Initiation to music
I was living in Lebanon since 1981, after a stint of 4 years in the US for higher education and a year in Africa. And I had a job that I could Not stand and had no idea what were my functions. Sort of “
Are you feeling redundant?” kind of impression.
It was during that period that I tried to learn
musical instruments that I was never initiated to in my upbringing. Thus, I purchased an accordion and a classical guitar, but gave up quickly.
I enrolled for music lessons on Saturday mornings at the University of Kaslik, but had no musical ears or talent in that art. And I bitterly learned that it was too late for me to acquire any musical skills.
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Melly Mel and 5mute(dB), collectively known as Prxject Mayhem, work remotely to produce some of the finest adult contemporary rap. Interview: South African Rapper-Producer Duo Prxject Mayhem Makes Top Tier Adult Contemporary Rap
Prxject Mayhem, the South African rapper-producer duo s debut album Textured is a return to its boom-bap roots.
Prxject Mayhemis South African hip-hop s answer to that seemingly lost hip-hop tradition of pairing an emcee and a producer to form a duo. Producer
Melly Melto deliver in the tail end of the year one of 2020 s best SA hip-hop projects, their debut album
Textured.
A cohesive and focused project espousing the tenets of boom-bap yet not sounding dated, thanks to Melly Mel s timely lyrics and 5mute s timeless beats that capture that nostalgic essence while retaining a modern feel.
Who initiated this project and how is the sound different from your previous work?
Pharoah Monch: This has been a passion project of mine for over 15 years. Conceptually, I was thinking about it and putting it together from over 10 years ago and during the culmination realized that I would need 2 assassins, two accomplished musicians, that would help authenticate the sound that I desired.
Anybody who’s a fan of mine knows that from Internal Affairs, to Free, to Calculated Amalgamation, my mindset has been heavily rock-influenced.
Having Marcus Machado and Daru Jones really completes the thought process and takes it to another level in that they get to showcase their skills within the structures of the songs.
Editorial – Hip Hop has been a colorful cornucopia of different genres since inception and samples have always been its essential building blocks. A producer finds a track they like, reuse of a portion (or sample) of a sound recording in another recording and make it their own.
Still, veteran producer Timbaland found himself a trending Twitter topic on Monday (January 18) after he was accused of “stealing” samples for some of his biggest hits, begging the question, “Do some people
still not understand how Hip Hop works?”
A young woman by the name of Nooriyah kicked off the chatter after she shared a video of herself playing three Middle Eastern songs used in Timbaland’s work. The songs included the 1957 single “Khosara” by Egyptian singer Abdel Halim Hafez (and later, Hossam Ramzy who released “Khosara Khosara” in 1994), which was heavily sampled for JAY-Z’s 2000 hit “Big Pimpin.”
Funky was that most intangible of British microscenes, built from a mesh of influences combining briefly to create something a vibe, a beat worthy of its own name. With catchy drum patterns placing emphasis on the offbeat, funky began in underground clubs and on pirate radio stations in the UK around 2006. From there, it tentatively entered mainstream culture, with a chart hit, a series of playground dance crazes, and even a few naff parodies on TV.
Yet funky’s mainstream lifespan was even shorter than grime and garage before it. As early as 2009 it was declared ‘over’, its peak so fleeting that some of its most vital figureheads now deny it ever really existed. (Funky’s originators initially christened the sound funky house, which stuck until someone pointed out that the name was already taken, by a ’90s house scene largely based on disco and funk samples.) Though it may feel like yesterday, funky nostalgia burns strongly enough that some have decreed a revival upon u