S. Samuel
Mississipi rapper David Banner recently discussed his motivation to momentarily hang up the mic and currently focus on his burgeoning career as a producer.
Banner said his main initiative when collaborating w ith artists is to deliver conceptual ideas for records.
“I produce, I’m not a beat-maker. When I come to artists now–especially since I’m doing all the advertisement stuff–I’m coming to people with concepts now. That’s actually something that Bone Crusher taught me. He said, ‘There are big concepts if you come up with big concept records.’ He said, ‘Dude, when you did ‘Get Like Me,’ the fact that you had Chris Brown singing like a rapper sings? The only other person that used to do that was Nate Dogg. That was big within itself for you to not go the ‘sing the hook’ route. That’s conceptually big.’ The beat is phenomenal.” (Complex)
Expressing confidence in his skills, Banner also proclaimed his greatness as a producer.
“Right now, I don’t believe there’s too many producers out here that’s better than me, hands down. You can dress up, get in your cars, and fly your airplanes, but sitting in front of that drum machine? Not right now. I’m about to prove it. I’m going to single-handedly make people who want to produce have second thoughts about picking up Fruity Loops or a drum machine. I’m going to make people want me to die because I’m better than them. And I’ve got a better spirit and I’m definitely more attractive. Imagine your girlfriend wanting to have sex with me, you can’t get a placement on my record because my beats are so jamming, and then if you talk shit, I’ll beat your face. And I’m spiritual, nice, do for the community, can play basketball, and I’m probably better than anybody at 2K11 on Playstation. So the best thing anybody can probably do is bury themselves.” (Complex)
Last week, Banner revealed that he’d previously contemplated hanging up the microphone for good.
“This has actually been the best year of my life,” Banner said in an interview. “Nobody really gave me a hand, played my records or helped me after I had done all the stuff that I did and it was really hard for me. [2005’s Hurricane] Katrina was my recession. At one point, I was willing to give it all up. God forced me to find other ways of being successful. I said I would never be in that situation again, where music was the only thing, [where] rapping was the only thing that I was doing.” (Billboard)
In May 2010, Banner hit up SOHH to discuss being hired to make an NBA Playoffs Gatorade commercial.
“It’s not an alternate sound,” Banner told SOHH about his soul-inspired commercial score. “I’ve always used live guitars, I’ve always used soul music. And that’s what I want people to know about our generation, period. Even though we’re gonna be talking about evolution, I want to talk about our generation still having soul, that there’s people still influenced by our mothers and our fathers — the truth is, Gatorade is evolving as a product and that’s something that is very important and was important to them…They wanted to make a statement and this does.” (SOHH)
Check out a recent David Banner interview below:
