The "MC HOUSE 102.7”

In honor of the Chicago house scene of the 1980s and early ‘90s, here’s a list of my 102.7 favorite house songs (named of course after the station that most of us first heard play that music: 102.7 FM WBMX).  Special thanks to all the DJs, promoters, and radio stations that brought us the music.  Extra thanks to the singers, musicians, and producers who created it. 

        Title & Artist

102.7 Atmosphere Strutt by Cloud One

102. What You Need by Soft House

101. Cocomotion by El Coco

100. Keep in Touch (Body To Body) by Shades of Love (“instrumental” version)

  99. Green Light by Cory Daye

  98. Bad for Me by Dee Dee Bridgewater

  97. Wargames by Lil’ Louis

  96. Magnifique by Magnifique

  95. Tee’s Happy by North End

  94. Dance by Earth People

  93. Disco Fever by Rare Essence

  92. Do What Ya Wanna Do by T-Connection

  91. I’m A Big Freak by Phreek

  90. Lost In Music (1984 Remix) by Sister Sledge

  89. You Got Me Running by Lenny Williams

  88. Fantasy by Bruni Pagan

  87. Moscow Disco by Telex

  86. Catch Me on the Rebound by Loleatta Holloway

  85. Disco Circus by Martin Circus

  84. My Love is Free by Double Exposure

  83. Touch and Go (1986 remix) by Ecstasy, Passion & Pain

  82. Melodies by Made In U.S.A

  81. Nobody Could Take Your Place by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes

  80. Let’s Get Together by Pam Todd

  79. The Player by First Choice

  78. Freak with Me by Universal Robot Band

  77. We Got the Time by MFSB

  76. You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too by Brenda Taylor

  75. Somehow, Someway by Visual

  74. If You Wanna See the Sunshine by Ubiquity

  73. Groovin’ You by Harvey Mason

  72. Earth to Mickey (“Hi-NRG” mix) by Chaka Khan

  71. Double Cross by First Choice

  70. Let’s Lovedance Tonight by Gary’s Gang

  69. Dancing on the Floor by Third World

  68. Funkanova by Wood, Brass & Steel

  67. In the Bush by Musique

  66. Hey Everybody by People’s Choice

  65. The Music’s Got Me by Visual

  64. Out of My Hands (Frankie Knuckles Remix) by Unfinished Business

  63. Right in the Socket by Shalamar

  62. Tell the World How I Feel About 'Cha Baby by Harold Melvin & Blue Notes

  61. Everybody Here Must Party by Direct Current

  60. Trans Dance by Night Moves  

  59. Rich Man, Poor Man (Peace) by The Dells

  58. Pow Wow by Cory Daye

  57. Pass the Buck by Love Committee

  56. Love Connection by The Dells

  55. Was That All It Was by Jean Carne

  54. Love to the World by LTD

  53. Free Yourself by Virgo

  52. I’m Here Again by Thelma Houston

  51. The Mirrors of My Mind by The Jackson 5

  50. I Feel A Groove Comin’ On by Bobby Womack

  49. Crying by Instant Funk

  48. I Just Keep Thinking About You Baby by Tata Vega

  47. Ease Your Mind by Touchdown

  46. Come Back Lover by Fresh Band

  45. Puet etre…pas by Liaisons Dangereuses

  44. Ten Percent by Double Exposure

  43. Everyman by Double Exposure

  42. Love Has Come Around by Donald Byrd &125th St. NYC

  41. Get Ready (Lookin’ For Lovin) by Patti Labelle

  40. Bad Mouthin’ by Motown Sounds

  39. Good Beat by Deee-Lite

  38. Waterbed by LTG Exchange

  37. I’ll Make Your Day Tonight by Hydro

  36. Can You Handle It? by Sharon Redd

  35. Never Gonna Let You Go by Made in U.S.A

  34. You Can’t Hide From Yourself by Teddy Pendergrass

  33. Eyes by B.T. Express

  32. Catfish by The Four Tops

  31. Out in the Night by Serge! Ponsar

  30. Body Contact Contract by The Trammps

  29. Adventure (No Way Back pt.2) by The Dells

  28. The More I Get, the More I Want by Teddy Pendergrass

  27. Hot For You by Brainstorm

  26. Dreamin’ by Loleatta Holloway

  25. Let’s Do It by Convertion

  24. Peace Pipe by B.T. Express

  23. Dancing Into the Stars by Logg

  22. You’re Just the Right Size (1985 Remix) by Salsoul Orchestra

  21. One, Two, Three (Counting On Love) by Peter Jacques Band

  20. Is There a Place for Me by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes

  19. Dancin’ and Prancin’ by Candido

  18. Thousand Finger Man by Candido

  17. Freakin’ Time pt.2 by Asphalt Jungle

  16. Dancin’ by Grey & Hanks

  15. Far Out by Crown Heights Affair

  14. Sweet Dynamite by Claudja Barry

  13. Keeep Your Body Workin’ (12 inch version) by Kleeer

  12. Only the Strong Survive by Billy Paul

  11. Pleasure Principle by Parlet

  10. Bad Luck (12 inch version) by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes

  9. Where Will You Go When the Party’s Over by Archie Bell & the Drells
