The Program (K-Def & Dacapo) - ‘Free Speech’ & ‘Life Goes On (Instrumental)’
taken from The Article EP (Ghetto Man Beats, 2008)

Mic Geronimo - ‘For Tha Family’
taken from Vendetta (Blunt, 1997)

The Program @ MySpace

So here we go with the second installment of my interview with the mighty K-Def. This time around we talk in more depth about how his creative process has changed over the years with a particular focus on computer technology, an overview of how The Article EP (what do you mean you haven’t downloaded it yet?! Get on it!) came about as well as reminiscing over some of his extensive back catalogue. I’ve also thrown in one of his lesser known cuts in the shape of Mic Geronimo’s ‘For Tha Family’ for your listening pleasure, a beautiful slice of K-Def orchestral phatness.

Just to give you an overview of things to come from the K-Def camp, these are the releases pencilled in for 2008:

Beats From Da ’90s (Instrumental)
Collard Greens (Instrumentals with some guest MCs)
Analog Past (Instrumental)
Digital Future (Instrumental)

Rest assured that as soon as I know more about them, so too will you. Enjoy the rest of the interview and check in on Friday for a beat deconstruction that focuses on one of my favourite K-Def produced joints of all time: see you then.

From Da Bricks: You’ve spoken a lot there about new technology. How has using Logic and other digital programs changed the creative process for you? Did it take a complete shift in mindset?

K-Def: I can tell you this much. If I hadn’t jumped on the computer in ’98 I wouldn’t be doing tracks no more, I would have just been known as K-Def the producer from the ‘90s that did these hits and that’s it. I wouldn’t have did Ghostface, I wouldn’t have did the KRS One or the UGK or the Diddy, none of that stuff would have ever come out. I would’ve given it up because the computer and Logic taught me how to play. I don’t know how to play a whole full song but I know how to program play. I can actually hear what I’m listening to and replay it back which I couldn’t do when I was on the MP, it just wouldn’t allow me to do that. Now everything is keys and I get to hear music better now and I get to see my music better now and do complex things that I could never do on my machines. I love it, I love it to death. I feel like I’m a Logic expert now, I’ve been on it for twelve or thirteen years now since it was version 2.5 and Cubase since it was version 3.0 and I just love the computers man. I love the technology, I love the virtual instruments. They’re making great, great sounds now, they’re getting better and better and the more you learn how to play the instruments the better they sound when you record them so it’s really great.

That gives me all the happiness in the world to be able to turn on my computer and know that I can produce a track that day. I can have EQs, I can have compression on my tracks, edits, I can have it mastered and mixed. Those are things I couldn’t do when I was on the MP unless I went upstate to Marley’s studio and get on the SSL board and waste a whole bunch of electricity, and all that just to make a beat that probably wouldn’t have ended up on nobody’s album. There was a whole bunch of extra time that was being taken that I don’t have to take no more and I get better results than I did then. I’ll never go back. I use the MP for drums every now and again or when I’m in the mood for an MP beat I’ll do it but anything that I produce is going to be pretty much on the computer. I’m sold on that. That keeps me going, it keeps me happy and helps me not to have to rely on having a band or getting hired musicians. I got everything I need in my own little studio in my house and I can do anything that my brain tells me to do. I couldn’t pull that off before, I’ll be honest with you. It was just too expensive and too time-consuming.

FDB: Are you happy with the changes they made for Logic 8?

KD: Logic 8 is actually great. They did a lot of overhauls to it. Put it like this: the way it looks for a new user it’ll be great because he doesn’t know, but for me, coming from the earlier versions, Logic 7 Pro is actually a lot more stable than 8, but 8 has the greatest plug-ins of all time. I did the American Gangster album through Logic 8 as far as the final mixing and mastering and it definitely makes a difference in sound. The sound is a whole lot better than Logic 7. The compressor plug-ins, the EQs… they are fantastic, I love ‘em to death.

I use Logic for the more complex stuff, but then I use Cubase if I want to sound like my old stuff from my MP days. Cubase is more my analogue funk machine, whereas Logic is my digital composing machine. I use them both as tools, I don’t pick one over the other and I know them both on expert level. The best thing about Logic is that when I get my mixes done they really sound good compared to any other program, even Cubase doesn’t sound as good as Logic when I get to mixdown. Logic is my inspiration, but Cubase is like my tool when I want my drums to sound funky and MPC style, with quanitzing and the right fills and those really intricate loops where if I was on a machine it would take a lot of edits to get it really tight. On Cubase it’s just a case of warping or time stretching where it just snaps everything right to your beat where you don’t even hear it. It’s the best. Cubase is my main program for making the hot beats. UGK was done in Logic, KRS One was done in Cubase as was Diddy’s ‘We Gon’ Make It’, Ghostface’s ‘Over’ was done in Cubase, Jayo Felony’s record was done in Logic. It just varies: anything that came out was one of those two programs. Believe you me, I’ll never turn back man. They make me happy and wanna keep on making beats everyday. I don’t knock anybody who uses what they use but I just think that with technology that those two programs are the best of the best. If it wasn’t for them I would have stopped making beats a long time ago.

FDB: Let’s talk a little more about The Program project with Dacapo. How did you guys hook up?

KD: He came through from a friend and he was telling me his story; he’d be working with a bunch of guys and they’d go into the studio and it would seem like it would never get to him when it was time to record and he wouldn’t get a chance to get his songs done. The first time I heard him he reminded me of Large Professor, this guy reminds me a little bit of C.L. Smooth… he started reminding me of too many guys who I used to like and I was just like, I got a lot of soul records, I got a lot of breaks and a lot of stuff that would fit his style so we decided to work on something. We did a song and he sounded pretty good man and I thought we could do something together. For some reason, he just had an ear for the tracks he was hearing and was like “I want to do that… I want to do that,” and my style of music just fit his style of rhyming.

We wound up doing an EP that we’re gonna have for free download and we have an album also that we just finished completing. It’s looking really good and we’ve actually started on another album as we speak, we’ll probably be recording again this week. We just gonna keep movin’ because I just feel like he’s a dedicated guy and he really loves his craft. You can tell he’s been into hip hop and the real essence of hip hop, the songs that made a real difference in his life and has influenced him as a person. All I try to do is just complement him by giving him tracks that make him sound the way he would want to sound and not somebody else dictating to him what he should sound like. He’s got the freedom and the opportunity to kind of pick what he wants to pick and that gives him the chance to do it the way he wants to do it. I’m really pleased with that, and I think in time he’s gonna get better. He’s a young guy, this is new for him and hopefully with my guidance and coaching and him having the understanding to make a great record we’ll have a couple of hits under the belt soon.

FDB: I think it’s great stuff. With the downloads you are obviously addressing an online market. Is that something that excites you or worries you?

