R&B is that music you love to hate these days. You tell your homies that you don't listen to it and you diss it all the time but when the candles get lit and your girl comes over, it is the first thing you dig out of your hidden stash. Groups with names that always seem to slip your mind are readily available when the time is right. Something For The People is one of those groups that has that song you like or they made the beat for that track that you just love hearing on the radio but your are too afraid to admit it. Well this time around they brought it straight to your face by putting Tash and Xzibit from the Liks on their album and making tracks you can't help but bob your head to as they dare you to go out and buy their album. And as they told me in a recent interview they have no plans of being hidden any longer.
JC: Now you guys are on album number three have you found it to be an easier process or is it a harder process?
Fuzzy: It's like this label it's always musical chairs so every process is a different process. This one seems a little harder right now because of the choice of the first single that we choose which is "A Bitch With No Man."
Cat Daddy: You know just coming off of "My Love Is The Shit." Then going there. What we wanted was shock value.
JC: Do you feel you have received it with the track? Like talking to people and hearing it on the radio and the responses.
Fuzzy: You know a lot of people won't play bitch so you lose some of the edge I think.
Sauce: Like we've done "Trick With No Man," "Girl With No Man." But none of those really have the same effect as "Bitch With No Man."
Fuzzy: Feel the anger.
Sauce: I mean there is even a version where we just kind of cut the word off and just play a little flexitone sound on top of it. People get it like that. It kind of has the same kind of feeling but for the most part once people see the title, they kind of shy away from it unless they know what it's saying. Once they know exactly what it's saying then they are like "Ok, I know somebody like that."
JC: Is it hard leading an album off with a song like that?
Fuzzy: Hell yeah. Here is the think which is probably the craziest concept, you have a ballad, not a love ballad, and it has the word Bitch in it.
Cat Daddy: It's groundbreaking in a sense. I mean you go back to ballads, ballads are like love.
Fuzzy: Ain't nobody going to propose on this record. It's not going to be in no weddings. So it's like a lot of hurdles.
Cat Daddy: It's been tough but it's not really a thing that we felt like was going to make or break the record. I think we've gotten a lot of people out of it to. We've gotten like a lot of guys, I mean guys who come up and are like "I love that song. Man y'all hit it right on the nose. I was waiting for somebody to say something like that. When is this shit coming out. I'm going to get it."
Sauce: Then you got the girls to from the shows we be performing at, they be there sitting in the front row and pointing at they girl. "There she go right here."
JC: Was that a hard song to make when you finally got the concept for it?
Sauce: No.
Cat Daddy: No
Fuzzy: Flowed like water. We had too many words.
JC: You guys do production as well as song writing, is it more of a challenge because there are three of you or is it easier?
Sauce: It's easier.
Fuzzy: Get in where you fit in.
Cat Daddy: Sometimes somebody can start something that you can't really necessarily finish and Sauce will come in and do more to it. Fuzzy will do his thing. It's like tag team. What may have ended up as a scrap, might end up as a bomb song.
JC: Does each person have their own roles or does everyone just do it all?
Sauce: For the most part Fuzzy handles the lyrics and the melodies and the vocal arrangements and me and Cat handle the music side.
JC: So how did you decide to have the one extra producer on the album for the first track?
Cat Daddy: Somebody brought that track to us.
JC: And you said that's the shit, I gotta have it.
Cat Daddy: Armando. The guy who wrote it with him his name is Ty. He told me about it before I even heard it. "I got this song man it's y'all. It's got Something For The People written all on it." And he had the hook. So he brought it by and the next thing I know we got Xzibit on it.
JC: How did those collaborations come about? You've got Xzibit on that track and then Xzibit again and Tash on another song.
Cat Daddy: We did "Last Call" first. And you can't do last call for alcohol without the Alkaholiks. So we called them and they were down. I mean we are always Xzibit and Tash in the clubs. Then we got a hold of that other song "Now You Want It," so let's call X. He came over and you gotta get the blunt and the Hennessy and he's straight. "Yo this shit is hot. I got some shit for this." He be sittin' there writing and then he be laughing.
Fuzzy: I mean it's a trip to see somebody do into their craft.
Cat Daddy: I mean if I smoked and drank the Henny like he was, I would never make it to the booth.
JC: Now do you guys have any studio rituals? Is there anything you have to do to make the song right?
Fuzzy: Show up.
Cat
Daddy: When we were doing one of the ballads we turned off all
the lights and had a mic in the middle of the room.
