Key to Keys: Kerry “Krucial” Brothers, Executive Producer

Kerry “Krucial” Brothers is Alicia Keys’ right-hand man — her longtime production and business partner in KrucialKeys Enterprises and The Oven Studios, and one of the Executive Producers on The Element on Freedom. As with As I Am, Brothers and Chief Engineer Ann Mincieli form the start-to-finish production nucleus that powers their artist.

Pictured in The Oven, Kerry “Krucial” Brothers, Alicia Keys and Ann Mincieli

Keys’ production partner since the early days, Brothers is trusted as the artist’s “extra set of ears,” and routinely makes the decisions that keep the production process moving forward. He is indeed crucial to this operation, which once in full swing — with mixers Manny Marroquin and Tony Maserati, and mastering engineer Dave Kutch in-house at The Oven — requires this musical right-hand man to be on-site and on-point.

Brothers sat down with SonicScoop and talked about how he supports, encourages and inspires the vision of Alicia Keys.

Is this all-under-one-roof process about pushing the envelope of production? Why do it this way, in this day and age, with the expense of bringing people in-house?

It’s kind of costly, but it’s really about keeping the quality up. With the technology you can send files, but with everyone here, you can say, “It sounds distorted. I need to change this.” Then you can run upstairs and say (to the mixer), “Can you change it?” You’ve got creative opinions. If Tony wants to add something, we can overlay it. Then when we get to the mastering, we say, “Can you EQ this?”
It makes my job a little easier. It gets everyone into it the project more, and the quality is better. Now with the big labels, everyone is about the bottom line. You could say, “I want to do this or that,” but they don’t care. Here, everyone cares, and that’s the main thing.
I’m one of the Executive Producers on The Element of Freedom. I’m Alicia’s main musical partner, producing, writing, arranging, and we’re doing it one more time. It’s still exciting, because each album we try new things. No album sounds like the one before.

Alicia is obviously very hands-on in the production process. How do the two of you communicate?

I’m her extra set of ears. Sometimes she’s busy doing promotion, for example, so she pretty much trusts my ears. We’ve worked together for 13 years now, and it’s like, “If you say it’s good, I believe you.” I’ll listen with Dave, listen to sequences, mixes, I’ll give my opinion.
We’re almost one mind now, we’re so much alike. We learn a lot from engineers, especially from Ann, bringing in new things to try out.

How do you deal with the huge expectations that come with a new Alicia Keys album?

Funny as it sounds, there’s never really been any pressure. Even from the beginning, we trust our instincts. There’s an enthusiasm to what we do. I feel like if you’re enthusiastic about what you do, even if people don’t feel each song, they hear that energy and they respect that.
We don’t worry about whether we have to do what we’ve done before. We don’t even listen to the radio when we do our albums. We don’t say, “We have to do our song like this hit.” And so far it works. There’s no pressure like we have to do better, and do what everybody expects.
We’ve done this, so how do we stay excited about it? No artist wants to do the same thing twice, it gets boring. We’re trying to stay excited, and it translates well. When there’s no pressure, then there’s nothing in the way of you getting into the music and into the production. I think if we started worrying about it, then it would change the music.

How would you characterize the way you and Alicia work together?

It’s always sharing ideas as lovers of music. Ann really keeps up and maintains the studio, and you really couldn’t have a better person doing that. We’ll use new equipment, and that inspires so many songs. During the off-hours, we’re really taking the time to learn different things — we’ll try out a new bundle, a new plug-in, adding in new elements that come out. We’re still like little kids, and that keeps the energy. We’re lucky to have a label that supports it.

What was it like transitioning from the SSL AWS900 to an SSL Duality?

More room, more power, more ways to change things, more ways to fly back and forth between sessions, and it’s not so huge, taking up the whole room. The Duality works very easily for digital and analog. It’s perfect for what we’re doing.
The big thing about being here is the home studio feel, but it’s still larger than a home studio. It’s a serious setup on the board, but it still feels like a home. It’s more comfortable.

What song on The Element of Freedom do you think will surprise fans the most?

“Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart.” It’s definitely a style you haven’t heard from her yet. She definitely made it hers. Another song is “Love is Blind.”
This album, in general, is going to be a little more than what people expect, but when you hear it, it will makes sense. There’s a few songs on the album like that where it’s really different, but it’s still her.

This being SonicScoop, we have to ask: What makes a KrucialKeys production an NYC thing?

There’s something about New York that has the grit, that has this whole rawness to it. We worked in Cali too and — no offense, I love L.A. — but there’s a certain laid-backness there. I speak to other writers about this all the time. You do a session in Cali and it takes three or four hours to get started.
In NYC, you get started. There’s a certain energy and pulse. You’re always on the go go go. You come in and you’re ready to work. We have fun, it’s enjoyable, and that’s what keeps the quality up. We still love what we do. It’s not like, “You’re already a star. That’s enough.” No! Instead, how can you throw something in that nobody expects? — SonicScoop

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