I think that there’s so much more to music than we even think about. “If you want to get to know somebody, just let them pick out their top ten records. “If you want to get to know somebody, just let them pick out their top ten records.” And the idea is to be able to take them on a journey where they want to go but do something that they wouldn’t have normally have done without you.” You have to know the personality of the artist and where the artist is trying to go. “I always looked at what we did as more being a tailor as opposed to going to buying your clothes off the racks in a department store. Ranging from Public Enemy to Paula Abdul, Ice Cube to Lisa Stansfield, or from Peter Gabriel to Slick Rick. The Bomb Squad custom made material for the specific individual artist. The Bomb Squad’s ethos of working together with an artist and creating exciting experiments caused them to be one of the most sought-after production teams. Or build a bridge between the East Coast and the West Coast so that it was no longer two different coasts in hip-hop.” Shocklee adds: “But there were some similarities there because we’re all coming from the street perspective and I also wanted in that project just to create a culture of unity. While in the West the sound was more laid back and melodic. And I thought that it was interesting that Ice Cube would choose to come to the East Coast to make a record when there was such a divide between the East and the West Coasts in terms of sound, in terms of ideas.”Īt the time the East Coast sound was faster and more aggressive. “We got an artist that came over from Los Angeles by the name of Ice Cube. With the successes of PE and projects at Def Jam Recordings, Shocklee shares another first. That’s why I don’t redo, repeat projects.” Spectrum City would become Public Enemy and the production crew The Bomb Squad. “I’m very interested in being the first at doing things. #BOMBSQUAD MUSIC HOW TO#And that B-side had gotten more plays than the A-side! It showed me that if I wanted to do something in the music realm I would have to learn how to do it pretty much myself.” So they gave me an opportunity to do the B-side, which we produced, called Check Out the Radio. “We were making demos already for local artists that were around that tempo and we just wanted something that was going to represent what I thought was the streets at that moment. And it sounded like a dance record and I heard something a little bit different, I heard something a little slower, somewhere around 90 beats per minute.” It was a very up-tempo record, I believe it was around 122 beats per minute. And there was a producer by the name of Pinky Velazquez who produced the record. The music was still in the electro phase. “It was in the early days, before hip-hop even really caught on. ”It was kind of like thrust on me by accident when me and Chuck, and my brother Keith, had recorded a single under the name of Spectrum City.” “I never really wanted to be a record producer,” Shocklee reveals. It would seem that the logical next step would be in record production. Hip-hop radio shows lacked access to an abundance of commercial material to play on air, thus the Spectrum DJs began to create mix and production content for the show, gathering techniques as they created more material. Playing what was then the new music of the underground, hip-hop, Shocklee broke into radio with his friends, creating the Super Spectrum Mixx Show, one of the first radio shows to feature hip-hop music. And so everything that I did in my entire life has been centered around records.” My parents gave me allowance money for doing little chores around the house and I’ve been buying and listening to records so intensely that it’s almost like I became a part of them. Hank Shocklee shares how music fascinated him early in life: “I’ve been an avid music buyer since I was able to almost walk–since I was 5 years old. ( Words: Malik Qadr | Photo: Michael Benabib)įrom starting in the music world by managing a heavy metal record store to becoming a concert promoter and radio DJ, to working within the record industry. The Find talked with the producer about some of his insights on contemporary music and the path to the future. But also a keen sense of purpose that he shares. What’s more, it is not just his bio, case examples, and technical skills that Hank Shocklee possesses. The vision of the co-founder of Public Enemy and The Bomb Squad is the development, insight, and need for change that is the impetus for exciting new sonics and frequencies. He turned the process, format, and technique of music production on its head. Music producer, composer, record industry executive and Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Hank Shocklee helped change the face of music.
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