New Grooves — CDs  

Miles must have turned over in his grave with this one – although it went on to influence a decade of jazz remix projects! Miles spacey trumpet is remixed from tapes recorded before his death, and production is handled by Easy Mo Bee, with kind of a "hip hop meets jazz" sort of flair. Titles include "Chocolate Chip", "High Speed Chase", "Fantasy", "Duke Booty", "Mystery", and "The Doo Bop Song".

The lyrically focused set in the 2 Stepping Stones compilations from DJ Krush – part remix album, part retrospective – featuring Company Flow, Black Thought & Malik B of the Roots, Mos Def, Aesop Rock, Zap Mama and others! Lyricism kind of finds Krush in his most hip hop reverent game, naturally – but he runs the gamut of possibilities within the genre. Krush never battles the MCs for track supremacy as many of the superstar producers of the day do. He's laying proper groundwork for the mic styles, yet still laying down his experimental funk signature – and the wide variety of vocalists gives him ample opportunity to show his unrivaled breadth! Tracks include "Only The Strong Survive (Bon mix)" feat CL Smooth, "Vision Of Art (Vib mix)" feat Company Flow, "Zen Approach (Cradle mix)" feat Black Thought, "Kill Switch (Beep mix)" feat Aesop Rock, "Song For John Walker (Sticky mix)" feat Anticon, "Danger Of Love (Gray-Sky mix)" feat Zap Mama, "Shinjiro (Harsh mix)" feat Mos Def and more.

Madlib invades Blue Note! He gets free reign of the catalog for this mix of sampler genius and live band interpretations, too, as/with Ahmad Miller, Yesterdays New Quintet, Malcolm Catto, Medaphoar, and others from the Stones Throw camp. This one's truly a conceptual triumph, if there ever was such a thing – one of the greatest hip hop producers alive, given carte blanche with the source beats of the century! Madlib's Blue Note crates are heavily weighed in the mid 60s through mid 70s electric beats that often get the shaft in mainstream jazz round-ups, but floor the beathead world into overdrive. Re-interpretations, remixes, and revisions are spliced seamlessly with the source samples, creating a whole new world where hip hop and late model live funk not only co-exists with classic Blue Note jazz, but it actually draws a linear transition between the 2 genius art forms. Beautiful stuff – if the album isn't the most original idea to come along all of these years into the hip hop & jazz underground, it's certainly one of the most perfectly realized projects of its kind, ever! It's one for the time capsule – pure funky sample wizardry by any standard! Includes Monk Higgins' "Slim's Return" interpreted by Ahmad Miller and DJ Lord Such on cuts, "Donald Byrd's "Distant Land", "Ronnie Foster's "Mystic Bounce", Yesterday's New Quintet's adaptation of Wayne Shorter's "Footprints", Madlib Invazion's "Funky Blue Note", the Joe McDuphrey Experience take on Horace Silver's/Herbie Hancock's "Peace/Dolphin Dance" and lots more.