We're always looking for old mixtapes. We don't care if they were made by a big-name dj or not. In fact, it'd be nice to hear what kids were doing in their bedroom studios back in the 90s. We're also interested in dj equipment modifications if you've come up with something tight.
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Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Isaac's Favorite Cuts - Part X
This is the 9th anniversary of the SHELDIACK blog. I don't pay much attention to it these days, but it's still a great outlet (and I'm happy that it's been helpful to a handful of people who don't want to pay like $40 each for some shitty plastic Vestax PDX-2000 replacement feet). For this year's post, I figured I'd call out two awesome battle-ish videos that I've discovered over the past couple of years. Coincidentally, they are both from 2004.
The first one is from DJ Vajra. This whole set is ridiculous. Everything is so fluid and crisp (the clicking of the fader is an added bonus). The scratching and the back and forth is spot on. Plus, I love the setting -- like in a hotel room or something. Warming up with wristbands on. As amazing as this set is, Vajra would have to wait until 2011 to win the World DMC Championships.
The second one is a bedroom vid from DJ PRO-ZEIKO. Again, the setting here is great. In fact, I've always said that the right plant placement makes me a better scratch DJ. This video is short, but man, when he gets into the two-handed needle dropping, and especially the crab-esque "cuts" caused by balancing the tonearm and tapping the headshell (starting at about 1:10) -- sick. I don't know a ton about PRO-ZEIKO. His more current videos show him geeking out in clubs playing dubstep tracks live sample-by-sample on a Roland SP-555.
Back in 1997, my friend Ben Wynn (aka DJ Rockwell, aka Deru) and I were working on our first mixtape together in Madison, WI. I went to his dorm room one day, and he had a couple of new 12"s, including one called the Overcast EP by Atmosphere. Even though I'd been going to hip hop shows in the Midwest since the early 90s (including up in Minneapolis), I hadn't yet heard of Atmosphere. This EP blew my mind. "Independent" hip hop was still relatively new to me in the mid-90s -- I was mostly still listening to golden age shit. But the stuff I would hear from Atmosphere and the Rhymesayers camp over the next few years really opened my ears up to newer hip hop.
In 1998, Ben and I (and I think my friend Allison) hopped in his tight Honda Civic and drove from Madison over to Milwaukee to catch a Rhymesayers at a bar called Y-Not II. As it turns out, this was the first Milwaukee appearance by the Rhymesayers (I think the Milwaukee legend Jay-Bee put that show on). The show was as amazing as the Overcast EP was, and I especially remember both the freestyling by Slug and the scratching by DJ Abilities. In fact, I remember telling Ben on the way home that I might as well quit scratching, because Abilities was so epic. Ben basically told me I was an idiot.
So anyways, DJ Abilities is the focus of the 9th installment of Isaac's Favorite Cuts.
I don't know if it's just me, but Abilities has a very unique sound to his cuts. If I was to hear him cutting and didn't know who the DJ was, I feel pretty confident I'd know it's him. He's not the most technical DJ (especially given how far battle DJ standards have evolved since he was in that "scene" in the late 90s/early 2000s), but he is accurate and his hands are lightning quick. Also, in the handful of conversations I've had with him, he was ALWAYS talking about scratching -- pretty much nothing else. So he's thoughtful about how he cuts, and what he cuts. But no matter what he was cutting for -- whether it was for a battle, a mixtape, an Eyedea (RIP) & Abilities or El-P record -- there were always a couple of signature scratches/styles that let you know it was him.
Let's check out some snippets.
The first is from Milwaukee hip-hop group the Rusty Pelicans and their song "All I Have". Abilities provided the cuts (and the song featured Slug from Atmosphere). I think this was released in 2000, and I remember the intro of the song caught my ear with crisp cuts in an interesting pattern:
To be honest, I still don't really understand if he's just transforming here, or if that's a chirp or something. That's one thing about Abilities, the few scratches that are staples in his arsenal are a bit mysterious to me, and I've always thought they were awesome.
