Chillhop II

Tapehead

r.n. 🏎

100+80

Instrumental: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/love-instrumental

Beat, mixing and mastering by Tapehead.
Vocals from ‘The Love Song Remix Acapella’ by Da Bush Babees, Mos Def and De La Soul.

Visuals: https://youtu.be/JskhIFkB-Hk

This beat was LONG to flip, took me multiple days of working on it for 8+ hours until I was happy it. I’d sped up the sample on my turntable to flip it around 90 BPM (originally it must have been 70 something), and based on the way I chopped it, it was looping at around 94 BPM. It was just one of those samples where it was from a more freeform part of a song which wasn’t necessarily constricted by one BPM or time signature, so even though my chops were looping at 94 BPM, certain notes and areas were out of time, which just took absolutely ages to fix. Essentially I had to listen to the track over and over across several days, working out which chops were out of time, and then chopping them up into one, two or even three more pieces depending on the issue, so I could sequence it myself and slightly adjust the timing to match the BPM and time signature of how I wanted to flip it. It was definitely worth it in the end, I was really happy with how the beat turned out. 

After the length of time it took to flip this beat I was mad grateful that the first acapella I tried over the beat was this one, I had a feeling it would match the tone of the sample. I have no real knowledge of music theory, so it’s always a nice surprise when the key of an acapella happens to be the same as a sample I flip for a beat. This is definitely the best that’s ever come together for me, it feels like every note Mos Def hits in the chorus is in key with the note of the chop which is playing in that moment, I’m just glad I happened to buy the record with this acapella a few days before I sat down to mix and master this beat, which kept it in my mind as a possibility to remix. I think it came together really well, as well as the acapella matching the beat tonally, I think the whole atmosphere, vibe and lyrical content that Mos Def went for perfectly blends with the beat, making it sound a bit less like a remix and more like an original song, which is always mad.

I’m also too happy with how the visuals turned out. There isn’t a video for the remix of The Love Song, so I initially tried using the video to the original, but it didn’t really fit because Mos Def actually spits a completely different chorus in that. This forced me to be more creative, and I was just watching other Mos Def music videos on mute with my beat in the background, seeing which ones fit the vibe best. I ended up choosing the visuals from UMI Says, which I chopped up in Davinci Resolve to play over my remix in a way that made sense. I think this really leveled up the visuals, its mad how well they both work together, but it does make a lot of sense given the themes of both tracks, I’m just happy to have been able to put this together.

Love

Dedicated to Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal. 

Beats, mixing and mastering by Tapehead.
Vocals and scratches from 'Just To Get A Rep Acapella' and 'The Squeeze Acapella' by Gang Starr.

Visuals: https://youtu.be/wYH3_H5WaoA
Original upload: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/claiming-respect

Since I started remixing and remastering my old beats it's been really helpful to hear the difference and improvements in my mixing ability. The first beat in this track is a rework of a very old beat, probably one of the first 10 beats I ever made. I was so happy with how it came out at the time, particular the way Guru's verse from Just To Get A Rep flowed over it, and it was mad to be able to improve on the concept I worked out back then and execute it better here. I wanted to take it one step further with this one though, and decided to add a new remix as a switchup, flipping a different part of the same sample that I used for the first beat. I initially only did this because of Just To Get A Rep acapella is so short, and I wanted the track to be longer, but it ended being a really great way of building on the ideas and concepts I was playing with back when I first flipped the sample, and mixing that with all the ways I've learned and developed as a producer since then. I'm really happy with how it came out, and will definitely be doing this again with other old ideas and concepts. 

For the switch up I tried a few different Guru acapellas, but eventually settled on his final verse from The Squeeze. I thought it fit really well after the stick up story on Just To Get A Rep, with Guru essentially sticking up those in power and demanding what is rightfully is, it contrasts as an inverse against the story of Just To Get A Rep which worked mad well to me. Because of this I named this track 'Gaining Respect' off a line from the chorus in The Squeeze, with the original remix being called 'Claiming Respect' off a line in Just To Get A Rep, I thought that worked well in showing the progression and development between the two tracks.

