Category: Production

Interview: Kenny Segal on “Maps”, Low End Theory, working with Pink Navel, and more

Photo credit: Tim Fish / GingerSlim

Veteran L.A. producer Kenny Segal has already been behind one of the year’s best hip hop releases, thanks to Maps, his second collaboration with New York rapper, billy woods. Now he’s set to score another win with his upcoming album with Ruby Yacht artist, Pink Navel. GingerSlim recently spoke with him to discuss the two albums, as well as his roots in the L.A. scene, his early love for drum & bass and his work with Jefferson Park Boys.

How you doing, man? How’s everything going?

Things are good. Had a bit of a hectic morning but I’m here and we’re finally making this happen after many tries.

I know, yeah. You seem to be in a perpetual state of activity whenever we exchange emails.

Yeeah, summer’s been very busy and abnormally so for me because I don’t usually tour that much, especially not since the pandemic. And you’ve seen how on this tour we’re on little short runs, so instead of it being one big chunk where I’m gone for a month, it’s been three months where I’ve gone for a week, then home for a week…

Is that harder to manage?

Well on one hand I like it, in that being on a long, gruelling tour… and gruelling is the operative word, I’ve been on a tour where we’ve done 30 gigs in a row, which definitely wears on you physically. But I’m not that great at hopping back into regular life. Like my homie Mr Carmack, from the Jefferson Park Boys, he’s perpetually on tour every weekend. He doesn’t go on long tours but he goes out of town almost every weekend for a gig. I don’t know how he does that shit. He comes home and just jumps right back into life, takes care of shit and then heads out of town again. For me, when I get back, it takes me a few days just to get back into the flow of things.

Do you like touring, aside from that element?

Yes and no. I’m more of a homebody, I would probably rather be at home making music and doing my own thing. But that being said, it’s undoubtedly fun. I mean touring – and it’s funny cos Maps is all about this – ultimately the majority is not fun, but then the parts that are fun are so awesome that it kinda makes up for all the other stuff.

And do you enjoy being in the spotlight like that? Are you that sort of performer, or do you prefer to be anonymous in the background?

I’m not a natural performer. I have grown over the years to be better at being a performer and to accept it and enjoy it more. If you’d asked me that a decade ago, I would have told you that I absolutely do not enjoy being on stage, or being in the spotlight whatsoever. I’ve got better at it from repetition and just from being a part of it, you start to enjoy it and cosy up to it more. In my head, if Flying Lotus had never happened and turned producers into artists… back when I first started, producers were not artists. Producers were just part of the people making the record. But over the last two decades that has completely switched, to the point where sometimes producers are bigger than the artists themselves. I was maybe being a little cheeky in my reference, but to me Flying Lotus was kinda like the person who made that shift back when he first became popular. If that had never happened, I would have been perfectly happy as a background player, toiling away and making stuff in the studio – knowing that I did a good job, but no one else knowing about it. But that’s just not the reality we live in anymore.

I wanted to go back to the beginning, because I know you’re from the East Coast originally and that a lot of the rap you listened to back then was East Coast. Do you feel like your music would have been a lot different if you had stayed there instead of moving to L.A.?

Hmmm not necessarily because I was always into being experimental. Definitely as far as hip hop goes my original references were mainly East Coast. Although very early on I had a dubbed copy of AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted, but I was totally unaware of Project Blowed or any of that. I was more into Gang Starr and all the DJ Premier stuff, like Group Home and Jeru Tha Damaja. Then when Wu-Tang happened, I was into Wu-Tang. But the music I was making, which I was already doing when I was in high school, well I was more into the rave scene than hip hop back then. I was much more into electronic music. I was into early drum & bass and minimal techno, like Plastikman and the Detroit stuff where it was really minimal. So the music I was making at the time was more like rave music. I was making experimental breakbeat tracks and some techno tracks. So early on I was into weird stuff. Yes I was listening to Gang Starr but I don’t think that was a big influence on me. If anything, it wasn’t until I moved to L.A. for college and met the Project Blowed rappers at Konkrete Jungle, that was when hip hop started being more of a musical influence on me, as opposed to just being something I listened to for fun.

Okay and so when you did transition into hip hop, was it easy for you? Did it feel like a natural fit?

Yes but more because I didn’t look at it as a transition at the time. I just made beats and I didn’t look at them as techno beats, or drum & bass beats, I just made all sorts of beats. So to me, making a hip hop was just me making a slower beat. And at the time – I think I’ve told this in some other interviews – my roommate was selling weed and a lot of the rappers from Project Blowed would hang out at Konkrete Jungle, which was Daddy Kev’s club before Low End Theory. Some of them started coming over to my dorm to buy weed from my roommate and Peace – who I think Daddy Kev actually bought over to my dorm – he heard me making a beat that wasn’t a drum & bass beat and he’s like, “Let me rap on that”. And that actually became the song “FakinDaFunk” on the album Megabite. That was literally the first time anyone had ever rapped on my beats and that was the first time that I ever thought that I was trying to make something for someone to rap on. For quite a while after that I wasn’t ever really making a hip hop beat, I was just making beats that weren’t as fast. It wasn’t until a bit later that I thought, alright now I’m making hip hop beats, so now I’ve got to think about that aspect of it a little bit more. So it was kind of a natural transition, brought about by the people I was around at the time. P.E.A.C.E. is arguably one of the best freestylers of all time, so to have someone like that just hanging round your house, smoking weed and freestyling, it rubs off on you.

Yeah, it must be infectious. Just going back to what you said about early drum & bass. I’m from Bristol in the UK, which was one of the major cities in its development, but at the time it felt like a very British thing. Was it a very big scene in L.A.?

So definitely in L.A. and even in D.C. When I was growing up and in high school in D.C., it was basically progressive house and drum & bass. There was no happy hardcore or any of the other type of rave genres at the time. There was a club called Buzz that was pretty seminal in D.C. at the time and they would bring out all the UK DJs, like Roni Size, the Renegade Hardware dudes, so all of that was happening. But then when I got to L.A., it was a weird shift for me because it was all happy hardcore and drum & bass, and it was much more ‘ravey’ at first. But because of people like DJ Hive and Daddy Kev himself, with their label Celestial, I really feel like at the time – I mean, you’re more of an expert than me – L.A. was really the centre of drum & bass outside of the UK. Or that’s what it felt like for quite a while. Then when Konkrete Jungle got established, that completely solidified the fact that drum & bass lived in Los Angeles and all the big dudes were coming out there too at the time. Then we had Respect as well, which was another big drum & bass club that still goes on to this day. So between Respect and Konkrete Jungle, every big UK act was playing in L.A. very regularly at the time.

That’s mad. So what year was this?

I moved to L.A. in ‘97. I think Konkrete Jungle started in ‘99, so it would’ve been from then until around 2002.

Yeah, so I would’ve been 18-19 when that started. I was going to raves but I think because this was early internet days, everything still felt quite insular, it was very local. So I had no idea about what was going on in L.A. beyond the hip hop I was exposed to.

Well similar to how when Low End Theory was happening, it felt like the entire world was paying attention to what was happening in L.A., and at the time we were all paying attention to what was happening in Bristol, London and Manchester [laughs]. Cos Roni Size is from Bristol right? His music was very influential to me when I was fooling around with drum & bass, because he was one of the ones who started putting jazz into the music and his approach even had more of a hip hop feel. I was also really into Danny Breaks back in the day and he was doing this sort of hip hop / drum & bass hybrid stuff as well early on.

Yeah, well obviously in Bristol before Roni Size blew up, we had Portishead and Massive Attack, so there had always been that sort of fusion of genres.

Totally. At the time I was also into Portishead and Tricky, all of that. And in fact, bringing it full circle, me and woods are opening up for Unkle in a couple of weeks.

Oh wow.

I don’t really know what James Lavelle is up to at this moment if I’m honest, but back when he was doing the stuff with DJ Shadow, that was very formative for me with my production ideas.

I still think that’s some of Shadow’s best work on Psyence Fiction. And who else was putting Kool G Rap and Richard Ashcroft on the same album?

[laughs]

Just talking about Low End Theory, how much has the musical landscape in L.A. changed since then? Is there still that same sense of community?

Yes, I mean one thing that I will say that Daddy Kev is the master of is building communities. He did that with Konkrete Jungle originally, he did that with Low End Theory for something like 12 years and now he has this new club, Scenario. Although it’s a different thing from Low End Theory, it’s a much smaller space that it’s held at, it has a very similar sense of community. And if anything, I think he’s really dialled in to the early days of Low End Theory. It had a number of phases over those 12 years but in the early days, one of the coolest things to me was that you never knew what you were going to get there. You’d go there and one week there would be a band playing and another week there would be a rapper and then another week it would be just straight electronic music. Then there might be someone playing trap music in between all of this stuff as the DJ. It was just such a melting pot. And there was definitely music that I didn’t think I was into, that I would hear and be like, oh shit I actually really like this. Like trap, I never would have been into that at all if it wasn’t for Low End Theory. And now Scenario similarly is back into those days. It’s very different week to week the music they play there and everyone is just down to come along for the ride and be exposed to stuff. Which I think is a very cool thing.

