RnB For The Late Night From Star Trak

1. Ray J - Formal Invite ft. Pharrell
2. Natasha Ramos - In The Midnight Hour
3. Latrelle - Long Night
4. Beenie Man - Ola
5. Babyface - Stressed Out
6. N*E*R*D - Locked Away
7. Usher - Wifey ft. Pharrell
8. Latrelle - Dirty Girl
9. Q-Tip - For The Nasty ft. Busta Rhymes
10. Nigo - Planet Of The Bapes
11. Ms. Jade - The Come Up
12. Toni Braxton - Hit The Freeway ft. Loon & Pharrell
13. Latrelle - House Party
14. Natasha Ramos - Invisible
15. Handsome Boy Modelling School - Class System ft. Pharrell Williams & Julee Cruise
16. Ray J - Out Tha Ghetto
17. Hasan - Phenomenon ft. Pharrell
18. Latrelle - My Life ft. Kelis
19. Latrelle - Dirty Girl ft.. T.I.

Inspiration has just struck. The idea had been there the whole time, it just needed to be dug out. The loop had been going on for who knows how long. From the video we can tell it was at least 10 minutes, most probably a lot longer. There were synths, piano, some hi-hats. Phrases and sounds and melodies were repeated and stretched and squeezed, moved around and experimented with, like pieces of a puzzle, trying to find how they fit together. Parts were done, fragments ready to go but a vital part proved elusive and so he waited, just grooving and vibing. She seemed unsure that they were getting anywhere but he had a calm confidence. This is what he does. Better than most who have ever done it. He stopped the loop.

'I hope you read every line to this message/In these trying times/We gon' make it' he sang softly and then started the loop again. His production partner came into the studio and they greeted each other. The loop kept going as his partner picked up an acoustic guitar on his way through and disappeared to another corner of the room, strumming along. With the distraction he lost it for a second. Frustrated he tried to get back to where he was with the melody and within about 30 seconds of his partner starting to strum along, he has it back and then it hits him. Synergy and illumination. Bad timing for her, a phone call, so she missed the lightning striking. The camera didn't.

This moment of inspiration was the key to unlocking the song. A chorus; 'In the midnight hour when you sleep/I hope you dream of me/I hope you dream of me/in the midnight hour when you creep/come get a piece of me, my baby'. Everything else would fall neatly into place now. Verses, the already established bridge and then a middle 8 that his partner no doubt came up with in tandem. 'How crazy's that? Woo hoo! ' He asks the camera man.

In The Midnight Hour ultimately went unreleased. It was meant for Natasha Ramos' debut album but the whole record was shelved yet the track surfaced online around 2004 so the studio session it came from was probably a year or so earlier. When I first heard the song I liked it fine. It didn't blow me away or anything. Then a while later a video of the track being created ended up on YouTube. It captured the moment of inspiration I just described. For whatever reason, seeing it come together and seeing the excitement on the songwriter's face as he found his breakthrough, as I'm sure by this point in his career he had done thousands of times before, and seeing it still seem like the first time, it gave me a whole other level of appreciation for the song.

I'm not sure if it was the first studio footage I'd seen of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of The Neptunes at work but it made a real impact on me. I was already a Neptunes obsessive, listening to every track I could find by them, buying whole albums because one track on it was produced by them and visiting the Grindin' forum (then called the Star Trak forum) multiple times a day which was undoubtedly where I first saw the video in question in fact. There is quite a lot of behind the scenes footage out there of these masters at work, on YouTube and in various documentaries if you do a bit of digging, not least of which is an incredible eight hour plus series showing the creation of Justin Timberlake's 2002 debut solo album Justified. It has some really awe-inspiring moments scattered around its epic running time. Anyway the Ramos video really struck a nerve because it showed in its rawest form how amazing, satisfying and exciting the act of creation can be. It showed me some of the reasons why people make art, in whatever form. It also showed that against all odds, Pharrell, a guy with a crazy amount of success already, and especially at this time when according to one statistic (whether or not it was accurate it certainly felt true) 'almost 20 per cent of airplay on British radio and 43 per cent in the United States' was produced by The Neptunes, and he still wasn't jaded or cynical. He seemed so enthralled with the craft. The video shows him looking a little worn out and tired but still energetic with enthusiasm for music. Making music because it's what he loved doing not because he wanted to make hits. The hits came as a by-product.

Sounds that could have come from the future and the past at the same time. Old ideas paired with sci-fi sonics. Spacey and minimal or bombastic and full, The Neptunes could do both. Hard rap, hook-laden pop or lush RnB, they could do all that too. And more. They first grabbed my ear in the last quarter of 1999. Ol' Dirty Bastard's perfect Got Your Money featuring Kelis and then Kelis' own hit Caught Out There were everywhere. At some point me and Luke were in Home Economics (our last year at school we wanted to make some cakes) we were doing the dishes and we got to talking about how that 'I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!' song had taken its time but had really wormed its way into our favour. I went from finding it a bit annoying to liking it a lot, but I never went so far as to buy the single. Luke had Got Your Money on CD. Eventually, probably around the turn of the century, I picked up a copy of Kelis' debut album Kaleidoscope. I wasn't prone to buying a lot of RnB records at this stage in my musical exploration (I was still a bit of a snob about it to be honest) but the album had been well reviewed and I'd liked what I had heard of it so far. Plus that cover was cool AND she was a babe. So I gave it a shot. Due to having been reading a lot about Steve Albini, Rick Rubin and Quincy Jones I was starting to become more interested in producers and who was responsible for the sound of records behind the scenes and so when I was reading the liner notes on the Kelis album I saw that the whole thing had been written and produced by The Neptunes. 'Interesting' I thought.

Then in 2001 Kelis' sophomore album Wanderland was released and I read about it in The Face magazine, The Neptunes were once again behind it and they had their own album coming out too under the name N*E*R*D. So I bought both those records on their respective release dates. I liked them both but it wasn't until March the following year that I fully fell in love with the Neptunes sound when they re-recorded and re-released that debut N*E*R*D album In Search Of with live band instrumentals instead of the heavily synthesized original release. Then I was all in. That's when I started seeking out everything I could find by them, singles by Jay-Z, Noreaga and Mystikal to album tracks by Mary J. Blige and Jadakiss and the search is what ended up leading me to the Star Trak forum. Star Trak was Williams and Hugo's new record label and on their website the forum became a dedicated community for sharing and discussing anything related to the duo. I plunged deep into both everything they'd ever released and all the stuff, and there was a lot, that was never officially released but had one way or another leaked online.

