Yo Dizzy! EP Review
- Sound Boy Ent.
- Mar 22, 2021
- 3 min read
Dizzy! Yes we are excited about this up and coming producer from Silver Spring, MD and the exclamation point is part of his moniker and rightfully so. With electrifying bass lines and hard hitting drums, Dizzy!’s production style is sure to have people skanking. In talking with Dizzy! (real name Devonte Brown) I was able to get a better look at what inspires him and where he derives his sound from. Once you pull back the curtain a little bit, it becomes abundantly clear that Dizzy! has been firmly rooted in the ethos of sound system culture, much more than most people from a young age.
When I asked what motivates him to make sound system music, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that his biggest source of motivation is his father. Devonte’s father; Freddy Dread, is something of a D.C. legend himself. Freddy migrated from Jamaica to D.C. and decided to build his very own Reggae/Dancehall Sound System. He created the mighty Emperor Sound System which quickly became well known in the 80's and 90's. Freddy clashed with all-time greats like David Rodigan and shared stages with the likes of Shinehead, Sister Nancy and Bounty Killer. But his father and his Jamaican heritage are just a piece of the puzzle. Dizzy!’s American upbringing, specifically his exposure to southern rap also really helped shape his music and you can really hear it in the percussion style he implements on many of his tracks.
If you go through Dizzy!’s discography, you actually get many different flavors of dubstep, not just the low end driven UK style. You can quite literally hear his evolution from riddim and brostep to a more tear-out style of dubstep, with him fully embracing the deeper end of the dubstep spectrum in his more recent releases. I asked him the reasoning behind his style change; was it intentional? Was it a natural progression? For Dizzy! it was more of an epiphany of sorts that propelled him into the sound he currently occupies. Like many of us, Dizzy!’s introduction to dubstep was the commercialized festival circuit of brostep and riddim DJ’s. It wasn’t until he stumbled upon The Widdler’s Twitch and Discord communities that he was able to connect the dots between the sound system culture he grew up around and dubstep’s symbiotic relationship. He previously associated reggae sound system’s only with reggae and dancehall music and once he realized that there was a niche in the dubstep community that was centered around the sound system, he knew that was the sound he wanted to pursue. He started listening to producers like J. Sparrow, Kahn, Silkie and Ternion Sound to get a better sense of the production style. His ability to seamlessly embed samples from his family’s Emperor Sound System dubplates into his tunes and his general knowledge of sound system culture made the change in production style natural for him.
You can hear how at home Dizzy! is in this production style on his latest, self released Yo Dizzy! EP. This EP which was just released on March 5th draws you right in with the first track “War” which has a killer vocal sample and a heavily reverbed intro, which is met by the wall of bass and percussion that is the first drop. He follows that up with the fast paced roller “Personal” that could get any dance bumping and moving. The final track, which is the EP’s title track “Yo Dizzy!” is the weapon on this release for me. This track is both a roller and gut punch all in one. With hip hop style drums and a mean flute sample that float effortlessly over a virtual tsunami of bass weight, is with this track Dizzy! really showcases his perfect marriage of hip hop and dubstep. The Yo Dizzy! EP can be streamed on his SoundCloud or purchased on his Bandcamp, which comes with two remixes of “Yo Dizzy!” by Austeria and Nixsin. Dizzy has also had releases on BassBoss Records, Background Noise, Damaged Sounds and Plasma Chill Records, and I look forward to many quality releases in this young talented producers future.
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Written by: Chum
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