MULTI-PLATINUM SUPER PRODUCER: Self Service
QUEENS, NEW YORK | SELF SERVICE
INTERVIEW TERRELL “REALIFE” BLACK
“I see a lot of dudes be saying they are Super Producers. So, the reason why I put Super Producer in front of my joint and claim that is because of my track record. I have contributed to over 25 Platinum, that’s 25 million copies of records sold, records that I produced. If that don’t qualify me as a Super Producer, I don’t know what does. Even today, niggas records don’t even go platinum no more, it is hard for niggas, niggas got to stream and also, I’m talking about physical copies, 25 million. They ain’t too many producers that can say that, you got Dre, you got Timbaland, you got Swizz, you got a couple of other niggas besides that but, I consider myself in the top elite.” - Self Service
VALIDATED: For the people who aren’t familiar with you or your work can you tell us a little bit about your background?
SELF SERVICE: I’m from Queens, New York, born and raised. I’ve been doing music for over 30 years. I’ve been producing for over 30 years. I’ve been doing film and television for the last 15 years. And I’ve been blessed in my career to be credited with 25 plus platinum records that I’ve produced. Everybody from LL Cool J, to Jay Z to Cam’ron and Juelz Santana, Method Man, you name it… Ja Rule, Fat Joe, everybody. I’ve been producing in the Golden Era, the 90s, which was a beautiful era. Now I’m into film and television, doing movies, I do commercials, I do all kinds of stuff.
VALIDATED: So, to go back, what would you say your earliest memory of Hip Hop culture is?
SELF SERVICE: The beginning... My earliest memory is King James, when the first Hip Hop record came out, I remember that, it was like ‘77, ‘78 or something like that.
VALIDATED: It’s crazy that you were able to see it from the beginning, like to see evolution from then til now and also be so involved in it. At the end of the day, when you look back, what do you think about Hip Hop culture, and the music industry?
SELF SERVICE: Now, you want my honest opinion? It is nowhere near the same. Back then, even what made me fall in love with Hip Hop was the battle. It was just a competition, who is better, who got the better rhymes, neighborhoods against neighborhoods, but it was friendly. It was cool and whoever spit the illest rhymes got the illest chicks and all that. And on top of that, it was all good back then, it was beautiful back then, man. And now its just, to me a little dumb, it’s just a little crazy man. A lot of these artists today don’t even respect what we had to go through, what some of the brothers had to go through to even get us recognized as rapping and as Hip Hop. And they don’t respect the culture. Now everybody is in it for the fad, a lot of these kids today grew up hearing their parents listen to Hip Hop, and their parents was into it. Now, they just take it and talk about changing it to the millennial thing, but they’re not really adding on to the culture to me, if I had to say, it was pure back then and now is just diluted.
VALIDATED: When you talk about Hip Hop culture, and the music industry, some people tend to act like the industry has always influenced Hip Hop culture. Me, I tend to think that once the industry caught on to what Hip Hop culture was and took control of it from an industry standpoint, they did influence Hip-Hop culture. But initially it was Hip Hop culture from jump. So, to me, you can separate the two. And I think the difference is, with these kids now, they’re products of Hip Hop, after the industry took control of it, for the most part. And because I come from an era, I grew up in the 80s era, so, I remember what it used to be and then the Golden Era, and then what it is now and I will be honest, I can’t tell you last time I listened to the radio.
SELF SERVICE: Yeah, me in my car, when I’m moving around, what I listen to is basically the Hip Hop from the 80s and 90s, a little bit of the 2000s. Even when Atlanta got the ball and they was running with it, the beginning was Goodie Mob, OutKast, stuff like that, and you are right… I agree with you- it’s industrialized now. They tried to industrialize the culture. And when it happened its seeds of the industry are part of the culture. But for me now, the only thing that comes close to what’s happening today that I listened to regularly, that reminds me of back then, is Griselda. Even from the record that I produced, it was from the street, so that’s what Hip Hop to me is like… and I’m from New York, the Mecca where it comes from.
