http://www.beatkangz.com/main/news
Music Instrument Startup Assembles Powerful Team, Bridges Culture and Technology to Create the Next Big 'Thang'
Nashville, TN: As the music industry continues its rapid evolution, Middle Tennessee producers The Beat Kangz have conspired with Live Nation Recordings head Bob Ezrin and Nashville real estate magnate David Crabtree to establish an innovative music technology startup called Beat Kangz Electronics, LLC (BKE).
BKE heralds the next age in music creation with The Beat Thang Music Production System, scheduled for retail release in Spring 2009. The Beat Kangz integrate pre-loaded sounds, sampling, and on board waveform editing in the portable, stylish and customizable Beat Thang. Flexible, functional and user-friendly, the Beat Thang moves effortlessly from the studio to the stage to the streets with tons of features for recording, live performance and DJing.
Aja "A.J.A." Emmanuel, Luke "Boom Bap" Jackson, and Reavis "Rev" Mitchell have been banging beats and ripping stages individually as artists, producers and promoters on the flourishing Southern hip hop scene for over a decade. In 2004 they joined forces to become The Beat Kangz, and began collaborating on a series of forward thinking music production and sound design projects.
The new partnership bore its first major fruits with the development of the SB-246 Streetboxx, the world’s first dedicated hip hop drum machine, designed by The Beat Kangz for Japanese manufacturer Zoom. The Streetboxx became Zoom’s best selling rhythm machine, and The Beat Kangz moved on to form their own musical instrument manufacturing company.
One hallmark of the Beat Kangz is the seamless integration of culture into their products. This is most evident in the Streetboxx with the names of drum kits and sounds. With names like “Dirty South”, “West Coast”, and “Old School”, there is no mistake that hip hop was the inspiration for this product and not the other way around.
“Most companies just put out the technology and ignore the culture,” says BKE president Emmanuel. “We bring the culture first, and that defines how our technology is developed.”
The Beat Thang will take this approach to the next level by going beyond the naming of kits and sounds to the futuristic styling of the machine. No other beat machine offers users a choice of custom skinz and grillz allowing the customer to individualize their Beat Thang.
Innovative ideas like these have helped the Beat Kangz attract a diverse group of power players from three countries to develop the Beat Thang. Legendary producer and music exec Bob Ezrin, perhaps best known as producer of Pink Floyd’s masterpiece, The Wall, has most recently been revolutionizing the music business as the head of Live Nation Recordings. A series of high profile deals with Jay-Z, Madonna and U2 are poised to make concert promotion powerhouse Live Nation a major new player in the recorded music world. As a BKE Vice President, Ezrin will help remake the musical instrument business as well.
David Crabtree of Nashville's Brookside Properties brings the financial acumen as the company’s Chief Financial Officer. The Kangz have also assembled a crack team of developers to create The Beat Thang and direct their streetwise marketing campaign.
BKE Vice President Reavis Mitchell voices the group’s appreciation for the team they have developed. "It’s a massive blessing that the universe has bestowed upon us to have such a talented and powerful collective of like-minded individuals dedicating their energy to putting out the next big thang, which is The Beat Thang."
hahaha will it make S&C version of the track lol
