Watch a New Documentary on The Lineage of Detroit Hip-Hop Producers
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Though it's likely best known for the Motown glow, the city of Detroit has fostered monumental leaps in the cultures of hip-hop, house and electronic music this side of Gordy's goliath institution. Since then, Motor City's gone through some seismic shifts in aesthetic, population density and economic opportunity, but it's lost little, if any, of the spaciousness and charm that helped foster those countless innovations,
A new documentary, The Unseen: A Detroit Beat Tape, ties "the fields," as Danny Brown once put, to the city's post-industrial turmoil, a newly barren metropolis that affords anyone with an itch for machine-based production an opportunity to hone and grow their respective crafts. Widely considered the patient zero of techno, not to mention the birthplace of pioneers like J Dilla and The Belleville Three (Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May) before him, Detroit housed some of music's most unrestricted experimentalists, solidifying its place amongst music's many stateside meccas, and this doc tells the whole tale with archival footage unearthed and restored from Justin Kovar's stellar cache.
Hit the link below to watch The Unseen: A Detroit Beat Tape and head over to Bandcamp to pick up a copy the film's soundtrack, featuring unreleased Dilla gems, Amp Fiddler, House Shoes, Quelle Chris, Waajeed and more.
