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El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead Sendspace
El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead 2007 (Definitive Jux) Sendspace MP3 Download
Tracklisting:
1 Tasmanian Pain Coaster (6:54)
Vocals [Featuring] - Cedric Bixler-Zavala
2 Smithereens (Stop Cryin) (4:32)
Vocals [Additional] - Hangar 18
3 Up All Night (2:36)
Vocals [Additional] - Mr. Lif
4 EMG (4:31)
Scratches - DJ Big Wiz
5 Drive (4:13)
6 Dear Sirs (1:32)
7 Run The Numbers (4:41)
Rap [Featuring] - Aesop Rock
8 Habeas Corpses (Draconian Love) (4:34)
Rap [Featuring] - Cage
Vocals [Additional] - Mr. Len , Victoria Allen
9 The Overly Dramatic Truth (4:30)
Vocals [Additional] - Daryl Palumbo
Vocals [Additional] - Camu Tao
10 Flyentology (4:01)
Co-producer, Vocals [Featuring] - Trent Reznor
Vocals [Additional] - Rob Sonic
11 No Kings (3:05)
Vocals [Additional] - Tame One
12 The League Of Extraordinary Nobodies (2:34)
Vocals [Additional] - Joey Raia , Murs , Slug
13 Poisenville Kids No Wins / Reprise (This Must Be Our Time) (7:00)
Vocals [Featuring] - Chan Marshall
Sorry, i was forced to remove the download link due to copyright violation
Underground Rap Instrumentals Rapidshare (Pt.1 - Madvillain, Madlib, Necro, Jay Dee, Jurassic 5, RJD2, A Tribe Called Quest)
Madvillainy Instrumentals:
rapidshare.com /files/7197848/Madvillain_-_Madvillainy__Instrumentals___Stones_Throw___200.rar.html
Madlib - Expressions Instumentals
http://rapidshare.de/files/19844579/...trumentals.zip
Necro Instrumentals Vol 1 http://www.megaupload.com/?d=33KW3T3F
Common - . Be (Instrumentals) http://rapidshare.de/files/18288920/Common-Be-Instrumental_LP-2005-sc.rar (2005) (prod. Jay Dee, Kanye West)
pass= scalp66
Jurassic 5 - Feedback INSTRUMENTALS (2006)
RJD2 - Magnificent City Instrumentals (2006)
(or Megaupload)
http://rapidshare.de/files/11549251/A_Tribe_Called_Quest_-_The_Love_Movement__Instrumental_.zip.html
Gangsta Rap Definition & History
Gangsta rap is a subgenre of hip hop, which developed during the late 1980s. With the popularity of Dr. Dre's The Chronic in 1992, gangsta rap became the most commercially lucrative subgenre of hip-hop. Since then some former gangsta rap artists have moved towards a more pop-friendly mainstream sound.
The subject matter inherent in gangsta rap has caused a great deal of controversy. Criticism has come from both right wing and left wing commentators, who have accused the genre of homophobia, misogyny, promiscuity, racism, and materialism.
Gangster rappers often defend themselves by claiming that they are describing the reality of inner-city life, and that they are only adopting a character, like an actor playing a role, which behaves in ways that they may not necessarily endorse.
Some commentators (for example, Spike Lee in his satirical film Bamboozled) have criticized it as analogous to black minstrel shows and blackface performance, in which performers -- both black and white -- were made up to look African American, acted in a stereotypically uncultured and ignorant manner for the entertainment of white audiences.
Gangster themes before hip-hop
The album Hustler's Convention by Lightnin Rod was released in 1973. The lyrics deal with street life, including pimping and hustling. The Last Poet Jalal Mansur Nuriddin delivers the rhyming vocals in the urban slang of his time, and together with the other Last Poets was quite influential on later hip-hop groups such as Public Enemy.
Ice-T, as well as many other rappers, has credited pimp and writer Iceberg Slim with influencing his rhymes.
There is also a long tradition of "gunman" lyrics in Jamaican music, which had a strong influence on South Bronx MC KRS-1.
Early hardcore rap and gangsta rap (1984-1990)
Schooly D and others
Philadelphia MC Schoolly D can probably be credited as the first rapper to use the word "gangster" in one of his songs. In his 1984 12" single "Gangster Boogie" he mentions it with "I shot call a ? with my gangster lean". He released the 12" single "P.S.K." (short for Park Side Killers) in 1985. In this song Schoolly D makes direct references to his crew or gang (PSK) as well as describing putting his pistol against another rapper's head.
The rap group Run DMC are often credited with popularizing hardcore and abrasive attitudes and lyrics in hip hop culture, and were one of the first rap groups to dress in gang-like street clothing. Their socially conscious lyrics would later influence socially conscious gangsta rappers and hardcore rappers such as Ice Cube and Nas.
Rappers such as Slick Rick, LL Cool J, the group EPMD, and the seminal hardcore group Public Enemy (which even sported a crosshair as its trademark symbol) would further popularize hard-hitting, aggressive, often socio-political lyrics, sometimes revolving around street violence, poverty, and gunplay.
Ice-T
In 1987,Angeles-based rapper Ice-T released "6 n the Mornin", which is often regarded as the first gangsta rap song. Ice-T had been MCing since the early '80s; his first song, "The Coldest Rap", was the first hiphop song to use the words ho and nigga, and included references to guns and pimping.
In an interview with PROPS magazine Ice-T said: "Here's the exact chronological order of what really went down: The first record that came out along those lines was Schoolly D's 'P.S.K.' Then the syncopation of that rap was used by me when I made Six In The Morning. The vocal delivery was the same: '...P.S.K. is makin' that green', '...six in the morning, police at my door'. When I heard that record I was like "Oh shit!" and call it a bite or what you will but I dug that record. My record didn't sound like P.S.K., but I liked the way he was flowing with it. P.S.K. was talking about Park Side Killers but it was very vague. That was the only difference, when Schoolly did it, it was "...one by one, I'm knockin' em out". All he did was represent a gang on his record. I took that and wrote a record about guns, beating people down, and all that with Six In The Morning. At the same time my single came out, Boogie Down Productions hit with Criminal Minded, which was a gangster-based album. It wasn't about messages or "You Must Learn", it was about gangsterism."
Ice-T continued to release gangsta albums for the remainder of the decade: Rhyme Pays in 1987, Power in 1988 and The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say in 1989. Ice-T's lyrics also contained strong political commentary, and often played the line between glorifying the gangsta lifestyle and criticizing it as a no-win situation.
Beastie Boys
The Beastie Boys, while never truly credited as gangsta rappers, were actually one of the first groups to identify themselves as "gangsters" on their acclaimed and commercially successful 1986 debut album, Licensed to Ill. They were also one of the first popular rap groups to talk about violence, drug and alcohol use, and themes common in gangsta rap today. According to "Rolling Stone" magazine, "Licensed to Ill is filled with enough references to guns, drugs, and empty sex (including the pornographic deployment of a Whiffle-ball bat in "Paul Revere") to qualify as a gangsta-rap cornerstone." In their early underground days, the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A. rapped over Beastie Boy tracks for songs such as "My Posse" and "Ill-Legal", and the Beastie Boys' influence can be seen significantly in all of N.W.A's early albums.
The Beastie Boys continued to produce proto-gangsta rap tracks on their 1989 album Paul's Boutique, which included such hardcore tracks as "Car Thief," "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun," and "High-Plains Drifter."
Boogie Down Productions
Boogie Down Productions released their first single, "Say No Brother (Crack Attack Don't Do It)", in 1986. It was followed by "South-Bronx/P is Free" and "9mm Goes Bang" in the same year. The latter is the most gangsta-themed song of the three; in it KRS-1 describes shooting rival weed-dealers after they try to kill him in his home. The album Criminal Minded followed in 1987. Shortly after the release of the album, BDP's DJ Scott LaRock was shot and killed. After this BDP's subsequent records focused on conscious lyrics instead.
N.W.A.
N.W.A. released their first single in 1986. They were crucial to the foundations of the genre for introducing more violent lyrics over much rougher beats. The first blockbuster gangsta album was N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton first released in 1988. Straight Outta Compton also established West Coast hip hop as a vital genre, and a rival of hip hop's long-time capital, New York City. Straight Outta Compton sparked the first major controversy regarding hip hop lyrics when their song "Fuck Tha Police" earned a letter from the FBI strongly expressing law enforcement's resentment of the song. Due to the influence of Ice T and N.W.A., gangsta rap is often credited as being an originally West Coast phenomenon. In 1990, former N.W.A. member Ice Cube would further influence gangsta rap with his hardcore, socio-political solo albums.
Others
Aside from N.W.A. and Ice T, early West Coast rappers include Too $hort (from Oakland, California), Kid Frost (who was an important Latin MC), and others from Compton, Watts, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego and San Francisco. On the East Coast, New York's Kool G Rap began to use more and more crime-related themes in his lyrics towards the end of the decade.
Gangsta rap after 1990
Ice-T
Ice-T released one of the seminal albums of the genre, OG: Original Gangster in 1991. It also contained a song by his new thrash metal group Body Count, who released a self titled album in 1992. The group attracted a lot of media attention for the Cop Killer controversy.
His next album, Home Invasion, was postponed as a result of the controversy, and was finally released in 1993. While it contained gangsta elements, it was his most political album to date. After that, he left Time-Warner records. Ice-T's subsequent releases went back to straight gangsta-ism, but were never as popular as his earlier releases. He had alienated his core audience with his involvement in metal, his emphasis on politics and with his uptempo Bomb-Squad style beats during a time when G-funk was popular. He published a book "The Ice Opinion: Who Gives a Fuck?" in 1994.
G-funk and Death Row Records
Eric Martin and Tupac were best of friends in 1992, it is said that Tupac found insparation in Eric as a friend. Also in 1992, former N.W.A. member Dr. Dre released The Chronic, which further established the dominance of West Coast gangsta rap and Death Row Records, and also began the subgenre of G-funk, a slow, drawled form of hip hop that dominated the charts for some time. Extensively sampling P-Funk bands, especially Parliament and Funkadelic, G-funk was multi-layered, yet simple and easy to dance to, with anti-authoritarian lyrics that helped endear it to many young listeners. Another G-Funk success was Ice Cube's Predator album, released at the same time as The Chronic in 1992. It sold over 5 million copies and was #1 in the Charts, despite the fact that Ice Cube wasn't a Death Row artist. One of the genre's biggest crossover stars was Dre's protégé Snoop Doggy Dogg (Doggystyle, 1993), now known as Snoop Dogg, whose exuberant party-oriented themes made songs such as "Gin and Juice" club anthems and top hits nationwide. Tupac Shakur (Me Against the World, 1995) has endured as one of the most successful and influential West Coast hip hop artists of all time. Snoop and Tupac were both artists on Death Row Records, owned by Dre and Marion "Suge" Knight. Many of Tupac's greatest hits sampled or interpolated earlier music by Zapp & Roger.
