DJ Godfather & Big Daddy Rick - Players Club Vol. 1

DJ Godfather & Big Daddy Rick, "Ride It, Shake It" (YSI link)

DJ Godfather & Big Daddy Rick, "Fuck Bitch" (YSI link)

DJ Godfather & Big Daddy Rick, "Hoe Bend Over" (YSI link)

Let's start the week off with a bang, a ghettotech bang. This is Pound for Pound's Detroit right here, the sound that has always been important here. Databass Records, a sublabel of Twilight 76, is one of the main labels that brought this music out of Detroit out to the rest of the world. Here's one of the earliest releases, DJ Godfather & Big Daddy Rick's Players Club Vol. 1, dropped in 1997. I think you will immediately recognize that the sound hadn't really solidified yet into that relentless, snares and bass thing yet.

Opener "Ride It, Shake It" has an almost Miami bass feel to it, with the hissy cymbals and melodic bassline. "Fuck Bitch" is my favorite and probably the most prototypically ghettotech, a minimal banger with an 808 and clipped vocals ("Fuck," "Bitch," "Whatever") repeated throughout. The drums are more minimal and much cleaner, this one works better for me. Finally, "Hoe Bend Over" is the busiest of them, it has an almost static-y white noise in the bacground, these bubbling effects and a lot less low-end. The vocals don't really seem to work with the song either; at it's best the vocals are another instrument that goes perfectly with the flow. I don't feel like that's the case here.

But, let's face it. Like sex and pizza, even bad ghettotech is still pretty damn good.