Yeah, that sounds cool. I’m glad to hear there’s still stuff going on. Obviously you’ve been interested in music since a young age, so where do that first come from? Were your parents musical at all?

I wish I could say I was from some cool musical family but not really. My dad was a personal injury attorney and my mom was a housewife… I mean certainly my dad had a record collection; he was into 70’s rock but it’s not even like I grew up in a house where he was playing a lot of music. My mom played oldies on the radio when we were in the car… that being said, my parents really encouraged me in elementary school to take piano lessons and then I started playing cello in middle school in the school orchestra. I don’t know if I would have gone on those musical journeys if they hadn’t encouraged me to do that. But very early on, at least the way my parents tell it, I was more interested in making original music than learning the instrument. When I got my cello for instance, I was never super good and I never liked to practise. Instead of practising I would write songs and record them. At the time my parents had a very early Tandy computer with a Sound Blaster sound card and I had some tiny sort of Radio Shack mic. Then I had his kids walkie-talkie that I disassembled and turned into a pickup for my cello. I would record into this program I had called Cool Edit, which was like an early Windows program that let you multitrack. Then we got the internet shortly after that and I discovered FastTracker, which is when I really started making beats, in maybe 11th grade or something like that. And the funny thing is that some of that came out of the fact was that I had this friend and we were really nerdy computer guys. Like we loved the Doom, if you remember that game? And we had this Doom level editor, where you could make your own levels. So we were really into that and then I think you could add music as well. This was before MP3s were invented, so music files were ginormous. But trackers let you have the sequence and the samples in a small package, so a lot of video games used them. I think I got FastTracker originally because I was trying to write a song for one of our Doom levels, but then once I had this playground where I could record audio, then sample it and play it back at different pitches, that just opened everything up. It’s literally 30 years later and I’m still tripping off how much fun that is.

Yeah, that’s beautiful. Now just coming back to Maps for a moment, was it liberating being able to make  a second album with woods, that deliberately didn’t follow on from the first album?

I don’t know if liberating is the right word. I’m cosying up to the idea now because I’ve done it successfully a few times, but originally I was very not into the idea of doing follow-ups for anything. Like after me and R.A.P. Ferreira did So the Flies Don’t Come, we kept on working with one another, but the idea of making a whole album together, it took like five years before we did Purple Moonlight Pages. To me, as a fan, I know how I view these things. You’re always going to be comparing it to what the person did last and it just seems like a losing proposition a lot of the time – doing a follow-up to something that people really love. So I don’t know if liberating is the right word but I’ve now discovered that I get a sense of when it’s the right time… obviously it’s not just me – it’s woods, or R.A.P. Ferreira or whoever I’m working with – we get a sense that we’ve grown enough and we have new stuff to say. I think that’s the real pitfall that people can sometimes fall into: going back to the same well that you were just drawing from. Sometimes it can happen very quickly that you have new inspiration, but you have to wait until you have new life experience, new things to draw upon. I dunno, maybe I’m generalising this and I should just talk for myself, but to me it’s not fun to do the same thing again. Part of the fun of making art to me is constantly exploring new stuff. So making the same album, or just trying to find a new twist of what you’ve already done, that’s not very fun to me. So I’m always trying to do something new. With that being said, Maps was super fun in that we already had a rapport and a friendship. When you have a deep rapport, it always makes it into more of a shared journey, rather than a personal struggle [laughs]. So yes, we had a lot of fun making Maps but ‘liberating’ would probably be the wrong adjective.

Okay yeah, that makes sense. Now the album, along with a lot of your production, has quite a heavy jazz influence. Was that a genre you were interested in before you started making beats?

Yeah, I like listening to jazz and I certainly went through a period in my life where I was pretty obsessed with it. But I would also say that it’s a specific type of jazz that I like to sample. It’s not like all jazz. I’m not a big Wynton Marsalis kind of dude. I’m definitely more in the Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, spiritual school of jazz. I just enjoy interesting forms of music, where things are unexpected. Where there are harmonies or melodies that you don’t expect, or tonalities that you don’t expect, or timbres that are being matched together unexpectedly, and jazz has a lot of that. Now there’s plenty of jazz that doesn’t have that and that stuff is boring to me… I will say though, that people tend to think I sample a lot of jazz but I think I sample all sorts of things. I certainly don’t go around thinking I only sample jazz records, in fact sometimes I specifically try not to sample jazz and do something different.

Oh it’s definitely only one element of your overall sound, but it felt quite dominant on Maps.

On Maps it certainly skewed towards it, but it just kind of evolved that way. Some of the initial songs that worked out really good were like that and I so I started pursuing that kind of sound. I would say that Maps is probably my most sample-heavy album. I mean all of my music is samples-based, but Maps is a lot more traditional – actually I don’t know if that is the right word because I don’t think anything is very traditional sounding about my beats… I dunno, it’s hard to talk about yourself like that. I’ll just quit while I’m ahead on that one.

[laughs] So is that your normal approach to making an album, you find the direction it will take as it progresses?

I mean there is always a little bit of a plan. With Maps the plan was just not to do Hiding Places! But usually albums just start with me sending a whole bunch of random beats to someone, throwing shit up against the wall and seeing what sticks. Then we usually see some things as they work out… in fact, one thing I’ll correct that I’ve stated in previous interviews, is that the beat pack that I originally sent to woods for Maps – which had about 15 beats in it – I think in another interview I said that only one of those beats ended up being on the album. Well I went back recently and listened to that beat pack and actually four of them ended up as songs. The beats for “Rapper Weed”, “Soft Landing”, “Bad Dreams Are Only Dreams” and “The Layover”. Now “The Layover” and “Bad Dreams Are Only Dreams” we didn’t use until much later on, but “Soft Landing” and “Rapper Weed” were some of the first songs we did. Then each beat pack after that we used much more of the contents because I was a lot more dialled in by that point. But it was really “Soft Landing” and “Rapper Weed” that made me hear a sound emerging and also to see a new synergy with the way woods sounded on my music that was very different from Hiding Places. It’s funny because I was just talking to woods about this in Vancouver, when we were trying to remember why it was we had originally decided to do Hiding Places. We couldn’t quite remember, but I was telling him the one thing that I could remember is that when I first started wanting to work with him, it was after I had given ELUCID the beat that became “Pergamum” on Rome. The second half is just like this very minimal beat and woods’ verse just sounds so dope on it, that to me was like the thesis statement originally where I was like, holy shit this dude’s voice sounds amazing on this beat, we’ve gotta do more of this! And so I think “Rapper Weed” was that moment for me with Maps, where I thought his voice sounded really different to how it had in other situations and I really wanted to explore it more.

We mentioned it briefly before, but I’m a big fan of your work with The Jefferson Parks Boys. How did you guys first come together?

Back in 2011 or 2012, there was a group called Team Supreme that I was a part of. Team Supreme, for those who don’t know, was basically like a beat cypher. It was a bunch of kids who were originally friends from a music making class, at a college in California. They started having a weekly beat cypher, where one person would choose a sample and then send it to his friends. Now at the time I still had a day job at a studio doing music for TV shows. I was going to Low End Theory a lot and I was good friends with DJ Nobody, who was one of the residents there. He somehow got on to the email invite for the Team Supreme cypher no. 1 or 2 and I’m pretty sure he posted his beat on Facebook or something. I was like, oh shit this sounds like fun, I want to do that. So I literally just sent Team Supreme a message to their Facebook page, like, “Hey my name’s Kenny, I make beats and I would love to be a part of this”. Great Dane, who was in charge of it at the time, he wrote back immediately and said sorry but it was only for friends, like an invite only thing. But then I think he Googled me and at that time I had already done stuff with Abstract Rude and I had already put out the album with P.E.A.C.E., so he was like, “Oh dude we’d be so honoured if you’d be a part of it!” – They were all just kids back then who had no credits at all. So I started making beats for their weekly cyphers and we didn’t know each other, but then they decided to do a show and that was the first time I met them. Mr. Carmack and Mike Parvisi were members of Team Supreme at the time and so that’s how we initially became friends. Then there was this moment, because I had just bought a house – which was a big milestone – and everyone else were college kids so they all started crashing at my house a lot. We’d go out and party, or we’d have a show, a lot of people would crash at my house. And Mr. Carmack, who lived in San Francisco at the time, when he would come to town for a Team Supreme event, he would crash at my crib for a couple of days. The neighbourhood was called Jefferson Park and they all loved it so much, so when they started to graduate they all rented a house right down the street from me. Then that was kinda like a gateway, because then Mr. Carmack moved out and got a different house in the neighbourhood, then Mike Parvisi did the same thing. So Jefferson Park Boys came out of a time in 2017, 2018, when me, Mike and Mr. Carmack were hanging out together all the time. We each had studios in our houses, so we’d make beats for the first part of the day and then just graze around the different studios, adding stuff to each other’s beats, smoking weed and having fun. That was what Jefferson Park Boys was all about.

