"Hobo Scratch" & Trugoy
I remember finishing a long canoe/hiking trip in the Yukon when I was 15 years old. For the first time in weeks, we buckled seat belts and turned the knob on a stereo. One of the trip leaders popped in a mix tape and I heard, “Linden Boulevard, represent, represent-sent…Tribe Called Quest, represent, represent-sent…”
I was 15 years old and it was 1997. I already knew Beats, Rhymes, and Life, but I’d yet to explore the Tribe catalogue, and hip hop was largely an unexplored, mysterious ocean.
But the horn sample, the melody, and the lyrics – I liked it immediately. That mix tape had a few songs from Midnight Marauders on it, including “Award Tour.”
Back then, with no internet, it was through careful listening and conversations with friends (as well as the study of liner notes) that I came to understand that De La Soul was a group, and that Trugoy, aka Dave, aka the Dove, was one of the three members of that group.
I then came to know that it was Trugoy who rapped the hook on “Award Tour.”
There is so much to appreciate about "Award Tour," and at different ages I appreciated it for different reasons. At first, it was just another great Tribe song. Then, it was another great Native Tongues collaboration. Then it was a great music video.
Then, more recently, I was lucky enough to acquire a whole bunch of 90s hip hop records. One of them was a 12” “Award Tour” single.
I put "Award Tour" on and dropped the needle. Then I flipped the cover over as I listened to the vinyl crackle, and I read more of the liner notes. There was a name I’d seen before, but one which I knew very little about, Weldon Irvine.
So now, in my "Award Tour" timeline, I could add appreciation for the fact that it boasts another great Tribe sample.
And once more, hip hop was the nucleus around the cellular development of my musical knowledge.
The force of coincidence cannot be removed from this cellular development, as it was in the same "90s hip hop" record purchase that I also picked up a couple Malcolm McLaren singles. Why? Well it was a name I’d heard and I knew he was involved in some early New York hip hop.
A few weeks ago, a friend and I were sitting at my kitchen table randomly listening to some of these old records and I put on Malcolm McLaren’s “Double Dutch” single.
The A side, “Double Dutch,” was far from memorable, but the B side, “Hobo Scratch (She’s Looking Like a Hobo)” was much more fruitful.
I immediately heard De La’s track “Baby, Baby…” from Stakes is High:
But, wait, at the start of the De La track, there’s a conversation that seems to be commenting on the very song we’re about to hear. Someone asks, “you heard that shit?” And the response is, “no, I ain’t heard that shit.” And the first speaker says, “they done took the 'Buffalo Girls' beat and changed it all around, they PLAYing themselves!”
I knew that “Buffalo Gals” was another song by Malcolm McLaren, again through coincidence, as I’d bought the “Buffalo Gals” 12” single in the same purchase.
But I was puzzled as the beat De La uses on “Baby Baby” is the “Hobo Scratch” beat. Was De La deliberately confusing me, or did they just erroneously name one Malcolm McLaren track in place of another? I don’t know. But I'm sure there's an answer.
Either way, I smiled as, again, something that I thought to be original was, in fact, not. To me, this does not diminish the creative efforts of De La Soul, but simply confirms the notion that nothing is, truly, 100% original.
The “Hobo Scratch” song kept spinning, and we sat through minutes of old school scratching and airplane b-boy sound effects. Then, a voice came in: “We on a world tour with Mr. Malcolm McLaren, going each and every place, including Spain. Asia, Africa, Tokyo, Mexico…”
And again, I was floored. There was the “Award Tour” hook. “We on award tour with Muhammad my man, going each and every place with the mic in the hand…” Same melody, same inflection and emphasis.
I went back to the “Award Tour” 12” – and nowhere was the “Hobo Scratch” track credited. Weldon Irvine, yes, but Malcolm McLaren, no.
It was just another connection, another piece of the puzzle falling into place. All these years, all the listens, and I was hearing an interpolation of a line from a 1983 Malcolm McLaren song.
And that’s two songs De La owes to Mr. Malcolm McLaren. Trugoy must’ve liked that “Double Dutch” record.
