Chucky Thompson Speaks On The Making Of Nas's One Mic

Chucky Thompson is a legendary music producer, who was with Puffy's Bad Boy Records 'Hitmen' music producing team back in the 90s. He is responsible for hits like Biggie's Big Poppa (1994), and Shyne & Barrington Levy's Bonnie & Shyne (2001) song. He has worked with Nas a couple of times in the past, but he recalls the most memorable ocassion, which was the making of One Mic. One Mic was the second single on Nas's Stillmatic (2001) album.

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"'One Mic' was a situation that was during a time that Nas was in the beef with Jay-Z. I knew that that beef wasn't gonna last forever. My whole thing was, 'Okay, so what do we do after this whole beef is over? How do we come out of this. It was my first meeting with Nas. We just sat and talked about that situation where you feel you're gettin' ready to fight or gonna have to get ready to defend somethin', what's that record that would calm you down? We both said it was Phil Collins' 'In The Air Tonight. He mentioned to me that he wanted to make a record where the chorus was quiet and that verses would rise. So me taking those two ideas, I just came up with something that was calm and built up a little bit in the verses and then go back calm for his chorus. I didn't think nothin' of it; we were just bein' creative. Next thing I know I'm in a strip club in Queens, and they cut all the lights out and the strippers had on neon." (HipHopDX.Com)