Black Milk - Demo Beats 2012

Black Milk, a producer/rapper as well as drummer/percussionist, who appears on the cover of his landmark album Popular Demand with an MPC tucked under his arm, plays the 'instrument' live and in the studio better than most any human being (Pete Rock's up there too).  Which is part of what makes Demo Beats 2012- a recently dropped teaser of his current output so fascinating.  This future-forward material veers out into some new bracing territory (sounding at times unabashedly similar to even Dilla's Donuts with it's style of constant revolutions of sound) that suggests a much broader sonic palette and production environment.  Where his last full length release Album Of The Year was definitive for how he captured the live sounds of instrumentalists Daru Jones (drums), AB (keys) and bassist Tim Shellabarger (not as much for his personal lyrics of the crushing year he had marked by loss) here we see a man tossing off, literally, a series of tossed off beats (one of 400 produced in the last year he'd rather hold onto for now) that echoes at points his deep crates neo-soul lineage while pointing to something else entirely.

Danny Brown - Greatest Rapper Ever (lyrics)

My homey a magician with a Tec
make your chain disappear
and reappear on his neck
I ain't trickin' with your hoes
But shit don't ask 'em
only thing I give a bitch a fuckin' orgasm
I throw you in the river
hands tied tight
watch your ass drown
feeling In The Air Tonight
I'm spittin' that dope shit
smokin' on regulars
ringin' sixteens like internet jail predators
rockin' that ten beat but I stay dolo
you wearin' Polo
who are you Young Dro?

I am fifth floor at the Bellagio
Vegas bitches that's resembling Rosario
Dawson awesome hit the head Mario
Started on my tongue now she's squirtin' up the sheets
She gave me that Becky
I gave her that Yoshi
The only time you niggers touch keys is Motif
Go and sell a beat
You never sold a rock
Still be sittin' on the couch if I was on the Koch
Coulda signed to the Roc
Na I'm signed to the streets
The D the only thing that's brothers and for me
Feelin' like Big Meech
when we bought to cook up
But not the one from B.M.F or the one from Lynwood

And ain't a nigga I know
Three years straight, three dollar blow
Good in the hood anywhere I go I'm great
Nigga hit me with a hundred cause of the look on my face
Momma I'm honoured to be your son
Cause that's the second stab and so and not rip a single one
Used to be in a rush to finish off my sack
I was so thirsty dog sold a pregnant bitch crack
Let her pay me extra smoke it in the back
Then she came back titties all smackin' herself
on the back
Talkin' 'bout somethin' crawlin' on her
Lookin' like the world fallin' on her
And I pushed it
You wrapped the foots of the bitches I mushed
Boogie ass Cutlass 3D blowing Kush

Nerd got her shook
Started reading when the jerk through the fucking book
But the block was off the hook
Sayin' fuck class
Off them same pills that had Carlton dancin' fast
Young buck look not a grown up not about them same pills
listening to Donuts
I rap like I bet my life cause in all actuality nigga I did
You rap like you used to hit the pipe
naw nigga that ain't crack that's crackhead shit
Rep that shit
We don't tell a bitch
You ain't break a brick you ain't seein' this dick
You trick on a bitch
Dog you ain't rich take a bitch to the movies
Take her to the crib

You seein' Brown nope never
'Bout to the live the title of the Greatest Rapper Ever
It don't get no better
It don't get no better

Danny Brown - Greatest Rapper Ever

J Dilla/ Jay Dee Mythology

A popular clothing company has hatched together some thoughtful interviews from a handful of operators that worked with or became aware of the growing body of work of Jay Dee's later J Dilla.  The mythology surrounding the man born James Yancey is so substantial post-mortem it's helpful to get a relative chronological run through of his career and the level of regional and international awareness around him in respective creative periods.  This particular documentary scans over his emergence as a producer of beat tapes and then member of Slum Village with the release of their album Fan-Tas-Tic (Vol. 1).

Where it particularly succeeds is in the thoughtful if at times ponderous (with for instance Stones Throw label founder Peanut Butter Wolf) reflections on how players first encountered Jay Dee's material and how the mythology grew rightly around him.  But that mythology didn't spring fully formed and armoured like Athena from the mind of Zeus- it built gradually and then with his death precipitously.  In the oral culture of hip hop fandom various accounts of Dilla's career are told and the nuances lean towards the story teller's vantage.  The 'truth' seems to be that in reality Dilla's frisson of greatness was vaguely and fairly narrowly felt by other hip hop producers and performers in his earliest incarnation as a producer. This particular documentary focuses, and sheds broad light,  in its second part on the nature of his (late-life of a young man) creative partnership with Madlib which would result in their mutual landmark Champion of Sound.  Likewise it places well his transit on the well travelled musical highway from Detroit to Los Angeles and his reception in the underground scene there. 

This particular doc, perhaps owing to the sponsor and also reasons of artisitic license, leaves aside for others the height of his mid-90's popularity as a producer qua producer for artists including: Pharcyde, Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, Janet Jackson and De La Soul.  There is scant if any mention of his solo album Welcome 2 Detroit, and Ruff Draft is equally skated past.  Nor is his so-called championing or definitive 'neo-soul revival' sound, and perhaps fairly so as these are critical terms that suit writers rather than listeners after the fact.  For these considered oversights the weary tale lands heavily in it's third part on Yancey's dogged work, even while in the hospital wrapped in his failing mortal coil where he withered from complications of lupus and a blood disorder thrombocystosis, and completion of Donuts (which Peanut Butter Wolf attributed to a stream of beat tapes with junk food titles like Pizzaman).  Thoughtful commentary from DJ Houseshoes, Frank Nitty and in particular Donuts engineer Dave Cooley illuminates the central pillars of his mythology being genius, prodigious output, emotional depth and technical audacity.  In the truest sense of cyphers and illuminati implication is cast clearly that Yancey new Donuts would be his gravemarker in the century of sound.  Etched into its surfaces references both lyrical and in the original source material to Death's shuffling stride.   The sound a ride cymbal makes well after it's been struck.