DEF Magazine - Issue 3

ISSUE NO. 3

TABLE OF CONTENT 2

-------------------------2023 In Review

3-6

-------------------------Sample Snitching: How We’ve Gotten Here, & Where Do We Go Now?

7-14

-------------------------Album Reviews

7-8

-------------------------DMAN [excerpt] Review

9-10

-------------------------Hotel 1105 Review

11-12

-------------------------Beware of the Monkey Review

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DEF MAGAZINE: ISSUE NO. 3

13-14

-------------------------CACOPHONOUS DIGRESSIONS, A RECORD OF A MOMENT IN TIME Review

15-24

-------------------------Painting the World Blu(e)

25-28

-------------------------MPCist Profile: Fresh Kils

29-32

-------------------------Streetwear Showcase: Sliv & Learn

33-36

-------------------------Heat U Missed

38

-------------------------Credits

2023 In Review As we wrap up our first year of DEF Magazine, let’s take a retrospective look at 2023 through the eyes of underground hip-hop. This year was one of celebration, marking the 50th birthday of the genre, acknowledging its enduring influence and cultural resonance. From humble beginnings in the Bronx to global dominance, hip-hop has not only shaped the music industry but has become a powerful voice for communities worldwide.

In the midst of this celebration, whispers of controversy emerged, echoing the age-old debate: Is hip-hop dead? Allegations resurfaced in the last few months, challenging the genre’s vitality in the face of evolving trends and emerging styles. Yet, as we delve into the intricate beats and lyrical prowess of the year’s releases, it becomes clear that reports of hip-hop’s demise are greatly exaggerated. The resilience of the genre is on full display, with artists pushing boundaries and redefining the very essence of what hip-hop represents.

Mainstream hip-hop may be dying, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Hip-hop was never supposed to be mainstream. A counterculture should never become the culture of the world, because once it does it has nothing to counter against. Underground hip-hop is not only alive, but it is thriving.

2023 witnessed a dynamic fusion of styles, as artists explored new sonic territories, blending genres and experimenting with innovative production techniques.

From seasoned hip-hop legends to newcomers trying to make their imprint on the culture, hip-hop continued to evolve, reflecting the diverse voices and experiences that fuel its enduring flame. Join us as we take a look at the music that shaped hip-hop’s 50th year, proving once again that this culture is not only alive but thriving in the underground, as it should be.

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SAMPLE SNITCHING:

HOW WE’VE GOTTEN HERE, & WHERE DO WE GO NOW?

By Nolan Kelly

Hip-hop’s production has evolved over the years, but it can be traced back to the dance break played on a loop interchangeably between two turntables, a tactic immortalized

by DJ Kool Herc in an effort to keep the party dancing. In time, as developing technology improved electronic samplers, other artists inspired by Herc’s tools used drum breaks and other excerpts from preexisting music in the patchwork of their own sound. Sampling became another hallmark of the genre, but not without controversy.

Practically, sampling is a mere form of expression in an art form often meant to entertain, but there are forces at play that work to thwart it. Hip-hop’s stewards are privy to these forces, and have branded attempts to call attention to the samples in their music “sample snitching.”

To fully understand the concern in question, the unanointed may need more context to define what a sample snitch is and how the sharing of samples can become problematic for artists who are looking to sample. A sample snitch, rarely harboring malicious intentions, might discover what song one of their favorite producers sampled within a new composition.

Excited about their newfound knowledge, they might feel

inclined to broadcast their findings to their friends, their greater music community, or in various corners of the internet.

Why is this so controversial?

There are legal, ethical, and artistic implications that sampling brings to the table.

The last fifty years have seen no shortage of lawsuits issued by rights holders against acts who use their music in a sample without legally obtaining permission. The desperately awaited commercial release of their catalog earlier this year brings to mind De La Soul’s storied legal issues regarding the samples in their work. When members of the 1960’s rock band, The Turtles, heard a song of theirs sampled without their consent in one of De La’s skit tracks, “Transmitting Live from Mars,” they sued De La and ultimately settled out of court for an amount to the tune of $1.7 million. News of De La’s case made a significant impact on producers’ willingness to sample for decades to come.

If thoroughly interrogating the logic of this dynamic, the next reasonable question one might ask in response to these events might be,

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Why can’t rappers and producers make the effort to get the rights cleared?

This is a valid question, and answers vary greatly depending on the artist or scenario. For many producers, obtaining the rights to use existing music legally is too expensive. If the artist is not already well established, their music doesn’t yet yield enough revenue to justify spending time and money to clear the sample.

For the most established contemporary artists, much of their most popular commercial music containing samples is not released until rights are cleared.

Pusha T might be in a position that allows him to have almost any sample he wants cleared, barring outright resistance from the original rights owners, but lesser known artists that still have a growing underground following may be inclined to use uncleared samples in their music, accepting the lower risk of a lawsuit.

Or, the

underground artist may resort to releasing their music on free platforms like SoundCloud as opposed to Spotify or Apple Music, which may earn them a larger following, but decreases or negates any chance of direct revenue streams from that release. However, even this does not completely prevent lawsuits.

Mac Miller was notably sued at least twice over samples in what were then free mixtapes K.I.D.S. and Faces. In any case, if their music isn’t being played on the radio or on the streets, rights holders are unlikely to catch wind of it. The artists who occupy this underground space have ever growing concerns though, as the sample snitch, increasingly equipped with the amplifying powers of the internet and an overflowing passion for music production, unintentionally threatens their creativity.

The result is a Mexican standoff between the original rights holders, the artist looking to sample their work, and the music consumer or sample snitch, each protecting their stake. As original rights holders look to

protect their original art, the sampling producer seeks creative freedom, while the consumer tries to maintain their unbridled passion for music.

This truly is a debacle that could only occur in the late 20th and 21st centuries, so perhaps people with more conservative perceptions of music might call crocodile tears on the latter two parties. They might ask, Why don’t producers just learn how to play instruments and make the music themselves?

Within this question is hidden another, a question of sampling’s artistic integrity. It’s a question forcibly produced not by a person with a soul, but by circumstances created by intellectual property and copyright laws. The extensive litigious efforts of rights owners and defensive responses of samplers towards sample snitches certainly imply the existence of a condescending attitude towards sampling as a practice at large. Many people still consider sampling to be an inferior form of musical creation.

As long as these attitudes exist, sample snitching keeps this notion alive by perpetuating facets of the music industry that discourage sampling via the threat of legal consequences or inaccessible costs.

In actuality, sampling has just as much of a right to exist as any other type of music production.

The question of whether sampling PAGE 4

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should or should not occur more or less based on the scale of its creativity, originality, or worthiness is irrelevant. Who among us would want to live in a world without sampling?

Sampling can have a variety of unique effects on the mood, themes, or styles in music that might be difficult to achieve without it. Sometimes, a vocal sample can add a fun layer of nostalgia to a track. The very fact that it is not an original recording evokes an air of mystery that pervades beyond even the intellectual awareness that there is a sample present.

Some sampled violins or cellos, perhaps slowed with a bit of reverb or other plugins, can welcome an eerie shroud behind which the vocalist can appear all the more mysterious. Sampling is of course not exclusive to hip-hop. Take the iconic string sections in Britney Spears’ “Toxic” for example. Those were sampled, and have since been interpolated countless times.

Ultimately, sampling is often a stylistic choice in the pursuit of alchemy.

When it comes down to it, sampling is the result of developing technology.

Was Mozart chopping up B-side cuts of some blues rock band from San Francisco whose vinyl he picked up on his way to the studio? No, but he’d shut it down if he got his hands on a MIDI controller and FL Studio. Here’s to hoping we get a hologram DJ Mozart set at a festival one day. Technology has made sampling more accessible than it was when two turntables and duplicate records were necessary, but other forms of synthesized music would not be

possible without the same kinds of tools. EDM, different types of synth-infused funk, and countless other genres have been touched by advancing hardware and software. Samplers, synthesizers, drum machines, or talk boxes might operate by altering existing and fabricated sounds, but this does not detract from the originality of their creations, and this is not to say that there is less talent or savvy required in modern music production. On the contrary, these tools can require entirely new skill sets and artistic vision that can take years to master. When amplifiers and pedals began to give electric guitars and basses new sound, was the instrumentalist to be criticized because those sounds weren’t coming from their guitar alone? Was Beethoven criticized for playing a piano, a new instrument invented to technically improve upon the harpsichord, because he didn’t invent the piano? The answer to these questions is clearly a resounding, “No!” To judge a piece of music based on the origins of its parts would be short sighted. Music is meant to be heard, regardless of how it takes shape.

possible no one will be able to hear it? These again are just some examples of the barriers and one-sided consequences created by the current market and lack of regulations in the musical domain. They require creatives to consider external factors that have no place in the abstract calculus of art, so this extra planning has serious potential to stifle creativity.

and another way to gain what fans see as an innocuous, more broad love for the wholesome art of music.

Sample snitches can often take the form of websites and blogs made up of millions of fans sharing samples. Hip-hop subreddits and the website whosampled.com are accessed daily by fans clamoring to learn what the likes of Madlib, RZA, and The Alchemist were sampling decades before these forums were popular. For producers with music at the forefront of the underground, these sites threaten to act as online treasure maps for lawyers looking to dig up lawsuits.

Perhaps the act of fanaticizing so obsessively over another grown adult’s work can run counter to the hip-hop artist’s aloof, guarded nature. Your Old Droog recently tweeted, “Mfers be identifying the sample in the comments like they gonna get a cookie,” effectively calling the sample sharing community a hoard of geeks. These fans certainly don’t seem to feel ashamed, if they’re even at all aware of artists’ opposition to their sample sharing. No, they’re simply enjoying their passion as thoroughly as possible, but when considered in context with why producers discourage identifying samples, the broader implications of their actions become clearer.

While technological advancements have enabled so much wonderful music, they also present a slew of threats to the modern hip-hop producer.

To many, discovering the samples within their favorite music is a way to deepen their appreciation for it. By learning what their favorite producers are sampling, they gain a more holistic appreciation and understanding for that artist and their craft. It’s a way for them to feel more involved, as if they’re in on a secret that only few are aware of. It’s often a gateway to other music. To acquire a taste for some jazz or folk artists by way of learning they were sampled in a hip-hop song can be a fun, rewarding experience,

Streaming platforms like Spotify employ AI driven software that automatically recognizes existing music in videos or samples with rapidly improving efficacy. Sure, lesser known artists might be able to sneak an unpopular chop under the algorithm’s nose, but again, why bother putting in hours and hours of work on a song if it’s

Why then, are hip-hop fans and the online hip-hop community perpetuating a practice that threatens the very music they love?

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In a vacuum, this act can indeed seem harmless. Sampling has nearly always publicly been at the core of hip-hop. Why not unabashedly spread the love and knowledge from this aspect of a genre that can be so entertaining?

To be clear, rights holders of original music certainly deserve to be fairly, not excessively, compensated if the new composition sees success.

The new song wouldn’t be possible without them. In this seemingly endless, spiraling thought experiment seeking to determine how sampling and sample sharing ought to be treated, a new crop of probing microeconomic questions arise.

What exactly makes sample clearance so expensive? Hasn’t sampling become so popular that

the market should have scaled the price down to a more reasonable level?

Ultimately, rights owners have a lot more leverage in these transactions. Laws and regulations surrounding music licensing do not impose many guardrails for rights owners to follow when setting the price for the use of their music. Instead of primarily deriving a price based on the amount of sales and streams of the new composition, the lack of restrictions means rights owners can essentially charge an upfront advance price as high as they want, in addition to a percentage of sales, regardless of how much commercial success the song sees.

What does this giant convoluted dynamic mean for fans and artists?

Questions beget more questions. What does the best path forward look like?

Is it possible for all parties to proceed with boundless fandom and untethered creativity?

Regardless of how they should proceed, how is this standoff realistically likely to play out?

Well, as technology advances, and the online spaces continue to connect people across the world, it seems inevitable that the frequency at which samples are found, as well as fans’ capabilities to do so, have only the potential to multiply. Hiphop fandom and the obsessive nature of chronically online hip-hop heads are here to stay.

Fans will always outnumber artists. Try as they may, artists might be unlikely to succeed in discouraging fans from sharing samples online. Is that the end of the story? Are artists fated

to succumb to the powers of the music industry? This also seems unlikely. There are potentially two paths from here that are more plausible. In the first, copyright legislation could be modified to deter price gouging by rights owners. In the free market though, this too may be unlikely.

If pharmaceutical companies aren’t often required to face sufficient pricing regulations while pricing their drugs, the music industry is decades away from seeing any such policy, if they are to see any at all. The second path may be a voluntary collective effort to remove the financial consequences that may come from sample snitching.

This path leads towards a world where rights owners, their record labels, and their lawyers voluntarily make their art economically accessible to sample. Some bands or artists, like George Clinton, have been known to be more forthcoming and less purse clutching when asked for sample clearance.

Others, however, disagree with the principle altogether, and either charge sky high prices or flatly refuse to authorize the use of their music. It seems as though the only alleviation of this resistance would be achieved through an increased embracing and respect of sample culture from other artists and the music industry at large.

Without that opposition, clearing samples might be much easier and more PAGE 6

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affordable. There are currently third party sample clearing service providers who, for a fee, offer licensed music by thousands of artists ready to be sampled, saving artists time by leveraging new and existing relationships with rights holders to obtain clearance. Their libraries of available music for sampling are still a bit limited.

Maybe one day, the landscape will change, and services like these, facing less resistance from rights holders, will have libraries as vast as Spotify’s, full of music ready to sample at a price point that’s fair to all parties. Then, any sample could be cleared with just a few clicks. That way, bedroom beat-makers and studio crate diggers alike won’t have to think twice about their work. They can simply create, while rights owners are fairly compensated in proportion to the sales of the music that samples their work, and according to the fashion in which their work is sampled.

A L B U M

R E V I E W S

DMAN [excerpt] Dos Monos Review – by Oliver Hogg It was a damp night. It wasn’t raining, but it had. It was cool, but none of us were dressed right, so it felt cold. But we were distracted by our excitement.

Well, that and the brawl between two gammon heads across the street. Ended in a choke out. I was excited for the headliner, sure, but really, I was there for the opener. A trio out of Japan, a group I have adored since their debut, and finally, I got to see them live, when I never thought I would. And let PAGE 7

me tell you, live, they’re a whole different animal: Dos Monos aren’t capuchins, they’re silverbacks.

What I experienced that night – you just had to be there. But, with the release of an excerpt from their physical only live album ‘Don’t Make Any Noise’, you can get as close to being there, without being there. So, without further ado, please follow me into Theatre D.

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Let’s take it back to 2018, specifically, the audio paranoia of Dos Monos’ second single, ‘Clean ya Nerves (Cleopatra)’. Starting in reverse, the track quickly decomposes into a sonic kernel panic, instantly triggering your fight or flight response with blaring horns and clattering percussion.

Oscillating keys keep you hypnotised – focused amongst the overload – but doesn’t distract from the anxiety. A suffocating track of technological pessimism, and one we get to experience all over again, in a new oppressive light, with ‘Clean ya Nerves (the horn jumps off)’.

Kei Matsumaru opens this live rendition with a dizzying saxophone solo. Free and chaotic, it builds into Brownian motion, zig-zagging between breaths until Zo Zhit and TaiTan open up the show. Atop the same blaring horns as the original, Kei Matsumaru’s sax stabs where the original suffocated, creating jagged edges of sound that cut through the insanity like a glaive.

This is how you do a live version of a song, keep what’s great, but change the angle of attack.

Instead of smothering, Dos Monos chooses to impale the audience with this standout from their debut project. I remember my ears clipping during this one; pure sonic bliss.

Black midi were the headliners, another group that I came to love around the same time I did Dos Monos. Two completely different sonic palettes, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t work together. Take the song ‘Estrus’, a track originally released on Dos Monos’ 2020 album ‘Dos Siki’. In 2021, we got a new version of the track featuring black midi on ‘Dos Siki 2nd Season’. So, how does the live version, ‘Estrus²’, stack up?

While the original 2020 version embraces a semblance of traditionalism with clearly defined horns, strings, and percussion, the black midi version liquifies every element, creating a formlessness between each section that rushes your senses like a flash flood. But after the two-minute mark, the real ‘black-midiness’ of it all comes to the forefront with juxtaposing tones, skittish yet precise drumming, and a killer breakdown to make this 2021 version feel wholly unique.

I remember when ‘Estrus²’ began amidst the pit, I was wondering which version would be played PAGE 8

seeing as black midi was also in attendance.

What we get is a stunning Frankenstein monster of the original and black midi version. The tight twangs of strings and triumphant horns make themselves known quickly, but the accents of squelching bass hits and electrifying hi-hats, keep you firmly planted in both styles. And then it builds. And builds. And builds. Into what: one of the most ferocious breakdowns I’ve experienced, taking a page out of black midi’s book, before drowning us out with a swelling mass of noise. I think this one also made my ears clip; it doesn’t get much better than that.

It was hot inside, a stark difference to coolness turned cold outside, but explains why we were inappropriately dressed. Sticky hot, congested and musky – like any good gig. But a heat which is natural, a product of life, no different really than any geothermal phenomena. But just like any old geyser, can be used for our gain. The space was like Larderello, with Dos Monos using the heat of the moment to bring about a frenzy with ‘Y… last warning’ from their third album, ‘Larderello’.

It may be the most sonically similar to its studio counterpart, but ‘Y… last warning’ stands out as a monument to the gravity of the human voice, something which too can be harnessed like the hot springs at Larderello for great power. The studio version is by no means vocally calm, but compared to the live version, it is. In concert, Botsu is possessed, screaming and bellowing with an unsurmountable terror. TaiTan is mesmerising with his flow and emphasis, putting on one of the best rap performances I’ve ever seen, and Zo Zhit comes in with a gravitas and command that subdues the untameable instrumental. I think I cried when this one ended.

I have to finish this with a thank you to black midi, without them taking Dos Monos along as their opener, I don’t know when I would have seen them live, if at all. Especially not in my home city.

It was a blessing and a night I’ll not soon forget.

And was a performance from Dos Monos which may have been the best I’ve ever seen, and I cannot thank Zo Zhit, TaiTan, and Botsu enough for that. But, for you, with ‘Don’t Make Any Noise’, you can experience what I did, just one degree removed, and that, is more than worth your time, money, and ears.

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Hotel 1105 D2x Review – By Evan Baxter-Carr

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From the album cover alone, you can feel the style of Hotel 1105.

The tropical setting; the vibrant colours; a sunbathing couple with hands linked together – the imagery perfectly embodies the rich, colourful sound the album offers. The sophomore LP from Chicago rapper D2x is a summery odyssey into the soul. Over a foundation of pitched-up soul samples and smooth saxophone passages, the Midwest MC spills out his deepest thoughts, delivering his most personal material to date.

That drive to succeed which made his debut so uplifting is still present, but through a newfound lens of maturity. Rather than simple stories of rising to the top, Hotel 1105 is a complex look into X’s psyche, taking the listener on a journey through his deepest struggles and greatest triumphs.

The record starts off with ‘Suite Life’. Immediately, the listener is greeted with a glamorous synthline, which soon moves aside for the slick bassline to kick in.

Surrounded by a shimmer of drums and that infectious bass, D2x sums up the core themes of the record – faith, family, and leading a good life. As the track closes, the synth returns, joined by a chorus of singers and horns that perfectly capture the jazzinfused beauty of the LP. The one-two punch of ‘The Light’ and ‘Faith’ keep up the momentum, with the vintage chipmunk soul samples giving the highlights a Midwest flair.

Rapping at length about his role as a father and his duty to achieve his dreams, there is so much hope to X’s bars, but at the same time, there are hints of despair and self-doubt:

“Keeping God first at all times, but feeling optionless” Moving on to ‘Dreams of an Adolescent’, we witness the rapper’s effortless ability as a storyteller. Painting vivid pictures of his upbringing, D2x explores the tensions between his parents, the absence of his father, but his undying love for both of them.

Rather than witty metaphors and tongue-twisting rhyme schemes, it’s in his narrative ability where the MC thrives most. Tense childhoods and absentee fathers aren’t new stories by any means, but X’s passionate presence and maturity as a lyricist turn the song into a uniquely introspective tale.

Diving even deeper into his soul, ‘I Am Here’ is the most personal cut Hotel 1105 has to offer. A dark departure from the upbeat jazz rap of the previous tracks, this one embraces a far more sinister sound. The ominous vocal sample and moody saxophone create a haunting backdrop for X to spit a set of devastating verses, exploring his battle with grief: “Sports was our only way to cope” The song ends with a frigid spoken word passage. Reciting his words with a cold, almost monotone delivery, the MC’s pain is vivid just from the tone of his voice. It’s that attention to detail – bending his tone to perfectly match his lyrics – that puts X a level above his Midwest contemporaries. Often a performer but always a poet, no track compares to the emotional heights of ‘I Am Here’.

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Things quickly take an upbeat turn with ‘Waves & Moonlights’, an enchanting track whose instrumental is simply hypnotic.

From the chirpy piano loop to the cinematic guitar running through the song, there are dozens of elements to unpack, and that’s not even mentioning D2x’s performance. With hunger in his voice and a determined flow, he certainly doesn’t waste the beat, turning the song into an anthem of self-love and motivation.

The remainder of the album maintains the gorgeous soundscape, with ‘Summer in Venice’ and ‘From Hotel 1105 With Love’ among the strongest cuts on the entire project.

Longing for a getaway with his family, to overcome his struggles and embrace his future, both highlights sum up the aspirational heart of D2x’s sound. As his last words on the LP, he reiterates, “I can see God’s planning for me, now, now I’m free.”

Any other artist would have ended the project there, but not D2x. Instead, Hotel 1105 closes with ‘Blue in Green’. A tranquil sax solo takes the listener on a tour through waves of rising strings and soulful samples, allowing us to fully bask in the peaceful sound before it finally fades away. X doesn’t rap on the track, and that is because the music speaks for itself. The warm, welcoming atmosphere the saxophone provides is like the sonic equivalent to the serenity the MC has been searching for the whole album. After many tragedies, tense relationships, and struggles to persevere, ‘Blue in Green’ is D2x finally reaching his destination – peace.

Beware of the Monkey MIKE Review – By Connor Dobson

Depressing. Uplifting. Comforting. All three words are synonymous with the music of New Jersey born, New York native rapper MIKE. His time spent across the world, including Philadelphia, Hackney, Essex and the previously mentioned New York has had a substantial influence on his diverse and eccentric music, no clearer than on his December 2022 effort ‘Beware Of The Monkey’.

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“The mixture of emotions on that project inspired me so much, just in the sense of like, there’s victory, but with victory, you can feel this huge tone of sadness. It’s a sad victory. And it’s sometimes these sad moments that we also feel comfort in, and sad moments that feel reminiscent or feel nostalgic.” MIKE speaking to VULTURE (2022).

MIKE’s previous album had glimpses of joy, a light

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at the end of the tunnel. On Monkey, the selfaffirmations are stronger and more frequent. This record speaks a lot to just how far the rapper has come since 2017’s ‘May God Bless Your Hustle’, as the confidence, vigour, and enthusiasm is omnipresent as the tracklist plays out.

“This my only chance left To prove to y’all I’m the best rapper In the fuckin’ world” - As 4 Me Sampling is an essential piece of MIKE’s music, the samples he uses aren’t just a backdrop for his vocals, but instead the backbone of the song.

Sometimes, the sampled vocals run alongside MIKE’s profound voice. We are thrust into this with the opener ‘nuthin i can do is wrng’, as an old vocal bridge from 80’s soul singer Forrest rings out throughout the track. Once again, this isn’t sampling for the sake of sampling, but instead an essential foundation of the song being built, allowing MIKE to get emotionally potent… “And sit tight through the fog, it be bigger floods”. Just another soulful opener in the catalogue in the Bronx rappers discography, almost mirroring Disco’s ‘Evil Eye’. The sample is like a reaffirming hymn, repeating continually.

The album’s title is telling too, exploring old Chinese astrology. The phrase ‘Beware Of The Monkey’ represents the tiger. Within the Chinese horoscope, the tiger opposes the monkey due to their incompatible natures. The monkey: witty and mischievous. The tiger: brave and courageous.

These attributes are what MIKE strives for within this memorandum. On the second track, ‘As 4 Me’, these sentiments ring true, “No more huddles in despair, the overcoming been apparent” he raps with a sense of urgency, “No more muzzle full of fear, running into terror”. MIKE’s commanding voice exudes an exceeding amount of bravado and confidence. Despite the faith, depression and sorrow still seep into the burrows of the record.

On ‘Eczema’, the rapper battles with his past, pondering over past regrets…

“In my mind it’s hella replaying Times I didn’t behave Times I had to be patient” These dark emotions still infest Monkey, but MIKE seems intent on manoeuvring between these PAGE 12

bleak times and pushing forward, understanding that all of this is one giant web of experiences, “Twenty-three around the earth, see the world different”. The appeal of his music is the emotionalvulnerability and confessional nature of his records, but also the humour that weaves into every cranny… “Dog, we ‘on’t really know your lyrics like LeBron James”. MIKE links up with his usual collaborators on Monkey, Jadasea, King Carter and Klein all delivering stellar verses, but perhaps the standout moment on the record is the appearance of dancehall legend Sister Nancy on ‘Stop Worry!’. Assertively upbeat, he pushes through the pain “Another summer with them gray clouds, puddles ‘round my feet”. On ‘Ipari Park’, MIKE sounds triumphant amongst the pain.

Tracks like ‘Swoosh 23’ and ‘Tapestry’ are true highlights in the rappers catalogue, his voice still hazy and muzzy, but his cadence strong and powerful, “Don’t want the wrath, want a mask and the black hoodie” he pens on the latter.

The production throughout, all coming from MIKE himself, hits a diverse range of sounds and emotions as he pulls samples from jazz and neo-soul. It’s a perfect companion piece to the passionate writing provided throughout the 33-minute run time. Speaking of run time, it is one of Monkey’s biggest advantages. The album is short, concise, a sucker punch of raw emotion and the exploration of life’s tendencies. The closer, ironically named ‘Closing Credits’, is the release of years of pain, grief and heartache… “It get darker when you deal with it, gotta pick a pill”. Within this trauma, comes acceptance as MIKE tries to start his healing process. “y’all gotta learn to take me as this dude that overcame a lot of this shit, and that now that I overcame it, there’s also still a lot of healing to do.”

- MIKE speaking to VULTURE (2022).

If you start with 2017’s ‘May God Bless Your Hustle’ and make your way to 2022’s ‘Beware Of The Monkey’, you will see the journey of a young man making his way through life’s troubles: self-discovery, grief, depression. At first, these conflicts were overwhelming, but on ‘Beware Of The Monkey’, MIKE is perseverant and calm amidst distress. He is aware that around every corner there is a danger of falling, but takes it in his stride and pushes forward as he begins to heal.

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CACOPHONOUS DIGRESSIONS, A RECORD OF A MOMENT IN TIME MARY SUE & PSYCHEDELIC ENSEMBLE Review – By Oliver Hogg When I first talked with the Singaporean MC and producer, Mary Sue, in early 2022, he brought up an interesting perspective on the pandemic years of what feels like a lifetime ago: COVID levelled the playing field in rap. No ‘real’ studios, no ‘real’ collaboration, no who-you-know; more what-youknow. It was in this environment that Mary Sue began his foray into the world of rap. And he has taken this somehow serendipitous time in history PAGE 13

and used it to cultivate the best young career of this decade. I claim that with heavy gravitas. But over three years on from the great reset, Mary Sue is evolving, teaming up with London based beat wizard psychedelic ensemble. to tell us he’s, ‘sick of all the comments dog, I’m more than just lo-fi’.

‘CACOPHONOUS DIGRESSIONS’ arrives exactly as you’d think: overwhelmingly. Instantly discordant,

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we are swallowed whole by crunching bass notes, piercing synths, and the key thematic mantra of the project, reverberating through your soul: ‘Forces, magnetic pull’ Fate sits at the centre of this project. The idea of an inevitability or a force of nature that is unwavering in its power to bring anguish into our lives at any point. ‘I’m Playing Tetris With My Emotions’ finds Mary Sue spilling his soul over a beat akin to cycling through neo-dystopian radio channels, with each wavelength giving us an inch of insight into the ‘forces’: ‘You could have told me straight, you didn’t really had to drag it, feelings I can’t tame, it be sticking like a habit, depression ain’t a phase it just stacks until it’s passive, deepening the baggage, here’s to being hazy till I throw away remembering’ To me, ‘forces’ is to be read synonymously with ‘habit’. Harking back to how I opened this piece, lockdown became a time of habit for us all, and serves as the perfect example of what I believe Mary Sue and psychedelic ensemble. are trying to covey.

COVID meant for the inevitability of doing the same things with no possibility of change. Bad habits were forced upon us, these habits didn’t have to drag us, there was no chance of retaliation.

For many of us, we were pushed into them, each and every day, until they became passive. We found respite in between lockdowns, but in the end, we had to accept that ‘Things Move in Cycles’, as told to us by the second track, and we fell by force right back into our ways.

So, how do we break out of bad habits, even when they are forced upon us? Track four, ‘Bob the Builder Did Not Build These Bridges!’, looks to give us some answers. Clattering percussion, chimes and bustle clash together to throw you off balance, a demonstration of supreme skill by psychedelic ensemble. to make sure every sound sticks in the cacophony. Mary Sue confidently cuts through the dissonance, opening and closing the track with a pertinent motif: ‘Burning bridges like it’s paper at a monastery, yeah the change wasn’t forced it was voluntary’ The burning of Joss Paper is a tradition found in many Asian countries, including Singapore, and is done so to give comfort to deceased relatives in PAGE 14

the afterlife. I read burning bridges as Joss Paper as cutting off corrosive relations for the sake of one’s self, or more specifically, severing ties to bring about finality and comfort in one’s old self, in order to grow into a better you - leaving the bad habits behind. But this change is not forced, it’s a choice. There is nothing innately wrong about having bad habits, we all have them sometimes; we’re forced into them. But to break out of them requires positive action on our end, but they cannot be forced, they have to be voluntary.

Ultimately, ‘CACOPHONOUS DIGRESSIONS’ is not a project to depress you, it is one which is to be a companion in times of depression. Times when you feel that everything is going wrong and going against your own will. These forces will get you down, but we need to be active and voluntary in our change to decipher the chaos: and Mary Sue and psychedelic ensemble. are our motivators to do so. There’s a reason that this album is released under psychedelic ensembles.’ label, ‘LIVE AT THE CLINIC’: they are here to help.

On the closing track, and one of my favourite tracks of the year at that, ‘Dream Pop on Steroids’, we are met with a message of love, and a musical palette that spans 50 years of hip-hop.

Synesthetic synths open the track, oscillating through every colour possible as Mary Sue sounds as hopeful as he’s ever sounded, spitting some of the most needed lyrics I’ve heard in a long time: ‘We spreading healing through the longitudes and latitudes, spare me of the platitudes, fuck you and your can-do attitude, this is all we can do man, we gotta do it, gratitude achieved, I can never lose it’ This all culminates in one of the best sonic moments of the decade as psychedelic ensemble. takes us back to record scratches and beatboxing, but with a futuristic twist, creating pure bliss before pulling it all out from underneath us to wind done the project with a time for peace, reflection, and gorgeous keys, courtesy of Daniel Alex Chia.

‘CACOPHONOUS DIGRESSIONS’ serves as one of the best projects of the year, undoubtedly. A vast sonic scope put together by the wizard that is psychedelic ensemble. is idyllic for Mary Sue’s candour and emotional presence. To me, this was a necessary project, one I think I am bound to by forces outside of me, and one I will voluntarily tell you to listen to and support for the sake of your past, current, and future selves.

