In 2007, Nike brought together DJ Premier, Rakim, Nas, KRS-One, and Kanye West for the track “Classic (Better Than I’ve Ever Been).” The song was made for the 25th anniversary of the iconic Air Force 1 sneaker. Now, DJ Premier has revealed how he was able to get the legendary roster of artists together on one song.
While giving some insight into the song via his ‘So Wassup’ series on YouTube, Premier said the process started from a beat CD Kanye West got from Rick Rubin, where the producer was asked to choose an instrumental for the rappers to get busy on. The original version of the track reportedly didn’t feature Rakim, and Premier went on to say KRS called him up about doing a DJ Premier version of the track.
Premier went on to say “KRS-One called me and said, ‘Yo, we need a Premier version of this song.’ I had no ties to it, but when KRS calls, what do you say, no? No. You’re like, ‘Alright, what do you need me to do?’ He said, ‘The original is done, we even performed it already on MTV. But we still need one to do a video to, and we want to get it a little more — not even uptempo, just more of a different type of energy.’ I said, ‘Alright.'”
The producer said he received vocals from Kanye West, KRS-One, Rakim, and Nas weeks later and noted he had to manipulate Rakim’s verse to match the tempo of the new beat. Nike ended up rocking with Premier’s remix of the track so much that they shot a video for it. Take a look above.
Source: Hiphopdx.com
