Young Guru

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

He has been the person, if you’ve heard the voice of Mr. Shawn Carter in any sort of recorded public forum, there’s a very good chance that he’s responsible for that. He’s gonna talk a little bit about his life and career, as well as his engineering and mixing studio expertise. So please join me in welcoming Young Guru. [applause]

Young Guru

I always feel weird when people clap for me.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Get used to it, it’s going to happen a couple of times. So you are Jay-Z’s personal… you describe it for us, I guess.

Young Guru

It’s weird, I am Jay-Z’s personal engineer, but my job encompasses so much more than that. I kinda say that I’m in charge of the sound of Jay-Z, basically, engineering-wise, mixing on certain records. But a lot of times I’m the guy choosing who mixes what records. I’m the guy who’s holding all of his music, so his whole career sits on hard drives in safes in my house. And I basically take care of everything he needs music-wise, but that encompasses a lot of things. Engineering is just a part of it. There’s a little bit of A&R-ing that comes into it, because Jay-Z’s not a normal artist, who has his own A&R. He’s kind of his own A&R, head of the label and artist all wrapped into one. Whatever he needs music-wise is what I contribute to. I’ve been doing that basically for him since 1999. It’s an incredible experience, I’m extremely blessed to have worked with him for this long. I think we just have a comfortable working relationship and there’s a huge amount of trust there, which is the reason why I’ve stuck around all this time. And I couldn’t ask for a better boss, he’s one of the best bosses in the world. But he’s not the only person that I work for. I do work for whoever, whenever I can. That also entails the rest when we had Roc-A-Fella and now Roc Nation. But it’s an interesting job and he’s an interesting person and as he grows and matures all of our lives are affected by that. It keeps just getting bigger and bigger and I always look at him and think, “How much further can it go?” It keeps going and going, it’s a beautiful experience.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Now, I know we have some hip-hop fans here, we may have some who are not quite as familiar with the entire catalogue. So I think you have something cued up maybe that you want to drop as a very quick example.

Young Guru

Yeah, this is “Run This Town.” This is a song I recorded and mixed for Blueprint 3. Also featuring Kanye West and Rihanna.

(music: Jay-Z feat. Kanye West and Rihanna – “Run This Town” / applause)

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

So I guess tell us a bit about the process, using this as an example.

Young Guru

This was a fun record to make. When we did Blueprint 3 we had a bunch of starts and stops. Jay-Z’s a very vibey artist, if you wanna put it that way, and it makes my life a little difficult. Nothing is ever super planned out. I never get a phone call, “OK, we‘re gonna start a session at 5 PM today in the afternoon.” It doesn’t work like that. He just vibes and goes in the studio whenever he wants to. That’s one of the pluses of owning your own studio. But we had started and he wasn’t really catching a vibe. That’s another of the problems I have with Jay and Kanye being such huge artists, is that when I try to record in New York, there’s so many people that stop by the studio, and they have so many side businesses, both of them, that it’s hard to get them to concentrate sometimes. And these are not frivolous things. Kanye’s trying to make clothes, Jay’s running his 40/40 business. For those who don’t know that’s his string of sports bars. He also is a co-owner of the Nets. So he has so many things going on, so when he’s in New York he gets pulled in so many different directions. So, specifically, when I try to work with him and Kanye it ends up being like ten extra people in the studio. It’s a cool vibe, but it’s totally distracting from making music. One of the guys who works for Kanye, Don C, pulled me to the side and he was like, “You know, Guru, if you want to get these guys to work you need to come with us to Hawaii. You need to bring the whole thing to Hawaii so we can really focus and nobody will stop by.” When you’re in New York everybody’s ten blocks away, five blocks away. So what we did was Jay, myself, Kanye has a set place he works in Hawaii, so we invited Timbaland down as well. We just went away for a week, week and a half, just strictly to get away and work on music. And this was one of the tracks that came out of that. It was a beautiful experience of just getting away, not having any distractions, waking up in the morning, go play basketball, eat breakfast and then get to the business of making music. This track took me back to the raw Kanye, which is what I love. It was just a great experience. Kanye didn’t actually lay his verse until we got back to New York City, but just the whole concept of the song came about out there. We had started and stopped maybe two times, so the Hawaii trip focused our whole thing for that album. For me, that was the key, to get away. Sometimes that’s what you need to do, to not have those distractions and to get away to make music.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Once you got to Hawaii, can you talk a bit about the process of being in that studio, working with Kanye, working with Jay and getting it to the point where it is?

Young Guru

There are three rooms in that studio, some great, beautiful rooms, both of them SSL rooms. We had Timbaland upstairs and we had Kanye downstairs. We had a pow-wow meeting to say, “OK, where are we going with this record?” A lot of times people don’t get focused, or they just start making music without being focused as to what the artist wants, what the producers want to do. So we had this big pow-wow, argument, meeting, if you want to call it that, the discussion about where the record is going, where hip-hop is going and where we need to go. That was what came out of that, because we were complaining about, as I normally do, where hip-hop is at the given moment. Because I hate the little gimmicky hip-hop, I’m sort of a traditionalist, purist, but I’m not against the new forms of the music. I just don’t like the gimmicky part of it, or the people who are just doing things to get a little quick hit. That was where the initial song “DOA” came from, because if you remember at that time T-Pain, Auto-Tune was everywhere in music. So it was getting to the point where it’s like I wanna throw up, because everyone’s using Auto-Tune, Auto-Tune, Auto-Tune and it’s getting on my nerves. “DOA,” for those who don’t know, is called “Death of Autotune,” which is one of the first records off Blueprint 3. It wasn’t a diss to T-Pain, it was a diss to everyone else using the T-Pain effect. As an engineer, it’s, we’re all stuck on this one effect, and there are so many vocal effects you should be trying other than this one. OK, this is the T-Pain setting and everybody just used that. There’s no experimentation when that happens, every single record starts to sound exactly the same. So that was the result of that conversation. We’re gonna smash everything that’s out there right now and totally take hip-hop in a different direction. Which I think is sort of our responsibility at this time, is to sort of lead and show people that you don’t have to follow the trend to do this and that. We’re also in the position where we can afford to do that. Meaning if it didn’t work, we can go and do something else, whereas a new artist is trying to get their foot in door. Whereas I’m not really concerned with album sales at this point. It’s about adding onto a legacy of music versus trying to use some new gimmick. But I do feel like we can direct the culture into better places and I think that’s our responsibility at this time. So that was really the result of that conversation, to bring hip-hop back to this pure thing. There’s been a couple times when we purposely tried to do that.

The first Blueprint was that. Hip-hop was very – how should I say it? Swizz [Beatz] is a good friend of mine and Swizz was known for using the Trident and the Trinity, using the classic sounds in there, but then everyone in hip-hop started copying that sound and everyone started sounding like him. So with the original Blueprint, Just Blaze and Kanye took us back to actually sampling again, specifically soul samples, which was sort of this feel we were missing in hip-hop at that time. Again, it’s done on purpose to try and direct the culture to say it’s cool to be different, not to copy what’s going on. The whole thing about copying is that you’ll never be great by copying someone else, because they’ll be at the top of the ladder and you’ll always be underneath them. It’s cool to look at other people’s style and to incorporate it, but to strictly copy it, you’ll never win that way. That happens in hip-hop kind of periodically. Every four or five years, there’ll be a new style that’ll come in and people will automatically gravitate towards it and copy it. But then the person that breaks out of that mold becomes the next style. We’ve seen it over and over again. Puffy was jacking ‘80s songs and looping up the whole eight bars; then people started doing that. That’s another point where you’re like, I wanna throw up. You have to change that. It keeps going and going and going, so we try to correct the culture at this point.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

On a more specifically technical level though, maybe you could break down a little bit of how this was pieced together.

Young Guru

This record is dope because there’s a quick loop that’s actually from a library record, the guitar part. Then there’s a classic drum break underneath it, then Kanye starts to layer synths on top. Again, hip-hop is one of those weird things where producers sometimes sit in a room by themselves and make music. In some genres as well you’re sitting in a room by yourself. I always preach to people that, I don’t care who you are, if you’re not like Prince, most of the best music is made by groups of people. No one just makes these incredible records on their own. You can produce a record in your room by yourself, but it’s good to be around other musicians, to get other vibes and to get other opinions when you’re making a record. Kanye has a good staff of people. Jeff [Bhasker] is one of his keyboard players and Mike Dean is also one of his keyboard players and engineers. So they start to layer sounds, just little keyboard sounds. I was mixing the song and Jay was looking at me and he was like, “I still don’t feel like it’s army enough.” That was the word he was using. Sometimes as an engineer or as a producer, you have to take layman’s terms and translate them into musical terms. So when Jay says “army” or “stomping” – he kept saying, “I want it to feel like an army is marching down the street.” So I had this little sound that Just Blaze, who is another great producer we’ve worked with over the years, had put in a Memphis Bleek record. I remember it being this stomp sound, so I called Blaze and said, “I’m gonna steal this sound from this other record.” He was like, “Yeah, cool, I don’t care.” I layered it under the kick to give it that extra whomp, so instead of the kick hitting boom, it was a [makes crunching noise] sound that adds to the kick, the march of the record. So this wasn’t a super complicated mix. It was basically those elements, Jay’s raps, Kanye’s raps and Rihanna singing. We have all these tools at our disposal and we want to show off sometimes as engineers and producers that we’re doing all this sophisticated stuff with all this equipment, but the overall point what you have to remember is it’s all about what comes out of these two speakers. The audience doesn’t know anything about the technical side of you making the record, all they know is the feel of what they feel. As producers and engineers you have to remember that; it’s the sort of forgetting everything you know for the feel of the record. This record was almost all the way there in the rough stages, so I didn’t want to add a whole bunch of effects that take away from it. It’s really supposed to feel like this army marching down the street, because it’s called “Run This Town” and it’s sort of like us taking over the town basically. That’s what the video adds, too; that was the whole feel of the record.

