Birdapres is an underground hip hop legend. He’s known for his exploits on the mic and among a certain shadowy breed, he’s known as one of the world’s elite record dealers. Bird and I have known each other for over 20 years. We hang out a lot. We get together and session (listen to records and talk hip hop) and we spend a lot time digging together. We regularly roadtrip to parts unknown, looking for that black gold. Bird has an uncanny knack for finding mind-blowing records that have been overlooked and/or forgotten by the world. There are a bunch of records out there that every hardcore digger is after that he’s credited with discovering.
A few years ago, Bird and I discussed the idea of recording an album that would make the heads of hardcore crate-diggers explode. This was long before I went to work on the King Of Drums album. I hadn’t recorded anything sample-based in a very long time and so I was sitting on a crazy-ass mountain of source material. Like a maniac, I decided to make a bunch of beats using almost all of the rarest and most valuable records in my collection. I think of it as ‘the million dollar record’ because if you added up the value of all the records I sampled, you’d be looking at a small fortune. It’s audacious. It’s a bit of a flex. But it’s fun as hell to listen to. And you don’t need to be a full-on record nerd to appreciate it. The records in question are valuable because they’re good. We’re talking about some heavy, funky, psychedelic business.
The album is called The Last Dig. Bird and I each have a solo song and for the rest, we trade off verses. I made the beats for all of the songs. Some were made with records I bought or borrowed from Bird. I also laid down the cuts. Our shared love of classic hip hop will come through loud and clear. There’s a song called “CTFO” which is something of a tribute to EPMD. This song - called “Lécher Les Ballons” is a tribute to Slick Rick:
In many ways, the work I did on this album set the stage for King Of Drums. I’m sure you’ll find that the vibe is very similar. The beats may be slightly more stripped back in a few cases. But like KoD, there’s a thousand ideas coming at you fast. It may take a few listens to get a handle on it.
The Last Dig was written and recorded slowly and methodically. Work began in 2019 and finished a few days ago. The album will be available digitally on Bandcamp tomorrow (here). The plan is to have a small cassette run ready in a month. We’re also doing a very small run of 7” singles (hand cut, limited to 20 copies!). I’ll keep you up to date on that biz. The album is very much a pet project. I hope you enjoy. Long live Double Nice.
*Oh, and by the way, the OG cassette version of Vertex is going up on Bandcamp tomorrow too. Plus! I’m finally setting up a deal for the entire discography. Have a look-see.