Shane Eli’s The Push came out early last summer and served as a nice introduction for the young emcee/producer, but he isn’t resting on his laurels. Eli recruits Playboy Tre and Rittz for “Let’s Ride,” a percolating ode to rolling out with that special shorty of the moment. In a world where everyone’s trying to figure out how they can give you more, Shane only wants to prove to listeners I Can Do Better, with his upcoming DJ Booth sponsored second album.

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Shane Eli Feat. Playboy Tre & Rittz – Let’s Ride

Spoiler alert: Consequence’s Movies On Demand will go down as one of the best mixtapes of 2010. Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for the novice rapper to go over-the-top in the mixtapes for that undeniable buzz but the more established rhymeslayers generally resort to just rapping over popular beats and calling it a day. Well, apparently someone failed to tell Consequence that the vets weren’t supposed to care as much because his recent project G.O.O.D. Music, Nah Right & Universal Motown Present Consequence Movies On Demand sports material that most record labels couldn’t laud on their artist’s retail albums. Read the rest of this entry »

This year’s VH1 Hip-Hop Honors show has taken on a whole life of its own.

Building from the momentum of previous years, the show & the channel are proving to be accurate to the essence of Hip-Hop music & culture. Digging deeper into the history each year, they’ve managed to recognize artists whose catalogs were not sacrificed for the sake of fame or critical acclaim. By choosing respectable artists, VH1 has garnered the attention & praise of fans across the map.

And some of those fans included a new crop of MCs, DJs and producers.

Which brings us to the topic at hand: Mick Boogie’s The Honor Roll. A musical mashup, the endeavor is a well engineered project featuring music from the catalogs of this year’s honorees, covered by a new generation of emcees & producers.

For more of the back story on how the project came together, The Crew’s Gotty™ got up with Mick Boogie, impresario Dan Solomito & Notherground’s 6th Sense for an impromptu Q&A about what all went into the making of The Honor Roll.

TSS: Whose idea was the tape originally?

Mick: Mine. Two weeks ago, I was sitting on the beach in Miami with my wife and we were talking about how dope the Honors are every year. And the idea just hit me. So for the rest of our vacation she sat at the beach reading and sunning while I sat under an umbrella with my Blackberry and iPhone and got the thing in motion. Then when we got back, I commissioned a few of my friends to really help get things popping, since we had less than two weeks to knock it out. Since it was so last minute, VH1 was not involved initially but they are very impressed and we are in negotiations to make it official next year, which is really exciting.

TSS: Who all helped out with this project?

Mick: In addition to myself, my homie Dan Solomito, who also manages Kidz In The Hall, stepped in and brought some cool new artists to the table that definitely deserve to be on this project. The kid that runs my blog – PressPlayFashionForward – his name is Christopher Truth. He definitely stepped up and helped coordinate stuff because I was out of town a lot. Lastly, one of my favorite new producers in the game, 6th Sense, produced the majority of the project and coordinated the engineering and mastering on mostly everyone else’s songs.

TSS: Dan, how did you connect with Mick Boogie to assist with this project?

Dan: It was great finally working together. He did a project with one of my artists, Kidz In The Hall, called Detention, which was an idea I had where we brought a mixtape DJ over to the RIAA-approved side of the business. I had him host a mixtape formatted album which was all original content and therefore legal to be sold via an exclusive we did with iTunes. But our interaction that project was minimal. It was not until The Honor Roll where we truly had a chance to work together; brainstorm, come up with some great ideas, and bring this project to fruition…and all in just under two weeks.

TSS: Can we expect more collabos in the future from two nerdy white guys?

Dan: We already have some big ideas on a few new projects. Mick is doing a great Obama-related mixtape and shirt coming next week. It’s always nice to come across someone in the music industry who has the ability to balance the rigors of the business side while still being passionate about what they do. Mick Boogie is that guy.

TSS: 6th, how hard was it to coordinate all of these beats at the same time?

6th: This was one of the first experiences I had with sending ProTools sessions back and forth. I’m used to doing everything in one studio, but this proved to be a little bit of a challenge. It wasn’t like I just sent the beats out and that was it. All them cats sent their vocals back and I would mix the song. Lotta credit to everyone, all the MC’s, managers, and engineers. Mick, Dan, everyone that helped out. I mean we did the damn thing in a week and a half. Beat creation, lyric writing, recording and mixing. I tip my hat to everyone on that.

TSS: And you guys got MC Serch to narrate the project. How did that come about? Read the rest of this entry »

Words By DJ Sorce-1

“If you don’t put Prince Paul in the top ten producers of all time, then you are smoking a rock.” — MC Serch

Throughout his career, Prince Paul has earned himself a reputation as a fearless risk-taker. His track record of oddball projects includes everything from horror-core rap to his recently produced children’s rap record (Baby Loves Hip-Hop). In addition to his unique catalogue, Paul also has the ability to tell stories through his art without having the music suffer. His A Prince Among Thieves album is arguably Hip-Hop’s one flawless concept record.

Prince Paul’s flair for the unique can be tracked all the way back to his early work with De La Soul. Paul worked side by side with the Long Island trio for their first three albums, coming up with skits and interludes to keep a humorous aspect to the music. For your reading pleasure, here are Paul’s musings from De La Soul’s early work as he Reconstructs his De La Soul years with TSS’s DJ Sorce-1.

