Remembering French soundtrack ace François de Roubaix on his birthday

Remembering composer/musician François de Roubaix with some of his work sampled for tracks by Missy Elliott, Lana Del Ray & ODB. 

Happy Birthday Large Professor & DJ Premier!

Celebrating the shared birthday of legendary hip hop producers Large Professor and DJ Premier with interviews and more.

Midweek Mixdown: Skratch Bastid & Cosmo Baker

Listen to a three and a half hour spin through some of Skratch Bastid & Cosmo Baker's favourite jams. Check it out below. 

Here's the scoop from Skratch & Cosmo...

The title says it all. It's a year-end mix, but not only just with music from last year. Music moves at it's own pace, and we have found that songs have a way of finding you when they are supposed to find you. Songs you grow to love are discovered in many ways: through hearing them at a club night, on a DJ mix, in a movie, in a friend's car, at a restaurant - and those songs aren't always new songs, or songs that came out the year that you hear them first. But they are songs that are relevant to YOU that year. And in each of our individual music experiences, they play a role in shaping your musical taste.

So here's our 2023 mix. A different take on things. Check it out here. 

Happy Birthday Ahmad Jamal

Remembering pianist/composer Ahmad Jamal on his birthday with two interviews and a few of his well-sampled gems. 

R.I.P. pianist/composer Ahmad Jamal, 1930-2023

Sadly, well-sampled pianist/composer Ahmad Jamal has passed away. He'll be greatly missed. Listen to a couple of interviews.

DJ Premier chats with Jazzy Jay about hip hop history

DJ Jazzy Jay – who helped Rick Rubin form Def Jam, produced Diamond D, Brand Nubian and ATCQ – talks hip hop with Preemo.

Happy Birthday Ahmad Jamal

Celebrating the birthday of pianist Ahmad Jamal with recordings which may sound familiar to fans of Nas, De La Soul & Common. 

LINKS
Udiscovermusic Pianist Ahmad Jamal recalls 'At The Pershing'

Killer Mike & El-P drop new Run The Jewels album RTJ4 early

Run The Jewels highly anticipated new album RTJ4 was slated for release on Friday but is now available for download on the group's website. 

Long overdue debut album from Toronto production ace MoSS due November 13

Outside of his Toronto hometown, MoSS may be a new name to some in the hip hop game, but if you've heard Ghostface Killah's "Kilos" off Fishscale, Raekwon's "Have Mercy" from Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... Pt. II or Obie Trice's Special Reserve album, you'll know his production work.  Jason "MoSS" Connoy has been hard at work making others sound good for awhile now so he's overdue for a recording under his own handle. That album, Marching To The Sound Of My Own Drum, is now set for release on his own Moss Appeal Music label November 13 and features guest spots from Havoc (of Mobb Deep), Sean Price, Ill Bill, ONYX, AZ, Guilty Simpson, Inspectah Deck, Joe Budden & Joell Ortiz (of Slaughterhouse) and DJ Premier. Check out the track Boombastic w/ Slum Village below.



Initially breaking into the hip hop world with Obie Trice back in 2000, MoSS produced Obie's indie singles "Well Known" and "Mr. Trice" which eventually led to Obie's deal with Shady. Since then, MoSS has notably added a prog rock whump to tracks for Bounty Killa, M.O.P., Kool G. Rap, Ras Kass, Papoose, Boot Camp Clik, Big Shug etc.

Apart from the production skills which impressed DJ Premier enough to sign MoSS to his Works of Mart operation, he's also a serious record hound with a taste for esoteric psychedelia from far away lands. With assistance from his Toronto digger/dealer pal Gholam, MoSS reissued an Iranian psych curio from Tehran's The Jokers on the Fading Sunshine label around the same time that Now Again put out MoSS's excellent Southeast Asian 70s psych survey Those Shocking Shaking Days: Indonesian Hard, Psychedelic, Progressive Rock and Funk: 1970-1978.

The success of that massive project led to the formation of his own Strawberry Rain imprint to continue recirculating mind-melting psych oddities by such artists as AKA, Rictus, Blind Owl, Salty Dog, Benny Soebardja, ฅาราวาน, Leong Lau, Mar-Vista, Kelompok Kampungan, Survival, Keith Mlevhu and Abbhama with apparently more on the way. In the OnSMASH interview clips below shot circa 2009, MoSS talks about constantly growing vinyl stockpile and mentions that his debut album is "half finished" which suggests that Marching To The Sound Of My Own Drum has been in the works for at least six years.

DJ Premier throws down with Bumpy & Flav

First look at Premo doc For Promotional Use Only