For Da Beatminerz, blood ties make for the best music. The production team is made up of Ewart “Evil Dee” and Walter “Mr. Walt” Dewgarde, a pair of brothers who have collaborated musically throughout their lives. Both are now on the other side of 50, but still operating at peak condition, and are well-respected amongst their peers and fans.
Da Beatminerz became more familiar within hip-hop circles through their affiliation with Black Moon and the larger Brooklyn-based Boot Camp Clik, whose ranks have included the groups Smif-N-Wessun, Heltah Skeltah, and O.G.C. among others. Over the last 30 years, they’ve handled production for artists of all stripes. During the 2000s, they released a pair of albums, Brace 4 Impak (2001) and Fully Loaded w/ Statik (2004), collaborating with a whole host of like-minded artists. Though their ranks once included five team members, they now operate as a duo. After nearly 20 years, they’re dropping their third project, Stifled Creativity, this month.
For over three decades, Da Beatminerz have represented the “traditional” style of hip-hop production. Each brother proudly asserts that they always work to deliver that quality, raw, boom-bap music. While some producers moved away from sampled material, Da Beatminerz held firm; Evil Dee calls himself a “Sample Evangelist.” The pair play to their strengths on Stifled Creativity, digging in the crates to create a solid throwback album.
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Da Beatminerz have been working on Stifled Creativity for a while. Over the last decade, they have been recording material for the project, partnering with a wide array of artists, including (but not limited to) KRS-One, De La Soul (before Dave’s passing), Ras Kass, Keith Murray, AZ, Lil Fame of M.O.P., Camp Lo, members of the Boot Camp Clik, and Living Colour’s Corey Glover. The new album features 22 tracks, including a few remixes and skits. It took a while for the duo to find a label to distribute the project, but they found a home with the Soulspazm imprint.
Evil Dee and Mr. Walt generously took the time to speak with me about their new album, how they’ve sustained their creative energy for decades, and whether they’ve ever felt stifled creatively. They also talked about their production style, the importance of Black Moon, the tediousness of the “business” of music, and O.G. artists who appreciate the art of sampling.
What makes this the right time for a new Beatminerz project?
Mr. Walt: First of all, we've been sitting on this project for maybe 20 years. We just wanted to put music out. Really, we're one of the few people from the '90s that are still trying to understand how this music thing works. But we got a grasp on reality with certain things, and we just wanted to put new music out.
It’s been a while since you released Fully Loaded w/ Statik. Is there a reason why there has been such a large gap between releases?
Mr. Walt: We started working on Stifled Creativity right after that album, but we started doing other things. We DJ around the world. So, we've been doing a lot of that, and every once in a while, a Black Moon project would come about and then we would stop what we were doing, and we would do that. We would do other projects. So, we just kept inching our way up to do it. One day, we had the opportunity to go and actually work. Because some of these songs are really old, especially “Seckle,” with KRS-One. “Seckle,” I think, we recorded maybe in 2009.
Could you break down the significance of the album title, Stifled Creativity?
Mr. Walt: Stifled Creativity is just the way music used to be. It was a lot of limitations and stuff like that. We were just like, "You know what? Let's just put this record out renegade style and just go back to the way it used to be." Boom Bap, that's us. We wanted to bring that to the forefront.
Do you ever feel like your creativity has been stifled as producers?
Mr. Walt: No, I don't think so. Because with the labels that we worked with from back in the day, we kind of know how to do it. If we're going to take the record and chop a record up, I'm not going to say anything. Because once you say the word “sample,” they go crazy. It's funny that you asked that question because when we worked on KRS-One’s Kristyles in 2003, we told (record executive) Alan Grunblatt, "Yo, we got samples." Yo, I've never seen anyone act like this. He was going crazy.
Evil Dee: He was bugging.
Mr. Walt: Dealing with (Nervous Records co-founder) Michael Weiss and dealing with (Duck Down Music co-founder) Dru-Ha we know what to do and what not to do.
Evil Dee: I would say out of all of them, the easiest person to deal with samples was Dru. He still was like, "Yo, that might be a little expensive,” but he understood it.
