As said prior, A.J. Crew is a SoundScape hermit. Many times I’ve gotten to build with Crew during my own sessions over there. I heard this track with Rhymefest a couple months ago, along with the story of how it came about, and told A.J. I had to post it along with the new song he debut on illroots last night. Without further ado, here is the inside track on A.J. Crew’s “Destiny and Desire” featuring Rhymefest.
So it was just another day in at Soundscape Studios with Michael Kolar (who is executive producing this project with me) and this song was bouncing off of Pro Tools. We were literally done with the song, like it was going to print after we bounced it. Mike had mentioned earlier that Rhymefest might be coming through for a meeting while I was there and I thought it would be dope if I could meet him and at least introduce myself, but Mike also mentioned that Rhymefest is sometimes late to his appointments so I didn’t get my hopes up. All of a sudden, after the intro leading into the first hook, Rhymefest and his family walk into the Bunker (the back studio) and me and Austin, my co-manager, kinda look at each other like “WOW.” So Rhymefest daps up with Mike and he introduces himself to me, etc. Mike walks out of the room for a call, I think and then Fest sits down at the console next to me and starts vibing out because he liked the sound of the production and the French sample. First thing he asks me: “What’s she saying?” I told him I didn’t know, but that the song’s original title is French and translates out to “Destiny & Desire”. So he continues listening and then he leans over and says something to the effect of, “Yo, can I jump on this track?” In my mind, I just start bugging out but I tried to keep my cool and I said, “Of course! Why not?” After my reply he was trying to play it off like, “Oh, well I don’t want you to feel no type of way about it” In my head I was like, “You’re Rhymefest! What type of way could I feel besides amazed?” but in reality I just said “Nah, go ahead!” And then Fest goes into his rapper mode and starts saying and thinking random bars, etc. and what you hear is what you get basically. The rest is history. Haha…
[audio: http://rubyhornet.com/media/rh/music/destiny_desire_rhymefest.mp3|width=180]