EWA100 - #27. Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - The Show

#27: Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - The Show (Reality. 1985. From 12-inch Single)

Raven Mack: The standard bearer of old school. This was one of the first "The Jamz" to cross my radar, with everybody in sixth grade all over this thing. You got Slick Rick's weird-ass voice hitting your aural canals for the first time, you got Mr. Fresh mixing in beatboxing skills with that party style rhyme vibe, and it's just good times. A lot of old school shit sounds dated, and so does this, but most of that old stuff can't crossover to cookout mixes nowadays. Like if a bunch of folks are sitting out in the yard and there's kids beating each other with sticks and playing football and young adults probably smoking reefers out on the edge of the woods or behind the shed and the older adults are sitting around the picnic table with grandma and Aunt Shelle-shelle sitting in cushioned chairs because they are old asses who don't even make the baked macaroni and cheese no more, if "The Show" comes on the Sunday afternoon old school jams show, it'll get people feeling good. Maybe not grandma and Aunt Shelle-shelle, who'd probably feel more comfortable with some biblical Al Green stuff or Andrae Crouch, but everybody under the age of 55 is gonna be alright with it. You can't say that for a lot of old school music from that era, like Whodini and U.T.F.O. and "Just Buggin'" by Whistle, for example.
I am confused though, and don't feel like actually Googling or Wikipediatricking the info, because that would be cheating since all this expert whiteboy analysis is from the dome, but what the fuck happened with Doug E. Fresh? I mean, "The Show" and "La Di Da Di" were opposite sides of the same single, and both of those songs are the monster jam, but Doug E. came up short for the rest of his career it seems. I guess having two sides to one single be so monstrous and long-lasting have kept him from being considered a one-hit wonder, even though Doug E.'s roll was secondary to Slick Rick on the latter one. I'm sure Mike's seen some VH1 bullshit or something and can shed some light on what happened to Doug E. after his quick bright flash of shine.

Mike Dikk: In my last write-up, I said I didn’t care much for rap music made before 1988, which was a big lie. I should have said I don’t care for 90% of rap music made before 1988. Whether or not you would agree with me, I think “The Show b/w La Di Da Di” 12” is the greatest 12” in the history of rap music. That 12” is basically my starting point for rap music. If I were to rewrite the history of music, albeit a bit ignorantly, it would look something like this:
*0-1940s – A lot of boring music is made
*1950s – Some guy invents rock and roll
*1960s The Beatles
*Later in the 1960s – Jim Hendrix more or less invents Heavy Metal
*A few years later – Black Sabbath perfects Heavy Metal
*Mid-1970s – Some homosexual invents disco
*1979 – Sugarhill Gang makes disco slightly better by turning it into rap music.
*1985 – The Show/La Di Da Di 12” is released and proves rap music isn’t a fad.
*1991 – Nirvana
*1993 – Wu Tang Clan
Then everything after that is inconsequential. I will admit, I prefer the “La Di Da Di” side more than “The Show” side but there’s no denying that “The Show” is a definite Monster Jam. Maybe I’m dating myself, or maybe I’m just old, but it should be regarded as the greatest feel-good party record rap has ever produced. Sure, there’s some dated shit going on, like the beatboxing, but it’s the most sensible beatboxing ever recorded. I could do with a remix that deleted the Inspector Gadget synths though, which is yet another clue that hip hop music was never meant to be regarded as classic music and was more of something that represented its specific era. It makes saying certain hip hop music is “timeless” kind of stupid, and I’m sure we’ve done it a lot throughout this thing, but that’s what happens when you are a bitter man and you can’t think of a ton of positive adjectives because you’re sporting your mad face 24/7.
As for what happened to Doug E. Fresh, I don’t really know. I think he just got phased out the same time beatboxing did. He kept making music but no one gave a shit. I do remember he had a single in the 90s called “I-Ight” that was mildly popular amongst my friends, but I think it was because of its unintentional hilarity, and not because it was good. Also, I owned a VHS copy of a movie he made called Let’s Get Bizzee. It was real low budget, but well before every rapper had their own low budget movies. I think it had to do with Doug E. Fresh’s character becoming president or something. Lastly, when I acquired this old dude’s record collection, which was more like this dude’s records he stole from a record store than an actual record collection, I ended up with 32 unopened copies of a Doug E. Fresh single called “D.E.F.”. I gave them away as Christmas presents for the next couple years and now I’m not even sure if I have one copy left.

Download: Doug E. Fresh & The Get Fresh Crew - The Show

No real video for this. Here's a live performance from some festival in Norfolk VA, last May: