JOHN’S GUIDE: PARTY BREAKS
PUT YOUR HANDS UP
I would say that I know a little bit about music, but there’s a lot of gaps in my knowledge. This isn’t the definitive guide… It’s just John’s Guide.
A few months ago, I was introduced to a mutual friend who happened to be wearing an AV8 Records shirt. I was excited to see such a rare piece of music memorabilia in the wild, though when prompted about it, my new acquaintance admitted to me that she had no idea what AV8’s all about. And why would she? It’s a label that would likely only be familiar to a working club DJ. AV8 specializes in party breaks: functional, collaged records that take samples and raps and layer them over a variety of popular beats. In their construction, these records have more in common with house or Baltimore club. They’re not “songs.” They are “tracks.” The best way I could explain the sound of AV8 to her was to say something to the effect of, “It’s, like, a loop of a rapper yelling ‘put your hands up’ for three minutes over a Jay-Z instrumental.”
Between our guide to big beat, our interviews with Doormouse and Machine Girl, and our sustained interest in contemporary jungle, we are a bit breakbeat crazy over here at John’s Music Blog. That interest continues today with John’s Guide to party breaks, which will have nothing to do with going out less (though I know a bit about that) and everything to do with a genre of music that goes well beyond AV8. The style never died, but I associate it with a pre-digital era of DJing—all of these tracks are from the 1990s and the 2000s—one where being a working club jockey required a great deal of effort: buying records weekly; schlepping crates to the club; playing the same Ja Rule song multiple times in a night. Party breaks isolate and sustain an energy only alluded to in the music they sample, and they provide a path for a DJ to get out of a dancefloor pickle. Like a lot of good club records, they are both pragmatic and deranged.
Fatman Scoop and Crooklyn Clan “Be Faithful”
Crooklyn Clan will appear many times today, and for a good reason: The duo of DJ Riz and Sizzlahands are behind some of the most canonical cuts in party break history. “Be Faithful” is arguably the ultimate record within the genre, though it is not driven by a sampled acapella but an original performance from East Coast hype legend Fatman Scoop. That makes it a slight outlier. Still, it must go first. “Be Faithful” is fueled by, among other samples, Scoop screaming like a demented party monster over “Love Like This” by Faith Evans; like many of the records on this list, it sounds antiquated, almost removed from contemporary culture, but it still sounds great. Listening to it, I get that “oldies radio at the diner” kind of feeling. I could probably write an entire essay about “Be Faithful,” and maybe one day I will—for the least popular edition of the 33 1/3 series ever.
Kenny Dope Presents The Mad Racket “Supa (KD’s B-Boy Mix)”
In the 1990s, there was a ton of crossover between house music and party breaks. Kenny Dope is one half of house legends Masters At Work, and here he uses an acapella loop from ‘90s dancehall star Super Cat as the foundation for a mellow hype-break burner that moves like a mini-DJ set. The song uses The Emotions's "Blind Alley,” a tune that was previously deployed by Marley Marl on Big Daddy Kane’s “Ain’t No Half Steppin’” to great effect. If you squint your ears a bit, a good portion of these records could be read in a trip-hop context.
Eric B. & Rakim “Paid in Full (Coldcut ‘Seven Minutes Of Madness’ Remix)”
The whole party breaks thing has roots in ‘80s cut-and-paste DJ records like “Lesson 1 - The Payoff Mix” by Double D & Steinski and this remix by the British duo Coldcut. Eric B called the cut “girly disco music” when it was first released; in actuality, it is one of the best remixes ever made. It features a pitched-down loop of Ofra Haza (“the Madonna of the East”) and countless other samples, both musical and not, manipulated and weaved around the “Ashley’s Roachclip”drum loop. It blew me away the first time I heard it. I was lying in bed, listening to college radio.
Time Zone “Zulu War Chant (The Funky Remix)”
“Zulu War Chant (The Funky Remix)” samples the disgraced pioneer Bambaataa and also Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman.” The end result is bubblegum-breakbeat magic. As always, it’s the little things that make it: The flicker of “All Night Long” by Mary Jane Girls; the Busta Rhymes acapella loop; the Peech Boys vocal callback... It’s funny to present these tracks in isolation, as they’re so clearly made to be heard within a larger DJ set.
Crooklyn Clan “Ladyz (Reggae Bounce Mix)”
Let’s reconnect with the Crooklyn Clan, but not for the last time. “Ladyz (Reggae Bounce Mix)” is, as you might expect, a dancehall-focused party break. It’s all about that Cutty Ranks sample that drops a few seconds into the song: “Lickwood means rewind. A gunshot means forward. You requested it, so we rewind.” The track then floats on over a Foxy Brown-via-Eugene Wild flip before stripping down to a massive KRS-One vocal. I have good memories of playing it at an art gallery decorated with papier-mâché to look like a cave. (What’s up, Fred?)
“The Dough” is made by two Frenchmen and is decidedly outside of the core party break cannon—other than that Coldcut remix, it’s the only track here not made by someone from the East Coast—but it’s been on the tip of my brain since I recommended it to my fellow blogger Molly Mary O'Brien during the 2023 John’s Music Blog fundraiser super event. So, let’s up the tempo: It’s a ghettotech-ish Kriss Kross flip that dropped right as the blog house era was heating up. How many times can I say the word "blog" in a blog post?
Kenny Dope “That Gangsta Shit”
With a single sample, you can connect the histories of trip hop, party breaks, and big beat. What I’m talking about is an errant line taken from a 1990 Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth live show: “You got to kick that gangsta shit.” The rap was first used on “Entropy” by DJ Shadow in 1993 (trip hop). A year later, Kenny Dope sampled it on the above track (party breaks). Flashing forward to 1998, Fatboy Slim made it the centerpiece of “Gangsta Trippin’” (big beat). There’s no escaping it. The ‘90s really were all about breakbeats.
Busta Rhymes and Greg Nice vocals duel over the “All About The Benjamins” beat. Party chaos ensues. It’s a record that likely caused mosh pits to erupt at the Tunnel. Speaking of that legendary ‘90s NYC nightclub, I had no idea a low-budget documentary existed about the spot. That’s going on the watch list.
A lot of my favorite ‘90s New York house music was made by producers with b-boy histories. Though he’s not a native, Armand Van Helden might be my favorite New York house producer, period. His records have a bounce that could only come from a rap head. “Say Yeah” finds AVH in the party break zone, building a track around an instrumental version of “Method Man” by Wu-Tang, which is a little confusing to me, as Armand’s track came out in 1992 and Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) didn’t hit until ‘93. What is my dumb ass missing here? Maybe Discogs is wrong.
We started with a Crooklyn Clan track. We are going to end with a Crooklyn Clan track. If you’ve read until here, you should probably have some sort of an idea of what this sub-two minute song will entail. There’s a House Of Pain sample, there’s a Busta Rhymes sample, there’s a Kriss Kross sample. It’s the soundtrack to the student section at the arena. Anybody doing a March Madness pool this year? Hit me up.
Great post! I literally have ALL the partybreaks from that era AV8, Freeze, Cutting, Bozo Meko, Sneak Tip, Nervous/Wreck are just a few of the most prominent labels putting out party breaks - I was obsessed with those because they were a DJ's secret weapon in the 90s (esp. if you had one that was a deeper cut no one else had)