Pete Rock’s New Album Gets Soulful Makeover From Beat Junkies’ J. Rocc
Revered rapper-producer Pete Rock followed up on his 2001 instrumental compilation Petestrumentals last month with Petestrumentals 2, a new batch of original tracks pairing hard, MPC 3000 beats with the soul and funk samples that have made him an icon among beatheads. Now, Stones Throw producer, Beat Junkies founder and Pete Rock acolyte J. Rocc has blended and remixed the album for Petestrumentals 2 The Official J. Rocc Mix, streaming exclusively below.
Opening with reworked audio from James Brown hypeman Danny Ray, the Los Angeles producer both pays homage to and builds on Rock’s album, solidifying both beatmakers’ positions as artisans respecting the past while looking toward the future. While the focus remains on Rock’s new productions, J. Rocc sprinkles in snippets of classic Pete Rock samples as sonic easter eggs for attentive fans.
As Rock noted in a statement earlier this year, the original, 20-track collection was meant to “conjure memories of BBQ cookouts and Seventies Blaxploitation scores, rattling summer jeep cruises and blunted Jamaican vacations.” Rock also pays tribute to J Dilla, an admirer of Rock’s productions, on a requiem titled “Dilla Bounce (R.I.P.).”
Rolling Stone premiered the first single “Cosmic Slop” in April. “‘Cosmic Slop’ is a beat I made that gave me a feeling of cruising down the highway on a nice day or night in the summertime seeing all kinds of people outside enjoying themselves,” Rock told Rolling Stone.
Pete Rock and CL Smooth’s “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” ranked 12th on Rolling Stone‘s list of the 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time. (Rock’s remix of Public Enemy’s “Shut ‘Em Down” also landed on Questlove’s hip-hop list.) In addition to his time with CL Smooth, Rock’s storied hip-hop career features productions on classic albums like Nas’ Illmatic (“The World Is Yours”), Ghostface Killah’s Fishscale (“Be Easy”) and Notorious B.I.G.’s Ready to Die (“Juicy”) alongside various solo projects.