Man, so many memories with this one…I gotta say this is my favorite tape I ever made.

I managed to start developing a small following off of this one, as it was getting passed around Rhode Island like a chicken parm recipe. I was rooming with my boy Dave at the time, who was kind of a maniac, and so this tape ended up having more energy than my previous ones. Special shouts to my dude Manny (Dek-One) and his boy Ariel (A-Train!). Me and Manny DJed a party on a boat (yes, a moving boat), and upon special request from Ariel, I managed to do the Marvin Gaye remix live, while the boat was rocking everydamnwhere, and keep that sh*t on-beat. This was the last tape done on my Gemini Scratchmaster mixer, so I’m still killing the transformer switches, and also the last tape unveiled in my boy Mike’s white Jeep, which was all but ritual up to that point; a “country cruise” as my ex-girl would call it.

I think this tape is such a treat because ‘97-’98 saw so many of the artists i grew up on still going strong (GangStarr, Rakim, Nice & Smooth, EPMD, The Beatnuts, Mobb Deep…) and new favorites were emerging almost out of nowhere (Company Flow, Mos Def, Big Pun…). The best memory from this tape though is when i waited for 3 hours outside Tower Records in Boston to get Guru and Premier’s autograph the day after “Moment of Truth” dropped and i actually gave a copy of this tape to DJ Premier. I was so damn shook, but he was too cool. I always wonder if he listened to it…

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD VOLUME 9 – A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY

This right here is really the first tape i’m pulling out of the vault–one that only friends have heard and really the last of my old style of mixtape. Since we’re going backwards chronologically you’ll see what I mean in the coming weeks, but mostly it means i remixed EVERY track on here. When I first started DJing, I (along with Jaysonic who used to make tapes with me) wanted to create a kind of library of mixtapes, so we started with Vol. 1, Vol. 2, etc… The reason this is called Vol. 0 is because the content is mostly stuff from when i first started DJing, or even before. Around this time in ‘98 I started bringing back the early 90’s music heavy, most likely a backlash from the then reigning “shiny-suit era” (which seems pretty appealing nowadays I gotta say). This is also the first tape I did on my brand new gold Vestax mixer as I said goodbye to Geminis forever. Damn line-switches. This isn’t on some “For My People”, the songs on here are some of the most well known from that era, but I re-did them…Mek style. Enjoy this one… Oh yeah, special eff-you to the chump at Guitar Center who swore up and down that Vestax never made a gold mixer. I said “But I use one every day!” yet he maintained that i was wrong. Guitar Center…pfffff….

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD VOLUME ZERO – GUMMY BEARS

The second and last installment of my monthly WMEK tapes is my favorite of the two. After this tape, I was back on the real radio waves and that was the end of this concept. The whole idea of these tapes was to blend older, slightly slept-on songs with brand new songs. I always thought if there actually was a radio station that did that 24 hours a day, it would be the be-all, end-all of radio. My favorite, and Comel’s favorite track on here is the Del and Mr. Lif remix I did. I always wished that song had a more melodic beat, so i remixed it. My man Beatbox Josh was all about the Roots song on here–white label only–produced by DJ Spinna (!); sh*t is tough! And of course one of my favorites, “Solar Power” by Binary Star. “And Rodney King, ain’t never felt the beat like this”…Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin about.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD WMEK DECEMBER 2000

Basically, I wasn’t spinning on the radio during this time, and wanted to be spinning on the radio, so I created my own radio station: WMEK, which not surprisingly had an all-mixshow format. I clearly wanted to make a mixtape badly because I filled up a 120 minute tape. At the time, i was doing tape duplication at Volume Productions, which was/is an electronic music DJ crew out of Providence. My dude Dek One hooked me up with the job, and with the kid John aka Myth who did these covers. The picture of me is from a Halloween party that Jaysonic threw when he was still in D.C., where I let out my inner nerd. Myth had the concept to put me at a different national monument for each tape. Suspenders, orange pants, and oxford shirt all courtesy of my father’s wardrobe.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD WMEK NOVEMBER 2000

Back with more free shit for you… sorry for the delay.

This mixtape was a breakthrough for me in so many ways, most of all because it was my first mixtape that got sold in stores–six years after i tried to scratch my first record it finally happened. I dropped a copy off at Skippy White’s record store (where i practically grew up) for the one and only Heartless Jim (a true legend!). I was so shook, i just kind of put it on the counter and ran out. The next time i was in there to buy records, Jim was like “yo, we want some copies to sell”. This was at a time when they weren’t just selling ANY mixtape; there was a definite filter and if you weren’t good enough they wouldn’t sell your tape. I was gassed!! This was also my first mixtape with an official cover, thanks to my dude Andrew Unknown who designed it. It was getting mentioned on the radio, and actually sold a gang of copies! This one means the most to me of all my tapes and really got my name out there locally.

