Legendary hip-hop producer DJ Premier talks with Noah Callahan-Bever of Idea Generation about a journey from his early days as part of the duo Gang Starr, to producing for then up-and-coming rapper Jay-Z and helping to shape his sound, to carving his own lane, forming PRhyme with Royce 5’9″ and becoming one of the greatest producers in hip-hop history.
“Mike has pitched this idea, it was during them working on Slaughterhouse, but it was taking so long and Mike was like ‘how about y’all do a project like a quick EP where you use Adrien Young’s sound only and make a quick EP of Slaughterhouse.’ I was very against it. I was like ‘nah, I like to dig and make beats through digging.’ Everybody was leaning on me about it and it just went silent.” said DJ Premier.
Then he continued: “Time passed, Royce hits me again like ‘what me and you gon’ do?’ Royce was just getting sober and had not rapped a long time. And for me knowing the not sober Royce, his bars, his delivery is always on point, sometimes you sober up…I’m glad he’s sober because the most cleanest and healthy lifestyle is the best, that does not mean that you gonna still pull off the Royce that we all know and love. So, I remember I was in LA for some business. I met Amanda Demme there. She told me I’m photographer and she was like ‘I gotta show my stuff, it’s real wicked.’ She starts showing me all her stuff and I’m like ‘yo, this s–t is bugged out, damn.’ She asked ‘what do you working on?’ I said me and Royce are doing this project, it’s gonna be called DJ Premier, Royce Da 5’9″, we are not PRhyme yet. She’s like ‘you should let me do pictures for y’all.’ I’m like ‘with all these weird a-s pictures?? We gotta look like hip-hop s–t’ and she goes like ‘nah, it should be art! Let me do something creative.’ I was like ‘I’ll introduce you to Royce whenever we get to that point.”
“The next day, we are about to fly back and I’m packing my stuff. We have not heard anything from PRhyme yet. I had already made 3 beats that I gave to Royce and he said ‘I’m gonna work on them and let you hear what I did and see if you like where I’m going cause I have not rapped in so long. So you tell me if I still sound like Royce.’ When I was packing I decided to go Puff’s party. Right when I go downstairs and get a ride to the party, Royce texted me and goes ‘just sent the first song, tell me what you think.’ I was like ‘damn man, I’m leaving in the morning, I’ll listen to it tomorrow.’ But when I’m getting to the door to go to the lobby, I was like ‘let me listen to it now, it’s either him sounding Royce or I’m gonna tell him falling off,’ man, the song PRhyme is what he sent, as soon as I turned it on, I’m like ‘HE’S BACK’! And I listened to the rest of it, I’m like ‘he sounds like when he drinks, but he’s sober!’ I called him ‘dude, you are back! That’s the Royce I was hoping to hear! Let’s get this album cracking!'”
“Royce stays up in so many different hours. He’ll call you at all different types of hours of the day. He’ll stay up for five days straight, not sleep, just be recording. He’s like a Kanye in that regard. Right before I get to the airport, he goes ‘yo, how about we call ourselves a name like a group? Instead of being DJ Premier and Royce Da 5’9″‘ I was like ‘you got a name?’ he’s like ‘how about we call ourselves PRhyme?’ P and R is capital, P is for Premier and R is for Royce and ‘hyme’ just encompasses everything of hip-hop together. I was like ‘I like that.’ Started coming up with logos. He was like ‘yo, Eminem’s art guy is really good. Can we use Eminem’s art guy to do something? He showed me PRhyme logo and I liked it. And he said, from now on, we are PRhyme!”
“We have PRhyme, PRhyme 2, I love PRhyme 2 and PRhyme 3 is a doozy! That’s all I can say. That one we are not going to announce until it’s done but you are definitely going to be like ‘oh, sh-t!'” DJ Premier added. You can watch the interview below:
