Founder and Co-CEO of KrucialKeys Enterprises alongside Alicia Keys, Kerry "Krucial" Brothers is a Grammy award-winning, multiplatinum-selling producer and writer who has played an integral role on Keys' albums Songs In A Minor, The Diary of Alicia Keys and As I Am. He has also produced, written, arranged and composed songs that appeared on the soundtracks of Dr. Doolittle, Drumline, Shaft and Ali . In addition to Alicia Keys, Brothers has also worked with Rakim, Mario, Angie Stone, Nas and Keyshia Cole, and is currently working with Anthony Hamilton, Goapele, Robert Randolph and Brandy. This week Krucial checked in to give 24Hr Grind his advice on succeeding as a music producer and songwriter.

Study Your Craft
Often you get into something because you like it but that’s just scratching the surface. The first advice I would give anyone that wants to be in the music business as an artist or as a writer is definitely study your craft. A lot of times you get into something because you like it and you scratch the surface and there is so much more you could offer the world and offer yourself by really studying your craft and learning what it is you do and how you can improve your talents . That’s very important. A lot of people are too easily content, like ‘this is working for me, let me leave it at this.’

Coming from my background, being a person who really started loving music going into hip-hop, really feeling like that’s all it was and I’m about making beats and sampling, when the opportunity came to produce an R&B album – “Songs in A Minor” -- I was a little intimidated because I felt like I didn’t know anything about R&B. That really forced me to study more into what I was sampling. I was sampling old soul and r&b records so I had to think about why I liked certain samples. That made me look into how albums were done and what instruments were used and it helped me understand not only why I liked certain samples, but also how to make things sound the way I liked them.

Greatest Moments in "Krucial" History:

Working on Songs in A Minor – there was a song called "Rock Wit U" that started out just as a beat and a bassline. It had a 70s’ blaxploitation feel to it and Alicia’s manager reached out to Isaac Hayes to see if he wanted to be involved because the track reminded us of that feel. What better person to get involved. The number one music guy of that era to me is Isaac Hayes. Just meeting him and sitting with him, hearing the track he sat down and told us "Wow I really like what you did." They'd approached him to just arrange the strings. He was like, "I am really not into just stringing arrangement, I’m a producer and I don’t do things like this, but the way y’all did this track I’m really impressed and I’m gonna do this for y’all." To get in the studio, watching him conduct the orchestra and then get on the tambourine was amazing. It was like "Wow I’m watching this legend embellish on something we created in the apartment." That was a great moment.