Hip-hop producer DJ Premier: ‘I’ll be 90 and making boom-bap!’

“When I left Houston to go live in New York, my father said: ‘Son, I don’t get this whole hip-hop thing . . . it’s not my generation. Just promise me this: if you are going to be a rap producer, make sure your face is on Mount Rushmore and everyone knows your name. Be the best.’ I promised him that’s what I was going to do.”

Few could argue that DJ Premier (real name Christopher Edward Martin) failed to deliver on that promise. The acclaimed music-maker has elevated sampling to an art form, taking the eclectic jazz and soul records of his youth and bending them into new shapes for his beats.

The scratching that often punctuates his work (as on “Ain’t the Devil Happy” by Jeru the Damaja) is no less exhilarating. “When I lay scratches, it’s like having sex,” he says over Zoom from his home studio in New York. “It’s like ‘whooo’ and then this big release. To touch vinyl with your fingertips is an emotional experience, it’s a visceral connection to the music.” 

Since the late 1980s, Premier has not only worked with legendary emcees such as Nas (“N.Y. State of Mind”), Jay-Z (“D’Evils”), Big L (“The Enemy”) and The Notorious B.I.G. (“Kick in the Door”), he has made a habit of producing their best songs. Meanwhile, in the influential group Gang Starr, he and late Boston rapper Guru took hip-hop to new heights with streetwise poetry and turntable wizardry.

Although the duo’s music grew out of the tough streets of Brooklyn, which Premier made his home, they were preoccupied with finding peace amid the chaos of the concrete jungle, with Guru famously rapping on 1992’s “2 Deep”: “Violence is never my first choice/I come in peace to release the effect of my voice.” Thirty years later, it’s a sentiment of which the Grammy-winning Premier remains proud.

“I still live by that lyric,” Premier says. “Violence should always be the last possible option. Anyone who was violent [on my block] wasn’t happy and they were living an unstable life. Usually all they needed was a big hug or words of encouragement that their life could be better. With Gang Starr, we tried to push people on to the right path.”

At 56, he might be expected to slow down and enjoy the royalty cheques that come with having produced the greatest anthems of rap’s golden age. “I remember in my 20s thinking I don’t want to be an old-ass 50-year-old still making rap beats,” he laughs. Yet it’s clear that his enthusiasm for music remains unwavering.

His new EP, Hip Hop 50: Vol 1, is the first in a series marking the genre’s looming 50th birthday next year and featuring big-name guest performers including Nas, Run the Jewels, Slick Rick, Rapsody, Remy Ma and Lil Wayne.

“I wanted it to be balanced, so it was important I had female emcees on there,” Premier says. “I thought Remy Ma and Rapsody would feed off one another well. Remy is raw and grimy; Rapsody has more of a Lauryn Hill-type vibe . . . Run the Jewels was a given after the success of [our last collaboration] ‘Ooh La La’ . . . and I had to get a Nas record. This EP is a celebration of hip-hop history. It’s like going to a graduation ceremony and looking back.”

Reflecting on the past is something that Premier does often during our conversation, especially when it comes to his contemporaries who didn’t make it. “When Gang Starr was coming up, we had people shoot at us and a lot of our peers were murdered,” he says. “I just wanted to earn enough money to be safe. But, with time, I realised quitting wasn’t an option.”

Pointing to the turntable, the stack of records and the MPC sampling machine that sit on the studio desk behind him, Premier continues in his warm yet gravelly voice: “This is what I do. Going to a record store and finding a gem is like a drug for me, so I will just keep on cooking. I’ll be 90 and making boom-bap, pissing off the nurses!” 

There were early inklings of his future career even when he was a small child growing up in Texas. “I was obsessed with my mom’s record player and curious to know how the needle would automatically find the right groove to start the vinyl,” he recalls. “So I took it apart with a screwdriver to see what its insides looked like. My mum whooped my ass for that!”

It was also here that he discovered many of the songs that would come to be the crucial ingredients of his craft. “I was listening to my mom’s Motown, Curtis Mayfield, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, Natalie Cole and Aretha Franklin LPs. To me, those artists were some of the very first rappers. If you listen to Pigmeat Markham, Teddy Pendergrass, George Clinton or even James Brown, they’re talking shit just like rappers do today . . . By sampling these artists, I wanted to show that hip-hop was keeping their energy alive.”

Sampling has had a long and difficult relationship with copyright law, and in 2022 continues to be controversial. Many US producers complain about “sample snitching”, fans tracking down the original samples and posting them online, which can lead to them being sued by the artists they have borrowed from. However, Premier says that in his experience a simple conversation can often avert any legal entanglements.

“I’ve been sued several times by old jazz musicians and whatnot, but I always ask to speak to the artist. When they can see I’m trying to take their sample and do something brand new with it, they realise how impressive it is and we sort it out,” he explains. “We’re keeping their sound alive, but also pushing it forward. That’s a beautiful thing.”

Premier’s beats have been known to spark nostalgia in rappers and inspire them. For “Memory Lane (Sittin’ in da Park)” on Nas’s 1994 masterpiece Illmatic, Premier sampled the carefree notes and yearning vocal coos of Reuben Wilson’s “We’re In Love”, prompting the rapper to reflect on his childhood in the Queensbridge projects, where a friend was robbed and shot for his sheepskin coat.

“You know, ‘Memory Lane’ was all Nas’s idea,” Premier says humbly. “He thought the Reuben Wilson song felt like sitting in the park on a summer’s day, reflecting back to being a kid and having no worries. So I chopped it up and added some drums to it.”

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Although Premier is renowned for his hip-hop work, he has consistently pushed himself outside of his comfort zone, producing pop hits for Christina Aguilera (“Ain’t No Other Man”), stoner blues anthems (Devin the Dude’s “Doobie Ashtray”) and funked-out neo-soul (D’Angelo’s “Devil Pie”). He cuts across musical genres with real relish, with the ultimate aim of proving that hip-hop’s influence can reach just about everywhere.

I ask him what he thinks hip-hop might sound like in another 50 years. “It will still sound like what I’ve been doing,” he says. “I’m going to keep making music this way and I hope others do too. If you love something, why stop? It is like a marriage. If you love your spouse then you stay true to them forever.”

‘Hip Hop 50: Vol 1’ is available now on Mass Appeal Records

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