sade - love is stronger than pride (mad professor remix)

i remember hearing love is stronger than pride on mtv and thinking, this is from the woman who did that video where she was a mermaid, it was a sweet and soothing track but i didn't take much from it until i grew older and rediscovered sade.

helen adu's vocals will be good on anything, you can never go wrong with the stylings of that and when mad professors remix came to my attention after the bootleg 2x12" best of sade remixed came up. it was really awesome, gave the original a reggae groove which complimented the original and mad professor did the right thing of adding additional backup vocals (courtesy of black steele & carroll thompson).

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eric b & rakim - rest assured

i didn't know alot about eric b & rakim's work beyond the two first albums but after some digging you found some change in the sound. eric b's beats was still nice but he kept finding more funky stuff to sample and use and it was a good backdrop for rakim's more maturesounding voice. i love the drumbreak in this one, sampled from rotary connection's 'life could'.

last.fm

swv - right here (uk back to black mix)

when 'right here' hit big internationally, it was due to the 'human nature' sample that teddy riley worked in his remix. one of things in the intro to that was the 'and the s s, the double the double u to v' which came from the rap that pharrell williams did and was put on the uk mix. pharrell & chad hugo was teddy's protoges in the 90's, he put them under his wings after discovering their musical abilities.

this version switches things up, you still have the 'human nature' lead but replayed and it's a more of an acidjazzy/rare groove flavour to the track, very suited to the uk market. no matter how much i love the original human nature remix, this is a very close second.

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nancy ajram - akid ya hayati aktar

nancy ajram who is one of the biggest arab popstars was not the same artist imagewise for her first two albums. it was more traditional stylings without overuse of computers & digital sounds and it also featured nancy's voice in a less girlygirl vocalstyling that would be appearant on the breakthrough album 'ya salam'. anyhow, this is a really good song and is a nice side to show the otherside of nancy.

bloc party - like eating glass

amazing buildup and the drumtrack is really tight, when i popped on silent alarm for the first time and just heard the guitartwiddle and then the drumbeat it was really jawdropping. great tune ye

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virtual dj - suspicious murder (voicedude mix)

it's the sound of elvis at the disco, 'suspicious minds' over' murder on the dancefloor'. when vdj put his mashup on gybo, most people said, it's a match made in (camp)heaven but it didn't align right. after a number of alterations and bullshit vdj handed the material over to voicedude who sorted everything out. i didn't notice how elvis sounded like cher until i heard this mash, always liked suspicious minds but didn't notice the aural similarites in with certain passages.

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dj gregory - tropical soundclash

gregory pulled out a corker with this one back in 2002, fueled by it's bouncy tribal rhythm and funky guitars it's a summer houser. i like the vocal chants the most in it, they have almost an windowlickery kind of swag to them.

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