How did you approach production duties for this album?
Mr. Walt: We've been doing it the same from day one. This was the Da Beatminerz' plan from the beginning, but I'm going to take it way back. So, you know me and Evil, we're brothers? Blood brothers. So, our mother used to have this saying, “it’s us against the world.” So, we took that and brought that into our production. We never wanted it to be “Produced by Evil Dee,” “Produced by Mr. Walt.” We always wanted it to be produced by Da Beatminerz.
Now, Michael Weiss, I don't know what the fuck he was smoking, but he was the first one to suggest, "Oh, produced by Mr. Walt." And I was just like, "Dude, that's not what we wanted, but okay, fine." We always wanted it to be produced by Da Beatminerz, but we worked together on songs. But one song might be majority E, one song might be majority me. All songs, we mix them together and we arrange together.
What would you say makes this album different than Brace 4 Impak or Fully Loaded w/ Statik?
Evil Dee: The time it drops. Because our sound has been the same. No matter what equipment we use, no matter if we're recording analog or digital, our sound still sounds the same. I think the difference would probably be more that it’s more sample-heavy. Because even though Brace 4 Impak is sample-heavy, it wasn't a lot of stuff that was easy to identify.
For instance, on [the song with Flipmode Squad’s) “Take That”? people thought we was playing keyboards. That's a sample. On this new album, you hear it and go, "Oh, that sounds like a sample."
Mr. Walt: The first album, we did it with three other guys, and so we had to work with three other people. We did Fully Loaded out of our house, we mixed everything in the house, and it was just me and E and it was just more one-on-one, and it was a better vibe on Fully Loaded. And then with this record, we took the same vibe from Fully Loaded and just continued it. We love doing these records. The only issue I got is just the business of the records.
Evil Dee: That’s a headache.
Mr. Walt: Yeah. It's been like that since Brace 4 Impak. That was a headache too. But putting the record together creatively and musically is incredible. But when the business comes about, even when you got to contact people for publishing and how the credits should read? That's a headache.
Evil Dee: I like the creative side more. I don't like the business side. I love being creative. I love creating the music. The business is the part that is like, "Yo, we got to deal with this and we got to, oh, got to pay what for sample clearance," and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Mr. Walt: Or “This guy smells. I don't want to stand next to him.”
That happens a lot?
Evil Dee: Oh man, listen, you're not allowed in the studio if you smell funny.
So how do you navigate the “business” side of music?
Evil Dee: That's the one thing we kind of learned the hard way by going through stuff. But we know our business, I just don't like the business. If I could just sit home and be creative, and I didn’t have to worry about the business, I'd be a better person. But once you decide to put something out there, it becomes business. So, you have to do what you got to do.
Did you record this album at the house?
Mr. Walt: We did all the pre-production at the house.
Evil Dee: All the beats were done at home.
Mr. Walt: But you know what? That's been like that since Enta Da Stage. In this very house that we live in, that we still live in to this day. We did every song from “Who Got Da Props” to “Finsta Baby” to “Seckle” in this house.
Are you using the same type of equipment now as you were back then?
Mr. Walt: On my side, the early beats was an MPC-3000, and then an X, an MPC-X. And now I'm using the MPC-1. So those are the three that I use for this record. And then E? Oh my God, I hope you have nine hours. He'll tell you all the equipment he's using. Listen, he's the tech guy in Beatminerz. Yo, anything new, anything, all the technical stuff, Evil Dee is the guy to talk to. Now when you want to talk music and samples and, "Hey, who plays drums on this record? Whose sample is this?" Blah, blah, blah. You talk to Mr. Walt.
Evil Dee: If you tell Walt, "Walt, I need a record with a dude playing xylophone with his toes," Walt will find that record in his collection. I'm the technical dude, he's the record dude. And I'll say this, just to put this out there: A lot of producers hit up Walt for stuff like that. “Yo, Walt, you know the record where the dude plays the ukulele in the water?" And Walt goes, "Yeah, that such and such. I got it right here."
