"The Essence"

BACK TRACK - "The Essence" by AZ feat. Nas - Produced by Baby Paul aka BPZY





When and where did you make the track?

I made the beat that became "The Essence" in a private lab in Queens with my co-producer at the time, Mike Risko around the winter of 2001, just fresh off working on Nas's "Stillmatic" album. We were going thru some songs on a few records in our collection just listening to ideas for a vibe or inspiration. I heard the piano chord sequence in the Mary Jane girls song, "musical love" & was feeling the melody & the vox harmonies in the chorus & thought it would be hot to sample.. so I loaded it up on the MPC 2000 & started adding drums to it. I layered the kicks & snares from sounds in my drum library & wanted to get the feel of a combined clap snare sound with a sharp drum snare. The track was sounding good, but felt it was a little slow in tempo, so we weren’t sure if it would be a hit. Mike thought it was hot, but I wasn’t so sure.

What did the artist think when they first heard it?

Well, I shopped the beat around to a few label a&r's & my boy Damien "Deo" Blyden picked the beat when we had a mtng one day @ Motown records when he was an a&r @ the time. I credit his ear for picking that beat out and giving it to AZ for his "Aziatic" album. the word was AZ liked it & decided to feature Nas on the track which was an added bonus!

What was the studio session like?

It was an interesting time, as Nas was just riding the wave of success from "Stillmatic" & still touring, so the studio scheduling was hectic. The 1st session was done right around Super Bowl weekend in early 2002, Deo got the track to AZ & Nas & they started working on it right away! Being that Nas was still touring, only half of the song was done before he had to go out & complete touring. After his tour was done, they went back in the studio to finish writing the song & knocked it out in a few takes, the synergy between them as far as writing the song was amazing. I'm still waiting for the world to hear a complete AZ & Nas collab album & would love to contribute music to it!!

First time you heard it on radio or in club what were you thinking?

I was surprised the 1st time I heard the song cuz it got leaked to mixshow djs with only the 1st verse recorded, the song wasn’t done! Dj Clue was the 1st person I heard break it on his mixshow, it was crazy!! Lol…

Anything else you can tell us that revolves around that track (funny story or weird event that happened with the track)?

The interesting thing about this track was that I originally shopped it to Rocafella records & Memphis Bleek came across it & passed cuz he felt the beat was too slow for him to rap to. The other thing was that the song literally just made the cut on AZ's album, cuz after it was finished being recorded after NaS got off tour I had a deadline to mix the song at Sugar Hill Studios in NJ, then the album had to be mastered the next day to be turned in to Motown! That whole project was a complete grind, & the blessing is that it was the 1st Grammy Nomination for all 3 of us despite all the work we did throughout our whole careers up to that point- myself, AZ, & NaS. It was nominated for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or group for that year of 2002. We lost the Grammy to Outkast, but to be nominated was a good look for our efforts. I have Deo to thank for the opportunity along with AZ & Nas!!


Credit: www.istandardproducers.com