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
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
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
We’re doing big things here at Crate Kings! The official Science Skateboards mixtape by DJ Semantik is now available as a free stream over at the Science website and consists of breaks and samples mixed with classic 90’s to 2000 Hip-Hop. I’m told that in addition to being bundled with their promo skate CD Rom … Read more
I needed a little inspiration tonight to get busy on the MPC, so I went hunting for beat videos again. This is one of my all time favorite videos and DJ Shadow does an excellent job of describing the almost karmic feelling and philosophy of digging in the crates.
This crazy thought crossed my mind a while back as I was downloading a fairly difficult to find album entitled Afreaka by a little known group named Demon Fuzz. It occurred to me that we are quite possibly on the cusp of a revolution within Hip Hop music and culture. There is an almost absurd … Read more
Today while waiting for the lady of the house to finish using the computer, I picked up an old, mint condition issue of Grand Slam magazine with Questlove on the cover. Now out of business, Grand Slam was one of my all time favorite reads and featured quality, well researched writing and covered a number … Read more
About a year ago I went through a bit of a strange phase where I felt the need to hunt down every single beat making video that I could find on the net. Like many of my endless obsessive hunts, I took this to the absolute extreme and ended up having to eventually purchase a … Read more