There are four favorite words of every DJ: I told you so. As in, “I told you so! I had that record last year and I told you to get it, but you wouldn’t listen to me, and nooooowwwwww… now you tell me how great it is like I never heard it before. Dude, I gave you that tape and I bet it’s still in your glove box!” So, it is with great self-congratulatory satisfaction that I can be one of the first people to tell you about the new Mover album, “Undetected Act From the Gloom Chamber.” Any old-school fan of The Mover and Planet Core Productions will have to admit his latest album is the most Mover-ish of any Mover release in his almost 30 years of techno-producing history.
That’s what makes this even better, because I can tell you “I told you so!” going back multiple decades. For you techno-hipsters that think you know some kinda stuff about morose knob-twiddling, guess what? I’ve been playing Mover records since freaking Nineteen Ninety-Two! Count ‘em jack. That’s 26 years ago… punks. Get your lame-o laptop digital filter facsimiles outta my freaking face.
Ok, so now that I got that out of my system, let me tell you what I like about The Mover’s new album. Right off the bat, Dark Comedown will stick in your head for the rest of your life. There is a little Mover trick in this one that he rarely pulls out but it is very effective when he does: It’s like a reverse engine-cycling sound that doesn’t seem to quite quantize 100% (though it probably does) running in the background of the track. It creates a riveting tension that is going to stick to dancefloors for years to come. Maybe until… the end? No wait, that already happened in 2017. The track’s got a cool video too that draws from some of the classic Planet Core Productions mythology.
“Stars Collapse” will sound pretty fresh to young bucks, but I know it’s an ode to an early period that pre-dates techno, kind of. Somewhere around 1987 there were all these techno-sounding records that weren’t really called techno yet. It was sort of an odd period for music though a great one. “Stealth” comes next. This is another track with a dope backwards synth-wave seemingly driving the track forward. It also showcases some of the things we like best about Mover techno: snappy snares and hi-hats that outclass anything that was ever on Chicago’s Traxx Record label. I could listen to this sound all day, and I have. “Shadow Deception” is another track that hearkens back to a time many forget but is still incredibly relevant. I will sum it up quickly and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, look it up. It’s like a cross between LFO and 808 State.
One of the great things about Mover techno is that he makes his own version of sounds that are kind of hip-hoppy, or sampley, and weaves them into an overall dramatic tapestry. So, you never leave the world The Mover’s created by a sample from the outside world. “Calculations” is a great example of this motif. “Lost” is a noticeable improvement on previous Mover attempts to maintain what can best be described as an upbeat melancholy vibe. Previous releases always had a track like Lost but didn’t quite maintain the feeling all the way through.
The Mover Logo
“Doom Computer” has a great name and has laser effect sounds. Those two things are a winner in my book. Besides Dark Comedown, Doom Computer is my favorite on the album. Last track up is “Fire Cloud” which is a perfect rendition of the “I’m in a spacesuit on the moon looking at an alien artifact right before a space octopus attacks me” feeling that we’ve come to know and love from older Mover releases.
The Mover, aka Marc Acardipane, always took techno one step further using his various pseudonyms (he has hundreds of releases under different names). Why do some of you not know him? It is because real creativity is a threat to the system. But, a good person can’t help but be creative. While the usual commercial junk clogs the arteries of society, eventually a real artist with passion and something valuable to give will surface. The Mover is a real artist and his work will not be denied. You can feel it, rather than count it. So now all of you reading, I’ve given you the head’s up, get ready to tell all your friends, “I told you so.”
You can check out The Mover’s “Undetected Act From the Gloom Chamber” here: https://themover.bandcamp.com/album/undetected-act-from-the-gloom-chamber
Bonus! Watch out for the exclusive Mover interview in the next print edition of The Hard Data!
