Pete Rock – PeteStrumentals (2xLP)

Pete Rock, along with DJ Premier, is without a doubt one of the most influential hip-hop producers of the last decade. He has worked with artists and bands such as Gang Starr, Nas, Rakim, EPMD, Public Enemy, Black Star, Mary J. Blige, Run DMC, Notorious B. I.G. and House Of Pain, among others. Not forgetting, of course, his own band: Pete Rock & CL Smooth, with whom he released two albums in the early 90s, Mecca And The Soul Brother and All Souled Out, still unsurpassed today.

Three years after his last solo album Soul Survivor, he now presents 14 largely instrumental tracks on Petestrumentals, in which Soul Brother No. 1 once again dives deep into the history of popular music and combines a wide variety of stylistic elements -- from jazz and soul to funk and folk to pop and rock. An equally electrifying and extraordinary journey to the musical roots of hip hop, which is guaranteed never to get boring, as Pete Rock succeeds in an impressive way again and again to draw in new arcs of tension in tracks like "Play Dis Only At Night" or "For The People". --Norbert Schiegl