Green Lantern talks Obama, Million DJ March and Rocking With a Band

Green Lantern’s power ring could use a charge. The sleep-deprived mix master is barely audible over the phone but with good reason. He’s been bouncing from city to city moving the crowd as Nas’ DJ on the Jones Experience Tour. But if anything can perk him up it’s the prospect of the first African-American President of the United States.

“This is a historic time we live in,” says the New York native who produced the track “Black President” on Nas’ latest CD. “If I can indirectly have a hand it in that’s really crazy. He’s come a long way and fought for a whole lot of things his whole life and I’m just shocked and amazed that we’re at this point with it.”

Green Lantern was originally scheduled to make a trip to Washington D.C this past weekend to attend the Million DJ March, but scheduling with the tour made that impossible. However, he is still in support of the march’s mission.

“I support the idea,” he says. “Get some health benefits and organize to a point, hold people accountable. There’s strength in numbers.”

Green Lantern is also putting the finishing touches on a Barack Obama mixtape but has taken his time putting it out for obvious reasons. His friend Ludacris was lambasted in the press for calling Hillary Clinton a “bitch” in a pro-Obama mixtape song.

“The Republicans have their agenda which is to test [Barack] ‘That’s your homey, right? That’s your man?’ So he has to go ‘hold up.’ I think it would have been taken lighter if he was already in the office,” says Green Lantern. “Right now he’s under a lot of scrutiny to be the perfect person. But in hip-hop we use aggressive language. By saying stuff like that to a hip-hop audience they’re not flynching. But to larger society where everything is so proper they go ‘oh my God!’”

Nevertheless, Green has made the appropriate adjustments for his own collection of pro-Obama songs.

“I just wanted it to be something that he could stand behind all of the songs,” he says of the delay in making the tape. “I was getting verses from people and had to go back and say ‘yo, this is a little over the stop,’ so I was waiting for the revisions and a lot of them never came. I gotta keep it movin’. I don’t want to put anything out that he can’t be next to.”

Green also talked about the hurdles in rocking a show like Rock The Bells with a live band, as Nas has done at certain stops on the tour.

“I was just a little worried about the sound at the venue,” he shares. “Having all of those different acts and then a band, it’s so hard for a soundman to setup and get a sound check, that’s why it took so long. There was a big gap before we came on. Rock The Bells for the most part is two turntables and a mic. So when you have a bass player, keyboard and drums, all these different inputs have to be leveled before you start playing or else you’ll sound crazy. I was concerned with that but we pulled it off. We’ve been using the band sporadically. We did a show at Webster Hall in New York with the band it sounded better than at Jones Beach.”

After the tour Green Lantern will be promoting shows for the Grand Theft Auto soundtrack that he has produced, but you can check him every Monday night on his “Team Invasion” show on Sirius Satellite radio with host Sharon Divine.

Bloggin 4 Beats: The World is Yours Remix

“even my brain’s in handcuffs”..

So there I was playing word association again. Got this Nas acapella of “The World is Yours” and filter my itunes list for songs with the word “world” in it to do a remix. Nothing I had seemed to appeal so I went Amazon.com and bought a copy of The Stylistics “People Make The World Go ‘Round.” [Read more]

WHAT THE WHATNAUT?? RZA AND NAS CAN’T BE STOPPED

Déjà vu is nothing new in the world of hip-hop samples, but it’s still odd to hear them used so close to each other. On RZA’s Digi Snax his first single “You Can’t Stop Me Now” makes liberal use of a sample by The Whatnauts “Message From a Black Man.” The cut was also previously used by MF Doom and Mos Def on “Anti-Matter” and “Undeniable” respectively. But hip-hop wasn’t done with it as Salaam Remi has put his hands on it for “You Can’t Stop Us Now” from Nas’ Unititled CD dropping next week.

The Whatnauts were a trio from Baltimore made up of lead vocalist Billy Herndom, Garret Jones and Gerald Pinkney. They released two albums Introducing the Whatnaughts: (Stang 1970) and Whatnaughts on the Rocks: (Stang 1974). One of their best known songs was “I’ll Erase Your Pain” which reached number 14 on the R&B charts in 1971. According to The-breaks.com it was sampled by Kanye West for the bonus cut “Late” from Late Registration.

Nas and DJ Green Lantern Release N*gger Mixtape

That man Eskay over at Nahright.com doesn’t sleep. He posted this link of Nas and Green Lantern’s The N*gger Tape. It’s all one long MP3 but should be worth a listen. Cuts like “Black President” and “Hero” have been leaking for the past few days so I guess this will feed the wolves until the album drops. Download it here.

1. Intro
2. Gangsta Rap rmx.(Prod by Dj Greenlantern)
3. Cops Keep Firing (Prod. By Dj Greenlantern)
4. Hero (Prod by Polow Da Don)
5. Black President (Prod. By Dj Greenlantern)
6.Association (feat. and Prod. by Stic Man of Dead Prez)
7. Legendary (Mike Tyson)..(Prod by Salaam Remi)
8. Ghetto rmx feat. Joell Ortiz (Prod by Dj Greenlantern.
9. Seen it All (Green Mix)
10. Esco Let’s Go (Full Song).(Prod by Dj Khallil)
11. N.I.G.G.E.R. (Slave and Master). (Prod by Dj Toomp)
12 “Be a Nigger too” rmx feat. Dante Hawkins (Prod. by Dj Greenlantern)
13. Surviving the times (Original Cool and Dre Version)
14. Nas Timeline mixed by Statik Selektah (Nararated by Nas)
15. Outro feat. Richard Pryor

Polow Da Don produces new Nas single, “Hero”

Fresh off of Usher’s “Love In The Club” Polow Da Don scores the next single off of Nas’ upcoming CD, “Hero.” From the sounds of it Nas is trying to get some love up in the club his damn self. Though the lyrics continue to go against the grain with a revolutionary narrative this beat will have folks shaking their drunk asses before they realize what he’s talking about.

Bloggin 4 Beats: Project Mayhem

Opposites attract but sometimes for the wrong reasons. I was told by a trustworthy person that this beat was just too soft for the lyrics. When I started chopping Ronnie Laws’ “Stay Still(and Let Me Love You)” I didn’t imagine making an angry record. But I’m also pretty sure Da Beatminerz didn’t imagine Laws’ “Tidal Wave” would make a record like “Who Got The Props.” I blame it on the drums. This snare pattern sounded like an uzi going off and even though the song was full of flutes and other minor chords I rearranged them into something with way more energy, way more aggression. The chops sounded like glass shattering on the ground. Could this be an R&B record? Sure, but it’d be one really hard R&B record. [Read more]