Month: April 2007

A friend recently sent me a link to an article that I find more than outrageous, for numerous reasons.
Jill must have been totally out of her mind when she posted that blog entry. At least, that s what numerous commentators pointed out. I agree with them. Not only because it is an ignorant attack against Eminem and 5O Cent s misogynistic sounding and violent lyrics, but because Jill dares to advocate the KKK s points of view- I mean racial discrimination-, citing the First Amendment of the American Constitution. Which is scandalous in my opinion.
I too am in favor of freedom of speech, but I consider that it should be restricted when the speech becomes foolishly racially demeaning oriented. I won t grant neo nazis their freedom of speech because of freedom of speech.
I won t allow people to condone racial discrimination or ethnic extermination, just because of the principle of freedom of speech.
One should consider that the freedom of speech has its own limits when it involves total segregation against a group of individuals, because of their race or origins.
Of course, Jill is jumping to stupid conclusions, regarding Eminem s lyrics, mostly because of her obvious ignorance of the subject. I bet she will consider Eminem discriminatory against women or gay people, just because she doesn t get his subtle sense of humor.
When people talk about misogyny in hip hop, Eminem s name is the first name that comes to their mind, mostly because those brave, utterly schocked people, totally ignore hip hop culture.
Misogyny is ways prior to Eminem or to 50 Cent: it reflects a state of mind that is typical to ghetto culture and to gangsta rap in particular. Men will diss hoes in their raps. But Jill probably ignored about the many female rappers who diss men in their lyrics… Should men take offense for their disses?
The rap game is about hits and disses. Being shocked at the disses is just ignoring everything about what makes the game.
I am a woman, a mom of two kids, and I have been listening to hip hop for more than a decade. I have been listening to the most hardcore hip hop songs, like NWA s A Bitch Is A Bitch. How come i don t feel insulted?
It is simply because i don t consider myself a bitch, a slut or a hoe. I don t behave like one nor do I dress as such, so why should I feel dishonored by a rapper s statement in a song? That s simply ridiculous if you ask me.
When hip hop becomes a bad influence, it is mostly because parents don t watch their kids and lack dialogue at home.
My kids and I, all the three of us, are hip hop lovers. None of us robbed a shop nor killed somebody with a gun. We all love the music for what it is: artistic expression.
If you don t like what Eminem and 5O Cent stand for, why not stop listening to them? Rather listen to artists you like instead of bashing those you don t get.
Talking without knowing what your are talking about and for endorsing the KKK s statements in virtue of freedom of speech is rather hypocritical as far as I am concerned-unless your article is meant to be a big joke.
Copyright © 2007 by Isabelle Esling
All Rights Reserved

check out this website.
You will even find a very rare Proof pic there…with the dreadlocks, of course!

A Living Proof of hip hop!



Proof keeps rocking our world…his music lives. Remember him alive, that’s what he d wanted anyway!

