säv./san. Aulis Sallinen
Copyright 1986 Novello & Comp. Limited

Soolo Jussi Chydenius

Äänitetty Siuntion kirkossa toukokuussa 1995/Bertil Alving
Valokuva: Sami Kulju
Ulkoasu: L & Antturi Design

Grex Musicus

The Beaufort Scale

säv./san. Jussi Asu, sov. Pekka Kostiainen
Copyright 1980 Fazer Musiikki Oy

Soolo Antti Lehtimaja

Äänitetty Siuntion kirkossa toukokuussa 1995/Bertil Alving
Valokuva: Sami Kulju
Ulkoasu: L & Antturi Design

Kirjeen Sulle Kirjootan

Pohjalainen kansanlaulu, sov. Pekka Kostiainen
Copyright 1992 Sulasol ry

Soolo Saara Ryynänen

Äänitetty Siuntion kirkossa toukokuussa 1995/Bertil Alving
Valokuva: Sami Kulju
Ulkoasu: L & Antturi Design

Veret Tuli Mun Silimihini

Säv. Jaakko Hulkkonen, san. F.E.Sillanpää
Copyright Fazer Musiikki

Soolo: Essi Wuorela ja Tomi Metsäketo

Äänitetty Siuntion kirkossa toukokuussa 1995/Bertil Alving
Valokuva: Sami Kulju
Ulkoasu: L & Antturi Design

Kai Muistat

CNF was and is a group that creates. 1992 - 1993 was a very musically productive time in my life and outside business school I used all of my time collecting records, borrowing records from the library and recording small snippets to my trusty C-cassette recorder for samples. I used this music with my Amiga 500 (with added 500k memory!) to compose hip hop with tracker software with four 8-bit samples. It was all I needed. Then we added a luxurious 2 tracks of rapping on top the two track music with a four track recorder. We had two eq’s and then we mastered everything to tape. Quick, easy and productive.

I created not only beats but compositions which collected and collaged music from ancient Greek flute records to 80’s pop with a twist of hardcore break beats. I got clever using the my limited specs and all the ”big boys” were interested how did we break the beats and twisted the music using a novelty tool, a computer. When the groups in Helsinki released 4 track tapes, we hit the market with CNF tapes with 24 tracks of dopeness. We loved hip hop and we were in it to create.

In 1992 in the middle of the teenage years I attended the transcendental meditation course together with my friend. I quickly became an enthusiast in all things yoga and vedic science. I felt the peace and happiness that came through practicing the method was just what I needed growing up in the suburban area in the middle of a huge economical crisis. I started to question my goals in life and to question my lifestyle too. I felt that the mood where rap music was going, idolizing gangsters, violence and money was not for me. The daisy age was gone and even the native tongues were disillusioned. I became vegetarian, stopped using alcohol and other substances and started to be more active citizen in various activist and environmental groups. I founded the Natural Law Party together with other Transcendental Mediation movement. I felt out of place in Finland, in my life, in hip hop and in CNF. I felt me and KRD were following a different path in life and I felt it started to show more and more in the music we made.

This song Universes is my break up song. I felt I had to do a song where I could express everything I felt and everything I stood for without the barriers of Community Neglects the Facts. I didn’t want even to be MC Reel anymore, I wanted to be me. I made this song for myself and it has never been released to the public. My partner in this song is my blood brother Jani U, who plays the flute and sings with me on the track. We started to sing together since we were 9 years in the boys choir of the Helsinki Cathedral Cantores Minores. I felt that I do not want to be solo on my solo tracks as music is not only for myself it is a process that can heal and bring people together. A vegetarian yogic choir boy, doesn’t make a great ganster rapper. 

Universes was the beginning of three solo tracks I made before I stopped rapping for five years. All of these will be released now after 25 years. I never thought that I would start to rap again. But I did and we came together in 1999 when the CNF as a crew with 3 MCs was formed. MC Reel, KRD and Maniac James. Life moves in mysterious ways. Go with the flow!

