Everything - Blame Mix

Feeling this version. The official Drum N Bass mix courtesy of Blame.

My Radio Believe Me I Like It Loud...

Just a quick note to let you know how excited I am about our progress on UK radio waves this week. The P-Money single "Everything" ft. Vince Harder received it's first playlist spin on Jo Whiley's show on BBC Radio 1 last night (load the player and skip to the 56min mark) and went straight on to playlist today at 1Xtra (the UK's leading Black Music station). [edit] Not to mention the man Trevor Nelson gave it a spin on July 4th on BBC 1 also!

This is real big stuff for us. Infact I'm curious to know how many New Zealand acts have attained this kind of airplay in the UK?
Not in a spiteful way at all. Please fill me in oh wise watchers of the web... Off the top of my head I know OMC smashed it back in the day and I'd make a guess that Fat Freddy's Drop got decent spot plays on specialist shows. But as for playlist on a UK station? We might be breaking new ground here.
Awesome news either way!
Onwards and upwards!!

How To Succeed In Life & DJ Battles

The 2009 NZ DMC Champs are taking place on 08/08/09 at Zen Bar in Auckland. That means you have just over 4 weeks to design your 6 minute masterpiece and take that title.

Those that know me well will recognize my expertise in this area.
There isn't a year that goes by where fans don't encourage me to enter again. I gotta be honest and say that competing in DJ Battles is simply not on my radar at present. But I do see it as a highly significant (dare i say 'necessary'?) part of any Hip-Hop DJ's apprenticeship. The Battle is where you earn your respect, establish your profile and most importantly, hone your craft. I encourage any aspiring DJ to challenge themselves and ENTER. The rewards from this unique experience are immeasurable.

So with this blog, instead of showing off what I can do on a pair of turntables, I thought I would share with you the method which I used to prepare, compose and rehearse my battle winning sets during my competitive years. Thus...

Prepare, Compose and Rehearse. Approaching your practice sessions with solid structure is key. This is how I break it down:

1. PREPARATION (Practice) - Any time you are practicing is preparation for the next battle. Putting your self through drills, repeating the same scratch or beat juggle pattern over and over until you have it locked, is very important. You should be doing this ALL the time (not just near battle time). Jamming and fine tuning the things you know plus pushing yourself to master new techniques is essential during practice. I would easily commit 4-6 hours a day practicing. Not on any one routine necessarily, but just honing my instrument.

2. COMPOSITION - I would begin the process of composing my battle routines as soon as the competition date had been announced (if not before!). I'd make the proper enquiries regarding the battle format (ie. how long are the sets, how many do I need to prepare so that I am equipped for every round etc..) and then the creative process would begin.
Because you have been practicing you should already have an arsenal of cuts, scratches and tricks that you can apply to any record. So now is the time to have fun selecting what records sound good and discovering which tracks have the elements you need to create a dope, entertaining and impressive routine.
Depending on how far away the battle was I might spend months on composing a whole bunch of routines. But in the case of NZ DMC 2009, YOU have 4 weeks to create and perform a 6 minute routine, so I would give you a strict 2 weeks to compose all the pieces you need, because you are going to need the remaining 2 weeks for...

3. REHEARSAL - This is the MOST important and oft overlooked part of preparing for a successful battle performance. Too often DJ's approach the stage with routines only composed the night before and proceed to forget parts, lose their cool and/or blame technical problems for the simple fact they were not well rehearsed and therefore fucked their routine up.
By now if you have spent 2 weeks composing then you should have settled on a final 6 minute routine. So what I advise you to do is line up all the records for your routine, in order, in a big stack next to the turntables. Then grab a stop watch, set it to countdown 6 minutes, and go through your routine. Once. Without stopping. If you make a mistake keep going, you are on the clock!
Now review your performance. How many mistakes did you make? What parts didn't work? Address all the issues. And run through it again. And again, and again. Until its running smoothly. It might take days to get it smooth, but you have two weeks so stop stressing and go over it again.

Now once you are able to get through the whole set smoothly with NO mistakes you can smile, give yourself a brief pat on the back and then continue to rehearse the same routine over and over and over again. Until your hands hurt, until your back hurts, until your head hurts, until you know the thing forwards, backwards and are borderline losing your mind from repeating this damn process. Then grab a glass of water and do it again.
During this 2 weeks if you find yourself at home sitting on the couch watching shortland street, get up off your ass and do your routine again. And when you're reading my blog and twitter and bullshitting online, slap yourself and GO REHEARSE!!!
If you follow these steps then by battle time you will have your set committed to memory so well that of the million things that can (and quite possibly will) go wrong on the night your set will not be one of them! Even if the needle skips, you will know how to get back on track so quickly that no-one will notice but you. Trust me. I know.

I strongly advise you to stick to this plan and spend the next 2 weeks composing routines using the techniques you ALREADY KNOW and can DO WELL. Don't create routines beyond your current ability. If there is an amazing trick that you only get right once every 20 times, leave it out and put that on the list of things to practice in advance of the NEXT battle.

Use the skills you have NOW to compose routines you can pull of cleanly.

Make a dope fun set that sounds good to you and to OTHERS.

Rehearse your set and enter that battle with the calmness and confidence that only comes from being on top of your shit.

Your goal is to perform flawlessly the material you have prepared.

Best of luck!

P-MONEY
3rd Place 2001 DMC WORLD DJ CHAMPIONSHIPS
2001 NZ DMC CHAMP
1999-2000-2001 NZ ITF DJ BATTLE CHAMP

The Wheels Are In Motion

We made our first appearance in UK charts this week. Debuting at number 10 on the Cool Cuts Chart*. Frikkin MEAN!
Shout out to the crew at 3 Beat.

