The Legend Of Austere Guinevere

You are probably thinking what real connection the title of this post has got to do with picture you are staring at above this text. Well, rest easy as I break down yet another manga-inspired beat I made more than a couple of years ago.

For those who don’t know:

“Fist of the North Star (北斗の拳 Hokuto no Ken, literally “Fist of the Big Dipper”) is a Japanese manga series written by Buronson and drawn by Tetsuo Hara that was serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1983 to 1988, spanning 245 chapters. Set in a post-apocalyptic world that has been destroyed by a nuclear war, the story centers around a warrior named Kenshiro, the successor of a deadly martial art style known as Hokuto Shinken. The manga was adapted into two TV anime series produced by Toei Animation which aired on Fuji TV affiliates from 1984 through 1988, comprising a combined total of 152 episodes.”

FOTNS to me is like the “Rocky” of  anime. The meteoric rise of the under dog despite being placed in impossible situations, oh yeah and with the help of the infamous exploding fist technique. No matter the predicament, the seemingly invincible enemies and mental torture is used. Kenshiro always finds a way to overcome adversity and restore balance to a more or less bleak world.

Besides the animation being a bit “meh”, the story lines somewhat simple (but enjoyable) and the villains being plain megalomaniacs (seems 90% of the world suddenly went power hungry), the other thing that drew my attention was the music. You got to give these guys props for that, unlike most cartoons in the 80s where there was an over reliance on cheesy rock songs. FOTNS took it up a notch, from jazzy tunes to ballads to epic orchestra pieces.

This particular piece I used for The Invisible Enigma’s “Austere Guinevere” was one of those slow ballads. It wasn’t a simple chop and loop cause the way the singer did it didn’t quite match what I had in mind so if you ever hear the original sample you may not even recognise it straight away. I probably made about 4 to 5 beats using samples from FOTNS at the time so expect a few more beats coming this way.

The Invisible Enigma- Austere Guinevere(Lady Killer)

The Holstar and Teck-Zilla: Past,Present And Future

This joint is taken off the collaborative album with Slamdunk record‘s CEO “The Holstar“. I must have told this story a thousand times but I’ma tell it once more.

After going through series of beats, trying to get a balance for the album. I stumbled upon the original beat for what eventually became “Past, present And Future“. The said beat was first made in 2007 and actually made into a song shortly afterwards but as fate would have it the song was never released and it’s probably in data heaven as we speak. I never even got to listen to said song so it’s like a dream that never actually took place.

Check out the audio here:

The video was Shot, Directed and Edited by Jamiel Banda in Zambia and features cameos by Hip-Hop Group ZoneFam.

This is my favorite song on the album, I’m a sucker for anything nostalgic and this right here hit the right spots. It was really dope to see the entire crew in the video as well having worked with all of them(2 years before) on “Full Script“.

Str8 Buttah – The Last Stand

This song is off Str8buttah‘s debut album: Str8 4rm Da Art and I think the only video we shot for the album. The Masta Ace intro I used was inspired by a conversation Rcube and I had months before the song was recorded. Often we had these friendly banter about the state of Hip-Hop in Nigeria and more than often we always agree to disagree on certain aspects and issues.

The beat samples a jazz record I got from a pal of mine who helped me with getting tons of old records and whatnot. It was a no-brainer at the time to keep the trumpet section for the hook and the verses short and straight to the point. I hit up the rest of the crew and we all wrote our verses and hit Knighthouse studios to record, we probably recorded more then 50% of “Str8 4rm Da Art” there anyway.

The video shoot was quite epic as we called all our rapper friends in the music biz to come represent and I’m glad most if not all of them showed up. Trust me, it would be freaking difficult to get these guys in 1 room now unless it’s a show or award ceremony.

Rcube directed the award winning video(yup we won an award for it) with Brother Lee and Wong Fei Hung lending a helping hand.

Roll call: Kraft, AQ  & Phenom(not Knighthouse),Loose Kaynon,Attitude, Kay,Blaqmind, Tha Suspect, Jabbar,Protek, Dj Bentley,Bugsy, Sabre(KnightHouse),Ex-O, Mifliss, Venomous and BigFoot(Micworx), Slimfella, Dark Poet, The Kalifate, Illbliss amongst others. Teeto Ceemos came through but he left before we could get the camera rolling.

Shout outs to Micworx for the location

Double Dragon 2: The Revenge (Remix)

I  recall vividly the first time I played this game on the NES. I must have been around 9 or 10 and I was stoked  out of my mind.

The gameplay was truly amazing at the time. As opposed to the usual, run,jump,attack that I was used to, in this scenario you could combine various moves depending on your position. You could attack an enemy behind you (with the back kick) while keeping another in a hold and then there was the famous “Hurricane Kick” and of course “Abobo“

 Another feature that captured my imagination was the music. Timeless pieces that capture the mood of each stage and draws you in. Seriously for an 8-bit game, the music was brilliant and for years it was stuck in my head like a mantra. Especially the themes for Stage 2 and stage 4(pictured below)

Fast forward many years later. I became a beat maker and naturally I had to get my hands on the entire Double Dragon 2 music catalogue. The version I sampled on the song “Set It Off RMX” is actually an updated rendition of the original 8-bit music but I also spliced the music used in the game’s interlude to give it that retro feel.

