This song represents a lot of firsts for Michael Jackson. It was the first single from Off The Wall, and the first recording MJ made that he had complete creative control over. Many of his hits were written by Quincy Jones or Rod Temperton or the guys from Toto, but Michael wrote this one himself. [...]
Filed in Dance, Key Musicians, Music
|
Tagged beyonce, dance, disco, drumming, harmony, hip-hop, jay-z, mase, Math, michael jackson, mixolydian, Music Theory, pop, public enemy, Sampling, seventies, slick rick, tritones
|
MJ’s death still makes me sad. It was so untimely, and so preventable, and it seems like he might have been on the cusp of a genuine creative reawakening. The life leading up to the end is as sad a story as I can think of. And the music keeps sounding better and better with [...]
All the musicians I trust for recommendations in real life and on the web agree: the hottest artist in the universe right now is Janelle Monáe.
Filed in Autobio, Music, Sampling
|
Tagged Autobio, digging the crates, Emotion, family, janelle monae, memory, michael jackson, randall thompson, Sampling
|
The best and most thought-provoking game of the DOS era was Starflight. Kids today, with their intuitive graphical user interfaces. They have no idea what a pain it was to use computers back in the eighties. DOS especially was an autistic nightmare. Bill Gates is some kind of genius to have convinced so many people [...]
While I was researching the Spoonie G meme, I noticed that Brand Nubian uses a lot of remarkably creative samples. It inspired me to do a sample map of their classic first album, One For All. Click to see it bigger. Hear all the tracks sampled on One For All, via Kevin Nottingham’s awesome blog.
Filed in Music, Sampling
|
Tagged aretha franklin, billy joel, bjork, brand nubian, digging the crates, edie brickell, hip-hop, memes, new edition, nineties, Sampling
|
After a few years of honing and balancing my various social media profiles and blogs, here’s how I have the information flowing. This doesn’t represent every last thing I put on the web, but it does cover the tools I use regularly.
Filed in Autobio, Social Media, Writing
|
Tagged blogging, delicious, facebook, flickr, friendfeed, seo, Social Media, social networks, tumblr, twitter, wordpress
|
I’ve been hearing this line in a lot of hip-hop songs: “One for the treble, two for the time” or “One for the treble, two for the bass” or some variation. I wanted to find out what everybody’s quoting. After some internet detective work, here’s what I’ve got. The phrase is a play on the [...]
Filed in Music, Sampling
|
Tagged aceyalone, brand nubian, common, davy dmx, digging the crates, dj khaled, eighties, elvis presley, grandmaster flash, hip-hop, kurtis blow, memes, mos def, sergio mendes, seventies, snoop dogg, spoonie g
|