INTERVIEW | MEET ‘TRACKSIDE BURNERS’ HIP-HOP DJ DUO PHILLY & 210

Track­side Burn­ers duo have been booked for DJ sets by the biggest graf­fiti organ­isa­tion in the world Meet­ing Of Styles (UK) 2015- 2019. Philly & 210 aim is to bring back the pause mix­tape era with beats to make your necks snap drop­ping with over 300 LIVE radio shows in the archives.  Over the past few years Philly and 210 exten­ded the Track­side Burn­ers Radio Shows cre­ated anoth­er plat­form for unknown pro­du­cers and your MC‘s from around the world. Every week­end present­ing dif­fer­ent types of Hip Hop shows to the listen­ers with a bunch of col­or­ful sets, live inter­views with artists in the stu­dio or guests call­ing in eg Marco Polo, Lord Fin­esse and BLADE. Also here are oth­er examples to innov­ate and not duplic­ate — Beat Spe­cials #strictly­beats, Remix sets #TBRe­mix, Homegrown UK Hip Hip Ses­sions #TBHomegrown, Spe­cial ded­ic­a­tions to cel­eb­rate icons of the move­ment, #Digit­alCrates and #DustyCrates spe­cials and one of the main sets #Boom­Bap­Burn­ers sets on UK Biggest (Anti com­mer­cial) Hip Hop Radio sta­tion ITCH FM  “Hip Hop is more than Music” Tune in www.itch.fm Listen live.

We catch up with them to find out more!

Tell us a bit about both of your jour­neys in music?  

-  210 — Well, that’s a good ques­tion… and I have no idea where or how to start, Ori­gin­ally I grew up in a small town in the East Side of Hun­gary (Debre­cen), but it has a huge his­tory and I think my first “ser­i­ous” con­nec­tion with music star­ted around 92–93 when I went to vis­it the primary school radio stu­dio with my class (back then)… Hahaha.. We had a gen­er­al induc­tion tour around the build­ing and that spot was one of them. There was a tall guy who had massive head­phones on his head and told our class how he oper­ates “our” school radio every day. I remem­ber that moment clearly because he dropped “Marky Mark Is Here” of the Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch album and because the tempo, the sound, the beat and the bass kicked my chest, that same day I lit­er­ally star­ted hunt­ing that dude and before my school day ended finally, I met him again and asked him to give me that music… He said, straight away NO way young boy !!! but he offered me a “deal” he said, if I bring a cas­sette into school tomor­row and give it to him, he will record that tune for me and I can have it… I was like, YES!! Of course I WILL!!!

I stole one of my dads TDK tapes and I gave it to him next day, I think that‘s how my jour­ney star­ted… (He was cool because he recor­ded the full album on that, cas­sette not just that single track!!)  by the way i have two cop­ies of the record now and the rest is history.…

- pHiLLy - So my story starts when I was inside my mums belly when she was preg­nant, they took me to a Frank Zappa con­cert, and told me that since that day in the field I will always feel the bass. My dad is Irish / Cana­dian and came back to the UK when young and my mum is ori­gin­ally from the Philippines.

Born in Lon­don, lived in Toot­ing my house­hold raised me on loads of dusty hippy records, prog / psy­che­del­ic rock, and blues music, my folks told me stor­ies of them going to see Black Sab­bath in a pub in Lew­isham or Pink Floyd in Luton in the green area on the ground where the air­port is now. My mum rocked disco records and went out rav­ing in Lon­don with her crews and she had a diverse set of friends so as a kid going many dif­fer­ent house­holds, exposed to all cul­tures, allowed so me and the kids, we looked like the united col­ours of Benetton, would hear all types of music and records play­ing at the parties. I was lit­er­ally raised in the crates, the crackle of the old vinyl, the smell and the dust has stuck with me ever since.

Tell us a bit about Track­side Burn­ers. When and how did the two of you met and start work­ing together.

pHilly - Track­side Burn­ers rep­res­ents the soundtrack for your eardrums as you look around, left and right, head­phones on feel­ing the beats, when you see some graf­fiti fly by you when you are out rid­ing the train, you smell the fumes of the spray can, you see the reach on the top of a rooftop or see the ink drip­ping on the con­crete, the music we give you, that is us, feel­ing it in our blood­lines, we are tag­ging your air­waves drop­ping that boom bap graf­fiti rap. Star­ted offi­cially in 2010 but goes back to 1997, basic­ally around all the graf­fiti friends, crews from around the world that crashed on the floor of my flats, or the rugged free­style sets with mics get­ting thrown to real writers spit­ting raw lyr­ics the sounds always provided with the music rep­res­ent­ing the ele­ments side by side beside the paint ink! DJing on a couple of radio sta­tions before find­ing a home, being picked for ITCH FM and nev­er turn­ing back and proud to be with the most legendary hip hop out­fit mov­ing for­ward from the pir­ate radio days which we all tuned into! Respect to the Man­age­ment for choos­ing Track­side Burn­ers to represent!

