Slick Rick Demos Are Better Than Your Entire Life

The 30th Anniversary special edition vinyl of The Great Adventures of Slick Rick is finally available, and you can opt for the double vinyl version (with a whole side dedicated to demos) or go all-out and cop the $100 collector’s pack with an eye patch (!?), reproductions of lyric sheets and some kind words from Nas in the liner notes.

While it looks like the previously announced ‘Can’t Dance To A Track That Ain’t Got No Soul (new song) – previously unreleased’ didn’t make the cut, it’s probably for the best since it tacking a new song onto the end of a classic album of this vintage never really works anyway. But onto the important stuff – let’s take a look at the four demo recordings and unreleased track…

‘Children’s Story’ [demo]

This still has the signature ‘Herbie Luv Bug’ style shakers, but also features a Haunted House keyboard for some reason.1 The intro goes on for a whole minute and the actual rap is completely different after the first two bars, giving the impression that Rick was still refining how he wanted this track to develop. We then get to hear Ricky D humming up a storm in harmony to the melody of the keys, years before KMD brought the ‘Humrush‘, before deciding to cut the session short to grab a bottle of Champale or some shit.

‘Teenage Love’ [demo]

It’s safe to say that no one liked the original, syrupy Rap Ballad version of this song, which featured an over-produced saccharine nightmare that actually led to fifteen cases of diabetes in Canada. Thankfully, this mix presents a more sombre tone – in that it sounds like it was produced on $30 Radio Shack knock-off of a Casio keyboard. While this might seem like a bad thing in theory, the actual result is a rather charming little ditty which finally let’s me appreciate this ode to schoolyard crush’s getting…crushed.

‘Mona Lisa’ [demo]

Same raps but a different delivery with nothing but a drum machine for accompaniment – The Bronx’s answer to MTV Unplugged, if you will. This also reminds me of the long lost art of rapper’s pretending to the be the chick’s they’re chatting up, as most famously heard in Positive K’s ‘I Got A Man’ – but at least he had the decency to pitch up his voice in the studio rather than just raising his voice an octave.

‘Hey Young World’ [demo]

The four-track version, minus the fancy vocal filters, scratching, piano and all that. Still interesting to hear an early take of this timeless classic.

‘Snakes of the World Today’

What do you get when you combine ‘Nautilus’, ‘Daisy Lady’ and a creepy chorus that sounds like the kid from The Shining singing along to the Fearless Four? Pure genius. As to why this track was left in the vaults instead of filler like ‘Indian Girl’ or ‘Let’s Get Crazy’, I can only imagine Uncle Rush thought it was ‘too weird.’ Thankfully it’s finally on vinyl in 2019 so that CRC DJ’s across the globe can clear dance floors at will. Any theories on the three weird edits where scratches seem to blank out naughty words? Or is it just a case where the original tape was worn out?

1. Let’s just blame this on the whole mid-eighties Kinda Spooky Rap movement that included ‘Amityville (The House On The Hill)‘, ‘Haunted House of Rock‘ and ‘A Nightmare on My Street.’ [↩]