Premier indeed.

I will always associate DJ Premier with the blissful era when I truly became a dedicated hip hop head. Before that, hip hop was still just a mix of sounds and rhythms in a way I abstractly and subconciously appreciated. The only names I associated with those sounds were the ones emblazoned on the album cover (namely, the MC). Premo's name was the first one I actually started to recognize in the album's liner notes, the one who laid the foundations of all those songs I loved. The architect of my addiction. The PRODUCER. Yeah, yeah... I knew other producers like Dr. Dre and all them... but mostly because they had their name on the front covers too. Preem's name was only on the inside cover of those Gangstarr albums. And after I wrapped my feeble mind around the concept of the "producer", I started digging further into what the concept of a hip hop producer entailed... how they actually took older records and chopped them up to create that entirely new sound that I was now a fan of. In a way, Premo largely shaped my appreciation for music outside of the boundaries of hip hop itself.

So XXL has done all of us Premier fans a huge service in presenting us with the definitive Premier interview. This is a must read for any true hip hop head. Preem gives us the back stories on a few events from the past that he had only hinted at before. Like what really happened in the beef between Jeru the Damaja and Bad Boy. And how that affected his work with Big. And how Big even tried to get some beats from Dre for "Life After Death". And how he made up with Chuck D after the "Crack Commandments" drama. And his thoughts on how things ended with Guru. And why he hasn't worked with Jay lately. And if we'll ever get that collab album with him and Nas. And how you might have even heard his work in some Wal-Mart commercials. Do yourself a favor and read this.

DJ Premier: The XXL Icon Interview.

St. Valentine's Day Massacre.

We as hip hop fans have been promised many albums over the years. "Helter Skelter". "Oh My God". "The Nacirema Dream". A Nas/Primo collab. Yet with every announcement, we hold out hope that these dream projects might actually come to fruition. Very rarely do we wait years on end and actually get the album delivered to us.

It seems like next February, two of the albums on my personal wishlist may finally see the light of day. Saigon's "Greatest Story Never Told" has been promised to us multiple times. And it seems I've written about it multiple times also. We've seen photos of an album cover and even the final mastered copy sitting on Just Blaze's mastering board. So this newly redesigned album cover could very well be another tease. Perhaps I'm just making myself the idiot who keep running back to that little bastard who won't stop yelling "Wolf" at the top of his lungs. But I am choosing to believe it's real this time. Saigon never delivered that 8-song appetizer he promised a couple months ago. But he has dropped about half that amount of songs during that time to prove he's back on he's grind. Let's take a moment to imagine how great the album could be if it sounds anything like this on track number one...

Beats, rhymes, and life.

It's amazing how much hip hop has evolved since its inception. Obviously, everything will change, for better or for worse throughout the years... but it's mind blowing when you sit back and really think about it. Growing up as a teenager in the suburbs of the Pacific Northwest, the music I heard was created by such luminaries as Dr. Dre and DJ Premier in the far off distant lands of Los Angeles and New York. D&D Studios might as well have been Never Never Land for all I knew. An MPC could have been a contraption created in Willy Wonka's factory that required three brains and a Mensa certification to operate. All I had to go on was the final product that I knew and loved blasting out of my cheap ass Sony headphones and my imagination. Hip hop, in effect, was bigger than life.

These days, you no longer need thousands of dollars of equipment to build the sonic landscape of your dreams. Just get yourself a laptop from Best Buy, a bootleg copy of Fruity Loops if you don't want to buy the real thing, and you're good to go.

Witness Lex Luger, the 19-year old producer extraordinaire... now with such street classics as Rick Ross' "BMF" and "MC Hammer" to his name. Love his music or hate it, you can't deny that at this moment, his bounce-heavy trap-style production is in full demand. And thanks to World Star Hip Hop, we can all get a glimpse of his creativity at work with the click of a mouse.