Welcome to five hundred Greatest Songs, a podcast based on Rolling Stone's hugely popular, influential, and sometimes controversialist. I'm Britney Spanos.
And I'm Rob Sheffield, and we're here to shed light on the greatest songs ever made and discover what makes them so great. This week we're going into It Takes two by Rob Bass and DJ Easy Rock. Yeah.
What an absolutely catchy song, kind of perfect.
One of the truly great summer songs of all time. Yeah, it was on the twenty twenty one list of the five hundred Greatest Songs and number one sixteen.
And the song was released in nineteen eighty eight. And I was reading an interview that Rob had done with with Rolling Stone a few years ago, kind of in the series about how great nineteen eighty eight was for hip hop and how their manager had basically just asked them to work on a couple songs so they can
start maybe getting signed and start chopping around music. And it started off as just a demo that they were using to get signed, and they use this great sample of Lynn Collins nineteen seventy two song think About It, which has that yeah woo that sample in the background and then it just completely changed their lives.
It changed everything. It was phenomenal. It was the epical hip hop song of the epical hip hop summer of nineteen eighty eight, which was such a golden age for hip hop.
Yeah, I mean what was making nineteen eighty eight that golden age and that kind of that best year? And if you agree that it was the best year of hip hop, I.
Don't know if it's the best year, but it was definitely a golden age in that people had taken the idea from Run DMC that you could focus the music entirely on hip hop and make street records and that they could cross over and be hits. But so much of the music was going strange places that you wouldn't
have predicted. But the summer of eighty eight was a time when you could turn on the radio and just hear hip hop getting reinvented week after week, with so many brilliant minds building on the innovation of what people had just done. So it was this ongoing creative project where people were constantly checking each other out and bouncing back with a new record. So the end of the summer,
it Takes two was a hit all summer long. Yeah, and it was really strange to think of it as a top forty hit when it was so raw and uncut.
Yeah, I mean this was also such a turning point, right in terms of kind of hip hop as pop music and kind of the opening of spaces both in radio and on MTV of like having more of these hip hop records played in primetime and played, you know, on the radio beyond just like the late night mixes that would play rap music, or MTV having this was like the first year that you know, MTV.
Raps TPA yeah, summer.
Yeah, I mean this was such like a turning point of seeing this music become what was top forty pop music and being played as equally as everything else being played at the time.
Yeah. It was so crazy how hip hop was considered a fad, almost novelty music right up till Run DMC really defined that it could be. Well, Run DMC really showed everybody what it could be and raising Hell from nineteen eighty six, which was their third album, but a phenomenal album. Yeah, Run DMC had already changed the world with records like Sucker MC's and it's like that in rock Box they were as they said, the first hip hop group to make a street record that was for
the streets rather than the clubs. Raising hell, they proved that it was an album format, and they showed how flexible it was, how diverse. It was still a phenomenal album.
Yeah, I mean with it takes two. I mean that song, I mean is just like such a great kind of catchy song that is still very much played on radio constantly, is very much still kind of a foundational song for in a lot of ways. I mean, what about that song makes it so so great and kind of stand out from the summer of eighty eight.
Well, it takes two takes that James Brown break that you mentioned, James Brown going yet and Lynn Collins going wo and just loops it into eternity. It was at a time when James Brown symbolized so much in pop music. He symbolized its independence from pop, its independence from compromise, its uncompromising blackness. And that James Brown was used in this really mutated way, and that there's so much disco in the record as well, that it's got that strafe
set it off rhythm track. Rob Basse told me once that he was thinking of one specific roller rink in Harlem where they used to go and skate. Yeah, and he was thinking of a record that would affect that particular room and what people like to skate to in that particular room. So he was aiming for a really specific building, a really specific room, a really specific crowd, And to his surprise and to everybody's surprise, it turned out to be a sound that the whole world wanted a piece of.
Yeah.
I mean, I love the roller rink inspiration. I feel like that's so apt for this song.
Absolutely.
I mean, I mean it's just so a great dance records, such a great hip hop record, Like I mean, the use of the samples is so incredible and kind of you know, just like so infectious on it. And I mean just like the flow is I mean just like amazing. Like it's everything that I really love about like a really great kind of hip hop track.
