This Is Book’s Music

Yeah, you really don’t need another blog or website talking about Lady Gaga but I’m going to make an exception with this track/video, which is a mash-up between her “Beautiful Dirty Rich” and Mark Ronson‘s “Bang Bang Bang”. Gaga probably would not be the success she is today if she went directly to the funk, but I dare her to prove me wrong.

Here it is:

If you’re unsure of where you can seen a similar stance, it is based on a well known photo of Malcolm X:

In hip-hop, KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions honored it with their album By All Means Necessary:

Is Bilal trying to convey a message with his updated perspective on the familiar photo? Or maybe he’s trying to bring back or revive messages in the music (or music in the message, take your pick)? Here is a confirmed track listing:
1. Cake & Eat It Too
2. Restart
3. All Matter
4. Flying
5. Levels
6. Little One
7. Move On
8. Robots
9. The Dollar
10. Who Are You
11. Think It Over

If the cover doesn’t move you, perhaps these videos of Q-Tip and Phonte Coleman will, as they were asked to share their views on Bilal.

Airtight’s Revenge is scheduled for released on September 14th on Plug Research.

About twenty years ago, Q-Tip and his tribe-mates shared with the world a song that featured the sound of the sitar (via Rotary Connection). Twenty years later, Q-Tip offers a video featuring someone who is half Indian. Full circle? Not really, but really, you would be watching this video regardless of what I said. This is Tip with a little help from Willie Nelson‘s homegirl, Norah Jones.

The song is from Q-Tip’s most recent album, The Renaissance, which you can purchase three different ways from CD Universe:
VINYL
COMPACT DISC
MP3

Click each individual icon to buy it in the format of your choice.

When the decade started, it was announced that Q-Tip would be releasing a new album combining a bit of the old and the new. It would be called Kamaal The Abstract, and a number of tracks surfaced in the hopes of getting him into the spotlight after the mixed reviews of his debut solo album, 1999′s Amplified. But for whatever reason, even as a steady buzz was climbing and Q-Tip was doing the rounds of promoting the next wave for him, the album was shelved. Rumors started, and for the most part everyone was waiting even as Q-Tip got involved in other projects.

After an eight year delay, the album now finds a home with Battery Records, who will be releasing the album on September 15th. Back then, Q-Tip found himself in a wide range of magazines, including jazz magazines where he shared his love of playing music and the kind of set-up he had at home. Q-Tip had always been musical, and I say this because as a rapper you were once expected to do nothing else but rap, the stereotype being that if you rapped, you couldn’t play or do “real music”. But go back to the remix of De La Soul‘s “Buddy” or him singing a bit of Funkadelic on an old home video by A Tribe Called Quest. It’s a musical side many rappers used to be afraid to share, so perhaps the world had to catch up to the reality that yes, someone in hip-hop can make “real” music. As Q-Tip might say, all music is real music and the eight year delay means the world will be able to get the reverb and echo that’s about to hit them.

Will this broaden Q-Tip’s musical horizons? He’s been able to share his talents with the world for the last 20 years, I don’t think the world would mind another 20.

The technique Q-Tip does here is nothing new, especially for any of you who were raised on turntables and considered a record player your “most favorite toy”. It consists of Q-Tip holding the needle as a 45 rpm record plays and manually looping it without the use of digital samplers or computers. Kanye West is in the studio witnessing the event and he is obviously blown away by it. Should he be blown away? No, but Q-Tip is grinning as if to say “I’ve been doing this shit since I was 13!”

How is it done? It has to do with the simple science of the tempo of the recording and the 45 rpm record. When the band (artist and title of song is unknown) played the song, they simply played without thought about anything else. However, when it was pressed as a 45 rpm (for you young kids, that’s “revolutions per minute”), something unique is noticed. Every two bars, the label makes a full revolution. Every four bars, the label makes two revolutions. If you happen to hold the needle at the same spot without it naturally moving forward, you’ll go back to what happened two grooves before, and thus you create your own loop. Or you can casually move it five grooves forward or backward and create something else rhythmically. If this song is on an album pressed at 33 1/3 rpm, you would not be able to get the same effect because the amount of time of one complete revolution on an album would take is technically longer. Can it be done on a 12″, yes, as long as the music that’s playing fits the bars to revolution ratio, it has to be precise.

If you ever played a record that skips and/or has a scratch, it’s never rhythmic, meaning it will skip around and sound like a mess. But when a song fits perfectly, it sounds like it’s just a minor bump in the road, but you also end up something that can sound funky, or at least clever. Watch the video and you’ll notice a white spot on the turntable mat as he’s manipulating the 45. It hits the exact spot after every two bars. DJ’s often use tape on a label as cue’s to know where to cut, or for those who don’t use stickers, they look at the logo on the label. If someone sees a Capitol Records logo at the 9 o’clock position on a label, and that logo happens to reach the upper left hand corner of the turntable when the beat, bassline, or key sample begins, you’ll know exactly where to cue back for a precise cut. Holding a needle over a record is just a lo-fi analog way of looping. In the video, Q-Tip tells Kanye that perhaps they should make a track that sounds like that, complete with the “needle drops”.

So will a track using this song materialize? I’m not about to wait, I decided to take audio from this video and create my own rough edit/track. This is as good as the sound quality on the video, but if Q-Tip and Kanye were to release something right now, it may sound a bit like this (free MP3 download).

While people in the United States were laying low in honor of Veteran’s Day, this hip-hop veteran was hard at work making sure people heard him and were aware he has a new album out on streets (which I still haven’t heard).  Nonetheless, Q-Tip is doing his thing as he brings people to The Renaissance so take a look and if you haven’t heard the album, go get it.  I’ll pick up the vinyl very soon and since I don’t have a copy yet, I may have to “do a search” for it.

Q-Tip Myspace Release Show: Philadelphia, PA 11/11/08

(The Renaissance is available from CD Universe.)

Interesting. Q-Tip‘s brand new album The Renaissance (Universal Motown) is out now (I haven’t heard it yet even though it leaked about a week early, hopefully I’ll get a chance to hear it soon) and he was at Fat Beats at midnight on Tuesday to see fans pick up his album and say thanks.

Also on the horizon: an A Tribe Called Quest documentary currently being filmed by actor Michael Rappaport, and produced by Nas.

(The Renaissance is available from CD Universe.)