(Click Here for Part One!)
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Aaron Matthews: Was Kanye actually hanging around the studio at this time? You mentioned him a little earlier.
No I.D.: Yeah, he was.
A.M.: Was he rapping yet or just studying your production?
I.D.: Naw, everything. When I met him, he was rapping and producing! He always was. I mean, he’d bring beats by all the time, be like, ‘Man, please, tell Common to let me do a beat for him.’ And it just... wasn’t the time, I’ll leave it at that! [laughs] But he definitely was around, and trying to contribute in every possible way.
A.M.: How did you originally meet him?
I.D.: His mom asked my mom, could I help him with music, and I kinda just did it as a favour. Like, ‘Okay, yeah, I know’. [laughs] It was over time that I saw him develop into what he is, even though I never could see that he would be all that he is.
A.M.: He had a group around that time, called The Go-Getters [consisting of Kanye, GLC and Really Doe].
I.D.: Yeah. There’s a lot of history to the whole thing. It’s a lot of it out there, there’s an album called World Record Holders. Kanye went through a lot of direction changes with his style. From doing beats like Puff, Jermaine, to doing beats like Timbaland until he really honed in where he wanted to go.
A.M.: Can you hear your influence on him?
I.D.: Yeah, definitely. That’s really how I describe it. I think I influenced him, but I’m not going to act like everything he does came from me. People say, you know, I taught him. And I’ll be around him, and he’ll introduce me to somebody and say, ‘He taught me everything I know.’ Nah. I probably gave him enough tools to learn the other things I didn’t teach him.
A.M.: Do you think there’s a Chicago sound? Around that time, there were a lot of people like yourself, Dug Infinite, Ynot and Kanye...
I.D.: There’s two Chicago sounds to me. I mean, you have the West Side sound and the South Side sound. I feel like I probably made the South Side sound and Traxster probably made the West Side sound, with Twista, Do Or Die, all of those. The South Side sound, in my eyes, is rooted in the house music. As a DJ, we would take parts of a record and repeat it, to give it an energy, and it would have parts that we really liked and we would call ‘em “pause mixes.” And just make these remixes of songs where certain parts repeat over and over. I feel like that’s where the Chicago sound originates, just comes to finding the best part of a record and making a whole song out of that. And just having it come from house music is what gave us our musical point of view where we look for melody and real musical instruments, versus just keyboards or artificial sounding instruments. And I think [Kanye] definitely got that from me.
A.M.: And you can hear that influence in recent records or even some of the stuff from the Go Getters’ days?
I.D.: Well, that’s what I mean. If you go back and listen to the Go Getters’ records, it’s left of that, maybe just some of that. Because he was experimenting with so many different styles. I mean, you’ll hear stuff that sounds like everybody. I think it wasn’t until me and Kyambo "Hip Hop" Joshua, we used to talk about Jay [Jay-Z] and I always used to tell him that Jay wasn’t going to go number one until he had a sound. And then that’s when Hip-Hop said, ‘Well, you know what? This new album, the sound's going to be soul.’ I remember Kanye said, ‘I’ma go back and study Resurrection, and Quest [A Tribe Called Quest], and the Pete Rock albums and really learn the soul all the way.’ And I remember him saying, ‘Okay, I got it now’. The point was, he always knew how to do everything. It was maybe around that Blueprint time that forced him to hone in on that sound, which made him recall everything I taught him in that lane and then learn other things that I had maybe learned from other people too. That’s where we kinda got the similar sound, from that type of working on the same project. I mean, you look at Just Blaze. Just Blaze did soul beats before that. When people talk about who has that sound and style, honestly, I feel like I was there. RZA had his sound, Premier had his sound, Quest [ATCQ] had their sound. But I feel like, back then, we didn’t all aim for a sound. We aimed for good music and it wasn’t about whether we kept a words sample in or not. It was just about what sounded good. It didn’t really come into that until we came into the “Marketing Age”, and people trying to say this person had that sound or whatever. I don’t think none of us purposefully did soul with voices until that was just the request of hip hop for Jay-Z.
A.M.: So it was kind of a conscious revival?
