Part of hip-hop's illustrious magic revolves around its world-wide appeal; the pervasive 4/4 time signature and repetitious melodies have a way of inspiring the head-nod, regardless of culture or geography, so today, we're giving the spotlight to gny, a Philippine native by the name of Eugene Yaptangco who has an unmistakable penchant for brewing archetypal lo-fi.

Separating the good, the bad, and the ugly with lo-fi can sometimes become convoluted, and the tropes that often denote musical prowess are left at the door, making the true value of this underground genre a variable that depends entirely on what the individual interpretation of the music. gny offers a product that is far less ambiguous in its musical acuity, and far more enriched in its composition, arrangement, and presentation.

His most recent beat-tape, hall of mirrors, shines far brighter than many of its contemporary releases as a conscious connection between hip-hop and jazz music. The conceptual goal for the collection was to explore the motif of jazz artists creating a vast array of interpretations of particular songs, and how that can be applied to the crafting of lo-fi rhythms. gny was gracious enough to provide some precise language about his exploits: "Each of these beats samples 5 different artists who created their own version of the same song. My thought when creating this project was: these jazz artists can create their own version of a song, why can’t beat-makers do that, too? Collectively, the titles of the beats create one sentence explaining the reinvention of this music in the hip-hop approach, and the tape’s titled /hall of mirrors/ since it is looking into different reflections of the same thing."

While there is only so much to dig through for now in the case of gny, it is also worth noting that he has an electronic project as well, by the name of Technicalia. Running through both projects will surely be enough to satiate until the next installment from this meticulous, multi-faceted producer.

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