Grammy-nominated producers discuss their lives, careers and pop music in general at a roundtable event. 

In 2010, the songs were ubiquitous, even if the music producers who helped create them were less well-known: Lady Gaga's “Bad Romance,” Eminem's “Love the Way You Lie,” Cee Lo Green's “[Forget] You” and B.o.B.'s “Nothin' on You” and “Airplanes” blanketed airwaves and filled earbuds with indelible hooks and melodies. 

But those hooks and melodies took work. Though they may drift out of the car stereo effortlessly, much sweat equity was spent crafting them. No one understands that process better than the music producers, whose job it is to turn an idea into a song. If the timing's right, the song hits. 

In advance of the Grammy Awards, which will be held Feb. 13 in downtown Los Angeles, three of today's hottest hitmakers, RedOne (Lady Gaga, Enrique Iglesias), Alex Da Kid (Eminem, B.o.B.) and Ari Levine of the Smeezingtons (Cee Lo, Bruno Mars) sat down with Times pop music critic Ann Powers for the first Los Angeles Times Music Producers Roundtable, an intimate conversation with artists who helped shape 2010's pop-music landscape.

On Saturday evening in front of a sold-out crowd, Powers led a freewheeling conversation that sought to put into words the magic that turns a bunch of notes on paper (or, these days, a hard drive) into a hit song.

“I think the most important thing is having a vision. Being able to see things before other people can see it,” Alexander Grant — better known as Alex Da Kid — told the audience inside the Grammy Museum's Clive Davis Theater. “Most of the songs you're working on, they won't even come out for three or four months at least, maybe longer, so you have to be able to think what's going to be a hit record in six months.”

Nadir Khayat, the Moroccan-born producer known as RedOne, knows something about foresight. His best known collaborator, and muse, is Lady Gaga.

“I just saw the vision,” he said of Gaga. “I just saw this girl that could be this [huge] thing. We went to the studio and talked about Queen, Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen and I'm thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, she knows music,'” Khayat said. “She was inspired. I've always thought of music as one, it's a universal language. That's what we did with the sound of Lady Gaga.”

The 53rd annual Grammy Awards telecast, to take place on Feb. 13 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, will feature a well-rounded collection of sounds and styles, at least based on the initial list of performers. 

Announced Thursday morning, the musicians range from the sturdy country sounds of Miranda Lambert to the grand rock 'n' roll of the Quebecois band Arcade Fire (both of whom will make their Grammy performance debuts), from the king of the two-word profanity, Cee Lo Green, to the reigning Queen of Pomp and Pop, Lady Gaga. Rounding out the list of heavy-hitters will be Detroit rapper Eminem, whose 10 nominations lead the pack, and Katy Perry, who will no doubt be competing with Gaga in the unofficial "most buzzworthy costume" category.  

Keep checking back with Pop & Hiss in the weeks leading up to the award ceremony. We'll be updating the performance list as news arrives, and will be highlighting nominees in some of the lesser-known categories, those whose contributions to the music world in 2010 were every bit as inspired as those who'll be taking center stage.

-- Randall Roberts

Photo: Cee Lo Green performs as part of Gnarls Barkley at the 2007 Grammy Awards. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times

Hip-hop heads, rejoice!

On the heels of their current critically acclaimed albums, hip-hop heavyweights Cee Lo Green and Big Boi have announced they are teaming up for a co-headlining 2011 tour they're calling “Georgia Power,” a shout out to the utility company headquartered in their home city of Atlanta.

As founding members of their own respective rap sets -– Cee Lo is known for his time in Goodie Mob, and Big Boi is one-half of the multi-platinum Outkast. The two groups formed the collective known as the Dungeon Family alongside production team Organized Noize, a nod to the basement studio where they did their early recordings, and became a force in the '90s Southern rap movement.

“We all lived in one house, eating off of one plate. It was a real brotherhood,” Big Boi recalled earlier this year. “It was like a real rap Jedi school.”