Mr. Walt: Because me and E, we used to work in record shows before we made records. I used to work in Music Factory in Jamaica, Queens. So when Q-Tip said on The Low End Theory, "What's Music Factory without Mr. Walt?" he's talking about me.
Evil Dee: Matter of fact, that's how you got your name “Mr. Walt,” right?
Mr. Walt: Yeah, Q-Tip gave me that name. One thing about me and E, we constantly to this day still go record shopping. Like I said, in this house that we're in, we have three floors full of records.
Evil Dee: Three floors? How about every room.
Mr. Walt: Not in the kitchen upstairs. Not in the kitchen downstairs.
Evil Dee: Well, my kitchen got records. All I need to do is put a turntable in the bathroom and every room will have records. And I'm thinking about doing that just to do it.
You have worked with a lot of artists over the years. Besides Black Moon and the rest of the Boot Camp Clik, who’s an artist that you really like working with?
Mr. Walt: If we had to put anybody in the forefront, it’s KRS. With KRS, we could send him ten beats and he'll send us nine songs back. KRS is the best one so far.
What’s a production you’ve done that you feel didn’t receive the shine that it deserved?
Evil Dee: Walt's collaboration with Taylor Swift, that went unnoticed.
Mr. Walt: E’s song with Raffi and Michael Bolton? Nobody listened to that at all.
Evil Dee: Hey, I tried, man.
Mr. Walt: Now all jokes aside, we had done a song for The Forty-Year-Old Version, the Netflix film, with Nas, Dave East, Ghostface, Styles P. and Remy Ma that I felt was underappreciated by the people. To us, that was one of the pinnacles in our career.
Evil Dee: To be honest, I feel that us as a production team, were very underappreciated, but hey, it is what it is man. Even my group, Black Moon, we're underappreciated. We did a lot of things that we never got credited for.
Like what?
Evil Dee: We helped bring hip-hop back to the East coast.
Mr. Walt: When Dre and Snoop had everything on lock with The Chronic, everything was going West Coast. Because Cypress Hill was on top two with their stuff. And two records dropped that bring the music back to the east: That was “Protect Your Neck” and “Who Got The Props”; they dropped exactly around the same time. So, when you hear people talk about it it was like, "Oh, Nas did it and Biggie did it and Mobb Deep did it." No, it was Black Moon and Wu-Tang that brought it back to the East Coast. And then I set it up for Mobb Deep, Biggie and Nas to do their thing.
Sampling is big business now. It was always big business to an extent, but now they have lawyers who specialize in clearing samples and people combing through records for samples. Do you guys even trip on that these days, or you just do your thing?
Mr. Walt: Just do our thing.
Evil Dee: Just be creative, do our thing. Because part of the thing is if you're being creative, the business is what makes you uncreative. Like I said before, if I had it my way, I would just do music all day. I wouldn't worry about nothing. Just music, music, music, music, music. But you have to stop and take care of your business and the business, that's what makes people get writer's block or in our case, beat block. The business is uninspiring. Now with sampling, sampling went from, "Yo, you sample my joint. Oh, I'm going to give you publishing. Okay, no problem," to people getting really greedy. And I get it because we are taking someone else's creation.
But yo, back in the days they wanted to put Biz, God rest he's dead, in jail. Gilbert O'Sullivan was like, "Yo, I want him arrested." He tried to get him arrested for sampling a record. But what it is, people looked at it and they was like, "Yo, we could kick off on this." And that's what happened. Now you have cats who are very understanding like Quincy Jones and Barry White. And I can say that from personal experience because we sampled their music. Quincy Jones was real cool. He was like, "Yo, I want twenty-five percent publishing." And I think he didn't even take no money upfront. It was something crazy. And Barry White, he took 50% publishing and he wanted $3,000.
Mr. Walt: But we took a large portion of his song, though.
