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I knew it, Dallas was influenced by Bomb Squad! Confirmed 
Dallas was a Take 6 fan too, this shyt makes all TOO MUCH sense now. 
But what I didn't know, these are the rough mixes and the final version was turned down by Motown because it was too slick
Imagine that today, coli fam. 
That shyt aint going to happen because your label head aint listening to your cd, the label is going to choose the shyttiest version because records dont make $ anymore. 
Poverty made the Boyz II Men live in splendor.....but the label really couldn't give them a salary? I call bullshyt, Motown so sadistic in the nineties. You had a music genius on at your beckoning call with a vocal group that was brilliant in their approach. You had them starving? You couldn't get someone to make home cooked food for them?
"If I sign to Biv 10 I can't start my own Biv 10" He knew this at 19....Dallas saw the future. 
Dallas the genius had to stay for the whole record, the Boyz knew this 19 year old was their Teddy
Producer Dallas Austin talks about Boyz II Men's debut album, 'Cooleyhighharmony'
Dallas was a Take 6 fan too, this shyt makes all TOO MUCH sense now. But what I didn't know, these are the rough mixes and the final version was turned down by Motown because it was too slick
Imagine that today, coli fam. That shyt aint going to happen because your label head aint listening to your cd, the label is going to choose the shyttiest version because records dont make $ anymore. Poverty made the Boyz II Men live in splendor.....but the label really couldn't give them a salary? I call bullshyt, Motown so sadistic in the nineties. You had a music genius on at your beckoning call with a vocal group that was brilliant in their approach. You had them starving? You couldn't get someone to make home cooked food for them?
"If I sign to Biv 10 I can't start my own Biv 10" He knew this at 19....Dallas saw the future. Dallas the genius had to stay for the whole record, the Boyz knew this 19 year old was their Teddy
Producer Dallas Austin talks about Boyz II Men's debut album, 'Cooleyhighharmony'
Boyz II Men, ABC, and BBD: The East Coast Family… was the mantra for the Biv 10 collective at the beginning of the 1990s. After being discovered by Michael Bivins, the collective known as Boyz II Men—Nathan Morris, Shawn Stockman, Wanya Morris, and Michael McCary—signed a recording contract with Motown Records in late 1989. Hailing from the streets of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the quartet spent years cultivating their trademark vocal chops by rehearsing and performing in their legendary high school’s choir and at local venues. Under the guidance of Bivins and music executive Jheryl Busby, they were on the verge of becoming pop superstars with their debut offering and a successful partnership with up-and-coming producing talent Dallas Austin. On February 14, 1991, Cooleyhighharmony would be released by Motown Records, and it spawned four singles, including “Uhh Ahh” and “Please Don’t Go,” and two top-five hits: “Motownphilly” and the remake of Freddie Perren and Christine Yarian’s classic, “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.” For the album’s twenty-fifth anniversary, we spoke with Dallas Austin about his role in constructing one of the biggest albums from the early ’90s.
How were you discovered by Klymaxx member Joyce Irby?
Dallas Austin: I started out playing in bands in the Atlanta area. I was doing lights for a band called Princess & Starbreeze. She signed them, but no one knew that I was able to produce music. I was 15 at that time. I started doing music over at their house. Everyone started listening to my music, and they were telling me how good it was. So I signed a deal with her. Once she started seeing more of my production work, I produced her “Mr. DJ” record and a couple of Troop records. After that, she said, “Why don’t you become my producing partner?” That’s how our partnership started. She had a deal with Jheryl Busby at Motown, who was the president of the label at the time, he had signed her, Boyz II Men, and few other acts to their roster. He called me to ask if I could produce Boyz II Men, but he wanted me to do it on my own, without her influence on the music. So that’s when fireworks started to happen. [laughs] I went to Philadelphia with them to record “Motownphilly” and “Sympin’,” and they were the only two tracks I was going to produce for their album. When I got there, I clicked with the guys, they asked, “Why can’t you do our whole album?” Then, they asked me, “Can you do ballads?” So I went and bought some Babyface records to listen to them, and I figured out how to do ballads. I ended up doing their whole album. When I called back to tell her I was doing to whole album, she said, “Oh, really. I’m suing everybody.” [laughs]
Can you describe the Atlanta music scene before you were involved with the Boyz II Men project?
Cameo was the biggest group around us. There was the SOS Band, Peabo Bryson, and Issac Hayes, but there wasn’t anything that connected with the young people there, except for Kilo [Ali] and Raheem the Dream.
How were you chosen by Jheryl Busby to begin working with Boyz II Men?
