Check The Credits: Jermaine Dupri

“Where Da Party At?” – Jagged Edge feat. Nelly

“It was an attempt to follow up the remix to “Let’s Get Married” with Rev. Run. That remix created so much momentum for Jagged Edge on pop radio, on commercial radio, on mix-shows period. For such a time they had only been a ballad group and the remix to “Let’s Get Married” took them to another place and they kind of wanted to stay in that world. They came wanting to make something uptempo. I wasn’t really sure what we were gonna do, but I knew we’d figure it out. They already had a song called “Where Da Party At?” It was the same song on another beat. It was almost like I was remixing their song, so I just went in and made a whole new track. Once they started singing to it I knew it was it. It sounded like something new. We just had to figure out who to put on the record. At that particular time they wanted someone that was gonna make them as commercial as possible. Nelly just happened to be one of my best friends and they wanted Nelly on there. It was like a couple of weeks before we got Nelly on the song. Then we sent the song to Columbia and Donny Inner heard the song and he loved it, but he felt the record wasn’t finished. He felt it needed another part after Nelly’s verse. I wasn’t sure what was missing, but the song was called “Where Da Party At?” so I tried to find something that goes with a party. The “Do the east side run this motherfucker” part is straight party stuff, so we just started throwing chants that happens in parties. That took that song to the next place for him. That was like the first time I had taken a record and went back after someone told me it wasn’t finished, so it was a cool experience to have to go through that. But that song actually took a little longer, because I didn’t actually write the lyrics. That was more Jagged Edge. It was more like a remix to a song they already had written.”