- 210 — I moved to the UK at the end of 2005 and I slowly star­ted work­ing with some UK artists and pro­moters. I used to work with Ivan6 & Luke on the Hold­in‘ Court events (Large up to Ivan6 & Luke as always) and I think at the end of 2013 Philly and I met at one of the Hold­in‘ Court gigs in Dal­ston, I think it was a (BBP) — Boom Bap Pro­fes­sion­als show­case event. I did a set before or after the label show­case.… and at the end of the night, Philly was wait­ing for me out­side the ven­ue and said, Hey YOU! What‘s up?!… Then we had a chat out­side and in the end we exchanged phone num­bers… Then in early 2014 I organ­ised an event in Fins­bury Park with Cappo, Iron Bradyz formerly known as Da Flyy Hoo­ligan, Mic­all Parkn­sun and I asked Philly to come and do the turntable business..

pHiLLy — Wait wait hold up…Bigup to 210 for bring­ing me in for real, but my man was work­ing hard and he had a tough event with some class acts, I am very real and straight up about the hip hop game so deal­ing with him, his approach, his love of the cul­ture, his hon­esty I was like no there is some­thing here that is hip hop code. I had to step back to him and speak more….

-210 — On that same night he asked me to come on the Track­side Burn­ers radio show for an inter­view and few weeks later I was at the ITCH FM Stu­dio. I remem­ber the radio show ended at 10pm but we were still chat­ting out­side the Itch FM build­ing ‘till mid­night (or longer) and now, I am still there hav­ing done over 300 shows with that bad boy! We can say after many years we are part­ners in crime, Audio dam­age, that’s what we do.….… Rugged ish …

You have both opened from some incred­ible artists in the past. Who have been your favourite?

- 210 - Sooo many hahaaaa.…. every show is about hav­ing fun and respect­ing oth­ers, but I feel quite lucky because I have so many great memor­ies.… Such a legends like Pete Rock, Raek­won, B‑Real, Ruste Juxx, Shabaam Sah­deeq, Craig G, Masta Ace and the whole EMC Crew.… but,

One of my all time greatest shows was back in 2012 when I was part of The Arti­facts Re-Uni­on European Tour and finally met El Da Sen­sei, Tame One and Dj Kaos (R.I.P.) face to face. We had a show in Hun­gary booked and it was an abso­lute pleas­ure to be spin­ning before they rocked the stage and it was crazy to see and hear the C‘moon with Da C‘moon or The Wrong Side Of The Track joints in live, but we had a day off before the show and we had such a great time in my homet­own.. but, I will nev­er ever for­get the night when.. back in 2010 (oh my days!! 10 years ago…) Jeh­st, Mic­all Parkn­sun and Jazz T came to Hun­gary and smashed the stage down at the RH Party, Debre­cen. I flew to Hun­gary a day before the show, I went to see my Home­boys to check how things were going but sadly the Tick­ets in advance did not go well, We were like, “Let‘s see tomor­row” (24 Hours before the show).… and than guess what ?? The night was com­pletely SOLD OUT (prop­er!) and there were 700 people inside the ven­ue and the queue was end­less from the main door even the ven­ue was fully packed!.. The show was abso­lutely crazy and I remem­ber I was on the bal­cony when Jeh­st came on with the his clas­sic joint “Run Hard” as an open­ing track. I still don‘t how or where it came from, but some­how a white bra flew over the stage and few pints were fol­lowed!! People went NUTS Big time! I get goose­bumps just when I even talk­ing about it (or typ­ing about it) the shows had offi­cially star­ted! Big up to P, Jazz and Jeh­st! And of course to all my hom­ies out there.

I had a really good time with Da Chef Raek­won few years back when we went to Hun­gary for a Fest­iv­al and unfor­tu­nately such an icon­ic artist like Rae could­n’t per­form because of the weath­er con­di­tion on that night, how­ever hang in out with him and talk­ing sense was inspir­ing … but, I remem­ber when Pub­lic Enemy, B‑Real, Craig G and many oth­ers were down at cHip sHop a few years back (Big shout out to Mike and Cid as always) and I was warm­ing up the decks with some clas­sic Hip Hop set and in the end we all were hanging around with a bunch of legends… I remem­ber when i did the first even Lon­don show with The Dop­pel­gangaz crew in Brix­ton at Plan B in 2013, that was one of my most unfor­get­table nights too, but ser­i­ously I have so many so I think i‘ve to step on the next ques­tion, oth­er­wise i could typ­ing all day long.

-pHiLLy - uh oh, that is too hard. All have dif­fer­ent stor­ies and feel­ings which I could go on with you. Let me do some one liners and see what you think. The High & the Mighty (East­ern Con­fer­ence Records) … smoke in the air, raw sound around 2004 I think, feel­ing was hype after drop­ping the set and stand­ing back to watch them tear down the crowd, then after going next door with DJ mighty Mi to then look at the DJ booth, see him look at me and say watch this he then told the oth­er DJ play­ing to step and he dropped records and made the crowd go wild! Lord Fin­esse — 10 minute chat about the set, 2 minute sound check, told that you gotta be on point and drop that, being the DJ for DITC legend was a hon­our so focus and on point, worked out right and got the nod from the under­b­oss after. DJ Tha 4orce did the set before him, chilled with him before he went on had a ‘chat’ and then had some a ques­tion for me, now back then he was on BBE and on TV etc, we heard a beat we nod­ding some dropped he said what is that break? Hmm test..I was like Dixie chick­en — he looked at me cold and said only per­son that said that to me that quick was Pete Rock. Boom Bap fest­iv­al, salute to the crew, so RA the Rugged Man & A‑F-R‑O needed a Dj to do their set, they called on me I met him and talked, tough char­ac­ter so full focus needed and lots of peeps said he was hard­core so no mess-ups allowed. ANy­way the set went down clean and focused, he even had the sound cut off and the stage col­lapsed when he got the front row on it, crazy ish, any­way we chilled for 5 mins after and he gave big ups and was straight up with the props, salute to hip hop underground.

Like 210 said we could go on but when you meet us and we all talk we have some stor­ies to share….on the flip I mean did not DJ at the show but been to a Marc Ecko party with Talib being the main act rock­ing the crowd, met Marc Ecko, talked about everything with him and the industry, true inspir­a­tions that will nev­er leave me to this day and makes you fight harder to keep this inde­pend­ent self-taught way alive…never give up men­tal­ity the time will come when the time is right…

How did Hip-Hop change your life? Was there a spe­cif­ic track or artist?

- 210 — How? It‘s simple.. Hip Hop is my life! I would­n’t be here today without the true Hip Hop Cul­ture. I moved to the UK in 2005 and I did­n’t speak Eng­lish — (back then), I remem­ber listened to ITCH FM Radio on FM in my single room on a small ste­reo.. The music showed me to the way because I don‘t think any­one is able to describe what they feel when goose­bumps come all over they‘re body of dur­ing cer­tain tracks of motiv­a­tion­al lyr­i­cism. Secondly, graf­fiti helped me to real­ise who am i and opened anoth­er plat­form in my life since the late 90‘s. Of course I do have spe­cif­ic Track, Tracks artist, artists (every­body have at least one.) I would say, when I saw the Style Wars movie in the mid 90‘s change my vis­ion of everything.. Music­ally, in the late nineties the Wrong Side of The Tracks video by The Arti­facts was a ser­i­ous horse kick on my chest, I remem­ber when I recor­ded to VHS cas­sette from one of the Yo MTV Rap‘s show I played that on repeat numer­ous times… but the time goes and we aren‘t get­ting any young­er I real­ise I am more inter­ested about in instru­ment­al music because it helped me to became more cre­at­ive on paper and on the walls..

Around 2014 I had some really tuff peri­od in my life and Damu the Fudgemunk “Spur Momento Trail­er” (EP) was in on my head­phones probaly for months and the “Mead­ows” track became one of my all-time favour­ite pro­duc­tions.. So Large up to Tame, El, T‑Ray, Kaos (R.I.P.) and Damu!

pHiLLy — I was PE (Pub­lic Enemy) since I was 10, I got sent home from my primary school for rock­ing a PE tee­shirt. Wel­come to the Ter­ror­dome changed my way and hip hop was the focus. I am mixed her­it­age and found sal­va­tion in the cul­ture and what it rep­res­ents form of expres­sion that unites and pushes empower­ment to the people to fight the system!

Tell us a bit about your art / design work?

