Jam Burglar

Dope one!

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, and it doesn't really matter now, but I was in those threads and I don't ever remember Ric claiming that he made that beat. I do specifically remember him saying that dramatically slowing it down was key because otherwise it wasn't good for scratching. Okay, fair enough or whatever, but the beats were never really the point of those records. It was about having tools for scratch music laid out in a usable manner. The amount of importance you put on that UPR series probably has a lot to do with whether you mess with scratch composition or not. There were way worse perpetrators than Ric when it came to jacking beats for break records. I always thought it was a stupid argument to make. I wasn't there so dunno what he said but still, I'd be he marked up that record just like Q does. Looking to make a profit off shit he took form other. That's the main point. Lame. It's not a sample, it's a beat jack. Here's another part of this that's fucked tho and being overlooked. He took a beat from a guy he knew on the forum without his knowledge! WTF!!?? And sounds like it was someone he butted heads with too! How the fuck is that ok? That's just being a prick to be a prick right there. How would you feel if I put out a record and all the beats were from you and other people on DV that had no prior knowledge? That's the biggest WTF of this whole deal. Psychopath shit. The beat was from Drexciya (two guys). The guy he was arguing with (at least at the time) was Lorn. Different dudes. Here's a list of DJs who made break records out of other people's beats, didn't clear the samples, and made money: Breakbeat Lou (he put out the Ultimate Breaks and Beats Series that was hugely responsible for hip hop as we know it); Qbert; Flare; Mixmaster Mike; D-Styles, Roc Raida; DJ Babu, Melo D; DJ Revolution: Bullet Proof Space Travelers; ATrack; Craze; Mr. Dibbs; ... almost every other DJ who put out a break record in 80s, 90s and early 2000s, ... Ricci Rucker. None of the scratch samples are cleared either. There are some very well known DJs who probably would have had to give up DJing and work day jobs if it weren't for break record sales. You're talking about a time when lots and lots of people were stealing these DJ's actual albums (non-break records) through file-sharing and break records were a primary way for professional DJs to keep afloat. You couldn't download a break record back then so you were forced to buy a physical record. And break records were never about bragging rights for beats on them. They were about making battle and scratch tools for yourself and other DJs. I can't even begin to imagine where DJing would be now without them. So yeah, I get it that some people don't like Ric, I just never got this line of attack.

I feel like I'm beating a dead horse here, and it doesn't really matter now, but I was in those threads and I don't ever remember Ric claiming that he made that beat. I do specifically remember him saying that dramatically slowing it down was key because otherwise it wasn't good for scratching. Okay, fair enough or whatever, but the beats were never really the point of those records. It was about having tools for scratch music laid out in a usable manner. The amount of importance you put on that UPR series probably has a lot to do with whether you mess with scratch composition or not. There were way worse perpetrators than Ric when it came to jacking beats for break records. I always thought it was a stupid argument to make.

Thanks for the feedback guys. Now if we were all 20 years old and had gobs of time to practice together

Most of the sounds and beats from break records are jacked. They're a copyright nightmare. But I don't think you'd see Ric take a slowed down Drexiya and put it on an actual album. Most of the guys jacking beats for break records would not ever do that for an album. And the guys who are making really dope beats for break records sometimes put their stuff on albums. For example, Mix Master Mike's drums from Needle Thrashers 2 ended up on Wavetwisters. And even when you get into albums, you start to get into shades more than black and white distinctions. I can kind of see why a lot of producers stopped using samples due to the hassle, but I tend to think we've lost a lot of good music because of it. I wish DJ Shadow would go back to making music the way he did with Entroducing.

You might be thinking of Thelonious London "Cold Pillow" or the track he produced for Breakbot. But yeah, I never remember him saying he made the samples, just that the sounds were sampled from instruments instead of the wax. I believe it was the Bastard Language Tour record where he and D-Styles were recording sounds. Here's the add for UPR1 He actually makes some really good points above and it's mostly about layout and making a scratch record for musical purposes. That record was very innovative and ground breaking and I can see why it would take a few years. When you compare it to one of the many Dirtstyle and Dirtstyle knock-off records of the time, he's got damn good argument. Also, gotta love Reezy. He seems like he's doing pretty okay these days. Anyway, to try to tie all of this back into the topic though, hip hop producers have been sampling without clearing for years and years but there's always that risk that some copyright owner will show up and sue you. It's pretty hard to do things 100% legal without (a) spending loads of time and money to clear every single sample (b) using vetted sample packs © using drum machines & synths or (d) creating your own samples. As a result, that classic hip hop mentality has pretty much been stomped out for anybody unwilling to take the risk. Sy Spex has been doing some pretty cool workarounds using midi-mapping to sample grooves without actually sampling the recordings.

