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Album: Hot Buttered Soul (1969)
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Songfacts®:

  • This ten minute funk number was on Issac Hayes' groundbreaking Hot Buttered Soul album. He was best known at the time as a songwriter and arranger for Stax Records. Hayes co-wrote such classic numbers as "Hold On I'm Coming" and "Soul Man," both for Sam & Dave, and he recorded Hot Buttered Soul at the request of a Stax executive.
  • Hot Buttered Soul contained just four tracks and was a complete breakaway from the standard three-minute song format. Hayes explained to Rolling Stone in February 1972: "I felt like what I wanted to say, I couldn't say it in no two minutes and 30 seconds, because I wanted to speak through the arrangement, I wanted to speak through singing, I wanted to speak through actual monologue. I cut that record with all the freedom in the world and it was a beautiful release for me."
  • The song title is unsurprisingly frequently misspelled, even on the album cover the backup singers are clearly singing "-nistic."
  • The song's lyrics, by Hayes and Stax Records Executive Al Bell, poke fun at those who use big words unnecessarily, in this instance when re-wooing a lost love through high-minded compliments.
  • The musicians include the Bar-Kays' bassist James Alexander and drummer Willie Hall (later of The Blues Brothers Band).
  • This song has been sampled extensively. The same high-pitched piano sample was borrowed by Public Enemy for their 1989 single "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" and The Game for his 2006 track "Remedy."

Comments: 1

  • Eric from EarthBorn and raised in Compton, by dj quic is the most popular and best used sample of this song.
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