The Deadbolt Interview - One on One Party Rock with Redfoo and Sky Blu of LMFAO

One on One Party Rock with Redfoo and Sky Blu of LMFAO
by Troy Rogers

LMFAO Party Rock After remixing Fergie's "Clumsy," Kanye West's "Love Lockdown," Black Eyed Peas' "Boom Boom Pow" and Katy Perry's "Hot 'N' Cold," the LMFAO duo of Redfoo and Sky Blu have continued their ascent to the top of the club scene with their own self-produced and self-distributed LMFAO tracks, "I'm In Miami Bitch," "Lil' Hipster Girl" and "Yes". With their new single "La, La, La" from the upcoming third LMFAO album about to open up to the music masses on June 9, Foo and Sky have been two of the busiest mixers in the club scene, having recently been enlisted by Chris Cornell and Lady Ga Ga to name only a few seeking their Midas mixing touch.

Although the third LMFAO album, "Party Rock," is still off on the not-too-distant Spring horizon, the will.i.am Music Group and Interscope Records duo will be lighting up the clubs on tour with "La, La, La" in the meantime. Despite taking their music seriously, with the skillful ability to creatively take a good song to even greater club heights, Redfoo and Sky Blu are all about fun, dancing, sex, craziness, and a carefree attitude about life away from the studio.

When we caught up with the LMFAO twosome for an exclusive one-on-one chat about how they approach their own music while remixing other hot songs, Foo and Sky schooled us in the LMFAO way of life.

With a musical mindset of living life like there's no tomorrow, LMFAO gave us a boot camp in partying like it's 2009 in Miami, hookin' up at the clubs, the reverse psychology of pick up lines, their mixing and selection process, and how they feel about other people mixing their tracks.

THE DEADBOLT: Since you guys hadn't been to Miami before writing "I'm in Miami Trick," where did the idea for that track come from?

SKY BLU: Well, the idea for "Miami Trick" came from: It was back in '07 and we started to get into electro music really heavily. We were DJing in all of the clubs in Hollywood and so we decided to take a little trip. We heard about this thing called the WMC, the Winter Music Conference that's held down in Miami, and as DJs, and as many DJs do, they have mix-tapes and things like that. So we were both solo artists, Sky Blu and Redfoo, and we decided to make a mix-tape co-joining all of the songs we liked and some of the solo projects we were working on, and we kind of needed a song to sum it all up.

You know, we were going to Miami for the first time and we felt like, 'Man, what is this going to be like?' So the "Miami Bitch" song was kind of like a prediction in a way. We felt like we were going to drink all day and play all night and then, you know, somebody was going to call us up and go, 'Hey, do you want to go to the local bowling ally out here in Los Angeles with all your friends?' And you know you hit 'em with a, 'Sorry, man. I'm in Miami ... Bitch! I can't make it.' So we made that song and put it on the mix-tape. The mixed tape was called, "I'm in Miami, Bitch". We went out there and we actually put our phone number on the CDs so any sexy ladies that had some feedback and wanted to come back and do the wild-shack, could do so.

THE DEADBOLT: So how did you guys initially hook up with will.i.am?

SKY BLU: Well, we actually went to school with will. So we know him from the old school, back in the deezay, literally. Actually Redfoo was the only guest rapper on the Black Eyed Peas first ever album, on a song called "Duet". We started our Miami thing and started to get some buzz on the radio and stuff. We were signing a deal out in London with Island, and we were just about to ink the deal, and will calls up and says, 'Hey, you need to meet Jimmy Iovine and I want you guys to sign with me and my label.' And we're like, 'Oh, well, you know we're close to doing this deal.' And he's like, 'Nope! You got to come and meet Jimmy.' So we went to Jimmy's house and we had a long talk and stuff, and it's history from there.

THE DEADBOLT: So how do the songs come together? Who writes and who mixes? What's the process?

SKY BLU: It's a collaborative effort. We both have experiences we both pull from, because usually every single day we're together. We go to the club, we holler at the chicks, you know, we feed off of each other's energy, like, 'Oh, that pick-up line didn't work? Okay. I'm not using that.' I'll tell you how "I'm Not a Whore" came about. We were going to the clubs and we were doing our best to talk to the ladies, you know, doing our best to take them back in the bathroom and do a little winky-stink. And the girls would come up be like, 'Hey, I love your hair. I love your glasses.’ We would just say thank you and that's the end of it. You know, thanks, she walks away and another guy says, 'Hey, get over here.' Boom, he takes her home.

