Good $hit 50Cal.
As far as that sampling goes, I would only really recommend the percussion sounds to you 8FIVE8 because you can get away with it for the most part with hiphop, I mean you ain't doing no Jazz where you need multiple different velocities and what not. Most often than not for your basic hiphop drum beats you just need that one same velocity snare/clap hit, bass kick, hi-hat, open-hat, shaker,etc....
However, for your synth sound needs, piano, guitar and other instruments such as those which will be used for melodies, I definitely recommend recording the real thing if you can, using the actual keyboard if the sound you want is coming from a Motif, Fantom, Nordlead, whatever the hell,... or from properly done software libraries like Hypersonic, SampleTank, Trilogy, Atmosphere, Nexus,etc... that way you can get all the true sound as closest possible to the real thing. I mean don't use a single-shot sample sound of a guitar pluck or piano press, $hit will sound really wack if you try to do a melody with that. You need it all, all the note ranges, velocities, voices that way it's as closest to the real thing and you can play it like an actual instrument with your midi controller. Why do you think some of these sample libraries are like gigabytes worth of data just for a few different instruments or for the same instrument. Just check out Spectrasonics Triology, that $hit is on like 5CDs I believe. I don't have Trilogy, but I assume one CD might be for an electric bass, another for acoustic, another for synth bass,etc..