Mafioso rap
Cover of Raekwon's mafia-influenced debut solo, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Mafioso rap is a hip hop sub-genre which flourished in the mid-1990s. It is the pseudo-Mafia extension of East Coast hardcore rap, and was the counterpart of West Coast G-Funk rap during the 1990s. In contrast to West Coast gangsta rappers, who tended to depict realistic urban life on the ghetto streets, Mafioso rappers' subject matter included self-indulgent and luxurious fantasies of rappers as Mobsters, or Mafiosi, while making numerous references towards .
East Coast Hardcore and gangsta rap
Meanwhile, rappers from New York City and Philadelphia, such as Black Moon (Enta Da Stage, 1993), Wu-Tang Clan (Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), 1993), Onyx (Bacdafucup, 1993), Mobb Deep (The Infamous, 1995), Nas (Illmatic, 1994), the Notorious B.I.G. (Ready to Die, 1994), and Raekwon (Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, 1995) pioneered a grittier sound known as East Coast hardcore rap. B.I.G. and the rest of Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Records roster paved the way for New York City to take back chart dominance from the West Coast as gangsta rap continued to explode into the mainstream. It is widely speculated that the "East Coast/West Coast" battle between Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records resulted in the deaths of Death Row's Tupac Shakur and Bad Boy's Notorious B.I.G. This had a knock-on effect on Death Row itself, which sank quickly when most of its big name artists like Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg left and it found itself on the receiving end of multiple lawsuits. Dr. Dre, at the MTV Video Music Awards, claimed that "gangsta rap was dead". Although Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Entertainment fared better than its West Coast rival, it continued to lose popularity and support of the hip hop fan base with a more mainstream sound, and challenges from Atlanta and, especially, Master P's No Limit stable of popular rappers.
Southern and midwestern gangsta rap
After the deaths of Biggie and Tupac, gangsta rap remained a major commercial force. However, most of the industry's major labels were in turmoil, or bankrupt, and new locations sprang up.
Atlanta had been firmly established as a hip hop center by artists such as Goodie Mob and Outkast and many other Southern hip hop artists emerged in their wake, whilst gangsta rap artists achieving the most pop-chart success. Jermaine Dupri, an Atlanta-born record producer and talent scout, had great success after discovering youthful pop stars Kris Kross (Totally Krossed Out, 1992) performing at a mall, and later masterminded a large roster of commercially successful acts on his So So Def label which although mostly weighted towards pop-rap & R&B, also included rap artists such as Da Brat (Funkdafied, 1994), and himself. Perhaps the most famous gangsta rapper from the South is Scarface.
Master P's No Limit Records label, based out of New Orleans, also became quite popular, though critical success was very scarce, with the exceptions of some later additions like Mystikal (Ghetto Fabulous, 1998). No Limit had begun its rise to fame with Master P's The Ghetto Is Trying to Kill Me! (1994, 1994 in music), and subsequent hits by Silkk the Shocker (Charge It 2 Da Game, 1998) and C-Murder (Life or Death, 1998). Cash Money Records, also based out of New Orleans, had enormous commercial success with a very similar musical style and quantity-over-quality business approach to No Limit but were less ridiculed.
Cleveland based rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony also had a monumental impact on the Midwestern gangsta rap scene. The mid-1990s saw Bone metamorphose into an extremely popular commercial rap assemblage with the release of their critically acclaimed album E 1999 Eternal. Their fast, harmonizing vocals (coupled with their fast rap delivery) changed the limitations of gangsta rap.
Mainstream era
Before the late nineties, gangsta rap and hip hop in general, while being extremely popular, had always been seen as a fringe genre that remained firmly outside of the pop mainstream. However, the rise of Bad Boy Records signalled a major stylistic change in gangsta rap (or as it is referred to on the East Coast, hardcore rap), as it morphed into a new subgenre of hip hop which would become even more commercially successful. Notorious B.I.G. is seen by many to have initiated gangsta rap's move towards conquering the pop charts, as he was the first hardcore gangsta rapper to produce albums as a calculated attempt to include both gritty gangsta narratives and polished, catchy, danceable pop productions entirely aimed at the clubs and at the mainstream pop charts. Between the release of Biggie's debut album Ready to Die in 1994 and his follow-up Life after Death in 1997, his sound changed from the darker, sample-heavy production to a cleaner, more upbeat sound fashioned for popular consumption (though the references to guns, drug dealing and life as a thug on the street remained). R&B-styled hooks and instantly recognizable samples of well-known soul and pop songs from the 1970s and 1980s were the staples of this sound, which was showcased primarily in his latter-day work for The Notorious B.I.G. ("Mo Money, Mo Problems"), Ma$e ("Feels So Good"), and non Bad Boy artists such as Jay-Z ("Can I Get A...") and Nas ("Street Dreams").
Also achieving similar levels of success with a similar sound at the same time as Bad Boy was Master P and his No Limit label in New Orleans, as well as the New Orleans upstart Cash Money label. A Cash Money artist, The B.G., popularized a catch phrase in 1999 that sums up what the majority of late-nineties mainstream hip hop focused on subject-wise: "Bling-Bling." Whereas much gangsta rap of the past had portrayed the rapper as being a victim of urban squalor, the persona of late-nineties mainstream gangsta rappers was far more weighted towards hedonism and showing off the best jewelry, clothes, liquor, and women. Many of the artists who achieved such mainstream success, such as Ma$e, Jay-Z and Cam'Ron, originated from the gritty East Coast rap scene and were influenced by hardcore artists such as the Notorious B.I.G and Nas. Ma$e, Jay-Z and Cam'Ron are also typical of the more relaxed, casual flow that became the pop-gangsta norm. Many of these artists are viewed as being rather illegitimately "gangsta" compared to their West Coast counterparts.
Pop-inflected gangsta rap continues to be successful into the 21st century, with many artists deftly straddling the divide between their hip hop audience and their pop audience, such as Ja Rule and Jay-Z. The influence of West Coast gangsta rapper 2Pac on the East Coast rap scene has also become increasingly apparent in the new century.
from en.wikipedia.org
The subject matter inherent in gangsta rap has caused a great deal of controversy. Criticism has come from both right wing and left wing commentators, who have accused the genre of homophobia, misogyny, promiscuity, racism, and materialism.
Gangster rappers often defend themselves by claiming that they are describing the reality of inner-city life, and that they are only adopting a character, like an actor playing a role, which behaves in ways that they may not necessarily endorse.
Some commentators (for example, Spike Lee in his satirical film Bamboozled) have criticized it as analogous to black minstrel shows and blackface performance, in which performers -- both black and white -- were made up to look African American, acted in a stereotypically uncultured and ignorant manner for the entertainment of white audiences.
Gangster themes before hip-hop
The album Hustler's Convention by Lightnin Rod was released in 1973. The lyrics deal with street life, including pimping and hustling. The Last Poet Jalal Mansur Nuriddin delivers the rhyming vocals in the urban slang of his time, and together with the other Last Poets was quite influential on later hip-hop groups such as Public Enemy.
Ice-T, as well as many other rappers, has credited pimp and writer Iceberg Slim with influencing his rhymes.
There is also a long tradition of "gunman" lyrics in Jamaican music, which had a strong influence on South Bronx MC KRS-1.
Early hardcore rap and gangsta rap (1984-1990)
Schooly D and others
Philadelphia MC Schoolly D can probably be credited as the first rapper to use the word "gangster" in one of his songs. In his 1984 12" single "Gangster Boogie" he mentions it with "I shot call a ? with my gangster lean". He released the 12" single "P.S.K." (short for Park Side Killers) in 1985. In this song Schoolly D makes direct references to his crew or gang (PSK) as well as describing putting his pistol against another rapper's head.
The rap group Run DMC are often credited with popularizing hardcore and abrasive attitudes and lyrics in hip hop culture, and were one of the first rap groups to dress in gang-like street clothing. Their socially conscious lyrics would later influence socially conscious gangsta rappers and hardcore rappers such as Ice Cube and Nas.
Rappers such as Slick Rick, LL Cool J, the group EPMD, and the seminal hardcore group Public Enemy (which even sported a crosshair as its trademark symbol) would further popularize hard-hitting, aggressive, often socio-political lyrics, sometimes revolving around street violence, poverty, and gunplay.
Ice-T
In 1987,Angeles-based rapper Ice-T released "6 n the Mornin", which is often regarded as the first gangsta rap song. Ice-T had been MCing since the early '80s; his first song, "The Coldest Rap", was the first hiphop song to use the words ho and nigga, and included references to guns and pimping.
In an interview with PROPS magazine Ice-T said: "Here's the exact chronological order of what really went down: The first record that came out along those lines was Schoolly D's 'P.S.K.' Then the syncopation of that rap was used by me when I made Six In The Morning. The vocal delivery was the same: '...P.S.K. is makin' that green', '...six in the morning, police at my door'. When I heard that record I was like "Oh shit!" and call it a bite or what you will but I dug that record. My record didn't sound like P.S.K., but I liked the way he was flowing with it. P.S.K. was talking about Park Side Killers but it was very vague. That was the only difference, when Schoolly did it, it was "...one by one, I'm knockin' em out". All he did was represent a gang on his record. I took that and wrote a record about guns, beating people down, and all that with Six In The Morning. At the same time my single came out, Boogie Down Productions hit with Criminal Minded, which was a gangster-based album. It wasn't about messages or "You Must Learn", it was about gangsterism."
Ice-T continued to release gangsta albums for the remainder of the decade: Rhyme Pays in 1987, Power in 1988 and The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech...Just Watch What You Say in 1989. Ice-T's lyrics also contained strong political commentary, and often played the line between glorifying the gangsta lifestyle and criticizing it as a no-win situation.
Beastie Boys
The Beastie Boys, while never truly credited as gangsta rappers, were actually one of the first groups to identify themselves as "gangsters" on their acclaimed and commercially successful 1986 debut album, Licensed to Ill. They were also one of the first popular rap groups to talk about violence, drug and alcohol use, and themes common in gangsta rap today. According to "Rolling Stone" magazine, "Licensed to Ill is filled with enough references to guns, drugs, and empty sex (including the pornographic deployment of a Whiffle-ball bat in "Paul Revere") to qualify as a gangsta-rap cornerstone." In their early underground days, the seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A. rapped over Beastie Boy tracks for songs such as "My Posse" and "Ill-Legal", and the Beastie Boys' influence can be seen significantly in all of N.W.A's early albums.
The Beastie Boys continued to produce proto-gangsta rap tracks on their 1989 album Paul's Boutique, which included such hardcore tracks as "Car Thief," "Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun," and "High-Plains Drifter."
Boogie Down Productions
Boogie Down Productions released their first single, "Say No Brother (Crack Attack Don't Do It)", in 1986. It was followed by "South-Bronx/P is Free" and "9mm Goes Bang" in the same year. The latter is the most gangsta-themed song of the three; in it KRS-1 describes shooting rival weed-dealers after they try to kill him in his home. The album Criminal Minded followed in 1987. Shortly after the release of the album, BDP's DJ Scott LaRock was shot and killed. After this BDP's subsequent records focused on conscious lyrics instead.
