I was like, 'What?! Did you hear that?' was saying it so cool and it made me want to cuss and be cool. I played it and I heard the most amazing, liberating, freeing sense of art I've ever come across in my life-Eazy E.Ĭussing on the record was new to me. But don't play the A-Side, only play the B-Side.” The record was 'Boyz In the Hood.' When I got home, I put it on accidentally-or not accidentally, I was being extremely mischievous I played the A-Side. I bought a Public Enemy record and the day I bought it he was like, 'Hey, I'm gonna give you this record too. I was in 3rd grade, 12's back then were $4.99. And every album I would buy he would give me another 12'. This cat Steve Yano-a very important person to the whole NWA culture-ran the record store there. Because she knew in her spirit if I stood where the music was at I wouldn't move from there for hours.

She would buy clothes at the swap meet and let me stand in front of the record place.

My mother would buy clothes every weekend and sell clothes on the side to keep the lights on. Dre used to sell their tapes in the late 1980s. The Roadium Swap Meet was the hub for early West Coast hip-hop.

Me and my mother used to go down to the Roadium Swap Meet in Gardena.

While offering a lift to 9th Wonder on a sunny day in Los Angeles, Martin spoke with The FADER about his experiences in becoming a producer, how he approaches the fusion of hip-hop and jazz, and how his inspirations have moved from music to life itself.ĭid you ever have trouble with your parents listening to hip-hop? Did you have to hide the tapes, or were they accepting of it? Martin's own LP, the long-awaited Velvet Portraits, is due out this year. One of the key players in reconciling this divide was 36-year-old Terrace Martin, a longtime hip-hop producer and saxophonist who came up simultaneously in Los Angeles' jazz and hip-hop ecosystems. The album's contradictions were held together, in large part, thanks to a dynamic marriage of hip-hop and jazz, genres which both play with latent tensions between 'art' and 'entertainment.' These are two worlds which have often been fused, although not always effectively Kendrick's success speaks not just to his singular vision, but to the musicians he hired, many of whom had their own histories within the disparate genres. Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly was that rare rap record which feels at once ambitious and urgent: intricate, complex, abstract albums aren't frequently hailed for their ability to capture the zeitgeist, to speak to now with such vibrant force.

Youtube eazy e live at the roadium