KD: It excites me more because the physical products are very tough to sell now. I look at some of the biggest artists like Kanye and 50 Cent, and if these guys are not selling no more like that… I’m not even on that level they’re on. I feel like there has to be a better way where the music can get to the people without them having to physically go to a store and buy it. Those days of going to the store and going to buy vinyl and all that… the DJs are always gonna do it, but most people are lazy, everybody got credit cards now so pretty much everybody wants to sit at home and browse around on their computer and see what the can find and have it mailed to their house. Everything’s got so simplified now.

I look at it that it should be a plus as far as I’m concerned, because as far as selling CDs and vinyl through major labels, there’s a lot of red tape involved in that and you have to wait a really long time to see any profit or money back from that, when everybody else is trying to get paid before you do. I think that there are just too many people involved in projects that have to get paid before you get paid and then if the project doesn’t really fly off then you don’t get paid. That’s the part that scares me more, dealing with those companies that don’t give you that 110% push where you can see a little profit and you can look forward to having a second or third album with the company. It’s not like that anymore. At the moment you’re lucky if you come out with an album and if you do, they’re only looking at pushing one song off the album. For me personally, if I got the digital downloads and people are buying it I don’t have to pay all these people out. If it only generates 5000 sales, that’s 5000 sales that came to K-Def, not 5000 sales that came through the company and have to go to this person and that person… by the time it gets down to you, you’re looking at pennies. I think it’s a better way to go and I think it’s only gonna get better because there are more and more big companies getting involved in it and I really want to take advantage of this moment before it gets too big and they figure out a way to rob the artists and the producers online. I don’t want to be on the outside looking in. It’s hard to get into record labels now with deals and everything because they’re not signing any groups or giving any deals out and that’s destroying the future of hip hop and the music. Online is definitely the way to go.

FDB: What about your label Ghetto Man Beats, us that just a vehicle for you to release stuff or do you have other artists signed as well?

KD: Definitely. It’s there to let people know that I have a company, I put stuff out and I love to do joints with other companies that are doing stuff. I take it seriously and I have skills that are just more than just making beats when it comes to the music. Me having a company solidifies that. There’s graphic design in this company, there’s photography, music, DJing, editing, mixing, mastering… pretty much everything involved in the music the company Ghetto Man Beats can get down and do. That’s one of the main focuses right now, having the company stand on its own and be able to do things other than just K-Def making beats for the company there are other things that can transpire from it.

FDB: Jersey is obviously your home and you still live there. How do you think it has managed to establish such a strong sense of its own identity regarding hip hop when it is in such close proximity to New York?

KD: There’s an old saying that states that although it started in the Bronx, hip hop made money in Jersey. Jersey was around the money makers and New York was more the culture end of it, you know what I’m saying? The cultural aspect of it was New York bound and Jersey took that culture and figured out how to make money and a profit from it. That’s what I’ve been around. I was around the Sugarhill Gangs and I saw all that era and for me, I’m not from New York but I got footprints all over New York. From day one when I was a kid when The Rooftop and the Latin Quarter and Union Square and all those spots was open I was a young kid and that’s where I learned a lot as far as the culture. When I came back to Jersey I was looking at the bands and rappers coming in and they were actually doing records over that were really breaks at the time.

Now that hip hop has turned so big the way it is today, people forget that even though I’m from New Jersey, don’t think I’m country, don’t think I’m corny, don’t think I’m lame, don’t think I don’t know what time it is because me and my peoples were only ten minutes away from Manhattan. Going to Manhattan was just like going to another town: it was nothing. I learned a lot, you picked up your dos and your don’ts, street codes… New Yorkers feel like we were trying to be like them or better than them but I just want to clarify that I’m from Jersey, but everybody from New York lived in New Jersey so don’t talk about it, be about it. If you gonna represent New York then go live in New York, I represent Jersey and I still live here. I think I know as much as any other New York guy with producing and DJing and everything else, I just happen to live in Jersey. I wasn’t dumb enough to stay in Jersey all my life, I did get out. That’s the difference: I got out when I was a kid. I got put in situations in New York where I was scared for my life, and from that point on it made me realise how seriously I had to take hip hop and the culture. I don’t think a lot of these new cats understand that. I was at the Raising Hell tour at Madison Square Garden where I saw people get cut and stabbed and beat up, and that was at a rap concert! I was there when KRS One threw PM Dawn off the stage at Sound Factory. I’ve seen a lot of things that show that the only way you get respect is not where you from but actually how nice you are doing what you do and where you at to do it. I felt like if I was as nice as I could be I could show New York that I could do it as well because I was in New York every other day, be it record shopping, being down in the Village, the Bronx, Queens, wherever it was, I was always a part of seeing how they looked at the culture. I vibed from that. There’s not a lot of people in Jersey who could be how I am. As far as I’m concerned you might as well say I’m from New York because I spent my share of time over there.

FDB: When you look back over the last 15 years or so, what do you identify as the best records that you’ve made?

KD: The best records to me? I would have to say the Real Live album. The early stuff, I didn’t look at myself as a producer because I was young, it was going so fast and I was doing so many projects, and it was only when I did the Real Live that I got serious about being an artist and taking on a lot of the business responsibilities that I didn’t have to take when I was just making beats for everybody else. I would say that the Real Live project was a real good project. I don’t have too much to say about the early ‘90s stuff because I really wasn’t paying attention like I am now. My mind wasn’t even set as like being a producer because I was under Marley Marl’s wing at the time and I was really doing everything for the company and not really for me. The Lords Of The Underground and Da Youngstas and the Tragedy, the Sah-B, the World Renown, I was just looking at it like whatever, to be honest with you. It was only when Real Live came into the picture and you know, Jayo Felony, the Ghostface and all the newer stuff I was doing gave me more seriousness in making it happen. I felt good about everything I did after I left Marley Marl. I felt good about those projects because I was on my own two feet doing it by myself and it felt better having been underneath somebody else for so long and not getting the full recognition that I should have got. The Real Live made me feel good because I’d never done a full album except that one.

The Program (K-Def & Dacapo) - ‘Free Speech’ & ‘Life Goes On (Instrumental)’
taken from The Article EP (Ghetto Man Beats, 2008)

P-Diddy - ‘Come To Me (K-Def Remix)’ (Unreleased)

The Program @ MySpace

So here it is: part one of an extensive interview I did with K-Def recently. A great interviewee, he sheds light on a whole range of subjects including projects from the past, present and future as well as getting into some of the intricacies of his production processes in what has to have been my most enjoyable interview to date. Audio-wise, as well as the link to the free EP with Dacapo, I’ve also included an unreleased remix that K-Def produced for Diddy. Get that mouse button clicking!

