Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Stage podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today he's musician, songwriter producer Jeff Baskar. Jeff
Speaker 1: has worked with Kanye West, Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift,
Speaker 1: the Rolling Stone. Even hear him on Uptown Funk with
Speaker 1: Mark Ronson. Jeff, So good to have you, honor to
Speaker 1: be here, Bob. So, what's up. You moved to Big Sir. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm in the process of setting up a studio there
Speaker 1: and having a kind of sanctuary, if you will, outside
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles kind of recently after the pandemic, started
Speaker 1: doing more traveling again and realizing how much I missed that,
Speaker 1: how much I loved being in different places and being
Speaker 1: in different and vironments. And you know, and you mentioned
Speaker 1: Kanye like we you used to do these excursions in
Speaker 1: Hawaii or Wyoming and these really beautiful, uh stunning places
Speaker 1: of nature, venues of nature. So I came across this
Speaker 1: property in Big Sir and jumped on it because it
Speaker 1: just checked so many boxes for me. Um. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I'm looking I'm looking forward to to sharing not only
Speaker 1: musical experiences but also kind of in the tradition of
Speaker 1: Big sir, all kinds of human potential, meditation, health, wellness experiences.
Speaker 1: So there's my plug from my my new studio. Come
Speaker 1: come work with me. Okay, you have a studio, but
Speaker 1: it's a studio part of your house or part of
Speaker 1: your properties. Yeah, it's actually a really amazing compound that
Speaker 1: the studio was built by the former owner, uh, in
Speaker 1: collaboration with an architect. Hey, Mickey Munich was known for
Speaker 1: uh designing all the structures on the post ranch in
Speaker 1: and all throughout Big Sir. He's kind of this like
Speaker 1: organic modernist and uh, it's an amazing facility that yeah,
Speaker 1: just it just kind of was kind of too good
Speaker 1: to be true. And it's in an interesting, such a
Speaker 1: beautiful setting. So yeah, it's it's gonna be. It's a
Speaker 1: compound of all those kind of things. Okay, you know
Speaker 1: the road constantly gets closed, etcetera. Why Big sur is
Speaker 1: opposed to anywhere else and you think people will come? Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, good question. You know It's funny when I
Speaker 1: when I first came across this place, UM, I asked
Speaker 1: myself the same question. UM, and I think maybe maybe
Speaker 1: part of the answer is that, um, those who want
Speaker 1: to be there will come. And that's kind of been
Speaker 1: part of my producer practice, or at least something I've
Speaker 1: learned over the years is I do my best work
Speaker 1: when the when, and it's uh, it's kind of meant
Speaker 1: to be, you know, like people are coming to get
Speaker 1: from me what they want from me and I and
Speaker 1: I give that so we'll see, you know. Otherwise I'll
Speaker 1: just be up there drinking my well water and looking
Speaker 1: at the at the incredible view and uh, I hope
Speaker 1: you'll come up. That's how this came about, right, I
Speaker 1: sent you the emails had come to Big sir. I
Speaker 1: just got inspired. I haven't been to Big Surf for
Speaker 1: a while, so, uh, you know, it's really a great
Speaker 1: place right over there over the ocean. Remember driving up
Speaker 1: Highway One really fucked up out of my mind. I'm stunned.
Speaker 1: I'm still here arguing with my girlfriend at the same
Speaker 1: time in the car. But forgetting that. You also email
Speaker 1: me about new music. What is the state of new
Speaker 1: music today where you do most of your work? Right? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm not gonna say I have my some
Speaker 1: like exclusive on that topic, but I mean I will
Speaker 1: tell you kind of on the same vein of like
Speaker 1: the post pandemic. You know, like I became a father
Speaker 1: about six years ago, and at that time, uh, I
Speaker 1: kind of took a break. I've been working hard. I've
Speaker 1: done a lot of music, done a lot of records,
Speaker 1: really fulfilled a lot of dreams of mine that were
Speaker 1: way beyond what I ever thought I would accomplish. And
Speaker 1: you know, it took the time out to kind of
Speaker 1: settle into parenthood adulthood. And after a year or two,
Speaker 1: I came back in and low and behold, like music
Speaker 1: really changed a lot. You know, Streaming started to take hold,
Speaker 1: social media started to take hold. There's all these new artists,
Speaker 1: Like the turnover kind of happened, and I I was
Speaker 1: starting to feel quite old and left out and and
Speaker 1: not connected to the quote unquote culture. And you know,
Speaker 1: like this young Thug record that I did with Nate
Speaker 1: and we performed on Saturday Night Live Going, you know,
Speaker 1: they invited We had been talking all pandemic about doing
Speaker 1: something together and then finally there was an opportunity where
Speaker 1: they invited us to come to Atlanta, Nate and I
Speaker 1: and being in the room with Thug, Gonna Metro Booming,
Speaker 1: Charlie Handsome, all these kind of like young lions or
Speaker 1: not so young lions anymore, because they're also kind of
Speaker 1: approaching thirty right like, and they're becoming adults. They're kind
Speaker 1: of coming into a more complete holistic all such talented,
Speaker 1: brilliant guys. It really reminded me of like, you know,
Speaker 1: I got my start in jazz and that was what
Speaker 1: really turned me onto music. It reminded me of that
Speaker 1: feeling and that culture and and and and Black culture
Speaker 1: being immersed in that. That's really where my heart is.
Speaker 1: Um So to your question, you know, the state of
Speaker 1: it after kind of kind of being feeling quite disconnected
Speaker 1: from you, come on, father, You're not up in the
Speaker 1: club anymore. You're not out in the streets, so to speak,
Speaker 1: to connect with those guys and also feel like their
Speaker 1: admiration and respect for me and what how I had
Speaker 1: influenced them through my work with Kanye and beyond, you know,
Speaker 1: like We Are Young. It's kind of like an amazingly
Speaker 1: embraced record in uh, you know, Travis Scott posted this
Speaker 1: this very viral video of him rocking out till We
Speaker 1: Are Young in the club and and that was specifically
Speaker 1: like engineered when we made that record, I was like,
Speaker 1: I specifically, we need black people to funk with this
Speaker 1: album in this band, and you know that kind of
Speaker 1: gulf between white indie music, indie rock, and black music,
Speaker 1: you know. So that was like a really exciting moment
Speaker 1: for me and then to kind of reconnect with those
Speaker 1: guys and feel the energy and the creativity. And in
Speaker 1: Atlanta also, which I had where had not spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time. Um, to get back to the question
Speaker 1: what is the state of new music? You know, I
Speaker 1: think it's incredibly vibrant and um, I think you could
Speaker 1: compare it to the advent of rock and roll, pre beatles,
Speaker 1: you know, the way black musicians were creating a genre
Speaker 1: that was mysterious, kind of opaque to the outside ear,
Speaker 1: but exciting, dangerous and cool above all else. Right, Because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, if you can boil
Speaker 1: anything down to its essence that matters. It's coolness, right,
Speaker 1: And that's what music. That's why Apple Tech, anyone, actors, uh,
Speaker 1: finance bros. They all want to be in music, because
Speaker 1: why because it's cool? Right. So I think there's like
Speaker 1: a I was so pleasantly, um kind of moved, to
Speaker 1: be honest, It was just such a wonderful experience to
Speaker 1: feel the potency expertise. Mike Will made it as another guy.
Speaker 1: It's I've known for a long time that we kind
Speaker 1: of connected more and more recently, and just to see
Speaker 1: how formidable these guys are musically, I think the state
Speaker 1: of new music is in awesome hands. Not to mention,
Speaker 1: I mean, um, the empowerment that all these tools like
Speaker 1: YouTube and being able to publish your own music, to
Speaker 1: create your own music, you know. I think there's a
Speaker 1: lot of on the other side talk about how it's
Speaker 1: kind of made music horrible, um, and it makes it
Speaker 1: too easy, which are there are some valid points to that,
Speaker 1: but I think the counterpoint to that is it's also
Speaker 1: been incredibly empowering. That's how I started producing because I
Speaker 1: was in jazz. I wanted to be a jazz arranger
Speaker 1: and a composer, and I had to write out these
Speaker 1: goddamn big band charts and my wrist is about to
Speaker 1: break with my calligraphy pen, and I started using the
Speaker 1: computer to print out the sheet music and then it
Speaker 1: would play the music back to me. Also, um, and
Speaker 1: that was an empowering moment to be able to not
Speaker 1: have to write all these charts out get a band together,
Speaker 1: have them butcher it and actually hear my music. So
Speaker 1: short answer, it's incredibly vibrant. And I think also at
Speaker 1: a tipping point where we're about to see and hear
Speaker 1: what's next. There hasn't been on next in a while, right,
Speaker 1: so I think they're also the youth is a is
Speaker 1: really getting tired of the robot music and the computer music,
Speaker 1: and they want to hear some really vibrant musical organic
Speaker 1: uh substance, and where I think we're about to feel
Speaker 1: that what is the Jeff Baskers special sauce? What are
Speaker 1: people looking for when they want to work with you?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll flip it on its head and maybe
Speaker 1: this is what they're looking for. Is I want to
Speaker 1: know what they're looking for and I can. I mean,
Speaker 1: as a producer, you know, I have a few different
Speaker 1: mode modes. You know. Sometimes I'm a creator. You know
Speaker 1: a lot of the music I did with Kanye or
Speaker 1: Rihanna or Beyonce or Alicia Keys, I created all that music.
Speaker 1: I wrote it from scratch. I played all the instruments,
Speaker 1: I wrote the lyrics, I sang the demo, and I
Speaker 1: have a very strong creative identity and potency. But as
Speaker 1: a producer. My ultimate scenario is when someone comes to
Speaker 1: me and knows exactly what they want to do. UM,
Speaker 1: and it's not about my sauce, but it's, uh, maybe
Speaker 1: it is my sauce, you know. I mean, I'll give
Speaker 1: you one example, like with Some Nights, which is about
Speaker 1: to turn ten years old. I think um or may
Speaker 1: have recently, you know, and and the the incredible Nate
Speaker 1: Rus you know, who kind of sought me out when
Speaker 1: he wanted to add a bit more of an urban
Speaker 1: MPC driven texture to his music UM and started listening
Speaker 1: to a lot of urban music quote unquote urban mus
Speaker 1: uzic and just my name started popping up on the
Speaker 1: credits a lot, and so he sought me out. And
Speaker 1: you know, I you know, it's been documented in many
Speaker 1: interviews how I turned him down multiple times until he
Speaker 1: kind of just by force of will collaborate with me
Speaker 1: and saying me, we are young in my hotel room,
Speaker 1: and I booked a studio the next day and I
Speaker 1: was like, we're recording this. That just made my life
Speaker 1: so easy. UM. And in that case, I think it's
Speaker 1: you know, a real maybe maybe I'm gonna guess I
Speaker 1: haven't really contemplated this before, but I can say for
Speaker 1: sure that you know, when I make a record, I
Speaker 1: have a very specific goal. I want to reach into
Speaker 1: your chest and rip your heart out, you know. I
Speaker 1: want to make music that moves people emotionally as a
Speaker 1: life changing moment. I want my music to be on
Speaker 1: the level of you lost that love and feeling or
Speaker 1: um you know, uh nothing compares to you. You know,
Speaker 1: so I have a very strong emotional uh component to
Speaker 1: my music that perhaps that's what people uh resonate with.
Speaker 1: You know, our people are you having? Do you have
Speaker 1: enough of the name that it's always people seeking out
Speaker 1: you or do you ever say, hey, I want to
Speaker 1: work with that person and you reach out, you know,
Speaker 1: and not not because I don't want to, but I
Speaker 1: have you know, I got kind of I hit a
Speaker 1: magic moment from working with Kanye, right, Like that was
Speaker 1: the moment when and it's still true to some extent,
Speaker 1: like he's got the mightas touched Like if you get
Speaker 1: the Kanye stamp of approval, love him or hate him
Speaker 1: or whatever controversies surrounding him at the moment, it's pretty undeniable.
Speaker 1: He's a genius and an incredible curator of talent. So
Speaker 1: I was very fortunate to kind of springboard from working
Speaker 1: with him two and being able to work with and
Speaker 1: having worked with every all of the most amazing talented
Speaker 1: people to then leaving his camp and going right into
Speaker 1: Some Nights with Nate, which was like a huge album
Speaker 1: at the time, right it was. They were like nominated
Speaker 1: Best they won Grammy Best New Artist and we won
Speaker 1: Best Song and it was like a big moment. So
Speaker 1: after that that led to like the Rolling Stones, Taylor Swift,
Speaker 1: uh you know. Um Bruno I had known since he
Speaker 1: was seventeen years old, had moved to l A and
Speaker 1: that's when I got my first placement on the game's
Speaker 1: first album, and Mike Lynn, who used to be Dr
Speaker 1: Dre's and R, said hey, I just signed this kid
Speaker 1: from Hawaii. Should work with him. And then I went
Speaker 1: and did my Kanye thing and then he became Bruno Mars.
Speaker 1: But then that's how I met Mark Ronson because he
Speaker 1: said for my second album, I want you and Mark
Speaker 1: to produce it, and then that became an you know,
Speaker 1: I'm the huge fan of Marks and um Um. It
Speaker 1: was just kind of a flow of being kind of
Speaker 1: lead to these opportunities and now much more recently, I'm
Speaker 1: kind of seeking out talent and and not even really actively,
Speaker 1: but you know, I really do kind of try to
Speaker 1: like stay within myself and then see what opportunities come
Speaker 1: my way. And a lot of opportunities do come my
Speaker 1: way where I think it's a little bit of the
Speaker 1: name recognition or my past achievements that people want me
Speaker 1: to work with them or a and our guys or
Speaker 1: label heads want me to work with someone, but it's
Speaker 1: maybe not exactly for the right reasons. Then I'll get
Speaker 1: in the room and they'll be, well, can you make
Speaker 1: it sound a little more like this? And I'm like, actually, no,
Speaker 1: I can't. Like I'm me. You know that took me
Speaker 1: a while to kind of realize that, because I do
Speaker 1: also stretch myself and want to I'm so curious about
Speaker 1: all kinds of genres and I want to explore them
Speaker 1: and I want to I love learning and I love
Speaker 1: appreciating all kinds of different music. But you know, to
Speaker 1: be honest, it's usually kind of just to letting the
Speaker 1: universe guide what comes my way and trying to say
Speaker 1: this is the right project for me right now. You
Speaker 1: mentioned working with Beyonce and Kanye, were you essentially at
Speaker 1: a completed song today's song credits? Canna have fifteen writers
Speaker 1: on a song, Let's be specific. You know you're telling
Speaker 1: me you write these songs, but if you look at
Speaker 1: the credits or all these other things, So what is
Speaker 1: it that you do and what is it that they do? Well?
Speaker 1: I mean, it can it can be different scenarios can
Speaker 1: be different things, right. I'm kind of at the beginning
Speaker 1: when I wasn't anybody nobody knew my name or wanted
Speaker 1: to place my music. I was sitting at home making
Speaker 1: these songs. That was kind of how it started. And
Speaker 1: then you get into like, hey, say like Uptown Funk right,
Speaker 1: Like there's a good example kind of in the middle
Speaker 1: where the credits are gonna say Mark Ronson, Bruno Mars,
Speaker 1: Philip Lawrence, Jeff Basker, um and uh and then the
Speaker 1: Gap band after the lawsuit. But um, you know, that's
Speaker 1: an amazing thing in music too, is that you can
Speaker 1: collaborate and have a I think sometimes in in l
Speaker 1: A there's like the the publishing uh session shuffle right
Speaker 1: where everyone gets in a room and there's a hundred
Speaker 1: rooms in l A where everyone's right in the same song, right, um,
Speaker 1: But then there's like you find your collaborator, right, like
Speaker 1: you've Paul McCartney and John Lennon, right make Jagger and
Speaker 1: Keith Richards. You find that foil that the dark and
Speaker 1: the light, the push and the pull that kind of
Speaker 1: bring the best out of each other. And in some
Speaker 1: cases that might be three or four or five people, right.
