Mike Skinner - The Story of The Streets: "I need to become the right producer"

Mike Skinner- The Story of The Streets: "I need to become the right producer" | http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions... In my teens, I'd had a mate a few years older than me who was really into hip-hop and used to sell a bit of weed. He went to London once to try and buy quite a big quantity and ended up getting robbed at gun¬point. At that stage I remember thinking, 'Fuck! Birmingham is bad enough, what must London be like?' The funny thing is, I felt much safer in London than I ever had done in Birmingham. Some of the stuff that's going on in Brixton is really hardcore, but if you're not part of it, it doesn't really affect you. This was the first time I'd lived on my own in England. But after Australia I was pretty familiar with the territory of the culinary lone wolf. If it was microwaveable I could cook it; if not, then purveyors of cheap takeaway curry, kebabs and jerk chicken were happily abundant in the Brixton area. I was so busy recording over those months that I hardly ever ventured out of my room anyway. It was my studio as well as the place I slept. And the link between creativity and bedding did not end there. I was using an emptied-out wardrobe as my vocal booth, and the best way to deaden out all the reflecting sound-waves in that home-made studio situation was to fill the space around me with duvets and maybe a mattress. The actual recording bit is where it gets really hot, and obviously you can't do that for very long when you're wrapped up in a duvet inside a small wooden cupboard. Also, you've got to be careful to get the right tog rating: the thickest possible duvet is best for the acoustics, but you need to physically survive as well. It's all about finding that balance... Of course when you're climbing back into that wardrobe you are aware that you're some way from the norm as far as studio environments are concerned. Deep down, you do know what the norm is, but you also know that the norm is really expensive. To me, realizing that I probably wasn't going to get it right on the first take, the important thing was to give myself the best chance of doing something good. And that meant making sure first that I had pretty much unlimited time, and second, that I retained control of every element of the process. I've always wanted to be able to do all of it. That's why I was always going to record myself. My thought-process was 'I need to become the right producer', and once I'd reached that point there seemed to be no option other than for me to do the vocals too. I was far too arrogant to think that finding someone with 'the right kind of voice' could help me. It wasn't even arrogance, really, more like insecurity. I was never going to want to make a track and then let someone mess it up with their vocals. If there are going to be mistakes in any song I've worked on -- which, inevitably, there are -- I want them to be mine, not anybody else's. Mike Skinner, The Streets Mike Skinner - The Story of The Streets: "I need to become the right producer" |    • Видео