Nice, DJ Premier is coming to my country again (the building where Premo’s playing is a protected monument, build in 1847. Something different lol). And to Europe off course, Nick Javas inclusive, hopefully Panchi haha. Another date:

06/05/2010 Cabaret Aléatoire, Marseille, France (Poster here)
13/05/2010 Bohannon, Berlin, Germany (Tickets here)

I didn’t put any word out about this producer competition Vibe Magazine organized until now. I don’t know, I have mixed feelings about it. Oh well, what does it hurt? And it’s interesting to see how strong the 90s hip hop community is on the internet. How far will DJ Premier go?

For the people who don’t know, Vibe Magazine is organizing a big ass competition to find the greatest hip hop producer of all time. In total 64 producers are listed in 4 groups. DJ Premier is in group 4 called “Boom Bap”. Dr Dre is in the first group “Homegrown”. Here is Preems group:

DJ Premier VS Bangladesh
RZA VS Rocwilder
Marley Marl VS Dame Grease
Rick Rubin VS The Beatnuts
Jam Master Jay VS Easy Mo Bee
Large Professor VS Q-Tip
Diamond D VS DJ Muggs
Havoc VS Da Beatminerz

Each winner of the group will take it up against a winner from another group I guess? Here are the dates when each vote end:

4/05 – First Round Begins
4/19 – Second Round Begins
4/26 – Third Round Begins
5/03 – Elite 8 Producer Battle Begins
5/10 – Final Four Producer Battle Begins
5/17 – Final Round Begins
5/24 – Winner Announced

I would say hate it or love it, but since Vibe is getting a lot of reactions from the producers self I’m going to keep this updated. The first round for DJ Premier will be easy, no offense. Today Bangladesh commented on the competition saying he’s isn’t a hip hop producer, but simply the best producer. Quotes like “Honestly, I’m Better Than All Them [Producers]”.

With unpopular quotes like this he has some respectful comments though, “I’m definitely deserving to be on the list as one of the best producers right now, but I wouldn’t say hip-hop. Probably the only hip-hop thing I made was ‘A Milli’ and that was probably the greatest beat of this era,” the Atlanta-based producer told VIBE. “I think if you really define hip-hop, Premier is really the best hip-hop producer. He’s amazing with samples… he’s the essence of hip-hop.”

VOTE NOW HERE

Slovakian rapper Rytmus who last year did a collaboration with DJ Premier for his album “Kral” is about to shoot a video for the track “Jediný” featuring the one and only DJ Premier. I think Rytmus is now officially the first European artist who has a video clip produced and featured Premo, hands down! The video shoot will take place at Hip Hop Jam 2010, a Czech Republic hip hop festival programmed in July, where both artists are on the program! Premo recently played the track again on his radio show LiveFromHQ. Be on the look out!

Props to Marek (from 90bpm.sk), source.

Joell Ortiz his single produced by DJ Premier “Project Boy” is now available as a digi single.

Tracklist:

1) Dirty
2) Clean
3) Instrumental

Cop it here via iTunes. Don’t say to me Joell never fucked with vinyl? I’m still waiting…

Official Stüssy x Manhatten Records T-Shirt now available here.

(Click on picture for full size…)

by gimantalon…

I’m from Belgium like some of you know and if you don’t know, Marvin Gaye has a very special band with Belgium. He lived in the city Ostend (The closest cities from where I live) for months to pick up his career again after a downfall, tracks like “Sexual Healing” were recorded in Ostend. Very touching story, Marvin Gaye and his relationship with the sea and Belgium. Here you have an interview from 1994 from the guy who took care of Marvin Gaye at that time in the Belgian Magazine “Humo”. I used google to translate the dutch into english. If you want only DJ Premier posts, simply don’t read.

Early eighties stranded Marvin Gaye, penniless and addicted to cocaine, London. Freddy Cousaert, a part-time concert promoter took Gaye under his wing, kept him away from the drugs and put him back on track. Eighteen years later, Gaye from Ostend, Belgium included with the album “Midnight Love”  and especially with the single “Sexual Healing” an unprecedented comeback.”Freddy’s the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Marvin,” said a friend and attorney Gayes Curtis Shaw in “Man Trouble”, a BBC documentary in which the last years of Marvin Gaye to be reconstructed through interviews.

