DJ Jazzy Jeff
DJ Jazzy Jeff ( born January 22, 1965 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, real name Jeffrey Allen Townes ) is an American DJ and record producer. He is responsible for the development of authoritative scratch techniques and forms with the rapper and actor Will Smith the influential hip- hop duo DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince.
Career
Jeff Townes ' father died when he was even ten years old. At fourteen he began, inspired from the family environment mainly from jazz and soul to hang plates and developed in the following years, regional notoriety. In the 1980s, he invented the technique of chirped - scratching, also comes the first shot of a Transform Scratches from him. In 1986 he won the New Music Seminar 's Battle for World Supremacy DJ. A year earlier he had Will Smith met. As a DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, they published 1986-1993 five commercially successful albums that established the popularity of hip-hop in the mainstream. In 1989 she received for the song Parents Just Do not Understand the first ever Grammy in the Rap category. The following year, Townes founded his own record label A Touch of Jazz, named after a song of the same name on their debut album. Between 1990 and 1996, he was a recurring guest role on the sitcom The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, whose main role was played by Smith. While Smith began a solo career, to Townes concentrated in the sequence to working with other producers on his label, but also continued to work with Smith on his albums. Together they performed approximately on 2 July 2005 at the Live 8 concert in Philadelphia, and on 30 June 2008 at the premiere of Hancock in Los Angeles.
The production team of A Touch of Jazz, which included also Dre & Vidal, worked among other things on the albums by Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild and Floetry and was instrumental in the development of neo soul. One of their songs, Butterflies, landed on Michael Jackson's album Invincible. Published in 2002, Townes his first solo album The Magnificent. Five years later, The Return of the Magnificent with guest appearances by, among others, Big Daddy Kane, Method Man and Kardinal Offishall. His Scratches can be heard on albums by Slum Village, The Roots, Little Brother and Talib Kweli.
Discography
- See DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince
Solo albums
- 2002: The Magnificent
- 2004: Hip- Hop Forever II ( Compilation )
- 2006: Hip- Hop Forever III ( Compilation )
- 2007: The Return of the Magnificent