Chuck E - Smokin' A Blunt (White House Records, 1994)
Regular readers of this blog will know that I like following a theme and today I'm going to continue my look at Sweet Sable related material with this track from Chuck E AKA Jimmy Ryan. The four track Chuck EP was his only release under this alias but he had several excellent 12"s on Ruff Kut! Records as The Good 2 Bad And Hugly from 1992-93.
'Smokin' A Blunt' leads off the EP and is particularly sample heavy even for a jungle tune. After a heavily timestretched "Big request to the junglist massive" shout out it gets going with a rapid fire Think break and low sub bass with vocals from Shabba Ranks' 'Caan Dun': "Now make the woman excited... Make the gyals dem want it". It then introduces vocals from the chorus of Sweet Sable's 'Old Times' Sake':
"You remember when we used to chill back when,
Smokin' a blunt, and sippin' on a Heineken"
This is the cue for some tearing Amen to slam in. Soundclash vocals also adorn the track along with dub bleeps. The mid-track breakdown then clearly reveals a sample that's been playing underneath the track, the beat from Shinehead's cover of 'Billie Jean'. In fact a brief snippet of his whistling from the tune even crops up at around 1:28, and considering Jimmy Ryan's other alias it's rather appropriate that Shinehead is whistling the theme from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly! The breakdown introduces string stabs from Starvue's 'Body Fusion' and coincidentally both 'Billie Jean' and 'Body Fusion' are sampled in Remarc's 'Sound Murderer', also released on White House Records in '94.
After the breakdown yet another vocal sample is deployed, this time from the Tracey Chapman song 'Behind The Wall': "Last night I heard the screaming, loud voices behind the wall, another sleepless night for me, it won't do no good to call". I have seen this attributed to the cover by reggae artist Sanchez but it doesn't sound like his version to me, nor is there an acapella that I know of, so although it's hard to tell I think it is Tracey Chapman's original. As it closes out 'Smokin' A Blunt' brings in some nice synth pads to round things off. Excellent stuff, a shame Jimmy Ryan went quiet after this although a series of releases (mostly reissues) came out on his own 2Bad Recordings in the 2000s.
'Smokin' A Blunt' proved to be his most well known track and has featured on a number of compilations. I have it on the excellent Calling All The People - The Best Of Whitehouse Records but that's rather pricey these days. It was remixed by 6Blocc in 2016 and appears on his Deadly Dubs 5 collection which is available for "name your price" on Bandcamp. Meanwhile check out this unreleased remix below courtesy of Deep Inside The Oldskool: