Thursday, August 25, 2011

The Boom Bap (nashville) this Saturday nite @the 5 spot

Nashville here is a snippet of what you will get this saturday nite Diamond D producer/emcee/crate digger/dj live & direct  from the 5 spot 


How Diamond D helped define an era for hip-hop 

Diamond in the Rough

by SEAN L. MALONEY








"F--- what ya heard."
As a suburban teenager, covertly sneaking late-night, left-of-the-dial listening after my parents went to bed, I knew exactly what Ididn't hear: the F-bomb. But that didn't stop me from filling in the blanks. And what I was hearing was mind-blowing — a liquid bass line over crisp, bouncy drums and a hard-panned horn loop swinging from one side of my brain to the next. The voices were familiar. "Was that the dude from A Tribe Called Quest's 'Show Business'?" I asked myself. "That's definitely the dude from Brand Nubian," I told myself, proud of the knowledge I'd gleaned from college radio, my cool older cousin's CD collection and the rare chances I got to watch Yo! MTV Raps. "F--- what ya heard." That was a sentiment I could get behind. Sorta.
"You just heard Diamond and the Psychotic Neurotics," announced the DJ.
That was my first run-in with the work of legendary rapper/producer Diamond D, but far, far from the last. The Diamond and the Psychotic Neurotics album, Stunts, Blunts & Hip Hop, never made it to my small-town record store — the owner clung to the "rap is just a fad" philosophy until the store shuttered in the mid-'90s — but even the craggy old dodger behind the counter couldn't ignore his later work. From that first album, which is the jump-off for a billion-and-a-half hip-hop tropes that are still in use 20 years later, D went on to help create some of the most definitive albums of the '90s: The Fugees' Grammy-winning The Score, Pharcyde's Labcabincalifornia, Tha Alkaholiks' Coast II Coast.
But D's true and lasting impact doesn't come from the hits, Top 40 or otherwise. It comes from the work he did with the legendary Diggin in the Crates crew, a loose conglomeration of New York hip-hop heavyweights working in the early '90s. Diamond D and D.I.T.C. defined the art of sampling and the craft of lyricism for an entire generation, unearthing loops and spitting rhymes that still show up on mixtapes and pop hits to this day.
Between Lord Finesse, Showbiz & AG and Big L — arguably the greatest MC of all time, and Lord knows I've spent enough time arguing about it — you have rappers whose worst rhymes are better than the best shit you'll hear in 2011. (Side note: Can we please get Kanye a ghostwriter? Pretty please? It's for the good of all mankind.) And with producers like Diamond D and Buckwild behind the board, every track is pure, unadulterated funk, timeless even 20 years later, when the only thing that gives away their age is the fact that, nowadays, some of these samples would never get licensed for anything short of budget-busting fees.
OK, the facts that the songs aren't drenched in Euro-trance-style synths and that they use polysyllabic words makes it pretty clear that it's not contemporary. (No one is ever going to confuse D.I.T.C. with, I dunno, LMFAO.) The fact that the dynamic interplay between the samples and vocals is so spacious makes it pretty evident that it was recorded before some record exec decided that every element in a song needs to be at maximum volume to be listenable. (A decision that was probably made at the same meeting in which the industry decided that suing the shit out of its customers was a good idea. A bunch of geniuses up in those boardrooms, am I right?)
There's also a lack of shameless pop samples in the D.I.T.C. catalog, making it pretty clear that they were creating beats before everybody started riding Puffy's shiny-suit-covered dilznick. All right, so maybe "timeless" isn't the right word for the work that Diamond D and D.I.T.C. did back in the day, because frankly, it does sound exactly like a specific time in history. And why not give them credit for having some of the most distinctive music in an era when innovation was at an apex?
It was more about obscure flute samples than stock portfolios and sipping fancy wine — more about creating music with actual musical value than marketing your designer vodka. D.I.T.C.'s music, whether 20 years old or of a 21st century vintage — like Diamond D's bangin' 2008 albumThe Huge Hefner Chronicles — evokes an era in which anything was possible in hip-hop. It was before the suits took over, before it had all the life sucked out of it by corporate sponsorship and vapid club styles. Back when the party was more important than sitting in the VIP section, and back when hip-hop was the province of late-night, left-of-the dial listening.
Email music@nashvillescene.com.




BIO











Diamond D is a hip hop producer and MC from the Bronx, New York City, and one of the founding members of the legendary D.I.T.C. crew. He started out as a DJ forJazzy Jay back in the late 1980s and was at the same time perfecting his skills in beat making and turntablism, and together with rhyme partner Master Rob, he was one half of the group Ultimate Force. The group signed with Jazzy Jay's Strong City Records, and Diamond and Rob started recording their debut album, I'm Not Playin', in 1988 and released the 12-inch single with the same title, which spawned a buzz in the underground. The album was completed in 1990, but it got caught up in label politics, such as the shutdown of Strong City distributor Uni Records, and was shelved until 2007 when it was released through Traffic Entertainment. One of the last songs recorded for the album was a Diamond D solo song in which he actually picked up the mike for the first time. The song was called "The Best-Kept Secret." As Ultimate Force dissolved, record executives got their eyes on the Bronx phenomenon, which eventually resulted in the release of Diamond's debut album, Stunts, Blunts and Hip Hop (released under the moniker Diamond & the Psychotic Neurotics), in 1992. The album is considered to be one of the finest D.I.T.C. solo LPs and features early appearances from Big L and Fat Joe, the latter of whose 1993 debut album, Represent, was mainly produced by Diamond D.
From then, he went on to produce for multiple hip hop and R&B artists listed below in the discography.
In 1996, Diamond D appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation CD America is Dying Slowly alongside Biz Markie, Wu-Tang Clan, and Fat Joe, among many other prominent hip hop artists. 
Diamond's second album, Hatred, Passions and Infidelity, was released in 1997 to mixed but mostly positive reviews. Following the release, Diamond established his name as a sought-after producer after providing impressive beats for hip hop legends such as Busta Rhymes, Fugees, KRS-One, Queen Latifah, the Pharcyde, andBrand Nubian, among others. He is regarded as one of the first hip hop producers to work with artists on both the east and west coasts. Since then, he released the independent street album Grown-Man Talk, the official mixtape compilation The Diamond Mine, and provided contributions to his D.I.T.C. cohorts' projects including the crew's self-titled 2000 debut album on Tommy Boy/Warner Bros. Records.
In 2008 Diamond signed with Babygrande Records. His fourth album, titled The Huge Hefner Chronicles, was released in October 2008, and unlike previous efforts, the LP showed Diamond focus more on his rhymes, as production was handled by other respected underground beat makers such as Nottz, DJ Scratch, Ill Mind, Def Jef, and Jesse West.


Discography: 

Production
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    1 comment:

    1. DJ Ghost DoggAugust 25, 2011 at 7:12 PM

      shoutout to the boom bap crew (case,rate,bowls) nashville needs this,

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