"Protection" by MASSIVE ATTACK
A sample of a sample. An abstraction of an abstraction. A song about love built on one about revenge.
And you can't change the way she feels, but you could put your arms around her
Trip-hop was an apt soundtrack for the last decade of the millennium. Emerging from Bristol, UK, the bass-heavy sound abstracted hip-hop — itself an abstraction — into something at turns melancholic and anxious. Songs appropriated soul, jazz, and the dub of Jamaican sound system DJs, as well as hip-hop beats and scratching, creating sonic collages that prefigured the promise of the Internet, where all of culture is yours at your fingertips. Is it even surprising that a founder of Massive Attack is one of the people rumored to be Banksy? “Protection” is meta pop art: In a genre that’s an abstraction of an abstraction, the song is built on a sample of a sample; that sample is taken from a song about revenge that was released as an act of revenge. Yet for all that infinity mirror of intellectual hooha, it’s also proof that the heart rules the mind. Guided by Tracey Thorn’s mourning-dove alto, this seven minute meditation on intimacy is as real and affecting a love song as you’ll hear.
“BOOF CLACK diddle-iddle-ick… (pause) BOOF CLACK diddle-iddle-ick… (pause) at the approximate pace of a snail. A stoned snail at that.” That’s how singer Tracey Thorn describes1 the demo tape that arrived from Massive Attack. The group had reached out to her to collaborate on a song. Thorn was known for the intimate, sophisticated pop of Everything But the Girl, but Massive Attack were also fans of her lo-fi (mostly) acoustic debut, A Distant Shore. Thorn had just returned from singing “Who Knows Where the Time Goes?” with Fairport Convention at the 1993 Cropready folk festival when the package arrived at her doorstep. The tape labeled “Massive Idea” was just a minimal rhythm composed of snare and wah-wah guitar sampled from James Brown’s “The Payback” plus some skittering high-hat. No vocal melody, no lyrics — she’d just been introduced to trip-hop at its most minimal. It made no sense to her, until it made all the sense. After repeated listening, the slow track with its empty spaces imposed its rhythm on her. She sat down to write lyrics and “within about 10 minutes I’ve written the whole thing and will never change a word.” It was, to her surprise, exactly what Massive Attack wanted.
You're a boy and I'm a girl, but you know you can lean on me
And I don't have no fear, I'll take on any man here
Who says that's not the way it should be
I’ll stand in front of you, and take the force of the blow
Protection
“Protection” isn’t so much a love song as it is a song about love. Thorn’s lyrics combine a girl’s story she’d heard from friends with her own protective feelings for Ben Watt, her partner in Everything But the Girl and life. The year before, Watt had been rushed to the hospital with what he thought was a heart attack but was eventually diagnosed as Churg-Strauss syndrome, an autoimmune disorder. Surgeons removed much of his irreparably damaged small intestine, and he spent nine weeks in the hospital. Thorn sat by him in intensive care, helpless, and wanting to “shout from the rooftops how much I bloody loved him.”
James Brown likewise wanted to shout from the rooftops, but what he was nursing was a grudge. Brown had done “The Payback” as part of a soundtrack to Hell Up in Harlem, the sequel to a 1973 gangster flick for which he also provided a soundtrack, Black Caesar. Studio executives rejected Brown’s songs as “the same old James Brown stuff” and too long, something that had frustrated them on his Black Caesar and Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off soundtracks. They chose to make a deal with Motown, who furnished shorter songs by Edwin Starr. James Brown wasn’t one to let such a slight, or any slight, go. He finished the tracks and released them as a double album in December 1973. He would have his revenge: “The Payback” was a #1 R&B song, and the album was a hit — more people paid to hear him shout “Payback! Revenge! I'm mad!” than see the film. The Payback and its long, cyclic jams are widely regarded as a landmark in funk. It was the 37th of Brown’s studio albums and is the only one to earn a gold plaque.
The sample of Jabo Starks’ snare and Jimmie Nolans’ guitar from “The Payback” was one of the defining sounds for ‘90s hip-hop and R&B. EPMD used it at least four times and Ice Cube twice. The sample drives two of the biggest hits for pop R&B group En Vogue, “Hold On” and “Never Gonna Get It (My Love).” LL Cool J combined it with an even more widely used Brown sample from “Funky Drummer” for “Boomin’ System.” The sample underpinned Notorious B.I.G.’s famous guest rap on Total’s “Can’t You See” in 1995, the same year “Protection” was released.
For all the naked ferocity of the original song and the hip-hop tracks built around it, here the sample just sounds naked. The snail’s-pace beat (“BOOF CLACK diddle-iddle-ick… (pause) BOOF CLACK diddle-iddle-ick… (pause)”) is presented dryly; all the negative space created by the pauses works as a vacuum to suck you in. A song slowly wells up around the beat -- a lulling bassline, pulsing synth gurgles, piano, and Thorn’s sweet-angel-of-mercy dusky vocal. Each time she draws out the each syllable of “protection,” she’s speaking of her experience, certainly, but also to a need deep within you.
“Protection” was done primarily by Andrew “Mushroom” Vowels, but Massive Attack’s fractious collaborative process at the time equally included Grant “Daddy G” Marshall, and Robert “3D” Del Naja, the one who’s thought by some to be street artist Banksy2. Thorn wrote of their session that, “Crudely speaking, Daddy G brings the reggae input, Mushroom the hip-hop, and 3D wants to be The Clash.” That the song sounds very little like the sum of those parts shows the power of both Thorn’s vocal melody and Massive Attack’s world-building commitment to atmosphere.
“Protection” is immersive. By midway through the song, as Thorn repeats “You're a girl and I'm a boy,” it’s like an ocean current has carried you past the breakers, too far to swim back. It’s only as the song fades out without the sampled beat — just piano and gurgling synths submerged into what sounds like the gentle hiss of waves crashing against a far-off shore — that you realize how long you’ve been floating in its deep sea.
18 Song Playlist
Massive Attack, Tracey Thorn, and James Brown (and a bit of ‘90s hip-hop and R&B that sampled him).
German Soul
Joy Denalane’s Let Yourself Be Loved, one of my favorite albums from last year, has just been released in a Deluxe Edition. I like how she sounds like Diana Ross in her upper register and love that she hues closely to ‘70s sophisticated soul while not seeming like a cabaret act. I particularly like “Be Here In the Morning,” which is grown-up and realistic without losing its romance. The Deluxe Edition includes a cover of Bill Wither’s “Use Me” which I dearly hoped she’d sing in German. Alas.
Serbian Soul
There have always been delicious wines from Eastern Europe. It’s just that they seldom left there. This friendly red is 100% Prokupac, an ancient and indigenous Serbian grape. A ton of red fruit flavor is held in check by spice and zippy acidity that can even take on your pulled pork sandwich. It’s champ with lamb but it super tasty with pretty much anything with a little char off the grill.
Thank you
Thanks for reading. This one was a bit harder to write, as anyone who’s seen a loved one (or two) through serious illness and extended hospital stays will understand.
There are no plans to ever charge for this newsletter, but I will ask that you share with a few friends you think might get something from it.
Thanks again,
Scott
All quotes from Tracey Thorn come from her autobiography Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to Be a Pop Star
Beautifully put Scott. 👌👏👏
Beautifully put Scott. 👌👏👏