While speaking exclusively with XXLMag.com, the production duo known as Play-N-Skillz (Juan “Play” Salinas and Oscar “Skillz” Salinas) revealed the stories behind five of their beats. Among the five records the pair broke down was Chamillionaire’s 2006 single, “Ridin’”.
According to Play, despite the success of “Ridin’”, he says it was a record that almost didn’t make it onto Chamillionaire’s The Sound Of Revenge album. The Texas-based beatsmith recalled Chamillionaire not being “as much of a fan of it as we were,” but says their manager helped in placing the record on the album.
“It was our first big world hit,” Play said. “We collaborated on that with Chamillionaire. That’s actually a very interesting story because that was the last song on the album. The song almost didn’t make the album. Our manager at the time, Charles Chavez, kind of forced the song to go on there, because truth be told, Chamillionaire didn’t really want the song on the album. He wasn’t as much of a fan of it as we were. When we made the record, the record was pretty much already done prior to Chamillionaire even getting on it. Krayzie Bone was already on it. Krayzie Bone did the verse for Play-N-Skillz because we’ve known Krayzie and Bone Thugs. They’re our big brothers. We’ve been making music prior to that. We asked Krayzie Bone to do a verse for Chamillionaire—who he didn’t even know or know of—because we told him we thought this would be something huge.”
Play also spoke on David Guetta’s “Where Them Girls At,” which also features rappers Nicki Minaj and Flo Rida. He says they helped in writing the song and also assisted the production team with arrangements.
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The producer then recalled the record serving as their first time jumping into other genres of music.
“This is a song where we didn’t really get the producer credit on it, but we wrote the song for David Guetta,” Play said. “You know, writing is an art of production as well. We wrote the song ‘Where Them Girls At’ featuring Flo Rida and Nicki Minaj. And why that song is in the top five is because that was the first time we stepped into other genres of music and entered this world of exploration of trying to conquer that side of things. We actually got to go into the studio with David Guetta, who’s legendary. This guy makes like the biggest records in the world. We worked with him on the arrangement of the song. He and his production team actually did it, but we worked with him on the arrangement.
“We ended up writing the hook for the song, which ended up being a huge massive worldwide hit for Flo Rida,” he added. “Why I think this was important is because a lot of people don’t know that that was the first time Nicki Minaj did a dance record.”
In addition to David Guetta and Chamillionaire, Play-N-Skillz have also worked with Bun B, Lil Wayne, Ludacris, Nelly, and a number of other artists.
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