Encounters: Scientist and Shafiq Husayn

Christened “Scientist” by King Tubby, after the dub master joked about his then-teenage mixing assistant’s forward-thinking sense of technical arrangement, Overton “Scientist” Brown has played a critical role in the spread of Jamaican music over the past several decades. By the late ’70s, Scientist had moved from his initial training at King Tubby’s studio to become the principal engineer at Studio One, where he mastered the 16-channel mixing desk and worked with dub, reggae and dancehall artists throughout the ’80s. Also known for his extensive discography of productions, through dozens of album-length recordings, Scientist has continually pushed the outer reaches of dub, giving voice to the experimental nature of the genre.

Best known for his work with the collective Sa-Ra Creative Partners, Shafiq Husayn is a hip-hop and future-soul artist based in Los Angeles. Outside of his own solo material, he has worked with a number of hip-hop and R&B greats including Erykah Badu, Kanye West, Robert Glasper, Andre 3000, John Legend, Hiatus Kaiyote, Thundercat, Bilal and Ice T. He is the also the founder of the Dove Society, a Los Angeles-based creative collective which spawned Anderson Paak and the Free Nationals.

In this edited excerpt from a conversation with Frosty on Red Bull Radio, the two artists – meeting for the first time – discuss their early influences, the connection between hip-hop and Jamaican music and give their two cents on the analog versus digital debate.

Is there something that you’re curious about when you connect with someone for the first time over music? Is there a kind of introductory moment?

Scientist

Personally, right now, if an artist’s morals are off, [if] he’s not about anything more than bling bling, blang blang, I usually don’t want to get involved. I like working with people for whom money and fame don’t change them.

Shafiq Husayn

I would have to say that too. Just in my personal practice in Islam, we don’t practice compulsory. We don’t make you do anything. We don’t expect anybody to do what we’re gonna do. But I agree, as far as coming into the session and stuff like that. I don’t make music from a materialistic point of view. So I’m not gonna come up in the session and let that become the new focus.

Scientist, what was the moment for you that put you on a path towards music? I know you’ve mentioned marijuana being a big influence in your life.

Scientist

Yes, marijuana did open up that way and that creative thinking for me.

But, when I was 16 years old I was young in electronics and I was learning how to build my first amplifier. So a friend of mine named Michael Clark said, “When you’re building amplifiers I suggest you use this record, because it really have good bass and all that.” It was King Tubby, The Roots of Dub. And what I noticed, all [over] the scene, people used to have a Tubby record testing the amplifier. But after listening to it, I become curious about what I was hearing, [and that] drove me.

So a friend of mine was doing a welding job, he said, “Hey man, I’m at Tubby’s. You should come up here.” So when I got up to the studio, most of what I had in theory was right, but I found out it was way too much at that time for a 16 year old or for one man to build a console. So I started going up to King Tubby’s. It was a regular place to buy parts. And Tubby was an island – everybody knew that he was the best amplifier builder.

What were you hearing in Tubby’s music that you hadn’t heard before, and what did you get from Tubby as a mentor?

Scientist

Well, first thing is the effects. We used to hook up our radar, or our amplifiers to the radar, and be playing like FM American type music, Marvin Gaye, and the amplifiers would be normal. But as soon as you start playing a King Tubby that have a certain amount of treble and bass, then all of a sudden you find that the amplifier starts behaving weird. And what that did, in fact, is force you to build a better amplifier, because the music note can show all the fault in the record. And it did the same thing all across the board.

The fact is, reggae is the first bass-heavy music, and then a direct descendant from reggae is hip-hop, which is now the next bass-heavy music. Then everything else is after that.

It probably couldn’t have continued evolving on the music front unless you had a technology front to go along with it. Did you feel like you connected with Tubby because you were coming with an engineer’s mind?

Scientist

I reminded him and the people in the neighborhood of when he was growing up. I was like, “Why is Tubby the one mixing a record?” And I found myself just mixing, mixing, which is why you know me in the world because I mixed all these records. And then, again, everything that you should not do, “the rules,” we broke all of them.

