The Feel Fantabulous Era

This was the album that took the Beef Wellington sound outside the Orlando music scene. With selections from two local releases, Cultural Starvation: Round One and Cultural Starvation: The Second Coming, the music showcased some of the artists and musicians that were integral to the evolution of Orlando music culture in the early 2000’s.

 It’s easy for me to listen to this music now through technical and critical ears, and cringe at the crudeness in production and some of the questionable creative decisions I’d made. But I then remind myself that this was all exploration and experimentation. Sound quality wasn’t a concern, because I didn’t know any better. This music was all about the connections, the collaboration and creating something greater than the sum of its parts.

This musical movement started back in 1999, when I connected with Swamburger (Solillaquists of Sound) on a Tuesday night at Phat-n-Jazzy, a weekly hot spot for everything hip-hop, funk, soul and jazz. With DJ BMF at the helm, the night was frequented by guest DJs, live musicians and vocalists from Orlando and around the globe.

Swam and I had a long phone conversation before he stopped by my place to listen to some music. I was basically just starting out as a producer, with only a few beat ideas under my belt. In fact, I wasn’t comfortable calling myself a producer at the time. I was just a guy with some gear and very little knowledge of music theory or audio production.

But Swam was instantly enthusiastic about what he heard, as evident by his head bobbing and dreads bouncing to the music. Those of you that know Swamburger are well aware that he is not shy of showing his honest enthusiasm when he hears music that he likes. He was one of the first outside of my circle of friends to actually hear my musical ideas. And by his reaction, I knew that he got it… he felt it… and he was eager to collaborate. His plan at the time was to get local producers, musicians and vocalists together to make a compilation, and I was all about being part of it.

This inspired me to go into overdrive on new beats and song ideas, while Swam was rounding up other vocalists and producers to contribute to the effort. The only problem was that the other producers weren’t delivering. At least not at the pace that I was. A couple of weeks into the project, Swam told me that he was struggling to get beats from other producers, and asked me “why don’t you just produce the whole thing?” I was nervous and excited (and still not a “producer”), but had to say yes.

 Feel Fantabulous

After Swam started getting the word out, and began to circulate Moon Song and some of the instrumentals I’d been working on, we found some more artists that wanted to get involved. Swamburger brought Aahmean, Oddizhe and Organic through to the cheap downtown office space that I was now calling a studio. He knew that one of my goals was to produce a song that brought together multiple MCs, and this was my opportunity.

The track was a throwback to the classic sampled hip-hop tracks of a decade prior, with a little extra live instrumentation added for good measure. Errol Windham had laid down a jazz guitar solo, along with some Rhodes keys by my longtime musical compadre, Chris Davis, and DJ SPS laid some cuts on the intro to set it off right. The track was put on loop, pens hit paper and we were soon ready to press record.

The same celebratory vibe that we experienced after recording Moon Song was being felt by everyone again. We had created a catchy, classic vibe that was sure to have heads bobbing at Phat-n-Jazzy. That’s all we had our sights on at the time. But there was an element missing that we weren’t even aware of yet.

As we were wrapping up the session, we had a surprise visit from Honey Larochelle at the studio. Honey is a world-class artist, both in the studio and on stage. Luckily, she was also feeling the vibes that night, and we got her in the booth to record the vocal hook, which truly put the sizzle on this track.

 From the One 2

One of the things that always appealed to me was getting multiple artists and musicians together to do a song. Many of my favorite hip-hop groups were just that, groups. Leaders of the New School, Beastie Boys, De La Soul, Fugees and Digable Planets to name a few. I loved how the individual voices, styles and personalities gave the group its own vibe that no single artist could alone achieve.

To add to the variety, many golden-era hip-hop albums had songs that featured other artists on a big collective jam, where’d they pass the mic around for each to get their 16 bars. Each artist added his/her flavor, and everyone got to shine. The result always stood out to me as a highlight of the album. Notable examples being A Tribe Called Quest’s “Scenario”, Leaders of the New School’s “Spontaneous (13 MC's Deep)” and “Buddy (Remix)” by De La Soul.

“From the One” demonstrates this effort on my first local album, Cultural Starvation: Round One. And when we started on music for the follow up, I wanted to repeat the experience with the same loose theme. “From the one to…” was the only direction I gave the vocalists when they came to the studio to listen and write. Music all starts on the one, everything came from the one Creator, and we all share the one Love. I told them to start with that line, and let it lead you where it may.

Swamburger and I enlisted two members of the legendary hip hop supergroup Da Few, Rome and Timeless. Alexandrah sang the beautiful hook, while Chris Davis added the sultry Rhodes keys solo to close out the song. Once the song was done, it was clear that this would be the end of the upcoming album to come. I just couldn’t follow it up with anything but silence.