The S950 was like the ghost writer of HipHop. The Sp1200 and MPC were the stars getting the credit but the 950 was doing the work behind the scene

Found my S950 at a pawnshop a few ago for $150.

SKI Beats!!!! He so cool we chopped it up at a Mobb Deep show. Another dope video. The s900 and s950 are the hardest samplers I have tried to use next to the rack mount EPS lol. Shout out to Premo and Large Pro!!!

"Put It through the S950, then STRETCH IT!" "All I see is blinkin' lights, track boards and fat mics-950's, SP12's, MP-60's." Still have my S-950 in mint condition.

Rickey Lawson Rest In Peace, those are his drums on the MPC60 sound kit, the Rickey Set

These 'What Had Happened Was' series is very informative and entertaining at the same time. Great content.

I still have both the s900 and the s950 the s900 is collecting dust but the s950 i still use to this day!

Your enthusiasm is unmatched

Definitely a trip down memory lane. I’m an old head I.T. Pro, and as you described your Napster experience I lived it from day one. I advanced to Megaupload, and other programs to start getting whole LPs. It got so bad, I was downloading 2-300 albums a day. It was crazy, but I kept it on the low. I never got to own an S950, but definitely was influenced by its usage. I went the E-MU ESI4000 route when the time came. I may eventually get one just out of respect for its legendary impact. These pieces are increasingly hard to find these days for reasonable prices. But, there’s no denying that sound. Keep em coming bruh. 👍🏾✌🏾✊🏾

Yes. You finally covered my old sampler. Brings back memories.

I'm Italian, I happened upon your video by chance looking for stuff on the 950. I'm laughing for the bus driver ahahhahahaha

I'm binge watching your videos right now, i like your style

Another banger!! S950 was a beast!!! Great video brother!! 🙏🏿🙏🏿💪🏿💪🏿

Another winner! Thx my guy

I love this channel bro. Keep making these. You'll make it happen.

Great channel you have here. I came for the gear but stayed for the history lessons.

Without this rack mounted sampler and the Roland TR-909, electronic music as we know it would not exist. Period.

This is great info and history. Keep dropping it for us 🔥

Dope work mane!

I remember Mike was posting on mpcforums years back chopping it up. I own 2 s950's. Will probably let one go in the future but will most definitely keep the other. Great content 👍🏾

another great video, thanks

I had that ninja turtles lunch box growing up back in the first grade. Best self defense weapon ever.

Finally one I can comment on! I’m definitely in the “still use and love the 950” camp.

Another classic vid on another CLASSIC peice of gear!

I absolutely loved your presentation on this. Was not expecting it whatsoever and I bet you could sell sand in a desert, with the way you handled yourself.

Love it man

Another great video. I love my s900. Anything you sample just instantly sounds like 'hip hop'. I usually sample from vinyl to the s900 or x7000 before sampling into the 2000xl. Really beefs up the sound.

I'm so glad I had a chance to use one back in the days..

Good work man!!!!!!!! The turtles lunchbox and NKOTB!! I'm at my desk rolling!!! 😂 You would be a good salesman I swear

bro! you need a podcast. You had me feeling like Rocky. You'd make a great Product specialist

I never got the Beatles either and I grew up at that time.

Love your videos man. Anything interesting to do from Emu?

It's so weird sometimes thinking about how some gear became legendary... knowing there was a time people were looking at people still using stuff like a SP1200 or S950 or MPC 60 or a 3000 like they were crazy. There was a point where these things were looked at like they were Rotary phones and everybody was trying to get rid of them on the cheap for the latest and greatest cept for the Studio Pro's they just kept using what worked for them and made hits with the old gear and made these things legendary. Go back like 15 nah not even go back like 10 years ago and no one cared about any of this stuff. People were trying to ditch these joints on Ebay all day. I remember back in like 2015 you could still grab a SP1200 for like $1,500 and even then that was steep. I still look at some of this old gear like the old turds they are. Those old machines were a PITA to use. Zip disk and f'd up floppys eating your beats. The crashing and the freezing mid project..long ass sample conversion times. Clunky loud buttons... This stuff the Model T Ford of beat making. I'd love to be in the room when one of those guys drops like 10Grand on a SP1200 just to get it home and realize it sucks and all the dope isht you know it for doing was actually a work around some producer came up with to make it not suck even though it still sucked.

