Interview by: Frankie P

Tell us about yourself and how you got your start in the game.

My name is Harry Fraud. I’m a producer that works closely with French Montana and Cocaine City Records. I was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. I got my start producing records locally in New York but things really started to take off when I linked up with my guy French. For the last 2 years or so we’ve been consistently releasing records and building momentum. At this point I’ve had the opportunity to work with a wide range of artists including Nicki Minaj, Three Sixx Mafia, Jadakiss, Sean Price, Fat Joe, Daz Dillinger, Ill Bill etc.

When and where did you make the track and what was your contribution to the record?

I started working on the idea for New York Minute around ‘04-’05 in the basement of my mother’s house in Brooklyn. I found a live recording of the song and chopped it up on the MPC 2000XL. From there I added some drums and 2-tracked what I had into pro-tools. The beat actually floated around my camp for a couple years but nobody could really do it justice and I knew it was meant to be a BIG record.

What did the artist think when they first heard it?

When French first heard the beat in the studio I could tell he saw the vision for it but we both agreed that it needed to be fleshed out cause at the time it was still a skeleton. So we pulled the 2-track right into pro tools and I began to rearrange stuff and add drums right on top of it. Once we had everything mapped out I went back and tracked the parts out off the MPC so I could put it all together.

What was the studio session like?

This song was put together over the course of a few different sessions. After we had the beat completed French layed some rough vocals so we could get the feel of the song. Once we had the basic idea for the vocals down we brought the record to Kiss so he could do his thing. He recorded his vocals at D-Block studios and then brought French in to hear wheat he had done (which was incredible). When we had Kiss’ verse locked in French went back and perfected his vocals. From there I took the record to my guy Fafu and we perfected the mix and master.

First time you heard it on radio or in club what were you thinking?

The first time I heard New York Minute on the radio I was in the studio with my pops and an artist that I was working with at the time. Someone called my phone and said Flex was going in on the song so we all ran downstairs to my pops’ car and actually only caught the second half but it still felt incredible to know that the record had just been heard by so many people.

Anything else you can tell us that revolves around that track (funny story or weird event that happened with the track)?

Well when the NY Jets (who are my favorite football team) came out of the tunnel with ‘New York Minute” blasting through the stadium that was pretty unbelievable. The fact that a record me and French had put so much time and energy into was being played on that scale validated all the work we had done for sure.

Thanks for the love iStandardProducers!!!

Follow Harry Fraud on twitter -  www.twitter.com/HFraud