I can’t remember the last time I put out a beat, I have to say it’s been a while. I’m sort of going through a creative block on all fronts. I can’t make music, I can’t work on my EP and I’m not able to complete other little projects that I have on the go. I started wondering what could cause a creative block. I mean think about it, let’s just say for arguments sake that there is a person that cranks out ideas like mad? Some ideas may not work out whereas others do, but what if you can’t come up with anything? You’re whole creative process stifled because your brain isn’t working or you think your brain isn’t working. I tend to think that but then I’m always reminded that if my brain wasn’t working I’d be dead (way to be a smartass). So then, why do I suffer from creative block? I’m able to process other thoughts that are obviously not creative at all but I still haven’t been able to ascertain why I’m in such a rut beat wise. I’m able to come up with wicked ideas for song ideas but when it comes to making a beat it just seems that there’s more to it that I’m just not able to comprehend. The last beat that I made was a while ago; I’m talking December 2008. I’ve been working on other stuff but nothing good enough to showcase because I don’t feel that sense of completion. When I worked on those other beats I could feel to myself that the beat was done, but I’m trying a lot of new things and trying to mix it in with some of the old tricks that I learned along the way. I don’t have a year under my belt yet but I think that I’m more suited for just rhyming. I mean I don’t think I can make a quality beat anymore. This shit is infuriating.

The only thing that I can do to make things work out for me is to keep working and hopefully if I put enough time and effort into my beats as I do with my lyrics I could be putting together projects in no time. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m aiming to have my lyrical abilities and my beat making abilities work hand in hand. As it stands right now my lyrics are a lot better than my beats are. I know that this won’t be attainable overnight but I feel as if I have to try in order to prove to myself that making beats is worth pursuing and I feel it is or else I wouldn’t be doing this. There are a lot of things that influence me when I make music and I have to say as of late that I’ve been listening to a lot of non hip hop trying to get myself some variety in some of my beats. The other day I was chillin’ with the Hussdiesel and he heard some of my works in progress. He told me that a tight drumbeat basically makes your entire song. And I agree with that, it’s hard to make a beat but when you have the right drum line to go along with it you can’t go wrong at all. I have to say that the nine beats that I have made so far have pretty good drum lines and they’re some pretty tight tracks that I can bob my head to. At the same time I have been doing a lot of research on different synths trying to improve my skills. Also when I make beats it doesn’t hurt to have a few samples in there too. I think that’s why I like a lot of J.Dilla because he takes a sample and flips it to make something so amazing and different and by the way that he flips these samples makes him so versatile with his music, plus he was an underrated Emcee. In the last year I have had the privilege of listening to J.Dilla and at first I was only listening to his instrumentals, which are hot to this day. But when I heard the dude kill the mic I was like holy shit, I didn’t know he was this good. I listened to his album Welcome to Detroit and his lyrics are friggin’ tight. Plus there are a lot of Emcees that I listen to that have amazing lyrical talents such as Talib Kweli, Mos Def, The Roots, Sean Price, J.Dilla Obviously, Wu Tang, Mad lib, K-OS, and there’s so much more but I can’t think of any others at this point in time.

The reason for writing this post is just to let people know first off, shit is slow right now and I’m looking to find a way to speed things up. But I think that may be my problem. The fact that I want to complete something so bad is because honestly I feel like I’ve gone through life without really accomplishing anything and with me aiming to keep my skills up so that I can be on the same level as other music producers or be on the same page as my producer who is helping pump out my EP. I guess the bottom line is, I feel like I’m slowing everyone down with my lack of knowledge not being able to contribute as much as everyone else is. That’s why I feel like I’m slowing down Kawlinz as well because of the lack of knowledge. He has fifteen plus years under his belt in making music. The thing is that for my EP I have the songs written and ready to record and I have all the necessary things that I need to record but I just can’t do it because I feel like I can do something more than what I’m doing but I’m not sure what to do. Does that make sense people? So I’m thinking to myself to just record the vocals and hopefully the ideas for the EP will come to me. It’s more than just recording your vocals and mastering them and doing all the necessary things to make your track the best that you can make it; it’s also the setup, the way that the songs are arranged and how one track can coincide with another. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’m trying to make my EP as smooth and unique as possible, which is easier said than done. Anyway, I’ leave it at that for now, I could go on and on about how I’m not feeling creative but then people wouldn’t want to hear my EP and that’s the last thing I want to happen. So with that being said I’m going to try and get back into the thick of things and get this EP out of the way and get back to working with Kawlinz on the NKC album. This shit needs to get done and released. Peace.

