DJ Muggs of Cypress Hill will be producing an untitled CD that melds Hip-Hop with rock-n-roll, a style called Mash-Ups. A Mash-Up, an English/ Jamaican term, blends two seemingly dissimilar music types into one that is designed to outshine each original.
With blends like 50 Cent and Nirvana, the veteran West Coast producer told AllHipHop.com that he hopes to break down barriers with the CD.
“For some reason, hip-hip cats want to keep you in this box and want you to keep drawing inside the lines. But can we be creative, man? I never want to work in a box,” he said.
In addition, Muggs is developing a syndicated radio show called Mash-Up Radio that he said would continue to expose the genre-melding music.
“It would open up for the format on radio to allow rock stations to start playing more hip-hop and hip-hop stations to play more rock. So this is the best way I went about it to make it feasible for both to understand it and digest it.”
And, Muggs admitted, with the legacy of DJs like Ron G, the concept of Mash-Ups is hardly revolutionary to Hip-Hop. He did state that there are differences.
“Because a lot of stuff [in England], they’ll mix Britney Spears with like Blink-182. So I decided to put my own twist on it like this. Blends has been used, there would have been nothing new. Run DMC opened the doors a long time ago,” he said. “But [with a] Mash-Up somebody is going to be like ‘What’s this?’”
As far as his album, Muggs said that he would be using largely original composition from Interscope Records, his label home.
“We got all the clearances worked out. We just going to use all Interscope rock bands and all Interscope rap artists. That way we’ll have no problem clearing [samples],” he said. “The real album is going to have like 75 percent original vocals on it and different bands stuff.”
Muggs currently has a mixtape that features his Mash-Ups with mixes that includes 50 Cent, Nirvana, Eminem, Jimi Hendrix, Jay-Z, Tupac, Biggie and many more.
