The Witzard

Sometimes, you need to look to the past as much as the future. The Overview Effect by emcee-producer duo Jermiside & The Expert is a vast musical collage of Psychedelic soundscapes merged together with Hip-Hop's golden age. A socially conscious Psychedelic Hip-Hop album equally inspired by Marvin Gaye's narrative on What's Going On (1971) mixed with tripped out beats reminiscent of Edan's Beauty & The Beat (2005.) The production on The Overview Effect takes on late 60's Psychedelic Folk/Rock, viewed through a 90's B-boy mentality of heavy drums and dope breaks. Built with a keen ear for detail, Dublin-based beatsmith The Expert densely layered his productions with tons of samples, seamlessly weaved together; swirling strings, sitars, Moog synthesizers, and crunchy guitars are all inter-woven and present together here, accompanied and embellished by trippy sound effects. "In terms of song-writing, very few songs on this record have a "classi...

Tanya Morgan is a Hip-Hop group hailing from Concinnati, Ohio and Brooklyn, New York. Its current line-up includes emcee, producer, and DJ William Donald "Donwill" Freeman (Don) and emcee and producer Devon "Von Pea" Callender (Von.) Tanya Morgan has remotely recorded and released four full-length albums, an online mixtape, and countless EP's and singles since their formation in 2003. Now, Don & Von are back with their fifth full-length album, simply titled Don & Von. This time, the duo steps out from behind the odd moniker to show listeners that they exist in a world that's all their own. The 12-track album tackles a wide range of topics, including their tenure in the Hip-Hop game, police brutality, and being Black in America. For Don & Von, Tanya Morgan recruited a handful of their old collaborators from back in the day when they first met in the okayplayer Forums. Don & Von features guest vocals from Miss Jack Davey (J*DaVeY,) Kooley ...

Haj of dumhi tells us he's been working on Shanti's Rebuttal on-and-off for about two years. We briefly spoke with Haj about Shanti's Rebuttal during our 2020 wrap-up style interview earlier this year. The majority of his beats were completed pre-COVID, but when COVID-19 hit, Haj started working on his 2020 projects with FERMENTED SPIRITS and Charles Only/ShamelessPlug. Some of the beats from Shanti's (and some from 2019's TERiYAKi HAiR.PIECE ) wound up being a part of the 2020 project The Airing of Grievances with Reef The Lost Cauze. Initially, Haj intended to put Shanti's Rebuttal out as an instrumental companion piece to Grievances shortly thereafter, but, then, he started working on video collages and more artwork, etc. the music, also, evolved a little bit. It's about 18 minutes long and is intended to be experienced as one continuous piece of music; an Instrumental Hip-Hop soundtrack, of sorts. Its basic plot involves an unwitting heroine who wind...

dumhi ORIGIN STORY: I started making beats around 2002, I guess. I had no intention of doing anything with it, except having fun. At that point, I, personally, knew no one that did music stuff. 2003-ish to 2005, I started meeting some other folks who did music in various capacities like Shameless Plug/Charles Only, Flud, Mash Comp/Wise, MicheleQJ. A lot of us met through sharing demos and talking sh*t on okayplayer.com. That was such a great place to meet [people,] at the time. A lot of [people] were on there, also, just starting their music and learning and we were all hype to talk to each other about it. This is where I met the Tanya Morgan guys and E L U C I D and I used to send my horrible early beats to Nicolay [The Foreign Exchange], via AOL Instant Messenger and we would sit there doing stuff like that until 3:00am every night. Then, on the weekends, I would get up with Plug, Flud, Mash, and whoever else might be around and we'd drink and make jokes and make songs. I, ...

Dragon Fli Empire (DFE) are a Calgary, Alberta, Canada -based rapper-producer duo consisting of emcee Teekay AKA Tarik and producer DJ Cosm AKA Cosmix . "Keepin' the Funk alive since 2002..." DFE have released four albums on Calgary 's own Makebelieve Records since 2004— Conquest , The Invasion LP, Redefine , and Mission Statement—as well as a slew of singles, EP's and compilations on Bigfoot , P-Vine, and Traveller Records . Dragon Fli Empire 's last proper full-length, Mission Statement (Deluxe Edition) featured a coveted guest verse from Brand Nubian 's Sadat X and an incorporated sample from Ol' Dirty Bastard 's "Shimmy Shimmy Ya," as well as a collection of bonus remixes and edits; Teekay & DJ Cosm have previously collaborated with the likes of Cadence Weapon , Djar One, Moka Only , and Masta Ace. Throughout the course of their storied 16-year career, Dragon Fli Empire have shared the stage with De La Soul , Jay Elec...

2 Hungry Brothers —or just "2 Hungry Bros." for short—have cemented a place as one of the strongest and most sought-after production teams in post-2000's Underground/Indie Hip-Hop ; over the years, having accumulated production credits for the likes of Homeboy Sandman , Fresh Daily, P.SO The Earthtone King , LiKWUiD, 8thW1 , Doc Reevez , and 2HB 's off-shoot crew Hunger Division , as well as numerous solo productions from each Deep & Ben Boogz . Last year, fresh on the heels of both Ben Boogz 's I Moreno and Deep 's Depth Perception Vol. 3 , 2 Hungry Bros. produced a full album for Hunger Division emcee LiKWUiD entitled Fay Grim . They, then, partnered with German -based imprint ORIGU to release a special 7-inch showcasing DJ Evil Dee -assisted "IllFayted," as well as P.SO The Earthtone King & Donwill -featuring "Hold That (Faybles)" on Side B . Now, LiKWUiD, 2 Hungry Bros. & DJ Evil Dee (Da Beatminerz/Boot Camp Clik) ...

Let's just get right into it: it's that special time of year where everyone readily flaunts their holiday cheer for everyone to hear! Jingle Bell Rocks! director and Christmas record collector Mitchell Kezin (@mabooshi) curated an especially festive mix full of Alt. Christmas songs, Hanukkah hymns, and obscure holiday jams entitled Mitchell's 'SOUL SISTA' Holiday Mix for The Witzard . Thanks again to Mitchell for sharing his special brand of holiday cheer and a very special thanks goes out to The Ologiest AKA JD at Common Good Records —his old imprint, When Crates Create combined with Analog Burners . In addition to my personal 2017 holiday favorite, Jumbled's Christmas comp. Merry Christmess , there has been quite the influx of festive musical cheer spread by your favorite musicians, emcees, and producers just in time for your last-minute shopping and wrapping sessions. Now, without further ado, I'm proud to present to you: The Witzard 's 2017...

" Deep of 2 Hungry Bros. is often known as the crazy and ExperiMENTAL half of NYC 's Lower East Side production duo. Deep has produced beats for songs that feature artists such as: Tanya Morgan , Breez EvahFlowin', Reef Tha Lost Cauze , Homeboy Sandman, Fresh Daily , Cella Dwellas, Substantial , and many more. Deep often DJ's parties now, as well as radio show, Living Envious Styles , on Sunday afternoons from 2-4:00pm on 8BallRadio . He has released three instrumental albums on HiPNOTT Records : What You Leave Behind , Bushwick Beatfeed, and Family Recipe . He also expanded his beat tape empire into The West with 77 Rise Recordings' label dropping three sold out beat tapes, Depth Perception Vol. 1-2 . Volume 3 is set to drop this November. All of his albums can be found on all digital retailers and streaming services, as well as on Bandcamp ." Depth Perception Vol. 3 by Deep of 2 Hungry Bros I. DJ Shadow - Entroducing..... (1996) "So, I wr...

stop. waiting. by Donwill "Hailing from both Brooklyn and Cincinnati , Tanya Morgan formed on the message boards of okayplayer.com in 2003 when Donwill, Ilyas Nashid , and Von Pea were all solo artists trading demos and beat tapes. The three emcees decided to collaborate for a one-off project and settled on the name Tanya Morgan —an inside joke to trick Hip-Hop crate-diggers and sample-searchers into thinking the record was an old-school Soul singer..." reads a clever emailed press release from HiPNOTT Records ; while Donwill 's Soundcloud description simply reads, " Donwill makes music and you can hear it here." Donwill quietly released a compact 12-minute EP, stop. waiting. under the cover of night late Sunday evening, which he described within an emailed statement as: "basically [though,] it's an EP that I made for myself and mostly by myself to help me get out of my own way. The images in the PDF booklet are a metaphor for me balancing ...

In an effort to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Run-D.M.C 's seminal release: "My Adidas," surviving members Rev. Run and D.M.C. have now teamed up with the good people over @ Adidas . Unveiled just yesterday [11/11/11], Adidas Originals Superstar 80s are essentially the "shelltoes" that Run-D.M.C. forever immortalized some 25 odd years ago, in the Summer of 1986; Permanently cementing Hip-Hop 's residency in the vast world of music. While the companion album, Raising Hell , seemingly the band's commercial breakthrough, it was actually their third overall and first with super-producer Rick Rubin . To put it lightly, these are the mere sounds that forever changed the face of music, blew out and fuzzed genre guidelines... affixing Hip-Hop as more than just a here-today-gone-tomorrow fad, and officially crowned Run-D.M.C. & Jam Master Jay as the 3 reigning kings of Hip-Hop . In honor of the special occasion, Mick Boogie decided to gather u...