It just dawned on me, your energy / vibe during narration reminds me of uncle Ralph from Video Music Box. 🤣😂🤣😂🤣

If you teamed up with very sick beats, that would be a powerful duo.

great video bro !!!!

My first sampler was an ESI2000 by E-MU. I still have it stored away. My first Akai sampler was an S3200XL, a big step up from the S950. However, the S950 and all samplers of that era definitely have me intrigued and I would like to play around with one of them to experiment and see what I can do to an 808 after sampling it in, or a drumloop after sampling it in. I bet the results would be different from anything I have previously experienced from the more modern samplers that came much later.

Hands down that late '80s & a majority of the 90's golden era of Boom Bap Hip Hop was the sound of the 950 acomnpanied by the E-MU SP1200. What made the 950 so special was its dope bottom-heavy 12 bit sound that hasn't been matched to this day making it still one of the sought-after samplers. Even though a 950 plugin came out a few years ago it doesnt come close to the original.

Yippee 👏🏾

Love the Turtles lunchbox! I still have my Gobots lunchbox from 1984 with thermos. It was never used! I had an aunt like Ralphie’s from “A Christmas Story”, who thought I was 5 years younger than I really was ;-) Akai was hit’n it back in the 80’s. Hell…, I remember seeing one of their early samplers in the music department at one of our local Colleges back in the 80’s when we were on a field trip there, and I specifically remember the music professor saying “Sampling is going to change the music industry”.

Excellent video 😁

Good laughs. Thank you

Hanging tuff gang here!

This definitely has a sound that's all it's own.

I just bought one off of reverb and paid grip for it, but I am happy with it!!!!! Filter sounds fantastic with a full body sound!!

I was just thinking about this thing. I can't be the only one that noticed dude from Isla Instruments, the ones that did the S2400, put up a picture of an S950 on his desk. Maybe they're cooking something up.

My favourite sampler in my collection,

S950 was the sampler of choice here in the UK as well for jungle producers. The 12-bit sample rate gave the samples a certain sheen, and they used it to timestretch the breakbeats

Did you forgot the biggest feature of the S-950? It was the last Akai Sampler with analog Filters. And that is THE reason why this machine sounds so gooood. :)

I still have mine. Love it still. It’s like Grandpa in the studio.

Nothing more to say but this machine is on so many BANGERS !!! GO HARD OR GO HOME AKAI TOOK THE CROWN AND DARED OTHER COMPANIES TO MATCH THEM, note how many other companies are in the top 5 of late 1980's and 1990's hip hop, Akai, Ensoniq, Kurzweil, Korg, Emu, Roland was on another level with the TR808 and TR909. The 950 LEGENDARY TO THIS DAY !!!!!

I’ve had 3 900s now. Bought the first one in 96 for $500. Everything worked. Used it for several years til it just started shutting off on its own. Had to wait for awhile til it came back on. Bought another on eBay for $100 in 2005 maybe. Screen didn’t work but it definitely powered on. Tried fixing it with my limited electronic ability and messed up and had to toss it. Got another one last year and put in a new screen and usb drive. Had to use some parts from the previous one to get to work as some capacitors were damaged. But now I have a fully functional 900 again. Simply a great piece of gear.

1986, the year of my birth!

Wha ha haaaaappen waaaaaaaas!!

Mate had one. Pain in the arse to use compared to what we have nowadays but it sounded amazing.

My second sampler I bought with the alesis h16

Can you do one about the Yamaha TX16W

Dope Sampler

yo whattttt I had no idea that MJ stumped for Akai Pro! Unreal.

Hahahahahaha! I love it.

A1

Ha ha love the lunch box story,

That's Mathematics from Wu Tang with Ski

That beat king's documentary is legendary.