I.D.: Yeah. And once it really worked, that’s when everybody was like, ‘That’s it. We gotta do that’. But you know, I’ve still been doing what I do the whole time. If you listen to Can I Borrow A Dollar?, I was using voices and soul samples, speeding them up.
A.M.: You’ve been around for a long time too and I think a lot of that has to do with your ability to change your sound. So you had the records with Common that we talked about, East Coast sounding beats and later on you were doing stuff with Jay-Z. How did you originally hook up with Jermaine Dupri?
I.D.: I met him because the first [major] record that Kanye did and put out was with Jermaine Dupri [“Intro - Turn It Out” ft. Nas, off Life In 1472]. So I came down to the studio one time and met Jermaine and we had the same manager who used to work for Jermaine. And that’s how my relationship developed. It really wasn’t a working relationship at first, we were kinda just cool. Then one day, I just was like: Man, I feel like we had opposite styles. We should hook up, I’ll learn from him, he’ll learn from me. And we’ll do things that we wouldn’t normally do.
A.M.: "All Around the World" off The Blueprint² (The Gift & The Curse) was your first collabo with Jay. How did that come about?
I.D.: Kyambo "Hip Hop" Joshua was managing me for a stint, and he gave Jay a lot of beats. That’s just one of the songs that came out around then.
A.M.: Were you working in the studio with Jay for that one?
I.D.: That song came because I gave him some beats for The Blueprint that didn’t get to him in time. So when he started off, I think they told me that was the first song [Jay] did for The Blueprint² (The Gift & The Curse). That and some other beats, he stashed them away and pulled it up at the end of the album. He called me at the end of the album with two days left before mastering, like ‘Yo, this record...’ and I’m like, ‘Oookay’. [laughs] It was funny because he had time-stretched and chopped up my two track, and when I did that beat, my MPC had cut off when I was doing so I only had what I had tracked out. It was like a nightmare trying to fit the beat to what he did.
A.M.: Let me ask you about another record from around that time, Ghostface’s “Metal Lungies”. Another one of my favourite No I.D. beats.
I.D.: Aw, thanks. Me and Ghost got real cool for a period of time. I don’t even remember how he got the beats, but for that time period when I worked on those records, I was getting him a lot of beats, I was cool with his manager. And you know, Ghost was one of my favorites and Ghost was actually Hip Hop’s favourite rapper. It really was us connecting and having a lot of talk about hip-hop and the direction and where he was going. A lot of times, if I’m not really involved in a project, it’s just me giving them a beat and then having a song.
A.M.: Are you still tight with Ghost? Will there be any more No I.D./Ghostface collaborations?
I.D.: We not as tight but I love him as a rapper, so I’ll always want to do something.
A.M.: You’re based in Atlanta now. When did you move down there?
I.D.: I moved down... this is the 2nd time I’ve moved here. I moved down like 3 years ago for the 2nd time.
A.M.: How did you hook up with Killer Mike?
I.D.: Me and his manager are real cool. That’s how I met him. I used to go over to Purple Ribbon and he’d always be there. He’s one of my good friends. He’s probably one of the people I’ve met in the industry that I know I want to work with and do a whole project with. He wants to do a whole project with me and I really want to go back to that place of trying to make a classic album. We’re going to do a whole album together.
A.M.: All No I.D. production?
I.D.: Pretty much. If not, then me influencing the direction, me executive producing it. We also about to do a mixtape, me, him and [Don] Cannon.
A.M.: That sounds crazy, man. When is that coming out?
I.D.: We just started on the mixtape and we’ve been working on the album off and on. He just finished his independent album with SMC, I Pledge Allegiance To The Grind II. Now we going to get in and really get on it.
A.M.: What’s your current set-up in the studio in Atlanta?
I.D.: Me and a producer named LRoc who works with Lil’ Jon and Jermaine got a studio together. Now, I kinda use Logic, a computer program, and I don’t really need all of that. It’s like more of a real studio, ‘cause you can really go in there and really do records. I really do most of my beats on a laptop, honestly. So I don’t really have to have all of that to do a beat.
A.M.: So you work mostly with Logic these days?
I.D.: Yeah. And a bunch of plug-ins. I’m not going to act like I just use Logic.