This first part includes discussion of the World Renown LP, the unreleased albums from both Sah-B and De’1 as well as a K-Def’s feelings about the issues surrounding sampling in the contemporary game. In the second half of the interview dropping on Wednesday we cover his current production set-up, approach to digital downloads and even reminisce over his personal favourites from his truly slammin’ back catalogue. To finish off the week, I’ll also be deconstructing one of my favourite beats from the Real Live LP. Celebrate: it’s K-Def week people!

From Da Bricks: Let’s start with some of the projects that you’ve worked on that never saw a full release. Why did Warner decide to shelve the World Renown LP?

K-Def: Wow… at the time I think Warner Bros was dealing with a merge and their rap department basically wasn’t doing that great. It was a subsidiary called Reprise, the urban department they had at Warner. It really wasn’t lifting off the ground, I think they had like The Bush Babees, a couple of other groups… When we had all the albums done, or almost done, I don’t think Sah-B’s album got done but I believe De’1’s album was pretty much done ‘cos I did a couple of other records with him that nobody ever heard that didn’t get released. What happened was that the Elektra/WEA system was shutting down and they were merging with Atlantic and a lot of other companies and at that time a lot of the independent subsidiary companies off the majors were all folding. Sah-B only had a single, but we were working on the album at the time, but eventually they just said that Warner was folding. Nobody really went into depth with it, but I don’t believe it was because of the projects because as far as I’m concerned I really believe the World Renown album was a great album, it had a lot of great stuff and it was for that time. But I don’t know, I couldn’t really even tell you the full 100% reason why it didn’t come out, but what I do know is that the record label itself just went under.

FDB: The Sah-B album must have been pretty close because it states on the back of the ‘Summa Day’/ ‘Some Ol’ Sah-B Shit’ 12’’ that the album was imminent.

KD: Right. I think Atlantic had something to do with it as well, from all the stuff that was going on. I don’t think they wanted Warner to be a rap label, they wanted to keep it more to the movies and the rock/pop stuff. I’m pretty much sure that Marley Marl has everything in the vault still so the albums do exist so maybe at the right time they’ll be released one day. I released the World Renown on my MySpace and I didn’t have the full master copies of it, just an old tape of it. I cleaned it up as much as possible and just reissued it out because I was trying to get it from Marley at the time but we didn’t come to a conclusion on having it released. The year somebody comes around with the right paperwork and the right business maybe the albums can be released. I can definitely let you know that the World Renown was definitely completed, I’m not quite sure if Sah-B’s album was ever completed and I’m pretty much sure that De’1’s album was completed. As far as why they didn’t come out, I don’t know… Marley has it so I think it will just be a matter of when he lets loose.

FDB: With the internet it would seem like the right time to do it, wouldn’t it?

KD: I would think so. That’s what’s selling right now, CDs and albums aren’t selling that much but downloads are of course really big, so I would think that would be the best way to go about it. There’s so much bootlegging and stuff going on, and I think that’s the reason why a lot of stuff hasn’t been released yet, because you release something now and a few months later another country has got the record and is selling it too, so once they can change those laws and fix that, I guess a lot of vintage stuff that happened in the early ’90s will get released.

FDB: How has the World Renown album done on downloads?

KD: For it to be 13/14 years for it to be released… it’s not doing that great. If people know about it, but it just took so long that it was just like, ‘I want to get the album but it’s not my top priority now because it is what it is,’ you know? I had intended to put it out a few years ago, I was going to put it out with Marley, we had somebody that was going to put it out but that didn’t work out. After that, everything just tapered off and died off. I just got frustrated and was like, ‘You know what, I got a copy of it I might as well go ahead and put it out, I know they’ll be a few cats who’ll buy it.’ It’s not the best quality as if it came out the studio fully mastered but it is the full-length songs where nobody else really has it and anybody who does have a copy it sounds terrible. I figured it’s great for history for it just to be out. It sells, but it doesn’t sell a whole lot.

FDB: Am I right in thinking that Seven Shawn and John Doe are Marley’s cousins?

KD: John Doe is Marley’s cousin and me and Seven Shawn are cousins, on distant paths, but we’re related. Basically that was a crazy time right there, John Doe just got out of jail and he said he wanted to do ten songs and hook up with Marley and come out with something. We did ten songs, Marley heard the beats, but wasn’t really feelin’ John Doe at the time and I started messin’ with the Lords Of The Underground right from there. Long story short after that it was all over with. John wound up hooking up with Seven Shawn maybe a year or two later down the line and we started working on their album. Those were the memorable golden days, the mid-‘90s was a great, great time, it was really great.

FDB: So tell me about some of the projects you’ve got coming up.

KD: K-Def is gonna have a lot of tracks coming out this year and it’s not gonna be through no majors, it’s gonna be all independent as far as I’m concerned and it’s gonna be all great, hot material, none of this throw together stuff. A lot of stuff I have from the ‘90s that was never heard before, those beats are gonna get released on certain albums. There’s gonna be a lot of great things going on. I got an album Beats From The ‘90s that will be dropping which is like all the instrumentals for stuff I did in the early ‘90s, stuff I did for Positive K, Artifacts, a lot of good instrumentals that will be appealing to the DJs to actually do blend mixes and have some of that old ‘90s culture that people are still trying to make today. I’m just doing a little bit of everything bro, I’m doing a whole lot of everything. I got so many beats that I’ve been doing. I got sample stuff, stuff that’s just strictly played with no samples at all.

FDB: You’ve mentioned there that you’re taking a range of approaches to composition now and sometimes playing over. What’s your approach to sampling now?

KD: The sampling that is going on now, I look at it like I really don’t try to change my style and I try to keep that same old sound, but use technology and engineering to make it sound clear like today’s music. A lot of people are just using MPCs and machines and that’s how I started at one time, but at some point you got to get older, more mature, you gotta use technology to your advantage and learn new technology. There’s a million and one records out there that still haven’t been used that you have to go out and search for, but a lot of these guys, nobody’s really doing it, but I’m doing it for sure. As far as what I’m trying to bring back, I’m trying to bring back that ‘90s sound but I’m trying to have it where it can go to mainstream because it’s so clear just like any other down south or mid-west record that’s out: it can compete with sound quality but still actually have samples in it.

When I was doing records in the ‘90s… ‘Funky Child’ had like five samples, but you know what, you take five samples that made a classic record for me but I never seen no publishing off it, I never ate off it, and I have to clarify this because people need to understand. If everybody’s keen on that ‘90s hip hop sound then there need to be someone to go to the lawyers and tell them that they need to make a new rule on publishing because in order for you to make those records that you did in the ‘90s then you gotta sample like five or six records in one song and if you do the math, everybody’s taking a percentage of your publishing and you’re not gonna eat. You get a whole lot of props but you ain’t making no money from it. I’ve been doing that for ten years! I’ve been sampling and doing what everybody wanted me to do for ten years on those machines and I didn’t make no money from it. You know why? Because I was just sampling, sampling, sampling, sampling, not knowing any better that there’s a strategic way to sample. A lot of the new guys that I see now, in the last five or ten years, they been sampling, sampling, sampling and they’re not doing it strategically where they can get away with doing it without clearing it. It’s not the same how it used to be and you have to be smarter now, because I know already that you’re not making any money off sampling. There has to be a new law behind that shit, where if you sample somebody’s record the publisher can’t take 50% of the record, they can only take say 30% and give the producer 20% because the producer did the work, you know what I’m sayin’? Until they can come up with that law, it’s gonna be rough, it’s gonna be really rough out there.

