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Title
"This Is Me...Then"

Singles
Jenny From The Block
All I Have
I'm Glad
Baby I Love U!

History

This Is Me... Then is Jennifer's third studio album (fourth overall), released on November 19th 2002 by Epic Records. The album debuted at number six on the U.S. Billboard 200 selling 314,000 copies during its first week, remaining in the top twenty for twelve weeks and on the chart for thirty-seven weeks. It has sold 2.5 million copies in the United States and over five million copies worldwide.

Track listing

European and Mexican edition

UK bonus-disc edition - Released on March 22, 2004

13. I'm Gonna Be Alright (Track Masters Remix featuring Nas) | 2:52
Producers/Writers: Lopez, Oliver, Rooney, Barnes, Olivier, Cheryl Lorraine Cook, Ronald LaPread

Bonus disc

01. Jenny from the Block (Seismic Crew's Latin Disco Trip) | 6:41
02. All I Have (Ignorants Mix featuring LL Cool J) | 4:03
03. I'm Glad (Paul Oakenfold Perfecto Remix) | 5:47
04. The One (Bastone & Burnz Club Mix) | 7:40
05. Baby I Love U! (R. Kelly Remix) | 4:11

Bruce Swedien on recording This Is Me..Then

Recording vocal & drums on Jennifer Lopez album's.....

Bea and I were both born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I grew up in Minnesota, a witness to bitter, icy-cold winters, complete with snow to the rooftops. However, Bea's family left Minnesota when she was an infant, to be missionaries in India. As a result, she grew up in far-off India, with mild winters and long hot summers. A couple of years ago we both decided that we were no longer interested in cold, snowy, winters in the north. So - we made the decision to move to beautiful, sunny Florida. A place we both love.

Once we had made the decision to move to Florida, both Bea and I had the dreadful thought that the recording industry would look at my move south as early retirement. In other words, people in the music business would think... "Bruce Swedien has moved to Florida.... isn't that where people go when they want to slow down?" Of course nothing was further from my mind. Retirement has never been an option for me. I positively hate the idea. What would I do? Quincy and I have talked about that very concept often. We have come to the conclusion that, traditionally when you retire, you get to travel around alot, and do exactly what you want. Well, we have been doing that all our lives! I love my work. I absolutely adore what I do for a living. I'm as excited now about recording music as I was when I started. There is almost nothing else in my life as important to me as recording good music.

The real central interest of my being is in creating a recording of 'popular' music that entertains the listener in an elegant fashion. Retirement.... who needs it!

Bea and I were enormously relieved when one day, a week or so after we had moved into our new place in Florida, the phone rang.... I picked it up and it was my old pal Benny Medina. It was great to hear from him. At the time Benny was Jennifer Lopez's manager. Benny and I had worked together a few years earlier, with a mutual friend, Quincy Jones. It was during the time when Quincy's record label Qwest Records was a part of Warner Brothers Records. Benny, at that time, was with Warner Brothers Records.

Benny asked me if I would be available to work on Jennifer Lopez's new album for Sony Music. Needless to say, I asked, "When do we start?"

I had heard alot about Jennifer Lopez, but what attracted me to Jennifer's album project is first of all, I love the sound of her voice, but equally important is that I heard that she is not afraid to work hard on a project.

I love to work hard on all my projects and with that kind of commitment from an artist, I felt that I could help take Jennifer to a new level of musical and sonic excellence.

Jennifer Lopez has another aspect to her skills as an artist, that I think is very rare, and it really appeals to me. I have recorded many of the very best artists in the industry, but rarely have I seen a performer with the innate naturalness that Jennifer exhibits. She has that same ease and believability, whether she is an actress on the big screen, or a vocalist in the recording studio.

Many of the top recording artists of today possess a spectacular vocal instrument, and have a great deal of style at their command, but often I find myself having a difficult time believing them, either musically or lyrically. Their dexterity and style is very apparent, but is anyone sincere actually there? To me, to be important, a popular song must make a spiritual connection with the listener. It's true value lies not in the vocal acrobatics of the performer, but in what the performer's musical statement declares to the soul of the listener. It's positively wonderful to record a vocal with Jennifer Lopez and then listen to it later and find yourself believing every phrase, every word, every time you listen.

