The Beat Thief

Fresh from working with rappers such as OC Jigga and artists on the Downtown Soul roster, the Beat Thief is a producer making waves. His latest project is somewhat of a creative masterpiece, taking some of the original accapella’s from Manny Moscow’s ‘Live From The Kremlin’ with UK Runnings & Tricksta, he has totally remixed the tracks adding a whole new flavour. HHBRadio.com sent Jonathan Miles to get the low-down on the bubbling talent. 

So before we get down to the nitty gritty, lets get some background info on you. Where you from, when did you get into music and when did you start making music?

Well nowadays Streaham. I always pretty much been based around South London, and I really probably got involved in promoting and creating music about 10 years ago, when I was outta work living in Peckham. I was known for having a huge record collection, of like all the latest and rarest hip-hop sh*t, so I just started making hip-hop mixtapes to make ends meet, like you know unreleased QB bangers, or rare wu stuff, west coast, rapalot, ruff ryders, any kind of hip-hop you name it, and selling them to the local barbers and dealers, well anyone that would buy one really ! Then after that I started working on the BBE street team for a while, this was like when they were releasing Pete Rock, Marley Marl, J Dilla n stuff so that really gave me the bug to just be involved in the music industry you know.

Making beats I started just 18 months ago. I always been known for having mad records so used to put out mad mixtapes in Peckham back in the day, like round 2000, then more recently I'd done mixing projects of like funk, soul, and hip-hop, but I never actually made my own beats. Through promoting DowntownSoul though, I just became more and more exposed to the studio, watching different emcees and producers at work, that gradually I got to a point where I thought I might as well just have a go myself. 

What have you released to date and what has had the best response?

Well my first real release just came out, which is “The Russian R3volution” with Manny Moscow. But my first track officially released was called "Roll With Me" by OC Jigga, which came out on a UK Running's mixtape earlier this year. In terms of best response I did a remix of "Beautiful" for Poetic Pilgrimage which has probably  been biggest for me cuz they’ve performed that track all over the world, and I even found a random live recording of it on YouTube! The first time I met them, they were onstage at Proud in Camden and the place was sold out so I couldn't even get in. I ran into Mohammed Yahya who sorted me out on the door, and I realised like ok this what its about.

Tell us about the set up at Downtown Soul. I got the Haka CD few months back and really enjoyed that too. Who’s on the roster and who runs the label?

Well at the beginning of 2007, a guy I used to sell mixtapes to back in the day came to me and asked me to help his brother put a demo together, I wound up meeting him and it  turned out to be OC Jigga. So through that I put his first mixtape out, which was called “True Stories SW9”, which wound up getting radio play and in HHC and all sorts, so some of the guys he was working with saw how well Jigs did, plus we realised you know we had a better chance of exposure working together, which is basically how the whole DowntownSoul thing came about.

In terms of the roster, that’s changed a bit since the beginning - we down one producer, one emcee at her majesty’s pleasure, and one emcee to fatherhood, you know how it goes ! Nah serious though, now we got OC Jigga, and Shanakee, who are both emcees, and then Haka and myself, Beat Thief, who are both producers. We had six releases now and hopefully a few more this year.

The mixtape with Manny Moscow is genius. I love the way you have themed the mixtape, as well as taking accapella’s from freestyles etc and making them into tracks. Whose idea was it to do this project and who came up with all the concepts?

Thanks, I really appreciate that for real. The whole project was my idea really, and the concepts just came from working with Manny Moscow’s existing branding, if that makes sense. I’d really been looking for the right emcee to work with for a while and as soon as I heard Moscow’s stuff I thought that was it. I mean his first mixtape was “Live from the Kremlin” and this was a remix of that so I wanted to keep the link whilst giving it the DowntownSoul stamp. In terms of the wider idea I really wanted to produce something that had a whole concept and feel about it, rather than just sounding like a load of different tracks - like the stuff from the mid-nineties used to, you know Boot Camp, Wu, and even more recently there’s the Green Llama camp in the states – Uncut Raw’s First Toke is an incredible concept album to me, MF Doom’s Madvillainy, you know all that kinda stuff…

So where did you get to hear about Manny Moscow?

Moscow I heard about through Park Street PR and Tricksta, who I worked with through DowntownSoul in the past. First off I seen his “Live from the Kremlin” mixtape this year, which I actually first spotted because of the dope cover that Skrilla did, then I listened to it and thought he was nice for real. Few months pass and Tricksta holla’ed at me so I ended up arranging for OC Jigga’s boy Cookie to guest on one of his tracks, and since it ended up being recorded at mine, I remixed the track at the same time and sent it to Moscow. He loved it so much he asked me to do a whole album and two (sleepless !) weeks later I sent him “The Russian R3volution”.

I guess it shows that it’s good to be promoted! So let’s talk about the tracks, what are your favourite three tracks? The one’s you would play me if you had ten minutes of my time! LOL 

Actually funnily enough all the tracks on there are real short so I’m not sure it’d last ten minutes ! I like that tho cuz it keeps the vibe fresh which is what I always loved about Mad Lib’s Quasimoto stuff, that it was so jazzy and experimental and dipping in and out of different tracks, so I tried to go like that… but anyways my favourite three:

“Jealousy” firstly because that was the first track I did, but mainly because I still think it has more of an overall appeal, where you know anyone could listen to it, you don’t have to be a hip-hop head, I tried to keep it jazzy and soulful with just piano, flute, bass, drums – then Moscow and Cookie’s bars on this are just real, talking bout their experiences of Jealousy in the streets, cuz you know its everywhere.

“Breakin Bars” because it has that kinda Juice Crew, Blaxploitation thing goin on. Its got this cold “Ohio Players” sample of just the backing singers at some live gig they did, then when Moscow and the bass come in, it kinda like what if a hip-hop emcee got timeported back to some dusty Harlem jazzclub in the 70’s and he was on stage performing with some old jazz cats and the backing singers, I was tryna go for that feel lol!

“Sun Stars” because I didn’t use any sampling on that track, so it sounds totally different to my normal tracks, plus I know that’s one of Moscow’s favorites as well. It has a kinda futuristic vibe to it but mellow at the same time so being near the end it’s a good tune to go out on at the same time.

Love the way you did the intro too, where did you get all the dialogue from and what gave you the inspiration to do this project? 

Oh that’s taken from a few different places - a BBC documentary about Boris Berezovsky, then the TV adaptation of the Robert Harris’ book Archangel, then its just got orchestral effects and other various sound FX. One of the funny things about this was that at the same time as coming across Manny Moscow on the hip-hop tip, I had been reading and watching about the Russian Oligarchs and the fall of the USSR, all of that stuff, so it all kinda just fit that the project made sense.

Do you plan to work with Manny Moscow again?

Yep definitely, I’m working on a track for his forthcoming “Boy with the Lost Flow” mixtape, and we even discussed doing a followup already to “Russian R3volution”, gonna call it “Cuban Revolution” lol I got mad ideas !

In the press release I got from Park Street PR, it said this was the first of three remix projects? What other projects you got lined up for 2009/2010?

Well there’s “As A Man Fights” with Shanakee Rap, which is a remix of his As A Man Thinks album from last year. That’s already like 90% done, then there’s the “The Jig Bond Ep” with OC Jigga, who I done like nearly 20 tracks with, some of them are completely fresh and some remixes, so we gonna get some of that work out as well.

So what do you use in the studio? Talk us through what your favourite things are and feel free to give any tips to up and coming producers! 

I ain’t gonna lie, my studio setup is pretty simple right now - se2200 mic, m-audio sound card and keyboard, acid pro and audition for sampling and fruity, ableton and sonar as sequencers. I'm looking to move onto more of a hardware approach but at the same time you know there's just an unlimited amount to learn with production so I got a lot to master.

Do you sample a lot or do you play the music in your beats? 

I tend to sample nearly always cuz I find the sound more authentic, you know like soul, jazz fusion, funk, lovers rock, ol skool reggae, rare groove, all the good stuff, but at the same time I will play keys over a sample as long as it sounds right, and I done a couple of synth tracks recently but I don’t see myself changing a whole lot to be honest. What I’d love to do is start producing tracks for a live band, I used to play sax so you know one day !

Are you planning to ever drop a Beat Thief album one day?

Well one on level I’d love to but at the same time I find to be honest producer albums are real difficult. The best albums to me like have a few emcees and a few producers, then they get that consistency of sound and direction which is so important, and producer albums naturally tend to have a mix of emcees so its hard to maintain that, which is why I’m really happy to do collabos for the time being. Haka did “Underground Journeyz” on DowntownSoul earlier this year and everyone was really pleased with the feedback to that so hopefully I can follow that soon enough.

Do you have a My Space page? Facebook and Twitter? 

Yep sure www.myspace.com/downtownsoul, www.reverbnation.com/downtownsoul 

twitter I ain't on that right now, but if it gets to the stage where people wanna know what I'm doing 24 hours a day, who knows man, but by then I'll probably have someone to do that for me ! safe BT…

Interview by Jonathan Miles