Horns: Luchini AKA This Is It

Camp Lo: Luchini AKA This Is It

[purchase]

Who'd have thought that Horn Week would turn SMM into a hip hop blog? This is the third post in two days to cover a hip hop track. Though, considering we collectively don't seem to own anything released after 1997, I have a feeling the trend won't hold.

Anyway, Camp Lo's Uptown Saturday Night is a (lost?) classic of the genre. Though the duo of Sonny Cheeba and Geechi Suede are still together, they never made another real dent into the mainstream after this single. But don't let that stop you from picking up the album if you ever see it. The whole thing is solid from end to end, heavily influenced by 60s and 70s funk and soul (as opposed to P-Funk, which was seeping into so much hip hop at the time), with a heavy dose of blaxploitation. I love the way the horns kick with the bass drum on this track. And I love both rappers' flow. Cheeba is cartoonishly cool while Suede is legitimately so (a template for Outkast?). Listen to the way Suede's flow just completely transforms mid-verse around the two minute mark.