Just when I thought I was all out of stuff to post on dSound, this one came back up...
There's a special fondness in my heart for this production/remix, and a kind of interesting story behind it...
I had put this together mid-2003 on a MPC 2000XL...
I'd moved to Vancouver to attend UBC a year earlier, though had been making my way into the DJ game, connecting with DJs and promoters, working towards establishing a presence in the local scene as a stepping stone towards larger goals in the music biz. "Comin' up," I was.
The work was bad ass.
I'd taken the beat from Saukrates' - a Canadian rapper - track "Coming Up," and chopped the shit out of it, transforming it into completely something else.
It'd probably take a seasoned DJ/producer and/or hip hop afficianado to appreciate the twist thrown on this one. Though as a brief rundown for those who aren't: the track starts out as the original, overlaid with some various samples - proceeding into the "remixed" section, which was put together by chopping up sections of the beat and played on the MPC to make an entirely new one - prior to returning to the original track.
Easier said than done.
(And again, I'm not expecting everyone to recognize or appreciate).
Now, the real interesting thing about this one...
I'd been working my ass off on it for a while, and was super stoked on how it came out. Like, really stoked.
And then... it accidentally got deleted.
The entire thing, gone.
It was borderline tragic.
I'd been absolutely amazed by the quality of what I was capable of. And with a press of the wrong button, it all disappeared.
Though as it's posted here now for your listening pleasure, that obviously wasn't the end of the story.
In hindsight, I'm surprised it was able to be pulled off twice. Yet, I couldn't bear to let the work die with that accident. So, I went back to it - reconstructing it.
In a way, it was almost a blessing in disguise.
First take, it coulda almost even been a fluke.
It was dope. But did I really have the skill to execute such a production - or was it just a random product of experiment? Could have been.
Yet, to have to give it a second go and recreate from scratch... that was the test.
And this was the result.
Moral of the story?
Sometimes our greatest inspiration comes from ourselves. From experimenting and discovering what we're capable of, producing works of art we never thought possible.
And... sometimes we're given tests of persistence to see whether we're willing to prove to ourselves whether such output was just random chance, or we do have the skill to produce consistent results.
Shit happens. But when it does, do we stop there? Or start over and rebuild something that'll continue to inspire us for years to come, when we look back and reflect upon such small successes - even if there are few who may recognize or understand...?
;-)
