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Friday, July 4, 2014

Friday Flashback: Clever Jeff: Year of the Fly Emcee


It's 1994, and the tune I put in the mix was "Year of the Fly Emcee" by Oakland based rapper/producer Clever Jeff who caught the attention of Quincy Jones, then signed to his Qwest Records imprint. This is a non-album cut I got as a promo, which got a lot of love from me, as well as from the people who flooded the dancefloor when I put it on. It seems that I would be the only DJ who knew about this song locally, and although it didn't have commercial appeal, it eventually faded.

Around 2001, DJ Chicken George was in the mix at one of the local eateries. I saw him reach into his crate, take out this record, cues it, blends it, then suddenly I hear a familiar bassline that I hadn't heard in years, but couldn't quite put my finger on what it was. At that time, I wasn't familiar because CG played the instrumental of the song, where I normally played the vocal version. I went to ask what played and he shows me the label. My mouth dropped. Seems like it was sweeter to hear him play the instrumental, than the vocal. And i've been a copy-cat since. LOL

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