One of the most interesting record stores I ever went to, but I wasnt in the right frame of mind that I am now, to really appreciate it, but I knew it was special was just off Hollywood Boulevard, not far from Mann's Chinese Theatre, and it was called As The Record Turns.

Its in a little shopping arcade, and its quite a small store, And they just had crazy shit. Everything is in nice plastic jackets, and marked up, like expensive records. They had things like The Transformer movie sound track on vinyl, the original cartoon, all these odd TV things, deep crates of soul, funk.. While we there, with my friend DJ P-trix, a DJ from LA, he took us there, and he told us this is where all the guys come to get their samples, and the old guy there has sold records to Q-Tip and Pete Rock, and this is where they come.

While we're in there, this guy, Mel-Man who co-produced The Chronic 2001, he came in, and he was high-fiving the old Phillipino guy that runs the shop. And he was like, “I need to get this and that”, and he was discussing his wants list. I was like “Wow, this is really the spot”.

Then we found out after we left there, my friend told me that their store is kinda like their shopfront. What they do have, where they let all the big time producers go, is a warehouse. They claim to have a million records in this place. I think Slave went there for Mo Show, and he walked down the aisles, but they didn't get to dig thru it. They have a catalogue, and any album you're looking for, chances are, this guy has got it,.

The folklore was that people like Pete Rock and Dre, instead of buying the records, its a library. You pay like a members fee, and you have access. So you pay your annual fee, like $5000 or something, and you can come in, you can borrow the records, take them out, sample them, do whatever you want, and take them back. I don't know how much truth there is to it, but it's the best story ever. There's this vault of records, like a secret underground producers club. And I've been finding out about more and more of these kinds of things.

I have another friend, he was in the original lineup of the Beatnuts, his name is Vic (Mighty V.I.C). He did a lot of the beats on the first Beatnuts album, and lot of the things that are credited as produced by the Beatnuts are produced by Vic.

Hes got an amazing record collection too. Over the last few years hes gone quite digital, with his process, and he realised he didn't need all these records, and he had like 40,000 records or something. He put them on E-bay, but the Dre's people called, him, like saying “We want your records”.

Cos they knew hes the guy, hes got all the breaks. Its funny that Dre wanted them cos the Dre record next Episode on Chronic 2001, the same sample was flipped by a group called Missin Linx, about a year before that Next Episode came out and Vic produced it.

So I was thinking maybe Dre's always been watching his samples, like “You've got the right samples” and just like sampling the same things, and then he just comes around and is like “I just want your record collection. Instead of stealing ideas afterwards, I'm just gonna take them from the source.”