2025 GRAMMYs To Take Place Sunday, Feb. 2, Live In Los Angeles; GRAMMY Awards Nominations To Be Announced Friday, Nov. 8, 2024 | GRAMMY.com (2024)

Music's Biggest Night is back! The 2025 GRAMMYs will take place Sunday, Feb. 2, live at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, the Recording Academy announced today. The 2025 GRAMMYs will broadcast live on the CBS Television Network and stream live and on demand on Paramount+. As well, nominations for the 2025 GRAMMYs will be announced Friday, Nov. 8, 2024. See the full list of key dates and deadlines for the 2025 GRAMMYs, officially known as the 67th Annual GRAMMY Awards, below.

Key dates for the 2025 GRAMMY Awards season are as follows:

Sept. 16, 2023 – Aug. 30, 2024
Product Eligibility Period
The period by which recordings are submitted for GRAMMY consideration. All releases must be available for sale, via general distribution, to the public by this date and through at least the date of the current year’s voting deadline (final ballot) to be eligible for the 2025 GRAMMY Awards.

July 8, 2024 – Aug. 23, 2024
Media Company Registration Period
Media companies must apply for registration with the Recording Academy to submit recordings.

July 17, 2024 – Aug. 30, 2024
Online Entry Period
All eligible recordings must be entered prior to the close of the Online Entry Period, regardless of the public release date.

Oct. 4, 2024 – Oct. 15, 2024
First Round Voting
First Round Voting determines all the GRAMMY nominees for each GRAMMY Awards year.

Nov. 8, 2024
Nominees Announced for the 2025 GRAMMY Awards
Announcing the official nominees list for the 2025 GRAMMYs.

Dec. 12, 2024 – Jan. 3, 2025
Final Round Voting
Determines the GRAMMY winners across all categories revealed on GRAMMY night.

Feb. 2, 2025
2025 GRAMMY Awards
Music's Biggest Night, recognizing excellence in the recording arts and sciences.

This February, the 2024 GRAMMYs proved to be an epic, history-making night. Women dominated the 2024 GRAMMYs: For the second time in four years, women won in the majority of the General Field Categories, winning Album Of The Year (Taylor Swift), Song Of The Year (Billie Eilish), Record Of The Year (Miley Cyrus), and Best New Artist (Victoria Monét). Elsewhere, Taylor Swift broke the all-time record for most GRAMMY wins in the Album Of The Year Category after winning for Midnights. Tyla won the first-ever GRAMMY Award for Best African Music Performance, one of three new GRAMMY Categories that debuted this year.

The 2024 GRAMMYs also celebrated the return of music legends, including Tracy Chapman, Joni Mitchell and Celine Dion, and ushered in new music icons-in-the-making like Victoria Monét, Samara Joy and Tyla. Relive some of the must-see moments and memorable, heartwarming acceptance speeches from the 2024 GRAMMYs. And rewatch all of the performances and key highlights from the 2024 GRAMMYs all year long on Live.GRAMMY.com.

Learn more about the upcoming 2025 GRAMMY Awards season and the annual GRAMMY Awards process.

Today, the Recording Academy and GRAMMY Museum announced a total of 215 music teachers as quarterfinalists for the 2025 Music Educator Award. This prestigious award is given to current educators—from kindergarten through college in both public and private schools—who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of music education and who advocate for the ongoing inclusion of music education in schools. This year’s quarterfinalists hail from 202 cities and were chosen from more than 2,400 initial nominations. Additionally, 159 legacy applicants from 2024 are also eligible for this year’s award.

Semi-finalists for the 2025 Music Educator Award will be announced later this year. The ultimate recipient will be celebrated during GRAMMY Week 2025.

A collaborative effort between the Recording Academy and GRAMMY Museum, the Music Educator Award invites nominations from students, parents, friends, colleagues, community members, school deans, and administrators. Teachers may also nominate themselves, and those nominated are invited to complete a more detailed application.

Each year, one recipient is selected from among 10 finalists and recognized for their profound impact on students' lives. The 11th annual honoree will be flown to Los Angeles to attend the 67th GRAMMY Awards and participate in various GRAMMY Week events. The nine other finalists will receive a $1,000 honorarium, and the schools of all 10 finalists will receive matching grants. Additionally, fifteen semi-finalists will be awarded a $500 honorarium with matching school grants.

