This is a mix that demands to be taken on its own terms: the bass line stays resolutely beneath the radar of small playback systems; the backing textures of the middle section (2:36-3:03) are seriously mono-incompatible; and the heavy clipping distortion on each kick-drum hit is printed in, whether or not you actually want the music turned up that loud. Anyone rattling the rims off their pimpmobile, however, will doubtless appreciate the way the kick’s low-frequency energy neatly targets the spectral gap between the two main bass-note fundamentals (37 and 56 Hz), and also the sporadic super-deep bass fall-offs, most clearly heard when the kick-drum is absent (eg. 1:22).

The hi-hat pattern’s worth listening out for, too, switching as it does between a straight 16th-note pattern and bursts of 16th-note and 32nd-note triplets. Polyrhythmic ideas like this might not occur instinctively to most software-based beat programmers, but they’re very easy to implement with the Roll key of Akai’s MPC workstations, those hands-on hardware sampling/sequencing devices which remain dear to many hip-hop producers’ hearts.