his home in Brooklyn, lives by this mantra. In a few short years the
T. Dot native has gone from green producer with a new MPC 2000XL to
a highly sought after purveyor of boom-bap, laying down tracks for
the likes of Masta Ace, Buckshot, KRS-One and Sadat X. In 2007 the
gifted producer came of age releasing his debut album, Port Authority
on Soulspazm/Rawkus.
A Hip-Hop head since copping the first A Tribe Called Quest album, in
2003 Marco Polo was fresh out of audio engineering school and
despite sending his resume to over 20 recording studios in NYC, was
without a single job prospect in site. Unfazed, he made the move to
New York, staying with a friend in Queens before moving to his
current Brooklyn confines. One day while meeting with recent
acquaintance Ayatollah at The Cutting Room Studio, Marco finagled
his way into an internship at the studio. From then on it was grunt
work-fetching coffee, cleaning up, answering phones-and in a few
months he landed a gig as an Assistant Engineer/Manager
(coincidentally, the same job held previously by one Just Blaze). It
would prove to be perfect locale for Polo to shop his beats. “I
would have my beats blasting out of the office so that when clients
came through they would hear my stuff,” he recalls.After having a
hand in engineering records from the likes of Fat Joe, Talib Kweli and
even R&B crooner Carl Thomas, a Juice crew member put the battery in
Polo’s career after sliding him some tracks. “Masta Ace came through
a Beatnuts session and I gave him a CD and he hit me back a couple
of days later for the “Do It Man” beat that I did on “A Long Hot
Summer.”
Ace wasn’t Polo’s first placement. He had already been working with
respected lyrical crew Brooklyn Academy which includes Jean Grae,
Block McCloud and Pumpkinhead while he had showcased his work at a
Beat Society show in NYC, which led to his relationship with
Soulspazm. But the “Do It Man” track placed Polo on plenty more
radars. Since the song was a late addition to A Long Hot Summer, in
lieu of Ace’s depleted budget the two decided on a trade. In turn,
Ace recorded “Nostalgia” which ultimately became the first track
recorded for Polo’s Port Authority project. Says Polo, “That’s what
set off the whole idea for me to do a whole album. My ode to Soul
Survivor, that type of album.”Polo left The Cutting Room a couple of
years ago, saying, “That was the best thing that ever happened to me
cause it forced me to go into producer role full time.”
Since then, Polo’s beats have sonically benefited folks like Scarface,
Talib Kweli, Pharoahe Monch and Rah Digga. Polo’s creative sampling,
knocking drums and throwback grooves are fresh, never dated; while
the warmth of sounds he is able to achieve has also led to mixing
work for rap legends. “I learned enough [at The Cutting Room] to
take it into my crib and I get a really good sound. So when O.C. or G.
Rap were hearing the sound I was getting and it was sounding better
than the studios they were paying for so I ended up following into
that too. Other benefactors of his skills at flipping samples
include Large Professor, Heltah Skeltah and Ed O.G amongst others.
In 2008 Marco partnered up with the young gun Torae to release Double
Barrel, an album at that put the Boom back in boom-bap hardcore hip
hop. The album was well received by fans who were craving more of
that authentic sounding, timeless hip hop. Following up last years
success Marco hit the studio again with a gifted MC - he & Ruste
Juxx laid the perfect blueprint for hip hop ether on The eXXecution.
Now the focus is the highly anticipated Port Authority 2 project.
I’m just trying to bring up that type of hip-hop that I grew up
listening to that inspired me to get into it,” says Polo of his
sound, before adding, “Hip-Hop is definitely not dead, you just
gotta make quality music and you gotta work extra hard to get it out
there. I gotta just let the music speaks for itself. I’m trying to
show anyone from anywhere, if you work hard enough you can make it
happen, and stay true to it and make some real shit.”
No comments:
Post a Comment