Rob Viktum

"The first hip-hop record I owned was The Message by Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five," recalls DJ Rob Viktum. "My father bought it for me."

When that record first dropped, back when Viktum was but a wee lad, it was mostly the inner-city kids who were having The Message handed down to them. It may have received some significant airplay on more "urban" radio markets, but probably not so much around Amarillo in the early 1980s.

Synthesizing the classical training provided by his mother with the love for rap and soul music that had been implanted in him by his father, Viktum started making beats when he was 12 years old, eking out whatever hip-hop flavor he could find within the Texas Panhandle town. Looks like it worked for him, since the DJ's eclectic spinning sensibility is now a hot commodity at the Slip Inn every Wednesday night in Dallas. - Voice Places

The esteemed nerdcore rapper with whom we've been honored to collaborate on several occasions, Adam WarRock is back with a new release. Called City Dangerously, the eight-track EP includes a brand new Rob Viktum remix of WarRock’s debut single “The Silver Age,” a touching, affectionate and “dope” remembrance of a childhood collecting comic books featuring Tribe One. The remix comes with some all new verses, featuring lines like:
Call this the Final Crisis, ‘cuz every mic device is
What I’m talkin ta’. Call me the mayor of Ex Machina
Lockheed to Old Lace, Rakim to Ghostface
I’m just an Animal bangin’ up on your drumcase
You can listen to the whole “The Silver Age (Viktimized Remix)” below. - Comics Alliance

With some help from Rob Viktum on the production front, Mr. Dibbs enlisted Brother Ali for "Pitch Black Noon". A track that was originally featured on 2010's Deadworld, and now can be found on Dibb's new project, Deadworld Reborn. More than just music, the story behind Reborn speaks at even louder volumes... - 2Dopeboyz.com

Rob Viktum is busy these days. Since we last featured one of his mixtape releases, the "Double Cupped Up" for the Dallas-based Prep Street, he has formed a label and released an excellent mixtape from Kool Quise, all while keeping folks crowded on the dance floors of Dallas from behind his decks.
Low Post Music, Viktum's label, is about getting back to the root of something in music and hip-hop. I will let them share their thesis: "We are a record label with a new perspective on a dying business model. A Record Label with No Politics, No Bullshit, Just Good Music! We will be providing free projects, digital releases, as well as limited edition small runs of physical copies."

He means it about the no bullshit. Viktum is one of my favorite artists in town with whom to wax philosophical, and always topics are drilled down to the essential - is the music good?

In this case, it once again is. At least from my view. If Viktum's "Double Cupped Up" was the perfect soundtrack for a trill dinner party, this is for the encore when your guests leave. His tape, Sex Sells, which drops today, features the same swingy grooves and rhythmic pockets you may recognize from other work but now with a decidedly grown influence. Those are all "big" words for baby-making music.

It won't be too long till we hear some 16s over several of these tracks but they stand on their own if you are looking for something to underscore your next seduction. Or art-house adult film.

"The Ride Home" is a great place to start. But you will want the whole mix if you are serious about setting the mood. So, are you? - Dallas Observer

A while back I brought you guys Booda French’s album Club 27 Reservations. And now I got something great for you, Rob Viktum has remixed the whole album with that classic flavor. I’ll save you the words and just tell you to cop the remix album for FREE below. - KevinNottingham.com

Hey when is the last time you made that face?

What face you ask?

The one that you make when you are listening to a particularly tasty groove played by what sounds like a killer 3 piece brass section.1 You know the face. The one where your lips curl up and your face looks vaguely pained, like you were in mid-shit and you felt a problematic ping somewhere inside. The kind of ping that let's you know there might be blood.

Well for me it was this very afternoon while listening to the deliciously sensual and erotically Feeling So Good off of the album Mechanized Burden by Rob Viktum. The crazy shit, is that it was one of a handful of faces I made and revisited while listening to this fucker. The above mentioned face returned with outrageously soulful tracks like Eat This Tracy Carslon. I also busted out my "Oooh I am totally going to stick my dick in the pot roast when everyone goes to bed" face when listening to Double My Love and Unsatisfied.

While listening to Foley's Big Break I totally planned a bank heist with the local boy scout troop and I killed my own dinner at an upscale Mexican restaurant while vibing to A Little Something...the mole was amazing!

I also did that thing where I try to hide the fact that I am crying by making the "my contacts are bothing me face" during Rebecca's Song and the title track...but for different reasons. Needless to say my shame boner was swagged the Fuck out.

