Speaker 1: R and B Money, Honey, we are than take vlotie.
Speaker 2: We are the authority on all.
Speaker 1: Things ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 2: Money is tank and this is the R and B
Speaker 2: Money podcast on.
Speaker 1: The authority.
Speaker 2: On all things R N B Ah.
Speaker 1: There is a man I was curated the air waves.
Speaker 2: And the TV waves and created a cultural movement that
Speaker 2: we have all prescribed to.
Speaker 1: We'll all called this man many a time and said,
Speaker 1: please please.
Speaker 2: Let me on your platform, please, because he was cracking.
Speaker 1: That ship, popping know with real music, real artistry.
Speaker 2: He knows what that real thing is and what it
Speaker 2: is supposed to be like as an icon in a building.
Speaker 3: And he's gonna dance to it too. He's gonna He's
Speaker 3: gonna dance. He gonna dance. He's gonna enjoy.
Speaker 4: Himself at the shelf we all have, I would rather
Speaker 4: enjoy himself.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, forgive me for taking so long on
Speaker 2: this interrupt This man's special.
Speaker 1: To me since the beginning of my career.
Speaker 2: He has been an absolute driving force and an inspiration,
Speaker 2: a battery, a man to tell you let you know
Speaker 2: you are on the right path. He is sitting two
Speaker 2: feet away from me, and his name is mister Stephen
Speaker 2: Hill yarn abound here.
Speaker 5: Wow, I would I would like to bottle that and
Speaker 5: put it on us after shave.
Speaker 1: Everything is this?
Speaker 3: Is it Stephen Stephan? Like, okay, yeah, I'm sure.
Speaker 5: Really, I'm sure, I'm sure about your name with Stephen
Speaker 5: for all my lifetime until Curry came along, it is Stephan.
Speaker 6: Every uber driver in the world, it's Stephan.
Speaker 2: It's the Beyonce thing. It's the Beyonce. Come on, man,
Speaker 2: I'll take it.
Speaker 1: I'm going with it. Stephan.
Speaker 3: Everybody in R and B know what it is. My
Speaker 3: mom in R and B.
Speaker 2: No, brother, I remember like him yesterday. I remember there
Speaker 2: was a show called spring Blink.
Speaker 5: Oh gosh, two words I'm not in my mouth in
Speaker 5: consecutive order for years.
Speaker 1: Let me let me tell you. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: about it. And I call it to spring bling down.
Speaker 2: In Daytona, in Daytona, and I got my guys with me,
Speaker 2: mowet and I'm and I'm looking around, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: this must be heaven. I don't know if they've imported
Speaker 2: all these young ladies, if they're just nestled here on
Speaker 2: the beach like this all the time from Daytona. But
Speaker 2: I am going to sing like my life depends on it.
Speaker 2: And I proceeds to sing my songs, my my one hit,
Speaker 2: maybe I Deserve and slowly is kind of percolating, you know.
Speaker 2: I sing my tunes, so you sing slow Jams. I
Speaker 2: sing on the beach because I have a purpose.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm I'm and an ability. You know what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do?
Speaker 3: The ability? You know what I'm trying. And you don't
Speaker 3: got no up. I don't.
Speaker 1: I gotta leave my strength.
Speaker 2: The first episode of the work, I couldn't perform that
Speaker 2: on so I perform performed. We feel like it's a
Speaker 2: great performance, you know what I'm saying. We we finger
Speaker 2: tip and touching the ladies of the front, like all right,
Speaker 2: let's go back to our room, you know, rotating the
Speaker 2: the the holding areas, you know, lartist seeing artists out,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And we're walking on our way
Speaker 2: back to the room, and I just I hear running,
Speaker 2: I hear like.
Speaker 1: I hear, and we're like, what the fuck is that
Speaker 1: it is? Stephen Hill?
Speaker 3: Okay you.
Speaker 1: Met Steve all right?
Speaker 2: And I'm thinking to myself, Okay, I guess this guy's
Speaker 2: got somewhere to be he's gonna run past us and
Speaker 2: get to where he's going. He stops right in front
Speaker 2: of me. He says, I'm Stephen Hill. I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I run all this. You're incredible And we were saund like.
Speaker 2: I was like what he's like this, You're incredible. Wow,
Speaker 2: great job, amazing job. WHOA, We've got a lot of
Speaker 2: a lot of stuff for you. Good job. Shook my
Speaker 2: hand and walked off. And that's Stephen Hill for me.
Speaker 1: Wow. Always been there since Dy Won.
Speaker 2: So for me, like this guy is like, you know,
Speaker 2: extremely instrumental in and giving me that type of confidence
Speaker 2: like spring bling b et at that time, that was
Speaker 2: like you had to be there.
Speaker 5: I'm just glad I was right. I was like that
Speaker 5: if you were flamed down, this.
Speaker 1: Story was down at the bar right now, man was
Speaker 1: the next looster right now. Look look, I'm glad you
Speaker 1: right too, because that five years I had off, I
Speaker 1: was like no, no, no, no, I've all Look.
Speaker 5: I have been a fan of true talent, true singing
Speaker 5: talent and performing talent because I believe people can have
Speaker 5: talents in other areas that just don't include the tones
Speaker 5: that come out of their mouths. Right, I really appreciate
Speaker 5: those who who take time with their craft and really
Speaker 5: learn it and hone it and improve and are just naturally.
Speaker 6: Gifted so much so that I married one.
Speaker 2: So anyhow, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, I
Speaker 2: did the same.
Speaker 1: The same look at surprises, but I did when she
Speaker 1: say yes, I.
Speaker 2: Did the same thing. Yeah, where does this start? Like
Speaker 2: your your love for for this? Because like, like like
Speaker 2: you you were you were the president, right, and so
Speaker 2: there's a there's a business, there's a politic, and all
Speaker 2: of that that goes along with what you do, which
Speaker 2: makes it very tough for you to lead with the
Speaker 2: thing that is most important, which is your heart and
Speaker 2: your gut and your feeling. And I feel like you
Speaker 2: you would fore go business and fore goal politic to
Speaker 2: do what you felt and nobody could tell you anything.
Speaker 1: How where does that start for you?
Speaker 5: So, I mean, I'm going to address that because that's
Speaker 5: a great point. The business and politic. I always hated,
Speaker 5: I hated it hates a little too strong a word.
Speaker 5: But I really did that and tried to improve how
Speaker 5: I did that just so I could stay close to
Speaker 5: the music, just like I stayed close to the songs,
Speaker 5: like I guess I'm known for TV, but my love
Speaker 5: has always been music. It's not I didn't, you know
Speaker 5: I did. I backed into television through music, through through
Speaker 5: MTV and then and then be ET and then just
Speaker 5: tried to be the best person I could so I
Speaker 5: could beat close to music. So that's really that's really
Speaker 5: my story. I got used to the business and politics,
Speaker 5: but my love never became that. It was never the
Speaker 5: art of the deal. It was how great can we
Speaker 5: make these shows? What new show can we make to
Speaker 5: highlight artists like? That was always the driver.
Speaker 1: So do you have a backstory where you were like
Speaker 1: in a group or something like that when you were
Speaker 1: growing up?
Speaker 3: So you just you saved the dance moves into the
Speaker 3: ward show.
Speaker 5: I did stressed before each a ward show. What I
Speaker 5: did want to do is pull a muscle, and when
Speaker 5: I knew I was gonna do is dance.
Speaker 3: So I so you were never nothing.
Speaker 5: I have, no I have. I believe I have musical
Speaker 5: ability that I did not capitalize on us out the
Speaker 5: world I want, But you didn't explore it. I did
Speaker 5: not explore it or exploit or dedicate the time that
Speaker 5: I needed to when I was twelve years old, right,
Speaker 5: So I took piano lessons for maybe six or seven months,
Speaker 5: and it's funny, and then my mom and dead let
Speaker 5: me quit. They let me quit, and I took drums
Speaker 5: for like three months and let me quit. I'm gonna
Speaker 5: jump ahead fast forward. My son we made a deal
Speaker 5: when he was thirteen. I was like, you're staying in
Speaker 5: piano till seventeen. You can try soccer, anything else you
Speaker 5: want to do and quit, but you've got to pick
Speaker 5: one thing. And he picked piano that you got to
Speaker 5: do through your seventeen and then you can decide after
Speaker 5: that whether you want to do it or not. And
Speaker 5: it was purely based on like I wish I hadn't
Speaker 5: been allowed to quit. It's six months, and he was
Speaker 5: the only sixteen year old who could play Scott Joplin slawlessly, slawlessly.
Speaker 5: By the time he was sixteen, Jayden could play Scott
Speaker 5: Joplin flawlessly Scott Joplin. So it was it was good
Speaker 5: to say, like, oh, my failure became his success.
Speaker 1: I'm good with that. Yeah, you made sure you Joe Jackson.
Speaker 3: Play past seventeen.
Speaker 1: He did.
Speaker 5: He did for two years after seventeen, and then then
Speaker 5: he finally dropped out, but he still loves he still.
Speaker 1: Play loves in jamming.
Speaker 2: And and what what leads you into I guess as
Speaker 2: you say, right, yes, is it radio?
Speaker 7: Right?
Speaker 1: What leads you into that?
Speaker 6: I was I was four years old.
Speaker 5: My my, my babysitter, Sheila Pegeese, who I had a
Speaker 5: massive crush on, would bring over stack of forty five
Speaker 5: to the house whenever we we had good by forty five.
Speaker 5: Those are the things that vinyl spin, small vinyls boys
Speaker 5: and men when they had their own company, their their
Speaker 5: logo was the spindle that in the middle. And so
Speaker 5: the first song I remember hearing was the name game Banana.
Speaker 6: And from there on, I just love music.
Speaker 5: We'd listened to music when she when she'd come over,
Speaker 5: and then I got into James Brown and the Temptations,
Speaker 5: and uh, you know, the Jackson five is a whole
Speaker 5: that's a whole chapter of itself, but just the motown sound.
Speaker 5: And I know it's R and B is the R
Speaker 5: and B Podcast, But it's like, but, but soul is
Speaker 5: what our soul is what really brought me in.
Speaker 3: But we consider R and B to B. Okay, it's
Speaker 3: just we don't do the sub genre thing. You sing
Speaker 3: it from your heart. It's got some rhythm and some
Speaker 3: blues in it. Yeah, yeah, that's for sure. We're in
Speaker 3: the same club. We're in the same club. And so
Speaker 3: you know, it led me. I loved music all the
Speaker 3: way through.