This mix is mostly made up of underappreciated releases and some of that never released stuff. From the mix's title I guess I was going for a nice smooth mix that would be appropriate for playing at a low volume late at night but a few tracks that I selected don't really suit that mood. Beenie Man's Ola really belongs in a party as he clearly states right at the top of the song and Planet of the Bapes is way too lively for a chill session. The scuzzy lo-fi unmastered sound of lost N*E*R*D track Locked Away is also quite disruptive, but what a great song though. I really wish they would go back and polish it off and give it a proper release. I am not alone in wanting this, there is only one song I can think of that the Grindin' community would like to see a full release of more, the holy grail that is Cassie's Hide. Ms. Jade's bars are too hard on The Come Up for a relaxing time but the beat based around a comedic Pharrell vocal loop is great fun. Similarly Q-Tip and Busta's unreleased For The Nasty just about works in this concept but I think I maybe should have stuck to the RnB tracks if I wanted to stay true to the premise. This would also count out Hasan's Phenomenon with its typically catchy Pharrell chorus.

Straying further still from the thesis of the mix is Class System, which isn't even produced by The Neptunes, that credit belongs to Dan The Automator and Prince Paul. It does at least have a Pharrell feature on it. Weirdly and excellently it also had Julee Cruise on it whose single Falling was used as the theme song for David Lynch's Twin Peaks. The song is a nice oddity but I don't think it really belongs with the rest of these songs thematically.

What remains are two Ray J tracks, five Latrelle ones, a buried Usher joint, a second Natasha Ramos number, and a hit single each from Babyface and Toni Braxton respectively. Ray J opens the mix with Formal Invite, a track that manages to stay silky smooth despite Brandy's brother spitting some grim/lame sex raps on it. I'm sure Kim Kardashian liked his chat. The second Ray J track is Out The Ghetto which Pharrell laced with a repetitive but ultra catchy hook that appears throughout the song and an even catchier chorus. The lyrics on this one about aspiring to work hard to get out of the struggle of hood life are better than than those on the earlier track. The Neptunes and Ray J had one other track together and all three of those songs appeared on Ray J's album This Ain't A Game. Those three songs are the only things I'm aware of him ever having done with any value.

Latrelle is a singer and songwriter from New Jersey who wrote songs for the likes of Destiny's Child and Monica as a teen and when she came to release an album herself she hit up Pharrell and Chad for six songs. Unfortunately it never really happened for her, that album went unreleased when the lead singles underperformed. There are two versions of Dirty Girl on here, the original version and the version with T.I.'s verse on it and if I'm being honest neither version of this song were ever going to be strong enough to be a hit. It's fine, but by no means great. Second single House Party is a slightly better RnB tune (with a gorgeously awful video), it's got a nice vibe and a strong hook but My Life, which features Kelis, has more of that Neptunes magic in it. Great snappy drums and synths, an excellent chorus and a terrific bridge where Kelis pretty much steals the show.

The other Latrelle song Long Night was one I always loved and really it should have been the single to try to launch her as an artist. Again the drums and synths are on point, but Pharrell's songwriting really flies here. Wonderful melodies and harmonies. The 'Phooooom Phooooom' vocal laser sound, that Pharrell was so fond of in the early days is all over this track as well. Years later Pharrell reworked the track for Shakira when he produced the bulk of her She Wolf album. He flipped it to give it a more Latin flavour. I still prefer the original version but I'm glad the song got its shine eventually.

Usher has had a long running a fruitful relationship with The Neptunes with a string of hits whenever they collaborate, but there are a number of tracks that they worked on together that ended up on the cutting room floor. Wifey is one of those and it is hard to see why. It bumps. Spare jangly guitar parts and lush strings topped with Usher doing some impressive vocal acrobatics, and Pharrell has some sweet vocals on it too. It is another one that should really be properly mastered and released at some point.

Stressed Out is one of two excellent songs the Star Trak duo wrote for Babyface's Face2Face album. There She Goes was the hit single but Stressed Out is a nicely slick track in its own right. And Hit The Freeway has everything you want from a classic Neps production and Toni Braxton just Toni Braxton's all over it.

Carbon dating would place this mix as being created around 2007. I'm fairly certain I would have been working at The Southern and that this mix was put together to score a quiet Monday night when not much was happening. Nothing to boisterous or raucous in the soundtrack. Just keep it relatively chill in the dim lighting. Maybe a little sexy. I didn't do a great job curating it. I must have been pushed for time.

On their first meeting Pharrell wrote In The Midnight Hour for Natasha Ramos and despite being fatigued from a five day recording session with Rodney Jenkins and flying in to Virginia to work Pharrell in the middle of the night, she must have impressed him because he wrote her a handful of other songs after. None of them ever got officially released but they got out there somehow (thank you internet). I am glad Invisible found its way out. Again it marries classic RnB songwriting with some weird futuristic sounds. It is what he/they were able to do seemingly without effort for years there. I mean, they are still doing it, but the impact has lessened. That golden era produced some truly amazing, forward thinking (and sounding) music and each and every one of those songs started with a moment of inspiration like the one caught on film the night they wrote In The Midnight Hour. It must have been so exhilarating and inspiring to be around two people with so much talent bouncing ideas off each other with that level of skill, enthusiasm and inspiration, because here, more than 10 years later listening to a poorly conceived mix of far from their best stuff I am still exhilarated and inspired. Long live Star Trak and long live The Neptunes.

