Dre Skull

DAVIDE BORTOT

Our guest this afternoon is a DJ/producer from Brooklyn. He’s been making music for about ten years now, runs a rather diverse and also rather excellent record label called Mixpak, and in some interesting turn of events has become one of the world’s most sought-after dancehall producers, working with the likes of Beenie Man, Vybz Kartel, Popcaan and some guy called Snoop Lion. So, there’s a lot of stuff going on, I think a lot of stories to tell. Give him a very warm welcome.

[applause]

So, maybe shall we play some music to start off? This is a record that came out two weeks ago, three weeks ago? When did it come out?

Dre Skull

Four weeks ago.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Four weeks ago, OK, sorry.

(music: Dre Skull feat. Megan James & Popcaan – “First Time” / applause)

DAVIDE BORTOT

So, I think there’s quite a lot to be said about the music, the influences on this record, but maybe we could start off by you telling us how this record actually came about, because it has quite an interesting and long history, right?

Dre Skull

Yeah, I mean it’s definitely kind of an interesting story behind it. The instrumental was a riddim I had released last summer, called the “Loudspeaker Riddim.” If you’re not familiar with dancehall riddim culture, it’s quite common to get multiple songs written on the same instrumental track. So, the original release had Popcaan, Beenie Man, Natalie Storm and Machel Montano. It did quite well as a riddim release and Popcaan’s track “The System” was pretty well-received in Jamaica and elsewhere. Machel Montano, who’s a soca artist from Trinidad, his track was also pretty well- received. I basically got approached by Puma, the brand, and they were interested in me doing a new version on the riddim and the director was, “We’d like to get a new female vocal.” I thought it might be an interesting opportunity to move outside the dancehall, Caribbean context. The lead vocalist is Megan James who’s in Purity Ring, if you’re familiar, an electronic act, with a guest verse from Popcaan. So, I reached out to Megan James’ management, just because I was a fan of her work, and despite being on tour and being quite busy she was interested, liked the track. So she was able to record that, I think, in a hotel room while she was on tour. Then I thought it could use a little bit more energy and it would be interesting to bring it back with Popcaan. Popcaan actually, I think, delivered three different verses and I think the first two, they were good but they didn’t feel quite right, so I ended up flying down to Kingston for a very quick 24-hour trip. I think I went in the studio at midnight, worked until 6am and flew out the next morning, and so he got that track done. I think one thing that draws me to dancehall, particularly as a producer, is just that you have this unique opportunity to hear different vocalists and different songs on the track or the beat that you make. It’s really interesting to see the different energy and the different vibe that people can find in a track, so I’m really happy with what she found and what Popcaan brought to the table.

DAVIDE BORTOT

If you look at the original “Loudspeaker” release, the artists on that riddim are already pretty diverse. You’ve got Machel Montana, who’s a soca artist, and you have Popcaan, who’s a dancehall artist but has a very melodic way of singing, so it’s very different vocalists and very different energy levels. How do you approach a riddim like that as a producer? Do you have any specific vocals in mind, then see what other people do with it, or would you rather try and create something which can work for quite a lot of different vocalists?

Dre Skull

I guess, not just in the dancehall context but in general, one of my favourite things is bringing a track that inevitably, in the process of making, I’ve heard it hundreds of times, basically, and so it is imprinted on my mind as an instrumental. So, one of my favourite things is to take it to a vocalist and that’s where it really becomes a collaboration, and it’s quite often that I’m just completely blown away or very surprised with choices a vocalist will make. I mean, Megan’s vocal on this is very laid back and ethereal. I know her work so it wasn’t a complete surprise, but it’s not exactly what I pictured on the riddim, but at the same time totally excited to get that back. Same thing with the Popcaan version, on his track “The System.” He did a very heartfelt kind of sufferation song about ghetto youth. Having lived with the track for some years before it got voiced, I was just surprised that that’s what he heard in the track. So, it’s kind of a thrill to see what different people find. As a producer I don’t necessarily want to dictate to a vocalist, like, “This is exactly what I want you to do.” Sometimes I do have that conversation and it’s a back and forth conversation, but a lot of times, if I feel like the artist is a competent creator, I want them to bring their own thing to the table and I don’t want to step on their toes before they get to offer that up.

DAVIDE BORTOT

You mentioned “The System.” We could play the video. That was a huge record in the dancehall scene, I think, and it’s also quite different from what we just heard, despite the fact it’s the same riddim track.

(music: Popcaan - “The System” / applause)

DAVIDE BORTOT

You talk about this as if it was the most normal thing in the world: “Yeah, I flew out to Jamaica, 24 hours, just recorded Popcaan.” But how did it actually happen that you would start working with these people? I mean, for those of you who don’t know, this guy is a huge deal. He’s probably one of the three biggest reggae dancehall artists right now, arguably the biggest. So, when did you first start working with artists of that calibre from Jamaica?

Dre Skull

Basically, as a producer I’ve always wanted to be working with vocalists and I think it was probably 2008. I’d been working with different people in the US and trying to work with different people in the US, but I had made a decision that I wanted to reach out and try to work with some Jamaican vocalists. At that point I had no real connections and I hadn’t really been down to Jamaica to work, so basically, through the Internet I found some people in the world of dancehall.

DAVIDE BORTOT

What does that mean, “through the Internet, some people”?

