90'STALGIA & GROOVE MASTA PUTZ
Released: January 13, 2018
This album was an international collaboration between myself and the amazingly talented people over in Valladolid, Spain that I met when I studied abroad there. One day when riding the bus home from teaching English I met some rappers chatting about some music they were working on. Being who I am I decided to introduce myself. Eventually they invited me to a show one night where I met Koke, who introduced me to Radio Musical 470 (WWW, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook).
Before I went to Spain I had the vague dream of making music over there, but didn't actually expect that to happen by any means. So the fact that this happened was a very pleasant surprise. It was originally planned as something simple to be released shortly, like a demo tape or maqueta as they call it in Spanish. It ended up taking a long ass time to release lol. I kinda just assumed it wasn't happening at one point, but then I got a message from Koke literally the day after I released my Groove Masta Putz album, without even planning it, so that was super cool!
Update August 8th, 2020: It appears the bandcamp page for this album has been removed :(
Links
Songs
Give 'em a listen. Mostly meant as a way to sample the songs before bothering to download them or in the event the mirrors above don't work.
Descriptions
Manifesto
My whole musical life has been defined by piracy for pleasure and sampling music I never got, nor will get, the rights to use. That's why I put my shit out for free under the Creative Commons, because in a lot of cases I have no business making money off of music anyway. But I also do it because I care more about my music being accessible. Music creates communities and friendships which have been far more valuable over the years than the money I've made off of it (or more accurately lost from it).
Yes, I realize there's some complicated realities to "making music" and artists need to eat, but as a counter to all the music about making money and commodifying yourself as some forgettable brand I decided to put down my philosophy into some dope ass elevator music sampling Mulatu Astatke - Mascaram Setaba. For me this album was a much better souvenir than anything I could ever buy in Spain. Shout out to DJ GP for the dope scratches and Koke for mastering it very well!
Nómada Salvaje (Remix)
Koke and Soviet representing the 470 in Valladolid, Spain! The title in English is Savage Nomad, the lyrics are, unsurprisingly, about being a nomad and living from moment to moment. That and a few shout outs to me and Wisconsin ;). Beat by me.
Looming Threat
A cypher over some random hip-hop instrumental. We were going to use a beat I made, but the timing was weird and in the end for the ease we just went with something else. I don't know if our verses really fit with each other, but hey it was still fun to record haha. Didn't help my Spanish wasn't as good as at the time as it is now.
Happy Final
The final version of "Make Someone Happy", a hip-hop instrumental I made sampling Barbra Striesand. Basically we just rap about happiness and sometimes I make it cheesy. I'm from Wisconsin, what do you expect lol.
* BONUS TRACK *
This is the first track I made in Spain when after first met NeryTBR on the bus ride mentioned above. I think he put the track out under a different name too, but I can't find it. Anyway, this one was pretty fun to make! The lyrics are about keeping on doing your thing and not giving up. The lyrics "The goal isn't the moon, it's making it to the fuckin' sun!" sums it up pretty nicely. Sample from Fela Kuti, but I'm having trouble finding the track so I'll have to update it once I find it.