We started work on Jennifer's new album, at "The Record Plant" in Hollywood. In retrospect, I have a feeling that those sessions were set up to see how we all got along. Of course, we had a great time together, and the song we recorded during those sessions, "You Belong To Me", is I think, one of the best on the album.

One of my first concerns about capturing Jennifer's vocal image for this album was, of course, what microphone and vocal recording equipment should I use for her vocals? I have an incredible microphone collection. Many of my vintage mikes I bought new in the 1950's and 1960's. One of my favorite vocal mikes is my Neumann Tube U-47 I bought it new, in 1956 it is a bit unusual in that it is the long-body, nickel grill, version of the U-47. It is in flawless condition! It is one of Michael Jackson's favorite vocal mikes.

I thought to myself that I'd better see what my Neumann U-47 sounds like on Jennifer. I brought it to the studio, set it up, used it on a vocal with Jennifer, and the result was absolute magic! Clarity, warmth and unbelievable presence! This lovely old mike sounds like it was created just for Jennfer Lopez. Of course, my marvelous Vintage Neve 1084 Class 'A' mike preamp, coupled with my amazing Brand-New Universal 1176ln leveling amplifier didn't hurt either! When Jennifer sang the lead vocal on the song "You're Perfect", I knew I had made the right choice for this piece of music.(Later Jennifer changed the title of this song to "Ben")

Many famous recording artists have sung on my Neumann U-47:

Joe Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Nat 'King' Cole, Michael Jackson, and now Jennifer Lopez.... the list goes on and on.

We worked on Jennifer's album at "The Record Plant", in Hollywood, "The Hit Factory" in New York, at "The Hit Factory/Criteria" in Miami and at "The Studio", in Philadelphia.
Jennifer's album happily afforded me the oportunity to work with some world-class musicians that I aleady knew from previous projects.

What a treat! Recording my pal Omar Hakim playing drums, was an absolute joy! Omar Hakim is, without doubt, one of the absolutely finest pop music drummers in the world. I got so excited when I heard that Omar was coming to the studio to play drums for Jennifer, that I spent three days searching through all my stuff at home, to find the kick drum cover that I had especially made for N'Dugu Chanclers's drum set for the famous recording of Michael Jackson's "Billy Jean". I really wanted to use this unique device on Jennifer's recording!

While I was looking for my bass drum cover, I also searched until I found the 12-inch square isolation flat that I put between the snare drum and the hi-hat to physically isolate those two sound sources. I knew this little device was very important to creating a drum sound for Jennifer that had real "Sonic Personality".

We were recording this part of Jennifer's album at the Hit Factory in New York. I keep a heavy-duty plywood drum platform at the Hit Factory, just for occasions like this, so I had the studio set it up for me for the Omar Hakim drum recording. It is eight feet square. The top of it it is eight inches off the floor. It is very heavily made, braced and counter braced. It is unfinished and unpainted to keep the plywood as porous and natural as possible.

I'm sure that I drove Omar nuts when I started messing around in his drum set with all my stuff! Of course Omar Hakim is the perfect studio gentleman, so he never said a word! What a great guy! I was happy to see that when we listened to the playbacks of the music, he did smile alot.

Early in the project I learned that Verdine White was on a plane to New York from Los Angeles to play bass on Jennifer's album. Verdine White and his incredible brother Maurice White are old pals from my studio days in Chicago. They are very well known for their legendary band "Earth, Wind and Fire". I first met Maurice at Universal Studios in Chicago when he was a session drummer.

Of course I had to get my fabulous bass direct box out for Verdine. It's one of my secret weapons of the recording studio! I knew I was going to be part of a real musical treat with these guys in the studio with us. Verdine White is one of my absolutely favorite bass players in the whole world!

You can hear this technique in action for yourself, as I used it on the Jennifer Lopez song "Baby I Love You" on Jennifers "This is me...Then" album.

The first single to be released from Jennifer's new album, "This Is Me... Then" was "Jenny From The Block" was released November 26, 2002.

The second single to be released from this album features a collaboration with rap super-guru, L.L. Cool J. This single, "All I Have," quickly rose to the #1 position on Billboard Magazine's Hot 100™ music chart since its release this January, 2003. It stayed there at Number One for five consecutive weeks. That's not too bad.

Life is not dull.....

Bruce Swedien

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Thanks to: Erick Kcire