Friday 2 September 2016

RnB For The Late Night From Star Trak

1. Ray J - Formal Invite ft. Pharrell
2. Natasha Ramos - In The Midnight Hour
3. Latrelle - Long Night
4. Beenie Man - Ola
5. Babyface - Stressed Out
6. N*E*R*D - Locked Away
7. Usher - Wifey ft. Pharrell
8. Latrelle - Dirty Girl
9. Q-Tip - For The Nasty ft. Busta Rhymes
10. Nigo - Planet Of The Bapes
11. Ms. Jade - The Come Up
12. Toni Braxton - Hit The Freeway ft. Loon & Pharrell
13. Latrelle - House Party
14. Natasha Ramos - Invisible
15. Handsome Boy Modelling School - Class System ft. Pharrell Williams & Julee Cruise
16. Ray J - Out Tha Ghetto
17. Hasan - Phenomenon ft. Pharrell
18. Latrelle - My Life ft. Kelis
19. Latrelle - Dirty Girl ft.. T.I.

Inspiration has just struck. The idea had been there the whole time, it just needed to be dug out. The loop had been going on for who knows how long. From the video we can tell it was at least 10 minutes, most probably a lot longer. There were synths, piano, some hi-hats. Phrases and sounds and melodies were repeated and stretched and squeezed, moved around and experimented with, like pieces of a puzzle, trying to find how they fit together. Parts were done, fragments ready to go but a vital part proved elusive and so he waited, just grooving and vibing. She seemed unsure that they were getting anywhere but he had a calm confidence. This is what he does. Better than most who have ever done it. He stopped the loop.

'I hope you read every line to this message/In these trying times/We gon' make it' he sang softly and then started the loop again. His production partner came into the studio and they greeted each other. The loop kept going as his partner picked up an acoustic guitar on his way through and disappeared to another corner of the room, strumming along. With the distraction he lost it for a second. Frustrated he tried to get back to where he was with the melody and within about 30 seconds of his partner starting to strum along, he has it back and then it hits him. Synergy and illumination. Bad timing for her, a phone call, so she missed the lightning striking. The camera didn't.

This moment of inspiration was the key to unlocking the song. A chorus; 'In the midnight hour when you sleep/I hope you dream of me/I hope you dream of me/in the midnight hour when you creep/come get a piece of me, my baby'. Everything else would fall neatly into place now. Verses, the already established bridge and then a middle 8 that his partner no doubt came up with in tandem. 'How crazy's that? Woo hoo! ' He asks the camera man.

In The Midnight Hour ultimately went unreleased. It was meant for Natasha Ramos' debut album but the whole record was shelved yet the track surfaced online around 2004 so the studio session it came from was probably a year or so earlier. When I first heard the song I liked it fine. It didn't blow me away or anything. Then a while later a video of the track being created ended up on YouTube. It captured the moment of inspiration I just described. For whatever reason, seeing it come together and seeing the excitement on the songwriter's face as he found his breakthrough, as I'm sure by this point in his career he had done thousands of times before, and seeing it still seem like the first time, it gave me a whole other level of appreciation for the song.
I'm not sure if it was the first studio footage I'd seen of Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo of The Neptunes at work but it made a real impact on me. I was already a Neptunes obsessive, listening to every track I could find by them, buying whole albums because one track on it was produced by them and visiting the Grindin' forum (then called the Star Trak forum) multiple times a day which was undoubtedly where I first saw the video in question in fact. There is quite a lot of behind the scenes footage out there of these masters at work, on YouTube and in various documentaries if you do a bit of digging, not least of which is an incredible eight hour plus series showing the creation of Justin Timberlake's 2002 debut solo album Justified. It has some really awe-inspiring moments scattered around its epic running time. Anyway the Ramos video really struck a nerve because it showed in its rawest form how amazing, satisfying and exciting the act of creation can be. It showed me some of the reasons why people make art, in whatever form. It also showed that against all odds, Pharrell, a guy with a crazy amount of success already, and especially at this time when according to one statistic (whether or not it was accurate it certainly felt true) 'almost 20 per cent of airplay on British radio and 43 per cent in the United States' was produced by The Neptunes, and he still wasn't jaded or cynical. He seemed so enthralled with the craft. The video shows him looking a little worn out and tired but still energetic with enthusiasm for music. Making music because it's what he loved doing not because he wanted to make hits. The hits came as a by-product.

Sounds that could have come from the future and the past at the same time. Old ideas paired with sci-fi sonics. Spacey and minimal or bombastic and full, The Neptunes could do both. Hard rap, hook-laden pop or lush RnB, they could do all that too. And more. They first grabbed my ear in the last quarter of 1999. Ol' Dirty Bastard's perfect Got Your Money featuring Kelis and then Kelis' own hit Caught Out There were everywhere. At some point me and Luke were in Home Economics (our last year at school we wanted to make some cakes) we were doing the dishes and we got to talking about how that 'I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW!' song had taken its time but had really wormed its way into our favour. I went from finding it a bit annoying to liking it a lot, but I never went so far as to buy the single. Luke had Got Your Money on CD. Eventually, probably around the turn of the century, I picked up a copy of Kelis' debut album Kaleidoscope. I wasn't prone to buying a lot of RnB records at this stage in my musical exploration (I was still a bit of a snob about it to be honest) but the album had been well reviewed and I'd liked what I had heard of it so far. Plus that cover was cool AND she was a babe. So I gave it a shot. Due to having been reading a lot about Steve Albini, Rick Rubin and Quincy Jones I was starting to become more interested in producers and who was responsible for the sound of records behind the scenes and so when I was reading the liner notes on the Kelis album I saw that the whole thing had been written and produced by The Neptunes. 'Interesting' I thought.

Then in 2001 Kelis' sophomore album Wanderland was released and I read about it in The Face magazine, The Neptunes were once again behind it and they had their own album coming out too under the name N*E*R*D. So I bought both those records on their respective release dates. I liked them both but it wasn't until March the following year that I fully fell in love with the Neptunes sound when they re-recorded and re-released that debut N*E*R*D album In Search Of with live band instrumentals instead of the heavily synthesized original release. Then I was all in. That's when I started seeking out everything I could find by them, singles by Jay-Z, Noreaga and Mystikal to album tracks by Mary J. Blige and Jadakiss and the search is what ended up leading me to the Star Trak forum. Star Trak was Williams and Hugo's new record label and on their website the forum became a dedicated community for sharing and discussing anything related to the duo. I plunged deep into both everything they'd ever released and all the stuff, and there was a lot, that was never officially released but had one way or another leaked online.

This mix is mostly made up of underappreciated releases and some of that never released stuff. From the mix's title I guess I was going for a nice smooth mix that would be appropriate for playing at a low volume late at night but a few tracks that I selected don't really suit that mood. Beenie Man's Ola really belongs in a party as he clearly states right at the top of the song and Planet of the Bapes is way too lively for a chill session. The scuzzy lo-fi unmastered sound of lost N*E*R*D track Locked Away is also quite disruptive, but what a great song though. I really wish they would go back and polish it off and give it a proper release. I am not alone in wanting this, there is only one song I can think of that the Grindin' community would like to see a full release of more, the holy grail that is Cassie's Hide. Ms. Jade's bars are too hard on The Come Up for a relaxing time but the beat based around a comedic Pharrell vocal loop is great fun. Similarly Q-Tip and Busta's unreleased For The Nasty just about works in this concept but I think I maybe should have stuck to the RnB tracks if I wanted to stay true to the premise. This would also count out Hasan's Phenomenon with its typically catchy Pharrell chorus.

Straying further still from the thesis of the mix is Class System, which isn't even produced by The Neptunes, that credit belongs to Dan The Automator and Prince Paul. It does at least have a Pharrell feature on it. Weirdly and excellently it also had Julee Cruise on it whose single Falling was used as the theme song for David Lynch's Twin Peaks. The song is a nice oddity but I don't think it really belongs with the rest of these songs thematically.

