The Witzard

Honestly, it doesn't even feel like there's a proper way to elegize an eccentric and extremely talented artist such as MF DOOM, who meant so much to so many of us for so many years for so many different reasons as truly unique as DOOM himself. So, what better way to pay tribute to The Man, The Myth, THE MASK himself than by speaking to those closest to him? With a heavy heart, I proudly present Shadows of Tomorrow; a new recurring column in tribute to DOOM in an effort to re-tell the tall tales, strange stories, and lesser-known tidbits of The Metal Face Villain himself. R.I.P. Daniel "MF DOOM" Dumile Thompson. "I've been a fan of DOOM's music since his first release, Operation: Doomsday. Incredible beats, rhymes that had their own flow and imagination to them, and the ability to craft it all together with a theme to create a stand-alone piece of classic Hip-Hop was remarkable. He went on to do that with, basically, every project; his albums aren'...

"We've been getting a lot of questions about a collaborative album that Madlib & Mac Miller supposedly created. Here's the real story: What exists is what the two had originally intended—an EP's worth of music that was supposed to be the start of something. The end point wasn't planned out or even discussed. The idea was to create for creation's sake. The two met after Mac recorded the last verse on Freddie Gibbs' Piñata album. By early, 2015 Mac had batches of Madlib's beats and was recording songs. The two ate tacos at Eagle Rock's Cacao Mexicatessen and discussed ideas. Madlib played one of Mac's tracks in July of 2016 at a European festival and Egon texted Mac to tell him; "Whaaat, what song, why isn't there any video evidence!!!" was the reply. Followed by "Let's do an EP." This process continued throughout 2017, as Mac got the latest beat batches, continued recording, and continued his commitment to th...

Flaunt Edwards is a long-standing alias of J.Rocc The Funky President . Jason "J.Rocc" Jackson has, over the years, become one of the most world-renown and sought-after Hip-Hop DJ's, turntablists, and producers. One of the founding members of The Beat Junkies , J.Rocc has spent time either playing with or recording alongside artists such as Axel F. with M.E.D. Bumrush Bros. D-Styles Sextet , DJ Spinna, Dirty Fingered B-Boys , J Dilla, Jurassic 5 , Madlib, and PSK , as well as being the honorary "third member" of Jaylib . The Witzard , actually, has a very special relationship with J.Rocc , as I've been patiently waiting to hear Jay 's long-rumored J Dilla & Michael Jackson mash-up/blend album, SHARE MY BED , for about 10 years now. Although, miraculously, earlier this year, J.Rocc surprise released an 8-track version of SHARE MY BED on his Bandcamp page; along with it, was this quote, seemingly, paraphrased from Dilla himself: " J D...

Heralded as a greenhorn rapper-producer project that's "shaping up to be easily the best thing on Stones Throw in [recent] years," despite the fact that they only have a mere two released tracks under their belt; Nxworries (pronounced: No Worries ) have managed to hone in a unique sound that could characteristically be best described as the missing link between George Clinton 's ground-breaking Parliament-Funkadelic and N.W.A. & Snoop Dogg 's G-Funk sub-genre of 1990's West Coast Hip-Hop that Clinton himself unknowingly helped inspire. Once distilled down to its R&B -leaning Hip-Hop core, Nxworries is essentially a sparse Jaylib -indebted "2 turntables and a microphone"-style project consisting of New Jersey -bred beatsmith Knxwledge and Dr. Dre's latest protégé, LA crooner Anderson .Paak . "He was a big part of me finding a sound that I was looking for and a tone that people are more familiar with now... when I started ...

"Now, the vocal album – that is something that I know [J Dilla] had a desire to see out, as he did Ruff Draft and, oddly enough, an album he'd made of noodling improvised keyboard lines over drum breaks (one of those made it to The Shining album)," Now-Again Records founder and former Stones Throw General Manager Eothen "Egon" Alapatt revealed when asked about Dilla's planned post-Donuts releases; to the best of my knowledge, Vintage Vibez Music Group 's sprawling 41-track Dillamatic album isn't in fact said "improvised noodling keyboard lines over drum breaks album." It is however, being billed as The Electronic Age of J Dilla , which was seemingly preceded by his "hard-edged, synth-heavy tracks crafted fro Busta Rhymes , Jaylib [with Madlib], Oh No , and Phat Kat." Detroit 's finest neck-snapping rapper-producer James "J Dilla" Yancey aka Jay Dee is still somehow releasing mass amounts of posthumous musi...

"I'm the epitome of all fly sh*t — jacket to the shoe sole / Two shooters, Flanagan, Caruso / Fly girl stuffed the drug in her caboose-o / "I see Bronson in the chartreuse coupe mo" / My eyes sparkle like a diva's mirror," charismatic sharp-tongued emcee Action Bronson effortlessly rhymes atop producer Tommy Mas' thumping James Bond -esque "Driving Gloves" beat; similar to a Jaylib -style double rapper-producer Underground Hip-Hop pairing, The Alchemist & Oh No are currently preparing to release their third full-length Gangrene album since initially forming back in 2007. " You Disgust Me begins where Vodka & Ayahuasca [2012] left off, with Al and Oh lyrically vandalizing the minds of the masses over gritty, Psychedelic Jazz, Rock , and Fusion -tinged beats," reads a recent Mass Appeal Records press release, which effectively describes Mas' brooding, Surfaris "Wipe Out" -leaning production work. Est...

"I just emailed [Peanut Butter Wolf] : "Would you like to go record shopping?" And I couldn't believe it, but he wrote back and said: "Sure." So, his show [in Austin ] happened to be the night of my prom, so I took my date to his show, her name was Cindy Huckabee . I took her to the show and I met Wolf and was still wearing my tux and we just kind of hung out for the next few days," James Pants lamented to Red Bull Music Academy concerning his first chance meeting with Stones Throw label-head, Peanut Butter Wolf . Pants' debut album, Welcome (2008), which garnered famous fans such as Tyler, The Creator , Gary Wilson, and Mayer Hawthorne , more or less helped spearhead what I'd loosely refer to as Stones Throw 's post- Jaylib "outsider artists" movement. James Pants' first album in four years, Savage , was reportedly "inspired by Martin Denny flourishes, royalty-free breakbeats, Gary Wilson , and Hamburg 's ...

homeboy sandman is the sandman by blu "I understand you've been running from the man that goes by the name of the sandman," echoes an eerie back-laid sample delicately lifted from America 's 1971 Folk Rock album track, "Sandman." It's actually the lead-off track from illusive super-producer from Blu and seasoned underground rapper Homeboy Sandman 's surprise four-track download-able EP, homeboy sandman is the sandman . While they've previously worked together on a number of non-album tracks, most notably "Atlantis," which was released on Stones Throw this past June, this marks their first cohesive long(er)-form project. homeboy sandman is the sandman EP was released with little to no release information, aside from " homeboy sandman is the sandman produced by blu " and a handful of vague Bandcamp genre tags: " hip hop , hip-hop/rap, nwc rap , Los Angeles." It's largely a Jaylib -style rapper-producer a...

While it's largely unclear exactly how Atlanta emcee Rome Fortune and British Electronic producer Four Tet managed to record their recent series of cross-continental collaborations, I'd like to think they followed the Jaylib model; legend has it that J Dilla & Madlib 's lone Stones Throw album, Champion Sound , was painstakingly assembled from dozens of beat/vocal CD-R's that were mailed back-and-forth between Los Angeles and Detroit . Rome Fortune & Four Tet unexpectedly released their second track together, "Lights Low" Thursday afternoon, which Fortune vaguely alluded is "Track 2 of ? between myself and Four Tet ..." For those not exactly familiar with either artists' work, "Lights Low" and "One Time For" don't sound totally dissimilar from Daft Punk 's Electro -tinged Hip-Hop collaborations with Kanye and Jay Z , "Stronger" and "Computerized" (respectively). Four Tet r...

Aside from his pseudo-brother-in-law Kanye West , I've never really heard tell of a rapper readily associating himself with Kardashian -bred entrepreneur Scott Disick ; until the red bearded charmer himself, Action Bronson effortlessly proclaimed, "Yo, it's the rap Scott Disick / Come through the f*ckin' block with some hot lizards." Bronson's long-time friend and Well Done collaborator Statik Selektah recruited him for the introductory verse on his latest single, "The Imperial." While it's only been out for a few days, AllHipHop has already dubbed Selektah's recent efforts "the unofficial Make-a-Wish foundation for dream rap collaborations," presumably for pairing Bronson up with Slaughterhouse member Royce Da 5'9" and veteran Roots emcee Black Thought . Now, try to stay with me here, but Action Bronson really seems to be the missing link between everyone involved here: he previously worked with Statik Selekt...

