Stumbled onto this piece of gold the other night thanks to TR Love – Angus Batey’s interview with Kool Keith and Ced-Gee for the liner notes of the Roadrunner edition of Critical Beatdown! Of particular interest was Ced’s breaking down his involvement with Criminal Minded:
Ced-Gee: Me and Scott [La Rock] grew up together. I knew Scott’s whole family. With BDP’s Criminal Minded, my input was more of showing Scott how to use the sampler. When the SP-12 came out, a lot of engineers just looped. But I would take sounds and chop ’em up – even if it wasn’t a full sound I’d make it sound full. I was the first person to chop samples on the SP-12. Soon everyone was doing it. [KRS-ONE] would bring the record, I would take it, chop it, rearrange it. I did the whole album, apart from four songs. I didn’t do ‘Criminal Minded,’ ‘South Bronx,’ ‘My 9mm’ and ‘Elementary,’ but I did the rest. But I got jerked on the credit. Scott kept telling me to stay on the back of the guy who ran the label. ‘I’m telling you,’ he said, ‘he’s sheisty’. I’m like, ‘Nah, he said he got me’. And when it came out, it didn’t say ‘Produced by Ced-Gee and Boogie Down’, it said ‘Produced by Boogie Down, special thanks to Ced-Gee’. Me and Scott didn’t fall out, but it cost me money.
Keyboard Money Mike also gets a mention when they discuss the creation of ‘Ego Trippin”:
Kool Keith: I borrowed the Melvin Bliss record from my friend in Parkchester, New York. We looped it, and I put a bassline on there. There was this guy named Mike with us, he was doin’ production with Ced’s brother. They had an R&B group. I got Mike to go in the booth and say ‘Ultraaaa!’ And we made the voice deep with effects. So he said ‘Ultra’, we pitched it up, and from then on, the record hit the streets.
RT @unkut: Ced-Gee confirming that he programmed six of the beats on ‘Criminal Minded’ http://t.co/vYgHtdHzcK
No surprise as far as Ced’s involvement in Criminal Minded. I wonder if Keith is talking about Trevor (from Parkchester). Probably not. I’m sure he would have just said Trevor/TL. But as far as Keyboard Money Mike’s involvement in Ego Trippin’ I thought he said in his interview on this site that he not only said “ULTRA”, but he replayed the piano/keyboards instead of sampling the Substitution stabs.
Im glad i tweeted that story to TR, it made it around to Unkut!
I remember reading those reissue liner notes and then noticing the very Ced-esque snare overdubs on “Criminal Minded” afterward — “Super Hoe” being a very obvious case.