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The Music Educator Award program, including the honorariums and matching school grants, is supported by the Chuck Lorre Family Foundation this year. Additional backing comes from the American Choral Directors Association, National Association for Music Education, NAMM Foundation, and National Education Association, which support the program through outreach to their members.

Learn more about the Music Educator Award and see the full list of the 2025 Music Educator Award quarterfinalists and legacy applicants below:

QUARTERFINALISTS

LEGACY APPLICANTS

For over three decades, Pepe Aguilar has proudly represented the traditions and culture of música mexicana. The iconic singer, songwriter and producer has made the biggest impact in mariachi music, penning and singing timeless love songs.

Aguilar became a worldwide phenomenon in the '90s with romantic classics like "Por Mujeres Como Tú" and "Directo Al Corazón." His deep and soulful voice, paired with honest and striking lyrics, continues the legacy of his famous parents: Flor Silvestre, an icon from the Golden Age of Mexican cinema, and Antonio Aguilar, a singer who was nicknamed "El Charro de México." To revamp the mariachi music that he grew up on in Zacatecas, Mexico, he blended in elements of Latin pop music.

Aguilar embodies the genre with his charro (Mexican horsem*n), suit and sombrero during live performances. In addition to honoring the traditions of mariachi music, Aguilar has helped globalize the genre with more than 13 million albums sold, hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. On top of that, Aguilar has won four GRAMMYs and four Latin GRAMMY Awards.

Now, Aguilar is bringing a new edge to mariachi music on Que Llueva Tequila, bringing elements of rock into the mix. His soaring songs become even more epic with this arena-ready sound: Mexican melodies collide with drums and electric guitars in power ballads like "Hasta Que Me Duermo" and "Corazón A Medio Día."

"I've always liked alternative rock and progressive rock," Aguilar tells GRAMMY.com. "It's something that I'm doing to keep on experimenting with. I'm also going to keep doing traditional mariachi."

To that end, the heartbreaking title track and "Contigo Aprendí," a soulful ode to his mother's memory, are puro Aguilar.

Aguilar's Jaripeo Hasta Los Huesos tour is hitting arenas across the U.S. through July. In the spirit of jaripeo (Mexican bull riding), Aguilar and children Ángela and Leonardo Aguilar, perform their songs live while riding horses. In this latest iteration of the tour, they're joined by figures from Mexican Día de los Muertos folklore.

In an interview with GRAMMY.com, Aguilar opens up about his family's legacy, keeping Mexican traditions alive, and going rock with his latest album.

You dedicated your song "Contigo Aprendí" to your mother. What did you take away from your parents to become the artist that you are today?

Professionalism, dedication, honesty, and resilience. I saw all of that in them and learned the meanings of the principles with them, among many other things.

It was a cosmic lottery because you don't choose where you're going to be born and who your parents are going to be, or if they're going to be loving parents or not. If they're going to have a strong work ethic or not. I won a cosmic lottery by being born in that environment.

Why has it been important for you to represent and keep alive the traditions of mariachi music and charro culture with your career?

Mariachi has proven itself for generations and decades, so I like that sound. It's something that also has to do with the first question about what I learned from my parents. I learned to be true to myself. I like charrería [Mexican equestrian culture] and that sport. I like mariachi. I like banda. I like that culture and that's why I do it.

You've won four GRAMMYs throughout your career. What do those GRAMMY wins mean to you?

They're very important reminders of the hard work and the dreams. It's very cool to have something that has so much validation by my colleagues, the ones that came before me, and the ones after me.

Those four GRAMMYs have meant only good things in my life. Like from the moment I was nominated and couldn't believe it, to the moment when I won my first GRAMMY, which I still couldn't believe. I was mixing an album and my wife called me and said, “Hey, you just won your first GRAMMY.” And then another one, and another one, and another one came. What I'm most proud of from my four GRAMMYs and Latin GRAMMYs is that I didn't win those with just one album. It was with different albums. That was cool.

On top of that, you won your GRAMMYs and Latin GRAMMYs as an independent artist.

For me, being independent was the natural way to go. It has been harder because it's a lot more work, but it has been a lot cooler in more ways than one — like having all the say and the responsibility and the timing, everything in your hands.

It's been a game-changer for me, so I highly recommend it, especially if you're a workaholic. Nowadays, it's not like a choice. If you want to do things in 2024, most likely you're going to have to go independent in one way or another.

