Nothing like waiting for a nearly 40-megabyte MP3 to download, only to find little of interest inside. Earlier this year, a podcast popped up in the Red Bull Music Academy that included interviews with three producers: Martin Ware, Rob Bowman and, foremost, the great beatmaker and turntablist DJ Premier. But Premier’s segment was brief, and the most memorable part was hearing about how he got lost at a Tina Turner concert when he was a kid, and how she called out for his parents from the stage.
More than making up for that, Red Bull has now posted over an hour and a half of Premier (born Chris Martin) reflecting on his work in hip-hop, most famously as one half of Gang Starr (MP3, redbullmusicacademy.com). He talks frankly about appreciating the beauty of static, hearing beats in his head, crate-digging for fresh samples, and cutting the line at James Brown’s memorial. He freely explains he was no fan of Christina Aguilera before teaming with her for the horn-drenched, retro hit “Ain’t No Other Man,” one of the few memorable moments on pop radio in 2006 — and a 12″ worth tracking down for the instrumental edit. The Red Bull file is almost 90 megabytes, but it’s more than worth the bandwidth.