- Leor Galil
The holiday season is arriving, and with it comes the constant stream of yuletide music pumping out of car radios and shopping centers. Of course there’s more to seasonal music than the corporate coffee-shop dreck we all love to hate, and among the many releases dropping on Friday are a couple Christmas hip-hop reissues from excellent Boston label Get On Down: Run-D.M.C.’s “Christmas in Hollis” single and Profile Records’ Christmas Rap compilation, which both came out in 1987.
The pair kicked around ideas until Mello D. came up with the idea for a holiday song. “He just kind of recited the lyrics and I was like, ‘OK, I like that,’” Buford says. They decided to sample “This Christmas,” the classic 1970 soul number by Donny Hathaway. “That’s just like a classic Christmas song,” Buford says. “Personally I call it a ghetto classic Christmas song. It’s like if you don’t hear that through Christmas it’s not Christmas.” Buford and Mello D. recorded “This Christmas (Rap)” at Chicago Trax and dropped the 12-inch in late 1988. “I think I had it ready in November,” Buford says. “I released it too late. But Ray liked it and liked the idea, so we went on and released it when we did. But in hindsight it was released too late.”
