10 Things We Learned From Mannie Fresh's Microphone Check
Producer talks new Yasiin Bey album, Tha Carter V, and more.
1 / 11
Go D.J. - It's a rare treat to hear Mannie Fresh speak. Without words, he's been changing the landscape of pop culture and bridging the gap between New Orleans big band music and hip hop since the '90s.The live instrumentation on "Back That Azz Up" and the drum patterns on "Bling Bling," for example, certified the Cash Money team in the mainstream ("bling bling" was even added to the Oxford-English dictionary) and his new album with Yasiin Bey is doing something similar, connecting the bounce of the South with one of the most thought-provoking lyricists. ("It's hard to get him to rap like that," Fresh said of the artist formerly known as Mos Def.)In a special sit down for NPR's new Microphone Check series with Brooklyn-born DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad (of Lucy Pearl and A Tribe Called Quest fame), Fresh not only drops a Bounce ver...
2 / 11
The Mind of Mannie Fresh - Of all the bangers Mannie Fresh has made, he still feels like he hasn't yet created his quintessential hit. "I like a lot of the songs I've done, but I haven't had that moment yet where I just wanted to just back up from the drum machine and be like, 'd--n, that's it," he said. The closest he's gotten? "It wasn't a song, it was an album, it was probably Juvenile, 400 Degreez."(Photo: Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for BMI)
3 / 11
Set It Off - What made 400 Degreez so special to Fresh? For most of the tracks, there were actual musicians in the booth playing live as Juve rapped. "It was a great process," Fresh said.(Photo: Rick Diamond/BET/Getty Images for BET)
4 / 11
Number-One Stunna - Fresh got his start as a DJ and he's been spinning ever since, but he's still amazed when he plays some of his own music, like "Go D.J.," and sees "the crowd go nuts.""It's weird being a DJ and you have a playlist of your own songs that you could hold it down for an hour," he said. Is he shy about playing his own material? "Not at all."(Photo: Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Sirius)
5 / 11
Like a Boss - Fresh's dad, a street DJ who apprenticed Fresh early, keeps him in perspective. "My dad is my biggest fan," he said. "He'll go to a wedding reception and he comes back and he'll say like, 'Man, they played 'Back That Thang Up,' then they played this new stuff ... You think they gonna play that B-S 10 years from now at a wedding reception? They still playing 'Back That Thang Up!' So you know, to have your dad high-five you on it, it's like 'I'm still here!'"(Photo: Jerritt Clark/Getty Images)
ADVERTISEMENT
6 / 11
Hood Rich - For the record, "Still Fly" does not include a sample of the theme song from Gilligan's Island.(Photos from left: John Ricard / BET, Jemal Countess/Getty Images)
7 / 11
Bring It Back - Of all the artists he's worked with, said Fresh, Lil Wayne positively challenges him the most. The two have been in the studio together working on Tha Carter V, and it's the first time they've collab'd on an album since Weezy's first in the series, released in 2004. Also, Wayne will change something in his music if his momma doesn't like it.(Photos: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
8 / 11
The Very Best - Yasiin Bey's first album since he made his moniker change is a collaboration with Fresh, and the lead single, "Let's Go," has all the thump and thought expected from the two. (Check what happens when the beat drops, it's magical.) But getting their two regionally distinctive sounds to blend universally wasn't easy. "Our process is this," Fresh admitted, laughing, "... we gotta listen to him talk for two or three hours, we gotta let him get it all out, he gotta give us all his conspiracies theories and all of that, then we like, 'OK, dude, you good? You ready?'"(Photos from Left: Johnny Nunez/WireImage, Aaron Davidson/Getty Images for Echoing Soundz)
9 / 11
This Should Move Ya - Besides his father, one-half of the hip hop duo Mantronix, DJ Kurtis Mantroniks was a major influence. "You can hear that in Mannie Fresh all day long. His snare rolls, his triplets, he was the first one who was tuning 808 drums ... I think he was way ahead of his time."(Photo: Skip Bolen/Getty Images)
10 / 11
U Understand - Hurricane Katrina (which touched down in New Orleans in 2005) had a major impact on the sound of the city. ("It's gumbo to me ... New Orleans embraced everything," Fresh described.) But afterward, "[The hurricane] it took away the whole essence of what was going on," he said. And, "It brung a lot of us closer together and showed me, personally, what's more important than everything: your family first before all of that."(Photo: Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Sirius)