Masters At Work (2013)
Their name says it all: Masters At Work. ‘Little’ Louie Vega and Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez have spent more than 20 years together, shepherding dance music down new paths with their inventive productions and imaginative feel for different musical forms. Synonymous with the rise and peak of New York City house music, Kenny Dope and Louie Vega met through their mutual friend Todd Terry, resulting in a fruitful production partnership full of timeless hits. With remixes being their specialty, the Masters at Work treatment has been given to a diverse roster of artists, from Madonna, Debbie Gibson, and Lisa Stansfield to Saint Etienne, Michael Jackson, Brand New Heavies, and about 800 other artists. They defiantly mix everything they can find – house, hip-hop, funk, disco, Latin, African and jazz – into a universal groove.
In their 2013 Red Bull Music Academy lecture, the dancefloor dons discussed everything from their famed remixes to their work as Nuyorican Soul.
Hosted by Gerd Janson This afternoon we have two gentlemen from New York here on the couch. I could
now start and talk for ages about how I’m a fanboy and all of these things, but that would be pretty boring for everyone. So we’ll more or less get right into the middle of it. Just for a little introduction, there’s this ongoing debate if one cares to look it up on the Internet, where house music started. And, of course, the people in Chicago argue that it was Chicago and the people in New York argue that – but, the Paradise Garage and all of that. Whatever it is, Louie Vega and Kenny Dope at least put the icing
on the cake, so please give them a very warm welcome. [applause] So yeah, we don’t want to talk about where house music started, but we want to
talk about where Masters At Work started. Kenny Dope Well, Masters At Work started in Brooklyn. You know, originally it was my crew
and we did parties, neighborhood parties in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and that
was the set in the beginning, you know what I mean? 50 people, 75, 100, that’s
basically where it started from. At that point me and Mike Delgado did those
parties and then Todd Terry used to come to those parties, and that’s how we
met Todd. Then Todd introduced me to Louie later on. But yeah, after doing all those parties and carrying speakers and all that kind of stuff, it came to a point where I didn’t want to do that any more and I wanted to start doing records, and start getting into that and into beats. I would go to Todd’s
house, I would cut out of school and go to Todd’s house and watch him produce
records and make beats and stuff like that, and that was the beginning pretty
much. In 1987, ‘88, that’s when I was getting my feet wet, I was starting to put out records on Nu Groove Records. The first joint was
this beat record called “Power House” and then I did this record called “A Touch
Of Salsa,” which sampled a Latin record, Celia Cruz. So at that point I was
putting records out and Louie had the record. Then Louie had spoken to Todd
and he was like, “I like this record,” and he was like, “Yo, I know who that
is,” and he introduced us. At that point Louie wanted to remix the record and
it never happened, actually, but we ended up working together. He had a drum
machine at his house and we took that and kept building on that. Then he was
working on the ‘Little’ Louie and Marc Anthony album at that time, it was
1990. He told me, come into the studio, and that’s when I was in a room like
we just went through over here, and it was just a lot of buttons, a lot of
lights, and I was like, “OK, what do you want me to do?” He was like, “Look,
just settle in, just watch, and if you have any ideas you’d be more than welcome to [contribute].” And that was it, that was the birth of Masters At Work, the production team. Gerd Janson So Todd Terry kind of was the link. Kenny Dope Yeah, absolutely, and actually before that in 1987 he had done two records
under ‘Masters At Work’. But I made sure I told Todd, I said, “That name, I’m
going to use it one day. I want it. Use it now...” Then in 1990 that was the
point when I said, “OK, me and Louie have spoken, like, ‘Let’s do something’.”
And it was a perfect name. Gerd Janson Just really quickly, who is Todd Terry, for the people who might not have heard of him? Kenny Dope Wow, Todd Terry, he’s the one I’ve got to say who took the Chicago house music
and added hip-hop flavor to it. A lot of his records at that point were just
hard. That’s where the term hard house comes from, before all this other
stuff. Because a lot of the sounds he was sampling were from breakbeats, and
him being a hip-hop head as well, he infused that in the music. He was just
sampling these riffs. I was there when he did “Party People,” when he actually sampled
Marshall Jefferson and made that track. Todd is a very special person to me because just watching him, and then him introducing me and Louie. If not, this would have never happened. Gerd Janson Do you remember when you heard “A Touch Of
Salsa” for the first time? Louie Vega Yeah, I started DJing professionally in 1985, and I started in the Bronx. I’m
from the Bronx. So Kenny being from Brooklyn and me from the Bronx, we were
pretty far away from each other, but that’s the record that brought us together. Because after playing at the Devil’s Nest, which was like the dance club version of Fever Records, the hip-hop label – so Fever Records had Fever the club and they also had the Devil’s Nest. So I was a big neighborhood DJ in the early ‘80s, and into the mid-’80s, and they’d heard about me and they asked me if I wanted to be the resident. So it started there and a year later I ended up playing in the city at the old Fun House, which was a huge club in
New York where and a lot of our predecessors came from, guys we
learned from back in those days. So I was doing a lot of the New York clubs.
Todd Terry would come up to me with cassettes and I was like, “Dude, I don’t
play cassettes. You need to put that thing on a reel-to-reel.” Because in
those days if you didn’t play an acetate you would play it on reel-to-reel, so
I had a Technics reel-to-reel with a pitch control. Kenny Dope Explain what an acetate is. [laughter] Louie Vega OK, I’m so sorry. When you master a record you get this acetate and that’s what you get to approve before it becomes the master to make all the vinyl. So it’s like a thick piece of... what’s it made of? Kenny Dope It’s a lacquer and it’s metal inside and it’s sprayed with this lacquer. But
you can’t cut it and it’s very heavy, it’s just to listen to as a reference. Louie Vega So Todd in those days, he couldn’t make acetates, so I said, “Yo, you got to
bring me a reel-to-reel.” So he bring me a 1/4” reel-to-reel and I had a
Technics reel-to-reel that was up on my right side. I had three turntables, a
Urei and crossovers. Gerd Janson What is a Urei? Louie Vega A Urei is... Gerd Janson It looks different from this one? Louie Vega Yeah, they’re all knobs. Urei’s actually for me the best sounding mixers ever made, came out in what, 1980 or something like that? A long time ago. Anyway, it was in all the clubs in New York City, it was a long time ago. So Todd came back the following weekend, he brought me a reel-to-reel. I said, “Wow, OK.” And that’s when he brought me some of those records that Kenny said he was there for the making of, which was a lot of Todd Terry’s early records, “Royal
House”... Kenny Dope “Black Riot.” Louie Vega You look up a lot of Todd’s early stuff on Sleeping Bag Records and all that.
From there I started breaking a lot of Todd Terry’s music and Kenny was right,
because Todd, what he did was when house music first came out in ‘84/’85
around then, a lot of it came from Chicago. There was also a style of music,
it wasn’t called house, but it was dance music in New York, as well. Gerd Janson It was called club music? Louie Vega It was called club music. They just came up with the term house and all that, so it was all called house music. Todd Terry took those records and sampled them, like Marshall Jefferson, like a lot of stuff on D.J. International and all
these big house labels from Chicago. But he also sampled hip-hop breaks, like
he would sample Public Enemy’s drums, then he would take an Afrika Bambaataa
electro record, “Planet Rock” maybe or one of those early ‘80s
ones. He just combined all these sounds and he made the sound a lot stronger.
At one point all the Chicago artists were really upset at Todd. Kenny Dope Yeah, they were mad. Louie Vega He started making these records that had a bigger sound, so a lot of his
records were getting played all over the place. By that time that’s when Kenny
was also making beats as well and he had Dope Wax at the time. So I always
knew about Kenny because I played his music as well, and when he did this
record where he sampled a disco artist and a Fania Records Latin artist and made
this cool club groove out of it. I was really interested in what he was doing
and I said I wanted to remix it. So Todd and I developed a friendship at the
same time that he was friends with Kenny. He would come up to the Bronx and I
said, “Listen, introduce me to this guy Kenny, who is this guy?” He goes,
“Yeah, he works in a record shop and he makes a lot of beats and he makes a
lot of records on a label called Dope Wax, his own label, which is distributed
by Nu Groove.” So as I was collecting a lot of Kenny’s music I noticed that he
loved hip hop, he loved disco, he loved funk, soul, I could hear it in his
music. And I loved the variation and how he was into all these different
styles. When we finally got introduced, I never got to remix the record but he
started coming to the clubs little by little. Eventually, I started remixing a
lot of records between ‘85 and ‘90, a lot of Warner Brothers stuff, anything
from Erasure to Debbie Gibson, who was like the Britney Spears of those days.
