Del Tha Funkee Homosapien – Mistadobalina
Label: Elektra – EKR 142 T
Format: Vinyl, 12", 45 RPM
Country: UK
Released: 1991
Genre: Hip Hop
Style: Conscious
This piece was written by Mr. Brown and originally featured in the Hip Hop special edition of DIG – copies of DIG Mag can be purchased here.
I first heard Burnt around 1992, sandwiched between two Beastie Boys songs in Mike Carroll’s part in Plan B’s seminal skate video Questionable and it’s been a favourite ever since.
Skate videos played a massive role in my early musical influences, especially when it comes to hip hop. Most of the songs/artists they’d use I’d never heard of before so it exposed me to so much great hip hop early on. The only problem with this was actually finding the songs! Many videos didn’t list the songs used at all or in many cases the info was wrong as was the case with Burnt, it’s listed in the videos music credits as Del & Hyroglyphics – 12 inch - Hyroglyphics Remix so being able to find it just wasn’t going to happen. Luck did finally come in the form of a friend having the song on a tape, that he got off a friend, that got it from someone else etc etc etc, so I at last had the full song (badly copied) but... I still didn’t know what it was actually called.
The song itself blew me away, there’s only a portion of it in the video but it’s just so damn dope. I’d never heard rhymes like that before, every member of Heiro smashes the track, the different styles and voices of each emcee all work together and the production is crazy, funky loops over the Substitution drums (what else do you need), the way the track keeps switching up the loops for the different rappers, just amazing.
It wasn’t until some years later (now a firm Heiro/Souls fan) that I found out it was on the B-Side of Del’s Mistadobalina 12” a record that’s super common and easy to find! plus Mistadobalina is a song I definitely remember hearing around that 91/92 time as I think it hit the UK charts? There are a few skate video songs I’m still searching for but thankfully I now have 3 copies of Burnt.
I recently set up an Instagram page @skate_records where I’m posting up clips of records used in skate videos.