Last week we introduced you to Dee & Teak Underdue of Hallway Productionz in an exclusive interview at the Ice Cube Raw Footage album listening party. Hallway Productionz produced 4 tracks on the new Ice Cube album (which is now in stores) and in this 2nd interview Teak "The Beatsmith" Underdue gives us a track by track break-down of those songs. The 4 songs that we go over are "Why Me?" "Hood Mentality" "Cold Places" and "Thank God."

Enjoy this special exclusive feature. I hope it gives you a further insight to music production.  

Styles: On the album, the 4 songs that you produced take up the center of the album – almost one right after the other  with Why Me, Hood Mentality, Cold Places and Thank God. It’s cool how you have that whole block of the album.

Teak: Once I first heard the album, I was very excited for us because of the placement of the songs. That’s huge.

Styles: Let’s start with Why Me. That song is the 3^rd official single. Cube goes deep with this one. It’s a message to all of the would-be killers out there.

Teak: That song really strikes home. In February, my wife’s little cousin was a victim. He was 13 years old. He was at the park with his mom and he was the victim of someone shooting and he died. It was ironic that Cube had recorded that song. It happened in my family, so that song is really personal to me. My whole family is still just getting over his death. His name was Aaron “Bubba” Kelly Jr. It’s amazing how that song worked out to me because I now have this piece of art work that I can take with me and really promote it since it actually did happen to someone that I loved.

Styles: What was the time frame between Cube making this song and the tragic death of your cousin?

Teak: I first got the song after he laid down the demo track around this time last year. It was August of last year and the death of my cousin occurred in February of this year. After my cousin died, I kept listening to the song. It was like he was talking to me about the situation that just happened.

Styles: That song is unique because in the past Cube has played the “killer” role in his songs and now he’s talking from the victim’s role.

Teak: Exactly. That’s the sign of a good writer too – being able to take on both personas.

Styles: When you gave this beat to Cube, did you know what he was going to do on it already?

Teak: Not a clue! I work with a lot of people that I am able to give input to, but with a legend like Cube you definitely will trust what he does. He created gangsta rap so he knows what he’s doing. He got the beat and my manager Dave told me that Cube wanted to rock it. I figured he might do a reflection type of song to match the beat. When they sent it back to me after me laid the vocals, I was like “wow.” I never even thought of a subject like that being used over that beat. It took me about a good week to take it all in because it took me by surprise.

Styles: So even though you guys produced the music, he produced the vocals of the song?

Teak: With a guy like Cube, he produces his whole album. It’s the same with WC’s album, Cube got co-production credit because he produces the vocals. That’s pretty much a partnership that you have with Cube. He’ll take some input but he’s been doing this for over 20 years. No one can produce vocals better than Cube, especially from my standpoint. Really in my place, you just sit back and learn from the guy. We do the music, Cube does the vocals and Dave “Dizmix” Lopez comes in with the bomb-ass mix.

Styles: So tell me about this beat that you made for Why Me. Obviously we know now that you made it before he recorded it but what was going through your mind when you created it?

Teak: I have a crazy ass process a lot of times when I am making this music. With that particular song, I had started it with the basic beat. I had the bass line and pretty much the whole song done but it wasn’t quite ready, so I let it sit in my computer file for like a month before I went back to it. Sometimes you’ve got to just wait until the vibe gets you to really finish off a beat. So when I went back to it, I added a lot of the percussions. I made the drums bang harder and once I did that, the shit was ready. The mix too is really important when you first present a beat to your client. Once I added all of the stuff that made the beat bang, I sent it out to Cube in about a day for approval. Then we have “Why Me” a few months later.

One thing with Cube too is that if the mix isn’t right, as soon as he hears it, he won’t use it.

Styles: So everything has to be perfectly in place before you even think about sending it in.

Teak: That’s right. He knows what he wants to hear and if he’s not hearing it, then he’s not happy. With a lot of our beats, me and Dee, whoever makes the beat, we’ll make sure that the mix on the beat is perfect or near perfect to where the engineer doesn’t have to do that much work too.

Styles: So after lays the vocal down, do you guys go back and touch up the track? You know, like add a guitar riff or something?

Teak: Yeah, we’ve done that. On Laugh Now, Cry Later we did that intensely. We were just getting to know each other then too. Pretty much what we do is we’ll make the beat and give it our own mix. Then Cube and Dave Lopez will get in the studio and figure out all of the vocals. When it’s ready to be mixed, we’ll all come together and that’s when we give our input on what should be louder or higher. In the case of this album, I think everything was on point. We were all used to each other so when I gave him the beats, everything was A-1, so I almost didn’t need to change anything on all of the songs. This album was real magical on how it came together. Like all of the ingredients were there already. We just mixed it all up and “Bam!” – Like some Emeril shit.

Styles: The next song on the album is “Hood Mentality.” That song hits you right off with that crazy guitar riff. How did you come up with that?

Teak: I got that sample off of Eddie Kendricks who used to be from The Temptations. The song is called “Can I?” I had it for a long time, maybe like a year or two. I knew that I wanted to do something with it, but everything is vibe, so I sat on it for a while. One evening last year I said, “Fuck it” and just took the guitar sample, chopped it up and put it in the MPC. I kind of wanted to have a Southern feel to it but I still wanted it to be gangster. I put some Southern 808 drums with it. The high-hats picked it up. I made sure the bass-line kind of crept and then I matched that with the guitar. Then I put a big orchestra hit behind it. I’m a big 70’s cat so I wanted to give it a 70’s feel, so I play a flute solo that comes in during the 2^nd half of the verses. Then I added a little bit of keyboard to mellow it out. That’s how the whole beat came together and to be honest with you, it took like 20 or 30 minutes to make. It just came all together. I sequenced it in Pro Tools and put a mix on it and as you hear it on the album, that’s how I sent it to Cube.

Styles: Do you use programs like Reasons, or do you play a lot of your stuff live?

Teak: My process varies. There was a time when I was just using Reasons but my method is always the same. If I have a sample, then I will chop it up. I’ll start on the MPC and get a good drum vibe going. I’ll sometimes get the bass-line crackin’ on the keys. Whatever the vibe is, West, East or South, I’ll get that going. If some parts aren’t jumping or live enough, I’ll go back in and play the bass-line on a Bass guitar. I’ve been playing Bass guitar since I was 13. So if something isn’t live enough, I’ll go and get the real instrument and play it myself.

Styles: You even got some flutes going off on that Hood Mentality song.

Teak: I’ve been a jazz musician since 13. I kind of understand how all of the instruments should work. With that song, I know how a flute texture should sound like and how a real flute player would play it, so I just played it on the keyboard. I tried to match that like a real flute player as much as possible. Sometimes if that doesn’t work, I’ll call a real flute player to come in and do the exact same line or even improvise.

Styles: That was my next question. I know that you and Dee are musicians, but I was going to ask if you have other musicians come in and play stuff.

Teak: So far we’ve been pretty lucky between the two of us to knock out the music but I have a cousin that won a Guitar Center drum-off battle and his name is Eric Moore II. So if I ever need live drums he’ll be all over it. We have access to a lot of musicians in Stockton and in Sacramento as well. There are times if I can’t cut it myself, I’ll get an actual guy to do a sound on the keys. But with Ice Cube’s music, myself and Dee have been able to do it between the both of us.

Styles: What was Cube’s reaction when he heard the Hood Mentality beat?

Teak: This past April we got together and he told us that the beats were slappin’. We were working on WC’s album and we all came together to work on some new songs. He was just telling us that all of the beats that he got were real fly and hard. Cube is a man of few words so that was enough for me.

Styles: When you listen to the songs, you get the feeling that music was tailor-made for the lyrics, like the song Cold Places. I know that he wrote the song after you made the best but it has that feeling of the words and lyrics being crafted together. Everything just fits.

Teak: To be honest, Why Me and Thank God were the two tracks that I was hoping for Cube to pick for the album. The other two, I had no idea that he was going to use those. All of our beats have a good West Coast vibe to it and then once Cube gets it, he transforms it in to whatever he wants you to think that it is. That’s the sign of a great writer. I didn’t make those beats specifically for him. I just went with the vibe and then he took it and made it in to a great ass song.

Styles: Cold Places is my favorite not just because of Cube’s rhymes but I’m a synthesizer fan. You start off with that smooth synthesizer and then you have church bells ringing. Me as a music fan, I pay attention to the details of a track. I listen to every snare, bass-line, high-hat, drum-beat, horn, piano and guitar sound in a song. Cold Places seems like your busiest track.

Teak: It is. Thank God is also busy.

Styles: That one is too and we’ll get in to that one last. But Cold Places is not a track where you just let a repetitive beat play. There are a lot of sounds going on through-out the song.