So, to us, it’s like everybody hanging on the corner, niggas doing pull ups on the light poles, doing dips, and rapping and banging on the tables and making Hip Hop. Today it is just totally different, bro. And Griselda comes close to hardcore Hip-Hop, like what I’m used to hearing and making, what I know of the culture from the 90s and 80s. I liked Migos, I like Lil Baby. Today’s Hip Hop is a little... When LA came out with the LA Hip Hop movement, even when they had Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q and all other types of dudes, Nip and the rest of them. They still had their finger on the pulse of Hip Hop while they were doing it. But they were changing it and actually adding on. Like today- I can’t do this today stuff. I listen to old school R&B or Jazz or something before I listen to the radio with all this other mess on it. I just can’t. And the female rappers to me, some of them is ill but they are just taking the wrong route to me.
VALIDATED: It just seems like now, the female artists… and not to knock Lil’ Kim, but it’s like I remember growing up and listening to Junior Mafia and listening to Lil’ Kim, I remember her ‘Hardcore’ album and thinking she was raunchy, but that’s nothing compared to what it is now.
SELF SERVICE: They are wildin’ now.
VALIDATED: So, how did you get your start as a producer?
SELF SERVICE: It is a crazy story. I had done eight years in prison, back in ‘86. I went in ‘86 and came out in ‘93. When I came out in 93, a very close friend of mine, Gavin Wray, was in a relationship with Salt from Salt-N-Pepa. He actually was her husband; they went on and got married and had kids and everything. But when I came home, I was on some going back to jail shit, just on some bullshit in the streets. And he took me in and he’s like, “Yeah, I don’t want you to go back to jail, I won’t let you go back to jail.” So, he said, “Come with me and watch over Salt.” So, when we go do these shows and stuff like that, I went and was hanging out with them. I’m in their house and they built a studio in their house. And inside the studio was an ASR-10 keyboard, and Salt said, “Self, if nobody using that keyboard, just take it home and see if you can figure it out,” no manual, no nothing.
So, I took it home, locked myself in the basement and just started messing with it, sampling from cassette tapes, cassette tapes into the ASR-10. I just started messing with that. I went out on the block playing my cassette tapes in my man’s car and niggas were like, “You are nice with this shit.” So, one day I was on Harlem 125th and I was playing some beats out my man’s car when Smif-N-Wessun was walking by. I didn’t know who they were at the time, but I was still a street nigga, I wasn’t thinking about the industry, I was like, I don’t deal with the industry shit, I was still on the street.
So, they heard the beat playing out of the car and he’s like, “Yo whose beats is this?” And I’m like “Mine, why? What’s up?” They are like “No, no, come to the studio,” and that started everything. I went to the studio with them. I sold seven beats to them for like $2,500 a piece. To me that shit was a come up because even hustling on the streets I was getting sneaker money, I wasn’t getting any real money.
I did “Guess Who’s The Black Trump” for Cocoa Brovaz. That’s the first record I produced, and then I did some joints on “God Bless The Dead” for Heltah Skeltah with Rock and Sean Price, my man, good dude. But after that Onyx, my man Eat ‘Em Up came to the studio. He heard some of the beats and then he put me on with Onyx and then from there shit just blew out the fucking frame overnight bro, I swear to God, I had no dreams of being a music producer bro, at all. I wasn’t even musically inclined. And then the Onyx joint ended up doing Onyx, “Shut ‘Em Down” and I did five or six joints on that album. “Shut ‘Em Down” was one of the first records DMX came out on and then – God bless the dead – Big Pun was on the remix.
So, I worked with these dudes from back then. “Shut ‘Em Down” was the lead single for the Onyx album and they named the album “Shut ‘Em Down” and that single sold platinum… I did like seven joints on it and then I sold them for five grand a piece. So, I’m just catching this little bit of money… I’m like, Nigga, I ain’t got to hang out in the streets no more, I ain’t got to beg, I ain’t got to rob nobody. I said man fuck all that shit and I never looked back. So, after that I did Musiq Soulchild, after that I did LL Cool J, after that I did Ja Rule on three of his albums.
