I gotta be able to create a groove out of whatever I'm making a beat out of.
Whether I'm making an original beat, whether I'm sampling, whatever it is
I gotta be able to create a groove.
If I can't, then it's like, the record is useless to me.
I got into producing because I ran out of other options, man.
I went to Howard University, got kicked out of college and ended up back in the Bronx.
Had a baby on the way and I had no form of income.
But I was a DJ back at Howard, so I was familiar with music and the rest is history.
My partner at the time, my man, Thrilla, he had bought a MPC.
An older version of this, and he went out of town and let me hold it.
I made two beats on it.
He took it back.
And I ran into a guy by the name of Todd Terry.
Todd Terry had artists at the time.
I played him those two beats I had.
He said, "How much you want for the beats?"
I said, "Yo, um."
I made a joke.
I said, “Give me a stack for each beat.”
Well, a thousand, back then. Nobody said "stack."
I said, “Give me a thousand for each beat.”
He was like, "Alright, bet."
Goes in the other room, goes in the safe, brings me back $2000.
He said, "Yo, I need more beats."
I said, “Yo, I don't got no equipment.
I just borrowed this from my man. You know, such and such."
He said, "Where you live at?"
I tell him.
Long story short, three days later he sends like $20,000 worth of equipment to my crib.
My parents had reggae music.
That's it.
That's all I grew up listening to, whether it was Beres Hammond.
Whether it was Garnett Silk.
Whether it was Bob Marley.
Whoever it was, it was just reggae music.
So, I always wanted to find a reggae song that I could really flip into some hip-hop.
When I listened to that, I said, "Yo how can I keep this feeling going for 3 1/2 minutes?
4 minutes?"
That was my goal when I first heard the intro.
And I didn't know how I was going to do it.
Everybody knows the original intro, which is this.
So, that's really the meat and potatoes of the sample.
That is the sample.
There's nothing else to the sample.
That's the sample.
So, I have that piece and I have this piece.
Those two pieces I just played for you make
up that whole beat.
Track 3 is where I started to layer a groove.
So I started with regular high hats.
Nothing crazy.
Next track.
A kick.
Kick, snare and a clap.
That was the next sound I used.
A regular scratch.
Again, this is 2002.
Nobody really uses the scratch no more.
Next track is just an open hi hat.
I was gonna throw this beat away.
Like, this beat was never going to exist because at this point, from what I'm up to
now, what I just played you, it wasn't making sense to me.
But I knew it was a dope sample to the point where it was supposed to sound fire.
When I did this last trigger, this is what brought the whole beat together.
This one piece that I'm about to show you.
Right now, the sample is still kind of all over the place until I did this with it.
I can't believe how I put that shit together.
It sounds crazy for producer to say that, that made the beat, but you gotta remember this is 15 years ago.
A lot of people can't remember what they ate last week.
This is 15 years ago.
So, to see this?
It's crazy.
At another event, I was asked to remake this track on another machine without loading up
the old disk or none of that and I couldn't do it.
I couldn't remember how I put it together, because that record it was meant to be.
That wasn't supposed to come out like that.
But it did.
And it turned out to be...
Maybe I should shouldn't say because it was me, but maybe one of the greatest hip-hop
records in the last 15 years.