Pursuit of Happiness

Do you believe that you can be happy? Life is pretty pointless if you can’t at least BELIEVE that you can be happy.

I had the pleasure of interviewing two really dope producers recently, DJ Green Lantern and Pete Rock. As a hip-hop fan and amateur beatmaker this made me very, well, happy. Pete is known as the king of hip-hop remixes and Green Lantern is quite appropriately called an evil genius for the blends/remixes he does of hip-hop songs. (He also produced Ludacris’ “Number One Spot” and Busta Rhymes’ “In The Ghetto” among many others.) So I asked them both what the secret to a dope remix is and they both said, “excitement! You want people to hear it and go ‘oh shit.’” Green is also clever with his remixes and blends, bringing in several familiar themes to create whole new compositions. He’s crazy enough to blend Junior Mafia’s “Get Money” with 50 Cent’s “I Get Money” and find some way to make it work. So I went home and thought about what they said and took a stab at a new remix.

At first this started out as a remix of Nas’ “One Love.” So I figured I’d sample songs with the word “love” in the title and took the intros to Jill Scott’s “Love Rain” and Chico Debarge’s “Love Jones.” I thought the latter was particularly clever because Nas’ last name is Jones. Get it? So I was playing and tweaking with my new found piece of Fruity Loops software, the FPC. I shunned it as being a hella corny attempt at an MPC for more than a year and just recently decided to try it out because I was bored. Come to find out it has a bunch of precomputed drum patterns that I could fill with my own kicks and snares. I liked using it as a foundation because I could adjust the tempo on it much easier than an imported break like say “Impeach The President.”

So I had my drums and started bringing in the parts of Jill and Chico and liked what I heard. I even brought in little vocal chops from Chico and Common (love, love, love like this) but it just didn’t fit. It was way too romantic for what Nas was talking about. So I went looking for some RnB pellas and found Mary’s “Be Happy” and adjusted the tempo to just a bit (they’re almost identical believe it or not.) And as soon as Mary started singing I said, “that’s it.” I rearranged some of the melodies to build up and come down to match her singing and when I was done I really felt like I had a new song. So enjoy the JLB remix of Mary J. Blige’s “Be Happy.”