Professional artists with poorly mixed songs.

j-traxx said:


dam castle!! how the hell?!?!?! walkin hiphop school. that's what he is. proffessa napalm
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I'm actually from that Heavy D era. After my pops retired from NYPD, he worked as armed security for Uptown Records. That was during the Mary J. Blige, Jodeci, Heavy D, Father Mc, Lil Shawn era. I remember him bringing home Heavy D's Blue Funk album and Tony Dofat was on the credits. That's when Puff was broke.-200 million dollars ago. Here's the link to that album. See Dofat's name in the credits.

http://www.mtv.com/bands/az/heavy_d/47452/album.jhtml
 
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thanks for the link. wow they even had kany....oh hold up.... oh naaaaa that's jesse west. wooooh i was about to say. :D
 
j-traxx said:
jay-z brush your shoulders off sounds muffled and undetailed as hell and the track is still fire but it lacks the high end clarity of everything else on the black album.
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Let me ask you something J. Does the song "stepping in here" sound familar but slowed down with a differnt drum kit. The beginnig was sampled slowed down and chopped. So all that was left was adding the drums and phasers. Go ahead listen closely and tell me. That may explain the poor quality and draggy synth sound.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/7/hitoppermusic.htm
 
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Hiphop production is going away from the high polish of the late 90's. People are going back to trying to capture the rawness of Rap's Hayday. Like, somebody made a comment about one of kanye's snares being slightly off. That's cool. Perfect ain't always good. Quantize is a great tool, but it can kill a groove sometimes. A slightly off snare sounds beter than a perfectly placed snare, at times. Hiphop be sounding too sterile now. Songs have all the life compressed, eq'd, and reverbed out of them. Make a track, lay some vocals, mix it, eq it, and let go. It ain't genetic engineering, its music........ That's my take on it.
 
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Music-is-it said:


Let me ask you something J. Does the song "stepping in here" sound familar but slowed down with a differnt drum kit. The beginnig was sampled slowed down and chopped. So all that was left was adding the drums and phasers. Go ahead listen closely and tell me. That may explain the poor quality and draggy synth sound.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/7/hitoppermusic.htm
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i'll check it and feedback as soon as i get home. at work we gets no speakers. :mad:
 
Ikemurda said:
Hiphop production is going away from the high polish of the late 90's. People are going back to trying to capture the rawness of Rap's Hayday. Like, somebody made a comment about one of kanye's snares being slightly off. That's cool. Perfect ain't always good. Quantize is a great tool, but it can kill a groove sometimes. A slightly off snare sounds beter than a perfectly placed snare, at times. Hiphop be sounding too sterile now. Songs have all the life compressed, eq'd, and reverbed out of them. Make a track, lay some vocals, mix it, eq it, and let go. It ain't genetic engineering, its music........ That's my take on it.
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Ike, you sound like the perfect engineer. I dont want my stuff too compressed. I wanna keep a little griminess to it. Some of the best beats made long ago had recording flaws.
 
I'm not the perfect engineer, but I'm pretty good at mixing. Plus, like you, I was around & can compare hiphop from '88, to '94, to '97, to '2k, to now. Its going back. Its never gonna go ALL the way back, because digital is cheaper than analog. But the perfection is getting downgraded to intentional imperfection. Trust me, I'm not on the Kanye bandwagon, because his style is no different than mine, except I'm not too much of a chipmunker. But one of things that I like about his productions are that they aren't perfect. His tracks aren't perfect, and his mixes aren't sterile. I'll admit Guru's mixes for the Roc lack bass, but that's not a flaw, that's just his mixing style. All engineers have a style.
 
Dirt off your shoulders was miced terribly, I wonder if Jimmy Douglas mixed it. He mixes all of his timbalands beats.
 
Mark the 45 King said The "It's a hard knock life" track sold to Jay-Z was a mistake. He couldnt loop it perfectly so he left it alone.
 
Music-is-it said:


Let me ask you something J. Does the song "stepping in here" sound familar but slowed down with a differnt drum kit. The beginnig was sampled slowed down and chopped. So all that was left was adding the drums and phasers. Go ahead listen closely and tell me. That may explain the poor quality and draggy synth sound.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/7/hitoppermusic.htm
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it sounds very close to the synth line in the "dirt off ya shoulders" track. that is an "interesting" thought though. imagine that sh!t? lol. it'd be so off the wall errbody would fall out. btw thanks for sharing your music man.
 
That Blue Note remix album Madlib did not too long ago isn't mixed all that well if I remember right. He did it all himself though so I can't really knock it.

Nice album too...

Jason
 
Jay-Z's Renegade has a random rhodes or strings riff jump to the left a couple of times in the song (most notably in the intro). I don't know if thats what they were going for, but it sounds out of place.

How but great mixes? Jill Scott's album is beautifully mixed to me.
 
What's good. Just a side note. DoFat isn't new to the game. I thought that too but was listening to Heavy D's Blue Funk album and He produced like 3 tracks on there. Thats the early 90's.
 
I noticed the imperfections in Kanye's style a while back. There were tracks I wished I had the opportunity to mix. THis is a GREAT TOPIC, cuz lately I was noticing how "professional" stuff was sounding not properly mixed. Another one is lil John, I think he has too much low end on his stuff. If you crank your stuff up all the way, all you hear is bass. I don't have his CD, but everytime I'm with my homboys they play that at top level, so that could be because of that.

Yeah, Imperfection is where it is at. I was telling my friends in 2001, that I was purposely downsampling stuff sometimes, and they thought I was out of my mind. If everything is too perfect you get that robot effect, imperfection shows the soul in the track. (I don't mix badly on purpose though, I just downsample other samples from time to time)
 
Anyone noticed how poor the quality of mixing is on Jay-Z's first verse of "never let me down" on College dropout?
 
kybeats said:
What's good. Just a side note. DoFat isn't new to the game. I thought that too but was listening to Heavy D's Blue Funk album and He produced like 3 tracks on there. Thats the early 90's.
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DoFat got tracks on Mary J Blidge Debut album...
 
what about that song on Mos Def last album, the one he used the takeover beat for. Something about the quality sounds off...idk
 
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