Celestial Blues

1. Gary Bartz NTU Troop - Celestial Blues

2. OutKast - Idlewild Blue (Don'tchu Worry 'Bout Me)
3. Nelly Furtado - Afraid
4. N*E*R*D - Waiting For You
5. Dead Prez - Bigger Than Hip-Hop
6. Lady Sovereign - Gatheration
7. Girl Talk - Smash Your Head
8. Eric Benet - Love Don't Love Me (Neptunes Remix) ft. Clipse
9. Uncle Charlie Wilson - Beautiful (Remix)
10. Jackson 5 - ABC
11. Michael Jackson - You Rock My World
12. Don Blackman - Holding You, Loving You
13. Fabolous - Can You Hear Me?
14. Fergie - London Bridge
15. Girl Talk - Too Deep
16. Nelly Furtado - Maneater (Remix) ft. Lil' Wayne
17. OutKast - Morris Brown
18. Snoop Dogg - Drop It Like It's Hot (Remix) ft. Jay-Z
19. T.I. - Kick It At The Hotel

Celestial Blues by Gary Bartz NTU Troop I first heard when listening to Giles Peterson's BBC Radio 1 show on July 2nd 2006 (it was after midnight when this track was played so I guess technically it was July 3rd) in my room at my dad's flat. It was during that spell of unemployment before the Rhythm Project and The Southern happened. I was sat listening to the radio online on my computer with headphones on. Pharrell Williams was a guest co-host on the show and for the first hour they played a selection of The Neptunes greatest hits up until that time. In the second hour Giles asked Pharrell to select some of his favourite songs and one of his picks was this Harlem Bush Music piece of wonderful. He told a story about how he'd been on tour with N*E*R*D and just got back home to Virginia Beach where some friend dragged him out to a club. He said he was just sitting, chilling, when the 'like, 19 year-old' DJ threw this song on. He was blown away and couldn't believe he hadn't heard it before. He immediately ran up to the DJ booth to ask the kid what it was.

It had the same effect on me. I was rapt at the majestic simplicity of the baseline immediately and was in love by the time the saxophone and vocals came in simultaneously and harmonised with each other. 'Expand your mind/Don't let it wither and die' the lyrics preached wise and enchantingly. It is a fantastic piece of funky, uplifting jazz. Bartz' audacious saxophone solos are gorgeous.

A year or so later I was playing it while on shift at The Southern and our resident vinyl junkie Robin 'Burnsey' Burns was sitting at the bar. His ears pricked up and he looked at me; 'Gary Bartz?! Nice.' He asked me if I'd heard the album the track came from, I hadn't and so the next time I saw him he came with a burned CD ripped from the Harlem Bush Music vinyl. Good music fans share great music with other music fans. Hell of a record.

Idlewild Blue (Don'tchu Worry 'Bout Me) and Morris Brown, 2 singles from the soundtrack/album from OutKast's lukewarmly received Idlewild movie would have leaked around the same date I was listening to that Giles Peterson show. Most likely I was sat in exactly the same spot for the first listens of both of these as I was for Celestial Blues. I remember that the general response to the new Andre and Big Boy music was that it was similarly underwhelming as the film it was made for. Both song struck a chord with me though. The bluesy guitars and harmonicas, the Doo-Wop vocals and 3 Stacks continuing his trend of singing in favour of rapping from The Love Below on Idlewild Blue, all worked for me. And the New Orleans-style first-line funk of Morris Brown made me want to second-line. 

This was also the era of Nelly Furtado's close affiliation with Tim 'Timbaland' Mosley. She'd been quiet for a while, 3 years since her commercial flop Folklore after the hit of her (actually quite rubbish) first album, the terribly titled Whoa, Nelly! Timbo had had a relatively quiet few years as well but was at the peak of a massive creative resurgence after having lost his way for a time following the death of Aaliyah in 2001. Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds was just around the corner and his name was enough to front his first solo record, Shock Value by the begining of 2007, but this was the first move in his comeback bid to take over the world. He signed Furtado to his label and he and his protege Danja handled production on the majority of her next album Loose. It was huge. Afraid is the album opener and is a decent tune, but once again; the same seat, in the same room, in the same flat would be the setting for my first encounter with it.

There is also a Maneater remix featuring the ascending Lil' Wayne on the tail end of the disc. It is fantastic. The beat is deep and atmospheric, Wayne sounds perfect, like a stoned alien, his flow makes rapping sound as simple and natural to him as breathing. And when the Nelly vocals come in the beat lends them a nice new context. Timbo was catching fire again. First play; same seat.

Waiting For You, the weird semi-interlude track tacked on to the back of Wonderful Place from N*E*R*D's prog-pop opus sophomore album Fly Or Die, I heard for the first time a few years earlier. That one was in my room at Gilmore Heights, before the unemployment and the moving back in to my dad's place. I had managed to resist listening to many of the leaks that were kicking about online from before the albums release and so my first experience of the song was in the context of the full record on the day of it's release. I went out early to buy it and rushed home to listen to it. The debut album, In Search Of, had fast become, and to this day remains, one of my favourite albums of all time, so Fly Or Die had a high benchmark to clear. It didn't. That first listen I felt a little disappointed. It was a strange record. An interesting record for sure. It was poppier in parts than I would have expected, with some bizarre collaborations (the Madden brothers?!) and a mad mix of musical styles all thrown into the blender together. I liked it but wasn't sure I was going to love it.

Later that day I went out to Oxygen bar on Infirmary Street, to have a few drinks with some mates and I remember discussing the album with Sod, who had liked the album a lot more on first listen than I had and Blair who'd had a similar reaction to it that I had had. It's interesting how Sod's enthusiasm for the record made me listen to it a little differently when I got home, and quickly the album grew on me. 2 years later I was still bumping it and obviously Waiting For You had called out to be included on this mix. It really is a weird little ditty, just Pharrell telling the story of a family fishing trip gone wrong over some strings, strummed guitar and some bongos in the outro. So we come back once again to that seat, that room, that flat, because it too was where I was sitting when I put this (and many others) compilation together.

A word about that seat; it was a deeply unspectacular and not particularly comfortable, black office swivel chair. No arm rests. It stayed at my desk, which is where I am sure it is still now as I write this. I sat there for hours and days in front of my slow but functional desktop computer, reading about film and music, messing around on MySpace and most importantly watching videos and listening to music. It was a starting point and also a stop off along the way. You see, many of the songs on this CD, as I have detailed already, started their journey with me from the same location; Celestial Blues, the new OutKast and Nelly ones along with new songs by Lady Sovereign and... Fergie's London Bridge?! Interesting. I never knew I liked this song. July 2006, I still wanted Lady Sovereign to happen, too. Sometimes things make even less sense with hindsight. That said; London Bridge is a bit of a banger.

All the rest of the songs on it had set of with me elsewhere and maybe took different paths before joining me again at this rendezvous point. Dead Prez' Bigger Than Hip-Hop was always around but it would have come to the forefront of my musical consciousness again with the near weekly trips to Medina on a Saturday night at that time where my big cousin Nasty P would DJ and could be depended on to play it. The 2 Girl Talk tracks were predictably played to me at George's place. He knew I would dig the insane genius of his multi-track mash-ups. These were both new and still fresh for me, hence their inclusion here.

The Eric Benet remix, Uncle Charlie Wilson version of Beautiful, Jay-Z featuring Drop It Like It's Hot remix and T.I.'s Kick It At The Hotel, I am fairly sure I would have come across using Luke's computer in his room at Gilmore circa 2004. The internet connection on his PC was better than mine (actually, mine may not have been able to access the internet at all at the time) so I used his to find new and rare Neptunes stuff on the Grindin' forum. Both the Benet and Charlie Wilson tracks I consider to be definitive versions, the Jay-Z verse on Drop It is a nice rarity, with it's R. Kelly diss and the beat is dope but still can't hold a candle to the original and the T.I. track is fine but not one of their finest collabs.

A Fabolous album track from 2004's Real Talk LP shows up on the mix and it is a nice enough number but I honestly couldn't tell you what had brought it back to my attention 2 years later. I guess I just must have been revisiting the album and it caught my ear again. I also can't be sure what brought Don Blackman's excellent Holding You, Loving You, a tremendous slice of soulful RnB released in the year of my birth, back into my consciousness.

The Jackson 5 have always been there. Their songs run deep in me. We started our journey together when I was very young and they have never been far away. And even in his waning years Michael was still capable of producing unquestionably perfect pop music like You Rock My World.

All of these songs started somewhere, and then they made their way into my life somehow. And we would hear from each other regularly or rarely but we all ended back together on one day in July 2006 sitting at that one chair at that piece of crap PC and I put them all in one place and now 10 years on that CD has gathered us again. This time I'm sitting with my laptop on my knees in my room in London and it's good to hear from them all again.

Bloods vs. Crips vol. 1

1. Charlotte Hatherly - Behave

2. Lazlo Bane - Superman (Theme from Scrubs)

3. Rosie Thomas - Pretty Dress

4. Ike & Tina Turner - Nutbush City Limit

5. bis - Listen Up!

6. Puffy Ami Yumi - Asia No Junshin

7. King - Love & Pride

8. Charlotte Hatherly - Kim Wilde

9. Fall Out Boy - This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race

10. A.R.E. Weapons - Street Gang

11. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Whatever Happened To My Rock N' Roll

12. The Music - You Might As Well Try To Fuck Me

13. Regina Spektor & The Strokes - Modern Girls & Old Fashioned Men

14. David Bowie - Oh! You Pretty Thing

15. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Machine

16. Charlotte Hatherly - Bastardo

17. Sophie Ellis Bexter - Catch You

18. Massive Attack - The Hunter Gets Captured Buy The Game

Jolene Cherry made a mix in 1995 that put some truly diverse artists side by side. An Offspring song right before a Nick Cave one. Right after that there is a Method Man tune followed by everbody's favourite deceased auto-asphyxiato wanker; Michael Hutchence's weird interpretation of an Iggy Pop staple. The compilation opens with one of the few U2 songs that I like and closes with an alternate recording of a Flaming Lips number and in between we also take in Eddie Reader, Brandy, PJ Harvey, Mazzy Star and a multi-million selling Seal pop ballad. It is a profoundly bizarre grouping. Eclectic to say the least. Jolene Cherry in her role as Music Supervisor put all these artists together to create the soundtrack for the movie Batman Forever.

The film was not good. I'd been so excited for it all year too. I couldn't wait for its July 14th opening. And I'd managed to whip a lot of my friends into a fevered frenzy of excitement as well by hyping it up incessantly.  I remember a bunch of us booked tickets and were there opening day for one of the earliest screenings. It was a bright sunny day and we all got the bus out to the UCI cinema at New Craighall and I think at the time I really enjoyed it. I was a dumb kid who was a bit of a Jim Carrey superfan and didn't mind that Val Kilmer was horribly mis-cast as Bruce Wayne and somehow wasn't incredulously irritated by Tommy Lee Jones' frankly insane over the top performance as Two Face. After Tim Burton's two gothic but camp and highly enjoyable takes on the World's Greatest Detective I really thought Joel Schumacher was going to nail this installment. I was sure he was going to keep the established tone but go bigger and even more exciting. He missed the target. But not by quite as much as he would a few years later.

I haven't watched the film in a long while but I remember it quite well and am sure it does have its moments but mostly it is a garish, poorly written mess. It wandered even further from the source material than even Burton dared to. I guess Michael Keaton's refusal to return to the lead role should have been a sign that it wasn't going to work out. A large portion of it I'm sure I would find unbearable if I tried to watch it now. I believe there is a fan edit called The Red Book Edition that restores some deleted scenes that the studio had demanded be removed as they were too dark for young children, that improves the film but I haven't been able to track it down. Either way only three or four of the tracks selected by Jolene Cherry and presumably, Schumacher too (who specifically demanded Kiss From A Rose be included), actually appear in any form in the movie itself.

Around the midway point of OST for the summer blockbuster there is a collaborative cover version of a Smokey Robinson-penned The Marvelettes number by Massive Attack and Tracy Thorn from Everything But The Girl. It is lovely and years later I decided to close out one of my own mixes with it. I didn't know who Jolene was until I started researching who did the music for Batman Forever but I feel like she and I have a similar approach to creating mixes. Perhaps she was a subconscious, spiritual guide or influence on me as a compiler of music. Bloods Vs. Crips Vol. 1 (we will presumably get to Vol. 2 at some point) bears a very similar attitude to eclecticism in early '07 as Cherry did in '95.

The title of this mix probably comes from my brief obsession with L.A. gang culture probably piqued by my fandom of both Snoop Dogg and  Lil' Wayne, a Crip and a Blood respectively.  Neither of which appear on this assortment. For a mix made by myself in 2007, this one is surprisingly short on rap (somewhat ironically given that title) and RnB music, but a spectrum of genres are visited regardless. There is the poppy alt-country ditty Superman by Lazlo Bane that was used as the title music for medical sitcom Scrubs and pop-punk-emo gods Fall Out Boy appear later with J-Pop icons Puffy (renamed Puffy Ami Umi in the West so as not to be confused with Sean 'Puff Daddy' 'Puffy' 'P. Diddy' 'Diddy' 'Ciroc Obama' Combs) turning up in between. There is little thought to flow in the order of the tracks. I appear to be subscribing to the same 'every track should be completely different to the last track' approach that Cherry took with Batman.