Quite a few months ago I posted about being faith-free, and I’d written the first verse, probably in a matter of 20 minutes. My second verse for the song, however, took a lot longer to write. I didn’t have a cohesive message to this verse, every once in a while I’d just pick away at the verse, writing the odd line or concept. A couple of weeks ago, I found a common theme in most of the pieces so I ran with it. The premise of the verse is mostly about the Euthyphro dilemma, which asks, in more modern English “Are ideas moral because they’re commanded by God, or are ideas moral because of God’s reasoning?”

… Laws we abide by, decided by chance
A guide for mankind, constructed by fiat
Or does he put thought behind each selection // a
Design of perfection, we’d be foolish to reject it

Both hype and I have decided that this track will be on The Demo Tape, it’s a very important track to both of us. We’re going to review the track listing once again and see if there are any changes to be made. For example, if you check out our track list, song 14 is listed as “Feet, Life, and Munchies”, but we’ve opted to take this song of, just because it’s no where near as good as most of the other stuff we have to offer. We’ll probably release it for free as a B-Side or something in the future, after everything with the album is completed.

Nearing the completion of two beats right now, both being songs that we’ve done a long time ago, I’d just never got down to getting the beats past their skeletons. Since in both cases the chorus wasnt really fleshed out at all, the choruses that both Hype and I wrote no longer go with the songs we’d written them to. In retrospect, both choruses did need some upgrading anyways, so why not just make new ones?

Usually, when I’m writing, I don’t like to change things once they’ve been written. I’m not sure if it’s an unusual habit, but in general, I only rewrite something if I need to change the flow or the amount syllables, and the actual content rarely ever changes. These two songs are going to need a make over. Murderous Intent has a chorus which I wrote, and while I might salvage a part of it, but the music for this section is a lot “bouncier”. I’ll probably rewrite it as something sarcastic rather than morbid, but then again, it all depends on how the rest of the song turns out and how everything sounds in context.

Masheek, however, has the opposite task ahead of him. The chorus section of Dark Words, Dark Times now has way more punch and bang to it, so I’ve gotta get Hype to swing hard on this one. I’m quite proud of the changes I’ve made to both songs instrumentally, now we’ll see if we can work both of these songs and make some fire.

what up peeps, first post on this joint- or any type of blog for that matter. watch me fuck it up >.>
lately I’ve been thinking about getting back into beat making again.. after my halfway attempt bout 8 years ago lmao. anyhow, things have been progressing nicely on that end, better than its ever been imo.
I’m little hyped about this right now as i feel like I’ve hit a ’sweet spot’ in terms of work flow, not necessarily sound but since I’ve made that little change to how i create i feel that improved as well.
enough talk though, I’m going to up load a joint i just did - let y’all see for yourselves.
btw i beez a sample heavy producer hehe.

whoever listens to this, speak on it. lemme know if its hot garbage or bumpin’ in your ipod worthy.

FEEL IT!!

in case your curious, here is the original clip that i sampled from. apparently its Swedish reggae.. go figure

Sample

back to the lab, Peace.

Fuck yeah, I’ve got my laptop back which means I can start making music again.

Other than that, Hype and I have written another track, which won’t be going in The Demo Tape, it’ll probably be reserved for the next album. I know, writing songs for a 2nd album before the first album isn’t even half recorded yet. What can I say? We needed an outlet for our creative minds, so we wrote a next track, it’s called “When My Mind Wanders”.

