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Bite This: Our 1989 Feature on Sampling
This article originally appeared in the November 1989 issue of SPIN. On De La Soul’s million-selling debut Three Feet High And Rising is one minute and 11 seconds of bugging out entitled “Transmitting Live From Mars.” Album filler (the Long Island hip hop trio doesn’t even rap on the cut), the song is basically nothing more than a sample of a French lesson floated over a tape loop of the first four bars of the Turtles’ 1969 pop hit “You Showed Me” with some drum beats added underneath. “Transmitting Live From Mars” is a goof, but former Turtles Flo and Eddie are not amused. They’ve filed suit against De La Soul and Tommy Boy—their record company—for $1.7 million in punitive damages. “This isn’t just a financial objection,” says Flo and Eddie’s lawyer Evan Cohen. “Flo and Eddie are genuinel...
Rock the Art House: Our 1989 Digital Underground Feature
This article originally appeared in the November 1989 issue of SPIN. In light of Shock G’s death, we’re republishing it here. “Say it loud, I’m arty and I’m proud,” because 1989 is the year of the boho homeboy. Back in the “who’s bigger and deffer” days, hip hop was fiercely competitive, more akin to sport than art; these days beyond def is the place to be. Unabashed experimental creativity—heavily influenced by George Clinton’s mid-70s costume funk revues—is making a big comeback. The Jungle Brothers, De La Soul, and Queens’ A Tribe Called Quest set the tone, but Oakland, California’s Digital Underground are now carrying the hip hop arthouse swing. “Digital refers to the fact that we lean towards the techno end of hip hop,” says DU’s chief polemicist Shock G. “Underground ...
Live to Ride: Our 2000 Interview With DMX
This article originally appeared in the March 2000 issue of SPIN. In light of DMX’s death, we’re republishing it here. It’s nearly midnight, and Manhattan’s Hit Factory recording studio is teeming with nervous life as DMX races to complete …And Then There Was X, which his label wants in just three weeks. The environment is not exactly conducive to getting anything done: DMX’s wife, sister-in-law, various producers, and manager/uncle stalk about the studio’s windowless maze of rooms, while ruffnecks in identical skullys, boots, and puffed-out jackets stand guard at every door, enshrouded in blunt smoke so thick they can barely see two feet in front of them. At the eye of this hazy hurricane is Dark Man X himself, who’s slumped motionless at the monolithic control board, his face stubbled wi...
Thank Heaven for 7-11: Henry Rollins’ 1985 Homage to the Convenience Store
This article originally appeared in the June 1985 issue of SPIN. Hey you. Yeah, you—come here a second, I wanna talk to you. Look, I don’t know you, you don’t know me, we don’t go to the same parties, never tubbed together. I know you think I’m some kind of weirdo, but listen… I bet, just bet, you and I have one thing in common, one thing that unites us, one thing that will allow us to look each other in the eyes and feel right. Yes, friend…7-11. They’re in your town, they’re in my town, we have both seen the orange, white and green beacon against the night sky. What’s your thing? Coffee, video games, microwave food? You want somethin’? They got somethin’ you want, and that is good. I ventured into my first 7-11 during the summer of 1968. That was back in the days when said establishm...
Dwight Yoakam and Buck Owens in Conversation: Our 1988 Feature
This article was originally published in the December 1988 issue of SPIN. We’re republishing this on the 15th anniversary of Owens’ death. Buck Owens has spent the last few years looking after business in Bakersfield, California, back again where his career began. When country music went slick in the ’70s, Buck let it alone—and for the last decade or so, he’s been remembered by most people as the grinning face they saw when they clicked the channel past the “Hee-Haw” reruns. <!– // Brid Player Singles. var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ “div”: “Brid_10143537”, “obj”: {“id”:”25115″,”width”:”480″,”height”:”270″,”playlist”:”10315″,&...
Lord of the Airwaves: Our 1993 Howard Stern Interview
This article originally appeared in the November 1993 issue of SPIN. On Long Island, where I live, Howard Stern is God. Lord and master of the airwaves, ruler of the turnpikes and expressways. All my friends are obsessive Howard fans, fanatics who listen to his radio show, watch him on cable, collect all his tapes and videos. They know every detail of his life, the lives of his extended family, his staff, and their extended families. So what was I supposed to ask Howard Stern? What don’t we already know about this self-described megalomaniac? This lunatic who sacrifices his personal life to our public domain, every day, five days a week, four to five hours a day and then some? <!– // Brid Player Singles. var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ “div”: “Brid_10143537&#...