Absolutely Yeah. And that records like this were dropping so fast. Records is innovative and brilliant. So that summer you have records by EPMD like strictly business and you've got to chill. You've got Eric B and Rakim Follow the Leader. You've got Public Enemy with Rebel without a pause and bring the noise. There was so much happening in the air in nineteen eighty eight that for a record like It Takes Two, which is just a straight up street record, to just cross over to Top forty pop, it was
unprecedented and very strange. I mean, it was very different from run DMC when they finally made the Top forty with a pop hit. They did it the compromising way. They did a cover of Walk This Way Aerosmith, which a song which had a really big impact on Aerosmith's career but in many ways turned out to be not so great for Run DMC.
Yeah, the video for the song is also really really great outside of the They kind of had to self finance this video basically and kind of filming outside of the Apollo And there's like a like a bismarky like cameo in the in the video too, of him just like walking past or something.
Yeah, it's a total straight up Harlem street scene like the record, and that something like this could be a hit. You didn't have to cover a pop hit, you didn't have to do that with the famous pop artist. You could just do a record like this, and that was what people wanted.
Yeah, And I mean, are you a fan of kind of the Rob bassed dj ez rock kind of full discography and like, what are some what are some songs, other songs I should check out by them?
Joy and Pain is a great one. I'm an unusually huge fan of Rob Bass. His second album, The Incredible Bass, which was done without DG. Easy Rock. That's a great record as well. War is a great version of the Motown song War. You're just talking about rap battles in the eighties and he says, you know what, I don't see Patty and Luther battling. But Rob Bass was someone who just had this, as he put it in the song, a real funky concept. That album, it takes two. It
had other great hits on it, like Joy and Pain. Yeah, but it's really this one song seemed to hit at a specific time and place and has never really gone away. Yeah.
I mean, I was reading in an interview that you'd done about how his favorite use of it was in the Proposal. It was just like such a great scene with it with like Sandra Bullock and Ryan and Ryan Reynolds kind of singing the song. Like the fact that the song is just still kind of finding new ways to break through and kind of be in you know. So it's in so many movies and TV shows and also like there's a great Black Eyed Peace song that
samples like their version. You know. It's like, I think it's so fascinating to kind of see this song that obviously was so important to this like breaking point for hip hop in this moment when hip hop was becoming even more mainstream and being that song of the summer that it was kind of still still being such an important touchdowne for everyone.
It's very similar to a rock sane chante song that was huge around the same time, go On Girl, Yeah, which is also a phenomenal song.
Love that song. That's a top song for me.
Rox Sande Chante with rhymes written by Big Daddy Kane, who, along with Bismarquis, was also so huge in that great hip hop explosion of eighty eight.
Yeah.
Long Lived the Cane is one of my favorite albums from the eighties, especially the song eight and No Half Step in Yes to Me that was a wordsmith just showing how far he could go to the outer extremes and yet not making it sound complex or thorny, but just making it rock.
Yeah, I mean especially kind of with how big this year was, and especially how big this particular song It Takes Two was, and kin kind of what it cracked through at that moment in sort of radio and MTV and kind of all these outlets that previously were more medicine to have hip hop be played against, you know, like next to Madonna and you know, Prince and Michael Jackson and you know, all the kind of like what seemed to be just like more kind of straightforward like
pop music, Like what sort of happened or I guess, like what do you remember of happening in ninete eighty nine and going forward and what this allowed for hip hop over the next couple of years.
Well, this was the era before sampling got really litigitious, which really changed everything in late ninety nine especially, But this was the era when basically people treated samples like they were free and DJ could take a beat from anywhere and turn it into a hitter at least turned
it into a great record. Yeah, And there was so much creativity going around with an album, Like in early eighty nine you have Dala Soul with later that year it's the Beastie Boys with Paul's boutique, but people were making such adventurous pastiche records with sampling, and it ended very quickly and very horribly. The Dala Soul song was a really minor track on Three Feet High and Rising.
It was transmitting live from Mars and it used a sample of the sixties pop hit by the Turtles called You Showed Me, who previously were not considered all that consequential in pop history, but Dalas Hole sampled them on their album and that was the lawsuit that really froze that sort of creative era of anything goes sampling.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I didn't realize it was the Turtles that kind of were the ones that broke that down.
It was the song where Dala Soul with the French lesson. Yeah, and it's while that, you know, like so many great Prince Paul productions, you listened to Three Feet High in Rising now and it's still full of surprises. You still hear so much imagination and creativity going into it.
Yeah, I mean, I love sort of the kind of crate digging stories from all these great producers and mcs from the eighties and early nineties, which just like how they've on those samples and kind of just like digging into those classic and often long lost disco and soul records and rock records that they would just kind of find and kind of like digging through record stories and finding these songs that they were able to kind of patch together and make a massive hit out of.
