I thought it was fresh the way Usher would sing “Shorty, I don’t mind.” And he would say “Nope” in the background. At first, I thought it was King Louie from Chicago. If you ever listen to Louie’s music; especially a song like B.O.N, then you would know that he is very clever with his adlibs. Plus the voice sounded like Louie a little bit. Anyway, my curiosity was peaked when I heard Ciara’s new song “I Bet” and I heard the same voice in the background. I didn’t think the usage of the voice was as clever as Usher’s song, but it was still nice.
I put on my thinking cap and start to make a connection with these songs. Both Usher and Ciara are from the ATL; so I’m thinking it could be someone like Lil Jon. I was curious because I wanted to know how this person obtained this position of being the adlib guy. Was he a producer or writer, or someone brought in simply to do adlibs? My Google search was efficient; on my first try I ran into this wonderful article called An Anatomy of a Pop Song: Usher’s “I Don’t Mind” Ft. Juicy J. The article was written by Big Life and it broke down the process of creating a song.
In most instances, especially in R&B, there is a team of people that contribute to the creation of a song. Usually, a big-name producer will have a team of lesser-known team of writers and beat makers. These people are the ones who typically collaborate to write and produce the songs we hear on the radio. In a lot of cases, the big-name producer gets the credit but really doesn’t do most of the work.
After looking at the long list of producers and writers credited with contributing to Ushers “I don’t mind” song; I look for Ciara’s song. When I looked at the Ciara song, I noticed some familiar names from the Usher song. Those names were Theron Thomas and Timothy Thomas. A quick Wikipedia search revealed that these two are blood brothers from the Virgin Islands. The 33 and 31 year old brothers are recording artist, songwriter, and producers who go by the name Rock City or Planet VI.