The Rec Show Podcast
David “Gldnmnd” Hicks is a Beatmaker and Hip Hop culture participant/supporter based in the United States. On The Rec Show Podcast, Gldnmnd interviews Beatmakers/Music Producers/Composers from around the world, hearing stories of beat culture, musical journeys (past and present), musical exposures and music technology. Topics include music genesis, inspirations, music superheroes, Digital Audio Workstations vs. Analog gear, Discographies, Local Beat Scene/community views and more while listening to each guest’s instrumental music compositions. Tap In!
The Rec Show Podcast
Beats, Therapy, and Hip Hop: A Conversation with Philip Drummond
“Be a homie & let us know what you think”
Ever have a beat that just wouldn't leave your head? That's the power of music, and today, we're taking a deep dive into the world of beat making and its therapeutic benefits with our guest, Philip Drummond. Also known as Dr. Egon, he wears many hats - a beat maker, DJ, psychologist, and the director of the non-profit organization, Today's Future Sound. Together, we explore how beats become the lifeblood of hip hop, the subtle art of creating the perfect beat, and the global influences that shape our music tastes.
Through the lens of his personal journey, Philip Drummond shares how beat-making has resonated with him on a deep emotional level, especially during challenging times. We discuss the cathartic process of creating music and its potential to heal, as exemplified by programs like Tilly's Future Sound. This program uses beat-making as a tool for therapy and community building, offering an outlet for expression to at-risk youth who may not otherwise have such opportunities. We also touch upon the importance of therapy in society, exploring both traditional and online methods, and how these can lead to better self-understanding.
But it's not just about the beats. We celebrate the culture of hip hop, the influence of the underground scene, and the role of events like beat battles in fostering a thriving community of artists. Get insights into Philip's 365-day beat making challenge and hear firsthand about the grit and grind behind each beat. Lastly, we discuss the ongoing fundraising efforts for Today's Future Sound and how you can contribute to their mission. So, plug in your headphones, let that beat drop, and join us for an exploration of the sounds that shape our world.
Consider Donating during Today's Future Sound Annual Fundraiser 2023 Here: bit.ly/TFSAF24
Buy Merch Here: https://todaysfuturesound.bandcamp.co...
Subscribe to Todays Future Sound YouTube Channel: / @uckf9nzjs5s5a8vcnpqjclda
Read "The Healing Power of Hip Hop - The Intersections between Race, Ethnicity & Culture" Here: https://www.amazon.com/Healing-Power-...
Buy Music for Inclusion and Healing in Schools and Beyond: Hip Hop, Techno, Grime, and More Here (apply Discount Code AAFLYG6 for 30% off:
Edited, Mixed and Mastered by Gldnmnd
Podcast Website Link: The Rec Show Podcast
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Okay, there we go. You know, I think you know how I do the show already, man, so I'm going to just do a little bit of an intro Boom Going to well, recap intro, and then I'll go into what we're going to do today, which today I'm just. Did you want to just redo your episode? Or do you want to do a like a special beat for stations when we're talking to you about? You know your music, today's future sound, you know all of that, all of that type of stuff.
Speaker 2:Man, is it possible to do both?
Speaker 1:We can do both. Yes, so I was hoping you say that yes, okay.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm down for both.
Speaker 1:Okay. So I'm going to just I'm going to go back and forth with how I do both. I'm going to do the regular episode but then be for stations, to where we're talking about the be for stations part of, be talking about the fun reason you're doing for today's future sound, and then, you know, just talking about that program, everybody involved with it, you know how it's reaching outreach, you know all that type of stuff.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, Don't yeah, okay, all right, here we go. All right, this is kind of weird with my wife. She's never heard me do an episode.
Speaker 2:Hey, well, she should be proud You're doing one of the best premier. You know beat casts in the world. Like everyone I know who's in the beat scene loves Rex show podcast and really respects it, so she should know Cheers. Beat show podcast Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud and all that good stuff. Beat show podcast is a beat show, but it's the rec show podcast. You better get that right Rec show podcast coming at you hot in 2024. All your favorite producers, conversations and things that you need to know about beat making.
Speaker 1:Blah, blah Yo. So yo check, check, one, two piece of love. Everybody Go to my here for the rex show podcast man, we got a special edition man special episode. But before we get into this new episode we want to go back in history just a little bit. November we had onesies, twosies come out. We had, you know, dj Basta from California. He was an episode man Basta.
Speaker 2:Basta, is Oakland, jim. Sorry to interrupt, that's amazing. Yeah, you can. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then we had cryptic one, the legendary cryptic one, who's been doing this for three decades, man. So yo, man, like we had some amazing guests just in November and not in due four weeks, you know, four episodes per month just because of the holidays and stuff like that, guys, incredible.
Speaker 2:And that's today's future sound and global beat side for family. That's good people. He just volunteered with us at the Brooklyn Justice Initiative, so shout out cryptic one doing amazing stuff.
Speaker 1:Yep, I just saw that too, absolutely. So internet, go ahead and tap into those episodes. They are available now on anywhere you get your podcast. But then also go head over to the Rex show podcast YouTube channel. Go ahead, hit that like, hit the subscribe, man, and stay tuned. Man 2024, we going up, but yo, today we have a special guest man, somebody that's been on the show before but not. That wasn't good enough, man. So he was like yo, let's link up again. He came back, we come, we coming back around. You know, I'm saying we got some special announcements that that's going on, but we also got some fundraising. So do me a favor, hit that like, hit the subscribe and then share this as well. Man. So we got a beat maker. You know he's originally from, I want to say NY, yeah, so so born in.
Speaker 1:San.
Speaker 2:Francisco, but I'm a New Yorker through and through Since I was one and a half, grew up, lived in New York City until age 18. I'm definitely a New Yorker. I walk fast, even if I live here on the West coast now I kind of bicoastal, but I go back and and you know my like I said when I moved out here, my, my only car was a subway car when I moved out here. So I was a New Yorker in this strange land we call California New Yorker, man New Yorker.
Speaker 1:So we got a New Yorker, but then he's. You catch him to the accent here and there, but it's you know, I, I, I saw him in the car.
Speaker 1:You know, I saw that in Texas state. I was like, yeah, you got to be from these goals, me too. So I knew that already. But anyway, so you know, we, we got beat maker. You know what I mean? Beat junkie.
Speaker 1:He's a DJ, he's a, uh, psycho, psychological, psychologist Wow, why am I missing up their word A psychologist, cultural ambassador man. He's an activist. He's definitely in the community, he's all over the world as well. He's a director of a nonprofit um, which is today's future sound. If you don't know who I'm talking about already, you need to. Man, he just completed a you know 365 day challenge as well. So we're going to get into that. We're going to talk about that as well. He's also here, Um, we're going to talk about the fundraising that we're doing for today's future sound, which reaches not only you know what I mean United States communities and stuff like that, but all around the world Um that he goes in with him and his team and reaches out to. So I want y'all to give it up for my guy, the one and only Philip drumming, aka Dr Egon Yo, what's going on?
Speaker 2:And he said Egon, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1:AKA Dr yeah, dr, hey. I'll rock with that. I'll say the only thing is I hey that works.
Speaker 2:Egan is, that's my first you know initial. That's my email address. Uh, dr Ely again, aka Philip drumming. Filthy beats Also known to to the kids. When I'm teaching as Dr Beats, if that's what they choose to call me, a lot of kids do. I got my Dr Beats jacket and all that.
Speaker 2:But, uh, yeah, shout outs to you, man, I appreciate what you do. Thank you for you know having me on the show again and let me do a redo. Last time that the sound fidelity, the audio, was horrible. I was just about to go to Poland, I was still displaced from my uh, my apartment and I was trying to get the audio right and the audio went all wrong with a dysfunctional like lavalier clip mic that just did not work. So thank you for let me do this as honor and privilege to be here. Big fan of Rex show podcast and you, it's a pleasure to meet you in Texas at the uh, you know, the Texas state hip hop. Next, 50 beat, cipher beats at battle. You, you won't. We're doing the final. So big up to you on that. You and acclimated assassin, it was San Antonio versus Austin. In the building it was dope man. You, you rocked it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I appreciate you for coming on. Man, thank you for the opportunity. Yo, we appreciate. I forgot to add in your description of everything that you do. You know what I mean Hero man, cause you know what I mean. You out there, like, literally in the streets. You know what I mean Trying to um change you, you creating change, you, a change maker man, cause you're out there with the kids, getting them while they're young and just changing some things um within the community, where it's keeping them out of jail First of all. Keeping them out of jail, keeping them out of you know the, the, the social um. What do we call that? Like? Uh, when they get caught up and have to go from home to home like group home, you're social systems, the foster, the foster care system yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, so a hero man, I got to add that in there. Man. So hey, when this is going on the whole, you know, I mean the applause is going to be going the whole time. Thank you, no.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it, Um, thank you so much. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. You know, we try to do what we can and we try to be, you know, a preventative program, but also a program that just meets kids where they're at, on their headphones, Um, and helping them find something that they love. Uh, you know, trying to help kids find joy and creativity. We do also work with kids in the foster system and with homeless youth, with houseless youth. We work in juvenile detention settings. We're currently working in two different juvenile halls locally here in Oakland and in San Mateo, which is the county next to San Francisco. Um and I do volunteer work in Australia and other countries in Latin America, Australia, Oceana, in juvenile halls there and prisons there, Cause I believe those are some of the people who've experienced the the greatest amount of trauma, along with foster youth and social services systems, um, who really deserve and need that, maybe don't have access to that.
Speaker 2:Um, just trying to share what what's therapeutic for us. Well, you know, our slogan at today's switcher sound is I wish I had this when I was a kid, because literally I've heard, you know so many people, like more than a hundred volunteers or people who've heard about our program who are beat makers verbatim say that I wish I had this when I was a kid. When they're in the schools with us seeing it happen, when they're doing it right, we're hearing about it and and that's what we all say. So it's really in the spirit of hip hop and each one teach one of the intergenerational passing on of traditions and culture and hip hop culture and beat making. I see it as intergenerational healing in the face of intergenerational trauma and trying to push back against that and offset that and just offer, you know, joy and connection and community and opportunity, access to kids, to young people, even to young adults and older adults, um, to have that experience, to give them the experience.
Speaker 2:You know, what we wanted, what we wish, what we wish we had when we were kids. So this is really the motivating factor, you know our inner beat making child or non beat making child that we're trying to get there, offering that and um, it brings me such joy to be able to do that and and to be able to build community, be part of different communities, bring people together. That that's really my MO and my mission in life is to is to do that and to try to inspire more joy for everyone. Um, in a world that can be very difficult and challenging, and all that give us these ways to see, you know, these pockets of joy, of beat cyphers and in in beat making workshops and therapeutic beat making workshops and classes and community settings. So that's, you know.
Speaker 2:That's, that's what I'm all about and what we're all about at Tilly's Future Sound and what we try to do, and, and it's first beat nerds and beat junkies and what have you, who may not necessarily want to be in the club all the time, or we want to play our beats, we don't want to be hearing just like top four, your radio or whatever's being programmed on Spotify or about by the algorithms, but share our music. So that's just a little bit to speak to your point. Thank you for that beautiful intro.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yo, man. So yo, that's. That's where we are right now. I'm going to just this. Is you know what? I'm going to just open up my life just a little bit, man. So, if you know, I was in the foster care system, right. So you know if, if this was available to me when this happened because I've always loved music ever since I was a kid like I would get in trouble for my mom beating on the table you know what I'm saying Like I would get in trouble for a.
Speaker 2:You know, hey, can't stop that drumming.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. So shout out to mom she. She didn't kill me. So look at me now, mom, hey, but yo, she's like, if we, if this was available to me, and like yo, I, I don't I have no clue where where a lot of people would be, especially if they were in a foster care system, jail system, juvenile detention system, like it, would have made a tremendous impact. And y'all been doing this for what? 11, 12 years now, I think. So, um, yeah.
Speaker 2:I took it over in 2012 and really kind of formally launched the structure of it in March of 2013. Uh, you know Ben Dorazo Dorazo, who you know does the two MPC thing, and his incredible beatmaker musician himself founded it and came up with the name in 2010. And I took it over from him. I was working with him from 2010, 2011, 12 ish, uh, and then look it over in full and kind of really took it to its structure and kind of implemented the, the early iterations, the early form of, like the therapeutic beatmaking model and thinking about it from a therapeutic and educational perspective, and then brought in all these folks then. So that's, yeah, you've been going for a minute and, um, yeah, it's, it's been a beautiful thing having the community involved.
Speaker 1:Man, incredible man, I um, so I'm a loop right back around to that, but I got to start with you man, like, uh, you know, how did you even come up? I'm? I'm going in your history just a little bit so the internet can understand, like as a you're not only a doctor man, so you're not only uh, you know an activist and everything like that, You're also a beatmaker too. And then you have your your own musical journey. So my first question would be how did you even come up with the name? Uh, philip Drummond or Philip, uh, philip the Drummond? You know cause, when I sit, when I, when I hear Philip Drummond, I think different strokes. So tell me about that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I had a, a way whacker name that I'm not going to disclose, maybe to that and um, when I wasn't taking myself seriously, and uh, my boy in New York who he was like three or four years younger than me but he was always like putting me up on game or always knew about like the dope, the dope stuff, the dope shit. But he put me up on Saigon and Mark Ronson before they blew up and told me about it. He had, I think, either Illajay or J Dilla's four track that he probably never returned to them, but like that's the kind of kid he was in like as a freshman in high school, like and he could rhyme, get freestyle, he was super dope. So I was hanging out with him, we were, we were like you know, working on music together and just kick it. We I mean we went inside like Eminem, right before he blew up, when he was still slim, shady at at Tramps in New York and when, like my name is, was only on late night radio. So he, he just knew what was up, right, and he's like yo man, you should call yourself Phillip Drummond.
Speaker 2:And I was like, yeah, you're right, I'm from the Upper East side of Manhattan.
Speaker 2:I'm a, you know, middle class white dude, upper middle class white dude.
