Q&A With Producer Rick Rock: Talks Experiences With Dr. Dre, Tupac & Who He Wants To Produce For
ay Area-bred producer Rick Rock may not have the headline-commanding name of a Dr. Dre, or the media prowess of a Kanye West, but the multi-platinum producer feeding your ears a steady diet of classic tunes for close to 20 years. Since those early years of producing for the Conscious Daughters, MC Eiht, Spice 1 and others, he has provided the sonic back drop to many of your favorite artists' songs.
Rick Rock has been platinum since 1994's MC Eiht featuring CMW's "We Come Strapped" and hasn't seen any decline in his platinum and gold track record, as evidence with a catalog which boasts production for 2Pac's All Eyez On Me, E-40's Hall of Game, The Element of Surprise and My Ghetto Report Card; as well as Fabulous' debut, Ghetto Fabolous, and Jay-Z's The Dynasty Roc La Familia to name a few.
With an first solo project, titled Rocket, on the way, BallerStatus sat down with Rick Rock to talk about a few of his hits over the years and working with the genre's legends, his experience working with Dr. Dre, and coming in the game with production mentor Mike Mosley, as well as his opinion on Barack Obama, Mariah Carey, and much more.
BallerStatus.com: Tell me about putting together the track "Symphony in X Major" for Xzibit's Man vs. Machine album. How did you get Dr. Dre to hop on there?
Rick Rock: I was looking for records and ran across a record called "Swithched on Bach". I sampled a couple pieces, and added some claps, kicks, and all the bells and whistles to it, and sent it to Xzibit. X said he was f***ing with it, but I never thought Dr. Dre would get on it. That was just getting my cake and eating it too (laughs). So when X called me at my Aunt Doris' house in the Gump (Montgomery, Alabama) and put me on the phone with the good Doc, I knew sh** was finna unfold nice. They added the whole negro opera sh** to it, but the dopest thing to me was getting to mix the song with Dre and get some good game from the Doc.
BallerStatus.com: How did you end up working on Pac's All Eyez on Me Death Row project, for "Tradin' War Stories" and "Ain't Hard to Find"?
Rick Rock: I drove into L.A. as part of a caravan with C-Bo, Mike Mosely and Richie Rich. When we got to the La Montrose Hotel, Pac was there, but was leaving so we all followed him to Can-Am Studio. I walk in, look to my left, and see DJ Quik mixing the song with Method Man and Redman in the first room. We go to the next room where Pac starts playing his album, All Eyez on Me, for all of us -- which was Mike Mosley, E-40, Richie Rich, C-Bo, Tha Outlawz, D-Shot, and B-Legit. It was the dopest sh** I had ever heard at that time. When he was done, he wanted to do a song with the Bay Area artists, but had no beats. They had a SP-1200, which I believe was Johnny J's, and I had a bag full of SP-1200 disks I brought with me from Alabama. I put a disk in and loaded it and pressed play. When Pac heard it, he was like, "what's that?" I was like, "That's you!" He started writing "Tradin' War Stories," then we got a keyboard and started doing "Ain't Hard to Find." It was dope ass hip-hop moment in time and I was blessed to even have been there.
BallerStatus.com: Were those the only two tracks you got to do with Pac? Or, are there some other tracks floating around that we don't know about?
Rick Rock: There are couple others floating around, fa sho!
No comments:
Post a Comment