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Z-Trip, Z-Trip Shifting GearsDetails
Title: Shifting Gears
Release date: 19 April, 2005
Record label: Hollywood
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There are thousands of DJs who roam the music world these days, each with pockets of recognition and bits of fame.
A few hundred of those actually have careers, built from a certain knowledge of music and skill, particularly in the genre of hip-hop. They disseminate that musical message behind two turntables or a production board earning their keep.
But only one DJ can be considered one of the best live performance DJs ever, by both fans and peers. Only one DJ can lay claim to being among the first new-school
turntablists to incorporate thunderous rock riffs, right alongside meaty funk beats, swinging soul riffs and old hip-hop breaks. Only one DJ consistently headlines sold-out shows around the world. Only one DJ has been personally asked by Linkin Park, Cypress Hill, DJ Shadow and Dave Matthews to join them on the road. Only one DJ can be called the
progenitor of the modern-day mash-up.
We’re talking, of course,
about Z-Trip. After years of forging an emblematic identity as one of hip-hop's preeminent DJs and showmen, Z-Trip has created his debut album, SHIFTING GEARS. It’s a time-traveling, stylistic opus that lives
up to his reputation as being one of today's modern day music masters.
The album finds Z-Trip translating the energy and language of his performances into a cohesive, robust album. SHIFTING GEARS displays
Z-Trip's own instrumental meditations and head-nodding collaborations with old-school veterans (Whipper Whip, Chuck D), vital contemporary MCs (Lyrics Born, Soup of Jurassic 5, Aceyalone, et al) and
multiplatinum rocker Chester Bennington.
"I wanted to touch upon every possible reference point that's led me to where I am at this point in time. The album’s rooted in hip-hop, of course, and it's also a story about me and my experiences," says Z-Trip. It was easy for him to recruit guests for his record. Through touring, he’s formed a number of friendships whose foundation is based in the shared love of music.
"I used their voices to tell my story,” he says. “I would give them a sense of what the song was to be about and then let them do their thing."
Z-Trip's story finds its first chapter when he started
DJing as a 13-year old growing up in Phoenix, Arizona (he’s now based in Los Angeles). Despite its off-the-beaten-path locale, hip-hop culture was alive and well in the desert and, as he got older, Z-Trip
found himself in the middle of a burgeoning scene. Part of a small collective of DJs, rappers and b-boys, Z-Trip and his then-partners, DJ Radar and Emile, formed the Bombshelter DJs, and began rocking parties
with a mix of rap classics, new school jams, funk and soul rarities and rock and jazz breaks. He can mix different pieces of both popular and obscure records into a move-the-crowd mélange. It’s a skill that calls to mind pioneers like Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa.
In
1998, Z-Trip's blistering, funk-heavy remix of the Rush classic, "Tom Sawyer," was featured in the movie and soundtrack to Small Soldiers
(Dreamworks). Soon his reputation outgrew his remote outpost and he began exporting his sound and showmanship across America, Europe, Japan and Australia. His live show could have come with this caveat: if you didn't dance, you were probably dead.
Those who have followed Z-Trip's career since the beginning know that he is credited as being king of today's "mash-up" sound. In live shows, Z-Trip likes to play with both the instrumentals and a cappellas found on 12" singles. It became a characteristic approach that ultimately resulted in the 2001 self-released Uneasy Listening Vol. 1, a mix-CD put together with
fellow turntablist, DJ P. The acclaimed mix (called "genius" and "wholly original" by critics), clearly came from kids who had too many records and watched too much television but heard the beats, breaks and funkafied chaos within. It was originally issued in a limited edition of 1000 copies but was endlessly bootlegged by fans spreading the hype by word-of-mouth.
In 2002, Z-Trip was featured in the DJ documentary, Scratch. He contributed a mock instructional short film, How To Rock A Party, that would be featured on the movie's DVD release
(and shown on MTV2). Z-Trip is one of the rare individuals who has earned the respect of his peers, original hip-hop masters and those
in-tune stars from other genres. As his reputation as a performer grew, the demand for his performances increased. Z-Trip has headlined tours that would take him around the world. He's played high-profile festivals in the United States such as Bonnaroo and Coachella. He's opened up for The Rolling Stones, Ben Harper, The Wu-Tang Clan and De
La Soul among others.
SHIFTING GEARS is as much about hip-hop as it is an embodiment of Z-Trip's personal music journey. "On one hand, it represents the kind of sound that's in my crate when I go out and DJ
– the classics, the soul, the b-boy stuff, up-tempo jams, even the dark stuff," he explains. "On the other hand, it's about me trying to expand my boundaries, trying to shift my own gears. I get off on DJing the
stuff other people aren't, and the 'mash-up' thing is being done to death now. So this record is about me moving on.”
No doubt, the crowd will follow.
The following is Z-Trip’s track-by-track breakdown of SHIFTING GEARS.
"INTRO"
This is Z-Trip's fellow LA-based DJ, Dusk, on the microphone, from when they spun together last year at the book release party for "Yes, Yes Y'all."
"More on this later," Z-Trip says. Ok.
"LISTEN TO THE DJ" FEAT. SOUP OF JURASSIC 5
Much of Z-Trip's personality is steeped in the party raps of days past, when hip-hop didn't mug for cameras or show off its jewels. This track is an introduction to that mind-state: a heavy, combustible mix of beats, breaks, scratches and Soup's move-the-crowd emceeing. "We worked on that over a couple of months," says Z-Trip. "It's that early DJ and MC play like cats did when we were coming up. I think that's gotten lost
over the years and this is just a nod to that style."
"ALL ABOUT THE MUSIC" FEAT. WHIPPER WHIP
"He's an original Bronx MC – who wouldn't want him on a track?!?" Z-Trip asks incredulously. The two met while Z-Trip headlined the "Scratch" tour and re-connected at the book release party for "Yes, Yes Y'all," where they expressed a mutual desire to work together. Whip's voice tornado-twists over an upbeat soul-clap party groove. "He's got such a great flow, way more than a lot of cats who are out today," Z-Trip says. "The song came together pretty fast, on some party vibe."
"THE GET DOWN" FEAT. LYRICS BORN
Z-Trip purposely put the percussive groove of "The Get Down" back-to-back with
the Whipper Whip song to draw a line between an old-school icon and a versatile new-school MC who could pay homage to the up-tempo party
style of hip-hop. "It's a current guy doing an ode to the old school. I had this track and thought it'd be perfect for Lyrics Born to do his own thing. He's got the perfect voice and such a command of the stage."
"ABOUT FACE"
The first of four instrumental tracks on the CD, "About Face" let's Z-Trip
show off his love of percussion. He samples, chops and flips marching band drum hits, capturing a sort of ordered, rhythmic energy that makes for a tk performance piece. "It's an antithesis to an MC track, just showing that I can flip samples with some of my contemporaries. I think it's way harder to make an instrumental than a song with an MC because the spotlight's on you and you gotta shine."
"FURIOUS"
The second instrumental track on Shifting Gears is a sneaker-stomping b-boy track that pays tribute to Furious Styles, a dance crew Z-Trip ran with in Arizona. "I didn't want it to be a typical sampled-funk b-boy track but something a little next. Furious Styles used to come to my shows and support me and every time I threw on something different, a drum & bass track or something, they'd lose their shit. They've been dancing to 'Apache' for 20 years, so when I threw on new beats, it'd tap into their sense of discovery. And I'd feed off that in turn. This song's really about those guys."
"TAKE TWO COPIES" FEAT. BUSDRIVER
From a DJ perspective, this song taps into the essence of flipping a
recognizable sample – in this case, courtesy Jethro Tull – into a total hip-hop throwdown. Z-Trip's quickstepping drum-track, though, is locked into a race with Busdriver, a denizen of the LA-freestyle community's Project Blowed crew, whose raps are as smart as they are fast. "He's just the epitome of someone who has so much style it literally oozes out of him," Z-Trip describes. "It's this controlled chaos situation and we both just sort of wanted to rock it so hard."
"FOR MY PEOPLE" FEAT. SUPERNATURAL
"Supernatural
and I talked a lot about hip-hop and life and it evolved into speaking about cats who had fallen in the game," remembers Z-Trip on the origins of this track, done with freestyle king Supernatural. "It's a song that's also about the a joining of different worlds in hip-hop and how you can get down if you know the code." Z-Trip based the track on the
classic West Coast jam, "Battle Ram" from Toddy T, using the East Coast voice of Supernatural. "He's got this reputation as just being a dope freestyler but he's more than that. In the end, we came together and
made a great song."
