A-T-6 011 Stetsasonic On Fire
The problem with writing about popular music from 40-years-ago is that it can look depressingly like an obituary column. Willie Colon has just passed, his single "Set Fire To Me" which became a hit with deejays was released in 1986, as was the first hip hop record Bob Power worked on. Stetsasonic's innovative On Fire helped advance hip hop so it's obviously on my list. Bob Power's passing on Sunday seems like a fitting, albeit sad, reason to look at that album now
Bob Power is probably best recognised for making A Tribe Called Quest and The Roots sound so good. In the studio he engineered and mixed many of the acts associated with the Native Tongues and Soulquarians collectives, and he is strongly associated with progressive hip hop and progressive soul subgenres of the 1990s
Now to Brooklyn's Stetsasonic. Formed by Daddy-O and MC Delite as The Stetson Brothers in 1981/2. They renamed themselves The Stetsasonic 3 MC’s when they were briefly joined by Crown Supreme, who their deejay, DJ Bushon, had introduced them to. The Stetsasonic 3 MC’s recorded two demos in 1982 then things go quiet
Crown Supreme departs but Daddy-O and MC Delite aren't calling it a day. They set their ambitions higher, building a larger collective which they restyle as Stetsasonic. By the time they entered Mr. Magic’s all-borough talent contest in 1984 Stetsasonic had become a sextet comprised of Daddy-O, MC Delite, DBC aka Devastating Beat Creator, Wise aka The Human Mix Machine, Prince Paul, and Fruitkwan
Stetsasonic - Go Stetsa I the hip hop band engineered by Calliope Studios' Bob Power and Chris Irwin
First prize in the talent contest was a recording contract with Sylvia Robinson's Sugar Hill Records. Stetsasonic won but opted to take the prize for second place, a recording contract with Tommy Boy. This was a smart move. At the time Sugar Hill's failure to sign a distribution deal with MCA was a disaster. Already in financial trouble Sugar Hill were ordered to pay 99 Records over $600,000 damages for their unlicensed use of Liquid Liquid's song "Cavern", the label filed for bankruptcy
The Tommy Boy deal looked a lot more attractive. In 1985 the label went into partnership with Warner Brothers with Monica Lynch as president. Tommy Boy would put out landmark releases throughout hip hop's golden ages, helped in part by having Stetsasonic on the books
Stetsasonic's debut single for Tommy Boy was "Just Say Stet", which is included in Ego Trip’s Greatest Hip Hop Singles of 1985. While "Just Say Stet" had been an invitation, the album On Fire was a declaration. It's here where we're properly introduced to Stetsasonic the hip hop band. On Fire is considered one of the first rap albums to mix live instrumentation with production contemporary to this era of hip hop - we could have a too long discussion about the ins and outs of this! What we can say for sure is that Stetsasonic are a hip hop outfit that were presented as a band rather than just being backed by a band
Stetsasonic - 4 Ever My Beat
The press release for On Fire describes Stetsasonic as "America's Hip Hop Band" who produce, arrange, write, mix, create, and stetasize. The back of the sleeve shows the roles of each of the members of the band a bit like an album by a funk group, like Mtume
Stetsasonic - Faye file next to La-Di-Da-Di and Latoya. "Devastating Beat Creator" was an 1992 Warp Records release by Kid Unknown, popular with ravers in the UK - it's primary sample comes from here, the second sample is from Ice T's "Colors"
Stetsa-branding
According to Bob Stanley's book Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop the pop genre begins with radio advertising jingles. Pop music had a sales element baked into it from its inception. Hip hop is unquestionably pop now but even back in the mid-1980s, when the quality of hip hop was high, it was regularly breaking into the charts
Stetasonic, Stet, take their name from the Stetson hat company. The packaging of Stet-product playful imitates of the corporate culture that saturates American culture. On Fire is "Stetsasized" by the band, the labels on "Just Say Stet" say it's "Stet-produced", "Stet-gineered", and "Stetsa-mixed" - teasing the type of advertising copy dreamt up by Madision Avenue. The song title "Just Say Stet" could be an advertising strap line or a slogan for a political campaign
Punk, post punk, and new wave artists had been attempting to subvert corporate culture since the late 1970s - Public Image Limited's 1986 album Album package was a deconstructed corporate product - the practice was easily absorbed by advertising agencies and used to make the image corporate brands appear more relevant. Off-White attempted to deconstruct Nike when they collaborated - although Nike couldn't let some things go, I'm sure the swoosh stayed - it's similar to some of the work of Sheffield's The Designers Republic, who turn 40 this year
I've gone off on a tangent again. On Fire comes out at a time when corporations are circling African-American culture to see what it can pick off and exploit. Nike have not long cut a deal with Michael Jordan and Adidas endorse Run DMC. Tommy Boy has joined forces with Warner Brothers but Tom Silverman opts to use independent distributers for artists like Stetsasonic to retain credibility - I actually think Tom Silverman is one of the good guys, he's an interesting fella
Jump forward to today and I'm seeing adverts for a brand aimed at white women in their 60s which finishes with the line "We on fire, let's get it lit." It makes my bum cringe every time I hear it!
I first noticed posh white children clunky dropping hip hop slang in the UK in the 2000's. True dat! Even more horrible is racist contempt these people retained, we've seen this with the mods, the skinheads... It's bigger than hip hop. Idioms coming out of African-American culture (and latin culture for that matter) are cynically plundered by agencies to market an image. I've not read No Logo in a long time but if I remember correctly this is something Naomi Klein touches on. I find pop music and advertisements are often indistinguishable, conversation and advertising is often indistinguishable! Dennis Potter was saying we have our stalls set out to sell ourselves to everyone all of the time in the 1990s, this has become even more evident in the age of influencers
