The Holstar and Teck-Zilla’s video drops tomorrow!!!! Zambia to Nigeria: The movement is not slowing down for no one.

Massive shout outs to all our supporters…we can’t do this without y’all!!!!

Fellow viewers,we present to you a track by track analysis of Mister Rae’s Brand New Masquerade.Straight from the horse’s mouth-Teck-Zilla that is.

Intro/Pretend You Know Me

I initially didn’t have a clue of how to go about this. I felt we needed something that would open a flood gate of emotions in the listener and draw them in. I needed some type of sober but yet engaging ambience. My initial plan was to have Rae rap on the intro but that idea was quickly jettisoned and we stuck to the vocal samples.

Brand New Masquerade

         This was one of the first set of beats I compiled for the initial album before it became an ep. I was actually looking to record an entire lp with only African samples at the time. The initial version was about 32 bars long but modifications were made here and there. I  normally don’t reveal my samples but this here is very popular in Nigeria. I’m pretty sure everyone in my age bracket remembers Eddie Kwansa? Anyway the original song was used as the theme song for a TV drama series in the 80s called The New Masquerade. Yup, that’s where the title of the ep came from

Here Now

Another of my afro beat influenced beats. Rae was skimming through beats and this caught his eye.  I normally avoid using a lot of reverb on my snares but for this I went the 80s route and kept the reverb on high to give it some other feel. The Sunny Ade sample was supposed to be at the beginning of the song but we opted to use Rae’s Makossa spoof intro instead to add some fun into the mix.

Dreams

This gotta be the oldest beat of the bunch. Really had no clue what to do with it. The obvious sample still sounds fresh since the Clan used it in ’93.All I did was go at a higher tempo with heavier drums. Rae rocking this was a no brainer

3rd World Super Star

This is a banger I got from Zambian producer DJ Peewee. I met him through my dealings with the Zonefam rap group. This bangs all the way through and obviously only the dopest lines could do justice to it. It really took a while for us to record this as I was out of town. I’d actually written a verse back in Nottingham but by the time I got back to London, my mind frame had changed and decided to let Rae rock the entire song. Mighty glad I did that.

Flow

This happens to be my favourite beat for no particular reason. I just love the funk in the beat. This also has to be one of the quickest recordings we did and also the most playful. The feel I was trying to project with the sample is something similar to Kanye’s “The Corner”. I chopped samples containing indiscernible voices in the background to create that pseudo rowdy feel. It was jokes all the way from the 1st to the last bar, I even got my home-girl from Belgium Abie Flinstone to do some cheerleading at the end. The intro was lifted from the actual demo recording Rae and I did, as we didn’t think it was possible to re-enact something so spontaneous. Rae was REALLY laughing his ass off at that point for real!

Keys Of Life

I ain’t gonna let the cat out of the bag for this one (regarding the sample) but just know that it’s from a very popular 80s Japanese anime. I chopped one shot piano samples and replayed them. I initially laid drums on the pianos but quickly got rid of them as I found ‘em too distracting. Again I decided to go “Jay Electronica” on the beat so I just left it as is.I was freaking inspired at the birth of this beat that I wrote my verse even before I sequenced the entire joint. Rae on this was another no brainer, I just sent him a demo recording of my verse and he came up with the hook and viola!. I still don’t understand why he wanted the Jadakiss vocal sample at the beginning? I might never know why.

Viacom

This was actually one of the 1st 2 songs Rae did as solo cuts. Way before the idea of the ep came along.  Rae had it all figured out, all I did was count him in before the second verse. No hooks, no intros/outros, just str8 lyrical dart throwing from start to finish…he produced the cut as well..good job lad!!

 Easy Lover

Rae brought the Segun Bucknor record to the studio and laid out the concept for the song. I just got out the break parts of the original and used the same hook .To add flavour to it, I employed some popular Hiphop beat breaks at the start and end of each verse. Rae came up with the idea of scratching during the chorus to keep that Hiphop feel in it. This record has more of that 70s Nigerian funk vibe going on, somewhat experimental. Yeah Rae and I were saying some deep ish too lol .Listen closely and carefully!

Outro

Used same instrumental as the intro to keep things uniform. One of the sickest verse dude spat had to be used nah-mean. I think there could be another version of this outro lurking somewhere on the internet. Hey who knows lol. I just feel it’s a good way to wrap things up. Left the out takes there too,notice how I kept feeding Rae the wrong answers till he gets it and says “Who’s coming with me!!”……   Jerry Maguire anyone?!