There are three Charlotte Hatherley tracks interspersed throughout Bloods Vs. Crips. I had been a big fan of her first solo record Grey Will Fade back when she was still a member of Irish pop rock powerhouse band Ash and the release of the first single from her sophomore record The Deep Blue would have just been released. I chose to open this selection with the thumping drums of that single, Behave and then halfway through returned to Kim Wilde from the first LP. From that album too was the single Bastardo, the story of a one night stand resulting in the tradgedy of a stolen guitar. The video for which was directed by her then boyfriend Edgar Wright and starred David Walliams as the titular two-faced lothario and had a cameo by Simon Pegg.

Each of those tracks are delightful indie rock pop gems. The aforementioned Scrubs theme directly follows Behave at the top of the record and the excellent This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race by Fall Out Boy comes after Kim Wilde in the middle and up the back Bastardo is succeeded by Catch You by Sophie Ellis-Bexter. 

Catch You was written by Cathy Dennis who is basically the female Max Martin, a sculptor of exquisitely perfect pop numbers from Toxic by Britney Spears to I Kissed A Girl by Katy Perry to the excellent Sensitized  by Kylie Minogue. Catch You is hard to place in terms of genre, it incorporates elements of dance music and rock music, it is dynamic and serious but also loads of fun. Sophie is still making music but her visibility has declined. She's apparently making folky orchestral music these days.

Elsewhere you will find stone cold David Bowie classic Oh! You Pretty Things sandwiched between Regina Spektor and The Strokes collaboration Modern Girls & Old Fashioned Men and their contemporary rock revivalists Yeah Yeah Yeahs with Machine. The former is a great pairing; Julian and Regina's voices harmonize beautifully and she sounds great on a Strokes instrumental, I really like the song. Machine is good too, it was technically Karen O and co.'s first single after their incredible self titled debut E.P. It never wound up being on their first album and so is a bit of a forgotten rare gem. It bears all the hallmarks of a really great Yeah Yeah Yeahs song, lo-fi charms, catchy chorus, aggressive guitars and drums and Karen's voice playfully dancing back and forth between yelpy shrieks, lovely melodies and attitude filled snarls.

Using a similar algorithm, (Ike &) Tina Turner's astounding leviathan Nutbush City Limits is wedged between a Rosie Thomas tune and a bis stomper. Now Nutbush will forever be tied in my brain to two things; second of those is Glasgow comedian Limmy's sketch that featured it, which is unquestionably perfect. The first though, is my hetro-lifemate Nick Lewis. Nick and I have known each other since we were 12 and have lived together frequently in the years since we finished school. Our relationship is about as close to a marriage as I'm ever likely to get. And the reason that he and Tina and Nutbush are so interlocked in my mind is because years and years ago in the early days of The Snatch Club, one night we were, as always, partying on a Thursday night when DJ Harry Ainswoth threw the song on, the timing was perfect, the crowd was lit and we were at peak-drunkenness/silliness and the moment those first few chugs of the guitar riff hit our ears suddenly Nick was like a man possessed, his fists went out at arms length in front of him and began moving up and down in time to the rhythm of the song. Simultaneously he started wrenching his torso in a similar motion. A spectacle that made everybody around giggle in delight. It was really quite a vision and inspires pretty much the same reaction from him if you play it now. I also recall one time it incited a moshpit in a pitch dark room at a New Year house party in Gilmore Heights. It was a savage 3 minutes.

Rosie Thomas is an American singer-songwritter who I know very little about or by but her 2005 single Pretty Dress is a lovely thing. Plinking piano, luscious vocals, delicate strings and then the drums come in and the chorus climbs. It's weird but I can't imagine that I'd enjoy an album by her but this one song has an enduring pleasantness for me. 

Listen Up! by Scottish indie ska pop band bis is an entirely different beast. The band was introduced to me, like many of my favourite bands from the age of about 16 to 19, by one of my best mates Luke. The artwork for all their early releases; E.P.'s, singles and the debut album, were Manga styled cartoons of the band drawn by band member Amanda 'Manda Rin' MacKinnon, had always intrigued me but it wasn't until Luke played me their Secret Vampire Soundtrack and Sweet Shop Avengers releases that I was hooked. They were the first ever unsigned act to appear on Top Of The Pops and were a wildly divisive act. They were three kids doing poppy, punky, ska-y lo-fi indie rock tunes, all shrill and shouted vocals, synths, stabbing guitars and a drum machine with lyrics about superheroes, monsters and candy. Many (in fact most) hated them. I fell in love. Listen Up! is from their more consistent and mature sophomore album Social Dancing and is a great big ole shouty anthem. They were huge in Japan.

As were the re-monikered Puffy Ami Yumi whose Asia No Junshin is like a slicker, poppier Listen Up! It's really great, loads of changes, bits with mad robot voices, strings, the lot. In the days before the internet made music globally more available my pal David 'Sod' Sodergren spent a great deal of his hard earned money importing music and movies and books from all over the world. J-Pop was a particular obsession of his and a compilation tape he made me of some of the best stuff that Japan's pop scene had to offer would have been the first place I'd have come across Puffy.

King's Love and Pride is an excellent bit of cheesy new wave eighties pop which I have no idea how it ended up being included in the this selection. I know literally nothing else by the band and have zero desire to find anymore out but am eternally grateful for this beaut.

Now the last three tracks that I have to speak on are by bands that like The Strokes and Yeah Yeah Yeah's can be loosely grouped together as part of the NME's so called New Rock Revolution. From Leeds were the baggy Stone Roses-pretenders The Music, who were awful but the song You Might As Well Try To Fuck Me (best song title of all time?) has some charm that still works for me. It's just a really nice riff. And similarly another good song by a terrible band is Whatever Happened To My Rock N' Roll (worst song title of all time?) by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. With a title like that the song really needed to be as rocking as it is. They had exactly one other good song. The Music had none. 

