By: Todd “DG” Davis
Rapindustry.com

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Before everybody had a beat machine in their pocket, making beats meant digging. Crates. Samples. Chops. Drums. Hours spent searching for that one sound nobody else heard the same way. 

Marco Polo comes from that school. 

Toronto born and New York tested, Marco Bruno took student-loan money, bought an MPC and bet on himself. A move to NYC and an internship at Manhattan’s famed Cutting Room Studios put him within earshot of the culture he had studied from afar—and before long, Marco Polo wasn’t simply listening to his heroes anymore. He was producing them. 

From Port Authority and Double Barrel with Torae to The Exxecution with Ruste Juxx, PA2: The Director’s Cut and A Breukelen Story with Masta Ace, Marco built his name the way he builds his beats: piece by piece, drum by drum, record by record. 

Nas. Scarface. Pharoahe Monch. Sean Price. Talib Kweli. Westside Gunn. The résumé crosses generations, but the fingerprints remain unmistakable—rugged drums, carefully selected samples and an understanding that an MC needs room to breathe. 

And while some call it keeping ’90s boom-bap alive, that almost sells Marco Polo short.  He never treated the sound like something that died. 

Today, whether behind the boards, touring alongside Masta Ace or passing the tools forward through his Pad Thai sound libraries, Marco Polo remains both student and craftsman—proof that respecting tradition doesn’t mean standing still. 

From Toronto to New York and from student loans to producing legends, Marco Polo found his lane by never abandoning the sound that made him fall in love with Hip-Hop in the first place.

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Q. Before the world knew Marco Polo as one of hip-hop’s most respected boom-bap architects, you were a producer from Toronto chasing a sound and a dream. What was the moment you realized New York was where your musical journey needed to happen? 

I think I always knew. Growing up in Toronto, the hip-hop that really spoke to me was coming out of New York. That was the sound I was obsessed with. I was studying records, reading liner notes, figuring out who produced what, and New York felt like the center of the universe for the kind of music I wanted to make. 

At a certain point, I realized that if I was serious about this, I couldn’t just admire that world from Toronto. I needed to put myself in it. There was no Instagram, no sending a DM to an artist and hoping they heard your beats. You had to physically be there. So I moved to New York with no guarantees. I was basically betting on myself. Looking back, that decision changed my entire life. 

Q. Moving to New York in the early 2000s meant stepping into the birthplace of hip-hop during a rapidly changing era. How did being surrounded by that history, culture, and energy shape your approach as a producer? 

It shaped everything. New York gave me an education that I couldn’t have gotten from records alone. I was around artists, DJs, producers, record stores, studios—all of it. You could feel the history, but you were also watching the culture change in real time. 

And New York will humble you. Everybody is talented. Nobody cares what you did yesterday. That made me work harder and really develop my own identity. I never wanted to just imitate the producers I loved. I wanted you to hear a Marco Polo beat and know it was me. New York forced me to sharpen that identity. 

Q. Your breakthrough came when Masta Ace used your production on “Do It Man” from A Long Hot Summer. Looking back, did you realize that moment would become the beginning of one of hip-hop’s most respected producer-MC partnerships? 

Not at all. At that point, I was just excited that Masta Ace was rhyming on one of my beats. Ace was already somebody whose records I respected before I ever met him, so having a placement on A Long Hot Summer was huge for me. 

There was no way I could’ve known that, twenty-plus years later, we’d still be making records together, touring together, and basically becoming family. That’s the crazy part. “Do It Man” wasn’t some calculated beginning to a long-term partnership. It was just two people connecting musically, and that connection kept growing. 

Q. Your chemistry with Masta Ace has continued through A Long Hot Summer, A Breukelen Story, and now this new collaboration. What is it about that creative connection that has allowed the partnership to evolve across generations? 

Trust. That’s probably the biggest thing. 

Ace trusts my instincts musically, and I trust him as a writer and storyteller. We don’t have to force anything. I know what kind of musical space can bring something special out of him, and he knows that I’m going to obsess over the details until the record feels right. We’re also both students of hip-hop, but neither one of us is interested in making nostalgia just for the sake of nostalgia. 

We’re trying to make great records today. The foundation is classic hip-hop, but the music still has to feel alive. 

Q. This new project with Masta Ace adds another chapter to a rare producer-MC relationship built on trust, storytelling, and musical chemistry. What inspired this latest collaboration, and what makes it different from the work you’ve done together before? 

The biggest difference is where we are in life now. We’ve both lived a lot since we first started working together. We’ve traveled the world together, made albums, lost people, gotten older, watched hip-hop change, and watched our own lives change. All of that naturally finds its way into the music. 

So this project isn’t about trying to recreate A Breukelen Story or anything we’ve done before. The chemistry is still there, but we’re telling a different story now. I think there’s maturity in the music. There’s reflection. There’s still humor and hard beats because that’s who we are, but there’s perspective that you only get from living. 

