En Vogue, “Don’t Let Go (Love)” (1996)
Wade told Complex the biggest song of En Vogue’s career was originally meant for Mick Jagger and was turned into a smash for the girl group by the record executive Sylvia Rhone. Ray Murray later said this majestic, lush, tympani-pounding track was a pure Wade invention: Murray was originally writing the beat as a rap song for Cool Breeze to rhyme over, but Wade had the foresight to give it to the R&B trio, resulting in a Grammy-nominated No. 2 hit.
Witchdoctor featuring André 3000, “Dez Only 1” (1997)
After its huge pop successes, Organized Noize signed a deal with Interscope. While its brief dalliance with the major label in the late ’90s did not yield any pop home runs, the moment coincided with what many consider to be the production trio’s creative apex. Its most out-there and ambitious release was the debut LP from the M.C. Witchdoctor, “A S.W.A.T. Healin’ Ritual,” a one-of-a-kind blend of Afrocentrism, voodoo imagery, unflinching street reality, off-kilter flows and skittering beats reminiscent of British drum-and-bass music. The spiritual “Dez Only 1” finds Witchdoctor, Big Boi and André 3000 celebrating God over a track that sounds like chittering birdsong.
Cool Breeze featuring Outkast, Goodie Mob and Witchdoctor, “Watch for the Hook (Dungeon Family Mix)” (1999)
The ultimate Dungeon Family posse cut features nine M.C.s and a skipping snippet of Merry Clayton’s soul-funk cover of Neil Young’s “Southern Man.” “We was all able to study each other’s rhymes before we did our particular verses,” Big Gipp told Hot 107.9 in Atlanta. Once André 3000 laid down his verse, “it was like, ‘OK, everybody gotta get their good pen out.’”
Outkast, “So Fresh, So Clean” (2000)
By 2000, Outkast’s André 3000 and Big Boi had grown into formidable producers in their own rights, as evidenced by the group’s first No. 1 single, “Ms. Jackson.” However, their old collaborators Organized Noize supplied the follow-up. Sleepy Brown came up with the melody on the keyboard and Wade provided the iconic lyrics: The chorus came to him while he was literally getting fresh and clean in the shower, Brown told Red Bull Music Academy.
Ludacris featuring Sleepy Brown, “Saturday (Oooh Ooooh)” (2001)
Organized Noize had given Ludacris a beat for his self-released 1999 debut “Incognegro,” and he returned the favor after becoming a multiplatinum superstar, asking the group for two songs for his second Def Jam album, “Word of Mouf.” “And just so happen that day I had got some new sounds from Ray,” Wade told Complex. “So I just immediately hit the beat and he loved it, took it, wrote to it, brought it back and it was done.” The giddy, up-tempo party anthem features Sleepy Brown on the chorus and became Ludacris’s fifth song to break the Top 40.
