Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of biphop

May 25th, 2009 – I must admit that I wasn’t always a fan of hip hop music. Up until the mid 1990′s, my experience of it had been Vanilla Ice, MC Hammer, and Kris Kross. Those are all classics for sure, but aren’t exactly representative of true hip hop. Hip hop, as with all types of music, has dominant artist that are more on the pop side. Today, artists like 50 Cent, Flo ‘Rida and Rick Ross would be considered the pop version of hip hop. A lot of gloss, not a lot of foundation.

It wasn’t until the late 90′s that I started to branch out and explore musical styles that I hadn’t really given a chance before. It was then I discovered the classics of hip hop, music that I today consider the bricks and mortar of today’s young artists. People like Rakim, Grandmaster Flash, even LL Cool J in his youth, defined what the artists of today. Of course, there are always the legends like Run DMC, NWA, Biggie, and Tupac.

One of the first hip hop artists I truly liked is DJ Krush. Establishing himself in the late 80′s and early 90′s, Krush is a Japanese DJ and producer. He is known less for his DJing, than he is for his dark and atmospheric music. He is probably one of the biggest names in “trip hop” along with his American counterpart, DJ Shadow. It is perhaps not his atmospheric style that attracts me, but his understanding of rhythm. His music has so much depth, it’s easy for the casual listener to get lost. For those willing to spend the time though, his music seems to be the work of an evil genius. Some want that music, some don’t.

While much of his music is instrumental in nature, he does collaborate with a number of well known emcees, Mos Def being the most notable. His album Milight is the most accessible for DJ Krush newbies, as it consists almost entirely of collaborations.

DJ Krush has come a long way, from his humble beginnings as a yakuza underling, all the way up to international hip hop recognition. He has been a well known international artist for the past 3 decades, and I suspect that he has a lot of music left in him. Embedded below are a couple of the songs that introduced me to him.