Today’s Stack

Posted on January 6, 2012 by Delgado

This is the pile of 45′s I came across at a random sale the other day. Great pile of Southern Soul, although some are scratchy as hell. Looks like I have some enjoyable listening to catch up on! Continue reading →

Heptones Dubplate

Posted on January 3, 2012 by Delgado

The Heptones, one of my all time favorite reggae groups, recently lost one of their founding members when Barry Llewellyn died the other day.

Starting their recording careers like so many artists at Studio One in Kingston, they were one of Jamaica’s many popular vocal trios. They recorded at Studio One for legendary producer Coxsone Dodd from 1966 until the early 70′s, with lead singer Leroy Sibbles doing double duty as the regular session bassist. In that role, he played iconic reggae basslines like the “full up” riddim (you know, the one from “Pass the Kutchie/Dutchie“) and the “Three Piece Suit” riddim.

As the Jamaican sound slowed from rocksteady to what most call roots reggae today, the Heptones moved on to working with Joe Gibbs and Harry J and released the classic Night Food album pictured above. One track, “Book of Rules,” garnered world renown and great popular succes.

In fact, it was so popular as a crossover, it was even covered by Grateful Dead survivor Bob Weir.

Of course, my favorite version mentions my name…. Here is the dubplate direct from Leroy Sibbles himself!

Download it here….

Check some other dubplates here!

Mixtape Monday: DJ Crimson’s Tribute to Stax

Posted on December 26, 2011 by Delgado

I ‘ve never been shy about my love for the wonderful soul music the Stax/Volt label released through out its lifetime, and I’ve been planning a tribute mix for the label for years. Of course, someone beat me to it… but for a change I’m not mad at all!

Continue reading →

Mixtape Monday: Soul Boulders 2!

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Delgado

I’ve mentioned before that Oakland gives me an opportunity to surround myself with some really great DJs. This week we feature Matthew Africa, a soul encyclopedia who is also frequently the answer to the question “who is your favorite DJ’s favorite DJ?”

Continue reading →

Keeping 45s Alive!

Posted on November 18, 2011 by Delgado

Tomorrow is the monthly 45 Sessions party at Disco Volante in Oakland, featuring the Oakland Faders‘ own DJ Platurn, DJ Enki, and E Da Boss. For those of you who live in the area and haven’t been yet—you’re missing out. Continue reading →

Remember Rappin Duke?

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Delgado

Remember Rappin' Duke?

I heard Notorious BIG‘s “Juicy” on the radio at work lately and heard dozens of 13 year–olds singing along, reminiscing on “The Rappin’ Duke” and Heavy D being photographed in limousines in the pages of Word Up magazine. The irony was extreme, considering the children were born long after Biggie was dead, and long long after Heavy D had fallen from the pages of Word Up magazine. (Since I initially wrote this, Heavy D has passed away. Much to my surprise, Word Up is still published. Hate to think who is in the limousine now).

I also realized that many people my age probably also didn’t know anything about Rappin’ Duke. Hopefully they know enough about “The Duke” John Wayne that they’ll be amused at the novelty tune. What ever happened to novelty rap, anyway? Or is that what Krayshean and Lil’ B are?

John Wayne

If you like novelty rap, the tune is a classic. Above is my copy of the 45, there are quite a few available I imagine, since the song reached 73 on the charts in 1985. The beat is the same as “Blowjob Betty” from Too $hort, and the lyrics mostly refer to John Wayne, but also reference other pop culture touchstones from the ’80s, even comparing Ronald Reagan’s ascendence to the presidency to the Beverly Hillbillies. Of course. Enjoy the original video below, and look out for the track to make an appearance on my next 45s only mixtape.

For more about some of the samples featured by Biggie, check out the homie Dj Skyscraper‘s Originals mix.

RIP Heavy D

Posted on November 9, 2011 by Delgado

As many of you know, Heavy D passed away this afternoon. I was always a fan because his songs were danceable and fun, and he always kept it classy and clean which was a big plus for those of us who had to sneak rap albums into the house.

He was always loved by the entire music, and strangely enough I was just doing a whole separate blog post that referenced him as well. Recent tributes have pointed out that he recorded with Biggie, Supercat, Michael Jackson, and the entire Stop the Violence Movement—how many could say that?

Below are a few of my favorites by the man. This Saturday, DJ Odiaka and I will be holding down the Lucky Lounge, and we are already working on our Heavy D tribute set. Come out and enjoy.

