Making Beats. Joseph G. Schloss

ease and domesticity that a home studio can provide is one of its major selling points:

      There’s really no time-rush thing. You’re at the house…. People come through unexpectedly and it just adds a whole different energy in the room. So when you’re busting [rapping], it’s like you kinda get their energy in the track, too…. It’s how you can keep the spontaneity and stuff going. A lotta times, the best ideas that we’ve come up with … they were spontaneous, they just kinda, “Let’s just do this. Let’s do it!” you know? You can’t do that in a studio….

      And you get inspired at different times. You’re not always inspired right then, you know? It’s like, I might be cleaning up the house, listening to some Miles Davis and hear a cold little riff or something, be like, “Man!” you know? “I gotta sample that right now!” Instead of going in the studio, doing all this. If I become inspired by something right there … I’m ’a get to chopping up these pianos, and then lead on from there, I might add these other records and start mixing over it. And it becomes what you hearing on tape. And you can’t get that with just going in the studio. (Vitamin D 1998)

      And yet the very fact that these home studio spaces have their own names (e.g., “the Lion’s Den,” “the Pharmacy,” “the Basement” [Pete Rock’s studio]) suggests that producers actually do see them as being distinct from their general domestic environment. In fact, when referring to the home studio environment in the abstract, producers often refer to it as “the lab,” a term which very clearly draws a distinction between work space and living space.¹⁰

      As with any form of music, an important technique of self-education is to listen to other artists in order to learn new techniques:

      Jake One: I try to get into people like that’s heads … just to know. I’m just curious. You try to break down their method … figure it out. (Jake One 1998)

      Joe: So you, like, listen to other producers and break down their formula …

      Vitamin D: All producers do that, whether they admit it or not. (Vitamin D 1998)

      This does not mean that producers want to imitate each other; the things they listen for tend to be very subtle techniques that nonproducers would most likely not notice. When I asked Negus I if he studied other producers, he was explicit on this point:

      I do. Yup, I do it all the time. Like Timbaland, I’ll put him up there, because I like the way he makes beats, in that he samples occasionally, but for the most part his compositions are original. He does use some sounds, but for the most part he doesn’t use looped samples. I’m impressed by his music, by his beats. Not that I would necessarily emulate his sound, but … I’m impressed with what he’s done, in terms of his originality, his creativity…. But if I made a beat that sounded too much like him, I would be like “Man, that sounds too much like Timbaland.” I wouldn’t be happy with it, because it sounds too much like someone else’s style. (Negus I 1998)

      And such listening is not limited to hip-hop:

      Joe: Do you listen to other producers to break down their method?

      Domino: I listen to all music like that. Today I was listening to the Beatles. I was just peepin’ how they have things panned [where sounds are placed in the stereo field]. And the ways that they totally change the song, within the song. And how they have a certain type of effect behind the MCs’ vocals, or behind the guitar, or whatever.

      Whenever I listen to music, I’m not the type of person who really has it as background music…. I gotta turn it on, and listen to it, and really listen…. That’s just how I am. (Domino 1998)

      Domino’s telling slip—referring to the Beatles’ singers as “MCs”—suggests that he is actually listening to the Beatles as hip-hop music. While he may appreciate many diverse aspects of the Beatles’ music, the elements he cites (how instruments are set off from each other spatially, the structure of the song, the use of various effects) are all specifically applicable to hip-hop production. The producers’ aesthetic is such that innovations from other musical forms can be brought in to their own practice.

      An important adjunct to the listening process is discussion of hip-hop music with other producers. It is not surprising that this often takes the form of ridiculing absent third parties. As I will discuss in chapter 6, ridicule plays an important role in maintaining the continuity of the hip-hop aesthetic; however, it is also an important pedagogical tool. Hearing another producer berated for something can lead a young producer away from it, before it even becomes an issue in his own music:

      King Otto: I really don’t talk with that many producers about making beats, per se. We just talk about other people’s beats…. like make fun of someone else’s beat….

      Joe: What types of things would you make fun of somebody for doing?

      King Otto: There’s occasions where maybe somebody sounds like somebody else, ’cause everyone has their own distinct style, but sometimes you’ll cross the line and make a [DJ] Premier beat. I know I’ve done it. Or maybe a Pete Rock beat. ’Cause their sound is so distinct. If you get too close to it you can tell. (King Otto 1998)

      This process has a secondary function in that by mutually criticizing other hip-hop artists, producers are implicitly complimenting each other on their knowledge and taste:

      I think an interesting dynamic to that, too, is that that type of exchange is something that only happens with people that have relationships with each other where they know that [they both have] a degree of knowledge within music, where that’s even the point for bringing the conversation up. It’s like, “I know how you know mu sic,” so it’s like, “What’s up with this?”

      But it’s not just something that you casually do, just every day. You don’t sit around and critique, or whatever. But, definitely. That’s almost like out of acknowledgement, you know what I’m saying? You respect the other person’s opinion, so you wanna see where they’re at, with the other music. That’s definitely true. MCs do it with MCs. MCs do it to producers. That’s the element within the culture where it’s like, “Is it fresh, or isn’t it?” (Wordsayer 1998)

      The producers’ educational process is not only practical and historical; it is also deeply ideological. Specifically, it promotes the mythological deejay as the cornerstone of the musical form and, by extension, the community itself: “When you learn as a deejay, you learn what the break is about. That’s really like what sampling is about. It’s about the break. And it’s not really about playing music. It’s more of doing what a deejay does” (DJ Kool Akiem 1999).