Over the past 30 years, I've had the great fortune to work with some amazingly talented artist.

The ones featured here are probably some you've never heard of.

What makes them "Hip Hop Confessions"?
Well, to explain it properly, first we have to talk about...house music.

Early in my career, whilst I was producing hip hop (including what's featured here), I also had aspirations as a "club" music producer and eventually signed to a label (Sleeping Bag Records) who was intent on pushing me as just that.

Even though I really wanted to be like one of my musical heroes Mantronix and release hip hop records, I had faith that Sleeping Bag and their other label Fresh Records were the perfect place to be if I wanted to try and do both.

Sleeping Bag/ Fresh were masters at marketing both genres (at the time they had Todd Terry, Hanson & Davis, Chocolette, Mantronix, Nice & Smooth, EPMD and Joyce Sims on the roster and ALL of them had hit records out). At the time, it was the only label I wanted to be on.

I had been shopping my demos with different styles of music under different aliases and mainly due to timing, the house career won out.

In late 80s early 90's era New York, the house scene was just starting to blow up, so there was more room for new budding producers like myself,
Kenny Dope, Pal Joey, to make their mark with underground club tracks.

Once hip hop went to the major labels, suddenly you needed a full team to get put on, get paid and possibly blow up (lawyer, manager, PR, major label hype, radio, video budget, etc.) but for house, you just needed a good demo and some hustle.

So, once house music started paying my bills, hip hop took a back seat and became an almost secret hobby.

I went from Sleeping Bag (no releases, just demos), to Nu Groove Records inspired by Kenny Dopes' Powerhouse series where he sampled and edited classic funk tracks that worked both as hip hop and house tools.
I figured I could do my thing with this label but again, they preferred the house tracks since hip hop wasn't the style they promoted well.

I later figured out how to morph my hip hop dreams into something novel, blending it with jazz vibes (see my other 4 albums posted here). But that's another chapter.

Back in the day, if you were pushing yourself as a producer, you had to be either this or that or folks in the industry got confused and would not tune into you.

Interestingly, as a club DJ, I was expected to play a diverse set including hip hop, house, reggae, breaks, classics but as a producer, you were marketed as one style, which frustrated many of us music lovers turned producers.

I realize it's still like that in some genres, but because of the internet, it's loosened up considerably compared to how it was in the 80's and 90's.

It took bold producers like Masters At Work, Todd Terry and later, Fatboy Slim and many others to prove to the marketplace that a dope producer can drop tracks in various styles, have hits and bring seemingly disparate audiences together.

My relationship with the artist featured here was mainly to help develop and refine their sound. At the time, some had never been in a studio or been recorded before.

A few had other careers in the industry and were making the first moves to transition into professional MCs.
Track 11 ; "Flip and Trip" featuring the amazingly gifted MC Jon Shaft (now known as Oxygen) was my first release as a hip hop producer (1991).

Mostly bedroom recordings, these tracks were intended as demos, audition tapes or first drafts to be either shopped to record labels to get development deals or passed to established MCs who needed lyrics from ghost writers.

Although there were many more recordings to choose from, I beleive the joints presented here are the best of the bunch both in quality of recording and artistic statement.

They were all remastered from either the original D.A.T. tapes or analog cassettes.