I mean, I did a lot of records that were on the radio, but I also had this
underground side of me that was doing the clubs in New York City. I finally
got signed to Atlantic Records, who I was doing a lot of work for, and it was
Joey Carvello who signed me to the label. I was probably one of the early DJs
signing a major record deal, because I was a DJ in clubs and I was starting to
produce and remix records, but mostly remixing them. He said, “Listen, I want
to give you a shot to come in. You’ve done a lot of remixing, why don’t you
come in and do this album?” So the first thing I did was look for a singer,
and in my clubs there was always a lot of singers hanging out. There was this
little skinny guy and his name was Marc Anthony. And he could sing his butt
off. Kenny Dope He’s still skinny too. [laughter] Louie Vega So I brought him into the studio and I said: “Listen, I would love for you to
be the singer on this and us be like a team.” I actually got the idea from my
uncle who was a famous salsa singer, his name was Hector LaVoe and his partner
was Willie Colón. So we were trying to emulate that in the dance and pop
world, I’d say. When I worked on that album I had met Kenny at the same time,
he started coming to clubs and stuff. I said, “Listen, I’m working on this
album and I think you should come in and just do beats. You make a lot of
great beats, just make a lot of beats and let me play over them, let’s just
groove together.” And he ended up doing a lot of the beats on the album. We gelled so well that after we were done with doing the album stuff we would do
these other tracks, with just me playing some keyboard riffs and basslines and
chords, and he would come up with these beats. It just sounded like another
thing, you know? So I said: “OK, let’s starting taking this around.” We
started giving it to Frankie Knuckles, Tony Humphries, Junior Vasquez. Gerd Janson Who were like big DJs. Louie Vega The big DJs of the time, huge, still are. When we were bringing the records we
said, “Wow! This is getting over in gay clubs, straight clubs, black clubs,
all the different clubs, Latin clubs,” they were getting into our music. It
had kind of a universal appeal at the time. So we just went in and kept doing
them, and then, since I was on Atlantic and did a lot of work with Warner
Brothers as well, they were giving me a lot of those pop groups to do remixes
for. So I said, “Kenny, let’s do these remixes together, but on the B-sides
let’s try to get our name out there and do these things that we’re coming up
with in the studio that’s different.” And then I said, “We got to call this
something, we got to call ourselves a name.” Because I really believed in
Kenny and not as just a beatmaker, I felt as a producer, like, we can grow
together. We gelled so well that it just happened in the studio, it just
happens like nothing. You got to just see it one day. So we started doing
these remixes and he says, “Well, Louie, I got this crew name called Master At
Work.” I said, “Isn’t that that thing that Todd Terry uses?” And he goes,
“That was my crew name, I took it back.” I said, “Kenny, I love Masters At
Work. I think that’s perfect for us.” So we had the name Masters At Work and
we said, “OK, we need to call these things on the B-side, we have to call them
Masters At Work dubs.” We did a few of those and they blew up so big, like on
radio they were playing these dubs, in clubs, everywhere we went they were
playing them and we were just like, wow, and it kept growing and growing. Next
thing you know bigger artists started calling us to do these things. I said,
“Really? Madonna wants a Masters At Work dub?” Everybody just cared about a
dub, they didn’t even care about their song practically. Kenny Dope They didn’t want their voice on it, they were just like, do us a dub. Louie Vega They just wanted a Masters At Work dub. So I said, “Alright, let’s take
advantage of the situation and get our name out there.” Gerd Janson Should we listen to one of those dubs? Louie Vega Yeah, I guess so. Gerd Janson You’ve got a choice between either Debbie Gibson, which I believe was one of
the first ones. So shall we start with Debbie Gibson? Debbie Gibson, “One Step
Ahead.” (music: Debbie Gibson – “One Step Ahead (Masters At Work Mix)”) Gerd Janson So, I think you get the idea. Kenny Dope That was Debbie Gibson. [applause] Louie Vega You got to imagine that she was like a Britney Spears in those days, so for
her to have a record like that, like, what? You know, you had like Frankie
Knuckles playing a Debbie Gibson record, Tony Humphries, which was unheard of,
on his mix shows on the radio. We were just floored by it, we were like, wow.
That was done in 1990. For us, it was very important to keep the sound fresh
and always be creative with the drums. All the drum kits that Kenny came up
with, for me it, was always like, “Kenny, you need to come up with a lot of
different drum kits,” and then we’d just play on all different drum kits. And
that’s how we did it. We started producing the records together and putting
them all together, and it started with those dubs. Gerd Janson That kind of swing also became synonymous, right, with not only Masters At Work but also with house music from New York City? Kenny Dope Yeah, it got to a point where I got more and more into the programming part of
it, so I really got deep into it. There was a lot of people at that time, a
lot of producers, who were trying to emulate the sound. They were trying to
figure out what I was using, they were really listening to what was going on.
Because, it got really complex to a point where I was using actually two drum
machines at one time, synced, different time signatures and everything. I
started to play a game with people, you know what I mean? It was like, “Yo, let’s really go deep with it.” Gerd Janson So you felt you had to stay one step ahead? Kenny Dope Well, yeah. Basically, like Louie said, each record had its own kit. It wasn’t
like I could call up a rack and use a preset. Every record, each kit was made.
Obviously, that was an early 909 because that was one of the first records we did together, but after that it
really got crazy with the sounds. Louie Vega Yeah, and also as far as the synths are concerned, it was all about finding
that right sound. Like, if I would find the right sound I could create a whole
song out of it. It would be the inspiration, that sound. For us, it was always
being on top of it. I mean, we were working 18 hours a day, seriously like
every day. We didn’t stop. Kenny Dope There was a point in the mid-’90s where we would have two and three rooms
going on at one time. We was in studios bouncing from one room to another, it
was just crazy. And for the amount of music that came out, we turned down
probably double that. We couldn’t do it all. We just couldn’t do it, being at
the studio all that time, going home for a couple of hours, taking a shower,
then coming back. Then it was just another record and another record. That’s what it was. Gerd Janson How did you make the choice, what to do and what to turn down? Kenny Dope Well, basically we used to get a lot of demos, a lot of labels used come
through, and like Louie said, we had certain labels that we worked for a lot.
So they needed a mix or something. There had to be something that gave us that inspiration, a little hook, a little line that we could make the dub out of.
Later on we started doing full songs and then basically after we did the whole
dub run, we started bringing in musicians. We started bring different
instruments into the music and that’s when it became more soulful. But we also
brought in Latin to the music, we brought in Afro to the music, we brought in
disco, obviously, jazz. There was so many different steps because we were all
playing those kind of records as DJs, so it was like we were putting it into
the music and introducing the crowd to them sounds as well. Gerd Janson Before we get to the later projects, why do you think major labels at that time were so interested in having underground remixes on their pop records? Kenny Dope They were selling records, a lot of those records were selling a lot, the
vinyl. There was no mp3s, there was none of that, there was no CDs yet. There
was cassettes and there was vinyl 12”s. And overseas they were selling them
and that’s what DJs played, they played records. A lot of DJs bought two,
sometimes they bought three, like myself. But yeah, for the club and for the
DJs. Louie Vega Yeah, and the UK was so big on dance music and in the UK, you make a dance
record it can go number one pop. It could be a straight up house record, like
that we would do for the clubs. So that made a big difference. When we started
our label we were like, “OK, we’re going to start our own label.” We started
selling like 130,000 pieces of vinyl. It was big, it was like, “Wow, that’s
just our label selling that amount.” So the major labels saw that dance music
was making some waves. In the US it did get some radio play and some of it got
a lot of attention, the major labels started signing, like Ten City and a lot
of different artists, Ultra Naté, who was on Warner Brothers. You also had
labels, like Strictly Rhythm
and Nervous Records, who are the big New York house labels that, if you look them up, you’ll hear a lot of history on this
type of music. Gerd Janson Why do you think it was so big at that time in New York, that house sound, on
the radio, major labels, and Nervous, Strictly being almost major labels
themselves, right, in a way? What happened? Kenny Dope Well, it was the thing to do, you know what I mean? Growing up you either were
on the street or you was doing records, you was DJing, or you were going to
college and stuff like that. Those were the areas. So a lot of the kids wanted
to DJ. They started to DJ then they wanted to make records. Then they wanted
to play keyboards. Some wanted to play drums. At that time it was a good
period because all these labels were looking for the next young kid that was
doing a record, and there was a lot of us. At that point a lot of people who
actually started in their bedroom and started doing mobile parties, they
started to make records. But they were right there, right there waiting to cut
a cheque to get that track. Little by little some of the guys had big records
and made decent money. That’s how we started going overseas, we started
travelling, and it just kept going from there. Gerd Janson Going overseas, you guys seem to be pretty much a product of New York City.
How did it feel to you went you went over to, for instance, the UK for the
first time to play there? Kenny Dope Even before that, when you get a publishing cheque and it’s from somewhere you
can’t even pronouce, that’s the most craziest feeling, to say, “Man, my record
got played there?” That was the thing about that time period, how far the
records travelled. Then, that’s when promoters started to call you, “We want
you to come to our city to come play our club.” And I’m like, “Wow, we’re
going there.” Then together we went, separately we went, but Louie went
actually before me in the ‘80s, the late ‘80s. But no, it’s crazy to actually
say to yourself, I made a profession, I’ve travelled all these countries just
playing music, something that you love doing. Louie Vega I think between the major labels putting out our remixes, and then we had
these outlets like Strictly Rhythm and Nervous Records. They were right in our
hometown so we’d be working in the studio and I’d call Michael Weiss at like
four in the morning, “Yo, you got to come right now.” That’s how excited
everybody was at the time, and Michael Weiss would be in our studio at four
thirty in the morning to listen to what we just made, because we were so
excited about it. Or Gladys Pizarro, Strictly Rhythm. So we had those outlets
and they had a lot of contacts around the world and they licensed a lot of
their music to the UK, Italy, France and everywhere else. That gave exposure
to a lot of our music in those countries. And then once we started going out,
when we first went to the UK together as Masters At Work, it was like
pandemonium, man, it was just like everybody wanted to know who these two guys
were that were making so much music. And the same with the other countries.
