The Wildstyle Story #20-Song Breakdown “Life Is Like A Party (Start Livin’ It)

Kevin Beacham
Nov 1 · 6 min read
Although our Foxcrest apartment was three dudes living the rap life, we didn’t really do much partying there. This is what I remember as a rare party-like experience there. It’s also somewhat staged, as I mentioned in earlier story, Madd Maxx didn’t drink alcohol. Though I believe Black Man Willie (in the back, in stonewash jeans) and myself, in my all purple sweatsuit, were indulging for real. Side Note: I wish I had that purple sweater that Maxx is wearing.

To be quite honest, I can safely say that this is my least favorite Wildstyle song, and it actually started off with the intention of being a parody of sorts. One day at our Foxcrest apartment, I programmed a beat on the Alesis HR-16 and I was getting started to look for some samples to go along with it. I had long been a fan of Parliament’s “Clones of Dr. Funkenstein” album cover, every since I was a kid (age 6) when it first released. But, I honestly wasn’t that familiar with the music, at least not as much as I was the artwork. However, I had it in the “records to potentially sample” crate(s) in our Rage Cage Studio because I figured it had to have something of interest on there. Skipping through the record I found the breakdown part of “Dr. Funkenstein”, and was trying to beat match it on the turntables. Back then, I had DJ experience, but I never practiced, so I was struggling to get it right, and that is when Maxx happened to come home.

He heard what I was doing and came in for a closer listen. I think he thought it was interesting to some degree, but mainly he jumped in to get the blend on time. The sound of this beat, and the one small sample from Parliament, didn’t honestly fit the Wildstyle vibe. Even though we had done “Coolin’ On The Block” already and that was a laid back song, at least the backbone of that beat was based on something that was forged in Hip Hop’s history courtesy of Vaughn Mason. The Alesis HR-16 was a drum machine that I was really intrigued by, but I was never fully able to tap into getting a sound out of it that I was really happy with, except for on uptempo songs, and this was one of those cases of not really finding the sound that fit. It is however quite possible I was initially making this track for another artist.

Anyway, as we are sitting there, and no ideas are coming to mind, Maxx gets on the Casio SK-5 keyboard and starts playing around, trying to see if he can come up with something, but nothing is sticking. So, at some point, to be funny, he starts playing the part that is used on the hook part of this song. This might be an exaggerated memory, but I’m pretty sure it is not, he was being super animated, and playing it, looking similar to Fozzie Bear in that saloon scene from The Muppet Movie. In response to his theatrics and the fun-like piano, I started rhyming Off The Top, mimicking simple and silly Pop Rap songs, eventually at some point improvising, “Life Is Like A Party Y’all, so start livin’ it”. Once I said that, I naturally made it the chorus of my mock song and kept repeating it. We stopped and laughed, but also thought there might be a concept there we could explore.

The idea was to approach the song similar to what Marley Marl and Roxanne Shante did for “Wack It” on Marley’s “In Control Volume One” album. She was doing the same thing, basically mocking Pop Rap, and I always dug the concept, but I also never wanted to hear the song again after the first time, as they basically nailed the concept, as “It” was indeed “Wack”, as intended. I wanted to try that same concept, but make it (somewhat) more listenable. I quickly wrote the lyrics, and how I altered the concept was that I wanted people to actually be unsure if we were being serious or not. That’s why there are lines like, “It’s gotta be hard even though it’s not”, and other similar comments. I’m not being serious, as this song is obviously not hardcore, but I was trying to see if people would actually fall for it. It was basically an experiment in psychology. I imagined this being the song on our album that most our fans, assuming we would have any, would dislike, but maybe some people who weren’t really fans, but liked Pop Rap would think it was catchy. And, then, if we were lucky, there’d be a few people who were hardcore supporters, who simply wanted to have our back, and support it, while they may also have been unsure about it. It’s kind of like what De La Soul did a year or so later with their skits on their “De La Soul Is Dead” album, where the people listening liked their debut album, and at first are trying to dig the new one, yet they are unsure, but then eventually, decide it’s wack. I was trying to achieve a similar desired result approximately two years earlier. The plan was for us to perform the lyrics in a bit of deadpan style to add to the effect.

I wrote the full, or bulk of the, song, and then presented it to LA. I think he added or changed some things up, but not much, and then we went about planning the trade-offs to record it. I’m not sure if I wasn’t fully able to communicate my grand idea for this, or he wasn’t fully able to grasp it, but probably a combination of both, so we were simply not nailing the vocals the way I envisioned. AND, I can’t put it all on him, I don’t think I fully knew what the vocal delivery should be either, except in my mind, so I was also experimenting, trying to find the right approach too. I honestly think this might be the Wildstyle song with both of us that we did the most vocal takes for ever, which is ridiculous on so many levels, but also the frustration of not getting it right is how we wound up with this take, which actually has us sounding like we are trying to be serious, which is pretty much the opposite of the intended concept. I think we were over doing this song and wanted to be done with it. However, at the end when we do the hook, we actually do the concept right with the slightly increasingly less believable way we are saying “Life is like a party y’all”.

Another part of how the concept is represented is at the end when Maxx quickly comes in with some swift complicated cuts, but L.A. and I immediately cut him off so we can discuss how we should end the song. The “joke” there is that those quick scratches are the best part of the song, particularly if we would have let him do his thing longer, but we were actively trying to make the song not dope. And, then we have this discussion about a perfect song ending, that we can’t come up with, which was our way of hinting at the uncertainty that is hidden in the song’s concept. Basically, it’s a pretty decent concept with a not so great outcome. I’m pretty sure this was recorded in February of 1990, right before Choice left back to Texas, as I think it’s the last Wildstyle song that he was around for, and we knew he was leaving which I think was part of the reasoning for putting him on the intro to talk with us.

When a good idea goes bad…

Choice and AMC at Black Man Zeke’s house circa 1990.
Choice at Ticketmaster in Lakehurst Mall circa ’90, with his airbrushed jacket flavor…