Then the DMX record came and I did the, “What’s My Name” record, which ended up being my biggest record that I ever produced, that sold like 10 Platinum as a single and then the album did mad platinum shit. So, from there I did Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, a whole album on them. I did Fat Joe, I did a bunch of stuff. I worked on the first “Def Jam Vendetta”, I have my voice on there. So, I’ve just been blessed to catch a great career in the best time of Hip Hop and that’s how I started. I was a street nigga, I just started picking at the keys and next thing you know God opened the door.
VALIDATED: Talk about being in the right place at the right time.
SELF SERVICE: At the right time, because I swear to you it wasn’t me bro. It was not me. I don’t know what happened but I am here today with all these accolades afterwards, I’ve just been blessed bro.
VALIDATED: And listening to you telling me some of the tracks that you produced, your style is totally different. What would you contribute that to?
SELF SERVICE: I did the “Come Through” record for Noreaga and Styles P too, that was one of my biggest joints in the club, that shit tore the club up, “The evening is the time of day…” I did that shit. I did Nas, “Queens Finest”. My style is definitely different than other producers like, what made me, even when I took the ASR-10, was that Wu-Tang was out. I loved Wu-Tang at that time and I still do. I'm an avid Wu-Tang fan. What made me want to do it was that. So with my style, I said I don’t want to sound like everybody else. When everybody else is trying to stay on the 1 or the 4, the 1, 2, 3, 4, - I was trying to be on the 3 and the 5.
So, my intros, I made it different, like even with the “Come Through” record, niggas didn’t know what was happening when that came on, and then it dropped. That was my little style. And then DMX with the “What’s My Name” and oh, I forgot, I did the Cam’ron, “That’s Me” record too, that was huge too. Cam’ron even shouted me out at the end of that record too. My style is definitely different from other people.
VALIDATED: Even now your style is different, you do different beats for different cats, but it doesn’t sound the same.
SELF SERVICE: You would never know it was me, never. Over the years of messing around, you know, to me, it was just once I figured it out it was just about mathematics, you feel me, there is numbers involved in making beats. So, if you’re a producer, you know the 4 is one of the most important numbers in producing, the bars is a 4 count. There is a 4 count inside 1 bar, 4 bars, 8 bars, 16, triplets, etc. Once I figured out the numbers then I just played with the numbers, when I’m making the beats to make the shit go off because I didn’t want to sound like nobody else, nobody.
VALIDATED: So, I see that you also produced for Jay-Z.
SELF SERVICE: Yeah, I did on Ja Rule’s album on the “It’s Murda” joint, at the end of it I did a joint called “Kill Them All”. Jay-Z was on that joint with Ja. And then I did the joint on DJ Envy’s mixtape album, the joint is called “H.o.v.a”, and it is really like a street joint. He just basically freestyle, but you know…
VALIDATED: I know what you are talking about. I can only imagine some of these artists’ faces when you played these beats. First of all, that “Shut ‘Em Down” beat, to me, that’s one of the hottest beats ever. And then when you talk about “What’s My Name?” there are no other beats that sound like those.
SELF SERVICE: No, not on the whole album, none he did after and none he did before. It was different.
VALIDATED: Do you ever get to see their faces when they hear your beats for the first time?
SELF SERVICE: Well, I wasn’t in the studio when X did his joint. I went through Irv and Murder Inc. They heard the beat and they went crazy. The crazy shit about that beat is I was playing beats for them for Ja and we were in the Murder Inc. office and Chris was playing the beat and that came on I said, “No, pass that beat, I don’t like that beat.” Chris said, “No, play that shit, that shit was crazy,” just when it came on. And he played it and then Irv ran into the office, he said, “Oh, that shit is crazy,” he went nuts. And then he went and played it for X and X loved it. And that’s how the record got done.
VALIDATED: And it seems like with producers and artists in general, most of the time when you don’t like something that’s the one that everybody else loves.
