- Timeless street soul reissued with a fresh remix.
- If you were weaned on the platinum-tipped sounds of '90s US R&B, hip-hop and New Jack Swing, chances are the sound of UK street soul from that era feels a little off. The drum breaks are there, but the production has a home-darned quality, the vocals sweet and unpolished. The best street soul tracks boast a naïf, wide-eyed sound that one can also hear in early lover's rock, freestyle, house and grime, before rules are set for a genre and money floods in to capitalize on the new sound. In the past few years, this sound of inner-city Manchester—street soul tracks that were in the shadow of the export-friendly sound of Madchester—has become fetishized, the prices for these small batch white labels fetching ludicrous sums online. Few can match the scarcity of Bô'vel's "Check 4 U," a B-side that became a staple of Manchester pirate radio and black radio stations in 1996.
So rather than spring £1,995 for a copy, Be With reissues "Check 4 U" and offers a chance to properly assess a sound of Manchester that was overshadowed outside of Northern England. As Mark Rae recalled in a 2016 Noisey piece about street soul, "The Madchester stuff was a story being sold to the outside world. In… the rest of the inner city, it was all black music. All the heads that had the record stores in Manchester were selling jazz, funk, soul and hip-hop." Despite the spartan sound of "Check 4 U," one can hear flecks of funk, soul and hip-hop in the space between the bass throb, ringing chimes and the aching and saccharine R&B vocal.
The track is exquisite all on its own, but for good measure, Metrodome adds a remix to the flip. His "UK-Gee Remix" adds a dash of UK funky to the mix, showing how the tune easily blended into the 2-step of the era. After the starkness of the A-side, it feels a little busy, but it makes it into a more dance floor-friendly tune. It's hard to top the original though, which in its grooves suggests a simpler, sweeter time.
TracklistA Check 4 U
B Check 4 U (Metrodome UK-Gee Remix)