You know, as you go out and do one gig you get two more, three more, whatever,
and it just kept growing. Kenny Dope It was very different back then too because there was no social media, no Facebook, none of that, so nobody knew what we looked like. We’d just show up to the club. “That’s Masters At Work?” “Yeah. Kid with the hat and the other dude with the hat.” And that was it, it was just like the two hats! [laughter] It’s crazy how far things have gotten where you’re able to reach so many people but you
can’t at the same time, you know what I mean? Because you got to be able to
touch the people that are into you and into your sound. But back then there
was none of that, there was just a PR person that you used to hire to promote
your stuff and your music and stuff like that. Gerd Janson Getting a little bit away from the remixes, when did you start to turn out
original productions as Masters At Work? Louie Vega Well, when we were creating those tracks for Debbie Gibson and everybody else,
there was always something extra we had. At that same time, in 1991 I believe,
we released a record on [Cutting
Records], which we put out our
first Masters At Work album. So that same year we started remixing... Kenny Dope We got to tell them the truth though. Louie Vega Isn’t that the truth? Kenny Dope Some of it. Louie Vega What? Did I lie? [laughter] Kenny Dope No, no, he didn’t lie, but pretty much while we were doing those remixes there was tracks that were actually too good to hand in, so we kept those songs for us. We still did good stuff, we still did great records for everybody, but there was certain records that we knew, “Nah, this can’t...” Because it’s going to get lost, it’s going to get buried somewhere, and we started
accumulating these tracks. Alright, go ahead. [laughter] Louie Vega OK, there you go. Yeah, so we made a deal with Cutting Records and we put out
the first album. We came up with this idea because we loved hip-hop, we loved
house. So for us it was about, “OK, let’s take one side of the vinyl, put out
a hip hop record, and the other side of the vinyl, we’ll cater to our house
crowd.” So that’s when we started doing those records like “The Ha Dance”
and... what is it? Kenny Dope “Blood Vibes.” Louie Vega “Blood Vibes.” At that time, I used to play in clubs and play a lot of hip-hop, reggae, house, disco, just the whole spectrum. So that influence came out in our music and that’s when we started doing that on Cutting Records and we created that album. From doing all those dubs we said, “Man, we need to put a vocal, a song, where people can identify with our dubs. Not just one little
hook.” We tried to do a song on these type of tracks. That’s when we did “I
Can’t Get No Sleep” with India back in ‘91 and that was a pivotal point for us
because we started doing songs on our style of music. Gerd Janson Before we listen to a song maybe should we show the people some of those Cutting things? This is one called “Get Up.” (music: Masters At Work – “Get
Up”) Gerd Janson So something like this would be on one side and something like that on the other. (music: Masters At Work – “The Ha Dance”) Gerd Janson So maybe you can tell us a little bit about this one. Kenny Dope Well, that goes all the way back to Brooklyn, to the bedroom. This shit’s
crazy, we were just trying to do tracks for the club. If I remember correctly,
there was “Seduction,” right? Clivillés and Cole was another production team,
they had a joint... Gerd Janson They were also known as C+C Music Factory. Kenny Dope C+C Music Factory, correct. They had a joint with that, but I was like, I want to do it a little harder than that for the b-boys and stuff. At that time Louie was playing in a predominantly Latin club, so everything was harder. It wasn’t so much the deep stuff. So that joint, we did it for that crowd, but it
became like a voguing classic, which is crazy because it wasn’t made for that
but they embraced it. We would get these calls like, “We would like to use
this record...” I’m like, “Sure, go ahead, do your thing.” But it was great
that it crossed so many different barriers. Louie Vega Yeah, this is a record that we made when we were going back and forth, like he
would come to the Bronx and I had a drum machine and a keyboard. It was just
an M1 keyboard and an SP-1200. He had, what, the Akai right? Kenny Dope The S-950, yeah. Louie Vega And just a small board. We would get together and that’s one of the records we
were in those rooms together making, the very beginning stages of Masters At
Work. It was a huge hit, it was crazy. Hip-hop people loved it, voguers loved
it. It hit all the audiences and we were like, wow. I mean, it was an exciting
track. It hit the Latin crowd. I was playing in Roseland at that time, so I was
playing to like 4,000 kids. Gerd Janson What was Roseland? Kenny Dope 4,000 rowdy kids at that, real rowdy. Louie Vega Between ‘85 and ‘90 I did pretty much every major club in New York and I was
playing like Studio 54 – not in the disco days because I would have been a lot
older - not in ‘78, it was like ‘89. In those days, when I played in that club
it was like 2,500 people on Fridays, 4,000 on Saturdays. In one night you would
have Public Enemy, Ten City, and India, that was like the line-up of the artists. So you see, they picked a freestyle artist, they picked a house artist and a hip-hop artist. In those days everybody loved dance music, no matter whether you liked hip hop or you were a voguer, whatever it was. Kenny Dope It was about good music, pretty much. Louie Vega So this record was huge at that time, but it lived on forever. We started looking YouTube and I said, “Kenny, look on YouTube at these voguing battles. They use the song on every single battle.” I was like, wow. Then we started getting a lot of the voguers that come to the club, because they come our
clubs too, and they would say, “Louie, you don’t understand. This record is
our anthem.” I was like, wow. That record’s had about nine lives. Gerd Janson It might have been the vocal sample in it? Louie Vega I think it’s the way we did that one... Kenny Dope It was just the movement. Louie Vega The movement, yeah, that clap, that loud clap. [gestures] So it calls for
that, I guess it worked out perfect for them. Obviously you guys know that is
from the movie Trading Places? That’s Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd when they’re in the train, they go, “Bibbidy, bibbidy, bibbidy, ha!” That’s where that comes from. I don’t think anybody even put that
together for a long time. Kenny Dope We’re lucky. [laughter] On some legal stuff, yes. He’s like, “Oh, shit!” Gerd Janson We’ll have to edit all of this out. Kenny Dope They’re coming to get you. Not me, you. [laughter] Gerd Janson Speaking of legal stuff, we touched upon it before the lecture very briefly
because I just thought it was out of fun to start up using other monikers than
Masters At Work for you guys, but there has been some issue, right, with the
Masters At Work name and Cutting Records? Kenny Dope Well yeah, it was crazy because at that point I was actually signed as an
artist, but the group – it was crazy. I was signed as Kenny Dope but performing
as Masters At Work, but then we were Masters At Work, it was like they had us
wrapped up crazy. But I was like, “I’m still doing records, forget about that.” So I did all these Kenny Dope records, but we were kind of stuck as Masters At Work because we couldn’t move on, because the name was still there. It was like, “Wait a minute, that’s our production team, that’s our DJ team.”
It was crazy. Basically, to get out of the deal we ended up leaving the record
there, which we could have re-record it at any point, which we never did, and
I just kept doing my solo records. We moved on pretty much. But they wrapped
us up pretty hard. What was crazy about the whole situation was they were
like, “Look, let’s work together,” and it was like this whole family thing,
but meanwhile they had us locked. It was bad, but you learn from it. That’s
one thing: whoever of you guys is doing music, make sure you get your legal
stuff straight and you know what you’re signing and all that. Because, even
though I didn’t care what I was doing at that point, you still can be in
serious trouble if you do sign the paperwork and you’re stuck and you can’t
move on and they’ve taken all your music. Or, everything that you do they own
forever, 50 years. You’re doing these tracks and you get a hit, and we’re
talking major money, you could be doing something and you think, “This is a
throwaway track, whatever.” Next thing you know that’s in the Madagascar
movie, next thing you know the label made $30 million on this one track that
you thought it was a throwaway track. So always value what you do. Gerd Janson So always get a music lawyer before you sign? Louie Vega Yes, please get a music lawyer. Get a lawyer in the entertainment business. I
think it’s important, you got to read what you sign, you can’t just trust that
other person. You should read it, you got to know what you’re signing. I mean,
we were definitely stuck there and after ten years we said, “Look, we can’t
take this any more.” Literally, Masters At Work was locked down for ten years
on Cutting Records. We had to give them that album and I think even some
money. We did something there where we gave them everything, let them own what
they own. We had so much other stuff we were like, “Fine, we’ll just move on,
but we have our name.” That’s what we needed, our name. Kenny Dope I just made sure that there was a re-record clause in the contract that we
were getting out of, because pretty much all you’ve got to do is change the
snare drum and you’re done. Record’s re-recorded. Louie Vega Well, you’re supposed to re-record the vocal too. Kenny Dope Forget about that. [laughter] That’s basically what it was and we got out of the deal. We never revisited
the records but we always can. But, though, the thing is they only have the
mixed down versions of the originals. We have the master tapes, which we could
actually dissect, and the vocals and the music and all that stuff, and always
remix it again. Louie Vega That’s why we came up with all these monikers. We were like, listen, we have
to come up with group names because we can’t use Masters At Work. If you know
of our records in those days, we had groups like Hardrive, TheBucketheads, Sole
Fusion, Nuyorican Soul, we came up with all these other names and we started making music under those things. But then all those
monikers, we created styles of music for them, so it was in a way good because
we got to expand a lot of the music we were making. So if you went to Hardrive
you know you getting a certain vibe, if you go to Bucketheads you know you
getting a certain vibe, or Kenlou or whatever. Kenny Dope Also the other meaning behind that too was, we did so much music that we wanted to flood the record stores. So when you went to the record store on Friday there was all these records by different groups, but it was the same people doing them. [laughs] So it was just like flooded. We learned that from Todd. Todd used to do that all the time. Because Todd’s thing was, he was like, “I’m
