Let’s just get this out of the way right now. When it comes to the greatest hip hop producers of all time Pete Rock, quite frankly, has the potential to go down in history as the best to ever do it.

Rock’s reach, influence, and impact on the art of beat production has endured well over 15 years, and extends well into today’s underground and mainstream. Kanye’s earlier work, 9th Wonder, Just Blaze and a slew of other dudes that integrate horns, soul riffs and other super-chopped-samples into their tracks are all taking their cues from the Pete. That newer hop-sound that was more influenced by straight-ahead jazz and late-60s/early-70s soul predated Rock, a tad. Let’s take a look back.

De La Soul (and therefore Prince Paul) and Tribe Called Quest (and therefore Shaheed and Q-Tip) had come out a few years before Pete and CL debuted with the All Souled Out EP in 1991, But Pete wasn’t sitting in Mount Vernon, listening to 3 Feet High and Rising or People’s Instinctive Travels and -- voila! -- he had his musical style. Those Native Tongue albums may have introduced hip hop to jazzier sounds, but Pete was different.

It wasn't just jazzy, Pete was more soul. His arrangements and samples created sounds that were much more lush and organic (not acoustic) than the dissonance and frenzy of the Bomb Squad, the James Brown funk of EPMD, or the later menace and shrill of the RZA. But despite his rejection of hip hop’s traditional minimalist approach, Rock’s beats still banged. They were still edgy—musically. The records and bands he drew from were so obscure and sampled so magnificently and technically. So much so that the original track is rendered indiscernible, creating a new musical approach altogether. It’s likely that PR has the deepest crates, you can tell with his music.
So, in the midst of the polar extremes of the early 90s – the alternative-hop of the Native Tongues and the brewing hardcore gangsta subgenre coming from the West, and all variations in between – you had Pete coming out with this mélange that was funky-soulful-jazzy and blatantly hip hop all at the same time. Rock was unique and with the help of Large Professor, showed a lot of these younger kats how to do this.

As an artist and an auteur, Rock was also particularly adept at creating albums that were profound statements. Mecca and the Soul Brother is a classic amongst classics; the beauty of it not lying solely in its individual tracks, but the creatively fluid interludes that string together the overall vibe of the album. Whether it was a 30-45 second soul break or a random freestyle session, Pete was able to piece different elements of soul and black music to create a piece of timeless art that epitomized the hip hop aesthetic. And while Main Ingredient isn’t necessarily held in the same esteem, it should be. It is clearly the sonic and artistic equal to the magnificence that Dr. Dre, DJ Premiere, and the RZA were pumping out at the time.

Pete was one of the first producers to really put the music in the forefront. He is the pioneer of the “producer album”. 1998’s Soul Survivor is an unequivocal classic not only because Pete stayed true to the essence of soul and funk that carried him in the face of an industry that was more style over substance, but because he executed a concept which was completely foreign to hip hop at the time. Never before had a producer taken center stage and top billing on a project that wasn’t a mixtape. Soul Survivor is a fully fleshed out album that is strung together both thematically and musically. Pete reversed the role of the producer-emcee relationship. Emcees were hand-picked for tracks as opposed to emcees hand picking producers. And Pete was so ill that he could make disparate, diverse group of emcees and seemelessly put them on the same album. Only Pete Rock could musically and sonically unify coasts and take emcees the likes of MC Eight, Kurupt Lord Tariq & Peter Gunz, Ghostface and Raekwon, and make them sound like they should be on the same album. He keeps realmusic alive, he is the Soul Survivor. He then followed suit with one of the warmest and soulfully inviting beattapes of our time in Petestrumentals. Soul Survivor II followed in similar format to its predecessor and one can only gleefully anticipate what 2008’s NY Finest will bring. I’ll go out on a limb and make a prediction: the drums will snap, the basslines will be lush, and the soul will be pervasive. It will be hip hop as engineered by one of the game’s premier pioneers.


Pete Rock Discography:
1991 – All Souled Out (EP)
1992 – Mecca and the Soul Brother
1994 – Main Ingredient
1995 – Center of Attention (with INI, released in 2003)
1995 – The Original Baby Pa (with Deda, released in 2003)
1998 – Soul Survivor
2001 – Petestrumentals
2004 – Soul Survivor II
2008 – NY's Finest

The Vids
Video #1: Pete Rock breaking down his technique on the MPC2000. I dare anyone to watch this video in its entirety and say that hip hop producers are NOT musicians. (Video courtesy of Future Music Magazine. Please visit http://www.futuremusicmag.com)

Video #2: The historic war cry against bootleggers, Pete Rock & CL Smooth’s “Straighten It Out” video off of their debut LP Mecca and the Soul Brother. The stuff of legend right here.