Welcome to the newest regular feature here at True Genius Requires Insanity, the “Crate Dig.” As you may already be aware, we strongly feel as though it’s time to advocate a “back to basics” movement in music. We feel that instead of everyone being an innovator, that some of us need to be preserving the importance of original source material. To that end, the “Crate Dig” will feature members of the TGRIOnline.com staff, the “Hustlers of Culture,” digging through their mental crates to remember the songs that made them appreciate music. There will be some amazing, and yes, embarrassing choices here, but always the key impact is to remember when music was not something to be over studied, remixed, downloaded, forgotten and torn asunder. We’re remembering when music was simply a song you liked, and really couldn’t tell you more than a sentence or two why. Sit back, reminisce, and enjoy the building blocks of music appreciation.
Year Released: 1971 Year “Discovered” by Me: 1994
Reason Discovered: Foremost, hearing the track as the background on a bumper for a Dimensions Unlimited promoted WAR concert at Constitution Hall in DC in 1994, then in 1996 as the rice and peas for Monifah’s “I Miss You”
Why a fan?
A really great sound can stop me on a dime. The horns at the start of “Slippin’ into Darkness” fall into that category of musical noise that I only view as legendary. It’s 7 AM, and I’m a college junior preparing to head to school. I’m taking a Bob Evans sausage biscuit out of the microwave as my mother is doing dishes on a rare off day, and those horns blast. We both stop, stare at each other, and my mother literally sings the entire first verse from memory. I ask my mother what the name of the song is, and she instead pulls out a copy of WAR’s album All Day Music, tells me she’s driving me to school anyway, and that I have to listen. When I began digging through her albums in earnest a year earlier, I was met with a lot of “don’t break my shit,” so, this was a curious moment indeed. I sat, listened, and was transfixed by everything about WAR. From Lee Oskar playing a harmonica, to Harold Brown’s achingly soulful lead vocals. Papa Dee Allen being the fattest and happiest conga player I’ve ever seen and Howard Scott underrated sloping lead guitar all mashed together in my mind, and blew it completely as I listened and re-listened to “Slippin’ Into Darkness” for the next 60 days at least once a day. I began my pidgin learning of composition from it, as the instruments were SO easy to pick out, and hearing how they worked together was thus easy as well.
The track got sealed for me as a classic when I became enamored with Monifah’s criminally underrated debut album Moods…Moments in 1995. My love of record labels had shifted to what we’ll call “anything Sean Combs had a hand in” as I was Jodeci’s biggest male supporter at the time, so the fact that she was on Uptown made her debut a must have. Lead single “You” with it’s delightful warm synthline over a breakbeat is one of the 90s most underrated R & B cuts, and when I heard both the original and remix of second single “I Miss You,” and heard the rhythm, I was sealed as a fan of her, WAR and even AZ, forever.
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