You know when you leave someone on read accidentally on purpose and forget about it but then for some reason the universe decides to put you in the same tube carriage on a random Friday night for a good twenty minutes?
Yeah, that's probably the same shame I felt logging on to blogger after three years and seeing the sad attempt to restart the blog in 2020 after going on a spring cleaning rampage and deleting all the weird crap that was on it from my university years.
So what happened? Not as in what happened in the last three years, as in what happened specifically today? I got annoyed. That's it. I spend too much time listening to music and researching music and talking about music and compiling music and hoarding music and and and and and and to just let all of it sit on my Spotify profile collecting tonal dust.
I'm doing the selfless act of giving back as if my recommendations were gospel (they're not, they're just objectively very good (big surprise, I'm biased, they're my own opinions (bracket within bracket (they call it bracket inception)))).
Okay so prelude done. Here we go.
I have the intention to restart this thing and actually keep it going as a way of keeping a musical diary and also self-promote my playlists, not gonna lie. Trade offer: You get awesome tunes plus some context and I feel like I'm not wasting my time (or wasting even more time, two sides of the same coin yadda yadda yadda).
What you will hopefully find here *fingers crossed* are my monthly playlists broken down and explained, weekly finds, occasional rants on music, current and past obsessions and whatever comes to mind worth posting really.
*runs into the warehouse full of stacked boxes of songs and playlists* "okay okay okay what to kick this off with... there must be something here... StereoMC's?" *shrugs and runs back out*
Okay. Classic. Timeless. But also very easy to pinpoint in a time period which is early 1990s UK. This is Connected by Stereo MC's.
Connected was released in 1992 and was the first single of the band's third album which was also named after the song.
It sounds like a weird cross between hip hop, funk, electronic music and what is known as acid jazz. (scroll down to the end real quick to see what acid jazz is)
So yeah, you could think it's a little all over the place. I mean, just look at the artwork on the album cover, there's a lot going on there. Are they in space? Is it a forest with mushrooms? It does a fantastic job representing what the music feels like.
It samples the insane bassline of funk song Let Me (Let Me Be Your Lover) by Jimmy "Bo" Horne but they reworked it so it sounds really insinuating and as if you're listening to it from inside a fish tank.
It also samples some of the vocals from this reggae track Now That We've Found Love by Third World and flips them around. You can hear it right at the start of Connected before the beat hits.
Aside from the fact that it's imposible not to bob your head a little to that bassline, it's helped out by vocalist Rob Birch who adds in the "yeah" loop which goes on and on throughout the track. As a result, you're locked on the the neverending and contagious circle of sound which is this single. The rest of the vocals sound a little carefree, a little dreamy, like he's driving on some convertible shaped cloud and he's got his female backing singers up in the sky with him.
Lyrically, I'm going to be honest here, he could be rambling on about anything. I mean, get connected to what exactly? I had to Google it.
DJ and producer of the band Nick Hallam explained the tune's meaning in an interview with Billboard back in 1993: "The song 'Connected' is about human beings and the lack of connection there is between anything today. It's about the way everyone tries to categorize everything. The way every race is trying to separate from each other".
Apparently Birch had the idea of spreading out good vibes "they way Bob Marley did" while also criticising that "somethin' ain't right" as there was a lot of rioting going on in LA against police brutality at the time and there was general unrest in London for similar reasons.
Stereo MC's are "sort of" considered as one-hit wonders because of Connected, and even though I do agree that it's very evidently their best track, the rest of the album isn't bad so I'll give them a pass. It's what you can play in the background if you're having a chill day at the park. I particularly recommend Step It Up, Chicken Shake and The End from that same album.
And on a final note, in case you're looking for a similar sound, a lot of the music from that era sounds just as funky and weird. Add to the queue some Happy Mondays with Step On, some Fun Lovin' Criminals with Scooby Snacks and some Freak Power with Turn On, Tune In, Cop Out.
*Acid Jazz: Music genre that combines jazz, hip hop, disco, funk and soul (it's basically Frankenstein's monster). It originated in London in the late 80s and its most notable artist is Jamiroquai.
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