And Then What Happened…Double-O Remakes Special Ed
June 25, 2009 by JLBarrow
Kidz In the Hall - “I Got It Made (09)” Reebok Classic Remixes
After watching Kidz In The Hall’s remake of Special Ed’s “I Got It Made” I hit up the group’s producer Double-O and asked him about the video and how he felt about remaking a classic New York hip-hop record.
It’s not my studio [in the video] but it’s all my same stuff. I didn’t want to shoot at my own crib and we just added some things in there to make it look a certain way. The 49 Key Radium, my keyboard, the Trigger Finger, I had Reason up. It’s pretty much all the same stuff, I just put it in somebody else’s spot.
It took me like a day and a half not to be angry anymore. For me being a very creative person I hate replicating. My biggest issue was “damn, they’re gonna make us do ‘Drivin Down The Block’ again”and that is not where I was trying to go at all. But that was the song we settled on so I had to figure out [something].
The first thing I did was go back and listen to the original sample [Ripple's " I Don't Know What It Is But It Sure Is Funky"] And what I noticed is that it was also the Kid-N-Play record [Rollin With Kid-N-Play]. That sparked a little light bulb for me cuz I was going to take it and try to incorporate that in there, so it doesn’t feel like I’m just doing [Special Ed] over again. That’s one of the things I knew was going to be in the beat.
Ripple “I Don’t Know What It Is But It’s Got To Be Funky”
The first iteration of it was in a similar speed to what it is now but still kind of like “Drivin Down the Block.” Very minimal. There was a break in it that had a little more music but I said “nah.” Initially I was gonna use the sample the same way but I realized that the young kids that listen to this don’t know “I Got It Made” so I can do whatever with it. So I did another version of the beat that was a lot faster, it was almost like on some club shit that was double the speed of the original and I didn’t really like that either. Then it came to this [compromise] where I can make it musical, make it feel big and everybody who listens to this “has it made.” And that’s where the third version came in. I just created a melody line based around the notes in the original sample but I didn’t have to incorporate that the entire time in the beat, so I could bring it in kind of like a jazz quote to the original. That’s where those breaks come in. The sample is in there in the last two bars of every loop. That’s how [the final] version came about. When we reach back it’s about the feel of hip-hop then, not about the sound of hip-hop then.
-as told to Jerry L. Barrow
Special Ed’s “I Got It Made”
Kid-N-Play “Rollin Wit Kid-N-Play”
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] To find out how he did it go to Nodfactor.com TAGS: I Got It Made 2009, kidz in the hall, Special Ed [...]
[...] this interview (That I 4got about) from Nodfactor…. My man Jerry did it and I always forget to ask him if he’s west indian cuz he has one [...]