Richard Russell - Liberation Through Hearing: Rap, Rave and the Rise of XL Recordings

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Dedicated to the memory of Keith Flint

Contents

Its an overcast early spring afternoon. Im in a recording studio on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Manchester. Ive been here for an hour. It would have been hard to locate but I was collected at Manchester Piccadilly by a professional who had researched the destination and got us here easily. He used to drive Keith Flint during The Prodigys UK tours, and having picked me up we spent the short journey reminiscing about Keith, who passed away less than a month ago, at the age of forty-nine.

I arrive in a sombre mood. There are three musicians here. A man known as CASisDEAD has just arrived from a stopover in Nottingham. He is the most idiosyncratic, articulate and fluent British rap lyricist I have heard since Dizzee Rascal emerged from Bow E3 in 2002. CASs themes are typically the underbelly of street life, drug sales and sex work. In the first really classic song he has made, Pat Earrings, he tells the apparently heartfelt and melancholy story of his ill-fated relationship with a prostitute. At the conclusion of the song, he finds she has continued to see clients despite telling him she has stopped. Heartbroken, Im at wits end / Shes never accepted by my friends / Thats cool cause I never liked them. The narrator is bereft.

As is often the case with those who make disturbing art, he seems a person of integrity. Those in the public eye who go out of their way to seem benevolent, the supposedly squeaky-clean ones, are the ones to beware of. Nasty pretends to be nice, and vice versa. CAS has his face covered at all times when in public. Oscar Wilde said, Give a man a mask and hell tell you the truth. CAS has a taste for the analogue synthesiser sounds of the 1980s, music that soundtracked my youth and was popular around the time he was born.

I have programmed my Roland TR-808 drum machine in order to echo the feeling of the year that the machine was first released: 1980. This item is my favourite material possession. Its sounds and groove have been enjoying a renaissance in popularity since the James Brown samples of classic East Coast hip-hop made way for the more electronic palette that was being used by rap artists from the South. Its distinct sonic character is still a crucial part of the hip-hop production landscape.

Drums are only part of the story. In creating music for this session, I have enlisted someone who not only has the ability to craft unforgettable melodies but owns a collection of the vintage analogue synthesisers necessary to sonically execute this job properly. He sits behind one of these while his daughter Missy and his best friend Remi potter around. His name is Damon Albarn and, as frontman of Blur, mastermind behind virtual band Gorillaz and all-round musical polymath, he has scaled every imaginable height of creative and commercial success.

Damon and I are both fortunate to have benefited enough from our musical endeavours to each have our own first-class recording facilities in west London. We are in this particular location because of the third musician. We want him to record a hook for the song and this is where he wished to do it. He possesses a deep, deep soul voice that evokes not just the specific time we wish to reference, the mid-eighties, but the theme CAS wants to explore in this song, which is intended for his debut album, for release on XL Recordings.

This theme is the ephemeral nature of fame. The song is to be called Everythings For Sale. It may become a worldwide hit. Or it may never be released, or even completed. At this formative stage of the creative process uncertainty is a given.

This third musicians name is Alexander ONeal, and he is a sixty-five-year-old former Prince associate from Natchez, Mississippi, by way of Minneapolis, where he was the original lead singer for The Time, before making three solo albums with legendarily great production and writing duo, and fellow Prince acolytes, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. These albums were quite successful in the US, but in the UK he became a huge crossover pop star, scoring Top 10 singles with his songs Criticize, If You Were Here Tonight and his duet with Cherrelle, Saturday Love. His second album, Hearsay , went triple platinum in the UK, and he sold out three consecutive nights at Wembley Arena.

His appetites were always legendary. Along with most other eighties success stories, his star faded through the nineties. With each new decade music changes irrevocably and only a tiny number of musicians can transcend the decade they found fame in. In recent times Alexander has appeared on reality TV programmes Just the Two of Us , Wife Swap and Celebrity Big Brother .

When CAS gave me a list of the eighties voices he wished to try to feature on his album, I knew that Alexander ONeal was the one to pursue. My guess was that we would find him in LA, perhaps living near the airport, but it turns out he lives in Manchester.

Were here to capture the voice of this weathered soul survivor, and prior to the session he has been supplied with a map in the form of a recording, a guide version of the song that Damon, CAS and I made in London. Our preparation and planning have been exemplary and, while I have experienced enough best-laid plans scenarios to know that nothing is ever guaranteed, an hour into the session we have a heartbreakingly soulful performance from Alexander ONeal on our hard drive. CAS says to me that it is important to absorb moments like this. I agree. I have had many of them but they always feel dreamlike. Alexander says he needs to buy a bed, inexplicably, and with that he is gone.

Two weeks have passed. Im driving down Sunset listening to the recordings Ive been working on with CAS. I text him to say how good they sound. He texts back:

Its mad u should say that Ive been playing bits we made all week/weekend

Another text:

I have never played my music so much Rich, man. Its exciting beyond comprehension

And a third:

Got my new mask fitting Thursday

Im in LA with Esta for Adeles thirty-first birthday party. It takes place in the house where the Godfather horse-head scene was filmed. Adele has rented the property for the occasion, but should anyone be house-hunting, its on sale for $135 million.

Its approaching midnight when I hear Esta urgently beckoning. I wander over to where shes standing and she introduces me to a tall, tuxedo-clad man sporting shades and dreadlocks. He exudes a megawatt charisma. His real name is Shawn Carter but the world knows him as Jay-Z. He is arguably the greatest rapper of all time and definitely one of my favourite artists, period.

Since making a failed attempt to license his first album for UK release in 1996, I have spent a great deal of time listening to his music over a period now spanning nearly twenty-five years. As well as being one of our greatest living storytellers, he is also a wildly successful entrepreneur, a former drug dealer who now has businesses encompassing the worlds of fashion, beverages, real estate and sports, not to mention his Roc Nation record label and management company. He would be able to purchase the property we are in should he so desire. He has a light energy yet possesses an intensely commanding presence.

There is a third member of the huddle. Ive never met her either but she is intensely familiar. She is Beyonc Knowles, and alongside our host tonight she is the worlds most beloved female artist, or perhaps artist overall.

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