Absolutely it goes back to the old school rap battles in the South Bronx, where DJs like Cool Hirk were innovating the idea of taking a break and making that the whole record, making that the whole song. Grandmaster Flash, Africa, Bombada and cool Heart. They famously used to take the labels off the record so other DJs couldn't peer over
and see what they were breaking. Africa and bab Bada had a great quote that he liked to put on music by the Stones or the Beatles or the Monkeys and later tell people, yeah, you were really dancing to that monkey's song, and people were really surprised to hear that they had danced to a monkey zone. I do that you could take any break and build a record
around it, but it takes too ridiculous. It just takes that one brief moment in a James Brown song that was not a crossover hit, definitely like a great digging pick, yeah, and turned it into the basis of a whole phenomenal record that was so influential and remains really influential.
Yeah, And what do you think it is about this particular song? I mean, obviously, again, like this year was so massive, and I mean there are all these incredible songs that obviously still have so much longevity and have still kind of maintained their popularity and still sound fresh and still sound so, you know, influential. But I mean with this particular song that I mean, I feel like kind of just is so ingrained into everything that we like,
look here constantly. What do you think it is about it takes two that's maintained its popularity over the years.
It's just so immediate, right, You hear it and it just grabs you right away.
Yeah, Yeah, I mean it's kind of hard to not be like that. Yeah, it was just like completely intoxicated.
I love it.
Absolutely, one of the great openings, yeah, in music history, with the announcement that you're about to be a mazed by the power of Rob Bay and DJ Easy Rock. Then the most amazing hit it intro yeah, and just that perfect opening where Rob Bass just says, I win a rock right now. Yeah, And this is definitely a song that creates the moment.
Yeah. I mean I think, like especially with any sort of eighties hip hop and sort of that fusion of like dance and kind of the songs that are both you know, club and street like this. I mean, it's just kind of like a perfect storm of kind of catchiness and fun that is on all these songs. Like the song is just so much fun to listen to and to hear.
Yeah, what do you love about eighties hip hop?
I mean, I think like so much of the sampling and kind of that kind of combination of like like disco and rock and soul and all of that has always just like really drawn me. I think just the songs are so fun and dancy, and I think that's always been my favorite thing. Like I just really like I always think of that Missy Elliott outro, and I think work it where She's just like, like, this is
hip hop, we love to dance. Like that outro is like such like a kind of encapsulates so much of what I love, especially about that sort of decade of the birth of hip hop is how dancy it is?
Yeah, absolutely, Missie La definitely a great example of somebody who takes that playful, creative, anything goes spirit of eighties hip hop, and it was very much an industry that was not trying to cross over to pop, but was able to stand on its own terms.
Yeah, I mean even just like listening back, it's like they're so I mean, because they are so influential to so much of what pop and hip hop would sound like for the next couple of decades. Like, I think it seems like so obvious that these songs like it's like, so they should be hits. You know, it's like a song like hearing it takes two. It's like, how are they not? I mean, obviously, of course there's a lot of reasons why a lot of hip hop artists weren't
signed just yet. But I mean it's one of those songs where it's like this is of course this is a big hit. Of course this song would blow up. I mean, this is like one of the catchiest songs ever made. It's such like a song that you immediately need to like move your body as soon as you hear it, and kind of hard to get out of your head once you hear it for the first time and just sounds like it, you know, just sounds so fresh and like it should be the biggest song of all time.
Absolutely. In the spring of nineteen eighty nine, Spin magazine did a list of the greatest songs of all time and this was number one. Yeah, and it really kind of summed up what the song meant at the time that it felt like, right now is a time of so much creativity and so much innovation, and it takes too. Is definitely a song that celebrates that. Yeah, it's definitely a moment that captures hip hop where you could take
this minimal record. It's just a rhythm, there's no pop hook, there's no outside instruments, and it's just minimal hip hop for hip hop. It's never intended to cross over. But you hear that song everywhere.
Yeah, Yeah, I mean I think that it's like one of those songs that it is very much like I still hear it kind of like at block parties and everything. Like I feel like every time my block has a party in the summer, like this song is always, always, always out on the mix.
Yeah, those run DMC records for the eighties, they always still sound so immediate and fresh and impatient, like they want your attention right now.
Yeah, there is like so much of that urgency to the beat on it takes too as well, Like there is kind of that like it's so like propulsive and just like really kind of it's really just like really hard to not move when you hear it. Yeah, where do you sort of hear? The influence of it takes to and of also rob bass and DJ easy rock.
