I was just bumping around and wasting a little time when I ran across this interview where J Dilla discusses the use of beats and ID tags. Of course there are many more lessons to be learned, so pay attention… you might just get schooled.
It was a very sad weekend. After coming up with the idea to have a rare beat making video blowout, I came to realized that in order to make room on my external hardrive, I deleted virtually all of my beat production and beat making videos. Yeah, I know it’s a damn shame to even … Read more
After much thought, I’ve decided to take a bit of a break from giving my isolated commentary about what music should sound like in an ideal world and figured it would be best to give you an illustrated example. By popular demand, here’s a link to a downloadable mp3 version of the Hip Hop, Breaks … Read more
Happy New Year Everyone! 2006 has definitely been an interesting and exciting year all around, especially musically. We saw the return of Jay Z, the confession by Nas that Hip Hop is Dead, and The Source magazine asking if Hip Hop has become a minstrel show. It seems as if there is a theme developing … Read more
I went ahead and gathered every Smack DVD beat making video that I could find. It just so happens that I hold a lot of respect for D.R. Period and it’s pretty interesting to hear his view on how a beat should knock. Arsonist from the Heatmakerz throws together something pretty hot in no time … Read more
They let me out of my gig a little early today so I took the opportunity to do a little crate digging on my way home from work. It’s tough when you walk into store and can’t find anything that you want. Imagine walking into a store and not being able to find one old … Read more
I really like this video of Kev Brown making a beat on his trusty MPC 2000XL. This is a great video because he goes farther than just looping a beat and takes it up a notch by chopping the hell out a string set. For further Kev Brown heat such as Brownies and his Beat … Read more
Life is good… life is grand… My apologies for the lack of updates lately, but I’ve been doing my best to climb the corporate ladder and keep on keepin’ on. It’s really cool how this site has turned out to be a great outlet for some of the musical thoughts that have been lingering around … Read more
I’m constantly racking my brain through my head in an attempt to more fresh and creative ways to find records and today on the rush hour drive home I started thinking of all the techniques that I’ve used in the past to find untapped crates. Some of them include the usual suspects like used record … Read more
Lately I’ve been thinking about the amazing and groundbreaking production on Mobb Deep’s 1995 release of The Infamous and how over ten years after its original release I still reference many of its instrumentals when looking for either inspiration or a reminder of what I consider to be a defining example of quality Hip Hop. … Read more