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Producer Series: Soulshock & Karlin

Two Danes who moved to Los Angeles and spent twenty years writing American R&B better than most Americans. Twenty-five tracks from a partnership almost nobody outside the industry can name.

Soulshock & Karlin: Copenhagen to Hollywood

Carsten Schäck (Soulshock) and Kenneth Karlin met in Denmark's hip-hop scene — Soulshock was a battle DJ — and relocated to Los Angeles in the early 1990s. What followed is one of the more improbable runs in R&B: two Scandinavians becoming trusted hands for Toni Braxton, Monica, 2Pac, TLC, Whitney Houston and Fantasia.

Their signature is a certain kind of dramatic, minor-key ballad — heavy on strings and piano, structurally closer to European pop than to American soul, and built for a big vocal performance. That outsider's ear is arguably why the records stand out: they were writing R&B as people who had learned it from records rather than from a scene, and the slight formality that produces gives their ballads real weight.

What to listen for

2Pac's "Do For Love" is the most famous thing here — a posthumous single built on Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do for Love," and one of the warmest records in his catalogue.

Monica's "Before You Walk Out of My Life" was a defining teenage R&B record of the mid-1990s, and Toni Braxton's "I Love Me Some Him" is the ballad craft at its peak.

JoJo's "Leave (Get Out)" — here in the 2018 re-recording, made after a contractual dispute forced her to remaster her own catalogue — is the biggest pop moment. Fantasia's "Truth Is" is the most soulful.

The Seal remixes ("Walk on By," "Don't Cry") show the duo's DJ roots, and Craig David and Sting's "Rise & Fall" is the UK crossover. Lemar's "What If" and Gary Barlow's "My Commitment" confirm how substantial their European work was — a whole career most American listeners never noticed.

Go deeper

Their remix work under the Soulpower banner is where the hip-hop instincts survive most clearly — the TLC "Diggin' On You" remix here is a good example.

For the broader story of European producers shaping American pop, the other essential name is Denniz PoP and the Cheiron studio in Stockholm — the operation behind Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and eventually Max Martin, who is now arguably the most successful songwriter alive. Scandinavia's influence on American pop is enormous and routinely underestimated.

For the American ballad tradition they were working inside: Babyface, Diane Warren and Walter Afanasieff.

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