The Real West Kept Secret

Hand me a late pass, for real. Because I have no clue how West Coast producer/rapper Terrace Martin's street album, Signal Flow, slid past me when it came out a while back. But when i finally heard it last night, I hit DJ Skee on the email (he hosted it), and told him that ain't nothing out right now fucking with this project on some hip-hop shit. On some hip-pop, pop, r&b or whatever the hell rap producers (read: Danjahandz, will.i.am, JR Rotem, Timbaland, Polow Da Don) are doing with themselves these days, it might not stack up. But that's not what it is. It's some straight up West Coast hip-hop, with a much more musical approach than the standard Dr. Dre-sounding stuff. And on the songwriting tip the topics are wide ranging and expansive.

It's my understanding that Terrace is one half of production duo Niggarachi, with Snoop. Every person in the universe slept on Snoop's Koch-distributed The Big Squeeze, but I enjoyed it and felt that young Terrace had the best track on the project, "Be Thankful."

Lastly, Terrace is signed to Warner Brothers Records. I gather that Warner Bros has Pittsburgh's rising star Wiz Khalifa (good job at the CMJ show this past saturday!), Jay Rock from Watts, Lil' Scrappy, Bohagon, and whoever 36 Mafia brought along with them when they got their label deal there. I honestly see no reason why Terrace is not guesting on projects from all these guys as a rapper, and furthermore, producing for them. Perhaps he is and I just don't know about it. Fill me in. But in all seriousness, make this guy a priority in the building. He's an incredible talent, and if the past year or two in hip-hop proved anything, it's that producer/rapper/songwriters run shit. The people need to hear him.

Check out some of the tracks here and download the full mixtape off DJ Skee's myspace page here