Honestly, the idea of just taking a break and making a whole song out of it influenced the way everybody made music. It was a bit like the Ramones in a way that the Ramones had this just play the fun part of the song and make that the whole song and do it over and over and again. But for hip hop to just prove that you could go so minimal and still make music that you still hear weddings and parties, it's still something that is fresh and influential on how other people make music.
Yeah, I feel like, I mean, of course, the Black Eyed Peas song, the samples that I am a big fan of that song body, and I mean I feel like, yeah, so much of Obviously Missy Elliott, who I know we both both love and have talked about this on the show before, is so kind of had constantly been pulling from this era of hip hop and kind of so much a love letter to a song like It Takes Two and kind of this like Year of eighty eight kind of hip hop breaking through and kind of that
that kind of Golden Age is so influential on her.
Absolutely. Yeah. EPMD had such a huge hit that summer with Strictly Business where they take a little bit from I Shot the Sheriff and they loop it all the way through the song, just this really micro minimal sliver of the song and in a completely weird sort of transcendence. They don't even use the Bob Marlee version. They use the Eric Clapton version, And it sounds so wild to take this little bit of a rock version of a reggae song and just loop it into this elemental hip
hop beat. Yeah, but to me that records like that sum up the spirit of that period and hip hop and what made it a real Golden Age.
Yeah, for sure. Next we'll be joined by Rob Bass.
Yeah, thank you, this record is a classic.
Thank you appreciate it.
Where does a record like this come from?
Well, I mean it was definitely like a last minute thing. You know, me and DJ Easy Rock had to be in the studio that night, you know, to go and work on something. We ain't really have nothing ready, So we went to one of our homeboy's house and he played a bunch of records for us and we was like, yo, I like that. He said, you know, he like this, and we just took both of the records and went to the studio put them both together, and that's how we came up with It Takes two.
Yeah, I'm curious. How how did you and easy Rock originally meet and kind of connect and start making music together.
Well, we met in public school, grade school. I think it was fifth grade. Yeah, we met in fifth grade, and we used to always play you know, softball together, and we hung together. And then you know, once the hip hop things started, you know, coming in to play, you know, we just got into that. So it was like it was actually like seven of us, and we was a group called a Short Shot seven when we
first started. And then you know, as time went on, you know, people just broke off and then me and him just stuck together and kept going.
Yeah, can you tell us a little bit about that musical chemistry that the two of you have and had and when you sort of realized that the two of you were creating something really special.
You know, we used to go to all of the block parties and skating rinks and listen to what people were dancing to, and we just came up we said, hey man, we got to get something to make people party and dance. So, you know, we got in the studio and we saw certain you know, beats and rhythms that they used to dance to, and we just try to come up with that same type of vibe and we was actually able to do it.
You know, the record. It was wild that it became such a huge hit, even though it's so street.
Yeah, because we definitely we made it for the We made it for a Harlem and the Bronx. Basically, we didn't know it would go worldwide.
You know.
It was something we did and we didn't think it was spread. You know, we thought it was just for around the Way, and it's you know, we feel blessed at it, you know.
I mean that year was such a big year for hip hop, and I mean, obviously the song changed your life. When did you sort of start to realize that something really big was happening with the song?
Well, when I first heard it on the radio, because back then, if you get a rap record on the radio, that was huge. You know, that means that the record was going to kind of blow up most likely, And the first time I heard it on daytime radio, I knew right there, I said, we got something here, man, this might go far, you know.
And do you have a favorite place that you've heard the song, either on a TV show or movie or is there a place like a grocery store or something that you've heard the song that just felt really fun and random?
Well, favorite, I definitely got to say the radio radio because once I heard the radio, it was it was so exciting just to hear your song on the radio is especially, you know, coming from you know, just struggling for a few years trying to get to record on the radio, and then you finally get one. That was the biggest for me.
You know, how did the record come out?
We had recorded it and then we signed Profile Records and they, you know, at that time, they were one of the big rap labels. They had run DMC and a few other big groups, and you know, once they heard it, you know, an R I think his name was Brian Chin. Yeah, he believed in the record and they put the record out and it took a little while before it caught on, but when it did, it caught on really big.
But you said that you made it for Harlem and the Bronx. What kind of record were you thinking about making when you made it?
Well, this is something you know that you know, DJs would play at a party, you know, something that they would play on play at the party. When it first come on, like people jump up and dance. That's why you know, we started it with this slow intro and then we came in with to hit it, and the beat hit so hard that you know, once it come on, people just started dancing. So it was kind of like just basically a party record, party record to make people get on the dance floor, you know, still does.
