About This Item
After 25 years of living his dream as one of hip hop's most respected producers, Hi-Tek is digging back into his roots with a brand new trio of instrumental vinyl LPs. InchBeatbox Studios 2 (1996 MPC 60II)Inch is the second volume of the series, each featuring a selection of restored and remastered beats, carefully chosen from an archive of DAT tapes. These LPs manage to both provide a window into Tek's development and to shine light on the work of an already enormously-talented musician whose beats would've sounded right at home on classic releases from the mid-1990s. Building on the styles showcased on the first InchBeatbox StudiosInch LP, Hi-Tek was clearly developing his own personal style on the studio's in-house Akai MPC 60II sampler. The drums were swinging more; the grooves were deeper; the bass thumped harder. Even when choosing familiar samples, he was chopping them in fresh and unexpected ways, which would eventually help shape his signature sound. As his reputation was becoming cemented in the local Cincinnati scene, his relationship with the rap group Mood was helping to catalyze more regular visits to New York City. The beats collected for InchBeatbox Studios 2Inch were the ones that would stick in the auto-reverse tape deck for those road trips, as were the demo tapes he crafted with Mood, which would eventually earn them a record deal with Blunt Records in 1996-the same tag and year where he would land his first major placement on Royal Flush's InchGhetto MillionaireInch album. It was also on one of those 1996 journeys to NYC that he would meet a young Brooklyn emcee named Talib Kweli-with whom he would form one of the most iconic duos of the indie-rap boom of the late-nineties. InchBeatbox Studios 2 (1996 MPC 60II)Inch showcases Hi-Tek as a hungry young talent on the rise, and his continued elevation would lead him to a career as one of the few produc
