What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective
 | By Steinski Illegal Art, 2008, Audio CD |
|---|
"Brilliant." — URB
"A masterpiece." — Salon.com
"Jaw-dropping. Perfectly paced, clever, funny, and down-right funky." — The Wire
Steinski (advertising writer, DJ, and record collector Steve Stein) produced his first record in 1983. In response to a nationwide remix contest by Tommy Boy Records, he and partner Double Dee (engineer and studio wizard Douglas DJ Franco) produced "The Payoff Mix." A panel of ten judges — including Afrika Bambaataa, Shep Pettibone, Jellybean Benitez, and Arthur Baker — unanimously chose the mix as the winner. Within two weeks "The Payoff Mix" became a Top 10 request on urban radio nationwide, but the release never saw official status and was subsequently bootlegged countless times. The Payoff Mix became the first record in a series now known as The Lessons. Double Dee and Steinski followed up with cut-and-paste landmark Lesson Two: The James Brown Mix, which Fatboy Slim called "the record that always gets the crowd going." Then came Lesson 3: The History of Hip Hop. The series quickly became highly sought after collectibles and led to homage records by DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, DJ Format, and , Steinski has produced a variety of tracks, and this Illegal Art retrospective collects everything from his hip-hop narrative about the Kennedy assassination (originally a white-label promo, also issued as a Flexi-disk for UK music magazine NME) to the 1998 remix of Afrika Bambaataa's "Jazz" with Double Dee. Besides the completist archive, the release will also includes the critically acclaimed "Nothing To Fear: A Rough Mix," an hour-long mashup that was produced for Solid Steel/BBC London, described by Salon as, "the closest thing to a masterpiece the genre has yet produced" and perhaps the most obvious precursor (along with The Lessons) to Girl Talk's Night Ripper.
Disc 1Disc 2
- The Payoff Mix
- Lesson 2
- Lesson 3
- Jazz
- Voice Mail
- The Motorcade Sped On
- It's Up to You
- I'm Wild About That Thing
- The Big Man Laughs
- Vox Apostolica
- Is We Going Under?
- Ain't No Thing
- Everything's Disappeared
- Number Three on Flight Eleven
- Tonight from NY Intro
- Swingset
- Opening Credits
- Greatest Man Alive
- The Id
- Let's Get It On
- Hit the Disco
- Lolita
- Hot Spot
- It's a Funky Thing, Pt. 1
- Bboy Breakdown
- B-Beat Classic
- Funk Construction
- Them That's Not
- Swan Lake
- Here We Come
- Product of the Environment
- By Any Means Necessary
- The Art of Getting Jumped
- I Like It Like That
- Solid Air
- Country Grammar
- Let's Get It On
- Easin' In
- It's Time to Testify
- The Acid Test
- Silent Partner (Peace Out)
Title: What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective
Sales Rank: 3244 in Music
Artist: Steinski
Label: Illegal Art, 2008-05-27, Audio CD, 1 Disc
Format: Limited Edition
Package Dimensions: 5.55 x 4.97 x 0.54 inches, 0.18 pounds
- Outstanding Old School Hip-Hop
- Great old school mixes from the early 80's breakdance scene that at one time was hard to find. It's a greatest hits of sorts of every good breakbeat that was ever used by any and all hip hop artists from the 80's until the present day. More reviews
- Before Shadow, way before Girl Talk...
- Long before label mate Girl Talk became known as the King of Mashup, hell, even before M/A/R/R/S sliced together the inimitable "Pump Up The Volume", two advertising dudes named Steve "Steinski" Stein and Douglas "Double Dee" Di Franco put together a mix of the most used hip-hop breaks for a contest, one judged by the likes of Afrika Bambaataa.… More reviews
- What it means
- "Hey, I recognize that sample from..." If you're into the whole cut-up and dub genre of music, you've probably heard Steinski for years. Maybe it was a Steinski cut, maybe it was Steinski mixed into someone else's work. Many of the actual cuts on this disk floated up to the surface over the years, but saw limited or no release. Now, amazingly,… More reviews
- Be an outlaw, buy this disk!
- Oh what a lovely collection. Like taking a dictionary to a desert island because it has all the classics in it, just out of order, this is a true desert island disk. I keep expecting the RIAA to break my car window and bust me for the uncleared samples. But it would be worth it.
But wither "Hang on St. Christopher?" More reviews
