"4
out of 5 stars" - URB Magazine
"B+" - Entertainment Weekly"
4 out of 5 stars" - Remix Magazine"
4 out of 5 stars" - Jive Magazine"
9.7 out of 10" - IGN.com"
"Monster Maker succeeds" - Beautiful Decay
Renowed producer/DJ Sharkey and indie
hip-hop stalwart C-Rayz Walz have teamed up to deliver a concept record that
speaks to the Monsters within us all.
The breaking point/threshold of personal
cacophony is the general idea behind the Sharkey and C-Rayz Walz collaboration
album Monster Maker. Sharkey breaks down the concept further: “I feel like the
world is the monster maker and I feel like everyone, no matter how good of a
family you’ve been raised by, or how good of a person you are, is capable of
being that person that is sitting in the middle of bumper to bumper traffic
for an hour one day and on the verge of going out and blasting people. Everyone
has that seed in them where they’re capable of doing something monster-ish.”
Sharkey’s debut album, Sharkey’s Machine
was embraced by the media far and wide. Featuring the likes of Grand Puba, Jean
Grae, Cannibal Ox, The Pharcyde, Cherrywine (of Digable Planets), and many more,
Sharkey’s Machine was named one of the top 10 albums of the year by the Washington
Post, amongst numerous other accolades.
Definitive Jux released Walz's Ravipops,
in 2003. The EP We Live: The Black Samurai appeared in 2004. The full-length
Year of the Beast hit the streets in 2005, & The Dropping, was released on Urchin
Studios earlier this year.
As Walz explains: “Sharkey’s a maaaad
underrated producer, arranger, concoctor the same way I’m a maaaad underrated
artist, composer, performer, thinker. We both put in a lot of work and have
had long careers in this music industry and I don’t think that we really got
that good weather, it was a lot of gloomy days, but I now think the world is
definitely gonna see something.”
After completing Monster Maker, Walz
unequivocally feels that Sharkey is "the best I've ever worked with. Sharkey's
[influences] are everything," Walz explains, "they're rock, they're synth, they're
techno, they're Hip-Hop…they're everything…he made a monster and now he's here
to bite everybody's fuckin' head off man."
Sharkey is indeed ready to do damage,
in that he aspires for his music to be an outlet for others. “For the most part
it’s about giving somebody something that’s maybe an outlet for them, just like
music’s an outlet for me.”
Sharkey and C-Rayz Walz have tapped into
their creative geniuses to create that something and what they’ve created is,
simply put, a monster.
Look out for the full length in August
2007 on Babygrande Records.
"C-Rayz
Walz"
"Sharkey"
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