Hello:
Before I write anything or go any further I would like to thank people whom I feel have been a positive influence in what I do from way back till resent both in my life and in my music, from my family to the greatest musicians that inspire me. I am grateful for all of you as you played a large part of inspiration in my life. It has to be my family, the blaq soul academy, vice de 13th, kwanele makhoba, T.I.A Records, Thulane Ngwenya, Nhlakanipho Dlamini, Jabo-o-Darkie, Storyville Records, RealFangster, Raasik, Dj Black Knight, Dj Medicine, Dj Zakes, Landmarq, the federations, mello music group, Madlib and stonesthrow records, next move, great minds think alike, tree skulls, Alkeida, emdee, siy ashezi, chuck d, deep Soweto, bopha, computer, mbuso zulu, bongane Hampton, dj nok, mambila ‘dice’ mageza, breeze yoko, thobile mbatha mthembu, lipid, danger elektronz, monde, hempza mawawa, Soweto apparel, gohan, bio mechanic, dungeon shack, splash jam, black Sunday, nhlakanipho magagula, vuyisile aka mjivan’, chippa m, collector’s treasury, maestro and Emprah soul, unfamiliar systems, peyge 1, mangaliso mofokeng, kineilwe mofokeng, 9th wonder, pete rock, the late j dilla, kev brown, oddisse, DTMD, eloquent, Freddie Joachim, mello music group, Mac-p, Nyambz, thirteen, gerry arsenic music, percy zvumoya, ninja tunes, fikile mhlongo, naledi mashiane, kgomotso makhaye, melusi mnyengeza, dj blaq, gilles Peterson, the legendary Isaac Hayes and everyone who is doing soulful relevant music, ya’ll inspire me a lot. Crate digger music. Kick and snare society.
The music is me doing what I feel and just being myself, it’s all that I know and I’ve known since the age of I think 9 years…. I respect and honor the fact that I can take a record, chop it and create a new version of a song, you know, it is part of my soul and being, my contribution and understanding, and that I achieve by helping out cats, cats who want to rap or rhyme, I sit them down and talk to them first, freestyle with them, show them the variety of this sphere we call hip hop, it is in an expressional form that I know, I won’t tell you what 9th wonder knows or what Mr. C knows, they know hip hop in an angle that they understand too reason why their contribution is more valuable that mine is, hip hop built this confidence in me, it created a space of thinking, learning and growing through the music, through the grammar, the behavior, all those important things you learn in life I learnt in hip hop meaning to me hip hop is my life, yeah some will argue that I am being stereo typed as a producer by not involving myself in different genres, yeah that’s cool I am good with the inspiration and influences from other genres but then hip hop spoke to me you know, most people know that I grew up just collecting music, house music, rap, and amongst those genres, I got moved by soul, I found myself traveling through sentence hemispheres you know, listening to rhythms and rhymes, I related in a bigger way and that’s me, that’s my inspiration you know and I am lucky to be surrounded by good people how are like minded, people like fangster who always reminds me of how good hip hop should sound like, he digitally digs a lot and that helps me too on a certain way coz he shares a lot of music with me you know and that creates that hunger to go produce you know, that’s hip hop for me, eternal random inspiration, working with what you feel with your soul, going with what is right for you, as we know that like everything else, hip hop also goes through phases..i mean you can identify an emcee or a hip hop head with the error they grew up on in hip hop you know, like for an example, if I can hang with Mr. C I would tell that he grew up in the boombap error because he studied that well and masters it and he is fluent in it, you listen to last days fam and you sense the street/bit of boombap in them, the rhyme delivery, the cleanliness in the rhymes, the messages and you listen to Aq and Thirteen, producers like Nyambz, you can tell that the dudes grew up in jazz, mellow sounds you know and the funny thing about me is I had to find myself in all those types of phases you know as I related in all of them, I grew up in hip hop with mob deep and wu tang clan you know and I related to soulful hip hop sounds, my sampling is more soulful but then I maintain the old school drum parten, like to me simplicity is key, that’s what one will pick up from me, having a conversation with me I don’t know but I always tell cats to be motivated and be themselves, know how to rhyme, know how to deliver, have reason and understanding, educate through your music, I mean c’mon hip hop is not ours, it’s god’s gift to a certain percentage of a gifted few to excel in the whole community as we also find those who enjoy listening, consuming, those who enjoy hip hop shows, deejays, graffiti artists, a whole lot, so grew to respect the whole thing, it is me and I am part of the tree that grows in hip hop, I contribute through production and it’s an honor to write this document as it is the only thing I know and respect, it is the only thing I am learning everyday how to master and be the silent best. There are a lot of writers, producers and deejays out there but what makes us all different is how we think and project our visions towards the sphere of hip hop. There is no other way but to make it.
