Just a quick post on an artist that I came across back in 2009. The artist goes by the name of DJ Gruff. I happened to be in a record / cd store in Italy and asked a couple of the locals to recommend a good hip hop cd. They looked at me and to my surprise asked if I wanted gangsta hip hop or real hip hop. Given my old school roots I asked for the real thing. They didn't miss a beat - pun intended - and pointed me in the direction of DJ Gruff. I am very grateful to those two gents as the cd I picked up - UNO - is extremely good and DJ Gruff is extremely talented. I don't speak Italian but you can hear several shout outs on the cd to old school artists like crazy legs (whom I once met by the way).
The beats on this cd are very mellow to say the least and the scratching by DJ Gruff is very impressive and tailored very well to match the instrumentals of the sampled records. I miss the days of DJ's doing their thing on stage and actually scratching (records vs CD's). I can't speak to Gruff's other releases, but this cd is very impressive - great music to kick back and relax to.
I am including several links below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPKoS2GwuEw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3y2acCQf7A
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DJ_Gruff
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