Released way back in 2001, this was the beginning of my foray into the mixtape game. Actually it was my second mixtape, my first one was I got Next but it didn’t get quite the acclaim i expected lol. Its funny because I started as a straight hip hop/RnB dj and I knew very little about reggae, but somewhere between 1996 and 1998 I kinda became obsessed with it! Buying clash cds, old reggae mix cds, current reggae mix cds, spending hours at Moodies in the Bx, the reggae room in Beat Street annoying the hell out of DJ JUNE in the 45 section, point is, it got a lil crazy lol.
Anyway, I wanted to make a Reggae Mixtape that would be in the same classic range as the Dj Rei Double R and G-Bo the Pro ones (without the hip hop side) and the DJ Precise Old to tha New but with double the tracks. The trick was to make it good enough to be respected in the reggae world and simple enough to be understood on the commercial (read: “Yankee”) world. So I began to work on it at home, (I have quite a few demo versions with homemade stickers and black n white kinkos covers which i might release eventually) and finished it at the Heavy Hitter studio at the old RPM offices. The Heavy Hitter studios was actually a closet crammed with Dj Enuff’s records, a mic, a 32 track mackie, D.A. 88, Roland 1880, Mpc and a turntable setup lol. But don’t knock it , we recorded various classic mixtapes and freestyles there from Kanye, Joe Buddens, Twista, Swizz Beatz, Cassidy, Bounty Killer, Wayne Wonder..I could go on for days but thats another story.
Back to the Bashment, it was recorded in one night, entirely on A Tascam DA-88..My first and last time ever using that machine! I still have the videotape master! (Shouts to Dj Precise who was the master of that thing!) Once released the mixtape actually did a lot better than I expected it to do, so well in fact that it grew into a 6 part series. I will also post those as time goes along. I think I want to post everything in Chronological order so up next will probably be Straight West Coasting…We will see…Stay Tuned!
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD REGGAE BASHMENT PART 1!