DJ Sorce-1: What sort of production equipment were you guys using on 3 Feet High And Rising?

Prince Paul: We were using a 24 track two inch reel. It might have actually been a 32 track board. I believe Sound Workshop was the name of the company that made it. As far as samplers, we were using the S-900, which had just come out, an SP-12, and a Casio sampler like an SK-5. We also had a Juno. I can’t remember the exact model number. That was basically it…that equipment and a bunch of records.

DJ Sorce-1: I understand that the records that you guys sampled came from a variety of sources. Dante Ross would have some records, De La would have some records and there was a big mixture of different people bringing by records. Is that accurate?

Prince Paul: Not to discredit Dante, but I don’t think we used any of Dante’s records for that album (Laughs). But yeah, it was a combination of me, Pos, Dave and Mase. We combined our collections. We more or less gathered what our families listened to and had collected over the years. Pos had a deep collection. His dad had some really obscure records, which helped us out a lot. I’d been collecting forever and I always had weird records. Everybody came to the table with their own little thing. It was almost like we were trying to outdo each other, like ‘Oh, look what I got!” That’s why the album sounds so layered out. We just kept adding stuff to it.

DJ Sorce-1: Did you teach everyone else the technical aspects of production or did the rest of De La bring their own knowledge to the table?

Prince Paul: In those days, especially with 3 Feet…, it was primarily me because I was already working with Stet. I was a little familiar with the studio, but I wasn’t that good. Luckily I had really good engineers with me or what I deemed to be good engineers at the time. I fronted like I knew everything just to make the De La guys comfortable. I’d say, “Yeah, let’s gate that and compress this.” Meanwhile, I didn’t know what half the things did. But I knew enough about what the different equipment did and its capabilities to get by. That helped. That opened them up to being more imaginative with how to chop things up, sample, and pitch things.

DJ Sorce-1: Do you think that’s part of the reason why the album came out the way it did? Since you guys weren’t seasoned veterans with production, it seems like there was a certain innocence and experimental vibe to the album.

Prince Paul: Yeah, without a doubt man. There are tons of mistakes on that album. I’ll listen to it and go, “Oops. That was a mistake, there’s a mistake, that’s a mistake.” There’s a part of “Me, Myself And I” where the music drops out; that was a mistake. Me and Pos used to mix everything by hand. We didn’t have automation. Everything was kind of on the fly as the song went along. There was a part where one of us was supposed to leave the beat in, and we forgot. We just looked at each other, threw it back in on time and said, “Eh, that’s good enough.” (Laughs)

We could have easily edited the pieces together on tape, but we liked to do everything from beginning to end, manually. We didn’t feel like doing it all over so we were like, “Nobody will know the difference. They don’t know how it’s supposed to go.” That’s what that whole album is. You can hear things like people talking in the background and the doors opening to the booth. It was horrible. But it made it work.

DJ Sorce-1: To be honest with you, since I’m a young guy, I didn’t start listening to the album until almost a decade after its release when I was in middle school. I don’t think there has ever been an album that has come close to 3 Feet… in terms of how imaginative it is.

Prince Paul: Wow, thanks. I appreciate that. If you had listened to it in the era it came out in, it probably would have freaked you out even more. When that album came out we treaded on territory that nobody was willing to go. I just remember people scratching their heads. Either you really liked it or you hated it. It was an extreme record and it was radical in its time. But I’m glad you picked it up and liked it. I guess that it shows it has a little bit of staying power.

DJ Sorce-1: One of my favorite tracks on the album is “Eye Know.” I love the Steely Dan sample. Could you talk a little bit about who came up with the idea to sample “Peg” and how you came up with the songs concept?

Prince Paul: I have to give Pos a lot of credit for that one. He’s the one who more or less conceptualized it. He said, “Hey, these are the songs I want to use.” For me, particularly on that song, I had to say, “Ok. Let me make it work. This is how we do it.” That was the working relationship with me and De La in those days. Wherever their imagination went and whatever songs they wanted to use, it was up to me to figure out how to sample it and make it into a song.

We were ¾ of the way into the album and Pos had came in and initially laid down the beat for “Eye Know.” I was impressed because that was a result of the time spent showing them the ropes with production. I literally sat there and showed them how to produce. As opposed to just doing it for them, I was trying to teach them. My intention was to just work with them on that one album and then have them do the rest of their albums themselves. When I came in the studio, Pos had laid down the basic format of the song. I was like impressed. And then it was just a matter of sprinkling whatever else on to make it right. But yeah, Pos should definitely take the credit for putting that song together.

DJ Sorce-1: You say that you were setting them up to go on alone after 3 Feet…, yet you ended up staying on for their next two albums. Was that a surprise?

Prince Paul: For me it was flattering. When De La Soul Is Dead started up, they hit me up and said, “We know you said you weren’t going to do the next album but we’d like for you to work with us on the next one. You’re part of the group and part of the family.” That was nice. That’s why the second and third album came about the way they did.

I had told them early on in our relationship, “My whole thing is to do this one album and then have you guys go do your own thing.” When I was in Stetsasonic, I always felt like I had a limited say in things. I thought I had some really good ideas, but you can only get so many of your own ideas across when you have such a big group. I always felt stifled.

