Tuesday, May 22, 2007

By the time I'm through you'll remember my name...

Back in the days a few cats, Richard Walters, Dana McLeese, Al Sneed, Lance Brown and Omega the Heartbreaker, realized they needed a gimmick. Like anyone else coming up in the mean streets of New York in the late 70’s and early 80’s they considered a bad-ass name like “Young Guns” or “Savage Skulls” One day they all realized they all had the same hat on so they settled on the thugged out name, “The Kangol Crew.” They started rocking matching blazers in hard ass colors like green, purple, and yellow. They furthered their realness with argyle socks and dreamt of fresh pairs of Bally’s from the Bally shop by the truckload.
In ‘85 Richard (A.K.A. Ricky D B.K.A. Slick Rick the Ruler) met Douglas and the rest of the Get Fresh Crew and made La-di-da-di and a basically unknown b-side called “The Show.” Maybe you heard it. But our story is not about Rick’s love for hookers, Da Vinci’s work and Native American women, but with the guy who bit his style from Rick.
Dana Dane’s British accent was fake. I know, I know. Who can we trust? A fake accent isn’t really a gimmick that can spans some one’s career (see Madonna.) However, for 3 records (some say only 2 and most say only 1) he was great to listen to. I’m a big fan of stories in rhymes and Cinderfella or Nightmares were certainly goofy but well crafted especially for that time. Dane didn’t do anything groundbreaking but he did a party record really well!
The whole album “Dana Dane With Fame” was produced by that master of the shaker in almost every song Herby “Luv” Bug (seriously, if you heard a “sh sh sh” you knew it was Herb.) It was tongue in cheek fun but he was pretty dope at the time. I made the mistake of trying to rock argyles and nearly got beat up but Dane says fashion is the 5th element of Hip-Hop (yes, even if it’s Ice and fronts.) That’s it for now kiddies.
Pace

01 - Dedication
02 - Cinderfella Dana Dane
03 - This Be the Def Beat
04 - Dana Dane With Fame
05 - Delancey Street
06 - We Wanna Party
07 - Nightmares
08 - Keep the Groove
09 - Love at First Sight


2 comments:

Travis said...

Thanks man, much appreciated

Anonymous said...

"seriously, if you heard a “sh sh sh” you knew it was Herb."

3rd Bass had a few "sh sh sh" tracks on "The Cactus Album", though. As I recall, Herb didn't produce them, but I get your point.

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