11/2/2022 0 Comments It takes two song![]() Yes, Biz walked up, he was on 125th Street. We seen them and we said, ‘Hey man, we want to get a video.’ I guess at that time, we didn’t have any idea where it was gonna get played, but we just want to shoot one, you know? I think it was only a few rappers out with videos at the time. ![]() Where were you expecting to get it played? There was no Yo! MTV Raps until the middle of 1988. I think the record company didn’t want to give us a video at the time, I think, so we just went out and put together our own money and shot it ourselves. In the music video, you’re outside the Apollo, the landmark of your native Harlemĭefinitely. “It definitely was like what they say: “Overnight success.” We woke up and we were just different people.” It’s crazy, even til today people still coming up to me and ask me about that. They thought I was saying “can’t stand sex.” I was like, uh, no, I’m not saying that, it’s sensimilla, talkin’ bout marijuana. There’s the line in there, “Don’t smoke Buddha/ Can’t stand sess.”Ī lot of people get that mixed up. So, I don’t know who else could say they’s there, ’cause it was just us. Well, me, E-Z Rock and William Hamilton produced the track. A lot of places say Teddy Riley was involved. There’s a lot of conflicting information about who actually produced the track. On Ultimate Breaks & Beats Volume 16, the Lyn Collins break and Galactic Force Band sample used in the intro are right next to each other on Side Two.īasically, it’s just like, it was right there. That’s got to stay in there.” And people didn’t understand where I was coming from. A lot of people said, “Oh too much ‘woo, yeah,’ you need to take it out at some point.” I had to fight and say, “Nah, we got to keep that in the whole record. He liked one thing, I liked one thing, and we blend it together and just came out to be “It Takes Two.” The Lyn Collins part made a big impact on the song, the “woo, yeah” part. I liked the Lyn Collins sample and E-Z Rock, I think he’d liked “Set It Off” beat. Who ended up picking the Lyn Collins sample? Yeah, it was just, “Alright, let me throw something together.” It was just spontaneous. We just went in there and did it, basically.Īnd you wrote the rhymes the night before? The guy that was managing us at the time, he told us, “Yo, we need to get in the studio, knock out a song or whatever.” So me and E-Z Rock, we just threw something together real quick and we went in the studio and knocked it out. Yeah, we did it as a demo trying to get a deal. ![]() So, you recorded “It Takes Two” before you were signed. Rolling Stone caught up with Rob Base to talk about the long legacy of a real funky concept. The following year, Spin magazine would call it the greatest single of all time.īill Pitman, Guitarist in the Wrecking Crew, Dead at 102 By the fall, it became the sixth of only seven rap songs to break the Top 40 in 1988. The way MC Rob Base describes the song’s rapid composition (one night before going into to the studio), its inauspicious Englewood, New Jersey recording session (again, one night) and its modest goals (hopefully a hit in the tri-state area) reveal a quick and instinctual process that perhaps provides some clue to its immediacy. ![]() Borrowing a giddy snatch of drums and screams from the James Brown-produced 1972 single “Think (About It)” by Lyn Collins, the repeating “yeah … woo” in the 1988 tune remains the single greatest use of a looped drum break in rap history – the hip-hop equivalent the guitar solo in “Stairway to Heaven.” E-Z Rock – would have an impact on hip-hop, dance music and pop for decades. Released in the summer of 1988, “It Takes Two” – by Harlem duo Rob Base and D.J. ![]() See our other entries on EPMD, Run-DMC, Sir Mix-A-Lot, Slick Rick, MC Lyte and Biz Markie. To celebrate 30 years, Rolling Stone’s Best of ’88 explores some of the greatest songs from those explosive 12 months. The lyrical molotovs of Nation of Millions and Straight Outta Compton, the post-modern (and pre-lawsuit) free-for-all of sampling, the national spotlight of a new show called Yo! MTV Raps and much more. 30 years later, 1988 still stands as rap’s greatest year. ![]()
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