We’ve been sent a few tracks from an up and coming artist Thadd Williams out of the South Carolina, repped by Mic Fiend Music. We were just sent some really cool commentary on mixtape production by Shod Harris, Mic Fiend’s Director of Marketing, so we though we’d post that up along with Thadd’s hit single, “Ridin’ Hard”.
The Instant Classic: The Key To A Classic Album
Whats up everybody, once again this is “The Instant Classic” Shod Harris as I prepare for a couple of different projects that I will be working on in the next couple of weeks I have been doing a lot of listening to classic music. I have been listening to everything from the whole Jay-Z catalog, Nas – Stillmatic, the whole Kanye West catalog, Biggie and Eminem. For some reason listening to these albums made me think of an old interview that I saw with the producer No I.D. where he stated that the secret to get a classic album is to have one producer or one set of producers. At first I thought this was probably the craziest thing I have ever heard because there have been a lot of albums and mixtapes that I was feeling that had multiple producers. But I then had to keep in mind that those albums I was just FEELIN and not in love with like The Blueprint, College Dropout, and the Marshall Mathers LP.
Even though these albums were created by artists who are completely different they do have one thing in common, they all kept either one or one team of producers throughout the whole project. Jay-Z had Kanye West, Just Blaze and Bink working together on every track and inspiring one another. Kanye West was keeping all of his greatest beats for his self. Eminem had the great Dr. Dre on his side.
The reason that I feel that a single producer makes an album sound complete is that as an artist when you are working with just one producer you all will have the same vision for the whole project. Instead of dealing with 8 producers and everyone has a different vision for your project. That helps to make an album sound like a complete album and the songs flow together instead of it sounding like a compilation album with random tracks just being thrown together. I have heard this happen multiple times when an artist has multiple producers on an album. You can be an artist from the Midwest, and by having different producers you can have some tracks that sound like they belong to Young Jeezy, some that sound like the Neptunes created them and some that are extra soulful. So your album would sound completely off.
This technique has even worked for mixtapes lately. I feel that 2 of the hottest mixtapes of the past year have all took this advice and they have made masterpieces. First Wale used Best Kept Secret for his whole Mixtape About Nothing mixtape and he created a very soulful project that still had that DC bounce to every track. Even when he put instrumentals on it, it still flowed with the original tracks. This year Drake had arguably the hottest mixtape and buzz of the year. His mixtape, So Far Gone, featured his producer 40 who crafted beats and put together instrumentals that fitted the eerie and haunting sound that Drizzy was going for to relay his feelings and deep emotions. If he had another producer on the tape they probably wouldn’t have been able to fully understand the music that he was creating and wouldn’t have been able to come up with the background for such a classic mixtape. So I told you this technique definitely does work. I bet even if you look further at some of the classic albums throughout the years they have shared this same technique. This is just one technique that could help you create that masterpiece; I will be writing more about what I believe can help you with goal as well. So definitely stay tuned for more CLASSICS.
[wpaudio url="http://cdn.thagoodlifereviews.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/03-Ridin-Hard.mp3" text="Thadd Williams - Ridin' Hard"]
