Cold Truth
IllMuzik Moderator
my story is tied up with vice's, but i'll give it from my own end.
i wrote my first song when i was like 15, and i had a friend who could sing (well.. looking back, no, he couldn't! lol) so i'd write the songs and he'd sing em, and some songs with rapping and singing, i'd rap and he'd sing and that was that. at that time i was awol from foster care and staying at that dudes house (his name was jason, same as mine) and we were breakin at the time.
anyhow, this dude talked me into trying to freestyle one night into a little tape recorder, and it was the most god awful thing ever made. he swore it was great but whatever. so i just started writing rhymes for the next few years.
thing was, i had rhymes but no beats. at this point my friend fernando was a dj- DJ Five- mostly doing house. he had these catalogs from American DJ and i was staying with this older couple from my church after i emancipated from the system, and when i got my G.E.D they dropped like $1200 on gear from AMERICAN DJ!! The ladie let me use this little casio and taught me how to read music nad i started on fur elise like most folks. anyhow they saw me with that catalog and saw how dilligent i was on that little $50 casio and decided i was a worthwhile investment for music. thats where i got the DR and Sp.
thats around when vice and i started to kick it breakin- i wanted him in my little crew to pop. i brought over pharoahe monch, mos def, soundbombing 2, high and mighty, all kinds of dope shit from back then.
anyhow when i moved in vices room was a fucking mess of tapes, cd's, records, and cords. thats all there was. we ate, slept, read, breathed hip hop in those days. i miss that shit cause i don't "live it" like we did back then. that was everything. like everyone else we sampled everything we got our hands on. some dope shit, some seriously wack shit, some "interesting" shit, lol, was made.
but it started with samples. then i had to pawn it.....but he fucking saved the day, months later, when i came home one day and my old gear was in his room. oh shit son!! he actually was kind of... i dunno... "eh" at first... but once it was gone that fool had the itch worse then i did. i showed him all the shit that i knew, and he would discover things that i didn't know about yet, and we never really touched a manual unless it was vital. we learned the mpc pretty damn well through trial and error that way, but it took fucking AGES for us to figure out how the midi worked and once we did it was like "we're fucking idiots. that was so easy!!" anyhow after i moved out i got the mpc, but i left it at his spot since he had the keys and a PA system. so i'd head over after work and stay till like 4 am, walk my happy ass home, head to work, and do it again, listening to the shitty tape i had just made on the way to and from.
obviously vice laid out the rest- except i didn't have the xl, it was the og mpc2000 and he copped the xp 30, not the triton- he traded it for a triton, not a triton for a fantom (not trying to "correct" you vice i just noticed it was backwards. lol) anyhow i eventually copped an xp80 to rock with the mpc and the triton so it gave us some different sounds to play with. at that time we were making beats together- each doing a part, making changes as we saw fit and in all actuality i still feel like our best beats between the two of us were in the form of a collaboration. anyhow i sold the xp 80, copped a motif rack, then switched that out for a proteus 2000 and a korg TR rack before eventually scrapping it all in favor of cubase, sampletank, kontakt, trilogy, and atmosphere and thats about when the Cold Truth sound started to really develop some legs and i stopped sampling all together, save for drums and a very rare loop. thats how it all sort of came together. i eventually set vice up with all the same shit that i had so we both had our own rigs and didn't need something the other had; this way we had it all at our own spot.
we've gone in our own directions since then, and that allowed us to further grow into who we are as individual artists. there is a lot of sacrifice that goes on in a group setting when you each have such a different vision and you don't really have that room to do YOU, which is the only way to really be the best you can be. so thats where we are today- but i think that time living and working together did a lot to lay a solid foundation for each of us as an artist. we learned alot. plus, i get to bust his balls and call him my son since i brought production into his existence. of course i was the homeless kid who needed a place to crash so i guess it's a draw. lol.
i wrote my first song when i was like 15, and i had a friend who could sing (well.. looking back, no, he couldn't! lol) so i'd write the songs and he'd sing em, and some songs with rapping and singing, i'd rap and he'd sing and that was that. at that time i was awol from foster care and staying at that dudes house (his name was jason, same as mine) and we were breakin at the time.
anyhow, this dude talked me into trying to freestyle one night into a little tape recorder, and it was the most god awful thing ever made. he swore it was great but whatever. so i just started writing rhymes for the next few years.
thing was, i had rhymes but no beats. at this point my friend fernando was a dj- DJ Five- mostly doing house. he had these catalogs from American DJ and i was staying with this older couple from my church after i emancipated from the system, and when i got my G.E.D they dropped like $1200 on gear from AMERICAN DJ!! The ladie let me use this little casio and taught me how to read music nad i started on fur elise like most folks. anyhow they saw me with that catalog and saw how dilligent i was on that little $50 casio and decided i was a worthwhile investment for music. thats where i got the DR and Sp.
thats around when vice and i started to kick it breakin- i wanted him in my little crew to pop. i brought over pharoahe monch, mos def, soundbombing 2, high and mighty, all kinds of dope shit from back then.
anyhow when i moved in vices room was a fucking mess of tapes, cd's, records, and cords. thats all there was. we ate, slept, read, breathed hip hop in those days. i miss that shit cause i don't "live it" like we did back then. that was everything. like everyone else we sampled everything we got our hands on. some dope shit, some seriously wack shit, some "interesting" shit, lol, was made.
but it started with samples. then i had to pawn it.....but he fucking saved the day, months later, when i came home one day and my old gear was in his room. oh shit son!! he actually was kind of... i dunno... "eh" at first... but once it was gone that fool had the itch worse then i did. i showed him all the shit that i knew, and he would discover things that i didn't know about yet, and we never really touched a manual unless it was vital. we learned the mpc pretty damn well through trial and error that way, but it took fucking AGES for us to figure out how the midi worked and once we did it was like "we're fucking idiots. that was so easy!!" anyhow after i moved out i got the mpc, but i left it at his spot since he had the keys and a PA system. so i'd head over after work and stay till like 4 am, walk my happy ass home, head to work, and do it again, listening to the shitty tape i had just made on the way to and from.
obviously vice laid out the rest- except i didn't have the xl, it was the og mpc2000 and he copped the xp 30, not the triton- he traded it for a triton, not a triton for a fantom (not trying to "correct" you vice i just noticed it was backwards. lol) anyhow i eventually copped an xp80 to rock with the mpc and the triton so it gave us some different sounds to play with. at that time we were making beats together- each doing a part, making changes as we saw fit and in all actuality i still feel like our best beats between the two of us were in the form of a collaboration. anyhow i sold the xp 80, copped a motif rack, then switched that out for a proteus 2000 and a korg TR rack before eventually scrapping it all in favor of cubase, sampletank, kontakt, trilogy, and atmosphere and thats about when the Cold Truth sound started to really develop some legs and i stopped sampling all together, save for drums and a very rare loop. thats how it all sort of came together. i eventually set vice up with all the same shit that i had so we both had our own rigs and didn't need something the other had; this way we had it all at our own spot.
we've gone in our own directions since then, and that allowed us to further grow into who we are as individual artists. there is a lot of sacrifice that goes on in a group setting when you each have such a different vision and you don't really have that room to do YOU, which is the only way to really be the best you can be. so thats where we are today- but i think that time living and working together did a lot to lay a solid foundation for each of us as an artist. we learned alot. plus, i get to bust his balls and call him my son since i brought production into his existence. of course i was the homeless kid who needed a place to crash so i guess it's a draw. lol.
