Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Speaker 1: As you know, we had an epic conversation with the
Speaker 1: one and only former Tony Tony Tony and rape El Sadik.
Speaker 1: This episode we continue that conversation with part two. He
Speaker 1: talks about more of a solo career, making records, he
Speaker 1: talks about score movies, He talks about all the other
Speaker 1: artists that he's worked with. Really interesting tippets for your
Speaker 1: music heads out there. This is part duo, partdiuh of
Speaker 1: Raphael s One Quest Love Supreme. Hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2: You know how many other random stories do you have
Speaker 2: like that?
Speaker 3: Because you just drive me one too, But that's that's
Speaker 3: my favorite one.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Wait a minute, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: even want to skip. I gotta ask you something yes
Speaker 1: or no. And this is without blowing up your spot.
Speaker 4: I already know where you're going with no.
Speaker 2: No, no, I don't think you know.
Speaker 1: Is the four tops strung out for your love?
Speaker 2: Does that mean anything to you?
Speaker 3: You got me strong out?
Speaker 1: No, it's it's it's it's on the Catfish record nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven.
Speaker 3: I mean every record means something to me, but not
Speaker 3: like that. I don't know. Okay, I'm curious to what
Speaker 3: do you think?
Speaker 1: Let me let me let me then ask who who
Speaker 1: was who was the creative head behind I couldn't keep
Speaker 1: it to myself me all right, I'm just asking.
Speaker 3: No, there there's uh similarities.
Speaker 2: There's yeah, there's.
Speaker 1: There's there's a song on that Catfish record from nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven that is literally the twin of that and
Speaker 1: I was like, oh damn, they made they made the
Speaker 1: their version of that song.
Speaker 2: But I mean I.
Speaker 3: Felt like that's I felt like those two core progressions
Speaker 3: back and forth was a lot of different.
Speaker 2: Records exactly like anyone.
Speaker 1: Because that's what I'm saying is like a Sam Smith's situation,
Speaker 1: like anyone could have picked.
Speaker 3: That song call not that close but right now?
Speaker 1: Which now House of Music for for House of Music?
Speaker 1: Was that just your derivative challenge album where it's just like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do my of this song and that song.
Speaker 3: Man, my whole career is that I know.
Speaker 1: But this this album, did anyone from Navana's camp ever
Speaker 1: get at you about Let's get down?
Speaker 3: Because because because to me, I think they got that.
Speaker 3: I thought that was from a derivive, a derivative of
Speaker 3: alshow get down, get not getting not cool in the game.
Speaker 3: But uh, I'm your boogey man. That's what. Yeah, like
Speaker 3: they got a song. It sounds like that too. With that,
Speaker 3: come on, let's get down. They got a joint like
Speaker 3: that too. But the way the way I was singing
Speaker 3: that song, I started singing it like it was an
Speaker 3: effect on my voice, and then I put an effect
Speaker 3: on my I was sunging come on, I start doing that.
Speaker 3: But but Casey in the Sunshine Band got a joint.
Speaker 3: It's just like that.
Speaker 5: Really a second, I thought you were about to say no.
Speaker 5: Their version goes.
Speaker 4: Ding ding ding ding ding ding.
Speaker 3: Right, McDonald's and McDonald's, So for.
Speaker 2: Me, for me, I gotta bring up all right.
Speaker 1: Yes, well, we'll enter some sort of talk of what
Speaker 1: they do, but can you please talk about how you
Speaker 1: discovered the great Spanky Chalmers Alfred Yeah, sure, man, the guitarist. God, oh,
Speaker 1: my mom, it's funny.
Speaker 3: My mom is eighty nine now, and she she had
Speaker 3: she has uh, she's lost some of her short term memory.
Speaker 3: But one thing she never forgets to say to me
Speaker 3: every other day is I showed miss Spankey.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: All the time. Spanky lived with me for a long time,
Speaker 3: and so what happened was Spanky growing up in Oakland
Speaker 3: and listening to gospel quartet. Spanky was sort of the
Speaker 3: king of that, and I didn't know him for years.
Speaker 3: I just knew his music. I knew how he played.
Speaker 3: And at one point, Uh, the last album was House
Speaker 3: and Music, I think the Tony's last album was. And
Speaker 3: we had these musicians that everybody thought I needed to
Speaker 3: make music. This is when the Tony sort of split up.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: It was like outcast, get my sided the album and
Speaker 3: they did their sided album.
Speaker 1: And was there a mutual coach in the middle that
Speaker 1: sort of make that happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, For years, I couldn't really understand what I did,
Speaker 3: you know, because there's always two sides to a story,
Speaker 3: and sometime you like to point. If you're on one side,
Speaker 3: you could point the finger. But I never knew what happened.
Speaker 3: So we were getting together and we're going to record together.
Speaker 3: We had this house Jerry Brown was gonna record. The
Speaker 3: whole thing was we were going to bring the press
Speaker 3: all to one house. They're gonna interview us before we
Speaker 3: put this album. That was gonna be a part of
Speaker 3: the press Humble marketing plan. Then I get a call
Speaker 3: and they were like, you record your side by yourself
Speaker 3: and we will record our side ourselves. So they took
Speaker 3: the guitar player that we had at the time. It
Speaker 3: took him. So they was like, well, if he doesn't
Speaker 3: have the guitar player, he can't be do what he do.
Speaker 3: I don't know whatever. So I get yeah exactly. So
Speaker 3: I get home and my mother has a friend named Frankie,
Speaker 3: and if somebody at my house said Frankie called you,
Speaker 3: I called him back, my mother's friend. This guy was
Speaker 3: kind of like my godfather. But he said this, I said,
Speaker 3: Frankie said, no, this is Spanky. He says, Spanky. Who's
Speaker 3: Spanky Charmers? I said the guitar player, Spanky. I was like,
Speaker 3: put something on it. I said, where's your guitar play?
Speaker 3: He played the guitar on the phone, And next day
Speaker 3: I had him at my house in Sacramento and we
Speaker 3: was in sear. I let him leave after a let
Speaker 3: it guy. So I got him and we recorded that
Speaker 3: album we recorded with you. We recorded with a lot
Speaker 3: of different people, and he sort of wanted to teach
Speaker 3: me to play, but I just thought it was impossible
Speaker 3: to learn how to play that good. So some things
Speaker 3: I did learn, I kicked it. I kicked myself every
Speaker 3: day for not you know, sitting down with him more
Speaker 3: as I should have. But I really want introduce him
Speaker 3: to people like yourself and being different people. And he
Speaker 3: got a chance to meet people like Pino because he
Speaker 3: was so well respected in the gospel. Feel I felt
Speaker 3: like his talent would lend himself to so many people.
Speaker 3: And I was just, you know, happy to have him
Speaker 3: in my life as much as I did. But that's
Speaker 3: how I actually met Spanky.
Speaker 4: How old was he? He was an older guy. About
Speaker 4: how old was he?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was the older guy. But this guy could teach.
Speaker 3: I mean, for many years, people would knock on my door,
Speaker 3: my house, my studio, I'm here for Spanky, Spanky's I
Speaker 3: got a guitar lesson with Spanky or even the album
Speaker 3: that he played the Voodoo album on. He played his
Speaker 3: guitar that my I bought from my uncle for like
Speaker 3: three hundred and fifty dollars. Some guys sold him Gibson.
Speaker 3: I let Spanky use the guitar. He played it all
Speaker 3: over the album and it was my guitar, but when
Speaker 3: it was time to give it back, Spanky didn't want
Speaker 3: to give it back, so and Spanky kind of fell out.
Speaker 3: I was like, Spanky, I just let you use it.
Speaker 3: But it's my guitar. It is day. People still come
Speaker 3: by my studio and they just want to look at
Speaker 3: that guitar.
Speaker 2: You still have that guitar?
Speaker 3: Still got it? Wow, we play.
Speaker 2: You've of course met Sharky, correct.
Speaker 3: I met Sharky a million times. Amazing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The story that tells me about Sharky was like he
Speaker 1: met Sharky when Sharky was like maybe thirteen, twelve or thirteen,
Speaker 1: and it's so weird. It's so weird meeting like and
Speaker 1: this is the same for like DJ Harrison, Like there's there's.
Speaker 2: A slew of.
Speaker 1: Gen Z or millennial gen Z you know, born in
Speaker 1: eighty eight, eighty nine to ninety that or it's like
Speaker 1: seven or eight when the stuff is coming out and
Speaker 1: how it affects them, Like there's at least five cats
Speaker 1: I know now, four of them who've never met Spanky ever.
Speaker 1: And it's it's as if it's like I know, you
Speaker 1: know when people say, like, well the spirit of blah
Speaker 1: blah blah and them, Like, I fully believe that because
Speaker 1: I've never seen such a mythical figure like Spanky and
Speaker 1: his story and the legend.
Speaker 2: Of Spanky like now spread out through the industs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just something to believe and like in right now,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know if you've been back to Oakland
Speaker 1: interf you're still like heavy into it, Like do you
Speaker 1: still meet musicians that are like just off kilter like that,
Speaker 1: that are like killing that no one will ever know about.
Speaker 2: But like just local cats.
Speaker 3: There's there's a couple I haven't met anybody. I haven't
Speaker 3: met anybody like that, but I know there's there's a
Speaker 3: few people brewing. You know in every department, you know,
Speaker 3: a beat makers, samplers, keyboard players. If you if you
Speaker 3: keep your eyes open, this is it's gonna be another one.
Speaker 3: But that was that one, right there was a special
Speaker 3: one because he was so good. But he was always
Speaker 3: keen on making records. You know, if he worked with somebody,
Speaker 3: he wanted to give you a part that that can
Speaker 3: make a record. Like every time I play you know
Speaker 3: what they do when they go Laren playing, Darren Planning,
Speaker 3: Blarn Laryn Clarinho, Blannard bla bl blonard. Now I still
Speaker 3: on the guitar and I try to learn those parts
Speaker 3: now and I pretty much got it. But I'm not
Speaker 3: as nice as Spank. You know. Spank is like I
Speaker 3: got hard bass fingers. I play really hard, but just
Speaker 3: knowing like to put him in one of the greatest
Speaker 3: hip hop bands ever. You know, to you guys that
Speaker 3: Grace Philly put that on your record.
Speaker 4: When I was.
Speaker 3: Working with you guys in the record, I feel like
Speaker 3: I have to do nothing. You got the best, you
Speaker 3: gotta you gotta guy to rap in your group that
Speaker 3: could rap for sixty ninety months, But I'll stop. You
Speaker 3: got you Who's just gonna play a beat that everybody like?
Speaker 3: I got Spanky playing guitar. I have to do nothing
Speaker 3: but whisper something that was it? So that's him. Wow.
Speaker 3: I mean I had. All I had to do was
Speaker 3: matching me a drums boom boom boom boom. So people
Speaker 3: say you produced that record, I was like, bruh, that's
Speaker 3: like being Phil Jackson with Jordan on the team. I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's producing. That's called a that's called
Speaker 3: a perfect storm in a room with the best people.
Speaker 5: Sometimes less is more and that trust me that helped,
Speaker 5: that everything about that should helped. I also like to
Speaker 5: know you were the person that also taught me the
Speaker 5: one thing that my girlfriend hates, which is abusing my awards.
Speaker 5: When I got to your house, your American Music Award
Speaker 5: was your doorstop. That's when I was like, well, you know, stop,
Speaker 5: so I've used every grammar I ever had, like bathroom,
Speaker 5: all that stuff, And you know, is that is that
Speaker 5: American Music a Wards still like somewhere in the draft somewhere.
Speaker 3: Probably you know is probably I just said. I just
Speaker 3: remember I did this interview and I forgot that that
Speaker 3: thing was in the corner man and somewhere, and this
Speaker 3: lady wrote, yeah, his American Music Awards was like in
Speaker 3: the corner with like dust all over him, like I
Speaker 3: just never.
Speaker 1: When we went on that night, I was like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: his award was a doorstopper. And I was like, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I want to be that famous one day where I
Speaker 1: just don't give a fuck. We're my grad that's woman
Speaker 1: do when I get my ship and.
Speaker 2: You know what, a guy first went right on the toilet.
Speaker 2: I was like, I'm gonna top of you.
Speaker 3: Fel one of the guys from around your Way to
Speaker 3: the famous Tom Bell. I met Tom Bell through his
Speaker 3: daughter one time. I was walking down the street and
Speaker 3: I'm like, hey, in San Francisco. I said, you look familiar,
Speaker 3: he said, I'm not. Before she said, you know, it
Speaker 3: sounded like a one liner. She was cute, and she goes, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm Tom Bell's daughter, and I go, Damn. She said,
Speaker 3: that's that's what you said last time you met me.
Speaker 3: So I said, come to the show. She comes to
Speaker 3: the show. We're walking down the street. She put Tom
Speaker 3: Bell on the phone. Tom Bell tells me don't worry
Speaker 3: about awards, Grammys, any and that stuff. He said, because
Speaker 3: when I the I R s come to your house,
Speaker 3: they leave those on the mantelpiece.
Speaker 6: Damn, that ain't even real goal.
Speaker 3: And so then one of my then one of my
Speaker 3: friends who got a drug case and one of my
Speaker 3: good friends, and he wanted me to bail them out.
Speaker 3: And so the Bell people came to my house and
Speaker 3: they wanted me to sign my They wanted me to
Speaker 3: uh sign my house's collateral. So guy I grew up
Speaker 3: with and I was like, I'm not putting up my
Speaker 3: house collateral. In my head like I'm doing that, even
Speaker 3: though I knew he wasn't gonna run, but they was
Speaker 3: offering him nine year, nine year deal. They wanted to
Speaker 3: cut his locks off. He wasn't doing none of that.
Speaker 3: So the lady and her daughter they look up at
Speaker 3: my wall and they see all these gold albums. She goes,
Speaker 3: what about four those? And I did like this, they
Speaker 3: don't mean nothing.
Speaker 4: They don't mean nothing.
Speaker 3: Do I act like a billion dollars? I was like,
Speaker 3: are you're acting?
Speaker 6: I love it?
Speaker 3: Okay, maybe I could part which is maybe four for
Speaker 3: a little while too. They took those gold albums down
Speaker 3: like they was worth a million dollars apiece?
Speaker 6: Are gold albums gold?
Speaker 3: No about? I mean?
Speaker 4: Thank you for Yeah, they're not anyone get question honest question?
Speaker 6: Sorry?
Speaker 3: Wait yeah, Ray, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1: I gotta say that your your your work with with
Speaker 1: G one and and DJ Quick definitely felt like was
Speaker 1: a marriage made in heaven. I always wanted to know
Speaker 1: why you didn't do more with them, or at least
Speaker 1: in that period.
Speaker 3: You're good, you really good questions.
Speaker 4: I'm a fan.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I want to ask you about Jaking the fat
Speaker 5: Man too. After this that's going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but I wanted to know, why do you
Speaker 2: want to DJ?
Speaker 1: Quick didn't work with you more, which led you and
Speaker 1: I love your work with Jake and fat Man.
Speaker 4: Two.
Speaker 3: What happened was they Jake and the fat Man is just
Speaker 3: scratched them. They're just terrible people. Damn ok wow, I
Speaker 3: worth talking about. Scept Bobby, the guy who programmed drums,
Speaker 3: was like really good. He was more like he was
Speaker 3: more like trying to be like a dealer. He I've
Speaker 3: always needed drum programmers to to finish what I like
Speaker 3: to do, and he was that. But the rest of
Speaker 3: it was not even not worth anything talking about. But
Speaker 3: back to Quick in g one. The reason why we
Speaker 3: didn't do more songs because it was a budget thing
Speaker 3: and I wanted to do three songs with him, but
Speaker 3: the band kept saying it was too much money. So
Speaker 3: every time I would say it was okay, Quick would
Speaker 3: come back to me and said, lawyer said it wasn't okay.
Speaker 3: So after three times I asked my brother, who's saying
Speaker 3: no when I'm saying yes? So we were going to
Speaker 3: get about three songs for probably forty five thousand dollars,
Speaker 3: which was a deal. Quick Yeah, and Quick was being
Speaker 3: really cool with us, and they wouldn't. They were never
Speaker 3: okay to budget, So we end up only doing one
Speaker 3: which we would have follow up songs, and it was
Speaker 3: less get down and pretty much nobody showed up to
Speaker 3: the sessions but me. So that was the band, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: That was just me and Quick in G One Wow.
Speaker 3: And that's why we didn't get more songs. I wanted
Speaker 3: three songs, so if we have this record, we'd have
Speaker 3: a follow up and a follow up. You know, you're young,
Speaker 3: you know, you know knowledge is wasted on the young.
Speaker 3: You know, we didn't didn't know, you.
Speaker 1: Know, towards the end of House of Music, did you
Speaker 1: know that this is the end of my tenure with
Speaker 1: with Tony to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was short of the dummy and that in
Speaker 3: that one, because I think I went to like the
Speaker 3: President was like, yeah, this is my last album, and
Speaker 3: I had written more than half the songs. And so
Speaker 3: that's a mistake you don't do when you because they
Speaker 3: would have promoted the song even more the albums if
Speaker 3: I said I was doing the next album right. And
Speaker 3: so instead of putting the money into us, they put
Speaker 3: into the other little group. They had those little three kids. Uh,
Speaker 3: I forget the name of them. Now three little white kids,
Speaker 3: little pop group all for whime. They were Brothers now
Speaker 3: Nicholas before them.
Speaker 4: Was it was it all? It wasn't. It wasn't.
Speaker 2: Like there's that type of group like t r L
Speaker 2: group or.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw with a t r S the something
Speaker 3: brothers like a hands not a t Yeah, it was Handsen.
Speaker 3: So once I came back like, you know, yeah, I
Speaker 3: don't think I'm gonna do any more records and solo
Speaker 3: record and so what they did, they just made the
Speaker 3: money back that they put out on this and and
Speaker 3: they can't be moving that move on my part. But
Speaker 3: I was definitely, I definitely knew that I didn't know
Speaker 3: if I was going to do a solo record. I
Speaker 3: was really confused because I really loved being in bands
Speaker 3: and so you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which leads to the the original Lucy Pearl, which
Speaker 1: was supposed to be.
Speaker 2: Delroy Li Rose.
Speaker 7: Yeah, talk about your Uma slash lim Wip Rose slash
Speaker 7: like your side groups and the idea of the super
Speaker 7: group that sort of.
Speaker 2: I mean, yes, Lucy Pearl got off the ground, but
Speaker 2: you know, well the.
Speaker 3: First the first one was gonna be Lambert Rose, but
Speaker 3: with Michael Archer and and and Uh and Q Tip.
Speaker 2: Kamar and was in this as well.
Speaker 3: Lamar was part of Lynwald Rose.
Speaker 2: I did that. I did not know.
Speaker 4: Okay, it was.
Speaker 3: Us three, but you know those are my really good friends,
Speaker 3: and we're we're very left brain people, right, and we're artists.
Speaker 3: And at the time d was hottest, you know, he
Speaker 3: was hotter than Fish Crease at this point. So you
Speaker 3: know his defense, he couldn't really stop to do that,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, He couldn't stop to do that,
Speaker 3: and he wasn't gonna stop to do that, but he
Speaker 3: wanted to do it. Chip kind of wanted to do it,
Speaker 3: but with all of us being so left brained, it
Speaker 3: just it could have never worked, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know the story better than me.
Speaker 4: So speaking the.
Speaker 1: Way before, I forget what exactly did you do on midnight?
Speaker 1: Because I asked Bob Power all the time, like Raphael
Speaker 1: has credit on Midnight on Midnight on Midnight, Marauders, is
Speaker 1: that you on BASSI is that your fuzz line?
Speaker 3: No, that's me on the night is on my mind?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well the song is called.
Speaker 3: Playing Bass Midnight.
Speaker 5: Oh, that's in Playing Bass okay, okay, right, yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: thinking it's the guitar organ.
Speaker 3: My claim to fame is I'm the only R and
Speaker 3: B cat on one of the biggest hip hop albums
Speaker 3: in the world, like Shut It Down, Drop the Mic.
Speaker 3: I don't want to hear it hip hop fans, I
Speaker 3: don't want to hear it Living Dreams.
Speaker 1: You came out to play with them, uh the first
Speaker 1: Like me and Tarik went to a tried New Year
Speaker 1: shill in New York and you came out and played
Speaker 1: bass with him.
Speaker 2: We was like, like losing our minds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I love hip hop is just so I mean,
Speaker 3: so it's so bass heavy for me and I just
Speaker 3: like when I first heard when I first heard rappers
Speaker 3: the light when I was a kid came on the
Speaker 3: radio or I was like and it wasn't good times.
Speaker 3: I was like what is this. I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: it's on, and from there it was all about it
Speaker 3: was all about New York hip hop for me. I
Speaker 3: just always, I mean, I just always like the Brownstones.
Speaker 3: I was in love with Brownstones. I didn't even know
Speaker 3: what they were called, you know. I actually like when
Speaker 3: I saw roun DMC come to Oakland and they got
Speaker 3: off the tour bus and Hurricane and all these jackets
Speaker 3: came out with Death Jam. It just looks so New York,
Speaker 3: looks so powerful and strong for hip hop. I just
Speaker 3: always uh knew it it was. It was a base thing,
Speaker 3: and I just always wanted to, you know, beat some bass.
Speaker 3: I still want to do a project where I'm playing
Speaker 3: bass and it's just basing drums. And I just got
Speaker 3: like mcs just like rhyming on an album, just as
Speaker 3: why yet, what's that organization, you know, organizing it?
Speaker 1: I feel you How, how when you finally got to
Speaker 1: do Instant Vintage, how is that for you? Like to
Speaker 1: you know, like, now that you're officially on your own
Speaker 1: as a solo artist, was it.
Speaker 2: An easy pivot to do?
Speaker 1: Or you know, because now you don't have I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that there's some level of collaboration between you
Speaker 1: and and yeah, the rest of your band that you know,
Speaker 1: makes the process easy. But if you're there alone just
Speaker 1: making the decisions that that has to be a harder
Speaker 1: thing where you're responsible for everything.
Speaker 3: Musically, it wasn't hard at all. What was hard was
Speaker 3: the interviews the press because I was used to being
Speaker 3: able to if I was tired to break up the
Speaker 3: interviews into like two or three. I don't know how
Speaker 3: people do the whole solo thing, whereas it's like people
Speaker 3: talk to you all day. That that drove me crazylam music.
Speaker 3: I could you could leave me in a room. I mean,
Speaker 3: I got everything in my room right now, I got
Speaker 3: able to hear. I could pull up right now and
Speaker 3: write a song right now. I got my mic in here.
Speaker 3: I could do that all day. But when you start
Speaker 3: getting me like you gotta talk to twenty people, and
Speaker 3: I can't go like Dwayne take just take forties, Tim
Speaker 3: take three of these. I was confused about that. I
Speaker 3: think I gave a call to UH to Mike Mike Archer,
Speaker 3: and I said, hey, bro, I said, man, I gotta
Speaker 3: give you a couple of props because this is like
Speaker 3: a little different, you know, like and you know he
Speaker 3: don't really do interviews, he don't do them, you know,
Speaker 3: but you know you can't, you know, so I'm I
Speaker 3: can't really be that person. It looks like I'm copying
Speaker 3: printing somebody. I don't talk to people. I mean, I
Speaker 3: really couldn't pull that. No, But yeah, I think that
Speaker 3: was the hardest part. And I think performing live. Was
Speaker 3: I thought I had it all together and I did
Speaker 3: this show in Chicago. I think I was singing this
Speaker 3: so called damn. I don't even know the name of
Speaker 3: the song. Now go upstairs and change.
