Jazzy Jay even goes so far as to suggest that the original musicians may not have understood the significance of their own work: “Maybe those records were ahead of their time. Maybe they were made specifically for the rap era; these people didn’t even know what they were making at that time. They thought, ‘Oh, we want to make a jazz record’” (Leland and Stein 1987: 26).
As digital sampling became the method of choice for hip-hop deejays (who, now that they used sampling, began to call themselves “producers”), their preexisting hunger for rare records became of paramount importance. They developed elaborate distribution systems for records and knowledge about records, yet still went to great lengths to “discover” new breaks before others did. In the mid-1980s, a Bronx-based deejay named Lenny Roberts began to press compilations of rare recordings, each containing a sought-after rhythm break, under the name Ultimate Breaks and Beats (Leland and Stein 1987: 27). This development reinforced the producers’ resolve to find new breaks that were rarer, and in response Roberts would compile those new breaks on new editions of Ultimate Breaks and Beats. As a result of such competition, hip-hop producers soon found themselves with record collections numbering in the tens of thousands as well as a deeply embedded psychological need to find rare records.
At the same time, this process established a canon of records—some of which appeared on Ultimate Breaks and Beats, some of which did not —that a producer had to be familiar with, an expectation that still stands to this day. For example, Bob James’s 1975 jazz fusion recording “Take Me to the Mardi Gras,” though it does not appear on Ultimate Breaks and Beats, was a favorite of early hip-hop deejays and producers (most notably, it forms the basis for Run-DMC’s “Peter Piper” [1986]). It is so well known, in fact, that few contemporary producers would even consider using it for their own productions.5 Nevertheless, producers must have the recording in their collections if they want to be taken seriously by others. As I discuss in later chapters, record collecting occupies a role for hip-hop producers similar to that of practice and performing experience for other musicians. Peers would consider a producer who did not own canonical records to be unprepared, in much the same way that jazz musicians would criticize a colleague who did not know the changes to “Stardust.”
The Ultimate Breaks and Beats series, for its part, eventually grew to twenty-five volumes and spawned hundreds of imitators (see chapters 5 and 6).
That was big, big, big, big influence to me, you know. I had ’em back in the days in like 1983, 1984, before they were even Ultimate Breaks, when they was just Octopus records with the little picture of the Octopus DJ on ’em…. That’s what they were originally. And they didn’t list any of the artists’ names or anything, it was just the titles of the songs, no publishing info or nothing. It was just something somebody pressed up out of their house or something. Yeah, they were a big, big influence, man. I mean, I had all of ’em: doubles and triples of everything.
That was the foundation of hip-hop, man, ’cause you listen to all the rap records when they first started sampling, and it was all that Ultimate Break stuff. That’s the foundation, right there. (Stroman 1999)
Although many producers today see such compilations as a violation of producers’ ethics (see chapter 5), most make an exception for the Ultimate Breaks and Beats collection on the grounds of its historical significance in alerting producers to the value of breaks in the first place: “Those were the ones that started folks looking for breaks and shit, anyway. I don’t know too many people that got the original ‘Substitution’ break, you know? So nine times out of ten, if you hear that shit on a rap record, they got it from Ultimate Breaks and Beats” (Samson S. 1999).6 Of course, not everyone made this exception:
Even [Ultimate Breaks and Beats]—I’ll tell ya, man—there was a lotta mixed feelings about those, too…. You talk to old school cats like Grandmaster Flash, and they’ll tell you that was like the worst thing to ever happen to hip-hop ’cause it took all the mystery out of the whole breakbeat game. But it inspired me, man. If it wasn’t for them, I don’t know if I’d even be in it to the level that I am now. (Stroman 1999)
As the 1980s wore on, the potential of digital sampling to go beyond the mere replication of deejaying techniques led to an increasingly sophisticated aesthetic for hip-hop music. In particular, producers made use of samplers’ ability to play numerous samples at the same time (a technique which would have required multiple deejays and turntables), to take very short samples (which would have required very fast deejays) and to assemble these samples in any order, with or without repetition as desired (which could not be done by deejays at all).7 The creative exploitation of these new techniques, along with parallel advances in emceeing, has led to the late 1980s being called the “golden era” of hip-hop.
One of the most significant forces in this development was the Bomb Squad, a production collective that became known for its work with Public Enemy. Their style—a blend of samples from diverse sources that emphasized chaos and noise—revolutionized hip-hop music. Keith Shock lee, one of the Bomb Squad’s masterminds, specifically characterizes their sound as being in contrast to the typical African American fare of the time, supporting my earlier argument that hip-hop was not an organic development:
Public Enemy was never an R&B-based, runnin’-up-the-charts, gettin’-played-all-day-on-the-radio group. It was a street group. It was basically a thrash group, a group that was very much rock ’n’ roll oriented. We very seldom used bass lines because the parallel that we wanted to draw was Public Enemy and Led Zeppelin. Public Enemy and the Grateful Dead. We were not polished and clean like any of the R&B groups or even any of our rap counterparts that were doing a lotta love rap. That just wasn’t our zone—even though when we were DJs we played all those records. We decided that we wanted to communicate something that was gonna be three dimensional—something that you could look at from many different sides and get information from as well as entertainment. (Chairman Mao 1998: 113–114)
But for most producers, the contribution of Public Enemy and the Bomb Squad lay not so much in their particular approach but in the fact that they had a definable approach in the first place. They were self-consciously breaking new ground in their production style, and that was an inspiration to other producers.
Modern producers cite other historical figures from the late 1980s, such as Ced G of the Ultramagnetic MCs, Kurtis Mantronik, Prince Paul of De La Soul, and the Large Professor as artists whose individualistic styles contributed greatly to contemporary approaches. In fact, this collectively held historical consciousness is clearly one of the things that holds the producers’ community together. The veneration of certain lesser-known hip-hop artists, for example, creates a common bond among contemporary producers.8 One example of this tendency is the respect given to Paul C, a New York–based producer of the late 1980s who passed away before his work became widely known but whose style is heard in the music of those he influenced: “He kinda put it down for Ced G and Extra P [also known as the Large Professor] … I think he was one of hip-hop’s biggest losses of all time. I think he was destined to be dope. He was gon’ be the man. He was the best producer that never happened” (DJ Mixx Messiah 1999). Although his name is largely unknown in the broader hip-hop community, Paul C was cited as an influence by virtually every producer I interviewed for this study.
The move by hip-hop deejays into the studio was part of a larger trend throughout the spectrum of popular music toward the increased use of technology in the creation of music. It is no accident that the individuals who create hip-hop music call themselves “producers” rather than composers or musicians. The term “producer” came into vogue in popular music in the 1960s with such individuals as Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, and George Martin. While a recording engineer uses recording equipment to capture a sound on tape,