A.R.E. Weapons were from New York and were the kind of band that were homeless but played gigs in art galleries and had model girlfriends. Douchebags, basically. Street Gang, the version included here is from the single version, is pretty good. Full of attitude and menace and lyrics like the opening couplet 'Standing on the sidewalk/sucking on a soda-pop/Nothing but a tough luck/Doo Wop' and 'Here comes the street gang/The beautiful killers/Aren't they gorgeous?/In their black leather jackets'. They totally messed it up when they re-recorded it for their (terrible) debut album. A real shame.

If this mix was to be the Original Soundtrack album for the major 2007 motion picture Bloods vs. Crips part 1 starring Vin Diesel and Johnny Depp and directed by Gus Van Sant, Street Gang would feature in the scene where the titular gangs are approaching each other for the climactic battle to run the streets of L.A. Dramatic stuff. Luckily Seth Rogen is there for comic relief as a lovable weed botanist who is developing a strain of marijuana that might bring about peace if only Shia LeBeouf's plucky young hero can get it to the gang leaders in time. Jessica Alba hams it right up as a violent chola meanwhile Scarlett Johansson seems to think she's in an entirely different film from everyone else, delivering a nuanced and subtle performance as the girl caught between these two warring gang leaders. The cast is absurdly white for a film set mostly in Compton. And the soundtrack is audaciously left field. But the opening scene fist fight set to Nutbush is so perfect it's a shame it doesn't really exist. My screenplay for this would've killed.

Déjà Vu

1. Beyoncè - Déjà Vu
2. Clipse - Re-Up Anthem (Nick Catchdubs Remix)
3. T.I. - What You Know About That
4. Bell Biv Devoe - Poison
5. Kandice Love - Amazin'
6. Plan B - Sick 2 Def
7. Lupe Fiasco - Kick Push ft. Pharrell
8. KanYe West - Drive Slow (Remix) ft. Paul Wall, GLC & T.I.
9. Fam-Lay - Da Beeper Record
10. Alana Davis - New Glasses
11. Amerie - Touch (Remix) ft. T.I.
12. Ashanti - Still On It
13 - Christina Aguilera - Ain't No Other Man
14. Dialated Peoples - This Way ft. KanYe West
15. T.I. - Bring 'Em Out
16. Michael & Janet Jackson - Scream
17. Rosco P. Coldchain - Pussy ft. Pharrell
18. Sierra Swan - Sex Is Keeping Us Together
19. Skunk Anansie - Weak

Nothing of much note happened that afternoon. The sun was hotter than usual. That's not saying much for Scotland, but it was certainly a bit hotter than we're used to getting, even in summer. I was out in the back garden at my dad's flat in Wardieburn, shorts oan, taps aff. I'd been trying to read comic books like the massive nerd I am but my sweaty hands were messing up the pages, so I abandoned that idea to continue reading Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, a wonderful novel about a young hermaphrodites self discovery. The boombox was out and this mix was playing. I'd just made it and I remember thinking how good the Nick Catchdubs flip of Clipse's Got It 4 Cheap mixtape cut Re-Up Anthem sounded in the sunshine. Pairing those crack slinging bars with an excellent, if obvious, sample of Eric Clapton's Cocaine was perfect. It would've been the beginning of summer 2006.

Later that summer I would do my second stint as Technical Director on a dance show my sister and her best friend put on in consecutive Edinburgh Festivals and as summer faded I would end up working at The Southern. At this point however I was unemployed and back living with my pops. This would've been around the time of the van with Malcs and Blair, probably about a month or so before those two days. The winter had been a long and dark one for me. But now the sun was out. As far as afternoons go this one was super chill. Like I said, nothing eventful happened. I mean apart from the new Beyoncé single leaking obviously. That was big. The first taste of her upcoming sophomore record B'Day? C'mon! That's exciting. A Jay-Z feature was the cherry for this Jigga superfan. As soon as I heard it I had to immediately compose this mix so I could have it burnt to CD.

Aside from that it was just a nice calm, sunny day, with just me and my book. And yet as soon as I saw that Clipse remix on the tracklist I thought of that day and as soon as I heard it I was right back there. That summer ended up being a really good one. That might be why this day sticks out. If I remember right, I'd been unemployed for months at this point. It was pretty depressing. There were a few temporary jobs here and there but I'd been on the dole more than working for the better part of a year prior to this. How my dad tolerated my shiftless ass is beyond me. Having some lazy, free-loader kicking about in my flat for that long would have made me wanna... Scream by Michael and Janet is a throwback. When it came out in '95 the thirteen year-old me was a bit disappointed by it, if memory serves, but I don't know what that wee hyper-critical prick was all about; the tune is a straight killer. I think Janet's aggressive sexuality in the extraordinarily expensive video may have scared my pubescent self. There is a sensational mash-up (almost an oxymoron) of it with Beck's E-Pro that may be better than either song separately.

Not long after the day in the van, rehearsals for The Rhythm Project got underway. A project to keep me busy! And lots of pretty dancers to distract me! Things were getting better. Annika and Jenny had asked me to take sole charge of the technical direction of the show this year so it was a lot of work but also a lot of fun. Friends I'd made on the show the previous year were suddenly back in my life alongside numerous new faces. Jenna, Ashley, Alloysious, Kayus , Bilal, Matt and Cleo, amongst others, were a fun cast of characters to work with and get to know. One time shortly before a performance I was playing records as people were coming in and I played the remix of KanYe's Drive Slow with the T.I. feature (probably from this very mix). Kayus hadn't heard this version before and asked me about it. We bonded. Sometimes being a geek can make you look cool. I still know Tip's verse on this inside out.

Over the cinematic strings, sub-bass and stuttering hi-hats of southern rap sub-genre trap music was where I first became aware of T.I. He did, after all, introduce 'the youth to what we now call "trappin"/Considered now a classic, who'd have imagined?' I remember late one night years previously, Luke and I were just hanging out in Gilmore Heights watching MTV Base when 24's came on. We both sat up like 'who's this kid?' To think that trap didn't become really popular over here until nearly a decade later is weird to me. And the genre has changed a lot in that time. Mostly for the worse. But I've been a fan of Clifford Joseph Harris Jr. since that first viewing. He makes a number of other appearances on this compilation; What You Know would have been the most current joint on there, from the 2006 classic LP King. My defining memory of this song however didn't happen until about 8 years later when at a southern rap club night in London called Player's Ball. Me, Nick, Lucy and Robyn were close to the only white people present. It was what I imagine clubbing in Atlanta, Georgia might be like. Awesome, basically. Me and Nick were high as kites. This came on and we were in the thick of it. Shit was wild. Such a good night.

