I Bless The Rains Down in Africa

There is a certain 80's pop rock song that for many of my younger teen years I had vaguely known about, not being too familiar with it but for the most part, I usually loved a bunch of 80's songs without knowing them by title or artist. That is until I saw the music video for "Murder Reigns" by Ja-Rule sometime around 2002 during my high school years. The uncredited lady on the hook, which I just thought was so overly dramatic and funny in a GOOD WAY, caught my attention, but what I really loved about the song was the beat/sample... and so my investigative work begun.

**Well, technically, the lady on the hook was miscredited...as another singer signed to the Murda Inc record label named The Letter M [aka Miredys, a former Miss Puerto Rico pageant winner] was credited and shown in the video... but the singer whose vocals are actually on the record belong to a woman named Celeste, who tried out for the Danity Kane season of MTV's show Making the Band.**


"Africa" is a song by rock band Toto, released in 1983 and can be best described by one of the band-members:

"... a white boy is trying to write a song on Africa, but since he's never been there, he can only tell what he's seen on TV or remembers in the past."

My favorite part about the song is the synths, but since acquiring the song I've played it countless times. Definitely one of my favorite 80's gems.


Watch the video HERE:




Some songs that have sampled this:

- "New World" by Nas
-"Heart of Man" by Xzibit
- "Anything" by JoJo
- "Tru Rider" by Mowett
- "Murder Reigns" by Ja Rule


The best recreation/usage of the song sample, in my humble opinion of course, is "Murder Reigns" produced by 7 Aurelius. I just hear some form of sloppiness in the other producers' beats for the aforementioned songs... but 7 Aurelius added a revamped mystical feel to the original melody with more advanced synthesizers and keyboards, while the other producers seemed to have just added to the actual original track.


Watch the Ja-Rule video HERE:




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