Credit to Remix Mag.
TURBULENT WATERS
The loop echoes through the house, wafting from the furnished basement studio to the first-floor foyer. It’s a dirty beat, foreboding and gritty. Upstairs, platinum records and a personalized, signed photo of 50 Cent hang on white walls. The home and the beat belong to Denaun Porter, who first gained fame as a member of platinum-selling group D12. Both a producer and an MC, he’s evolving as an industry force behind the board. Porter, who has long contributed to Dr. Dre’s storied vault and Eminem’s arsenal, is branching out as executive producer of Pharaohe Monch’s new album and taking on the weight of an expanded roll on the upcoming D12 record due for release later this year. Fans know him as Kon Artis — his MC identity — but under Mr. Porter, his production name, he is upping his game.
In the basement of this quiet, unassuming suburban street, 20 miles northwest of Motown, a piece of Detroit hip-hop history takes shape — D12’s next record, the first album made without a cornerstone of its group, Deshaun Proof Holden, who was killed during a bar fight in April 2006. Here in Porter’s studio, it’s the winter season, the beginning of a new year, and the music goes on. But it’s been a roller-coaster year for Detroit hip-hop and those who live by its code, starting with the death of one of Porter’s early mentors last year, J Dilla.
Over the past several years, Porter has developed into one of hip-hop’s well-versed producers, an understudy to Dr. Dre and J Dilla. “From Eminem to Dilla to Dr. Dre, I got the best teachers you can have,” he says.
STEERING THE SHIP
Today, Porter is diligently at work with Guilty Simpson, a Detroit MC signed to Stones Throw Records and a longtime D12 contributor. As Porter levels out the beat, Simpson furiously writes to Porter’s loop. “I made a beat two, three weeks ago on an MPC4000 and used a Minimoog. It’s an irritating sound with some hard-ass drums, and I heard his voice over it,” Porter explains.
But Simpson’s voice requires dynamic guidance to keep up the intrigue throughout a song. “What I have to watch for with him is that he has a monotone voice, like Ice Cube. If you start low [dynamically], you can get higher, instead of starting high,” he says. “You hold back.”
Porter doesn’t use layering as a dynamic tool for Simpson, though. “I don’t have to have Guilty do five vocals,” he says. “He got a strong-ass voice, so it sits right in the middle. [Instead], I’ve got to get him to inflate certain words differently. If you’ve got a straight line, people want to hear the inflection in the song, especially if your mood is changing. So by the time he gets to the punch line, the things leading up to the punch line don’t get boring.”
At the helm of his self-described sonic spaceship, Porter sits behind the controls facing Guilty, and two Macintosh screens stare back at him with Pro Tools 7 and Scribble and Plogue Bidule soft synths. “I wanted it to look like you’re flying a ship,” he says. “I turn to the left front, and it’s the screen and Pro Tools. Then right in front of me is my drum machine and the keyboards to the right. On the left is the sampler and turntable. If you’re standing in a certain place, the south is always behind you; it’s the ground root. The north is where you’re going. That’s the energy, that’s the focus.”
LEARNING CURVE
Satisfied with the beat’s basic structure, Porter leaves Simpson to brainstorm and climbs the stairs, filling up the corner of the white L-shaped leather couch. Porter is a big man, but he is soft-spoken and reflective, and he articulates his thoughts with deliberate and studied measure. He fingers a tattoo on his right forearm, a look of bewilderment on his face. He explains how yesterday the tattoo, which has been on his arm for years, flared up. It was the birthday of Bugz, the first member of D12 to lose his life just before the group broke out with Eminem and became superstars in 1999, changing all of their lives.
Porter was already a skilled producer when the group found fame, always tinkering with technology. “I used to break TVs and put them back together.” He began producing almost 10 years ago: “The first piece of gear I worked off was an ASR-10 rackmount. I was working at Mo Master’s Studio. He would leave the room and let me figure it out on my own. I learned to do that until I understood the actual sampling and MIDI.”
Influenced by his surroundings, Porter gravitated toward the Hip Hop Shop, a Detroit record store owned by designer Maurice Malone where hip-hop luminaries set the standard — J Dilla, Slum Village and the open-mic host Proof. Here, Porter honed his lyrical skills but also developed his ear for production. “I started with Proof and then Eminem,” he remembers. “He would show me the syllables, and when it came to putting beats together, I showed him shit. I would ride beats differently than he did. I was like, ‘You rap too fast. Slow down.’ When I started producing for him, I said, ‘I’m going to give you some beats that are not regular shit.’”
In the tradition of Detroit producers, lack of gear sharpened his focus. “When I made a beat, I had to make the drums all the way through. I was like a one-man band. I knew sampling was shameless in the Hip Hop Shop. Everybody was chopping. You had to make that chop perfect every bar. But I never use timing to this day. I use a sequencer to keep the loop. And I don’t time snares, I don’t time hi-hats, I don’t quantize.”
