Vibe (March 2002)
No Doubt: The Art of Noise
Ska-revival band turned pop sensation No Doubt had dabbled in black music before. But with Rock Steady, the group took some artistic chances and really got their groove on
Teenagers have a way of stereotyping themselves, in music as much as anything else. There’s the bougie girl who digs R&B, the thug kid with his hard-core rap, the pierce-tongued Goth who’s into heavy metal. They often view genre shifting as betrayal rather than musical experimentation or evolution. As these folks blossom, more than likely they’ll expand their horizons. On their latest album, Rock Steady, No Doubt seem to be going through a similar process, widening their influences to include both hip hop and dancehall. The group first started catching attention in ’95 with the hits “Just a Girl” and “Don’t Speak” off their 7.7-million-selling ska/punk breakout, Tragic Kingdom. But if you were up on No Doubt, seeing lead singer Gwen Stefani in a rap video last year (Eve’s “Let Me Blow Ya Mind”) didn’t surprise you: This is a group that asked Hype Williams to direct their clip for “Ex-Girlfriend,” the first single from 2000’s Return of Saturn.
Some hip hop fans definitely wondered who the blond chick was in Eve’s video; others recognized that it was Stefani, and admired her, but were a little disappointed by the collaboration. “It should have been more Gwen, less ‘R&B chick’ who referenced the vocals,” says veteran hip hop DJ and No Doubt fan Stretch Armstrong.
“The way Dre used her voice on the hook, it could have been anyone.” It wasn’t until Armstrong saw the chemistry between Eve and Stefani in the video that the song came alive for him. Eve says the compatibility was real. “Gwen and I had an instant connection both artistically and spiritually,” she says. “We could have been sisters in another life.”
Talking to Stefani, 32, it’s easy to see why Eve feels that way. Gwen is the kind of girl anyone would love to hang out with. She’s got an amazingly cool vibe that transcends her tastemaking fashion sense and crowd-pleasing voice. And she has a spirit of adventure—a willingness to just go places and try things— that is rare among stars of her magnitude.
When No Doubt formed in 1987, they were practitioners of the hiccuping rhythms of ska-revival, which traces its roots back to Jamaican rhythms via British punk. Fifteen years later, the music and culture of the lush Caribbean island still inspire the band, especially bassist Tony Kanal, 31, who vacationed there in 2000. He chilled in Kingston, swam in waterfalls, climbed the Blue Mountains, and even held hands with friends under a full moon. “It was all stuff I’d never done in my life. It was such an amazing experience,” he says.
Kanal convinced the band to head down to Yard to do some of the recording for Rock Steady. They fell in love with dancehall’s sexy, hard-edged groove, which Kanal turned them on to at impromptu back- stage parties. Some of the island’s legendary musicians-Bounty Killer, Steely & Clevie, Lady Saw, and Sly & Robbie—ended up contributing to the album.
The sessions in Jamaica are one of many strands woven together on the new album. During No Doubt’s nationwide tour in 2000 to support Return of Saturn, they left their hotel rooms and started going out to clubs-something they hadn’t done much of before, but continued to do during the months of songwriting for Rock Steady. They soon found they wanted to create music as relevant as the hip hop in heavy rotation at these parties. “Every once in a while, they would throw on one of our songs, but it didn’t sound quite as good on the dance floor,” says guitarist Tom Dumont, 34. Adds Kanal, “I thought, Fuck, if we’re going dancing all the time, let’s hear our own records.”
Kanal was the first in the group to embrace hip hop, even forcing Stefani to listen to N.W.A in his car during their much publicized romance 10 years ago. She now says she misses the days when lyrics were more pure. “Rappers were really writing about their lives. That’s what made it so intense. It’s starting to get saturated, with copies of copies coming out-talking about how much money they’re making, girls. Hmmm, that’s interesting. Why don’t you write a song about how many girls you hired to be in your video?” she asks, chuckling with sarcasm.
Nevertheless, the group admires the genre’s musical progression. “In the last three to four years, hip hop has been so creative, inventive, and fresh-sounding compared to rock. It has definitely been an inspiration,” Stefani says. “The older you get, the more different stuff appeals,” adds Dumont. “It’s easier to drop the thing you had when you were the teenage rocker dude with long hair— the social context of your music. You just don’t care anymore.”
