"If Jermaine likes it, then I like it!"
Jermaine Dupri is one of the best, and most unsung, producers of the past 30+ years
Jermaine Dupri is a flat-out genius. His catalog as a producer is vast, starting with his work with Kris Kross and Da Brat, moving into his iconic work with Usher and Mariah Carey, along with killers for the likes of Monica and Jay-Z - and don’t sleep on Xscape. I mean, no less an eminence than Carey even opened her “My All/Stay Awhile” remix opining “I told you, if Jermaine likes it, then I like it!”
Some of his greatest work has been with Carey, in fact: not only did he helm much of her 2005 “comeback” album The Emancipation of Mimi, but his hands are on over half of the second (hip hop-styled) disc of her titanic 2003 comp The Remixes. In most cases, much like David Morales did for Carey on the dance side, Dupri improved upon her originals, the S.O.S. Band-sampling “Always Be My Baby” remix a fine case in point. (Also: why is it that JD’s most important discovery, Da Brat, so often sounded better on remixes than on her own records?)
In 2007, 10 of Dupri’s works, including a few records as a lead performer and a host of his productions, were compiled on Y’all Know What This Is… The Hits, a truth-in-advertising title if ever there was. And as it turns out - I’d genuinely forgotten this - I reviewed it for Allmusic! (This was thanks to my pal Tom Erlewine, one of the best critics of my lifetime, whose Substack you should most definitely be reading.) Here’s that review:
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Jermaine Dupri has had such a prolific career as a producer, songwriter, collaborator, and lead artist in the 16 years since his initial splashdown with Kris Kross' "Jump" that you could fill multiple volumes in UMG's Gold series with his great(est) work. Sadly, for some reason, Island Def Jam decided to instead, almost secretly (it was done with such little fanfare), drop a stripped-down ten-track comp of some of Dupri's biggest hits in late 2007. That said, the ten songs presented here are fairly impeccable in both pedigree and execution, from Dupri's own hits "Welcome to Atlanta" and "Money Ain't a Thang" (featuring Ludacris and Jay-Z, respectively), to monster hits he crafted for two of the planet's biggest pop stars, Usher ("Confessions, Pt. 2") and Mariah Carey ("We Belong Together"). Add in some killer one-offs from mid-table artists like Chingy ("Pullin' Me Back," featuring fellow mid-tabler Tyrese) and Bow Wow (the lovely Ciara-featuring teen pop fantasia "Like You") -- both of which spotlight Dupri's unfairly overlooked gift for writing some ridiculously pretty melodies -- and you've got a compilation that, while incomplete, regardless slams from one end to the other. Dupri deserves a much more comprehensive career-to-date summation than this, but damn if this really doesn't represent his crème de la crème.
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What makes JD so good? The ways he’s rooted in bass music (cf. Ghost Town DJs), the ways he’s of Atlanta and tributes that without letting it limit him, the ways he always respects source material (check out his remix of Maxwell’s “Lifetime,” which absolutely shouldn’t work in theory but absolutely does), and of course his ear for melody (I mean, the man cowrote “We Belong Together”!). Here’s a sensational playlist compiling much of his production/remix/artist discography; I didn’t make it, but it’s sooooo good. (Obv not everything can be a banger, but his batting average is much higher than most.) Put it on shuffle and let it soundtrack your day.