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NEW Orleans music scene is legendary known as the birthplace of jazz, pioneers such as Louis Armstrong and Fats Domino hail from the Louisianan state and music remains the cultural centerpiece of this American city.

Two New Orleans natives are continuing this tradition and are about to take the music industry by storm.

Darrell Flowers and Will Metcalf are music producers and songwriters for their company MF’Ntertaintemnemt specialising in many different genres including Pop, Rock, Jazz, Hip Hop and RNB.

The pair have been making music for more than 10 years and with former Boys II men star Michael McCary on hand to offer advice they are looking forward to making their mark.

There accomplishments have been varied, They have had their tracks played on a range of MTV shows including “The Hills” and “Pimp My Ride”, scored the play, “In her Defense The Afeni Shakur story” as well as submitting a song to Akon and Konvict music.

“We have sectioned off a lot of our musicianship, I do all off the aggressive hip-hop and rock music and Darrell do some of the softer and more melodic rnb and pop music,” Will explained.

Despite Darrell being a promising basketball player and Will harbouring ambitions to be a professional wrestler the pair’s love for music was to strong.

“I never made a conscious choice to be a musician it kind of happen, music was all I did and I decided that I didn’t want to play basketball anymore,” Darrell said.

The pair list their Influences as Quincy Jones, Stevie Wonder, Brian Mcknight and Lenny Kravitz but their biggest musical role model is superstar Michael Jackson which is why they have released a paying homage album “Michael Jackson: The Reconception” to celebrate the King of Pop. The album features vocals from some of the biggest stars including singer Akon and rappers Lil Wayne and Drake.

“It’s a 10 song project and every track on the album we rework a Michael Jackson song. It’s paying homage to someone that we admire,” Darrell said.

The project has always been in the works for some time but the shock death of Jackson in June prompted the duo to work hard to produce the album.

“I was so messed up, I recorded the memorial service and it breaks my heart to see it, we listen to Michael all the time and when he died it was like a friend dying or a pen pal you never met,” Will said.

Released on the date of Jackson’s birthday, the album has already generated a buzz and the pair believes the album will be successful.

“The response has been overwhelmingly positive. I knew when we did it we created something good but it’s better then expected. We’ve had 1600 downloads, and 20,000 listens in the first week,” Will revealed.

The numbers are indeed impressive but the pair says that it’s important not to take short cuts when making their music, pointing to the growing use of the Autotune.

“If autotune is used properly there’s nothing wrong with it. Autotune is a very simple musician programme but at the end of the day you still got to understand things about music, pitch, melody and vibrato when you get it wrong it sounds horrible,” Will explained.

In fact the pair are determined to change what they say is “a lack of standards” in the music industry.

“In being a producer your job is to balance creativity with a typical application of a fan which requires you to curb a certain level of creativity to make it acceptable for fans but the industry of late have taken it too far and the balance is off right now,” Darrell said.

The pair have turned down working with well know rappers despite the lucrative opportunities.

“We are often asked to dumb down our musicianship. We would do a track that have the sweeping arrangements and giant strings but artists would shy away from that,” Will explained.

The pair who currently resides in Atlanta says the city of New Orleans continues to impact on the type of music that they produce.

“Whenever I have to work on something myself and I need the space to work on it, I can’t do it here (Atlanta) I need to go home and take it all in,” Darrell outlined.

Will added: “We took the music for granted when we were there but now that we don’t live there we really do appreciate the talent that comes out of New Orleans.”

The duo were forced to leave the city when hurricane Katrina struck four years ago causing widespread damage to the city. But the storm also impacted negatively on the 28-year olds.

“It completely change the course of my life and in day my life has a different course. There are two major radio stations in New Orleans that pay hip-hop and Rnb and the station we invested all our money in was the station that got destroyed and we didn’t get our money back. A lot of the stores where our products were looted so the product was lost,” Darrell stated.

Despite the setbacks, the pair are hoping to tour the UK and dream of working with British acts including Duffy, Amy Winehouse and the Sugababes.

“We are hoping to be in the UK by next year, there’s a lot of British talent out there,” Will said.

The rest of this year and next is set to be a busy one for the Producers.

“We are working on a publishing and production deal with EMI and we have our own artists that we look after,” they outlined.

For more information visit www.myspace.com/Gaimezworld and to download the album, visit www.muzartonline.com

Published: 11 October 2009
Issue: 1393

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