[Legendary producer Mark “The 45 King” James recently sat down with hip-hop personality and SOHH correspondent Shawn Setaro on his popular “The Cipher” podcast. Listen to the full interview and check out five gems the 45 King dropped during the Q&A.]
On his early days as a record boy for DJ Breakout and his huge sound system, the Mighty Mighty Sasquatch:
“The Mighty Mighty Sasquatch. Yeah, I used to carry that Mighty Mighty up the mighty mighty steps.”
On his feelings towards his old album covers:
“You know what’s funny? People send me covers, like I really want to see them. Like you want to see your old girlfriend’s pictures. You might not! So people think, ‘Oh, he’s going to want to see this old album cover. I’m going to send it to him.’ Okay, you like the album cover, beautiful. But you don’t have to send it to me. You could send it to anybody else in the world.”
On how he made his most famous songs:
“I didn’t do anything different. I looped the sh*t and put it out, basically. I may have got lucky and sampled things before people got around to doing it.”
On the Queen Latifah/Monie Love duet he produced, “Ladies First”:
“I remember Monie’s verse was longer than Latifah’s, so Monica [Lynch, of Tommy Boy] wanted her to go back in there and do more vocals, because [Monie] got too many more than her.”
On his struggle with drugs, and how it hurt him in surprising ways:
“Angel dust makes you act stupid, so that really f*cked me up. And I still have a dent in my name because of that. I will always have a dent in my name because of that. Unless I make a movie with Kevin Hart, and then everything is forgiven.”