WAT

WHAT
Guess what dropped today.

Allow me to explain.

I'm half disgusted. Offended, much more so than when Guitar Hero dropped and kids started caring about famous guitarists again.
This is far worse, this is....dangerous. It's much closer to home.

I'm half intrigued. I have no desire to play Guitar Hero, but if I squint my brain I can understand why it's such a popular game.
I have an extreme and pressing desire to try out DJ Hero.
There is more at stake than some Pat Benatar song here.

Remember that Konami game at Fun Factory? Beatmasters? The thing, basically, DDR with turntables, and it sucked because all there was were DDR-style tracks?
I hope it isn't that.

I hope it isn't Guitar Hero for the Turntable.

I don't actually like turntablism that much. Scratching, crabbing, transforming, all the intricate and quick movements blend together in my ears too much. I respect it but I don't enjoy it. I recognize DJ Qbert, but I don't listen him for fun. .

I hope it isn't mashups.
I like them but I don't respect them. I understand that they're easy to make and hard to master, but I don't think it takes the same amount of skill as sampling and beatmatching does. (Note: They still take a considerable amount of skill - at least the good ones do) I like this, but I still don't listen to it for fun.


What do I hope it is?
I hope it's an adequate simulation of playing multiple tracks simultaneously, of crossfading between them, of flipping them back and forth and making them intertwine, of laying down a massive beat, of creating something that makes you want to move.

That's why I want to play it. Maybe it's training wheels, maybe it's daydreams. Why do people want to play Guitar Hero? Same reasons.

But it isn't going to be what I want. It isn't what I think of when I see the iconic image of a turntable.

It'll be DJing. That's fine. It's called DJ Hero.
I don't want that.

I want Producer Hero.

This game has spun my brain about. Got me questioning, thinking of hip hop in general, of djing, of why I talk about this so goddamn much, of why I have so much and yet so little of this kind of music.

The answer is annoying.

I like it.

That's it.

I like some of it and I don't like some of it and I hate some of it, and I tend to focus on one side more than any other, and I have my favorites and my prejudices and my background but it boils down to, in the end, I like it.

I like Producers. I follow the behind-the-curtain information behind tracks, I research beats, I wonder how they made those goddamn noises and where they came up with these samples. I like them more than DJ's and Scratchers and Rappers because they above all manage to inject a bit of flavor into already flavored things.

It's very easy to make something taste strongly of a single thing.

Mixing is the hardest thing to do. Mixing well, that is, mixing two delicate or two strong and maintaining balance, making something new, making something delicious.
I guess I have my drink prejudices too. Sour, painful, alcoholic, sardonic, achingly sweet. In that order, maybe not.

If I made a list of "Top Hip-Hop Producers", it would differ greatly from my own personal choices. I'd have to speak for decades of artists, I'd have to obligatorily include pioneers who otherwise pale in comparison, I'd have to do research and bulk up my meager knowledge so I could sound more official.

It's something I might have done, not too long ago.

I think it's time for a different kind of list.

You have to understand that producers are, by nature, creating something to be used by another artist - out of something produced by a different artist.
Beatmakers just pump out clever tricks and rappers mosey on and search through them and go "this one, I can rhyme over this one. tune it up".
The technicalities, the specifics, these are fascinating and ornate aspects of the music business that can gum up an entire blog.
There are a lot of producers. There are substantially more than five, anyway.

This list ignores a lot in order to say a lot in not very many words.

The following links contain over an hour of music, so...take your time.

Griffin Weston's Top 5 Hip-Hop Producers

1. J Dilla - There are two things everyone knows about J Dilla. He was influential, and he was prolific. Neither of these reasons contribute to why I like him. I like him because his beats are the greatest I've ever heard, with or without somebody on top of them. They're complex, they're rich and voluminous, they rock back and forth. They're funky and slow and they're the absolute best for walking along the street and bobbing your head. It's impossible to not move listening to Dilla. It's simple as that. He's "your favorite producer's favorite producer".

2. K-Murdock - Having just gone on a bender about Panacea, it's no surprise I consider Murdock a damn fine producer of beats. He's half the group - literally, he provides 50% of all content. And what content it is. One of the most dedicated, intricate, and concentrated. There are melodies at work here, strung with strange twangs and thumps, woven around fat beats or no beats at all. One of the most diverse out there, Murdock also throws in samples from so far out there you never heard of them. Also, his first instrumental album was entirely anime-flavored. Amazing.

3. The Neptunes - I think even the dumbest among you know how hard I slaver over Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo - and why. Talk about original. Talk about creative. Talk about primordial thoomps mixed with spaceship whirps. Talk about stripped-down essence of music. Mixing ethereal with striking. Dont' even take into account their incredible range of production, from Britney Spears to Snoop. If you've danced to it in the last ten years, it's a 33% chance the Neptunes produced it. And it was good.

4. RJD2 - I have incredible respect for RJD2 because he, in turn, has incredible respect for the art. The man is a machine. A brilliant, fastidious, mindbreaking machine. SO funky. So cool. So ranged and clever, such an amazing library of rare funk samples, so many changeups, so many perfect matchings. He has the skill only years of diligent crate-digging and study awards, and it shows over and over again no matter what direction he takes it (and he's taken it in a lot of directions).

5. I spent a lot of time debating number five. It's low enough a slot to be available to a lot of different producers - all of which I like, but none enough to elevate among his peers. There are quite a lot. There are the influential, the legendary - Prince Paul (De La Soul, Handsome Boy Modeling School) and DJ Premier (every East Coast rapper for the past 20 years), the new and skilled yet immature popular champions - Kanye West (to quote Justin Timberlake, "It might sound cocky, but is it really cocky if you know that it's true?") and Timbaland (responsible, no matter how you cut it, for a shitload of gargantuan beats), to the underground and innovative - Danger Mouse (Grey Album, Gnarls Barkley), MF Doom (you've heard him and you didn't even know it), Q-Tip (ATCQ, The Renaissance)

And a million others.

Slot 5 goes to whoever I've ever linked to on this blog, whoever you've listened to and gone "god damn" and felt movement, to whoever I haven't ever mentioned and just have to hear, to whoever you keep secret, to whoever you think you could dance to if you really tried.