Lay Up Drills

Drake said it best in his song Thank Me Now, "I swear music and sports are so synonymous." For me personally I attempt a lot of samples and a lot of them just don't go. So after attempting a lot of beats I do what I call "layup drills." Just to get back in rhythm I need to see something go through the basket just to keep the basketball analogy up. Lay ups aren't the most flashy or as exciting as dunks but they're still two points nonetheless. Enjoy.

-J. Dev

Lay Up Drill by J. Dev

Old Beats

I don't think we've put up any new beats since the 90's mixtape, the main reason is because we're working on our new instrumental tape Welcome To The Basement 2 (that title isn't set in stone and look out for more details about that). These two beats are something I was working on before I started on the new mixtape, enjoy.

My Way (J. Dev) by J. Dev

Make Her Dance by J. Dev

New MPC Coming This Year

Although we dont use an MPC currently, this definitely looks intriguing and I expect there may be an investment made this year. Check it out

Beat of the Week 01/02/2012

I know I missed a few of these due to the holidays, but we're back with the first beat of the week of 2012. For this one I'm going to go with one of the most creative tracks from one of the best albums of 2011, Drake's "Look What You've Done" from his Take Care album. The track is produced by Chase N. Cashe with additional production by Noah "40" Shebib. The creativity behind this track lies in the fact that it is sampled from a studio session of the group Playa as you will see in the video below. The simplicity of this track mixed in with Drake's lyrics/flow just makes this a real hot song (at least in my opinion). Check it out for yourself.

The sample appears at 1:03 in the video

J. Cole

I'm sure everyone is aware that J. Cole also produces most of his tracks (He produced/co-produced 13 out of the 16 tracks on Sideline Story). This link below is to a site that shows a production breakdown from the track "Return of Simba" that J. Cole produced (co-production by Elite). The beat is sick and samples "The Lion King" and two other tracks. Check it out.

http://www.refinedhype.com/hyped/entry/production-breakdown-jcole-simba/

Beat of the Week 12/16/2011

This will be the first beat of the week, to start it off I had to go with one of my all-time favorite beats by none of than Just Blaze. Just Blaze originally did the beat for Ghostface Killah but obviously he passed on it (don't know why). Jay-Z really goes in on the beat too just to make it a complete song. Just Blaze really did his thing with all his chops and slices from Tom Brock's "There is nothing in this world that can stop me from loving you." I put the link below as well, if you're anything like me I love to listen to original songs. Enjoy.

"40"

I came across this page on Noah "40" Shebib, aka the man behind most of Drake's beats and sound. The page talks about some of 40's techniques he uses and I just found it interesting. Check it out.

http://justmythoughtsman.com/2011/08/09/deciphering-a-noah-40-shebib-production/