You Know What Im About Big L
In the next part of our 'Behind The Beat' series, Bronx producer Buckwild recalls crafting Big L's "Put It On" beat and tells Thomas Hobbs how the late Harlem rapper combined profundity with depraved punchlines
Even though he released but one solo anthology in his lifetime, Big 50 walked through Lennox Ave with the confidence of Thelonious Monk. For starters, L knew other New York rappers feared getting on the same track as him. "I was scared to decease when I heard Big L's tape. I knew I couldn't compete," Nas one time remarked . The Harlem spitter's cutting delivery and crisp menses was capable of making even a young JAY-Z appear ordinary.
50 was enlightened he possessed a rare souvenir of being able to conjure up ingenious cartoonish punchlines, practically on command. He turned being poor ("I wasn't poor, I was po, I couldn't afford the o-r") and getting involved in too many fistfights ("I knocked out so many teeth, the molar fairy went broke") into belly laughs, finding light amid inner-city dilemmas that were darker than the midnight sky.
He also routinely expressed vehement imagery, talking about striking women, committing murder, and, bizarrely, raping Jesus Christ. Not every line has aged well. However it's worth noting 50 helped pioneer the horrorcore-era of rap on the E Declension, which was driven past an urge to say something more than outrageous than Nas' "going to hell for snuffin' Jesus" proclamation. And in his music, L oftentimes took on the modify-ego of the "Devil'southward Son", reveling in becoming the line-pushing villain.
Across his classic 1995 debut, Lifestylez Ov Da Poor and Unsafe , Fifty, a cracking student of both Big Daddy Kane and Richard Pryor, worked through the traumas of institutional racism, police force brutality, crime, and being on welfare without ever losing his sense of sense of humor. It spoke to a perseverance and then many Black people raised in the Crack era — Large L, real name Lamont Coleman, was born on May thirty, 1974 — were forced to develop; an understanding that laughter and escaping into fantastical imagery can prevent one from unraveling.
"Big Fifty was a comedian who liked to push the line as far as he peradventure could," says Buckwild, a veteran Bronx producer who produced some of Big L'due south greatest songs and was also office of the Diggin in the Crates (D.I.T.C) collective alongside artists like Diamond D, O.C., AG, Showbiz, Lord Finesse, and Fatty Joe. "He was a prophet too, though! He knew how important it was to talk almost the horrible things he had seen in the street. If yous listen to a vocal like " Fed Upwardly With This Bullshit " it could take been recorded right after the George Floyd killing."
Buckwild says this juxtaposition between sobering social commentary and trying to crack a dirty joke no one else had heard before was "integral" to 50'south artistry. "For someone who probably weighed 125 lbs, he talked so much shit," he said. "It was funny because he'd rap a bar that shocked you to the cadre and then tell other rappers in our camp to be more than righteous and to clean up their human activity. He was the nicest guy with this amazingly dark sense of sense of humor. That dude lived right beyond the bridge from me! It was maybe a 10-infinitesimal bulldoze. His neighborhood was simply every bit bad as mine was."
The dichotomy between ballsy comedian and thoughtful ghetto poet is crystallized perfectly on the jubilant political party anthem "Put It On", which was produced past Buckwild. To this day, Buckwild considers the runway to be among his very all-time. On "Put Information technology On," the first single from Lifestylez , Large L complains of how "some brothers would withal be large if crack never came out" simply a few bars before nonchalantly boasting: "I got girls that brand that chick Toni Braxton expect like Whoopie!" These lines capture his contradictions perfectly.
Like many of Buckwild'south best beats, "Put It On" sounds like Miles and the Band having a jamming session at a block party thick with weed smog, combining dusty boom bap with dense jazz in a way that sounds completely natural. The hazy music video is basically the hood Groundhog Solar day : L repeatedly wakes upwardly at 7 AM earlier putting on yet another fly outfit and heading to a party with beautiful women, who braid his hair and hold his coat the second he shrugs information technology off his shoulders. Even at present, in 2021, Big 50 looks similar a rock star who would dominate the charts.
Notwithstanding "Put It On" didn't exactly happen overnight, and the producer says the pair's working relationship progressed gradually beyond the early 1990s. "Alongside peradventure Nas, Large L was easily the toughest critic I've ever worked with when information technology comes to picking his beats," Buckwild said "I used to play him beats and he would be similar, 'Yo, this is wack. I'thou not rhyming on this. Bring me something hot. I need that oestrus.' Merely I'grand the kind of musician who ever wants to learn new things so it didn't bother me. Fifty lit a fuse under me."
