Speaking with New York Observer about the closing of his longtime recording space D&D Studios in Manhattan, DJ Premier announced that MF DOOM is set to appear on a bonus track for the upcoming deluxe version of his collaborative album with Royce Da 5’9, PRhyme.
“The album’s doing really good,” he said. “We’re shooting a video for every song on it and Royce and I are hitting the road in February. We’re also getting ready to release the deluxe version with three to five new cuts on it. I can’t name all of the artists on it, but we’ve got MF DOOM on one. We’re putting that out on 45-inch box set and digital.”
During the interview, Premier also recalled some of his favorite memories at the D&D Studios location and hinted that his upcoming move to Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens comes with an opportunity to push his career into a new area.
“I’ll still be working on hip-hop projects and also expanding on that,” he said. “They do a lot of television and film at Kaufman. They do Orange Is The New Black, they did Goodfellas and all of The Cosby Show episodes, so I’ll be able to get into film scoring and that whole world, which I want to do. I’ve done some scoring in the past, but I want to get into it on a bigger level—a Danny Elfman level.”
Asked about the climate of the D&D studio in the 1990s, DJ Premier recalled Jay Z and The Notorious B.I.G. recording “Brooklyn’s Finest” together at the space.
“Back then, Black Moon and the rest of Boot Camp Clik had a big chapter in the A Room at D&D,” he started. “That was a standard picture here. Jay Z too. He would book my room, the A Room and the D Room, which was a newly built studio space in the back that they later tore down. He would have them all blocked so that he could knock out three or four songs at a time. I remember when Jay and Biggie recorded ‘Brooklyn’s Finest’ for Reasonable Doubt in here. I didn’t do that beat, but they needed a place to rock.”
Diving farther back, the Gang Starr producer even confirmed getting into fistfights with Guru at the studio.
“He had a couple of bandages and bruises after that,” Primo said of a fight around the time of recording the duo’s White Men Can’t Jump soundtrack offering. “I still have his teeth marks right there [points to his fist]. That’s where he bit me and they never went away. Now I’m proud to have those teeth marks. I’m not a tough guy, but I’ll throw down just like the rest of them if I have to.
“We’d fight all the time and then immediately afterwards be like, ‘I love you,'” he added. “I have no complex about saying that. We’d hug like long-lost brothers and then his line was always, ‘Yo, let’s go out tonight.’ He loved to drink and chase women. That was his thing apart from making money and recording music. Through all the fights though, we’d always motivate each other and it fueled the music. Look at how many albums we made. And we had been fighting since No More Mr. Nice Guy.”
