![]() –Louis Pattisonįor a few months in 1988, as Neneh Cherry ’s debut single “Buffalo Stance” climbed the global charts, it looked like Madonna might have a serious competitor to her pop throne. One highlight is the penultimate “Spying Glass,” which Andy would later reprise on Massive Attack’s 1994 LP Protection, drawing out its themes of paranoia and surveillance. The record can be sonically adventurous-on “Stop the Fuss,” a blanket of echo pushes the bass and drums to the point on disintegration-but you’re gripped tight throughout by Andy’s voice: sweet, sinuous, reflecting on greed, division and the Rasta life. Under the guidance of founder Lloyd “Bullwackie” Barnes, Wackies had become a home for skulking heavyweight dub of the first order. But Dance Hall Style has a special alchemy. Recorded at Wackies, a damp basement studio in the Bronx, it was just six songs long, and some of those had already lived a full life Andy himself had recorded “Lonely Woman” with producer Derrick Harriott a decade earlier, while “Cuss Cuss” was a cover of a track released by rocksteady stalwart Lloyd Robinson back in 1968. On paper, at least, there’s no reason it should stand out as a classic. What's your experience with Def Jam Recordings? Tell us in the comments section.Horace Andy had been a prolific recording artist for some 15 years, cutting discs for Studio One and the dub pioneer Bunny Lee, before he made Dance Hall Style. This Def Jam mix is by no means definitive, but it reflects my experiences with a label that will always be, as Nice & Smooth once put it, for "Hip-Hop Junkies." Club bangers like Sisqo's "Thong Song" could share shelf space with political flamethrowers like Public Enemy. The genius of Def Jam lay in its ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still sell tons of records. ![]() Of course, this was also the label that gave us Jay-Z, Kanye West and countless other game-changers. (Yes, I eventually got a real ticket out.) More recently, Ghostface Killah's FishScale was the killer soundtrack for my daily subway commute in Brooklyn. In college, when I was working a crappy restaurant job, we used to blast DMX's "Ruff Ryder Anthem" as we closed down the kitchen. LL Cool J's "Around the Way Girl" (on cassette single, no less) got me hyped for my first junior-high dance. Looking back, I'm struck by how often Def Jam tracks were lurking in the background. Or remember the bedtime stories of the eyepatch-wearing Slick Rick? Sick. Songs from The Cactus Album like "The Gas Face" and "Brooklyn-Queens" were my personal anthems. Everyone talks about The Beastie Boys (and where would they be without Def Jam?), but the white boys of 3rd Bass were my heroes. ![]() The smuggled tapes from a friend's older brother, the after-school ritual of Yo! MTV Raps - this was my salvation. I grew up amid the Great Plains, and hip-hop always felt like my ticket out for a while, it seemed I marched to the beat of a different Def Jam record every week. A new glossy coffee-table book, Def Jam Recordings: The First 25 Years of the Last Great Record Label, reveals that aspect of the label's legacy in vivid detail. What you may not know, unless you lived outside of New York (like me), is how instrumental it was in bringing hip-hop to the masses. You know the little story of Def Jam Recordings, started way back in history by Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons. With Rick and Russell in an NYU dormitory Now, here's a little story I've got to tell Music Interviews Rick Rubin, Russell Simmons: Def Jam's First 25 Years
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