"BURY ME STANDING" FEAT. LUKE SICK
One of Z-Trip's greatest qualities as a DJ and producer is the sheer
breadth of his knowledge and output. Built on a bed of heavy beats, grinding guitar riffs and the riled energy of rapper Luke Sick, "Bury Me Standing" is a kind of defiant hip-hop anthem boldly sticking its chest out to the world. "If there was ever a teen-rage song that was in my bag of tricks, this is it," says Z-Trip. Luke Sick, of Bay Area rap
crew Sacred Hoop, taps into his inner b-boy to deliver retribution for all the times anyone's ever felt marginalized for their passions. "It's for all those guys who never got taken seriously, or people who looked different and always carried around that energy with them."
"BREAKFAST CLUB" FEAT. MURS AND SUPERNATURAL
"Sometimes people take hip-hop – and music, really – way too seriously," Z-Trip says. "So this is a song like Biz Markie's 'Pickin' Boogers' that just
reminds people that it's ok to have fun every now and then." Indie MC stalwarts Murs and Supernatural (who makes his 2nd appearance here) cleverly mash together a world of sugary cereals, action figures and Saturday morning cartoons, spawned when Murs observed to Z-Trip one day that, "people forget to goof sometimes."
"3RD GEAR"
There's
a narrative arc to Shifting Gears that begins with big-beat party tracks and ends in cerebral, often personally charged declarations. "This is where the fresh water and salt water meet, the part in the
record where we're coming out of the fun stuff and getting into more seriousness," describes Z-Trip. The song is built around the soulful
musings of Mars Volta keyboardist TK, who just jammed over Z-Trip's beats and scratches. "He laid down all sorts of keys over the track and
I found little spots to cut and paste and sample. It's just something really cool to groove to."
"EVERYTHING CHANGES" FEAT. ACEYALONE AND MYSTIC
"It's an ode to an old relationship," admits Z-Trip of this song, cautioning that it's not a moody goth track or a ballad. "There's a little bit of a past breakup in there but it's ultimately about inevitable changes in life – how love isn't always the good stuff." To express the song,
Z-Trip recruited master wordsmith and famed lyricist of the Freestyle Fellowship, Aceyalone, plus the singer/rapper Mystic. "I think Acey has such storytelling command and Mystic is someone I've always wanted on a
hook. During my live shows, I always get a good response from playing the acapella of her song, "The Life" over a Latryx beat."
"WALKING DEAD" FEAT. CHESTER BENNINGTON
More than any other track on the album, "Walking Dead" showcases just how
versatile Z-Trip is as a songwriter, clearly not limited to others' pre-conceived notions of what a hip-hop DJ can do. Having met Linkin
Park during numerous performances, Z-Trip had taken to the ache, pain and hope that radiates from Chester Bennington's voice. "It's really a morbid song about death and digging up old loves and everything that goes on with that," Z-Trip explains. "I sat down with Chester and we both knew we wanted to do something really dark. This is also me flexing my skills as a musician – hey I can make songs, people."
"SHOCK & AWE" FEAT. CHUCK D
"It's a funny time in the world right now, so much anxiety," Z-Trip says. "There's this struggle and I think this song is about struggle and violence and change." Who else better than Chuck D, then, to deliver such an apocalyptic sermon? His tremor-shock delivery matches up with Z-Trip's hell's-gate guitar dirges to form this sonically stunning
manifesto. "Chuck was the only one I gave instructions to before we cut the song. I told him that if he wanted to call out people, don't do it by name. It would date the song and I wanted our message to be timeless. There's anxiety in every generation and I think people are going to feel this."
"REVOLUTION (STR PARTS 1 & 2)"
Z-Trip was writing this instrumental – in two parts – around the same time he
and Chuck D were working on "Shock & Awe." What Chuck expresses with words, Z-Trip does here with beats, breaks and samples, a sort of
post-apocalyptic assessment thoughtfully delivered with urgency, immediacy and a trace of hope. "The word 'revolution' obviously has
many meanings for me and in its most literal sense, I wanted to convey a feeling that would resonate with people after listening to the
record, particularly the last few songs," Z-Trip says. "I really can't explain it because the meaning is different for different people, however they want to project it." After a brief break, the other revolution kicks in as the record circles forward into a speech delivered by Grandmaster Caz. "What he said shook me hard," Z-Trip says. "Here's a guy who got jerked by hip-hop, a pioneer who doesn't get anything he's truly due – not just money but respect. He's delivering this rhyme acapella to a room full of people and he gets
choked up halfway through. It's really moving." And as the last bits of Caz's words drift into the applause, DJ Dusk grabs the mic. It's the book release party – and the beginning of the record all over again.
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