  8. Smack Dab in the Middle by Janice McLain

  7. Law and Order (album version) by Love Committee

  6. Don’t Leave Me This Way (12 inch version) by H. Melvin & the Blue Notes

  5. Life is a Jungle (alias Jungle DJ) by Kikrokos

  4. Everybody Have a Good Time by Archie Bell & the Drells

  3. Welcome to the Club by Blue Magic

  2. The Beat Goes On and On by Ripple

  1. Get On Down by The Dells

To hear house mixes go to DeepHousePage.com and ChicagoHouseRadio.com

For more info about the peak era of Chicago's House scene,

get Sex Time And Radio Vol. 1 & 2: "Blueprint of a Radio Star"

Available in paperback and Kindle ebook for your iphone, ipad, android, or blackberry w/Amazon's FREE Kindle app.

"April 29th was Power to the People, and we might just see a sequel!"-20 Year Anniversary of the L.A. Riots

"To get some respect we had to tear this muthafucka up!"

-Ice Cube "We Had to Tear This Mothafucka Up" 1992

"It's jumpin' off in Compton so I gots to get my loot on.

And come up on me some furniture or som'n,

got a VCR in the back of my car that I ganked from the Slawson Swap Meet,

and muthafuckas bet'not try to stop me!"

-Dr. Dre "The Day the Niggaz Took Over" 1992

"That's what they told us today, in other words, you still a slave.

No matter how much money you got you still ain't shit!"

-Unknown black man live from the L.A.Riots 4-29-92

     Today marks exactly 20 years since one of the most significant events of the late 20th century. It's also a Sunday, and while I'd like to think the anniversary of the 1992 Los Angeles Riots falling on the Lord's resting day is a sign we won't need another uprising of this magnitude in 2012, the recent killing of Trayvon Martin and other race/hate related incidents might be saying otherwise.  If justice is served and George Zimmermann is convicted, peace will prevail.  But if that doesn't happen there's a chance Florida will find itself in the midst of what California experienced 20 years ago.  In acknowledgement of that moment in time when people of my generation served some serious notice to America, I've posted a piece of what I wrote about it in the "Rebirth and Death" chapter from my book Sex Time And Radio Vol. 1 & 2: Blueprint of a Radio Star. At the end of this blog are links to YouTube clips of two songs that dealt with the historic event.  This revolution was not only televised, it was documented on CDs that sold over 6 million units combined!---M Chapman 

  

With Death Certificate, Ice Cube was clearly challenging young blacks to reach beyond what we thought was possible for us.  But despite his intentions, he and the album were slammed by the mainstream media and labeled as racist.  The bulk of the complaints were about the songs “No Vaseline” and “Black Korea”.  “No Vaseline” was actually Cube’s response to NWA, who had dissed him after he left the group on their EP 100 Miles and Runnin’ and their album Efil4zaggiN (“Niggaz4life” spelled backwards).  It was easily the hardest diss song in rap history, and was the most popular cut on the album when it was first released.  Cube blamed the group’s white Jewish manager Jerry Heller for breaking them up, and basically called NWA hypocrites by saying “you can’t be the nigga 4 life crew with a white Jew tellin’ you what to do!”  That line, along with the proclamation to “get rid of that devil real simple, put a bullet in his temple”, created cries that Ice Cube was anti-Semitic.  The warning in “Black Korea” to “pay respect to the black fist, or we’ll burn your store right down to a crisp”, and its use of dialog from Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing, created cries of him being racist against Asians.  Some radio stations around the country, including WGCI in Chicago, refused to play any Ice Cube songs.  Billboard magazine suggested that record stores should “protest the sentiments” contained in the album, while the national chain store Camelot Records refused to sell it.  According to Joel McIver’s biography Ice Cube Attitude, “the state of Oregon made it illegal to display Ice Cube’s image in a retail outlet” and “Black Korea” and “No Vaseline” were actually taken off of the album in the UK.  All of this was because Ice Cube was supposedly spreading a message of hate.  The album also contained several pieces of dialog from members of the Nation of Islam, as well as an endorsement of the organization in the liner notes.  This newfound affiliation with Minister Farrakhan’s feared group definitely added to the mainstream media’s conclusions about Cube. 

