Thaddis “Kuk” Harrell is one of the music industry’s preeminent vocal producers, in charge of coaxing unforgettable studio performances out of top-tier stars. He compares his process to a therapy session—to capture distinctive, compelling performances, he has to connect with musicians and dig into their emotional cores. Harrell has a gift for doing this, to judge by his resumé—it reads like a who’s who of the Top 40. He’s worked with Beyoncé, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Mary J. Blige, Jessie J, and Celine Dion, and he has prominent credits on every Rihanna album since 2010’s Loud.
For this Q&A (which has been edited for length and clarity), I spoke to Harrell as he was returning home after a rare week off, relaxing in Florida after Anti‘s release. His 2016 is already shaping up to be busy—he has a book deal, he’s working with Jessie J, and he’s mentoring a Netherlands-based songwriting team called DFRNS (aka Hidde Huijsman and Massimo Cacciapuoti). Harrell also says he’s looking to connect with new talent using the hashtag #kukharrellswhosnext on Instagram (@officialkukharrell) and Twitter (@kukharrell).
But this particular album, she was really, really specific about every single line. If there was anything that she heard that she felt wasn’t perfection in her eyes, she wanted to change. It was a lot, and I respect that. It’s hard, because I want to work quick and get stuff done and make it excellent, but now she’s like, “Listen, let’s up the quality level.” Let’s make sure we have the emotion, and make sure it’s a masterpiece. That was the mind-set for this one. You know, the other albums, they were, “Yeah, let’s make a great album.” But this time it was like, “Let’s make a masterpiece—a great body of work.” That was a big switch-up for me, and a point of growth.
Then fast-forward to 2005, when I moved down to Atlanta with my cousin, Tricky Stewart. We decided to get back together and write. We all grew up together, but we had gotten to a point where we were really making it professional, making it our gig. I moved to Atlanta and we set our system up just like an assembly line, based on the example of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, how they used to work back in the day. Jimmy would do the tracks; Terry would do the vocals and the melodies and the lyrics. Then once they got the record done, they would give it to their engineer, Steve Hodge, and he would mix everything. It was an assembly line. We decided to set up our thing like that. Tricky was like, “Would you cut the vocals?” and I was like, “Absolutely. It’s no big deal.” I had been doing it for a long time, just practicing and all that kind of stuff.
The most challenging part for my job as vocal producer is probably just always being in a mode where it’s not about me as an individual. If I’m cutting an entire album with an artist, even though we have a great relationship . . . we can take Rihanna, for instance. Just because we have a great day and a great moment right now doesn’t mean that we’re going to have the exact same kind of moment tomorrow. The superstars, they’re definitely in the moment, but they’re so busy. They have so many different things pulling at them, so depending on how close you are with them, it can kind of seem like, “Oh man, we’re buddies today,” and it’s like, “No, we’re not buddies. We have a job to do, first and foremost.”
Number one, obviously, this Rihanna album [Anti], because it is such a body of work. The whole mind-set. The records that stick out for me the most are when we went into it thinking, “Let’s just do great work. Let’s not chase radio. We’re not trying to get radio hits. We’re not trying to make sure that we can have a song that anybody could sing.” So that’s what Anti is. Let’s just do good work, because we love doing what we do, and we get to make music to it.