My favorite at the time, mostly because it was based on the original reggae tune by Third World. I especially liked that the vocals featured Aaron Hall.

Here’s the original song:

Another favorite of mine. I definitely taped this off of Yo! MTV Raps.

A later 90′s tune of the Heavster.

He was born in Jamaica, and always paid tribute to the Jamaican roots of Hip Hop, as well. Check him out with Supercat and Frankie Paul.

Here’s a 45 I played last weekend, and will now play again this weekend.

Check back to this post for some tribute mixes over the next few days, I’ll see what comes out.

Mixtape Monday: DJ Skyscraper Originals IV—Tupac

Posted on October 24, 2011 by Delgado

Like a lot of you, I love Hip Hop music. Not just the songs, but the songs that make the songs. This week, DJ Skyscraper joins us with a great mix that highlights one of my favorite rappers and the songs that were sampled to make some of his greatest hits. A long time hip hop DJ from a rather unusual location, Skyscraper is no stranger to digging for samples—this is the fourth mix in his Originals series. Listen to the mix below while you read a very insightful interview with the man himself. Be sure to check out his mixcrate page for more music! Continue reading →

Mistah F.A.B. I Miss Hip Hop

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Delgado

I’ve posted a few tunes by my favorite rapper younger than me, here’s the latest along with a bonus extra dope classic East Bay freestyle. Special request to all us old heads who think that hip hop is dead, here’s an Oakland boy keeping it alive.

Mixtape Monday: DJ Enki Breaks it Down

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Delgado

Like many obsessive music listeners, I hear music all the time. And not just when it’s playing—it’s in my head all the time. Oftentimes it’s a favorite song, but frequently it’s just vaguely recognizable beats with semi-familiar melodies floating in and out. This is the soundtrack to my daily comings and goings, always just out of the reach of my consciousness.

I had always wondered at those “songs” floating through my mind, but I never imagined that such a funky, free floating montage of music could actually be recorded and put to disc. And then I heard Break it Down, by DJ Enki of the Oakland Faders.
I’ve heard mixes with cool concepts executed perfectly. I’ve heard mixes that were incredibly technically proficient. I’ve heard mixes that contained records I’d never even thought to dig for. This mix has all three components, and a subtlety that ties it all together. When I first heard it, I had to know more about it. Lucky for you and I, DJ Enki had time to answer some in–depth questions very eloquently and thoughtfully.
You can stream the mix below while you read the interview. Take a moment to also check out Enki’s blog and his mixcrate page, where are there are more mixes and you can leave him a comment.

Delgado: What was the process of making this? How long did it take??

Enki: It definitely took me a while—it was a serious labor of love. I like to have my mixes more or less planned out before I start recording them, and the planning stage took much longer than usual…several months, I think. And then the recording/editing process took another few months. I think I spent a good 6 months on it, all told, maybe even more.

For the planning part, I started off with some self-imposed rules. First of all, strictly OG vinyl—no reissues, no comps, none of that. That’s that digger mentality and wanting to flex your crates. Second of all, nothing that was on UltimateBreaks & Beats or had otherwise been repeatedly reissued. Third of all, steer clear of well-known samples. Of course, I kind of broke that last rule with the very first break on the mix because Kanye has sampled those drums to death. And there are a few things on there that I knew had been sampled: There’s a loop on there that my man DJ Zeph put me up on because he had used it on the Zeph & Azeem Rise Up album, so I put it in the mix as sort of a shoutout to Zeph, I have a drum loop on there that Muggs has used, and I do scratch the horn riff that Stezo used for “Getting Paid.” But in the big picture, I didn’t want this to be a known-samples mix, I wanted it to be lesser-exposed material.

I also didn’t want this to be a typical breaks mix where you cut up two copies of a break, then cut up two copies of another break, then another, and so on so it’s just one break at a time and you kind of jump from one to the next. I wanted this to be more fluid, more intricate, and more reflective of the kind of loop-stacking mentality that my own beatmaking is based on. And I felt like this would make for a better listening experience, too: Instead of abrupt transitions, it would constantly have elements coming and going so the music and the grooves are shifting and changing but in a way that kept listeners engaged instead of jerking them around.

