Alain_Patrick, Aug 27, 2007
A feel of a deep Soul-Funk aura, some caribbean-horn flavors, rhythmic guitars, and of course the break drums make "Funky Nassau" from the Nassau brothers project entitled The Beginning Of The End one of the major classics of Funk-Soul genre and a standard for the Breakbeat era. The opening lyrics "Nassau's gone Funky... Nassau's gone Soul!" works like a trademark for the era it represents. "We've gotta jugg'on beat now! We gonna call our very own! Nassau Rock... and Nassau Roll... Nassau got... a whole lot of Soul!" brings lot of rhythmic elements embraced by a deep feeling. The most sampled parts are indicated on the solo parts: "Listen to the drummer... playin' this beat!" is followed by Frank 'Bud' Munnings' hot drum solo (which is back on the openning of "Funky Nassau Part 2"); "Listen to the bass man... go get the same groovery!" announces Fred Henfield's bass solo (whose quote was sampled years later by Steinski & The Mass Media on "Let's Play It Cool", 1988); "Listen to the guitar, give that Soul some too!" adds Liroy 'Roy' Munnings' guitars on it. The well-known passage "New York, you know? Has got a whole lot of Soul!" is an evidence of the Big Apple's Music influence on the rest of the World since the sixties & seventies for all the related genres. Since then, several Breakbeat style bands and artists, from Hip Hop to Jungle, Drum n' Bass, some Electro among other Breakbeat made use of instrumental solos from American Funk-Soul bands, many of them from New York. Drum n' Bass producer Paradox used fragments of "Funky Nassau" on his "Kool Is Back"; also did DJ Mink on the WARP classic "Hey, Hey - Can You Relate?" for all the drum solo; Breakbeat act Renegade Soundwave on "Ozone Breakdown" too, just like did Cuba on the downtempo piece "White Shadow". "Nassau's got sunshine... and this you all know! But we've gone Funky... And we've got some Soul too! Funky Nassau!" is just one more evidence of the hottest Soul-Funk combination that is at the core of "Funky Nassau". The timeless classic was included on countless compilation since them, from Kenny Dope's 'Choice: A Colection Of Classics' to Liam Howlett's 'The Dirtchamber Sessions Volume One', the 'Funk 45's' selection, just to mention some.
4.6/5 (