I mixed it on an SSL, my normal stuff. I love API preamps, I love API EQs, 550As, 550Bs. That EQed with distressors is probably my kick-and-snare combination for the past ten years, because I can kind of dial in the harmonics on a distressor. But the API is different, I describe everything differently. SSL has a super-punch. Neves are very warm and sweet – I love Neves on vocals and they can also distort well, the distortion coming from a Neve is incredible. So for guitars Neves are crazy – you can turn Neves up and still get the sweetest ugly – ugly to me is sometimes good – and get the sweetest distortion. With APIs, they’re in between punchy and gritty and they’re the best thing for me on kicks and snares. That’s really my thing. I want my drums to outdo everyone, that’s really my calling card. I wanna out-knock everyone on the drum tip, so APIs to me do that extremely well.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Backtracking for just one step, when you mentioned borrowing a sound from Just to add a little extra layer, you mentioned collaboration. I think a lot of times people get caught up – “Oh, so and so produced this, so and so is responsible for this, and this is the line between this job and this job.” You mentioned Kanye has his own engineers as well, you’re there, he’s also producing the track, but then you’re also adding something as well. So are there any rules with this sort of thing, depending on who’s involved?

Young Guru

Well, yeah, if it’s people outside the family. I wouldn’t necessarily do that to another producer, but I consider Just [Blaze] a friend, so of course I would call him. There are rules and regulations, but if I’m in the middle of mixing a record and someone’s asking for it to sound like this, I’m not necessarily gonna ask for a credit for adding a little simple sound like that, even though that is part of production. You have to understand we’ve worked together since about ‘98, ’99 making a ton of records. When we get into that situation it’s more about facilitating the record. If I was just Joe Blow and I added to this record that I knew was gonna be on a Jay-Z album, then yes, I’d want a credit. But if I’m already mixing all the records, you know what I mean? And I’ve produced records… it’s just me adding a sound to a certain degree. But it’s also in the context that all of us are in this group and I consider everyone to be family to a certain extent. So while Kanye is down working with his engineers, I may be tracking vocals for Jay-Z. Timbaland has another engineer working with him. But like I said, at the end of the day my responsibly is to be over the whole project. Jay doesn’t look at it like, “OK, this person do this, this person do that, this person do that.” He looks at it like, “OK Guru, why is this not done?” So I’ve got to be responsible. He thinks it’s a joke sometimes and people laugh in the studio. My responsibility is to get the whole thing done. Funnny story is like, I’ll go to mastering and my mastering engineer knows, whenever I come with a Jay-Z record, this is about to be an adventure. I’ve never walked in – even though I try every time – the best thing would be to walk in with 12 songs and go, “OK, here, Tony [Dawsey], take this and master it.” I walk in with maybe five songs done and I’m like, “OK, start on these, I’ll be back tomorrow.” And I’m running back finishing mixes, running around town checking on other people’s mixes. When we finished this record, I went to mastering. I thought I was finished. Then Jay walks into mastering and he sits down and I’m calling him to listen to the sequence, the spacing in between the records, and while he’s sitting there he goes, “OK, I’ve got a better verse for that record.” We’re at mastering, and we run back to the studio, re-record a verse. Artists don’t always understand, if you wanna switch a verse, it’s real quick, I’ve already mixed the record, I can fit it back in. But then that means I have to do seven passes again. I have to do the main, the instrumental, the TV, the clean [version], whatever all these other passes are. We do that, I go back to mastering again, put it back together, I go back to the studio, we listen again and then he starts naming all these things he wants to change. Now mind you, he’s going on vacation the next day. It’s him and Beyoncé sitting in the studio with me and, we call him OG Juan, Jay’s partner with the 40/40s – he’s also the owner of the studios. He’s finding all this super hilarious, this is super funny to him, because he knows I’m not going to sleep. And they’re about to go on vacation, their bags are packed and they’re like, “Alright, we’re out the door.” So as I’m sitting there it becomes one thing, two things, three things, so I’m, “Alright, let me start breaking out the paper.” So I get out a piece of paper and by the time Jay’s done there are seven different things he wants to change. So that became the joke of the night, because I’m like, “Alright, I’m really not going anywhere.” So I called Tony back up, we had to change all these things. This is also the point where I have to start making decisions. So it’s like yes, I would love to mix the whole record, but for time-wise I don’t have the ability because he’s changing all these things. So this is when my A&R hat comes on and I’m calling Duro, who’s another great engineer here in New York City and I’m like… “OK, I don’t wanna disrespect Duro,” because we’re kind of the same age, but he’s the person I look to to follow his career. Because at the time I came to New York there were no young black engineers, so he’s the person I look to. “Who manages you? Because if I find that person then I can get on.” That’s how our relationship started getting on. But needless to say he’s another guy who I trust, so I had to reach out. “OK, I have this great song called ‘New York City’ and I need you to mix this record. I was gonna mix it but now I have to change all these things.” So I reached out to him, gave him that record. That way I can relax and I know that he’s gonna do a great job with it, I don’t have to be over his shoulder. “Call me when you’re finished with that record, I’ll be back over here to pick it up.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Being able to delegate.

Young Guru

That’s when it leaves just being an engineer and it becomes the sort of A&R mode. It’s whatever’s necessary to get the record finished. It never stops. So I fix all these little things. There’s maybe one thing where Jay’s like, “Take this new hook that I did out, put the old hook back. Take this verse I did out, put the old verse back.” It’ll be little things like that. So I run back to mastering, I’m finally finished. Tony’s like, “Guru, don’t call me again.” All of those things. I get the final CD, Jay’s on vacation now. Our studio is Baseline Studios in New York, so I run back to Baseline and I’m about to relax and listen to the Blueprint 3 all the way through. So I rip it, send it to Jay, I’m sitting there relaxed, I’m smoking and listening, and this is my dirty version and on one of the songs there’s a clean hook. I’m like, “Oh fuck!” So I gotta run back, I gotta call Tony again because we were rushing to change everything; he’s probably on the BQE on the way home. “Turn around, come back to mastering, we’ve gotta switch this, this one’s wrong.” And we finally switch back to the dirty hook and I send it to Jay finished. But those are the things that I have to go through to make sure the album comes out the way it’s supposed to come out.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Who’s your mastering engineer?

Young Guru

Tony Dawsey.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Tony Dawsey, former RBMA lecturer.

Young Guru

He’s incredible, he’s incredible. He’s on those guys, he’s mastered everything I’ve done for like the last ten, 15 years, so I don’t have to be super over his shoulder. It gives me a comfort level of being able to hand him the records and then run back and do something else. Then I come back and there’s little tweaks I may have to do and say, “OK, I want this to be a little more pronounced.” Or I can give him those notes beforehand, and I’ll listen to my mix. I know my room and I know his room. So I’ll listen to my mix in his room and I go, “Alright, Tony, help me out. I need you to boost the bass at such and such,” or, “Clean this up a little bit, clear this up.” It’s a comfort level from someone that I’ve worked with for so many years. A normal mastering engineer is not gonna keep coming in and going home, coming in and going home; it ends up being four or five different little sessions.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

But what you’re saying is so applicable to what everybody here is doing, too. Because it’s about collaboration, it’s about trust and relationships.

Young Guru

That’s part of the job. Stuff comes up and you can’t just be like, “Oh shit!” You’ve got to stay calm, you’ve got to figure it out, and hopefully you’re prepared enough and you’ve got a good enough team that doesn’t sweat. But things happen like that, you have to figure it out in the middle of it. You’ve got to kind of bullshit your way through it to the audience.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Off the top of your head, when you had to really jury-rig something, can you think of an example of that?

Young Guru

Oh man, you would be surprised at how many super-professional shows are going on and there’s like tape on the back of a speaker or something like that, connecting a lead. There’s no time to sauder things together. Or somebody’s physically holding a wire for two hours connected to a speaker. [laughter] You do whatever you have to do to get it done. That’s part of my come-up, though. I was born in ‘74, I’m 37. I know I look like a little kid, but I’m 37. I used to do parties in Wilmington, Delaware. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the States, but New Jersey’s here [holds hand up], Pennsylvania is right here and at the corner where Pennsylvania and New Jersey meet, right in that little thing is Delaware. So it’s a little, small place. That’s where I’m from. Growing up there were no clubs in my area. When we partied it was in fire halls and school auditoriums and people’s houses. I would drive half an hour – this is at 14, 15 years old. So it wasn’t a thing where you just roll in with some records or roll in with Serato. If somebody came to me and said, “Hey, I want you to do my party.” That means I have to get in a truck with all of this, mics, mixers, lights, the whole nine. I might be packing all this stuff, drive for an hour and a half, then I get down the road and it’s like, “Oh shit, I forgot my headphones.” You know what I mean? And then have to feel where the record starts and you’re on someone’s mom’s washer and dryer in their basement. You have to get through whatever you can do to get through it. But that also builds up your confidence, so when you do get in a situation where you’ve got two hours to go soundcheck, put together this stuff professionally, it doesn’t bother you. The whole thing is to get through the gig. That’s what people come to trust in you – not only can this person do the job, but they can solve problems. That’s part of being an engineer, is to solve problems. That’s the real definition of being an engineer, not just a music engineer. I went to school with this… my mom was always putting me in these programs. I went to this program called FAME: Forum for the Advancement of Minorities in Engineering. But that was engineering like civil engineering, like building a bridge. But that’s problem solving: I want to get from this side to that side. I don’t know how to make this work or that work. That’s what engineering is, solving problems.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Actually, I’m glad you touched on DJing as a kid because the next thing I want to ask you is about your background. So you grew up in Delaware.

