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Saturday, July 28, 2012
Friday, July 27, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Guru and Sean C talk sampling and hit making
‘Curator’ is probably one of the most over-used pop culture buzzwords of 2012 – only this time it perfectly applies.
On Friday June 29, 2012 legendary Engineer/Producer/DJ Young Guru hosted Sounds & Vision: The Art of Sampling at the 92YTribeca cultural arts space. For the first of three installments, Guru welcomed Sean C & LV from Grind Music and Diddy’s own Hitmen production squad to discuss Jay-Z’s American Gangster album, for which they produced six of the fifteen tracks.
In front of an audience filled with loyalists, aspiring producers and general music fans, Guru set the tone for the night by explaining that he created the Sound & Vision series ‘with the music lover in mind’.
WATCH: Sean C & LV Remember Grandmaster Roc Raida
Technical at times, universally comical during others, Guru proclaimed early on they “had all the time in the world.” They didn’t. The night would end with the three men being played off stage with “wrap it up music,” but the preceding two hours held a wealth of edutainment.
Usually the interview subject, Guru moderated, asking the duo to revisit their involvement in what would become Jay-Z’s first concept album and 10th (consecutive) number one effort (tying Elvis Presley’s record for the second most number one albums behind The Beatles).
“Puff walked in one night and said ‘Jay’s thinking of doing an album and I’m gonna executive produce it,” Guru recalled. “Give me everything you have.”
But despite being apart of the driving force behind the “Bad Boy sound,” LV recalls being skeptical that it was ever going to happen. “So I told Puff if he was serious, then call Jay and he said just said ok and walked away.” All doubt was erased when the doors to Daddy’s House opened and in walked a disheveled Hov, ten minutes later.
WATCH: Sean C & LV Remember Big Pun
“I just remember Hov coming back like ‘they got some shit over there’,” Guru added, and thus began what all three described as a grueling twenty-one days in which Jay recorded numerous tracks, including efforts from Just Blaze, Pharrell and No I.D. According to Sean C, the albums inspiration – the Ridley Scott film by the same name – played scene by scene during Jay’s recording sessions. “Guru would make sure we had the correct scenes when were working on tracks.” This process highlighted the first of many comparisons between the legwork (both symbolically and literally) absent from a lot of today’s production.
There was no emailing of tracks and verses. There was Guru. ‘”I would go back and forth between Daddy’s House and Roc The Mic [studios] helping to insure that nothing leaked but also that everyone remained on the same page. We would send over the rough, Jay would record his verse and then it would come back for us to finish it,” Sean explained. And by ‘finish it’, he meant recreate pre-recorded samples with lavish live instrumentation, bringing to life the lush sounds of the 70’s and 80’s and capturing the spirit Jay intended. This highlighted the second comparison: the job of the producer isn’t finished until the track is.
“Now-a-days, you send off a track and artists don’t realize that’s just a reference,” Sean explains. “They lay their verses down and think it’s ready to go out, and sometimes you don’t hear it again until it’s ready to be mixed, but really you had a lot more you wanted to do with it.”
Guru – the former student of Chucky Thompson and Derrick ‘DDot’ Angeletti – says while the age of “at home computer producers” has provided tipping points to many, it’s deprived more with a lack of proper training historically learned during apprenticeship under a more seasoned producer. “They lose the foundation of how to work from the bottom up. It’s the same as learning to add with a calculator from the very beginning.”
The solution, he says, is to make it your mission to familiarize yourself with a vast array of music, spanning all genres and time periods.
“When you listen to all forms of music your mind expands as a musician,” says Guru. “You’re exposed to different rhythms, different time signatures and different textures. It’s the same way a writer should read different authors so that his or her style can improve.”
When it comes to sampling, inarguably the zeitgeist of Hip Hop culture, the consensus is mixed. While all three men agreed that the best sample-friendly producers began as DJ’s, LV believes that once a sample is classically used it should become untouchable. (See the recent Pete Rock/Lupe Fiasco drama over “T.R.O.Y.” for evidence.)
Guru – whose producing credits include Jay-Z and Little Brother – says nothing is off limits, as long as it’s fresh.
“Samples can be used as many times as you want as long as you use it different than what the previous producer did,” he said. Exact copying of samples is undeniably wack but if flipped then it’s the very essence of Hip Hop. “Dilla was the best at that.”
American Gangster (both the film and the album) – debuted to critical acclaim in the first week of November 2007. Guru and Sean C & LV shared similar feelings: from the time an album is finished, you don’t play it again until it’s released. “So you can experience it with the people.”
