Modbap / Sonic Salute 01: DJ Premier

Hip Hop culture has always been about adding on to the legacy and pushing the culture forward with our contributions. If you don't know the history of a culture, it's traditions and practices you have no business being a practitioner. The Modbap scene that we are pushing is rooted in Hiphop beat making culture, this art form is one of the most influential offerings on the planet that was given birth out of poverty. A lot of my favorite Hiphop producers started out as DJ's and vinyl was the medium of choice. Making beats is the evolution of cutting a record back and forth to extend the break or instrumental section of the song. Later producers started using samplers to chop, loop and rearrange samples with heavy drums with focus on the low-end bass frequencies. This is what we call BoomBap, Modbap is a branch of that tree, the difference is we use modular synthesizers.

My Sonic Salute series is an homage to some of my favorite producers. 001 in the series is dedicated to DJ Premier of the group Gangstarr. Whenever I would find a record Premier sampled I was always blown away at how he flipped these old dusty samples and brought new life to a forgotten song. I sampled the John Dankworth - Two-Piece Flower song that DJ Premier used on the Gangstarr - Above The Clouds song for this installment. I have more planned for some of my other favorite producers that I listened to growing up in HipHop culture coming soon.
Big up DJ Premier and Gangstarr! RIP Kieth Guru Elam