It’s quite experimental in the way we laid out the track, and it’s very free-form in structure. Very rarely do I jump from thought to thought the way I’ve done in this song, let alone in the middle of a line, but I’m quite pleased in the way that it came out. It’s definitely not the way I’d approach a song over and over, but for this song, it just felt really good to let the ideas flow without being afraid that the idea isn’t concrete in it’s meaning.

Hallucination’s imagination is in unconsciousness
Expand to infinity, looping in its thoughtlessness
These lies in your eyes are only delusions //
At ease, — guiding the mind to conclusions //

So Hype and I are probably going to abandon “Rhyme So Tight” for now, it’s probably not going on The Demo Tape, but on Friday night we had a writing session and we wrote a verse each, that turned out pretty good. Our faith, or lack of faith to be more accurate, was our topic of choice. It’s been coming up a lot more in my discussions recently, so I decided I had to write something about my views of the world.

…Stick to what’s real, they make up fantasies // A
Romantic view of the world, it’s so sad to see //
People get bitten by these leeches and liars
Some bend over to every preacher’s desire

I think it’s going to have a very stop and go type flow to it, almost mechanical, and I also have a few ideas for a beat that have been rolling around inside my head. I also have a pretty good idea which direction it’s going to go in. We’re probably going to do two verses each, but I’m not sure how it going to affect our track list, or the order, but I think it’s definitely going on the album. Anyways, my break at work is almost over, so I’m saving the post, publishing it, spelling mistakes and all. No firefox to spellcheck for me.

I think it mostly started with the troubles that I’d been having with my computer. When Hype and I would try to record, a glitch in the machine would happen once in a while. I thought I’d solved it, but then it came back and I realized that I didn’t know what the cause was. The my graphics card/mobo combo decided to give out (I won’t place blame, even though I don’t think his dog reads my blog). Getting that sent off and back took a while, and when I got the laptop back, I’d rather play Team Fortress 2 with it than create music, mix, or do anything productive.

I find that it happens to me a lot, actually. It happened with jiu-jitsu and MMA training. I find that I get “good enough” at something, and it becomes boring. No longer fun, I’d say it becomes about as exciting as washing dishes. I find that my music creation process goes through cycles of sorts. I get really amped about it (usually due to a new toy, a new way or working) and then desire slowly fades away. Realizing that this is a recipe for failure, I can’t allow myself to fall into that rut. I know I’m capable of doing great things with my music, and this time I’ve got a friend that’s relying on me, so I can’t allow myself to fall victim the the lethargy.

Oddly, these thoughts coincide with a great piece of inspiration. A few days ago, I heard Peter Angelo’s song “Show Me The Exit” (right click and “save link as” to download), which I’ve now linked to since he’s put up the final final mix. I can’t believe someone I that know personally could make such an outstanding track. I’ve told him already, but I think the song is probably going to end up in my top three tracks to listen to — ever.

So the other night, when I came home from work at 2 in the morning, I turned on Reason instead of TF2, and I’d realized something. Part of why I think that I get into a rut, is because I approach composing a song in nearly the same way every time. My goal every time is to create a final product, or at least work toward it. It makes sense, because I want to make songs. But, the reason I initially want to make songs is because I find it fun. If I no longer find it fun, then making a song in a manner that I don’t find to be fun is pointless. So, my new approach to making music is to have fun, and if I get a song out of the process, then the song is just a fortunate event of that fun. It may take longer, but I’m going to be happier in the process.

Instead of working on a song when I booted up reason, I made a very simple synth patch, pressed record, and jammed on my MIDI keyboard controller for about half an hour. I’m not that great of a keyboardist, but who cares? I get to nail three birds with one stone this way. I can learn better techniques on the keys, get some material for music, and now I’m finally having fun again.

I’m a hypocrite. I’ve recently been made aware of this, and the only option that I can stand by is to change the actions that lead me to being a hypocrite. It’s something that I don’t tolerate it from anyone else, so obviously it’s something I won’t tolerate about myself.

