PUBLISHED: 11-24-08

Premium Blend

With The Hood Internet

Remember when mix tapes were in? Although it might seem like decades ago, two guys are successfully finding a fun way to bring them back.

The Hood Internet is a DJ duo mixing its way into Chicago’s music scene by standing out from other bands and resisting the competition. Steve Reidell and Aaron Brinck, the faces behind The Hood Internet, aren’t originally from Chicago, but consider themselves a “Chicago thing” after they started working together in the city.

Since March 2007, they have put together seven mix tapes, three of which are The Hood Internet mixes and another set called the Chicago mix tapes. Their compositions are made up of hip-hop artists they admire and listen to, like T-Pain, Kanye West and Missy Elliot.

Their latest work, The Hood Internet Mix Tape Volume Three, released on Oct. 20, has already reached 10,000 downloads on their website, TheHoodInternet.com.

The Chronicle spoke with Reidell about the duo’s history, the secrets to their success and how President-elect Barack Obama influenced their style.

The Chronicle: How do the two of you work together when Brinck lives in Michigan and you now live in Chicago?
Steve Reidell: A lot of the stuff we work on, we just do it out of a computer, and if we’re looking at something together, we e-mail it back and forth, work on it and give it to the next person. For shows, we just meet up in whatever city we’re playing.

Does distance ever become an issue?
Not at all. I see him more than I see a lot of my friends here.

How are you involved in the Chicago music scene if you’re not a band?
We play at places that would be appropriate for DJs. When we put out the first mix tape, we definitely worked with other rappers. Now those are people we end up doing a lot of shows with here and there.

When you’re using tracks from other artists, is permission required?
We have never gotten permission from a single person we have ever made a track with. You can just put it out and it’s out there-as long as you’re not charging people money for it.

Where does your profit come from since your material is free online?
Well, it’s not a highly profitable venture, but once we started playing live, we were able to do shows like all the other DJs. Except the difference would be we played mostly tracks that we put together ourselves. We’re able to make a little money and offset the cost of the website and traveling where we’re going to go play.

How long does it take to create your mix tapes?
It’s more work to start off with, having all the tracks to begin with. Once we get the tracks it will take about a weekend to a week to get it together and ready to upload.

Where did your name “The Hood Internet” come from?
The rapper Cameron put out Kill a Season, which is a movie that has an accompanying soundtrack. In the film there’s this one guy that says, “Tyrell, he’s like the hood Internet-anything you need, he can get it.” We’ve been told that it’s funny we have the word “Internet” in our name.

Is there a reason why the cover of the latest mix tape closely resembles Obama’s campaign posters?
Well, the Shepard Fairey design for the Obama thing is a pretty cool [design]. So we totally ripped it off, but within it there was a little icon. But it was totally a pro-Obama design.

To download their latest mix for free, visit TheHoodInternet.com.

Popularity: 5% [?]

No comments, leave your comment or trackback.