Musicon Ambassador Joel “DJ Deadly Buda” Bevacqua addressed the Intellectual Property and Blockchain discussion panel: “Creating Globally Applicable Best Practices in Blockchain Technology in Russia for IP Management: from Patents and Inventions to Books, Paintings, Photos, Music and Films” held at the VI St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum. Below is the video of the address, the text of the speech, displayed slides, and the hand-out text mentioned in the address.
Here is the text from the speech:
“Hello, my name is Joel Bevacqua. Some know me as DJ Deadly Buda. I am the Musician Ambassador for Musicoin. We are honored to be invited to the Cultural Forum and especially by IPChain, which we believe could not only benefit Russia, but might shine as an example worldwide about the possibilities of blockchain and its utilization to aid human creativity.
We sincerely hope that one day, younger people in the audience will look back to this panel as a day that the world took a step in a good direction.
So, what is Musicoin?
Musicoin is a digital currency for the listening and compensation of music. On February 11, 2017, artists could upload their songs to Musicoin.org . When listeners played a song, they paid the artist 1 Musicoin. This payment happened in seconds. 1 Musicoin was worth at the time between 1 and 4 cents in US dollars. The artist could save that Musicoin in hopes it would rise in value, or sell it on and exchange for the currency of his or her choice. This was all achieved with the Musicoin blockchain.
Musicoin Presentation Slide 1
This was a success, but we noticed a problem. As Musicoins rose in value, people played less music. So, we made a change to the Musicoin blockchain which we code-named “U.B.I.” for “Universal Basic Income.”
In this change, the artist still receives 100% of the income, but now 1 play is equivalent to an amount of Musicoin equal to about 2 cents in US dollars.
Musicoin Presentation Slide 2
Also, listening for the public is now free. It is paid for by Musicoin miners. Miners are people with computers that process Musicoin transactions and mint the coins. A part of their mining reward creates the fund for free listening. The miners hope this leads to greater adoption and the Musicoins they retain becoming more valuable.
Through UBI, free listening become the human intelligence of the system and makes many traditional concerns about music piracy irrelevant.
Some might call what we’ve done, “disruptive”, but we feel it is constructive and ultimately an aid to the human imagination. In that spirit, a forthcoming update will allow consent-based location data to be entered in the Musicoin blockchain. This way, an artist might indicate where their payments may go.
Musicoin Presentation Slide 3
If their song is played in Russia, RAO may process some funds, if played in Canada, SOCAN could process certain payments. Theoretically, public domain works could pay its citizen in near real-time.
The possibilities are many and are being realized now. Mobile and software players are expected soon, and even dedicated hardware players are expected within the next year.
I am having a fact sheet about Musicoin passed out. Please contact me after the panel if you are interested in interfacing with the Musicoin blockchain and I will help facilitate it.”
Below is the text from the hand-out mentioned in the speech.
Important Facts:
February 11, 2017, Musicoin becomes the first blockchain-enabled streaming music system in which artists can upload music, the global public can listen, and when they do, the artists are paid in seconds.
You can listen to streaming music at http://musicoin.org . The rights-holder is rewarded with Musicoin.
Musicoin has over 19,000 registered users. 1,500+ are musicians who have uploaded over 7000 tracks.
The price of a Musicoin has gone as high as 4.6 cents USD each. Musicoin’s exchange symbol is: MUSIC.
How it Works:
Every time a song is played the copyright holder is paid an amount of Musicoin equivalent to about $0.02 USD. This amount can fluctuate based on market demand and can be raised or lowered to compete with other online streaming services. The copyright holder receives Musicoin seconds after a listener presses “play” anywhere in the Musicoin system. Once the copyright holder receives the Musicoin, he, she, or it can elect to split the payment with others if needed.
Musicoins are created by people all over the world with personal computers. The process is called “mining.” The computers validate and process Musicoin transactions and are rewarded with Musicoins. 15% of Musicoins mined are allocated to fund the playing of music by the public. Musicians, miners and the public can sell their Musicoin on exchanges for the currency of their choice or use them to transact with one another.
Future Plans:
Easy purchase of Musicoins for the public (a cryptocurrency exchange will no longer be necessary).
