Celebrating Classics: Pete Rock & CL Smooth – Mecca & The Soul Brother

In anticipation of the Mecca and the Soul Brother 20th Anniversary UK tour Flip the Script continues the ‘Celebrating Classics’ series with a few pictures and video from the duo’s last visit. The duo return to London’s Jazz Cafe on the 28 Oct 2012….

“I was 14 years old with this drum machine in my room, I had 2 turntables a mixer and a tape deck. Before I got that machine I was making beats with a tape deck. I would over dub and keep pausing and pausing for the parts of the record I liked until I learned how to sample.” Once Pete Rock learned how to use equipment at his disposal he set out to make his mark on the music industry. The production technique was a skill known as ‘filtering’ that made 1992’s album Mecca & the Soul Brother and 1994’s The Main Ingredient so outstanding. Pete Rock pioneered a way of filtering out sound from original recordings so he could make his own beats. It made his sound and especially his blaring horns stand out. ‘Once I got the baseline and bottom beat, everything else comes easily’ The most famous example possibly being “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” (on which he uses a horn sample from Tom Scott‘s “Today”), Peter Rock has also used horns on several other productions such as “Straighten It Out”, Public Enemy‘s “Shut ‘Em Down”, Rah Digga‘s “What They Call Me”, and A.D.O.R.’s “Let It All Hang Out”.