(click back cover for legible tracklisting)

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FINGERPRINCE

My good friend Dek-One aka Manuel Rivera introduced me to house music in 1997, and even in a time when all i listened to was hip-hop, i always liked what he played. I mean, the dude is an amazing DJ, so when he came to me w/ the idea of doing a half house music, half hip-hop mixtape, i said let’s go. One day he came over w/ a bunch of records, pressed “record”, and breezed through his entire side in one take. He played one joint that samples some classic GZA lines, and that sh*t is tough! Plus he plays this version of “Music Sounds Better With You” that’s crazy; he was on that Daft Punk sh*t early.

My side is even different from my other tapes, with remixes coming in when they’re least expected. There’s a “Mighty Healthy” remix on here that just plain rules, some forgotten indie gems, and even an early (pre-Time Machine) song me and Jaysonic did together. I’ll keep the tracklist a secret on this one. Hip-hop nerds beware of Side A, but people who just plain like electronic music should find this one special.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD PROJECT ‘99

Back in ‘96 I did an instrumental mixtape where the beats switched up every 4 or 8 bars, which I then “screwed” or slowed down on my 4-track recorder. It was really on some burn-out sh*t. I didn’t know anything about DJ Screw or that chopped & screwed style, it just sounded cool to me. Thing is that when you were feeling normal, that tape was too trippy. That’s when my buddy Ned Flanders said i should do another one of those instrumental tapes, but not so burnt out.

I started this in 1999 and didn’t finish until 2001, because I kept going back and erasing whole sections of work. There ended up being over 150 beats on the mix cuz they switch up so quick, and I divided it into 3 sections: medium, fast, and slow, with my younger brother doing amazing intro’s in between; and within each section all the beats were blended together. People were copping this to rap over, play video games to, and just have as background music. One DJ in Rhode Island stole the cover idea, and another sucker stole the entire concept. Whatever for them, part 2 will be done when I stop seeing the beats as code and come back to earth.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD ‘MOODSWINGS’

One of my favorite skits of all time is the “killer tape” skit on Wu-Tang’s “Enter the 36 Chambers”. Raekwon yelling at Meth, asking where his killer tape (kung fu flick) is always got me. For me, i didn’t give a sh*t about kung fu tapes, but mixtapes, so i applied it to that. Like, if someone borrowed this mixtape from you and didn’t give it back, that’d be a serious effin problem.

My favorite line on here has gotta be “On the charge of being funky, the court found you innocent”. HAAAAAA!!! “Sincerely” by JUICE still hits me the same way now as it did then–a perfect song, and hearing Big L rap makes me f**kin sad he didn’t have a chance to make the impact he undoubtedly would have.

This is actually ripped from cassette. Most of this tape was done live and then i threw some little tidbits on top of it, and the reason most of the tracks are clean versions is cuz they were all marked to be cut up on the radio, so i just ran with the idea that Part One was for the children, just like Ol’ Dirty said about Wu-Tang at the grammys.

CLICK FOR TRACKLISTING.

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD.

I met Unknown at the 90.3 studio one day when Sage Francis was doing his show. He told me he lived near Skippy White’s, which for you non-New Englanders was the best place to go to see all the new vinyl releases, and most of the local DJ legends worked there at some point or another. So one day i was at Skippy’s, called up Unknown, and we got up to scratch and build and all that rap-type nerdery. We got along real well and are actually still good friends to this day, and soon started talking about joining forces and collaborating on a mixtape.

He had this vision to get exclusive verses from the dudes whose records we were buying at the time, which i didn’t think was possible. So Unknown started getting in touch with artists, and pretty soon we were meeting up with these dudes. I remember me, him, and DJ Next drove to Philly one Sunday to meet up with Louis Logic and almost died on the way home when the car hydroplaned, did a 360, and almost smacked right into the jersey barrier. No offense to Louis but i’m not sure it would’ve been worth it. I also remember Apathy’s girl making a pop-screen out of dryer sheets and a coat hanger. Best smelling pop-screen ever.

(Tracklisting)

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After we had gotten all the exclusives we thought we could, we were mixing down each track from the newly named “Platinum Ice” to mini-disc and then somehow arranging the entire mix from there. Listening to it, i’m still not sure how we pulled it off with that equipment. This mix is too damn raw…

The second installment in this series saw kind of a different approach than the others. I had a gang of a cappellas this time around and decided to take it back to my older tapes when i would remix my way through a tape. This was during the time when I was full-time into a group called Funkbunker Fleet, which was a 3 DJ and 3 MC crew, so all the exclusive verses are by the FBF emcees.

Planning this tape was crazy because of how much remixing i was doing, and so I had pages and pages in a notebook figuring out how to transition from one track to the next. I was still recording on Platinum Ice, which was nothing more than an inexpensive digital 8-track recorder, so if i wanted non-stop music, I had to know ahead of time what was going to happen and keep the improv to a minimum.

I remember killing the D-Tension/Encore song on the radio to the point i had to retire it, and also the feeling i got hearing the “Fall In Love” Remix. Chills. Peep the remix i did with 8-year-old Jinsu over Time Machine’s “Reststop Sweetheart” instrumental. Wahhhhwwww….

(Click here for tracklisting)

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