Pete Rock has thrown a little shade in the direction of today’s Hip Hop producers for not being creative enough when it comes to digging for samples.
Rock has long established himself as one of Hip Hop’s most prolific producers — alongside the likes of DJ Premier, RZA, Q-Tip and J Dilla. And, as half of Pete Rock & CL Smooth, the Bronx native became a pioneer of sorts of the 1990s East Coast sound due to his partiality for sampling heavy, jazz-infused beats alongside numerous iconic collaborations with artists from Redman and Run-DMC to Skyzoo and Kanye West.
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But on Thursday (March 16), the Chocolate Boy Wunda had few words of wisdom to offer and instead opted to criticize the direction producers have taken, in which they are flipping more recent tracks — many of which were already hits to begin with.
“They are resampling rap and r&b records that was made only 3-4 years ago [crying laughing face emoji] no diggin for the hits they sampling what was already a hit recently lol [shrug emoji],” he wrote via Twitter.
A sentiment that resonated with fans. “Rap these days is a joke. Marketing machine$,” wrote one Twitter user, echoing his agreement with Pete.
Another suggested Diddy was to blame for the current state of sampling, writing: “I blame Puffy [shrug emoji] sampling used to be one of the most creative aspects of good Hip Hop [one hundred emoji]. Taking a sound, beat, whatever and looping it, til it sounded completely different.. then Puff said F it and just started hijacking entire tracks and just flipping the lyrics, [skull emoji].”
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This isn’t the first time Pete Rock, a veteran in the game, has sounded off about the new era of Hip Hop. In 2020, he shared a clip of Tory Lanez explaining how “rap is in a horrible place,” — a concern he echoed in a lengthy caption, via Instagram.
“Horrible! This new shit is forced!” he wrote. “No Leadership just Followers! what happened to the actual artist who gave you official inspiration for real to become something in music? for me it was marley marl, teddy riley, howie tee, 45 king, Larry Smith (RIP). This new generation shits on that, leading music to a bad place.”
He continued: “Where i come from if your talent wasnt for real you had no chance. The music business is built for music people not just any artist, any DJ or any producer. God had to bless you with something real to share with the world in order to be seen or heard your true talent had to shine through.”
“Today you dont have to have talent no more. just a look, a instagram page or some sort of social media presence or you can also act like an idiot too and get on today,” he added. “Integrity of hip hop is out the window due to greed and thirstyness to be popular. Thats today’s generation. Minus the real dudes yall know who yall are, my 90’s torch bearers and dudes who keep the music real. Even some artist from my generation can be annoying. i got love for them even when they dont show it back to me.
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“Mainstream radio sounds really bad and nobody in that world cares about real music anymore. they big up this new shit like its talent involved. Mofo’s hate the truth, and thats a gotdamn shame man. Big up to all real artist who make real music from new to old. Mainstream world [thumbs down emoji].”
