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".

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".