Rihanna "Bitch Better Have My Money" (dj Jesster Fazeo Remix)

rihanna remix..  i love BBHMM.  about time i did a remix.  was feelin' kinda mellow on a flight from ATL to LGA and put this together.  i do some of my most focused work on a plane, i guess it's 'cause you don't have much else to distract you from the beat.

always loved "ridin' high" by faze-o.. inspired by the NWA song "always into something" and the EPMD song "please listen to my demo"  love the bassline and the high pitched synth sound and how they work together.

soundcloud's been a little weird lately with putting remixes up.. i got a message from them saying a remix of "happy" i did was in violation of some copyright protection thingey blah blah so they removed my remix and i now have "one strike" .... we'll see if they have beef w a rihanna remix.  there are so many remixes of this song already on soundcloud i don't see it being an issue.. but really what would be so bad about two strikes, i mean, i pay for this.

hope you enjoy.

-jesster

new from the "beats on a plane" series

two new beats on soundcloud from the "beats on a plane" series.  one is a dedication to paloma...

Paloma's First Beat

here's paloma's first beat. she was in the lab while the beat was being made and her voice is on the track... she wasn't in the best mood but i felt like it would be cool to have her voice on there either way... documenting this period of time.

Team Supreme vol 76 rejected submission

i really dig what the guys at team supreme are doing.. every now and then they have an open submission for beats.  tried to get one in there for vol 76.  didn't make the cut but i ain't sour about it.. maybe next time 'round.
here's what i made:

here's what the mix ended up being:

New Beat: Dj Jesster "why me"

while i was driving home from work yesterday i heard an interview with linda rondstadt on NPR.  it was pretty interesting, and i thought to myself "i probably couldn't name more than one or two of her songs." so i went back to the lab, pulled some up and hooked up this beat..

Vinyl Collection Record Shelves

as a record collector i've always been into having a good looking shelving unit for your vinyl.  back in the day i had made a shelf out of some really long screw poles and cinder blocks.  it made it from my basement apt on linwood to the lofts on memorial and eventually to the house in east atlanta on cloverdale.  that thing was a beast.. everytime i moved i had to lug around about 16 full size cinder blocks on top of all that vinyl (which is already pretty heavy itself.)

every move i made resulted in about 200-300 records getting donated to goodwill.  i would go through the collection and see what i could knock out to make the move easier.  some of these records i would look at and say "man, i'm never going to play that, i don't need it..." of course now i wish i had them all back.

well, now at the house on lenox (and having been there for over a year) it was overdue for me to get all the vinyl put up nice and neat.  since the move it was previously stacked pretty hap-hazardly in the corner.  i thought about making some shelves custom, but once i found these sefora 500 shelves it seemed like it would just be easier (and nicer looking.)  also, the dimensions of those shelves seemed like they would fit just right in the area i had in mind in the studio.

i got 'em off of musician's friend for about $140 each.  they came with very little instruction but were easy enough to figure out.. it's kinda ikea'ish in that it's pretty much particle board all the way around.  once you get 'em put together though they're solid enough.  they claim to hold 500 records per shelf (which in this case would be 1500 records) but i would say they're closer to 400.  i don't like my record shelves to tightly stacked anyways, i need room to breathe so i can peek at the covers without pulling the album out.

right now they're not in any order at all.. at some point i'm going to go in there and organize 'em.. doubt i'll have the patience to alphabetize them all but i will prob do a general "genre" sorting.

overall i'm happy with the shelves.  i'm very happy about getting my vinyl in a nice place.. it will definitely lead to me getting back into collecting and listening to my record collection.  hopefully we won't be moving any time too soon so i can enjoy these where they are.