Universes - MC Reel (1993)

Rhymes to taste

Me and Mr RAG had a similar mindset and preference in Hip Hop. We both liked native tongues style and digged bands like A tribe called quest, De La Soul and the Jungle Brothers. RAG had already visited the CNF tapes with tracks like ”That’s 4 for da freestyle” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1EyO18-1NQ). When I wanted a new direction for my music I asked my friend RAG to join in a positive joint which we called ”Rhymes to taste”. My idea was to create the musical opposite to the ganster rap mood at the time and to celebrate the international connection and dialogue of MC’s all over the world. This was also my second rap song where I also did the singing vocals on the hook. 

Mr RAG aka Ragford Brown / Brownsand Brothers (Miikka Lommi) is a Finnish video artist and a producer who is known for his work with rap and music artists all over the world. One of his most famous works is ”Freestyler” by Bomfunk MC’s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymNFyxvIdaM) and the latest video is Gang of Witches (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9aJF0L_w5zk&feature=youtu.be). Mr RAG started rapping already in the end of 1980’s and produced music together with his friend DJ Slow (Vellu Maurola) both from Ruskeasanta Vantaa. Their band was called Brownsand Brothers. I met Mr RAG in business college where we both studied. At the time there wasn’t many hip hop acts in Finland, so we quickly started to collaborate by creating quick remixes from each others music. DJ Slow went to win the DMC Finnish championship four times over so he was the dopest scratch DJ at the time. The CNF DJ Kane was Maniac James’ DJ and they performed together with RAG and Slow at the International DMC championships in London 1994. 

In 1993 DJ Slow created his first Brownsand Brothers tape ”Us plus others” with the help of my trusty Amiga 500 and my self-made sound card. (https://www.discogs.com/Brownsand-Brothers-Us-Plus-Others/release/3622503). I visited the tape together with my CNF brother KRD (Mika Hautamäki), B.O.W (Raymond Ebanks) and Celes aka Davo / MC Taakibörsta (Jukka Salmi) and Dream / Nuera aka Petri Nygård (Petri Laurila). The tape was booming and all of us are still making music and art to this day! Long live Hip Hop! 
Respect the Grind!

Rhymes To Taste feat. Mr RAG

Get Reel

Dr Dre and the whole west coast hip hop sound from United States came rolling in to Europe in the beginning of 1990’s. It sampled heavily my personal favourite band Parliament Funkadelic and other funk and soul classics and added booming beats and gansta raps. My first rap concert was in 1989 in Lepakko where Digital Underground was performing. There are rumors that famed Tupac Shakur was also in Helsinki as a member of Digital Underground! I can remember one life changing event from the gig, the second I walked in I heard their DJ Fuze scratch Doowutchyalike song on two turntables. I heard the scratching sound outside the venue behind closed doors, but I immediately knew that this is something strong and even a bit frightening. This is something new. And I want to be part of it. 

As the musical differences between me and KRD inside our CNF world grew stronger and I wanted to follow my heart and my path, I knew that I need to get a stance against gansta rap. Two of my first rap albums ever was Eazy-E’s Eazy duz it and NWA’s Straight outta Compton, so I grew into the sound from Killer Cali, but coming to 1993 I was fed up with the growing glamour of killing and pimping in rap. It happened also that the opposition Native Tongue movement fell apart and I remember even KRS-1 and Brand Nubian to get hyped up and publish albums containing an atmosphere of threat and agression. I was sure that this was not the movement for me. 

I felt alone and sad. I found my happy place inside the Funk cassettes I have been collecting for years for sampling. I used to use the music for samples inside my beats, but now I started to collect soul and funk for their music, sound and content alone. I fell in love with the songs about love and social issues, about complex arrangements and about that feeling of moving forward. About hope. I made a song ”Get Reel” soon after Dr Dre released his super popular The Chronic -album. I wasn’t copying his sound but coming to the same area at the same time with the same idea. Bringing the dopeness of laid back Parliament sound + Roger Troutman and Zapp to the scene agains cold aggressiveness of East Coast sounds.

I recorded the song using Casio keyboard from my friend Jouni Nurmi, my Amiga and an effects unit. I mixed it together with my four track cassette player. It is the dusty sounds from my bedroom, my answer, my speech to the world, even though I knew that nobody would listen to it, ever. I spoke against violence and aggression and I spoke about each persons ability to choose which path to take. After 25 years I release ”Get Reel" to the world where Dr Dre is a billionaire and rap has gone pop. CNF is still making dope tracks. Nuff said.