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BLU INTERVIEW, COVER STORY

by Def Goldbloom

Over the past 20 years, Blu has been building one of the most impressive and expansive discographies that hip-hop has ever seen. With his dedication to poetic introspection and a knack for artistic innovation, few artists have been able to paint the world their favorite colo(u)r quite like him.

Blu is most known for his work with world class producers like Exile, Madlib, and Oh No. But with a discography filled with over 40 albums, mixtapes, beat tapes and more, his catalog of music is deeper than any other lyricist working today.

There is no denying that Blu has left his mark on hip–hop, but in speaking to him it became apparent how many more shades of Blu we are still to see. In a career with multiple classic records, it has also been riddled with “what-if’s” and “could have been’s.”

Just a few days after he arrived back in the States from his European tour with Exile, I was lucky enough to speak with Blu about his incredible career. Looking back on the past 20 years, and everything that is the color Blu(e).

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What’s good man! I know that you started out in the L.A. rap battle scene but I’ve never heard you talk about that part of your career.

What was it like getting your start in that scene at the time?

Man, it’s crazy. I just started writing about like you know stories in my life, writing them down. Almost like a book or something, or a journal. And I just wrote about my experience in high school, man. It was one of my favorite experiences being a rapper even to this day.

We used to draw like the whole… it felt like the whole school would come out to all of our cyphers.

We would cypher before school, recess, in between class, we were passing notebooks with raps inside, and we were just writing raps in class, not even doing the work. They started announcing our battles over the intercom, “16 man battle held by the hip hop club, at that outside amphitheater.” We’ll pack it out. The principal would come out you know, I mean, we cussing each other out bro, taking heads off. That was around the time of like Sprite battles. The Sprite battle was on like Showtime or something. All the rappers were doing Sprite commercials. The joints Eminem was rocking. The Wake Up Show battles you know I’m saying. So I was definitely in a battle shape right up until I started recording like when I was like pretty much 12th grade.

The first album that you ever made was supposedly California Soul, but that is nowhere to be found on the internet anymore. What can you tell me about this mystery project?

If you looking to hear that album which is a myth, it doesn’t exist to 98% of my fans you know what I mean. Look out for that at the top of the year.

The other project that you released around that time that I feel like most of your current fans aren’t familiar with, is Bruise Brothers with Jack Spade.

We were doing those records at the same time you know. Bruise Brothers was a little before my solo California Soul actually. That was fire, big up to Donel Smokes, Black Spade my mentor in rap with the pen. When you listen to me rap on Soul Amazing, you listening to Donel Smokes. He was schooling me in high school.

The legend Black Spade. Black and Blu, The Bruise Brothers, we’ll leave you black and blue.

The original Bruise Brothers.

Shout out to Black Milk, he hit me up like “Yo, we should do a Bruise Brothers album.” I said “You kidding me? That’s me and my boy!”

Coincidentally, me and Ta’Raach, our second album was gonna be called Martin and Malcolm, you know, the second C.R.A.C, album. But Revolution dropped the group called Martin and Malcolm like right before we pressed up on wax, bro.

Bam, boom. It was like we just never got into it. You know?

Speaking of albums that kind of are myths in your career. There’s one that I heard about years ago.

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There’s a rock album. I think you called it Bob Smiles or Toothpaste.

Man, how do you know about Bob Smiles dude? We revamped the Bob Smiles album. I’m just gonna drop it on you… nah… you know what I’m just gonna drop it on you. We just revamped that album by just putting new raps all over that. We did it a while ago actually. But that is actually now the second Johnson&Jonson album. It’s fire. We can’t wait for the people to hear all that.

Oh wow. So the beats were from back in the 00’s and the raps are from recently?

The beats were created in 0506 and the raps were laid to it in 2017.

That’s been years in the making, can’t wait to finally hear that one.

I know that you give credit to

Mainframe and Ta’Raach for teaching you how to produce.

What was that like?

They did teach me, and Exile as well you know, Below the Heavens. Picking up tips from each of them watching all of them produce. Mainframe taught me how to produce on the MP step by step, you know, he just walked it out. I just wrote it down and boom, I’m operating the MP. I actually didn’t start really, you know, producing on the MP till like 2010. I started, cooking up little beats. I think my first MP beats was like on Jesus, the ‘DMV’ song and it’s like, super dirty. It’s like, “What the hell is this?” That was a lot of my beats for a long time. So I just want to give homage to one of those grimy little nasty, you know, intro on a learner’s machine beats, you know?

Yeah, man. I feel like your production never gets the love it deserves from people. Do you still produce it all? I know, for a couple of years, you said that you weren’t anymore.

No, I haven’t really produced much since 2015. I actually did some MP loops over the pandemic for like two months.

I did a tape. The Color Blu(e) I originally produced myself. I got a couple of beats and I just put it down. You know, I was like nah.

Exile and Sirplus reproduced The Color Blu(e) for me.

So is that a completely different version that you have somewhere of The Color Blu(e)? Just on your beats?

I’m just gonna say it like this. Look out for the original Color Blu(e).

The Original Color Blu(e) Tape,

The Demos. Bandcamp, about to load it up.

You mentioned your project Jesus a few minutes ago. Tell me about the process of making Jesus because I think that’s the only album ever made with Madlib, Alchemist, and Knxwledge beats on it. How did that all come together?

Man, I actually wrote all those raps. Probably like a week, two weeks prior on tour. I was on tour with J*Davey. I wrote the raps, in the van, listening to trap. That’s when Future had his first single, what was that called? Magic?

We were slapping that. I actually say in the song ‘Jesus’ “Saw the future, told the homie keep winning.” you know, like, Future wasn’t popping right there. That was that 2011. Like he was with that single, he got the TI remix.

But like, he wasn’t on the level that he was say a year later, you know what I mean.

So that line in ‘Jesus’ was about Future?

Yep, Future. I wrote those raps just listening to trap. Kind of for the first time and in the van, touring the south, you know, hitting Atlanta and Texas. I mean, I wrote those raps, came back, and just found some beats from them. I did that album in two days. I had all those raps and I just found beats that fit them. I cut them all and then I cut Jesus the song like two days later.

Going back to you and Mainframe, you guys produced a tape for Danny Brown back in the day called It’s a Art. What was it like hanging with Danny and being in the studio with him?

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Danny was a beast man. I’m gonna put it like this, when I met him I heard some crazy bars and then I was supposed to record a verse. Danny Brown was working on some joints with Mainframe.

So I’m sitting it out listening to some heat. And then Mainframe pulls up my joint. I’m like “Oh shit he just killed it.” And luckily, it was my song ‘Bang’ over that Flying Lotus beat. So I kicked this fucking, the most phenomenal 32 bars and kind of set it off. And I’m like, “Yeah, that’s me.” You know, and I roll it out. And it’s a trip, he must have dropped three tapes of heat. And that was like my only dope rap for like the whole time.

Danny came in and shut it down.

He was just rapping tape after tape.

I feel like that was your most prolific era from like, 08 to 2013 ish. You were dropping so much at that time when you count all the beat tapes and everything.

So my friend taught me how to produce and coincidentally like when we did Johnson&Jonson, I was doing the beats, he was giving me the beats and I would, you know, make them a beat, loop them up. Basically, just loop up, he’d be like, “Yo, play this record,” I’d loop it up, and boom boom. I’d just loop it up right there on the spot. Boom, then we’d go to the next one. We would just pump out beats. That was going on for years. We’d just sit down and pump out like eightnine beats in a session. Then I started writing afterward.

I had all three of those albums done by the time Below the Heavens dropped. I wanted to drop my first three albums in one year like DMX dropped two. They had that label clause where you

can’t drop in like six months till after the release for like their promotional window, so I could only drop two. The label Sound in Color went bankrupt after they released my album. My album was pretty much the last out.

Mine and a Fishbone album, and then the label went bankrupt. The model of the label was to make art as important as the music, Sound and Color. The homie Mainframe from Johnson&Jonson started that label, and he hooked up one of the homies with like a 75 page art booklet, like killing it. But by the time they got to mine, Mainframe left the label and they were going bankrupt. Bro if you see the first Below the Heavens CDs, there were 7000 pressed, no vinyl.

Everybody got singles, multiple singles on vinyl. I just told you how lavish the homies book was, beautiful art. Sound in Color was an ill era. Great art coming out of there and I got like a flyer for my covers, like one little flimsy little page. I was super bootleg pressed, only 7000 copies till 2013 when Fat Beats licensed the album from Sound in Color.

The label that you have is called New World Color. Was that inspired by Sound in Color?

Yes, Mainframe started Sound in Color, and when I signed to Warner Brothers, they gave me an independent label. I asked Mainframe to help me run it and he named it New World Color. So that became my label. If you look at the New World Color logo, it was an exact flip off of the Sound in Color logo, just updated it.

You mentioned your time with Warner, obviously that didn’t go as planned, but was there anything

that you took from that experience that you have implemented later on in your career?

It was… it feels like just a big loss.

I hate to say that, but nothing was gained from that situation.

It was like, a huge loss because it was so much offered, I was supposed to do three albums, three movies, and I had an independent label. They wanted me to release Her Favorite Colo(u)r. They wanted me to release TheGODleeBarnesLP, Open, all the stuff I was dropping on MySpace is what they signed me off of. That and Below the Heavens. So they wanted me to release these materials under my own imprint. They were gonna clear the samples, they’re going in. I got some heavyweight hitters. I was like, you gotta meet this dude Flying Lotus. Gotta meet this kid Knxwledge. You got this dude Daedelus is crazy.

Exile got some crazy electrical stuff that ya’ll ain’t exposed to, like, we could take this to another level. And so they were down, but they were, you know, they heard [Give Me My] Flowers.

I recorded Flowers before NoYork in like two weeks. I just had Exile send me some beats for the No York album.

And he was like, “This is the tip I’m on right now,” and it was more so like, beautiful guitar loops, like a Brazilian vibe, you know he loving the flowers somewhere and I’m like, “Nah, that’s not what I’m looking for on NoYork.”

I had a bunch of raps that I wasn’t using for that project.

I had those raps in journals, and I just matched them to different Exile beats and recorded that whole project in two weeks. We sat on that just listening to it. I wasn’t PAGE 19

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looking to put that out or nothing.

And, the label one day was like “what are you doing.” I’m like “I cut this last week.” I played them some Exile joints one day, bugging out. “Yo, we got to drop this.” I’m like, “That’s not the album I’m trying to do.”

Kyambo “Hip-Hop” Joshua was my A&R. He was Jay-Z and Kanye’s A&R. They were like “What’s up with a Kanye beat.

What’s up with a Timbaland beat?” I’m like “Dawg, y’all gonna eat up my whole budget on one beat. I’m trying to introduce you to the new wave.

The second album. Let me get a Pharrell on a second album.”

You said that as a part of that deal you were supposed to make three movies as well?

Three movies. I wrote the NoYork movie. It was pretty fire.

What was that movie like?

I still would like to shoot that film so I don’t want to say too much.

I’m gonna put it like this, the dude who was supposed to direct and shoot the movie ended up doing Kendrck’s Good Kid MaadCity and Beyonce’s Lemonade movie.

So this dude just skyrocketed.

I mean, he was already out of here, he was working with Lotus.

Big shout out to Khalil Joseph, he was a beast. We were about to kill it with NoYork. I was doing records. I was trying to do some Prince shit like the Purple Rain with the album a movie. Then Kanye dropped the movie with his album and it fucked me up, Hype Williams produced it.

Yeah man I made that Youtube video a few years back about how Blu is the Kanye of the Underground. Your careers are always lining up.

It’s a trip, I was doing God is Good productions for GodLeeBarnes, then Ye came out with GOOD Music, and I was like that’s fire. Then his fourth album, I believe was a love album. My fourth out was a love album.

Then you got Jesus and Yeezus.

Yeah. Listen, I’m saying we just kept running into each other.

Like, my first album to me is High School Dropout.

It’s crazy how it all keeps lining up.

You mentioned your project God is Good which is one of my all time favorite records. I know that the album breaks your heart to talk about because it never ended up as perfect as it could have been. It was your hard drive that crashed and ruined the master files, right?

My hard drive crashed and I kept it. The reason why I stopped

making beats was actually my studio got robbed and all my hard drives and master’s equipment was stolen.

Most importantly like 10 years of collected records, gone forever. I was actually planning on producing and DJing and stop rapping. I was planning on retiring. I wanted to do two more albums, Bad Neighbor and one with The Alchemist, and then boom. started DJing and producing, I got this crazy collection, and boom they hit me.

They got the hard drive. I was planning on getting that hard drive fixed, and you know, retouching that album by putting it out properly but they hit me.

The version of God is Good that you ended up releasing had to have this unmixed and unmastered, really lo-fi sound to it.

Obviously, it was unintentional for that release, but as you went into the 2010’s you started releasing albums that were purposefully lo-fi like that. Would you say that the unfortunate nature of how God is Good turned out, ended up inspiring that next evolution of your sound?

No, I was always into raw ish. Like the original studio rough edits of Below to Heavens were my favorite. No offense to Rome, he killed that mix, every time I listen PAGE 20

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to it. I’m very appreciative of Rome’s mixing it you know many and because it’s you know, it’s perfect. But the raw sound, man I’ve always slapped those.

Nowadays that lo-fi sound has really become one of the most used styles in the underground with artists like Earl Sweatshirt and MIKE. Were there any artists before you who influenced you with that?

Yeah, like Dilla tapes. Tapes from Dilla rapping just in a basement.

Dudes from Detroit, even the Breakfast Club tapes. The Breakfast Club was Ta’Raach, Big Tone, Elzhi and Dwele. They all did the group tape and then they had the solo tapes as well.

That shit was raw as hell but it was hard.

There was a run of time when you were releasing a bunch of beat tapes. I feel like they get lost in the shadow of your rap discography.

What was the process of making those beat tapes like?

No Sleep For a Day was like my

very first MP beats, that was me touching the MP for the first time. My Pro Tools beats, that was like GodLeeBarnes, Her Favorite Colo(u)r, Open, Norman Rockwell, all those beats. That album with Sene, most of the joints with Real J Wallace. Those were all Pro Tour beats you can hear like the different quality but like later on, I started producing on an MP. Now the difference is I would take four hours doing one beat on Pro Tools. I was doing four beats an hour on an MP. Yeah, so I just left the whole ProTools thing alone. It wasn’t the same quality, but the feeling was there. You know what I mean? It gave me the same feeling. That raw, something in the beat that made me already want to rap to it.

I want to take a little diversion because I know you are a huge fan of the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, may he rest in peace. Could you talk a little bit about what his work means to you?

He’s my favorite director. Two of his quotes that I’ll always remember. One, when he said, “All you need to make a film is a girl and a gun.” And two, in his first film, the main actress was like a reporter for the newspaper. She interviews a director and says, “What is your goal in life?” Like everybody’s asking him questions about his movie and she just asked some randomness. And he ignored her.

Then he pointed at her again and said “What was your question?”

She said, “What is your goal in life?” And he said, “To become immortal and then die.” Then he like, left the interview. That was in Godard’s first movie. That’s like, my favorite quote, I mean your goal in life is to become immortal and then die? Come on,

man. Godard is the most poetic director and movie writer of all time.

Could you speak a little bit about your faith and how that relates to your music?

Speaking of film, one of my favorite projects by you is Her Favorite Colo(u)r, and you kind of mesh film and hip hop with that, with all the samples. What was the process of making that like and what was your mindstate throughout the process?

I love religion. I look at it historically, I look at it like phases man goes through. Religion was immensely important, it was the government, it was your day to day, your law, the law of the land, it was your faith, your church, your everything at the time. But that was just like a phase we went through like surviving getting ate by lions, it was a phase. Migrating to America from Asia on animals, when animals were migrating we said let’s follow them then boom and we discovered two effing continents.

Her Favorite Colo(u)r was done in two weeks. I dropped it on Valentine’s 2009. My girlfriend at the time left me two weeks before I dropped that on MySpace. She left and then I was like, fucked up for a minute.

And then I just did the album in two weeks. The whole album is just about you know, her leaving me how I feel about her leaving really, you know, being blue. It was supposed to be my first album for Warner when we were negotiating a deal at the time at the top of 2009. Her Favorite Colo(u)r was supposed to be my first album, a three part album.

One part produced by Ta’Raach, one part by Waajeed from Detroit, and one part by Shafiq.

Amnesia off of that record has one of the most poetic lyrics ever written to me. ‘Naive as the dry leaves on the ground, looking past the trees to the blu sky asking why me?’

Man, that’s my favorite line.

God wrote that, honestly. I was just writing out of pain and God just gave me that line.

That’s what GodLeeBarnes is. You know, God speaking through me. I felt like he writes my lines for me, he gives me so much, I don’t know where it comes from.

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I’ve read that your father was a reverend. Did that play into your interest in religion?

Yes. My stepfather was a reverend, and my dad was a G. My dad was on the block in LA and then my step pops was at the church in LA, so I was like a balance. I was like, in between both of those. But I get my religious outlook, my religious, you know, point of view from my grandfather. Oscar Barnes Rest in Peace, he just passed. He was 103. He told me I was a God, you know, GodLeeBarnes is my grandfather. I made that album, living in his back house. That album GodLeeBarnes is about

living at my grandpa’s house.

There’s the song on the album, I said “I live behind my grandma’s kitchen.” That was about him telling me I was a God through scripture, through the Bible. Not like, you know, you go to church, you hear a totally different outlook than my grandfather had.

My grandfather will sit you down and recite passages throughout the whole Bible off the dome.

Tell you to pull up a scripture and be reading it off his head.

My stepfather was a pastor. So I know the level he was on, you know what I mean? He was just naturally into religion like I was.

I’m like, into every religion man.

I studied every religion I love, the Hebrew religion, Judaism, The Torah, the Five Books of Moses, the New Testament with Christ, you know, Christianity is dope. Islam, like Mohammed, just dropping everything off the dome, he can’t even read or write, restoring, like, taking down the Roman Empire, 900 year reign, like changing the world.

Just like Jesus did, you know on a humble front. More so like on a Moses front, Mohammed was doing it from. Egyptology is my favorite ish. That trickles down from Greek mythology which trickles down to Sumerian, to Babylonian, to Indian, Hinduism. The multiple Gods, the Polytheism. Then the monotheists like Anunnaki, Abraham, the Hebrews, Jesus, you know what I’m saying? Buddha, I love it all man, the Incas, the Olmecs. So I love it all. I’m not really religious.

I don’t tie myself to a religion, but I am a monotheist, I do believe in God. But no, I don’t tie myself to a Christian because I appreciate too many. My favorite religion is Moorish Science. That’s Islam, Moorish Science. Islam is my favorite religion because they

study the five major prophets, Moses, Muhammad, Jesus, Buddha, and Confucius. Like they repping the whole religious world.

You mentioned that your stepfather and your father kind of were the two sides, where one was a G and one was a Reverend. I feel like that span from God is Good to Jesus you were letting the people see more of that Reverend side but then when Good to be Home came out it was your chance to show people that other side of you.

Yeah, that was more like a homecoming. The purpose of NoYork was because everybody thought I was from the East when I dropped stuff. I got mad love going to the East you know, I got more love at the beginning of my career on the East Coast and on the West. Good to Be Home was like bringing it back home to where I’m from. NoYork was supposed to be that flex, but when I set out to do it, I wanted the music to be like a homage to all the music from New York in the 80s, like just that melting pot of all that sound coming out of the 80s. It was like weird, it was like, this ain’t no New York but it really is. So when I did Good to be Home Bombay kind of hit me with it. He hit me with like 200 PAGE 22

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beats. Bombay produced three joints on California Soul.

Oh wow, I didn’t realize that you were working with him way back when.

Yeah, Bombay is a legend, a 909 legend, the bass guy Bombay. I was buying beats off three different heads before I met the real producer of the beats, which was Bombay.

Heads was in the 909 slanging his beats making money off of it like it was dope. Some dude was like “Yeah, you could use those,” then somebody else was like “Nah, those are my beats. Boom boom, $75 a beat I got you.” So I bought like three beats from him then boom somebody tells us that those weren’t even his and that his cousin was the real producer. Eventually, we meet the real Bombay and of course we didn’t believe it was him. It was crazy, my homie who produced the other 70% of California Soul, my homie L’s from Long Beach from the Glory Squad. L’s was like “Yo, those are DJ Quik’s beats. Y’all found DJ Quik’s beat disc!” That’s how ill Bombay was, he was not sampling back then, Bombay was producing off keyboards killing it, out of high school. Bombay the same age as me. I was 19 looking for him. He

was doing his beats when he was 16-17. So I meet with this dude when I’m like 19, this dude was playing me loops, the stuff I was rapping on Good to be Home and I’m like just saying “Dude, this is not that dude?” This wasn’t the dude we were looking for, so we played him the beats that we heard and he’s like “Oh ok.”

He starts shuffling his discs in the back seat. “Put this in.” BOOM… We hear them keyboards come melting through and we were like “Damn this is that dude!”

up, I was sitting on joints like ‘Burgundy Whip’ I had already recorded. There were points that I was just busting over Madlib beats. l was sitting on 500 Madlib beats from like 2009.

This is 2012 It took me like three years to actually go through all 500 of them and figure out what I was sitting on. What really did for me was when I heard Strong Arm Steady. That’s when I learned what to do with a Madlib beat. This is like LA shit over like some soul.

I hadn’t talked to Bombay for a while after that. 2012 we run into each other and I’m like “Send me some stuff.” Within two to three months he sent me 200 beats, and they heat. I’m still sitting on Bombay heat to this day like “Man this is an album right here!”

The Jesus album was kind of, like a return to like LA for me in a musical sense, but unintentionally.

It felt like home. So Good to be Home was like me intentionally taking it back to LA, hence the title.

You’ve worked with some of the best producers of all time. How did it feel early on in your career when producers that you looked up to started reaching out to work with you?

You and Madlib worked together on Jesus and ended up making Bad Neighbor together with MED. You also released a mixtape over Madlib beats at one point called UCLA. Could you tell me about that project?

So after I dropped Jesus, MED hit me up like “Let’s do an album.” We talked to Lib and he was like “Yo, I’m gonna make you a part of this Medicine Show series, as one of the 12 albums I’m dropping here.” So we do the joints for that but towards the end of it he said we didn’t make the cut for the Medicine Show series. I was like “Damn…”

Now initially, when MED hit me

Well when I started making Below the Heavens, before it was with Exile, Oh No was the first producer I got beats from.

I got about 6 beats from him.

He was killing it at the time, he and Exile would battle and I started getting beats from both of them off rip. I talked to Dilla, Dilla was supposed to produce on my first album too.

He’s still my favorite producer to this day. Just him saying that he wanted to produce on my record is a trophy in my career. Dilla told me “I got beats with your name on it.”

He produced the song with me and Miguel, ‘Sun on My Face.’

That was his mom’s favorite song on Jay Loves Japan, she really loved Miguel’s singing on there. Shoutout to MA Dukes. Rest in Peace to the greatest to do it, J Dilla.

You have mentioned Miguel, did you guys go to high school together?

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Yep. Miguel the big homie. You know, I got Miguel singing, I’m the one who told him he should sing. Shout out to Ill Flavor Crew, Miguel was Ill Flavor. Miguel was from Bridgetown. We went to High School together in San Pedro High. Hi-Tek heard our demo together, Rhythm and Blu. He flew Miguel out but didn’t fly me out. Miguel called me from Cincinnati and was like, “Yo, I just want to tell you, Hi-Tek is going to reproduce our single… but he’s gonna take you off and put Mos Def on.” And I was like “Damnnn.”

But actually, I was so hyped because I’m such a fan of those guys, like it meant that I was one step closer. Like you open the door and now I’m gonna prove to them that I can live up to Mos. And last year Mos Def gave an interview where he said he was a fan of yours so it all came full circle. It was amazing too when you and Miguel reunited on Miles

for ‘American Dream.’ I know that you’ve been talking about Miles nonstop for three years now, but how do you view the album now that you have lived with it for a few years?

It’s my second favorite album after Below the Heavens. I think it’s the sharpest, it’s gotten the best response. It’s the most relatable. It did more than I could imagine. Miles is pulling everything out of me again.

Was there anything that happened in your life that made you make an album that was so introspective and to look into your roots like that?

The Oh No album A Long Red Hot Los Angeles Summer Night was coincidently about my studio getting robbed. I just made a fantasy day about it like where I find those fools and chop them up but in reality, they got away with my whole studio.

So Miles also had a significant meaning behind it, something more personal. It’s expressed in the album, but it’s not the most prominent so people don’t really know that it’s what the album is based on. It’s heavily influenced

by Miles Davis. The concept of miles out of life. I was pulling every mile out of my life to put on this record. Bringing it to Africa, bringing it to the roots of man. I was trying to kind of drop everything in there, everything inside of me emotionally.

So now after 20 years of making all these amazing albums, what is next? What is the next era of Blu? Tidal wave. The NoYork cover is about to become audio reality.

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MPCist Profile

Fresh Kils

by Ian McBride

In the dog-eat-dog world of hip-hop, artists have to find ways to separate themselves from the rest of the pack.

Enter Fresh Kils, the triple threat, who is adept at mashing pads on the MPC, in addition to his engineering and production duties. Even though his MPC routines are his claim to fame, he stacks enough paper off his engineering skills to focus on his musical passions full-time. Ironically, he “didn’t even like rap” back in his guitar-playing high school days. It wasn’t until Kils moved to Halifax that he started to immerse himself in hip-hop culture. I had a chance to chop it up with the Toronto-based artist, and during our discussion, he revealed his musical influences, spoke highly of his mentor K-Cut and had many talking points related to the MPC. When you first started making music, was it hip-hop-inspired? Or was it based on other genres?

You know what, totally not hiphop-inspired. In fact, I was a guitar player. I grew up playing guitar in high school and I didn’t even like rap honestly for a while, it kind of missed me. I wanted to be Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix, so I had a guitar and a 4-track. And that was kind of the thing, it was the early/mid-90s, where everybody wanted to be Lou Barlow. Everybody wanted to record guitar stuff into a 4-track and everybody had a 4-track, that was it. That was the DIY way to make records. So that’s really what started me, not in hip-hop. But in terms of production, I was already kind of doing that, like layering guitar parts and writing songs. I hated writing songs, I hated writing lyrics, that just seemed to feel corny all the time. I was listening to a pretty wide range of stuff, in terms of your question about influences. I was listening to Metallica, Nine Inch

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Nails, but also old-school stuff like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix.

A lot of guitar-driven stuff like I Mother Earth and Our Lady Peace. And then some of the local bands like Treble Charger and Hayden. Yeah, that was where I started. I didn’t really get into it hard until I moved out to Halifax.

What artists influenced you after you started making music?

When I went to Halifax, that was a big change for me because that hip-hop scene there was vibrant and crazy. It was kind of blowing up. There was a lot of really incredible artists there. So I moved in next door to Uncle Fester, who became a production partner and one of my best friends through all the years. But at that time, this was the beginnings of Skratch Bastid, The Goods, Kaleb Simmonds, Classified, Josh Martinez, DJ Moves, Buck 65, Sixtoo, Sebutones. That was the Halifax scene and it was blowing up. In terms of production in particular, I usually mention a producer by the name of Gordski. He was a producer for this group called The Goods and I absolutely loved his beats, I thought he was just incredible. And what he was doing then was sampling a lot of David Axelrod records and a lot of almost like orchestral funky stuff. Gordski’s production, DJ Shadow obviously, was a huge influence on me. And in terms of my journey from being a long-haired guitar-playing hippie cat in university listening to rock bands and stuff, by the end of university before I went to Halifax, the groups that started to leak into my conscience

were bands like Portishead, Beck, Chemical Brothers. Those types of groups were essentially sampling hip-hop breaks, but doing it in a more different way.

So the reason I mentioned that is my entry into hip-hop stuff was the production and the beats, I love the beats. I was like, “Damn, these songs are awesome!”

But the lyrics took longer for me to catch. It’s almost like the “White Men Can’t Jump” thing where,”Well, you can listen to Jimi, but you can’t hear Jimi.”

When did you start doing MPC routines?

So the thing about the MPC is, I couldn’t afford one forever. They were always like two grand or three grand. The 2000 at that point, was still really expensive.

I was making beats on Cool Edit and Logic for years before I even had an MP. Then I was at the Harris Institute, where I got a Production Engineering degree.

I came out of there and I got an internship with K-Cut of Main Source, which was an incredible, unbelievable moment for me. I spent about three years with him.

And of course, his studio, and a lot of the studios that I would work out of over the course of those three years, the MPC was the centrepiece. So I had to learn it as an engineer to run the studio. My first gig for K-Cut was that he wanted me to sync his MPC to Pro Tools, so I could dump beats he was producing.

Dumped the tracks separately, so they could mix the records and arrange them. I learned the MPC from an engineering standpoint, so I could help run these studios. And by the time I got one, I didn’t really need it

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to make beats. I was already making beats. I approached it much more like an instrument, in the sense that it was a different way of accessing the sound. It was a different way of interacting with the sound, the pad. I’ve been pointing and clicking my way through songs, production-wise. My first time on stage doing it was in ‘04. I’m going to credit More Or Les with this because I was making beats for him and I was helping him with producing his records. I was like, “Listen, I could probably do some of these live if you’re interested?”

And to his credit, he was like, “Yeah, let’s do it. It sounds really cool.” Whereas other emcees over the years, are not interested in that. It’s a lot easier to just press play on an instrumental and do your song, rather than risk some cat back there with an MPC that he barely knows how to use. So More Or Les was into it. It was right around ‘04/’05 that I was performing on stage with the MPC. The routines that you got that y’all came to know, really came out of me starting to do battling. Battle Royale was like 2010/2011/2012, across those years. That’s when I built the battle routines that I became known for, but I’ve been performing on the MP for years and years, before that.

What inspired you to do MPC routines?

The process of making beats for other artists was frustrating because once you give somebody a beat, you can’t really control what they do with it or where it goes. It’s sort of out of your hands. So for me, it was like, “I’ve got to figure out a way

to represent my art in a more hands-on way. I’ve got to get on stage.” That was one thing, but the other main thing was that hip-hop shows were so boring.

Cats would get up there with their CD player, or they had their MiniDisc player and they press play and there’d be these loud beeps going through the thing that they cycled through their songs. It’s like watching karaoke.

Hip-hop in general is a pretty terrible live medium.

Especially if guys have no stage presence.

Yeah, exactly. In order to pull off you and a CD player, you’ve got to be hella compelling.

I do remember there was a moment in Halifax where I was disappointed with that part of it.

I was like, “I wish this was more live, at least have a turntable.”

And there was a time where no one even had DJs anymore. And then I remember Sage Francis coming to Halifax and going to the show and it was just him and his MiniDisc player, and it was so incredible! But this guy’s a one-in-a-million shot. There’s very few people that can pull that off. And then I went to go see The Roots live and I was like, “Shit, this is fucking crazy!”

So that was part of it, too, just thinking and desiring to do more with the stage show and this can be a live thing. This can be more interactive. Then when they wanted us to battle each other, it was like, “Okay, I’m gonna crush these motherfuckers! I’m gonna mash these fucks up!” When a lot of producers go into a beat battle, they don’t think of it as a battle. And when I went into a battle, my whole background of it was like, “Where am I going to draw inspiration from?

What should I be doing?”

And of course, I was a huge turntablist fan. I’m a terrible DJ, I can’t scratch a lick, but I watched all the DMCs, I went to the Regionals, we collected videos. The Invisibl Skratch Piklz videos, we watched those back to back to back. We’d just have them on in the background all the time. I love turntablism, and that’s what I wanted to do when I was battling. A lot of my battle routines are essentially turntablist battle routines done on an MPC. Are there parallels between the chiptune genre and MPC routines?

I guess they call it controllerism.

It might fall under the umbrella of the development of different controllers of music. Different ways of interacting with the sounds. So I think chiptune, you could argue, insofar as the MPC stuff, is one of the first iterations of what you might call controllerism. But the chiptune from a cultural standpoint is much different. There’s different cultures and different communities interested in it.

Dibia$e is one of the most prominent producers, when it comes to video game samples.

Does he inspire you as an MPCist?

I think so, yeah. You gotta give it up to the OG. He really drew his line in the sand and stuck his flag in the ground and stuck with it. And he’s inspiring, especially insofar as to be a producer, be a beat maker. A lot of the beat scene stuff, especially if you look at it from Low End Theory in LA and different events that came up, there was this moment where it was a bit of a Zeitgeist or paradigm shift in a certain way PAGE 27

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where people started getting really tired of the emcee and the attitude and the egomania and all this crap that came along with dealing with artists. And just getting shat on or not getting light shined upon. So there’s something to the Low End Theory movement and the beat scene movement in general where it’s very anti-emcee, in a way. You don’t think about it that way and it’s not as overtly stated as much.

I’ve had instructions, “We don’t want any emcees. We don’t want any instrumentalists. We want the peace, that’s what we’re about.” And again, I want to be careful, it’s not anti-rap. It’s just you’re mistaken if you think that these beats need an artist to be great, or to be wonderful or to be less listenable. This art is its own thing, too, and it deserves love and it deserves attention. And it’s a craft in and of itself. And insofar as Dibia$e represents that, that’s a huge thing. He is part of that and I definitely do find that inspiring.

Do you have workshops that teach people how to create MPC routines?

Man, I’ve done all kinds of different things. I got sponsored

by Akai through inMusic Canada in 2016. I did tons of workshops with them across the country. We did coast to coast to coast with Vekked doing the turntablism workshops. I’ve done workshops all over the country with different organizations like Boys and Girls Club. It’s not always specifically how to make an MPC routine. I’ve always tried to, in my workshops, not be so gear specific, as in, “You need this gear to do this.” I try to keep things as accessible as I can, in terms of information being disseminated. I do a lot

of one-on-ones, too, so people will hire me to teach them what I’m doing. My finger drumming technique I’ve taught many people over the years. I’m the only one that does it, or I guess I created it. I taught Peter Project how to do it and he used it to beat me in the first round of the Sound Battle Royale. First year of Sound Battle Royale Finals he beat me with it. I started a beat-making workshop with Unity Charity. I helped build their beat-making curriculum and we would do like 8-10 units.

There would be one where I would specifically cover, not just MPC routines, but how to make content out of your beats, how to make live content and different approaches. Whether that’s just running stuff, playing stuff on an SP-404 and tweaking some sounds, to full-out finger drumming madness, to putting an animated picture with your feet behind it. Just different ways to create content. I love doing it, I love teaching. It’s a lot more fulfilling than slogging away in an industry that is rife with bullshit and disappointment.

Which aspect of your musical repertoire is your favourite?

MPCing, engineering or producing?

I’m known for flailing on the MPC. That’s what I’m most known for, but I’m known for that because it’s the most viral thing or the most marketable thing. It’s fun to watch. But I’ve been an engineer from the beginning. When I moved to Halifax, I was the de facto engineer. I’ve been an engineer my whole career and it’s been the thing that has kept my lights on. It’s the reason I’m still here. Not to say that it’s my favourite, I think that oscillates.

Some days it’s one thing, some days another. I think I’m probably most thankful for my engineering.

I say this to my students sometimes, “Anything that keeps you in the chair.” Because if you gotta go work another job to do this, you’re not spending as much time in the chair as you should. I’m also cynical about the MPC routines in a way. For example, PremRock and I. We would work on these beautiful, lush, musical, deep rap records, and we would travel across the ocean to go and perform them all over Europe. We get there and some guy that doesn’t even speak English as his first language would be screaming at me to do the Transformers routine. It’s an interesting thing where the MPC is a blessing and a curse in some ways. In the curse of success is repetition where, if you do anything that people really love, then you gotta do it every night. The MPC is this thing that I’m known for, but I’m a lot more than that. If you listen to my first solo record, Disclaimer, which I put out last year, it’s not really what everyone thought. Everybody thinks of me as this loud, bombastic MPCroutine guy. In terms of what my favourite thing is, I have a weird love/hate relationship with the MPC because it’s just become the circus act that everybody wants from me. I love producing records. I think most often it’s my favourite, but I wouldn’t be here without the engineering. The engineering is something I’ll do until I’m dead. I don’t know if I can do MPC routines in my ‘70s or ‘60s.

How long have you been touring as an MPCist?

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From ‘07 until whenever, I was doing 150 shows a year on average for about six years.

I started really being on the road heavy, heavy in ‘07. I was on the road before that, more on and off. But ‘06/’07 is when it really went crazy. And it got even crazier because I was on the road hard for those years, and then I got a booking deal in 2012. Those following years were even crazier. In 2019, I got off the road. I had to stop. I turned 40, and I was like, “Jesus. This is cool, but I gotta figure some life shit out.” I’d essentially gotten off the road. I’ll not ever do four or five weeks ever again. Unless somebody throws an obscene amount of money at me. I did three weeks in Europe last April and it was great and it was fun, but I don’t like being away that long, especially if the money isn’t right.

What advice would you give to an aspiring MPCist?

Stay working on your craft 100 percent, get the 10,000 hours in.

Be yourself. Do routines that you love. Don’t do routines that other people will love. Be weird with it, don’t be afraid to be weird.

Don’t be afraid to like what you like and rep what you want to rep, because that’s where we falter. Don’t be afraid to be you on the pads. There’s a reason why I do a Tenacious D routine and a Bruce Lee routine, and not a 2Pac tribute routine. I have a Dilla routine now, but I try not to pander. I try to do stuff that is as much me. I didn’t even pick the Transformers sample. I didn’t pick The Price Is Right sample. They handed me that sample.

So do you.

Streetwear Showcase: By Seher Ahmed

Sliv & Learn

There are multiple things that tried to stop Cameron Connolly from realizing his dream: Depression, addiction, a cancer prognosis...but Cameron shows the world every day why hard times don’t last, hard people do.

Cameron Connolly is the creator and designer of fashion brand Sliv Life, a name that is quickly taking off in the Denver community as an up and coming force to be reckoned with.

Sliv Life currently focuses on hand bleach dyed denim and upcycled 1-of-1s. Each piece is handcrafted and designed with care from the mind of Cameron, and it just goes to show that persistence can put anything from paper to previewing in fashion shows.

Getting to speak with Cameron about his beginnings, his trials, and successes opened my eyes to the power of the craft. As long as your tunnel vision is tuned correctly, there is nowhere you can’t strive for. Cameron’s work is truly poetry in motion, so I sat down with him to flesh out his writing style for the world to see.

What is your background? How did you get into fashion?

“Hi I’m Cameron from Denver, CO, born and raised - if I’m starting from the beginning…

Like I said, I’m from Denver growing up here I’ve seen it evolve from nothing, to an up and coming city in the scene.

I’ve been making clothing for a total of just under 10 years, Sliv Life for 7. In highschool me and PAGE 29

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one other friend messed around with a concept called Karismatik (with a K) nothing too crazy, some graphic tees with a logo.

At the time it ended up taking off, but I eventually left the project to explore my own creativities.

That was the first real “fashion” project I had gotten into.

It was really just self expression through different mediums. I grew up dirt biking, so I would always be coloring my gear, painting my gear...modifying it in any way to add my own style to it. That may be the first time I truly recognized I craved more individuality in my clothing.

I worked a lot (and still do) with my dad, and that’s where I feel I got my entrepreneur energy from. Working with my family,

keeping my head down. I didn’t really have any crazy ideas or “aha” moment...it wasn’t until 2015 when I was diagnosed with cancer that changed.”

So, a cancer prognosis...in the middle of your transition out of Karismatik, and school. What did that mean for you?

“It put life in perspective for me.

I stopped holding resentments, I cleared those out because I realized life is too short to be holding onto grudges. It was definitely scary at first, but it put all of the small stuff into perspective.”

“I didn’t even tell my parents for a while, but it made me realize, we really DON’T have much time here, and I DO need to take my ideas and time seriously. To be honest...it was over as quick as it came. I had two surgeries, and within 60 days, I was on the road to recovery. I thought it’d be this thing looming over me, but within two months I was back on track and my cancer was in remission.

Gratitude is all I can say. That following year I started Sliv Life.”

And so now you’re actively recovering from cancer, and still working on your own brand. This is a good segue - how did you come up with the name Sliv Life?

He chuckles a bit before perking up and answering.

“I know from experience life is short, and we need to live it to the fullest. Live life right? I figure a “sliv” of your life is like a day, so it’s about living every day to your fullest.”

Brilliant verbiage, taking something that was supposed to be a scary endeavor and flipping it on its head, this was the first glimpse I got to Cameron’s persistence.

He continues: “But yeah, when I had started I just made about 100 tees, nothing too special, something with a logo...I sold out of almost all of them. I’ll admit I was still running from what I had gone through with my cancer diagnosis, and using alcohol and drugs as a form of escape.”

Cameron went from a debilitating, life changing disease, to a terrible cycle of addiction brought on by the pain of his treatment. And yet, he persisted and got to where he is now. I followed up - how does that happen? For lack of a better PAGE 30

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question, how does one bring themselves out of that hole, by themselves?

Cameron thanks me for the sentiment before returning his statement.

“Looking back on it now, it’s funny because I’m just trying to help kids nowadays that are coming out of high school with drug use.

I try to be a good role model as much as I can. People forget that we need to be easier on ourselves. We’re all trying our best. I actually almost quit during that time because nothing was hitting for me. I wasn’t feeling anything from creating. Then I went to Denver Fashion Week.

I was honestly so inspired, I got a sewing machine literally from my grandma, quit cocaine and by the next month I was working hard with new pieces”

to him from his grandmother, Sliv Life has grown into a brand continually premiering on Denver Fashion Week, through Denver’s well known community of Thrift Con, and even through Cameron’s own fashion shows that he has put together this year, including two for Halloween.

It’s clear that Sliv Life has grown from a passion project of recovery, sobriety and positivity, to something much bigger.

About his last fashion shows, I asked Cameron how he maintains his composure in high-stress situations, especially coming from a small operation to an almost cult following in the city of Denver within a year or two.

Can you speak on your creative process? How do you design new products?

