Dominican producer and multidisciplinary artist Kelman Duran was thrilled to get a chance to work on Renaissance: “I was just like, ‘How did this happen?'”
he’s especially glad to see the late Memphis rapper celebrated on a stage this big. “I have a feeling that they wanted to promote underground culture on this album, just based on the samples that they had chosen,” he says. “So I’m sure Beyoncé knows who Tommy Wright is, who Princess Loko is. And I’m sure that they know that she still hasn’t been given her due.”
The art of sampling is something Duran has been careful about over the years. The artist grew up in Washington Heights — he went to LaGuardia High School and graduated in the same class as Nicki Minaj — and often plucks sounds from his upbringing in his music. But he’s also experimented with sounds from his travels and newer surroundings; his albumdrew direct inspiration from his time living in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
“I feel like I’ve also had my share of people accuse me of sampling without giving them credit or talking about them online,” he says. “But I feel like in club culture, underground club culture, it’s kind of a given that everyone samples each other… You obviously have to be careful when you put out stuff with bigger artists, but that’s a whole different game.”
He adds, “I saw The-Dream’s response to it, and I understand where he’s coming from… When it comes to these credits, especially now in the industry, you have to be very careful where the publishing and it’s extremely complicated. So there’s a lot of people involved who are credited, who maybe just did some something here and there. You have to credit those people, just because that’s the way that system works.” As someone who worked on the album, Duran feels like he was given plenty of credit.
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