Jermaine Dupri on the art of making a hit | On the Spot

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume. For music mogul Jermaine Dupri, who you might know as the producer behind hits like Mariah Carey's We Belong Together and Ushers, Nice and Slow, The magic of producing music is that you always start with nothing but the seed of an idea, and yet you're able to build a song that people can feel and connect with. Jermaine took to the TED stage for a rapid-fire Q &A-style talk to share his creative process and why the city that shaped him, Atlanta, Georgia, in the U.S., matters so much to his work.

0:54Jermaine Dupri: Who here is not from Atlanta? Okay, welcome to Atlanta. Let's get started. What do I love most about producing? It's almost like having a baby for me. Like, you go in the studio and it's not an idea that, you know, most people will be looking around the studio trying to figure out what we're going to do. And then we get an idea and we start making that idea come to life. and depending on how long it takes, you know, sometimes it takes five minutes, sometimes it takes two days to get this, but it's still, it's like making a baby. And, well, it's not like making a baby, but, you know, you know what I'm saying.

1:36Yeah, so, but yeah, that's what it feels like, though.

1:41Jermaine Dupri: It's like, that's how I feel when I make music. I watch it go from, you know, nothing to something and then I give it to you guys and then y 'all have to digest it. So it's a trying process, but that's the one thing that I love about watching it grow from the bottom up. So that's my first little question. How has Atlanta played a role in my success? Well, I'm from College Park. Who's from Atlanta here? All right, for anybody that's not from Atlanta, that's the South Side. That's where I come from. And I feel like Atlanta, when I first started making music with Criss Cross, and even earlier in 91, 92, the whole city was building at this time.

2:29Jermaine Dupri: The music scene prior to me was here. We had like SOS Band, Brick, Peebo Bryson. Y 'all know who I'm talking about? Okay, make sure. Okay. So we had a cool music scene here, but it still was, you know, in the birth. And I just feel like my success came with the growth of this city. That's why I feel like I'm the mayor. I am the mayor, but yeah. But yeah, you know, I feel like people watch me grow, and they watch the city grow, and they came to the city. and that's why I created Welcome to Atlanta because I felt like I saw people taking other cities more serious than this city. They used to have this shirt and they used to have hats and all of this.

3:18Jermaine Dupri: They would have Detroit, L.A., Tokyo, and London. Y 'all remember these shirts? Oh, y 'all don't? Okay, maybe I'm older than all of y 'all. Damn. Okay, well, anyway, they had these shirts that they used to sell at the airport. And they used to say this. And I used to go through the airport and I'd see these shirts all the time. I'm like, damn, why they don't have, like, why they don't put Atlanta on these shirts? And it felt like, it just felt like the city wasn't doing what it needed to do. So I just kept pushing, working, trying to create artists and create music and bring more and more people to the city and show how beautiful this city is.

3:57Jermaine Dupri: And so I'm happy to see everybody here today, because this is what I wanted. I wanted this. So that's that. What's my formula for making songs? Anybody in here that want to make music? Oh, over here on the left side. Somebody is screaming. Okay, so my idea of making music is that once you get a hit, you have to follow whatever it was that you did to get to that hit. So, like, the first time that I did jump, I don't know how I made it, but I made it, and you guys liked it. And then I started tracing back what I did to get to that song, and I realized that, you know, you can't... I couldn't really just, like, do exactly what I did to get to that song.

4:51Jermaine Dupri: But I had to find the little different things that the crowd liked or the people liked or what was really, really interesting about the song. So say, for instance, like, with Jump, the hook over and over again, Mac Daddy will make you... See what I'm saying? See, yeah. So what I had to figure out is, how do I make other songs that have that same lasting impression on people? and you have to, it's almost like baking a cake. I know I keep saying babies and baking cakes, but anyway. Yeah, it's like, this is really like baking a cake because when you bake a cake, every time you bake the cake, you do basically the same things.

