Does Wu-Tang Chamber Music + Raekwon’s OB4CL2= Wu Is Back???

Seems like there’s a lot of Wu-Tang material dropping these days, huh? Can’t say I’m surprised. Every couple of years the Clan resurfaces and all the members start dropping projects around the same time. It’s a synergy that worked for them back in the late 90s, and it wouldn’t be farfetched to think it’ll work for them again. The Redman/Method Man album, Blackout 2, just dropped. U-God’s album, Dopium, drops next week on Frank Radio/Babygrande. A new Ghostface single “Forever” leaked two weeks ago. And then there are what seem to be the two biggest projects on deck, the Wu-Tang Chamber Music LP on June 30th, and Raekwon’s Only Built for Cuban Links 2 in August.

Is it a Wu renaissance? Maybe.

I’m probably most excited about the Chamber Music album. In a press release sent out by E1 Music (formerly Koch Records), Rza said:

“This album has a very live element of today’s musicians playing the vibe of Wu-Tang, know what I mean? The vibe we would normally sample, the vibe of things that we would accumulate through old soul songs, jazz songs, kung fu movies whatever, now you’ve got musicians that can play this vibe with Wu-Tang MC’s rapping over it. The goal of this album is definitely paying homage to our early sound. In the old days, we had to sample and find snares and things like that or chord changes just to make a beat. Now, this is being done it with a band. A lot of times, you hear rappers over a live band and that loses the hip-hop because a lot of those bands from the old days wasn’t from the hip-hop generation. On this album, we make it sound like it was in the 36 Chambers era. To me, what also adds to this album, you’ve got the Wu-Tang MCs but you also got your other favorite MCs from that era like Havoc, Cormega and others. This album can be played with a live band and it will sound BIG.”

Listen to a few of the tracks that have leaked and then tell me if they match what he’s describing. I think they do.

Raekwon, MOP, Kool G Rap “Ill Figures”
Ghostface, AZ, Inspectah Deck “Harbormasters”

The thing about this project that is disappointing to me is the way it’s being marketed and sold. E1 is pushing this project calling it a compilation pairing Wu-Tang emcees with 90s rap veterans. But if you look at the tracklisting, there really aren’t that many rap “veterans” on the album.

Tracklisting:
1. Redemption
2. Kill Too Hard Ft. RZA, Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa
3. The Abbot Ft. RZA
4. Harbor Masters Ft. RZA, Ghostface Killah, Az, Inspectah Deck
5. Sheep State Ft. Rza
6. Radiant Jewels Ft. RZA, Raekwon, Cormega, Sean Price
7. Supreme Architecture Ft. RZA
8. Evil Deeds Ft. RZA, Ghostface Killah, Havoc
9. Wise Men Ft. RZA
10. I Wish You Were Here Ft. RZA, Ghostface Killah, Tre Williams
11. Fatal Hesitation
12. Ill Figures Ft. RZA, Raekwon, Kool G Rap
13. Free Like ODB Ft. RZA
14. Sound The Horns
15. Enlightened Statues Ft. RZA
16. NYC Crack Ft. RZA
17. One Last Question Ft. RZA

Kool G Rap, Havoc, Cormega, AZ, Sean Price, MOP… those are 6 rap “veterans,” so to speak, but they’re also like the Koch all stars. These guys are all part of that label family, they all collab with one another and ya’know, I just have higher hopes for something billed as a collaboration project with 90s rap veterans. There’s 17 tracks. I mean, let’s keep it funky, this is a Wu-Tang album with a few features.

Then you’ve got the Raekwon LP, which is a whole different animal altogether. My issue with this project seems to be the press Raekwon is doing for it, which centers around the same couple of questions, namely, “What happened with Dr. Dre and Aftermath? What took so long? Why sign with EMI?” I guess that’s what happens when it takes you five years to release an album, and every year you’ve sat there and talked to people about it, done press and so on, never to have the project drop. There’s an interview over at XXLMag.com today, where Rae talks a little about Rza and Dre being in the studio together, and reading it, I said to myself, wow finally something interesting about this LP!!!

