DJ Premier featuring Nas and The Berklee Symphony Orchestra - Regeneration

Here comes a remix that brings quite a contrasting force of musical skills. VIBE recently teamed up with DJ Premier, Nas and the Berklee Symphony as part of their RE:GENERATION project. This documentary project comes to life in conjunction with Hyundai Veloster and follows DJ Premier, Pretty Lights, The Crystal Method, Mark Ronson and Skrillex as they remix, recreate and re-imagine five traditional styles of music.

DJ Premier was given Classical and began his immersion into the genre with Bruce Adolphe, a former classical music professor at Juilliard. They met at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music not far from DJ Premier’s home in NY. After learning about classical music theory, the inspirations of some of the genre’s most profound composers and how traditional pieces are structured, DJ Premier went out and bought tons of classical symphonies on vinyl to mash up his own creation. We then took that mash-up and orchestrated it for sheet music. In the first step of the actual recording process, DJ Premier partnered with Stephen Webber, a professor and conductor at the Berklee College of Music. Steven taught Premier how to conduct and helped him in studio with the 58-piece Berklee Symphony Orchestra you hear on the track. Of all the takes, the one you hear is the “wild” version (which means they recorded it without the metronome in their headphones) DJ Premier conducted himself. Then DJ Premier brought that instrumental track back home to NY and Nas laid down his rhyme on top of it.

Listen below!