Speaker 2:From my origins, um, and I feel like you know, this is kind of after the fact, my interpretation, but in a way not being born into you know hip hop necessarily. I mean, I grew up in New York city and I really fell in love, like in fifth grade, with it and you know, but it wasn't something that like my family or my community per se, you know, was like. You know, it's not my origin and I'm, you know, I'm a visitor in hip hop. Being a white dude, I'm a practitioner in a hip hop head through and through, and it shapes the way that I view the world. But it seemed kind of like an interesting metaphor to kind of be, you know, adopting black culture but also acknowledging, you know where I come from and my, my privilege in my class and not denying it. And it also like you just tell any hip hop head over the age of 35, you know, I say my name and like they get it, they laugh also cause they're like the generational thing in the show.
Speaker 2:Um, it also kind of it's cool, you, the way you can kind of flip the name right, like my boy, lush, one who I made albums with. Some people may know him from grind time or from, uh, you know KOTD or you know all the, you know all these different battle leagues, cause we were we used to do a lot of MC battles together and music together. Uh, would call me like filthy drummer, right. And then I just put out a drum and bass like a jungle record remix of a boom back track I did years ago, just dropped that a couple of months ago. And, and you know, when I do drum and bass, when I do jungle, I'm Philip, drum and bass, right. So it's got the drums in it. Filthy drums.
Speaker 2:I really like dirty, grimy, boom back, crunchy drums, um. So I think there's a lot of ways that you can play with the name. That makes makes sense. I just I encourage people to call me filthy. If you want to call me something for short, don't call me Philip, cause that sounds like a real person's name and I I look like I could damn near be a Philip, but I'm not. My name is, so don't call me Philip.
Speaker 2:Call me filthy, that'll be the. You know, that's one of my taglines. Call me filthy, but with a pH Um, and so that's that's the, the, the origin story of the name. That kind of has different iterations filthy, filthy beats. Filthy, drumming, filthy drummer Philip, drum and bass Um, you know, some people call me drumming, uh, and I like the drums, the drums of the core. That's the. You know, the basis of hip hop and the foundation, the breaks, the drums, the rhythms, um, yeah, and I've just played off of that and um. So that's, that's the. That's the name, that's the origin. Um, you got a little, a little history of my early kind of iterations in hip hop there.
Speaker 1:Yo, if if for the internet's man that don't know, lush one man, um, I think he's got his own. He's got his own right now. Um, I've been seeing this one for years, cause you know I'm a better rapper, I'm a better rapper, and so um, cause he's always the one that's like um, he's got like a little bit of a raspy voice, but he's so like um, yeah, Well, yeah, I mean, we put out in 2008,.
Speaker 2:We put out our opus, which took three years to make, called music for dope runs, and, um, it was ironic, cause I was in graduate school at the time trying to like counter the effects of drugs and you know all the kind of like illicit stuff, and then it's it's always complicated but I used to like wear a mask and hide my face cause I also didn't want, like my clients or patients like seeing me or associating me with it with a record like that, you know, with that name. And so I told him look, we can't just be glorifying selling drugs, moving drugs, taking drugs, like this can't. It has to be three dimensional. It has there has to be an offset to this, there has to be the negative side. So we, the record's actually kind of deep in the way that, um, there's a song about like Maria, who you know, based on Maria full of grace, who is a, you know, it's about a drug mule and it's telling her story and her biography and her trauma and her history. And then, like the last track with like the source is all about when you get popped, when you get caught, and then the music video has him getting popped, you know, and uh and and getting caught and being sent away. So it's, I really wanted to kind of offset that Um.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and, and you know, lush and I like I kind of brought lush into this you know what we later call a fresh coast scene of of hip hop, which really influenced uh battle wrap in a major way, even on an international scale, in terms of like multi-syllabic, like up, like leveling up of, like rhyming and battle rhyming, multi-syllabic punchlines and rhyme schemes in a way that you know, most folks weren't really doing it, compared to how we were doing it in Cali and in the West coast. Um, so there's a lot, there's a lot of behind the scenes that people don't know about. Um, but yeah, lush and I kind of brought together he labeled it fresh coast, taking that from like a project blow kind of thing that he had heard before. But that was something that we were really involved in and we made a lot of music together. We traveled France together when a group called Roland Rockers and its first iteration.
Speaker 2:So there's, there's history there and I used to be super, super deep. I used to have one of the biggest uh collections of battle rap and MC battle footage in the world and would ship it literally all over the world. I shipped it to Australia. Mc justice, who won scribble jam years ago, literally bought the entire collection, studied the source and the other you know fresh coast MC's battle rappers and then came back and beat him with his own formula. So and you know, hello, like there's a lot, there's a lot of history there.
Speaker 1:That's battle rap 101.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, but anyway yeah, shots to lush and, um, yeah, that's a. That's a little, a little piece of my history before I kind of migrated much more into doing strictly beat battles and beat ciphers, uh, from the MC battle and MC kind of uh battle battle rap scene. I put on tons and tons of battles captured. You know a lot of. Did you know videos with avocado? I brought avocado into uh to like document. You know the, the battles and that's how he got involved, you know, through that with grand time. Uh, I was vice president of grand time for a minute before I stepped down and then you know KOTD and that kind of thing. So there's, there's little things here. This is like a little backstory. Most people don't know this stuff but I, you know, I've been. I've been around in a lot of different cutty places and behind the scenes, um, and done a lot of work in kind of different aspects of hip hop aside from just beat making and uh and all that.
Speaker 1:So Wow, you've been. You've been doing a lot of stuff. How, how long have you been in? You know this journey of hip hop.
Speaker 2:I mean it depends where you define it. Starting, I mean, I fell in love with rap and hip hop. Um, arguably, when I heard this, the single from tribe called quest in like 91, 92, uh scenario, right, I remember Laura Nadoff's, and rest in peace brought the single cassette into our classroom and we were studying rock and roll in fifth grade it was the dopest class we did like this music video, we're studying rock and roll. It was like the illest fifth grade class of all time and um, but she put in that tape and we used to wrap along with it here we go Yo, here we go Yo. So what's so? What's what's the scenario Like we're all rapping during break period to scenario. And then I've seen the music video for it which is like this you know, 90s, quick time tracker, 90s, looking like video, with all the the cheesy 90 video effects on, like the video editing software from back then, which it was an interesting kind of meta take.
Speaker 2:But I was also in New York city, right, yeah, growing up in Manhattan, the birthplace of hip hop, where, like hip hop was the finding style and aesthetic and like the coolest thing. So I really fell in love with that. And then Cyprus Hill, insane in the membrane, I think it was. It might have been the summer before or the summer after fifth grade, which was the same year as scenario by trial call quest and I was just like yo, this is it. They play the best part again and again and it makes me like super hype and like this is it? The drums, the sounds, the, the rhymes, the energy, the vibe. So I think from there, like that was the beginning of my falling in love with hip hop, and then it just kind of continued and beats like through middle school. You know the beastie boys like Wu Tang had come out when I was in seventh grade and that was a thing, you know. Snoop Dogg listening to doggie style. I thought that album was amazing. The beats were incredible.
Speaker 1:And to me.
Speaker 2:You know people will, will, you know, definitely strongly disagree with me, but I I ranked for me the production on doggie style by Dre by quick, by you know, other folks who were involved in whether it was battle cat or I don't know who else didn't get their Russian credits on that, but no matter that influenced me in like I think that's a better produced album than the chronic, and a lot of people were will object to that, but, like for me, I think doggie style is one of, if not the best produced records of all time, along with Midnight Marauders. So I really was influenced by that, by both tribe and Wu Tang, snoop Dogg, dr Dre, cypress Hill, which was like West Coast but they had this East Coast aesthetic. And DJ Mugs is a major influence in one of my favorite producers, like insane in the membrane. What the hell is that sound? Oh, it's a horse, you know. Or, like you know, hits from the bomb. What the hell is that sample from that? Like it's amazing, you know, when the shit goes down, you know, cock the hammer.
Speaker 2:All of that, Like that was infiltrating my my eardrums and you know, was in my mind and mind. You, I'm walking around New York City and like a champion hoodie and you know, baggy, you know, or silver tab jeans or you know, like that's the, that's what everyone's wearing, stoosey, go downtown to the store in the village, go down to St Mark's to cop your T-shirts like hip hop T-shirts and music T-shirts and all sorts of other stuff you know. So it's really that was the kind of the backdrop for me and kind of when I fell in love, and then it just increased more and more as I went from middle school to high school and I really discovered more and more of like. I'm also listening to electronic music, another kind of beats oriented music house music, jungle, drum and bass, trip hop, porters head I think Jeff Barrow is one of the best beat makers of all time. Who's not credited with like the beats on the first porters head album or ill, like Nas could have wrapped over that. You know what I mean, these grimy, boom, bad beats, but it's trip hop. So tricky, Maxing Quay was something I was like bumping hard.
Speaker 2:A lot of underground trip hop and electronic music. Daft Punk's first album when I hit 10th grade, even though it's house music, it's very much indebted to hip hop and loop based electronic music. And you know DaFunk is like a funky West Coast funk. You know Detroit techno inspired kind of all the above and a maligation of all those influences. So I'm listening both to like electronic music. I'm listening to mixed shows where they're playing, like you know, lesson Six by Cutchemist and then also playing, like you know, leg rhythm, digital and Daft Punk and other electronic stuff and this melange of beats. So I'm going to. You know raves and underground. You know parties in New York City. Concrete Jungle is a jungle party in New York City that you know we used to go to and go into underground hip hop shows, like having access to the wetlands, to tramps, to SOBs like these are all classic places where underground hip hop was alive and well. I saw the roots play like six times under filling record. You know recording artists, jam session. You know Sausageexe and you know Guru get on stage there and you know just it was insane like Fifth Platoon, the X-Men before they were the executioners. You know it was like I was so lucky to be there and have access to, like, the halftime show, wnyu, you know, stretching, bobbito 89, tech 9. You know, listening to Stretch's first album, that really got me into a lot of underground stuff, including company flow. And then I later fell in love with company flow, you know, fun Crusher, plus Major Influence LP, all that, so it's like there's so much there.
Speaker 2:And then moving to California when I was 18, and then getting involved both in the Bay Area hip hop scene, seeing the premiere of Scratch, like, with the DJs who were in it in the theater and the premiere it was crazy Having access to people there. And then going to Southern California and going like, linking up with cats from SoCal, being able to drive to Project Bloat in LA, you know, and having access to all that and J5 was popping off dilated peoples being in Cali for that in that vicinity. You know it was just. I was really tapped into it. That's when Future Primitive was going to in San Francisco which was like a collaboration of Turntabless and Beatmakers and they'd have live performances of, like, you know, shortcut beats, cut chemists, stuff like that. That whole scene in San Francisco and the Bay Area. So much. You know it was the Turntablism and the early iterations of beat culture and instrumental beat music like trip hop or not, you know.
Speaker 1:Man, yo you've been all over. You've been in some of the yo internet. You're gonna have to rewind this and then Google everything that he was talking about. There's so much in what you just said in the last. You know two, three, four minutes, man, like I'm gonna have to go back and listen to it and then do my research on a good portion of it. Man, but yo we. Okay, let me start at home. You know, growing up I don't know if it was mom, dad, I don't know if it was brother's sisters. You got older brothers and sisters. You got, you know, uncles, aunties, grandmoms, grandmoms, grandmoms, grandmoms, grandmoms like who was playing the music in your house and what were they playing?
Speaker 2:So I grew up with my dad playing piano and guitar and singing and it's not what he did professionally, but like he was incredible. I have vivid memories of sitting underneath my grandmother's grand piano in her apartment in New York City and my dad would play, like you know, scarlottie or Beethoven or Chopin, and like sitting under you're catching the reverberations, like from underneath the piano, which is kind of ill you know, and my dad, you know, could also play guitar and sing.
Speaker 2:He was in his singing group. He had even made records in college and traveled with like a Russian chorus and all this kind of stuff. My mom wasn't particularly musical. She wished I think she wished that she was, and so she liked music and had an appreciation for it. You know, like my mom's the kind of person that she's got a pretty good taste in general. So she came back from Jazz Fest one year where there were like the meetings, the psychoanalytic meetings that she was attending, with like a funky meter CD and a Dr John CD and I'm like yo, that's dope. My mom's buying a meter CD like cause she likes it, that's a good look. I'm like mom, this is dope, I'm gonna sample this.
Speaker 2:But yeah, my dad was definitely very musical. I had some older cousins shout out to my older cousins, andrea and Ellen, who were also like just really cool, really tapped in and were into all different genres of music. But they're the ones who told me, like man, paul's Boutique is the best Beastie Boys album, which I think is up for debate. I think is very arguable, even when it check your head was out, maybe ill communication had just come out or whatever, and I'm hearing like ill communication in seventh grade and Q-Tips verse on it and that kind of stuff. But, like one of my cousins even told me she's like man, epmd is kind of cheesy with the pop crossover and so, even though EPMD is some mental classic hip hop and make dope records and Eric Parrish dope producer and they put on Red man, who's so dope and I love too, I think I always had a bias, a prejudice against them because my older cousin told me that and because she would put me on like the dope shit, like underground crazy shit, and I think there were probably all their older folks that I don't know who put me up on some game, but a lot of it was discovering stuff was the radio I would just literally used to go. There was this record store called HMV on 86 and Lexington in New York and Manhattan massive CD record store and I literally used to go and hang out in the hip hop section because they would get to play whatever music they wanted. That's how I heard the Stretch Armstrong Mixed CD volume, one that had company flow on it, had getting close to the go out in a tight situation like Lace the Booms, all these really dope, grimy underground hip hop cats, and so then I discovered a lot of underground through that and just look at album covers like I seen the LaTierrex album for years and thought that looks dope but I haven't heard it. Should I cop it? And later on, yeah, I ended up copping it. It was amazing. It was produced by DJ Shadow and Chief Excel and had Latif and Lyric Born rapping on it, doing some of the most mind blowing am seeing over. You know that I had heard over some of the dope is beats I had heard. So I was literally going to HMV almost every day after school and just kicking it in the hip hop section, just looking at albums and wondering what they were.