I’m keeping it real: I would love to do what I did in the early ‘90s and stay focussed on that with MPs and all that, but I do this not for the money, but to get better at my artform and to let the world know that I’m really good at what I do and that I have a great passion for it, but I still need to make money from it too because this is how I make my money and I’ve always been making my money like this since I was a teenager, you know what I’m sayin’? I can’t do that anymore: you gotta change with technology and that’s what K-Def did. As computers came onto the scene, I jumped right on the computers and started making music on the computers and I used that to my advantage. Now, I feel outta place trying to use an MPC again, it just doesn’t make sense. I can’t make a hit song like I did in the ‘90s, because the first thing I’m thinking is it’s going to take a whole bunch of sample to make this song and I’m not going to see no money. It’s a great record and it’s a hit record and everybody else who made the records in the ‘70s that I sampled from, they’re the ones that are eating from it and I’m sitting here twiddling my fingers with nothing and I did all the work for it. There has to be some kind of way where that changes. I just feel that they’re really hard on producers when it comes to sampling, but people still want to hear them because it’s what they love to hear, and yet producers are getting thrown into the shit every time!

Ski Beatz - ‘Back It Up’ ft. Buff 1
taken from Half Man, Half Amazing (Redefinition, 2008)

Ski Beatz - ‘Pages Of The Past’
taken from ‘Ticket For Two’ 12” (Redefinition, 2007)

50 Cent - ‘That Ain’t Gangsta’ (Unreleased)

Ski Beatz - ‘jwatson’ (Unreleased)

Ski Beatz - ‘Ryders’ (Unreleased)

Ski Beatz @ Myspace

So, here it is: part two of the interview with legendary producer Ski Beatz. This time around we cover material from 2002 onwards, including upcoming releases from the man himself and Camp Lo. Included for your listening pleasure are a bunch of beats from Ski’s vaults that you won’t find anywhere else on the net. Just don’t say I don’t treat ya right…

From Da Bricks: 2002 heralded the Camp Lo follow-up Let’s Do It Again, which didn’t achieve anywhere near the success of the first album. How do you reflect on that record now?

Ski Beatz: There’s some songs on there I feel, but we were in a different place, we weren’t really together. When we did that album I hadn’t seen the guys for maybe a year, I was back in North Carolina, so when we finally got together… I don’t want to say rushed, but we didn’t really feel each other, we didn’t really know what was going on, we just wanted to do an album. You can kind of tell by the sound where we were when we finished that album. You heard Black Hollywood, right?

FDB: Yea, I was just going to say that it must have felt good to firmly re-establish that connection on the latest album.

SB: Yea, definitely. Black Hollywood is where we got comfortable again. The album that we’re working on now is going to probably be an equivalent to Uptown Saturday Night.

FDB: That’s Another Heist, right?

SB: Yea. That’s what we’re working on now and it’s gonna be crazy. They now live in North Carolina and we’ve been back around each other for two or three years. They come to the crib regularly and we in the zone, know what I mean? It’s like back in the day.

FDB: So is the ‘Ticket For Two’ track gonna make it onto that album?

SB: I don’t know. You like that track?

FDB: Yea I love that track. I was surprised it didn’t make it onto Black Hollywood.

SB: With Black Hollywood we was dealing with a different person, different distributors and we had already gave them certain records. ‘Ticket For Two’… yea, we might have to do that. You gotta hear ‘Black Connections III’, you wait ‘til you hear that.

FDB: Can’t wait. When you planning to drop that?

SB: As soon as possible man, I never have any official release dates. When it sounds good and sounds finished that’s when we’ll put it out.

FDB: How many complete songs are there so far?

SB: We probably got seven strong songs.

FDB: One thing that struck me about Black Hollywood was that it was quite short, are you planning to make this a longer record?

SB: I don’t know… I might give them fourteen this time (laughs). I could never tell you bra’h, we just do things on feelings. Not that there’s never a plan or a structure to it, but it’s just a case of how we feel; if it sounds good, then we’ll put it out.

FDB: You’ve got a solo drop coming up as well haven’t you, Half Man, Half Amazing?

SB: Yea that’s gonna be half beats, and half original songs with other artists. Royce, Skyzoo, Camp Lo, a new artist Pittsburgh Slim. There’ll also be a bunch of underground hot rappers who are ready to disturb the airwaves.

FDB: I’m feeling the track with Buff 1. I noticed you used the Mountain drum break, how do you feel about using breaks that have at one stage been quite popular?

SB: Well, you gotta think, we’re dealing with a whole new generation of kids who never heard ‘Funky Drummer’ or any kind of break, you know what I mean? They don’t even know what a break is! So to reintroduce those drums is brand new to them. Older cats might be like, “Ah no, he used that,” but you know, that’s the older cats. You gotta cater to a younger audience right now.

FDB: So is the fact that you recognise that new audience something that directly affects the music you make, or is it not something you think about too much?

SB: I try to keep it as current as possible. Sonically I use current sounds, but I keep the essence of hip hop in the track, I try not to sound too dated. There’s a real fine line between backpack hip hop and what’s acceptable to the masses. I’m not saying that stuff is wack or anything, but I want to be somewhere in between. I want the backpack, hardcore hip hop cats to think it’s hot but I also want the kid who’s listening to Soulja Boy to be able to fuck with it too.

FDB: I know you’ve been keen to push artists from North Carolina as well. Who have you worked with from your home that you’re trying to push?

SB: I got a company called Now City because that’s what we call North Carolina. Got an artist by the name of Hot Right who we’ve been pushing who has got a real good buzz down here, M.O.S. is another artist who’s got a good buzz, J Bully… there’s a lot of talented producers, rappers, singers from N.C.. N.C. is like an untapped goldmine, I don’t know why labels overlook this town because there’s so much talent.

FDB: Do you think there’s a specific identity to N.C. hip hop?

SB: We don’t really have our own distinctive sound. We call N.C. the Middle East because we got a lot of cats who do New York style of music, some cats do the Southern thing, Cali music… you know, anything, and that’s the thing about North Carolina. They’ll emulate any type of sound but we don’t necessarily have our own particular sound yet.