And so, will we hear more from you guys in the future? Have you got anything else planned?

I mean we’re still all best friends. Unfortunately, Mike has now moved out of the neighbourhood so he lived about an hour away from us and then just last week he moved to Boston, so now he’s on the other side of the country. But me and Mr. Carmack still live down the street from each other… in fact, we’ve had half of another project done for like a year and a half now, so we will definitely have more stuff. And we’ve been looking for another artist to work with, because I’m even more excited about producing an album for an artist than I am about doing an instrumental project, like the way we did for R.A.P. Ferreira. There are little seeds being planted for that at the moment, so I’d say within the next year you will hear something. Also, Jefferson Park Boys are always doing stuff, like on the new Pink Navel album Mike Parvisi’s on a song, Carmack’s on a song. Even on Maps, with “As the Crow Flies”, it’s basically a Jefferson Park Boys beat. So it’s inevitable that there is always music being made by the three of us, just because we’re all friends and we’re constantly working together. But as far as a formal project, that’s definitely in the works, just with no actual timeline at the moment.

Okay, well good to know. And what about the more immediate future? I know you’ve got the Pink Navel album coming…

Yeah, I’m very excited about that. It’s coming out on Ruby Yacht. This album was made concurrently with Maps – in fact I made like four albums concurrently in 2022… this will be the second one to come out. There’s still an Abstract Rude one that may come out by the end of the year, or the beginning of next year, and an album with a singer named Benjamin Booker, the guy who sings on “Baby Steps”. We have a whole project which is also fairly complete that we’re shopping around. But back to Pink Navel – this album’s amazing is all I have to say. I think beat-wise it is as exciting as Maps. It has a lot of cool experimental beats that I’m very proud of. And Pink Navel was already an amazing rapper, but they have stepped up their game in every way on this album. The reason I wanted to work them in the first place, I mean not only are we friends and we have a rapport, but also although they make music that is nerdy and appeals to a certain type of hip hop fan – and I think this is true of R.A.P. Ferreira also – they have bars! On just an objective level, he is a very good rapper and I don’t think people have recognised that as much because it’s hidden beneath so many layers of different aesthetics of nerdiness. But this album really lets Pink Navel shine and will show that not only do they have really cool ideas and artistry, they’ve also got bars. So I’m very excited for people to hear it. Also, one last thing I’m going to plug is that I have a video game that I’ve created myself and that I coded, that’s coming out with the album. I’m really excited to have people play it because I legit think it’s a fun video game. It’s already an interesting thing when you put music out and you get to see other people enjoy it and react to it. But music is something that’s a very personal enjoyment, so it’s going to be interesting seeing people playing the video game. I feel that’s another aspect of seeing people react to something that’ll be unique, that I’m looking forward to.

***

Follow Kenny Segal on X, Instagram and Spotify. 

Gingerslim has been a hip-hop fan since 1994 and has written for various blogs and websites since around 2006. During that time he has contributed to The Wire, style43, Think Zebra, Headsknow, Front Magazine and more. His main interests in rap are UK hip-hop and the underground movement in America, with a focus on Rhymesayers Entertainment and the once mighty Def Jux label. He lives in Bristol and has a beard. All other details are sketchy at best. Read his own hip-hop blog and follow him here.

Interview: Preservation

Preservation is perhaps best known for his extensive work with Mos Def, his production for the GZA, Roc Marciano, Your Old Droog, Mach-Hommy, billy woods and countless others, and for being one half of Dr. Yen Lo with Ka. His most recent album, Eastern Medicine, Western Illness, is possibly his finest album yet. He recently spoke to Gingerslim about the project, and how it was influenced by Preservation’s time in Hong Kong.

How’s everything gone with the release so far? I’ve seen a lot of positive reviews in circulation.

It’s been good. Feels great to finally have it out on all platforms and physical.  Specifically I’m really proud of how the limited edition double cassette came out.  I always wanted to do a custom packaging with an exclusive element which is the beat tape.

I read that the album was created from a challenge you set yourself, where you wanted to make a project solely using records you had found while digging in Hong Kong. I was wondering what sort of records you had to work with initially and were they fairly typical finds for Chinese record shops?

A lot of the local records I was discovering in Hong Kong did not have much variation in styles of music, so it made it a challenge to find the right loops and pieces that would work with my style and the MC’s I was envisioning for the record. I had to listen to a lot of music before I found that one gem that popped out amongst the rest, so creatively it made me have to dig deeper. Most of the music from the 60’s and 70’s were based on what was popular at the time. Cha Cha, Go Go etc.. Most of the lyrics were sung in Mandarin with a lot of the records coming from Taiwan and Singapore. Then in the 70’s more songs were being recorded in Cantonese developing into Cantopop created in Hong Kong.

What had drawn you to Hong Kong initially?

I first went in 96 to visit a friend but later I came a few times to do shows with Yasiin Bey. Then in 2014 my wife relocated for her job to the Hong Kong office. Initially it was going to be a 6 month stay but ended up being 3 years. I always had a connection with the city growing up watching movies from there and being fascinated with the culture.

With regards to the album’s title, what do you view as the West’s illness and does the East really hold the cure / answers?

First and foremost my intention was to put what I consider the illest Mc’s from the west on the sounds of the East. During my 3-year stay starting in 2014, I witnessed the student umbrella protest movement in HK, mirrored with the negative news coming in from the West including Trump’s election, mass shootings and the continued police oppression and killing of black lives. The act of creating was my solace.  I feel there is a different way of going about healing in the East through more handed down traditional methods and also a strong respect for family. Turn on the TV and it’s obvious no region in the world holds the cure, but for me this experience was therapeutic and hopefully that resonates with the listeners.

The list of guest spots is beyond impressive. Did you have a fairly good idea of who you wanted to work with when you started production, or did it evolve more organically as things progressed?

I created a list of people I knew and worked with in the past and also artists that I was listening to at the time I was living in Hong Kong, like Tree, Mach, Grande etc… Ka was instrumental in bringing the album together and making a lot of those connections with artists I didn’t know personally. Most of the time I make music with people I already have a relationship with but in this case a lot of the artists were inspiring the sound I was making for the album so I was open to making new relationships through the music.

Did the album lead you in any new directions that you hadn’t envisioned when you began working on it? Did you notice any shift in your usual production techniques or anything like that?

In the past, I was doing music with loops and no drums, then during the Dr. Yen Lo sessions, I was learning a lot from Ka about opening things up even more and letting samples just ride. My thing is layering and creating a collage of sound. For Eastern Medicine, Western Illness, I felt like I was bringing some of the elements I used to do before and after Yen Lo and trying to blend them including adding drum loops here and there.  I think “A Cure For The Common” and “Lemon Rinds” capture that direction.

What is the Hong Kong hip hop scene like in general; is there much struggle with censorship or anything like that? For example, are there any politically-minded local artists making music?

Hong Kong has a large EDM scene stemming out of a heavy disco/club culture coming out of the 70’s and 80’s. Hip Hop isn’t that popular but has a small underground community. The Graffiti and street art element is very big and the B-boy scene got some things going on as well. There is a group called LMF from the 90’s still doing their thing. I think it was the only Chinese speaking Hip Hop group signed to a major label at the time. A lot of the younger mc’s now are doing the trap sound with some doing boom bap sound as well. As far as the lyrics go, I’m not exactly sure what most of the content is, but I would guess that some of it is speaking about certain day to day issues and political oppression. Censorship is definitely becoming an issue more and more especially with recent events including the student movements and the Hong Kong national security law.

Sticking with that subject, how did you and Young Queenz end up working together?

It was important to me to have a local Hong Kong artist be a part of this album and represent and draw the listener into the city. I was combing through YouTube videos of Hong Kong rappers, but couldn’t really find anyone that could match the vocal tones I anticipated would end up on the album. I asked Gary Leong who runs White Noise Records, a local vinyl shop that specializes in new music. He mentioned Queenz and hit me with his cd. It was heavily influenced by 90’s hip hop and you could tell he studied the craft – but it was his voice which stood out. Heavy and raspy, so automatically I felt that he could fit in the sound of the album.  Turned out that a friend knew his manager and made the link. I went to go see him perform at one of the few underground music venues in Hong Kong. The place was packed to capacity and headlining was LMF, the veteran hip hop group. Young Queenz took the stage with his crew, Wildstyle records and did a whole trap set. I wasn’t expecting that kind of sound because of the CD’s boom bap sound but saw in the moment that he was a special artist taking full control of the stage and audience.

I was wondering if you have any aspirations to use this creative model in any other countries?

Hong Kong is a great jumping off city to visit other countries in the region and I took advantage of that during my stay. So, I’ll definitely be releasing some projects related to the music I was fortunate enough to acquire during my travels.

***

Eastern Medicine, Western Illness is out now on Nature Sounds. Visit Preservation’s site for more about his music, and follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Gingerslim has been a hip-hop fan since 1994 and has written for various blogs and websites since around 2006. During that time he has contributed to The Wire, style43, Think Zebra, Headsknow, Front Magazine and more. His main interests in rap are UK hip-hop and the underground movement in America, with a focus on Rhymesayers Entertainment and the once mighty Def Jux label. He lives in Bristol and has a beard. All other details are sketchy at best. Read his own hip-hop blog and follow him here. 

