In the same vein as Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Hell Razah from Sunz Of Man breaks down their first album track-by-track. Link to article
Shining Star – The story behind “Shining Star” is so deep. The original track was done by me and Priest and RZA had done this beat. We were out in Cali. We recorded 85% of this album out there. This is when Wu-Tang was out there doing “Wu-Tang Forever.” We had done the original song. I ran into Wyclef at “The Jungle” shit for Muhammad Ali at Radio City. We were talking about doing a song together. I had lost contact with Lauryn Hill, but I had a talk with Wyclef about how he felt about doing a track for us. The track that he had originally gave us, we had tracked it up, but we really wanted to make history with him. We were like, “Yo, we need a beat for this “Shining Star” remake of an Earth, Wind, and Fire joint. The second version we had done sounded like some roller-skate-type shit. We needed something gritty. We didnt want to sound pop.
We recorded it with Earth, Wind, and Fire. This wasnt no Pro Tools shit. We were with them! We met their family, their kids…we had done this song and Dirty came to the studio, Rest in Peace, ODB came to the studio and when he heard this…he had been with Wyclef doing “Ghetto Superstar.” When we had done “Shining Star,” it was kind of weird because Pras came into our studio and asked ODB to do a verse for “Ghetto Superstar.” We were bugging at the time because we didnt know they were going to call that “Ghetto Superstar.” We felt that some funny stuff was happening. Were doing “Shining Star” and now youre doing “Ghetto Superstar”? It went down, we did the track with Earth, Wind, and Fire.
Wyclef was real good. I have footage coming out on a DVD showing the making of this song. Wyclef came in and got us to chop our verses down to eight bars. Wyclef thought we should break it into pieces where we all come in sporadically. This came out incredible. When we finished it, we were like, “This song right here is history” It took a lot to get this song done, and we earned Earth, Wind, and Fires respect because they had never heard anyone rap on some positive and spiritual vibes before.
