Masquerade J.s. Cooper

Unlike other labels subjected to exhaustive multi-disc retrospectives like this whopping ten-disc Revolutions in Sound: Warner Bros. Records – The First Fifty Years, Warner Brothers never embodied a scene or sound: they've always embodied what a major label should be – a dominant force that chronicles and dictates the sound of the mainstream. Coming out at the tail-end of 2008, when the influence of major labels is on a slow steady decline, Revolutions in Sound can be seen as a portrait of a time that's beginning to recede into the past: a time when there was such a thing as mass entertainment, when the pop audience all shared a common bond of hit records they either loved or rallied against. Perhaps the greatest things about this monumental box set is that it captures that colossus while also illustrating that for a while, majors did take risks. Of course, Warner was the riskiest of all the majors, never held back by an anti-rock & roll sourpuss like Mitch Miller, who struggled to keep CBS out of the tumult of the '60s (this with no less than Bob Dylan as the label's flagship rock artist). Instead, Warner embraced the underground, recording some of the strangest to shake out of the '60s, and that adventure fits a label that turned to rock & roll to help establish themselves as a real player at the turn of the '60s.

Dusty Fingers is the name of a series of compilation records of songs that are widely admired as breakbeats collected by Bronx DJ Danny Dann the Beat Mann. Some of the songs featured contain "open breaks" which are solo drum passages which enable DJs to easily transition into them. These are also attractive to producers, who loop or rearrange them to create new compositions. Following in the tradition of the Ultimate Breaks and Beats series, the Dusty Fingers records contain an eclectic range of musical styles: mainly funk and jazz, but also including soul, rock, disco, and pop. Many of the songs in the Dusty Fingers series have been sampled into new musical compositions, mainly by hip hop producers. Popular songs that sample songs from the Dusty Fingers series include "Guilty Conscience" by Eminem, "Find Your Wealth" by Nas, "Rowdy Rowdy" by 50 Cent, "Show Me What You Got" by Jay-Z, "Daydreamin'" by Lupe Fiasco, and "Dr. Carter" by Lil' Wayne.