A distinct style is crucial to Porter. “You don’t want to sound like your teachers; then they’re not going to be interested,” he says. “If I hear something that sounds like the same thing I did before, I just scratch that because I think that’s unfair to my brain, so I’ve got to interpret that every time.”
ROLLER COASTER
As executive producer on Pharaohe Monch’s new album, Desire (SRC, 2007), Porter went the extra mile to be creative while still aiming for Monch’s ’70s soul-influenced style. “I took mics and put them outside while it was raining,” he says. “We didn’t use sound effects; we made them. We had to do it on another day to get the birds. A regular person would be getting these from a CD, but the difference — I’m telling you — it sounds so great. That song didn’t even make the album.”
On his contributions, “Anger,” “Cops Comin’,” “Revenge” and “Gun Draw,” he was conscious, even in the early stages, of how all the parts were gelling together. “I might have [Monch] say this line over so that it will fit in the pocket because by the time those frequencies appear and I get to mixing, I hear it a certain way. I can tell if I’m going to be able to get it clear by listening to the frequency. Dre taught me to mix along the way. If you mix it along the way, you don’t have that problem. It’s already done.”
While the absence of Proof is marked for D12, Porter is determined not to use this loss in an opportunistic way, and the sensitivity of the material is being approached gingerly by D12’s members — Kuniva, Swifty McVay, Bizarre, Eminem and DJ Salam Wreck. “We ain’t got to that point yet,” he says. Emotional release has come out in sporadic studio sessions, but nothing intended for public consumption. “We recorded some records you’ll never hear because there was a lot of anger going on in the studio.”
Things are steadily moving forward, with five completed tracks slated for release when Eminem signs off on the project, but Porter is guiding the album’s direction. “I applied the Juan Atkins techno thing,” Porter says. “We did a joint called ‘Zoned Out’ that is Detroit all the way.” He describes the song as a “jit” song, a style of music designed for a popular club dance in Detroit. “When I made it, I wanted to do something that Proof would have wanted. We was always talking about doing a jit song.” D12 still uses its signature sardonic humor, exemplified on the tawdry “Bugzshit” and a Swizz Beatz-produced “I Got Me an Ugly Bitch.” “That’s classic D12,” he says. “Battlecat gave me a record that’s got Nate Dogg sounding like a totally new man,” he says about “Out the Box.” “We’ve always been outside of the box, and then people put us on an island of our own.”
Despite the pressure to make a record without Proof, Porter is primed. “I’m standing up to every ounce of pressure. Sonically, it’s going to be one of the best D12 records. It’s been Eminem-driven for so long, and I wanted to step away from that. It’s a shame that my label didn’t use me the way I should have been used. In light of my friend passing, I’m not here to try and impress them. I’m not here to sit quiet and let days go by. That’s the Eminem Show; that’s not the Denaun show. He worked hard to get that, but it’s time for me to step outside of that. That they trust me is a great thing. I’ll be glad when it’s over with. After I’m done, there won’t be no more. We friends, but it’s political; it ain’t no fun. I don’t think it’s bad to say — it’s just honest. Even before what happened to Proof, it wasn’t fun.”
MOVING FORWARD
A mixtape is in the works, but Porter is primarily focused on refining his studio skills. “If I got a hook, I’ll make the hook, sing the hook, write a beat around the hook, present the song to the artist,” he says. “I’ll make the drums and chop the drums. I make drums for every beat, whether I use it or not. I make drums because that’s exercise.” Porter’s filled up three hard drives with various combinations of drums. He studies ’70s soul music — Marvin Gaye last month, now back to Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway and James Brown — for inspiration on background tones.
Sometimes he captures his own sound in tracks that get snatched up by others. “That Busta Rhymes song, that’s my record: “They Out to Get Me.” I had made that record the first time I had seen a million dollars personally, seeing it on paper, in my hand,” he reminisces. “All of that [song] was live. My engineer plays guitar, and I did an 8-bar loop on the bass. I started with the melody of the guitar and went to the drums, and then I used a [Yamaha] Motif. Once we leveled things out, I started in the booth.”
Being tied to Dr. Dre’s camp means working on projects that may never be released, though he will be spending a good chunk of the spring adding finesse to the long-awaited Detox album. “Being in the studio with Dre, he was teaching me without saying: ‘Don’t talk about an idea; just do it.’”
Mr. Porter is focused on doing it, with renewed vigor for recording music. “I gotta stand on my own, too. I got a newfound energy.” With that, it’s time to go back into the basement to finish the track.