That’s more or less the reason that De La Soul came about. I needed a creative outlet and they came at the right place and the right time. I used them as my creative outlet. But I didn’t want them to feel like I did in Stet. My whole intention was to do the one album, show them how to do things in the studio, and then have them do their second and third album, if they were going to have one. We didn’t know back then.

DJ Sorce-1: So they only had a one album deal?

Prince Paul: Back then labels always tried to lock you in for ten albums or something insane. They’d give you a contract and say, “Here’s a ten album deal that expires in 2000-something.” You’d be like “Whoa, that’s crazy,” but you didn’t know any better so you’d sign it anyway. That was standard back then, to sign your life away. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m a certified music junkie. I own hundreds of CD’s, mixtapes and cassettes. I lost count of my record collection years ago. I’ve been to many a live show and I’ve rocked for big crowds as a party DJ. Throughout the countless hours I’ve spent listening to music over the years, no group has had more of an influence on me than De La Soul. I can say with a straight face that their music has changed my life.

The more I’ve talked about De La Soul with people in the music scene, the more I’ve become aware of how many different lives they’ve touched. I decided one day that I wanted to write an article that captured the significance of their music. I asked my boy Sloppy White, a Chicago-based rare rap record aficionado, to share some of his thoughts on De La to help kick start some brainstorming. He finished his email to me by saying “To me, 3 Feet High and Rising epitomizes what a Hip-Hop album can be: funny, creative, funky, political, dirty and way out there. The only rules are the ones you put on yourself.” The last two lines of his email stuck with me. “When it came to following rules, De La Soul usually said “Fuck that.” They rarely went with the hottest gimmicks, guest MC’s and producers. They did what worked for them.”

De La stuck to their guns and did what they did best. Instead of following trends, they set them, or just ignored them completely. They made music from the soul. And they continued to challenge us as listeners as much as they challenged themselves as musicians.

Fortunately for fans like me, De La has not been resting on their past success. With the 20th anniversary of their debut album 3 Feet High and Rising approaching, there is talk of a tour where the group will perform the album from beginning to end. They are also working on a project with sneaker giant Nike and performing at this years Rock the Bells tour. Most recently, it was announced that the group has been selected to be one of this year’s VH1′s Hip-Honors recipients.

With so many projects on the horizon & well-deserved accolades on the way, TSS decided to take our readers on a musical trip down memory lane. Here is a look back at their first four albums through the eyes of those who were inspired by their work.

Jaycee, member of The Aphiliates, Ludacris’ Tour DJ, Mixtape DJ, on 3 Feet High and Rising:

The first time I heard De La Soul was back in ’88. I was listening to the radio and “Plug Tunin”’ came on. They were playing it on this mix show that used to come on every Friday night on V103 called “The Fresh Party.” I can’t even tell you how wack I thought that name was. (Laughs) This Spanish lady named Wanda Ramos was the host of the show. When I first heard “Plug Tunin”’ I thought it was dope but I didn’t know who it was.

At the time I had this friend named Boobie from my neighborhood who had turntables before I did. A lot of times I would practice at his house. He was a real spoiled kid. He was the youngest and his mom would literally give him anything he wanted. If he said he wanted a Technics 1200 turntable she would work extra hours so he could get one. I can’t even begin to tell you how spoiled this motherfucker was.

On the weekends we’d get on the bus and go all over the city copping records from different spots. We’d go to Lenox Square, Greenbriar and a bunch of other malls. We’d start early and try to hit as many malls as we could. We took the bus and we’d haul records around with us all day.

As upcoming DJ’s we had this thing with labels. If you saw an album released on a label with a track record of releasing dope shit, you’d pick up the record based on the other stuff the label has put out. We picked up doubles of “Plug Tunin” without listening to it because it said “Produced by Prince Paul” on the sticker and it was on Tommy Boy, which was home to Stetsasonic and Fresh Gordon. We brought it back to the crib and listened to it I was like, “Oh shit, that’s the record I heard on ‘The Fresh Party.’”

When the “Potholes In My Lawn” single came out, I thought the cover was kind of weird. It had a hot pink color and these three goofy looking dudes on it with flowers and African medallions and shit. There was no visual for “Plug Tunin,” so we didn’t know what these dudes looked like until we saw the cover for “Potholes.” I remember thinking, “They look kind of weird, but fuck it. I trust them because ‘Plug Tunin’ was dope.” Read the rest of this entry »

Take one musician more versed than a collection of sonnets. Add one MC who rips tougher than a phone book. Throw them in an industry think-tank devoid of artist development and full of MySpace rappers.

A dash of humor. A sprinkle of throwback. Stir.

Such is the recipe for Zo! And Tigallo Love the ’80s, a joint project with Detroit native musician Zo! and Little Brother emcee Phonte. The piping hot result is a set of yesteryear covers crafted to perfection without straying into the overly produced.

With no effective blueprint for the industry to subscribe to for signing and squandering talent, Zo! and Phonte were afforded the opportunity to (-gasp-) actually make music. There were no rules and they could develop and push their project however they saw fit — which lead to individually numbered, autographed, limited quantity CDs with a compact but muscular play list.

I recently caught up with Phonte online and asked him about the decisions he and Zo! made for putting out the record.

