Mark Ronson has been producing since the turn of the millennium, and in that time he has worked with everyone from Amy Winehouse to Lady Gaga to Dua Lipa to Bruno Mars, with whom he created “Uptown Funk,” one of the highest-selling singles of all time. He is also the presenter of an excellent TED Talk on the history of sampling and has continued that journey of musical curiosity with the Apple TV show Watch the Sound, which explores the untold stories behind music creation and the lengths producers and creators are willing to go to find the perfect sound. Between all that, he finds time to host the FADER Uncovered podcast, on which he interviews artists ranging from David Byrne to Haim. Busy guy.
Recently, Ronson’s dance card also included appearing on Switched on Pop for another one of our Modern Classics discussions. The song he chose for our talk is an iconic ’90s jam: Ginuwine’s “Pony,” produced by Timbaland and Static Major, which continues to serve as an example of the ways that innovation and radical experimentation undergird even the biggest of pop smashes.
Nate Sloan: What do you think makes “Pony” endure? After 30 years, it still slaps. It still just explodes out of the speakers.
When you asked me to pick a modern classic, the first place my brain went was, What was a record that was a full paradigm shift? Like, when that record came out, nothing was the same? I remember the song from a purely DJ standpoint. I’d been DJ-ing for a couple of years in hip-hop clubs in New York, and there was a tempo that your set had to follow. There was old-school hip-hop that tended to be faster, like Big Daddy Kane and Rakim and fun things from the ’80s. Hip-hop in the ’90s got kind of slower and moody. Then you had Puffy and Biggie, a little more shiny but all in this 90 or 110 beats-per-minute range, and that’s where your set resided.
