I started DJing for Kanye in 2004, and by 2005 I was spending most of my time on the road with him and his boys, seeing them more than my own family and friends. That was the year of the Touch The Sky tour, a sort of golden era in the history of Kanye touring. GLC and I became good friends pretty quickly, mostly on the strength of jokes and eventually discovering a common love for Project Pat album cuts. When it came to his own music, he was very driven, often recording freestyles in hotel rooms with his own mic and MBox. He just needed a bit of guidance, like most budding artists. We decided to work on a mixtape together. I would go to LA during downtime between tours (he moved there from Chicago) and after a couple of trips we had enough material to for this CD.

I still have fond memories of those trips. This was my first real experience coaching a rapper and doing artist development, which would turn into valuable lessons for my work with Kid Sister and Fool’s Gold down the line. We recorded a grip of songs and freestyles, and I remember Kanye gave me advice on which ones to scrap. But what makes this mixtape unique, in my opinion, is the skits. GLC is hysterical and I never stopped cracking up while recording those prank calls (they’re real) and the notorious “Ain’t It Mayne” competition. In fact once you listen you’ll probably want to start following Tator Chip on twitter: @TatorChipPimps.

The kitchen was also an important theme in those recording sessions, for two reasons. First, GLC cooked a lot and although his cooking technique was different than, say, my mom’s (butter in a spray, Foreman grill), the results were tasty. The second reason is that when we weren’t eating I had my turntables set up on the kitchen counters and that’s where I recorded all the scratches.

Once the music was wrapped we did a photo shoot on a tour stop in Detroit, and by the time the artwork was done and the CDs were pressed up it was early 2006.

Now, 4 years later, here it is for your listening pleasure. Download here or in the “Downloads” section.

Tracklist after the jump.

(more…)

The line-up for this year’s Sasquatch! festival has been announced! Go check their website. I’m playing on Sunday May 30th. Tickets go on sale Feb 20th.

Here’s an anecdote about Sasquatch: back when I was DJing for Kanye we played this festival in May of 2005. Kanye was just a few weeks away from finishing Late Registration. I hadn’t seen him in a while because he had been in the studio for so long. He was working on “Golddigger” and felt like testing it out live that day even though it wasn’t quite finished. I knew the song before it was recorded. Now that it was coming together, I told him I wanted to lay some scratches. I said “I want to scratch on ‘Get down!’ in that part where you say ‘get down girl, go ‘head get down’.” To prove my point, when we performed the song live (for the first time, with no rehearsal) I grabbed the sample and tried that scratch in front of this festival crowd of thousands. Kanye liked it, we flew to LA a few days later and the rest is history. Check my post from 2005 that shows a pic of the festival followed by a pic of me, Ye and Jon Brion in the studio.

247HH MTV2 Wild Tour Stories: DJ A-Trak Extended Cut from MCM on Vimeo.

Here I am talking about the Kanye performance at the Lady Di memorial 2 years ago, working with janky turntables in front of millions of viewers.

In fact I still don’t want to comment on this whole Kanye situation. It’s a personal choice that I made and I’m sticking to it. However what’s been appalling, I’d even say traumatizing, is the outburst of openly racist attacks directed at him. A post on Harry Allen’s blog recaps many such tweets, all with open use of the N-word and talk of lynching. Clearly the idea of a post-racial society in the Obama age is extremely naive. Yesterday this made its way onto my own blog with the following comment to my post about Jordans and Super sunglasses:

Bizzle Sundizzle says:
September 17th, 2009 at 2:45 pmwow Kanye West is such a douche bag. If this is his web site I just wanted to let him know that he looks acts and sounds like a big harry shaved gorilla. Someone like that shoulden’t be allowed into society should be in a zooo eating and playing with his own shit like he was ment to. FUCKIN SLAVE!!! should be sent back to south africa where he belongs

I can’t even explain the level of shock that I’m in as I read this. I’m not deleting that comment, people need to see it and be aware that racism is still everywhere around us. These are deeply-rooted, historically poignant slurs. How long will it take for America to vanquish this poison?

PS: If you’re going to comment on this post, please stick to this topic of racism, not what Kanye said at the awards. I want to know what you think…

I’ve only ATTENDED a handful of Kanye concerts. For the longest time I was just on stage and couldn’t see the show! I’m happy to be able to watch now, the guy’s good. Ha!

Kanye performed in New York last night at a G-Shock event and I went to watch with my brother. He did a one-time-only set design with video screens that were moved around by ninja-looking dancers. It was excellent, I loved the simplicity of it. Nice to see him talk to the crowd again, his rants are the best. No one can touch this dude. He was also wearing what looked like tefillin.

Here are a few pics of the night.

Don’t let Amber’s butt distract you — that’s Grand Puba on the left!

I dedicate the last picture to Nick Catchdubs.

Unboxing KW x LV Red “Dons” And Grey/Pink “Jaspers” from ibn jasper on Vimeo.

So you know Kanye’s got his new Louis Vuitton shoes and he named the different colorways after some of the homies. Here’s Ibn and Don C unpacking their Jasper and Don shoes, respectively. Stuntastic.

Last week I started my run of shows for the Bacardi B-Live tour. Extended fam The Fader interviewed me at the Boston and Philly shows, check it out.

The song originally leaked in this post is now available for your CD-quality listening pleasure on iTunes. The title went from Poker Face to I Poke Her Face to Make Her Say… but the song remains the same (Zoso).

Scratches by me. Pretty lettering by Dust La Rock.

OK this picture is kind of a bigger deal than the content of this post. Of course it’s Damon Dash, me and Kanye, but this is the first time I met Kanye, right when he asked me to come on tour with him. Dame was actually trying to get me to DJ for Samantha Ronson but Kanye snatched me. This picture has never appeared online. Straight out the shoebox. (May, 2004)

Anyway, the reason for this post is I wanted to link an article on Damon Dash written by this guy Combat Jack. Not sure who he is, he says he “repped” Dame in the mid-90’s. Just by coincidence there’s also that video that surfaced today of Dame spazzing out… but the article is much more interesting. Watching a guy spazz is pretty one-dimensional. I actually have a lot of respect for Dame and am a bit fascinated with the early days of Roc-A-Fella since I run a label myself. So, read up!

Shout out to DJ Soul for the twitter referral.

Watch this, it’s a clip of Q-Tip working a sample for a Consequence track, in the studio with Kanye and them. But the way Tip loops the sample just by needle dropping is ill!!

UPDATE: Something seems to be wrong, this damn Kyte player is playing the wrong episode of Cons TV… ugh… bring back the needle drop!