Herbie Hancock - Rockit

"Rockit" is a composition recorded by American jazz pianist Herbie Hancock and produced by Bill Laswell and Michael Beinhorn. Hancock released it as a single from his studio album Future Shock (1983). The selection was composed by Hancock, Laswell, and Beinhorn.

The track was driven by its deejay scratch style, performed primarily by DXT, and its music video created by Godley & Creme, which was put in high rotation on MTV. "Rockit" won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Instrumental Performance in 1983, and it won five MTV Video Music Awards in 1984.

Bill Laswell explained how this song came together to The Quietus: "I got a call from a guy who knew Herbie who told me he wanted to put together some tracks. I went to New York, saw Bambaataa and people DJing at the Roxy and I don't even think he was really paying attention but after that night out I said 'I'll come to LA in a couple of weeks and I'll bring a couple of rhythm tracks.' So we just recorded very quickly in a basement in Brooklyn. We didn't really know what it was. We took it and Herbie played over it for an hour or two and then it took like another hour to mix. The whole thing didn't take very long. We didn't really know what we'd done. We stopped at a store that sold a lot of speakers on the way to the airport because we wanted to kill some time. The guy went to put on a rock record and we said 'No we don't listen to that kind of stuff.' We had a cassette of the rough mix we'd finished so we said 'Play this instead.' We played it and afterwards we turned round and there was just about 50 kids looking at the speakers, saying 'What the f--k was that?!' [laughs] I think there was Grandmaster Caz from the Cold Crush Brothers and D.ST and we all just looked at each other and everyone was 'Oh s--t! I think we might have something.'"