Dre Skull

Essentially, just asking around and getting kind of like, “Oh, you need to talk to this person, you need to talk to that person,” sort of thing. So, through my work as a DJ and just talking with different DJs, and they tell me to call this person or email this person. I basically was able to work with Sizzla and that was something where I didn’t get to meet him, and I still haven’t met him, but basically I had a riddim, sent it down through email. He sent a ProTools session back and then I finished mixing and making the song. I repeated that process with Vybz Kartel and when I reached out to him, he was obviously a very big artist but he still hadn’t hit his full peak. His track “Ramping Shop” was just building buzz in the US and that went on to be a ‘Billboard Hot 100 radio play’-type of song that built up him that much more, so it was a little bit fortuitous. Again, that was facilitated through the Internet. I guess, basically he voiced a track for me called “Yuh Love” and I didn’t really get to interact with him about the track too much, and I didn’t know what I would be getting back. But he sent this track “Yuh Love,” which was a very romantic love song, a little bit unusual for him and it just took on a life of its own and became a big hit on its own. Ultimately, I guess, it was very fortuitous and a bit lucky, but through that song, then people started coming to me, emailing me, and saying, “We’d like to do this with you or do that with you.” About maybe nine months or so after “Yuh Love” had been out and had been building, I started going down to Jamaica, so I got to meet Kartel and it went from there.

DAVIDE BORTOT

You’re originally from Massachusetts, right? Where exactly?

Dre Skull

Actually, I was born in Cleveland and my family moved around but my folks live up in Massachusetts, but I’ve been in Brooklyn for about eight years and lived down in Philadelphia before that.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Why did you move to Brooklyn, because of the music, or was there any other reason?

Dre Skull

It was a bunch of friends of mine were living in a warehouse in Brooklyn and a room opened up. There wasn’t a strong reason, just something that happened.

DAVIDE BORTOT

You’ve been making music for maybe ten years, a bit more, but your first release, if I’m not wrong, was in 2007-ish, and I think people started to notice more what you do in 2009 when you launched your own label. What did you do between 2002 and 2007?

Dre Skull

Well, I was doing a lot of different sorts of things in New York. But in terms of creative pursuits, when I moved into Brooklyn I moved into this four-storey warehouse and pretty much everyone, apart from myself, had gone to art school and was pretty engaged in the New York art world. A number of us were doing different performance-type art or installation sort of things with video and audio, so that was kind of my original creative output when I got to New York. A lot of that work was reworking popular culture, say, with editing videos or reappropriating different pieces of music. It was good and it was interesting and we had some level of success, although doing performance art you cannot really make too much money. [laughs] I mean, there’s nothing to sell, it’s a one-time thing, so there’s a lot of effort and it’s this ephemeral sort of thing that’s basically gone. But ultimately, working in a group, people had different ideas about what was important to them and so forth. For me, at a certain point I realized I don’t want to be deconstructing culture, popular music or popular films or video content, I’d rather try to build it up from scratch. I think that was the real shift for me. I was just like, “I would rather be making popular music or songs that have a life of their own instead of tinkering with someone else’s songs and video.”

DAVIDE BORTOT

The whole idea of making popular music, pop music, was that always something that was of interest to you, something that inspired you? Because, obviously you came up through the whole club scene at large, being a DJ, producer, putting out 12” releases and being somewhat of a household name in that world. Now you’re working with people like Snoop Dogg and other people that I’m not allowed to mention, so that’s quite a journey, that’s quite a transition and I think a very different type of working as well. Was it always your ambition to be that type of producer or did it just accidentally happen?

Dre Skull

That’s a good question. I think making pop music, and I use that term very broadly, for me, working with these dancehall artists is making popular music. It’s within a genre but it’s songs that take on life as songs and I guess that’s really what I mean when I say pop music. I think the draw there is partially just because I felt it was the hardest thing for me to do. It wasn’t like I went, naturally I know how to make pop music and that’s what I’m going to go do. It was this challenge like, how is pop music made, or as a producer, how do you mix full songs and refine them? In a way it was just the challenge of it that was somehow a draw. And I think over the course of my life, songs have lived in my mind or in my life more than just like, say, a club track or something. Those can be amazing, beautiful things and they have certain contexts where they work absolutely perfectly, but there’s something about songs that had a real pull on me.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Having worked with popular culture on a more theoretical level as a performance artist, does that inform your work if you try and write a pop song these days, or is it something that you try to keep away from your creative process?

Dre Skull

I don’t know, that’s a good question. I mean, I don’t come to music as a super-skilled musician. I didn’t grow up playing piano or guitar or something like that in a really formal way, so I think for me it started by looking at songs and having to take them apart. I don’t know about theoretically, but just conceptually like, “This is a verse, how many bars is that? This is pre-chorus, how many bars is that and how does that lead into the chorus?” Just really analyzing music in that way and trying to analyse it enough that it becomes intuitive. Then you can take different things from different genres or different types of songs and create new songs using some of that DNA, if you will.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Speaking of different genres, on your label you release quite a lot of different music. You have a punk band, you’ve put out some New Orleans bounce stuff, some clubby electronic stuff, obviously dancehall. Did you always listen to all these kinds of genres, or was there anything that attracted you in the first place?

Dre Skull

I think probably with my love of rap music and hip-hop, that music has not always, but it’s often relied on sampling. When I look back that’s what I think happened, whether it’s a DJ Premier track or Public Enemy or whoever, depending on how you relate to music in general. For me as a producer I’m kind of wondering, “Where are those samples coming from?” And tracing those roots to the original source material. Quite naturally, you’re going to end up listening to a wide, wide range. I think many hip-hop producers will tell you, “I listen to everything,” and I think it’s that kind of ear, of realising there’s amazing music across all genres.

DAVIDE BORTOT

How did you actually start making music, then?

