The Essence of Hip-Hop: Doing More With Less
Arizona DJ Ruthless Ramsey is featured in this YouTube video ’scratching’ tapes on two commercial boomboxes hooked up via a DJ mixer. An aspiring DJ since his younger days, he wound up as a tape jockey when he was on welfare and couldn’t afford a pair of turntables.
It’s nice to see someone bring this level of innovation back to the field of DJing. After all, this is where hip-hop comes from–taking what you have and making it fresh. While the horde of hunched-over laptop DJs have reformatted the artform by clicking and dragging their way into the future, it’s nice to see someone rewind the game back to its essence.
More on tape scratching:
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March 19th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
One of my colleagues e-mailed a link to this story because he– like many an associate of mine– was familiar with my experiments with cassette mixing in the ’90s. Had the web been more ubiquitous then, maybe I would’ve stumbled upon this guy’s work; but back then, we thought I was the only one who was trying this… good to know I’m not alone.
My attempts peaked between ‘96 and ‘98, but sorta died when CD turntables started sounding legit.
Check some photos from ‘97 of my cassette deck mix set-up here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24849044@N06/sets/
Bush Head Ed
The Soul Controllers
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