Check out Short Distance here.

Adam Graham / Detroit News Pop Music Writer
‘Time-A-Tell’ premiere
7 p.m. Thursday
Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
315 E. Warren Ave., Detroit
Tickets free
Call (248) 773-2773 to R.S.V.P.
Two-and-a-half months before he was murdered at an after-hours club in Detroit, Proof set out to write and record an entire album in a 24-hour period.
“Time-A-Tell,” a 74-minute documentary chronicling the frenzied recording sessions, premieres Thursday at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, one day after the one-year anniversary of Proof’s death.
“You see how focused he is on his music, how intense he is,” says DJ Jewels Baby — aka Julius Myers — who posed the 24-hour challenge to Proof in Jackson, Mich., in January 2006. “This is a chance to see his greatness.”
Proof, who gained worldwide fame as Eminem’s right-hand man onstage and in the group D12, got together with Jewels later that month at Jewels’ home studio on Detroit’s west side and sat down to write an album’s worth of rhymes. Sure, Red Bull helped them stay awake as the clock ticked away, but more than that, it was the spirit of creativity that drove them. “It was almost like we were kids again,” Jewels says.
Proof’s mother, Sherallene Holton, is looking forward to seeing the film for the first time.
“I’m happy there is something positive that’s going to be presented in (Proof’s) honor,” she says. “It will represent his talent at its best.”
Proof, an integral figure in Detroit’s hip-hop scene, was gunned down at the CCC club in the wee hours of April 11, 2006, at the age of 32.
Before being shot, Proof fatally shot Keith Bender Jr., a U.S. military veteran.
“Time-A-Tell” presents Proof “the way I would want people to see my son,” Holton says. “He was so focused about his music, and he was always reaching back and giving to the hip-hop community.”
Jewels is planning to release “Time-A-Tell” as an album, as well, but the project is “still in the works,” he says. “I’m making sure it gets its proper justice.”
You can reach Adam Graham at (313) 222-2284 or agraham@detnews.com.

Re-ILL is the kind of artist who will barely leave you indifferent. Thanks to his offensive spirit, his obvious lyrical skills, his true gangsta attitude, Re-ILL will manage to catch your attention.
Where That Nigga At s musical background anticipates drama. Harsh electric guitar sounds mix up with harmonic piano sounds while drums will make you feel the overheated speech atmosphere of the track. With his icy, EaZy E alike voice, Re-ILL s throat cutting voice will put the listener on the edge. Jungling with his words, creating numerous astute punchlines, Re-ILL takes over by authority. Enjoy the street anthem, it is greately done.
Come On Ma features a brilliant female emcee, Purple, with an incisive style. The chorus itself introduces into a scurilous atmosphere. You will get punched literally and lyrically. Electric guitar sounds will remind you of sharp razorblades. Re-ILL concludes the track. Have a look at the dynamic, merciless track.
The track is musically Ruthless inspired, which reinforces its gangsta spirit.
Hungry for more? Check Re-ILL and his crew here.
Copyright © 2007 by Isabelle Esling
All Rights Reserved

Right now, there’s a lot of people focusing on the way he died. I want to remember the way he lived. Proof was funny, he was smart, he was charming. He inspired everyone around him. He can never, ever be replaced. He was, and always will be, my best friend. – Eminem
If Deshaun Holton really mattered to you, I suggest we all observe a minute of silence for him on April the 11th.
Please don’t be sad. Proof has gone, but don’t remember his death…rather remember the amazing person and artist he was. Life goes on…with Proof.
With the Time A Tell CD and movie, we have thousand good reasons to remember the good times.
We love you, Proof:)

P.S: this picture is an exclusive Brian Stepp creation. Please don’t take it without the author s permission.
It has been exposed here with the author s permission for promotional purposes. Thank you.

Everything is available on the following my space account.
Enjoy:)

credit to Rahul…many thanks for posting the news on my blog:)


Read the full news here and here.