Before venturing out to have drinks and mingle with the attendees, Grind Music did a live demonstration of sample usage by recreating the AG classics ‘Roc Boys (The Winner Is)’ and ‘Sweet’.
On Friday June 29, 2012 legendary Engineer/Producer/DJ Young Guru hosted Sounds & Vision: The Art of Sampling at the 92YTribeca cultural arts space. For the first of three installments, Guru welcomed Sean C & LV from Grind Music and Diddy’s own Hitmen production squad to discuss Jay-Z’s American Gangster album, for which they produced six of the fifteen tracks.
In front of an audience filled with loyalists, aspiring producers and general music fans, Guru set the tone for the night by explaining that he created the Sound & Vision series ‘with the music lover in mind’.
WATCH: Sean C & LV Remember Grandmaster Roc Raida
Technical at times, universally comical during others, Guru proclaimed early on they “had all the time in the world.” They didn’t. The night would end with the three men being played off stage with “wrap it up music,” but the preceding two hours held a wealth of edutainment.
Usually the interview subject, Guru moderated, asking the duo to revisit their involvement in what would become Jay-Z’s first concept album and 10th (consecutive) number one effort (tying Elvis Presley’s record for the second most number one albums behind The Beatles).
“Puff walked in one night and said ‘Jay’s thinking of doing an album and I’m gonna executive produce it,” Guru recalled. “Give me everything you have.”
But despite being apart of the driving force behind the “Bad Boy sound,” LV recalls being skeptical that it was ever going to happen. “So I told Puff if he was serious, then call Jay and he said just said ok and walked away.” All doubt was erased when the doors to Daddy’s House opened and in walked a disheveled Hov, ten minutes later.
WATCH: Sean C & LV Remember Big Pun
“I just remember Hov coming back like ‘they got some shit over there’,” Guru added, and thus began what all three described as a grueling twenty-one days in which Jay recorded numerous tracks, including efforts from Just Blaze, Pharrell and No I.D. According to Sean C, the albums inspiration – the Ridley Scott film by the same name – played scene by scene during Jay’s recording sessions. “Guru would make sure we had the correct scenes when were working on tracks.” This process highlighted the first of many comparisons between the legwork (both symbolically and literally) absent from a lot of today’s production.
There was no emailing of tracks and verses. There was Guru. ‘”I would go back and forth between Daddy’s House and Roc The Mic [studios] helping to insure that nothing leaked but also that everyone remained on the same page. We would send over the rough, Jay would record his verse and then it would come back for us to finish it,” Sean explained. And by ‘finish it’, he meant recreate pre-recorded samples with lavish live instrumentation, bringing to life the lush sounds of the 70’s and 80’s and capturing the spirit Jay intended. This highlighted the second comparison: the job of the producer isn’t finished until the track is.
“Now-a-days, you send off a track and artists don’t realize that’s just a reference,” Sean explains. “They lay their verses down and think it’s ready to go out, and sometimes you don’t hear it again until it’s ready to be mixed, but really you had a lot more you wanted to do with it.”
Guru – the former student of Chucky Thompson and Derrick ‘DDot’ Angeletti – says while the age of “at home computer producers” has provided tipping points to many, it’s deprived more with a lack of proper training historically learned during apprenticeship under a more seasoned producer. “They lose the foundation of how to work from the bottom up. It’s the same as learning to add with a calculator from the very beginning.”
The solution, he says, is to make it your mission to familiarize yourself with a vast array of music, spanning all genres and time periods.
“When you listen to all forms of music your mind expands as a musician,” says Guru. “You’re exposed to different rhythms, different time signatures and different textures. It’s the same way a writer should read different authors so that his or her style can improve.”
When it comes to sampling, inarguably the zeitgeist of Hip Hop culture, the consensus is mixed. While all three men agreed that the best sample-friendly producers began as DJ’s, LV believes that once a sample is classically used it should become untouchable. (See the recent Pete Rock/Lupe Fiasco drama over “T.R.O.Y.” for evidence.)
Guru – whose producing credits include Jay-Z and Little Brother – says nothing is off limits, as long as it’s fresh.
“Samples can be used as many times as you want as long as you use it different than what the previous producer did,” he said. Exact copying of samples is undeniably wack but if flipped then it’s the very essence of Hip Hop. “Dilla was the best at that.”
American Gangster (both the film and the album) – debuted to critical acclaim in the first week of November 2007. Guru and Sean C & LV shared similar feelings: from the time an album is finished, you don’t play it again until it’s released. “So you can experience it with the people.”