Speaker 4: I was singing body the string arrangements on that song too, man,
Speaker 4: I love thank you.
Speaker 3: That was that Benjamin Wright, and I think I walked
Speaker 3: out and I just uh, I sounded like the sheep
Speaker 3: every for the whole song. I was like this, man,
Speaker 3: long time, I'm talking about the whole entire song. I'm like,
Speaker 3: shake out of it. Shake out. I couldn't do it
Speaker 3: until like maybe second in the middle of the second song.
Speaker 3: I popped out of it. I said, I didn't even
Speaker 3: know I could be that scared. I was really nervous
Speaker 3: because when I had my brother on this side, and
Speaker 3: Tim and all the guys behind me, it's like you
Speaker 3: got a wall of people. You know, it'd be like
Speaker 3: you playing with the Roots, and I'm like, just leave
Speaker 3: everybody off the stage and you just go play drums
Speaker 3: and you go rap a song. It's it's it's gonna
Speaker 3: be a little different, even though you know you're about
Speaker 3: to get off. That was a little weird, a career.
Speaker 5: I want to ask you about that record too, man,
Speaker 5: the record with Calvin Richards and how did y'all hook up?
Speaker 4: He's another excuse me, yeah, excuse.
Speaker 3: Me, yeah, excuse me? Well that song. I wrote that
Speaker 3: song for Angie Stone, okay, And so once we were
Speaker 3: singing and it was happening, I was like, hey, Angie,
Speaker 3: I think I need this for my album. And he
Speaker 3: just happened to be hanging out with her that day
Speaker 3: and I told both of them. I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think I'm taking this one from my album, and
Speaker 3: that's how I got on the album, and they were
Speaker 3: cool about it.
Speaker 1: Speaking of excuse me, speaking of excuse me, dog, why
Speaker 1: did you why did you take the live off the
Speaker 1: House of Blues album out of rotation like in streaming.
Speaker 1: I can't mind it nowhere only because that version of
Speaker 1: excuse me on that record.
Speaker 2: To me, will you guys do the false ending it's.
Speaker 5: Gonna be y'all and then you go back into the song.
Speaker 2: That's my favorite ship.
Speaker 1: I abused, like after I heard that, almost every Root
Speaker 1: song does a false ending. Yeah, it goes back to
Speaker 1: the that is my favorite thing. I'm just begging you
Speaker 1: please put that record.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, I am. That was in the VARs. That
Speaker 3: was that was the first when I That was the
Speaker 3: first records that I like that I did independently. So
Speaker 3: those two records Ray Ray and that record I'm re
Speaker 3: releasing and I'm trying to get Lucy pro album back
Speaker 3: right now to h to release them all of my
Speaker 3: new my new venture wait.
Speaker 2: For streaming.
Speaker 3: No, it's still available, but it's not not the way
Speaker 3: it should be available.
Speaker 4: Trying to bring that thing back under new management.
Speaker 5: About Lucy perl Man, So I've seen, yeah, I've seen,
Speaker 5: Like I've heard stories from a lot of people that
Speaker 5: were involved Don stuff from your perspective, what was that experience, like.
Speaker 4: What what was the kind of rise fall whatever? How
Speaker 4: was that part? Yeah, why did you only do one
Speaker 4: one record?
Speaker 3: Well, Don Robinson only she she wanted to do a
Speaker 3: solo album before she actually worked with us, and I
Speaker 3: think she wanted to do a solo record when she
Speaker 3: worked with in Vogue. So I think Sylvia wrong gave
Speaker 3: her a deal, Doctor Dre gave her a deal and
Speaker 3: none of those worked out. And then she kind of
Speaker 3: grew up in Oakland. I think she's from Connecticut, though
Speaker 3: from some part of in some part of Connecticut, but
Speaker 3: she grew up in Oakland a lot, so I just
Speaker 3: thought first we were gonna get We were auditioning girls.
Speaker 3: In the first girl we talked to Aamar Braxton, h okay.
Speaker 3: So then we were like maybe not. And then we
Speaker 3: said so somebody said I should call Don Robinson. It
Speaker 3: kind of heard some stories, but I was like, you know,
Speaker 3: let's see if she wanted to do it. And she did.
Speaker 3: She agreed to do it. We worked with it. I
Speaker 3: got my friend may to Uh. She's a female writer
Speaker 3: who don knows, she's from Oakland. She sing with a
Speaker 3: lot of country singers. She's a great writer, and so
Speaker 3: she came on. She came on board and we just
Speaker 3: got together. As soon as the record came out we
Speaker 3: got to Amsterdam, Don was like, this is my last record,
Speaker 3: my last tour. And we were only like three months
Speaker 3: into the record, and so she pretty much quit. She
Speaker 3: pretty much quit pretty fast. And I mean, if you
Speaker 3: follow her thread on YouTube, you'll hear her dogging just
Speaker 3: killing me, saying I help her lose her house.
Speaker 6: And yeah, she's not happy.
Speaker 3: I mean, but the grip was all together for three mins,
Speaker 3: and your house would have been an escrow. I mean,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, we didn't stay longer. We didn't.
Speaker 3: We didn't stay together long enough for somebody to buy
Speaker 3: a house or lose a house.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then came Joy, right.
Speaker 3: And then Joy helped me out and came to finish
Speaker 3: the tour for us. We were just finishing the tour off.
Speaker 3: Really that was it. But we had a We had
Speaker 3: a blast making an album. But when we were doing
Speaker 3: the vocals, I pretty much would go to Lemandria and
Speaker 3: get drunk and then uh, the other guys will produced
Speaker 3: vocals with with her, Doctor Dre said. Doctor d said,
Speaker 3: so I want to know this, how did you get
Speaker 3: an album done? Basically I went to Leandrea and got
Speaker 3: drunk when she did vocals.
Speaker 4: Man, appreciate that's that's hilarious.
Speaker 5: So with Joy, because I love like of your of
Speaker 5: your solo records.
Speaker 4: I think maybe Ray Ray might be my favorite. You
Speaker 4: know what I'm saying that.
Speaker 3: Record?
Speaker 4: Man, Listen, we was on we was on tour. That's uh.
Speaker 4: We was torn.
Speaker 5: I forgot little brother was torn some day where I
Speaker 5: can't remember, but we used to run that ship on
Speaker 5: the tour bus.
Speaker 4: And Joy's intro like I did a record with Joy
Speaker 4: a couple of years ago, she came to the crib.
Speaker 5: We recorded man, listen what you Love, because for me,
Speaker 5: save Us is the greatest song of all time. I'm
Speaker 5: jacking the ship out that song on the next Roots record, especially.
Speaker 2: Especially now.
Speaker 3: Well yeah, yeah, that's funny. Yeah that that was a
Speaker 3: that was gonna be my record to the way I
Speaker 3: kind of curated those records were like, when I did Instadvintage,
Speaker 3: I was like, this is my introduction Ray Ray, I
Speaker 3: was like, I'm just gonna have the most fun I
Speaker 3: could ever have. And then when I did the Way
Speaker 3: I See It, I did When I did the Way
Speaker 3: I See It, I was like, this is gonna tell
Speaker 3: everybody how much I was like love the motown in
Speaker 3: the sixties. So I just really played dress up on
Speaker 3: that record, and I dressed like that for a whole year,
Speaker 3: and and I had because that record actually came out
Speaker 3: before Amy Amy Winehows came out, and we used to
Speaker 3: talk a lot about it, and she came out with
Speaker 3: her record and really blew up, which gave me an
Speaker 3: open gate to like really taking that record further. But yeah,
Speaker 3: that was that was in my records, and yeah, your
Speaker 3: little Brother records though, Bro, were just I was like, what,
Speaker 3: thank you so much? What record? What records? What record
Speaker 3: was it was? It? Was it Little Brother or was
Speaker 3: it another group out of Detroit Extreme that did the
Speaker 3: the slum that did the spoof of cheating Bob of
Speaker 3: the jazz singer that was that was that was spoof too, though, right.
Speaker 5: We did we did like the cheating, the Ron Eisley
Speaker 5: or Kelly kind of spoof.
Speaker 4: We did that cheating.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's all me, okay because rolling Thank you, Bro,
Speaker 5: I didn't realize. I didn't realize that you were doing
Speaker 5: both voices. I thought the straight was was was always
Speaker 5: I thought you and I thought the straight boys guys.
Speaker 5: Was I forget your partner this name right now?
Speaker 2: Damn uh.
Speaker 3: Yes?
Speaker 4: Nah? No, hell no.
Speaker 1: Genius because I thought, who's purposely singing like sharp?
Speaker 5: Like there was a whole science behind that thing. No, nah,
Speaker 5: that was me that really in the fact.
Speaker 3: Okay, my little brother came on. I was like little Brother.
Speaker 3: I was like, I was selling everybody.
Speaker 4: I was like, thank you man, thank you man, And
Speaker 4: you have to.
Speaker 3: Sing, Bro, you could sing sing?
Speaker 4: I tried. Yeah, when we did both speaking.
Speaker 6: The last time we were together.
Speaker 3: That's why we were together.
Speaker 6: Was singing.
Speaker 3: Almost feels that he was a little brother because he
Speaker 3: was singing so good. I got, I got all, I
Speaker 3: got all the way home and was like that was hell.
Speaker 3: It was from a little brother that was singing the
Speaker 3: hell out of that song.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Bro, I hit you. Afterwards, I hit you.
Speaker 5: I was like, Yo, appreciated, but yeah, no, I was.
Speaker 5: I love that time man.
Speaker 3: Picnic was like I was like in shock because you know,
Speaker 3: I mean because questioning like the way they the way
Speaker 3: they just kind of grew and everything. You just sit
Speaker 3: back and look at how somebody grow. I'm looking at
Speaker 3: these people and I'm looking all like the African artists
Speaker 3: on the on the on the actually on the bill
Speaker 3: that all the people, the kids in Philly knew. So
Speaker 3: I would go to that stage, I would look at
Speaker 3: the artists and look at the audience, and when I
Speaker 3: was just sitting there like blown away.
Speaker 6: Like wow, yo, you know.
Speaker 8: The highlight of your show for the whole rooth Picnic
Speaker 8: was that if you was grown, you was having a
Speaker 8: real good time.
Speaker 6: Ross and rothfael Man listen.
Speaker 3: But speaking of that, speaking of that, who is that
Speaker 3: dude that was playing the drum machine? Was with his
Speaker 3: fingers elliotts Eliot, that's crazy, and then a mirroring them flip.
Speaker 3: I like flipping songs. But ever since that day, I've
Speaker 3: been trying to flip everything I do that show.
Speaker 1: No, you know, we just wanted to do something different.
Speaker 1: It's weird you say that, because like I was trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, like, okay, now that we've turned into Earth, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the Roots started out as a threesome, as
Speaker 1: a foursome. You know, we just when we meet interesting characters,
Speaker 1: it's just like, all right, join the band, join the band.
Speaker 2: Oh you play two, but join the band. Joined the band.
Speaker 1: I was actually having like a Graham Central Station moment,
Speaker 1: and I was like, yo, be really dope if we
Speaker 1: had somebody that played the role of Chocolate. You mentioned
Speaker 1: Chocolate earlier, Larry Graham's former girlfriend that was playing the
Speaker 1: drum machine back in the day, and I was like,
Speaker 1: I want something. And we just happened to look on
Speaker 1: YouTube one day at the time, we you know, Jeremy
Speaker 1: Ellis and Strow were two dudes that just played you know, instruments.
Speaker 1: It's like we still don't know what to call and
Speaker 1: we just say Strow, Elliott on the beatbox. But it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a new there's a whole new generation
Speaker 1: of cats that like that are redefining what musicianship is.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: The race been doing that for years.