Not that I’m not excited about the album. But just put the fucking thing out already dude. I know you’re going on the Rock the Bells tour throughout the summer, and you’ll hype the project. Thing is, you might actually sell more records if the album was out by the time you hit the road. The days of the big first week are over, and even at that, you might only sell 30k copies. I just don’t see a Raekwon album moving many units in this industry climate, and that’s having nothing to do whatsoever with the quality of music on the LP.

So is the Wu back? I don’t know. Blackout 2 didn’t sell many records, even though Red and Meth have been everywhere promoting it. U-God doesn’t have much of a buzz (even though I am digging the records I’ve heard so far), and the Ghostface track hasn’t caught on yet. Rae’s album hasn’t dropped yet, and the Chamber Music LP is being billed as a compilation project, even though it’s not. And furthermore, it came out of nowhere! Granted, hype is hard to come by, but you still gotta make an effort.

I like the Wu music that is dropping right now. Whether anyone cares, that’s the question.

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The Way Music Is Created Nowadays Kinda Sucks, See: The Clipse

The way music is made nowadays just flat out sucks. Not saying the music itself sucks. But the way it’s created. We’ve hit a point where music, specifically rap, is like karaoke. And I was just thinking about all of this, when I came across this post about The Clipse working with flavor of the moment singer/songwriter Keri Hilson. According to The Rap-Up.com,

“It’s an amazing record,” Pusha T [says]. “Uptempo. Party. Girls. Shake every ounce of your ass.” The “Knock You Down” singer’s busy schedule prevented her from being in the studio when they recorded the track, so she phoned it in. “She wasn’t in-studio with us when she did that, but I was listening over the phone,” Pusha discloses. “The way of the music industry these days.”

The way Pusha describes this collabo, I’m not expecting much. Not that I don’t think something great can come from the combined talents of The Clipse and Keri. I do. In fact, I like both acts quite a bit. But I just feel like the way Pusha describes the song, it doesn’t sound very organic, or furthermore, very interesting. Like, isn’t every song these days about partying, girls and shaking every ounce of your ass?

The more troubling thing is how Pusha says the song was recorded. He even uses the phrase “phoned it in.” Phoning it in is often used to describe a process whereby someone was supposed to do something, and they did a half ass job at it. But in the music business, phoning it in is what collaborating recording artists do when they can’t be in the studio at the same time.

In actuality, that’s painting a rosy picture about the situation. It’s quite possibly that Keri Hilson referenced some Neptunes records for her own album, then didn’t use them, had a hook portion of the record that sounded good, so the Clipse “took” the record for themselves, then paid her for the feature and cleared it with the label and so on. I’m just speculating here, but that’s very conceivable.

This post isn’t really about The Clipse though. It’s more about the way technology helps and hurts the artistic process. On one side of the coin it allows for a piece of artistic work to be created without a barrier of physical space getting in the way. Hey, they might have even been on iChat during the process of recording.On the other side, you get this instrumental in your email with Keri Hilson’s vocals on it, you basically just add your raps and it’s done. It’s almost the equivalent of getting an excel spreadsheet at your lame ass 9 to 5 job, making an edit, then sending it off to a senior level manager for approval. It all seems kind of… I dunno… assembly line-ish.

There’s nothing you can do about it. It’s just the way the business exists right now, and it’s depressing. I still think there’s something to be said for being in the same physical space with another person and making art collaboratively. What would “Brooklyn’s Finest” be had Biggie recorded his verse a thousand miles away, in some studio down South. It might have sucked. It might not be the classic that it is today. How many classic collabos have been “phoned in.” That just sounds like you’re getting it done, just to get it done. Not because there’s anything more to it. That could have been Keri Hilson, or if this was four years ago, it might have been Ciara. Fans aren’t stupid. They know all this. Give them something authentic, that is of quality, and they will support. Otherwise you might as well be at that 9 to 5. Might even make more money.

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Neptunes’ Pharrell Comments On Record Labels, Susan Boyle, Proves That He’s A Genius

I was clearly kidding about Pharrell being a genius.

Actually, I find comments like the ones he’s making to be rather questionable. And he knows it, because if you listen to the sound bite, he makes mention of it being easy to question his motives for saying some of these things. He essentially calls record label prehistoric, and comments on Susan Boyle, saying,

They were tryng to change her look, she should have stayed the way she was, cause it’s no longer intersting. Leave her alone; that’s what engaged everybody. She’s talented. Someone should be signing her right now. It would work. The world would want to hear that. The last 12 to 15 years, this whole aesthetic thing has ruined everything. It’s not about how good your hair grows, or like how strong your cheekbones are, or like how much colagen is in your lips, or if you’ve gotten a boob job. What music was, and what it’s going back to, is how talented is this person?

My thing is, you think someone should sign her. Ok, so sign her! You have a label. You have relationships. You have money. Make it happen.

Ok, so maybe it’s not that easy. But still, it kills me when people who are in a position of influence don’t use that influence for the greater good. Maybe Pharrell doesn’t fall into that category completely, because I do think the guy is a proponent of cultural and musical change. The Neptunes definitely shifted the landscape for urban-driven pop music. And a lot of the skater aesthetics, the European and Japanese fashion, and so on, Pharrell was heavily complicit in that movement. That movement is by and large what youth pop culture is right now, at least in the urban space. So I give Pharrell a lot of credit for doing things differently for arguably most of his career.

Musically though, it’s been a few years since The Neptunes have really gotten behind any talent. Which is what he’s talking about. He’s saying, the aesthetic is over. It’s about how well you can hit this or that note. I agree. It is about talent right now. Because the filters and the companies that owned them, have either totally crumbled to the ground, or been leveraged by other forms of media, replaced by other filters, and just people in general. Those social networks that Pharrell talks about, he’s right, they have found ways to get eyeballs on new forms of music. That said, they’ve also gotten eyes on people like Tila Tequila too. So the aesthetic is not completely gone from people’s consciousness. The “show” part of show business still factors in. Just maybe not as much.

What’s so crazy to me is, I think if Susan Boyle was a hot broad with big tits, blonde hair, and a coke bottle shape, and she sang the same exact song the same exact way, she might not have gotten nearly as much attention. It would just fly under the radar as some other hot chick with a dope voice.

So the aesthetic factor, or lack thereof, works both ways.

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In A Case Of Extremely Bad Logic, Newspapers Following Music Industry To Make Money

Over at the Wall Street Journal today, there’s an article about how the newspaper business is looking to create some sort of intermediary (“To Beat Antitrust Rap, Papers Take Cues From Songwriters” by Russell Adams and Shira Ovide), much like ASCAP or BMI for songwriters, that would monitor a paper’s content, and demand license fees from sites that post, repurpose, and otherwise aggregate said content.

The article mentions that one of the biggest obstacles facing the establishment of a third party entity is actually anti-trust law, which prohibits companies from joining forces to price fix and keep competition at bay. Which to me is sort of a loaded issue, because while there’s certainly a case to be made for big media trying to keep the little guy down, the reality is that the bulk of real news is still coming from big media. It just gets filtered down on so many levels, from blogs, to twitter, and so on.

It’s almost impossible to quantify all the sources that are pulling from this one piece of content– some monetizing it via ad supported business models on websites and the like, some not monetizing it all– all while the originator of the content, and the company that underwrites the creation of that content (via paying that writer a salary, or paying a freelancer, and a photographer and so on) not seeing any real hardline benefit from it at all.

Now some may argue that the content just being out there on the web is free marketing and so on, and I could see a case being made for that. But it’s hard to tell the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times that some small time blogger is helping their brand sell papers in the big scheme of things, particularly when the links get posted on so many blogs that it’s hard to tell where it originally came from. Fact is, crediting on aggregation models is not very effective, nor standardized.

And that’s one of the biggest problems facing music publishers. Sure, some sites pay for blanket licenses. The big ones do. Your Imeems and Myspaces and so on. These are big business, and the agreements are often times a lot more complex than people can even realize. It’s not as cut and dry as a simple blanket license. There’s revenue sharing built into the ad component of the site as well. So it’s really not as easy as just paying a license fee and/or royalty for every time the music is played. The newspaper business will have to take that into account as well. Because those licensing fees may pale in comparison to the site’s overall revenue. And then what’s going to happen? The newspapers are going to come back crying for more money. Just like the labels have done with Google/Youtube, saying they’re not getting enough money out of their licensing arrangements.

The bigger issue, I think, is quantifying the type of “legs” that newspaper content has online. How much news really lives online after a couple of days, and furthermore, if the news does live, will anyone pay to see it?

The New York Times used to make the archives of articles available only via purchase. I was one of the unlucky few who had to pay for content at one point in time, whether it was for a college-related assignment or something else. But how many people would do that on a regular basis? Probably very few. Needing to go into the archives is a very selective thing. It’s not every day that a large body of web users need to look at articles from 1958. Which is probably one of the reasons why they eventually abandoned that model and opted to make everything available for free, monetized instead via advertising. Now that advertising hasn’t yielded the desired results, they’re ready to bail.

Point I’m making is, to create a third party to monitor content would be a great idea, and I think it’s needed. Had I included a quote or something from the WSJ article, I’m technically using WSJ content and monetizing it via google ad sense (I don’t make much from that, but just using it as an example), and WSJ sees nothing from that. I’m using their content to create content, and they get nothing back from it (although I am including a link that is sending people directly to their site).

Practicality is the issue, I just don’t know how practical something like this would be, considering just how much content comes from big media on a daily basis, and how much doesn’t get used for anything. I mean, if I had a news aggregation site, would I pay like a yearly fee for a license to everything from WSJ.com, when I may only use 2-3 relevant pieces from them a week? And would they get royalties or something from me? Like, how does this work?

Overall, it just seems like a mess to me. Definitely needed, but the model has to be worked out.

Thoughts?

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Have Eminem and Lil Wayne Traded Places?

In the past week, roughly 608 thousand people supported Eminem and bought the shiny plastic disc known to the world as Relapse. Leading up to the album’s release, the question everyone asked was, will it outsell Lil Wayne’s The Carter 3?

Record sales aside, the question to ask is, to the general public, have Wayne and Eminem traded places?

Eminem hasn’t had a worthwhile project out in five years, and in a music industry climate (hell, maybe even an entire country) that resembles the terrain in Terminator Salvation, 608k is a LOT of records. The guy has been out of the public eye completely.

Then in mid April, XXL leaked their June covers to Rap Radar, and all of a sudden Em was back. Nobody had heard any music at all, (other than “Crack a Bottle,” which apparently was a big record, but I admit, never even heard it before the album dropped) but he was back. “We Made You” dropped, and MTV, which abandoned videos for original programming long ago, somehow found it in the network’s Interscope’s best interest to premiere the music video on their channel, in prime time no less.

The response to the hokey jokey video was, hey what is this crap? He’s doing this same pop culture reference shit he’s done his whole career, and we’re supposed to care? Critics pondered, is Eminem still relevant?

The numbers are in (and I’m not even going to address the myriad other ways besides record sales- which are prehistoric- to quantify “relevance” in ’09), and the answer is a resounding, “yes!”

But it seemed like most fans and critics alike were betting that Em would struggle to outsell the million plus copies that Wayne’s The Carter 3 sold last June. In all fairness, the odds of Em outselling Wayne were slim to none. Actually, it was impossible.

Lil Wayne appeared on what seemed like at least two dozen records from other artists leading up to The Carter 3 dropping. Pretty much everything that dropped, he was on. He dropped mixtape after mixtape, hundreds of songs literally floating out there for free in cyberspace. Every two days there was a new Lil Wayne track popping up. Carter 3 songs were leaking left and right. On top of that, he was on magazine covers galore. Every music and pop culture rag in existence had his tattooed mug all over it.

Wayne also had a lot of controversy surrounding him. He had this mysterious penchant for kissing his record label CEO-turned-foster parent, Baby, on the lips (“Ewww, how gay”). There was the styrofoam cup (“What’s in it- Cough syrup? Coke Zero? Soy Machiato from Starbucks?”). Then his relationship status (“Who’s he dating- Superhead? Trina? Nivea? Oprah?”). This guy would get a tape recorder put in front of him and just say the most outlandish shit possible (“I’m the greatest rapper alive.” “I’m a martian.” “Treat me like Martin Luther King.”)

Compare Eminem with Wayne in the month since he’s been back out, and well, Shady’s been pretty tame.

Let’s watch him on Jimmy Kimmel, a week prior to his album dropping.

Nothing even remotely outlandish about that appearance. In interviews, he’s talked about his sobriety, how he was struggling with drug addiction and depression, and how he lost a lot of weight running on a treadmill. There’s no scandal there. He didn’t even become anorexic to drop that poundage. He even went to far as to admit that he’s been chatting it up about addiction with his once sworn enemy, the leader of the gays English pianoman, Elton John.

Look at young Eminem, he’s all grown up now. Such a role model.

That drug problem? Oh, that’s Wayne’s styrofoam cup. Relationship problems with Mariah and Kim? That’s Wayne’s Nivea, Trina, Superhead issues. Legal problems? All Wayne’s. Eminem used to sell a million records in a week, now Wayne does. They’ve traded places.

And finally, if last night’s Drake performance in NYC is any testament, Wayne’s protege is shaping up to be his proverbial 50 Cent. The only things missing are Drake’s weed carriers, a crafty catch phrase, and perhaps some beef with another storied record label.

Meanwhile, Eminem’s still talking about his Mom. And Mariah. And nobody seems to care besides Nick Cannon, who in fact, may not even care anymore. Dr. Dre’s production, while serviceable and head-knod worthy, only seems to work because Eminem is just that good. And Relapse, thematically, exists in its own space, its horrorcore ethos echoing an early 90s aesthetic that hasn’t been heard since…well… the early 90s. In short order, Eminem made Relapse not for his fans or for a rap audience that is hungry for its next microwaved movement, but for himself.

That may be the biggest trade Eminem and Wayne have made with each other. While Em walked into the game already having found his voice (Em’s first 3 LPs), then losing it (Encore), then finding it again (Relapse), Wayne’s made a steady progression towards that goal, culimating in The Carter 3, and everything that has dropped after it.

Who do you think has the upper hand right now?

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Allow Me To Introduce Myself

My name is Arthur Pitt.

I entered the music business just when it was making its curve towards the digital world. Perfect timing. This is not to say anything was easy. Over the years, I spent countless hours on Myspace learning the best ways to add “friends” manually. As exciting and fast as the digital world might seem to the outside eye, building your database and contacts is quite the contrary. It is a hustle of its own. It takes a relentless push forward and great product to spin. But it is the future. Luckily I had both to start.

A lot of the early marketing development of the first artist I worked with, Wiz Khalifa, was done on Myspace. We didn’t have a huge budget to get Wiz on the radio right away or a hot 16 from Jay Z. We were simply a grassroots teams with major label dreams.

I soon came to find out there was more than Myspace. Youtube was an effective tool for an artist. The Youtube hits and street videos we shot for Wiz soon led to him being featured on some of the top hip hop sites in the country. Before I knew it, I was servicing Wiz’s records to AllHipHop and XXLmag.com without a major label deal. My hustle was relentless and people were taking notice of our team. My guerilla style marketing tactics turned some off, but there was always someone standing beside a person who thought I was too much that would cosign for me. I was breaking into the business fast.

Sometime around 2007, the major labels started to notice us. We had been to places where no one from my hometown of Pittsburgh had been. With that said, a lot of these unchartered territories were places like Allhiphop, Nahright, and XXLmag.com. MTV, BET, and major radio airplay were in the works for Wiz. However, by utilizing the digital world first, we were doing things the right way. By June 2007, we had signed with Warner Bros. Records. Wiz was only 19. I had only been in the business for two years.

So what am I getting at? Can you have a meteoric rise with the right grind and product in this game? You bet. Can you quickly fall if you don’t respect the future and study what’s around the corner? You bet. Can you set yourself up for failure if you compare yourself to everything going around you? You bet.

Don’t waste your time trying to be the next Diddy or Jay Z. There will never be two like them. Do I study their words and how they achieved success? Of course. Do I compare my artists with who they have signed with their multi-million dollar budgets and contacts? Yes and no. I do it because I have to understand what type of music I am competing against. But it stops there. My sense of urgency kicks in. I know that it is pointless to compare myself or my artists/clients to an Irv Gotti’s or Jay Z’s latest signee. I have to focus on using what resources I have. I have to try to outwork them, put out better music, and utilize what I know better than them.

When my good friend Paul and I discussed me writing a column for this site, I wanted to share some of my early experiences with readers and my fellow music industry colleagues.

This past month has really been an amazing time for me. Wiz Khalifa’s latest mixtape Flight School has been downloaded over 90,000 times for free. Besides all the touring and promotion he does, Wiz has grasped the importance of the net. Just last week, he started to broadcast himself via his Twitter account. Before we knew it, he was a “Trending Topic” next to the Swine Flu and Grey’s Anatomy. Wiz understands the curve.

Another artist of mine, Boaz, a 22 year old MC from Pittsburgh was featured on the front page of Myspace Music and iTunes Music within a week. The staff at Apple loved his album so much they made him the “Featured Artist of the Week.” Boaz is a street savvy kid from the hood in Pittsburgh with a relentless grind to match mine. He can now fully grasp the importance of the net. I am proud to say that I have been a major part in showing him the future of the business. Boaz knows that while the majors can be a great avenue, it’s not the only way to make money in music.

Whether you know my name now or whom I represent you will soon. I am a huge part of the future of this business. No matter what, I will continue to go hard and put my artists up against companies with staffs and departments. I will compete against people who have longer money than we might have. I will always do my best to win. I am the future of this shit. Be inspired. Be focused. Believe. From Larimer to iTunes. What up Boaz!!

Arthur Pitt can be reached at artie@rostrumrecords.com or artie.pitt@gmail.com

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Rza and Me

During the weekend of May 16th-18th, I had the pleasure of attending Sha Money XL’s One Stop Shop producer conference, which took place at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in downtown Phoenix, Arizona.

I’d originally ventured to the conference under the pretense that I’d be moderating one of the variety of panel discussions, but wound up as a panelist on the management/A&R panel. Why? Your guess is probably as good as mine, but I imagine it had something to do with Sha Money wanting a 3rd party perspective up there with the A&Rs, someone to sort of balance out whatever information they might be giving. I was on the panel with Gene Nelson from Atlantic Records, Step Johnson Jr. from Interscope Records, Serge who’s an A&R with Jermaine Dupri’s publishing company, Dre McKenzie from G-Unit and a few other folks who– pardon me– I just can’t remember at the moment (my mind’s going blank in my ripe old age ha!).

The highlight of the event was having the opportunity to meet and share a few words with The Rza.

Too often in the music business, people who work in the game tend to spend their time grandstanding and not wanting to show love. I’m guilty of that myself, considering that, admittedly, I don’t have nearly as much respect for the newer acts as the older ones. I mean, I’m just not impressed by these guys. They don’t move me.

Rza moves me.

Maybe not as much as he once did, perhaps maybe not at all right now. But most of my desire to even want to make music comes from being that kid in junior high school, headphones on during the bus ride home, bumping Wu-Tang songs I taped off the radio. Wu-Tang was and still is the illest shit I’ve ever heard in music, period. At the time, I thought Rza was a grand scientist with the beats. It wasn’t until later on in my own production career, when I realized a lot of those incredible beats he was “making,” were in fact just loops he’d expertly dug up from a dusty record bin nobody else was looking in. There’s something to be said for that though. Wikipedia defines a genius as:

…an individual who successfully applies a previously unknown technique in the production of a work of art, science, or calculation, or who masters and personalizes a known technique. A genius typically possesses great intelligence or remarkable abilities in a specific subject, or shows an exceptional natural capacity of intellect and/or ability, especially in the production of creative and original work, something that has never been seen or evaluated previously. Traits often associated with genius include strong individuality, imagination, uniqueness, and innovative drive.

