Big Daddy Kane’s “Get Into It” (1987) stands amongst endless indicators that music is indeed a time-capsule (who opens a rap with allow me to introduce myself anymore?). All will agree that New York’s hip-hop scene was different thirty-three years back – most point to branding, streetwear, and an emphasis on lyricism – but Get Into It forces one to consider the funk foundation that blazed a trail for rap’s beginnings.
The emergence of funk music opened a door for Afro-Futurism in a relevant cultural sphere. Mainstream societal representations of a “future” (most coming amidst a new wave of 1950s alien movies inspired by the Red Scare) envisioned a trek to eternity widely led by white people in rocket ships, dapper suits, or government offices. George Clinton and bands like Parliament-Funkadelic took those concepts and knotted them deliberately into a preexisting fabric of Black pride. They dressed in spiky metallic shoulder pads, otherworldly face makeup – a precursor for bands like KISS – along with medieval armor meshed with early spacewear; the combination of imagery and music garnered a loyal subculture of fellow black visionaries who had at long last found a symbiotic cultural niche.
Kane’s track epitomizes the latter’s contextualization of New York hip-hop. It opens with two taps of the snare followed by an echoing brass section that emanates throughout (credits to Marley Marl), with samples including Uncle Louie’s I Like Funky Music, James Brown’s Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved, and Funk Inc.’s Kool Is Back. The prideful element of the genre is, perhaps, what shines through most obviously – Kane appears rightfully boastful in his craft, flaunting his word savvy before there is any mention of chicks, drugs, or cash.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” he begins, after a brief dialogue capped by the (fulfilled) promise of “one of my funkiest beats.”
“As the authentic, ultimate def, now is there anything else, that I can use to describe my name? Ah, to hell with it. I’m the Big Daddy Kane.”