RC Williams inboxed me a preparty playlist ahead of Best of Big D tomorrow, at which RC & The Gritz will appear with an artist who won’t be named. So of course I combed it for hints. Here I will share the fruits of my searching.
The six-song set is decidedly relaxed, almost to a point of warning if you’re not in a spot to lean back — terminally chill, one could say. It leads with Wings’ “Arrow Through Me,” the groove of which Erykah Badu samples on “Gone Baby, Don’t Be Long.” A wind into meddling bliss with Gary Bartz’s “Gentle Smiles (Saxy)” leads us also to A Tribe Called Quest’s “Butter” which contains whispers of Bartz’s track. “The Feel,” the band’s own song, is a nod to the BOBD setlist – I know because I asked RC to include at least one song they’d play. He sent two; the other is “Leave Me Alone,” featuring Badu who pleads the words in the title. James Brown’s “The Boss” is an interlude well-placed between the two, perhaps to throw us off.
He ended with “King” by J Dilla which samples Todd Rundgren’s “A Treatise Of Cosmic Fire,” all strength and punctuation. So with my crowdpleasing colleagues who’ve arranged this huge party in mind I’ll venture that it’s either steady partner Badu or, because of the Rundgren and wishful thinking, Neon Indian’s Alan Palomo. You’ll have to just come to Best of Big D and find out.
