Anatomy Of A Murder : Black Moon's Enta Da Stage LP

Preface: For the purposes of fandom and content focus, this dusted discussion between myself and long time Bardian friend and ethnomusicologist George Murer (aka KG) focuses solely on the works of Evil Dee and Mr. Walt though Da Beatminerz team includes or has included Baby Paul, Rich Blak and Chocolate Ty. On another note, Ultramag's “Poppa Large (East Coast Remix)” in 1992 is credited to Ike Lee & Aaron Lyles as "Da BeatMinerz”, putting the production crew on the map but Lee and Lyles subsequently went their own ways. "Finsta Baby" was Evil Dee and Walt's first released production work.

Mr. Walt and Evil Dee

ARM 18: Evil Dee and Mr Walt's production profile emerged on a national level in 1992 with the Black Moon debut 12” single “Who Got the Props.” The hit single overshadowed the track on the flip, the organ propelled “F**k It Up.” While the texture of the underlying sample is interesting, the latter was a rudimentary uptempo jazz reflective of early 90s east coast hip hop. The “F**k It Up” intro even gives a moment to the group's unwieldy mission statement: Brothers who Lyrically Act and Combine Kickin Music Out On Nations. Not surprisingly, it was “Props” that received the spins and initial interest.

The elongated four bar “Props” sample was distinct, so lush with strings and electric piano my first guess at hearing it assumed the Brand New Heavies or some live band had been sampled. Sampling to this point in hip hop music had largely been 1 or 2 bar samples or snippets of samples overlapped. The length of the backing track carried the energetic, young Buckshot Shorty easily like a boat on water. Alternately, a MW Smooth Mix of “Props” was mixed by the studio appeared on the 12” as insisted upon by Nervous Records label owner Mike Weiss. It combined the long sampled groove with a New Orleans be bop trumpet and trombone intro that feels like a compulsory nod to the jazz horn filled hip hop of that early 90s era.

Ultimately, “Props” production hinted at a new direction of the digging in the crate jazz-hop aesthetic that was to emerge in the next year on Black Moon's full length Enta Da Stage and A Tribe Called Quest's Midnight Marauders most notably. But even “Props” did not prepare any avid fan of hip hop of this era for what Enta Da Stage had in store production wise when it was released in November of 1993.

Explaining the fairly successful DJ, radio, and critical reaction to
Enta Da Stage's music is a story of its singles and album cuts and the interplay of the two. Preceding the album by a few weeks, “How Many Emcee's” was what I would call a version record. Considering the Jamaican influence Evil Dee and Walt pepper their music with throughout their career, it is not a stretch to identify “How Many” as such. The Grover Washington “Hyrda” loop had been used by EPMD two years prior but for Black Moon's first single, Evil Dee and Walt chop it in half to one bar, adding understated horns and flutes that flutter in time like flags in the wind. A classic KRS line is cut up in the hook. It was tough but accessible with its familiar sampled elements. Two other album cuts, the opener, “Powerful Impak!,” “Black Smif n Wessun” and “Slave” were versions of already broken beats. Whether serving as a hook to the average listener or a creative retort to other producers or simply flipping a record as requested by Buckshot, either way these types of tracks were straightforward whereas the majority of the album's production pushed the envelope of established production practices.

ARM 18: It is these album cuts that really make Enta Da Stage a remarkable piece of Hip Hop production work. The four bar bass loop of “Niguz Talk S--t” emerges a churning leviathan, with slapping dusty drums and a brittle echoing horn swinging forward over the pitch black bottom bassline. Another four bar walking bassline is found in “Son Get Wrec” with sporting drums, swinging to great effect again. The long horn sample of “S--t Iz Real” smothers the churning basslines and pulsating drums for a unique sonic tension.

KG: It's also interesting to wonder, behind the mythology of the perpetual digging in the crates or rooting around in Aunt Millie's record collection, what sort of consultations might have been going on that would have delivered some of these less obvious source materials into consideration. Like the Art Ensemble of Chicago or the Ten Wheel Drive or "Mannekind" for "Come Clean". These are not ready-made motifs really. I'm not doubting that it could all have happened in the conventional listen-to-a-ton-of-music-and-construct-a-dope-beat sort of way but I bet there are some interesting accidents and interventions here and there. Agency in music built upon samples and collage can be wonderfully diffuse.

ARM 18: Even when Da Beatminerz employed shorter, more conventional basslines, the “melody” and warmth provided an intriguing mood that only a few producers to this point had captured save for the pioneering efforts of Large Professor's “Looking At the Front Door”, Gangstarr's “Ex Girl” or Pete Rock's “Reminisce.”  Examples of this can be found in “Ack Like U Want It”, the album version of “Buck 'Em Down," "Make Munne" “Enta Da Stage.” My fascination with “I Got Cha Opin” for this fact is well documented.