It's sooo expensive now.. so I went with EMU E6400 Ultra loaded too for 350.0 and it has a hard drive last Thursday.. I really wanted S950 though. I really do. Now I'm just stuck with the S950 plugin called RX950

I've had a lot of gear, but this is the sampler I've held on to the longest. Bought it back in 2007 for $200 when people were giving this type of stuff away. I mostly used it to process samples and run it through other samplers cause the filter and character at the different sample rates is so good, but later on got to know it better. Setting it up to an MP or an SP with MIDI is dumb easy, you can see why so many people used it. The floppy drive is a downside but there are ways around that nowadays. I would argue that this machine defines the sound of late 80's/early 90's hip hop.

Yamaha used nearly that exact branding for it's PSR-S7XX & 9XX models.

yea! i spend hours in front of the pc downloading songs in napster and then i discover the chat program mirc ,tons of albums to be downloaded there ..

The Ensoniq ASR 10 was the best and the easiest to use. Still to this day

I have so many questions like when you say 63 sec of sample time is that the total per sample track or total for the whole machine? I’m so confused on this. Either way it’s nothing short of amazing what these ppl did. 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

I was/am close to copping an S900… (with new backlight screen, USB/SD drive and updated operating system), I hear it’s almost the same machine as S950 just without the timestretching. I could progress a sample with the filter etc and then time stretch after on Logic Pro. The lunchbox analogy was a joke but it’s not dead accurate right? as the S900 is still Great machine. You almost make me not want it get it now haha. ‘What a way to start the day’ 😂😂

I guess the interviewer never heard of the TV show Dance Fever. Cause that's how i've heard about Akai. Where the winning dancing couple of that show would win an Akai Hifi Stereo Rack system.

Timestretching… now imagine get control over timestretch dissengaged from pitchshift… that was Variphrase and what wha happened was… that and Acid/Fruity loops…

Akai s950 and Emu sp-1200, the wonder twins

That Timestretching shit was Revolutionary!

My s900. Radio shack floppy disks still working today 😂😂😂

What had happened waaaaaas ! Makes a good beat tag lol

That miles davis story actually true? Cool AF if true

2:34 imagine that dude sitting down with and MPC and making a banger

At 8:30 you wild...lmao 🤣

You have unreleased hip hop songs of 2pac and biggi?!

The s950 is Premo's secret sauce for his sound not the MPC 60. His so wassup series exposed it for me lol

Yoo I got to wonder how old you is. I was born In 1984. I didn't have a TMNT lunchbox, I had a Denver the last Dinosaur lunchbox.😂

😆😆😆😆😆😆 Donnie from NKOTB lunchbox!

Mike McRoberts was the Dan of his day?

What done happen waaaaaaaaasssssss!!!!!!!!

Pencil holder lmao!

Naw forget them turtles I wanted a transformers lunch box lol 👍🏾

We have the E-MU 6400 ultra

“Click click, bee-yow, bang, booyaka!! What am i do to ya?　 it's somethin new to ya Like screwin ya, all over my studi-ah Ride on my mp-60 and let the s-950 squeeze your *******” -Redman

It's a shame Jordan never beat Bird in a playoff game. Jordan got swept... twice 😂🤣! ⛹‍♂🐦🏀🐐

this is one sampler along with the S900 that will never wither into nothingness..

Bought a S-612 for $100 recently.

Goes to show you that most of these anti-MPC SP1200 users were still on Akai's d^^^. Because they were using that SP1200 with Akai samplers. Akai was running s6^%^. Including those Ensoniq and Emu users who swear they never touched an MPC. Bow tf down to the MPC 2000 Classic. The best LEGACY MPC ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wonder how many lables got hit with cases because of producers sampling some stevie wonder song or some major soul hit on the 950 and not telling them before they published joints and sent them to every record station in the usa lmao

The S950 is definitely not their most legendary Akai sampler….its between the *MPC60 or MPC3000!* The S950 might be the most infamous sampler lol