Re: Configa’d Released in May
Remix Album from UK Superproducer hits like a Classic Mixtape
If you read The New Haberdasher, you know I will always drop reviews of Configa’s work. He’s a hell of a nice guy, on top of being one of the Greats of the Underground who has been making beats that BOOM behind artists like Arrested Development, Big Daddy Kane, HaStyle, Rah Digga, Jahi, Chuck D, Fro Magnum Man and etc…
I bet you wonder what a dude who spends his working hours and makes his money by building beats for rad MCs all over the world does in his spare time. Assuming Configa, who is always involved with a new project these days, has any spare time, I would imagine that he makes remixes of classic hiphop tracks. And I would be right. It seems that Configa has collected his remix work from his own archive and compiled it all onto one album, 2022’s Re:Configa’d that you can check out on Bandcamp by clicking on this link. (Re:Configa’d of course means Remixed by Configa.)
And this record, which features bars and hooks by Tupac Shakur, the Notorious BIG, Biz Markie, Heavy D, Nipsey Hussle (RIP to all these legendary MCs) as well as Nas, AdRock, Canibus, Mary J. Blige, Fat Joe, and Grand Puba, among a dozen others, is delivered like a mixtape made of like 16 cyphers. You may know some the original versions of some of these tracks, while others you may never have heard before, but they are all dope, they all bang, and if you are a fan of great Hip Hop and Configa, you will be happy with this album.
For those who are not familiar with an old school mixtape, it is a rough tape that MCs would put out between their studio albums, or often in place of their studio albums, to allow the artist to self-promote his or her work free of record label control, and often in violation of copyright laws due to inability or unwillingness to clear samples. The old school mix tapes would basically be individual songs that were often recorded separately, often on different equipment, and then were compiled onto a single tape and sold unofficially.
The production of the classic mixtape would be fast and dirty — mixtapes rarely had track gaps, for example, and often limited overdubs or layered vocals. They would circulate around then as underground bootlegs, spreading the word as the tape passed from hand to hand, deck to deck, party to party, and illegal corner tape stand to illegal corner tape stand. Fans knew the most experimental and forward-leaning stuff was on the mixtapes, not on the label releases. 50 Cent was the master of promotion by mix tape and made his name by building his audience organically, from his own hustling, recording and selling his own mix tapes, and one of them falling into the right hands, while others like Dead Prez put out mixtapes that were often as famous as their record label stuff.
Modern “mixtapes” are made in a conscious imitation of the classic mixtape aesthetic but there is really little difference between what an artist will call a mixtape and a studio album. Drake is especially guilty of calling his work “mixtapes” rather than EPs, which is probably more appropriate. For example, he has 7 “mixtapes” and only 6 Studio albums, and his mixtapes are often previews of his upcoming studio albums, rather than standalone music, some of which occasionally makes it onto a record.
Re:Configa’d sounds like the old school version of the mixtape, or rather (re)mixtape. Not only does Configa offer 16 alternate mixes of some classic and more modern hip hop tracks that sticks to his Boombap production style, but I would argue that he probably would never put these remixes out on a full-fledged studio album (unless you count this as a full fledged studio album). But he also employs the aesthetic of the old mixtape, because all these tracks sound like they were produced on different equipment, over various sessions that were themselves unrelated, and compiled as a package of new music that you sort of have to know about to know about. It is an album, in the purest sense — Configa has taken what is probably years of his work and put it in a single medium, gotten rid of the song gaps, and presented a coherent package that would likely not be released by a major label.
At the end of the day, this is a modern iteration of the Classic Mixtape, a compilation of remixed music that takes all the loose ends that Configa has hanging around on his computer, and unifies them into an eclectic survey of the Classic hip hop sound.
The vocal tracks are taken from both well-known and more underground tracks by the various artists. As such, they are unimpeachable. How can you fault Tupac’s or Nas’ flawless delivery? These tracks were perfect when they were laid down like a quarter century ago. Some of the vocal tracks are familiar, some of them are new to me, though they are not new at all. Of course, “Be Happy” by Mary J. Blige and “Made you Look” by Nas come to mind as more well known tracks, while some of the songs were far more obscure: “Spam” by Milk feat. Ad Rock and Joyner Lucas’ “remix” of Lil Pump’s “Gucci Gang” fit this category. But there is nothing to say about the vocal track except they were well selected and fitted to Configa’s style of production — the lyrical flow lends itself to Configa’s Boombap, sonic landscape sound.