Speaker 1: Or in hip hop, it used to be like the
Speaker 1: producer made the beat and the rapper wrapped on it.
Speaker 1: They're writing the song, they're creating this song. Then it
Speaker 1: kind of turned into like okay, like may you've got
Speaker 1: a keyboard player came in and played some things, and
Speaker 1: it's it starts becoming very not democratic, but like it's
Speaker 1: a kind of an equality where whoever contributed what deserves
Speaker 1: some writing credit. I think like the the structure and
Speaker 1: the the litigious nature of publishing and how it was
Speaker 1: created used to be very used to be like the
Speaker 1: melody and the lyrics, right, So there was kind of
Speaker 1: definitions that have warped and changed over time. So in
Speaker 1: some cases I write the whole song. In some cases
Speaker 1: someone might have all complete song written and I might say,
Speaker 1: you know what you need, like a melodic cook here
Speaker 1: and then I write this melodic cook and I get
Speaker 1: my little five percent or something. But every situation is different,
Speaker 1: and you know, when you talk to painters or people
Speaker 1: in different artistic disciplines, being able to collaborate like that
Speaker 1: is not It just doesn't exist. And and collaboration is
Speaker 1: one of the beautiful things about music. So a lot
Speaker 1: of times I think maybe in cases where people are like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, today's music is just written by by committee,
Speaker 1: by twenty people, it's like, that's also called collaboration, you know,
Speaker 1: in collaboration is a beautiful thing, having a conversation, talking,
Speaker 1: bouncing ideas off of each other, someone being there when
Speaker 1: you're alone and you're saying, oh, that's a stupid idea.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say that, and someone's like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: that's a great line. That's great. You need that. And
Speaker 1: you get elevated, uh content and creative fruit out of
Speaker 1: situations like that. Right, So that's kind of kind of
Speaker 1: one take on that question. So you're born in Kansas City, Kansas,
Speaker 1: and for those of us have been to Kansas, really
Speaker 1: the Kansas City we think of his Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas.
Speaker 1: And you grow up in New Mexico. Give me the
Speaker 1: backs story and all that. Yeah, well, I mean take
Speaker 1: it even back before that. You know, my dad's a
Speaker 1: from from India, from northern from fron job Lahore as
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, where which is now Pakistan. And
Speaker 1: our family had to flee Pakistan during the partition because
Speaker 1: we're Hindu. And then my grandfather moved to the United
Speaker 1: States to study psychiatry at the Manager Institute in I
Speaker 1: believe it's in Topeka, Kansas. So my dad came to
Speaker 1: the United States as like an eight year old brown
Speaker 1: Indian kid dropped in the fifties in the Midwest in Kansas.
Speaker 1: He ended up going both my parents went to KU
Speaker 1: University and my dad graduated from KU Medical School, which
Speaker 1: is in Kansas City, Kansas, whereas the hospital I was born.
Speaker 1: So that's how I wound up in Kansas. Then he
Speaker 1: my mom went to high school in New Mexico and
Speaker 1: my my dad had to do his residency. He did
Speaker 1: it for like the Health Service and Indian Reservations and
Speaker 1: they moved to New Mexico and then they got divorced
Speaker 1: when I was about five years old old. So I
Speaker 1: kinda went back and forth, but mainly grew up. Grew
Speaker 1: up in New Mexico in a little town called Sokoro,
Speaker 1: which was an awesome place to grow up, and it
Speaker 1: was about like ten thousand people. But we got the
Speaker 1: v l A there. I don't know if you've, like
Speaker 1: you've seen the movie Contact, when Jodie Foster is in
Speaker 1: this big satellite. It raised the most powerful radio telescope.
Speaker 1: So you have all these astrophysicists, Carl Sagan, all these
Speaker 1: this beautiful horizon, all this space, and you know that
Speaker 1: kind of really influenced my sound too. I think like
Speaker 1: I was really into Pink Floyd like when I when
Speaker 1: I was one of the first things, like when I
Speaker 1: really started like getting in the headphones and just listening
Speaker 1: to music and this very expansive wide uh sound. You know,
Speaker 1: it's kind of similar to the visual landscape and um
Speaker 1: you know, like think of like shine on you, crazy Diamond.
Speaker 1: You know that's like a New Mexico sky and desert.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of my childhood. Then I discovered jazz.
Speaker 1: My mom kind and my mom's families from Ohio, like Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: Dutch Ohio family that and her dad kind of played
Speaker 1: by ear like Oregon and trombone and really talented actually, Um,
Speaker 1: and then my mom could kind of play these like
Speaker 1: jazzy arrangements, you know. She used to play like tenderly,
Speaker 1: you know. And and I was here these like chords
Speaker 1: like what is that? You know? And I'm growing up
Speaker 1: also listening to the BGS and Kiss and uh Empire
Speaker 1: strikes Back soundtrack. That was my That was my record
Speaker 1: collection when I was a little kid. I had the
Speaker 1: Muppet Show Empire Strikes Back and Uh Kiss Destroyer, you know.
Speaker 1: And I got to meet Bob Ezrian actually he reached
Speaker 1: out to me when we did some nights. I was
Speaker 1: super awesome and had dinner with him and Alice Cooper,
Speaker 1: Um but one of my heroes, and UM discovered jazz
Speaker 1: checked out an album from the library of Miles Davis,
Speaker 1: and then I was just hooked and just got everything
Speaker 1: that Miles Davis ever did, and and also whoever worked
Speaker 1: with him. I just started listening to all that and
Speaker 1: I fell in love with jazz. Played in my high
Speaker 1: school jazz band, and I spent a year in Germany
Speaker 1: as an exchange student, got some more opportunities to see
Speaker 1: more music and have better teachers that weren't available to
Speaker 1: me in New Mexico and then I went to Berkeley
Speaker 1: College of Music. But you know, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a nice place to have just the silence of your
Speaker 1: own thoughts. And also kind of had like a bit
Speaker 1: of a rough childhood, you know, with my parents divorce
Speaker 1: and everything, and music has always been like a really
Speaker 1: important emotional outlet for me to kind of process uh things. Um,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have the kind of cultural richness that
Speaker 1: maybe other places, like you know, Mike mark Ronson, you know,
Speaker 1: like he really kind of brought me into this world
Speaker 1: of culture and took me under his wing and introduced
Speaker 1: me to everyone. And you know, he is just the
Speaker 1: consummate gentleman of ficionado cultured guy. Um And I think
Speaker 1: he even kind of mentioned once we're talking on this topic,
Speaker 1: it's like, you know, you're just thirsty for it. So
Speaker 1: now I'm in this phase. And like with Kanye, like
Speaker 1: he's such a just such a just a cultured person,
Speaker 1: you know, but similar from the Midwest, you know, like
Speaker 1: we kind of had that simpatico, kind of down to
Speaker 1: earth Midwestern nous mixed with this really highbrow kind of
Speaker 1: space in our practice. Um. So that's kind of my story.
Speaker 1: How do your parents meet and to either of them
Speaker 1: get remarried? Do you have any siblings? Yeah, so my
Speaker 1: mom got remarried briefly. They met at at university. My
Speaker 1: mom was married briefly to another dentist. She's a dentist
Speaker 1: in Colorado, and my dad's a physician and he got remarried.
Speaker 1: And I do have two step sisters and a half
Speaker 1: brother and a half sister who we all grew up
Speaker 1: in the same household, so you know, we're pretty close.
Speaker 1: And you know, we were like a real family with
Speaker 1: all of our fighting and being sleeping on top of
Speaker 1: each other and go on ski trips in the suburban
Speaker 1: and uh breaking down on the side of the road,
Speaker 1: and I had a reel. So I went from being
Speaker 1: like an only child to having like being the oldest
Speaker 1: of all these siblings. So yeah, okay, wait, hey, why
Speaker 1: were we all living in the house and be we're
Speaker 1: exactly is this in New Mexico? So it's like south
Speaker 1: of Albuquerque due south on Oh wow, so like it's
Speaker 1: like in the middle of the state basically, So it's
Speaker 1: kind of between like uh, truth or consequences in Albuquerque,
Speaker 1: you know, like right dead smack in the middle. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: like kind of on the Santa Fe trail and Rio
Speaker 1: Grand Rio Grand just follows right straight down, and so
Speaker 1: it's like Rio Grand Valley, Okay, and you're all living
Speaker 1: in the same house. Explained that to me. Well, when
Speaker 1: my dad remarried, she had two kids, they had two
Speaker 1: more kids, and I was living with them. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you were living with your dad, not with your mother.
Speaker 1: I lived with my mom until I was eight, Um,
Speaker 1: and then I uh, you know, my parents were married
Speaker 1: until I was five. So I lived with my mom
Speaker 1: for three years and then and then I moved back
Speaker 1: with my dad when I was eight years old. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it was like that age where
Speaker 1: I started getting a little bit of like trouble at school.
Speaker 1: I was having like uh yeah, I was having I
Speaker 1: was having like a tough time, and I think my
Speaker 1: mom was like, I think the phrase she uses like,
Speaker 1: I think it's time for you to move with your dad.
Speaker 1: Because I was getting a little and she was also graduated,
Speaker 1: she wasn't met, she was in dental school. She was
Speaker 1: kind of having a tough time, and um, it was
Speaker 1: just like the right time for me to live with him,
Speaker 1: and and definitely kind of instilled a little more of
Speaker 1: that like Indian discipline in me when I needed it.
Speaker 1: And and also like you know, young young boy, you
Speaker 1: want to live with your dad, You're kind of like
Speaker 1: having that kind of feeling like, um, he's like your hero.
Speaker 1: And and then shortly after that he met his current
Speaker 1: wife and she had two kids, and it was like whoa,
Speaker 1: this is like a, this is not exactly what I
Speaker 1: had in mind. But and then they had two kids.
Speaker 1: But you know, we worked it out. We we we
Speaker 1: we uh. We had a lot of ups and downs
Speaker 1: and and that's family life, right. So what kind of
Speaker 1: kid were you? Good in school? Bad at school? A
Speaker 1: lot of friends, loner. I was good at school, but
Speaker 1: kind of definitely like always through the outsider or the
Speaker 1: marginal man, as my dad puts it, you know, like
Speaker 1: he I think he felt like that, being like a
Speaker 1: Indian kid in America and never really belonged anywhere, but
Speaker 1: you kind of can fit in a lot of places. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I lived in Colorado. I was a little more dark skin,
Speaker 1: not this kind of blonde Colorado kid named Kyle or something,
Speaker 1: and like I didn't quite fit in there. And then
Speaker 1: I moved to New Mexico, and I'm the gringo because
Speaker 1: everyone's like Hispanic and like I'm like, now I'm too white.
Speaker 1: So but I definitely kind of got a lot. I
Speaker 1: had the advantage my dad's like been a long time
Speaker 1: doctor in the community, has also been the mayor for
Speaker 1: thirty years, so he's like a very well liked guy,
Speaker 1: and so I definitely league fit into being like, oh,
Speaker 1: your doctor Basker's son. You know, Everyone's like treated me
Speaker 1: so nice, and it was so nice growing up in
Speaker 1: a in a small town where everyone knows you. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, like even to this day, and
Speaker 1: it's funny I look back on like like I was
Speaker 1: taking French lessons during the pandemic, and I was I
Speaker 1: was always a good student in school, and like, you know,
Speaker 1: it was like second in my class and and like
Speaker 1: very achievement oriented and I love learning too, so um,
Speaker 1: but when I went back into French class, I noticed
Speaker 1: how unorganized I was and my notes and everything, and
Speaker 1: I had this image of myself as being this real academic,
Speaker 1: good student. But it reminded me I just do everything
Speaker 1: by ear. It's like how I do music. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't learn how to read music. I can read music,
Speaker 1: but everything I do in life I do by ear.
Speaker 1: I listen, I take it in, I process it on
Speaker 1: the fly. And that is kind of also it made
Speaker 1: me think made me think about how like the more
Speaker 1: you learn about yourself and how you behave and learn
Speaker 1: made me realize how like I'm the kind of person
Speaker 1: like I'll meet someone and five seconds later I can't
Speaker 1: remember their name because it was like my dad introducing
Speaker 1: me to people and I I was like, I was
Speaker 1: just like block it out or something, you know, like
Speaker 1: you're in your own world and and uh, I mean
Speaker 1: it's something that I'm working on, but I think it's
Speaker 1: also super interesting, like the more I learned about myself
Speaker 1: and how I am and in embracing that, you know,
Speaker 1: instead of kind of thing like, oh I need to
Speaker 1: I need to work on that or that's like a
Speaker 1: like a like an Achilles heel or something. But I
Speaker 1: was kind of like that I had and I'm still
Speaker 1: like that. I have kind of a tight group of friends,
Speaker 1: but I'm not necessarily the most social person or um
Speaker 1: post COVID changed out a lot, like I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: I forgot I really like being social. I or it's
Speaker 1: so nice. Not that I like it, but I like
Speaker 1: to connect with people. I love connecting with people, and
Speaker 1: I love, um being inspired by people, and and have
Speaker 1: learned from some of the most inspiring people that I
Speaker 1: know to listen more, to be the one asking the questions,
Speaker 1: not just going on and on like I am right now.
Speaker 1: But um, it's an interview, so I guess that's okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about you. Well why did you start taking French lessons? Well,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend really wanted to move to France, so it
Speaker 1: was just something we were doing together and my my
Speaker 1: son was possibly going to go to like a French school,
Speaker 1: which I was just like, I had no idea why
Speaker 1: we were going to do that, but um so I
Speaker 1: just just something to do. So how far did you get?
Speaker 1: I mean, can you speak French? Read French? No? No,
Speaker 1: I can say Bonvon s Cajura said, you know, like
Speaker 1: I can do some super basics. It was nice to
Speaker 1: learn how to like pronounce things and and I can
Speaker 1: speak German from being my my exchange How you end
Speaker 1: up being an exchange student? What was that like? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So so in my school, like this French teacher and
Speaker 1: the German teacher were the same guy Mr Sylvester uh
Speaker 1: in Coral High School. So every year would be like
Speaker 1: depending on what year you went into school, it would
Speaker 1: be like German one, French to German three. Then it
Speaker 1: would be like next year would be French one, German two,
Speaker 1: French three. So the year I got in, you know,
Speaker 1: you know you want to take a foreign language, right,
Speaker 1: I got in, it was German. And then one year
Speaker 1: there was a sign on the wall that was like
Speaker 1: this Bundestalk Exchange, right, they picked a hundred kids from America,
Speaker 1: hundred kids from It was during the reunification of Germany
Speaker 1: the year that I went um and as a government
Speaker 1: exchange program where they paid for everything. I had to do,
Speaker 1: all these interviews I had to I had to basically
Speaker 1: win and be like one of two kids they got
Speaker 1: picked from New Mexico. They picked two from each state.
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to get the hell out of
Speaker 1: my town. I wanted to get the hell out of
Speaker 1: my fucked up family life and get away. And also
Speaker 1: I viewed if I could go to Germany, I would
Speaker 1: be able to go to jazz clubs and sit in
Speaker 1: and jam, and I might find a jazz piano teacher
Speaker 1: and exactly it's like a matter of fact, that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I did. And I would audition for these master
Speaker 1: classes at all these jazz festivals, and I would ride
Speaker 1: the train to Hamburg and go see all this jazz
Speaker 1: went Marsalis and John McLaughlin and Jack d Jeannette and Gary,
Speaker 1: Gary greg Osby and uh Gary Thomas, all these people
Speaker 1: that were kind of my heroes. So that's why I
Speaker 1: went and did it. And in the end it actually
Speaker 1: was you know, and I got to live with this
Speaker 1: wonderful family that was were farmers and just filled me
Speaker 1: full of love and supported me so much, and it
Speaker 1: was just a wonderful, wonderful year. So you're half South Asian.
