The Bass Brothers have their names in the history books as key figures in Detroit’s hip hop recording scene of the 1990s. Their work became known far beyond Detroit when Eminem, with whom they had worked on his early projects, found international success.
Jake Bass continues the family tradition, following in the footsteps of his father and uncle. He even produced D12’s recent comeback album, blending the experience of two generations working on the band’s sound.
In his recent interview, Jake talked about his current projects and a little bit about family history, much of it intertwined with the Detroit hip hop scene and Eminem’s legacy. Listing his favourite Eminem songs, Jake paid more attention to deeper cuts than to his commercial hits. And one song especially stood out:
A fucking killer track for me from back then. Kim. The record was done in 30 minutes, too, by the way. That’s the OG bullshit record.
Marshall did his vocals in one take. My dad did his shit in one take. My uncle actually played live drums on that one. A lot of people think it’s a fucking sample. It’s not. It’s real. It is not Led Zeppelin. It’s a real fucking drum kit.
I even had Apple Music change that shit ’cause they said they sampled Led Zeppelin. They did not. It just pissed me off because I know the truth. Just because they put a microphone in the hallway doesn’t mean they stole the drums from John Bonham. My uncle played those drums. That’s what a hallway sounds like. It’s fucking badass.
His uncle most probably still has tapes to prove it. The Bass Brothers have quite a collection, and some of it could still be put to use. Jake did that in 2016, for the anniversary of Eminem’s debut album, Infinite, produced by the Bass Brothers.
That was the 20th anniversary. We knew it was a big milestone, and that record had never been on streaming services because the original album has a lot of samples. We wanted to do something special for the fans. I had come up with this idea of playing everything original but making it sound like it was from 1996, with my piano and whatnot. I came up with the track, getting it as close to the original as possible but original, you know, playing and everything. I presented it to my dad, and he was like, “Holy fuck, this could be it”. And then I played it for my uncle and everybody else, and they were like, “Holy shit, this is going to be the F.B.T. remix that we do”. And I was like, “What?” Like, I was just kind of fucking around because I wanted to hear what it could be. So, when I did that, they were like, “Okay, get the master tapes and get his vocals and put it on your track and see if it fits”. And I was like, “Well, fuck yeah”. We actually got the tape that was recorded at that time, 20 years ago. It was actually a delicate thing to handle that tape ’cause you can only touch it so many times. Then the process of converting it digitally… You could fuck the whole thing up very easily. Nick King, the son of the late great Steve King, who mixed all of Em’s records with my dad, was able to transfer all that safely. And I got the original 24-track of that song so I could get his vocals off of there. And I put it on my track and was like, “Holy shit, this sounds old but fresh”. It works. It was the same recipe, the same formula that every other Marshall record was done at our studios. It was really special because after I put his vocals on there, I grabbed some old guitar parts of my dad’s that were just sitting around. I put them in there to make it sound like an old horn or something like that, to make it organic. Then I had my uncle mix it here, actually. So it was a true F.B.T. production 20 years later. It just came out right; it felt so good.
Then we decided to do a small documentary about that era. I got to go through all my home footage that I had sitting in boxes for decades. And I was like, “Holy shit, I’ve got some good ass footage of when the studio was being built and all this shit”. We had old footage of them and Marshall in the studio. I put all of that together as well to go along with the release. And we were able to put together a whole 10-minute package. The 20th anniversary was around the corner and, boom, let’s put this shit out. And we did.
Obviously, fans ate it up. Back then, people were still downloading songs on iTunes. Not that they do it anymore, but back then that was kind of the tail end. We sold almost 30,000 downloads in the first week, which is insane for one song. That’s just not normal. As a producer, I had never gotten that kind of love before on one particular song. Obviously, it was such a landmark song for Marshall because it was the first record. The whole thing had to be done right. I was honoured to be part of that and really glad that it worked.
The Funky Bass Team now includes two generations of the Bass family and one long history with Eminem – one generation recorded his early work, the new one brought it back to life decades later and now shares the behind-the-scenes studio stories only those closest to it would know.