Speaker 2: We do that.
Speaker 8: Wait, American, you're gonna go off a ray ray because
Speaker 8: I just wanted to ask Rafael about an unsung singer
Speaker 8: that needs to be sung, Tdra Moses.
Speaker 6: Can you just talk about her for a second, Yes, please.
Speaker 3: Tidra is my is a weapon man, people. She just
Speaker 3: she started a little later in her career. You know,
Speaker 3: she had twin boys when she was younger, and she
Speaker 3: had to take care of boys. But like she so Tdra,
Speaker 3: I wrote that I had had this on my label
Speaker 3: and I signed Truth Hurts and I had Yeah, so
Speaker 3: I put truth that record that Tdra singing take Me
Speaker 3: was for Truth Hurts. Yeah me too, That's what I said.
Speaker 3: After She's so she she so, teacher was singing a
Speaker 3: song in the studio and I'm looking at teaser. You know,
Speaker 3: teacher got these beautiful legs too, right, So the body
Speaker 3: and her body is like yeah, So I'm sitting there
Speaker 3: She's singing take Me, and I'm sitting there like yeah
Speaker 3: in a way too. Her singing this song but is
Speaker 3: like her pen is crazy. Her vocal rangers is crazy.
Speaker 3: If anybody, I say, if anybody wants somebody. She even
Speaker 3: wrote that song I Want You back on the Yeah yeah.
Speaker 3: So I took the melodies from her for those records,
Speaker 3: and she just always somebody that I really like to
Speaker 3: work with. If I was ever in the doing a
Speaker 3: duets album, which I don't think I really am, you know,
Speaker 3: but she would be the person.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's man, man. She was my crush back in
Speaker 5: the day man and people. Man, could you could you
Speaker 5: have ever had guessed like how big of a song
Speaker 5: that Scott can you feel Me?
Speaker 4: Was?
Speaker 3: So there was the night that a Leah passed passed
Speaker 3: away when I wrote it. I wrote this. I wrote
Speaker 3: this song with Aliyah in mind. Everybody was calling me
Speaker 3: and I thought my friend was in the plane too
Speaker 3: for Tima Robinson. So I was in this kind of
Speaker 3: different mood and and I and had Ray Murray with
Speaker 3: me from Organized Noise, Organized Noise Yeah, so Ray programmed
Speaker 3: programmed the drums on that and uh Ray also titled
Speaker 3: my album Instant Vintage. I just remember him making the
Speaker 3: beat and I just started playing those chords on the
Speaker 3: piano HM and after that we started writing it. It
Speaker 3: was just a song on the record. And this guy
Speaker 3: UH from London and one of the biggest DJs ever,
Speaker 3: JOHNS Peterson, he knew somebody. They took the record, they
Speaker 3: remixed it, and I saw the record that amba and
Speaker 3: it said Sky Can you Feel Me? Remixed? But it
Speaker 3: was for sale and I'm like, what is this? And
Speaker 3: it was extended and it was long, and I bought it.
Speaker 3: I listened to it. It was a look yeah, you
Speaker 3: know that happened. And I finally met the guys like
Speaker 3: fifteen fifteen years later. I met him like on my
Speaker 3: last tour and they were all talking about it. And
Speaker 3: I would go places and I would play that song
Speaker 3: and people would just like go. It was almost like
Speaker 3: the guy of that that movie. He he was like
Speaker 3: really big in Africa and he didn't he didn't know
Speaker 3: it hin. That's how Sky was for me. I would
Speaker 3: go somewhere and I'll be due and people start like
Speaker 3: I was playing like what I had so I had
Speaker 3: not I had not a clue and I usually I
Speaker 3: usually can my show with that song.
Speaker 4: Yes, nah, I love that song.
Speaker 6: The version that here is the version that we know recognized.
Speaker 6: Which version is it?
Speaker 3: Well, the version on the album is the one that
Speaker 3: you hear, but there's a version this so long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they just extended the strings.
Speaker 3: And yeah, they just extended the strings.
Speaker 5: I want to with jam who who did that? The
Speaker 5: yam who edited I wanted edited when I was too Yeah,
Speaker 5: I think he did editor. Make me hot, said brother.
Speaker 2: Oh he did that nice?
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, Ray Giles did the same thing for us,
Speaker 1: like back when our first record was just like some
Speaker 1: local thing. He took our record and pressed it up
Speaker 1: and just started playing it like he he he was
Speaker 1: the John Peel.
Speaker 6: But they sell it because that's a whole nother thing,
Speaker 6: Like what's with that? You can't just be.
Speaker 1: Don't just make copies of it. I don't think he
Speaker 1: personally sold it like he just made. He was just
Speaker 1: making something for it, be like me making an edit
Speaker 1: so I can DJ that night, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I get that, you know, because he needed four hours
Speaker 1: of content for his radio show. Yeah, man, you know
Speaker 1: that feel was damn near almost like a hidden cutter
Speaker 1: like bird on side to And I always wanted to know,
Speaker 1: like why wasn't that ship a single like hmm this guy.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean.
Speaker 3: People, I just feel like but after after after it
Speaker 3: never ranged an anniversary. We were just floating. It's like whatever,
Speaker 3: whatever fell, unless you were a music connoisseur. We were,
Speaker 3: we were. We were just floating. So that I'm I'm
Speaker 3: still floating. I mean, that's what I've been, just floating, floating, floating.
Speaker 3: If I didn't love music, man, i'd have been done
Speaker 3: after it never rained.
Speaker 6: Those romantic words come from those ways of saying things
Speaker 6: like where does that come from?
Speaker 8: Is that like relationships? Or is that just this is
Speaker 8: what I feel like? Where does that come from?
Speaker 3: It's just what I feel. It's just it's just I
Speaker 3: just I just say the things that the guys want
Speaker 3: to say that they can't say. But that's why I
Speaker 3: see people just. I remember I went to a show
Speaker 3: like the West Coast Hip Hop Show, Old school hip
Speaker 3: Hop show, and it was at Universal before they tore
Speaker 3: tore down the Gibson Theater. And in the back it
Speaker 3: looked like it looked like the yard. It looked just
Speaker 3: like Chris Blood just and when I walked through the yard,
Speaker 3: every every gangster was like, no Ah, this song and
Speaker 3: this song means this to me at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, at the end of the night, when you're
Speaker 3: trying to be hard at bricks, at the end of
Speaker 3: the night, you probably trying to lay down with something.
Speaker 3: You know. We grew up with the Isley Brothers and
Speaker 3: we grew up with Ron and you know, like in
Speaker 3: my biggest you know, del Phonic, Christ's and Philly group, right, yes,
Speaker 3: and those are some of my favorite groups. And Delphinance
Speaker 3: was the coldest group because they was talking about leaving
Speaker 3: girls and girls was in love with him. They was like,
Speaker 3: did not blow your mind this time? Did not? My
Speaker 3: older brother said, you didn't want to take your girl
Speaker 3: to a del Phonic show because even though they was
Speaker 3: like you I thought this, I thought this, this harder
Speaker 3: was true. Girl, now did not think it? Baby, but
Speaker 3: this time I'm really leaving you. But every girl wanted
Speaker 3: to see him. So I think for me it was
Speaker 3: always if you could like make them passionate songs. But honestly,
Speaker 3: I want to blow it for girls. But I was
Speaker 3: really in love with the music. The words that I
Speaker 3: put on top I just felt like the words that
Speaker 3: go on top of the song, I think this some ship.
Speaker 6: This is all the songwriters. You this is what are
Speaker 6: we learning? It's okay, all right, let's.
Speaker 1: Just rap it fire because let's rap it fire because
Speaker 1: you work with too many people between D'Angelo and Total
Speaker 1: and Solange and yes, uh, Erica, you want to gram
Speaker 1: me with Loving My Life Mary J.
Speaker 5: Blige, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to yo Peace of Mind,
Speaker 5: the little Backing and Faith record. Man, how'd that come about?
Speaker 3: I love that science, But I've been a little dragon
Speaker 3: before they really got hot in the States. So when
Speaker 3: they started over, when they started coming over, because they
Speaker 3: were on my record, one of my records, I just you.
Speaker 4: Know, yeah she was on Stone Rolling. She was on
Speaker 4: Stone Rolling, right.
Speaker 3: He was on that album. Yeah, she was on that record.
Speaker 3: Yeah she was on that record with the name of
Speaker 3: the record. But you know, I mean, I just I'm
Speaker 3: a utility guy. Quest It's like, I just feel like,
Speaker 3: if if there's somebody who wants me to, you know,
Speaker 3: to work with him, and they feel like I could
Speaker 3: bring something to the project, and then that's that's kind
Speaker 3: of what I what I do. I just worked with
Speaker 3: Kanye on Donda and and I'm on the record, but
Speaker 3: nobody knows I'm on the record. It's almost like one
Speaker 3: of those tribe things ever record, Just.
Speaker 8: Tell me the track so I can skip to it,
Speaker 8: because I just I couldn't do what it's going to it.
Speaker 3: I'm not I'm not really on it. I'm just singing
Speaker 3: like something at the very end of I think it's
Speaker 3: called pure soul and funny out. Everybody was like talking
Speaker 3: about like he took me off the record. I just
Speaker 3: I ever seen people get mad because it wasn't on
Speaker 3: somebody's record, right, but the check Still, it's a new generation,
Speaker 3: like our general. We come from a generation that following
Speaker 3: what's a big word, right, you know, now following the
Speaker 3: leading word. But but I just think I work with
Speaker 3: a lot of people. But I tell my nephew, who's
Speaker 3: an amazing producer, piano play, guitar player, like just be
Speaker 3: a utility guy, a person that don't mind showing up
Speaker 3: to work with somebody that's really good man, you know,
Speaker 3: you know for me, and that's what it is for me.
Speaker 3: I just like, if if you, if you, if I
Speaker 3: see you and you're like, yo, I'm in the studio tonight,
Speaker 3: bring your base. I'm coming. I'm showing up. I don't
Speaker 3: know what you're doing. And I don't care. I know
Speaker 3: it's you and when I leave, if it come out,
Speaker 3: who if you don't. I had an experience and I learned,
Speaker 3: like I learned from working with different people. So I'm
Speaker 3: working with Snoop a lot too, And and it's like
Speaker 3: but it's so many different people that come through. There's
Speaker 3: like great producers, new musicians, new people. You see people
Speaker 3: running different programs. Like when I came to your show,
Speaker 3: I spend more time looking at that kid. That dude
Speaker 3: was making the beats. I was like glued on this dude.
Speaker 3: When I left, I was like, I've just seen all
Speaker 3: these lights on these drum machines. I'm like, to me,
Speaker 3: that's what the music is about. Like who can I
Speaker 3: learn from? Like you? I played drums on records. I
Speaker 3: mimic you on drums. It never sound like you because
Speaker 3: I'm not you, But people like the beats like I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't program good drums, but I play if my
Speaker 3: drum set could sound, I got a drum set that
Speaker 3: finally sounds like SP twelve. It's it's your drum set.
Speaker 3: That one of the drum sets that you one of
Speaker 3: your drum sets that one of my friends who was
Speaker 3: an artist. He took your drum set and he painted
Speaker 3: it to look like my guitar. So it was in
Speaker 3: my room for like a year. My engineer took it
Speaker 3: out and he man, he set it up. That drum
Speaker 3: is the best drum set sound had.
Speaker 2: You want to know why? I told them.
Speaker 1: See, they wanted to like, you know, we got these
Speaker 1: uh we got to connect in Japan and we're gonna
Speaker 1: use the hollowwood of this particular forest and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And I was like, nah, I said, what what do
Speaker 1: y'all use for? Like them cheap high school sets? And
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, you don't want that, quess you want
Speaker 1: these uh hollow trees and da da da da da.