Before venturing out to have drinks and mingle with the attendees, Grind Music did a live demonstration of sample usage by recreating the AG classics ‘Roc Boys (The Winner Is)’ and ‘Sweet’.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Fantasia Breaks Down During Trinidad Show
Fantasia Breaks Down During Trinidad Show
“American Idol” winner Fantasia Barrino
allegedly broke down into an emotional wreck during her show in
Trinidad on her birthday while reflecting on the loss of Whitney
Houston.MUST READ: Fantasia Returns To Twitter With An Apology For R. Kelly
Reports say she burst into tears “Even Angels.”
“This year, we lost Whitney Houston…They just wouldn’t leave her alone. They did not understand that she was only human. We lose family, friends, all for the love of money. The only person who will never leave you is Jesus.”
Spotted @RWS
Mindless Behavior Tweets Apology to Lauryn Hill
Mindless Behavior Tweets Apology To Lauryn Hill
As reported by V101.9 radio site…R&B boy band Mindless Behavior stepped in some mess at Sunday’s BET Awards show. they made a bad joke about Lauryn Hill‘s tax drama and they are apologizing for it now.
When Mindless Behavior presented the award for Best Female R&B with Mike Epps, they did the usual joking at the podium before announcing the nominees. The only problem is the jokes got out of hand when Mike Epps began singing terribly and Ray Ray of mindless Behavior said, “You sing bad. Like Lauryn Hill tax accountant bad.” People in the audience gasped at the insensitivity.
Today, the group apologized via Twitter, saying, “We meant no disrespect to our girl Lauryn Hill last night, it was a bad joke. We’re big fans and hope you’re not mad! #peace -MB” While we can’t blame Mindless Behavior for reading a teleprompter, we must hold the writer of that joke accountable for his poor judgment.
For more details on the incident, click here.
Prince Paul-Documentary
No one has repeatedly subverted and expanded the hip-hop
vocabulary quite like producer and comedic raconteur Prince Paul. From
his teenage days as DJ for Stetsasonic (the original hip-hop band) and his unparalleled collaborations with De La Soul, to his later, highly unsettling solo LPs Psychoanalysis (What Is It?) and A Prince Among Thieves,
Prince Paul has a body of work that resembles no other. Throw in Paul’s
stint as a sickle-swinging member of hip-hop supergroup Gravediggaz and
his production role on Chris Rock’s Grammy-winning comedy album Roll With The New, and the subject of this exhibit is the very thing he’d be slow to admit: a living legend.
Paul Huston was born in 1967 in Queens, New York, and raised in suburban Long Island. It was the heyday of Parliament/Funkadelic, and Paul grew up idolizing P-Funk’s chief prankster, George Clinton. Then, as hip-hop took shape in the boroughs around him, Paul started spinning records at neighborhood parties.
One night at a party the scrawny teenager was approached by two leather-clad men. Paul assumed they were going to beat him up. Instead, the pair introduced themselves as Daddy-O and Delite of Stetsasonic, and invited DJ Paul to join their group. Such scarifying weirdness may have been expected by a kid who lived not far from the Amityville horror house. But it was another local building, Amityville High School, where Paul met three fellow students with whom he’d change the face of popular music.
As the hip-hop timeline zooms further away from the creation and release of De La Soul’s first three, Prince Paul-produced albums, it becomes easier to overlook their initial impact. Three Feet High and Rising, De La’s 1989 debut, sold a million copies by offering something completely different. While Trugoy, Posdnous, and Pacemaster Mase delivered their skewed suburban stories, Paul provided a soundtrack hand-stitched from unexpected sources like Steely Dan, Flo & Eddie, even a French language-instruction record. (As technicolor sampling fantasias go, only Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique can compare.) If that wasn’t enough, the album also introduced to the world perhaps Paul’s daffiest invention, the hip-hop skit.
Under Prince Paul’s patronage, De La Soul promulgated a decidedly non-gangsta alternative they dubbed The D.A.I.S.Y. Age. The acronym stood for Da Inner Sound Y’All; nevertheless the group was labeled hip-hop hippies, and they snapped back with their sophomore LP De La Soul Is Dead. Around the same time, Paul clicked with 3rd Bass, Def Jam’s pale-faced replacements for the Beastie Boys. With a chip on their shoulder the size of Manhattan, 3rd Bass delivered the Paul-produced “The Gas Face” — still one of the funniest, foamiest dis records ever.
In 1993, De La Soul birthed Buhloone Mindstate, their most mind-expanding Prince Paul collaboration of all. In a genre where two decent songs an album was considered permissible and shelf lives are often on par with open jars of mayonnaise, Buhloone stands tall on the short-list of all-time front-to-back hip-hop classics. Simultaneously singalong-ready and defiantly anti-commercial (“It might blow up but it won’t go pop” goes one memorable chant), Buhloone Mindstate‘s soul-swabbed boom-bap remains one of Prince Paul’s most indelible achievements.
