Six years ago Matt Shadetek & I (DJ Rupture) decided to start a record label. Madness. We’d returned to New York City the same season, after spending time in Berlin and Barcelona respectively. Dutty Artz began as a vehicle to release music that we were working on. Since then the DA family has grown, branched out, run, stumbled, and – thanks in large part to your support – keeps on going.
These days Dutty Artz is less a record label and more a grassroots experiment in creating cultural value in ways that challenge industry standards & dominant social norms, with dope music as our touchstone.
And we’re entering a new phase.
I’m pleased to announce that Chief Boima is now the CEO of Dutty Artz. Yes, we operate as a collective, but Boima is our motor making the big stuff happen. It’s not easy keeping us divergent headstrong folks on-point & efficient, so we couldn’t be happier that Boima’s here. He’s a badman DJ, a seasoned producer, and one of the best people to rap about the radical possibilities for cultural creation with. But the E stands for Executive – B gets things done like nobody else. Hold tight 2014.
The first fruits from this development arrive in the form of our brand new compilation, Dutty Artz: Six Years Deep (aka the perfect holiday gift – and Bandcamp makes it very easy to send this as gift).
Seriously – next year’s release schedule is our busiest to date, and this strong collection of tracks indicates where we’re heading. Six Years Deep unites DA extended family from Brooklyn to Cairo and beyond. Edge to edge.
Here’s my track-by-track breakdown:
No better way to kick off 2014 than with an original production by Uproot Andy tapped into the irresistible dembow sound. The Dembow riddim is as much about New York as Santo Domingo, and here Andy Adoboes it up with big room synth sauce rich enough to feed a horde of lesser DJs. It’s a worldwide ting.
Timely streetwise Auto-Croon maghranat / sha3by from Cairo. Read my Fader feature from 2012 to learn more about these guys making some of the most thrilling music in the world right now. This heater features scene leaders on the socially conscious tip, a song they first performed at a women’s rights rally in downtown Cairo.
From Egypt to Gyptian in one smooth step! Kush Aurora’s ethereal production makes sure that this downtempo reggae tune warms you up like a hot toddy. Slow & low.
“I’m like a—“ [hard cut] Ha! In just a few seconds of sound, Mexico City’s Lao spits out a sermon on dancefloor migration & redemptive sweat via Masters at Work and ballroom, wrapping the whole thing up in tribal guarachero’s post-Youtube rodeo/Aztek futurism. Any questions? Feel it. Here’s my 2010 feature on tribal + 3Ball MTY.
The Chief is busy at work producing an album for Sierra Leone’s Sorie Kondi; a few weeks ago I asked for beats for this movie I was scoring and B sent me two dozen quality jams like this one. Tip of the iceberg, folks. (Earlier this year we put out Kondi’s latest album).
OLD MONEY IS BETTER THAN NEW MONEYAND EVEN BITCOIN, but ask them about melanin as/& black power or simply wait for the new OM mixtape joint, out soon. The only time I saw anybody famous in NYC it was Beyoncé & Jay-Z. I have Scheme to thank: I was in the VIP area of this downtown party that Old Money brought me to. OM got that juice. For the record: Jay’s a cold-hearted clown, Bey is expectedly radiant, and I’m more convinced than ever that their marriage isn’t a marriage so much as a closet-friendly business merger.
FACT: I only log into Facebook to troll Grey Filastine. I was also the first person to release this gringo’s outward looking anarchocapitalist dance anthems. (The extremes meet, agree on libertarian precepts, and invest in BitCoin.) But this song! An extra beautiful Soot-era throwback jam blessed by Jessika Skeletalia Kenny’s phonetic Farsi vocals & Brent Arnold’s swooning cello stacks.
Kev is a young Nigerian rapper from Queens, part of Royal Kulture crew. I like this move, using rap to narrate a new immigrant courtliness.
Everybody chant: “more Ushka songs!” In this tune (her first?!) our hero chops up “Hanuma Vanama†(recital of the monkey) with Brooklyn Shanti, thereby sneaking a Sri Lankan folk tune into the club with a Bengali twist. Check their ‘What Edward Said’ mix for further brown power bounce.
A Spanish-language version of Depeche Mode’s “I Just Can’t Get Enough†from our Los Angeles correspondent. I had this on exclusive for awhile and every time I played it out people would ask me for the tune… GooglePayola must be broken because we gave them 1532 hours of immaterial labor and this track didn’t go viral. WTF? It is joy! But you saw the video, right? Rafi’s debut full-length drops on DA this January, get familiar.
El Remolon specializes in slinky waist-winders that create momentum from the tension between cumbia’s rootsy grooves and techno/IDM audio-engineering. Our buddy down in Argentina has collaborated with Damas Gratis’ leader/cumbia villera innovator Pablo Lescano! Inquiring minds can rewind to my 2008 Fader feature on the Buenos Aires cumbia scene.
I was only in Caracas briefly, but it struck me as the most f**-up place I’d ever visited, which is saying a lot. The Venezuelan political situation remains extra wild, just ask Mariana, Cardopusher, Algodon Egipcio, Pacheko, or any of our other homies from there — but one thing that the pressure cooker generates is some serious creativity. You can hear it in the dancefloor urgency of this song by M Peach, who bounces between Caracas and Brooklyn, hair aflame with ideas. La La Light It Up!
Galliano has been in the game since the late 90s, bringing Angolan kuduro artists to tour Europe and championing their sound from the beginning. As for this tune? Boima writes: “it’s a trusty club banger – primed for the naughtiest part of the night!”
Fresh sufferah lyrics from Kingston’s Trawma over future-fwd production by Matt Shadetek protégé Robzilla. Hauntingly good, with echoes of Mavado’s early work.
Africa Latina is the brainchild of Que Bajo boss-jefe Geko Jones. While the notorious vibes-springer may be known for redefining the sound of what it means to be young and latin@ in Nueva York, Geko has roots in dancehall & Floridean rave – just like Ponce de Leon! but that’s another story — which makes it even more surprising that what began as a club DJ duo with Boima is evolving into a full band. Soulful vocals in Lingala grace pointillistic guitar lines that sparkle like a broken iPhone screen. We might not deserve this unexpected beauty! Dear Africa Latina, more songs right now PLS.
Spacey Banjo Music From Berber Morocco Is Some Of The Best Music In The World. This is a new song by my good friend Hassan Wargui in Morocco, whose debut album we released in 2011. He played “Bo Nity” for me in an Agadir kitchen as we ran around researching my Maghrebi Auto-Tune rabbithole last summer. I got so excited I smashed a wine glass. Hassan finally managed to get “Bo Niyt” on tape for this comp. Follow Hassan’s YouTube and if you’re going to Casablanca, let us know, for real.
Last but not least let’s give a big round applause to our art director, Talacha, responsible for the Dutty Artz visuals.