Consent-based location data will be available from the Musicoin blockchain.
Mobile apps will be available soon. Embedded hardware platform expected late 2018.
FAQ
What kind of blockchain is Musicoin? Musicoin is its own blockchain, based on Ethereum code. By using its own blockchain, Musicoin can better scale with the increasing demands of music consumption.
How would my blockchain system communicate with Musicoin? Like Ethereum, ERC-20 tokens can be utilized to easily communicate with other blockchains.
The hour-long panel was held by IPChain (the National Coordination Center for Processing Transactions with Rights and Objects of Intellectual Property), whose ambitious task is the formation of a national blockchain-based network of Russian intellectual property objects, their associated rights, transaction records, and the facilitation of such transactions.
“The creation of a decentralized IPChain network is a necessary and indispensable stage in the development of the national intellectual property sphere,” said Andrey Krichevsky, president of IPChain. “However, when speaking about practical steps, it is important to remember that, despite the seminal nature of today’s steps to reform the sphere, we must constantly be on the move. After all, the trend of the current day – blockchain – will be replaced by newer and newer technologies and solutions. Our task is to monitor the strategic vector of global development, to foresee and anticipate technological shifts. ”
Musicoin Ambassador Joel Bevacqua addresses the St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum
In that context, panelists who contributed their solutions and viewpoints were: The Unified State System for Accounting for Research, Development and Technological Works of Civil Purpose (the state service is already one of the key components of the IPChain infrastructure), The National Register of Intellectual Property, which participates in a project initiated by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation to create a system for storing and comparing three-dimensional models, and FormMax, a business to business solution for delivering background music,
The participants also included a number of services that could potentially use the IPChain infrastructure such as IP EXCHANGE (IPEX), an online platform that ensures the regular functioning of the organized market of intellectual property, artists societies worldwide, and the world’s first music streaming blockchain service, Musicoin.
Panelists from left, Eric Baptiste (SOCAN), Andrey Krichevsky (IPChain), Sergey Matveyev (Director of the Department of Science and Technologies of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation)
Though intellectual property forums tend to be sedate, this panel had its share of barely suppressed fireworks. Ivan Zasurskiy, Head of the Department of New Media and Communication Theory, Journalism Faculty of Moscow State University, referred to lawyers in the field as leeches, attorney Pavel Katkov wondered aloud if blockchain smart contracts might relegate lawyers to a secondary role in intellectual property management, and Joel Bevacqua, the ambassador for the Musicoin blockchain pointed out to the younger members of the audience that the panel they were witnessing might one day be a watershed moment in their lives.
The Russian Federation’s IPChain ended the panel with another sign that Russia intends to be a world leader in blockchain technology, as official signing agreements on strategic cooperation took place. IPChain and the largest company in the market of licensed electronic books in Russia, LitRes, signed an agreement on cooperation and interaction, and then IPChain and BankPrav.ru service – “AyBi” LLC, signed an agreement on establishing partnership relations and developing long-term mutually beneficial cooperation for the registration and monetization of intellectual property and increasing the transparency of intellectual property transactions for all market participants.
Joel Bevacqua, Musicoin Ambassador (and The Hard Data Editor) arrives at the VI St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum’s IP & Blockchain Panel
At the very end came the surprise, as IPChain’s head Andrey Krichevsky, announced IPChain’s intention to open discussions with SOCAN and Musicoin on possible cooperation pacts. Musicoin’s ambassador, Joel Bevacqua, was seen giving a “thumbs up” to the audience. How this plays out, the world will have to see, but the announcement could signify another significant step for music fans and artists not just in Russia, but the world.
Musicoin is a digital currency designed for the compensation and consumption of music. Every time a listener plays a song anywhere in the global Musicoin ecosystem, the song’s creators are paid in near real-time. The listening however, does not cost listeners anything. This article will explain how this is possible and speculate on Musicoin’s possible ramifications for music artists, fans and business people around the world.