The tour marks Green’s return to his solo career after putting it on the backburner for his duo Gnarls Barkley. His recently released album, “The Lady Killer,” debuted at No. 9 on Billboard's 200 chart after selling 41,000 copies in its first week. Those sales are likely the result of his awesome (and fabulously profane) kiss-off, “Forget You,” which became a chart smash after going viral -- the song was covered on this week's episode of "Glee" by Gwyneth Paltrow.

Big Boi already has been on the road touring his solo debut, “Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty,” which remains one of the year's top-rated albums, according to Metacritic (Times pop critic Ann Powers gave the “pleasure cruise of an album” 3 1/2 out of four stars).

Dates for the tour have yet to be announced, but our anticipation for a Dungeon Family reunion, including a long-overdue one from Outkast, begins right about now.

In the meantime, read Powers' profile on Green and get inside the mind of "The Lady Killer."

-- Gerrick D. Kennedy
twitter.com/gerrickkennedy

Photos, from left: Rapper Big Boi performs Sept. 4, 2010, during the "Heineken Inspire" Atlanta concert series. Credit: Rick Diamond / Getty Images. Cee-Lo (born Thomas Callaway) performs as part of Gnarls Barkley. Credit: Stephen Osman / Los Angeles Times

“The Lady Killer,” the latest solo album from Cee Lo Green, sounds like something Don Draper would put on the hi-fi, if he’d been raised in Detroit on equal parts Motown and head-bobbing hip-hop. For every swanky old-school touch, there’s a glassy modernity that makes the album a sexy sonic adventure of loving and leaving.

Green, for all his heartbreaker bravado on the opening track, has also suffered some gut punches, as “... You” and its viral video can attest. Pitching his voice high and low, whiny and tough, Green attacks the song with the kind of Broadway-style gusto that’s fixed him as one of the best performers in the game. Perhaps his biggest flip-off should be reserved for the record industry, who for so long didn’t give this vocal supernova due attention -– until “Crazy,” his missile to the moon with collaborator Danger Mouse for Gnarls Barkley.

Though “The Lady Killer” purports to slay the feminine gender outright, it’s actually more of a standoff situation. On “Love Gun,” a Cupid-as-sniper vamp ready for the next James Bond movie, Green and Paradiso Girl Lauren Bennett take turns circling each other, getting in a bullet here and there, but who knows when either will fall?

Either way, it’s not Green’s caddish ways that charm. Rather, as “Cry Baby” shows, it’s his big heart underneath. Ladies, next time you see a satin hankie tucked into the pocket of a player, know that it might be wet with his own tears.

-- Margaret Wappler

Cee Lo Green
The Lady Killer
Elektra Records
Three stars

Cee-Lo Green has a knack for releasing songs that go viral, which may be the result of writing tunes with hooks centered on acronyms derived from the phrase "fornication under consent of the king." First, it was "Crazy," leaked in 2005 from his Gnarls Barkley collaboration with Danger Mouse -- a song that made mental anguish sound appealing and became the first song to ever top the British charts off digital downloads alone.

Now, he's back with a Bruno Mars-penned soul workout that this family newspaper can't print, even though the odds are that your entire family has already heard the song. Released just a week ago, the ditty is closing in on 4.2 million YouTube plays, a smash so massive that it may inspire OK Go to purchase a new set of treadmills.

You can watch the video at Gorilla Vs. Bear -- complete with Cee-Lo and a trio of pretty back-up singers in lime green dresses watching over a "young Cee-Lo Green" and "The Heartbreaker," a gold-digger-to-be. The plot line is simple, of the sort that concerns your average F. Scott Fitzgerald themes or Kanye West single. Boy loves girl. Girl loves boy, but not as much as she loves "rich boy." Not this Rich Boy.

If you're anything like the rest of America, you'll love it too. And with school starting, it's sure to inspire a lot of kids being thrown out of class. 

-- Jeff Weiss

Photo: Cee-Lo Green. Credit: Fabrice Coffrini / AFP / Getty Images