Appropriately, drums have earned a unique level of reverence within hip-hop, frequently commanding pride of place in the mixdown and consuming the most time in any conversation between producers or connoisseurs.
This unequal division of labor is only intensified within the realm of hip-hop, a musical culture which from its very inception has measured creative excellence via originality in using Other People’s Percussion. Timekeepers, storytellers, motivators, fighters and occasionally mind-alterers, drums are arguably tasked with more jobs and do more of the heavy lifting than any other single element of modern music. If drums were people, they might be the hardest working people in the music biz.
