It’s been almost two years since Action Bronson and Harry Fraud first began working together and this Tuesday, they released their first collaborative body of work. “I don’t know how the actual title happened, but I just know that we were kind of talking about how I grew up and my mother drove a Saab," said Fraud. "This is probably like an ’87 900-S old school joint. And [Action Bronson]’s father had a Saab. Somehow that title came up and then we just ran with it." The result is a brief yet engrossing EP, which sees the two New York natives bringing out the best in one another. With Bronsolino currently performing a string of dates overseas, we caught up with Fraud to get the scoop on how “Strictly 4 My Jeeps” came together as well as how Prodigy and Raekwon came to be on the NYC powerhouse cut “Seven Series Triplets.” Saaab Stories’ stories, if you will. Enjoy.

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“72 Virgins” feat. Big Body Bes

It’s "72 Virgins." I don’t know what’s going on with that "2 Virgins" but they’re fixing it. I definitely hemorrhaged on that. Because that makes it sound like Body and Action or me and Action are virgins [Laughs]. Seventy-two virgins is like the reward for the martyr, you know. That was actually the last song that we recorded for the project. What ended up happening was that we had another record that was the intro and the sample got denied. Like, the artist would not clear the sample for us. So [Bronson] was already down in Florida, and we already had the album done, we just needed that first piece. Because, you know, we had 40 songs at least, so we were really trying to piece something together. We thought all the songs were incredible, so we just wanted it to be like a variation, you know what I’m saying, and just not monotonous, and move through like a little feeling.

So that beat was done with me, and I wrote it with my guys Red Walrus and Rusty. There’s no samples on there, that’s all live instrumentation. And we had [written] the piece of music, and then I played the piece of music for Bam Bam not looped or anything like that. And he couldn’t believe—he was like, “that’s not a sample?" Like, "stop lying!” He couldn’t believe it. And so what I did was I took it and just chopped it a little bit on the spot, and he wrote the rap right there. We laid it right there. And Body is always with us, Body is family you know? He was right there to come through and do what he does.

 

Saab Stories
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“Triple Backflip”

We were just in the studio with the beat that was from a sample that I had found, and I was like, "Ooh, this is so feel good," you know what I’m saying? And it just felt so airy, and then when [Bronson] came in and put the shit on he said something like, “Yo this is some Kurt Russell shit.” You know he loves his references and his Nick Nolte and Kurt Russell shit? He was like, “This is Big Trouble In Little China," you know what I’m saying. And then boom, he goes off. We’re very stream of consciousness in that way where we’re just bouncing ideas and whatever comes, comes.

 

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“No Time”

That was probably one of the songs that I’ve worked the hardest on. It started as just drums and a bass line. I wrote it with my friend Matt who’s this like crazy Yogi, hippie dude that I do beats with a lot. We had the drums and he was just playing some other bass line and I was like, “Yo, just catch that one part and get super funky with it and vary it up through the whole beat.” If you listen to that beat, there’s big chunks of him just playing live, and a lot of people don’t even do that shit when they have live people come in. They just take the 4 bar loop. Then I brought in my keyboard player Judd, who’s like a fucking virtuoso on the electric keys and the organs and shit. And once we had it all put together, I called in the trombone player. What we did was we had him stand outside the booth and literally mic'd it with the shittiest mic we could find and shot the trombone into the booth. It came out super thin and distant. That’s what we wanted, for it to sound grimy.

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“The Rockers” feat. Wiz Khalifa

As soon as I played this beat for Bam Bam he was like, “Oh, this is just fucking disgusting.” He loves it when I mix his style of sample with my style of drums. That’s his favorite shit, when I start doing the hi-hats and getting all crazy with the shit. When we were going around and playing people stuff, that was one of the ones where you play it and there wasn’t one person who wasn’t like, “Wow.” We knew that was a good one. What’s so genius with Bronson about the hooks, is that he’ll pick the thing for the hook that you would pick for the rap, but he's just gonna make that one line so significant. He makes the choices that other people aren’t going to make, and that’s what sets him apart. That’s what makes him unique and important and significant as an artist. When motherfucking Dalí started making all the clocks drip and shit, it wasn’t like everybody was making the clocks drip. They were like, “What the fuck is wrong with this guy?” That’s Bronson, you know?

“Strictly 4 My Jeeps”

I was at Alchemist’s house with Bronson and we were just kicking it. I think him and Al were finishing up some shit in one room for their shit. He’s got two studio rooms in his crib so he lets me go crazy in the other one. And I was cooking it with just that loop. Bronson said something like, “You’ve done the 'Shot Caller' record, you’ve done 'I’ma Coke Boy,' you’ve gotta just do one of those for me.” I’m not just a dude that flips old school samples, but people definitely know me for that shit and asked me for beats like that, and I don’t do it just because I don’t want to be that guy, you know?

But anyway, at first I thought the beat was so simple, nobody would like it. But then I did the drums to it, was looping the horn and it started smacking, but it was just too monotonous. So I went into my drive and I had all these keyboard stems that me and my dude Rustie and Walrus had been working on back home. And I pulled up this one, and it just magically worked. It was in the right key, the right tempo. And that’s the line you hear, that little breakdown line where the claps are coming in and stuff. So I scrapped the whole other thing, took that line, put it in and it started to build. We didn’t get back to it for a while back in New York and I was like “Listen, let’s just do that fucking joint we had and go hard with it.”

“No Time”
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“Alligator”

Everybody’s fucking with that man. It’s weird that people are hitting me about that. That was the second to last song we recorded. The second piece we recorded a long time ago but the first piece we just recorded. It was the last thing. [RiFF RAFF]’s supposed to be on the first part. He’s gonna be. We’re just gonna do like a deluxe version or a remix, because we also have a piece that AG Da Coroner did over the second part.

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“Seven Series Triplets” feat. Prodigy and Raekwon

I had this beat, and when I did it I knew it was for Bronson, 100%, so I tucked it. I had been working with P on some music which will come to fruition when it’s time. Bronson recorded his verse and it was nuts, and Prodigy came in and when played it for him he loved it and wrote his shit, and we all just hung out all day in the studio. And then [Bronson] and I had talked about who else are we gonna put on this and what are we going to do for the hook. I don’t remember who came up with it, but someone said “Yo, if we can get Raekwon on this, it’ll be over.” But dudes like Raekwon, they don’t just do shit to do it and they take their time and they’re rockin’ how they’re rocking. Sometimes you got the perfect record for somebody and they don’t do it, and then you feel attacked or angry or whatever.

But Bronson reached out—he and Rae’s brother are close—and I think what sealed it for Rae was when I was at Daddy’s House for a session with Frenchy [Montana] and they were finishing up their shit for Excuse My French. Rae didn’t know who I was. He knew my name but he didn’t know who I was. I sat in the room for 20 minutes and there were mad people and I didn’t want to go over to him and be a weirdo. [Laughs] Then French was like, “Yo, you know Harry Fraud?” and he was like “Yeah.” French was like, “That’s him,” and Rae said, “Awww, you’re a murderer,” and just showed me so much love. So I told him about the record we had sent him and that it would just be special. And he was like, “I love that record, I just need to write the right thing.” Then one night right before Bam Bam went to Sundance or some shit, he hit me up like, “Yo!” and sent me the joint, and it was just so perfect. It was just perfect. That was the hip-hop gods saying, “You guys work hard. This is your reward.”

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