Speaker 5: I thought everybody was was as obsessed as I was.
Speaker 5: I thought everybody read every credit on every album like
Speaker 5: I did. I thought everybody listened to every groove. I
Speaker 5: thought every they slowed down the forty five to thirty
Speaker 5: three so they could understand the lyrics.
Speaker 1: I thought everybody did all that stuff.
Speaker 3: You was directed.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, absolutely absolutely. And so when I got to college,
Speaker 5: to Brown University, they had a radio station.
Speaker 3: Oh Brown, Yeah, okay, yeah, Brown, so reflect everybody don't
Speaker 3: go to Brown. Most of you niggas don't you know Brown.
Speaker 6: And it was a great place. I love I love,
Speaker 6: I love it.
Speaker 5: But they had a radio station that wasn't a college
Speaker 5: radio station. It wasn't a bunch of kids just like
Speaker 5: throwing on what they want. The Brownie radio station was
Speaker 5: a commercial radio station.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: There were only professionals in the sales department and as
Speaker 5: the general manager. Everything else, promotions, music director, programming director
Speaker 5: was run by kids, and we had to compete for
Speaker 5: the same advertising dollars as everybody else in the market.
Speaker 5: So it was a real quick It wasn't quick, it
Speaker 5: was a it was professional training, right, And so we
Speaker 5: bring professionals, other pds from other stations in to help
Speaker 5: teach us. We all, we all ran, and we all,
Speaker 5: we all populated it. And so unlike folks who came
Speaker 5: out of college radio not knowing how to format, not
Speaker 5: knowing how to not knowing how you know, kind.
Speaker 1: Of schedule, I was, I was. I was.
Speaker 5: I spent more time there than I did in class.
Speaker 5: I can only say that because I know my mother
Speaker 5: won't be watching. Like literally, I spent more time at
Speaker 5: the radio.
Speaker 1: Finish. Did I finish college? Ye?
Speaker 3: Yes, I finished?
Speaker 1: Yes, listen, you finished.
Speaker 5: Guess what applied math economics degree? That's what I got.
Speaker 5: What applied math and economics?
Speaker 3: Have you applied that to? I can.
Speaker 5: I could not tell you which way a demand curve
Speaker 5: goes right now. But but that was my that was
Speaker 5: my that was my thing radio. I was. I wasn't
Speaker 5: a good applied math economics. I was a banker for
Speaker 5: a man, I'm not gonna lie I was a banker.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 5: I was I was a commercial banker for a for
Speaker 5: a second before my big break came.
Speaker 1: Oh big break, Yes, I got hired.
Speaker 5: Was w I l D Boston still around when you
Speaker 5: when you came through or is it already been shuttered?
Speaker 5: It may have been shuttered in the late eighties there
Speaker 5: was an AM radio station.
Speaker 1: Because I didn't come until two thousand and so, oh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it may have been showed. I was definitely gone
Speaker 5: from then. Gone by then. By about seven or eight years,
Speaker 5: it was an A and M radio station in Boston.
Speaker 5: If you know Boston, Boston is not the blackest city
Speaker 5: in the world, It's not. But Wild on AM was
Speaker 5: like the It was the magnet for all black entertainment,
Speaker 5: black attraction, black black folks. Like everybody was listening to Wild.
Speaker 5: And I got a break there to do a weekend show.
Speaker 5: All right, we got times on a dive into this.
Speaker 1: Absolutely sorry.
Speaker 5: So the story is I went to Brown University, did WBRU.
Speaker 5: I graduated. I tried to get a job in the industry.
Speaker 5: Couldn't find anything, couldn't I got. I still have my
Speaker 5: rejection letter from Solar Records somewhere right. I was really
Speaker 5: trying to get it radio. I just wanted to be
Speaker 5: in the business and couldn't do it. I ended up
Speaker 5: going back to my oldhigh school and teaching math. So
Speaker 5: I did apply the I used the math. I applied
Speaker 5: the applied math there.
Speaker 1: And uh, and that was it.
Speaker 5: I was like, Okay, I'm gonna teach. I gotta figure
Speaker 5: out what I'm what I'm gonna do. A year and
Speaker 5: a half later, Christmas, h Christmas, a year after I
Speaker 5: had graduated. I remember his name, Rob Hartley. Rob Harley,
Speaker 5: Uh got sick at wbr U. He was a he
Speaker 5: was a software when I was there. He was now
Speaker 5: now a senior. He got sick. It was Christmas time.
Speaker 5: They were understaffed. They were and somebody called me and said, hey,
Speaker 5: can you come down do a four hour show? I
Speaker 5: know you haven't done it in a while, but would
Speaker 5: you have fun.
Speaker 6: I'm like, yeah, it'll be fun. I'll go on this
Speaker 6: first Sunday. I went out.
Speaker 1: Sunday.
Speaker 5: I go down to Providence, Rhode Island. You know, I
Speaker 5: do what I always did before show. I read every paper.
Speaker 5: I knew what where the charts were, so when I
Speaker 5: brought up the music it would be timely. Everything else
Speaker 5: I do more for my four hour show in December.
Speaker 5: I think nothing of it, go back to my life
Speaker 5: and teaching.
Speaker 1: UH.
Speaker 5: In April the following year, I get a call from
Speaker 5: that knew I do know, you'll know this name, el
Speaker 5: Roy Smith.
Speaker 1: El Roy Smith, who was the program director.
Speaker 5: Of Wild at the time before he went to Dallas
Speaker 5: and before in Chicago. He's a very very very big
Speaker 5: influential radio guy, but at was the start of his
Speaker 5: career as the program director there.
Speaker 3: He said, Steven Stephen Hill.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, el Roy Smith.
Speaker 5: What I didn't know is that when I was on
Speaker 5: the radio those four hours, that one Sunday, when I.
Speaker 6: Hadn't been on for a year and a.
Speaker 5: Half, el Roy Smith was driving through Providence, Rhode Island,
Speaker 5: a route I found out later he'd only taken twice
Speaker 5: in the last three years.
Speaker 6: In the previous three years, he heard me on the radio.
Speaker 5: He called back the next day, but since I had
Speaker 5: been gone, the people who were there didn't know. There's
Speaker 5: like Stephen Hill, like, we don't have Stephen Hill on Sundays.
Speaker 5: I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: But he didn't give up.
Speaker 5: He finally called somebody who called the station, and somebody
Speaker 5: who was a friend of mine happened to pick up
Speaker 5: the phone and he called me.
Speaker 6: So my whole career revolves around one.
Speaker 5: Sunday where if Robert Harley doesn't get sick, if I
Speaker 5: don't pick up the phone because there were no cell phones,
Speaker 5: then right if if if Elroy's not driving through at
Speaker 5: that point time, if I don't pick up the phone
Speaker 5: when Elroy calls me, I'm not sitting here with you too.
Speaker 5: It's like a Star Trek episode, like when something happened,
Speaker 5: one thing changes the future.
Speaker 1: That is the one day that changed the future.
Speaker 5: So I've always been so thankful to Elroy, and I've
Speaker 5: just I've called myself the luckiest guy in the world
Speaker 5: so many times.
Speaker 3: And I still absolutely believe.
Speaker 1: That Elroy calls you. Elro called me. I like, I like,
Speaker 1: I like what I heard.
Speaker 5: I like, but I heard Stephen, And tell me more
Speaker 5: about yourself.
Speaker 1: You know, how long and how long were you there
Speaker 1: at the station?
Speaker 5: I was at w ild until for five years, eighty
Speaker 5: eight to ninety three.
Speaker 1: Is that fly?
Speaker 5: Yes, fie eighty eight to ninety three, And then I
Speaker 5: worked I'll talk about this much, but I worked as
Speaker 5: the first executive producer.
Speaker 3: At the Tom Joyner Morning Show.
Speaker 5: No, absolutely, absolutely, they started. They started in January of
Speaker 5: ninety four, and they needed someone who could be the
Speaker 5: liaison between Tom's wild self and all these very nervous
Speaker 5: program directors. They were twelve at first at the radio
Speaker 5: stations that were taking him syndicated.
Speaker 1: Now those are Tom Joyner is a very famous.
Speaker 5: You least callim fly jack fly jock because he usul
Speaker 5: to do a morning show in Dallas and then fly
Speaker 5: to Chicago to do the afternoon show in Chicago same.
Speaker 1: Day, same day. You know, he was same day morning
Speaker 1: show in Dallas.
Speaker 5: They I it was a police escort, but he'd get
Speaker 5: to the airport and then literally do the afternoon show
Speaker 5: in Chicago. Real popular, Like the only person who did
Speaker 5: an interview with Michael Jackson during the bad period. He's
Speaker 5: so and so he became a He's Howard Stern was
Speaker 5: syndicated and then Tom Joyner was the first African American
Speaker 5: syndicated radio person. And so I was the executive producer.
Speaker 5: What that meant is that like Tom, if you if
Speaker 5: you could, it would be great if you played an
Speaker 5: up tempo song right here, Uh, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: So we can satisfy el Roy.
Speaker 5: El Roy's one was one of the pds in twelve
Speaker 5: cities Miami, I can't remember Miami, Chicago, but big cities,
Speaker 5: and of course it grew to be this b a myth,
Speaker 5: but I was the first first there.
Speaker 3: How long did you work with Tom Joyner?
Speaker 5: For a year? For a year and a half, and
Speaker 5: then I went to MTV. I moved to New York
Speaker 5: for MTV.
Speaker 3: So at this point, you like, that's your that's that's
Speaker 3: your last dnning radio.
Speaker 5: That was my That was my last stting radio until
Speaker 5: I had had a very lovely and very productive gig
Speaker 5: at Sirius XM about about.
Speaker 3: Four years ago.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I did it. Okay, you I did radio.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 5: I smile about that because it is through that show
Speaker 5: that my wife and I got reconnected. It was through
Speaker 5: the Serious XM Show. Tracy Jordan, thanks you very much.
Speaker 5: Booked her as a guest on the show. You were
Speaker 5: on the show, You were on my Serious XM show.
Speaker 5: You booked her as a guest. But I did not
Speaker 5: marry you and.
Speaker 1: I I don't know, you didn't know. I just really.
Speaker 3: Man, So how does MTV discover you?