Speaker 2:You know I had access to fat beats and go down to you know later in high school go down to fat, beats yeah and like you would walk into fat beats and there'd be you know there's a turntable and they would be playing and all the records would be like yo, what's the hot shit, what's the new shit? I heard nonprofits, which is Sage Francis, that's his group with Joey Beats. I heard off a dat tape before it was wax in fat beats I heard bounce and I said what the hell is this? This is fire. I need this right. So then I went and copped the Scribble Jam, you know VHS cassette, cause Sage Francis was battling on it. I was like I wanna see some rap battle, I wanna see what he does. He won it. Okay, I know him from nonprofits.
Speaker 2:So you know the different things that you have access to in the early years of the internet and kind of pre-internet and pre-YouTube that. And then going off to school having access to you know high speed internet downloading like Cuddy underground Canadian hip hop, like Dirty Circus from Vancouver and what called Dirty Circus and I forgot the other subgroups associated with them and like Benefit right In 99, the kid that recorded his whole album with one of those you know gray computer mics and made all the beats for it had that record so sick and the Maro song, you know, like that, and Edon at the same time, like my boy from San Jose, they were underground hip hop cats too and they're like they had techniques. So I used to go over their dorm room and they'd be like yo, check out Edon. It's like who's this cat? Edon so sick? This is ridiculous. So I was downloading all this stuff, downloading tons and tons atmosphere like back in 99, the whatever, the Lucy 40P or maybe pre that, and hearing that stuff and getting access to that through these kind of back channels and of course later Napster and you know, like LimeMirror, but before that, like off these servers, like off these crews that were ripping these underground records and playing them and listening to underground hip hop and just listening to the underground station.
Speaker 2:And you know, I went to UC Santa Barbara in California and being with all these you know Filipino, like turntabless cats from LA and from the Bay who, like the Filipino frat, was the only frat that I would consider kicking it with because they all had technique 1200s and Vestax05 pros set up in their frat house. So we used to go over and like scratch or kick it or talk about beats and just nerd out on shit. So it was really it was a lot of that. It was coming with this kind of already this knowledge of underground hip hop and coming from New York city in the renaissance, you know, of New York hip hop, indie hip hop, and this is interesting because I've been listening to Talib Kuali's podcast and him talking about and interviews with him and other people and he's so eloquently, he just perfectly phrases it that the anti-commercial like kind of stance of New York underground hip hop and underground hip hop in the US against the jiggy movement and like the whole commercial thing that was happening from like 95, 96 on and how we were so such underground, real hip hop, you know. That kind of shit, like what he says to a T is like how I felt and how I experienced it and how I lived it in terms of being like pretty anti-commercial and trying to create a space early on with, like you know, groups that I put together. You know social circles of us that used to kick it and listen to underground hip hop and like, oh, have you heard the new Deltron record? Oh, automator, da, da, da da.
Speaker 2:Later I started the hip hop club at UC Santa Barbara and we used to literally go into this is kind of the early iterations before today's Future Sound. We used to go to elementary schools and with B-boys and B-girls and turntables and lug the gear and set up and perform for the kids and then do little demos for that. Have them do it. We started a campus visitation program for kids from underserved communities, bringing them on campus and doing both hip hop like workshops and performances, but also telling them how they could get into the university. We used to put on popping battles and bring up you know legendary funk styles dancers from LA, from Long Beach, from Inland Empire in California and down from the bay like some of the best funk style dancers. You know people you've seen in like step up part five, like Mad Chad, and we used to drop down the project blow it Like.
Speaker 2:So we had access to like a lot of cool stuff and was kind of integrating all this really underground hip hop and you know extensions of hip hop dance culture, rave. You know rave music, electronic music, breakbeat based music and just kind of learning from my peers and later starting the hip hop club at UCSB putting on battles. We put on a battle that the student center was only supposed to have 800 people. We had 1200 people in the student center for this MC battle that I arranged Immaculate, you know, came down from Portland and you know flew him down and he slept on my couch at our house and we had so many people packed in there and aligned out the door. You know a big cash prize, people who'd been on like the MTV. You know battles and are legendary. Now no can do from people. People might know him from Low End Theory and from Project Blow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was crazy. It was crazy just having access to that in your kind of your periphery or being adjacent to that set of barbers, like 90 miles from LA. So it's not a long drive and you know college and universities are really beautiful resource for meeting people from all over, especially in Cali, and being able to have time just to do that stuff. So that's kind of like it was both New York and it was California. It was my dad moved to California, to San Francisco, when I was nine so I'd spend time out there and then I could get access to the underground scene in you know Oakland, Berkeley, you know living legends, and then you had the San Francisco scene. That was really really like dope at the time, with Future Primitive, like I mentioned, and a lot of stuff popping off there.
Speaker 1:Wow, man, and all of that starting from you just being next to well with your pops, but then also with I think you said your mom or your grandma was playing the piano.
Speaker 2:So my dad was playing the piano.
Speaker 1:Dad was playing the piano. So the energy playing the piano. And then I just want you to think about this You're like you're a little kid sitting underneath to the piano just catching the vibes, and then that transcends all the way to what you were just talking about, which is curating event shows and, you know, going to fat feeds. Oh my gosh man.
Speaker 2:It's crazy, man, like my parents had a turntable and a CD player so I would put the records on. I was like listening to my parents' records, like the Beatles and other stuff like that, and also playing dire straits, you know, like Money for Nothing, right? So I had access to vinyl and then I my neighbors, when I was like nine, 10, maybe 11, threw out a turntable and hundreds of records which I took in Now, mind you, when I was and so I started like because I wanted to scratch them and I could scratch the dinosaur record I had as a little kid right Is a turntable with a could also record. It had a built-in tape deck, right, so you could record from the vinyl, so I could record myself scratching, but only from one deck. I mean, I got a lot of like I get similar stories to so many of us, like the pause, the dubbing, cassettes and recording from the radio catching the dopest song on, you know, funkmaster Flex, or on 89.9, or you know the halftime show WNYU with, like, dj Eclipse and DJ Riz and all that. I used to call in all the time and talk to them and talk to the lady that did the halftime show with them, and I want to hell of tickets to see like the arsonists and nonfiction or see like Karris won at Tramps and like for Synco the Myo in 97. That was a crazy show.
Speaker 2:But I also, you know from the time I was a kid and I think this is a similar story to a lot of people who became DJs or MCs or beatmakers. Like as a kid I used to record vinyl the tape, or record with like a tape recorder myself and I would be doing like radio DJ stuff. So I'd be like narrating, like making my own DJ mix show right and like playing records and introducing it Like with my Fisher Prize turntable and then you know, later my other turntable and all this vinyl that I collected. And I started buying vinyl in high school with the intention of scratching and making beats and all that. And I got to give a shout out to Mr Ruhman, who's an art teacher at my high school. I never had a class with him but he was cool and I used to go kick at free periods and just talk about music with them. He put me up on, like you know, that Tricky and Portis had both sampled the same Isaac Hayes sample and like bomb the bass and all this other stuff and I remember wanting I used to get pro sound and stage lighting catalog and you would have, like the MPC, you know, 2000 MPC, 2000 XL, the S20.
Speaker 2:So I remember for years being like man, I want to get an S, should I get an S20 or an MPC? I want to make beats. I want to make beats. And I went to I think it was Sam. So Sam Ash in New York City is like you know, if you watch the Wu Tang series, that's where he gets it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, nice, right and like yeah, you're trying to sneak it down his book bag.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I went there and asked the dude I'm like yo, I want to make beats, I want to get like an MPC. And the guy's like, look, are you going to college? I must have been a senior or junior in high school, he said. I said yeah.
Speaker 2:So I know the MPC is sexy and I know it's like you have this romanticized notion of it is expensive. But if you're getting a computer there's no point in spending all this money on it when you could get these programs that are coming out. Essentially he was talking about DAWs and beat making applications. And you know, get a MIDI controller, just use a much more powerful computer to make beats than you know ostensibly wasting $2,500 on an MPC. Or you know, take advantage of that. And that's what I did. I ended up doing that.
Speaker 2:I was already in 97s, like I really wanted to make beats. So I was using my little brother's computer that he had saved up for and had like the deep concentration by ARM compilation with like lesson six by it, had like all these turntables on it and cut chemists, and it had this thing called Mixman where you could play the loops from the tracks. And then I had like the first iteration of FL Studio. Propellerhead's first application before Reason was Rebirth, which emulated like a 909, a TR909 and a 303. And so I was making really crappy beats on there and then you know other trackers or beat making programs.
Speaker 2:Then went to college, got Cool Edit Pro shout out, peter Quistagard, appreciate you, peter Quistagard, for that crack. Cool Edit Pro was making beats on Cool Edit Pro which became Adobe Audition, sonic Foundry Acid, fl Studio programming drums in FL Studio, looping and chopping also in Sonic Foundry Acid and, yeah, making some really trash beats until I finally made you know a good beat. But that was the journey in meeting kids who were DJs and turntables from like SoCal and meeting other cats who were interested in beat making and all that kind of stuff. So it was like all these different sources of input. But I was just really curious and really seeing anyone who had knowledge about like how to make beats, how to scratch, you know all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Man, man, I gotta ask you, this man Speaking you going through all of this, like what was that one beat that you heard? That was like it kind of just messed you up. It was like holy shit, man, like I'm in it right now. What was that one beat for you? Because everybody got one. It might may have been a couple beats, but what was the couple beats that blew your mind, man?
Speaker 2:I think they would be like the first songs that I named when I fell in love with hip hop listening to scenario, because that beat was amazing and then, you know, insane in the membrane. For me I always listen to the beat first, and then if the raps are dope too, then I'm even more about it, but like that's what caught me I remember. The other thing that comes to mind is like hearing Lesson Six by Cut Chemist, but also hearing like. When I first heard DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World and introducing starting track Building Steam with the Green Assault, I was like yo, what the fuck is this Like? What are these drums? What is this piano sample? These vocals like this is heavy.
Speaker 2:I used to go to sleep, you know, like almost every night listening to like that or Portis Head or Tricky, and then you know wake up in the morning sometimes to that. You know there was also like get it together by the Beast Boys. That beat is incredible, that jazz beat, that, like you know, short piano loop. I was listening to Beck too and like, arguably Beck it's kind of like trash can. Hip hop beats very like grimy and like early lo-fi, but to me, arguably Beck was singing over pseudo-rapping on its first album, mellow gold over you know boom-bat beats and you know kind of I was also listening to like a lot of alternative rock and stuff like that too, that kind of you know bridged over. But yeah, man, and like you know hearing like when Moment of Truth came out, I think it was 11th grade in high school.
Speaker 1:I want to say it was like 97th.
Speaker 2:Those beats were incredible, like work, or you know my STEEZ, like who just starts an 808 snare drum or 909 snare drum, like that you know. And like those drums were so compressed and so saturated and distorted and like it was so innovative of DJ Premier the way that he did that Omen of Truth, jfk to LAX, like I reckon that's one of the best produced hip hop albums and in my top three or four best produced records of all time, up there with Midnight Marauders and Bizarre Ride. When I heard Bizarre Ride, like Yamama or obviously everyone passing me and those passing me by, but like Yamama, oh shit. Like I think Bizarre Ride is one of the best produced records of all time and most people are like oh, la Cabin, but for me it's not La Cabin, it's Bizarre Ride. Jay Swift is one of the. He has a smaller catalog because of, like you know, his addiction issues and all that kind of stuff. But the guys I think one of the best boom-bat beat makers of all time that's really slept on who made incredible records Like, and Bizarre Ride is a perfect example of that. I think it's almost perfectly produced record album.
Speaker 2:So to me that's the kind of stuff, that aesthetic along with like Cypress Hill, dj Mugs, dj Shadow, dj Premier, rza. Like when you first hear like Wu Tang and like how grimy those beats are and like what he did with like the saturation and the distortion. So I think a lot of that stuff, a lot of East Coast but also West Coast stuff. Hearing Latterics man, like the Latterics self-titled Latterics album and the song Latterics, that opens up the record with the rapping simultaneously at different rhythms with different cadences over, like, like how did DJ Shadow make that beat? It's like, it's like a your mind is melting kind of beat matches perfectly them rapping at the same time in your left and right ear, like the whole. And like LP Eight Steps to Perfection, company Flow that Extrude, calude, extrude. How do you make a beat like that? What is that? You know, and Ann Burners later figured out. You know a lot of what LP was doing was taking like disco samples and slowing them down 30, 40 BPM. You know the really funky, like funky tracks and slowing them down and that's how you get that grimy. You know, time stretched but still funky kind of, but dirty but like you know, those are tracks that stick out to me.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of other ones. The other one for me and I mentioned this on the interview last time that we did last time is Verse Murphy. When I got into college and freshman year of hip hop when I discovered Sacred Hoop, it was a Bay Area slash Arizona hip hop group. In Verse Murphy, it's VRSE Murphy who's doing some of like the craziest, like combining, using samples that you would never imagine, like using, like you know, atmospheric jungle sounds layered over like a congo loop, layered with the vocal sample from Run Around Sue, layered with the music from Fellini's Eight and a Half, and then sampling like totally other, like like crazy 70s standup comedy. Now, I think that's in the spirit of and in the legacy of, like Prince Paul and Prince Paul I also heard on Deep Concentration had a scratch track and a beat track on there.
Speaker 2:It was one of my favorites on that record.
Speaker 2:Like Deep Concentration was an incredible turntable as a beat record put out by Om Records, who were based in San Francisco, had lessons six by Cut Chemist.
Speaker 2:Keep on referencing that. That shit blew my mind Finding out, like all those turntables and return the DJ put out by Bomb Hip Hop by Bomb Records, which was also based in San Francisco Dave Paul, billy Jam, invisible scratch pickles, discovering them, buying a herb magazine with the scratch pickles on the cover, like really that was like the beginning of my, my oriental, you know, old school hip hop culture and like I was already in it in high school and living in New York and seeing nonfiction hearing. You know Necro's beats Like Necro's beats were crazy too. You know nonfiction's beats were dope, they were rapping over fire boombat beats and the way they were rapping was crazy, so that DITC production it's kind of like the cliche ones that a lot of hip boombat heads who grew up in New York or grew up on that early 90s sound will tell you. Not even by nature I didn't know who was making the beats but, like you know, feel me flow, but even more so OPP, which by the way.
