Slum Village’s “Villa Manifesto” is in stores today so I caught up with T-3 and Young RJ to ask them about some of those beats from the webisodes that didn’t make the album, the future of BR Gunna and to shed light on that secret J-Dilla beat-making formula that Ma Dukes told me about years ago.

You can see more of this interview at the day job.

On his recent collaboration album with MURs, Fornever, he drops a verse on the song “Asian Girl” and on his artist Big Remo’s “Go” the Grammy winning producer spits, “coming through on the humble/ 9th Wonder beats make it thump like Rumble/I’m in the Soundwave, ask the Megatron Don…”

While on a recent visit to New York for an EA Sports “NBA Elite 2011″ event (9th scored the music for the latest installment of the basketball franchise)   spoke with “9thmatic” and he explained the inspirations for the “Go” video and what made him decide to start rapping.

As  you know I tend to split my interviews between the day job and here and best believe I have some treats coming from this interview.

Pretty much what the title says. While Apollo Brown was in town for his Fat Beats in-store we caught up with him for a really dope interview. In this first part the mad man from Michigan plugs his latest project The Reset and gets into how he started making beats on Windows Voyetra software and how he makes his remixes using nothing but Cool Edit 2000.

“I use Cool Edit 2000 with no multitrack…I have like 30 windows open..” – Apollo Brown

Also check out this interview Crooks & Castles does with Khalil  about his group The New Royales and their up-coming mixtape, Freedom For The Brave.

New Royales pt. one from Crooks & Castles on Vimeo.

Here is the video for “Cars” the b-side to “Shine So Bright” from super-producer Nottz album, You Need This Music. Tell me if you’ve ever seen anyone lean out of a hooptie and scratch turntables before. Gotta love it.

From Nahright.

Just mentioned this on Ustream the other week. He’ll be embarking on a European tour with his homie Alchemist and they’ll be facing off with each other, record for record. They did it once last year and decided to make a tour out of it. More footage of that here.

May 6 London, United Kingdom / East Village
May 7 Bordeaux, France / BT59
May 8 Nantes, France / Jongl’Hop
May 9 Amsterdam, Netherlands / Bitterzoet
May 11 London, United Kingdom / East Village
May 12 Zurich, Switzerland / Rote Fabrik
May 13 Milan, Italy / Tunnel
May 14 Paris, France w/ DJ Premier / Elysee Montmartre
May 15 Marseille, France / Cabaret Aleatoire
May 16 Helsinki, Finland / Virgin Oil Co.

Who: Illfonics (Matt Friedman and Jed Cappelli)

What: Produced the following tracks…
“Nananana” for Jim Jones,
“Enter Galactic” on Kid Cudi,
“Day Dreamer,” Gorilla Zoe
“Come Party With Me” and “American Girl” For LL Cool J.

Where: NYC

Key advice: “You want your beat to sound as finished as possible because artists and A&Rs don’t want to have to imagine what it will sound like…”

NODFACTOR.COM: Why the name Illfonics?

ILLFONICS(Matt): Our friend actually came up with that a long time ago joking around. We were talking about the Delfonics and he said you guys should call yourselves Illfonics. We were having such a hard time coming up with so we used it.

How did you get started in production?
I’ve been playing instruments my whole life, bands and stuff. And in college I got an MPC and then got Logic and switched everything over to that.

I had saved up and got my MPC back in ‘98. Back then it had so little memory that it’s laughable now. That was the start of learning to sequence and cutting up samples. But once I got Logic it was a combination of dumping stuff into Logic and sequencing in there. Then eventually I got Battery for my drums. After that I never looked at the MP again.

Me and JED linked in college at NYU in the music tech program there. We were doing weird electronic stuff with really intensive drum programs. Detail oriented stuff where you’d be working on a track for three months. Then Jed linked up with someone in L.A. and started working on more commercial production, R&B and Pop stuff. When he came back we said lets give this a real shot. We started having fun with it. It was less stressful than the stuff we were working on.

How did you link up with Gorilla Zoe to do “Day Dreamer?”

We had a meeting with his publisher and he came in and we hit it off. We played some beats and he liked a lot of shit. Our first session is where we knocked out Day Dreamer. He’s supposed to come back tonight actually.

Most producers that read this site are comfortable with their sound but they’re trying to get a placement and you’ve had some real success. Is good representation the key?

For everybody it’s different. Everyone gets where they’re going in a different way. Our manager Toshi [veteran scribe Toshitaka Kondo] is out there hustling and meeting people. You have to get stuff out there and slowly over time building that respect and reported with people. Then you get those meetings.

What was the first track you placed?
The first thing we did was on the Re-Up Gang project [“My Life’s The Shit”] that came out on Koch and then the LL Cool J beats for Exit 13. We met with LL, hung out one night dropping off the stems for the mix for Come Party With Me and he said play me more shit. Then Toshi played him some other weird track that we didn’t think he’d like and he did. So that turned into two placements.

How would you describe your sound?
We’re very diverse. We do rock, pop, R&B, weird indie stuff. We try to have our drums really beefy sounding, using old school synths with an analog feel.

You’ve got the placements but still hold down a day job. You must not sleep much.

It’s tough. I work in advertising doing music supervision. It’s a lot of work and I get out of there and go straight to the studio. It’s really having two full time jobs. You gotta go at it really hard if you want to see any good returns.

Watch the video below to see how they made “Day Dreamer”