A.M.: On a website I write for, Metal Lungies, we do this feature called the Beat Drop, where we pick a producer and we have a bunch of different writers and they pick their favourite beats by that producer. We did one on Kanye and we had people pick their favourite Kanye beats. I wanted to know if you had five favourite Kanye beats.
I.D.: It would be [Beanie Sigel]’s “The Truth”. His beat on the Madd Rapper [album Tell ‘Em Why You Mad] called “Ghetto”, a lot of people never heard. “Late”, off Late Registration. “Takeover” [Jay-Z].
A.M.: Was there early stuff that you really liked?
I.D.: Oh yeah. He got a lot of beats with an independent artist named Grav, [those] were the first beats he really produced on.
A.M.: Could you take me through the process of making a beat?
I.D.: Nowadays it either starts with me listening to records or having something in my head already. Either way, I kinda do beats in my head first, ‘cause I have to see the mistakes in the beat and fix them without having to go through the process and getting tired and worn out. A lot of it is just me listening and thinking, and really trying to envision what I want to hear and feel. That’s always my first step. A lot of people that work with me sometimes get frustrated because, it’ll look like I’m not doing nothing, I’m just sitting there, playing records and talking. They’re like, ‘C’mon, let’s work!’ and I’m like, ‘I’m working!’ And at that moment that I got it, I’ll do it quickly and it’ll be correct because I took enough time to really figure it out. A lot of people do a lot of beats and sometimes it’s just one little wrong thing with all of them and never take the time to fix ‘em. Me and Kanye always had a thing called problem solving, like he’ll play me a beat and be like, ‘Problem solve this’. And I’ll say what’s wrong and he’ll fix it. And after a while, you learn how to problem solve with yourself.
A.M.: Is that the same process when you co-produce?
I.D.: Me and Jermaine’s process is different. Usually he’ll have the vision and usually he’ll call me to bring about a vision he don’t know how to bring about. It’s a little easier. I’d say my perspective and vision is very cutting edge, trying to go sometimes too far creatively. Whereas he has a very good pulse on what common America really likes and wants, the average normal person. And not really trying to prove too much. A lot of the times I work with him, it’s just for that reason, ‘cause I know his vision is a little more commercial than mine.
A.M.: So you guys kinda balance each other out.
I.D.: Exactly. Working with him has made my view more commercial but not to the point... I’m still going to keep it real at heart. A lot of that comes from the fact that I don’t always pursue this whole production game. ‘Cause I’m from an era of you do with artists, not ‘you shop beats’. The whole shopping beats for an album game is really the worst thing that ever happened to music, to me. It makes albums just a bunch of different stuff, instead of one album. The classic albums always sounded like an album to me. Instead of a mixtape, a collage.
A.M.: You have a whole lot of different producers with different sounds.
I.D.: The concept of having a bunch of different producers on the same album is absolutely ridiculous, when you look at the history of music. That’s like Michael Jackson saying to Quincy, ‘I can’t just use you on every song’. [laughs] ‘I’m too big for that now’.
A.M.: Even some of the earlier albums where there would be a couple different producers, there were usually working with a very unified sound. They either came from the same area or came up around the same time, and so they had a very like-sounding sound. Where it wasn’t like, ‘Okay, you’ve got one very pop sounding production on an album mostly produced by underground producers.’
I.D.: Even take it to commercial music. Usher got an album with 19 songs and no producer has more than two beats. So after a while there’s no continuity in the sound, the voice is the only constant. And I think that’s where it hurts albums.
A.M.: I’ve seen some people that pointed to Illmatic as being the first time that happened, even though that album had a fairly unified sound. But it was the first time you had several different producers working on an album.
I.D.: In hip hop, I think that’s the album that commercialized ‘get beats from anybody’. Before that, you didn’t see Premier trying to produce for somebody that wasn’t somebody he was doing a whole album [for]. And if he was, it was a remix. Like, ‘I want to get on the Quest album!’ That’s a ridiculous thought. The Bomb Squad did PE and Ice Cube, it wasn’t like Q-Tip saying, ‘I’m trying to get on Amerikkka’s Most Wanted’. People were just trying to create dope albums. That’s where the game is lost, now. Every beat is always trying to be the single, every song is trying to be the hit. Everything is trying to prove this, this, and this for this region. Nobody wants to make the “WMOE” [skit] on Resurrection. The skits that went in between Midnight Marauders. Everybody wants to make the same.
