If you checked out yesterday's post about 'Sky High' by ST Files you may have listened to Sweet Sable's 'Old Times' Sake' which I mentioned. A nostalgic summer R&B jam from the Above The Rim soundtrack, the main riff should be instantly familiar to any discerning junglist from Tom & Jerry's 'Airfreshner'.
But that isn't the original source of course. 'Old Times' Sake' takes it from Eddie Kendricks' soulful ballad 'Intimate Friends', a track that's also been directly sampled or interpolated by Alicia Keys, Erykah Badu, Common and many more including Alix Perez & Specific's 'Just Memories'. However 'Airfreshner' doesn't actually use the Eddie Kendricks original but instead samples a cover by Paul Johnson, you can clearly hear the vibrato keys as well as drums and horns when Johnson's falsetto coos are introduced. Over this Dego and Marc Mac cut-up the Sesame Street break and add a vocal from David Grant's 'Life':
"There is darkness, there is light"
The Johnson and Grant samples eventually give way to wicked rumbling bassline and ragga chatter from Studio One cut 'It A Fi Bun' by Kentrus: "Bring the sensi come and make me smoke it til me done, It haffi bun, smoke the sensimillia ah mi bowl". The section from around 1:36 is absolute bliss as mellow synth pads come in before the breakdown brings back the 'Intimate Friends' sample. Quintessential jungle to blast on sunny days: in fact I've been basking in the garden while writing this. There may be darkness right now, but there is always light somewhere.
There was a VIP of 'Airfreshner' done by Teebone and that was released a few years ago on his huge The Jungle Years compilation. To bring things full circle, Tom & Jerry actually sampled Sweet Sable's 'Old Times' Sake' on 'Till The Morning'.