Rock The Bells

Real hip hop heads that came up in the '90s golden era treat the work of Pete Rock with an almost holy sense of importance. Rock has maintained his credibility and reputation through not just his own highly regarded works, but for the contributions he has made to the production of other artists.

It's hard to imagine a more influential track than The World Is Yours by Nas, from his 1994 classic album Illmatic. Even 20 years on it sounds as fresh and unique as ever, the Scarface-referencing track still very much the jewel in Nas' crown and probably one of Rock's most famous beats.

“After Nas there will be no one else,” Rock says definitively. “It's sad because the way hip hop sounds today it doesn't seem like the artists are like who we were in the golden age, not to be disrespectful. But I just feel that with Illmatic that's a one-time only thing. You have to cherish and praise it and keep it on the mountaintop, and celebrate it. When you listen to Nas' lyrics you can see it in front of your eyes like you're watching a movie. It makes me feel great that I'm a part of that album.”

Although he's worked with so many greats, Rock still finds it easy to pinpoint his most important collaboration.

“I would probably have to say working with Russell Simmons and having a shot to work with Run DMC was the most important thing I've ever done in my career,” he says proudly about his track Down With The King. “It is one of the highlights of my career. Growing close with Jam Master Jay and having him become a close compadre. He was a guy to know, I hung out with him in Jamaica, Queens, and he would come to hang out at [Rock's late cousin] Heavy D's house and then we would come back to the basement to make beats.”

Despite things looking back on track for Pete Rock and his old collaborator CL Smooth in 2013 (they had a very public falling out in the early 2000s) it seems that situation has taken another turn for the worse, with Rock apologising and saying that no collaboration was forthcoming. More reassuringly, future releases for Rock that he could talk about sound very tantalising indeed.

“I'm very excited about a lot of ventures I have coming up,” he says. I'm working on new beats for a new Petestrumentals and Soul Survivor 3 [He adds that Smoke DZA has already recorded a track]. I'm working with De La Soul on a new EP, working with Mack Wilds again, Pusha T and a couple of other people.”

Rock's upcoming tour sees him side by side with Gang Starr's DJ Premier, jumping between tracks and trying to show each other up – a hip hop dream team. 

“Definitely, that's what the whole tour's all about,” he says reassuringly. “We're gonna go back and forth with genres and year-spans of music we grew up with all the way through our careers in hip hop.”