A.M.: Is this what’s killing hip hop?
I.D.: I think it’s killing music, period.
A.M.: I want to ask you about a few more records. Can you tell me about the making of Rhymefest’s “Chicago Rillas”?
I.D.: That song wasn’t [Rhymefest’s] song. The guy, Mikkey [Halstead] on that song, that was his song. He’s an artist of mine and when ['Fest] heard the song with Mikkey and Bump on it, he just was like, ‘I need that song’. So it really wasn’t a process with Rhymefest, it was more me just helping develop a new artist, going through experimental different styles. Rhymefest was cool with Mikkey, since they both started out with Kanye. And when he heard that song, he was like, ‘That’s what I need for my album, I need something street. Or something’s that hip hop, east coast style.’
A.M.: Are you working on an album with Mikkey?
I.D.: Oh yeah. He’s actually in town right now, I’m here in the studio with him. We got more than an album worth of material, and it’s super classic stuff. I’m actually about to leak an album of unreleased stuff on my site. There’s about 4 songs we did together. I mean, he’s incredible and we got some [I.D. makes a whistling noise]. The incredible music.
A.M.: Are there any other emcees you’d like to work with? Past or present, dead or alive.
I.D.: I’d probably want to do this album with Killer Mike because I haven’t worked with a Southern lyricist ever. And I think he wants to go somewhere different and he doesn’t have anything making him want to stick to some sound he think he maybe had or any expectation or anything. He really is just open. Other than that, I would have wanted to work with 2pac. I wanted to work with Rakim. I’m a certain type of rap fan so a lot of my stuff would be based around me being a fan. I was so oblivious to the concept of shopping beats back then; someone from Biggie’s camp had reached out to me to get beats and I didn’t even respond back then. And now I kick my own butt [laughs]. Other than that, I really like T.I. It was great to finally work with Nas. I wish I could have been involved in more of those classic things and those timeless artists. That’s what I always strive for. Just trying to make something that’ll survive time’s test.
A.M.: No I.D., thanks so much for doing this.
I.D.: Thank you.
Aaron Matthews: Was Kanye actually hanging around the studio at this time? You mentioned him a little earlier.
No I.D.: Yeah, he was.
A.M.: Was he rapping yet or just studying your production?
I.D.: Naw, everything. When I met him, he was rapping and producing! He always was. I mean, he’d bring beats by all the time, be like, ‘Man, please, tell Common to let me do a beat for him.’ And it just... wasn’t the time, I’ll leave it at that! [laughs] But he definitely was around, and trying to contribute in every possible way.
A.M.: How did you originally meet him?
I.D.: His mom asked my mom, could I help him with music, and I kinda just did it as a favour. Like, ‘Okay, yeah, I know’. [laughs] It was over time that I saw him develop into what he is, even though I never could see that he would be all that he is.
A.M.: He had a group around that time, called The Go-Getters [consisting of Kanye, GLC and Really Doe].
I.D.: Yeah. There’s a lot of history to the whole thing. It’s a lot of it out there, there’s an album called World Record Holders. Kanye went through a lot of direction changes with his style. From doing beats like Puff, Jermaine, to doing beats like Timbaland until he really honed in where he wanted to go.
A.M.: Can you hear your influence on him?
I.D.: Yeah, definitely. That’s really how I describe it. I think I influenced him, but I’m not going to act like everything he does came from me. People say, you know, I taught him. And I’ll be around him, and he’ll introduce me to somebody and say, ‘He taught me everything I know.’ Nah. I probably gave him enough tools to learn the other things I didn’t teach him.
A.M.: Do you think there’s a Chicago sound? Around that time, there were a lot of people like yourself, Dug Infinite, Ynot and Kanye...
I.D.: There’s two Chicago sounds to me. I mean, you have the West Side sound and the South Side sound. I feel like I probably made the South Side sound and Traxster probably made the West Side sound, with Twista, Do Or Die, all of those. The South Side sound, in my eyes, is rooted in the house music. As a DJ, we would take parts of a record and repeat it, to give it an energy, and it would have parts that we really liked and we would call ‘em “pause mixes.” And just make these remixes of songs where certain parts repeat over and over. I feel like that’s where the Chicago sound originates, just comes to finding the best part of a record and making a whole song out of that. And just having it come from house music is what gave us our musical point of view where we look for melody and real musical instruments, versus just keyboards or artificial sounding instruments. And I think [Kanye] definitely got that from me.
