The New Club Music Sound of Chemical Sundae

     “What we’re gonna do right here is go back, way back, back into time”. Well, not that far back, but far enough back to draw upon the early days of MarqA’s experience with music to arrive at the lyrics for this new club music track “Chemical Sundae”.

     “Rhymin’ on my mic and movin’ it back to the beginnin’, when I was hookin’ up tables, spinnin’ wax and we was chillin’, to Run D.M.C and The Beastie Boys, parents didn’t understand, screamin’ what’s that noise?” Just listen, the lyrics tell the whole story right from the get go, with a rhythm and hypnotic flow that perfectly compliments the grimey synth bass line and Hip Hop influenced drum track that sets the intro into motion. “It’s just built around a true story” says Marc. “I don’t think I was deejaying professionally back then, but it wouldn’t have been too long after that I started. We would come home from school and get straight into the make shift sound room and if they weren’t already, hook up the tables and just hang out making up raps and playing records for hours and hours on end. A lot were old records of my dads from when he used to DJ, but I was starting to collect my own also, which consisted of a lot of Chicago house and early Hip Hop, try mixing that together on a pair of old belt driven turntables, Ha Ha!”

     In the early to mid 80’s, two favourites of Marc’s exploded into the vocabulary of many that would never really have listened to what was then simply called Rap. Run D.M.C. earned their first platinum record with “King Of Rock” in 1984, the very same year The Beastie Boys transformed from a Hardcore Punk band to Hip Hop after a successful experimental 12” release called “Cookie Puss” in 1983. Of course, for Run D.M.C. “Raising Hell”, 1996 and very much an all time favourite album of Marc’s went multi-platinum and that same year The Beastie Boys “Licensed To Ill” sold more than 9 million copies in the United States alone, an album Marc says “we wore out, but then again, who didn’t?” It’s no wonder there’s a definite influence in the style of rap on this new club music banger that takes us back over two decades. There are other hints of classic Hip Hop influence from the lyrical chops of MarqA on “Chemical Sundae” as well. How about the nice play on words with “we had to “Go See The Doctor”, cause of Kool Moe Dee”? 1986. Schoolly D – “Park Side 5-2”, 1987 and Jive, a prominent active label for Hip Hop in the 80’s. Sure, there are lots of other artists that could have been referenced to in “CS” like The Sugarhill Gang, LL Cool J, Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five (yes, Marc used to breakdance) and many more that all played a role in Marc’s musical journey up to now and maybe we’ll hear about those in another song.

     What about the new club music sound we hear after the Hip Hop intro and the spelling of sundae like the frozen treat? Marc has obviously pulled influence from many different genres of music, he started deejaying when he was fourteen and music has gone to the moon and back since his first gig, a pre-teen dance. “Nowadays, I love the big club sound” says Marc and “I still like to rap, so I wanted to combine the two”. So here we are in a grime ridden soap opera of Marc’s musical journey, it drops and we’re coaxed into Chemical Brother-esque territory, the tempo shifts, the synths rise, the hook snags us and we get lifted into the new club music sound of today. Is that even legal?

     Music today borrows from all sorts of other genres to make its own, almost indefinable genre. We can hear Hip Hop in Rock, thank you D.M.C., Rock in Dance, Pop in Country, Reggae in Alternative, Ska in House and of course Hip Hop in Club or Dance Music. The Music itself is the chemical and the chemical is about to get you high.