♫♪  J-Zone - “Funky”

Sometime in late 2012/early 2013, I met J-Zone. I was in Breakdown Records, a store in Bayside that stocked only used records, each of which was priced at $2. If memory serves, it was around that time that I’d just started buying rap singles. I’d previously considered them a waste (preferring albums to singles, as I didn’t and still don’t DJ), but once I started really getting into collector mode, I began to see the value in them, so I was stocking up on all the essentials, and Breakdown was proving to be a great place for exactly that, as I was able to amass a stack of 12s by everybody from Eric B. & Rakim to Lil’ Keke. And I’m talking classics, like Check the Rhime, I Ain’t No Joke — all the shit I should’ve owned on vinyl but only had on mp3 up until that point. Some were unsalvageably wrecked, but I snatched them up anyway; $2 is $2.

Anyway, at some juncture, J-Zone started digging near me, so I said something like, “Hey, you’re J-Zone, right?”

To which he said, “Yeah.”

So I kind of awkwardly introduced myself and told him I liked that song he had just put out with Breeze Brewin. He replied reminding me that it also featured Prince Paul and Oxygen and was available as a 7” single, and I nodded, and that was that basically. Or so I assumed…

You see, at some point while I was going through the “section” containing all the rap singles, J-Zone walked behind me, passing the stack of records I’d accumulated thus far. It was sizable, but I wasn’t just grabbing shit willy-nilly. In other words, I knew what was in there. However, next time I went through it, I found that the 1970 self-titled debut by blues rock outfit Sugarloaf had somehow made its way into my pile. Now, like I said, I had a very good idea of what I’d picked up at this point, and aside from the guy working the counter, J-Zone was the only other person in the store, so I could only deduce that either A) I’d accidentally grabbed a copy of Sugarloaf along with some other album (unlikely, I thought, as I’d barely picked up any non-rap albums from the place), or B) J-Zone, for whatever reason, slipped a copy of Sugarloaf into my stack.

This, I thought, was very strange, but regardless, I decided to conclude that this is exactly what had happened, and I wasn’t going to question it; at least, it would make for a good story. It wasn’t until years later that I considered how adding Sugarloaf to someone’s record haul might actually be a diss, not because their music’s bad — it’s not; it’s great, actually — but maybe J-Zone was using “sugarloaf” as a funky, derogatory term for “white person.” Odds are it didn’t go down like that at all … but I really hope it did.

As it just so happens, “Funky” b​/​w “Go Back To Sellin’ Weed” is currently available on 7”, and both songs will also be on the album Fish-n-Grits, due out April 1.

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