The Best Of Both Worlds, part 8: Debonair Samir
A more detailed examination of the music discussed in my Baltimore City Paper article about the crossover between Baltimore club music and hip hop.

Finishing up with the 8th part of this series of posts, I'm gonna focus on Debonair Samir , who was also the subject of the last 4 or 5 paragraphs of the article. Samir's been thick in the Baltimore club scene since the late 90's, and has been on some big local hip hop projects too. In the last few months, I've posted some of Samir's productions for Dirty Hartz and Mullyman and talked a little about his work with Aaron Lacrate. I'm not sure when that Baltimore Club Crack compilation on Koch is dropping, I've heard in the fall, but I've got a rough mix of it and it's some hot shit, tracks from Tim Trees and B Rich and Chopper from Da Band. Samir and Lacrate were also featured on MTV's You Hear It First about the Baltimore scene, and they'll be spinning club music at Sonar's indie dance party, Taxlo, next Friday, August 11th.

Samir's worked with so many people around here, he did a track on Bossman's independent album and some stuff on Bigg Patch's new album. And the other night at the Low Key God/Scottie B. event at 5 Seasons, the dudes from Tru Bill Ent. played a new song produced by Samir that sounded hot. Check out the "Samir's Beats" mp3 on Samir's MySpace page, which is the instrumentals from a bunch of his hip hop productions. Some of them are familiar, like Dirty Hartz's "Post Up" and Tim Trees' "Fire," and there's a crazy sample of the Golden Girls theme, and towards the end there's a weird remixed version of the "Soldier" beat.

D.O.G. f/ Jon Boe - "Soldier" (mp3)
Samir's produced several tracks for D.O.G., including "I Get Doe" featuring Jim Jones, "Higher," and a track from the upcoming album called "Mardi Gras." But when Samir told me that he did this track during our interview, I had to really give him props, this is my shit, the drums are crazy. The other MC on the track, Jon Boe, is D.O.G.'s brother, and he's got a solo mixtape that I'm gonna post about at some point. Champagne Dreams never did drop in July, but last time D.O.G. was on Rap Attack, he said they were about to sign something and make it a national release, so it's gonna be worth the wait.

Don Brody - "Back It Up" (mp3)
Don Brody is this cat that's on DNA's label and has been appearing on a lot of his mixtapes. His MySpace page says he's from Philly, but his solo mixtape, Hard Money has beats from Bmore producers like Akira The Great and Samir, and this is the cut from Samir.

G & R - "Git Ya Money" (mp3)
Not sure who G & R are, but I like this track, produced by Samir from the first Street Radio mixtape.

Joe Pesh f/ Danmoe - "Ridin' Stock" (mp3)
Here's a track from the new Street Radio 3, which I'll be doing a post about soon. Kind of a Southern vibe on this one.

Also in this series:
The Best Of Both Worlds, part 1: The "Think" Break
The Best Of Both Worlds, part 2: Blaq Starr
The Best Of Both Worlds, part 3: Dukeyman
The Best Of Both Worlds, part 4: DJ Ron Rico
The Best Of Both Worlds, part 5: DJ Booman
The Best Of Both Worlds, part 6: Nigga Say What a.k.a. Say Wut
The Best Of Both Worlds, part 7: Rod Lee

Labels: Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore club, D.O.G., Debonair Samir, Dirty Hartz, mp3, Mullyman, The Best Of Both Worlds