House of Hits: The Story of Houston's Gold Star/SugarHill Recording Studios (Brad and Michele Moore Roots Music) (48 page)

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The Writing’s on the Wall
and 2001’s
Survivor.
In 2003, the most famous member, Beyoncé Knowles (b. 1981), issued
Dangerously in Love,
her fi rst solo CD, winner of fi ve Grammy Awards. By 2005, the global superstar trio—Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams—were mainly pursuing independent careers, but they were still hugely popular. In her 2005 article “Destiny’s World Domination” Julie Keller reports that they “were the big winners at this year’s World Music Awards, taking home trophies for Best-Selling Pop Group, Best-Selling R&B Group, and Best-Selling Female Group of All Time.”

Along their way from anonymity to unprecedented success, there were some controversial personnel changes, well-publicized disputes, lawsuits, and settlements—which sparked some negative backlash among fans and in the media. Yet Destiny’s Child, conceived and managed by Knowles’s father, never wavered in their rapid climb to the highest peak on the pop cultural landscape, and the three core members continue today to enjoy multimedia success in a variety of ventures.

Yet during a key phase in their metamorphosis into a triumvirate of world-famous music and fashion icons, they recorded some of the most noteworthy Destiny’s Child tracks at SugarHill Studios.

Workman collaborated extensively with Destiny’s Child on their second and third albums and with Knowles on her solo debut. He explains the group’s SugarHill connection:

Ron Wilson sent Matthew Knowles and Destiny’s Child to us. . . . They [already] had a Top Ten hit with “No No No,” which was produced by Wyclef Jean on their fi rst album. They were working on their second record and wanted to fi nd a more comfortable place to do their recording.

He

fi rst brought Beyoncé in here to see if she would be comfortable.

Beyoncé came in, and I did vocal karaoke sessions with her. . . . We did several sessions like that, and then Matthew brought the rest of the girls in to begin working on their second album.

That’s when we rented all the gear from Dream Hire in Nashville for their producer, Kevin Briggs, alias “She’kspere.” He was from Atlanta and had just come off the [girl group] TLC’s [hit] record, which was huge. We set up shop in Studio B . . . [and] we recorded six or seven songs, [ four of which] wound up on that record
Writing’s on the Wall.
I did most of the sessions, but . . .

Ramon Morales covered a session, and . . . was hired away from us to tour with them and handle all their live sound needs.

When Morales departed, Christensen took his place. He describes his involvement in the Destiny’s Child sessions:

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I did a lot of interning with Dan Workman and Ramon Morales as they worked on the
Writing’s on the Wall
CD for Destiny’s Child. Later I engineered the Bee Gees cover they did called “Emotion.” I also did a song for them that went off to Disney Productions. I was the engineer for Dan when he cut the guitar parts for the song “Dangerously in Love 2” that became the title track for Beyoncé’s fi rst solo album. I worked with her sister Solange on a number of tracks. In between all of that, I subbed for Ramon on their fi rst European tour.

SugarHill Studios thus played an important behind-the-scenes role in the major phase of Destiny’s Child’s ascension. By engineering numerous hit tracks in the studio, as well as providing talent for their sound needs on tour, we were participants in their success.

The megahit album
The Writing’s on the Wall
included the SugarHill-produced tracks “So Good,” “Hey Ladies,” “She Can’t Love You,” and “Bug-aBoo,” the last of which peaked at number thirty-three on the
Billboard
Hot 100

pop singles. That album reportedly sold approximately eight million copies in the United States and another twelve million worldwide.

SugarHill Studios was even more involved in production of
Survivor,
with six of its songs recorded there. Of those, four became Top 10 singles.

“Independent Women Part 1” and “Bootylicious” both reached number one on the charts; meanwhile, the title track single went to number two, and

“Emotion” peaked at number ten. The two other SugarHill-recorded tracks were “Gospel Medley” and the original version of “Dangerously in Love.” The album debuted at number one on the
Billboard
charts and reportedly sold over three million copies in its fi rst two months of release, eventually reaching the rarefi ed quadruple-Platinum status.

Workman recalls the SugarHill sessions for that album:

For their third album,
Survivor,
. . . the recording took place over a much longer period of time. The previous record with She’kspere was done in a concentrated chunk of time. By now Beyoncé was really producing the group.

They were buying tracks from highly qualifi ed programmers and writing words for them. The sessions took place in Studio A and B. . . .

Beyoncé would be driving over to the studio listening to all these tracks that had been sent to her, and she would pick out her favorite. When she got here, she would immediately start writing lyrics for the song and fi nish it right there in front of me. For the song “Bootylicious” she wrote all the lyrics for it right in our Studio A. Then she taught the song to Kelly and Michelle, and all three of them worked on the vocals together. Unlike the previous
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album where Beyoncé did 95 percent of the vocals, for this their third album, the other girls were much more involved.

“Bootylicious” started out with the Fleetwood Mac sample “Edge of Seventeen,” and I thought that it turned into a phenomenal song. I remember Matthew calling me the next day and asking me what had the girls done. The day before had been a fourteen-hour day in the studio, and we had fi nished the song completely. So I told him that we had done the song

“Bootylicious.” He said, “What?” And I said, “Bootylicious.” And he said,

“Bootylicious?” I could tell he didn’t like the sound of that at all. That all changed when he actually heard it, and, of course, it became a big hit.

