Spotlight Chicago Artist: The Hood Internet

Indie rock and hip-hop make out on The Hood Internet mashups. by Althea Legaspi


Lil Flip and The New Pornographers? Clipse and Cat Power? Dr. Dre and Fujiya & Miyagi? It’s unlikely these pairings would ever move in the same circles, but Chicago-based The Hood Internet has these rap and indie artists commingling like crushed-out teenagers.
Named after a character from the movie Killa Season, The Hood Internet mash-up duo, ABX and STV SLV, has been garnering some serious love for its site including being named in Blender’s Hot Report last month and buzzed throughout the blogosphere. Its mashup creations are available for free download on the site.

“ABX and I are huge fans of all sorts of music, and we had sort of discussed making mashups using less likely tracks for beats, stuff from bands we like that have songs you hear and think ‘that would make a hot beat,’” says STV SLV of its unusual creations.

From that idea, The Hood Internet was born. The site, which launched in March, receives an average of 2500 unique visitors a day. New mashups are posted each week. The pair hopes to parlay its popularity into some production work and to get on the road. “It'd be cool if it led into some more production stuff – we did a remix for Blitzen Trapper and a mixtape for The Pack recently,” says STV SLV. “We're starting to work with a booking agent, so we're going to start doing more live sets.”

Inspired to create your own mashups? STV SLV has this advice. “The most common email we get is one of the following: ‘What do you use to make your mashups?’, ‘where do you find the a cappella tracks?’, or ‘Where do you find your instrumental tracks?’ You can use any audio program to do these, some are a little better when it comes to time stretching and pitch bending,” explains STV SLV. “I use Ableton Live and ABX uses CoolEdit Pro. A cappellas are all over the Internet, and as far as finding the instrumental versions of songs, we're generally just isolating parts from songs that can be looped and arranged into verse, hook, and bridge sections. Anyone could do what we're doing, especially with current technology.”

Check out The Hood Internet’s ear candy at www.thehoodinternet.com.

Recommended: Dr. Dre vs. Fujiya & Miyaji, Devin the Dude vs. Les Savy Fav, M.I.A. vs. New Order.

The Hood Internet will perform in New York City, during CMJ’s Music Marathon at Music Hall in Williamsburg on October 20.


 

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