If you’ve ever fallen in love with a hip-hop beat, chances are DJ Premier made it. With a signature hefty percussive style with bright melodies and often thick piano riffs, the song-maker has created the musical bedrock for countless big-name artists, from Nas to Gang Starr to Macklemore.
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Born Christopher Edward Martin in Houston, Texas, the now-57-year-old artist has earned the acclaim and respect of many. With so much experience and expertise, he has a lot to say about the world at large. Below are the best DJ Premier quotes on subjects such as karma, gun etiquette, the New York state of mind, and so much more.
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1. “I believe in karma; what you do will come back.”
2. “Jazz came from the streets, hip-hop came from the streets. It’s just a different language. It’s all born out of hard times, struggle, and the fight to have equality and things be better.”
3. “I’m all about competition; still am to this day. That’s how you should be, but not with any malice. From Mike Will Made It to Boi-1da to Mike Zombie, I’m out to get ’em all and it’s that friendly competition that keeps us all on our toes.”
4. “That’s the thing with social media: it’s a gift and a curse. It’s cool on one level, but it’s also bad.”
5. “The ghetto music of my era is hip-hop. And Parliament, and Curtis Mayfield, and Marvin Gaye, that was all the ghetto stuff when I was a baby, and then when I was a teenager it was hip-hop and we were taking all those old ’70s sounds and recreating them and putting them into a hip-hop format.”
6. “My mom’s an art teacher, so I always had music in the house. She always had records, and I was mesmerized by the mechanics of how a turntable works.”
7. “The majority of my life is spent doing nothing but godly things, especially when it comes to dealing with other people.”
8. “The great thing was that both K-Ci and JoJo told me to not make an R&B track that was reminiscent of radio hit records. ‘Make a Gang Starr track and we’ll write our lyrics to that,’ they told me. They couldn’t stress it enough.”
9. “You can’t do seven successful albums and just hate each other. Our [Gang Starr’s] yin and yang, and night and day, is what made us great when we went into the studio.”
10. “Yeah, Travis Scott’s dad taught me how to ride minibikes and how to repair the engines. His name’s Jack Webster. Jack had a drum set and his brother had a bass. So I used to play with them, and that’s what started me wanting to get into music and take it serious. And this is before rap.”
11. “It’s whatever—people like me and Dre are music people, so we’re beyond just hip-hop. We’re purists. Not everybody who makes beats is a purist.”
12. “When you have a deep focus, you can’t go wrong at all. Not when you’re an expert at what you do.”
13. “When I hold a gun, I know how to be sensible about it. I’m not holding it to wild out or just to shoot somebody because I’m mad at him. There’s responsibility in buying that gun, and part of it is dealing with it like a man, and not dealing with it like an idiot, and getting behind iron bars for unnecessary reasons.”
14. “I’m a big rock ‘n’ roll head, I love country music, I love yodeling music. But I’m still black and funky.”
15. “I’m not really a comparison dude. Even when people say ‘Big or Pac?,’ because they’re two totally different types of lyricists.”
16. “I always followed my heart and if my heart said I gotta pack up and go, I’m gone.”
17. “I’m known for taking a long time getting music out, partially, my schedule is bananas, I’m only human, and then on top of that, I’m a one-man-producer.”
18. “You have to know who you’re making music for.”
19. “Jay Z and Biggie and Nas always listened to my direction. They listened and they applied it and I also listened to their opinions and that’s why the records came out so good.”
20. “Everything I do is in a New York state of mind. I’m indebted to preserving the sound of the city.”
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