dj jesster "Flowers For Weezy"

two "knock-off" beats

so here at work we have what we like to call "Demo Reels" aka "shzzle reels" or show reels or whatever.. they're basically video montages edited to some cool music that we use to display some work that we're proud of for our perspective clients. in 99.9999% of cases like this the music that's used for these things is normal licensed music that you would hear on the radio, spotify, itunes or whatever.. like actual real music (no needle-drop b.s.) .. well for whatever reason the legal dept ran through it and decided that we can't use that music because we could get sued.. so i volunteered to make a couple of versions that are "loosely inspired" by those tracks that we could edit to. one is "inspired" by the m83 song "midnight city" and one is "inspired" by the DJ shadow song "building steam with a grain of salt" ... in both cases these videos are going to be noticeably less cool than they were before but it's enough to get the legal department to leave us alone and go back to doing whatever it is they do from 9-5. here's what the new tracks sound like.

beat 1

beat 2

since they're .wav files it may take a sec to load. just like a fake gucci purse you get off the street corner? when the actual videos get posted i'll put a link up so you can see them in context. hope you dig it.

The Harlem Shake "Franchise Edition"

so if i were asked "have you ever participated in a harlem shake vid?" i would now have to say 'yes.'  but listen, it was for the kids..

this past weekend i came through the 'cuse for a little bit and got to hang with my little homie nate dogg.  we played some hoops, had a few dunk contests and made a shake video.  we nailed it in two takes, one for each shot.. basically we jay-z'ed that shoot.

nate dogg was in charge of costume design, and if you look in the back you can see mike d and dano.  it was as fun as it looked like it would be, so to all the H.S. haters out there: make one and then get back to us....

WPBB video

video of wasted potential brass band playing at the corner tavern in L5P.  very fun afternoon celebrating mardi gras...

Radio Spot for WABE

i like to support public radio.  it's what i listen to in the morning on the way to work.  get in some news, weather, traffic, current events, no commercials and no annoying "drive-time" DJ yelling about this and that.

at the end of the year i donated to WABE which is the local NPR station in atlanta.  felt like since i'm always listening it's only fair.. (plus i got a dope eco-friendly bag, oooh.)  and on the donation page online there's a little comment section.. so in the comment section i said something nice about the station.

about a month later i got an email from Eric Durban who works at WABE asking if he could record me answering a few questions for a promo spot.  i was cool with it so we set up a little phone interview.  i was a little nervous at the time (i kinda think you can tell..) but whatever.

here it is.

REMIX COMP: Cazzette "Weapon" DJ Jesster Remix

put together a remix of "weapon" by cazzette.  layered up a bunch of drums and filtered some sounds.. added a simple little bassline and BAM.  this is a remix...

What I Do

this is my regular gig.. working on the flame for turner studios.  client number one is turner sports.  i know that "working on a flame" sounds kinda vague and abstract.. maybe this will help:

Persian Wedding Song Remix (in Farsi)

A couple of weekends ago i DJed a wedding party for Sarge and Leyla.  Leyla's mom brought me a couple of CDs with some persian wedding music to play.  I thought one of them was pretty interesting to i kinda worked it into a beat i was working on.

The lyrics are in farsi so i don't know what is being said and i'm not sure that the arrangement is in a way that the lyrics make any sense now.  i do think it sounds kinda cool though.  When i put this together i did it because i like the idea of blending different musical styles together, i sincerely hope this isn't offensive or rude towards anyone.

Some of the tricks i tried to use involved some grouping of effects in a timeline.  Using a simpler in a bassline and warping and cutting in arrangement mode.  there's a couple filter delays in there, oh and i used a corpus effect on the bass drums after i wired them through their own audio channel.. that was a trick i learned in a tutorial from dubspot.

The wedding was great by the way and both Leyla and her mom are adorable.  Thanks for the tracks.....

Big House Pimpin' - dj jesster [jay-z house mix]

here's a house music mix i put together..  the concept was to weave "big pimpin'" throughout it and make it a quick little mix.  it's about 35+ minutes.  i looked for about 6 months for the jay-z acapella but had no luck (even tried to tweet the man himself.)  i gave up and did the mix with the original.  thanks to my main man Kev Goreham for the v.o. work...

It's Time For the Percolator (dj jesster Re-Edit)

always loved the song "percolator" by cajmere.  on the flight back from LGA today i put most of this together.  i finished it off back here in atlanta.   it's short and sweet, clocking in at 2:00 min on the nose.  the breakdown with the high-pitched synth got the auto-pan xformer trick which is one of the tricks i got from abe duque in the dubspot workshop.  unfortunately i didn't get to say "thanks" to him in person after the class, i had my head in the apc when he took off.

