Easy Mo Bee
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Easy Mo Bee (born Osten Harvey, Jr. in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York) is a notable African-American hip hop/R&B record producer.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Early years
In high school, Harvey donned his Mo Bee moniker and started a group named "Rapping is Fundamental" among some classmates. One of its members played one of Easy Mo Bee's beat tapes for his classmate, the Brooklyn rapper who would become known as Big Daddy Kane. Impressed, Kane had Easy produce two tracks on the rapper's album It's a Big Daddy Thing and netted him production on many of Kane's future releases.
Afterward, Easy produced the lion's share of Words From the Genius, the debut album of GZA from what would become the Wu-Tang Clan. Easy Mo Bee also produced Miles Davis' final studio album, 1992's Doo-Bop, which won the 1993 Grammy Award for Best R&B Instrumental Performance.
[edit] With Sean Combs and Bad Boy
In the early 1990s, he linked up with Bad Boy Entertainment and became their main staff producer, crafting most of the tracks for its first release, Craig Mack's Project: Funk Da World and the label's first major hit, "Flava in Ya Ear." He also produced "Party and Bullshit" for The Notorious B.I.G, the rapper's first single.
Subsequently he produced for both Tupac Shakur and Biggie. He is one of the few producers to have worked with both of them, especially on the song "Running from the Police" (from the album One Million Strong) where he had both of them in the studio at the same time.
After producing on Tupac Shakur's album Me Against the World, Mo Bee started on Biggie's Ready To Die. His production on both spawned hits and critical acclaim; he continued producing for Biggie on the rapper's second album. Bad Boy CEO Puff Daddy eventually asked to manage Mo Bee and for the producer to join his Hitmen production team; he declined, and Puff severed their ties. Mo Bee also produced the driving hit for Busta Rhymes's The Coming, the song "Everything Remains Raw."
[edit] After Bad Boy
Easy stayed close with Big and they recorded tracks, including a song for his third album Born Again called Dead Wrong. After the rapper was killed, however, the album version that appeared was remixed without credit to Easy. Puff stopped bringing him in on label projects, and over the course of future releases has remixed more of Mo Bee's material without giving the producer credit (such as Flava in Ya Ear, remixed by Puffy on the Bad Boy 10th Anniversary album, and Runnin, remixed by Eminem on the Tupac: Resurrection Soundtrack). Mo Bee also has a label, Be Mo Easy, which has yet to see a release.
In recent years, Easy has worked with non hip-hop artists such as Alicia Keys, for whom he produced a cover of Gladys Knight & the Pips' 1971 hit "If I Were Your Woman". He also produced for Afu Ra on Life Force Radio, Mos Def on The New Danger and Blaq Poet of Screwball on his solo album, Rewind <<< Deja Screw.
[edit] Production technique
Mo Bee has been acclaimed for his bass-heavy style and jazzy influence. In an interview with Allhiphop.com, Mo Bee stated that for collaborations, he looks for a soulful, emotional artist.
At times Mo Bee has branched out more with his sound, as on the smooth, poppish "I Love the Dough" by Biggie, sampling Angela Winbush's "I Love You More". He also turned to trippy rock for inspiration on Mos Def's "Zimzallabim".