Nice ones!

I don't know yet cause I had to pre-order it like a year before its released so I won't have it until 2021. I played "Dark Tower" in the 80s a few times and thought it was the dopest thing ever and have always wanted one. I found out about this updated version a day before the pre-order stopped so I sort of impulse bought it. Looks crazy dope though. This company has a pretty good track record. They also updated "Fireball Island" if you remember that one.

I remember that, although I can't remember the song, but it was definitely a straight rip off. I also remember when someone found most of the samples from his Utility Phonograph Record all on the same site, pre-dating the release of his record by a couple of years. He wasn't best pleased about that either. The name was Drexiya I believe. He also put a lot of sample he jacked from a university on UPR1. That Ruck Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer here. First, I fully remember that situation with the Ruck and it was super stupid. Almost every beat you hear on a break record is jacked! Sometimes it's as simple as a looped up beat. Sometimes it's chopped up. Sometimes its more involved. So the Ruck took the Drexiya beat, slowed it down and put it on a break record and Lorn was like "hey you stole that" and everybody who knows anything about sampling was like "uhhh, yeah, of course he did, that's pretty much EVERY break record". To me it showed the ingnorance of your average scratch DJ when it comes to break records and where the sounds and beats come from. If I ever see Mixmaster Mike, I'm not going to "call him out" because he put Jive Rhythm Trax 122 BPM on his break record. It's just supposed to be a cool beat to cut over, nobody cares if you made it or not. So, while I disagree with the Ruck on lots of things, he was right on this one. I'm not sure if Lorn was entirely ignorant of sampling at that time, or if he was trolling, or what. I know they were beefing hard. Second, as far as sampling goes, there's no hard-fast rules. To be 100% safe you need to license/buy the rights to use the sample recording. There ARE legal concepts, such as "fair use" that allow you to sample a recording without paying, but you never know if your work qualifies as "fair use" until a Court says it does. Unless you have tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around to finance your fair use defense in Court then you're taking a risk by sampling. A lot of people just take the risk, especially independent artists. If the album blows up then you might not make much money because at that point you're spending profits paying claims. This can be especially scary if you have no backing from a label. There are some classic hip hop albums where nothing was cleared and the artists ended up spending most of the profits clearing samples after the fact, which is not a good place to be when negotiating with the owner. Even when you clear all the samples, you can STILL get sued. This happened to the Beastie Boys sever times. I'm just a simple caveman, but I have to say the sampling laws are a good example of the wackness of Western society. We've set things up so that everything must be "owned" by somebody, and because ownership can be sold, we're now at a point where people can own intellectual property pretty much forever. You have to go WAAYY back to find much in the public domain that's safe to sample. Hip hop, which is one the most creative and new forms of music to come about in the last 100 years, WOULD NOT EXIST if these laws were enforced in the way the owners would like them to be enforced. These traditional musicians came up stealing other people's ideas, rifs, etc. and as soon as a lot of them cut their records they were like "this is MINE now" and you have to pay me. These fools weren't paying the Stylistics shit to cover "People Make the World Go Round". But if you sample their cover of that song, you have to pay? This goes back to the distinction between the copyright on the composition, and the copyright on the recording. But the only reason the copyright on the recording was initially treated differently was to prevent bootlegging whole songs. Sampling did not exist when they created the laws. So, now you have this situation where a person can take someone else's composition, change a few minor things, and call it their own "original" work, but the guy who samples the recording, flips it to high heaven, and comes up with something totally different it "copying". And I've got nothing against producers who don't sample, but there's a REASON many of us are drawn to classic hip hop, and its lost on these sterile sample packs and synth sounds. People who think they are "serious musicians" simply because they use some sample pack, or keyboard, or even generate their own sounds, and that they are somehow above somebody who samples, are fooling themselves. They're still jacking techniques that exist SOLELY because sample musicians created them. And the only reason these techniques were created was specially because of sampling. Again, not saying it's wack to not sample, I'm just saying the fact that a person doesn't sample does not automatically put them on a higher level than Pete Rock when it comes to musicianship. Anyway, I'm not against Artists getting paid when somebody samples their work, but it has to be a REASONABLE amount and they shouldn't be able to deny the use. When you put your music out there in society, its no longer just yours. They should have to deal with that. They copied somebody else anyway so the fact that they don't want to reciprocate makes them hypocrites.

Yep, Mondo. That's where I saw it anyway. I got carried away a few months back and preordered this monstrosity: Return to Dark Tower

I'm using Google Chrome and it works. Are you on Instagram JHouse?

