Flex & Hated

Flex&Hated (C. Betz & N. Betz)
Background information
Birth name	Neil Betz and Craig Betz
Genres	Pop R&B Hip hop Alternative hip hop Hip pop
Occupation(s)	Music Impresario, Executive Producer, Record Producer, Musical arranger, Composer, Production Studio owner, Musician
Years active	1992 – present
Associated acts	Danity Kane, P. Diddy

Flex & Hated is an American pop music production team consisting of members Flex and Hated, both born in Wilmington, Delaware. The duo, who are also brothers, started as a rap group known as Cipha in the mid-90s; they released several local records, which caught the attention of Vibe magazine, "40 Acres and Mule" Records, Def Jam, and Violator management. When a chance meeting with a member of the group Prophet Jones led to Flex&Hated's first placement (referred to as 456 Music at the time) on the 2001 Motown-released album Prophet Jones, the duo's focus changed from rapping–writing to music production.

Flex&Hated were fortunate enough to learn under producers, such as DJ Clark Kent, who managed the group early on, to Grammy Award-winning producer Rockwilder, whom the group met in 2003. Before placing records, Flex&Hated paid dues, by being in the studio and working with or submitting tracks for many artists, including 50 Cent, Lil' Kim, Onyx, Black Rob, Carl Thomas, and many more.

The production team's biggest break came in 2007; after meeting Dawn Richard of Danity Kane, the duo began to compile a catalog of songs with Dawn over their pop club style tracks, the result, "Lights Out" a track off the No. 1 Billboard debuting album Welcome to the Dollhouse, by Danity Kane. "Lights Out" was the third highest downloaded song from the Welcome to the Dollhouse LP and charted as No. 1 on Billboard's hot bubbling under 100 singles chart on April 5, 2008. "Lights Out" also reached No. 26 on Billboard's Hot Digital chart and No. 78 on Billboard's Pop 100 chart in 2008.

During the fourth quarter of 2008, Flex & Hated submitted a song/demo for Jamie Foxx's Intuition LP titled "Turn This T.V. Off" which featured rapper Twista. The song was written and referenced by songwriter–artist D. Goode. The demo version of the song was leaked on the internet and was featured on several large music websites. "Turn This T.V. Off" gained much popularity with media and underground DJ's sites so much so that it appeared as track No. 9 on the unofficial advanced street version of Jamie Foxx's Intuition album.

On May 9, 2009. the song "Train Wreck", written by Dawn Richard and produced by Flex&Hated and Eric Price, was leaked on the internet and has been featured on many online music and gossip websites. The song chronicles the formation and breakup of the group Danity Kane and has been received well by many fans anticipated a solo project from Dawn Richards. As of February 2012 Flex&Hated has produced the single "Dirty Dancin" by artist Pooch. The single released in October 2011 has garnered over 105,000 views on YouTube, and is slated to be the duo's biggest accomplishment to date.

During the year of 2013, Flex&Hated worked on building solid relationships with major A&Rs within the industry, this has resulted in Flex&Hated submitting music for major artists spanning into the urban pop lane. Flex&Hated are currently submitting music for upcoming releases for Rihanna, T-Pain, Fantasia, Monica, and Diddy.

In late 2014, Flex&Hated crafted 3 tracks slated to appear on upcoming rap vet and former RocaFella artist Beanie Sigel's comeback LP to be released on Rick Ross's MMG label. Flex&Hated also produced several songs on rap legend, K-Solo's upcoming 2015 LP. Flex&Hated have been asked to contribute production effort to pop star Rihanna's upcoming 8th album tentatively entitled "R8", slated for release 4th quarter 2014 or first quarter of 2015.

Discography and credits

Credits

Year	Album/Song	Artist	Credit
2015	TBD	K-Solo	Producer
2015	TBD	Beanie Sigel	Producer
2010	Last Train to Paris (Unreleased ) /"Before"	P.Diddy/Dirty Money	Producer
2009	GoldenHeart (single)/"Trainwreck"	Dawn Richard	Producer
2008	Intuition (Demo)/ "Turn This T.V. Off"	Jamie Foxx feat. Twista	Producer
2008	Welcome to the Dollhouse /"Lights Out"	Danity Kane	Writer, Producer
2001	Prophet Jones/"Prophet Jones (Track 06)"	Prophet Jones	Producer (listed as Sharp for 456Music)

Awards and nominations

Year	Album/Artist/Song	Award/Nomination
2008	Welcome To The Dollhouse/Danity Kane/"Lights Out"	Gold Certification Award from RIAA

References

http://www.billboard.com/biz/charts/2008-04-05/bubbling-under-hot-100-singles