Musicoin began as a way to address the problems associated with the current global music industry. Three corporations, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Universal Music Group own over 80% of the global market. Because of their power, they tend to dictate who the winners and losers are – and will be – in the global music ecosystem. New and even established musicians can suffer because of this situation. For example, many artists have complained about low royalty payments they received from streaming websites such as Spotify and Pandora. Furthermore, music copyrights and licensing are so complicated that it is difficult for the average artist to keep track of what monies they might be entitled to.
The Musicoin PPP Contract enables quick payments to artists and can be easily split with band members and other important people in the music ecosystem.
The Musicoin solution to this problem is achieved primarily with the use of blockchain technology and smart contracts. Computers around the world communicate with each other to create a digital currency called Musicoins, and then keeps track of all their transactions. This currency creation and ledger system is sequential and often referred to as a “blockchain” because the computers are processing “blocks” of transactions one after the other. Within those transactions are orders to distribute payments to one or several entities. Those payment orders are called “smart contracts” because they logically execute payment orders based on how they are programmed.
So in plain English, once a musician uploaded their song into the Musicoin system, every time their song got played they were paid 1 Musicoin. And if the musician had band members he or she needed to split the profits with, the Musicoin would get split accordingly. This all happened in seconds via the Musicoin blockchain.
An elaborated view of the Musicoin PPP pay-per-play system.
So how much is a Musicoin worth? It depends. Like other digital currencies, Musicoins are traded on the open market and its value fluctuates by the minute. At times, Musicoins have been worth over 4 cents (in United States Dollars). At over 4 cents per play, Musicoin was paying artists a much higher per-stream rate than any mainstream music websites.
But with any success comes challenges. It was quickly realized that if the price of Musicoins kept climbing, no one would play music. People would hoard Musicoins hoping they would be more valuable. In fact, some were already doing that when they were worth 3 cents. So, Musicoin’s primary founder, Isaac Mao, started developing innovative strategies for the future.
Isaac had gained notoriety in China for being one of its first web-bloggers, and an advocate of internet freedom. In the early 21st century he had developed a theory called “Sharism” that emphasized the importance and necessity of sharing information in the information age. Though Sharism was already an idea that underlined Musicoin’s early incarnation of February 2017, it would now influence the Musicoin system more so than before in response to the new challenges. A controversial new implementation to the blockchain was proposed: UBI or “Universal Basic Income.”
UBI was initially controversial as it sounded like a Socialist program implemented on the blockchain. Many proponents of digital currencies are very Libertarian in outlook, and anything that resembles a welfare system, or a “Universal Basic Income” for everyone raised a lot of eyebrows. However, a closer look at UBI revealed it was far more ingenious than out-dated monetary policies.
UBI solved the problem of Musicoin hoarding first by changing the reward to the artist. One play of their song was no longer 1 Musicoin, but an amount of Musicoin equal to roughly 2 cents USD (however, that amount can fluctuate so that it would always be more than what other music streaming services pay). In this way, music plays would emit a stable reward, and people holding onto Musicoins will likely see their investment grow as the system gains wider adoption.
Musicoin’s UBI schematic demonstrates how the flow of Musicoins will be set to solve ongoing problems with the global music industry.
Next, all plays on the Musicoin system became free for the listener. The musicians are paid from a fund allocated by the computers processing the Musicoin transactions as described earlier in this article. When the computers process Musicoin transactions and make new Musicoins it is referred to as “mining”. So now, the miners of Musicoin pay the artists while the public listens for free. Far from being a social program, the UBI system arguably makes the Musicoin miners direct competitors with Universal, Sony and Warner. And who are those miners? They could be anyone with a computer and a modern graphics card. Virtually any gamer could easily mine Musicoin. So, normal people all over the world mining Musicoin are helping build a system that rewards artists and listeners in a whole new fashion. If you want to learn more about Musicoin mining, here is a good video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5-6PXfH7gw
I speak a little bit about the wider implications of UBI in this video:
The UBI system is only the beginning though. Slated for late 2018, Musicoin will introduce a new wrinkle: Proof of Sharing (though it may be renamed to “Proof of Play” as seen in this video). In this system, users actively sharing content will help mine Musicoins. For the nuts and bolts about how the Musicoin system works, read their “White Paper” which is a document outlining Musicoin’s platform design and specifications. Musicoin’s long-term vision can be found in its Roadmap document.
