Common (w/Kanye West & John Mayer)
Go
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Album: Be (2005)

Linda Lewis
Old Smokey
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Album: Lark (1972)

Common has had quite the inconsistent career. But when Kanye West came knocking, Common stepped up his game, resulting in the pretty darn awesome LP Be. I fear Be may end up being the apex of Common’s recording career, but I’m still rooting for one of Chi-town’s finest.

Though Be has a number of enjoyable tracks, I’ve been surprised by how much its third single, "Go" has stuck with me. I think it’s the contrast between the mellow beat and the risqué lyrics that keeps it in rotation.

Kanye makes an able hype man and as for John Mayer, I think his contribution is limited to the echoed "Go" that is looped every two bars or so. (And he gets a songwriting credit?)

I hadn’t heard the Linda Lewis track Kanye sampled in "Go." To be honest, I hadn’t heard of Linda Lewis. But "Old Smokey" is a sweet, feel-good song that is ideally suited to a Sunday morning. Whatever led Kanye to isolate the short electric keyboard breakdown that appears towards the end of the song is a mystery to me, but I’m indebted to Yeezy for leading me to this rare groover.

Barbra Streisand (w/Barry Gibb)
Guilty
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Album: Guilty (1980)

Tanya Morgan
Stay Tuned (Sunset Version)
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Album: Sunset (EP, 2005)

A couple of months ago, I was diggin’ in the dollar bin at Amoeba and came across Guilty, a Barbra Streisand/Barry Gibb duet album from 1980. My Mom totally had this record, and played it frequently enough that the title song came back to me instantly. As I stood hunched over the crate on the floor, I wondered what other beats might lurk within the dated airbrushed sleeve. For a buck, I could satisfy my curiosity and prevent lingering back damage.

I had thought about featuring Guilty in a new gBlog feature dedicated to cheesy pop, but couldn’t find enough tracks on the record that were bad-good enough to share. Oh well. At least the title cut — which won a Grammy and features the brothers Gibb (aka the Bee Gees) on background vocals — entertained me enough to rip it and upload to my iPod.

I had pretty much given up on the idea of blogging about the record. But a few weeks after I had put it aside, I heard a familiar sample in a podcast from The Sound of Young America. It was included in a 2006 performance by an unknown rap group with a misleading name: Tanya Morgan. (According to their MySpace profile, “THE NAME MEANS NOTHING…AND EVERYTHING. JUST ENJOY THE MUSIC! THATS AN OLD QUESTION PLEASE DONT ASK IT ANYMORE! LOL”)

After about 30 seconds on Google, I discovered the name of the track and soon possessed a copy of the song, “Stay Tuned.” Production-wise, this cut is bananas! Tanya Morgan (I keep wanting to call them Tracy Morgan) speeds up a “Guilty” sample and chops Barbra’s vocal into tasty little morsels.

But as the track nears its expected end, it veers in an unexpected direction, letting the original Barbra/Barry track play unadorned (at the accelerated tempo) for a good minute or so. As Barry rehashes the same vocal line Barbra sang in the first half of the track, producer Von Pea brings the beat back and chops up Barry’s vocals to match the earlier Barbra sample. Rappers Donwill and Ilyas then repeat their verses over the remixed beat. It’s kinda hard to explain, but the impact is a deft combination of clever and groovy.