Main Source was a Canadian-American East Coast hip hop group based in New York City / Toronto , composed of Toronto-born DJs and producers, K-Cut and Sir Scratch, as well as the New York City natives, DJ J.O.D and record producer Large Professor . Later, another Queens MC, Mikey D (Michael Deering), replaced Large Professor.
23-716: Main Source was founded in 1989. The group's first album, Breaking Atoms , released in July 1991, featured tracks such as " Looking at the Front Door ", "Just a Friendly Game of Baseball", and "Watch Roger Do His Thing", as well as the first on-record appearance of Nas on "Live at the Barbeque," which also featured Joe Fatal and Akinyele . Because of business differences, the group broke up before its second album, tentatively titled The Science could be released. However, Sir Scratch and K-Cut released
46-534: A goal to create an open-access database that included every recording "since Enrico Caruso gave the industry its first big boost". The first All Music Guide , published in 1992, was a 1,200-page reference book, packaged with a CD-ROM, titled All Music Guide: The Best CDs, Albums & Tapes: The Expert's Guide to the Best Releases from Thousands of Artists in All Types of Music . Its first online version, in 1994,
69-510: A second album under the Main Source name titled Fuck What You Think , with new recruit Michael Deering aka Mikey D on vocals & featured another first on-record appearance for The Dog Pack which would later become the Yonkers rap group The LOX on "Set It Off"; however, the album was shelved due to inner conflicts between Wild Pitch Records and group management., The singer Madonna sampled
92-546: Is an American online music database . It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands . Initiated in 1991, the database was first made available on the Internet in 1994. AllMusic is owned by RhythmOne . AllMusic was launched as All-Music Guide by Michael Erlewine , a "compulsive archivist, noted astrologer, Buddhist scholar and musician". He became interested in using computers for his astrological work in
115-447: Is distinguished stylistically by its incorporation of jazz and soul music samples . The album has been highly regarded by music writers due mostly to its production, whose heavy and original use of sampling influenced hip hop producers for a considerable portion of the 1990s. The album has been widely regarded by writers and music critics as a significantly influential album and has been noted for debuting rapper Nas , who appears on
138-467: The Sultan of The Source hailed it as "New York hip-hop at its best", praising its "slamming beats and smooth, nod-your-head-to-this grooves thick with jazz-infused samples", as well as the "clever rhymes that you want to follow word-for-word." Entertainment Weekly ' s James Bernard wrote that "Main Source may not break much new ground, but [it] offer[s] a clever, quietly seductive collection in which
161-559: The album as one of its 100 Best Rap Albums. Initially giving a four-and-a-half out of five "mic" rating, The Source gave the album a five "mic" rating in a retrospective list of "5 Mic Hip-Hop Classics" in its 150th issue. The album was named as one of two jury vote winners, alongside Buffy Sainte-Marie 's It's My Way! , of the Polaris Heritage Prize at the 2020 Polaris Music Prize . AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG )
184-516: The bass and drum tracks casually strut instead of stomp, and the sparse samples of guitar and horns allow the Large Professor's voice to take center stage." The Baltimore Sun said that "Main Source understands how to compliment the depth of its rhymes by stressing the complexity of its music". Since its initial reception, the album has received retrospective acclaim from writers and music critics. AllMusic writer Steve Huey declared it "one of
207-463: The bassline from "What You Need" on Fuck What You Think in her song " Human Nature ," which appeared on her 1994 album, Bedtime Stories . Prior to Main Source, Mikey D was also one third of the Laurelton, Queens -based hip hop group Mikey D & The L.A. Posse. The group also consisted of DJ Johnnie Quest and engineer/producer Paul C (who was also the mentor of Large Professor). In 1988, Mikey D
230-524: The company after its sale. Alliance filed for bankruptcy in 1999, and its assets were acquired by Ron Burkle 's Yucaipa Equity Fund. In 1999, All Music relocated from Big Rapids to Ann Arbor , where the staff expanded from 12 to 100 people. By February of that year, 350,000 albums and two million tracks had been cataloged. All Music had published biographies of 30,000 artists, 120,000 record reviews and 300 essays written by "a hybrid of historians, critics and passionate collectors". In late 2007, AllMusic
253-510: The cornerstone of the record. Dan Nishimoto of PopMatters considers the album's sampling to be "neatly layered, its subject matter is modest, and its overall tone is simply well executed fun." In his book Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide , Oliver Wang writes that Large Professor as a producer "thinks in complete song structure, never focusing on one single element—a loop , a break —but always juggling them in unison." Upon its release, Breaking Atoms received critical acclaim. J
