Designed by Roger Linn and released by the Japanese company Akai in 1989, the MIDI Production Center or MPC has proven to be the backbone of hip-hop production. Its 16-pad interface allows for 64 continuous sample tracks, and has provided producers with some of the intense sound-granulating control that you’ve heard in the genre’s last 20 years.

The MPC has been around for pretty much all of Providence, R.I.’s Abraham Orellana’s life. So it makes almost cosmic sense that Orellana—who does business under the puzzlingly given name of AraabMuzik—has a masterful way of pounding the pads. He came to most peoples’ attention as the man who produced this summer’s “Salute,” the reunion track for Harlem’s Dipset crew (after the jump). Personally I think the kid’s talent far outclasses Dipset’s extreme-swagger stance, but whatever.

Here he is in raw form in the studio with his buddy the MPC-5000…a visual treatment of his virtuosity to follow…
 

 
Here, Death by Electric Shock’s Shane Annas and Kevin Chung link up with New York visuals man System D-128 to add even more spice to the AraabMuzik sound.
 

 
And here’s the track that got Araab first noticed: “Salute” by Dipset. The rhymes cover the same ol’ generic swaggering ignorance, but hey, ya can’t have it all…