Black Milk The World Is Yours (MPC Live Mix)

. On the cover of Popular Demand Curtis Cross stands in front of the State Theater, resting lightly under his arm is a nondescript piece of electronics. It is an MPC. A Music Production Center, to be specific an Akai MPC 2000 XL. This device originally known as a MIDI Production Center was originally designed by Roger Linn and produced by the Japanese company Akai from 1988 onward. It was intended to function as a powerful kind of drum machine, the MPC drew on design ideas from machines such as the Sequential Circuits Inc. Studio 440 and the Linn's own Linn 9000, combining a powerful MIDI sequencer with the ability to sample one's own sounds. Later models feature increasingly powerful sampling, storage, interfacing and sound manipulation facilities, which broadens the use of instruments beyond just drum and rhythm tracks. It is Black Milk's dextrous exploitation of the MPC, not just his inputting the device with soulful samples and elegant live instrumentation, that is at the core of much of at least his early sound. Much an and will be said about Cross's pioneering work on this piece of electronics, but it doesn't take a degree in mathematics or the mind of a hip hop producer to experience the sheer joy the audience experiences watching Milk and his band build some bellicose beats from the ground up into an adlibbed homage to Dilla by way of Nas in the form of The World Is Yours.