 The original version of Set It Off was recorded for Rhythm 93.7‘s Dj Tommy’s mixtape (still in limbo) hence we never actually put it on any Str8Buttah project. The original was recorded at Jabbarad’s studio after we got kicked out of the first studio for another artist (that’s another story for another day). Unfortunately XYZ was unavailable for the recording as he was still serving in the Northern part of Nigeria so you get to hear only 4 emcees plus me on the hook.

 The remix in question was done about 2 years later(2009) while we were putting the Buttah-Tapes together.

Compare and contrast:

Set It Off Double Dragon Remix

AFRO B-BOY

A video I made on my macbook and I must confess, I hate making videos. It take so much of your precious time and uses so much space on your hard drive. I’d rather not do it at all. This is actually the first movie I made using iMovie, I’d tried working on windows video maker but it kept crashing so I had to completely jettison the 2 video projects I was working on at the time.

This video splices scenes from Fela’s live performances, interviews and much more. You can spot a young Femi Kuti playing the sax in one scene.

Here is the audio for good measure.

RiS feat Shikara- Bint Helwa

RiS, an Ottawa based Nigerian MC, recently dropped a mixtape called Vol 1: Road To Northbay and yours truly was part of the production team. RiS is a budding lyricist with a distinct flow.

The video we have here is for “Bint Helwa” and features a female emcee, Shikara on the second verse. The title of the song is arabic for “beautiful“, which you can clearly hear in the chorus.

The beat was one of the first few I made when I moved to Canada, shortly before I had a long conversation with Mister Rae about making an ep with only Asa samples and beautiful was one of the beats made for that purpose.

I had been making other beats for RiS and I felt this will fit the project he was working on so yeah, that’s how the story goes.

The video is pretty basic and features Shikara and other beautiful ladies. What can I say…beautiful. (pun intended). It was shot on location in Malaysia

Ris-Bint Helwa (ft. Shikara) from Sharina Shahrin on Vimeo.

Afro J.E.T.S Club Project Podcast

A.J.C.P is an audio quasi-documentary inspired by Africa’s rich musical and political history. Teck-Zilla goes the extra mile and digs deep into the sounds from 70s Africa.Splices them with rich commentary/sound bites from Africa’s great political & musical visionaries such as Nkrumah, Lumumba, Nnamdi Azikiwe,Sunny Ade,Fela Kuti etc. to create a fusion of raw edged boom-bap beats laced with African melodies and rhythm.

Afro J.E.T.S Club Project Podcast by Teck Zilla on Mixcloud

R-Cube,The Invisible Enigma And Venomous – Steps

I remember making the beat for this song right after I had finished NYSC, which is a program designed to integrate Nigerian students from different ethnic backgrounds. At the time I “served” in the northern part of Nigeria, which was quite peaceful those days.

The sample here was from a Billy Ocean song I found from a CD store around my way. I was an avid collector back then, since vinyl was a little bit out of my league, I settled for CDs. I usually tend to make a bucket list of artists I want to sample and spend considerable amount of time trying to locate their material and trust me, back then that ain’t no easy feat.

At the time the beat was made, I was working on a collaborative album (Illastr8) with fellow Str8Buttah producer XYZ and my initial plan was submitting this beat for a song towards that end but all that changed with one phone call. I was still in Zaria for the time being and was heading to Kano (my place of primary assignment) to pick up a recommendation letter when Mister Rae called to inform me of Fleet Militant’s unfortunate demise. It came as a rude shock and really hit me hard from the blind side. Fleet was also supposed to perform on Illastr8 and then some. Fleet’s work as the director of G.A.M.E (Nigerian Chapter) was instrumental for introducing me musically to XYZ. As a matter of fact, XYZ was passing out flyers for the event when we first met in University of Lagos.

The song “Steps” was what that beat ended up to be. It’s taken from a dedication album to Fleet Militant (Rest In Power kid) and the video was shot by some peeps (I honestly don’t know them). The location of the shoot is close to the former studio of Micworx (A super duper Production crew which Venomous is part of). I remember tensions running high on set, technical issues, tantrums getting thrown with reckless abandon but everyone manned up to get the job done out of respect for the dead.

Cameos include GQ, Deckzavier, Big Foot and Mister Rae, oh I did appear at the tail end for a few seconds.

“First Class” by Flowsmith (Produced by Teck-Zilla)

Flowsmith is a Birmingham based  Nigerian MC/Producer. I stumbled upon his first mixtape and it sounded like nothing I have heard at the time. I didn’t waste time in getting in touch with the kid and our first collabo was on the remix of Mister Rae‘s “Here Now“.

The beat for “First Class” was actually made when I was living in London but it went unnoticed( or better yet forgotten by me) for a year or two, until Flowsmith hit me up regarding me contributing to the sequel of his mixtape(Life Vol II).

The final version I submitted is considerable different from the original, better drum patterns/instruments and arrangement. This is a sample I really like as well, plays out like a tragic scene in a movie.

The man behind the lens is Paul Usoro, who works closely with Flowsmith (He shot a mini documentary on Flowsmith‘s life plus other short films).

You can watch a video promo for his yet to be released mixtape HERE