download it here.

tracklist:
1. computer love (intro)
2. ecstasy
3. bam bam
4. green power
5. circles
6. love + happiness
7. i wanna do something freaky
8. juicy fruit
9. e'rybody loves the sunshine
10. we're gettin' down
11. just a touch
12. i scare myself
13. love for sale
14. come running to me
15. purple

put that in your ipod and smoke it.

"you guys should get together- make a 'we are the world' record."

no word yet from taylor or his tech support team at tunecore. he was just saying i was his "priority." wah wah.

so finally today, after thoroughly enjoying and eventually influenced by pips' "i swept you off my feet" mp3, i listened to the otis clay sample mp3 for ihabu.com's competition (whose deadline may or may not have been extended a week) and came up with my version, "green power." mp3

i was thrilled at how sample-ble the otis clay track was. otis' voice conveys so much emotion, you don't even have to listen to the lyrics. you can just hear the pain and feeling in his intonation. pips freaked it really well- his drums banged, he stabbed certain chops to make the sound feel extended, and the vocal part he cut up sounded like otis was saying "killing me." the butter on top are the bass and rhodes he threw in behind (on top?) of the sample. so chill. i didn't actually talk to young hopper about his beat making process, i am simply deducing from what tools i know he uses and what my dumbo ears tell me.

i started out with a simple "bump-ba-dump" section my ear picked out, ran it thru a low-pass in goldwave, eq'd it, cut it up, and brought it into fruity. i came up with the simple stabbing bass and added an 808 long bass sample behind each stab to thicken it a lil'. i cut a snare off zimba ku, fell back on the impeach drums for the kick ('cuz i'm laaazy), and left it at that to work on vocal samples.

i used a few tracks for the vocal samples: a tribe called quest's "peace, prosperity, and paper," funky 4 + 1's "the joint," young holt unlimited's "ain't there something money can't buy," and don campbell's "campbell lock" for the "ugh"'s and the "hey"'s

after cutting it up i went back to the otis clay song for the simple chopped up guitar and wailing from otis. it seemed kinda empty so i loaded up the eMu phatt soundfont and just went down the scale on the keys.

i don't like the result. it sounds too cluttered. too busy. i should've cut the sample out at certain points when the keys came in, the q-tip vocal sample is not clear, etc. still i thought i'd post the muthafucker for you curious cats...

remember a few saturdays back when this asian dude came into the sw bar, put on a chef's apron, and just stood in the back of the kitchen taking notes? kinda weird right? then there was this rumor on chowhound. further googling revealed this. so i guess it's true. $340,000? damn homey. looks like i got out just in time. but why buy the business, why not just wait 'til the space goes up for lease? i guess north andover is the new spot?

ihookabeatup moved to a dedicated server at ihabu.com. treebeats didn't carry over any record of the previous competitions though. they put a new sample (otis clay "i can't take it") up for next week. i have not peeped it yet so we'll see if i compete.

mista mark has got this boo banger mp3  lined up for them tho. "killing it."

permanent midnight is an album recorded in the time i spent uptown, nawlins (circa 2003). the album employs a robotic woman as the tour guide (a nod to midnight marauders, one of my favorite albums), who appears here and there across the 14 tracks. i produced the enitre album myself (with the exception of track 6), using goldwave and fruityloops, and recorded it on fostex digital mixers and digidesign pro tools. the studios were 6040 prytania street and 318 broadway. aside from dubs for friends, yousendits, and hand to hand sales, it was never officially released... until now.

more than a few months ago, i signed up with tunecore to put permanent midnight up for sale on itunes, amazon, emusic, napster, etc. after paying $27, they told me that the album was projected to "go live" on or before biggie's death anniversary (sauce money says r.i.p. for me). so i log on to tunecore yesterday and lo and behold, the album is still "processing."

me to Support@TuneCore.com

darling, why isn't my album (X004247) live yet?

i've paid you already and its been saying "Projected go-live on or before: 09-Mar-2008" for something like 3 months now.

had i the budget to promote this album, i'd be pretty pissed today. lucky foryou guys, i'm starving and broke, so i'm a bit ticked but not pissed.


what's up?

chris b.

even though it was sunday, a few hours after i sent the email i received a response,

Support@TuneCore.com to me

Hey there Chris,

Thanks for writing. I'm very sorry your music hasn't gone live yet. I'm having our tech team research why this happened so we can resolve it for you ASAP. Getting your music live is my first priority. I will continue to monitor your album and keep you updated as I get news on the status.

I'll find out what's wrong and write back to you. Sorry again for the trouble, talk to you soon!

Thank you,

Taylor Simons
Customer Support and Solutions
Email: Support@TuneCore.com
10am - 9pm EST Sunday - Saturday
Join our Affiliate Program and start earning commissions from TuneCore ads on your site!

i check my gmail around 10pm EST with no word from the gentleman taylor or his "tech team." today i log back in, and "processing" has become "ready to go," yet searches for "he's hers" and "permanent midnight" on itunes and amazon render shitty rock and brittany wells songs. so i hit the keyboard again,

me to Support@TuneCore.com

taylor,

thanks for looking into this.

i went to check up on things today and there was a difference- "processing" has become "ready to go," but as far as searches reveal, my product isn't for sale in any of the stores (itunes, amazon, etc) yet. i tried to see if the album was for sale on the tunecore site itself, only to find this message in the "edit my page" section: "Currently none of your albums are live in iTunes. When we have received confirmation from Apple you will be able to add albums to your page."

any word from your tech team?

