crate-digging
n.— «What it is, however, is a feel-good mash-up of beats, scratching, jazz, swing, rock—and one of the most eclectic collections of vocal samples ever. Compiling these somewhat strange recordings, or crate-digging as it’s known in DJ culture, is second nature to San.» —“Kid Koala becomes a kid again” by Hans Ongsansoy in Vancouver Canada.com Oct. 31, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A writer stumbles upon a tiny, motionless creature on a country road and, against all good advice, takes it home. The resulting memoir, Raising Hare, is a lovely meditation on nature and our relationship to it. And: have you ever invented a fake...
Chase from Jacksonville, Florida, grew up in Sacramento, California, where kids played Rochambeau instead of rock, paper, scissors. Why the difference in names? Nobody knows. Folklorists call this a choosing game, and while the hand-game itself...
The meaning is rather broader than that implied in the quote. It doesn’t refer specifically to the process of compiling records from samples, it’s more the actual process of searching for old vinyl records, in order to sample them. Wikipedia has it about right.