Most people I know making hip hop have an MPC or ASR X, and most of them (people I know) come from a DJ background and they love those machines.
I started off DJing, then emceeing, and finally I learned to play the keyboard. So for me I need keys! The Motif has really changed the game. The sounds are dope. It has a sampler that you can use normally, but the sampler also integrates with the sequencer. So you can sample while the sequence is playing. It can be expanded to 64MB Ram (about 6 mins @ 44.1k of recording time) so you could actually record your vocals on it for a complete song. Or if you're sampling loops or phrases you can slice it automatically like Recycle! and flip it.
You can also add plug in cards which adds new synthesis to the board.
It uses a smart media card up to 128 MB to store your music. Imagine having more than an album's worth of beats (depending on how much you sample) on a card that only measures about one inch. It also has built in scsi.
Check out www.motifator.com, I bought this board about 2 months ago and it still has me open.
