03: “Find Me” featuring Chong Nee (produced by Chris Laupama)
Chris Laupama used to hit me up a lot to listen to his music online. Its hard to gauge the quality of peoples stuff when your listening to 96k streams on a Bebo page, so I didn’t pay it too much attention. Then he somehow got my Hotmail email address, added me on MSN Messenger, and sent me a Mediafire link to a zip file of beats. I thought I should at least respect the dudes hustle, so I checked it and was impressed with how polished his sound was for a bedroom producer. None of the beats really suited what I was trying to do though, and were more on the Timbo-house craze of the time. I asked him if he had anything more “rap” and he made the “Find Me” beat that night. That’s the main thing I like about working with new dudes, they have that hunger that can fade with artists that have been doing stuff for awhile.
That same week I went over to my boy Chong Nee’s house for a classic wednesday night drinking session with him and his crew. After a few rum and cokes we started playing music we were working on, so I threw on that beat, and Neezy just starts singing “FIND ME!”. It cracked me up, cause it was instantaneous, the beat had been playing for like 4 bars and he had the hook. We hooked up the mic and did a demo then and there, and a dude he was working with at the time, Tolu Faletolu, jumped on it (he’s actually singing a lot of the hook aswell). Chong Nee is loud as hell though, and we were drunk recording it, so his takes were clipping like mad. When we went to do the proper recording Neezy wasn’t in the country so we ended up having to use the demo vocals for his parts, that’s why there’s so much distortion and reverb on the chorus, we were trying to disguise it.
I really like how the track turned out, and I was stoked with the clip too. Only thing is, I wish I had done a remix. I wanted to get Mr Sicc on it, and Tiki had a verse for it that he rapped to me on the Tour Of Dirty that was mean, but it never eventuated. That would of been ill.
02: “Bazooka’s Theme” (Produced by Forty One & Evan Short)
The original version of this song was to a different beat, which was produced by P-Money. We used the same sample that Stardust used for “Music Sounds Better With You”, put some raw ass drums on it, and got Mz J and Awa from Nesians to sing on the hook. I liked the song, but with Stardust’s track only 10 years old, and being such a worldwide smash, we thought we really were taking the piss. Unfortunately me and my constituents at the label didn’t come to this conclusion till a week before the album deadline, leaving fuck all time for me to create something else, up to its predecessor’s standard. To make it worse, I had my mind made up that the verses on this song had to be on the album, and at the start for the record to flow proper. So I went through all the beats that I hadn’t used on my Itunes that had a similar tempo and vibe, and came up with this old Forty One demo he’d made back in 2007. It was a slightly slowed down 80′s disco track, with some sinister synths added. Only thing is, I knew Nick had switched computers and lost a lot of his files, including this one, meaning we were gonna have to remake it from scratch. So, I sat down with Evan, and we layed out the basis of the track like Nick (Forty One) had it. We ended up adding a whole lot more to the original demo. Evan switched up the bassline sound, and put a few different synth lines in it, one which is more rave, one which is more Pet Shop Boys. I re-recorded the vocals, and rewrote the hook, just doing it myself this time. Those added elements gave the track a whole new life, and made it the most authentically retro track on the album.
I always like to hear about the behind the scenes of making music. I love shit like the Classic Albums doco’s and The Source’s Rhyme & Reason section, and I feel like it gives you a new appreciation and connection with the songs. So I thought over the next few weeks before the album drops, I’d share with you a short anecdote of how we made each song on Bazooka Kid. From the writing process, how I first heard the beat, what other songs influenced it etc etc. So lets kick it off with…
01: “Intro” (produced by Fire & Ice)
This beat turned up in my email one day from the Fire & Ice bros, and I knew instantly it was gonna be the intro to the album. It kind of reminded me of the Scarface theme music, and I felt it was the perfect platform to set off the album. Sometimes when you hear a beat, the opening lines just come to you, and with this one I had the first line “No brother, one mother, no dad…” instantly. I ended up with two 16′s on some train of thought shit, that I thought were top notch, and left the hook as a nice guitar line that they had put in the demo. I still wanted the track to build a lot more though, as it seemed a little flat. So I kinda referenced a couple of my favourite all-time jams (“In The Air Tonight”, “Blackberry Molasses”) that I thought had that dramatic feel, and used their technique of not bringing in the full drums till a lot later in the track. I knew my engineer Evan Short would nail it in the mix too, as he’s also a revered producer in the electronic scene, and knows all the tricks of the trade to make a track grow from beginning to end. As long as Fire & Ice are still making beats, I think I’ll get them to do ‘Track 01′ on all my albums. They just come through with the perfection.