Not even counting his seemingly endless pre- Stones Throw material, veteran emcee Homeboy Sandman has released one album, First of a Living Breed , and about four EP's with the documentary-wielding Indie Hip-Hop label since inking a deal in 2011; most recently having concocted a Jaylib -style collaborative EP with Stones Throw affiliated producer Paul White , ingeniously titled White Sands . According to Stones Throw , Homeboy Sandman 's latest track, "Atlantis" is "one of a few dozen new tracks Sand's been working on this year. Expect to hear the best of them in a new full length album set for Fall 2014 - title, producers and track list TBA." It's single cover is essentially laid out to mimic Nirvana 's iconic Nevermind album artwork and the track itself was produced by insanely prolific rising West Coast rapper-producer Blu . Comfortably nestled atop a jittery off-kilter beat, Homeboy Sandman ferociously raps, "I'd rather l...

I'm about 98% sure that I first stumbled upon Kieran Hebden (aka Four Tet ) during my early exploration of Jaylib -era J Dilla ; the late great rapper-producer concocted a neck-snapping remix of Hebden's own "As Serious As Your Life" (2003) along with fellow Detroit emcee Guilty Simpson . While he's primarily regarded as a one-man band, Four Tet has branched out in recent years working with drummer Steve Reid , MADVILLAIN, Neneh Cherry , Syrian wedding singer Omar Souleyman , and has produced unofficial remixes for everyone from Lana del Rey to Justin Timberlake. Four Tet unleashed his latest foray into Hip-Hop late Tuesday afternoon; "One Time For" is one of two tracks recently recorded with rising Atlanta emcee Rome Fortune . Even though it may still be a little rough around the edges, "One Time For" is an extremely glitched out, drum-heavy Electronic Hip-Hop hybrid, which could very well be the start of a great collaborative ef...

" Share My Bed = MJ & Dilla 1st track, "Player Has Butterflies" ...wait [for] the rest," read a vague 2009 Stones Throw post. Beat Junkies co-founder and former Black Star & Jaylib DJ J. Rocc has seemingly been working on some sort of unspecified J Dilla/Michael Jackson mash-up project for the past 5+ years. Dilla was a known Jackson (5) super-fan and even sampled "Dancing Machine" for Q-Tip 's solo track "Move" (2008), originally appearing on his Beat CD '05 #3 web-bootleg. I can vaguely remember downloading a copy of my first J Dilla album, Champion Sound with Madlib (2003). It falls right between what I would consider his two greatest works, Ruff Draft EP and his magnum opus, Donuts . Little did I know, at the time, that Dilla's health was slowly failing because of lupus complications and a rare blood disorder; he ultimately passed away on February 10th, 2006. I didn't realize til a few years later, bu...

There's nothing quite like aimlessly diggin' through a bunch of dusty old crates and cherry-picking one random record based on either an interesting cover, lone production credit, or even a stand-out track and then having it sound 10x more awesome than you [n]ever expected; Well, that's pretty much what Otis "Madlib" Jackson Jr. does for a living! He's recorded tracks with everyone from the late great J Dilla to Brazilian Funk drummer Ivan Conti and somehow unleashed 13 full-length albums between 2010-12. It must be hard for a seasoned rapper-producer like Madlib to constantly keep melding together inventive-sounding output. Attempting to delve into a largely untouched batch of source material, Madlib has bravely crafted Rock Konducta (Vol. 1) for an unspecified December release. He'll supposedly draw potential inspiration from "1960-70's Progressive Rock , African "Zam-rock," and other Funky forms of the Rock genre,...

"Today is February 7th, 2013, which means it is the birthday of one of the greatest Hip-Hop producers of all time, James Yancey aka J Dilla ; Today, he would've been 39 years old. It's incredible that every month of February for the last 8 years that Dilla 's life & music is celebrated around the whole world. It's also bittersweet because he was taken from us in such an early age when it looked like he was really get ready to take the world by storm. I [was] been very lucky & blessed to be part of his close circle of friends when he moved to Los Angeles . Not only was he was a talented individual and one of the nicest & humble guy I ever met, he was also a private person... You definitely [didn't] want to get on his nerves LOL!! I know there's a lot of Dilla Tribute mixes out there, and me personally, I don't think there's anyone that can out top a Dilla mix that was made by my fellow Beat Junkie & the 3rd member of J...