Press AdminVINYL-ONLY TOUR HONORING AFRIKA BAMBAATAA’S INFLUENCE ON HIP-HOP’S BEGINNINGS
Due to popular demand, DJ Shadow & Cut Chemist’s vinyl-only Renegades of Rhythm tour is continuing throughout November and expanding into new markets across the U.S. and Canada.
These two world-renowned artists and turntablists are spinning the well-loved and well-worn vinyl from the record collection of the founding father of hip-hop and “Master of Records,” Afrika Bambaataa.
Shadow and Cut kicked off the tour with two sold-out shows at NYC’s Irving Plaza where Bambaataa himself watched from the balcony as the duo pulled his vinyl collection apart and mixed a nostalgic set that chronicled and honored the genre that influenced so many others.
Check out Rolling Stone’s live review here. Read NPR’s Rational Conversation with DJ Shadow here. Check out the record rundown with Wax Poetics here. And read the in-depth interview sit-down that OkayPlayer did with Shadow, Cut and Bambaataa here.
“Deep into their September 4th set at New York’s Irving Plaza, as DJ Shadow bent over his spread of turntables, cueing the next sequence of beats, his partner in spin, Cut Chemist, gingerly lifted a piece of 12-inch vinyl from one of his decks and held it aloft, like a round, black equivalent of the Ten Commandments. He had, in fact, just played a religious object.” -Rolling Stone
“And just like [Bambaataa] encoded disparate styles like punk, J-pop, krautrock and beyond into hip hop’s sprawling DNA from the ’80s to today, [DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist are] bringing Bam’s socially conscious, purposefully inclusive cultural power to the people.” -Salon
“Afrika Bamabaataa‘s record collection has long been regarded as one of the most comprehensive and expansive archives of hip-hop’s formative stages that exists in the world today. That bold and well-reasoned statement never rang more true than it did last week, when the duo of DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist took on the immense task of presenting some the most foundational and iconic cuts of that cratedigger’s master document into one fluid and masterful exposition on the ones and twos. Casual observers, funky fanatics, collectors, hoarders, b-boys and b-girls were all able to bear witness to a turntable orchestra, less an homage and more a reeducation in the art of the break.” -OkayPlayer
“Attendees were awash in hip-hop history as the DJs took them on a journey with mini-sets that spanned the early days of the genre or regional variations, like Baltimore’s go-go scene, and a set of Bambaataa’s own classics like ‘Renegades of Funk’ and ‘Planet Rock.’ Working with a hundred or more records in one night isn’t easy but these wizards made it look that way and, more importantly, had a lot of fun doing it.” -PopMatters
Visuals for the tour are supplied by acclaimed video director, multimedia producer and regular DJ Shadow collaborator Ben Stokes. The tour is produced by Jamal Chalabi and Backlash Management.