Exclusive Premiere: Justo The MC & maticulous – ‘County of Kings’ + Interview

Today we’re excited to bring you the premiere of the new album from Justo the MC and producer maticulous, County of Kings. A follow-up to last year’s Mind Of A Man, the new project is more of what you’d expect from the true-school duo. Hit play below to listen now, and keep scrolling for our interview with maticulous.

Tell us what people can expect from the new album with Justo The MC, County of Kings?

First off, thank you for reaching out, it’s good to talk with you! I think what people can expect is the evolution in chemistry we’ve had making records over the past two years. I’m very proud of Mind Of A Man, the first record we did in January  2019. It was organic and we’ve really just relied on our ear and creativity to guide us through each project and County Of Kings builds upon that. You never want to make the same album over and over…

Its about only been about 18 months since Mind of A Man, and a year since the Bonus Room EP. Do you guys tend to record new shit pretty much non-stop, or do you just have plenty of music in the vaults ready to go when you feel the time is right?

When we first started working on songs it was just to see if it’d progress into a full project. Since finishing Mind Of A Man, we’ve been consistently working and building projects. Bonus Room came to be because we were in a really chill/vibe-out type zone for a few months while working on Mind Of A Man. The Bonus Room tracks did not fit the energy of the album, but it turned into a Summer EP.

Has the way you guys work together changed or evolved much since you first started collaborating?

For sure, working on this much music you develop a brotherhood. More ideas spark and get bounced back and forth and I think it makes the music better overall. All organic, nothing is forced or trying to fit in a certain lane, just trying to create high quality hip-hop from our perspective.

The first time you really caught our ear as a producer was with The maticulous LP in 2015, which we posted about a lot at the time. It had a great mix of emcees on there (Masta Ace, Your Old Droog, Guilty Simpson, Blu and more), and I’m curious as to how you chose who you wanted to feature, and do you craft beats with specific artists in mind?

Thank you. When I do producer projects I map out instrumentals and sequence it to have an album-feel as opposed to just a compilation of tracks. Once I have them all sorted, I’ll reach out to the emcees that I feel would best represent each sound. I also enjoy featuring artists that have never worked on tracks together before — for example RA The Rugged Man with Duck Down artists on “Body The Beat”, Blu and Masta Ace on “Bet Your Life”, Fame and Rah Digga on “Black Hoodie Rap”, etc. It’s fun approaching it from a fan point-of-view!

This leads nicely to the inevitable question about which rappers are on your list of who you’d love to have over your production. 

Black Thought, Anderson .Paak, Phonte, Freddie Gibbs, Nas… I could go on, haha!

How has lockdown been for you creatively? I think it was El-P who tweeted a few weeks back how a lot of artists probably thought they’d be mad productive during this time, but how art doesn’t always come out that way, when you have free time. How are you finding it?

El-P is 100% correct! It takes a while to figure out your own process as an artist and finding what process brings you the most fulfilment. My productivity comes in waves, and when I’m inspired I want to work all the time, and if I’m not I don’t. However, telling an artist they have unlimited free time can be crippling because too many times I’ve tried to force things and I end up regretting the time I spent.

Do you tend to work with rappers in person? I ask, because that cohesive sound you only get when a producer and emcee actually make music together in the studio is definitely something that Covid 19 is effecting. 

Working in person on any level is my favorite, whether it’s just playing beats, recording, or mixing. It’s more productive than sending e-files back and forth. You miss the energy and the collaboration of doing everything over the internet. This is not to say you can’t make dope music strictly that way… in my experience I’d say it’s been a 50/50 mix.

Lastly, what can we expect from you next now that County of Kings is out?

Justo and I are in the midst of our third album. All the beats have been crafted and lyrics written… recording and post production next. Our workflow is enjoyable because he doesn’t subscribe to a certain sound or whatever the flavor of the moment is. I’m always creating, stacking beats, sometimes you’ll hear where my vibe is when I post some snippets on my IG. I appreciate the questions, thank you to all your readers and supporters of the music!

***

Purchase County of Kings here. Follow Justo the MC on Twitter and Instagram here and here, and maticulous here and here. Interview by Grown Up Rap Editor Ben Pedroche.

Nobody Beats The Baz

Words by Dave Waller.

A few years ago, many followers of Mass Appeal’s Rhythm Roulette series noticed a glitch in the Matrix. Alongside the regular films of 9th Wonder, El-P and Large Professor testing their beatmaking chops on random records, there emerged a clip fronted by a middle-aged English bloke in wire-frame specs, a needle-sharp v-neck sweater and a lemon shirt, clutching a carrier bag from Lidl. “I’m Barry Beats,” he said, before ducking through the door of a record shop. Inside, he blind-picked an INXS 12”, some AC-DC and the Hair soundtrack. Then he got busy in Pro Tools and duly unleashed heat.

The clip somehow found its way into Mass Appeal’s official rotation, and has since racked up close to half a million views and hundreds of comments – the vast majority of which can’t get over how someone as unhip-hop as this guy could be banging out that kind of beat. There are a lot of Ned Flanders comparisons. Walter White. Lenny from Memento. He was called the ‘dirty old man of hiphop’, and a ‘korny ass mutha fucker’.

Then there was this: ‘If this cat had 2-3 dead boys n his closet and one cut up and stuffed in his bed I would tell anyone thats not even the craziest shizt I seen him do.’ [Sic]

Indeed, despite all the confusion, there was one sentiment that drove the response: this weird-looking dude is lit.

Digging for a living

Should you ever find yourself in the town of Camborne, deep in the rural English county of Cornwall, you’ll feel the past. The town is dissected by long terraces of granite cottages built back in the 18th Century, for men who spent their lives underground in a perilous hunt for tin. Back then, Camborne was the richest mining area in the world. But all that bustle, industry and purpose is now a distant memory, hanging heavy over the town like the mist that still hugs its hills. These days those streets are dotted with bored kids, old folk and shops struggling to survive.

Today I’m in a particularly weird example of the latter, one full of thick carpet, lavender and trinkets. I’m here following local resident Barry Beats, clad today in slick bottle-green wool-felt slacks. He strides purposefully up the stairs, past Miss Molly’s Tea Room and a terrifying display of old Dutch dolls, and through a room of floral drapes and paintings of pink carnations. Well-honed instincts lead him to a corner annex, where he discovers a rich vein of old vinyl. “This one looks good,” he says, extracting a battered copy of Non-Stop Latin Party. Price: 20p.

Newcomers may be happy speculating over the contents of Barry’s locked attic, but those of a certain vintage may be aware of the man’s real secret – he was once half of production duo The Creators, going under his old alias of Si Spex. As well as doing remix work for Dilated Peoples and Nas, The Creators released one full-length LP, The Weight, back in 2000. It was a transatlantic banger, with Mos Def and Talib Kweli, El Da Sensei and Dilated all gracing the mic.

In the wake of that LP, Barry got hit with label troubles, and his MPC got shut in the loft while he went out delivering Chinese takeaways to make ends meet, and to fund a troubling addiction to model railways. But now Barry is back and dropping his debut solo release, the instrumental ‘2 Sides of Barry’, on King of the Beats records. The sound is what Barry calls ‘new bap’: crisp, tight and funky with hard drums and playful edits. On the first side of the record, everything is sampled. On the other side, Barry deftly twists software instruments to perfectly ape ’70s easy listening LPs from the charity shop crates.

It’s a sound he knows well. “My brain is programmed with a default mode to sniff out records wherever,” he says. “The other day I went to the car park at Carn Brea Leisure Centre, which had three stalls of records. One guy just kept pulling Bags for Life with records in out of his car boot. Then I popped into Pool Market, which had four stalls next to a fun fair – one of which was a pick-up truck with the entire back-end full of records. I’ll always be diverted to get records.”

I watch as Barry contorts among the cramped shelves, hunching his back, his knees creaking to the floor. These days he could just sit on his arse with a mug of Yorkshire Tea and sample stuff from YouTube. But, he says, “the discovery is the joy”. He goes off to pay for his pile, smiling as he recalls once finding a solid break on a Wombles record. Then, much to the bafflement of the shop owner, he tries haggling for 50p off.

Chopping it up

We head back down the stairs and sit in Molly’s Tea Room, to share a couple of saffron buns and blow the dust off Barry’s stash – which includes Peter Skellern’s ‘You’re a Lady’, a Pebble Mill LP and a flexidisc selling the Magicair ‘salon-style home hair dryer’. It doesn’t look promising. But, as Barry says, that’s the alchemical art here: creating gold where you really have no right to.