Once I had the rules and the concept in place, I just started going through breaks, cataloging them, and then grouping them based on similar BPMs. Then I could start putting them together. In some cases, I already knew that this break and that break would go together well, but there was also plenty of experimentation, taking a couple breaks that were close together tempo-wise and seeing if they worked well together. I spent a lot of time doing that, finding those good combinations where the rhythms complemented each other. And I would just build from there—get a good combination, then see how I could move from that combination to the next combination by gradually dropping out elements and bringing in new ones. I wanted things to progress and kind of morph in a smooth, natural way, and I wanted the music to be constantly evolving instead of just jumping from one loop/stack of loops to the next without having something tying them together. And it was definitely a challenge figuring out how to arrange everything and deciding which elements would come in and go out when so that I could get from combination to combination in a way that made sense and wasn’t too abrupt.

As far as construction goes, the one big rule I had was that I wanted to stay away from chopping as much as I possibly could. I wanted to strictly loop things (or, in the case of the longer breaks, just let them play from beginning to end) without rearranging them. There are two or three places where I did some very subtle chopping in order to create a loop that didn’t really exist on the record, but other than that, the whole thing is straight-up loops. Obviously, as I was stacking the loops up, I might nudge the snare in loop A over a bit so that it locked up with the snare in loop B, but I didn’t really get into reprogramming things because I felt like that would be a whole different kind of recording, more of a production showcase or a beat tape than a mix.

Delgado: You mention in the notes that all the tunes & breaks are taken from the original pressings of the vinyl. How difficult was it to find original pressings of all these tunes? Are there a few tunes that you searched for for years?

Enki: Well, I didn’t really go seek out specific breaks for the mix, like “Oh, I should get such-and-such break on there, lemme go try to find that record.” It was pretty much just using what I already had (though the whole time I was making it, I was still digging, so I would incorporate stuff I was finding with things already in my collection). I’ve been digging for a long time, so I’ve built up a pretty good arsenal of breaks and samples over the years, and some of the stuff on there was definitely tough to find, though there’s a fair amount of straight-up dollar bin stuff on there as well. And a bunch of the breaks I have I didn’t know about until I actually bought the record—you know, something looks interesting while you’re digging, so you take a chance on it, and it turns out to have a nice break on it.

Delgado: I know I inherited my addiction to vinyl from my father (luckily I got his jazz collection, too). When did you get bit by the vinyl bug?

Enki: Not until I started DJing, really, which was around 1994. Neither of my parents had a record collection to speak of. I had bought some records when I was a kid, but I very quickly moved on to buying tapes, mostly so I could play them in my Walkman and have music with me at all times. But DJing requires digging (or at least it did back then), and I very quickly threw myself into that. A great DJ needs a great arsenal, right? And I just went wild with the whole concept of finding something I’d never heard before, constantly looking for that next thing that was gonna blow my mind. It’s a real thrill.

Delgado: Since you’re clearly an accomplished digger, do you have a few favorite spots to find the good stuff?

Enki: Groove Merchant in SF is legendary around the world for having the good stuff, but a boutique shop like that is sort of its own thing and not really “digging.” Cool Chris does all the legwork for you; all you have to do is walk in the store, and he’ll have ridiculous heat sitting there waiting for you—you don’t have to flip through rack after rack to find something good. Groove Merchant provides a tremendous service, and I’m definitely in there on the regular. And right down the street from Groove Merchant is Rooky Ricardo’s, and that place has been very good to me over the years as far as digging goes. And of course, whenever I’m traveling, I keep an eye out for flea markets, thrift stores, yard sales, whatever. You never know where your next come-up is going to happen.

Delgado: I was listening to the mix in my office after school, and four junior high girls started dancing and saying that it “slap.” What is it about these breaks that is so timeless?

Enki: First of all, I think it is incredibly cool that junior-high girls are dancing to this mix and calling it the slap. I never would’ve thought that this mix would appeal to junior-high girls at all, but I guess it’s like you say: These breaks are timeless. And I’m really not sure what it is about them that makes them timeless. Maybe it’s the way they’re played, maybe it’s the way they’re recorded, maybe it’s the fact that I looped them up (a lot of times music takes on a different feel if it’s looped). It’s really hard to say what, exactly, makes them so timeless, but they all move me in some way. Sometimes I’ll find a record with some open drums or something, but they just don’t move me. It’s like, “OK, here’s a break, but…meh.” If it has good sounds, good playing, good rhythm, it’s going to move me. And that’s the biggest key right there. I wish I could say definitively what it is that makes them timeless so that I could help make more of them!

Delgado: Hip hop has moved away from using breaks as samples because of their price and the difficulty of getting samples cleared. Beyond the basic beat making, do you think this move away from samples has changed hip hop?