Speaker 1: You talk about issues of fitting, kid, but after you
Speaker 1: get out of school, hey, you felt discrimination because it's
Speaker 1: not like, uh, there are a lot of South Asians
Speaker 1: in the popular music business in America. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: wouldn't look at me and say, oh, you're Indian. I
Speaker 1: think I say, like maybe one out of twenty people
Speaker 1: can guess. They're gonna guess like Argentinean or Italian or
Speaker 1: Spanish or something. But um, it's funny. You know where
Speaker 1: you notice it is when you go to Europe, Like
Speaker 1: I had this gig in Switzerland one time, playing at
Speaker 1: the Ski area, and I gotta look from a guy.
Speaker 1: Or in Germany where there's a lot of Turkish immigrants,
Speaker 1: you know, you notice it much more in those places,
Speaker 1: feeling kind of a bit of this you're not white,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of this kind of more deeper like
Speaker 1: rooted racism than you even experience in America, uh, because
Speaker 1: there's more diversity, you know. On the flip side, it
Speaker 1: was really funny being like super into jazz, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's this kind of it's like a white man can't jump,
Speaker 1: It's like white man can't swing right. So in music
Speaker 1: school it would be like once the once uh the
Speaker 1: Brothers would find out I was half Indian, they'd say, oh,
Speaker 1: you're You're basically one of us, you know. So that
Speaker 1: was kind of my ticket into like being able to
Speaker 1: play with like the best guys and being kind of
Speaker 1: accepted and embraced by them. So it went both ways,
Speaker 1: you know. Um and and I think there is maybe
Speaker 1: some element to that, even if it's maybe subconscious. That definitely,
Speaker 1: like growing up, my dad spoke about uh us as
Speaker 1: not being white. You know, we'd refer to white people
Speaker 1: as the other and maybe he experienced that more. He
Speaker 1: doesn't really get into his childhood, and but I'm sure
Speaker 1: he must have felt that to some extent, and and
Speaker 1: maybe also why he settled in New Mexico where the
Speaker 1: browner the better and there's a strong Hispanic influence there.
Speaker 1: Um that also influenced me, I think in how I
Speaker 1: perceived myself, how I perceived where I fit into American culture,
Speaker 1: and how I view American history. And you know, for me,
Speaker 1: especially in jazz, like they teach you about the history
Speaker 1: of jazz and the blues and then it came from
Speaker 1: African slaves, and it's a very important part of your
Speaker 1: jazz education to understand the history of it. And I
Speaker 1: love under somewhere along the way, I've just been always
Speaker 1: piecing together like the history of the world, right, like
Speaker 1: how did we get here? And I think that's kind
Speaker 1: of what art is is always kind of this reflection
Speaker 1: of time periods, and production itself is stamps a time period,
Speaker 1: right Like you listen to Phil Spector, You're you're hearing
Speaker 1: the soundtrack to that. It's like seeing in black and
Speaker 1: white or something like um. And even musically, UM, I'm
Speaker 1: always conscious of where I where, what we're doing, where that,
Speaker 1: what's behind us and what's in front of us, Like
Speaker 1: we want to be on the cutting edge. We don't
Speaker 1: want to repeat ourselves. But you're aware of what is
Speaker 1: behind You know that that's maybe a bit that's a
Speaker 1: bit lost in today's music. To go back to kind
Speaker 1: of your what is the state of music? Of new music?
Speaker 1: You know that's a part that maybe yet on some
Speaker 1: levels it's it's kind of a perforated page. It's like
Speaker 1: some levels some people aren't thinking about it. And then
Speaker 1: sometimes you'd be surprised how much music these young people know,
Speaker 1: you know, or happened in hip hop? Right, People just say, oh,
Speaker 1: hip hop, that's not music, and they don't know about music.
Speaker 1: And I used to read that Keyboard magazine. There was
Speaker 1: like a magazine called Keyboard Magazine and this interview was
Speaker 1: interviewing Chuck d and he made this comment I remember
Speaker 1: in this article. He said, people say music isn't hip
Speaker 1: hop is in music? How come this guy knows more
Speaker 1: about music than I do? Because they went through all
Speaker 1: the records and they sampled everything, they read all the credits.
Speaker 1: They know, they know the music backwards and forwards, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's a big part of my practice is kind
Speaker 1: of not you know, and again like I do it
Speaker 1: by ear. I'm not like this. I don't have a
Speaker 1: spreadsheet in my brain that knows all this stuff. I
Speaker 1: have some friends that are just you know, marks like that,
Speaker 1: even like diplos like that. You know. I have other
Speaker 1: friends my friend Ethan Alipat who does now Again records,
Speaker 1: and it's just this just just card catalog of like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a brilliant, obscure music. I do it all
Speaker 1: by ear, but it's always on the forefront of my
Speaker 1: practice to kind of at least on an approximate level,
Speaker 1: know where I am on the map and the continuum
Speaker 1: of music and art. So how do you end up
Speaker 1: going to Berkeley College or music And what was your
Speaker 1: experience there? Yeah, so, you know, being more academically oriented,
Speaker 1: but like being so interested in music, I didn't know
Speaker 1: if I had what it took to to have a
Speaker 1: career in music. And I used to go to these
Speaker 1: camps because they used to have these one week camp
Speaker 1: in Santa Fe and in my kid in my jazz
Speaker 1: band came back with this T shirt Berkeley Santa Fe Camp.
Speaker 1: I said, I want to go to that, and then
Speaker 1: they changed it to Los Angeles. So I went there
Speaker 1: three years and then the last year that I went,
Speaker 1: I said, and I'd go there and there's all these
Speaker 1: kids from l A. They're like ripping piano and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: piano is actually my third instrument. I'm a trumpet player.
Speaker 1: And I'd be like, oh my god, Like I'm just like, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't this is not you know, I suck, you know,
Speaker 1: compared to these guys. They they have like three jazz
Speaker 1: bands in their high school. And um, so I said
Speaker 1: the last time, I said, well, if I get a scholarship,
Speaker 1: they'd give out these little scholarships at the end, like
Speaker 1: partial scholarships. And I did get a partial scholarship to
Speaker 1: go to Berkeley. So I decided I'd go, and I
Speaker 1: drove my car out there. I drove all by myself
Speaker 1: to Boston, and I and I slept on my dorm
Speaker 1: mattress without any sheets on it, and and uh, the
Speaker 1: the tuition hadn't didn't clear because I was like working
Speaker 1: that out for the rest of my dad had kicked
Speaker 1: me out of the house and I was just kind
Speaker 1: of on my own. But well, Why did your dad
Speaker 1: kick you out of the house. I don't know. That's
Speaker 1: a long story. Maybe we won't get into that one.
Speaker 1: Oh Okay, was it behavior or drugs? It was neither,
Speaker 1: to be honest, I was actually a real clean cut,
Speaker 1: pretty good kid. I think it had more to do
Speaker 1: with like some like uh inter family, like uh, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a personal thing. That's like it really didn't
Speaker 1: it really, to be honest, it just wasn't my fault.
Speaker 1: It was something that you know, like uh uh, maybe
Speaker 1: I didn't deserve to have happened to me, you know,
Speaker 1: but uh, anyway, we'll leave it at that. Okay, But
Speaker 1: just you're going to Berkeley, you take your car, you
Speaker 1: go to Boston. You're sleeping on the match without cheets.
Speaker 1: Is your father helping you out financially? My mom, my, mom,
Speaker 1: my mom, and my uncle took over and pitched in. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I got there and like, you know, because
Speaker 1: I had this scholarship, I had to play in this
Speaker 1: scholarship ensemble, this Art Blakey jazz ensemble that was led
Speaker 1: by Billy Pierce, who was the tenor player in the
Speaker 1: Art Blakey band. When went Marcellis and Brandford Marsalis were
Speaker 1: in there, so this really amazing era of and then
Speaker 1: I remember this is still the era when like Branford
Speaker 1: was the house m D of The Tonight Show, Jett,
Speaker 1: Here's Harry Connick Jr. There was like Witten Marsalis is
Speaker 1: winning double Grammy's Classical and jazz Like these guys were
Speaker 1: still like superstars, right, Like jazz was still kind of
Speaker 1: in the forefront of American culture to some extent, which
Speaker 1: is I don't think is the same anymore. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I heard the interview did with m Jacob Collier. You know,
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting the kind of subculture on Instagram,
Speaker 1: all these jazz uh people have. It's really inspiring. Another
Speaker 1: another one like the current state of like music, so
Speaker 1: many look at that kid just just a genius, right,
Speaker 1: so everything I ever wanted to be in music, but
Speaker 1: now I'm me, which is cool too, um. But I
Speaker 1: got in there and just felt like such a fraud
Speaker 1: because these guys were just so killing. Like the bass player,
Speaker 1: this guy Ruben Rodgers, would get out of classes and
Speaker 1: I got to take the train down to New York.
Speaker 1: So I got a gig with Winton and I'd be
Speaker 1: like oh my fucking god, like I kill myself. But
Speaker 1: in the end, you know, like it was great because
Speaker 1: being going from being in Socora where I was like
Speaker 1: the superstar of music too being like the dumbest guy
Speaker 1: in the room, so to speak. It's just like the
Speaker 1: best place you want to be, right because that's how
Speaker 1: you learn being around this like the super inspiring people.
Speaker 1: And there's this there's this famous jazz club in Boston
Speaker 1: called Wally's which was like the first black owned uh
Speaker 1: jazz club where all the cats back in the day
Speaker 1: would go. And then even to that in that time
Speaker 1: and probably to this day when anyone's in town, they
Speaker 1: play it like I think it's Regatta Club is like
Speaker 1: the jazz club in Boston. And then and then they
Speaker 1: will sit in at Wali's after So I had I
Speaker 1: ended up getting the gig there with these friends of
Speaker 1: mine who are in this band Lettuce. I was in
Speaker 1: this band Lettuce. I don't know if you've ever heard Lettuce,
Speaker 1: It's like yeah, right, So that was kind of like
Speaker 1: my crew. And then we got a Sunday night. It
Speaker 1: was like Monday night was like I think Monday was
Speaker 1: what was it? Monday was blues Tuesday was Fusion, Wednesday
Speaker 1: was Fusion, Thursday was Latin, and Friday and Saturday was
Speaker 1: straight ahead and Sunday was fusion. And you call it
Speaker 1: the Sunday Night Band, Monday Night band, Tuesday Night Band
Speaker 1: was the night band. So I went from having the
Speaker 1: Tuesday Sunday Night Band two then I got called to
Speaker 1: be in Rubens Band and the Tuesday Night Band and
Speaker 1: the the first gig I remember he lent he leanked
Speaker 1: over to my shoulder right before the first hit and
Speaker 1: he said expect the unexpected, and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: ship boom hit the But so I played three nights
Speaker 1: a week at Walies, you know, almost four hours a
Speaker 1: night for like five years. You know. That's where I
Speaker 1: really cut my teeth on being comfortable on stage and
Speaker 1: improvising and listening and playing with like world class musicians,
Speaker 1: you know. So that was an awesome experience in in
Speaker 1: Berkeley and Boston, UM, but mostly Wallis was like the
Speaker 1: real education, you know. I mean, it was cool being
Speaker 1: in Berkeley, but it's mostly the environment and it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's kind of a it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a business, you know, like they're kind of
Speaker 1: it's the largest music school, and you know, maybe it's
Speaker 1: not the seventies Berkeley that I had imagined, but at
Speaker 1: the same time, it was a wonderful time in my life.
Speaker 1: For sure. Did you graduate and you went in thinking
Speaker 1: you wanted to be X and you exited thinking you
Speaker 1: wanted to be what I went in exactly. I went
Speaker 1: in and I was like, Okay, I got a major
Speaker 1: in something. I'll major in education because I'm gonna need
Speaker 1: a job. What other degree is gonna help me out?
Speaker 1: And then I switched that to a double major in
Speaker 1: jazz composition and music education. And then I had accumulated
Speaker 1: all these credits and I was like, Ship, I just
Speaker 1: want to get the funk out of here. Let me
Speaker 1: change to this major called professional music where you get
Speaker 1: to make your own curriculum, and I could take all
Speaker 1: those credits and just put them together. And I'm actually
Speaker 1: like one credit short of actually getting my paper. And
Speaker 1: I was like on the cover of Berkeley magazine they're
Speaker 1: always citing using my name as an alumni. Grammy awarding
Speaker 1: me asked me to do all this, Ship, I said,
Speaker 1: why did you just give me the degree? Like give
Speaker 1: me the it's like the credit I'm missing is some
Speaker 1: stupid thing like make a record, and I'm like, bro,
Speaker 1: like I I like it was the Producer of the Year.
Speaker 1: Do you want to maybe just give me the degree?
Speaker 1: I can't believe they are gonna make me take the
Speaker 1: fucking class. Can you believe that? Well? You know, I
Speaker 1: I gotta believe there's some way, assuming it's important to you,
Speaker 1: and I think maybe they're listening right now, is uh
Speaker 1: they should find some way to marry your experience with
Speaker 1: a thing and say, hey, yeah, do this. You know
Speaker 1: there's a way. That would have thought so I would
Speaker 1: have thought. So they're hardcore man. It's like a it's
Speaker 1: like scientology or something like. You cannot break the rules.
Speaker 1: You gotta take that credit, you gotta pay that money. Okay,
Speaker 1: So how do you end your tenure Berkeley? And then
Speaker 1: what do you do? So I decided to move to
Speaker 1: New York because I had been kind of driving back
Speaker 1: and forth gigging down there, and at this point in time,
Speaker 1: you're done with Berkeley, what do you see your future as.
Speaker 1: That's when I started getting into production because I bought
Speaker 1: some recording equipment. I had an old like D A
Speaker 1: thirty digital eight track recorder and a couple of outboard effects,
Speaker 1: a s R ten, some keyboards, and I started making
Speaker 1: like R and B music and transferring from kind of
Speaker 1: like my jazz aesthetic and a ranger aesthetic and instead
Speaker 1: just recording the arrangement myself, you know, and kind of
Speaker 1: playing everything, sometimes really poorly. But that's the beauty of
Speaker 1: recording is you can kind of do it until you
Speaker 1: get it right, which is also an amazing practice. Right
Speaker 1: you're basically practicing and you're just recording it, listening back
Speaker 1: to it, critically, listening to it. Um So I had
Speaker 1: moved and I wanted to move to New York and
Speaker 1: pursue production more. You know, then you're gonna live on
Speaker 1: what So I worked in a wedding band. I worked
Speaker 1: in this incredible wedding band that was like all these
Speaker 1: amazing musicians and really well runn business. You know. Um
Speaker 1: Bill Garside and his wife Karen Garcide, who shout out
Speaker 1: to Night Shift in Boston. We played. You know, they
Speaker 1: were like the best wedding band in New England, right,
Speaker 1: we were like four seasons. Anyone who wanted like the
Speaker 1: best wedding band at their wedding, that was us. So
Speaker 1: and they paid real good. So I moved down to
Speaker 1: New York, and I would drive back to Boston and
Speaker 1: all over New England, Cape Cod sometimes Vermont, and like
Speaker 1: I would do like a wedding Friday night. I would,
Speaker 1: you know, I would drive up through drive up through
Speaker 1: New Hampshire, up through all that traffic, sweating that I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make it on time, and play a wedding Friday.
Speaker 1: I would do a double Saturday, double Sunday. I'd do
Speaker 1: the cocktail hour and and i'd make my rent for
Speaker 1: the month, you know, and then I go back to
Speaker 1: New York and play some kind of shitty gigs and
Speaker 1: just produce and write songs. Okay, so you're in New York,
Speaker 1: you got enough money to pay the rent. How do
Speaker 1: you make the connections to start to get tracks? Well?
