RandoMax Radio's Producers Guild - Episode #2: DJ Premier

Producers Guild is a series celebrating the creators behind the boards of your favorite songs. Listen to today's episode and leave your comments, suggestions, questions, criticisms, and/or whatever you have for me below so we can continue the conversation.

Chris "DJ Premier" Martin is a producer that truly needs no introduction, but that would make for a terrible introduction for today's episode, so I'm forced to give a bit more information. A Brooklyn-based artist by way of Houston, Texas, Martin is an institution within our chosen genre at this point: when you read his name in song credits, you know that you're going to hear hard drums, influences drawn from jazz, soul, and funk records, and multiple vocal samples creatively thrown together into a gumbo we refer to as "boom bap". DJ Premier may actually be the godfather of boom bap, his very existence embodying the sound that laid a foundation for not just New York street shit during the 1990's and early 2000's, but for the way that our chosen genre sounds even today. Premier has influenced a lot of people with his template, and while imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, you'd be hard-pressed to find a producer who would admit to ripping the man off, given just how much he's contributed to the culture as a whole. 



A lot of you two will know the man best through his work as one-half of the legendary group gang Starr, which Premier formed with Boston-based emcee-slash-producer Guru (R.I.P.). Your first exposure to the man's technique was likely here, whether it was with their jazzy debut, No More Mr. Nice Guy, or their pivot into the harder sounds of Hard To Earn, which reflected both the spirit of the day and the reality of those who were forced to grow up quickly while hustling to make a living. It was through Guru and his Gang Starr Foundation, a loose collective of emcees that included among its ranks Jeru the Damaja, Big Shug, and the duo Group Home, that Preemo (Guru's preferred nickname for the man) found his success multiplying many times over: his became a highly sought-after sound, and the man quickly found himself commissioned to provide instrumental backing for luminaries such as Nas, Jay-Z, The Notorious B.I.G., M.O.P., and far too many more to list here without boring you to death. In fact, his work permeated the culture in such a manner that one could conceivably not be taken seriously unless they were the recipient of a DJ Premier co-sign. (I make fun of the fact that Preemo seemingly sold his beats to whoever had cash in hand, resulting in collaborations with artists you've never heard from again such as Truck Turner, Sonya Blade, and All City, but the reality is that those folks were lucky enough to grab Martin's ear, even if just for a moment, and honestly, if I were a rapper and I had the wherewithal to do it, I'd try to secure a Preemo beat too. Wouldn't you?)

Simply put, DJ Premier's beats could help a meh rapper sound entertaining and a good rapper sound like a fucking God behind the microphone. The man knows what he is doing, and his continued longevity in the music industry today is proof. Preemo may be more interested in challenging himself to create more unique output these days, but as some of his more recent production credits show, he'll never fully leave boom bap behind. Does boom bap even exist without DJ Premier at the helm? Discuss.

Similar to the previous episode featuring work from The Automator, Episode 2 of the Producers Guild series compiles a bunch of DJ Premier production efforts in seemingly a random manner (hence the RandoMax tag), my only rule being that every track featured is one that I liked in the moment, a feeling which hopefully transfers to you. The goal is to showcase a wide array of the man's work behind the boards in an accessible manner, which means that, yes, you may be familiar with a lot of these tracks already - while there may be some rarities hidden here and there, that isn't my focus here. Instead, what I want to do with this series is construct the gateway for your knowledge of the subject, in the hope that you will choose to walk through and bask in the glory on your own.



Today's episode bounces around to a lot of the high points of DJ Premier's career, such as his work with the likes of Nas, Biggie, and his more recent duo PRhyme (alongside Royce da 5'9"), but there are a few curveballs, as you can see below.

