DJ Premier & Dabrye Lecture (Toronto 2007) | Red Bull Music Academy

[Deltron]

DJ Premier is an undisputed heavyweight champion of hip-hop, a native Texan whose love of hip-hop brought him to New York where he wound becoming a vital part of the music’s golden years. As one half of Gang Starr alongside the late MC Guru, and as a producer for established and upcoming talent like KRS ONE or a young Nas from Queens, Premier was responsible for shaping a hard-edged hip-hop sound in the ’90s, sample-heavy and full of incredibly memorable scratched elements. In this lecture at the 2007 Red Bull Music Academy, Premier talks about Guru, Nas, Jay-Z, digging for samples, working with Christina Aguilera and eating KFC with a naked Notorious B.I.G.

TOPICS:
5:29 - Early hip-hop
26:31 - Forming Gang Starr
50:54 - The Premier sound
56:28 - Production technique
1:08:54 - Nas, Jay-Z and B.I.G.
1:17:03 - Longevityv

If anyone embodies the spirit and eclecticism of Ann Arbor’s Ghostly International and Spectral Sound labels, it’s Tadd Mullinix. Since first taking to music in his teens, the Michigan-native has developed a chameleon-like ability to shift between genres and styles while maintaining an understanding of what makes people react and move: hip-hop as Dabrye, house and techno as JTC, experimental electronic under his birth name, EBM as Charles Manier and all-out ragga jungle as SK-1 alongside his friend Soundmurderer AKA Scott Osborn. All of this largely produced with a lean setup centered on tracker software, some hardware touches and a wide taste for experimentation. Throughout the 2000s, Mullinix maintained his multiple aliases and found success locally and abroad, including a rare collaboration with J Dilla before he passed. In this lecture at the 2007 Red Bull Music Academy in Toronto, Mullinix discussed the enduring influence of Ron Hardy, the benefits of a stripped-down studio and the highs of collaborating with friends and heroes.
TOPICS: 10:12 - Todd Osborn
16:58 - Aliases
23:00 - Rudimentary software
31:52 - J Dilla
42:41 - Ron Hardy