Common F/ Talib Kweli & Marvin Gaye “The Light” (Remix)
September 29, 2010
Over the weekend I was out driving and Jill Scott’s “He Loves Me (Lizel In E Flat) came on the radio and the intro kept playing over in my head for the rest of the day. This happens to me about several times a day but I usually forget by the time I get home. This loop was stubborn though.
When I finally got home to the comp I clipped it off the end in Audition, ran it through the Fruity slicer, quantized it and chopped it. I played around with some drums and liked the way the Barry White kick and snare sounded but I wanted to play with the pattern some more. So I exported all of the parts using Slicex and placed them in the “pads” of the FPC to make a more unique pattern.
After that I made about 5 more different segments with various chops and drums and stashed them until I was ready to sequence. After playing the beat for about ten minutes I pitched up the sample and added some filters to differentiate it from Jill’s composition a little bit. Then I started hearing voices on the beat, so I went through my acapellas and Common’s “The Light” seemed to go with the whole thing so I matched two verses up to the beat and left it alone.
A few days later I came back to it and decided it needed a hook so I went hunting in my acapellas for someone professing their love to their woman and found the Marvin Gaye acapella to “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby.” I chopped it up and isolated the pieces I wanted to use to create a phrase and that became my hook.
From there the song felt short so I added Talib’s verse from “Hot Thing” (which was a pain in the ass to match up until I realized the acapella was fubar.) And that was it. I’ll dub this one the “Heaven On Earth” remix.
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Bloggin 4 Beats: The Beat With No Name
September 14, 2010
I’m in a Fantasy Football league right now (lost my first week by 4 points. Sucks.) But anyway…one of the team names is “No Clever Team Name.” I thought it was a place holder until they came up with something like the rest of us lemmings intent on fashioning something intimidating or boastful. But nope, they’re rocking into week two with that same name. I guess it “be like that some times.”
This beat didn’t invoke a name when I made it, I can’t remember what I sampled…so I just labeled it Nodfactor2010. Maybe after I slap an acapella over it I’ll be inspired to some clever nomenclature, but for now just enjoy.
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Bloggin 4 Beats: What About Your Friends?
June 7, 2010
Friends? How many of us have them? Third installment of my 2nd Childhood beat series pilfers the Super Friends theme music:
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PREVIOUS: Bloggin 4 Beatz: Happy Birthday Pacman
Bloggin 4 Beatz: Happy Birthday Pacman
May 21, 2010
Man, I had no idea today was the 30th anniversary of Pacman. Had I known I ‘d have put this beat up first, but here it is from my “Second Childhood” 80s beat series. Happy Birthday Pacman!!
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Bloggin 4 Beatz: What Would Scooby Doo?
May 19, 2010
A few months ago I copped the Motorola Droid and I think it’s the best phone I’ve ever had in my life. Though it could really use some better games I love that I can use just about any sound in the world as a ringtone. I downloaded the Pacman soundboard and the start up music is my ringer. I’ve gone through Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Family Guy…you name it.
So what does this have to do with Scooby Doo? Well the Pacman ringtone gave me the idea to do a mixtape of beats based on childhood music and theme songs, which would be the 80s for my 35 year old azz. Hence, The 2nd Childhood Mixtape. I do have a Pacman beat done but I didn’t want to lead with that one simply because I love this Scooby Doo joint more. Yes, I’m aware that Doom flipped this for “Hey” but since when has that stopped me?
I was just happy to finally find some way to use those Axelrod drums from “Divine Image” …
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Bloggin 4 Beats: Brand New Being Remix
January 25, 2010
When I interviewed DJ JS-1 he told me that he was providing a data disc with acapellas, instrumentals and clean version for his new project, Ground Original 2, No Sellout. What I failed to notice at first was that he also provided them for the Sadat X project he recently produced as well, Brand New Being. The title cut features a reunion of all three original members that had me feeling more than a little nostalgic. So I grabbed the acapella and went to work.
Since I love to play the word association game with my beats I chopped up the drums to “It’s a New Day” in Slicex so I could program them freely and then threw a bunch of different things at it. I gave Jamar, Puba and Sadat each a different song to flow over and ended things with a clip from the JS-1 interview that I’d love to hear him cut up one day, “dirtbag style, raw, grimey hip-hop.”
It’s a 180 degree turn from the original, much mellower but still raw. So I’ve nicknamed it the 420 remix:
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Bloggin 4 Beats: Never Enough Remix
January 11, 2010
A few days ago we put ya’ll onto 2dopeboyz.com’s Tanya Morgan Remix Contest. Though I’m not officially entering you know I couldn’t pass up on working with a dope acapella. This contest has been over, but if you haven’t picked up Brooklynati by now make sure get a check for $12 $5 from your grandma and make it happen on iTunes.
As with a lot of my remixes I like to do word association, so I literally searched for “Never Enough” in my iTunes catalog and Amel Larrieux’s “Never Enough” from the Love Jones soundtrack popped up. This was gonna be fun.
I listened to the song and played the acapella in FL at the same time to get a sense for what parts would work. (They conveniently labeled the acapella at 95 BPMS so I didn’t have to tap it out. )After isolating the breaks I commenced to chopping. After I had all of the sounds and pieces I arranged them a few different ways until I liked what I heard. I added some low pass filtering to certain sections to bring the bass out and that was it. Peep it and let me know what you think.
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If you have a Tanya Morgan remix you want to share send it to [email protected]!
Bloggin 4 Beats: Hello Brooklyn (Flow Ayers Remix)
January 6, 2010
I really miss Brooklyn. After living there my entire life I relocated to Queens seven years ago so that I could escape the scourge known as Alternate Side Parking. While you have to be from NY to truly appreciate the inter-Borough wars I’ll go on record to say that it ain’t been that easy. Brooklyn just has intangibles unmatched by any place I’ve set my feet or laid my head.
When I first heard Jay-Z’s “Hello Brooklyn” I couldn’t fathom why Lil Wayne was on this hook (even now actually). But if Jay could get an expat from New Orleans to sing my home boroughs praises I could only get but so mad (how Bleek feels is another story).
So after attacking a few other Jay-Z acapellas I took a swing at “Hello Brooklyn.” Staying true to my word association formula I sampled portions of Floetry’s “Hello” and Roy Ayer’s classic, “We Live In Brooklyn, Baby.” I was really tempted to chop Weezy’s hook out of the whole thing and use another vocal but I left it alone for now. Maybe in take 2.5 if I get hold of some Skyzoo Acapellas.
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Bloggin 4 Beats: Jay-Z’s “I Know” remix…
December 4, 2009
Posted this last year…bringin it back like a boomerang for Jigga’s Birfday….
Addiction is a bitch…sometimes literally. You spend so much time trying to recreate that first high. Sometimes you come close (again.. literally) and other times you lay there in the throws of futility waiting to come down enough to resume the chase. I am addicted to this beat shit, which makes it that much harder when I lose something. Yes, I fugged up big time.
Bloggin 4 Beats: Jay-Z’s Allure Remix
September 3, 2009
A few weeks ago I posted a beat I made called “Neo Soul Orgy” where I blended together elements from some of my favorite R&B artists. I got a stronger than usual response to it across the board so one night I messed around with some acapellas to see what would go with it. Actually, that’s a lie, the first one I tried was Allure and the shit went so well that I just arranged the beat around Jay’s words and made an MP3. I’m re-posting the instrumental along with the remix.
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