Beat, mixing and mastering by Tapehead
Vocals from ‘Nowhere To Run, Nowhere To Hide Acapella’ by Gravediggaz

Visuals: https://youtu.be/Jf33L2Lxoas

So many people picked up on the Halloween vibes of this beat when I dropped the instrumental, so since then I’ve been working on a Gravediggaz remix to drop before the 31st, cause their style just fits that perfectly. I didn’t have this acapella record when I first made the beat so I never thought to use it, and I’m definitely glad to have it now. There aren’t many acapellas out there from their first album (this might be the only one) and to me that’s their best horrorcore sounding album lyrically, they were in their own zone making that one for sure, and I always play it loads this time of year. To be honest my favourite track off the album is ‘Graveyard Chamber’, it’s just got that underground hardcore vibe on lock, and that’s exactly the kind of Hip Hop that I was tapping into when I made this beat. Also I’d argue that the album has one of, if not the best outro from a 90s Hip Hop album, it’s just ridiculous and I’m always looking forward to it when I hear the album, and then once it’s over it just makes me want to replay the whole album again.

Original remix: https://soundcloud.com/tapeheadloops/sparkin-on-the-mic

I made this beat 2 years ago now in late October 2019. I'd picked up a generic record compilation of music from films at a charity shop for 50p on the off chance that there would be something dope on there. Most of the record had nothing that stood out to me and was really hectic classic music with no sampling potential, and it was a bit frustrating, because I'd spent a few hours listening to records for samples. Then for a brief moment there was a pause in this rhapsody, and these really dark and menacing bass notes played for a few seconds as a bridge, and they instantly stood out to me so I sampled them into the MPC2000. I guess being frustrated with not finding a sample brought out an aggressive nature in this beat, it made me think of the soundtrack to Jaws or something in how sinister and angry the beat sounded. It was late October too so maybe it being near Halloween inspired the evil sound of the beat too. I was happy with the loop of the bass heavy string notes, and I layered the best piano notes from the rhapsody ontop, which added a lot to the beat and made it a lot more engaging.

Overall this is one of those beats that was born out of frustration, but once I actually had the samples on the MPC it was very simple to make, and it didn't take long to get to the finished product, which I was very happy with as it's always fun to make a really grimey hardcore sounding beat. I still do rate what I was going for the remix of Mad Izm over this beat, but I’ve learned a lot about mixing since then, and I think this remix is mixed a lot better, as well as Gravediggaz making more logical sense over the beat. I layered more drums here and layered the sample to give it more bass, I just wanted the melody to hit as hard as possible without clipping, which was actually difficult cause of all the different tracks. I do think the mix is a lot better now, it’s nice to improve more recent beats because there’s normally only a few things that need touching up, and with this one I feel like I’ve got a convincing remix here that does the sample justice and feels like something Gravediggaz might have hopped on. Also when I loaded this beat up on the MPC to rerecord the sample, I found a different flip of the piano I chopped from the rhapsody which I completely forgot about and never ended up using, so I decided to use it here as a little switchup at the end for RZA’s bonus verse.

Hope people enjoy this one in time for Halloween, next week’s upload on the 31st is going to be a tribute and celebration of MF DOOM. I rarely know what I’m uploading that far in advance, but I’ve been planning this one for a while now. Until then, peace!!

Nowhere To Run

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