What was the first tune that was released that you were involved in?

Scientist

The first song that I mixed was Barrington Levy “Collie Weed.” The producer came there wanting a different engineer, and I begged Tubby, and he reluctantly let me do it. And it went number one.

Shafiq, was there a kind of gateway or moment that the doors opened for you?

Shafiq Husayn

I’ve had a few breakout moments. I came into the industry producing with Ice-T. I actually worked on the “Cop Killer” album. I had been producing for a while under a different name. The way my current name got into the music industry was because my friend Akil from Jurassic 5 turned in the credits to their songs that I worked on, “Contribution” and “Twelve,,” to Interscope as Shafiq Husayn, but I already had a professional name for the past 15 years.

Going further back, was there a moment that made you say, “I’m gonna spend my life in music?”

Shafiq Husayn

Hip-hop. Straight up, hip-hop. When I heard rhyming, beats, scratching, just the whole thing that came along with it, the whole atmosphere. It completely just blew my mind. And from then on, I said ‘I will always be into hip-hop.’ I mean, everybody is gonna say “Rapper’s Delight” was the first song. But I was hearing hip-hop before “Rapper’s Delight,” because it was on cassette tape. Where people would actually go to jam parties and put the speakers to the demonstration, and you would actually hear what was going on. That alone, hearing the old dub records.

Scientist

Hip-hop was using demonstrations?

Shafiq Husayn

Yeah, it was like the whole cohesive. Grandmaster Flash is Jamaican, you know what I mean?

Were you aware of that Jamaican lineage?

Shafiq Husayn

They made it known early. American DJs got from Jamaican DJs the whole rewind, stop, then on, all that. The MCs, we got from the Jamaican DJs the whole echo chamber. “Yes, yes, y’all, you don’t stop, stop, stop.” That’s all dancehall.

Scientist

And where were you living at that time?

Shafiq Husayn

I split time between LA and New York, the Bronx. I used to carry records for Afrika Islam. I was in the Zulu Nation. But when I lived in LA, I’m with Uncle Jamm’s Army, Egyptian Lover. I went to school with Battlecat. So I had a very unique musical upbringing because I’m affiliated with both coasts. And the thing about it was, LA didn’t have that part of hip-hop that I was talking about. That came later on in the record-making time, as far as using the echo chamber and all that.

Did you follow it back? Once you realized that you were hearing Jamaican influence, were you interested in checking the roots?

Shafiq Husayn

Yes. So even back then, I was reading whatever history that they had on hip-hop at that time, I was studying it. Like, I wanted to know about Grandmaster Flash.

It’s interesting, because you were coming up in the roots of what evolved into hip-hop, but both forms of music continued. They didn’t stop, they were continuing their evolutionary paths, but there was a very important moment where they connected.

Scientist

Where they made babies. Hip-hop is the baby of Jamaican dancehall roots, DJing, seriously. Let me ask you, I don’t know if it’s the same thing in hip-hop like I find in reggae. I find a lot of artists, they can’t wait to see the next one die before they can jump in the spotlight. Is it the same thing? Because I find in reggae, one of the downsides to it is this constant battle to say, “I am better.”

Shafiq Husayn

It’s the same thing in hip-hop. Jay Z, believe it or not, had to call people out, remember he said he’s overcharging ones for what they did to the Cold Crush. At that time, people weren’t paying respect to the Cold Crush. [The Cold Crush Brothers] never got the chance to even be on the platform and make money like everybody. So since he’s in charge, making all the money now, he’s saying he’s going to overcharge for the Cold Crush.

There is something about the positive side of creative competition, and then there’s the negative side where it’s just fully cutthroat for money. In Jamaican soundsystem culture, the elevation of one sound to try to have the heaviest, best sound, and knowing the next one down the block is going to come and try to have even better – there’s something there that can forward the culture.

Scientist

That is good and all, but when I hear artists in Jamaica paying DJs not to let the other artist’s record play, that’s bad.

