Red Bull... In Amsterdam?

When you are speaking in beats, it doesn't matter where you are at we can all relate.

Seattle has a history with the Red Bull Big Tune beat battle. Having been set up and founded by some of our town's legends like Vitamin D, Jake One & the mayor himself, J Moore it's something anyone from here reps for. And why shouldn't we, it's a competition that has traveled the country and featured performances from so many different levels of producers you can't even begin to fathom the talent Big Tune holds.

Perhaps I'm way late to the party on this but I was unaware that, just how here in America Big Tune travels around hitting different cities and regions, it also does something similar in Europe! Come to find out in September of 2009 some of the Netherlands best beat makers came out and went head to head with some of the countries up and coming talent. The result was Hayzee taking the crown with StatikMusic at number 2 and J'83 going home with the Bronze.

You are probably wondering who these cats are? Well I don't really know but the organizers of this Big Tune are some forward thinking cats. They took the time to compile tracks from all the competitors and dropped it as a free download on their websites.

Filled with some crazy beat soundscapes, if you are fucking with Flying Lotus and the Brainfeeder collective, Hyperdub, Lucky Me (Hudson Mohawke and the rest of his Glasgow beat homies) or any number of other Electro tinged, Dilla inspired/infused modern Hip Hop production, this collection is certainly worth a listen. Not only will you hear some funky and crazy beats but you are gonna be listening to an entire album of cats nobody is working with.

Some of them are flipping samples, some are getting heavy with the bass and static sounds. FS Green samples the He-Man theme and keeps you nodding to his hypnotic strings. While this is a compilation inspired by a beat battle, I think that some of the producers decided to let their work speak for itself rather than trying to come over the top for a CD and that was a good call. Battle beats are dope but don't always demonstrate what a producer can really do.

It plays for less than a half hour, download it and see where some cats are taking the future of this culture we call Hip Hop. What do the emcees out there think of these tracks?