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Joined: 30/10/2010(UTC)
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Rel----Building An Album----  On a late March afternoon, I arrive at 1312 AVEX Studios, the seaside recording studio on East Atlanta where Rel recorded his mixtape In My Life and is now block-booking all three session rooms, 24 hours a day, until he decides he's done. He had deliberately concealed the names of the players he'd enlisted, but I can't say I'm totally shocked to find him posted up in the studio's A room with Monte Carlos and Trell. Those are his artist, after all. What does elicit a visceral reaction—hard, heavy laughter—is the wall of Rel's Commandments posted on sheets of paper on one side of the studio. They include the obvious—"No Tweeting or Facebooking during an session" and "No Pictures"—and some...well, some less obvious ones, too. Not that "half ass rapping" and "No lying on records" aren't rules to live by.
In any case, within 15 minutes I get to see YRMG in action.Rel throws on the instrumental for "Love Me or Hate Me ," which plays on hypnotic repeat for more than an hour while Monte Carlos puts pen to paper finishing his verse.Meanwhile, Rel stares at his blackberry, jumping between texts and writing lyrics for the song. He occasionally barks orders at the engineer, tuning subtle parts of the beat—all without breaking eye contact from his blackberry. This is how he works: all-A.D.D. everything.
The sun sets, and Averge Of The Martyr arrive, straight from the plane. Rel asks Troy if he'd voice the hook—"Where would I be/I don't know/ Aint no doubt in my mind/Still aint learnt my lesson/Looks like I done messed up all my blessing"—and the Troy steps into the booth and his voice just sounds so perfect...for the song. But Rel notices something off in the delivery, and he presses the intercom button to talk to Troy: "Um, Troy, it's actually ‘messed up all my blessing,' not ‘missed all my blessing.'" Troylaughs. "I'll do it again," he says, "but to be honest, the way I be saying words, you're not gon' be able to tell the difference."
The rest of the trip settles into a fairly routine pattern. Each morning begins with a 10 a.m. breakfast at Rel's Atlanta residence. Monte Carlos, Trell, Avenge of the Martyr and Rel's crew slowly assemble to enjoy the absurdly tasty cooking of Rel's mother who cooks meal for her son everyday when he's intown. An hour later, Rel pulls up in his Porsche, fresh from the studio. That's right, from the studio. During my five days in Atlanta, Rel never slept at his house, or even in a bed. He would, er, power-nap in a studio chair or couch here and there in 90-minute intervals, working through the night. Engineers remained behind the boards 24 hours a day.
With everyone assembled and enjoying their leisurely multi- course breakfast, music is the only thing discussed at the kitchen table—or anywhere else. Despite the many artist assembled, their egos rarely clash; talks are sprawling, enlightening, and productive. Topics range from the future (whether "Love Me Or Hate Me" should be given to Monte Carlos, who ended up with the track) to the present (reactions to Brittany Knox's success) to the past.But mostly we talked about Rel's album: what it has to mean, and what it has to accomplish this time around.
At its heart, beyond the beats or rhymes, this conversation is the reason we were all summoned to the Atlanta.It's never explicitly discussed, but everyone here knows that good music is the key to Rel's redemption. With the right songs and the right album, he can overcome the disappoint performance of his debut album and we are here to contribute, challenge, and inspire.
On one particular afternoon, Rel is hell-bent on finishing "Dirty World" which has had exactly 1.5 completed verses for the better part of a month now. He takes up residence in the A room. Rel's process is communal—he literally goes around the room asking everyone there what "dirty" to them about this world, throws out lines to see how they're received, and works out his exact wording with whomever is around to help. But his output is most definitely entirely his own—one listen to that consistently unique cadence, word choice, and sense of humor reveals that. rappers, producers, and entourage are all welcome to offer ideas or phrases, but the funny thing is, nearly every suggestion is met with, "That's really not at all a word I would ever say, but don't stop offering ideas, thanks!" In fact, that day, a line is offered by a rapper in the room (Monte Carlos) to close a line on "Love" and Rel jokingly says it would be "great—if my name was Monte Carlos and I was making ‘your type of music'". You get the feeling it's addition by subtraction with him—the demonstration of what he doesn't like illuminates what he does like.
