Steve 'Flash' JuonThere’s an innocence to “It’s a Beat Wave” that will be hard for modern listeners to identify with. In 1983 it was still possible for a rap group with simple lyrics and a futuristic sound to find an audience and catch on. This was the era of “Planet Rock” and “Jam On It” after all. Hip-Hop was not far removed from the disco and funk records of the 1970’s as to have forgotten those roots, and “sampling” in those days could just as easily be a live band recreating the breaks selectors favored in their mix. That left plenty of room for a group like Warp 9 to catch the literal wave of rap’s rising popularity with what they called “Nunk (New Wave Funk).”
Producers Lotti Golden and Richard Scher saw their chance to surf the rising tide and recruited Milton Brown, Chuck Wansley and Ada Dyer to provide Warp 9’s vocals. Frankly the vocals of “Nunk” are entirely secondary to the groove, and that statement holds for almost every Warp 9 song. In most cases I would call it proto-rapping. There aren’t a lot of bars or verses here, and most of them are just short exhortations to get off your ass and move to the beat. While the anti-disco movement had taken hold with fans of metal and rock, rap fans were not steadfastly opposed to it and embraced the electro-funk futurism of songs like “Light Years Away.”
In fact Milton a/k/a Boe Brown describes himself as an alien who landed on Earth by mistake who is seemingly finding his way back home through music. There’s a little bit of Melle Mel to his words but you won’t find him “losing his head” at any point, nor do his playful cohorts. At over seven minutes long it’s a song that goes far beyond what radio programmers would have played, but it was a single all the same, suggesting to me it was far more popular at roller rinks and neighborhood cookouts. Why not? Success doesn’t always come from a jam getting on the airwaves. Any place people could party and have a good time was perfectly suitable to play Warp 9. “Don’t stop, let your body rock/space’s the place for the human race.”
A compact disc reprint of “It’s a Beat Wave” from 1992 significantly increased the length of the album’s original six tracks, adding things like a ten minute long “Mega Mix” of Warp 9’s material and a “Nunk” instrumental. If you already enjoyed Warp 9 to begin with then these additions aren’t unwelcome, but if you already owned the original vinyl LP you would only buy the CD as a digital upgrade. None of the “new” tracks are necessary. They are just padding out the length. Warp 9 songs are already padded out to begin with if we’re being honest. I enjoy revisiting this era of rap for nostalgia’s sake but Warp 9 relies on the production more than the performers, more so than any other rap group of the day. These songs are largely instrumental without instrumental versions, which is fine so long as you know what you’re getting into when you press play. It’s a time capsule of a completely different era.