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, I want I want the throwaway,
Speaker 1: trashy shit that y'all hate. And I was trying to
Speaker 1: tell them that like the breakbeats we grew up on
Speaker 1: was done on the cheapest Yeah, yeah, like a serious
Speaker 1: drum set, that sort of thing, and they they were
Speaker 1: they try to talk me out of it, and I said,
Speaker 1: and I want you to sell it cheap too, because
Speaker 1: you know, they're like, our bottom line is if we
Speaker 1: sell a drum set for two hundred bucks.
Speaker 2: Then we can't sell this one for four thousand.
Speaker 1: I was like, no, it's going to be like a
Speaker 1: drug deal, Like you're gonna give them a taste and
Speaker 1: get them at hooked. Like you get a kid, a five,
Speaker 1: a six year old a drum set for two hundred
Speaker 1: bucks and it sounds dope.
Speaker 2: Then when they turned thirteen fourty, they're gonna be drummers.
Speaker 2: And I need, I need, I need.
Speaker 3: I needed a couple of those in my life. I got.
Speaker 2: I'll give it to you.
Speaker 1: I mean, because I'm trying to get rid of these boxes,
Speaker 1: and my girlfriend will gladly welcome that request to make
Speaker 1: less space in the house I have I can't give.
Speaker 3: We played, I played those drums, and I went back
Speaker 3: into the control booth.
Speaker 2: I was like, what sound like break beats?
Speaker 3: Yes, like break beats when I've been chasing my whole life.
Speaker 2: All right, working with Total?
Speaker 4: Yes, you gave them some jams the whole days. M Yes,
Speaker 4: they go one.
Speaker 1: I want to know how taxing was the process to
Speaker 1: produce total, But more than that, like how easy was
Speaker 1: it as far as puff breathing down your neck for.
Speaker 2: Magic? And you gave them really.
Speaker 3: Kind of two hits. This is funny. So I didn't
Speaker 3: really want to do it, ye think, because I didn't
Speaker 3: know what I could I didn't know what I could do,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like you got to know
Speaker 3: if you could pull it off. So Joscelyn Cooper at
Speaker 3: the time wasn't published for a midnight music and so
Speaker 3: she was telling me Puff was looking for me. So
Speaker 3: I was basically running from Puff. I was like, I
Speaker 3: was not answering the phone and nothing. So Joscelyn called
Speaker 3: me like, hey, Ray, I got Puff on the phone.
Speaker 2: Put you on the spot, right.
Speaker 3: And so so this is even a funny part. This
Speaker 3: what Puff says. You gotta love Puff of this Buff say, man,
Speaker 3: I really think you could do something with this group man,
Speaker 3: like right down your alley, Like they not really singers,
Speaker 3: they something like you.
Speaker 4: That's sick.
Speaker 3: I was like, I was like this, okay, I mean
Speaker 3: I never said I was Luther. Definitely, you know, I
Speaker 3: seen to make it work. But what do you mean
Speaker 3: is like I make things work? And so when he
Speaker 3: said that once he got me on the phone. When
Speaker 3: they came out, that girl Pam right, she has so
Speaker 3: much swagging attitude, and I think they thought they were
Speaker 3: so much under the gun. They sung with so much
Speaker 3: personality that it was just flying off the tape, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean? They sung the tape that.
Speaker 6: Pamc were her sunglasses one like.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Pam is like she's like you know she
Speaker 3: just like I wouldn't know Pam if she walked in
Speaker 3: my house right now? You actually being up being really
Speaker 3: a fun project and like I said, I have Bonnie
Speaker 3: Boy Yeah actually vocal coaching them too.
Speaker 4: Oh kissing you Jam? I love that song?
Speaker 6: What's the other one?
Speaker 4: Do they think about us?
Speaker 3: What do you think about us? Now?
Speaker 8: I was going to ask a music supervision scoring composing situation.
Speaker 8: It seems like whenever you jumped into the game that
Speaker 8: you were really selective. I thought that like Insecure was
Speaker 8: your first, but like you even did Underground, which is
Speaker 8: impressive because you.
Speaker 6: Talk about like why you went that way and do
Speaker 6: are you selective? And how you because I mean love
Speaker 6: Craft like.
Speaker 1: It's Laura your your official partner when you do TV scoring.
Speaker 3: Sometimes yeah, sometimes we do a lot of projects together.
Speaker 3: She do a lot on her own. I know she
Speaker 3: did some stuff with you guys too. She had a
Speaker 3: bigger picture of the in studio you work with.
Speaker 5: You actually worked with a good friend of mine before,
Speaker 5: my buddy man Deshaun Daniel Crawford, and that's my man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's that's yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, damn, you're playing in my band. Yeah, that's one
Speaker 3: of my piano teachers. All my friends were my that
Speaker 3: played keyboards on my piano teachers. I'm playing piano like
Speaker 3: as good as I can a lot.
Speaker 2: But indeed, Daniel Crawford that makes the remixes and all
Speaker 2: that stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, wait, you do.
Speaker 2: Know that Daniel also can do what Stroe does, right.
Speaker 3: You know what? I have seen it. I've seen it,
Speaker 3: but he he kind of sneaks and does it around me.
Speaker 3: He don't do it like I've seen him. I've seen
Speaker 3: him do it before, and I was like, no, this
Speaker 3: is what he does. He goes like, I'm like, who's
Speaker 3: the drummer. He's like, oh, that's me. I was just
Speaker 3: like this and then and then it goes away. But
Speaker 3: when I saw your guy do it, it was like
Speaker 3: a whole.
Speaker 2: Daniels in that first generation. I couldn't get him.
Speaker 1: So then there's like who else, ohtro and but Daniel
Speaker 1: was like one of the first guys I saw like
Speaker 1: play drums and keys at the same time.
Speaker 3: Laura's my partner on a lot of stuff. We did
Speaker 3: love Craft, we did Underground, we did a couple other
Speaker 3: little little flicks, and I was really just getting you know,
Speaker 3: just getting my feet you get my feet in and
Speaker 3: Laura went to She's a great she's like a professor
Speaker 3: at the school. So it was kind of good, great
Speaker 3: going up being with her because I was learning from
Speaker 3: her all at the same time. You know, like like
Speaker 3: I said, I like, I'm like a sponge. I like
Speaker 3: to be around people I could learn from.
Speaker 6: With Laura's role just for us law apartment.
Speaker 3: She's a stream composer, okay, because.
Speaker 1: She like she just you know, she pulled she pulled
Speaker 1: me into the academy. Okay, yeah, like she she got power,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and yeah, she's really good. And I'm I'm I mean,
Speaker 3: you can't really be selective in that business, you know,
Speaker 3: if you want to get in real but at a
Speaker 3: certain point you can. I just happen to be able
Speaker 3: to I just happen to get some great phone calls.
Speaker 6: So tell me about the Lovecraft phone call and the
Speaker 6: Underground phone call.
Speaker 3: Just because well, Misha Green is she did, Sha Green
Speaker 3: did Underground.
Speaker 6: And love Craft right.
Speaker 3: So it's like when you're on the team, if they
Speaker 3: think you could handle it, they call you. And they
Speaker 3: called us as a team and he jumped right on
Speaker 3: it and Cure I was working with salone and.
Speaker 6: She said, you did all the work. I think us
Speaker 6: that she was.
Speaker 3: So long just funny because when I was doing Insecure,
Speaker 3: I would be working on the song and Solans be like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's for my album and she was just taking and
Speaker 3: I'm be like, yo, but I think it's in the
Speaker 3: show now, be kind of gone. So I just been
Speaker 3: you know, just you know, I just felt like with music,
Speaker 3: you just have to be able to you know. I'm
Speaker 3: sure you guys all experienced that with radio, being in radio,
Speaker 3: whatever we're in, we all have to diversify and do
Speaker 3: different things. Honey. I just felt like in music, we
Speaker 3: all have the knucklehead status of he's a musician, he
Speaker 3: can't be on time, he can't do this, and I
Speaker 3: kind of want to get rid of that before somebody
Speaker 3: started believing that I was that person. And then film
Speaker 3: and television, if they need a pink elephant on Sunday,
Speaker 3: you have to deliver it.
Speaker 4: You deliver it.
Speaker 3: That's why I have my setup right here in this room.
Speaker 3: I just pull it out, bloom bloom and just start working.
Speaker 3: So and I start to really enjoy it now. Actually
Speaker 3: I didn't enjoy it at first. I was just trying
Speaker 3: to be a part of it because you know, I
Speaker 3: liked watching like Donnie Hathaway used to score. He scored
Speaker 3: this film Blues.
Speaker 1: Okay, so you've worked with a lot of your heroes
Speaker 1: like earth Wind and Fire. I know you worked with
Speaker 1: the Beg's. I think, uh ship it was earth Winding
Speaker 1: Fire the Beg's. I forget uh Whitney Well when, yeah,
Speaker 1: you worked with Whitney Houston. Is there a classic artist
Speaker 1: that you almost to work with that that it didn't
Speaker 1: go down?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Man, Eddie Kendricks.
Speaker 4: Wow are you serious?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, we we was. But I did this song
Speaker 3: called that song called Leavin.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, he was going to sing that song with me.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, don't hear that part going? No no no, no,
Speaker 3: no no no no so going. So when I sing
Speaker 3: that one part, it sounded like the ghost of Eddie
Speaker 3: Kendrick because it don't sound like me when I do
Speaker 3: that one part, I'm like when I heard it back,
Speaker 3: I'm like, that's not me. That feels like just like
Speaker 3: it's him on that one part. Yeah, Eddie Kendrick is uh,
Speaker 3: because my older brother Randy, he he's like Eddie Kendricks
Speaker 3: and that's that's his favorite, and that's one of my favorite.
Speaker 2: I know you did someone on one of those Linel
Speaker 2: Richie records.
Speaker 5: What was it like?
Speaker 3: I did? See? I first toured with Sheila after the
Speaker 3: Under the Trade Moon tour. She opened the line on
Speaker 3: that was it wasn't outrage it was dancing on the
Speaker 3: cylind tour after Outrageous.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I toured with Lionel, so we call him
Speaker 3: Lionel B. So we were always pretty much closer. I
Speaker 3: did this one song on Lionel, but Linel was it.
Speaker 3: Linos like us. Lionel is a great storyteller. He'll tell you.
Speaker 3: He's like, if you don't have any stories, then you
Speaker 3: can't talk to me. You need you need stories, he said,
Speaker 3: who wants to work with an a n R guy
Speaker 3: or an artist a person that doesn't have any stories?
Speaker 3: But you know we have stories because we tour with
Speaker 3: different people and you know, me touring with n W
Speaker 3: A and hanging out with ice Cube every day, you know,
Speaker 3: and ice cream telling me stuff like you know, I
Speaker 3: want to make movies. I'm don't make movies. And then
Speaker 3: to watch him make next you know, next Friday. I'm like,
Speaker 3: I heard him say that early in his career. Then
Speaker 3: watch him do it.
Speaker 2: Did you go to those n w A pool parties?
Speaker 3: Damn? I went? I went. I went to I went
Speaker 3: to the UH to the uh the water gun parties
Speaker 3: when everybody just run around the hotels, like the cheap
Speaker 3: Motel six is like firing off water guns and and
Speaker 3: all that stuff. Million ah.
Speaker 4: Man, it wasn't a movie, Okay.
Speaker 5: I wanted to ask you man you had a record
Speaker 5: because I was thinking about your you were talking about
Speaker 5: your scoring career and like stuff with Insecure and everything.
Speaker 4: It's a record you just dropped. I think it was
Speaker 4: last year, maybe your full last uh. But is it good?
Speaker 4: It's good to you, It's good to me? Bro, Like
Speaker 4: what's the word on it? I love that song?
Speaker 3: Man, Like, yeah, well that's like that's that was a
Speaker 3: one of the songs I put in Insecure, and I
Speaker 3: was it was like, you know, it's very you know
Speaker 3: those songs when you put them on the score they're
Speaker 3: very low. So he heard it and she said, can
Speaker 3: you go back and make a song to that? So
Speaker 3: then I just went back in and I just put
Speaker 3: a verse on it because at first it was just
Speaker 3: saying is it good to you? Good to me? And
Speaker 3: I did that, and like because during the pandemic, I
Speaker 3: moved to Portland, Orgon. Oh wow, why Portland because I
Speaker 3: caught COVID and I was like, I'm not going to
Speaker 3: be in dusty ass l A.
Speaker 2: We all right over here, but in Portland, Oregon. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm ruined my old time favorite city.
Speaker 3: So you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know people tell
Speaker 3: me that. You know, I see all the venues you play.
Speaker 3: My best friend is Brian Grant. He just played for
Speaker 3: the Trouble. So I've been going out there for years.
Speaker 3: So I got a place out there so I can
Speaker 3: hike and it's just nothing but trees. So you're just
Speaker 3: walking through this trees getting all this oxygen. And and
Speaker 3: like in a month, I got my spell on my
Speaker 3: taste back and I just got back to LA. I
Speaker 3: just got a place there besides my studio. I was
Speaker 3: staying in my studio like stity there like for like
Speaker 3: three months, three months ago. I've been in Portland the
Speaker 3: whole time.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: And I found a nice studio to record that. Bro,
Speaker 3: I found studios. It's inexpensive to record that. It's a
Speaker 3: lot of musicians out there that's untapped and nobody know
Speaker 3: about I don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm trying to tell the world Portland is where
Speaker 2: it's at.
Speaker 3: They don't you Every morning, Bro, I got I got
Speaker 3: a nineteen eighty five Vovo wagon. Bro, y'all do.
Speaker 4: You see it.
Speaker 1: I'm not far behind you when I get my money, right, yo,
Speaker 1: I'm getting me a spot important.
Speaker 3: Oh telling me everyone?
Speaker 6: Hey, Raphael on the side, note, what made you lock
Speaker 6: your hair?
Speaker 3: I was already curious, uh Donald Trump?
Speaker 4: Word?
Speaker 3: Yeah. What happened was I was watching the news earlier
Speaker 3: on he was talking to him. I was like, this
Speaker 3: ship sounds crazy, and I was just like I was
Speaker 3: watching the news, and before I knew it, my whole
Speaker 3: head was twisted.
Speaker 5: Anxiety about You took the word about anxiety.
Speaker 2: Twist anxiety.
Speaker 5: Yeah, wait a minute, ship, you twisted watching the news
Speaker 5: going like, wait a minute.
Speaker 2: I got turned the white light to him. You're right,
Speaker 2: you're absent.
Speaker 6: That's when you started to a mirror in the pandemic.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: I don't know why.
Speaker 3: I just when you look at my album, my last
Speaker 3: album cover of Jimmy Lee, yes it looks like my
Speaker 3: hair is short, but there's little, tiny, tiny balls on
Speaker 3: my hair. That's that's how short it was when I
Speaker 3: was twisting my scalp watching them then or you knew
Speaker 3: what I was growing up, That's what happened.
Speaker 2: Anxiety.
Speaker 6: That is what is the thing that Donald Trump did?
Speaker 5: Thank you?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's great. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Is there anything that you've not done that you wish
Speaker 2: to do?
Speaker 3: I want to, I want I want to. I really
Speaker 3: want to live in Europe for a minute. I've been.
Speaker 3: I just I just I don't know really where I
Speaker 3: want to live. I kind of want to go somewhere.
Speaker 3: And I kind of want to make a record with
Speaker 3: a symphony, but not a not a large symphony with
Speaker 3: like So when I listened to the Dell Finals, always
Speaker 3: felt like they had a drummer like you, they had
Speaker 3: a bass player that was like good as hell, but
Speaker 3: they had an orchestra that was right by the book.
Speaker 3: So I've always wanted to make that record, but not
Speaker 3: the big, big giant, just like you know, something that
Speaker 3: you can't ever imagine having on the tour, but just
Speaker 3: something like that would have. But just I always wanted
Speaker 3: to make that record when I can. I sort of
Speaker 3: did it with when I had Spanky and people where
Speaker 3: I could just I could write on the spot, I
Speaker 3: could just sing parts to people and we make the
Speaker 3: record that way. I mean, like without just sitting back
Speaker 3: and writing, kind of sit back and play and then
Speaker 3: go okay, you do this, you do this, you do this,
Speaker 3: and then go write the words and have people kind
Speaker 3: of want to do that because I think we're living
Speaker 3: in this experimental phase where nobody really understands streaming or
Speaker 3: how are we making money or any of that, and
Speaker 3: you know, we're so happy about making pennies and people
Speaker 3: were all about, like you know, people holding up gold
Speaker 3: albums talking about they streamed a million, goes a million plaque.
Speaker 3: Is this It's really confusing right now to me. So
Speaker 3: I just think the only thing we have left is, uh,
Speaker 3: it's it's creativity. I think we should be at the
Speaker 3: top of creativity and and not don't worry about what
Speaker 3: everybody else is doing and don't knock any younger kids
Speaker 3: or anything like that, but you know, like yourself just
Speaker 3: bringing light with that. You know, I don't know feel
Speaker 3: if you notice, but like that documentary of that that
Speaker 3: guy that hosted so that guy and listen to him
Speaker 3: and his struggle to get that thing to fly and
Speaker 3: it still didn't come out. But all of those people
Speaker 3: until now we might as well just kind of just create.
Speaker 3: And so I think for me, I just want to
Speaker 3: just you know, create. I kind of want to take
Speaker 3: out a tour where I'm like, it's just me. I'm
Speaker 3: working on a tour call to recital, whereas it's me
Speaker 3: just playing piano and and base and telling my stories
Speaker 3: now because the reason why it's cart recite it was
Speaker 3: because I can't play the piano that good. I just
Speaker 3: can't play good enough to like for my songs and
Speaker 3: and make mistakes. So I'll be making mistakes, but most
Speaker 3: of them be me talking about my career, like this
Speaker 3: interview that we're doing like a woman, Yeah you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. Always wanted to tour like a comedian
Speaker 3: with it, like with a chair in the glass and
Speaker 3: so Warden bring all the money home.
Speaker 6: There you go going on versus.
Speaker 3: I'm just a versus who would you?
Speaker 4: Who would you go against? The verses.
Speaker 3: They had me going against D'Angelo, right, I was supposed
Speaker 3: to do that.
Speaker 6: The only one that did the show that wasn't even
Speaker 6: a versus loved him, but that wasn't no versus.
Speaker 3: But I didn't. I didn't do it because it was
Speaker 3: supposed to be. They wanted to be Maxwell Maxwell. It
Speaker 3: was supposed to be basketballing him.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: He didn't want to do it, But I don't. I
Speaker 3: don't know. I don't know. I like Versus for it's
Speaker 3: a fund as entertain but who could I love it?
Speaker 6: Who could sell?
Speaker 1: If you're if your legacy were more tighter with the Tonys.
Speaker 1: I would have loved to see a live Tony condition MA.
Speaker 3: Condition, would Chris? Every time Chris Webber sees me, he
Speaker 3: loves MA condition. He's like, yeah, buddy, I'm get you
Speaker 3: on the stage of condition and see what you do.
Speaker 3: Chris Webber loves MA conditions, so he's always trying to
Speaker 3: put stokely against me my boy though Chris is my boy,
Speaker 3: but no, honestly, but stokely by.
Speaker 6: So you can say condition in the Stokely records and
Speaker 6: Tony records.
Speaker 3: Stokely is like I tell people, Stokely sing circles around
Speaker 3: any and then Stokely, the kind of person you'll be
Speaker 3: like in France and somebody be like, hey, Stokely's down
Speaker 3: the street doing a fusion gig.
Speaker 2: On drums, right, exactly right, And then he's.
Speaker 3: Like stokely Carl Michael So his dad was a black
Speaker 3: college professor. He like this intellect and everything. I'll be
Speaker 3: like every time I talk to Mit, Hey, secret smart guy.
Speaker 4: Oh.
Speaker 5: I was gonna ask just about the with you know,
Speaker 5: with the Tony's, you know, with you guys breaking up,
Speaker 5: but you know y'all actually family.
Speaker 4: How does that play in your family dynamic?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: Is it Thanksgiving? Is it cool? Is it smoke?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 4: How do y'all handle each other in real life?
Speaker 3: Man? Our traditional Thanksgiving has been over for so long.
Speaker 3: I don't even think families have traditional Thanksgiving anymore. Indigenous people, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think for us, my father always come on to
Speaker 3: see us get together and do something. And I think
Speaker 3: what we're gonna do is we're gonna get together be
Speaker 3: Dowayne and Tim because you know, we're pretty much a
Speaker 3: group in the beginning that wasn't really R and B
Speaker 3: were more like the Black police. And we're gonna get
Speaker 3: together and do like a kind of like a farewell,
Speaker 3: like thank you to be We're gonna do that. I
Speaker 3: was at Dwayne last night. If you if you look
Speaker 3: on his Facebook, Dwayne can't go anywhere and let's get down.
Speaker 3: If you see Dwayne, he's gonna be singing whatever you
Speaker 3: want or let's get down, are singing, Hey, Hey, the
Speaker 3: blues is all right. Dwayne is like an old man
Speaker 3: just running around singing like the same song.
Speaker 6: He had a dope single they haven't remember he had.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm just saying, Dwayne, he's not gonna miss the performance.
Speaker 3: So last night I was in San Francisco before I
Speaker 3: got to New York. We're sitting in this club called
Speaker 3: Black Black Cat. These guys up there killing it. I mean,
Speaker 3: I mean killing everything. We're sitting in the audience with
Speaker 3: the mayor of San Francisco, and this is this young
Speaker 3: lady and it's her friends. And at the end of
Speaker 3: the night, Dwayne grabs the guitar to from this guy
Speaker 3: from uh the Nationals and the piano player and start
Speaker 3: playing let's get down and get on the mic? Is
Speaker 3: it not like to call my brother? So then we're
Speaker 3: doing two. I'm embarrassed because we're doing two verses of
Speaker 3: Let's get down after these dudes was up Player playing
Speaker 3: Cold Train and I'm like, come on, Wayne, But I
Speaker 3: guess that's my introduction of like of telling people that
Speaker 3: we are about to get together and and do our
Speaker 3: farewell and like, you know, thank for people, thank people
Speaker 3: for it's support, and we and we're actually gonna do
Speaker 3: like we're gonna do instruments. We're gonna put out four
Speaker 3: four songs, and it's it's gonna be instrumental record, just
Speaker 3: instrumentals almost like you know, Summer Madness and break stuff
Speaker 3: like that. And then because we never performed the last
Speaker 3: album House Music anyway, we're gonna get together and learn
Speaker 3: that album and then give people like three new instrumentals,
Speaker 3: three four instrumental songs. That's the plan. And this is
Speaker 3: the first place I said it, but this is.
Speaker 4: Yeah, man, I would love to see y'all do Wild
Speaker 4: Child live.
Speaker 3: Man was yeah, Yeah, that's that's that was our thing.
Speaker 3: Even when we did that record, that's the record, when
Speaker 3: they said let's you do your side of the record
Speaker 3: and I do mine. Even though I did that record,
Speaker 3: I went back and god doing He said, hey, bro,
Speaker 3: you got to sing them on this part of the record.
Speaker 3: He was like, of course, But I found out the
Speaker 3: reason why he didn't reacuse, this is the funny thing.
Speaker 3: You're gonna You're gonna dig this because I was always
Speaker 3: trying to figure out, like what did I do with
Speaker 3: these guys. You know that they didn't want to record
Speaker 3: a record with me because my dad came over. He
Speaker 3: was like where everybody else? I said, I didn't want
Speaker 3: to break his heart. And my dad passed away about
Speaker 3: five years ago, and I said, uh, I don't know, Dad.