Yeah, and I know the video is such a love letter to that as well. Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like to film the video When he did, they.
Didn't want to give us a video, so we had to shoot the video on our own, So we put up our own money and we got a camera. We had a guy we met that had a camera and he knew how to shoot videos a little bit, and we went to one hundred and twenty fifth Street in Harlem, set up, shot right there, went into a couple of stores. We just started filming. We just was filming, and then people started to come jump in the video. We seen Bizmocky across the street. He came across and got in
the video. Red Alert was walking by. He jumped in the video. People got behind us. It just happened like that. It was no script. We just did it the way we did it.
It was such an exciting and free time in hip hop.
Yes it was, Yes, it was.
What was it like hearing the innovation that was going on in eighty eight.
One thing about hip hop at that time, everybody had a different style, Like it wasn't no one rapper sounding like another rapper. So everybody like if you heard run DMC, you knew who that was. You heard Nick Daddy Kane, you know who that was. Dougy Fresh note, everybody had their own style. So it was just like it was a great time in hip hop when, like I said, the different flavors of hip hop you could get any type of hip hop you want to hear. You want
some public Enemy, you got that over here. You want some Paris One, you got that over here. You want some broad Basis right here. You know, it was an amazing time.
Did you think that the record would last the way it does over time?
No?
Wait, no, I never would have thought in a million years that it would last as long. Because I mean when I do concerts now, you got little kids that wasn't even born when the record came out, and they coming up to me singing a song. So I'm like, I'm just like I said, I felt blessed. Man. It's like crazy to have these little kids that know the lyrics, you know.
Yeah, I mean, especially because this is for our five hundred Greatest Songs of All Time podcast and list. I'm curious, what are some of the songs that you think are the greatest of all time?
Oh?
Now, that's that's pretty hard for me. The greatest of all time? I gotta say one of them got to be Rappers Delight Sugarhill Gang, because that was one that started at all to me. You know, I would say the message by Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five should be in there, I guess, and who go soul soignic I'm going back though, you know, so Sonic cos playet Rock, you know, that was another one that was huge. And then to catch up in time, I mean, it's
just been so many. It's just so many tone low wild things, but no ice, Ice, ice baby. You know, it's just so many. You know, it's so many.
Yeah, like you said, hearing your record in daytime, there's really a sense of hip hop was finally taking over the world.
At that time. You will only hear maybe one or two rap records three for the most and on the daytime radio most of the time they would play hip hop at night. So to get your record played during the daytime least where I was living at in New York, that was something huge. It was huge. That mean, you was like one of the big groups at the time, you know.
And you mentioned how you know, having really young kids come up and knowing the song. I mean, this song is still so still just one of the biggest songs of all time and also such a big influence on a lot of young artists and a lot of music. Where do you kind of hear at the legacy of it takes too in music today.
I think it's just one of those songs that's probably just gonna stick around, and you know it's gonna it's here to stay. I just see it. It's here to stay.
You know. The record it turned into such an important part of the James Brown legend and the James Brown connection to hip hop.
Oh definitely, definitely. You know, I grew up when I was a little kid. You know, my parents used to always play James Brown. So he to me, James Brown has got to be one of the founder fathers of hip hop because you know, I believe when you hear him sing, it sounded like he rapping most of the time, you know, so he definitely wanted the founder fathers.
Yeah, and you got to that break before anybody else. Everybody wanted it after you got it.
Oh yeah, I mean, but actually, let the truth be told, they were one or two other releases that used the sample, but they didn't use it the way I used it. So, you know our record maybe they came out maybe two weeks before us, but then we came right behind and we blew it out the water.
You know, you made it just part of the universal universal music.
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, after we did it, like a lot of rappers were coming out with the same type of rhythm, same type beat at the wool. Yeah, you know, so it was good. It was a good thing. I mean actually when I first when we did the record and when it was completed, we played it for a few people and a lot of them were like, I don't know about this record. It's too much woo. Yeah, it's too fast.
You know.
They had a lot of complaints about it at first, you know, but then when it started hitting, they was like, Oh, I knew that was going to be a hit. And I'm looking at them like, yeah, right, look.
Thank you so much for talking about this classic record.
Yeah, we really appreciate it.
Thanks for having me.
Thank you so much for listening to Rolling Stone's five hundred Greatest songs. This podcast is brought to you by Rolling Stone and iHeartMedia. Written and hosted by Rob Sheffield and Brittany Spanelstve, produced by Jason Fine, Alex Dale, Christian Horde, and Gus Wenner, and produced by Jesse Cannon, with music supervision by Eric Syler.