Dexter Baby Steps (Beats 2010-2013)

They all started small. But it all - the art - has become so big for very few of them. Dexter has: The Stuttgart native has been involved as a producer in the last 13 years on iconic albums by Deichkind, Cro and Casper, he was responsible for three successful Fatoni albums and, together with Max Herre, most recently put together a showcase of the GDR label AMIGA ("hallo 22"). With three instrumental albums of his own and later with the producer supergroup Betty Ford Boys, he led the way for the new self-confidence of an entire generation of local hip-hop beatmakers - fewer service providers, more attention.

The fact that Dexter himself had once started out as a rapper was often forgotten. It wasn't until "Haare nice, Socken fly" (2017) that he released his first rap solo album, and with "Yung Boomer" in 2020 he got to the heart of how his very own Grown-Man Rap works in the field of tension between trap and jazz. The fact that he brought old-school legend Lakmann on an album with Lugatti & 9ine is just one of many proofs of Dexter's exceptional position in the scene.

With his new project, Dexter goes back to the beginnings, more precisely to the era in which he celebrated his breakthrough with "Jazz Files". That instrumental album from 2010 remains a milestone in the genre-defining "Hi-Hat Club" series (Melting Pot Music). "Jazz Files" brought him overnight onto the iPods of favorite rappers and post-Dilla beat nerds, into clubs, festivals and beat fights, and into the collective consciousness of a German rap landscape in upheaval.

From this era comes a hard drive with about 400 beats thought lost, which Dexter was able to rescue a few months ago. Dexter is now releasing 25 of these instrumentals for the first time on the album "BABY STEPS (BEATS 2010-2013)", which will be available digitally and on vinyl from July 14, 2023. The productions flow and push, rumble and clatter, are remastered, but otherwise unchanged Dexter - full of jazz, psych rock and soul. And the artwork? That's by Dexter's kids and was laid out by Dexter's sister.

Family first!