- 210 — As I men­tioned earli­er, I have done Graf­fiti since the late 90‘s and I have so many unfor­get­table memor­ies from dif­fer­ent coun­tries and actions, even if it was simple wall pieces or pan­els on some metals or quick throw-ups.. Even today I still go out and paint when I’ve some “spare” time (i know, i should do more to be hon­est) but unfor­tu­nately days are go too fast and some days should be 32 Hours allow­ing enough time to do what I really want to because 24 Hours is not enough… Around 2010 was my first exper­i­ence of Adobe Pho­toshop and I star­ted to learn how to deal with the lay­ers day by day.

Since 2014 we (Philly and I) decided to cre­ate our “New Look” on the Track­side Burn­ers radio shows and we‘ve star­ted work­ing our real faces what could be the best and how we really should present our shows… After so many weeks and months we have finally found our mutu­al vis­ion and that‘s what you guys and all our listen­ers, friends and fam­il­ies see each and every weeks online. We have so much more I store and i can prom­ise loads of new stuff and our merch series will be) com­ing out really soon..

- pHiLLy — We love the arts, we feel the expres­sion, we have infin­ite ideas that keep com­ing out of us and we want to share them. We break it down we have brain­storm­ing ideas all the time to inspire each oth­er, each one teach one, we come from self-taught back­ground and we want to do our styles clean and sharp…rugged ish! The know­ledge and sim­il­ar styles we have are second to none and we deliv­er the good for you, reach out to us any­time, we innov­ate nev­er duplicate…hip hop code right?

- 210 — Yeah for sure pHiLLy! In 2016 when Dj Kaos (R.I.P.) was in Lon­don we went out dig­ging and we had a DJ night at cHip sHop with DJ Rumz and I did a poster (that was prob­ably my first ever poster for cHip sHop) for that night, Mike and I star­ted work­ing togeth­er on so much art­work and designs. I am pleased and I feel lucky enough to have a good work rela­tion­ship with him because we have over 130 and some­thing posters now.. I did so many posters and art­work for cHip Shop and I wish we could be part of it in the future too because the bur­gers and chick­en wings are banging there so we have to keep vis­it­ing that spot more often.. Hahahaaa

What does your radio show Track­side Burn­ers focus on? And why was it import­ant for you to start?

- 210 — (We answered these ques­tions sep­ar­ately) but, I can tell you without even ask­ing Philly how to answer this question..

Our focus is mainly to Keep the Under­ground Hip Hop move­ment and the life of Dig­gin‘ alive because it is the engine of the whole Hip Hop Cul­ture, we opened anoth­er plat­form for the unknown Mc‘s & pro­du­cers from around the world.. We gave them an online arena to prove how great they are. They can show how they deal­ing with the Mic, the beats, the snares, the kicks etc.… We are drop­ping music from around the world and I would say that‘s our main focus, Plus we love it because we have so many exclus­ive joints from around the world in our tracklists.

It is really import­ant to me, to us because we both feel the vibes, the energy of the good music and if we hear some good music, good pro­duc­tions and it‘s some­thing fresh it‘s some­thing new that‘s our pleas­ure from the artists. That means the Mc‘s trust us, Pro­du­cers trust us and they think we deserve to have their music & pro­duc­tions in our col­lec­tions. I would say that‘s mutu­al respect to both ways because, we are hav­ing some exclus­ive joints and we have their music so if it fits in our show rota­tions we will def­in­itely play their music on our shows.… Make sense?

pHiLLy — Agree with the home 210 as we said Boom map graf­fiti rap tag­ging your air­waves enough said….rugged ish!

Was there a par­tic­u­lar show, guest, mix that stands out for you the most?

- 210 - Well, way too many and I know there are more to come, but the most amaz­ing show we have had is when Blab­ber­mouf & Proppo88 were our guests once, I think we had the most “LIVE” listen­ers ever in our his­tory, as far as i remem­ber we had 16 or 18 dif­fer­ent coun­tries locked in live.. We had listen­ers from Columbia, Venezuela, Chile, The Neth­er­lands, Hun­gary, Slov­akia, France and many more.. (Big Up Blabb‘s & Pro­poo). Actu­ally the main mon­it­or in the stu­dio was flash­ing and the coun­tries just kept pop­ping up i did­n’t believe my own eyes.. Hahhaaaaa

Then a few years ago we had an “aver­age” Sunday and we were get­ting ready for our Remix set (#TBRe­mix) but I received a mes­sage around mid­day (maybe) later, it was Dj Kaos (R.I.P.) and the mes­sage said.. “Yoo man are you hav­ing your show tonight? I would deffo want to come and join you guys..” I called Philly imme­di­ately and we both said YES! Let‘s do that but we did­n’t have enough time to change our sched­ule so I mes­saged Kaos and said, “You are more than wel­come, but we are only play­ing Remixes tonight” he replied straight away, “That‘s COOL bro”.. Then we met out­side the ITCH FM stu­dio 10 minutes before the shows should start.. Yo, i can tell you people we did a great “ran­dom inter­view” and he did about 20–25 minutes live set. He played so many great Remixes.. You can listen, it‘s on the offi­cial archive still and we will keep that show forever.. (What a legend! Rest well Kaos, you are here with us)..

