A huge step up from its predecessor, the 2000XL builds on the 3000’s status as a studio in a box, with an output board expandable to eight MIDI outs and internal effects unit. Two years later, Akai would revise the MPC 2000 with its MPC 2000XL, perhaps the most popular sampler that company ever made.
Many considered this machine underwhelming, but the MPC 2000 still found love from Kanye West’s on his early productions. The 2000 also only offered two MIDI outputs. This meant that the 2000 lacked the Roger Linn’s signature swing program.
This model was used, for instance, on Warren G’s “Regulate” in 1995, DJ Shadow’s sampling masterpiece Endtroducing in 1996, and continued to be used by DJ Premier into the 2000s.Īkai overhauled the MPC operating system in an attempt to avoid paying Linn royalties for his hardware and software design. The MPC 60 was popular early on, but it would also sustain in hip-hop for years to come. “At the time,” he recounts, “I intended it for any type of rhythmic music, but I had no idea it would resonate so strongly with the emerging hip-hop community, which was a very pleasant surprise.” Over email, Linn related that the MPC 60’s innovation of creating a MIDI sequencer that could be programmed on the fly was simply an elaboration on his early drum machine designs, which allowed for live loop recording with quantization. With four MIDI outputs and a 99-track sequencer capable of programming internal sounds and external ones, the MPC 60 could act as the brain for an entire studio of gear. Linn and Akai gave the MPC 60 MIDI capabilities to sync external sequencers and control synths with its own internal sequencer. The hands-on aspect and the capacity for recording and manipulating sounds directly on the machine meant that the MPC 60 had a lot more flexibility than conventional step-based drum machines like the Roland TR-808. Along with his development team in California, Linn developed the software that would make the MPC’s operation so intuitive and set the blueprint for MPC functionality across all generations.
Linn was responsible not just for that interface, but for the design of the entire MPC operating system. This grid was adapted from the external controller for the never-produced MidiStudio. The MPC 60 was designed as playable drum machine, with its innovative grid of 16 square pads that could be used to program the machine’s sequencer.
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