DJ Premier: Sampl-'K'-ing

"MCs of the New York 1990s had one rite of passage above all else — they had to get by DJ Premier to be great," Sound On Sound printed in its article.

DJ Premier is at the very heart of the American hip-hop. He got famous in the 90s through his revolutionary work as a producer of hip-hop albums. He also was a DJ and producing partner of the groundbreaking duo Gang Starr. The Texan got introduced to the world with Gang Starr's "Manifest" and it totally transformed New York hip-hop in the 90s. His style was so innovative that he is famously considered to be the first hip hop producer to use a jazz sample in one of his production.

Though his records were initially thought to be a sub-genre "Jazz-rap" but the genius was much more than just sampling jazz and extending into sampling Beatles covers, KRS-One's impression of an Emergency Broadcast tone, sound of dirt on analog vinyl and much more. He developed his unique sound from the shortened clips of drums, filtered bass-lines, piano and scratched-in warning of authenticity. Though he is such a big name in hip-hop, he still uses and creates tracks on ancient Akai MPC60 and S950 sampler.

Sound On Sound in an article on DJ Premier quoted him, "I do everything with a DJ mentality. DJ'ing is my number one love. Producing is not my favourite thing, it's for paying my bills. Although, when I produce, I don't want any half-assed quality coming out. It has to sound great and I make sure that I put my all into it. Everything I do comes from DJing, because using samples is one of the ways in which we create music in the hip-hop world. It goes back to not having an instrument and not being able to afford to put a band together. So we used music that fits our atmosphere, and you have to understand how to convert samples into a format that works for our culture."

"To me, I'm a writer, even though I sample. There are songs in which I play all parts myself, but when I use samples I still do it in the same way a music writer would, because you still have to construct the track and shape it and make it blend with what you're trying to bring out of whoever is going to MC or sing it. And you have to understand and respect what you sample. When I constructed tracks in the past, I usually started with the samples, and then added the drums. Now it is usually the reverse. I may begin with keying a rhythm into the MPC, or play around with a little melody on my keyboards. This may be my Korg Trident, or my Roland Fantom, or my Yamaha Motif — I just got it and I'm still experimenting with it, but it has some really cool sounds. I may play on my M-Audio Oxygen 8 controller and use sound modules like the Emu Planet Phatt or Mo'Phatt. It is different every time, but today the majority of the time I'll get a drum pattern going, just a basic skeleton, and I then start to see if things fit."

Lets look at one of the examples where he used sampling. And it is none other than:

This song has a sample at 0:12 from 1:06 of the song:

There is another sample at 0:00 from 0:23 of the song:

And another one at 0:01 from 5:29 of the song:

DJ Premier has grown through the trends and nailed it for numerous artists. The master has been delivering for past 30 years and there is so much more to come.