Stix Hooper Discusses a New Album and the Grooves That Built Hip-Hop

Nesbert “Stix” Hooper held the drum chair for The Crusaders across decades of shifting sound, anchoring a band that threaded R&B, jazz, rock, and funk into a fusion template. His playing would later become raw material for a generation of hip-hop producers. J Dilla, Madlib, and Three Six Mafia are just a few who mined his feel for loops and chops. Hooper’s own label has called him “arguably the most sampled drummer of all-time,” and the catalog backs it up.

In a new interview with Aquarium Drunkard, the drummer looks back at that history while touching on a forthcoming solo album. The conversation covers the Crusaders’ blend of groove and improvisation, the studio sessions that later fed samplers worldwide, and one ingredient Hooper insists should be in every pot. His answer lands with characteristic economy: “Only the good shit.”

The interview is available to Aquarium Drunkard members and traces a career built on feel rather than flash, where precision never meant sterility. Release details for the album remain unannounced, but the discussion places Hooper’s work in a lineage of music that never courted trends yet quietly shaped the sound of modern beatmaking. For crate diggers and rhythmic scientists, it confirms again that the source material often hides in plain sight.