Thursday, July 8, 2010

The Winner Is...


What’s poppin my cyber-surfing, internet addicted, blog reading, Hip-Hop hooligans,

The Best Remix Contest is over, school vacation just started and the timing couldn't be better. Thank all of YOU who participated, there were almost two hundred entries to the contest so it took awhile to listen to everything. It was a tough decision so I had a few friends ( artists and producers) listen to the final 5 and help me decide. The winner is Richard "R.K. Cerman" Kaliarik a producer from Slovakia. He got his track in on time, the beat was dope and he made sure to matched it to the song BPM. I received allot of entries a day or two after the deadline and they had to be disqualified. This doesn't mean they weren't dope cuz we listened to them and a few were, it means it would've been unfair to all the other contestants if I bent the rules to allow late entries. This is why we made a deadline. R.K. Cerman has been producing for two years and describes his style as sample heavy similar to DJ Premiere and is currently working on a beat tape project. You can check out more of his music on his myspace page and if you want some of his production his contact info is below.

MySpace : myspace.com/rkcerman
Swift.FM : swift.fm/rkcerman
Twitter : twitter.com/rkcerman
Facebook : facebook.com/rkaliarik

A group that receives honorable mention is OERJGRINDER (www.myspace.com/oerjgrinder), their death metal infused with funk and Hip-Hop mix was creative and reminded me of Linkin Park Hybrid theory. The group consists of Krovx guitarist with bass players Nasty and Punished Earth, they describe the music as Grindcore Beatdown. For those of you that don't know I also listen to a wide range of other musical genres outside of hip-hop, including rock, metal, house, drum & bass and quite a few styles in between. This contest was about originality and creativity, something the music business is lacking right now. What inspired me to start the contest was the remix style of the 90's. 

Notice that in the 90's when producers made a remix they not only added new verses, but in some cases added a new beat. The reason Murder Inc, Bad Boy, Def Jam and other labels at the time stopped doing this is because of money. The way labels track a records success is thru BDS (broadcast data systems) spins, which is the current system in use. In the 90's if they changed a records beat it wouldn't matter as long as the chorus was the same or if it had the same title with the word "remix" behind it. Now If they change the beat of a record the BDS system doesn't recognize the record anymore and starts counting the spins from zero.

So this means back in the day if you had a record that sold 20,000 copies (which by industry standards is a failure) then had a remix with a new beat selling 130,000 copies your total would be 150,000 which would be a successful. Under the current system using the same analogy, if the first record sold 20,000 copies and the remix sold 130,000 copies the label would have one successful record and one unsuccessful. So to capitalize off remixing and getting the most sales from a record, labels stopped changing the beat. This is good for business but bad for creativity in Hip-Hop. The remix contest was a way to bring that creative freedom back to Dj's and producers and it worked. You can listen to both the winning remix and the honorable mention below.

Aside from the contest I’ve been rehearsing and preparing for my trip to the U.S.. School just ended this week. I'm on summer vacation until the end if August and seriously I need it. Juggling classes and a career is tiring work. My intentions for the summer are simple make music, workout, more music, paint, more music and tour. (can u dig it) other than that I’m just taking things one day at a time. Holland is in the World Cup finals and this place is going bananas. The weather has been so hot Satan would get a sunburn, everyone is wearing orange, people are blowing the vuvuzelas (a long, loud horn associated with soccer) until they break and public intoxication is at an all time high.(I luv it) 

That's it for now, I hope this post finds all of you outside and enjoying the summer cuz winter will return way to quickly. If I have any words of wisdom to survive this scorching weather its ...drink less to party more, do less drugs to have less regrets and if you do allot of both learn to exercise control. Food for thought.






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