N.W.A.
N.W.A. released their first single in 1986. They were crucial to the foundations of the genre for introducing more violent lyrics over much rougher beats. The first blockbuster gangsta album was N.W.A.'s Straight Outta Compton first released in 1988. Straight Outta Compton also established West Coast hip hop as a vital genre, and a rival of hip hop's long-time capital, New York City. Straight Outta Compton sparked the first major controversy regarding hip hop lyrics when their song "Fuck Tha Police" earned a letter from the FBI strongly expressing law enforcement's resentment of the song. Due to the influence of Ice T and N.W.A., gangsta rap is often credited as being an originally West Coast phenomenon. In 1990, former N.W.A. member Ice Cube would further influence gangsta rap with his hardcore, socio-political solo albums.
Others
Aside from N.W.A. and Ice T, early West Coast rappers include Too $hort (from Oakland, California), Kid Frost (who was an important Latin MC), and others from Compton, Watts, Los Angeles, Oakland, San Diego and San Francisco. On the East Coast, New York's Kool G Rap began to use more and more crime-related themes in his lyrics towards the end of the decade.
Gangsta rap after 1990
Ice-T
Ice-T released one of the seminal albums of the genre, OG: Original Gangster in 1991. It also contained a song by his new thrash metal group Body Count, who released a self titled album in 1992. The group attracted a lot of media attention for the Cop Killer controversy.
His next album, Home Invasion, was postponed as a result of the controversy, and was finally released in 1993. While it contained gangsta elements, it was his most political album to date. After that, he left Time-Warner records. Ice-T's subsequent releases went back to straight gangsta-ism, but were never as popular as his earlier releases. He had alienated his core audience with his involvement in metal, his emphasis on politics and with his uptempo Bomb-Squad style beats during a time when G-funk was popular. He published a book "The Ice Opinion: Who Gives a Fuck?" in 1994.
G-funk and Death Row Records
Eric Martin and Tupac were best of friends in 1992, it is said that Tupac found insparation in Eric as a friend. Also in 1992, former N.W.A. member Dr. Dre released The Chronic, which further established the dominance of West Coast gangsta rap and Death Row Records, and also began the subgenre of G-funk, a slow, drawled form of hip hop that dominated the charts for some time. Extensively sampling P-Funk bands, especially Parliament and Funkadelic, G-funk was multi-layered, yet simple and easy to dance to, with anti-authoritarian lyrics that helped endear it to many young listeners. Another G-Funk success was Ice Cube's Predator album, released at the same time as The Chronic in 1992. It sold over 5 million copies and was #1 in the Charts, despite the fact that Ice Cube wasn't a Death Row artist. One of the genre's biggest crossover stars was Dre's protégé Snoop Doggy Dogg (Doggystyle, 1993), now known as Snoop Dogg, whose exuberant party-oriented themes made songs such as "Gin and Juice" club anthems and top hits nationwide. Tupac Shakur (Me Against the World, 1995) has endured as one of the most successful and influential West Coast hip hop artists of all time. Snoop and Tupac were both artists on Death Row Records, owned by Dre and Marion "Suge" Knight. Many of Tupac's greatest hits sampled or interpolated earlier music by Zapp & Roger.
Mafioso rap
Cover of Raekwon's mafia-influenced debut solo, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...Mafioso rap is a hip hop sub-genre which flourished in the mid-1990s. It is the pseudo-Mafia extension of East Coast hardcore rap, and was the counterpart of West Coast G-Funk rap during the 1990s. In contrast to West Coast gangsta rappers, who tended to depict realistic urban life on the ghetto streets, Mafioso rappers' subject matter included self-indulgent and luxurious fantasies of rappers as Mobsters, or Mafiosi, while making numerous references towards .
East Coast Hardcore and gangsta rap
Meanwhile, rappers from New York City and Philadelphia, such as Black Moon (Enta Da Stage, 1993), Wu-Tang Clan (Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), 1993), Onyx (Bacdafucup, 1993), Mobb Deep (The Infamous, 1995), Nas (Illmatic, 1994), the Notorious B.I.G. (Ready to Die, 1994), and Raekwon (Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, 1995) pioneered a grittier sound known as East Coast hardcore rap. B.I.G. and the rest of Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Records roster paved the way for New York City to take back chart dominance from the West Coast as gangsta rap continued to explode into the mainstream. It is widely speculated that the "East Coast/West Coast" battle between Death Row Records and Bad Boy Records resulted in the deaths of Death Row's Tupac Shakur and Bad Boy's Notorious B.I.G. This had a knock-on effect on Death Row itself, which sank quickly when most of its big name artists like Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg left and it found itself on the receiving end of multiple lawsuits. Dr. Dre, at the MTV Video Music Awards, claimed that "gangsta rap was dead". Although Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Entertainment fared better than its West Coast rival, it continued to lose popularity and support of the hip hop fan base with a more mainstream sound, and challenges from Atlanta and, especially, Master P's No Limit stable of popular rappers.
Southern and midwestern gangsta rap
After the deaths of Biggie and Tupac, gangsta rap remained a major commercial force. However, most of the industry's major labels were in turmoil, or bankrupt, and new locations sprang up.
Atlanta had been firmly established as a hip hop center by artists such as Goodie Mob and Outkast and many other Southern hip hop artists emerged in their wake, whilst gangsta rap artists achieving the most pop-chart success. Jermaine Dupri, an Atlanta-born record producer and talent scout, had great success after discovering youthful pop stars Kris Kross (Totally Krossed Out, 1992) performing at a mall, and later masterminded a large roster of commercially successful acts on his So So Def label which although mostly weighted towards pop-rap & R&B, also included rap artists such as Da Brat (Funkdafied, 1994), and himself. Perhaps the most famous gangsta rapper from the South is Scarface.
Master P's No Limit Records label, based out of New Orleans, also became quite popular, though critical success was very scarce, with the exceptions of some later additions like Mystikal (Ghetto Fabulous, 1998). No Limit had begun its rise to fame with Master P's The Ghetto Is Trying to Kill Me! (1994, 1994 in music), and subsequent hits by Silkk the Shocker (Charge It 2 Da Game, 1998) and C-Murder (Life or Death, 1998). Cash Money Records, also based out of New Orleans, had enormous commercial success with a very similar musical style and quantity-over-quality business approach to No Limit but were less ridiculed.
Cleveland based rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony also had a monumental impact on the Midwestern gangsta rap scene. The mid-1990s saw Bone metamorphose into an extremely popular commercial rap assemblage with the release of their critically acclaimed album E 1999 Eternal. Their fast, harmonizing vocals (coupled with their fast rap delivery) changed the limitations of gangsta rap.
Mainstream era
Before the late nineties, gangsta rap and hip hop in general, while being extremely popular, had always been seen as a fringe genre that remained firmly outside of the pop mainstream. However, the rise of Bad Boy Records signalled a major stylistic change in gangsta rap (or as it is referred to on the East Coast, hardcore rap), as it morphed into a new subgenre of hip hop which would become even more commercially successful. Notorious B.I.G. is seen by many to have initiated gangsta rap's move towards conquering the pop charts, as he was the first hardcore gangsta rapper to produce albums as a calculated attempt to include both gritty gangsta narratives and polished, catchy, danceable pop productions entirely aimed at the clubs and at the mainstream pop charts. Between the release of Biggie's debut album Ready to Die in 1994 and his follow-up Life after Death in 1997, his sound changed from the darker, sample-heavy production to a cleaner, more upbeat sound fashioned for popular consumption (though the references to guns, drug dealing and life as a thug on the street remained). R&B-styled hooks and instantly recognizable samples of well-known soul and pop songs from the 1970s and 1980s were the staples of this sound, which was showcased primarily in his latter-day work for The Notorious B.I.G. ("Mo Money, Mo Problems"), Ma$e ("Feels So Good"), and non Bad Boy artists such as Jay-Z ("Can I Get A...") and Nas ("Street Dreams").
Also achieving similar levels of success with a similar sound at the same time as Bad Boy was Master P and his No Limit label in New Orleans, as well as the New Orleans upstart Cash Money label. A Cash Money artist, The B.G., popularized a catch phrase in 1999 that sums up what the majority of late-nineties mainstream hip hop focused on subject-wise: "Bling-Bling." Whereas much gangsta rap of the past had portrayed the rapper as being a victim of urban squalor, the persona of late-nineties mainstream gangsta rappers was far more weighted towards hedonism and showing off the best jewelry, clothes, liquor, and women. Many of the artists who achieved such mainstream success, such as Ma$e, Jay-Z and Cam'Ron, originated from the gritty East Coast rap scene and were influenced by hardcore artists such as the Notorious B.I.G and Nas. Ma$e, Jay-Z and Cam'Ron are also typical of the more relaxed, casual flow that became the pop-gangsta norm. Many of these artists are viewed as being rather illegitimately "gangsta" compared to their West Coast counterparts.
Pop-inflected gangsta rap continues to be successful into the 21st century, with many artists deftly straddling the divide between their hip hop audience and their pop audience, such as Ja Rule and Jay-Z. The influence of West Coast gangsta rapper 2Pac on the East Coast rap scene has also become increasingly apparent in the new century.
from en.wikipedia.org
J Dilla Ruff Draft Rapidshare
J Dilla Ruff Draft Promo 2007 Rapidshare:
01 00:18 Intro --
02 02:11 Lets Take It Back --
03 02:42 Reckless Driving --
04 02:34 Nothing Like This --
05 02:44 The Money --
06 00:49 Interlude --
07 02:28 Make'em Nv --
08 00:45 Interlude --
09 03:43 Crushin (Yeeeeaah!) --
10 00:52 Shouts --
11 00:48 Intro (Alt) --
12 02:20 Wild --
13 04:25 Take Notice --
14 01:47 Shouts (Alt) --
Totals --
14 28:26 min --
http://rapidshare.com/files/11137966/J_Dilla-Ruff_Draft-Promo-2007-.rar
How to Graffiti / How to Do Graffiti / How to Paint Graffiti
Steps
Know and respect the history of the art. Graffiti is a hobby with a long history. Look at early hip-hop and the first writers (people who write graffiti), such as Taki in NY. The worst thing to experienced writers are "toys" making fools of themselves and destroying the scene for everyone else.
Pick a name. Practice drawing letters and pick some that you like drawing. Do not try to get too crazy with extensions and bending at first. Take it slow and make everything as clean as possible. It is very helpful at this point to find inspiration from other pictures you see. However, in the future, you will want to develop your own, unique style. A very important aspect to creating a good style with your name is flow. Keep characteristics of letters common throughout the rest of your name. Style is everything.
Carry a sketchbook and pencil with you wherever you go. Practice your craft as much as possible. As you come up with new ideas for tags and designs, sketch them in your book and develop the concept by trying out different variations. If possible, carry pencils of a few different colors. Eventually, you can move to using permanent marker.
Work with your cans. Buy a piece of plywood from Home Depot to practice on. At this point, colors and styles should be simple. Practice your can control and your techniques for painting and steps for putting together a clean "piece."