What is the story behind your new album Que Llueva Tequila?

I wanted to go back to the more romantic way of doing Mexican music. I went all out. I did it, recorded it, and produced it in a year. I wanted to lean towards romanticism. I'm very proud of what happened.

It took me so long, because I wanted to find a new sound. I think we achieved that. That sound is a fusion between rock and mariachi more than pop and mariachi. I have a few pieces that are very traditional and full-on mariachi. Most of them are fusions.

"Te Confirmo" is another love song on the album that leans more towards traditional mariachi. Why is it important for you to always have that element of romance in your music?

I think that it's needed. It's also something that I feel as a person. I think romanticism is fading away. The narrative of love in songs right now is very aggressive to me in many genres. I think bringing a little romanticism and poetry doesn't hurt anyone.

Good orchestration and a big sound is not trending right now. Everybody just wants to go with one guitar. [They're] going directly to the chorus or not having any type of intro or bridge or outro. They just want to sell [music] and go directly to the chorus. I think there's nothing wrong with that, but that's not my thing.

I like to create a particular story around a song, and you feel that. The music also speaks and it needs to have that narrative as much as the voice, the melody, and the lyrics. Call me old fashioned, but I'm going to keep on doing that.

Then you lean into a bit of heartbreak with "Que Llueva Tequila." What was the story behind that song?

I like drama in my songs, and this is a romantic album, and romance is always filled with drama. With that song I wanted to go completely hardcore traditional and I did. The theme and arrangements are a homage to the more traditional mariachi days. No one's doing that. Not because no one's doing it that I'm doing it, no. It's because it should be done more.

How do you feel to see Ángela and Leonardo Aguilar following in your footsteps and their music careers blossoming?

I don't know how much they are following in my footsteps. They're making their own paths. I'm like their teacher and master of the trade. When they're finding their own place in life, their own personality, and ways, of course they're going to do their thing their way.

If their way is similar to mine, then that's fine. That's going to be their way regardless. I love it! I'm very proud that they're doing cool things with music and that they are growing every day.

How would you describe the experience of bringing to life the Mexican jaripeo tradition with them on your tour?

It's been a rollercoaster ride. Amazing and very hard and lots of work and tremendous satisfaction. We've been doing it for almost seven years now with the pandemic in the middle. It's great to see how people enjoy their traditions and how they're proud of them and how they take the whole family to see this thing. It's amazing how in the 21st century, there are charros on horseback singing with mariachi and Día de los Muertos characters filling up arenas with a family as the center attraction. It's an honor. It's been pretty cool. It's also evolving, so let's see where it takes us.

What do you see for the future of mariachi music?

I don't see it ending anytime soon because the new generations are adopting it. Maybe they're not dressed up like charros, but you have Christian Nodal, Carín León, and a lot of people singing with mariachi. Banda acts and their vocalists are doing singles with mariachi like Banda MS. Alfredo Olivas and Luis R. Conriquez — people that normally do banda or norteño music or corridos — they end up singing one or two songs on their albums with mariachi.

I don't think it's going to end anytime soon, especially since people like Ángela and Leonardo are doing it at a very high quality level. It's just the beginning.

After having accomplished so much, what do you want to achieve next?

[Representing música mexicana] is a consequence of the actions that I have done for my beliefs and my own goals. I believe in my culture. I believe in charros, in charrería, in mariachi, and in banda. I consume it. I like it. That's why I do it, and if that's inspired other people to get identified with their culture, that's amazing.

Now I see that it's a responsibility. Now I see that a lot of people can get inspired and do something about preserving the traditions. Most definitely there are a lot more things to achieve. I'm ready to do whatever comes next. I'm very happy to keep on evolving and reinventing myself. I don't know where that's going to take me, but I'm nowhere near the potential that we have.

“If you were able to go back and hang out or collaborate with your younger self, what would you say to them? What advice would you give them?”

That question fueled Machinedrum’s new album, 3FOR82, out May 24.

Unlike most people, the prominent electronic producer, real name Travis Stewart, has a direct line to his younger self through the music he’s made. He still has hard drives with productions from his teenage years, and on his new album, he sought to create with that same spirit. He wanted to hang with his younger self who was nothing but a kid who loved music with big dreams.

“In that early period where everything is just so free, there's nothing like it,” Stewart said. “I think, as creatives, we all try to find different ways to tap back into that.”

By tapping back into that freedom, Stewart made 3FOR82 into a diverse and exciting body of work. On his 41st birthday (the album title 3FOR82 reflects Stewart’s birthday of March 4, 1982), he started exploring his older recordings, collaborating with his younger self. The result is an album that is more than the sum of its parts. Weaving a wide palette of genres together, including alternative hip-hop, drum & bass, and UK garage — along with a long list of collaborators — it has an experimental hunger to it as well.

Stewart worked with more vocal collaborators than on any past album, featuring artists including Tinashe, Mick Jenkins, and Topaz Jones on 11 of the 12 tracks. With this stronger external input, each track has a unique identity. While “HON3Y,” the only solo production, harbors Stewart's talent for erratic sonic motion, “KILL_U” with Tanerélle is a minimalist soul tune.

Clearly, when Stewart was just starting he wanted to make anything and everything. He started releasing music as Machinedrum in 2000. Since then, he has shared 15 albums and launched various aliases including Tstewart, his atmospheric side project, J-E-T-S, the club-focused collaboration with the respected house artist, Jimmy Edgar, and Sepalcure, his duo with Praveen Sharma that focuses on dubstep and UK garage.

After so much experience, he knows the music industry very well. The good parts and the bad.

“Once you've released a few projects, this new pressure comes along with what your fans expect from you,” Stewart said. Conversely, his early recordings offered a window into an era without any pressure or expectations.

Read on to learn more about where he found the biggest inspiration when he took a trip down musical memory lane during the making of 3FOR82.

Impulse Tracker: His First Production Software

Every artist has to start somewhere, and Machinedrum started with Impulse Tracker, the music production software released in 1995. Stewart is now using industry-standard programs like Abelton, but when he was using Impulse Tracker during his early days, his music was imbued with a kind of youthful optimism that only comes when you’re starting something new.

"For me it was going into these old Impulse Tracker sessions and finding these little nuggets of ideas that I didn't really know what to do with at the time."

When he was working in Impulse Tracker, he only had the skills to make cursory musical ideas, but when he listened back he was really proud of those ideas. “I was just so excited about music. Not to say that I'm not now, but when I listen to electronic music now, I can't help but think about how it was made. Think about what kind of numbers they're doing. Who produced it? What label released it?” Stewart said. “Whereas back then, I would listen to things for the pure sake of listening to them and just be so inspired.”

Finding Freedom In Rules

Stewart often suffers from what he likes to call “choice paralysis.” If there are too many options it can be difficult for him to make a decision. Well, music production presents endless choices. How much reverb to use? Whether or not to use samples? What plugins will make this track sound its best? So, when he was making 3FOR82 he laid down specific parameters to limit his choices.

First, he was only allowed to use sounds that he drew from his Impulse Tracker recordings. He spent a month going through the old pieces of music and created a sound library from them. Those sounds became the album. “That whole process of creating the sound library was incredibly inspiring. Being a digital archaeologist,” Stewart said.

He had two rules if he wanted to sample something outside those old files. One, he had to run the sound through Impulse Tracker so it maintained the same aesthetic. Two, he had to sample music from his birth year of 1982.

“That was one of the parameters that actually made it a lot of fun to explore what music came out the year of my birth and see what things resonated with me. I was finding a lot of interesting synchronicities of stuff that I didn't realize came out in 1982 that I'm actually a huge fan of,” Stewart said.

The Legacy Of Joshua Tree Continues

Plenty of artists have found musical inspiration in the vast deserts of Joshua Tree National Park. Josh Homme founded The Desert Sessions there back in 1997. RÜFÜS DU SOL recorded their live album, aptly titled Live From Joshua Tree among the desert rocks in 2019. Now Machinedrum has joined the musical legacy of Joshua Tree by making 3FOR82 there as well.

He always had a great time there when he visited with friends and family in the past, but he also found a profound sense of clarity during those trips.

“Ideas come to me. I just feel so separated from the chaos of the world,” Stewart said. “I had always wanted to come to Joshua Tree for the pure reason of doing something creative.”

He set up a mobile studio in an Airbnb and invited myriad guest artists to join him in this temporary creative atmosphere and share in the clarifying experience.

