Just finished watching the Guru thing. Hoooooooo boy.
- Talks stagnation of hip hop from autotune.
- Talks nitty gritty of producing Run This Town (Timbo was there working on it... for some reason) and producers communicating with the artists on the direction of the sounds for the track(s). Talks about how technicalities and shit don't mean jack shit to people, "it's what comes out of the two speakers that's what counts."
- Talks collaboration and production crediting. You know how people say "oh he didn't produce that, this guy did!"
- Talks coming up, DC not giving a shit about any other kind of hip hop sound at the time.
- Talks the balance between, not necessarily just commercialized music, but music for your audience and what you want as an artist creatively.
- Talks basically how he came up, taking Hip-Hop worldwide and when he figured out this was what he wanted to do, and how networking got him where he is.
- Talks what made Bassline special, and a key to the success to the Roc, how he got to tune their Bassline room acoustically at the beginning of it all.
- Talks doing Jazz sessions to learn how to clean up music production that's riddled with plugins and stuff. Plays "Oh Boy" by Cam as an example of one of the cleaner tracks he's made with none of that excessive shit added on. Talks the story behind the song.
- Talks the creation of De La Soul and MF DOOM's Rock Co. Kane Flow.
- Talks trying to get Jay on a Dilla beat forever, Jay not really understanding/not finding it fitting in with album/music direction at the time.
- Talks having stuff of Dillas that he's not supposed to have, playing MF DOOM (and Food)/Dilla for Jay.
- Talks where hip-hop is going next, says International hip-hop taking over, cites Drake as an example. "We would have never though someone from Canada would be running hip-hop." Says he hates when international artists try to emulate US styles, "If you have to rhyme in your native language, do that. Half the people who listen to Reggae don't know what the hell they're saying, but they enjoy the music." Feels the UK is hungriest right now, and are probably next.
- Talks maturing the culture, 40 year olds shouldn't be talking about popping bottles in the club, and everyone trying to rhyme like their 18 year olds, that being the only way to sustain the genre without fizzling.
- Talks putting on his A&R hat and changing "New York State Of Mind" to "Empire State Of Mind," used to be a complete R&B song by some girl with a different story, Jay changed the story and the name was changed not to alienate people and make it a global anthem and not just a NY one.
- Teases the Jay Electronica album some more.
Dude is a fucking genius. Love this kind of commentary on hip-hop and the nitty gritty of it all. Surprised more people here aren't into stuff like this and the Rosenberg sit downs and stuff. *shrug*