Rob Viktum has been at it for a long time and knows his way around a studio, very much the way Joel knows his way around the ovaries of his numerous teen brides. Mechanized Burden is a brilliant work that travels all over the fucking place but always comes home and spoons with you every night.

I want to punch Rob in the dick for being so god damned awesome. - Shut Your Fucking Face And Listen

Rob Viktum, the man behind so many excellent free projects like An Audio Tribute To The Cambodian People and AmericanDONUTShop hits us now with Volume One of his Snack Pack instrumental series. I can say in the utmost confidence that Rob Viktum can bang with the best when it comes to production. Time and time again he blesses the internet with polished, high quality projects that sets himself apart from the clutter of free online releases that you get on a daily basis. If you have yet to delve into the work of Rob Viktum, this collection of 14 smooth, soulful instrumentals is a damn good place to start. Check it out and as always, let us know what you think! - Potholes In My Blog

Dallas hip-hop producer and DJ Rob Viktum is known as an impeccably tasteful sampler, a beatmaker who uses snippets of half-forgotten soul songs and boom-bap drumbeats for a sound that hearkens to the '90s Golden Era of rap and '70s movie soundtracks. And yet he still manages to sound modern.

But, in 2007, his Progress project referenced a completely different time and place: pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia. Inspired by a treasure trove of records given to him by a Cambodian family member, he assembled a combination of hard-hitting hip-hop beats merging Cambodian classical music and pop with rappers contributing verses to a handful of the tracks. He offered the resulting collection as a free download on the Internet, and it became a minor sensation, with more than 10,000 copies downloaded in the States and in Southeast Asia.

Tuesday, meanwhile, brought the release of the follow-up, Progress Vol. 2. But, this time, Viktum is raising more than just awareness: Each $7.99 download charge for the digital album will go to a soon-to-be-determined Cambodian charity.

As with the original, Viktum used samples from some 35 or 40 records saved by his longtime girlfriend Tavy Um's father Sihourn Um, who with his wife, Sovannary Um, managed to escape the Pol Pot-led genocide. Knowing of Viktum's love of music, Sihourn gave the rare records to his de facto son-in-law. Had he not salvaged them, they would have almost certainly been destroyed, as music and other cultural artifacts were seen by the communist regime as tainted by capitalism.

"A lot of them were completely random compilations," Viktum says. "One song might be classical Oriental music, and the next will be a Credence Clearwater Revival cover."

While he was proud of the results and bolstered by the encouragement of Um's family, Viktum braced himself for criticism that he was misappropriating the Cambodian culture. To his shock, there was none.

"I figured there would be some backlash, but the Cambodian youth were so intrigued by it because all that music had been destroyed during Khmer Rouge," he says. "They're enthralled with U.S. hip-hop, and then for them to see it used in that way was exciting for them."

While she thinks it's a great album, Tavy is just as proud of Viktum's research into the dark subject. Her parents don't talk much about their experiences during the regime, but a 1999 trip to Cambodia capital Phnom Penh brought the horror to life. There, she visited a memorial at the school her parents had attended. The school had been turned into a torture camp—bloodstains on the walls were still visible, and bones exhumed from a mass grave loomed in a gruesome pile that stood two stories high.

"A lot of people don't realize that as many people were affected as were during the Holocaust," she says.

Like the first, Progress 2 is a mix of instrumental beats and songs with rappers. Each instrumental track is named for a specific date corresponding to an unnamed event, which Viktum hopes will encourage curious record buyers to do some research into the genocide. As for the tracks with rhymes, Viktum let the guest rappers come up with their own titles. In fact, he gave them no framework for their lyrics.

"I didn't want people rapping at you about the issue, because that comes off as corny," he says. " I just said, 'Do whatever the song makes you feel.'"

Despite that lack of guidance, he says positive vibes of triumph over adversity seemed to be a recurring theme.

"Problem Child [from Austin] did 'Born Leader,' which is kind of a from-the-ashes, phoenix-type story," he says. "And Caucasian [from Lubbock] sang 'Progress,' which is just one of those feel-good, moving-forward type things."

Other rappers include Damien Randle of Houston's Legendary K.O./K-Otix, original Progress alum Bavu Blakes (from Austin by way of Dallas) and Viktum's collaborator on his recent Aight, New Drink release, Elucid from Brooklyn.

Though Viktum had a beneficiary in mind, he found out some "sketchy" information about the would-be recipient. As it happened, Um's family recently left the States to visit Cambodia following a death in the family. While there, Viktum says, they plan to choose a beneficiary.

Even without that detail finalized, Progress Vol. 2 is already moving forward. - Khmerization