Dre Skull

I think I started not with a computer but with a four-track, with a little cassette tape. In some ways there’s a certain freedom to that because it’s very limited what you can do. You can set the tape to play at different speeds and record at different speeds and do different experimental stuff like that. But I quickly graduated to a computer and, really, it’s as a producer, just a solitary sort of pursuit. It became a hobby and then a passion and now more of a career.

DAVIDE BORTOT

What’s your set-up these days then? Do you still try to limit yourself in terms of the equipment, now that you probably have access to more professional, more well-staffed studios?

Dre Skull

Yeah, I think I do. I know some producers make a conceptual decision like, “I’m making music with this drum machine and this synth and that’s what this project is,” or something very defined like that. I don’t quite do that but I pretty much strictly make music on a laptop, whether I’m in the studio or at home or in a hotel room or anywhere. That freedom, you know? Actually the “Loudspeaker Riddim,” that was the track behind “First Time” and Popcaan’s “The System,” that was recorded on an aeroplane. I mean, the original idea was done on an aeroplane sitting at the tray table. I really think it’s a unique thing that we are able to make music wherever we are, if we have a laptop, so I try to take advantage of that rather than confine myself to something that has to be in a studio context.

DAVIDE BORTOT

You mentioned Vybz Kartel before. I don’t know if all you guys are familiar with him. He’s probably the most influential dancehall artist of the past five to ten years. I would like to play a track, which is the other video.

(music: Vybz Kartel - “Go Go Wine” / applause)

DAVIDE BORTOT

So you mentioned that you had recorded the first track over the Internet, but then you ended up going to Jamaica and actually working with him in the studio. And you ended up producing his whole album, which I think is quite an uncommon thing in dancehall to do anyway, just produce an entire album. And then, for you to not come from that scene and obviously only having worked with him over the Internet, how exactly did that happen?

Dre Skull

As I said, it was a bit of a fortuitous, random thing, but based on the strength of “Yuh Love” I had made plans to go down to Kingston to record a bit more and so I got in the studio with Kartel. I think I brought three or four tracks for him to record on. He works incredibly quickly.

DAVIDE BORTOT

How long does a song like this take to come together for him?

Dre Skull

I’ve never heard of anything this quick or worked with anyone, but even heard of anything. The way it would usually work is, I show up with the music. I don’t play him 20 beats and he picks three, I play him four beats and he records on all four. Generally, he will sit down in a chair. The track is already loaded up in ProTools and the lights go down, the mic is turned on. He’s got no pen and paper and the first time he hears the song, the record button is already pushed on the mic. So, he’s maybe for the first ten or fifteen minutes he’s just listening back and he’s starting to, not mumble, but just hum and make different guttural sorts of sounds and find cadences and melody ideas. And I should say, he’ll tell the engineer, “Keep that little bit,” or, “Keep that little bit,” even though it’s this non-verbal sort of thing. That’ll be saved and muted and those are his guide reference points when he feels like he found something quite good. Then within ten or fifteen minutes he’s now recording words onto the track. Within an hour, maybe an hour and half, the song is completely written, completely recorded. He’s recorded his doubles, his ad libs. It’s unbelievable. I think it’s because he’s an incredibly hard-working entertainer. I think he’s probably recording like fifteen songs a week for years, if not for over a decade, so he’s definitely done 3000 or 4000 songs or more. He’s really honed something and obviously has deep talent. I think when I went down there that first time we did three or four songs in one or two nights, and at the end of it he said, “I think we made a mini-album.” I don’t think prior to that trip I would dream like, “Oh yeah, I should produce a Vybz Kartel album.” That was kind of outside the realm of what might be possible so I don’t even think I imagined that, but when he said that - we had been getting along well and it felt like a good creative connection - I was like, “Well, what do you think? Maybe we should do an album.” And he was like, “We should definitely try to do that.” Then it took about a year, but I would go down maybe four or five times over the course of the next year and I would bring three or four songs every time.

DAVIDE BORTOT

So, it’s three days of tracking him down and then 30 minutes of recording?

Dre Skull

 [laughs] Yeah, I definitely spent days in Kingston just waiting, where he would be like, “Yeah, 8 PM tonight we’re good,” and then at eight he’s like, “Ten, we’re good at ten.” “We’re good at midnight.” And then he never shows up. So it was really a certain amount of patience and waiting but I knew that was part of the deal so it wasn’t so bad. But once we got in the studio it was just unbelievable.

DAVIDE BORTOT

So apart from the waiting, which I think everybody’s familiar with who’s ever been to Jamaica before, can you tell us a bit more about how it’s like coming there? I mean, the place is pretty special. Obviously, the role that music plays in the country is incredible, probably unlike anywhere else in the world, so maybe you can tell us a bit more. How is it like, touching down for the first time?

Dre Skull

I guess, I didn’t completely know what to expect the first time. At this point I’ve been lucky enough to go to many studios and meet a lot of different people in the business, vocalists and producers and everything, and to go to a lot of parties and see soundsystems and everything. To me, it’s unbelievable, this island that has, I think, about three million people; just the number of studios and successful artists per capita, particularly that have such an international reach. I don’t know if there’s another place in the world that has anything similar, so it is very special to be able to work with artists that come from that culture, because music is such a deeply ingrained part. There’s such a deep history there.

DAVIDE BORTOT

You mentioned that there’s a lot of successful artists there. At the same time I think the industry is struggling. It’s pretty hard for artists to create a substantial revenue, just because it’s a small island, and it’s hard to cross over internationally. Obviously, people don’t buy records anymore and I think reggae suffered probably more from that than any other genre. But you at the same time are pretty successful at what you do and seem to be able to make a living, so why do you think that is?

