It's Friday . . . Let's Dance

I don't know why but I've been listening to a lot of stuff from 1987 recently, probably nostalgia. I have came to the conclusion that it was a very good year for House and Hip Hop.

Today's posting is by Eric B and Rakim, the duo who released my favorite hip-hop album Paid In Full.

I Know You Got Soul was the second single from the album and was originally released in 1987. The track features so many couplets which would be sampled or repeated in future hip-hop and dance tracks from the opening line "it's bin a long time/I shouldna left you" to the final words "Rakim a say Peace" but possibly the best known and most sampled is "pump up the volume". The orignal tune is an updating of Bobby Byrd's 'I Know You Got Soul' with Rakim's unmistakable rapping over Eric B's beats.

The version posted is the 1988 remix, which I think was released on the back of the success of the seminal Coldcut remix of Paid in Full. Instead of Coldcut, the remixers here were Double Trouble alias Danny D and one Norman Cook on his first foray into dance music after the Housemartins split up. The remix was done without the knowledge of Eric B and Rakim and was basically put together by Cook using the a capella from the b-side of the original single over the top of a rather famous break and piling on the samples, as he didn't have access to the masters of the original. I don't think that they would get away with that these days, definitely not on a dance off shoot of a major as a bootleg white label maybe.

Eric B & Rakim - I Know You Got Soul (Six Minutes of Soul, Double Trouble remix)