Speaker 2:That's that, from what I understand, they jacked that beat from a Tony, what was his name? The white dude from Trenton who put out the breakbeat record with that beat on it, tony D. Amazing producer, rustin Pease. Tony D made incredible beats and put that out on a breakbeat record and then they sampled the breakbeat record and use that Jackson five, abc sample and all that. But you know those kinds of beats like the East Coast beats, yeah, and like I was also like I was fucking with like dark side of the moon and Pink Floyd, tough David Bowie, lou Reed, you know that kind of early 70s rock is Led Zeppelin. So I was listening to the like the breaks and I kind of didn't know it. But also the you know the 70s like aesthetic I was. Always my favorite music comes from typically like the mid, early to mid 60s to like late 70s, early 80s and that would be the stuff that was being sampled for a lot of boomback records and East Coast early 90s hip hop.
Speaker 2:But I and like you know, I was also listening to oldies as a kid. Like I got super deep in oldies as a nine year old. I used to buy like what you call like the Swapmeat or the Flea Market oldies like compilations and I had no idea until I got to California that there was a low rider oldie thing that, like Chicanos and like gangsters, would like bump in like 50s. You know oldies and do up and soul. And like I heard Al Green for the first time on an oldies compilation and James Brown, I remember the first time I heard that, even though it's hip hop, or say you know it is hip hop, right, and I heard like I feel good and I was like that was my ninth birthday party. We were at a billiards hall and I put the quarters in the jukebox and played that. I was like I didn't know what this is but this is it, like this is my jam.
Speaker 2:So there were several things that you know. You hear different things as you over the years, as you get older and especially the deeper you get into it, the more you hear like crazy dope shit that just inspires you. But I think you know those are a lot of my production influences. I was listening to, you know, trip hop and the English Bristol sound to the. You know port, like I said, port said tricky death punk. So many of those like artists that were putting out stuff big beat in the late nineties it was basically up tempo instrumental boom bap. The wise guys, dj Touche, goes by fake blood as well and makes house records and boom bap still. But like the wise guys, first record is amazing, but I first heard their second record first. That's like say ooh la la se, soon come on the Budweiser commercial track, right they saw the.
Speaker 2:Super Bowl. I was up on that. I was in France. I went to France and they were playing the music videos for like that on TV because France is like super hip hop and I caught the record. I caught the CD there and I was like yo, it starts with a scratch intro. So that became a thing for me on all my records, where I would start rap records every time with a scratch intro, Even if I wasn't, I was picking the cuss out or collaborating with DJ on the cuss.
Speaker 1:That's how you hook them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, with the script and that's my nod, like every record should start with a dope scratch intro. So I did that for a minute and with the instrumental outro, even if it was a rap record, it's like the credits rolling and like a. I think it's probably. You know, obviously Pete Rock would be a big influence too and his like mini little beats he'd do with those like instrumental interludes at the beginning of a track, like the creator or whatever, or outros, with like sick little, like loops and breaks, right. So a lot of that and a lot of listening to like a lot of genres of music, classical, listening to jazz.
Speaker 2:I got into jazz in eighth grade and that was you know. I think that made from it made it easier for me to understand what I was listening to in terms of like tribe or you know, the Beastie Boys on ill communication or De La Soul. I mean man, when I heard De La Soul, like Boolean Mindstate, the beats on that are insane and they have a bunch of live jazz and funk musicians they got I think they have like the meters or other people in the meters or you know groups like that playing on it right, and Prince Paul huge influence, very slept on as being named one of the most important and best producers of all time. The guy's a genius and automator as well and they're an enhanced boy modeling school. When I got, you know, when I got into college, when I heard the Truth, which is a Galt McDermott sample, coffee Cold, j Live wrapping on it and I don't know the vocalist who sings on it, like I was like what is this? And then my homie, his boy, came up from, you know, the Inland Empire in Southern California. We literally set up his techniques on bricks to hold them up outside. He had his crates of records and he played that break, that Galt McDermott Coffee Cold sample that samples the Truth on Hanson Boy modeling school that you know automator. And or Prince Paul sample, and I was like yo, that's where. So that was a jam for me.
Speaker 2:Dj Shadows, you know record on that Hanson Boy modeling school's album. Like that was freshman year of college and was such a big influence. First Murphy, you know Edon, there's just there's so many different dilated peoples. J5. I got JU on CD single. Like what the hell is that flute sample? What's Newmark and Cutchemist doing? Like who are these guys? What are they sampling? Jesus, they can scratch, but they can make killer beats too. So that was big, big influence. And hearing that each time, each iteration, you know, would get you hyped.
Speaker 1:Yo man, yo okay, listen, internet sale. You are hearing some dope ass stories and some history, some personal history of you know filthy drumming man. I'm gonna just say filthy, dr Filthy, how about that?
Speaker 2:Call me filthy that's the name of my beat tape.
Speaker 1:I gotta say I gotta say doctor man, because you know what I mean. You earned that joint and so you know what I mean. Dr, filthy man, yo listen. If y'all like what y'all listening to, man, hit the like, hit the subscribe, share this joint. Man, if you own Spotify, you know Apple, apple Podcast or Google Podcast or Deezer, wherever you listen to it, man, go ahead, hit the like all that type of stuff, man Just gives me feedback.
Speaker 2:Shout out to Deezer. I know we on the track Yo, if you're listening on Deezer, send me a DM and I'll send you a sticker pack. I've never met anyone that actually uses Deezer, but, like you know, send me a screenshot, I'll hook you up with a. Deezer sticker pack, but today's your sound stickers.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I heard that yo, so my Deezer fans. Like when I go through stats and stuff like that, I'm like, okay, what are people listening? It's iTunes, apple Podcasts, spotify, google, Internet Explorer, deezer. Yeah, and I'm like what.
Speaker 2:They say Deezer.
Speaker 1:Deezer, deezer, deezer, deezer, deezer.
Speaker 2:Deezer. Deezer not so the folks who are listening on Deezer? They're crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah man, yeah man. That's like streaming on Periscope yeah aw man, it's Periscope.
Speaker 2:We're beer can.
Speaker 1:Holy crap, man, yo man. So dope, dope, dope stories, man. And that's the reason why I asked this man, because you know, kind of going back in my guess history, man, it just there's so much emotion of where you were when you heard this or that, or straight up you know what I mean. Like in it. And for you, what I'm listening to right now is you're listening to world music, from all around the world, man. It's not just one genre that you're listening to. You're listening to you know what I mean Hip hop. You're listening to jazz. You're listening to classical, you're listening to drum and bass. You're listening to you know what I mean A whole bunch of different genres, and that shapes how you hear music and then how you create music as well. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely, and you know, the deeper I get in as I get into my beatmaking journey, when I'm digging, and I'm really digging, I'm also looking for, like the most obscure countries I can think of, to find their version of disco or psych rock. Or you know, popular music between years of 65 and you know 83, where you got like Armenian disco right. Or you know Turkish psychedelic rock like shout out Erkan Koray right. Or Persian pop music in the 70s is amazing, shout out Gugus and Haida before her right, which is really dope because it creates this circle where I'm looking for that and then in turn and I'm learning about other cultures through doing it. But then it also allows me to engage people Like I can't tell you how many Persian, like Iranian folks, persian folks I've met who I'll drop like a Gugus reference, and be, like, how do you know about Gugus?
Speaker 2:I was like, oh, what you know about Delcache and vegan? And then it creates this really beautiful connection where I think people feel seen and heard and it opens up a whole another world, and so it's really it's a feedback cycle in a loop and I was fortunate enough to travel a lot and I was getting to like I got really deep into French hip hop in high school and so I knew about that. When I went to France I was like going record shopping and you know I was like I'm going to get up cutty French, like Italian records. You know I was traveling to Bosnia and getting you know Bosnia and Croatian hip hop and older records as well to sample and being really so.
Speaker 2:I think it's a beautiful way and again, I think this is so many people's stories that I've heard about. You know how they got. They fell in love with hip hop, fell in love with music from around the world. Like you're saying world, and I think world music is kind of like a colonial kind of term it's, but like music from all around the globe, different cultures and countries can really connect you and expand your mind and teach you to listen to music differently. So I had that from, like my parents, val, you know, valuing music, but also my valuing music in my own way and growing into that and through the lens of hip hop and beat making and digging and collecting records. So, yeah, that was really, really dope.
Speaker 1:Yeah, would you. Would you say that your most impactful moments in your music journey were? Was that middle school, high school, college?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think so I mean again, like you know, like you were saying like if you had had beat making, if you had someone rock up to your spot at like a foster placement or whatever with an MPC and sat down with you for like an hour or two hours one time, or maybe repeatedly, like how you know, how would that have changed your trajectory versus where you are now, which is a beautiful place right Through all your you know, whatever your journey and your challenge is, whatever along the way, that brought you here right. So I don't know, but, like you know, sitting under the piano is important. Just digging for music in HMV in New York City at the time of the in New York City at you know, going to the hip hop section every another genre too in HMV, that was an important part. Going away to college, that was a major, important part. Meaning other hip hop heads and actively seeking that and knowing.
Speaker 2:I went to B-Boy Summit in 99 with my home girl who lived down in LA and she was a hip hop head too. I met her in Croatia the year before we went to B-Boy Summit and saw like some of the dopest, like breaking, popping, locking battles right, and I'm being exposed to super underground LA hip hop culture and graph culture and like boutique clothing labels and simultaneous like just like living it, breathing it, and then taking the New York and bringing it to California and you know whatever. So there's all these different moments that it's hard to say.
Speaker 2:You know, it's kind of multiple streams of input, you know that all but they're all important stages in the development, and I think listening to oldies as a nine year old and opening my world up to music that my parents weren't exposing me to as well was important too, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel the same way, man, like when, when moms and you know the guests have heard me say this, you know the internets have heard me say this a thousand times. But you know moms playing, you know the vinyl records, man, I'm seeing her take them out the cases, you know, place it inside of the, because we had the cover we had to lift up. You know what I mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you better, you better close the top. You don't close the top.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you better protect that vinyl.
Speaker 1:Protect the vinyl Exactly. So we listen, I know exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Listen to all of that. And then you know, listen into the, you know Patty LaBelle's and the Smokey Robinsons and you know all that. And then just going up and down the street and people were playing their music like loud and there was no, like hey, you better turn that down. Like there's a noise ordinance, another you know it wasn't under that shit.
Speaker 2:Like it was play your music.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was in Jersey man, camden man, so yeah, Okay, yeah. Right over there, right over to Ben Franklin bridge from Philly man, so um, or the wall Whitman, or the Takoli by Mara, yeah, yeah so yeah we, we all over man.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I think that was super interesting, I think that was super influential. Um, that's, that's another reason why I asked that too. Um, let me, let me ask you this question the, the, the value of that music. Right, cause I heard you say, um, which your pops value in the music, value in the records. Um, do you feel the same way about the music that you hear now, like you know, the music that you buy, that you purchase? Do you feel, do you place a sense of value in that music?
Speaker 2:I think, because we're so overwhelmed with choices and you know, things that we can buy and consume, because there's so much more being produced, it can make it potentially less like, less valuable. I don't want to say less sustainable, but you listen to something unless you really like it, perhaps less than you did back in the day, and you're less invested in it. That being the case, like you know, I was bumping like Richie Cunning, who I think was one of my favorite current MCs and he also makes all his own beats. He's one of my favorite producers too, from San Francisco. He put out a record called big deal. That was amazing. Now I was bumping for several months. I got the t-shirt I was wearing the t-shirt the other day and and I choose actively to support independent artists local and otherwise independent artists who are in my scene, in our scene or whatever I still buy vinyl with the intent of DJing it and collecting it and getting the free digital download, and I stream and I also like it's because I make my own music and I'm involved in a community and I see that I also share it actively. But I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't think that I or many other people listen to music in the same way that we did before Spotify before, how accessible it is. It was so much more valuable. I used to listen to mixes over and over. I used to like, even even in the early digital age, like I had a KALX crazy like underground hip hop breakbeat mix that I used to listen to. That was like a 56 KMP3 or you know, 82 KMP3, which is super lo-fi again and again with like this dope, like far side mashup and crazy like and I knew it by heart and I didn't care that it was lo-fi and I was listening to it again and again Because like the value of how it was done. But nowadays, even if something's really well done unless I have it at the top of my like songs or I'm really intentionally thinking about it or whatever you can get lost or lose those songs because we have so much constant music coming out and social media were flooded with so much content.
Speaker 2:So I think it's changed it. But I do still buy vinyl, I buy tapes, artists that I like and then I want to support and I play certain songs or beats on repeat again and again and again and again, and I'll listen to beat tapes. Or I'll listen to beats like this dude from Poland. I would listen to his beats, his MPC 2000 or 2000 XL S950 beats. I ended up meeting him because I went to Poland with the US State Department doing this hip hop diplomacy thing I did last year. I went to his city and I invited him into my beatmaking academy that I helped run for like a week in the city and it was incredible that I got to meet this guy whose beats I would listen to, study and literally emulate Like low hey, what's up? Low-end theory beats. Shout out to low-end theory and daughters.
Speaker 2:I hope you're learning about low-end theory.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she'd be riding with daddy, so she'd be listening.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she's getting exposed. Oh yeah, you remember when I used to ride with dad in the start?
Speaker 1:You play all those damn beat tapes, dad, you're gonna remember it Great.
Speaker 2:Let's do something else.
Speaker 1:Hey, can I ask her?
Speaker 2:do you like listening to the music that your dad plays, or would you put on different stuff?
Speaker 1:He said do you like listening to music your dad plays or do you like listening to different stuff? Listening to music your dad plays. Listening to music I play Nice.
Speaker 2:Tell her, dad's got good taste in it.
