There are soul beats, generally attributed to Just Blaze, Kanye West and the like in which songs from the 70s are chopped, looped and at times sped up, and then there are beats that touch your soul. That trigger a frequency in your brain and the rest of your body to feel a sensation so pure you wonder why anyone would spend the rest of his life listening to anything different. For most of my formative years, Hi-Tek helped me experience the latter feeling. Tek was a magician with a drum machine, melding vocal samples, bass lines and drums in a way that few in rap had done before. And while a Just Blaze or a Bink could make something hard and turn around and make something smooth, few producers could generate a beat with a palpable sense of melancholy like Hi-Tek. Take Snoop Dogg's "I Believe In You." It's a sad beat, but it's a happy beat. You have the hi-hat and rimshot combo for most of the drum loop paired with a guitar part that implies sorrow or mourning, but then those shakers and that oh-so-beautiful clap come in at the third bar to make everything feel better again.
Not a lot of producers experienced celebratory underground status and major commercial success like Hi-Tek. He grew up in Cincinnati — and you can probably make a Midwest Dilla connection in terms of the soul stuff but they do have pretty established differences* — but he's mostly known for his work with Rawkus Records in New York. He produced five songs on Mos Def and Talib Kweli's Blackstar album and he has assorted credits throughout the Soundbombing series, but he's easily most famous for his and Kweli's Reflection Eternal album (the first one, anyway) and its lead single "The Blast."
*If anything, you can probably make the Pete Rock comparison but they all obviously come from the same lineage.
In 2002, he received a call from Dr. Dre asking permission to use the beat for what would become "Hollywood" for Truth Hurts' debut. That sparked his relationship with Aftermath where he would contribute to albums by 50 Cent, G-Unit, Lloyd Banks, Young Buck, The Game (twice), Snoop Dogg (twice) and D12, albums that would go on to sell 11 million, 5.5 million, 4 million, 5 hundred thousand, 5 million, 2.3 million, 1 million, 1 million and 2 million copies, respectively, though none of his songs were ever singles. In 2009 when three or four T.I. references for what was then Detox leaked, one of them, "Coming Back", was done by Hi-Tek and I stand by the fact that that song and the rest of that batch were better than anything on Compton.
He also released three solo albums that featured him rapping* even though he was never really known for that and a bunch of his friends that were much more famous than him. They were kind of like DJ Khaled albums but not as good and he actually contributed something to them. Hi-Teknology 2 is one of those middle of the road albums that doesn't really exist anymore but for nostalgic reasons means a lot to a certain type of person on the Internet. I'm one of those people, but to be fair 2006 was a hell of a year for that kind of fan. While I still wait for that unreleased Dion album, here are Hi-Tek's 25 best beats.
*Apparently all written by Smoke DZA.
Listen on Spotify.
Hi-Tek Top 25:
1. Reflection Eternal - The Blast
2. Bishop Lamont - Friends*^
3. Snoop Dogg – I Believe In You (feat. Latoiya Williams)
4. The Game – Runnin' (feat. Tony Yayo)
5. Dr. Dre – Coming Back (feat. T.I.) [T.I. reference]*^
6. 50 Cent – Ryder Music
7. Hi-Tek - Come Get It (Tekstrumentals)
8. The Game - Ol' English (feat. Dion)
9. Hi-Tek - Music for Life (feat. J. Dilla, Nas, Common, Busta Rhymes & Marsha Ambrosius)
10. Reflection Eternal – Love Language
11. Reflection Eternal – Good Mourning
12. Styles P – Testify (feat. Talib Kweli)^
13. Hi-Tek – Step Ya Game Up (Remix) [feat. Little Brother & Dion]
14. Cormega – Take These Jewels
15. Hi-Tek – The Sun God (feat. Common & Vinia Mojica)
16. Styles P – Let's Go (feat. Ray J)
17. The Game - Letter To The King (feat. Nas)
18. Reflection Eternal – Back Again (feat. RES)
19. Hi-Tek – Josephine (feat. Ghostface Killah, The Willie Cottrell Band & Pretty Ugly)
20. Hi-Tek – Know Me (feat. Jonell)
21. Hi-Tek – Baby We Can Do It (feat. Czar-Nok)
22. Black Star – Respiration
23. Common – 1-9-9-9 (feat. Sadat X & Talib Kweli)
24. G-Unit – G-Unit
25. Tha Eastsidaz – Eastside Ridaz (feat. Snoop Dogg, LaToiya Williams, Nate Dogg & Soopafly)
* Not released officially
^ Not on Spotify
Previous Top 25 Lists:
Cool & Dre
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