MusicRadar

Where will Pete Rock rate in MusicRadar's Top 10 beats?

View in gallery

8. Ghostface Killah Featuring Raekwon & U-God - Black Jesus

Producer: Rza
Album: Ironman (1996)

Fast forward past the minute-long intro of mafioso street chat… As soon as the haunting vocal sample and those drums, tambourines and guitars kick in you know the about Rza's cooked up a Godfather-esque cinematic landscape for The Chef Raekwon, Ghostface and U-God to spit criminology tale magic off a classic album.

7. Jay Z - Heart Of The City

Producer: Kanye West
Album: Blueprint (2001)

Way before Kanye was crying through Auto-Tune he kicked the door open at Roc-A-Fella Records. And along with Just Blaze (they were both nobodies at the time), he crafted the majority of Jigga's 2001 classic Blueprint album. This cut, sampling Ain't No Love In The Heart Of The City by Bobby 'Blue' Bland, sounds like it was straight out of a blaxploitation movie. The plodding drums and guitars provide a perfect background for Jay's braggadocious rhymes and the hand claps make us get up out of our seats and pray to the god Hova.

6. Eric B & Rakim - Follow The Leader

Producer: Eric B
Album: Follow The Leader (1988)

Eric b and rakim follow the leader

Was this really made in 1988? Eric B had his Marty McFly game real strong with this futuristic pulsing bassline-driven track. One of many producers to chop up Bob James' Nautilus, Eric B created something so dark, so broody that you could imagine Rakim holed up in a grimy room, spitting vicious-tongued rhymes of a metaphoric trip to space to a hungry mass of followers. Sick, sick track.

5. LL Cool J - Mama Said Knock You Out

Producer: Marley Marl
Album: Mama Said Knock You Out (1990)

LL cool j mama said knock you out

Back before LL filled his face full of plastic and sang songs about chicks and lollipops he used to rip some of the hardest hip-hop beats. Mama Said Knock You Out is probably the hardest track of his career. Marley Marl flipped James Brown's Funky Drummer and Sly And The Family Stone's Trip To Your Heart amongst other samples into a pounding beat that J ripped to shreds.

4. Snoop Dogg - Who Am I? (What's My Name)

Producer: Dr Dre
Album: Doggystyle (1993)

Snoop dogg what's my name

1993 was when the world was introduced to a young pup from Long Beach called Calvin. Dr Dre had just dropped a classic solo album that starred Snoop and the world was begging for more. The debut solo single from Snoop saw Dre flip Funkadelic's (Not Just) Knee Deep winding bassline over a chorus sampled from George Clinton's Atomic Dog with additional vocals by the silky smoothed songstress of Death Row Records Jewel.

Around the web: