Channel Orange One of the artists that has inspired me to produce my own music is Frank Ocean with his second album, Channel Orange. The first time that I ever listened to the album back in 2012, I remember thinking, “Holy shi*t…I have never heard anything like this before in my life.” Telling a song-by-song story, his poetic lyrics about his personal sexuality, strip clubs, pregnancy, wealth, drugs, and corruption show Frank’s slightly strange perception of it all. That is one thing that really intrigued me the most. To have such real-life, and uncomforting situations spilled into a seventeen track album is really powerful. With this, you can relay any sort of message and perception you please as an artist. Although Frank had a good amount
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The biggest and most helpful person that went on this journey, though, was James Ryan Ho, better known as Malay. Although I could not find very much background information on the co-writer/producer, I found that he was born in Washington state in 1978, so he is currently thirty-eight years old. He was given the nickname Malay due to his father’s Asian decent. In the late 90’s, James began participating in the music industry, but it was not until 2005 that his first high-profile project was released in the soundtrack to Get Rich or Die Tryin’. This is when his career really began to take off. Since then he has produced many records for some of the most well known hip-hop and R&B artists of my generation, such as Danity Kane, John Legend, Mario, Big Boi, Fantasia, Yelawolf, Jamie Foxx, Frank Ocean, and many more. Some of the most notable works that have come from Malay include John Legend’s Evolver, Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, and Zayn Malik’s Mind of Mine (Malay Music Producer, …show more content…
It all began the same way most albums begin, with a few great ideas and a couple instruments. There were days that Frank would come in with some lyrics, and Malay would pull up a keyboard and guitar to get some ideas floating around, and those were the days that the album began (Complex Magazine, 2012). By composing songs in this style, they did not have a bulk amount of songs that they had to choose and narrow down from. They had around twenty really heart-felt, well-planned songs, and that is how the songwriting process went for about three weeks (Discogs, 2016). According to Malay, after the song-writing process, Frank became an even more diligent worker and artist. He put the songs in order as he wanted over a year before the album was recorded, and once the recording began he went in a did vocals like a perfectionist for nine months straight (Complex Magazine, 2012). After the vocals were completed, Malay and Ocean went back into the tracks to rework and touch up their production. To touch up, they brought in some more live production, and cut out some of the extra and unnecessary guitars and bass. The producers would only work in order of the record, meaning that they never worked on a track out of order (Complex Magazine,
The biggest and most helpful person that went on this journey, though, was James Ryan Ho, better known as Malay. Although I could not find very much background information on the co-writer/producer, I found that he was born in Washington state in 1978, so he is currently thirty-eight years old. He was given the nickname Malay due to his father’s Asian decent. In the late 90’s, James began participating in the music industry, but it was not until 2005 that his first high-profile project was released in the soundtrack to Get Rich or Die Tryin’. This is when his career really began to take off. Since then he has produced many records for some of the most well known hip-hop and R&B artists of my generation, such as Danity Kane, John Legend, Mario, Big Boi, Fantasia, Yelawolf, Jamie Foxx, Frank Ocean, and many more. Some of the most notable works that have come from Malay include John Legend’s Evolver, Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, and Zayn Malik’s Mind of Mine (Malay Music Producer, …show more content…
It all began the same way most albums begin, with a few great ideas and a couple instruments. There were days that Frank would come in with some lyrics, and Malay would pull up a keyboard and guitar to get some ideas floating around, and those were the days that the album began (Complex Magazine, 2012). By composing songs in this style, they did not have a bulk amount of songs that they had to choose and narrow down from. They had around twenty really heart-felt, well-planned songs, and that is how the songwriting process went for about three weeks (Discogs, 2016). According to Malay, after the song-writing process, Frank became an even more diligent worker and artist. He put the songs in order as he wanted over a year before the album was recorded, and once the recording began he went in a did vocals like a perfectionist for nine months straight (Complex Magazine, 2012). After the vocals were completed, Malay and Ocean went back into the tracks to rework and touch up their production. To touch up, they brought in some more live production, and cut out some of the extra and unnecessary guitars and bass. The producers would only work in order of the record, meaning that they never worked on a track out of order (Complex Magazine,