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#1733084574550276-642: The first time in nearly 10 years. Breaking Atoms was named as one of two jury vote winners, alongside Buffy Sainte-Marie 's It's My Way! , of the Polaris Heritage Prize at the 2020 Polaris Music Prize . Breaking Atoms Breaking Atoms is the first album by American/Canadian hip hop group Main Source , released in 1991 on Wild Pitch Records . It was produced by the group, primarily by member Large Professor , with recording sessions taking place during 1990–1991 at Homeboy Studio, Power Play Studios, and Libra Digital in New York City . Breaking Atoms
299-513: The mid-1970s and founded a software company, Matrix, in 1977. In the early 1990s, as CDs replaced LPs as the dominant format for recorded music, Erlewine purchased what he thought was a CD of early recordings by Little Richard . After buying it, he discovered it was a "flaccid latter-day rehash". Frustrated with the labeling, he researched using metadata to create a music guide. In 1990, in Big Rapids, Michigan , he founded All Music Guide with
322-496: The projects, the PJ's, fuck them two DJ's; Self mission." K-Cut also produced for a wide range of hip hop artists including Big Pun , Maestro Fresh-Wes , Fu-Schnickens , Queen Latifah , and even NBA star Shaquille O'Neal . He also mentored another Toronto-based producer named Watts . On December 22, 2002, at a concert in Toronto, the original members of Main Source performed together for
345-462: The quintessential cult classics in hip-hop history". In 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide , Peter Relic wrote that "From the candy-colored cover depicting the three members crowded around a fantasy science project to the uptempo beats and matching fast raps, it's a period piece whose meticulous presentation... make it an enduring pleasure from a bygone era." PopMatters ' Dan Nishimoto called it "deliberately smart and rough" and praised
368-409: The tone of the music and the platforms on which the music is sold. It then connects that data together, in a way that can intelligently tell you about an entire type of music, whether a massive genre like classical, or a tiny one like sadcore ." In 1996, seeking to further develop its web-based businesses, Alliance Entertainment Corp. bought All Music from Erlewine for a reported $ 3.5 million. He left
391-473: The track "Live at the Barbeque". His contribution to the song was sampled on "The Genesis", the intro track to his debut album Illmatic (1994). Breaking Atoms has been recognized as one of the most important records in hip hop history, and was out of print in the United States after the demise of Wild Pitch Records in 1997. It was reissued on April 22, 2008, through Fontana Distribution. Breaking Atoms
414-432: The varied scope of its production and sampling. RapReviews notes that many acknowledge Breaking Atoms to be on a similar level to Nas ' Illmatic (1994) and A Tribe Called Quest 's first three albums. SoundProof magazine lists the album at number sixteen in "The Top 20 Toronto Albums Ever" and About.com 's Henry Adaso lists it at number twenty in the "100 Greatest Hip-Hop Albums". In 1998, The Source selected
437-568: Was a text-based Gopher site. It moved to the World Wide Web as web browsers became more user-friendly. Erlewine hired a database engineer, Vladimir Bogdanov , to design the All Music Guide framework, and recruited his nephew, writer Stephen Thomas Erlewine , to develop editorial content. In 1993, Chris Woodstra joined the staff as an engineer. A "record geek" who had written for alternative weeklies and fanzines, his main qualification
460-516: Was also the winner of the New Music Seminar battle for world supremacy. Large Professor went on to be an instrumental producer for hip hop stars such as Eric B. & Rakim , Pete Rock & CL Smooth , Nas, and Diamond D . He references his falling-out with Sir Scratch and K-Cut on A Tribe Called Quest 's third album Midnight Marauders . On the track "Keep It Rollin'" he says, "I'm Uptown chillin', takin in this Grandmaster Vic blend/from
483-500: Was an "encyclopedic knowledge of music". 1,400 subgenres of music were created, a feature that became central to the site's utility. In a 2016 article in Tedium , Ernie Smith wrote: "AllMusic may have been one of the most ambitious sites of the early-internet era—and it's one that is fundamental to our understanding of pop culture. Because, the thing is, it doesn't just track reviews or albums. It tracks styles, genres, and subgenres, along with
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#1733084574550506-462: Was produced using the E-mu SP-1200 . AllMusic 's Steve Huey writes that the album's acclaim lies mostly in its production, which popularized a number of now widely imitated techniques. Huey describes that the "intricately constructed tracks are filled with jazz and soul samples, layered percussion, off-kilter sampling effects, and an overall sonic richness." RapReviews also notes that the beats are
529-422: Was purchased for $ 72 million by TiVo Corporation (known as Macrovision at the time of the sale, and as Rovi from 2009 until 2016). In 2012, AllMusic removed all of Bryan Adams ' info from the site per a request from the artist. In 2015, AllMusic was purchased by BlinkX, later known as RhythmOne . The AllMusic database is powered by a combination of MySQL and MongoDB . The All Media Network produced
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