Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez

Seminal New York DJ Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez, best known as a beatmaker and producer for Masters at Work and Nuyorican Soul, comes from a diverse musical background, a background that ended up assisting him greatly in making significant contributions to house and dance music. To demonstrate this upbringing, he, with the help of Azuli Records, assembled some of the tracks that influenced him the most and mixed them together (though there is a limited-edition unmixed DJ version) into Choice: A Collection of Classics (and the 11th in the label's Choice series). More than anything, the album shows the producer doing what he loves to do, with the songs that he loves to do it with. It doesn't present anything that's completely unexpected -- there's a Patrick Adams song, one by Dazzle, and R&B and disco cuts from James Ingram, the Fantastic Aleems, Kool & the Gang, Earth, Wind & Fire, and James Brown -- but it's a nice selection of music mostly from the '70s and '80s, Gonzalez's prime influential period, and the era whose records he uses most when making his own music. Being that the DJ is an admitted vinyl head, there are also some pretty rare tracks on Choice, including "Ain't No Need" by the mysterious Skye, "Come on Baby, Pt. 1" by the one-hit Bahamian soul group Beginning of the End, as well as "Super Strut" from the Kashmere Stage Band, a high-school funk band out of Houston that produced scores of talented musicians jazz guitarist Melvin Sparks to name just one). The album grooves and slides along nicely, and it's easy to tell that Gonzalez is having a good time mixing it all together, filling out overly electronic beats with warmer tones and additions, playing around with disco, Latin, hip-hop, and soul, and proving once again why he's so deserving of such a compilation. [Azuli released a limited-edition CD in 2006 that features 22 of the 29 tracks unmixed.] ~ Marisa Brown, All Music Guide