JC: Did you go through a lot of tracks to dwindle it down to the 13?
Fuzzy: Yeah we took a break because we had, I think, some Will Smith production. So we took a break and then we came back and was like "this sucks. What the hell were we thinking"
Sauce: We had to start over. We kept "Can We Make Love."
JC: You have a big track record as far as production for other people, are you sought after often to make tracks for people?
Sauce: Not as much as we would like.
Cat Daddy: For us it's probably more of an availability thing. Back when we first started we would kind of like cross paths we people all the time. And it would be on that kind of vibe. It would be like "let's hook up. Let's work and write and do this and that." As artists we would pass at that same show, "hey what's up." It's like for a minute we had switch the hats. We had to put on the artist hat and support the record. But I love writing and producing. That's where our hearts lie.
JC: So is that what eventually you are going to evolve to, just writers and producers in the studio?
Cat Daddy: Yeah. You know in about five years I want to look like a producer. Gain about 50 to 80 pounds. Just be big and be sittin' at that board. You know I'm ready to look like a producer. It's funny because they start off like that. They look like that young now.
JC: Being producers you guys have done your share of sampling, what are you feelings on it?
Cat Daddy: Sometimes you just come down and you will do something off the top of your head. You will create just music. Right now I just like getting records that nobody ever heard of. Particularly Hip-Hoppers or whatever. I mean you can take a Lawrence Whelk album and make some funky shit out of it. That's creative. I'm into that type of thing right now. Not necessarily taking something that was already hit but like getting something. I love doing something when everybody listens to it and they hear the sample and they are like "what the hell is that. Where did you get that shit from."
JC: Who have been your favorite artists to work with over the years?
Cat Daddy: Eric, Trina and Tamara, Will (Smith), Tash and Xzibit.
Fuzzy: But you know what for the most part the most learning experience we had, had to be Brandy. Because she was just a kid and she was nervous about coming out. She didn't know if she was going to make it. We were new producers.
JC: This was her first album?
Fuzzy: Yeah.
JC: Did you do the whole album or just certain tracks?
Fuzzy: Everything that wasn't a single.
Cat Daddy: Four tracks.
Sauce: We cut about eight to ten songs.
JC: What artists are you trying to work with that you haven't had a chance?
Sauce: Everybody. Stevie. Kelly Price. Lauryn Hill.
Fuzzy: Mary J Blige.
Cat Daddy: We definitely want to get in the Hip-Hop game.
Fuzzy: Canibus.
JC: Would you ever step into the rhyming side of Hip-Hop or just stick with the production?
Cat Daddy: Production.
Fuzzy: We've got a rapper signed to us, Diablo.
JC: When did you guys get together and really start putting music out?
Cat Daddy: 1990, 91.
Fuzzy: I tricked Sauce in to coming out here from Oakland because this cat promised us the world.
Sauce: We recorded about four songs a day.
Cat Daddy: Then when we all moved together we used to do demo's for people in the neighborhood for rent. We were writing it and producing it and paid our rent. We did that for a good while. Before we knew things just started happening and we started getting real work.
Fuzzy: Nobody could ever sing or write or anything but they always wanted a demo.
Cat Daddy: When we did Brandy she was in our apartment singing in Sauce's bedroom. Daily, on the regular.
JC: So was that how you started, doing production before you came out with your own stuff?
Cat Daddy: Yeah. We got a deal in 1993 with Foster and McElroy as artists.
Sauce: We were supposed to be stand ins but they couldn't do. They like got this deal but they couldn't do it because they were obligated somewhere else.
Cat Daddy: This was like in '93 we got the deal over there and then Capitol got rid of the whole black music department. Then we left and got a deal with RCA and we were there for all of like six months. Then in '95 we were with Warner Bros. So we rolled it up 2000 and we are still with Warner Bros.
JC: So has it always been Something For The People?
Cat Daddy: Yeah we were Something For The People at Capitol and Something For The People at RCA.
JC: Now how did you guys come up with that one?
Cat Daddy: That was shit we used to say between all the homies and we would see a girl that was hooked up and we would say "she got a little something for the people." It just stuck. We said it all the time.
JC: If you had everyone in music listening to you, what is the one thing you would want to tell them?
Sauce: Listen to the songs on the album.
Fuzzy: I can write them but I can't flow. If I could rap I would battle everybody. Because I've got battle rhymes. I'm just a big fan and I'm jealous pretty much.
Cat Daddy: Just work.
SDU