“I get inspired by others and people around me, and I’m a workaholic. I’m overloaded with ideas and I feel blessed because of it, it’s all I think about. I guess right now it’s about evolving my craft, always trying to make something new, something I’ve never seen. But I’m proud I’ve always stayed true to my brand... the creative process is genuinely a way for me to stay sober. When I’m frustrated or dealing with something, I make clothes. It’s therapeutic for me, and it blocks out all the noise.”

With Sliv Life’s repertoire starting with a smooth 30 jeans in 30 days, it brought Cameron to the forefront of creation, and learning as he went. Starting off with a sewing machine gifted

“I mean, I still get nervous! (he laughs) But, I run off pressure, I feed off of it because I don’t want to come up short. Doing a fashion show is so hard because of all the little details that need to be in order. But I’ve gotten better. I’m better at assessing my time, considering how long it takes to make a piece. Since I’m older, the lack of nerves comes with me putting myself out there and the experience of being uncomfortable - I work through the fear all the time - public speaking is something I’m not the best at, but I don’t give a shit.”

Any advice for some new designers looking to break into the scene?

“You gotta let go of being a perfectionist, you really just gotta put out - out of my 30 first jeans I made, some were bad, some were better...then I found my style. Let’s just say the first 100 things you make are gonna PAGE 31

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be hit or miss. Believe in yourself - a lot of people get worried about others opinions...ultimately, that’s just random haters on the internet, that in 10 to 20 years, will it even matter?”

Locking in and tunnel vision is something Cameron won’t shy from. Doing your 10,000 hours is something universal that every lover of art or war can attest to.

Sliv Life and Cameron want you to understand it’s a bit of both, as your time is very precious, and until that is sunken in, it’s a constant struggle of priorities.

Sliv Life is more than a brand or a project from a creative, it is a love letter to life, individuality, and persistence by Cameron Connolly.

Each bleach dyed denim piece, adorned with the signature look, and yet all distinct and beautiful in their own way. As this may just be the beginning of something even more beautiful, I asked Cameron What’s Next?

“I don’t wanna give away too much” He takes a second to reply.

“I have a lot planned for next year. Should be doing DFW in Spring, my own show in October.

A few out of state Thrift Cons, and travel with them. Hit more states, so people can see the clothes in person, I feel like that makes all the difference. I got one huge thing I’m working on that I’m not quite ready to talk about” He laughs “...but it’d be cool to pull it off next year. Really just working hard to elevate, stay consistent, learn, grow, put out cool stuff and have fun. I get a high from it - it’s a whole world when I’m creating in this room.”

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HEAT U MISSED

By Def Goldbloom

2023 has been a great year for hip-hop, and anyone who says otherwise simply isn’t tapped in. We’ve gotten albums from established hip-hop veterans, and young cats determined to create their own musical legacy. With so much music dropping every week, it’s almost impossible to stay up to date with all of the new releases. Album of the Year lists are going to start popping up soon and most of them will feature the same dozen and a half albums, so allow me to introduce you to some of the Heat that U Missed this year!

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If you have been reading DEF Magazine since the first issue, then you are familiar with Fatboi Sharif. Our very first cover artist has been absolutely killing it this year. After the release of that first issue, he teamed up with Steel Tipped Dove for Decay, one of the most experimental and boundary pushing records of the year. The duo was able to tap into a sound unlike anything in the current hip-hop landscape.

Sharif teamed up with Bigg Jus as well for the EP Insomniac Missile Launcher. As Bigg Jus’ first release since 2012, he hasn’t missed a single step, giving us four tracks that are nothing short of mind bending.

Coming out of that same New York scene, Phiik and Lungs are one of the most dynamic rap duos working today. They have been releasing tapes in their Another Planet series now since 2020, and their most recent effort Another Planet 4 is the best yet. Lungs produces the projects under his name Lonesword, and is able to conjure up another world sonically for the two MCs to conquer. As different sounds start to build and gain imitators across the underground, just know that Phiik and Lungs were ahead of the game.

Phiik & Lungs//LoneSword Another Planet 4 Fatboi Sharif & Bigg Jus Insomniac Missile Launcher

Fatboi Sharif was also part of a group release with some of the best rising artists in the up and coming New York/Jersey scene. Infinite Victory Loop was released by producer Roper Williams and features the MCs, Fatboi Sharif, YL, Akai Solo, and Pootie. This record was recorded in just 24 hours and captures a victorious moment of hip-hop, looping it infinitely for future generations to hear the magic these artists were able to create in this moment.

Another artist who was featured in issue 1 during our Artists on the Rise Segment, is AJ Suede.

As the year wraps up and people start releasing their lists of the top MCs of the year, any list without the Suede God should be deemed invalid. Suede has released four albums this year, each with the sharpest lyricism that you will find. Steel Tipped Dove, who seems to be working with all of the best MCs these days, teamed up with Suede for the incredible Reoccurring Characters in October Suede’s Indica Music and Ark Flashington deepen his already amazing discography, but it’s his PAGE 34

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collaboration Parthian Shots with Televangel that remains at the top of my album of the year list.

AJ Suede & Televangel Parthian Shots

Suede has been affiliated with R.A.P. Ferreira’s Ruby Yacht crew who have been building a roster of thought provoking abstract lyricists for a few years now. His fellow Ruby Yacht comrade Pink Navel recently dropped their album How To Capture Playful in October and it is one of the best collections of beats and rhymes that you will hear all year. The album takes its name to heart, capturing the playful nature of life in all of its creativity. The production on this record is handled by Kenny Segal who is coming off of one of the biggest releases of his career, teaming up with billy woods for the album Maps. Segal is phenomenal at crafting a soundscape specific to the skillset of each MC he works with. Segal and Navel were able to capture the wonder and nostalgia of discovering a new video game and diving into a new world.

This year has been filled with talented MCs and producers teaming up to build some of the best work of the decade so far. Sketch185 and Jeff Markey linked up in February for the

Backwoodz Studioz release He Left Nothing for the Swim Back. This album may not have arrived to much fanfare when it first dropped, but this will soon be a cult classic championed by all who appreciate forward thinking, avante-garde hip-hop.

At just over a half hour in length, you will be hard pressed to find an album with as much care put into its craft as this. From the aggressively abstract delivery of Chicago’s most underrated lyricist to the industrial experimentation of Markey’s production, no second of sound is wasted on this one.

Going from one of the first great records released this year to one of the latest, the rising collective Hidden Renaissance recently released the album BA SING SE. This album has so much talent across the board and features many of the brightest young acts in hip-hop. Hidden Renaissance is quite literally a hidden renaissance of artists from around the world who have linked up through the internet to band together and make incredible music. BA SING SE channels its namesake from the world of Avatar, as a safe haven, an impenetrable city, and the album is unbothered by anything outside of its gates. Featuring 24 songs and almost four dozen artists, this album might just be what saves hip-hop from the fire nation of wackness.

With the sheer amount of music released every week, it is far too easy for great work to go unnoticed in the internet age.

Even an album with production from the likes of Conductor Williams, Statik Selektah, Khrysis, and Nottz could go largely unnoticed. Granddad Woolly

released a pair of albums titled OITO (RED) and OITO (BLUE) with those legends as well as others on the boards.

Both projects deserve way more love. These are the most personal albums in Woolly’s career and feature some of the most focused and introspective lyricism that you will find this year.

Another one of the most celebrated producers in the game right now is Nicholas Craven. His work with Ransom, Boldly James, and MachHommy has been some of the most talked about hip-hop of the decade so far, but his record from earlier this year with Jimmie D is among his best work.

Garbage Music for Trust Fund Babies 2 follows up on the duo’s first mixtape from 2018. These two have been working together since they just started out in the scene, so their chemistry picks up right where it left off years ago. With Craven’s signature soul samples, and Jimmie D’s commanding flow and pen, do not let this one go under the radar.

Jimmie D & Nicolas Craven Garbage Music for Trust Fund Babies 2

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and his 2023 has any hip-hop head who missed it doing their homework to catch up. Since the start of the year he has released the albums It Means a Lot, and E-Town General 2, both of which he produced, mixed, mastered, and rapped on. His production has been what really sets him apart from his contemporaries, releasing the instrumental project Rituals, along with all five editions of his Proglodyte series.

There have been a slew of amazing new producers, creating the backdrop for this next era of underground hip-hop. After just his second year of releasing music, Noqh already has the sound of one of hip-hop’s most reliable and seasoned producers. His instrumental project wtvr_vol.1 and his album Water to Wine showcase his talents as one of the most promising producers on the rise. Filip Neuf has been building a name for himself in the online hip-hop community for a few years now, and 2023 was his best yet, releasing two instrumental tapes Polvere, Vol. 2, and Red Car. He also linked up with a few MCs, producing TERMINAL : TERMINAL for xhef, and Duck Soup with MANSDEM. These projects are very different in tone and style and really showcase his wide variety of skills. Neuf first popped on the scene in 2021 with his release Charis collaborating with his fellow producer Harvey Gold.

Gold had been quiet all year until the late release of his 30 song opus As It Unfolds. Quelle Chris has been blessing this new crop of talented underground producers all year. On top of his great verse on As It Unfolds, Chris was featured on the Deluxe edition of Blackbrainz

As many of these artists are pushing their sound to the future, some are simply perfecting the world class hip-hop that came before them. From the aggressive boom bap of Sacco & Vanzetti on the album Battery, to the smooth and wavy lyricism of Swizzy, AbbotJackson, and Red Amandala on their immaculate project 3wizemen.

The blending of jazz-rap and neo-soul has been around for decades, but the synthesis was perfected by WHOBEJAZZZ and Tenten with their album Absinthe. These artists have all been able to channel what came before them and add their own spin to help bring underground hip-hop into this new age.

WHOBEJAZZZ & Tenten Absinthe

As the mainstream hip-hop machine continues to run in place, underground hip-hop has lapped them time and time again. Each year more and more artists arise to continue to push the boundaries of what the genre has to offer, and if you are looking for the future of hip-hop, just take a look around because it is already here.

HEAT U MISSED

WIZZDUMB vol. 2 and was one of two features on the futuristic Headspace by H31R and JWords.

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DEF MAG DEF Magazine was created & published

by Def Goldbloom aka Brandon Mariano Designed by Chase Simmons

Pages 2, 16-24, and 33-36 written by Def Goldbloom aka Brandon Mariano Pages 3-6 written by Nolan Kelly

Pages 7-8 and 13-14 written by Oliver Hogg Pages 9-10 written by Evan Baxter-Carr Pages 11-12 written by Connor Dobson Pages 25-28 written by Ian McBride

Pages 29-32 written by Seher Ahmed Art on page 37 by Sean Monaghan

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