Another interesting thing about this track is the original upload was the first of my tracks that @hightopsfeed liked and reposted, reaching out to say he rated it. That began the start of conversations and discussions that really enabled me to begin the process of developing and growing as an artist, and I'll always remember and associate that with this track.

Gaining Respect

gang moves ギャング

intuition

New Moon

Hz. & Eaup - New Moon

✘ Purchase the untagged beat ➤ https://bsta.rs/d60ad6793
✘ Beat Store ➤ https://www.beatstars.com/beatmaschine/tracks

This beat is free for non profit use only. Must credit (prod. by Beatmaschine).
For any form of commercial use you need to purchase a lease.

Vibes

Instrumental: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/guitar-swing-instrumental

Beat, mixing and mastering by Tapehead
Vocals from ‘Hail Mary Acapella’ by 2pac and The Outlawz

Visuals: https://youtu.be/-1YU8xoWj7U

I vividly remember making this beat, I’d probably been producing for about 3 months, and was showing someone who was getting into old school hip hop how the beats are produced etc. I was tryna make a simple beat so it would be quick and not too time consuming, to clearly demonstrate the process without spending too long chopping up samples etc. This guitar sample instantly stood out to me, and I chopped it up and made this 2 bar loop instantly, the whole process of flipping the beat defo took under 30 minutes which is crazy quick for me. It’s always fun when beats just turn out naturally like that, cause to me it shows how pure the inspiration is from the sample, and the result is as organic as possible.

Originally I had Havoc’s verse from Hell On Earth over this beat, but seeing as I remixed that recently I thought I’d try something different. I haven’t remixed Tupac vocals that often, and I thought his voice and style would fit this beat, the sample has a west coast kind of feel to it, even if the drums are NY boom bap sounding. 

Peace and thanks for listening! Really appreciate all the feedback and support I've been getting.

Hail Mary

Beat, mixing and mastering by Tapehead
Vocals from ‘Meat Grinder Acapella’, ‘Raedawn Acapella’, and ‘The Time We Faced Doom’ by MF DOOM/Viktor Vaughn

Visuals: https://youtu.be/9BO7hPGEwj8

I can’t think of anything to say about DOOM that hasn’t been said before, all I can do is thank him for inspiring me and countless others. There’s no doubt that I would never have thought about making music if I hadn’t heard his work, the way he approached Hip Hop was so unique and interesting, it really made it clear that anyone can do music if they want, no need to feel constricted by ‘rules’ or trends or anything, just do your own thing. Ontop of that, his workrate was crazily inspiring to me, I just couldn’t believe the amount of music he had out under different names, a lot of it released really close together too. When I first discovered DOOM and really looked into his discography I must have almost exclusively listened to his music for a year, it was that crazy to me and there really is that much of it ( I also was playing a lot of MF GRIMM, Quasimoto and Monsta Island Czars as a part of looking into artists he was affiliated with). 

I reworked these beats this time last year and just dropped that instrumental, but I’ve learnt a lot since then about mixing and mastering, so I thought I could improve on it a lot after relistening. The main thing that made me sure I wanted to use these beats though, was the way both creepshow flips blended together when I layered them, cause I knew it would elevate the potential of this remix, which I always thought was solid conceptually, cause DOOM really fits the comic style of the creepshow sample well. When I first made the beat years ago I had Meat Grinder over it, then when I reworked it I changed it to a Viktor Vaughn acapella, so for this upload I wanted to combine the two, updating the Meat Grinder remix and then having Viktor Vaughn over the switch up. What got me the most excited though was how I managed to fit ‘The Time We Faced Doom’ over the beat at the end, seeing as that’s the intro to my personal favourite MF DOOM album, it felt like a nice way to end this tribute.

Here's the older versions for comparison:
https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/change-the-beat-creepshow-mix
https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/meat-grinder

Really hope people enjoy this one, all I’m trying to do here is honour DOOM as an artist and pay respect to the music he made, and just show how much he always has, and continues to inspire me.

