Check The Credits: Jermaine Dupri

“Just Kickin’ It” – Xscape

“When I wrote the song Kandi didn’t really understand the format of the record, because I wrote the song from a man’s perspective. The lyrics say “every man wants a woman.” Women don’t talk from a man’s perspective. Most women don’t say stuff like “every man wants this.” It was written from a man’s perspective and said by a woman, so at first the girls didn’t really catch it. They didn’t really get it. Then getting Kandi to sing at a lower register was her trying to mimic me, because I was doing that demo in a lower register. I kind of wanted her to sound like me in some kind of way, but at the same time sound better than me. I wanted the record to be as cool as possible. It was kind of an experiment, because it was the first record I made with Xscape where I was actually giving them something to do. At the same time, I wanted to incorporate Hip Hop and singing at the same time, so that’s where I came up with the “kick off your shoes and relax your feet” part. And adding their name in the record is something I learned from the Kriss Kross record. The best promotion is if the record is gonna be played a bunch of times put the artist’s name in the record and everybody around the world is gonna know what the group’s name is instantly. Little things like that I learned from the Kriss Kross record and I put into their record. It went on to be the first number-one record of my label.”