TRACK #315:

How Much Can You Take? by M.C. A.D.E.

The real question is how much can you take of M.C. A.D.E. More specifically, his grating vocoder rapping.

Well, Adrian Does Everything (or Anus Do Exterminate, whichever you prefer) is challenging us to find out, with his tune that inexplicably uses John Carpenter’s classic Halloween Theme.

And to good effect, as this  beat is pretty awesome. Unfortunately, that fat shit A.D.E. comes in with his monotonous vocoder sound and we quite literally begin asking ourselves “How man can we take?”

I get it. I know. But hear me out.

We gave A.D.E. a pretty hard time on the Freddy Raps episode, and we didn’t really redeem ourselves on Halloween H40 either, and I feel bad.

Dude essentially invented Miami Bass, used the Halloween theme, produced gnarly, trunk thundering bass and he made a Freddy Rap. C’mon, that’s worth some respect, no? And I know his Freddy Rap is pretty irritating, and we definitely took a firm stance on no Nightmare on ADE Street on the playlist, but we gotta throw him a bone, right? Just for being so shitty to a pioneer?

And this song is better! Isn’t it? I mean, I know it’s not much better, but it’s better, right? Plus, he uses the Halloween Theme to craft a great beat for crying out loud. And hell, I’d put money on him being one of the first guys, if not the first guy sample this theme.

But I’m really just guessin’ here. I don’t have that kinda info on hand. In fact, I wanna double check this claim. Gimme a sec.

Ok. So Jaybok the City Ace seems to be the first guy to do this, on 1987’s Hip Hop Phenomenal, followed closely thereafter by Slick Master Rick on his tune Brothers and Sisters House on 13th Street in 1988.

But then, 1989 rolls around with Esham, The Beat Pirates and M.C. A.D.E. all sampling this theme.

Slick Master Rick and The Beat Pirates both made clubby electronic dance tunes with no rapping, and The Beat Pirates are sampling what sounds to me like the Part 2 theme, not that that matters really.

Esham is definitely using the tune, but it doesn’t sound sampled to me. And the part he uses is kind of a pushed-to-the-back-of-the-mix flourish that decorates a beat that isn’t really built on Michael’s theme. I will say his song is much better all around than A.D.E.’s though. So there’s that.

But then there’s Jaybok. Unfortunately, The City Ace has A.D.E. dead to rights. Hip Hop Phenomenal was released 2 years earlier, and it slaps. The beat is on point and his rapping isn’t all annoying like A.D.E.’s. And not for nothing, but Jaybok’s flow is smooth. Smooth like “is this really from 1987?” smooth.

However, I can’t say for sure, but I might argue that Jaybok isn’t sampling the song either. It sound different, like it’s just played in another synth. It could be a pitched sample, for sure, but it doesn’t sound like a straight sample the way A.D.E’s does.

So, he’s probably at least the 2nd, but at the most generous, I’d stand by my statement and say A.D.E. was the first cat to really use the sample in this manner, for a rap song that relies heavily on Carpenter’s theme as the beat. You could argue against that effectively though.

Either way, that’s not bad, particularly considering how much it’s been used since, and whom by.

Ice T, Afrika Bambaataa, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Biggie, Soulja Boy, Juciy J and even (unsurprisingly) The Insane Clown Posse, have all had producers that dipped their MPCs into this classic piece of horror scoring.

But here we are, with our friend A.D.E., the man who makes me reconsider my love of the Vocoder. It’s like Adrian, I know it’s a dope tool, but you can’t rap the whole song through it like that bud, you just can’t. And what Vocoder are you using, cause it doesn’t sound that great. Is it even a real vocoder, or an FX pedal? Whodini had it right. You gotta get that VP330 Whodini had if you go hard like that. I know that fucker was pricey (still is!) and Whodini was Whodini, but there had to be someone around the studio with something close.

But I digress.

I’m sort of in a conundrum over this song. I’d like to include it, but frankly, it doesn’t really nest into any of The Shindig’s categories. It’s not Referential (unfortunately) and it doesn’t appear in any film (that I’m aware of anyway) and it’s certainly not about monsters or Halloween. But it is using the Halloween Theme, right?

But if I went around just adding every song that used this theme (Blood for Blood’s Spit My Last Breath comes to mind) we’d be here till Thanksgiving.

So, technically, it shouldn’t even be here. But we played it on Shindig Radio Ep. 20 and I’d like to commemorate that moment on the playlist and reproduce some of that Halloween Kills vibe here, and maybe assuage some of this guilt I’m feeling over giving A.D.E. so much grief.

So, if you’ll all indulge me for a moment, I’ll just chalk this one up as a Horror Theme and  give M.C. A.D.E. his day on The Shindig, lord knows he’s earned it.

How Much Can You Take?