02.01.04: They call themselves The
Underdogs, but this dynamic production team is far form being the
little guys. When Harvey Mason Jr. and Damon Thomas met three
years ago, no one really heard much about them. But even then,
Mason worked with Rodney Jerkins and Thomas worked with Kenny
"Babyface" Edmonds. when the two linked up and created Underdog
Entertainment, it was only a matter of time before these Underdogs
became big dogs. The first project the two worked on together was
Tyrese two years ago, and today they are the hot producers to have on
your project.
On his way to the studio to meet up with his partner Damon, I had an
opportunity to chat with Harvey Mason Jr.
Inside Cx: What are you currently
working on?
H.M.: We're working on a couple of records for Ruben Studdard,
the American Idol winner, and Craig David's new record. Actually,
we've been working on Craig David's record for the last two months.
(We're doing) a bunch of songs for that. we're doing a couple of
new things for Janet Jackson right now and working with a couple of new
artists for different labels, but that's kind of the bulk of what's
going on.
Inside Cx: Do you write lyrics for
most of the tracks you produce?
Yeah, we pretty much write everything. we write music, we
write lyrics. we have people that co-write lyrics, we have people
in our camp that sometimes do music with us. Sometimes they do
lyrics with us. So we kind of just all put our talent together
and come out with whatever we come out with. It's a product of
all of us together.
The Underdog Camp is located in Los Angeles, and according to Harvey
Mason Jr., the studio is a basic music factory with state-of-the-art
facilities and offices for A&R and production staff. Both
Mason and Thomas play a couple of instruments, including the piano,
bass, drums and guitar, and do a lot of recording using both studio
equipment and live music. Mason says the studio has a room for
every creative cause and everyone is working on something at the same
time. There's always something happening in all the different
rooms.
But the studio is only a piece of the picture. When Mason and
Thomas signed an exclusive label deal with Clive Davis; J Records, this
camp, which consists of about nine other talented individuals, became a
place where the duo could not only produce acts but develop and sign
new acts while still producing artists on J Records. With a
steadily growing discography that currently includes Ruben Studdard,
B2K, Babyface, Brandy, Brian Mcknight, Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears,
Jennifer Lopez, Faith Evans, a host of other artist and several
soundtracks, it is amazing how humbly the conversation flowed.
Inside Cx: How did you get your foot in the door?
I've been writing songs for a long time. Once I
graduated from college, I started actually doing music for
commercials. Jingle music and stuff like that first to spend
money, buy equipment and put together a studio because I always wanted
to produce records. So as I started doing more and more jingles,
I continued to build my studio equipment and started writing records
and songs, and coming out to L.A. trying to meet people to play my
music. At some point an A&R guy just heard one of my songs
and said "I like that," and I started working for him. I
saw that I wasn't going to be able to jump right in and make records,
so I needed some kind of way to bridge just being in the studio doing
demos and making records. so I kind of started in that way, but
you definitely have to put in work. You can't expect someone to
hear your first song and love it. You have to write and write and
create and produce and get the product out there and really meet people.