DJ Premier and Prince Paul are two of the most influential DJs and producers in hip-hop history.
The legends recently sat down at Sonos’ flagship store in New York City to talk staying dope while aging, the gear they’re currently using, stylistic changes in Hip-Hop throughout the years, how Premier was too afraid to dress like Prince and Prince Paul and Ladybug Mecca’s fantastic new Brazilian/Hip-Hop project Brookzill.
DJ Premier also addressed the controversy with rapper Lil Uzi in depth:
“There was a little controversy with Lil Uzi Vert from Philly… and everybody was like, ‘Yo, man, he needs to be smacked, he needs to be this and that’ — they were saying because he wouldn’t freestyle to “Mass Appeal” when Nero put the beat on for him. First of all, Mass Appeal’s not really a beat you throw on to freestyle to.
Back when ‘Come Clean’ was out a lot of people were like, ‘Yo throw on the ‘Come Clean’ beat!’ There’s just certain records that you put on to spit to if you’re gonna put someone live on the radio. ‘Mass Appeal”s not one I would choose, either, that’s just a dope record that we did. Out of our Gang Starr catalog that was one of our biggest hits, but that doesn’t mean that that’s what you rhyme to.
He said, ‘I don’t wanna rhyme to that.’ Then everybody was saying it was disrespectful.
One day someone said something on Twitter and added him on Twitter and I jumped in and said, ‘Hey he doesn’t have to rap to anything I do. He can make whatever decision he wants. If he don’t like it that’s fine with me, I’m not upset about that.’ He responded and goes, ‘Hey OG, I don’t know why everybody’s taking this out of context.’
He said if it’d been ‘Full Clip’ instrumental he would have rapped to it. And I was like, ‘Wow.’”