SELF SERVICE: Facts, definitely. And I tell producers today and I tell artists today, just because you don’t like something don’t mean that the world is not going to like it. You just got to try to put the best music you could put out and say a prayer and let it go because you don’t know who will like this shit. And there are millions of people on this planet, you can’t be the only person that will like it, there got to be millions of others. Some people ain’t going to like it, some do. So, I’ve learned from that experience and played with everything I got, just in case I might be wrong. That one record changed my life though. It really changed my life. I was getting busy before then and making money before then but that record really just threw me into a whole nother life.
VALIDATED: Nice. So, you’re a Super Producer, for the listeners, what is it exactly that makes you a Super Producer? At what point does a Producer earn the title of Super Producer?
SELF SERVICE: I see a lot of dudes be saying they are Super Producers. So, the reason why I put Super Producer in front of my joint and claim that is because of my track record. I have contributed to over 25 Platinum, that’s 25 million copies of records sold, records that I produced. If that don’t qualify me as a Super Producer, I don’t know what does. Even today, niggas records don’t even go platinum no more, it is hard for niggas, niggas got to stream and also, I’m talking about physical copies, 25 million. They ain’t too many producers that can say that, you got Dre, you got Timbaland, you got Swizz, you got a couple of other niggas besides that but, I consider myself in the top elite. I never wanted to be in the front. I still kept my street shit, like I don’t trust this shit, let me just stay in the back and get my money, let me be about my business.
I feel like if I did jump up like Swizz and try to get in front of the camera and all the rest of that shit... I had that opportunity to be in DMX video, the “What’s My Name?” video and they asked me to, I was there when they filmed it, but I didn’t want to get in it. I just was that dude. But, to be a Super Producer… a lot of dudes are claiming it, I don’t see how they claim it when you ain’t got the accolades to match that.
VALIDATED: Yeah, and that’s why I was asking is it something in particular, is that an industry standard… that qualifies a person and by all means I definitely agree that you qualify, but is there a grading scale so to speak?
SELF SERVICE: No, not at all good. Dudes are just putting Super Producer in front of their name just to brand themselves, and market themselves. That’s it. But my thing is if you Google a dude and his accolades, say what it is supposed to, then he is qualified as a Super Producer. You can Google me and every record, I came, I still make money off of God bless the dead, off the “What’s My Name?” record, almost all my catalog to this day, royalty and checks, to this day, that’s 20, 30 years later. So, to me, I just feel like I’m in a lane by myself.
VALIDATED: Definitely. And I know that you have other businesses, as well. What can you tell us about those?
SELF SERVICE: I do films and movies now. So, my thing was, when the industry started to change, dudes were selling beats for $20, $30 online and I’m like, “I can’t bring myself to do that.” So, I was like, “Okay, I got to find a way to stay in the entertainment business, and still be able to make the money I’m used to making.” So, I said, damn, this film shit… I see my men, I had a club in the Bronx for five years, and “Love and Hip Hop” used to rent me out and come in and I see dudes in front of the camera. I’m like, “Damn, this camera shit is ill.” So, I started picking up the camera. And I ended up selling all my music equipment and picked up cameras and bought lenses and all the gear. And then I made my first movie three years ago, it is on Amazon Prime now. So, now I’m a Director, Film Producer, Videographer, Editor, Graphics, CGI on film… everything I do myself. And I’m working on a movie right now. I have a TV network called “Self-TV”, elpdproductions.com is my own TV network. We play 24 hours a day, I’ve got 25 channels, 24 hours a day, content that I put up and I promote other artists' content as well.
VALIDATED: Wow. And that was the same thing as with producing, you didn’t know anything about it, you just took it upon yourself to learn it and master it.
SELF SERVICE: Nothing about it, I just picked it up and learned it. I just picked up the camera and just started, because nobody wanted to help, even in the beginning with the beats, nobody wanted to help me. So, at the end of the day, I learned to say, “Damn, if you want something done…” You know how sometimes you say “I got this idea for a video,” you say, “Now, I got to get a videographer. I got to get an editor. I got to get this now.” I was tired of asking niggas how they did it and they just be like, “Yeah, yeah,” I’m like, “Aight, cool.” I went and got my own shit, learned to do it myself and now I do my own. And it’s been a blessing ever since.
So, now what I do is take my music and put it in my movies. So, I make the money off the licensing, the movies, the commercial branding, the rest… it’s a blessing, like I said, straight blessing. But I do film and TV now. Right now, I’m working on the soundtrack for the last movie, DMX filmed called “Dog Man” with Antonio Simmons as the Director. I’m doing the whole soundtrack on there. And we got Eric B on there helping me with the project and the rest of that. And I’m about to go to New York now and start that in another week or so. And that’s a big deal for me because it’s a good way of paying homage to X, on top of it.
VALIDATED: Were there any artists you wanted to work with that you didn’t get the chance to work with?
SELF SERVICE: Me and Busta tried to do some records millions of times in the studio, a good friend of mine but the thing just never panned out. But Busta, definitely, I wish I would have done something with. Me and Lil Kim tried, and we were tight, and we almost did it too. Big, I wish I would have done something for, of which I was two seconds from that too. But so far, that’s about it.
VALIDATED: Do you prefer doing the videography over the music?
SELF SERVICE: Yep. You know why? Because I feel like, like I said, my accolades speak for itself. I feel like I conquered that, I got older. I’m not a young boy no more. So I’m like, instead of me trying to be a corny nigga with gray hair, and talking about making beats and all the rest of that. I said, let me switch over and it kind of suits me, I feel like, because I got a nomination for Juelz… Actually, I forgot that too, Juelz Santana record “Dipset”, I did that too. And that got nominated for a Grammy. So, I feel like I did so much, I contributed to Hip Hop enough.
Now I want to see if I could go to the Oscars or something for my film work. So, I really like editing and filming and directing. I really love it. But my heart is still making beats, I made beats today. Like I said, I’m working on the X soundtrack with the “Dog Man Soundtrack”, I still get busy with that, but I feel like that’s a given, God gave me a talent, I can turn that off and on like it ain’t nothing. So, I just want to conquer the film side now… I’m determined to be the next Tyler Perry. I’m determined.
VALIDATED: You were mentioning about the movie that you’re working on, DMX’s last movie. Can you tell us anything about that, without giving it away?
SELF SERVICE: It is called “Dog Man”, it is an action thriller movie. And that’s the most I can say for now. Antonio Simmons is directing all that but, just stay tuned for the soundtrack, because, I’ve got a lot to prove. I’ve got a lot to prove with this soundtrack. So, when this comes out, I’m trying to officially stamp myself in that A-list group, which I know I’m already in, but I’m trying to let everybody know who the boss is.
VALIDATED: I hear you though, and with your accolades in music and your current resume in the film and production world, it is coming.
SELF SERVICE: Accolades speak for themselves. I could say something with my mouth, but if there is no proof of it, it doesn’t mean anything.
VALIDATED: So, for the readers looking to check out your businesses and check out your music catalog, how can they get familiar and how can they follow you on social media and check out your website?
SELF SERVICE: Everything about me is on my website. My bio, my discography, my television network, my video work, everything. My website is www.elpdproductions.com and then my Instagram is @superproducerself. And my government name is Edward Henson. I tell my government name now, I feel like back when I was in the streets, I couldn’t do that. But now if you want to find out, Google me, put in Self Service, Edward Henson and the whole world will come up about me, 2 or 3 pages on Google easy.
VALIDATED: Any last words for the readers?
SELF SERVICE: If you got a passion, stick to it, don’t stop. I don’t know how it happened with me. But like you said, I just might’ve been in the right place at the right time. All you need is somebody of importance to hear your music. No matter if you produce or an artist, just keep going, somebody will hear it and the minute they hear it and you got the talent, your life could change overnight.