There are other digital currencies aimed at addressing the problems of the global music industry, but Musicoin differs from them in significant ways. Most notably is that Musicoin runs its own blockchain system, whereas other solutions ride on top of other digital currency solutions that process many different types of transactions besides just music. This makes Musicoin potentially faster and able to scale easier to a larger population of users. The other important fact is that Musicoin was the first functioning music streaming service powered by blockchain technology that could be used by artist and listener alike. Being such, it has been the first to successfully deal with real world problems and fashion solutions. In essence, Musicoin is battle tested in real-world applications.
Here are some early Musicoin milestones that have helped shape its evolution and adoption:
Musicoin becomes the first functioning music streaming service powered by blockchain technology that can publicly accommodate musicians and listeners.
Musicoin joins the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, an organization made up of Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, start-ups, and academics dedicated to smart contract technology.
The Musicoin Alliance forms, as providers of goods and services join in an effort to promote the adoption of Musicoin.
The Hard Data and Musicoin Pilot Program successfully put Musicoin in the hands of active users for music-related goods and services, namely article writing, photography, and the ability to purchase t-shirts and printed magazine subscriptions with Musicoin.
The future of Musicoin is rapidly coming to fruition. In the future we could see the Musicoin system embedded in commercial products such as speakers and headphones. Internet radio stations could stream Musicoin so that artists are paid for each listener. Web applications would easily allow the implementation of Musicoin links and streams. Soon, you may be able to buy tickets to events with Musicoin, band t-shirts, and a whole raft of goods and services normally associated with the music world. The overall effect of the Musicoin system could be artists making a decent living from fans the world over enjoying their music, and this is the world that Musicoin is helping to make.
The Musicoin view of the future and important milestones towards which it is headed.
Post script: a couple things worth mentioning is that Musicoin has an exlusive URL-shortener for Musicoin.org links, http://jam.dj and a new website administering dj mix policy for the Musicoin system has been launched, http://musicoin.dj
Also, fair disclosure in case its not obvious, The Hard Data is a big fan of Musicoin. We use it to pay our contributors, and accept it for t-shirts and magazine subscriptions. Musicoin helps fund content creation on theharddata.com. So, we are really biased when it comes to the topic of Musicoin. That said, we don’t think you will find a better music-focused digital currency and urge you to look for yourself if you don’t believe us.
“King of Style” is a techno track that took three decades to make. As many of you know, the track is made from audio and video samples from what is regarded as the first Hip Hop Documentary, Style Wars, a movie that mesmerized me from the day I saw it and echoes in my head to this day. From 1983 onward, the movie had catalyzed millions of Hip Hop lovers around the globe. When I started producing rave music in 1994, one of the first things I wanted to do was sample Style Wars and make it into a rave track. But, because I loved the movie so much, I agonized over every detail. In my mind, every attempt I made was never good enough. Slowly but surely though, life (or more accurately) the realization that life could quickly end, would bring the project into being.
The first time I saw Style Wars was 1985, when it appeared on PBS, WQED Channel 13 in Pittsburgh, PA. I already had heard about the film, and “recorded” it as best I could, with an audio cassette deck. At the time, VHS and Betamax television recorders were still expensive and my family didn’t have one. From that day on, me and my graffiti friends would listen to the audio cassette over and over as we practiced our lettering and character styles. We could practically recite the entire movie if asked. I was always obsessed with lettering styles, and so Kase 2, the graffiti artist that invented “computer rock” style was my favorite graffiti writer in the movie. I loved everything he said in the movie, and me and my friends would pepper our everyday language with his seemingly random extra-galactic vernacular. We called each other, “The fresh extra-tellestrial (sic) brothers”, and called things “super-duty-tuff-work” on a regular basis.