Young Guru

Yeah, born 1974, grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. People always get this confused. My mother’s from Newark, New Jersey, my father’s from Washington, DC. I was born and raised in Delaware but my whole life I’m bouncing back and forth in between these two places to go visit a lot of family. Again, for those who don’t know, Washington DC is the capital, but it’s like this island, culture-wise. People are gonna be pissed when I say this, but from Delaware up, through Philly, all this other stuff, people kind of look to New York for styles, sounds, things of that nature. Don’t get me wrong, Philly has a different style from New York. But from Delaware up we kind of look towards New York. And when you go beyond DC – Virginia, North Carolina – they look towards the South, their style and music and the way they dress. Then once you get past the mountain ranges, everything else – the Midwest, all that stuff – used to look towards the West Coast for style and sound. Washington, DC, it’s our capital, but it’s so small. It could care less what anybody else is doing in the United States. Go-go music is probably the prominent music in Washington DC. And not just the music, but the style. The way people dress, the way people talk. They could really care less what you’re doing anywhere else. So DC was this great place that was completely different from anywhere else, musically and style-wise. New Jersey was great because New Jersey’s always been on its own form of club music, what some people call house – there’s all these different terms. Like Chicago house is different from Baltimore house is different from New Jersey house. Chicago is sort of the birthplace, home. Chicago and Detroit battle back and forth with their styles of house music. Baltimore is sort of this music that just repeats one phrase. Like, “I’ll beat that bitch with a bat.” You’re gonna do this all night, the same phrase all over again, over again, over again, over again, all night. Jersey is much more soulful, where we have fully written-out songs, in a different tradition from everyone else. Bouncing between Jersey and DC gave me a different perspective than everyone that’s just sitting in Delaware listening to Philly radio stations. That was my upbringing. As a kid, I can remember as early as seven or eight years old, I had older cousins that were four or five years older than me who were bringing me into this scene that didn’t exist before. Every area in Delaware is known for a certain things. Certain areas are known for basketball, certain areas are known for illegal stuff. Our area just birthed the best b-boys and the best DJs. So we would go around and battle everybody in terms of breakdancing and in terms of DJing and we’d smash everybody. That was what my side of town was known for, so I’m really just following the older guys in my neighborhood and they were the first ones I knew that had Technics 1200. I used to be in the basement practising on their little Mickey Mouse turntables and then they got 1200s and I fell in love with it. That’s what the start of it was. This was like ’81, ’82 and from that point on it was like, “OK, this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life.” It just clicked like that. You gotta remember at this point hip-hop’s not a job.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

It’s not even a genre.

Young Guru

It’s not even a genre of music yet. It’s something that we, like, go get some cardboard and battle these dudes in the parking lot of whatever school that we choose. That’s really what it was. It was still an emerging culture. Everybody in our town didn’t even know what it was yet. It was still filtering down from New York City and Philadelphia. Then in ‘83 Run-DMC hit and that was this big boom to the rest of the world, “Oh, this was what the kids are doing, this is what this thing is.” But it was sort of like our, I guess you want to call it anti-culture, because we weren’t disco. That wasn’t our thing, that was our older cousins. That looked foreign to me. It looked kind of funny, kids walking around with the spikes on. The disco-y thing was just super weird to me. Hip-hop was the thing that was ours. No one understood it and I loved it like that. We had our own language, our own expression and our own way of doing things. Back then people used to look crazy when I would walk into a record store and start buying these old rare records. Back then it was like 50 cents, a dollar. The first thing you do is run over to your friend’s house and start raping his father’s record collection. My father was great with funk and slow records; one of my best friends, his father was an avid jazz collector. So I used to go over there and run through his records, then wait for him to leave and grab 20 and run out the house and take them to my house. That was the thing, going in dollar bins and finding records. But it was like an education process. At first I thought everything came out of drum machines, because I knew Run-DMC…

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Those were the records that were coming out.

Young Guru

Yeah, I knew Run-DMC made their records with certain drum machines and I would ask questions. But then Ultramagnetic came out with Critical Beatdown – I forget exactly what year that was – and I was just blown away. I was like, “What beat machine is it that makes that drum like that?” But my man was, like, “Nah, they’re taking this from this and that from that.” And it wasn’t until I heard a James Brown break on there and I was like, “OK, that’s what they’re doing.” Because I thought they were just programming from a beat machine. So it just opened up this whole other world of beat digging. You’ve got to remember now there’s the internet, people can easily find whatever they want to find. This was is completely blind. You were going in and I just start listening to records. So you might get up at six o’clock in the morning and go to the record store and be in there and turn around and it’s eight o’clock at night and it felt like two hours. It was that type of thing, and it was just a beautiful experience of finding new records. Then the ultimate would be to find something that you heard on someone’s album. “Oh, that’s where they got it from.” It’s this big discovery period. That was my musical education into all these different forms of music. Also, my schools that I went to, I went to play basketball at a bunch of different schools, so I would be around different people other than just my friends. So then I learned about other types of music from all these people, and that was really my musical education growing up.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

You went to Howard University?

Young Guru

Oh, absolutely. Let me tell you something. I might be the proudest person to go to Howard University. For me, this was the best decision I ever made in my life and it came at the right time.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

[to participants] How many people know about Howard University in Washington, DC?

Young Guru

It’s a predominantly black university… well, it’s all black. It’s an HBCU, it’s the alma mater of Shawn Carter, of Puffy. I could go down the line of people who went there, from Digable Planets to Shai. These are all people who went to school with me at the time. It just birthed so many artists, so many different people, but it was just the most dynamic experience. Most of my best friends are people that I met while I was going to school at Howard. All of my experience of first getting up in front of an audience to play music I just made last night – most of you probably know that feeling, “I made this beat last night, I wonder what everybody’s gonna think about it.” And having a representation of all 50 states in one place was a great thing as a DJ. Because you can get locked into just playing for one type of people. So when I’m playing at Howard, I can play a record and these are my friends, but one of them is gonna come up and go, “Yo, where’s all the West Coast music?” Another guy is gonna come up and go, “Yo, where’s all the Down South music?” Another is gonna come up and go, “Yo, where’s all the reggae?” Then a DC person is gonna be like, “You not playing no go-go?” You have to service all these people within a four-hour period. So it opens your mind to all these different types of music and you’ve got to stay current with all these different types of music. Again, these are all my friends, so it’s not like they’re strangers and I’m like, “Get out of here!” I really do have to service all these people as a DJ. And then I had to learn to play records that I didn’t like necessarily. Because you start to understand that if you’re gonna just play music you like, you might as well just sit in your room. You have to play what the audience wants to hear. That’s one of the biggest things that people don’t understand. When you want to release commercial music, yes, you have to find that balance between what is best for you and what your audience wants. It’s like if you’re gonna open a restaurant and you make chicken and everyone’s coming back to you, “I like my chicken like this,” but you’re, “No, the way I make chicken is this way, this way, and these are my spices.” Eventually, you’re not gonna have anybody buying your chicken. But if you listen to your audience and say, “OK, everyone’s telling me they like this type of spice, so let me try to put that spice in there in my way.” You have to understand how to service your audience. That’s one of the things that people miss, because we get so into this, “This is who I am, I’m expressing myself.” Yes, you can do that, but understand that once you ask someone to buy a record you’re in the service business; you’re selling something. So now the customer is always right to me and that’s the key to success. We all come from this super underground thing, we are the carriers of the underground music. My friends and my circle, we love underground music. There’s this great thing where I can exist in the underground but also make commercial music and sell commercial music because of the way I view it. The underground is where my heart and love is and if you’re with me on a normal day I’m probably playing Dilla all day. But then when I move into my commercial aspect, I’m looking at numbers and sales and regions and I’m figuring out what’s the best way to present the music I make, or the artist I work with, to the public. I always think of it like this, when I’m in the creative process, I don’t wanna think about none of that, the commercial, the pop stuff, when I’m making the music. Now, once I’m done making the music I turn the hat around and go, “OK, what’s the best way to sell this?” I’m also thinking about the career of this artist. I don’t work with an artist who’s here this year and then he’s gone. If I work with you I’m trying to build a career, so you can stay in this for ten years. And some people can do this really well, and some people can do this really well, but it’s hard to find somebody that understands both sides of it.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

In DC, you began working with an artist who had a big hit.

Young Guru

Yeah, in 1996. I had to make this huge decision. I went to school in ‘92 and was supposed to graduate in 1996. In 1996 I had my first child at the age of 22, so I’m sitting in DC, scared shitless, right? “Oh, man, I have a baby on the way. I can’t sit here and keep making this couple of dollars DJing.” So I ended up hooking up with this girl named Nonchalant, who had a song called “5 O’Clock in the Morning.” It was a really big single; the album didn’t do so well, but the single was huge, took us around the world. And at the end of our tour, we ended up doing this one show in Miami and we opened up for the Fugees in ‘96. It just so happened that my camp, the people with me, we knew all the people in the Fugees, because we’re all from the same area around New Jersey. Lauryn [Hill]’s from Ivy Hill, Clef [Wyclef Jean] and them are from Irvington and they’re areas around where my family stayed at. So they just – no pun intended – very nonchalantly said, “You guys wanna open up on the European leg of the tour?” “Hell yeah!” So we ended up doing three months of the “Ready or Not” tour. I had done spot dates, you fly in. But that was my first major, major tour where the tour bus drives into the venue and everything is super professional, where you’re not fighting with the sound man, you get as long as you want for a soundcheck. There are computerized EQs that save the EQ settings for your voice. A professional tour. That was my first one and it was just a great experience to see it at that level. I think that was the first time where I was like, “OK, this hip-hop thing is worldwide.” I didn’t quite understand the idea of someone in Germany listening to records that I had done, or listening to hip-hop at all. I didn’t get it back then. The tour kind of opened me up to the world listens to this music and it’s possible to be on a worldwide career for the rest of my life. This was the moment that clicked for me.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

And working with Nonchalant you also met another mentor of yours. Who would that be?