PRODUCERS GUILD EPISODE #2: DJ PREMIER
1. Nas - N.Y. State of Mind
2. The Notorious B.I.G. - Kick In The Door
3. Tony Touch - Gangsta Gangsta (featuring Tego Calderon)
4. Jeru the Damaja - You Can't Stop The Prophet
5. Bahamadia - 3 the Hard Way (featuring K-Swift and Mecca Star)
6. PRhyme - Wishin' (featuring Common)
7. The Lady of Rage - Some Shit
8. Limp Bizkit - N 2 Gether Now (featuring Method Man)
9. Gang Starr - So Wassup?!
10.Devin the Dude - Doobie Ashtray
11. Jay-Z - A Million and One Questions (Remix)
12. Christina Aguilera - Still Dirrty
13. Bumpy Knuckles (Freddie Foxxx) - R.N.S.
14. Gang Starr - DWYCK (featuring Nice & Smooth)
15. D'Angelo - Devil's Pie
16. Group Home - Supa Dupa Star (June 1994 Demo Version)
17. M.O.P. - Stick To Ya Gunz (featuring Kool G Rap)
18. Torii Wolf - Shadows Crawl
BONUS PROGRAM - The Original "Producers Guild - DJ Premier" Selections
19. Jeru the Damaja - Me, Not the Paper
20. Group Home - Suspended in Time (Groovy Remix) (featuring Amel Larrieux)
21. Royce da 5'9" - Boom
22. Big Shug - Crush
23. Crooklyn Dodgers '95 (Chubb Rock, O.C., and Jeru the Damaja) - Return of the Crooklyn Dodgers
24. Ill Bill - Society is Brainwashed

One would think that I could have filled the entire program with nothing but Gang Starr tracks, and one would be correct, but that wouldn't cast the wide net that Preemo has done himself within the music industry. Also, Mixcloud only allows a handful of tracks from one artist or group, but in exchange for following their guidelines they actually pay royalties to the artists, so why haven't you two pressed 'play' yet?

Episode 2 features some unorthodox choices that I'm quite enamored with. That Limp Bizkit track, which I found to be fucking mortifying when I played this mix back in order to check for recording errors, was a big deal back when it first dropped, allowing for the DJ Premier crossover effort to pick up steam (which resulted in projects with both Christina Aguilera and Torii Wolf, both of whom are represented on here), and besides, the beat is still pretty damn good, even if Method Man's chorus is rather embarrassing. The inclusion of both Devin the Dude and D'Angelo represent opposing theories on the R&B spectrum, but both are rather successful in their way, and I imagine there are a lot of folks who dig both tracks. The Group Home track featured isn't the version they're known for, but I find it fascinating, and I was hoping for a reason to include a song on one of these RandoMax mixes where someone (Melachi the Nutcracker, specifically) says "Hitler is a dickhead". (Seriously, how did that line not make the album?) There were too many options to consider when it comes to contributions from acts (and frequent collaborators) such as M.O.P. and Bumpy Knuckles, so I had to choose wisely, but the tracks I did end up selecting bang, so.

DJ Premier had a knack for bringing caustic, sarcastic, and downright aggressive performances from those he worked with, so more so than usual, I should warn you two that today's mix is NSFW and should not be played out loud at your job or in your car while dropping your kids off at school, unless you have a cool-ass boss and/or children, of course.

As an added bonus, to honor the fact that Preemo was the inspiration for the original iteration of my Producers Guild series, I've included six additional tracks at the end of the episode, all of which were included in the first post as examples of the man's versatility behind the boards. I love all of the songs presented there still, except for the Ill Bill track, which I think is fine and more than deserving of its place on the mix, but just know it's there mostly for nostalgic purposes for me. Even with the bonus songs, however, there's still plenty of material to mine for a follow-up to today's episode, which I may or may not have already recorded, who knows for sure?

Does Chris Martin (not the dude from Coldplay) belong in the HHID and RandoMax Radio's Producers Guild? What sets him apart from his peers? What has he done that would disqualify him from entry? What are your favorite Preemo productions? And why is Max going all-in on this podcast series instead of just writing reviews like he should? Let's meet up in the comments to discuss, and listen to the mix, which I hope you'll enjoy.

See you in a week.

-Max