Chosen Words: S is for Smokers

Fat Roland's A-Z guide to the most important words or phrases in electronica and their associated "facts"

'Smoker's beats' is a loose term referring to the blunted hip hop movement of the 1990s.

The likes of DJ Food, Dr Octogan, Nightmares On Wax and UNKLE brought a rough-edged urban instrumentalism to the masses, where hip hop seemed to swap its guns for a big fat doobie.

The most important record label at this time was Mo'Wax, founded by UNKLE mainman James Lavelle. The label was named after his extensive scented candle collection. Maybe.

Entroducing... by DJ Shadow is an album made entirely of samples. The cover design depicts people browsing in a record shop, and if you look closely, you can see one of those records in the photo is Entroducing... which in turn depicts people browsing in a record shop, one record being Entroducing..., which in turn depicts - and so on.

This kind of existentialism is not healthy when smoking a big fat doobie.

The smoker's beats legacy lives on, although now its producers have to make the music outside the door of a pub in the rain.

Top five nicknames for cannabis / spliffs:

- Mary Jane
- Fatty boombatty
- Bing bang bong
- Slappy ting tong
- Ooo diddly doobie dong fiddly diddly doop
- I'm making these up, clearly

For more Chosen Words, click the tag at the bottom of this post.