The catalog behind the desk
Not the beats — the decisions. The albums Eddie ‘F’ Ferrell heard first, signed, developed and put his name on as executive producer or A&R.
Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
Signed & managed via Untouchables · 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 brought 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, Elektra and Motown — signing acts, cutting the records and putting his own name last in the credits.
Albert Brown III
A high-school friend from Mount Vernon handed Eddie a demo, and Eddie handed it to 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.
Essential
↑ Back to topPete Rock, C.L. Smooth
Eddie signed 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
Father MC was Uptown's proof that rap and R&B could ride the same track without either one apologizing. Eddie was in that building and in those sessions while the template was being drawn.
'I'll Do 4 U' and 'Treat Them Like They Want to Be Treated' are the blueprint later borrowed by every hip hop soul record of the decade.
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Uptown / MCA
Redd was an Uptown A&R man and a singer at the same time — the exact double life Eddie was living from the production side. 'You Called and Told Me' remains a quiet-storm staple of the era.
The two roles feeding each other is the thing to notice: the person cutting the record and the person choosing the roster were often the same person at Uptown.
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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.
Essential
Kenny Greene, Jeff Sanders, Clinton 'Buddy' Wike
Eddie discovered and signed INTRO and steered the self-titled Atlantic debut. 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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↑ Back to topExecutive 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, as did a wave of young R&B talent developed inside the building.
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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's run of platinum R&B singles 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.
The Def Jam relationship deepened later, when Eddie served as Executive Consultant to Chairman L.A. Reid from 2005 to 2007.
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Uptown / Universal
Moods…Moments and Mo'Hogany put a rougher, rawer voice on top of Uptown-school production. 'Touch It' is still the record that fills a floor in three seconds.
Monifah's run belongs to the same Untouchables extended family — writers, producers and singers moving between each other's sessions all decade.
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↑ Back to topExecutive 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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