The other T.I. single on the disc is from 2004's Urban Legend LP; Bring 'Em Out. With it's Swizz Beatz Jay-Z-sampling beat it is party ready with its horn's and whistles but it lacks the dark edge I like on T.I.'s more trap-y stuff. It's catchy enough though. Also it was weird to see him performing it on The OC that one time. Man I loved The OC. For the first few seasons at least. Comedic teen melo-drama at its finest. We had a first season finale party at the Gilmore Place flat one time where we all came dressed as characters. Poorly. Except Luke made a hilarious Sandy Cohen. It was a fun night and exactly the kind of lame but awesome shit we always got up to in that flat.

Coincidently, in my memories now Bell Biv Devoe's new jack swing classic Poison also is now intrinsically tied to a TV show; hospital sitcom Scrubs. The song was already legendary but once Turk did that lip-sync and dance the song would forever bring it to mind. I watched a lot of that show. That dance was my favourite moment from it.

Back to T.I. in the form of a feature on a remixed Amerie single. Both versions were from 2005 and bore that unmistakable Lil' Jon, Crunk&B sound. The single never quite scaled the euphoric heights of her global behemoth 1 Thing but is a lot of fun none the less. T.I. doesn't add a whole lot to the proceedings, this verse isn't a patch on the Drive Slow contribution.

Inevitably T.I.'s four appearances here are bested by the ever-present Pharrell and Chad of The Neptunes who manage six productions and features between them on this compact disc. That's not even counting the Clipse track on account of it being a remix. Sierra Swan's glam rock stomp Sex Is Keeping Us Together is a Chad Hugo solo production. It was recorded and leaked to the internet around 2005 but due to label issues the record wasn't officially released until 2008. It is a fascinating oddity as it sounds nothing like anything else in their discography. It's a scuzzy mess. The only clearly Chad Hugo-ish thing about the song really is the weird sci-fi synths that are all over it. But it works, it's a boisterous hoot that I still get a kick out of. I don't know too much of Sierra's other stuff but I really liked her official single from that year also; Copper Red.

Similarly rare but bearing a more classic Neptunes sound is New Glasses by Alana Davis. The drums are snappy, the chords are pretty and the bassline grooves. A decent enough jam it is but Davis' vocals are really quite unremarkable and the lyrics are a bit too hippy for my taste. I can't help but think that over this beat Kelis would have soared.

Pharrell is on his In My Mind flow on the official remix of Kick Push, the lead single from Lupe Fiasco's debut album Food & Liquor. And by 'In My Mind flow' I mean that he's rhyming competently with intermittent groaningly clunky bars; 'I know my dead homies wish they was much gooder then/I mean gooder then, not cuz I'm better than'? The song is an ode to skateboarding culture and growing up and is really quite lovely despite those cringers. That first Lupe album got a lot of spins at The Southern later in the year when it was released, but Kick Push worked for the good weather.

Nasty sex raps over a smoother than smooth beat is the order of the day for Rosco P. Coldchain and Pharrell on the sublimely ridiculous Pussy. Rosco was one of the artists Pharrell and Chad signed to their Star Trak imprint. The chorus on this song is so dumb and so catchy, I often catch myself singing it at inopportune moments. Only a couple of the Rosco P. songs that are in circulation online were ever officially released before he got himself locked up for murder. It's a real shame because a lot of them are great. Needless to say his album was never put out. He wasn't the most talented of rappers but he sounded good over a Neptunes beat.

Fam-Lay who was also signed to the Star Trak record label was just unlucky though. And he didn't even murder anyone. Da Beeper Record was released as the first single for his never to see the light of day debut album Traintago. The song is typically weird and brilliant for these guys.  One repetative synth stab, snappy clicks and drums and a shark-like bassline that swims below the waterline and occasionally pops its head up. Fam-Lay's flow is slick and varied and at one point he says 'Telling you not that my shit is/Bigger than knuckles on midgets' which is... bananas. But it went nowhere, largely ignored by the masses. A couple of years later it was sampled by The Count & Sinden on Beeper featuring Kid Sister which was a bit of a hit in the Indie-Electro scene. Still not enough to get Fam recognised though. He was shelved and then ultimately forgotten when the label folded. He still sometimes tours with Pharrell and N*E*R*D when the can be bothered to put out a record. If you're willing to root around online you can find a whole host of excellent songs meant for his lost classic.

The Star Trak forum, which later became the grindin.org forum, was where I found most of these songs. It was amazing to have a community of nerds as obssessed with The Neptunes sound (phooom phoooom) as I was. Rarities and unreleased stuff would always find its way onto the board. Stuff you could only get there or on the #theneptunes mIRC channel. And it was there that I first came across the version of Amazing with only Kandice Love on it. I was already aquainted with the beat as I owned LL Cool J's 10 album from 2002. The beat is improved upon massively when shorn of LL's corny seduction bars and replaced with additional Kandice vocals. It's super cheesy but it suits Kandice's voice much better. This beat should never have ended up with Mr. James Todd Smith.

I guess I made this mix not too long after The Jump Off one, I was quite excited to hear the new album from Christina Aguilera for a while. I'd heard she'd been working with Premier which was an exciting prospect and I had really liked Still Dirrty. Ain't No Other Man is really pretty good too. Not the best Premo production and not the best Aguilera song but I still think of it fondly. The album when it came out in August was a bit of a let down in the end and faded from memory quickly. Those early releases from it however were a good time while they lasted. 

The Swishahouse sound that came out of Houston in the late-90's owed a lot to the Chopped and Screwed stylings of DJ Screw, the trap music from Atlanta and the Memphis originated crunk. Paul Wall, who appeared on forgotten Ashanti single Still On It, was a Swishahouse stalwart who rarely rapped about anything other than the grillz that were both in his mouth and for sale on his website. He also appeared on Kanye's Drive Slow. He got about for a while there. Always amusing, never really very good. Adding some credibility to the proceedings is Method Man who phones in a perfectly fine if not very memorable guest verse. I quite like the song even though it's existence was lost to me between the time I last played this mix until hearing it now. I'm pretty surprised that it had a video and everything to be honest.

