Erick Sermon’s “Full Cooperation” Beat Inspired Pharrell To Make Jay Z’s “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)”
Erick Sermon was in a peak creative zone when he made many of the beats for El Niño, Def Squad’s first full-length collaborative album. After knocking out track after track without a specific destination in mind, he realized that his growing batch of instrumentals would be perfect for a joint project with Keith Murray and Redman. “I just had some beats,” he told Complex in 2012. “I was making a whole bunch of shit at one time. I was like, ‘Yo, we gotta do something. These shits is crazy.’”
Those familiar with the production on El Niño will concede that the beats are indeed crazy. But Sermon — long known for his ability to flip funk records from his own collection with deft precision — recently made the surprising revelation that the album leaned heavily on an outside sample source.
In a 2017 Tracklib conversation with Erick Sermon and Prince Paul, Sermon explained where many of the album’s incredible samples came from after Prince Paul told him that El Niño was one of his favorite records of all-time. “One of my friends — she’s a white woman named Carolyn Robbins — she used to work at Def Jam,” Sermon told Tracklib. “I tell you, she had more records than Premo, more records than Pete Rock. She had a warehouse full of albums.”
“The whole Def Squad record was almost dug by a 44-year-old white woman. On my Jordan’s.”
According to Sermon, Robbins wasn’t merely a collector — she had a deep understanding of her records and an impeccable ear for pulling out potential samples. After selecting a wide range of material from her massive cache of wax, she would compile the different hand-picked samples onto a disk and give them to Sermon. “Not only did she have records, she knew records,” he told Tracklib. “So she would make DATs and say, ‘Erick I made a DAT for you, check out these samples.’ So I didn’t dig ’em. I picked what I liked, but she was diggin’ ‘em.”
Sermon goes on to underscore his point by telling Prince Paul and Tracklib, “The whole Def Squad record was almost dug by a 44-year-old white woman. On my Jordan’s.”
In addition to the surprising influence of Carolyn Robbins on the El Niño beats, Sermon also credited a major Busta Rhymes record from the late 90s for inspiring the lead single “Full Cooperation”. “‘Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See’ was so prominent,” he told Complex. “‘Full Cooperation’ is a loop, but it moved like ‘Put Your Hands.’”
Though the connection might not be obvious at first, if you listen to both songs side by side you can definitely hear it.
“He took the whole entire technique and style from ‘Full Cooperation.’ I took it from Busta, Pharrell got it from me.”
As if the Busta/Def Squad connection isn’t interesting enough, Sermon goes on to tell Complex that Pharrell credited “Full Cooperation” as the inspiration for several of his early 2000s breakout successes. Citing songs like “Shake It Fast” and “Danger” as being indebted to Sermon’s beat, the producer mega-star apparently told him, “‘Erick, you changed my life.’”
Pharrell also told Sermon that the influence of “Full Cooperation” helped him compose a massively popular Jay-Z track. “Pharrell said, ‘I played 18 beats for Jay-Z, and the one he chose was ‘I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)’. And Pharrell said, ‘Thank you,’” Sermon told Complex.
Though producers are sometimes angered when another beat maker finds success from borrowing their style, Sermon seemed to be more than OK with the sequence of events. After admitting to Complex that he himself took elements from an earlier song, he didn’t seem the least bit upset about Pharrell building off of his sound. “He took the whole entire technique and style from ‘Full Cooperation.’ I took it from Busta, Pharrell got it from me,” he told Complex.
“I was making a whole bunch of shit at one time. I was like, ‘Yo, we gotta do something. These shits is crazy.’”
In celebration El Niño turning 20 years old on June 30th, 2018, I compiled an exclusive 41-track playlist featuring some of Erick Sermon’s finest productions. From well-known EPMD classics to Shaq’s forgotten 1993 single “I’m Outstanding”, I tried my best to showcase the depth and breadth of Sermon’s catalog.
As you listen you’ll notice LL Cool J’s “4,3,2,1”, which also sounds very similar to “Full Cooperation”. You’ll also notice plenty of beats that sound nothing like it.
Whatever connections and similarities you find between the 41 songs compiled here, I hope you enjoy them.
Connect with Erick Sermon on Instagram and on Twitter @iAmErickSermon.
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