END POLL: 1 JANUARY 2012

With Kendra Morris being the last beat of 2011 it’s again that time of the year my friends. We didn’t get NYGz, Nick Javas nor KRS-One, Pete Rock and Get Used To It DVD. But we did had a productive year, there’s much more to choose from than last year. I wonder if I can out due last year vote succes. Be aware, judge strictly on the beats, not the rhymes. It’s the beat that matters in this poll… Who will run away with the award?? This one could be tricky!!

2010 winner: Première Salve by Soulkast (20%)
2009 winner: Rap Addiction by Blaq Poet (17%)
2008 winner: Say Goodnight by Reks (30%)

In 2008 we had 359 votes, in 2009 we had 950 votes, in 2010 we had 3 118 votes. LETS BEAT THAT RECORD MY FAMILY!! WHO WILL WIN THE AWARD??? VOTE VOTE VOTE!!

Thank you for your time and support over the years! -gim

For one night only, MTV2 is bringing back “Yo! MTV Raps!,” the show that turned on a generation of MTV viewers to a mysterious new musical form called hip-hop.

The show, which originally aired from August 1988 through 1995, helped bring once little-known acts like Ice-T, N.W.A., A Tribe Called Quest and Public Enemy to households across America as hip-hop exploded in popularity. The return comes after the revival of such MTV shows as “Beavis and Butt-head” and “120 Minutes.”

The show will return as a 30-minute retrospective called “Yo! MTV Raps Classic Cuts,” and will on MTV2 immediately after the first-ever “Sucker Free Awards” on Sunday, Dec. 4.

The awards will air at 11 p.m., followed by the “Yo!” special at midnight. The special will feature the artists behind three hip-hop classics: A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario,” Geto Boys’ “My Mind’s Playing Tricks on Me,” and Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day.” (“Good Day” just happens to mention “Yo! MTV Raps” by name.)

The special will feature former hosts Fab 5 Freddy, Ed Lover and Dr. Dre, and hip-hop stars from the past and present. They include A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip, Geto Boys’ Scarface, and Ice Cube, in addition to well Wiz Khalifa, DJ Khaled, Questlove, Busta Rhymes, Mac Miller, Machine Gun Kelly, Young Jeezy, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Phife, Fat Joe, Common, Mike Epps, Ice T, Meek Mill, Tyga, and Naughty By Nature.

DJ Premier will remix the iconic “Yo! MTV Raps” theme song for the special.

“It’s a great moment to be re-connected with Yo! and examine the music that had a role in introducing hip-hop to music lovers globally,” Ed Lover said. “By looking back at these classic songs in hip-hop it becomes clear that hip-hop would inevitably transcend distance and generations.”

“In this Classic Cuts special, people will go back to a seminal time in hip-hop which many have called the ‘Golden Era’ – resulting in records that are as meaningful today as they were back then,” said Fab 5 Freddy, the original host of the show. “In order to appreciate how far hip-hop has come, you have to pay respect to the songs and artists that helped catapult the genre from a small community of fans to world domination.”

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While everybody from the hip hop industry and fans are mourning of another legend we lost a lot of his close friends still can’t understand how this happened so fast. DJ Premier told us he and Heavy D talked with each other no too long ago that he was working on another “Blue Funk” album called “Blue Funk 2”. “Blue Funk” was released on January 12, 1993 for Uptown Records and was produced by DJ Eddie F, DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Jesse West aka 3rd Eye and Tony Dofat. Blue Funk made it to #40 on the Billboard 200 and #7 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, and was certified gold. The album spawned three singles, “Who’s the Man”, “Blue Funk” and “Truthful”. Guests on the album include Terri & Monica, 3rd Eye, Busta Rhymes, Guru, Rob-O and for the first time The Notorious B.I.G. Till this day still considered to be a classic (next to his other classics) he wanted to go back today to the hip hop basic roots by releasing “Blue Funk 2”.