Speaker 1: I didn't, and I was about to give up on music,
Speaker 1: because you know what. The day I moved to New
Speaker 1: York was nine eleven. I had my all my ship
Speaker 1: packed up in my car, and my dad called me
Speaker 1: and said, hey, you're still moving to New York. And
Speaker 1: I said yeah. I said, well you should turn on
Speaker 1: the television. So I was like, okay, you know, they
Speaker 1: advised us not to drive to New York. But I
Speaker 1: had this girlfriend that lived outside, like in Yonkers, and
Speaker 1: I kind of stayed with her, and then I drove
Speaker 1: in the next day to sign my lease. There was
Speaker 1: dust all over the cars and everything. So I lived
Speaker 1: in this era of post nine eleven New York and
Speaker 1: everything shut down, Studios, anyone who wanted to help you,
Speaker 1: because that's how you make it right, like people help you,
Speaker 1: maybe you get you kind of do some little jobs
Speaker 1: for someone who's doing really well. None of that happened,
Speaker 1: so I was really struggling. Then I had some friends
Speaker 1: who had moved to Los Angeles who were doing really
Speaker 1: well doing jingles, mixing five point one stuff and more
Speaker 1: technical stuff. But they were my friend Greg Morgenstein and
Speaker 1: Jeff Reid, who were like, uh, had this this company
Speaker 1: enormous music and they'd say, well, here, do this to
Speaker 1: this jingle demo for us. I can pay you three
Speaker 1: hundred bucks to do this jingle demo. Okay, I never
Speaker 1: won one, but I think I won one. I do
Speaker 1: I won like a like a uh sunny d commercial.
Speaker 1: I I actually won. But other than that, I was
Speaker 1: just making demo fees and they were so sweet. And
Speaker 1: I would start coming out and and and uh visiting them.
Speaker 1: A matter of fact, my manager and longtime friend Neil Jacobson,
Speaker 1: who I think you know who end up being started
Speaker 1: up internship at Interscope, kind of went to go visit
Speaker 1: him and just fell in love with l A. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, like the weather and like everything, so kind
Speaker 1: of like you've got a pool in your house and
Speaker 1: like compare and I was living in a cave basically
Speaker 1: in green Point, Brooklyn, freezing my ass off, just broke um.
Speaker 1: So I started coming out and like take you get
Speaker 1: like a round trip ticket for like two bucks and
Speaker 1: go out and visit. And then I finally said, you
Speaker 1: know what, I'm gonna move there. I'm just gonna move.
Speaker 1: Their place opened up in the house. We had a
Speaker 1: studio there, and the very first track that I did
Speaker 1: was the first placement I got on the Games album.
Speaker 1: So it was like remember the Game, like in like
Speaker 1: two thousand four or something, right, So it was like
Speaker 1: Timbaland just Blaze, Dr Dre, Kanye West, Jeff Basker like
Speaker 1: it was like this, like wow, like I got so
Speaker 1: l A has just been very very lucky and and
Speaker 1: uh good been good to me. Moving here and and
Speaker 1: everything just changed, the dynamic change of being in New
Speaker 1: York and being so it's like a guy who's never
Speaker 1: gotten laid talking to girls and they can just like
Speaker 1: smell it on you. Like I'd just be in New
Speaker 1: York just like can you listen to my demo and
Speaker 1: just be like I get away from to Like in
Speaker 1: l A, you'd you'd hang out with people and you'd
Speaker 1: like just be hanging out and then get to know
Speaker 1: them as a person, and and then at the end
Speaker 1: of the conversation they'd be like, what do you do,
Speaker 1: by the way, and it would always be this is
Speaker 1: just the whole energy just flipped. So I've just been
Speaker 1: so fortunate to uh to have that experience in l A.
Speaker 1: And then things kind of didn't really take off for me.
Speaker 1: And I was working for Diane Warren to a friend
Speaker 1: of mine did like drumbeats for her that she would
Speaker 1: write her songs too, and then he brought me into
Speaker 1: help with Then we would make the demos for her
Speaker 1: and get a singer to sing, and I'd say, why
Speaker 1: don't we, why don't we just why you should just
Speaker 1: play this for them? Diane like no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I need like a real, real, uh real demo. But
Speaker 1: I learned so much about so and I wanted to
Speaker 1: come to l A to learn songwriting. I wanted to
Speaker 1: definitely get into stick a get away from doing like
Speaker 1: just beats or production for other people, and write the
Speaker 1: song too. And I learned an immense amount from her,
Speaker 1: just so subtle and so nuanced the way she writes
Speaker 1: these iconic songs that have little details in them that
Speaker 1: you don't even notice, you know. And and then also
Speaker 1: met Steve Lindsay. I don't know if you're familiar with
Speaker 1: Steve Lindsay. He had signed Bruno also, and he was
Speaker 1: kind of our mentor in like hit songwriting, UM and
Speaker 1: just doing my little songs. Let's go back a chapter.
Speaker 1: So it was your first composition? How did you get
Speaker 1: into the game? How did that happen? So, my very
Speaker 1: first placement was with this girl wop l A, who
Speaker 1: kind of had she put out. I met her at Berkeley.
Speaker 1: Then she moved back to the Bay. She was from
Speaker 1: the Bay and put out this album UM on her
Speaker 1: own label with her brother's help, on Skyblaze Records. And
Speaker 1: she had this record called Closer that was like a hit.
Speaker 1: It was like number one on cam L when like
Speaker 1: into club was like the number one song everywhere. At
Speaker 1: k M e L it was closer and then number
Speaker 1: two fifty in the club. So she had this like
Speaker 1: hit indie record and I had a couple of cuts
Speaker 1: on that record, and she was doing her second record
Speaker 1: and said, you got any You got any music that
Speaker 1: you want to share with me. I didn't really have
Speaker 1: that much. I had like a couple of things that
Speaker 1: were appropriate for her. It's kind of like a neo
Speaker 1: soul R and B I from a beautiful voice. Um.
Speaker 1: And then I had this beat that I did, like
Speaker 1: with g unit in mind, Like I was just decided
Speaker 1: I was gonna make the hardest beat of all time,
Speaker 1: and so I threw that on there. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like a joke, like it was totally inappropriate for her.
Speaker 1: But her brother Nomani heard it and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: what are you doing at that beat? You mind if
Speaker 1: I give it to game? I said yeah, sure, and
Speaker 1: he placed it. Last minute. I was visiting my grandparents
Speaker 1: and iowah, and I get a call we want the
Speaker 1: session files And my buddy had to go dig out
Speaker 1: this old computer that I had made the beat on
Speaker 1: and to find the session and delivered it to the
Speaker 1: studio and Dr Dre mixed the track, and I met
Speaker 1: Dr Dre walked in the room and walked over to
Speaker 1: me with his hand out, was like meeting like Obama
Speaker 1: or something, and like shook my hand and said, you
Speaker 1: made a great track. You made a great track. I
Speaker 1: was just like wow, like this is just amazing. So
Speaker 1: but it all came like totally by accident, like sending
Speaker 1: it out. I mean, that's a good lesson that I
Speaker 1: still got to keep in mind. Now. It's like like
Speaker 1: with Beyonce too, Like I had all this kind of obscure, weird,
Speaker 1: dark music that my publisher Katie Welly at Sony at
Speaker 1: the time, Uh, I'm you know, it was kind of
Speaker 1: Jody Gerson's right hand woman. UM, and I'm still with
Speaker 1: Jody at Universal. Um said do you mind if I
Speaker 1: send those Billy Craven songs to Beyonce. I was like, sure,
Speaker 1: go for it. But and there's no chance in hell
Speaker 1: she's gonna want that. Turns out that's exactly what she wanted,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's like you never know, a matter
Speaker 1: of fact, you should probably count on people want the
Speaker 1: opposite of what you are. They definitely don't want their
Speaker 1: what their last hit sounded like, which is whatever people
Speaker 1: are trying to give them what their last hit is.
Speaker 1: They think, what would Beyonce want? Well, I'll sounder another single? Ladies,
Speaker 1: It's like, well they want the next thing, you know,
Speaker 1: so and most of all they want you and what
Speaker 1: your creative essence is something unique? Right, So in both
Speaker 1: those cases, it was the uniqueness of what I was
Speaker 1: doing that one and bore out, you know. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're talking about all these lessons and these little things
Speaker 1: you'll learn from Diane, and then ultimately they're after working
Speaker 1: with lindsay, Um, can you give us a couple of those? Sure? Well,
Speaker 1: I mean, like one thing I noticed with Diane because
Speaker 1: like I had, like I have a really good musical here, right,
Speaker 1: and especially from like playing wedding band. Thing was like
Speaker 1: pretty easy for me because I could just like listen
Speaker 1: to a song and I can just play it and
Speaker 1: I know the structure and I have a background in composition,
Speaker 1: so you know, I would listen to her demo and
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, I got this down easy. Boom,
Speaker 1: I started doing it, and somewhere in the middle or
Speaker 1: like a quarter of the way through I would get
Speaker 1: off somehow, and I said, this was such a simple progression.
Speaker 1: What happened? And I go back and listen to it. Oh,
Speaker 1: she dropped a little beat out there, you know. And
Speaker 1: you know, I think one tendency is sometimes like you
Speaker 1: tend to want to extend a bar or something. And
Speaker 1: that's one lesson I learned from her, is like, don't
Speaker 1: ever extend pull the rug out, like you want to
Speaker 1: take a beat away so that that chorus hits them faster.
Speaker 1: You don't want to make them wait, you want to
Speaker 1: be unexpected. I mean, she was just full of little
Speaker 1: tricks like that, you know, or like just a simple
Speaker 1: something that seemed like a simple figure, but there's some
Speaker 1: little melody going on on the inside of of what
Speaker 1: she's doing. And that was like one of Lindsay's things too,
Speaker 1: write like um for everything to be hooks, you know,
Speaker 1: everything to be the little hookie things, and especially like
Speaker 1: I'm a lot of cook you know, like that's uh,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to give away like the secrets of
Speaker 1: of Steve Lindsay, but but uh, but you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of it is like I mean, I think to
Speaker 1: the point is like there's a real craft to doing,
Speaker 1: to writing great songs and to making uh. I think
Speaker 1: there's inspiration, but I think that gets a little lost
Speaker 1: along the way. And that's something I try to do
Speaker 1: in my production to try to encourage the artists to
Speaker 1: keep pushing, keep refining, keep keep working on it until
Speaker 1: it's the best, best, best thing it can be. Play
Speaker 1: it for other people, like listen to it through their ears.
Speaker 1: You know, you'll know you'll think something is great, and
Speaker 1: then play it for something you kind of feel a
Speaker 1: lull in the rooms. Okay, I gotta fix that, you know,
Speaker 1: but you want you need that song. You talk about
Speaker 1: that a lot in your in your letters, like about
Speaker 1: really crafty, like you you need something that is gonna
Speaker 1: just murder, like you can't look. Don't think you're gonna
Speaker 1: go out there and just get in fired and write
Speaker 1: it on there. I don't know forget who said it,
Speaker 1: but it's a great quote. Inspiration is for amateurs. You know,
Speaker 1: you go in there and do the work, make the donuts,
Speaker 1: you know, and the special sauces to be critical of
Speaker 1: yourself because guess what, once it's released, you can't go
Speaker 1: back and fix it. Although I guess Kanye kind of
Speaker 1: pioneered like the that being fake, but but you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately you this is your chance to make it as
Speaker 1: good as it can be. And that's the whatever rules
Speaker 1: you follow, or you know, make your own rules, but
Speaker 1: have rules, have limitations, be critical of yourself, don't go
Speaker 1: for the I'll tell you one thing I did that
Speaker 1: really just was a real magical thing that I did
Speaker 1: for myself, you know, and your peers. Of like you're
Speaker 1: playing music for your peers, like listen to this beat
Speaker 1: I did, and everyone's You want to play music for everyone, right,
Speaker 1: it starts to become like a burden, like people like, okay,
Speaker 1: let me listen to your fucking song. At one point,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, I just said, you know what, I
Speaker 1: am not going to ask anyone to listen to my
Speaker 1: mean USIC anymore. I want people to beg to listen
Speaker 1: to my music, you know. And that's like that's the
Speaker 1: reaction you want, right. You want to play something and
Speaker 1: you want them to say, can I hear that one
Speaker 1: more time? You want them to listen to it again.
Speaker 1: So just having that mentality I think of, like you
Speaker 1: want to make your music so good that people want
Speaker 1: to listen to it, not like subject. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of effort to listen to someone's song, you know, so
Speaker 1: you better make it freaking good. Like, don't waste their time.
Speaker 1: Kanye said to me once. The first time I played
Speaker 1: him something, he said, don't ever waste my time like
Speaker 1: that again. He says, time is the one thing that
Speaker 1: I can't get back, and you just wasted it, you know.
Speaker 1: So the next time I played him something is I
Speaker 1: made sure it was the right thing, and that's when
Speaker 1: he said, Oh, you're gonna make my next album with me,
Speaker 1: he told my mom. My mom came backstage one night
Speaker 1: to one of the shows because I used to play
Speaker 1: in Kanye's band. That's how I met him. I was
Speaker 1: his music director and one and my mom came to
Speaker 1: one of the shows and he said, I mean, Kanye,
Speaker 1: this is the side of Kanye that people don't see.
Speaker 1: It's stuff like we played in Albuquerque. He's he hasn't
Speaker 1: had slept, He's just did a show. He's not feeling
Speaker 1: that great. He like hung out with my family for
Speaker 1: like an hour, you know, like and like just like
Speaker 1: shooting the ship. That's that old Midwestern like Mama raised
Speaker 1: you right shit. And then my my mom came backstage
Speaker 1: to one of the shows and he said, oh, Jeff Man,
Speaker 1: Jeff so great. He's like, just kinna, He's gonna produce
Speaker 1: my next album. And I was like, I am, you know,
Speaker 1: because I played him this song. And that's a lot
Speaker 1: of the influence of the stuff I was doing and
Speaker 1: my love of melody and and learning from Diane and
Speaker 1: mixing it with this kind of darker aesthetic. That's what
Speaker 1: he was kind of interested in, that realm, and that's
Speaker 1: when Ada Waits and Heartbreaks kind of came together and
Speaker 1: he his love of melody. He decided he wanted to
Speaker 1: be a melodist, you know. And he saw me and
Speaker 1: he was like, oh, you can help me do this
Speaker 1: because you get it, and you also understand can temporary art,
Speaker 1: or at least have an interest in it. And you
Speaker 1: understand what I'm trying to do kind of merge highbrow
Speaker 1: and lowbrow, classical avant guard. You know, it's always a
Speaker 1: mixture and a cocktail of polar opposites that exist in
Speaker 1: tension with one another. Okay, let's pick up the narrative.
Speaker 1: So you know, you're working with Diane and you're working
Speaker 1: with Steve Lindsay, you introduce you and Bruno. What happens next?
Speaker 1: So what happens is I get the call to do
Speaker 1: some backup keyboard gigs. And we bet you remember the
Speaker 1: Scion car. Maybe they still make them, but they were
Speaker 1: doing these Scion cars to appeal to like people who
Speaker 1: like hip hop music. So they started sponsoring these tours
Speaker 1: with the Rizza with Slick Rick, did like a tour
Speaker 1: of Colorado with Slick Rick Um and did the Game,
Speaker 1: did something with the Game with the Lettuce guys. Right,
Speaker 1: we were like backing up these rappers. Then I get
Speaker 1: a call I had done this gig with this band Chromeo.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know of Chromeo, right, and
Speaker 1: Dave the Dave One, the lead singer, UM and Brilliant
Speaker 1: Guys a couple of like awesome guys. I played in
Speaker 1: their live band at the beginning. And then but Dave
Speaker 1: One's little brothers A track who the DJA, who was
Speaker 1: kind of a DJ at the time, and they needed
Speaker 1: a substitute keyboard player because their keyboard player had to
Speaker 1: go to some other gig with jay Z I think,
Speaker 1: And so he asked a track said, you know when
Speaker 1: your keyboard player A track asked his brothers who recommended
Speaker 1: my friend Nick Casper, who was the other keyboard player
Speaker 1: and Chromeo and Nick said, nah, you should get Jeff.
Speaker 1: He'll do he'll do a better job. You know, it's
Speaker 1: more his his thing. Um. So I got the call
Speaker 1: to be Kanye's sub keyboard player, did the Jimmy Kimmel
Speaker 1: Show right when he released Graduation and did a few gigs.
Speaker 1: The other keyboard player was ready to come back and
Speaker 1: they said, no, what we decided we want to keep you.
Speaker 1: You're so I was getting in there. I was like,
Speaker 1: it's when we had like a track, a keyboard player
Speaker 1: and then it's like all female, like Miniature Orchestra was
Speaker 1: amazing group. And I've noticed like this this arrangement is
Speaker 1: a little like messed up, Like this part's not right.
Speaker 1: Do you mind if I And I'd ask him you
Speaker 1: mind if I changed that? He's like, go ahead, fix
Speaker 1: fix this, fix that, And and a track was telling me,
Speaker 1: He's like, you know what, this is great, keep doing
Speaker 1: this because he needs someone like you. There's no like
Speaker 1: music director for someone with your skill set to kind
Speaker 1: of polish all these things musically. So I kind of
Speaker 1: went in there with the goal of making myself indispensable,
Speaker 1: and I had always been kind of a fan, like,
Speaker 1: not not so obsessed like it was the end all
Speaker 1: be all, but I really admired his kind of idio
Speaker 1: sync syncratic style and and humor and and the positive
Speaker 1: kind of like empowered thing that he embodied. So right
Speaker 1: away we kind to hit it off, and then I
Speaker 1: became his music director, and then he started inviting me
Speaker 1: to the studio, and kind of the rest is history
Speaker 1: as far as that era of the might work with Kanye,
Speaker 1: you know, and worked on EIGHTA Weights and and Dark
Speaker 1: Twisted Fantasy as well as like jay Z Blueprint three
Speaker 1: and uh a few other things, you know, but but
Speaker 1: mainly all that work with and then you know, still
Speaker 1: played in his band and like did the world tour
Speaker 1: like Glow in the Dark Tour, and which was amazing
Speaker 1: because we always got to work with the best lighting people,
Speaker 1: the best stage designers as Devlin you know. Um, I
Speaker 1: love that part of it. And that's how I actually
Speaker 1: got the Gaga gig, because remember they were going to
Speaker 1: do a joint show and then it fell apart, but
Speaker 1: she said, well, you do my my show, So so
Speaker 1: many opportunities came from that and also just like the
Speaker 1: finishing school of being, like, oh shit, like this is
Speaker 1: how hard someone can work. Like just seeing how hard
Speaker 1: he worked and and how focused he was and uncompromising
Speaker 1: and and also like you know, it was just like
Speaker 1: the ultimate graduate school of being. Also being an artist,
Speaker 1: like taught me what it means to be an artist
Speaker 1: because he just true to himself and explores his ideas
Speaker 1: and also so outside of the mainstream, right just setting
Speaker 1: the trends and setting defining, not following ever, and it
Speaker 1: kind of it away was my little version of not little,
Speaker 1: but my version of working being with Miles Davis. You know,
Speaker 1: like as a jazz musician, you'd you would get picked
Speaker 1: up by some iconic leader and then you would learn
Speaker 1: from them, So it's kind of similar aesthetic. I think
Speaker 1: also that he was such an intelligent guy, so uncompromising,
Speaker 1: but also very rooted in the black tradition and outspoken socially,
Speaker 1: and just like that was an incredibly formative time for me.
Speaker 1: And then I kind of had to go out on
Speaker 1: my own and and and do my own thing. And Okay,
Speaker 1: so how did it end with Kanye And what's your
Speaker 1: really ship with Kanye today? Well, it ended because I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I don't think I want to be
Speaker 1: in the band anymore. I just want to be in
Speaker 1: the studio. And he kind of got upset about that
Speaker 1: because I think it was kind of like, oh man,
Speaker 1: it was a tight inner circle. You know, it kind
Speaker 1: of maybe felt like I was abandoning him or but
Speaker 1: the reality was just like, hey, I could be out
Speaker 1: there and making hit records. I don't need to be
Speaker 1: in this like rehearsal space, eating a bag of chips
Speaker 1: and waiting twelve hours for you to show up. Um,
Speaker 1: not that it was always like that, because I would
Speaker 1: be in the studio, but it was just quite a
Speaker 1: brutal existence. You know, at the time it was great,
Speaker 1: but taking a forty hour flight from Rio de Janeiro
Speaker 1: in economy to Singapore, like after you had food poisoning,
Speaker 1: like it was just like physically demanding, and you know,
Speaker 1: moving forward to me like he's kind of my idol
Speaker 1: and role model, like you would never limit yourself. You
Speaker 1: want to keep growing and keep expanding on So for
Speaker 1: a brief period we kinda stop contact, but then you know,
Speaker 1: anytime he would call, I would go back and do
Speaker 1: some more gigs. I could do the Coachella when he
Speaker 1: headline Coachella or any little gig or you know, he
Speaker 1: always kind of calls in all the forces for any
Speaker 1: project to get all the manpower on deck. Um. So
Speaker 1: when Kanye calls, I answer and I happily go in
Speaker 1: and you know, just like this last one like come
Speaker 1: to Life on the Donda record. You know, I always
Speaker 1: just love being around his energy, and it's just like
Speaker 1: the most inspiring environment and positive environment like you can
Speaker 1: be in creatively because he really sets the tone for
Speaker 1: her for that and you're always around like the most
Speaker 1: creative interesting people. But you know, I kind of hold
Speaker 1: like a like a have my boundary of where I
Speaker 1: have to preserve my own creative practice and how much
Speaker 1: time because you can get sucked into it. It is
Speaker 1: a very like powerful world to get sucked into. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's such a you know, it's such a privilege
Speaker 1: to be able to move in and out of that
Speaker 1: circle and and um, I feel really blessed to when
Speaker 1: I get that call and go in and and do
Speaker 1: that thing and then be able to go outside and
Speaker 1: do my own thing again. Okay, I'll be home with
Speaker 1: Kanye once. And what I most remember about that experience
Speaker 1: was he had no sense of humor about himself. Okay,
Speaker 1: he talked about himself in the third person a little bit,
Speaker 1: and it was an addressing room, you know, it was
Speaker 1: there was no pressure, so it was kind of funny.
Speaker 1: And certainly since then a lot has changed in his life.
Speaker 1: So and then, of course many people believe he's bipolar.
Speaker 1: What is going on with Kanye? I mean to be honest,
Speaker 1: I can't really comment on what is going on with
Speaker 1: him or what, like, to what extent he is a
Speaker 1: bipolar or not or anything. To me, he is like
Speaker 1: the most brilliant artists out there, like by a thousand miles,
Speaker 1: and he is uncompromising and on a kind of on
Speaker 1: a mission. You know. He's a philosopher in a sense
Speaker 1: that he and that's kind of the part of like
Speaker 1: the third person is like being able to say in
Speaker 1: the grand scheme, you know, like here's what I'm meant
Speaker 1: to He's always trying to find meaning in what he does,
Speaker 1: right and um finding truth, you know, like one example,
Speaker 1: one one other story I can tell about, like with
Speaker 1: eight O weights and heartbreaks. When I asked for my publishing,
Speaker 1: you know, and I think a lot of people around
Speaker 1: him like we're like, hey, you know, just trying to
Speaker 1: protect him, not in a not in a kind of
Speaker 1: nefarious or kind of unfair way. We're trying to limit
Speaker 1: my contribution, uh, publishing wise and monetarily, because they're just
Speaker 1: negotiating for his side. It was had nothing to do
Speaker 1: with anything anyone doing anything wrong. And I remember at
Speaker 1: one point he said, give Jeff his publishing, like he
Speaker 1: who made a very point to be fair about it,
Speaker 1: and even further, at one point I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I got teen percent on this. I think it should
Speaker 1: be and and I kind of felt sheepish about asking
Speaker 1: him because I was so grateful. He kind of gave
Speaker 1: me a big chunk anyway, and he said, hey, it's
Speaker 1: not about feeling bad or this or that. It's about
Speaker 1: being fair, you know. And that moment kind of gave
Speaker 1: me a little insight into I think even in his music,
Speaker 1: it's very self examining, you know, and he really wants
Speaker 1: to get to the body of why we're here, What
Speaker 1: is the truth? You know, kind of in classical art
Speaker 1: or the idea of like uh uh, a perfect truth,
Speaker 1: things that are perfect and beautiful, that there's a truth
Speaker 1: to beauty that's my take on it, like that he
Speaker 1: has this sense of what's what's the truth? And I
Speaker 1: think especially in this day and age where things are
Speaker 1: so polarized, and I think that I was just having
Speaker 1: this conversation with someone about how we want things to be.
Speaker 1: We need things to be black and white because it
Speaker 1: makes it much easier to process and deal with. But
Speaker 1: the reality is, it's just not like the world is
Speaker 1: just not black and white. There are so many shades
Speaker 1: of gray, and everything is a conversation, right, and the
Speaker 1: truth maybe even hard to pin down, like if you
Speaker 1: even get to like quantum physics, how they say, like
Speaker 1: if you observe something, it changes you know. It's like
Speaker 1: it's just so ultimately and unfathomably complex the world. And
Speaker 1: I think in trying to bring those things into the
Speaker 1: light and saying the uncomfortable things and saying and exploring
Speaker 1: the uncomfortable topics that gets him and a lot of
Speaker 1: like people just cannot understand it because they need things
Speaker 1: to be black or white. They need to be John Legend,
Speaker 1: or they need it to be fucking Floyd Mary whether
Speaker 1: or I don't know what what what what think how
Speaker 1: you want to explain it? But I think with him,
Speaker 1: He's not gonna stop being who he is for anyone else.
Speaker 1: That's always been the constant mantra, like I am gonna
Speaker 1: no one's gonna define me. I'm gonna define myself. And
Speaker 1: to be honest, in America, if you're a black man
Speaker 1: and you have that attitude, you're gonna hit get some blowback.
Speaker 1: You know. If you're Marlon Brando and you punch a
Speaker 1: photographer in the face, you're like cool and you're you're
Speaker 1: you know, wow, such a yeah, Like those photographers are
Speaker 1: so invasive. If you're Kanye, like, oh man, he's unhinged,
Speaker 1: he's bipolar, you know, Like there's definitely an undercurrent of
Speaker 1: racism in the viewpoint of Kanye West. And then there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of complicated things around it too. And I
Speaker 1: don't want to spend too much time talking about Kanye,
Speaker 1: but you know, I can just say from many experiences
Speaker 1: that he's not a different person so much. He's maybe
Speaker 1: he's he's grown and he's changed, but his core hasn't changed.
Speaker 1: And at that core is a person who truly wants
Speaker 1: to better the world through his actions, you know. And
Speaker 1: I think it gets complicated, but you know, there have
Speaker 1: been too many moments of of goodwill. And I think
Speaker 1: anyone that has been in a more casual environment, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe not with like someone who writes about music and
Speaker 1: you're kind of on your guard, but if you've ever
Speaker 1: been in this studio, in his creative environments, you feel
Speaker 1: an overwhelmingly positive and uplifting feeling. I think even his
Speaker 1: music it has at its essence that feeling positive, uplifting.
Speaker 1: Uh true, true? You know, like those are all these
Speaker 1: kind of like things that I hear in his music from,
Speaker 1: like a sense of hope, you know, touch the sky
Speaker 1: you know. Um, I wonder and I wonder if you
Speaker 1: know what it means to find your dreams lift off.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just like an endless graduation. It's just
Speaker 1: an endless dream stronger. You know. It's always this empowering, uplifting,
Speaker 1: positive emotion that I think says a lot about who
Speaker 1: Kanye West is. So you wake up and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to be flying a coach
Speaker 1: around the world. I want to do more own thing.
Speaker 1: When you leave Kanye, do you have opportunities that have
Speaker 1: come to you want to fulfill or do you basically say,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't do the Kanye thing anymore. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna hang up my shingle and see what happens. No,
Speaker 1: I already had a lot of pressure. I had. I
Speaker 1: had try Sleeping with a Broken Heart in the can
Speaker 1: and I don't know if you remember that record by
Speaker 1: Alicia Keys, but Beyonce, Rihanna, and Alicia Keys all wanted
Speaker 1: that record. So I had like a heater and everyone
Speaker 1: was like I had. I had every label and every
Speaker 1: manager calling me going like what is it gonna take
Speaker 1: to get this record from you? So I had like
Speaker 1: a missile uh in my back pocket. That was, you know,
Speaker 1: already like hey, you know I could do this. I could. Uh.
Speaker 1: That's kind of what happened when I signed with Jody
Speaker 1: was she came over and she thought she was gonna
Speaker 1: sign like Kanye's keyboard player, and I played her try
Speaker 1: something the Broken Heart and she was like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: You're like you're like the total package, Like you have
Speaker 1: a whole aesthetic, you can write the whole song. So
Speaker 1: it was about kind of falling. It was kind of
Speaker 1: like okay, like everything I had learned up to that point,
Speaker 1: now let's go. Let's let's get in the game. And
Speaker 1: where I kind of left off with the game track.
Speaker 1: Why it didn't pop off, it was because I wasn't
Speaker 1: really ready, you know. Now I was ready and try
Speaker 1: to see the Broken Heart happened, the Beyonce cuts happened,
Speaker 1: Then Nate Ruce came along, and then it went and
Speaker 1: Bruno and Mark ronson and then it was just this
Speaker 1: stream of like got to work at Taylor Swift called
Speaker 1: I got to work with the Rolling Stones, which was
Speaker 1: an amazing experience that Jimmy Iveen put together. That was
Speaker 1: all from some nights that was all like mix and
Speaker 1: here and we are young and be like, why can't
Speaker 1: we do a song like that? And Jimmy saying, I
Speaker 1: know the guy, you know, because that was when Neil
Speaker 1: was That was when Neil was like his protege and
Speaker 1: was like, um so just you know, just so many
Speaker 1: a little bit slower. So you have this song, you
Speaker 1: start to have this success us what happens next? Do
Speaker 1: you hunker down in a studio and start writing more
Speaker 1: stuff or do you start working with people to build
Speaker 1: from the ground up? You know, you get you have
Speaker 1: that one amazing track, and how much of it is you?
Speaker 1: And how much of it is Jody or the other
Speaker 1: people who are you know, working for you mostly me,
Speaker 1: right because it's just after the so I was talking
Speaker 1: about like the Kanye stamp of approval, and then also
Speaker 1: throw the try sleep in the Broken Heart on it,
Speaker 1: which at the time was like a very influential record,
Speaker 1: like it was her first number one UK record, and
Speaker 1: even to this day people tell me like that's their
Speaker 1: favorite song of mine, like that was a really special moment.
Speaker 1: Kind of became my calling card. I think all producers
Speaker 1: out there like and writers like that's what you should
Speaker 1: be focusing on, Like you need to make your calling
Speaker 1: card song, like the song that's going to define you.
Speaker 1: So after that, it was kind of like I mean
Speaker 1: not to oversimplifying it, but like the phone ringing off
Speaker 1: the hook, you know, so I could kind of choose
Speaker 1: my about and I did a lot of things that
Speaker 1: we're also filling the space to like that that maybe
Speaker 1: not weren't necessarily the biggest projects in the world, but
Speaker 1: I think, you know, it varies from not always the same,
Speaker 1: Like sometimes I'd write the whole song and I'd send
Speaker 1: it out and people would want to cut it. And
Speaker 1: sometimes I'd go in a room and we wouldn't have anything,
Speaker 1: and we would write the song from scratch, or we
Speaker 1: would get an idea and then we would bring another
Speaker 1: writer in. So every every situation is different, right, Um,
Speaker 1: But ultimately I think that was like one one of
Speaker 1: a big lesson I learned from working with Kanye was
Speaker 1: don't be afraid to like I'd always want to be overprepared.
Speaker 1: I was. I had a lot of anxiety about going
Speaker 1: in a room and not being able to like deliver,
Speaker 1: you know, So I'd always I liked that having something
Speaker 1: that was done and I could send it out. But
Speaker 1: I'd also challenged myself to go in there and like
Speaker 1: walk on that tight rope and and just say, hey,
Speaker 1: we're here, we're in the room. Let's believe in ourselves
Speaker 1: and like see what happens. And and also just like
Speaker 1: let it flow. That's also kind of my jazz background,
Speaker 1: you know, where like it's your turn to solo, just
Speaker 1: jump off the cliff and see what happens, you know.
Speaker 1: And UM, I think that really served me well too,
Speaker 1: have that kind of spontaneous, improvisational uh skill, um to
Speaker 1: just go into rooms and and make something happen or
Speaker 1: you know, uh, and have the confidence to just try
Speaker 1: things and and it's a really beautiful thing about like
Speaker 1: you know, or it was hinting at before about collaboration,
Speaker 1: you know, to like go and play something and think
Speaker 1: like maybe I shouldn't is there's people gonna like this,
Speaker 1: and to have someone like that's the ship man, like
Speaker 1: that's the like you know, or you might get correct
Speaker 1: gets too, but it's fifty fifty or you know, like
Speaker 1: you so to answer your question, it was like all
Speaker 1: of the above, you know, like every situation like kind
Speaker 1: of trying to always push myself and and put myself
Speaker 1: in a situation and just go for it, you know,
Speaker 1: like try to succeed. Like a lot of times, what
Speaker 1: would happen was I would have like one song that
Speaker 1: maybe like an artist would like and they had cut that,
Speaker 1: and then I'd come and work with them, and then
Speaker 1: he got any more, so I would just go maybe
Speaker 1: while I was waiting for them, I would make three
Speaker 1: new ideas, you know, and maybe one of them they
Speaker 1: be like, oh I really like that, and then we'd
Speaker 1: work on it together. You know. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a like a just I think just ultimately like
Speaker 1: having a creative practice that like everywhere you go wherever
Speaker 1: you are, what room you're in. If you're tired, if
Speaker 1: you're hungry, if you're well arrested, if you're a little buzzed,
Speaker 1: you go to work and you make the donuts. You know,
Speaker 1: like you have a skill set, you have a craft,
Speaker 1: and you have like confidence to like be willing to fail,
Speaker 1: make a mistake, do something shitty, like you're definitely like, like,
Speaker 1: how many songs do you think of? Princes? Like he
Speaker 1: wrote some of them are stinkers, you know, like we
Speaker 1: all here, you're only gonna hear. This is kind of
Speaker 1: a Virgil Ablow thing to like talking about in him
Speaker 1: and Virgil and Kanye is like practice, like so amazing.
Speaker 1: How like that they viewed creativity. Just try everything. The
Speaker 1: things that suck, no one's gonna remember. You get the
Speaker 1: great things. People remember it, so they think that, oh
Speaker 1: this person just everything they do is great. It's not true.
Speaker 1: They just working like you know, so that was kind
Speaker 1: of my life, you know, up to now, or at
Speaker 1: least before COVID, you know, just just just working. Okay,
Speaker 1: How do you see from being a songwriter in your
Speaker 1: own studio to alter really being a producer, which was
Speaker 1: one of your earliest desires you're moving to New York for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think it was a lot to do
Speaker 1: with my the nature of like how I do music
Speaker 1: kind of by ear, and recording just became the perfect
Speaker 1: outlet for that because I wasn't great at reading music.
Speaker 1: I wasn't great, I wasn't the best technical piano player.
Speaker 1: I wasn't like the best technical singer. But I could
Speaker 1: have a vision and I could bring it to life,
Speaker 1: you know. And I think my producing and record and
Speaker 1: also I think that helped me like developing. And I'm
Speaker 1: kind of a bit of a late bloomer, you know.
Speaker 1: Even as a kid, I was like really short, and
Speaker 1: I was about like five ft two till I was
Speaker 1: like sixteen years old, and then I grew like a
Speaker 1: you know, ten inches in Germany, and you know, I
Speaker 1: moved to l A when I was like thirty, little
Speaker 1: kind of late in the game in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: like I'm matured very gradually, but in a very steady way.
Speaker 1: So I think that also helped me relate to trying
Speaker 1: to pick out, like for an artist that I'm producing,
Speaker 1: try to help them find what their vision is or
Speaker 1: at least push them towards articulating that and then saying,
Speaker 1: let's go after that. Like let's also like figuring out
Speaker 1: how to get that out and develop that because I
Speaker 1: had to learn how to develop myself, you know. So
Speaker 1: I think that's one of my strengths for sure as
Speaker 1: a producer, is is identifying the vision that they have
Speaker 1: and helping them realize that, you know, and maybe throwing
Speaker 1: in my two cents along the way or you know,
Speaker 1: or maybe a dollar or two, but um ultimately helping
Speaker 1: them fulfill what's true to their heart and like the
Speaker 1: most vulnerable place that they can find expo using that
Speaker 1: and and bringing that into the light. You talked about inspiration,
Speaker 1: you know, it's from amateurs. So when you're writing songs
Speaker 1: by yourself, are you saying, Okay, I started ten am
Speaker 1: and I gotta finish the song, or do you say
Speaker 1: I get a certain inspiration I figured, you know everything
Speaker 1: that I understand. Working in the studio is different. But
Speaker 1: when you're working alone, what's your process? How do you
Speaker 1: get the song done? And how do you finish it?
Speaker 1: You know? I mean, I mean one version of it
Speaker 1: is like just sitting at the piano and and getting inspired.
Speaker 1: That kind of comes back to my jazz practice and
Speaker 1: even just how I've been doing music my whole life
Speaker 1: since I was like five years old, just sitting down
Speaker 1: at the piano and just making a sound and then
Speaker 1: then letting the craft take over, you know, find finding
Speaker 1: one kernel of thing that's great. Like even also could
Speaker 1: be like a melody or a phrase, you know, like
Speaker 1: marrying a phrase with a melody and saying, oh, there's
Speaker 1: something good about that, and and uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: think the hardest part is just maybe as a writer
Speaker 1: you can resonate like this resonates with you is like
Speaker 1: just getting something down on the page, right, You just
Speaker 1: gotta start writing, and then you go back and you
Speaker 1: work on it. You say, let me take this out,
Speaker 1: let me let me rearrange this thought. Oh you know
Speaker 1: what this this could be more clear. But it always
Speaker 1: starts with with an idea, you know, like in your letters,
Speaker 1: you're you kind of have a theme. Sometimes. I love
Speaker 1: when you write about like your personal experiences, Like you
Speaker 1: have all these different modes you go into, like you're
Speaker 1: kind of like decoding the bigger picture of tech and
Speaker 1: the the it's all about society, and then then you'll
Speaker 1: go into this really personal thing you're talking about your health,
Speaker 1: you're talking about your family, you talk about skiing, you
Speaker 1: talk about your passions. But I imagine it's a similar
Speaker 1: thing for you, like how to decide what you want
Speaker 1: to write about? You just have a thought and you
Speaker 1: just start writing about it. Or how is it for you? Yeah? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: Although the best stuff is when you're in a mood
Speaker 1: and there's inspiration of the inspiration always comes when you're
Speaker 1: doing something else, you're standing in the shower or you're
Speaker 1: reading whatever. But I find the opposite then most no
Speaker 1: one does it my way. I throw it all down
Speaker 1: and I find if I edited, I funk it up.
Speaker 1: I've been doing it for a long time. That's interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, we could go down the path of me
Speaker 1: but staying with you here, you know, the game has
Speaker 1: changed certainly from the pre Internet era. In the CD era,
Speaker 1: they would cut out the single if the single was successful,
Speaker 1: you had to buy the album to get the single.
Speaker 1: Let's just say twelve tracks on an album. A lot
Speaker 1: of songwriters made a lot of money by having not
Speaker 1: hit songs on those albums. That generally speaking, that is
Speaker 1: not true. So as a songwriter, I know certain songwriters
Speaker 1: I've spoken with, household name songwriters. They'll say, you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: if someone do, if they get inspired, it's a friend.
Speaker 1: But otherwise they evaluate, they say, you know, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna put this much effort into something that's going to
Speaker 1: go nowhere. In addition, there's only twenty four hours in
Speaker 1: a day. You also have to sleep, So how do
Speaker 1: you deal with that opportunity cost? I'm sure you have
Speaker 1: more people looking for you than you can actually work.
Speaker 1: And you say, well, you know there's some economic element,
Speaker 1: just creative elements, how do you pick and choose? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's an interesting that's an interesting point. And I'll have
Speaker 1: to say, I think you just kind of following your
Speaker 1: analysis of the music industry help kind of like inform
Speaker 1: a kind of a different side of like, um, I
Speaker 1: may be wrong, and I think there's so many nuanced
Speaker 1: parts of it, but yeah, the value of publishing seems
Speaker 1: to have on down. And you talk write a lot
Speaker 1: about like catalog sales and everything and how you and
Speaker 1: I feel like sometimes like I feel like most of
Speaker 1: the time i'm reading about it, you're you're kind of saying, oh,
Speaker 1: don't sell your catalog. That is your that's your baby,
Speaker 1: that's your nest egg. Don't give that up. Maybe that's
Speaker 1: true if you're if you are uh Bob Dylan, or
Speaker 1: you are um who we talk about in the news
Speaker 1: right now, hard of Gold Neil Young, Right, But you know,
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of my stuff. It's like I
Speaker 1: got a five here, I got a ten there, I
Speaker 1: got aft there, I gotta and I already gave up
Speaker 1: these songs. I'm not even singing on them. So like
Speaker 1: a lot of it is kind of like, man, the
Speaker 1: valuations of all these catalogs, not to mention the tax benefits,
Speaker 1: and like, you know what happens if you die and
Speaker 1: your heirrors inherit your catalog, I RS comes to take
Speaker 1: that tax bill. Guess what, Now you're selling under duress.
Speaker 1: You gotta sell that catalog fast to pay the taxes.
Speaker 1: So there are all kinds of arguments for selling the catalog.
Speaker 1: And now personally, I'm moving into I want to own
Speaker 1: my master I want to be the artist. Now I
Speaker 1: get an artist royalty from Spotify. So talk about like
Speaker 1: the game changing, And I think that's that's really interesting.
Speaker 1: Following your your assessment of the history of the music industry,
Speaker 1: we are in a much different place now and the
Speaker 1: opportunity to own your own master published shit. I at
Speaker 1: least I think it's smart to like start exploring those areas.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the game has changed, at the same time
Speaker 1: the game hasn't changed. And you write about this too.
Speaker 1: Just do something fucking great. If you do something amazing,
Speaker 1: good things are gonna happen and things are gonna start
Speaker 1: flowing your way. You need the flow to start going
Speaker 1: your way, and you can't bitch and wind your way there.
Speaker 1: You can't complain about Spotify, as you point out about
Speaker 1: doing that, Like, just be great, worry about being great first.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk about all the other stuff. But you're
Speaker 1: not gonna like, yeah, I guess all these guys. That's
Speaker 1: interesting point you make about like how you could have
Speaker 1: these album cuts even that, like you're gonna be the
Speaker 1: album cut guy your whole life. Like maybe you make
Speaker 1: maybe you maybe you do. But like I think, at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you gotta strive to be
Speaker 1: great and do your best. That doesn't mean compete with
Speaker 1: someone else. Maybe you look at someone else as inspiration
Speaker 1: to get up for it, but at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, you gotta do your best. You gotta do
Speaker 1: your best and in a way that's its own reward, right, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go into some of the specifics here. Uh so
Speaker 1: you get hooked up with the Rolling Stones, what was that? Like?
Speaker 1: That was amazing. I get a voicemail on my phone
Speaker 1: one day, says Hallo jf it's make calling call me back,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, holy shit, I just got like a
Speaker 1: a voicemail from Mick Jagger and just like the coolest, nonchalant,
Speaker 1: still curious fun guys. And what's what's funny was at
Speaker 1: the last minute, because they're gonna do the record in France.
Speaker 1: The last minute, he said, you know, maybe we were talking.
Speaker 1: He was sending me his demos, he was talking, we
Speaker 1: were talking on the phone. That's like what the real
Speaker 1: definition of cool is, right, These guys aren't trying to
Speaker 1: impress anyone. They're not trying to like they'd just like
Speaker 1: just super cool dudes. At the last minute he says,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe maybe we should just send you stuff
Speaker 1: back ah from France and you can like mess with it.
Speaker 1: And something in me was like I was like, now
Speaker 1: ain't gonna work like that. You gotta you gotta fly
Speaker 1: me out there. I gotta be in the room with you. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, okay, okay, okay. Then I got there and
Speaker 1: it soon became obvious that he had not told the
Speaker 1: other members of the band that I was gonna be there.
Speaker 1: And there, you know, Keith Pitchers is looking at me
Speaker 1: like who's this guy? Uh, and they kind of put
Speaker 1: me in this other room and waiting for them to say,
Speaker 1: I brought my good friend Emil Haney with me, so
Speaker 1: i'd kind of have like a wingman to too, we're
Speaker 1: gonna me. I don't know if you're familar with Emil
Speaker 1: Haney produced Lana del Rey's album and he's just like
Speaker 1: an amazing producer and artist in his own right. Um.
Speaker 1: Finally he's like, what the funk are we doing here?
Speaker 1: Let's just go down there and just bust in their room.
Speaker 1: And he's like from New York, you know, he's like
Speaker 1: he's not sucking around. So we go down there. Were
Speaker 1: just like walking the room, you know, um and uh,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of like, oh, like okay, you just
Speaker 1: kind of walked in and very quickly like they're just
Speaker 1: cool dudes, you know. Like I had this bottle of
Speaker 1: beer in my hand and I'm looking around for a
Speaker 1: bottle opener and Keith kind of comes over and hands
Speaker 1: me a bottle opener and we're having a beer. Also
Speaker 1: part of the story is like his his guitar tech
Speaker 1: who I forget his names, amazing guy. Um. He was
Speaker 1: kind of behind the scenes saying no, he's gonna love you.
Speaker 1: He's he's cool man like he's gonna you know. It's
Speaker 1: like because he could see what was going on, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of kind of internal politics. And then and
Speaker 1: the end we we um. They cut the song with
Speaker 1: um Um, who's their long time producer, had a blue
Speaker 1: note and how Don was um you know, Don was
Speaker 1: was there kind of like overseeing the whole thing, and
Speaker 1: and we kind of took the tracks that they tracked
Speaker 1: and instead of like you know, I think in the
Speaker 1: old days, like all the Rolling Stones records that we
Speaker 1: you know, not the steel Wheels kinda era, but like
Speaker 1: the old Stone stuff, they sit there and do just
Speaker 1: like seven D takes until they got like the right
Speaker 1: one right. Well, So this was for their fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 1: ger thing, and they were gonna Keith was gonna have
Speaker 1: a song and Mick was gonna have a song. My
Speaker 1: master plan was I wanted to get them back together
Speaker 1: and do a song together. And I had this idea
Speaker 1: I was gonna have Keith playing piano and Mick was
Speaker 1: gonna sing, and they were gonna do the song together.
Speaker 1: But there's because they were had a separate thing about
Speaker 1: you know. To me, the magic is the glimmer twins,
Speaker 1: you know, like you want Keith and Mick together doing it.
Speaker 1: In the end, it was not to be, but we
Speaker 1: took the tracks and then we kind of formatted it
Speaker 1: and it's that song, um gloom and Doom and gloom.
Speaker 1: It's a great record. Came out amazing, and even a
Speaker 1: Meal like programmed this drumbeat like Charlie Watts sating there's something.
Speaker 1: They're looking at him with his jaw open, like what
Speaker 1: is he doing? And then we actually tempo mapped Charlie's
Speaker 1: performance and then layered a Meals stuff underneath it. It
Speaker 1: was a really cool process. And then even afterwards Keith
Speaker 1: was like, hey, will you do my song too? You know,
Speaker 1: so it was just too good to be true, you know,
Speaker 1: just such an awesome experience, and even like you know,
Speaker 1: and afterwards I could call them like can I come
Speaker 1: to the show. They're always just so cool and just
Speaker 1: such a such a role model for me to see
Speaker 1: how curious they were. But see them gathering around the
Speaker 1: mic doing the Morocca tracks and saying like what should
Speaker 1: we have? Oh yeah, I like that, man. I like that.
Speaker 1: Like they were still like eighteen years old, you know,
Speaker 1: like making music, and that was really inspiring to see.