Q. Your production has always carried the spirit of hip-hop’s golden era—deep crates, soulful samples, heavy drums, and that unmistakable boom-bap feel. What is it about that sound that continues to inspire you after all these years? 

Because it still makes me feel something. 

I’ve never chosen boom-bap because I thought it was a smart career move. Trust me, there were plenty of years when it definitely wasn’t. I make this music because this is what I love. 

There’s something about a great sample and hard drums that hits me physically. When the drums come in correctly, I still get that same feeling I got when I was a kid hearing my favorite records. Technology changes, trends change, but that feeling doesn’t. I’m still chasing that feeling every time I sit down to make something. 

Q. You’ve worked with some of the greatest lyricists in hip-hop, including Nas, Scarface, Pharoahe Monch, Sean Price, Talib Kweli, and Westside Gunn. What separates an artist who truly connects with a beat from someone simply rapping over it? 

The great ones hear something inside the beat that sometimes even I didn’t know was there. 

Anybody can rap sixteen bars over an instrumental. But when somebody really connects with a beat, the beat becomes part of the song’s identity. Their cadence, subject matter, and emotion start interacting with the production. 

That’s one of my favorite parts of producing. I’ll make something with one idea or feeling in my head, and then a great MC hears something completely different in it. Suddenly, the record has a meaning I never imagined when I made the beat. That’s collaboration. 

 

Q. Projects like Port Authority and PA2: The Director’s Cut established you as one of the producers keeping traditional hip-hop production alive. Did you ever feel a responsibility to protect and preserve that sound while still pushing it forward? 

Maybe more as I got older, but when I made Port Authority, I wasn’t thinking about preserving anything. I was just making the hip-hop I wanted to hear. 

Over time, though, I realized that there was a generation of people who really connected my music with a certain tradition of production. I take that seriously. I respect the lineage—Premier, Pete Rock, Large Professor, Diamond D, Marley Marl—all the producers who laid that foundation. 

But preservation doesn’t mean copying 1994 forever. You have to bring your own personality and your own time period into it. Otherwise, you’re making a museum piece. I want the DNA to be recognizable while the record still feels like something Marco Polo made today. 

Q. In today’s era of instant technology and endless digital tools, what do you think young producers can learn from the old-school process of digging for records, studying music, and building a signature sound? 

Limitations can actually help you become more creative. 

Today, you can open a laptop and have access to practically every sound ever created. That’s incredible, but it can also make it harder to develop an identity. When we were digging for records, you had to work with what you could find. You might spend an entire day digging and come home with three records. That forced you to listen differently. 

I’m not against technology at all—I use modern technology every day. But I think young producers should study records. Learn why certain drums feel good. Learn arrangements. Learn musicianship, even if you don’t play an instrument. Learn where the music came from. 

And most importantly, don’t let having a million sounds stop you from developing your sound. 

Q. Hip-hop has evolved from vinyl, radio, and physical albums to streaming and social media. What do you think the culture has gained through that evolution, and what do you think it has lost? 

We’ve gained access. That’s undeniable. An independent artist can make a record tonight and potentially have people hearing it around the world almost immediately. You don’t necessarily need somebody at a label to give you permission anymore. That’s powerful. 

But I think we’ve lost some patience and some mystique. 

When you bought an album, you lived with it. You looked at the artwork. You read the credits. You might listen to an album ten times before deciding what you thought about it. Now everything moves so fast that sometimes music feels disposable. A record drops Friday, and by Monday, we’re asking what’s next. 

I love the access we have now. I just wish we could combine that access with some of the attention we used to give music. 

Q. Some producers create beats, but others create worlds, moods, and moments that become part of hip-hop history. When you look at your career, how do you define Marco Polo’s contribution to the culture? 

That’s almost easier for somebody else to answer about me. 

But if I had to define it, I’d hope people say that I cared about the craft. I cared about drums. I cared about samples. I cared about MCs. I cared about albums. I cared about making records that could stand next to the records that made me fall in love with hip-hop. 

I’ve been fortunate enough to work with artists I used to study as a kid and eventually contribute something of my own to that same lineage. Coming from Toronto, moving to New York with a dream, and eventually making records with some of my heroes—that means a lot to me. 

I never needed to reinvent hip-hop. I just wanted to add my chapter to it. 

 

 

Q. Decades from now, when people look back at this era of hip-hop, what do you hope they understand about your music, your partnership with Masta Ace, and your role in keeping the soul of boom-bap alive? 

I hope they hear that we meant it. 

There was never anything ironic about this music for us. We genuinely love hip-hop. We love the craft of making albums, writing rhymes, finding samples, programming drums, and obsessing over details that most people will probably never notice. 

With me and Ace specifically, I hope people recognize how rare it is for an MC and producer to find each other at different points in their careers and continue building together for decades. We didn’t make one record and spend the rest of our lives trying to recreate it. We grew together. 

And as far as my legacy, if somebody twenty or thirty years from now hears my drums, hears one of my records, and says, “You can tell this guy really loved hip-hop,” I’m good with that. That’s probably the greatest compliment I could get.