Db major · Camelot 3B · 109 BPM
Block Rockin' Beats
by The Chemical Brothers
- 109
- BPM
- Db major
- Key
- 3B
- Camelot
- 61
- Danceability
- 2
- Acousticness
The Chemical Brothers recorded and produced "Block Rockin' Beats" at Orinoco Studios in South London, with engineering by Steve Dub and mastering by Mike Marsh at The Exchange in London. The track was built from samples: the drums came from Bernard Purdie's "Changes", while the vocal line "Back with another one of those block rockin' beats" was lifted from Schoolly D's 1989 song "Gucci Again". The bass sound was sampled from The Crusaders' "The Well's Gone Dry", and the opening bass riff resembles the intro to Pink Floyd's "Let There Be More Light". Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons wrote the song, with Schoolly D credited as a writer under his real name, Jesse Weaver.
Released in March 1997 by Freestyle Dust and Virgin Records, the single opened the duo's second album, Dig Your Own Hole, and topped the UK Singles Chart in its first week, on 30 March. It stayed at number one for a single week before falling to number eight. The record went silver in the UK after 200,000 copies were sold, and it later won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. In the United States it reached number 40 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Two edits of the track exist. The album version carries an intro, while the single version begins with the bass line. The B-side "Morning Lemon" also appeared on the second disc of the limited edition Singles 93–03, opening with a vocal sample of a man singing "Morning lemon" and closing with an Ice Cube sample.
Block Rockin' Beats runs at 109 BPM, the tempo of mid-tempo pop, dancehall and indie. In classical terms it sits in moderato territory. A bar of 4/4 lasts 2.2 seconds, and a quarter-note delay is 550 ms. It is in Db major, Camelot 3B, which shares its notes with Bb minor and mixes cleanly with F# major and Ab major.
We use multiple sources as part of our online research for the song story including Wikipedia.