Soul Diggaz Interview

DJ Booth:  What’s goin’ on ya’ll?  It’s your boy “Z,” doin’ it real big, and joining me inside the DJ Booth is one of the two men behind Keisha Cole’s hit single, “Let It Go,” Cheri Dennis’ current single, “A Portrait of Love,” and the upcoming Bow Wow and Omarion release, “Hey Baby (Jump Off).”  Please welcome K-Mack of the Soul Diggaz – how you doin’?

K-Mack:  I’m good, man; it’s a blessing.  How’s everybody doin’ out there in Chicago, Z?

DJ Booth:  I’m doin’ great.  Happy belated Thanksgiving.

K-Mack:  Same to you, my brother.

DJ Booth:  What is one of your favorite holiday meal side dishes?

K-Mack:  Side dishes?  I’m gonna act like a fat person right now, but I love some macaroni. [laughter]

DJ Booth:  I love macaroni, too.

K-Mack:  If the side dish is macaroni, I’m good to go.  You can keep the turkey; just give me some macaroni and some red velvet cake, and we good to go.

DJ Booth:  So, hold the potatoes and hold the stuffing, but if there’s macaroni, you’re a happy camper?

K-Mack:  Yeah, I’m a macaroni fan.  It’s so bad right now, ‘cause me and my brother blessed right now, and we’re on this whole health thing, and I can’t eat too much macaroni right now, but I can’t help myself sometimes.

DJ Booth:  What you have to do is eat it during the holiday’s and then your New Year’s resolution will just have to be no more macaroni.  So you’ve got two more months of macaroni-eating ahead of you.

K-Mack:  I know.  I definitely have to and I’ma enjoy all the macaroni out there.

DJ Booth:  K-Mack, give me the definition of a “Soul Digga.”

K-Mack:  A lot of people do music that doesn’t touch the soul, and it’s not soulful, heart-filling music.  So for me and my heart, “Soul Diggaz” is just the music that touches the soul – music that digs in your soul.  And we put the two together and call it the Soul Diggaz.  Because if it don’t touch the soul, then it’s not a record.

DJ Booth:  When you think soul music, when you think what touched your soul, what comes to mind?

K-Mack:  Dr. Dre, “Chronic,” your Bad Boy Biggie and Pac era, you know what I’m sayin’?  That’s music to me; that’s real soulful music.  And then you can go way back to Aretha Franklin, Minnie Rippleton.  You can take it far back to real soulful music.  I love a lot of the music today, but a lot of the music is just a fad; it doesn’t touch my soul.  It just touches me and walks right off.  I need that music that sticks to your ribs like macaroni!

DJ Booth:  [laughter] I’m sure a lot of people would agree with you.  Over the past eleven years, you’ve produced records for and with Mary J. Blige, Beyonce, Missy Elliott – the three, arguably, are the top female recording artists of the past decade.  Do you approach a studio session differently when the featured artist is someone of the aforementioned caliber?

K-Mack:  You can’t really approach it differently; you’ve pretty much gotta approach it in the same way, real open-minded, and treat every artist like you’re going into the studio with an artist that has less talent than them.  You’ve gotta show them that you’re just as talented, ‘cause you get more respect like that.  You can’t go in with your tail between your legs; you’ve gotta go with your chest stickin’ out and give ‘em the works.  ‘Cause at the end of the day, workin’ with Beyonce, workin’ with Missy, and all the other guys that we work with – they taught me a lot.  They go in the studio and they be themselves.  They take off their superstar uniform and put it to the side.  They go on and we just do music together, and it comes out better like that.

DJ Booth:  Producers that I’ve spoken with in the past, such as Cool & Dre, JR Rotem, and Swizz Beatz, all agree that when they finish a record, they have an idea of how they’d like that final product to sound once vocals are added.  Have you and Sean even heard the vocals to a record and then highly suggested to that artist that they might want to go back into the studio?

K-Mack:  Yeah, because sometimes a record is not complete.  Sometimes me and my brother, we do [a track] halfway, and we don’t complete the entire record utill the vocals is on.  ‘Cause once you start puttin’ the vocals on, it’s more music stuff that you wanna add on, ‘cause then you see another color, and you can add on, you can take away.  You might wanna add on other elements to enhance the music.  It’s just like puttin’ the final touches on it – like, once you cook everything up; you’re just adding the seasoning on it.

DJ Booth:  Let’s say Beyonce comes into the studio, and records some vocals for a Soul Diggaz record.  After she’s done, she looks at you guys, you look at one another, and you’re thinking, “Mmm, not what we had in mind.”  Do you share with Beyonce your wisdom and your knowledgeable suggestions musically, or because it’s Beyonce do you say, “You know what?  You’ve done just fine up until now; we’re going to let it go.”

K-Mack:  Naw, because that’s when the respect factor comes in, you know what I’m sayin’?  As me, as a producer, I don’t want Beyonce lookin’ at me like, “Well, this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing because he didn’t correct me.”  Even though they’re Beyonce or Missy Elliott, I gotta tell them what sounds good to me.  I have to tell them when I think they’re wrong; that’s the only way you gain respect, and that’s the only way you learn.  If you sit there and just be a yes man, “Yeah, Beyonce, that sounds good,” I have on my conscience at the end of the night like, “Damn, I know that didn’t sound good.  If only I could’ve said this, if only I could’ve done this.”  I wanna make sure I go in there, at the end of the night, I can rest because I did my best.  I told the truth about the record.

DJ Booth:  So true, because, like we both know, there are plenty of “yes” men in this industry; we don’t need any more of ‘em.

K-Mack:  No, we definitely don’t need any more yes men.  For all the new coming producers and vocalists, man, you definitely gotta be truthful to yourself at the end of the day.  ‘Cause that’s how some of the greats become great –they’re true to theirself, true to their art and their craft.

DJ Booth:  You and your brother formed Soul Diggaz back in ‘96.  It’s currently 2007 – do you feel it has taken too long for you guys to get the mainstream recognition that your work deserves?

K-Mack:  I used to think like that, but I just leave everything in God’s hands.  When it was time for us to shine, he let us shine.  It was a lot of developing and growth business-wise, that we had to learn throughout the years.  I think the talent was there, but business aspects, we had to learn a lot of stuff.  We did a couple of bad deals that stunted our growth, but it also helped us gain knowledge of the industry, and made us into who we are now.  I will never argue about the time situation; I’m just blessed that we got the opportunity to get our chance.  There are a lot of producers out there that have hit records, but they’re broke, because the business aspect sucks.  If it takes us two or three more years, just to learn the business even more, then I’m cool with it.

DJ Booth:  That experience is extremely necessary.  And just to think back: when you guys first started producing records, over ten years ago, the industry was completely different.  Now, in addition to retail, there’s digital and ring tone sales.  When you sign a deal to produce a record for an artists, do you charge an up-front, flat fee, or do you gain a percentage of future sales in all the different mediums that are available today?

K-Mack:  Pretty much do both.  Back in the day, it was more money.  Put it this way: [they] took more of a chance.  Now they’re taking fewer chances, because records aren’t sellin’ as much, and people’s jobs on the line.  They’re not taking as much chances as they did back in the day, as far as giving out big advances.  But to your question: yes, we take advancement on the first half, before recording, and second half upon mastering.  Then we also get a percentage of the record sales, the royalties, and the publishing.  You have to; that’s something that we didn’t know back in the day that we had to learn.

DJ Booth:  Are there any specific incidents where you produced a record for someone that at the time, you didn’t think would gain popularity, but in the end caused you to lose out on a lot of money?

K-Mack:  Yeah, there definitely was a record that we did, on Pras’ album, “Ghetto Superstar,” back in I think that was ‘98 or ‘97.  Pras, he’s a good friend of mine.  We did a bad deal with him, and the album winded up actually doing really well over the years.  We could’ve gained a lot more money than we did – it was just a bad deal.  But we had no knowledge back then.  We just wanted to get a record on the radio, get a record on.

DJ Booth:  You live and you learn.  Let’s go from a bad deal to a great deal: you just landed and imprint with Timbaland’s Mosley Music Group for your rap artist, Izza Kizza, and in-house singer/songwriter Corte’ Ellis.  What does this opportunity mean?

K-Mack:  It’s a great opportunity just to know that the years we’ve been puttin’ in a lot of time, and tryin’ to collaborate with so many up and coming artists, we finally get the one artist that listens, and you can go in the studio and come up with great records, ‘cause he’s a great artist and lyricist just as well as you are a great producer.  It’s just a great situation for us to have.  Timbaland acknowledges our production and sees that we’re very different; we’re not like the average producers out there that do a finger-snap record and try to get on a good ring tone.  We got diversity. 

DJ Booth:  When you hear the kind of production work that’s being churned up in the industry right now, a lot of simple production work is gaining a lot of notoriety and a lot of money through ring tone sales.  How hard is it to resist the temptation to produce a record that might rise to the top really fast, but doesn’t have any soul?

K-Mack:  Well, any record that’s a hit record nowadays is gonna become a ring tone.  Alicia Keys’ record, “No One,” right now is a ring tone, and that’s not a snap record; that’s a very soulful record.  It’s not just a snap record that’s gonna automatically turn into a ring tone; any record that’s doing good on radio, automatically is gonna turn into a ring tone record.  ‘Cause ring tone is generatin’ money.  Ring tone is basically like the new record sales.  Guys are sellin’ more ring tones than they are sellin’ records.  If you got a great record out right now, they’re gonna automatically ring tone deal with you anyway.

DJ Booth:  Your bio says that your early musical influences include the Fugees, Queen Latifah, and Naughty By Nature.  The Fugees unfortunately are broken up, Queen Latifah is into jazz music and acting, and nobody has seen or heard from Treach or Vinnie in a long time.  So if all three of those acts came to you, and asked for the Soul Diggaz to produce their comeback album, K-Mack, only choosing one, which project would you take on?

K-Mack:  Fugees.

DJ Booth:  Why?

K-Mack:  Because we had a great relationship with the Fugees.  My brother, Bless, him and Wylef was great.  He actually used to show Wyclef how to use the NPC-3000 beat machine.  And me and Pras had a great relationship, and we had a cool relationship with Lauryn.  And Treach – we knew these guys, but our relationship wasn’t as strong.  It’s just like a Jersey thing – we just love to see Jersey people come up.  I have a great relationship with Latifah; I actually got a chance to work for Latifah back when she was workin’ on an album.  This is back when she was really heavy into the hip hop.  But our relationship was with the Fugees and we’d just love to see those guys get back together.  But if we had a chance to work and do their album, that would definitely be the way that we would go.  Not even that they’d sell more records, it’s just because of the relationship, and we feel the music more.

DJ Booth:  Hopefully, you guys will get that opportunity, because I’m sure that everyone would love to hear a Fugees’ reunited album.  Give everybody a website or a Myspace page so they can find out more about what you’ve got coming up and all the projects you’re working on.

K-Mack:  Yeah, you can go souldiggaz.com, there’s a link to our Myspace page and you can go check us out.  Big ups, and I appreciate you out there listening.  Soul Diggaz for life, man!  Look out for the new Izza Kizza comin’ out.

DJ Booth:  K-Mack, I appreciate your time greatly.  I wish you nothing but the best of luck, and we’ll have to definitely keep in touch into the future.

K-Mack:  Yes, yes, yes – appreciate you too, brother.  Thanks a lot, Z.