The next sample is from the song "Star Destroyer" off of the "E&A" album. A whole mishmash of cuts in this one, but I really love how it hops over the beat and has a groove to it. Up and down, and quite a few slow pull-backs. I feel like this short snippet shows a lot of Abilities's cutting styles as of 2004:
This super short snippet is just a chirp, but Abilities regularly used this scratch (with it's varied speed) as a transition from cut to cut. Even though every DJ uses the chirp, this particular use of it always makes me think it's Abilities cutting.
The final sample here is from El-P's song "Dead Disnee" off of the Fantastic Damage album. You can hear use of the transitional chirp (explained briefly in the sample above), as well as another one of the cuts that he regularly uses (the ultra fast one in this clip). I honestly have no idea what this scratch is. Some scratch nerds out there would laugh at my old ass for not knowing it, but I don't feel like I ever hear anyone else do it.
Anyways, another long-ass post. At least it's only one per year.
Okay, so this isn't actually a review of any of my favorite scratching, but it's always had me a little perplexed, so I thought I'd throw it out there. In the Pete Rock & CL Smooth song "The Creator", Pete Rock steps to the fore with mic in hand. It's a respectable outing. I had completely forgotten about how strange the video is (P.R. busting some really, um, funky dance moves in his pirate costume -- complete with Seinfeld "puffy" shirt). But just as strange is how Pete Rock apparently hands off the scratching duties to C.L. Smooth at the end of the second chorus:
What?! Not that it's mindblowing by today's standards, but for someone who was never known as a deejay (at least I didn't know he was), it's a pretty killer little 1991 cut section (especially the ending accelerating stutter thing). And to top it off, Pete Rock is spliced in doing some extra retarded dancing (again, in the pirate costume). I can't find my cassette to check the liner notes -- does anyone know if this is for real?
It's hard to believe, but today is the 5th anniversary of this blog. To celebrate, let's look at another cutmaster: DJ Premier. This one should have been up here long ago, but we post something about once every six months or so (we're lazy), and it just hasn't happened. Not like anyone's reading anyways, so no harm. But seriously, what better person to honor on a milestone day?
I can't think of a hip hop producer with a better ear for loops and matching the appropriate drums with those loops. Really proper stuff. And it's not like Premier is using tons of layers of loops, trying to get all unnecessarily complicated; rather, he finds the tight shit and flips it in his own way (i.e. the right way).
But growing up, I took all of this for granted. It sounded so natural that I wasn't even paying attention to it. Instead, I was blown away by his scratching. Premier was getting his on almost every song. And, in the same vein that the loops and drums were seamless, the cuts and samples fit. And they were funky as hell. Never the most complicated, but always creative and well-executed (and again, funky). Plus, when it was time to cut on the chorus, he wasn't reaching for Generic Battle Record to flex, he was either snatching another Gang Starr Foundation record, or dude went digging again. Whatever fit the song, he was finding it.
Let's face it, we could put 100 examples up here. Instead, here are a couple of highlights:
Take a Rest: The little scribbles in here are awesome on their own. Then he ties them together back-to-back. In my circle of friends, we used to call this technique of doing back-to-back scribbles "the scratch" and there was a point in time that this was the ultimate scratch for me.
2 Deep: Relatively basic, rhythmic cuts of James Brown's voice is a recipe for gold in Premier's hands. He just rocks with it nice and easy through the fade out of the track. An additional bonus here is the fader/switch crackle. I love that shit.
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Simple, but incredible sample selection. Any time you can slip Kool Keith in there, I'll be cheering. And his ending with the series of "haha-haha-haha-haha-haha see ya later" is killer.
As I Read My S-A: I love how he includes a backspin in the intro to this segment and keeps it moving. Usually, a backspin sounds sort of like a weird cop-out to me, but he uses it really nicely -- it fits. He also does some slow pull-back stuff that my friend Rob Zimmerman and I used to imitate and laugh about. If you listen closely, there's a little record rumble in there too (obviously not intentional, but it still makes me nostalgic).
DWYCK: Every hip hop kid knows this jam. It's a party rocker, and it includes (among other things): Greg Nice's patented echoed delivery and a video showing GURU (RIP) rapping from some sort of rickshaw and Premo sitting down on the pier cutting away on a single turntable. His cuts are sweet on this track. Lots of slow pull-backs on here. In the summer between high school and college, I went to Rob's house and he had two copies of the DWYCK 12". He threw the instrumental on one side, and replicated all of Premier's cuts (verbatim) on the other table. I'll never forget it.
Okay, enough already. Hopefully I'll be more succinct in the 10 year anniversary post.
I think I first heard DJ Revolution's work in 1999 back in Madison, Wis. A friend of mine had put together a mixtape and it had a song called "The Freshest" by Red Foo & Dre Kroon on it. The cuts on that mix of that song were by Revolution (although I didn't know who he was at the time) and blew my mind (for example, I hadn't really heard his now-famous terror chirps). Here's a clip from that song:
Over the years, he's turned into one of my favorite mixtape djs. To be honest, I don't even really care so much about what songs he's playing -- I'm usually just waiting for the chorus or the mix when he lays on the cuts and phrase collages (like no other!) nice and thick. Here's a little example:
Another one of those memorable transformer cut choruses complete with nasty-sounding transformer switch/crusty crossfader moments. This time courtesy of Roc Raida.
Who could put together a list of all-time favorite hip hop djs and not include DJ Scratch? Not me, that's for sure. To be sure, EPMD was hot before he was part of the group, but after Scratch joined was when shit really got good.
I guess everyone has their own favorite EPMD record, but Business As Usual is definitely mine. I think this record came out in 1990, and Scratch wasn't playing! Check him out on "Rampage":
Later, he ends the record with "Funky Piano." I always found myself fast-forwarding to get to this song (which he also produced); his transforming just killed me:
I like how you can hear the sound of the phono/ line switch (or maybe it's a crusty old fader?) in this very last segment:
I have no idea why I was watching it, but I also caught Scratch in this cheesy hip hop movie from the mid 90s called "Fly By Night." The movie is awful (hilarious), but there is a scene where Scratch is doing his famous "Friday the 13th - I'ma Play Jason" routine. Classic.
I always loved DJ Richie Rich's cuts on 3rd Bass's album "Derelicts of Dialect." In particular, I think that the song "No Static At All" contains a segment that demonstrates some of the best album scratching in 1991. Check it out.
After 3rd Bass broke up, Rich and Pete Nice released an album called "Dust to Dust" under the name Prime Minister Pete Nice and Daddy Rich. The scratching certainly wasn't lacking in this outing either. One thing about the really great deejays on these early/mid 90s records that always stood out to me is the pacing and control of their transform scratching. You could always tell who seemed like they were moving the fader (or switch) at random like an amateur (ahem, Eric B) and who actually knew what they were doing. Here we are 15 years later, and I still couldn't match the funk that Rich displays in this segment.
Besides being a battle veteran, Mista Sinista isalso an incredible chorus cut king. One thingthe X-men always seemed to do (maybeunintentionally) was that they used the samecopies of records that they practiced on forever torecord with. After you've cut the same sectionof record a hundred times, it starts to get this verypronounced hiss over the top of the samples. I'vealways felt that this hiss makes the actual samplesbeing cut sound even better -- especially in acut chorus. This sample comes from a song called "Remember" off of Sinista's "Street Credit" mixtape. And now...Sinista.
I'd like to highlight some segments from those folks that I consider cutmasters. Today, I've got a snippet from the end of the Outro track from Babu's "Duck Season Volume 2." Rhettmatic sounds bleh at the beginning of this track and Babu himself is also a little uninspiring here. Fortunately, Melo-D wraps up the disc by straight ripping it. Let's give Melo a listen.
