Experience Vinyl Brings Artist-Curated "Desert Island Discs" To The Masses

Vinyl has seen a huge resurgence over the last several years, and companies are hopping on the trend left and right hoping to capitalize on the vinyl boom. But Experience Vinyl, co-founded by musician Brad Hammonds, isn’t the average vinyl service. The company selects high profile artists to curate a “Desert Island Disc” of their essential albums. From Carlos Santana and The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson to Parliament-Funkadelic’s George Clinton and Talib Kweli, each month subscribers get a taste of each artists’ musical preferences.

“It took us a while to land on this particular model,” Hammonds explains to HipHopDX. “The funny thing is, it was staring at us the whole time. Back in 2014, I started a blog called ‘Desert Albums,’ where I asked my musician friends for their top-10 desert albums. I got Vernon Reid [Living Colour], Regina Carter [Macarthur Award recipient], Mark Guiliana [drummer on David Bowie’s Blackstar] and others to participate. They loved it! We were brainstorming ideas one day and realized we already had the model: top-10 lists from iconic musicians.” 

Kweli crafted a list for the inaugural month, which included Erykah Badu’sMama’s Gun, Bob Marley’s Legend, Nas’ Illmatic,A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders, and Jay Z’s Reasonable Doubt. (Midnight Marauders wound up being the sole selection for monthly subscribers.) As a Hip Hop legend in his own right, the former Black Star MC has endless amounts of respect for the vinyl record and its massive contribution to the culture.

“Vinyl for people who are into Hip Hop is not just a tool to hear songs, but it’s an actual recording instrument in our culture,” Kweli tells DX. “Scratching and cutting, and the whole art of DJing on vinyl is part of the creation of Hip Hop, so vinyl should always have a special place in the heart of anybody who loves Hip Hop on top of it being the best way to hear music.”

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Although vinyl is not a traditional instrument like a trumpet or guitar, it was integral to Hip Hop’s birth. During the 1970s, school music and arts programs in the Bronx were being subjected to budget cuts, which left kids without any instruments to play. Kweli believes Hip Hop rose to prominence from the ashes of those cuts.

“Kids could not learn how to play instruments,” Kweli explains. “The DJ becoming the most important person at the party as opposed to the band comes from cuts to music programs in New York City. So people who used to go to parties to hear bands now go to parties to hear DJs, and then the DJ becomes the focus and the MC starts talking about the DJ. Then the DJ starts cutting and scratching the records, and the records turn to part of something that created our whole culture just by making a new instrument.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7wcYCvsvR4

While it often seems like the younger generation of artists tends to ignore those who paved the way for Hip Hop, Kweli recognizes that’s not his fight or his struggle. But he seems to have hope.

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“I think kids are influenced,” he says. “When I hear Drake or Bryson Tiller, it sounds like Aaliyah to me — like they’re influenced on what they grew up on. They just don’t have the reach age-wise to sometimes be influenced. When I was a teenager, Puff Daddy was very prominent. They were sampling like ‘70s and early ‘80s records because that’s what we grew up on.”

For the team at Experience Vinyl, they just want to continue crafting incredible musical experiences for their subscribers. In terms of upcoming curators, they haven’t snagged every artist on their list yet, but have a few in mind.

“We started with a huge list of artists we wanted to partner with and then worked with our lawyer who pitched to their managers,” Hammonds says. “From there, we go with who says yes. We’ve been really excited so far with the artists we have on board. My top choice is Questlove, if he happens to be reading this [laughs].”