Speaker 1:He said I got good taste, you agree? That's what's up.
Speaker 2:That's fine. Does she make beats too?
Speaker 1:She'd be trying. She'd be trying, right, she has an iPad where she has Garage Band in it and I'm about to download Koala. She can start with that. And then I have a pad controller. So I have a pad controller that she can touch physical touch and everything like that but he'd be into different stuff. When she get an itch she'll go in and be like, hey, I want to make music, type of thing.
Speaker 2:That's fire.
Speaker 1:Lately she ain't been making no music here. It's gotta come from the heart, she might make some beats over the Christmas Okay.
Speaker 2:Christmas.
Speaker 1:V-tape. Ask Mommy for some jelly beans. You don't know that. You said it, you gave me them. I said yes. But now I asked Mommy, tell her. Daddy said yes, I'm doing an interview. Man, come on, can I just grab a bowl and put them in a bowl? No, go, ask Mommy for it.
Speaker 2:Ask for jelly beans and enjoy them. Why do you, ask Mom?
Speaker 1:You try to get me in trouble. Yeah, I'm a sucker. I'm a sucker, I go ahead.
Speaker 2:That's a good dad. She be hit me with the eyes.
Speaker 1:I'm like I know, but yeah, okay, sorry about that man, but um, um, um man, I lost the. I lost my next question, but I'm going to be too. Yeah, but okay.
Speaker 1:I'm going to be too, yeah, but okay, all right. So here's, here's my segue to my next question, which is um, with your wealth of, you know, music learning and music creation and um, event curating and things like that, man, so, and we have some mutants, you know, I mean some beat mutants that are like on their own journey, and music creation, um, yeah, yeah, I think that would be something that you would recommend that they either watch, listen to or read. And then, I think cryptic one said uh, he said something else he had, he added a fourth one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he added a fourth one.
Speaker 2:I haven't seen the interview, I'm just guessing he said Dilla time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he said. He said uh, read, watch, listen to, um, uh, man, I can't remember it right now, but hey, yeah, any three of those, like what would you recommend that they? They listen to, listen to, read or watch?
Speaker 2:Um, I would say there's several films about beat making and sampling that I think are really essential, kind of classic. Uh, there's one called sample this which is about um, it's about Apache and birth a hip hop, but it's also about sampling and um, I just it's not too long, it's great we show the kids when we teach it. Today's feature sound as a way for them to understand sampling and the birth of hip hop where it came from, the Bronx, the framework, uh, the context Also, if you haven't seen the movie scratch by Doug Prey is classic, it's amazing, it's super dope, um and uh, that will let you know about, like future primitive and a lot of the San Francisco Bay area, turntables and stuff I was talking about in LA and New York as well. You know the X men became executioners, um, also copyright criminals. About sampling and I mean again, it's older but it's still similar kind of interesting issues and it is about beat making, um, and turntable is in hip hop. Um, hip hop evolution, obviously, at the different sub genres of hip hop and the kind of chronology of hip hop and different sub genres, regional styles, uh, things around the country and around the world. Uh, I would also say like on the today's feature sound YouTube channel. We have 112 episodes of the global beat cipher with some of the dopest sample flip beat battles you've ever seen. We were doing it live, starting in COVID before anyone else was doing the sample flip. Uh, you know beat ciphers like we started it and you know it and kept going for 110, 109 weeks straight. We have 112 episodes total. We got some of the best beat makers in the world flipping samples, going head to head, flipping the same samples, multi round beat battles.
Speaker 2:Also on my YouTube channel, the Philip Drummond YouTube channel, there's a lot of old school beat battles footage that I put on and beat ciphers and beat showcases that I put up. I started a monthly beat battle that I did for 13 years straight, starting in 2006, the month after donuts and came out and after Dilla past. We did a beat battle starting then and did a monthly in San Francisco and Oakland, but mostly in San Francisco for 13 years and I did. I've been doing monthly essentially doing monthly beat battles, beat showcases and beat ciphers since 2006. And there's a lot of footage on the today's features sound I would say mainly YouTube, but that we also have on the SoundCloud. Today's feature sound SoundCloud is SoundCloudcom slash, today's feature sound and today's feature soundbandcampcom. We have the beat tapes from those. Now there's footage that there's only two, three, maybe four clips released from this.
Speaker 2:But back in 2013 or 10, trying to remember lush one and I did a two day event. He did the rap battles but I did two days of beat battles and we're talking one on one three round sample flip beat battles DBA C versus poetic in four rounds, with lithium by Nirvana being the the bonus you know over time that I knew was going to happen. Dba C versus Jeffrey, and Jeffrey is the one who, like exposed soldier boy using the, the garage band. You know stock samples for crank, that or whatever the hit was. So great beat maker, great dude. I had them. We also did. One thing I asked to do was car stereo beat battles, right, so we did it outside, through people's car stereos. So I have like DBA C versus Jeffrey. I have some other ones Nestle, who's known as a as to be one of the best battle rappers in the Southeast and, I think, around in general, is also equally talented at making beats and producing and making music Battle.
Speaker 2:Chase Moore and if you, if you know, you know the fresh coast scene or lush one or face more, is an incredibly talented beat maker, also very talented MC, who used to battle too, but like Chase Moore versus Nestle that that footage is on the internet Solo eternity versus my boy, campbell. Campbell now, you know, produces for Doja cat and has I don't know 53 million or billions, whatever it is streams like on his Spotify. That's a me who is also battle DBA C and the iron chef sample for beat battle we did with Lewis Den based out of I think they're out of Birmingham, england. We shared the samples right. We did a kind of collaborative sample flip beat beat battle back in 2006 or 2007. That footage is up with DBA C and Campbell and other producers. Checks max Watch the Red Bull beat battles from back in the day. That shit was fire.
Speaker 2:I was in a couple of them. I never made it past the first round but you know that was in the hyphy days when boom bap, I think, was not going to advance you and whatever man I got to meet, vitamin D I helped you know vitamin D and Jake one for three years in a row to kind of you know. Come up with a roster of people who participated in the Bay Area beat battles. My little homie, campbell, won three years in a row and beat Marco Polo in the finals of the nationals and took second place, like there's, and there's so many talented beat makers in that that I discovered and in the beat battles I've done over the years we had DJ Dahi was in our beat battles in San Francisco who works with Khalil and Dre and all of them down in down in LA incredibly nice guy. You know DBA obviously used to take the bus up from LA and make beats on the 404 on the bus and come win the battles. It was crazy. There's beat tapes on our bank that you can download, including that LA. We did LA versus the Bay. That DBA poetic that was 27 one on one sample for beat battles over two days. Trucks who produce his breakout with 50 cent is a big name in production battle, his doppelganger and you know I have tracks on there on the on the free beat tape, the LA versus the Bay beat tape.
Speaker 2:So yeah, there's a lot there that I would point to in terms of on the today's feature sound social media channels and bank camp and SoundCloud on my YouTube. I think just watching beat battles beat ciphers from around the globe is really inspiring and there's a lot of content on Instagram that I think is really dope. And we stream. We do live streams of all our beat ciphers on Instagram For today's feature, sound and beat cipher. Oh, okay, like the Oakland based beat ciphers that we did some down in LA recently, beat cipher hashtag, beat cipher SP with organic beat sessions, maddie J the home is down there and wherever I go in the world I tried to do beat ciphers and beat battles.
Speaker 2:So I've done beat ciphers and beat battles on six continents. I got a plan for how to get down to Antarctica and try to do a Antarctic beat battle, beat cipher, through the Chilean national research team. So look for that in 2026 or 27. That's bucket list. Well, I've done.
Speaker 2:I've done beat battles on all seven continents and you know there's there's a lot of stuff on the Instagram is what I'm saying and other resource. I mean there's so much out there like cryptic one, crypt uno is amazing. Toru has a producer head podcast fire and has cryptic was on there recently. You know Toru is doing great stuff. Medic the home in New York, who's another you know, tfs kind of family member and volunteers and teachers with us. I think he still has it or had a music production podcast. That was super dope.
Speaker 2:There's. There's so much out there in terms of resources and, yeah, I've got whatever is part of the beat scene. Flip a beat Club is always doing stuff all over the country doing amazing beat ciphers and beat showcases and they do live streams. I think their talent is deep shout out, acclimated assassin that runs the Austin chapter of that and then other other beat platforms. That was the other thing we try to do with global beat ciphers always have on different platforms of beat ciphers and beat beat platforms. So if you go back and watch those episodes, there's got in depth interviews with Doug infinite about Chicago under an hip hop about you know no ID and Kanye back in the day like being 13 and in Doug studio in Chicago with his ASR 10, you know, sitting in the corner. There's a lot of history there and a lot of underground nerdy details, buck wild talking about DTC. So all of that and more. There's just you know so much, so much great stuff out there nowadays.
Speaker 1:Oh, oh. I got a plan to ask you about what's that book, what's the book that you?
Speaker 2:know right there, music, music conclusion for healing in schools and beyond. So I have I think this is my first book chapter, maybe second book chapter with my collaborators Dr Alexander crook. Dr Rafael Travis was one of the publishers of this. I was the guy you met at Texas State who started the create lab. There has been an essential part of our publishing peer reviewed journal articles, scientific articles on the impact of therapeutic beat making.
Speaker 2:Therapeutic beat making is my like life's work, using beat making as a therapeutic and educational intervention modality. That's what we do at today's feature sound, my nonprofit. We work in elementary, middle and high schools, juvenile detention settings, community settings and the beat ciphers that we do in the community like that you're at, I believe, our therapeutic and useful and pro social for adults. We talk about everything that we do at today's feature sound. We even have this is the first time we've actually published in an academic journal or book article the beat tape covers, because that's a big part of what we do with kids is help them. This is like a beat tape cover, right, this is I don't know if you can see it, but and we have that that all the kids get to design, conceptualize their own covers and so we published that because that's an important part of the therapeutic process that kids actually be able to make like really official, like dope beat tapes that sound good, that have dope custom artwork they designed we go through.
Speaker 2:The chapter is about what's called it's. It's dope, it's called global inclusion and healing through therapeutic beat making and it says this chapter offers a narrative journey through the mission of one hip hop nonprofit today's feature sound to offer opportunities for individual and community healing through arts and culture. Unique to this journey is how different levels of community have been integrated into a cohesive vision to foster a healthy, connected global society. So we're talking about all the workshops that we do across the world with kids, with adults beat making workshops, beat ciphers, the global beat cipher, which was the you know the online thing, and we also have done events in life to gather community members. We had DJ docile flew from Chile to New York City for a three day event that we did to gather everyone to. It was called together for the first time three day event, new York City, getting all the homies together from all over the country in New York. We did that in Cali. People flew from all over the United States and internationally to San Francisco and Oakland.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I would encourage you to grab a copy of this. There's a coupon code for it that I'll see if I can, I can dig up, but it's 30% off. But it's a really dope book that looks at hip hop and electronic music and so called urban music and how it's been used for healing, education, inclusion, therapeutic, educational, personal. You know applications and uses across the globe. And yeah, I would also say Dr Rafael Travis is seminal book and I'm biased because today's which is mentioned in it.
Speaker 2:But the healing power of hip hop. If you want to understand in a really nuanced, explicit way how hip hop is educational, how it's therapeutic, how it's empowering, it goes from no preventative stuff all the way into working with people who've exposed, exposed to trauma or, you know, need you know, therapy or whatever in a multitude of different ways of therapeutic beat making, hip hop therapy. It's an incredible book. I think any hip hop head should read that.
Speaker 2:The healing power of hip hop by Dr Rafael Travis absolutely worth. It explains everything in detail and it gives a lot of arguments, especially to like the arguments that people make about hip hop being like negative or, you know, sex is objectifying, women being money centric, all these kind of like you know, I think, very one dimensional and not very thoughtful arguments that miss kind of the point of hip hop and and the larger kind of conversations he addresses that to in a really smart and detailed way. It's just is an incredible book. The healing power hip hop so caught. That beat tips manual is another classic one. Dilla time, obviously, yeah, and man, there's, there's so much, there's so much out there, there's so many resources.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot. Where can? Where can? The Internet? Well, and I'm gonna get the link for this too. So when I put it in the description to show like a good portion of everything that you know filthy is talking about me and Dr filthy is talking about, I'm gonna put it in the description. So I gotta do is click the link, boom and it take you right to it. Whether it's in podcast form or it's on YouTube, you'll still be able to see what he's talking about. Support what he's talking about right, because that that book, because I was, I was noticing that the whole show. So I was like, you know, I can't wait to get to this.
Speaker 2:This one yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so.
Speaker 2:I live on the push.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on the push man. So, um, my next question, because I gotta talk to you about your music, right? You know you do a lot with today's future sound. You do a lot with the global beat cypher, which is bringing a whole bunch of like kids, is bringing adults together. I mean so community is what I see you as, like your community minded person. You know, I mean so.
Speaker 1:Yeah your music. You've been putting out, you've been creating music for a while, you've been putting out music for a while, but then you recently did something that I think only one other person has been a guest on this show Um has done, which is one beat a day for 365 days. Right, and you completed that challenge. So can we start off like how, why did you even decide to do a that challenge and what was the emotional? Um, they're like total roller coaster that you went through trying to complete the challenge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a good, good way to phrase it. I'm on day like 389 or 390 now. But, um, the person who really inspired me to do that there's two people, but the Bain one is DJ prominent, who's a really good friend of mine, who did the 365 a few years ago and is one of my best friends and you just talk for hours about plugins on the phone and you know stuff like that. Um, and seeing hit and hearing about his inspired me. But it started with a 30 day challenge in Australia, not this past August, but the August before, and I decided I was going to do a 30 day challenge. And also the other person I know who did it is the homie in Wales oh God, his names escape me Bryn Morgan, who's really amazing beat maker to play his instruments. Met in England. We did a beat cypher. So those guys inspired me.