Evil Dee: Yeah, the Barry White sample on the “I Got Cha Opin” remix, yo, me and Walt took a lot of that. That whole record is Barry White chopped up. The only thing on that beat that's not Barry White is the hi-hat. And so yo, it's only right. And Quincy Jones is the “Reality (Killin Every N***a)” record, the B-side. Quincy Jones realized it was a B-side. Well, his son cleared it, QD III. And Quincy of course, he makes the judgment too, and they realized it was a B-side, and they were easy on it. "Oh, this isn't going to be a single-single? All right, no problem."
And the shock, believe it or not, is I went to LA to perform. It was a Ghostface and Raekwon show featuring Black Moon and C-Rayz Walz. And we were at House of Blues in LA. They have a little room like where they do private events at. I look at the door and it says, "Quincy Jones Private Event." And I'm like, "Yo, I want to go there. What's going on?" So, after we did the show, I went in and the event was over. And I seen Quincy Jones and I say, "Thank you. I'm a big fan." And the most shocking thing was when I told him my name, he said, "Oh, Black Moon the reality record. I like the way you use ‘Summer in the City.’”
And then the crazier part is Herbie Hancock was there. He goes, "Hey, Evil Dee, this is Herbie Hancock." Like I'm his friend. Things like that, that just shows he listens to the records. Quincy Jones isn't just the dude that's, "Yo, give me the check." To me, I was like, "Yo, this guy did Thriller." … He's the quote unquote older dude that embraced hip-hop. He had Hip-Hop cats on his record before cats thought it was cool. That's one of the things that I look at, me and Walt is doing something that's right. If the number one producer is like, "Yeah." Well, if he would've said “Beatminerz,” that really would've killed me. But for him listening to the record that we did, I was like, "Yo, that's dope."
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How often are you out on the road, DJing?
Evil Dee: Since the pandemic, of course it has slowed down, but overall, it's still cool. I always tell people this, the pandemic was a reset button. Because for two-and-a-half years, every DJ was DJing in the same clubs: Club Twitch, Club Instagram, Club TikTok. It was all online clubs. And when everything started coming back, people woke up and they realized that the older music is really here. You can't fool people no more.
Because if you look at one thing with the pandemic, older music blew up. All the Versuz with older people blew up. The ones with younger artists? There was a couple that popped off, but it didn't pop off like that like it was supposed to. D-Nice blew up playing classic records. He wasn't playing new stuff like that. So, when we came back in, a lot of more people was embracing older music and when it came to the clubs, cats were like, “Yo, I need that ’90s.”
Now, one of the problems I always have with touring and everything is, of course, budgets. Being that we are going through a recession, the budgets ain't the same. But you have to say to yourself, “Do I want to play my music for people, or do I want to sit home and wait?” So that's the decision that we have to make as artists.
What advice would you give to up-and-coming beat makers these days?
Evil Dee: Study the past. Study your craft. If you're going to get into it, get into it and learn, experiment with equipment. Don't just get a piece of equipment because blah, blah, blah used it. Create your own path. Mess with a bunch of equipment and see what you're comfortable with. And once you learn that equipment, just go off. Like with Beatminerz, we went to the SP1200 and the 950. I tried an MPC, back then it was an MPC60, didn't like it. And we did trial and error and settled upon what we settled upon. And at the end of the day, just be funky. Create your own groove and lean into it.
Mr. Walt: You just got to really study from the past and just you put your stuff on top of it.
Okay, so what are your top five albums, any genre?
Mr. Walt: Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Because that's the record that actually made Mr. Walt. When I heard that record, I said, "This is what I want to do." I was dibbling and dabbling in the beginning, but when I actually heard that whole album, I said, "This is it." Number two is Prince’s Sign O’ the Times. Number three: Songs In The Key of Life by Stevie Wonder. Number four: Off The Wall by Michael Jackson. Number five: Slick Rick’s The Great Adventures of Slick Rick.
Evil Dee: I'm going to talk about five now, like five that I'm listening to because there's so many albums, so I'm just going to name the first five I can think of, no particular order. Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet, Public Enemy, Eric B. & Rakim’s Paid In Full, Ohio Players’ Pain, BDP’s Criminal Minded, and Slick Rick’s The Great Adventures of Slick Rick.
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