“It just came from me looking at the marketplace and seeing niggas complain about buying CD’s, but then turn around and spend $400 on a pair of exclusive limited edition dunks,” he said. “I just wanted to bring some sort of excitement back to music. You’re not just buying a CD… you’ve become one of the few…the proud….the Zo! and Tigallonians. *salutes* I’m trippin… we don’t salute…. lemme do this right… *sprays activator*”

The project more or less began as an often revisited discussion about music, including ’80s favorites. The conversations snowballed into equal parts creation, friendly one-up-man-ship and personal conditioning.

“With each song, I just took time to figure out how I would voice it to make it fit in a modern-day context,” he said. “Because these were ’80s songs, a lot of ‘em had vocal effects that sound dated now… real heavy reverbs and shit like that… so I just had to sit back and play with different vocal styles to see how I’d make it work.”

Phonte credits sound engineer Khrysis with being his “right ear in the studio.” Together they learned the unpleasantries of voice alteration for the computery stylings of Tay Pain on the track “Steppin’ Out 2008.”

A Cliff Noted lesson on alteration:

1) Vocoder – Allows an instrument to sing. Requires you to play an instrument well. Not an option.

2) Talkbox – Also requires instrumentation. Not an option.

3) Autotune – Championed by folks who can’t sing worth a damn live, i.e. T-Pain. An option… but…

4) Pitch Corrector – Championed by female vocalists operating under the guise they can sing live. Creates the Cher-effect, if used correctly. Ding!

Phonte sang all of his vocals straight, sent the tracks out for pitch correction, and got them sent directly back because he had sung too well (Phonte can saaang… in case you haven’t noticed.) He rerecorded the tracks a little left of kilter and sent them out again.

“Soooooooo… he sends the joint back to me and it has the effect on it. BUT… the computer only recognizes key… it doesn’t recognize individual notes. So that meant that me and Khrysis had to go through and match EVERY NOTE to the right pitch of Zo’s instrumental. THAT. SHIT. TOOK. HOURS.”

Thus deaded Tay Pain — activator to activator, dust to dust — after his one and only appearance.

“I ain’t never doin that shit again.”

The next day I spoke with Zo! on the phone about the laboriousness of getting his tracks right and what drove both he and Phonte through the process. Read the rest of this entry »

Words By DJ Sorce-1

Horror movies and rap music have always seemed to have a loosely formed bond. From The Geto Boys “My Minds Playin’ Tricks on Me” to The Gravediggaz conceptual 6 Feet Deep album, there has been no shortage of inspiration drawn from scary cinema in the world of rap. Even RA the Rugged Man and 8 Off the Assassin used an image from the grind house classic Basket Case for the cover of their “Til’ My Heart Stops” single.

With all the source material out there to choose from it was only a matter of time before a savvy DJ decided to make a horror-themed mix tape. Leave it up to DJ P, the same man responsible for Uneasy Listening Vol. 1 and the gangsta rap-themed Gangsta Mix, to take the honors for tackling such a project. P’s initial Halloween themed mix tape Hell On Wheels (originally titled 10/31/98) combined old sound effects records, dark rap songs and horror movie samples to create an unforgettable listening experience.

Due to critical acclaim and some deep roots in the world of fright flicks, P decided to release a sequel in 2003. Since the release of both Hell On Wheels mixes, P has taken the next logical step. P, along with the help of some talented video editors, is in the early stages of making a video mix to go with the entire Hell On Wheels 2 CD. From The Shining playing over an Eagles remix to The Evil Dead flowing into a Queen blend, viewers are in for a memorable experience when the DVD drops.

Find out more about the roots of these spooky mixes and P’s personal horror movie preferences in the newest edition to our Reconstruction series.

TSS: Around what age did you start to get into horror?

DJ P: I was nine or ten. It was around the time Movie Channel came out. Cable TV was introduced to the Midwest and I started seeing trailers for scary movies. It was intriguing to me. I’d never really seen anything like it before, and as a kid it caught my interest.

TSS: Was there one particular movie that kick started your love of horror?

DJ P: The two movies that were big for me that were popular on Movie Channel at the time were My Bloody Valentine and The Funhouse. The Funhouse was directed by Tobe Hooper. He’s the same guy who directed Texas Chainsaw Massacre. My Bloody Valentine was a Canadian horror flick.

But if I really think back on it, I’d say my first horror influence was Halloween. It came on regular TV and it still scared me to death. I wasn’t able to finish the whole thing. I think I was intrigued by it because it scared me that badly. I liked it. I ended up growing into horror and I became a fan of the Halloweens, Friday the 13ths, Funhouse, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. All the old stuff is what I really love because it’s what I grew up on.

Friday the 13th is another one that I shut off in the middle of the day. Kevin Bacon’s death was brutal. It happened while he was lying in bed. A hand comes up and pins his head down, and then a spear actually goes up through the bed and through his body. That freaked me out. That scene freaked a lot of people out. It looked like he really died. It wasn’t an illusion of a knife going in; you could actually see a spear coming out. That was done by the makeup artist Tom Savini. If you ask me, he’s the god of slasher and horror movies. He did Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, and the original Friday the 13th.

TSS: Pretty much every great horror movie had make-up done by Savini.