A.M.: And you can hear that influence in recent records or even some of the stuff from the Go Getters’ days?
I.D.: Well, that’s what I mean. If you go back and listen to the Go Getters’ records, it’s left of that, maybe just some of that. Because he was experimenting with so many different styles. I mean, you’ll hear stuff that sounds like everybody. I think it wasn’t until me and Kyambo "Hip Hop" Joshua, we used to talk about Jay [Jay-Z] and I always used to tell him that Jay wasn’t going to go number one until he had a sound. And then that’s when Hip-Hop said, ‘Well, you know what? This new album, the sound's going to be soul.’ I remember Kanye said, ‘I’ma go back and study Resurrection, and Quest [A Tribe Called Quest], and the Pete Rock albums and really learn the soul all the way.’ And I remember him saying, ‘Okay, I got it now’. The point was, he always knew how to do everything. It was maybe around that Blueprint time that forced him to hone in on that sound, which made him recall everything I taught him in that lane and then learn other things that I had maybe learned from other people too. That’s where we kinda got the similar sound, from that type of working on the same project. I mean, you look at Just Blaze. Just Blaze did soul beats before that. When people talk about who has that sound and style, honestly, I feel like I was there. RZA had his sound, Premier had his sound, Quest [ATCQ] had their sound. But I feel like, back then, we didn’t all aim for a sound. We aimed for good music and it wasn’t about whether we kept a words sample in or not. It was just about what sounded good. It didn’t really come into that until we came into the “Marketing Age”, and people trying to say this person had that sound or whatever. I don’t think none of us purposefully did soul with voices until that was just the request of hip hop for Jay-Z.
A.M.: So it was kind of a conscious revival?
I.D.: Yeah. And once it really worked, that’s when everybody was like, ‘That’s it. We gotta do that’. But you know, I’ve still been doing what I do the whole time. If you listen to Can I Borrow A Dollar?, I was using voices and soul samples, speeding them up.
A.M.: You’ve been around for a long time too and I think a lot of that has to do with your ability to change your sound. So you had the records with Common that we talked about, East Coast sounding beats and later on you were doing stuff with Jay-Z. How did you originally hook up with Jermaine Dupri?
I.D.: I met him because the first [major] record that Kanye did and put out was with Jermaine Dupri [“Intro - Turn It Out” ft. Nas, off Life In 1472]. So I came down to the studio one time and met Jermaine and we had the same manager who used to work for Jermaine. And that’s how my relationship developed. It really wasn’t a working relationship at first, we were kinda just cool. Then one day, I just was like: Man, I feel like we had opposite styles. We should hook up, I’ll learn from him, he’ll learn from me. And we’ll do things that we wouldn’t normally do.
A.M.: "All Around the World" off The Blueprint² (The Gift & The Curse) was your first collabo with Jay. How did that come about?
I.D.: Kyambo "Hip Hop" Joshua was managing me for a stint, and he gave Jay a lot of beats. That’s just one of the songs that came out around then.
A.M.: Were you working in the studio with Jay for that one?
I.D.: That song came because I gave him some beats for The Blueprint that didn’t get to him in time. So when he started off, I think they told me that was the first song [Jay] did for The Blueprint² (The Gift & The Curse). That and some other beats, he stashed them away and pulled it up at the end of the album. He called me at the end of the album with two days left before mastering, like ‘Yo, this record...’ and I’m like, ‘Oookay’. [laughs] It was funny because he had time-stretched and chopped up my two track, and when I did that beat, my MPC had cut off when I was doing so I only had what I had tracked out. It was like a nightmare trying to fit the beat to what he did.
A.M.: Let me ask you about another record from around that time, Ghostface’s “Metal Lungies”. Another one of my favourite No I.D. beats.
