MAKE OR BREAK KORI ANDERS

Deciding at the last minute to ditch law school and pursue music, Kori Anders is a Grammy-winning audio engineer who has worked with Gucci Mane, Snoop Dogg, Nicki Minaj and Usher – to name a few. Anders shares the story of his breakthrough into the industry, what he feels is needed to get to the top, and his set of go-to plugins from Waves.

How’s life treating you in Atlanta, Kori?

Life has been great in Atlanta and keeps me super busy, but I’m enjoying every second of it.

Can you remember the moment in your youth when you started thinking of music as a potential career? Because you originally wanted to be a DJ before you discovered engineering, correct?

The first time I really fell in love with music was when I heard Whitney Houston’s Greatest Love Of All. I must have been eight or nine, and I remember listening to that song over and over again, and just really falling in love with the emotion of how the music made me feel. Then I became interested in hip-hop, because I had older brothers that were listening to Run DMC and LL Cool J, and just seeing that whole scene and seeing how you could take music and manipulate it with turntables. That was always fascinating to me. That was how I got into DJing.

How were your early days interning?

I interned at a studio called Patchwork Recording Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s a pretty legendary studio. Early on in my career I worked with Ludacris, OutKast, David Banner, Young Jeezy, pretty much a lot of the hip-hop scene. We’re talking about 2003, 2004.

The whole intern process was crazy because I was working 80 to 90 hours a week, going on food runs, cleaning up trash, making coffee – I’m sure y’all have heard the classic stories of interns. But it was in exchange for directly being able to sit in on these sessions, and learn the ropes with engineering. It’s as much the technical skills as it is people skills.

Did you ever have any nervous sessions that were make or break for you?

I did, shortly after I became an assistant engineer. I wasn’t quite seasoned in recording with artists, but I had sat in on enough sessions to learn how to deal with artists. In one particular session I was working with T-Boz from TLC. I was recording her, and I was young, new and nervous. She recorded this perfect take, and then I deleted it by accident.

In that moment, I thought that I could either panic and tell her I messed up and make her nervous for the rest of the session and lose her faith in me, or I could play this off and try to see what I could do. So in a split second decision I pressed the talkback button and said, “Tionne, you can get that again but a little better.” So she did and she didn’t know that I had totally messed up, and we kept moving on. That was a profound moment for me because it really showed me the level of confidence you need in being able to not only do the technical stuff, but also psychologically keeping artists feeling comfortable, because it is our job to extract the very best performance out of them.

You recently worked with Gucci Mane on So Icy Boyz: The Finale. How has it been having him as one of your longest-term collaborators?

We essentially grew up in the industry together. I remember going on the food runs for his sessions to working with him, and eventually becoming one of the main engineers he works with. Our process is pretty streamlined now as he’s the easiest artist for me to work with. I’ve done so many records with him that it’s like second nature now to mix his records.

You must have some interesting stories about working with Nicki Minaj and Usher?

Nicki had the same manager as Gucci, and I got to work with her before she blew up. It was really cool to see her go from being unknown to one of the biggest superstars in the world. I worked with Usher when he worked with Zaytoven on A. That was another experience where I went from being a kid in San Jose and listening to Usher’s music, and then suddenly I’m mixing his record and seeing how those records touch millions of people around the world.

You’re a big user of Waves plugins in your work. How did you initially begin using them?

I started my career in 2003. So, twoinch tape had pretty much phased out. Almost everything was going digital so I started learning how to mix. I did learn initially on large format consoles, particularly the SSL J 9000. I remember using Waves R-Compressors and DeEssers, that was like my first introduction to Waves plugins.

“T-BOZ FROM TLC RECORDED THIS PERFECT TAKE, AND THEN I DELETED IT BY ACCIDENT.” beat that they weren’t using from the project. Believe it or not, I was able to use the Waves Clarity VX Pro to extract the instrumentation and create an acapella of 2 Chainz’s vocal which I could then bounce and send to Zaytoven. He literally created a whole new beat and we put it together and we mixed it and it sounded great. up in the Atlanta trap scene working with Gucci, Jeezy and Kanye – a lot of artists. He’s putting together different compilations, and I’m really excited to be working on that. It’s hard to say that 2023 is busy because it doesn’t feel busy. I might be in the middle of three projects, but because I love what I do, it doesn’t really feel like work!

A lot of engineers have their closeknit set of go-to plugins from Waves, is that the case with you?

This might sound boring, but always R-Compressors, R-Vox, R-DeEsser. R-Bass, which I might use slightly differently than a lot of engineers — I still use it on low end, but I’ll use multiple R-Bass plugins in succession.

What I do is I set my parameters in R-Bass based on the key of the song because I want to affect different harmonic octaves on the low-end, because what I found is that helps me to get a bigger overall low-end sound without going overboard on 40 hertz, for instance. So I use multiples of those. There was a song I worked on with Gucci Mane which featured 2 Chainz. When I got the files, the problem was they didn’t actually have the original recording session with 2 Chainz’s vocals on.

Have there been any times where using Waves got you out of a difficult spot?

How’s 2023 shaping up for you?

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IAMKORIANDERS.COM

All they had was a rough bounce of when he recorded the song. And the problem was he recorded it on a

Currently, I’m working with a producer by the name of Druma Boy, who’s from Memphis, Tennessee. He came