People don't realize how much it means to your music to record on tape, whether it be for new music or old music. People don't realize how much or how imperative it is to use actual hardware when making drums because those are actual percussion samplers. They're hardware instruments that are made to have the drum hit.
I like golden-era hip-hop because they were recording on a 2-inch tape. There was dirty, raw sampling. It's nasty. It has a vibe to it.
To me, recording with live instruments and tape takes things back to an older sound that I like but that's still fresh.
I remember those moments in my life when the tape came out on that Tuesday, and I went to Sam Goody to cop it. And sitting and listening to it. In awe of the music I was listening to, but also imagining this music at the hip-hop clubs and with the homies in the car.
When you're recording live, really good vintage instruments onto two-inch tape, it's the best fidelity you can get.
I'm always followed by two or three cars and have police around. Even walking in the park, you see them taking photos behind the bushes and trying to videotape everything.
Francis Ford Coppola did this early on. You tape a movie, like a radio show, and you have the narrator read all the stage directions. And then you go back like a few days later and then you listen to the movie. And it sort of plays in your mind like a film, like a first rough cut of a movie.
In Staten Island, when you have video showing the alleged chokehold used on Eric Garner, why not go to trial and have the officer(s) explain the tape, and then this jury can determine guilt or innocence? The tape should guarantee that there should be a trial.
I was 17 and just learning what high fidelity was, what good sound was, and learning the mechanics of tape machines. It was a real education, going right from the consumer end to the record factory.
The Sicilian Defense album was never released and never will be if I have anything to do with it. I have not heard it since it was finished. I hope the tapes no longer exist.
