I first got into Eugene McDaniels when a really good soul put "Outlaw" on a mix for me. While not often a household name himself, McDaniels' music was sampled in a crap ton of hip hop in the 90s, most often by A Tribe Called Quest, and again in the 2000s by groups like De La Soul, Quasimoto and People Under the Stairs. (A comprehensive list is available on WhoSampled, which is fun to play with.) He started out doing gospel and jazz stuff in the 60s under the name Gene McDaniels but later went back to Eugene McDaniels before releasing Outlaw and the much sampled Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse. Also in the same time period, he began focusing on black consciousness and wrote "Compared to What," a protest song made famous by Les McCann and Eddie Harris.McDaniels was pretty up front with his politics. A message printed on the back of Outlaw reads:
Under conditions of national emergency, like now, there are only two kinds of people -- those who work for freedom, and those who do not: the good guys vs the bad guys.
The original gangsta passed away just this summer, at his home in Maine.
This Tribe classic samples McDaniels Jagger the Dagger (featured second).
yay!
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