Speaker 1: I guess how I want to be, like getting older
Speaker 1: and older and still have that curiosity and excitement about
Speaker 1: creating something. It was such an awesome experience. Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're working with Bruno Mars. Was he even called Bruno
Speaker 1: Mars at that point and tell us to the evolution
Speaker 1: of bringing him to market and such success? Yeah, well
Speaker 1: he was Bruno right, and he was his remember he
Speaker 1: was an Elvis impersonator at the age of five, known
Speaker 1: as Bruno Um. And then one day we started working
Speaker 1: on songs. We're making these songs and Steve Lindsay's critiquing them.
Speaker 1: We kind of learned that, like went through that process.
Speaker 1: We're playing online poker, We're just like doing things. And
Speaker 1: then after a while I was just like, God, this
Speaker 1: guy is just such a he has so I'm kind
Speaker 1: of starting to turn gray in the studio, you know,
Speaker 1: And I was like, you know, we gotta get this
Speaker 1: kid back on the stage because he is a performer.
Speaker 1: He's just a god given, god gifted, uh performer. So
Speaker 1: we made this little cover band with me and him
Speaker 1: and his brother who was a police officer at the
Speaker 1: time playing who still plays drums in his band um.
Speaker 1: And we used to play cover gigs in the valley
Speaker 1: that we just found a bar there's hire us and
Speaker 1: we do these cover gigs. And you know, he got
Speaker 1: signed to Motown, but they wanted him to be this
Speaker 1: like urban like Omarion or Floyd or one of these
Speaker 1: guys like and it was you know, he had this
Speaker 1: other It was amazing. What was amazing about Bruno was strong.
Speaker 1: Songwriting was not his talent when he him He's an
Speaker 1: amazing just raw performer, right, and to see him become
Speaker 1: this amazing songwriter is just one of the things that
Speaker 1: makes him so dangerous because now he can create his
Speaker 1: own music. And he kind of, you know, I think
Speaker 1: he kind of retreated and I went and did my
Speaker 1: Kanye thing and he was kind of like, dude, what
Speaker 1: am I supposed to do? Say, well, just keep doing,
Speaker 1: just keep doing your band, keep doing stuff, and then
Speaker 1: he kind of retreated. A little bit into kind of
Speaker 1: being a songwriter. And then I think, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: he hooked up with this former manager was an n R.
Speaker 1: Brandon Creed, and he started doing this more more BEATLESZ
Speaker 1: pop three chord aesthetic rather than an R and B
Speaker 1: kind of richer harmonic aesthetic. But I Want to be
Speaker 1: a billion is so freaking bad. I mean, how are
Speaker 1: you gonna how are you gonna beat that? Like he
Speaker 1: just nailed the whole advertising level, like perfect songwriting combined
Speaker 1: with his talent and his available his ability to kind
Speaker 1: of form, do the videos, do the stage, show, create
Speaker 1: his band, And if you've ever been to one of
Speaker 1: his shows, it's like being in an earth Wind and
Speaker 1: Fire concert. He's got this band, he's got horn players,
Speaker 1: they're dancing on stage, there's young, old, black, white, brown, yellow,
Speaker 1: purple people in the audience. It is just like a
Speaker 1: total and just a joyous fast And you know, when
Speaker 1: we did Uptown Funt, it made me realize, you know,
Speaker 1: after kind of working with Kanye or having like I
Speaker 1: did a project under this moniker Billy Craven that was
Speaker 1: kind of a war protest. I remember you were writing that.
Speaker 1: You write a lot about that where's the protest music
Speaker 1: of our generation? And I did this project kind of
Speaker 1: about the Iraq war um call born on the fourth
Speaker 1: of July, and Uh, I had a strong sense of
Speaker 1: I want music to have a strong message, to have
Speaker 1: that ability to bring up difficult issues and discuss them.
Speaker 1: And I realized when we did Uptown Funk, seeing it
Speaker 1: bring all these different people together who can just from
Speaker 1: all different walks of life enjoy one thing. That's also
Speaker 1: a superpower of music doesn't have to be the most
Speaker 1: deep and uh polarizing or or or political statement. It
Speaker 1: can bring people together. It's an amazing art form pop music,
Speaker 1: you know, to be able to do that, to unite people.
Speaker 1: And stand next to someone who may have a completely
Speaker 1: different viewpoint than you and you're dancing to the same song,
Speaker 1: you find something in common that you are both human.
Speaker 1: You both like this song, you both like dancing, you
Speaker 1: both like having a good time, you know. Like so,
Speaker 1: I think Bruno just embodies this like being able to
Speaker 1: bring joy into people's lives. I think that's an incredible
Speaker 1: service that artists like him provide to humanity. Um and
Speaker 1: that's kind of been his journey. I was driving actually
Speaker 1: when I was doing uh, driving to the studio when
Speaker 1: I was working for Kanye, I think I was just
Speaker 1: writing trying with a broken heart too. I was writing
Speaker 1: the chorus to that just in in the car on
Speaker 1: the way back. You know, I had done the verses
Speaker 1: the day before. When I was driving to the studio
Speaker 1: thinking about the chorus, I turned on the radio and
Speaker 1: I heard that Bob song and Nothing on You and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, Ship, that's that's Bruno. I was
Speaker 1: listening to song a little a little longer. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is a hit song. Bruno is gonna be huge.
Speaker 1: And that was that was it was. It was. I
Speaker 1: don't know what happened to Bob, God bless him, but
Speaker 1: like Bruno just took off. You remember that was Billionaire
Speaker 1: and Nothing on You was featuring Bruno mars right. It
Speaker 1: was at Travis what's his name McCoy, Traviy McCoy record
Speaker 1: and a B O B record. But Bruno was the
Speaker 1: star of those records, and people figure that out real fast,
Speaker 1: you know. So just an amazing talent, amazing story, amazing
Speaker 1: guy just came from nothing, you know, and worked his way. Uh,
Speaker 1: just a raw talent and just just just made his
Speaker 1: way to the top and is just always challenging himself,
Speaker 1: playing the Purple Rain guitar solo at the Grammys. You know,
Speaker 1: like there's just nothing this guy can't do. Okay, tell
Speaker 1: us the story of working with Mark Ronson and ultimately
Speaker 1: creating Uptown Funk. Yeah. Well, you know. The the little
Speaker 1: known story about that is after after working on Bruno's
Speaker 1: second album and Mark and I became good friends, he
Speaker 1: asked he'd produce his album with him, and I was
Speaker 1: just like, wow, okay, what a dream. And for some
Speaker 1: reason I got this, you know, I get passionate about stuff,
Speaker 1: Bob I started when I started dreaming, you know, and
Speaker 1: like uh, I said, you know what we gotta do
Speaker 1: is we gotta drive through the South. We're gonna drive.
Speaker 1: There's a book called Mumbo Jumbo by an author named
Speaker 1: Ishmael Reid that I had to read in college about
Speaker 1: this dis mysterious disease that spreads up the Mississippi River
Speaker 1: and people start having convulsions and dancing. Well, he was
Speaker 1: talking about the spread of black music and rock and
Speaker 1: roll and how it infected everyone and changed everything, made
Speaker 1: people want to move their hips. So I got this
Speaker 1: idea that we're gonna find the next Shaka Khan and
Speaker 1: or you know amazing. We're at the Franklin and we're
Speaker 1: gonna go to New Orleans and we're gonna drive up
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River and stop in all these towns and
Speaker 1: and uh hold auditions. And he looked at me like
Speaker 1: I was crazy, but he said, okay, let's do it.
Speaker 1: And we filmed it and we had this experience and
Speaker 1: that's you know, not really so much came out of
Speaker 1: that necessarily like that came into view. I mean, uptown
Speaker 1: funt just overshadowed everything, right, But what did happen is
Speaker 1: when we stopped in Memphis, we went to Sun Studios,
Speaker 1: and we went to Royal Studios, and we ended up
Speaker 1: coming back to Royal Studios and finishing the record. Um
Speaker 1: and it put this maybe that did seep into the
Speaker 1: uptown funk aesthetic or you know this this very like
Speaker 1: hallowed ground of al green and black music and this
Speaker 1: mecca of like kind of like the quintessential I shouldn't
Speaker 1: say quintessential, but one of the very important uh tent
Speaker 1: poles of American pop music. And we involved um this
Speaker 1: author um uh oh ship. His name is Escaping me, right,
Speaker 1: now um uh hold on, let me let me real quick.
Speaker 1: You guys can edit this part together, so it sounds
Speaker 1: like I have an actual good memory. Um. Michael Shabon
Speaker 1: uh you know, got him involved to write these lyrics
Speaker 1: and and then we would take the lyrics. That was
Speaker 1: an interesting process you're asking me about, Like the process.
Speaker 1: That was the first time I had like, okay, taking
Speaker 1: someone's lyrics and then I write the melody of it.
Speaker 1: And if you go back and listen to uh um,
Speaker 1: I mean he wrote a lot of the lyrics of
Speaker 1: that album and he kind of we've this narrative of
Speaker 1: like kind of in the we kind of want to
Speaker 1: do this kind of steely Dan aesthetic where it's like
Speaker 1: these stories about these guys in the sixties and seventies
Speaker 1: out there, like I'll learned to play the saxophone. Oh
Speaker 1: I played just what I drink Scotch whiskey? Oh not
Speaker 1: long then done behind the wheel. You know, it was like,
Speaker 1: what the what what is this story? It's so like
Speaker 1: interesting kind of dark, seedy lifestyle of these jazzy it's
Speaker 1: kind of this extension of beat nick stuff with this sleeks,
Speaker 1: sleeker kind of aesthetical like you know, like there's a
Speaker 1: song Heavy and Rolling on Uptown Special that's like kind
Speaker 1: of in that vein and Michael Shabon, We've this story
Speaker 1: about these two guys who are kind of grifters and
Speaker 1: they're gonna pull off this highest kind of like dirty
Speaker 1: rotten scoundrels, and they meet this woman who gets involved,
Speaker 1: and their plan is to kind of do it and
Speaker 1: then leave her in the dust, but she they end
Speaker 1: up both falling in love with her separately, and then
Speaker 1: she ends up screwing both of them over. And the
Speaker 1: whole albums was this whole narrative. In this whole album,
Speaker 1: Stevie Wonder played the harmonica on this track and played
Speaker 1: my melody and like there's all these like little gems
Speaker 1: moments that as an album, it's just like amazing updown funk,
Speaker 1: just like blew everything away, right, But that was just
Speaker 1: an awesome experience to work with Mark and just see
Speaker 1: what an expert producer he is and the tones he
Speaker 1: would get, the way he would record drums, the way
Speaker 1: he would introduce collaborators, kind of a different version of Kanye, right,
Speaker 1: like bringing these collaborators in and ultimately having your own
Speaker 1: vision but being able to involve others and use others.
Speaker 1: So he's just one of my favorite people in the
Speaker 1: whole world. And I got so much out of that experience.
Speaker 1: And let's be very specific. Tell us how you created
Speaker 1: the track up Tom Funk. Yeah, So that one was like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: we gotta get Bruno on the record. So we went
Speaker 1: over to his studio in Hollywood and we just started
Speaker 1: jamming and Bruno's on the drums and marks like on
Speaker 1: the guitar, and I'm on the keyboard and we just
Speaker 1: started jamming and it had like the first verse like
Speaker 1: that night we did that this ship that I school
Speaker 1: Michelle five for that white gun boom boom, like this
Speaker 1: funk jam and it was just this jammy thing. But
Speaker 1: everyone knew this was like something special, like for some reason,
Speaker 1: this was in it a super special thing that's like
Speaker 1: so rough. And we'd even play like the rough thing
Speaker 1: for like radio programmers and they just be like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is gonna be a giant song, you
Speaker 1: know and that. But the problem was we got to
Speaker 1: the chorus and it was like this is the We
Speaker 1: had the amazing first thirty seconds of this record. But
Speaker 1: then it's like, Okay, how do we deliver on the
Speaker 1: promise of how good this feels without it just going downhill.
Speaker 1: You know, it needs to just get better and better.
Speaker 1: That was a super challenge. So then we continue to
Speaker 1: work on that song for like about a year, you know,
Speaker 1: we need this, and then Bruno came up with the
Speaker 1: dope nope, no, dope, dope, do it needs this? You know,
Speaker 1: like kind of like a you know, all these little
Speaker 1: details that were like, like we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: just make this thing bulletproof, you know. Like so we
Speaker 1: had the first thirty seconds, but then it took like
Speaker 1: nine i think nine or ten months to really get
Speaker 1: to the end, and then we had all these different
Speaker 1: things and then then we just started over and said okay.
Speaker 1: We got together in a room again in London in
Speaker 1: Mark Studio and just played the song live and said, okay,
Speaker 1: if we were gonna play this live, what would need
Speaker 1: to happen? And then we kind of sorted at all
Speaker 1: the details and then it came together and then dear Lord,
Speaker 1: it was released and it was like the biggest song
Speaker 1: of all time, and especially like uptown funk, like funk
Speaker 1: was kind of a dirty word, like people like that
Speaker 1: was not an uphealing thing. But just what a magical moment.
Speaker 1: And I have like a background in funk music, and
Speaker 1: and uh you know did all that and Wallis and
Speaker 1: all the people I played with Lettuce. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like just amazing how that came together and then how
Speaker 1: it just like it just infected the world. And um,
Speaker 1: I mean that's the story. It was like thirty seconds
Speaker 1: of magic. Okay, but you knew you had something with
Speaker 1: the thirty seconds when it was finished, did you know
Speaker 1: this was going straight to the top? I did not,
Speaker 1: I will be honest, and I did not think it
Speaker 1: was gonna be I thought it had a chance to
Speaker 1: be really successful because with like Bruno delivering that and
Speaker 1: the records good, I thought it was good. But I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone knew it was gonna be I mean,
Speaker 1: it was like twelve weeks at number one or something.
Speaker 1: It was like the longest running number one song at
Speaker 1: the time in the ATS era or the two post
Speaker 1: you know, twenty one century. So yeah, that was just insane.
Speaker 1: What a what a special magical moment? Okay. Taylor Swift,
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift, Taylor Swift story. I got a call Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift was to work with you. Great came her with
Speaker 1: her guitar to my little studio in Venice, played me
Speaker 1: the song top to bottom. I said, okay, great, I
Speaker 1: made a little beat on my MPC and some uh.
Speaker 1: It was a song Holy Ground and Lucky Ones, two
Speaker 1: beautiful songs. That Lucky One song is just so so gorgeous.
Speaker 1: But such a pro just came in. I said, okay,
Speaker 1: made my Beata said, now can you play the guitar separately? Yep,
Speaker 1: did that? Okay, now cut the vocal boom boom, and
Speaker 1: I kind of did my thing, and then um came
Speaker 1: together incredibly incredibly fast, and yeah, what a what a
Speaker 1: force of nature she is, right like, she's just like,
Speaker 1: I mean, through all I know, you guys have your
Speaker 1: history everyone, she's gone her ups and downs, especially in
Speaker 1: my connection to Kanye and all that. But another person
Speaker 1: who just decided to be great, stick to herself, not
Speaker 1: take no for an answer. Not I mean her parents.
Speaker 1: She may have come from this, like what are her
Speaker 1: dad like an investment banker or something no one bought her.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of people who are children of investment bankers.
Speaker 1: They don't become Taylor Swift, you know. So I think
Speaker 1: it's amazing, like what she's accomplished, and um, you gotta
Speaker 1: give it up. Gotta give it up to her for
Speaker 1: all her success and and and sticking to like being
Speaker 1: a songwriter kind of in the old old style, right,
Speaker 1: like having talking about her life and her experiences and
Speaker 1: then and growing changing, going to max getting out of
Speaker 1: country music, which is a fucking terrible place for a
Speaker 1: female artist to be. I mean, uh, I always talking
Speaker 1: about being good people and all this stuff, but they're
Speaker 1: the worst snakes you'll ever find in the music business
Speaker 1: up there in Nashville. Uh. I speak from experience too. Um.
