On friendly competition with Q-Tip...

Pete Rock: What’s funny was they [A Tribe Called Quest] were competing with me when I ain’t even know I was competing with them! They was fucking trying to compete with me with every beat I would drop, they were just blown away dog. They didn’t understand who I was after “Shut ’Em Down.” When “Shut ’Em Down” hit, them motherfuckers was like, “OK, who the fuck is this nigga right here?” And then that’s how I understood like, “Award Tour” and all this other stuff, they was competing with me with that stuff. “OK, aight, let’s play hardball, let’s go!”
I didn’t really get the proper credit for “We Got the Jazz.” Q-Tip just took the elements of what I used and re-did it, the same exact way. When Tip came over, I played that beat and he just stood there in a trance. I had just made the beat, and the record was sitting on the other turntable. I told him the drums I used, and he was a record dude at the time, so he found it in the record store. After he leaves the crib, next thing you know, the record just came out. And then he says at the end of the beat, “Pete Rock for the beat and you don’t stop.”

On “Don’t Curse” by Heavy D...

Pete Rock: Heavy D was like family, so everything I’ve ever done for him was a breeze. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be who I am. “Don’t Curse” was dope because all my favorite rappers was on it, from Q-Tip, to Big Daddy Kane, to Brand Nubian, to Heav, himself. It was a record about not cursing. We was basically letting people know, we got skills dog. We can make records without saying motherfucking curse word (laughs).

On “We Roll” by Jim Jones and Max B...

Pete Rock: I love that record! I get mixed reviews about that and the thing is, it’s great. Pete Rock fans are like, “Jim Jones?” But the nigga got respect for a nigga. My man Max B, that dude is so ill with it. He got a memory bank for a pen and pad dog. I think he killed that shit.

On “Holdin’ It Down” by Big L...

Pete Rock: We were friends. We used to ride around in Harlem. I had a Honda Accord-that was my first car-I’m playing my beats, we ridin’ around and he?’s freestyling. That part of him I will miss. He got down with D.I.T.C., Jay-Z was looking at him, everybody was looking at this kid ready to sign him and make him official. He was a legend already, like all he needed was a deal. He was so hot in the street that it was ridiculous. He had niggas getting me out my house goin’ to find this dude, like, “Let me go find this nigga, who is this cat?” And then, Lord Finesse, and Showbiz, put me on to him. We developed a relationship from there.

On the impact of “Straighten It Out”...

Pete Rock: The CL joint is like one of my favorites because it touched on bootlegging, which still goes on today. I thought it would be a positive message to the people. Even in the video, we were walking down 125th St., and we see the Africans and we just start looking through our shit, and we start tearing up the whole motherfucking table, letting them know, “Y’all taking food out our mouths.” And doing that video in Harlem, in the town of black people, it was just beautiful. When you see stuff like that happening in the game you want to put a stop to it. Home // CELEBRITIES // WEB EXCLUSIVE // Pete Rock