The gist of the story is that I wrote a few lines in a song to insult Hype. I wasn’t thinking and I wanted to call Hype the most offensive word I could imagine, so here are the three lines that I started the verse with:

Yo you can’t touch me, getcha fingers away faggot // Get
Back in the closet and dress up in drag with –
All your fuckin homo friend’s setting up abnormal trends…

Yeah, it’s pretty offensive, but not in the way that I intended it to be. I intended it to be offensive in the “using harsh language” sense. The way it actually comes off is that I’m a gay hater. For me to actually use this as an insult, one would probably assume that I have something against being gay. Since I don’t have anything against gay people, I can’t stand behind my using of the word “faggot” as an insult. I also can’t believe that someone actually had to point his out to me.

So yeah, we have a song that will either not make the cut for the album, or will need to be reworked to be put on the album. In it’s current state, it’s definitely not going on. If we decide on reworking the song, we’ll definitely work on making it offensive, but only in the way that we intend it to be, nothing inadvertent.

I have a few news items to post.

First, we’ve finally come up with a name for another one of our parters in rhyme. Well, when I say we, I mean he came up with it himself. We identify him by the short form of his last name, Nate. So he came up with a great pun in Resin Nate. As soon as he said it, we knew it was going to stick.

We’ve written 4 more tracks, with the following titles:

• Feet, Life and Munchies
• Wheels of Fate
• This Is Total Take Your Soul Music (or affectionately, TITTY SM)
• Braggadocios (featuring Resin Nate)

Feet, Life and Munchies is pretty much self explanatory, just a funny idea to combine a few very different verses into one song. Wheels of Fate is a short solo track from Hype (and I’ll be writing a short solo of my own soon). TITTY SM is a track that I can’t wait to start. It’s going to be very experimental from a production standpoint, and I’ve got the basic idea for it in my head. I kind of want it to be a surprise to everyone, but I’m pretty sure it’ll be unlike any hip hop song I’ve ever heard. Braggadocios is our first track featuring Nate. All I can say is, Nate is ready to rhyme. We wrote it over a few days that spanned a few weeks, but I think the track is going to turn out quite sick. We’re definitely aiming for a Boot Camp Clik styled song, shout out to those guys, some of my favourites are from that crew.

We’ve also recorded a few songs. I’ve been mixing one of them (The Weed I Need) for a while, getting the vocal flavours to my exact liking. I’m done pretty much everything that I have to, we just have to record another set of back up vocals and then we’ll have that under wraps. We’re gearing up to do a long haul of recording sessions.

I’ve appointed Peter to produce the beat on “Tha Chambers”. I swung by his place last week to get a sneak peak of the beat that’s he’s creating on the PC. I don’t know why I did that. In any case, the beat was really nice, very distinct an different from my production style, but it’s a welcome contrast. He’s got a great style on the song and I can’t wait to rap to it.

Masheek has acquired a new microphone for our recording session, so now we can both record at the same time if need be. I might need another stand and pop filter, but it’s all good.

So that’s the update. Look for more frequent updates as we step up our game. peace

Well, I know I’ve been away from the site for a while, but a lot has been going on as of late. Kawlinz and myself performed at a friend’s party on June 16. We performed 7 tracks that will be on the album that is coming out in October: Dark Words Dark Times, Party Track, Rhyme So Tight, The Weed I Need, Thru Time and Space, Murderous Intent, and to close it off the source of Origins.

But after the performance Kawlinz and myself got right back into things and started writing new tracks to be added to the album. Also on a side note we have some of the performance recorded, we didn’t get the first few tracks recorded but that’s okay. Also I would like to take a moment to thank everyone who was at the party for their support, it was greatly appreciated and we hope to perform for you again. Special thanks go out to Nader for letting us perform at his place, to Caker 194, for recording the performance, and also Barry for getting a camera for us to use on such short notice. That’s pretty much all I can say about that.

I did mention that we were working hard on writing these tracks so here is a track list of what we have so far:

Dark Words Dark Times
Party Track
Rhyme So Tight
The Weed I need
Thru Time and Space
Murderous Intent
The Source of Origins
Years of Destiny
Tha Chambers
Layin’ Shit Down

Now there isn’t a particular order in which these tracks are listed right now, it’ll probably be different once the album is finished.