“Pete Rock’s work on Rahzel’s ‘All I know’ is ridiculous,” he says. “He uses Dorthy Ashby’s ‘Windmills of your Mind’, and what he gets out of it is just bonkers. The original isn’t really funky, but the way he chopped it is. That’s probably my favourite chop of all time – you can hardly even hear the little bits he took.” He bites into his bun, and then starts salivating over the back catalogue of DJ Premier. “He’s great at taking something from nothing,” Barry says. “On Royce da 5’9”’s ‘Boom’, the original is by Marc Hannibal, ‘Forever is a Long Long Time’, which is just really lightweight and terrible. Premier makes it sound so powerful and meaty.”

Many subscribers to Barry’s ‘School of Beats’ YouTube series have the same reaction to him. With his idiosyncratic approach to Ableton, he’s inventing his own methods to get the sounds he wants from the gear, recalling the early days of DJs first manipulating turntables to turn forgotten funk records into hip-hop classics. He’s a craftsman: drums are sampled, cleaned and chopped, and days can pass while he perfects a particular bass line. Barry points out that he came up in the age of the MPC, when it could take 40 minutes just to fill the pads – only to find what you had was crap. He’s now happy building a community around his generous online tutorials, but he still mourns that lost sense of struggle. “There’s no secrets in beat making now,” he says. “Back in the day you had no internet and had to learn it yourself.”

Barry’s own route in to hip-hop was typical for rural British kids in the ’80s (meeting breakers at the local monster truck show, getting LL Cool J tapes in Woolworths). But he was soon taking it further, following a growing curiosity into playing with four-tracks and early samplers. It was after a chance meeting at a Cornish holiday park that he hooked up with fellow Creator, Juliano, and the digging became serious. In the mid-90s, when break insanity was at its peak, and the top US producers were paying crazy dollar for records they knew their rivals hadn’t touched, Barry and Juliano would travel to the US to serve them with these mysterious European slabs. “The likes of Buckwild were getting paid $10k a track,” says Barry. “They’d do two or three tracks a week, and would go out and chuck thousands of dollars around at record fairs. We’d go over there with Top of the Pops records, and we could trade them for killer US funk breaks. I couldn’t tell you how many Playschool records we took over.”

It was, he says, an insane time – and not just because of the inflated market for local charity shop finds. Here was a Cornish lad who’d scored a backstage pass to the centre of hip-hop’s Golden Era. “After one record fair, I’m sat in the driver’s seat of Q-Tip’s Mercedes, next to Pete Rock. Tip’s in the back, and they’re playing our demos. They’re both freestyling over the beats, going: ‘Yep, that’s a good one’.”

And then?

“A week later I’m back in Cornwall, stood at the bus stop in Troon.”

Or your Honda or your Beemer…

There was a story about jeeps that emerged back when Q-Tip and Tribe Called Quest were still yet to release Low End Theory. The group would apparently make copies and rush them direct from the studio to the parking lot to hear how the bass sounded in the ride. They were crafting an album for a particular context, a certain time and place. A few weeks after our sojourn to Molly’s Tea Room, Barry offers to give me a test drive of the still unfinished ‘2 Sides of Barry’. I’m stood waiting in the centre of Camborne when a dark blue Hyundai i30 pulls up, and Barry stretches across to the passenger window. “Jump in, pard,” he says. I sit on a Fruit Salad chew.

Barry kicks off my tour of Camborne’s back streets. Pointing as we pass one property, he tells me it’s home to local ghost hunters, Terry and Tracy. “They reckon they’ve got the best ghost footage in the UK,” he says. “They wanted me to clean up the audio on it. It’s probably just interference from local radio, but they’re convinced it’s little girls.”

The album kicks off with the familiar bells and Fender Rhodes from Bob James’ ‘Take Me to the Mardi Gras’, instantly mangled into new shapes under some scratched spoken word. Barry explains how, for the first side of the record, he wanted to take hip-hop staples and find a way to flip them in a way that still feels fresh. Soon massive uplifting drums rumble under ‘Harlem Shuffle’, while Bobby Byrd’s ‘I Know You Got Soul’ is chopped to within an inch of its life under an extended cameo by Clay Davis from The Wire. This all serves to set up the sample-free second side, where somehow the absence of crusty source material doesn’t change the quality of the sound at all. Everything feels like it’s culled from the same crates.

As the sound bounces off the surrounding pebble-dash, Barry keeps interjecting to explain bits he’s added and bars he’s cut, or to ask whether a particular vocal sample really works. This is minor detail stuff, but like a true beat scientist he only hears all the details that are missing. Judging from his mental unrest, Barry still has hours yet to spend trawling through arcane hair dryer sales records before he’s happy. In an age of constant throwaway ‘content’, he’s like an industrial craftsman seeking the precise nugget that will give the whole work the timeless cohesive sheen.

“A scratch may take only minutes to do, but you could be there for days trying to find the sample,” says Barry, as he pulls up to a red light. He slips a Fruit Salad into his mouth, dropping the wrapper casually on to the slip-on resting patiently by the clutch. “I don’t know how Premier does it.”

***

Barry Beats’ 2 Sides of Barry is out now . Download via Bandcamp here. Vinyl copies available from King of the Beats,  complete with free Barry poster and postcard. The vinyl release will be marked with a secret LP drop in charity shops around the UK. Check out Barry’s Instagram/King of the Beats for clues.

Dave Waller is a writer based in Cornwall. He occasionally lurks on Twitter as @diameterdave. He’d like to keep writing about music from different angles. 

Interview: Frank Nitt

Following the release of the new Frank N Dank album, St. Louis, we spoke to Detroit legend Frank Nitt about the new project, working with J Dilla, and more. Interview by Matt Horowitz.

In your opinion, what are the primary differences between the original/bootlegged 2003 MCA version of 48 Hrs/48 Hours and the widely-released 2013 Delicious Vinyl edition? 

The Delicious Vinyl version was the actual album as we intended. The 2003 version had extra songs and bad mixes.

Is it true J Dilla (then still known as Jay Dee) had to go back in and make more synth-driven beats, after MCA rejected the original sampled-based version of 48 Hours?

[laughs] No it was actually the opposite. We turned in the same version of the album that we put out via Delicious Vinyl, and the executive at the time said we love it but we need something more for the club and radio, and that is where “Take Ya Clothes Off” and “Off Ya Chest” came from. Unfortunately that executive left and went and signed Chingy to Capital, and the new exec, who was also the president, told Dilla he wanted more of his sampled driven beats because that’s what he knew him for. The original 48 Hours was recorded to more sample-driven beats but about seven songs in, Jay decided to strip all those beats and keep the vocals, and that’s where all the synth joints came from. Side note: he decided to change all the music after going to the studio while Dr. Dre was working on a D12 record in Detroit. After that he said “I’m about to play everything”. 48 Hours is the only sample-free J Dilla produced full album.

What’s the current status of your group, The Joint Chiefs, with DJ Rhettmatic? Do you fellas have any immediate plans to record and release a proper follow-up to your 2013 FWMJ/RIK EP, The Smoke Musik?

Ahh man, Rhett is my brother. Incredible dj/producer, better person! We have kicked around the idea of doing another joint., but Rhett is like a head of state, lol. He has a school, gigs, touring and still goes to lunch with his mom on sundays. It’s not easy to lock him down. If he reads this tho, I’m ready let’s gooooooo!

What’s one of your personal favorite J Dilla stories or moments from your time spent recording, hanging out, touring, etc. together that most people might not have ever heard about before?

One of the things that standout is a conversation we had one day sitting in his Lexus 450 outside the Nevada house. He told me “I wish I had a nigga like me when I was you”. At the time I didn’t get it, but later on, it’s like that old saying “Those who can’t do teach”. I had a teacher who was doing.. he not only showed me the game but showed me the pitfalls and traps in real time because he was still living it as he showed me.

How did yourself and Dankery Harv (AKA Dank, your partner in Frank-N-Dank) get involved in recording “McNasty Filth” from J Dilla & Madlib’s beloved album together as Jaylib, Champion Sounds?

At the time we were in the studio and hanging all the time anyway, so when he decided to do the LP and got a batch of beats from Madlib, we sat in the studio and went thru beats. We vibed to all of them but me and Dank didn’t vibe quite as hard to the “Mcnasty Filth” beat as we did to some of the others, and Dilla was like “ohhh y’all gotta write to this” [laughs]. He put the beat up and went upstairs for the night so we could record. I don’t think he thought we would be done by the a.m., but when he came back with the morning blunt we had our parts done. He actually put us out after that [laughs], because now he had to sit and write his parts.

What’s the current status of The F.D.R. Project featuring yourself, Dank, and Young RJ? Are there any plans for a proper follow-up to F.D.R. from Frank-N-Dank & J Dilla’s 2007 European Vacation CD+DVD set?

At this point we don’t have any plans to do anything new, but you never know.

Who did yourself and Dank recruit to submit production work for Frank-N-Dank’s latest effort, St. Louis? 

It started wwith King Michael Coy (Her, Dr. Dre, Anderson Paak). He did three joints, and we went to guys we worked with before like ToneMason, Lancecape and of course a Dilla joint (“Young Buck 1995”, made in 1995). And for that newness we went to Cazal Organism (son of Mellow Man Ace) and Japanese producer Mitsu The Beats, for that fire.

