At 1:30 in this beat-making rhythm roulette video of 9th wonder, you can see the sp-1200 with a record laying on top of it.

At 3:29 in this video, RZA says, "...I was at Easy Mo Bee's house, we were on Gza's first album and he had a SP-1200, and I'd never seen that in my life never knew what it was. It was 1987 probably." "Took about a year and a half before i finally got ahold of one....so i was about 19 when i got my first SP-1200..."

"The original hip-hop drum machine. That is fat! I'm really into the hip-hop scene, and did a lot of research into the equipment they used to get that real heavy sound. A guy from our record company went to New York and got this for me for my birthday; it was a really good present. It's so nice, just for single drum hits." – Liam Howlett, from a 1996 interview with Sound On Sound.

In the video by Produce Like A Pro, Junkie XL is shown using the E-mu SP-1200 during his studio tour.

Seen behind the artist in an EB video interview from his studio.

The photo shows a rack inside cEvin Key's former Subconscious Studios, featuring the E-mu SP-1200, prior to his relocation to Los Angeles.

"Danger Mouse also loves his vintage E-mu SP-1200 Sampler/ Drum-Machine. The SP-1200 was THE drum machine & sampler combo of legendary status among old school rap and hip hop artists from the eighties and nineties," states this article.

Alicia Keys is confirmed to use the E-mu SP-1200 in her home studio, as evidenced by a photo shared on Instagram by the user @paperyesterday. This photo, dated March 27, 2024, captures Alicia Keys at age 17 in her studio located on 137th St. in Harlem, New York, clearly showcasing the E-mu SP-1200 among her equipment.

The description of this video of Bibio says, "Capturing sounds with a vintage Sennheiser MD-21 microphone, then using the EMU SP1200 for its inimitable fidelity, then resampled and sequenced on an Akai MPC 5000."

Used on People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm and The Renaissance, as respectively stated by recording engineer Bob Power in this November 8, 2016 Wax Poetics interview, recording engineer Blair Wells in Q-Tip's January 2008 Remix interview, and Q-Tip himself in this April 19, 2009 Moovmnt interview. Transcripts of the Remix interview can be found at the Future Producers forums and this Prince.org forum.

Wax Poetics

Also, back then, MIDI was in a very primitive state. MIDI is the language that computers, synthesizers, and samplers use to speak to each other. It was extremely primitive at that point. Q-Tip was sequencing on an SP-1200, and Ali had an Alesis eight-track MIDI sequencer and an Akai S950. Sampling technology was very primitive. The S950 had maybe a second and a half worth of memory. Putting together those complex, elaborate constructions was so difficult. It took a lot of time. We had to do things bit by bit because of the undeveloped memory for samplers at that point. We had to be creative in the way we approached things. People say we used twenty-four tracks, but we really had twenty-two tracks to deal with because you needed to print a synchronization code on one track and use another track as your guard band. Because samplers would only hold less than a second worth of sound at one time, we ended up putting little bits of things across different tracks and combining them later.

Remix

Q-Tip goes even further with aural textures than he did on Open, trying numerous methods to get to the sound he hears in his head. “The MPC3000 has been his main workhorse,” Wells says, “but there was a period where he went back to the [E-mu] SP-1200 for obvious tonal reasons. He's tried the MPC4000 and the 1000, and some of the Roland boxes like the Fantom [X-series workstation] with the drum pads, to rework his samples.”

Moovmnt

The one thing that always told me something was a Q-Tip production were the drums. What kind of equipment did you use?

The SP(1200) for drums and for the loops the (AKAI S)950. That’s something that Large Professor put me onto (the AKAI S950). I just liked the snap of it. For me… I was always into the big drums with the tin like smack of it

"The SP(1200) for drums and for the loops the (AKAI S)950. That’s something that Large Professor put me onto (the AKAI S950). I just liked the snap of it. For me… I was always into the big drums with the tin like smack of it" ~ Q-tip

In the AMA they did for the subreddit r/electronicmusic, Bicep mention they use the SP-1200 for the drums on the track "Saku":

Saku was a lot of hybrid-ing different demos but the bulk of the song was made around the main sp1200 drum beat and Clara's vocal sang over a very early bones drums & bass demo, the latter chords are from the Andromeda with the sh101 through a tonne of guitar pedals coming in later.