DEARBORN, Mich. (CBS DETROIT) – For music producer and recording artist Sharif, making it happen has always been in his DNA.
“I had this faith. I loved it so much that I had to make it happen,” Sharif says.
And now after working on his craft for seven years, the 22-year-old Dearborn native received a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, audio engineering a song for the latest Fast & Furious film, “Fast X.”
“In the movie, there is a song called Reaper with Babyface Ray. I worked on that song as an audio engineer,” Sharif says.
Sharif says producers for the Fast & Furious film originally contacted Detroit rapper Babyface Ray to create and collaborate on a song for the new film. It just so happens that Babyface Ray is also one of Sharif’s clients.
“They reached out to him to do a song for the movie and he reached out to me to engineer it,” he says.
And while “Reaper” is now part of a movie soundtrack that belongs to one of the most successful film franchises ever, Sharif says the song was not created in a multi-million dollar studio as most would imagine. It was produced inside Babyface Ray’s kitchen.
“A lot of people kind of have this thing like it has to be perfect. We have to have a $10 million studio and it is not like that. I feel like the art comes first. You can create great art with whatever you have,” Sharif says.
It is that kind of drive that he says he found at just 15 years old when he entered the studio for the very first time.
“When I had my first session, I just knew. I can’t explain it. I just knew that moment, that day this was it,” Sharif says.
And while being credited as an audio engineer in the “Fast X” soundtrack is a huge accomplishment, Sharif says it does not beat being able to do it while representing who he is and where he is from.
“Dearborn is like, this is kind of unheard of for someone to go out and do music, especially when I started. It was like, you want to do music? Go be a doctor or a lawyer. But it feels good because where we come from, it is definitely not. This isn’t normal,” Sharif says.
What also is not normal for Sharif is being the face of his own songs but moving forward, he is “Making It Happen” with his latest released single.
“I’m used to producing for a lot of bigger artists but ‘Making It Happen’ is the start of a bunch of my own recorded songs so stay tuned,” he says.