Speaker 5: MTV discovered me because at my time at w b
Speaker 5: r u UH Providence at Brown University. A good friend
Speaker 5: of mine who I actually did the morning show with,
Speaker 5: was then one of the program directors at MTV, And
Speaker 5: so there had always been There had been opportunities I
Speaker 5: didn't want, and then they wanted me for stuff I
Speaker 5: didn't want. And we had done a dance for about
Speaker 5: two or three years, and then finally there was an
Speaker 5: opportunity that I thought, this is worth leaving the comfort
Speaker 5: of Dallas, Texas for and going to New York, a
Speaker 5: city I was completely scared of at that point in time.
Speaker 5: In nineteen ninety five, before they cleaned up forty second Street.
Speaker 5: Just to put it put it in context for those
Speaker 5: young folks, forty second Street, which is now Disney five
Speaker 5: used to be crack Row crack Row forty second, forty second,
Speaker 5: forty second Street in New York. Do you not remember
Speaker 5: when forty second Street used to be peep peep shows
Speaker 5: and peak shows.
Speaker 2: The first time going to New York and actually walking
Speaker 2: around was I guess right around ninety nine, ninety.
Speaker 3: Ninety seven.
Speaker 6: Yeah, forgetting how much older than you I am.
Speaker 5: This I gotta keep forgetting how much I think I
Speaker 5: see these two you know, I think, I'm like, I'm
Speaker 5: with the crew, right.
Speaker 2: You're still with the gang, right, like forty second Street, yo,
Speaker 2: And I get these blank faces.
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh.
Speaker 5: Shoot, because really was between ninety five and ninety nine
Speaker 5: when Juliani was like, we're getting rid of all this
Speaker 5: and we're making people invest in forty second Street. So
Speaker 5: my point was New York was a much more dangerous
Speaker 5: place than ninety five, and so that's why I was like, ood,
Speaker 5: I really don't want to move there, but this opportunity
Speaker 5: is that was awesome. I love I'm an R and
Speaker 5: B cat, but I grew up in d C where WPGC,
Speaker 5: before it was a black station, would play Barry Man
Speaker 5: Barry Manilow next to earth Wind and Fire, next to
Speaker 5: the Jackson five, next.
Speaker 1: To the Doobie Brothers. Right.
Speaker 3: So my musical intake.
Speaker 5: Was always multi genre, multi genre, and so that served
Speaker 5: me great at MTV. It frustrated a few people because
Speaker 5: they thought I was going to be the black guy,
Speaker 5: and I was the guy who was like, no, no, no,
Speaker 5: there's these folks called the Blackstreet Boys. We really should
Speaker 5: take a look at them.
Speaker 3: Imagine being his homie from Tom Joyner days, he's telling
Speaker 3: you about the back Boys. Yea too hot?
Speaker 1: You're not happy with Steve Wow? And what was your
Speaker 1: position director? I was director.
Speaker 5: I was a director of music programming, So I was
Speaker 5: on the team the selected the way we like to
Speaker 5: phrase it, the way America rock now. Back in MTV,
Speaker 5: this is back in MTV was actually playing music videos
Speaker 5: call it at least at least eight nine hours a day. Yeah,
Speaker 5: pure pure videos with with vj's in between, and so
Speaker 5: the music really mattered, Like you you played something, you
Speaker 5: moved the needle. Yeah, yeah, first song I remember being
Speaker 5: involved with, but I was like, no, no, this is
Speaker 5: the song we should play. I promise she was gonna hit.
Speaker 6: Was Skilo's I wish ski Loo, I wish.
Speaker 1: I what?
Speaker 5: So I was right, but without MTV would have been
Speaker 5: the same thing, right, It's it's really like we put
Speaker 5: on MTV and it started to blow up.
Speaker 1: It just it just it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was it was too smart old.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, yes, I believe you'll be You're gonna be
Speaker 5: talking to uh Chante Moore in a couple in a
Speaker 5: few weeks or soon, right, Yeah, really you should ask
Speaker 5: her about her involvement with ski Lo's. I wish it's
Speaker 5: her story to tell. It's her story to tell. But
Speaker 5: she's on the song. She's on the song. We like that, okay, right?
Speaker 5: Uh sow first record you pised? The first record I remember.
Speaker 5: I remember I picked and I was like, oh that
Speaker 5: was that was gonna work and they were there were
Speaker 5: kid rock days.
Speaker 6: Radiohead is still one of my favorite.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: It is my favorite rock group to this moment, because
Speaker 5: I remember when they came out. This was after Creep,
Speaker 5: when The Bends first came out, as when I started
Speaker 5: and and I was just blown away by their musicianship,
Speaker 5: there the risks they were willing to take, and Tom
Speaker 5: York's vocals or just he's He's one of my favorite
Speaker 5: soul singers. Yeah, so but it was great. Look, I
Speaker 5: talk about somebody who loves live shows, like being able
Speaker 5: to go. They used to call they used to call
Speaker 5: me the local because I go to three shows a night.
Speaker 5: I would literally go, like there'd be a showcase that
Speaker 5: a label was having early and then there'd be a
Speaker 5: Mercury Lounge would have somebody around eight o'clock and then
Speaker 5: be a a and I catch the final of some
Speaker 5: show at Madison Square Garden or something it was. It
Speaker 5: was like Dave Matthews band ever clear. Uh, it was
Speaker 5: you know jay Z has started around, it was starting
Speaker 5: around you.
Speaker 3: You were really locked in. And that is at once
Speaker 3: again sitting in a meeting and them talking about trying
Speaker 3: to get certain playlisters and different people in a room. Yes,
Speaker 3: you should not have to try to get music people
Speaker 3: in a music room. If you really love the music business,
Speaker 3: you should know what's coming, what's here, Well, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. You should be involved more so on
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, we think maybe such and such might
Speaker 3: come by this showcase. No, if you've signed up for
Speaker 3: this thing, you should be at that showcase. Yes, at
Speaker 3: whatever level, you're adding a business.
Speaker 5: And I try not to make it a generational thing
Speaker 5: because so many people want to talk about to talk
Speaker 5: about that, but I just know there's a there was
Speaker 5: a passion and I will say an ability.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 6: So live music has taken on the chin.
Speaker 5: Technology has made live music take it on the chin
Speaker 5: a little bit or a lot of bit over I
Speaker 5: think in the last certainly in the last thirty years.
Speaker 5: So there's a whole generation who doesn't understand what it's
Speaker 5: like to go to a club and hear things out
Speaker 5: of tune.
Speaker 1: Because it's live just for a moment.
Speaker 5: It's not because you're bad, it's because it's real, live
Speaker 5: and the passion may have not the passion in the
Speaker 5: note might not have met in that moment, but it's
Speaker 5: still a live experience, right, And so I think there's
Speaker 5: an entire generation who who does not have that experience,
Speaker 5: of course, which makes me always glad that I grew
Speaker 5: up when I did, because I got to see Jackson five, Prince,
Speaker 5: James Brown all live. And there's very few people who
Speaker 5: do it like that now. And it's not their fault.
Speaker 5: It's because what they had access to when they grew
Speaker 5: up taking music out of school, so they didn't know
Speaker 5: how to pick up a guitar in third grade. Like,
Speaker 5: there's a whole bunch of societal and technological things that
Speaker 5: made it so their experience had to be different.
Speaker 2: I also believe that that the requirement also, or the
Speaker 2: people requiring a certain thing kind of changed because we
Speaker 2: started gearing or moving away from music, people actually being
Speaker 2: in charge of music. Like the preparation of a Jackson five,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, the preparation of a James
Speaker 2: Brown of a that's.
Speaker 1: A costly preparation if you want to be that.
Speaker 2: And when the business started overtaking the art, they the
Speaker 2: business found ways to cut those.
Speaker 5: Corners debt service over dopeness, and debt service over dopeness.
Speaker 2: And and in their mind yield the same or a
Speaker 2: better result on the books. Yes, but from a career
Speaker 2: standpoint and in the idea of creating icons, yeah.
Speaker 3: It took a hit because they're just swapping people out.
Speaker 3: They're swapping people out. It's just like, Okay, who has
Speaker 3: a hot record right now that we can tag along to.
Speaker 3: We know what's in the pipeline. Oh, it's about one
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty thousands in there because they got, you know,
Speaker 3: some traction, and the analytics says that this record can
Speaker 3: go here if we just throw a little bit of money.
Speaker 3: But they're not saying, oh, let's also throw in some
Speaker 3: artists development. Let's also get them with a great choreographer
Speaker 3: and a vocal coach so they can stop hitting that
Speaker 3: bad note that they continue to hit.
Speaker 4: To continue to us all very consistent on that with
Speaker 4: the bad note, right, But that is where it.
Speaker 3: Where you need music people.
Speaker 5: You need music, You need music people, You need music people.
Speaker 6: Again, I'm gonna sound like the old guy.
Speaker 5: But there was the there was the the mo Austin's
Speaker 5: back in the day, like you got three albums before
Speaker 5: you got dropped three albums to find yourself, right right,
Speaker 5: you got you got multiple opportunities before they were like,
Speaker 5: we've given it a shot. It's not going to work,
Speaker 5: good luck, and that timeline is just condensed if your
Speaker 5: second single doesn't work. And let's not let's not understate
Speaker 5: how much the disruptor from tech made all this happen.
Speaker 5: Right Once, once you broke up the album, Oh, once
Speaker 5: you broke, Once you broke once you allowed you defined
Speaker 5: the you know, the album cut and the hot single
Speaker 5: or exactly the same price at ninety nine cents and
Speaker 5: you only have to buy one.
Speaker 6: It changed, It changed everything, and I.
Speaker 2: Think it killed the movie, right, it killed It killed
Speaker 2: the story. Yes, like there's a there's a like there
Speaker 2: are albums where okay, maybe there's not a hit single,
Speaker 2: but the story from song one to thirteen is absolutely incredible.
Speaker 5: The first so y'all have to know this. But Prince
Speaker 5: in nineteen eighty eight put out Love Sexy, and he
Speaker 5: refused to have any CDs printed that any tracks on it.
Speaker 5: You could only put it on and listen from start
Speaker 5: to finish. There was no track one track too, and
Speaker 5: so I remember there being a big, big fight about that.
Speaker 5: He's like, no, that's that's the way, that's how this
Speaker 5: is to be consumed.
Speaker 1: I wonder, from a business standpoint, how is that.
