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DJ Premier

Gazillion Industries · September 20, 2026

Thirty years of records that sound like one person made them, built on a sampler with sixty seconds of memory and a drum machine he does not sample with. The technique is documented in his own words and it is stranger than the reputation.

Christopher Martin, who produces as DJ Premier, was born on 21 March 1966 in Houston and became half of Gang Starr with Guru before producing a run of records that defined New York rap in the nineties: Nas, Biggie, Jay-Z, Jeru the Damaja, Mobb Deep, KRS-One, Rakim. His method has two parts people usually get wrong. He splits the job between two machines, sampling into one and triggering from the other, and he builds loops out of fragments rather than lifting bars.

The short version

Two machines, one job each

The sentence that explains his whole setup, given to Sound On Sound in 2007: "I don't sample with the MPC60, I just use it to trigger drums. Instead I sample in the S950 and trigger them from the MPC."

The S950 is a rack sampler with about sixty seconds of memory. That constraint is not incidental; it is the reason the chops are short and the reason nothing in his records is a long borrowed passage. The MPC60 is there for its pads and its timing, which is a very deliberate way of dividing the work between a machine that stores sound well and a machine that plays it well. Our piece on the creation of the MPC covers why that second machine's timing was worth building a workflow around.

His machine lineage, in his own account, runs from a Yamaha drum machine through an E-mu SP-12, an Alesis HR-11 and an Akai S900 to the MPC60, which he bought secondhand from an engineer and adopted around Gang Starr's Daily Operation in 1992.

The correction

He is routinely described as an SP-1200 producer. He says he never used one: by the time it shipped he had already moved to a different drum machine. The claim appears to have spread from one loosely worded magazine sentence and has been repeated ever since. If you are studying his drum sound, you are studying an S950 and an MPC60, not the machine everyone names.

How the chops actually work

The best outside description of his sampling comes from Adrian Younge, and it is worth stating precisely because it is the part that cannot be copied by loading a break. Premier takes three or four separate sections from a record and recombines them into a phrase that was never played. He deliberately avoids the obvious break, the part any other producer would take. And he pitches individual chops against each other, which means the melody in the finished loop is frequently not the melody in the source at all — it has been rewritten out of pieces.

That is why his loops feel composed rather than borrowed, and it is also why sample-spotting his records is so difficult. There is often no single bar in the original that sounds like what you are hearing.

Gazillion Industries makes plugins for people who work in fragments: commit the chop, print it, keep going.

The drums, and the quantize question

He answers it directly: "I tend to program my drums, but a lot of the time I'll turn off the 16th notes and I'll play the MPC live, so it sounds like live drumming." Both modes, chosen per record. That is the same answer the honest sources give about every great drum programmer of that era, and it is more useful than either of the slogans people prefer.

The scratch hooks

The chorus made of cut-up vocal phrases from other records is his signature and it is a DJ's technique rather than a producer's. The selection comes out of a DJ's memory — knowing which record has the word you need — and the placement is decided by where the sample lands against the beat rather than by a plan. It is the one part of his method that genuinely requires having been a working DJ first.

The room

He worked out of D&D Studios in Manhattan and later owned the room, renaming it. He moved off two-inch tape in 2005 and has worked in Pro Tools since, with a large-format control surface and a fairly plain plugin set. One detail worth knowing because it is unusual: he has described using de-essers as a color rather than as a repair, which is a very specific piece of engineering taste.

On pace, ignore the number you have read. The widely repeated fifteen-minutes-a-beat figure belongs to somebody else describing another producer. Premier's own account of his rate is four days for five or six songs.

Questions people ask

What equipment does DJ Premier use?

An Akai S950 for sampling and an Akai MPC60 for triggering and sequencing, with Pro Tools for recording since 2005. He has said explicitly that he does not sample into the MPC.

Did DJ Premier use the SP-1200?

He says he did not. His own account of his machines goes from a Yamaha drum machine to an E-mu SP-12, then an Alesis HR-11, an Akai S900 and the MPC60.

How does DJ Premier chop samples?

He takes several separate sections of a record, avoids the obvious break, recombines them into a phrase the original never contained, and pitches individual chops so the resulting melody is partly his own.

Does DJ Premier quantize?

Sometimes. In his words, he programs his drums, but often turns the sixteenths off and plays the pads live so it sounds like live drumming.

What to take from it

The transferable idea is the recombination. Most producers loop the best bar; he takes the parts nobody wants, in three pieces, and builds a phrase that did not exist. It is slower, it is harder, and it is the reason nobody can find his samples. How to chop samples has the mechanics, and how to flip a sample has the argument.

Sixty seconds of sample memory, and thirty years of records that have never been mistaken for anybody else's.

Keep reading

• The creation of the MPC — The machines that failed first, what Akai and Linn each did, and how swing works.
• How to chop samples — Tempo, where to slice, killing clicks, and playing a new arrangement.
• J Dilla — The life, the machines, how the drums really work, and the claims that do not hold up.

Gazillion Industries LLC · reading material