February 14th, Saturday afternoon.
Outside the Staples Center, outdoor broadcasting studios for the Shooting Stars and Slam Dunk Contest are being set up in Heat, while inside Burbank Warner Bros.. Recording Studio 1 in downtown Burbank, the heavy double-layered soundproof doors are locked tightly from the inside.
In this recording studio that once mastered the Hawks' tapes, the lighting was extremely dim, with only two warm yellow long-arm spotlights shining above the huge 64-channel SSL analog mixing console.
On the rack next to the mixing console, two newly released Digidesign Pro Tools HD chassis had their green lights flashing, while a Stud reel-to-reel opener next to it was still quietly spinning its empty spindle. At the beginning of 2004, Hollywood's top recording studios were going through the growing pains of transitioning from two-inch analog reel-to-reel tapes to digital workstations.
Behind the mixing console sat Ken Duro Phil, the most sought-after black mixing master on the East Coast in recent years. The dry tracks of Thorn and Jay-Z's top hits all came from his hands. Duro wore a pair of worn-out Sony monitor headphones with the foam peeling off his head, twirling a lighter in his hand, staring at the audio waveform on the CRT monitor with a worried expression.
On the dark leather sofa against the wall behind Duro, David Fincher held an unlit cigar in his hand, his eyes bloodshot from staying up all night watching the sample footage, his face revealing no emotion.
Lin Qi sat in a single seat near the door, holding a freshly brewed cup of black coffee, his gaze fixed on the recording studio through the double-layered soundproof glass.
Ron Artest wasn't wearing casual clothes in the recording studio.
He was wearing an unwashed gray training hurdle vest, and on his lower body, he was wearing the Celtics' green game shorts he had just worn that morning after a scrimmage at the Clippers' training facility. He hadn't even bothered to take off the thick black padded knee brace on his left knee. Even more conspicuous was the red and black striped beanie he had worn backwards, with large monitoring headphones stuck out on the outside of the beanie.
Artest walked barefoot on the anti-vibration wooden floor, his thumbs flying across the keyboard as he replied to text messages. He chewed on two mint hard candies he'd swiped from the front desk, making a crunching sound as he stared intently at the microphone hanging on the rack.
" Ron, close your phone and swallow the candy in your mouth."
Duro pushed up the fader on the main output channel, pressed the intercom button, and his voice traveled into the studio. "This is the seventh time. If you spray sugar residue onto the $20,000 tube microphone again, I'll have Lin deduct it from your competition salary next month."
Artest rolled his eyes, shoved his phone into his baggy shorts pocket, tilted his head back, and swallowed the half-chewed candy down his throat with a gulp, even patting his chest to catch his breath.
He leaned closer to the pop filter, tugged at the earphone case, and yelled at the glass, "Duro, the heating in this lousy shed is way too high! I feel like a turkey in a Thanksgiving oven. Also, the accompaniment in the headphones is too clean; it sounds like I'm in a church service. Could you push the bass of the 808's bass drum up to the max? Like that kind of sound that could shake the poop out of my stomach, otherwise I can't find the feeling of smashing a window on Queensbridge."
David Fincher frowned slightly and glanced at Lin Qi.
"Did this guy talk to Rick Carlisle like that in the Boston locker room too?" Fincher rubbed his temples.
"Well... sometimes he is, sometimes he isn't; he's good on one hand and bad on the other. If this kid acts up, Rick Carlisle usually puts him on the bench to calm him down. You guys don't have that kind of method to make him back down."
Lin Qi took a sip of coffee, ignoring Artest's nonsense, and simply gestured for the sound engineer to begin.
Duro shook his head and pressed the transport control button.
Two muffled metronome clicks came through the headphones.
Next came an unusually slow bass drum. The deep bass frequencies sounded like someone wearing thick-soled, muddy boots, stomping in a damp, empty concrete corridor.
Artest took a deep breath, his previously nonchalant gaze suddenly vacant, as if he had instantly fallen into some kind of obsessive meditative state. He leaned closer to the microphone, his lips almost touching the popscreen.
"A moment of silence for the champion..."
The voice uttered this line was very low, with a hoarse, sleepy tone and the rough texture of sandpaper rubbing against wood.
David Fincher, who was sitting on the sofa, stopped holding his cigar.
"Dedicated to those who make fighting a way of life... Never wait, take what you want now... I stand under the spotlight, and when the lights dim, only the true champion will throw the hardest punch in the 12th round."
Artest's speaking pace wasn't fast, but his distinctive Queensbridge old-school hardcore enunciation created an unusual sense of heaviness against the backdrop of this dull rhythm.
The lyrics didn't contain any of the lowrider modified cars, big gold chains, or street gunfights that were rampant in West Coast rap at the time, and there wasn't even a single word about illegal drugs that black singers loved to talk about.
Artest wrote about his footsteps at 5 a. m. on his way to practice shooting at his high school gym in the unswept snow of Queens, about the blood-stained tape scattered on the locker room floor during away games, and about the suffocating feeling in his lungs as if they were being roasted by fire during the last few minutes of the fourth quarter of the Game 7 thriller.
"They say we are warriors, they say we've won again."
Artest's voice gradually rises with the bass drum, and the female backing vocals in the chorus cut in at the right moment. They are two Detroit underground Detroit vocalists signed to his independent label "Real Warriors," which he funded last year. The high-pitched and clear black spirituals spread out in the reverb effects, like the sea breeze sweeping through barbed wire on a winter's day.
"Raise your hands to the champions! Never surrender, never retreat, we will conquer every battlefield!"
As he sang the last line, Artest suddenly raised his right hand and slapped himself hard on the chest with a dull thud.
"Stop."
David Fincher suddenly raised his hand, signaling Duro to cut off the audio.
The accompaniment in the recording studio suddenly stopped.
Artest stood in front of the microphone, panting heavily. A large red welt remained on his chest from the force of the slap. He glanced at the people outside through the glass, his eyes darting around, before suddenly blurting out, " David, did you record that chest slam? I thought it was really powerful, like O'Neal hitting me in the chest in the low post."
David Fincher pinched the bridge of his nose and pressed the intercom switch.
" Ron, there's something I've been holding back all afternoon." Fincher's voice was thick with weariness and sarcasm. "You wrote a theme song for a basketball movie, right? Why are the lyrics all about boxing? 'The 12th round is the hardest punch'? Are you playing at Staples or fighting Phil for the gold belt at Madison Square Garden?"
Artest paused for a moment, then reached up and gripped the edge of his knee pad, replying confidently, " David, that's where your ignorance comes in. On the Queensbridge courts, when it's dark at the end of the game, who cares if you've traveled? Everyone's exhausted, and every time they go for a rebound, their elbows are aimed at the corner of the opponent's eye. If you punch someone down on the concrete, that's good defense. The 12th possession is the last two minutes of the fourth quarter, the logic is exactly the same."
This twisted logic made Duro laugh out loud.