He only released one single, but millions have heard Melvin Bliss’s music without realising it. A singer in naval bands with superstar aspirations, Bliss final got his break when New York songwriter/producer and ex-Exciter Herb Rooney sequestered him into a studio for his sole single. While A-side ‘Reward’ was a cultured slice of soulful yearning that brought Bliss’s vocal chops to the fore, B-side ‘Synthetic Substitution’ was an ahead-of-its time critique of a computerised future, it’s heartfelt plea “I’d be suspicious of a modern day scheme/Replacing a woman with a love machine” tapping into a similar android paranoia as Tubeway Army’s ‘Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ six years later. While the single flopped, and Bliss’s label Sunburst soon went bankrupt, its instantly recognisable Bernard Purdie drum break gave it a second life, sampled so heavily by 80s rap producers – it’s the basis of Ultramagnetic MCs ‘Ego Trippin’’, Naughty By Nature ‘O.P.P.’, De La Soul’s ‘Potholes In My Lawn’, the Pharcyde’s ‘Ya Mama’ and Onyx’s ‘Throw Ya Gunz’, to name just five – it’s practically part of hip-hop’s anatomy. While Bliss told The Guardian in 2010, just before his death, that he was yet to receive any recompense (“I’m sure I’ve got a lot of royalties coming from somewhere”), he was also endearingly modest about his and Rooney’s aspirations (“We just needed a B-side”), selling way short his incredible curveball creation – a great song in its own right, beyond all the heavy lifting its done for others.