He was also a founding member of the production collective known as The Soulquarians (along with Ahmir " Questlove" Thompson, D'Angelo and James Poyser amongst others) which earned him more recognition. 2, creating a new following for J Dilla as a producer and an MC. Performing career Ģ000 marked the major label debut of Slum Village with Fantastic, Vol. He handled production on seven tracks from The Pharcyde's album Labcabincalifornia, released in the holiday season of 1995 and Hello, the debut album by Poe, released earlier that year on Modern Records. Under this umbrella, Jay Dee produced original songs and remixes for Janet Jackson, Busta Rhymes, Brand New Heavies, Something For the People, trip hop artists Crustation and many others. However, he was given songwriting credit on all of his non-remix productions under The Ummah. Many of these productions were released without his name recognition, being credited to The Ummah, a production collective composed of him, Q-Tip and Ali Shaheed Muhammad of A Tribe Called Quest, and later Raphael Saadiq of Tony! Toni! Toné!. īy the mid-1990s Jay Dee had a string of singles and remix projects, for Janet Jackson, The Pharcyde, De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, A Tribe Called Quest, Q-Tip's solo album and others. And at that time, that’s when Ruff Ryders and there was a lot of hard shit on the radio so our thing was we’re gonna do exactly what’s not on the radio. I guess that’s how the beats came off on some smooth type of shit. But like I said, I understand to a certain extent. I mean, I ain’t never carried no goddamn backpack. Not the backpack shit that people kept putting out there like that. Me, myself, I hung around regular ass Detroit cats. It’s kinda fucked up because the audience we were trying to give to were actually people we hung around. It was like a nigga from Native Tongues never woulda said that shit. Niggas was talking about getting head from bitches. I mean, you gotta listen to the lyrics of the shit. I thought the music came off like that, but we didn’t realize that shit then. That was actually a category that we didn’t actually wanna be in. It was kinda fucked up because people automatically put us in that category. However, Jay Dee said that he felt uncomfortable with the comparison and often voiced it in several interviews. Many journalists compared Slum Village to A Tribe Called Quest. Upon its release in 1997, the album quickly became popular with fans of Detroit hip hop. In 1996, he formed the group Slum Village and recorded what would become their debut album Fantastic, Vol. In 1995 he also recorded 'Yester Years EP' with 5 Elementz (a group consisting of Proof, Thyme and Mudd). In 1995, Jay Dee and MC Phat Kat formed 1st Down and became the first Detroit hip hop group to sign with a major label ( Payday Records)-a deal that was ended after one single when the label terminated. This is where Fiddler introduced Q-Tip to Jay Dee, who gave Q-Tip a Slum Village demo tape. Fiddler, while playing keyboards with Funkadelic on the group's slot on the 1994 Lollapalooza tour, met Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, who were also on the lineup. In 1992, he met the Detroit musician Amp Fiddler, who let Jay Dee use his Akai MPC, of which he quickly gained mastery. During these teenage years he "stayed in the basement alone" in order to train himself to produce beats with his growing record collection.
He also took up beat-making using a simple tape deck as the center of his studio. The three formed the rap group called Slum Village. After transferring from Davis Aerospace Technical High School to Pershing High School, he met classmates T3 and Baatin, and became friends with them through their mutual interest in rap battles. Īlong with a wide range of other musical genres, Yancey developed a passion for hip hop music. His mother said that he could "match pitch perfect harmony" when he was a pre-verbal infant. His parents had musical backgrounds his mother, Maureen “Ma Dukes” Yancey, is a former opera singer and his father, Beverly Dewitt Yancey, was a jazz bassist, and performed Globetrotters half-time shows for several years. The family lived in a house on the northeast corner of McDougall and Nevada, on the east side of Detroit. James Yancey grew up in Detroit, Michigan.
0 kommentar(er)
