Greg Wilson - Credit To The Edit Vol.3 (Tirk - 2018)
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Fab 5 Freddy (Fred Braithwaite) is a cultural connector of the highest order, his fingerprints are all over the emergence of the Hip Hop movement in the early ‘80s, exposing the outpouring of invention and expression emitting from the uptown Bronx to the movers and shakers of the downtown arts scene in Manhattan. His name first came to my attention via the lyrics of Blondie’s ‘Rapture’ (1980), a track which delved into Hip Hop’s then undiscovered corners where, as she informs us, ‘Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody’s fly’.
Jean Karakos (jokingly nicknamed Grandmaster Cash by the Hip Hop fraternity), who’d started Celluloid Records in France, moved to New York in 1980 with the intention of making his own tracks, bringing in Material bassist Bill Laswell as in-house producer. The eclectic cutting-edge dance label would enjoy a prolific run, operating until 1989.
He met Braithwaite via a mutual friend, French-Algerian journalist Bernard Zekri, who provided his introduction to the burgeoning Bronx Hip Hop community. This would lead to a series of recordings at Brooklyn’s OAO Studio in 1982, including the session for ‘Change The Beat’. Zekri planned to take Celluloid’s newly acquired Hip Hop roster to France in order to highlight the music there, and with this in mind he wrote a French language rap for Braithwaite to record.
Braithwaite rapped in both English and French, but he struggled with the French pronunciation. Zekri’s then wife, Ann Marie Boyle, who could speak French and had been helping coach Braithwaite, laid down a version herself, which would be issued on the flip of the 12” instead of the planned instrumental, under the artist name of Beside (early pressings would also credit her as Beeside and Fab 5 Betty), bestowed on her by pioneer turntablist Grandmixer D.ST, who was part of the Celluloid crew. Beside would go on to record further tracks for the label, including vocals for the 1983 Electro-Funk favourite ‘The Wildstyle’ by Time Zone, releasing an album as B-Side in 1985.
Material’s manager Roger Trilling chipped-in with an impromptu faux-Japanese rap, based on actor Toshiro Mifune, best-known for his 16-film collaboration with the great director Akira Kurosawa. Trilling also provided ‘Ahhhhhh, this stuff is really fresh’, which would become arguably the most scratched words in Hip Hop history, ‘fresh’ famously used the following year by Grandmixer D.ST on Herbie Hancock’s Grammy award-winning ‘Rockit’, which Bill Laswell had a big hand in, and subsequently utilised by numerous artists ranging from Eric B. & Rakim to Justin Bieber. The phrase parodied Bruce Lundvall, an executive of Elektra Records, who’d make this expression on hearing something he liked. Trilling recorded the throwaway contribution through a vocoder, giving his voice a robotic edge, ‘Change The Beat’, as a result, amongst the most sampled records of all-time.
Whilst ‘Change The Beat’ was the name on the US release, the tracks were issued in France under the title of ‘Une Sale Histoire’ (French for ‘A Dirty Story’) with the Beside version promoted to the A side. My edit combines the separate sides.
Written by Bernard Zekri / Material
Produced by Material
Published by Copyright Control
Celluloid Records 1982
Licensed courtesy of Celluloid Records
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