Be smart. Many cities also have "permission" or "legal" walls specified for graffiti art. Legal graffiti is often more respected than street art. You have unlimited time and freedom to do what you please. Compare legal walls to quick throw-ups found on the street. You will find that legal walls are intricate and aesthetic. Street art is just trying to be seen. Legal graffiti art is more remembered and respected by those who do not completely understand the artform.
Try to meet experienced writers who can help you learn the ropes. (However, be cautious; you do not want to come off like an undercover officer.) Show your appreciation for their work and their skills.
Tips
Don't get frustrated with lettering, it takes time.
Wherever you write, keep in mind that you are representing the entire graffiti culture anytime anyone else sees it. People usually don't differentiate between writers, they just know that somebody destroyed their property. Stay away from privately-owned businesses, worship areas, high profile business buildings. The experienced writers nowadays tend to stick to low-profile spots such as tunnels, abandoned buildings, and, if so desired, legal spots.
It's a lot easier to use stencils. Buy some sticky paper and put it in your printer. Use Photoshop or any other graphics program to make the paint layers. Print them.
from wikihow.com
Aesop Rock All Day Rapidshare
Aesop Rock - All Day: Nike+ Original Run (continuous mix)(2007)
This is one continuous 45 minute track, so no song list. Also includes the digital booklet in PDF format. Here's the description from Aesop Rock's myspace blog:
"All Day" Nike + Original Run series
hey all
i was asked to do a 45 minute long (mostly) intrumental song for nike's 'original run' series. i wouldnt call it my first intrumental album as i kind of approached it differently then i would a true inst album, but it is primarily intrumental, with some areas of vocals. this project has lots of live intrumentation, bass, guitars, keys, etc., and really has a consistently changing sound. there were a couple rules to follow, as i kinda had to make something that was as 'functional' as it was kinda cool to listen to. it really runs the gamut from super light and almost ambient to pretty dark and tuff, to eerie, to funky, etc etc. I really got to try things i dont think i would have ever tried elsewhere on this thing. dj big wiz does cuts throughout. allyson baker (former parchman farm member) plays guitar a lot. also, the music will come with a 'digital booklet' featuring 6 photos by the lovely and talented chrissy piper. should be available thru itunes feb 13th if youre interested. heres a snippet from the press release that went out:
AESOP ROCK COMMISSIONED FOR NIKE + ORIGINAL RUN SERIES!
Joining the ranks of renowned artists The Crystal Method and LCD Soundsystem, MC/Producer Aesop Rock has joined forces with Nike to release an original composition in the third installment of the "Nike + Orignal Run" series, available exclusively in the Nike Sport Music store on iTunes. All Day: Nike + Original Run, a 45-minute continuous mix, was created specifically with runners in mind and reflects Aesop Rock's distinct and unique style. "I wanted to create something that evolved enough that the sound was constantly fresh and attractive, as if the runner were moving through a set of differing cities or landscapes."
http://lix.in/cf4871
Grandmaster Flash Rapidshare
Grandmaster Flash Rapidshare:
The Message (1982) 62247 kb
hxxp://www.egoshare.com/3f58a0550f0305caab7c30a5457d62 13/grandmaster_flash__the_message rar.html
parol: raplover
xx=tt
The Source 54840kb
hxxp://www.egoshare.com/66150fcc5906a0d10d64612df2483f 36/grandmaster_flash__the_sourcer ar.html
pw: raplover
xx=tt
They Said It Couldn't Be Done (1985) 65179kb
hxxp://www.egoshare.com/7acd095c624b093eea57e9d472f0f9 5f/grandmaster_flash__they_said_i t_couldnt_be_done_1985rar.html
pw: raplover
xx=tt
LMNO - Workethic (2007) Rapidshare
LMNO - Workethic (2007) Rapidshare:
http://rapidshare.de/files/37645294/LMNO-Workethic-PROPER-2007-FTD.rar
Dj Kentaro Enter Rapidshare
Dj Kentaro Enter Rapidshare
01. Enter The Newground [02:21]
02. Keep On (Ft. Pharcyde) [03:45]
03. Free (Ft. Spank Rock) [03:13]
04. Tasogare Highway High (Bass Wanna Be A Singer) [03:37]
05. Rainy Day (Ft. New Flesh) [04:34]
06. Uminnaka [00:37]
07. Handmade Gift (Ft. Little Tempo) [04:27]
08. Space Jungle [04:22]
(Ft. MC SPanl Rock Ronnie Darko And Chris Rockswell)
09. Nursery Room [00:40]
10. Harvest Dance (Ft. Hifana) [03:16]
11. Trust [04:49]
12. One Hand Blizzard [02:19]
13. Brightin Star Enter [00:48]
14. Let It Go (Ft. Fat Jon) [05:09]
15. Hatsuyume (Ft. Hunger) [03:50]
16. Grateful To You [02:17]
-------
50:04 min
69,7 MB
After announcing himself to a worldwide audience with his Solid Steel mix "On The Wheels Of Solid Steel", Japan's DJ Kentaro returns with his full production debut, "Enter". Forty minutes of beautifully structured beats, musical smarts and occasional smattering of turntable magic, the record also features guest turns from The Pharcyde (Not on promo), Spank Rock, New Flesh, Little Tempo, Hifana and Fat Jon.
Kentaro is best known as a phenomenal turntablist and former DMC World Champion, but on this debut record, he's more concerned with showing his muscle as a music producer. Which is why "Enter" runs from the funk of "Free" to the dubby downtempo soul of "Tasogare Highway…", through the drum and bass attack of "Rainy Day," the live reggae feel of "Handmade Gift," the squelching dance aesthetic of "Space Jungle," on into the tribal space-jazz of "Harvest Dance," the epic turntable cut-up of "One Hand Blizzard" and, finally, the cosmic hip hop of "Let It Go". It's not that he can't scratch the shit out of a piece of vinyl when he wants to (check finale "Grateful To You") it's just that he understands that making a great album demands a wider palette.
Utterly contemporary, completely rooted in hip hop's old skool aesthetics and with a magpie naivety which gives him a freedom within them...
Kentaro enters your musical consciousness so that you can enter his. Come in…
RS>
http://link-protector.com/151614/
FTO>
http://files.to/get/381467/9641/DJKEnterAdv.rar
Abdominal Escape From The Pigeon Hole Rapidshare
Abdominal-Escape_From_The_Pigeon_Hole-2007-
R e l e a s e D a t a
Artist : Abdominal
Album : Escape From The Pigeon Hole
Genre : Hip-Hop
Label : Handcuts
Cat # :
URL :
Ripper : E. Gnore
Ripped : 2007-02-27
Store : 2007-00-00
Source : CD
Encoder : LAME v3.97 --vbr-new -V2
Grabber : EAC
S/Rate : 44.1 KHz
Bitrate : 144 kbps (average)
Mode : Joint Stereo
Playtime: 00h 50m 44s
Tracks : 14
T r a c k L i s t
1 1:20 The Escape
2 3:52 Breathe Later
3 4:00 T. Ode feat. Notes To Self
4 2:44 Radio Friendly
5 3:29 Pedal Pusher
6 2:29 Big Track
7 3:01 Abdominal Workout
8 5:28 Walk Left / Stand Right
9 5:05 Open Relationship
10 4:32 Sex With The Girls (Skip This One Mom)
11 4:10 Heaven's Demon
12 2:51 Girl Shit
13 3:35 Flyer Antics
14 4:08 Abdominal Workout (Speech Defect Remix)
R i p N o t e s
production credits:
01, 13 - DJ Fase
02, 07, 11 - DJ Format
03 - Bronze
04 - Cut Chemist
05 - Young Einsten
06, 09 - Morgan Smietana
08 - Bird
10 - Circle Research
12 - Phat Tony
14 - DJ Prao-D and Mr. Linus of Speech Defect
if u like it buy it and show artists some love...
enjoy...
http://link-protector.com/151119/
RZA Afro Samurai Rapidshare
RZA PRESENTS AFRO SAMURAI THE SOUNDTRACK (KOCH, 2007) Rapidshare:
http://rapidshare.com/files/14904566/Afro_Samurai_The_Soundtrack_2007_-_The_RZA_-_41st.rar
De La Soul De La Mixtape Rapidshare
De La Soul De La Mixtape Rapidshare
http://www.zshare.net/download/de-la-rar-sha.html
OneSelf Organically Grown Rapidshare MP3 Download
Here's a new song from One Self Organically Grown EP
http://www.zshare.net/audio/02-one_self-caravan_vs_black_ink-mp3.html
How to Scratch or Be a Turntablist
Here's an introduction to the basics of turntablism, or how to manipulate records or CDs and a crossfader in order to create music. This guide is not for absolute beginners.
Steps
Learn your music theory. Many DJs - even professional DJs - have no knowledge of music theory. Begin your education now. A turntablist is a percussionist, which means you need to have a good understanding of rhythm. You will be practicing scratching to music and then eventually making music using records. When you are scratching to a beat, you are scratching out a rhythm. If you have a complete understanding of rhythm, you can develop your skills to recreate these rhythms properly.
Learn about rhythm: most hip hop and dance music is in 4/4. That means for each bar of music there are 4 beats. Each beat can be subdivided in only a finite amount of ways. Count these out loud while you listen to music. Each beat will be place between [brackets]:
[1] [2] [3] [4]
[1 and] [2 and] [3 and] [4 and]
[1 trip let] [2 trip let] [3 trip let] [4 trip let]
[1 e and a] [2 e and a] [3 e and a] [4 e and a]
[i trip let and trip let] [2 trip let and trip let] [3 trip let and trip let] [ 4 trip let and trip let]
These are quarter notes, 8th notes, 8th note triplets, 16th notes, and 16th note triplets, respectively. Learn how to count these to the beats of songs you already like. You will have to increase the speed of your counting as you progress. Remember that triplets are just playing 3 notes in the time it usually takes to play two. Once you have mastered these subdivisions you will have to throw in rests to really have an understanding of the complexities of rhythym. Just remember that there are a finite way in which each beat can be subdivided. A good way to introduce youself to beats is to play the snare drum. You can go to the Vic Firth website listed below to get a feel for how each of these subdivsions and how the subdivisions that include rests, that were not written out here, sound. Once you can sing these rhythms or at least some of them out loud, you can start using these as a foundation for the scratches you develop.
Find a mixer that has a curve adjustment. This means that the crossfader does not have to be exactly in the middle before the sound is fully crossed over into the new channel. You dont absolutely have to have one of these mixers, but they make mixing a lot easier later on when you start doing advanced techniques.
Find a slipmat to put between the turntable's table and the record. This allows the record to spin freely. (Most turntables come with a rubber disc that keeps the record in place and you don't want it.) You want to be able to put a finger or your hand on the record and stop the record from moving without stopping the whole platter from moving. If you have a cheaper set of turntables you may need to cut additional pieces of plastic, wax or parchment paper (plastic carrier bags from the supermarket works really well) in circles that fit under the slipmat in order to reduce the fricion enough so that the platter does not stop when the record is stopped. You can buy a product called "majic carpets" that will help reduce friction. If you want to use your own slipmats or have a problem with stoppage or you can pick up a product called "butter rugs" and just use those as your permanent slipmat. You may still need to reduce the friction further but it depends on your taste and equipment.
