Hip-hop producers rarely come greater than Pete Rock, whose reputation as one of the titans of the '90s golden age hasn't and shouldn't be diminished by the increasing marginalization of his profile in the mainstream. Just because he's doing latter-day mixtapes with Camp Lo and scoring extended Smoke DZA monologues doesn't mean he can't bring the same insight and motivation that he brought to "The World Is Yours" or "Be Easy" or "The Joy". The man knows his craft and doesn't skimp on it, so it hardly matters whether an MC on one of his tracks is a household name or a hardcores-only attraction, so long as the beat's done justice. The question remains, then, how good a beat can be before it can work without an MC at all.
Great instrumental hip-hop records from great producers sound like inner voyages with their collected influences, filtered through their newest observations and wrangled into something unpredictable and evocative. Not-so-great instrumental records from great producers? Well, they kind of sound like demo reels. To be fair, the first PeteStrumentals, released way back in 2001, was a hell of a demo reel, as is its long-belated sequel PeteStrumentals 2: in both cases, the beat hooks you in the first few bars before you start fiending for somebody putting in an actual verse by the midpoint.
Still, it's at least worth delving into what shifts in style and technique both connect and separate PeteStrumentals 2 from the sounds he was working with 14 years ago (or 24 years ago, for that matter). Those characteristic blasts of seamless horn loops and burbling keyboards—piano, Rhodes, or otherwise—still jump out as backbone elements, pieces that introduce themselves like flourishes and eventually work their way down into the marrow to become as integral as the drums. But it's those drums that still hit on (or around) The One that remain Pete's core means of expression even when he's rewriting his signature. The lead-in to opener "Heaven & Earth" hints at choppy, juddering excursions that threaten to mess with basslines in micro-fractured doses, a tease at an acknowledgement of more contemporary and weirder ways to toy with samples. But its psychedelic dub descent eventually lands on a solid boom-clap foundation that rides on the deep juxtaposition of soulful expressions—elegance on the piano, oomph on the drums—that's made him one of the best at merging melodic grace and percussive power.
Where he's been taking his sound since his first flush of renown has put him in the position of being an elder statesman who still seems open to learning and mutating. That someone who was veteran enough to influence Dilla wound up having that influence reciprocated is worth highlighting. Maybe it's not that big of a surprise considering the two-way torch-passing meant he oversaw and arranged the postmortem Jay Stay Paid, but it turns out he can still stake a claim to his own turf even when paying tribute ("Dilla Bounce (R.I.P.)"), whether he keeps his drums quantized or not, whether he pushes for familiar soul-jazz cool ("Air Smoove"), heated funk ("Accelerate"; "PR 4 Prez"), and wistful R&B ("I Wish"), or dives into something like "Cosmic Slop", which latches onto disembodied synth chords and builds up a track that runs on hypnotic ambience—albeit with a goldbrick-heavy bassline.
The atmosphere, meanwhile, trades on tweaks of nostalgic familiarity—sample-spotters will hear old standbys like David Axelrod and Isaac Hayes and Black Heat woven into the texture —but PeteStrumentals 2 is too aware of the post-Ummah, Stones Throw-adjacent culture of contemporary beatmaking to coast on his golden-age pedigree. There are Madlib-esque moments of abrupt soundbite drop-ins, narrative or otherwise, some of which—like the 34-second anti-police-brutality interlude "Justice (Brotherhood & Understanding)"—provide a deeper emotional core that the beats themselves only allude to. It's just disappointing that there aren't more of these little touches, or a more quick-moving barrage of ideas condensed into a more concentrated dose—the beats are all quality, but without voices there's not much they can do in three-and-a-half minutes that they don't have the strength and presence to do in two.
