Alphabet Soup

We mourn the loss of our great friend and mentor Mr. Eddie Marshall.

solos taken from a recent Mactet gig.

Between the summers of 2009 and 2010 I entered the Stones Throw Beat Battle a total of 24 times. I won Battle 149 outright and placed runner-up or top 3 numerous times. The rules were straightforward - only chop samples from the song provided each week and only outside drums & bass were allowed, with a 2 minute time limit. There were occasional rule modifications and additions such as Battle 134 when we were instructed to use samples from a radio or TV commercial (I used Patrick Ewing's Snickers commercial). On the anniversary battle 150, Stones Throw provided a Guilty Simpson acappella to work with in addition to the weekly song sample. I played over Beat 161. Beat 145 was to use an animal sound inside the beat etc.. I used my trusty MPC1000 (JJOS2XL) to create most of my beats, usually finishing them in Logic Pro. My 'Big 3' heroes of hip-hop production (Dilla, Premier & Pete Rock) inspired this body of work. There were many beats created and discarded as not worthy of submission, I have included one example in 149 alternate. My follow up to that was the winner that week ('93 Flavor').

I hope you enjoy them.

if you missed it the first time Alphabet Soup's 1997 CD "Strivin" has been re-released on iTunes!

This Thursday 2/3: Alphabet Soup at NuBlu with special guest drummer Aaron Johnston (Brazilian Girls)