Pick up some scratch records. You can use a cappella records or records that you already have and try and find a sample to use, but most DJs normally end up picking up a few scratch records to use in practice and battles. Most scratch records have a series of samples and then a beat and then some more samples and a different beat and so on. Dont just buy any record you find online, it's best to listen to the records to make sure they have something on it that is usable in your practice/performance. There are records that are unskippable which basically means that they repeat the samples in a way that if your needle skips (as it will) you will remain on the sounds you are trying to use. If you don't have an unskippable record, then try and wear in the record a little by finding the samples that you like and then pushing the record back and forth to get the needle and the groove groovin, baby.
Find a sample or sound on your record to practice scratching on. Longer sounds are the best.
Put the needle on the record and let it play until right before the sound.
Take a marker or sticker and put it somewhere on the record so you will have a visual cue to where the sample starts. It does not have to be on the vinyl itself. You can put it on the paper and when you get better you can worry about marking up your records with stickers that actually go on the vinyl itself in order to allow you to just place the needle on the paper and have the sounds cued up.
Start with no fader movement; just the hand on the record. When doing these scratches, first do them to a slower beat and then get faster and faster as you go along. When you are able to do them at a good speed, try and vary the rythyms by throwing in rests to the beats you develop.
Allow the sample to play at normal speed forward.
Stop the record with your hand or finger after the sound finishes playing and then slowly bring the record backwards at close to the same speed as it played forward. Pretend that you just hit reverse on your turntable and try to mimic the sound it would make.
Put on another song and do this to the beat.
Keep your hand on the record and slowly push the record forward; do it backward at the same speed. Then do this to the music.
Push the record forward over the sample instead of allowing the sound to play at regular speed or slowing it down. You will get a high pitched sound. Do the same for the reverse, pull it back at a similar speed. Then, do this to music. This is known as the baby scratch.
Tips
Rent/buy qbert's Do It Yourself Skratching Volumes 1 and 2
Rent/buy DJ Shortee's DJ 101 and DJ 102
Search for DJ performances on the internet
Go to the DMC website and see past winners of the yearly competition for the best DJs.
Protect your ears so you don't go deaf later on.
Don't use drugs or drink.
Warnings
Protect your ears! Wear earphones or earplugs if you have to play with the volume turned up.
from wikihow.com
Dilated Peoples Rapidshare Megaupload
the platform
http://rapidshare.de/files/37291887/all_movements_start_underground.rar
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=WGSX8JP9
http://files.filefront.com/DPPlatzip.../fileinfo.html
Neighborhood Watch
http://rapidshare.de/files/2647175/Neighborhood_Watch__2004_.part1.rar.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/2647485/Neighborhood_Watch__2004_.part2.rar.html
http://rapidshare.de/files/2647841/Neighborhood_Watch__2004_.part3.rar.html
pass : chill
20-20
http://rapidshare.de/files/16412757/20-20.rar
http://download.yousendit.com/8231323723435972
Method Man & Redman - Blackout Rapidshare
This one is not actually underground hip-hop, but it's kinda hip-hop classic, so i post it here. btw, it's not that easy to find this album for free download. if you got some megaupload, sendspace, rapidshare links - let me know
Method Man & Redman - Blackout
Del the Funky Homosapien - Profile + Bio + Rapidshare
Del was born and raised in Oakland. In 1991, Del, with his cousin Ice Cube’s support and with part of Ice Cube's backing band Da Lench Mob, made his first solo album, I Wish My Brother George Was Here, marking the first appearance of Del's crew Hieroglyphics. Despite mixed reviews, the album was generally well received. Del, however, was unhappy with the album, believing it was over-produced and phony. He decided to break away from Ice Cube's influence on his next album, No Need for Alarm, a break which (along with their disappointment in demos for his 3rd LP) caused the record label Elektra to drop Del's contract.
In 1998, Hieroglyphics came out with their first full length album, Third Eye Vision. This album was well received by both fans and critics[citation needed]. Two years later, Del came out with Both Sides of the Brain, and in 2000 he released Deltron 3030 with Dan “the Automator” Nakamura and Kid Koala, which garnered praise from critics[citation needed] and helped expand Del's audience. This project was particularly interesting because the CD was a work of science fiction, telling stories about life and hip hop in the year 3030.
Del collaborated with Gorillaz for two songs on their debut album, both of which became singles: "Clint Eastwood" and "Rock the House". In their videos he was portrayed as a ghost. Del later commented on the success of "Clint Eastwood" by saying that he actually wrote the song with the book "How to Write a Hit Song," a book that he bought with a coupon his mother gave him[citation needed]. After the song went platinum he gave the plaque to his mother[citation needed]. As part of Russel Hobbs' backstory, the character of Del was one of Russel's friends that was gunned down in a drive-by shooting, whose ghost possessed Russel. When Del was not invited to work on the Demon Days album, a story was written that Del and the other spirits that possessed Russel were exorcised in 2003.
Most recently, 2003 saw the release of Full Circle, a second album with the Hieroglyphics crew. This latest album has received mixed reviews[citation needed].
In 2004 Elektra released "The Best of Del The Funky Homosapien: The Elektra Years" -- without the approval of Del. The CD only includes songs from his first two albums, along with a handful of b-sides from that era. Del was not pleased and advised people to not buy the CD, saying it was just Elektra trying to make money off of him due to his newfound fame.
Together with his crew, Del has established his own independent record label, Hieroglyphics Imperium, which primarily consists of Hieroglyphics and a few other artists with whom the group collaborates regularly.
Del’s lyrics often reflect his interests, offering humor and themes that differ from mainstream hip hop. His songs have discussed video games, bad hygiene, intergalactic rap battles, and more. In 2000, the song "Jaw Gymnastics", featuring Casual, was featured in the game Knockout Kings. In 2000, the song "Positive Contact" from Deltron 3030 was featured in the game Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX. In 2001, the song "If You Must" was featured in the game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. In 2003, the song "Positive Contact" from Deltron 3030 was featured in the game Tony Hawk's Underground. In 2005, the song "Burnt" featuring Hieroglyphics was featured in the game Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland. In 2006, the song "Catch A Bad One" was used in the game Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure. Also in 2006 his song "Dr. Bombay" was used in commercials for the movie Beerfest and more recently his song "At the Helm" was featured in commercials for Tony Hawk's Project 8.
Currently there is a DVD available called 11th Hour, which DVD contains some live footage, footage of him in the studio and around the house, as well as footage of him recording 11th Hour.
According to an interview with Del on the latest edition of the Hierocast, Hiero's official podcast, progress has been made on 11th Hour and the beats and the cuts for the sequel to Deltron 3030 are complete.
from wikipedia.org
In 1998, Hieroglyphics came out with their first full length album, Third Eye Vision. This album was well received by both fans and critics[citation needed]. Two years later, Del came out with Both Sides of the Brain, and in 2000 he released Deltron 3030 with Dan “the Automator” Nakamura and Kid Koala, which garnered praise from critics[citation needed] and helped expand Del's audience. This project was particularly interesting because the CD was a work of science fiction, telling stories about life and hip hop in the year 3030.
Del collaborated with Gorillaz for two songs on their debut album, both of which became singles: "Clint Eastwood" and "Rock the House". In their videos he was portrayed as a ghost. Del later commented on the success of "Clint Eastwood" by saying that he actually wrote the song with the book "How to Write a Hit Song," a book that he bought with a coupon his mother gave him[citation needed]. After the song went platinum he gave the plaque to his mother[citation needed]. As part of Russel Hobbs' backstory, the character of Del was one of Russel's friends that was gunned down in a drive-by shooting, whose ghost possessed Russel. When Del was not invited to work on the Demon Days album, a story was written that Del and the other spirits that possessed Russel were exorcised in 2003.
Most recently, 2003 saw the release of Full Circle, a second album with the Hieroglyphics crew. This latest album has received mixed reviews[citation needed].
In 2004 Elektra released "The Best of Del The Funky Homosapien: The Elektra Years" -- without the approval of Del. The CD only includes songs from his first two albums, along with a handful of b-sides from that era. Del was not pleased and advised people to not buy the CD, saying it was just Elektra trying to make money off of him due to his newfound fame.
Together with his crew, Del has established his own independent record label, Hieroglyphics Imperium, which primarily consists of Hieroglyphics and a few other artists with whom the group collaborates regularly.
Del’s lyrics often reflect his interests, offering humor and themes that differ from mainstream hip hop. His songs have discussed video games, bad hygiene, intergalactic rap battles, and more. In 2000, the song "Jaw Gymnastics", featuring Casual, was featured in the game Knockout Kings. In 2000, the song "Positive Contact" from Deltron 3030 was featured in the game Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX. In 2001, the song "If You Must" was featured in the game Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3. In 2003, the song "Positive Contact" from Deltron 3030 was featured in the game Tony Hawk's Underground. In 2005, the song "Burnt" featuring Hieroglyphics was featured in the game Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland. In 2006, the song "Catch A Bad One" was used in the game Marc Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure. Also in 2006 his song "Dr. Bombay" was used in commercials for the movie Beerfest and more recently his song "At the Helm" was featured in commercials for Tony Hawk's Project 8.
Currently there is a DVD available called 11th Hour, which DVD contains some live footage, footage of him in the studio and around the house, as well as footage of him recording 11th Hour.
According to an interview with Del on the latest edition of the Hierocast, Hiero's official podcast, progress has been made on 11th Hour and the beats and the cuts for the sequel to Deltron 3030 are complete.
from wikipedia.org
Del Tha Funkee Homosapien [2000] Both Sides of the Brain Rapidshare
Del Tha Funkee Homosapien-I wish my brother george was here megaupload
Deltron 3030 Rapidshare
What is Turntablism? - Definition & History
Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and an audio mixer. The term was created in 1994 by DJ Supreme to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who actually performs, by touching and moving the records to manipulate sound. The word was never meant to be the actual title of the art form. It was regularly stated as an example, while explaining the need for a new word to describe a newly emerging and totally unique instrumental artform. The intention was for the original creators of the artform to confer, and decide on a title. While the idea of the need for a new word spread, some DJs just began to use the example word "turntablist" before the originators had a chance to proclaim an actual title.
DJ Babu has defined a turntablist as "One who has the ability to improvise on a phonograph turntable. One who uses the turntable in the spirit of a musical instrument;" while the Battlesounds documentary film suggests a definition of :"A musician, a hip-hop disc jockey who in a live/spontaneous situation can manipulate or restructure an existing phonograph recording (in combination with an audio mixer) to produce or express a new composition that is unrecognisable from its original ingredients."
Turntablist DJs use turntable techniques like scratching or beat juggling in the composition of original musical works. Turntablism is generally focused more on turntable technique and less on mixing. Some turntablists seek to have themselves recognized as legitimate musicians capable of interacting and improvising with other performers.