And when he hits a creative wall, as he does this evening, he heads to another studio room to make progress on another song. In this case, it's upstairs to check in on Trell, who is listening to an R&B beat he'd called "Not In Love." At first, Rel is engaged, offering copious feedback, but as the record plays over and over, Trell tweaking small parts, Rel starts to zone out. At first this means he just nods and stares without talking— processing, but too tired to speak. Eventually, the weight in his eyelids overcomes him and he nods off. It's only 11 p.m., which means that we can expect a rested and ready Rel by 2 a.m. at the latest. Trell keeps banging on the beat machine for his sleeping audience while the rest of us decide whether to crash out at the hotel or wait on the next burst of creativity.Monte Carlos -"Rel is the on hardest working people in music I've met. If it wasn't for deadlines, I don't know if anything would be finished. I've heard things that I thought were perfect, and I come back and they're more perfect—and they're still not done. The guy's the maestro. It's a totally unorthodox way—well, it's unorthodox to me, 'cause I've never seen anyone work in pieces like that. It was really on some Quincy Jones shit, man. We could easily be working on one song, thinking we're in a mode, and he'll hear a sound from someone like Shantel and immediately turn his whole attention to that sound and go through his mental zone to where that sound belongs on his album, and then it goes straight to that song, immediately. Now, mind you, his album is a collage of sounds. It has one consistent theme, but you really have to be insanely talented to be able to do that. It's like turning on the drop of a dime, in a car. R&B Starlet Cherise - I heard through that Rel wanted me on his album, and I got on the next plane to Atlanta and stay for 3 days. I didn't think that he was gonna like me. I always figured that he was just another one of those street rappers, so I thought that he would have countless girls hanging around the studio—and I go to the studio and he has nothing but an small entourage of fellow rappers and singers. They were really professional, so it was a complete shock to me, 'cause I thought I had him all figured out, but I didn't. Rel kept askin' me to come and eat breakfast, but I like to record in the morning. So, when they were eating breakfast, I was in the studio listening to music and writing. And he would always be like, ‘Cherise, why you ain't never come over for breakfast, yo?’ But I never went. I would get to the studio at like 10:30 in the morning and he'd be leaving to go home and eat breakfast and I'd be getting to the studio to just write and record. I stayed late sometimes, but I was always getting sleepy. I get up at 6 in the morning, so midnight is late for me. One time he caught me nodding off, and When I picked up my head from sleeping, he was looking at me in the like I was crazy. He pulled his shades down and he looked and said, ‘Oh, she's sleeping?’ I wanted to crawl under a rock. [Laughs.]
"I'd never worked the way Rel was working. Everybody's opinions mattered and counted. You would walk in, and there's Monte Carlos and Trell and everybody is sitting in there and he's playing music and everyone is weighing in. It was like music by committee. It was crazy that everybody cared like that. I have my people that listen to my stuff—I think everybody does—but his thing is much more like, if the delivery guy comes in the studio and Rel likes him and they strike up a conversation, he'll go, ‘Check this out, tell me what you think.’ Which speaks volumes about who he is and how he sees and views people. Every person has a voice and an idea, so he's sincerely looking to hear what you have to say—good, bad, or whatever."R&B Singer Trell- "It's always the same thing when we work together—it happened on Remember Me, too: ‘Trell, what are you thinking?’ And I'll spit out something I think is good and hope he doesn't shoot it down. It's very casual; we're all creative people, so it's not a stressful thing for us to create in the studio. We're not in there pulling our hair out. We all have good ideas, and that's why the records usually come out the way they come out—everybody adds their flavor, and it ends up being a masterpiece. ‘She Know,She Bad’ was one of those joints. The process this time was a bit smoother; there was definitely an operation. I knew how I wanted to go about writing references, whereas on Remember Me , I had to go off, get my ideas right, and then bring them to the team. This time, I wanted to it was people in a room and caught the vibe. I was soaking up everything in Atlanta and it was a learning experience. I always go back into my mind and reimagine those moments again, because it's life-changing shit for me. Leaving Atlanta, I just saw that there was a formula that I wanted to apply to get my shit together. Edited by user 04 December 2010 09:50:50(UTC)
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