Speaker 3: Well time, because yeah, you can't get it off now
Speaker 3: unless you just have a long play of a song
Speaker 3: that just goes. But from a publishing and now you're
Speaker 3: selling a ten dollars song.
Speaker 6: Well right with Prince publishing was all the same.
Speaker 3: As you say, But.
Speaker 5: The bottom is crazy, top to bottom is crazy. But
Speaker 5: it really is taken away. Look, there's some artists will
Speaker 5: still make the entire artistic statement.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: And I love I love when that happens.
Speaker 1: I love.
Speaker 5: There's nothing I love more than like sitting on a
Speaker 5: on a car ride and listen to an album front
Speaker 5: to back. And I there's few of them in the
Speaker 5: last twenty years that that make me want to do that.
Speaker 1: I get for me.
Speaker 5: Also, it's an age thing I always wanted. I always
Speaker 5: want to asterisk I'm I'm older. But I think it's
Speaker 5: also the way that the business has been set up.
Speaker 5: The business has been set up thanks to uh, Steve Jobs.
Speaker 3: I still listen the same way though for me, from
Speaker 3: buy an album. If you put out an album, I'm
Speaker 3: going I'm not going to jump to the song that
Speaker 3: got a star on it on the playlist. I'm literally
Speaker 3: going to go from your intro to the end and
Speaker 3: then I'll decide what I liked from that standpoint, and
Speaker 3: maybe I'll go back and forth tongs that I like.
Speaker 3: But I am searching for that album that I literally
Speaker 3: can do that with and I and for me personally,
Speaker 3: I found albums that I can do that, yes, all
Speaker 3: the way through Leon Thomas Thomas front to back for sure,
Speaker 3: Kendrick Lamar G and X Yes.
Speaker 5: Yes, I'm I'm back back, front to back and back
Speaker 5: to front.
Speaker 3: Yes, Like I'm literally like those out for me personally,
Speaker 3: those are, you know, albums that I can either take
Speaker 3: a ride to, I'm at the gym, whatever those things are.
Speaker 3: I'm not skipping one song and it's hard to do that.
Speaker 3: Jazmine Sullivan Hotels. Absolutely Yes, I'm sorry.
Speaker 6: Yes to me, that's the last one that's.
Speaker 3: Summer over it.
Speaker 8: I to man like her every Victoria. I'm sorry Victoria Money,
Speaker 8: but I do I do that exactly what you said.
Speaker 3: I'm and we don't have to anymore obviously, but I
Speaker 3: love that experience.
Speaker 5: What's your favorite fund the back album of all time?
Speaker 1: Take time out of it? Favorite fund the back? Off
Speaker 1: the Wall?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean from the back.
Speaker 5: That's not your own, that's not corn I'm sorry, suld
Speaker 5: I said that before.
Speaker 1: Damn he stole my Off the Wall.
Speaker 9: So if it's off the walls, off the agreeable one,
Speaker 9: something different, it would.
Speaker 1: Have been thriller. But the Girl's Mine, I gotta do something.
Speaker 3: You don't like the Girl's Mine.
Speaker 5: I love the girls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people aren't. I'm gonna go.
Speaker 3: I love it. I love what Paul Carty says.
Speaker 1: I don't believe it. I don't believe it.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go, and a go on Impact.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go too. I'm gonna go. Joe Toosy Diary
Speaker 2: for Man Band and Brandy's first album, Brandy, Oh, that's.
Speaker 1: A good one.
Speaker 3: Over forever, my lady. You're gonna go. You're gonna go,
Speaker 3: You're gonna go, dive you. Maybe I have to for you, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for me, not along with Off the Wall, but
Speaker 2: just like Jesus.
Speaker 5: That's when I asked the question. I have no idea
Speaker 5: what my answer.
Speaker 1: Is gonna be. Uh.
Speaker 5: Well one, uh one is obviously it's the only It's
Speaker 5: the only album the Prince ever mentioned in the song
Speaker 5: where they where he mentioned the album and the singer
Speaker 5: is precious by Shante rocking on the rocking on the box.
Speaker 5: Uh so precious by Chante Moore. Seal second album, hm hmm,
Speaker 5: Seal second album. Uh And because I.
Speaker 6: Was such a Jackson five fan, which we haven't talked about.
Speaker 5: The the album ABC, their second album is just start
Speaker 5: to finish, Start to finish, my favorite album of theirs.
Speaker 5: And I promise you if you listen to a song
Speaker 5: called I Don't Know Why, I don't know Why I
Speaker 5: Love You, I don't know Why I Love You, which
Speaker 5: is the end of the first if you have their album,
Speaker 5: it's the last track on the first side, and it's
Speaker 5: Stevie Wonder wrote it. And people talk about how Michael
Speaker 5: Jackson sounded on Who's Loving You. The vocal that this
Speaker 5: twelve year old puts on the Stevie Wonder remake is unbelievable.
Speaker 5: I promise you just look up the album, maybe see
Speaker 5: by the Jackson five, I don't know why I love you,
Speaker 5: And listen to a twelve year old and remind yourself
Speaker 5: the twelve year old.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you what's because we have this
Speaker 3: back and forth at times. Is Michael Jackson the greatest
Speaker 3: kid singer of all time? Think of the rush, the rush,
Speaker 3: the rush.
Speaker 6: Okay, no, and don't give me okay, kid, give me
Speaker 6: what age?
Speaker 5: Give me an age range?
Speaker 3: Anything under eighteen.
Speaker 1: No, it's not kid, it's a kid. It's got to
Speaker 1: be anything like under thirteen, anything under twelve, that's a kid.
Speaker 5: So Frankie Lyman's in the conversation, Michael Jackson's in the conversation,
Speaker 5: Tevin Campbell in the conversation Wonder, there's Stevie Wonder.
Speaker 6: I have to now, I have to say, but.
Speaker 3: Yes, when he's singing that.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's true. But okay, I'm glad you.
Speaker 5: So listen to Stevie Wonder singing young, and then Michael
Speaker 5: Jackson singing Love Young.
Speaker 1: I gotta go.
Speaker 5: I gotta go with Mike at young when it comes.
Speaker 5: When it gets older, it gets closer.
Speaker 3: But Mike changes his voice as he gets older, just
Speaker 3: so Steve. Yeah, I get it.
Speaker 5: But as a kid, I got tomorrow, That's what That's
Speaker 5: what I'm saying, Tevin, Frankie, Michael, Who's it? Is there
Speaker 5: a young woman in that conversation.
Speaker 3: The closest I would think would be Brandy.
Speaker 5: She was sixteen, was fIF she was fifteen, fifteen.
Speaker 3: She was saying, she says, she's sang them at fifteen, Yeah,
Speaker 3: fourteen fifteen?
Speaker 1: Is there a young Jojoh was pretty crazy? Jojo was crazy.
Speaker 1: Jojo was a good one.
Speaker 3: Jo was crazy. Uh.
Speaker 5: I am taking Michael Jackson because no one, for forget
Speaker 5: technical ability.
Speaker 1: But no one had the soul.
Speaker 5: I'm telling you, listen to this one song and you
Speaker 5: will have to keep reminding yourself to the twelve year olds.
Speaker 2: I like the way you articulated that because me, Me
Speaker 2: and Jay go back and forth with this a lot,
Speaker 2: and I think as you broke it down, I think
Speaker 2: technically Devin was the best. But when you add that
Speaker 2: soul element to it, I believed Michael. It's like when
Speaker 2: they say, oh, that kid has an old soul. Yes,
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson had an old soul. From the beginning.
Speaker 3: It did not sound like a key No, he had
Speaker 3: a high voice, but it's like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's like a little grown he had the fazing
Speaker 5: a little person.
Speaker 10: Really, he's in a movie with mar Willians smoking.
Speaker 1: Robinson said.
Speaker 5: The coolest thing about I thought about Michael Jackson said
Speaker 5: he had never met anyone who was more grown up
Speaker 5: when he was a kid, and never met anybody who
Speaker 5: was more of a kid when.
Speaker 3: He was growing grown up.
Speaker 1: Wow, that was Michael Jackson.
Speaker 3: Bar because that is that bounds it all us, it does.
Speaker 1: All right, take me from MTV TV.
Speaker 3: E no, before you go to BT, though, I have
Speaker 3: a question. Yeah, did you hire Tyres for MTV?
Speaker 1: Hire him? No?
Speaker 5: No, no, no no, no, I did not.
Speaker 3: What did he do? I forget what he do? He was,
Speaker 3: That's why I asked.
Speaker 1: That's no.
Speaker 5: I think he may have gotten there after you lever
Speaker 5: I left. I feel like he was post ninety nine.
Speaker 1: I left. I left the April ninety nine.
Speaker 5: Uh okay, wait, yes, MTV is lovely and I won't
Speaker 5: go into it, but I think this think is funny.
Speaker 5: I can always uh and when I left MTV because
Speaker 5: it was the.
Speaker 1: Uh week.
Speaker 5: That uh the NAS hate Me Now video came out?
Speaker 5: Video I was at MTV. That's the story that doesn't
Speaker 5: get told right, The story that gets told is like, oh,
Speaker 5: somebody went to the Universal Building hit Steve's out on
Speaker 5: the head. There was another crew that came over to
Speaker 5: MTV to see you, to see all of us.
Speaker 9: All of us, to see all of us because the
Speaker 9: video got played on MTV.
Speaker 5: I won't I won't use any proper now that I
Speaker 5: don't know if it ever got explained.
Speaker 1: So we have standards and.
Speaker 5: Practices that has that that that you can't say these
Speaker 5: words in there, you can't serve this much in the video.
Speaker 5: So videos come in, videos coming to MTV, we'd say
Speaker 5: whether we will to play them or not, and then
Speaker 5: to go to the standards practices. Standards and practices would say, oh,
Speaker 5: you have to take this out. You have to take
Speaker 5: out you have to not say that word, you can't
Speaker 5: show that body part. It goes back to the label.
Speaker 5: Label makes those edits and it comes back to MTV.
Speaker 3: Hate me.
Speaker 1: Now. Video comes in, goes to standards and practices, they.
Speaker 5: Make their edits. But an artist being on the cross
Speaker 5: was not a standards and practices edit.
Speaker 6: It was not It was a required question.
Speaker 5: Edit from the from one of the artists on that
Speaker 5: And so video artists didn't want they didn't want to
Speaker 5: be on the Cross. Did not want to be on
Speaker 5: the Cross. Video goes back to the label. Label makes
Speaker 5: the standards and practices edits doesn't make the artists requested.