And yet some No Doubt partisans haven’t been too receptive to the band’s wanderings on Rock Steady. The band’s Web site logged more than a few complaints about the first single, “Hey Baby,” in the first days after its release. And the track drew angry phone calls to Southern California’s leading rock radio station, KROQ on which No Doubt was weaned while growing up in Orange County. The album’s more rockish “Don’t Let Me Down,” coproduced by ex-Car Ric Ocasek, was soon substituted on the station’s playlist.
True fans of the group shouldn’t worry so much. Bands change, okay? Get over it. No Doubt didn’t sacrifice their integrity; they just spread their wings. And that meant reaching out to an array of artists and producers, among them Prince, the Neptunes, Dr. Dre, Timbaland, and Britain’s Mark “Spike” Stent, William Orbit, and Nellee Hooper. The results are a mixed bag, but No Doubt has chosen to look at the positive side. “I think we learned loads from all these different, amazingly talented people,” Stefani says.
No Doubt immediately applied some of what they learned in the recording booth. For years, they had created their songs by jamming in the garage with a tape recorder and then handing the cassette to a producer. Now they began to record themselves on Pro Tools and put some of the raw material on the final CD. “We did more on these songs than we’ve ever done, ’cause the preproduction stuff was actually used,” says Stefani. Kanal agrees: “Using the computer to record was a cool way to keep all the original ideas intact.”
Working with the Neptunes was an especially enticing prospect. “The idea was to see what would happen,” says Stefani. “It was two different worlds that mutually respect each other coming together to do something new and fresh.”
Unfortunately, their ideas didn’t quite gel in the studio. “Working with the Neptunes was really hard and awkward,” she admits. The producers were more accustomed to simply laying down a track for a solo artist to rap or sing over, rather than working with a band. And No Doubt felt intimidated because they rarely wrote songs with people outside the group. “Songwriting is such an intimate thing, and with people you don’t normally write with, you’re naked,” says Kanal. Even the extroverted Stefani was nervous. “Like, yeah, let me sing a little thing off the top of my head for you. Ooooh, it’s horrible!” she says. According to the Neptunes’ Chad “Chase” Hugo, “They weren’t used to our methods, so it was strange at first. But it was all good.”
The fruit of No Doubt’s uneasy pairing with the Neptunes was “Hella Good,” a track that still needed tweaking after they finished. “We knew it wasn’t quite right, but we weren’t sure how to make the song work,” says drummer Adrian Young, 32. Nellee Hooper patched it up with them in London. “He’s the one who got excited about it,” says Young. “He had the idea of coming up with this overdriven synthesizer riff. He brought excitement and fun to it.” “Hella Good” did eventually make it on the album. No Doubt’s attempt to work with Dr. Dre, however, fell short of their hopes. After receiving a CD of his instrumental tracks, they found one they liked, looped the beat, and played around with it-and that’s about where it ended. “We never went into the studio with Dre. He kept being busy,” says Dumont. “We went in with this guy named Scott Storch, one of Dre’s guys, I guess.”
They were basically done with the album when coproducer and mixer Spike Stent suggested they go in the studio with Timbaland. “We were like, We’d love to, it would be an honor,” says Kanal. “But again,” adds Stefani, “it was hard to go in the studio with someone new, so we really had to push ourselves.” The experience turned out fine, but Timbaland’s track didn’t feel finished. No Doubt decided not to force it and just go with the songs that were completed. Rock Steady was the first album they had ever finished in less than a year. And the Timbaland effort is, Stefani points out, “another bitchin’ track that will get used someday.” You gotta love the band for not including songs produced by hip hop’s most celebrated producers just because it’s trendy. And they will go back and make those songs work. For their last album, No Doubt did a tune with Prince and shelved it, hoping to complete it later. The haunting result, “Waiting Room,” now appears on Rock Steady. “It’s definitely us doing a song by Prince who’s doing a song by No Doubt,” says Dumont.
One of the biggest challenges for any mainstream artist is balancing creativity and popularity. It’s easy to focus obsessively on what the musical climate demands, but that route limits inspiration and blocks your own growth. “If you’re a true artist, you make the music for yourself first,” says Stefani. “You can’t try to please even your biggest fans. That would be selling out, ’cause you’re just trying to make sure they still love you.”
Though Rock Steady’% experimentation with new genres was largely guided by their own tastes and instincts, No Doubt still hopes the rest of the world appreciates their gift. And as long as you’re down for evolution, it’s a gift that keeps on giving.