So we didn't like that a lot and Redfoo said, 'Man, I'm tired of this and we gotta change it.' So one day a girl came up to him and said, 'Hey, I love your glasses.' He says, 'Don't. Don't do that. Just because you're flattering me with compliments does not mean I'm going to sleep with you. You can take me home tonight and I'm not going to do the nasty to you because, you know what? I am not a salami steak.' And from that we got "I'm Not a Whore." He just broke it down to them, "I am Not a Whore".

REDFOO: I went home and slept with that woman that night.

SKY BLU: He went home and beat it down. We found out that works, so we made it a song. And man, every time we sing that song we get girls coming back, 'You're a whore,' and they start grabbing on the precious packages. And like the songs always do - it has a purpose, it has a meaning, and it has its own world to it. You know what I mean? Like, "I'm in Miami" is just a traveling song, because everybody that goes out there from out of town sings that song in a choice manner because they're so happy to be in Miami drinking all day, playing all night. Playing naked Twister, working it on the mat, you know?

THE DEADBOLT: What goes into selecting the songs you want to remix? What made you pick Kanye's "Love Lockdown"?

SKY BLU: We select the song we're going to remix, but I think they select us. I mean, now we get a lot of calls from people to do remixes for them but that song was calling us. We were driving back from Vegas and we were listening to an electro CD, dancing and sweating in the car, doin' the stanky leg. Then we turned off the CD and we're listening to Power 106 and they're playing "Love Lockdow", and we said, 'Wow, this is a great song. It has a great melody and stuff, but we just can't dance ...' Our groove, our steps weren't [working]. We weren’t sweating no more, we were just sitting. So we said, 'Man, this is not going to get it popping in the club.' We come with a DJ's perspective, you know what I mean? So we were like, 'Man, this would be great if we could remix this song and put it in the club, because everybody wants to play it. All of the DJs want to play it, but they can't because people on the dance floor can't bang to it. So Redfoo said, 'Man, I think we're gonna have to tackle this one,' and we stayed up. What's that philosophy from Napster that you took? Remember, you told me?

REDFOO: Well, we felt like Kanye is a big mega-artist and we felt like a lot of people have the same idea. A lot of people have the same idea as us and we felt like there would be a lot of remixes coming. You know, there were already a couple out there but we felt there hadn't been the right remix yet. I mean, I felt like my heart was beating like I was a little high and excited for the future. I felt like we saw the future, like, 'Yo, we could put this in the clubs before anybody and this will be the main one for the clubs.' So we stayed up two days straight and we were like scientists and we downloaded Auto-Tune. We never used Auto-Tune on a record before and we downloaded the demo version - a free trial period for like ten days or something - and we just figured it out. We wrote our verses, we made the beats, made sure it had that Party Rock sound, put it right back out there, and it just hit the blogs. Within four or five hours it was across the country and it was all over the world, actually. It was in London in like four hours.

But it was this: The guy who created Napster wrote this article on how he spent two days straight just creating Napster because he felt like someone else was going to create it before him. So that was kind of the same feeling we had.

THE DEADBOLT: So how does it feel to have other artists remixing your songs now?

REDFOO: This is a very great question because it's a timely question. There are a thousand "I'm in Miami" remixes and sometimes the DJs put them up on sites and they sell the edits for three or four dollars. That's fine, we have no problem with that, it's part of the culture. There are custom intros and edits and electro versions. But actually, an interesting thing is that we planned not to give the acappella out for the first year and a half. So we didn't drop the song and the acappella because we didn't want it to be remixed. We didn't want somebody to take the acappella and put their sound on it because we figured out we had a sound, we wanted to build our sound, and we wanted to keep this song in its original state. So you didn't hear a lot of remixes in the beginning. You know, Interscope wanted us to drop the acappella so we did that upon their request.

We didn't drop the instrumental either, because we didn't want other rappers jumping on the beat. You know, like a Lil Wayne might jump on it. Once we dropped the acappella, sure enough, Jermaine Dupri did a version and all of that stuff. But we felt the song was well branded and it was attached to us, so it was all good. But had we put out the song and a week later some famous rapper jumped on the remix and all of that stuff, and people heard the remix for the first time, then that would've been quite upsetting. So we felt like we strategized it pretty well.

Now that being said, ever since this last WMC there's been a lot of European people - There's this one group called Stereo Palma from Hungary and there's another group, I think, from Canada who have straight out stole the song and re-sung the song and are selling it on Beatport. We feel like they're simply just trying to cash in. Actually, one of these groups, I don't know the other name of it, they're actually trying to ...

They're called The Kleptos, that's funny. I think one of these bands is trying to sue us and saying that their song is the original to try and convince the world that it's theirs. That's craziness! So, that, we definitely put our middle finger to and we don't enjoy someone trying to capitalize on our sound. Although in the long run it still helps us become more popular.

-- Troy Rogers