Words by Emma Warren
Lawrence Lord - aka The Purist - has been making ‘luxurious rap beats’ for decades and in doing so he’s created a whole beat-digging universe of his own.
It contains a constellation of physical items including thousands of vinyl records and folders full of beats, as well as friendships and working relationships with some of hip hop’s biggest names. It’s the basis for his music, productions, and the instantly sold-out lo-fi hip hop releases on his highly collectible Daupe! label.
The producer was born in Chichester, lived for a long time in South London and now lives in Brighton. He’s had a long career working with some of the most inventive artists in US rap including Madlib and MF Doom, often due to connecting with them at a super early stage of their musical careers. “All of them were just the same thing – I spotted them really early. Danny Brown, before XXX came out. Action Bronson before his first tape was out. Freddie Gibbs, it was well before Piñata. People early in their career are much easier to work with. They haven't had time to build up bad habits, their ego hasn’t gone mad. A lot of people, their early work is their best work because they listen to other people’s opinions. It’s easy to get carried away when you’ve got a platinum disc and a million pounds in the bank.”
A lot of people, their early work is their best work because they listen to other people’s opinions.
He’s also got a long list of UK artists under his production belt, including Mercury-prize nominated Loyle Carner, or Fatima. Working with fellow Londoners means there’s often common cultural ground to build on in between the music-making. “When I’m working with [grime artist] CASisDEAD, we have so much in common so things are really quick. Same background, same sort of age, communicating things is easier. I can talk about EastEnders to Cas, but I can’t do that with Westside Gun. He doesn’t know who Pat Butcher is, does he? Fatima, we’ll have a laugh, talking about old London clubs, nights out at Plastic People. It’s a case by case basis.”
The music made by The Purist and released by the artists on Daupe! sits in a lineage of rap made with minimal equipment. “When you look back to all the old stuff, the De La Soul stuff, Tribe, it’s just records and a sampler and a big reel to reel or DAT tape. You don’t need a massive machine to help you record those sort of records. I’ve taken that mentality and applied it to putting records out myself. Keep it in-house, do it on a smaller scale, have full control. Pay for the best things you can – artists, designers, mastering person – but keep it simple.”
It’s an attitude that plays out in his own studio set up, which is made of two drum machines (the SP1200 and an MPC60), a record player, a laptop running ProTools and a Brauner VM1 microphone. Oh, and his Lunchbox which contains inserts from an API desk including a Neve mic, pre-amp and an inward corrections compressor. “It allows me to take a professional recording set-up anywhere in the world, in a suitcase, and get really good results,” he says – although it’s also a set-up that inevitably attracts the attention of Customs Officers when it goes through the scanner.
Keep it in-house, do it on a smaller scale, and have full control. Pay for the best things you can – artists, designers, mastering person – but keep it simple.
If he needs a sample – and The Purist’s music-making process remains heavily sample-based – he has a substantial storage unit full of ultra rare records gathered over two decades. His collection contains everything you’d imagine from a primo producer for hip hop’s most unique rappers, as well as what he describes as ‘bizarre loner Californian folk’. “I still like the same things: rich jazz chords, melancholy things, big strings. One thing I’ve started to get into is electro DIY stuff from the ‘80s. Folk with drum machines from California. Every album has one amazing song.” It’s perfect material, he says, for a film soundtrack, should a director call upon his skills.
For about five years, in his early twenties, before he was making ‘good money’ from songs, he was buying and selling rare records, flipping them to other producers. “It was dirty, a lot of hard work, but nothing more rewarding than finding an unfound sample. Absolute gold. It’s a really special feeling.” He’s understandably loathe to discuss his digging methods (“I don’t want to put people on like that!”) but he is prepared to share one story.
“I’ve got this record I found more recently,” he says. “I was in Los Angeles with [DJ and producer] Budgie. I went to a record dealer’s house, who sells a lot of gospel records. He sold me an African-American private press stage show soundtrack. The entire thing is absolute garbage apart from this one sample, from a soul song about the world’s worst lover. This sample, it’s incredible. I was straight on the internet to see if it’d been used. I was sure Madlib would have beaten me to the punch on this one but this time round, he hadn’t.”
The internet, he points out, has made ‘the price of everything available to everyone’. “In the early 2000s a record store owner would have a book and if a record wasn’t in the book it was worth $5,” he says. “Now, it’s on Discogs or it’s not on Discogs which means it’s very rare. You need to find an old Mom and Pop store where they don’t like the internet.”
Changing times have their benefits, too. “As times change and tastes change things become more usable. Samples that were too slow ten years ago, you can use now. Everyone was rapping at 96 bpm now they’re rapping at 70 or 75bpm. It’s got the stage where now I really only dig in my own collection.” He’s basically become his own record dealer, although the savings gained are offset by storage costs, which are, he points out, ‘not cheap’.
As times change and tastes change things become more usable. It’s got to the stage where now I really only dig in my own collection.
The Purist has another rich source of beats, ready to use in the moments where no new ideas are flowing. Recently, he made a track for highly-regarded UK rapper Lord Apex using a beat originally made twelve years ago for an entirely different rapper. “Ultimately it ended up with Lord Apex and it’s a great fit,” he says. “You might have a week or two where you have no ideas. I’ll go to my old computer, my G4 tower, from the 2000s, plug it in, fan barely working, get the folders open. You find things you completely forgot you’d made.” If he updated it, he says, ‘it’d just have crashed and never started again.”
New Yorker Westside Gunn is one of the high-profile artists (with over 2m monthly listeners on Spotify) drawn into the Daupe! universe – the label just released his new album Peace “Fly” God with Stove God Cooks and Estee Nack. Daupe! specialises in collectables and the 4,500 units of cassettes, Japanese Obi editions, coloured vinyl and picture discs flew out to fans within days of the drop. Westside Gunn’s 2020 release on the label, Hitler Wears Hermes 8 (Side B), similarly sold out and is now available on Discogs with prices nudging £200 per copy and rising as high as £650. The relationship goes back: The Purist produced, released and art directed Westside Gun’s Roses are Red back in 2016. “The Griselda guys, Westside – for me it was instant, genius level artistry. When they first started no-one really took any notice and now they are one of the most emulated and loved collectives in hip hop.”
Birmingham rapper SonnyJim is another regular collaborator. The pair have spent the last three years working a new album together, titled White Girl Wasted. It contains features from Madlib, Jay Electronica and the late MF Doom. “I played [Sonny] the beat and he wrote a verse. It’s 24 bars, I thought we can’t have another verse 24 bars long. I thought the beat sounded very MF Doom-esque. We reached out, a week later we had the verse back. Jay Electronica, we played it to him down the phone, a day later we had the verse back. Before we done it, it didn’t seem possible. I was confident.”
The manual is a gold mine. Read the manual. If there was a manual to life, you’d read it, right?
And whilst he’s been doing it for decades – Daupe! turns ten this year – there are still things to learn. “I’ve been using ProTools for 20 years and even now I’ll find a new shortcut. I’ll see an engineer in a big studio – and I think ‘I’ve been doing that in ten steps’ and it’s one button plus whatever.” He’s also a big believer in that most old-school of production techniques: reading the manual. Yes, there are YouTube tutorials, but they’re not foolproof. “If the person giving the tutorial hasn’t read the manual they could be making the same errors you’re going to make. A lot of machines - even alarm clocks - have features you don’t know exist. Go through the book and you’ll find features that could change your workflow, reduce time, make your art better full stop. People are so emotional and impatient they want to get to the machine, press the button and go, but the manual is a gold mine. Read the manual. If there was a manual to life, you’d read it, right?”