DYWM!?! by Garfunkle

Do You Want More?!!??! came out in 1994, a time that many people consider the golden era of hip-hop. Classics like Illmatic, Ready to Die, Enter the Wu-Tang, and Midnight Marauders to name just a very few were coming seemingly left and right. And in the midst of that, for me DYWM was the one. The tracks from ?uestlove, Scott Storch, and Leonard Hubbard plus the incredible heavy-hitting guests on the album (Cassandra Wilson, Steve Coleman, Josh Roseman, Rahzel, Graham Haynes, and Rufus Harley) blew this particular head wide open, picking up on strains of jazz and hip-hop, staying absolutely true to the latter without any corniness that could very well have happened with a live hip-hop band. And the lyricism! I feel like the commonly accepted wisdom is that Black Thought and Malik B really started clicking after Illadelph Halflife (see: Black Thought's Hip-Hop Quotable for his verse on "Section") or even Things Fall Apart, but the lyricism and control of rhythm on display on DYWM holds up against the other classics coming out at the time and really to this day. Add in guest verses from Dice Raw and Elo and the spoken word from Ursula Rucker to close out the album, the Bob Power stamp on the sound, and the Blue Note inspired cover and the whole is greater than the considerable sum of its parts.

I have listened to DYWM dozens of times but like so many things from thirty years ago, even the classics, they tend to get put aside for a period of time. So in 2022 when I gave this album a listen for the first time in years it was with basically fresh ears and when the music hit, it hit hard. Later that night the bassline from the intro/something's going on was cycling through my head and the project was born. Jumping into the music it very quickly became apparent to me that this was a project I was working on and not just a song or two, and most of the music was knocked out within a week or so.

I'm honored that Zilla Rocca agreed to contribute his remix of The Lesson and love the way his version calls back to Dice Raw's incredible freestyle introduction to the world on the original while also giving this version of the song a heavy east coast hip-hop feel. I'm also honored that Pecue contributed the artwork for the project, obviously calling back to The Roots' original cover, but with his personal stamp on it.

The last song to come together for the project was my version of the Beatminerz' Silent Treatment remix. As incredible as the album is, there is a universe of remixes and new versions of songs that came out of the project - multiple versions of Silent Treatment, Proceed, and Distortion to Static on various singles, plus of course the many live versions done by the band. The bassline on the Beatminerz Silent Treatment remix has basically lived in my head these past thirty years or so and so it seemed like the most obvious candidate to include here.

Many thanks to Pecue, Zilla Rocca, and MJC for their contributions to the project, and to others who gave early drafts of the music a listen and provided encouragement.

A keyboard player, mc, and producer raised on hip-hop with a love of jazz. Working at it, infatuated with the music and the process since learning how to record to a cassette.

garfunkle1.bsky.social
Instagram