Having eulogised my love of the beats concocted by my man pajozo for his project with K. Sparks (check the freeness), i decided to propose a little Q&A. This is the result.
So give me a bit of a musical background of yourself. your 1st hip hop experience, how you got into making beats, tell the good people a little about yourself.
When I was a kid I used to listned alot to my dad's cd collection, Jimi Hendrix & BB King among others, later I got my hands on a Soul compilation & that’s when I fell in love with soul sound.
My first real Hip Hop experience was when I was about 8 years old, and my friend's older brother had bought the Wu-Tang Forever double cd. I remember sitting in their living room when he came in and started playing it, and I was totally stunned by it. I had never heard anything like it before, and I loved it. From that day on I always listened to Hip Hop.
The beat making started about 3 years ago. I always wanted to make music/beats, so I decided to give it a try. So I started to play around with it, and later on I got better and started to get positive feedback, so I just kept going.
I notice you hail from Stockholm, while K.'s Myspace reads, Jamaica queens. was this a Foreign Exchange type of hook up & how did the collabo 1st come about?
We got in touch on Myspace, and I really dug his music and style, so I asked him if he wanted to collaborate and he did. So I started to send him beats, and we did a couple of song together until we decided to form a group.
Its obvious from your use of samples that you are a real crate digger. who would you consider major influences on your work & whos music, hip hop or otherwise is getting your juices flowing right now?
My main influence is Hip Hop between 1993-1999, for example D.I.T.C., Keith Murray, Ras Kass, Gang Starr and of course Wu-Tang, all kind of sweet Soul from the early 70’s til 75. Plus a lot of old Blues and Reggae as well.
With that last question in mind, obviously you & K have made the strides to embrace the internet age of hip hop with both hands. What do you think of the current state of hip hop as a whole & what would you say to artists who continue to ignore the change in hip hop as a whole?
I think the internet is a great tool to spread your music to people and connect with other artists etc. If there wasn’t for the internet, I wouldn’t be working with K. Sparks for example.
I think that Hip Hop need’s to be rescued from all this money-bling-bling-souljahboy bullshit. Cuz those songs that they play on the radio that aint Hip Hop, that's Hip Pop. We need to draw a line so people don’t get confused by what is Hip Hop and what isn't. I have no problem with people liking Soulja Boy or that kind of music, but DON’T call it Hip Hop, cuz it isn’t.
i'm not gonna lie, the 1st thing i did when i played Definition was to marvel at your beats skills. are there gonna be anymore collabos in the future & are there some projects from yourself in the pipeline or anyone else from your part of the world that we should be looking out for?
At the moment im putting together beats for mine and K. Sparks new project, that is gonna be released next year. Im also working with a couple of artists here in Sweden, rappers and a reggae artists. Maybe gonna Im put my own mixtape together aswell and put some dope features on it. We'll see.
Well, there you have it. Short, sweet & to the point. Now peep a brother's beat skills on the Definition freeness to the right (
or Here)
Pajozo's Myspace
I've been championing Small Pro every time he lets a new project loose. His latest is an instrumental album & his 1st official release. Slow Bus takes instrumentals to a new level. This isn't simply a collection of beats that should have lyrics over them. This album takes the album part of the equation more seriously than the instrumental part. The drum patterns & sample arrangements are constantly changing during songs & there is always a story of sorts actually taking place within each track. It's only a matter of time before this guys name is being seen regularly on album credits.
