Stereo MC's
DJ-Kicks: Stereo MC's (DJ Mix)
Album · Electronic · 2000
A decade after their debut album established Stereo MC’s as one of the UK’s foremost rap crews, they returned with a DJ-Kicks mix that traces the links between classic American hip-hop and the British post-rave dance scene. Their crates are deep: They routinely dig back to vintage tracks like 1981’s “Do It, Do It”, by the oft-sampled Harlem group the Disco Four, or Kool G Rap and DJ Polo’s “Road to the Riches”, from 1989, and for scene-setting, they even avail themselves of library music from the ’60s and ’70s. The set is peppered with cuts reminding listeners that the era was a golden age for boom-bap production and hard-hitting bars—Ultramagnetic MC’s’ “Poppa Large”, Divine Styler’s “Tongue of Labyrinth”, Hieroglyphics’ “At the Helm”—but selections from Sofa Surfers, The Herbaliser and Red Snapper also show the ways that American hip-hop was breeding new directions in trip-hop across the Atlantic. How you know that this is a truly old-school mix: At times, you can actually hear the clicks and pops of the group’s vinyl. It’s the sound of rap history playing out in real time.