Speaker 3: They just decided they wanted to record their side of
Speaker 3: the record on their own. So he was he said,
Speaker 3: are you gonna be all right? So I just have
Speaker 3: to make my dad feel good, I said, you know,
Speaker 3: because he thought I was on my own. And I
Speaker 3: used to say, like Muhammad Ali refords too. I'm like Dad,
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm like Ali. I felt like a butterfly thing,
Speaker 3: like a beam. And my dad he starts smiling when
Speaker 3: I say that, because I just want to make him
Speaker 3: feel But honestly, I didn't know what the hell I
Speaker 3: was gonna do, but I figured it out, and so
Speaker 3: I asked Tim, I said, so, man, what did I
Speaker 3: do to you? Man? Like what did I do? Like,
Speaker 3: I don't I don't really understand, like I understand what
Speaker 3: I what y'all did to me. I understill did it
Speaker 3: to me. It was just like, you know, we just
Speaker 3: had regular band issues when you don't have enough money.
Speaker 3: Every black band don't have enough money. The problem is
Speaker 3: money most.
Speaker 4: Of the time.
Speaker 3: So what happened was I figured it out because they
Speaker 3: never told me. Every time we did an album, when
Speaker 3: you heard strings on the album, they cost forty thousand
Speaker 3: dollars twenty five thirty thousand dollars a song. Okay, so
Speaker 3: that's me. I would spend all the money in the
Speaker 3: production I took. I put the money on in the film,
Speaker 3: you know. And so they didn't want to record me
Speaker 3: because they was like, he gonna spend all all the money.
Speaker 3: I got it, but they never told me. I just
Speaker 3: figured it out.
Speaker 1: You need to watch Metallica some kind of Monster, and
Speaker 1: I want y'all that for y'all because you'll be you'll
Speaker 1: be really shocked on how the smallest issue can cause
Speaker 1: the biggest problems in a group. And then when the hindsight,
Speaker 1: when you talk about it, it'll be like you remember
Speaker 1: that time you stole my rich Crackers and said that
Speaker 1: you didn't, and I saw it in your bag.
Speaker 2: That's why I talked to you.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm I want to get you talk about
Speaker 3: Metallica because I told Dwayne I said, I said, bro
Speaker 3: like Metallica. I said, when we come on stage, I said,
Speaker 3: my mic is gonna be far right, your mic is
Speaker 3: gonna be far left, or you're gonna be right. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna left, and Tim is gonna be right in the middle.
Speaker 3: I said, We're gonna make this ship like Metallica. We're
Speaker 3: gonna have a choir like a sixteen people and a
Speaker 3: keyboard player to the side, and they gonna be singing backgrounds.
Speaker 3: We're gonna just be playing these instrumentals. I said, it's
Speaker 3: gonna have to feel like Metallica. You know, when we
Speaker 3: recorded some of our albums, like by Sons and Soul,
Speaker 3: Metallica was in it was there too. They were Salclito,
Speaker 3: uh Rika Plan Plan Yeah. So and so I was
Speaker 3: hanging out with Metallica, like you know, all day times,
Speaker 3: and they would play shows in New York. I would
Speaker 3: go hang out with him. So we have a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of you know, Connoe of Metallica and
Speaker 3: those little patty things like you said, it's definitely we
Speaker 3: probably have some of the most silliest reasons.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: And you'll be shocked at, yeah, at what little communication
Speaker 1: could do. And you know, I will admit that, you know,
Speaker 1: me and a certain member probably as close now as
Speaker 1: we were.
Speaker 2: You know, it's weird that we.
Speaker 1: Did this operation for nineteen years almost without communicating with
Speaker 1: each other.
Speaker 4: But you know, me and people the same way, we
Speaker 4: didn't really become friends to make a little watch.
Speaker 2: You gotta communicate, You gotta communicate.
Speaker 3: I mean also with my brother last night and I
Speaker 3: just I just said, bro, look, it wasn't for you
Speaker 3: bringing all them records and playing all those Ernie solos
Speaker 3: and playing all those Larry Graham records and put me
Speaker 3: on the Larry, I wouldn't be the person who I
Speaker 3: was today. Some of the ball getting that record deal
Speaker 3: and shit changed, and start going backstage, and then you'll
Speaker 3: be like, hello, hold on, be back. You start everybody
Speaker 3: start getting new friends, and all of a sudden you
Speaker 3: like then all of a sudden you like the five
Speaker 3: heart beat. You like five RT beats front.
Speaker 1: Center right flash it's normally at the top. Wait, I
Speaker 1: got two more questions and then I gotta go. But well,
Speaker 1: you we kind of brought up one thing. You brought
Speaker 1: up one thing, which was is did you when you
Speaker 1: when when Claire Fisher did the strings for anniversary?
Speaker 2: Did you get to meet him or you just send
Speaker 2: in the tapes.
Speaker 4: And he sent it back.
Speaker 3: I was with him every time he worked with me.
Speaker 2: What else did he do besides the anniversary?
Speaker 3: He did a song that we call that we have
Speaker 3: called on the on the revival album that we never
Speaker 3: put out. It's called Cherry Love with Me. And it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Wait, you have a you have an unused Claire Fisher song?
Speaker 4: What the fuck?
Speaker 3: What this song? Cassette? Bro, I don't think we even
Speaker 3: find the multi tapes. And if I can find it,
Speaker 3: I'll send it to you.
Speaker 2: You can just freaking let a clear Fisher song go unscathed.
Speaker 3: And bro he he like I met Claire even in
Speaker 3: the last So then I did Claire this song? Uh?
Speaker 3: We were talking about with TJ Moses take me. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's Claire too.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: To our listeners, Claire Fisher is a string arranger. All
Speaker 1: the Prince stuff that we love as Chaka Khan ask Rufus. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like switch look up, Reaching for Tomorrow that that's probably
Speaker 1: like one of my favorite Claire Fisher moments. And and
Speaker 1: but you know, he had to push me away with
Speaker 1: the Jackson's and he really turned like a lot of
Speaker 1: like black music and to really like lush, lush arrangements.
Speaker 1: Steve and I got to work with Claire Son Brent
Speaker 1: on the Elvis Costello record.
Speaker 2: Claire.
Speaker 5: Actually the last thing that Claire did before he passed
Speaker 5: away was really love Like I know that he wrote
Speaker 5: the string arrangements for DiAngelo, but his son finished and
Speaker 5: executed it like at the time he was doing it,
Speaker 5: he passed away, But that was the one of the
Speaker 5: last things he worked on. The last thing I wanted
Speaker 5: to ask you just in general, like in your in
Speaker 5: your canon and you're songwriting canon, what's the what's the
Speaker 5: fastest song that he wrote that was like popular with us, Like, oh,
Speaker 5: I wrote that song in three minutes?
Speaker 3: Mm hmm. Pler with you probably probably probably was the
Speaker 3: Blues as far as that was, it just wrote itself,
Speaker 3: just kind of wrote itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, okay. And what was the struggle song? What
Speaker 1: was the song that, like all of them, you really
Speaker 1: just like to fight to the finish.
Speaker 3: I think the struggle song. It wasn't it wasn't a single,
Speaker 3: but we just have this thing where our album would
Speaker 3: be done and then label would say, now we need
Speaker 3: a single, right, okay, So that single was if I
Speaker 3: had no lute blues? Was that? But the song that
Speaker 3: I have a problem with was coming into the man
Speaker 3: of who I was. It was probably blind Man. What yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: because blind Man was a song that I felt like
Speaker 3: it would have been a voice like Bobby Blue Bland, right,
Speaker 3: And I was singing all those kiddies songs, you know,
Speaker 3: like no, no, no no, and all of a sudden
Speaker 3: I had to say the first lyric and that song
Speaker 3: was like look at here, I'm still standing dingn Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the Teddy Pendergrass line, you know, like you can't
Speaker 3: say looking here with the voice I've been singing with
Speaker 3: with the albums before that.
Speaker 4: So I wrote.
Speaker 3: I wrote it, and when I got to the mic,
Speaker 3: I walked to the mic and I was like, look
Speaker 3: at I was like, hold on, I thought you. I
Speaker 3: was like, hold on, shit, that's that's just not gonna work.
Speaker 3: So I still I stood back and I saw I
Speaker 3: looked at my shadow on the floor, and I had
Speaker 3: a conversation and I was like, you gotta you gotta
Speaker 3: pull from within, you gotta pull all these other different
Speaker 3: energies and spirits from these people. And I that song
Speaker 3: I struggled with but one after I did leaving. In
Speaker 3: that song, I sort of like my sister I passed
Speaker 3: away and my sister got hit by this car. My
Speaker 3: sister was a great blues singer, and she had a
Speaker 3: strong voice like Millie Jackson and Aretha and just I'm
Speaker 3: talking about. My sister could sing any type of soul song.
Speaker 3: And she was a parole office. She graduated from, you know, college,
Speaker 3: had degrees, owned a lot of property and until my
Speaker 3: sister's a singer the Al Green's version of I Can't
Speaker 3: Get next to You like below it. And when my
Speaker 3: sister passed away, I felt like her spirit just kind
Speaker 3: of got into me. After that, I started singing better.
Speaker 3: I started singing better after that. And that was after
Speaker 3: my sister died, when I was in the hospital singing
Speaker 3: it never rains, damn what Yeah, And then we I
Speaker 3: went to the hospital and they pulled her off the
Speaker 3: well and pulled off the machine. At that point, they
Speaker 3: pulled her off the machine, and I went back to
Speaker 3: the studio and I started recording that those songs. But
Speaker 3: then my life for singing it just after that sorted changed.
Speaker 3: But I never really got comfortable singing vocally until really
Speaker 3: the way I see it, wow, until the sixties album
Speaker 3: Okay pretty much.
Speaker 5: Man, I was gonna ask before we go on Instant
Speaker 5: Vintage the high Tech in the lose, how did.
Speaker 4: Y'all hook up? I thought it was so dope that
Speaker 4: you reach out there.
Speaker 3: Man, yeah, because i mean, like I said, my hip
Speaker 3: hop thread goes deep, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 3: and I just hit a high tech. I was like, bro,
Speaker 3: I'm doing these interlus and it'd be so sick if
Speaker 3: I could drop three or few high tech doings right
Speaker 3: in the middle of everything, you know, because he was
Speaker 3: just ye'a. I just always loved, you know, high tech
Speaker 3: because I could play bass to a you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: all I ever need is is beats man beats, beats,
Speaker 3: and and I can I can go all day if
Speaker 3: somebody give me a beat, and I'm like, I'm like
Speaker 3: more of like a MC on the bass, Like I
Speaker 3: could just play bass lines all day, and I could
Speaker 3: come up with a metal day because it's and even
Speaker 3: in I was in Trinidad when we did the flow
Speaker 3: Wind album. The Tony's was over there and this guy
Speaker 3: told me, he said, man, you know in Africa, it's
Speaker 3: we all speak through drums, right, rhythm, we all speak
Speaker 3: through drums. Drums is ours our thing. So drums and
Speaker 3: bass just singing to people. And that's why with all
Speaker 3: these different music, it's really you know, drums and bass.
Speaker 3: And I feel like even when I did Still Ray,
Speaker 3: it's just really drums and bass, the keys, right, But
Speaker 3: it's the way those drums sounds with. People always want
Speaker 3: to rhyme over room. I can't find the multi tracks
Speaker 3: to give them to nobody.
Speaker 2: So y Wiggins, I will send you some tracks. Great,
Speaker 2: please it is please, No dog, it ain't nothing for that.
Speaker 3: Put them drum sets in them, bro.
Speaker 4: I got you.
Speaker 2: I'll text you. I got you.
Speaker 4: Wait, it just hit me.
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 1: Fontage just hit me to something like a couple of
Speaker 1: years back, and I just got trapped inside of this whole.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw that playlist I gave
Speaker 2: you a liquor house music. Come on, yes, sir, I
Speaker 2: feel I feel like I feel like that's I feel
Speaker 2: like even more than Go Go.
Speaker 1: Liquor house music is the under undiscovered gem of R
Speaker 1: and B music, like Sir Charles Jones and.
Speaker 3: All like.
Speaker 4: Down here like way, it's the last place. It's the
Speaker 4: last place white people ain't took.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like you need you need to do
Speaker 1: the thin line between liquor house music and gospel courts.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: To me, let me, let me send me the Yes,
Speaker 5: I will, Oh God, Marvin's Candy liquor like it's all
Speaker 5: just some people call it blues.
Speaker 4: Yes, come on, come on like.
Speaker 1: That Malaco Records, real cheap sounding karaoke R and B.
Speaker 1: But it's my favorite ship of ault.
Speaker 3: Is Jesus, are you talking? Are you talking about like
Speaker 3: songs like the Big Get It All and all them
Speaker 3: songs the Bitch Get It Off?
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, yes, indeed yes Yo.
Speaker 3: Yo, the Biscuit Yo, my ex girlfriend parents. I've been
Speaker 3: listening to that ship for like fifteen Yo. I got
Speaker 3: a whole list of it.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yo, I'll be in the yo.
Speaker 3: They're gonna take that off he too pretty soon. These
Speaker 3: dudes be like forty five old school hats. Yes. So
Speaker 3: are you talking about so you ever heard of theotis.
Speaker 4: The yeah.
Speaker 3: Just singing.
Speaker 4: Uh stand up?
Speaker 3: Stand up dude played in my sister's band, my sister
Speaker 3: blues band, Theotis was her guitar player.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: I know that's right because theoda has been on me
Speaker 3: since I was like eight years old. Bro.
Speaker 2: Wait, there's a house moving in Oakland as well.
Speaker 4: Man, that's the issue universe now he lives. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: stand up in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, stand up. The stand up man is my is
Speaker 3: my my friend. He's the older guy.
Speaker 5: His stepdaughter is like real longtime fan of ours, like
Speaker 5: good friend mine like she He came out, he came
Speaker 5: out to a little Brother show.
Speaker 4: He came back, and we was going to get back.
Speaker 4: He came out and kicked it with us straight up. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Man, Yo, but them horns, those cheap horns, I cannot take. Well,
Speaker 3: I'll be definitely.
Speaker 1: There's a way, there's a way to adjuctwist to it.
Speaker 1: But it's just like for me, it's the most Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean Fante is right, it's the last sort
Speaker 1: of ungentrified, the last ungentified movement of black music.
Speaker 3: That we have.
Speaker 6: And but then Raphael do it, and it's gonna get
Speaker 6: gentrified right after that.
Speaker 3: No, I'll tell you. I'm gonna tell you who going
Speaker 3: Who's gonna end up doing it? First?
Speaker 2: You said a white artist. I said, I know, Michael
Speaker 2: Arthur is next to be on Malco.
Speaker 3: No, it's gonna be Mally Cyrus. Dad.
Speaker 4: You think you think you think he's gonna do this?
Speaker 5: Oh damn Billy gonna start singing about Jody Big Plaizer energy.
Speaker 2: I thank you, thank you for doing We've been begging
Speaker 2: for this episode for so long. Man, thank you so much.
Speaker 6: I'm all in person. He can I just ask you
Speaker 6: as a fan you, I feel like you've just done
Speaker 6: so much for us. Is there anything we could do
Speaker 6: for you? I'm never asked anybody.
Speaker 3: Everybody's everybody's I'll be around when this when this Tony's
Speaker 3: project project comes out, Like I'm gonna start bringing out
Speaker 3: a couple of artists, but you assume myself and the
Speaker 3: artists are, they're gonna be pretty much underground artists. But
Speaker 3: I just feel like when that happens with the platforms
Speaker 3: that you guys have, you guys are already doing so
Speaker 3: much with the platforms, and all we need is the
Speaker 3: platforms for people to be I feel like we're going back. Absolutely,
Speaker 3: that's it and when we come to town, just buy tickets.
Speaker 6: Okay, we got them, right, y'all? Okay, they say, yes, yes,
Speaker 6: we got.
Speaker 3: There's a t shirt off that says that niggas don't
Speaker 3: buy tickets. I didn't make it, but we do. We did.
Speaker 4: That's the nick.
Speaker 2: Listen right, well, I keep on doing what you.
Speaker 6: Say right right now.
Speaker 3: It's you're right, it is.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, we.
Speaker 6: Broccoli still eighty twenty eighty twenty were killing it twenty.
Speaker 2: Hey man, that's because we keep the price under one
Speaker 2: hundred bucks.
Speaker 3: Sorry, we asked.
Speaker 6: You know you got generational wealth.
Speaker 3: So help us.
Speaker 1: Yes, this is not coach telling. I'm not charging a
Speaker 1: thousand bucks to get in some ship.
Speaker 4: Yo. Man.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you and this this has been
Speaker 1: amazing episode. This is definitely two part episodes.
Speaker 4: I know it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, A big fan of yours and you know this
Speaker 1: is everything I could ask for it. And I'm really
Speaker 1: mind blowing how many things we have in common. Like
Speaker 1: now now I'm gonna listen to Larry Graham a whole
Speaker 1: nother way, man, But no, thank you for doing the.
Speaker 3: Show, bro Like Larry, Larry is the bible for us.
Speaker 3: And we come out we're thinking about playing today as
Speaker 3: our opening song.
Speaker 2: Dog there you go, there you go. Rap fiels, ladies
Speaker 2: and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: Thank you, guys, thank you, question thank you, thanks.
Speaker 4: All the music much appreciate itble.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you too, man, thank you just seeing
Speaker 3: you again.
Speaker 2: Oh for sure, for sure, I'm sorry y'all got you fired.
Speaker 6: It's all right today talking to you for three hours.
Speaker 3: I couldn't do that on the black You with the best,
Speaker 3: you with the best right here, you in the best
Speaker 3: hands right right, and my man, how do you.
Speaker 5: She holds us together? Steve seems like a long time
Speaker 5: electric lady.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: Steve probably worked on on titled like I was.
Speaker 9: I was in the room when that was when when
Speaker 9: Dee and and Ray were recording that song up in
Speaker 9: See up in studio Sea.
Speaker 3: And now I'm looking at you like yeah, of course,
Speaker 3: and so you were you in the room and d
Speaker 3: was like, uh went talking about he was like when
Speaker 3: the cat was making this moaning noise, you was in
Speaker 3: the room and Dee Go was like hey Jimmy, and
Speaker 3: everybody was like yeah, Jimmy, and I was like, ain't no,
Speaker 3: goddamn Jimmy. That cat hungry.
Speaker 6: He'll always keep it real man, we didn't we had.
Speaker 3: We didn't have three grilled cheese sandwiches, all those extra
Speaker 3: bacon that they put in it. The cat was watching
Speaker 3: us eat.
Speaker 2: Wait, Ray, you don't even get it. You don't even
Speaker 2: get it.
Speaker 1: The amount of bacon references I got for Steve, the
Speaker 1: fact that you brought that up. Even on my audiobook
Speaker 1: which I just finished, like fucking half hour ago, I
Speaker 1: credited Steve for bacon.
Speaker 3: Dude. We used to be in the studio and we
Speaker 3: would eat, we would smoke, eat, smoke and smoked, and
Speaker 3: d was like Sod was like yeah uh. Dean would
Speaker 3: be like, way, uh, I'm gonna eat something on the
Speaker 3: healthy side from this other restaurant. So we just not Waverley.
Speaker 3: So I'm like, what you order? He like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: ordered burger.
Speaker 4: I'm like a burger.
Speaker 3: But at the Waverley we would go get like a
Speaker 3: grilled cheese and the bacon come in it, right. De
Speaker 3: would say, then I get extra bacon. I'm like, extra bacon.
Speaker 3: The bacon is already filled in that chin thing with bacon.
Speaker 4: Steal. I know bacon.
Speaker 2: The podcast Yeah, but but but Ray, but getting untitled.
Speaker 3: All I remember is the bacon.
Speaker 5: Voodoo was nothing but bacon Fest. That's how he got it.
Speaker 5: In summer body eating bacon and nothing else.
Speaker 10: That was the original title of the record.
Speaker 1: Actually, I've credited Steve on most albums with bacon because.
Speaker 2: You know, like what spinaches, the Popeye old boys just
Speaker 2: like yo, I need a break.
Speaker 6: It's so crazy about to say most of the early
Speaker 6: people do. Just think y'all didn't even eat pork. I'm
Speaker 6: in shock over here, like.
Speaker 2: FROMA and you.
Speaker 9: Up, Raphael, Raphael, you remember recording on titled though. You
Speaker 9: guys were standing in front of the console, you know
Speaker 9: what I'm talking about. Yeah, and not not on this
Speaker 9: not on the engineer side, on the other side, like
Speaker 9: in between the console and the and the window to
Speaker 9: the live room, and you guys were playing.
Speaker 10: You were on bass and was on guitar or or
Speaker 10: no vice versa. I don't remember now, but.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I was a guitar, he was playing, he
Speaker 3: was he was playing piano.
Speaker 9: Thin So you played bass hanging on that yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 9: but you were standing in front of the in front
Speaker 9: of the console.
Speaker 10: It was like one of my first first gigs. I
Speaker 10: was like, whoa, but and then we ate.
Speaker 3: I remember the tape ran out. Indeed, was like, y'all
Speaker 3: was going to change the real so we could finish.
Speaker 3: And I was like, now it's finish, don't don't just
Speaker 3: leave it like that and just call it. And then
Speaker 3: the dad said untitled, and I was like, just call
Speaker 3: it untitled. Oh, I was like finished. Then I was like,
Speaker 3: and I was like, when you leave, I said, when
Speaker 3: I left, I said, you just gotta scream at the
Speaker 3: end of the record. You gotta scream. He's like, he said, yeah,
Speaker 3: were gonna do the video. We're gonna do the video.
Speaker 3: So I told my boys, like, we did this song.
Speaker 3: I said, it's good, but I like to Spanish joint
Speaker 3: the best. That was my favorite album. So I didn't
Speaker 3: think untitled was a single. So they put it out
Speaker 3: and the video came out. My boy was like, hey,
Speaker 3: it's a good thing. You ain't in the video. You
Speaker 3: only had one part you could have did.
Speaker 6: But if I recall it the time, y'all both had
Speaker 6: body around that time.
Speaker 3: So and everybody's just everybody just say, yo, only you
Speaker 3: think that song was popular because because he was naked,
Speaker 3: and I was like, he couldn't. I said, if it
Speaker 3: was wacky couldn't have been naked, right, exactly. That's true
Speaker 3: that when Maxwell was naked with that rubber ducky in
Speaker 3: the in the in the bathtub, the cops knocking. That
Speaker 3: doesn't work.
Speaker 4: No, that was the It was the luxury.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can't. You got to ask some weapons to
Speaker 3: do that one naked. You are so right? Yeah, he said, anyway, man,
Speaker 3: thank you. I appreciate it. Long overdue man. Congratulations to
Speaker 3: everybody man on your success. And wow, man, it's good
Speaker 3: doing ask you. Look now I'm looking on when as
Speaker 3: soon as he said it, I was like, wow, y'all
Speaker 3: have bacon in coming?
Speaker 1: Yes, bacon, all right, so when you have a light, yeah,
Speaker 1: ficolo paid Bill is not here, and doctor bacon this question.
Speaker 2: Love Supreme will see you on texts. Go around, Thank
Speaker 2: you rich all right, see y'all.
Speaker 3: Hey, this is Sugar Steve.
Speaker 11: Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at QLs.
Speaker 11: Let us know what you think you should be next
Speaker 11: to sit down with us. Don't forget to subscribe to
Speaker 11: our podcast.
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