Me, Alf of Hip Hop Slam, DJ Ragz and DJ Select have linked up maybe 3 or 4 times now for scratch sessions. The first time, it was really just your typical trading bars with a very limited amount of composition. The second time we started spending more time delving into composition, just making it up as we go along. By the third session we progressed into mostly improvising compositions, sometimes rocking over a drum machine, sometimes using beats from a producer named Unown (who Ragz worked with on his group the "Jazz Addixx") and sometimes using scratch drums as a base layer. Anyway, last week Ragz tells us that he gave the recordings to Unown. Turns out Unown turned the recordings (mostly the third session but also a thing or two from the second session) into an album. This was a really cool gesture and a nice surprise! If you want to check it out you can listen here https://vibejars.bandcamp.com/releases And just to be clear, there was absolutely no planning, no talking about what samples to use, and nobody even knowing who's going to do what at any given moment. We just hook up our turntables and vibe out for a few hours. Aside from some slop you get from winging it, I'm a little floored at how easy it is to make music like this. If you are into this type of experimental thing and have a few DJ friends I highly recommend trying this sort of thing out. Here's a little promo that Alf did: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_xpx8VAOPX

Oh man! I love me some Kraftwerk. I even listen to their first two albums. Nothing better than rolling around in a German car (or better yet a bike) and listening to Kraftwerk).

Yep, Celly, Connah J, ... and Jeebus.

omg ty !! I try man, lately Ive been on a rut where I feel like Ive plateaued with my flow. I find that taking a days break and then returning to the turntables and firing up a looper is when Im best :-) also respect to mentioning the homie Connor ! I was able to cut with him last year and dude has an amazing flow/crazy handstyle haha its an absolutely trip to witness I cut with him and Celly when Connah was like 17-years-old or something. Celly was amazingly solid and has just gotten even better, and I remember Connah being crazy unique in some of the stuff he was doing even back then. You all seen this shit (it's old but crazy dope)? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXJBHWCHgEQ

I think they have to have context or purpose other than "remember this movie clip"? Like if you're playing Nightmare on My Street and bust in with some Nightmare on Elm Street movie clips, that actually work with the music, I'm good with that. What's even better is when you have some Rebecca Black "Friday" playing and you bust in with some Friday the 13th like "blowwwwwww!" But chyea, when you just randomly throw in movie clips "because '80s" then it feels gimmicky to me. That sort of thing reminds me of the cameos everybody does in movies now. For instance, putting ET in the middle of a Star Wars movie. Cheap pandering.

Maybe I'm confusing Yoda with Girl Talk.

Here's a link to the one I did if anybody needs it. https://www.tablist.net/audio/jbs-jockin-80s I like how Spinbad approached his like a hip-hop mix using 80s records but I was definitely trying to go a different direction than that. I want to check out the Curse and Melo D mixes! Melo is unbelievably good. Didn't Girl Talk or somebody like that do an 80s mix with hip hop accapellas over 80s loops? Not a fan of his personally so I didn't pay much attention.

Oh yeah, I put up a bandcamp page too if anybody wants to download or stream from there. https://jamburglar.bandcamp.com/releases

Thanks Dan! Still listening to "Here We Are One Time"

Yeah, just straight technicality is really cool in some respects but at the end of the day its not enough to overcome the fact that we're dealing with music. It's hard to beat Dave Styles for me because he's so good at keeping things interesting but there are some other cats that are really good in this area too. Symatic is really good at the technical/musicality balance. Mr. Brown is dope in that respect. The Ruck is still more in the pocket than anybody. Eprom is insane. Dopez. IQ. There's a a whole slew of cats that are slept on. Connah Jay for example.

This is some pretty killer stuff Broma. Nice textures/vibes.

Thanks for the feedback guys. I get kind of wrapped up in these mixtape projects sometimes and can't tell if they're any good. Hey Wax On, check out my profile at Tablist.net for a few more. https://www.tablist.net/artist/jam-burglar I did an '80s mix a few years back, "JB's Jockin' The '80s" that's multi-tracked like this latest one. The earlier ones on there, "That Digger's Crazy" and "The Nightmare Before X-Fade", are live (one-take) mixes. I put some heavy planning into "That Digger's Crazy". "The Nightmare Before X-Fade", on the other hand, was not something I put any real work into. I think I uploaded it because we were sharing Halloween mixes on skratchworx back in the day.

Still D!

Yeah! A lot of it was stuff he knew, Intergalactic, the Jackal and Hyde electro track, Willie the Giant. I was trying to bug him out by mixing up stuff he knew already and then introducing him to other things, like the old Transformers cartoons and Scooby Doo. When intergalactic starts coming in I could see the wheels turning in his head because I think that was the first time he grasped what mixing was.