Pete Rock Signals More Petestrumentals & Unleashes A 20 Year Old Groove (Audio)
It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 14 years since Pete Rock released Petestrumentals. Following Jay Dee’s (p/k/a J Dilla) Welcome To Detroit, Soul Brother Pete laced BBE (Barely Breaking Even) Records’ Beat Generation series (Marley Marl and will.i.am were among those who would follow).
Pete struck the Hip-Hop/R&B charts simply through speaking with his hands, and the effort—an instrumental follow-up to 1998’s Soul Survivor was a testament to veterans coming back to the booming underground Hip-Hop movement.
In 2015, Mello Music Group replaced the void that labels like BBE and others left in the space. Fresh off of some session work on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly, today, Pete Rock announced that on June 23 Petestrumentals 2 is happening, via Mello. The Mount Vernon, New York DJ/producer/MC/radio personality will include music new and archival in the collection. To make the announcement, P.R. shared “One, Two, A Few More.” This song is from 1995, unheard until now…
The joint references some classics (for sample Heads and Slow Jams Heads), and sounds like it could have been made yesterday, or 1-9-9-5. Hopefully this is only the tip of the iceberg…
Pete Rock Heads know that back in ’95, he was a busy man. Coming off of Main Ingredient with Pete Rock & CL Smooth, the Elektra Records star was hard at work with his off-shoots I.N.I. (on Center Of Attention) and Deda’s The Original Baby Pa. Both shelved (with promo leaks), BBE would release both LPs on a double-disc in ’03.
Pete Rock’s last studio full-length work was 2011’s Monumental, alongside Smif-N-Wessun. In ’04, he notably followed-up Soul Survivor with a sequel of its own.
Related: Here’s the Story of How Mello Music Group Defiantly Built a Haven for Real Hip-Hop (Interview)