"Rap Ethics Question: His producer timeshifts my effing flow." Fri Feb-07-14 11:22 PM by Jon
I write and record 1 verse each for 2 songs on this dude i think i'm kinda friends with's album in late 2012.
The album comes out December that year and to my horror, his half-baked "producer" actually time-shifted parts of my vocal track on both songs so my flow sounds all fucked up. He did the same thing to another dude's keyboard part on the album.
The producer acts like an utter jackass about it and is canned by the artist from any future projects
This unnamed artist/exec-producer (who has a decent cult following) tells me he's uncomfortable with me reusing these verses for my own project or purposes, but agrees to cut and release remixes that I'll produce with the shit done right.
This all took place between Nov 2012 and Feb 2013
It is now 2014
For a year, this dude has danced around the topic of getting in the studio, and now I'm starting to get mass-texts from him advertizing for everyone to come out and see him and his newly-signed rapper perform at this gig or that gig.
Yall think its cool at this point for me to just say "fuck it" and use those verses for my own shit by this point?
I feel I gave him ample time, but he prolly feels like I gave them to him. But my sense is, as an emcee, you do that under some expectation of not having your shit mangled and presented to the listening public.
1. "I have nothing to add other than:" In response to Reply # 0
Talib Kweli: “I remember seeing the promotion for it and thinking, 'Kanye has an album coming, I wish I was a part of it.' And then he called me. I sent him what I recorded on the road. When I rapped on that beat, I rapped on a different part of the beat that you hear. I sent it to him, but when I heard it, I was frustrated. Imagine you rapped on one part of the beat and you hear it moved to another part, and it starts on a different part. People loved it though. Kanye did it by mistake but it was a beautiful mistake. When I first told him, he said, 'Oh shit. I get it but I like it.' When you send someone vocals through e-mail, it could be anyone's mistake -- an engineer, or it could have been that Kanye heard it the way he heard it and that's the way it got laid."
8. "they didn't pay me. i have credit. i hear u. i'm actually" In response to Reply # 4 Sat Feb-08-14 10:42 PM by Jon
ok with playing around with vocals or even flow if its a remix or the artist/vocalist is on the same page. Sometimes they're just laying some basic vocal parts down for you, which i get. There's no expectation or integrity of a performance to mind.
but i'm utterly amazed someone can fathom thinking its cool to fuck with someone's verse like that on an original (or a serious singer's performance, like imagine Ella Fitzgerald getting all shifted and tweaked in the wave forms before we ever got to hear her true performance)
but yeah, i'm leaning toward using them eventually. hope i don't burn any bridges
5. "FYI: He didn't shift the flow on purpose for effect. He messed up when" In response to Reply # 0 Sat Feb-08-14 08:04 PM by Jon
trying to fuck something else up.
The producer wanted to delete a fairly important word of mine (which is fucked up as it is), not because it was an undesired word, but get this: he thought the vibrato i used was odd.
So instead of being a medium piece of turd and just muting out the word, he actually deleted it from the wave file, thus causing everything after it to move up in time.
He didn't realize he did this until i pointed it out to him.
that's the more egregious one.
the other song, he must have been playing around and shit (like i saw him do with other things when i was there in the studio, shaking my head), and would up manually putting my track back in *roughly* the right place, but just a shade off where its not hitting right anymore. Keyboard player told me same thing happened to his part on a song lol
9. "if your next post is "i kicked his mothafuckin' ass"..." In response to Reply # 5
i'd thoroughly understand.
i've seen people get fucked up for less.
did this guy even apologize for making you look/sound foolish? he's fucking with your reputation. who knows who is gonna hear his bullshit and be hearing YOU for the very first time and forming a solid opinion about *you* based off of HIS fuck up?
10. "The ''producer'' did not apologize. He said its his perogative. The MC" In response to Reply # 9 Sun Feb-09-14 06:05 PM by Jon
did apologize. And he canned that other dude after a number of other mess-ups that he was ultra defiant and defensive about. Its his upstart label, he's the one with the resources and connections, etc. He's a real nice humble dude i go way back with, but for whatever reason he hasn't given me the opportunity to rectify the situation. I figured he was too busy for music (his first excuse almost a year ago -- and it is like a side thing for him still). But then now I'm getting those adverts about "come see me and new rapper rock the joint at x and y location"
That's why I want to just go ahead and do my own thing with those verses (they weren't throw-away battle rhymes or something...they were incredibly deep and thought-out concept pieces), so maybe they can be heard right by at least some people out there.
And yeah thats what kills me. a good number of people(including enough industry heads) heard or will hear that crap.
"You can take an African out of Africa, but you can't take Africa out of the African" Afro-Americana/Afro-Caribbana/Afro-Latino unite. We are ALL Black!
"You can take an African out of Africa, but you can't take Africa out of the African" Afro-Americana/Afro-Caribbana/Afro-Latino unite. We are ALL Black!
17. "So I texted him yesterday." In response to Reply # 0
With the remixes in mind, etc
"We still doing this music thing?"
he replies (paraphrasing): "I sent you the flyer for my show with so-and-so. I'm still producing him and had our first live concert together last Thursday"
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