Today I watched some of the BET Awards live via Maseo's (of De La Soul) Ustream channel and then watched a rip of Jay-Z's latest video (premiered on US tv immediately following the awards) via Onsmash. Both of these events were broadcast on BET. A black entertainment network that has never aired in New Zealand. I know most (or at least a lot) of us do shit like this daily but man... the awards live and the Jay video only minutes after its first airing? Im just saying... the internet is FAST.
If you own a pay-tv network, step your game up (immediately!), or go the way of the recorded music industry... oh and same goes for movies, y'all are f**ked already. Evolve or die. :)
The story of Scribe's Not Many (produced by yours truly) is an interesting one, the writing and recording took place in a number of stages.
Scribes lyrics for the 2 verses on the original version were written years before we recorded the song "Not Many". (I need to check with Scribe as to exactly when they were penned, I think they were possibly 3 years old by the time we recorded the album in 2003). To the best of my knowledge, the famous hook "How many dudes you know roll like this..." etc. was written a few months to a year before we recorded the song aswell. I composed the music in about an hour or two in the bedroom of my flat on Khyber Pass. Scribes lyrics were not written to the beat I made and the beat was composed with no knowledge of those particular lyrics, but we made them fit together perfectly.
We recorded Scribes vocals to the music I had made in about 2 hours. Scribe paired the old verse lyrics with the 'Not Many' hook to form the body of the song. Together we added some intro adlibs and the outro chants "next time you come on down to North Canterbury...." to complete the vocal parts of the track. I then set about mixing the track with our engineer Chris Chetland. I recall the mix came together unusually quickly for the original version. It was at most a 6 hour session with a couple of additional tweaks needed the next day (a couple more hours). Mastering took some more time. I think we revisited the master about 2 or 3 times. And with that the original mix of "Not Many" was complete.
"Not Many - The Remix" was created a couple months later. We needed a second single for Scribe. "Not Many" was becoming a popular track but it was already available on the Stand Up single. So instead of making a video for the original, and essentially selling the same song twice, I decided we should do a remix. The remix would retain all the elements that made the original song popular (same beat & same hook) but we would add some featured guest verses and a new verse from Scribe. We set an incredibly short timeline to turn this thing around because we needed another video on TV quick to push Scribe's momentum to the next level. (aside: i dont think Ive worked so hard and with as much urgency to complete any project as I did with this record, this shit was intense). From concept to completion was about 10 days. The first thing I did was contact Savage and ask him if he would write a verse for the remix and then I called Con-Psy (aka David Dallas) to see if he would take part. They both agreed and began writing their parts. The 4 of us got together at The Lab in Mt. Eden to record the new verses. That session was about 6 hours long and I was left with 3 new verses and some adlibs from each rapper. None of these parts were recorded in the order you hear them on the finished song. My job then was to arrange all the new vocals and edit the beat to match. I spent the following 2 days and nights working around the clock to get the track to a finished state that I was happy with and deliver to our video director in time to map out a shot-list for the impending shoot. The guys (Scribe, Savage, David) heard my finished arrangement for the first time on the friday before our sunday video shoot and had 2 days to memorize the song for their performance in the video. The shoot was really fun and about 14 hours long, a one day shoot.
The next day after the shoot I was back in the lab to finish the mixdown. The mix was already half done of course because we didn't change any of the music. We instead spent another day getting the new vocals sitting right with the original recording's chorus. A new master was done and we eq'ed it a little harder than on the original so it had the intensity I was going for. All up, the new mix and master was about 2 days work.
We put it out and woohoo, big success! The track was dope, the video awesome and the movement reached fever pitch. Scribe, Savage, P-Money & Con-Psy became household names and we all lived happily ever after lol.
The RIANZ chart is in. Bazooka Kid # 18 on Albums Chart, Tonight # 35 on the Singles Chart. Congrats go to PNC and the crew at Dirty for a strong first week!
PNC's second full length offering "Bazooka Kid" arrives in stores and online as of tomorrow June 2nd. The album is dope and captures PNC's strongest performances to date. The music is a mixture of modern and late 80/early 90's influences. PNC did his thing on this one. Make sure you pick it up! And don't forget to request the lead single "Tonight" on radio and TV.
