Pete Rock

There’s a reason Pete Rock goes by the nickname Soul Brother: Very few in hip-hop have perfected the craft of sampling the way he has, blessing the '90s and 2000s with some of the genre's warmest, jazziest soul loops. Born in the Bronx in New York City to Jamaican immigrants before moving to Mount Vernon as a child, he carried the record crates for cousin Heavy D and eventually met rap legend Marley Marl at age 13, landing a spot DJing for him on the radio. He met rapper C.L. Smooth in high school, and they formed a duo, releasing three albums’ worth of material—including the immediately recognizable horn loop of “They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.),” a song created to commemorate the life of fallen friend Troy Dixon. Pete Rock became an in-demand producer, offering his inventive samples to Run-DMC, Nas, Public Enemy, and many others for a prolific '90s run. He also began his own solo album series called Soul Survivor (one of the best dual-threat rapper-producer albums of its time) and an instrumental series titled Petestrumentals, and he would go on to steer the posthumous J Dilla album Jay Stay Paid, work with Kanye West, and create joint albums with other esteemed MCs in the 2010s and 2020s.