A Retrospective - Wiggle Jiggle : Never Forget to Have Fun When You Make Music

Updated: Sep 29, 2022

There's a quote that goes along the lines of

"Don't take life too seriously, nobody makes it out alive anyway"

and the last few years, I've applied this to the creation of music.

Over my 12 years at MCM Studios in Pittsburgh, I've seen artists take the process too seriously, often the new or sheltered artists. They eventually get the courage to make their ways from the corners of their bedrooms and the depths of their headphones and ego and make their may to seek my assistance.

A typical overused process in the studio to me is a great original idea to them as if pitching down a vocal to a devil voice hasn't been done in hip-hop 10,000 times or thinking adding a telephone effect or using auto tune is going to catch the listener by surprise. A lot of times I let them enjoy their moment cause who am I to spoil their excitement, I'm a facilitator. They don't need to know nor should they that I already did it 2 dozen times that week.

I wanted to make a song that was a sort of love letter to the cliche editing tropes in the recording studio while working on hip-hop music. You could call it, A Commonly Requested Edits highlight reel. As a more serious toned artists in the past myself, I wanted to let go of the deep rhymes and complex instrumentation and just poke a little fun and have a little fun no different than a comedic act. I could see the parody in it all. Then again It also made me understand deeper, that these same redundant requests are what make creating easy and accessible and as basic as they are, they're the stepping stones to the new ideas!

This is where my creation of the song Wiggle Jiggle comes in.

Music doesn't always need to be scientific. We don't always need to break down the metaphors, find the deeper meaning or win awards, sometimes they just need to make us smile a little no matter how ridiculous and let us go on our day.

Artists often want to be felt, they're emotional creatures who wear their heart on their sleeve. Sometimes they focus too much on trying to tell you how they feel than making you feel a certain way. The greats I always believed are awesome at making you feel their emotions but having you feel as though it's about your original feeling or emotion.

To the people who don't know me and Wiggle Jiggle is their introduction, they would think I am a meme rapper, so in a way it became an easter egg for people who DO KNOW the deeper Mike Hitt, the Music Producer from Pittsburgh who works with artists every day in the studio to help them on their own artistic journeys.

I went on to make a Instagram video showing this interaction between me and a naive wet behind the ears creative as sort of music video for the song. This took me deeper into just having fun and being creative and ended up doing even better than I thought. Before this I had taken a break from releasing much music to focus on my clients but there's only so much creative tension you can release making art for others. You're kind of like a creative sperm donor.

There's something about speaking your story even if it is to shake a few asses.

-Hitt