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Americans may not be allowed to travel to Cuba, but British 2-step star Craig David absorbed the socialist country's rich culture while he recorded his latest album 'Trust Me.' The country's rhythm and dance served up fresh ideas in terms of the production, the lyrics and music."When you're put in a certain place like Cuba, it's so raw and it's so much about capturing the moment rather than thinking about it too much," David tells AOL Music. "I think culturally it was an amazing experience. But musically, you just couldn't help with being inundated with all incredible people around you. You'd walk the streets, take a Kodak camera and take pictures of things, and everything would turn out beautifully. It just has that feeling about it. It definitely had an effect on the record."
For 'Trust Me,' David recorded with producer Martin Terefe (KT Tunstall, James Morrison) who suggested that David up the ante a bit. David recalled Terefe telling him that his records lacked spontaneity and a live feel. He traded in perfection for performance.
"It was his idea to go to Cuba where he knew some great Cuban musicians, but at the same time it would take me out of my comfort zone by the virtue of the technology there is quite limited," David saya. "The way they record would be quite old school on reel-to-reel tapes. It was almost like singing a song down from start to finish. If you like it, that's the one we'll go with. If you don't, then you have to do the whole thing again. It really made me step up my game."
One song on the record that wasn't necessarily inspired by the Cuban sessions was 'Hot Stuff (Let's Dance),' the first single that heavily samples David Bowie's 1980s hit, 'Let's Dance.' David, who was born in 1981, called the U.K. hit an ode to his childhood.
"When I was growing up, I just missed when the original dropped from David Bowie," David said. "I just felt that it would be a great song to sort of cover in some way. But I needed to find a new top-line melody that hopefully would balance it out. If you're going to use a sample, you can't be heavily reliant upon it. You have to think, 'What if I took the sample out, would the song still hold up?' The true test of that is when you do acoustic performances or you break the song down. It's very difficult to recreate that sample on an acoustic guitar."
He seems to have accomplished it. Craig said he hears people singing his lyrics, "Get on the floor/no need to hold back" rather than 'Let's dance.' "For me, it's showing that people were finding the new melody within the song, rather than actually just the sample," David saya. "I don't want to do too much sampling because it's all about new and fresh material. But I just felt like it was one that was begging for me to do something over it."