How would you like to gross $60 million doing what you love? Gil Smith II and partner Adrian “AP” Porter are doing just that. They are the musical directors for one of the biggest names in rap, Lil Wayne, as well as Wayne’s Young Money labelmate Nicki Minaj. The list doesn’t stop there: There’s Cee Lo Green, Keri Hilson and their latest addition, Frank Ocean of Odd Future. The tours Smith has directed for Wayne and Young Money alone have grossed over $60 million.
Most of us buy tickets, mark the date on the calendar, pick out something special to wear and show up for the show. What we hope and expect is to be entertained, to feel that we were privy to an intimate experience between us and the performer, getting to hear our favorite songs live and go home with music playing in our head. There is so much that goes into a concert, but the actual performance, song arrangement and selection can make it or break it. For Smith and Porter, thinking of the fans is key.
“At the end of the day we want people to feel like they paid their money to come away with something that they can’t get anywhere else,” Smith said in an interview backstage at the Cruzan Amphitheatre in suburban West Palm Beach, prior to Lil Wayne’s show there Tuesday. “You can’t get that by just buying a CD,” Porter added. “You have to come see it to get this experience.”
So what exactly goes into creating a live show or CD?
“There are different approaches we can take from tour to tour,” Smith said. “We can set it up as chapters, which is what we did. We can set it up as, ‘Let’s take you on a journey from the young Wayne and by the end of the show you have the more current Wayne.’”Smith went on to explain, at least with Wayne, “It’s a lot of music and we have to figure out how to do it in this amount of time.”Porter quickly added: “And also what he (Wayne) is feeling as a player at the present time.”In the case of Lil Wayne, there are many “chapters” to cover. “Wayne also has many sides to him,” Smith said. “There’s Mix Tape Wayne, Commercial Wayne and now Crooner Ballad Wayne.”
Trying to put it all together is the trick and what Smith and Porter do best. “We want to give every fan what they came to see. Dirty Wayne. Rockstar Wayne,” Smith said. There are even specific times in the show designed to stir the audience, especially at a larger venue. “We have the Crooner moment, where people have a chance to put their lighters up, their cell phones up, those kind of things you might not necessarily do in a smaller venue.”
Smith has been working with Lil Wayne for four years, and during that time Wayne’s performance has soared to new heights. Around the time Porter joined Smith as a musical director/producer, Wayne declared to the world and himself, “I’m going to be the best rapper in the world.”The result was a media and recording blitz in which Wayne appeared or sang in more than 100 songs or videos.
With a sigh of exhaustion Smith recounted those days: “It was bananas. We shot, like, 16 videos in, like, two days. It was crazy.” Porter only had two words: “No sleep.”Smith and Porter just successfully finished production on Wayne’s MTV Unplugged album due out after Wayne’s highly anticipated album Tha Carter IV hits the scene on Aug. 29. During the production of MTV Unplugged, they chose to strip down some of Wayne’s monster radio hits and present him in an intimate setting. It went so well they incorporated some of it into the tour. So what do Smith and Porter really do? For starters, they look at each artist and ask how they can “bring quality music and great energy to our clients.”
While they are looking at the arrangement and song selection for a show, there are many things to consider. With Lil Wayne, one of their biggest challenges is his sheer volume of music, Smith said.
Although Wayne “gives us liberty and trusts us to do our stuff,” Smith recalled one instance where they had designed a whole musical section that they loved.
“We were rehearsing the mess out of it and lighting and video came along, (production) came along, there’s flames spinning and (Wayne) walks on stage, and we go into it and he’s like ‘I don’t ever want to hear that song again.’ It was actually a couple of songs. So, we had to kind of revamp. You know, the show is tomorrow.
“It’s a collaboration.”If Wayne tells them he wants to change something, that he didn’t like the way the crowd reacted to a song or how it came off one night of the tour, they change it up. On this second part of the I AM Music Tour, “we had to do some tweaking after the first two weeks of the tour”, Porter explained.
When Wayne tells them, for example, “This section feels better to me if we add this on, or maybe take this all away. Or maybe the second version, not the first and a hook,” Porter and Smith adjust. “So we always get those kinds of audible calls,” Porter explained, “and especially after the first two weeks of the tour, really getting out and tweaking it where it is the most amazing experience for the fans and Wayne on stage. So that means two shows are never the same, just like the audience.”
Smith and Porter both began their musical careers as performers and actually toured together in 1999-2000. Smith’s combination of experience as a performer and studies at Berklee School of Music, where he studied Jazz and Performance, has brought him a better understanding of how to make a performer a million-dollar winner. These days it’s not enough to just have the talent but how you market that talent and ultimately how you please the fans that translates into staying on top. “When you like what you hear at a show you take it home with you,” Smith said. If you liked it enough you buy a CD and tickets the next time the tour comes to town. So for any performer, having creative people with brains watching your back is the winning combination. Smith and Porter are just that.