I.D.: Aw, thanks. Me and Ghost got real cool for a period of time. I don’t even remember how he got the beats, but for that time period when I worked on those records, I was getting him a lot of beats, I was cool with his manager. And you know, Ghost was one of my favorites and Ghost was actually Hip Hop’s favourite rapper. It really was us connecting and having a lot of talk about hip-hop and the direction and where he was going. A lot of times, if I’m not really involved in a project, it’s just me giving them a beat and then having a song.
A.M.: Are you still tight with Ghost? Will there be any more No I.D./Ghostface collaborations?
I.D.: We not as tight but I love him as a rapper, so I’ll always want to do something.
A.M.: You’re based in Atlanta now. When did you move down there?
I.D.: I moved down... this is the 2nd time I’ve moved here. I moved down like 3 years ago for the 2nd time.
A.M.: How did you hook up with Killer Mike?
I.D.: Me and his manager are real cool. That’s how I met him. I used to go over to Purple Ribbon and he’d always be there. He’s one of my good friends. He’s probably one of the people I’ve met in the industry that I know I want to work with and do a whole project with. He wants to do a whole project with me and I really want to go back to that place of trying to make a classic album. We’re going to do a whole album together.
A.M.: All No I.D. production?
I.D.: Pretty much. If not, then me influencing the direction, me executive producing it. We also about to do a mixtape, me, him and [Don] Cannon.
A.M.: That sounds crazy, man. When is that coming out?
I.D.: We just started on the mixtape and we’ve been working on the album off and on. He just finished his independent album with SMC, I Pledge Allegiance To The Grind II. Now we going to get in and really get on it.
A.M.: What’s your current set-up in the studio in Atlanta?
I.D.: Me and a producer named LRoc who works with Lil’ Jon and Jermaine got a studio together. Now, I kinda use Logic, a computer program, and I don’t really need all of that. It’s like more of a real studio, ‘cause you can really go in there and really do records. I really do most of my beats on a laptop, honestly. So I don’t really have to have all of that to do a beat.
A.M.: So you work mostly with Logic these days?
I.D.: Yeah. And a bunch of plug-ins. I’m not going to act like I just use Logic.
A.M.: On a website I write for, Metal Lungies, we do this feature called the Beat Drop, where we pick a producer and we have a bunch of different writers and they pick their favourite beats by that producer. We did one on Kanye and we had people pick their favourite Kanye beats. I wanted to know if you had five favourite Kanye beats.
I.D.: It would be [Beanie Sigel]’s “The Truth”. His beat on the Madd Rapper [album Tell ‘Em Why You Mad] called “Ghetto”, a lot of people never heard. “Late”, off Late Registration. “Takeover” [Jay-Z].
A.M.: Was there early stuff that you really liked?
I.D.: Oh yeah. He got a lot of beats with an independent artist named Grav, [those] were the first beats he really produced on.
A.M.: Could you take me through the process of making a beat?
I.D.: Nowadays it either starts with me listening to records or having something in my head already. Either way, I kinda do beats in my head first, ‘cause I have to see the mistakes in the beat and fix them without having to go through the process and getting tired and worn out. A lot of it is just me listening and thinking, and really trying to envision what I want to hear and feel. That’s always my first step. A lot of people that work with me sometimes get frustrated because, it’ll look like I’m not doing nothing, I’m just sitting there, playing records and talking. They’re like, ‘C’mon, let’s work!’ and I’m like, ‘I’m working!’ And at that moment that I got it, I’ll do it quickly and it’ll be correct because I took enough time to really figure it out. A lot of people do a lot of beats and sometimes it’s just one little wrong thing with all of them and never take the time to fix ‘em. Me and Kanye always had a thing called problem solving, like he’ll play me a beat and be like, ‘Problem solve this’. And I’ll say what’s wrong and he’ll fix it. And after a while, you learn how to problem solve with yourself.
A.M.: Is that the same process when you co-produce?
I.D.: Me and Jermaine’s process is different. Usually he’ll have the vision and usually he’ll call me to bring about a vision he don’t know how to bring about. It’s a little easier. I’d say my perspective and vision is very cutting edge, trying to go sometimes too far creatively. Whereas he has a very good pulse on what common America really likes and wants, the average normal person. And not really trying to prove too much. A lot of the times I work with him, it’s just for that reason, ‘cause I know his vision is a little more commercial than mine.
A.M.: So you guys kinda balance each other out.
