DX: So, you’re related to Donald Harrison?
D: I am related to Donald Harrison, where, we don't know. I know that he's my mentor and a brother to me, not a blood brother, (even though) we are related somewhere down the line. We haven't figured it out yet, but all of our family members look alike. I have co-produced Jazz records and Smooth Jazz records with Donald. I also had a part in some Jazz records that were deemed classics by the Jazz critics, and it was because of Donald and his appreciation for my talent. Donald is definitely a big part of my life, still to this day. Matter of fact, he does workshops with kids over the summers at his Jazz camp, and I get involved every summer and teach production for a day or two. He is really a motivating force in my current development and a very positive mentor in my life and my career.

DX: Speaking of the young musicians coming up today, how do you think the Internet has changed the process for a producer to get his work out to the masses?
D: I really think it gives cats false hope. Take me for instance, people get my e-mail address and send me tons of e-mails. First of all, I value my hardware and my computer, so I'm not going to open an e-mail from somebody I don't know. I don't want to get a virus. Then some cats will send me the same thing 10 or 15 times so I can notice it. That’s aggravating, because you're filling up my inbox with the same thing over and over again.

In some ways it has advantages though, I can't look at it totally negatively. At the end of the day, I think it's about building relationships. If my manger says you're going to send me something, then I’m looking for you to send me something. But if you send me something, and I don’t know who you are, I could get it confused with any kind of e-mail, "Make a million dollars in 10 days!" I could get it confused with that. I think that once you have the relationships you need developed, the Internet can be your strong tool. That saves me from spending $25 at Fedex for overnighting something, and I could get it to you the same day.

DX: Can you describe your creative process when you are making music? Are there any quirks or routines you go through when composing a beat?
D: I have one routine, and this is a quote from Donald Harrison, he said, "The music will tell you where it wants to go." That's my routine, I let the music talk.

DX: Being that you’ve worked on films, what's the difference between scoring a movie and producing an artist?
D: When scoring a movie, the picture is there. It's easy to match the sound to the picture, and match the feeling of the music to the picture. But it's more difficult, and you have to be a lot more in tune, to match the music to how the artist is feeling on any given day. I like to create for the moment, not the cookie-cutter, I’ll send you a beat and you do a song, because if you're not feeling it, the song is going to be wack. It's a lot more variables in it than looking at a picture and seeing it's a sad situation, okay, the music needs to be sad. With a human being, you're guessing.

DX: Moving on to the biggest album in the world right now, Tha Carter III, how did you link up with Lil Wayne?
D: I've been working with Wayne [click to read] for the last seven years. Tha Carter III [click to read] was a given, because I'm on his last two albums. I recorded the whole Carter I uncredited, and I recorded and produced on Tha Carter II [click to read]. On the DJ Khaled [click to read] mixtape, Like Father, Like Son, six of those records on there were mine, and they were all supposed to be for Tha Carter II. But some samples couldn't get cleared and stuff like that. Time got away from us, and they ended up not making the record, so they put them out right after the album, as [if it were] Tha Carter II, Part II.

The relationship between Wayne and I started when Ronald "Slim" Williams found me from asking around who was the best engineer that people knew in the region, and my name came up. I got a phone call from Slim one day telling me they needed an engineer; I thought somebody was playing on my phone so I really didn't take it seriously. Needless to say it was him, so they invited me to the house and we worked the next day.

When Wayne came through, he was starting on Tha Carter, and obviously it was produced by Mannie [Fresh] primarily. Then they found out that I produced, because I didn’t tell them. I was doing my own thing and I was determined to keep doing my own thing. I ended up with six records on Baby's Fast Money album [click to read]. Wayne was on two of my records on that album, and after that he just really started loving my music because it was a change from the norm. It had all of those elements that we talked about earlier in this conversation. It was allowing him to stretch as an artist and to see different things, because the energy was different in the music, and he was able to go different places and explore. For Tha Carter II, I was supposed to have three singles off that album. Two of the songs we couldn't get the samples cleared, and one of them got leaked; somebody lost a disk or something. Needless to say that was a disappointment, but it was also a blessing. For Tha Carter III, we linked up and the chemistry has been there, and we went in like five or six months straight and came out with that album. Continued on page 3 »