Inside hitmaker Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds’ SSL Studio

Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, the prolific award-winning hitmaker behind chart-topping songs by artists such as Toni Braxton, Mary J. Blige, Madonna and Mariah Carey, has upgraded the mixing console in the A room at his Brandon’s Way production facility in Hollywood.

The two-room private complex, which opened in 1996, now features a new 48-fader Solid State Logic Duality Fuse SuperAnalogue console with SSL δelta-Control and integrated Fusion coloration processor, which joins an SSL Duality in the Studio B.

Babyface's history with making hit records with SSL consoles dates back to the mid-'80s, during his collaboration with Antonio "L.A." Reid.

"SSL has always been at the forefront of my hit making formula,” said Edmonds. “Nothing else allows me to achieve the level of production excellence."

Babyface, an 11-time Grammy-winner, four of them for Producer of the Year, a Recording Academy Trustee Award-winner and a 2017 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, has worked with a who’s-who of pop and R&B royalty, including artists such as Boyz II Men, Bobby Brown, Aretha Franklin, Katharine McPhee, Vanessa Williams, Celine Dion, Phil Collins and many, many others.

The very first production completed in Studio A at Brandon’s Way, which was named to celebrate the birth of Babyface’s first child, was a collaboration with Stevie Wonder, How Come, How Long. The song was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals.

Most recently, in November 2022, Babyface released his 11th solo album, Girls Night Out, a 13-song collection featuring some of R&B’s most iconic singers, including Ella Mai, Kehlani, Ari Lennox, Muni Long and Queen Naija, which was written and produced at Brandon’s Way.

“We had a 96-fader SSL 9000 J Series in Studio A, one of the first,” said Paul Boutin, who has been chief engineer at Brandon’s Way for more than two decades. "This replaced the SSL 4080 G+ that was originally installed."

Studio A eventually became a writing room, with Babyface favoring the B room for most of his production projects and the 9096J was used less frequently.

“I have a Duality in my room, so I know the board,” said Boutin. “So he suggested a second Duality to replace the aging J Series desk”.

The recently installed console in Studio A is SSL’s newer Duality Fuse version, which features a Fusion analogue processor integrated into the center section. Fusion offers six analogue coloration tools for adding tonal character, weight and space to stereo stems.

The new SSL Duality Fuse is outfitted with angled producer’s bays at each end, matching the footprint of the 9096J previous installed in Brandon Way’s A control room. The console also includes SSL δelta-Control to seamlessly integrate SSL’s analogue console automation with today’s DAW-based workflows.

Boutin had been working on a project with Babyface at Record Plant for about six months when he was invited to take a full time position as an assistant at the new facility when it opened in 1996.

At Brandon’s Way he has collaborated with Babyface on two dozen Gold records, 15 Platinum records and 16 multi-Platinum releases, and has participated on three Grammy-winning albums while garnering a further 18 Grammy nominations.

I'll Make Love to You by Boyz II Men was written by Babyface. Released in 1994 as the lead single from their second album, II, it spent 14 weeks atop the US Billboard Hot 100. It was also the third best performing song in the 1990s on Billboard, and won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals and was nominated for Record of the Year.