Hip Hop Be Bop

The Awesome Foursome were a group of friends from Brooklyn. The group consisted of brothers, Milk Dee (Kirk Robinson) and DJ Gizmo (Nathaniel Robinson Jr.), who would go on to form the Audio Two plus Mike Master and Sugar K who would go on to form the Kings Of Swing together with female DJ, Cocoa Chanelle.

They debuted on Nairobi‘s electro cover version of Manu Dibango’s ‘Funky Soul Makossa’ in 1982 before releasing their own single, ‘Funky Breakdown’, in 1984 on Partytime Records produced and arranged by Arthur Baker and Chris Lord-Alge. The track was reissued some years later on the Canadian Unidisc label with the Nairobi track on the flip side. Two years later came the highly collectable ‘Monster Beat’ on Reality Records which was produced by Greg G of the Disco Four and Teddy Riley.

Following their Reality Records release, the group split amicably and later formed Audio Two and Kings Of Swing.

As is often the case when groups make music, there are often a lot of tracks which never see the light of day. Many are unreleased because the label doesn’t see any commercial viability. Other times the record labels close, leaving behind unreleased material and demos which are very often lost forever.

Fast forward to 2018 and Canadian record label Roots Forward. Since 2011 they have been releasing new material from the likes of Craig G and Madman Shawn plus reissuing hard to find material by Schoolly D, 6th Floor, Frankenstein, Krown Ruler’s, etc. As an addition to their catalogue they had the idea to officially reissue Nairobi & the Awesome Foursome’s ‘Funky Soul Makossa’ as a 7″ single, however, after enquiring about licensing the idea was cancelled in favour of a full 12″ release when a tape was discovered with two unreleased tracks by Awesome Foursome from 1983. The end result is the excellent ‘Awesome Foursome EP’ containing two unreleased tracks from 1983.

There are also dub versions of ‘Subway’ and ‘Big Turnout’ but they couldn’t be added to the EP without compromising the sound so luckily Streetwise decided to release them digitally.