PETE
ROCK
WORDS
:
PAUL
S
ULLIVAN
))SOUL BROTHER
NUMBER ONE
PETE ROCK IS ONE OF HIP HOP’S MOST RESPECTED BEATMAKERS AND THE
OWNER OF ONE OF THE MOST PANT-WETTINGLY LARGE RECORD COLLECTIONS
KNOWN TO MAN. KNOWLEDGE HOOK UP WITH THE PRODUCTION DON
))
DURING ONE OF HIS RARE VISITS TO LONDON.
I’m about two feet away from Pete Rock but I’m damned drum machines and things. I was shown the TR 808, time between albums. Believe me I’m putting my
if I can see him. It’s the middle of the day and the the Roland 909, the DX drum machine and Mr Rhythm, elbows, my feet, my fucking hands and chest and all of
curtains are open in his hotel room, but there’s a sweet this little box, some drum machine shit. Then I got that into it when I do it. I always know that people are
smelling dense fog around us that impairs my physical onto the SP1200 and learned how to make shit. I read gonna want satisfaction and you can’t let people down.”
vision almost as much as it no doubt enhances his up on the manual after he’d shown me the basics. I
creative vision. A throaty cough emanates from the bed was in the crib every single day trying to master that By the time he came to putting out ‘Soul Survivors’,
and after a few waves of a hand the skunk cloud clears machine and I did it. It took me a few months, maybe Pete had amassed a huge collection of head nods that
and a pair of bloodshot eyes hove into view... a year and shit progressed.” couldn’t go onto the LP for one reason or another. Three
years on and he has put these off-cuts and a few
Pete first blew up on the hip hop scene back in 1991 After slapping suckas silly with the ‘All Souled Out’ EP, other choice tunes onto a new album entitled
with the release of his ‘All Souled Out’ EP, made with Pete and CL delivered the immortal hip hop album ‘Petestrumentals’. Released through London based
high school friend and rapper CL Smooth. But his ‘Mecca and The Soul Brother’, a record crammed full of label BBE, the album – mainly instrumental as the title
musical education stretches back way further than ‘91; the rawest and most souled out funk nuggets known to suggests – features the requisite glut of pedigree
while many artists routinely claim to have been man. Spawning the classics ‘When They Reminisce jazz-funk-soul infused joints that Pete has become
producing, DJing or rhyming before they’d learned to Over You’, ‘Lots Of Lovin’ and ‘Straighten It Out’, the LP known for. In contrast to ‘Soul Survivors’, the vocal
wipe their own asses, in Rock’s case the cliché is true. put Pete and CL firmly on the map and earned them a tracks are limited to one or two joints from a talented
place in rap music’s Hall Of Fame forever. In 1994 they new crew called the UN, whose album Rock will be
“I was kind of born into music,” begins Pete in blunted followed up with the weaker ‘Main Ingredient’ before producing quite soon.
New York drawl, motioning for me to take a chair going their separate ways.
and making himself more comfortable on the bed. “My “‘Petestrumentals’ isn’t my best work,” admits Pete, “but
father was a DJ back in Kingston, Jamaica. He was a Since then Pete has kept himself in the frame with a there’s a lot of stuff there that I wanted to share with the
record collector and all of that, doing his thing back then. string of high profile remixes and productions (Lost Boyz, world. I wanted it to be instrumental and done this way,
So when I was born, I was born right into the music. Nas, Large Professor, Rakim, Heavy D) but no big ‘cos it’s never been done before. I just wanted to try
I remember seeing a bunch of albums and 45s in projects. Then in 1998 he suddenly came with ‘Soul something new and see what happened. I’ve had
my fathers bedroom and basement, and remember Survivor’, a dope collection of tracks that pooled enough of all the ass-kissing that goes on in New York...
how he used to show me how to clean and take care together some of the hottest cats on the rap scene – what’s the point of doing shit just for money? I’d rather
of the records. He was doing this when I was like, three Method Man, OC, Raekwon, Large Professor, The just be me ‘cos all the cats with money have so many
or four years old.” Roots, CL Smooth, Heavy D, Big Pun, Lord Tariq – and problems. I’m trying to do something different just to
reaffirmed his status as Soul Brother Number One. make sure people know I’m a versatile producer.”
It was when Pete started hanging with Heavy D that his
rap career started to take off. The ‘Overweight Lover’ “I didn’t want to burn myself out,” explains Pete. “This
introduced Pete to the likes of Marley Marl and Teddy industry can really do that to you. No-one gives them- Pete Rock’s ‘Petestrumentals’ is the second instalment
Riley and before long Pete was working on the ‘In selves time, they just keep putting shit out and straining of BBE’s ‘Beat Generation’ series which aims to release
Control With Marley Marl’ show on WBLS. He was themselves. You can hear it in the music - it goes from quality original music from esteemed beatmakers such
just a short step away from producing his own shit: good to mediocre and then to bad. I always try to stay as Pete Rock, Marley Marl, DJ Spinna, King Britt, Jazzy
“People like Heavy D showed me a lot about equipment, fresh, try not to go down that route, give myself some Jay and others.
34 KNOWLEDGE
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