Behind the Beats: Supa Dups
Supa Dups already has quite an extensive résumé, and now he can add "Producing for Eminem" to it. The Miami-based reggae producer has already racked up tracks for Sean Paul, Buju Banton, Estelle, Akon and Bruno Mars. More recently, Dups and his Black Chiney production partner Jason "JG" Gilbert stepped into rap's arena, crafting the beat for Eminem and Royce Da 5'9"'s "Fast Lane," the first leak off of the duo's upcoming Bad Meets Evil album.
"Me and my partner JG: He and I made the beat together. We just wanted to make a beat with just our mouths," Dups said, humming the melody to "Fast Lane."
Sampling their own vocals proved to be genius when Em chose the beat for Bad Meets Evil's Hell: The Sequel EP, which drops June 14 on Shady Records. "We didn't even have Eminem in mind [when we made the beat]," Dups explained. "We just had the track and submitted it off to 50 Cent, Nicki Minaj and a couple of others. But Eminem, when we heard he wanted it, we were like, 'Cool, we'll hold it. That's Eminem.'
"I didn't even know the project was coming out. I didn't know what the beat was for; I just knew Eminem asked me for the files and I sent it to them," he continued. "When I saw Eminem in L.A. for Grammy weekend, Eminem said, 'Yeah, he ripped the track.' Later on that day, I met Royce, and Royce was like, 'Yeah, download that track man. We ripped that track. That's the first single.' I was like, 'What?' But until then, I still wasn't sure."
Dups might not have been present for the recording of the track, but when he first heard it with the rest of the hip-hop heads, when it leaked onto the Internet in April, he was impressed. "I was like, 'Damn, this record is crazy,'" he recalled. "It's one of the craziest hip-hop records I've heard in a while lyrically — where they're just spittin'."
Supa Dups gave props to the pair: "I think both of them went hard," he said. "I'm just glad to be on the track."