Cousin Pete Rock told us later today he already finished a song with him 2 weeks ago and that everything was looking fine. “We did something. I finished something with him like two weeks ago, finished. When people call you that don’t call you and then your phone is just blowing up with those kind of calls, my stomach got kind of weak. DJ Scratch called me first because that’s my homie, and he let me know,” he continued. “I felt like he was my guider, the person who put me in place. He was my number one believer.”

He made a lot of good music and opened a lot of doors for a lot of people, R.I.P. Mr. Legend!

DJ Premier will probably doing a tribute for Heavy D on his weekly radio show on Sirius XM this friday.

Rap legend Heavy D — one of the most influential rappers of the ’90s — died earlier today … TMZ has learned. Heavy D — real name Dwight Arrington Myers — was rushed to an L.A. hospital around noon today … and was pronounced dead at the hospital at 1 PM. He was 44 years old. We’ve learned a 911 call was placed from Heavy’s Beverly Hills home around 11:25 AM to report an unconscious male on the walkway . When help arrived, we’re told Heavy D was conscious and speaking — and was transported to a nearby hospital. He died a short time later. Cops are investigating the death — and so far, there are no obvious signs of foul play. Heavy D had several massive hits — including “Now That We Found Love.” He also wrote and performed the theme song for “In Living Color” … and appeared as an actor in the movie “Life.” Heavy just performed at the Michael Jackson Tribute Concert in Wales on October 8. He sang “Jam” with La Toya Jackson — and rocked it.

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We just lost another legend… Too soon. My condolence too his family and close friends, cousins Pete Rock & Grap Luva. May you rest in piece and we’ll never forget what you did for hip hop!! We already miss you…

DJ Premier produced two track for Heavy D on his album “Blue Funk” in 1992.

You now above us meeting up with the other greats, rip. This was his last very strong message he left for the world:

🙁

DX: As far as collaborations go, you guys have put in a lot of work with DJ Premier. I want to backtrack for a second, because he’s been quoted as saying “Face Off 2K” is one of his most personal records. What inspired that?

Billy Danze: I wrote that record in the dark. And it wasn’t because I wanted to be in the dark, it was because my motherfuckin’ lights were cut off [laughs]. I was just feeling a way when I wrote the record, and when you listen to it, you see that I stop and start over a couple times. I loved the track so much, and I was going through so much, that I just wrote two verses. I wrote one, and I was like “I don’t love it. I don’t know if that’s hot. Let me try it again.” So I wrote another one. Preme came to the crib to pick me up, and we got in the truck…I don’t know where the hell we were going; we were just driving. And I started spitting the verses and asking him which one he liked better. He said, “Both of them shits is hot, so let’s figure out a way to tie ‘em in.”

DX: You guys stopped in the middle of your set tonight and made the crowd give it up for Guru and DJ Premier. How important is Gangstarr to you professionally and personally?

Billy Danze: Ridiculously important, man.

Lil Fame: To me, Premier is my brother. I grew up on Premier since I was a baby. That was one of my favorite dudes that I used to look up to music-wise. And Guru is just a fuckin’ beast on everything. Although he’s from Boston, we he moved to Brooklyn, that’s what we had. We had [Big Daddy] Kane and we had Gangstarr.

Billy Danze: You can search from as far back as you can remember up until this very moment and you’ll never find anybody like Guru. Nobody. His recording process was so crazy, because he would go in there and spit the rhyme one way. Then he would come out and talk to Premier, go in again and spit the rhyme another way. So by the time he spit it four or five times, that was the complete shit. And he was fucking amazing. His voice was amazing.

And Premier…the passion that this dude has. Let me tell you something: can’t nobody change Premier for nothing in the world. Premier was the last dude on the planet to get Pro Tools. He ain’t following nobody’s lead. It was like, “I like this big ass, heavy table!” I love him for that, and he always keeps it 100% real with us. Premier is the only producer I ever worked with that stopped me and was like, “That line wasn’t dope. You gotta do that again, dude.” Strangely, him and Puffy were the only ones.

DX: Bullshit…Puffy?

Billy Danze: Yeah. Puffy said, “That ain’t no M.O.P. record. Where that shit at?” He’s a good man. I respect his hustle and everything that he’s done. We did a record for the Bad Boys II soundtrack, which he was handling. He heard the record, and he liked it enough to put it on the soundtrack. So when we went over to talk to him, and he was like, “Yo this shit is crazy. The beat and the lyrics are dope, but where that shit at?”

