Sherwyn - Slow Rider

Who doesn’t love a clever sample? Nobody, that’s who. Especially when said sample is bent and warped almost to the point of no recognition, but its soul remains intact. This brings us to Sherwyn’s “Slow Rider,” which seems to bust apart War’s “Low Rider” like one of those CAD schematics of a dishwasher’s precisely exploded innards. Only to reassemble the pieces in a neat, and groovy new whole. I think so, anyway.

I don’t have one of those encyclopedic music memory palaces. I know a bunch of songs — but I don’t know every song. This means a.) I won’t bore you at parties with an exhaustive breakdown of the bass line in Steely Dan’s “Peg,” and b.) I’m sure there are other samples at play in Sherwyn’s work, I just can’t seem to, well, peg them. I’m actually fine with this because this song is such a banger, to borrow a now very-dated reference from Succession’s Kendall Roy. I can just enjoy it without over analyzing it. The low rider bass line sample is enough, twisted like a pretzel without losing anything that makes it iconic.

“Slow Rider” slinks and thumps and cruises. It rolls, baby, and you feel like you’re in the passenger seat. It’s not an easy song to sing along to, Sherwyn’s got kind of a narrow throated yell-y vocal. That’s not a criticism, just a stylistic choice. But you can definitely bob your head to it, driving with one hand dangling out the window as you pull into The Emporium, right before you party at the Moon Tower. Alright, alright, alright.