Now on my 4th remix of 3 Sade songs taken from the album 'Love Deluxe' (celebrating its 30th anniversary next month), I've gone after the 2 second released from that project in 1992, called "Feel No Pain", which was a social conscious song about the poverty, unemployment, and–before it was a phrase back then–mental health awareness. The original version was a bluesy, twangy pop vibe with a repetitive & hypnotic bass line, and the video for it, ironically was very sensual and sexy that you'd have to close your eyes to remember what the song was about. Now, of course, I chose to just take the acapella vocals from that song and initially was going a different, faster dance route with it (house-style) but wasn't really feeling it the more it developed, so I was wondering what could fit as I had already put so much effort into it, until I saw a throwback on my Instagram timeline of the boom-bap Hip Hop classic, "Respiration" from the 1998 album 'Mos Def & Talib Kweli are Black Star'. This song was also its albums second release (like "Feel No Pain's" was) and dropped the day after my b'earthday in 1999 (02/23/99). I was reminded just how hard that beat went that I thought that I could maybe mash this song with the Sade one, as they we both under the same socially-conscious umbrella of the struggle of life, though the latter was specifically about the inner-city from Brooklyn to Chi-Town.

However, I wanted to keep the vocals strictly Sade, so instead of calling it the "Black Star" remix, I instead paid tribute to the producer of the beat, itself–Hi-Tek–who gave Hip Hop one of the dopest tracks any great rapper worth their salt could lyrically bless (and Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and Common certainly delivered), so instead I called this the "Sweat the Tek-nique"...feel me? 😉 But at the very beginning of the track, I still wanted to also pay homage to the artist who was sampled by Hi-Tek to even make this beat, for me even to make my remix, and that's Don Randi's "The Fox", from the 1969 album 'Don Randi Plays the Love Theme from Romeo & Juliet', which was one of the big Hollywood films out that year. I produced the intro to sound like someone turning on an old record player and playing that song as Sade and Don Randi actually collab'd in 1969, with that old vinyl static, then segueing into 1992/1999/2022 simultaneously. You catch all that? 😂

As for my parts, I added new bass lines, a new bridge, again playing the B3 Hammond organ (it just worked for me since the previous Kanye one), new percussion, a great orchestral string sample I found that worked perfectly, edited & chopped Hi-Tek's original beat instrumental throughout the track, and...look...just go and press "play" if you haven't already and download this joint! Free, of course, but love donations always welcomed and appreciated, and I really enjoyed doing this one even though I spend some long, late nights working on it, even up to this very release day to get it just right, so I hope you appreciate the effort put into it, and also support the individual artists whose music I combined to create this remix.

Hope you enjoy, and get a neck brace in case you nod your head too hard to this joint cuz it kinda goes hard and funky! 😁