Babyface is a legend in the recording booth.
As a producer and songwriter, he’s developed some of the world’s greatest musicians across genres, including the likes of Whitney Houston, Beyoncé and Usher, just to name a few.
This week on “Renaissance Man,” Babyface – born Kenneth Brian Edmonds – took me down memory lane and dished on the moments when he realized that these young talents would become undisputed global sensations.
Specifically, Babyface remembers developing his own “language” while recording with Houston, who, he said, was all business.
“She didn’t necessarily like to spend a lot of time singing. She liked to get in there and get it done,” Babyface told me.
“If it was hard for her, if she wasn’t in voice one day, then she probably would just stop immediately and say, ‘We’ve just got to try this another day.’”
Babyface respected the superstar’s process, as he too “hated” banging his head against a wall in the studio.
“It was always great work with her. And she was always a lot of fun … We kind of had our own language with each other, kind of knowing when to go and when to stop.”
As it turns out, not surprisingly, Beyoncé took a similar approach during her own recording sessions, as she’s “always serious about her craft.”
“She clearly came with that intention, no different than when Aretha Franklin would walk in the room,” he said. “She would come in and say, ‘Let’s do this. I’m gonna sing it two times, that’s what you get.’”
But everybody in the industry does things in their own style — and there’s no better example of that than my personal friend Usher Raymond.
Babyface got to know the “Love in this Club” vocalist while he was just a teen. Young Usher did a private performance for LaFace Records, Babyface’s label with LA Reid, doing a single the executives wrote for Boyz II Men, “End of the Road.” Babyface knew this adolescent talent was destined for greatness.
“We had the room full of our employees and everybody was there,” he said. “He went up to every one of these girls that were way older than him. He was flirting with all of them.”
“You knew, ‘OK, this kid is gonna be something,’” the producer said. “It took a little more time to get him there, but you knew then that he had something.”
While Babyface has worked with contemporary global stars, including Ariana Grande and Bruno Mars, he was very quick to recognize the music industry just isn’t the same as it was — especially in how talent is grown.
“I think the thing is that things move so fast, there’s not a lot of time to develop our artists,” he said.
“You can put a record out and put a single out [but the artists] didn’t have any time to really grow, to practice their trade … There’s no training ground for that because everything is so immediate. It doesn’t take the same kind of time anymore.”
Such a rushed process often leads to, as Babyface put it, “cookie cutter” hits. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, he added.
“There’s always been those things, but you have to keep your mind open,” Babyface said. “Does it feel good? It does. Does it speak to you? For a lot of younger kids and the younger generation, it speaks to them … just as our parents might not have heard things the way we heard them.”