*The Cool Cuts Chart is the UK’s leading tastemaker dance chart compiled from reactions from tastemaker DJs and the Cool Cuts panel, now in it’s 21st year. The Cool Cuts is exclusively published in MUSIC WEEK, the UK’s leading music industry trade publication.

Internet Is Fast

Today I watched some of the BET Awards live via Maseo's (of De La Soul) Ustream channel and then watched a rip of Jay-Z's latest video (premiered on US tv immediately following the awards) via Onsmash. Both of these events were broadcast on BET. A black entertainment network that has never aired in New Zealand. I know most (or at least a lot) of us do shit like this daily but man... the awards live and the Jay video only minutes after its first airing? Im just saying... the internet is FAST.

If you own a pay-tv network, step your game up (immediately!), or go the way of the recorded music industry... oh and same goes for movies, y'all are f**ked already. Evolve or die. :)

His spirit remains with us forever.

Flashback - Making "Not Many"

The story of Scribe's Not Many (produced by yours truly) is an interesting one, the writing and recording took place in a number of stages.

Scribes lyrics for the 2 verses on the original version were written years before we recorded the song "Not Many". (I need to check with Scribe as to exactly when they were penned, I think they were possibly 3 years old by the time we recorded the album in 2003). To the best of my knowledge, the famous hook "How many dudes you know roll like this..." etc. was written a few months to a year before we recorded the song aswell.
I composed the music in about an hour or two in the bedroom of my flat on Khyber Pass. Scribes lyrics were not written to the beat I made and the beat was composed with no knowledge of those particular lyrics, but we made them fit together perfectly.

We recorded Scribes vocals to the music I had made in about 2 hours. Scribe paired the old verse lyrics with the 'Not Many' hook to form the body of the song. Together we added some intro adlibs and the outro chants "next time you come on down to North Canterbury...." to complete the vocal parts of the track.
I then set about mixing the track with our engineer Chris Chetland. I recall the mix came together unusually quickly for the original version. It was at most a 6 hour session with a couple of additional tweaks needed the next day (a couple more hours). Mastering took some more time. I think we revisited the master about 2 or 3 times. And with that the original mix of "Not Many" was complete.

"Not Many - The Remix" was created a couple months later. We needed a second single for Scribe. "Not Many" was becoming a popular track but it was already available on the Stand Up single. So instead of making a video for the original, and essentially selling the same song twice, I decided we should do a remix. The remix would retain all the elements that made the original song popular (same beat & same hook) but we would add some featured guest verses and a new verse from Scribe. We set an incredibly short timeline to turn this thing around because we needed another video on TV quick to push Scribe's momentum to the next level. (aside: i dont think Ive worked so hard and with as much urgency to complete any project as I did with this record, this shit was intense). From concept to completion was about 10 days. The first thing I did was contact Savage and ask him if he would write a verse for the remix and then I called Con-Psy (aka David Dallas) to see if he would take part. They both agreed and began writing their parts. The 4 of us got together at The Lab in Mt. Eden to record the new verses. That session was about 6 hours long and I was left with 3 new verses and some adlibs from each rapper. None of these parts were recorded in the order you hear them on the finished song. My job then was to arrange all the new vocals and edit the beat to match. I spent the following 2 days and nights working around the clock to get the track to a finished state that I was happy with and deliver to our video director in time to map out a shot-list for the impending shoot.
The guys (Scribe, Savage, David) heard my finished arrangement for the first time on the friday before our sunday video shoot and had 2 days to memorize the song for their performance in the video. The shoot was really fun and about 14 hours long, a one day shoot.

The next day after the shoot I was back in the lab to finish the mixdown. The mix was already half done of course because we didn't change any of the music. We instead spent another day getting the new vocals sitting right with the original recording's chorus. A new master was done and we eq'ed it a little harder than on the original so it had the intensity I was going for. All up, the new mix and master was about 2 days work.

We put it out and woohoo, big success! The track was dope, the video awesome and the movement reached fever pitch. Scribe, Savage, P-Money & Con-Psy became household names and we all lived happily ever after lol.

PNC Chart Action

The RIANZ chart is in. Bazooka Kid # 18 on Albums Chart, Tonight # 35 on the Singles Chart. Congrats go to PNC and the crew at Dirty for a strong first week!

PS. We're having a party!

PNC - Bazooka Kid Has Arrived!

PNC's second full length offering "Bazooka Kid" arrives in stores and online as of tomorrow June 2nd. The album is dope and captures PNC's strongest performances to date. The music is a mixture of modern and late 80/early 90's influences. PNC did his thing on this one. Make sure you pick it up! And don't forget to request the lead single "Tonight" on radio and TV.

TRACKLIST
Intro (produced by Fire & Ice)
Bazooka's Theme (produced by Forty One & Evan Short)
Find Me feat. Chong Nee (produced by Chris Laupama)
Moonlight (produced by Official)
What's Up (produced by P-Money)
V.S.O.P feat. David Dallas (produced by Beat Kamp Muzik)
Gone feat. Che Fu (produced by Fire & Ice)
Take Me Home feat. Mz J (produced by Forty One)
Tonight (produced by Forty One)
It Doesn't Matter (produced by JSquared)
New Day feat. Tyra Hammond (produced by JSquared)
1/2 Kast (produced by David Atai)

[EDIT] And you can now stream the entire album before you buy at Amplifier

Ask M-Phazes

My ozzie mate M-Phazes has posted a bunch of vids answering the most common questions he gets from fans. In this episode he answers the age old query "How do you get your beats heard by artists and labels?".

Props to Phazes for coming up with this clever means of sharing the knowledge and interacting with his fans.

I like the idea so much that I'm gonna blatantly rip him off and do my own version "Ask P-Money". Leave your questions in the comments here and I'll pick out the best ones to answer on my youtube channel. Sweet!