DJ P: Yeah he’s just a great make up artist. Dick Smith, who was another great make up artist, was a big influence for Savini. I’ve read books on Tom Savini. I’ve got the illusion books that show how they did all those effects. It’s like an art form to make it look like someone’s head is coming off. I know it’s not the most positive thing, but I have an appreciation for how they make things look real in movies.

I’m not a fan of watching violence in real life. I don’t like the Faces of Death stuff. I’ll never watch that crap. I’m not into the realistic stuff, but I really like scary movies and suspense. These days it’s not so much about the gore. That was cool in the beginning, but now it’s about how good the story is. Back in the day of course, it was how many pounds of blood were going to be in a movie.

TSS: When you did the Hell On Wheels 1 mix tape in 1998, what made you want to take the leap from just watching horror films to putting together a cohesive musical project based around them?

DJ P: The idea came from me trying to think of the most creative tape I could make. One day I just had the idea to do a Halloween themed mix. I was thinking about songs like “My Mind’s Playing Tricks on Me” by The Geto Boys, “Nightmares” by Dana Dane, and “A Nightmare on My Street” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince. I just went to town on it.

That’s the mixtape I made without a sampler. All the samples came from the VCR. I had to time the samples by pausing the movie at a certain place and hitting play at the right time to make it fall in place. It was crazy. That tape has a lot of scratching too. I’ve never cared for my scratching too much, but it came out decent. It was more technical than the second Hell on Wheels. It took me a while but I finally finished it.

TSS: Hell on Wheels 2 came out in 2003. Did you do the sample movie dialogue in the same fashion with a DVD player or did you use a sampler?

DJ P: No. By then I had a CDJ. I was recording the samples form the DVD’s on to CD so I could load the sample onto the CDJ. Hell on Wheels 2 wasn’t as technical with all the samples, but that’s how I added them.

TSS: That must have been a lot more manageable.

DJ P: Oh yeah (Laughs). I had a sampler for the first one. Every sample you hear from a movie on Hell on Wheels 1 was from a VCR. I was using a 64 digital 8-track to make the tape. It was an 8 track digital recorder, but each track had 8 virtual tracks. I only used the top 8 though, and I’d just got back and forth. Hell on Wheels 1, if you have it on CD, has been edited down. It was originally a 90 minute mix tape I had to edit down to 74 minutes.

TSS: Really? I didn’t realize it was on cassette before CD.

DJ P: Yeah. The original title was 10/31/98. I still have the original cassette cover. I’m standing around the turntables with these flares coming out of my eyes. When it came out on CD the cover was a goblin sitting at an organ with some ghosts floating up from it. A buddy of mine did the goblin cover. That was for the first 1000 CD pressings. Then I redid the cover again and had it done with a bunch of horror villains. I had someone different do it, just to give it a different feel. I liked the other cover a lot; I just wanted to repackage it.

TSS: Do you have a preference between number 1 and 2?

DJ P: When I listen to the first one I kind of bug out because of all of the effort I put into the samples. I like the first one, but the second one was more of a challenge. When I did the second one, I was like “How the hell am I going to come up with enough new music to do this?” I used a lot of the Halloween-themed music that I like on the first one, so I had to dig deep. I had to really think.

Part 1 was more scratching, samples, and slower samples. It didn’t move as fast. Part 2 had more of an Uneasy Listening feel to it. I would do mixes like “The Terrorist” by DJ Vadim over “We Will Rock You” by Queen. For it’s time Part 1 was cool, but Part Two was more digestible. A lot of people tell me they like Part 1 better, which is cool. I’m going to start doing more mixes like that again. I miss doing those kinds of tapes with fast scratching and weird samples from oddball records. Read the rest of this entry »

1996 was a year chock full of great rap albums. There was an endless list of essential long players, including ATLiens, It Was Written, The Score, Hell On Earth, and Ironman, just to name a few. Yet amongst all these heavyweights, there was a worthwhile album that many overlooked. It featured a much hyped newcomer and an all star production team that featured The Beatnuts, Buckwild, Clark Kent, EZ Elpee, J Dilla, Large Professor, and Shawn J. Period.

The album was Skillz (formerly Mad Skillz) debut From Where??? Skillz, who many now associate with ghostwriting and year end wrap ups, came in with an original, varied effort that featured songs complete with memorable punch lines and hard-hitting battle raps. Despite a few misfires, the now out of print album proved to be a very strong rookie effort. Between several classic beats and creative lines like, “I came alone, draggin bags of bones, slit my own wrists, and bleedin’ out microphones”, Skillz created something TSS considered worthy of a Reconstruction.

Take a trip back in time as DJ Sorce-1 and Skillz reconstruct the untold stories of From Where???

Graphic By P.

DJ Sorce-1: When you look at From Where???‘s production list, it’s amazing that you had such a strong production team for your first album. Could you talk a little bit about what it was like to work with all those great producers?

Skillz: With regards to the Beatnuts, what ended up becoming “The Nod Factor” was part of another beat. The instrumental had another section and then it changed up and the Johnny Guitar loop that “The Nod Factor” used came in. That was the only part I liked, so they ended up redoing the beat with that loop as the core. They chopped the hell out of it.

I think I spent more money on the two songs I did with Large Pro (Editor’s Note: Only one Large Professor song made the final version of the album) than any other songs because we were in the studio for so long. He would come to the studio with me and create. It wasn’t like he was at home and he had a pattern or something he wanted to load up that he would bring to the studio. It wasn’t really a situation where he was somewhere else making stuff. We were in the studio working together.