Peace

DOOMSDAY

Instrumental: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/dont-mind-me-instrumental

Beat, mixing and mastering by Tapehead
Vocals from ‘Money Folder Acapella’ by MF DOOM

Visuals: https://youtu.be/a81-toGlUWk

Back when I first flipped this sample I put the acapella from ‘Strange Ways’ over it cause I thought the beat fit DOOM’s style. Looking back though it’s clear that the vibe of the beat doesn’t really fit what DOOM’s talking about on that track, so I switched up my approach for this rework. I thought ‘Money Folder’ fit it way better, DOOM has a sort of carefree attitude on that track which I think goes with the beat, has a sort of go with the flow kind of vibe. I’ve been wanting to make this one for a long time now, I actually first put the Money Folder Acapella over this beat at the very start of the year when I was working on my first DOOM tribute track, and then left it for time as a rough concept idea. Now after spending this year really dedicating myself to music, I felt crazily motivated to revisit this idea and do it justice. I really am too grateful and humbled by all the support I’ve been getting throughout the year, and I’m now more than dedicated to keeping on and growing/improving as much as I can. To me this beat gives of that vibe of contentment and focus: knowing what you want to do and being in a blessed place doing it. It makes sense to me that I set up the ideas for this remix at the start of the year with that focus and grind to music in mind, and am now revisiting and releasing it after spending the year doing what I set out to do, if that makes sense. 

Peace and thank you for all the support and feedback, hope people enjoy the vibe of this one!

Original version: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/same-game

Don't Mind Me

Beat, mixing and mastering by Tapehead
Vocals from ‘One Love Acapella’ by Nas and Q-Tip

Visuals: https://youtu.be/0CaM6Wp8zDY

I was considering dropping this last Sunday when I hit 1K subscribers, but it wasn’t quite ready, so I decided to leave it until this week. It’s given me enough time to properly arrange and mix this remix, which I was intending on dropping as a thank you to celebrate hitting that milestone, so it was actually nice to have a whole week to work on it after having hit 1k, cause that really put me in the zone to finish up this idea properly and do it as well as I could.

As soon as I started chopping ‘Love’ vocals out of this sample, I had a feeling I’d be remixing ‘One Love’ over it. Honestly, it might be my all-time favourite Hip Hop song, without a doubt top 5, and every time I remix it I want to go all out and make it as emotional as possible really, cause that’s what always stood out to me about this track. The last remix I did called ‘Watch Me Speak’ ( https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/watch-me-speak ) was a remix of the 3rd verse only, and for this one I decided to do the opposite and remix the 1st two verses. I didn’t actually intend this when I made the beat, but I also ended up chopping a melody that used the vocals ‘day’s have gone’, which in the song was talking about a relationship ending, but obviously translates to what Nas is talking about here too, in the sense that being locked up means you’re wasting days that are essentially gone, so it’s cool that it ended up working out like that cause it makes the remix more convincing and effective imo.

There’s a lot of layering in this beat, so much that it definitely won’t fit into a 1 minute short, so when I do a Behind The Beat for it that’ll have to be a normal video, so I might just go in on that one and go in depth on everything to really show the whole process, including drum layering etc. I was so motivated to flip this sample because it had so many nice melodies which were separated and very brief, so I wanted to combine my different flips to make new melodies out of the new melodies I already made and properly extend the parts of the sample which I thought were way too crazy to be so brief in the original song, it’s difficult to write down but hopefully when I show what I did it will make sense.

Peace and thank you for listening! I hope people enjoy this one, I’ve got a lot of music releasing over the coming weeks, including a 4 track EP which will be out on the 18th of February – One Love!

