Before No I.D. became vice president of Def Jam Records, producer of Jay Z’s 4:44 album, creator of hits for Common, Nas, Ghost face Killer, DMX, and Sade and a musical mentor to Kanye West, he was just Dion creating funky beats in the basement. Let’s flash back 30 years ago in Dion’s basement in the Pill Hill area on the south east side of Chicago. During this time his production gear was minimal and consisted of 1 technic turntable, a gemini mixer, a tape deck, and the legendary SP1200 sampler. Digging for disco, breaks, funk, Soul, Jazz, House, and rap records was a norm for him, along with childhood friends Frank Washington, Marc Davis and Leron Carson (RIP).
This tight circle of friends enabled No I.D. to create, and test out new beats. He would put them on cassette tapes and oftentimes give them to Marc to get feedback. As Time went on, these tapes accumulated and ended up in Marc’s shoeboxes, which throughout the years became damaged or lost. Luckily a few years ago Marc was able to retrieve some old shoe boxes with some of these lost tapes containing pure funky treasures!!
The unreleased yellow 7 inch Holy Grail is a 3 track E.P. on the SP1200 in No I.D.’s early years developing his signature chop sample style of sweet jazz over hard drums. The lead off track “Throw Your Hands Up” is pure hard-core jazz funk with a magnetic chorus. The B-side song “Invisible Theme” is a classic 12 bit gritty sound dressed with slick sequenced horn stabs. “Invisible Jazz” showcases a groovy baseline with an ear bopping clarinet that filters in and out super smoothly. This is the second follow up to the Black Pegasus’ Seven Sense Series that’s bound to be a record store day hit!