His Dear Friend Jesse Boykins III

Jesse Boykins III is a vocalist who has collaborated with Stewart since the 2000s. He was also a groomsman at Stewart’s wedding. When Stewart was out in Joshua Tree, he spent an hour on the phone with Boykins discussing his idea of revisiting the past to make the album. During that conversation, he realized their long history together could further fuel the creative process.

Stewart made Boykins a co-executive producer, and Boykins brought in numerous vocalists Stewart had never worked with such as Duckwrth and aja monet. Stewart instructed Boykins to find seasoned artists when he was courting collaborators so they could bring their own past into the music.

He asked each of the collaborators the guiding question at the beginning of each session: “If you were able to go back and hang out or collaborate with your younger self, what would you say to them? What advice would you give them?”

Sometimes Stewart sampled their responses and added them to the music like with Mick Jenkins’ track, “WEARY.” Other times, the question was meant to inspire trust between Stewart and the collaborators Boykins introduced to him.

“Just having him there, understanding the concept behind the album, and making sure that we're all keeping within the theme, whether literally, or in more of an abstract way, that was super important,” Stewart said of Boykins. “I'm super grateful for his involvement on the album and all the inspiration he gave me. Being there along my side throughout the process. It's very cool working like that with someone. I had never done that with an album in the past.”

Healing His Inner Child

When Stewart was producing 3FOR82 from songs he made as a teenager it was just as spiritual for him as it was technical. During those early years as an artist, Stewart felt very isolated. There was no community around the music he loved growing up in North Carolina in the 90s. Even when his preferred sounds migrated from the UK to the US, it was in cities like Miami and New York, far away from him. In his loneliness, he struggled to believe his dream of being a professional electronic musician was possible.

Well, over two decades later, Stewart has accomplished his dream and then some. By working with music from his past, he was assuring his younger self that everything was going to be OK. “This whole process of collaborating with my younger self on these new songs was so healing for me. It was like a way of me sending a message to my younger self. ‘You're gonna do all these amazing things. You're going to travel the world. You're gonna work with amazing artists. So keep your chin up. Don't worry so much about the future. Just keep going. Keep doing what you're doing,’” Stewart said.

6 Reasons Why Fred Again.. Was Dance Music's Rookie Of The Year

A child of New York’s ultra-niche soul revival scene of the early 2000s, multi-instrumentalis turned producer Leon Michels has had an extensive reach into global pop music. As both producer and session man, Michels has worked with the Carters, Norah Jones, Black Thought, the Black Keys, Kalis Uchis, and Aloe Blacc — to name a few.

He has held to a specific creative vision for more than two decades, first through his heavily sampled El Michels Affair projects and a healthy schedule of releases through Truth & Soul records and later, Big Crown, the label he co-founded with DJ Danny Akalepse in 2016. He runs a studio in upstate New York called the Diamond Mine North, where he does most of his work since relocating from New York City in 2017. He has two GRAMMY nominations to his name, for Mary J. Blige’s Good Morning Gorgeous and Lizzo’s Special.

Trained originally on piano, he took up drums and eventually saxophone through the guidance of his high school music teacher, Miss Leonard. "[She] is actually the person I owe it all to. She started this jazz band when I was in fifth grade, and there's no drummer, so she asked me if I would learn drums," he tells GRAMMY.com. "I did that, and she would give me Duke Ellington cassettes, Sydney Bichet, Johnny Hodges. She would just feed me music."

Daptone Records co-founder Gabe Roth recruited and mentored Michels while he was still in high school, and the teenager soon became a regular touring member of what would become the Dap-Kings, backing singer Sharon Jones during an early run of success in the mid-2000s. " I joined Sharon Jones when it was the Soul Providers. We went on tour in Europe with them. Somehow my parents let me do it. I don't even understand. Gabe came over and sweet-talked them."

Michels left the group in 2006 after seven intense years, wanting to spend more time recording than enduring the grind of touring. His chosen timing caused him to miss out by mere "months" on the group’s recording sessions for Amy Winehouse’s four-time GRAMMY winner Back To Black. Despite what appeared to be a major missed opportunity, he turned his focus to his group El Michels Affair after initial encouragement from the 2005 album Sounding Out The City, released on Truth & Soul, the label he had co-founded.