Configa’s real contribution to this music is the change of the atmosphere for a lot of these songs. The most noticeable example of this change in atmosphere, to me, is his remix of “Be Happy” by Mary J. Blige. In the original track, produced by Sean Combs back when Mary J. Blige was breaking new ground taking neo-soul and mixing it with Hip Hop back in 1994, there is a super funky bass line that employs the Philly Soul sound throughout the track complete with flutes, strings and perhaps a harp. It is a bouncy, upbeat song and presents kind of a hopeful Blige who is looking for happiness and love. On Configa’s remix, the funky bass and the Philly soul aesthetic is replaced by a stark high hat, a stick for the snare, thumping bass drum and what sounds like a vibraphone (I don’t know the name of the instrument), that really changes the temperature of the song, and makes Mary J.’s bouncy optimism of the original track sound more like regret: Instead of “I’d like to be happy” it feels more like she asks “Why can’t I be happy?” The vocals don’t change: her melody doesn’t change. But the feeling of the song is completely different because the mood of the backing music is much different.
There are LOTS of examples of the differences that a new backing track makes for the song. “Spam” by Milk and AdRock really sounds different from the original mix: a Hammond organ evoking kind of a psycho circus feeling makes the song at once both harder, and funner than the much sparser, and regrettably dated, original production that sounds like a leftover track by Mario Caldato. These remixes bring what is occasionally 25 year old music (and occasionally much newer) music into the 2020s, and gives them new life. Of course, the vogue in popular music is still derived from trap, but in the underground, where boom bap still lives and thrives, this record sounds both fresh and also gives fans of Golden Era Hip Hop a lot to relive.
The production on the record is the typical high level provided by Configa. I frequently use the adjective “lush” to describe Configa’s music. It’s a pretty good adjective for these remixes. On the plus: it feels like Configa did these remixes at different times, probably between other projects, so no one track sounds like anything else on the record. It does not get repetitive or boring, even when he reuses beats from other, earlier released remixes (like the backing Track for “Made you Look” ahem.)
The music is designed to be heard in good headphones, a fact that leads me to my critique here: One of the weaknesses of this record is that sometimes the production could stand to be a little less lush. I know Configa works with sound layers the way a painter works with paint layers. The layers of Configa’s production create depth, a three dimensional characteristic to his music that the MC raps over, even if the MC laid down the verses when Configa was just a kid.
But sometimes the depth and virtuosity of the backing track washes out the vocal track, which is supposed to stand out, and maybe even slightly above the backing track. I know that this record is not made to highlight the vocals but the production (It’s Configa’s record, obviously. He can mix it how he likes.) But in some of the mixes, there is a LOT going on, and the coherence of the song itself sort of gets lost as Configa is demonstrating his prowess in production. I think particularly of Planet Asia’s “Having Thangs”, where there is a lot of scratching and like a really cavernous loop in the back ground as well as the vibraphone (that’s probably not the name of that instrument, but whatever it is called, I’m just going to call it that. Configa uses it often enough to create kind of a spooky sound, and uses it well: I should know what it is called by now.) and a huge bass drum track, and … It’s a lot, and while I’m trying to figure out what I am hearing here, I lose track of where they are at in the lyrical delivery.
Even that critique has a flip side. Some of the most sparse production on the record is actually some of the most effective. I am not a huge fan of the Notorious BIG. While he was alive, I was not into him at all, and when he died, getting into his music seemed kind of performative to me. So I missed that boat. But, I think one of my favorite tracks on this record was also one with the simplest and aesthetically different production, the Old School flavored “Friend of Mine feat. Biz Markie”. It is a conscious nod to the “good times” loop that was so influential in early hip hop. The bass is there, of course, as you would expect, but it is not an overbearing thump of a bass drum, but a funky bassline once more. The brass overlays are very effectively used, and the Biz Markie sample from the classic “Just a Friend” is a fantastic addition to the track, lightening it and bringing a joviality that I sort of feel like BIG wanted in the song but the subject matter more or less denied him. This is one of the tracks that Configa released a while back, and it sounds different than a lot of the other songs on the album.
Other stand-out tracks are “Gucci Gang” by Joyner Lucas (which is itself infinitely better than the song it claimed to “remix”) “Spam” by Milk ft. AdRock, “LA Confidential” by Nipsy Hussle, et al., “Let’s Get it on” by Heavy D and Grand Puba, which also features a collaboration between Tupac and BIG, and “Do This” by Canibus, Bekay and Chino XL, that is probably the hardest core hip hop on the record. These songs are all an excellent marriage between spot on lyricism, bombastic braggadocio and expert production — it’s hard to just pick a few.
Definitely check the record out if you want to hear some dope remixes of songs that you might realize you haven’t heard in a while, as well as some slept on tracks by some of the greats of the last quarter Century. And then if you like it and want to continue to support Configa, pick up a digital copy of Re:Configa’d at Bandcamp. Of course, I recommend it, and if you dig it, you should recommend it as well.
*Always patronize underground and independent artists at Bandcamp. They give artist the best royalties of all streaming services, and you can know that more of your money from your purchases go to artists themselves when you buy on Bandcamp.