The history of the turntable being used as a musical instrument has its roots dating back to the 1940s and 1950s when musique concrète and other experimental composers (such as John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer), used them in a manner similar to that of today's producers and DJs, by essentially sampling and creating music that was entirely produced by the turntable.
Even earlier, Edgard Varèse experimented with turntables in 1930, though he never formally produced any works using them. This school of thought and practice is not directly linked to the current definition of hip hop-related turntablism, though it has had an influence on modern experimental sound artists such as Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Philip Jeck and Janek Schaefer. These artists are the direct descendants of people like John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer and are often credited as a variant to the modern turntablist DJ and producer.
Turntablism as a modern art form and musical practice has its roots within hip hop and Hip Hop culture of the early 1970s. It stems from one of the culture's "four pillars" - DJing (see "four elements," Hip Hop Culture). Scratching was already widely spread within Hip Hop by DJs and producers by the time turntablists started to appear.
Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash are widely credited for having cemented the now established role of DJ as Hip Hop's foremost instrumentalist (and historically the genre's only instrumentalist). Kool Herc's invention of break-beat deejaying is generally regarded as the foundational development in Hip Hop history, as it gave rise to all other elements of the genre. His influence on the of concept of "DJ as turntablist" is equally profound. To understand the significance of this achievement, it is important to first define the "break." Briefly, the "break" of a song is a musical fragment only seconds in length, which typically takes the form of an "interlude" in which all or most of the music stops except for the percussion. The break is roughly equivalent to the song's "climax," as it is meant to be the most exciting part of a song before returning once more to its finale (usually a return to the main chorus). In addition to raising the audience's adrenaline level, the percussion-heavy nature of the break makes it the most danceable as well, if only for seconds at a time. Kool Herc introduces the break-beat technique as a way of extending the break indefinitely. This is done by buying two of the same record and switching from one to the other on the DJ mixer: e.g., as record A plays, the DJ quickly backtracks to the same break on record B, which will again take the place of A at a specific moment in which the audience will not notice that the DJ has switched records.
Kool Herc's revolutionary technique set the course for the development of turntablism as an art form in significant ways. Most important, however, he develops a new form of deejaying that does not consist of playing and mixing records one after the other (incidentally, the type of DJ that specializes in mixing is well-respected for his own set of unique skills, but this is still deejaying in the traditional sense). Rather, Kool Herc originates the idea of creating a sequence for his own purposes, introducing the idea tof the DJ as the "feature" of parties, whose performance on any given night would be examined critically by the crowd.
However it was Grand Wizard Theodore, an apprentice of Flash, who accidentally isolated the single most important technique in turntablism: scratching. He put his hand on a record one day, to silence the music on the turntable while his mother was calling out to him and thus accidentally discovered the sound of scratching by moving the record back and forth under the stylus. Though Theodore discovered scratching, it was Flash who helped push the early concept and showcase it to the public, in his live shows and on recordings.
DJ Grand Mixer DXT is also credited with furthering the concept of scratching by practicing the rhythmic scratching of a record on one or more (usually two) turntables abd using different velocities to alter the pitch of the note or sound on the recording (Alberts 2002). DXT appeared ( as DST ) on Herbie Hancock's hit song "Rockit."
Together these early pioneers cemented the fundamental practice that would later become one of the pillars of the emerging turntablist artform. Scratching would during the 1980s become a staple of hip hop music, being used by producers and DJs on records and in live shows. By the end of the 1980s it was very common to hear scratching on a record, generally as part of the chorus of a track or within its production. On stage the DJ would provide the music for the MCs to rhyme to, scratching records during the performance and showcasing his skills alongside the verbal skills of the MC. The most well known example of this 'equation' of MCs and DJ is probably Run DMC who were composed of two MCs and one DJ. The DJ, Jam Master Jay (RIP), was an integral part of the group and his scratching an integral part of their productions and performances.
The appearance of turntablists and the birth of Turntablism was prompted by one major factor - the disappearance of the DJ in hip hop groups, on records and in live shows at the turn of the 1990s. This disappearance has been widely documented in books and documentaries (such as Black Noise and Scratch The Movie), and was linked to the increased use of DAT tapes and other studio techniques that would ultimately push the DJ further away from the original hip hop equation of the MC as the vocalist and the DJ as the music provider alongside the producer. This push and disappearance of the DJ meant that the practices of the DJ, such as scratching, went back underground and were cultivated and built upon by a generation of people who grew up with hip hop, DJs and scratching. By the mid-90s the disappearance of the DJ in hip hop had created a sub-culture which would come to be known as Turntablism and which focused entirely on the DJ utilising his turntables and a mixer to manipulate sounds and create music. By pushing the practice of DJing away, hip hop created the grounds for this sub-culture to be birthed and evolve.
The origin of the terms Turntablist and Turntablism are widely contested and argued about, though over the years some facts have been established by various documentaries (Battlesounds, Scratch The Movie), books (DJ Culture), conferences (Skratchcon 2000) and interviews in online and printed magazines. These facts are that the origins of the words most likely lay with practitioners on the US West Coast, centered around the San Francisco Bay Area. Some claim that DJ Disk, a member of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, was the first to coin the term, others claim that DJ Babu, a member of the Beat Junkies, was responsible for coining and spreading the term Turntablist after inscribing it on his mixtapes and passing them around. Additional claims credit DJ Supreme, a UK DJ and producer for the group Hijack, though the claims that the terms were birthed in the Bay Area are the most widely acknowledged and established ones. The truth most likely lies somewhere in between all these facts.
In an interview with the Spin Science online resource in 2005, DJ Babu added the following comments about the birth and spread of the term:
Spin Science: First thing was about your role in the spread of the word turntablist. I'm sure you must have spoken on it many times, but I was wondering if you could give us some details about how it all came about, as you're widely credited for birthing the term in a way. DJ Babu: Well I humbly accept the position I've now been given for this whole thing, but I want to stress that I was just part of a whole load of DJs who really made this whole thing happen. People like DST are in a way those who really deserve the credit for it all because they gave the bug to scratch to our whole generation, he started it by being part of the Herbie Hancock band and doing his thing on 'Rockit'. Without him and the other pioneers, probably none of us would have got into this thing. After that well... It was around 95, I was heavily into the whole battling thing, working on the tables constantly, mastering new techniques and scratches, and all the while working in a gas station and spending my spare time concentrating on all these things. One day I made this mixtape called 'Comprehension', and on there was a track called 'Turntablism' which featured Melo-D and D-Styles. And this is part of where this whole thing about turntablist came from. This was a time where all these new techniques were coming out, like flares and stuff, and there were probably 20 people or so, in around California between Frisco and LA, who knew about these. So we worked on them, talked about it and kicked about the ideas that these techniques and new ways of scratching gave us. And what I would do is write 'Babu the Turntablist' on tapes I was making at the time, and somehow it got out a bit, the media got hold of it and it blew into this whole thing we now know. But it was really nothing to start with. We'd all talk about these new scratches and how they really started to allow us to use the turntable in a more musical way, how it allowed us to do more musical compositions, tracks, etc. and then we'd think about how people who play the piano are pianists, and so we thought "we're turntablists in a way, because we play the turntable like these people do the piano or any other instrument". Beyond that, it was just me writing 'Babu the Turntablist', because it was something I did to make my tapes stand out. I'd just get my marker pen out and write it on there.
So by the mid to late 1990s the terms Turntablism and Turntablist had become established and accepted as defining the practice, and practitioner, of using turntables and a mixer to create or manipulate sounds and music. This could be done by scratching a record or manipulating the rhythms on the record either by drumming, looping or beat juggling.
The decade of the 1990s is also important in shaping the Turntablist artform and culture as it saw the emergence of pioneering artists (D-Styles, Q-Bert, A-Trak, Ricci Rucker, Mike Boo, Tony Vegas, Prime Cuts) and crews (Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters, Beat Junkies, The Allies, The Scratch Perverts, X-Ecutioners), record labels (Bomb Hip Hop, Asphodel, Tableturns), DJ Battles (DMC, ITF) and the evolution of scratching and other turntablist practices.
More sophisticated methods of scratching were developed during that decade, with crews and individual DJs concentrating on the manipulation of the record in time with the manipulation of the cross fader on the mixer to create new rhythms and sonic artefacts with a variety of sounds. The evolution of scratching from a fairly simple sound and simple rhythmic cadences to more complicated sounds and more intricate rhythmical patterns allowed the practitioners to further evolve what could be done with scratching musically. These new ways of scratching were all given names, from flare to crab or orbit, and spread as DJs taught each other, practiced together or just showed off their new techniques to other DJs.
Alongside the evolution of scratching, which deserves an article in itself, other practices such as drumming (or scratch drumming) and beat juggling were also evolved significantly during the 1990s.
Beat Juggling was invented, or discovered if you will, by Steve Dee, a member of the X-Men (later renamed X-Ecutioners) crew. Beat Juggling essentially involves the manipulation of two identical or different drum patterns on two different turntables via the mixer to create a new pattern. A simple example would be for example to use two copies of the same drum pattern to evolve the pattern by doubling the snares, syncopating the drum kick, adding rhythm and variation to the existing pattern. From this concept, which Steve Dee showcased in the early 90s at DJ battles, Beat Juggling evolved throughout the decade to the point where by the end of it, it had become an intricate technique to create entirely new 'beats' and rhythms out of existing, pre-recorded ones. These were now not just limited to using drum patterns, but could also consist of other sounds - the ultimate aim being to create a new rhythm out of the pre-recorded existing ones. While Beat Juggling is not as popular as scratching, due to the more demanding rhythmical knowledge it requires, it has proved popular within DJ Battles and in certain compositional situations.
One of the earliest academic studies of the turntable (White 1996) argued for its designation as a legitimate electronic musical instrument -- a manual analog sampler -- and described turntable techniques such as backspinning, cutting, scratching and blending as basic to the repertoire of the virtuoso hip hop DJ. White demonstrated that the proficient hip hop DJ must possess many of the same skills required by trained musicians, including a keen sense of timing, sharply-developed hand-eye coordination, technical competence and creativity with his material.
By the year 2000 Turntablism and turntablists had become widely publicised and accepted in the mainstream and within hip hop as valid artists. Through this recognition came further evolution.
This evolution took many shapes and forms: some continued to concentrate on the foundations of the artform and its original links to Hip Hop culture, some became producers utilising the skills they'd learnt as turntablists and incorporating those into their productions, some concentrated more on the DJing aspect of the artform by combining turntablist skills with the trademark skills of club DJs, while others explored alternative routes in utilising the turntable as an instrument or production tool solely for the purpose of making music - either by using solely the turntable or by incorporating it into the production process alongside tools such as drum machines, samplers, computer software, and so on.
In the 1990s, turntablism achieved new levels of attention. Dedicated DJs had gradually refined the practice, and it expanded on its own, apart from the MCs who had largely neglected DJing as rap developed.