Speaker 5: Edit gets back to MTV. Now candidly, it was MTV's
Speaker 5: job to make sure that that artist requested edit was
Speaker 5: out right, standard practices did their job, label did their job.
Speaker 1: Everybody had their notes, everybody had their notes.
Speaker 5: It came back, it got missed over, it when on
Speaker 5: the air, and all hell broke loose. It was, but
Speaker 5: it was, it was. It was a simple mistake. Nobody's
Speaker 5: I don't as I understand it. Nobody was trying to
Speaker 5: pull over anything there was. You know, yes, the label
Speaker 5: should have pulled it out because their artists requested it,
Speaker 5: but it was really on us before it got on
Speaker 5: the air to to make sure that got done.
Speaker 1: So I've never told that story. I don't think. I
Speaker 1: don't think.
Speaker 3: I think I've ever told that story.
Speaker 1: But that was the week I left m TV. That's
Speaker 1: that's how we got to that.
Speaker 5: People here, no, no, and security ain't good enough. No.
Speaker 3: I will say this and.
Speaker 2: Again, there was just feel like a black operation. How
Speaker 2: much we'll hang out with the black no.
Speaker 3: No, no, to that point.
Speaker 5: To that point, the person who was who was the
Speaker 5: head of Running Music at that time, uh was, uh was, Uh,
Speaker 5: there's a couple of white folks who I remember feeling like, Oh,
Speaker 5: I'm You're lucky I'm here this week, since I'm here
Speaker 5: to protect you and have a conversation and a language
Speaker 5: that you really can't have you won't be able to
Speaker 5: have next week. No, that's not because another my man
Speaker 5: was there, he would have had the conversation. But you
Speaker 5: had a senior level person having this conversation. So yeah,
Speaker 5: so they were yeah, and then and then no bad
Speaker 5: boy stuff got played for like four or.
Speaker 3: Five months after that. That was the you can't because
Speaker 3: they did. They came into the building.
Speaker 5: They came in into the m TV building like a
Speaker 5: MTV building, like they came into the Universal building.
Speaker 3: No passes, no passing landers.
Speaker 5: The guy, the guy from the guy, the label executive
Speaker 5: came through with the four big dudes.
Speaker 3: Said I needed them to facilitate my movement. That's what
Speaker 3: the four big dudes were doing.
Speaker 5: That's what the four big dudes would do. The label
Speaker 5: executive literally said, I said what what I was like
Speaker 5: when I talked to them off was like, why'd you
Speaker 5: come through like this? It's not going to bode well
Speaker 5: for you, Like I'm leaving like you ain't got me
Speaker 5: to like I needed them to facilitate my movement. If
Speaker 5: you see this, you know who you are?
Speaker 3: He did.
Speaker 1: I like, first, I'm rolling with that.
Speaker 3: Mh. So now you now, now it's a great way
Speaker 3: to go out in the door.
Speaker 5: It was an interesting way to go out the door.
Speaker 5: It was an interesting Yes. So I went to b E.
Speaker 5: T Uh as a VP of music programming.
Speaker 3: Again. That was time when when BT played U uh,
Speaker 3: everybody playing video.
Speaker 5: Everybody's playing videos and so I came away. You just
Speaker 5: want to jump the tip thrill? Is that what you're doing?
Speaker 5: You can always So.
Speaker 6: Here's the here's here's here's the thing to know.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing to know about b Et Young cut
Speaker 1: and we'll jump around again the cut so again.
Speaker 5: Because we appreciate artists and what they do and always
Speaker 5: want artists, whether it's no awards show, where it's in videos,
Speaker 5: want to have artists be able to present themselves the
Speaker 5: way they'd like to present themselves. We were conundrum because
Speaker 5: we couldn't do that during the day because the standards
Speaker 5: of the equivalent of standards and practices at BEET wouldn't
Speaker 5: allow it. And I understood it. You don't want to
Speaker 5: have champagne being poured on.
Speaker 3: People, so do standards and practices go to sleep at
Speaker 3: a certain time.
Speaker 5: So it's so the deal that we made was, look,
Speaker 5: we just want to we like to play videos more
Speaker 5: like the artists want them.
Speaker 1: We understand it can happen during the day.
Speaker 5: As a matter of fact, we can be more strict
Speaker 5: during the day if you allow that thing at night
Speaker 5: at two o'clock in the morning. And there was a boy,
Speaker 5: there were people, folks bought in. So that was But
Speaker 5: here's the thing. It was so that videos that already
Speaker 5: existed and videos that were made would have an outlet
Speaker 5: during the day and there and then at night during
Speaker 5: bet Cut and if I'm not mistaken, Bet you and
Speaker 5: Cut came on it two o'clock, two to four, two
Speaker 5: to four, three to five, and we were like, if
Speaker 5: you got your twelve year old up at midnight, then
Speaker 5: your your problem is not bet.
Speaker 1: And that's tip Drill is the.
Speaker 3: Poster child for this.
Speaker 5: Is that people started making videos for uncut, right, And
Speaker 5: so I'll take the blame for not seeing that coming.
Speaker 1: We were really just going.
Speaker 5: To have artists so like, oh, you gotta cut that
Speaker 5: out of my video. We gotta cut it out during
Speaker 5: the day, but you get this at night, right, So
Speaker 5: we didn't expect people to just like we ain't trying
Speaker 5: to get daytime play. We're just getting gun cut because
Speaker 5: we didn't realize how big uncut.
Speaker 3: Uncut was a ratings.
Speaker 1: You thought you were doing some type of damage control
Speaker 1: he's giving them. That's all that was in many answer.
Speaker 5: Right, Okay, a common theme throughout things like wanting artists
Speaker 5: to present themselves the way they want to, the way
Speaker 5: they desired, all this stuff.
Speaker 6: So so here's.
Speaker 5: What I knew uncut was a problem. I knew uncut
Speaker 5: was a problem when Patti LaBelle comes on one oh
Speaker 5: six and Park because she had something else she started
Speaker 5: too or something. She comes on and and she was asked, so,
Speaker 5: what do you what are you watching now? Like what
Speaker 5: the things you watch on TV? Just ran in crush
Speaker 5: and she's like, I really like on BT on cut
Speaker 5: and we were like, and I forget the follow up.
Speaker 5: The follow was like just trying to check, like like
Speaker 5: sure she wasn't saying just to be funny.
Speaker 1: He said, oh no, no.
Speaker 3: Was that video? What the thing smelled like?
Speaker 1: Commercial? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, yes, cooking.
Speaker 1: Turn that out.
Speaker 5: So it was great one of the two of the
Speaker 5: best things that happened, as bt cut happened and bet
Speaker 5: Uncut ended. It was because things were getting out of hand.
Speaker 5: People were protesting in front of my boss's house. Really
Speaker 5: oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yah, yeah, oh yeah it was.
Speaker 5: I mean just videos, videos overall were being blamed as
Speaker 5: being the scourge of America, right they were. The videos
Speaker 5: were the reason that America was going down the tubes. Yeah,
Speaker 5: uh it was you know, you see the Lords Tucker
Speaker 5: never that that trajectory never really ended. Uh and then
Speaker 5: you know the videos with again Champagne on women and
Speaker 5: everything else didn't.
Speaker 1: Really help it.
Speaker 5: So, uh there were church there were church groups that
Speaker 5: would protest outside my boss's house.
Speaker 3: And so are you in DC at this time?
Speaker 1: Were you know?
Speaker 3: We started?
Speaker 5: I started in DC in ninety nine and then I
Speaker 5: thought it would a few years to get the thing
Speaker 5: moved to uh New York. But thanks to uh Bob Johnson, Deverly,
Speaker 5: Curtis Gats and we got one of six and parks
Speaker 5: started on in in fall of two thousands, so it
Speaker 5: was only a year. Nice nice to my house in
Speaker 5: DC just stayed empty for I don't know, and it's
Speaker 5: that's another story. But yeah, so that was that was
Speaker 5: a real challenge for a problem challenge for a while
Speaker 5: was UH videos and their content and how we were
Speaker 5: being blamed. One of the most boss moves I ever saw,
Speaker 5: who was Bob Johnson called me and said, I need
Speaker 5: a head of every label on the on the phone
Speaker 5: at three o'clock in the I remember it was three
Speaker 5: three o'clock PM. I don't remember what day of the
Speaker 5: week it was, but I need every label, every label head.
Speaker 5: But like I'm like, we don't know what they're doing.
Speaker 5: They might have means like every label head on the phone,
Speaker 5: and so I'm dialing, We're just dialing for dollars. It's like,
Speaker 5: please can you make sure that? And I've sent who
Speaker 5: the label heads were at the time, like like like
Speaker 5: like the mucketed MUCKs, you know, uh, Donnie Ironer here,
Speaker 5: Doug Morris, like all the like the big dudes, and
Speaker 5: they were there at three o'clock PM. And and and
Speaker 5: Bob was like, we're taking all of this flack for
Speaker 5: things that you are producing. So if you don't start
Speaker 5: taking some of this or find a way to make
Speaker 5: sure that we're not taking all of it, it's going
Speaker 5: to be a problem. And I and I and I
Speaker 5: appreciated that because we because BT took a lot of
Speaker 5: flak for videos that we we edited down. We we
Speaker 5: we we we couldn't tell people to what you're just.
Speaker 1: Doing your best to represent the artists and their freedoms
Speaker 1: and their artistic vision, like you were just trying your
Speaker 1: best to support.
Speaker 5: That was that is indeed, that is indeed the case
Speaker 5: as BT did long before I got there, and it's
Speaker 5: done long since I left.
Speaker 2: But it's like, also, you kind of gotta help us
Speaker 2: out when you're dating.
Speaker 3: You can't deliver. You can't deliver. You can't you can't deliver.
Speaker 5: I can't think of I don't want to call out
Speaker 5: any video, but you can't call out the villain.
Speaker 3: You can't deliver the.
Speaker 5: Video where they're they're pouring a honey on a selection
Speaker 5: of women and then smacking the ass and go like,
Speaker 5: y'all plan.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, Well if you if you go on YouTube,
Speaker 3: it's a free for all now now everything, but at
Speaker 3: no one's expense.
Speaker 1: Right at your own expense at that point.
Speaker 3: But and that's the thing I just wonder, also, are
Speaker 3: those same people picketing in front of the YouTube officers they.
Speaker 1: Gave up the fight the fight?
