Scratch Beats - 4

21st of december 1946, the Duke from Trinidad has a live concert in New York. Almost 70 years later, Bandura, a guy from Basel/Switzerland, remixes one of those songs performed in NY. Arash Pakzad from Tehran/Iran finally does the mixing and the track is released on the german label Resense records. (Resense 38)

Trinidad - New York - Switzerland - Iran - Germany. Now if that is not world music...

Mixing: (http://soundcloud.com/arash-pakzad)
Guitar, Bass, Keys & Beats: Bandura


Get it on 
Juno Records (http://www.juno.co.uk/products/bandura-sono-rhizmo-resense-038-angelitos-negros/511017-01/?scref=sc)
Juno Download (http://www.junodownload.com/products/bandura-sono-rhizmo-resense-038/2399372-02/)
Bandcamp (http://shop.agogo-records.com/album/resense-038)
Kudos Records (http://www.kudosrecords.co.uk/release/RESENSE038/Various_Artists_Resense_038.html)


Calypso Invasion (96kbit)

from the  Kenn Starr album  "Square One" on Mello Music Group.

About The Album:
Kenn Starr sees his career at square one, despite being regarded among the elite of the DMV scene, and being in the inner circle of producers Oddisee and Kev Brown, and having his newest album signed to Mello Music Group. Eight years since his debut, Starr Status, Kenn Starr is baggage free on his sophomore album, Square One.

Largely produced by Kev Brown with a nice block of production by Black Milk, and additional work by 14KT, Roddy Rod, and Kaimbr, Square One is Kenn Starr getting back to his foundation to begin anew. The laid back flow remains intact—complementary to the Kev Brown’s vintage soul-crate production—but the perspective is written with a wisdom earned through seeing opportunities that overpassed his doorstep. On “Cigarettes & Whiskey“ he addresses his history with passing fancy and a buried hatchet, “please pardon my view points / Starr Status wasn’t a classic but had a few joints,” and makes no qualms about his hiatus. Square One is the only album Kenn Starr could write in order to bid farewell to days past and move forward.

With the firmest of grips on reality, Kenn Starr has kept his Low Budget Crew ties in toe, including Sean Born who makes appearances on “Product Of The Basement” and album closer, “Farewell”. Kenn also enlists Mello Music standout yU, and long time compatriot Wordsworth, as well as the lush voice of singing star Melanie Rutherford. Square One is built from the underground-up as Starr still writes from the mindset of being a product of the basement. 

Kenn Starr - The Movement II (prod. Kev Brown)

from the upcoming album Oddisee "The Good Fight" (5/5)
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/the-good-fight/id969829649

In a landscape overrun with abstract indulgence and shallow trend-chasers, the Prince George’s County, Maryland artist Oddisee has created 'The Good Fight', a record that reminds you that it’s music before it’s hip-hop. Due May 5th on Mello Music Group, it’s for the fans and for himself. It finds the musical heavyweight balancing between craft, career, and successfully growing into the world around him. Stream the first single, "That's Love".

Album Description:
Oddisee makes music that rattles in your bone marrow. It’s imbued with love, honesty, and selflessness. It’s virtuosic in its musicality, direct in its language, and infinitely relatable.
 
In a landscape overrun with abstract indulgence and shallowtrend-chasers, the Prince George’s County, Maryland artist has created “The Good Fight,” a record that reminds you that it’s music before it’s hip-hop. Released on Mello Music Group, it’s for the fans and for himself. It finds the musical heavyweight balancing between craft, career, and successfully growing into the world around him.
 
For Oddisee, “The Good Fight” is about living fully as a musician without succumbing to the traps of hedonism, avarice, and materialism. It’s about not selling out and shilling for a paycheck, while still being aware that this is a business requiring compromise and collaboration.
 
It’s music that yields an intangible feeling: the sacral sound of an organ whine, brass horns, or a cymbal crash. It’s not necessarily the syllables, but rather what they evoke. A song like “That’s Love” is more than a declaration; it’s a meditation on our capacity to love and the bonds binding us together. Ambition and greed war with our sense of propriety. “Contradiction’s Maze” offers a list of paradoxes we all face (“I want to tell the truth when it hurts/but when it comes to me, I want the blow softened.”)
 
Oddisee’s production simmers in its own orchestral gumbo. You sense he’s really a jazzman in different form, inhabiting the spirit of Roy Ayers and other past greats.  The Fader’s compared him to a musical MC Escher, calling hailing his “grandiose and symphonic sound” and “relevant relatable messages.” Pitchfork praised his “eclectic soulful boom-bap.”
 
“The Good Fight” acknowledges the stacked odds, but refuses to submit.
 
It’s both universal and personal. The child of a Sudanese immigrant highlights the rigors of his own upbringing: his pregnant mother working the register until she was about to burst, his pops’ shuttered diner that couldn’t survive Reaganomics—the one that Oddisee drives past every time he returns home, just to remind him how quickly the world can turn bad.
 
It’s these minor details that add into something major. It’s testament to the indelible nature of art: when you can turn what you love into something that lasts.


Oddisee - That's Love

from Rapper Big Pooh's Mello Music Group debut album "Words Paint Pictures" out now everywhere (CD, Digital, Vinyl).

produced by Apollo Brown
photography by Jeremy Deputat

Rapper Big Pooh - Promise Land (prod. Apollo Brown)

Young Grasshopper - Reverie & Louden
Written by Reverie , Produced by Louden
need beats ? hit up @LoudenBeats

Young Grasshopper - Reverie & Louden

"Aftergold" by Big Wild is the second release from Foreign Family Collective, an outlet for musicians and visual artists alike curated by the duo behind ODESZA.

@bigwild is on tour now http://bigwildmusic.com

Acapella for a few of the vocal chops provided by @kelandia

Hype Machine: http://awe.sm/bM6PS
iTunes: http://foreignf.am/aftergold-itunes
Spotify: http://foreignf.am/aftergold-spotify

More info on Foreign Family Collective at http://foreignfamilycollective.com


Aftergold

Big Wild - Aftergold

Large Professor - RuDopeDapNNoyd Pt. 1 (Feat. Jeru Tha Damaja) (Remix)

My remix of "Courtesy". 

Shouts to one of my fav albums of last year.  #PRhyme

Courtesy (Marco Polo Remix)

PETE ROCK - "PETESTRUMENTALS 2" 
COMING JUNE 23rd on Mello Music Group
https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/petestrumentals-2/id977868001

Pete Rock was raised in Mount Vernon, but his face belongs on Mount Rushmore. The Chocolate Boy Wonder perfected an art form, inspired millions, and soundtracked a generation. By contrast, Teddy Roosevelt seems like a chump. 

This is the man who Dilla told, “I wanted to be like you.” Kanye once called himself the “new Pete Rock.” But the original Pete Rock remains permanently vital. The evidence bangs in his latest opus, Petestrumentals 2, the sequel to the 2001 classic that helped define the hip-hop instrumental record. It marks the legend’s first album on Mello Music Group, a fitting union between the author of the boom-bap blueprint and the label that’s expanded upon his legacy. 

Describing Pete Rock’s productions do them little justice. They resonate in your gut, heart, and brain. The title of one of these beats says it all: “Makes Me Feel Like.” You fill in the blanks based on your personal experience and current mood. 

Petestrumentals 2 conjures memories of BBQ cookouts and 70s Blaxploitation scores, rattling summer jeep cruises and blunted Jamaican vacations. There’s a gorgeous requiem to Dilla (“Dilla Bounce (R.I.P),” where the originator pays tribute to the prodigy. You see the full range of Rock’s gifts on display: the meticulously chopped horns, unquantized drums, and air raid sirens. It contains the emotion of a thousand eulogies. 

No record can’t be resurrected. There’s no sub-genre or era that can’t be converted into Rock’s singular brand of soul. His music is the closest thing we’ll ever get to a time-traveling DeLorean, effortlessly shifting between past, present, and future. 

For the last 20 years, hip-hop heads have argued over the best Pete Rock original productions and remixes. Is it “They Reminisce Over You” or the “Shut ‘Em Down Remix?” Do you prefer Soul Survivor or the first Petestrumentals, his work with INI or the UN? His catalogue can’t be compressed into a bio; you need a book. 

This is the latest chapter—an even 20 slaps and rhythmic levitations. It’s Pete Rock at his best, accelerating and kicking cosmic slop, extending wishes, hope, love, gritty drums and eternal wonder.

Pete Rock - Heaven & Earth

on and on and on and on and on and on and on....

On And On, Two, Pass It (Herse Remix)

1996 Beat Tape, Vol 1

Murky

Notty

Fazer

Uuugghh

"All music is good music, if it touches your soul. If it doesn't touch your soul, that means it ain't meant for you to make it". 
Dj Premier.

My Main influence is still the album "The Beauty In All" by Oddisee. I want my music to be in the same spirit that this album.

Large Professor - RuDopeDapNNoyd Pt. 1 (Feat. Jeru Tha Damaja) (Remix)

Sharksty

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