This mix starts off with two rare 12-inch disco remixes associated with New York City. "Stayin' Alive" is the lead track off The Bee Gees' phenomenally successful soundtrack to 1977's NYC-based film Saturday Night Fever, which also features a handful of songs by other artists. The rare 12-inch remix was overseen by The Bee Gees themselves the same year. The following year, The Rolling Stones released their comeback album Some Girls; featuring their first disco song, the #1 hit "Miss You". The version included here is the first 12 inch remix they ever released, produced the same year by the young and eventually prolific producer Bob Clearmountain. The 12 inch version features extra lyrics not in the original.
One song repeats on the mix: Prince's "I Wanna Be Your Lover", the lead single from his 1979 self-titled second album. It reached number 11 in late January of 1980, and is accompanied on this mix by Corinne Bailey Rae's cover from 2010's The Love EP.
"Shoo" is from Busta Rhymes's 2026 album Dillgence II, a sequel to his 2007 mixtape Dillagence, both of which draw beats from his collaborator, the late J Dilla.
"I Be Blowin'" is from De La Soul's 1993 album Buhloone Mindstate, their third and last to be produced by Prince Paul, and does not feature any vocals at all but does feature saxophonist Maceo Parker.
The rest: Smokey Robinson's 1975 hit single "Baby That's Backatcha", the airy Madlib-produced "Air Quotes" by Talbi Kweli for their 2023 album Liberation 2 with Kweli's daughter Diani, the obscure 1989 single "Your Love Is..." from Christine's Cat, the punishing RZA-produced "Guillotine (Swordz)" from Raekwon's 1995 Only Built 4 Cuban Linx and featuring Inspectah Deck, GZA & Ghostface Killah, the rare and only single from female-led glam rock band Gumbo called "We Don't Care", a 2013 cover of Stevie Nicks & Tom Petty's 1981 #3 single "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" by Shearwater and Sharon Van Etten, an early 1984 demo of Tom Petty's "The Apartment Song" eventually re-recorded for his 1989 album Full Moon Fever but as a duet on the demo with Stevie Nicks, Kelly Harrell's 1925 recording of the traditional "The Roving Gambler", an outtake from The Replacements' 1987 major label debut Pleased To Meet Me called "Run For The Country", a home demo with piano overdub of "I Had A King" by Joni Mitchell recorded before her 1968 debut album Songs To A Seagull, Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou's meditative "Mother's Love", a demo version of Hall & Oates' 1977 song "Fall In Philadelphia", cover of Christopher Cross' 1981 hit "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" by Shirley Bassey and the shortened television version of Bob James' moody 1978 jazz track "Angela" for the contemporaneous show Taxi.
