let's talk about beats.....okay when I was coming up making beats under the late great Jdilla we kept things simple with only a few tools... scripture was our master piece. The main tools of choice was turntables ,mpc 3000, records , and sometimes the trusty sp 1200 which only had 13 seconds of sampling time .. You pulled that out only when you wanted those crunchy drums like I did on the Trinity album on "Disco"...most producers today flip beats on computer programs like fruity loops, reason and many others.. and now a days even the art of record digging isn't as sacred as it use to be with producers getting samples from blog sites and even itunes...don't get get me wrong I'm not mad at the new Millennium approach to beat making cause some of my favorite producers have made great music using these new tools.. Shit, six years ago I couldn't make beats on a plane but now the options are endless ... I feel a little nostalgic so I prefer to use a little of the old with the new ... So the question I got for y'all producers out there ..Some of you who are new to the process and other old heads... What are the new tricks of trade, and are you familar with these old school tools that I came up on....What's your choice??? -T3
usually means starting by getting buzz through an emcee battle, a mixtape, local radio show buzz or basically word-of-mouth interest.Then the next big opportunity is to do shows in your area and also start relationships with fans through the internet. This is a Digital age people, the Myspace age. Unlike when I came into the game. I mean I had to make sure I got my cassette tape in the right hands at the right time. Not quite from the 8-track age, but damn near. LOL! You know the story of how Slum came to be, right? Well, We got our tape in the hands Q-tip through Amp Fiddler, and that's how JDilla got on as a producer and started out with the Ummah. At that time, Tip wasn't really feelin the Slum Vibe, he was all about the beats. Then years later, like 4, we started making a name for ourselves but needed something to spur interest in the group on a national level. So we got inspired at the Detroit Hip-Hop Shop. Proof's group, 5Ela was in the store bragging about their new tape that was coming out, of which James Yancey aka J Dilla had produced all the tracks by the way. And, we felt like Damn, what's up with our tape? What are we doing. So, we decided that it was time to make our own album, better known as Fantastic Volume 1 . So, We rounded the gang up, slept in Jd's basement and finished a 22 track album with some of the greatest hip-hop beats of all time in a week. Classic. Then, we gave it to Q-tip and played ou stuff again and this time he loved it. Then that tape made rounds through the Roots crew, D'angelo, Common, and the rst is histrory. It's all about timing folks. They say Luck is where preparation and opportunity meet. That's what it takes to be successful in this biz. The next step is to decide what works for you, staying on the Underground level, which can be profitable with a lot of hustle. Or, making that crossover leap...Good Luck.Listen to this unreleased remix called "5Ela" it was Slum Village, 5ela and Frank featured on the song. Here's a little SV trivia. We were really lazy on our song titles some times or what we called just being "Cheap"...so the 5Ela song is that because we rapped with 5Ela. Then we got the Phat kat song on Vol.1, cuz we rapped with Phat Kat. We should of called Hold Tight, the Q-Tip song, but we started getting more creative on titles by Vol. 2.
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