clients Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins. Rodney was looking for an up and coming engineer at the time and Ricco helped open that opportunity up for me that I believe was a breaking point in my career and gave me the career I have today. In the famous word of Ricco…Thanks Bro, Bro, I appreciate ya. BSM: How was it working on the Rihanna project? And what did you do exactly?
JV: “Very important! It’s almost all you have at the end of the day to be honest. You may not like them on a personal level or always agree with them but maintaining a professional relationship will always keep them coming back because they know that you can deliver without having to babysit you. Plus, in this industry you just never know. A lot of the people I’ve come up with in the game are now in a position of power to make decisions and this is key because who do you think will be the first people they turn too? The ones they made relations within the beginning, that can get the job done and were all in the same room trying to get put on.” BSM: Who were your musical influences growing up? JV: “Funny thing growing up, I never really had a big musical collection or went to a lot of shows. I mainly just listened to the radio and whatever was playing at the time, so I like a lot of wide range of music. Coming up in the industry though especially after graduating engineering school Grammy Award Winning Producer/Engineer Ricco Lumpkins really played a vital role as a mentor and still very much does so to this day. When I first met Ricco, I was in awe because he had been a part of my favorite albums and records from TLC, Brandy, to Outkast. So, growing up as a 90’s R&B / Hip-hop Head I did whatever I could to pick his brain. He did more than just that by taking me under his wing. Ricco began bringing me into his sessions with major clients to assist for him and later introducing me to one of his
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JV: “Working on the Rihanna ‘Loud’ album was amazing. Lot of factors and motivation behind the making of this album from all the way up from the Top from Rihanna and LA Reid to the songwriter, producers and engineers. First of all, got to give it up to LA Reid. He had something to prove on this album and he did. The ‘Loud’ album had 7 singles off this album. Should’ve won Album of the Year that year in my eyes but competition was tuff going against Adele’s ‘21.’ I engineered 2 records that made this project called ‘Cheers… Drink to That’ and ‘California King Bed.’ Two records that I feel like Rihanna had never done stylistically and wish she would do more of because she sounds amazing on. The ‘Cheers’ record will always be one of the most memorable records I was a part of because of the way it came together. It was literally started with us just going thru songs we grew up on and taking about stylistically what we liked about them until we came across a record by Avril Lavigne called, I’m with you where we sampled a vocal from the bridge and made a song with it. The song references drinking Jameson Whisky, so we got a couple of bottles of that and decided to make the record. By the end of the night we literally had 30 people I didn’t know in a booth taking shot of Jameson and singing drunk background vocals throughout the record. All in all, the song is very simple and the hook plays like 6 times throughout the song, but it just feels so good. I knew it would be a smash. When we were done with the demo. The A&R flipped and sent it over to LA Reid with a bottle of Jameson at 8am in the morning. The ‘California King Bed’ record a lot different approach where in this record feels very like a big country rock/pop ballad but very emotional. I saw this record, no lie, come together lyrically in 15 minutes and was based on a real situation the song writer was personally going through. Again, totally two opposite records when it comes to vibes and two records stylistically Rihanna had never did before. She sounds so amazing on these records and I wish she would go Rock/POP.” BSM: Bacardi ,Grey Goose, D’usse or Patròn when celebrating another Grammy win? JV: “D’usse. I love my Cognac.” BSM: Do you work alongside the producer of the song/ track when doing a mix? JV: “Always! Again, my job is to be an extension of the creativity and bring the music to life sonically. So, I very much enjoy having the Producer, Artist and all involved on the mix. I do usually wait