FREDDY COUSAERT: In the sixties I had a r & b club, and regularly went to London, hunting for new records. In London I was often in the Q Club, which was attended mainly by blacks. There I learned many people famous in the music. Every week you could well find Jagger and Rod Stewart. That were inspiration came looking (laughs). Gradually I was accepted by the ‘black’ London environmentally. One day the boss of Q club calls me: Marvin Gaye was on Christmas Eve in Q occur. I almost fell backwards, I asked if he could introduce me to Marvin. I never dreamed that Marvin Gaye two months later would sit at my kitchen.

HUMO: How was he added, when you first met him?
Cousaert: He lived first in a posh apartment, then in a cheap apartment hotel. He snorted cocaine and had a lot of worrying constantly surrounded by questionable people: dealers and hangers-on. A British tour promoter had him a few weeks previously, after a disastrous tour, with only $ 5,000 left in London. That he had nipped the return tickets for his group can afford. He was completely broke.

HUMO: How did he end with you in Ostend you?
Cousaert: A week after that first meeting he tried to call me at home. I was not there, but my wife was. She talked half hours with him. He sounded depressed, she said. When I called back, he seemed to be in Brighton. Marvin loved the rain and wind, the fairness of the sea. Sometimes he went to the coast, to sit on the breakwater. When I told him that he can do all these things in Ostend, he immediately decided two weeks to come and visit. We have here then an apartment for him and arranged for him when he was made a member of the family. Those two weeks became a month. We became friends and later business partners. As he gradually became her old self again, I organized a successful tour for him, with the highlight of a concert at the Casino of Ostend, which was broadcasted directly by the national television. He held personally about £ 55,000 and could hardly believe it. Then I have him a contract with CBS Records decorated. Larkin Arnold, a senior executive of CBS who was just Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in the weather, came personally to Ostend. He wanted assurance about the physical and mental condition of Marvin. Now, he was quickly convinced. “I Can See he is in very good hands,” he said, and the project was financed.

HUMO: When the trouble started.
Cousaert: From the States was much pressure exerted on him. He sat back in the saddle, so he was for the businessmen in Los Angeles again ‘interesting’. Figures emerge from everywhere were hoping that a piece to ride.

HUMO Like?
Cousaert: The New Yorker David Ritz, who suddenly stood, saying he was making an interview for Rolling Stone. Halfway through the interview leaves the Ritz term ‘sexual healing’ fall. Marvin says that he like the song title. After the interview we eat, and Ritz says casually that he wants $ 10,000, if we want to ‘have’ the title. Marvin and I almost fall of our chairs. We tell him that we needed Ritz on the cover would indicate, and that’s what happened. But in the States has gone to court Ritz, pointing out that cover entry, and the story that he is the song ‘Sexual Healing’ would have co-written. The judge gave him was right too, and since then he gets royalties for it! I was present when “Sexual Healing” was written. Odell Brown and Marvin have that song written. Nobody else.

HUMO: What makes your collaboration jumped off?
Cousaert: In Switzerland we had opened an account in the name of Marvin, where his money was deposited. The problem was that Marvin was absent when the bank forms were signed. Everything was also in French, and the bank could not immediately us an English document delivery. Marvin suggested that I would act as a holder. I wish absolutely not do, so he registered his accountant. A provisional one. But this problem kept dragging because Marvin always the case postponed. A few months later we get a phone call: a seething Marvin, who had unsuccessfully sought money from his account to be removed. The bank accepted his signature course not. He thought we were trying to cheat him off and even a lawyer came into the picuture. Then I got angry. I went to Switzerland and were I proved he was wrong. He turned in, but our relationship chilled rapidly. Eventually, they gave him an excuse lured to the States: his mother was supposedly ill and wanted to see him. In October 1982 he moved to the States. He was supposed to come back, but we’ve never seen or spoken him again.

Humo: The documentary says a friend of Gaye father, also a pastor, that he was not surprised when he heard news of the shooting. “He showed me the gun,” he says meaningfully.
Cousaert: Indeed, an artist whose name I will not mention, but take it from me that it is a highly reliable person told me that he spoke with his father a few weeks before the shooting. He too had seen the weapon and had Gaye father had even added: “I’m gonna take him out before some white man does it.”

Source: Humo

R.I.P. Marvin Gaye, also Freddy Cousaert recently died, R.I.P.

I noticed, their are three 1st april jokes that always work in the hip hop community big time (like on twitter):

1) “Gang Starr is working on a new album”
2) “Nas said his next album is going to be the one with DJ Premier”
3) “A Man Of A Few Words about to drop soon”