Young Guru

Chucky Thompson, who was a Bad Boy producer – Puffy had a conglomerate of producers called the Hitmen. About ten guys. Chucky Thompson was one of those guys. What happened was, Nonchalant started on her second album. And there was also something key there too: I went to a school called Omega Recording Studios. Most people in the United States, they try to go to Full Sail because it’s the premier engineering school. But Full Sail’s expensive and back then they didn’t really have the financial aid thing popping like that. It was just like, “OK, pay for Full Sail? I can’t pay for Full Sail, I’ve got a kid on the way.” So I found a studio in Rockville, Maryland, called Omega Studios that was teaching engineering. And again, it was just by luck of the draw one of the best decisions I ever made. Because there were maybe six, seven people in my class. And it was a working studio. My professors were actually working engineers, so one person would teach you the SSL, one person would teach you the Neve, one person would teach you the APIs. There was no Pro Tools back then; there was a program called Sonic Solutions that people kinda used to master two-track programs. And a company that’s no longer around called OpCode had this program Studio Vision, which was just MIDI at the time but then Studio Vision Pro came out and that was the first time I ever saw audio being recorded into a computer along with MIDI, and that shit blew my mind. I was like, “Oh my God, we don’t need tape no more.” I was there for that first initial, “OK, I get it.” I’m one of those people that was mad they didn’t put money into Microsoft. And once Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did what they did with personal computing, I was like, “Oooh, how did I not see this?” You know what I mean? I got it instantly, I knew these guys were about to dominate. Back then, because I saw what it was. The computer does this thing forever where it gets faster and smaller, faster and smaller, forever. It’s just what happens with computers. I finished my schooling at that time so the reason that was so special is because I met Chucky Thompson, who became one of my best mentors. But my first real “I’m in the hot seat” session was with my own group. So he was executive producing her second album, so the nervousness you have of figuring out the equipment and knowing how everything works in a session was with my own group. It was just so much more relaxing to figure everything out because it was my music, or the group that I was with. But through working with Chucky, he got comfortable with me, I got comfortable with him, and then he started bringing me into all the stuff he was doing with Bad Boy. He had started Chuck Life, which was a record label he was dealing with in DC, but he would still do a lot of stuff in New York. So he would be telling people, “OK, you have to fly my engineer to New York with me.” And he would take me everywhere he went. I would normally track stuff and then go with him to New York. And he was the bridge that introduced me to another great engineer, Tony. Tony Maserati is an incredible engineer who did a lot of stuff for Puff, and Chucky was the person who sat me in the room and was like, “Watch him and figure out whatever he’s doing.” At first he wasn’t that open to me, as Tony is, but – I always tell this story – I watched him smoke these specific type of cigars, so then I went to the store and bought those type of cigars. So the next day when he walked in I opened the box on the desk. He was, “Yo, who bought the cigars?” “Me.” Boom, boom, boom. Then we kind of struck a relationship. To him it’s probably nothing, he probably thinks of it as just normal conversation, but I’m being super observant, watching every move he made, every twist of every knob. To this day I turn my NS10s up. Most people have their NS10s flat, and I turn mine up. All of that comes from Tony Maserati. So one thing leads to another leads to another. Relationships are just as important as the information that you get. The information makes you ready; the relationship is gonna actually get you in the door to use what you know. That’s also part of the job, is maintaining relationships. But that’s how that went – I went from DJing for Nonchalant to engineering her second album, which hooked me up with Chucky Thompson that got me in the door to New York City which allowed me to meet Tony Maserati, where I learned a whole gang of stuff that you could never learn in a book. And it got me accustomed to working in New York City. Now I’ve been to all the major studios, I know most of the assistants, and when it’s time for me to leave DC, I already had an in. So I moved from DC to New York and I was, “OK, I’m gonna try my hand at this independent engineering thing.” It was scary at first, but again, I hooked up with someone who’d been to Howard with me, which was Deric Angelettie. He’s known as the Madd Rapper, he also produced “The Benjamins” for Notorious B.I.G., “Hypnotize” for Notorious B.I.G. and a slew of records for Puffy. You have to remember all of these guys were about three years older than me in school, so I’ve known all of them for years and years. They were the guys throwing parties, so I would be outside and, “Yo, get me into the party.” That was sort of my relationship with them until that point. But all of that led to me getting to New York City. But once the Madd Rapper album was done, again, I looked at Duro and was trying to work out who managed him. I went on this two-week search for his manager. I was mad because I was like, “Who the hell is this person?” The girl who worked the front desk at Crazy Cat, which was Derek Angelettie’s label, was, “Oh, I know this girl named Loreal, she manages Duro.” “You’ve got to get me in touch with her.” That was my first step into becoming independent in terms of engineering. Once I got with her, the next day I was doing a session for DMX. It just never stopped from there.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

How long was it before you started working with the Roc-A-Fella camp and Jay-Z?

Young Guru

I did a session for Memphis Bleek. Interesting things started to happen. It wasn’t just me and Duro. It was me, Duro, a guy named Pat Viala – if you look at a lot of the classic Neptunes records, a lot of Murder Inc. stuff with Ja Rule, Pat was doing that. There was also a guy named Brian Stanley, good, good friend. There started to be this little crew of us, like the Jackie Robinsons – that’s who broke the color barrier in baseball. So there was a little crew of us. We were all doing major sessions, but we were all young black guys. We used to be pissed because we tried to get sessions but Allied Pool was controlling New York City at this time. Tony was in Allied Pool, but it was just a group of older rock engineers that had everything on lock. We would record stuff, but we’d never get to mix anything. So we were all banded together and in a loose way we’d all converse with each other and figure out what everybody else was doing. That was our way of helping each other out. I ended up doing a session for Memphis Bleek because one of the guys couldn’t make it that day. Bleek and I gravitated toward each other and struck up a friendship. A normal engineer is just supposed to sit there and be quiet and facilitate the record. But me being me, I’m producing kinda and engineering at the same time. So Bleek starts saying his rhyme and I’m like, “You know, you could say something better here and here and here.” Artists are taken aback by that, like, “Is this guy correcting my rhyme?” “Yeah, you could do better, there’s better words for you to say.” And then they start to get comfortable with you, so Bleek started asking for me back. I owe a majority of whatever else came after that to him, just from our relationship being cool. Then Jay-Z being the COO of the label inevitably is gonna come by to check on whatever one of his artists is doing. That’s how I met Jay. In the middle of a Memphis Bleek session, Jay was working on an album at the time. Bleek had got done with his session early, so Jay goes, “Take that tape down and throw my tape up and let me.” That was the very first time I recorded Jay, but it was in the middle of a Memphis Bleek session. Jay-Z doesn’t really follow the rules of, “You need to book a session.” It was just we’re in there, there’s tape in there, throw the tape up. That’s how it started. Then he was like, “Yo, what are you doing all next week?” “Whatever you need me to be doing.” Baseline Studios was key to the magic we created and that place had just been built, so we consolidated instead of jumping around all these different studios. It used to be this thing where we would call Quad. “Do you have rooms?” “No, call Hit Factory.” “No, we’re all booked up. Call Sony.” “OK, we can get in that room for the day.” Then the next day somebody else had it, so you had to jump back to Quad. When you have the ability to have your own studio and have this room you can get comfortable with, and know the sound of that room, it makes work flow so much faster. I always say to people the best music comes from small groups of people coming out of the same room. If you think of the immense amount of music that Motown put out, it’s really about 20 or 30 people in this one room. When you go to Detroit and you look at the house, it’s amazing that that amount of historical stuff came out of that house. It’s a little house in Detroit. Hitsville is not this big place – this place might be bigger than Hitsville [looking around the room]. It’s this little crib, just Smokey Robinson sitting there, a small amount of people. Every single time you think about it. Stax is not this super conglomerate of people. 20, 30 people, including the secretaries and everybody. Even hip-hop music, the majority of people that dominated and had runs, from Bad Boy to Death Row from Roc-A-Fella to Murder, it’s a small group of people in one place. And that’s what we got when everything came out of Baseline.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Can you talk a bit about the sonic characteristics were of Baseline? What was defining about it, what was acoustically unique about it?

Young Guru

That room was designed by… what’s his name? We had it designed by a Pro Audio designer, his last name Malekpour. Dave Malekpour at Pro Audio Design designed that room. When it first started I gave him two days to put the room together and it was sounding like a real opera room. I was like, “OK, this is completely off.” To his credit he sat there with me for three days completely retuning the room. I’m like, “OK, this is what we’re about to make in here. This room needs to sound like this.” That’s a rare opportunity. You don’t get to see a studio from the ground up and tune it exactly the way you want it, but I had that opportunity. So I’m like, “OK, let’s tune the room exactly like this.” From the beginning I got to make the room the way I wanted it to sound, so I’m super spoiled that I’ve never found another room that sounds like that to me. I kind of learned every nook and cranny of that room. I know exactly what it’s supposed to sound like when I stand here, when I stand here, when I stand here. That’s sorta key when you’re making music or you’re engineering. It can sound beautiful to you in your one environment, then you take it somewhere else and you’re like, “Oh, it doesn’t sound as good.” Or you may have too much bass in your room, then you’re not turning the bass up enough. Then when you leave you’re like, “This kick that sounded so great in my room sounds like air somewhere else.” That was key sonically to the way that I mixed a lot of the records, that I completely understood that room. We had Genelec near-fields. I had NS10s, which I absolutely live by. I love NS10’s because they’re such a crap speaker, one of the nastiest speakers you can get. But if you can get it to sound good on a pair of NS10s it’s gonna sound good everywhere. Sometimes the Genelecs are a little bit too forgiving. They’re sort of like Dr. Dre headphones – you can put anything through the Dr. Dre headphones and they’re gonna sound good, which isn’t always what you want. You want to be able to hear exactly what’s going on. Then we had Augspurgers as our mains and then we had the extra sub-Augspurgers and the amps were perfectly tuned to the Augspurgers. You have to buy the amps with the speakers, because he has to tune it exactly like that. But I love the Augspurgers, they’re some of the best. Because they don’t tire out. I listened to music super loud in the beginning for maybe 20 minutes and then the rest of my mix is sort of quiet, on NS10s or Genelecs, and then at the end when I have everything together I’ll turn it back up loud. Your ears can wear out real easy if you’re listening to real loud music for three hours. It’s just gonna sound like mud. When you turn those Augspurgers on, they kick. I’ve only seen one other person that has a more hitting system than that and that’s Dr. Dre. Nobody can compete with what he has going on in LA, it’s ridiculous.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Do you have a rough and a final that we can play off?

Young Guru

I tried to find a rough, I don’t know if I have too many roughs in here.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Well, do you have another example of something? You’ve talked in the past about the mixing process, perhaps even going in and doing extensive work on a sample, or having to isolate the frequencies.

Young Guru

What I would like to play – and there’s gonna be a point to this. When I go around now and I start to talk to people who are interested in audio, there’s so much you can do with the music. There’s so many plug-ins and there’s so many ways you can affect music that people sometimes start putting things on things just because. And sometimes you need to step back and listen to the purity of the music. One of the best things I ever did was start to do some jazz sessions. Coming from hip-hop and going to jazz is just a completely different approach. I have to span all these genres of music. In hip-hop it’s like, “I’m doing everything I can to make it the hardest thing, it’s gotta hit, it’s gotta knock.” Jazz isn’t like that. In jazz music, I’m taking two or three hours to set up the microphones and make sure every angle and phasing is perfectly correct. When you do a jazz session, you mix as the session is going on. Jazz artists expect to be able to knock out the whole album, maybe two albums, in a day. So it’s not this extensive, “We’re gonna be able to do exactly what we like afterwards.” Whatever is going on in that room is what they want on tape and you are just going. So you take all this time to get ready but then you just flow. Most of it is just fader levels. I may be pressing a couple of things, EQing a couple of things. But it speaks to you not getting in the way of the music. So this next record I’m gonna play, a record by Cam’ron called “Oh Boy,” it’s one of the proudest mixes that I have because there’s absolutely nothing on this mix extra. There’s maybe one reverb and everything else is the SSL. I didn’t insert anything on anything. The whole mix is just SSL because I’m pulling up faders, I’m starting messing with stuff and I’m like, “This sounds great.” It’s one of those examples where you don’t have to... Just because you’re in this room with Fairchilds and all this super-expensive equipment, you don’t have to. If you’re standing next to a Fairchild as an engineer you’re, “I have to use it, this is a $20,000 compressor, the greatest thing on earth.” But it may not be necessary. And you have to make those determinations and decisions.

