The cover art for Shyheim’s “Shaolin Style” CD single.

The Micro-Chop Daily X #11–90s Edition

A Micro-Chop playlist featuring 10 hand-picked instrumentals — every single day for an entire year.

Gino Sorcinelli
Sep 8, 2018 · 3 min read

In recent months I’ve compiled five playlists that showcase 104 beats from 104 different producers. This obviously requires quite a bit of digging around to find enough songs for each playlist. During my more recent searches, I noticed that some labels are putting up old 90s 12" releases from artists that often include instrumentals. Reissues versions of 90s albums on Spotify also sometimes feature instrumental versions of singles or multiple songs from the project.

The Micro-Chop Daily X #11 —90s Edition. Ten hand-picked instrumentals for your listening enjoyment.

I hope this trend continues to grow with time, as it makes perfect sense for labels to upload instrumental versions of their back catalog if they have them. The right placement on a big playlist can help breathe new life into a song and make people re-discover it. Having access to instrumental versions can also help hook a listener that wants to start with the beat by itself and might eventually give the vocal version a shot. It’s just another way to gain some new fans.

Listening to these instrumentals brings me back to might high school days when I had to hunt down a 12" of something if I wanted to listen to the beat by itself. Many songs in the modern era of instrumental albums are on the shorter side, so it’s nice to sit down with a 3–5 minute instrumental and really study the intricacies — which are often incredible. I’ve also enjoyed discovering some songs I completely missed during my record buying heyday, like Shyheim’s “Shaolin Style”, which features a really nice L.E.S. instrumental and a cool Method Man-sampled hook.

There’s a large cache of 90s instrumentals like the ones featured above on Spotify, so I’ll likely doing several volumes of the 90s Edition Micro-Chop Daily X. But for now, let’s start by appreciating the one’s I’ve captured here for your listening pleasure.

The tenth playlist in the Micro-Chop Daily X series features the following artists, with each name hyperlinked to bring you directly to their Bandcamp, SoundCloud, or website: Large Professor, L.E.S., PF Cuttin, J Dilla, DJ Premier, Erick Sermon, Joc Max, DJ Evil Dee, Battlecat, A-Plus.

Be on the lookout for The Micro-Chop Daily X #12 dropping tomorrow.


If you enjoyed this piece, please consider following my Micro-Chop and Bookshelf Beats publications or donating to the Micro-Chop Patreon page. You can also read my work at HipHopDX or follow me on Twitter.

Micro-Chop

Dissecting beatmaking, DJing, music production, rapping, and sampling.

Gino Sorcinelli

Written by

Freelance journalist @Ableton, ‏@HipHopDX, @okayplayer, @Passionweiss, @RBMA, @ughhdotcom + @wearestillcrew. Creator of www.Micro-Chop.com and @bookshelfbeats.

Micro-Chop

Dissecting beatmaking, DJing, music production, rapping, and sampling.

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