But you know, there’s me, Fanatic is a big name producer, 9th Wonder, you know what I’m saying. There’s a lot of producers from North Carolina that’s on some albums that are doing some real, hot shit. There’s a lot of hot shit in N.C..

FDB: Do you feel settled back down there now or do you have plans to move back to New York?

SB: Oh yea, I’m definitely ready to head back to New York. Matter of fact me and my wife are trying to get out of here within a year and get a spot back there. The reason being is that everything is right there, and it’s a bitch to move back and forth from N.C. to New York, it’s like a ten hour drive. It’ll just be so much easier if I go back and set up shop there again.

FDB: You’ve got your label as well, Redefinition. What’s the deal with that?

SB: Yea that’s me and John. We’re gonna try and release the Camp Lo as well as Half Man, Half Amazing. I might even fuck around and do an Original Flavor album since I’ve been fuckin’ with Tone, just to do it, just to see how it was taken. I know a lot of kids aren’t gonna know who the hell Original Flavor is, but there’s some loyal, original people who would pick the album up, I know for sure.

FDB: Do you think there is a viable market made up of people who are into the late ‘80s/early ’90s stuff or do you feel that it’s simply not enough to maintain a career in the industry?

SB: As a producer, your lifeline, the only way you can eat is that you have to stay current. If I wanna get all artsy and go back to the past and make something from the ‘80s or ‘90s then I could do that, if someone wants me to do that I can do it. At the same time I can do a track for a brand new artist that’s out right now. I think the reason I can do that is because I learned to appreciate the new sound as well as the old. I know a lot of old producers who just think that this rap shit is wack and hate the shit on the radio, but it’s not bad music, it’s just not the music that they’re used to. Once you learn to appreciate anything, and if you can wrap your brain around it and feel the vibe that the kids are feelin’, you can capture it and translate it into your music. If you go around like some dinosaur, stuck with these beats that nobody is trying to get then you basically just keep digging your ditch because nobody’s buying your beats and you hate everything that’s out right now. You gotta be open-minded to music because music is ever-changing.

I’m sure the old school cats who we sample from was probably listening to rap like, “What the hell is this, I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.” But then you got cats like Ron Isley that stayed current, by messing with R Kelly or something like that, that were smart and realised they were old school, but he went ahead and did it and was accepted by the younger kids. Look at LL: how do you think he keeps coming back? He’s current. How does Timbaland keep coming back? He stays current.

FDB: Good luck with everything this year, keep doing what you do.

SB: Alright, thanks man. Peace.

Shouts go out once again to both John at Redefinition Records for organising the interview and Ski for being such a fantastic interviewee. I hope you all enjoyed reading this as much as I did doing it, more big hitters to come in the FDB interview series very soon…

Photo courtesy of John @ Redefiniton Records

The Bizzie Boyz - ‘Droppin’ It’
taken from Droppin’ It (Yo!, 1990)

Original Flavor - ‘When I Make It’
taken from This Is How It Is (Atlantic, 1992)

Jay-Z - ‘Dead Presidents (Instrumental)’
taken from ‘Dead Presidents’ 12” (Roc-A-Fella, 1996)

Camp Lo - ‘Feelin’ It (OG Demo Version)’

Ski Beatz @ MySpace

From The Bizzie Boyz to Original Flavor to Jay-Z to Camp Lo, the man who now goes by the name of Ski Beatz has built an astonishing career in hip hop that has remained remarkably consistent considering it’s nearly two decades since his first appearances on wax. I had the privilege of talking to Ski towards the end of last week, so here’s the first part of the interview where we cover all of the older stuff including his reflections on the early days with Jay, how he hooked up with Camp Lo and memories of a wealth of collaborations during the ’90s. Enjoy, part two to follow later in the week.

From Da Bricks: I thought we’d start off with a record that some people may not even now about. Tell me about those early days with The Bizzie Boyz.

Ski Beatz: The Bizzie Boyz… the first rap group I was ever in. Wow… we originated out of Greensborough, North Carolina. It was me, I was the MC, a producer by the name by Fanatic, DJ Mixmaster D and two dancers, Smooth and Groove (laughs). Basically that was my first real experience with hip hop. We put out records, singles on the radio down here in North Carolina. We had this one single, ‘Droppin’ It’ [that subsequently appeared on Ego Trip’s Big Playback] that caught the attention of disc jockeys like Red Alert, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl in New York and that was my break into the game. These cats heard the record and we started doing a bunch of shows with acts like Dana Dane, Whodini, you know cats like that, we used to open up for them. Whilst doing that I met DJ Clark Kent. He said if I was ever in New York I should look him up. When I moved to New York and looked him up he was A&R-ing at Atlantic Records, so the timing was beautiful. I told him I was working on a demo, so I gave it to him and came back to North Carolina. Later I got a call from him, and he was like, “Yo, Atlantic Records is loving your music, they wanna sign you!”. So I came back to New York, back down with him, and that’s how we formed the group Original Flavor.

FDB: So did you do any of the beats on The Bizzie Boyz album?

SB: Yea, I did a few joints. I did this new jack swing/R & B song, there was this reggae song I did, there was even this house song I did.

FDB: I was going to ask you about those tracks. ‘Closa’ had that reggae feel, ‘Pump Up The House’ had that house vibe… did you feel a freeness to experiment with the music at that stage?

SB: Yea, back then you didn’t really have to be in a cookie cutter type of situation, you could basically do what you wanted to do or whatever you felt. I always used to love LL’s song ‘I Need Love’, so I wanted to make a song like that; I used to love reggae, so I wanted to make a reggae song; I used to love Jungle Brothers’ ‘I’ll House You’, so I wanted to make a house song as well. There was no harm in that back then, it was all fun.

FDB: Some of those interesting sample choices made it onto the first Original Flavor LP. Is it sitars on ‘This Is How It Is’?

SB: Oh yea, yea, yea… I think that was Richie Havens. I sampled him, the sitars… whatever, gumbo. Whatever I liked, whatever I wanted to do, I just did it. I didn’t need any guidelines I just made what I liked.

FDB: Were you happy with the response to that record at the time?

SB: I was happy with the record. I mean, because we didn’t hit the charts at number one or didn’t sell a million records I wasn’t mad or disgruntled, I was just happy to be doing what I wanted to do and making a living. You know, music is first. We made the album, we made the music, just to see my face on a CD cover was amazing to me at the time. I wasn’t mad, it’s all growth.

FDB: I guess the second LP is best known for ‘Can I Get Open’. What are your earliest memories of hooking up with Jay-Z?