(music: Cam’ron feat. Juelz Santana – “Oh Boy” / applause)

That too was a super fun record. They’re not overrapping the song. It’s not super deep, “We’re gonna have a discussion about the lyrics.” It’s just a fun song. And again, that’s what music is sometimes, is just having fun.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

With this specific record, I feel I’ve heard Just tell the story, where he didn’t even deliver a final version of it and it was already on the radio.

Young Guru

If you listen intensely he says my name in the song, he says, “Guru start popping ’em.” The original version ended right there. And that’s becasue Just had made this beat for Jay-Z and Cam had actually asked for this beat months before he did it. Just was, “This beat is for Jay.” So Cam kinda left it alone. Months later he’s, “Yo, he still didn’t use this beat?” Just wasn’t there and you have to understand during that time I’d have a DAT with 20 of Kanye’s [beats]. Kanye used to send monthly DATs. He’d be in Chicago and he’d send a January DAT, a February DAT and a March DAT. Just Blaze was already in the B room, that used to be his little environment, and he’d make a ton of beats. Jay might lke two of them and pass the rest around to whoever was in the studio. It was like a factory, that’s how we kept going. This beat was laying around and then one day when Cam came in and Just wasn’t there, he was like, “Put that beat up, I’m gonna a make a record to this beat.” But the “boy” thing wasn’t running through the whole song, so he had me loop it so that the “boy”s kept going. That was Cam’s way of locking in this record, saying, “This is my record.” Somebody could take a beat and make the record and we’d be like, “Oh, OK, well so-and-so artist did a better record to it so we’re gonna let them roll with it.” It was like the Motown thing, they would demo records with a bunch of different people and whoever came up with the best record, that’s who would win. We did this record, it was probably about three o’clock, 3:30 when we got done with this. And he was like, “Guru, put a rough mix on it, just make it good enough that people can hear it.” Every day in New York City at five o’clock DJ Enuff gets to play whatever he wants. There's a five o’clock free ride on Hot 97 where he can basically play whatever record he wants with no programming. It’s one of the only open formats left in New York City. If you know Enuff you can be like, “Here, play this.” So Cam basically took the record, went to Hot 97 and had Enuff play the record on the five o'clock free ride. So you make the record at three and it’s on the radio at five. But he did that to claim the record. “This is mine and no one else can take this.” It was dope and it kinda introduced Santana to people that didn’t know about him. Cam was already hot, but it shot him to real serious superstar status.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

This is a record you said you didn’t have to do any work on, relatively speaking. Do you have an example of something you did extensive work on, beyond normal? Then we can open things up a little bit for them to ask questions. As I mentioned earlier, you’ve spoken in the past about having to work with a sample, so something along those lines.

Young Guru

OK, this is one of my favorite records I have ever done. Has everyone heard of De La Soul? They’re probably one of my favorite groups ever. They made a record called “Grind Date” and I finally got to… I’ve known them for a long time, their road manager is one of my best friends, we went to school together. But I actually got to work with them on this album called Grind Date. There’s another guy named MF Doom who for us in the underground is sort of at god level, because he just exemplifies what we love in the underground. He wears a mask. He used to be in this group called KMD back in the day with his brother, but his brother passed away, so he just flipped it and made this new persona called MF Doom, where he takes from the Spiderman comics, that character. But he completely developed his own persona, so he wears a mask so that people don’t know what he looks like. That’s sort of the thing, it’s sort of the Miles Davis, turn your back to the audience, don’t pay attention to me, listen to what I’m doing. That’s what the mask represents.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

He’s gonna be here next week.

Young Guru

He’s an incredible artist. His music doesn’t really have hooks and stuff. It’s like pure water hip-hop. When other people have to put stuff in it, he’s just water, pure beats and rhymes. So this is a song by De La Soul that features MF Doom. The reason I’m gonna play this is because, in real life situations you don’t always get to have the music the way you want. Personally, I like the song tracked out, every sound. Every producer is not gonna do that. Some producers might just give you a two-track and be like, “I like the way it sounds.” I’m begging the producer, like, “Please, come on. I’ll come to your house and track it.” “No, this is the way I want it.” So sometimes you’re presented with two-track and thank God we’re in the computer age where I can steal the kick from here and come up with it and muffle it and filter it and figure out all these ways to make this record sound like the rest of the records on the album where I had a full multitrack and could do what I want to it. Sometimes you’re locked in to dealing with whatever the reality of life gives you. This is one of those tracks, but it ended up being an incredible record that is a staple on underground music. It’s called “Rock Co.Kane Flow.”

(music: De La Soul feat. MF Doom – “Rock Co.Kane Flow” / applause)

So there was vocal stuff going on there. Obviously, Jake One produced this and he killed it with the speeding up and slowing down of the beat. So then you’ve kinda got to match what you’re doing, effect-wise, with the vocals at the end. It adds on because Dave is saying, “Too old to rhyme, too bad, too late,” because it’s the last record on there and he’s making a statement that De La consider themselves old. Then he’s saying it’s too late because now you’ve just listened to their whole album and you’re at the end of it, so it’s kind of a play on words. So it’s like the stretching out. Sometimes effects are more what’s going on at the given time and what someone’s saying. Then it’s the slowed-down version of him saying, “Too old, too bad, too late.” I had to figure out little neat stuff to go along with the record. It’d seem stupid if they’re rhyming at the same speed while the beat is doing all this intricate stuff. You have to give credit to Jake for doing that with the beat and to De La for doing that. Then it’s up to me to go, “OK, I’m gonna do this and go along with what they’re doing to present the whole record that way.” So a lot of the time it’s based on whatever’s going on in the song, but I love Grind Date, it’s one of my favorite records that I’ve done, just because it’s De La Soul. It’s at a point where people expected them to be done, but they came with a great record. 9th Wonder produced on here and a bunch of people I respect and love did great stuff on that record. MF Doom is on there. It was also the only time I got to touch Dilla’s music and that was after he passed away. Dilla is one of my great favorites. If you just listen to anything hip-hop, J Dilla is the person you should listen to. His catalog will show you the complete range of what can be done with hip-hop music. He’s one of the greatest producers of this era because he took every single thing that came before him and put it all together then took it to another level. To me he’s sort of the Michael Jordan of hip-hop beatmaking. He didn’t care about the flash, the money, none of that stuff. He was just into making music. He’s probably the greatest representation I could give to someone, “This is hip-hop production, J Dilla.” Doom was on this, too; you should check out Doom. His album Mm.. Food to me is another hip-hop classic, very underrated. It really shows what can happen when someone thinks and is not on this commercial, “I really need to sell records.” Doom is very much, “I have a set audience and I feed them and that’s it.” Food is a great concept album. But Grind Date is definitely one of my favorite albums.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I wanna give everybody a chance to ask Guru a few questions as well. Does anybody have a question at this point? Please wait for the mic.

Audience Member

I have a geeky question.

Young Guru

It’s all good, I’m a geek.

Audience Member

Me too. I noticed you mentioned API. Do you ever use the Waves API or things like that?

Young Guru

Yeah, I think they sound extremely close to what it is. Here’s my thing with plug-ins and the actual thing: I think people make the mistake of going, “This is a replication of this.” If you’d never heard of API before in your life and someone gave you that plug-in, you’d be going, “This is a dope EQ.” But I’ve had five-hour-long discussions about, “Well, it doesn’t sound exactly like my 550B because when I did this, I had this analyzer up there it had a little bump…” Nobody hears that, nobody cares about that. If I gave you that plug-in you’d just turn it and say, “This sounds dope,” and move on. I think you’re comparing apples and oranges when you do that, you know what I mean? No two 550s or 550Bs are gonna sound exactly alike. In the real world, there’s a ton of things that make a difference in a piece of equipment. If I give you a 550 we’d have to both sit down and… we’re dealing with stuff that comes from the ‘70s, right? We would have to first of all re-cap everything. If you don’t know what re-cap is, the capacitor is the first thing to go, because it’s what holds the charge in any type of electrical thing. You don’t know what state that’s in, so the first thing I do if I’m putting something back together if I get an old piece of gear is re-cap it. I’m just giving that as an example. I don’t think plug-in’s and real gear should be compared. It’s sort of putting your mind in a general sense of where we try to go with this. But I think it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing that I can have an unlimited amount of 550Bs, like, right here. The plug-in thing is incredible to me, so I never try to argue, is it exactly like the real thing? It does a job and it does a job well. The Waves ones are extremely close to the real thing, just because those are my EQs of choice on certain drums. I think they did a great job. Waves and Universal Audio are killing the game with actually doing remakes of old pieces of gear. Also, in your mind you associate a sound with the visual picture of that piece of gear. I have a certain thing that I’m thinking about. Even when I turn around and look at a rack of gear and I’m making a decision on what type of EQ, compressor, whatever I’m going to use on whatever it is – be it a vocal, a sound, a synth, whatever – when I turn around and look and I know every piece of gear, the visual thing is automatically triggering a sound in my head. So I love that the interface looks like the real thing. But if you really just listen, I can flip it to the mode where it’s just sliders and you should be able to do the same thing. You understand? We’ve got to stop looking at the picture and arguing about, does that sound like the thing in real life sounds like? I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes that people make. Because it’s a pointless argument, apples and oranges. At the end of the day you can restrict me to just Pro Tools’ basic plug-ins or basic Logic plug-ins, I’m still gonna mix the record. It’s just that we have a greater plethora of things that we can choose from right now. But Universal Audio and Waves are really killing it. If I had to be on a desert island and I only have one thing, yeah, give me the complete Waves plug-ins and I’m good. Of course, I want the Universal Audio stuff because they’re doing a great job. Then there’s Altiverb is something that I probably can’t live without. But these are just my things that I go to on a regular basis because now I can replicate all my mixes in the computer. Because I have every single setting from the Eventide or every single setting for my PCM-70s or my PCM-60s. A beautiful thing about having those reverbs is that there’s rooms in New York City that aren’t there anymore. So people actually made convolution verbs out of those rooms before they destroyed them. Sound on Sound was one of my favorite rooms in New York City to mix and it’s not there anymore, but now I have the sound of that room inside a reverb. It’s sort of an ill thing. We’re losing rooms left and right in New York, so it’s a great thing to be able to have that particular sound that you’re so familiar with. I was pissed when Sound on Sound went. Pissed. It was one of the greatest rooms to mix in. I hope that answers your question.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Over here.

