Bridge & Causeway

My roommate has been blasting this throughout the apartment for… weeks straight now. And, I gotta say… I don’t really mind. I mean, it’s Snoop, which frankly makes the talkbox not bad in any sort of way, can’t help but feel a little Frankie Knuckles on the whistles (you know I love my house music), and the main synth line… well, I have to admit that really just reminds me of the background music to Tokyo Xtreme Racer for the Dreamcast, a completely underrated video game which I totally played the shit out of back in the day. So yeah, high marks on all counts.

(download Snoop Dogg’s “Sexual Eruption”)

I like that there’s no guest appearances on the new album. From an interview:

“I’mma do the whole record, me by myself. I don’t want no guest rappers, no singer, nothing. Just Snoop Dogg. I want you to feel me. When I think of all the greats before me … I bought Rakim’s album the other day for the hundredth time, no guest rappers. I bought one of KRS-One’s albums the other day for the hundredth time, no guest rappers.

“You lose focus after awhile when you’re doing an album,” Snoop continued. ” ‘Snoop, you got a new album coming out. Who’s on it?’ I’ll be like, ‘I got him on it, him on it, them on it.’ When it’s time to do the video, they’ll do the video with me, but when it’s time to do a show with them, ‘Oh, I got a show in Germany,’ or, ‘I got to be in Paris.’ You’re left one-legged. Now it’s time to show artists.”

“But when you listen to James Brown, he did it by himself. Curtis Mayfield, by himself. Of course they did collaborations, but the [songs] that matter they did by themselves. I don’t think people have got all of me yet. Doggystyle was about 95 percent of me. But I wanted Tha Dogg Pound on my album. This record, even if this record don’t sell, that might be a blessing. It needs to get back to [letting people know] who you are. I don’t know whose record I’m buying right now because it’s so many people on it. Is it a compilation? What is it?”

Sometimes I watch homemade scratching and juggling videos on YouTube, you know, just looking to get ideas, or inspiration for combinations or whatever — it’s not biting per se, it’s to watch, learn, and build on, you know? Foundations.

Anyway, sometimes you come across shit like this and it’s completely useless to you. I mean, I can’t learn shit from this DJ Kentaro vid. He’s just too fast, too beyond me. I mean, there’s certain segments where I can almost sort-of figure out what he’s doing, but that “Holy shit/What the fuck” factor just keeps pulling me back out of it. Brown and I stumbled on this one the other day (don’t know if I mentioned but he was staying at my place up in NYC last week, digging for records and helping his girl move to the 212 — only a matter of time before we get his ass up here too), and we both just kind of sat there for a minute when it was done until his girlfriend’s said, “That’s not… real, right? It’s sped up or something, right?” We just shook our heads.

I guess the main draw for me over other juggling/scratching routines is Kentaro… I mean, dude obviously works in hip-hop, but doesn’t get stuck into the solely hip-hop vibe during his routines. Instead he gets open on some DnB, breaks, jungle, and whatever the hell else sounds good, and just puts together sets that sound way more original than the average scratch superstar to me. (I’m not going to hate on anyone with the technical skills to scratch nice, but I also know there’s not a damned person reading this who hasn’t heard some turntablism sets before that sound like pure DJ masturbation — endless rapid-fired scratches over the same hip-hop beat). Here you get an eclectic mash of shit that comes off sounding like Jet Set Radio on speed after downing a few shots and noticing the girl of his dream winking at him from across the club. I mean… it’s hot.

Also, for posterity, his famous (infamous?) 2002 DMC routine.