Speaker 3: Did they give up the fight or was it that
Speaker 3: they were holding BT to a different standard, because it
Speaker 3: was like, it's my cousin.
Speaker 5: I think that's both.
Speaker 3: We're all black, I can go and.
Speaker 5: I'm always looking for the positive side of things. And
Speaker 5: so what that meant is that they were passionate about right,
Speaker 5: CBS doesn't have fans, right, ABC didn't have fans.
Speaker 1: TBS doesn't have fans. BT had fans.
Speaker 5: BT had folks who were always cheering for us and
Speaker 5: wanted to hold us accountable.
Speaker 6: The wholding accountable didn't didn't really bother me.
Speaker 5: It was the level to which they went and invaded
Speaker 5: people's private lives that was That was a real real
Speaker 5: challenge behind that. But I always always appreciated that folks
Speaker 5: cheered for us, folks want us to win. Folks. Bob
Speaker 5: Johnson talks about the day that they rang the bell
Speaker 5: at the Stock Exchange and the people who working in
Speaker 5: the service jobs who were black were like crying because
Speaker 5: they hadn't seen something like that happen before, and they
Speaker 5: were really proud of that, of that moment, and they
Speaker 5: were to stock Exchange and see people come by ringing
Speaker 5: the bells for years and then, but to see a
Speaker 5: black man do it for a media company was really
Speaker 5: was really special. B BT is just an unbelievably special place.
Speaker 5: Jumping off ground. Uh entity just awesome.
Speaker 1: Let's talk one six and Park Man. Okay, let's let's
Speaker 1: talk to talk man. Let's what about it? I mean,
Speaker 1: what's so much? One O six and Park.
Speaker 2: The landmark, Yes, where everybody wanted to land.
Speaker 1: How how tricky.
Speaker 2: Was was that for you to manage all of who
Speaker 2: gets who gets to sit? Or okay, who gets to
Speaker 2: just get their video played? Okay, you can perform? Maybe
Speaker 2: you like all of these things.
Speaker 5: So I need to shout out a few people so
Speaker 5: I can get into the story and not worry about
Speaker 5: doing it now. Penny McDonald, who was simple leave my
Speaker 5: right hand for so many years and instrumental in so
Speaker 5: many of these things that you're going to ask about,
Speaker 5: was Penny McDonald, Rick Grimes, Lee Harris, Melanie Massey, uh
Speaker 5: and talent, Kelly g and music. And as I think
Speaker 5: of more people, I will, I will, I will somt
Speaker 5: them out. Stephanie Hodges insub because she was always in
Speaker 5: sub board and I'd say, hey, can you do this,
Speaker 5: She's like, y'all do it and then not do it
Speaker 5: and then it would be better than the thing I
Speaker 5: asked for. So just a really Stephie Hodges was a
Speaker 5: great was it was. It was a great great inventive
Speaker 5: producer as well. Now, okay, I just want to make
Speaker 5: sure that people because I never because one O six
Speaker 5: in part was completely a gang of folks who really
Speaker 5: believed in the mission when other folks would and I
Speaker 5: rarely say these, you got me saying a lot who
Speaker 5: really believed that we would never ever come close to
Speaker 5: t r L And that was the that was undoubtedly
Speaker 5: the driver for the first first year and more than
Speaker 5: the first year. But getting to their level, or getting
Speaker 5: to their ratings level, not their creative level. But we
Speaker 5: had a report card every day, which is ratings like
Speaker 5: how many people watched to you, how many people watch them?
Speaker 5: And I was maniacal about watching about seeing that how
Speaker 5: that was.
Speaker 6: But it was just it was a it was just
Speaker 6: flavor of love.
Speaker 5: The the so the one oh six in Park in
Speaker 5: a lot of ways was built around my first Jackson
Speaker 5: five concert July seventeenth.
Speaker 3: Nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 5: The Commodore's open, fine, Commodore Commodores are open. They have
Speaker 5: no single machine guns, not out yet. And while they're
Speaker 5: on the audience is screaming, we want the Jackson five,
Speaker 5: we want the Jackson five.
Speaker 6: While they're performed.
Speaker 5: So they don't know who the Commodore are. They don't
Speaker 5: realize a lot of or Richie's gonna go to be
Speaker 5: one of the greatest, Like they don't know what they're
Speaker 5: seeing in the moment.
Speaker 3: Not that did I.
Speaker 5: And they go off, they go off stage, and the
Speaker 5: lights come on, and the lights went down before the
Speaker 5: Jackson five came on, and there was a sound that
Speaker 5: when I talk about I can still hear in my ear.
Speaker 5: There was a scream, there was a whale, there was
Speaker 5: a there was an antisity, there was audio, uh audible
Speaker 5: anticipation of that thing that was coming up next.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 5: One O six in Park I always wanted to get
Speaker 5: that sound, like that sound of teenagers, young black teenagers,
Speaker 5: losing their mind, like for that thing.
Speaker 6: That's about to come out next.
Speaker 5: Is what one O six in Park was built for
Speaker 5: and to do and we got we got and again lucky, lucky, lucky.
Speaker 5: It came along the same time that Bow Wow came out, right,
Speaker 5: and so.
Speaker 1: From the beginning to the end, and so.
Speaker 5: We had you know, there's a bunch of people who
Speaker 5: do we had on in great talent, but bow Wow was.
Speaker 6: The first act that got that sound.
Speaker 5: That sound, yeah, that sound that I that I'd heard
Speaker 5: twenty nine years before was was was had when bow
Speaker 5: Wow came out. And then B two K and then
Speaker 5: Chris Brown, then Trey Songs and the whole bunch of
Speaker 5: like I got to hear that sound.
Speaker 3: Talk about genuine and the ambulance.
Speaker 6: We ain't got to that point.
Speaker 1: You got.
Speaker 6: Genuine, genuinees wasn't anticipation.
Speaker 5: Genuine wasn't like genuine, and then you spring it was
Speaker 5: it was like bow Wow and you know right right
Speaker 5: it was. B two K was so crazy. I know
Speaker 5: B two K was so crazy that we were trying
Speaker 5: not to let them know when we were We would
Speaker 5: actually trying to tape that show so it wasn't live,
Speaker 5: so people wouldn't come up because they were live. And
Speaker 5: once and it was the first she was there, they
Speaker 5: came to one O sixth and Park. I want to
Speaker 5: go to details because one of the park in case
Speaker 5: you don't know, was named after the intersection where the
Speaker 5: studios studio actually was one O six and Park in
Speaker 5: in uh In in New York. They came up and
Speaker 5: these these girls came up and surrounded the building and
Speaker 5: I mean beatles like like like coming into JFK. Like
Speaker 5: I'm not exaggerating and I'll just clap cap it off.
Speaker 5: And they were like, and the police came out and
Speaker 5: these girls like, we.
Speaker 3: Want to get in, we gotta get in, we gotta
Speaker 3: get in.
Speaker 1: You're not getting in.
Speaker 5: And I saw a fourteen year old girl get thrown
Speaker 5: into a back of the police cruiser. Now I know
Speaker 5: things have changed, but I like she deserved to be
Speaker 5: in the back of the police cruiser.
Speaker 1: Like she deserved that.
Speaker 6: She deserved, she earned it.
Speaker 1: She earned the back of that cruise with her behavior.
Speaker 5: Now we made sure that she got out, it was right,
Speaker 5: but I was like, we gotta give.
Speaker 1: Her a minute put her in.
Speaker 5: That That was the that was the activity, that was
Speaker 5: the energy there was around around Bet and it was
Speaker 5: it was just it's just the best thing. We talked
Speaker 5: about the business of political side of the business, which
Speaker 5: I don't want to spend that much time on tell
Speaker 5: you the shoes, but I will say days of bad
Speaker 5: meetings or board presentations or something I freaking loved at
Speaker 5: six o'clock.
Speaker 1: I could go to the studio.
Speaker 5: I could go to the studio and just make the connection,
Speaker 5: make the connection with the audience, like they were the
Speaker 5: livest audience there was. There was hardly ever like they
Speaker 5: really like. I didn't realize we were. I didn't realize
Speaker 5: the first that there was for that type of entertainment.
Speaker 5: I didn't really realize like t r O was their
Speaker 5: default because there was nothing else like One of Six
Speaker 5: and Park live. Like there was a lot of stuff.
Speaker 5: BT had great music shows before and video soul, but
Speaker 5: it wasn't live. It wasn't with an audience. It wasn't
Speaker 5: You couldn't see your culture with you. And so again
Speaker 5: we we we got, we got lucky in One of
Speaker 5: Six in Park.
Speaker 3: Uh. It lasted fourteen years, fourteen.
Speaker 1: Years, wow, fourteen.
Speaker 3: I want to say, the part was great.
Speaker 5: It was great, And nothing makes me happier than hearing
Speaker 5: people talk about how One of Six in Park was
Speaker 5: was an absolute part of their childhood, right, and it
Speaker 5: they feel about One of six Park like I do
Speaker 5: about Soul Train h m hmm.
Speaker 3: Right, and to and to be.
Speaker 5: Part of that, to be part of that absolute like that,
Speaker 5: to have entertained it's just it's it's it's it's the
Speaker 5: greatest thing in the world. I was on one of
Speaker 5: six and few times we were I wanted to me
Speaker 5: to tell it we were somewhere. We were somewhere, and
Speaker 5: they because my wife is fantastic. My wife is just
Speaker 5: the best at what she does and is amazing. And
Speaker 5: its crowds wherever she goes, and someone asks like like, like,
Speaker 5: I mean, you do you feel bad? How do you
Speaker 5: feel that your wife is so like she's so popular,
Speaker 5: and like you just in the background, I'm like, I
Speaker 5: feel great. Number one, She's the greatest in the world.
Speaker 5: I love I love supporting her. Number two.
Speaker 1: That was kind of part of one O six in Park.
Speaker 5: So I'm good Bet Awards one of six in part
Speaker 5: like I'm like, I'm good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like my goal.
Speaker 5: Literally I got to be around music and entertain people
Speaker 5: and make people smile, like that's the thing. And without
Speaker 5: any musical talent, like that's the thing. I just got
Speaker 5: to I got to be the art I got to
Speaker 5: be the art gallery. I got to be part of
Speaker 5: our gallery, a curator of our gallery. Like, oh, this
Speaker 5: is gonna be good with that. That's gonna work. There,
Speaker 5: that's gonna work. Oh, they got a genuine, genuine with
Speaker 5: the ambulance.