Hip Hop
Hip hop as a genre and it is vast in its form of creativity, it is what you make out of it, and to some of us it is a journey we’ve known all our lives...Lol. There are steps I feel like we need to take as hip hop heads, the knowledge and education of what we call hip hop, its diverse form, what this really means. Yes at the end of the day it is the choice of one who is recording on how to go about doing their music, or it can be the producer but then again it can be me as a listener or consumer on how they want their hip hop to be like or to sound like, but there is a certain order of how to do things in a proper way. Let’s be simple and honest, in hip hop there are certain basic things we need to learn, as an emcee, producer, listener, collector, audience or disc jockey, 1.Practice [as that makes one perfect in their chosen art field], 2.Skills [mostly applied on emcee’s, deejays, graffiti artists, producer and also the listener as listening is said to be also a skill], 3. Good writing skills [in poetry or lyricism] 4. At least know how to Freestyle [I believe that a freestyle can help unlock certain hemispheres in your brains to help you in constructing good material], Then there are certain significant things like what’s a Mixtape, what is an e.p, what’s an LP, what is to emcee, the history, what is rhyming, rapping, 16bars, sampling, production, recording, the deejay, the hip hop seminars-, the underground, mainstream, things like that I believe we need to know as a hip hop community, the elements of this sphere we call hip hop, as it comes in many dimension and directions and different times, it is not about when you fell in love with it or how much knowledge or punch lines you drop in your rhymes, or the swagger you rock or anything else. To me it’s simple and plain, it’s all about your vision and understanding and expressing yourself.
So for this issue I decided not to review cd’s but to try explaining the definitions of the abbreviated words [e.p, l.p] and Mixtape in a quicker view and talk more on the topics of writing a track, formulating your bars, what is a bar, sampling, deejaying, doing shows, listening, understanding the emcee or the producer, rhyming and rapping, reviews, magazines, the whole art form and that will be achieved by us taking it step by step for every issue of the sapocketbook. I will continue my conversation about hip hop as an umbrella of self expression. so I hope you will enjoy this expedition of hip hop with me as I write in a way I understand it and in a manner of an open mind, the hip hop document is written in a simple way and I stand to be corrected yet someone might say I wrote from my own opinion and that is also correct, all in all let’s just enjoy the music. And please note that I am not trying to change you into being what I think hip hop is, I am just expressing my own views on this sphere we call hip hop.
Mix Tape. E.P and L.P
my first discussion is “what is a mix tape, e.p and l.p”
First a Mixtape for me is something that you randomly record, well prepared though, you then have a deejay to mix it for you in a form of scratches, turntables type of set up, using various instrumentals and just random verses or verses an emcee wrote or freestyles, it is that one cd you give out for free, free downloads and just largely based on promotion purposes. Then the emcee will record what I call or we call an e.p(entrance project), this is where you fully introduce yourself as an emcee or artist, you don’t give out much also here “but” mostly the cd is a studio recording with instrumentals produced for you, in other words you will be using you own instrumentals*at least you do six or 8 or up to 16 tracks but these day it depends on the artist on how many joints he wants to give you*, then after doing that, a few Mixtapes for promotions and also recording an e.p which you sell to the people, the artist now gets in studio to record their album, a LP, long play, a full length cd which is then for me the artist works in full creativity, well placed, recorded on point with quality invested in the LP.
to be continued.....
History of emceeing
Rhyming and rapping
16 bars
Sampling/production
Jazz/soul funk on how they inspired hip hop in production
Software’s
Deejay
Hip hop seminars’
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