The earliest Hip Hop DJs did some very creative things with the technology at hand.

Before we had samplers or could set up a loop and hear it repeat indefinitely, we made our own loop using two copies of the same record.

I demonstrated how this was done at a special class visit recently. You can watch the video here or on my TikTok.

While this has traditionally been done with two records on two turntables, it is possible to do it on modern controllers or CDJ decks like the ones I used here.

In the clip, I play a Led Zeppelin song and show that it starts out with a great drum break. I then demonstrate how to extend it by playing it on a second deck immediately after that. Then going from deck to deck, I loop up the break and extend the drums indefinitely.

Old school Hip Hop DJs used to do this so the very first generation of rappers could spit some rhymes. This piece of history is absolutely incredible. It’s amazing how a whole genre of music came out of this groundbreaking technique.

This workshop and demonstration was so much fun. The students even wrote and recorded a rap song and did some scratching.

If you want me to come to your class or school, please let me know. We can have your students write and record short rap songs too. This workshop is always a lot of fun!