Forward After All: Dorothy gets a makeover

This past July, MA-based hip hop group The Problemaddicts released their second full-length album "The Dark Side of Oz" on the Mystika Music label. As a founding member of this group, it's been real watching us move forward within a genre dominated by jokers and clowns... The Dark Side is a concept record (maybe you figured that one out?) melding Pink Floyd's timeless "Dark Side of the Moon" album with various and somewhat random snippets and samples from The Wizard of OZ. Be it the soundtrack, narratives, that weird flick with Michael Jackson called 'The Wiz', etc., entirely sampled from vinyl. We even dug a little deeper and incorporated bits from interviews with Roger Waters, and even some ish from the HBO series 'OZ'. I would say the biggest feat of this record was that it went from initial concept to completion within just a few months! That included all the artwork, production, recording, mixing and mastering, not bad for a few kids from western MA. I gotta give it up to my man Marko as well, truly earning his co-exec producer badge on this one, nuff respect for believing in us and the project homie. All songs were produced by Tone and DJ Theory, all cuts and scratches by myself as well. To describe the album a little more, Tone came at me with the idea last year when he made the first beat blending a dark side sample with some oz shit. I was into the concept, but didn't foresee it coming to fruition as an official release until I made a couple beats, he made some more heaters, and then we had some serious ammo to work with. We then got our team on board (Vorheez, 1ne Man Sound, Black Buddha & Force) along with some of our friends including Agent 23 (NC), Blacastan (CT), Lex Boogie (MA) and Platypus Complex (MA). Individually they also represent GFE, Cold Duck Complex, Fireset Radio, The Alchemystics and the Branch Davidians. With past projects, Mystika has always relied on our good friends and partners @ Northfire Recordings Studio in Amherst, MA to track all our vocals...however on this project our budget was much tighter, and we wisely invested in our own professional vocal booth which we set up @ VO's crizz. We were able to get the quality we were looking for with tracking, and then letting our prodigal engineer Garret Sawyer @ Northfire do his magic in the mix. We did utilize Northfire for all our mixing, as we always will. If you're in the MA area and seeking a high-end and reasonably priced studio, it's well worth dropping them a line...feel free to tell em Theory sent ya, maybe you'll get a cookie or two. So, recording and mixing were done, then it's off to Peerless Mastering in Newton, MA (same plug applies to Peerless). I'll provide a few sample tracks from the album below, but if you're feeling it please support and cop an album for yourself and anyone else interested in trying something new in the hip hop world... even if you don't feel it you gotta give a little credit for trying something different in this mess. Our inital goal was to have the discs pressed in time to promo @ Bonnaroo in TN, and if you were there, there's a good chance you or someone near you had an advance copy of the disc. We also hit Rothbury in Michigan pretty hard, and I may have to dedicate an entire post to that festival, just due to it's sheer brilliance among other festivals I've attended over the years...that's a whole nother.