I’m on a beat LP kick lately and came across this on Bloggerhouse. After seeing the dope cover art around the net for a few weeks, I pulled the trigger and thought “what the hell.”
As the story apparently goes, these two producers live in Bed-Stuy (hey neighbors!) and sampled exclusively 70’s records from one of their enormous record collections. The result was this. I love the minimal added percussion, but the beats all carry a very infectious groove. To me, that means these were extremely well composed. Often times, if the drum beat goes too hard, it’s usually making up for something that isn’t there. That’s not to say I don’t love me some drums, but hey, you get where I’m going; I just love the way these beats groove all based on the way the samples were flipped.
Enjoy it! And donate to them if you feel so inclined.
I like cover songs, so long as the covering artist puts a personal flair on the original. If I wanted to listen to someone do the same thing as the original artist, I’d listen to the original artist. That’s why I was pretty happy to stumble across Aloe Blacc’s version of “Billie Jean.”
This all reaffirms my belief that the sign of a really well written song is if you can take it and sing it in any style and it still sounds good.
While arguably not as drastic, Metallica’s cover of Bob Seger’s “Turn the Page” fits this description. The same goes for The Fray’s cover of Kanye West’s “Heartless” (as well as all the other country singers I heard do covers of it).
So our song appears for like 3 seconds on the season 2 opener for AL BE BACK’s 1 Minute Show, on Creative Control. Don’t cover your ears or listen to this while traffic is going by, you might miss it. But it’s there, during the part where AL BE introduces his band. Click on the picture to check it out!
I graduated from Northeastern a little over a month ago, and moved down to Brooklyn the day after to begin the full time plunge into making music. And what better project to start on than our own (Black Hoodie Rap’s, that is).
Why buy the picture when you get the one that says PROOF all over it for free? (also, my cap didn't fit on my fat head, I wasn't breakin' it off to be cool, although I should have said that... too late)
Don’t get me wrong, we’ve been working on music pretty consistently since the release of For Rent, but about 2 weeks ago, Brandon and I made a pledge to do nothing but create for one month, with no thought of marketing, the business, politics, or what our next move is. Usually I’m not a fan of these “this and nothing else” approaches, because it’s just not realistic. It’s also because we run everything that is Black Hoodie Rap (no managers or anything like that).
However, this was one time I was willing to bend that rule. I had a few reasons for this, really:
What better way to become a better producer than to make, study, and listen to music all the time?
The last thing we should do is worry about the non-music side of Black Hoodie Rap because if our next release sucks, what’s there to market or promote?
I just finished 4 years in the realm of “higher education” and kept myself busy with an infinite amount of other things before Black Hoodie Rap, and that wasn’t working for me. This is what is most important to me, and I want to do it.
There’s another big thing too. For years I’ve known what I was trying to do with my life, and I did anything I could to set myself up for the moment I find myself in now: freedom (or unemployment as some may call it). Producing music is what I’m going to do. It’s what we’re going to do. This isn’t even close to getting started. It’s an exciting and scary time (if you’ve never found yourself in it).
See, the thing is, as you all know: life gets in the way sometimes. Sure, everyone talks a mean game, saying things like “I live and breathe _____ and I’m always locked in” and it’s true, they do. But they also have school, a job, kids, bills, and girlfriends (or boyfriends). And as much as I make music, there’s always been that part of me that worried I wasn’t going hard enough because I had to deal with things like school and moving. So for the first time in my life, I find myself with none of those worries. It’s only me, B, and the MPC (or now the Maschine….)
So why am I telling you all this?
Basically, we’ve been in that creative cave where we haven’t been paying attention to much else. People have been asking us if we’re okay, and the last thing we want to do is not show you guys that we have a pulse. We’re ALWAYS here, even if we ain’t Twittering or on here. But we’re going to make sure we remedy that, and really let you in on what’s going on in our world.
p.s.- What’d you all think of the Machine Head video? We’re starting to push it down new avenues that we haven’t really been to familiar with, and we appreciate your support through it all!
It’s only the beginning for this video, but we’d like to thank everyone involved thus far. You all know who you are. We have really high hopes for this, and we don’t even want to pretend to hide that. We’ve sat around this past year coming up with ways we’d like to see videos done, and we finally walked the walk and did it. From the narrative of the video itself to the story building video shorts, this is how we thought it should be deeeeeed.
We’ve got something to say and a lot of ways to say it. I hope you all enjoy it, and take the message to heart. We appreciate every single one of you who takes the time to watch this, because a great deal of work went into it. We’re also grateful for anyone who send this thing to. I mean, without one person seeing this, and sending it to their friend, we’d just be talking to ourselves.
I’ll let Brandon explain how we approached the video itself, since the video realm is kinda his thing:
When it comes to music videos, we are firm believers in placing story above all else. The characters within the story need to grow and change as the story progresses. So, with Machine Head we wanted to make sure we made this a story with compelling characters and an obvious character arc for Lo-fi, the protagonist of the video. Good stories normally have a three act structure and ours is no different. Act 1: Set-up, Act 2: Conflict, Act 3: Resolution, see if you can peep where each act begins. I swear we know what we’re doing!
Credits:
Jahmel Reynolds- Lo-fi
Terrance Young- August Vincent
James Jones- Body Guard
Edward Pages- Cinematographer
Brandon Dottin- Director
This is the 2nd part of The Eddie’s Stoop interview. August Vincent comments on the rumors that Lo-Fi, aka Machine Head, is writing for him. Eddie Pages is hilarious in this one. He really channeled his inner MTV VJ, as he sounds exactly like Sway when he drops the “Some of the controversy line.”
(real life note: Terrance really makes me hate and love August Vincent, “AV all day baby I’m only sideways in the frame….feel me.”)
Back story: August Vincent is the antagonist to Lo-Fi in the Machine Head video. (August Vincent is fictional if you couldn’t tell). He’s a satire.
In this video, August appears on some nobody blogger’s show called Eddie’s Stoop. We created the show Eddie’s Stoop to comment on bloggers who are much more concerned with their own image than the people they are interviewing. August premieres his new track called “Active Burden” off his album “The Day Before Tomorrow.”
Big thanks to Edward Pages for playing Eddie, and thanks to Terrance Young for playing August Vincent. Check out the conclusion of the interview tomorrow, after I edit it.
So, last night was the Machine Head premier and it was amazing! Thank you to everyone who came to check out, the culmination of over a month of hard work. Needless to say Machine Head is a video that we are extremely proud of and can’t wait to release. We will be releasing it on our blog sometime within the next week, but in the meantime we have some left over footage that we want you guys to take a look at. We treated Machine Head more like a short story than a music video. So, we have a couple of extra scenes that make appearances in the video but aren’t shown in their entirety. This one is a scene of Lo-Fi eating in a diner, I hope this gives you a greater sense of what Machine Head is all about and adds a little extra depth to your experience.
Another Short by the man Eddie Pages, staring Jahmel Reynolds and Brandon Dottin(ME). We filmed this one a little over a month ago. I like the way it came out Aka I like that Jahmel gets hit by a car. My only slight criticism would be the voices, if there were multiple people playing the voices, I think it could have been a lil better. But any who, Eddie also did the Break Short that we posted up last week and is filming the Machine Head Premier Party Tonight. So for more Eddie Pages check out his vimeo page.
We're two guys who take hip-hop and push it past how you understand it. A mic and an MPC is all we need to bring some grit to your ears. It's not polished or about what we have, it's Black Hoodie Rap.