going to this label, I’m going to get a check over here, I’m going to this
label, I’m going to get a check over here, they’re going to have this name,
I’m going to get this name over here,” and that was the thing. The same thing,
you went to the store, you had Black Riot, Royal House, Orange Lemon, all the
craziest names, but they were just different projects. Gerd Janson So you have to wrap the sandwich to sell it a few times. Louie Vega Well, it’s crazy, in those days I guess we had some marketing going on there,
whether it was Masters At Work dubs and all these aliases we created. I mean,
we definitely were kind of thinking about it but not thinking about it. We
were young, we were just making so much music. They were coming in one after
the other, we would make three or four songs or tracks in one night. When you
look at those tracks and you dissect them, one night it could have been “The
Nervous Track,” which is a really popular song of ours by Nuyorican Soul, or
it could have been “Beautiful People” or “Deep Inside.” Those things would
come up in one night, music of that calibed, which to this day has been
licensed over and over again and has become club classics, I guess, to a lot
of the DJs out there. Gerd Janson So we’ll listen to “Deep Inside,” but getting back to that Masters At Work
term, you were allowed to used it for remixes, right, because that’s what went
on, just the remixes? Louie Vega Yes, not as recording artists. (music: Hardrive – “Deep Inside” / applause) Gerd Janson So what’s the story behind “Deep Inside” and who painted the cover? Louie Vega Well, it’s funny because – first I want to say thank you to all you DJs for keeping that record alive. I mean, that was done 20 years ago. I had a keyboard in my house and I would play grooves and I had this new Rhodes sound, a really nice sound. I came up with this keyboard riff, and if you listen to a song called “Beautiful People”
by Barbara Tucker, that riff at the top of the song is what I was playing over
and over again. So I had this idea for a song and I went to India, Lem
Springsteen and Derek Whitaker and they all came up with this song called “Beautiful People” on top of that groove. At that time I was doing a party called the Underground Network, from ‘92 to ‘96, and that
was a very pivotal point in house music as well in New York. That was our base
for our music and for everybody else. You would go to that club and the same
night you’d have Armand Van Helden, Todd Terry, Kenny Dope, I’d be DJing,
François K, like everybody was hanging out in this club on Wednesdays. Kenny Dope It was the industry night, labels, DJs, producers, artists, everybody. Louie Vega And dancers. So, when I did the “Beautiful People” song, at that time I had
been working with Marc Anthony. It was ‘93, we had the _When The Night Is Over
_[album], and he was hanging out with a young kid who was a DJ and he says,
“Listen, I got this kid, his name is
Eric and he just wants you to
come to the studio, Louie, please just go there. He would be so happy. It’s
not a big studio, it’s like in a little bedroom or whatever.” So I went to the
studio, I went to go meet him and see him, and he says, “Man, would you like
to use it to do something here.” And I said, “Wow, OK.” I had this song or whatever, I had this reel we had recorded and stuff. Somehow I got that little “deep inside” hook from the “Beautiful People” song. He engineered it, that’s why it doesn’t sound as powerful as the Masters At Work stuff we were doing in the studio, because we were doing it in these big studios and we were doing great stuff together and everything. It was just a very raw kind of thing, I
didn’t expect it to do what it did. So I played these keyboard riffs and I
played that bassline and all that and I sampled this “deep inside” hook. He
engineered it and his name was Erick Morillo. So, if you read the record it,
says Erick Morillo’s the engineer on the record, which he was. I gave the
record to Strictly Rhythm and then I said to myself, “Man, why don’t I put
this out to kind of introduce Barbara Tucker’s voice before the song” -
because the song was already done, “Beautiful People.” So I put the song out
on Strictly Rhythm and that little track, I spent like an hour and a half in
his house. It’s funny because Kenny and I, some of the biggest records we’ve
had, like the Bucketheads that he’s done, “These Sounds...” and all that,
those records we made in like an hour and half and they became some of our
biggest records ever. They’re not the big, lush productions, they’re just like
raw club tracks. So the song did very well, it still lives on I guess and I’m
really grateful for that. I’m really happy that you guys love it and
appreciate it. I mean, you guys can do this. You guys can really do this. I mean, you don’t have to work in a huge studio with tons of money, you just have to have a few pieces that you know very well and you feel comfortable in. And it’s about the choice of sounds. You guys put together records in
different ways now and you have more access to things than what we’ve had. I
mean, we’ve had to spend time just stretching a song. Like, stretching a vocal
took hours. Kenny Dope Let me tell you something, what I could do in Ableton now it’ll take me ten
minutes, it used to take four days before when we used to do a remix. You
would get these vocals and they were 100 beats per minute and you had to make
them a club tempo. Our engineer used to [do it] line by line, it took hours.
Actually, one of our assistants is back there too and his name is Yaz. Louie Vega Engineer. Kenny Dope Engineer now, but he started with us. Say what’s up to Yaz, everybody. Yaz,
stand up. [applause] Yaz, he came in the studio and used to throw the garbage out and go to the store and get us stuff. He went to school and he wanted to learn. When we left he was in there learning all the equipment. Little by little, he’s a master at programming, ProTools, he’s a genius with that. So, like Louie said, I just thought about when he was saying, “You can do it.” It’s so crazy because it
just flashed in my mind how much stuff is available now and how we used to do
things before, with the programs. I have so much stuff on my laptop. Back in
the days it was $300,000 in a studio, or like, what’s in the studio here. We
had a studio like that in the city. But pretty much you can move with it, you
could do tracks in your laptop. Obviously, they’re not going to sound like a
professional studio but you create your stuff, you create your tracks, and you
can always take it to a big room and mix it. It’s crazy how technology, how
far it’s come. Gerd Janson So, you had your own studio or did you like always rent studio time in places? Kenny Dope Well, I always had a room, like once I got my money together I always had a
studio in my house. Because before I went into the studio I never used to like
to waste time in the studio. I would prepare the basic skeleton of what we
were going to work on. We spoke on the phone either the night before or in the
morning, he was on the keyboard and I was on the phone, and he was like,
“Look, I got this progression,” or whatever. I would make the beat, record it,
take the discs, go to the studio, print the beat, record it to tape. Then he
would add his stuff to it and that was the process. Throughout the ‘90s we
used Battery studios, Axis, a lot of studios in New York, but our management
actually built a studio that we ended up buying later on because we wanted a
club sound. We wanted subs in the room and we wanted a club sound because we
were making club records, so we wanted it to be powerful. But that became the
MAW home base. A lot of people came through there, from Mood II Swing to Erick
Morillo to even Dexter Jenkins who did Michael Jackson, Rodney Jerkins who did
a lot of stuff on the urban side. There was a lot of people that came through
there and they were friends of ours. They all wanted to see what we were doing
and stuff like that it. It was definitely a good time. Louie Vega And on the art of that Hardrive, I don’t remember who did it, but he did a good
job. Kenny Dope I don’t remember. Louie Vega That was a really unique cover. Gerd Janson You mentioned Nuyorican Soul as a project. How did that start? Should we listen to the track first? The first one? This one is called “The Nervous Track.” (music: Nuyorican Soul – “The Nervous
Track” / applause) Gerd Janson So, of course, there are some Masters At Work traces in there, but it’s a bit of a departure also from your sound up until then. Kenny Dope Well, yeah. Pretty much what actually happened, we were going a lot to England
and we were doing this party, Southport, which actually is a weekender. They
have like five rooms, at that time it was all different music. We had walked
into this room and it was all jazz dancers. Everybody was in suits, tap shoes,
all the women were dressed in dresses and they were playing these really fast
jazz records. Just the whole vibe of that room was crazy, it was like we went
into another world. At that point I looked at Louie, I was like, “Wow, this is
crazy. We got to try to make some records that are not four-on-the-floor,
let’s kind of break off of that rhythm for a minute.” And when we came home
that’s what we did. It was like the beginning stages of Nuyorican Soul, with
the keyboard horns and stuff like that, but it definitely inspired “You Can
Do It” later, and the whole
broken beat vibe came from that record. That’s where that comes from, from
that record, and being from Southport. Louie Vega Yeah, that record was made all with synths and the only thing live on there is
the conga player. Kenny did a really unique thing there because he sampled
like a bunch of drummers, jazz drummers from these jazz beat records. If you listen, there it’s drummers on top of drummers and just the way he puts it together was amazing. We were working on a remix for Ultra Naté – I can say it now so many years later. This was in ‘93 we did that as well. We were working on a remix for Warner Brothers, it was for Ultra Naté, and all I kept hearing from Kenny that was, “Louie, I’m tired of doing house.” I heard that over and over. I said, “OK, we’re not going to do house, let’s do something different.”
That’s when we had come back from the Southport thing. He had sampled these
drums and I said, “Oh, man.” Then I found this module we were using and that’s
where I got that pad sound. I started with that pad sound and Kenny started
with that beat. I said, “Kenny, listen to this pad sound, listen to this chord
progression.” It’s one of those things. For me, it was always coming with
these chord progressions that kind of make you think, it takes you somewhere.
It started with those pad sounds and once he put that beat in, I played a bass
around it, that little horn sample and that little organ and that was it. But
it felt full and I said, wow. Then we got one of our friends, who was one of
Kenny’s friends from Brooklyn and played percussion, and we asked him to come
in and play on the record and he just really hit a nice pocket on the record.
