The Love Song

By the time I heard this song for the first time it was ten years old. I grew up listening to Tribe, Black Star, De La Soul, but I missed this. You have to remember, this was life before the internet – at least before most of us had it. You heard things on the radio. You got recommendations from your friends. You passed around tapes and shared CDs. You’d stop at the local music store and see what was in their top 20 or listen to one of those multi-disc players mounted to the wall with shitty headphones that had probably never been cleaned. Knowledge was silo’d. It was easy to miss things.

This track was produced by Posdnuos of De La Soul. It’s a master class in sampling, with layering particular to producers from the early 90s (see Paul’s Boutique).

“The Love Song” is one of the first studio tracks to feature Mos Def. He also features on S.O.S.. With some distance, its easy to see that the Bush Babees were a bridge between the Native Tongues and the artists that would frequent the Lyricist Lounge at 45 Orchard.