Bazooka Kid available tomorrow + tracklist

TRACKLIST

1. Intro (produced by Fire & Ice)
2. Bazooka's Theme (produced by Forty One & Evan Short)
3. Find Me feat. Chong Nee (produced by Chris Laupama)
4. Moonlight (produced by Official)
5. What's Up (produced by P-Money)
   
6. V.S.O.P feat. David Dallas (produced by Beat Kamp Muzik)
   
7. Gone feat. Che Fu (produced by Fire & Ice)
   
8. Take Me Home feat. Mz J (produced by Forty One)
   
9. Tonight (produced by Forty One)
   
10. It Doesn't Matter (produced by JSquared)
    
11. New Day feat. Tyra Hammond (produced by JSquared)
    
12. 1/2 Kast (produced by David Atai)
    

Available everywhere June 2nd

Behind The Music (part 5)

05: "Whats Up" produced by P-Money

I wrote "What's Up" early in 2008, and funnily enough it was the second to last song we finished for the album. I grabbed the beat off P-Money when he was showing me a bunch of stuff he'd been working on for his album, and I remember instantly liking how the beat had a simultaneously shiny/sparkly yet raw rap feel.

The inspiration for the lyrics was a classic verse from Andre 3000 on Devin The Dude's "What A Job", where he rhymed about a couple talking to him on the street and telling him how his music influenced them. Everything in that song is something someone has said to me face to face, or something I've read online. I wrote the first verse pretty easily, just jotting down the usual positive shit people say to you on the street. The part about the guy mentioning the tat on his arm dedicated to his friend is true. I played a sweet 16 party in East Auckland, and a dude come up to me and told me his mate had recently died in a crash, and that he was an aspiring rapper who looked up to me. He just said he liked my stuff cause it reminded him of his bro, and that stuck with me as a high point in feedback I've gotten. I didn't want to make it a 'everybody loves Sam' ego fest though, so I wanted to flip it and talk about the negative side too. People have said that its a dope concept using the same verse structure, but it was really me just being lazy and not wanting to write another verse. I sat on the song for ages cause I had no idea what to do for the third verse, until I realized it didn't need one.

Me and Pete both knew the song needed a lot more added to it though, so we grabbed the Nas "One Love" acapella and he did some cuts. Then he sat down with Evan and they just went through different sounds until something caught his ear. At first I didn't know if the synths were going to work, but the way he layered the parts for the hook really brought the track to life and reminded me a bit of Kanye's Graduation sound. With only one track on the album, Money showed why he's NZ's illest producer.

Behind The Music (part 4)

04:"Moonlight" (produced by Official)
Moonlight was the very first song we did for Bazooka Kid, and really set the tone of the albums soundscape. Its produced by Official, who also produced the first single off Rookie Card, Just Roll. He had sent a CD to P-Money with like 40 beats, and I skipped through it one day at Pete's and ripped the ones I was feeling off the bat. I liked the contrast between the sparseness of the verses, and the overdriving synths on the chorus. It was really easy to write, I came up with the hook first, and the verses were fairly straight forward as the beat is around 114bpm, right in my flow-comfort-zone. I was listening to Britney Spears' Blackout album at the time, and really wanted a female pop vocal on the track. It's a funny thing in New Zealand though, how the genre we're kind of void of is straight forward pop. So thinking of who to get on the track would become more of a task than I initially thought. I ended up searching the NZ music section of Myspace for artists who had people like Mariah Carey and Gwen Steffani listed as influences, and Zeisha Fremaux popped up. I flicked her a message on her page, and she came and laid the parts in the studio that same week.

That was also the first session I did with Evan, and I was slightly nervous about it. I knew he made Drum n Bass and was a die-hard Metal head at heart, so I didn't know how he'd react to a song like Moonlight. We knocked it out with ease though, and its one of the mixes I like most off the album. The bottom end booms nicely on the right system, especially during the verses.

This song generated a few suspect looks, mainly from the indy-rap/angry-rap flag wavers, but at the same time it has been my most popular song with another group of I have even more love for... women!

tyson x collins

Haha "In The Air Tonight" can make anything seem epic.

Behind The Music (part 3)

03: "Find Me" featuring Chong Nee (produced by Chris Laupama)
Chris Laupama used to hit me up a lot to listen to his music online. Its hard to gauge the quality of peoples stuff when your listening to 96k streams on a Bebo page, so I didn't pay it too much attention. Then he somehow got my Hotmail email address, added me on MSN Messenger, and sent me a Mediafire link to a zip file of beats. I thought I should at least respect the dudes hustle, so I checked it and was impressed with how polished his sound was for a bedroom producer. None of the beats really suited what I was trying to do though, and were more on the Timbo-house craze of the time. I asked him if he had anything more "rap" and he made the "Find Me" beat that night. That's the main thing I like about working with new dudes, they have that hunger that can fade with artists that have been doing stuff for awhile.

