From: Puttin' On the Hits/Ego Trip's The Big Playback: The Soundtrack to Ego Trip’s Book of Rap Lists (Wild Pitch/Rawkus, 1987/2000)
Latee’s This Cut Got Flavor on the other hand, brings the party to a gradual boil thanks to producer DJ Mark the 45 King’s typically tight dissection of Fatback Band guitar scratches, horn stabs and vocal moans. In fact, so flavorful was the cut, that it was later adopted by Mark and Latee’s talented New Jersey-based Flavor Unit clique (rounded out by Queen Latifah, Latee’s brother Apache, Chill Rob G, Lakim Shabazz, Lord Alibaski and Double J), as its official anthem. But the song might have languished forever as a raw demo recorded in disco producer Vaughn “Bounce, Rock, Skate, Roll” Mason’s East Orange, NJ studio basement had Mark (who was a tenant in Mason’s building at the time) listened to Apache’s “it needs something else” -critique of the song. Undaunted, 45 King brought it to the attention of airwave mixmaster Kool DJ Red Alert. Red immediately took to the tune and “This Cut’s Got Flavor became a popular exclusive on his KISS FM weekend show for close to a year before eventually being picked up by struggling indie Wild Pitch Records. The song then garnered a second life when it broke on mix shows nationally, thus putting the Flavor Unit and Wild Pitch on the map.
My yester-year remembrance is vivid. Most of my memories are palpable, serving real-time on-call. I still have my ’80 KISS FM Kool DJ Red Alert cassettes in a Nike shoe box awaiting their digitized maturation.
Latee’s TCGF was and still is one of favorite Hip-Hop embodiments of Occam’s Razor whereby: entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity. The 45 King truncations and sequencing exposition unsophistication quintessence; furthermore, my production style for Sunny Day in Harlem was leadenly influenced by 45 King.
+The 45 King: Official Website l YouTube
+Get 45 King's 'Break Beats for Dummies' mixed LP for just $20 bucks including shipping and handling. This is the record that 45's mixing in Japan: Movie clip
+Queen Latifah