Though better known for his R&B doings, Ryan Leslie did a pretty nasty job on the beat for Fabolous’ “You Be Killin Em”. I guess I’m still a sucker for the “Synthetic Substitution” drums despite them being amongst the most overused in rap history. They do sound as tough as ever on this though, so between that, the addictive melody, and the way the bass comes in with Fab’s harmonizing, the first 40 seconds of this track are pretty undeniable…..

Thinking that such an intro deserved an intro of its own, we put together this little tempo tool* that goes heavy on the build up (flipped to a BPM of 125) and uses the original track as its climax. By adding a context-appropriate Barrington Levi sample to serve as a verbal air horn of sorts, hopefully we achieved the rare feat of making a tempo tool just as equally headphone worthy.

*for non-DJs: a tempo tool is generally used by DJs to transition smoothly from one BPM (for example, an electro song at 125 bpm) to another (a hip hop song at 95 bpm).