KG: There seems to be a fascinating genealogy. The same way that Led Zeppelin built upon and perfected the monster bassy riff that had already been put forth by like Iron Butterfly and Cream and before them by Charlie Mingus perhaps and other jazz cats with their bass and baritone sax ostinatos, I feel like the Beatminerz have been able to hone in on elements introduced, as you mention, like Pete Rock and CL Smooth and Main Source.

ARM 18: Taken as a whole, there is dark and blunt sound to this entire LP. Somewhat similar to Nirvana's Nevermind, all the highs seem to have been EQd out of the mix except for perhaps in the snares. Horns, scratches, strings, even vocals seem to be muffled in a sonic smog. It lends itself to a low-fi sound in stark contrast to the bright and expansive mixes of Dr. Dre in The Chronic or Efilrofzaggin. Nor does the production sound as intrinsic like Bomb Squad or deliberately jazzy like A Tribe Called Quest. The beats for Enta Da Stage rumble like a subway train underneath pavement, seemingly alive and sinister in its unstoppable force.

KG: A lot of the production models and aesthetic choices you have discussed- for instance the warming up of the bass line- seem to have exerted considerable influence on a whole wing of production-based music, like stuff one associates with "lounges" and boutiques, a kind of welcoming, "naturally soulful," unostentatiously electronic sound with a back bone of beautified hip hop grooves. It's always very studied and it's interesting to imagine its architects pouring over some of these examples.

Coming Soon, Part Two: Enta Da Stage's Singles, Remixes and B-sides

Guitar Hero on a SP 1200

Recently my man King George and I have been discussing one of our favorite topics,  Brooklyn's Da Beatminerz.  Sports is a close second for me, but strangely, George only responds, "Yeah, that was a good ass game" anytime I mention to him last night's score.

Da Beatminerz are a DJ production crew comprised of two Bushwick brothers, energetic Evil Dee and the bespectacled Mr. Walt.  In the mid 1990s they rose to prominence crafting some of the most gorgeous haunting basslines that have ever gurgled out of a speaker for Black Moon, Smif n' Wessun and others.  The Dewgarde brothers' beats have a knack for making murderous lyricism as cleverly entertaining as a Kubrick steadicam shot.

While George and I need to have an offline discussion on the Beatminerz' back catalog, I thought I would break out this dissection of Walt and Evil Dee's LP version of "I Gotcha Opin," one of the duo's most illmatic productions.  This post is bumped to you from The Audio Goldrush...

My good friend Fearless Jones and I have been clowning friends of ours who are intent on mastering video games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Our feeling is if you spent that much time strumming a guitar as you did playing a video game you would be a regular Bobby Dylan by now. Or in these guys case, Eddie Van Halen:

This phenomenon reminded me that as a Hip Hop DJ/Producer I am in no means immune to this idolatry. I have always favored “covering” songs or making versions or remixes. In my early days at the school of Bard Knocks one mentor of mine (*cough*couch*CHASE*ahem) became exasperated that I was constantly looping beats that had already been broken. He threw up his hands as day after day I would tinker with King George's boxy Gemini samplers re-looping Diamond D bass lines or X Clan drums (no small irony that versions were X Clan's Paradise's production hallmark in the early 90s).

In my defense, finding the originals of a Hip Hop beat, picking it apart, cutting 'em up and mixing them back together gives me a greater knowledge of how exactly beats are made. In this instance, I chose to break up and piece together Black Moon's “I Gotcha Opin.” Attempting to push the same buttons as producer Mr. Walt revealed a couple of things to me:

1. Walt and his brother Evil Dee's eclectic record tastes are crazy. We babble on and on about Tip and Ali, Pete Rock, Large Pro but often forget the lo-fi jazzy boom bap crate diggin' sound of the Beatminerz. At a time when most producers were all about finding cool like dat be bop funky horns that matched the vibes and stuff of their MCs, the Beatminerz took a different direction. Walt especially was unafraid to match the rugged intensity of Franklin Ave Posse's finest to the sounds of a female fronted jazz rock fusion band from New Jerz of all places.
   
   
2. Getting disparate samples to work in unison together both spatially and harmonically is incredibly difficult. Walt's choice of ingredients for this song hail from different genres and different decades yet all the snippets sound as if they hopped the train to Bucktown for one terrific menacing recording session. “Gotcha Opin” sports drums from Iron Butterfly, basslines from Ten Wheel Drive and horns from Art Ensemble of Chicago. Oh, a snippet of “Jimbrowski” for good measure. There are dub like samples that ride the beat that I couldn't figure out so I approximated.

3. I couldn't help thinking that what undermines many contemporary Hip Hop productions is the unwillingness to chances or make mistakes. So many beats these days have promise but they are too clean, too rigid in their professionalism. Hank Shocklee has said countless times that real time recording mistakes informed the apocalyptic sound of Nation of Millions as much as any planned production. I imagine this approach may have made Walt's unorthodox choice of samples work together.

I had considered playing this straight ahead like the original Black Moon version but I decided to actually be creative and re-imagine this beat with drops and variations. Don't front.

gOTCHA oPIN (A18 Mix):