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MIX NOTES

Pop’s Rap – Nashville native Amerigo Gazaway has long been known for his internet mashup projects. His latest pairs Stevie Wonder beats with Common’s rhymes, to pretty stellar effect. He adds a lot of his own drum sounds and updates Stevie’s stuff in what sounds complementary and reverent to my ears. Download the whole project and judge for yourself HERE

Don’t Wake Me – Another nice, groovy track from LA trio Moonchild’s 2015 release “Please Rewind”, very much in the vein of 90s neo-soul like Amel Larrieux and such. I added a few drop-outs of my own with the acapella. Check their album HERE.  I put a remix of another one of their songs on a mix called ONE WAY TO DO IT earlier this year

Purple Tuesday – a nice little collabo from May 2017 between Irish rapper Rejjie Snow, Joey Bada$$, and Brooklyn resident/rising producer Jesse Boykins III. Rejjie aka Alex Anyaegbunam hails from Dublin. He’s got an ear for just the kinda schmoove beats I fuckz with, and I’ve been thinking his long-promised debut album is gonna be dope. You can download his latest mixtape HERE

Itsoweezee – I was listening to that “Purple Tuesday” song (above), wondering why I was so immediately drawn to it, and then it hit me: “this shit sounds like Itsoweezee!” So I dug the OG cut out of the shelves to include it here. De La Soul produced it themselves for their 4th LP, 1996’s “Stakes Is High”. Not their strongest album perhaps, but worthy of another listen if it’s been a minute. The lunchroom food fight video had some nice cameos, too.

Pickled Spider – I put this instrumental under De La’s second verse. It’s a 2010 Ninjatune one-off from longtime beat junkie Mr Scruff and Kirtsy Almeida, a singer who grew up in Gibraltar but holds things down in Manchester UK. Mr Scruff always continues to push boundaries and make eclectic joints for dancefloors and headphones across the globe. Catch him live if you can.

Caught Their Eyes – I wasn’t really that amped for a new Jay -Z record, but I couldn’t NOT give it a listen, and this track caught my ear. Jigga’s lyrics still have some bite when he wants. He goes hard after Londell McMillan, the executor of Prince’s estate.

This guy had ‘Slave’ on his face / You think he wanted the masters with his masters?

Chicago’s own No I.D. chopped up Nina Simone’s reggae-ish cover of Randy Newman’s “Baltimore” in a really weird way, but it still kinda works.

Fish – Israeli jazz drummer Amir Bresler released this on a really great 45 in June of 2017, on the British label Kudos. The A-side is sure to show up on a mixtape of mine in the near future. He seems to mostly play the Jazz festival circuit, but hopefully this record will encourage him to put together a band that makes more of this buttery goodness.

1,2 Pass it – I threw the very last verse that Jeru did from the 1994 classic D&D All Stars compilation over a breakdown in that Fish song (above). The beat was just so nice I wanted to hear some rhymes over it, nahmean? Missing are the rest of the D&D posse, that included Doug E. Fresh, Fat Joe, KRS, Mad Lion, and Smif-N-Wessun.

Peace & Love – Just about every track on Tall Black Guy’s 2106 “Let’s Take a Trip” LP will get your head nodding. Dude has really evolved from just dope beats to complex, lush soundscapes. Working with Norfolk VA’s “Trap House Jazz” impresario Masego and another multi-instrumentalist whiz kid, Rommel Donald, thickens the gumbo nicely.

Come On – This backing track is “Funk In The Hole”, a lost Roy Ayers cut that appeared on 2005’s “Virgin Ubiquity II: Unreleased Recordings 1976-1981”. Unfortunately few details were given for any of the songs, so it’s not clear what album recording session this outtake is from. It sounds to me more a remnant from his Blaxploitation soundtrack era than from his later disco years, but no matter – it’s bad as fuck. I threw the Biggie & Sadat X acapella over the break and did some creative editing to make it all come out smoothly. Why not blow up the spot with Sadat?