Speaker 2:But I figured I would start with a 30 day one and I completed 30 days and said, well, I'm gonna go for 100. And then I said, well, 100, I'm gonna go for 365, like I might as well. This is keeping me accountable, it's leading to a lot of collaborations, it's making me more prolific than ever. It's akin to what I was doing with the global beat cypher, where I would make you know 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 beats a week for each cypher, each week. It was kind of continuing that flow which led to some of the best output and increase in sample flipping capacity and ability.
Speaker 2:But, man, it was so hard. It was so difficult, I sacrificed so much sleep and time and it really affected a lot of other parts of my life. But I'm proud that I did it and it was a big achievement. But it's brutal when you're doing it for social media, for Instagram, and I posted on my YouTube channel and my Facebook as well and while I had TikTok, I was posting it there as well, cause, like making a video for each beat is like twice to eight times as much work.
Speaker 2:I would stay up after I made my beat, like hours and hours editing the video, but making the video for Instagram. So I learned a lot about editing video shooting video, you know, in the process and making beats, collaborating with people, using my plugins, using drum sounds, doing you know that I maybe lived on my hard drive I didn't use before, tapping into different techniques, learning more about music technique and music theory. So pushing my snare drums early instead of instead of late, to get that Dilla feel I was always a late snare drum guy if I was going to swing it, you know. But I did that for the first time, doing stuff I normally wouldn't do, using plugins I wouldn't use and putting all the damn plugins to use, you know, and it was.
Speaker 2:It's like working out, you know if you do your pushups every day or you work out every day, you do your stretches, you fall into a habit of being that and it can feel like you're missing something or it doesn't feel right if you haven't done it. And that was a good brain exercise and body exercise and, you know, intellectual, musical exercise and it led to doing a lot of cool stuff that I wouldn't have done otherwise and having a routine. And you know, look, my dad passed fewer, several months ago now, but like I even, I even did it through his passing, through the time that he was sick, you know, in the hospital with cancer and and after, and I think that was an important part of maintaining a routine and a kind of a momentum and inertia and a structure for myself as a beat maker and also to demonstrate like I beat making, nonprofit, therapeutic beat making. I'm a practitioner of hip hop and a beat making and I really want to be about it and I'm not just a psychologist, just an executive director, like I live, what I believe in and what I, what I talk about. So that's with the beat ciphers to, and I'm really, really about it and I really want to be able to flex and be skilled and when I teach. I want to come from a place of skill and knowledge and still and learn as well and be an ongoing. You know, being a student, so I think it was all those things and wanting to have a better, a better output. I still need to put out a beat tape. Three years later, you know I'm about to put out a beat tape.
Speaker 2:So I have a project with DJ ambush aka, and Bada is a really dope DJ beat maker, mc I know, also super humble dude, and we went to Australia together back in 2019 and he came on tour with me and we did shows together and we hung out, we kicked it and you know he was. That was when the first iteration of Serato studio came out. He made it one of the beat that he produced on that on our record, which is it's called Elinger is our group he made in the living room of my homies place in Sydney while I was making another beat. That would become the first track that we did together. But that's a rap album, right, but, and it's got crazy collaborations on beats like with Vo or Voo, however you want to call him and a lot of other really talented beat makers, but the record we're putting out leading into that. That's kind of like the prequel is an instrumental record from Elinger that's curated by him. I made all the beats on it but he's chosen it and curated and ordered it and so that's like the Elinger beat tape. So I'm about to drop that.
Speaker 2:And then I got a rap record, you know the, the Elinger album that he wraps on and did this, all the cuts on and we have some crazy collaborations. And then, you know, I got other stuff coming out, like I got a record with Defi or Defi, who's a really amazing MC from from Santa Fe and not well around he lives in Santa Fe now, but from New Mexico. That's one of my other best produced records I've ever made. I got but I'm sitting on these beat tapes but all these things especially the record with Defi and the beat tape came and the other record a lot of them came out of the, both the global beat cypher that I did with the years and the 365 challenge, and now I can share these beats leading to a lot of other projects, and so it's being able to use these beats that I've made, especially the better ones, for projects and maybe for beat tapes, and it really I think it helped me and it's also helped me to lead into putting out my music more.
Speaker 2:So I've collaborated with, like best Paul and I.
Speaker 2:He's another homie from the global beat cypher, from the TFS community are you to drop to a single this morning, a low five boom bap single called next to nothing, and I've been putting out records with him, singles with him on, you know, hit here or myself solo, on a monthly basis, most of which have come from the 365, and some of those are collaborate with collaborative beats, collaborations.
Speaker 2:Some of them are just solo beats. That I did. But that's also led to, I think, as an artist, being able to put out my work and I, you know you're putting it out when you're putting on on Instagram too, but it's not the same as putting it on officially on streaming platforms, like whether Spotify or Apple music, or releasing it on on band camp and that kind of stuff. So it's that's also been an outcome as well. As you know increased skill sets, knowing more about music and the accomplishment of it, which is really dope, and I feel like that also kind of gets your name out and people kind of you know you can get some props for it too, you know first of all, I know your pops would be proud, man.
Speaker 1:I know he is proud of you, man, for your words and what he's doing. Man, and we hear. Man, we send our condolences to you and your family. I don't know how you push through. I don't know how I was seeing you a few weeks ago, you know, still doing your work, still doing what you're going to do, man, like what I would have had to take a step back and just you know me, just take a little bit of a break, but you push through, man. How did you like, where did that come from? How did you do that?
Speaker 2:again, I think the structure of having that as an outlet, as a therapeutic outlet, as an outlet to express myself, was really important during his sickness. I think having work and instead of just getting stuck in, you know, feeling overwhelmed or whatever, can be really helpful. And then you look, I mean I think there's also grieving, is a process, right, and sometimes I can get really stuck in work, or you know, the 365, or making beats like and that may even take away from, like you know, the grieving that I need to do so, as I think it's a balance between using it as a therapeutic tool and using it as a way to structure my life and also, you know to, to yet to distract me. I think so. It's. It's it's multi-dimensional, it's complex, but I think it helped. It helped like I made a song called I don't know why, and I literally sang on it because I felt like it and I felt like I had to sing it, I had to just like speak it. You know, on a beat that I made, I sang on the beat and it was about I don't know, I don't know why, I don't know why my dad got sick, I don't know why he had to get sick and to die. But that was me, from, you know, my heart, my soul, my body, my, my pain, elaborating that for myself and for anyone else who was listening and understood it or whatever and I think that's a way that we communicate and share that process and move through it and that's why I'm a really big advocate for therapeutic beat making what we do it today's future sound and and I believe strongly in it I've seen how it works for me. I've seen it works for other people.
Speaker 2:I think making beats can be a beautiful, constructive outlet. It can be like anything, like you could, you can also be. It can have its negative impact to and taking away from, you know, adult responsibilities, and it definitely interfered with my sleep, you know, and has interfered, you know, probably interrupted with my sleep and stuff, but it's also, I think, overall been really positive. So I think that was that was something. And doing the the T beats Argentina project, where we went down to Argentina in the summer, was also a good thing. Like after my just, you know, a few weeks after my dad passed, I went down there didn't mean I wasn't suffering it, and I think it was a good thing to have a purpose and a mission and I think this kind of thing gives me structure and a mission, aside from and in addition to work related to it, but separate from it.
Speaker 2:In my own practice of making music for myself as an artist and I think the 365 both the global beats, I for doing the weekly flips for three years and then also even more so the 365 was me stepping into being an artist, saying you know what, I'm not just going to put my R side for my nonprofit, running the nonprofit, running today's future sound. I'm going to engage in it and treat it with the proper respect and respect myself as an artist and put my art out there and release it. I don't want to sit on a hard drive or whatever. I think that's important part of you know, related to the nonprofit, but separate from it as well man, super, super strong, brah brah, super strong man.
Speaker 1:And there's, there's been, a few other guys that have gone through similar losses as well, man, and I asked them you know how they persevere to do that and and once again, internet's man, there's no time table for healing. You know, and process these emotions. You know, because you know some people will be like I already happened, get over it type of thing. But that's not human beings, like that's not how it are, man. Especially if they said something to you, you're gonna, you're gonna notice that they're missing your body's gonna know your subconscious, your mind is going to everything is going to know man. So process the emotions safely and hopefully have a support system, a good support system that can rally around you and during those times because you know, I mean, I'm still, I'm still in denial.
Speaker 2:A lot of people are I spoke to, who had similar losses, have said man, it takes six months a year to really like to like I was in denial. I'm still in denial, no, and and like I find myself like I'll want to share something with my dad, you know, by send me a text, or share something I've done, or music or whatever, or just something funny. I'll be, oh fuck, he's dead. Like Dad, like that, you know, I'll get. I'll get like the, the metaphorical gut punch every now and then, um, or people will say something, or I'll remember something. So I think it's, it's a process. I think it's also about stepping into it, which I need to do more of. Um, cause I can definitely, you know, stay mentally busy doing, doing, doing, doing and then you know, but I, you know, it's a journey.
Speaker 2:I'm in my own therapy. I've been in my own therapy for 20 years, maybe 21 year, I try to remember 20 years now, as of 2024. It's been one of the most useful things I've ever done in my life, uh, as a therapist myself, as a person, as you know, whatever you know, we all got our baggage. I think that's useful. I don't just think that therapeutic beat making is going to do it for me. Um, but, yeah, having a support system, but yeah, man beats has been so important for me and that's why I love to share it with other folks. That's why, you know, I wish I had this when I was a kid is that's our slogan, cause, that's what we wish, that's what I wished. I'm really passionate about sharing that with other folks. Um, and it's it's. You know, it's what I, what I need to to make, to make life even more meaningful and fun.
Speaker 1:Speaking of speaking of that, and these are my, like last four or five questions, because I think you've got things to do, but, um, and I thank you for your time, you know internet, right now, with talking to a field, okay, uh, dr Dan, um, ellie again, um, who's doing today's future sound? Uh, nonprofit, but then also global beat cypher, you know. So I want to talk to you about profession, which is, um, uh, not psychotherapy, but uh, therapy, right. So, okay, as somebody that's doing therapy themselves has been doing it for years we don't talk enough as a beat making community, as a music community, we don't talk enough about it. It just started coming up in, you know, the rappers where, if our top MCs were starting to talk about it, right, with GZ, with Nas, with Kendrick who else Kendrick, yeah, he made a whole album.
Speaker 2:And the homie from Chicago. What's the name? Yeah, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 1:Where's the Five Nights? Butch started talking about Charlemagne, right? So I mean as a community, that's you know living life, you gotta live life, you gotta you know life, responsibilities. But then also you've got the other end of the spectrum, which is you're doing, you know, you're creating, whether it be art, whether it be music, whether it be writing books, read books, and you know all that type of stuff. How important is therapy to human society? What you say, that's a very general, broad question.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I mean, look, I wish that everyone had a therapist. If they're willing to go, you have to go on your own terms and be ready to go. But I think it's so useful and the reason that having a therapist and being in your own therapy is different from talking to friends, your partner, your siblings, whomever is because it's designated a completely different relationship with a different dynamic. This is someone whose job it is to listen to you, who listens closely and is professionally trained to help you understand yourself and learn about yourself. For an hour every week Most spouses, partners, if you're lucky you can listen for five to 15 minutes without phasing out maybe, maybe more, but then they take on some of your toxicity and you can't be completely honest with them. You can't say whatever you want in total confidence, right? The dynamic is completely different when you know it's totally confident and your job is not to please that person, not to Like. You can be totally honest. You can be honest about your faults, your shortcomings, your wishes, your fantasies, your greatest fears in a way that I don't really think you can honestly do that or effectively do that in the same way that you can with anyone else in the world, even a best friend who knows you incredibly well. You can't really be totally honest about being greedy, being petty, being resentful and contentious, being proud of certain things that you're not supposed to or not allowed to or can't talk about with other people in a completely different way. That person is a professional, trained to help to understand the human mind and knows you, who doesn't have a secondary relationship that changes the dynamics of the relationship, and they're a trained professional.
Speaker 2:I, as a therapist, been going to my therapist 20 years. It's changed my life and it continues to change my life and I continue to work on myself and all my shortcomings and baggage and whatever, to try to be a more effective, honest, healthier person. And it's tough, it's a long-term thing, but I think it's worth it. It'll pay you back in every dimension of your life if you can engage in it, and I think that as men, we're taught that we're emotionally weak if we share our feelings and speak them and that we'll be criticized, shamed et cetera that we're not supposed to. If you hold that in as a man or as a person, you just end up acting it out in other destructive and self-destructive ways in your life in other ways, whether it be undermining yourself, not allowing yourself to succeed, taking it out on your kids, on your partner, on your friends, and bearing that resentment and toxicity. And you can take that into therapy, talk about it, project that onto your therapist, who then have to deal with it and who can get to know you in that capacity.
Speaker 2:So I think it's a profoundly different thing and it will have effects not only on you mentally, emotionally, but I think, the physical, because the mind-body connection is so closely tied together the stress level that we experience when we're experiencing something that's stressing us out, like the metaphors that we use for heartache when we break up with someone. We literally feel that in our heart and our body and there's the drama of that loss. And I think we need to process these losses and process and it's not to say you can't talk about good stuff in therapy too. I made sure that I had a therapist who had a sense of humor so that we could laugh at shit, and he's taught me to think about humility and being humble with myself, being able to laugh at myself and laugh at my own pettiness or whatever right, and then being able to step back and be like man. You're doing that again. You need to do that really. So that's my plug for therapy.
Speaker 2:And it may not be for everyone or for everyone right off the bat, but to have someone who will actually listen to you and if you're willing to learn about your, because it's like it's learning about yourself.
Speaker 2:Meditating is one thing. It can be incredibly useful and you can come to accept it in a non-judgmental way if you're doing a certain kind of like Buddhist or whatever meditation. But I think it's very different to be able to have your unconscious reflected back to you, and to be listened to is so underrated. To have reflected back to you what you're saying in a dedicated way with someone who's there professionally to do that is completely different from a partner or a friend and it is a profound experience that can change you Mentally, physically, spiritually, if you're into that. I just couldn't speak highly of it enough, and there's less and less stigma around it as more and more rappers, men, come out and step into that and say I'm in therapy and it helped me. Charlemagne will tell you straight up and tell everyone it helped them, and so I can't remember if it was like Little Dirk or that other rapper, it might have been Little Dirk.