Get Reel

MC Reel is all about bizinezz!

It’s the new me! Created through time vortex, combining transmissions from the past and the future. Making the change, rearranging alpha and omega. Transforming skill and expression to a new edit style MC’ing. The name MC Reel came from the fact that I did tape-to-tape DJ mixes after listening a lot of the Public Enemy album ”It takes a nation of millions to hold us back” and ”3 feet high and rising” by De La Soul. The Ying and the Yang sides of my style emerged already then, militant and hippy, dark and shiny. 

MC Reel is all about bizinezz is a strong and unique beat from KRD the Beat Lord, who composed three blasting beats for the new CNF solo songs. They all inherited the KRD whizz-kid- approach of combining a quirky beat with a strange sound a snippet from the CNF’s historical cassette releases. The choruses are longer than the two 8 bar verses which places a tuff place for the MC to be. I must bust a verse that is as juggernaut and demanding as the KRD beat. 

In the first verse I come out as ”the edit style MC the world is needing”. That means that I bring my reel-to-reel editing past to this day and start to re-edit and re-mix with KRD my recorded verses as it would be music. I recorded my verses three times in different styles. Then we cut the verses out of these three styles, sometimes alone, sometimes together. All styles combined. That’s my steelo. That’s my steez. 

The first verse starts with my mission statement: ”Make world peace”. I think peace is the start and the end, tranquility, harmony, not wanting anything, co-operating, collaborating, moving in the caleidoscopic realities of life. I feel that we are living in ”Eden”, not ”Mordor” where I feel the my other side, my ”cousin”, would be stronger and livelier. I see colors, I feel colors. The first verse ends with my wish to be me, whatever that is. Yogic OG! Right now I feel that I became the person that I am, and I can reinterpret myself always inside my verses, in my art, in our CNF art.

”I am ecstatic” is the first line in the second verse and expresses my feeling about me and about the world. Inside the second verse I am ”Swallowing the sun”, because that is how I feel when my energies are flowing in and out. My feelings are like the explosions on the sun surface jumping in to the darkness of space. I want to be everything all the time everywhere. It’s like loosing myself to the vastness of the world and all great things in it.”Solution is orange” comes from the coded words from the famous ”Music has right to children” -album from Boards of Canada. In my original text this line came twice, so I feel it is a sentence that wants to be there.

I wrote two full pages of material for this track and then rearranged and rewrote two 8 bar verses which represent different angles and perspectives of me and my goals in life and in my art. Which follows which, I do not know, yet. I guess it’s my dialogic perception of reality where things and processes can always be reinterpreted again and again and what is the most important is the will to express and the will to understand not only yourself but other people. We are not alone. The reality is somewhere out there for us to explore.

MC REEL IS ALL ABOUT BIZINEZZ

Make world peace, simple word piece, earth please, let me 
babtize thee all about bizinezz, 
sum of its parts, some of its arts, son of the 
stars, outcast of the past scarred hearts
voodoos and cockoos, I’m all in, 
Swallowing the sun too bizzy to begin as
the solution is orange, I want to be me,
MC Reel the bizzy man, the Yogic OG,
yo!

I am ecstatic, like a happy rabbit in the attic
positive panic, vomiting habbit, not scared 
no more, empowered, you say Mordor and 
I say Eden, I’m the edit style MC the 
world is needing, I’m all about biziness 
feel the real appeal of dealing healing
need, I mean I preach’n’teach, seeing
dreams where I want to be me aka the 
bizzy man, Reel D O double G,
yo!

MC Reel Is All About Bizinezz

This is broadcasted through Radio City, Helsinki Finland approx. 1990.

Artist DJ Tube (Tuomas Seppänen) & B.O.W (Raymond Ebanks).

DJ Tube & B.O.W Radio City Approx 1990 Part 1

DJ Tube & B.O.W Radio City Approx 1990 Part 2

De La Soul performed in Club Berlin in Helsinki 9.4.1989. 
This is an audio recording from the local Radio City.

http://www.wearedelasoul.com

CNF - MC Reel
www.cnf.fi

MC Reel

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