Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Ladies and Gentlemen,
Speaker 1: My name is Questlove. That this is q LS classic.
Speaker 2: When we look back at classic Quest Love Supreme episode,
Speaker 2: this one was a doozy. This is from December seventh,
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: However, the night that we've recorded this was the night
Speaker 3: of the presidential elections. Kind of came in the door
Speaker 3: thinking that then Senator Hillary Clinton had it in the bag,
Speaker 3: and midway through the episode you just hear are yeah,
Speaker 3: And that's because, yeah, we found out whose winner was
Speaker 3: going to be that night, and we didn't know what
Speaker 3: America was in for who Anyway, Stephen Hill, a good
Speaker 3: friend of the show, performer, et executive and now you
Speaker 3: know general Love of Music, shares this.
Speaker 2: Journey with us and it's an amazing show.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2: This is Stephen Hill or Quest Love Supreme Classic from
Speaker 2: December seventh, twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: Suprema Su Su Suprema Roll Call, Suprema.
Speaker 1: Sun Sun Supremo Role Call.
Speaker 4: Suprema Sun Sun Suprema Roll Call, Suprema Sun Sun Suprema
Speaker 4: Roll Call.
Speaker 1: My name is Quest Love. Yeah, you're resident. Yeah nothing
Speaker 1: the President.
Speaker 4: Sun Suprema Roll call Suprema Sun Sun.
Speaker 1: Suprema roll call. My name is Fonte. Yeah. My style
Speaker 1: so elegant.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some even say, yeah, I'm too intelligent, Suprema.
Speaker 6: My name is Stephen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just like I guess.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the only difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's more well dressed.
Speaker 4: Supremo Supreme roll call, Supreme Suprema.
Speaker 8: Ro still is my first name. Yeah, my middle name
Speaker 8: is Earl. Yeah, waiting for some reruns. Yeah, of Cedar's.
Speaker 1: World, Super.
Speaker 4: Supreme, roll called Supreme son So Supremo roll.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I'm a little sad, Yeah because Obama gone. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I miss her.
Speaker 4: Roll call Supremo something something Supreme roll call, Primo Supreme roll.
Speaker 6: My name is Stephen. Yeah, I got that base.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I'm about to put Yeah, Supreme Supreme Suprema roll
Speaker 9: Suprema Suprema roll.
Speaker 1: Give yourself? How you doing? Still ain't got fired yet?
Speaker 1: Now we're still here. I'm shocked we are still here
Speaker 1: after all this time. Ladies and gentlemen, what's up? Welcome
Speaker 1: to another episode of Quest Love Supreme. I am your host,
Speaker 1: Amir quest Lov Thompson, and we have another great show
Speaker 1: for you this week on the show. Today, we have
Speaker 1: the president of Programming at BT Networks, mister Stephen Hill.
Speaker 1: We'll bring him on in a minute, but before we
Speaker 1: do that, let's check in quickly with Team Supreme. How
Speaker 1: you doing.
Speaker 10: Man, I'm good man. I have some foolish to jump
Speaker 10: off at the crib. Yeah, some foolish to jump off.
Speaker 6: At the crib.
Speaker 1: The day my uncle got shot.
Speaker 10: Whoa, and so I gotta I gotta go home and like,
Speaker 10: see what's up. He was shot in the stomach exit
Speaker 10: through his back, and so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just another day in the life, my brother. How
Speaker 1: y'all doing? Forget about? How are you doing?
Speaker 7: How's your uncle doing?
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 9: Well?
Speaker 10: I mean he's he's well, he's in critical condition and
Speaker 10: he's he's on a respirator I think. And so he
Speaker 10: had a surgery and now he has I have another
Speaker 10: surgery because it got h What was it hit is
Speaker 10: it took some of his They had to take some
Speaker 10: small intesting I think, and it hit some of it.
Speaker 1: But it exit, which is a good thing if it exits.
Speaker 10: But if it stays, that's like you're totally fucked if
Speaker 10: it stays. But they had to take something small intestine
Speaker 10: but he's sixty four five and he already has like
Speaker 10: some other health issues, so it's a lot so but
Speaker 10: uh but no, but no that I mean, you know
Speaker 10: this praise up for my uncle, you know what I mean.
Speaker 10: And but but I'm good man. Everything else is everything
Speaker 10: else is cool.
Speaker 1: Well, it's just that Fante is still spot on with
Speaker 1: his dead pan humor.
Speaker 6: If you were just waiting for the punch on, my
Speaker 6: first response was to laugh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my uncle got shot. Yeah, I was like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, no, I mean you got no laughter. But
Speaker 1: but nah, man, he's uh prays up for him. But
Speaker 1: other than that, I'm cool, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I'm in New York City. How's your family, Steve, They're
Speaker 1: not shot.
Speaker 7: I've not been shot, okay, No.
Speaker 1: Just you know, I want to make sure everyone's family.
Speaker 1: That's good. It's good, Bill, you.
Speaker 5: Gots Yeah, everybody is alive, you know, and excited about
Speaker 5: this new year.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's what it is. That's what we call it
Speaker 1: new year.
Speaker 5: And I'm excited.
Speaker 1: What is this new year going to bring us? We
Speaker 1: don't know even No, I'm just saying, you know, January
Speaker 1: special for you. Well, it's you and I that's right,
Speaker 1: it's special for you and I yeah.
Speaker 5: Well it's not here because as a woman when you
Speaker 5: turn babies and no husband, it's a little different. But
Speaker 5: quest love what your birthday?
Speaker 1: What was you gonna be like how I'm always out
Speaker 1: of the country the way anybody wants to say gifts.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing though, because usually around inauguration time, Uh,
Speaker 1: my birthday falls on MLK Day and Inauguration Day, so
Speaker 1: people just naturally forget it's my birthday. And uh, one
Speaker 1: time when I turned thirty, I thought, oh, okay, you remember, okay,
Speaker 1: light and I go way back to Philadelphia. So the
Speaker 1: tasty treats collective, Yes, I thought, like, y'all mean and
Speaker 1: Stacey were like, set me up for like a thirty birthday,
Speaker 1: bast They were like, yeah, we used to spend next
Speaker 1: next Sunday because you know, special night on Monday. And
Speaker 1: you know, I thought it was my birthday, so I
Speaker 1: wore suit, I was all happy, walked in the room
Speaker 1: like surprise, there's no one in the room to embarrass
Speaker 1: myself in front of my girls. I was just like
Speaker 1: they so let's go and we went to VIP and
Speaker 1: then I was like, oh, y'all really wanted me to
Speaker 1: DJ tonight and there was like three people there, and I.
Speaker 5: Was like, that's the story of January twentieth and our birthday.
Speaker 1: It is even even when Obama got inaugurated, not one
Speaker 1: person remembered it was my birthday except for my mom
Speaker 1: my mom. No, but I mean it was a historic day.
Speaker 1: So I forgive.
Speaker 10: That's almost like, you know what, man, I had something
Speaker 10: similar heavening to do me. That was almost like I
Speaker 10: was married once in a former life, and our anniversary
Speaker 10: just so happened to fall on the same day that
Speaker 10: Michael Jackson died. Oh no, And so we went out, Yeah,
Speaker 10: we went out. And we went out one night. I
Speaker 10: used to throw a party downtown Raleigh and it was
Speaker 10: just a regular just just a dance party. And so
Speaker 10: Mike died that day, and so and my party was
Speaker 10: on Thursday. It was always on Thursday night. And so
Speaker 10: Mike died that day, and so it was also our anniversary,
Speaker 10: and so my wife at the time wanted to go
Speaker 10: out and she wanted to come with me to the party.
Speaker 10: I said, Okay, cool, we'll come out, we'll celebrate whatever.
Speaker 10: But Mike had died, and so I'm fucking Bill boss
Speaker 10: Bill he had a gig somewhere in Atlanta. He was
Speaker 10: in Atlanta, and so he damn crying and shit, I'm
Speaker 10: in the phone. I'm on the phone, fucking like just cry.
Speaker 10: I'm like, dude, why am I crying over Michael Jackson?
Speaker 10: But I was fucked up? So we go out. Now,
Speaker 10: So we come to the party. Everybody shows up. They
Speaker 10: got the Black high Waters on with the white socks
Speaker 10: and the loafers and everything, and so we just playing
Speaker 10: Mike all night going in and my wife didn't really
Speaker 10: get that much attention. So then later on as we divorced,
Speaker 10: as you probably could gather, later on, she brought that
Speaker 10: up as a bone content. She was like, I remember
Speaker 10: we went out that night and it wasn't even our anniversary.
Speaker 10: Y'all was celebrating Michael Jackson. And I just remember telling her.
Speaker 10: I was like, yo, she tried to blame. She was
Speaker 10: celebrating the Michael's life as well. No, no, it's not that
Speaker 10: that was a callisquar divorce, but just as to say, well,
Speaker 10: I f I wasn't. I didn't get my attention that night,
Speaker 10: and I was and I was just like, listen, that's
Speaker 10: Michael Jackson. Like I mean we will hopefully have other anniversaries.
Speaker 1: I mean we're not, but there's only one Michael Jackson, Like,
Speaker 1: are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 10: Like you didn't make thriller? I mean you brought me
Speaker 10: a son into the world. Okay, cool? Like right, you
Speaker 10: brought you gave me a son, all right? That ship
Speaker 10: wasn't off the wall.
Speaker 1: Though, so that was kind of you know, you could
Speaker 1: see why Barrys maybe didn't last. But we're great friends
Speaker 1: now and it's cool. But but nah, I hear you.
Speaker 10: Whenever big events happened, you kind of can't compete with that,
Speaker 10: and you just got to accept it.
Speaker 1: Wait, I didn't know that I can compare real life
Speaker 1: relationship matters with our classic albums. Look at my face
Speaker 1: light up right now? I had kind of this dinner
Speaker 1: was okay, but you know it wasn't no purple. You
Speaker 1: know it might have been love sex. You know, chicken
Speaker 1: was real love. Joe.
Speaker 5: Wait, you you gotta announce this, this amazing laugh that
Speaker 5: we got in the room because I don't think we
Speaker 5: didn't said about our guest is up in.
Speaker 1: Here with us? Listen, yes, where is Yes? Let's do it?
Speaker 5: Like well, since you, oh, don't make me do it.
Speaker 1: The man because I know you're ladies and.
Speaker 5: Gentlemen, boys and girls. The man who has shaped the
Speaker 5: narrative of one of the first black TV channel in
Speaker 5: our nation. The man that gave us the Real Prince Tribute.
Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 5: The man that kept Team some of the life for
Speaker 5: a little bit, because I'm sure he was there for
Speaker 5: that long, gave us Sita, the Man, Rap City, Joe Claire,
Speaker 5: Chris Thomas, Rachel Caribbean rhythms, jam b E t so
Speaker 5: uh Real Husbands of Hollywood. Uh, step Hills here, y'all? Wow,
Speaker 5: I mean you see yeah?
Speaker 1: Can we call you mister president?
Speaker 6: So you got to call me something because there's another
Speaker 6: step in here. So we got to figure out Sugar
Speaker 6: Sugar Steve.
Speaker 8: You want to know why we can hold on to
Speaker 8: that name tightly?
Speaker 1: Do you want to know why we call short version
Speaker 1: short version? He has diabetes? There you go, so he's down.
Speaker 1: You can laugh, we laugh about it.
Speaker 6: Okay, okay, all right, We're five minutes in and so
Speaker 6: far we have a guy who has diabetes and somebody
Speaker 6: whose uncle got shot.
Speaker 5: This and might I just say, mister Hill, congratulations on
Speaker 5: being the most successful radio person ever to go to
Speaker 5: TV like I mean, I you know, people have dreams,
Speaker 5: some of us and you have lived it. So congratulations,
Speaker 5: we're making out the radio story.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that's a hard transition.
Speaker 9: Yep.
Speaker 5: That excuse excuse me for calling you this when niggas
Speaker 5: say they have successful TV careers. I can't wait to
Speaker 5: get back to radio.
Speaker 1: Really, you want to go back to radio. I love rate.
Speaker 6: Come on, I've loved no no. I grew I grew up.
Speaker 6: I wanted to be Donna Simpson when I grew up.
Speaker 6: I I grew up in d I grew up in DC.
Speaker 1: I go back to the idea of radio.
Speaker 6: I want to go back. I want to have listen
Speaker 6: to Deven Love Supreme. That's what I like to have
Speaker 6: at some point in time. So the idea of radio,
Speaker 6: the idea of music and personality and having discussions about music.
Speaker 6: That's what it was when I was in radio. I
Speaker 6: loved that.
Speaker 1: You want to know something, I'd spent two days in
Speaker 1: d c uh previously. You know. I love the fact
Speaker 1: that Howard station is still.
Speaker 5: The best station in the world. Yes, I said it loud.
Speaker 5: W h u R is the best. Every radio station
Speaker 5: in the work that's.
Speaker 6: Because it's it's independent independent, it's not it's not owned
Speaker 6: by one of the Kings.
Speaker 1: Are they the last Mohican in a black music in
Speaker 1: the United States? Close to it or besides Steven st
Speaker 1: Stevie Stevie's that has.
Speaker 5: Such good positioning on your radio dial. I feel like
Speaker 5: everybody else is eighty something when that's college.
Speaker 6: College is when you're below ninety two point three. If
Speaker 6: you're below ninety two point three, you're you're either publicly
Speaker 6: funded or college above. That is where you start playing
Speaker 6: with the money.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so h R HU R. But HUR is not
Speaker 6: owned by any of the big you know people who
Speaker 6: own five hundred radio stations so they can channels. Yep,
Speaker 6: they aren't. So they aren't beholden to any contracts to
Speaker 6: play this certain song this many times a day so
Speaker 6: the artist will show up at their station.
Speaker 1: Why do you have these romantic visions of radio as
Speaker 1: it was in your childhood.
Speaker 6: Because it was that way when I was in radio.
Speaker 6: That's all like I missed. It's like it'd be like
Speaker 6: the Rip van Winkle of radio, Like I got out
Speaker 6: of it a certain time then fell asleep for twenty
Speaker 6: some id years and then go back and expect it
Speaker 6: to be exactly the same. But it wouldn't be right.
Speaker 6: First of all, my voice would be a tape another city.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, you would you be in a computer?
Speaker 1: What is the question?
Speaker 8: Would you go back to terrestrial radio or would you
Speaker 8: try satellite or a pandora?
Speaker 6: I would try anybody who would have me and be
Speaker 6: playing great music and talk to great folks. Oh yeah,
Speaker 6: well what.
Speaker 5: Is great music? Stephen Hill? That's a fascinating statement you
Speaker 5: made there.
Speaker 1: Well, this is the thing because I know the thing
Speaker 1: is is that you know I understand that it's I mean,
Speaker 1: this is almost like a relationship like do you think
Speaker 1: with your heart or do you think with your brain?
Speaker 1: And you know, lately I've been accused of this like
Speaker 1: cats always kind of joke like oh you know, you're
Speaker 1: such a suit your suit meaning really.
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah, yeah no, just well I'll tell you why
Speaker 8: after you after you do you think I'm a suit?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think you think like a suit?
Speaker 5: Yeah, oh okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 1: It's whear that my suit is accusing me of being
Speaker 1: a suit.
Speaker 5: In a suit the same sweatshirt on.
Speaker 1: Wow, so you get the suit? Say where does that
Speaker 1: come from what do they mean by that? Here's the thing. Well,
Speaker 1: number one, I'm I see, I don't I get offend.
Speaker 1: The idea of me being over calculating or overthinking really
Speaker 1: didn't come into play until, like I think, like a
Speaker 1: Pitchwork review of the Tipping Point. And then slowly, and
Speaker 1: only because Pitchfork was such the Emperor's new clothes of
Speaker 1: record criticism that other critics would see what Pitchfork was
Speaker 1: saying and then they would start that was like the forecast, right,
Speaker 1: And then slowly, between like two thousand and five and
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight, I started seeing, well, you know
Speaker 1: he overthinks everything and da da da da da da da,
Speaker 1: which I mean, okay, granted, like it's that's lazy journalism
Speaker 1: when you just see what they say and then you
Speaker 1: paraphrase it. But then I personally got offended because I
Speaker 1: just felt like, why does the black guy like, why
Speaker 1: do I have to be accused of thinking too much?
Speaker 1: But the thing is that I feel like life is science,
Speaker 1: Like you're either going to go on science or you're
Speaker 1: going to go on faith. Okay, you're even Christianity or science.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying I don't believe in faith, but
Speaker 1: I believe in science. I believe in numbers, and I
Speaker 1: believe in occurrences, and I believe in circles, and I
Speaker 1: believe in patterns. Yeah, patterns, And somehow I don't know,
Speaker 1: I feel as though it might read less authentic if
Speaker 1: it's planned ahead of time, as opposed to people just
Speaker 1: like the narrative of the spontaneity of magic happening. And
Speaker 1: it does have flat like a guy like Prince. And
Speaker 1: this is from a coming from a scientist that is
Speaker 1: listened to at least I'll say I put in a
Speaker 1: good one hundred and fifty hours of listening to Prince rehearsals.
Speaker 1: And I mean stuff that the average guy would run
Speaker 1: out of patients of listening to. I mean George Clinton's
Speaker 1: greatest quote about princes, like damn man, even that cat
Speaker 1: rehearses is spontaneity, you know, and it's just like to me,
Speaker 1: I mean that might seem sudi like the the idea
Speaker 1: of over preparing and that sort of thing. So it
Speaker 1: reads less authentic because it's scientific and not just I
Speaker 1: think it would be that doesn't read scientifically, that just
Speaker 1: the reason of a person just putting into work for
Speaker 1: the craft.
Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 10: I think Sudi would be all right, We're gonna get
Speaker 10: Max Martin to produce the new Roots album, Like that
Speaker 10: would be a suit thing, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: If you let's get Scott Storts to do the first
Speaker 1: single for our next record. Yeah, that happened. Scott Storch
Speaker 1: was a member of the Roots, right, But Scott stor
Speaker 1: did the first single, things Fall Apart, But he hadn't
Speaker 1: been a member a member of the Roots for Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Scott Storch did the most loved all the time.
Speaker 8: But okay, Scott Storch being considered a member of the Roots,
Speaker 8: I'm trying to think of a great analogy.
Speaker 1: Is it's like he never left. Like the thing is
Speaker 1: that you never leave the Roots, Malik, Okay, So is
Speaker 1: Kalie still a Route?
Speaker 5: Kalise? Was she a Root?
Speaker 1: She was like six months but I thought, all see,
Speaker 1: But the thing is is that the Roots are like
Speaker 1: Steely Dan, you know it's it's it's fake session and
Speaker 1: then a bunch of session players. But I but I
Speaker 1: understand the romantic attachment to members, like why do I
Speaker 1: love the Revolution? Like Princess had better more technical musicians,
Speaker 1: but my heart's always with the revolution. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: understand people's attachments to it, but I mean on the
Speaker 1: real like I mean, James Poyser has been a route
Speaker 1: since Do You Want More, but really hasn't been officially
Speaker 1: what I said.
Speaker 8: Scott wasn't hasn't been a root for a long time.
Speaker 8: It's like he wasn't really a constant presence on the records.
Speaker 1: He's always been just his Yeah, but I mean Scott
Speaker 1: was therefore it ain't saying nothing new and you got
Speaker 1: me and then adrenaline. Scott Storte is all over things
Speaker 1: fall apart.
Speaker 5: Just formulas. You're basically saying that you're not a suit
Speaker 5: just because you have a formula. Did you think would work?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: But I never went out like, hey, let's get it
Speaker 1: hit with Scott storage. It was just like the sooth
Speaker 1: thought concerning the tipping point. The sooth thought was fall
Speaker 1: back a mirror and let's do something well, let's do
Speaker 1: something normal. Only because Jimmy and I Bean was like
Speaker 1: he really didn't get and didn't have the time to
Speaker 1: absorb and come and observe and all that stuff, like
Speaker 1: he's dealing with nineteen other platinum artists, So it was
Speaker 1: just like, let's just do the most normal. I got
Speaker 1: to put my two cents on Star and maybe like
Speaker 1: which was my favorite song some other joints. But really
Speaker 1: it was just like that was my most hands off Okay,
Speaker 1: what do I do? And let you guys do the work.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't think there's anything calculating on that level.
Speaker 1: So anyway, Stephen, I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: I'm still trying to figure out who the Jeff Skunk
Speaker 6: Baxtra of the Roots is.
Speaker 1: A man that would be uh would it be Kurt?
Speaker 5: Did I figure out what Jeff Skunk Baster is.
Speaker 6: Or brother effort?
Speaker 1: Steely Dan had at least nineteen revolving musicians around the
Speaker 1: planets of Fagin and Becker and a few other people.
Speaker 5: But when you learn you're just a surface Steely Dan fan. Okay,
Speaker 5: thank you guys.
Speaker 1: No, but this is what the show watch, y'all.
Speaker 5: Watch Michael Jackson tapes over all.
Speaker 6: Right, I could do that forever, you know, I could
Speaker 6: do that?
Speaker 5: Is he your favorite?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: It's tough when you have it's tough when it's princes
Speaker 6: in the room.
Speaker 1: It's tough.
Speaker 6: It's tough. You talk about practicing spontaneity. I didn't know
Speaker 6: that much about Prince, but Michael Jackson felt like he
Speaker 6: rehearsed a lot of spontaneity, like there was whatever it
Speaker 6: was like, can I come down there and sing? You know,
Speaker 6: it was the same point at the same show.
Speaker 1: I assure you everyone probably maybe George Clinton's p funk
Speaker 1: mom because they were too hard to control. But I
Speaker 1: assure you I've seen repetition even with like listen, Coltrane
Speaker 1: outtakes his entire Temple University series of like nine shows
Speaker 1: right after Love Supreme came out. Even his his his
Speaker 1: scaling of solos were the same level. So it's like,
Speaker 1: I think anyone that great just you know, has a
Speaker 1: pattern they follow due to hours of practice.
Speaker 5: But that's funny because anybody that great, most fans just
Speaker 5: don't know that they have a pattern. And so maybe
Speaker 5: the people who call you a suit they just you know,
Speaker 5: know you behind the scenes so well, But.
Speaker 1: I don't mind being called to suit old suit or wait,
Speaker 1: I had to look to the left to see what
Speaker 1: Bill's response was. So Steve, back to you and your
Speaker 1: your humble beginnings in radio, Can I can I assume
Speaker 1: that you uh kind of your curiosity about radio started
Speaker 1: with like making up your own radio programs at the
Speaker 1: house and tape recorders.
Speaker 6: And absolutely absolutely I just same thing. I was grew
Speaker 6: up in d C, where I thought the radio. I
Speaker 6: didn't realize it then, but the radio there was so
Speaker 6: crazy great, the w p g C, which eventually came
Speaker 6: an urban station, but it used to be a station
Speaker 6: where you'd hear earth wind and fire next to Barry
Speaker 6: Man a Low next to the Jackson five like it was.
Speaker 6: It was just all this is is a pop station?
Speaker 1: Was this like pe D Green, Dewey Hughes, was this?
Speaker 6: Yeah, ol Oil is the station I listened to in
Speaker 6: the car in my dad's Mustang when you drive drive
Speaker 6: through Southeast, you know, during the weekend.
Speaker 5: Melvin Lindsay was a little later.
Speaker 6: I think Melvin Lindsay a little later. Yeah, But Peter Green,
Speaker 6: Peter Green was around Bobby. I can't think of Bobby's
Speaker 6: last name, Bobby Burner. I can't think Bobby Burner something Burner.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, explain where did you grow up? Was
Speaker 1: it DC?
Speaker 6: Southeasts?
Speaker 1: You were born in d C.
Speaker 5: Yo, that's the only part of DC that's still not
Speaker 5: one hundred percent gentrified.
Speaker 6: Yet they're getting close, tough, getting very they got as
Speaker 6: anacostia bridge. It's gonna be an issue.
Speaker 1: Describe specifically what black radio was like.
Speaker 6: It was AM, it was w O L, it was AM.
Speaker 6: It was am w ok.
Speaker 1: Your visions and romantic visions of what radio was has
Speaker 1: an AM frequency to it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean at the beginning, at the beginning, now
Speaker 6: it's now it's FM. At the beginning where I learned
Speaker 6: to love music, it was absolutely AM radio w O L,
Speaker 6: w OK, w e E M for a pop station
Speaker 6: PGC I think was FM by then it was actually
Speaker 6: AM and FM, but it was. It was. It was
Speaker 6: sound coming out of my father's nineteen sixty six Mustang
Speaker 6: fake convertible, you know they had it had like the
Speaker 6: cool green color, but there was a black but it
Speaker 6: wasn't really a convertible.
Speaker 1: It made it look like O convertible. Yeah, that's just
Speaker 1: kind of the Chrysler three hundred of its exactly.
Speaker 6: Exactly.
Speaker 1: This is Quest Love, Supreme, Wor and Pandua. And if
Speaker 1: you're just tuning in, we're chatting with our guests. The
Speaker 1: head of programming at BT Networks, Stephen Hill. Okay, I
Speaker 1: guess you're the first guest that was born on the
Speaker 1: far east of the United States, where a lot of
Speaker 1: our Midwestern guests told stories of just being one radio
Speaker 1: station and maybe two hours of soul music.
Speaker 5: Whereas Plus it's still the stop. Remember DC's below the
Speaker 5: mazing Dixon line and very black. So it was one
Speaker 5: of those rare cities four black radio stations. It still does.
Speaker 6: Yes, Okay, so WEIM wasn't their black station. WPGC wasn't black.
Speaker 6: Then that was the pop station, but that's the one
Speaker 6: that we played bury Man Low and Earth wind Fire
Speaker 6: and wild Cherry and O L and Okay We're am
Speaker 6: and then okay became FM one hundred point three.
Speaker 1: You could trust radio back then?
Speaker 6: Oh yes, absolutely. I trusted it with my heart absolutely.
Speaker 1: So were you DJ at heart or just like you
Speaker 1: wanted to be a personality.
Speaker 6: I just wanted to be around music as much as
Speaker 6: I possibly could. Like there was I'm sure everybody had
Speaker 6: that experience of getting in the car and like the
Speaker 6: first thing you do is turn on the radio. Like
Speaker 6: the biggest, the biggest thrill I ever had when we
Speaker 6: got a car that we could turn the radio on
Speaker 6: before the engine came on. I remember that there was
Speaker 6: a Volkswagen that came out of Mom got a Volkswagen. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and the radio would turn on. Now this caused challenges,
Speaker 6: of course, when you go to listen to the radio
Speaker 6: in the car. Sometimes I would just look outside and
Speaker 6: listen to radio in the car without going anywhere, and
Speaker 6: then leave the radio on and the battery be.
Speaker 1: Out and.
Speaker 6: But yeah, so that that's the first part of music,
Speaker 6: and it was motown. It was James Brown. James Brown
Speaker 6: was my first, uh musical crush ever, like that was
Speaker 6: my first idol, like that when we saw James Brown
Speaker 6: on TV move and he was in the middle of
Speaker 6: his going from process to Afro phase. So say it,
Speaker 6: say that Loud's transition. He was transitioning. Say it Loud was.
Speaker 6: I think I was like seven or eight years old,
Speaker 6: but that meant something to me. I didn't know what
Speaker 6: I didn't know what black and White was at that
Speaker 6: point in time, but I knew something about that song
Speaker 6: spoke spoke to me.
Speaker 1: Were you attending concerts by this point or.
Speaker 6: First concert was July second, nineteen seventy Temptations, Temptations right
Speaker 6: after the right after psychdelic h It was after one
Speaker 6: album after that Ballic Confusion was on the album That's
Speaker 6: Skyt's limmit right, I got a.
Speaker 5: Check to get I have to check was that like,
Speaker 5: Howard did you go see that? No?
Speaker 6: No, I was actually came out to My dad had
Speaker 6: to work in LA for the first half of that year,
Speaker 6: so we came out at the end of June. I
Speaker 6: remember this very well.
Speaker 1: What did your parents do?
Speaker 6: My dad worked with the Census Bureau. He was a
Speaker 6: statistician for years, and mom was a mom, raised us
Speaker 6: and then was a part time teacher, music teacher. Yeah,
Speaker 6: so that was my That was my parents there.
Speaker 1: But your mom was a music teacher.
Speaker 6: She was that explained teacher. She was a taught piano
Speaker 6: so to me.
Speaker 1: But did you ever want to learn?
Speaker 6: Or did? But I had never had the patience for it.
Speaker 6: That was the problem, and it's I have very few
Speaker 6: regrets in my entire life. That's the biggest regret we
Speaker 6: didn't stay with the piano that I didn't stay with
Speaker 6: the drums. I tried, but I just didn't have the
Speaker 6: patience at eleven and twelve years old to stick with it.
Speaker 6: It's the biggest regret. But I learned how to play
Speaker 6: some things about my own, right, So I can play
Speaker 6: first part of Purple Rain on a piano. I can
Speaker 6: play MacArthur Park. Oh oh wait a minute, really I
Speaker 6: can play I can play the first part of MacArthur
Speaker 6: Park on a piano. And I used to be able
Speaker 6: to play father song. Really, I used to be able
Speaker 6: to play father song.
Speaker 1: Well. But the first part of MacArthur's part, that's hilarious
Speaker 1: record shopping Steve and I discovered on the forty five
Speaker 1: we had a radio promo of MacArthur's part. What you
Speaker 1: have to know about MacArthur's Park is that by Donna
Speaker 1: Summit or no no, no, no, no, Richard Arthur. Oh
Speaker 1: there is Richard Harris. Richard Harris, right, yeah, So MacArthur's
Speaker 1: Part is sort of like a hell Mary throw into
Speaker 1: the world of radio, which each song should be about
Speaker 1: three minutes and thirty seconds, and the idea of telling
Speaker 1: radio programmers to let this seven minute.
Speaker 6: It's about seven it's seven seven seven seven, yeah, like seven.
Speaker 1: Oh two or something like that. So it's very unusual
Speaker 1: one for a forty five to have a seven minute song.
Speaker 1: But the actual artwork of the forty five of MacArthur's Park,
Speaker 1: it's more about the record label telling you the listener
Speaker 1: that you know, sometimes you have to let songs breathe
Speaker 1: and get to you. And you know, what's a seven
Speaker 1: minute song? Sit down and absorb this music like I've
Speaker 1: never seen a selling point of such an epic song.
Speaker 1: And and and of course you know what is MacArthur's
Speaker 1: part really about? I mean, just the idea of wasting
Speaker 1: cake in the ring. You've heard MacArthur's part, like you.
Speaker 5: Know, I haven't. You know you hear me being quiet
Speaker 5: over here. I was just gonna act like I did.
Speaker 6: Well, you've heard the.
Speaker 1: Melting and the Dog.
Speaker 6: It's the same as the summer version.
Speaker 5: I got it because I was sweating over year.
Speaker 6: Written by Jimmy Jimmy Webb.
Speaker 5: Okay, if not, I'm going to google it now.
Speaker 1: My dad used to do that song in the show.
Speaker 1: And yeah, I just wondered about leaving cake out and
Speaker 1: the raine. And so it's funny think.
Speaker 6: About that every time because it was my mother's favorite
Speaker 6: song for a very long time. Something about that song
Speaker 6: really talk to her and I try to figure out
Speaker 6: what it was. I couldn't figure with it, but I
Speaker 6: always had the idea of a cake out in the
Speaker 6: rain and I could see it vividly that there's lime green.
Speaker 6: It's lime green with some kind of strawberry and was
Speaker 6: just melting down. It's such a visual to me.
Speaker 10: But that's the song though, I mean, Jimmy Webb, I think,
Speaker 10: if I'm not mistaking, I think he's just saying got
Speaker 10: a wrote Witchity Lineman.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think that's like one of my favorite songs.
Speaker 1: He's a great songwriter.
Speaker 6: I don't think did Richard Harris ever sing any song
Speaker 6: beside that, like Richard Harris the actor. By the way,
Speaker 6: Richard Harris the actor sang MacArthur parkon problem was that
Speaker 6: was on a forty five and trying to get seven
Speaker 6: minutes worth a sound of the forty five if you
Speaker 6: wrong all of a sudden, Yeah, I remember my mom
Speaker 6: had a Dell Stany in my corner and that was
Speaker 6: like six sixty.
Speaker 9: Boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, how they get on? So it's
Speaker 1: here for long forty five? Good mastering? All right? So Steve,
Speaker 1: where do you at least get the curiosity on how
Speaker 1: to enter radio? Like was this dreams you had as
Speaker 1: a kid or just this come to you as a
Speaker 1: teenager or an adult or mostly as.
Speaker 6: A teenage but really, I mean it really it turned
Speaker 6: around in my first year in college. My first year
Speaker 6: I went to Brown and oh, because it's so tied back.
Speaker 6: So Brown University had a radio station, has a radio station,
Speaker 6: sorry WBRU, but it is ninety five point five. So
Speaker 6: even though it is a college radio station, it is
Speaker 6: in the it is in the you got to make
Speaker 6: that money sector of the spectrum, right, It is not
Speaker 6: a college below ninety two point three. So it was
Speaker 6: a commercial radio station and it was rock, alternative, rock, away,
Speaker 6: whatever you call it back in eighty four. But on
Speaker 6: Sunday it was a three hundred and sixty degree black
Speaker 6: experience in sound. If you hashtag that you've used up
Speaker 6: all one, it's done.
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you a story about BRU. It's a
Speaker 1: little dishonest, but I'll say that after a few a
Speaker 1: lot of root shows at Brown University, because we would
Speaker 1: frequent a lot of the upper echelone colleges and get
Speaker 1: that money. Sometimes at these radio interviews, the DJs would
Speaker 1: sort of just let me rummage through.
Speaker 6: No, I know where this is going, by the way,
Speaker 6: because it's still on, it's still in the I know
Speaker 6: where this is going.
Speaker 1: I know where it's going. Okay, I'll say that I
Speaker 1: have a lot of wbr U records in my possession.
Speaker 6: So if there if they are BRU records in the
Speaker 6: upper left corner, it says R and B you wrote
Speaker 6: it has a date on them. If you turn them around,
Speaker 6: you'll see the writing on the back and they'll say,
Speaker 6: we used to call it marketing records. And so we
Speaker 6: just go through like one, you know, the side one
Speaker 6: side too, and so you probably have some of the
Speaker 6: market records, like what the good joints were, like Mark,
Speaker 6: and we always try to figure out like, okay, that's
Speaker 6: a single, so we're gonna mess with what that happened,
Speaker 6: but here's what should be the next single. And so
Speaker 6: we would go through every like.
Speaker 1: All the like. Imagine that because that doesn't happen today
Speaker 1: in the cutting piece. So all right, what is the
Speaker 1: process of Because I know how important college radio was
Speaker 1: to the development of a new artist, especially in the
Speaker 1: eighties and in the nineties, so you know, they would
Speaker 1: try to woo you just as important or as much
Speaker 1: as a top five station or you know, like the
Speaker 1: local conglomerates. So give us an example of an unheard
Speaker 1: of talent coming to you first at at Brown You okay.
Speaker 6: All right, A rather a rather greasy haired gentleman came down.
Speaker 6: I can see, I can see it. It came down.
Speaker 6: I don't know. I still to this day don't know
Speaker 6: how he got into the studio. But he's like, hey,
Speaker 6: I got this group. I got this group, right, And
Speaker 6: he like, I got this group and this record, and
Speaker 6: you know, the Jackson five was Thursday fart. But they're
Speaker 6: just like the Jackson five. They're just like the Jackson five.
Speaker 6: I think the blow up good for you. You know
Speaker 6: exactly where it's going. And I swear to god he
Speaker 6: came in on a Sunday because it was that was
Speaker 6: that was three hundred sixty degree black experience of sound.
Speaker 6: And I'm like, okay, we'll give it a shot. We'll
Speaker 6: give it a shot, because you know people would do
Speaker 6: that if you if you can get through and you
Speaker 6: you're not gonna kill us, we'll play the record. We're good,
Speaker 6: and we put and it was a it was a
Speaker 6: new edition candigir.
Speaker 1: It was it was I'm thinking Michael Johnson Maurice.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well what I can't think it was a real name.
Speaker 6: That was No, Johnson's the last name because.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of Michael Johnson John Johnson Crew. That was
Speaker 1: his partner, was it not? Okay?
Speaker 6: Brother?
Speaker 1: In this day and age, a lot of people approached
Speaker 1: me about you know, check this out this this gentleman included,
Speaker 1: you know, and maybe my record is probably zero and
Speaker 1: nine million for at least the patients to actually take
Speaker 1: said product and press play and listen to it and
Speaker 1: absorb it. Like but in radio, I mean, how do
Speaker 1: you know who's worth listening to? Or I mean do
Speaker 1: you have to accept everyone's Like if a person comes
Speaker 1: to you and they seem rather shady or whatnot, do
Speaker 1: you still give that product a chance?
Speaker 6: And so I try to. Again, I'm big on that
Speaker 6: not getting killed things right, because it's happened when people
Speaker 6: walk in like yo, man, you won't listen to what.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was about to say, Like what if you
Speaker 1: don't like a product.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry you try to never listen to it in
Speaker 6: front of them. You always try to get it like, hey,
Speaker 6: can't listen to it now, I'll listen to it later.
Speaker 6: You avoid that danger, right then, it's seriously, you try to.
Speaker 6: You try to unless you know the person. If you
Speaker 6: know somebody and you can give honest feedback. You want
Speaker 6: to be able to absorb it, because we've all heard
Speaker 6: things where the first time we hear it is like, eh,
Speaker 6: that's not working. But by the third time you understand
Speaker 6: or you feel, you feel a different way about it.
Speaker 6: And if you really respect them, music gonna get You're
Speaker 6: gonna give it that two or three times before you
Speaker 6: before you come to that judgment, before you're ready to
Speaker 6: share that judgment. That's probably the best way to put it.
Speaker 6: And so even in college, we'd sit around, well, it
Speaker 6: was more like there are more people. There'd be a
Speaker 6: music meeting. We take all the albums and everybody was
Speaker 6: a sign, like two or three albums and they come
Speaker 6: back and say, okay, here the here's the custs we
Speaker 6: should play on three hundred and sixty Black experienced that sound. Okay,
Speaker 6: we did call it three sixty. Just sometimes it's funny.
Speaker 6: Just keep running it all the way down.
Speaker 1: Who's who did?
Speaker 6: Don't go dun dunk no, no, no, no no. They
Speaker 6: tried to be like the time right after Time came out.
Speaker 6: Oh o zone no no no dum dream boy dream boy, yeah,
Speaker 6: dream boy, dream boy.
Speaker 1: So I'm you can hear the activator dripping on the floor.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, there were a couple of groups that came out,
Speaker 6: like the Time That Struck My Head because that's one
Speaker 6: of those songs I remember that. That was that that
Speaker 6: we played on like WBR. You was one of the
Speaker 6: first people to play that song and it.
Speaker 1: Was you gave them a chance. It was huge, It
Speaker 1: was huge. We're here with our guest president of Programming
Speaker 1: Beach Heat Networks, Stephen Hill. We're talking about as humble
Speaker 1: beginnings going to college radio back in the eighties.
Speaker 5: Did y'all have like any bear like no hose barges whatever,
Speaker 5: black soul or what was okay so whatever?
Speaker 6: Yes, which was yeah, we go. Yeah, it's college radio,
Speaker 6: but it was real radio. But it was college radio.
Speaker 6: But we can play whatever we wanted to as long
Speaker 6: as getting curse obviously.
Speaker 5: So did it hurt when you had to leave that situation.
Speaker 5: I guess it didn't hurt because you you know, more
Speaker 5: money and commercial radio, but uh, that life is different
Speaker 5: college radio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you only get three to four years to run it, right,
Speaker 1: you do.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was there for I did it all for
Speaker 6: you because it was one of the things you go
Speaker 6: on campus. You go on campus like in the back
Speaker 6: then they had all the come join the press club
Speaker 6: right for the paper, come join the you know, the
Speaker 6: poker club.
Speaker 1: And what year?
Speaker 6: What period was this between what Brown was eighty to
Speaker 6: eighty four? From me, Wow, okay at eighty four, so
Speaker 6: I remember where so the cool thing is like I remember, like,
Speaker 6: I remember where I was when nineteen ninety nine came
Speaker 6: out the day that, the day that, the day that
Speaker 6: Thriller came out.
Speaker 1: Oh man, November thirtieth, nineteen absolutely two.
Speaker 6: I went straight from there to Music one forty two
Speaker 6: with Professor Kleman was her name. I remember just having
Speaker 6: to the album just like this. I'm like, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: try to pay attention to this class. I'm gonna try.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna try.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so you were one of those people that
Speaker 1: were like cut school for a record or loose sleep
Speaker 1: the night before for a record.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah. I remember being mad because because do
Speaker 6: you know the date? What day did Triumph come out?
Speaker 6: Became a fall of eighty. I don't know the dated.
Speaker 1: It was September because I remember being in in fifth grade.
Speaker 1: It was definitely September of.
Speaker 6: Right, so I had just gotten to Brown. I remember
Speaker 6: going to like my first or second dance and Shannon Harris.
Speaker 6: I remember how fun find Shannon Harris. She had I
Speaker 6: saw an album. I say, wait, is that Mike hold On?
Speaker 6: She had the Triumph album. I left the party. Really,
Speaker 6: I left the party to try to go to the
Speaker 6: record store before because it was it was early. I
Speaker 6: left to try to get to the record store before closed,
Speaker 6: like one o'clock in the morning, two I could get trump.
Speaker 6: I was mad that somebody had a Jackson all before
Speaker 6: I did.
Speaker 1: When someone had a record before you did. Oh oh man,
Speaker 1: you just took me back with you. You described my
Speaker 1: wife right there. I used to cry. My aunt had
Speaker 1: asked Rufus by Rufus and for some reason, even there's
Speaker 1: like an asterisk mark when I think of the Rufous discography.
Speaker 1: Even though I was six, I was still musically an
Speaker 1: adult in that household. So she flawing it like like
Speaker 1: what twenty three year old person, It's like a mere
Speaker 1: luke what I got. And she put on that midnight,
Speaker 1: and I was like mad. I was angry see them
Speaker 1: with anger like she would flaunt when she got records
Speaker 1: before I did. I hate it. Yeah, when some one
Speaker 1: got family.
Speaker 6: Is worse the worst trick I ever played with my
Speaker 6: brother because I loved my brother more than cook food. Right,
Speaker 6: my brother is my guy. But when I was nine
Speaker 6: and he was six, So we got the first two
Speaker 6: Jackson five records on the same day, right, Dania Ross
Speaker 6: presents an ABC and I because I wanted the newer one,
Speaker 6: wanted ABC. I wanted ABC. I wanted so, so we
Speaker 6: go into the record store. I can remember this, I said,
Speaker 6: what I god nor exactly what was? It was panmar
Speaker 6: in Southeast DC, on on Pennsylvania Avenue up near the
Speaker 6: near the Maryland line. We go in there and my
Speaker 6: little nine yeld self goes, hey, okay, let's go try
Speaker 6: to find them. And we were both trying to find ABC.
Speaker 6: I said, hey, maybe if yould go look under it's
Speaker 6: fouled under the under ABC. We're the artists, we're the artists,
Speaker 6: are looking at ABC.
Speaker 1: And I feel daughter.
Speaker 6: I said, you go look over there.
Speaker 1: That's bad, that's bad. That was wrong. But you misled
Speaker 1: your brother.
Speaker 6: I did, I did.
Speaker 1: I did, just so he had his own collection, you
Speaker 1: had your own.
Speaker 6: Now he stopped after that one. He stopped like like
Speaker 6: that was just like I don't know's brother competitive? But
Speaker 6: he wasn't me. He's the sports guy. He loves sports.
Speaker 1: Okay, uh, you know he's just.
Speaker 6: Now like he's the guy. I uses the test to
Speaker 6: find out what songs are really good and really gonna
Speaker 6: hit because the idiot factor all completely and I.
Speaker 1: Don't know, you never tell the idiot factor the idio factor.
Speaker 6: And I keep him away like he you know, he
Speaker 6: wants to take us shows and stuff. I can get that,
Speaker 6: but but I don't want him to get anywhere close
Speaker 6: because I used him as the is the test? Like
Speaker 6: is this you know, he's the guy who's sitting in
Speaker 6: the back of the car with the kids singing happy
Speaker 6: like he's he's the guy. He's he's that guy. I
Speaker 6: know if it you know, always be my baby is
Speaker 6: his favorite Mariah Carey song, Like that's the that's the
Speaker 6: that's the he's the he's the pop guy, your litmus test.
Speaker 1: Like what do you think about this? Listen? Yeah, so
Speaker 1: I'm starting to use his kids now, No kids are
Speaker 1: your an rs? That's like that's the kids are yes?
Speaker 10: No, Well, I want when I say an RS, it
Speaker 10: just means if your kids can sing it, that's when
Speaker 10: you know, it doesn't mean if they don't like it
Speaker 10: that it's not good or it still won't jam.
Speaker 6: But if your kids are singing it, yeah, that's the way.
Speaker 6: I won't to go back to. Which So, do you
Speaker 6: remember any of the any of the albums you took
Speaker 6: from you took from I'm sorry you borrowed from Brown University?
Speaker 6: No no, no, no no no, no.
Speaker 1: Curious you know what. Because I was heavily looking into
Speaker 1: samples and things, I believe that I was more given
Speaker 1: access to the jazz. Oh yeah, sort of the seventies
Speaker 1: jazz stuff. So I know, like there's I think maybe
Speaker 1: the Virgo Red album from roy Aers, you know what,
Speaker 1: Tony Williams Ego, those two records. Like I took a
Speaker 1: lot of the seventies jazz jazz stuff like that's in
Speaker 1: my collection.
Speaker 6: And then and there's still The cool thing is I
Speaker 6: go back and visit every once in a while, just
Speaker 6: and sometimes it let me go on the air for
Speaker 6: a minute, which is just I have such a rush
Speaker 6: after that. But the album is still on the wall,
Speaker 6: the albums are they still have the album on the wall,
Speaker 6: haven't been used for years, they still keep up there.
Speaker 6: I love that.
Speaker 1: Really. Wow, I gotta make a return, find a new
Speaker 1: home for it.
Speaker 10: So how do you go from how do you use
Speaker 10: a person like that loves music, you know, wanting to
Speaker 10: be on radio?
Speaker 1: How do you get from radio to TV?
Speaker 6: Like? How did you?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, how do you go there?
Speaker 9: Major?
Speaker 1: I assume that was your major.
Speaker 6: My major was applied math in economics. Applied math and economics, brilliant.
Speaker 6: I spent more time at the radio station. Love you mom,
Speaker 6: love you Dad. But yeah, I got out, but I
Speaker 6: did graduate. I good, I could graduate. Go ahead, ask it.
Speaker 5: No. I was just gonna say, don't you find because
Speaker 5: people are always I was a communications major, So it's
Speaker 5: not like you really wanted to switch play with me
Speaker 5: because I always tell people young people, you know what,
Speaker 5: take be a business major economics and then just have
Speaker 5: an internship learn radio that way because you're really not
Speaker 5: going to learn a lot of it in the classroom.
Speaker 5: So you perfect right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was communications major too. I was communications major too.
Speaker 1: I'd say the same thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, internships is where you learn everything.
Speaker 1: Because but isn't that FV like fall back on this?
Speaker 1: Just in cases?
Speaker 6: Doesn't no?
Speaker 1: Which one for communications majors? Really?
Speaker 8: I mean you do a lot of stuff in class.
Speaker 8: But really the only way to learn how to do
Speaker 8: to do it, you have to actually do it and
Speaker 8: be around people who would right right. So like I
Speaker 8: was a communications major, Yeah, I do the thing of it,
Speaker 8: so was to Yeah. I did three and a half
Speaker 8: years at the college radio station. You know, I worked
Speaker 8: on television shows at the campus TV station, And that
Speaker 8: was the only way we could learn how to do
Speaker 8: stuff because it was to actually do it.
Speaker 1: So what was your major?
Speaker 7: Steve Journalism actually interned at DC one on one I
Speaker 7: went to Maryland.
Speaker 6: So I was interned, Well, you got DC route was
Speaker 6: how it was starting there when you were there? No, No,
Speaker 6: I was with the grease Man. Okay a long time.
Speaker 1: Who's the grease man?
Speaker 7: He knows the Howards turned down in d C. Basically
Speaker 7: in the.
Speaker 1: Lady Wild Morning Guy.
Speaker 7: Well it wasn't the morning show, but he was just
Speaker 7: like he was just that, you know, crazy Greaeman, at
Speaker 7: least in some circles, is best known for the horrible,
Speaker 7: horrible joke that I will tell if you want me to,
Speaker 7: but it's really it's a horrible originally offensive.
Speaker 1: Please please offensive.
Speaker 6: It was around the time that they were talking about
Speaker 6: m l K getting a holiday. I remember, Okay, remember that?
Speaker 6: Do you remember? So it was like, uh so let
Speaker 6: me get the straight m Ok is going to get
Speaker 6: all we get a holiday for m Ok. If I'd
Speaker 6: known that, I'd have shot four more and gotten a
Speaker 6: whole week off. That was the grease Man.
Speaker 5: That must have been. That must have been a day
Speaker 5: Donnie Simpson got his fifty million dollar contract.
Speaker 6: D Radio DC Radio has it was was it was was.
Speaker 6: There was the variety.
Speaker 1: Howardzs.
Speaker 6: Thurne was on DC one on one before he went national,
Speaker 6: before he came to New York, like he cut his
Speaker 6: teeth there. Greaseman was kind of like Howard's thurnish as
Speaker 6: you can probably tell them by that.
Speaker 7: And by the time I got there, I don't know
Speaker 7: eighty nine or something like that, and it was all
Speaker 7: computer generated playlists and you know nothing. I was like, well,
Speaker 7: I'm too late to this game.
Speaker 6: It was past my romanticized version of radio.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what was your first radio station outside.
Speaker 6: Of wild Boston? It was an AM daytimer station. What
Speaker 6: an AM daytimer station is? We just call it solar powered.
Speaker 6: There's this crazy there's this crazy rule. The SCC had
Speaker 6: that certain because they were trying to make when radio
Speaker 6: they were trying to make radio grow. People were allowed
Speaker 6: to have local stations, but there were these superstations that
Speaker 6: went everywhere at night, like WOWO out of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Speaker 6: I don't know how I remember that WBAL out of Baltimore.
Speaker 6: There were these superstations that jacked their power up at
Speaker 6: night so they could be heard nationwide. Because radio, you know,
Speaker 6: when they were trying to build the radio business, and
Speaker 6: so every other every other if you were on that frequency,
Speaker 6: you had to get off that frequency at night. So
Speaker 6: WBAL had the frequency ten nine to zero out of Baltimore,
Speaker 6: and so at night we were wild. We had to
Speaker 6: get off. So we were only allowed to be up
Speaker 6: from sunrise to sunset. Oh wow, Right, So that was
Speaker 6: my first radio station, and the short version of how
Speaker 6: I got there. I got out of Brown University. I
Speaker 6: tried to get a job in radio. I couldn't do it.
Speaker 6: I failed miserably. A year and a half later, a
Speaker 6: guy named Robert Hartley was sick. He was during cristmification
Speaker 6: at WBRU. They called me said, can you come fill
Speaker 6: in for four hours? I said sure. I have been
Speaker 6: on the radio on a year and a half I'll
Speaker 6: come down. But as I did always, I prepared and
Speaker 6: made sure I knew what was going on. When did
Speaker 6: a four hour show, thought nothing of it, went back
Speaker 6: to my job where I was teaching at Groton School.
Speaker 6: Two months later, I get a call saying, is this
Speaker 6: Stephen Hill. Yes. I happened to be driving through Providence,
Speaker 6: Rhode Island a couple of months ago, heard you on
Speaker 6: the radio and wanted to know if you want to
Speaker 6: come in. And I got a part time gig at
Speaker 6: w I l D. El Roy Smith, who was is
Speaker 6: a wonderful program director, wonderful program former boss.
Speaker 5: He was your he was my boss when he left Chicago,
Speaker 5: he came to Field, I was morning show.
Speaker 6: El Roy Smith was the program director. Yeah, Elroy Smith
Speaker 6: was after Kobe.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, at w I L D. And so I always
Speaker 6: I tell people like my career, like if if Robert
Speaker 6: Hartley doesn't get sick, if I'm not home to answer
Speaker 6: the phone because there were no cell phones at the time, right,
Speaker 6: if I if I don't you know, if I can't
Speaker 6: go down there and do those four hours, we're not
Speaker 6: sitting here. Because I found out el Roy only did
Speaker 6: that drive twice in five years. Man, and it just happened,
Speaker 6: and it happened to me. I hadn't been on the
Speaker 6: radio for a year and a half. I was on
Speaker 6: there those four hours. He happened to be driving through
Speaker 6: track me down and other hips. Is not for that.
Speaker 6: I'm somewhere either teaching or applying math and and economica.
Speaker 1: Now, as as a DJ, did you have total control of.
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 6: No, this college is over?
Speaker 5: Is this?
Speaker 9: What?
Speaker 1: What year is this? What year is this?
Speaker 6: Is a This is a spring of eighty six?
Speaker 1: Okay, spring of eighty six? At this point, the WYLD this.
Speaker 6: Is like wild is it now? Even though it's a
Speaker 6: daytime station, it's a real money, real money commercial radio.
Speaker 1: Stak got back up a little bit because you said
Speaker 1: your previous experience was a fail? How was that a fail?
Speaker 1: Which one you said?
Speaker 6: When you? Oh, what I tried to get? I tried
Speaker 6: to get a job in a radio when I left
Speaker 6: Brown in eighty four. But I couldn't.
Speaker 1: I could You couldn't Like it was just a bad experience, DJ.
Speaker 6: I couldn't get a job I was. I couldn't get
Speaker 6: a job in radio radio or or record labels or anyplace.
Speaker 1: Man. Back then, what were the requirements to to woo
Speaker 1: over a radio programmer that would bring you aboard, Like
Speaker 1: what was required?
Speaker 6: I don't know, because I didn't get a job. Seriously,
Speaker 6: I don't know. I thought, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 6: I think it was just talking on the air naturally
Speaker 6: that appealed to l Roy. Like I knew the music
Speaker 6: back then, it was good to have some kind of
Speaker 6: radio voice, and thanks to my mother, who has the
Speaker 6: deeper voice of my parents, I happened to get it.
Speaker 6: So I think it's just that and being able to
Speaker 6: relate and being able to and he didn't know that
Speaker 6: that I knew or was obsessed with music, but I
Speaker 6: think that helped in the interview, and as I got
Speaker 6: to grow at WLD.
Speaker 1: I mean I would think, at least in my head
Speaker 1: or you know, this is a very naive you know,
Speaker 1: thought like I would figure that, okay, well, I would
Speaker 1: want people to be knowledgeable about music and all that stuff,
Speaker 1: because I don't even know what the criteria for today is.
Speaker 1: But I would think like there were least some standards
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, whereas like you know, you know, it's funny,
Speaker 1: I think went to that era and where the radio
Speaker 1: DJ was, well, what you're.
Speaker 6: Saying when an end. I think the real challenge was
Speaker 6: when they changed the ownership rules of radios, right, it
Speaker 6: was ninety six. They changed it two FM's two ams.
Speaker 6: That's all you can own. That's all you can own,
Speaker 6: even in the market, right, And so now people were
Speaker 6: buying radio stations. They had to service all this debt.
Speaker 1: And so the service that debt, you got.
Speaker 6: To play commercials, and to play more commercials you have
Speaker 6: to have less talk. And so the less talk you have,
Speaker 6: the more commercials you can play. And so you play
Speaker 6: a music and you play just a little bit. Hey,
Speaker 6: that was the That was the jacks was chaking about
Speaker 6: it down the ground right back after this, you get
Speaker 6: in and out, so you play more music, like it
Speaker 6: was just servicing debt. It feels like the way record
Speaker 6: companies with like Warner Brothers was it seemed to be
Speaker 6: about like an artist development and movement, and then all
Speaker 6: of a sudden, you know, you got to service your debt.
Speaker 6: So you got to sell more records. And sometimes you
Speaker 6: don't get two or three shots at it make it,
Speaker 6: making it big.
Speaker 1: So quest Love Supreme would be their worst nightmare because
Speaker 1: we're more talk less music now.
Speaker 6: So so when you know, when I listened to this,
Speaker 6: I'm going to laugh because my speech pattern, even in
Speaker 6: this broadcast has slowed down once I realized your pace,
Speaker 6: which is a good thing because my radio kicks back
Speaker 6: in and like you're supposed to get in, get out
Speaker 6: to go and so so in. So even in these
Speaker 6: this time we've been on, I've slowed it down and
Speaker 6: I can go with the conversation and the speed, y'all go.
Speaker 1: I want to go to a song and have Steven
Speaker 1: introduce it. Okay, radio style, radio style, all right, I
Speaker 1: want you to introduce the Jackson shake your body down
Speaker 1: to the ground now. Just no, there's a rule where
Speaker 1: you have to do it before like the lyrics starting
Speaker 1: on it.
Speaker 6: It's called hitting the post. It's called hitting the posts.
Speaker 6: The best song ever Hit the Post two Anita Baker
Speaker 6: sweet Love. Yeah, and you talk about your radio station,
Speaker 6: you talk about what the sunshine is outside and having
Speaker 6: to make it We love.
Speaker 1: On w I L dude, we're going to have your
Speaker 1: intro that one. So wait, what is what is? What
Speaker 1: is a nightmare song? Then? Like a song that would
Speaker 1: let us short intro?
Speaker 6: Yes, either got no intro. I'm trying to think that
Speaker 6: there was this song that that just would come in
Speaker 6: with the vocals and they edited and.
Speaker 1: Get down on it. Is an example of a song
Speaker 1: that crazy crazy by a crazy uh Barkley, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah boom boom, yeah boom.
Speaker 6: You can't talk of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a three snare hit.
Speaker 5: And then right and the rules of radio, you have
Speaker 5: to pray that the song before had a long outro.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah right, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: But at the radio station, you see like a reverse time.
Speaker 1: You get to see the clock of No.
Speaker 6: I would not that was my you look you. I
Speaker 6: would research, I would time it myself. I would till
Speaker 6: it myself, not much. And then certain songs us new
Speaker 6: the feeld like.
Speaker 8: For me you got to feel I mean, oh yeah
Speaker 8: back to day, like well back in the day, like
Speaker 8: on the promo forty five. On the timing you would
Speaker 8: have the intro seven second intro.
Speaker 1: You know, it would tell you, yeah, you would.
Speaker 5: Still have your body. He's a rhythm. You would just
Speaker 5: know the records and it feels better when you know
Speaker 5: the rhythm.
Speaker 6: Which when we're doing five Sweet Love four three two man,
Speaker 6: I am so happy to be here on quest Love
Speaker 6: Supream this man Stephen Hill. This is my girl, Anita Baker.
Speaker 6: I hope everything's going well in your world today and
Speaker 6: that you have exactly what she's talking about. In this
Speaker 6: song from the Fantastic nineteen eighty six c D Rapture,
Speaker 6: This is a Needy Baker with sweet love.
Speaker 5: Yo Yo.
Speaker 6: That is the best of all the songs I've ever
Speaker 6: heard in my entire life. It's absolutely my favorite song.
Speaker 1: Why do you think have doom rhymes over that? Man? Wow?
Speaker 1: So man, I was really.
Speaker 5: American shock because he doesn't know that there's a method
Speaker 5: to radio madness.
Speaker 1: I respect that. I respect that. This is what I've
Speaker 1: been trying to impart upon him for the last several
Speaker 1: months in our fiftieth episode.
Speaker 6: But it's different. Now you don't have to do that anymore,
Speaker 6: inspite me thirteen nah, but but I think it's different.
Speaker 6: People want the information. Like when we when we talked
Speaker 6: through don't go. Then my first visual reaction like, oh,
Speaker 6: you can't do that, well, you can't do that. But
Speaker 6: then when you know we're in a culture where you
Speaker 6: want to hear the information, and there you know, you know,
Speaker 6: kind of pop up video started started that where you
Speaker 6: want the information during the middle of the song because
Speaker 6: you've heard the song, you know, countless times before. So
Speaker 6: if you can get something new while you're listening to it,
Speaker 6: that's that's great. But viscerally when you when you what
Speaker 6: are you doing.
Speaker 1: Talking over the song? I'm sure there's times where you
Speaker 1: made a mistake and maybe played a radio editing Oh yeah, well,
Speaker 1: like if the vocals coming, do you still continue or
Speaker 1: is it like, uh, let me cut off?
Speaker 6: You go straight to the call letters?
Speaker 1: What cabout cool?
Speaker 6: Study outside of WB are you once you hear a voice?
Speaker 6: It's just like.
Speaker 1: And was your boss always on you about back selling
Speaker 1: and front selling?
Speaker 6: And ye, no, look absolutely yeah it was part of
Speaker 6: the format you either. I always thought it was cool
Speaker 6: to backsell a song because when I listened to a song,
Speaker 6: when you listen to a song and you like it,
Speaker 6: you you listen to the end and you'll pay attention
Speaker 6: because you're looking to find out what that is. I'll
Speaker 6: never forget the first time I heard another one bites
Speaker 6: the Dust by Queen Right. It was on w k
Speaker 6: Y S and Washington d C. It was on w
Speaker 6: k Y. Yes, I'm like, oh this sound is this
Speaker 6: song is fantastic? Sounds a little bit like she but
Speaker 6: I'm good And I waited for them to back sell
Speaker 6: and they didn't. I called the radio station. I called
Speaker 6: the radio station. What's that song? It's I know there
Speaker 6: has the lyrics? Another one bites the dust? Who's that buye?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 6: And somehow I don't know how I got through the studio.
Speaker 6: I remember.
Speaker 1: Song, there's another one?
Speaker 6: What do you call another one? Yeah? It's my queen. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but there was a there was an excitement about like
Speaker 6: first of all hearing the song, but then getting through
Speaker 6: it like yeah, but like like I knew it before
Speaker 6: the DJ did, because the DJ whoever's coming on next
Speaker 6: didn't know it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm learning now that about back selling and front
Speaker 1: selling words. I never heard of my life yet until
Speaker 1: this radio show started, and I didn't know the importance
Speaker 1: of doing that. You know, so to you, that's not
Speaker 1: a nightmare.
Speaker 6: Or enjoy it because look, the reason I loved radio
Speaker 6: was a lot of it was because you play music
Speaker 6: and you hope they're really attracted to it, so you
Speaker 6: want them to go out. And then it was that
Speaker 6: you want to go out and buy it, but not
Speaker 6: because I didn't profit from it. I just like I
Speaker 6: liked being responsible for you discovering something you dug right,
Speaker 6: and so w ild is urban or as black but
Speaker 6: straight up kind of R and B not go outside
Speaker 6: the lines. It could be before I got there, and
Speaker 6: then you know, Seal had the nerve to put out
Speaker 6: a record when I was there, So the Living color
Speaker 6: Head Head and Tracy chap Tracy Chapman came up with
Speaker 6: the original personal baby, Can I Hold You Right? And
Speaker 6: I remember I would play these songs and the record,
Speaker 6: the labels themselves would be like, that's not the single.
Speaker 6: Why are you playing this? Or you're not playing our
Speaker 6: song by the other rack, but you're playing this. I'm like, oh,
Speaker 6: that's the that's the They wouldn't want you to play no, no,
Speaker 6: it was like, that's not the single we're working. Oh
Speaker 6: oh please, oh please, that's not that's not.
Speaker 8: The single working. But the reason why you playing the
Speaker 8: second cut. But the reason why I used to listen
Speaker 8: to radio was to hear all the stuff, you know
Speaker 8: that wasn't on everything.
Speaker 9: You know.
Speaker 8: I loved when they would play all the album cuts,
Speaker 8: so you know, I would love when they would dig
Speaker 8: out the twelve inch versions of songs and let the
Speaker 8: whole seven minute version of kids play on the radio.
Speaker 1: So when Sign of the Times comes out, you're not
Speaker 1: looking to play house Quake.
Speaker 6: And we heard how the exact song you picked, the
Speaker 6: exact song that I once on a Saturday played and
Speaker 6: got a call on the hotline from El Royd. I
Speaker 6: want to be clear. I do't want to be clear.
Speaker 6: I followed the rules pretty well. This is I'm sorry
Speaker 6: I forgot to say so Wildither was eighty six to
Speaker 6: eighty eight when I was a weekend DJ and I
Speaker 6: filled in in the mornings and stuff, and then in
Speaker 6: eighty eight to ninety three I was the program director,
Speaker 6: so I was the boss then, but in eighty seven
Speaker 6: when the Times came out, I was not the boss.
Speaker 6: I was the weekend guy. But I still followed the
Speaker 6: rules have decently, so much so that when I played
Speaker 6: house Quake and I got a call on the hotline,
Speaker 6: which doesn't ring you're in the radio studio, so just
Speaker 6: the big bright red light goes and there's like two
Speaker 6: people who have that phone number too, here's the program
Speaker 6: director and the owner. And when that goes off when
Speaker 6: you're playing, there's no good news coming. There's just no
Speaker 6: and you know you did something wrong.
Speaker 1: So you just know it.
Speaker 6: So I was hoping he wasn't home or listen, he
Speaker 6: wasn't in the car yet.
Speaker 1: But Housequake was the exact song that I played in
Speaker 1: eighty seven. How old is Erroy at this point?
Speaker 6: Oh, that's a good question.
Speaker 5: Oh it's got a big difference between the two.
Speaker 6: Oh no, No, I was twenty seven, so he was
Speaker 6: maybe thirty two, maybe thirty two, and.
Speaker 1: He didn't get it.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, no, Elroy's that he's the format guy.
Speaker 6: He's he's he's got success because of this.
Speaker 1: So what's his mind?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 1: Process of Okay, he hears house Quake and.
Speaker 6: It was just not on his list. He knows, he
Speaker 6: knows that that is not in the cards, but he
Speaker 6: doesn't know that.
Speaker 1: Some fifteen year old at the laundry Matt is hearing
Speaker 1: this for the first sign and going out of his
Speaker 1: mind and no, I gotta buy that record. No, he
Speaker 1: don't care.
Speaker 6: No, it's not the format.
Speaker 1: So what does he want? What is he in? What
Speaker 1: is his what is his idea of success in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven?
Speaker 6: No, I want to say got it because Elroy was
Speaker 6: really good at playing album cuse that he thought were good.
Speaker 6: That just wasn't one of the ones that he picked out. Really,
Speaker 6: that was right. That just wasn't he That wasn't when
Speaker 6: he that wasn't that wasn't.
Speaker 1: So he questioned some Prince's artistic integrity.
Speaker 6: No no, no, no no no no no no no.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Part of it was playing the singles game that every
Speaker 6: radio station was playing then. But for example, he was
Speaker 6: into let's chill and I like, while the record company
Speaker 6: was still.
Speaker 1: Doing groove me forgot forgot right.
Speaker 6: He had no problem digging into some stuff, just not
Speaker 6: everything and how And Prince wasn't his thing. Prince was
Speaker 6: when it came to that station, I was. Prince was
Speaker 6: completely my thing.
Speaker 5: And that was the art of the PD too, right,
Speaker 5: don't you think like the RT, the PD was when
Speaker 5: you went outside the box you usually there and you
Speaker 5: picked something that popped, the record company would go, oh
Speaker 5: well maybe Steve and you have something. Yes, And let
Speaker 5: me remind you that el Roy Smith is the same
Speaker 5: person that almost fired me for an interview on Rafael's
Speaker 5: Deep Live. He didn't play that shit.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, oh that's very fun. Well you didn't clear
Speaker 1: it through him first?
Speaker 5: Oh, I mean I cleared it. They just want the
Speaker 5: true story. They wanted me to pre record it. We
Speaker 5: Rafael agreed to do a music conference with us. This
Speaker 5: is when his Stacks album came out, remember like that,
Speaker 5: And they did the radio line to me. They were
Speaker 5: like like, okay, so record the interview and we're gonna
Speaker 5: play it. After we start playing the record, and my life,
Speaker 5: your mine went, y'all ain't never playing this shit. This
Speaker 5: is we are hot, hot one old you know whatever.
Speaker 5: So when he walked in the door late, I was like,
Speaker 5: this is the god Rafael Sadik, let's go. And it
Speaker 5: was a really great interview.
Speaker 6: But it just gets the rules, that's it. And sometimes
Speaker 6: in management you just gotta you just have to manage
Speaker 6: in the rules or else everybody will break the rules.
Speaker 6: The reason I knew I could play House Quake is
Speaker 6: because I managed myself within the rules for like a
Speaker 6: full year and I was I was a good I
Speaker 6: was a good employee because I didn't want to lose
Speaker 6: that gig. I loved that gig.
Speaker 1: So wait, since we have two d C elites of radio.
Speaker 1: I interned at DC one on one.
Speaker 6: Three and a half, we got to cover up.
Speaker 1: All I want to I want to go off script
Speaker 1: for a second and do the radio introduction contest between
Speaker 1: set this out? No, no, no, you are I was
Speaker 1: not on the air, that was getting coffee.
Speaker 7: I was in charge of the prize room.
Speaker 6: And what's the introduction contest?
Speaker 8: Was this?
Speaker 1: I don't know? All right, we will start with Stephen Hill.
Speaker 6: You're doing an introduction, Okay, okay, when we let people
Speaker 6: know that I have no idea what song about this? Okay,
Speaker 6: we should, we should set let's set the expectation.
Speaker 1: Here we go.
Speaker 6: Hi, my name is Stephen Hill. You are listening to
Speaker 6: the best music in the world on Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 6: Yes you should have this song? Just no two ways
Speaker 6: about that flashback?
Speaker 1: Who's that? Oh yeah, oh all right, that was good.
Speaker 1: I knew that was coming too. I knew that was coming. Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. This is for you, like here we go?
Speaker 5: Heyes, Love Supreme. I'm like EO on your Sunday afternoon
Speaker 5: And what better way to cruise through road with a
Speaker 5: little marry on your mind? So no, oh ship, oh.
Speaker 6: Red light, red light red.
Speaker 5: It's fake. It's fake. It's face in its say can
Speaker 5: I go over? It's fain.
Speaker 1: Avoid to avoid the rent. Stephen won even the engineers
Speaker 1: even the studio life.
Speaker 5: So does that mean we're even though since we both
Speaker 5: sucked up?
Speaker 1: That was the one?
Speaker 5: Is that zero zero zero zero?
Speaker 9: Right?
Speaker 1: I want to crack it this. Give me say I
Speaker 1: did college radio for three years, all right, so you
Speaker 1: all right, if you were on a radio program, you'll
Speaker 1: probably the Friday night rap gyms. Maybe wait, do the
Speaker 1: same rules? The same rules apply for all fourmats, Like,
Speaker 1: were you guys more lenient on? Absolutely the midnight wrap show?
Speaker 6: So it wasn't midnight because remember we're a daytimer, so
Speaker 6: our midtime is like six pm, so midnight is six pm.
Speaker 1: No save Harbor hours. You Max Mix?
Speaker 6: I had Max Mix doing the Thunderstorms. Well actually one
Speaker 6: of the first first mix shows where I gave I
Speaker 6: shaid like dude, just don't get us arrested. Right, It
Speaker 6: was like an hour at the end of the day,
Speaker 6: nineteen eighty six, eighty seven. That's pretty early for that's
Speaker 6: pretty early for hip hop hip hop show.
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 6: So in Boston you ready, you're ready?
Speaker 1: Yea yea yeah, let's get it. You're ready? Here we go, yo, yeah,
Speaker 1: y'oll what up?
Speaker 10: This man fonte font ticle tickettle ticleo right here? On
Speaker 10: Quest Love Supring, be gonna get into something real fun.
Speaker 10: You know what I'm saying, some real fly, some real funking.
Speaker 10: This is some randow music, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 10: And I'm gonna just play it. I'm gonna come back
Speaker 10: and I'm a back seller because i just want to
Speaker 10: get into this record. I've been playing this ship right
Speaker 10: here on Quest Springs.
Speaker 1: Let's go.
Speaker 5: The audience I'm gonna do. I'm gonna be like this, people'.
Speaker 1: What a backsell?
Speaker 5: What is a backseell?
Speaker 1: I was like I was with I was like, what
Speaker 1: the fuck is this? From the Bob Power episode? That's
Speaker 1: a sentence?
Speaker 5: Did you not get the song right? No?
Speaker 1: I didn't know, but I didn't get it wrong. I
Speaker 1: sure was. I didn't get it wrong.
Speaker 6: Something new.
Speaker 1: You can back sell something, so try it's been a while,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, I got one for you.
Speaker 8: All sook and sooking. Now you're listening to Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 8: This is Boss Bill coming into you Live Ship red Light.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get into some oj.
Speaker 5: Were you trying to figure out what the artist was? No?
Speaker 1: I just got lost in my words. Scott coming, Scott,
Speaker 1: how you doing? You're there? Yes, I'm here. What's up
Speaker 1: all right, ladies and gentlemen. This is Scott yayo or
Speaker 1: our boss boss Bill's boss. Uh. And also deep in
Speaker 1: the radio.
Speaker 6: Uh do you do? You do?
Speaker 1: You know what we're doing? I do?
Speaker 11: Yeah, better be alternative these early two thousands. Alternative would
Speaker 11: be helpful, really well, put some.
Speaker 6: Silver, put some cake on it.
Speaker 8: I think, yeah, yeah, you're going disc Well no, because
Speaker 8: that one starts straighten writing the lyric't but I'm.
Speaker 1: Saying that I'm not object isn't stumping you with the song?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Object is seeing how quick you adjust to whatever.
Speaker 11: To be clear, you if you were DJ, and you
Speaker 11: wouldn't be a just you would know what it was.
Speaker 11: I would listen to it beforehand. I would know my
Speaker 11: run up.
Speaker 6: Time well, to be fair. To be fair, I think
Speaker 6: rock radio had a different rules as well, Like you
Speaker 6: didn't want to step on the music as much as
Speaker 6: you didn't want to talk over the music as much
Speaker 6: as as much as you did in like an R
Speaker 6: and B. No, the music a lot of us started cold,
Speaker 6: at least in radio stations.
Speaker 11: And by the way, if you if you were as
Speaker 11: good as Steven was earlier when he hit that post.
Speaker 1: We'd call him a postmaster general. Nice, okay, postmaster in general.
Speaker 5: You're right, you do know you'll be doing this last right, boss?
Speaker 1: I'm doing this too. Yeah, yeah, I'm doing this as well.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you thought you were going to get away,
Speaker 1: get away? Yeah, I thought I was going to get
Speaker 1: away with this? All right? You ready? Yeah? Here we go?
Speaker 6: Red light, red light, red light?
Speaker 1: What's going on? It's Scott Riggs.
Speaker 4: How you doing?
Speaker 11: It's crazy Wednesday morning.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you.
Speaker 11: The weather out there is nuts. But we've got some
Speaker 11: good music for you. It's Quest Slap Supreme. Here is
Speaker 11: the Gorillas.
Speaker 6: Red light, red light that he's picking your songs?
Speaker 1: All right, bottle?
Speaker 5: Who's doing it right now?
Speaker 1: Because I give him.
Speaker 6: Blur song too.
Speaker 1: Actually I'll say.
Speaker 11: Give him Blur song too, or give him or give
Speaker 11: him Peter Murphy cuts you up, which is about a
Speaker 11: three minute leading for him.
Speaker 1: No, that's hard. Like, if anything, I think the the
Speaker 1: longer the show is you have to talk.
Speaker 6: There's a perfect there's a there's like a ten to
Speaker 6: twelve like a perfect there's a perfect amount of time.
Speaker 6: Like it's too short, it's too bad, too long, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But do you have to talk until the vocals start.
Speaker 6: You don't have to, but you want, you want to
Speaker 6: be post master General. Yeah, post Master General comes with
Speaker 6: a star.
Speaker 1: So do you practice this at home? Do you practice
Speaker 1: this at home? There who teaches you this? No? In
Speaker 1: between songs when you're playing music. I'm really glad you
Speaker 1: did the show because I forgot you are post master General, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you hit that post, your yoda of postmaster in general.
Speaker 11: Well, and by the way, you also, it gets hard
Speaker 11: to make it interesting every time, right, Like you can't
Speaker 11: throw out the weather every time. You can't throw out
Speaker 11: the time every time. Sometimes you're pulling facts about the band.
Speaker 11: Sometimes you're saying what's going on in the city, But
Speaker 11: you got to fill that with something interesting.
Speaker 6: And also you got to know the music. But you know,
Speaker 6: part of the reason I got hired when when word
Speaker 6: was driving through is because i'd gone through the paper,
Speaker 6: like I loved hitting the post. That was one of
Speaker 6: the things I love doing. And to your point, you've
Speaker 6: got to think of different thing. So I had to
Speaker 6: know what was going on, something about the music, and
Speaker 6: so you kind of plan on what you're gonna say,
Speaker 6: or that you don't you don't script it out. But
Speaker 6: you know here the here a the beats I want
Speaker 6: to hit in this intro, or before I start this intro, or.
Speaker 5: You got a little note right there, a couple of
Speaker 5: little things you want to say, or.
Speaker 6: Giving away tickets to the circus.
Speaker 5: It's really easy. This I got a liner.
Speaker 1: I gotta give away a liner.
Speaker 5: A liner is uh. Quest Love is being brought to
Speaker 5: you by Boost Mobile.
Speaker 1: Oh where you is?
Speaker 5: It's like it's like the station business is like, Uh,
Speaker 5: don't forget. We got this festival coming up and we'll
Speaker 5: be having tickets in the next hour.
Speaker 11: Make sure we got free comedy tickets to the show
Speaker 11: coming up this weekend. Come out to NAPA Auto Parts
Speaker 11: on Saturday. Right, we'll give you some stickers.
Speaker 1: All right, I'm ready, I got you ready. You let
Speaker 1: me meditate, all right? Okay, bring on the panic. That's right,
Speaker 1: ladies and gentlemen. This is Quest Love of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: It is the midnight hour, and we are paying tribute
Speaker 1: to the great road Temperton. That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Uh,
Speaker 1: free hot dogs to the ninth caller who can guess
Speaker 1: some of the greatest music. This is love. Time's love
Speaker 1: all right, that wass that was? That was c minus,
Speaker 1: that was minus.
Speaker 5: All of us who went to school.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, radio is my school. I have a question. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's sort of philosophical question.
Speaker 7: Almost now, the intro to a song and theoretically the
Speaker 7: fade out are those specifically meant for radio, for a
Speaker 7: DJ to be posting up or whatever it's called.
Speaker 1: Do I think that?
Speaker 6: Do I think that some creators went into the studio
Speaker 6: to so that that could happen.
Speaker 7: I'm saying, if you're making a song that you want
Speaker 7: to be on the radio, do you create intros specifically
Speaker 7: for so for what we're talking about.
Speaker 6: Right now I'm going to talk about. I have no
Speaker 6: idea because I've never created a record, but I would
Speaker 6: not be surprised if, like, maybe that's some people out,
Speaker 6: if there were there were people I want to I
Speaker 6: almost want to think of the Motown area, right. I
Speaker 6: almost think Barry Gordy sitting there with the with the
Speaker 6: transistor speaker in his office, is thinking like that intro
Speaker 6: is too long, like that were the interests too long?
Speaker 6: Or the intro is just right? They'll they'll talk about
Speaker 6: my record going right up to it. But by the way,
Speaker 6: but then I thought I was stopping the name of love,
Speaker 6: and I was like, probably not.
Speaker 11: Well, posting is all about it's something like that was
Speaker 11: invented by DJs, because your board as hell when you're
Speaker 11: in that studio for fourner.
Speaker 7: Once it was invented, then we're people who are making.
Speaker 6: Songs, specifically, specifically.
Speaker 7: Creating intros with that kind of time.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't they probably could be.
Speaker 11: I know that at least an alternative and rock they
Speaker 11: started telling us to step out. They were like, don't
Speaker 11: even talk even if there is an intro, just let
Speaker 11: it go, or we'll get edit and I'll chop that
Speaker 11: off and it'll just start with the vocals.
Speaker 1: So yeah, was there because I grew up or at
Speaker 1: least became of age where I started hearing, you know,
Speaker 1: more music, let's talk. Or there was a I remember
Speaker 1: an issue in Billboard magazine, like during the George Michael
Speaker 1: Faith period, so like eighty eight eighty nine where it
Speaker 1: was like the pay to play thing, or like pay
Speaker 1: us to sell your song, or I remember this issue
Speaker 1: coming up like eighties, near early nineties, so dependent promoters, Well,
Speaker 1: just the idea of like, you know, we're not going
Speaker 1: to back sell or front sell the song anymore. Was
Speaker 1: there a period in which you got a memo which
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, you no longer have to sell the
Speaker 1: song or.
Speaker 6: No, no, I've but I you know, I was at
Speaker 6: a kind of a black man owned station that daytime
Speaker 6: in Boston. They would have said no to that any
Speaker 6: other because there's no way they would have not try
Speaker 6: to promote promote the music, right, And I think there
Speaker 6: were some people who were trying to figure out we'll
Speaker 6: call them more shady ways of getting paid around the music.
Speaker 6: And so that's what that sounds like. And so ken
Speaker 6: Nash was never about that.
Speaker 1: Okay. So again this is me asking from the most
Speaker 1: naive standpoint whatever, because I really never spoke to a
Speaker 1: seasoned radio person. Is radio's existence or is its purpose
Speaker 1: to promote music? No? What is radios? What is radio's purpose?
Speaker 6: It is to increase shareholder wealth. That's what it's there for.
Speaker 6: That's what it's there for.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 6: Now, so there are people who are in radio who
Speaker 6: love music, who want to make sure that music thrives
Speaker 6: and gets a thrill out of finding the new and
Speaker 6: exposing to other folks. But radio's purpose itself is to
Speaker 6: increase shareholder wealth, and it became more and more of
Speaker 6: that as more of these conglomerates popped up and they
Speaker 6: found wonderful ways of doing it, and there's some cool
Speaker 6: creative stuff that's come out of it, but that's not
Speaker 6: what they're there for.
Speaker 1: So the cheery on top is that you know, a
Speaker 1: cat like you and I can discover Return to Forever
Speaker 1: or weather report or craft work you know along the way.
Speaker 1: But radio is really about how Chrysler or Toyoda or
Speaker 1: whatever company it is can sell their products now for
Speaker 1: a kid, For me, listening to radio at thirteen is
Speaker 1: the object that you'll play the songs that I love
Speaker 1: so much that I'll control the dial in the car
Speaker 1: so that when Dad hears that cool in the Gang
Speaker 1: Slitch want Liquor commercial, He'll like, yeah, I want some
Speaker 1: you know, some beer or whatever like.
Speaker 6: So it depends depends on the station. Das was probably
Speaker 6: trying to appeal to your dad. You can DA, You're
Speaker 6: probably trying to appeal to your dad at the right.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying is that is the radio targeting
Speaker 1: a twelve and thirteen year old depends on station.
Speaker 6: I mean, well, today I know.
Speaker 1: They're because of the artists that are winning now. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm sure the Rihanna's of the world and the Tailor
Speaker 1: Swifts of the world are hitting the eleven year olds
Speaker 1: in the twenty.
Speaker 6: But I guarantee you they're trying to hit eighteen to
Speaker 6: twenty four. Maybe sixteen, but that's not one of the
Speaker 6: sellable demos. But eighteen to twenty four is probably as
Speaker 6: low as you're going, and they believe that, you know,
Speaker 6: the song appeal to a thirteen or sixteen can can
Speaker 6: travel upward as well.
Speaker 1: So your sweet spot is the sixteen to twenty five.
Speaker 6: Year old for certain stations. For other for like adult contemporary,
Speaker 6: it's older.
Speaker 1: What's the station that was your highest listenership? Who had
Speaker 1: the biggest audience?
Speaker 6: WBRU On Sundays we were in Providence, Rhode Island, and
Speaker 6: no one else was playing black music at all. On
Speaker 6: Sundays we would kill it.
Speaker 1: But you weren't thinking about demographics then, were you.
Speaker 6: We always think about demographics. We were ninety five point five,
Speaker 6: so therefore we were on a commercial part of the dial.
Speaker 6: We were always thinking about demographics always, and we were
Speaker 6: selling eighteen to thirty four at that time, so we
Speaker 6: really wanted to make sure that we were hitting eighteen
Speaker 6: to thirty four. We were. That's I mean, that's one
Speaker 6: of the great things about that station. We had to
Speaker 6: think like a professional radio station. But in doing that,
Speaker 6: we still did you have a much looser format?
Speaker 1: Did you play a candy girl? If that's the case, absolutely,
Speaker 1: but eighteen and thirty.
Speaker 6: Four the great here's the thing, here's the thing. So
Speaker 6: we were able to cheat a little bit because there
Speaker 6: was no other competition, so we had a we had
Speaker 6: a captive audience and a loyal audience in a in
Speaker 6: a good way. And you can kind of sell anything, right,
Speaker 6: So for example, for for Candy Girl, we would go
Speaker 6: on there and say, hey, I know you missed the
Speaker 6: Jackson five or having these talented brothers out of Boston,
Speaker 6: so you hit on the emotion of they used to
Speaker 6: like their local and you hope they do well. So
Speaker 6: that's the way you make something like Candy Girl work,
Speaker 6: even though it's not necessarily for eighteen thirty four. So
Speaker 6: just was about, hey, this is a really good song,
Speaker 6: and that as well. You want to find a really
Speaker 6: good song, but you also want to find.
Speaker 1: A way that did it make it relevant?
Speaker 6: To make it relevant and make it attach them.
Speaker 5: To They stay and don't turn the channel because they
Speaker 5: don't recognize the song.
Speaker 1: So if thirty four is the closing get then for
Speaker 1: for b are you at the time. But I would
Speaker 1: think the older you are, the more you control the
Speaker 1: purse strings in the house. So are you not thinking
Speaker 1: a forty five year old, like if you're in a
Speaker 1: household the dad who might be forty two, forty three
Speaker 1: years old.
Speaker 6: So there's money at every level, Okay, there's there's just
Speaker 6: you know, there's money at every level because especially eighteen
Speaker 6: thirty four, you're controlling your own per springs, even though
Speaker 6: it's not as much as the older, older audience, but
Speaker 6: that's why they have I can't think of any station
Speaker 6: that's a that's.
Speaker 5: Ah like the light stations.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like anything that says light FM. You can just
Speaker 6: you just tattoo fifty four.
Speaker 1: I live there all right. The radio edumacation portion of
Speaker 1: the show. I can stay on forever, but we kind
Speaker 1: of have to go to DC a little bit and
Speaker 1: go to BET. So what did you make your excess
Speaker 1: from radio to uh television?
Speaker 6: Said ild I left IOD in ninety three. I went
Speaker 6: to Dallas to go work at the Tom Joining Morning
Speaker 6: Show was the first executive I was the first executive
Speaker 6: producer of the Tom join Of Morning Show for a
Speaker 6: year and then was that like it was what I learned.
Speaker 1: I learned.
Speaker 6: I learned how to do Selector, which is a great
Speaker 6: great music program on Sele. Selector is a music programming
Speaker 6: well I use it as a warehouse. Some people use
Speaker 6: to program their stations like it's like you put all
Speaker 6: of your songs in a computer in different categories, and
Speaker 6: then most people ask the computer to spit out right,
Speaker 6: So you in categories in different categories. So in an hour,
Speaker 6: if you play twelve songs, you'll play five heavies, four mediums,
Speaker 6: one brand new and one classic. Does that make sense?
Speaker 5: Oh no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: That's how radio has been formated. Did you feel conflicted,
Speaker 6: Like no, no, no, no no, But that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: So what you do is you put in all the
Speaker 6: number of heavies you have, which is probably which is
Speaker 6: maybe ten, I'm way off of the numbers. But the
Speaker 6: idea is you put in the computer and then it'll
Speaker 6: spit out in the order that you asked. Wanted to
Speaker 6: be in music, and most programmers program their stations that way.
Speaker 1: So when you say heavies, are you talking about heavy rotation?
Speaker 6: Yes, heavy rotation.
Speaker 5: It minds you. Every radio station uses this saying program So.
Speaker 1: Ninety four, if you're talking about five heavies in a
Speaker 1: month's time, are you singing that this song will get
Speaker 1: played thirty times a day?
Speaker 6: And no?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 6: So can I do it differently? Once every two hours?
Speaker 6: So once every two hours a heavy would get played? Right,
Speaker 6: and then now a heavy gets played like what once
Speaker 6: every thirty five minutes?
Speaker 1: Like I could hear marias Fantasy at least three times
Speaker 1: in a two hour period on radio or belief. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true.
Speaker 6: I mean that that's probably about the time, maybe two hours, right,
Speaker 6: maybe twice yep. But now it's like it lives won
Speaker 6: every thirty five minutes, once every forty five minutes. Yikes,
Speaker 6: because the measure the way they measure it is how.
Speaker 1: Did you feel about that? Like did you feel as
Speaker 1: though the was it just like let's go with the
Speaker 1: times or was it?
Speaker 6: Well, in ILD when I was a programmer, it was
Speaker 6: you still had to do that because we still wanted
Speaker 6: to keep the audience. But the fun wasn't The two
Speaker 6: new records you got to play right, because right, the
Speaker 6: fun was the two. The fun was the new you
Speaker 6: want to play with hour. It's true, like so you know,
Speaker 6: and when you pick, especially when it's either an album
Speaker 6: cut that nobody else is playing or like still Seal
Speaker 6: and Tracy Chapman and like Living, that was like it
Speaker 6: was like putting on something that the other won't dare right, right,
Speaker 6: That's what it was like.
Speaker 8: Okay, so here's a question. How long would a song
Speaker 8: have been on the station before it hits heavy rotation?
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, you test my memory. Ten weeks? Okay,
Speaker 6: so ten weeks? What works itself up from light medium
Speaker 6: to heavy rotation?
Speaker 1: And it would stand for heavy rotation for like on average.
Speaker 6: If it was what was the Tony Terry song with
Speaker 6: You With You Tony Terry stayed on for like half
Speaker 6: a year. Oh my god, Tony Terry till to this
Speaker 6: day is that song would not need to put bullets
Speaker 6: in that thing and it would not it would not
Speaker 6: go down.
Speaker 1: Well, who determines the life of a heavy rotation?
Speaker 6: So you do research once you Once you have a
Speaker 6: song on there, you no more call out research. You
Speaker 6: call different people and play hooks for them over the phone,
Speaker 6: and you find out how it's selling down at a
Speaker 6: Nubian notion UH in Dudley Square in Boston, and find
Speaker 6: out how it's selling its strawberries and town. And so
Speaker 6: you find out how people are engaging with the song.
Speaker 8: So, if you've ever gotten a promo seating and wondered
Speaker 8: why call out, research took was tracks two and three
Speaker 8: and they were only seventeen seconds song.
Speaker 1: That's why. Yes, wow, So because.
Speaker 6: We always want to find out, like we're playing this stuff,
Speaker 6: but do they like it? Do they not like it?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I can't get off radio acause.
Speaker 5: I was about to ask a radio but kind of
Speaker 5: still transitioning your career question. So once you became a
Speaker 5: producer for the Tom join and Morning Show, were you
Speaker 5: feeling a little bit more is it more free less
Speaker 5: stress situation? Because no, it's not more boss.
Speaker 6: But ninety four it was more stress around music because
Speaker 6: if you remember, a lot of people do it now,
Speaker 6: but back then, only Howard Stern was doing multiple shows,
Speaker 6: multiple stations in multiple cities. Right, Tom Joyner was the
Speaker 6: first black shock to do it. So it was really pioneering.
Speaker 6: And what you have to do is we started off
Speaker 6: from twelve stations, if I'm not mistaken, So on those
Speaker 6: twelve stations, what you have to do is take all
Speaker 6: the music from those twelve stations and you have to
Speaker 6: find a common denominator for those twelve stations, which is
Speaker 6: just a very very small subset of the music that's
Speaker 6: being played or the music that's out that time. So
Speaker 6: being the music person or one of the people put
Speaker 6: together the music for that was stressful for the times
Speaker 6: on the show because I would get a call from
Speaker 6: who are programming Miami? Because we put on a song
Speaker 6: that Chicago like, but they don't like it. So it
Speaker 6: was really a restricted, restricted playlist, and when it came
Speaker 6: to uptempo songs, it was it was it was difficult.
Speaker 1: Sounds like a headache.
Speaker 6: It sounds like twelve headaches.
Speaker 5: So then you were ready for b Etcause.
Speaker 6: So yeah, anyhow, so I was there for a year
Speaker 6: and then I got an opportunity to go to MTV
Speaker 6: because MTV was hiring people who did radio. They like,
Speaker 6: we don't care if you don't have any TV experience.
Speaker 6: We're looking for people who know how to program radio.
Speaker 6: So when were you at I was an MTV ninety
Speaker 6: five to ninety nine. February ninety five to April ninety nine, Oh.
Speaker 1: Right, when were you there doing Fred's period? Fred got us?
Speaker 6: He did? He did?
Speaker 1: He did, Fred Fred he did?
Speaker 6: Fred was Fred Jordan. Of course, of course I'm not.
Speaker 6: I'm not never mind, I was not connecting that very
Speaker 6: obvious dot. Yeah, Fred Jordan was.
Speaker 1: Fred Jordan, the late great Fred Jordan. Like one of
Speaker 1: his last acts of greatness was I'm not just babing,
Speaker 1: I'm like, please play my video. Yeah, and Fred got
Speaker 1: you got me on like medium MTV rotation. Well you're
Speaker 1: instantly nineteen ninety nine, and it's hard one nine trying
Speaker 1: to think I was there everywhere. It took MTV a second.
Speaker 1: By April of nineteen ninety nine, they finally jumped aboard
Speaker 1: and that really that started. That's when we were like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, like five hundred thousand people brought this
Speaker 1: record like we couldn't believe it.
Speaker 6: Like I'll tell you the record where I realized the
Speaker 6: power of MTV. What Skilo I wish, oh Man Skill
Speaker 6: I Wish was shortly after I got there.
Speaker 1: I still love this song.
Speaker 6: I love that song. I was like, oh my, like
Speaker 6: it was just fun. It was everything a video should
Speaker 6: be like it was. And one of the things I
Speaker 6: loved it was inexpensive right now was that was the
Speaker 6: time when when budgets on videos were starting to go up.
Speaker 6: And what I loved about it, I was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 6: show people that if you just have a great concept,
Speaker 6: the cool song, you can spend little money, don't have
Speaker 6: to spend crazy money. I love that about it. And
Speaker 6: Skilo went gold, Like Skilo I Wish went gold, and
Speaker 6: I was like, Oh, that's that's what MTV can do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Shortly after I got there, during that time period,
Speaker 1: I mean, MTV gave you regular rotation for at least
Speaker 1: two or three months. Your life literally literally changed. But
Speaker 1: what was it like in that system once you got there?
Speaker 1: What was your position once you I.
Speaker 6: Was a director of music program. Yes, I was director
Speaker 6: of music, not the director because there was there was
Speaker 6: a bunch of us, myself, Lewis Largent, Kurt Stephik, Fred
Speaker 6: Jordan was a manager. Patti Galuzzi ran the rand the
Speaker 6: apartment along with Andy Shown was there when I was there.
Speaker 5: So were you the black guy?
Speaker 6: I was the black guy. I was a black guy, yes,
Speaker 6: but I was I was like the Black Scenior.
Speaker 1: Were you the ear to the streets?
Speaker 6: No, Fred was always the ear to the streets, right,
Speaker 6: I was.
Speaker 1: The streets, Yeah, yeah, yes, Baltic Avenue. Yes.
Speaker 6: And Jack Benson to Jack Benson, who was a producer,
Speaker 6: he wasn't on the music team Jack Jack Benson. Jack
Speaker 6: Benson as well, was like, right, yeah, yeah, Jack is
Speaker 6: Jack was. Jack was fighting the good fight long before
Speaker 6: I got there.
Speaker 1: How would you guys arm wrestled space of what got to.
Speaker 6: I haven't thought about this at all, like.
Speaker 1: The Motown system where the whole staff sits there and
Speaker 1: watches the video.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. Monday we'd have the video meetings. We'd see what
Speaker 6: got accepted, like this is for you, this is for
Speaker 6: one hundred and twenty minutes, this is for regular rotation.
Speaker 6: And on Tuesday we'd have the music meeting. Fred eventually
Speaker 6: came into the meeting. Freda wasn't in the meeting when
Speaker 6: I first got there. Kurt Lewis, Paddick Lutzi, Sherry Howe
Speaker 6: and we'd all kind of have it out for what
Speaker 6: what music should be where, and it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 6: unlike radio. And that's why they I think it had
Speaker 6: had radio folks come in and do a lot of
Speaker 6: work on MTV, especially when it came to programming the music.
Speaker 6: There are some great ones. I thought we'd you know,
Speaker 6: there's some real misses we had, and one mentioned. Julie
Speaker 6: Greenwald from Atlantic Records, who formerly of Deaf Jam, mentioned
Speaker 6: one at the Revolte conference the other day and she
Speaker 6: put on Instagram and actually commented behind it.
Speaker 1: Wait, I want to guess good because I'm trying to
Speaker 1: figure out the mine of Julie.
Speaker 6: It was a miss.
Speaker 1: It was on Atlantic.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, it wasn't. Remember she was Deaf Jam
Speaker 6: at the time, and they really wanted to come on
Speaker 6: the MTV. I remember New York's Times called it the
Speaker 6: love song of the of the summer els.
Speaker 1: What year is this?
Speaker 6: I think it was ninety five, One sweet Day. Nope,
Speaker 6: method of Mary Oh, okay, the method of Mary Oh.
Speaker 6: I need to get by it.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 6: And they brought that video up. They tried to get
Speaker 6: on regular rotation and I was brand new, so I
Speaker 6: didn't know my way around. One of the stories of
Speaker 6: the biggest regrets, And I remember somebody on the team said,
Speaker 6: I remember these words it's too dark in street. Oh
Speaker 6: my god, I was like, I didn't know what to
Speaker 6: do with at the time. I just I was brand new.
Speaker 5: You didn't know what to say in that room at
Speaker 5: the time, right, Like what do you say to that?
Speaker 6: Too early to raise my fist? Like so and so
Speaker 6: we it was it was in yo MTV, but it
Speaker 6: never really got on a full rotation that it deserved
Speaker 6: while it was on there.
Speaker 1: But but remember it being played a lot.
Speaker 6: But you're saying that it could have been it could
Speaker 6: have been played more.
Speaker 1: It wasn't.
Speaker 6: It really was that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't.
Speaker 6: You didn't get played on regular rotation that much on MTV.
Speaker 1: How many how many videos would MTV keeping in heavy
Speaker 1: rotation at.
Speaker 6: The time, I can't remember. It's somewhere in the low teens.
Speaker 6: I think. I don't think of because Cake was one
Speaker 6: of those something about that video and about that song.
Speaker 1: It was great. Yeah, I love that song and video.
Speaker 1: So you weren't dealing with just quote urban videos as well.
Speaker 1: You you were dealing with.
Speaker 6: Absolutely yeah, with all formats, all formats.
Speaker 1: How did labels feel about that?
Speaker 6: What do you mean?
Speaker 1: Well, Sylvia Rone told me some stories about how Metallica
Speaker 1: felt about being their boss. But you know what's what's
Speaker 1: a label feel about you? If you don't think that
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily working. They kind of want to be like, uh,
Speaker 1: well let me see what I think. So they they call, uh,
Speaker 1: who's the president?
Speaker 6: Was not Andy Shoon was running at them, Judy Judy, Judy,
Speaker 6: Judy McGrath was kind of overdall and it.
Speaker 1: Was sort of like I want to talk to your
Speaker 1: boss and see what she thinks.
Speaker 6: And that happened every once in a while, but it
Speaker 6: wasn't It wasn't a regular occurrence, and I think people
Speaker 6: understood and respected all different types of music. I think
Speaker 6: people were surprised that I was that that the black
Speaker 6: guy like stuff other than black and music as well.
Speaker 6: I think that came to a shocker to some folks
Speaker 6: at first of the labels. But that was that was
Speaker 6: short lived. It was a great time. That was a
Speaker 6: great time, and at a time when music was was
Speaker 6: was was kind of booming. It was it was you know,
Speaker 6: post Nirvana. But uh but read how Chili Pepper is
Speaker 6: still going and so but.
Speaker 1: How is it dealing? I mean, how's that for you personally?
Speaker 1: At least trying to not speak two languages. I know,
Speaker 1: like as a black person, yeah. I mean everyone has
Speaker 1: to naturally know two languages. The Great Dave Chappelle says
Speaker 1: that you know black men speak uh English, Well, no
Speaker 1: that we and yeah job interview. So I mean you
Speaker 1: found yourself often in positions in the boardroom having to
Speaker 1: prove your pedigree as far as your music knowledge is
Speaker 1: just well beyond knowing, you know what what the black
Speaker 1: artists are doing, and.
Speaker 6: Just with anything in any job, you just got to prove.
Speaker 6: You got to prove that you belonged there. It wasn't
Speaker 6: I don't felt like. I don't think it was. I
Speaker 6: had to prove myself anymore, just had to prove that
Speaker 6: I belonged there. I had to talk the language that
Speaker 6: like I know my music, I know I know my rock,
Speaker 6: I know my I know my you know my hip
Speaker 6: hop thinks to and some of that was like I
Speaker 6: also knew what I didn't know right. And that's why
Speaker 6: I have such a such a place for Fred, because
Speaker 6: Fred Fred got it, Fred got stuff. Fred was. It
Speaker 6: hurts to talk about him sometimes he was just he
Speaker 6: was other not otherworldly, but he was just a very
Speaker 6: special guy and that artists loved him, and he understood
Speaker 6: music and he knew what the next trend was. He
Speaker 6: called he called cash money up like a good year
Speaker 6: and a half before it really popped off. He called
Speaker 6: master p before that popped off. He was DiAngelo long
Speaker 6: before d popped off.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: And I know they had a very very very special relationship.
Speaker 6: And so also so part of what was me knowing
Speaker 6: knowing what I didn't know. But so sometimes Fred would
Speaker 6: Fred would come with the Uh. Fred would come with
Speaker 6: the knowledge, and I'm like, great, I'm gonna take this
Speaker 6: in the meeting and and let's see, let's see what
Speaker 6: we can do with it. Okay, favorite thing is that
Speaker 6: Fred Fred I'm the guy who liked the slow version
Speaker 6: of him my Bed by Drew Hill, and Fred was like, nah, dude,
Speaker 6: the remakeer.
Speaker 1: So how at this level? Now got to ask, at
Speaker 1: this level, how do artists handle rejection at this level
Speaker 1: of your career, people that know that you're connected to
Speaker 1: the label. I'm not asking for Suge Night stories. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying that, you know, by this point in the
Speaker 1: mid nineties, there's definitely a more hostile environment, especially with
Speaker 1: the uprising of hip hop and where it's come to
Speaker 1: where you know, it's about dollars and cents in the
Speaker 1: popularity of you know, are you allowed to express I
Speaker 1: don't know if I'm feeling this video or not. And
Speaker 1: you know, then you're somewhere at dinner in lam and
Speaker 1: you have to see an executive and you know, how
Speaker 1: come you ain't playing it? Like how do you because
Speaker 1: you were so active between that period in the mid
Speaker 1: to mid ninety to the early arts, like how did
Speaker 1: you handle the juggling act of artists and executives egos?
Speaker 6: So two things. I think One is that MTV we
Speaker 6: always try to find a place for something, even if
Speaker 6: it was just one spin on MTV, on YOUO, MTV raps,
Speaker 6: the weekend version, right, we always try to find a
Speaker 6: place for something that was that was that was our
Speaker 6: that was our mantra, that was our mindset, like there's
Speaker 6: got to somebody's gonna love this. You know, an alternative
Speaker 6: rock could get a play one hundred and twenty minutes.
Speaker 6: So I think people understood were always trying to find something.
Speaker 6: That's one. Two is that I found it was advantageous
Speaker 6: to establish very early that this is a long game.
Speaker 6: I know, I plan on being around for a while,
Speaker 6: so we not We're not going to have this conversation.
Speaker 6: We're gonna have this conversation, but we're not gonna lose
Speaker 6: our relationship over one song because you're gonna come back
Speaker 6: again and you know, so we're let's let's do this
Speaker 6: dance for a long term, because there's sometimes we're gonna
Speaker 6: be able to do stuff, do stuff the way you
Speaker 6: want it, and other times we're not gonna. We're not
Speaker 6: going to So I think, and I think everybody I think.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that they knew not to bite the
Speaker 1: hand that feeds them.
Speaker 6: I don't see. I mean, I don't think. I don't
Speaker 6: I don't see it that way because it's not a
Speaker 6: matter of biting the hand, Like what what could they do, like,
Speaker 6: you know, not give us the videos or we were
Speaker 6: especially then, you know, there was still a lot of
Speaker 6: music being played on m t V. And so it
Speaker 6: just didn't make it didn't make any and I can't
Speaker 6: remember it came. It came, but someone's ego had to
Speaker 6: get shattered.
Speaker 1: That was that big. I mean at some point, like
Speaker 1: if Kanya had been around, no, I mean, okay, let's
Speaker 1: take uh okay, you weren't you were going by the
Speaker 1: time Forever came out, Uh, when when when the Puffies
Speaker 1: Forever album come out?
Speaker 6: I want to say, no, what came up? Which is, uh,
Speaker 6: did Forever have a which was hate Me Now?
Speaker 1: That was?
Speaker 5: That was.
Speaker 1: But do you have a hate Me Now story?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 5: That was a Stout?
Speaker 1: So is there a good Steve Stout story?
Speaker 6: Steve Stout story I think has been told that is
Speaker 6: there a good Puffy story? Well, my last week, my
Speaker 6: last week get MTV, there was an executive from Bad
Speaker 6: Boy that while puff was going his route, they were
Speaker 6: right across the street actually in the building that we
Speaker 6: exist in right now, and came across to fifteen fifteen
Speaker 6: Broadway with a couple of very very large gentlemen. Uh,
Speaker 6: to facilitate his movement. Executive came over to try to
Speaker 6: you know, to intimidate, to intimidate people in the music department.
Speaker 6: Now I don't want to use any proper nouns, but
Speaker 6: there was there was a guy will we'll call him Bob,
Speaker 6: Bob who was who was new and was running the
Speaker 6: department and and wasn't used to this type type of activity,
Speaker 6: right was used the type of activity and so I
Speaker 6: and Fred understanding that this activity was not going to
Speaker 6: bode well, for the long term. Again, this is about
Speaker 6: a long term play. Yes, there was a mistake made
Speaker 6: about playing and this was about playing the video with
Speaker 6: NAS and Puff and someone he was on a cross
Speaker 6: and they weren't supposed to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say the controversy was the
Speaker 1: fact that Puffy didn't want to be seen as on
Speaker 1: the cross.
Speaker 6: That is correct, That is that was controversy. That was
Speaker 6: the controversy. He did not want to be seen as
Speaker 6: on the cross.
Speaker 1: Why did you shoot it?
Speaker 6: Well, because by the way I and I support that,
Speaker 6: you don't edit in the field. You edit in the room, right,
Speaker 6: and you make so you can make decisions, don't. You
Speaker 6: can't go like, oh, we should have shot that.
Speaker 1: So he didn't get final say he did.
Speaker 6: There was a mistake, There was an there was a
Speaker 6: there was a so there were standards issues where standards
Speaker 6: means like, oh, you can't do that because that's going
Speaker 6: to get us, you know, in trouble, and there's creative issues.
Speaker 6: So in that all the standards issues were taken care
Speaker 6: of in the edit. Puff being on a cross wasn't
Speaker 6: a standards issue. It was a creative issue. The creative
Speaker 6: issue didn't get taken care of and so it aired
Speaker 6: with puff on the Cross, you know, right, the puff
Speaker 6: stouts thing. I don't I can't talk about that because
Speaker 6: I wasn't there that that's documented. But a couple of
Speaker 6: folks came across the street and like.
Speaker 1: What went on.
Speaker 6: Now, the part the problem, of course, was there's nothing
Speaker 6: that could have been done. You can't untake it off,
Speaker 6: you can't have un people unsee it. So that wasn't
Speaker 6: really that wasn't a good use of force. It just
Speaker 6: wasn't a smart use of force. It was just a
Speaker 6: use of force out of anger, not out of intelligence
Speaker 6: or thinking it.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, why were the unsavory
Speaker 1: gentlemen at fifteen to fifty Broadway and not at the
Speaker 1: editor's post or.
Speaker 6: Closer access.
Speaker 1: So are you saying that they called you guys and
Speaker 1: said stop playing the video, and you guys said nope, no,
Speaker 1: that's the point.
Speaker 6: The point is all they had to do is say,
Speaker 6: don't play the video. Wouldn't play the video again the
Speaker 6: first The fact they played in the first place was
Speaker 6: a mistake. We knew that it was. It was out
Speaker 6: of emotion. So it was Sonny Qualleone, not Michael. That's
Speaker 6: the best way to put it.
Speaker 8: So the video came had the video had to have
Speaker 8: come from the label, right, yes, so somebody at the
Speaker 8: label screwed up so.
Speaker 1: Or in a way yes, so like did the label
Speaker 1: does not have the right they did not have the
Speaker 1: final version? Or did they said too?
Speaker 6: I think if I remember correctly, you test my memory,
Speaker 6: I think we had two versions. The wrong one got
Speaker 6: played because I remember it was a creative issue, not
Speaker 6: a standards issue. So we had the one that that
Speaker 6: and the one that got played was the one that
Speaker 6: took care of all the standards issues. And so that's
Speaker 6: how the that's how the wrong got played. But I
Speaker 6: think that was the one and only time it was played.
Speaker 6: There was no there was actually nothing to be gained
Speaker 6: by coming over and doing that, right because except and
Speaker 6: and sure enough I've talked about it. You know, you
Speaker 6: play for the long you play for the long ball.
Speaker 6: That damaged the relationship. And that was literally my last
Speaker 6: week at MTV. Not because of that, that was just
Speaker 6: it was scheduled at all. We're rid of the last
Speaker 6: week and I've always I'll take this moment and say
Speaker 6: I was I loved MTV and being there. It was
Speaker 6: very cool, even after I announced where I was leaving
Speaker 6: and where I was going, they let me stay, Like
Speaker 6: I remember, let me finish out the week. It wasn't
Speaker 6: like close up your laptop and close computer to leave
Speaker 6: right now. And I've always I was. I always had
Speaker 6: a loft foot up for that.
Speaker 1: So at the time, was BT part of the uh
Speaker 1: Viacom conglomerate over the independent.
Speaker 6: BT was independently owned, was privately owned. Bob Johnson, of course,
Speaker 6: is the person who founded it. He had taken it
Speaker 6: public and then taken it private again, so he he
Speaker 6: was the major shareholder or it was. It was privately
Speaker 6: owned at that.
Speaker 1: Point in time, and you felt like that was a
Speaker 1: better move or a better that's what you know.
Speaker 6: I I here's where I put it. I put I
Speaker 6: decided to put my job where my mouth was right.
Speaker 6: I looked at it. I looked at it and said like, oh,
Speaker 6: maybe could be a little bit better or do a
Speaker 6: little bit different. And I knew that there was some
Speaker 6: different ways that labels were treating BT and and MTV
Speaker 6: at the time, and so there was just an opportunity
Speaker 6: to to make a change. And so it was in
Speaker 6: the beginning.
Speaker 1: What were your thoughts of BT, like, did you see
Speaker 1: it as the kind of the kid redhead step style
Speaker 1: of the videos.
Speaker 5: Showing immediately say I have to change that, or like we.
Speaker 6: Can step this up a little bit or that sort of.
Speaker 6: I think it was more we can we can step
Speaker 6: this up? You know, I knew it was it was.
Speaker 6: It was handcuffed by being in d C. Being in
Speaker 6: DC was a great thing for because when Bob needed
Speaker 6: to get stuff done on Capitol Hill, that was the
Speaker 6: perfect place to be. But to be to really be
Speaker 6: an entertainment a player in the entertainment world, it was
Speaker 6: tough being in DC.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of the motown Detroit.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, but except except the talent lived in Detroit,
Speaker 6: so that was great. The talent coming to d C
Speaker 6: was always a bit of a challenge, like it was,
Speaker 6: you know, it's out of the way, right and so
Speaker 6: one of the first things in my interview I was like,
Speaker 6: but what do you think about moving some parts of
Speaker 6: your stuff to New York? And so were they receptive
Speaker 6: or yeah? Within within a year we I got there
Speaker 6: and I got there in June April April May of
Speaker 6: ninety nine, and we kicked off one of six park
Speaker 6: on September September eleventh, two thousand. I was in the room,
Speaker 6: like there was a bunch of us, but yeah, but
Speaker 6: but yeah, there.
Speaker 1: Was a I remember there was talk amongst us, you know,
Speaker 1: my peers, that you know, they're going to have a
Speaker 1: black TRL. I was like, how is that going to work?
Speaker 1: And you know I could have I couldn't imagine such
Speaker 1: a thing, and so yeah, yeah it actually worked.
Speaker 6: It was, it was yeah, it was. It was live
Speaker 6: TV New York. A J and Free a J was
Speaker 6: actually supposed to be a J was actually we were
Speaker 6: we were getting a J to help us find posts.
Speaker 6: And then I saw how we how we how we
Speaker 6: work with people and how people reacted to him. I'm like, no,
Speaker 6: that that's you.
Speaker 5: Because AJ and he went to like Howard is THEFF
Speaker 5: because I J and ali Al used to work against
Speaker 5: the wall right on Howard, Who's yeah, yeah, we used
Speaker 5: to go in high school. We went to Bannkers, so
Speaker 5: we would go down there. But he would make us laugh.
Speaker 6: Yeah he's still doing it. He's still doing that today.
Speaker 6: And then free Free actually was a Free was an
Speaker 6: intern at w I L D in Boston. I know
Speaker 6: I knew Free seen she was fifteen sixteen years old.
Speaker 6: Oh wow, and always had that personality. She was down
Speaker 6: with the quad CFS clue with the she was.
Speaker 1: Yes, she was Oh yeah, she was marine.
Speaker 6: That's right, Mariet, That's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the free.
Speaker 6: Girl w PGC sister absolutely absolutely shout to a j
Speaker 6: N free Wow.
Speaker 1: What damn?
Speaker 5: There must be something, you know what, you must be
Speaker 5: very proud. You have some some great talent that's come through.
Speaker 5: And all my kids like AJ has really done it, Rocky.
Speaker 6: Has done it, Roxy, Terrence is killing Terrence is killing it.
Speaker 5: I mean really tickets killing it on his own little
Speaker 5: way too, you know what I'm saying. So wow, Jo, Yeah,
Speaker 5: a lot.
Speaker 6: So where kids?
Speaker 1: So at this point, like how do you besides the
Speaker 1: New York recommendation, Like what's the reception to you kind
Speaker 1: of coming in shaking things up?
Speaker 6: Or was it.
Speaker 1: It was Jed read like the Art of war to
Speaker 1: figure out? Like can you even talk about this?
Speaker 6: I can't because because it was it was people wanted
Speaker 6: to you know, Deborly and and and and and Bob
Speaker 6: Johnson really wanted to want to change. They wanted to
Speaker 6: be a kind of a they want to be bigger player,
Speaker 6: bigger players in the game, and so they were absolutely
Speaker 6: open to change and and and and and and uh,
Speaker 6: you know, for example, there only used to be like
Speaker 6: like six months a year, and the rest of them
Speaker 6: were repeats throughout the summer, so you could you could
Speaker 6: change the videos, but the but the but the interviews
Speaker 6: were sometimes like four months old. And so one of
Speaker 6: the first things we did was was, Okay, was going
Speaker 6: to keep some of the music up all year. Get
Speaker 6: great personalities, hits from the street, you know, hits from
Speaker 6: the streets. Still one of my favorite people in the world.
Speaker 6: Hits from the Street literally came from I got second
Speaker 6: week there. I'm having meetings with people and have this
Speaker 6: meeting with a group of people and uh, everybody leaves
Speaker 6: accept him. I'm like, oh, you in this department saying no,
Speaker 6: I just came in for the meeting. I heard you knew,
Speaker 6: I'm your guy, I'm funny, and I do this and
Speaker 6: I'm like, and somebody's told me not to kick him
Speaker 6: out of the office. And so I said, Okay, here's
Speaker 6: what I need you to do. I need you to
Speaker 6: take get a cam quarter, big ass cam quarters in
Speaker 6: the day and just go somewhere and for half an hour,
Speaker 6: just play with people, right, just just just get's interact
Speaker 6: with people. He said, I don't have a camcram quarter.
Speaker 6: And I said, if you really want this gig, you'll
Speaker 6: find a cam quarder, right, And so he went and
Speaker 6: got a cam quarter and went down to Union Station.
Speaker 6: And I don't remember every one of his bits. Number one,
Speaker 6: I never watched the whole tape. Number two, one of
Speaker 6: his bits was going to somebody, you know, play listen,
Speaker 6: I'm getting I'm getting the I'm getting my friend a
Speaker 6: birthday gift. You look about the side. Would you mind
Speaker 6: trying it on for me? Just see see if it fits?
Speaker 6: There's no problem, and he pulls out a condom and
Speaker 6: so literally the first fifteen minutes, first fifteen minutes of
Speaker 6: that tape were so fun. I never looked at the
Speaker 6: last fifteen minutes and we we oh my gosh, I'm
Speaker 6: just remembering. So when I came there, they had already
Speaker 6: ad sales. The ad sales team had already sold the
Speaker 6: titles of the shows, and so I was stuck with
Speaker 6: the titles of the shows. But I could do whatever
Speaker 6: I wanted to with them, right, So Hits from the
Speaker 6: Street was a title I had to had to use.
Speaker 6: It didn't matter what the show was. The show had
Speaker 6: to be called Hits from the Streets. And so since
Speaker 6: I had that title, I just called him Hits. We
Speaker 6: just called him hits. The show Hits from the streets,
Speaker 6: and so we sent him on the streets, and so
Speaker 6: we becme Hits from the Streets. Ceta's original name was
Speaker 6: jam Zone Jam Zone Time. It was way ahead of
Speaker 6: her time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she was like the black Max head Room yet
Speaker 1: of Okay, bad reference, but okay, I always watch your
Speaker 1: face to see if it was too.
Speaker 5: No, I agree, but she's a little bit more comfortab.
Speaker 6: Yeah, she got she she got away with saying stuff that, like,
Speaker 6: you know, a live person couldn't have done, couldn't have done,
Speaker 6: couldn't have done because there was somebody coming and break
Speaker 6: the mystery.
Speaker 5: Who was she?
Speaker 1: I met her, you know, Troy.
Speaker 6: Her name is Kelly Troy.
Speaker 1: She told me close my eyes and then she started
Speaker 1: talking like yeah, but her voice is like nothing like that.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, no. The name Ceda came from the
Speaker 6: person who actually drew the design for the for for
Speaker 6: the character Cita. That was her name.
Speaker 1: It's time for a Cedar revival. I'm sorry. I wouldn't look.
Speaker 6: Different, more like you saw by the way, and it
Speaker 6: was I thought it was brilliant. The person somebody put
Speaker 6: together the B T Harlem shake when that was the
Speaker 6: big thing, and all of a sudden, the dude the
Speaker 6: Harlem shake and Ceda comes in going from left and right.
Speaker 6: I was like, that's championship move right there, Yo, I.
Speaker 5: Gotta ask you because one thing about you. I mean,
Speaker 5: people watch BT, they see you periodically, but you always
Speaker 5: look like you are having a ball. Like when was
Speaker 5: the first time and this gig when it was like official,
Speaker 5: you were having a ball. You were loving this job.
Speaker 6: This is it.
Speaker 1: He's always like always from the beginning, because I always
Speaker 1: see you at concerts.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, even at the Police when the Police reunited.
Speaker 1: That's right, when yes, two black guys in the audience
Speaker 1: jumping their asses off and the whole audience was like
Speaker 1: too cool for school and that's right.
Speaker 6: And by the way, and man, because because Stuart Copeland
Speaker 6: wasn't playing it like you did on the record.
Speaker 1: I know, but they were, you know, these something they.
Speaker 6: I was waiting for that.
Speaker 1: Just for the fact that they were there. That was
Speaker 1: enough for me.
Speaker 5: It was so how do you do this, Steve, And
Speaker 5: this is interesting because you have such a dynamic like
Speaker 5: music taste and now you're at BT Like it was
Speaker 5: different when you were a MTV you had this, you
Speaker 5: had that. Now it's a little bit more of a box.
Speaker 5: It's just a big box, but it's a little bit more.
Speaker 5: But how do you survive in that? And then at
Speaker 5: the same time you have to create standards for what
Speaker 5: you're going to do in that box because it wasn't
Speaker 5: like it was like your college show where you just
Speaker 5: played black music, you know what I mean? You had standards.
Speaker 5: So how did you survive with this mentality of free
Speaker 5: music life in this box?
Speaker 6: I'm not sure I understand.
Speaker 1: I think he's trying to ask, like, how do you
Speaker 1: reconcile the ship you like versus the ship you have?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was trying to make it sound real pretty.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of there's a lot of people who
Speaker 6: who have to work. Now, that's not gonna sound right
Speaker 6: like I love this music thing. I love this music,
Speaker 6: I love I love television, but my heart is my
Speaker 6: heart is in music and so the fact that I
Speaker 6: get to work in music at all is just the
Speaker 6: greatest thing in the world. I still have hobby. You know,
Speaker 6: I'm still going to go see you know, Radiohead. Traveling
Speaker 6: around the world to see Radiohead is my thing.
Speaker 1: That's my thing.
Speaker 6: It will never be my it won't be my job anymore.
Speaker 6: It was when as an MTV I could make that
Speaker 6: that but but it's I just love doing it.
Speaker 5: So so you're really living still living your life. Like
Speaker 5: basically I feel like like a black radio person, whereas
Speaker 5: like we do have other tastes. But however, at my job,
Speaker 5: this is.
Speaker 1: What you do.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely, But also you try to you
Speaker 6: try to try to put not my taste but part
Speaker 6: of the cool thing. I never never lose the desire
Speaker 6: and the love of like, oh shoot this brand new
Speaker 6: like Anderson pack on the on the BET Awards year,
Speaker 6: not painting many people who knew who Anderson.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I was thankful for thank you for that.
Speaker 6: No, no, no, no, it's the it's the thing we
Speaker 6: love to do. Do we we put on the BT
Speaker 6: Awards like we want to find two people that nobody
Speaker 6: knows about and hopefully people will put people will people
Speaker 6: will pick up on it.
Speaker 1: Do you think that you know, because uh, I had
Speaker 1: a group at one time, Little brother not ringing, ringing, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know ues And at the time, there was a
Speaker 1: we had a video and it was the rumor was
Speaker 1: that it was we we got from BT that was
Speaker 1: too intelligent for the listeners.
Speaker 6: I spent years trying to track that down, like like
Speaker 6: literally they just did no joke, no, no, for real,
Speaker 6: because that made no sense to me because given and
Speaker 6: I don't remember the exact time period, but like this
Speaker 6: part about always wanting to expose and go new directions
Speaker 6: of music is not new. And so for us to
Speaker 6: anybody say that's too intelligent just flies in the face
Speaker 6: of everything that I had done in my career and
Speaker 6: that that our team wanted to do. So and I
Speaker 6: swear to go except like who said to anybody on
Speaker 6: the team that was too intelligent? I never found out
Speaker 6: who that was.
Speaker 10: No, I mean we didn't either, and I mean after
Speaker 10: a while, it was just whatever on the internet. It
Speaker 10: really could have just been something that came out of
Speaker 10: a fucking internet form or form or whatever. Yet, right,
Speaker 10: so my question was, do you think now you know,
Speaker 10: a group like a Little Brother. I mean it's not
Speaker 10: about me, but just like a group like that, do
Speaker 10: you think they have more because from what I've seen.
Speaker 10: It seems to me like y'all have more leeway now
Speaker 10: in terms of like getting the Anderson Park and the
Speaker 10: stuff y'all doing with the ciphers, you know what I mean.
Speaker 10: It seems like y'all have more leeway now to really
Speaker 10: put new people on than you did, say, ten years ago,
Speaker 10: like when we were kind of doing I mean, that's
Speaker 10: how it seems to me.
Speaker 6: So we have to do it in a different form
Speaker 6: because again, like like radio, when we were doing you know's,
Speaker 6: there's tons of videos that I've loved that we just
Speaker 6: couldn't play. There's far more good music than there are
Speaker 6: slots to put it in when you're trying to programming
Speaker 6: it on radio. You know, I saw, I saw you
Speaker 6: crinkle your eyebrows when I say like twelve and twelve
Speaker 6: specific an hours, five heavies. But that's that's just the
Speaker 6: reality of the business. But on the Ciphers, on those
Speaker 6: music matters, slots that we that we did, that we
Speaker 6: do on the BT Awards, that's when we get to like, Okay,
Speaker 6: we can't do it repeatedly like we do with videos,
Speaker 6: but we can show people like this is some dope
Speaker 6: stuff you should know.
Speaker 10: Yeah, you should You should know this. What is the
Speaker 10: challenge for y'all in terms of like staying relevant which
Speaker 10: is a word that I hate, but I think you
Speaker 10: understand the context of what I mean. You know, in
Speaker 10: a in an era where we live in where you know,
Speaker 10: videos and stuff are pretty much on demand now, and
Speaker 10: you know, just the way that people consume music is
Speaker 10: totally different, and there's so much more. You know, you're
Speaker 10: a network, but you're competing with celebrities on Snapchat, you
Speaker 10: know what I mean, How how do you adapt to
Speaker 10: that we've had?
Speaker 6: I mean, when it comes to music, there's there's the
Speaker 6: music on BT right now is really it's in our
Speaker 6: it's our tempoles and our award shows. A lot of
Speaker 6: there's some stuff on Centric. We have BT Jams, which
Speaker 6: is still completely video uh BT Soul as well. But
Speaker 6: the idea of playing videos on on BET propers is
Speaker 6: it's a tough thing to do now. We don't have
Speaker 6: any video shows on on BT like V Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: because because to your point, everything's moved online. You know,
Speaker 6: you used to sit around with man Man when that
Speaker 6: new Little Bow Wow video comes on, We're sitting right
Speaker 6: in front of that TV. I'm gonna be right there,
Speaker 6: and now it's like, you know.
Speaker 1: I can use exactly you see it. There's there's no
Speaker 1: As a result, you lose some of the discovery that
Speaker 1: comes along with.
Speaker 6: But I'm fascinated by folks like like like Chance the Rapper.
Speaker 6: I love seeing here what I love. I love seeing
Speaker 6: Chance the Rapper at the top of the this thing
Speaker 6: comes out that you know, the top songs being played
Speaker 6: at radio, and it has the name the song and
Speaker 6: the artist and the number of weeks it's been on
Speaker 6: and the label it's on.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: I love seeing Chance the Rapper and having no late label.
Speaker 6: That was That was fantastic. The last thing I remember
Speaker 6: that happening was Drake, the best I ever had before
Speaker 6: before he signed. Right, that's the last number one without
Speaker 6: a label. So there's just different ways, you know. I
Speaker 6: think somebody's going to make a whole bunch of money
Speaker 6: when they figure out how to harness that. Okay, how
Speaker 6: do you how do you reach critical mass at the
Speaker 6: same time on the internet. I don't think anybody's really
Speaker 6: done that successfully repetitively yet, But there's these things that
Speaker 6: break through and it's just it's fantastic to see hurts
Speaker 6: our business as a music lover, and I'd love to
Speaker 6: have more music on B E T proper. You know
Speaker 6: it's above for me, but I love but for the game.
Speaker 6: I love the people can do that. I love the
Speaker 6: people don't have to be dependent on a distribution source
Speaker 6: to get their music.
Speaker 1: Hurt So in your world, what is the perfect what
Speaker 1: what's the what's your vision of Okay, now, especially now
Speaker 1: that you're president, like, what is the vision two? Make
Speaker 1: it perfect?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: What is your perfect vision of B E T?
Speaker 6: It's good to make to make entertaining programming. The people
Speaker 6: are either doubled over in laughter with or all up
Speaker 6: engaged in the drama. Right If I can do being
Speaker 6: married Jane times three in Real Husbands of Hollywood times
Speaker 6: four while doing things like Charged the DA versus Black America,
Speaker 6: which we did last night, you'd be stunned how many
Speaker 6: people don't know what a DA does, who their d
Speaker 6: d A is or or or how they can elect them. Right,
Speaker 6: and yet the DA has more to do with how people,
Speaker 6: how people go to get charged and go to jail
Speaker 6: than the police. Everybody's focused on the police, and for
Speaker 6: an American interaction, it's all about the DA. All the
Speaker 6: police do is deliver you to the door, right, the
Speaker 6: DA decides whether what you have in your pocket is
Speaker 6: going to get you probation or a twenty year or
Speaker 6: get charged for twenty years. And so when we get
Speaker 6: to do programs like that, I love that as well.
Speaker 6: We did we did I think a great show on
Speaker 6: on OJ Simpson when we talking about O J. Simpson
Speaker 6: and we went back to the hood where O J.
Speaker 6: Simpson came from and went from that perspective. So if
Speaker 6: you can get people to think about your programming plus
Speaker 6: double over laughter and be involved with the drama, that's
Speaker 6: the thing. And then of course the big award show.
Speaker 5: So how do you On a smaller note, I'm just curious,
Speaker 5: how do y'all decide what you're gonna syndicate because I
Speaker 5: know you guys have like Wendy Williams and I think
Speaker 5: you do scandal.
Speaker 6: I thought you used to do scan.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but that's just interesting too, because I always thought
Speaker 5: it was interesting what shows you decide to do that,
Speaker 5: which is BT now has so many original programming, But.
Speaker 6: How did you There's a lot of hours in the
Speaker 6: day and you gotta fiell. I think every kind of
Speaker 6: all cable stations are building that model of you. You
Speaker 6: you you syndicate a bit, you do a little bit
Speaker 6: of original programming, and then sometimes you do do some
Speaker 6: tenpoles and so you know, with that same thing we wanted,
Speaker 6: you know, we got Scandal because that was drama that
Speaker 6: everybody was all up in at the time.
Speaker 8: Uh yeah, I thought that was really soon that that
Speaker 8: started was being syndicated because it was like.
Speaker 1: One of the Yeah.
Speaker 6: But but but that's the way, that's the way it's happening.
Speaker 6: Now things are coming on, things are coming on getting
Speaker 6: syndicated sooner. But but there's challenges around that because now
Speaker 6: you can find almost like with with videos, you can
Speaker 6: find them wherever you want to, on your device or wherever. Yeah,
Speaker 6: well I would have lost that. I don't have lost
Speaker 6: that fight. I would I would have lost that beat.
Speaker 6: Ten years ago, someone said, ten years ago, I'm gonna
Speaker 6: give you something the size of your phone, and you're
Speaker 6: gonna watch a video, not just a video, but you're
Speaker 6: gonna watch something for in half an hour, two hours
Speaker 6: straight on this No, no, no, it's not gonna happen.
Speaker 6: But I lost that. I lost that. I lost that one. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I like scandal you did.
Speaker 5: It's not an original program in Steve, you gotta.
Speaker 7: It's syndicated, alright, he likes it.
Speaker 1: Hey, Mikey be like, so I would be remiss if
Speaker 1: I didn't bring up kind of the the the contra
Speaker 1: well not the controversy, but I mean, obviously in some
Speaker 1: people's eyes, they you know, there's people that like, thank
Speaker 1: God for BT, and they focus on stuff I want
Speaker 1: to see, and then there's another Yeah, the critics, the criticism.
Speaker 10: First of all, I hate that BT Young Cut went away, know,
Speaker 10: and I'm gonna tell you why.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm be just keep on hunting with you.
Speaker 10: I like BT Young Cut because it came on at
Speaker 10: a time when no children should be up anyway, you
Speaker 10: know what I mean, And so like it came on, So.
Speaker 1: I was one of the supporters, you know, regardless of whatever.
Speaker 10: I was one of the people that defended BT for
Speaker 10: I'm like, listen, we all watch these songs.
Speaker 1: It birthed us some of the greatest songs.
Speaker 6: What that Thing Smell Like?
Speaker 1: Come On by Black Jesus On the personal favorite of mine,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: They had a whole open episode about y'all, like that's amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean they brought on the.
Speaker 8: Girls, and there was there was a rumor, like I
Speaker 8: guess a year or so ago that bt.
Speaker 1: Cut was coming back.
Speaker 6: April Fool's joke, but split between people who are like, ah,
Speaker 6: that's very funny, people like I can't believe way back.
Speaker 8: But wait, wait, wait the way cable television is now
Speaker 8: actually because I mean like the Fax and A, A
Speaker 8: and E are being very, very more relaxed about language nudity.
Speaker 6: It would never work because you get it online right now.
Speaker 6: That's that's the only reason it would never work. It's
Speaker 6: it's available everywhere.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 6: That's that's the that's the you know, it wouldn't be
Speaker 6: a surprise now, it wouldn't be a shock now if
Speaker 6: it were on, But it just wouldn't rate well.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing.
Speaker 6: Look, bet Uncut was created because there were all these
Speaker 6: videos we were editing, and and again I come from
Speaker 6: place on I want people's artistics. They're right, I don't
Speaker 6: know if the laughter is about them.
Speaker 1: No, No, I'm thinking about you because I had a
Speaker 1: vision in my head of you editing Neddy Nellie's tip
Speaker 1: to video.
Speaker 6: Then we'll come back to Nellie tip. But The idea
Speaker 6: was like, there's all these videos coming, we have to
Speaker 6: edit them so people can watch them during the daytime,
Speaker 6: but you want to say they have artistic, artistic expression,
Speaker 6: and then to your point, like, let's put them on
Speaker 6: later so they're just uncut. Right, this is just it
Speaker 6: that you know, we can't put porn on but but
Speaker 6: but but you know, we don't want to. But so
Speaker 6: it was for videos that it kind of existed but
Speaker 6: in there and we play them in the natural form
Speaker 6: during uncut and then the edited form during the day.
Speaker 6: The challenge came when people started making videos for specifically
Speaker 6: for uncut, and so that was the that was the
Speaker 6: challenge that people were like, oh, that's the way we're going.
Speaker 6: We're not even gonna work because everybody wanted to get
Speaker 6: on daytime. People were like, no, worried about daytime. I
Speaker 6: just want to get on cut and uncut was it whatever,
Speaker 6: it was a rating success, it was a rating. It
Speaker 6: was it happened. That was great. But so Chip Drill
Speaker 6: is the one that looks at as the is the
Speaker 6: video that was kind of made for uncut and it
Speaker 6: and it wasn't that kind of that kind.
Speaker 1: Of it was the point. It was.
Speaker 6: But the other point was when I realized how popular
Speaker 6: it was. Was on one O six in Park. Peddler
Speaker 6: Bell came on one O six and Park and said,
Speaker 6: my favorite show was B T and cut and we shot.
Speaker 6: We thought she was doing as a joke, and and
Speaker 6: so I forget what she I think she just offered
Speaker 6: and said, oh yeah, I watched that.
Speaker 1: My favor what was her favorite?
Speaker 6: Jam favorite? My favorite video is what that thinks about?
Speaker 1: Won't be right back commercial, right back?
Speaker 5: We can get all ages. Man.
Speaker 1: That was the Negro Spiritual. I love it from Indiana,
Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
Speaker 6: But I think, you know, people people have criticized BT
Speaker 6: in the past, and I gotta say that when people
Speaker 6: bring up BT, I'll cut them like we took that
Speaker 6: off like eight years ago, seven years ago. And usually
Speaker 6: when it comes to people that things that people criticize,
Speaker 6: it's things that like we're seven or eight years ago.
Speaker 6: So it's telling you know. You know, I think people
Speaker 6: who watch it now and that may be when people
Speaker 6: checked out, so I don't I don't follow them. If
Speaker 6: you check out at a certain time, then that's you know,
Speaker 6: I checked out a radio twenty years ago. I still
Speaker 6: think I can play whatever I want to and.
Speaker 5: Y'all diversified too, So now I don't have to watch
Speaker 5: Bett proper. I can watch BT jams.
Speaker 6: Or if you want videos, you've got we got them.
Speaker 6: You know, if you want you hip hop, you want
Speaker 6: BET jams. You got your soul for BT soul. Black
Speaker 6: woman who got the black got Centric?
Speaker 5: Congratulations about can you can we just have a moment
Speaker 5: for Centric when you just I'm guessing when you decided
Speaker 5: to really make it the Black Woman Channel, Like that's
Speaker 5: it's only.
Speaker 6: Like a year ago that y'all did a year and
Speaker 6: a half, year and.
Speaker 5: A half fantastic campaign.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: No, I try to get a job there, auditioned and everything,
Speaker 5: but that's a whole other thing. But I want to
Speaker 5: hear now you're here and now I'm here, thank you, mister.
Speaker 5: But why but explain?
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, because because there's no there's no
Speaker 6: other entity out there really focused on black women exclusively. Right.
Speaker 6: So the point is for Centric is whenever you go
Speaker 6: to Centric, no matter what time of day it is,
Speaker 6: no matter when it is, if you're a black woman,
Speaker 6: You're going to go go there and find something that
Speaker 6: appeals to you. And while there's other shows on different channels,
Speaker 6: you know, every once in a while, like you go
Speaker 6: to Centric and you're gonna find that hopefully twenty four
Speaker 6: hours a day. That's the that's the goal behind Centric.
Speaker 5: I appreciate that. I'm glad y'all made to switch.
Speaker 6: So you know, anybody who's who you know, bashes bat
Speaker 6: I think or or criticizes. I love criticism. I want
Speaker 6: to be clear, like honest criticism. You you get sharper,
Speaker 6: you understand what people folks.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 6: But if it's from eight or seven years ago, seven
Speaker 6: eight years ago, I'm just like, well watch it now.
Speaker 6: If you still have the same criticism, let me know.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna say I used to be one of the
Speaker 8: heavy criticizers of BET still I'm but I've started watching
Speaker 8: a lot more recently because I got cable again and gradulations, Yeah,
Speaker 8: thank you.
Speaker 1: Pretty much. I got a job.
Speaker 8: The programming definitely has changed quite a bit, and I
Speaker 8: think the big difference is just the music videos aren't there,
Speaker 8: and I think that actually might have made the channel better.
Speaker 6: Well if you don't, yeah, that's hard, that's hard. That
Speaker 6: wasn't a question, So I don't feel like.
Speaker 1: That was called gotcha compliments.
Speaker 8: I'm saying that because you know, you would turn on
Speaker 8: BT all times a day and it was just almost
Speaker 8: always all music video.
Speaker 1: So now there's a lot more variety of you know,
Speaker 1: I don't want to listen to music all the day,
Speaker 1: you know, so you know I can turn on Catch
Speaker 1: the House, Painting Run.
Speaker 10: Yeah, and two I think too. It was something to
Speaker 10: be said, you know, like a Buddy Man, you know,
Speaker 10: we were talking. He has the theory of like how
Speaker 10: you kind of just grow out of things, right, So
Speaker 10: it's it's a funny thing with BT where it was
Speaker 10: for me. It was a thing where when I was
Speaker 10: a kid, I watched BT like all day like that
Speaker 10: was I mean, I was Rap City Video, LP Video,
Speaker 10: Vibrations Midnight like our screen scene, screen scene, Oh my god,
Speaker 10: I was yeah, screen I don't want to even take
Speaker 10: it back for you remember telling me something good was
Speaker 10: that it was a game show.
Speaker 1: It was a game show where people would call in.
Speaker 1: You know I missed that. Yes, this was like eighty
Speaker 1: seven eighty talking about this is this is late.
Speaker 5: I'm passing Angel Stripling.
Speaker 1: This is Angel Stripling years.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Robin Breeden, who was back on the radio, the
Speaker 6: radio they would show.
Speaker 10: The reruns of the show Desmonds, there's the Jamaican I
Speaker 10: have like four seasons, but it's syndicated, some of it's
Speaker 10: on DVDs.
Speaker 6: So yeah, it was. Yeah, it was from back in
Speaker 6: the day.
Speaker 10: But I will watch it as a kid, and like
Speaker 10: that was all I would do. But then it got
Speaker 10: to a point where I kind of just grew out
Speaker 10: of it, you know what I'm saying. But now as
Speaker 10: an adult, like in my you know, thirties, you know
Speaker 10: what I'm saying. Now I watch it again, so it's
Speaker 10: like there's content for me there. But it was just
Speaker 10: that middle fund, that funny part like kunting in your twenties,
Speaker 10: where it kind of it kind of lost me. Maybe
Speaker 10: it's kind of us just growing out of it and
Speaker 10: you know just what he just.
Speaker 6: Said, growing up. But then you.
Speaker 5: Is it because your video has never really played on
Speaker 5: there too, Orna, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I won't want to watch the ship just to watch,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't. I don't have any regrets of
Speaker 1: the Tortoise in the Hair Journey only because, like you know,
Speaker 1: I look at all my peers that did get instant
Speaker 1: rotation love and they're kind of on the side of
Speaker 1: the road, broken down vehicles.
Speaker 6: And it's about.
Speaker 1: The longest admire Well yeah, yeah, the the your your
Speaker 1: your your, your childlike enthusiasm for uh music when I
Speaker 1: see you in concerts and everything, all that stuff. But
Speaker 1: having witnessed you at several BT Awards, I wonder how
Speaker 1: you keep so cool, especially this year. Now, hold on this.
Speaker 8: I was I was randomly on Facebook the other day
Speaker 8: and somebody posted a video of Actually the Jackson's posted
Speaker 8: a video of their performance at the their final performance
Speaker 8: at Michael's fiftieth anniversary thing.
Speaker 1: And halfway halfway way through, halfway through, there is the
Speaker 1: clearest day shot of.
Speaker 6: Stephen Hill just going crazy in the crowd.
Speaker 5: I remember that one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I always know you are because you're
Speaker 1: the most enthusiastic audience member ever.
Speaker 6: It's true.
Speaker 1: But okay, now this is where the suit and me
Speaker 1: wants to know. Like, when you're at the BET Awards,
Speaker 1: I would be losing my mind every second only because
Speaker 1: it's like it's such a down to the wire. Is
Speaker 1: this going to work? Is this not going to work?
Speaker 1: Because you know you can't be there as a fan
Speaker 1: watching this this performance. You have to trust in your director,
Speaker 1: You have to trust in the creative people. You have
Speaker 1: to trust the talent. I mean, do you not have
Speaker 1: anxiety on whether or not blah blah blah made their
Speaker 1: plan or not, or if there's a Plan B or
Speaker 1: Plan C, or you know, we got to cut this
Speaker 1: part of the show. We have to edit that part
Speaker 1: of the show. Like just the things that I now
Speaker 1: know in television production that drive proprietors and bosses crazy.
Speaker 1: You never have that on your face.
Speaker 6: But I know for this year, anybody, anybody, anybody who
Speaker 6: works with me or who's hearing this is like, perhaps
Speaker 6: he doesn't know who Stephen Hill is. Maybe he's looking
Speaker 6: at somebody else's face.
Speaker 1: No, no, because it's always it's always poker face time.
Speaker 1: Now for instance, now this year with the with the
Speaker 1: passing of our king, mister Hill, you you took a
Speaker 1: very no, I mean you took a very bold stance
Speaker 1: with the tweet. That was the best thing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the shade. But here's the thing.
Speaker 5: Mirror was on stage.
Speaker 6: You know, he was off, he had cleared the stage.
Speaker 6: And the way you insinuated that, I just meant it wasn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't on stage with them. I introduced them, And
Speaker 1: can we not say what this is in regards to oh,
Speaker 1: are we allowed to?
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm asking you.
Speaker 5: It's in the past, isn't.
Speaker 1: It because he's my manager. No, we're referring to the
Speaker 1: Madonna performance.
Speaker 6: Of perform Stevie. Can I clear something up. I wasn't
Speaker 6: talking about the Madonna No no, no, no no no
Speaker 6: no no no, no, no, no no. What I was
Speaker 6: talking about is if you're going to you're gonna be
Speaker 6: really honest about it, if you're gonna, if you're gonna
Speaker 6: tribute Prince, if Madonna had been, I'm gonna give myself
Speaker 6: in trouble if Madonna had her tribute. But it would
Speaker 6: be awesome to have someone else cover another aspect and
Speaker 6: has to have someone else cover another aspect.
Speaker 1: Okay, now here's this thing that's so so.
Speaker 6: So people took it it was me against another person.
Speaker 6: It was just like as a tribute as a whole
Speaker 6: we got you. It was it was it was really
Speaker 6: like I did. That's that's how that came out.
Speaker 1: I didn't take I didn't take your tweet as something
Speaker 1: to Madonna or Stevie, but I understood where you were going.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing, though, and you know, I know
Speaker 1: the timing was Uncan you know Prince well in the audience?
Speaker 1: You know Prince well? You know what I mean, you
Speaker 1: know his music well? And being as though it's slim
Speaker 1: Pickens out there, when you said we got you, I
Speaker 1: instantly got worried because it was like, Wow, okay, now
Speaker 1: the pressure's on and everybody is betting on Black and
Speaker 1: now all I'm thinking is who who do you have
Speaker 1: in mind that can even come close to what Prince
Speaker 1: really means? Fourth letter of the alphabet.
Speaker 6: In nineteen sixty one or sixty two, John F. Kennedy
Speaker 6: went to Rice University gave a speech said, guess what,
Speaker 6: by the end of this decade, We're gonna put a
Speaker 6: man on the moon.
Speaker 1: Cheer. Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 6: People at NASA were like, what, we don't have the technology,
Speaker 6: we don't have the capability, we don't have the people.
Speaker 6: We cannot get a man on the moon by by
Speaker 6: by by sixty nine. But sure enough, in faith and
Speaker 6: like you believe in your people, that that happened. I
Speaker 6: had a feeling that you would be No, no, no,
Speaker 6: I had a feel no, I had a feeling that
Speaker 6: you'd be on board.
Speaker 5: That's that's that's the we all had that feeling.
Speaker 6: That's the that's the and that was the that was
Speaker 6: the that's the foundation. I'm serious, that's true. The foundation
Speaker 6: was was that I had a feeling that some other
Speaker 6: people would come on board, and with our knowledge and
Speaker 6: our respect for that guy and knowing how much our
Speaker 6: audience was going to want it, I just we just
Speaker 6: we didn't have the tools at the time, but we
Speaker 6: knew what we knew that it existed, right, and so
Speaker 6: Janelle we knew would be on board. Right. We knew
Speaker 6: Janelle would be on board.
Speaker 5: So are you saying none of these people working firm?
Speaker 6: When you said no, no, no, no, no, no, nobody
Speaker 6: was confirmed.
Speaker 5: No, we.
Speaker 6: Had our first conversation. No we you were.
Speaker 1: It wasn't even board. But the thing was when he
Speaker 1: did that, I just I sat in my room for
Speaker 1: like almost two days, like I was like wow, Like
Speaker 1: you just thought you weren't asked who? No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I knew I was going to be part of it.
Speaker 1: I instantly got an m D mode, which was like who.
Speaker 1: Because the thing is is that the people that I
Speaker 1: feel that are close to Prince's talent aren't names. And
Speaker 1: as a suit, the suit in me was like, who
Speaker 1: has a name that will really bring him justice? He
Speaker 1: was just so obvious, right, But it was itself. It
Speaker 1: was a risky all right. When I brought the laud
Speaker 1: to it was. I didn't bring him to you personally,
Speaker 1: but I brought him to the producers and everything. But
Speaker 1: was it a Okay, he's going to hit out the
Speaker 1: park or was it a I don't know if our
Speaker 1: audience is ready for him yet, or.
Speaker 6: Like, what what are you thinking in your head as
Speaker 6: we're bringing this? How okay?
Speaker 1: And Dangelo was a part of this?
Speaker 6: Okay, how how deep do you.
Speaker 1: Want to forgot? Oh, let's let's talk about it. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're good, We're good.
Speaker 6: Sure, yeah, okay, that's why we had we had, we had,
Speaker 6: we had, we had, we had wed, and so Danzel
Speaker 6: couldn't couldn't make it. And so there was I remember
Speaker 6: exactly where it was. We were on the phone having
Speaker 6: this call. Let me let me, let me, let me
Speaker 6: let me back up. I love that John F. Kennedy
Speaker 6: story because it's just a story of faith and a
Speaker 6: sort of desire and like, if you can get people together,
Speaker 6: you can go towards that goal. And I knew enough
Speaker 6: people loved Prince that we would be able to go
Speaker 6: towards that goal, and and the Prince was the star.
Speaker 1: Faith versus science. By the way, fair enough, now I'm thinking.
Speaker 6: Of calculations or or believing that the science exists. We
Speaker 6: just haven't found it yet, right, right, And that's what
Speaker 6: it was. That's exactly what that was. I'm glad you
Speaker 6: phrased it that way. It was having the faith that
Speaker 6: the science is going to follow that faith, right, And
Speaker 6: that's exactly what this was with with with the Prince thing.
Speaker 6: But knowing that you were on board, I'm not true.
Speaker 6: Was it was a big part of the foundation and
Speaker 6: that Prince was the star and that we knew.
Speaker 9: You.
Speaker 6: No, I'm not picking my words. It's just it's just
Speaker 6: watch happy, happy, and I'll say this now a happy accident. Look,
Speaker 6: the tweet was we had a feeling that that it
Speaker 6: was going to be that the that the that that
Speaker 6: tribute was going to be was not going to be fulfilling.
Speaker 6: It was not going to fulfill all the things that
Speaker 6: you want around that. So we thought that maybe to
Speaker 6: get a little air press. Prince is the star, and
Speaker 6: now you just got to find people who love and
Speaker 6: respect them enough to pull off the to pull it off,
Speaker 6: they don't have to be that. They don't have to
Speaker 6: be We didn't need the biggest names in the world, right,
Speaker 6: we need the people who respected their music. We started
Speaker 6: that tribute with and I love that people picked up
Speaker 6: on it. We started that tribute with Ballad of Dorothy Parker, right.
Speaker 1: Which is as an album.
Speaker 6: It's an album. It's a deep album cut. There wasn't
Speaker 6: any history onics around it, like Erica just saying, sat
Speaker 6: there and did it. Because we were setting like, Okay,
Speaker 6: this is going to be a Prince View for real,
Speaker 6: this is for real Prince fans, but we're still going
Speaker 6: to get deliver you top notch talent. And you were
Speaker 6: the person who I never thought of it before. You know,
Speaker 6: it's just one long verse. There's no curve. There's just
Speaker 6: that's the thing. By the way, Well you said that,
Speaker 6: I was like, I had known this song for freaking
Speaker 6: thirty years and I've never thought about that. It's just
Speaker 6: one long verse.
Speaker 1: I was the suit and he was the greated one.
Speaker 1: Because when they said yeah, let's do Ballad Dorothy Parker,
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait, there's no hook to it. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: part do I take you guys won't let me do
Speaker 1: three minutes. I know, like I'm instantly thinking in suit
Speaker 1: television producer mode and not in creative mood. So it
Speaker 1: was just but you were so cool about it.
Speaker 6: Like break the rules for that one. And then and
Speaker 6: then once once was the Angelo left out. We actually,
Speaker 6: if I remember correct, we we both came to blow
Speaker 6: independently and we're surprised that the other one was going
Speaker 6: to co coke.
Speaker 1: It was I was shocked that you were going to
Speaker 1: let me do it, and you were like.
Speaker 5: Great, And is that what a revolution took the league
Speaker 5: because ever since then has been doing like gigs.
Speaker 6: Oh no, No, we knew that, we knew that was
Speaker 6: gonna change it.
Speaker 1: We knew the second that happened. Then every member of
Speaker 1: the revolution, uh minus Brown Mark Uh hit me up
Speaker 1: and was just like.
Speaker 5: That was dope, thank you for that.
Speaker 1: And I felt like super justified and at least like
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to say it like I
Speaker 1: wanted to dodge the bullet. I wanted to hit the target.
Speaker 5: But y'all felt the whole country go yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 5: but it.
Speaker 1: Was risky because the thing is is like I'd rather
Speaker 1: in my mind, I would have rather done non popular
Speaker 1: print standards so that I wouldn't get judged, Like it's
Speaker 1: hard for you to have an opinion about slow love of.
Speaker 8: Or just stop trying to impress the orders the Prince
Speaker 8: orger people man not even I.
Speaker 1: Mean, but yeah, yeah, yeah, but I mean, but I
Speaker 1: think it's harder if you just say, all right when
Speaker 1: doves cry in nineteen ninety nine, like I felt more
Speaker 1: for Shila than anything because she was going for.
Speaker 6: The hits.
Speaker 1: She was going for the Juggernauts, so.
Speaker 6: She and Janel and Janel put that. I thought she
Speaker 6: put great artistry and great show personship to it as well,
Speaker 6: uh with costumes and danced across the stage and you know,
Speaker 6: it's great music performed by it, like when Blaud did
Speaker 6: Beautiful Ones and got down on that floor like we
Speaker 6: knew vocally, well you know what.
Speaker 1: I really, you knew it, but America didn't know.
Speaker 6: America didn't know. Yes, but but but but And that's
Speaker 6: the point of the cool thing is we talk about
Speaker 6: exposing new artists like he's not a new artist, but
Speaker 6: like people understood who he was that night, right the
Speaker 6: same way you know Candley the year before it was
Speaker 6: Tory Kelly. Tory Kelly was the one no one knew
Speaker 6: and then she stepped out to sing Who's Loving You
Speaker 6: were like, oh got it?
Speaker 1: Yo?
Speaker 5: Is it getting more challenging because you know, the one
Speaker 5: of the things that people look forward to with the
Speaker 5: BET Awards are the tributes, not so you have pretty
Speaker 5: much like I mean, I just remember the year you
Speaker 5: had Alexander O'Neill come out with Sharrel. Is it getting
Speaker 5: more challenging or is it getting more fun? Or is
Speaker 5: it more Is it combo of both trying to decide
Speaker 5: who are you gonna do and then who's going to sing?
Speaker 6: It's always fun, It's always fun. It gets a little
Speaker 6: more challenging. We love the you know, we love the
Speaker 6: reunions get.
Speaker 1: But surely you're planning it now, Like how far in
Speaker 1: advance do you you have to plan seven months in the.
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. There's conversations being had already.
Speaker 1: Here's here's a good idea.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna give away the biggest secret more than anything else,
Speaker 6: more than anything else on that show you know what
Speaker 6: you Know? And we mentioned him earlier or a member
Speaker 6: of the band earlier. Uh, in this conversation I'm gonna
Speaker 6: get Tony Tony Tony back together.
Speaker 1: It's the thing.
Speaker 6: It's the thing. It's please the thing.
Speaker 1: It's the thing.
Speaker 6: It's not worked out yet, and I don't give away secrets,
Speaker 6: but but if if anybody out there, if you can
Speaker 6: get Tony to help me get Tony Tony Tony together,
Speaker 6: I'm all the way, all the way. I want to
Speaker 6: pick the set list too.
Speaker 5: Is that it you got? Like you got three of those?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 5: Is it Tony Tony Tony?
Speaker 6: Is it gonna play my ex girlfriend?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, girl friend, it's a whole Sorry, Steve,
Speaker 1: you have to be there. Wait a minute, you don't
Speaker 1: know that?
Speaker 5: Is that before?
Speaker 1: Walter?
Speaker 5: That was so oh yeah, no, I know you didn't
Speaker 5: just look at.
Speaker 9: Me like that.
Speaker 1: That was that was the album with Anniversary. I know
Speaker 1: you know that one.
Speaker 5: Do you gotta play me with the single yoke?
Speaker 1: Because she was six years old when it came out sixteen.
Speaker 5: But I know all the Lucy Pearl album. I'm just joking.
Speaker 5: That's a joke. I'm just I'm I said, hey, little
Speaker 5: Walter jail, give.
Speaker 1: Me some credit. Joke if anything, or who else would
Speaker 1: you like to reunite? Is it too? Way for Ready
Speaker 1: for the World.
Speaker 5: Yes, that sight like ready for the World with like surface.
Speaker 1: Well it's gonna be the thirtieth anniversary of New Jack Swing,
Speaker 1: so I would imagine.
Speaker 8: Can we talk about New Jack Swing for a second. Yeah,
Speaker 8: let's do it, because I feel like the John or
Speaker 8: that period of music has been.
Speaker 1: Sorely overlooked. I think it was something that you had
Speaker 1: to be there for. Like it's a hard sell to
Speaker 1: people in twenty sixteen, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 10: Because the music was great, but like I mean, it
Speaker 10: was kind of hockey, you know what I mean it now,
Speaker 10: like listen to the baselines and the drum program like
Speaker 10: I mean, like for example, like the Foreign Exchange, the
Speaker 10: cover we did of Steve on the If She Brickshard.
Speaker 10: One of the main reasons why I wanted to do
Speaker 10: that song was because I thought it was a great song.
Speaker 1: Took the New Jackie out. Yeah just take the Chunkle Fever,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 10: But those are great songs, but just the production of
Speaker 10: the time, it you know, it didn't serve them well,
Speaker 10: didn't It didn't age well?
Speaker 1: Side note. Yeah, that's the one thing I big from
Speaker 1: Stevie Wonder's people like can I have the masters to
Speaker 1: Jungle Peole, just so I can take the drums away
Speaker 1: and put what I think he would do in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three to it.
Speaker 10: Lighting up the candles could be God lighting up the
Speaker 10: candles without jack drums.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like all so effect get back together. We could
Speaker 5: just make the new Jack swings we got.
Speaker 6: We got them back together for the soul train wars
Speaker 6: a little while. Yeah, we didnt make for the soul trains.
Speaker 1: How do you determine what soul train will get versus?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 1: Very good, very good question? It's a very good And
Speaker 1: what is your Are you allowed to say what your
Speaker 1: your what your baby is, and what your step son.
Speaker 6: Is in terms of war shows?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Because then hip Hop Honors is my.
Speaker 6: Favorite, my favorite, I don't mean disrespect my favorite celebration
Speaker 6: of gospel because if you can't sing, don't come.
Speaker 1: Oh wait a minute, I don't come. That was the
Speaker 1: fourth category.
Speaker 6: I wasn't even thinking celebration of gospel. If you can't sing,
Speaker 6: don't come anytime.
Speaker 1: I actually, yo, wait has got well into the room
Speaker 1: where we might lose good singers. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: love God.
Speaker 6: You heard that song? No, it's it's it's it was.
Speaker 6: It was a choice by a good singer to do
Speaker 6: a song that I respect that that's fine, but but
Speaker 6: you gotta sang got celebration of gospel, right, That's that's
Speaker 6: we just called. I just want to call it. Landa
Speaker 6: Adams shown so. But to my eye when when I
Speaker 6: when I see Elanda Adams walk into a room, my
Speaker 6: eyes smile because I know my ears are next.
Speaker 1: She is.
Speaker 6: She just is just a gift to sound.
Speaker 1: So between BT Awards and Soul Train Awards, how do
Speaker 1: you and both of them are your responsibility?
Speaker 6: Yes, but shout out to I'm going to say this
Speaker 6: earlier we all you talked about how to keep calm head.
Speaker 6: We have the best production crew in the business with
Speaker 6: Jesse Collins Entertainment and Janey and Knyie Orlando who oversees
Speaker 6: it for most directly for for for b E T.
Speaker 6: It's just the best in the business. Like so when
Speaker 6: I'm not worried about people missing flights because if they do,
Speaker 6: Jesse will find a way to rends a prop plane
Speaker 6: to go pick him up.
Speaker 1: You got to get a I forgot who he did
Speaker 1: that to, but he told me a story of getting
Speaker 1: someone last minute absolutely.
Speaker 6: They get it private, they get it done. No crop dusters,
Speaker 6: I said, I said properly, I say private, I said, prop.
Speaker 1: Back.
Speaker 6: But soul Training. Here's what trying to do with Soul Train.
Speaker 6: Soul Train is really about it the soul like it's
Speaker 6: it's it's it's pretty hip hop free and it should
Speaker 6: have a groove. That's why I rote. James worked so
Speaker 6: well on it this year. Anderson Pack, who's kind of
Speaker 6: in between, works on it. Una worked on it. Drew Hill,
Speaker 6: We're yep, Eric, I do get it.
Speaker 5: I don't know how Oh my god.
Speaker 6: This year we had Drew Hill. We had a tribute
Speaker 6: to Teddy Riley uh Yuna Rode, James, Eric Bennet because
Speaker 6: that song Sunshine.
Speaker 4: Is just.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which Okay, I kind of know the answers
Speaker 1: since I'm working for them, But is there any chance
Speaker 1: in hell, even if it's not on BT proper for
Speaker 1: you to really develop I want you to develop a
Speaker 1: midlife crisis BT channel for me?
Speaker 6: All right, what are the elements of that show?
Speaker 1: Well, I just I need living single reruns. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I forget the rerun list that we have that's endless,
Speaker 1: but I need the anxiety of eleven fifty eight am
Speaker 1: on a Saturday, No. One in two minutes that the
Speaker 1: Soul Trained animations coming on is one of the most
Speaker 1: thrilling moments of my childhood. And I know twelve occasionally
Speaker 1: twelve sometimes one in the morning, But yeah, I just
Speaker 1: I need a what VH one was to MTV back
Speaker 1: in the eighties, what it was meant to be? Oh
Speaker 1: my god, can you imagine that? Like one time VH one.
Speaker 5: When playing Paul Simon and it was the video Hits
Speaker 5: one was the Chevy Chase video.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the conservative White Guys channel.
Speaker 5: Now it's like, don't worry, be happy all the time.
Speaker 1: That's funny. Yeah, But I just I don't I feel
Speaker 1: like Soul Train and the interests of Soul Trained could
Speaker 1: still have life into it.
Speaker 6: It's possible, And I know you. I knew I was
Speaker 6: not going to escape without having that question answered. But
Speaker 6: it is possible. As you know that b ET and
Speaker 6: Soul Training are joined. Joined. Now, yes, if you need anything,
Speaker 6: let me know.
Speaker 5: So we're talking about new episodes of soulcirating and if
Speaker 5: you're talking about classics, do you stop at them more
Speaker 5: years or where do you stop?
Speaker 1: Soul Trained? To me, is nineteen seventy one to the
Speaker 1: last episode The Commodore's episode of nineteen ninety three, which
Speaker 1: was Don's last show. The Commonists were still around in
Speaker 1: ninety three.
Speaker 6: What was the jog?
Speaker 1: What was their last song? Their last song was I
Speaker 1: Think I'd Locked off Breakouse nineteen ninety Oh it was
Speaker 1: a very don't play it, Please don't play it, No,
Speaker 1: please play it. I've never heard this song.
Speaker 6: On my life.
Speaker 5: You can't find it.
Speaker 1: Just play light Ship please say yeah.
Speaker 6: A by The Commodore was yeah. So I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't mean for my personal collection though I'm talking about.
Speaker 8: I still think there should be a Soul Trained app
Speaker 8: for for Apple TV and Roku and smart till.
Speaker 6: You're exploring all sorts of opportunities with Soul Trained brand
Speaker 6: or do you understand how i it is and how
Speaker 6: much it means to so many people who only experienced it,
Speaker 6: but I just heard about it from their their their
Speaker 6: elder generation.
Speaker 5: So there's there's, you know, nice statement, mister President.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately Don didn't have clearances.
Speaker 5: Or or you know, so there's licensing issues.
Speaker 1: We've been working on it. It's like four years already.
Speaker 1: I think maybe wonder years of Black Television. Maybe like
Speaker 1: three hundred some some episodes have been totally cleared. But
Speaker 1: I think the whole goal is just to have the entire.
Speaker 6: We would be great to have the whole entire catalog cleared.
Speaker 5: But after the Soul Train episode goes off on your
Speaker 5: Midlife Crisis channel, what's what you just I think he
Speaker 5: just wants you just want all soul trained all the time.
Speaker 5: Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 1: Just two episodes of Soul Training a week, that eye
Speaker 1: program and then what else is.
Speaker 5: On the channel?
Speaker 1: Right? What else? Whatever? Y'all want.
Speaker 6: Kung fu flicks and you know, so basically you want
Speaker 6: it to be Bounced TV.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but like that.
Speaker 6: I can get that.
Speaker 5: I can get you know, has has a Viceland and
Speaker 5: Revolt had any effect on I mean, I don't want
Speaker 5: to say effect or impression or have you guys, it's
Speaker 5: a matter. Is it an your peripheral at all? Does
Speaker 5: it matter? Is it anything that they're doing that you like?
Speaker 8: I would suggest you watched Jesus and Mirro on Viceland?
Speaker 8: What Jesus and Miro on Viceland? Yeah, it's a future
Speaker 8: of black comedy right there.
Speaker 1: He's actually telling the truth.
Speaker 5: So has Viceland or revolt question.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I was getting that because I appreciate a vice's
Speaker 6: different approach to media, and I'm hoping, you know, to
Speaker 6: freshen things up. I think they freshened things up to
Speaker 6: use that term revolt is. I think it's an awesome
Speaker 6: exhibition around music. We just not do that. We do
Speaker 6: that on kind of jams and soul, but not the
Speaker 6: main one anymore.
Speaker 5: I was just curious. It is funny because we were
Speaker 5: talking about Noisy the other day and it's it's funny.
Speaker 5: It's a really great show in a way. However, as
Speaker 5: my mother said, when she walked in and then walked
Speaker 5: out when she saw what was going on, it feels like,
Speaker 5: what do you call that? Cultural tourism? So I was
Speaker 5: just asking because there's some things that you know, we
Speaker 5: could do without it.
Speaker 6: Feeling that way. We we we you know, we we
Speaker 6: over use this term, but you know, absolutely authentically black
Speaker 6: as what we what we are, we we we we are,
Speaker 6: we are the culture folks other folks read about it.
Speaker 1: Speaking of which, you went to the White House this year? Yes, actually, yes,
Speaker 1: I forgot we Okay, I was talking about going, you know,
Speaker 1: us going to the world, but then I forgot you
Speaker 1: were actually there to witness everything. Okay, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the actual production of the show, but I really want
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about the afterwards after Love and Happiness.
Speaker 1: Did they approach you or how did you? How did you?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 6: Shout to Janine Library from b E two, who really
Speaker 6: has been who's been working with the White House? Look
Speaker 6: the White House. You may not, I guess you can
Speaker 6: you believe it now, but White House has this great
Speaker 6: collection of black women who work there.
Speaker 5: I've seen the article.
Speaker 6: Is a great collection of black women with whom like
Speaker 6: a bunch people woul be to your friends, especially Janine,
Speaker 6: And so it was like, look, we really want to win,
Speaker 6: you know, the thick of the election is over. We
Speaker 6: want to air something. It's like just a great goodbyeparty,
Speaker 6: just a throw down. There's no there's no rhyme or
Speaker 6: reason to it. Just just have fun. And so two
Speaker 6: years in the making, they were like yes, and so
Speaker 6: we were honored to go to the White House to
Speaker 6: be part of the last musical celebration they've had them
Speaker 6: over the years for Country and I think they're going
Speaker 6: from from from Memphis, from Memphis, and you know, backrack
Speaker 6: and how David had won and so this was just
Speaker 6: one for for for be eating and so a man
Speaker 6: it was was on board Roots and and Jane Monet
Speaker 6: and and and Soul they lost Soul requested by the
Speaker 6: President of the United States.
Speaker 1: Crazy. I think almost a tear.
Speaker 5: When I told him that who else was requested?
Speaker 1: Well, we all were requested, but this okay. So I
Speaker 1: guess the rumor is that you know what's on his iPod,
Speaker 1: and you know he wanted to see that come to life.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of weird knowing that the leader of
Speaker 1: the free world has a Roots song on his iPod
Speaker 1: when he works out at the gym in the morning.
Speaker 1: And I'm trying to figure that one out because I'm like,
Speaker 1: probably aren't we aren't we the Sunday Sunday afternoon, I
Speaker 1: can count maybe four songs that are over like one
Speaker 1: hundred bpms, like I thought were the relaxing evening songs kind.
Speaker 6: Of maybe maybe part of his cool down maybe on
Speaker 6: this on the on the tape of part of.
Speaker 1: Maybe who knows, Yeah, who knows? Who knows? Yeah?
Speaker 6: But we were there and we had a good time.
Speaker 6: We had a good time. It was one of the
Speaker 6: last he said he wasn't going to sing, and then
Speaker 6: he sang at the end. I think he grabbed somebody's
Speaker 6: mike mike like love it happiness.
Speaker 1: Wait. My favorite moment though, was Okay, So I'm sitting
Speaker 1: in this section with de La Soul and with Common
Speaker 1: and we're watching BBD do Poison and so at the
Speaker 1: White House at the White House, and like all seven
Speaker 1: of us are collectively looking at each other like, well,
Speaker 1: we know there isn't a radio edit version of this,
Speaker 1: so how are they going to handle the low pro hope?
Speaker 6: Dog? Oh, that's the only one I was watching.
Speaker 1: I was watching first lady. Oh, I know, she said, Dog.
Speaker 1: It was the most magical moment of my life.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 1: It was kind of watching her.
Speaker 5: It was our movements too, right the local host she
Speaker 5: cut afro Like, all.
Speaker 1: I know is that obviously in nineteen ninety that must
Speaker 1: have been their jam when they were dating each other
Speaker 1: in Chicago, because there was just levels of Roger Rabbit Thom.
Speaker 5: Going on that I like doing the did he get
Speaker 5: on the back? Did he get on it?
Speaker 1: Let's not make it do a comedy moment, but not
Speaker 1: a comedy moment. Yeah, look, I'm just saying that. That
Speaker 1: was the realest moment I've ever seen Potus and Flotus.
Speaker 1: And she mounted the words, and I was just.
Speaker 5: Like, did she like let me ask? I'm sorry, I
Speaker 5: just have many questions. So she mounted the words, so
Speaker 5: mouthing the whole song she was, she's singing the.
Speaker 1: Song, and then she just mounted. The crew used to
Speaker 1: do it right.
Speaker 6: So you will never see it on TV. You will
Speaker 6: never see it. You will never see that on TV.
Speaker 5: But you guys filmed it.
Speaker 6: You will never see it on TV.
Speaker 5: You will film what I meant to stay with y'all.
Speaker 5: I mean, we saw us, we saw on social media, so.
Speaker 6: There was so much energy around that. You know, you
Speaker 6: were like it was it was. It was palpable, it
Speaker 6: was undeniable, it was I think you're right. That hadn't
Speaker 6: been their song at some point in time, and that's
Speaker 6: why that was their song. We kind of introduced this like, well,
Speaker 6: you know, the first movie was do the Right Thing.
Speaker 6: But you know, we imagine at some point in time,
Speaker 6: you guys dance to this and they jumped up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so y'all had a full I'm sorry, so y'all
Speaker 5: are not telling this story, you know, and listen your turns.
Speaker 5: So let me ask you said you introduced it. So
Speaker 5: you introduced BBD to the crime out like they're literally
Speaker 5: you're on the stage and you're like, okay, coming up next,
Speaker 5: we got a song.
Speaker 1: I thought that was obvious.
Speaker 5: No, no, it's not.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, yeah, yeah, because we said it, Yeah they said.
Speaker 5: It, But I didn't believe that you said it like that, like, yes,
Speaker 5: that's exactly how you said it.
Speaker 1: We talked about their first date and then we imagine
Speaker 1: that at sometime doing your courtship, this was your song,
Speaker 1: and but we didn't know it was true because because
Speaker 1: once it happened, because the tone of the night was
Speaker 1: like yes Jill, Yes, yes you're the yes John l
Speaker 1: and yes yes common yes think you know. It was
Speaker 1: a very positive and then when them snare drum hit,
Speaker 1: it was like like a pajama Jimmy jim.
Speaker 5: So am I to understand there is going to be
Speaker 5: a televised part of this which which will have the
Speaker 5: Jill and all of that and stuff. And then that
Speaker 5: other stuff was like their after party.
Speaker 1: For later there were there was the after party.
Speaker 5: Was not the after party, Yeah BD was the Okay,
Speaker 5: so you say that's why you're saying that she didn't
Speaker 5: see that.
Speaker 6: Wow.
Speaker 1: Wow, you really couldn't figure that out.
Speaker 5: I really did not. I love you, Layah, thank you,
Speaker 5: because somebody at home is with me, aren't you. That's okay? No,
Speaker 5: you'd be safe in your zone. Another dumb question. No,
Speaker 5: I'm talking to the people right now.
Speaker 1: Or it's fevers at an all timeline. But my point
Speaker 1: is that there were three versions of that performance. There
Speaker 1: was BET's uh, there was BBD's performance of it, which
Speaker 1: was flawless, and there was us looking at each other.
Speaker 1: I wish there was a camera just looking a reaction
Speaker 1: camera at between pass mace me, treak, common uh, Dave,
Speaker 1: true boy, everyone spouses, everyone's like. We were just looking
Speaker 1: at each other like is this supposed to happen? Are
Speaker 1: they allowed to say it? And then looking at her,
Speaker 1: is she she's mouthing at work? Oh my god? They
Speaker 1: no poison? Like it was just it was the craziest
Speaker 1: moment I've ever seen in my life. Thanks, thanks, No,
Speaker 1: it was bedtime, it was BT and cut time. About
Speaker 1: the video, it was a video vibrations.
Speaker 5: Yes, the fact that Usher did not have to take
Speaker 5: that video down just show the rest of the world
Speaker 5: that you know what he.
Speaker 6: Read to go and he don't give a what he
Speaker 6: gonna be audited next year, but let that.
Speaker 1: Happen, all right, So fante, man, I learned that. What
Speaker 1: do we learned? Man?
Speaker 10: I learned Stephen Hill as a lot more musical uh
Speaker 10: appreciation than I realized.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 10: This is the first time that me and you have
Speaker 10: ever really have to have a conversation and uh, you know,
Speaker 10: you know it's it's always funny.
Speaker 1: And again you know you answered earlier.
Speaker 10: Just you know, the people who are in position, who
Speaker 10: are in power in their program and it's like the
Speaker 10: things that they have to program a lot of times,
Speaker 10: it's very different from the stuff that they appreciate in
Speaker 10: their real lives, you know what I'm saying. So I just,
Speaker 10: you know, really appreciate the opportunities to sit and uh
Speaker 10: clear the air and just to really just talk about
Speaker 10: music just as fans.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. When you talked about going
Speaker 1: to see Radiohead, I mean, dude, like.
Speaker 6: Bruh England Aly fourth and July fifth, Oh.
Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, yeah, you got your tickets already. Wow.
Speaker 8: No, I'm sorry, No, I'm gonna get them, I hope
Speaker 8: you have better luck than I did with the New
Speaker 8: York shows. Oh they sold out, like I think the
Speaker 8: server crash or something and by the time it was
Speaker 8: back up, it was sold out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So no, man, no, no, no, I want to be clear.
Speaker 6: I got online. That's why I want to go see
Speaker 6: him in Amsterdam.
Speaker 1: Oh so you don't know pros and that.
Speaker 6: Takes the fun out of it.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Getting free tickets is the fun part for me.
Speaker 6: You trying to tell me sometimes you're just a fan though, right,
Speaker 6: So sometimes I was online at four because they went
Speaker 6: on to say at ten am in every place, So
Speaker 6: I was up at four a m. On Wasiste dot Org?
Speaker 6: I think Wasiste dot Org? Get my tickets for Radiohead
Speaker 6: for Amsterdam last May. Absolutely, But dude, sometimes you do
Speaker 6: it as a fan. I'm like, I'm a fan of music. Like,
Speaker 6: there's sometimes I'm not going to say, like I never
Speaker 6: dial in for tickets. I'm going to see Maxwell and Mary.
Speaker 6: I'm dialing in for tickets, right, But there's sometimes you
Speaker 6: just want to have the entire fan experience, and with Radiohead,
Speaker 6: you know I.
Speaker 5: Do.
Speaker 1: I do, absolutely, But if it sells out, you're gonna
Speaker 1: call them, right If.
Speaker 6: Stub Hub and everything else fails and I really want
Speaker 6: to go then I will, but that last resort, that's last.
Speaker 6: But that's last resort because there's with them. It's just
Speaker 6: like I'm a fan.
Speaker 1: Damn. That's what I learned. I learned that Stephen Hill
Speaker 1: really is a fan wants to pay for it? Uh, Sugar, Steve,
Speaker 1: how you doing?
Speaker 7: I learned a lot about Stephen Hill, learned a lot
Speaker 7: about radio. I learned a lot about pet. What I
Speaker 7: found interesting was your It seems like from day one
Speaker 7: you got this charge out of breaking new artists or
Speaker 7: new songs or new music from your college radio days,
Speaker 7: and now still even up until now, it sounds like
Speaker 7: you're doing that still and still getting that same rush
Speaker 7: from it. So I found that cool and interesting.
Speaker 1: That's that amount of breath amazing. Okay, I'm gonna save
Speaker 1: Laya for last, because no, you'r DC's finest, you know, So,
Speaker 1: Boss Bill, Yes, what did you learn today? Bruther?
Speaker 8: I learned about hitting the post. I didn't know there
Speaker 8: was a term for that. I did not know there's
Speaker 8: a term for that, and postmaster general, yeah, post master.
Speaker 8: So miir is going to be hearing a lot about
Speaker 8: hitting the post.
Speaker 1: In the future, I can't be FedEx or no, he
Speaker 1: can't work in the mail room hitting the posts. Hitting
Speaker 1: the post. Well, thank you Steve for introducing. You got
Speaker 1: another task for me to master.
Speaker 6: You got my pleasure.
Speaker 1: Gosh, all right, Layah, let's have it.
Speaker 5: You do such a build up that if I don't
Speaker 5: do something, I feel like an idiot. I was gonna say,
Speaker 5: I'm learning. I'm learning that you can leave radio and
Speaker 5: go to greater and better things. However, I'm still learning
Speaker 5: how to do that because it's interesting. It was when
Speaker 5: you said it was a time when like people really
Speaker 5: appreciated radio, people's opinion like MTV, and those times have change.
Speaker 5: So I am learning that I am appreciating quest Love.
Speaker 5: I think that that was leaving radio and transitioning to
Speaker 5: something better. That's what I meant.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, you met me as the radio show, not
Speaker 1: me as an Emir Thompson.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And I learned you should never lose your passion and
Speaker 5: your spirit about radio about music in that way, because
Speaker 5: most radio people, we start out that way, but you know,
Speaker 5: sometimes the business jade you a little bit, and you know,
Speaker 5: you don't listen to music for a while and that's
Speaker 5: what I've been doing. So you kind of encourage me to.
Speaker 1: Like the music.
Speaker 5: Yeah, in the music business, and you've been hurt and
Speaker 5: fired a couple of times. As you know, you're like,
Speaker 5: I'm gonna take a break, but no, I'm gonna keep
Speaker 5: it going.
Speaker 1: I learned the importance of front selling. I learned the
Speaker 1: importance of that. Finally, finally I learned that all of
Speaker 1: my authority figures at at Pandora are relieve that I've
Speaker 1: learned those things. I've learned that this too shall pass
Speaker 1: word and we will have a prosperous New Year's and
Speaker 1: we will have a prosperous year and a prosperous decade
Speaker 1: and a prosperous life. And you know, life goes on.
Speaker 1: Life ain't over. Which is still in with all right?
Speaker 1: By Kendrick, I was gonna say, outcast, hold on, be strong?
Speaker 1: Word up? Can we who are we going to throw?
Speaker 1: Just a inter wait? Do me favorite?
Speaker 9: Can you?
Speaker 1: Can you front?
Speaker 6: All right? Right?
Speaker 1: You want me to hit try and hit the post?
Speaker 1: I want you because that one start it fades in. Okay,
Speaker 1: here we go. You're gonna front and back Celle, outcast,
Speaker 1: hold on be strong. That'd be like one of the
Speaker 1: same thing, right, yeah, you gotta by the time minute
Speaker 1: twelve seconds. You ready, why tell me front tell me
Speaker 1: it's plain. It is good evening, ladies and gentlemen. You're
Speaker 1: tuned in the Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 8: As we wrap up this fine, fine episode with our
Speaker 8: guest Stephen Hill tonight, we want to leave you with
Speaker 8: some uh some uplifting words from the cast about outcasts.
Speaker 1: This is hold On Be Strong on Pandora. That was
Speaker 1: out hold On Be Strong, and I'm taking over. Join
Speaker 1: us next week for another episode of Quest Supreme. Yes,
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed us. Thank you very much, Stephen Hill.
Speaker 6: This has been a black Thank you very much us.
Speaker 1: Hold body up, hold On be Strong, hold On Be Strong.
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.