The last two tracks to talk about here seem entirely at odds and out of place on this particular collection. Thing is I can work out how they ended up on it. Plan B's harsh Sick 2 Def almost makes sense, it has rapping on it, albeit over atypical strummed guitar and nothing else. The content of his rhymes is a lot more explicit and controversial than everything else around it but I remember being impressed by his word play and storytelling. The third verse where he mimics the concept of the NaS track Rewind and tells a tale about a stabbing in reverse is noteworthy. It doesn't warrant too many repeat plays but is interesting at the very least.

Blair had put me on to Plan B when he gave me a copy of the Radiohead-Sampling Missing Links, I really liked that one. So I came across Sick 2 Def while finding out more about him. There was an interview where he said that his favourite song was Weak by Skunk Anansie. Ali Blaikie, my oldest childhood friend, we've known each other since we were 3 years old, was a big fan of that band. I knew the song but hadn't thought about it in a long time. So I downloaded it and bashed it on the end of this mix. The whole thing was put together quickly because I wanted to go outside and listen to Déjà Vu in the afternoon heat. Nice days are few and far between in Edinburgh so you have to act quickly.

Lying out on the grass, drinking apple juice, reading my book, sweating. It was all about to change for me. I don't think I was fully aware. There was gonna be fun and parties and new jobs and girls and new friends. That day in the sun was a start and a end. A long winter, cold, dark, depressing, working temporary jobs I didn't like. Every day had been like bad Déjà Vu. And it was all lifted. Sometimes it all starts with a song. Or a few songs in the sunshine.


Photo credits: George Michael Taylor

The Jump Off

1. Ducktails Theme
2. Christina Aguilera - Still Dirrty
3. Snoop Dogg- Vato ft. B-Real
4. Brooke Hogan - About Us ft. Paul Wall
5. R.A.M.P. - Daylight
6. The Killers - All These Things That I've Done
7. Phil Collins - Easy Lover
8. Missy Elliott - On & On
9. Tiffany - I Think We're Alone Now
10. Ace Of Base - All That She Wants
11. Lil' Kim - The Jump Off
12. Razorlight - Somewhere Else
13. Animaniacs Theme
14. Beck - E-Pro
15. J-Lo - Get Right (Remix) ft. Fabolous
16. ELO - Mr. Blue Sky
17. David Bowie - Magic Dance
18. Missy Elliott - The Rain
19. Talespin Theme
20. The Killers - Somebody Told Me

Among the branches and in the living room, in worlds unreal and composed on paper, spanning the hours betwixt lessons and meal time and cared for by grandparents, nurturing and supportive but also tired and at their wit's end. An exodus for this child. Colour and madness provide the ideal escape from a world where love never seems to last except between parents and their children. A grim world in the aftermath of the reign of a grotesque witch who'd drained all the joy from the people to then be replaced by a gray, charisma vacuum. Things are slow in getting better. And so off into animated lands of ducks and bears and insane siblings I go. Themes that will earworm for decades soundtrack the transition, from reality into a glorious universe of living paint and paper.

And then there are the moving pictures, another exodus from the real world. One where a legendary popstar pretends to be a king of goblins meanwhile a young, future Oscar winner seeks her abducted brother with the help of many lively puppets, is a place this now young teen frequently visits. Push existence to the side and indulge in fantasy. Ah, those songs! Such a joy.

Older now but still young and dumb, in discotheques seeking fun and drugs and sex.  Different scenes, different music, the goals remain steady. An alternative to the mundane. Snatch Club for variety, songs new and old, Establishment for bars and soul and songs about carnality and the rapture of the party. Indigo and EVOL for introspection and sensitivity masquerading as hedonism. The Mission and Genetic for the fun of costume and fake aggression and heavy music. All the while making bonds with others pursuing the same highs with analogous tastes. Vibrant interactions, drama and dancing. A magnificent time in the darkness and smoke. Nights and songs that I wont remember with people; unforgettable.

Waxing nostalgic here, thinking about the old days. An adult looking back. Now isn't bad but is it as good as then? Remember that song?! Remember that night?! What a blast. Who was that guy?! Where did she go? Why did we do that?! *groan* What fun we had. Bathe in the score of those memories for a short time, put off dealing with the now. It's okay to do sometimes. Necessary in fact.

Perhaps as middle age sets in I'll disappear into some soulful jazz, on a trip. To take a short break from living my middle aged life.

This was some of the incidental music. The three cartoon themes on this mix are grand; Ducktails had the better theme (with its wah-wah guitar solo that sounds like a quacking duck), Animaniacs was the better show. On Still Dirrty Christina Aguilera sounds good over an awesome DJ Premier beat, but her claims are unconvincing. The beat simply isn't grimy enough to sell her claims of nastiness. She doesn't sound like she really means it. Vato by Snoop is fine but if we're being honest it wasn't the most inspired of his Neptunes collaborations. God only knows where that Brooke Hogan song came from. It isn't great which I'm sure is surprising to no-one. Roy Ayers' Daylight is classic and I will still be listening to it into my old age. Two Killers tracks on this mix?! I never liked them as a band nor rated their albums but in the right setting (The Liquid Room on a Wednesday night, high on E in 2007) their singles were undeniable. Easy Lover; perfect. On & On is the ideal marriage of an utterly loony Neptunes beat and Missy Elliot who sounds more at home the more mental the instrumental is. I Think We're Alone Now is I Think We're Alone Now, which is to say; terrific. Same goes for All That She Wants. Notorious K.I.M. lucked out when Timbaland decided to give her The Jump Off. The beat knocks SO hard. She does well enough on it. Somewhere Else is one of those ones that I like but can't really explain why. It's awful. I love it. E-Pro bangs, in a peculiar way for a Beck tune. The Get Right remix is dope. Mr Blue Sky will forever, for some reason, make me think of my dear friend Mr. David Sodergren. And Magic Dance will forever, for better or worse, make me think of Mr. David Bowie's penis.

This is how we soundtrack our lives. When life is too real there is always music. A way to cope. A dalliance with another life. There will be sunny days and magic and there will be The Rain (another Missy masterpiece) and heartache. It will be hard. And it will be wonderful. And it will sound... well... varying in quality.