Do you ever see Frank-N-Dank’s J Dilla-produced stand-alone/non-album singles, such as “Move,” “Pause,” and “Push” ever being packaged together and re-released as a more full-length, widely-available project?

Maybe, but those are all on different labels. We would need a great level of cooperation to make that pop [laughs].

Have you spoken to Madlib since the release of your collaborative album, Madlib Medicine Show #9: Channel 85 Presents NITTYVILLE? Any chance of you guys reuniting for a follow-up? I would personally LOVE to hear you rhymin’ alongside Guilty Simpson again?

Madlib is my dude. We haven’t spoke about that but would I be down. Shit yea! And Guilty is a no brainer. I’m waiting on him to send me a joint for one of his projects now!

What was it like getting to work with more non-traditional Hip-Hop producers, such as DJ Sepalot for Fracture’s Outrageous EP and Dutch producers I.N.T. Kid Sublime, Wouda, Elsas, Y’skid & Kid Sundance on Frank-N-Dank’s The EP?

It was dope. I’m all for a little musical exploration., and all those guys have their own approach to making music and its fun for me to try to meld my style to theirs.

Who are the current artists signed to your imprint, Digipop’s roster and what’s your next planned label release?

We have Serious and my son Joz B (you can hear them on a few of my solo/group projects) – they both should be working as we speak. I gotta send em some beats though.

Aside from what we’ve already discussed thus far, do you have any additional high-profile collaborations, all-star team-ups, long-vaulted gems, etc. that have yet to be released unto the terribly unsuspecting masses?

We have a few things coming in 2020. And when I say we I mean the whole fam. I’ll be playing more of an executive role but bars a cometh as well as some new beats. Maybe a beat album. Stay tuned.

***

St. Louis by Frank N Dank is out now. Follow Frank Nitt on Twitter and Instagram.

Matt Horowitz has been a hip-hop fan ever since he first heard Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) back in the mid-90’s, which positively or negatively changed his life ever since, depending on who you ask. He single-handedly runs online music publication The Witzard, and has been fortunate enough to interview Eothen ‘Egon’ Alapatt, Guilty Simpson, Ice-T and Mr. X, Dan Ubick, Career Crooks’ Zilla Rocca & Small Professor, Cut Chemist, and J-Zone, amongst countless others. He enjoys writing about and listening to hip-hop, Punk/Hardcore, and Indie Rock on vinyl with his lovely wife, while drinking craft beer, red wine, or iced coffee. To paraphrase both Darko The Super and the Beastie Boys: “Already Dead fans, they want more of this… I’m a Witzard like my man Matt Horowitz!”. Follow Matt here.

Classic Rap Demos

Words by John Morrison.

In the years since the emergence of the internet, the means by which music is produced, administered and distributed has been radically altered. Not only did the introduction of peer-to-peer file sharing, streaming and social media change the way music found its way to listeners, these new technologies have also changed the way artists would gain the attention of labels.

Today, aspiring artists have the tools to connect with listeners and build their own autonomous fan bases, with or without major record labels. Years ago, this was not the case. During the Golden Era of Rap, a relationship with a major label was almost mandatory if a budding artist wanted to secure consistent radio play and make an impression on millions of potential fans. For many artists, recording and shopping a demo tape was the first step toward securing that relationship.

Whether recorded in professional studios or in grandma’s basement, on Tascam 4tracks, ancient reel-to-reels or Ampex DATs, a tight demo tape was often times the key to an artist getting on and being heard. Mostly unheard in their own era, a wealth of homemade demos from future rap greats have now found a home on YouTube. John Morrison breaks down a few of the best and most significant.

1. Biggie Smalls – Unsigned Hype Demo: Recorded in the basement of his friend DJ Hitman 50 Grand, future GOAT Christopher Wallace’s first demo tape is a brilliant look at a rough but gifted young MC. Biggie shows off his trademark polysyllabic flow while 50 Grand cuts up classics like The Emotions’ “Blind Alley” break. The tape was so good, it won a feature in The Source Magazine’s coveted Unsigned Hype in March 1992.

2. Organized Konfusion Demo: When Queens New York duo Organized Konfusion first arrived on the scene under the name Simply II Positive MCs, it was clear that Prince Po and Pharoahe Monch were already standing at the vanguard of the science of rhyming. Forward-thinking and fully developed, a few songs on this demo made it to O.K’s mind-bending eponymous debut album. “Prisoners Of War” is a stark, dramatic barrage of words delivered at rapid fire clip, while “Mind Over Matter” is intense, funky and avant-garde.

3. S.B.I. (Timbaland & Pharrell Demo): A true gem of a demo that’s been floating around for the past few years, S.B.I. (Surrounded By Idiots) is the teenage rap crew made up of future super-producers Pharrell Williams, Timbaland and his partner in rhyme, Magoo. Colorful, creative and full of soulful, jazzy samples, the S.B.I. demo tape is deeply indebted to the lighthearted Black Bohemia that A Tribe Called Quest and De La Soul was mining during this era. Despite being noticeably derivative of the Native Tongues aesthetic, the S.B.I. demo is full of some refreshingly forward-thinking moments. “Skull Caps & Stripe Shirts” is a fun, uptempo “Human Nature” flip, while the quirky, skating vocal sample and dramatic piano stabs of “Uh Uh Uh”  are like looking into a magic 8-ball that reveals the production steez that Timbaland would use to completely transform the musical landscape in the not-so distant future.

4. DJ Quik – Red Tape/Underground Tape: While there is some discrepancy around the true-title of this tape unloaded by the Underground Dope YouTube page in 2015, this cassette demo of Los Angeles legend DJ Quik is one of the best of its kind available. Expertly produced and featuring young Quik’s x-rated lyrics and high-pitched delivery, this demo contains many West Coast classics like “Underground Terror” and “Born And Raised In Compton.”

5. Nas – Pre-illmatic Demo: By the time his landmark debut Illmatic was released, Nas had already made noise with show-stealing appearances on “Live At The Barbeque”, “Back To The Grill Again” and pre-Illmatic singles like “Halftime”. Before his debut would change the course of rap music, the young Queensbridge MC found himself in the studio crafting demos that showcase Nas as a gifted, blossoming wordsmith. In recent years, a treasure chest of Nas’ pre-illmatic demos have been archived on YouTube. The best of these demos include a rough and dreamy demo version of “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” entitled “Nas Will Prevail”.

Bonus Beats:

1. Jay-Z – Pre-Reasonable Doubt Demo

2. Wu-Tang Clan Demo Tape 1992

3. Juggaknots – Baby Pictures 1989-1993

4. T.I. – T.I.P. Demo

5. Artifacts – 4Track Demo

***

John Morrison is a Philadelphia based DJ, producer, and music journalist (Red Bull Music Academy, Jazz Right Now, Bandcamp Daily etc.) His debut instrumental Hip Hop album Southwest Psychedelphia is a psychedelic trip through a day in the life in his Southwest Philadelphia neighborhood, and available now on Deadverse Recordings. Follow John on Twitter and Instagram.

Interview: DJ Rhettmatic

One of the most respected DJs and producers in hip-hop, Rhettmatic has been a fixture of the L.A. scene for decades through his solo work, as part of the Visionaries collective and as a member of the Beat Junkies. He recently talked to Matt Horowitz about projects new and old, production technique, touring with Dilla and more.

Following your 2011 collaborative mixtape/remix album/live EP, Bobo meets Rhettmatic, what’s next for your group, Cypress Junkies with Eric Bobo?

It’s been a hot minute since Bobo and myself have had a chance to work on new material.  The last joint production we did together was for Rakaa’s (of Dilated Peoples) solo album, Crown Of Thorns, called “Rosetta Stone Groove” featuring Noelle Scaggs of Fitz & The Tantrums. We also toured Europe a few years ago but Bobo has been really busy with Cypress Hill since their new album dropped and has been touring mad crazy. But we’ve been talking still about doing some new music and getting back on the road, doing some spot dates in the near future.

How did yourself and Bobo initially meet and decide to form Cypress Junkies?

I met Bobo along with B-Real in the late 90’s when I was one of the DJ’s spinning on their Soul Assassins Radio Show at a local radio station in LA called 92.3 The Beat. Babu & Melo-D were also the other Dj’s; we would do their mixes live in between guests and comedy skits. This is around the time of the Cypress Hill IV album days. If you don’t know the history of Bobo, he is the son of the legendary Latin percussionist, Willie Bobo. He also used to play for the Beastie Boys (he even had a song named after him, “Bobo On the Corner” on Ill Communication before he became the 4th official member of Cypress Hill), as well as doing production for Psycho Realm. Anyways, he was working on a solo album called “Meeting Of The Minds” and he always wanted to do a DJ/percussionist song. We’d become friends already because of my stint on the Soul Assassins Radio Show, but I was honored he asked me. The song was called “Bobo Meets Rhettmatic”.  When we performed the song at his release party, we realized that we might have something here. Then we were asked to perform for a benefit show in Los Angeles, and ended up being the headliner. We restructured our show to be more of a live element with more emphasis on the synergy between a DJ and a percussionist, and as we performed, we were really surprised by the response we got. Hence, “Bobo Meets Rhettmatic” was born; which eventually changed to Cypress Junkies (Cypress Hill/Beat Junkies affiliation). It was a big honor with B-Real giving  us the official blessing.

