Albums Amerie - 4AM Mulholland & After 4AM (Discussion Thread)

brownsugah

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Literally NO ONE is saying this tho

Beyonce, her father, Rich Harrison and Columbia Records are all to blame for derailing her career back in the day if you know the full story.
LOL

You and the other delusional haters can think that all y'all want.

What excuse y'all got for this album though?
 

Yinny

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Amerie is struggle-voiced to the max but autotune for an entire album isn’t it, either. I’m keeping the title track and bushing the rest.
 

JustCKing

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She heard Rich in the studio working on beats for Amerie, and pulled the jack move.

You really running with this story, when Rich Harrison himself says otherwise. He is not Amerie's producer and she wasn't his breakthrough. Rich got his break producing for Mary J. Blige in 1999.

Amerie was the first entire album he produced. That same year, he was producing for Kelly Rowland.

This is how he ended up producing for Beyonce and "Crazy In Love" came to be
"Yeah, I had it in the chamber," he said. "I hadn't really shopped it much, because sometimes you don't want to come out of the bag before it's right. People don't really get it and you'll leave them with a foul taste in their mouth. So it was just something that I held on to until I got the call from B."

Harrison got more than he bargained for when he answered the call, however. He had anticipated an easy day: Stroll into the studio, play Beyoncé the golden sample and wait for her face to light up. To celebrate the anticipated victory, Harrison hit the clubs. The following day, things didn't exactly go according to plan.

For starters, he was a little late. He was also a bit hung over. "Oh my lord, it was crazy," is all he revealed about the prior evening's festivities. With two strikes against him going into a meeting with someone who was working on one of the most anticipated albums of the year, he played Beyoncé the sample and figuratively fouled one off to stay alive.

"From her face, she was kind of like, 'I don't know, but I'mma ride with you anyway,' " he remembered. "I knew I was going to have to sell it a little bit, because when it comes on it doesn't sound like anything that was being done at the time."

Beyoncé warmed up to the sample and then said something that, in his wildest dreams, Harrison would have never imagined, nor would he want to: "I love the idea," he recalled Beyoncé saying. "Now write the song. I'll be back in two hours."

With production and songwriting credits for Mary J. Blige, Alicia Keys and his own discovery Amerie, Harrison's no slouch in the studio, but writing a hit song in 120 minutes is a daunting task for anybody.

Unpleasant reminders of the night before notwithstanding, Harrison stepped up and wrote the verses and the hook, leaving the bridge for Beyoncé. He wound up playing all the instruments on the track, too.

Jay-Z added his part later, and though Harrison wasn't in the studio with him, he got the rapper's reaction to his creation through Jay's engineer Young Guru, a friend with whom Harrison attended Howard University.

"Hov love your sh--," Guru told him. "He played the track and went crazy."

When Harrison heard Jay's addition, he, too, had a bit of a freak-out.

"I remember when I first heard Jay's version," he recalled. "I was in my car screaming, 'Whoaaaa!' "

Despite receiving accolades from two artists at the top of the respective genres, Harrison wasn't convinced the song was going to be the massive hit it turned into.

"No, not like that," he admitted before clearing his throat. "I mean, I wrote it hung over."

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