Back in 2009, I was still figuring out how to use and integrate hardware with software in my music creation; mainly my MPC 2500 and newly purchase Mo’ Phatt with my software of choice at the time, Reason 4. I had the homie, Akil, over once day playing beats for him and somehow prior to this day my MIDI cables got mixed up and one of the files that I loaded up on the MPC which (if I remember correctly) was original triggering sounds on in Reason triggers sound on the Mo’ Phatt and it turned out to be a very simple beat that I liked. I ended up giving him a copy to write something to. I also ended up letting someone else hear the same beat a week or so later, and asked her, Shae, if she’d write something to it as well.
Shae was the first one to return to record to the track. I had the idea to make it a posse cut and ended up letting Akil her what she had recorded as well as the homie’s Mr. Ray and Menno-P and asked them to write something to it as well. That track became “The Shit”, named because I had no idea what the song was going to be called and had to save the Pro Tools session under something. This was recorded with my first audio interface, an M-Audio Fast Track Pro. And due to some technical difficulties that apparently only I could hear, I didn’t include Shae’s verse on the final product because I couldn’t get her over to re-record her verse, so the song ended up featuring Menno-P, Akil, and Mr. Ray.
Throwing the song up on my Bandcamp page and forgetting about it, I moved on to other things. Until 2011…
The Shit II
Scrolling through Twitter, I saw that 9th Wonder was taking submissions for an album he was producing for a group that I can’t remember the name of, but it was Stevie Wonder themed (sample based). So I went digging through my records and put together something on my MPC 2000XL that I thought was pretty cool, but didn’t think it was good enough to submit for the project, so I held on to it. Then something to me… “Let’s do another posse cut!” So I put the call out to everyone again. Mr. Ray, Menno-P, Mr. Ray, Shae, and Reyvee Tension (who was also supposed to be on the first song, but our session never produced anything either of us liked). I think I gave the track to a couple other people as well who never came through. But this one was what I wanted the first one to be; a big posse cut. As with the first one, this one was recorded in my “not a studio”, in Pro Tools but this time with my new Fast Track Ultra 8R and new MXL R-144 ribbon microphone (the first was recorded with an MXL 990 condenser microphone); an upgrade for both in my mind.
Now “The Shit” was a thing! I had to keep doing them.
In early 2014 while in Guitar Center, I met someone who had a group of rappers that he was working with / managing and he connected me with one of them, bE!. bE! and I had a meet where I played and left him with some beats, hoping to produce a short EP for him. The EP didn’t happen, but he did tell me that he’d written to a couple of them, so I decided to book a session at recording studio as a test run for what I wanted to do next…
The Shit 3!
Later that year, I book another session at Skyline Studios and called up everyone for another round, this time including my brother and bE! label mate Champlu. Unfortunately, not everyone was able to make it and the session ended up being my brother, Bossman, Akil, Champlu, and bE!, although bE! didn’t make it onto the song; there was also Della who wasn’t there to sing but ended up singing the hook for another song we recorded that day. Although I’d been wanting to do “The Shit 3” for a while, even attempting to make music specifically for it, the music for it was another mistake. Maybe a year or so prior, Akil and I had swapped my MPC 2000XL for his Maschine MKII. “The Shit 3” came out of my playing around with Maschine trying to learn it and stumbling upon what became the music behind it. Being recorded at Skyline Studios, this was recorded on some high-end Pro Tool HD equipment that I’m not sure of what exactly it was at the time as I’m sure they upgraded their equipment over the past ten years.
Being that not everyone showed up for the initial session, I named this “The Shit 3 (Part I)” in hopes of gathering everyone else for a second session to continue to build on the number of people featured on previous tracks, but as time went on, that never happened. Now it’s 2025, 11 years later, and after some life changes and having not created any music for the better part of 6 years, I’m ready to bring back The Shit with “The Shit 4”. I’m physically in a completely different state and around all new people and no one from the past (both musically and personally), so unless past The Shit featured artists are willing to travel to The Middle of Nowhere, Washington, I won’t be able to record with them in the same room as I’ve always preferred doing, which means this one will be less produced by me (as I think I’ve finally gotten up the confidence to know exactly what a Bishop Jackson joint needs) and more “I’ll send you the beat, send me back your verse” which I’ve never been a fan of, as well as me searching for new people to collaborate with in a new musical scene; a scene that I like, I’ve always loved Seattle’s Hip Hop scene.
“The Shit 4” will hopefully be coming along with the Bishop Jackson EP 3. I’m planning to start working on both of these this summer, hoping to have the complete and read for public ears by the end of the year; I have to get this Akai GX-635D working as that’s a big part of the project, but that’s a different story.