And yet this is one of those rare, serpentine industry tales where the beat ends up exactly where it should. There are innumerable versions of this story, where the beat eventually gets buried deep on an album by a rapper who has it foisted on them by an A&R, or another producer gets to the same sample while everyone is waiting around, shuffling buyout agreements. But when that LP got held up during the Priority-Capitol merger, Alchemist moved on-this led to a much-publicized feud between the two that was later papered over. (When the beat got passed to Millennium Thug, the producer backed out.) Ras Kass, who was working on what would have been his third album, the famously shelved Van Gogh, actually recorded to it.
There was the session where he actually tracked it for Nas, who was then working on the QB’s Finest compilation, and led Alchemist to believe it would be one of his solo songs on that record. There was the time at Baseline when he played it for Jay-Z. But when Preemo gave the beat his highest compliment-“Yeah, I can rap to this”-Alchemist knew it was time to shop it.
So when DJ Premier dropped by to hear what the younger producer was working on, Alchemist wasn’t sure how the legend would react. He didn’t think his flip was perfect: The handclaps he’d added weren’t exactly right. A little over 20 years ago, Alchemist, the Beverly Hills–bred producer who at that point was best known for his work with Dilated Peoples and Mobb Deep, began chopping up the break that comes three and a half minutes into a Samuel Jonathan Johnson song from 1978.
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