DJ Enki

Large Professor. Strictly 45s. May 25.

DJ Enki — Mon, 07 May 2012 07:31:04 +0000

I am beyond excited for this. If you know me, you know that Large Professor is pretty much my hero when it comes to hip-hop, so to get the chance to share a billing with him–spinning all 45s, no less–is an incredible honor for me. This is gonna be serious business, y’all. Do NOT miss out!

Friday, May 25

Mighty (119 Utah St. San Francisco)
9pm-2am
LARGE PROFESSOR
Shortkut
DJ Platurn
DJ Enki

Spinning all 45s all night.
Plus: Free BBQ!

Get your tickets at eventbrite.com

Friday, April 20: The 45 Sessions featuring DJ B-Cause

DJ Enki — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 03:03:25 +0000

This is gonna be great. We’ve got my favorite Bay Area DJ, the one and only DJ B-Cause, coming through for the 45 Sessions this month. B’s got a seriously deep collection and phenomenal skills when it comes to playing them. You really don’t want to miss out on this one.

Friday, April 20

Disco Volante (347 14th St., Oakland)
10pm-2am
E Da Boss, DJ Platurn, DJ Enki, and special guest DJ B-Cause spin funk, disco, hip-hop, rock, breaks, boogie, and all sorts of great tunes on nothing but 45s
$5

Quote of the Month

DJ Enki — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 05:33:27 +0000

“EDM is, to me, firmly ensconced in its ‘Arena Rock’ phase — much like in the way that rap music has both feet firmly planted in terrain too similar to the harmless and entertaining yet vapid realm of ’80s hair metal. Yet one must understand that such progression cannot continue without the eventual backlash. The physics law of for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction applies here, and with such vehement corporate co-opting we can all expect to see the rubber band snap back. Rap and dance music both need their 1988 or their 1991, and it will happen.”

-Cosmo Baker, hitting the nail squarely on the head

“Mann Up”

DJ Enki — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:56:23 +0000

One from the hard-drive archives: This cut from 2008 was originally meant to be the follow up to “Kung Fu Kwaku,” but somewhere along the line, it got lost in the sauce, and I pretty much forgot about it, except that it occasionally pops up on my iPod. I also made this track in order to take on two technical challenges:

1. Simulate stereo sampling with the SP-1200
2. See if I could freak a bass line to make it do things the original record doesn’t do at all

It was kinda cool to figure those things out as I went along. Hell, I’m not even sure if I could do that bass line again–I’d have to go back to the Pro Tools session and see if I can figure out what I did.

Friday Flips #6: “Build and Destroy”

DJ Enki — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 21:31:16 +0000

The song: “Build and Destroy’”
The producer: Kenny Parker
The science: For a crew with the word “productions” right there in its name, Boogie Down Productions doesn’t get talked about too much when we get to listing the best producers or the best beats or what have you. That’s understandable when the real driving force of BDP is arguable the greatest rapper of all time, KRS-One, but still, the beats on those BDP albums don’t get talked about too much (save Criminal Minded because of the whole Ced-Gee-jacking-Marley-Marl’s-reel-of-drum-sounds business), which is kind of a shame.

While KRS isn’t afraid to dabble outside the margins a bit–witness his early embrace of reggae and even his dip into ska loops for “Edutainment”–his heart clearly lies with that good ol’ boom-bap. And when it came time for KRS to fire back at X-Clan for all of Brother J’s Blastmaster-targeting quips, he did so on top of a boom-bap monster of a track crafted by Kenny Parker. The result: The heavy-hitting “Build and Destroy” off what would turn out to be the last official BDP album, 1992’s Sex and Violence.

For that molasses-thick bassline and the shrieky organ tone, Kenny turned to Gary Byrd’s “Every Brother Ain’t a Brother.”

Of course, only Kenny and KRS can speak to whether that song was sampled just based off the title, but when engaging in this philosophical battle with a Black Nationalist rapper who called himself Brother J, KRS must have known that delivering his shots over snippets of a track called “Every Brother Ain’t a Brother” would make the song hit his target even harder than just the lyrics alone. “Sit back and take heed, brother, you must learn,” Brother J had said in X-Clan’s “Grand Verbalizer, What Time Is It.” In retort, KRS reminds Brother J that every Brother ain’t a brother simply via sampling choice. Ouch.

And that’s not even getting into the lyrics, which are a pretty thorough evisceration of a rapper who also happens to be one of my all-time favorites…but that’s a topic for another time.

Back to the beat: If sampling “Every Brother Ain’t a Brother” had just been a little title trickery and cleverness in service of a weak beat, that would ultimately be a letdown. Fortunately, Gary Byrd’s track delivers a great groove; all it needed were those heavy drums that Kenny locked in, and you’ve got a punishing beat just waiting for equally punishing rhymes.