New DJs/turntablists/crews like DJ Craze, Roc Raida, DJ Focus, DJ Q-Bert, Gunkhole, DJ Woody, A-Trak, Noisy Stylus, D-Styles, Birdy Nam Nam and Kid Koala owe a distinct debt to Old School DJs like DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Cash Money, Afrika Bambaataa and DJs of the golden age of hip hop, who originally developed many of the concepts and techniques that evolved into modern turntablism.
Within the realm of hip hop, notable modern turntablists are the cinematic DJ Shadow, who influenced Diplo and RJD2, among others, and the experimental DJ Spooky, whose Optometry albums showed that the turntablist can perfectly fit within the classic jazz setting.
Jurassic 5 members Cut Chemist (who left the group in 2005 to concentrate on his solo career) and DJ Nu-Mark, Kid Koala, and Mix Master Mike, who collaborated with the Beastie Boys on 1998's Hello Nasty and To The 5 Boroughs in 2004 and was also a founding member the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, are also known as virtuoso of the turntables.
Like many other musical instrumentalists, turntablists compete to see who can develop the fastest, most innovative and most creative approaches to their instrument. The selection of a champion comes from the culmination of battles between turntablists.
Battling involves each turntablist performing a routine (A combination of various technical scratches, beat juggles, and other elements, including body tricks) within a limited time period, after which the routine is judged by a panel of experts. The winner is selected based upon score. These organized competitions evolved from actual old school "battles" where DJs challenged each other at parties, and the "judge" was usually the audience, who would indicate their collective will by cheering louder for the DJ they thought performed better. Often, the winner kept the loser's equipment and/or records.
from wikipedia.org
DJ Babu has defined a turntablist as "One who has the ability to improvise on a phonograph turntable. One who uses the turntable in the spirit of a musical instrument;" while the Battlesounds documentary film suggests a definition of :"A musician, a hip-hop disc jockey who in a live/spontaneous situation can manipulate or restructure an existing phonograph recording (in combination with an audio mixer) to produce or express a new composition that is unrecognisable from its original ingredients."
Turntablist DJs use turntable techniques like scratching or beat juggling in the composition of original musical works. Turntablism is generally focused more on turntable technique and less on mixing. Some turntablists seek to have themselves recognized as legitimate musicians capable of interacting and improvising with other performers.
The history of the turntable being used as a musical instrument has its roots dating back to the 1940s and 1950s when musique concrète and other experimental composers (such as John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer), used them in a manner similar to that of today's producers and DJs, by essentially sampling and creating music that was entirely produced by the turntable.
Even earlier, Edgard Varèse experimented with turntables in 1930, though he never formally produced any works using them. This school of thought and practice is not directly linked to the current definition of hip hop-related turntablism, though it has had an influence on modern experimental sound artists such as Christian Marclay, Otomo Yoshihide, Philip Jeck and Janek Schaefer. These artists are the direct descendants of people like John Cage and Pierre Schaeffer and are often credited as a variant to the modern turntablist DJ and producer.
Turntablism as a modern art form and musical practice has its roots within hip hop and Hip Hop culture of the early 1970s. It stems from one of the culture's "four pillars" - DJing (see "four elements," Hip Hop Culture). Scratching was already widely spread within Hip Hop by DJs and producers by the time turntablists started to appear.
Kool DJ Herc, Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash are widely credited for having cemented the now established role of DJ as Hip Hop's foremost instrumentalist (and historically the genre's only instrumentalist). Kool Herc's invention of break-beat deejaying is generally regarded as the foundational development in Hip Hop history, as it gave rise to all other elements of the genre. His influence on the of concept of "DJ as turntablist" is equally profound. To understand the significance of this achievement, it is important to first define the "break." Briefly, the "break" of a song is a musical fragment only seconds in length, which typically takes the form of an "interlude" in which all or most of the music stops except for the percussion. The break is roughly equivalent to the song's "climax," as it is meant to be the most exciting part of a song before returning once more to its finale (usually a return to the main chorus). In addition to raising the audience's adrenaline level, the percussion-heavy nature of the break makes it the most danceable as well, if only for seconds at a time. Kool Herc introduces the break-beat technique as a way of extending the break indefinitely. This is done by buying two of the same record and switching from one to the other on the DJ mixer: e.g., as record A plays, the DJ quickly backtracks to the same break on record B, which will again take the place of A at a specific moment in which the audience will not notice that the DJ has switched records.
Kool Herc's revolutionary technique set the course for the development of turntablism as an art form in significant ways. Most important, however, he develops a new form of deejaying that does not consist of playing and mixing records one after the other (incidentally, the type of DJ that specializes in mixing is well-respected for his own set of unique skills, but this is still deejaying in the traditional sense). Rather, Kool Herc originates the idea of creating a sequence for his own purposes, introducing the idea tof the DJ as the "feature" of parties, whose performance on any given night would be examined critically by the crowd.
However it was Grand Wizard Theodore, an apprentice of Flash, who accidentally isolated the single most important technique in turntablism: scratching. He put his hand on a record one day, to silence the music on the turntable while his mother was calling out to him and thus accidentally discovered the sound of scratching by moving the record back and forth under the stylus. Though Theodore discovered scratching, it was Flash who helped push the early concept and showcase it to the public, in his live shows and on recordings.
DJ Grand Mixer DXT is also credited with furthering the concept of scratching by practicing the rhythmic scratching of a record on one or more (usually two) turntables abd using different velocities to alter the pitch of the note or sound on the recording (Alberts 2002). DXT appeared ( as DST ) on Herbie Hancock's hit song "Rockit."
Together these early pioneers cemented the fundamental practice that would later become one of the pillars of the emerging turntablist artform. Scratching would during the 1980s become a staple of hip hop music, being used by producers and DJs on records and in live shows. By the end of the 1980s it was very common to hear scratching on a record, generally as part of the chorus of a track or within its production. On stage the DJ would provide the music for the MCs to rhyme to, scratching records during the performance and showcasing his skills alongside the verbal skills of the MC. The most well known example of this 'equation' of MCs and DJ is probably Run DMC who were composed of two MCs and one DJ. The DJ, Jam Master Jay (RIP), was an integral part of the group and his scratching an integral part of their productions and performances.
The appearance of turntablists and the birth of Turntablism was prompted by one major factor - the disappearance of the DJ in hip hop groups, on records and in live shows at the turn of the 1990s. This disappearance has been widely documented in books and documentaries (such as Black Noise and Scratch The Movie), and was linked to the increased use of DAT tapes and other studio techniques that would ultimately push the DJ further away from the original hip hop equation of the MC as the vocalist and the DJ as the music provider alongside the producer. This push and disappearance of the DJ meant that the practices of the DJ, such as scratching, went back underground and were cultivated and built upon by a generation of people who grew up with hip hop, DJs and scratching. By the mid-90s the disappearance of the DJ in hip hop had created a sub-culture which would come to be known as Turntablism and which focused entirely on the DJ utilising his turntables and a mixer to manipulate sounds and create music. By pushing the practice of DJing away, hip hop created the grounds for this sub-culture to be birthed and evolve.
The origin of the terms Turntablist and Turntablism are widely contested and argued about, though over the years some facts have been established by various documentaries (Battlesounds, Scratch The Movie), books (DJ Culture), conferences (Skratchcon 2000) and interviews in online and printed magazines. These facts are that the origins of the words most likely lay with practitioners on the US West Coast, centered around the San Francisco Bay Area. Some claim that DJ Disk, a member of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, was the first to coin the term, others claim that DJ Babu, a member of the Beat Junkies, was responsible for coining and spreading the term Turntablist after inscribing it on his mixtapes and passing them around. Additional claims credit DJ Supreme, a UK DJ and producer for the group Hijack, though the claims that the terms were birthed in the Bay Area are the most widely acknowledged and established ones. The truth most likely lies somewhere in between all these facts.
In an interview with the Spin Science online resource in 2005, DJ Babu added the following comments about the birth and spread of the term:
Spin Science: First thing was about your role in the spread of the word turntablist. I'm sure you must have spoken on it many times, but I was wondering if you could give us some details about how it all came about, as you're widely credited for birthing the term in a way. DJ Babu: Well I humbly accept the position I've now been given for this whole thing, but I want to stress that I was just part of a whole load of DJs who really made this whole thing happen. People like DST are in a way those who really deserve the credit for it all because they gave the bug to scratch to our whole generation, he started it by being part of the Herbie Hancock band and doing his thing on 'Rockit'. Without him and the other pioneers, probably none of us would have got into this thing. After that well... It was around 95, I was heavily into the whole battling thing, working on the tables constantly, mastering new techniques and scratches, and all the while working in a gas station and spending my spare time concentrating on all these things. One day I made this mixtape called 'Comprehension', and on there was a track called 'Turntablism' which featured Melo-D and D-Styles. And this is part of where this whole thing about turntablist came from. This was a time where all these new techniques were coming out, like flares and stuff, and there were probably 20 people or so, in around California between Frisco and LA, who knew about these. So we worked on them, talked about it and kicked about the ideas that these techniques and new ways of scratching gave us. And what I would do is write 'Babu the Turntablist' on tapes I was making at the time, and somehow it got out a bit, the media got hold of it and it blew into this whole thing we now know. But it was really nothing to start with. We'd all talk about these new scratches and how they really started to allow us to use the turntable in a more musical way, how it allowed us to do more musical compositions, tracks, etc. and then we'd think about how people who play the piano are pianists, and so we thought "we're turntablists in a way, because we play the turntable like these people do the piano or any other instrument". Beyond that, it was just me writing 'Babu the Turntablist', because it was something I did to make my tapes stand out. I'd just get my marker pen out and write it on there.
So by the mid to late 1990s the terms Turntablism and Turntablist had become established and accepted as defining the practice, and practitioner, of using turntables and a mixer to create or manipulate sounds and music. This could be done by scratching a record or manipulating the rhythms on the record either by drumming, looping or beat juggling.
The decade of the 1990s is also important in shaping the Turntablist artform and culture as it saw the emergence of pioneering artists (D-Styles, Q-Bert, A-Trak, Ricci Rucker, Mike Boo, Tony Vegas, Prime Cuts) and crews (Invisibl Skratch Piklz, Bullet Proof Scratch Hamsters, Beat Junkies, The Allies, The Scratch Perverts, X-Ecutioners), record labels (Bomb Hip Hop, Asphodel, Tableturns), DJ Battles (DMC, ITF) and the evolution of scratching and other turntablist practices.
More sophisticated methods of scratching were developed during that decade, with crews and individual DJs concentrating on the manipulation of the record in time with the manipulation of the cross fader on the mixer to create new rhythms and sonic artefacts with a variety of sounds. The evolution of scratching from a fairly simple sound and simple rhythmic cadences to more complicated sounds and more intricate rhythmical patterns allowed the practitioners to further evolve what could be done with scratching musically. These new ways of scratching were all given names, from flare to crab or orbit, and spread as DJs taught each other, practiced together or just showed off their new techniques to other DJs.
Alongside the evolution of scratching, which deserves an article in itself, other practices such as drumming (or scratch drumming) and beat juggling were also evolved significantly during the 1990s.