     But many of these media folks were fooling themselves with their own arrogance.  Despite all the talk of banning Ice Cube, the song “Steady Mobbin” became a major hit.  Although it only reached #30 on the Billboard black singles chart, it was easily the hottest song out at the time with the main rap audience.  Plus Death Certificate spent 3 weeks in the #1 spot on the black album chart, reached #2 on the pop chart, and sold well over a million copies.  As Cube put it in the album’s opening track, “I’m platinum bitch and I didn’t have to sell out!” because as the title suggested he was “The Wrong Nigga to Fuck Wit”.

     One of the most common aspects of American society is its ability to denounce those who deliver bitter messages while completely ignoring the fucked up conditions within the society that make the messages necessary in the first place.  Ice Cube was showing a genuine concern for his own people, not a hatred of others.  Those who argued against the song “Black Korea” either ignored or were unaware of an altercation in March of 1991 between a 15-year-old black girl named Latasha Harlins and a Korean store owner in L.A. named Soon Ja Du.  According to the transcript of court case People v. Superior Court of Los Angeles County, Du saw Harlins place a bottle of orange juice in her backpack and assumed she was attempting to steal it.  Harlins actually had the money to pay for it, but since Du didn’t see it, she snatched the teenager’s backpack away. Harlins responded by hitting Du three times, knocking her to the ground, and then backing away.  Du reacted to this by throwing a stool at the teen, after which Harlins picked up the juice bottle, threw it on the counter, and walked away to leave the store.  Du then grabbed a gun from under the counter and fatally shot Harlins in the back of her head.  On trial, Soon Ja Du claimed self-defense and that she feared for her life.  She was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter with a recommendation for 16 years in prison, but amazingly, Judge Joyce Karlin reduced the sentence to five years probation, 400 hours of community service and a $500 fine.  African-Americans in Los Angeles were outraged, and the tension expressed in the song “Black Korea” had a lot to do with this incident. 

     Ice Cube’s words might have been harsh, but he was expressing the real feelings of people in his community.  In fact, he had been warning about the tension in black neighborhoods for his whole career up to that point, especially the tension in South Central L.A.  The same could be said for Ice-T and NWA, as well as Public Enemy and other rappers.  Most of their observations about the feelings of the main rap audience were dismissed as annoying rhetoric by the American establishment.  But on April 29th of 1992, the country got a major wake up call. 

     In March of 1991, a black man named Rodney King was severely beaten by four Los Angeles police officers.  A black man getting beat by cops wasn’t new, but this time someone caught it on camera.  The video tape was shown on TV throughout the country for months and the officers went on trial.  Everyone expected them to be sent to jail, yet despite the obvious evidence, the officers were found not guilty in court.  Not guilty.  They beat the living crap out of this man, everyone saw it on TV, but that was “not guilty”?  The officers smiled and hugged when they got off, but if America thought so little of black men that they could beat us nearly to death just because they had so-called “authority” they were in for a serious surprise.  Black folks in L.A. took to the streets and started a vicious riot that lasted damn near a week.  They burned down stores (including many Korean owned ones) and took whatever items they could get.  Hispanics felt they were even bigger targets of police brutality than blacks were, so they joined in too. 
     For people around my age, riots were something that we saw on old documentaries about the 1960s or read about in history classes.  But this wasn’t a book or a movie, this motherfucker was real!  Though I wasn’t anywhere near Los Angeles, I understood how the people out there felt because I’d been hearing about their environment in rap songs for five years.  Hell, I woulda went out there and tore some shit up too if I’d been there!  Now all of a sudden the mainstream media, who had dissed so many rappers for so long, wanted to talk to Ice Cube, Ice-T, Chuck D, and anybody else they could find connected to the rap audience.  Ice Cube and Ice-T (who would have his own controversy over the song “Cop Killer” a few months later) were both obviously thinking “we told you so”.  In fact, Cube’s next album, The Predator, came out later that year.  My favorite song on it, “We Had to Tear This Motherfucker Up”, was specifically about the L.A. riots.  He described ways of getting revenge on each of the four officers, but what stood out the most was the line “I told you it would happen and you heard it, read it, but all you could call me was anti-Semitic!”  The album’s first single, “Wicked”, also had a line that said “April 29th was power to the people, and we might just see a sequel!” 
Read more in paperback or Kindle ebook by clicking here: http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Time-Radio-Vol-Blueprint/dp/1463716966/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2