I would say one more…really deep and really good inter­view we did with Chester P a few months back (his “Free­style” was Crazy!!) it was one of my unfor­get­table Sunday even­ings too.. but ser­i­ously we did so many funny and great interviews!

-pHiLLy - Each show is dif­fer­ent and we always show the raw organ­ic energy with that we want to show and have fun with this, you can take it ser­i­ous but if you don’t laugh and enjoy then what is the point and un the stu­dio we laugh so much! That is a hard ques­tion as we have way to many as 210 said earlier!

We had Marco Polo & Lord Fin­esse phone us live to talk to us — they choose to do that and put away 1 hour of their time to call us and talk to us and we are humbled to grace with liv­ing legends! Talk­ing to two of the best beat makers in hip hop was some­thing that could only make us hype and proud!

Per­son­al friends DJ Mat­man and his broth­er DJ Dare­dev­il joined us and had so much fun and laughter but with ser­i­ous DJ skills and show­case of beats, one love to Dj Dare­dev­il as we will always play your music forever!

Our ded­ic­a­tion to the samples every Christ­mas Strictly Breaks always hits home as we need the year with a feel­ing of music from all genres, beau­ti­ful to hear where the music we love come from, nev­er for­get the artists!

Being deep into the cul­ture, study­ing and forever learn­ing we go into focus mode depend­ing on what we are chal­lenged with.

Drop­ping Sub­way Art or our Dondi trib­ute were next level and bring­ing you back to 1979-183 NYC and feel­ing what a real block party was is a spe­cial place to us and pay­ing homage to the greats!

Our ded­ic­a­tions to record labels always hits home wheth­er it be FAT BEATS or Pay Day records or Bronx Sci­ence, note we have more in store stay tuned, we love the vinyl and we had to do this!

We did a ded­ic­a­tion to Mark B and showed love and in return live in the stu­dio — people reached out to us as they knew we were going to pay salute from the heart. Chester P. mutu­al friend of Mark B, Matty joined us and Blade called us live and sat with us for 2 hours as we had to show love and power to the legend, rest in para­dise brother!

-210 — So many fea­tured Grand Agent / Tableek dur­ing the situ­ation Par­is hap­pen­ing dur­ing our set, Ric Bran­son, Chrome and Black, Flipt­rix, Phyba, Coops, Gee Bag, Ram­son Bad­bonez, Oliv­er Sud­den and many more in the past but to be hon­est every all the shows are dia­monds to me because it’s still unbe­liev­able to me to think where i am now and walk­ing to the Itch FM stu­dio is like my second home, our shows will be there forever and we are tag­ging the air­waves without even real­ising it.…

You do a UK Homegrown Hip Hop Spe­cial, who from the UK scene do you feel have really paved the way, or have been mak­ing a big impact ?

- 210 — To me the UK Scene is so import­ant and became a massive mile­stone of my life.. I have to name the real her­oes because i missed out on the First gen­er­a­tion of the UK scene but still I would say, The Ruth­less Rap Assas­sins, Derek B, Lon­don Posse, Demon Boyz, Son of Noise are just a few but i am sure plenty more could be men­tioned of course but the place where i grew up there wasn‘t any inter­net in the late 90’s so only inform­a­tion I (or we) had was once a week at 1am on Sunday morn­ing was Yo MTV Rap‘s (on my par­ents black and white TV) in our house liv­ing room.. That was my google chrome back then, Hahahaaaa..

But ser­i­ously, my ulti­mate UK her­oes (Mc‘s) Blade, Chester P, Sun­drag­on, Jeh­st, Skinny­man, Verb‑T, Klash­nekoff, Num­skullz and the list goes on.. Flip it to the side of pro­du­cers i would say without even think­ing defin­tely Harry Love he is my abso­lute favour­ite pro­du­cer from the UK scene but people should nev­er for­get the clas­sic Herb­al­iser or Vadim joints and of course Mark B (R.I.P.) pro­duc­tions that‘s how i feel but there is plenty of oth­ers i could name it for example Lewis Park­er, Mr Brown these two have so much know­ledge of music and great pro­duc­tions.. It sounds so unique. People must be really proud of these people because after so many years these artists are still around and deliv­er­ing great productions.

