The heart of crate digging culture has always been price. Back in the day, pioneering DJs invented the beat by looping drum fills from cheap 1960s funk and soul records. Then, record sellers caught on and raised the price of vintage funk records. Turntablists had to move on to the next cheap thing, like Spokane's beat making extraordinaire James Pants, snatching low-cost smaltzy '80s R&B, '80s and '90s (old skool) hip hop, and new age records from the bins—and making hits.

 Take “Lets Celebrate.” James Pants samples feel good wind chimes from your church's record collection and mixes them with the best bass synthesizer 1983 could provide. Its a jam. Or on the sly funk of “Space Date” he samples a Barry White wanna-be whispering “I want you for a girlfriend” but instead of feeling like the worst come on you've ever heard, he makes it feel like a commentary on the original track. The singer's desperation for a record deal, the studio's desperation for a hit, all wrapped up in the pathetic pick up line.

That's the beauty of James Pants; his campy sample sources aren't played for laughs. He makes them thump, the overwrought sexual metaphors of crappy R&B given new meaning through re-contextualization. See, what made these old records cheesey to begin with was their genesis as money grabs by callous studios in the 80s and early 90s. A corporation thought they could affix themselves to the Stevie Wonder trend and sell well-marketed yet half-baked manufactured R&B bands to the unsuspecting public.

But James Pants is the opposite. He is taking a corporate artifact and reshaping it into something personal without their permission. That's why you are laughing with James Pants. He has turned something soulless into something with heart.

 James Pants is playing at Chop Suey on April 25^th