Many months ago, Stephen Howard got his hands on a copy of Hiphop E-Jay 2, a $10 CD-ROM from Circuit City that functions as a prerecorded sample-driven instrument arranger for hiphop musicians. Originally making tracks as a lark, his love for the Top 40 took hold and drove him to create an entire album from these neglected phat beats and faceless vocal samples. The result is that most mythical of creatures in the midwest indie-music community -- a RAP ALBUM. Stephen's mostly content to let the beats and samples speak for themselves, though original vocals ice out 'Aviators' (written and recorded by Stephen, arranged by France's DJ Chienloup) and 'My Nuts!' (a Fat Boys cover, featuring MC Cat Genius). Each CD in the run of 50 Hot Beats / Cool Treatses comes in a popout case hot-glued into a defaced and rearranged secondhand book (defaced and rearranged by OBELISK & friends), with a mini-CDR of remixes glued between two unmarked pages (so the packaging has to be destroyed to hear all the music -- sorry, posterity), to continue the theme of reappropriation of existing media. Featuring remixes by James Harvey, Tape Store, Digiki, the Diet Soda Supertsars, and the Marriage.

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