1995 has seen the decisive return
of the lost narratives and hidden histories of one of hip hop's
most overlooked moments, namely electro funk. From the
recent path-breaking work of the Burden Brothers at Detroit's
430 West and Direct Beat labels, to the innovative Clear and
Evolution labels in England, as well as the music of Ann Arbor's
Ectomorph, the Kingsize Crew from Connecticut, and even Leftfield's
"Original" which samples chunks of "Stick 'Em" by the Fat Boys,
the brilliant yet often despised electro years of hip
hop are coming home to roost. The search for a unitary moment
of origin for electro would probably be fruitless. Nevertheless,
the work of Afrika Bambaataa in his formative "Planet Rock"
years provides a good point of entry. What followed from the
cavernous 808 pulses of "Planet Rock" is, however, less well
documented.
