The Catalyst
Ideas with a spark, energy, range and the ability to start things.
Jermaine Dupri is The Catalyst in its purest form, a leader who provokes rather than dictates. He reads the room before he reads the chart, channeling Usher's real emotional turmoil into 'Confessions' and turning a freeway drive past the Beverly Center into a fully formed verse. His test for a hit is involuntary, somebody in the room has to jump.
“I'm not even gonna argue with it. I might think it's a hit, I'm still not gonna argue with it, because that reaction is what — that's all I got, that's all I know.”
Explaining his hit-detection processundated
“I'm always mentally going into the studio already thinking like these niggas don't believe we could do it again. We gotta do it, we gotta find it — that's all that mattered to me.”
On competitive motivation in the studioundated
“I realized, Oh, I'm not — I'm trying to be like them, but I'm actually different. That's the first time it hit me.”
Reflecting at the Songwriters Hall of Fameundated
R&B Money: “Jermaine Dupri Part 2”
LISTEN AT THE SOURCE ↗THE RECORD IS CHECKABLE