The Witzard

"Rolled Gold is a soulful Hip-Hop producer from Philadelphia, who has a versatile, life-long musical resume, ranging from Jazz to Punk Rock bands, Trap beats to live Neo-Soul groups, and more. His style has influence from Hip-Hop producers, such as J Dilla, RZA, and MF DOOM, as well as the timeless catalogs of Motown, Stax & [Philadelphia International Records]. While he has been sampling for most of his production, so far, this past year has been spent composing and recording friends and family to use as sample material. His next releases will be instrumental/remix EP's and a compilation album, all constructed from these original samples and compositions... These albums, in no specific order, are the first that come to his mind in his influence and evolution as a musician over the years." Rolled Gold's Healthy Ass Breakfast by Rolled Gold A. Madlib - Beat Konducta: Movie Scenes, Vol. 1-2 (2006) "This is the first album I heard, at age 13, that really ...

"My name is Lang Vo. I'm one half of WORDS HURT with Def Jux alum ALASKA and the other half of the group REINFORCED STEEL with my friend and sage, Kwamizzle. I've been producing and making beats for the last 20+ years. Back in the heyday, before I had kids, I used to work the Columbus, Ohio scene and did shows with Camu Tao and opened for his group, S.A. Smash. I've opened for Atmosphere, Mr. Lif [& Akrobatik AKA] The Perceptionists, Blueprint with Soul Position [RJD2], etc. Although, I never hit "The Big Time," I had a great time back then. My last show was a show with Killah Priest in 2009. Once I started having kids, I still made music and did a few shows here and there in Austin, Texas, but staying out late and having drunk people dump beer on my equipment didn't seem as fun anymore. I didn't pick it back up again seriously, until I started working with Alim Wade, a rapper in Atlanta. He started sending my beats out to people like Kool A.D. ...

"Hello, I'm âtƒ (AKA all these fingers ) and I make beats and play music. There's a lot of dudes who have influenced me as a producer, but these are probably the ones I owe the most to... in particular, these records," Michigan -based producer all these fingers wrote within a recent email. I actually believe I met âtƒ through my buddy and frequent collaborator Darko The Super —they've collaborated on a few albums, as both Darko The Super & all these fingers and Doc Fingers . âtƒ has self-released a whopping 52 albums, mixtapes, cassettes, EP's, beat tapes, and digi-singles on his personal Bandcamp page since 2011. He's collaborated with the likes of Darko The Super , Mr. Muthaf**kin' eXquire, and Future Islands frontman Sam Herring 's rapping alter-ego Hemlock Ernst , as well as creating remixes for Roc Marciano , Sean Price, Beastie Boys , Nas, Raekwon , Biggie, and Slick Rick . all these fingers' latest Super Mario Kart -inspire...

"I'm Jeff Richie from New Jersey . I make Punk-Rap under the name "JE DOUBLE F" and New Wave under the name "TUFF TURF." First of all, I've never considered myself a "beat-maker" or a "producer." I've never considered myself much of anything. Nothing specific, at least. I write songs, I record them; sometimes, with sequenced instrumentation à la Rap/New Wave , sometimes not. No bullsh*t, no claim to be part of any specific "culture" or "scene." In fact, I think music culture and scenes are a complete waste of time. With that said, here are three albums that f**ked me up permanently:" I. GRAVEDIGGAZ - 6 FEET DEEP (1994) "I had been listening to a lot of traditional Hip-Hop around the time that I first heard 6 FEET DEEP . I was probably 16-years-old. This album proved to me that you can make " Rap music" that's not about intercity violence and drugs—two things that I had (an...

Just about a month ago, I got an email from my friend, producer buddy, and frequent collaborator John Bachman AKA Jumbled mysteriously labelled "2 things." Bachman was writing me about his upcoming Bmore Club -minded project, as well as an idea he said he had been "kicking around;" wherein he simply detailed he wanted to ask "producers to name 3-5 albums that influenced them/their style and talk a little about each album and maybe their [favorite] track." Needless to say, I was immediately interested and Jumbled and I collectively decided we would jointly run our producer playlist column (now, appropriately deemed "Beat-maker Bedrock" ) on both The Witzard and his Hatford & Reckord Tumblr . And without further ado, here's the inaugural Beat-maker Bedrock artist-penned column with brainchild and beat-maker himself, John "Jumbled" Bachman . Beat-makers and producers: if you're reading this and could like to partake in f...