SB: I first met Jay on a video shoot for ‘Here We Go’. He was with Sauce Money at the time, Clark Kent brought him to the set to meet Dame [Dash] because he wanted him to manage him. We were just all stood around and Clark was like, “Yo, you gotta hear this kid rap, you gotta hear this kid rap.” As soon as Jay opened his mouth I knew I wasn’t gonna rhyme any more, I just wanted to produce him. I just felt like I had to give this kid beats, I didn’t even want to rap no more because he was rhyming so well, he was the best I’d ever heard in my life. After that we went back to the studio to make a song just for him and that was ‘Can I Get Open’.

FDB: Are you still in touch with T-Strong and Suave Lover?

SB: I speak to Tone almost everyday, I’m definitely in touch with him all the time. Suave Lover, I haven’t spoken to him in like three or four years. I’m still in touch with Jay and Dame as well.

FDB: Do you think it was that affiliation with Jay that catapulted your career onto that higher level?

SB: You would think that was the case, but really, not to take anything away from Reasonable Doubt because it’s a classic, but the one record that really catapulted me into the game was ‘Luchini’. A lot of people don’t know that… I had hot records, legendary records on Jay-Z’s album, but ‘Luchini’ was my first radio/club hit. Camp Lo are still on tour right now from that record.

FDB: It’s a great record: we’ll come back to that in a minute. What was the atmosphere like at D & D during the recording sessions for Reasonable Doubt?

SB: It was magic man. The whole crew, Dame, Jay, Clark, Jaz-O, Sauce Money, Memphis Bleek, everybody from the original Roc-A-Fella crew… in the studio we were always joking. Sometimes I made the beats in advance, but ‘Politics As Usual’ I made the beat right there in the studio. It was fun man. I can’t front, it was fun.

You know, I was in there the same time Primo was doing ‘Ten Crack Commandments’ with Biggie Smalls. There was always a battle, like Jay would say, “Go take that beat and let Biggie hear it.” So I would go in the studio and be like, “Big, check this beat out,” and they’d hear the beat and look at me like, “Agh!” They was always in competition, but it was friendly competition, know what I mean?

FDB: I guess that’s what drove those records to be such classics.

SB: Yea, you know at the same time there was DJ Evil Dee and Mr. Walt in the studio working with Buckshot and doing all that stuff. It was crazy: everybody was there.

FDB: I know the ‘Feelin’ It’ beat originally cropped up on a Camp Lo demo, what prompted the decision to give that to Jay?

SB: ‘Feelin’ It’ was actually my song, with me rhyming on it. I invited Suede from Camp Lo over and wanted him to get on the song with me, you know I was just making the song just for the sake of making it, not really to put it out or anything but because I like to make songs. I did the song, I rapped on it, Suede rapped on it then I took it to Jay and Dame and Jay was like, “Yo, you gotta give me this song, I love this song.” He even took the way I was flowin’, the same rhythmic pattern I was rhyming in, he took that too. Of course I said he could use it, it wasn’t a song that I was putting out, it was a song I was doing just to do, so I gave it to him.

FDB: You kind of cut ties with Roc-A Fella after In My Lifetime Vol. 1. Was that a conscious decision on your part?

SB: I kinda just ventured off, I moved to Jersey, I started Roc-A-Blok and got a label deal with Ruffhouse. From there we put out the Sporty Thievz, they had that ‘No Pigeons’ record, we had Pacewon… things was happening. I still did some stuff with Jay, I think the last records I did with him was ‘Who U Wit’, ‘Streets Is Watching’ and then ‘People Talkin’’ was the last record I did with Jay, but as I said we kept in touch.

FDB: Any chance of you working together again in the future?

SB: Hey man, he’s like if I got the heat then I should bring it to him. I don’t wanna sound dated, but I’d like to do something close to that original hip hop sound, but I still want it to sound fresh. I don’t want to sound like everybody else right now.

FDB: What did you make of American Gangster?

SB: There’s a couple of records I love on that album. I like it, it wasn’t Reasonable Doubt, but the flows were witty, the wordplay was good, some of the beats was tight, you know I felt it. It got rotation in my car.

FDB: We’ve already mentioned about some of the earlier stuff with Camp Lo, how did you hook up with Cheeba and Suede?

SB: I was living in the Bronx and Suede was living in the building adjacent from me and he used to see me and be like “I rap too, I rap too, you should hear me rap.” So he came to my crib and he rapped for me, and when he rapped he was wack. At the time when I met him he was like thirteen (laughs), he was young. I told him he needed to work on it more, come up with some concepts and then I lost touch with him for three years.

He came back to me, and he had Chee with him. He was like, “I got a group, this is my partner Chee, we don’t have a name for the group but we want you to hear us rhyme.” I didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, it was crazy… it was bananas, the whole style, the ‘70s throwback. I could see what they were doing. So I had ‘em in the crib everyday for hours, we would do three or four songs a day just to cultivate their style. The slang and the whole swagger started to come out. When they came up with the name Camp Lo I gave a demo tape to T-Strong and he took it up to Profile Records, to Will Fulton the A&R at the time. He was like, “This is amazing, we wanna sign ‘em.” When they signed them we didn’t have ‘Luchini’ at the time, we had ‘Coolie High’, it did its thing, it was pretty good, but then in the clutch I came up with the beat for ‘Luchini’. I called up Suede and he thought it was bananas, I came up with the hook and they did it. Next day, it was a wrap.

FDB: When you first came across the ‘Adventures In The Land Of Music’ break did it instantly strike you as something you wanted to use?

SB: Nah, I mean I loved it, I was thinking, “Has anybody used this?! This is crazy!” I didn’t even do anything, I just looped it, threw some drums on it, a little piano and that was that, I just let them rhyme.

FDB: Any chance that YouTube video about ‘Luchini’ is going to get done? [Check the breakdown of ‘Dead Presidents’ here]

SB: Yea, that’s definitely gonna get done. I should be with the guys in a few weeks actually, I might do it while I’m working.

FDB: You’ve already said that you see that song as your big break, and Uptown Saturday Night is now considered classic material, so you must have been pleased with how it was received by a genuine hip hop audience.

SB: Yea man. That first Camp Lo album, when I listen to it I can’t really believe I did it, know what I mean? The sound was so crazy to me, the whole texture, the whole feel, where we was as at… it was just crazy to me.

FDB: After that of course you did a lot of production for other artists, Fat Joe, Lord Tariq, Lil’ Kim etc. Did you work directly with those guys or was it just a case of shopping some beats?

SB: Um, with the Fat Joe, the track ‘John Blaze’, my man Reef the A&R at Atlantic he called me to come in to do a remix. So I came into the studio, Joe was there and I made the beat on the spot, I called in the violinist girl and she did the little intro for it. But Nas, Raekwon and Jadakiss, they weren’t there, but Pun was there. All the stuff I did for Lord Tariq I was always in the studio with him, we were both in the Bronx and I would just run across there and I did those tracks on the spot.