Dilla was a person Q-Tip had formed a relationship with and brought into the studio. I still have the first beat tape he gave me. It had “Runnin”, “Drop’”, and “Somethin’ That Means Somethin’” by the Pharcyde on it. It also had one of the joints he did for Busta and the two songs he did for me. I did three songs with Dilla beats. One of them we never used. It wasn’t because the beat wasn’t hot; I just couldn’t come up with a hook for it that I liked.

The first beat I heard was “It’s Going Down” and I took that out the gate. That kind of sounded like “Runnin’” when you think about it, but he sampled two different records for “Runnin’” and “It’s Going Down”. “It’s Going Down” sampled a Sergio Mendes record. Don’t quote me on that, but I think it was a Sergio Menendez record. (Editor’s Note: You can quote Skillz on that one. Dilla utilized a sample from a Menendez song titled “Boa Palava”.)

The second beat I heard was “The Jam”. It had a real eerie melody (Skillz begins humming the songs melody). That’s the sample that was running under the track. At the time he was using an SP 1200 and a 950. When you hold down the tap and repeat button on the SP with whatever sound you’re using, it speeds it up. It made a crazy sound, and when he did that right before the track came in, I was like, “Oh, that’s nuts.” When he asked if I liked it I was like, “Yeah, you gotta keep that in there right before the verse.”

He said, “Aight, cool. That’s some shit I be doing just to make sure my drums are right at the top so when I hit the pad there’s no air between. That’s how I check my drums.” We kept it, and that’s what “The Jam” turned into. Dilla was definitely ahead of his time.

I paid him three grand for each song, so he got a check for $9,000 dollars. I remember he came to Battery Studios one day when we were mixing and he told me, “I don’t care how big I get. I could be as big as Dr. Dre or Quincy Jones. If I ever get big, you will always be able to get a beat from me for what you paid me on this album.”

That’s how humble of a person he was. He was young, he kept that Detroit fitted cap on, and he was just in there working. The Pharcyde was recording in the studio next to me. That’s how they came up on “Runnin’” and “Drop”. That’s the classic Hip-Hop story. I run into a lot of Hip-Hop historians and they’ll say, “I don’t know how true this is, but the Hip-Hop folktale is you passed up on “Runnin’”. All I can say is, “Yeah I did.”

DJ Sorce-1: (Laughs) So people give you a hard time for that one?

Skillz: Oh man, do they?!? (Laughs) The real heads are like, “Skillz, what were you thinking?” You have to understand there was no Slim Kid Tre singing the hook, none of that. It was just the loop and the drums…just the beat. But even when you tell them that they go, “Still, I just can’t see it kid.”

DJ Sorce-1: That’s amazing that Dilla would approach you after the album was done and say that you could still go to him at that price.

Skillz: I knew he meant it. There was never a question of him living up to that statement. I knew he would. I’m just sad I never had a chance to work with him again. He’s definitely missed.

DJ Sorce-1: He really is. I saw a video on YouTube where Dilla says that he ended up working on the album instead of Q-Tip because you and Dilla had a better vibe. In the video, Dilla said the disagreements between you and Tip would get really heated. Is that true? Read the rest of this entry »

“A DJ Premier mix tape of B-sides, remixes, samples and forgotten tracks? Why not… This was easily one of the best hip-hop mix tapes released last year. I still don’t understand how people slept on this.” – DJ Soul

Can someone DJ for Luda, be a member of DJ Drama’s crew the Aphilliates and be a diehard DJ Premier fan at the same time? Just ask Jaycee, the musical mastermind behind one of 2007′s finest mix tapes, Pizza At Primo’s. Jay, who took a long hiatus from mixtapes after getting burned out on the game in the late 90′s, has come back to the mixtape world with a vengeance in recent months. Since this years NBA All-Star break, he has been dropping tapes on the regular and we’re not talking about run of the mill pause joints they sell at your neighborhood bodega. When you bump a Jaycee tape you can expect blends, cuts, mixing, doubling up, and all the other freshness that you used to get when you copped a mix tape.

While Jay has been busy dropping many hot tapes as of late, his Premier mixtape may be his crown jewel. Spanning 56 tracks and featuring many underappreciated Primo songs and original samples, Pizza At Primo’s plays more like a true fan appreciation tape than a greatest hits compilation. It shows Jay’s in depth knowledge of Primo’s extensive body of work as well as his understanding of the music he chose for the mix. The tape is cleverly laid out so that many of the tracks flow together in more ways than tempo. Songs that sample one another are often played side by side while Jay also shows his digging knowledge by exposing several Premier sample sources. There is a perfect mix of skill display and letting the tracks breathe at the appropriate time, making for the most unique and enjoyable Premier mix tape to date. Luckily for TSS Crew’s DJ Sorce-1, he was able to catch up with Jaycee, hot off of his appearance with Luda at Northeastern’s spring concert, to discuss to conception and creation of Pizza…. Peep the technique as Jaycee gives an up close look at the ingredients that helped make this Reconstruction classic.

TSS: Do you remember the first Premier track you ever heard?