- pHiLLy — First and fore­most I am a fan. Listen­ing to Gun­shot, Blade, Hijack at the age of 10. This raised me with empower­ment and the enjoy­ment of cre­ativ­ity. But as I grew up and the time frame of 1998–2003 flipped the scene. Actu­ally meet­ing these people in real life and formed a bond, and even friend­ship with them, helped see things with­in the UK under­ground and showed power with respect.  In all hon­esty that is a hard ques­tion so many cir­cum­stances at dif­fer­ent times paved the way and made a big impact DJ Dis­orda nights in south East lon­don with a small set of real heads, opened doors people like Lewis Park­er (who got chucked out the ven­ue from the boun­cer) to then tell them he is on stage dropped cloud step­per bars with ice beats and made the whole crowd look at the floor. Bump­ing loc­ally and chilling with DJ 279 was inspir­ing! Going to Kung-fu and feel­ing the energy from every­one Taskforce, Mys­tro, Harry Love and Sarah Love, the Solo One pieces rolling with loads peeps with­in our crew and exten­ded fam­ily circles. The ori­gin­al Peoples Army in Lough­bor­ough Junc­tion, in the ware­house and the raw energy of the true next gen­er­a­tion in an event. I DJed a warm-up for Non Phix­ion and the warm-up act was Klash­nekof, the stage had 30 heads and a black flag wav­ing then Daggo Men­tal­ity dropped — stand firm stood still and absorbed a change. How­ever a big thing was with our crew and form­ing an alli­ance with Blade and Mark B (RIP) when the Unknown came out before it dropped as the white label singles came out we were there and going every­where togeth­er finally amount­ing to two mem­or­able nights which will stand close to the heart. Firstly the night at Scala Kings Cross and the album launch party Blade and Mark where get­ting ready for one of the biggest nights of their jour­ney we were there, Blade stage diving and rock­ing with us, the crew, in the crowd at the front ‚my homie Kn0Wn (graf­fiti writer) tak­ing the mic and free-styl­ing on the stage, it was pure chaos but raw energy and the house was going wild. With Blade after the show we were all so hype that some guy in the shad­ow was watch­ing gave a big up and we were like yeah and all bounced and smash­ing around the ven­ue and back­stage, that guy was Rakka Iresci­ence of Dilated Peoples. Secondly was the show at LA2 Tot­ten­ham Court ROad, Mark B and Blade, Blade’s son stage dived and Skinny­man just came out of Jail, nev­er seen a ven­ue go crazy as that night! I have so many oth­er stor­ies but those stood out for dif­fer­ent per­son­al reasons….

You state you are bring­ing back the mix­tape era, what are your thoughts on the cur­rent state of Hip-Hop, and what do you hope to revive from the old­skool that you feel the scene is missing?

- 210 - “Bring Back The Mix­tape Era” means like I men­tioned earli­er, we try to keep the engine run­ning because the under­ground, inde­pend­ent move­ment will nev­er die, even nowadays there are so many great artists swim­ming in this ocean, we have to dig deep­er each day to deliv­er the Mix­tape Era and of course the real Track­side Burn­ers flava! We are play­ing thou­sands of tracks from the late nineties, from the mid 2000 that people have nev­er heard of because these tracks are on some inde­pend­ent labels or never.

