THE CUTTING ROOM: COOL & DRE

Do you or Dre start a beat and then the other finishes it off?
Cool: Yeah, most of the time. Dre might come in and the beat already be done and he just put a crazy hook on it. Or boom, he’ll throw a string line over it, or he might just come in, or I come in, and we’ll just start a beat from scratch. I’ll be like, We should try it like this and it will give it a whole different bounce.

Something like “Hate or Love It” is smooth, then you’ll have something gritty like “New York,” is it a question of using different machines?
We usually use our ASR for percussion because it has a dirty sound to them. But what we did do on that, we sampled a hi-hat that we had from one of our drummers…we got a library of sounds, we’ll get our drummer in the studio and we’ll just record him. We’ll have a beat and we’ll throw our drummer in there just to throw the live hi-hats through the whole shit and it will give it a dope bounce.

This is for New York?
Nah. On “Hate It or Love It.” I got like a library and we were like we need to put a hi-hat loop on this shit. I went into our library and found the dirtiest hi-hat loop, threw that shit on there, chopped it up, looped it. Then boom. We’ve been infamous  for that Hate It or Love It hi-hat loop, that’s signature right there.

What made y’all say let’s sample an actual drummer?
Yeah man, sometimes, you be in the studio, you got the drummer there, we’ll do a beat   and then in the break just have the drummer do a crazy drum roll [beatboxing an example], you can’t do that shit with a drum machine. We got this one beat where we programmed the drums ourselves but we got him doing hi-hats. We had him just do a bunch of crazy fills and we just used a few of them. If you want to go in with the live musicians, that’s something we love to do, get all the players in the studio, a keyboard player, a guitar player in there, get a percussion cat in there and we go at it. If we go in, we go in.

So there was a lot of controversy over that beat for “New York,” huh?
The funny story about New York, we had that beat, we had put a different hook on it. The hook that we put on it was “I’m the magnificent with the sensation style…” from Special Ed. We did the beat, then I went and I sent it to Jadakiss. Jadakiss was like “Yo, that shit’s crazy.” But Dre didn’t know I sent it Jadakiss. That same time I sent it to Jadakiss, Dre hooked up with Fat Joe and played it for Joe. So Joe was like “I’m fucking with this.” I go to Dre and I’m like, “We goood. Jadakiss is fucking with that beat.” He goes “which beat?” and I say “the Special Ed one.” Nah man, I played it for Joe, Joe wants it. Joe was like Yo man… We had to call Jadakiss up like Jada man, we’ll get you another one, he was like a-ight, y’all just make me another one. A few months go by, Joe’s rapping up his album we’re like yo, what’s up with that Special Ed beat? He’s like well, I wasn’t feeling it like I was. I’m like Ah man, you made us take it from Jadakiss, and now you ain’t feeling it! So Ja Rule calls us up to come to the Hit Factory, they’re over there working on their album. We’re at our studio working on a beat, Dre’s on the keyboard, I’m chilling and I just start humming, “I got a hundred guns a hundred clips, I’m from New York…” Dre was like what is that. That’s some old KRS-One shit. He’s was like, Damn, that would be a crazy hook. We came up with the hook right there and I was like yo, We gotta let Ja and Irv hear this shit. I go to the studio and we’re like Yo, we got a crazy hook idea, they thought it was incredible. We didn’t have no beat for it. They’re like, That shit is incredible, you guys got a beat? If y’all ain’t got a beat we’ll do a beat…we’re like we got a beat for y’all. We didn’t really have a beat for it. We go back to the crib and Dre was like I think I got the beat. We were going through our computer and we loaded up that I’m the Magnificent beat, took the hook off and we put that hook over that beat and man!

We go to the studio…before we do it, we got Dre go in the vocal booth, played the beat, Dre laid the reference hook, and Ja and Irv lost it. We go back in the studio they’re like yo this is incredible. This is it blasé blah. Ja goes, Yo, we need to put two other people people on this record. He was like we should put Nas on it, yeah, call up Nas. Something happened with Nas, he couldn’t get or something, they ended up not getting Nas. Irv goes, We getting Jadakiss. I’m like Oh my god—we took the record from Jadakiss and gave it to Joe…

Jadakiss heard the beat and he goes, “Them m’fuckas, they on my beat!” Finally they got Jadakiss, they’re like we gotta get one more person on it. And then Ja was like I got the perfect person, we’re going to put Fat Joe on it. He goes, that’s my beat! But hold on, I never had that hook! Somehow they all ended up back on the record. We ended up taking it from Jada, Joe ended up not using it, and they ended up on the same record.

What’s the story behind “Holla At Me Baby”?
The Soul Sonic sample, I was sitting on it for a minute. I was like Yo, I don’t want to flip it. I was sitting on that shit for a minute because you can’t flip it fast. The original record is like a bass record. It’s like 130 something BPMs. I come from a DJ background, so I was like the DJs ain’t really going to be able to mix it in. I got one of those Numark turntables, the CD turntables, I put the shit in there and I pitched it down, real low, where it kept the same pitch, then I slowed it down to about 90, 99 bpm. That’s a good tempo for the clubs so DJ’s can mix it in with another record. Chopped the one little “teeny nee nee”, chopped that one little piece off, then I took the “DJ’s!”, I was like this is going to be a DJ anthem. We were sitting on the beat for a little while then Khaled was like I’m starting an album. I let Khaled hear the beat, he lost his mind, he put everybody he put on it and the rest is history. It took a minute to record the record. Wayne the first one to record it, it took another two months to get Paul Wall [laughing], Khaled did it. We just gotta do it again for the new album.

What specific Numark turntable it was?
It’s the Numark X…it’s the only one that came out where it looks just like a real turntable.  

You said you went back to run through your beats, was that on Pro-Tools?
We got a folder on iTunes. We usually download all our beats from Pro-Tools to iTunes. That ain’t got to be loading up Pro-Tools sessions. Once we feel the beat is good enough to be heard, we download it. Sometimes even if it’s in the rough stages just to play it in the car and be like, Ok, I know what that shit needs.

Check out the latest issue for more of the hottest up-and-coming talent...

Or get 8 Issues for only $12, Subscribe Now! Save 70% off the newsstand price!!!