AllHipHop: Lord Finesse was talking to us about that early Bad Boy team of producers. You were part of that. Do you as a builder in that label, feel cheated by the way that label has seemingly turned its back on its roots of real Hip-Hop?
EMB: First of all, in the very beginning, Puffy just had various producers just doing work for Bad Boy. Then eventually, he got the idea to create The Hitmen. I was never a Hitman. There's a lot of people out there that never understood that or never knew that. I never became one of the Hitmen. I was asked to. Or rather, I was asked to in a different way. [Puffy] asked to manage me. At the time, I already had a manager. So I told him, "I'm already managed by somebody. I don't know about all that. I'll get back to you." And, I never got back to him. Honestly, I think he always took that real personal too. Because, I could imagine early on especially, him wanting to have a piece of, and the control of Easy Mo Bee - this guy whose doing all these great beats and songs for [him]. Because I never became one of the Hitmen, I noticed I didn't really appear on anymore of the Bad Boy projects after say, Life After Death. And I had to really push for that.
AllHipHop: And the reason you got on that, relates more to Big, right?
EMB: Oh, me and Big didn't have no problems whatsoever. Big would've recorded with me til' the end, and I know that. There was an element to what I brought to his music, that I'm sure he would've made sure to include on any albums. I had to push to get "Going Back to Cali" and "I Love the Dough" on Life After Death.
AllHipHop: What are the terms with the lawsuit against Bad Boy?
EMB: It's concerning royalties owed. Back royalties. Let's put it like this: On the Born Again album, a lot of people don't know that "Dead Wrong" was originally produced by Easy Mo Bee. It was remixed by Chucky Thompson, but it was originally produced by [me]. I still haven't received any money for the Born Again album. Also, a throw-away verse from the "Dead Wrong" was used to construct "Hope You N*ggas Sleep." There's that, there's so many other different things. There's issues of issues of things that were done that are finally beginning to be dealt with. For instance, when Puffy used my "The What" for the "I'm Going Down" Mary J. Blige remix, in the credits he has it as "remixed by Sean "Puffy" Combs" or whatever. That's my track. Things like that.
AllHipHop: Since you're looking for new blood to work with, we got to ask. When you put your work alongside an MC, what do you look for? What moves you?
EMB: First, before I even check for what they're rapping about, I always check for his flow, or the more technical term would be the cadence. That's real important to me. In other words, we talked about the - you called it emotion, I call it soul - when you think of a sax player, like God rest his soul, like a Grover Washington, Jr., or any of the funky, soulful sax players, when they play, they don't play on a click. It's very freestyle the way it ends up on top of the beat. I always felt like rappers should rap like that. That would be the amount of soul you put in it. That's what I'm looking for. I'm very soulful. I wanna know if you'll get real soulful with me.
AllHipHop: In this series, we're spotlighting one track with each producer that I love. With you, it's gotta be "Temptations." Tell me about the creation of that track, and everything you can.
AllHipHop.com Feature
Serious inquiries for Easy Mo Bee production,
contact Omar McCallop at 919-413-7401
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oh shyt the liks
you my nikka for this
