DX: A lot of artists collaborate these days via Internet. When you listen, how often can you tell? Like, “This is cool, but they definitely weren’t in the studio together”?
SR: There’s people that have gotten to the gift of songwriting where they’re able to [do that]. I prefer not to. I hardly have time to just do tracks for track’s sake, and if that’s the case, a lot of time it’ll be tracks that are left over from my actual session with an artist. I prefer to vibe directly off of an artist and be in the same room. There’s so much more that can happen when you’re getting someone’s direct feedback. But to me, most of the music right now sounds similar because [artists] get it to sound great on MP3 before it’s even completed. Because of that, a lot of intros to the tracks sound similar, the way they move is similar, because you’re trying to impress someone. You don’t know what mood they’re in, what vibe is going on, what’s going on in the room where they’re listening to it. For me, when I’m creating, all that makes a difference. If my artist comes in in a bad mood, maybe we’ll make a sad song, or maybe we’ll make a happy song that’ll change the mood. It’s like a life reflection. I think we all want music that’s some type of life reflection as to what’s going on at that time. … A lot of industry stuff is cookie cutter at this point. As much as the artists may come out and people say, “Is Hip Hop dead or not,” or “Is R&B dead or not,” or whatever else it is, the music is still going, and it’ll never stop. But we of course know that more creative times in the music [are in the past]. Everyone knows that. But at the end of the day, the radio doesn’t come off, things keep coming out and we keep working with it.

DX: You’re in a real interesting spot. You’ve produced hit records and you have a crazy catalog, but you still aren’t on as many top producers lists as other people may think you should be. Do you think anything has held you back from being a household name?
SR: I think it’s my personality, that I really wasn’t trying to be a household name. My goal is not necessarily to be an artist, per se, on the level of if you walk down the street and see Salaam Remi next to Jermaine Dupri or Timbaland, people who have taken on the artist factor, rapped, and do different things. I prefer personally to be more in the cut, look at things as an old school producer. You know who Quincy Jones was, but Quincy Jones had years of a career before he produced [Michael Jackson's] Thriller and people on the outside knew who Quincy Jones was. I look at a producer’s producer type of career for myself, where I’m able to work on many things. The fact is, I don’t really say my name on the beginning of a record I produce, and the records I do produce don’t sound the same, so you’re listening to it and getting the artist more than me. So if you name all the artists I worked with or the songs I worked on, they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know he worked on that.” I didn’t want you to know; I wanted you to buy that artist and buy the album. That’s just something I feel more comfortable with, working behind the scenes and making sure everything goes. As far as being rated, I think it’s cool, but the reality is that for whatever label presidents and people in the industry, I’ve got a good grip on who’s who and what’s what. I’ve been doing it for so long, most of the people who were interns during my career have seen the vice president spot. So I’m cool with it.

I don’t really mind. … Whatever may be hot now may not be hot later. I’m not a really trendy person; I don’t mind not being a certain lists now, because I feel like it all comes back in. If you look back at the body of work, it doesn’t move. I’m not necessarily doing it for props; I’m doing it to add to music as a whole.

DX: When did you realize that you and Nas had the chemistry that you have?
SR: The majority of records for Nas that I’ve made, I make in front of him. He’ll walk in and say, “I wanna do blah blah blah,” and we’ll work on it. Or, we actually talk a lot, so it’ll be based on a conversation. With “Made You Look,” we were having a conversation about how Flava Flav looks in the [Eric B. & Rakim] “I Ain’t No Joke” video, when he’s in the park dancing with the clocks on, thinking about what the music sounded like in that park-like atmosphere. If you look at the “Made You Look” video, they captured part of it when Nas is standing up in the Rucker Park and the camera’s going on around him, it’s was based on that same energy. So, most of the records that we make are based off of conversation. … This past weekend, we were at my house, going through records listening to stuff that we felt had a particular sound to it, and that’s going to be the influence for his next album. We’re music listeners first of all, and the more we listen, things just come out that have a certain energy to it. Of course, the root is still Hip Hop, the root is still Queens. We love [Public Enemy's] "Rebel Without A Pause" and certain records gave us that push and energy. But he also trusts me enough that if he’s doing something, I can tell him to switch his voice or something like that. We have that type of relationship. Continued on page 3 »