People have written or scratched into walls for ages, dating back to cave drawings and ancient hieroglyphics, the earliest means of written communication. ”Graffiti was already born before we ever existed”, says Red. However, around 1970 in New York City a new culture was born out of a need by disadvantaged youth to express themselves. As writing became more prolific, writers developed their styles with size, color, and complexity. This graffiti culture bounced from city to city in the USA and ended spreading all over the world. Red started at the age of 14 to tag his name (Slow Down) on walls, schools, busses, and so on.
Hip-hop culture is commonly defined by “four elements” – rapping, DJ-ing, breaking or B-boying, and graffiti. Graffiti actually started at least five years before hip-hop music, so that’s why over the years Red started to concentrate on songwriting and producing tracks with different kind of artist from the Netherlands.
In the year 1999 Red began updating his recording studio, as well as composing new songs with an eye toward producing his own music. He hooked up with Giovanni and Tarik and they started to compose songs for many underground artists from the city Amsterdam in The Netherlands. Red say’s, ”we helped so many artist on the road, but we didn’t got our props, credits, a simple gesture or thanks”. Soon after that behavior we started thinking about an own independent record company, simply because we wanted to protect our own music compositions, royalties, management and also wanted to sign a few artists that have the real flavor and impressive vocals. From that point Red made the decision to start his own record company. Needing a name for the Record Label, Red came up with ‘Slow Down Productions. Red says, “I suppose it came from pure tenacity, my philosophy about the world and my graffiti history. The name for the new record label was born, it would now and forever be called Slow Down Productions.
Now-a-days Red has hooked up with Rick Alberigs (photographer), Triple X (recording studio/beat creator) and O.G. (recording studio/beat creator) and with Real Graphic Design (an audiovisual production company). Now all these great elements have joined together we can deliver the total package. Also Slow Down Productions has grown from only working with Dutch artists, to also working with International artists from all over the world. In the future we see ourselves still as the same underground record label as we are now. If you listen to our music, you’ll here it is music with a message for all ages with no commercial influences. We are making music, what the hell are you doing? Slow Down and take it easy!