Finding his inspiration in the intersections of soul and hip-hop, as a fully committed instrumentalist producer, he was able to develop an analog soundscape that quickly caught the ears of artists including Raekwon and other Wu-Tang Clan alumni, with whom he toured in 2008. This led to the follow-up album Enter The 37th Chamber in 2009. Samples from El Michels Affair, including those by Ghostface Killah, Jay-Z, Just Blaze, J. Cole, and Travis Scott quickly proliferated and opened doors. Via the Lee Fields album My World, Michels' work caught the attention of Dan Auerbach, with whom he and his longtime collaborator and bassist Nick Movshon toured from 2010 to 2012.

Producing the Aloe Blacc song "I Need A Dollar" in 2010 further enhanced his credentials and provided the financial stability to allow him to be true to his creative spirit, which he has done successfully over the last decade.

Leon Michels spoke to GRAMMY.com about some key career recordings, including his latest release with singer Clairo.

Clairo – "Sexy to Someone" (Charm, 2024)

I met Clairo almost three years ago. I made a record with her that took three years to complete, which is actually one of the longest stretches I've ever spent on a record.

She’s made two records before this. Her first record, Immunity, came out when she was 19. It's a pop record, and it was very successful. But she's a total music nerd like me. She’s constantly scouring the Internet for music. The way people, especially young people, ingest music these days is just insane. She's got great taste.

Her first record was super successful. She made her second record, Sling, with Jack Antonoff, and it was an ambitious folk record, and a huge departure from her first record. I think it caught her audience off guard, but it was kind of a perfect move because now she can make whatever she wants.

When she came to me, I was excited but slightly confused. What do I do? Because in those situations, you think, well, I need to facilitate a successful pop record, but she just wanted all the weird s—.

It’s this cool mix of pop elements, but some of the music sounds like a Madlib sample. All of it is steeped in pretty cool references and older music, but her perspective is a 25-year-old’s, and she’s an incredible songwriter. It's a really cool mix.

Norah Jones - "Running" (Visions, 2024)

Norah used to hit up me and Dave Guy, trumpet player in the Menahan Street Band and the Roots, if she needed horns.

As we were coming out of the pandemic, she hit me up and wanted to make some music. We made a few songs and then after that, she asked me to produce her Christmas record, which was super fun because I've never listened to Christmas music. I started to enjoy it, which was weird because I had thought I hated Christmas music. I mean, once you start to dig for Christmas records, pretty much all of your favorite artists have them. I was listening to Christmas music from March to October the entire year.

After that, we made Visions, which is all original stuff. Norah's just so talented. Her musicianship is actually some of the most impressive I've ever seen or worked with. She's so good that when I play with her, I get intimidated and I forget basic harmony and music theory!

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We cut that record, mostly just the two of us. There's a couple of songs where we got a band, but most of it was in my upstate studio. She would just come over from nine to three. She would come after she dropped her kids at school and then have to leave to pick them up. It was super fun to make, essentially just jamming all day.

[Overall] it’s not a huge departure for Norah, but sonically it is a departure, and it's got this very loose, "un-precious" quality. That's maybe a little different from her other stuff.

"Running" was her choice as a single. When it comes to singles — the songs that have actually been most successful — I've wanted to take those off the record. I have no idea what's going to be the hit or not.

Black Thought - "Glorious Game" (Glorious Game, 2023)

That was a total pandemic record — at the start of the pandemic when everyone was completely locked in, we had no idea what was going on.

Black Thought texted me out of the blue, and I think he was just trying to stay busy. So he just said, "Can you send me songs?" I sent him maybe two songs and then he sent back finished verses three or four hours later. Most of that record was just me sending him s— and him sending it back, and then going like that. We had probably 20 songs.

The time I did spend in the studio with him was, he's a total savant. He sits there while you're playing a song, and it kind of looks like he's on Instagram or f—ing around, you know what I mean? Does this guy even like this song? And then 45 minutes later, he’ll be like "Aight, ready." And he goes in there and, and he'll rap four pages of lyrics in one take. It's insane. He remembers everything; we'll do a song and then three years later, he'll have to redo it, but he'll know the lyrics from memory.

There's a couple of things that I figured out on that record. One: The thing I love about sampled hip-hop production the most is it's almost always pitch-shifted, which makes a giant difference in the sound. And if the piano has decay or vocals have vibrato, when you pitch it up, it becomes something that is so uniquely hip-hop. The second thing was, with hip hop, one of the best parts about sampling is the choices a producer has to make when they are limited to chopping a two-track mix. If you have multi-tracks, there are too many options.

