The cover art for 14KT’s ‘Nickel & Dimed’ album.

The Micro-Chop Daily X #4 — Mello Music Group Edition

A Micro-Chop playlist featuring 10 hand-picked instrumentals — every single day for an entire year.

Gino Sorcinelli
Sep 1, 2018 · 3 min read

I n the interest of keeping things interesting with Micro-Chop Daily X 10-beat playlists, I’m going to experiment with playlists organized by different eras, labels, geographic locations, themes, years, etc. Not all of the playlists will follow a specific theme — I still like the idea of compiling 10 great instrumentals from all over the place into a cohesive listening experience. That said, people seem to like it when things are organized around a central concept or idea. Playing with the format and giving it some focus seems like a great way to generate more interest in these playlists.

With that in mind, the first Micro-Chop Daily X playlist to focus on one specific topic features instrumentals exclusively from Mello Music Group — one of my favorite record labels. In addition to being a fan of so many of the releases on Mello Music Group, I also love their story. Unlike many people in the industry who show an intense love for music at a young age, label founder Michael Tolle’s musical discovery was a gradual process. “I never had any ambition in music,” he told Jocelyn Valencia in an excellent 2017 interview with JRecognize. “I never played any instruments seriously, or sang, or was involved in music in any way. My family wasn’t musical.”

The Micro-Chop Daily X #3 — Mello Music Group Edition. Ten hand-picked instrumentals for your listening enjoyment.

Tolle may have been a late bloomer, but once he discovered a passion for music, it consumed his life. When he first started Mello Music Group he had to split a ridiculous amount of hours between running a full-time tutoring company and getting his label off of the ground. Even though Tolle has since admitted that the long hours took a toll on his health and personal relationships, he built an independent juggernaut in the ten years since Mello Music Group put out their first official release — Oddisee’s 101 album.

Building off of the noise generated by 101, Oddisee has turned into one of the label’s flagship artists over the past decade. Releasing albums at a breakneck clip, his massive discography of beats and rhymes has helped earn them loyal followers all over the world.

Beyond Oddisee, Mello Music Group boasts an incredibly deep and diverse catalog of successful releases from artists like 14KT, Apollo Brown, Quelle Chris, Gensu Dean, Ugly Heroes, ILLingsworth, Kool Keith, Mr. Lif, Georgia Anne Muldrow, L’Orange, Rapper Big Pooh, and Denmark Vessey — just to name a few.

In today’s Micro-Chop Daily X you’ll find 10 instrumental selections from Mello Music Group releases both old and new. From high-visibility albums like Pete Rock’s Petestrumentals 2 to yU’s lesser-known but worthwhile A Garbage Beat Tape, I hope the beats showcased here motivate you to further explore what Mello Music Group has to offer.

The fourth playlist in this series features the following artists, with each name hyperlinked to bring you directly to their Bandcamp, SoundCloud, or website: 14KT, Oddisee, yU, Drew Dave, L’Orange, Apollo Brown, SlimKat 78, Khrysis, Pete Rock, Georgia Anne Muldrow.

Be on the lookout for The Micro-Chop Daily X #5 dropping tomorrow.


If you enjoyed this piece, please consider following my Micro-Chop and Bookshelf Beats publications or donating to the Micro-Chop Patreon page. You can also read my work at HipHopDX or follow me on Twitter.

Micro-Chop

Dissecting beatmaking, DJing, music production, rapping, and sampling.

Gino Sorcinelli

Written by

Freelance journalist @Ableton, ‏@HipHopDX, @okayplayer, @Passionweiss, @RBMA, @ughhdotcom + @wearestillcrew. Creator of www.Micro-Chop.com and @bookshelfbeats.

Micro-Chop

Dissecting beatmaking, DJing, music production, rapping, and sampling.

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