NOW… when I was speaking on the jumpoff point for the Hip-Hop Soul movement the other day, I was remiss to not ALSO mention a certain DJ who also had a strong influence on it taking shape. Ron G was a teenager and reppin’ the Polo Grounds Projects in Harlem, New York. In ‘91, he dropped a tape that spread like crazy, entitled “Mixes #1″. The thing about this tape that stood out was that he blended R&B tracks with hip-hop beats for the entire 90 minutes, continuously, with three turntables. Before that, DJ’s just included blends as part of their tapes, but never based a whole tape around them. After that tape, he continued dropping them, and ended up becoming the top mixtape DJ in NY.
I’ll admit, at 11 years old in Baltimore and not yet up on the mixtape scene, I didn’t hear those at the time. But once I caught on to them (around ‘92-’93), Ron G was one of the DJ’s whose tapes I copped. I liked the blend tapes the most, because I thought they were creative and I’d always get amped off the combinations that the DJ’s would come up with. Actually, hearing those (and the movie Juice as well) sparked my own interests in spinning. Something about hearing stuff like Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” mixed with a hip-hop track just made me wanna do it myself someday.
But back to Ron. As time went on, his tapes got so popular that the homie Puff Daddy saw a vision for the R&B artists he was working with… thus spawned the sound of Mary J’s 411 album, and the rest is history. After a while, Ron not only did blend tapes with instrumentals, but his own beats, and eventually he started producing and remixing tracks for artists in the industry. He’s worked with Michael Jackson, Boyz II Men, J.Lo, Fat Joe, R. Kelly, Lost Boyz, and Mary J. herself, among others. Today, he still does mixtapes, in addition to producing and spinning all over the world.
With respect due to Ron G, aka “The Youngest In Charge” as he called himself then, here’s the tape that in many ways got the ball rolling for what later became the new sound of R&B in the ’90s. No stone is unturned here- not even Otis Redding’s “Sittin’ On The Dock Of The Bay” (check out G co-signing on the “whistling part”). Enjoy!
Mixes #1 (1991) NOTE: don’t mind the “tape hiss” either- that’s just authenticity. Ha!
-D!
Posted by Danj! 