Productive partnerships seldom dissolve at the appropriate moment, but Paul and De La Soul parted ways at their peak. While De La waded into the mainstream with Stakes Is High, Paul paddled further into uncharted waters. Offered his own label by Def Jam mogul Russell Simmons, Paul insisted it be called Dew Doo Man Records (much to Simmons’ chagrin). The label disappeared quickly. Rap, meanwhile, was bigger than ever.
Since Paul started out with Stetsasonic, hip-hop had grown into a big business. And in business, the almighty dollar is king. This particular Prince never ascended to the throne of his overpaid peers. Instead Paul rallied with wordy cronies Fruitkwan and Too Poetic, as well as a not-yet-famous RZA, as the demented supergroup Gravediggaz. Their 1994 album Six Feet Deep, labeled “horrorcore” by critics, was equally a tribute to the campy, semi-scary movies like Blood Sucking Freaks that Paul had grown up loving.
As RZA went on to worldwide adoration with Wu-Tang Clan, Prince Paul descended into madness. On record, anyway: Paul’s 1996 solo treatise Psychoanalysis (What Is It?) was a portrait of a producer for whom laughter was his sole link to sanity. Alongside an album cover collage that would’ve made Freud flinch, Paul’s claim “Alfred E. Neuman got nuttin’ on me” seemed all too true. But could a madman have created a cohesive masterwork like 1999′s Prince Among Thieves? The album’s featured guests included Chubb Rock, Big Daddy Kane, Kool Keith and Everlast. Blaze magazine thought it sounded like if “Jonathan Swift smoked a blunt with Rodgers and Hammerstein, then invited the Juice Crew over.” Swift, presumably, would not have protested much.
Paul subsequently adopted the pseudonym Chest Rockwell, cigar-chewing martini-swilling majordomo of Handsome Boy Modeling School, a recording project that resulted in two deservedly acclaimed, gut-busting albums. Not bad for what had begun as a private joke with fellow producer Dan The Automator.
Most revolutionaries end up before a firing squad, but somehow Prince Paul has survived. The shifting tides of the rap game have occasionally set the producer adrift, but Paul has displayed an uncanny knack for surfacing with the goods. Witness the new on-line series Scion A/V Presents Prince Paul: Musician Impossible, where the producer travels to far-flung locales in an attempt to reinvigorate his own interest in making music.
Appropriately, this brings us to the Project Museum exhibit you are about to enter. A clinical assessment might deem Prince Paul a pack rat, but it’s history’s good fortune that Paul is in fact a minutiae-minded archivist who has held onto a wealth of memorabilia from throughout his career. Here, Paul takes us on the guided tour of a selection of artifacts from his personal collection that have never before seen the light of day. So whether you’re a long-time Prince Paul devotee or a new jack just starting to dig the great man’s tracks, there’s something here to delight, affirm and inspire.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Stevie J and Coke? Damn dawg!
Ask Jacky… Did you Know Stevie J. is Addicted to Cocaine
by Jacky Jasper
Jacky,
I stumbled across your post about that buffoonery of a show Love and Hip Hop Atlanta. I know Stevie J and his brother Mike Jordan (not related to the legendary basketball player). I used to live in Marietta, Georgia, in the Westminster apartments.
At the time I was dating a man named Damiane Stockdale who was friends with Mike and Stevie. Damiane knew I wrote songs, I was working on a book too. Every time Damiane and I met Stevie J, he was coked up. It became clear, he was only interested in sleeping with me. Stevie wasn’t into collaborating musically with me, he wanted sex. Damiane assumed I slept wit Stevie and he assaulted me, in my home.
He’s currently in jail (In a Georgia Department of Correctional Institution). Stevie and Mimi were living with Anna and Chris Benson (the retired baseball player) Stevie used to ride around in Mimi’s black Mercedes truck, he gave me a ride in the vehicle several times. Stevie was broke, because he was always high. Stevie is a heavy coke user, he’s on prescription pills too. Thinking about it, Damiane and I started to bumped heads once he started to hang out with Stevie.
Damiane started to use drugs after being clean for five years. I remember Stevie telling me Mike Jordan and Damiane were being on the down low, he was hating on Damiane and Mike. Stevie is so low, he’ll throw his own brother under the bus.
Stevie always bragged about the ‘BOULE’,he also told me Diddy and Fonzworth were lovers.
Thanks Jacky,
Kimmi Illumina
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