Disco stew

I'm not sure who should be the most embarrassed about sleeping on Disco Four's Throwdown : the Ego Trip gang for not including it in their top 40 Rap singles of 1983 list, or ya boy Mansplain Jane right chea for only discovering it recently when I love pre-1985 Harlem-Rap like South Park Mexican loves pre-pubescent girls? At least I've got a legitimate excuse for my tardiness since I gave up investigating Disco Four's catalogue after blindly shelling out a tenner for the worst 12" Enjoy Records ever released, whereas Ego Trip's merry band of Rap scholars need to come clean and admit they done fucked up since their 1983 list features such utter tripe as Games Females Play by Gigolette, Dog Talk by K9 Corps & Freddy C, and - let's not front here because it's only notable for the "OH MY GOD!" sample - Punk Rock Rap by the Coldcrush Brothers.

"Attention Disco Four, attention Disco Four!
We have a positive ten-thirteen in progress with a report of a party not being rocked!
Please respond, please respond!"

Disco Four - Throwdown
(From Throwdown 12"; 1983)


Like Coldcrush, Disco Four were one of those old-school groups with a fearsome live reputation who spent their recording career struggling to translate their on-stage routines into song format, but this is the crew's one record where their Rapping and their ye olde Harlem harmonizing really congealed, and for that we can probably thank Rap's first genuine production auteur, Pumpkin. Composed and played by him, Throwdown is similar to Pumpkin's other great 1983 production in that it's got a stonking Seinfeld theme type slap-bass at the song's centre and it serves as the transition point between his earlier disco band-Rap original compositions for Spoonie Gee and his later Electro-tinged productions like the Profile Records posse-cut Here Comes That Beat and Coldcrush's only true classic Fresh, Wild, Fly And Bold, a song he ghost-produced alongside various other 1983/1984 Tuff City singles which Aaron Fuschs inevitably took the credit for.

Favourite line in the song? C'mon now - it's gotta be "because I been summoned to arrest y'all for party-poopin' up against the wall" since it's one of the quintessential wallflower-disses by a Harlem Rapper alongside Ma$e's "while you stand on the wall, hand on your balls/lightin' up drawls, always fightin' in the club/I'm the reason they made the dress-code, they figured I wouldn't wild when I'm in my French clothes" from Feel So Good, innit?