Review
Genre and Mood
Guts made Want It Back for his album Hip Hop After All with two guests: the singer Patrice and The Studio School Voices NYC, a New York children’s choir. It sits where hip-hop production meets soul singing, and its warmth comes from the people on it: one adult voice, a room full of young ones and an electric piano between them.
Song Summary
Want It Back is the tenth of the sixteen tracks on Hip Hop After All, released by the Paris label Heavenly Sweetness in September 2014. The credits on the official video name its parts: Rhodes and keyboards by Florian Pellissier, the choir directed by Ayelet Cogan and recorded by Steve Addabbo and Bob Power at Shelter Island Sound in New York, Patrice and Pellissier recorded by Mathieu Gibert at Onetwopassit Studio, where he also mixed the track. The label’s own note puts its idea in one line: Patrice, used to playing pared-down acoustic music, “changes tack and faces off against a New York City children’s choir”.
Musical Breakdown
The sources describe who sings and plays here rather than how the track unfolds bar by bar, so this walk-through stays with what they name.
The Keys
Florian Pellissier’s Rhodes and keyboards are the ground the voices stand on.
The Lead Vocal
Patrice, the German-Sierra Leonean singer whom the label calls “half reggae, half soul”, carries the song.
The Choir
The Studio School Voices NYC face off against him, as the label puts it: a children’s choir recorded for this song rather than sampled from an old record.
Outro
How the track ends is not described by the sources; listen for whether the choir or the soloist has the last word.
Concepts in Focus
Want It Back is a clear case of the <a href=“https://korczis.github.io/sonic-playground/concept/featured-artist/” class=“concept-link font-medium text-primary-700 underline decoration-dotted underline-offset-4 hover:decoration-solid dark:text-primary-400” data-concept=“featured-artist” title=“A guest performer credited on another artist’s track, usually as “feat.”: a rapper’s verse, a singer’s hook or a second voice. Features bring together different styles and audiences and are central to hip-hop, R&B and dance music.“>featured artist. Guts is the producer and the name on the cover, but the song belongs to the voices he invited. He told Konbini that when he composes, he already hears the voice: a man or a woman, its colour, its timbre, its energy, “the same for the track with Patrice and the children”. The beat was written for its guests.
It is also a lesson in mixing. The choir was recorded at Shelter Island Sound in New York, Patrice and Pellissier at Onetwopassit Studio, and Mathieu Gibert then mixed it all into one track. Balancing a solo voice, a whole choir and an electric piano so that none buries the others is the mixing engineer’s work. The same pairing of French producers and a guest from abroad runs through C2C, Pigeon John – Because of You.
Artistic Context
Guts is Fabrice Henri, born in 1971 near Paris, a founding member and the producer of Alliance Ethnik, the French rap group of “Simple et funky”. After three instrumental solo albums he made Hip Hop After All: Heavenly Sweetness presented it as a return to working with rappers and singers in person, his productions taken across the Atlantic to record his guests in New York and California, with DJ Fab co-producing. Masta Ace, Grand Puba and Cody Chesnutt are among them.
Impact and Reception
Want It Back got an official video directed by Olivier Hero Dressen and, in 2017, a remix by L’Entourloop and Troy Berkley; MusicBrainz also lists it on the Radio Nova compilation Nova Tunes 3.1. No critic’s review of the song itself turned up in the sources. Play it for the moment the children come in.
