Summertime: The MixtapeAfter putting together the best posthumous Michael Jackson mixtape last year, DJ Jazzy Jeff is at it again. This time, the subject is “summertime” or rather, the new definition of summer madness. Mick Boogie also helps out to create an ode to the summer that seamlessly jumps from song to song and makes you reminiscent of summers of the past.
There are the predictable summer songs like Kool & The Gang’s Summer Madness, Ice Cube’s It Was A Good Day, and of course, his buddy Will Smith’s Summertime.
But there are also other songs that you might not think of right away, but they fit just perfectly like Jodeci’s Get On Up and Dionne Warwick’s Walk On By.
Jeff (and Mick Boogie) has another gem on his hands. Go get it quickly before you can’t find it anymore, like the MJ mixtape, which I think is hard to find these days.
Shout out to Big Money Mike who hipped me to the mixtape last weekend.
Track listing
* 1. Summertime Intro
* 2. Kool & The Gang: Summer Madness (Live Version)
* 3. Kool & The Gang: Summer Madness
* 4. Quincy Jones: Summer In The City
* 5. Ahmad: Back In The Day
* 6. Ice Cube: It Was A Good Day
* 7. Roy Ayers f/ Mary J Blige: Everybody Loves The Sunshine
* 8. Pharcyde: Passin’ Me By (Ffej Remix)
* 9. Jay-Z f/ Babyface: Sunshine
* 10. Ramsey Lewis: Sun Goddess
* 11. A Tribe Called Quest: Find A Way (Ffej String Edit)
* 12: Bush Babies f/ Mos Def: The Love Song
* 13. Jodeci: Get On Up
* 14. The Commodores: High On Sunshine
* 15. J Dilla f/ Dwele : Think Twice
* 16. Erick Sermon f/ Marvin Gaye: Music (Mick’s Marvapella Edit)
* 17. Bernard Wright: Who Do You Love
* 18. LL Cool J: Loungin’
* 19. A Tribe Called Quest: Hot Sex
* 20. Main Source: Live At The BBQ
* 21. Nuyorican Soul: Nautilus
* 22. Pharcyde & Sublime: Summertime
* 23. Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff: Summertime Remix
* 24. Michael Jackson: I Can’t Help It
* 25. De La Soul: Breakdawn
* 26. Musiq: Just Friends
* 27. Carl Thomas: Summer Rain
* 28. Faze-O: Riding High
* 29. Dionne Warwick: Walk On By
* 30. Skee-Lo: I Wish
* 31. Black Moon: Who Got The Props
* 32. Frankie Beverly and Maze: Before I Let Go
* 33. Nu Shooz: I Can’t Wait
* 34. Montell Jordan: This Is How We Do It
* 35: The Roots f/ George Benson: Breezin’
* 36: Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff: Time To Chill
* 37. Biggie: Can’t You See
* 38. James Brown: The Payback
* 39. En Vogue: My Lovin’
* 40. Bobby McFerrin: Sunshine Of My Life
* 41. Fifth Dimension: Let The Sun Shine In
* 42. Mos Def: Sunshine
* 43. Nine: Whatcha Want
* 44. Otis Redding: Sittin’ On The Dock
* 45. 2Pac: I Get Around (Mick’s String Edit)
* 46. Zapp: Computer Love (Terry’s Mirage On The Water Mix)
* 47. Seals And Croft: Summer Breeze
* 48. Jay-Z: Dear Summer
* 49. Weldon Irvine: Morning Sunrise
Update: I changed the link of where to download the mixtape. The previous link had expired. Get it here (for the time being)!
MJJust the other day, I reminisced about Tupac Shakur on what would’ve been his 39th birthday. That post was much easier to write than this one. It’s still too soon.
I was a fan like everyone else when I was younger. Thriller came out when I was six years old and I had the flea market glitter glove like every other kid. But I fell off as a fan. I’m not really sure why, other than it probably just wasn’t as cool to be a MJ fan anymore. I still knew the music and I still enjoyed it, but I was nowhere near the fan that I am today.
Right around my late high school and early college years, I just started to buy everything in site. I bought a J5 four-CD set, all the Jacksons albums, and all of his back catalog on CD. And today, while I won’t say I have everything the man put to wax (or plastic), I do have most everything he’s done. Now if they’d only release all the old J5 and Jacksons’ TV footage.
What’s interesting about Michael Jackson’s death to me is that he was so much larger than life when he was alive that it was almost like he wasn’t really alive. He was a living legend. And by that, I don’t mean the cliched way that the term is used. He was like a fairy tale that we lived through. Michael Jackson the real person was almost like a character from a book. He was a surreal celebrity who was hard to relate to.
So to me, I still think of him in that way. He was never someone I could touch. I could only see him and hear him.
Rather than look back at how I felt when I heard he passed (sad), where I was when I heard (work), and how I followed the situation (Twitter), I wanted to point everyone to some of the cool things I’ve read and seen in the past few days.
Our previous editor and lead writer and friend of SC, Big Money Mike, wrote an exhaustive four-part series on Michael’s music at Popdose which you can read here, here, here, and here. It’s a fantastic read.
Nancy Griffin writes a stellar piece for Vanity Fair called The Thriller Diaries, which studies Michael during the filming of the Thriller video just as his superstar status was entering white hot mode.
Last month, the New York Daily News posted an interesting photo of Michael that was being considered as album art for his 2001 album Invincible.
Lastly, I wanted to showcase a few videos that I’ve come across and also my favorite video that wasn’t actually a performance or music video.