Large Professor: Bandito Numero Uno

Enki: It’s definitely changed hip-hop. Today’s aesthetic is much more pristine-clean, shiny, and drum-machiney, which sounds cold and a bit sterile to me for the most part. There are times when people really freak a sample and mix it with drum machine sounds and do it really well (the way Bangladesh flipped the Harry Belafonte sample for Li’lWayne’s “6 Foot 7 Foot” is really fresh), and in the hands of a genius like Mannie Fresh, keyboard sounds and stock drum machine sounds can be used to make incredible things. There’s definitely good stuff out there in this clean, polished aesthetic, but generally speaking, I prefer samples, grit, dirt, that rugged and raw sound, all of that.

And beyond just the sound difference of sampled vinyl vs. keyboards, I feel like the move away from samples reflects a change the outlook of hip-hop. I remember a Large Professor quote where he referred to the “bandito mentality” that was prevalent back in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s. It was that whole B-boy element–it’s renegade, underground, and all about taking these bits and piece of discarded music and making something great out of them. Hip-hop isn’t quite so rebellious these days because it’s a much, much bigger money maker now than it was back then, and like you say, sample clearance has become a big financial issue. When hip-hop wasn’t such a money-maker and people didn’t really look at sample clearance as a revenue stream, producers could throw as many samples as they wanted into a song and not really worry about it. But the parameters are different these days, and after those first few big sample-clearance lawsuits, people started stripping down their sound (and their song arrangements, it’s worth mentioning), using fewer samples per song, doing sample replays, and even moving away from sampling altogether so they didn’t have to deal with the cost and the hassle of clearance. Correlation is not causation, of course, but it does seem like heavy-duty sampling fell out of favor a bit as hip-hop expanded into the mainstream. But that’s just the mainstream. There’s still a vibrant underground that couldn’t care less about that stuff and just does its own thing—that’s where you can still find that bandito mentality Large Professor was talking about, still being expressed in tons of different ways.

Delgado: DJing has also moved from digging for vinyl to downloading MP3s. Has this had any positive effect or has it simply flooded the market with DJs who haven’t earned their stripes?

Enki: It’s had some positive effect—putting a hard-to-find track in the hands of a talented, skilled DJ who might not have otherwise gotten it is a great thing. And it is cool to be able to bring thousands of songs with you to a gig so you’re prepared for anything. But even that has a flip side: I’ve talked with a bunch of DJs who say that having 10,000 songs can be overwhelming so they find themselves kind of retreating to the same few songs. Like, you’ve got so many options that it just overloads your brain and you go with those few safe things you already know.

But by far the biggest negative is just like you said: The market is flooded with DJs who haven’t earned their stripes. There’s little to no dues-paying anymore. You don’t have to spend the time learning the craft and amassing you collection. You can just get Serato, download a bunch of popular MP3s, and you’re set. It’s even getting to the point where using turntables at all is considered antiquated. It’s unfortunate.

Delgado: You have a great opportunity to play some of these classics at your monthly residency at the 45 Sessions—what is your favorite event or type of event to play?

Enki: My favorite type of event is one in which I have some real freedom to play what I want to play, which is to say the freedom to play “old music,” whether that’s funk, older hip-hop, breaks, whatever. I absolutely love that, and I get to do that at the 45 Sessions, which is why it’s easily my favorite gig these days.

I’m not as clubby as I used to be because I find the typical club a bit constricting—people want to hear what they already know, and if you deviate from that, then they get upset. Plus, I’m about to turn 36, and the typical club–goer is not my age, but is a good 10 years younger than me, so we have very different frames of reference as far as music goes. The club is largely a young man’s game, and I’m not a young man anymore. But I do still play some club gigs, and I find ways to fit in regardless. At these electronic music events, for example, I can get over by playing Miami bass, older Baltimore club, and classic electro stuff, cutting it up, doing live blends, scratching, all of that. So I set myself apart, I still get to do what I like to do, but I’m giving the crowds the tempos, the energy, and the low-end they want to hear, so it works out well.

Delgado: Lastly, the extra nerdy question: What kind of equipment do you have in your studio, and what did you use to record this mix?

Enki: I always love the nerdy questions. As you’ve probably noticed, I’m much more old-school than futuristic in my sensibility, and my studio is the same way. I use an old version of ProTools—6.4 LE (I think they’re up to Pro Tools 9 now, but I’m riding 6.4 until the wheels fall off!)—and I have the greatest sampler of all time, the SP1200. And I have my record collection. That’s it. Everything I make beatwise is made out of records—I don’t own any keyboards or anything like that. For this mix, I did the whole thing in Pro Tools—all recording and arranging.