Club Queen K-Swift - Vol. 6: The Return

The Club Queen Vol. 1-5 mixes are all great snapshots of Baltimore club music at the moment they came out and the whole city was waiting on Vol. 6 for months. I posted a flyer for a release party back in March, but I don't think the CD was actually out until after another release party about a month or two later when I started seeing it in stores all over the city. I've been listening to K-Swift's mixes 5 nights a week on 92Q since, I dunno, it's probably been about 3 years since she took over the 9 o'clock mix from Reggie Reg fulltime, she's probably the most popular club DJ who doesn't also produce tracks. Vol. 6 is her first CD that's been released by Unruly Records, first one in a regular jewelcase with a silver bottom too, all her old ones were in those slim mixtape cases. It's not currently available from the store on K-Swift's official site, maybe it will be, I dunno, but there used to be a lot more old ones for sale there that aren't now.

Nigga Say What - "Hornz Joint"
One of those monolithic synth brass riffs that are a hallmark of club music, I go wild every time this song comes on, it sounds incredible to me. When Le Coq was visiting here last week and heard this track, he called them "old rave horns", but I've never really listened to proper dance music so it never occurred to me that that's what they are. (The track that gets mixed in a little at the end of this one is KW Griff's "Hey What's Up".)

Blaq Starr - "Get My Gun"
This was the most requested song on K-Swift's show for a while earlier this year, although the radio edit obviously is a little different and plays the "fuckin'" and "gun" parts backwards, which makes it sound even weirder than it already does. The producer's name is spelled "Blackstar" on this CD but I've always seen it on other CD's as Blaq Starr. Between this, the NEK song he produced, and a couple other joints, I'd have to give it up for Blaq Starr as the MVP among the newer club producers right now.

Doc Slice - "Asses Wigglen"
This was #1 in my top ten of weird club music samples, before I knew the name of the track w/ the loop of Morris Day's best scene from Purple Rain.

King Tut - "Big Girl Theme"
This is an old old one, a classic, I remember hearing this a lot way back when I first started paying attention to club music. I think like a lot of people it took me a while to realize it was a unique local phenomenon, there are still a lot of people in Baltimore who kind of think that it's totally normal for rap stations everywhere to play an hour of 130bpm ghetto house every night.

(For the record, I hope I don't come off as elitist or possessive about club music. I've never tried to play keep away with it. If I was, I wouldn't be writing about it, posting mp3's, and telling people out there how they can buy it in the rare event that it's actually available for purchase online (and I've always had links on the right to the sites of the only 2 local club DJs who sell mixes online). Every year the music reaches more and more people outside the Beltway and I'm not mad at that at all, although I would like to help shape their understanding of it and make sure it isn't looked at as just a fad or a novelty. I fucked up on the calling out Diplo thing, if I'd had my facts straight I'd stand by it, but I didn't so I won't. I hesitated for like a week about posting it because I wasn't sure I had the correct info, and when it turned out I didn't, I regretted the whole thing, obviously. I don't like having egg on my face so I'm just going to leave it at that. And to the guy who complained that I didn't give him credit for telling me the (wrong) info, I was trying to be polite by not pointing the finger at anyone else in case it was wrong, which it was.)

Labels: Baltimore club, Blaq Starr, K-Swift, NSW (Say What)