Even after his death, Miles’s music continued to raise controversy and the posthumously-released Doo-Bop certainly added fuel to the fire. Miles went “back to basics” abandoning the carefully-crafted studio productions that resulted in Tutu and Amandla for a studio collaboration between him and rapper/hip-hop producer Easy Mo Bee. Even more controversy resulted from the decision made after Miles’s death to create two new tracks using old performances from Miles. Standout tracks include the melodic opener “Mystery,” funky “Sonya,” driving “Blow,” and cool, mellow “The Doo-Bop Song”, even though some people dislike the rapping.
Excerpt from The Last Miles:
Doo-Bop: Francesca Spero, who introduced Miles to Easy Mo Bee, describes how they worked together in the studio
“The chemistry was really with Miles and Mo Bee. I would go by the studio and they were just doing their thing. Mo Bee would lay the beats. There wouldn’t be a tremendous amount of overdubs on it and Miles would go into the vocal booth with the horn and play it like a vocal. He was riding the beat like an MC would. He would pull the melody out of the beat and just created it with the horn. It felt so very freestyle [improvised]. It didn’t feel like anyone was sitting down and writing these compositions. Mo was playing the beat and Miles was feeling it and he was just spitting out on the trumpet what he felt melodically. A lot that stuff was very raw. You had the raw track with Miles over it and you mixed it. It was very similar to the way we were making hip-hop records at the time.”
Buy Doo-Bop online from Amazon UK and Amazon US
- Miles 80s Music Collections - a round up of various Miles compilations from the 1980s
- The Man With The Horn Album Primer - An Introduction To Miles’ 80s album
- We Want Miles Album Primer - An Introduction To Miles’ live album from 1982
- Star People Album Primer - An Introduction To Miles’ album from 1983
- Decoy Album Primer - An Introduction To Miles’ album from 1984
- Miles Live - a round up of the various Miles live albums from the 1980s