Soul Hustler (Pt. 1)

Soul Hustler is my first physical mixtape in 20 years and it’s up for sale on Bandcamp! It’s hella cheap, yo… $10 for the limited edition cassette and only $4 for the download. Shout out to my homie J-Beez and /re/fined sound$ for releasing it!


Listen to a preview of Soul Hustler (Pt. 1) (Side A):


01. Phizyx In Your Ebony Eyes
02. Sander Molder – In Your Eyes (PHY-6 Layered Mix)
03. Phizyx A Lil’ Somethin’ Somethin’
04. Para One When The Night
05. Phizyx (I Like) What You Do To Me
06. JetsSin Love With You (PHY-6 Edit)
07. Phizyx I’m Gonna Get You (Baby)
08. Phizyx This Ain’t No Game
09. Phizyx You’re Alright With Me
10. Phizyx Everybody To The Sun
11. Phizyx (Waiting On) My Feelings
12. Disclosure – Lividup (PHY-6 Edit)
13. U-Tern Give It Up (PHY-6 Layered Mix)


Listen to a preview of Soul Hustler (Pt. 1) (Side B):


01. JoeblackShow Me Love (PHY-6 Layered Mix)
02. Phizyx(You Do Know That) I Want You
03. PhizyxFreak Of The Week
04. PhizyxSad And Free (Everybody)
05. PhizyxFind A Friend (To Spend The Weekend)
06. PhizyxLife Is Just A Party (And Parties Weren’t Meant To Last)
07. PhizyxSatisfy (The Need In Me)
08. KyodaiBreaking (PHY-6 Layered Mix)
09. PhizyxGimme That Stuff
10. PhizyxMadness In The Music


This mix has been two years in the making. I originally set out to make a simple, basic mix of the newer house and boogie funk tracks that I’ve been diggin’ over the last decade. And I wanted to do a 4+ hour mix so that I could have something to keep me motivated on longer bicycle rides.


So I selected over 300+ songs and began to organize them. It was difficult to decide which ones were keepers (i.e., that MUST absolutely be included in the mix), which ones were just OK and might make the final cut, and which ones weren’t good enough to be included.


But as time passed and the list of songs grew, I began to ask myself, “Do I really want to put all of this effort in making a mix of songs that other people made? What’s my reason for spending all of this time on it? I mean, if I want to hear these songs, I can just put them in a playlist. I don’t need to hear them in a mix…” So I took a break from it.


Since I had some of these newer tracks on vinyl, I was already messing around with doing cheeky acappella blends–some of which appear in “Soul Hustler (Pt. 1)”. For example, I would take the acappella of Rocker’s Revenge “Walking On Sunshine” and spin it underneath Julio Bashmore & Hyetal’s “Speedway“… and I would take the acappella of Class Action’s “Weekend” and spin it underneath Todd Terje’s “Inspector Norse“. From an online MP3 standpoint, I had been getting very lucky with finding acappellas of classic rock, soul, disco, and house songs… and over the years, I’ve accumulated a good amount of acappellas.


I don’t remember when it happened, why it finally clicked in my brain, or what caused it… but one day I realized, “What if I do this mix with nothing but original acappella blends that I’ve created? What if I take the instrumentals of newer house, nu disco, boogie funk, and electro tracks (some of which have been played to death) and make them my own?” And after that, everything started to fall into place.


Over the course of planning out and working on the foundations of the mix, there were dozens upon dozens of “oh shit” moments… as in, “oh shit, that sounds soooo damn good together!” It was crazy how these 30-40 year old acappellas worked so perfectly together with some of these present-day songs, breathing new life into them.


Now, the concept of mixing acappellas with different instrumentals is not a new one. For example, from time to time, you will still hear me breakin’ out my blend of Sade’s “Love Is Stronger Than Pride” with the instrumental to Kurious’ “Walk Like A Duck“! But for my “Soul Hustler” mix, the seeds were planted in the early 2000’s with Vitamin D‘s classic “Funk On Sight” mixtape. A few years later, I would hear U-Tern’s remix of Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up”, and more recently Joeblack’s version of “Show Me Love” with Robin S. Both songs would linger in the recesses of my mind and stand the test of time as excellent examples what eventually gave me the idea for “Soul Hustler”.


It’s obvious that I was also heavily inspired by Kon… even to the point of incorporating some of the post-production techniques that he uses to create his legendary edits, remixes, and reworks (and I would be remissed if I didn’t mention Reflex and all of his masterful revisions as having a huge influence as well). During the pre- and post-production of “Soul Hustler”, there were many times when I felt like something was missing… for example, the volume of the bass kicks throughout an entire song were too low and/or non-existent, the snares in a particular section weren’t hittin’ hard enough, or there just wasn’t enough “oomph” happening musically. In all of those instances, I would go back into the mix session and manually insert individual bass kicks or snares (or entire layers of drums/music) to fill-out and enhance the overall sound of the mix.


I also wanted to pay homage to the cut’n’paste-style of analog tape edits made famous by likes of Chep Nunez, The Latin Rascals, etc. (you can read more about them in the post for my “Sandcastles” mix). After finishing the initial recording for “Soul Hustler Pt. 1”, I went back into the mix session to add my own cut’n’paste-style edits in order to give the mix a little bit more energy in certain parts, keep things interesting, give it my own personal touch, etc.


As I began to get closer to mapping out and recording the 2-hour point of the mix, my homie J-Beez convinced me to slow my roll. We came to an agreement that I should shorten the length of the mix, split it up into two parts, put them out on mixtapes, and release them through his /re/fined sound$ label.


“Soul Hustler (Pt. 1)” took many months of planning, many months of recording, and many months of mixing down to complete… and I’m excited to announce that the planning and recording of “Soul Hustler (Pt. 2)” has already begun, and it picks up where Pt. 1 leaves off. There’s even been talk of including an exclusive 7″ or 12″ single of Phizyx remixes with the release of “Soul Hustler Pt. 2”!!


So hit me up in the comments section and let me know what you think about the mix… and which of my “Soul Hustler” remixes you’d like to have on vinyl to play out!!

2 Responses

  1. You the man Phizyx! Your mixes are always incredible works of art and this is another masterpiece!

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