Someone Put Your Hand Out was recorded during the Dangerous era and was actually released in Europe through Pepsi to promote the Dangerous World Tour. It was released in the US several years ago as a part of MJ’s The Ultimate Collection. It’s one of the better previously unreleased tracks that have come out.
This next video isn’t really all that ground breaking. It’s just him rehearsing for We Are The World. I’d never seen it before until recently. It’s kind of interesting to see him bide his time and try to figure things out with the song. And for whatever reason, he breaks into a dance step for 2 seconds, which I found pretty funny.
This is my favorite non-performance, non-music video piece of footage out there. It’s actually for a Pepsi commercial, but you get to see Michael play an instrument and it seems like he’s truly happy in that moment. For whatever reason, I’ve just always been fascinated with this short piece.
Edit: I added one more that Questlove tweeted out. Michael is literally a dancing machine.
Lastly, if you can find it, go download DJ Jazzy Jeff’s mixtape, He’s The King, I’m The DJ. By the looks of it, people are having a hard time finding it though. It was released shortly after MJ died last year.
Hey Folks, I’ve been asking for volunteers to put their iPods on shuffle and let me know what they’re listening to (in totally random fashion, of course), and lo and behold, somebody bit!
Ladies & Gentlemen, coming straight out of the Jersey suburbs, here’s my boy Kyle, taking over the Sunday Shuffle from me. Kyle is a full-on hip-hop head, although he’s also enjoyed music by everyone from John Mayer to Ben Folds (which means that this is someone who has damn good taste in music similar tastes in music to mine). Take it away, Kyle!!
Aight, since my iPod lacks a working skip button thanks to a dumb decision I once made to listen to it during a long walk during a rainy vacation day I was thinking about listening via iTunes, but decided I might as well just listen to it through my iHome. There are plenty of times I skip songs just to get to ones I wanna hear, so I am not doing that today.
“Puppy Chow” – Common: Maybe it’s finally time I try to write a review of “Can I Borrow A Dollar?” (although one of these days I also have to do “One Day It’ll All Make Sense”.) I’m sure as of now there are plenty of people ready and willing to write an essay comprising 24 paragraphs about how and why Common has fallen off (even though I’m worried about his new album too) but I won’t go into detail about that right now, I’ll fight temptation. This song is fun and has a lot of Common’s hard-to-describe old style, but it’s definitely not as memorable as some of my favorite tracks on his debut.
“Electric Relaxation” – A Tribe Called Quest: I’ve been meaning to pull out my copy of “The Low End Theory” for weeks (although I do think “Midnight Marauders” is better.) My opinion of this song is no different from any other big hip-hop head/Tribe fan, and it also has a classic Phife Dawg punchline, great stories from both emcees (I’m relistening to Q-Tip’s November solo album to see how much I like it) and I accidentally once found out the actual words they say in the chorus. There’s actually been a remake of the song by producer Marco Polo and J*Davey (that I thought wasn’t too good) and I think it’s also been sampled a few times in hip-hop songs as well. Probably the best song on their best album.
“Mama Had A Baby And It’s Head Popped Off” – Atmosphere: Not my favorite Atmosphere song (off my favorite Atmosphere album – their debut “Lucy Ford”.) It’s got some interesting lyrics from Slug regarding God and politics, but the beat is just sinister and not something I really like. I don’t know what else to say about this one…wish a better song from them came up here.
“The Definition” – DJ Jazzy Jeff & Kel Spencer: The emcee Kel Spencer (ed.: Isn’t Kel Spencer the dude who was on “All That” with Kenan Thompson back in the 90s?) raps over some pianos and DJ scratches here about observing the bad habits and trends perpetuated by wack emcees around him, and how he doesn’t like being overlooked by them. Jeff’s last album, “The Return of the Magnificent” was started off by lesser-known rappers like Kel (that has so far been the only time I’ve heard him) but still was one of 2007’s best, and perfect to listen to during a long-ass road trip (the album concept was that Jeff was forced to listen to the radio during a trip between Philly and Florida because there was no CD changer in his rent-a-car.)
“Final Frontier” – Blueprint & RJD2: I want Soul Position to release another album, and I also want to know whether or not it has been confirmed that RJD2 is no longer doing hip-hop producing. This is kind of a tough song to describe thanks to Blueprint’s unusual lyrics, which some people could say are obviously pretentious. Blueprint also needs to release another album – it’s been pushed back for years. He’s done better than this song, but it’s still enjoyable (although the best performance on “Deadringer”, RJ’s first album which this is on, is from Copywrite on “June”…but that’s another story.)
“American Dreamin” – Jay-Z: This song is kinda moody. Jay rhymes about trying his hardest in the New York grind he’s detailing, and he sounds good throughout the whole song (even though there are many other tracks I’d rather listen to from “American Gangster”.) Considering Nas and Kanye West dropped great albums I was really anxious about this year, hopefully Jay will next year.
“Inherited Scars” – Sage Francis: Damn, had to end this on a depressing note. And I’ve been in a decent mood today so far too. He’s an easy artist to play when you want self-pity or are reflecting about your life’s misfortunes, but here he’s kinda vulnerable, talking about a secret his sister told him about a deadly habit of hers and is not sure what to do about the situation. The lyrics are fantastic as is the message, and he details what he’s feeling and what he expects his sister is feeling, hoping for empathy from her side. I’m gonna have to listen to some more happy music soon.
There ya go, folks. Thanks Kyle, for sharing at least a portion of your music collection with us. Now that someone has thrown down the gauntlet. Anyone else wanna share? You know where to find me.