True Love (From The Heart & Soul)

Beat, mixing and mastering by Tapehead
Vocals from ‘Wrong Side Of Da Tracks Acapella’ by Artifacts

Visuals: https://youtu.be/J-sYmg7qlEk

Like the ‘Ill Street Blues’ remix I uploaded recently, this is one of the first remix concepts I put together back when I first started producing. I was too happy with the flip of the sample, and it immediately brought this acapella to mind, so I layered it on top and was mad happy with how they sounded together. Back then I didn’t focus on drums or have any real mixing or mastering experience, so it was very rough and not put together well, but the idea always shone through to me. I actually reworked this beat last year, but pitched it down and only had the Artifacts hook over it because there was so much resonance in the verses, and I had no idea how to mix vocals back then. Now that I’ve been mixing vocals for over a year it felt like a good time to revisit this one and finally do a full rework of the idea, so I decided to have the normal pitch to start and then lower the pitch for the second verse. I also went all out filtering this one, cause to me the sample always stood out for the warm vibe the low end had, and I wanted to really focus and exaggerate that by filtering and boosting those frequencies in this mix.

Original rough mix: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/wrong-side
2020 rework: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/wrong-side-1

Peace and thank you for listening!

Wrong Side

Instrumental: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/top-illin-instrumental

Beat, mixing and mastering by Tapehead
Vocals from ‘Gazzillion Ear Acapella’ by MF DOOM

Visuals: https://youtu.be/xXRrNEMQA6o

This flip took a while to get right, I was trying to be more creative with the way I flipped the sample. It was crazy on it’s own (and I kept longer chops to use with the vocal flip that comes in second), but for the main flip I wanted to make a melody from chops in-between the vocals, which is always fun and gives the beat a very different vibe to the original sample. It also took a long time to layer both the flips I made, but I'm definitely glad I persevered with it.

I felt like the finished beat ended up having a cartoonish vibe with an upbeat melody, so I immediately went to DOOM acapellas which I thought could fit over it. I chose Gazzillion Ear because DOOM is really having fun on that one, loads of cool punchlines different flows and switchups, which I thought would work well here. It just feels like the kind of beat made for an emcee to show skills over without being too serious, just demonstrate some lyrical skill and technical flows. It was long to get the acapella to fit over the beat though cause of how abstract and varied the flows are, so I had to chop it up into loads of different pieces (basically for every line), just to get it to fit in the right places over this beat. I think it was worth it though, I can’t really imagine many other artists over this kind of beat, and I always love remixing DOOM.

Hope people enjoy this one, thank you for listening! Peace

Top Illin'

https://jippy.bandcamp.com/album/brazil-by-ear-3

Peace - and thanks for listening

jippy.bandcamp.com

BRAZIL BY EAR 3

Birocratic - Mango Seltzer

🌐 SPOTIFY 🌐

Driftin'

https://jippy.bandcamp.com/album/brazil-by-ear

brazil by ear [full tape]

Instrumental out now on Spotify and other streaming services:
https://open.spotify.com/track/4HXXXVWoRG9ubvDXklIvzs?si=fbfd3fedb20b446f&nd=1
https://music.apple.com/us/album/just-zone-instrumental-instrumental-single/1578517704?uo=4&app=apple+music

Remixed and Remastered.

Instrumental: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/just-zone-instrumental

Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krt3oKLg0-I&lc=Ugzs4B0w07jS99VzL8Z4AaABAg

Original upload (2018):
https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/just-zone

Memories of making this beat are mad vague and hazy. It was either late 2016 or early 2017, and I was too excited over the sample. Being a very old beat the drums were terribly done, so I've added news drums and balanced out the levels on the sample a bit better.

I've always loved how the Shootouts acapella sounds over this beat, especially this verse, so I've kept that the same, but added the chorus at the start and the end of the track. I don't know why I didn't use the chorus before, because it sounds dope, but then again I was bugging back then. The decision to put Shootouts over this beat was a dope one though, and I'm glad I've got the track to a place where it now sounds a lot better.

Peace.

Just Zone

streaming platforms march 2nd. some other projects on the way. thanks for listening.
https://jippy.bandcamp.com/album/brazil-by-ear-2
https://jippy.bandcamp.com/album/brazil-by-ear-2
https://jippy.bandcamp.com/album/brazil-by-ear-2

BRAZIL BY EAR 2

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