That same week I went over to my boy Chong Nee's house for a classic wednesday night drinking session with him and his crew. After a few rum and cokes we started playing music we were working on, so I threw on that beat, and Neezy just starts singing "FIND ME!". It cracked me up, cause it was instantaneous, the beat had been playing for like 4 bars and he had the hook. We hooked up the mic and did a demo then and there, and a dude he was working with at the time, Tolu Faletolu, jumped on it (he's actually singing a lot of the hook aswell). Chong Nee is loud as hell though, and we were drunk recording it, so his takes were clipping like mad. When we went to do the proper recording Neezy wasn't in the country so we ended up having to use the demo vocals for his parts, that's why there's so much distortion and reverb on the chorus, we were trying to disguise it.

I really like how the track turned out, and I was stoked with the clip too. Only thing is, I wish I had done a remix. I wanted to get Mr Sicc on it, and Tiki had a verse for it that he rapped to me on the Tour Of Dirty that was mean, but it never eventuated. That would of been ill.

Behind The Music (part 2)

02: "Bazooka's Theme" (Produced by Forty One & Evan Short)
The original version of this song was to a different beat, which was produced by P-Money. We used the same sample that Stardust used for "Music Sounds Better With You", put some raw ass drums on it, and got Mz J and Awa from Nesians to sing on the hook. I liked the song, but with Stardust's track only 10 years old, and being such a worldwide smash, we thought we really were taking the piss. Unfortunately me and my constituents at the label didn't come to this conclusion till a week before the album deadline, leaving fuck all time for me to create something else, up to its predecessor's standard. To make it worse, I had my mind made up that the verses on this song had to be on the album, and at the start for the record to flow proper. So I went through all the beats that I hadn't used on my Itunes that had a similar tempo and vibe, and came up with this old Forty One demo he'd made back in 2007. It was a slightly slowed down 80's disco track, with some sinister synths added. Only thing is, I knew Nick had switched computers and lost a lot of his files, including this one, meaning we were gonna have to remake it from scratch. So, I sat down with Evan, and we layed out the basis of the track like Nick (Forty One) had it. We ended up adding a whole lot more to the original demo. Evan switched up the bassline sound, and put a few different synth lines in it, one which is more rave, one which is more Pet Shop Boys. I re-recorded the vocals, and rewrote the hook, just doing it myself this time. Those added elements gave the track a whole new life, and made it the most authentically retro track on the album.

nesian and pnc on the track

In my continuing mission to feature on a song from every genre known to man, here's the clip for "RSVP" by my mates Nesian Mystik. Fun as to shoot, turned out noice!

Vodafone txt code for "Tonight"

If your on Vodafone like myself, just free TXT 'PNC' to 5483 to grab my new song "Tonight". The first week stats have been good, so a few more sales is gonna help gain some chart actioooon.

While we're on the subject of Vodafone phones, my mate I'm staying with in Oz, Sam, just lost his crackberry in a taxi we caught so... RIP to that.

PNC: Behind The Music (part 1)

I always like to hear about the behind the scenes of making music. I love shit like the Classic Albums doco's and The Source's Rhyme & Reason section, and I feel like it gives you a new appreciation and connection with the songs. So I thought over the next few weeks before the album drops, I'd share with you a short anecdote of how we made each song on Bazooka Kid. From the writing process, how I first heard the beat, what other songs influenced it etc etc. So lets kick it off with...01: "Intro" (produced by Fire & Ice)
This beat turned up in my email one day from the Fire & Ice bros, and I knew instantly it was gonna be the intro to the album. It kind of reminded me of the Scarface theme music, and I felt it was the perfect platform to set off the album. Sometimes when you hear a beat, the opening lines just come to you, and with this one I had the first line "No brother, one mother, no dad..." instantly. I ended up with two 16's on some train of thought shit, that I thought were top notch, and left the hook as a nice guitar line that they had put in the demo. I still wanted the track to build a lot more though, as it seemed a little flat. So I kinda referenced a couple of my favourite all-time jams ("In The Air Tonight", "Blackberry Molasses") that I thought had that dramatic feel, and used their technique of not bringing in the full drums till a lot later in the track. I knew my engineer Evan Short would nail it in the mix too, as he's also a revered producer in the electronic scene, and knows all the tricks of the trade to make a track grow from beginning to end. As long as Fire & Ice are still making beats, I think I'll get them to do 'Track 01' on all my albums. They just come through with the perfection.

dirty records x ozzy ozzy ozzy

Australia, are you ready.... I said are you ready! ©50 Cent

Me and the brothers are hitting up the Oxford Art Factory in Sydney tomorrow to bust some flows for the masses. Come check it out! Also performing at Meche in Canberra on friday and at Fannys in Newcastle on Saturday.

buy "tonight"... tonight... or today even!

Forgot mothers day? No problem!

My new single "Tonight" is now available on all the digital platforms your New Zealand heart could ever desire. Click any of the links below and they will take you directly to the song so you can make your purchase.

• Itunes
• Vodafone
• Digirama
• Amplifier
• Telecom available through headset

whoa

new vid from my mate Percieve. Featuring me and Flowz.