I don’t know if you would be into it, but what if we did a summer mixtape?” And I was like, “Yeah that’ll be cool, but you know what? We can’t put any new records on it. It was funny – Mick is a very good friend of mine and he actually came up with the idea. Your first “Summertime” mix leads off with “Summer Madness,” the song sampled in “Summertime.” Was that an intentional ode? It was like, “Man, if we can add this for the summer and have everybody at the barbecue and everybody at the block party grooving to it we’re good.” And it just came back the year after that and the year after that and the year after that. I just knew that this is the song that I wanna hear at the barbecue.
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No way, shape, or form did I think that song was gonna be around 20-some-odd years or people were still gonna be playing it. And as soon as I heard it I was like, “Wow. But what happened was once he came up with the idea the music of the song perfectly fit. And he basically wrote all of the things that we grew up with in the summer, never thinking that there are places all across the globe that have the same feeling. A lot of the lyrics about the nuances of summertime is basically what he missed. And that is what drove him to write that song. It was just the typical banter of the season changing that he missed. Come April and May, when the season started to change for us, he still felt the nostalgia and I remember him calling me because I think someone told him, “Oh my God, it’s 80 degrees in Philly today.” He called and he was just like, “Hey, what’s going on?” and I’m like, “Oh my God, it’s great! It’s warm!” You know you got the car out and everybody’s out and you start talking about people that you haven’t seen: “Oh, you know such and such? He gained about 20 pounds over the winter.” “But you know the girl? She looks so good.” So this was also the first year that he never went through the season change – 90 degrees in January and February and March. This is the first year that Will was in L.A. When you first heard the beat for “Summertime,” what was your reaction? You helped create one of those songs for a whole generation, too. You’re just rushing to throw on shorts because of that feeling it gives you. Like you know the first day that it hits 70 degrees because you’re rushing to throw on shorts, even though you’re nowhere near shorts weather. And it’s really prominent with people who grew up in cold-weather climates because the changing of the season is what brings those emotions on. And I think that feeling never leaves you, especially if you grow up like that. It was time to go to the park, or time to go to the pool. It made you feel like it was hot outside. The summer song was almost like a feeling opposed to a sound. “Summer Madness”, “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” by Roy Ayers: This is what was blasting on the radio growing up. And you had songs and music that automatically made you feel you could not wait for the Saturday or Sunday to figure out who was having a block party and who the DJ was and how much equipment they were bringing out. Growing up in Philadelphia, we had a lot of block parties and parties in the park. What was the first summer song that you remember from childhood? With the ninth edition of the mix coming tomorrow, Vulture caught up with DJ Jazzy Jeff to talk about “Summertime”: the song, the mixtape, and the season. Racking up hundreds of thousands of streams, the compilations have turned the duo into the curators of June, July, and August. In addition, since 2010, Jeff and Brooklyn-based DJ (and longtime friend) Mick have put together “Summertime” mixes featuring Seals and Croft, Jay-Z, and seemingly everyone else who has ever released a song that even vaguely feels like a beach or a barbecue (that’s more than 350 such tracks through the first eight volumes).
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Fingers helped create the song of summer for an entire generation 1991’s “Summertime” is still played on the first sunny, warm day of the year in cold-weather cities everywhere. Jeff, Will Smith, and Chicago producers Hula and K. Prince, and not the Y2K bug, owns the year 1999.ĭJ Jazzy Jeff may not own summer to the extent that those previously mentioned own their particular holidays or dates, but he certainly has a claim.
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Earth, Wind and Fire owns September (the 21st of the month, in particular). DJ Jazzy Jeff performs during the 2017 Hangout Music Festival kickoff on May 18, 2017, in Gulf Shores, Alabama.