To the average Hip-Hop fan, the names Sean C and LV may be foreign but their work is not. Responsible for the production behind classic records like Can’t Knock the Hustle (Jay- Z) and 100% (Big Pun), it’s a shock that it’s taken almost sixteen years between them to gain the notoriety they now enjoy. But as newly minted members of Diddy’s Hitmen production team and having produced six of the fifteen tracks on Jay-Z’s recent release, American Gangster, via their company Grind Music, they are quickly finding themselves in high demand.

Only days after the release of American Gangster, I was able to catch up with Sean C and LV in Miami between mixing records for Fat Joe’s upcoming album The Elephant in the Room (featuring the Sean C and LV produced lead single I Won’t Tell featuring J. Holiday). The two Harlem natives who combine to create Grind Music took the time to discuss American Gangster, working with Jay-Z, Diddy’s influence and their unique production style.

Scheme: Many people are acting as if the both of you are new on the scene, but in actuality Sean C, you produced Can’t Knock the Hustle on Jay-Z’s first album Reasonable Doubt. Having been there then and now, how has Jay-Z developed and grown as an artist over the years?

Sean C: I mean, if you look at his body of work it varies a whole lot. From Reasonable Doubt to the Dynasty [Roc La Familia] album to Kingdom Come to now, he’s tried a lot of different things and he’s done a lot over the course of his career and evolved a lot. Now, he’s gone full circle with American Gangster which is real similar to a Reasonable Doubt kind of feel.

Scheme: How did the both of you end up linking up?

LV: We grew up about two or three blocks away from each other in Harlem and Sean C was best friends with Fatman Scoop, whose brother Kendall was my best friend, so we connected that way.

Scheme: Out of the records you placed on American Gangster, which mean the most to you?

Sean C: To me they all hold a different place; I don’t think either one of them to me hold any more special of a place than another. They all have a unique place. Some of them were beats that were done [before we started working on American Gangster], for the most part they were beats that we had…

LV: Only like two or three of them…

Sean C: Yeah then the rest of them were joints that we just did for the project. So they all hold a special place in their own way.

LV: I think my special one would have to be American Dreamin’, because the song just evolves like throughout the whole song. It just gets bigger and bigger, pause. We didn’t just take a sample and put drums over it. We made the sample talk and just did some different shit. I felt like we took that sample and just made something else. I can’t really explain it in words. And that was one of the last joints [Jay-Z] did for the record. He did different verses for that at first and then he went back to it, cause people were like “you wildin’, cause that beat is crazy”, because he had a song he wanted to do that he had in his mind so he put that song to the beat. But then he was like “I love the rhymes and I love the beat but I don’t feel like they go together”, so for a second he put that song to the side but then at the last minute he went back and did new rhymes and made a whole new song cause he loved the beat and he was playing it for people and people were like “that shit’s crazy.” So he ended up going back and doing a whole new joint.

Scheme: Was that the last record he did for American Gangster?

Sean C: It was one of the last, I think the last record was the Lil’ Wayne record. [American Dreamin’] was done right before [Hello Brooklyn].

Scheme: Very rarely do artists take the time during their ascent to pay attention to defining moments in their career, but for a moment try to describe what being a part of American Gangster means for the both of you as individuals and as producers.

LV: I can’t really explain it. To be honest, it means everything. This is the time like…you know when you’re sitting back and you’re like ‘I’m good, I’m good’, you only wish to get on some crazy sh*t. And Jay-Z is like the best rapper, so imagine you’re sitting there like ‘yo, I’m working with the best f*cking rapper!’ That’s like one of the biggest sh*ts in my career right now. So this is everything, it’s showtime.

Sean C: It’s monumental. Just for the fact that we were able to be a part of a record that is this big and I don’t think anybody has done the amount of songs that we have done on a Jay-Z record. I could be wrong, maybe Ski has done as many records, but to have six records on a Jay-Z album period is a monumental thing to be able to say and at this stage in his career it’s really really big, pause. It still hasn’t really sunken in. Doing Can’t Knock the Hustle is one thing, but Jay- Z is “Jay-Z” now, so having six…having one, is like ‘yeah I have a joint on Jay’s album’ and that’s a big deal, but to be like ‘we did six’ is like saying ‘we did the album really.’ So that’s just still sinking in, pause.

“…we didn’t know what the Pharrell joint sounded like, or what the Jermaine Dupri joint sounded like or what anyone’s joints sounded like so we were kind of just moving…and I know I wasn’t thinking ‘yo, we gotta bring it cause Pharrell got a joint’, we were just like ‘let’s make the record as hot as we can make it’ and they did what they did.”

Scheme: Your production company Grind Music has been bubbling for a minute, I first noticed you guys after hearing Aasim who is signed through Grind Music to Bad Boy. Explain the Grind Music, Hitmen, Diddy connection.

LV: Since Aasim is signed to Bad Boy and from us being up their working with him and being in the studio, that’s how we developed the relationship with Puff. So that’s how he ended up feeling our vibe. Because we came in there just real happy to be there and Puff liked the vibe and we just work real well together.

Sean C: Aasim being signed to us and doing the whole Grind Music thing like LV said, it created the relationship and then when Puff was doing his album last year we were out in Miami and we were in the studio, and we had worked with Puff but never as close as when his album had started so that’s when everybody really started connecting cause that’s when people were in the studio just vibing and he liked it. So we went back to the crib and he called niggas on the phone like ‘yo, that’s the most fun I had in the studio in years!’ So I think he just dug the vibe and we all just worked well together, so I think that’s what made this relationship go to the next level, just production wise and on his album, then it filtered over to the Jay-Z record.

Scheme: Your production on American Gangster, more so than the rest, seemed to channel the vibe and mood of 1970’s Harlem. Explain your approach to creating such a soulful sound?

Sean C: A lot of it was just the planets lining up, because some of the music we already had, cause that was already our zone. We were already doing that kind of stuff, so when that came to play, sh*t wasn’t even like ‘we gotta do something like American Gangster the movie’, we were just like ‘aight nigga, let’s go do some beats!’ It’s already what we do. Four of the songs -Party Life, American Dreamin’, No Hook and Sweet – those are beats that were already done, so it just fit…we were like ‘yeah, take this.’ Then when we got in the zone, we went to see the movie and kind of threw some stuff in, we did Roc Boys right after that and then we did Pray, so those were the only two songs that were done after seeing the movie…

LV: Those beats were there, but after working on the project, Sean C, Puff and I actually took the beats to a whole new level. After seeing the movie, we just made all the beats like a movie…

Sean C: Like a little bit more cinematic…

LV: That’s what Puff brought to the game too, like he would come in and say the songs gotta be bigger.

Sean C: The other thing too is that we hadn’t seen the movie and Jay of course had seen the movie, so we were like ‘yo, these rhymes are crazy’ but then when we saw the movie we were like ‘oh, ok, that’s where this comes from, that’s where that comes from.’ So then after that we started adding on like LV said, to make it more movie like.

Scheme: In addition to the Lil’ Wayne collaboration on Hello Brooklyn, the biggest feature on the entire album was the Beyonce assisted Pray, a record that Diddy has claimed will define Jay-Z’s tenure in Hip-Hop. Explain the process which produced that record.

LV: That record, like all the other records on the album just happened organically. Like for that record, Beyonce just got in the booth and did something trying to make the song work. It wasn’t like, ‘let’s get Beyonce on this.’ Like with Roc Boys, we weren’t like ‘let’s get Kanye on this.’ Kanye just came in and was like ‘oh sh*t’ and went in and made it work…

Sean C: Yeah, everybody was around. Every time we’d go over to Roc Da Mic [Jay-Z’s studio] Beyonce would be there with Jay. So she’s on Roc Boys too. Like Roc Boys has the all star ad lib track. Cassie was on there, Puff did some backgrounds, Kanye did some backgrounds, Beyonce’s on there doing some backgrounds. It wasn’t like, ‘oh, it’s a feature’, everybody was just there and they contributed to what was needed at the time. Even Puff did a reference of Pray to show what it would be and Jay had Beyonce go in and do it over. [Puff] wasn’t saying ‘here, do this’, he was just contributing to help make the record sound right.

“Our main thing is to always make it music. It’s not gonna be some real simple sh*t unless that’s what’s called for. It’s gonna give you that feeling like when you hear something and you get that feeling in your stomach when you hear something that’s crazy, that’s what we try to do every time around.”

