ACEYALONE & RJD2
Feb 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By DJ Ethx
It's been awhile since they last spoke — or collaborated, rather — on the lead single to Aceyalone's last long player, Love & Hate (Red Urban, 2003), but the chemistry is definitely still there. Both artists cite mutual respect and admiration for each other's art as their motivation for expanding upon their previously limited working relationship.
“We had gotten introduced and started working together, and I started getting more familiar with what [RJD2] does, and I like what he does,” Aceyalone says. “There's only a handful of producers that are really dynamic when it comes to song structure and putting music together the way I would like to interpret it, vocally.”
Aceyalone is proud to say that his collaboration with RJD2 was no run-of-the-mill beat-and-sample production process. “The universe is just a crazy flux of energy, and we just went for it,” Aceyalone says. “It's nothing super-scientific, [but] he fills a piece with a lot of different layers and variations. It's interesting at more than three, four or five different points: The intro starts one way, and it ends a whole different other way. It's not a song where it goes all the way through, and [the producer] drops out the bass and brings back in the bells. He can change moods. We made actual songs; we didn't just do beats to rhymes.”
For RJD2, the full-length partnership was all about having “room to stretch” and being able to show the full range of what he has to offer. “If [I've] got some electro shit, some double-time bounce shit and some party, 105 bpm shit,” RJD2 says. “I feel like I'm in my element when somebody's like, ‘Okay, let's do all three. Now.’ That's where I feel most comfortable. If I'm hired to work on [one song on a] record, my natural instinct is to go for the single. I'm a competitive guy — and I'm a DJ — so I don't want to have the one weird, abstract, spacey song on your album. But if I'm doing the whole record, then I don't have to worry about that; I can do the weird shit and I can do the singles. I can stop caring about this or that, and I just have fun.”
Magnificent City finds RJD2 exploring live instrumentation to a degree that is, for him, without precedent. “I got to a point where in my recording process, I had a structure for a song, a beat or a main part, and now I want to expand on it. I'd go looking for things; I'd have specific ideas. I'd want a sustained, lower-register piano riff for this other part, and I'd go through records and records. I went through this whole thing where I organized my entire catalog according to instruments and where there were open samples. So the dividing cards are like guitars, pianos, strings, drums. Even then, it was just too labor-intensive. It was stupid. At the same time, I was going through this thing where sampling…there's problems with it from a business perspective. So I started buying instruments. Now I'm at a point where it's easier for me. If I want a Wurlitzer — if that's the right sound and the right harmonic range — I can just go sit down and play it instead of looking for a record. I'm not a pro with the chops, but I have enough to get done what I want to get done.”
For RJD2, artistic progression is necessary for avoiding boredom, and the process is key. He's as concerned with the journey as he is with the destination. “Everything is done in real time. I do it over and over — it takes me 10 tries. That's the fun of it. You gotta use the amps, the mics and the preamps. You experiment with all the miking approaches to get different sounds. That's what I'm into now; I'm not into records at the moment. I stick a mic in front of something. I start playing, and when I get it right, I'm done. That's what it is in a nutshell.”
“I'm a competitive guy, and I'm a DJ, so I don't want to have the one weird, abstract, spacey song on your album.” — RJD2
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