Riot theme #1: <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/efrM6DK8vbA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Riot theme #2: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UyyU6eSROnc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Flashback Blog: October 2006 "Beyonce Starts a New Trend...Hopefully (How Quantity over Quality Has Hurt the Music Industry)"

I googled my own name recently and found this blog i posted on Myspace when Beyonce's 2nd CD was released in October 2006.  It deals with the over-emphasis on the number of tracks released on CDs, and how much that hurt the music industry.  For those of you who wonder if I wrote anything prior to the Sex Time And Radio book series, here's proof of my journalistic credentials well before I was a published author. This is good, so enjoy it...  

A few months ago I met a friend of mine at a Borders book store. At some point during our conversation, we somehow got on the subject of rock acts from the 1980s. This led us to my favorite rock act of that decade, Van Halen, and the videos they did for the songs "Jump" and "Hot For Teacher" (a not so subliminal hint on my part since she's a teacher). The album that those songs came from, 1984, is number 20 on my TOP 150 Albums list. Since she mentioned how much she liked the songs, and Borders also sells music, I found the CD in the store so she could check it out. Her reaction: "I'm not buying this; it only has nine songs on it!" I explained to her that in the days when vinyl records were the main source of music, albums could only hold about 40 to 45 minutes of sound on them. As a result, most albums had between 6 and 10 songs on them, or sometimes less. I assured her that the CD was a classic, and was great all the way through (it sold well over 10 million copies). Although she knew at least three of the nine songs on it, and it was on sale for only $8.99, she still felt it was a rip off because of how many songs were on it. I gave up, and we switched to a different subject. On my way home from this encounter, I wondered how and when the idea of an album being good or not good based on the number of songs started.

QUANTITY VS. QUALITY

In 1989, LL Cool J followed up his classic album Bigger And Deffer with Walking With A Panther. That album had some great tracks on it like "Big Ole Butt", "Droppin' Em", and "1-900-LL Cool J", but received mixed reviews from fans and critics alike and is generally regarded as a failure. One reason it didn't do as well was the number of songs on it. Walking With A Panther was the first hip-hop album that suffered from the "more is better" mentality. It had 16 songs on the record, 18 on the cd, and 20 on the tape, an unheard of amount at that time. Had it been trimmed down to about 10 or 12 songs, it might have been received much better since most of the extra songs were crap to begin with. Later that summer, rapper Big Daddy Kane became the next victim of having a padded album. His sophomore release It's A Big Daddy Thing contained some of his best material, like "Smooth Operator", "I Get the Job Done", "Mortal Combat", "Young, Gifted, and Black", and the infamous "Pimpin' Ain't Easy" (which ended with the line "bitch betta have my money" that was sampled for the AMG classic of the same name in 1991). However, at least 6 or 7 of the 17songs on the album could've been left off, and they kept the album from being the classic that it should've been.

For the next few years, most artists and record labels seemed to be smart enough to avoid those mistakes. In the early '90s, most CDs had between 10 and 12 songs on them, with the only exceptions being sure fire rap classics like Ice Cube's first few solo efforts, N.W.A.'s Efil4zaggiN, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's first releases, and Notorious BIG's Ready To Die among others. In 1996 though, the bar was raised even higher with the release of 2Pac's double CD classic All Eyez On Me, which contained 27 mostly quality songs. While most acts avoided the double CD trap, All Eyez On Me seemed to make a lot of artists feel the need to have more songs on their CDs. The audience expectations of the number of songs also increased. While working at various record stores in the late '90s, I saw and heard people judging the worth of a CD based solely on the number of tracks they saw on the back of the CDs. The word “tracks” is important though, because everything listed on the back of a CD isn't always a song.