Dre Skull

Well, I’m not totally sure, but maybe I have a bit of a benefit from not having been deeply involved in the dancehall business as it has been historically structured. I mean, there’s different labels like VP and then in the early 2000s a lot of US or international major labels were signing artists like Elephant Man and Beenie Man and other artists to big international deals that would give them a big push internationally. But unfortunately, like I was saying, in the US dancehall has a pretty limited ability to reach major radio, because for whatever reason New York, Hartford, Boston and maybe Atlanta and Miami are the main radio markets, but a lot of the country is shut out, or shuts out dancehall, so it does make it a bit harder. And maybe it becomes a chicken and egg thing where A&Rs at majors are thinking, “We shouldn’t invest in this because the radio potential is limited and therefore the sales potential is limited.” At the same time, the radio people are probably seeing, “Oh, the labels aren’t really pushing this, so we shouldn’t really go out on a limb and try to see what this track can do.” In terms of what I’ve been doing from the business side, I just think there is a huge demand and level of appreciation of this music around the world. Given that the music industry as it’s been known to exist is kind of crumbling, I think it’s a good time to be a disruptor and try to find new ways, whether it’s new revenue streams or just new ways to present the music to different people who might not be core-market dancehall fans.

DAVIDE BORTOT

One of the problems, obviously that the scene is facing is some of the lyrical content, just because it’s very specific to the culture, I guess. You coming from a totally different culture, how did you find relating to some of the things that an artist that Kartel talks about in his lyrics, like bleaching or certain views on sexuality that are very far away from what I think the kind of people that you would be dealing with here in New York? How did you find dealing with this sort of conflict, or this sort of contrast?

Dre Skull

A couple of things: just generally as a producer who’s not usually writing lyrics, it’s always interesting because when you collaborate with someone you’re giving up a certain amount of control. Particularly if you make the music and someone else is writing the lyrics, whether it’s a pop song or a dancehall song or a rap song or anything else. Does everything that rapper said on your beat speak to you directly or to your experience, or are you 100 percent behind every word that was said or every thought that was put out there? It’s an interesting aspect of being a producer. But with respect to Kartel, say, or working with dancehall artists, I feel pretty good about the messages he’s sharing, say, on Kingston Story. It’s a wide range of songs, some of it’s sufferation stuff, some of it’s definitely for the club and parties, “Go Go Wine,” this kind of song for the dancers. Just to watch that music have a life, I think I can feel good about it. There’s another track on the album called “Half On A Baby.” It’s amazing when you put that music into the world all sorts of things can happen that you would never have anticipated. That song, for some strange reason, really took hold in the Bronx and in New York, not even with the core dancehall crowd but actually with more of a Latino crowd. There’s this dance called the Bronx wine, which is huge with 15-year-old kids in the Bronx and in Brooklyn and all around New York.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Can you show it to us?

[laughter]

Dre Skull

No, sir, but go on YouTube and type in “Bronx wine.” That song, for example, in terms of new revenue streams and working in this business - and again, we didn’t plan for this - every day for the last year there’s ten to 20 people uploading videos of themselves in front of their webcams doing the Bronx wine. Even though we didn’t do a video for that song and even though we didn’t get to fully push it as a single the way we would have liked, it just picked up by these kids and we monetize all these videos. And that’s OK, but more importantly, I think it’s been the best-selling Kartel song in the US for the last five months, and that’s just through this very viral, organic development.

DAVIDE BORTOT

So, how important is YouTube as a revenue source for you running a label? How does Mixpak make money? Obviously, everyone knows nobody’s buying records any more. There’s some digital sales but this can’t possibly be enough money to make a living off of it. So, how important is something like YouTube and how have you been engaging with this platform as an entrepreneur?

Dre Skull

It’s interesting and it kind of fell into our laps or definitely just exploded without us planning to, “OK, let’s figure out how to monetize YouTube.” We just kind of recognized, I mean, Kartel is such a big name and his total, all Kartel videos on YouTube, it’s got to be well over 100 million views. We were recognizing that people were posting the songs and reposting the videos, and at a certain point we became content partners with YouTube. It’s been eye-opening because we do actually make pretty good money on sales, say with the Kartel album, and that’s a continuing monthly revenue stream for us, which is great, but then it’s just been amazing because when we invested money in that project and put the album out, we didn’t have YouTube in mind, but actually we make, let’s say, like thousands of dollars a month on Kartel-related YouTube revenue. So, it is important and now that we’ve seen that it’s shifting some of the business decisions we’re making in terms of saying, “OK, yeah, we can afford to go to Kingston and shoot a music video.” Traditionally, a music video is an expense that a label makes, it’s a marketing expense and you hope to make it back in sales, but with what we’ve got going with YouTube now, it’s actually not. Ideally, it is serving a marketing function but it’s actually a product to be consumed, essentially, and so ideally it’s going to at least pay for itself if not become a source of its own profit.

DAVIDE BORTOT

So, business aside, the fact that you put out a proper album, which is a rarity in Jamaica with this type of music, from a creative perspective, how did you approach making an album? You mentioned the first four records more or less came about as an accident and weren’t planned to be for an album, but was there any sort of concept to the record, any sort of overarching theme that you tried to give to it? It was the first time for you, right, producing a full-on album?

