Time for another Stu Reid Sampler, where we find the dopest samples from the dopest songs and trace them back to the dopest originals. And other things concerned with dopeness.
This one's a bit of a flashback, taking a page out of Moby's book - a guy who was insanely popular following the release of Play, his 6th LP. In the preceding and following years, he was merely sanely popular. He's made some noise recently, but it's gonna be hard for him to top Play. It was 18 songs of brilliance - moving, poppy, commercial and yet personal.
Fun facts about play:
- All 18 of its songs were used in commercials, a first for any album
- 50% of the songs on the album were released as singles
- It started with slow sales but stayed on the charts for 3 years
- The liner book contained a series of essays by Moby. Wrote Moby, "These essays are not really related to the music, so if you hate the essays you might still like the music, and if you like the essays you might hate the music. Who knows, maybe by some bizarre twist of fate you'll like them both." Funny guy, that Moby.
BUT, as the album's Wikipedia page notes, "the fusion of gospel and house for which the album was most widely praised also drew some criticism for Moby's style of appropriation, with some critics claiming not enough credit was going to the original (often anonymous) musicians and performers. THAT, my friends, is where The Stu Reid Sampler comes in.
"Natural Blues" is a tune that centers on a spiritual female vocalist, backed with electro/techno instrumentation. It really embodies the gospel/house fusion described above. But the anchor of the track is clearly the vocal part, so I was super excited when I learned that the original was done by Vera Hall. Hall was a folk singer (who is immortalized in the Library Of Congress) and her voice is positively unbelievable. It's emotive, pained, sympathetic, beautiful, and many other wonderful adjectives.
I really like "Natural Blues", but it's tough not to find something a little deeper in the a capella original "Trouble So Hard". This is one of those examples where the original sheds a new light on the sample. Enjoy.
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