Cheba – The Piper (Promo CDS) (1990) (FLAC + 320 kbps)

Ruffhouse Records was founded in 1989 by Chris Schwartz and Joe Nicolo as a joint venture with Columbia Records. In his book, “Ruffhouse: From the Streets of Philly to the Top of the ’90s Hip-Hop Charts”, Chris Schwartz explains how “The Piper” became Ruffhouse’s first release with Columbia. He received a call from Len Fico out in Los Angeles about an artist named Cheba who had a track called “The Piper”, a rendition of the Pied Piper children’s story, with Cheba doing different voices of characters in the story. He heard it and decided it would be their first single on Ruffhouse through their deal with Columbia, which was a “singles deal”, which meant they agreed to do one song while retaining the option to do either additional singles or an album should the single be successful. The “Pied Piper” song Chris heard was on cassette but they could not locate the original multi-track tapes, so they decided they would replicate the song in their Philly studio and had Cheba fly in from Los Angeles. Joe “The Butcher” Nicolo replicated the track exactly as the original but Cheba’s performance in the studio did not sound anything like the demo Chris had heard. “He could rap, but his performance lacked the timbre, color and animation of the vocal featured on the original demo tape.”

After a while, Cheba admitted he did not perform the original vocal nor did he write the song. Instead, it was written and performed by Shock G ЫЫ (R.I.P.) of Digital Underground who gave it to Cheba to go out and shop it for himself as an artist. Since they had already signed Cheba, Chris and Joe decided to move forward with the single and had Cheba record the song “painstakingly word-by-word until Joe – with editing and determination got it to sound exactly like the demo”. It took a long time but Joe got it done. Next they had to get a mechanical license from Shock G, even though Cheba assured Chris there would be no problems. Chris called Atron Gregory, Digital Underground’s manager, who asked for the document to be faxed to him to have it signed by Shock G. They moved forward and got Rich Murray to come from New York to do the video on a very small budget.

Everyone loved the song and the video, but weeks had passed and they still hadn’t received the license from Atron. Chris contacted him again and he was asked to refax the document. Atron acknowledged Shock had given Cheba the demo to shop and that there wouldn’t be a problem. Running out of time (the video and the 12″ record were scheduled for release, with the masters already delivered to CBS), Chris jumped on a plane to Chicago where Digital Underground was performing, went to their hotel, called Atron and waited in the lobby. After two hours, Atron came downstairs with the document in hand, signed by Shock G. Apparently, Chris and Joe learned a valuable lesson from all this: never sign an artist unseen. I guess Chris was too classy to write it, but I’m sure he was thinking it – you can’t spell douCHEBAg with Cheba.

The single sold 25,000 copies, not great, but not a failure either. They didn’t proceed with an album but based on retail and video play they decided to do another single.

Tracklist:

01. The Piper (Radio Edit)
02. The Piper
03. The Piper (Street Mix)
04. The Piper (Instrumental)

Download:

FLAC – Wayshare

320 kbps – Wayshare