One of the major record labels started releasing some unauthorized Greatest Hits series called "ICONS" for a couple of their recording artists. It's a quick way for the labels to cash in and Erykah Badu was subject to one of these atrocities. She did an interview with Vibe a couple of weeks ago where she went through her entire discography and included a segment where she talked about a collaboration song she did with The Roots called "You Got Me".

When she recorded the song she didn't know that (then unknown neo-soul artist) Jill Scott originally recorded it and ?uestlove sent the track to Erykah to redo so she could be featured on The Roots album instead of Jill. She recorded it and Jill was upset, which made Erykah upset at ?uestlove for a bit.

Now, this record label puts out an Erykah Badu Icon album and they're so incompetent that they put Jill Scott's original demo version of "You Got Me" on ERYKAH BADU'S CD. So, Erykah is nowhere to be found on the track, it is just Jill Scott.

Badu said she called up Jill and they laughed about the situation. It's so sad and is just one of the many, many points that could be added to my collection of "why the music industry should be deconstructed and rebuilt".

No one knows what they're doing.

Also, I decided to download the Icons release out of curiosity (I was going to buy it, but decided not to support the record labels) and noticed that the engineers tried to get rid of the cuss words on the live version of "Tyrone" That is featured on the CD.

YOU CAN'T EDIT CUSS WORDS OUT ENTIRELY ON A LIVE RECORDING.

Yes, you can mute the main vocal track where Erykah is singing, but do you forget about the room microphones? The microphones that are picking up the reflections of the stage performance, the sound of the room, and the screaming fans? If you edit out a cuss word in the room microphone, the live performance will sound off, it will sound fake, because suddenly all of that activity of the natural reflections, reverberation and sound off of the arena is gone to get rid of one word. It is muted.

The engineers didn't mute the room microphones, which I think was a middle finger on their part to the labels for making them try and remove a word that didn't need to be removed in the first place. However, the result of the edit is that the word is still present in the song. It's attenuated immensely, but the word and the echo of the word off of the room is still there in the song.

And these are just two things that are wrong with one of the Icons CDs and major record labels.

This is all. x

Signed,
A Very Angry Sound Engineer

Oh no. Not the Icon series. Poor Immi. I hate these things. I made a little blog about what they do.