I’ve heard rumblings a new Visionaries album is currently in the early stages of creation, correct? What can you potentially tell us about your upcoming return?

Yes, the Visionaries are working on a new album. It’s been 13 years since our last album “We Are The Ones”, which dropped in 2006. A lot of our core fans have been asking us to make a new album but everyone got busy with their own individuals lives and music careers. Both Dannu & Key-Kool have families, LMNO has a couple of solo projects out along with having a new baby, as well as 2Mex & Zen having their own projects out. Plus 2Mex had his own health situation that he needed to take care of; he had one of his leg amputated because of diabetes a few years ago. Now he’s still moving forward with full force and living life. Me personally, I got really pretty busy with the Beat Junkies. The Visionaries have done shows here and there but we never really worked on a new group album just because whether we realized it or not, we needed a break as a group (or at least for me personally), even though we’re family.

As for the new album, we are tentatively calling it “Vintage”, as a return to our roots of just making music for fun and not overthinking things. The difference between this particular album and our other albums; I will be doing all of the production, where it used to be Key-Kool and myself being the chief producers and having our regular family of producers such as J.Rocc and Babu, to name a few. I like to think in the last 5-10 years that I’ve grown and improved as a producer compared to my past production. The guys always wanted to make a new album, but for me personally, I wasn’t really ready just because I was burnt out and wanted to expand more as a DJ, an artist, a producer, as well as a person. So to be transparent, the guys were really waiting on me to work on new material. Besides me growing as a human being, a DJ and a producer, a lot of family, friends, and even our heroes were passing away as well as dealing with our own situations separately. We were all getting older. In 2017/2018 is when we started working on new material and just learned how to record as a group again with no expectations, and have fun making music together. We’re almost finished….hopefully it will drop by the fall/winter of 2019, God willing. If not, at least some new music this year to set up the new album for the top of 2020.

In adittion to Cypress Junkies, Visionaries & Beat Junkies, you’re also, part of The Joint Chiefs with Frank Nitt (Frank n Dank.) What’s the current status of this project?

Frank is my brother! I met Frank n Dank at the Jaylib “McNasty Filth” video shoot. We’ve became real good friends during the time since I DJ’ed for Dilla in Europe for his last tour ever. It was really fun when we made the Joint Chiefs album; basically Frank just crashed at my crib for a whole week just to work on music. Each day, I would work on beats in one room while he was playing Nintendo in the other room, then when I finished with a beat, I would show it to him, he’d start writing then we would record. After the session, we would get “enhanced” while listening to the finished product, then go out to the clubs just to take a break, then we would repeat again the next day. We basically would record two songs a day. We’ve talked about doing a follow up but we both are busy with our own schedules. The last joint we did together is a song called “Classic” that I produced for his solo album Frankie Rothstein on Delicious Vinyl in 2015. Besides his own solo projects as well as the Yancey Boys and Frank n Dank albums, he’s currently in charge of the California chapter of the James Dewitt Yancey Foundation as well as still being an artist on Delicious Vinyl. We’ll definitely going to work on new music soon in the near future.

Loops, Chops, Beats & Vibes (VOL. 2) was recently released in honor of your 50th birthday. What’s the significance of said release to you?

I’ve been releasing music for free on my Birthday (May 10th), whether an album or a mix, for the last 10 years as a way of saying thank you to everyone that has been following my DJ/producer career, and just as a way to promote my catalog and progress as an artist/DJ/producer. With Loops, Chops, Beats, & Vibes Vol. 2, I wanted to a little something different when I dropped this on my birthday this year. I wanted to actually treat it like an official album versus giving something away for free, so I actually sold the album instead and made an official music video for the project. I made a video to the joint called “West Coast Vibrations (An Ode To Souls)”, which is a flip of the original sample that was used on Souls Of Mischief’s 93 Til Infinity, hence the tribute to Souls Of Mischief. I even wanted to shoot the video in the same vibe or essence of 93 Til Infinity, except highlighting Los Angeles and some of the cities that make up Los Angeles County. The video was shot and edited by Dj Underkut of Open Format LA, and he did a great job! I was really surprised and honored by the response for both the album and the video – it really meant the world to me that people went out and supported this album. That was definitely a great birthday gift to me for turning 50, and it tells me that I’m still doing something right. So everyone that purchased this album, I truly thank you from the bottom of my heart!

How would you say your process, approach, sound, style, etc. for Loops, Chops, Beats, & Vibes Vol. 2 differs from that of 2018’s Loops, Chops, Beats, & Vibes Vol. 1?

The approach to Volume 2 in terms of how the production was done is a combination of how I made the beats on Volume 1, by doing a cut & paste style strictly using Pro Tools only and making beats on the Propellerhead Reason program like I did on my Rhett Got Beats album. When I made Volume 1, I originally wanted to challenge myself and go back to making beats on my MPC2000 but it wasn’t working; so when that wasn’t working, I tried to turn on my SP1200 machine, but that wasn’t working either. I didn’t want to make beats on Reason because that’s what I’m currently using right now, but I still wanted to challenge myself for the fuck of it. I decided to try make beats on Pro Tools by doing a lot of cut, paste, and layering. I went digging for records for a good month and just basically pick any record from the stash I bought, record it on Pro Tools and just basically start chopping away. It was more tedious but I had a lot of fun doing it.  With Volume 2, I wanted to continue the tradition, but I also have been making beats on Reason that I really liked and I didn’t want to put them to the side; plus I was also on a time constraint. So I decided to put some of my Reason beats that I liked a lot (plus the Nipsey Hussle tribute track that I made last to finish up the album), made a few tracks with the same Pro Tools procedure, and arranged them together so I can beat my personal deadline. I’m very proud of the end product, if I do say so myself! [laughs].

I know you were J Dilla’s touring DJ for a string of shows through Europe with Frank n Dank and Phat Kat; happen to have any particularly memorable stories from your time spent on the road with Dilla?

When Dilla was still alive and living in LA, I always told him if he ever needs scratches from me, I got him. And we actually talked about doing some work together. He always had love for the Junkies, especially for J.Rocc.  J.Rocc is the 3rd member of Jaylib so it makes sense that he was Dilla and Madlib’s DJ. Dilla had a real small circle of people that he would hang out  with and trust in LA; I was very lucky to be considered to be part of that circle in his last years. Originally Dilla asked J to go out with him on tour to Europe, but he couldn’t make it because he was scheduled to go out on the road already with Madlib. When I got the call from Dilla that he wanted me to go out on the road with him, Frank n Dank and Phat Kat, I said let’s go. I hit up J to thank him for recommending me for the job, but J said he didn’t even say anything to him – that was all Dilla’s idea. I was shocked and honored. Around this time as well, I knew he was sick, but I didn’t know to what extent until we met at the airport. To tell you the truth, the whole tour was memorable to me because Dilla personally asked me to be his tour DJ, plus I was able to bond with him, Mama Yancey aka Ma Dukes (Dilla’s Mother), Frank N Dank, Phat Kat, and Dave New York (Dilla brought him along as well). We all didn’t know this was going to be Dilla’s last tour ever, but I think he already knew and he wanted to do it for the fans regardless of his health. I also think that this was his way of saying this is our chance to work together….I will never forget this experience for the rest of my life. Thank you, Dilla!

What’s the current status of your long-time crew, The World Famous Beat Junkies or any of its affiliated entities?

The Beat Junkies are still going strong. We celebrated our 20 Year Anniversary in 2012 by doing shows in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco as well as in Europe and Japan. We were really surprised how many fans, young and old were still excited to see us perform and how much people are still checking for us even though we never stopped.  Because of that, we decided to get serious in terms of building our own business by relaunching our merch such as shirts and hats, and launch the Beat Junkies Digital Record Pool (www.beatjunkies.com). From there, we were able to launch our very own radio station, Beat Junkie Radio in conjunction with Dash Radio, a free app that was designed and founded by Dj Skee (www.dashradio.com/beatjunkieradio). I actually have my own radio show on the station called “Soundcheck” that airs live every 2nd & 4th Tuesday. I’ve been lucky to have guests such as Diamond D, Agallah The Don, Blu & Exile, MED, Defari, as well as Dirty Diggs, Supreme Cerebral, & many more. When we celebrated our 25th Anniversary in 2017, we were figuring out what would be our next business venture. From there we started our own DJ school called the Beat Junkie Institute Of Sound in the City of Glendale, Ca. (www.beatjunkiesound.com). We’ve been open for 2 years now and the school has been slowly growing. If you asked us 5-10 years ago that we would have our own DJ school & become instructors, we would’ve looked at you crazy. In January 2018, we officially launched Beatjunkies.tv (www.beatjunkies.tv), our online DJ school, which is an extension of the Beat Junkie Institute Of Sound. Everything that we teach at our school, we also teach online; it’s for those who want to learn how to DJ from us, but either cannot make it to our school or live very far, or for those who want to learn at their own pace. We’re still working on other projects, either as a crew or as individuals, but by the grace of God, hopefully we can keep on going till the wheels fall off.

I’m personally a big fan of your 2016 release, Circa 2004: Blaccmatic with Aloe Blacc! Although, I’ve always been curious: how exactly did this collaboration come to be?

Thank you very much, that means a lot. As the title suggested, the Blaccmatic album was made in 2004. A lot of fans of Aloe Blacc, the singer, don’t know that he’s a talented MC as well, and is in a group called Emanon with producer extraordinaire Exile (Blu, Fashawn, King Choosey). Around this time, Aloe was branching out working on his own material while Exile was in the beginning stages of working with Blu. For myself, nobody knew me really as a producer except for my work with the Visionaries, and I wanted to expand and work with different artists. Aloe and myself talked about doing some work together and then finally he said “just give me a beat CD”. Then one day while I was working at Fat Beats LA, he stopped by and gave me a CD with “Aloe Blacc & Rhettmatic” written on top of it. When I got home to listen to it, I was blown away because he practically made a whole album of all the beats I gave him. One of the songs “Find A Way”, had someone singing, me not knowing that it was Aloe singing himself. When I asked him who was singing, he told me it was him….I was so blown away. Then right there, this was a star in the making. That particular song was supposed to be featured on his Stones Throw debut album Shine Through but didn’t make it, but it did make it on the B-Side of the “I’m Beautiful” 12″ single. On a side note: I also let my dear friend and producer extraordinaire Dj Khalil (Self Scientific, Aftermath) hear “Find A Way” and he immediately asked me who the artist was. He also bugged out when he found out who it was….”You mean, Aloe as in Aloe Blacc from Emanon?? I need to work with him!”. I was able to connect them both and then a couple of years later, they collaborated on a song you might’ve heard or seen on a Beats By Dre commercial called “I’m The Man”.

We never got to officially put the project out because eventually Aloe got signed to Stones Throw and I started working on the Visionaries’ We Are The Ones album. Over the years, we have talked about putting it out but then eventually, Aloe became the talented and respected singer that he is now. When I decided that I wanted to put it out, I asked Aloe permission first to see if he was down with the idea of releasing the project, he said yes, as long it was a free download. He still wanted people to hear our project. When I released the project in 2016, we had such a positive reaction. Fans of Aloe Blacc the MC were happy to hear an unreleased project with him spitting bars; fans of Aloe Blacc the soul singer, didn’t even know the history of Aloe as an emcee and were blown away. Really glad that people got to listen to this project and the positive feedback was the icing on the cake.

I know you’ve worked with everyone from Guilty Simpson to Ras Kass… but do you have any currently vaulted/unreleased collaborations you’re looking forward to the hip-hop-loving world hearing one day?

Who knows, that’s a good question. I do have some joints in the vault that I did with J-Ro of Tha Liks and Defari, K-Solo, an unreleased Key-Kool & Rhettmatic song & some other artists that I worked with in the early 2000’s that never came out officially. If my small core of fans really want to hear some old/unreleased material of mine, then I might put it out….or maybe redo it over. But I do know I have more work to do….

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Buy Rhettmatic’s music here. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram. Read our oral history of Key Kool & Rhettmatic’s Kozmonautz album from earlier this year.

Matt Horowitz has been a hip-hop fan ever since he first heard Wu-Tang Clan’s Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) back in the mid-90’s, which positively or negatively changed his life ever since, depending on who you ask. He single-handedly runs online music publication The Witzard, and has been fortunate enough to interview Eothen ‘Egon’ Alapatt, Guilty Simpson, Ice-T and Mr. X, Dan Ubick, Career Crooks’ Zilla Rocca & Small Professor, Cut Chemist, and J-Zone, amongst countless others. He enjoys writing about and listening to hip-hop, Punk/Hardcore, and Indie Rock on vinyl with his lovely wife, while drinking craft beer, red wine, or iced coffee. To paraphrase both Darko The Super and the Beastie Boys: “Already Dead fans, they want more of this… I’m a Witzard like my man Matt Horowitz!”. Follow Matt here.

Interview: DJ Skizz

DJ Skizz
DJ Skizz has built a solid catalog of production credits over the last few years, dropping high-profile remixes, solo albums and collaboration projects with the most respected emcees in the game. We recently spoke to the beatmaker about some of his best work.

 

Your catalog includes collaborations where you are the sole producer (Cashmere Dice with Da Villins, Billy Ocean with Big Twins). Do you approach these differently to projects where you are one of several producers? And are these projects more personal?

 

As far as the approach, it was really no different than other projects in that I wanted to give it a particular feel, sonically, and make the collection of songs fit together in a dope way. The Villins record was on some groovy, slick, “cashmere” vibes that fit Rim and Villin P’s rhyme styles, whereas Billy Ocean was on some 80s yacht rock, queens pimp shit and worked as a contrast to Twins gruff voice.

 

When I am the sole producer, I do feel more of a responsibility to “produce,” rather than just contribute beats. I always try to provide the artists and listeners with the filthiest beats I can make, but I find that it’s also important to deliver tracks that allow for the MCs to shine. Sometimes “the craziest” beat might not work for a particular artist or project. It’s got to make sense in the wider lens on the record. But yeah, as the sole producer, I can really dictate the sound of a record. And that’s not just with the beats, its with the sequencing, skits, interludes, etc. as well.

 

The Way We Were by Milano Constantine was one of 2017’s best albums in my opinion. It has beats only by you and Marco Polo, sometimes alternating from one track to the next. Did you and Marco Polo compete a little to see who could bring the most heat?

 

Thank you! And I agree. I think as Hip-Hop producers we are always competing. We come from that school of Hip-Hop. Whether it’s competition with other producers or just competition within ourselves to inspire and create better and better music…Marco and I have been great friends for a long time and I have huge respect for his craft. He definitely helps inspire me to make beats and he definitely inspired ‘Lano to write some filthy bars!

 

Cruise Control from 2016 was another great album, and personally I think it was criminally slept-on. Is it frustrating to put a lot of work into something that may not get heard by as many as you’d like?

 

It can be frustrating, but for me it’s about my legacy as a producer. If someone doesn’t hear the record now, they might hear it in 5, 10, or 50 years and appreciate it then. In today’s climate, music seems to be here one day and gone the next with it’s popularity built on social media hype etc., but my goal has always been to create pieces of art that last and that age well. As an indie artist, with limited financial resources, it’s challenging to truly compete in a business with artists who are helped by large corporations. In our case, the sharing of the music has to be completely organic with help from the fans and supporters, rather than just paying to play.

 

What I like about that album is the variety. It feels like beats were tailored to the emcee: a sparse, minimalist track for Bosses with Roc Marciano and Conway; headnod shit for Evidence on Geppetto; space for Your Old Droog to spit dense rhymes on Listen To Jazz. Do you often make beats with specific rappers in mind?

 

Sometimes I make beats with specific rappers in mind, but usually it’s just how I’m feeling on a particular day. Many producers have “a sound” and I’m not sure I have a particular sound. Sometimes my beats are hard, stab you in the trachea type beats and others are more groove/melody driven. I think having the ability and willingness to try different things and create different sounding beats allows me to work with different artists and also allows me to create different projects that are dope but that sound nothing alike.

 

What’s your actual process when you sit down to make music? Are you able to turn on the creative juice whenever its needed, or do you need to be in a certain mood?

 

Since producing is part of how I earn money, sometimes I feel pressure to turn on creative juices at any given moment. I think I make the best shit when I’m not forcing it though. Also I seem to get into a groove when I’m in the studio with an MC or someone who is inspiring me. The vibes can set the tone and the beat is just a bi-product of that vibe.

 

I know a lot of producers don’t like to give up their formula, but I’m interested in the gear you use. What’s your basic equipment set-up and some essential bits of hardware and software? 

 

My setup consists of either an MPC 2000, MPC 2500, or MPC Studio, an Akai keyboard, ProTools, Serato, 2 turntables, a mixer, and vinyl records.  I have also been using Kontakt from Native Instruments and a few other Virtual instruments to make sample-free beats and to manipulate and add on to samples.

 

You’ve worked with a huge selection of artists already, but who is on your ultimate wish list? 

 

Kendrick Lamar, Cam’ron, Jay-Z, Redman, Anderson Paak, SiR, Sade, Ghostface, Dr. Dre, Nas, to name a few.

 

Aside from the obvious masters of the art, which other producers are you feeling the most right now?
Can’t think of anyone in particular at moment.  I will get back to you on this…

 

What’s next on the horizon?

 

I’ve been putting together an instrumental project that should be ready for release this spring. Also working on a few EPs with rappers that I’m not gonna speak on just yet. Also got some placements on some big projects that shat should be coming out soon… But yeah just know I’m cookin and there will be plenty of Skizz work out there in the near future!
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Follow DJ Skizz on Twitter and Bandcamp. Interview by Grown Up Rap Editor Ben Pedroche.