Dre Skull

Yeah, it was the first time. I wouldn’t say there was a complete, overarching concept. Definitely, I recognized that the business side of the dancehall business is very much around riddims and riddim releases and singles, so a lot of times a big artist album is pretty much like a collection of their biggest hits over the last two or three years, plus a couple of new songs. So, I thought, “Why isn’t someone” - and it has happened, but generally speaking - “Why hasn’t there been a focus on albums and maybe you could make a bigger impact?” That was kind of the idea, because particularly with the internet, collecting the singles from the last few years, it’s much more likely that a lot more people have heard those songs, so if you buy that album you’re very familiar with the music already. So, I just thought it might be an interesting thing where we could really just surprise everyone. Kartel was still putting out singles while we were making the record and so he was very much staying relevant and pretty much staying on top of the dancehall industry, but like, “Let’s show a greater body of work.” I really approached it as something like, “How can we showcase Kartel’s talents in a very well put together” - or try to do it well put together – “array of songs with an arc to it?” But it wasn’t a total concept album in terms of, it’s all about this. I think if anything the concept was, let’s do an album, which was almost conceptual in the dancehall context.

DAVIDE BORTOT

You’re now working on Popcaan’s album as well, right?

Dre Skull

I am, yeah. The Kartel album was pretty much me on production throughout and so for this one I’m taking more of an executive producer role. I am producing a bunch of tracks on the record but Dubble Dutch, who’s a Mixpak artist, is doing some really great work and has a bunch of songs on it and then we have a number of Jamaican producers, Anju Blaxx and Jamie Young Vibes and then Adde Instrumentals so it’s not completely the same sort of affair in terms of how the album’s coming together, but I’m really excited. I think we’ve done 14 or 15 songs and I’m hoping it’ll be ready for the fall and that should be another Mixpak record as well.

DAVIDE BORTOT

What was he like in studio, how was it working with him?

Dre Skull

It’s great. I first met him when I was making Kingston Story. He kind of came up in Kartel’s crew and so he would come ‘round the studio sometimes and so we had that connection. I think we’ve done three singles together since then. Every artist is different, and like I mentioned with “The System,” he really surprised me with that, with the content and direction he took that in, and I’d the say the same goes for the album. I really think he writes amazing pop songs, very much in a dancehall context but I feel like he has a lot of... I mean, he already has, but I was going to say he has a lot of ability to cross over. I think he has already landed in the Billboard Hot 100 charts, which again is kind of hard for a dancehall artist to do in the US, so that shows something. Also, I think another interesting thing is, a lot of the biggest names in dancehall are a bit older and I kind of feel like that is because there used to be more money in the dancehall business coming in from, say, US labels and so there was more marketing dollars to build up those names. Then, as that money has dried up, those people kind of keep the crowns that they have, so to speak, and there’s really no room to build up new, younger artists. He’s kind of a rare exception in my opinion. I think he’s maybe 23- or 24-years-old and he’s one of the biggest names in the world in terms of dancehall, so I think it’s really refreshing that there’s a new voice speaking for a new generation. I think he has a lot of potential to push things further in a cool way that hasn’t been done.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Through working with Kartel, I think you changed your sound a lot and maybe opened up to a bit more of an international audience. A lot of the stuff he does these days is in a way influenced by the work you guys did together. So, you developed some sort of producer/artist relationship. When he went to jail - for those of you who don’t know, he’s currently in jail on murder charges - how did you react to that? It’s obviously a crazy situation. How did that feel for you, not knowing exactly what was going on?

Dre Skull

When I first heard he was arrested, I didn’t hear the charges or anything, and actually over the course of making our album he had been arrested and held without charges. I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on the Jamaican justice system, but that initial time they asked him to come in for questioning and then they said, “We’re going to hold you for 24 hours.” Then they said, “We’re going to hold you for a week.” Then it was two weeks and after two and a half weeks they let him go, no charges. At least comparing that to the US justice system that seemed a bit odd. When I first heard he was arrested again, we were about seven or eight days away from shooting the “Half On A Baby” video, it was going to be the second single for the album. So, I assumed he’s just been picked up and he’ll be held for a little bit and released and it’s probably no big deal. Once I heard there was murder charges, obviously, I was shocked. Working with him, that’s the last thing I could possibly expect. I think that pretty much goes for most people I know. I’d like to assume that he’s innocent until proven guilty, and again with the Jamaican justice system, I think it’s been about two and a half years, a little bit over that, that he’s been locked up with no trial, no charges. So, one wonders or one hears that he offended the wrong person and they’re just going to hold him, teach him a lesson and not charge him, so I just want to presume that he was not actually involved in any of that and hope for the best.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Have you been in touch with him since?

Dre Skull

Obviously, when someone’s locked up it’s a bit hard to be in touch.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Well, he still manages to release a couple of songs a week, even though some of the material might be old.

Dre Skull

Allegedly, there’s been allegations that he’s recorded in prison but he has refuted those. I have been able to talk with people close with him, so in that way communicate on certain business stuff that we’re dealing with. He basically has communicated that he’s keeping his head up and doing all right, but yeah, not a lot of direct communciation.

DAVIDE BORTOT

A lot of your music, obviously, there’s a Jamaican influence. Some of your early releases on Mixpak had a lot of remixes by European producers. You have a Japanese band on your label. How much of New York is in your music? Is that of any importance to you, or is it just a place where you happen to live and happen to have a family, but don’t really care that much beyond that?

Dre Skull

I don’t know what a listener would say, but for me I love listening to - and have been for years - Funkmaster Flex. It’s such a rare thing, at least in the US, to have a radio DJ that has that much flexibility with what he plays.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Flexibility?

Dre Skull

There you go, yeah. So, you know, hip-hop obviously was born in New York and still has a strong vibe. Also, New York has a really big Caribbean community, Jamaican community and I think that’s definitely been influential. But I think just the concrete, the architecture and the vibe itself in ways that I probably don’t even understand. Definitely, one thing I’ve taken is that music can sound different in different locations. I don’t know if I can describe it that well, but definitely hearing certain songs in Kingston, it comes with a feeling of what I’m experiencing, what I’m seeing, who I’m with, and the same would go with New York and pretty much anywhere. So, being in New York and making music, I’m sure that’s had a big impact.

DAVIDE BORTOT

You mentioned your hip-hop influence. You recently worked on an album by a relatively well known rapper. Maybe we should play a record off of that.

(music: Snoop Lion feat. Mavado & Popcaan - “Lighters Up Up” / applause)

DAVIDE BORTOT

So, what’s it like working with your childhood hero?

Dre Skull

Basically, Diplo brought me in on this project and when I heard who it was... He initially said, “I want to partner with you, bring you in on this project, but I can’t tell you who it is.” [laughs] When he eventually told me who it was, that was kind of amazing because definitely I grew up listening to Snoop. Definitely, the first day we were in the studio, Snoop had his wife there and it was just playing him tracks and watching him bang his head to something I made five days before it was kind of a surreal experience. Then, obviously, we had to get to work and it was just a pure pleasure working with him.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Did you make the music specifically for that, with the idea in mind that you now had to produce a reggae album for Snoop Dogg, or was that stuff that you had already done before and thought could work well on this album?

Dre Skull

I think pretty much every single thing I did for that album was done for this album. I think Diplo basically brought me in and said, “Snoop is wanting to do an album recorded in Jamaica that’s inspired by a wide range of Jamaican music.” So, before I got to Jamaica I made probably 20 tracks with a lot of different types of ideas.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Let me put it this way, there’s quite a few people who feel like he shouldn’t be doing that and it’s not real reggae and it’s disrespectful to the culture, where it comes from. Regardless of whether he did a good job on that album or not as a vocalist, but he basically doesn’t have the right to adopt certain symbols, images and play around with this sort of terminology and symbolism that means quite a lot to a few people, even on a religious level. How do you feel about that?

Dre Skull

I don’t know. Obviously, I can recognize that it could be complicated ground to tread, but I felt like, obviously aside from just making the music I got to spend a lot of time with Snoop and he really shared the story of why he wanted to make this record and it felt like a very genuine impulse. Essentially, what he shared, which he’s said many other times publicly, is he’s getting to a certain point in his life where he really wants to add to his legacy with a different kind of spirit and content in the music. I personally wouldn’t fault him for wanting to make music inspired by Jamaican music and collaborating with different artists in Jamaica, so I don’t know. I think the main thing is, the way I would look at something like that whether it was his project or someone else, is what kind of attitude is this person bringing to this? Are they sincere in what they say they want to do? And he really felt like he was on something like a spiritual journey, so I felt honoured to be part of that process.

DAVIDE BORTOT

What was it like working with a producer like Diplo in the studio, who I think a lot of times will take more of a curator role and put together people who he believes would work amazingly well together in the studio? It’s a lot of times not quite clear what he did on the beat, and then some beats he makes by himself, so how exactly was the collaboration between you and him?

Dre Skull

Well, he’s got a great musical mind; great producer, probably one of the hardest working people I’ve come across in this business. It’s pretty amazing, he’s probably on tour 200 to 300 days a year and yet he really is making time to go into the studio in any country or any city he’s in. But yeah, in the studio over the course of the work we did here, some of the songs are 100% from his mind and his vision and other songs are collaborations between all the producers and then some of these songs, there are more things that I brought to the table but then he said, “Hey, what if we switch the beat up like this?” Because he’s both a producer, he’s a label owner and just kind of a cultural figure in a way, so he’s hitting different projects from different angles. But it was definitely a great experience to get to see him work and to collaborate with him and just to see his mind. I mean, I think being a DJ can be a real asset to a producer, depending on the music you make, but I think he has a real intuitive sense of what’s going to work. It might be, “Hey, wait, we need to speed this track up ten bpm so we can play it in this context in the club” - that sort of thing, where I think a lot of producers might not have that relationship. He’s a great producer, so I don’t know that he always gets enough credit for that.

DAVIDE BORTOT

How does it feel like if you put something out on Mixpak? You make a beat, record vocals, work on the arrangement, mix it and put it out on your own label, so you have full control. And a situation like this, where you work on a major label record with other producers, other people might have different opinions? How does it feel hearing your music, which is your music in a way, but again, it’s also other people’s music and might not sound exactly like your vision was like when you started out making that track?

Dre Skull

It’s an interesting aspect of the business dictating certain creative stuff. Like you say, when I do something on Mixpak it’s pretty much something that I have a great amount of control over. I mean, if I’m working with a vocalist I don’t tell the vocalist what to say and that sort of thing.

DAVIDE BORTOT

But you could always not release it.

Dre Skull

That has happened. Sometimes with a vocalist we will have a conversation like, “I think this song could be about this.” Whether it’s Kartel or Popcaan or someone else, but a lot of times, probably the majority, I’m letting the vocalist dictate that to me. I guess you have to ask yourself what you want out of your own creative energy and output. I mean, if you are working in a major label context there’s many different ways it goes down, but there’s A&Rs who work for the label and a lot of times A&Rs, say, in the rap world, are looking for beats. Then you have artist managers who might bring the beat in. You might have a beat that in your mind was like a sketch of the idea and it gets to the rapper and the next thing you know you hear it and it’s released and you’re like, “But I was going to change the outro,” or something like that or, “I would have flipped it a little different, or just mixed it differently.” So, I guess you have to be aware of what kind of game you’re playing and are you comfortable in that role, ceding some control? I guess it’s on very much a case by case basis, and also you might not realise that you have an issue with it until it’s too late, so it’s definitely a learning thing. It’s a very personal thing that you have to learn your own relationship with it.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Is that something that you see yourself doing in the future, doing the next Rihanna album or something like that, or would you rather produce riddims and record artists that you like? What’s the vision for moving forward?

