Digging / Producing - the usual ish...

DJCire

I was reading up on some Roosevelt Hotel goodness the other day (from Wax Po') (how dealers/sellers were looking for beats/breaks to sell at the show). http://www.waxpoetics.com/features/articles/elbow-to-elbow

This got me thinking about a couple things. One, I don't really consider this diggin. Don't get me wrong, I've been to spots where I've bought the goods from dealers, etc. (especially nowadays). But imo its just not what I would call diggin - for the simple fact that the diggin has already been done for you. Two, my next thoughts were more in line with dudes like Tip, Large Pro, Pete Rock, DITC, etc. - people who are known to have substantial collections and are also producers - were their sound/songs more based on the records bought from shows like those at the Roosevelt Hotel? Was it probably a combination or stuff from Roosevelt and real digs? I know in Pete Rock's case he inherited a lot of records so that would seem to be a combination of things. Or does it not matter and is it really just about the craft of making great songs and really who gives a sh*t where they got the record from...? Which I'm ok with too!!!

Complete hindsight here and curiosity as well. Am based on the left coast so I never experienced Roosevelt or have ever gone to the other shows/conventions that went on/go on... Thoughts?

Duderonomy

I'm sure a lot of the early '90s hottest beats were hooked up from dealers who knew what producers were looking for. I doubt the producers cared about anything more than how much a record would cost and if it had already been flipped. There's definitely some anecdote about the POZ drums being sold by a record dealer, and more recently there was The Next Episode - I think the Sound Library or A1 sold that beat... there was a documentary with Mark B (UK hip-hop producer) discussing The Edge record.

asstro

We need Phil Most to pop in here and share some wisdom since he was actually at those shows. The impression I got was that the heavyweight dudes were digging but that early on they relied on dealers to find them obscure things that they could use. Then they probably realized that they could probably find hot records on their own and not have to pay dealer prices for them.

I just dug on one of Phil's old websites and there was this interview with one of the Roosevelt dealers, pretty relevant.

http://www.samplehead.com/worldofbeats/volume15.html

DJCire

asstro said:

We need Phil Most to pop in here and share some wisdom since he was actually at those shows. The impression I got was that the heavyweight dudes were digging but that early on they relied on dealers to find them obscure things that they could use. Then they probably realized that they could probably find hot records on their own and not have to pay dealer prices for them.

I just dug on one of Phil's old websites and there was this interview with one of the Roosevelt dealers, pretty relevant.

http://www.samplehead.com/worldofbeats/volume15.html

I checked that too! All of it is really interesting to me and just got me wondering...

HarveyCanal

There are no rules to this shit. Make a great song/album however you can. Only thing that matters is the end-result. If it bangs, doesn't matter how it got to that point...just let it bang away.