In addition to being impressed with Beyoncé’s on-the-spot skills as a lyricist and producer, Workman also was awestruck by certain aspects of her musicianship, particularly regarding timing. For example, he says,

“Gospel Medley,” [which] was released on the
Survivor
album, . . . was also placed on Michelle’s solo [2002] gospel record,
Heart to Yours,
and that was done here. . . . Before we started recording it, I asked Beyoncé if she wanted a click track, or metronome, for the song. She said, “No, it is a
rubato
song with tempo changes.”

Then I said, “Well, would you like some kind of pedal tone or synthesizer pad to sing over to use as a pitch reference?”

She said, “Oh no.” . . . I thought, wow, this could be a big mess. Well, I was wrong. She sang it perfectly in tune, and the timing was great. She put all her parts on it fl awlessly, and so did Kelly and Michelle when it was their turn. It turned out to be an astonishingly beautiful multilayered gospel med-ley.

The good working relationship established between Destiny’s Child and SugarHill Studios even led to a recording project for national television.

Workman provides the context:

MTV did a special called
The Road Home.
It was about stars going to play in their hometown . . . [and] one of the shows was on Destiny’s Child. . . . The concert was at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. MTV called us to record the live performance. I assembled a combination of J. P. Rappenecker’s remote recording rig and ours to do a forty-eight-track digital tape recording of the concert that could be locked up to video.

Given the group’s moneymaking success, Destiny’s Child’s manager Matthew Knowles eventually bought a valuable block of real estate (contain-2 4 0

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Destiny’s Child, publicity photo, 2002

ing a three-story nineteenth-century house and other buildings) in Houston’s Midtown district; there he established his Music World Entertainment offi ces

and installed a state-of-the-art private recording studio. But prior to that, we staged one last SugarHill session to record a remixed version of “Dangerously in Love” for Beyoncé’s fi rst solo album. The new treatment of the song, called

“Dangerously in Love 2,” won a Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, while the album earned the Grammy for Best Contemporary R&B Album in 2003.

Workman describes how he came to play on that song:

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I was cutting vocals for it and doing mixes of it. I noticed that the nylon string guitar sample was so bad that it was embarrassing to listen to.

Beyoncé really liked the song a lot. . . . So I called Matthew and told him that vocals were going well, but that the guitar part on the song was really bad and that I could cut it again and make it better. He said, “Do it.” . . . It was my fi rst credit as a studio musician on a Platinum-selling single and album.

Despite the excellent track record that Destiny’s Child and Beyoncé had established as clients of SugarHill Studios, that relationship ended once Knowles created his Music World Entertainment compound. “Ramon Morales, who used to work for us, was engineering in their studio,” Workman notes, adding, “So basically our run with Matthew and Destiny’s Child was pretty much over.”

But what a fi ne run it had been for SugarHill, one that enabled it to start a new millennium as a reenergized hit-making studio.

in addition to recording best-selling material for the contemporary R&B and pop market, in the early twenty-fi rst century SugarHill Studios got involved in the rap scene. That transformation started with our brief affi liation with the New Orleans–based label called Cash Money Records. Founded in the early 1990s, Cash Money achieved a 1997 pressing and distribution deal with Universal Records. Several of its artists—including Juvenile (b.

Terius Gray, 1975), Lil’ Wayne (b. Dwayne Michael Carter, 1982), and producer Mannie Fresh (b. Byron O. Thomas, 1974)—have now risen to superstar rapper status, and SugarHill played a role in one large production.

That opportunity arose at the suggestion of musician Rick Marcel (b.

1966). In March 2001 he came to SugarHill to record the foundation tracks for a song in an upcoming Universal fi lm release, which starred several Cash Money recording artists. Marcel produced all the instrumentation and sang the scratch vocals. We then sent the tapes to Sigma Studios in Philadelphia, where the group Unplugged added the fi nal vocals. This small project led, in April and May of 2001, to a gathering of various so-called “Dirty South” rappers at SugarHill Studios. Workman explains,

They found us through guitar and bass wizard Rick Marcel. Rick had been working with them at Carriage House Studios in Florida, and they had been talking about going to Houston. Rick Marcel steered them towards us. . . .

They wound up staying for about two and a half weeks, working around our regular clients.

The presence of a large assemblage of self-proclaimed gangsta rappers proved diffi

cult for the SugarHill staff . Cash Money had booked studio time
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for one week but actually took over twice that long, confl icting with other scheduled productions. “Those guys would show up fi ve or six hours late for almost every session, like it was no big deal,” says Christensen. “It’s like a giant parade when they arrive somewhere.” Workman adds,

They were the most disrespectable bunch, and we had just a miserable time with them. . . .

Amazingly, they told us when they left that they had never gotten so much work done before. A lot of that had to do with the quality of the engineering staff they were working with. Part of it had to do with the fact that we didn’t have a swimming pool, or pool tables, or a basketball goal so that people could slack off and leave the engineer sitting waiting for the next session.

I must say that none of the sessions ever started on time, and they certainly fi nished way later than we expected.

Among this large entourage of Cash Money artists were Lil’ Wayne and Mannie Fresh, as well as label cofounder Brian “Baby” Williams (b. 1974, aka Birdman) and the West Coast rapper called Mack 10 (b. Deadrick D’Mon Rolison, 1971). Various others were there, including an all-girl group called S5 and a boy band named Unplugged (aka Offi

cial). Workman elaborates on

the sessions:

Lil’ Wayne was the most talented, and Mack 10 was the aggressive, bad-attitude guy. Mannie Fresh was the resident producer for all the rappers, and Baby was the chief musical programmer. I think we had as many as thirty reels of two-inch tape working with DA-88 digital slave tapes, and Pro-Tools sessions all running simultaneously. On some days they were using both rooms at the same time.