Suffice it to say, I’ve admired his craftiness for all these years. I remember arguing with kids in high school about the first Bobby Digital album, how it was far superior to whatever Ruff Ryders material they were bumping. It was that classic backpack vs. underground war, and the late 90s was when it was in heavy bloom.

Rza and Wu-Tang, in a lot of ways, defined what I wanted my hip-hop to sound like. If it wasn’t Wu-Tang, at a certain point, I just didn’t want to hear it anymore. Their sound was so in its own lane, in its own pocket, in its own little world.

And then my own production career started. I’d been making beats since back before I had even hit double digits in age. I figured out multi-track recording techniques by simply using the microphone portion of a boom box my dad had. I would play a drum pattern out with a juice bottle, record it through the mic on a blank tape. Then I’d take that tape, play it in another boom box, while I was tapping out another pattern, and record the two sounds now playing at once back on the original boom box. *Sigh* My how far we’ve come with the technology, to the point where all I ever wanted to do back then was loop something up, and now all I want to do is figure out how to NOT loop something.

But I digress.

As I entered college in the year 2000, I got more serious about being a producer. Because my girlfriend at the time didn’t get into the same college I got into, I decided to stay local for school. Back then, I still rapped. I was actually pretty good, although I could never get over my tiny white guy voice, which always made me rather unconvincing, no matter how ill the punchlines were. I didn’t really want to rap though, I just wanted to produce. Making the music itself was more aligned with my interests back when I was a quiet 18-year old college student, who spent his free time listening to avant-garde jazz records and reading Herman Hesse novels in my spare time.

That I would go on to work with some of the guys from Wu-Tang was beyond me at the time. But lo and behold, a few years later I was cutting records with Rza’s brother, 9th Prince, of Killarmy, which at the time was one of my favorite offshoots of the Wu brand. I also produced a few songs on Shyheim’s “Greatest Story Never Told.” Raekwon spent some time in the studio I co-owned with my partner at the time, recording “Castle to Castle” with DJ Doo Wop, and I even wound up engineering a recording session for Raekwon in his house some time around 2004. I produced a song called “Shine” for U-God, and he did most of his Hillside Scramblers album in my studio as well, working with my then partner Cue. The Wu-Tang guys would come and go, one day it was Cappadonna, the next it was Inspectah Deck and so on. I have stories for days.

Still, I’d never met Rza.

People would come through to my studio, say they had tracks of his, but you could never tell what was what. I seriously doubt anyone ever came through with an authentic Rza track. I imagine most of what was labeled as Rza stuff was just a collection of tracks that someone swiped from the hard drive at the old 36 Chambers studio.

Ah yes, 36 Chambers. Which is now called something else– the name escapes me at the moment– and at last check, was being leased to Swizz Beats.

Before it became Swizz’s spot, I even put some time in over there, working on some records with various people. Still, no Rza.

When I went the Wu offices that used to be on 34th street and the west side highway (the “new” 36 Chambers) a few years ago, my close buddy, former Trackmasters A&R (read: 50 Cent’s A&R) Gello Jones and I kicked it with Rza’s other brother, Divine. We were meeting to try to come up with a mixtape marketing plan for, you guessed it, Raekwon’s OB4CL2. This was 2005!! Four years, the album is now finally set to drop. Divine even came to my 2nd studio, Lifestyle, when he was trying to buy a building from my business partner, William Martin. To hear him tell it, he wanted to buy a building, put a new studio in it, offices, and so on, raise the Wu flag, and call it a day. Never happened.

Still, hadn’t met Rza.

To go back in time just a bit, there was a brief moment where Rza and I did meet, although it wasn’t anything formal. It was backstage at the Wu concert, at Continental Airlines Arena, the day before ODB died. I remember that concert like it was yesterday because earlier that day I was staring at a computer terminal, taking the GRE exam, which would determine a lot about where I was going to head to grad school. See, I was out of college for roughly 6 months back then, and it was a trying time. I’d lost my mother about a year prior, and although I’d just received my first paid placement (on Freeway presents Ice City: Welcome to the Hood), and was beginning to write here and there for XXL, I wasn’t making much money, and was still living at home. You think post-college, and a lot of times all that is on your mind is getting out there in the world, starting your career, your life and so on. And that wasn’t really happening for me. My partner had bounced to Florida, we closed our studio, and I was back at square 1. So here I am, months in advance, trying to prep for the GRE, studying math and things that I hadn’t looked at in years (god forbid I were to take that exam again now, yikes!), pondering my future and wondering what the next was going to be.