Beat Juggling was invented, or discovered if you will, by Steve Dee, a member of the X-Men (later renamed X-Ecutioners) crew. Beat Juggling essentially involves the manipulation of two identical or different drum patterns on two different turntables via the mixer to create a new pattern. A simple example would be for example to use two copies of the same drum pattern to evolve the pattern by doubling the snares, syncopating the drum kick, adding rhythm and variation to the existing pattern. From this concept, which Steve Dee showcased in the early 90s at DJ battles, Beat Juggling evolved throughout the decade to the point where by the end of it, it had become an intricate technique to create entirely new 'beats' and rhythms out of existing, pre-recorded ones. These were now not just limited to using drum patterns, but could also consist of other sounds - the ultimate aim being to create a new rhythm out of the pre-recorded existing ones. While Beat Juggling is not as popular as scratching, due to the more demanding rhythmical knowledge it requires, it has proved popular within DJ Battles and in certain compositional situations.
One of the earliest academic studies of the turntable (White 1996) argued for its designation as a legitimate electronic musical instrument -- a manual analog sampler -- and described turntable techniques such as backspinning, cutting, scratching and blending as basic to the repertoire of the virtuoso hip hop DJ. White demonstrated that the proficient hip hop DJ must possess many of the same skills required by trained musicians, including a keen sense of timing, sharply-developed hand-eye coordination, technical competence and creativity with his material.
By the year 2000 Turntablism and turntablists had become widely publicised and accepted in the mainstream and within hip hop as valid artists. Through this recognition came further evolution.
This evolution took many shapes and forms: some continued to concentrate on the foundations of the artform and its original links to Hip Hop culture, some became producers utilising the skills they'd learnt as turntablists and incorporating those into their productions, some concentrated more on the DJing aspect of the artform by combining turntablist skills with the trademark skills of club DJs, while others explored alternative routes in utilising the turntable as an instrument or production tool solely for the purpose of making music - either by using solely the turntable or by incorporating it into the production process alongside tools such as drum machines, samplers, computer software, and so on.
In the 1990s, turntablism achieved new levels of attention. Dedicated DJs had gradually refined the practice, and it expanded on its own, apart from the MCs who had largely neglected DJing as rap developed.
New DJs/turntablists/crews like DJ Craze, Roc Raida, DJ Focus, DJ Q-Bert, Gunkhole, DJ Woody, A-Trak, Noisy Stylus, D-Styles, Birdy Nam Nam and Kid Koala owe a distinct debt to Old School DJs like DJ Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jazzy Jeff, DJ Cash Money, Afrika Bambaataa and DJs of the golden age of hip hop, who originally developed many of the concepts and techniques that evolved into modern turntablism.
Within the realm of hip hop, notable modern turntablists are the cinematic DJ Shadow, who influenced Diplo and RJD2, among others, and the experimental DJ Spooky, whose Optometry albums showed that the turntablist can perfectly fit within the classic jazz setting.
Jurassic 5 members Cut Chemist (who left the group in 2005 to concentrate on his solo career) and DJ Nu-Mark, Kid Koala, and Mix Master Mike, who collaborated with the Beastie Boys on 1998's Hello Nasty and To The 5 Boroughs in 2004 and was also a founding member the Invisibl Skratch Piklz, are also known as virtuoso of the turntables.
Like many other musical instrumentalists, turntablists compete to see who can develop the fastest, most innovative and most creative approaches to their instrument. The selection of a champion comes from the culmination of battles between turntablists.
Battling involves each turntablist performing a routine (A combination of various technical scratches, beat juggles, and other elements, including body tricks) within a limited time period, after which the routine is judged by a panel of experts. The winner is selected based upon score. These organized competitions evolved from actual old school "battles" where DJs challenged each other at parties, and the "judge" was usually the audience, who would indicate their collective will by cheering louder for the DJ they thought performed better. Often, the winner kept the loser's equipment and/or records.
from wikipedia.org
dead prez Profile / Bio
dead prez is the pair of underground alternative rappers stic.man and M-1. They have become known largely for their hard-hitting style and politically active lyrics, focusing on racism, critical pedagogy, activism against governmental hypocrisy, and corporate control over the media, especially hip-hop record labels. dead prez made their stance clear on their first album, declaring on the lead song, "I'm A African" that the group is "somewhere between N.W.A. and P.E.".
In 1990, M-1 headed to Tallahassee to attend FAMU (Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University) where he and stic.man met and connected due to their mutual love of music and knowledge. "I was soaking up the Black Panther Party as a whole," M-1 remembers. "I learned about their lives and it helped mold me."
"I realized there's a struggle already going on and I have to try to help ride it out," interjects stic.man. M-1's quest for insight led him to join the International Democratic People’s Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) in Chicago for three years while stic.man remained behind in Florida and started getting into trouble. Burned out by the arduous labor of Uhuru, M-1 decided it was time to focus on music and stic.man agreed.
Dead prez transcribed the political education they acquired into lyrical poetry. Brand Nubian's Lord Jamar discovered them in New York and helped them sign a deal with Loud Records. But being the new kids of the block on a powerhouse label like Loud (home to the Wu-Tang Clan and Mobb Deep) wasn't easy. dead prez wasn't always Loud's top priority but that didn't stop them from building a fan base around their over-the-top performances (they've been known to ignite dollar bills and toss apples into the audiences, declaring that they must eat healthily).
Their debut album was 2000's Let's Get Free, which featured a minor hit with the song "Hip Hop" from the year before. The album was critically well-received, and included intense political diatribes featuring prominent black activist Omali Yeshitela, as well as "Animal in Man" - a retelling of George Orwell's Animal Farm. The instrumental version of their song "Hip Hop" was used as Dave Chappelle's entrance music for his show on Comedy Central, and can be heard on every episode. In 2001 they collaborated with The Coup, another politically active hip-hop outfit, to release Get Up. In 2002, dead prez released the independent mix tape Turn off the Radio: The Mixtape Vol. 1, followed by the release of Turn off the Radio: The Mixtape Vol. 2: Get Free or Die Tryin' in 2003. In 2004, Columbia Records finally released Revolutionary But Gangsta. They were featured performers on the film Dave Chappelle's Block Party, released in 2006. In 2006, they and former 2Pac collaborators the Outlawz will jointly release an album titled Can't Sell Dope Forever.
Some of dead prez's fan base have accused them of giving up on their revolutionary aspects, in exchange for their 'Gangsta' side after Revolutionary But Gangsta was released, while others say the group has begun to emphasize their black nationalism (especially in the Turn Off the Radio mixtapes) over their original views of radical socialism, and that this is alienating to previous fans of their work. It is worth noting that cultural nationalism of the sort evident in many of dead prez's songs was heavily criticized by the Black Panthers (which dead prez also claims to uphold), as was described in Panther Bobby Seale's Seize the Time, in which Seale describes Panther Minister of Defense Huey Newton's condemnation of the "jive-ass cultural nationalism" of Kwanzaa founder Ron Karenga. Even still, other fans insist that the revolutionary lyrics are still prominent.
Critics also accuse the group of lifestylism, the practice of adopting superficial attributes of a revolutionary culture while doing little or nothing to objectively advance revolution. They point to lyrics such as those in the song "Hell Yeah," which advocate a method of identity theft in which one person applies for and receives credentials under the name of a friend and then adds charges to a credit card linked to these credentials, as by a bank account. The description evinces a lack of actual experience with credit card fraud, since typically in such a case the friend would be held accountable for the resultant charges, resulting in substantial debt and/or damage to his credit. Lyrics such as these indicate to critics that the members of dead prez are not, in fact, professional criminals, but merely posture as such.
from wikipedia.org
In 1990, M-1 headed to Tallahassee to attend FAMU (Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University) where he and stic.man met and connected due to their mutual love of music and knowledge. "I was soaking up the Black Panther Party as a whole," M-1 remembers. "I learned about their lives and it helped mold me."
"I realized there's a struggle already going on and I have to try to help ride it out," interjects stic.man. M-1's quest for insight led him to join the International Democratic People’s Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) in Chicago for three years while stic.man remained behind in Florida and started getting into trouble. Burned out by the arduous labor of Uhuru, M-1 decided it was time to focus on music and stic.man agreed.
Dead prez transcribed the political education they acquired into lyrical poetry. Brand Nubian's Lord Jamar discovered them in New York and helped them sign a deal with Loud Records. But being the new kids of the block on a powerhouse label like Loud (home to the Wu-Tang Clan and Mobb Deep) wasn't easy. dead prez wasn't always Loud's top priority but that didn't stop them from building a fan base around their over-the-top performances (they've been known to ignite dollar bills and toss apples into the audiences, declaring that they must eat healthily).
Their debut album was 2000's Let's Get Free, which featured a minor hit with the song "Hip Hop" from the year before. The album was critically well-received, and included intense political diatribes featuring prominent black activist Omali Yeshitela, as well as "Animal in Man" - a retelling of George Orwell's Animal Farm. The instrumental version of their song "Hip Hop" was used as Dave Chappelle's entrance music for his show on Comedy Central, and can be heard on every episode. In 2001 they collaborated with The Coup, another politically active hip-hop outfit, to release Get Up. In 2002, dead prez released the independent mix tape Turn off the Radio: The Mixtape Vol. 1, followed by the release of Turn off the Radio: The Mixtape Vol. 2: Get Free or Die Tryin' in 2003. In 2004, Columbia Records finally released Revolutionary But Gangsta. They were featured performers on the film Dave Chappelle's Block Party, released in 2006. In 2006, they and former 2Pac collaborators the Outlawz will jointly release an album titled Can't Sell Dope Forever.
Some of dead prez's fan base have accused them of giving up on their revolutionary aspects, in exchange for their 'Gangsta' side after Revolutionary But Gangsta was released, while others say the group has begun to emphasize their black nationalism (especially in the Turn Off the Radio mixtapes) over their original views of radical socialism, and that this is alienating to previous fans of their work. It is worth noting that cultural nationalism of the sort evident in many of dead prez's songs was heavily criticized by the Black Panthers (which dead prez also claims to uphold), as was described in Panther Bobby Seale's Seize the Time, in which Seale describes Panther Minister of Defense Huey Newton's condemnation of the "jive-ass cultural nationalism" of Kwanzaa founder Ron Karenga. Even still, other fans insist that the revolutionary lyrics are still prominent.
Critics also accuse the group of lifestylism, the practice of adopting superficial attributes of a revolutionary culture while doing little or nothing to objectively advance revolution. They point to lyrics such as those in the song "Hell Yeah," which advocate a method of identity theft in which one person applies for and receives credentials under the name of a friend and then adds charges to a credit card linked to these credentials, as by a bank account. The description evinces a lack of actual experience with credit card fraud, since typically in such a case the friend would be held accountable for the resultant charges, resulting in substantial debt and/or damage to his credit. Lyrics such as these indicate to critics that the members of dead prez are not, in fact, professional criminals, but merely posture as such.
from wikipedia.org
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