From there I got a little tired as well. I mean, I was playing on all these
records, and it’s crazy because especially the generation of today, all the
records they like from us are not the big, lush productions that we do. Of
course, you have the Nuyorican Soul fans, but especially people from the
techno scene and a lot of the progressive type of club sounds, they love our
early music. Like, when I was playing those keyboards, those simple lines and
everything, but it just works in clubs, I guess. At that point, when we
started doing Nuyorican Soul and we wanted to take it to the next level, we
started working with a lot of musicians. We had already done a few things with
musicians since that time, but we really took it to the next level and I got
really spoiled with all these great musicians. Kenny Dope He didn’t want to play no more. He still doesn’t want to play. But play, man,
play. They want the raw tracks, you know what I’m saying? Come on, get on ‘em. [laughter] Louie Vega But you know, there definitely is something special when he’s on a drum
machine and I’m on a keyboard. It’s like, we come up with really... Kenny Dope We did some things yesterday, though. Louie Vega Yeah, we did. But that song for me was definitely a magic moment for Masters
At Work. When we had Funkmaster Flex call us and say, “Yo, I love this ‘Nervous Track.’“ We were like, “What?” Right? He was playing on Hot 97. Kenny Dope That was the weirdest call ever. I know Flex for a long time and I’m like, “You do? Alright.” Louie Vega And then Roni Size, Goldie, they were calling us, “Yo, we love this record.” Gilles Peterson, it got all these DJs from different genres of music. They’re amazing DJs and in the music they make and everything. They reached out for this song and we were like, “Wow, we can’t believe everybody was into it like that.” So we
definitely knew that there was something special there. Gerd Janson Would you say it’s a natural progression for you as producers that you always
try to improve, instead of being content with what you...? Kenny Dope Definitely, that was the definitely the mood back then. If we didn’t like it,
it wouldn’t come out. We were always pushing. We had a lot of eyes on us at
that point too. Everybody was actually biting a lot of the stuff too, we had
certain guys out there doing the same record and doing it for a different
artist and a different a label. So I was always pushing forward, always. Gerd Janson Did you ever call them about it? Kenny Dope Oh, yeah. Gerd Janson And they felt guilty or apologetic? Kenny Dope I don’t want to get into that. [laughter] That was ugly, that was my ugly days, just wilin’ out, you know? Louie Vega Well, just imagine you work really hard on something. You create this thing
that doesn’t sound like anything else and then somebody goes and does a remix
for a major artist and they take your same groove for a major artist and you’re like, “Damn!” Kenny Dope And they were getting the props for it, that’s what was crazy about it. Louie Vega We had a lot of that in the ‘90s, but you know, we just kept moving. Kenny Dope He wants to know who it is. Gerd Janson No, I just wanted to say that imitation is the highest form of flattery. Louie Vega And that’s true. But it was to the note. I mean, if somebody takes an idea you
have and takes it to another level or another place, and you can hear what
your idea was in there. But when you’re doing note for note, riff for riff,
bassline for bassline, chord for chord, on another song. Kenny Dope Things like that happen all the time and they still happen, and I know where
people get certain things from when I hear them. A lot of mainstream records,
radio records, a lot of the guys that are current right now doing stuff, we
inspired them but they’ve inspired us too, which is cool. But not what happened back then, that was just blatantly the same song and it was just like, “OK...” Gerd Janson So if you sample, be creative, that’s the bottom line? Kenny Dope I sample to death, so that was my thing, I’m not even going to front. All my drum sounds were samples, every last one of them until now, until like the last two years. I have a drummer now, but all my stuff was sampled. But I always made it something else, I always made it a different song or arranged
it in a certain way that made a new song. Like the Bucketheads record, if you
play the original song it doesn’t do that. The way the hooks are laid out, the
way the anticipation is with the whole horn intro and all that – which
actually was a mistake, which ended up to be that long-ass loop, it was me
missing the sequence. It sounded cool so I was like, “Alright, let it run one
more time and then I was like, let it run one more time.” Next thing you know
the whole intro’s four minutes long. But that was the whole thing in the club
that had everybody crazy, until finally when them horns drop it’s like, “Oh,
OK.” The record’s 14 minutes long but it was actually a mistake. That’s something else that is a lesson for whoever’s doing tracks, that the mistakes work. There’s a lot of mistakes in the classic records that we all love, there’s bad notes, there’s everything. But it’s just something about the
chemistry that was going on with the band and how they were playing it. So I
always kept that kind of stuff too. Even the first joint you played, the
Debbie Gibson record, the hi-hat comes in off and I was telling Louie, “That
shit’s off beat.” Back then, a lot of the mixes – or actually, I would say 90%
of the mixes - were done live, me and him on the board doing mutes through the
whole record, rides and everything, so that’s why it felt like that, like
there was a lot of things coming in and out sporadically. Gerd Janson So it wasn’t a screen arrangement. Kenny Dope Nah, not at all. Louie Vega No, it wasn’t. We were doing that right on. Those eight minutes that went
down, we were doing live stuff. He might mute the kick, I might have brought
up a keyboard, faded it up. Of course, you programmed the delays. Kenny Dope We tweaked it and stuff like that, but the body of it was done live. Gerd Janson Is it very different to work with real musicians instead of samples then,
because you mentioned you have a drummer now? Kenny Dope I got a whole band now, but yeah, it’s different. It’s a different sound. When
you want to do the raw stuff, there’s something about taking a two bar sample
and flipping that because you’re capturing a moment that is very hard to
reproduce live. You would have to have your band playing live and then capture
that. But you can do a lot of stuff with a band. Now with the experience that
we have and what we know and the sounds that we know and just the music that
you know. I listen to the weirdest things. I’ve been listening to rock music
all week, rock stuff like hardcore. It’s a different head, it removes you from
where you at, where your comfort zone is and just brings a different element
into it. Louie Vega Yeah, because now you’re talking about a whole band it’s not just your mind,
you have five or six other minds involved in this groove. Gerd Janson And opinions, maybe. Louie Vega Yeah, and opinions. I have a band called Elements of Life and we’ve been
doing it since 2003. I wasn’t even thinking of going on a stage or doing any
of that stuff, we’ve always been background or behind the scenes. But when I
was rehearsing with the band I was directing them, they said, “Louie, you’re
not going to come on stage with us?” I said, “Are you crazy? I’m not doing no
Blue Note and being on the stage and doing what, jumping up and down?” They
said, “No, you’re directing us, you’re really doing it, you’re doing it
naturally.” And I said, “Really? Let me test this out where I don’t have any
friends.” We were doing this tour, it was in the Blue Note’s in Japan and we
did like 16 shows. I was like, “Let me do it there, I don’t know that many
people there, and let’s see what happens.” But I started loving it so it just
became a whole new thing for us. I see it as definitely a natural progression,
we went from being just raw, together, making music on drum machine and
keyboards, to working with musicians doing these big orchestral records. But
we also love to take it back and do that again, and that’s what we’re doing
now. We got together after ten years of not making music, because all those
records that everybody knows, was made from ‘91 to 2001. Kenny Dope A big body of work. Louie Vega That period was when a lot of those records came out. Then we started doing
our own thing. I mean, he kept on with Dope Wax and Kay-Dee, and then I had
Vega Records, I had this band. I wasn’t even going to start the label. The
only reason why I started a label is because I had an album so I have to put
out these singles so I started the label. Next thing you know, everybody
around us, “Oh man, I got this record.” Mr V. would come with “Jus Dance,”
like everybody around the club. So I said, “OK, let’s put ‘em out.” So we kept
going with that and it’s really our fans that brought us back. And, of course,
we’ve been wanting to do things but everywhere we went everybody’s just,
“Masters At Work, when are you going to do something?” Around the world. We
finally got together and we said: “OK, let’s not bring a band, let’s not bring
the musicians, let’s just start it with me and you in the room, us together as
we did when we first started.” It’s been amazing. We had three session and we
already did like 12 tracks, like an album. That’s just getting together three
days for five hours a day, so it’s been really productive and wonderful and
I’m happy to start that way and I think that we’re going to make records for DJs right now. That’s what we’re going to do and we’re having fun with it and I think that’s the best way this music comes out best. You do it for the passion and love and just to make people dance and for DJs to have something
fun to play. Kenny Dope And obviously, we’re going to take our sound and incorporate what’s going on
now and bridge it all together and create something new. That’s basically what
we’ve been figuring out, how to bring that forth: bring us, but at the same
time bring it new and do it like that. Because definitely, there is a lot of
stuff going on now and there is a lot of music and there’s a lot of great music that people are doing, but at the same time we want to incorporate that
sound too. Gerd Janson So you’re still following what happens in house music these days? Kenny Dope I don’t really follow anybody at all. I listen, I get inspired, but I don’t
really copy what’s going on. We do tracks and it’s still us no matter what, no
matter how you look at it. Like he said, we got together and started doing
these sessions and it’s just natural, it just happens. I’m sitting yesterday
and I’m EQing something and I’m just like – how it just gels. That’s something
really, really special when you actually could not speak to somebody for
x-amount of time, get together and then shit just happens. They keyboards
happen, the beats happen, the songs happen. So it’s like you got to say to
yourself, “OK, we got to work on this a little bit more, fine tune it some
more, incorporate our experience with the new vibes and the new technology and
we’re back.” We’re back for sure. Gerd Janson Getting back a little bit to the ‘musician’ thing, because the last song we
heard was “The Nervous Track,” that developed into the Nuyorican Soul project
with some legendary musicians. Maybe you can talk a little bit about how that
came together from this very basic track. Kenny Dope Basically, at that point, like Louie said earlier, we was at that point and we
was like – well, I was at that point where I was like, “No more four-on-the-
floor, please. Let’s do something else.” That spawned the broken beat style
but also we wanted to do something that – all the musicians we came up on
growing up, we wanted to incorporate that vibe and bring that out. That’s how
that whole project developed. So we had Roy Ayers, we had George Benson, Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, India, Jocelyn Brown, the
Salsoul Orchestra, Vince Montana who just passed away, rest in peace. There was a lot of people who we brought together that we grew up on musically. I didn’t even
realise it until the photo shoot for that album because we’re like robots,
man, we just go in, record, do what we do and keep it moving. But it’s like,
once we did that project – what was it, like a year and a half, a year? – and
we did it, it sounded great, label signed, did videos, the whole thing,
artwork – we did the photo shoot and I’m looking around just like you guys
sitting here and it’s like, “Wow! We have Eddie Palmieri, Tito, Benson. These
are all our heroes in one room and we put it together.” And Roy Ayers, yeah.
That was just a crazy, crazy feeling to think that two DJs put this project
together, not musically trained at all, learned bars by DJing, by playing
records, learned song structures from playing records. So that was really deep
for me and that’s why that project was so special, definitely. Gerd Janson Were you self-conscious when you went into the studio with them? Kenny Dope Nah, we just did it. They didn’t know what was going on, they didn’t know. I
don’t remember who it was but somebody was like, “That’s in the wrong key, that doesn’t fit with that.” I’m like, “We got this, don’t worry, it’s going to fit.” And then when they heard it back they were like, “We never envisioned what you guys were doing.” We would just bring in different artists and record and do the tracks. Benson, who was amazing, came in and did his thing, went to
church, came back and it was like a whole different record. Seriously, because
he played to a whole different beat. What he played was so inspiring, I said,
“Louie, this beat is wack. I got to change it, it’s George Benson.” And I did
the whole beat over. Louie Vega And he canned the music too. Kenny Dope Yeah, and the music and it was just like three hours, it was done. Louie Vega I mean, he was probably the only one that gave us a little feeling of indtimidation when we met him because it was all about, we had to have this meeting, we had to go to an office. Kenny Dope A label... Louie Vega Tommy LiPuma, who’s one of the greatest producers of all time, he told us - you know, because he’s the one who produced George Benson, Miles Davis, everybody – he
said, “Listen, you have to come meet George Benson so you can play him your
idea and tell him what you want to do.” So went and he just looked us like... Kenny Dope Like, “What are these two guys going to play me?” [laughter] Louie Vega We played him the track and we just explained to him what we were doing. We
played him the other stuff because they were more finished and he says, “OK,
I’ll do it. I’ll go in.” And that was it but when he first came in we were
like, “Damn, it’s George Benson,” you know? He’s going look at our track and
say, “What is that, some little two-chord thing?,” or whatever. [laughter] But he gave us a shot, he came in, and once he came in it was magic, man. We had like two or three days with him, right? It was just letting him loose. He would be exercising and he said it was like a scale exercise or something, right, remember that? And we said, “Yo, we love that,” and we made it the intro to “You Can Do It.” If you listen to Nuyorican Soul and you hear George
Benson playing by himself, that’s him exercising, like in one shot, doing that
whole piece. But we loved it, we thought it was beautiful. And then that was
it, when he came back he said, “That’s not the record I played on, that’s not
the track.” I said, “Yeah, man, you inspired us, we went in and this is what
we did.” You know, he sang a lot of hooks all over the place and we put that
all together and it became “You Can Do It.” But when we first went in it was a
little intimidating for sure because George Benson was the only one we didn’t
know. We knew Roy Ayers, we had met him and we had a relationship with him,
Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri. Kenny Dope Yeah, we had worked with a lot of the artists before. He was the only one that
we didn’t know. But it was like, “Whatever, let’s go! Let’s do it.” Louie Vega It was after that project when we started getting calls from like Janet Jackson and Luther Vandross, like everybody was reaching out, BeBe Winans, because of Nuyorican Soul. It was a great opportunity for us because we got to show what we could do as producers. That’s my favourite project that we’ve
ever worked on. Gerd Janson Then let’s listen to something off that album, “I Am The Black Gold Of The
Sun.” Louie Vega Gilles Peterson. Kenny Dope You picked a deep record, that’s a deep record right there. (music: Nuyorican Soul - “I Am the Black Gold of the Sun” / applause) Gerd Janson It doesn’t sound like music made by DJs, but it was also the template for another song. Kenny Dope Yeah, you know, it’s crazy because from that song we actually made “It’s Alright, I Feel It” and it’s kind of how our remixing skills came in because we basically remixed our own track and made another song. So if you want to play that real quick, like for a minute, and then we can keep going from there. So check this out, it’s come from that. You’ll hear the same chord progression. (music: Nuyorican Soul – “It’s Alright, I Feel It”) Gerd Janson It’s hard to fade it out. Maybe we should open it up for some questions from
the audience. There’s one right there. Audience Member Yo, that was dope. You guys talked a lot about remixing and stuff like that. I
love remixing. You guys come from a time where remixing is really almost a
reprise, like taking the same idea but reconceptualising it and making new
chords and making a new song with the same idea and similar aspect. I feel
like in today’s music that artistry is, not diminished but it’s not really
accepted, especially amongst commercial music and stuff like that. My real
question is, do you ever become upset when you hear commercial music? A remix
nowadays, especially as it relates to hip- hop and I guess other genres, is the
same song with just somebody rapping over it, a new artist. Do you ever become
upset with the lack of artistry or do you just not even pay attention to it? Kenny Dope Nah, it’s just a different form of it. The word remix has definitely changed,
like you said, from where we came in. Our version of a remix, we did a whole
new record. We went in and changed the whole song, just kept the vocal. If it
was a lead track, that was all that was kept from the original song and we
went in and did the whole music bit. Whereas today, yeah, Beyoncé will have
Jay-Z spitting on it and that’s the remix. Not that we’re trying to change
anything that’s going on, but we’re going to start doing stuff again together
and see what happens and reach out to some of these people. Let’s do some
music. Audience Member Thanks for being here, big pleasure. As DJs from the beginning, how do you
guys personally feel about the vinyl culture now? Because I got to get it on
the last end of it, like the late ‘90s. So I got to experience going to the
store and having stuff people didn’t have, before mp3s, and that was really a
great honour. Now it’s like, it’s just all about downloading music, which is
cool and it’s only a double edged sword, I think. But how do you guys personally, deep inside, feel about vinyl culture and where it’s going? Kenny Dope I’m still pressing records, believe it or not. I got a 45 label that we still
press records, we’re doing great. The
website, we do a lot of that stuff on
there, online. It’s definitely gone digital, but it’s something about when you
do play those records – everybody that sold their records to play on Serato is
mad because they’re like, “Oh, man, I just sold all my records.” But then
there’s the whole new generation of kids that don’t know what a 45 is or a 12”
is, so they’re looking at it like, “What the hell is he playing?” It’s cool.
It’s coming back slowly, thank god that there is a new generation out there
that appreciates and wants to feel something. I think people now want to feel
that vinyl again, they want to read the credits, they want to see who’s on the
record. You don’t get that on an mp3. For a minute everybody was just so happy
to get a record for free or to share a record, but now they’re seeing all this
artwork and they want to read on the artist and you’re only going to get that
from a real record. Like Louie said earlier, there was a period when we were
selling 100,000 records or 50,000 records on our own label. We’re not doing
that today but we got to keep it going. Kay-Dee is ten years strong this year,
still pressing them 45s. We’re going to do some more stuff on vinyl again too
for them collectors out there, because they are out there. Louie just pressed
his record on vinyl, which is real dope to me, because usually new records
don’t come out on vinyl like that, like a project like that. In the rock scene
they’re pressing vinyl and certain house stuff as well, there’s limited
edition things too, popping off. Audience Member Yeah, I can’t imagine a hundred-and-something thousand being pressed. I’m
struggling trying to sell 300 so 100,000 is crazy, man. Kenny Dope But the other answer to your other question about the record store. I definitely miss that because that was a meeting point where you could go a store and hear music, you met other DJs, you met other producers, you met
artists, it was just that meeting point. You went there on a Friday night,
sometimes we made appointments because we were in the studio, so we would go
at two in the morning to a record store. It’s something about just being in
that environment and looking at the covers and picking them up and playing
them. And I still go digging to this day, that’s like a big part of my life is
still collecting vinyl and 45s and all that kind of stuff, so I definitely get
what you’re saying and it’s definitely missing. So hopefully, slowly it’ll
come back. Louie Vega Yeah, and doing certain parties and stuff. Like last week I had my album
party, I said, “Let me do something different, I want to play vinyl all
night.” I made a huge project out of this, got my whole staff involved. I
called my boy Sting International, I said, “Listen, I need your console.” I
got Shorty, this sound who does clubs, I said, “I need you to do my rubber
bands over again,” you know, for the turnables. I went all the way and at
Cielo I set up on the stage. Then I looked at the crowd, I said, “Damn, this place is packed and I haven’t seen some of these people in a long time.” Everybody just wanted to feel that and I never got so many compliments, the way the sound sounded. You
could feel the difference, totally, and it was really wonderful. I definitely
want to go to Berlin because I heard there are so many places over there where
they’re playing vinyl in clubs, like everybody. And they’re putting out a lot
of vinyl in that area. So there are some places where it’s bubbling and stuff,
obviously. I mean, it’s very boutique still now and there’s a lot of us that
want that. We’re definitely making an effort. Kenny has been already, I’m
going to start putting out my catalog. I mean, the last thing I put out on
vinyl was “Into My Life,” which is an Elements Of Life song with Lisa Fischer
and Cindy Mizelle, which did pretty well in the clubs. I can only take records
that I know would be successful, because it’s really difficult as well just to
press that amount of records. If I can break even, it’s cool, but I don’t want
to lose to put out vinyl. Now that there’s this resurgence of the young
generation looking for it, now we can do it. Audience Member I got one more quick question. At what point did you guys decide to get a manager and what was the most important part of that? Because, you want to be in the studio all the time, you don’t want to be on the phone, signing contracts, you don’t want to do all that stuff. So what was the most important
part when you guys got a manager and how did you figure out who you wanted to be behind you guys? Kenny Dope That was our biggest mistake. [laughter] For real, honestly, man. They were stealing from us, we didn’t know what was
going on, for the amount of records that we were doing. At one point it didn’t
matter. There was so much money being made it didn’t matter, it was like,
whatever. We knew they were robbing us. But somebody had to deal with that,
you know what I’m saying? And you learn from it. It wasn’t like they were
going into these labels knocking people’s doors down and being like, “Yo, they
want to work with...” They wasn’t doing none of that. We had relationships
with all these people, all the A&Rs, all the labels, because we were working with them for ten years. So we didn’t need it but it was almost like, “Oh, we need a manager just because.” And we were young and it was just to run the office or whatever, but it was the biggest, biggest mistake, seriously.
