Good Night Mr. Lewis: DJ Cassidy + O’Neal McKnight

As the recession deepens, will creativity rise? It seems that during times of duress, the music becomes more interesting. For many years as I’ve popped around from club to club, I’ve heard basically the same set played by playas pretending to be DJs. It wasn’t unusual to hear the hit du jour three or four times during the course of an evening. The model-and-bottle crowd isn’t hip, and as this group becomes less relevant to the bottom line, a necessary change will be the order of the night. The brokers and bankers -- usually as musically progressive as their tailoring -- will no longer dictate the playlist, and the model crowd -- as bright as a five-watt bulb in a snowstorm -- won’t notice the change as long as they have an anthem to pump their fists in the air to once in a while. DJ Cassidy isn’t afraid to mix it up, and the music he’s producing sticks in my head all day. A lot of important people are paying attention to our young stud, and his birthday parties have been attracting the who’s who of cool. See part 1 of my interview with Cassidy, and after the jump, check out the latest hit song, “Champagne Red Lights,” from Cassidy’s up-and-coming artist O’Neal McKnight.

New music has more of an electronic beat; it’s popping up more and more and seems to be gaining a foothold right now. Some of it sounds like music I was listening to back in 1985. Is this where music’s going?
I think all genres, from hip hop to R&B—even rock if you look at groups like The Killers or The Bravery—have started to take on a more electronic texture in the past few years. In hip hop, the Timbalands and the Neptunes started to make music reminiscent of new wave and electronic music of the early-to-mid 1980s, so we’re hearing our favorite R&B and hip hop stars singing and rapping over tracks that remind us of the Cure and Depeche Mode. I think that opened up those listeners to music that would normally be categorized as electronic or house. I think hip hop producers opened up people’s minds to that, in addition to a general overlapping of trends in 80s inspiration. The two things combined have made music very electronic sounding, which I love. I’m an 80s fan, and I listen to classic R&B of the 70s and 80s, and the main difference between the two decades, in my opinion, is that in the 80s it became electronic. But I think the electronic music of the 80s is a huge influence on all the music that we play today, so you are 100 percent right; that is very much the trend in music right now.

How did you get started with production?
I formed a production team called Cass & Dubs about five years ago with my partner Dub-L. He was a producer in the indie hip hop scene, and I was in college just starting out. I collaborated with Dubs on a few things and really felt a bond, so we found a room in a studio on the west side and spent every minute that I wasn’t at a gig in there making beats. We did a remix here and there, one for Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Lopez, T-Pain; we were doing a lot of remixes because a lot of labels already knew me, and they were coming to me to turn a lot of songs that were not club songs into club songs.

So now you’re producing an artist named O’Neal McKnight?
Yes, O’Neal McKnight was a stylist for several years; Puffy was one of his main clients, and since 2000 I’ve DJed 90 percent of the parties that Puff has thrown, so I met O’Neal through Puffy. Andre Harrell, the legendary producer, and O’Neal are cousins, so he got introduced into the hip hop industry and found his niche in styling. So Dubs and I were finding a lot of success in remixes, but we were also shopping our tracks because we really had a new sound. I can’t explain it, and I don’t like to—because if you can explain it, then it wouldn’t be a new sound. But we were thinking that we wanted to find an artist who was open, free-spirited, and willing to put a voice to this sound, and one night as I’m going through these tracks on my computer, O’Neal overhears a track, and he starts to hum along. So I say, keep singing, keep singing, and he starts going, “Just check your coat and let the music get inside you ...” So I’m like that’s hot, keep singing, and two hours later, “Check Your Coat” was written. We spent the next month or two recording a couple more songs, and it became apparent that O’Neal had an innate talent that he had never realized.

And then you worked together from there?
I started to play “Check Your Coat” at a few parties, and it got a great reaction. It doesn’t mean people jumped for joy, it means people continued dancing; that’s a great reaction, if you play a song that people have never heard and they stay. All my DJ friends started playing it, and before you know it, it becomes the hottest unsigned song in the clubs. I gave it to DJs who played it on the radio; DJ Enuff started to play it on Hot 97, DJ Clue started to play it on Power 105, and before you know it, this song is everywhere, and people have no idea who sings it, so the labels start calling me. Steve Rifkin signed us last December to Universal Motown, and we’re putting out the second single as we speak, which is called “Champagne Red Lights.” The album will come out at the top of the year, and that was really the first Cass&Dubs project. There are going to be many more to come, but we’re the type who like to drive the first one home before we go on.

How does it feel to be recognized and respected by your peers?
It’s one thing to walk into a club and hear your song being played by someone you gave it to ... that’s one level of excitement. But it’s another thing to hear your song being played by a DJ who you’ve never met before. As a DJ, you hear every artist saying, “I heard my song for the first time on the radio, or in a club!” But to be a DJ and hear someone else playing your song, as cliché as it sounds, it’s the most thrilling thing ever. The same goes for the first time I heard it on the radio; you grow up listening to Hot 97 your whole life, you hear Enuff and Flex scratching records, and suddenly to be hearing all these guys going, “Yo this is that hot new shit you need! It’s that new O’Neal McKnight produced by Cass&Dubs, shout out to DJ Cassidy!” This is what I’ve been waiting for my whole life.

Tell me how you helped other DJs like Mel DeBarge.
Mel DeBarge worked as barback at Marquee, and I did the opening of Marquee and every Friday after that for two years. He has a very electric aura, and I remember him coming up to me and saying, “Yo Cass, I’m a DJ, I just got turntables, you’ve gotta help me go record shopping!” And this was before Serato, so I was on all the record pools, and I gave him a bunch of records. I can’t remember the first time I heard him spin, but when I did I knew he was real and knew he could be big and would be big. So I introduced him to my manager Damon, and the rest is history.