Although New York producer Pete Rock has remained a prominent figure in East Coast Hip Hop for decades, he revealed that it was only through the help of a handful of other producers that he began to expand his musical palate.
The noted beatsmith revealed that prior to linking up with the likes of Large Professor and J Dilla, his musical taste was heavy on the soul. He also spoke more in-depth on his relationship with J Dilla and how he was instantly blown away by the producers beats.
“Large Professor is a great producer. He’s inspired me to dig more into other things and listen to other stuff,” Pete Rock explained in a video posted on NahRight.com. “When I was only listening to like James Brown and Isaac Hayes and Barry White and so forth. There were other things out there. I was just aware of that from not only Large Professor, but lots of other people as well. Q-Tip, J. Dilla. James Yancey, he was such a humble, nice guy. You don’t meet too many people like that in the music industry…We shared music, listening to music. He used to blow me away with his beats and I became a fan instantly.”
Prior to speaking on Large Professor and J Dilla, Pete Rock touched on working with Kanye West on the Watch The Throne record “The Joy” which features a sample from Curtis Mayfield.
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“Kanye reached out to me. I came out to Hawaii,” said Pete Rock. “I worked on like eight beats and out of the eight we narrowed it down to one. I helped him out on a couple of other beats and that’s it. We did that song; it’s a Curtis Mayfield sample that I used to listen to growing up as a kid. My father used to play it…I remember it from then.”
