Moodymann goes moodier, crafting a sombre cut that moves fluidly between groovy downtempo and 100-BPM house. "Believe me Dilla, understand, it's hurting," he raps. His own verse, veiled in a swirl of echo, is smooth and heartfelt.
Illa J, a rapper, producer and the younger brother of J Dilla, takes the upbeat funk of the original cover and super-sizes it, strapping the full vocal to a bassy beat, whistling melody and radiant synths. Club Mix" is more constrained and therefore less compelling, making only sparing use of the lovely vocal alongside disco flourishes and a rolling groove.īoth Detroit remixes are much more creative. His original cover, featuring the piercing vocals of the London singer Sadie Walker, sets a strong blueprint, with sunny sounds and a shapeshifting beat combining for a slice of classy pop. From that came Deep Shadows Remixes, a four-track EP that pays homage to the track's origins, pairing reworks by the Detroit artists Illa J and Moodymann with two versions by Nightmares On Wax. The title track, which became so well known that Nike used it in a trainer ad, has since been covered several times, most recently by Nightmares On Wax for his eighth full-length, Shape The Future. By all accounts, the music didn't leave those four walls for roughly 20 years, until a British Northern soul collector named Ady Croasdell visited Hamilton's widow and decided to take a gamble on a box of reels scrawled with the words "The Possible Little Ann Album." A subsequent compilation, released in 1998, introduced the world to three of her songs, before, in 2009, the Finnish label Timmion Records went one step further and released the album, Deep Shadows. Sometime in the late '60s, the promising Chicago-born singer Ann Bridgeforth, AKA Little Ann, recorded an album's worth of material in the Detroit studio of Dave Hamilton, one of the unsung heroes of Motor City soul.