Calogero Dean: Music

“Let Your Hair Down” is a song by the R & B artist Dwele in case you don’t know. It’s probably one of the most fun songs I’ve had the pleasure of recording and one of the most playful songs I’ve ever made. I bet if Dwele heard it he would like it. Maybe I should get on that.

“Love & Lee” was a song that was originally on my album “Nobody Cares.” It was called “Tell Me Something.” It had a different beat. I put the original on myspace and it seemed no one liked it. So I updated it. The track is by a group named D’Nell. They are a white girl and guy from West London and they make better R & B music than the majority of the black kids in the States. They are on BBE Records and pretty much everything on BBE is worth checking out. I discovered them when I was doing a story on Nicolay. He did a remix for them. The instrumental at the end is the same instrumental that was at the end of “Tell Me Something.” I make beats every now and then but I hardly rap over them for whatever reason. David Banner once said the reason why he didn’t rap over his beats for his “Play” album was because he compared producing to being Joe Jackson. You can see how attractive Janet Jackson is but you don’t look at her like everyone else because you created her.

“Cotton” is a song I like just because at the time I had never done anything like it. I think it came as a surprise to everyone whether they knew me or not. One of the things I love about hip-hop is taking something that was already there and changing it to something different. Andre’s “I’d love to make...” part was probably just an add lib but I chose to highlight it. DJ Quiks’ “Do I love Her” was the lyric inspiration for this song. I like how Quik is known for making nasty songs about sex (“Sweet Black Pu**y” for example) but as he got older he didn’t stop talking about it he just got a little more a mature. “Do I love Her” is about sex but he doesn’t curse once. I tried to do the same thing. I say “D**k” and “A**” once though. I think it’s funny I was never told I had a nice voice until I started rapping. I guess that’s not something you say to a persons face though.

“Candy” is the only song I would say is autobiographical for the most part. I tried desperately to use Aaliyah’s “It’s Whatever” but I couldn’t get it to sound right. I used the Outkast vocals because “Cotton” used Andre’s vocals. The songs are obviously meant to complement each other and that’s the first time I ever attempted to make a song that way. The original names of the songs were “Cotton Candy parts 1 & 2” but since they were back to back I thought it would look better to rename them. I think it’s understood that they go together. The thing I like is that the majority of the song is inter monolog. The last part is the only part that’s actually dialogue. He, like most guys, never actually tells her his feelings.

“God Talking (Skit)” I enjoy because I like putting things together and watching them work. Some of the sounds effects where bought but some of them were done by me. Also I wanted to show off my music collection. It could have been much longer. There are plenty of blues songs about this subject.

“As Long As I Live” was really easy to record for some reason. Everything was in the first couple of takes. I enjoyed playing with my voice and getting that weird crack like I was about to cry. I was trying out different beats that would go with this song but nothing was working. The track I chose was “Whutkanido (Can Do It)” by Madlib. Honestly, I’m not a huge, huge fan of his. One day I was on iTunes checking out some J Dilla tracks for no real reason and I ended up on Lib’s page. Most of the songs from this album were good but when I heard this track, I went nuts. I knew I wanted to do something with it but I didn’t know what because at this time I had forgotten about the gun song I was writing. For some reason the two thoughts crossed my mind and “As Long As I Live” was born. This song reminds me of something Ghost Face would do. I didn’t necessarily approach it that way but there are some unconscious similarities. Don’t ask me what happens in the end because I don’t know either.

Lee H./ Andrew Bird

Lee H./ Copeland

Lee H./ C. Greenwood