Double Dee & Steinski: The History Of Hip Hop

RP101A

Double Dee and Steinski

• Lesson 1: 'The Payoff Mix'

It's 1983, Tommy Boy Records have just held a remix contest to promote G.L.O.B.E. & Whiz Kid's "Play That Beat (Mr. DJ) and the winner has just been announced. It's unanimous: Steve "Steinski" Stein & Douglas "Double Dee" DiFranco's "Lesson One: The Payoff Mix.

It gets played everywhere on American radio but never gets commercially released. These guys can't afford the clearance on any samples, let alone the bucket load that they've used here.

It's all done with a trailer load of vinyl and a light touch on the pause button of a double tape deck. Loads of kids try and copy the feat.

Two more Lessons soon followed:

• 'Lesson Two: The James Brown Mix'

• 'Lesson Three: The History of Hip-Hop'

Together, these Lessons became history and a new genre was born.

quote monkeyfunk.net
Steve Stein was working with a large advertising agency in the early 80's. Between briefs, he and fellow music-nut Doug DiFranco (Double Dee), spent many hours languishing around legendary NY hiphop club the Roxy, and buckling the counters of every record store with vast hauls.

When Tommy Boy launched an open-door remix contest in 1983, to promote G.L.O.B.E & Whizz Kid's "Play that Beat (Mr.DJ)", Stein & DiFranco hunkered down over a weekend, armed with little else but the song, a turntable, an eight track deck...and a fuck-off record collection, and an already huge, gleaned and lifted library of quotes, out-takes and samples.

The result, "Lessons 1 : The Payoff Mix" won the prize, and cut-ups were born. The record went crazy on the radio, and to this day has inspired kids to start plugging their parents VCR's into a tape deck to lift choice dialogue and soundgrabs. Brainfreeze ? Ninjatune ? Skratch Piklz ? The Lessons series, and Steve's subsequent work including "The Motorcade Sped On", "it's Up To You" and the Nothing to Fear" mix continue to cast a long shadow...

White Label Bootleg 1985

All three mixes were collected together and pressed on a bootleg 12".

Lesson 3 was the A-Side and my white label features the serial number...

RP101A MT

...etched into the run out. (RP101B MT on the flip, of course)

quote fuelfriends
The famed Lessons, which were produced in '83-'85 by Double Dee & Steinski - the first records made entirely from other records. Their innovative purpose was to be fodder for the turntables, a collection of sounds to scratch into others. Self-confessed record junkie Steve Stein (aka Steinski) says he remembers thinking when he first heard these sounds: "There is nothing in this music that I don't want to hear. This is music that I've been waiting all my life to hear . . . and I didn't know it." That's a quote that could just as easily be applied to the birth of the rock 'n' roll, but here the same sentiment is cropping up 20-30 years later in the birth of turntablism and hip hop culture."

Steinski & Mass Media*
"The Motorcade Sped On"
Steve Stein created this cut-up of Kennedy assassination coverage. His label, Tommy Boy, was unable to officially release it because CBS refused to grant clearance for the use of Walter Cronkite’s voice. It was released as a freebie 7" single in the UK 1987.

The download link is here: Download
Filename: A History Of Hip Hop.rar Filesize: 28.04 MB