Here’s what I learned. Don’t try to stay in the spotlight too long, your Jheri curls will get melt. You get in, you get out, you give somebody else the spotlight so you don’t wear out your welcome.

I don’t know if it’s the same thing like in Jamaica, but the reason for the soundsystems is that corporate radio wouldn’t play that type of music. Because it’s like it’s mobilizing the people against them.

Shafiq Husayn

No, it was just strictly to battle to be louder and clearer than the other opposing DJ. I know in LA, there was 1580 KDAY, which was AM radio. And they would play just all our people’s stuff, but then you would have, like in New York, there was WHBI. You know, African, Islam and Zulu beats.

One of the interesting things I was reading recently was about your first mentor, King Tubby. The unique thing about Tubby’s sound system was he was also hanging the tweeters and the horns in the trees, so you’d come into the place and it was just a transcendent experience because the music felt like it was all around you.

Scientist

Well, a lot of things get invented by accident, right? But the primary idea for it, we used to have these big 20-something inch steel horns.

The purpose of the steel horn was to attract people from very far, because you go two, three miles out, you’re gonna hear the soundsystem. And a lot of people they would just follow the sound, and they know the louder the sound get, the closer you’re getting to the soundsystem.

But it was also a magnet for the police back in that time, because the police used to come and when they looking for somebody, they just have to find a King Tubby’s dance. Then they know they ain’t going home empty.

I know you guys both have crews of people that you’re connected with and you work with. Do you have a specific approach when it comes to working with other people?

Shafiq Husayn

Number one, I meet people where they at. Just in general. So, I take that mentality into the studio.

Scientist

When professional people work together and not against each other there’s no limit as to what you can accomplish. When you make a record with somebody it’s like you have a wife that can never divorce.

And whatever bad vibes will come into the recording when you’re making the record. 50 years you’re going to remember that. But you never know what the next person is going to like. That’s why a lot of times, right, I work on song, I don’t really like the song but I find other people like it. And I work on song that I don’t like, but guess what? The song went number one. Other people like it, so it’s not really about what I like anymore.

Shafiq Husayn

Right, yeah. That’s the part where I remove my ego as well.

We did a John Legend record, “Maxine.” We did it with an electronic, old school funk box. And I wanted the drums to be a little bit more present, but when I heard the mix I just felt like the song didn’t reflect the mentality that I would normally put into the record. But that was the ego part that we talked about where I had to check myself and allow the process. But it’s probably one of my best-selling records. I make the most money off of that record.

When you hear certain songs, do you remember the days that they were made on? Do you remember if it was a day and if it was nighttime or if it was daytime?

Scientist

Not exactly. I learned to identify the nighttime mixing when I’m sleeping. I have a couple mixes I do in my sleep, and when I hear it back, I said, “Damn, I couldn’t do that if I was fully awake.”

Like when I go to a dub club now, 90% of the songs they play at the dub club is what I mix. And that’s a time I start remembering some of them.

I was talking to Doreen Shaffer who was in the Skatalites, and when she connected with those guys they were studio musicians who were in there just grinding non-stop. That kind of Jamaican-era studio thing was so much work.

Scientist

But you find, like back in those times when you look on a lot of those records, the injustices. None of those musicians get any credit. So it does an injustice to music. Take a Doreen Shaffer song. Who played the drums in it? No mention of the drummer, right?

Shafiq Husayn

What was the last record you put out?

Scientist

The last record I put out is with Hempress Sativa. She’s an up-and-coming artist.

Shafiq Husayn

And in your approach into making that project, did you find yourself using any of your old techniques? Because I know a lot of dub was made with analog. In this day and age, how is that translating into the creative process?

Scientist

It help a lot. But I don’t miss analog one bit. Matter of fact, on that session we ran into some technical issues, and the first time I remembered what a buzz sounded like was when I plugged in an analog.

Shafiq Husayn

Right. Yeah, you like the quiet.

Scientist

I can get just about everything without noise. What do you think coming from your side?

Shafiq husayn

I love analog. I’m looking for a tape machine right now.