Rapper’s Delight (Lost Episode)
*Edit*: From the wishing well rises the fuzz of the found episode in fully glory!
Rapper’s Delight (Found Episode)
Last Saturday between the indigo hours of eight to ten, the Sanguine Sunday crew enjoyed a landmark moment in our evolution. We pushed our first live show on the longest running independent based radio station in San Francisco, Pirate Cat Radio. If you were lucky enough to listen to the show on the live broadcast then I hope you bumped that shit loud because I have a slightly confident and not too egotistical feeling that we killed it! If not, then my apologies, but the show is lost in the abyss of squandered recording opportunities.
I kind of like that though. It brings back the hazy nostalgia for the not too distant old days of radio when you had to get the tape deck out, prepared anxiously with a new cassette, fingertips steady on the record button ready to click as soon as your favorite show bumped something fresh. My nostalgia however quickly fades away to a stronger sting of, “fuck we lost the show!”
In tribute to the lost episode, number ten in the working, Honey Knucks and myself (Z Nooote) decided to rerecord our sets in the raw. My research delves into the early wax poetics of hiphop spanning the years 1979-1983. This rapper’s delight goes far beyond the commercial success of The Sugarhill Gang. During halftime, listen in to a concise Q&A I conducted for International Record Store Day with Cool Chris, owner and manager of Groove Merchant Records. He drops fifteen years expertise knowledge in the vinyl dealing trade and the ethos of digging physical vs. surfing digital, wrapping it up later with his own take on the beginnings of hiphop. Honey Knuckles digs into his own crates to spin a strictly vinyl set that follows the development of two turntables and a mic into the disco and break dancing clubs of the 80′s. Whether cultivating rhymes, looping break beats, cutting up jazzy backbeats and horns, or arranging a whole new resonance of electro-funk, this era offers a plethora of rapper’s delight.
– Z Note