Last weeks sample source was:
Grant Green - We've Only Just Begun
generously donated by King E
Alright fuckers,
I'm working on the new site, if there are any of you that are talented web wise and want to help out, let me know. If you know anyone who is talented, let me know. A little something different this week. Not one, but two, yes two options to choose from. Also, only 15 cats per sample so, first come first served bitches. They are generously donated by MR. Mass over at Masscorporation so stop by and say "merci". The first is a track from an Italian film that has endless possibilities for flipage and the next one is Salt's "Hung Up" which some of you will recognize from Brain Freeze and for those of you that fuck with beats your world is open. I figure that to make it interesting, you can use what you want on the Hung Up track but you have to use the beat. Let me know what you guys think.
Just to clarify… Anyone can download the sample. I want everyone to download the sample. Test yourself. Try something different. What I’m limiting to 15 is the received beats. So after I’ve received 15 beats for any given sample, I’ll let you know on here that it’s full. If this is unclear or if you have any other questions let me know..
Enjoy.
Pace. .
And now for the beats...
He's Hers' Flip "The Truth"
Used: Goldwave, Fruity Loops & Black, Rock & Ron.
Primus Maximus' Flip "The Beginning Of What"
Used: FL Studio 7.0.0 , Adobe Audition 3.0
Arch Beatz' Flip "Intelligent Tete-a-Tete"
Used: FL Studio & Audition
Straight Out The Congo's Flip
Used: FL Studio & Audacity
DJ Cid's Flip "POSITIVE VIBRATIONS INSTRUMENTAL"
Used: Akai MPC 4000
PSY/OPSogist's Flip "1408 Atmospheric Mix"
Used: Reason & Ableton Live
Bace135's Flip "New Beginings"
Used: Audacity, Reason, ReCycle & a Midi Keyboard
Beat Banga's Flip "Gang Green"
Used: Fruity Loops, Sound Forge, & ReCycle
Beats By The Pound's Flip "Believe Me"
Used: Fruity Loops
Prince Will's Flip "A.D.D. Affliction"
Used: Acoustica mp3 mixer and FL Studio 4
Illa's Flip "Grant's Greenery"
Used: Stuff
King AdBeck's Flip "Lunar Eclipse"
Used: Acid 6.0
Treebeats' Flip "Golgo 13"
Used: Acid & Sound Forge
Notes: Again not finished but it's all for the good of the site.
Silence DoGood's Flip "I Had Only Just Begun"
Used: Ableton Live & Reason
RZR' Flip
Used: Cool Edit & Reason
B Logik's Flip "Sunshine"
Used: Acid 6
Scotty Nevers' Flip "Green Giant"
Used: FL 6 & Audition
Newstar Productionz' Flip "Fish Tank"
Used: Fruity Loops
Turkish's Flip
Used: Audition and FL Studio 6
Vintage's Flip "Just Begun"
Used: Fruityloops
Wallsauce's Flip "Beautiful Day"
Used: Stuff
3Am's Flip "Getting Green"
Used: Stuff
And now for our panels thoughts:
Treebeats' Thoughts:
I’m going to be on the panel just in case, in the rare occurrence of sucktitude, they “forget” to post. I also want to say that it’s a forgone conclusion that my beat was the best. What with the unfinished second half, a beat so papery thin it could be oragamied into a swan and lack of bass line, it’s pretty much a gimme. However, in the interest of fairness I will not consider it in this review.
Now, while this seems like an odd segue, a lot of you guys need some help with mixing shit down. One of the best things you can invest in is a shitty pair of speakers and once you’ve mixed everything down in your headphones with a huge dynamic range or your $300 studio monitors mix it again to those. If it sounds good on shitty speakers, it will probably sound good anywhere. Plus it’s cheap.
The sample this week was hard to flip without sounding like a horrible pile acid jazz aural vomit. I went through 2 incarnations before I didn’t finish the third. A lot of you flipped the same guitar part, I did too, but it took a special dopeness to make it fresh. A lot of the beats were in a similar level of dopeness because of this. This is where originality stands above.
Last thing before I give my top 10, I like chopping as much as the next guy. But when you beat sounds like a lot of chops rather than a cohesive track it gets distracting and irritating to listen to.
Here’s my top 10
1. Illa – Grants Greenery My favorite of the bunch. He tweaked this shit to the point of it not really sounding like Grant Green anymore and the bass line rolls along quite nice. I’d like to have sexy time to this song with a buxom woman with braids.
2. PSY/OPSogist – 1408 Atmospheric Mix Once again PSY took some acid and created some music. This isn’t a track I can hear anyone rhyming on. This isn’t a track I’d want to hear anyone rhyming on. He, once again, makes a complete composition that requires codeine and cough syrup to fully understand and enjoy. I mean that in the best way possible.
3. Vintage – Just Begun This dude is fucking nasty. The track is dope and he made some sort of complaint about tweaking the sample and it not sounding right, it sound pretty dope to me.
4. B Logik – Sunshine B comes through again with a dope track. He is case and point about chopping shit up with out it sounding all over the place. Consistently one of my favorite producers.
5. Prince Will – A.D.D Infliction Will uses a lot of layers in his work affectively. I like the way the bass line marches along on this joint. And, Most importantly, it has an intermission, which oddly is my favorite part of the track but it’s good overall.
Niceness.
6. Straight Out The Congo – Untitled Again, SOTC makes a good track, while this one borders that dangerous crevasse that tumbles into crappy muzak it remains on terra firma with nice work on the guitar.
7. He’s Hers – The Truth Besides a slew of myspace friends, my man has some pretty tight beats. Plus the fact that he has God and Black, Rock, and Ron in his arsenal (some may think they a synonymous) he makes well-constructed tracks
8. 3 am – Getting Green Pretty simple track but that works sometimes. This is one of those times. The guitar work is nice and repetitive without getting monotonous with subtle changes here and there.
9. Primus – The Beginning of What Nice guitar work and the bass line isn’t my favorite bass tone but sounds good enough. Plus I think any time something is put through a delay in a track it makes it better. That and preverb. There’s none of the letter here.
10. DJ Cid – Positive Vibrations Instrumental While I liked the track itself, I hated the guy talking in the back. It sounded like Perez Hilton dictating his final paper for Metaphysics 101. Dope track besides that though. Nice drum work.
Pace.
Andrew's Thoughts:
Eric's Thoughts:
Man, this week was hard as fuck!!! I thought I was gonna be overly critical this week cause I loved flipping this sample myself and the beat I made is one of my favorites I’ve ever made. But everyone really stepped up and crushed it this week. It was really hard picking just 10!!
And I before I get down on the list I wanna just remind everyone that I listen to these and actually pick them based on my feelings as a hip hop fan first, then once I narrow my 10 down, I look at them from a technical stand point.
10. Beats By The Pound, love the "nano-chops" homie!! using real fine chops like that is rarely done well, let alone THAT well. Also (to quote my main man Crash) your "high hat game is crazy".
9. DJ Cid, just a fly ass hip hop beat son. I liked how you weren't afraid to keep some of the original melody. Far to many cats seem to move away from the melody that caught their ear in the first place. Sometimes it’s refreshing to a little bit of the original melody shine through. Props.
8. B Logik, just a lovely flip man. Dope beat, nice drums, stepped up the bassline progressively over the weeks. I just dig the way you make beats homie
7. CONGO!!!! That melody you created is the shit holmes. You just make beats that I like to listen to man. You need to find some emcees and fast. Get out there homie. (you would have been much higher this week, but your bottom end was a little light, mad props anyways)
6. Scotty Nevers, to be honest I wasn't feeling this one at first. Then the second half came in and you won me over in a big way. The second half is mad nice man. Same as Congo though, your bottom end is a little weak. Dope shit though! Stick around man.
5. Vintage... What can I say? You do what you do and its always nice man. Period
4. Turkish, this beat is fly as shit man. It’s a layed back take on the drum and basslines that I’ve come to expect from you. I really wish there was a longer beat though. That break up at the end had me mad hype and then it just stopped. Daaaaamn!!! I want to hear this beat in its entirety.
3. Treebeats, love this joint man. The strongest beat I’ve heard from you yet. Dope chops, the break is cut up nicely, the panning work is real fresh to. All around dopeness.
1/2 tie....
Illa is my dude and this beat is a perfect example of why. Super chilled out, roll that shit, light that shit, smoke that shit beat! Your originality and your ear are really second to none. I be checkin for you a whole lot more than you think man. (that break in the middle is incredible by the way). Overall, nicest mixed/engineered track this week to.
He’s Hers - The Truth is just that... The truth. This is some Webster’s dictionary text book grassroots hip hop for hip hop's sake type of shit. This is the shit to me. Done the way I like to listen to it. The vocal samples are really fucking choice to man. Can't wait to hear more from this dude.
Again, everyone’s shit was real ill this week. Mad props to all. Fuck all those cock suckers that say hip hop is dead. It’s alive and well, its just underground with us, where it should be.
On that note, I’d like to take a minute to thank Treebeats for hooking this up. I really enjoy doing this (even though I’m mad late all the time. Responsibilities are a mofo man). Bottom line is this: on a weekly basis we all bear witness to the next generation great producers. When all the Pete Rocks, DJ Premiers, and DITCs are gone... We'll be standing there in their place. And in my humble opinion, that’s not bad thought.
Stay on your grind, be creative, and keep it timeless.
Peace,
Whenever I finally get around to hearing the beats, what I try to do is listen to the source material first, so at least I can try to pick out the song elements in th eflips that follow. This week, everyone took Grant Green's version of "It's Only Just Begun", which to me sounded like fucking muzak, so it shouldn't be that hard to turn it into something good, right?
If it were that easy, then I would have done it myself.
So, once again, much respect to the contributors. I didn't like every single beat presented to me, but everyone gets an "A" for participation. This time around, I didn't have a clear favorite, so this list is subjective: my number one beat is simply the one I liked the most at the moment I was writing my notes.
1. Prince Will - This beat rocks! Although I could have done without the vocal sample looping the word "intermission" over and over again.
2. DJ Cid - I liked the David Holmes-type feel , what with the dialogue almost running through the entire instrumental.
3. PSY/OPsogist - Is it cheating that he also used The Carpenters's version of "It's Only Just Begun"? Well played, sir.
4. Vintage - Probably the most accessible beat presented here for someone to actually rhyme to.
5. Beats By The Pound - Nickname aside (it conjures up images of the No Limit tank, which is not pleasing to me), this beat is enjoyable as shit.
6. Bace135 - Very interesting work. Sorry, that's all I got.
7. Straight Out The Congo - I picture this guy releasing an instrumental album in the vein of a DJ Shadow/RJD2 knockoff exclusively on HipHopSite.com and selling eighteen copies. No, that's actually a complement.
8. Illa - Reminiscent of early Pete Rock, before he discovered his hard-hitting drums and horns. Good, but a bit monotone: I kept waiting for the beat to switch up a little.
9. King AdBeck - I have to give credit where it is due: this beat sounds completely different from everyone else's flips.
10. Treebeats - Contains the best drums of all of the beats presented this week.
That's it, I'm fucking exhausted. Good luck next week.
1. PSy/OPSogist - PSY/OPS always has home team advantage from my perspective because he's from my section of the internet world wide web, so everyone else is basically a dirty foreigner to me. It pained me not to place him first for the past few weeks, but he's back on top.
2. Primus Maximus - I thought this was going to be another PSy/OPS - B Logik one two punch for me, but Primus Maximus snuck in there with a straight up menacing beat. Outside of Travis, no one else even ranked the dude which leads me to believe that they didn't get his beat or something. Seriously, WHATS WRONG WITH YOUR EARS GUYS???
3. B-Logik - At this point, this dude is like he New England Patriots of this dumb blog. Well, I guess more like the Colts. Always on top somewhere.
4. Prince Will - I'm glad to hear this guy leave the Myspace promo bullshit off of this track and just let it flow like a nicely held in stream of urine after a 5 hour road trip with no bathroom break.
5. Straight Out The Congo - Congo shows his sensitive side with this nice little breezy beat. It totally contrasts the blistering fucking cold that's right outside of my window as I type this.
6. DJ Cid - I don't know who this guy is, but the hippie public speaker vocal sample really pushes this one over the top for me. Dudes talking about vibes is always ridiculous.
7. Newstar Productionz - I like this because I don't even know if he used the grant Green sample. It's just a bunch of weird underwater sounds from Atlantis. Dude needs Namor to rip a verse on here.
8. Kind Adbeck - I like tracks when it's just like 9 thousand different drums and basses.
9. Wallsauce - Wallsauce wins for name of the week and also the beat that sounds most like something you would hear on a real rappers record.
10. Tree Beats - This is kind of like Congo's beat but more skittish. I always imagine Tree as a real jittery dude, so this makes sense.
I first heard this sample while at my boys house, half drunk last week. We played around with it (read: he played around with it, I just sat there and drank my Hurricane high gravity malt liquor and acted like Flavor Flav), and again, I thought there was some interesting pieces to sample but not a lot of variety to flip. He wasn't to happy with what he had to work with and I can understand why. Then I started playing this weeks submissions. Honestly, if I ever hear this song again, it'll be too fuckin' soon. I woke up this morning with this damn song in my head. Truth be told, about half of the beats pretty much all sounded the same. I had to go back and re listen to shit just to remember who did what. I haven't had to do that in the past weeks. I can't really blame it on the producers themselves, but man....this week was one of the toughest ones. That being said, there was thirteen STRONG tracks again. Three tracks I really wanted to fit in the top 10 but just couldn't, two of them didn't make it because they were just really too short to get a good feeling. Sorry, but I think we need more than 40 seconds to get a full grasp of stuff. It's like turning in a short loop and calling it good. Like Pamela Anderson on a boat, we just need more to get a good feeling. These top ones that made it just added more to the beat. They tweaked it differently, or added some extra spice to it. They stood out is what I'm trying to say. There was also a couple that made it that did the same as the rest, but they just did it better. Overall, while I still would rather never hear this song again, the attempts were good.
1. B Logik - I'm going to suggest to our faithful leader that maybe next week he sends the beats as mere numbers instead of attaching names. I'm not saying the names are corrupting my thought logic, but I'm starting to have certain artists that I like and I don't want that to influence anything. Even so, B Logik did it again. This shit was just so silky smooth. I just thought it all just flowed together, the little bell shit, the guitar loop part, it all just fit like a big jigzaw puzzle that had soft silky satin corners.
2. He's Hers - See what I'm saying about the names? I picked dude first last week as did everyone else. This week he is right there again. But in my book this cat deserves it. Again, he flipped just tad differently. The same elements were there, but he just did it differently. A nice tight package that just had it all for me.
3. Illa - A new cat to the competition and a welcomed new comer. This was smooth as well, but a different kind of smooth than B Logik's. I'm not a producer so I'm not going to know and use all the technical terms, but I dug the feel and sound of this. I can definitely see someone spitting over this. It's a rhyming beat compared to "song" beat. If you feel where I'm coming from. Great first time effort.
4. PSY/OpSogist - I dug this a lot. Looking back on it, I could almost see this being right up there in first or second. I looooooved the opening part after the 21 second market. I just thought that was a great interpretation of the sample. This was probably the beat with the best done creativity. I'm a firm believer in just because something is different doesn't mean it's necessarily mean it's good (Danger Doom album, Deltron 3000, most of Madlib's stuff for example), but dude pulled it off excellently. Another producer I'm starting to watch.
5. Straight Out The Congo - Another beautiful beat, and an example of just how strong the top 10 was. This beat could have easily been first or second and if someone votes that way, I won't argue with them. Congo flipped it in a different way as well. It's on some smooth shit as well, which I guess is about the only way you can tweak the beat on this.
6. Primus Maximus - Dude interpreted this totally different than anyone else, which gets extra brownie points in my book. I also really dug the g-funk sounding bassline. I liked the chamber echo sounds he used as well, the simple string guitar sample. I just really liked everything about this, but not so much that it moved up real high. Hard to explain, but still a damn good beat.
7. Mike Healy - The first time I heard this one I was doing cartwheels over it. Then the next four or five times, it kind of got less exciting. I liked the sounds and how he flipped it, but there is just something lacking there. Again, I'm not a producer, so I'm not totally sure what its lacking. None the less, despite my bitching, I liked it enough to be in the top 10.
8. Wallsauce - I want to hear someone rhyme of this, cause this is one of those beats that, while its great on its own, I think it'd sound even better with an accomplished rhyme layer on the top of it (uhhh, yeah). I love the strings, I'm big on strings anyway, but what he did with them was excellent. The little horn thing was nice touch as well.
9. Treebeats - I wanted to leave him off the top 10 last week just for calling me a douche bag last week, but ninth was as far as I could let him slip. Tree has lots of little things going on in his beats and I'm a sucker for that. It's busy, but not too busy that it sounds like a bunch of gargled noises. But he did use that part of the sample that I really would rather shoot myself in the head than ever hear again.
10. tie DJ Cid & 3am - These two dudes were pretty close what ever one else did that didn't make the top 10, but they just did it better. They all used that damn guitar sample that everyone else used at nausea, but I just dug their attempts more. I also liked the little vocal sample thing that Cid used...it just made it funny. 3am also sounded like everyone else from here on out (minus the two 40 second attempts that probably would have made it if I had more to judge) but it was done well.
Tune in next week when we use:
Stelvio Cipriani - Cani Arrabbiati (Opening Title)
Salt - Hung Up
Generously donated by Mr. Mass
Go grab it and make it def and fresh.
Now it's your turn. Vote!!! Make a comment about what you liked or didn't like. Make you're 1's and 0's heard!
