![]() Ron grabbed the producer’s tools of the trade at the time for his time in Trinidad: his Akai MPC60, Ensoniq ASR 10 and stacks of records. “Before we went to Trini, we signed our agreements and D Dot met me at my brother’s house and we went through a couple of records and one of the records that we grabbed was “Rise” by Herb Alpert, a song that we both remembered growin’ up as kids in the streets of New York, and I even remembered it from the soap operas” Ron recalls. He wanted us to work on an album that was called Hell Up In Harlem at the time, but it's known today as No Way Out.”īecause of the turmoil surrounding the on going East-West conflict Puffy felt that Trinidad would be a nice place to get away and concentrate. At one point says Lawrence, “He wanted to call us the Goodfellas. ![]() That was Puffy’s master plan.” Puffy summoned Ron Lawrence, Nashiem Myrick, D Dot and Stevie J and announced that he was forming a production team called The Hitmen. ![]() He continues, “During the time when Puffy started the Hitmen we decided to take a trip to Trinidad, so that we could get away and focus on dominating the airwaves of New York City. “I’d, just left LA before signing to Bad Boy and I was at my brother’s house in Mt. Ron shares the story of the making of “Hypnotize”, the first single from the Notorious B.I.G.’s last album Life After Death. ![]() He was one half of the rap duo 2 Kings In A Cipher with Deric “D Dot” Angelettie, and he attended Howard University with Sean “Puffy” Combs - ultimately became part of Puffy’s production team, The Hitmen. He grew up in the same Queens neighborhood as super producer Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor and worked with him early in the Super Lovers, The Turnout Brothers, and The Invincibles. Ron Lawrence has quite a resume in Hip-Hop as a DJ, MC and producer. You can watch the music video for ‘Hypnotize’ in the video below.The birth of Diddy’s production team, The Hitmen, and the creation of Biggie’s “Hypnotize,” happened at the same time in the same place, and producer Ron “Amen Ra’ Lawrence was there and an integral part of all of it. ‘Hypnotize’ was the lead single for the album and has been certified platinum in the US and two times platinum in the UK making it one of Biggie’s most successful singles. The album was recorded during what was a media frenzy surrounding the East Coast versus West Coast beef, centred around Biggie and California rapper Tupac Shakur. The majority of Life After Death including its lead single ‘Hypnotize’ was recorded in New York. The song also samples Slick Rick’s song ‘La Di Da Di’, the sample only appears partially during the chorus.įor the chorus, Biggie specifically recruited Pam Long from the group Total. Now, if that isn’t something that needs to be freed from the old school archives, then I don’t know what is. Furthermore, still has the cassette demo. The original demo featured Biggie behind the mic singing the female’s part. Surprisingly, many don’t know that Biggie wrote the entire song, even the female part. Alpert continued in an interview proceeded to say that “Over the years was approached by Ice Cube, Easy E, Vanilla Ice, and maybe another 4-5 artists to use the song and never said yes until heard rough version of Biggie’s recording.” According to Randy Alpert, Diddy chose to use the bass riff of ‘Rise’ because, along with Chic’s track ‘Good Times’, it was an extremely popular song that the kids of New York City were rollerskating to. The track was written by Andy Armer and Herb Alpert’s nephew Randy “Badazz” Alpert. ‘Hypnotize’ was produced by P Diddy and samples the 1979 song ‘Rise’ by Herb Alpert. In this article, we’ll be looking Behind the Mic to discover the story behind The Notorious B.I.G.’s 1997 hit ‘Hypnotize’ and bring you facts no one else knows about on how this classic was made. For fans, it is fascinating to see how artists we admire and producers we love piece small things together like a jigsaw puzzle and before they know it, something unimaginable is coming through the speakers. Sometimes we need to dig even deeper to find those hidden gems.
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