So how involved were you in the music production side of UGK?
Early on I did all the production for UGK, Like on Southern Way. Yeah, 90% of the production and not for any other reason then I couldn’t find anybody that would give me what I needed, so I had to make it myself.
What was it that you needed?
I mean, I was going to producers trying to buy the song but I couldn’t get what I needed out of em. I would go to em an tell em: look, sample this record and sample this and put this together…and they would try to bring my ideas out of my head and put it onto the tape but they couldn’t quite get it, so at a certain stage I said fuck it and bought a drum machine. I already knew how to read music from high school and from playing instruments and shit, and I knew how to play by ear from being around my dad. My Dad’s name is Charleston Butler, by the way. My dad had taught me at a young age and by watching and listening, I learned. Then my parents broke up when I was about 6 years old, right? My mom ended up remarrying a few years later and ironically my stepfather—his name was Norwood Monroe—he was a band teacher. He knew how to read music and shit and ironically, I don’t know how I got put in that position but he ended up teaching me how to read music. At one point in junior high school he was actually my band teacher, my step-father was. And he would hear me—I always had lil drum machines and was trying to do lil things, whether it was putting two tape decks together and doing dub mixes like that or later on when we got 4-tracks and what not—you know every year for Christmas I got another piece of equipment, and he was listening. I didn’t know he was listening but he told me one day, he said “Man, let me tell you something, that shit you makin is noise. That rap shit is noise,” he said “but let me tell you something before you get mad at me. Man, try to put some music in that shit. I betcha if you can put some music in that you can dominate and you can get rich, know what I mean?” And I thought about it cause at the time, we talking the heyday of New York hip hop, we talking ‘88, ‘89. Shit was… you had the Bomb Squad at that time, you know what I mean, shit was kinda noisy back then. It was: take a bunch of samples put ‘em together and you know, a lot of bass and a lot of noise, which at that time was the sound. But he heard something in it that some people had caught on to, like Too $hort. He was one of the first guys to actually play all the instruments on a record and actually have bass-lines and do that shit for real. By that time I had accumulated a whole bunch of vinyl and shit so I had a bunch of old school records and things of that nature. He told me put some music and that was one of the best things he coulda told me, cause that’s what I did an it worked, man. It worked for us at least. That’s where I get the organ influence, the live bass and the live guitar and the real acoustic pianos and shit like that. That’s where I get the way I make music cause I always remember what he told me. He passed away in 1993, right before the “Pocketful of Stones” remix came out, in fact. The day he died was the day I got the master back before it was about to go on Menace II Society. I got that back the day he died. He told me put some music in that shit, boy, and you gonna win.
Did you have other peers in the south who were doing the same thing at that time?
I was listening to all posts. I was listening to Rodney O and them down in Miami, I was listening to everyone out New York, everyone West Coast. You know Dre was putting music in it a long time ago. All I did was take the good of both sides and try to put it on our music. Our music has a lot of West Coast influence and a lot of East Coast influence. That’s what made us different.
I think people recognize those early UGK records as a blueprint for a southern sound, that’s different from east or west.
Thank you, I take that as a compliment that you would see it that way but it was a whole lot of us making the type of music that we made. Groups like the Convicts, groups like Street Military, Coppertone Conspiracy…all independent groups that never got to get on a major label and really do it major. OG style; Texas got history. Just like New York got Kool Herc, Red Alert, we got people that was putting in work, too. Sir Rap a Lot, which was one of the original Geto Boys, is actually J Prince’s brother. Jukebox, Reddy Red and Raheem…I mean they was making records when it wasn’t a cool thing to be doing. It was a lot of us. We wasn’t the only ones rapping this country style, we was the only ones that had a major record deal and I think that might be the reason why our name gets mentioned and we still around. You can say what you want to about Jive records but Jive records put us out there. Maybe not the way we would’ve liked it to, but had it not been for those soundtracks; Menace II Society, Lowdown Dirty Shame, The Wood, Don’t Be A Menace…all that was good for our career. It put us in places where we may not have been able to get on our own. Like everybody heard Menace, everybody had pretty much seen that movie. Had “Pocketful of Stones” not been on that movie, people up east wouldn’t of heard that record, people on the west wouldn’t a heard that record, cause we were down south selling to our own fans, moving 350-400,000 records down here, ya dig? We the only ones that get mentioned man cause we had a major deal, it was a whole bunch of us at that time putting in work.