" Ghostface [Killah] 's Ironman is still my favorite album in all of music. And Raekwon is one of my favorite rappers ever, so I wanted to take a stab at his solo cut off Ironman and pay direct homage, since Raekwon has had a big influence on me as a writer of visual Crime Raps [over] the past 3-4 years," Philly emcee Zilla Rocca wrote within a recent email sent to The Witzard . Zilla 's "Faster Blade" (Redux) expertly flips RZA 's Persuaders-sampling Raekwon cut from Ghostface 's 1996 debut, Ironman . Not entirely unlike Zilla Rocca 's recent Son Raw -produced "98 Avirex Flow," "Faster Blade" was uploaded to Wrecking Crew 's Soundcloud — Zilla 's Philly -based collective formed with fellow rapper-producers Small Professor and Curly Castro . Like much of Wu-Tang Clan 's discography, "Faster Blade" takes its name from 1982-83 Hong Kong Martial Arts Action film Faster Blade, Poisonous Darts...

"Just in from the department of unexpectedness, Banks (no, not Lloyd ) has upped a mixtape and it's called EVERYBODY ON MY D*CK LIKE THEY SUPPOSED TO BE . Actually, we kinda knew this was happening. Paul [Banks] sent over a rough mixtape about nine months ago of his beats and production and it was genius. And what, with all the Kendricks and the A$APs and whatever, we thought a mixtape would take Banks to new heights if we got it out months before release... In this case, Paul called in a some mega-favors and got features from El-P , Talib [Kweli], Mike G , and hold up, HIGH PRIZM (né High Priest )," reads Matablog's tongue-in-cheek press release published accompanying Interpol frontman Paul Banks' surprisingly great 2013 "mixtape," Everybody On My D*ck Like They Supposed to Be . It would appear as though around the same general time frame, Banks miraculously managed to link up with avid chess player and Wu-Tang Clan founding member RZA ;...

While it's a pretty painfully disoriented sequence of events, Wu-Tang Clan 's recently unearthed "Y'all Been Warned" music video is more or less the sheer epitome of everything good, bad, or indifferent about late 90's-early 2000's Hip-Hop all rolled into one; a simpler time when you could just book a hotel room, rent a few strippers, invite some buddies over, and coincidentally film the whole thing with a department store handy-cam. Acting as the proper 12" B-side to "Uzi (Pinky Ring)," "Y'all Been Warned" simultaneously features sharp-tongued swordsmen Method Man, RZA, Inspectah Deck, Raekwon , and Masta Killa , Sugar Factory Films seemingly produced a set of companion lo-fi visuals back around 2001. It's pretty uncanny, yet surprisingly awesome that an unreleased video-single from a group of this caliber has just sat locked up in "the vaults" somewhere in unreleased form for nearly 15 years! "That...

Fresh on the heels of collaborative full-length albums with Omar Souleyman and Neneh Cherry , Post-Rock and Electronic multi-instrumnetalist Four Tet (Kieran Hebden) unleashed about 10-15 tracks upon hitting 100,000+ Twitter followers Monday evening; "let me go through the hard drives and see what's there..." The bulk of the tracks included on what we'll just call Twitter 100k CD-R , for the sake of convenience, were all written-recorded between 1999-2012, according to Hebden's calculations. Four Tet then continued to liberate a generous batch of rarities and unheard remixes, which includes but isn't limited to solo fragments, on-again-off-again pseudo-band Percussions , and Welsh musician David Wrench , as well as a Grimes re-work and separate Atoms for Peace and Gravediggaz remixes. "gravediggaz SID rmx 2000" is a slightly glitched-out remix of "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide" from their 1994 Horror-core debut record, 6 Fee...

