"I Was Making Beats in Seventh Grade" - We Talked to Salaam Remi

It's not up for discussion: Salaam Remi's musical experiences are unparalleled. Not just due to his family's extensive musical lineage but also his own quiet, yet dedicated resolve to master his craft. In the smallish room that serves as his office/studio, Remi swivels in his chair, slowly turning from the board to answer more questions about his rich legacy. With such an extensive history though it's difficult to determine where to begin so we start at the very beginning when his parents nurtured his natural musical abilities from a very early age.

In a condensed break down, he outlines how his father, Van Gibbs, a musician/arranger /manager/executive, surrounded Remi with music and instruments and band members since before he could walk. "It wasn't just my dad although he was the most [prominent influence]," explains Remi. "All my uncles on both sides of the family were musicians as well so I was soaking up game without even knowing it."

He showed his prodigious capacity for music early on. When Remi was just three years of age, famed Jazz drummer and friend of the family, Elvin Jones, heard him hitting things with drumsticks. Recognizing his rhythm Jones made him a miniature drum set out of a cocktail drum kit. Remi still has that first set up tucked away at his grandmother's house. "I took drum lessons with [jazz drummer] Steve Reed, one of my dad's friends," explains Remi when asked if he ever took actual lessons. "Also I played in the band or orchestra in high school and junior high school."

Somewhere within those years though, while kids were just getting their feet wet performing in front of crowds at school functions, Remi assisted his dad by playing keys for Kurtis Blow's Kingdom Blow. It must have been tough to not get a swollen head being so much further advanced than his school band mates and peers but Remi remained the humble sponge soaking up the ins and outs of his craft. "Besides," he intimates. "Some of those kids were really playing and were pretty talented. Also, more importantly, by that age I was already making beats so I wasn't [competitive] about playing instruments better than my classmates." What might have been a watershed moment for a young musician was just a matter of course to Remi. His mind had been made up long ago.

"I was making beats in 7th grade," he recalls. "I went to junior high with Akinyele. He always cracks about how I had this little keyboard that I could program beats on. So that was '83. I'm on the cheese bus with my little keyboard [imitates beat], holding the beat down. And this is when Doug E. Fresh was just doing the human beat box."

As Hip Hop's presence grew, Remi stated to come into contact with it more. He lived on Springfield and 116th Avenue, the block with the only McDonald's in all of Jamaica Queens so he would see Run DMC, Biz Markie, LL Cool J and Salt–N-Pepa. Without disobeying his mother by leaving the block he was able to see this culture flourishing right in his front yard. By the time 1985 came around Remi had a 707 Roland, a little keyboard, a DX 21 and was making other, slightly more advanced beats.

"By the time I got to '87 I got an S900 and I started sampling," Remi says with emphasis. "And then by the time I graduated in '89, I was able to make stuff that sounded like what was on the radio."

Salaam recalls this era fondly. There were times he'd sneak over to Downstairs Records for 45s to sample and to study what others had sampled, researching how his favorite beats came together. By the summer of 1989 just after graduating form Queens' Thomas Edison High School, Remi had fully taken the plunge; he was a producer. He moved out of his mother's house in St. Albans and went to live with his father in the city to embark on his career, though in all fairness that day had occurred years ago when he first started banging on the drums.

"My dad had a studio in midtown and he had a few artists signed to his label," says Remi. "Uncle Ralph had an office there, there was a lot of activity… I walked into that. I'd been around it for years on the summer breaks but now I moved into the house where all the Hip Hop was going on. Chuck Chill Out, who was my dad's artist, lived down the hall. My dad would be like 'Chuck, take Salaam with you. Let him meet some people.' So the two people who were always with Chuck would be my self and Funkmaster Flex. It was me, Flex and Chuck 90% of the time for at least three or four years."

As a result when Chuck Chillout began sitting out more and more, Flex and Remi grew tighter. Remi was with Flex at clubs all around New York as well as on the air at WBLS, consulting Flex on what to spin. These nightly lessons taught him what DJs needed from a record to motivate the crowd; he learned what a "jump off record" sounded like. It was an important lesson that he implemented when it came time to create his own club anthems.

During the years he was running around with Flex at radio, he also became acquainted with DJ Bobby Konders. Together they produced/arranged a medley of reggae joints including "Mack Daddy," "Ghetto Red Hot" and the "Don Dada (remix)." That led to production for the likes of Lil' Vicious and Shabba Ranks and also a crew of Haitian rapper/singers who needed a hit bad.

"All that early reggae stuff and my first production deal with this group I had called Zhigge…that was like the equivalent of college for me," sums up Remi. "Everything was happening for me. They were small blocks I was building but they were very important blocks, too. The whole '89-'93 was my college. My experience working with Caribbean music lead to me working with the Fugees and remixing "Nappy Heads" in December of 1993."

Just college. No big deal. Not like he was helping change the face and sound of Hip-Hop or anything. Holding court in his bat cave doing press for his new album One: In The Chamber, Remi still has the air of a student, of someone humble enough to know they're still at the learning stages of their craft despite their mastery of it. The album is a compilation of sorts that fully employs the lessons he picked up from the years under his dads tutelage. He even samples Taana Gardner's "Heartbeat," a song that his father arranged. That's not to say there aren't plenty of Salaam's own fingerprints all over it.

"I'm into musical development," he says. "In the late 1990s I took started my own label but I also started working outside of [rap.] I remixed "You're Making Me High" for Toni Braxton and I also remixed "Virtual Insanity" for Jamiroquai. Just doing other stuff. Bought a studio, I worked with Left Eye. I was doing musical development, playing more instruments, working with Tony Rich… I was still doing rap but I was trying to develop and get to another level of music."

But he never forgets his roots. Around the studio are some samplers and keyboards. When asked about the equipment, he mumbles, "That stuff is mostly generic." He goes off to a section of the room and comes back with a portable Casio MT-40 keyboard. "This is something else though, " he says mischievously. Remi loops up little sounds and before you know he's recreated the Sleng Teng Riddim.

This isn't exactly what you might expect from a "hip hop producer," so to speak, but then he did score films like Sex And the City and TYSON. Those credentials and experiences make it hard to summarize Salaam Remi's accomplishments.

All the while he's managed to maintain a certain level of anonymity throughout his career. He admits to popping up in a video way back in the early days but for the most part he's just here to make incredible music. He prides himself in tailoring everything to the exact mood the artist is trying to capture and in doing so melting into the background, giving the artist the forefront.

The subdued organ on Miguel's "All I Need Is You," the soothing strings and soft keys on the Corrine Bailey Rae-assisted "Makin' It Hard For Me," and even the "Apache" drum sample that Nas slaughtered on "Made You Look" never drown out the featured artist. Check Amy Winehouse's "Me & Mr. Jones" if you still don't catch the drift.

"I like working with people who sometimes have talent that is hard to spot," confesses Salaam Remi when asked how he's managed to accomplish so much in, not just Hip Hop, but also reggae and R&B. "Working with people and helping them find their talent made me a better producer."