What remains are two Ray J tracks, five Latrelle ones, a buried Usher joint, a second Natasha Ramos number, and a hit single each from Babyface and Toni Braxton respectively. Ray J opens the mix with Formal Invite, a track that manages to stay silky smooth despite Brandy's brother spitting some grim/lame sex raps on it. I'm sure Kim Kardashian liked his chat. The second Ray J track is Out The Ghetto which Pharrell laced with a repetitive but ultra catchy hook that appears throughout the song and an even catchier chorus. The lyrics on this one about aspiring to work hard to get out of the struggle of hood life are better than than those on the earlier track. The Neptunes and Ray J had one other track together and all three of those songs appeared on Ray J's album This Ain't A Game. Those three songs are the only things I'm aware of him ever having done with any value.
Latrelle is a singer and songwriter from New Jersey who wrote songs for the likes of Destiny's Child and Monica as a teen and when she came to release an album herself she hit up Pharrell and Chad for six songs. Unfortunately it never really happened for her, that album went unreleased when the lead singles underperformed. There are two versions of Dirty Girl on here, the original version and the version with T.I.'s verse on it and if I'm being honest neither version of this song were ever going to be strong enough to be a hit. It's fine, but by no means great. Second single House Party is a slightly better RnB tune (with a gorgeously awful video), it's got a nice vibe and a strong hook but My Life, which features Kelis, has more of that Neptunes magic in it. Great snappy drums and synths, an excellent chorus and a terrific bridge where Kelis pretty much steals the show.

The other Latrelle song Long Night was one I always loved and really it should have been the single to try to launch her as an artist. Again the drums and synths are on point, but Pharrell's songwriting really flies here. Wonderful melodies and harmonies. The 'Phooooom Phooooom' vocal laser sound, that Pharrell was so fond of in the early days is all over this track as well. Years later Pharrell reworked the track for Shakira when he produced the bulk of her She Wolf album. He flipped it to give it a more Latin flavour. I still prefer the original version but I'm glad the song got its shine eventually.

Usher has had a long running a fruitful relationship with The Neptunes with a string of hits whenever they collaborate, but there are a number of tracks that they worked on together that ended up on the cutting room floor. Wifey is one of those and it is hard to see why. It bumps. Spare jangly guitar parts and lush strings topped with Usher doing some impressive vocal acrobatics, and Pharrell has some sweet vocals on it too. It is another one that should really be properly mastered and released at some point.

Stressed Out is one of two excellent songs the Star Trak duo wrote for Babyface's Face2Face album. There She Goes was the hit single but Stressed Out is a nicely slick track in its own right. And Hit The Freeway has everything you want from a classic Neps production and Toni Braxton just Toni Braxton's all over it.

Carbon dating would place this mix as being created around 2007. I'm fairly certain I would have been working at The Southern and that this mix was put together to score a quiet Monday night when not much was happening. Nothing to boisterous or raucous in the soundtrack. Just keep it relatively chill in the dim lighting. Maybe a little sexy. I didn't do a great job curating it. I must have been pushed for time.

On their first meeting Pharrell wrote In The Midnight Hour for Natasha Ramos and despite being fatigued from a five day recording session with Rodney Jenkins and flying in to Virginia to work Pharrell in the middle of the night, she must have impressed him because he wrote her a handful of other songs after. None of them ever got officially released but they got out there somehow (thank you internet). I am glad Invisible found its way out. Again it marries classic RnB songwriting with some weird futuristic sounds. It is what he/they were able to do seemingly without effort for years there. I mean, they are still doing it, but the impact has lessened. That golden era produced some truly amazing, forward thinking (and sounding) music and each and every one of those songs started with a moment of inspiration like the one caught on film the night they wrote In The Midnight Hour. It must have been so exhilarating and inspiring to be around two people with so much talent bouncing ideas off each other with that level of skill, enthusiasm and inspiration, because here, more than 10 years later listening to a poorly conceived mix of far from their best stuff I am still exhilarated and inspired. Long live Star Trak and long live The Neptunes.

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