Hip-hop production is an art that has been long overlooked. In many cases, the most striking part of a song is the instrumental, and yet, for the most part, it is the rapper who gets all of the acclaim.
In recent years, it seems that popular culture has caught on to the influence of producers and their visibility has grown.
Nonetheless, few know about the great diversity and long history of hip-hop production. There are hundreds of artists and thousands of beat tapes worth mentioning, but it is too much to fit into a short article, so this should serve only as an introduction.
There are three producers who defined the sound of hip-hop in the early 90s that are universally known and respected: Dr. Dre, DJ Premier and Pete Rock. If there were a Mount Rushmore of production, they would be carved in it. Each producer sparked a style that has stood the test of time, and has been developed through the generations.
Pete Rock was the pioneer for jazzy, gritty loops. His work is soulful, sweet and natural — built by samples of live instrumentation over organic sounding drum-loops. The song, “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y)” with CL Smooth is probably the best introduction to his style. PeteStrumentals, his solo album, is a great collection of his lush, expressive work.
Rock served as inspiration to both J Dilla and Madlib — two quirky West Coast producers who sparked an underground, experimental hip-hop scene. Like Pete Rock, their work is almost completely sample based, but instead of only cutting jazz records, they broadened their library, drawing from thousands of completely unknown records of all genres.
Both are poster-boys for crate-digging: searching through boxes in record stores to find hidden gems. Dilla is best known for his beautiful, knocking drums. In many of his tracks, the kick and snare are mixed into unexpected pockets in the soundscape.
I recommend a listen to Slum Village Vol. 2 or Donuts for his best work. Madlib is revered for his insane selection of sounds. He makes music by slicing together some of the most outlandish samples. His collaboration album with MF DOOM, Madvillainy, is a masterpiece.
Dilla and Madlib inspired a whole group of artists in LA, who developed their styles in a small, underground club, Low End Theory. The breakout star of this collective is Flying Lotus, who took the sample-heavy, drum-knocking style of Dilla, and introduced a synthetic, electronic element.
He became a pop culture icon for off-kilter instrumental work. Cosmogramma and You’re Dead! are incredible records that any music fan should check out. The newest, fastest rising star from this niche part of hip-hop is Knxwledge, the brainchild of Dilla and Madlib.
Like them, he samples a wide range of music, he creates mixtapes at an incredible rate, and infuses all of his work with an analog, retro feel. He takes his beats in wild directions, tapping out drum breaks that are never on-beat, but are still somehow groovy.
For an introduction, I recommend Yes Lawd, his collaborative album with Anderson .Paak, a fantastic neo-soul record, Hud Dreems, his first instrumental album and Anthology, a collection of some of his greatest beats.
DJ Premier (Premo), unlike Pete Rock, made music that is quiet and dark, embodying the harsh streets of New York through grimy, noisy beats. He is best known for his scratched vocal choruses. Alongside Premo, the NY sound was defined by The Alchemist and Just Blaze.
The Alchemist fleshed out the quiet, sinister, grimy street music with menacing lead samples and rattling drums. His newer work is more off-kilter, and his solo projects, Israeli Salad and Russian Roulette, feature phenomenal beats stitched together using international samples. Just Blaze’s style is on the opposite side of the spectrum: big, expensive and polished, with overwhelmingly lush samples.
His greatest beats are flooded with roaring horn sections and booming orchestras, backed by heavy kicks and snares. He produced classics like Cam’ron’s “Oh Boy” and one of Jay Z’s best songs, “Public Service Announcement.” Together with Kanye, he championed the chipmunk soul sound that ruled the charts of the early 2000s.
Dr. Dre, the final forefather of production was a pioneer for the West coast sound and an artist who enjoyed major play in the clubs. He thrived off booming drums, funky synths and a powerful, central groove. He is considered the father of G-funk, inventing the trademark high pitched synth whistle over bass-heavy beats. His work, along with that of DJ Quik, continues to shape the sound of the West. One only has to look at The Game’s newest LP’s, any of YG’s albums and a lot of Top Dawg Entertainment’s work to find his influence.
While not truly a producer, DJ Screw is still worth mentioning. He created the marquis sound of Houston from scratch, inventing the chopped and screwed technique. He would take big records from the South, slow them heavily, and then cut parts of them to create smooth, sweet melodies. Any of his tapes are worth checking out, just because the music is so unique and groovy.
Right now, the king of the airwaves is undeniably Metro Boomin. Some argue that his domination is a product of his “If Young Metro don’t trust you they gon’ shoot you” producer tag on the Kanye track “Father Stretch My Hands, Pt 1,” which cemented him as an Internet sensation for some weeks.
There’s more to his success than that. His production is actually excellent. No aspect of Metro’s beats gets stale; He seems to experiment with samples, sounds and even drum loops. “Benjamins Burn” with Future is different from “Ride of Your Life” with Tinashe, for example. The only thing that persists across all of his music is this underlying eeriness, an evil undertone that I haven’t heard anywhere else. His marquis works are undeniably Savage Mode with 21 Savage and What a Time to Be Alive with Drake and Future.
This is only a short peek into the wide world of production. It has a deep, long history with many avenues to explore.
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