Genres, Music, Video

Genre Blends

Toddla T

Prancehall interview with Toddla T:

You sound like someone who is trying to make dancehall/techno/garage/house/hip-hop all at once within the same track without coming across like those dicks who make stuff like Baltimore bootlegs of kuduro tracks with an Akon acappella and a Daft Punk sample hook, and describe their tastes as “eclectic”. Tell me about that.

It’s a great question. And Toddla T makes great beats

Toddla T feat. Mr Versatile “Fill Up Mi Portion” music video:
[youtube PYYfPS3S438&border=1]

Meanwhile, over at the Dutty Artz blog Matt Shadetek elaborates on my Bass Research tutorial and then goes on to discuss the wacknesss that results when purveyors of a certain style of music begin to take themselves too seriously.

And as Gervase from LDN’s excellent Heatwave sound points out in the blog’s comments, the tutorial he’s given provides basically all you need to know to make some pretty familiar sounding ‘dubstep by numbers’ type shit. Why do I mention this? Well, I like dubstep. I think it’s interesting and I like the fact that there’s a genre of music that’s around thats focused on pushing the limits of pure physical sound and what you can do with that. However, I don’t like a lot of the way that a lot of the people in dubstep act. Like they’re on some holy quest to make the deepest, purest, most whatever whatever sound, that they’re ’smarter than grime’ or ‘more complex’ etc, when in fact they are just another branch on the same tree that started decades ago in Jamaica and mutated into Rap, Jungle and soon enough is gonna be mutated into something else. Especially now that Dubstep is starting to have the type of commercial success that drum & bass had in a certain era and go international I feel like some of the people near the heart of that scene are trying to do what a lot of top dnb heads did, which is to lock the doors behind them and say ‘this is ok, this is real dubstep, and this isn’t and only we get to say so, and blah blah blah’.

I have no time for those type of people as I have always been a mutant genre nomad and am never happy sitting in ANY little genre fishpond. To me the moment a style sits still I’m bored and looking for something else. That’s why I like dancehall so much, every month not only are there new tunes and riddims but new tempos, beats, sounds, everything. So my point here is, take this knowledge, do what you want with it, flood the market with derivative dubstep records, make bassline house out of their favorite tunes, put wobble bass in tv jingles, generally make it hard for everyone sitting still…

Well put, Matt. Let’s keep this shit moving!