There isn‘t any dif­fer­ence to me in Cur­rent Hip Hop because so many people who grew up on the Boom Bap era back then think the game has changed. Hip Hop isn‘t same any­more etc.. I think these people became lazy (no dis­respect!) and they haven‘t see the cherry on the cake because the sound of Boom Bap is still alive, the 16 bars are still 16 bars the cuts and the chor­uses are still the same (even sharp­er) and of course the time has changed but think about that Blues?? Why, because the Blues is still the Blues, Jazz is still Jazz, Funk is still Funk, Techno is still Techno, Rock & Roll is still Rock & Roll and the Punks are still around so guess what?? .…. Hip Hop is still Hip Hop that‘s noth­ing to do with the cur­rent state­ment that the main­stream media cat­egor­ised as “Hip Hop”. This genre became one of the most sale­able products for the young­er gen­er­a­tion because it looks cool. They have some funny slo­gan tagged on shirts, it makes young boys proud hav­ing a pen-box with a cool tag on to put on his desk at school, It looks cool hav­ing wall­pa­per in Chick­en shops or res­taur­ants with some “cool” tags on their walls.. plus because most of the teen­agers are using expens­ive phones they don‘t really have to search for “Hip Hop” or any Genre really  because the main media plat­forms and video chan­nels, major labels have their sponsored adverts on all social media sites and what‘s their main agenda? Sales, Sales and more sales.. They are push­ing their products and unfor­tu­nately lots of “crap” (no dis­respect) products are land­ing on teen­agers phone screens and of course they will press play on music videos because the main adverts look “cool” for them. The life that we are liv­ing nowadays is super-fast and some­times it is out of con­trol but It doesn‘t mean there isn‘t a real hip hop move­ment or the Hip Hop cul­ture has lost the respect or is los­ing the ori­gin­al­it­ies of the true artists.

The young­er gen­er­a­tion will real­ise one day some of the music that they are listen­ing to today will not exist so long so I am sure they will grow up one day and they will go back where everything star­ted from not par­tic­u­larly Hip Hop it could be any genre..

For example when I was young­er and I was listened to Marky Mark and I nev­er ever thought about I would ever listen to 7^th Won­der, Gladys, James Brown, Barry White or Miles Dav­is but I do because times have changed and how many Hip Hop beats were sampled from these legendary artists? Way too many so… Long story short… Real Hip Hop nev­er dies, doesn‘t mat­ter what the main­stream media put on their lists for sale.. The sounds of Real Hip Hop will be here forever, just tune in to the Track­side Burn­ers and listen (to) some Boom­Bap­Graf­fitiRap ish it will make you think, trust me!!… And those people who moan­ing about “This” or “That” not good need to open their eyes and please do your­self a favour  go out and do some research what you wanted to hear because it’s out there, i guar­an­tee you!! (No dis­respect) but if they don’t know, please don’t judge the whole cul­ture or the whole move­ment! Simple.

pHiLLy — you hear that 210 and I are the same mind­set, that is why we rep­res­ent and basic­ally the same mind state and vis­ion! Even if he was raised where he was raised and me raised where I was raised we do and think the same way! Crazy par­al­lel worlds but the mix tape hip hop era is with us since we star­ted and now we rock togeth­er keep­ing this infin­ite for those that know I used to run with oth­er graf­fiti writers mak­ing straight raw under­ground van­dal mix­tapes fea­tur­ing hard­core crews from all over in the cypher — to have a Wu-Tang DJ Coali­tion mix­tape for Rock the bells fea­tured on www.wu-world.com. We got that Mix tape era with beats to make your necks snap!

Dur­ing the lock­down peri­od we have seen a lot of DJs go head to head with the verses chal­lenges (track for track on two artists). Which artists would you put back to back?

- 210 —  Ohh­hh wow, That‘s a super tricky ques­tion but let me try to make a list.… I would say…

- DJ KHEOPS VS. CUT KILLER (French Hip hop battle)

- DJ STYLEWARS VS. DJ MIK­RO MACHINE (Ger­man Hip hop Battle)

- DAMU THE FUDGEMUNK VS. K‑DEF (Redef Records — Beat Battle)

- ROC MAR­CIANO VS DARINGER (Beat Battle)

- MR BROWN VS HASHFINGER (Beat Battle)

- SPAZE WINDU VS. AK420 (Beat Battle)

- ETO PARA­NOIA VS. MIKE FLIPS (Beat Battle)

- HARRY LOVE VS. LEWIS PARKER

- LORD FIN­ESSE VS. EASY MO BEE (Beat Battle)

- PF CUT­TIN VS DJ EMS­KEE (Sample Battle)

I Could carry on but I think it’s bet­ter if I stop here oth­er­wise I could make an end­less list and to be hon­est and I don‘t really want to see these people back to back because I am sure the next day I would put my turntables on eBay for sale imme­di­ately.. Hah­haaa. They are prop­er heavy­weight DJ‘s and pro­du­cers. Large up all of them for the num­ber of years they were truly ded­ic­ated to Hip Hop and the amount of the great music and shows they have done in the past. Once this lock­down issue has ended around the world I can‘t wait to see these people in action (again!)..

-pHiLLy-

- ISP crew VS. Beat Junkies (DJ Hip hop Battle)

- Large Pro VS Pete Rock (Beat Battle)

- Plus One VS Atrak (DJ Hip hop Battle)

- Marco Polo VS RJD2 (Beat Battle)

Feel­ing that one 210 said HARRY LOVE VS. LEWIS PARK­ER uhh fire!