Early on I did all the production for UGK, Like on Southern Way. Yeah, 90% of the production and not for any other reason then I couldn’t find anybody that would give me what I needed, so I had to make it myself.
What was it that you needed?
I mean, I was going to producers trying to buy the song but I couldn’t get what I needed out of em. I would go to em an tell em: look, sample this record and sample this and put this together…and they would try to bring my ideas out of my head and put it onto the tape but they couldn’t quite get it, so at a certain stage I said fuck it and bought a drum machine. I already knew how to read music from high school and from playing instruments and shit, and I knew how to play by ear from being around my dad. My Dad’s name is Charleston Butler, by the way. My dad had taught me at a young age and by watching and listening, I learned. Then my parents broke up when I was about 6 years old, right? My mom ended up remarrying a few years later and ironically my stepfather—his name was Norwood Monroe—he was a band teacher. He knew how to read music and shit and ironically, I don’t know how I got put in that position but he ended up teaching me how to read music. At one point in junior high school he was actually my band teacher, my step-father was. And he would hear me—I always had lil drum machines and was trying to do lil things, whether it was putting two tape decks together and doing dub mixes like that or later on when we got 4-tracks and what not—you know every year for Christmas I got another piece of equipment, and he was listening. I didn’t know he was listening but he told me one day, he said “Man, let me tell you something, that shit you makin is noise. That rap shit is noise,” he said “but let me tell you something before you get mad at me. Man, try to put some music in that shit. I betcha if you can put some music in that you can dominate and you can get rich, know what I mean?” And I thought about it cause at the time, we talking the heyday of New York hip hop, we talking ‘88, ‘89. Shit was… you had the Bomb Squad at that time, you know what I mean, shit was kinda noisy back then. It was: take a bunch of samples put ‘em together and you know, a lot of bass and a lot of noise, which at that time was the sound. But he heard something in it that some people had caught on to, like Too $hort. He was one of the first guys to actually play all the instruments on a record and actually have bass-lines and do that shit for real. By that time I had accumulated a whole bunch of vinyl and shit so I had a bunch of old school records and things of that nature. He told me put some music and that was one of the best things he coulda told me, cause that’s what I did an it worked, man. It worked for us at least. That’s where I get the organ influence, the live bass and the live guitar and the real acoustic pianos and shit like that. That’s where I get the way I make music cause I always remember what he told me. He passed away in 1993, right before the “Pocketful of Stones” remix came out, in fact. The day he died was the day I got the master back before it was about to go on Menace II Society. I got that back the day he died. He told me put some music in that shit, boy, and you gonna win.
Did you have other peers in the south who were doing the same thing at that time?
I was listening to all posts. I was listening to Rodney O and them down in Miami, I was listening to everyone out New York, everyone West Coast. You know Dre was putting music in it a long time ago. All I did was take the good of both sides and try to put it on our music. Our music has a lot of West Coast influence and a lot of East Coast influence. That’s what made us different.
I think people recognize those early UGK records as a blueprint for a southern sound, that’s different from east or west.
Thank you, I take that as a compliment that you would see it that way but it was a whole lot of us making the type of music that we made. Groups like the Convicts, groups like Street Military, Coppertone Conspiracy…all independent groups that never got to get on a major label and really do it major. OG style; Texas got history. Just like New York got Kool Herc, Red Alert, we got people that was putting in work, too. Sir Rap a Lot, which was one of the original Geto Boys, is actually J Prince’s brother. Jukebox, Reddy Red and Raheem…I mean they was making records when it wasn’t a cool thing to be doing. It was a lot of us. We wasn’t the only ones rapping this country style, we was the only ones that had a major record deal and I think that might be the reason why our name gets mentioned and we still around. You can say what you want to about Jive records but Jive records put us out there. Maybe not the way we would’ve liked it to, but had it not been for those soundtracks; Menace II Society, Lowdown Dirty Shame, The Wood, Don’t Be A Menace…all that was good for our career. It put us in places where we may not have been able to get on our own. Like everybody heard Menace, everybody had pretty much seen that movie. Had “Pocketful of Stones” not been on that movie, people up east wouldn’t of heard that record, people on the west wouldn’t a heard that record, cause we were down south selling to our own fans, moving 350-400,000 records down here, ya dig? We the only ones that get mentioned man cause we had a major deal, it was a whole bunch of us at that time putting in work.
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