Steel Tipped Dove Unveils Hand-painted Watercolor Instrumental Album cui bono & Compiles Beat-maker Bedrock #15 (self-released)

"Steel Tipped Dove is a music producer and recording engineer in Brooklyn, NY who has the skills and desire to service your audio needs from vocal recordings, song mixing, podcasting, video scoring, etc. He has done work for Armand Hammer (billy woods & ELUCID,) Kool A.D. PremRock, Quelle Chris, SHIRT, and many more talented Underground Hip-Hop emcees. Hit him up at steeltippeddove.com. Here are three albums that were extremely influential on my overall style and sound:"


I. Viktor Vaughn (AKA MF DOOM) - Vaudeville Villain (2003)

"This sh*t sounds like a movie. It's astonishing. I once took 'shrooms and sat in the room with the lights out and just watched DOOM walk around, go up and down these golden staircases—hitting the walls and sh*t to make the beats. The production on this album is so wild and detailed, it's incredible. If DOOM put this album out in 2025, it would feel brand new. "A Dead Mouse" really stands out lately as one of the crazier productions... all the little changes in the beat are so subtle, but so pretty."


II. P.O.S. - Ipecac Neat (2004)

"The beats on this were mostly made by P.O.S. and this guy Lazerbeak from Doomtree [plus, MK Larada & Emily Bloodmobile]. He's one of the best Hip-Hop producers of all time. This album was given to me by someone, who wasn't even really a giant Underground Hip-Hop fan (I don't think?) but it blew my mind—every element of the production was stunning to me. I was already a huge music fan, but this really pushed me toward wanting to buy a laptop and start making beats."


III. The Field - From Here We Go Sublime (2007)

"The repetitiveness is what KILLS me, in a good way, but if you listen close (it's not repetitive at all) there are constant little changes going on through the production. I don't know, if I even have the right words to describe why I love this album so much—I can zone out to it, at any time. Sometimes, when I'm making beats, I shoot for the sort of track that I can just listen to on Repeat and chill out to—so, this is an album I am always coming back to."

Steel Tipped Dove is a Brooklyn-based beat-maker, recording engineer, producer, and mixing/mastering engineer who first came up around the time of Das Racist's demise; having worked with a select group of their friends, affiliates, and label mates at Heems' now-defunct Greedhead Music, such as Big Baby Gandhi, DVS, Lakutis, Kassa Overall, kechPhrase, KOOL & KASS, Mr. Muthaf***in' eXquire, SAFE, and TECLA. Said collaborative works have been collected on Bandcamp albums and compilations entitled Ampersand Vol. I-III, THE MASCULINE DIGNITY OF MOUNTAIN TRIBESMAN, and amazingly-titled & a whole bunch of crazy motherf***ers. Steel Tipped Dove has worked on recent critically-acclaimed albums from both milo's scallops hotel alter-ego and SHIRT's Third Man Records debut, PURE BEAUTY, as well as recording seven tracks on mc paul barman's upcoming Mello Music Group album, (((echo chamber))).

Not entirely unlike last year's to name it. Steel Tipped Dove's latest solo album, cui bono, comes with original pieces of artwork design by the producer himself. "cui bono (Latin: "who stands, or stood, to gain") is a phrase I heard some time ago and for the past couple years, it keeps bouncing around in my mind. It's applicable in a myriad of ways, I'm just trying to use it as motivation to communicate and act better," Steel Tipped Dove wrote within a recent Bandcamp email. cui bono is currently available on Bandcamp—along with the rest of Steel Tipped Dove's storied back catalog—in either standard Digital Album format or an 8x8" watercolor painting with a hand-written message and download code on the reverse side.