As Sixoseven and DJ Dad, I've been mixing music and making compositions on and off for a decade. It basically started because I need to keep knucklehead music out of my kid's ears. So I got some music software and let them in on the fun - making dance, ambient and hiphop tracks. I've recently started up again and I'm burning my fifth album. This one is called Rendition. So I wanted to share a few tracks with y'all. Why? Because I'm keepin' it right.
Check out Bhangra Chubb. I dare you not to bop your head.
Here's another groove, called Groove 74 which is straight for the Smooth Jazz station.
I was looking for a clip on YouTube for that little piece of Chris Rock's act where he talks about the baby on the corner selling crack. I was going to try to inject a little humor into Sean Bell thing. I never did find it, but what I did find was his thing about hiphop being hard to intellectually justify. Then he went on to do something from a Little John song about 'skreet-skreet'. I had no idea what he was talking about. It has been a long time since I listened to hiphop on the radio on the regular. I seem to recall Da Brat, Bone Thugs and Craig Mack as the very last radio hiphop I ever listened to on purpose. Was that 95? Of course everybody loved Lauren Hill and Wyclef and them. And for a while I was always always playing Raggasonic and Chant Down Babylon. Then I started making my own stuff in '97 or so and really that was the end of it.
Still I was impressed by Chris Rock saying he really loved hiphop, and I consciously tried to recall the heartbreak of the whole thing. It has been so long that I only vaguely recall the pain. Besides, starting around the same time, actually the first season of MTV's Real World to be precise, I jumped into alt rock with both feet. It was the Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden and Green Day that got me going, and then Blink 182, Offspring, Papa Roach, Linkin Park, Rage Against the Machine, Soul Coughing and Modest Mouse that kept me coming back. Funny, I remember hanging out in Austin and trying to listen to the entire Crash Test Dummies record and I kept saying, no way. It turned out that they were one hit wonders after all.
Now I think about it, I think there was a brief period when I did the Silicon Valley thing that I made some drunk night exceptions for DMX and Ice Cube in his Don Mega period. Good thing I didn't get into any fights in strip clubs.
These days I mostly pay no mind to the man behind the hiphop mask although I've been told that not knowing Mos Def, Common and Kanye West means I'm missing what it means. Eh. What's good will last and I'll catch it it five years on the downstroke. No biggie. I don't miss the dancing or the club at all, and I basically have all the beats I love already. I mostly look at hiphop as badass music and it works nicely on occasion for precisely that mood. But I never really got into the lyricism that deeply. I mean for example, I can think of no finer example of hiphop than Steve Coleman and Metrics. It would have to rank as probably the best hiphop album ever, right up there with Nation of Millions, Miseducation, Stakes Is High & A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing.
The kids listen mostly to the crossover R&B/Pop crap - basically from Black Eyed Peas to whatever derivatives issue forth from that derivation. They have suburban middle school tastes in music (High School Musical, Reliant K), appropriately, although they all recognize a full broad range, and Boy does have a special fondness for New Orleans Jazz and Journey, (and Korn on the DL.) Scholar knows every pop song in the universe. It's freaky. Sprite has awful taste and an awful voice too. So I'm not bumping up against any hiphop other than that kid Chris Brown and whatever breaks into the pop charts. Yech.
Still, I can't tell you how satisfying it is to crank up the beat mixer and put together some tracks. Whenever I get the urge, I can take the verbal poison out of a rockin' beat, and I probably will in the near future as I get going again on the new album. In the meantime, enjoy these track and don't try to sell them for money.
Recent Comments