Yes, I had a Casio keyboard in elementary school. It was a gift from my Uncle Peter, and came with a dozen on-board drum patterns, each one tempo-controlled from a dedicated fader. My favorite preset was the “16 beat” – I could rock that shit at any speed. Piano lessons be damned.

Fast forward to college. I had a pretty trick PC – It must’ve had a 500MB hard drive in it. I installed  a copy of Voyetra Orchestrator, from floppy disks. This was an “application,” mind you, waaay before apps. We’re talking 3MB, and nearly an hour to install.

A multitrack WAV editor with simple MIDI sequencing. Hysterical, even this product page lists a Windows 3.1 minimum requirement.

And with one piece of software, I was convinced I had everything I needed in my “studio” to make hits.

I proudly cut a short EP of hip hop remixes that summer (’99). Bo Mack, from Portland, OR, spit verses with Matt Bamford on guitar. It was Matt’s idea in the first place to get Bo on the mic, to try to lay something down. Bo’s “Call of the Hood” flow was killer. Using only16 bars and two acoustic guitar chords, I snagged a bunch of Del tha Funkee Homosapien and Quake shotgun samples (like you’d normally do) and got to work.

I copied and pasted individual hits around to assemble a groove. Took forever, but shit was ground breaking for me.

Sadly, there’s no evidence of the Bo Mack “Call of the Hood” remixes. But they happened, I can assure you. Clearly my passion for producing and mixing started ages ago. I’m just taking this opportunity to look back, to see how far I’ve come.

And I’ll proclaim it again, as should you: I have everything in my studio I need to make hits. Including that Casio. Whattup Bo Mack.