... was (as everyone knows) the Coldcut remix of Eric B and Rakim's "Paid in Full". The brilliant original track (that flow, that bassline), merged seamlessly with the Ofra Haza vocal track - which at the time, in that context, sounded like it came from another planet... In some ways you could call the track one of the first mash-ups, though I'm sure there are earlier examples.
But also part of what made it great was that it was underground - the remix was just out on a white-label pressing, so if you weren't friends with the right clued-in DJs it was pretty hard to find. Now the damn thing is everywhere, it's on like three soundtrack albums, two Eric B and Rakim hits comps, and it took me about a minute of online searching to find a link to this passably-listenable 2-minute stream. Which makes me feel a little sorry for people today who may not experience the same thrill of the search, looking for a cool rarity in every record store for months or years... now it's all out there somewhere, it's just a matter of digging it up...
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