Drake «Scorpion» (Static Major tribute)

Drake is the worldwide superstar of 2018. On Spotify, 10million people are listening to his new album «Scorpion» every hour since the release yesterday. On Twitter, the #Drake was used more than 2 million times in a couple of hours.

There are only 4 official guests in that great contemporary hip-hop & r&b album : Jay-Z, Michael Jackson (!), Ty Dolla Sign (if you know a platinium album without him since 2017 call me!) & Static Major. This last name must be ?? by most of the people listening to Drake. But I was so happy to see him ! Lemme explain…

Static penned all the Aaliyah, Ginuwine hits. If Timbaland was the music in the early 00's, Static was the voice & pen. Together, they did tracks for Jay-Z, Nas, Diddy, Nicole, Destiny’s Child etc…The falsettos & melodies of Justin Timberlake were clearly inspired by S.M.

Alone, he did songs for Truth Hurts, Pretty Ricky, Jojo, TQ, Devante Swing & Mr Dalvin of Jodeci (he was discovered and signed by Jodeci to Swing Mob label in 1994) & as a singer r&b fans know him as a member of the famous trio Playa with Smoke E.Digglera & Digital Black. Only real r&b addicts know the classic album «Cheers 2 U» produced by Timbaland including duets of Missy Elliot, Foxy Brown, Aaliyah back in 1998. In 2008, he penned & sung the 1st trap song «Lollipop» who became a number one hit with Lil Wayne. That’s when Timbaland was thinking of reuniting Playa to make a new album.

But Static passed before he even received a grammy for Lollipop. He was only 33. I remember when I had Smoke E., his music partner who was my producer at the time, on the phone, crying.

Playa was my favorite group. Thanks to Myspace in 2005, i spoke with Static & Smoke invited me to Louisville to make an album together. That’s when we launched a youtube channel of our meeting. We had 1 million views in 2007. He even gave me an unreleased song of Playa including Static called «Left U A Message» to record it as a duet. Since then, me and Smoke have about 30 songs together online. And when I talk about my link with Playa to friends and musicians, they usually say it’s «old r&b» and that Static and Smoke are unknown.

Drake has always been a fan of Playa like me. He sampled a youtube video of Static and Smoke for «Look what you’ve done» in 2011. And now he’s paying tribute to this legend. I had the same idea last month by releasing a new EP called «Latin Playa» including Smoke in each song with beats by Guitarboy who did songs with R.Kelly and Chris Brown.

I just hope now that people will look after Static Major online and see all his work & our work with Smoke.