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Pharrell Williams · S2 E3
First Credits
Early production work nobody noticed — yet
RCA Records offices, New York, 1996. Two producers from Virginia Beach nobody has heard of deliver a finished track for SWV's second album. It charts at #22 on the Hot 100.
Jay-Z, The City Is Mine (1997). Produced by Teddy Riley, with Chad Hugo on saxophone. While The Neptunes were scoring their own hits, Hugo was still moonlighting as a session musician on Riley's productions.
Use Your Heart
SWV's "Use Your Heart" is the first Neptunes production to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Released July 1996, it reaches #22. They also produce "When This Feeling" on the same album, sampling Maria Muldaur's "Midnight at the Oasis."
TAP TO REVEAL: How did The Neptunes get their first Bad Boy placement?
“They was just flowing, ciphering, and creating on the spot. I wasn't looking for somebody who sang a Luther Vandross song.”
— Teddy Riley, on discovering The Neptunes
First Credits: The Numbers
Daddy's House Recording Studios, New York
Sean "Puffy" Combs' studio where The Neptunes recorded their first Bad Boy placements. A long way from Tammy Lucas's living room in Virginia Beach.
Use Your Heart. SWV
The first Neptunes production to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. July 1996, #22. Two producers from Virginia Beach, still in their early twenties, with their names on a hit record for the first time.
What was The Neptunes' first top-10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100?
They have a top-10 hit and the attention of Bad Boy Records. But they are still producers for hire, making other people's music. Next: the sound that made The Neptunes unmistakable.
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