Musical interests

EIGHTY

To keep it short my musical interest are mainly hip hop, samples and breaks.  More so just hip hop. I just started getting into digging for samples and breaks.  

But I am not just limited to hip hop only. I really do enjoy other types of music. It's just I feel more confident in talking hip hop. But that is why I joined Soul Strut in the beginning. Even though some of you have your own language and ribbings, there is a ton of knowledge in here. I can always learn something new by lurking or digging through the archives. Some stuff you guys and gals talk about is for me and some is not. But I am open to trying it out and discussing it. 

Anyway, thought I would put that out there. Hoping to hear what your main musical interests are and what you look for when out in the wild. 

Jimster

Back in the day you would have copped clownage for admitting anything other than a complete encyclopaedic knowledge of all music and the mysterious and intangible value-scales of any incarnations of it's recorded manifestation.

But the Strut is a lot better now.  

For me, there is nowhere like here to ask "I liked [this], what else should I be checking?" - There is still a ton of knowledge here which is why I came.  I am more of a hack musician (guffaws internally) than a collector, and thus my "Collection" reflects the stuff I wanted to listen to and learn to play / fluff straight clams along to.  Discovered a lot from recommendations here [moastly Jazz/Jazzfunk/Funk/R&B/and Beatways thereof] and made some good friends. 

I do enjoy the tales of mythical raers as much as the next Strutter, but I lack the time, space and funds to stockpile myself.  I think I run to a few hundred vinylways, mostly from the last 30/40 years.  If you want to talk sleeve card weights of re-issue cycles, there is that other place.

But the first rule of Fight Club etc.

klezmer electro-thug beats

For me, since I was a kid I liked hip-hop but never dug deep or even necessarily bothered to get into the most popular stuff of the time, just whatever I came across (my 7-yo self would've named 3rd Bass' second LP and Naughty By Nature O.P.P. cassette single b/w Wickedest Man Alive as favorites). For whatever reason samples grabbed me, and the genres they came from were some of the same stuff I'd been exposed to via my parents' tastes anyway (soul & reggae).

At some point I discovered college radio and heard a load of new niches - turntablism, backpack rap, 60s ska & rocksteady, library music and so on. I think I've always had an automatic distaste for whatever is currently selling a lot, which is a bad habit, but I can probably thank it for leading me to the genres I'm most interested in. The ones I've already mentioned are still strong, plus funk, stuff that samples (yes in 2017), and various branches of those genres.

The strut, from waaay before I started posting, I'm talking like... even back to when it started, '99, was actually pretty formative for me in doing that butterfly effect thing of putting you onto a single song or album and going "what the hell is this, I need more" and starting you into an education, so I'm appreciative of the knowledge dropped here over the years. I only wish the wild forums shit before the database crash of '05 was still around to peruse.

Duderonomy

When I first developed my own tastes in music I was hip-hop and grunge, and classic 60s-70s rock. ATCQ, Beasties, Cypress Hill, with Nirvana and RATM. Then I started dropping LSD and Es and was turned on to electronic music in a big way. My tastes will always gravitate towards the '90s sounds. For a long while my record collecting was samples, but, just like ElectroThug was saying about avoiding the popular, I was never trying to find rare Premier sources, I was trying to find my own dope shit - on shit records. This place turned me on to the raer that was more than just a break. For a while in the late 90s I did some hip-hop DJing in a club, but after a few years hip-hop started to suck and I got jaded with requests so focused back on what I wanted to hear. Put myself through univ and had to sell a lot of raers to eat, always been pruning the collection to make room for new stuff, and I'd say it's a healthy thing to realise this stuff is still just stuff that shouldn't put restrictions on your life. The biggest change to my life has been leaving my collection in storage in another country... with the majority of the good stuff digitized! I'm no longer vinyl or death. Feels ironic that I've moved away from vinyl DJing after 20+ years just as it's become incredibly fetishised by the mainstream. Really I should sell them, but planning to give them to a friend I know will appreciate them.
What is music for me now? I'm trying to champion it's value as a Chinese-tea-ceremony thing... reminding my friends to take time WITH NO SCREENS ON and JUST listen.

dukeofdelridge

My dad was into jazz in the 60s. Local saxophone dudes in LA. My mom liked ABBA and the Beatles. My brother listened studied metal, with a specialty in virtuoso guitar soloists. I like it heavy.