Diamond D is an icon
of the game who still
digs to this day

DJ Premier bought his three-year-old son a turntable and some Stevie Wonder 45s for his introduction to music

 

Veteran producers of hip-hop were scientists dissecting tracks, librarians of musical culture, mathematicians of the BPM, and above all music historians. But the dawn of the new millennium brought a cultural and technological shift. In 1999 Napster arrived, ushering in digital bootlegging and introducing beatmakers to the relative ease of pulling songs off of the Internet in the form of an MP3 file, dragging and dropping them into sampling computer software.  The production technology became more sophisticated.  Bedroom producers  

could now create entire songs from start to finish on a small laptop. Downloadable music meant not having to “digitize” music from old pieces of vinyl. In addition, the upswing of sample-light Southern hip-hop eclipsed the sample-heavy hip-hop of the East and West coasts. As younger producers entered the game, the ritual of cratedigging became archaic.

 

“I think a lot of the younger kids that are learning to make beats may not have the same love for samples that somebody from my generation or older has,” says J57, producer of Homeboy Sandman and other indie acts. “They’re probably ripping stuff off YouTube 99 percent of the time, so they kind of aren’t connected to the record. It’s not even a real thing; it’s not physical. Think about this: when they were little, guys like Lil’ Wayne were really big at the time, and a majority of what they were doing was sample free.”

 

During 2005, I worked with J57 at New York’s Fat Beats record store, the kickoff of a five-year-long death watch that ended when the store closed down. Another colleague of ours was Audible Doctor, who in recent years has produced tracks for 50 Cent and Smoke DZA.

 

“Even while I was at Fat Beats, I could see the climate kind of changing,” says Audible Doctor. “I can understand why there’s a [decline] in the culture of digging. It’s easy not to, especially when there’s no real cultural upbringing surrounding vinyl. [Younger producers] don’t understand the importance of how special vinyl is. They never bought it. They were never around it.”

The new beat-centric producer works differently in an industry that delivers digital music instantly rather than taking months to manufacture physical product. He churns out tracks that within minutes of their creation can leak on blogs and over social media. So hanging out for hours in the few remaining, dusty record stores doesn’t quite fit with the pace of the market and the attention span of the listener. While “digging” has reconfigured itself in a new ritual of scouring websites for MP3s and ripping music off of YouTube, even that process is still very time consuming. And with the points you have to give away on publishing, why sample at all?

 

Says producer Vanderslice: “A lot of the artistry is gone in production today because so many people would rather just get a quick fix and download a program and start making beats today than put anything into it. That’s why everything sounds the same.”

Two years ago I interviewed producer Clams Casino on his beatmaking process. I was geeked at the opportunity to sit with him and discuss Imogen Heap and Bjork—two ethereal female artists who specialize in electronically obscure music sometimes called “trip-hop”—because a few of Clams’ beats leaned on their recordings. Clams’ abstract production made rapper Lil B more palatable and A$AP Rocky a nouveau leader of the “designer rap” movement. But when I tried to chop it up with him, I found that Clams didn’t know much at all about the catalogues of the artists he sampled. “Oh, nah I just skim their albums and pull what sounds good,” he said.

 

Here I was picturing Clammy Clams wearing a dust mask in downtown Bloomfield (he’s from New Jersey too) searching for the original release of Bjork’s “Human Behavior” because he was obsessed with the drum pattern. My disappointment is my own fault. Why should Clams Casino be some die-hard connoisseur of electronic music? I’m 35; he’s not. He has WhoSampled.com, Shazam, and finally YouTube to grab what he needs and run. I had liner notes and a Numark. He’s not from an era where you need that kind of knowledge to succeed.

 

It’s a sign of the times; it’s the death of a ritual.

 

And while vinyl saw a 32% increase in sales last year, it doesn't increase any hope that cratedigging will become a producer or music aficionado’s new norm. For the tangible music lover, vinyl has straddled the line between nearly dead and surprisingly still alive for quite some time. The new idea is to save vinyl as an artifact, not for the art that’s on it. That’s the reason why Urban Outfitters has a whole vinyl section with vinyl picture frames conveniently located next to the endcaps.

 

The scariest thought for any current or retired cratedigger is imagining a world where the sport no longer exists. Some producers will remain adamant about the practice, and there will always be a basement somewhere filled with a hoarder’s secret treasure. That’s where you’ll find producers who love vinyl for the music woven into it. DJ Premier bought his three-year-old son a turntable and some 45s for his introduction to music.

“I was like, ‘Let me give him the basics,’” Premo says, who bought his son a NuMark turntable and some Stevie Wonder records to start.

 

That’s a glimmer of hope for the next generation of music lovers. While cratedigging feels more like an analog detachment from a digital world, what’s wrong with taking a step back? Even before they can read, toddlers can manipulate vinyl and remember songs by label color, a pleasurable tactile experience that can be a gateway to more music appreciation. I know I’ll be saving some dust masks for my future children, just in case.

 

Original link to this article:  https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-lost-art-of-cratedigging-4ed652643618   http://calibermag.org/articles/the-addiction-of-collecting-vinyls/

 

Follow Kathy Iandoli on Twitter @kath3000 and http://www.kathyiandoli.com 
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