Large Professor Wrote a Love Song About His Drum Machine
Music is a lifelong love affair for some artists, often helping them express emotions they might not be able to otherwise. Large Professor is one of those people — music is more than a profession or a lifestyle for Extra P, it’s the very essence of his being.
For evidence that this isn’t mere exaggeration or hyperbole, throw on Large Pro’s 2008 album Main Source and you’ll hear him break down his longstanding romance with a drum machine. While the premise of “Sewin’Love” might seem odd, it works as a heartfelt ode to a piece of technology that changed his life. Spitting lines like “When I’m in the dungeon mood, you lift me out of that. Strings are not attached, to our love,” Large Pro pulls off a convincing love anthem about an inanimate object.
As Large flows over a head-nodding, minimalist beat, one gets the sense that producing is secondary only to breathing for him. Lines like “I’m with you because life is a circus and you’re the only thing that’s real, that’s how I feel,” confirm that music keeps the blood flowing through this man’s veins.
“I really live through this music. If I couldn’t do that, I don’t even know where or what cause that stuff keeps me alive.”
In an era where so many musicians have leveraged their talents into lucrative side hustles involving alcohol, books, clothing, radio and TV shows, movies, podcasts, and weed, it’s refreshing to see someone who has maintained a passionate, singular focus for close to 30 years. During his appearance on the Microphone Check podcast in 2015 Large Professor let it be known in no uncertain terms that music is the pinnacle for him, there is no secondary interest. “I really live through this music,” he said. “If I couldn’t do that, I don’t even know where or what cause that stuff keeps me alive.”
Much as the song shows a meticulous attention to lyrics that reflect an undying passion for hip-hop, Large also shows equal care in crafting the instrumental. He flexes an appropriate amount of skill by choosing a well-known sample and flipping the hell out of it — a sound choice for a tune about a drum machine. “When you find it you gonna be like ‘wow,’” he told Nodfactor in a 2008 interview when asked about the sample he utilized. “A lot of people when they dig they try to be so obscure but I’ve been kind of rockin’ with what’s there and brought it back to the joints we always love.”
Though Large Pro is a notoriously humble and modest guy, he seems to have a special affinity for the stellar rhymes and production techniques displayed on “Sewin’Love”. When host Microphone Check co-host Ali Shaheed Muhammad asked about the song, Large Pro responded, “I feel these songs will, later in life, they’ll be heralded as some good little works there…one of these generations will catch on.”
In the end “Sewin’Love” is another creative, innovative, and inspiring song in the catalog of a producer who has dedicated his life to making music he believes in. We can only hope it catches on in the years to come as Large Pro predicted it would.
Connect with Large Professor on Facebook, Instagram, and on Twitter @plargepro.
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