The main difference between album Nicki and remix Nicki is she has more fun when she does remixes, features and stuff like that because she’s not thinking about, ‘OK, how are we going to roll this out single-wise? What am I going to do for the video? How is this going to fit into my album?’ When she in remix/feature mode, she’s only thinking, ‘I’m going to kill this verse and keep it moving.’ It’s more fun and instantaneous. She approaches it the same believes it or not. Y’all already work together.’ The first session we worked on was the ‘Danny Glover’ freestyle.ĭo you notice a difference in her recording when she’s in album mode versus when she’s working on a remix? Nicki was looking for a new engineer and Ester was like, ‘You should hire Juice. Ester was going to film Pitch Perfect 2 at the time, I think. Fast forward to 2014 with The Pinkprint and that’s when I got the opportunity to work with Nicki full-time. Nicki had her own engineer at the time, But, anytime she and Ester would collab, Nicki would want me to come in and engineer the song. The first time I ever worked with or met Nicki was for her song ‘Super Bass.’ Ester and Nicki wrote ‘Super Bass’ together around 2011. I was working with Ester Dean as her engineer. What was your first session with Nicki like? In this installment of “Studio Sessions,” Juice details the work that went into fixing Nicki’s “MotorSport” verse, making dozens of versions of “Anaconda,” and how Nicki’s fame changed how she recorded. She spoke to me afterward,” he told REVOLT TV. I found out about her retirement the same way everyone else did. “I really can’t tell you what’s going on with new music because I don’t know. Juice practically knows almost everything about Nicki’s artistry, except for when we’re getting new music. As her primary recording engineer for the last five years, he knows what she wants before the rapper even requests it. These are the stories that rarely leave the booth.Īubry “Big Juice” Delaine knows everything there is to know about Nicki Minaj’s sound. For “Studios Sessions,” we delve into the stories behind the long hours in the studio and all that goes into making an album by talking with artists, producers, engineers, photographers, and more who are intimately connected to the recording process with some of the biggest artists in the world.