But in retrospect, the thing that resonated most with me about Kase 2 was his dedication to inventing new lettering styles. That simple love of innovation in the visual arts, or anywhere in life, that joy in creation, is what inspired me. Sure, like many male dominated fields, graffiti was competitive, and I liked that, but at its heart it was constructive. It was making something, and wanting to make something good, for goodness’s sake. That was the goal. This felt natural to me.
In the mid-80’s there was an airline called “People’s Express”. For $49 Round-trip you could fly from Pittsburgh to New York and Boston, and me and my graffiti crew, Badassest, often did so to paint in each other’s city. During this time I would frequent Henry Chalfant’s studio in Soho, where famous graffiti artists would congregate. Making acquaintance and befriending some, I would develop my own lettering style, later known as “monster rock”. I would constantly bug the heck out of everyone asking them, “What do you think of this style?” after every twitch of my pencil.
One day, as Chalfant was on his way to photograph a wall for his upcoming book “Spray Can Art” book, I tagged along with who would become an internationally famous graffiti writer, T-Kid 170. During that trip, T-Kid gave me the “Wildstyle Card”. This was a membership to one of New York’s biggest and most legendary graffiti crews, started by Tracy 168. But, that was not all. At one point in the journey we had to make a stop to see Kase 2. I was thrilled as you could imagine and once he got in the car I immediately started drawing my version of computer rock. But, since I was so rushed and nervous meeting one of my all-time heroes, it came out kind-of-wack. Kase was like, “um…”, and frankly seemed to have his mind on other things than graffiti, anyway. But, nonetheless, I got to tell him how great I thought he was. So, though not a perfect experience, I look back at it with a lot of fondness.
In the course of hanging out with all these graffiti writers, I invariably would hear background stories of beefs, collaborations, history, and behind-the-scenes goings on during the filming of Style Wars. Some of these stories would eventually influence the way I edited the “King of Style” video, decades later.
For example, though Cap comes off in the movie as some sort of racist thug, he actually did pieces and whole car paintings. One of which was filmed during the making of the movie, seen at 2:54 in the King of Style video. Basically, showing anything but Cap’s throw-ups didn’t fit the narrative of the original story, and this footage can only be seen in the outtakes. So, I wanted to give a bit of the “other side” of the story after all these years. Also, something most people won’t realize today, is that back then in New York, everyone in the graffiti scene used the word “nigger” to describe friend and foe alike, be they black, white or otherwise. I believe I heard that Cap even used to piece with Kase occasionally! So, to some degree Cap’s dialogue wasn’t as racist as modern viewers, and viewers outside of New York in the 1980’s, might think.
At 3:37 in King of Style… see that kid all the way to the left, in the white sweater and gloves making the hand move? Well, the story with him is that Mom was so worried he would be dressed right for the filming, she kept him in too long prepping him. He never made it on time and missed the prime shooting window! So, I wanted to make sure his Mom’s hard work was finally appreciated!
When selecting the train footage, I tried my best to get examples of wildstyle lettering on the trains. Usually the public sees more of the glossy work by Seen, Lee and Dondi from this period, but what I remember going on at that time was skinny, angular wild styles by crews like FBA (Fast Breakin’ Artists) and I tried to salvage as many examples as I could from the outtakes. And, just an aside, I think one of the things I like most about the Style Wars outtake footage, is that it reminds me of those hot, humid summers in 1980’s New York. There was freedom in the air then with its own distinct character. I wonder if younger viewers can see that in the film, as I do. I wonder if it registers as being any different than their current experience.
