Thirty Three Jones | Desktop Site
My brother has spent the past few years trying to convert me into a dubstep fan, even occasionally popping up in the comments section (under the name ezrider, as longtime readers might remember) to suggest that certain artists featured on here should start rapping over those beats. EZ was always a man ahead of his time, so his advice went largely unheeded with rappers only recently starting to recognize the genre in the past couple of years. Despite his best efforts I still haven't become a huge fan of dubstep, but every now and then I'll hear a track that I really dig. One such track is a recent collaboration between the homies Curly Castro, Zilla Rocca and Philly producer Starkey.
I'll admit I'm not well versed when it comes to grime or dubstep, so most of what I've heard from Starkey is off of an older album he put out with Zilla as part of the group Crooked Soul, but I'm told he's now kind of a big deal over in the U.K. I asked Zilla how he hooked up with him, and here's what he had to say:
I met Starkey in like '02-'03. He was my teacher at Temple University, doing digital recording and engineering. He's the best musician and engineer I've ever heard, bar none. Back then, he was in a band called the Can-Am Connection. Then he started a trip-hop/glitch hop/IDM group called Aunt Jessica, who later signed to Rope-a-Dope digital. And he was in my first group Crooked Soul, a bunch of Philly guys making rap in the pre-iPod age in the vein of Dizzee Rascal and Stankonia. When he finally decided to go solo as Starkey, he was so ahead of the curve on grime and dubstep and all the beat cats. His company Seclusiasis with Dev79 has been doing street bass shows and releases in Philly for a long time and I was lucky enough to get on their first 7 inch release "Less Than Paper" for their label Slit Jockey back in like '05 or something. I still have 2-3 copies of that record.
The weird thing is that after I left Temple, Starkey ended up teaching Small Pro and picked up Smalls' debut Slowbus for Seclusiasis in 2008, which is right when I met Smalls who's now a close friend. This past year, me and Castro linked up with Starkey's partner at Slit Jockey El Carnicero, who was working with Elucid on this project called CapricornOne. Now Carnicero is gearing up to drop some dubstep singles this year with Castro and I that are HGH pipebombs. Castro will be featured on Starkey's next worldwide release Space Traitor Vol. 2 coming this summer. Elucid is on my stuff, Castro's coming projects, and on Smalls' production LP Gigantic coming shortly. It's really weird how it's all come full circle. Starkey's all over the world, Elucid is in NYC, Carnicero is in Indianapolis and us in the Wrecking Crew are in Philly. And that's the best part--totally organic connections based on making good music.
Here's the song:
Starkey featuring Curly Castro and Zilla Rocca - Holodeck (Three Dollar Pistol Remix) (right-click to d/l)
And as a bonus video, here's the song Less Than Paper that Zilla mentioned above:
Starkey featuring Zilla Rocca - Less Than Paper
4/6/2011 6:30:00 PM posted by Fresh