About

THE WARM UP EP – BEATMASTA BILL & STAR
#NottsMeetsBrooklyn

“The Warm Up EP is an aptly titled adventure in Bronx-fuelled hip-hop from NYC femcee STAR, and Nottingham producer/DJ BEATMASTA BILL. At the starting line of their collaboration, two artists stand waving to spectators, casually flexing their muscles amongst injured athletes, poised and ready for the marathon.

From the very first kick and snare, the music takes you way back to the best-loved classic era, laced with an electronic edge that cements this as a new interpretation. A self-assured female voice introduces herself with the authentic New York twang that immediately lifts any hip-hop fan’s ears. She sounds like what you want a rapper to, but it’s not forced. Verbally flexible, Star’s endless rolling out of prose, rhyme after rhyme is a decent tongue lashing to her contemporaries, letting them know she finds most dried up and is nominating herself to ‘bring it back to those New York raps’.

Throughout The Warm Up, both STAR and BEATMASTA BILL demonstrate years of honing their skills only to own them now. Having met in the Stone Soup Studios in Nottingham, they have both spent years working on their own game. Bill was teaching music production at the studio when he found Star to be a lyrically skilled artist.

From age 10 Bill was playing violin and then drums, at 13 he started making music on computers, at 16 he joined punk group ‘The Decepticons’, and when he got decks at 17 he incorporated that style into the band. When his scratching and mixing improved he soon supported Aim (signed to Grand Central) at Technique. When Beatmasta Bill was 21 he had already had a very early-life-crisis. Refining his production skills he entered Leeds University, famed for its musical alumni, to study Creative Music and Sound Technology. Here he learned to sculpt sound using synthesis techniques, and as extra curricular learned to beat juggle and scratch better, landing him a support slot with hip-hop/nu jazz group Fingathing. Entering the DMC Leeds Heat, he was consoled for not qualifying by a support slot for the X-ecutioners.

In Star’s own words: ‘I can only seem to write in rhymes. Since a schoolgirl, I’ve been doing this, since nine.’

Her tough life growing up sharpened her survival instinct to do better, saying it was ‘designed to help [her] shine’. Stylistically Star has the storytelling styles of Masta Ace or even KRS-One: her differently fresh flow is exciting to listen to, yet it remains that all essential classic. Alternating the pressure on her words, she goes from grimier hard-flow to attenuating spoken parts effortlessly.

 ‘Till my baby was born, I was treading on tight rope. She saved me from myself, so this is what I climb for’

She recognises being in a man’s world but calls out to ‘every little girl and every little woman’, promising to break through the misogyny hip-hop is tarred with. Opening dialogue on her sexuality and admitting pains she encountered dealing with it, Star doesn’t hyper-vulgarise the female form when she describes her lover, acknowledging the difficulties women in the game already face.

Featuring a cameo from Nottingham’s crowning hip-hop glory CAPPO, the EP is testament to the expertise of each involved. Cappo is name-dropped as one of the UK underground’s most prominent wordsmiths, and his ability to be playful with language takes no backseat on ‘This 333: NY to NG’.

Beatmasta’s relationship with wobbling modulated bass is realised as he sews multi-genre techniques into his hip-hop fabric, scratching with slick ease under a perfectly bouncing vocal. The punctuating adlibs and harmonies are so well placed in the mix it’s like an orchestration, the emcee and producer both highly skilled musicians.

If the warm up is this hot, what’s 5 laps saying?”

The Warm Up EP Press Release, Written by Parisa Eliyon.