Arts The Beatdoctor

Locals of Utrecht, The Netherlands, have reported sightings of a shady stranger lurking in the local hospital. He comes dressed in freakish style, replete with coat, stethoscope, and a scalpel the size of a small Samurai sword. Passing as a new kind of medical expert, the “Beatdoctor,” this suspect figure indiscriminately prescribes unhealthy doses of dark and melancholic hip-hop beats to patients and staff alike.

Twenty-three-year-old Arts The Beatdoctor mixes a complex cocktail of emotions: melancholy supplemented by foreboding, a few grams of tension, and a coating of release. Comparisons to artists such as DJ Shadow, Krush and RJD2 spring to mind with his blend of atmospheric and cinematic hip-hop beats. Arts also finds his inspiration in jazz and classical music: “What really gets to me are the harmonies that are being used. There's a lot of stuff that's about ‘playing wrong notes, but making them sound right.’ For that quality, jazz is a good starting point if you want to make music that's surprising, exciting.”

Arts has already made his musical tracks across several hip-hop and non-hip-hop projects. In 2003 he made his official debut producing a track for Lord Cyrus’s Diamonds R 4Ever compilation, alongside MF Grimm and other American MCs and producers. The Dutch scene, however, gave Arts his first break: “Pete Philly picked up one of my demos when I was still in my ‘indescribable abstract music’ phase. I guess he heard the potential, because before I knew it we were making music together and stirring it up.”

There's a new crop of supreme talent emerging from the canals and crooked streets of the Netherlands: Nicolay of the Foreign Exchange, and artists like C-Mon & Kypski and Pete Philly & Perquisite. Arts The Beatsdoctor now stands squarely among them.

Arts remains secretive about his mega persona. The Dutch word for physician just so happens to be “Arts,” but more than that? Not much is known of his operations, but hold your breath as Arts slices open Beats Broke's second release on July 8th, 2008.