On this song, producer/engineer Rich Tozzoli combines “real recorded percussion and programmed loops over an odd time signature. I think it’s a good example of the integration of live musician and looped program material, which can push a song along in its own unique way.
Producer/multi-instrumentalist Chink Santana found inspiration from Isaac Hayes for this song: “I took four bars of the [Hayes] record [“The Look of Love”] and then I took the bridge and we used that for Ashanti’s B section,” he says. “But I added [my own] drums to it-subs, fade-away, rim shots, cymbals-and guitar. He had some horns in the record, and I chopped the horn stabs and placed them in the bridge so we could EQ it differently from the rest of the sample because we wanted them brighter than the way he had it. We also changed the level to actually turn the volume up.”
Clif Magness: “I had to decide how to approach the song, and the first thing I did was find a loop that fit the character of the song and had the right rhythm,” he says. “I found those first loops, and then I played the whole song with just acoustic guitar to those loops. In the chorus, I added some sampled drums to simulate a real drummer. I’d replace that with a real drummer later, but I would punch it up to just the samples to play along with the loop and add other loops to that.”