Large Professor - Top 10 Beats

Here at BeatGrade we decided to do our own Top Ten series of great producers. This feature is the Legendary Large Professor. He has produced some of the Best beats and classic albums of all time.

Based in New York City, Large Pro is known as a founding member of the underground hip hop group Main Source and as mentor and frequent collaborator of Nas. He is critically known to be one of the best Hip Hop producers of all time.

In 1994, Large Professor produced three of the ten songs on Nas's Illmatic ("Halftime", "One Time 4 Your Mind", and "It Ain't Hard to Tell"), the most of any producer involved with the album. According to an interview with Busta Rhymes, the "Halftime" beat was originally intended for him Though he liked the beat, he didn't end up using it and later regretted it after hearing "Halftime". While describing the making of the song in an interview Large Pro said, "I mean, we just wanted to put something gritty out there to the world, and those drums—that's what it was at that time. It was that gritty, muffled out, because the Hip Hop that we grew up with… We grew up with park jam tapes and things like the fidelity of these tapes." He was so instrumental in the making of Illmatic that Nas wanted to give him an executive producer credit, but he refused. Next to Pete Rock he is considered one of the best remix producers.

In 1996, Large Professor completed his debut solo album The LP for Geffen Records. It was promoted by the singles "The Mad Scientist" and "I Juswannachill". After several delays, the album was shelved and later released as a bootleg version in 2002. An official release of the album finally came out in 2009, thirteen years after its original intended release date.

In 2001, Large Pro produced "You're da Man" and "Rewind" for Nas's Stillmatic album. He first played Nas the beat for "You're da Man" while Nas was working on Nastradamus a few years prior. Nas chose the beat but decided to save it for a later project. Large Professor also used the same vocal sample from the chorus on the song "The Man" for his 1st Class album.

***If there's a producer who's beats you feel we should list, please say their names in the comments below!

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