5:40Jermaine Dupri: Whether you put different icing on the cake, whether it's a lemon cake or it's a red velvet cake, whatever it is, you go into baking that cake the same. And for me, when I go in the studio, Without me telling the people that I'm in the studio with, I basically do some of the same things over and over again. I'm going to give you an example. I have a little song that came out last year called Made For Me that was by Money Long. Y 'all know that song? Okay. Yeah, it won a Grammy or something like that. But, yeah. And in making the song, she called me one day and she was like, Jermaine, I think that we made the song prior in the studio, and she was like, Jermaine, I think the beat needs to have a little bit more bounce to it.

6:28Jermaine Dupri: Now, my initial making of the beat, I didn't put this bounce that she's talking about in the record just because I don't try to make all my records sound the same. But I was watching TikTok when she sent the message to me, and I saw that they did a mashup of Mariah Carey and this group, this artist named Yeet, and they put Yeet over top of We Belong Together. And these kids was dancing to the beat, and I'm like, oh, okay. Those people always try to make me seem like I'm old, but they got these young kids dancing to my beat. So I'm like, okay, so they like the beat, they love the beat. So then I started thinking about why everybody loves the Mariah Carey record beat and what I did to the beat and what the hi-hats was doing in that beat.

7:15Jermaine Dupri: I said, OK, I'm going to take that same thing and I'm going to put it in May for me. And sure enough, it became a number one record. It sounds easy. It's not easy, but it's just like making a cake. Like I said, it's just something that you have to put in there. And if you see it happen one time, it can happen again. You just have to know how to grab it and catch it. I'm pretty good at that. All right. How do I know what's cool? I'm going to say I don't. I'm going to say that. I don't know what's cool. I just try things. So if you go back to like Criss Cross, and I had one day, one of the Chris's came to my house, and he had a jumper on, a boat jumper, and the jumper was bigger than me, right?

8:09Jermaine Dupri: And you could basically turn yourself around inside the jumper. And I said, you should put it on backwards. And, you know, he looked at me like, what's wrong with you? And the other Chris looked at me like, yeah, what's wrong with you? And I was like, just do it. Why don't you do it? why not, right? And this was before Jump came out, and I was like, you just put it on backwards. And, you know, I don't know why he did it, but he did it. And I said, let's go to the mall. And we went to Lenny Square, and when we walked through Lenny Square, I kid you not, the whole mall seemed like they saw something that they'd never seen before.

8:52Jermaine Dupri: And I was amazed, because I'm like, this ain't nothing, but he just put his jumper on backwards. But what I learned in that process was that it was the coolest thing that they had ever seen in their life. So to answer your question, I don't know, but I'll try something that I don't believe somebody else is doing, and it normally turns out to be the coolest thing. You know? All right.

9:22Jermaine Dupri: Thank you. What song do I want y 'all to remember me for? Oh, what song? Let me think about this. I could say I ain't made it yet, but I'm going to say we belong together because it was the song of the decade. And it's like when you go in the studio and make music, that's one of the things you do not forecast. I'm going to make a song that's going to become song of the decade. That sounds crazy, right? So I would say we've been one together, all right?

10:01Jermaine Dupri: Here's my lightning round. Hip-hop or R &B? A fun fact is that I'm a real hip-hop guy. I started out breakdancing. I hated R &B music, so I'm going to go with hip-hop. Working with legends or rising stars? I would say new stars would be my answer. Legends always got ego. Reality TV or Docs, because I have a new documentary. It's called Magic City. It's on Starz. Yeah, all right. Rhythm or melody? I'm going to go with the melody, or depending on whatever I'm drinking at that night, it might be the rhythm, but the melody most of the time. Oh, who mentored me. Now, I was mentored, I'm sure, by my father, but not really mentored for the music business, just more or less showing me around and showing me how to be.

11:03Jermaine Dupri: And then I started watching other people from afar, like Teddy Riley, Quincy Jones, Barry Gordy, Andre Harrell, Russell Simmons. All of these guys, I just watched them from afar, and they basically are the ones that mentor me without me actually talking to them. I am a person that usually forecasts things that I want to see happen in my life. and I saw this on YouTube one day, people up on stage talking at TED Talk and I was like, I'm going to do that.

11:44Jermaine Dupri: And I'm here. Thank you.

11:52That was Jermaine Dupri speaking at TED Next in 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonsika Sungmarnivong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faze-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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