Hip Hop Production Quotes

Prince, Bootsy Collins, Earth Wind & Fire and Parliament all had albums that sound different. I wanted to show, as a hip-hop producer, I'm one of those that can do anything, because I was raised on so much music aside from rap and hip-hop.

I grew up around electronic instruments. To me, the turntable is an electronic device. At the same time, I had access to drum machines and keyboards through my uncle; then track recorders into computers. At an early age, I was messing with computers more than most hip-hop musicians.

I grew up on Dilla, Timbaland, Pharrell, all these drums that are super pocketed, so all those influences come out on a song like 'Ungrateful Eyes,' with all the crazy drum swing.

It was actually working with Kendrick Lamar that pushed me further into the act of songwriting, specifically.

The whole '400 Degreez' album was inspired by what Outkast was doing, Organized Noize. That was what I was listening to around that time.

So I was about 19 when I got my first SP-1200, and on that SP-1200, I made 'Bring The Pain' and a few other classic Wu joints.

I had a boom box with a dual cassette deck and a mic, so I used to make pause tapes. I think a lot of people started like that because it was all I had. I would just take rap records that I liked and just loop the beat by pressing pause and record and make, like, five minutes of these beats.

Hip-hop and electronic music are so similar, in the fact that they're both very visceral, have so much bass; a lot of times, it's the same tempos. The culture and some of the sound design is different but a lot of times, it's the same stuff.

'Welcome to Atlanta' was a song I wanted to do on my first album. The idea was for me and Outkast to do it, but I could never come up with a beat for us to do it. Outkast beats and my beats were very different.

I try to get the hip-hop aesthetic, most times without an MC. I don't use a rapper or a DJ to give it the hip-hop style; it's strictly the band that makes that music, which is a lot harder to do.

Kanye is producing in the true sense of the word. 'Real Friends' was an idea started by me and Boi-1da. We passed it off to Kanye, and Kanye kind of stripped it down and had Havoc add some drums to it. Kanye had the vision. That's really true-school production.

Every time I want to impress someone about samples and hip-hop, I play 'Portrait of Tracy.' It's one of the greatest bass players ever doing a whole composition with only the two harmonics of electric bass; then a three-second loop in it became every great R&B song in five-year intervals.

My brother's been producing rap music and hip-hop for maybe 10 years.

'I Used To Love H.E.R.,' from a production standpoint, was a brainchild of the style I developed on 'Soul By The Pound.'

I've worked with incredible producers in the past, but when me and El-P got in a room, there was no way I was going to let off his head because not only was he one of the greatest producers I heard, he was one of the illest rappers I had ever heard.

I wanted to make something that reminded people of the way albums used to feel. I wanted something as good as the stuff put out by the Bomb Squad, or Dr. Dre and his production crew, or 'A Tribe Called Quest.' I miss albums like those.

I really didn't even pick producers. I just picked beats, except for Dre - he's the only producer I knew I wanted to work with.

With every song, all the elements have to work. First, the beat has to be great - you start there. You start with the music, and then the ideas follow. Then you start thinking of rhymes, and then you record it, and sometimes - this happens to me a lot - it doesn't come out as good as it did in my head when I first wrote it.

I love Dilla, and who knows where this beat thing would be without him.

All the Public Enemy albums, I knew what records they were sampling but was like, 'How'd they construct it like this?!'

I get upset when people knock hip-hop, because I can absolutely see the musicality in it. These days, when I'm listening to records by hip-hop artists, I hear the production. It's just astounding how great the productions have become.

I can't really even name a person I like in hip-hop music.

I really wanna make hip-hop music, but I don't know how to use any of the tools. Electronic, computer skills, I don't have those for engineering or making beats. I don't know how to use a sampler well. I don't know how to use any of these things.

Everything I did on the 'Paid in Full' album and those first three albums, I wrote everything right in the studio.

People don't understand how long it really takes to find beats. Sometimes they're not all the way there, but it's elements in them I love. Then I get to take them to get chopped up. Ye got to cook over a few of them.