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Don’t get it wrong, DJ Premier doesn’t have anything against Justin Bieber. The story goes like this, Justin Bieber asked if he could join the BET Cyphers ’11 which was cool for Premo and the staff. DJ Premier doesn’t care who joins the cyphers as long as you can spit dope verses everybody is allowed. But then Justin Bieber wanted Ludacris to write his rhymes and that wasn’t allowed by DJ Premier. Thanks to DJ Premier the BET Cyphers are still spitting ryhmes on dope breaks like they used to do it on the streets… Word!

Audio:

You can check the rest of the interview here.

“Writes Your Own Rhymes Honey”

Nick Javas leaved DJ Premier’s label Year Round Records. No further details were released, but they both go separate ways in peace. Together they did 2 big European/World tours and released 2 singles with videos. It wasn’t a secret Nick Javas would love to do more mainstream music, but his debut album “Destination Unknown” looked promising in the hip hop world with productions by DJ Premier, Pete Rock, Marco Polo, Statik Selektah & more. The DJ Premier beats from the album will probably be used by other artists in the future. We from DJ Premier Blog wishing Nick Javas the best and a promising future. The 2 times I saw him personally he was a real friendly guy.

Now NYGz and Khaleel are the only two who are signed to Year Round Records. But also the upcoming MC Eiht & Pete Rock collabo album are scheduled to get a release on the label. Be on the lookout!

Here is some old track from Khaleel with Nick Javas:

Khaleel – Unfortunate (Feat. Nick Javas) (Prod. by Dynamite Bros)

“I like to say this is the first new Doors track of the 21st century,” Ray Manzarek tells Rolling Stone of a new song he’s recorded with Robby Krieger and John Densmore, as well as popular DJ/producer Skrillex (Sonny Moore). The recording session and song are part of a new documentary film, RE:GENERATION, that recruited five popular DJs/producers to work with artists from five separate genres and had them record new music. A glimpse of the results are featured in the world premiere of the trailer (below).

In addition to Skrillex, the project, co-produced by the Grammys and directed by Amir Bar Lev (The Pat Tillman Story, My Child Can Paint That), brought in DJ Premier to produce a classical track with Nas and the Berklee School of Music Orchestra; Pretty Lights, who did a country song with Leann Rimes and Ralph Stanley; the Crystal Method, who headed to Detroit to spend two days recording a R&B tune with Martha Reeves; and Mark Ronson, who teamed with Erykah Badu, members of the Dap Kings and Trombone Shorty for a jazz cut in New Orleans.

The pairings led to some real fish out of water moments. For instance, Pretty Lights (real name Derek Vincent Smith) says that when he first got in the Nashville studio he might as well have been speaking a foreign language.

“It was a lot of me having to communicate my approach and my ideas to a roomful of top-level country players who were just looking at me like, ‘Who’s this dude?'” Smith says. “And then when Ralph showed up, I tried to tell him what I wanted to do and his response was, ‘I think we’ll just do it my way.’”

Not every pairing had those initial issues, though. Manzarek and Skrillex had an immediate musical connection. “[Sonny] plays his beat, all he had to do was play the one thing. I listened to it and I said, ‘Holy shit, that’s strong,’” Manzarek says. “Basically, it’s a variation on ‘Milestones,’ by Miles Davis, and if I do say so myself, sounds fucking great, hot as hell.”

The union of the Crystal Method with Reeves (best known for the iconic “Dancing In The Streets”) was the best of both worlds – a happy pairing with some creative tension. “It’s gonna be a really interesting viewing cause we got along really well with her,” TCM’s Scott Kirkland says, “but there are also moments when we’re trying to whip the lyrics out where she’s just like, ‘No, no.’”

The film should premiere early in 2012 and will be a big part of Grammy Week next year, with the artists involved doing “Remix Labs,” as well an event at the Grammy Museum and screening that week.

Full trailer:

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Looks interesting!