Every week in the “Shhhh-it!” AnonIMous Super-Secret Music-Biz Interview Series (S-I!AS-SM-BIS for, uh, short) we interview a grizzled music industry veteran via the letter thunderstorm of instant messaging software. Last week, we had an illuminating chat with Joe The Engineer, who has worked as an assistant engineer for five years at a major NYC studio, and whose credits include quite a few big-time pop and hip-hop records. We decided to bring him back for another round, and in this edition, Joe tackles overcompression, underwhelming Autotune usage, and whether hip-hop has lost its fire:
StumpyPete1975: someone asked if you had anecdotes that are examples of hip-hop losing its fire
JoeTheEngineer: how about an artist interrupting his session to meet with the designer of his new line of jeans?
StumpyPete1975: HAHA
StumpyPete1975: amazing
StumpyPete1975: yeah, I’d say that’s not entirely street
JoeTheEngineer: I guarantee Biggie didn’t do that when he was making Ready To Die
Your questions answered after the jump!
Lil Wayne, T-Pain, and Mack Maine’s rhyming Robin Hood act in the video for “Got Money” not only shows why so many banks are turned into dance clubs by developers who are bored by having depositories on their books, it reveals the guys’ seemingly easy strategy for giving money back to the… More »
So here’s how the great “I’m N Luv (Wit A Stripper)” heist of 2005 went down. Three producers–Rodney King (no, not him), Jeff Byrd, and James Reese–wrote a song named “Makin’ Luv 2 A Player” in 1997, which was then recorded by Antonio Fargas, a.k.a. TV’s “Huggy Bear.” A year later, King and Fargas met with Steve Rifkind, then-owner of Loud Records, who was interested in having the Wu-Tang Clan or Fat Joe redo the track. The parties couldn’t come to a mutual agreement, but Rifkind allegedly kept a copy of the song. Eventually, according to the producers, T-Pain was given a copy of the song by Akon; his label Konvict Music, which signed T-Pain, was connected to Rifkind’s SRC Records. Because this Antonio Fargas track is just that damn good.
Lil Mama told SOHH over the weekend that her album VYP–which has fallen off the Billboard charts after just two months in stores–was completely botched by Jive. More »
The first part of this cartoon, involving a phone conversation between Akon and T-Pain, is cute enough, but it’s Snoop Dogg’s “Buttermilk Butternut Reduction” that’s had me going back to this thing all morning. “And then we roast it slow…surround it with escargot… More »
While it seems that having T-Pain on your track is enough to drive a song to the top these days, apparently that axiom doesn’t quite apply to 55-year-old Charlie Wilson, formerly of the Gap Band. America, you’ve let 2 Pistols have a moment in the sun–it’s time to give some love to Uncle Charlie. (Wait, that doesn’t sound exactly like I had intended.)
I like to think of myself as having my finger on the pulse of youth culture (not literally, as per my agreement with the state of Arizona). When I spent a evening at the local skating rink, I managed to keep up with the pre-drinking age DJ’s and their “Does The White Guy Know Urban Music?” quiz. But reading through the radio charts this morning, I realized quickly that T-Pain is releasing music quicker than I can hear it at this point.
Add another name beside “Toby Keith” on the ever-growing list of T-Pain’s dream collaborations: “Really, to just do a T-Pain/Limp Bizkit song, that would be awesome for me.” Could this rappa-rocka summit prove the end of the sanga’s bulletproof Billboard run? More »
If the existence of Lil Jon’s Big & Rich remix didn’t send enough country-rap chills down your spine, how about the news that T-Pain is sprung off the idea of adding a little “who’s your daddy?” to his next Auto-Tuned outing? Mr. Pain has made it known that he’d like naughty Christmas elf Toby Keith to guest on his next album. And if that doesn’t work, maybe they could just bro down, get into some trouble involving bartenders, and hate on the Dixie Chicks?