Speaker 6: That's gonna be a lot of fun. That'll that'll work.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 5: It is a great performance, genuine and genuine coming out
Speaker 5: of the stretch.
Speaker 1: Is just that bad acting. They said, something happened to j.
Speaker 3: He's not going to make it.
Speaker 1: He's not going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, great that you said though awards. Yes, sir,
Speaker 3: h yeah, there was another amazing thing. Yes, that you
Speaker 3: were a part of curating this.
Speaker 2: I want to say this before you before you say
Speaker 2: what you're going to say. You know, I want to
Speaker 2: say this, and I don't want to ruffle any feathers.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do any feather Yeah, there ruffling.
Speaker 2: I just you know what, Let me frame it like this.
Speaker 2: Let me say like, by the.
Speaker 5: Way, feathers, feathers in a cap when there's a cap
Speaker 5: means you did something really good. I learned that after
Speaker 5: the Kendrick Lamar uh destected Kendrick Lamar super feather his cap,
Speaker 5: so ruffling feathers is perfectly fine, right now, Okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 5: I just want to make that I'm gonna frame it
Speaker 5: this way.
Speaker 2: Things changed after Stephen Hill. Things changed, they were different,
Speaker 2: and I remember the times of Stephen Hill, and those
Speaker 2: were some great fucking times.
Speaker 5: That's all I'm gonna say. All right, that's a great statement.
Speaker 5: Glad there was no question to it. I will say this.
Speaker 5: I think it goes back to the thing that we
Speaker 5: talked about before in terms of artist preparation, artist development,
Speaker 5: and artist preparation. I think there is some the artists
Speaker 5: of now performed differently and need different things on stage
Speaker 5: than the artists earlier, right.
Speaker 6: And so I think that may be some of the
Speaker 6: thing you're you're you're noticing.
Speaker 1: It's it.
Speaker 5: Uh yeah, yeah. I I've not missed a show. I
Speaker 5: still go and I still stand up, and I love
Speaker 5: every show.
Speaker 1: I think that.
Speaker 5: Actually, I think this past year was one of the
Speaker 5: best ones ever. And I and and what needs to
Speaker 5: be pointed out in I don't think it's gets enough
Speaker 5: notice is the BT Awards of twenty twenty COVID set
Speaker 5: the blueprint for how every Awards show did.
Speaker 6: No one knew how.
Speaker 5: To do award shows when COVID came around, No one like,
Speaker 5: what are we gonna do?
Speaker 3: What are we gonna do?
Speaker 5: And Connie Orlando and Jesse Collins and and Dion Dion Harmon.
Speaker 5: Uh I was supposed to say Dianicole Harmon because that's
Speaker 5: what it uh, Dion, It's it's it's like Chuck Berry
Speaker 5: playing the guitar like if you if you're now, and
Speaker 5: you're like, well, that's not really, that's really there's nothing
Speaker 5: special about that.
Speaker 6: But it was pioneering. It was like no one had
Speaker 6: done that before.
Speaker 5: And so the BT Awards twenty twenty if you look bad,
Speaker 5: I had at Lesha Keys out there and it was
Speaker 5: it was the George Floyd year as well. I mean
Speaker 5: a little baby laying down like and and was able
Speaker 5: to keep you captured with no audience, with no audience,
Speaker 5: and that's what happened for the next year. BT Awards
Speaker 5: twenty twenty one was the first one to give you
Speaker 5: the little cocktail setting, like the cock the look for
Speaker 5: the cocktail tables and now what did what did?
Speaker 1: What did?
Speaker 3: What did the Grammys have this year?
Speaker 1: Will Grahams have this year?
Speaker 5: Cocktail, the little cocktails tables around. So I always want
Speaker 5: to sell it because because I don't think i'd get
Speaker 5: enough credit for being kind of the Chuck Berry, uh,
Speaker 5: coming out of COVID when no one knew knew what
Speaker 5: to do.
Speaker 2: I just I don't know if the I don't And
Speaker 2: speaking of just times changing and maybe the artists of
Speaker 2: people in terms of how they view things, it just
Speaker 2: feels like the reverence of a thing is just different now.
Speaker 2: Like I remember. I remember, like when the BET Awards
Speaker 2: was coming up, like it was a frenzy for all
Speaker 2: you know what I mean. There wasn't gonna be anybody
Speaker 2: missing at the BET Awards. It wasn't gonna be anybody
Speaker 2: like the BT. No, I'm good on that when I'm
Speaker 2: just you know, it wasn't no really sitting at home
Speaker 2: like the top of the Top were at the BET Awards.
Speaker 5: In my time, in my yes, also in your time.
Speaker 5: And I don't think it's uh uh, it's not a coincidence.
Speaker 5: It's not a not a coincidence. What I'm I forget
Speaker 5: what to say, but you'll understand.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying.
Speaker 5: BT was also involved daily in how much you got exposure,
Speaker 5: right right, those those those things are connected. I remember
Speaker 5: making can't I remember making some deals like we really
Speaker 5: would love to have you at the show, Okay, video
Speaker 5: play for this artist, because we're building this show.
Speaker 1: These are the things we're gonna do.
Speaker 6: And I think that's it's it, that's that's I'll use
Speaker 6: the word leverage.
Speaker 1: There was leverage. There was there was a there was
Speaker 1: a negotiation.
Speaker 5: It was a great given, there was a great given,
Speaker 5: there was a great give and take. And and I
Speaker 5: think it's still true that and they know we want
Speaker 5: you to look good, like they know everybody. We're we're
Speaker 5: into making this and and it's the thing, it's it's
Speaker 5: the thing that continues with the BET Awards.
Speaker 6: You want to make things look as best as they
Speaker 6: possibly can.
Speaker 5: I think the Hip Hop Awards gets overlooked is because
Speaker 5: the idea was make was to make hip hop shine,
Speaker 5: make something it's grimy shine as well and look looks spectacular.
Speaker 1: Do you as you say that?
Speaker 2: I love that you said that, because that makes a
Speaker 2: whole lot of sense.
Speaker 1: Do you do you feel like as we have our.
Speaker 2: YouTube and our Instagram and all these things that now
Speaker 2: fuel our content, do you feel like we are still
Speaker 2: missing that the one thing, that one show, that one
Speaker 2: that one O six in Park that you know, kind
Speaker 2: of that shaped the the childhoods, that shaped the careers
Speaker 2: and shaped and brought everybody together in this one place.
Speaker 5: So I miss it. But again, once again I must
Speaker 5: remind you, I'm older. I respect that there's a generation
Speaker 5: whose discovery of music is very different than what I
Speaker 5: or we did, right. We enjoyed having curated music. We
Speaker 5: enjoyed listening to the radio and hearing what the new
Speaker 5: thing was. We enjoyed watching soul training and seeing with
Speaker 5: the new dances. We enjoyed watching one O six in
Speaker 5: Park and then going to school and sharing that thing.
Speaker 5: I think the DSPs, Spotify, Apple Music Title, all the
Speaker 5: rest of them, and YouTube made it so. Folks don't
Speaker 5: want to be curated to thet. They want to be
Speaker 5: able to make the discover themselves and go, hey this
Speaker 5: is what I discovered.
Speaker 3: Do you like it too?
Speaker 1: And then things got shared? Right.
Speaker 5: I think the Internet and that approach is a way
Speaker 5: that this generation enjoys it. Where we enjoyed, We loved
Speaker 5: having that central core thing. We loved being able to
Speaker 5: talk about that performance. I think award ward shows still
Speaker 5: do that. I love the chatter that existed around the
Speaker 5: the super Bowl halftime show super Bowl Halftime show this year,
Speaker 5: I loved all of the conversation around it. I got
Speaker 5: a shout out once again produced by Jesse Andon.
Speaker 1: Yes, because.
Speaker 5: It I still like things that unite folks and the
Speaker 5: thing about that unites them and then people don't go
Speaker 5: and have their own opinions and everybody's got their own
Speaker 5: TikTok video. But in terms of discovery of music and
Speaker 5: new music, folks like it's it's hard written. Terrestial radio
Speaker 5: is still around, but it's but it's more it's more
Speaker 5: of a I want to discover it. I want to
Speaker 5: I'm gonna go through things myself.
Speaker 3: But don't you think we deserve alternatives, right because we
Speaker 3: still have Jimmy Kimmel, Yes, we still have Foulon, but
Speaker 3: we have nothing for the black community or for urban music,
Speaker 3: and we you know, it's you got to roll the
Speaker 3: dice to see who's who's going to get on one
Speaker 3: of those shows, right, So, but before we've we've had
Speaker 3: so to you know, like, I completely understand and respect
Speaker 3: what you're saying. I just think that if those shows
Speaker 3: can still exist, why can't ours, Why can't I our
Speaker 3: senior hall still exists? Why can a one O six
Speaker 3: in park still exists? Are as ol trained or yes?
Speaker 3: Which the times are changing, so yes, the newer versions
Speaker 3: of them, right, it's coming along. But Johnny Carson, Jimmy Fallon,
Speaker 3: now it's just you know what I mean, it's and
Speaker 3: those shows haven't changed much.
Speaker 5: But if they're not music based, right, there's a music
Speaker 5: performance on it. I think that, And that's.
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying, Like I'm saying something that just
Speaker 3: like we don't have anything where in the space honestly
Speaker 3: that an urban artist, a new R and B artist, a.
Speaker 1: New new actor act.
Speaker 5: So I'm I'm going to I'm going to argue for
Speaker 5: Questlove because because that show has had a few artists
Speaker 5: that I was surprised, and I know he's kind of
Speaker 5: pushing buttons behind trying to trying to get that done.
Speaker 1: I don't what is that?
Speaker 5: Oh, I'm sorry, that's a that's a Fallon show, Jimmy
Speaker 5: Fallon tonight show the roots because.
Speaker 1: The roots of the roots of the band.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I get it, but it's not our show.
