Album Sequencing Quotes

I think that's what most of us rappers do too often. We put too much information in some of our albums that could actually be on the next ones.

I sequence during the entire recording process. The sequencing changes as I'm recording and as I'm listening. From when I'm, like, four songs in, I start trying to figure out which song should come after which. Which is important, and it changes as the album goes.

I love doing third albums. A group makes its first album, and then the record company rushes them into the studio to make their second album. After that, they go, 'Whoa, wait a second.' They get a little more confident. They step back and say, 'Okay, now we're gonna do it.'

I've been sequencing all of my albums, from any Gang Starr stuff to Jeru to Group Home, all of it. I pay a lot of attention to that and really always have. I've even helped sequence friend's projects.

You don't put your only No. 1 single on the last cut of side two!

One of those things that I find hard to dispose of is my attitude to album sequencing, the layout of the pieces.

My favorite records are, like, The Pretty Things' 'Parachute' and 'S.F. Sorrow' and The Mothers of Invention's 'We're Only in It for the Money' and The Kinks' 'Village Green Preservation Society' - these records that have a story - even if it's not a literal story - because of how they're sequenced and flow. It's like a novel with sound.

When sequencing an album, you kind of have to look at it like you're making a movie with different acts, and you have ebb and flow, peaks and valleys. You want it to feel like a journey or a good movie or book where you can actually feel very satisfied at the ride at the end of it.

There's this misconception in the industry that you might have to go a little lighter or skate on the surface in order to reach people - and then in your second album, you get to tell who you are.

Our friends in the group Chicago, they just numbered theirs and we thought that was kind of neat but it made continuity from album to album and that was our way of doing it.

I had between 20 and 40 songs for 'Detox,' and I just couldn't feel it. Usually, I can hear the sequence of an album as I'm going, but I wasn't able to do that. I wasn't feeling it in my gut.

When it came time to sequence the album, the new arrangements really demanded a different order. They were so different than they were before that the old sequence didn't work anymore.

Usually albums are frontloaded with singles.

The reason I make that distinction cassette before CD is you have to listen to it in the order in which I've curated it for you. You know, side A to side B is our act break.