Song Exploder - Ghostface Killah - The Battlefield

Episode Date: January 7, 2015

In November 2014, Ghostface Killah of the Wu-Tang Clan released his 11th album, called 36 Seasons. A lot of people worked on it: soul band The Revelations served as a kind of house backing band for the whole thing. Lil' Fame from M.O.P. and engineer Daniel Schlett helped produce, and there's a host of guest vocalists, including the ones on this track: singer Tré Williams, and rappers AZ and Kool G Rap. But the person who put the whole thing together, came up with the idea, and corralled all of these contributors is someone who doesn't appear on the record. His name is Bob Perry, and his title is A&R, which stands for artist and repertoire. Nowadays, that usually means the person at a record label who acts as a talent scout for new artists, but back in the day, the A&R reps were often responsible for much more. In this episode, Bob Perry talks about how the Ghostface song "The Battlefield" came together, and Revelations guitarist Wes Mingus breaks down how the beat was assembled.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. In November 2014, Ghostface Killa of the Wu-Tang Clan released his 11th album, called 36 Seasons. A lot of people worked on it. A Solon R&B Quartet, The Revelations, serve as a kind of house backing band for the whole thing. Lilfame from MOP, and engineer Daniel Schlett helped produce, and there's a host of guest vocalists, including the ones on this track, singer Trey Williams, and rappers A-Z and Cool G-Rap. But the person who put the whole thing together came up with the idea and corralled all of these contributors

is someone who doesn't appear on the record. His name is Bob Perry, and his title is A&R, which stands for artist and repertoire. Nowadays, that usually means a person at a record label who acts as a talent scout for new artists, but back in the day, the A&R reps were often responsible for much more. In this episode, Bob Perry talks about how the ghost-faced song The Battlefield came together, and Revelations guitarist Wes Mingus breaks down how the beat was assembled. Here's the Battlefield on Song Exploder. Not once with a nigga test me or gets tested.

I'm a walk down the streets as these they all bless me. This is Bob Perry. I'm the A&R on the album. I was working on a record by a singer called Trey Williams, who's a sort of soul R&B singer, and the Revelations ended up becoming the band for Trey Williams album. Have I told that I love?

that I love you lady. I also at that time was working as an A&R for Koch Records in New York. One of the artists that we had signed to our label was the Rizza. The Rizza became familiar with the Revelations work. I played him some of the stuff. He was really digging it. He came to some of the shows. And that led to a working relationship between myself, Riza, and the band.

we did two compilation albums and then we collaborated with him on the soundtrack to his film The Man with the Iron Fist I had also worked with Ghostface prior to all of that the idea was to do a concept album with Ghostface

I have a friend of mine who's a writer his name is Matthew Rosenberg he's a comic book writer and he and I batted around a couple ideas for narratives for an album And we came up with this idea of 36 seasons about, you know, a guy who'd been away from his neighborhood for a long time, comes back home, things have changed up for the worse, and bad things happen along the road to redemption. It's a different process than you have with most musicians and most rappers.

Most rappers would never let this kind of thing happen, but thankfully Ghostface has the faith in the process to allow a piece of music like this to be created. He has a huge amount of trust in me, yes, I would say. And I'm thankful for that, you know. The thing is, what you got to understand is that that is really how he came up. He always worked with, I would say, strong-voiced producer. And he says, you know, I perceive myself kind of like an actor, you know, like, I get called in. You know, the guy's giving me my script. I do my scenes.

And then I leave so many months later, I see it on the big screen. And I'm like, wow, I never thought it was. going to go that way. I wouldn't take credit as a songwriter. You know, we just came up with the narrative for the album, but the rappers wrote the lyrics and the musicians wrote the music. I just was kind of an A&R, you know? That's the classic, I think, definition of an A&R putting together artists and repertoire, you know? The song that we're discussing here is called The Battlefield, and that's song one on the album. And that's a song where each of the three main characters, characters in the album kind of establish who their characters are and tell a little piece of their story.

Once we had agreed on the storyline, my job was to come up with bullet points for each song. Okay, Ghost, and Song One, these are the topics that I need you to deal with in your verse. And what we did was we gave Ghostface demo beats, not the actual music that you hear on this album, but we gave him beats and we gave him the general instruction for that particular track and then he laid down his verse and sent it back to me I yo I'm back at the nine years that's 36 seasons shit is changed up for all types of reasons statin allen ain't the same shit is lame no familiar faces son I'm dodging the game I want a clean slate but these cops straight screwing snatching me up and then once I had that then I knew what I needed to tell the other guys because the other rapper's job is to a

establish their own characters and fill in the bits of the story that Ghost Face for whatever reason doesn't touch on and to move the narrative along. So basically the characters are Tony Stark's played by Ghost Face of course. Cool G Rap, his character is called The Future, the drug Kingpin slash Slum Lord who's gotten the neighborhood jammed up. White booster shit hot as Fallujah kids grown out at Gok Ruggas. Welcome back to the sewers with new Wist maneuver. And then Izzy's Rogers, Lieutenant Rogers. Mama Beard was the church woman, pop skated off. I was impaired to introvert young and a lot changed my course.

From nowhere to my first onion then them cops came across. Flats the badge took my stas, told my little ass get lost. I just imagined I was casting a movie and it was like an audio movie, you know? Like maybe like what was radio plays. You imagine what their voices sound like and what the personality is that they have either in real life or that they've had on records in the past. And then Ghostface filled in the missing pieces at the very end. There's a guy named Little Fame. He's from M.OP, a rap group here in New York.

