[vimeo 44000846 w=580 h=326]
Found this while reading about the Beat Junkies last night. LRG will be putting out a short documentary next month about the history of the group and it looks like they will also be talking to some of today’s popular DJs about how they were influenced by the collective’s work (Noticed A-Trak in the teaser video above). Really looking forward to this, will definitely be putting it up here when it’s out.
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Cool little rework of Jay Dee’s Fuck the Police (a favorite of mine as I’ve said before!) from J Rocc. As you can tell it’s not a finished product, appears to be more of J Rocc just toying around with the original’s sample material which is Rene Costy’s Scrabble. J Rocc explains the rework here, “Here’s a snippet of a little something that I was working on. Played this out a few times and it’s crackin!!… Full version might never see the light of day so if you see me playing out then make a request”. Would personally love to hear a full version. I also realize this is the third Dilla post in a row, sorry about that… Have ran into too many random/good Dilla things over the last week or so that I wanted to post, will find some other stuff to post about after this one (I promise)!
Figure it’s also worth noting The Beat Junkies are celebrating their 20th anniversary this month. Congrats to J Rocc and crew with that, lots of fantastic work from the group over all these years.
I have been very busy lately which is part of the reason why I haven’t posted anything in the last few days. The other reason why is that I have been working on getting a new host for the site! I have been with a cheaper host for awhile now and it could be very unreliable at times. Decided to make the move back to Host Gator whose reliability and customer service are MUCH better compared to the company I had been hosting with for the last 6 months or so. Costs a bit more, but you get what you pay for!
Still adjusting to my new job and whatnot, but more frequent posts should be returning here soon.
After yesterday’s post I have been thinking about what I would consider J Dilla’s most “disgusting beat ever” as Benji B liked to put it in the video. While What Up is pretty high up there, I think I’m going to have to say that for me personally this has to go to J Dilla’s Geek Down from The Shining. In a weird coincidence (or maybe not!) Busta is also over this beat. As I mentioned last night, it is truly amazing how he could make these crazy beats from so many different genres of sample material. Only someone like Dilla could flip a kazoo cover of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee to make one of the hardest rap beats ever. Busta Rhymes also sells it pretty well with his hype over the track. Definitely one of my favorite J Dilla beats.
Hadn’t heard of this series by Bling47 until I saw their latest vid posted over at ST. Waajeed’s video for Look of Love is nice, but the one above is my favorite that I have seen so far. Benji B is one of the coolest dudes over in the UK (his work with BBC Radio is fantastic) and his breakdown of what made What Up so awesome is on point. I love when Dilla flipped more electronic stuff, have always appreciated how varied his source material could be and how well he could make beats with this stuff.
Definitely check out some more of these videos from Bling47, very interesting stuff for J Dilla fans especially.
Ran into this one from a recent Fat Beats newsletter a few days ago, really digging the track. I’m not very familiar with Wordsworth but after listening to some of his work on Youtube I can see why folks were getting pretty hyped for The Photo Album which is the album that just dropped recently. From what I have been reading he hasn’t put anything out since around 2004 so folks have been waiting for new material for quite some time. The music I have heard from the album is great, especially the tracks produced by Apollo Brown here and here (a collaboration between the two in the future would be nice!). I’m really feeling the production on the video above too, haven’t heard anything from The Are before but it is very nice here. Asked him about whether this would be getting a release on wax at all on Twitter and he wasn’t quite sure, hopefully Fat Beats might be able to get on that. This is definitely something I’d like to have on vinyl if it was made available.
Saw this vid the other day and I have to say I’m very excited about some new Blu & Exile material coming out soon. The beat alone sold me on the two records that will be out over the next few months (10″ in July, full album in September!). Probably replayed it a couple dozen times by now…
From what I have been reading it sounds like this is actually somewhat of a re-release from material that was originally recorded back in 2009 and put up on Blu’s Bandcamp late last year. Like a lot of stuff he throws on Bandcamp, it seems that it wasn’t mixed or mastered so the quality wasn’t so nice as you can imagine. The promo above promises that these will be fully mixed and mastered, along with some unheard songs and instrumentation which sounds great to me. I haven’t heard any of this material yet, so it will all be new to me which is cool. Really looking forward to these releases, if they are even half as good as Below the Heavens was I will be quite happy!
If you are as excited as I am, you can even pre-order the 10″ right now over at Fat Beats.
Super old ad for Toyota of Oxnard which features the Lootpack before their Soundpieces days. This is actually a “fixed” version that I made from the original video on Youtube. Not sure if the actual commercial was sped up like that, but slowing it down just a little bit brings back their real voices as we know them. Wish there was more info on the story behind the ad, think it’s pretty awesome to see stuff like this before they made it big. We also need more commercials with Madlib beats!
I know I have been sharing a little too much Will Sessions stuff over the last couple of weeks, but I swear this is it for awhile anyway! Just wanted to post up their free album Real Sessions which includes live performances with some of Detroit’s finest emcees (including Guilty Simpson, Phat Kat, Elzhi, and Black Milk). Will Sessions does the hip hop thing so well and it’s incredible to hear how well they are even when it’s live. Their renditions of these beats are flawless, just as it was with their work with Elzhi on Elmatic. Haven’t heard anything coming from these guys recently, hoping they might do some more hip hop collaborations in the future as I’ve enjoyed every one of them I have heard so far. You can grab Real Sessions here.
Got a package in the mail today, got some goods from Stones Throw as you can see! Picked up the green Mayer Hawthorne 12″ so that I could grab that freebie copy of the new Frank151 featuring MF DOOM. Some nice promo vids for the book below. I might do a video showing it off after I’m back from InfernaLAN this weekend.
Videos:
