The_Poet
05-26-03, 06:33 AM
Poetically Refreshin: im reading about this Nicolay "City Lights LP", it says the "almost" instrumental mixalbum, what do you mean by that? is it going to be like Petestrumentals ?
Nicolay: it's almost instrumental in the sense that there's one or two freestyles by emcees on there. But the rest is instrumentals, yeah
Poetically Refreshin: oh, are the instrumentals gonna be the ones that you put for listening pleasure on your site, or is it going to be new ones ?
Nicolay: a mixture of both, new and old, and all mixed together
Poetically Refreshin: Can you tell me more about this project you are working with foreign exchange ?
Nicolay: sure thing, "the foreign exchange" is the group that phonte from little brother and me formed after working together on a few tracks, we had a strong chemistry going on, so we decided to try and do a full-length album together and to invite some guests along the way, so right now we're about 10 tracks deep and title is going to be "connected," yeah, that's about it i guess
Poetically Refreshin: What do you use to make your beats ?
Nicolay: i work strictly on the computer as a platform for production
Poetically Refreshin: Is there any particular software you use ?
Nicolay: lately i've been using a lot of live elements, you know, recordings with the band or bass tracks that i record, stuff like that, as far as software goes, i use www.modplug.com for the basic tracking people should check that out cause it)s dope and it's free. Soundediting, i use soundforge and wavelab and for multitracking i mainly use cool edit pro 2.0, people should definitely look into the new cool edit pro because it's pretty darn good
Poetically Refreshin: Which artist(s) influenced your work? And do you have any favorite producers?
Nicolay: ok, artists that influenced my work, i'll just name the ones that inspired me to get started, because otherwise the list would be too huge to even type and they're my favourite producers at the same time so there you go:
jay dilla, holding down the number one spot
primo and pete
and more recently, 9th wonder and eccentric (from the justus league), dj spinna, kev brown, cats like that
oh, and i forgot kariem riggings, that's the name right there
Poetically Refreshin: How do you feel about the state of hip-hop?
Nicolay: i feel fine about the current state of hiphop, i know there's a lot of cats out there having some sort of apocalyptic vision about the current state of hiphop. Like, right now we're experience the dying breath of the artform, nonsense. As far as i'm concerned, there's a lot of good **** out there if you know where to look, so what if we don't have an early nineties kinda vibe going on, so yeah, i feel fine, hahahaha
Poetically Refreshin: What are some albums you've been listening to lately?
Nicolay: word, here's a list. First a couple of cats i'm down with, little brother - "the listening", and science fiction - "walls don't exist," for both of which my man @ www.ohsonappy.com did the excellent artwork, btw common - electric circus, dwele - subject, just picked that up, yeah, that's all i can think of right now, i know i'm forgetting a couple. Yeah, dj spinna - here to there and funkadelic, music for your mama, those been in the deck
Poetically Refreshin: Which artists do you wish to work with in the future ?
Nicolay: that's the nice part. First i gotta say common cause that's my alltime favourite in hiphop, i wanna work with the fellas at www.ohsonappy.com for the cover of the foreign exchange album because they're extremely talented in visual arts, i would love to work with bilal, dwele, singers like that, as far as emcees go, q-tip, slum village and outside of hiphop, norah jones cause that voice just gets me oh and coldplay, let me remix some coldplay joints, lol
Poetically Refreshin: In your opinion, which is the best produced hiphop album ?
Nicolay: holy lord, that's some question, man but i don't even have to think long. Like water for chocolate, by common. 3 years after, i find myself still trying to recreate that ****, the unity and sequencing on that album is class A
Poetically Refreshin: yeah, the beats are lovely on that album, "Nag Champa," and "Thelonious" are my favorites
Nicolay: yo man, those 2 are mine as well
Poetically Refreshin: word
Nicolay: but the album as a whole, **** i just CAN't skip any tracks on there
Poetically Refreshin: What do you do when you're not producing tracks?
Nicolay: i talk **** online, hahahaha, nah, i got a dayjob for the bills at an internet service provider 4 days a week. I'm hoping i can quit someday to actually focus on music but right now, that's not realistic..... yet
Poetically Refreshin: How do you feel about downloading music on the internet?
Nicolay: i'm fine with downloading on the internet, i would be lying if i say i wasn't because i do it all the time myself. I believe in two things though. One, is that people will eventually want to own something they really like, so the internet download is sort of like a preview. Two, is that prices for cd's are just too high at the moment, so i don't blame anybody downloading. What i do have a problem with, is when money is made with material. As you know, i've got a site online with downloads and beats playing for people to freely check out and enjoy and burn and bump in the car or whatever, recently, we found out that there's people out there actually trying to make money with that ****, making money with **** we wanted to give out free, that's where i basically wanna draw the line, other than that, i'm cool with SLSK and stuff like that
Poetically Refreshin: i totally agree
Nicolay: (and yes, that goes out to that *****ass bootleggin muhfuggah releasing those justus league bootlegs!), lol
Poetically Refreshin: I definitely knew you were talking about "them," that was totally wrong
Nicolay: i'll tell you something about that real quick. First of all, most of the joints they put on there, were made available previously, mostly through cesar comanche's website, you know, everybody already had most of that **** for free, BUT this dude (or dudes) obviously had NO idea who they were dealing with cause they got some tracknames wrong, put groups on there that have nothing to do with the justus league, etc. etc., basically an amateur job, i'll stop now though, lol
Poetically Refreshin: How do you feel about Little Brother getting source quotable? and the exposure the crew has been getting? and also how do you form projects with Little Brother considering they are in the United States and you are in Europe?
Nicolay: you know i ghostproduced that entire album, right? Hahahahaha, nah little brother, those guys are my boys, man i'm very happy they have to exposure they get right now cause they deserve it, and they basically got there on their own, so yeah that quotable? well deserved cause phonte is getting to be one of the best out there, trust me, too bad that the source lately kinda lost a lot of shine for me at least, but i'm still happy for them. As fas as us hooking up, the internet is a beautiful thing, man we were both hanging out at the okayplayer message boards. You know, the roots website, that's who we "met" and got started, it's a virtual thing hahaha
Poetically Refreshin: wow, thats mad cool
Nicolay: yeah man, especially considering we nearly have a whole album finished that way
Poetically Refreshin: Is there any new upcoming/underground producers that you like ?
Nicolay: 9th is upcoming also watch out for a group called "the foundation", from texas they're dope
Poetically Refreshin: word, thanx
Nicolay: slopfunkdust from tampa, florida - that's my man, he's on the akrobatik album, and he got his group unseen coming out soon, he's nice with the beats, i heard people talk about that cat soul supreme but i haven't been able to check him out yet
Poetically Refreshin: yeah he remixed Nas's album "Stillmatic"
Poetically Refreshin: ok i got one more question, I really like your beats and I tell my friends about your work. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Nicolay: yeah man, "the best is yet to come," hows that for famous last words
You can get more information about Nicolay and his crew at www.nicolaymusic.com
------- Poetically Refreshin aka The_Poet
Nicolay: it's almost instrumental in the sense that there's one or two freestyles by emcees on there. But the rest is instrumentals, yeah
Poetically Refreshin: oh, are the instrumentals gonna be the ones that you put for listening pleasure on your site, or is it going to be new ones ?
Nicolay: a mixture of both, new and old, and all mixed together
Poetically Refreshin: Can you tell me more about this project you are working with foreign exchange ?
Nicolay: sure thing, "the foreign exchange" is the group that phonte from little brother and me formed after working together on a few tracks, we had a strong chemistry going on, so we decided to try and do a full-length album together and to invite some guests along the way, so right now we're about 10 tracks deep and title is going to be "connected," yeah, that's about it i guess
Poetically Refreshin: What do you use to make your beats ?
Nicolay: i work strictly on the computer as a platform for production
Poetically Refreshin: Is there any particular software you use ?
Nicolay: lately i've been using a lot of live elements, you know, recordings with the band or bass tracks that i record, stuff like that, as far as software goes, i use www.modplug.com for the basic tracking people should check that out cause it)s dope and it's free. Soundediting, i use soundforge and wavelab and for multitracking i mainly use cool edit pro 2.0, people should definitely look into the new cool edit pro because it's pretty darn good
Poetically Refreshin: Which artist(s) influenced your work? And do you have any favorite producers?
Nicolay: ok, artists that influenced my work, i'll just name the ones that inspired me to get started, because otherwise the list would be too huge to even type and they're my favourite producers at the same time so there you go:
jay dilla, holding down the number one spot
primo and pete
and more recently, 9th wonder and eccentric (from the justus league), dj spinna, kev brown, cats like that
oh, and i forgot kariem riggings, that's the name right there
Poetically Refreshin: How do you feel about the state of hip-hop?
Nicolay: i feel fine about the current state of hiphop, i know there's a lot of cats out there having some sort of apocalyptic vision about the current state of hiphop. Like, right now we're experience the dying breath of the artform, nonsense. As far as i'm concerned, there's a lot of good **** out there if you know where to look, so what if we don't have an early nineties kinda vibe going on, so yeah, i feel fine, hahahaha
Poetically Refreshin: What are some albums you've been listening to lately?
Nicolay: word, here's a list. First a couple of cats i'm down with, little brother - "the listening", and science fiction - "walls don't exist," for both of which my man @ www.ohsonappy.com did the excellent artwork, btw common - electric circus, dwele - subject, just picked that up, yeah, that's all i can think of right now, i know i'm forgetting a couple. Yeah, dj spinna - here to there and funkadelic, music for your mama, those been in the deck
Poetically Refreshin: Which artists do you wish to work with in the future ?
Nicolay: that's the nice part. First i gotta say common cause that's my alltime favourite in hiphop, i wanna work with the fellas at www.ohsonappy.com for the cover of the foreign exchange album because they're extremely talented in visual arts, i would love to work with bilal, dwele, singers like that, as far as emcees go, q-tip, slum village and outside of hiphop, norah jones cause that voice just gets me oh and coldplay, let me remix some coldplay joints, lol
Poetically Refreshin: In your opinion, which is the best produced hiphop album ?
Nicolay: holy lord, that's some question, man but i don't even have to think long. Like water for chocolate, by common. 3 years after, i find myself still trying to recreate that ****, the unity and sequencing on that album is class A
Poetically Refreshin: yeah, the beats are lovely on that album, "Nag Champa," and "Thelonious" are my favorites
Nicolay: yo man, those 2 are mine as well
Poetically Refreshin: word
Nicolay: but the album as a whole, **** i just CAN't skip any tracks on there
Poetically Refreshin: What do you do when you're not producing tracks?
Nicolay: i talk **** online, hahahaha, nah, i got a dayjob for the bills at an internet service provider 4 days a week. I'm hoping i can quit someday to actually focus on music but right now, that's not realistic..... yet
Poetically Refreshin: How do you feel about downloading music on the internet?
Nicolay: i'm fine with downloading on the internet, i would be lying if i say i wasn't because i do it all the time myself. I believe in two things though. One, is that people will eventually want to own something they really like, so the internet download is sort of like a preview. Two, is that prices for cd's are just too high at the moment, so i don't blame anybody downloading. What i do have a problem with, is when money is made with material. As you know, i've got a site online with downloads and beats playing for people to freely check out and enjoy and burn and bump in the car or whatever, recently, we found out that there's people out there actually trying to make money with that ****, making money with **** we wanted to give out free, that's where i basically wanna draw the line, other than that, i'm cool with SLSK and stuff like that
Poetically Refreshin: i totally agree
Nicolay: (and yes, that goes out to that *****ass bootleggin muhfuggah releasing those justus league bootlegs!), lol
Poetically Refreshin: I definitely knew you were talking about "them," that was totally wrong
Nicolay: i'll tell you something about that real quick. First of all, most of the joints they put on there, were made available previously, mostly through cesar comanche's website, you know, everybody already had most of that **** for free, BUT this dude (or dudes) obviously had NO idea who they were dealing with cause they got some tracknames wrong, put groups on there that have nothing to do with the justus league, etc. etc., basically an amateur job, i'll stop now though, lol
Poetically Refreshin: How do you feel about Little Brother getting source quotable? and the exposure the crew has been getting? and also how do you form projects with Little Brother considering they are in the United States and you are in Europe?
Nicolay: you know i ghostproduced that entire album, right? Hahahahaha, nah little brother, those guys are my boys, man i'm very happy they have to exposure they get right now cause they deserve it, and they basically got there on their own, so yeah that quotable? well deserved cause phonte is getting to be one of the best out there, trust me, too bad that the source lately kinda lost a lot of shine for me at least, but i'm still happy for them. As fas as us hooking up, the internet is a beautiful thing, man we were both hanging out at the okayplayer message boards. You know, the roots website, that's who we "met" and got started, it's a virtual thing hahaha
Poetically Refreshin: wow, thats mad cool
Nicolay: yeah man, especially considering we nearly have a whole album finished that way
Poetically Refreshin: Is there any new upcoming/underground producers that you like ?
Nicolay: 9th is upcoming also watch out for a group called "the foundation", from texas they're dope
Poetically Refreshin: word, thanx
Nicolay: slopfunkdust from tampa, florida - that's my man, he's on the akrobatik album, and he got his group unseen coming out soon, he's nice with the beats, i heard people talk about that cat soul supreme but i haven't been able to check him out yet
Poetically Refreshin: yeah he remixed Nas's album "Stillmatic"
Poetically Refreshin: ok i got one more question, I really like your beats and I tell my friends about your work. Is there anything else you would like to add?
Nicolay: yeah man, "the best is yet to come," hows that for famous last words
You can get more information about Nicolay and his crew at www.nicolaymusic.com
------- Poetically Refreshin aka The_Poet