Trespassenger – Just a simple trip-hoppy groove from Ben Dover’s 2016 mixtape “Often Imitated, Never Duplicated”. Ben Dover is Ron Deveb, a beatmaker from Holmestrand, Norway who has been putting out joints on his own Lost Heaven label since 2015. Peep more of his stuff HERE

Technova (Folknova) – yes indeed, this is where that Tribe sample came from. It’s an LP cut from DJ Towa Tei, who split from Deee-Lite in the early 90s and moved back to Japan. He got Bebel Gilberto to sing the hook, and he added a bunch of random stuff, including a broadcast recording from John Glenn’s 1962 narration as he orbited the earth. Towa Tei continues to record and tour, mostly in Japan. I first saw Deee-Lite in 1988 with De La Soul at the Brixton Academy in London. Back when the Chicago/NY house sound was really taking the UK by storm. It definitely felt like the right sound at the right place at the right time.

NNGE – If you’ve been listening to my mixes for any period of time, you know that I am Brooklyn’s biggest Oddisee fan. Dude delivers, time and time again. He really represents everything great about Hip Hop to me. This Meters-esque beat is fucking bangin’, and the lyrics are on point as usual. Buy his albums. Buy black music.

I mean, what is there to fear?
I’m from black America this is just another year
If you’re new to disrespect by your elected puppeteer
well let me show you how to persevere

Just get up every time somebody knocks you down
& celebrate in front of people like they’re not around
& if they try to build a wall to keep you balling out of bounds
Use the bench they told to you warm to keep the fences knocking down

Get Retarded – Most people don’t seem to remember that “MC EZ” was just the first MC name of Craig Mack. Yes, that Craig Mack. This track was a staple from my DJ Red Alert cassette recordings in 1988. I missed the vinyl back then, but thankfully caught a repress at Fat Beats years later. The break, which never seemed to have anything to do with the lyrics BTW, is a Monk Higgins sample from 1974.

Moshitup – Classic collabo with Just Ice and KRS One – two of my faves and the first rappers to really champion dancehall reggae. The bassline is a replay of a 1986 digital riddim called “Jah Send Mi Come” by a one-hit-wonder going by the awesome deejay name of Dignitary Stylish.  Just Ice is a cool dude too. When I was just learning how to DJ, train wrecking mixes on WPIR at Pratt, he used to come by the reggae show and spin a few records. His gold fronts were definitely next level back then.

Players – Just a little Dilla to get us through the day. This is from Slum Village’s 2nd and arguably best LP, Fantastic Vol. 2 (1998). The vocal sample that loops throughout is one of those ear worm things for me. Pops up outta nowhere and gets stuck in my head for days. FWIW, the pitched down voice is actually saying “Clair”, from this creepy acapella song by The Singers Unlimited.

Cents & Sense – Speaking of Dilla, like so many of his joints, the beat on this Lojii & Swarvy track just makes my scrunch my whole face up and whisper “gat DAMN!” through my teeth. I came across these dudes on some blog, and I’ve been feeling their weird, laid back “Due Rent” album ever since. It came out on Portland’s Fresh Selects label in March of 2017. They’re originally from Philly, but now call LA home – when they can make the rent, at least. Peep more HERE

!Aqua No Ma! – Some boom bapp-ish Bristol beats from the early days of Ninjatune, the label that is pretty much responsible for making Trip Hop “a thing” in the 90s. This was the opening track on Up Bustle Out‘s second album, which came out in 1996.

Living For the City (Reflex Remix) – Just thought I’d mix things up and throw a straight funk cut in here. The Reflex put his foot into this and respectfully boosted the low end and extended some of the breaks. Not that Stevie Wonder ever needed a remix, of course, but I love it just the same. His embellishment of the bassline into something a bit more techy and loopy is impressive when you consider how perfectly it complements the original masterpiece.

Frontin’ (bonus mix) – A simple bossa nova rework by Pharell & the Yessirs, which was the name given to the Pharell, ?uestlove & James Poyser’s session in which they re-worked cuts from Skateboard P’s “In My Mind” LP. It was floating around on blogs since 2007, but finally got some kinda official web release a few years later. If you’re a ?uestlove fan then you might want to add it to your collection.