TOO MANY SONGS, TOO LITTLE TIME

CDs in general (and hip-hop CDs in particular) seem to constantly be padded with intros, outros, interludes, skits, comedy bits, and other unnecessary tid-bits between the songs that often kill the flow of the music. More importantly, the CDs have been padded with weak songs. A typical cd may have 16 or 18 tracks, but how many of them are actually good? In some cases, we have actually been "treated" to bonus tracks which are often even worse than the crap we had to sit through in the main part of the CD. A note to anyone associated with the music industry: just because a CD can hold nearly 80 minutes of music doesn't mean it should actually have nearly 80 minutes of music! Technological breakthroughs like the internet and downloading have affected the sales of CDs and cut into record company profits. But there is another reason many people have decreased the amount of CDs they purchase: they are sick and tired of spending their hard earned money on whole CDs, only to find that there are only a few more good songs on them in addition to the ones they heard on the radio or saw videos for. It's not about quantity, it's about quality! Word of mouth spreads quickly, and when word gets out that so-and-so's new CD isn't worth buying, it won't sell.

Part of the problem with today's music industry is the lack of development of new artists. Pick any legendary act from the 1960s, '70s, or '80s, and there's a good chance they were not successful right away. In those years it often took artists a few albums to hit their stride commercially. One reason they had the opportunities to grow was the expectations of the releases themselves. If an act released an album that didn't do well, they could come back with a new album 8 months to a year later and try again with new material. If the album sold well, they would come back with more new material the next year and try to build on the momentum they established with the previous release. In each case, the new albums would contain the best 6 to 10 songs the act cut in the studio during those album sessions, with the remaining songs being left unreleased or "in the can". While every album might not have been good all the way through, it's a lot easier to deal with 3 or 4 bad songs than it is to deal with 9 or 10 of them. In the current music climate, an artist may not get a chance to release new music for another 2 years or more after a new release. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if the CD did well. If it didn't, the inability to come right back again with something new to erase the public's memories of a bad release can be serious damage to a career. When a new act doesn't sell by the second album (or the first in some cases), they're usually dropped from the label. Once that happens, the chances of the act getting another deal aren't very good. Although talent, management, and other issues contribute to an artist's survival, I believe that having less songs on a CD can help raise the quality to some degree. It can also decrease the amount of unsatisfied buyers; if the expectations of how many songs should be in a CD are lowered.

WILL B DAY START A NEW DAY?

In 2004, the final Destiny's Child CD Destiny Fulfilled contained 11 songs. Beyonce's new CD B Day has 10 songs on it. Considering the attitude of most music buyers toward the number of tracks, I was very surprised to see that. I was also sure there was something extra on it and I was right. Not only is there an extra song at the end, there's also a spoken intro from Ms. Knowles herself preceding a second extra song. This brings the total amount of songs on the CD to a reasonable 12. Hopefully Beyonce has started a new trend of having fewer songs on a CD. In my opinion, 10 new songs (with or without 2 bonus tracks) is a much more achievable goal for artists to make a quality CD than 16, 18, 20 or whatever else. After all, if many artists and producers in the creative heyday of the 1970s had a hard time coming up with 8 or 9 quality songs for an album, how can we expect those on today's music scene to give us so many. I say cut the number of songs (and the prices), and come back sooner with more new songs for us to groove to. Maybe then the industry can get better, and more acts can have a chance to improve. In the meantime, I'll play my Van Halen 1984 CD with only 34 minutes of music and 9 songs on it. Then again, there are only 8 songs on it because the title track is just a one minute instrumental intro. As with much of the music in my collection, including the #1 album on my list, 8 is enough.

Marcus Chapman

October 2006

Video interview with Rolling Out Magazine

MC Marcus Chapman's New Book Series, ‘Sex Time And Radio’ Rolling Out - Black News, Celebrity Videos, Entertainment, Business & Politics

Interview with N'DIGO magazine & ChicagoNow.com

Here's an interview I did with N'DIGO Magazine and ChicagoNow.com for "Sex Time And Radio Vol. 3: The Cult of Personality" in December 2011: