I've often wondered why producers are overlooked and not treated as equal to rappers. I know that rappers are at the forefront and are the ones seen on stage, in videos, and are heard on the airwaves, but producers, however, are the ones that piece everything together and make sure that every single...
Money is very important, but so is music. Without music, there would be no money, and vice versa. When it comes to making beats and possibly making money from those beats, you could be faced with some tough choices, namely, does money affect your beat making? I'm sure that today there are many pe...
With what exactly? If you have to ask me that question then you must be either blind, deaf, dumb, or all of those combined. If that's the case then I should call you DJ Helen Keller. Hip Hop music is at an all-time high of oversaturation and it doesn't look like it's going to end anywhere in the nea...
It's always difficult to find some good drum sounds for your productions, and Hip Hop producers often look towards vinyl or drum kits for those sounds. However, what's often overlooked is old drum machines because they all have some great sounds that can easily be manipulated to match our sound. The...
There has been a disturbing trend in the world of Hip Hop over the past decade or so, and it's something that needs to be addressed NOW. I actually first discovered it back in 1996. I know it's hard to believe but it began back in the day when a friend of mine came over one day to freestyle. What ha...
Success comes in all shapes and forms. Most people tend to associate money with success, and while that may very well be a good fit, it's not the only type of success there is. If you're hitting the studio on a regular basis and you're working really hard on your beats, hoping to blow up and get som...
I have a challenge for you: organize your samples. I know it's a tedious task because no one wants to have to sort anything, but by organizing your files, guess what will happen? You'll work better! Too often we're used to taking a sample from whichever source, such as a vinyl record, or just an MP3...
At least I hope! This won't be a "Hip Hop today sucks, old school is the best" type of article, instead it's about which direction Hip Hop is headed. Some say that everything eventually comes back into style and I strongly believe that the same can hold true for Hip Hop. We've seen it go through man...
When producing music, it can become quite repetitive given that we're mostly working with loops. Maybe by working this way, we've grown accustomed to doing things over and over and not realizing that it could be hurting our productions. There are many different ways that you can change things up ...
The question of whether you would sell out or not is one that has often been asked in many Hip Hop circles. Being a beat maker or producer, it can often be tough to be heard and to meet the right people in order to have your career progress. The safe bet is to find a middle ground between selling ou...
Making beats can be a very time-consuming affair, and often most of us just can't find the time to really sit down and get creative in the studio. Between our jobs, family, friends, and regular daily chores, making beats can often be at the very bottom of our to-do list. I find that in today's world...
In January of 1991, Alesis announced at the annual NAMM convention that they were about to release a new product to the recording market, the ADAT. In early 1992, they finally delivered on that promise and released the first model of their digital audio recorder, and it quickly became a huge boost f...
