Baltimore Club music is raw. Ol’ Dirty Bastard raw. Like eating hamburger that has not been cooked, teeth clenched into the meat as blood drips down your chin, raw. B-more Club music prides itself on being rough, rugged. It’s nothing if not unpretentious. “The DJ was an extension of the crowd,” Scottie B says, “and there was a lot of nonsense going on at these clubs, from fist fights to cheating, so the sound was made as a reflection of that.” This is the kind of primal music that makes you want to dance. It exists off emotion. In the late 1980s, Scottie B was known for his ability to mix any style of music, and out of this developed a hybrid of hip-hop, house, club and hip-house. The sound is exemplified by an 8/4 beat structure, a tempo that ranges from 126 to 130 beats per minute. There might be sampled break beats of the songs, repetitive hooks of well known hip-hop and R&B songs, as well as the use of weird pop culture references and of course, most notably, there’s the kind of raw sex talk that would make Luke from 2 Live Crew blush and Bill O’Reilly’s head explode. Besides being one of the pioneers of the scene and a top-notch DJ and producer, Scottie B also runs one of the most successful B-more Club record labels, Unruly Records (unrulyonline.com), with his partner, Shawn Caesar. Since 1994, they have been putting out the best releases in B-more Club, and their label roster now reads like a Who’s Who of the scene, with artists such as Rod Lee, Blaqstarr, KW Griff, DJ Class, Say Wut and K-Swift. “I know everybody will say Scottie B = club music, but I play more than that, you know what I mean,” he says. “And I try to get out of that hole to a point. Of course, I want ‘em to know who the best guy for that job is, but it’s not the only job that I can do.” |
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