"You're just like my mom and dad, when I'm happy y'all make me sad..."
Song: u gotta groove
Artist: DJ Nagureo (Reo Nagumo)
Genre: HIP-HOP
First appearance: beatmania (1997)
What better track to kick off this blog than the first song in the first beatmania game? (Specifically, it's the first in the menu, the lowest-difficulty track in the game, and the first one played in Expert Mode.) u gotta groove adds a few extra flourishes of piano and guitar on top of the beat and rapping that you'd expect from the genre. Personally, I enjoy the groove (haha) the song settles into about 42 seconds in; the more complex bassline and funk-influenced clean guitar gives the whole thing a bit of cool smoothness, and the MC over the crowd noises does a good job of selling the fantasy of being a DJ at an underground club that beatmania is selling. Let me hear you say yeah!