The Atlanta producer Rico Wade was the de facto leader of the Dungeon Family, the loose collective of rappers and musicians that coalesced around his mother’s smoke-filled Georgia basement — a.k.a. the Dungeon — in the mid-90s. Wade’s open doors and nurturing vision became the engine of Atlanta’s creative explosion, tilting the spotlight away from New York and Los Angeles and toward the homegrown sounds of artists like Outkast, Goodie Mob, Killer Mike, Janelle Monáe and eventually Wade’s younger cousin Future. Wade’s death at 52 was announced on social media last Saturday.
Beyond his roles as conceptualist and deal maker, Wade served as one-third of the adventurous production team Organized Noize. The crew’s red-clay-scuffed sound was steeped in vintage ’70s soul, cutting-edge electronica, murky noise, slurping hi-hats and the warmth of live instruments. Working alongside the melodic sensibilities of Sleepy Brown and the beatmaking prowess of Ray Murray, Wade was “the mouthpiece,” Outkast’s Big Boi said in the 2016 documentary “The Art of Organized Noize.” “He was the inspiration guy; he could sell it.”
Here are 10 essential productions from Rico Wade and Organized Noize, who brought the “dirty South” to the world. (Listen on Spotify and Apple Music.)
Outkast, “Player’s Ball” (1993)
The slow-rolling breakout moment for the Atlanta sound emerged after the LaFace Records co-founder L.A. Reid tapped the teenage duo Outkast to fill the final spot on the R&B-heavy album “A LaFace Family Christmas.” Though initially reluctant to make a Christmas record, Outkast decided to focus on lived reality instead of holiday cheer. “Just talk about how we kick it on Christmas at the Dungeon, man,” Big Boi recalled for GQ. “There ain’t no chimneys in the ghetto. We won’t be hanging no socks on no chimneys.” A slightly less Christmas-themed version was released as the group’s debut single, and the Puff Daddy-directed video was filmed in Wade’s house. (Wade convinced André 3000 to wear an Atlanta Braves jersey for the clip.) “I remember the day they played it on the radio — everybody quit they job,” Goodie Mob’s Big Gipp said in “The Art of Organized Noize,” thinking, “‘If one of us’ll get in, all of us’ll get in.’”
TLC, “Waterfalls” (1994)
This indelible pop smash emerged from a moment of studio serendipity. The songwriter Marqueze Ethridge sang the hook to Wade in the middle of an Outkast session. Murray played a stuttering beat on the SP-1200 and LaMarquis Jefferson improvised some slippery bass licks. They called TLC’s T-Boz to come in and do a demo and a No. 1 hit was born. “The horns in the song was live,” Wade told Complex. “As you can tell, the horns were very pop. But we were at that point in our career where we wanted to bring everything back that was analog”
Goodie Mob, “Cell Therapy” (1995)
Four aspiring rappers with wildly different styles, the members of Goodie Mob were grouped together by Wade, who supplied the quartet with darker, moodier beats than the more playful and colorful ones he made for Outkast. Inspired by the raw, noisy clank of Jeru the Damaja’s 1993 East Coast hit “Come Clean,” “Cell Therapy” was built on a swirl of dub-inflected noise and an icy piano riff. Goodie Mob painted with dark lyrics gleaned from a copy of Milton William Cooper’s Illuminati manifesto “Behold a Pale Horse” that Busta Rhymes gave to the group. Khujo Goodie told VladTV that Reid allowed them to take a risk with the track: “‘Man, run with it. I trust Organized Noize.’ And to this day it’s a pillar in hip-hop.”
Goodie Mob featuring Big Boi & Cool Breeze, “Dirty South” (1995)
Over a shadowy Organized Noize production, the Dungeon Family member Cool Breeze introduces the phrase “dirty South,” a description that would grow to become as ubiquitous as the movement itself. “As far as the term go, we never got paid for none of that [expletive]. But as far as the way it’s been capitalized, now everybody got ‘dirty south’ records, and ‘dirty south’ movies,” Wade told Complex. “I didn’t know we should trademark that.”
Outkast, “Two Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac)” (1996)
“It was Wu-Tang-ish. And we knew that. But it was still Southern,” Wade told Boiler Room. “We felt like we opened up that gateway where we could bridge this gap.” Though Organized Noize rarely relied on heavy sampling, “Two Dope Boyz” loops the evocative, nighttime croon of the Chicago soul group Five Stairsteps, setting the tone for the psychedelic space-noir of Outkast’s second album, “ATLiens.”
En Vogue, “Don’t Let Go (Love)” (1996)
Wade told Complex the biggest song of En Vogue’s career was originally meant for Mick Jagger and was turned into a smash for the girl group by the record executive Sylvia Rhone. Ray Murray, later said this majestic, lush, tympani-pounding track was a pure Wade invention: Murray was originally writing the beat as a rap song for Cool Breeze to rhyme over, but Wade had the foresight to give it to the R&B trio, resulting in a Grammy-nominated No. 2 hit.
Witchdoctor featuring André 3000, “Dez Only 1” (1997)
After its huge pop successes, Organized Noize signed a deal with Interscope. While its brief dalliance with the major label in the late ’90s did not yield any pop home runs, the moment coincided with what many consider to be the production trio’s creative apex. Its most out-there and ambitious release was the debut LP from the M.C. Witchdoctor, “A S.W.A.T. Healin’ Ritual,” a one-of-a-kind blend of Afrocentrism, voodoo imagery, unflinching street reality, off-kilter flows and skittering beats reminiscent of British drum-and-bass music. The spiritual “Dez Only 1” finds Witchdoctor, Big Boi and André 3000 celebrating God over a track that sounds like chittering birdsong.
Cool Breeze featuring Outkast, Goodie Mob and Witchdoctor, “Watch for the Hook (Dungeon Family Mix)” (1999)
The ultimate Dungeon Family posse cut features nine M.C.s and a skipping snippet of Merry Clayton’s soul-funk cover of Neil Young’s “Southern Man.” “We was all able to study each other’s rhymes before we did our particular verses” Big Gipp told Hot 107.9 in Atlanta. Once André 3000 laid down his verse, “it was like, ‘OK, everybody gotta get their good pen out.’”
Outkast, “So Fresh, So Clean” (2000)
By 2000, Outkast’s André 3000 and Big Boi had grown into formidable producers in their own rights, as evidenced by the group’s first No. 1 single, “Ms. Jackson.” However, their old collaborators Organized Noize supplied the follow-up. Sleepy Brown came up with the melody on the keyboard and Wade provided the iconic lyrics: The chorus came to him while he was literally getting fresh and clean in the shower, Brown told Red Bull Music Academy.
Ludacris featuring Sleepy Brown, “Saturday (Oooh Ooooh)” (2001)
Organized Noize had given Ludacris a beat for his self-released 1999 debut “Incognegro,” and he returned the favor after becoming a multiplatinum superstar, asking the group for two songs for his second Def Jam album, “Word of Mouf.” “And just so happen that day I had got some new sounds from Ray,” Wade told Complex. “So I just immediately hit the beat and he loved it, took it, wrote to it, brought it back and it was done.” The giddy, up-tempo party anthem features Sleepy Brown on the chorus and became Ludacris’s fifth song to break the Top 40.
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