Eight Gigs: Pete Rock

East Coast rapper and producer Pete Rock bridged the distance between hip-hop's golden age and its grittier late-'90s success. He scratched and sampled obscure jazz albums, fashioning gritty minimalist tracks with droning horn-driven hooks. Rock debuted as a deejay to CL Smooth on two albums in the early '90s before they broke up, and he focused on production (Nas, Jay-Z, Wu Tang Clan). A star-studded lineup of emcees keys his '98 solo debut, Soul Survivor, but it failed to break through commercially. Rock kept producing and releasing music, putting out an even better Soul Survivor II in 2004. Rock revealed last year he's working on a third Soul Survivor. 2708 J Street, www.peterock.com.