Barbara Acklin's 60s soul song "Love Makes A Woman" always sounded, to my ears, like an early Prince song, which may be why it's followed by his "Kiss". Halfway between Prince and disco is the fantastic Mick Jagger solo track "Sweet Thing", leading to a slightly truncated version of "Hot Stuff" off Donna Summer's greatest hits. I reserve the right to stretch my rule of never repeating a song on a mix by not only playing alternate or cover versions, but longer versions of any given song, so I'm sure that somewhere on here I have the fuller version of this.
Q-Tip's unreleased album Kamaal The Abstract is weird and fascinating. One of the more straight-ahead songs is a collaboration with Raphael Saadiq: "Get Involved." Had to follow that with James Brown's more urgent "Get Up, Get Into It And Get Involved."
Rakwon's "Wu-Gambinos", Louie Armstrongs's "Dropping Shucks", Maceo & The Macks' "Cross The Tracks (We Better Go Back)", Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's "Deez Nuuts" and Fred Wesley and the JB's "Blow Your Head" all flow nicely to anchor my mix with one big gangster suite. Yes, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five were fierce gangstas.
Breaking this up is the sexy "Bette Davis Eyes" by Kim Carnes. Then Jimi Hendrix's moody "Castles Made Of Sand" followed by the mellow stylings of Cal Tjader with "Meditacao".
We've already had one song called "Sweet Thing", here are 2 others, all different songs: Van Morrisons's classic Astral Weeks track followed by Rufus, led by Chaka Khan.
The laid back groove is continued with great production by Handsome Boy Modeling School, who have Cat Power sing "I've Been Thinking".
And then the mix concludes with the daffy and sweet "Nobody's Hippie" by Kimya Dawson. I'm nobody's hippie either, but I doubt I could have expressed it this way.
