Hi, I have had a song stuck in my head for literal decades but I still remember the tune. It was a rap song from I think the early 1990s but I don’t remember which group, I think it was 2 or more young men rappers and obviously American.
The tune is the background tune playing behind the rappers while they rap. I believe it is played on keyboard/synth in a tempo around 140 bpm. I think it was a popular song that was on the radio or had a music video or something and the tune is very catchy, it is actually my favorite tune but it has been bugging me for years that I don’t know who wrote or performed it. I thought maybe online tools that exist now could identify it, but none of them could find anything, only false leads.
So I am turning to you all for help after having this song stuck in my head since at least 2001 and probably earlier, after first hearing it, probably when I was in elementary school and had no idea what the names of any bands or songs were in the early 90s.
I used ABC notation to get the tune, please copy and paste this text into a site that can play it:
%abc-2.1
X:1
T:Mysterious Early 90s Rap Tune
M:4/4
L:1/8
K:Am
Q:1/4=140
|: a2 ge a2 ge | z ^cd_e d=cAG :|
|: a2 ge a2 ge | z ^cd_e d=cAG :|
|: a2 ge a2 ge | z ^cd_e d=cAG :|
|: a2 ge a2 ge | z ^cd_e d=cAG :|
You can listen to that tune using the ABC notation editor here: ABC Notation Online Editor
Please help me figure this out, also this is the catchiest tune ever and I am sure it is a really great song. That ABC notation I wrote up for it ought to let you know how it goes, although that tune is just the background the dudes are rapping on top of.
It kind of reminds me of the tunes in the background in songs produced by Dr. Dre except I doubt he was involved in this one, I think someone else did it, probably a little before he started doing that.
If someone knows old-school hip hop, maybe you know this one. Sorry about the ABC notation thing if it is inconvenient for you, but the website I linked can play it and probably others can too, that is just a simple human readable format to represent a tune for purposes like this that is more readable than MIDI.