Those of you who caught the early snippets of the Ultra re-union project may have been dissapointed when you heard the finished album, which seemed to have no trace of DJ Moe Love or TR Love, and sounded more like a Kool Keith album featuring Ced-Gee. Now those original sessions have been collected for the Ultra Laboratory Stories album, which is out now in digital form and will be available on double vinyl and CD through Black Pegasus in a couple of weeks. I caught up with Moe and TR to find out what went down: (more…)
Loud drums, Treach on point and…Vinnie doing his best Onyx impersonation? Two out of three ain’t bad, word to Meatloaf. Thanks to D-BO for pointing this out to me.
UK-based producer Mark B decided that where better than Unkut Dot Com to host the online premier of this radio documentary he made for Radio One. Here’s the story behind the project:
In the cold harsh winter of 2002 UK producer Mark B was approached by BBC‘s Radio One team do a short documentary based around the art & knowledge of record collecting from a hip-hop perspective. Already aware of the global coverage & support of Radio One with the success of the Mark B & BladeUnknown LP (2000) he jumped at the opportunity to take a break from the studio & touring to further his skills & learn the art of producing a radio documentary. (more…)
It would appear that Hydra Entertainment is back in effect with the release of Godfather Don‘s Donnie Brasco. I guess this is the project that Jerry Famolari told me about years ago:
Jerry Famolari: I’m actually working on a Don album right now. An unreleased album. I just put together a Hydra single – a white label – that I’m going to release next month. This is gonna be like a “Best of”. There’ll be about fifteen unreleased records on there, so there’ll be about twenty, twenty two cuts. I’m walking around with the work DAT today, actually, just looking for songs to pull, songs to mix. It’s tough because after Diabolique, him and I worked on about fifteen, twenty songs – but we never released anything. The stuff that I have that I’m mixing now is crazy, because some of it is from ‘99, 2000 and 2001, and a lot of the stuff is still hot! There are some good little records. The only thing is, sound quality on a lot of these things is gonna be tough because I don’t have the reels of some of these records. Anything I find the reel on, I’m bringing up and remixing. There’s stuff that we didn’t use for Diabolique, which is about another dozen songs that we had as well.
Truth be told, the entire Runaway Slave album should be nominated for Show‘s greatest work with Andre The Giant, but since I’m sticking to the script of ten per round, that’s not going to happen. I don’t want to sway the votes here, but you’d be hard-pressed to find better beats than ‘Medicine’ and ‘Stand Strong’ in any producers discography. (more…)
For the second round knock out, let’s focus on the work Showbiz was contributed to his D.I.T.C. peoples. The final round will of course be dedicated to his classic work with Andre The Giant… (more…)
Mistakes were made in the last ‘Search For The Best Beat’ feature…namely, Alchemist has too may cot damn tracks! This time I’ve selected a producer who is a little more restrained in terms of his musical output, but still a beast on the beat – the Bronx Bomber himself, Show. While his early work featured a signature sound that was easily identifiable, Show’s style developed into a tighter, more refined minimalism by the time Goodfellas was released. While the majority of his work has been with his Diggin’ In The Crates crew and Wildlife, he’s contributed tracks for a select few over the years. The first round is dedicated to production outside of his immediate D.I.T.C. circle. Hopefully we can get this one sorted out in three round this time. (more…)
If you caught the Special Edition of Marley Marl‘s In Control Vol. 1 then you would have caught the commentary from the man himself introducing each track. According to Marley, Tragedy’s second verse on ‘Live Motivator’ was the official birth of the QB style:
