DJ Premier, one of Hip Hop's greatest DJ's and producers!
Down The Street are guest posts by other bloggers, writers or anyone who has an interesting view on Hip Hop music or the culture as a whole; that could even be you if you post something significant in the comments, or even email me! — In the first post kicking off this brand new category, I have a long time friend and reader of LostMoniker.Com, Michael Telemaque, discussing his take on the role of the DJ in modern Hip Hop culture. Definitely not one to be a missed, and sincerely an excellent post by Michael. Also, be sure to leave comments and feedback!
The DJ Is King… Again?
By: Michael Telemaque
I’ma throw this premise out there: they say history and societal trends are cyclical, and in the early days of hip hop, the DJ was the star and the MC played more of a host role, and we both know how that evolution went and now we have the dynamic today of the MC as star and DJ/Producer as an after thought. In some cases DJ/Producers are considered down right replaceable, but I ask this: are we now coming full circle ?
With the desire for lyrical uniqueness either in delivery, cadence or complexity , rappers are now more archetypes or characters we can identify with than the more traditional versions of the original MC. Has the hip hop community slowly started a march towards marginalizing the MC and giving due to the musical muscle behind many acts? Its no coincidence that more rappers are doing collaborations with House Producers and with a euro pop sound finding way on many club records, that the fans now are starting to idolize the DJ much like they do in House Music.
They didn't find the Weezy jokes that funny... Workaholics I tell'ya!
Oh. Sorry about that interruption, but back to our regular posts! LETS GO!
Oh… and:
I know last time I preached that I wouldn’t do anything like this, but school took a toll on me. I have more free time than before and am working my ass off to deliver some crazy new articles! Sorry about that hiatus and I hope you guys enjoyed the april fools genius provided by site manager Astroblakk and myself. Now, enjoy the NEW shit (which will be posted five minute, above, after you’ve read this!). Bye.
Posted by LostMoniker on April 30th, 2011 :: Filed under Moniker's Minute
I hate making filler articles such as this one, but it’s been a slow couple of weeks! I know, I know… I should be keeping up! Butttttttttt… I’m busy with mid-terms and projects for school at the moment, so I’ve been taking a back seat to updating and posting! However, I AM working on a bunch of big articles and have a lot of other tutorials pending for later times, but in the meantime, be sure to check out all the Mobile-Minute posts and Under The Cover’s articles if you haven’t already! Otherwise, keep checking back; next week is when I’ll be rolling out more tutorials, more reviews and of course, more commentary! In the meantime, I’m listening to this new group H.I.S.D.’s album The Weakend, and definitely plan to have a review of that brilliant album sometime this month!
Sampling is a fundamental component in Hip-Hop; sampling is also one of the most controversial elements too. While in recent times producers are resorting to their own instrumentation to craft the sound of their production, sampling still remains as one of the most prominent ways to create beats.
Many people argue that sampling destroys the original intent of whatever has been sampled, and while that CAN be the case, in many circumstances it follows the pattern of a classical hip hop ideology: take something from a song and turn it into your own. Just as Kool Herc started by looping breaks, producers take samples from other songs and turn them into their own.
I know some of you awesome gentlemen (and women), have been viewing this Hip Hop blog (yeah I’ve been stalking you, whattttt’s up?) but you have not been commenting. Don’t be shy! I’m looking forward to hearing feedback, criticisms and just general comments that contribute to any of the articles here. For the readers who are commenting, that’s great! This post is not directed at you!
Keep being incredible everyone!
Also, a well deserved shout-out to AstroBlackk for keeping this site running! Thank you sir.
On my commute to College today, I look through my list of albums and decide to listen to one of my favorites that I hadn’t listened to in awhile… Illmatic. It got me to thinking, Nas’ Illmatic is to me, and many others, the archetypal perfect Hip Hop album. The flow of the music is brilliant and not once does the music become bland or boring. I can listen to any track on Illmatic and still enjoy it just as much as the first time I ever heard it. Genius.
Normally I dislike the standard album intro but Illmatic was different. The Genesis was like a thesis of everything brilliant in Hip Hop during the 90′s. The samples from Wild Style and Nas and AZ talking about their distaste of the radio is more than enough to send tingles down my spine. Following the brilliance of The Genesis is the first actual track, New York State of Mind, Nas rhymes poetically about his lifestyle yet keeps it on a street level.
So you may be sitting at your computer, eating your bag of chips and wiping off your keyboard from the last half hour or so ago of watching some films your mother would not approve of, asking yourself, “Why is Moniker saying, F&*% WMG?! They have never affected me in anyway, and so why be mad at them?”
Well my young internet-porn-minded sir (or possibly mam? haha… right), WMG seems to consistently – and I assume forcibly – delete classic Hip Hop videos because like the dirty snakes they are, they own the rights to the content and refuse to let other sirs enjoy the classic music videos.
If you haven’t noticed already, or if you even cared for that matter, videos I linked to from the gracious gentlemen who posted up the classic Hip Hop tracks on Youtube, are mostly taken down as a result of WMG. I was going to post up another video to the ever-so-brilliant “Sound Bwoy Burriel,” but not-surprisingly, WMG took it down.
" Madame Butterfly let me in your house of pleasure"
“This is it, whaaaat, Luchin pouring from the sky, lets get rich, what!” Camp Lo seems to not be recognized for their lyrical output. Sure they had brilliant production handled by Jay-Z’s early producer Ski, but the actual content of their lyricism seems to be overlooked for what it really is. Certainly people will state they loved the style of Camp Lo’s lyrics, but those same people probably did not delve past the the flow that delivered those lyrics.
What I am trying to get at regarding their lyricism is that it seems to be forgotten. Camp Lo is not regarded for the brilliance behind their stylization of words and seems to have been forgotten by a lot of the newschool and even old school listeners. The style they use on their first album, Uptown Saturday Night, is probably one of the freshest styles of rapping I have ever heard from absolutely any rap artist or group. I have never heard any artist twist as many classic references and classic slang’s to provide a narrative. Their single, Luchini, is a great example of how they used different movie references and outdated slang’s to describe their
LM’s Mobile Minute is an on-the-go column that discuss Hip Hop ideas and elements . However, these articles are not meant to be large essay style write-ups, but smaller bite-sized posts!
Painkillers. “Sometimes you miss the feeling, of a never ending headache and a spinning ceiling, the sob story of an alcoholic, praying on his knees to that porcelain toilet.” I remember the first time I heard Cannibal Ox’s Painkillers, and I remember not getting the lyrics at first but loving the style of production. Prior to Painkillers I had not heard of El-P’s work and did not know Hip Hop of this style, the spaced out production to be particular, existed.
