Robert Christgau said it best-- Spoonie Gee's groove is so old it's new, and Spoonie Gee's groove is plenty old-- the self-appointed Godfather cut his first track in 1979, and got his big break as a result of being the godson of the founders of both Enjoy Records and Sugarhill Records. Take a listen to that first track, "Spoonin' Rap", cut back when Gabriel Jackson was all of 16. His bravado and charm instantly place him in a continuum where you can believe Spoonie was an original member of the Treacherous Three. On the other hand, Spoonie's conversational savoir faire looks forward to a time where rappers skimmed over the beat and didn't make like an end-rhyming red bouncing ball. And he was doing it for a good five or six minutes at a time, as all MCs did back in the day, when rap still dangled from disco's umbilical cord. "Love Rap" bears some of that baby fat. Spoonie himself rightfully claims this track is one of the first attemps to pitch woo yes-yes-y'all style. Unlike future luva-luvas like Cool James, Spoonie respectfully bumrushes ladies with his rapid-fire flow-- "I got a cure for all women, and hope you understand/ Why they call me Spoonie Gee, the medicine man/ Because I do it with greed and not too much speed/ So just take off your clothes, lemme give you what you need". Spoonie proves he can run at different speeds, though-- "The Big Beat" is more prescient of the cool and confident 60-minute-man approach LL and his type of guys perfected.