I said, ‘Well, what if it’s a remix? We haven’t pressed up the single. So I turned it in, but I just … I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was already scheduled on the calendar. ‘ Bring the Pain’ was already out as the single. And he was like, ‘Drew, that’s not possible. And that I thought it should actually be a duet with a female artist singing to make it really a hit. I told him that this needed to be a record. What ’s next? Did you take it to Russell Simmons? So you kept playing it and you have this idea. Don’t you remember? You kept playing it.’ And I was living in his apartment at the Southgate Towers Hotel, which I actually forgot until he saw it on On The Record and called me, and was like, ‘Drew, I was there when you heard it. I remember thinking it’s really a hip-hop sonnet.Īt the time, I was dating D’Angelo. It’s not like an LL record, where it’s like a mac daddy record. I’ve never heard anything this romantic before. But it’s all in the vocabulary of hip-hop.īecause it was actually romantic in its own way. This is so loving, so romantic, so selfless, but also, so hip-hop.’ The way he’s telling her that he loves her, and what he wants in the future he’s envisioning, is really romantic, if you listen to it. But, I started listening to this interlude on repeat. And I’m playing it on my one speaker while I’m typing everything up to make sure it matches up and the sequence is right, and make sure I know which order to put the credits in, and stuff.Īnd I hear, ‘ Shorty, I’m there for you any time you need me/For real, girl/It’s me in your world/Believe me/Nothing make a man feel better than a woman/Queen with a crown.’ Whatever. I get the credits in all these sheets of papers and stuff, and I’m trying to compile everything. And I was told to essentially type up the credits for Tical album, and to send it over to Polygram, so they could press it up and put it up. I was just in my office, no window, one working speaker. Simple question: How does this story start? This interview has been edited for length and clarity. I spoke with Dixon to get the story behind Method Man and Mary’s duet, her experience in the industry, and how her place in hip-hop history has been nearly erased. Dixon is a living, breathing, surviving symbol of this. Nevertheless, to properly celebrate the genre we’ll also need to have honest - oftentimes harsh - conversations, too. It changed the world and peeled back layers of nuance and complexities about race, discrimination and sociological differences like none before it. Or perhaps it’s easier to think of a song as just a random cocktail of beats, rhymes and life and not an intricate process that takes more than just the artists to bring them to life. Perhaps it’s because she was subjected to hell in an industry that cares more about hits than humans. “Lyor really wanted nothing to do with me, so I was given A&R administration tasks,” she recalled.ĭespite helping to bring one of rap’s most iconic love songs to life, Dixon’s contribution to the culture has been all but written out of history. She didn’t yet have the keys, but at least she was on the lot. Lyor Cohen became the label’s president on her first day, and she was like most young people working in the music industry at the time, wide-eyed and excited to just be in the building. In the summer of 1994, Simmons tapped Dixon to join Def Jam. Related Story How Diddy reinvented the remix Read now She wasn’t just listening to the music, she helped birth classics such as Deborah Cox’s “ Nobody’s Supposed To Be Here,” Aretha Franklin’s “ A Rose Is Still A Rose,” Brandy and Monica’s “ The Boy Is Mine,” Whitney Houston’s “ My Love Is Your Love,” and Santana’s “ Maria, Maria.” When you love something - truly love something - it’s almost impossible to completely let it go. Hearing D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar long before he was heralded as “ the next Marvin Gaye.” Dixon was part of the generation of hip-hop execs that helped take the genre to new heights. Her friendship with a young, relatively unknown Lauryn Hill. Dixon is animated when recounting her experiences in the 1990s: Marathon smoke sessions with The Notorious B.I.G. Despite being pushed out of the industry after she was assaulted, she still loves hip-hop music. Blige’s “ All I Need.”ĭixon, who served as director of A&R at Def Jam Records in the mid-1990s, recounted the abuse she allegedly experienced at the hands of Def Jam founder Russell Simmons in the documentary On the Record. The former music executive played a pivotal role in helping create one of rap’s greatest love songs, Method Man and Mary J. Hip Hop at 50 is our yearlong look at the people, sound, art, and impact of hip-hop culture on the world.ĭrew Dixon has never truly gotten her flowers.
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