Metal Lungies

French producer Astronote sounds like he could be from Detroit. His beats have that hard-to-define knock and he works with the best of the Motor City’s lesser knowns like Finale and Magestik Legend, both of whom spit acid on his new album Weapon of the Future. Listen to the choice cuts below and the whole thing here. Previously: “Big Trouble Little China.”

Renaissance man Zilla Rocca seized the opportunity to remix Pete Rock and Roc Marciano’s “Give It To Y’all” when the acapella landed on the tenth anniversary edition of Petestrumentals. Zilla’s take has everything: twangy guitar, a ridonculous bassline, and classic Roc Marci verses. Dope begets dope.

via Clap Cowards

There’s often a surfeit of live instrumentation on Terrace Martin tracks. The California producer also plays the sax, which results in many extraneous saxophone solos on otherwise lean hip-hop tracks. It’s usually not a deal-breaker and sometimes it’s a nice touch.

He used even more live instruments on his last project The Sex EP, which is more soul-funk miasma than hip-hop. It’s a directionless mash of horns, rhodes, and vocoders that sounds like a long, boring, overproduced interlude. That’s not to say hip-hop production can’t benefit from live instrumentation, but it shouldn’t be an end in and of itself.

But Terrace just re-released the EP as The Sex EP 2.0: Cease & Desist with five more songs. The original cover used a picture of Kim Kardashian’s breasts and she issued Terrace and company a cease and desist letter. One of the new additions is a veritable West Coast sex romp in the tradition of DJ Quik. Bad Lucc and Kurupt rap about dirty things over a funky beat that proves Terrace’s musicality can turn a song into an entirely different beast when he doesn’t overdo it.

via Devi Dev

Say you’re Prodigy and you want to make a lighthearted song without going the Jeremih route. They can’t all be “Dog Shit.” Where do you turn? 80s R&B/funk always does the trick. Prodigy raps over the Mary Jane Girls’ “All Night Long” for a welcome respite from the controversy surrounding who got shot and who snitched on who in his autobiography.

Longtime ML friend and producer 6th Sense ended up on the outro track on The Lonely Island’s 2nd album Turnleneck & Chain. I hit him up to get the scoop on how he ended up on the Grammy award winning group’s comedy/rap album (who we have written about a little in the past).

Here is how it all came about:

Amazingly dense rhymes from Detroit’s Magestik Legend. “Big Trouble Little China” will appear on French producer Astronote’s Weapon of the Future, coming soon as a free download.

Lemonade was a popular drink and it STILL is. Here’s the title track from Bumpy and Statik’s album Lyrical Workout. Corner store rap, holmes.

Also, here’s a Statik-produced track by Slaine that won’t make Slaine’s album because of sample clearance issues. Love that guitar.

Drum Talking is the distinct sound of a specific musical segment of a remote part of the world, recontextualized as dope beats. Mo Kolours worked the Sega music (no blue hedgehog) of his native Mauritius into funky beats worthy of the Beat Konducta. “8 Hours” in particular is disarmingly funky. Mo uses mostly handclaps and exotic, natural-sounding drums to avoid the synthetic feeling of garden variety beats. Mo further distinguishes himself by adding a layer of ghostly singing, which combined with the minimal drums, really distinguishes him from other artists. It beats the shit out of watching National Geographic.

Meridian, Mississippi artist Big K.R.I.T. has his big raucous choruses, but his delivery is acutely measured and refined. Sometimes he raps just above a whisper, on a solemn account his career (“Dreamin'”) or an admonition about the thorns of success (“Lions and Lambs”). ReturnOf4Eva, released for free online in March, has a consistently rich vintage sound thanks to K.R.I.T.’s defiant sample-based production. Even though he signed to Def Jam last year, he hasn’t shown any sign of mainstream pandering.

As a producer, he sounds like a dedicated student of Organized Noize, so it was surprising to hear him fawn over the different ways J Dilla and 9th Wonder flipped Billy Paul’s “Let the Dollar Circulate” in our interview. He also picks out his favorite classic records, breaks down his creative process, and states his ambitions for his debut album.

ML: Why release an album quality mixtape for free?

K.R.I.T.: Mainly because I felt like I needed to do another solid project before I dropped an album. We dropped K.R.I.T. Wuz Here last year, but we dropped ReturnOf4Eva, and it’s to prove to people that K.R.I.T. Wuz Here wasn’t a fluke, that I could put together another solid body of music, all-produced again, and to be able to work with other artists, I thought was more important. Kind of building up the confidence for the consumer to actually go to the store and buy my album. So I didn’t really mind. It did definitely help at the end of the day to just build a buzz up more and build up people’s faith in my music and that I’m not going to change just because I’m signed. But for the most part, we really don’t be trying to call them mixtapes anymore just because they’re all original.

ML: Southern rap is focused on Lex Luger and trap music right now. How does that affect you as a Southern producer?

K.R.I.T.: I don’t really think it’s primarily just focused on trap music. Lex Luger definitely, as a producer, is working with a lot of artists aside from being what would be considered trap music. It really don’t affect me per se because I make music based off how I feel and as far as my life is concerned and I think everybody respects that, but I respect every art form of music. Everybody paints the pictures that they see and write about the environment that they’re around, so I just do what I can as far as hip-hop is concerned.

ML: So you don’t feel sidelined at all?

K.R.I.T.: No, not at all. I managed to put my music out, build my fan base organically. Obviously, everybody’s not going to like your music. My music, I make for a certain kind of people, I guess or just everybody in general I’m shooting for, to Lord willing be able to put music out and globally, everybody listen to and take something from it. But for the most part, it’s growth. In the beginning, everybody might not get it, but as long as I stay focused and keep putting out quality music, in time, my fan base will grow and it really won’t matter. Even now, it kind of doesn’t matter. It takes time. A lot of people just came out last year. I’ve been around since 2005, so I understand that it’s not overnight and I’m not really in a crazy rush. I take my time and just put out good music.

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Even though JR Mint looks like Mac Miller’s stunt double, the Canadian rapper mostly sidesteps frat rap topics, with the exception of a great smoker track produced by MoSS. He’s an able enough rapper who really shines when he has the right beat (Super Mario World sample?!?). Download the whole album here and listen to the standout tracks below.