Jaycee: I would have to say it was “Positivity”. I used to watch Rap City back in the day when they had Chris Thomas, The Mayor (Laughs). They used to play “Positivity” a lot and I thought it was a cool record. I liked the sound of it. That record put me on alert to be aware of Gang Starr. Aside from the beat being so dope, I liked Premier’s scratches on the hook. His cuts are so rhythmic and I loved the way he broke down the phrases in the samples he scratched. From a technical standpoint the cuts weren’t that difficult, but he made them sound great. They were simple, but them shits were funky.

In terms of albums, the very first Gang Starr album, No More Mr. Nice Guy, was kind of hard to find in Atlanta. I’ve never had that album in my collection to be honest. I’ve seen it over the years, but I was always more concerned with buying other stuff. It wasn’t a priority record. To this day I don’t own it, and that would probably piss a lot of DJ Premier heads off.

When Step Into The Arena came out, I bought that shit immediately. I studied all of the beats on it and what impressed me about Premier’s production was that his stuff was clean sounding, but he could also flip and do some really gritty shit. If you listen to “Step Into The Arena”, that song sounds kinda clean. You can hear the high hats and the 808′s. But then on a cut like “Precisely The Right Rhymes,” which utilized “The Brethren” sample and something else that I’m not familiar with…that shit was just dope. It sounded real dirty. You could tell Premier’s production was evolving at that point. By the time Daily Operation came out, it was just like “Aww damn.” I can say that other than The Bomb Squad, Premier was my favorite producer at that time. This was around ’92.

TSS: Have you ever met DJ Premier?

Jaycee: I actually got to meet Premier sometime around ’92. I was part of a group that will remain nameless (Laughs). We put a nice lil’ demo together and hooked up with a promoter who was bringing Gang Starr to town for a show. Read the rest of this entry »

Words By DJ Sorce-1
Graphics By P.

Lately, I’ve been listening to nothing but pre new millennium music. With a few exceptions, if it came out post 2000, I haven’t been fucking with it. Call me bitter. Call me a hater. Call me whatever you want to, but I sorely needed a break. I needed to go back to a time where ringtone sales had no meaning and there were no mix tapes only featuring 50, Jigga, and Weezy.

Shit, I needed to go back to a time when the word “Weezy” meant nothing to me.

One thing that has been in constant rotation in my ride during this phase is Vinroc’s Recon-Struction mixtape. DJ Neil Armstrong, Vinroc’s crewmate, cites Recon-Struction as his favorite mix tape of all-time. Released in 1997, it’s a perfect mix of great early to mid-nineties hip-hop, flipped with a turntablist aesthetic. Vinroc’s presentation of this era is a unique one as each track represents a mix of a specific group. He crams in three to five minutes of dopeness from each group and then moves on to the next. Vin successfully rides the fine line of displaying his skills as a DJ without going over board throughout. He flexes enough cuts and juggles to make Recon-Struction unique while simultaneously letting songs play uninterrupted when appropriate. The result is one of the purest hip-hop mix tapes I’ve ever heard.

These days, Vinroc is known more for his production accolades than mixtapes. The world of music is a much different from the world in which Recon-Struction was created, yet Vinroc’s memories of the tapes genesis remain fresh. Take a walk down memory lane as TSS’s Sorce-1 revisits Vinroc’s mixtape masterpiece.

TSS: What tapes influenced you before making Recon-Struction?

Vinroc: Hmm. That’s a tough question. I used to just listen to local Jersey stuff during that time period. I always checked my homie Ed Swift and bought tapes by cats like Camillo and DJs from Queens. But I can’t really say that stuff influenced Recon-Struction. That was just hip hop shit I was into.

TSS: So was the turntablist and battling scene more influential than the mix tape scene?

Vinroc: Yeah, that scene influenced Recon-Struction. At that time, other than battling, I was straight hip hop with what I listened to. I was all about Mobb Deep, Raekwon, and neighborhood music. Recon-Struction was paying homage to the stuff that came out a little before that and up to that time. I can’t say it was really influenced by anything but my personal taste.

TSS: What did Recon-Struction mean to you and your career when it was released?

Vinroc: My manager at the time pushed me to put Recon-Struction out and I’m still selling it to this day. It first came out around 1997 and was originally on cassette tape, to put the time in perspective (Laughs). If I recall correctly, I also did the cover art for it. At that time, I was a heavy duty battle cat…a real turntablist type. It was always on my brain. I was young and the turntablist and battle scene was at its peak. The music I used on Recon-Struction was the music I grew up with. I wanted to create something like a team turntablist set with golden era hip hop samples that flowed together well.

One of the first times I owned any “real” studio equipment was during the creation of Recon-Struction. I had a Tascam 424 tape based 4 track, which everyone used back then. I had just moved to Cali and I’d bought my 4 track from Canal St. a few months earlier. I basically pooled all of my favorite artists and the joints that they made and put them together as I was hearing it in my head. A lot of the composition and mixing philosophies that I used on that tape were part of what the Triple Threat DJ’s eventually became. If you’ve ever seen some of our videos, there is a lot of Recon-Struction-style composition mixed with Skratch Piklz techniques.

TSS: Can you talk a little bit about how things have changed since Serato? Back in the day you had to have a physical copy of each record that you used on a mix tape, or at least borrow one from a friend. How was it different having to collect each and every piece of wax? Read the rest of this entry »

Words By DJ Sorce-1 Graphics By P.

