Emergency Monday Video

It is a Monday holiday, which normally would mean no posts. But with the horrible news Friday that hip hop legend Rob Base had passed at the age of 59, it seemed rude not to share the video of his biggest hit.

“It Takes Two” came out of nowhere in the fall of 1988 and became a timeless classic. I did some rough calculating last night and figured that the song has been played at 87% of wedding receptions since then. EVERYONE loves this song and it is guaranteed to get people moving.

My “It Takes Two” story is that after the video debuted on Yo! MTV Raps, it was difficult to find the record. My group of young, hip hop heads had a regular rotation of music stores we shopped at. We had tried them all but could not find it. At this point in the song’s life cycle, I believe it because there just weren’t that many copies that had been produced, let alone shipped to the greater Kansas City area.

However, someone in our extended circle at Raytown High School had found it at a more “urban” record store. I distinctly remember sitting in the back of math class and a friend writing down the directions on a piece of paper, directions that had come to him at least second hand, but which he had tested out the previous evening with success. Later I found my closest brother in music, John N, to share the exciting news. We checked each other’s schedules and made plans to trek to this musical oasis after school. Which we did successfully.[1]

I like to think that when we go to that record store we laughed as other white kids from the suburbs who knew what was up were also milling about, looking for the Rob Base cassette.

A similar process would play out 25 years later, when the microbrew craze hit, and hipster dads lived in text threads that tracked when rare brews landed at local stores. I remember going to Trader Joe’s and seeing several dads that looked a lot like me hoping TJ’s limited shipment of Zombie Dust had not sold out yet.[2]

This song also contains one of the most mis-heard/misunderstood lines of all time:

Don’t smoke buddha, can’t stand sess, yes

I know I was one of many who, for at least a while, thought he was saying he couldn’t stand “sex,” which confused me. Who couldn’t stand sex??? Turned out buddha and sess were nicknames for marijuana. Not close to the same things! Good for him for taking a stand, although I wonder if he was like Dr. Dre in “Express Yourself” and sharing a view that was good for getting your song played but not necessarily accurate to how he lived.

This video is thoroughly delightful. It is one of the final, great, lo-tech videos of the early hip hop age. They had to have made it for a thousand bucks, right? Biz Markie makes a cameo!

“Joy and Pain” was also an incredible party song, but “It Takes Two” is an absolute all-timer, and I hope Base lived well off of it. If you go to a wedding this summer, make sure the DJ spins it. RIP to Rob and to DJ EZ Rock, who passed in 2014.