Young Guru

And you shouldn’t fall into, “These are just the classic things that people use so I’m gonna go to this.” It should really be about you listening to what it is. I’m not gonna say it, because I don’t wanna diss those companies, but there are some classic things that are shit pieces of gear, too, you know what I mean? That don’t necessarily sound good to me but have become known as classic pieces of gear. When I used them I was like, “I don’t know why people like this so much.” Something like the DBX-160 wasn’t really an expensive compressor, but then when I used it I loved this compressor and I’ve used it ever since. It just depends on what you like and what works for you.

Audience Member

I was going to ask you, clearly you’ve displayed a huge love for the underground music, from Dilla to Doom, and I found it surprising this year when Drake dropped Dilla, “Show Me a Good Time.” You’re in the pinnacle of the commercial hip-hop game. Do you not find it a struggle working with Jay? I know Just Blaze, he’s always talking about the underground, Hudson Mohawke or J Dilla or whoever, aren’t you ever tempted to say, “Jay, do a track with Doom?”

Young Guru

I’ve tried for a very long time to get him to rhyme over a Dilla beat. But at the end of the day I’m facilitating the best Jay-Z, whatever he wants. So we bring tracks to him from Dilla and try to explain who Dilla is, because Jay might not always understand. And Amir does this as well. Just tries to bring it to him. But it has to fit into what he’s doing. One of the hardest things for me is that when producers bring me tracks and I play them for Jay – you sat at home and you guys are gonna sit here and make a bunch of good music, right? But it just may not fit what we’re doing at a given time. Salaam Remi said this, one of the best statements I’ve ever heard. “It’s very easy to make a beat. The hard part is making the right beat for the right artist at the right time.” All three of those things have to be there. It could be an incredible beat but it may be for the wrong artist. It may be an incredible beat for that artist but it may be the wrong time. All three of those things have to be together. Once you understand that it becomes easier when someone denies your beat, because it may not be the right beat for them at that particular time. And we just haven’t come across the right beat. But I will play him Dilla beats for the next album; whether or not he chooses it is up to him. But believe you me that it gets played. I have stuff that I’m not supposed to have of Dilla’s, that’s how much of a Dilla fan I am. If Busta [Rhymes] has a CD that Common doesn’t have… You’ve got to remember that Dilla made beat tapes for specific artists, too. So I’m not supposed to have them, but if you have a Dilla tape around me, I’ma copy it.

Audience Member

Are people like Kanye and Jay-Z respecting someone like Doom’s lyricism? Or would they even be that familiar?

Young Guru

I don’t know if Kanye does, but I know I’ve played Doom for Jay and he gets it in terms of that. But here’s what you have to understand. Jay-Z has this huge fanbase, right? If you come to a show, he has a huge fanbase, and he’s said this to me plenty of time; this is his genius. If he just made records for me, they wouldn’t sell. That’s a huge point. People that are like me, that live and thrive in this underground thing and we love it, we’re also not the biggest buying audience of music. We are the downloaders and the “I have it first” people, and “I know someone in the industry” people. We are those people. The people that come to a Jay-Z show are from all walks of life. There are some people that I could play Dilla for and they’re like, “I just don’t get it.” There are people that I could play Doom for and they’re like, “I just don’t get it.” I give it to fashion. If we flip to fashion, I’m not a big clothing person. There are people whose whole life is fashion. My studio is right next to FIT – FIT is the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City – so I have a bunch of people who go to that school and that’s what they do. But when I buy clothes I don’t go in there and be like, “Oh, the way they cut this along the bias is wrong.” That’s the way we analyze music when we listen to it. When I go into a store I go, “I like these jeans, I like this t-shirt,” and I take it off the rack and I buy it. But for someone in the fashion world, they analyze the clothing the way that we analyze the music. So flip it and think about your audience like that. They’re not into music the way that you are. For them it’s the way we think about clothes. They just go, “I like it,” or, “I don’t like it.” You’ve got to think about it in that standpoint. Meaning I have to service a huge range of people, so when we make albums I have songs that are, like, OK, if I were to pull up our last album. “Run This Town” might not be peoples’ favorite, favorite song in my group of people. My people like “Already Home” or “DOA,” harder records that are saying a whole bunch. But if I’m super drunk in a club, am I really trying to break down lyrics and analyze all this stuff at the time? No, I’m drunk and I have this girl in front of me and I wanna dance. You have to know what that feeling is, because otherwise you’re missing the point and your audience is gonna leave you. So it’s about giving all these different forms on one album to please all these people. I just went to a Kanye show in Norway; there’s, like, people from every culture from literally 60 to eight and everything in between. So it’s about feeding those people and also doing something that you yourself wanna do. At the same time that I live with my personal taste over here, I’m also selling music over here. And it’s a business. What I had to do a long time ago was love my culture, and what I do in terms of my culture, and take my love out of the business. If you start loving the business, that’s when you getting the VH1 stories about people going crazy. Or people throwing their love into something that’s never gonna love you back. This is a business. Over here I just sell music and over here I love what I’m doing. It’s two different things, two completely different things.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I’m just trying to imagine Jay listening to MF Doom. Can you remember what you played him?

Young Guru

I’m not sure. There are certain things that I play for Jay just so that I know it’s on his consciousness. And there are certain things he plays for me. I’d never heard of Thom Yorke until Jay-Z played it for me. We kick ideas back and forth. He’s like, “Yo, have you ever heard this?” “No, have you ever heard this?” We just play music back and forth to each other. But I think I might have played Food. Food to me is just incredible. Doom just hit it. It’s him but it’s this super concept album that he doesn’t break. Every title has to do with food, every word in the album has to do with food, but he’s communicating all these other concepts based around this food concept. It’s an incredible album. And it’s so under the radar, nobody knows about it. To me it’s a hip-hop modern-day masterpiece.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

From his catalog it’s under the radar. But going off the last question, even on the original Blueprint there’s an example of the middle way. There’s this purist sensibility, but it worked totally in the commercial realm as well.

Young Guru

Then there’s “Bonnie & Clyde” on the album, which I completely hate.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

No, Blueprint 2. I’m talking about Blueprint 1.

Young Guru

OK, Blueprint 1 still has commercial…

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

“IZZO” is commercial because there’s a Jackson 5 sample.

Young Guru

I wasn’t too hype about “IZZO.”

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

From a song standpoint or a sonic standpoint?

Young Guru

From the fact that it’s a Michael Jackson sample. For me, I’m a beatdigger, you know what I’m saying? I spend all this time finding music that no one’s ever heard about or that I know my audience has never heard and is unfamiliar with. That would be like me flipping a James Brown sample at this point – it’s too easy, right? Then you have to bow down to the genius of it. The fact that it’s a Michael Jackson sample, Jay made a great record, it’s a singalong record. My son and my daughter at eight are gonna go… [sings] OK, great. We can put that on the radio and sell records. But we also have “Heart of the City” on there, “Never Change” on there, the song that’s going at Nas. There’s a lot of substance on there. It’s different if I come and just give you a steak. This could be the best steak in the world but if I serve it to you on a garbage can, you’re not gonna want the steak. So that’s why people take the steak and there’s all this stuff around it, they make the plate look nice, then there’s the presentation and hopefully it’s in a nice restaurant with some ambience. That makes your whole eating experience that much better. It’s still the same steak, you know what I mean? It’s how you dress that steak up and present it to the people. All that makes a difference. If you spent $100 on a meal and I serve it to you on a garbage can you’re gonna be, “What the fuck?” But it’s how I put it together and present it to you. At the same time I can make a “H to the IZZO,” service radio, and at the same time get back to changing where hip-hop is going at the time so people can respect it. You have to understand with your audience you can not just, “I’m doing me, I’m just doing me.” You can, but I guarantee you you will be in your room by yourself with you and your 200, 300 people listening to it on Twitter or Facebook or Soundcloud, whatever form on the internet that you’re getting it out on. You might think if you get a thousand hits that that’s some big shit, but it’s not. There’s billions and billions and millions and millions of people in the world and you’re trying to get your music out to as many people as possible. I’m not saying conform, but what I’m saying is understand you’re presenting something to someone and you’re actually asking them to buy it, so you have to service them to a certain degree.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Every piece of music once it leaves you has a certain life of its own to a certain extent. Who else has a question?

Audience Member

Can I ask a two-part question? The first part is what is your favorite gear that you use to produce beats?

Young Guru

This is gonna sound really esoteric, but I’m gonna give you this answer then I’m gonna give you the answer you really want. Your mind is the most important tool in producing the music you want. You could take all of that and just leave me this and I could make a hit record just beating on the table. But if you really wanna get into it, for years an MPC 3000 was like my toy, my baby, the thing I could work blindfolded by myself. I recently put that away and now I use Maschine.

Audience Member

I heard that it’s becoming a favorite.

Young Guru

It feels like I’m on my 3000, but with access to every single sound that I’ve ever sampled ever. What happened was I had a 3000, the 4000s came out, I transferred with the SCSI thing, hooked up the 3000 with a zip drive. So I took all the sounds in zips I had, put them on a 4000, so I’ve got all this stuff loaded on a 4000, I’m rocking. Then a lot of software stuff started coming out and the great thing about the 4000 was it had a CD on it, so I started burning CDs of all my sounds and put those in my computer. But it didn’t feel the same when I just had my MPC 3000 or 4000 programs in Logic. It felt weird and, when I’m hitting a key, I need the pads for it to feel like my machine. The same way a guitar player, you can make a guitar sound on the keyboard. But it’s not gonna feel the same as what you’ve been practising doing for years. For years my mind works in rows of four and four, if you can think about it like that. Even with the smaller MPC; when I got the 500 I couldn’t really deal with it because it’s three and three, so all my programs are four and four. It just works that way for me. So my favorite piece of gear is the 3000. The sound of it, I’ve never felt something that felt as good as the 3000. I’ve owned every Akai beat machine, I’ve owned pretty much every beat machine that ever came out. I really can’t mess with ASR. I know people that get busy with it – RZA gets busy with ASR, Alchemist gets busy with ASR – it’s just not my thing. I hate the sequencer on the ASR. But the MPC 3000 is probably my favorite thing. But on top of the real answer is your mind. That’s the best piece of equipment.

