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Dert is an accomplished producer. With his roots firmly in the LA hip-hop underground, over the span of a decade he’s collaborated with many emcees, including LMNO, 2Mex, Ahmad, Micah 9. and KRS-One, to name a few. Ever since Dert’s first nationally released album credits in 1998 (with LPG’s sophomore album ‘360’) he’s been earning respect worldwide as a top-level beat-smith with a catalog that’s both prolific and stylistically unpredictable. Over the years he’s honed his craft putting in some tremendous work as the in-house producer for Tunnelrats Music, where he was the production backbone for the vast majority of their releases since 1999! Dert started to show his fans a different side in 2004, releasing his first full instrumental album entitled Fledgling (Illectronica). Like the Octavia E. Butler novel by the same name, the album was a completely pleasant surprise for fans, forging an eclectic mix of afro-rhythm, synth-heavy soul, and of course, raw hip-hop. What fans didn’t know was that ‘Fledgling’ was just a glimpse of the instrumental genius to come. In 2006 Dert released the hounds on the underground! First he introduced the world to ‘Derty Gonzales’ – a remixtape featuring a collage of beats made completely with samples from Jose Gonzales’ album ‘Veneer’. It was released to much critical acclaim, and even earned the cosign and endorsement of Jose Gonzales himself. Not too long after that, Dert flexed his boom-bap magic on KRS-One’s album ‘Life’, producing the entire album. ‘Life’ is considered by many fans of The Blastmaster to be one of his best albums. Not one to lay low for long, in between such major releases, Dert continued to show his versatility working on the fan-favorite remixtapes, inspired by the likes of Pink Floyd on ‘Westside Of The Moon’ and West Indian Girl’s ‘What Are You Afraid Of’. The Short List is Dert’s latest and greatest instrumental offering, and it’s an album that reflects just how far and high Dert has come as a producer. Picking up right where ‘Fledgling’ left off, ‘The Short List’ is a rather intimate boom-bap record filled with beautifully arranged headnodders, perfect to “just cool out and listen to”. In one sense, the album is an acknowledgement of Dert’s many muses, and he even dedicates this album to “all the pretty girls, not the ugly ones.” Ugly or not, this album is set to be a personal favorite for many. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.