In 2007, to call D'Cal an up & coming producer is like, in 1984 calling Michael Jordan an up & coming basketball player. While the statement is true, it doesn't fully emphasize the impact he is destined to have. This NJ native is a producer, writer, arranger, and a multi-instrumentalist, playing all the instruments on his recordings. Several people familiar with his work has described him as hip-hop's "One Man Band."
As a youngster, he could often be found either in his room practicing on his father's guitar or pouring through his parent's record collection. It was through this record collection that he first began dabbling in production. By using the pause and record button on his tape deck connected to a single turntable, he began seamlessly looping the breakbeats of those song, turning them into instrumentals. He remembers, "I knew I was on to something when I first heard "Gin & Juice" by Snoop, the main sample in that song is a record that I had been messing around with before. It was real exciting for me because I felt that I was thinking in the same ways that these artists were, in terms of what was hot, and that pushed me to dig and find the hottest records I could." That push soon caught the ear of his older brother who was signed with Teddy Riley's Future Records based in Virginia. "My brother took a tape of some beats I did down to Teddy and after he heard it he wanted to meet me. The plan was for me and my brother to form a group with him rhyming and me as the DJ - but my mother wasn't having it because I was barely in my teens at the time. But Teddy was real cool, he gave me a couple of tips and some real good advice and I just went back to what I was doing before."
So how does someone deeply rooted in sampling develop into playing all his own instruments? "Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, that joint changed my thinking. I learned to play damn near that whole album on my little Casio keyboard. At that point I was like, "I'm gonna put sampling on the backburner and concentrate on making my own beats. My quest became to be the Prince or Stevie Wonder of the hip-hop world, musically speaking."
That quest brings us to "The Remedy", the all instrumental hip-hop album that he is putting the finishing touches on. With influences ranging from R&B and Rock, to Reggae and Classical and all points in between, he has crafted a sound that is beyond description, yet firmly rooted in hip-hop. |
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