New Medina Beat Suites

Here's a rundown on the history of a friendly little creativity game. It all started on a trip to Berkeley and S.F. in Oct. 2005. There's a long running joke amongst us Medinians about how many copies of Chuck Mangione's "Feels So Good" we could spot and in fact how many copies are required to be in the used bins before a record store can actually open.

As we drove, an idea came up that one of us should buy a dollar-bin Mangione record and try to make something out of it. By the time we reached Berkeley, the idea had went through several phases and came to rest that each of us bought a different Mangione record which we exchanged at the end of the day. From that record you would then have to come up with some (hopefully dope) musical concoction within two weeks. The only rules being that most of the main body of the track would utilize the Mangione record in some way (drums and accents could come from anywhere) and that you couldn't play the track for anyone before the meeting date. At this point, we all considered this a one-off, just something funny to take the Mangione joke to the next level. When we finally converged two-weeks later to listen to each others compositions, we realized not only had it been fun, but the tracks turned out dope (esp. Edeeq and Kiko's) As it went, we started a monthly session which went on to include several other friends and range in artist selections from Sade to The Specials.

So, at the Beat Suites one year anniversary, the rules were relaxed so that each suite could use any combination of artists we had used throughout the year. The catch was you had to remix or use portions of the vocals from Nas "It Ain't Hard To Tell" or Wu-Tang Clan "Cream" in the track. This was my contribution, an unfinished remix of "It Ain't Hard To Tell."


http://www.zshare.net/audio/6343937ecea39c/

peace,
Oh