And so I walked into that exam room, not as well-prepared as I would have liked (read: no study), and took the test. It was pouring that day. It was quite depressing actually. I didn’t think I did too well (ended up with a 1090, 6 out of 6 on the writing part though, go figure), and to blow off some steam I decided to hit up the Wu-Tang concert.

If there were any doubt in my mind as to what I was going to do with my life, Wu-Tang cleared it all up that night. All I needed to do was see a sea of heads bobbing in unison to “C.R.E.A.M.” and my mind was set.

Hip-Hop was going to pay the bills.

Backstage Rza gave me a pound real quickly, a little head nod, and kept it moving. That was it. I don’t even think at the time I could really reflect like I’m doing right now. Maybe the moment didn’t mean as much to me five years ago. I wound up in Ghostface’s little corner of the dressing area, chilling with his manager Lord Mike, Trife and the rest of the Theodore Unit dudes, who I obviously knew from cutting records with them.

We had one other moment where we briefly exchanged head nods as well, after a press junket for the H20 Hip-Hop Odyssey Film Awards, where he was also being honored. Again, no real convo though.

Fast forward to a week and a half ago, and here’s Rza on stage, being honored at the One Stop Shop. Tall and wiry, he’s wearing a shirt that says “The New Negro,” and has on his customary black-rimmed glasses. He’s on a panel with production luminaries such as Just Blaze, Hi-Tek, 9th Wonder, Pete Rock, Needlez, Nottz, Don Cannon and Drumma Boy, but to me, he just sorta sticks out amongst the crowd up there. It’s like he doesn’t belong, like he’s in his own class. And that’s no disrespect to anyone else that was up there. I just feel like he fathered a lot of people’s styles. Even Pete Rock’s work, to some extent, started sounding all Wu-Tang-ish in the late 90s (“Strange Fruit” anyone?). It felt like he needed a panel of his own. A friend of mine said he had seen Rza deftly breeze through the lobby the day before, almost unidentifiable. He wasn’t seen again until this panel. Whereas everyone else was mingling with others for the whole weekend, he off on his own, maybe too cool, maybe too accomplished, maybe just too tired, to socialize.

When the panel was over, I walked up to him and said:

“I’m Gooch, the producer from Staten Island.”

His eyes lit up.

“Oh, you from the island? That’s peace.”

“Yeah, I produced a bunch of the songs on your brother 9th’s new album ["Prince of New York"], the one that just dropped on Babygrande.”

“No doubt, he told me about you. Good shit.”

“What’s been going on with you though?”

“Shit, I’m chillin.”

We took a picture, and our conversation ended.

I met Rza.

me on the A&R/Management panel

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Deadmau5 at Webster Hall

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Coldplay’s Giving Away Free Music, Why Aren’t You?

Just came across this article at the grey lady about Coldplay giving away a live CD of their music for free on their next tour. From the article:

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“There’s Rules To This Ish, I Wrote You A Manual”

I spotted this over at DJ SMP’s site, really good list of articles that teach and/or elaborate on different aspects of DIY culture in hip-hop music.

I suggest everyone who’s reading it to pay some serious attention to #8:How Can I Get More Gigs?

So far on the list, we’ve been overlooking the most important part: live shows. Start with How Can I Get More Gigs? For more to chew on, check out this series on the question “Is Touring Still Necessary?” Basically: yes, but not until you’ve got enough of a fan base to be turning a profit on the road.

This is the lifeblood of the music business right now. Basically, the oldest and most traditional form of entertainment there is, the live show. This dates back to medieval times, I’m sure even cavemen had some sort of live entertainment. If you can’t play live, get out of the business NOW. You will not survive.

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