Audience Member

And the second part of my question is you are a guru and you’ve seen hip-hop grow over the last 30 years. Where do you see hip-hop going over the next five, ten, 20 years?

Young Guru

I think the international market is gonna completely take over hip-hop. If you notice what happened, it starts in New York City, then people on the West Coast were, “Hey, we’re dope too,” so the West Coast comes and has prominence. Then the South was like, “We’re dope too.” Hip-hop is always looking for the new thing, the next thing. It’s just like popular culture: What’s new, what’s fly, what’s next? So after the South got it, they’ve been able to maintain such a grip on it because of the fact when hip-hop went, for so long we were excluding the South. We actually looked at the South and were like, “Oh, you’re ’bamas!” Bama is a short word for Alabama, it means you’re country. Being from the city, you’ve gotta remember city guys have all the new clothing, the new slang, they seem slicker and hipper. And New York City always moves at a faster pace than any other place in the United States, right? So people are always up on the new things. So we kind of look at the South disrespectfully – not me personally, I’m talking about the culture of hip-hop. So the South and southern artists inevitably had to start with independent music. These are the guys who taught everyone else the independent game because they were forced to. These are the guys who were selling music out of the trunk of their car. If you notice in the South, people kind of band together, more than people up North. They have a whole network down South of how they used to distribute their music, which has made them stronger. This is the reason why they’ve had a grip on hip-hop for such a long time, in my opinion. When we had it, we didn’t really respect the fact that we had it. We were setting the styles and there was this elitist, “nobody can mess with us” type of idea. Then the West Coast came and just bust our ass. It wasn’t until Biggie came that we came back to a little bit of prominence. I’m talking about this as an East Coast guy. And the West Coast completely outsold us in terms of numbers. When Tupac and Death Row were dropping records, side groups like Dogg Pound were selling two million. This is a side group off of the protégé of the guy who was really doing it. Then you notice that the point we’re at now is a guy from Canada is one of the top dudes. Drake is from Canada, you know what I mean? He’s one of the top dudes in hip-hop. It’s gonna move to overseas. Somebody from overseas is gonna do exactly what Drake did. We would never have thought some guy from Canada was gonna be running hip-hop, but it’s gonna move overseas. Because it’s gonna be some different flavor. That’s the whole point of when I go overseas and I see people trying to emulate US artists and I’m like, “You’re doing it wrong, that’s not hip-hop.” Hip-hop is about taking your personal experience and expressing that through the culture, but expressing it your own way. So if you need to rhyme in your native language, do that. Half the people listening to reggae music don’t know what the hell the artist is saying. When I play reggae in a club, half the people don’t understand patois but they love the records. So rhyme in your own native tongue and be who you are. Be true to the culture of that’s what you wanna do. That’s just my prediction. I think someone from the UK or Africa or… I’ve heard great music everywhere. There’s horrible music and great music all over the world, and just I think the UK is just a little more hungry and advanced and feels like how the South used to feel. When I go to the UK they’re like, “Guru, why are they not listening to us?” And they have that urgency right now. They wanna bust in and be the guys; I think that UK hip-hop might be the next thing to really take over the scene.

Audience Member

[inaudible question]

Young Guru

Yes, absolutely. But that has to do with time as well. Cultural things, in terms of just being from a different place, and then time. This is the weird thing that’s happening in hip-hop right now, but it’s a beautiful thing. Never before has there been a genre – rock did this, but it was to a certain degree. n hip-hop you’re gonna have 50- and 60-year-old people that are gonna be in the same genre as a 15-year-old. And that’s sorta weird. Jay-Z is probably one of the oldest still-doing-it hip-hop artists. And I know there’s people older than him, but I mean super relevant, put out a new album and it’s on top of the charts this year type of thing, and this guy’s 40-plus. But he’s not supposed to be taking about the same thing as a 16-year-old’s talking about, because they haven’t had enough life experience. And I don’t know what it is to be 16 in 2011; it’s a completely different experience to come up with the internet and with social networking and all this other stuff. So I wanna hear the experience of a 16-year-old now, the new slang and how they talk. You shouldn’t be saying the same words we say, it should be your experience. I’m speaking to a younger generation. So there’s also this time difference of what it is to grow up in America or anywhere in the world as a kid now. I want all of that experience and I want my older audience. This is the problem that we’re trying to change, we’re trying to mature the culture. So the 40-year-old guy shouldn’t be talking about, “I’m in the club popping bottles.” OK, we’ve done that. Where’s the, “My mortgage is this, my kids are driving me crazy”? Real-life stuff that’s going on with a 40-year-old should be expressed in the music. When you start thinking about real grown-man stuff, all of that should start being expressed so we’re not rehashing old concepts or trying to necessarily be in the club. Not saying we don’t go out and party and have a great time, but that’s not my main concern as a 37-year-old. I wanna start hearing, “Me and my wife had this argument today,” or, “I divorced my wife and what that feels like, the effect it has on my kids.” All of these things should come into the music; that’s what will allow us to sustain our genre for real and not be just this passing phase or whatever it is. It’s one of those things that hasn’t happened before, so we get to be the people that do it.

Audience Member

You obviously live hip-hop, but outside of hip-hop where do you find inspiration?

Young Guru

Everywhere, everywhere. I could go down the line. As much as you hear me talk about hip-hop, it’s what I do, reggae music is something that I’ve loved forever. That’s culturally part of me. Just like reggae and dancehall is I think one of the purest forms of music on the planet. I love the expression that comes in house music. It took me a minute to get into grime and things like that, because I didn’t really get it at first. But then when I started to hang out with some of the UK artists I started getting into grime a little bit. But I find inspiration in all types of places. Because I may listen to something and do a certain thing with it, and then another genre may take that and do something totally different and I’m like, “OK, it’s dope.” One of the things I love about house producers, or should I say people that do dance music in general, they tend to have a greater respect for actually doing live effects, in terms of filters and delays and things. Whereas a hip-hop producer doesn’t necessarily get into that. I find that house producers tend to know how to program synths a lot better than hip-hop producers. They’re more into how an actual synth works. So it’s okay, now I can have that conversation with you whereas most hip-hop producers, they just bring up the patches. They may do little tweaks to the attack and the release, but they’re not really delving into creating your own sounds. I used to complain about that a lot. “Yo, let me make a sound for you.” This is like the guide. When I buy a synth, or I used to have the Trident or Trinity, the first thing I’d do is take all the reverbs off, the reverb’s just garbage. Then I would take the patch and change it to some degree so that everybody can’t have the same sound that I have. So that’s sorta what I pick from other genres of music, the things that we may be lacking as a hip-hop culture. But I listen to all types of music. Mudhoney are probably my favorite… It’s just something in me. If everyone’s on Nirvana I run to the other thing. In that moment when Nirvana was popping, I was Mudhoney all day. That was who my group was. I was like, “Mudhoney are killing Nirvana, they just don’t have a Kurt Cobain.” But if you go back and listen to Since We’ve Become Translucent, the very first song takes you on this super-long journey of audio. I can’t even call it [music], it’s just sound. It’s the most incredible thing to have this rock group playing… [makes guitar noise] and then these horns and stuff start coming out. You don’t expect that from an alternative group. But I find inspiration in that and the way it’s engineered is an incredible thing. So I probably listen to a lot more genres than any other person would listen to; people get stuck into their own genre. But the whole thing with hip-hop was to find drum breaks. So if you look in my drum break folder, we’re going from 2nd Chapter of Axe to 3 Pieces to the 5th Dimension, 7/11 to 10cc to 20th Century to AC/DC to Aerosmith. I have to go through every genre of music to find a drum track, right? That was the whole thing, find open drums so you can loop those up. It takes you to every single form of music.

Audience Member

I’ve got a question. Did you engineer “Empire State of Mind”?

Young Guru

Yeah. I didn’t mix it, I recorded it and I then gave that away to Duro because of the state we were in trying to finish that record.

Audience Member

That was probably Jay’s biggest tune, right? His biggest commercial tune.

Young Guru

Definitely. When I turn on my A&R hat, I knew that at that given moment, and I still gave it to Duro because I was like, “I know what you can do with this record.”

Audience Member

It went #1, right?

Young Guru

Yes, definitely.

Audience Member

Is that his first #1?

Young Guru

Yeah, that was our first #1 on crossover.

Audience Member

What do you mean, like Top 40 #1?

Young Guru

Yeah, I can have a #1 on the Urban/R&B charts…

Audience Member

He’s had tons of those.

Young Guru

Exactly. This is the first one that was #1 on every chart. It played on Z100 and Hot97 at the same time. For those that don’t know, that’s our super-pop station versus our super-urban station.

Audience Member

Pre-hype and buzz, was there a general feeling of, like, yeah, this is… you said yourself.

Young Guru

There was, but again I have to analyze things. The song was called “New York State of Mind.” So it wasn’t about, is this song good or not? I was thinking, “Am I alienating people who aren’t from New York?” The way the song originally was presented to us, Jay’s publisher, the guy that handles his publishing, brought us that record. The girls that wrote it, the hook, and the producers, they have the same publisher as Jay. So long story short, they brought us this record and I got a hit. They actually did a version where the girl who wrote it, she did a complete R&B song. So this was smart on the publishers part. He went to her and said, “Look, if you put out this record, it’s a great song. It’ll probably do some things for your career. Or you could let me give this record to Jay-Z and I guarantee at the end of this year you’ll buy a house.” Being a very smart woman – it was two girls that wrote the joint – they left the hook and took the vocals out. The story was really a “coming to New York” story. I’m from a small town, I wanna make it in the music business, the entertainment business, or whatever I wanna do, so I take that trip to New York. That was the perspective of the record. I wanted to keep that same perspective because that’s my story, I totally related to that record. So when Jay changed it and made it this New York anthem; we have those in hip-hop. They haven’t been as big as New York. This is sort of our Frank Sinatra hip-hop version of “New York, New York,” where Frank Sinatra has this huge record that would go on forever to represent the city. My thinking is am I alienating… People are very sensitive about... Is somebody on the West Coast gonna be in a club going “New York!”?

