How Did Dr. Freeze and Hitman Howie Tee Make The Beat for Color Me Badd’s “I Wanna Sex You Up?”
I answered this question on Quora recently and thought it might interest some Micro-Chop readers so I’m posting it here as well.
According to The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits, the beat first took form when Giant Records secured a placement for “I Wanna Sex You Up” in the film New Jack City.
After securing the placement, Giant employee Cassandra Mills asked producer Dr. Freeze to watch the film for some visual inspiration and to get a feel for what the label wanted the song to sound like. “I Wanna Sex You Up” was going to play during New Jack City’s strip scene, so Mills asked Dr. Freeze to capture the vibe of the scene and make a song similar to Bell Biv Devoe’s “Do Me”.
To make the beat, Dr. Freeze enlisted the help of producer Hitman Howie Tee. Howie Tee said that he sampled a Nancy Wilson cover of the Bloood, Sweat & Tears song “Spinning Wheel” as a starting point for the beat in The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits. It’s difficult to tell which part he sampled because the cover isn’t available anywhere online, but Howie Tee said he sampled the “groove” of the song in the Billboard book.
After he adjusted the initial sample to his liking, Howie Tee played different elements over the Nancy Wilson loop to hide the sample and make it less obvious. “First I sampled it, and once I had the loop going, I played things over it so the sample could disappear,” he said in The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits.
The interview with him doesn’t specify what percentage of the final beat was sample-based vs. what percentage was Howie Tee playing different drum machines, keyboards, and/or instruments himself.
Now here’s where the story gets really interesting — Dr. Freeze received head producer credit for “I Wanna Sex You Up”, but I haven’t been able to find any documentation online about his role in producing the song. That’s not to say he wasn’t a central figure in making the final beat work for Color Me Badd, I just haven’t found any articles or interviews that talk about how he was involved.
Howie Tee, meanwhile, received a co-producer credit, even thought it appears he may have been the main driving force behind the song. In the The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits, Color Me Badd member Bryan Abrams even said, “Howie Tee had the track and we took it back home.” This would seem to further imply that Howie Tee did most of the heavy lifting to compose the beat.
The fairness and accuracy of production credits have always been an interesting and sometimes opaque aspect of the music business, so there may be more of a story here that’s worth investigating. Having said that, there didn’t seem to be any bitterness from Howie Tee when Billboard interviewed him, so he may have been fine with the recognition he received.
Adding further intrigue to the album credits, Discogs also lists Spyderman as a co-producer, though I haven’t been able to find any specifics about his role online.
Whatever the case, Dr. Freeze, Howie Tee, and Spyderman helped Color Me Badd score one of the biggest hits of the early 90s.
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