Description: Late one Miami night in 1985, Amos Larkins II was mixing Commin’ In Fresh by Double Duce while also partying in the studio with a stripper. He was so distracted he forgot to review the levels before sending the track for mastering.

The next week at a flea market, he was horrified to hear the over-compressed bass tearing up the store’s speakers. But the other customers felt differently.

Thus a genre was born: Miami Bass!

Verdict: For those unaware, Obsessed with Bass: The Essential History of Miami Bass, 1985-1993 is #5 in Mircocosm’s Scene History series and might well just be their best yet.

For nearly a decade, this accidentally-created Miami Bass, a DIY genre that enjoyed a massive mainstream popularity that nobody, and I mean nobody could have ever seen coming at the time.

Here in this thin, yet wholly-heartfelt, magnificently dedicated new reading, author Aaron Nemec explores this obsession in this fascinating, well, we’ll lovingly call it little zine full of larger-than-life characters.

Detailing how Miami Bass (booty music or booty bass) was nothing more than a slither of a sub-genre of hip hop music that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s, where the use of drums from the Roland TR-808, sustained kick drum, heavy bass, raised dance tempos, and frequently sexually explicit lyrical content differentiate it from other hip hop sub-genres, it’s no secret now that the underling characterizations of Miami Bass were the use of rhythms with a so-named stop-start flavor along with hissy cymbals, all completed by lyrics that reflected the language of the streets, particularly Miami’s historically black neighborhoods, et al.

Indeed, and despite Miami Bass never having consistent mainstream acceptance, early national media attention in the 1980s resulted in a profound impact on the development of hip hop, dance music, and pop.

Furthermore, Miami Bass - the new bumpin’ kid on the block party - has long been historically noted as having been truly brought to the public fore by the some-would-say the true founders of the genre, The 2 Live Crew, for they brought forth heart-pounding beats, sexual overtones, and hype man vocals within their tracks that are still dominant in clubs across the world today.

Indeed, they perhaps sum up the historic emergence of Miami bass best in their 1986 hit Throw the D; There’s a brand new dance and it’s coming your way / it was started in Miami by the ghetto DJs.

All this, and oh-so much more, information is brought forth here in Aaron Nemec’s little, yet dutifully compulsive zine, of which I urge you to go out and purchase today!

Official Book Purchase Link