Isaac's Favorite Cuts - Part VII

It's hard to believe, but today is the 5th anniversary of this blog. To celebrate, let's look at another cutmaster: DJ Premier. This one should have been up here long ago, but we post something about once every six months or so (we're lazy), and it just hasn't happened. Not like anyone's reading anyways, so no harm. But seriously, what better person to honor on a milestone day?

I can't think of a hip hop producer with a better ear for loops and matching the appropriate drums with those loops. Really proper stuff. And it's not like Premier is using tons of layers of loops, trying to get all unnecessarily complicated; rather, he finds the tight shit and flips it in his own way (i.e. the right way).

But growing up, I took all of this for granted. It sounded so natural that I wasn't even paying attention to it. Instead, I was blown away by his scratching. Premier was getting his on almost every song. And, in the same vein that the loops and drums were seamless, the cuts and samples fit. And they were funky as hell. Never the most complicated, but always creative and well-executed (and again, funky). Plus, when it was time to cut on the chorus, he wasn't reaching for Generic Battle Record to flex, he was either snatching another Gang Starr Foundation record, or dude went digging again. Whatever fit the song, he was finding it.

Let's face it, we could put 100 examples up here. Instead, here are a couple of highlights:

Take a Rest: The little scribbles in here are awesome on their own. Then he ties them together back-to-back. In my circle of friends, we used to call this technique of doing back-to-back scribbles "the scratch" and there was a point in time that this was the ultimate scratch for me.

2 Deep: Relatively basic, rhythmic cuts of James Brown's voice is a recipe for gold in Premier's hands. He just rocks with it nice and easy through the fade out of the track. An additional bonus here is the fader/switch crackle. I love that shit.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Simple, but incredible sample selection. Any time you can slip Kool Keith in there, I'll be cheering. And his ending with the series of "haha-haha-haha-haha-haha see ya later" is killer.

As I Read My S-A: I love how he includes a backspin in the intro to this segment and keeps it moving. Usually, a backspin sounds sort of like a weird cop-out to me, but he uses it really nicely -- it fits. He also does some slow pull-back stuff that my friend Rob Zimmerman and I used to imitate and laugh about. If you listen closely, there's a little record rumble in there too (obviously not intentional, but it still makes me nostalgic).

DWYCK: Every hip hop kid knows this jam. It's a party rocker, and it includes (among other things): Greg Nice's patented echoed delivery and a video showing GURU (RIP) rapping from some sort of rickshaw and Premo sitting down on the pier cutting away on a single turntable. His cuts are sweet on this track. Lots of slow pull-backs on here. In the summer between high school and college, I went to Rob's house and he had two copies of the DWYCK 12". He threw the instrumental on one side, and replicated all of Premier's cuts (verbatim) on the other table. I'll never forget it.

Okay, enough already. Hopefully I'll be more succinct in the 10 year anniversary post.