This collection of defining mixes by Steve Stein, aka Steinski–made in collaboration with his longtime musical partner Douglas “Double D” Di Franco, as well as DJs P-Love and E.T., and covering every base regarding audio collage that’s been touched upon since the heyday of tape-splice edits–fills a long-standing gap in the history of hip-hop. It compiles the uncompilable, a series of promo-only mix 12”s and ascendant recordings by Stein alone and with others, each a patchwork of uncleared samples, save the harrowing 9/11 requiem “Number Three on Flight Eleven.”
What’s at stake here is the enthusiasm of a couple of clued-in outsiders–in every aspect of the culture they’d ingratiated themselves into–fully informing the hip-hop genre, still in its infancy in both practice and technique. Responding to a contest to remix a new artist, advertising employee Stein teamed up with Di Franco, a studio engineer with whom he’d worked professionally. With Di Franco’s technical experience, Stein’s crate-digging expertise, and with both keeping a close ear to the street, “The Payoff Mix” and “Lesson 2 (James Brown Mix)” evolved unburdened by any history other than which they were able to observe and create. Around the source material of a G.L.O.B.E. and Whiz Kid 12”, they crammed in Culture Club’s “I Tumble 4 Ya”, rammed it into Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti,” and let that spill into Herbie Hancock’s “Rockit.” In spite of the painstaking crafts which the two needed to develop, between tape splicing and quick cuts, these works dropped many a jaw in a fertile era where B-Boy culture in their homebase of NYC was still evolving and built into the ends of disco, breakdance and graffiti crews, punk rock, and Latin music audiences. With the implicit support of Tommy Boy Records and then-label manager Monica Lynch, who would release Steinski and Double D’s works in promotional editions (to avoid the inevitable copyright infringement issues their liberal use of sampling would incur), the duo would create lasting contributions to hip-hop, ones which would salute and inspire the artists then in the field and challenge those who followed (both DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist, for example, created their own “Lesson” mixes in the wake of the five presented on What Does It All Mean?).
The approach to all Steinski mixes is straightforward old-school cut-up, to be sure, but instead of taking the outwardly subversive approach, a la ad-busting collage artists like Negativland, the mixes here acknowledge the hyper-referential qualities of sample-based music as signposts in a larger process–medium above all–rather than using pieces of that medium for more dogmatic ends. Even “The Motorcade Sped On,” an elegy created by Steinski to document the JFK assassination, plays as ready for the dance floor as the “Lesson” mixes.
Disc one of What Does It All Mean? (Illegal Art, 2008) compiles fourteen of Steinski’s legendary promotional tracks, and shows his hand as an artist with an ear for soundbites as well as staying within the groove, but it’s disc two, a BBC-commissioned mix entitled Nothing To Fear, where the taste and skills of Steinski and crew really start to shine. Nothing To Fear is an hour’s worth of next-level cuts & scratches that jump decades with a single flick of the crossfader, tie in tap dance with beatboxing in and around the beat, celebrating the rhythmic constants within both. It’s a bombastic, expectation-leveling effort, and as with almost every selection here, illustrates that, with the right material and proper inspiration, anything is possible.