Old Downtempo DJ mix "Hair Did vol. 1"

there's a mix competition on lets mix dot com. i wanna win some new headphones so i entered this downtempo set. get on there and give it 5 stars for me ok?

Hair Did vol 1. from jesstermix77 at Letsmix.com.

oh yeah and there's a ton more mixes on obpmusic.com/mixes

jesster's 20 albums

Jesster’s top 20

This is going to be hard to do but here we go:


20. Black Sabbath “Paranoid” – If you know me you’re definitely surprised that Sabbath made my list but this is a pretty dope album.. the drums and basslines are ridiculous… i.e. “Hand of Doom” and “Planet Caravan” is slooow and dope. I know some of my boys in the ROC are pretty big into sabbath. they'd dig that this album made the cut.

19. Bob Marley “Rebel Music” – hard to pick a fav Bob Marley album. But this one’s pretty funky. I remember doing a radio show called artists only that was a 2 hour tribute to bob marley. you wouldn't (actually maybe you would) believe all the stoners that called into the station with requests.

18. Charles Mingus “Mingus Ah Um” – every song on there is solid. I especially love the song “Better Git It In Your Soul” and especially the part where it breaks down to the hand clapping and shouting. If you’ve never heard this song I highly recommend checking it out.

17. Gangstarr “Step In The Arena” – classic hip hop. This is what all hip hop should aspire to be like. The art form of hip hop. Lil’ wayne needs to listen to this album about a million times before he makes his next album. this takes me back to high school rollin' in the green monster with chiwale, mike heath and my boy chris heinlein, rest in peace my man.

16. Al Green “I’m Still In Love With You” – This album was in HEAVY rotation for me my junior year at IC in t10. The second side of the album isn’t really that great, but the first five songs on this album are SO strong that it makes up for the last five. “Simply Beautiful” is kinda underrated and possibly my favorite al green song ever.

15. Miles Davis “Kind Of Blue” – I will never get sick of that album. “All Blues” is not the most famous song on there but it’s THE BOMB. “So What” and “Freddie Freeloader” are dope too. Dope Mellow and Soulful. Mike nice gives me credit with introducing him to this album, i'm pretty proud of that.

14. Jimi Hendrix "Are You Experienced” – don’t even need to say anything about this album.

13. Parliament “Up For the Down Stroke” – this is not the Parliament album that best defines the funk they were putting down… but this list is so subjective. It’s my personal favorite parliament album. The song “The Goose” is dope slow funk and “All Your Goodies Are Gone” is a bad ass song.

12. Morcheeba “Who Can You Trust?” – stumbled on this album working at Strawberry’s (I had to answer the phone “strawberry’s music movies and more, this is jesse how can I help you?").. their other albums never really did it for me but this one is incredible. That one summer I listened to this album at least once a day.

11. Michael Jackson “Thriller” - I’ve been a DJ for a long time and I’ve never DJed a party where you couldn’t throw on some MJ. Black people, white people, old people, young people … everybody can dance to “PYT” or “wanna be startin’ something”

10. Run D.M.C. “Run D.M.C.” – this album blew my mind. It was the first record that I owned. My bubbie bought it for me when I was 10. Rest in Peace JMJ .. the cut during the part where run’s like “fly like a dove, come from up above, I’m rockin’ on the mic and you can call me run-love..” is still to this day one of my favorites. I've definitely been yelled at for playing this album too loud a bunch of times.

9. The Meters “Struttin’” – got into the meters because my boy mike heath had this vinyl my senior year in high school. My boy smiddy is also a pretty big fan of this album. Hooger was a pretty big meters guy too if i remember correctly.

8. Herbie Hancock “Headhunters” – used to sample this album a ton when I was making beats on the eps or the SP1200. There’s only 4 songs on there but they’re like 10 minutes long each. Every song is worthwhile in it’s own way. At first, my favorite song on there was “Chameleon” then it was “Watermelon Man” .. lately I’ve been into “Vein Melter” but the first two we play at steinbeck’s so I have a personal attachment to ‘em.

