A classic sample from the best voice in the Beastie Boys from their only truly classic album (Paul’s Boutique can eat a dick) with slick fucking horns. It’s a night-walking track, something to gas your head up and make you feel cooler than you have any right feeling when you’re on the train getting mean-mugged by Brooklyn hipsters or 14-year-old high school kids who should be the fuck at home at 1AM. Something about this beat reminds me of Obama.
-Christopher
Dilla juggles Ad-Rock atop a thrilling wave of looped horns and keeps the spirited energy from “Light My Fire” going. “The New” is the arrogance of innovation. And who better to represent youthful (but justfied) cockiness than Ad-Rock circa Licensed to Ill?The next track, “Stop!” will bring the mood back down–like “Waves” after “Workinonit”–but “The New” and “Stop!” are a combo of needy arrogance–a selfish suite of songs. “The New” is Dilla’s insular version of a “I’m fresh” battle rap reminding you that this weird beat-tape instrumental hip-hop mega mix meditation on life and death really is the new, and “Stop!”, although culminating in right-minded advice, is primarily a track telling Dilla’s fans, family, lovers, everybody else how much they’ll not only miss him, but need him when he’s gone.
Dilla never spoke on it, but so many of his admirers temper fawning tales of his talent and brilliance with a reminder of how many beats got swiped from him or slapped on an album uncredited to J. Yancey when they should’ve been. Mostly Donuts tells you how amazing it is only by example, but on “The New”, Dilla comes out–as much as you can on a vocal-less album–and flat-out declares his innovation. But this exclamation of new-ness is just a simple statement of fact and so it rides out on a crest of killer soul horns, earning its arrogance, justifying the uncouth-ness of it…it’s Priest in Superfly calling the Commisioner “A redneck faggot”, slapping him with a trash can lid, and speeding away.
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