Afrika Bambaataa & The Soulsonic Force: 'Planet Rock'
For mixing Kraftwerk's synthetic beats and simple melodies with New York rap, 'Planet Rock' can be credited with creating an entirely new genre: hip-hop. This is how it happened...
"Bambaataa wanted to use the keyboardist who had played on a record that he liked, and this turned out to be John Robie, who is now my oldest friend. John played everything by hand, nothing was sequenced on 'Planet Rock' ? we didn't have a sequencer at that time.
...it was my idea to use a combination of those two numbers (Numbers & Trans-Europe Express) for Bambaataa's next record, because the beat on 'Trans-Europe Express' was too slow.
Anyway, since we were basically trying to emulate the Kraftwerk sound, when we went into the studio we decided we needed a drum machine. What's more, after hearing an 808, we knew that was what we wanted, so I looked in the Village Voice and saw an ad stating, 'Man with drum machine, $30 a session.' His name was Joe and he had an 808, so we paid him to come in and do the beats.
We played him 'Numbers' and asked him to copy the beat, and then Bambaataa asked him to copy the beat from 'Super Sperm', so that's what we did first....
In fact, we realised we might get sued by Kraftwerk if we used the 'Trans-Europe Express' melody, so John performed a different string melody just in case and that was what we ended up using for 'Play At Your Own Risk'."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Everlast
Sta reci onda za Planet Rock gde je kompletna stvar semplovana, ali to su se kao dogovorili 
Pise da je "pozajmljeno", ranije se "pozajmljivala" cela stvar, a sad ne moze ni 2 sekunde..  Eto kakva su vremena dosla - nije ni cudo sto je Akai-u tolika pala cena
============
The main melody of "Planet Rock" is borrowed from the title track of Kraftwerk's influential album Trans Europe Express, while the drum pattern is based on the song "Numbers" from the Kraftwerk album Computer World, another popular underground club record. The borrowings eventually resulted in an out-of-court settlement between Kraftwerk and Tommy Boy Records head Tom Silverman. |