Massive Amounts of Quality (M.A.Q.) and Irvin Mayfield have teamed up on a trio of songs merging New Orleans funk royalty with the city’s underground hip-hop scene.
Cyril Neville and M.A.Q.
Cyril Neville has collaborated with three of New Orleans’ most gifted lyrcists: Nesby Phips, Paasky and Gene Stanza. The songs are a result of M.A.Q.’s desire to showcase the value of underground rap music, a genre not often associated with New Orleans’ venerated music history.
Mayfield produced each of the three songs (known as “The Neville Collection”), which feature Neville’s vocals. “Mayfield used Cyril’s vocals like a sample,” M.A.Q. tells OffBeat.com.
The first is the Nesby Phips-assisted “Facts.” M.A.Q. approached Nesby (who will perform at the Best of the Beat Awards on January 31) about laying down the track. “I walked in with no expectations and was blown away,” Nesby tells us. “I always think it’s important to keep crossing the bridge between generations of music, especially for New Orleans artists. We are a derivative of them. Us not working together is like not eating by ya people on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Cyril’s vocals set the tone from a spiritual space for me. Though I’m a young man, if ya cut me open it’ll sound something like Cyril’s voice.”
Best of the Beat Award nominee Paasky lends his rhymes to “Keep Playing With Me,” a song he says was tailor-made for him. “The song was made with the intention of getting me and Cyril on it. When I got the track Cyril’s vocals were already on it so that just made the recording process straight to the point. Being that I’m currently working on my own solo project, I already had skeleton verses in my head due to all the writing I’ve been doing. So all it took was a few things to make the verses fit where they needed.”
He says the collaboration is emblematic of hip-hop’s rightful place in New Orleans music history. “With the influence New Orleans hip-hop and culture has on the mainstream, in the past decade or so hip-hop was still never embedded as a force within the city. Now, with major outlets like M.A.Q., OffBeat, etc, and established artists like Cyril and Irvin willing to not only align themselves with us, but also are willing to listen to our ideas, shows that hip-hop lives in New Orleans now more than ever.”
For Gene Stanza, who appears on the Best of the Beat Award-nominated album Supreme Beings, the opportunity to work with Neville on “Told You Once” was a no brainer. “It’s a big deal because The Neville Brothers did a lot for music in general. My pops played the trumpet and a couple other instruments, so a ni**a used to have The Neville Brothers and The Meters runnin’ with the rest of oldies. He still don’t know, but he gone go crazy when I tell him…”
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