Scheme: Did you at any time feel intimidated knowing that the likes of Jermaine Dupri and Pharrell Williams were also submitting music?

LV: There wasn’t no intimidation. It’s just great to be working with other people and your sh*t sounds like the JD joint or the Pharrell joint or the Just Blaze joint or the No I.D. sh*t, like it was crazy…

Sean C: We were doing so many songs as well that we set the tone for the record, we were already in our own…like we were in Daddy’s House…and we were in our own world. So we didn’t know what the Pharrell joint sounded like, or what the Jermaine Dupri joint sounded like or what anyone’s joints sounded like so we were kind of just moving…and I know I wasn’t thinking ‘yo, we gotta bring it cause Pharrell got a joint’, we were just like ‘let’s make the record as hot as we can make it’ and they did what they did. Then we came to the studio and they played that No I.D. joint and we were like ‘this sh*t is stupid.’ I ain’t even gonna front, that No I.D. joint, that Success joint, is stupid! So we were like, ‘ok, ok, we know what it is.’

LV: Honestly it felt good, to hear like the No I.D. joint, cause niggas were bringing it. You want to be a part of hot shit. Success is one of my favorite records on that album. I wish we did that shit!

Sean C: You wanted everybody’s shit to be hot. You want the album to be hot, so you want everybody to bring it. So we can say we all made a hot project.

Scheme: How many records did you guys make in the process of trying to make the album?

Sean C: We got six on there, but we did seven cause there’s one [Jay-Z] did the first day he came and we played all the beats. Puff called him and said “come to the studio, I’ve never asked you to come to the studio”, and he was there in like 15 minutes. He got there and we played him like 30 joints and the final one we played, he was like ‘turn the mic on’ and he went in the booth and laid a reference cause he was just warming up, he did like a verse and then kind of like a hook and that kind of set the tone but that’s the only joint that’s not on the record. But besides that, the six that we did are the six that are on the album.

Scheme: Any chance that last record might get finished and put out?

LV: We hope so. We hope it gets done. I think it will, I don’t see why not.

Scheme: Besides American Gangster and working with Diddy, what projects do you have coming up in 2008?

LV: We did six on Ghostface’s new album [The Big Doe Rehab]…

Sean C: We got three on Fat Joe’s new album [The Elephant in the Room] including the single with J. Holiday and we’re real anxious about working with Nas right now, we did one joint with him so far so we’re in there with him right now.

LV: Cassie…

Sean C: Yeah we got a joint on Cassie…

LV: And they’re all different types of records, they’re all in each artist’s zone. Like American Gangster isn’t going to sound like anything else, it’s gonna sound like American Gangster. Ghostface is gonna sound like Ghostface. Nas is gonna sound like Nas…

Sean C: Ghostface is gonna sound like what Ghost should be doing, not what American Gangster sounded like. It’s still our sound, but it’s gonna be for Ghostface. And Aasim will be out next year definitely, in 2008.

Scheme: Noting that you’ve worked with artists like Jay-Z, Cassie, Ghostface and Nas, all of whom are different. Describe your production style.

Sean C: Our main thing is to always make it music. It’s not gonna be some real simple sh*t unless that’s what’s called for. It’s gonna give you that feeling like when you hear something and you get that feeling in your stomach when you hear something that’s crazy, that’s what we try to do every time around. And since it’s two of us, we can balance each other out as far as the sound goes. Like when you hear the Cassie record, you’re gonna be like, ‘the same dudes who did the American Ganster record did this?’ Yeah! The common denominator is that it stays music and it stays warm.

Scheme: If people would like to learn more about Sean C, LV and Grind Music where should they go?

Sean C: myspace.com/grindmusicinc

LV: We should give free tours to come to the studio. Free tours, like when you go to a museum and do a museum tour. Do a Grind Music studio tour if you really want to know.

Scheme: Any parting words?

LV: It’s not a coincidence that we’re here. We’re very humble and appreciative, but it’s not a coincidence. If you’re good and you want to do something, you do it and it’s gonna happen.

Sean C: And for artists coming up and producers too, don’t think you have to conform to do what everybody else is doing cause your time’ll come and when your time comes you’re gonna stand out against everyone else. So just do what you do. If it’s hot music, it’ll have it’s time. And when it has it’s time it’ll have it in a big way and I think we’re proof of that.