And Kenny did a great job putting it all together, starting out by slowing the record down and filtering the bassline so he could have it play without that organ tone on top. Beyond that, he chopped up the bassline so that he could just have the first note stab on the one, then leave the rest of the bar empty, except for those drums. When he does let the entire one-bar bassline loop go, it gives the track renewed energy. Plus, the filtering strategy let Kenny isolate the organ tone, which he frequently uses without the bassline underneath. Just by having various permutations of organ tone playing or not playing/full bassline loop/just bass stab/no bassline, Kenny is able to keep the beat interesting–simple but effective arrangement.

As an interesting side note, an instrumental version of “Every Brother Ain’t a Brother” was later released by Joe Thomas.

It’s the same groove, just a longer song.

Friday, March 16: The 45 Sessions f/ DJ Doc Fu

DJ Enki — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 17:42:29 +0000

If you’ve been sleeping on the best party in the East Bay, it’s time to wake up. What we have here is big things: The homie DJ Doc Fu coming through to bless us with a set. Doc’s a San Francisco legend — an institution, even. He’s been slaying crowds for years with his killer record crates and top-notch skills. We’re excited he’s finally able to come bless the 45 Sessions with a set, and you should be, too, because much like Poor Righteous Teachers, he’s gonna rock this funky joint.

Friday, March 16

Disco Volante (347 14th St., Oakland)
10pm-2am
Doc Fu and DJ Enki spin funk, disco, hip-hop, rock, breaks, boogie, and all sorts of great tunes on nothing but 45s
$5

Here’s the Facebook event page.

The Commute of Sisyphus

DJ Enki — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 03:40:50 +0000

So here’s a really cool project: My good friend Tara Zanzig–now located in Chicago, but who I first met back in my college days in Greensboro, NC–is a very talented artist. Comics, sculpture, all kinds of good stuff. She contacted me about an interesting collaboration: She’s part of a group that makes 3-minute movies based on various themes, and she asked if I wanted to do the music for her next movie.

Hell yeah, I’m down for that!

The theme for this round was “release,” so I mentioned a few ideas for the track, she refined one of those ideas, and I sat down and started working on a beat–one with a different feel from what I usually make. She shot some footage based on the concept we worked out, and then we went back and forth, tweaking the beat and her filming ideas until I finished off the track, and she was able to edit her footage to fit it. It was a really great creative collaboration with lots of good ideas and feedback flowing in both directions, and the final result is, I think, really cool (she did a great editing job on it). Check it out and see for yourself.

The Commute of Sisyphus from Tararchy on Vimeo.

First 45 Session of 2012!

DJ Enki — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 07:11:07 +0000

Big dudes. Little records. Massive fun. And it don’t stop, y’all.

“Red Line Radio” (DJ Enki remix)

DJ Enki — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:27:12 +0000

My man Headnodic gave me the acapella to the song “Red Line Radio” (featuring Raashan Ahmad and Moe Pope) from his album, and, well, you know what that means. Reeeeeeeeemix! I knew I had to come aggressive with this one because of the way the guys were rhyming, so I chopped up some drums, grabbed an energetic loop, and, well, everything else fell into place. Check it out!

Red Line Radio (DJ Enki Remix) by DJ Enki

Friday Flips #5: “Shadowboxin’”

DJ Enki — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 22:15:10 +0000

The song: “Shadowboxin’”
The producer: The RZA
The science: It’s one of the most timeless and fun-to-discuss, never-to-be-resolved hip-hop debates out there: “Which Wu-tang solo album is the best?” People will argue all day about it, and based on the many, many conversations I’ve had about it, Only Built for Cuban Linx… gets the most nods. But my choice is GZA’s Liquid Swords, not just for GZA’s rhyming (which is top notch), but for RZA’s production.

Of course, RZA was killing it back then, and basically anything that said “Produced by the RZA” was going to have a banging beat. But the consistency of GZA’s album, the steady feel of the whole thing, really showed RZA’s skill. It wasn’t just an album full of good beats, it was an album with a real texture to it all the way through–dreary, eerie, a bit glum, a bit surly, a bit moody.

Composition-wise, RZA wasn’t just catching great loops (the “Cruisin’” loop for “Liquid Swords,” the “I’m Afraid the Masquerade Is Over” loop for “Duel of the Iron Mic”), he was doing some slick chopping as well. The perfect example: Slicing riffs out of Ann Peebles’ “Troubles, Heartaches, and Sadness”:

And turning them into the beat for “Shadowboxin’”

As most hip-hop heads already know, RZA was a pioneer of the whole sped-up soul sample technique that Kanye later bludgeoned to death. “Shadowboxin’” is a great demonstration of how great the sampling method could be in his hands.

The Ann Peebles song is s-l-o-w. This wasn’t a case of “flip it on 45 so I can dance to it,” it was a case of “flip it on 45 so I can rap to it.” But then came the issue of the loop: The record doesn’t really have a clean one of the basic groove. So RZA chopped out two different pieces, put them together, and created the loop. As a bonus, the little vocal clip that came at the end of the loops sounded like a child saying “oh, man,” as though impressed with the verses of GZA and guest Method Man (who contributes by far some of the best rhymes of his career). If you listen to the beat back-to-back with the original song, it’s easy to hear the pieces RZA took, but to have the creativity to take those pieces out in the first place is what made RZA RZA back then.