Twenty years ago, “Back That Azz Up” coming
out, that was the introduction to bounce music.
To the world.
A lot of people don’t know, it was met with,
“Nah, maybe the world not ready for it.”
Like we get it, this New Orleans.
We get it.
Fast forward 20 years later, it stood the
test of time.
I don’t see it going nowhere.
I would say the way I produce is definitely
from a club DJ's perspective.
Because I like it when people dance, I like
it when they move and I notice certain sounds
the way certain drops happen in songs and
the way they format it made a difference on
the dance floor.
The way I got started in music, my dad was
a DJ.
My Christmas gifts was always DJ equipment.
Other kids got bikes and all that kind of
stuff.
I got one turntable one year, mixer the next
year.
So it was my dad, definitely.
That was the influence.
Before I met Juvie, Juvie used to actually
rap at some of my dad's DJ things.
Meeting him brung out the best in me.
His word play was so unorthodox, something
that you had never heard.
You're just like, "How does the beat catch
up with this dude?”
How do you figure this out?
Basically he was
doing it off of break beats.
And I was like, “What if we really put some
music to this, and put some structure to it?”
When I started “Back That Azz Up,” most
people know the intro.
That's an awesome feeling man, to have a song
that's still, 20 years later and the intro
of the song says “from the '99 to the 2000s”
and it don't bother nobody.
When that comes on, people wake up.
It starts off with a string line, and this
is one of the sounds in it.
I'm thinking, orchestra.
Let's find a whole bunch of keyboards with
orchestra sounds and let's make them hood.
Make the bassline something that the hood
would rock to, but the sounds gotta be some
orchestrated sounds.
We got some other little strings that went
into it too.
Pretty much filtered ‘em a little bit, put
some bottom on them and some reverb.
After that, I kinda kept the bassline part
going.
Okay.
We get down to where the beat start.
It was basically a kick that I made.
I sampled some drums from a Roland 808 and
I had a couple other sounds that I got from
other places.
This is like a classic, this sound right here.
This is one of my classic bounce snares right
here.
And, this kick.
That was pretty much the pattern.
You heard this maybe once or twice in it.
Another snare that was in it.
The hi-hat.
Tripled.
Crash.
The reason why I even liked putting crashes
in songs, Ice-T, “6 ‘N The Mornin.’”
You know, it had that iconic break.
You know what I’m saying?
Every time it went around.
Where it was like, “sksssssss, word!”
So I just took a lot of elements from songs
that I thought, “Okay these are the reasons
why people like these songs.”
All of that had to be part of the kick.
But when you finish with all of these drum
sounds that I gave you, and you program it
you get something kinda like this.
You hear this in the song.
That was just me going “Ooh!”
It was a song that we used all the time, called
“Triggerman.”
Showboys made it.
And it was like one of those songs that everybody
in bounce used it.
But I knew I couldn't use it on this song,
because if I would have did that, I would
have to clear it.
I decided that I was going to sample myself
close to the way it sounded in that song and
recreate that element.
I played with it several times to get it how
I wanted it to sound.
I was like nah, it's too high.
It's too low.
Now it's in the middle.
So I finally got it where I wanted it.
The other element is this small part right
here.
Now where I got this hit from, I don’t know.
I just got hits from all different kind of
places, different records and all kind of
stuff back in the G or whatever.
So that “Unh!” that was vital to the song.
What to me is the most iconic sound of "Back
That Azz Up," the thing that drives the song
the thing that make girls shake their ass is the string line in it.
That’s what kept it going.
When it came in, and when it dropped out.
And a lot of people don’t know one of the
UGK albums came from New Orleans.
The whole sound was New Orleans.
It was a song where they had that string line in there.
But it was the same way.
They was like, “Dude."
"I don’t know where I heard it, where you
heard it.”
But I never had to clear any samples or nothing.
Even when we did this, the only thing we sequenced
was the string line.
That string was the final sound in it.
When I put that with the drums and everything…
People had got used to me saying shock value
stuff on records.
So, Juvie was just like, "Bro, you gotta do
the third verse."
He just didn’t want it to be any kind of
way politically correct.
He was like, “I want it to be raunchy.”
Wayne immediately was just like, “Shit,
I’m getting a piece of this."
"There’s no way in the world this song going
on without me being on.”
And he did his part.
Same thing, first take.
I know as producers we wanna go wild and say
oh, I'm so creative, this is what I can do.
This song to me was about simplicity.
Sometimes you just gotta move around and try
different things.
And this song was about trying different things
when I did it.
I'm just super super happy to have a song
20 years later that's going strong.
That's what a producer, or like I said anybody
that's in music, would dream of having.
I saw somebody say. “If you’re trying to catch a criminal in New Orleans, just put the intro to ‘Back That Azz Up.’
He gon’ come out.
You know, or if you think your girl is cheating on somebody or with somebody
just put that on and, you know.
