“Fuck this rap shit – I listen to classical…”

The one and only time I met Baatin was back before the official release of Slum Village’s ‘Fantastic Vol. 2′. It was at a hotel in London, and at 11am on a sun-filled morning Baatin, T3 and myself sat outside on the patio for an interview. I can’t say it was a particularly revelatory session, and I mainly remember the paranoid publicist vehemently warning me not to ask them anything about Jay Dee (even in those days there were rumours of tensions within the group, though both Baatin and T3 were fine to talk about Dilla), that they ordered the type of drinks that came with umbrellas in them, and that when I asked them who the song ‘Players’ was about they laughed and said something along the lines of, “That’s some local cats – keep listening and all will be revealed.”

This was in the days when there was a hushed hype about this three-man crew from Detroit called Slum Village: At 1am on his BBC Worldwide radio show Gilles Peterson would rinse versions of tracks like ‘Jealousy’ and ‘2U4U’ long before rap deejays threw them into their mixtapes and shows; ?uestlove could be found interviewing the group for Blag magazine, talking about trying to recreate the tinny texture of the sound that played when you teased the plug from your headphones out just a tiny bit from the Walkman socket; vinyl bootlegs made up of a hodge-podge of alternate takes and songs culled from the ‘Fan-Tas-Tic Vol 1′ demo were sought after, and you could walk around in a secret world with your headphones broadcasting songs like an almost disco-esque track featuring Busta Rhymes (possibly titled ‘Hustle’, and probably the beginnings for what morphed into ‘What It’s All About’), a dustier take on the Pete Rock-featuring ‘Once Upon A Time’, or a version of ‘Forth And Back’ that unabashedly sampled ‘Funkin’ For Jamaica’.

Then, when ‘Fantastic Vol. 2′ finally saw an official release, I remember it being met with a slightly quizzical response: For every glowing genuflection about this new direction for rap, there were definitely other voices wondering just quite what all the fuss was meant to be about (no doubt helped by that misconstrued Q-Tip line on ‘Hold Tight’). Nevertheless – and, honestly, preferring the pre-release versions of songs I’d been feverishly listening to for the last six or so months, though through sheer familiarity not snobbishness – I remember buying the album and listening to it solidly for a couple of months (this being the days when you’d leave home with two or three carefully selected albums to see you through the day), and over that time lines from Baatin – the cat with the weirdly warped and textured vocal tone – became permanently ingrained in that part of the mind that catalogues rap lines.

Those days seem like a world away now. Finding out news of Baatin’s passing via a re-Tweeted post from Dwele brought home how things have changed: We’re living in a world where personal memories of rappers are fast being zapped in favour of zipping everything up into 140-character updates and rote right-click collecting. Baatin may never have troubled top ten emcee lists, but as someone who’s likely made songs that you’ve rocked on repeat, and rapped lines that you can quote to hand, doesn’t his legacy deserve a little more than snatching up all the unreleased and back-cat links that will crawl over the web during the next few days? (How about Paypalling a quid to his funeral fund after grabbing every 20 tracks? Didn’t think so.) If Drake were to pass away then there’s probably nothing more appropriate than a five million-viewed YouTube tribute, but Baatin came to modest fame in a different era, so maybe for this one it’s time to step back from the monitor and physically pull out an old Slum Village record that you remember picking up at the time and reminiscing the old fashioned way.

RIP Baatin – now I’ll be off to put the needle on the track and work out whether ‘Players’ really was all about Proof’s old crew… Phillip Mlynar