A-REECE Breaks Down the Beats & Samples of "Today’s Tragedy, Tomorrow’s Memory"

“I’d ask myself: what the hell was Kanye thinking?” A-REECE (acronym for “Above Reality, Exceptionally Emotional, Conscious with Everything”) says in a recent Forbes feature. “How’d he end up deciding he is gonna chop the record like that — dissect it and put it back together into something totally new. I’ve always wanted to be able to do that.” That’s how he got back into sampling, flipping five samples off Tracklib for his newly released mixtape "Today’s Tragedy, Tomorrow’s Memory".

"Around 2017/2018 my relationship with sampling kind of started, because I have made beats before but I stopped,” he explains in this new Made With Tracklib video interview. “But back then I got back into beatmaking and got introduced to sampling. I feel like, at a point in the future, kids will be sampling us. Sampling what we do right now. Samples are giving the youth some knowledge of the music. That’s how they can appreciate the creation of it all. Like, this song came from the 70s and is still being used in many hip-hop beats. That’s longevity. So I guess that sheds a little light on how dope music back then was, and how long its lifespan is.”

What makes A-REECE's rocket of a career even more impressive is he's done it all independently. Yet another area where Tracklib and A-REECE connect: "As a producer you want to focus on making the beat, making it a classic, not going to court clammed and stuff. So Tracklib comes in as the middleman to that, and they do it all for you. And I feel like that service is good for producers who are sample-driven because you don't want that type of smoke, especially if you're an up-and-coming artist, and you don't have that type of budget anyway. Or if you're an independent artist like me and there's no label to go out and pay for all this stuff."

In the mood for more? Find out how BROCKHAMPTON and JPEGMAFIA flipped another unreleased track from Isaac Hayes via Tracklib.