The best rap beats are nerdy as hell. Every drum placement, every melody, every chopped-up sample sends me down a YouTube rabbit hole trying to piece together the way a producer contorts and dissects the music that came before them. Recently, I was stuck on the roaring horns of Diamond D’s “ Step to Me ” that spits out like the haphazard trumpeting of an elephant. All I could think was, how the fuck did he decide to go with that ? The answer: He was listening to a lot of the Bomb Squad and De