Disco D
David Aaron Shayman (1980-2007), who recorded as Disco D, was a producer and DJ who came up in the Ann Arbor and Detroit scenes, where he helped popularize and name ghettotech — a high-energy fusion of Detroit techno, Miami bass, and explicit party-rap. He later moved to New York and crossed into mainstream hip-hop, most notably producing 50 Cent's 'The Ski Mask Way,' before his death in 2007. He is also remembered as the early mentor who taught a teenage Benny Blanco how to build beats in the studio.
The ghettotech Disco D helped name was built on the bedrock of Detroit's own electronic music — the cold, funky machine-music that Cybotron pioneered as the seed of Detroit techno and electro. That Detroit machine-groove is the ancestor of the synthetic, drum-machine feel Disco D carried into his rap productions.
listen forDrop 'Clear' and feel that icy, robotic electro-funk pulse — hollow drum machine, bending synth bass, nothing warm about it — a beat wearing sunglasses indoors. Then hear the same stark, synthetic bounce holding up the beat of 'City of Gods.'
Ghettotech fused Detroit techno with Miami bass — the booming, up-tempo, explicit party-rap that 2 Live Crew made famous. Disco D's high-tempo, low-end-first, club-freaky sensibility descends from that Miami bass lineage, and it surfaces plainly when he built Southern club-rap records.
listen for'Me So Horny' rides that trunk-rattling Miami bass boom and a chanted, party-freak hook. Hear the same low-end-first, booty-shaking club impulse in the Miami bounce of Trick Daddy's 'I Pop.'
The electro that Bambaataa's 'Planet Rock' crystallized — TR-808 drum-machine beats married to bright synth hooks — is the common ancestor of both Detroit techno and Miami bass, and thus the foundation of the ghettotech Disco D built from. That 808-and-synth electro skeleton runs through his hard, programmed beats.
listen for'Planet Rock' is the electro blueprint: that hard 808 kick and the mechanical, bright synth riff. Hear the same 808-driven, synth-hook electro architecture — menaced and slowed down — holding up 'The Ski Mask Way.'