Teak: All of our music has to move or I won’t even send it anywhere. It has to move and build up. I’ll break the vibe down too for Cold Places. I started out with the drums and I got this idea in my head that I wanted a creepy ass chord change. I love the sound of the piano but to me the synthesizer really drives home this 80’s sci-fi feel. What I did on the keyboard was a different attack on it so it kind of built up and it was ill. That whole song was built off of that chord change. Once I got that going I put that in Pro Tools. I played the bass-line in it and I said that the “bass-line has to move a lot.” It took a lot of takes for me to nail the bass-line but if you listen to it, it gets really busy. Once I did that, I added the church bells. When you hear church bells, you think of church or a funeral, so when you add that to a track it gives it an eerie feeling. So that’s how that track came together and it had an 80’s synthesizer, eerie death type of feel, over 808 drums and a live bass eating it up.

Styles: This one sounds like it didn’t take 20 to 30 minutes to make though.

Teak: Excluding the bass it took about an hour. Why Me took about the longest to make. Cold Places came together though. The bass-line part took the longest because there is a lot going on with it.

Styles: Thank God is a strong track. After the intro, the horns just hit you full blast. That was a throw-back to the 80’s where they had horns prevalent in rap songs. You really don’t hear horns too much anymore unless it’s a DJ Toomp track.

Teak: That’s funny that you mention Toomp, because the artist that I sampled for that track is Tom Brock. Toomp actually brought him back to the forefront with Say Hello To The Bad Guy with Jay-Z. Also Just-Blaze uses Brock too. DJ Toomp is Just-Blazes crate record digging’ cat. I didn’t know that was Tom Brock. I had the sample for like two years and I didn’t know who it was. Cube hit us up because he wanted more beats and I decided to narrow this record down. I took the sample and chopped it up in the MPC. The intro where Cube is talking, I added that part last. So I chopped up the sample and built up the drums around it. Then I replayed every part in the sample after I put it all in Pro Tools. It took a long time to put that shit together. There is so much going on in that beat.

Styles: It has a really powerful feel to it.

Teak: There’s a part to that sample where I added a Trombone and played the guitar with it too. There are so many instruments. I have a piano playing in the background. The session for that track is huge in Pro Tools. There is a vocal part in there during the hook. I have my sister and my mom singing and I’m playing the organ with it. It was a crazy beat to put together.

Styles: So you sister and mom are in the song?

Teak: They are in the background singing some “yeah” parts. It’s chopped in there and you can’t really hear it but there is a vocal in the sample, so I had to replay and capture the whole vibe of it.

Styles: So for this one Cube just told you that he needed more beats? He didn’t give you any direction on what to make?

Teak: He used to tell us, “I’m looking for this type of vibe.” We’ve gotten to the point where he’ll call up Dee and just say, “I need something Hot.” That’s pretty much it. Sometimes he’ll say, “I need a little bit less West Coast” or “something hard.” He’ll leave it up to us fill in the blanks.

Styles: That’s a pretty big blank to fill though, just going off of “give me something hot.”

Teak: Yeah, he’s starting to trust our judgment. We’ll give him a lot to pick from too. He keeps us busy.

Styles: How long did it take for you to make the Thank God track?

Teak: That one took overall about 3 hours.

Styles: You’ve never had to spend days working on something?

Teak: Sometimes to get a good idea. But when you get a good idea, it’s just about executing it. With that one I had the sample ready to go and the drums were kickin’ already. That’s usually the rough part and the rest is just filling in the blanks. It took about 3 hours to get the beat how I wanted it. Then I spent about another hour mixing it. Now the mix can take days sometimes, or sometimes just an hour here or there.

Styles: I know that samples can be costly to clear especially nowadays. Do you ever get the edict from Cube asking you not to use samples or as little as possible?

Teak: That’s funny you should say that. After I sent him the Thank God beat, he was pretty much like, “Awww.” He got it and knew that I used a sample because of the little intro part. He was like, “I just had to rap over it but you guys can’t use any more samples. Please send us beats without samples.” But yeah, he heard it and was like “Awwww man” because of that sample. Back in the day most of his beats were samples so he knows the whole thing in and out. He knows that we can play too, so he’s like, “Y’all can just get down on some original shit. Just don’t sample anymore.” With the Thank God track he had to just it though – he couldn’t help himself.

The same thing with Hood Mentality. He heard the beat and couldn’t help but use it.

Styles: The other two tracks were sample free?    

Teak: That was us 100 percent. Thank God we replayed everything but for Hood Mentality you can’t match that guitar anywhere.

Styles: That guitar is vicious.

Teak: There was no way around that one. We just ate that. We were like, “Fuck it. It’s going to cost us.” That’s Hip-Hop.

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