Many songs and tracks have sampled Style Wars, but usually the samples floated in the background of the music. I wanted my samples to be upfront and bold, as if they were lyrics to a song, and in the back of my mind, I always wanted the original video to be featured in some way. So, around 2011, when I was able to help with the film’s restoration project, in passing I mentioned to Public Art Films that I could make an electronic remix of the footage, and no one said, “no.” So, that encouraged me to keep poking away at ideas on how I would feature the material in an electronic dance music track.
Ultimately the catalyst that made me finally commit to finishing the track was a tragedy that happened in my life. A fire destroyed virtually everything I owned, my records, art, letters… all gone. Being present during the fire, I realized that in a split second, everything can change, and if I ever wanted to finally make the track that had been banging in the back of my mind, now was the time. Fortunately, following the chaos of the New York stop on the Trauma Live Tour, I ran into my old rave friend, Lenny Dee, who was interested in the possibilities of the track (and eventually tweaked it for mass consumption, the original mix appears in world’s first blockchained DJ mix, “Rock the Blockchain“) and encouraged me to go forward. He even gave me advance samples from his upcoming audio sample packs (Industrial Strength Samples) that I made sure to use in the track. Much as Kase 2, Tracy 168, Lee, T-Kid, A-1, Daze or Phase 2 were inspirations to me in graffiti, Lenny has always been someone I listen to before creating my music. He’s a master that can’t help but share his experience and can easily be judged by the myriad of artists and tracks he has launched and showcased over the decades.
I would spend much of the summer of 2016 working on the track. The one aspect that I wanted to incorporate, that I felt needed in the track, was horns. Horns or saxophone like in the Jimmy Castor Bunch’s “It’s Just Begun.” I’ll never forget the time I heard Marley Marl scratching up two copies of “It’s Just Begun” on his Saturday night WBLS mix show in New York. The “transformer scratch” technique had just come out, and Marley Marl made sure to “transform” just about every jam he played that night. I was lucky enough to record him slicing up two copies of “It’s Just Begun” and I listened to it all summer. Of course, “It’s Just Begun” was already dated by the time I heard it as a teenager, but until this day, no song captures the spirit and the youthful vitality of the New York City summer for me, and represents one of the critical sparks to what would one day become Hip Hop.
One of the feelings I wanted to recreate also, was the original spirit of Hip Hop that Style Wars represented back in 1983. It was a spirit of creativity and living in the moment, using what was at hand to make the world a better place, a fun place. And sadly, and I pre-apologize for being kind of a bummer here… that I felt Hip Hop had abandoned as early as about 1987. Like many early Hip Hop adopters, I found solace in its creativity, but the world at large could have cared less. Many truly hated the sound back then! And, at some point it was decided that Hip Hop would no longer promote creativity, but it would promote the acquisition of money, status symbols, and eventually degenerate into misogyny, misanthropy and greed for its own sake. As a somewhat nerdy, middle-class kid, I frankly couldn’t understand the attraction to those topics. And, I wonder to this day how much of that was forced on the public, rather than accepted. Regardless, I had felt somewhat betrayed by Hip Hop, and from 1987 to 1991 bounced around aimlessly from music genre to music genre hoping one day I would find the same joy I found in original Hip Hop.
That joy was rekindled when my friend Neil Keating sent me a tape from London that had two tracks I’ll never forget, Final Exposure’s Vortex, and Lennie De Ice’s “We are I.e.” and from that point, I never looked back. The rave era began for me. That joy of sonic
exploration and do-it-yourself fun was back, and I think because many of us remembered what happened to Hip Hop, we called the first manifestations of rave music “hardcore” and proclaimed it would never die. So, that is why King of Style thumps with the big distorted kick drums and flanged breakbeats of hardcore techno and drum and bass, two styles that I saw carrying original Hip Hop’s early promise. King of Style is my tribute to that feeling, to the joy of creation for its own sake, and enjoying it with your friends. It’s when you put your mind and body into whatever you’re doing, whether its graffiti, knitting, pottery, gaming, heck, even aerobics…whatever you like to do! It’s when you lock into that zone and know for that moment, you’re the “King of Style.”
