My Collaboration with Dust and Grooves

This past spring I had the honor of participating in an interview/photo shoot with my homeboy Eilon for his Dust & Grooves website. He took a bus from Brooklyn, NY to Deerfield, MA, where I lived up until a week ago. We crashed that night and got up early the next morning to head out to Worcester, MA to visit my dude DJ Shame.

Shame is the real deal. He has made a ton of incredible contributions to hip hop over the years, from his extremely sought after remix of G Rap's "Fast Life" song to his remix of Tim Dog's "Bronx Nigga". Shame also is the man responsible for Traveling Through Sampleland, which is considered by many the first all sample mix tape.

Going inside Shame's house is kind of like going inside your dream record shop. The man has everything. EVERYTHING. He had doubles of "My Mic is On Fire" by Lord Shafiq, and there are only 500 original pressings in existence! I had been looking for that record for damn near 10 years, and Shame just happened to be selling his double of it. Here is a picture of our transaction.



"My Mic is on Fire"- Lord Shafiq



Anyhow, I don't want to give anything else away, you'll have to read about the rest of our trip in the interview! Check it out by clicking here.

Bonus: Shame very nicely shared some goodies with me for people to enjoy. The following tracks are included below:

"Fast Life" (DJ Shame Remix) Original Sample



"Fast Life" (DJ Shame Remix)- Kool G Rap feat. Nas



"Brong Nigga" (DJ Shame Remix)- Tim Dog



These last two tracks are from Shame's unreleased mega mix that he talks about in our interview.

Big Daddy Kane and Rakim Blend



So Damn Tough Scratch Routine



Extra Bonus: Here is some crazy old school footage I found of Shame performing in Worcester on YouTube.

Dust and Grooves

With the explosion of blogging over the past five years, I've always been surprised and saddened by the lack of consistent coverage given to digging. Eilon Paz must have felt the same way, because he launched one hell of blog for all the record lovers out there. Titled Dust and Grooves, the blog's presentation as a "photo documentary/portrait project about crate diggers around the world" has a refreshing and unique feel to it. I was happy to see one of the first interviewee's was a personal favorite and inspiration of mine, Cosmo Baker.

Here is my favorite of Eilon's photos of Cosmo.



To check out the post about Cosmo, click here.

As a side note, anyone who has participated in Can You Dig It? or checks out my blog and collects records should reach out to Eilon. Contact info can be found by following the links to his blog.