Tank, DJ Toomp Talk Grammy Noms, Confident About Winning
Published: Friday - February 8, 2008
Words by Allen Starbury & Jay Casteel
L to R: Tank and DJ Toomp (Photo: BallerStatus.com)
With the Grammy's coming up Sunday (February 10), everyone's in Los Angeles preparing for parties and promotion, while others are celebrating. One individual really happy as the 50th Annual Grammy's come around is Tank, because he's up for two awards -- for the first time in his career.
After three solo albums and countless contributions and collabos with a variety of artist, the R&B singer is finally getting his just dues. He's nominated in the Best Male R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Album categories for his 2007 release, Sex, Love & Pain, and right now he's riding high.
To celebrate the accomplishment, Tank threw a coming out party at Hollywood's Area nightclub, drawing the likes of Chloe Kardashian, Rick Ross, DJ Toomp and several others.
As he entered the party, he expressed his happiness and joy as he basked in the moment. "It's amazing. Somebody was listening. I didn't know that they were, but somebody was listening. I thank God for that," he told BallerStatus.com.
As grateful as he is to receive his first noms, he's just as confident that he's gonna take home the trophies. "It's an opportunity of a lifetime for my first time to be a Grammy nomination... to be two of them at that," the singer said. "So, we going to get our hardware baby. We going to get it. We praying and believing that that's ours."
Reflecting on his career thus far, Tank said that although he's never been nominated in the past, he's has an optimistic look on the situation. To Tank, it's not that he wasn't recognized over the years, it was just that it wasn't his "time to blast off."
But with his recent album, he said that all his experience brought things into perspective and he finally knew what was required for him to get to this point.
"I think me growing as an artist and a singer and a songwriter and a producer, it all kind of came together on Please Don't Go," Tank explained. "I kind of found myself and I wasn't searching for anything. I knew exactly where I needed to go and where I needed to be, in order to do a successful project... I'm just getting better. I'm at the beginning of my game, let me say it like that. I'm not at the top yet, we got a long way to go."
Tank wasn't the only one sporting smiles on the red carpet Friday, super producer DJ Toomp had a lot to be thankful for as well. After taking home a Grammy last year for his production contribution on T.I.'s "What You Know," he's followed with multiple nods this year, thanks in part to Kanye West's highly successful Graduation album.
For those unaware, Toomp contributed production to West's latest release, including the singles "Can't Tell Me Nothing," "Good Life," and album cut "Big Brother." Like Tank, the producer is very confident Grammy Awards will be sitting on his mantle after Sunday's ceremony.
"It feels good to be winning another Grammy," Toomp told BallerStatus.com. "I won one last year with T.I. for 'What You Know.' Here I am again. It's definitely a blessing.
"First of all, being nominated for a successful album like Graduation and working with one of the best producers like Kanye, collaborating and coming out with a masterpiece. I think we had the hottest album of the year," he continued.
Before Grammy's and chart-topping singles, though, Toomp DJ'd for Uncle Luke and 2 Live Crew in the early 90s. Now, more than 15 years later, and lots of hard work, he's finally earned his spot among producer elites. It's something the producer says keeps his grounded.
"[That was] definitely a long journey. [There was] definitely a lot of accomplishments and lessons I've learned, as far as in and out of the business. It's a beautiful thing. It's a blessing to be here honestly," he exclaimed.
Toomp is currently working with artists on his label and continuing to produce tracks for artists like Mariah Carey, G. Malone and others.
Tank, on the other hand, revealed that he's already begun work on his next solo album, titled Aggressive Beginnings, but there's no specific date for it as yet.
The 50th Annual Grammy Awards will air on Sunday (February 10) at 8 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
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