Active from the mid-late 1980s to the early 2000s, the group was more often known as a duo, Poke & Tone; it was joined by now-former members Frank "Nitty" Pimentel, Alex Richberg and Curt Gowdy to form Trackmasters.
[1] Throughout their career, they have been credited on albums and singles for hip hop and R&B artists including Destiny's Child, Nas, R. Kelly, LL Cool J, Mary J. Blige, Will Smith, Jay-Z, Cam'ron, Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey, The Notorious B.I.G.
[2][3][4] In 1989, Poke connected with childhood friend Frank "Nitty" Pimentel at his recording studio in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York City.
's debut album, and "Be Happy" for Mary J. Blige, as well as producing for other artists including Heavy D, Soul for Real, Method Man and Faith Evans.
Although it was criticized for having a more mainstream or commercialized sound, it was highly successful, topping the Billboard 200 chart for a month straight and is Nas' best selling album to date.
The two singles "Street Dreams" and "If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)" also helped the Trackmasters establish their position as prominent hip hop producers of that era.
Capitalizing on recent success and taking advice from manager Steve Stoute, Trackmasters and Nas created hip-hop supergroup The Firm which also included Foxy Brown, AZ and Nature.
The Trackmasters were in high demand from many record labels for their ability to create radio-friendly records which were not deemed to be "selling out", and around this time they produced singles such as Will Smith's "Miami" and "Men in Black", Jay-Z's "Wishing on a Star", R. Kelly's "Did You Ever Think", and the Trackmasters Remix to Ricky Martin's "Livin' la Vida Loca" which featured Big Pun and Fat Joe.
However, three days before the filming of the video for "Thug Love", which also featured Destiny's Child, 50 Cent was infamously shot nine times near his home in New York.
Columbia Records forced Trackmasters to drop the artist from their label due to bad publicity surrounding the shooting, and as a result the album was shelved leading to a falling out between 50 and Poke & Tone.
They also worked on rapper The Game's 2008 album LAX however, the song "Ain't Fuckin' With You" which they produced was only featured on the Deluxe Edition as a bonus track.
This style can be found in songs such as "I'll Be" by Foxy Brown and Jay-Z, "Street Dreams" by Nas, "Just Crusin'" by Will Smith and "The Roof (Remix)" by Mariah Carey and Mobb Deep.
Additionally, they experimented with different percussion sounds as shown on Fabolous' "Damn", and frequently incorporated turntable scratches at the end of every 8 bars on beats including Jennifer Lopez's "Im Gonna Be Alright (Trackmasters Remix)", and "Jenny From the Block".