Jheryl Busby made an offer to me to work on their project, but I was signed to Joyce Irby’s production company. I was working as a work-for-hire producer for her. Once I started producing more than those two records for the group, she started to feel like something was going on with Jheryl, and that they were trying to take me away from her and this, that, and the other, when really, I was just in a bad work-for-hire contract. The more I learned about the work-for-hire contract I signed, the more I realized I wasn’t going to make that much money off the stuff I was doing unless I got it situated. It was Michael Bivins who hooked me up with Joel Katz. Then, Jheryl Busby, Clarence Avant, and a bunch of people started to get involved at a certain point to help make sure I was cleared from the contract because I was doing so much work for them by then.
What was your relationship with Jheryl Busby when you began producing records for the Motown label?
He thought I was a bright young kid. I was into producing music, but I was also interested in guessing the artist and that type of stuff. He said to me, “You can learn what we know, but we can’t learn what you know.” This was before I got my own label. As I was working with Another Bad Creation, I thought that we should turn them into a miniature version of Bell Biv Devoe (BBD) and not New Edition. The same thing happened with Boyz II Men. I thought that the music should match what the artist looked like. So he was excited about the music I was creating. He thought that when Joyce mixed the songs, she mixed them too soft. This was during the days when Teddy Riley was just starting up and everybody else. Hard beats were just coming into R&B songs. At the same time, Michael Bivins had Boyz II Men and Another Bad Creation. We started hanging out with him. Once I produced “Iesha,” and the by the time we got to “Motownphilly,” we already started making a lot of noise with these records.
What do you think Michael Bivins saw in you to make him believe that you would be a great fit to work with his new group?
When he met me, he saw how musical my stuff was with my beats. Once we broke through with one song, and continued with song after song, he said, “Let’s keep this moving.” By the time I was done, he wanted me to sign to his label, Biv 10 Records, but I told him, “If I sign to Biv 10, then I can’t start my own Biv 10. I’ll keep doing records for you, but I don’t want to be signed to a production company.” Later on, I started my own production company, DARP.
You mentioned earlier that when you first met the group, you guys clicked instantly. When you first started working with the group on this album, what were the things that made you guys click and how did it help you create songs in the studio?
One thing was that I used to like the group Take 6 a lot. So I was excited to work with an R&B group. We could do Take 6-like harmonies and do them over pop songs. When I first met the guys, the first song they were singing was “Mary.” We took that and kind of played off of it. Their voices were amazing. When they did harmonies, they didn’t sound like anyone else. Having that doo-wop sound coming back out of Philadelphia mixed with that youthful early 90s sound was a good mix. You could tell there was magic happening in the room. We were excited about the next song and the next song, and the ones we hadn’t made yet because we knew how the combination would sound after we made them. Other than that, we were so broke and hungry. [laughs] We would do things just to pass the time. We used to walk to the studio together, and their feet used to be hanging outside of their shoes. I was broke from being in a bad contract, so we had that in common, too.
When you began working on this album, you were 19 years old. The group was relatively young around the same age back then, too.
Yeah. That is true. Wanya was the youngest. He was around 16 or 17.
What was the regular studio routine with the group during the making of this album?
We would usually start working in the studio around two or three o’clock in the afternoon, and we would work all night until three or four in the morning. Then, we would come in the next day and finish what we had worked on the night before. Everything wasn’t that quick. We didn’t have Pro Tools back then. They would sing, and it’d be put down on tape. Then, we had to go in and fix things the proper way because there wasn’t Autotune or anything like that. It made our minds work differently. It made our ability to play stuff sharper because we didn’t have any other options. We were constantly trying to perfect things. You had to be talented to sing on records. If you listen to a lot of records now, people get away with not being talented. Back then, there wasn’t an option. You had to be talented. When we were in the studio, I’d sit behind the console, and my keyboards would be set up there, too. The guys would be in the vocal booth or we would sit around and just write.
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continued....How were you discovered by Klymaxx member Joyce Irby?
Dallas Austin: I started out playing in bands in the Atlanta area. I was doing lights for a band called Princess & Starbreeze. She signed them, but no one knew that I was able to produce music. I was 15 at that time. I started doing music over at their house. Everyone started listening to my music, and they were telling me how good it was. So I signed a deal with her. Once she started seeing more of my production work, I produced her “Mr. DJ” record and a couple of Troop records. After that, she said, “Why don’t you become my producing partner?” That’s how our partnership started. She had a deal with Jheryl Busby at Motown, who was the president of the label at the time, he had signed her, Boyz II Men, and few other acts to their roster. He called me to ask if I could produce Boyz II Men, but he wanted me to do it on my own, without her influence on the music. So that’s when fireworks started to happen. [laughs] I went to Philadelphia with them to record “Motownphilly” and “Sympin’,” and they were the only two tracks I was going to produce for their album. When I got there, I clicked with the guys, they asked, “Why can’t you do our whole album?” Then, they asked me, “Can you do ballads?” So I went and bought some Babyface records to listen to them, and I figured out how to do ballads. I ended up doing their whole album. When I called back to tell her I was doing to whole album, she said, “Oh, really. I’m suing everybody.” [laughs]
Can you describe the Atlanta music scene before you were involved with the Boyz II Men project?
