Backstory Of 50 Cent
Curtis James Jackson III, known as 50 Cent (after an infamous Brooklyn, N.Y., gangster), was born in Queens, New York in July 1975. By age 12, his mother had been shot dead and he was selling drugs, by 15 he was in juvenile prison.
Jackson had a passion for music and was signed to Columbia Records. However when he was 25, he was shot nine times outside his grandmother's house.
He was subsequently dropped by Columbia records and blacklisted from the recording industry because of his song "Ghetto Qu'ran". He went to Canada, releasing popular underground mix-tapes through the independent G-Unit label.
In 2002 a breakthrough came for 50 Cent. Eminem discovered the Guess Who's Back? mix tape. Eminem called Dr Dre and gave him the go ahead to fly 50 Cent from Canada to sign to Shady Records for $1 million.
Dr Dre and his Production Styles
Dr Dre, real name André Romelle Young, was born on 18 February 1965 in Los Angeles, California. He is an American super producer, rapper, actor and record executive. He is founder and current CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and former co-owner and artist of Death Row Records. He is an important figure in the popularization of West Coast G-funk (short for gangster funk), it's a style of rap music characterized by slow hypnotic grooves with a fat synth bass line, often including soulful keys, melodic synthesizers, and sampling of 70s records, normally parliament funkadelic songs often using an artificially altered tempo including a high-pitched portamento saw wave lead, resulting in a slower, more melodic hip hop sound but maintaining a hard sound. Dr Dre uses live instrumentation allowing him flexibility. In 2001 Dre told Time magazine, "I may hear something I like on an old record that may inspire me, but I'd rather use musicians to re-create the sound or elaborate on it. I can control it better."
Dr Dre was fascinated by George Clinton, Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield and they were a major influence on his music.
Equipment Dr Dre uses:
Akai MPC3000 (his primary instrument)
SP-1200-Sampler (DJ Quik who gave the drum samples to Dr Dre for In Da Club used this)
Minimoog Synth (for leads and basses, used by Dre In "Nuthin but a 'G' Thang")
Korg Triton (used In Da Club for the strings using Triton Racks.)
Mike Elizondo and his Production Styles
Michael Elizondo, born in Los Angeles California, started on the upright and electric bass, soon becoming a multi instrumentalist, producer and songwriter. He has worked with artists such as 21 Pilots, Ed Sheeran, JayZ and 50 Cent. His career took off after meeting Dr Dre through “a wild loop of personal connections”.
https://news.belmont.edu/grammy-award-winning-producer-mike-elizondo-shares-his-wisdom-with-belmonts
When Elizondo was working as a session musician for the recording of The Album, by The Firm.
Dr Dre was starting his new label, Aftermath, and was in search of new musicians. Elizondo explained his introduction with Dr Dre “I went in and learned what he was looking for, and he would just call me back to play baselines.” He worked with Dre as a session musician (bass, keyboards, and guitars), songwriter, and producer for the next 11 years.
Production Of In Da Club
The song was originally created for Eminem’s rap group, D12 by Dr Dre and Elizondo with the intention of it being on the 8 Mile soundtrack. They created a repetitive drum loop but D12 couldn't make anything of substance. Newly signed 50 Cent, was definitely interested. He recorded the track just over the drum beat in the basement of G-Unit Manager, Sha Money XL’s house in Long Island. Sha said “he is able to make the worst track sound good because he pulls melodies out of it". Much of the content on Get Rich or Die Trying was dark, 50 wanted to take this song in the opposite direction and make something that would always be relevant. He called it a celebration of life as every day it's someone’s birthday in the club, coming into the song with legendary lyrics “Go Shorty it’s your birthday”, an interpolation of The Birthday Jam (It's Your Birthday) by The Miami Bass DJs.
In Da Club has been sampled more than 90 times. Mary J Blige used the instrumental in her song "Hooked", In 2003, Beyonce used the instrumental in an unreleased song called "Sexy Lil Thug" and Kanye West has sampled the lyrics.
Michael Jackson apparently used to love the beat to the song, according to the comedian Chris Tucker in this hilarious clip.
Arrangement & Instrumentation
This is one of 50 Cent's most memorable songs. The beat has a repetitive feel and there are just a few arrangement changes throughout. The song starts with a catchy introduction, perfect for the club environment to get the crowd jumping immediately. 50 Cent goes right into the chorus after the first few bars, immediately intriguing the listener. A few instrument and structure changes keep the beat being one repetitive loop, The bridge comes in early after the second chorus creating tension, bringing more energy to the second verse and last chorus.
There are 5 main instruments used; layered orchestra stab, synthetic strings, muted rhythmic guitar, drums, bass. Elizondo said “we didn’t want to layer it up with too much stuff to clutter it up”, “Dre was using a concept of less is more but make it sound as big as possible”, which you can hear in the instrumentation and mixing style. He takes a different approach to songs like "Still Dre" going for a wide stereo mix.
The drum samples were given to Dre by DJ Quik , “I helped Dr Dre with the drums. I gave him those claps and that kick. He acknowledges that now”.
DJ Quik showed Dre a technique he called Interior Dynamics. In the 2000s they were getting their clean drum sound from audio editors such as Sound Forge and Call Edit. They would use the removed centre channel plug in(s), use an EQ, and EQ the noise out.
An alternative way to do this:
“I put out the drum machine, he started playing the breaks and Dre jumped up and snatched his hat off and said "how did you do that" and I started dropping him these crazy dope drum sounds and I wasn’t into doing DJ Quik records at this time so I was giving all my jewels like I become a diamond cutter”.
The shaker is dark, not much brighter than the strings, playing every 1/16 with every other 16th turned down in velocity. The kick is fat and dry but layered with a click it plays at 1/16 th , 4/16 th , 8/16th and 12/16 th within each bar. The signature claps are swung creating rhythm. They play just before the 6/16th, probably played on Dre's mpc, which can be created by layering two clap samples, where you play with the quantisation wanting one of the claps to have a long attack time leading into the main timbre of the sound.
Dr Dre uses the Korg, layering up staccato, an orchestra stab and pizzicato strings he is playing vi-v-v-vi-iv in the key C sharp minor. He plays A to G sharp which is on 4/16th, on the 2nd bar G sharp to A, 9/16th of the second bar is F# and G# on 12/16th. The synthetic strings played in the bridge are very dark but harmonically ascending.
The guitar is in mono and playing C# 16th notes. It changes melody just before the bridge and in the outro. The guitar fits perfectly in the beat and doesn't clash with any instrument but adds body and rhythm.
The bassline doesn't play the bass notes to the strings which creates harmonic content, they play E,C#,E,D#, F# and back to E. Every four bars they play B, C#. In the mix the bass has some stereo width.