Dogg’s World – For my money, Dre’s production on Snoop’s debut album is sonic fucking perfection. You can claim “The Chronic” is the better record, but I’ve always thought Dre took every trick he learned on The Chronic and stepped it up just a little more on “Doggystyle”. Kinda how the Bomb Squad shook the world with PE’s “It Takes A Nation of Millions…”, but their follow-up work on Ice Cube’s “Amerikka’s Most Wanted” is even better. Anyway, this has always been my favorite track on this record and I simply must run it every now and again.

Afropuffs – While we’re reminiscing on early 90s Death Row, Lady of Rage’s debut album is another stellar piece of Dre production. I never met Rage, but she used to work the phones at Chung King Studios a few years before my time there, and I only ever heard mad love for her. She was down with many notable MCs over the years, including Nikki D, Chubb Rock, Rakim, and the L.A. Posse. Peep her spitting a very Big Daddy Kane-esque verse on one of her old cuts HERE

Late Night Reprise – Düsseldorf by way of Berlin DJ Suff Daddy has been making noise since about 2010, working with talented folks like Oddisee, Miles Bonny, and Kissy Asplund (the voice you hear semi-rapping on this track) – to name a few. Mostly just beats and vocal loops, all nicely put together, and definitely ready for the head nod.

Ignore the Man To Your Right – Turn off your radio and you just might notice, despite what you hear, good Hip Hop is very much alive and well. DC producer L’Orange made this joint with Jeremiah Jae and Homeboy Sandman for his 2015 “The Night They Took Us In Like Family” LP. He’s about to drop his third album “The Ordinary Man”, featuring many of my favorite working MCs, including Oddisee, Blu, and Elzhi. It’s even rumored to have a Del The Funky Homosapien cut. Say word. PEEP IT.

Wild Thang (blend) – A straight blend of Jimmy Spicer’s “Money (Dolla Bill Y’all)” and the 1988 one-off “Wild Thang” by 2 Much, otherwise known as Leshaun. She later got signed to Tommy Boy under her own name, but didn’t have much luck. She was down with the Flavor Unit, and the influence of Latifah is pretty evident. She ended up suing LL Cool J for his 1996 version, which went to #9 on the US charts. Rumor is she cashed in on that, big time. Good for her.

The Freaks Come Out At Night – This is really just the vocoder chant breakdown from the middle of the Whodini song, which I’ve always loved for some reason. Maybe cuz it sounds like Zapp and reminds me of Brian Terrizi‘s 1984 gun-metal grey VW Scirocco.

You Know I Got Soul – What can you say about this joint? A timeless, flawless, straight up classic. Eric B & Rakim always made some pretty good B-side dubs too, which I let run for a bit on this mix. The quality of their dubs was due to the fact that they were mixed by legendary Disco producer Patrick Adams, who is responsible for dozens of classic jams, including Inner Life’s “Caught Up In A One Night Love Affair”, Cloud One’s “Atmosphere Strut”, Phreek’s “Weekend”, and Skipworth & Turner’s “Thinking About Your Love”. Dude is a bauce.

Live Convention 82 (snippet) – I made this mix 2 days before I left for a Labor Day weekend in Puerto Rico (escaping just 12 hours before the hurricane, thank god), so I mixed in a snippet of Grand Wizard Theodore live at The T-Connection in the Bronx – to remind folks whence the PR sample came (It’s Master Rob from the Fantastic Five). If you are a student of Hip Hop history, you need this in your life.  This record is so rare, I have never actually seen one in person.

Hours Go By – Fast forwarding to 2017, RKLS released this just this past June. RKLS are Kid Fonque from South Africa and D-Malice from the UK. The vocalist is Sio, another Jo-Burg South African native who’s been working with a wide variety of musicians and producers since about 2013. Peep her Soundcloud for her latest tunes.

Rules – UK Jazz OG Courtney Pine teamed up with another favorite of mine, Omar, to release this track in August of 2017. I was first introduced to Courtney through his work with Soul II Soul. Listening to the melody, you can’t help but notice the reference to Freddie Hubbard’s “Red Clay”. Tribe Called Quest later sampled the Jack Wilkin’s version, which to their credit, is indeed a bit more stripped down and funky.

Thanks for listening. As always, please share these mixes with anyone who might dig them. Music is life.