You got to watch your own stuff, man, because they’ll rob you blind. It’s
like, you’re doing three, four records, five records a week and these budgets
are coming in. Money’s just getting lost all over the place if you understand
what I’m saying. It happens. Audience Member Hi, I’m Federico from Argentina. Kenny Dope What’s up, man? Audience Member I have no idea what the impact of “Mambo No. 5” is here in the States or in Europe. I don’t know, maybe you don’t want to talk about it, but... [laughter] Kenny Dope Alright, I’m going to stop you right now. Gerd Janson I wanted to stop him, but... Kenny Dope Check it out, you know that’s not him, right? [points at Louie Vega] Louie Vega No, it’s OK. Kenny Dope No, it’s fine, trust me, you’re not the first person. Audience Member Really? OK. Sorry, Red Bull team. Kenny Dope No, it’s cool. Audience Member I’m interested anyway. [laughter] Kenny Dope You got another question? Audience Member No. Kenny Dope Nah, don’t clown him, seriously. Audience Member No, because I’m a little worried about... Anyway, you are involved with...
It’s about Latin symbols, Latin culture. Because, for example, I’ve been
playing in Europe more than in my own country. That’s weird. I learned a lot
of Latin culture in Germany. What’s going on with us out there? What’s your
perspective of Latin music or Latin culture? Sometimes, for example, I don’t
know, Bomba Estéreo is big here. What’s your perspective of Latin culture?
It’s not that important, “Mambo No. 5,” but it’s how that symbol goes backwards and forwards around the world. Kenny Dope Well, let me tell you, for instance, when we were doing our music we were selling records in New York, Philly, West Coast a little bit, Canada, but we wasn’t huge in America. We were huge in Europe. London was like my second home for like eight years because we were doing music there, we were DJing a lot
there. Italy is another country that really embraced Masters At Work and still
embraces Masters At Work. I think now, I would say, what, the last probably
five to eight years, around there, we’ve been travelling the States now. I
didn’t travel in the States back when we was popping over here, it wasn’t even
like that. Was there time to do it? Probably not because we were so busy in
the studio and stuff like that, and then we were travelling abroad, but we got
embraced overseas, man, seriously, like Japan. It wasn’t like we were
travelling to Puerto Rico and stuff like that representing our music or
anything. It was totally different. Audience Member So it’s like you just play around with your ideas and then see what people in
the world are interested? I mean, we were listening to one of your aliases,
Nuyorican [Soul], and well, that’s why I’m asking. Thank you, I hope to still
have friends, sorry for the mistake. [laughter] Louie Vega Nah, don’t worry about that. You know, for years there’s Lou Bega – that’s
“Mambo No. 5” – with a ‘B’. I’m Louie Vega. Then you have Lil’ Louis, “French
Kiss,” and you have ‘Little’ Louie Vega, that’s me again, so don’t worry, I’ve
gotten over that for years. Kenny Dope Then you got Louie Louie Vega. Louie Vega The hip-hop guy, right? Kenny Dope ...who was down with Queen Latifah and 45 King and Naughty By Nature. Louie Vega So there were a lot of us, man. Kenny Dope There’s a funny story with that one too, that was crazy. Louie was getting his
checks, like big checks. [laughter / applause] It was crazy because we were in the studio one day, he’s like, “Yo, I got this
check for like $60,000.” I’m like, “Word? That’s cool.” He’s like, “No, but
it’s not mine.” I’m like, “Who’s is it?” Louie Vega I said, “I didn’t do Queen Latifah and Naughty By Nature.” Kenny Dope It’s Louie Louie Vega. I was like, “We’ll find him.” He was so happy, it was crazy, because nobody would ever do that. He handed over like 60 grand, it was crazy. [applause] Audience Member How you guys doing? So you guys produced ten years of my youth soundtrack and
I partied with y’all hard in Roseland, so thank you for that. But my question
goes more to your legacy. You guys are Masters At Work, original pioneers in
your field, especially for Latinos. Who are you mentoring right now and who’s
the next generation of people that are following your genre and following in
your footsteps? Kenny Dope It’s hard. There was a couple of people that I met that had potential, last
couple of years, but it’s just like almost they’re in it for the wrong
reasons. It wasn’t from here [points to the heart], it was just because they
wanted to be in a video or they wanted a nice car. We all want nice things and
we’ve been fortunate to have nice things, but you got to do the music first,
first and foremost. I was really disappointed, honestly, because you see the
talent, they got great ideas, they remind you of yourself when you were
younger, but you put them into the situation and you’re like, “Wait a minute,
what did I do right now?” Because I didn’t break down what needed to happen.
I’m just thinking, “You know what? They got it, put ‘em in the studio.”
Whatever, but it’s hard. I would love to pass this on to somebody else.
There’s people, kids, that I show ‘em records and go digging with and stuff
like that, but it’s hard. You don’t really see that drive, they’re just in it
for the wrong stuff. Louie Vega I think for me, I’ve been focusing on kind of showing the youth where it comes
from. I have a new album, Elements Of Life, which I signed to Fania Records,
and that kind of comes full circle because Fania Records is the label that my
uncle was on, Hector LaVoe. He was one of the greatest salsa singers of all
time and Fania music has one of the biggest catalogs, if not the best. It’s
like the Motown of Latin music, put it that way. So for me, I brought Elements
Of Life there, we signed this project, we did this African-jazz-Latin-soul
thing, but we combined it with the Fania sound. So I think this is a good tool
to have because Fania has history, I went in there and now there are people
calling me from the Latin scene, which never ever called me before, and now
people want to get involved. And it’s young people, which is wonderful. There
are some poets we work with that are really young, a lot of the artists that
we worked with on the project, the singers – and also veteran singers as well
– but I think for me it was important to do something strong like that and then we can kind of look for new talent. We’re always open to find new talent. If we see that person who has it, we’ll know if they have it and you’ll know because we’ll be paying attention to that person, to that artist. So we’re open to it, we want to embrace the generation of today and build. Kenny Dope It’s just a lot of legs go with that, you know what I mean? You definitely
have to study your history and know what came before and you have to know what
your goal is and where you want to go, that’s the biggest thing. I knew I
wanted to do this since the beginning and I did it. There was people that
didn’t think I could do it but I did what I had to do to make it happen. I
think the biggest thing is not second guessing yourself and that goes to
everybody here. You just go with your gut. The gut always speaks and it’s
right 100 percent of the time in anything, not just in music, in life, period. Audience Member Thank you for being here. I’ve got a question and a comment. The question is,
you say you’ve gone back to making music for DJs and I was curious as to how
you’re working processes have changed in the last 15 or 20 years. The comment
is that over in Europe, as DJ over there playing in various countries, I can
definitely say that vinyl’s not dead yet. It’s difficult to tell whether it’s
on a downwards trajectory or whether it’s keeping steady, but it’s still got
some life in it. Louie Vega That’s great, that’s what we want to hear. Audience Member I mean, there are almost no records that I can think of that have come out in
the last few years, that I’ve been interested in, that have been digital only
for the kind of stuff that I’m into anyway. Kenny Dope Yeah, we sell a lot of stuff overseas too, we ship a lot of stuff over there.
