Brass Trax

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To hear the difference two years can make, listen to the Wu-Tang Clan. The only musical samples in “Tearz” come from a 1964 Stax tune by Wendy Rene. The refrain of “After Laughter (Comes Tears)” even serves as the chorus for the Wu joint. But there is something atavistic about the sample; Rene’s voice floats over the bouncy break like a ghostly cry, an aural evocation of nostalgia. It’s a fitting effect for a song that’s just a series of elegies, but it underscores the way that really old soul music seems out-of-place on a hip hop track. Play “Tearz” side-by-side with “Shame on a Nigga,” with its 1966 Syl Johnson sample of “Different Strokes,” and you will immediately hear the gap that separates the two original recordings.

“Tearz” by Wu-Tang Clan

“After Laughter (Comes Tears)” by Wendy Rene

“Shame on a Nigga” by Wu-Tang Clan

“Different Strokes” by Syl Johnson

If hip hop turned a cold shoulder on early sixties soul, Baltimore club gave it a sloppy kiss. Bmore producers, who can be counted on not to give a fuck, made syrupy, sing-songy sixties sunshine soul samples a staple of their art. From “Mr. Postman” to “Tears of a Clown” (actually a 1967 joint, but it doesn’t sound like it), Baltimore club producers pasted hours of bubblegum soul over their 130 BPM drum breaks. Consider it another oddball feature of the genre, if you must, another reason that club was long considered hip hop’s dirty-assed stepchild. But the catchy choruses could rock a club, a lesson that the wider world is now learning as club filters beyond I-695.

“Mr. Postman” by DJ Technics

“Please Mr. Postman” by The Marvelettes

A case in point is the Lo’s (formerly Camp Lo) new banger “Lumdi.” It’s built on that same Smokey Robinson sample we heard on “Part Time Suckers,” but now the chorus (”Lumdi lumdi la”) takes front stage. Smokey is on the track and so are his back-up singers, and the whole thing sounds oddly natural. The beat stomps, after it gets going, with a shuffle that you hear in the best reggae music, and the vocals are on point, a flashback to Camp Lo’s heyday in the nineties. The tune was produced by Korleon and Apple Juice Kid, both out of Durham, NC, and it manages, with a few accents on the right beats, to wrestle hip-hop out of an early sixties soul track.

“Lumdi” by The Lo

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