Public Enemy: Our 1988 Interview With Chuck D and Flavor Flav
This article originally appeared in the January 1988 issue of SPIN. Critics don’t like them. Black radio stations won’t play them. But in less than a year Public Enemy has managed to sell 275,000 copies of their debut LP, Yo! Bum Rush the Show, and has toured the U.S. and Europe with L.L. Cool J. They hit the stage like an alliance of shock troop and rap group. Behind them stand the S1Ws (which stands for Security of the First World), their gun-toting, Muslim backup crew (the guns are unloaded). The music is hard and the message is strong—maybe too strong for some. Chuck D is the meat of the message, and Flavor Flav is the spice—the younger sidekick who tempers the militance. “You wear a clock to know what time it is. And when you know what time it is, that means you are aware. And w...
Messin’ With the Hook: Our 1986 John Lee Hooker Feature
This article originally appeared in the April 1986 issue of SPIN. A battered motel room in Watts, the Glen-Dora Motor Lodge. When you come in, John Lee Hooker is standing at the stove in the cramped kitchenette. He’s cooking him up some red beans and rice, some biscuits and gravy, some neck-bones. Battered neckbones. Or no, better—it’s a woman at the stove. A middle-aged black woman, thick at the hips, wearing puffy bedroom slippers. And John Lee Hooker’s settled in at the yellow linoleum dinette table with the rusty chrome legs. He has an old undershirt on, and as you come in, he looks up and says (nigh-perfect ZZ Top–imitation growl), “How how how how…” No. John Lee Hooker is in bed. On the eighth floor of Santa Monica’s Bay View Plaza Holiday Inn. Half under the covers a...
I Fought the Law: Our 1991 Slick Rick Feature
This article was originally published in the August 1991 issue of SPIN. AT 5:28 P.M. on Tuesday, July 3, 1990, officers Rodriguez and Wong of the 47th Precinct in the Bronx got the call. “MB shots . . . six rounds . . . in black Toyota Camry . . . possibly fled on Parkway . . . 241 and White near OTB.” A black male (MB) had fired six rounds at East 241st Street and White Plains Road, near the Off-Track Betting outlet, before fleeing in a Toyota toward the Bronx River Parkway. It wasn’t a Toyota, but otherwise the radio alert matched the testimony given later by the gunman, one Ricky Walters, following his arrest. “I was driving a rent-a-car Dodge Shadow at East 241st Street and White Plains Road when I saw my cousin Mark,” Walters told the cops. “I drove home with my girlfriend, Lisa ...
It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll: Our 1991 The Black Crowes Feature
This article originally appeared in the May 1991 issue of SPIN. Chris Robinson, the Black Crowes’ very skinny lead singer, is standing in the band’s tour bus outside the Market Square Arena in Indianapolis. The Crowes have just finished another set as the support act on ZZ Top’s Recycler tour. When the band completes this tour in May, it’ll have been on the road for almost 16 months, and they’re beginning to look a little road weary. Drummer Steve Gorman has been complaining all day that he’s coming down with something; he even threatened to pass out during the after-show meet-and-greet session with Indianapolis’s radio dudes and dudettes. Chris Robinson is still hurting from the last three nights in Chicago, which included a visit from his girlfriend and late-night jam sessions with ...
Panic! Attack: Our 2006 Panic! At the Disco Cover
This article originally appeared in SPIN in October 2006 It’s just past 2 A.M. some-where outside Detroit, and the tension on Panic! At the Disco’s tour bus would send the most devoted groupie scurrying. “I hate Jon,” ruminative guitarist and co-songwriter Ryan Ross quietly announces, referring to bassist Jon Walker. “I’ve never felt it this much.” As if on cue, Walker emerges from the bunk area into the front of the bus, where the rest of the band, plus some crew, are sitting, listening to Ross’ lament. With a mischievous smirk, the newest member deliberately inflames the situation. “I lost a ten-dollar bill in here,” he says, scanning the plush couches and snack-strewn kitchenette. That would be ten of the 1,400 bucks he has just won in C-Lo, a street dice game that the band members play...
The Last Temptation of Jenny: Our 2006 Jenny Lewis Profile
This article originally appeared in the February 2006 issue of SPIN Jenny Lewis is concerned that she talks too much. She does not directly say this, and there is no evidence to support her fear. But this is her concern. And I know this because of the manner in which she talks about total strangers, which is always the easiest way to admit things about yourself. “Let me tell you what happened to me on the way over here,” Lewis says. We are sitting in a Lower East Side restaurant called the Pink Pony, but neither of us is eating. I am pretending not to ask whether her mom had a substance abuse problem during Lewis’ childhood, and she is pretending not to care. But she eventually says this: “I was walking over from the Howard Johnson’s, where I like to stay, and there was an older...