Dre Skull

I definitely want to keep working with artists that I really admire, that I personally have an affinity for and have an emotional response to, but that’s not to say that I wouldn’t want to work with a Rihanna or someone like that. I’m interested in working at the highest level, essentially, not financially, but just as a producer who wants to work with vocalists and songwriters. It’s a great opportunity to be able to work with the ‘best’ songwriters, quote- unquote, or the ‘best’ singers with great voices, that sort of thing. I’m essentially actively pursuing both, a lot of stuff, like I’m doing this Popcaan record. At the same time we’re bringing in some pretty major rappers to do guest verses on the Popcaan record, but we do have a lot of control over that. And yet at the same time, yeah, I have a bunch of different things in motion with major labels that I’m not going to assume will all work out well but that I’m happy to be pursuing that as well. But, really, I think if I was just in one side of that, only doing Mixpak stuff or only doing major label stuff, I don’t think that would be enough for me and I think by doing all of it, or different types of projects with different levels of control or input, it serves my different areas of interests.

DAVIDE BORTOT

I think before we open this up to questions I’d love to play one more record.

(music: Tifa – “Champion Bubbler” / applause)

DAVIDE BORTOT

So, do you have any questions?

Audience Member

Hey there, I don’t know if I can see you through this crowd of people, but hey. I was just going to ask, when you’re getting into the room with a vocalist, do you ever have occasions where maybe the vibe just isn’t there and they’ll leave without recording something on top of the riddims you’ve made for them?

Dre Skull

Let me think about that. In Jamaica I’m just about always working with the artists. Sometimes in the US I’m working with a top-line songwriter and maybe the track’s going to be for someone to be determined or something like that. I think it’s pretty rare that we leave the room without something. Sometimes, obviously there’s been times where it’s been hard to get the vibe. In a lot of ways, obviously I have less work to do in that moment, because I’ve made the track, so sometimes the vocalist or the songwriter rather is just having a mental block of some kind, or just they don’t care for the track and are not responding to it, so I guess there’s been a few times. I think I did a track with Popcaan called “Get Gal Easy,” and we did a session where he did “The System” and this other track “So We Do It” and “Get Gal Easy,” so we were going to do all three of those in a day. When it got to time to do “Get Gal Easy,” which did not have that title because it wasn’t written, but he said, “Let’s slink back tomorrow.” But then I got a text in the middle of the night being like, “By the way, I recorded that.” So, for whatever reason, I don’t know if he was hungry or he was tired in the moment, he was like, “Let’s come back to that, but in the end he recorded to it.”

Audience Member

Do you have a ritual to get the vocalists in the right mindset when you get into the studio with them?

Dre Skull

Well, it really depends. I would say not really. I usually let the vocalist carry forth with whatever ritual’s going to work for them. I mean, usually in Jamaica I’ve been working out of the studio that the vocalist is most comfortable with, so it’s kind of like their home studio. So, that’s part of their own ritual. I just would say, actually, if you want advice, ask the vocalist, “How do you want to do this?” Recently, I was working with this vocalist, a New York-based vocalist, Wavy Spice, and it was a studio that you could walk out and get up on a roof deck. So, we just put the instrumental on her phone and she took it up onto the roof away from me and just took an hour and a half, two hours to herself, looking at the New York skyline, and wrote it. I think, really, just giving the vocalist or the writer the opportunity to make themselves comfortable, and really respect whatever it is they need to do to get comfortable to write a song that they can connect with.

Audience Member

Hi. I know you work with Lil Scrappy, you’ve produced a track for him and released it on Mixpak. I was wondering if you could just speak a bit about that.

Dre Skull

That track process-wise wasn’t super different from some of these tracks I’ve done in Jamaica. I went down to Atlanta and linked with him at this studio called S-Line, which is this well known rap studio down there. He was interesting. He actually is a super nice, humble, dedicated artist and he shared a pretty interesting story with me, that he came up in the game writing down his lyrics, having a lyric notebook, and then he met DJ Toomp who was working with T.I. a lot. And Toomp, I guess, convinced him to stop writing his lyrics. He did a process similar to Kartel, where it’s like a dance between the engineer and the vocalist and so the writing is happening to the microphone live and it might be just bar by bar or a few bars at a time. But he was explaining to me that for him it made the performance and the writing more real, in his words. So basically, I think what he meant by that is, if he’s reading off pen and paper, there’s a part of his mind that’s focused on reading while he’s trying to rap and by just literally coming from his mind it can be a more direct kind of performance. The other thing I noticed about that is, it can really become about the sounds and the enunciation and how you’re pronouncing different things, because sometimes it’s the way you say something that makes something so catchy. The drawl or however you do it, the timing, that might be the most important thing for the song. So, that was cool to hear his take on that and to see it happen.

Audience Member

They both come from the same camp, but what’s the difference between working with Kartel and Popcaan?