When Odd Future first came out (2007), it seemed like they were pretty against working with an outside producers. But they've since slightly broadened their horizons, working with a handful of various producers: Kanye , Flying Lotus, Pharrell , James Pants, The Alchemist , RZA, BADBADNOTGOOD , Samiyam, and supposedly even MF DOOM . Late Tuesday night, without any prior notice, rhyme or reason, OFWGKTA uploaded "Look" to Soundcloud ; It's produced by Nottz Raw , a Virginia -based beatsmith who's worked with everyone from Asher Roth to [The] Game . Tyler The Creator, Hodgy Beats, Domo Genesis & Earl Sweatshirt manage to utterly RIP apart Nottz 's hard-hitting beat over the course of nearly 5 minutes. While it's chock-full of righteous-minded bars-on-bars , some of my personal favourite lines include: "Barnacles, now I gotta brag / [Beamer] drive right by you nig*as like I was kinda fat / with a paint job that's flatter than Miley Cyrus...

James Blake is a London -based First Wave Dubstep super-producer; one of the genre's originators, before it got all Americanized , club-ready, and alcohol-infused (ie: Skrillex ha). Blake has always kinda seemed like an on-looking Hip-Hop supporter/closet fan... he actually unleashed a series of white label 12" Harmonimix[es] prior to his self-titled debut: Lil' Wayne , Destiny's Child, Snoop Dogg , and handsome hermit D'Angelo. After working with master swordsman RZA on his second album Overgrown , James Blake recently recruited hyper-rhyming Chicago upstart, Chance The Rapper to help remix "Life Round Here." It's supposedly the "first of many songs with @jamesblake ," if Chance The Rapper 's righteous Twitter feed is to be believed; Blake told Radio 1 DJ Zane Lowe Tuesday morning that the track was re-recorded post- SXSW and lamented that "[He] never really felt the track was finished; even when it went on the album...

What kind of madman would spend the better part of a year recording and re-recording an anti-commercial mainstream Hip-Hop album (if that's even a thing ha) all while his celebutante girlfriend is carrying their unborn baby and steadily nearing her dude date, only to have mega-producer Rick Rubin come in and re-work the entire 10-track collection mere hours before it's deadline!? - Unsurprisingly, Kanye West . It's almost mind boggling how much steam Yeezus has garnered without a proper single or music video, aside from "New Slaves"' building-side projections across the world, and virtually no album track leakage until the Friday before it's Tuesday June 18th release! Aside from all that, Kanye decided to boldly stray away from any sort of legitimate-looking album artwork/packaging, instead opting for the ghetto bootleg CD-R look: no cover or booklet, empty jewel CD case, sparse tracklist on the reverse side, and only a Yeezus -marked piece of red ta...

James Blake 's music has always had an underlying, vaguely Hip-Hop feel to it; from his early Harmonimix tracks to his work with Grime rapper, Trim . But now, it seems like Blake is fully embracing his inner beatsmith on his upcoming sophomore album, Overgrown ... having worked with legendary Wu-Tang Clan emcee/producer RZA , sampling Big Boi for a bonus track , and most likely logging some studio time with Kendrick Lamar in the near future. James Blake recently linked up with former R&S Records manager, Dan Foat to form a new imprint, which has been dubbed 1-800-DINOSAUR . Overgrown hits shelves next week, April 8-9th and it will be their second (first major) release. James Blake lamented, "It was like sending it for mastering. It was like, 'Just see what comes back.' [RZA] really nailed it though. I mean, he's obviously a consummate professional. He also did it with such a level of intimacy and sensitivity that I got it back and I got shivers,...

Brooklyn 's very own Flatbush Zombies are preparing to essentially single-handedly "bring [back] da mother_ucking ruckus." The One, Two crew of tag-team rappers Meechy Darko & Zombie Juice are backed by the morbidly RZArected beats of in-house producer, Erick Arc Elliott . Flatbush Zombies indeed evoke the mid-90's, Gravediggaz popularized genre of Horrorcore ... adding their own unique updated twist(s), in an effort to revitalize the music after Limp Bizkit forever tarnished and brutally killed it. From what I can tell, The Zombies released their first track, "Thug Waffles" back in November 2011; Since then, they've slowly leaked out a handful of additional tracks: "S.C.O.S.A." "Caps Lock," "Gucci Gucci" (KREAYSHAWN) , and "Suspiria." While their latest track, "Laker Paper" was liberated roughly 2 days ago, there are still no signs of a Flatbush Zombies mixtape/full-length. But if the ...