Last week my Twitter buddy, Spencer from Rough Trade, tweeted a link to an old Afrika Bambaataa mixtape he had found on some far-flung corner of the interweb. As a collector of mixtapes, and as lover of early hip-hop and electro, I downloaded it with great excitement, and knew at once that Spencer had stumbled across something very special.

In the winter of 1983, Afrika Bambaataa and his Soul Sonic Force walked into a studio in NYC, spun up the Wheels of Steel and warmed up their mikes to record a live mix for Alan Bangs’s show on British Forces radio in Germany. What they played over the airwaves, and committed to tape, that day was something remarkable and rather wonderful and deserves a prominent place in hip hop history.

In simpler and more innocent times, before the tyranny of the genre police and regimented BPM, Afrika Bambaataa created a loose and free- ranging mix, joyfully crossing musical borders with no thought apart from the rightness of each track and its perfect place in the whole. It slides effortlessly between rap (‘hip hop’ hadn’t even been invented), electro, go-go, funk, reggae/dancehall and soul. With characteristic skill and bravado, Bambaataa even manages to drop a Don Henley track right into the middle of the mix.  (Not something I heard matched until Spank Rock managed a similar feat with Yes’s ‘Owner of a Lonely Heart’ on their seminal Fabriclive’ mix 25 years later)

The mix contains some huge dance floor-fillers – such as Man Parrish’s early electro gem ‘Six Simple Synthesizers’; the DeBarge Family’s gorgeous Soul ballad ‘All this love’; Nicodemus’s playful classic ‘Boneman Connection’; Malcolm McLaren’s genre- defining ‘Buffalo Gals’; Trouble Funk’s go-go anthem ‘Drop the Bomb’ – and finishes with Sly and the Family Stone’s ‘If You Want me to Stay’. (To which the only sane response is ‘YES PLEASE!’) All of this is presented with the Soulsonic Force freestylin’ over the top just enough to bring the mix to life but not overpower it.

But, as with any great mixtape, it’s not one track that stands out but rather the whole that makes it so special. To quote Thom Yorke, “Everything in it’s right place“– and that applies not just to the tracks, but also to the mix’s place in time: just as East Coast hip hop was poised to take over the world.

Tracklist:
Trouble Funk – ‘Trouble Funk Express’
Fab 5 Freddy ft. B-Side – ‘Change the Beat’
Phase 2 – ‘The Roxy’
Don Henley – ‘Dirty Laundry’
D-Train – ‘D-Train’
Planet Patrol – ‘Play At Your Own Risk’
Soul Sonic Force – ‘Planet Rock’
Bar-Kays – ‘Do It’
Instant Funk – ‘No Stoppin’ That Rockin”
Man Parrish – ‘Six Simple Synthesizers’
Soul Sonic Force – ‘Looking for the Perfect Beat’
Mr. Biggs & IKC (maybe Keith from Funky Four) – ‘Rap Attack’
Falco – Der Kommissar’
DeBarge Family – ‘All This Love’
Nicodemus – ‘Boneman connection’
Michigan & Smiley – ‘Diseases’
unknown
Malcolm McLaren & World Supreme Team – ‘Buffalo Gals’
Trouble Funk – ‘Drop the Bomb’
Parliament – ‘Flashlight’
unknown
Smurf That Body – unknown
unknown
Sly and the Family Stone – ‘If You Want Me to Stay’

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Afrika Bambaataa Mixtape 1983 Vol 1

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Afrika Bambaataa Mixtape 1983 Vol 2

You can download the mix here