Dre Skull

Obviously, everyone’s an individual in many different ways, but I think without saying anything negative about Popcaan, because he’s a great songwriter and a great vocalist, Kartel I just think has had so many years of writing so many songs that his understanding of song structure and of how to do certain things... I mean, I’ll tell a little story about Kartel. He blew my mind in a number of different ways, but he would do something where he would often, say, it’s a hook, he’ll record bar one then he’ll skip bar two and write something for bar three. Then he’ll go back and write bar two and bar four, and so it’s like this weird filling in this puzzle. My take on that is that there’s something actually subtly catchy about what happens when you hear the lyric. You would never listen back and think, “Oh, that sounds like it was recorded out of order,” but there might be something almost subconsciously that’s more catchy about the recorded quality of that. Then also, it has implications for the songwriting in terms of what words he’s choosing and stuff like that. I think the craziest thing he did once, there was a 12-bar verse in a song and he recorded bar 12, then he recorded bar 11, bar 10 and literally recorded the entire verse, wrote it and recorded it, backwards. I was just like, “What the hell is going on?” Because I’d never heard of anything like that. But upon reflection I’m thinking, “OK, he knows lyrically where this verse is ending up, so he can build a path to that end and likewise with the melody.” So, there’s kind of a genius in working that way. I don’t know that many people could do it even if they wanted to try to do that. So, I really would say just the difference with Kartel is probably he’s recorded, as I said, 3000 or 4000 songs. Popcaan has done a lot less. But as important as that might be, that kind of experience, someone who’s recorded two songs might write the most amazing song that’s ever been written, so it’s not a requirement that you’ve had that experience. But I’d say with Popcaan, I think he takes maybe a more measured approach. I should have on the previous question mentioned that with the “Get Gal Easy” song, Popcaan took the instrumental and put it in his car and drove around Kingston all afternoon or all night, I guess, I should say. I definitely never saw Kartel take instrumentals and live with them, but occasionally Popcaan will do that. Again, whatever works for the vocalist. I like listening to music in a car and you definitely might catch a different inspiration from that context.

Audience Member

Just one other question about “Champion Bubbler” with Tifa. What’s the difference between working with female artists in dancehall and male artists in dancehall?

Dre Skull

I’m not sure I’ve seen something that would stand out as a difference. I mean, her process, in my experience, she likes to get the instrumental maybe the night before and spend some time with it. And then she’ll come in with something more fleshed out, maybe not done, but maybe a hook or some ideas, a hook and one verse. She’s a good friend and a great vocalist, but yeah, I don’t know if I could really tease out the differences on that.

Audience Member

I think one of the most interesting things in your whole story is, you were just doing music and then you saw a window, I guess, or something. Was this like, rational? Did you, when “Yuh Love” happened and there was obviously a different sound. I’ve never heard anything with a dancehall artist on top of that sound like that before. There’s a room full of people and everyone’s from a different country, from Argentina to whatever. I did my whole life like that as well, I saw a window and I took it and I kind of think that’s how I got out of Portugal or how I got into music and stuff like that. Was that a rational thing, did you actually see it consciously? “OK, I made a different sound here and I should push this button more often so I get more beats that sound like this and do a little side road for dancehall or whatever and this is going to be my signature thing.” Was that a [conscious decision]?

Dre Skull

I think at that point it was probably more random than a very conscious decision. Actually, that first track for “Yuh Love,” I hadn’t met Kartel. I had actually sent a different instrumental to him and I think I waited three or four months and every week it was like, “Yeah, yeah, he’s going to be recording it this week,” endlessly like that. So, I was wondering, is this really going to happen, and then after three or four months I got an email saying, “You know what? You got to send something different.” So, I had the riddim for “Yuh Love” on my computer and I polished it a little bit, so in a way it wasn’t intentional.

Audience Member

 I mean, it’s more like after you actually saw the result of it, was it something you wanted to grab and explore?

Dre Skull

I guess to a small degree, but maybe it was almost more unconscious. Definitely, when I made that track I wasn’t thinking, “Oh, this is my take on dancehall that’s going to be different than these specific ways.” There’s certain differences maybe that people could tease out or talk about, but I think it was just being true to where my head was at, at that time, in terms of synth sounds or percussion or something like that. It wasn’t super calculated, because I still don’t know what exactly I did or how I would describe it.

Audience Member

Thanks.

Audience Member

OK, nobody’s asked this question yet so I guess I’ll just bite the bullet. The Vybz Kartel prison break hoax, do you have any insight into the motive behind that?

Dre Skull

I do not. It was kind of amazing. We were getting contacted by financial magazines in India wanting information, so it really became this crazy global story. I have no reason to suspect that it was Kartel who created that story, but at the same time I really look at Kartel and the way he handled his career in the last few years as a conceptual artist almost, approaching it in a really extremely contemporary, interesting way, so I would say he was very good at manipulating the media to have constant stories about him. Every week there’s a huge scandal. It’s hard to really understand just how seriously these scandals would take hold in Kingston and in Jamaica. I mean, it was headline news every week. Kartel got braces and he would say in interviews, “Yeah, I just got braces just to mess with y’all,” just because that would be a weird thing to do. And so he was constantly creating these stories and creating this larger myth about himself. So, I wouldn’t be that surprised if he participated in that, but at the same time it may have just been a blogger who realised they would get a lot of traffic if they made that story up.

Audience Member

These scandals, they don’t necessarily correlate with album releases or anything, they’re just in order to keep his name in the public eye?

Dre Skull

Yeah, I never had a deep conversation on that with him, but definitely not related to album releases. It might have just been a way he entertained himself. Maybe he’s naturally eccentric in certain ways and realised people are responding to this, so I’m going to share this more with the world.

Thank you.

DAVIDE BORTOT

Any other questions? No one? Good, then I guess we just wrap this up. Give a huge round of applause for Dre Skull.