Lil’ Kim was kinda different, I just shopped the beat. They heard the beat and liked it, I went to the studio and she was there but she didn’t really say anything to me, I never really had any words with her, she was just over in the corner talking to Big and I just laid the beat down and left. That was a strange… (laughs) you know, I never really been in a situation like that.

FDB: You did a lot of the production on the Sporty Thievz drop, whatever happened to that affiliation?

SB: Like I say they were signed to my label Roc-A-Blok and the first record was ‘Cheapskate’ and that did pretty well in the clubs but of course what catapulted them was the remake of ‘Scrubs’, ‘No Pigeons’. That single actually sold over 100,000 copies and the album did pretty good, but the label kin of backed up off them for some reason and everything went downhill when Brando died. The group just fell apart and I lost touch with the guys and everything. The other artist I had was Pacewon, you ever heard ‘I Declare War’?

FDB: Yea, I think so. [I subsequently remembered that this track cropped up on the Beats, Rhymes & Samples retrospective mixtape by DJ Raize. Get it on Ski's MySpace page]

SB: The video’s on YouTube, listen to that track and tell me it’s not crazy. Actually 50 Cent took the track recently and rhymed over it. He was doing a diss record and he used that beat.

FDB: I can’t remember if that made it onto an album.

SB: Nah, Pace never came out. We actually did the album and the video, the video was hot, Eminem was in it. Eminem was of course a part of The Outsidaz with Pace, it was hot.

Y Society - ‘Colorful Storms’
taken from Spare Time (Redefinition, 2008)

[Audio remains active: cop this shit] 

I mentioned towards the end of last week that you’d be hearing more from Damu The Fudgemunk here at FDB, and here it is in interview form. I was particularly pleased to get to talk with Damu because I genuinely believe that he is one of the most exciting and refreshing producers in the contemporary game, and if you’re still sleeping on either Y Society’s Travel At Your Own Pace or his recently released beat retrospective Spare Time then you need to remedy the situation immediately. Deeply rooted in boom bap aesthetics but with enough complexity and texture to demonstrate that he has more than a few original ideas of his own, Damu deserves to hit it big in 2008 after the successes of 2007. Here we talk about his early experiences of hip hop, the Y Society release and dispel a few myths about Tres Records.

From Da Bricks: Let’s start with a little background. You’re from D.C. which isn’t a city particularly well known for hip hop. What were your experiences of the culture like growing up there?

Damu The Fudgemunk: Since I came up as a child, I came up during the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, and I was still relatively young, you know, elementary school and junior high. Most of the hip hop that I’m influenced by was on the radio back then. It wasn’t until I got around to high school that it started changing. You could distinguish the difference between the traditional and the commercial rap and I noticed when it switched up.

Overall, I really wasn’t a part of the scene, not that it didn’t exist, but I was just too young to be a part of it. Most of the influence I have was just gained on my own, through my own curiosity.

FDB: I believe you started as a DJ, but how long was it until you started producing beats?

DF: Well, to set the record straight, I actually started out rhyming first. I was an MC in junior high and high school, I had a little duo with my man. We needed beats, and I started buying records and tried to loop them up long before I had a sample. I just had a turntable and a mixer. That grew into what I am now. I got my turntables at 16, and then at 17 I went out and bought a sampler. That’s when I hung up the mic, it was just so much fun, and I became a record nerd. (laughs)

FDB: Did you start out always replicating stuff you liked, like on your Youtube videos, or was it always in conjunction with your own original material?

DF: I guess it was just like the influence of what I had been listening to. As I already said, I could definitely distinguish how the music had changed, how people weren’t making the kind of music that had stuck with me, the soundtrack to my life. After a while of just diggin’ and finding samples, just making beats means you understand the production process, how things are done and edited. Most of the remakes I’ve done have just been out of sheer appreciation for the music and the producers. A lot of time it’s just beats that never had an instrumental release, and I didn’t have them on wax so I just remade them for the fun of it.

FDB: You obviously know your way around an MPC. How do you get around the standard 2 meg of memory?

DF: One thing is that I don’t sample CDs, I only sample records. That’s one way of getting around it. There are a lot of ways to do it, I could sample tapes or CDs but most importantly I do it the old school way, speeding up the records, pitching it down on the MP and then editing things, chopping them up into little beats and then reassembling them to make the loops.

FDB: You’re still active on the turntables as well, having done all the scratches on the Panacea album.

DF: Yea, I’m still in that group. It’s funny, because I read a lot of stuff that says the group has disbanded or that I’m no longer with them but we still hang out and make music, all together. Right now, with our label situations the way they are, the politics mean we’re not able to perform and record together as much as we’d like.

FDB: Was it K-Murdock who showed you around an MPC?

DF: Kinda, sorta. When I met him I had my first sampler which was an SP303, I had that for a couple of months. When I met him he had the MP. Around that time I was still learning how to make beats in general, he had just got his MP, so we would just go back and forth and have one on one beat battles, playing tapes and CDs, and then after I’d learnt how to use my sampler then I would just go into the studio when he wasn’t there and fool around with his. Once I graduated high school I bought an MPC a few months later. I’ve had it since 2003.

FDB: You mentioned before there are certain issues constraining your collaborations. Are there any plans for anything different, say a K-Murdock/Damu production project?

DF: Not that it wouldn’t happen, it’s not something that we’ve talked about… it’s possible. Right now, he’s definitely got a nice archive and I’ve done a lot of remixes for him, but as far as us doing a project together we haven’t talked about it. I’m sure it would be something that would come out nice.

FDB: I bet. You’re down with Grap Luva as well aren’t you?

DF: Yea, that’s my man. I met him back in 2003/2004 and that’s a long story but basically ever since we met he’s been like my biggest critic or my biggest ear, so he has my archive. Whenever I make beats I send him like 20 or 30 beats, so although I slowed down a little with the release of the album, he’s got a lot of my beats. That’s why I give him so much respect because when nobody was listening down here, he would definitely listen to anything I make.

FDB: So do you know Pete Rock as well?

DF: I’ve met him quite a few times, but I can’t just call him up on the phone like Grap.

FDB: Cool. I see you as an artist who is clearly embracing shifts in the industry. Is YouTube and free downloads something you’ve been keen to address directly or has it just seemed like the natural thing to do?

DF: I guess a little bit of both. Honestly, I wish things could go back to the way that they were, before the internet, before YouTube, before everybody rushed to the internet to get everything. But you do have to shift with the industry if you want to remain dominant in the field of doing music.

Everybody goes to the internet to get their news, to find out what’s cool, what to wear, what to listen to… that’s just where the people are, that’s where the market is, that’s where the records are. That’s where you need to go if you really want to do anything business-oriented. It’s just a sign of the times. Hopefully one day I won’t have to rely on the internet to make a name for myself but right now there are some pros and cons with the online marketing and videos. I’ve definitely gotten a lot of opportunity from some of the things I’ve done.