I think that record resonated with people who are hip-hop aficionados who really love the art of emceeing.

Aloe Blacc - "I Need A Dollar" (Good Things, 2010)

We had just recorded the Lee Fields record, My World. Eothen Alapatt, who used to be a label manager at Now Again, was a friend of mine. [Jeff Silverman and I] started Truth & Soul, but we had no infrastructure. We thought My World would have a bigger reach if Stones Throw took care of the press and distribution. And so Eothen said "Yeah, we can do that, but instead of paying us, just make a record with this artist we have, Aloe Blacc."

I had no idea who he was. And so that was the business deal. We didn't get paid for the record initially. The payment was that they were going to promote Lee Fields record for us. So [Aloe] came to New York, and I did it with my partner at the time, Jeff Silverman, also Nick Movshon, who played on the entire record.

He wanted to do this Bill Withers thing. "I Need A Dollar" was probably my least favorite song on the record. I think I have this aversion to anything that's slightly cheesy, but I've gotten better at it. But at the end of the day, it's just a good song. It got picked up as the theme song to an HBO pilot called "How To Make It In America." And then, it just blew up in Europe. It was No. 1 everywhere. But it never hit in America.

It kind of set me off on a weird path for a minute, because I got a taste of success. And made some poor career decisions. I tried to a do lot of songwriting sessions with strangers. It was maybe four years until I decided to just make El Michels Records.

The Carters - "SUMMER" (EVERYTHING IS LOVE, 2018)

At the time, I was making these sample packs and sending them out to producers. One of them was this slow jam, and so the producers called me up and said "We used one of your samples. It's for a giant artist. We can't tell you who it is. You have to approve it now. And you can't hear it, but it's going to change your life." That’s what they kept saying to me. Then they said "It's coming out in two weeks."

So I figured they used one of my samples and chopped it up and did their thing to it. And so when the record came out, it was Beyoncé and Jay-Z. It was the first track on that record they did together, the Carters. And it was mostly just my original sample with some new bass and string section. So basically it was just Beyoncé and Jay-Z over an El Michael's Affair track. The track was called "Summer," and my original never came out.

So just hearing Beyoncé, hearing these giant pop voices that I associate with absolute hits, over my song, that was pretty cool.

Liam Bailey - "Dance With Me" (Zero Grace, 2023)

Me and him just have a very crazy chemistry when it comes to music, because it all happens super fast and with very little thought. Sometimes I'll listen to Liam's stuff, and I actually don't know how we did it. That is actually the goal. That’s why Lee "Scratch Perry" is the greatest producer of all time, because he could access that instant input, instant output type of creativity. It just passes through him and then it's on the record. Making music with Liam is like that; I'll make some instrumental, or I'll have an idea and then he'll freestyle lyrics one or two times.

To me, it sounds gibberish, but then he'll go through it and change one or two words and all of a sudden has this crazy narrative, and it's about his childhood [for example]. When I’ve worked with him, he has this same process where it's just kind of "hand to God" s—, just let it happen. I was trying to make something the way Jamaicans did, [like] that brand of Jamaican soul from the mid-'60s.

Brainstory - "Peach Optimo" (Sounds Good, 2024)

I met those guys through Eduardo Arenas, who's the bass player from Chicano Batman, and he had recorded a couple of demos from them. And they had one song in particular that really caught my attention, which made it onto their first record called "Dead End."

They’re three jazz kids. Their dad was a gospel singer and loved soul and Stevie Wonder. So they grew up on all that stuff as well. Producing a band like Brainstory is super easy, because they rehearse all the time. Most of their songs are written; all I have to do is maybe shuffle around sections or just essentially cut stuff out. Because a lot of times when bands write music and rehearse every day, they just love to play, so sections are endless.

I'll…have a sound in mind for the record, some reference for me and the engineering hands to kind of work from. And in the case of Sounds Good, the reference for the whole sound of the record was that this is Gene Harris song called "Los Alamitos Latin Funk Love." This is kind of the vibe of the entire record. We just cut that record over the course of a year, but it was two sessions that were maybe six days each.

Kevin is the main vocalist and he's amazing. He can do that sweet soul background stuff perfectly. And when he does [his own] background vocals, it's this thing that not a lot of people can do where he changes his personality. So he becomes three different people. Then the background sounds like an actual group.