Check the flava... "Good And Plenty" a funky beat for funky lovers.
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Good And Plenty

talker

The Vocals/Poetry: Wayne Gooden aka Elder X
The Music Mix & Sampling: C. Double34 Music
The Sampled Vocals:
Michael Jackson, Tavares, Johnny Guitar Watson, The Persuaders, & Miss Cleo
The Additional Music: Vei Beats

* FAIR USE DISCLAIMER: I do not own copyright for this copyrighted material, but under Section 107 United States Copyright Law as noted by the United States Copyright Office (Copyright Act 1976), allowance is made for fair use for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research

And Every Hater Is A Matriarch Of My Fan Club (Wayne Gooden Elder X, vocals)

c o l d | n i g h t s

Remixed and Remastered.

Visuals: https://youtu.be/_RIBwMIzLHY

Original upload (2017): https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/thank-you

This is an old beat, which had such a positive vibe, and I vividly remember the reason behind it. A few days before I had recorded a verse over one of my beats for the first time at @hightopsfeed studio, and that experience was truly nuts, a real turning point in my life because I was able to finally let out all these pent out feelings about the way I was living onto the mic. Writing is therapeutic for sure and I'd had the verses written for time, but actually saying the words out loud in front of someone else was a different level in terms of the realization it gave me. This definitely stayed on a subconscious level at first, when I rode back home after recording, I was gassed, but it was more of a general feeling towards how positive of an experience it was. It wasn't until a few days later when Hightop sent me the finished mix of the song that I really deeped what had happened, and was crazily inspired to make music on a different level than I had been previously. 

I had found the sample I used for this beat a while back, by pure chance I stumbled onto the same song used by Nujabes for his song 'Thank You' off of Modal Soul, which has always been one of my favourites. I wasn't really planning on flipping the sample myself, I was just interested to have learnt where Nujabes got it from, but after hearing the final mix of my first track I was too inspired, and just wanted to make a beat to say thank you for what the experience did for me, so I thought flipping the sample for 'Thank You' would be the perfect way to do that. I deliberately didnt put an acapella over the track, and dropped the beat after I uploaded the track I recorded at Hightops, just to mark my appreciation for what it did for me in terms of my focus on music and approach to life. I've never thought to remix this beat since, until last week, when I was thinking about what kind of beat could work with this MF DOOM acapella.

Operation Doomsday is probably my favourite MF DOOM album (it’s hard to say really, Vaudeville Villain is a close second). Being a huge old school hip hop fan, when I first heard the album it blew me away with how innovative everything was, whilst being ridiculously raw and authentically 90s sounding. There’s something about DOOM in this period which is just different, he was making music for the pure love of it, was homeless at some points, and you can just hear that this album was born out of sheer passion to keep on with music to continue what he and his brother started, and what they had planned. It’s always resonated with me.

This acapella is the Extended Raw Rhymes version of Go With The Flow from the deluxe version of the album. I was too excited when I had the idea to remix it, because it’s even more raw than how the track sounds on the album. DOOM just sounds so hungry here with MF GRIMM backing him up, and the style is so authentic and genuine, it oozes real deal hip hop shit which I love. GRIMMs adlibs make the track even harder to me, you can really feel the sense of comradery between the two, and of course the scratches on the beat are just nuts, everything is cutthroat sharp, just straight skills.

I love that side to DOOM, all his work is dope to me and obviously he gets ridiculous respect for pioneering alternative genres in Hip Hop through what he did on albums like Madvillainy, but the underground skills heavy vibe of Doomsday will always be special to me, and I’m so glad and honoured to have been able to remix a track from this early period in DOOMs legendary career, when he was completely set on his goal, and had the experience, skills, and passion to do something incredible. So so so inspiring, and I’d like to thank him once again, his influence really was huge on me during the years before I started producing, and I've got loads of plans for more DOOM remixes in the future.

Just Go With The Flow

Instrumental: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/constant-elevation-instrumental

Beats, mixing and mastering by Tapehead

Vocals and scratches from ‘I Know You Got Soul’ Acapella by Eric B. & Rakim

Visuals: https://youtu.be/XXxMipo1iYU

I bugged out crazily when I made this beat, I’d spent ages chopping up different sections of one jazz song, which was mostly piano and bassline melodies, but there was also some really nice saxophone playing at the end of the track, which I had recorded into the MPC. I spent most of the day trying to flip the piano and bass melodies though, and completely forgot about the saxophone samples which I still hadn’t chopped up, I just had them recorded ready to chop up. I decided to have a break from the main loops I was working on, where I was spending ages trying to mesh piano and bassline chops together, and thought it couldn’t hurt to chop up the saxophone samples to see if they would work with what I had, seeing as it was all from the same song. At this point I was pretty worn out, having spent 4 hours or so working on the other chops, so I kind of went into autopilot and chopped the saxophone melodies into 16 pieces. This meant that the MPC was completely full: the 16 A bank pads were all piano sounds, the 16 B pads were all bassline sounds, the C pads were all saxophone chops, and the D pads were all drums. The saxophone flip came together instantly, it probably took less than a minute of experimenting with them over the beat for me to know the melody I wanted to make, and it got me way too excited. The maddest thing was the saxophone fit perfectly with the bass sounds that I had already chopped from an earlier point in the sample, which really made the beat work for me, because the lows of the bass worked perfectly alongside the highs of the saxophone, and it just all came together so well. Its always sick when this happens, cause it reminds me to keep persevering when producing, because although I was a bit tired and worn out by the time I’d chopped the piano and bass samples, by just pushing myself to keep on and chop the saxophone sample, I was able to create something I was really proud of.

Because of the smooth vibe of the sample, I didn’t really want to put any hardcore acapellas over the beat, although that contrast can work sometimes, I wasn’t feeling it with this one. Even though this beat wasn’t made from a soul sample, I thought about putting the acapella from ‘I Know You Got Soul’ over the beat, seeing as it’s a pretty laid-back song that’s easy to listen to lyrically. The fact that Rakim came with these flows in 1987 is crazy to me, it must’ve been ridiculous at the time and its influence is so clear when you look at artists throughout the 90s, who always give Rakim huge props as one of the innovators and pioneers of the emceeing craft. This track is probably my favourite off of Paid In Full, which is actually the first 80s Hip Hop album I ever heard, wanting to hear the albums that artists like Nas always cited as inspirations for when they were younger. It makes sense for the album to be crazy seeing as it inspired artists who made projects like Illmatic, and this track in particular was ahead of its time in my opinion. 

I knew Rakims’ flow would sound good over this beat, but I didn’t expect Eric B’s scratching to sound so raw on the track, especially when I soloed the drums at the very end. To me that just shows how ahead of its time their style was, and it’s cool to hear the scratches in a hardcore context, because this album definitely inspired the more hardcore sounding Hip Hop that came out of New York in the 90s, but came before it, so it’s dope to hear the two work together, if that makes sense.

Constant Elevation

P r o j e c t i o n

I n  L o v e

Smile

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Mind Game

Beatmaker / Emcee
Contact: tapeheadloops@gmail.com

<--MPC2000 Classic                     

Underground Airplay

Trying to give something back to Hip Hop - really appreciate any comments or feedback.

Peace

Constant Elevation

Tapehead

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