The only thing that’s killing us right now is the postage. It’s like $12 to
ship a 45 overseas, it’s ridiculous, and that just happened. But people are
supporting and they’re actually buying a couple of other records in there to
make the shipping worthwhile. Definitely, there’s nothing like it, the vinyl
is what it is and there’s nothing like it. We could play CDs, we could play
WAVs and all that stuff but there’s something about, like Louie said, the
vinyl and what it sounds like. But the thing about it too is, a lot of people
they don’t know the process when they’re making these records, and I’ve picked
up a lot of new records that sound like I’m playing CDs, because people are
treating it like that. There is a process when you’re creating this music. You
got to print it to tape, number one. You got to get it mastered. And don’t mix
your records like you’re mixing it on a CD, because the mastering guy can’t
make them levels pop like the way they’re supposed to be on a record. So a lot
of these records are really hot and they sound like you’re playing CDs, and
the sound is not right compared to the old stuff. Audience Member I guess this is going to be controversial, but I’ve always thought that vinyl
mastered and cut badly sounds way worse than a bad mp3. Kenny Dope Oh yeah, definitely, without a doubt. And you can tell. When you’ve got old
records and you listen to them new records and you be like, “Man, they just
pressed this off a CD.” It’s important. The whole artform of pressing records,
there’s really nobody teaching the younger generation how to do this. Because
a lot of these kids don’t even have tape machines, they ain’t even thinking
about analog boards and all that, because they’re doing it in a laptop. You
can’t blame them but that’s something that I always talk to people and try to
tell them, say, “Look, you’re record is going to sound better if you print it
to tape. Trust me on that.” Audience Member So are you still mixing down records live on a board? Kenny Dope Yep. If something’s getting pressed, that’s the process. I even record my
stuff to tape, multi-track tape, and I’ve done stuff in ProTools but the end
result, if it’s going to be on vinyl, is half-inch tape or quarter-inch tape.
It’s a big difference. Gerd Janson But there was also the question of how your ways of working have changed
together, right? The recording process? Audience Member That’s actually what I was referring to. Are you still structuring out tracks
by fading things in live? Kenny Dope Oh yeah, all day. Yesterday, to give you an example, we had something running
live. I printed it to CD because I wanted to do it live and he was like,
“Bring in the things the way you was bringing it in before when you was
playing around.” So I actually took the mix out of ProTools and mixed it right
to the CD and that was the mix. Later on Yaz got some work to do because he
got to figure out what I did. But nah, it’s a real thing, real organic. Louie Vega Yesterday just happened. It was like, “OK, let’s start with this keyboard
sound and let’s keep it stripped down.” Then, as he was doing it, I was
calling in the parts, I said, “Bring in the bassline,” and he already knows
I’m telling him two bars, four bars before, warning him. It’s really cool that
it comes out spontaneous. Last night I played at Cielo, I have my Wednesday
night there, and I played one of the tracks and it sounded amazing. I said,
wow. I told him today, I said, “This is really going to work, what we’re going
to do, because it kind of has the magic that we had a long time ago.” I mean,
we’re not on a big SSL board, it’s a little different, but there’s still
faders, there’s still mute buttons, there’s still everything. And it’s still
loud, of course, at Kenny’s studio especially. I think we’re on our way. We
work well together that way, it’s all spontaneous, the spontaneous stuff at
that moment really happens. We didn’t really touch on the DJing thing, but from block parties back in the days it’s always been a thing for us to play
together on six decks or whatever. I mean, we didn’t invent that, we got that
from the block parties or watching the other DJs in the neighborhoods back in
the days. So we decided to play together and just kind of do it. We don’t
really plan anything. We don’t say, we’re going to play these ten records. No,
it’s just like, go in. We got our libraries of music and whatever we bring and
we just feel it. And tomorrow, the way we play if you come watch us tomorrow,
it’s going to be that same similar way we work in the studio. So we kind of
bring that to life right in front of you at that moment and it’s all
improvised. Audience Member Hi, pleasure. Can you talk about your favourite mastering engineers, for
electronic of course, US specifically? Kenny Dope Number one has got to be Herb Powers. Louie Vega Herb Powers, yes. Kenny Dope That’s number one. Herb Powers did everything from probably like ‘78 to like,
what, 2000? Actually, Herb does Beyoncé, Jay-Z today. Unfortunately, he
doesn’t cut anymore, the vinyl, because that was another art that he had that
was just impeccable, crazy. His highs were just crisp and the records cut
through, you heard them. When you were mixing them in they just cut like
blades. Herbie’s got to be number one for me and for a lot us, for our generation. Audience Member He’s based where? Kenny Dope He’s actually in Florida now. He used to be at Hit Factory in New York. Under
Herb, I use Rick Essig and he’s in New Jersey. He cuts all my records, all my vinyl, and he’s got it from Bucketheads all the way up. He’s great, he’s definitely great. Great guy. Louie Vega There’s Wally at Masterpiece in London as well. Kenny Dope Wally’s somebody else we use. Believe it or not, a mastering engineer can ruin
your record, too. Seriously, you could have your record sounding incredible
and then they guy gets it... For instance, “Deep Inside” is the perfect
example. Louie blamed it all on Eric but a lot of it, too... Louie Vega No, I didn’t blame it all on Eric. The mastering was bad, yes. [laughter] Kenny Dope A lot of it was the mastering, because Strictly Rhythm used to use this place
in Jersey and he used to put compression on everything. So a record with a lot
of drops, when the beat comes back in, it just gets smaller, you know what I’m
saying? Then when the drop comes up it just gets bigger and that’s why that
record is like that. It’s horrible. Audience Member That’s why folks used to love the old stuff, it breathes so much and it has so
much more dynamic involvement to it, for my taste at least. Kenny Dope No, but this is back in the analog days still. That was his thing, he
thought he’d put compression on it and that was his job. But it can ruin a
record too if you don’t have the right people, definitely. Louie Vega Yeah, we didn’t get to approve that one and everything was moving so fast. But
you know, definitely there’s an art to it. Those guys have made an art out of
it. I mean, I’ve heard Crystal Waters, let’s say, “la da di, la da da,” you
know that song? Gerd Janson ”Gypsy Woman.” Louie Vega ”Gypsy Woman,” right. Herb showed it to me before and it really sounded like
a demo. I was like, wow. It had that Basement Boys feeling, because those boys
were rocking it, but when he showed me the ‘after’, what you hear on the
record, I said, wow. I was really blown away by it. I said, “Herb, man, we’re
going to work for the next 30 years.” No, really. And he did “Planet Rock,”
one of the first big electro records, Afrika Bambaataa, from there all the way
down, Kanye West, everything, you name it. Now he does all the big commercial
artists but he also still loves to do these kinds of records, so he loves when
we call him because he gets to do dance music and have fun with it. Audience Member It’s such a different approach, maybe. I work a lot of with Brian Lucey a lot
but for rock and funk stuff, played stuff, but it’s a different kind of art, I
guess, mastering for electronics and such. Louie Vega Yes, they can definitely add another level of sonics to your record and make
it sound really wonderful if you have the right person who understands what
you’re trying to do. They can bring it out. Herb Powers is definitely on top
of the list for many, many years. Gerd Janson Any more questions? There’s one in the back. Audience Member Hello. I want to see what you think about the whole sampling thing, with a lot
of the records that you told was people copying your stuff, like right on the
same bassline, the same beats and stuff. Wasn’t it just because you could get
a lot of the records in the same stores if you were in New York? At that time
you could go downtown and get the Ultimate Breaks & Beats collection. Kenny Dope Yeah, I think sampling’s sampling, but the thing about the copying was it was
beyond sampling. A lot of us had the same records, but it’s basically what’s
in here [points to his head] and what you do with it. The situation earlier,
he was copying the same... it was the same song, different artist pretty much.
But yeah, there’s tons of records that have been used 50 million times over. I
got into a situation probably when “The Best of Both Worlds” came out, the
Jay-Z record and R. Kelly record. I did that beat, you know what I mean? But
somebody heard it, it was a sample, they took the sample and they gave it to
them. Legally, I couldn’t do nothing because it was just an idea. So it is what it is. Audience Member Also with the sample clearance today, do you think you’re maybe going to get
into problems with some of the stuff you made before, like Beastie Boys had,
they came 20 years later trying to [sue them]. Kenny Dope If it happens in happens, you know? It’s there, we did it. But a lot of the
people have actually embraced what we’ve done, a lot of the old guys respect
us. I’ve met a lot of people over the years, and actually through my reissue
label I’ve met a lot of the OGs too, and they’re just happy that we’ve kept it
going. Because people actually, believe it or not, when you sample something
they do look for them records. And believe it or not, if it’s a record like
“The Bomb,” I’ve made money but them guys made a lot of money because they
have 66% of that record. And that was a record that was on an album cut and
nobody played it. The Chicago version was only in the clubs, but if it wasn’t
for my record Pitbull wouldn’t have a record, let’s be real about that,
because they never would have sampled that record, they would have never used
that record. So there’s a lot of benefits too, to it, if you do everything in
the right way. Audience Member Also, I think you made a lot of like original sample records, breakbeat
records that people use. Kenny Dope Absolutely. Audience Member And I used a lot of them myself since the ‘80s. Thanks a lot! Kenny Dope That’s what’s up. Louie Vega Yeah, it’s like when we did “Everybody Be Somebody,” I mean, we signed that
record. We said, “Look, man, we’ve got to clear that sample.” So we called the
guys from Yello up, in the UK or whatever - I think the UK or Germany or
something. Gerd Janson Switzerland. Louie Vega In Switzerland, OK. And we cleared it, it worked out actually great for us
when we did that. We don’t just take everything and just do it. Kenny Dope Today, if your record got legs and you got samples in it, you’re better off
clearing it once you get wind of what’s happening, because you know what?
Today they use these records in films, they use them in commercials, and you
can make some decent money off the stuff if it’s done correctly. Once you get
your situation right then do it, you might as well just do it. It’s to your
benefit anyway. Gerd Janson Any more, or that’s it? Then please, Masters At Work. [applause]