Dwele’s tribute to Michael Jackson is the most honest and authentic expression marking the passing of the pop legend I’ve yet seen.
Essentially a cover version, but with no reasonable cause for publishing claims or financial transactions to take place. This is simultaneously an artistic expression and cultural communication of something for which there aren’t any right words.
It’s pop music by an important recording artist, using the intellectual property of another.
But it’s not commerce.
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Tagged: tribute
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3 Comments
And is it just me, or is his physical beatmaking completely informed by and infused with the MPC 3000’s swing feel? I haven’t encountered that as strongly anywhere else before.
nah. you could only ever get that swing on an MPC if you turned all the groove templates (quantizes) off. it’s the classic dilla style funk of the boom-clack… definitely created by humans albeit expressed thru the sequencing capability and tactile interface of the MPC
That makes sense. I guess since it’s a rhythmic feel I’ve encountered in MPC-based music, I’d assumed that the MPC had contributed the feel through its quantize parameters, and not because people had avoided them. But it’s interesting that the interface lends itself to that approach.
I do wonder the extent to which people like Dwele construct rhythms like that because of their experience using and listening to the MPC. Whether that hi-hat pattern, for instance, would be imagined by someone who’d only ever played a drum kit and only ever listened to music that used a drum kit…
Of course this is looped, but it feels sequenced as well, if you get what I mean.