He and I were here in the studio before the band came and we were messing around with a sample from a gospel record. We couldn't really make it work because the time signature. was so slow but I liked the feel of it the darkness and the blues it had the thing that I wanted for this song and the idea of these old warriors

the fact that the Revelations are a soul band to me they were the perfect guys for the job as much as Ghost was the right rapper I thought the revelations were the right band although we had worked in the past on other projects with the Wu Tan clan there'd never been one where we had this much I would say creative control.

It was a tremendous opportunity to showcase the capabilities and talents of the group. Yeah, this is West talking now. West Mingus, I play guitar and bass on the song and co-produce. Like Bob said, he and fame worked out the kind of vibe they wanted for the track and the general feeling of it. I heard where they were going conceptually with the sample that they were working with. They had been working on it and working on it, and they were just like, this just isn't working, you know? And then we just kind of took it from there.

And so, Gintas, Jan Yusonis, the drummer, he would lay down the drums first. We knew we wanted to keep the vibe of the demos that were sent out because we didn't want a drum track that wasn't going to gel with the lyrics that were given to us. And so it was sort of a reverse engineered thing because the beat came out. after the verses, which is obviously totally backwards from a normal hip-hop approach. There was a certain sort of chord structure and movement in the original gospel recordings. What we decided to do is just dumb it down, keep it Wu-Tang, and just rock on just one note. I played the bass on it, rocked. Dumb-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum- You know, and just keep it right there.

And that was the first layer after the drums. From there, I decided to double. double the bass line on the guitar to just give it a little bit more grit and motion and then added a couple more stabs there's some whirletzer there's the high kind of guitar part that doesn't and then we created the intro we knew this was song once so we knew something had to come in the beginning that sounded like an intro the treatment is much different and the beginning sounds much dustier and kind of like an old record the chorus says I've been on the battlefield for a long time.

I can see life closing in on this old body of mine. Been on the battlefield Trey Williams. For a long, long time. Yeah, so Trey, I mean, Trey and I know each other backwards and forwards. We have worked

together for eight years. I told him what he needed to do. He did it in 10 minutes and then left. I can see life closing in. Y'all niggas don't see it? On this old body of mine.

I guess I wrote that part. But I don't take credit for it because, again, it's a very traditional kind of thing. You will hear something like that in hundreds of quartet gospel records. Even though we were a live band approaching, doing a hip-hop project, we didn't want everything to sound like a bunch of guys just noodling around and like this is a rapper over a band. And we wanted the textures to come from different atmospheres, which is a very hip-hop kind of thing, because it's sample-based traditionally. And every sample is taken from a different record, different time, different genre.

And that's part of what makes the soup and the gumbo of hip-hop so beautiful, making a collage out of different sounds and bringing it all together and recycling it in a kind of way that creates something new, even though you're taking it from things that were pre-existing. A lot of people think that these songs. songs in this album are samples, they don't know that it's a band until they look at the credits in the CD booklet or whatever, you know, like, people all the time come through, oh, what was this, what sample did you use for this? But I don't think it sounds like samples. When I hear it, it doesn't sound like a sample record to me. It sounds like something new. It sounds like something in between what other people have done before, you know? And Bob, do you have a background making music yourself?

No. Only trying to get other people to make music I like. And now, here's the Battlefield by Ghostfing. killer featuring Cool G-Rap, A-Z, and Trey Williams in its entirety. It out like some old damn socks. I want respect. These streets watched my playground once. I worked a mad cross a hundred and ten funny stunts. Not once.

Would a nigger test me or get tested? I'll walk down the streets and knees. They all bless me. Beyond the battle, feel like closing in it. Now niggies don't see it? Beyond the king, pink, poor future.

Making a killing and these builders and the millions got them feeling like a booster. Shit, hot as for Lujia kids grown. Now they got Ruggers. Welcome back to the sewers. Renewist maneuver. No kids playing. No safe in sound havens.

There's trade pound cases on the playground pavement. No more dudes with 20 tools in their secret souls. Kids do shit. They leave your body with heat a hose. I'm that neighborhood blizzard flooding these streets of snow. Heavy iron on them ready. My shit should have creche clothes. Keep a flock of the sweet and souls.

Yeah, I sweep with those. Little slum young geese and clothes with cheaper clothes. Undercovers all around the gutter, they're creeping low. I stays ahead kid I toss bread like piece of dough I keep the teff around my torso with the beast below That bull's dog shark nose G be a beast with those you know Been on the battle

Feeful of clothes Mama Beard was the church woman Pop skated off I was impaired An introvert young and a lot changed my course From nowhere to my first onion Then them cops came across Flats the badge took my stas Told my little ass get lost

Threw me off When my grind was crime times then You can step on and stretch minds too were nine times ten, I was gone. Remembering, though, that that fine line's in, so I studied the chessboard, and we were all blind men. Dillers ran the streets, but the D's ran them. I was a killer underneath, but needed expansion.

Something to constitute, being high in the coop, the cries for my youth, so I applied for the suit. Salute to the enforcer, call me officer now, supporter of path and nea, I toss it around, the link to the cartelow, courses is down. It's that Denzellon training day shit. Costs you my grounds. The battle I can see life closing in on this old body of mine.

Visit SongExploder.net for more information, including a link to buy the song The Battlefield and a list of the other songs that appeared in this episode. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out of full ink, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh, way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists, and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from

some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabond, Fenlily, and the producer of Phil wine robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs

are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. You can find all the past and future episodes of songexploder at songexploder.net or on iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you download podcasts. Find the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Song Exploder. Coming up next time on Song Exploder, Blonde Redhead. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a curated network of extraordinary story-driven shows.

Learn more at Radiotopia.fm. My name is Rishi-Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.