Audience Member

In the States your regional pride is so hot.

Young Guru

Yeah, it’s so hot, but the record transcended that. So it became this anthem for New York City but it also became this anthem of making it.

Audience Member

It was massive in Chicago. It was on the radio. I was like, really? I’m from Chicago but I live in New York. In New York I was hearing it all the time, but then in Chicago on the radio it was every four songs.

Young Guru

So that was my question: It wasn’t about the quality of the record, it was, are people from outside New York City even going to allow this to be accepted? There was another song a while ago called “Uptown Baby” that became this huge, huge New York record. But it was so big that it needed to spread to other cities where they actually went back and changed who they were shouting out. And they made versions for every single region, because you can’t just shout out Harlem. You’re not gonna get that response in Texas if you’re shouting out Harlem. So they went and changed the record for everyone. We didn’t have to do that. But to answer your question, yes, I was concerned about is this record gonna be big all over the world. And it ended up being a huge record. But I have to think about those things when we’re piecing together a record. The great thing about Jay-Z is my opinion gets considered. People who work in IBM or whatever company you work in, you can’t really go to the boss and be like, “Yo, I don’t really like the program we’re putting out, Steve Jobs.” God rest his soul. You can’t do that. So in my position, it’s a blessing to go to the boss. In the music business you’ve got to go through a lot of red tape sometimes to get to the boss, so it’s a direct thing straight to my boss. Now I say my opinion, I say it once, I argue strong for what I believe in, and then I leave it alone and let him make a decision. Now, once he makes the decision, my opinion goes out the window and I execute whatever his decision is, because he’s the boss. That’s how it rolls. But I know my opinion gets taken into consideration. But there’s a wisdom that Jay has that I may not have because of the fact that he’s in different circles than I’m in.

Audience Member

But he listens, right?

Young Guru

Absolutely, yeah. To be honest, there’s only four or five people that make up this group, that really have an effect on his decision in terms of, “OK, I’m gonna listen to this person, to this person, to this person.” Guru represents what we were just talking about, sometimes to a fault because people don’t think that I can think on a commercial level because I represent underground music. Whenever I make an opinion, you know that this is gonna service this. He does me a favor and services my audience first every time. They’re the guys in the barbershops who are gonna be like, “This is dope.” “DOA” is for us. “Kingdom Come” was for us. Every time the first record – it may not be the first single, but the first thing you hear from the album is for the streets, every single time. Because that’s what locks you in. Pop music comes and goes. They may mess with you this year; the next year they may not like you. And you’ve got to get back in good graces with pop music – that’s a game. You can play that up and down. Whenever you lose your core audience, they’re done with you, period. It’s much harder to lose a core and get them back. Pop is they’re gonna go wherever the television or the radio tells them is hot.

Audience Member

Have you got any tips or tricks for recording vocals at home for someone who’s got basically just a laptop to work with and some crap monitors?

Young Guru

I love this studio electronics, whatever that little thing is that wraps around the microphone. Somebody help me out. What’s it called? The reflector filter. I should’ve made that myself; I missed out on a lot of money. What I find the best thing to do is if you have a wall, if this is the wall [points behind him] I take the egg crates and put those behind you on the wall and then move about three feet out and have the studio electronics reflection filter there. The key is, though, you have to put the microphone in the middle of the reflection filter. I see some people have it sticking far out. It has to be in the middle of it. But if you do that and put the egg crates behind it, it gives me the effect of being in the booth and it’s one of the best things. But really the microphone technique is, if you’re dealing with, say, a Neumann, right? And it’s standing up, make sure you’re on the diaphragm of the microphone and not talking into the metal part. Some people have the microphone too high or too low.

Audience Member

Mine’s very low.

Young Guru

It should really match. Some MCs, I’ve had people tell me, “Yo, turn the microphone down like this so I can rhyme down like this.” I always try and convince the artists to rhyme directly into the diaphragm of the microphone, so I make sure that whatever the height is, the little circle you can look through is right there at the person’s mouth, that they’re not too close or too far away. If you’re too close, you can get so close that it creates this proximity effect so it gives you more bass. But you don’t wanna be so close that you end up having to take that out and it pops and all this stuff in the microphone. That, and microphones are great. There’s all these different qualities of microphones. I would spend more money on getting a quality preamp. A decent microphone with a quality preamp is gonna give you way better results than saying, “I need to go out and buy the $5,000 microphone.” That’s dope, that’s cool, but you can get away with a Rode NT and a super-dope preamp. The preamp has a lot to do with the sound of whatever you’re doing. So it’s really about where the placements of your vocals are. If you can get one of those reflection filters, I think they’re about $300. They really make a huge difference for people that don’t have a booth and are just recording. But the biggest thing is to not overdrive – unless you’re doing this on purpose – to not overdrive the preamp and let it go into the red. That’s the only thing a professional engineer can’t fix. If your vocals are coming in super low, it’s in the computer, there are things I can do to fix that. I may be turning up some room noise, but I can take some of that out. Just things that I can do to fix it. If you give me distorted vocals, I can’t fix it. There’s nothing I can do. So make sure you don’t hit the red.

Audience Member

This might be a bit obvious but I just want to ask you about your personal relationship when you’re working with an artist and he trusts you and lets you discuss artistic decisions. Does that also mean you’re not going to abuse that and go and discuss every little thought you have? You’re waiting for the time when it might matter to you and it matters to him.

Young Guru

It’s a balancing act. There are some artists where I do nothing more than press record, set up microphones, I don’t say anything to them because they don’t want that. Some people are just like, “I know exactly how I want my stuff, shut up and just record my music.” And that really is your job as an engineer. Then when you put on a production hat, you’re flipping into a different thing. So you have to know your relationship with that artist. You may suggest certain things and some artists are sitting there begging you to help them out because they don’t have the strong producer or whatever, and they’re just fishing around and they’re, “I like to sing, I know how to sing.” Or, “I know how to rap.” Something like that. It just depends. If I have one of those people, it depends on how far I get into the production bag. But if I’m completely doing stuff then I want some credit to a certain degree. A lot of times it’s a small mixture of things. As a mixer, if I’m given raw tracks and I’m the one who decides where to do certain drops and things like that, that’s part of production. It depends on the situation and the actual artists themselves. But you have to walk this fine line when you do that, because as an engineer that’s not really your job description. But you find that when you open up to people like that, they start to trust you more. And the more the people trust, you the better the relationship you’ll have with them, and a hit record kind of shuts everybody up. “Oh, I know what I’m doing.” You knew what you were doing before anyway, but now you have this thing called a hit record that backs up whatever you’re saying. You don’t get any extra money for winning a Grammy; it’s what putting Grammy-award-winning so-and-so adds to your résumé that brings everything else. You actually spend money to go to the Grammys. Seriously. Those type of things, you have to look at it like that. It’s an award, “This is who I am,” and it boosts your status. It’s not like something magical happened because I won a Grammy. But people start to get more comfortable with you after you have a certain amount of success or you’ve done something with someone for so long.

Audience Member

There’s not actually going to be more snare drum samples on your hard drive after winning a Grammy.

Young Guru

Absolutely not, no.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I think we have time for one more if somebody has one.

Audience Member

Is there anything you’re currently working on or planning on working on that you might wanna share with us?

Young Guru

Yeah, I can’t talk about it in depth, but I will say that the Jay Electronica album is incredible, and that’s all I’m gonna say. He’s a very special type of person, right? So he doesn’t like me talking about his albums, so I promised him I wouldn’t talk about his album anymore. But this happens once in a while – this happens all the time with me – I love my genre of music, hip-hop, so much that when it gets to be shit, I get mad at it and I walk away. I’m done, it’s just so commercial and so garbage, I’m just gonna fall back into a super-underground mode and not care about it. And every time it gets like that, something comes along that rejuvenates my spirit. I was feeling like that when I discovered J Dilla and then it went down again. I was feeling like that and then Little Brother came along [raises arm], rejuvenated my heart. Then I was feeling like that again [lowers arm] until Jay Electronica was working in the studio with Just Blaze and he told me to my face, “Yo, I’m gonna make you…” It was one of those days. We were into snap music and those records that come out, dumbass records that come out with no quality whatsoever, just about the whole gimmick of the record. I was like, “This sucks!” [inaudible comment from participant] It just depends, if it don’t have that substance to it, you know what I’m saying? I don’t like it. Then I’m forced to play it all the time in the club. Jay Electronica is the person that brought my feeling back for the music as a whole. He’s a very special, special, special artist and it’s not gonna be the normal hip-hop album. It’s just not. It’ll be a very big, huge worldwide record and that’s all I can really say about it.

Audience Member

Thank you.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

I think that’s actually all the time we have. The great thing is Guru’s gonna be here all week, so the stuff we talked about today – and there’s actually tons of stuff we didn’t get the chance to talk about today – you guys get a chance to build with him a little bit across the hall or at lunch or in the studio. He’s gonna be around. You can pick his brain a little more if you have a question that didn’t get addressed, and apply some of the stuff that he actually talked about.

Young Guru

Or make some music. That’s what this whole thing is about, just go in there and do it. The business is what it is, you can deal with that later. But you shouldn’t be doing this if you don’t love it, in whatever you do. That’s the whole thing. I say this all the time: If I didn’t love this so much I would not deal with it, because there’s so much nonsense that goes with it. But I love it. When you’re a little kid, my father was like, “The key to life is, if you were rich, what would you do every day?” I’d wake up and search for records. That’s me, that’s what I enjoy, that’s what I love. Don’t let anybody take away at any point your love of what you do. It’s always vibe over money, vibe over money, vibe over money. It has to feel right first. No amount of money should take away what feels right. And if it don’t feel right, no amount of money should make you do it. You’ll know when you’re broadening yourself or when you’re selling out for money; you’ll know. It’ll be a feeling. Just don’t go with that feeling; that’s the short money to sell out and do the commercial. But you feel like, “Oh my god, this is just totally not representing me.” Just don’t do it. Just let someone else make that money. Always vibe over money. Always.

Jeff “Chairman” Mao

Let’s say thanks everybody to Young Guru. [applause]