Todd Edwards
Todd Edwards is a Garage producer from Bloomfield, New Jersey, and undoubtedly the Trope Codifier of sampling; he is known for taking small samples from many various songs and mixing them together, something not heard of before he started making music.
Beginning on 111 East Records, he released the single "Get Carried Away" under the name "The Todd Edwards Project" in 1992. This song was very much unlike anything he had made since, as it's more like a regular dance track, and doesn't contain his signature sample chopping style he is famous for today.
And year later, he released another single, called "Guide My Soul" on the New York-based label, Nervous, this time as "The Messenger". This one was closer to his usual sampling style.
A year after that, he released the single "The Praise", now as "The Sample Choir". The same year, he made many tracks for i! Records, a then new New Jersey-based label. One of them, "Saved My Life", became a huge club hit, and gave him his place in the Electronic Music world. He has made remixes for a large pool of artists, such as St. Germain, Daft Punk, (also provided the vocals and co-produced their song "Face To Face") Justice (as Sunshine Brothers), The Superman Lovers, Beyoncé, Kraftwerk and Enya.
He has also dabbled in other genres, such as Smooth Jazz (under the name Clever), Funk, and Disco.
He is also a Christian, which greatly influences his music.
- Auto-Tune: Used either for his own vocals or his remixes (to match the singer's vocals with his track). Often used very heavily in the former's case.
- I Have Many Names: The Sunshine Brothers, the Sample Choir, the Messenger, and the Todd Edwards Project are all aliases of which he as released songs under.
- Mondegreen: It's fun trying to interpret his sample-chopping as actual lyrics. "I'm Hopeful" alone gives us, "I made a poopie" (alternatively, Caterpie) "at the movies", and. during the B-Section you can hear someone shouting what sounds like "NIGGA". There's also a Title Drop manufactured with the vocal samples, but seeing as how that's most likely intentional, that's not this trope.
- Sampling: If he isn't the Trope Codifier, no one is.
- Signature Style: Most of his songs follow this pattern: opening drumbeat, usually with lots of shuffling snares, remove drumbeat to let the samples play, bring drumbeat back in along with a bassline, play a different sample pattern, go back to the previous one/introduce a new one, repeat previous step, remove some samples, remove all samples so only the bassline and drums are heard, take out bassline, start from step 3.
- Subliminal Seduction: Being Christian, he tends to insert Christian messages in his songs (sometimes via Manipulative Editing). Aside from this, in his dub mix of St. Germain's Alabama Blues, you can hear the words "Jesus loves you" throughout the song, "Incidental" has the words "I follow God" and "I surrender", and his dub mix of Lonyo's "In Ayia Napa" has the lyrics, "Perfect paradise... it's Jesus. Where all the people go to Jesus, Jesus." Other times, he's less subtle. Other times, his songs are just straight-up Gospel songs.