He reflects: “I was always good at drums. We’d get up, eat breakfast and go right into the studio” Lawrence says of the daily process. The studio had a pool, beds and a breakfast bar. Again, this was the mission, to flood the airwaves and we were in the studio day and night. “We got down there and we recorded a lot of music. I believe Teddy Riley went down there before and that was like the little secret getaway.” Robert Amar’s Caribbean Sound Basin Studios is the place where the Hitmen created and recorded for the first time as a unit. His father was a big tycoon and they owned gas stations, car dealerships and his son owned a studio.
Puffy had connections with one of the biggest guys in Trini who actually ran a studio. When you go to these islands, they don’t want you to go in and make all of this money without the proper paperwork, I guess. “I remember tryin’ to go through customs with all that bulky ass equipment and they didn’t wanna let us through. Ron grabbed the producer’s tools of the trade at the time for his time in Trinidad: his Akai MPC60, Ensoniq ASR 10 and stacks of records. “Before we went to Trini, we signed our agreements and D Dot met me at my brother’s house and we went through a couple of records and one of the records that we grabbed was “Rise” by Herb Alpert, a song that we both remembered growin’ up as kids in the streets of New York, and I even remembered it from the soap operas” Ron recalls. He wanted us to work on an album that was called Hell Up In Harlem at the time, but it's known today as No Way Out.”īecause of the turmoil surrounding the on going East-West conflict Puffy felt that Trinidad would be a nice place to get away and concentrate. At one point says Lawrence, “He wanted to call us the Goodfellas. That was Puffy’s master plan.” Puffy summoned Ron Lawrence, Nashiem Myrick, D Dot and Stevie J and announced that he was forming a production team called The Hitmen. He continues, “During the time when Puffy started the Hitmen we decided to take a trip to Trinidad, so that we could get away and focus on dominating the airwaves of New York City. “I’d, just left LA before signing to Bad Boy and I was at my brother’s house in Mt. Ron shares the story of the making of “Hypnotize”, the first single from the Notorious B.I.G.’s last album Life After Death. He was one half of the rap duo 2 Kings In A Cipher with Deric “D Dot” Angelettie, and he attended Howard University with Sean “Puffy” Combs - ultimately became part of Puffy’s production team, The Hitmen. He grew up in the same Queens neighborhood as super producer Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor and worked with him early in the Super Lovers, The Turnout Brothers, and The Invincibles. Ron Lawrence has quite a resume in Hip-Hop as a DJ, MC and producer. The birth of Diddy’s production team, The Hitmen, and the creation of Biggie’s “Hypnotize,” happened at the same time in the same place, and producer Ron “Amen Ra’ Lawrence was there and an integral part of all of it.
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