Speaker 1: I have an artist in country we Cam who we
Speaker 1: had like a number one country song, this beautiful song,
Speaker 1: Burning House. Got to work with Doug Morris on that song.
Speaker 1: He signed her and I had the privilege of kind
Speaker 1: of sitting in Doug's office in New York and just
Speaker 1: talking about stuff, and he said, let me play this
Speaker 1: song for you. Okay, alright, let's do it. What do
Speaker 1: you think of that? I don't know, Doug, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, if this song is really special? You know what?
Speaker 1: You're right? When they had r C Records, I had
Speaker 1: just had my first country artist signed with him. He said,
Speaker 1: would you consider being the president of our CIA Records
Speaker 1: Country because like I was like, oh my god, Like
Speaker 1: this guy was just such a like a old school
Speaker 1: and he worked that record, by the way, he did
Speaker 1: research on it. He's the one that like broke burning House,
Speaker 1: you know, and like that's another beautiful one. That's just
Speaker 1: a special song. And always stuff I did throughout my
Speaker 1: career is like that was the height of like E
Speaker 1: D M bangers, right, and then we come in the
Speaker 1: summertime with like a odd bar slow moody song number one,
Speaker 1: you know. But um uh, just to just wrap up
Speaker 1: how horrible country music is for women, it's just like, man, like, uh,
Speaker 1: the world has just progressed so far from being trapped
Speaker 1: in this country radio format. Maybe we literally had our
Speaker 1: records sabotaged internally because over some stuff. But then they
Speaker 1: keep coming around talking about oh, good people this, you're
Speaker 1: good people. If you don't play along, like that's just
Speaker 1: not the place for me. Man. I'm probably gonna make
Speaker 1: some enemies up there in Nashville, but that's fine. I
Speaker 1: don't have no reason to be there because and and
Speaker 1: that's not against like all the people in Nashville, but
Speaker 1: I think specifically for women and like their way behind
Speaker 1: in like just like the ethos of like where the
Speaker 1: world is at, Like hey, like I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know where I'm going with this. I just had
Speaker 1: a horrible experience. Okay, here he styles member of One Direction.
Speaker 1: They're selling stadiums, go solo. How do you get the
Speaker 1: gig and what's the experience like cutting an album with Harry? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Harry reached out to me. I think it was probably
Speaker 1: right after I won the Producer of the Year award,
Speaker 1: and he's like the biggest artist in the world basically
Speaker 1: and wants the best producer in the world, which, you
Speaker 1: know whatever advertising that is when the Grammy for Perduser
Speaker 1: of the Year. I guess that's a pretty good qualification.
Speaker 1: So he reached out. And that's kind of at that
Speaker 1: time period I mentioned earlier, when I was kind of
Speaker 1: had my son. I wasn't really sure how active I
Speaker 1: could be, you know, in like the first year or
Speaker 1: two of my son's life. So I said to him,
Speaker 1: I said, what do you want to do? And he said, well,
Speaker 1: he played me some references and it was kind of
Speaker 1: like he wants like a real rock band, you know.
Speaker 1: So I I had signed a couple of producers at
Speaker 1: the time, one of Taylor Tyler Johnson, who's like a
Speaker 1: who did the Watermelon Sugar number one record with him
Speaker 1: and he is like an amazing producer in his own right,
Speaker 1: who also did the CAM project with me. Brought Cam
Speaker 1: to me and um, I said, well, you know what,
Speaker 1: I cannot just full disclosure, I'm not going to be
Speaker 1: able to go in there and be like in the
Speaker 1: trenches with you every day because I'm a new father
Speaker 1: and I just can't be. I have a have to
Speaker 1: set some boundaries for myself. But I have these guys.
Speaker 1: I can get them to go in there and we'll
Speaker 1: find some band surround you with them, and you know,
Speaker 1: if that's cool with you, you can try it out
Speaker 1: and see how it works. So he said, okay, cool.
Speaker 1: He trusted me another just like you know, totally magnanimous,
Speaker 1: like class act and just like spreads kind of just
Speaker 1: the groovy vibes everywhere he goes. So I mean funny story.
Speaker 1: His current musical director and guitarist who played drums and
Speaker 1: guitar on the entire first album with my engineer's roommate
Speaker 1: who have We tried a couple of guitars. I said,
Speaker 1: we need to get you your Keith Richards. You know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna find a guitar player. You want to make
Speaker 1: like rock music and be like an indie band. Basically,
Speaker 1: let's get that guy for you. Tried a couple of
Speaker 1: people that didn't really work out, and then my engineer
Speaker 1: Ryan nowsh She says, well, I could get Mitch over here,
Speaker 1: but we'll have to see if he can get off work.
Speaker 1: It's where he's a dishwasher and a pizza shop. So
Speaker 1: he got off of work, came in, they fell in love,
Speaker 1: he did the whole album, and he's on tour with
Speaker 1: him now married the drummer and they have a kid
Speaker 1: together on tour. So just another amazing story of like
Speaker 1: just people making it in l A. You know, like
Speaker 1: Mitch Rowland, you know, incredibly talented and just the sweetest
Speaker 1: guy who came in there and just became Harry's like
Speaker 1: right hand man, and it was super fun like making
Speaker 1: that album with him. It was also like a period
Speaker 1: for me where I shifted gears to like realizing I
Speaker 1: don't have to do everything, you know, I can have
Speaker 1: a team around me or bring people into the project
Speaker 1: and I can guide it. I can give my tips,
Speaker 1: my influence. They would go in and work in the studio.
Speaker 1: I'd come in and say, Okay, this is good, take
Speaker 1: this part out, move this over. Now, that's your core,
Speaker 1: that's your verse. Now we need to make a better chorus.
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of editorialize it and really produce it
Speaker 1: right in the classic sense. Um. And that's how that
Speaker 1: album came together. I'm so proud of that album. I
Speaker 1: think it really set Harry on his path to being
Speaker 1: a respected solo artist and separate him from the whole
Speaker 1: uh one direction association affiliation, which is nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 1: but he needed to become Harry Styles, you know. And
Speaker 1: that's with the album's name, Harry Styles. I mean that
Speaker 1: that record uh uh in the Hallway or something that
Speaker 1: something something about the six the second record in the Hallway. UM.
Speaker 1: Just beautiful how that came together. Um, And so happy
Speaker 1: for him and seeing like the show and another guy
Speaker 1: who just brings that, you know, good vibe and good
Speaker 1: energy when he does his shows. Um. But it was
Speaker 1: a cool experience for me to see like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: can do a project kind of from afar and budget
Speaker 1: my time and have boundaries, and that was kind of
Speaker 1: the beginning of like to kind of bring it full
Speaker 1: circle to like you're saying, what's up with Big Sir,
Speaker 1: kind of a time of saying, like setting new boundaries
Speaker 1: for myself to focus more on my own projects. Two
Speaker 1: raise the bar as far as how far we can
Speaker 1: push stuff musically and provide a place for artists to
Speaker 1: kind of go and get away from Elie. I'm just
Speaker 1: wrapping up this Portugal demand album that I've been producing
Speaker 1: for the last two years and through the Pandemic. They're
Speaker 1: an amazing band. We have an amazing album that's about
Speaker 1: to um drop. The first single is gonna drop in February,
Speaker 1: I think February or um maybe that's not as many things,
Speaker 1: but um well did did the single with Ryan tetter
Speaker 1: Um and it's a bomb. I'm not a bomb, it's
Speaker 1: a missile. Uh. But like we did a little we
Speaker 1: kind of wrapped up that record of this place Sonic
Speaker 1: Ranch outside of El Paso. I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: ever heard of the studio, and it was you know,
Speaker 1: John Gourley, the singer and leader of the band. We
Speaker 1: did a little bit of in New York and he
Speaker 1: was kind of talking they live in Portland. It's kind
Speaker 1: of talking about like getting out of l A, you know.
Speaker 1: And I noticed when you or outside of l A
Speaker 1: kind of get that noise out of your head, all
Speaker 1: the influence walking outside, even just feeling the the gravity
Speaker 1: of the industry kind of pulling you towards trying to
Speaker 1: do something that a n R will like or the
Speaker 1: label will like. It's so special to get out of
Speaker 1: that atmosphere and get back to yourself, get back to
Speaker 1: what is inside you and bring that out. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of the big sur thing, but kind of like
Speaker 1: setting these boundaries between me and my mentor Kanye West,
Speaker 1: me and the labels, me and like what I think
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be delivering to the label and creating
Speaker 1: an atmosphere where we can make special music again. We
Speaker 1: can make music that is from the heart, you know, authentic,
Speaker 1: highest level, like free from any kind of commercial expectation. Um.
Speaker 1: And we're about to do it. We're about to like
Speaker 1: make the next wave of like you're going to see
Speaker 1: like a wave of of super creative musical like jazzy.
Speaker 1: All the kids are into jazz, and I started going
Speaker 1: into the sessions now, like with like Travis Scott and
Speaker 1: like guys like this, like oh god, I don't have
Speaker 1: any beats. I'm gonna go in there. I'm gonna like
Speaker 1: play something's gonna be like, oh man, this guy's washed up.
Speaker 1: So I just said, well, I have all these like
Speaker 1: voice notes of me playing piano ideas I kind of do.
Speaker 1: You're asking me my process for sometimes I just play piano.
Speaker 1: I'll just do a bunch of voice notes and then
Speaker 1: I'll kind of work on that. Just playing that, I
Speaker 1: feel like people in the eyes in the room, their
Speaker 1: eyes light up, like just like the piano just plan ideas.
Speaker 1: You know, we're getting back to this organic um musical,
Speaker 1: stripped down intimate time of music. That's going to be
Speaker 1: really exciting. Like Donda, right, I don't know how much
Speaker 1: you've listened to Donda, but it's there. There's no drums,
Speaker 1: it's just all this Like that's a very interesting phenomena, right,
Speaker 1: Like post COVID, like no one could go to the club,
Speaker 1: so no one needed to put drums on their music anymore.
Speaker 1: You just want to listen to it in your house.
Speaker 1: So that's like a really interesting shift that I'm really
Speaker 1: excited about to just kind of get back to my
Speaker 1: musical roots of jazz and aspire to the highest musical levels.
Speaker 1: Because it's funny, like you listen to like a film soundtrack,
Speaker 1: the music can be a film score. Rather, the music
Speaker 1: can be so sophisticated in arcane and and dissonant, and
Speaker 1: it works. People can process that. Yet in pop music
Speaker 1: for good reason, it needs to be simpler. But it's
Speaker 1: one thing I noticed when I was working with Kanye
Speaker 1: versus like, you know, a lot of hip hop artists
Speaker 1: i'd work with, I'd have to really dumb it down.
Speaker 1: I'd have to really particularly purposefully only play about like
Speaker 1: five or ten percent of what I was capable of. Kanye,
Speaker 1: it was like, bring it on, Like, let's go Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson on this, Quincy Jones, you know, like wants to
Speaker 1: hear all that music and Earth Winn and Fire, you know,
Speaker 1: David Foster like this this high musical level. I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to bring that back into the fold, you know,
Speaker 1: and and the word front. You stated earlier that you
Speaker 1: want to own your own masters. You want to certainly
Speaker 1: own your own publishing. Do you see yourself being the
Speaker 1: act in the future, And also you've achieved so much
Speaker 1: in any specific goals, dreams still in the future, I
Speaker 1: mean definitely being the act is the next goal, you know,
Speaker 1: and not for any um like egotistical reasons necessarily, but
Speaker 1: maybe egotistical in the right sense of like so nice
Speaker 1: to have your own project and create and own it
Speaker 1: and own it just from an artistic standpoint, you know,
Speaker 1: and control and everything I've learned and being around and
Speaker 1: being able to work with all these amazing artists, seeing
Speaker 1: the process from beginning to end, make the video, design,
Speaker 1: the cover, it really be your expression because that's what
Speaker 1: music was for me from the beginning, right. It's my
Speaker 1: way to process the world, process my emotions. So it's
Speaker 1: kind of my gift to myself to like say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, maybe do one for them, one for me,
Speaker 1: or maybe just do all for me and be up there,
Speaker 1: but collaborate on the same level where I have an
Speaker 1: artistic uh ownership and license of it. Not to mention
Speaker 1: the financial benefit of doing that right and building your
Speaker 1: own future, um and being smart about that part of it.
Speaker 1: With all these things that Kanye and Prince were fighting
Speaker 1: for against, like the you know, signing shitty deals with labels,
Speaker 1: that's like any other person in any other business would
Speaker 1: look at those contracts and be like, what the funk
Speaker 1: is this? You know, like tech people will be like,
Speaker 1: I think you may have written about that once said
Speaker 1: talking about at least it should be fifty fifty. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm making the entire product here, and not only that,
Speaker 1: like just doing it in my studio, you know, but
Speaker 1: uh well, not only should be fifty fifty, you should
Speaker 1: own the copyright absolutely absolutely, you know, especially solve A
Speaker 1: costs are paid for. Why did they get the only
Speaker 1: album ad? Infinite? Absolutely, And you know a lot of
Speaker 1: guys are making strides to that end, you know, like
Speaker 1: Logic I think has an amazing deal with def Cham
Speaker 1: And you know you got to take the initiative and
Speaker 1: and put that intention into your practice. So definitely, Like,
Speaker 1: especially after all the success after catalog sales and you
Speaker 1: got this money in the bank, I think I would
Speaker 1: be pretty dumb not to pursue that path. And not
Speaker 1: only that, like it's going to be very artistically rewarding
Speaker 1: to you know, drop my own music and make my
Speaker 1: own videos and and then participate on a on a
Speaker 1: little equal footing with like people like I think I'm
Speaker 1: a little behind the curve to be honest, as far
Speaker 1: as my peers like Mark Ronson, Calvin Harris, Benny Blanco, Diplo,
Speaker 1: all these producers who shifted into being artists. And Benny
Speaker 1: just said to me. I was asked him, like, how
Speaker 1: do you do? He's well, I just do the same
Speaker 1: thing I did, except now it says my name on
Speaker 1: the record. I was like, you know, I come from
Speaker 1: such an old school aesthetic where I'm like, I thought,
Speaker 1: if I'm the artist, i gotta get up there and
Speaker 1: like singing dance or something. It's like, no, It's like
Speaker 1: it just says your name on the record. It's still
Speaker 1: your record. I mean goes back to Georgio Moroder or
Speaker 1: like all these guys. I think it's just a mentality
Speaker 1: that also like kind of put myself behind the artist.
Speaker 1: So it's definitely that's kind of my next challenge, and
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about kind of, you know, take ownership
Speaker 1: and have the confidence and the uh, you know, go
Speaker 1: on the adventure of like putting you gotta be guess what,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's not easy to be on the artist either.
Speaker 1: It's nice to be able to sit in the studio
Speaker 1: and make the record and get the royalty checks while
Speaker 1: they go out on tour, do all the press, do
Speaker 1: everything that be famous and all that ship. That's not
Speaker 1: all it's cracked up to be. So, you know, with
Speaker 1: a green of salt, but it's definitely on my agenda
Speaker 1: to bring take back the ownership creatively and financially of
Speaker 1: my work. Well, Jeff, this has been great. I mean
Speaker 1: I could go on for a couple of hours. I'm
Speaker 1: certainly more interested in digging down into the creative process
Speaker 1: which we got into. But this is something that the
Speaker 1: suits really don't understand. They want to control you, but
Speaker 1: you know, you say, doing the preparation to be able
Speaker 1: to then do something great. I don't want to go
Speaker 1: off on a tangent myself, but I just want to
Speaker 1: thank you for all the time you put in giving
Speaker 1: my audience all this insight. Hey, Bob, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: and thanks thanks for all you do too, you know,
Speaker 1: writing about this stuff, and you're kind of the version
Speaker 1: of that and yourself, you're not beholden to editors and
Speaker 1: and you really tell it like it is. So it's
Speaker 1: been such a pleasure being on your program and uh
Speaker 1: and connecting with you, thank you. Until next time. This
Speaker 1: is Bob left sex