Scottie B

Becoming one of the most requested and sought after djs in the world isn’t something that happens overnight. Scottie B has accomplished what every other DJ aspires to: he’ll forever be known as the innovator of a musical genre that transformed a regional sound into a style that now influences countless DJs worldwide. Baltimore Club music is raw. Ol’ Dirty Bastard raw. Like eating hamburger that has not been cooked, teeth clenched into the meat as blood drips down your chin, raw. B-more Club music prides itself on being rough, rugged. It’s nothing if not unpretentious. “The DJ was an extension of the crowd,” Scottie B says, “and there was a lot of nonsense going on at these clubs, from fist fights to cheating, so the sound was made as a reflection of that.” This is the kind of primal music that makes you want to dance. It exists off emotion. In the late 1980s, Scottie B was known for his ability to mix any style of music, and out of this developed a hybrid of hip-hop, house, club and hip-house. The sound is exemplified by an 8/4 beat structure, a tempo that ranges from 126 to 130 beats per minute. There might be sampled break beats of the songs, repetitive hooks of well known hip-hop and R&B songs, as well as the use of weird pop culture references and of course, most notably, there’s the kind of raw sex talk that would make Luke from 2 Live Crew blush and Bill O’Reilly’s head explode. Besides being one of the pioneers of the scene and a top-notch DJ and producer, Scottie B also runs one of the most successful B-more Club record labels, Unruly Records (unrulyonline.com), with his partner, Shawn Caesar. Since 1994, they have been putting out the best releases in B-more Club, and their label roster now reads like a Who’s Who of the scene, with artists such as Rod Lee, Blaqstarr, KW Griff, DJ Class, Say Wut and K-Swift. "I know everybody will say Scottie B = club music, but I play more than that, you know what I mean," he says. "And I try to get out of that hole to a point. Of course, I want 'em to know who the best guy for that job is, but it's not the only job that I can do." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.