I was at the Compound with my good friend Ambush and we had a debate on our top 5 mc’s. We both agreed on 4 out of our top 5. We couldn’t agree on the 5. The next couple of post will be our picks and also links to mixes done by Dj Ambush.  I’m going to need ya’ll help on the 5th pick. Please hit us at our twitter’s to let us know who you think the 5th should be. @Iam_setfree & @skambeezy. Okay here is one of our first 4.

“ The Roots’ frontman Black Thought has held it down for close to two decades as one of the most gifted emcee’s with a record deal. Bad album from The Roots? Neva happened. The same can be said of his verses. One of the best freestyle emcees… I mean what else do you want? Philly at its finest. There isn’t a an emcee I wouldn’t put him up against. Enjoy”

Black Thought Mix

http://www.mediafire.com/?id7aipij0229v26

When you think of  a band and hip hop there is only one group that comes to mind, The Legendary Roots Crew. To celebrate the new release of their 13th Album Undun,The Roots held a show at the Highline Ballroom the other night  and this was one invite I was not going to pass up!

The energy in the air was on 10, warming things up was Mr Hip Hop himself, DJ Mr. Cee, playing all the classics. The only thing is when you hear NYC DJ’s you are only going to get to 12 seconds of each record, but it was bonkers anyways.

It was time to start the show and it sounded and felt like the building was starting to shake, then steps out The Dark Knight aka Black Thought. I have to say that Black Thought is defiantly in my top 5 MC’s dead or alive. The minute he step on that stage he started killing it. To me his performance that night was equal to the Jokers performance in Batman. The special surprise of the night was Big Krit, he came out and did a joint. It was good to hear 2 good mc’s and no gimmicks.

I can’t even explain what’s its like to hear good music being played live at this caliber. This is one group that has never changed because of the business. They are always staying true to their Roots.

I thought the spirit of Ray Charles came onto the stage but it was Bilah. He came with the inspector gadget coat on and sung like a bird stuck in a tree. What a voice on this kid.

The show was a classic and I am defiantly going to buy the new Roots album Undun. If you want some good music you should go to itunes as soon as you finish reading this post. Shouts out to the whole roots crew and 215. ONE

I got an opportunity to go to the Numark/Akai offices, talk about excited, I felt like I was going on a class trip lol. I went there for a meeting but besides that I dug out my MPC 3000 and wanted to see if i could get some things fixed on it and figure out some new and old tricks.

As soon as I got there I saw a S900 and a MPC60, talk about 2 classic machines. These are the pieces that Prince Paul, Dr Dre, Pete Rock and Marley Marl started on, so many hits were made on these machines. I felt like I was looking at gold, there was so much equipment laying around but I felt like I was window shopping lol.

It was time for me to take my MPC 3000 to the doctor lol. I used to call my MPC the Death Star but now it looks more like the Dirt Star lol. The drum pads defiantly needed some 409 x2 lol.

I got a chance to see the workings of the company, some areas was so top secret that I couldn’t event take pictures. I finally linked up with the MPC doctor which is my dude Dan Gill. He is the basically The Ghost In The Machine.

After I got all the news from Dan the doctor, I went over to tech support. This was like a producers library, I saw all the products from Akai, Numark, Ion and Alesis. It was crazy to see people answering the phones and answering questions about all the different machines. This room was running like a well oiled machine.

It was a great trip and I learned a lot and now it was time to head off and crank up the Death Star and see if I can start producing some tracks again. C-ya