Your Mix Fix: DJ Rhettmatic

Read more
The word mixtape has plenty of different interpretations. It used to be that mixtapes were actually DJ sets recorded on cassette tapes, but with the coming of the digital music age, the name remained the same, but the definition expanded. Nowadays, people call mixtapes many different things, some of which are not necessarily mixed and most of which were never taped. Here we try to cover them all. In this column, Juan Data gives you a worthy one every week.

DJ: Rhettmatic

MIXTAPE: Ritmo Machine Mixtape

Anybody who knows a thing or two about hip-hop DJs know who DJ Rhettmatic is. From the world-famous Beat Junkies crew, this Asian-American vinyl wizard repping the West Coast is basically one of the most skilled turntablists alive. He had won international DJ battles, collaborated with countless famous rappers and put together some of the most influential mixtapes of all times.

Now the hip-hop legend got his hands on last year’s Ritmo Machine, the collaboration album by Chile’s Latin Bitman and LA’s Eric Bobo, and what came out of that is this 24-minute long set. Ritmo Machine revisited from the perspective of a master in the ones-and-twos.

This, however, wasn’t a surprise for the fans of said artists. Rhettmatic and Cypress Hill‘s percussionist are long time buddies and have toured together in the past breaking ground as a DJ/percussionist duo, which in turn set the basis for further collaborations with other DJs like Bitman. While we patiently wait for Bobo’s next release (a collaboration with Argentine rapper El Guapo), let’s rediscover Ritmo Machine in the form of an intricate mixtape.