7. The Roots “Do You Want More?” – prob not necessarily the root’s best album but it was real important to me ‘cause it (along w the brand new heavies’ “heavy rhyme experience”) showed me how dope live instrumentation was with hip hop. i remember a roadtrip from IC to the 'cuse to see them with some of the fellas from mission control. it was an outdoor concert and luscious jackson opened up for them. there was prob only 50 people or so in the crowd... black thought came out and made everyone get up close to the stage and then they just ROLLED.

6. Aretha Franklin “Young Gifted and Black” – Aretha is the best female musician of all time. This album has one of my all time favorites on there “Rock Steady” and a dope slow song “Day Dreamin'” not to mention the title track that has dope piano and of course a positive message.
Once the beat drops in “Young Gifted and Black” (at around 1:43 - wait for it, it's worth it...) she starts right up with “In this whole world you know…….” And it just flows from there. No doubt obama heard this one at some point in his life and drew some inspiration... that's what i thought of when i saw Aretha singing at the inauguration.

5. Stevie Wonder “Songs in the Key of Life” – tons of good songs on there since it’s a double album. Stevie Wonder is the shiznit. got to see him live in '08 and he was incredible, you wouldn't know he was pushin' 70 years old. my boy at work skot's daugter hope did a thing at school on stevie for black history month, i think she's 9 ... that's pretty cool.

4. James Brown “The Payback” – james being james. The song “the Payback” is obviously dope but my fav song on there is “Mind Power” and I also dig the underrated slow paced song “Forever Suffering” especially the part with the girls where they’re singin’ in the back all slow while james is going off over it. He KILLS it. "I'll give you all of my money, give you my car, i don't wanna see your face, if the police come i don't wanna know who you are. just give me back my kids!"

3. Tribe Called Quest – “People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths Of Rhythm” – gotta put this album on this list if not for anything else, the fact that it stayed in my walkman for about 8 months straight, no joke. Q-tip's probably my top emcee of all time... and phife dogg was a good compliment. got to see them live in the atl... also at one lollapalooza.

2. Tribe Called Quest “Low End Theory” – this is the best hip hop album ever, and hip hop is possibly the best music ever. The only reason this album isn’t number one is because of how dope number one is. there's no bad song on the album. from the jump this album is so tight "back in the days when i was a teenager before i had status and before i had a pager, you could find the abstract listening to hip hop, my pops used to say it reminded him of bebop..." one day i'm gonna silkscreen a shit with that quote on it. the high hat on there me and fresh would refer to as "old reliable" 'cause we sampled it only a million times.

1. Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On” – not only is this album so dope to listen to, but it’s completely relevant. The song “Save The Children” just about makes me cry every time. “Inner City Blues” could’ve been written last week and it would be just as meaningful. Marvin Gaye’s voice is dope, the music is dope, the lyrics are dope the album cover is dope. Makes you sad about how he was killed. This album should be mandatory listening for every American over the age of 24… you’ve got to have a certain sense of maturity to really appreciate it. I also love "what's happenin' brother" especially when he asks "will our ballclub make the pennant? do you think they have the chance?" .. and how appropriate is the line "can't find no work, can't find no job. money is tighter than it's ever been" ..

albums didn't make this list but easily could've:

• still bill
• giant steps
• aquemini
• ready to die
• illmatic
• roni size's 1st album
• zeppelin II
• sonny rollins "decisions"
• paid in full
• criminal minded
• youngest in charge
• headless heroes of the apocalypse
• nation of millions
• layers
• betty davis' first album
• marley marl in control vol I
• maggot brain
• de la soul is dead
• mirror conspiracy
• when it falls
• breaking atoms
• innervisions
• nina simone "i put a spell on you"
• fantastic vol II
• the platform
• miles in the sky
• stand! (sly stone)
  
• 36 chambers
• bizarreride II the pharcyde
• straight outta compton
• strictly business
• straight no chaser
• mingus mingus mingus

this is one of those things that you can never really finish.