-
Survey
-
Featured Music
Mar
13
About three quarters through HipHopDX’s lengthy interview with 88-Keys, the phone randomly cut off. “I talked your [phone] off,” Keys joked via instant messenger. The Long Island native is definitely long-winded, but as a veteran of the music industry since he was 14 years old, he’s got tons of stories to tell. Forming a friendship and business relationship with a local record collector/vendor after meeting them in a quest to buy Roy Ayers’ Everybody Loves the Sunshine, he started going to record conventions and rubbing shoulders with Hip Hop legends. Even his stage name was a result of Large Professor calling him such in a casual freestyle after seeing the man at the keyboard.
Once Keys actually started producing records, he laced Black Star’s seminal “Thieves In The Night,” and would go on to lace heaters for both Mos and Talib, Musiq, Pharcyde and others. While his discography doesn’t remotely amount to his years of work, things should be different after this year. June will see the release of The Death of Adam: a narrative-based, primarily instrumental album that uses features from Kanye West, Shitake Monkey, and others to show the power of the vag. Read on to see Keys talk about his upcoming LP, expand on his friendships with the likes of Q-Tip and Kanye West, and give historical behind-the-scenes accounts of what would become legendary Hip Hop moments.
HipHopDX: Was Black Star’s “Thieves In The Night” your first placement?
88-Keys: My very first placement was a remix for this group called Network Repz. The original song was called “Collabo,” my song was called “Dos Collabo (Hip Hop’s Delight).” I was pretty psyched about it, because with the remix, they added Bahamadia to it. And she was pretty big, at the time she had an album out. I believe KRS was supposed to get on it, but that didn’t happen. Me and my man Nat had a group, ACG Live, and we got on the hook doing background vocals or whatever.
The thing is, they actually bought the very first beat that I ever made on the equipment I use today, which is the [Akai MPC 3000]. By the time they received that beat till I got to the studio to lay it down, I had improved immensely. My beats still weren’t ill like that, but they were way better than the joint they picked from me. So I was kind of begging them, like, “Nah, I’ve got other joints, listen to this.” They’re like, “Nah, man,” they just went with what I had originally had, which was my super wack DJ Premier bite. So that was the first joint I got credited for that I got paid for. I got shorted by Nervous Records, or whoever was running it at the time, but I was just happy to get money for a beat. That was mind-boggling for me. Then maybe a year later or so, I did “Thieves In The Night.”
Read rest of interview @ HipHopDX.com
And here a lil’ something to bang from 88-Key’s upcoming album “The Death of Adam”:
Exactly
Comments
2 Responses to “20/20: 88-Keys is Interviewed by HipHopDx.com”
Leave a Reply
I definitely missed out on listening to this track when you first posted it…This joint is CRAZY…
The other day I over heard 88 playing some new joints over at Okayplayer…1 word and three exclamations — FIRE!!!
Discovered 88 Keys via Bilal…wow!