Hip-Hop Bus Review. Let’s call this a new mini featurette where I come to work late, get stuck in the Kings Cross one way system and get treated to new playings of hip-hop records on the radio. And on this bus journey it was all about the production. Now I expect Missy Elliot to have slick, swish production but her new Indian themed thang is spectacular. Tabla’s a-go-go, faded in and out with her usual vocal skill and some nagging string riff which is played a bit too high to be on a sitar (is it a baby sitar?). Even if on the singing bits she sounds too much like Mel B it still rocks hard.
From a completely different angle but equally well produced in a bargain basement sort of way is M.O.P’s “Cold As Ice”. Yes that is a Hall and Oates sample, and yes it is speeded up to sound like Dolly Parton. Not since Puff Daddy did “I’ll Be Missing You” has such an entire song been ripped off wholesale, but Puffy could never do anything this funny. Admittedly the sample is the funniest thing on it – the rapping is all Busta Rhymes big breathing shouty stomp. But the insertion of that sample, and so much of it, made me smirk all the way until I realised the police had closed the stretch outside St Pancras station and I would have to walk the rest of the distance to work.