Prince Paul

At roughly the 33:30 mark of the "A Prince Among Thieves" episode of the "What Had Happened Was" podcast, Prince Paul says that he made his solo album "A Prince Among Thieves" with "S-950s and ASR-10s".

In an interview on the making of "De La Soul Is Dead", Prince Paul says that the Akai S-900 was his favorite sampler at the time:

"Gino: Did you have a favorite sampler that you were using at the time?

Prince Paul: Probably the S-900. I could navigate that pretty easily. I broke it out recently because I have a couple in racks in my basement. I plugged them in and played some old samples through them. Even though it’s big and bulky, nothing sounds like that. It’s pretty flexible, it’s easy to work, and it’s easy to truncate your sample and get things tight. You can trigger certain sounds with different keys on the drum machine.

When you look at all this new technology, everything sounds very sterile. Everything is clean and super quiet. It kind of lacks something. When I plug that in, it’s like, 'Wow, this is hip hop.' It makes a big difference…a way bigger difference than having an MPC or something. It has its own character. Certain pieces of equipment make you program a certain way because you are limited. That’s the beauty of those machines."

At roughly the 8:30 mark of the "3rd Bass, MF Doom, and MC Paul Barman" episode of the "What Had Happened Was" podcast, Prince Paul mentions using a Casio RZ-1 on the beat for "The Gas Face" by 3rd Bass and on "some of the De La [Soul] stuff".

From an interview on producing the 2009 Souls of Mischief album "Montezuma's Revenge":

"If people are true fans of Souls of Mischief, which, coming into it, I was, they know what they want to hear on this record. I sat and analyzed all the records they’ve put out, even the solo projects. I tried to figure out what I liked and what I didn’t like. I told them, 'I’m going to make what should have been your follow up to 93 ‘Til Infinity. I’m going to make a retro record and scale back technology.' To do that, I decided to use an SP-12, ASR-10, MPC-2000, and MPC-60."

From an interview on producing the 2009 Souls of Mischief album "Montezuma's Revenge":

"If people are true fans of Souls of Mischief, which, coming into it, I was, they know what they want to hear on this record. I sat and analyzed all the records they’ve put out, even the solo projects. I tried to figure out what I liked and what I didn’t like. I told them, 'I’m going to make what should have been your follow up to 93 ‘Til Infinity. I’m going to make a retro record and scale back technology.' To do that, I decided to use an SP-12, ASR-10, MPC-2000, and MPC-60."

In an interview on the making of "De La Soul is Dead", Prince Paul comments on the equipment used for the album:

"Gino: I know in talking to you for an earlier interview that you guys were using an Akai S-900, an Emu SP-12, and a Casio SK-5 on 3 Feet High and Rising. Did you use the same equipment for De La Soul is Dead?

Prince Paul: Yeah, we used all of the same stuff. We were at the same studio, Calliope. I think we mixed the album at Island Media in New York. We basically used the same format.

...

Gino: I’m amazed that you guys were utilizing an SK-5. I know that’s a very limited sampler. Did you just use the external mic device to sample?

Prince Paul: I honestly don’t remember. I still have that sampler, but it’s in my attic. I think there was a mic input and it also had mic built in on top of it that you could speak into. I think we just plugged into the mic input and sped samples up. Obviously the sound was kind of jacked up, but nobody was concerned about quality back then. We were just impressed by the novelty of sampling. Everyone was like, 'Ooh, I can take a piece of something and play it on a keyboard.'"

At roughly the 33:30 mark of the "A Prince Among Thieves" episode of the "What Had Happened Was" podcast, Prince Paul says that he made his solo album "A Prince Among Thieves" with "S-950s and ASR-10s".

At roughly the 5:20 mark of this video, Prince Paul uses a TR-808.

Here is Prince Paul in a studio with a prominently-placed SP-1200.

In an interview on the making of "De La Soul is Dead", Prince Paul comments on the equipment used for the album:

"Gino: I know in talking to you for an earlier interview that you guys were using an Akai S-900, an Emu SP-12, and a Casio SK-5 on 3 Feet High and Rising. Did you use the same equipment for De La Soul is Dead?

Prince Paul: Yeah, we used all of the same stuff. We were at the same studio, Calliope. I think we mixed the album at Island Media in New York. We basically used the same format.

Gino: Can you explain the difference between an SP-12 and SP-1200?

Prince Paul: The SP-12 doesn’t have a disk drive so you can’t save the samples. The 1200 has a floppy disk drive that you can save your music in. So we had an early one, the very first one."