N.E.R.D. - Maybe (Sa-Ra Remix)
This track may be relatively easy to find on the old interwebs these days, but damn if I didn’t have to work to get it initially. That’s one reason this gets a Thursday post, I must have put about two solid weeks of work tracking down a copy. I really don’t know why it was so hard to track down, but since I’ve never heard anyone else use it except Blu Jemz and Roger Yamaha I’ll continue to tout it as a secret weapon.
The other reason is that most people have never heard of Sa-Ra Creative Partners and couldn’t have cared less about a bi-coastal production trio before I played them this song. For music heads these guys are well known as a forward-looking, much hyped trio, whose lazy (in a swinging, loose kind of way) productions have been lauded by other production heavy weights such as Pharrell (obviously) and Dr. Dre. But for all their production brilliance for others, their own compositions are getting traded between record companies like baseball cards. Their full length debut is sometimes incorrectly credited as Second Time Around (2005) when in reality The Hollywood Recordings (2007) is their proper full length put out on Babygrande. Babygrande? No disrespect to the label, it’s got some good stuff, but these guys were rumored to be on Star Trak, G.O.O.D., and a major label at various points during their career. Any one of those could have given them the push they needed to really hit. They first flew into my radar through a 12” of one of my favorite MC’s, Pharoahe Monch’s horribly neglected Agent Orange. Just try and tell me that beat isn’t the nastiest thing you’ve heard in a month, that’s a double dog dare.
As for the track itself, the production is BONKERS! Kinda makes me like Pharrell’s vocals, no easy task. Analog synths and tricky melody lines are a lock for me, so when the chorus kicks in and guitars mix in with everything else and the backup vocals come up in the mix, ooh I just can’t stand it. My only response to it was to absolutely lose my shit to it when it breaks down two-thirds of the way through (2:36). Is that an oboe? I dunno but i wanna be smoking what they are! That’s for sure. Light up SA-RA, and pass some more new shit to me. Please.
Note: Upon researching this i found out that they released something titled Nuclear Evolution: The Age of Love in November 2007 possibly as a Japan only release. Other sites list it as coming out on Ubiquity (please say its so) but all info is sketchy at best. Two questions: 1) Why hadn’t I even heard of this? 2) Why is Japan always getting the hottest shit as exclusives?
