Hadley Street Journal

 It all started when Catchdini the Great Peruser of the Blogosphere found this: Solange Knowles listing “Say Whoa” in her fave songs of 08 year-end list. I thought “what in the world?” and went over to her myspace page, where I saw her talking about WMC and Justice and Midnight Juggernauts and I thought “iiiinterestinggg”.So I reached out, and not only did the lovely lady have some Macklovitch Muzik (both brothers) in her iTunes, she told me she even wrote a song to “Say Whoa”… Whoa! So we made plans to link up in New York, which leads us to this week. Wednesday she was performing a short set at a charity event at Lincoln Center, so I came down to say hello. The whole thing came together at the last minute, so like half an hour before stage time I called my friend Denise and said “hey, wanna go see Solange at some sort of hoyty toyty thing?” and she was like “yeah sure” and we scooted uptown. We got lost, and when we finally found the place we realized it was a fancy award ceremony for a foundation for heart disease in women. Larry King was a speaker. (I later found out that Solange mistakenly called him Larry David on camera. She won points for that one.) They gave awards to cardiologists. Everyone was wearing red! It was called the Red Dress foundation. Needless to say, Denise and I were oblivious to that. And at the end, Solange took the stage and rocked the grown-ups off their seat. I recognized her tour manager, who used to work for John Legend on the first Kanye tour. After the ceremony, everyone moved over to the party room where my homegirl DJ Rasheeda was spinning some grown & sexy jams. I met up with Solange, she was super cool and we were all set for our studio session the next day. On Thursday we met up at Armand Van Helden’s studio. I decided to go there because I don’t have a proper vocal booth at my spot, but we wanted to keep a home-studio vibe. I’ve been at Armand’s every other day lately (wouldn’t you like to know what we’re up to?) so it was easy… I was super curious to hear what she wrote to my track, which doesn’t really have a melody to start with. It sounded great though! So we rearranged the track to fit her vocals and recorded a ruff of the song. I’m also fascinated with the convoluted universe of songwriters all the steps that go into making the songs that we hear on the radio, and I know she writes a lot for other singers, so I was picking her brain about that too. Twas an enjoyable afternoon. And later last night I was DJing at this pop-up of Parisian model-type hangout Le Baron inside the Bowery Hotel (it’s fashion week in New York), so she came to hear some Trizzy tunes. Also in attendance were the homies Vampire Weekend, DJ Lindsey & Myles, Catchdubs of course, et al. The adventure continues!