This fuse involved excavation in the crates at an obsessive level. Like Big Fifty'south quest to find depraved punchlines no one else in the rap game had the audacity to put on wax, Buckwild wanted to flip niche jazz samples in a fashion that would intimidate other producers. "After I had sampled a song, I wanted my beat to be and so good that no other producer would cartel touch it. I wanted people to be similar, 'How did he flip it like that?' Other producers sampled the same shit over and over, merely that wasn't me."
A jazz obsessive intimately familiar with the dorsum catalogs of artists like Miles Davis, Ron Ayers, John Coltrane, and David Axelrod, Buckwild was inspired by Fifty to dig even deeper into his vinyl collection. He eventually arrived on a scratched-upwardly copy of Buster Williams' Crystal Reflections. The album'southward centerpiece is "Vibrations", a gorgeous 12-minute jazz vocal that combines a deep funky bass guitar with heavenly licks from a glockenspiel that playfully twists beyond the track. "Those two instruments [on "Vibrations"] worked together so beautifully and the vocal just touched my soul," Buckwild said. "What I beloved virtually jazz is it'south and then emotional and has so much pain and feeling to it [and "Vibrations" was an extension of that]. I chopped it up and knew I had something special."
He says Big L liked the subsequent beat instantly, quickly deciding information technology would be the first single for his album and roping in Kid Capri to bark the giddy claw, which sounds like he'south giving the Harlem rhymer a locker room pep talk. It took Large L two days to write his verses, something he did at home earlier nailing the song in a couple of takes in the studio. "L was a person who took his time writing, you lot know?" Buckwild said. "It had to be perfect. His writing procedure was so unique. He would write "Ebonics" on like 15 unlike pieces of newspaper and take them all in his pocket scrunched up. He had a shoebox of ripped up pieces of newspaper, which had like all the lyrics for his album. I used to give him shit for information technology."
By November 1994, the naturally competitive Big Fifty saw the release of "Put It On" as a gamble to friction match up confronting kingpin New York MCs like The Notorious B.I.One thousand. and Nas, while also offer something a little brighter and more radio friendly to draw people into the adjacent year's Lifestylez , which, it'due south fair to say, had more than than its off-white share of nihilistic moments. The song was barely even a small hitting (peaking at No. 81 on the rap charts), but the unmarried's potential for success was derailed past label Columbia not understanding how to market Large L as an artist. "They dropped the ball," Buckwild said.
However, over the years, the vocal's legend has simply grown, achieving cult status among hip-hop heads. Musically it sounds like euphoric "lo-fi rap" decades before it officially existed, which could explain why it'due south and then popular on streaming (with 44m streams and counting, it'southward easily L's most popular rail on Spotify). "'Put It On' just has that vibrant infectious energy, man," Buckwild said. "There's kids at school now who tell me it's their favorite rap song. When I met Mac Miller he showed me his Large 50 tattoo and said 'Put It On' was the blueprint to him condign a rapper. That influence is just as large [to me] as having a hit record."
Buckwild considers Large L'south "Put It On" to be one of his best beats. Photo Credit: Buckwild
Now 52, Buckwild is notwithstanding pushing forward as a producer. Last year he put out two new albums ( Fully Loaded and Music Is My Faith ), a beat tape ( Essential Beats ), and produced rapper Rasheed Campbell's underrated political rap opus Sinners and Saints . Each release is underpinned past that luxurious cornball hood audio Buckwild made his name off of, with vibrant samples that yous tin't quite identify. He'southward as inventive every bit he'due south ever been. However, the legendary producer is acutely enlightened of the tragedy of his friend not making it to such an age or being able to see how much his music was loved by the masses. Big L was shot to death on February 15, 1999, on 45 West 139th Street. His "space potential" was wiped out forever.
"I however miss him," he Buckwild said. "He learned and so much from the first album and was definitely headed to the next level with the new shit. He was literally working out the contract with Roca-a-Fella because Matriarch [Dash] and JAY-Z wanted to sign him, so that tells y'all what kind of mainstream artist he was about to become."
__
Banner Graphic: @popephoenix for Okayplayer
Thomas Hobbs is a freelance culture and music journalist from the UK. His work has appeared in the Guardian, VICE, Financial Times, Dazed, Pitchfork, New Statesman, Niggling White Lies, The i and Fourth dimension Out. You can find him on Twitter: @thobbsjourno.
Source: https://www.okayplayer.com/music/big-l-put-it-on-sample-buckwild.html
0 Response to "You Know What Im About Big L"
Post a Comment