Schnipper’s Slept On
- story THE FADER
Each Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it’s the Amerie 12-inch “Love’s Off the Chain.” Listen to the song below and read about it after the jump.
I used to DJ at a bar in the lobby of a fancy movie theater one block away from the hotel where Reagan was shot and two blocks from my apartment. I would put all of my records in a rolling suitcase and roll them over. If I brought more records, I would put them in a Kmart basket (that I alternately used as a laundry basket) and make two trips. Sometimes my roommate would give me a ride. When I got there, I had to bring all the records through the theater because the DJ booth was the old ticket taking room. I had to be really
quiet. There was a panel on the wall I would take down and then I was looking out at the bar through a frame in the wall. I had two regular nights at this bar: once a month on Fridays and every Wednesday. The Friday night gig I had to play a lot of Curtis Mayfield. The Wednesday night gig I played whatever I want. This was before Serato existed—not that I would have bought it, because I wasn’t a very good DJ—so I only could play what I had physically, which was a lot of random bullshit. I would buy 12-inches from DJ Hut when I could, but mostly I played weird jazz records and Brutal Truth and “Crazy In Love” over and over. That summer “One Thing” was bumping hard in DC and I had that (on a Killah Kuts with Brooke Valentine, real talk) but somewhere on the internet I heard “Love’s Off the Chain.” No one had this. Turntable Lab got copies but then you had to pay shipping fees. So I just hummed that shit but I never got to play it, always having to come with the more obvious joints and then the shit that no one cared about except me.
“Love’s Off the Chain” was the halfway song, the little special magic that only a few people had, a non-album weird bootleg thing. Why didn’t this get put on the record? You know there were clunkers on the Amerie album. This bumps. People in DC would sell their children for go-go, and Rich Harrison was continually able to synthesize that into an R&B mishmash hoohah. Listen to the gibberish in the background, I swear they are saying “Matt Schnipper.” But you can probably swear they are saying your name. It’s like Magic Eye; I see a wizard, you see a desert plateau. We’re both right.
I tried to find this song on the internet this morning (I couldn’t) but I did find an old playlist from Mark Ronson’s East Village Radio show three years ago. When he played that I was packing to move out of my apartment in DC, had just graduated college and had no job and no idea what I was going to do. I would sit around all day wearing a purple shirt and maybe apply for jobs, maybe walk around and buy records. I never found this one. I probably lost weight that summer. It was a bleak time. Not to be dramatic, but three years gives you some perspective. It is what it is. Maybe it would have been different if I had this song. I found it later, copies upon copies, at the record store. I bought a handful, gave them out to friends.
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