Vitamin D Music Producer Video Profile Interview

Seattle's own Vitamin D has had a major hand in the development of Northwest and West Coast hip hop. His out reach helped develop Big Tune which along with Red Bull rallys up and coming music producers in beat battles across the county.

Drake Requests "Free Weezy" Live At Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival

Above Ground Magazine said this about yesterday's Drake Seattle performance:

Drake came out to a slightly larger crowd than J. Cole, and for the first three tracks, had the crowd in the palm of his hand. With his music made for the big crowd, and a band backing him, Drake was exciting and completely natural…and then his set took a turn for the strange. In addition to his clear infatuation with his big brother Lil Wayne, the crowd heard this name at least 50 times, Drake proceeded to bring an 18 year old girl on stage, and almost gave her the Akon treatment. Dancing with her and kissing her on the neck, the crowd was slightly confused for a few minutes. After this, his performance lacked energy, as he entered into all of his slower songs, which were not performed with the most confidence. Maybe he should have kept it in his pants for a few more tracks.

Photo links:
Film Magic

(video footage courtesy of seattlesarachan)

Indie Rock Label Sub Pop Signs Indie Hip Hop Group Shabazz Palaces

via Seattle Weekly

Two EPs and just a pair of local shows into their existence, Shabazz Palaces -- the Seattle hip-hop duo featuring Digable Planets' Ishmael Butler -- have inked a deal with Sub Pop Records. Their full-length debut is due via the label sometime next year.

In a press release this morning, Butler, AKA "The Palaceer" and "Palaceer Lazaro" says:

"I think we both have a lot of love, appreciation, respect and energy for music and for each other. Recognizing the fact that business is necessary for maximizing exposure to it, I think we mutually feel that doing business is less a 'job' and more an opportunity to exercise those feelings in dope ass ways."

Shabazz Palaces by subpop

Three 6 Mafia Party Super Bowl Sunday In Seattle + Video Interview

Danger Mouse & The Shins' Frontman James Mercer Form Broken Bells

via Reuters

NEW YORK (Billboard) – Observed over Stellas in the lounge at the Soho Grand, Danger Mouse and James Mercer make an unlikely pair.

Mister Mouse -- whose birth name is Brian Burton -- has a neatly trimmed Afro and goatee; he could be the founder of some startup that combines social networking, crowd-sourcing and, say, cats. Mercer, best known for fronting the indie rock act the Shins, looks like Kevin Spacey. Burton represents his home base of Los Angeles -- he's a multiracial genre-crossing musician whose iPhone screensaver is a picture of ferrets dressed as characters from "The Wizard of Oz." Mercer lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, who owns an organic bedding company, and two kids. He worries about public schools and his backyard compost pile.

But when one half of Gnarls Barkley and the man behind Natalie Portman's favorite band met at a festival in 2004, things clicked. They kept in touch, hung out at other fests and finally tied the knot in 2008 and formed Broken Bells. Now, almost two years later, the pair is about to release a self-titled album, due March 9 on Columbia.

"It was good timing for both of us," Mercer says. "I was trying to figure stuff out and I wanted to do something different. I tossed around the idea of a solo record, but in the end, I'm glad Brian was looking for someone to work with, because it would have been crazy for me to do it on my own."

The album the pair created is multilayered and almost psychedelic, tethered by Mercer's steady vocals -- and it manages to sound almost nothing like the Shins or Gnarls Barkley.

Mercer is quick to add that the new project doesn't mean that the Shins are defunct. Burton says that Gnarls Barkley is on hiatus while he works on Broken Bells and Cee-Lo records a solo album, but notes that the future is unpredictable. "I never feel like I have to do anything," he says. From his pioneering Beatles/Jay-Z mash-up "The Grey Album" to his production work on Beck records, Burton's career has been built on anything but predictability.

Read the rest of the full article here:
Reuters - Danger Mouse, James Mercer ring in Broken Bells

Jake One: Producer Talks To Seattle Times About Upcoming Freeway Album & More

Seattle superproducer Jake One recently released 40 minutes of hiphop with rapper Freeway, one of the most original voices in rap, on a free downloadable mixtape called "The Beat Made Me Do It."

The compositions are simple: looped samples of funk and soul records Jake likes from the late '70s and early '80s. He made the whole thing in three or four hours, he estimates.

"I just grabbed some records and looped 'em up. [Freeway] wanted to do a mixtape and I didn't want to do what everyone else does, rap on 'A Milli' or whatever beat is hot at the moment."

Jake and Freeway are a team; the mixtape promotes "Stimulus Package," the duo's album coming out Febrary 2010.

Jake says during the week the mixtape came together, he would email Freeway a track, and Freeway would make up little bits of rhyme off the top of his head and record them as he went along, stitching together verses, then email the tracks back. That's how most of the mixtape happened, with very little writing or planning.

"For him to do that, it's basically nothing. It's an exercise for him."

Really? Off the top of his head?

"Yeah, four bars, eight bars at a time and go back and do another. He's more about style. He has a really unique style. It's more about his rhythm and flows than what he's saying sometimes. It's about patterns."

Read the full article here:
Seattle Times - Catching up with Seattle superproducer Jake One as he works with Freeway, Dr. Dre, Brother Ali, Fatal Lucciauno

Download Freeway's mixtape here:
"The Beat Made Me Do It."

J.Cole On A Recording Streak For Upcoming Roc Nation Debut

At the 7:45 mark:
"If you would have asked me two weeks ago [about the status], I would have told you I was 30 percent, man, [now it's] 70," Cole revealed in an interview. "Like 75, like, this is how many songs, I hit a little streak and now I got some stuff that's impressing me. Like, 'Man, did I just do this song?' I got in with [producer] No I.D. and now, you gotta understand, I've been doing music, myself, my own beats, since I was making my own songs, so it's hard to allow somebody to come in but now the way that we make music, it isn't just 'Oh yeah, I got this beat for you, rap on this beat,' he's in there, I'm in there, there's a guitar player, key player, it feels like you're making an album."