Agree with 210, that list could be end­less but the sound has to be good so you can enjoy the atmo­sphere hard to check if is not…good to see the legends bring audio visu­al damage

What have you been doing to keep act­ively cre­at­ive dur­ing the lockdown?

- 210 —  It‘s easy, Designs, Art­work, Sketch­ing, Dig­ging in my record col­lec­tion, Spin­ning a bunch of old records, Eat, Sleep and REPEAT.. Ohhh and i for­got to men­tion a few nice cold beers (why not??) Haha

- pHiLLy — Being with Fam­ily (shout to my daugh­ter and son & Mrs pHiLLy), Dig­gin in the record col­lec­tion, innov­a­tion and motiv­a­tion, doing art­work and video ideas, con­stantly think­ing togeth­er to do that audio visu­al dam­age and tak­ing it to the next level, rein­vent your­self and nev­er biting…

Tell us what you have com­ing out and where we can keep up to date with you? 

- 210/pHiLLy — We have been work­ing with the DEPH­ECT cloth­ing brand for the last few years and we did our latest Strictly Beats spe­cial mix not so long ago. it‘s on Sound­cloud and Mix­cloud plus we did a Rugged, Raw mix with the BeatVan­dals (Rus­si­an Record Label) that will be up online in the next few days, maybe weeks.. We are both doing weekly shows as always and we keep each oth­er strong because we are only able to do shows sep­ar­ately so we can‘t do our “healthy back2back chal­lenges” as we usu­ally do on our shows but you can catch us on ITCH FM Radio every Sunday 8–10pm and join the show. We also have lots of fresh Remixes, Indie Hip hop joints for our next shows when we are back to a nor­mal life routine…

- 210 - Plus on the 31^st of May I will play on the Track­side Burn­ers radio show a prop­er Nineties spe­cial so (bet­ter tune in) and enjoy the sound of the ori­gin­al Boom Bap era.…also work­ing on a prop­er Beat Tape with one of my good old friend and we cre­ated a form­a­tion with T.oT.o and became the Unknown Sus­pects in the under­ground world.

Plus we did a great inter­view with the I Am Hip Hop Magazine not so long ago and I hope people like it because I per­sonaly really enjoyed it !! Big up to you guys and stay safe…

Last words…

-210 - Salute to my fam­ily, salute to the 2 Ter­min­at­ors, salute to my crews RH, NST and all my hom­ies in Debre­cen, Hun­gary, of course a bunch of Big ups go out our heads around the world!

Big up to Tizer, Shucks, Relay, Wish­er ID Crew, Zom­bie, Yan DDS, Mr. Die, Shobal­boa, Kaos, Bronk, Lino, my cuz and all my people at num­ber 7, Upik 1, B‑Line Record­ings, Dj Spe­cifik, 12 Fin­ger Dan and the whole Back­spin crew, Figub, Teknic­al Develope­ment, Blab­ber­mouf and Da Sho­gunz family,

-pHiLLy - Big love to my fam­ily and to my crews:

BBP — Boom Bap pro­fes­sion­als, AAA – Audio Aer­o­sol Assas­sins, & the Fam­ily First Sound System.
Salute to the found­a­tions Chan­nel Zero (the homie Kn0Wn & Dan Diego) DDS, CBM, IPN, ID crew

- 210 / pHiLLy — Big up to our gen­er­als on ITCH FM Radio Sta­tion, Big up to Nick UDGS — Under­ground Store, Francesco — Music Aven­ue Records Shop (Par­is), EFF­IS­CIENZ Crew Shout out to Deph­ect, BeatVan­dals, Post­partum Records, Rare­Kind Records, Chip Shop, Chrome and Black Graf­fiti Shop and of course we send love out to all our haters..

One Love!

Peace

Track­side Burn­ers crew

pHiLLy & 210

Respect due and we are doing this for you! #boom­bap­graf­fitirap #tag­gingy­ourair­waves.

Listen to the EXCLUS­IVE Track­side Burn­ers x I Am Hip Hop Mix Below!

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Rishma

Edit­or / PR Con­sult­ant at No Bounds

Rishma Dhali­w­al has extens­ive exper­i­ence study­ing and work­ing in the music and media industry. Hav­ing writ­ten a thes­is on how Hip Hop acts as a social move­ment, she has spent years research­ing and con­nect­ing with artists who use the art form as a tool for bring­ing a voice to the voiceless.

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