Ali watched James come downstairs, grab a record, and walk to their workstation, his fingers darting over the turntable and the sampler pads in a way that let Ali know James had already found some audio to manipulate and had begun chopping it. Within a few minutes, James had created an insane track—not just a beat but a completely arranged song. Then James went back upstairs, like it was nothing. Ali had never seen anything like it—James’s level of freedom, the speed and beauty of his execution. It helped that James was quiet and unassuming. He never got in the way. He enhanced things. Tribe
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