Coolie J Is Back (January 31, 1987)

At the end of 1986, my production partner Charlie (DJ KooKoo) got a new toy - a Yamaha VSS-100 sampling keyboard. One of the first breakbeats I looped was Dexter Wansel's "Theme From The Planets", adding some reverb and echo from Charlie's guitar pedals. Charlie recorded some layers of scratching, and our friend Jerry (Coolie J) recorded a couple of verses. We went down to Magnus Johnstone's Lecco's Lemma rap radio show and played the song on January 31st, 1987. The following is how Jerry recalled it in a MySpace comment in the late 90s: [ It’s Saturday, 9:00 am, most kids are headed to baseball practice, some are sleeping in. Me, I’m on my way to Dedham. The journey begins on the 104 Bus in Everett square. From there, I take the orange line from Sullivan Square to Forest Hills. At Forest Hills, I catch a bus to the Dedham mall. Once at the Dedham mall, it was about a 2 mile walk to either Matt or Charlie’s house. In all, about a 2 hour journey…I wrote a song for this trip and it started: “Coolie J is back” … I must have recorded at least a dozen versions of a song with this title later on, but this day’s version would be special. I worked feverishly to lay the vocal. Take after take, line after line. If we could finish by 5 pm, Charlie and Matt assured me they could get it on Lecco’s Lemma that night. 4 pm rolls around and my time is up. I need to get walking so I don’t get home too late. My part of the song was finished. I rode the bus, then sat on the train, then rode another bus and finally, walked to my house. It was probably about 7 pm when I stepped in my house that night. I called my Everett friends and decide a night at the Palace was in order. My crew and I walked up to the line, which was probably 100 people long. I remembered a week before, the FTI crew had started rapping and were able to cut the line. I, however, needed no such trick. I knew just about everybody, including the doormen at the Palace. I strutted past the unknowns and as I approached the front of the line I heard the most unusual thing. Some classmates of mine who were in line were singing a song. It wasn’t something I had heard before but there was something vaguely familiar about it. They were singing Coolie J is back, Coolie J is back. One of the kids grabs my hand and starts telling me he loves my new song. I shake my head, thanks and keep on walking. I thought he must have been crazy. It turns out that as I was on my long journey home Matt and Charlie were crafting a masterpiece. ] Fans really responded to the looped drumbeat, which as it turns out was one of the first times anyone had ever heard it looped. This is January 1987, so it would be a few months before Eric B. & Rakim's "Paid In Full" would kick down doors with its opening track "I Ain't No Joke", built atop the Wansel beat. I'm not saying I was "first" or anything - others had scratched bits of that song, and Eric B. & Rakim were certainly already well into production on their album by then. But yeah, for what it's worth, our song was one of the first places anyone heard that beat with rapping over it. It's not a better/worse thing, it's just chronology. Note: this track is recorded off radio; we re-recorded the song from scratch a week later in much better quality: https://soundcloud.com/type4/coolie-j-is-back-ii-february