On March 14th, 1970, during a Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol mission in the Duc Lap area of the Quang Duc Province of South Viet Nam, a UH-1P helicopter carrying Capt. Dana A. Dilley, Capt. Marvin R. Loper, SSgt John A. Thorburn, and A1c David A. Carpenter was shot down by enemy ground fire. Staff Sergeant Thorburn, along with fellow gunner A1C Carpenter, suffered serious injuries. Captain Dilley lost his life in the crash, and Captain Loper sustained broken bones in one of his feet. An Army helicopter on the same operation was able to rescue the surviving crew and bring them to Cam Ranh Bay, where they received treatment for their injuries. Upon receiving treatment, they were brought back to the U.S. Despite being badly injured, Thorburn ultimately survived the incident.

Thirty-six years later, in a verse that would win him a “Hip-Hop Quotable” in the October 2006 issue of The Source, Thorburn’s son, RA The Rugged Man, would retell what took place on that fateful March night in the Jedi Mind Tricks’ song “Uncommon Valor: A Vietnam Story”. The song was featured on Jedi Mind’s most recent album, Servants in Heaven, Kings in Hell. Spanning fourty-four bars and nearly two minutes, RA’s rapid fire, monotone masterpiece of a verse left people breathless as he dropped lines like “Tail rotor broke, crash land, American man, Cambodia, right in the enemy hand” over superproducer Stoupe’s haunting production. His vivid storytelling ability and insight into his father’s emotional state during the helicopter crash made the song an instant classic.

Over a year after its release, the verse stands as one of RA’s finest moments as an MC. His verse is so good that The Crew’s DJ Sorce-1 decided to talk to RA about what went into making the song. TSS is proud to present an in depth look at the genesis of “Uncommon Valor: A Vietnam Story”.

TSS: Whose idea was it to make the song? I know that your father is a Vietnam veteran and that your verse was based on his experiences. Did you come up with the songs concept or did Jedi Mind Tricks approach you about it?

RA: Paz had approached me to do a song about Vietnam because I always have the veteran’s hat and green jackets on and I’m all on that Nam shit. When he first came up with the idea I didn’t think, “Whoa, amazing idea”, I was just like, “Uh, ok.” When I started writing to the first Stoupe beat I was writing some Rambo shit about grenades and blowing shit up. I didn’t think to do my verse about my father. But then I started to think about doing the verse differently because it felt corny.

When I got the second beat I said, “Eh, trash those other rhymes. That’s some Rambo cartoon shit.” So when I got the beat we used for the song I said, “You know what, fuck it. Let me tell me father’s story. Who got a better story than him?” I called him up and talked to him for an hour or two and took notes. I knew most of the stories by heart, but I didn’t know the names of everything. I didn’t know the name of his gun or the names of specific locations. He also said things that I used in the song like the stuff about black pajamas. So that was just me talking to my father for two hours. I took a little time on that song too. The 44 bars took me a week to write. Usually you go into the studio and just write some shit. But that particular verse, I tried to make it really accurate and took my time on it.

TSS: Was it difficult for your father to talk to you about his experience in depth and was he uncomfortable that his story was being made into a song?

RA: No, he loved the idea. When he heard it he was blown away. He couldn’t believe it. He was blown the fuck away, like, “Holy shit, it’s like you were there.” It brought some of his friends to tears. They were really happy and impressed with it. As far as talking about his experience, he was ok with it. He told me all the stories in the past. But there is one part of his story that he doesn’t talk about. My dad’s gun shot 4,000 bullets a minute. He was shooting 30,000 bullets a day sometimes. When I say, “Hey pops, how many people did you kill while you were there?” he’ll say, “Oh son, I didn’t kill nobody. I didn’t take lives I saved lives.” He looks at it like he wasn’t killing; he was saving the lives of his people. So he’ll never tell me how many lives he took. But the rest of it he’s totally open about.

TSS: How much input did you and Vinnie Paz have on Stoupe’s production for the song?

RA: Well, Stoupe originally hit us with different beat. I started writing some shit to the first beat he hit us with. Stoupe is neurotic, and after I started writing to the first beat he said, “Oh, I hate the beat. I don’t like the beat.” I told him, “Just give me the fucking beat that we’re really using.” Paz sent me over the next beat that Stoupe had, and I just started writing to it. Neither of us really had any influence. Vinnie just accepted it and I said, “No doubt, we’ll do it.”

TSS: The buildups in the production fit the lyrics so well; I thought you guys might have had some input.

RA: Yeah, well if you’re a writer you reinvent the beat. That’s part of your job, to reinvent the beat and give it a new world.

TSS: When I first heard your verse I was trying to tell if you did it all in one take. It sounds like you did, but I wasn’t sure because of the length of it.

RA: I could do that whole verse in one take. The only problem is with memorizing it. When I read it off a paper I can do it in one take. That particular time when we recorded it in the studio I didn’t. The length of the verse is 44 bars, I didn’t know the rhyme very well, and I was reading it off of a piece of paper. So it took a couple punches here and there. But our reason for using multiple takes wasn’t because I couldn’t do it in one take. If you want to test me, I’ll grab a sheet of paper and read the whole thing to the beat without missing beat.

TSS: Is it difficult to do breath control and hold it together when you’re rhyming for that long? Read the rest of this entry »