Hey,
Prophet brings up the point that I was trying to make with my original post, that people can find cheaper and more powerful solutions than just running out and buying the hardware sampler/sequencers, but because of marketing hype and the tendancy for the hip-hop community to simply 'follow the leader' everyone feels that the MPC is 'the' machine for hip-hop.
It's the same in the techno community, everyone feels that they need to have a 909 or 303 (which cost a TON of money in the second-hand market) to make a good track, they don't realize that they can simulate a 909 kick with an analogue synth or run a simple sawtooth waveform through a distortion pedal to make a convincing acid lead.
It's only when people start learning about how to become original and making their own sounds and beats using what they've got instead of running out to buy whatever everyone else has because they think it will guarantee them a good track.
Here's a mark of a good producer/programmer: give him ONLY a waveform editor, like Sound Forge or Cool Edit, and tell him to have a track done in a few hours. No sampling off discs, so external sounds at all...he has to make the sounds himself using the analogue/fm wave generators and whatever else is available to him in the program.
Guaranteed he will have something totally original
Nick