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, from.
Speaker 2:Chicago, when LA was talking about it. So plug there. If you want to make better beats, get in therapy.
Speaker 1:Yo, here's a part A to that question, because there's going to be people listening to me. They're thinking about it. I just want you to talk about some prerequisites. We're searching for a therapist. What should we be looking for when we're searching for a therapist? So we can actually open up and learn about ourselves, and things like that.
Speaker 2:I have ambivalent feelings, very mixed feelings, about the online therapy and I do mind virtually. I started in person with my therapist, so I'm not saying that virtual therapy is bad or whatever, but I have some mixed feelings about some of the services that are being provided through some of the online therapy service providers. But ultimately, look, I'm not saying you couldn't get a good therapist that you like there. You totally could and it could be extremely helpful. I think it's better help or something like that. I'm just a little skeptical. But the most important thing and this goes along with understanding therapy, beat making and how it's affected the most important thing for good therapeutic, the number one predictor of positive therapeutic outcome across all therapies, all kinds of therapies, theoretical orientations, et cetera Is the relationship. You have to find someone that you can relate to, that you can have a relationship with, that you can trust building that rapport. So it may not be the first or second therapist that you come across. You might have to shop around for therapists, you might, and then look, there are going to be some people who maybe you're so ambivalent about doing therapy that they're going to make it impossible for any therapist to help them because they feel so conflicted about it and that's just an issue they're going to have to tackle themselves or with a therapist. But I think it's so important to find someone that you like, that you trust, that you feel comfortable with, that you have a relationship with, because everything else is based on that, and that's talking about the therapeutic beat making model, the development of the relationship through beat making. That, what we do with kids, that's the building of the relationship. There's something that's culturally responsive, something that's familiar. So if you're of a certain ethnicity, maybe you want a therapist from the same ethnic background who maybe has had a similar, not to say everyone from the same ethnicity has had the same experience, because they haven't right, Depending on if your first generation, second generation, whatever, or whatever right. It's not monolithic, but it can also be important and maybe to you it's important to have someone from the same religious background who can understand some of the quirks, the religious quirks or struggles you're dealing with, or similar ethnic background or similar socioeconomic, I don't know. So you might you interview therapists, you see who works for you. I mean, what is it? Little Dirk was talking about how he had a like an upper middle class white, young female therapist and that worked for him Because it didn't maybe make him as defensive or he felt he could be emotionally vulnerable with her. So maybe it doesn't have to be, but it's whoever you feel comfortable with, whoever you can relate to, who works for you.
Speaker 2:I got you know, I have this collaborative of hip hop therapists and trauma therapists who are super dope, and my home girl, brittany Williams. You should follow her online, I think it's BC Williams or BCLW Williams. She's on TikTok and on Instagram, super hip hop therapist and has a practice with all POC, with all folks of color, and she's someone that I would refer people to in a heartbeat. She's amazing and you know if you're in Philly and if you're a person of color in the black community there and you don't have a lot of money. There is one of the dopest trauma therapists and the dopest people. I know who's another friend and collaborator and colleague. It's called San Cofa Healing Clinic and her name is Jackie Williams and she is one of the dopest trauma therapists I've ever met and does incredible work, works in the local jail, has come with us to Chile to do therapeutic beatmaking down there. She's amazing. San Cofa Healing Clinic, philly amazing therapist and supervises really talented therapists, mostly black therapists and therapists of color, so I'm happy to give referrals and recommendations.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's really about that. It's about finding some of you trust, who you like, who you can relate to, and just trying to go in with an open mind and understanding that it's gonna be scary or anxiety-provoking, but the more you can make yourself vulnerable and be willing to explore that and not judge yourself but step back and understand that's just you and have self-compassion. Like having self-compassion is the essential part of healing from trauma and healing and growth. Being able to be and that kind of goes along with the humility I was talking about like that I talk about with my therapist and that he's talked about with me is being able to have a bit of humility and step outside yourself and kind of laugh at yourself and be like ah, damn, oh, elliot, come on now. We're like oh man, that again, okay, self-compassion, humility related to humility, humor, right, but also being open to working through things and understanding that we're gonna keep on repeating these self-destructive or undermining or negative patterns in all aspects of our lives if we don't address it, if we don't really come face to face with it enough.
Speaker 2:I got my own stuff too. I'm not a perfect person. I have relationships that need mending and healing and where I've screwed up and I'm trying to look at myself and trying to do better. And even your everyday interactions work, personal, social, your social circles like I know I can be better and I'm trying to be better and growing, and I think everyone else can, and I know hella people in today's Future Sound staff and former staff who were all about the same age, in our either late 30s or early 40s, and most of us are in therapy.
Speaker 2:The world's a crazy place.
Speaker 2:It can be a wonderful place, but it can be a crazy, unforgiving place, and therapy helps us to make sense of the world and ourselves and understand why we keep on doing that thing or why we get into situations where people keep on doing, maybe things to us. We allow that to happen, and how we can avoid that and how we can be more. I just think it's just gonna help you, in every realm of your life, be more successful and we can make excuses. I can't afford it and you can afford it. It's the best investment that you can make is in investing yourself is like a cliche that people say, and there's low sliding scale therapies that you can get at training universities, even online stuff, et cetera. I'm happy to help people look for resources and think about, so I would just strongly encourage everyone to do that and to look after yourselves and be open to learning about yourself, cause, like that's dope knowledge of self, knowledge of culture, knowledge of history as fifth element of hip hop knowledge. Knowledge of self, knowledge of culture, right.
Speaker 2:Don't talk about yourself where you come from. I'm an Eastern European upper middle class white Jew and that's part of my history. I got to accept whatever shame I carry with that as well and it's part of my identity and I've been able to step into that and integrate that more and own that. And I got to know my history and there's plenty of trauma in my family and I learned about it. The more I learned about that that trauma and that intergenerational trauma and I'm trying to do what I can to you know, relieve that and heal it and not perpetuate that in the world.
Speaker 1:All about breaking the cycles, man, and taking care of self. You know, I think the pandemic kind of spotlighted that for more about. You know, just taking care of self is the best you can do for others, Right? Because if you add 50% and everybody else is still trying to pull from you guys.
Speaker 1:It's only a little business before you break and then who knows what happens after that man. So thank you for talking about that man. That's definitely a major part of why I even started this podcast. It's just the different stories, but then there's also the lessons, the jewels that you've been dropping this whole time, that we've been talking about invaluable man, and they're going to live on forever and the aliens go here and there and be like damn damn, do I need to go to therapy?
Speaker 2:I hope so. I hope the aliens go to therapy. Look man, I'm Elliot and Elliot had ET right Phone home.
Speaker 1:Elliot yeah.
Speaker 2:ET was calling his people and calling his therapist. You know, with the big cell, yeah, man Yo.
Speaker 1:So part of this is why, I'm getting into our instrumental section of the episode, right, so you know, you got your music. You about to come up with the beat tape soon, hopefully, yeah, yeah, probably 2024. And then, because you're a busy man, and then we got to talk about this today's Future Sound team, which is I think it's 16-year-old, 16-year-old.
Speaker 2:It really varies from time to time. We got a lot of volunteers in a lot of different places in New York, in Texas, here in California, southern California, australia, latin America, south America, central America, so you know. But there's a core group of us who are active in the Bay Area teaching right now and other chapters get activated when I go to other places. And then there's other programs that we've launched, like we just launched a program with the Today's Future Sound workshop in Atlanta, georgia, at K-PACE Elementary and I brought in, you know, john Robinson, a little side from Science of Life, and his brother in visible hands, both incredible beat makers and hip hop educators. Especially John has been doing it with Jay Rawls from Loom Catalyst right, who's a doctor of education. Now we had Nestle there, a bunch of other people like really dope beat makers from Atlanta. But then, you know, go to New York and I work with Dr Mistolo from the Global Beat Scythe for Community and Today's Future Sound family Cryptic One has came and taught with us a couple of weekends ago in Brooklyn. So we've really, you know, we've got a lot of family but you got like really active people that you'll see like in our videos. Annual fundraiser video for Today's Future Sound, your annual fundraiser video, lacks the Monk who's teaching finger drumming in multiple different elementary, middle and high school classrooms in two different juvenile detention centers.
Speaker 2:Juvenile Hall is here in the Bay Area Doing incredible work as an amazing finger drummer, beat maker, engineer, great guy, great performer. You know you got like the Egon, egon Brain Parts from formerly of Bossasaurus, who's also teaching in the Juvenile Hall and our other programs, who's studying to become a therapist as well. And you know, like other amazing instructors, cosmic, who works in our elementary and middle school programs as well. You know we got a lot of really dope staff, like Best Hall is kind of like one of our tech people that supports us in terms of testing plugins that we get donated, showing us how to use it. Dj Prominent supports on that end too. So we got a lot of folks and a lot of volunteers, you know, and we're in the schools we're in the juvenile detention and community settings, doing therapeutic beat making, doing educational.
Speaker 2:You know beat making, hip hop, education, hip hop therapy. And you know, if people want to see that, they can go on our Instagram, they can go on our YouTube check out the year end annual fundraiser video. Yeah, and you know, check out the beat tapes on our Bandcamp the Todays Future Sound, bandcampcom, soundcloudcom Todays Future Sound. So you can peep that out and that's there it has a resource.
Speaker 1:So we want to say at the Racial Podcast, thank you to every single one of your team members that gives their time you know what I mean gives effort, gives energy to this program. Man, to the nonprofits and everything that they're doing. Man, because, man, they are all the real heroes. Man, they are all the real heroes, like I know, I get it. There's, you know, people doing some amazing physical feats and sports and entertainment and stuff like that. But this is what y'all are doing, is what we needed at man, like man. Man, we got to talk about, I got to talk about this, we got to talk about the fundraiser that's going on right now, man. So your fundraising, I think it started two days ago, was it two days ago?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it started on Giving Tuesday. We launch it each year on.
Speaker 2:Giving Tuesday even though it's getting like earlier and earlier and earlier that people are asking for money and doing these Cyber Monday, black Friday sales. But Giving Tuesday is the answer to like the rapid consumerism that we deal with. Engage in on Black Friday and Cyber Monday right, bye, bye, bye. And instead says, on Giving Tuesday, instead donate to a pro-social cause, to a nonprofit organization, to nonprofits that are doing something good for the world with, and instead of like just investing in more crap that we don't need or, you know, maybe, maybe we feel that we need don't actually need or whatever give money to a cause that has a positive impact on the world. So we launched our campaign, we dropped our video and if folks want to donate, they can go to today's future sound dot o r g or to the short link b I t, bit dot lee. Y'all know the short links bit dot lee. So it's bit dot lee slash and it's all capitals T F S, as in today's future sound T F S AF for annual fundraiser 24. So all caps t, bit dot lee slash, t F S, af, 24. Or just go to today's future sound dot o r g. If you go to the today's future sound Instagram profile or our Twitter profile at on Twitter it's at T F S underscore beats it's in the it's in you know the bio link. We can link it up. You go to our Instagram or our YouTube or our Facebook. You get the links and you can also watch the videos and see pictures of. You know what's going on and see video of of you know folks teaching, kids learning, our instructors teaching. We really do need the support. It's been a rough year, I know, for everyone, but we're we're definitely we need a lot of help on our fundraiser a bit behind and hoping to rally. So if y'all can make a tax deductible donation, even of just like 10 bucks right, even $10 you get a best of the global beat cypher compilation. But it's a mixed compilation. Dj new mixed the volume one last year that we gave us thank you gifts that we're giving, and volume two is going to be a thank you gift for the $10 level. We got T you know T shirts like this and hats for higher giving levels. It really makes a huge difference in us being able to sustain our work in elementary. We're going to teach in elementary school students beat making fourth and fifth graders even younger sometimes middle school students, high school students, kids in juvenile detention and foster systems. Imagine being a fourth grader and getting to make beats and having professional beat makers come in and make beats with you and being able to make your own beat tapes. Like it's a no brainer for me and I hope most beat makers can can understand that. And if y'all can donate, it really helps. If you even you know, even if you only donate 10 bucks or if you can't donate, you can't afford it. Share the video, like the video on all the different platforms. Comment on it. Share with one person that you think would like it. Share with someone that maybe you think could donate or believes in the mission, because you never know who's going to see it. You never know and that's really important and we're trying to spread our mission.
Speaker 2:We're also doing a beat cipher year and annual fundraiser event in person Sunday, december 17th, 11am to 5pm in Oakland, california, the Bay Area, at Lovely Day where we've been doing a lot of our beat cipher OAKs the Oakland beat ciphers. This is volume 21 beat cipher OAK, open ox. We always have an open ox. It'll be open ox at the beginning, maybe even one at the end. Beat sets by Telly McLean, who I believe has been a guest on this program. You know, looking for people like science, a bunch of other really dope beat makers. Let me check the lineup because there's just so many that like incredibly talented beat makers, and the open ox remains open for everyone. We always do that. It's really important that people have a place, a venue and an opportunity to play their beats for the audience. You know, for the cipher and hip hop, we got Bravo Domo.
Speaker 1:Who's Dope and Sacramento Team Machine. That's a Team Machine guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, incredible dancer too EC, who's Monzerock's cousin, who runs Flip a Beat Club, science will rend off the fifth, who is an incredible beat maker and performer and a monster beat battler. If you want to see some of the most entertaining beat battles you'll see in your life, go back and watch Team Canada with a shea and works versus my man, will Rand, off the fifth. And my homie, my little homie, mickey Breeze, who's an incredible turntablist and beat maker from Twin Cities, minnesota, us, versus Canada team beat battle. Anyway, not to digress, too much.
