Mannie Fresh Premiers New Mos Def Collaboration, Talks Making Juvenile’s 400 Degreez With NPR (Video)
Veteran Bounce producer and DJ Mannie Fresh sits down with NPR Hip-Hop to discuss a myriad of topics including his work with Cash Money Records, Lil Wayne’s career, working with Mos Def, and the lack of diversity on the Hip-Hop horizon. Along the way, the Big Tymers co-founder also premiered some of his new work with the Brooklyn native now known as Yasiin Bey.
One of the most interesting subjects included Mannie’s pre-Pro Tools era work with Juvenile on 400 Degreez (3:00), a project the New Orleans artist refers to as the most quintessential Mannie Fresh album. The album was fashioned as if they were a multifaceted band, playing out the instrumentals live in the studio as Juvenile spit his bars simultaneously. This free spirited, uninhibited act is a rarity in today’s Hip-Hop, and was one that Mannie described to be in the mold of “an old Marvin Gaye Motown session.”
“I mean the thought process of how it came together. It was no pressure. It was just spur of the moment, you know. And if you listen to some of them songs you can probably hear us in the background countin’ em off, and we didn’t really sequence hardly anything on it. We played everything down. So I think just the process of how we did it was just incredible.”
Check NPR Hip-Hop, which now has Ali Shaheed on staff, out for the whole scoop.