I get influenced by all the great music out there whether it's hiphop, soul, jazz, rock, funk...as long as it has soul to put it in the words of dj Shadow.
But to name a few artists: Roy Ayers, Barry White, Lonnie Liston Smith, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Cymande, Curtis Mayfield, Lyn Collins, Mike Oldfield, Mavin Gaye, Rza, Preemo, 4th Disciple, Beatminerz, Diamon D, K-Def, Marley Marl, Pete Rock, Grazzhoppa, Shadow, Prince Paul, ...
When I was a kid I'd always make improvised drumkits out of cookie boxes and other stuff I could find. When I was about six my grandparents were sick of me stealing all their cookie boxes and banging them with sticks all day long. So they bought me with a drum kit and sent me to get a music education.
Throughout my teens and early twenties I've been in a fair share of bands here and there as a drummer in all kinds of different genres of music (punk rock, metal, rock, hiphop, funk, soul, ... )
When I was about twenty I was getting to a point where couldn't just put on a cd anymore. I would stick one specific song in the player and be there waiting till it finished with another cd in my hand, trying to switch the cd's a fast as possible. That's when I figured I really wanted turntables.
I finally got turntables and started getting into vinyl. At first it was all hiphop. I tried to get all the classic stuff (to me that is) that I've been listening to for so long and loved to death on vinyl. I didn't really follow the new stuff that came out but was more into the late eighties to mid ninetees hiphop.
I also got into skratching alot. Not really turntablism since I never got much further than some basic beat juggling patterns.
After a couple of years I really got bored with hiphop as it was and pretty much still is today. I know there's good stuff out there but I don't want to wade through so much really bad to average stuff these days. This is what lead me to the search of where it all came from. In the meantime I organised some hiphop nights where people could come together to do their thing whether they were mc's, dj's or turntablists. I did it all with no budget and help from friends who could provide the location and such. After a while I quit doing this because of me putting in all the work yet getting nothing out of it financially. It really wasn't about the money but I didn't wanna put in money and get nothing when money was made.
So I started buying more and more other music on vinyl (soul, jazz, funk, rock, ... ). After a couple of years I had a very modest collection of music I could sample but I didn't really buy it for that purpose since I wasn't into production. So I started organising nights in bars where we would play a mix of hiphop, soul, funk, jazz and all kinds of other stuff. This was a nice outlet but again, it took a lot out of me.
In the meantime I was approached by a group of three mc's called AMOK that perfomed on some of the TrueHipHop nights to be their dj. I accepted so to this day I'm occasionally their dj on stage and I do the cuts on some of their tracks.
A lot of people said they really enjoyed my taste in beats and said to me I should get into production. When a friend of mine was gonna sell his MPC I couldn't resist and bought it. At this point I quit organising the nights because I wanted to focus on production in the future.
If you want to hear more, there's some more stuff up on my soundclick account.
Thanks for checking...
THIS TWO SKILLED-PROJECTS ARE THE RESULT OF PASSION & WORK'PROGRESS SINCE 2 YEARS, IT'S LIKE A ACHIEVMENT POINT FOR ME. I JUST WANT TO GIVE A MOFOKIN' SHOUT OUT TO ALL OF YOU WHO SUPPORT MY STYLE.