Speaker 1:But Will Rand, off the beat battle. I think I see no one.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I gotta go back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:Thanks to the Monk who I was talking about, one of the best finger drummers in California performing live finger drumming DJ01, spider Beats I'm sure Fifth Pee will show up who's incredible? Bobby Mack and AWOL if you know them, coddy Wampal Records those are the little homies. Hopefully they're coming out too. Hamza, who's another incredible beat maker and artist and rapper and singer Anyone who's in the Bay and you meet Beats come, come play your beats in the open. Ox, it's all about building community opportunity, a venue, a place for us to gather as beat makers. Yeah, and if you could donate, we appreciate it. We got some dope merch. We also got the prototype of the TFS 5 panel jockey cap. Here you can see this. It's mini, little TFS logos.
Speaker 2:We also got the Beats for Lunch gear. We got bucket hats, dad hats, snapbacks. We got I haven't shown anyone else this before, but this hasn't even been posted on the website but we got this kind of water resistant kind of coach jacket. You feel me with the TFS logo here. We also got other windbreakers with hoodies, camo windbreakers that are pretty sick. So we got a lot of really dope gear. We got hoodies and t-shirts. I'll show you one of the. This is one of our many bucket hats. We got custom hats coming, more different designs and Beats for Lunch. I'll show you all the.
Speaker 2:We got Beats for Lunch logo Ableton push, dream machine hoodies, which is what I'm wearing. I'm wearing the t-shirt right now, but we got hoodies, t-shirts of this. You can see it's a dream machine because it's got both. It's got. This is our OG logo had the turntable and the keys and the book and the beat machine, the PC kind of thing. So we got this in color with a bite out of it.
Speaker 2:Beats for Lunch our program at West Oakland Middle School. We've been running during lunchtime since 2012,. Right, which really was a jumping off point. So we got this and if you you know, if you make a big, big enough donation, you get that as part of your thank you gift. But you could also just buy the, buy the gear directly. You know we ship these all over the world. It supports a good cause. Windbreakers, hoodies, crewnecks, t-shirts got tons of one-of-a-kind hats. So I'm really excited about that. People can come check that out and support. Go to today's feature, soundbigcartelcom. You buy it there if you want to DM today's huge sound, or you can DM me, philip Jolman, if you want to cop some stuff. We're also selling limited edition other ground MF Doom figurines and some uh bootleg quasi moto joints too. It's pretty fresh. We also got some in blue as well, multiple different iterations of the MF Doom thing. So just some underground Chilean hip hop memorabilia super bootleg.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, Hold on, man, because you know you, you pick your mind. It's definitely because I believe in what y'all doing, man, so, um, I'm a DM, you about them two figurines right there, All right, and then uh, and then um, so okay, uh, internets, man. So you go to today's feature soundorg, right? Um, yep, we're going to see. I think it's eight different tiers that you can donate, right? So starts off with $10. You get them. You know, I mean a digital, um, GBC beat tape, global beat, cypher beat tape. Then it goes to 25, which get more stuff included um $50, $100, and then more stuff just keeps getting added to it. And then also, um, the big car, today's feature sound, that big cartel that I have that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, big cartelcom. That's where our digital storefront where we have, like you know, t-shirts and hats and stuff like that you can order through that. Um, for the the figurines, just hit me up directly. Um, we haven't really put that on the store but, uh, you know, buying them from some, some homies in Chile and reselling them. Uh, I've already sold a bunch in Australia and locally here. They're dope man.
Speaker 2:If you're, if you're a hip hop head, you know you gotta have your, gotta have your figurines, your beat machines. We got crazy limited edition sticker packs, handmade in Mexico, of these all these different like crazy mutant beat machines like a 303 with like slime in it and, like you know, a mosquito SP 1200. Like our, our sticker game is is dumb. We got some crazy, crazy beat making stickers for sale as well.
Speaker 2:But it all supports our therapeutic beat making groups that we do in elementary, middle and high schools, in juvenile detention and community settings and the free beat ciphers that we do, not only here in Oakland, nationally and internationally. Right, so, bringing it to your local community. We're able to do that with your support and we really do depend on community support and this year in annual fundraiser it's a tax deductible donation If you're in the United States. If you're not, we still really appreciate the support and you're supporting something really positive. We've been putting out free beat tapes for, like you know, 12 years right, and all the global beat cipher beat tapes are for free download. With you know, people like Shay works, boom Baptist, like you know, crazy, crazy names buck, wild, doug, infinite for all made beats that were on these global beat cipher videos and that are on these beat tapes Stolen drums.
Speaker 1:Man, I'm trying to do the math. If I had, there's like 17 times four, what's that? Oh no, there's like 400 and something. Beat tapes on today's feature sounds band camp, yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, 500 beat tapes yeah.
Speaker 1:Almost, yeah, almost 500 beat tapes like a yo y'all need to tap. I'm going to link everything in the description in the next, so don't even worry about it. The goal right now for today's feature sound is 20,000. And do I have that right?
Speaker 2:We're aiming for 20,000. Yep, we need your help to push the needle on that. So remember, anything helps. $10 helps, you know. Do $5, do $5, whatever, do five more and get the beat tape. It's fire. And yeah, you know, any anything at all helps. If you can't donate, share like, pass it along, spread the message, spread the love. Our hashtag and our slogan for this campaign is keep kids making beats.
Speaker 1:I like that, yo, I like that, yo, I like that, yo. So here's what the, the retro podcast, is going to do, man, I'm going to keep that posted on the podcast or the IG stories. I'm going to keep that posted all month in December. Yo, that's my pledge to you, that's my place to you. Man, every day is going to be up there with that link to donate to today's Future Sound Giving Tuesday, like the, the fund raiser for 2023, man, so, all month, that's what you're going to see. So, anytime you all click on the retro podcast, yeah, it's going to be. You know things about future guests and you know the other shows we have coming up with stuff like that. But this is a little bit bigger impact, man, and we all should get behind this and other programs that are going on around in the United States and around the world too. Man, he's talking Chile, australia, america, spain I don't know if you've been to Spain yet Tokyo.
Speaker 2:We're working on it. We're working on the Japan tour with the homies from Australia Shout out the chop and my man, debo, who we do the annual beat battle fundraiser with in Sydney. Every usually every July, we do a fundraiser beat battle, then we do a goodbye party and beat cipher for me it's, it's my going away party, philty's going away party. So we did that in September. It was amazing and we're we're, we're planning a Japanese tour with you know Australian beat makers. Hopefully some American beat makers maybe come on over with me and you know anyone else who's part of the crew or who wants to come along. Japan's on the list and I know, I know you know people there. We got folks there too. So, yeah, you're looking at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man Always, always skating in there, but in a good way though. Okay, so last two questions. It might be actually 2.5, but let me ask this question out of all the things that you can create, man, and all the things that you've done, why create music?
Speaker 2:So this comes back again to my therapeutic beat making model, explaining how and why music, but particularly beat making, is therapeutic. Right, when you make music, you're expressing. It's coming from inside you, right, and something that you do externally. But it's coming from within you, it's something that you're creating and generating, it's your unconscious being projected into the outside world. So you're expressing what's what's inside you and you're creating your own nonverbal musical narrative. That's the way I view beats and beat making. But the repetition of the beats and the drums and the repetition can also calm our nervous system and put up into light trance, like states. It calms us down. Repetitive beats, repetitive motions help us to calm down. That's why kids, who maybe are on the autistic or Asperger's spectrum, do that kind of hand flapping, self soothing behavior. That's why you you know if you have a baby, you rock it rhythmically, right, and you may sing to it, so we can soothe ourselves, communicate to ourselves, communicate to others, help to kind of calm ourselves down, create something and create something that exists outside of us. Right, that's tangible, right, and I think it reminds us of our existence, reminds us of who we are. It's a way that we share a piece of ourselves in the world, with others, a way that we communicate and join with others, and it's really, it's pretty profound thing, if you think about it, for someone to listen to a piece of music that you've made, to see you perform, and really connect with you and engage. It's an incredible way of connecting, it's a very connected way and, like we're all you know, I did a live stream about this this morning on my on my Instagram, on the Philip Drummond Instagram, explaining how and why, you know, beat making is therapeutic and, like us, joining in the same moment, syncing up, nodding our head or dancing, or just syncing to the same beat, is really unifying us in a pretty profound way, sometimes beyond what words can express.
Speaker 2:In the same way that making music, I think, can help us to express, maybe what we can't articulate with words, necessarily nonverbally. Our lived experience, our trauma is nonverbal, it's preverbal, it's, but we receive it into our brains, into our amygdala, which is our attachment system, before it gets to the part of our brain, our prefrontal cortex, that where we think and construct language. It goes through our amygdala and through our body right, and so, therefore, we can express things that we may not be able to otherwise express or process and process in a different way. And music soothes us. It helps us to express ourselves, helps us to join, it gives us a profound feeling of connection and I think it can be making music and give you purpose and help you to have something you know, help your identity.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like whatever your job is, whether it's connected to music or not, it can be an alternative way, alternative sense of identity. I don't give a shit about you know what job someone works or other stuff in their lives. If I know them as a beatmaker and I love their beats, I first and foremost connect to them as that and it's been like that for 20, 25 years. We're like so and so beats, like I receive you as an artist, I care about you, I care about you as an artist and that's important for us to have those communities and subcultures and those identities where we're received as that and we're not like you know Bob, who does you know construction or is a janitor or who's a psychologist or whatever. We all connect through beats and through a hip hop culture and that shared subculture.
Speaker 2:And that's why I think like communities like Flip a Beat Club or the Global Beat Cipher or Beat Cipher, oak or any of these other communities of beat makers and music and hip hop music, musicians and artists are so important and places where we're hopefully joining in positive ways and supporting each other and have an identity outside of that. So I think making music is incredibly important in that. I think it's important to build and construct things where we often destruct things, right. I think it's important to not just be a consumer, but to be a producer. I think it's also important to be a consumer as well, like as well as a producer, right, and I learn, we learn constantly by making music. I think there's so many different aspects to it. I could talk about it for hours, but those are some of my thoughts on it.
Speaker 1:I got you man Yo. How can the internet work? Can the internet find you? You know, any like social media lanes or websites or anything like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my website, I mean I'd say my link tree, is the best place to go. Link tree, link dot, it's like link dot or link tr, dot e or whatever it is. Link tree slash filthy drummed with a pH will take you to all my different kind of pages. I'm on SoundCloud as Philip Drummond with two L's P H I L L I P D R U M M O N D. I'm on Bandcamp same spelling, philip Drummond, dot. Bandcamp, dot com. Filthy beats dot com with a pH, only one L in that one. At Philip Drummond, two L's P H I L L I P D R U M M O N D. On Instagram, I think it's. I have a Facebook page profile as well under that. That's linked to that and you can also go to Facebook dot com. Slash filthy D beats. Youtube is Philip Drummond same spelling as before. Philip Drummond with two L's.
Speaker 2:Today's Future Sound dot org is our website at Today's Future Sound on Instagram. Today's Future Sound on YouTube. Tfs underscore beats. On Twitter I'm also on Philip the Philip Drummond handle on threads, the Instagram Twitter kind of spin off thing from Instagram. Yeah, just you know, today's Future Sound dot org. Good place to go.
Speaker 2:Our fundraiser is, you know the bit dot L, y, bit dot Lee slash TFS AF 24. Go check out. You know the video there. Make a donation, follow us on social media to know what's going on in terms of like events and such. And we live stream the beat cypher. So if you can't make it in person, on at Today's Future Sound on Instagram, our YouTube has a huge library of beat cypher broadcasts. We also have it. I think the Twitch ones uh, delete after a while, but they're archived on YouTube. They also were streaming to our Facebook. Dot com slash Today's Future Sound. Yeah, man, well, you know you'll find me where we're usually where today's future sound is at, and um, much love to Rex show podcast for having me where it's supported. Today's Future Sound. Therapeutic beat making. Hip hop therapy, hip hop education. Check out the year end annual fundraiser. Cops and fresh merch. Some beat makes merch. If you're that beat life and beat culture, cop the gear we got dope hats, t-shirts, stickers, windbreakers, hoodies um, you know all that good stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, can we, can we, um, can we talk about this net, this new single, real quick? Um, you got a single that's coming out. It's called next to nothing, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I dropped in 12,.
Speaker 2:Oh one a this morning.
Speaker 1:This morning yeah, yeah Best ball.
Speaker 2:Well, his a K is technically it's with Ray Normandy, which is one of best Paul's many uh, lo-fi, slash, boom back aliases Shout out to my guy best Paul. I put out several singles with him. Now lo-fi and boom back singles it's one of my favorite beats that I've made in a long while, Definitely for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, man, we're going to link that as well. It's going to be a crazy amount of links in this episode, man. So, into that, skip ready. Yo replay this over again, man. It's going to be holidays coming up, so yo listen. If y'all want to give give to today's future sound man, buy some merch. As you know, it's going to impact way more than just going to just buy something that's you know, like a pair of $300 shoes or something like that. You know what I mean. Like I don't know if everybody's spending like that, because our dollars ain't buying that much in these days, but, um, yeah, just consider donating to today's future sound man. Dr Elliot Gannon, aka filthy, filthy drumming Philip. Drumming man, I appreciate your time. If you got to say anything to the, to the mutants, to the all, to the internet's man, what would be one final thing that you would leave them with?
Speaker 2:I got one and a half things to say. Today's future sound has 112 free sample packs that have been crazily curated with some of the dopest samples of music from around the globe old music to sample that you can download for free at soundcloudcom. Slash today's future sound. Go download that and consider making a donation. But what would I say?
Speaker 2:I'd say make beats, not war. Be patient, kind, considerate, compassionate with yourself, keep making art, keep making music, collaborate. Just try to like, build community and build understanding and understand that you know if other people are mean to you or say some, you know hate or ass shit to you, that it's about them and them projecting their hate. Also, you know be open to questioning yourself and how your actions impact others. But I really hope that everyone gains as much joy and satisfaction from making beats as I do and sharing it with each other. Join your local community scene, keep on building. It's helically shaded, but the youth are our future and that's why you got to support today's future sound, because the children are the present, but they're also the future, the future of beats and hip hop. So you got to support.
Speaker 1:There it is. I'm going to cut that. I'm going to cut that. So you stop the recording and quit.