I.D.: Exactly. Working with him has made my view more commercial but not to the point... I’m still going to keep it real at heart. A lot of that comes from the fact that I don’t always pursue this whole production game. ‘Cause I’m from an era of you do with artists, not ‘you shop beats’. The whole shopping beats for an album game is really the worst thing that ever happened to music, to me. It makes albums just a bunch of different stuff, instead of one album. The classic albums always sounded like an album to me. Instead of a mixtape, a collage.
A.M.: You have a whole lot of different producers with different sounds.
I.D.: The concept of having a bunch of different producers on the same album is absolutely ridiculous, when you look at the history of music. That’s like Michael Jackson saying to Quincy, ‘I can’t just use you on every song’. [laughs] ‘I’m too big for that now’.
A.M.: Even some of the earlier albums where there would be a couple different producers, there were usually working with a very unified sound. They either came from the same area or came up around the same time, and so they had a very like-sounding sound. Where it wasn’t like, ‘Okay, you’ve got one very pop sounding production on an album mostly produced by underground producers.’
I.D.: Even take it to commercial music. Usher got an album with 19 songs and no producer has more than two beats. So after a while there’s no continuity in the sound, the voice is the only constant. And I think that’s where it hurts albums.
A.M.: I’ve seen some people that pointed to Illmatic as being the first time that happened, even though that album had a fairly unified sound. But it was the first time you had several different producers working on an album.
I.D.: In hip hop, I think that’s the album that commercialized ‘get beats from anybody’. Before that, you didn’t see Premier trying to produce for somebody that wasn’t somebody he was doing a whole album [for]. And if he was, it was a remix. Like, ‘I want to get on the Quest album!’ That’s a ridiculous thought. The Bomb Squad did PE and Ice Cube, it wasn’t like Q-Tip saying, ‘I’m trying to get on Amerikkka’s Most Wanted’. People were just trying to create dope albums. That’s where the game is lost, now. Every beat is always trying to be the single, every song is trying to be the hit. Everything is trying to prove this, this, and this for this region. Nobody wants to make the “WMOE” [skit] on Resurrection. The skits that went in between Midnight Marauders. Everybody wants to make the same.
A.M.: Is this what’s killing hip hop?
I.D.: I think it’s killing music, period.
A.M.: I want to ask you about a few more records. Can you tell me about the making of Rhymefest’s “Chicago Rillas”?
I.D.: That song wasn’t [Rhymefest’s] song. The guy, Mikkey [Halstead] on that song, that was his song. He’s an artist of mine and when ['Fest] heard the song with Mikkey and Bump on it, he just was like, ‘I need that song’. So it really wasn’t a process with Rhymefest, it was more me just helping develop a new artist, going through experimental different styles. Rhymefest was cool with Mikkey, since they both started out with Kanye. And when he heard that song, he was like, ‘That’s what I need for my album, I need something street. Or something’s that hip hop, east coast style.’
A.M.: Are you working on an album with Mikkey?
I.D.: Oh yeah. He’s actually in town right now, I’m here in the studio with him. We got more than an album worth of material, and it’s super classic stuff. I’m actually about to leak an album of unreleased stuff on my site. There’s about 4 songs we did together. I mean, he’s incredible and we got some [I.D. makes a whistling noise]. The incredible music.
A.M.: Are there any other emcees you’d like to work with? Past or present, dead or alive.
I.D.: I’d probably want to do this album with Killer Mike because I haven’t worked with a Southern lyricist ever. And I think he wants to go somewhere different and he doesn’t have anything making him want to stick to some sound he think he maybe had or any expectation or anything. He really is just open. Other than that, I would have wanted to work with 2pac. I wanted to work with Rakim. I’m a certain type of rap fan so a lot of my stuff would be based around me being a fan. I was so oblivious to the concept of shopping beats back then; someone from Biggie’s camp had reached out to me to get beats and I didn’t even respond back then. And now I kick my own butt [laughs]. Other than that, I really like T.I. It was great to finally work with Nas. I wish I could have been involved in more of those classic things and those timeless artists. That’s what I always strive for. Just trying to make something that’ll survive time’s test.
A.M.: No I.D., thanks so much for doing this.
I.D.: Thank you.
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