Large Professor

For this installment of Rhythm Roulette, we connected with Extra P, aka Large Professor. We took the legendary Queens producer to Human Head Records in Brooklyn, where he picked three random records to begin a game of Rhythm Roulette. He ended up grabbing an Instant Funk record, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ Black and Blue album, and Shirley Scott’s On A Clear Day. From there, Extra P began to go through the records and create some new heat from what he picked.

If Large Pro never did anything other than produce Main Source’s “Live at the Barbeque,” thus introducing the world to a teenage rap phenomenon known as Nasty Nas, his place in the hip hop pantheon would be secure. But of course he’s done much more than that, taking young Mr. Jones under his wing throughout the Illmatic recording process, and going on to blaze his own trail as a super-producer and emcee extraordinaire in his own right. We asked Large Professor to sit down for 5 Under 5. Watch as LP breaks down the meaning behind his name, bigs up his mentors in the rap game, explains what drew him to work with Nas, gives his true thoughts on how the sound of hip hop has changed over the years, and reveals why he had to let the graf game go.