The catalog behind the desk
Not the beats — the decisions. The albums and artists Eddie ‘F’ Ferrell heard first — signed, produced, developed, or provided his services as executive producer or A&R.
Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
Signed, A&R'd, & managed by Eddie F · Executive production
Two kids from Mount Vernon, one of the most sampled drum-and-horn palettes in rap history, and an album that still sets the bar for producer-led hip hop. Eddie signed and A&R'd the duo through Untouchables and into Elektra.
I.N.T.R.O.
Discovered, signed & executive produced
Eddie found the Brooklyn trio, signed them and executive produced the self-titled debut. Kenny Greene's writing over hip hop drums gave R&B groups a new template — harmony with street weight underneath it.
Donell Jones
Discovered, signed & executive producer
The signature signing and the album that proved it. A top-ten Hot 100 single, a number one R&B record and a platinum album that defined the turn-of-the-century sound of grown R&B.
Donell Jones
Discovered, signed & executive producer
The debut. Eddie brought Donell through Untouchables and into LaFace, and the first record laid out everything the partnership would become — protect the voice, keep the arrangements warm, let the writing carry it.
Mario Winans
Personal signing & executive producer
Eddie's own signing during his run as Executive Vice President of Motown. A Winans family voice raised in gospel, turned loose on hip hop soul — the debut that set up everything Mario went on to do as an artist and producer.
The Tony Rich Project
A&R (Vice President of A&R, LaFace)
A singer-songwriter record in the middle of a hit-machine label — spare, intimate and completely against the grain. It won the Grammy for Best R&B Album and gave LaFace one of its most enduring crossover moments.
Stevie Wonder
A&R (Executive Vice President, Motown)
Curating the catalog of the greatest songwriter Motown ever had, from the EVP chair — sequencing, selections and new material bridging four decades of the label's defining artist.
Run-D.M.C.
A&R / compilation production
The definitive career retrospective of the group that made rap a stadium music — assembled with the same archival care Eddie brings to every catalog project.
Demos, deals & the family business
1986 – 1994
Before the title on the door there was the crew. Out of Mount Vernon, Eddie F built Untouchables Entertainment into a production house, management company and farm system that fed Uptown, MCA, Def Jam, LaFace, Warner Records, Elektra, and Motown — signing acts, cutting the records and putting his own name last in the credits.
Various Artists · Uptown Records / MCA
The birth of Uptown Records. The 1986 various-artists sampler that introduced Andre Harrell's newly founded label to the world — Heavy D. & the Boyz, Groove B. Chill, Finesse & Synquis, The Uptown Crew and others on one MCA Records release.
The first two singles off the compilation that launched Uptown Records — 'Uptown Is Kickin' It' by The Uptown Crew and 'Mr. Big Stuff' by Heavy D. & the Boyz — both carried beats created by a young DJ/co-producer, soon to be producer, DJ Eddie F. It was the earliest signal of the producer-led sound that would define the Uptown and Untouchables eras.
Essential
Albert Brown III
A high-school friend from Mount Vernon handed Eddie his demo, and Eddie played it for Uptown boss Andre Harrell. That chain of two moves is how In Effect Mode got made — the album that gave New Jack Swing its softest, most romantic edge and sold platinum out the gate.
It set the pattern for everything that followed: hear it first, put it in the right room, then build the record. Eddie stayed close to the Uptown camp from that point on, and the label became the first home for the Untouchables sound.
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↑ Back to topPete Rock, C.L. Smooth
Eddie signed, A&R'd, and managed the Mount Vernon duo through Untouchables and got them to Elektra. What came back was Mecca and the Soul Brother — dusty horns, drums that breathe, and one of the most quoted records in rap history in 'They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.).'
It is the clearest case of the Untouchables thesis: find producers as artists, not as hired hands, and let the beat carry the same weight as the voice.
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Timothy Brown · Uptown Records / MCA
Father MC's second album was Uptown's proof that rap and R&B could ride the same track without either one apologizing — and Eddie F produced the record that opened it. 'One Nite Stand' went out February 11, 1992 as the album's first single, built on an Average White Band flip that put Eddie among its credited writers.
He produced, recorded and mixed three cuts on the album — 'One Nite Stand,' the title track 'Close to You' (co-produced with Nevelle Hodge), and 'Do the One, Two' — with Mary J. Blige and also introduced the world to Intro's Kenny Greene singing background across those sessions.
'One Nite Stand' reached No. 22 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and No. 16 on the dance sales chart, and the album climbed to No. 34 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.
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Uptown / MCA
Jeff Redd was a new artist on Uptown when Puff Daddy was still an intern. Eddie F created his lead single, and he and the rest of the Untouchables crew created the follow-ups — including the hits 'U Called and Told Me,' 'Love High' and others — launching Redd's career.
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Keenen Ivory Wayans · Fox Television
For five seasons, the loudest stage in comedy walked out to an Eddie F beat. Eddie produced and co-wrote the theme song for Fox's groundbreaking sketch series In Living Color, carrying his sound into living rooms every week across the show's entire original run, seasons one through five.
Keenen Ivory Wayans' writing room launched Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, Jamie Foxx and the Fly Girls — with Jennifer Lopez in the lineup — and every one of them came in on an Eddie F cue. Television was just another room for the same record.
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Untouchables Entertainment / Motown
The Untouchables compilation — Eddie F's name on the front as executive producer, the whole crew in matching leather on the back. Heavy D, 2Pac, The Notorious B.I.G., Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, Erick Sermon, Dave 'Jam' Hall and Felicia Adams all in one tracklist.
It is the closest thing to a mission statement the label ever released: a producer-led album where the beatmakers are billed like stars.
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Kenny Greene, Jeff Sanders, Clinton 'Buddy' Wike
As probably the first group that pioneered mixing hard core Hip Hop loops with R&B, Eddie discovered and signed INTRO and steered the self-titled Atlantic debut. He also produced the lead off single Love Thang which launched the group into success. Kenny Greene's writing plus street-level harmony made 'Come Inside' and the 'Let Me Be the One' remix era records that R&B groups still study.
Their reworking of Stevie Wonder's 'Ribbon in the Sky' is the group in one take: church-trained voices over hip hop drums.
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↑ Back to topThe executive years
1993 – 1997
Two of the most consequential A&R chairs of the nineties, back to back. Vice President of A&R at LaFace Records under L.A. Reid and Babyface from 1993 to 1995, then Executive Vice President of Motown Records from 1995 to 1997 — signing, developing and greenlighting records rather than only producing them.
L.A. Reid & Babyface
Eddie sat in the A&R chair at LaFace during the label's defining run, the stretch when Atlanta stopped being a regional market and became the center of American R&B. Development, song selection and producer matchmaking were the daily job.
The LaFace method — artist first, song second, everything else third — carried straight into the Untouchables roster and later into the Def Jam consulting years.
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Executive Vice President
As EVP at Motown, Eddie helped steer the most storied catalog in Black music into the hip hop era — bringing producer-led signings and street credibility to a house built on Detroit soul.
Let's Get It On (The Album) came through Motown in this window, and a wave of young R&B talent developed inside the building. One of the breakout moments was 702, the Las Vegas trio brought to the label through Biv 10. Eddie F helped quarterback 'Get It Together' as a single — a hard-knocking, harmony-rich record written and produced by Eddie's Untouchables producer Donell Jones, who would go on to become an award-winning hit artist in his own right. The track became 702's first Hot 100 entry, went top three on R&B, and was certified gold.
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Motown
An actress out of A Bronx Tale turned singer, Hicks made This Time for Motown during Eddie's run in the building — a soft, grown record with hip hop underneath it.
It is a good example of the era's crossover instinct: pull talent from film, television and the street, and put the same producers on all of it.
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↑ Back to topSigning, developing, executive producing
1996 – 2007
The independent years, when Eddie F ran his own signings through Untouchables Entertainment Group and later consulted directly to Chairman L.A. Reid at Def Jam Recordings from 2005 to 2007.
Untouchables Entertainment / LaFace
The signature signing. Eddie discovered Donell Jones, signed him through Untouchables and served as primary and executive producer on his first four albums — the deepest artist-producer partnership of his career.
'U Know What's Up' went top ten on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in 1999, and Where I Wanna Be became one of the defining R&B albums of the turn of the century.
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Def Jam / Spoiled Rotten
Case was discovered, signed and produced by Eddie F and Untouchables affiliate Kenny Smoove, building a run of platinum R&B singles that sat in exactly the lane Eddie helped build — hip hop drums, grown vocals, records that worked in the club and on quiet storm radio in the same week.
Eddie later stepped back in to produce and remix Case in collaboration with Joe, keeping the Def Jam relationship alive from the nineties into the early 2000s.
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Uptown / MCA
The album that turned Mary J. Blige into the queen of hip hop soul. Untouchables-affiliated producer Dave 'Jam' Hall co-wrote and co-produced cornerstone tracks on the original 1992 debut, while Eddie F and the Untouchables crew left their mark on the remix companion released the following year.
Eddie F is credited as producer on the remix album's 'You Don't Have To Worry,' and the project became a template for the Uptown/Untouchables sound: R&B vocals riding hard, sample-heavy hip hop production.
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Columbia Records
'Dreamlover' was the lead single from Mariah Carey's Music Box and her first collaboration with Eddie F's Untouchables-affiliated Dave 'Jam' Hall, who co-wrote and co-produced the track. The single spent eight weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.
The connection is Eddie F's Untouchables extended family at work: the same production circle shaping Mary J. Blige's sound brought that hip hop soul drum-and-sample feel to the biggest pop record of 1993.
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Columbia Records
'Fantasy' became the lead single from Daydream and Mariah Carey's first single to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Eddie F's Untouchables-affiliated Dave 'Jam' Hall co-wrote and co-produced the track, with the Bad Boy Remix adding Ol' Dirty Bastard to the Tom Tom Club sample.
Once again Eddie F's Untouchables production circle supplied the hard drums and sample flip that turned a pop record into a hip hop moment.
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Executive Consultant to Chairman L.A. Reid
Reunited with L.A. Reid at Def Jam, Eddie advised on A&R and artist strategy during one of the label's biggest commercial stretches.
Three decades in, the job description had not really changed: hear it first, put it in the right room, protect the record.
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