Recording and Music
After being signed to Uptown Records, Blige began working with record producer Puff Daddy. He became the executive producer and produced a majority of the album. The title, What's the 411?, derived from Blige's past occupation as a 4-1-1 operator; it was also an indication by Blige of being the "real deal". The album contains elements of hip hop soul and new jack swing, The music was described as "revelatory on a frequent basis". Blige was noted for having a "tough girl persona and streetwise lyrics", which gave the album "a gritty undertone and a realism missing from much of the devotional love songs ruling the charts at that time". Havelock Nelson of Entertainment Weekly expressed that Blige "bends her gospel-bred pipes around streetwise collages consisting of hard drumbeats, rugged rap samples, and hazy synthesizer lines", describing déjà vu of "the most accomplished fusions of soul values and hip-hop to date".
The album begins with "Leave a Message", a collection of Blige's answering machine messages over a drum beat. The following two tracks, "Reminisce" and "You Remind Me", are melancholy songs that are overlaid with hip hop beats. A cover of Chaka Khan's "Sweet Thing" followed.
Read more about this topic: What's The 411?
Famous quotes containing the words recording and/or music:
“Write while the heat is in you.... The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As polishing expresses the vein in marble, and grain in wood, so music brings out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole patron of music.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)