It was always music first, and I got better and better at putting drums to samples I chopped or looped. And when I finally found something that excited me, I’d sample it and then put drums around it. When you first started on the ASR-X Pro, did you approach beats by establishing a tone or pattern first?Ĭole: 'At first I would only make a beat when I found a sample I got excited about, so I was going through my mom’s CD piles, from Dire Straits and Steely Dan to Bob Marley and Marvin Gaye.

the red machine with just the drum pads.' After that, I started trying things on the ASR-X Pro. I just sat there trying to imagine how he made it. On Aaliyah’s third album, the song More Than a Woman was so next-level to me. I couldn’t even fathom it, where you would get started, but I was interested. 'But the first time I got interested in how to make something was listening to Timbaland productions, trying to figure out how he did those things. Puff’s crew was sampling all these older songs that my mom would recognize, or my stepfather would call out, so I got into the credits to find out who produced the songs. Walk us through the first time you heard a song and started to think about how it was produced.Ĭole: 'I think the first time I started paying attention to production was around 1997: the year Biggie’s second album and Puff Daddy & the Family’s album No Way Out came out.

J.cole power trip instrumental