“Get At Me Dog” came right in the clef of the golden era shutting down.
B.I.G. died, Tupac died, different things.
The last song of that era is “If You Think I'm Jiggy,” The Lox, which was the last
of the flashy songs.
And then the next song was the bring it back to the streets gutter, was “Get At Me Dog.”
I actually did not make this song for it to be a commercial hit.
I made it just to kill and body the streets and different things.
And actually from there, took it to a whole boosted level because I guess the world was
craving that type of sound.
We was actually following up “Niggaz Done Started Something,” and everybody actually
really got to hear 'X off that last verse where he just fucking went crazy.
As a whole team of Ruff Ryders shit we want to display more.
So we did a freestyle.
The original freestyle birthed from the DJ Clue tapes, the “Get At Me Dog Freestyle,”
Lox and 'X.
But once we grabbed the deal with Def Jam it was like, "We need a single."
And we're like, "We have a single already."
So we just rearranged the record and that’s when 'X did his three verses.
We let that bitch go, and that shit took off again.
It was commercial, but you know he's still raw as shit.
Alright I got my little turntable system plugged up.
I got the sample right here.
That's the original tempo.
What I did, I slowed it down.
Back then it was on Akai, SP-1200 but we using Ableton now.
So I just drag the mp3 onto my Ableton.
Alright, we just take this beginning chop.
Slow it down a couple more notches.
A lot of times with music now, you grid it.
One, two, three, four.
If you play any older record and try to put a fucking metronome to it, it's not going
to stay on time.
It's not blocks.
With the pads we're creating like that.
You create that natural feel, that it’s not directly sequenced.
They give you a unnatural feeling.
So we've now got hi-hats, slides.
Original records hi-hats was real laid into, but with hip-hop, you know what I'm saying,
we push everything the fuck up.
Kick gotta be pushed up, snare gotta be pushed up.
Hi-hats, slides gotta be pushed up.
That's what actually really get it the hip-hop element.
The breakdown, that was the most part that always kept the club going.
Back then I used to do the sequence live.
So I would move the sequence to every dope ass fucking line he was saying.
He was saying some crazy shit?
Break down.
That’s pretty much it.
“Get At Me Dog” broke in The Tunnel.
If you haven't heard about The Tunnel, I think everybody heard about The Tunnel.
The Tunnel nightclub was a tremendous, big, warehouse club.
Flex was DJing.
Bobby Trends, all of the big wigs from the radio was DJing at that club.
So it would bring people from Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens, Jersey, Connecticut, everybody come
there collectively to get the vibe what was going on the city.
When I started I didn't even go to clubs.
So it was one of my boys, you know, he hits the club every weekend and he's like
"Yo you got to come to the fucking club. All your records is going."
I went and I'm like, "Oh, shit."
I'm seeing hundreds, thousands people rocking my shit.
It gave me more inspiration to go back.
I tell a lot of artists this.
I cannot look at you in the club dancing to something and you come into the studio
and make something else.
Make what the fuck you dancing to.
Like, on a off day, X listened to disco.
He don't listen to no rap.
He could sing every disco record in the world.
When he rap, he go "Kill, kill, kill."
But if you notice some of the beats, “My baby mama be buggin',” he actually goes
to the disco records and the vibes of the old school funk and movement music, through
his element which is him, which is streets.