Shawty Redd

Shawty Redd seems special. He gained my notice with his production work on Young Jeezy's 2005 debut, where he crafted the track for "Get Ya Mind Right", a song that goes way beyond the typical trap music pack, standing out with a compelling mix of dark cinematics, wild-west whistles, and crisp drums that smoothly transitions between haunting and triumphant textures. It's trembling keyboard-whistles work so well that you'd have to go back to Dr. Dre to find a producer as effective with extended notes.



And that's enough for him to have been special to me. But the fact is that he's recently come into the mainstream spotlight, though most people don't realize it. He produced and wrote Snoop's unstoppable "Sexual Eruption"/"Sensual Seduction". And once again he's using long, almost ambient keyboards to create the backdrop textures that he puts the rest of the song over. But obviously, the style is total different. It's the kind of genre-hopping you rarely see from hip-hop producers, and it will be interesting to see if he can keep it up.



He has his own appropriately titled album coming out sometime this year, Jekyll & Hyde. From what I've heard from early singles, I'd still prefer see him stay in the background, but as long as the tracks stay original, I'll let him do what he wants.

Bonus Track: His disco-pop lead single that sees him going directly after Timbaland's niche.