Waiting To Explode

Sheare

Scott E. Shelton — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 17:01:35 +0000

After years of carefully crafted passion, my good friend Brandon Sheer will finally see his work out in the world today. As an A&R and DJ, for years I have listened to a lot of independent music. The quality of this writing and production however is far beyond anything that ever came my way, and I am excited to see what the fans think of it. Check out “We might as well be dreaming” by his band Sheare.

http://www.facebook.com/SheareMusic

Mario Jose

Scott E. Shelton — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 20:31:58 +0000

In 2009, my junior year at Northeastern, I had the pleasure of attending the only a cappella concert of my college career. During said concert, I was introduced to Berklee college of music’s own Mario Jose, the most unlikely looking person to be singing lead on a cover of Rihanna’s “Disturbia”, but as I later found out, also the most qualified. After the concert, my friends and I ended up at a house party for all of the groups involved, (how we got invited, I still don’t remember) which was its own unique experience, but also one that afforded me the chance to meet Mario. The dude couldn’t have been nicer, and somehow we ended up becoming Facebook friends. Today, I was perusing Facebook, and this incredible youtube video showed up in my timeline. Apparently Mario is going to be featured along side John Legend in the new show Duets on ABC. Check it out!

Micah Murders Another Cover

Scott E. Shelton — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 19:45:34 +0000

AT LONG LAST! Emerging from his cave, Micah has decided to share with the masses another one of his world class covers (spoiler alert, it’s sheryl crow). Hopefully this is a sign of things to come…

Hoodie Allen Goes Viral

Scott E. Shelton — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 02:39:00 +0000

I had a phone call with Hoodie Allen on thursday. The call went a little something like this…Me: “Hey dude…i think the video is blowing up. You got like 400 comments in 2 hours” Him “Yeah man…its stuck at 308 views because of youtube issues, but I feel like we might have gotten 10,000 plays or something crazy like that”. Turns out Hoodie was wrong. In his first 2 hours the video for his new single got 35,000 plays. It then went on to pull down 100,000 in the next 40 hours. To celebrate, RJF, his girlfriend Loris, and I enjoyed a lobster dinner on the beach in Westchester tonight, musing about the pending Leap Year release this Tuesday and reminiscing about working on Pep Rally a year ago. One things for sure, any semblance of a normal life will shortly be unattainable by these two.

The Knocks (Click to Listen)

Scott E. Shelton — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 03:22:11 +0000

It’s a rare occasion that I go to check out an act I’ve never heard of and leave knowing that they will be on repeat on my ipod for the foreseeable future. It’s a far more rare occasion for this to happen, and to realize that I have met the members of the band on multiple occasions before that night. Strangely enough, a couple of weekends ago when I was invited to a fantastic event thrown by the good people at brobible, this is exactly what happened.

I was pleasantly surprised at the level of musical integrity The Knocks had. They made electropop, but had they been born in a different time period, they could have written for orchestras. They make really full sounds, and are equally cognizant of catchy melody, full harmonies, and head bobbing rhythm grooves. For the life of me however I couldn’t figure out where I had heard of them before. It turns out that I was introduced to Ben “b-roc” Ruttner in 2008 when I was working for the famous firm. We were recording a verse for a new female rapper named Nikki Minaj, and b-roc owned a studio called heavy roc where we recorded her vocals. B-roc and I would cross paths again in 2010 when RJ and Hoodie recorded at heavy roc. Another reason why their name was so familiar to me was because they were just recently featured in a corona light ad.

Brandyn Burnette (click to listen)

Scott E. Shelton — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:00:06 +0000

This August, during one of his many studio sessions at Pilot creative in Brooklyn, Dave called to let me know he was working with a young artist named Brandyn Burnette that he thought had a ton of potential. He invited me to sit in on the session, and I was very impressed with what I saw. Brandyn, who hadn’t even turned 20 (his birthday is August 23^rd), looked right at home in the studio, and had a very smooth voice with great range, especially in the higher register. I later found out that in addition to his killer pipes, Brandyn had signed his first publishing deal with Sony/ATV at the age of 18. As mind-blowing as this was to me, I became even more impressed with him when I found out he had to walk away from his full acting scholarship at NYU to pursue his career in music. Apparently it was the right decision though, in addition to his publishing deal, Brandyn has recently been signed to Warner Brothers Records. Check out these tracks for a sneak peek at his debut album due this spring.

Open Up (Demo) by BrandynBurnette

***Update 6/12/11***
Check out Brandyn’s dope cover of Lil Wayne’s “How to love”

Dot

Scott E. Shelton — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 22:59:04 +0000

So a while ago I made a post about my homie Dot, and a mashup I made with his vocals. Since then hes hit me up with some really impressive video footage I think you guys should check out. The first is an old freestyle video from 2006, which caught me off-guard with its dopeness, and the second is the video for his recently released single “The World is Not Enough”. I don’t endorse independent rappers lightly, so take note!

Justin Baron

Scott E. Shelton — Wed, 19 Jan 2011 01:33:46 +0000

A couple months ago when I was filming RJF finishing up Hoodie Allen’s track “Dreams Up”, which was released today and has already breached the top 40 of the Hype Machine popular charts, I met 3 young musicians who I quickly became friends with. Their names are Nana, Dot, and Justin, and each of them has merited a mention on WTE for their awesome talent.

Justin, who was responsible for the keys in “Dreams Up” is a musician’s musician who plays an array of instruments, as well as singing, and is as comfortable playing re-inventive covers as he is originals. While he finishes up his highly anticipated EP, I thought I would share with you some awesome covers he has done:

The Specialist

Scott E. Shelton — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 17:39:42 +0000

About a month ago, while DJing an after-party for Dennis Leary and Jim Gaffigan in Boston, I was introduced to a young DJ from Baltimore named The Specialist. I informed him of a contest I wanted to run on WTE, where I would invite DJs to submit their own minimixes. The rules for the contest: the music had to be top 40, and the mix couldn’t be longer than 10 minutes. Without further adieu, I present to you our very first submission for the Waiting to Explode minimix contest, courtesy of Baltimore’s own The Specialist:
UPDATE:Contest cancelled due to soundcloud’s restrictions on copyrighted material.
Ceci n’est pas une pipe by the specialist

Maroon5 vs. Dot

Scott E. Shelton — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 05:59:12 +0000

A couple of weeks ago when I was in the studio shooting RJF with Nana and Justin, I was introduced to a rapper named Dot. Now, after working in hip-hop for years and years, I am always skeptical when I am introduced to independent rappers, but Dot was part of a crew of very legitimate young musicians (I met him in Dave Tozer’s studio after all) so I was curious to hear what he had to offer. Eventually he sent me a couple of his tracks, with the vocal tracks attached as well in case I wanted to do some mashups. When I heard the flow of one track in particular, something clicked in my head and I immediately started hearing a guitar riff from Maroon 5′s debut album. Most mashups are an arduous process of adjusting tempos and tweaking levels, but somehow, from concept to finished product, this track took me all of 15 minutes.

Listening to this track once is like eating one french fry, it’s just not going to happen.