If you know me or my playlists you know that most days of the week I stay listening to beats. While I love my rap music, it’s hard for me to do 7 things of time rhyming Brotha Lynch Hung’s “24 Deep” so I need my instrumentals. But a lot of 90’s rap producers were dope with a rapper over their beats but the loops got repetitive to an ADD listeners like myself. That’s why when DJ Shadow started popping, I was all in. He made the listener not know what was going to happen which wasn’t the norm in the Mid90s.
Around the same time, DJ Qbert and turntablism as a whole was poppin out in Cali. Not only did you have producers experimenting with timing on their drums, but you also had them dumbing out on the drums themselves… It was like some new jazz soloists came into the game and they were here to bring a louisville slugger to what you thought instrumental hip hop was or what it could be.
Producers like Amon Tobin were even blurring the lines of what hip hop was. I listen to a track like this and I instantly think hip hop… you?
Cut Chemist and Numark with Jurassic 5 aka J5 were testing out some things as well and not giving one f*ck as to what somebody thought about this new fire sliding in on “alternative” hip hop albums…
But man… When Sixtoo came out with this it was insane. Sixtoo might be one of my favorite producers from the early 2000’s… Too damn dope… Add a little Sage Francis to the mix and you just had something different.
Then you mix Dan the Automator and DJ Shadow and bring in some Kool Keith and whoa… new wave for anybody who wants to come down underground. And icing on the cake is Qbert mixing up some Dre and The D.O.C is just some shittttttttttttttttttttttt!! Beautiful music right here.
new styles came in that were wild….
but the beats also took on additional life forms when they made their way to the LA beat scene where Gaslamp Killer, Teebs, and the Brainfeeder / Low End Theory crews were running shit… There were a few years there that were crazy… Killer Mike rapping over Flying Lotus was about as unexpected as Killer Mike joining forces with El Producto from Company Flow… Ahhh.. hip hop… this why we all f*ck with you.
Taylor McFerrin just sounded different than anybody else and some tracks off his remain in rotation for this old head.
Crews like Run the Jewels formed and what we thought hip hop was supposed to be was smashed…. A dope emcee could coexist with an a fresh emcee from NYC and make crazy music. But to see the art form bend and turn with what should be boom bap and what should be hip hop and what should be rap was amazing… fuck the boundaries b… just go. Even if a an album from a rapper becomes full on experimental you gotta support an artist’s creative vision for their art.
MHE aka Machine Have Emotions became Drumetrics but when they were MHE, they put me onto Radiohead when I neverrrrr would have peeped. These musicians fusing and melting genres kicked down doors for ya boi.
You have no idea how hard this beat hit from Diplo and then he had Big Juss from CoFlow on it? Whaaaaaaat???? Orko in the mix too??? This was what experimental hip hop was to me.
My ears and attention span have always been out of wack so when producers come and kick the cord out the wall I applaud.
I haven’t been able to stay on the beats as much but I absolutely did listen and tap in when I saw ohkaywhy had some new heat… Ohkaywhy just reminds me of… well… nobody… actually… maybe he’s a descendant of Gaslamp Killer with a lil Kaytranada with some Murs type hype on the stage presence. Ohkaywhy is somebody who is turning heads whenever he performs… The kid is up next but it’s all good… stay sleeping on greatness because the young bucks are ready to chomp like some mahfuckin sharks…. Go peep and tell me this doesn’t hit different. Now take all that shit and forget it because you haven’t seen a beatmaker perform like ohkaywhy… one man hype train ya heaaaaaaaaaaard??