Today marks the inception of a new feature to the site titled (in true autopsy-speak) “Beat Dissections,” in which I’ll break down and discuss the various musical components of a particular hip hop track. In addition to shifting focus from the emcee to the producer, this will also give me a chance to share more glorious instrumentals with the reader, a treat often denied to those without the requisite vinyl and a turntable.

Pete Rock & CL Smooth “In the House” The Main Ingredient Elektra 1994

The duo of Pete Rock and CL Smooth released two remarkably solid LPs during the second Golden Age of hip hop, each helping to define the era in no small measure: the undisputed classic Mecca and the Soul Brother (1992) and its equally magnificent and frequently overlooked follow-up The Main Ingredient (1994). The tired adage of “they don’t make hip hop like this anymore” applies tenfold to these two ’sister’ records, which mirror the other in several distinct aspects. Both nearly reach the 80-minute mark, yet are nearly devoid of pointless skits or filler. Each keeps the guest spots to a minimum, instead making CL Smooth’s philosophical musings the center of attention. The two records share plenty of brief instrumental interludes, a Pete Rock signature touch. And both subsist on lush, mid-tempo head-nodders for their entire durations; there are no hyperkinetic club bangers or dated new jack ballads to be found. In other words, to this writer’s ears, they represent the purest, most distilled substance of hip hop, and will likely never be replicated again.

I suppose if I had to choose between one or the other, however, I’d most likely lean toward The Main Ingredient. While Mecca is much more direct and contains the stronger singles (the timeless “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)”, the trunk-rattling “Straighten It Out”), I prefer Ingredient for its subtlety, the way the tracks slowly nestle their way inside the head after a dozen listens or so. More importantly, though, is that it displays Pete Rock’s talents in arguably their finest hour, which resulted in a high demand for his work shortly afterward. The man’s skill with the SP-1200 is legendary among DJs and producers, influencing countless others who followed him, but here Rock takes the relatively simple concept of looped samples over drum breaks and makes the Sistine Chapel out of it. The basslines are chunky and warm the soul, the snares resonate with a tight crispness, his trademark horns are chilling; there is simply no musical element that is out of place.

For an example, we can look no further than the opening cut, “In the House,” which firmly establishes the lazy, summer-afternoon vibe of the record right off the bat. The musical bulk of the track appropriates the Fender Rhodes piano from Cannonball Adderley’s interpretation of George Duke’s “Capricorn” (from 1972’s Music You All), which, when written out, looks something like this:

The other dominating presence in the track is the drum pattern, a classic boom-bap arrangement with an abundance of bass drum hits that settles into a tempo of around 94 beats per minute. The hi-hats adhere to steady eighth notes while the snare is pitched slightly lower than usual. The vocal hook should be glaringly obvious to anyone familiar with early-’90s hip hop, an extraction from the slew of shout-outs that comprises the coda of “Verses from the Abstract” (off A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory [1991]) with Q-Tip playfully repeating, “Pete Rock is in the house, CL is in the house.” (The original hook from that track can also be heard in the mix, which features a young and buttery-voiced Vinia Mojica.) A bed of delayed saxophones provides a gorgeous brassy color during the hook, and sound pitch-shifted from an unknown source. For a touch more variety, Rock also uses a vocal snippet from the same cut with Q-Tip saying, “Check it out, and give me my spec,” which he uses to bracket the song. The dusty, thumping drums alone could carry the track, but when blended with these other elements, “In the House” seems tantalizingly brief at four and a half minutes. A fine way to introduce the record, to be sure.

“In the House (Instrumental)” – Pete Rock 4:32 (The Main Ingredient, Elektra 1994)