Cameo was the biggest group around us. There was the SOS Band, Peabo Bryson, and Issac Hayes, but there wasn’t anything that connected with the young people there, except for Kilo [Ali] and Raheem the Dream.
How were you chosen by Jheryl Busby to begin working with Boyz II Men?
Jheryl Busby made an offer to me to work on their project, but I was signed to Joyce Irby’s production company. I was working as a work-for-hire producer for her. Once I started producing more than those two records for the group, she started to feel like something was going on with Jheryl, and that they were trying to take me away from her and this, that, and the other, when really, I was just in a bad work-for-hire contract. The more I learned about the work-for-hire contract I signed, the more I realized I wasn’t going to make that much money off the stuff I was doing unless I got it situated. It was Michael Bivins who hooked me up with Joel Katz. Then, Jheryl Busby, Clarence Avant, and a bunch of people started to get involved at a certain point to help make sure I was cleared from the contract because I was doing so much work for them by then.
What was your relationship with Jheryl Busby when you began producing records for the Motown label?
He thought I was a bright young kid. I was into producing music, but I was also interested in guessing the artist and that type of stuff. He said to me, “You can learn what we know, but we can’t learn what you know.” This was before I got my own label. As I was working with Another Bad Creation, I thought that we should turn them into a miniature version of Bell Biv Devoe (BBD) and not New Edition. The same thing happened with Boyz II Men. I thought that the music should match what the artist looked like. So he was excited about the music I was creating. He thought that when Joyce mixed the songs, she mixed them too soft. This was during the days when Teddy Riley was just starting up and everybody else. Hard beats were just coming into R&B songs. At the same time, Michael Bivins had Boyz II Men and Another Bad Creation. We started hanging out with him. Once I produced “Iesha,” and the by the time we got to “Motownphilly,” we already started making a lot of noise with these records.
What do you think Michael Bivins saw in you to make him believe that you would be a great fit to work with his new group?
When he met me, he saw how musical my stuff was with my beats. Once we broke through with one song, and continued with song after song, he said, “Let’s keep this moving.” By the time I was done, he wanted me to sign to his label, Biv 10 Records, but I told him, “If I sign to Biv 10, then I can’t start my own Biv 10. I’ll keep doing records for you, but I don’t want to be signed to a production company.” Later on, I started my own production company, DARP.
You mentioned earlier that when you first met the group, you guys clicked instantly. When you first started working with the group on this album, what were the things that made you guys click and how did it help you create songs in the studio?
One thing was that I used to like the group Take 6 a lot. So I was excited to work with an R&B group. We could do Take 6-like harmonies and do them over pop songs. When I first met the guys, the first song they were singing was “Mary.” We took that and kind of played off of it. Their voices were amazing. When they did harmonies, they didn’t sound like anyone else. Having that doo-wop sound coming back out of Philadelphia mixed with that youthful early 90s sound was a good mix. You could tell there was magic happening in the room. We were excited about the next song and the next song, and the ones we hadn’t made yet because we knew how the combination would sound after we made them. Other than that, we were so broke and hungry. [laughs] We would do things just to pass the time. We used to walk to the studio together, and their feet used to be hanging outside of their shoes. I was broke from being in a bad contract, so we had that in common, too.
When you began working on this album, you were 19 years old. The group was relatively young around the same age back then, too.
Yeah. That is true. Wanya was the youngest. He was around 16 or 17.
What was the regular studio routine with the group during the making of this album?
We would usually start working in the studio around two or three o’clock in the afternoon, and we would work all night until three or four in the morning. Then, we would come in the next day and finish what we had worked on the night before. Everything wasn’t that quick. We didn’t have Pro Tools back then. They would sing, and it’d be put down on tape. Then, we had to go in and fix things the proper way because there wasn’t Autotune or anything like that. It made our minds work differently. It made our ability to play stuff sharper because we didn’t have any other options. We were constantly trying to perfect things. You had to be talented to sing on records. If you listen to a lot of records now, people get away with not being talented. Back then, there wasn’t an option. You had to be talented. When we were in the studio, I’d sit behind the console, and my keyboards would be set up there, too. The guys would be in the vocal booth or we would sit around and just write.
Click to expand...