let me know,

chris b.

it is around 11pm EST and no album, no response. wah wah. i hope i didn't get took-en. it's so stupid the itunes store makes us deal with these middlemen. why can't we just fucks wit' u apple?

so no permanent midnight for you (for now). the best i can offer (since it seems fitting in a fashionably late kinda way) is a biggie mix i threw together a long time ago that a few of you nawlins cats might remember. you can grab the entire mix (24 tracks, 84 mb) here zip. it's old but let me know how you like it. this is the track listing:

1. got this shit locked intro
2. dreams
3. kick in the door
4. c.r.e.a.m. freestyle
5. realms of junior m.a.f.i.a.
6. da dirty b-side
7. you'll see
8. running
9. wickedest love
10. flava in ya ear remix
11. dolly my baby
12. who shot ya?
13. brooklyn's finest
14. be happy
15. buddy x
16. me & my bitch (live)
17. real niggaz do real things
18. all men are dogs
19. gettin' money
20. house of pain
21. missing you
22. party & bullshit
23. get money
24. machine gun funk

download zip it. and rock, rock on.

i think i got robbed.

not literally, like on some omar mike shit, i'm talking about "the truth," mp3.

that's right kiddies, despite its dopeness "the truth," mp3 did not prevail last week.

i mean it got 49% of the popular vote (the closest competition was 11%, thank you myspace and facebook).

judge and competitor (just to show you what kind of competition ihookabeatup really is) treebeats had me in 7th place, remarking that

my man has some pretty tight beats... he makes well-constructed tracks.

old faithful travis had us holding the #2 spot (#2?!! c'mon really?). here's what he had to say

I picked dude first last week as did everyone else. This week he is right there again. But in my book this cat deserves it. Again, he flipped just tad differently. The same elements were there, but he just did it differently. A nice tight package that just had it all for me.

the surprise came from judge king e, who panned moi the first week, panned pips the next, and didn't vote in the 3rd,

The Truth mp3is just that... The truth mp3. This is some Webster’s dictionary text book grassroots hip hop for hip hop's sake type of shit. This is the shit to me. Done the way I like to listen to it. The vocal samples are really fucking choice to man. Can't wait to hear more from this dude.

he placed us in first place, tied with some other dude but c'mon, really?

max and mike panned the beat, of course.

i guess i shouldn't be too mad. i made the beat mp3 30 mins before the submission deadline. and who are these squares anyway? they didn't even get my stop the world reference.

so i took the week off from the competition, just to let these bitches breathe, and concern myself with the wire series finale (s05e10).

got to see it today (couldn't you tell?). david simon > david chase, fo sho. i just wanted more pop offs. awww daquan. and that slim charles quote they leaked last week is deceiving. but yo i'm gonna watch it again tonight, i might write something up about it tommorah.

we killed them hard with the votes the first week.  intimidating them so much with our presence that i feel like the judges panned "when our i's meet," mp3 on purpose (it got A mention, "'When Our I's Meet' sounds almost Madlib-esque...and it was unique" ).  33jones didn't sleep though.

then in week two, pips made some noise (oh yah, pun intended) with his lucio battisti flip, "i can't feel no," mp3 getting both votes and the dude travis' top pick (even though, he couldn't spell his name).

Here is the originality factor kicking in. Pip [sic] freaked this in different tempo and style than the others did and it was kind of a breath of fresh air. I felt the urge to spit over this beat and I don't even rhyme. That to me is a sign of a good beat. Some tweaks to this and I can see someone spitting some macking game to the females on this beat. Also great use of a vocal sample from the song. Simple yet, very effective

but alas, no win.

finally in the third week... break out the champagne and dutches 'cuz we killed them in the votes, copped two out of three of the judges top picks, and somehow "all night long" mp3 won the motherfucker.  the dude travis was down again,

this sounded unique as they came. The string sample was amazing as was the way he tweaked the horn samples. I don't look at the popular vote until I have my top 10 finalized, so it was kind cool to see this running away with the public vote this week.

and andrew said

Quality work. Way to go.

judge max was the only one unconvinced, not even ranking ya boy in his top ten.  so it wasn't the landslide victory i wanted... no sweat, i'll take whatever i can get.  fact is, he's hers won.  it's a celebration bitches.

if you've been clueless as to what the fuck i've been rambling on about, and persisted reading this long, god bless you and why aren't you reading my facebook notes or myspace bulletins?  c'mon, you need to get your interweb-stalking-game up dunny.  what i've been refering to is the beat competition that's been going for the last three weeks over at ihookabeatup.  every week swanky mp3 bloggers (like scholar and dj nes) contribute tracks for beatjunkies like moi and marco to flip, and the best one (elected by panel and public votes) gets you the props, for the week.

i have an entry this week too.  vote for it.  it's "the truth," mp3 but they seem to be having streaming problems over at the site, as treebeats is working on moving the shit over to a dedicated server.  so we'll see how it does.  "the truth," mp3 might just end up as an album intro. nonetheless, vote for it.

no entry from the young hopper though.  he was busy working on the joe budden remix competition that fresh mentioned.  here's pips' remix to "dear diary." mp3 he sent me the sweet instrumental like a week before he did the remix.  i shoulda popped off on it then.  ah wells.  get those turntables!

as you've prolly noticed, we changed lanes from wordpress to blogdrive. jeah.

stay tuned.

new he's hers!

"it's retarded," mp3 produced by big pips.

download it here.

or use the fly.pod on the right to listen.

recorded in sunny somerville, massachusetts.

show me some love.