FDB: Let’s move onto the Y Society album now. How did you initially hook up with Insight?

DF: I met him back in 2004, he was on tour with Edan, Procussions, it was the Don’t Sleep tour. I met up with him, I was too young to get into the club, but when he came out I was playing my beats outside and I gave him a CD. One of their promoters had a show the next day which was 45 minutes away from D.C. in Baltimore, and the promoter snuck me into that show and we got a chance to build. Me, him and Edan just talked and everything and ever since then we kept in touch. The album came about when I started working with Panacea. Tres came to the video shoot to talk business with me, I wanted to do an instrumental album but they didn’t want to do any at the time; it was all business. I had some instrumental records and they just said I needed to get with an MC and then they’d talk. I called up Insight.

FDB: So had you done all of the beats for the album before Insight had done any of the rhymes?

DF: No. Some of those beats, most of them, were made in 2006. ‘Peace I’m Out The Door’ was done in 2004, ‘Puzzles’ I did in ’04. ‘Puzzles’ was actually from our first album, we had one album we did for Tres that got shelved that hasn’t come out yet. Travel At Your Own Pace is our official debut but we have one that we recorded before that. The reason we did Travel At Your Own Pace was because they shelved the first album.

FDB: Any chance of that seeing a release?

DF: Um… we haven’t negotiated with any other label, we’re just sitting on it right now. When we made that, that was really where our heart was. Travel At Your Own Pace is definitely something that we’re proud of but when we made that first album our minds were in a completely different place. A lot of the beats that were on the first album were a lot harder than the ones currently on the market.

FDB: I’d love to hear that.

DF: Yea, I mean originally we recorded about 21 tracks and then we narrowed it down to 15/16. On Travel At Your Own Pace we did about 15 or 16 and then narrowed it down to the ones that made the album. From our first album we kept ‘Puzzles’ and ‘Scientist’, other than that, everything was stuff we came up with to make the release for October.

FDB: What’s it’s like at Tres Records, it’s run by Thes One isn’t it?

DF: No. A lot of people perceive it that way, but Thes is more like a consultant. It’s actually run by Chikamaranga of Giant Panda with his partner Sausen. They’re two Japanese cats that started a label and then when they first created the label Thes One definitely had a big hand in a lot of the music and production, but he’s kind of backed away as he’s real busy. He doesn’t have as much say in what’s going on and that’s his idea.

FDB: I read elsewhere on the internet that you had a possible project with O.C. lined up. Is that true?

DF: That is true, I did do an album for O.C.. I did a lot of beats for an unreleased album and I actually remixed parts of those songs three or four times so I used a lot of beats. Who knows, it’s basically a respect issue right now, I would love for people to hear the stuff I had done, whether it’s free or people pay for it, just the fact that it gets heard. Otherwise, I could give the beats to other places which I have plans for, but it’s a case of ‘don’t show, don’t tell’ and that’s what I agreed to. Right now, the project is lost. Who knows… I can’t do much about it.

FDB: What other projects have you got in the pipeline?

DF: I have so many beats, I would prefer to release just instrumental albums. But then again, like you said earlier, being keen to what’s going on… I look at the internet and the industry and I can see how much that can pay off. Of course I want the respect, but mainly it’s just going with the flow at this point. Shopping beats, which I’ve been doing, working on the new Y Society album. I want to go into the archive and release some beat CDs, some instrumental albums rather. But I change my mind everyday! (laughs)

FDB: I know you’re a big vinyl junkie, so I’m assuming that everything you do is still sample based.

DF: Oh yes, if it’s on a record I’ll sample it. There’s nothing wrong with sampling CDs or anything like that, but for my creative process that’s what works for me. It just adds to my aesthetic of making beats.

FDB: Original pressings only then?

DF: I don’t have any reissues, all originals. As I said, there’s nothing wrong with it, I don’t knock anybody for doing it, but then again I do it the way that they did it. I don’t sample any reissues. Music is music, beats are beats, a dope producer can sample reissues and be dope, or you can have a dude with thousands of records and he’s wack, so in some ways it doesn’t really matter.

FDB: If your house was on fire, which one record would you save?

DF: (laughs) I think about that every day! I don’t know, it would have to be a couple. I’ve got two copies of ‘Impeach The President’ or Melvin Bliss, you know just the breaks that I’ve been looking for. I don’t know, I really can’t tell you. I have a lot of records.

FDB: I read you were still trying to track down Kool & The Gang’s ‘NT’ break.

DF: Oh no, I have that. You know, actually, I used the ‘NT’ break on our first album, but of course you won’t have heard it. I’ve had that record for a couple of years.

There are still records that I don’t have like Skull Snaps, there are a lot of things on my want list but I have a lot of breaks that other people don’t have and other people do. That’s just a part of diggin’: one day I’ll get them. Like, I don’t have the Lafayette Afro Rock Band records, I have a couple of David Axelrod records but not the full collection. Anything dope, anything funky… The Whatnauts I still don’t have.

FDB: So in terms of contemporary hip hop, what releases got you excited in 2007?

DF: Gosh… I was definitely excited about the Panacea record. What else did I buy? I bought the Percee P album… honestly, I’m trying to remember what came out. The releases were so scarce last year and I was in the house working on the album so I can’t tell you exactly what records I bought.

FDB: Were you a fan of the Marco Polo album?

DF: Yea, it was good. I guess I’m very picky about production in what I buy. I did like the album, it was a solid release but in all honesty I didn’t buy it. It was a better year for hip hop I think.

FDB: Anything you’re particularly looking forward to in 2008? What about the Pete Rock album?

DF: I’ll buy it because it’s Pete Rock, but I can’t say I’m really looking forward to it. I’m just being honest… I haven’t made beats in months because I’ve been promoting the album and I’ve been in New York so much, I’ve been away from home and I’m really just looking forward to just making beats again.

FDB: Cool. I checked you in the bow tie and stripy socks on your MySpace. Is your personal sense of style important to you?

DF: I guess it’s not to the point where I’m looking in the mirror all day and I can’t leave the house a certain way. It’s definitely fun to have my own style and be different but not try too hard at it, the bowties and the striped socks… believe it or not they’re not socks, they’re tights! I have a nice little hefty collection of both. It’s fun, and it’s kind of a calling card when you walk around the city, people know you for wearing that and can draw you out of the crowd.

FDB: And finally, have you got any plans to come over to the UK at any point?

DF: I’d like to but right now there aren’t any shows or tour dates lined up, that would be dope. I definitely look forward to it one day, but right now I’m just keeping my ear to the street and to my heart, doing what I feel like doing instinctively. As far as Y society goes, I probably did about 20 beats that I scrapped that I think I’ll put out before we put out the next Y Society album, that’s what I’m feelin’ right now.