Instrumental: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/lifetime-impression-instrumental

Beat, scratches, cuts, mixing and mastering by Tapehead
Visuals: https://youtu.be/zPoxbmlxVGA
Free Instrumental Download: https://tapehead.bandcamp.com/track/lifetime-impression-instrumental

All We Got Iz Us is probably my favourite Onyx album, it doesn’t have a single weak track imo, the album is just mad motivating. I think its mad underrated too, obviously its fairly well known, but cause it came out in ’94 it’s definitely been a bit overshadowed by the insane amount of classic albums that came out that year. To me this album is a classic, one of my favourites from ’94 for sure. The singles are decently known for sure, Last Dayz being the most recognizable, but the whole album doesn’t seem to get as much love as the singles, and the whole project is a must listen to me. Putting the Evil Streets acapella over this beat was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I fully can’t believe how well the Onyx acapella fits, its truly nuts to me, and pretty rare that something comes together this well. I’m pretty sure the hook is ‘sung’ in the same key as the sample I flipped, and all the verses fit ridiculously well, but not just the flows, the voices sound right over the beat too. 

I had to go all out when I mixed this beat. The drums are all layered so thick, there’s about 4 hi hats, 6 kicks, and 6 snares which are all mixed together to give the drums a punch which definitely matches Onyx’s style. The way I chopped this sample left some vocals in for split seconds, which sounded like scratches because of them being right at the end of a chop and cut off, like how a fader cuts out a scratch when the DJ spins a record back. I thought this sounded cool but it only happened once in each 2 bar loop of the sample, so I decided to add some of my own scratches from a few break records I have. I used ‘Super Seal’, and recorded some scratches of snares and the famous ‘yo’ sample at the BPM of the beat. Layered with the drums this sounded crazy to me, it gave the beat a different vibe, I’ve definitely said before how much I love how scratching sounds, and it was cool to incorporate it into this beat in a more permanent, less obvious way, not just something for the hook. Normally I don’t like how censored acapellas sound over beats, but I think with this one it works, because of all of the scratches and cuts that play in the beat, it sort of makes the gaps in the verses make more sense as if the record was being cut up, and then sometimes the scratch/break fills up a gap left by a word being censored, it was definitely a part of what made this acapella work so well over the beat. I also layered the sample 3 times, 2 filters, one high one low, and a standard mix, which I layered, soloed etc throughout the track. This was unbelievably long to do without quantization (which is how I flipped the sample originally), so all 3 had to perfectly match each other, which took hours to sequence. I fully kept giving up but knew the beat needed the layers on the sample to really do it justice (especially the groove that’s added by filtering the lows), so I just stuck by it, and sequenced each chop individually, so I was hitting the pad at the exact right time, which ended up with the beat sequence being 30 tracks on the MPC (they’re usually 15 or so). It was definitely necessary to do this, because the contrast of the smooth flows of the low end to the scratches and samples really gives the track variation, and gives it a lot more presence throughout, definitely was worth the time and effort.

This is by far the happiest I’ve been with a remix in time, and it’s all positive, because making this has given me an unbelievable boost in energy music wise, and I’m mad excited to make the next beat, and now for the first time I’m equally as excited about mixing and mastering, because of what I was able to achieve with this one. 
Peace.

Lifetime Impression

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

Comments

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