He heard it and immediately wanted to record it. I showed up at the session he had a guitar there, and I just started playing along with what Easy Mo Bee was doing. Puff asked if I wanted to go to the studio and hang out with him. My first real session with Bad Boy was with Easy Mo Bee. What was a typical session like whenever The Hitmen made records? Getting a GRAMMY anything is the biggest deal in music. I was buggin' that the album was certified triple platinum like What's the 411? When I got the nomination, I was over the top in the quasars, man. It wasn't even marketed and promoted like that. Mary's fans and the people that loved her gave it so much love, it became this underground classic. "My Life" was never a single, so that lets you know what type of turmoil and twist that was happening. It just solidified all of the things that were happening to me. Getting that GRAMMY nomination almost made me feel like anything was possible. We were working on B.I.G.'s next project, Mary's project, and not quite Faith Evans just yet, but she was in the room. At that particular time for everybody, it was crazy energy around. How did you feel earning a GRAMMY nomination for Best R&B Album in 1996? I'm just happy that things turned out the way they did. She was in the studio crying a couple of times, but she'd wipe the tears and go back to work. Imagine writing a letter talking about the most personal stuff, then it ends up on MTV. Just like the My Life album is medicine for a lot of people, as we were pulling in Curtis Mayfield and Barry White samples, that was medicine for Mary to expose herself the way that she did. I didn't know exactly what was going on with her the documentary actually showed me a lot about what was going on. I'm just happy that they trusted me enough to give them a blank canvas, but the lyrics had nothing to do with me. I was pretty much just an instrumentalist.
Mary and Puff's relationship is where a lot of the lyric writing came from. Certain things are just life and God that situation came from me being in the right place at the right time. Man, I wanted to do backflips when I heard her say that.
#411 ALBUM MARY J BLIGE FULL#
She came to me and Puff to ask if I'd like to do the full My Life album. I didn't know Puff or Mary like that, but that one session for "Be With You" allowed us to feel the energy. I give lots of thanks to Puff and Mary for even trusting me because it was a brand new situation. I could understand, but Mary wasn't with it. She was coming from a triple platinum success, and a lot of the producers and people that were part of the debut album were submitting astronomical budgets. She loved it and did something amazing on that record. It was "Be With You." I was only contracted to do one song, but that one song pulled us into a different room outside of the What's the 411? album. One track was supposed to get sent to a group in D.C. We had a mutual friend, and I was sending tracks. Hiram could get me TLC, but Puff could get me Mary. I had two situations: Hiram Hicks and Puff. Mary is the reason that I signed with Bad Boy. How did you end up landing so many credits on the My Life album? He took some time from a session recently to chat with about commemorating the 25th anniversary of My Life, his secretive work on Diddy's newly developed Love Records, and how he's paying respect to his D.C. These days, Thompson has evolved from producing and writing music into developing film projects and mentoring aspiring talent. Thompson was responsible for singles like The Notorious B.I.G.'s "Big Poppa," Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear," Total's "Can't You See," and Faith Evans' "Soon As I Get Home." The skilled musician would also work with Nas, Raheem DeVaughn, Jennifer Lopez, Snoop Dogg, Frankie, Emily King, and TLC. The once aspiring artist manager became a founding member of Diddy's in-house production team at Bad Boy Entertainment, The Hitmen. His ear for slickly layering recognizable classic soul/R&B samples under hard beats prompted then Uptown Records executive Sean "Diddy" Combs-then Puffy-and Blige to let the then 24-year-old multi-instrumentalist to produce over half of her GRAMMY-nominated masterpiece, now the subject of an Amazon Prime documentary.Ī native of Washington, D.C., Thompson got his start on congas in go-go music legend Chuck Brown band, The Soul Searchers. Thompson's initiative would go on to change the sound of '90s hip-hop and R&B. When the GRAMMY-winning "Queen of Hip-Hop Soul" started to plan her follow-up album, 1994's My Life, she kept turning down producers who raised their fee Chucky Thompson got one placement and was willing to do it for free. Blige's triple platinum 1992 debut What's the 411? brought along matching egos.