Speaker 3: That's it's not his show, I think because I was
Speaker 3: about to say, what's you are you talking about? You
Speaker 3: said it was so and I realized that they're the
Speaker 3: band for it his show. That's the difference between having
Speaker 3: one O six in part are having our Senior Hall,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: I think as soon as someone finds that there's money
Speaker 5: to be made and having a new or Senio Hall,
Speaker 5: our Senior Hall will come back. I just don't think,
Speaker 5: and especially in this climate right now, I don't see
Speaker 5: someone turning a Tonight like show and let's it's really
Speaker 5: on the Tonight show in Saturday Live right those those
Speaker 5: feel like the only places. And if you ask record folks,
Speaker 5: SNL moves the needle every once in a while it's
Speaker 5: a great performance. One of those other shows will move
Speaker 5: the needle, but it's much more for additional exposure. I
Speaker 5: think as soon as someone believes that that our Senial
Speaker 5: Hall or the new Arsennial Hall or I think of
Speaker 5: this name UH is going to be better than Colbert,
Speaker 5: then Colbert will be out. But until then, until then,
Speaker 5: it's not going to happen. It's going back to the money.
Speaker 5: It's the same thing that not you know, the music
Speaker 5: people out of the out of music. You know you're
Speaker 5: going to keep it your the money. You gotta follow
Speaker 5: the money, got to follow the money. We've got to
Speaker 5: figure that out for you. I look forward to it.
Speaker 5: I look forward to being part of it.
Speaker 3: I have to continue to create platform where we can
Speaker 3: give exposure to our talent. Yes, because now you got
Speaker 3: to be the one percent of the one percent to
Speaker 3: get on any of their platforms. Absolutely, so we have
Speaker 3: to continue to create our own you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And that's a big reason why we wanted you here too,
Speaker 3: just just for your knowledge of it, and you know,
Speaker 3: to give the insight to young creators that are out
Speaker 3: there and for us, for us to think of new
Speaker 3: things that we want to do. I mean, we talked
Speaker 3: about other stuff, you know, before we before we start filming.
Speaker 3: But we have to continue to create it.
Speaker 5: I think that's right and and and creators. It's it
Speaker 5: sounds corny, but like, be true to yourself. There's there's
Speaker 5: gonna be no better you than you. You may get
Speaker 5: influenced by someone else, but like just keep doing it. Look,
Speaker 5: there's no platform where you can curate like that, but
Speaker 5: my goodness, there I mean, there's so many artists who've
Speaker 5: made it big and never been on one of those
Speaker 5: platforms or never had a platform move for them and
Speaker 5: can sell out. I mean, you know, like right now,
Speaker 5: I'm thinking of a Sabrina Claudia right who's never really
Speaker 5: had a huge hit record, but like has a rabid
Speaker 5: fan base who will come out and she's curated it
Speaker 5: through the internet in ways that I don't. I don't
Speaker 5: understand how to use TikTok to make a record move.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 5: It's it's yeah, this is it's a it's a new
Speaker 5: thing that you know. It's like my grandmother trying to
Speaker 5: ruse the remote, right, It's it's a it's a different era.
Speaker 5: But I do love that people can use YouTube and
Speaker 5: like keep putting things on YouTube, keep putting things up
Speaker 5: on TikTok, keep trying to get it out there. I
Speaker 5: think the the turn is when one of these labels
Speaker 5: take interest in you and you start you start popping,
Speaker 5: concentrate less on the popping and more. And it's so
Speaker 5: hard for a young person to do, especially when the
Speaker 5: money starts coming in. But how what what is what
Speaker 5: is three years down the line? Look like, who can
Speaker 5: I get with? Who can teach me artists?
Speaker 1: Development? Who can I like what.
Speaker 5: And it's so hard when you when you're young and
Speaker 5: you have nothing, you put this thing out and people like.
Speaker 3: It to look that far.
Speaker 6: You've got to have great counsel for that.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I to get frustrated. I see these these
Speaker 5: TikTok artists who come along and they may have something
Speaker 5: really catchy and then I'm like, Okay, well let me
Speaker 5: go watch them perform live, and I'm like, and they're
Speaker 5: not even working on it. They just realize they're just
Speaker 5: they're there. They realize that they walk back and forth
Speaker 5: and uh say the lyrics, they can get the check
Speaker 5: and go home, and they believe it can that's going
Speaker 5: to that's going to keep them going today.
Speaker 3: Don't get booked anymore.
Speaker 6: I mean and and live music is doing better than
Speaker 6: it ever has before.
Speaker 5: Right, I think there's a there's a false sense of
Speaker 5: security and the longevity when you know TikTok rapper can
Speaker 5: go out and get there and uh and and get
Speaker 5: a checked for a while and and not look at
Speaker 5: the future. I said this once before. You do have
Speaker 5: the eye of the tiger or eye of the TikTok
Speaker 5: like you like, like, right, I have the tiger means
Speaker 5: you're gonna get ready for three years from now. You're
Speaker 5: preparing yourself, you're getting your crew together, you're getting your development.
Speaker 1: Because I have TikTok is like.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna ride this until my label drops.
Speaker 3: Me, losing in mind when TikTok was down for every
Speaker 3: many hours, you.
Speaker 6: Know, absolutely all right, test me out, test.
Speaker 1: Me out your top five R and B singers.
Speaker 5: M So, does everybody have a disclaimer before they do
Speaker 5: their top five or like everyone has a disclaimer like like, oh, it's.
Speaker 6: Hard to get five, hard to get five.
Speaker 5: These are five of my top and I'm gonna try
Speaker 5: to avoid some of the ones that you that you
Speaker 5: may always get. Uh, that's not true. That's not true,
Speaker 5: and it has to be five. I thought I was
Speaker 5: much more prepared for this than I was. I'm gonna
Speaker 5: I'm gonna start with I'm gonna start with the obvious.
Speaker 5: I sent out a tweet in the year twenty eleven
Speaker 5: and it was random. It wasn't connected to anything else
Speaker 5: that I had sent out, and I just said something like,
Speaker 5: my goodness, the most underrated singer in all of music
Speaker 5: is Chantey Moore. I said that out too, that randomly
Speaker 5: randomly in twenty eleven. Now what I imagine I di
Speaker 5: I used. I was probably listening to something and listening
Speaker 5: to her sing, and it made me write that the thing.
Speaker 5: And I know that I'm married to her, but I
Speaker 5: need you to understand that I can articulate.
Speaker 6: There's no one who makes me believe.
Speaker 5: Everything she's singing like Shante does, like when she's feeling pain.
Speaker 5: I feel that when she's back in her earlier days
Speaker 5: when she was trying to be romantic with somebody else,
Speaker 5: like I like, I feel that, like I feel that
Speaker 5: in the way she can manipulate her voice. And then
Speaker 5: if you've ever seen her do it's all right live
Speaker 5: like just just just it. It's Google Soul Train Awards
Speaker 5: twenty twenty two. And what what she does with that?
Speaker 5: We used to call it whistle tone. And then we
Speaker 5: spend we spend some time in Yeah, I say, yes, Oh,
Speaker 5: we had a conversation that we sure did.
Speaker 1: We should strangers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we would spend some time in China. Another thing
Speaker 5: you should talk to my wife about when you have
Speaker 5: her on the show. And we now refer to it
Speaker 5: as the Dolphin tone. It's it's the dolphin tone. The
Speaker 5: dolphin tone. Yes, I didn't realize yeah, yeah, and so
Speaker 5: we call it whistle tone, but the people in China
Speaker 5: call it a dolphin tone. And so, but that her
Speaker 5: and her ability to really I believe the emotion. There's
Speaker 5: no one else that does it like her.
Speaker 3: To me.
Speaker 5: There's people can belt and and and technically and fine,
Speaker 5: but like it's it's she and Prince who I believe
Speaker 5: what they're singing. I believe when they want to get
Speaker 5: in bed with somebody. I believe when they're angry at somebody.
Speaker 5: I believe when they're pleading so Chancey Moore. And it's
Speaker 5: not just because she's my wife, it's because she's awesome
Speaker 5: that uh, I got uput prints in there because I
Speaker 5: think he's under He's so good at everything. He's underrated
Speaker 5: at everything. Like he's just so good at everything. He's
Speaker 5: an underrated guitarist.
Speaker 3: Way to look at it, I feel like celebrated.
Speaker 6: But but as a whole, not as individual.
Speaker 3: Right, It's like we brought that up with production as
Speaker 3: far as like when they named the greatest producers, they
Speaker 3: never named Stevie wandar Prince. That's because they're so great
Speaker 3: at so many things. So I agree with that.
Speaker 1: It's like the package of them is like it is
Speaker 1: just too much, too much.
Speaker 5: Yes, Now, now I'm I think Chris Brown is unbelievable
Speaker 5: and so far ahead of everyone else of this generation.
Speaker 1: Now it's tough because for him, it's.
Speaker 5: It's vocals plus the package plus what he could do
Speaker 5: when he performs. So I take R and b artists
Speaker 5: that that's got to be part of it, like any
Speaker 5: anybody got to talk about has to be able to
Speaker 5: perform except maybe one uh that I mentioned, And so
Speaker 5: that's really a big part of it. Uh And I
Speaker 5: love that. I Yeah, So I think I put I put,
Speaker 5: I put Chris in there. Uh Uh. I'm just gonna
Speaker 5: say it and it's not and I'm gonna change it
Speaker 5: around because it's it's really Luthor Andros. But I want
Speaker 5: to say George Michael just because I want to say
Speaker 5: George Michael because I'm not sure how many people come
Speaker 5: on the show and talk about how great George Michael
Speaker 5: is amazing as a soul singer.
Speaker 3: Amazing.
Speaker 1: He is an amazing singer. Now faith.
Speaker 5: Is what it is. There's some great work he had
Speaker 5: on older where he's just his us technical singers would
Speaker 5: know much butter, but his pitch and his tone is flawless.
Speaker 6: I base a lot of this on I was fortunate.
Speaker 5: Enough to go to his MTV Unplugged in London in
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety seven. It was amazing. I'm gonna send you
Speaker 5: because they only use like five songs in the show,
Speaker 5: and he did like.
Speaker 1: Fifteen or sixteen.
Speaker 5: And his voice was pure the entire time. When it
Speaker 5: started to give out, literally two hours and fifteen minutes in,
Speaker 5: he called it. He said, my voice is about to
Speaker 5: give up out of I've got to go. But in
Speaker 5: terms of again a feel of of just singing vocal
Speaker 5: ability live George Michael.
Speaker 6: He's not gonna be in my top five tomorrow.
Speaker 5: I'm doing this mostly but I want to point him
Speaker 5: out as someone who probably doesn't get mentioned. And the
Speaker 5: other one is I'm gonna introduce this like this. This
Speaker 5: Scottie Pippen one of the fifty best basketball players of
Speaker 5: all time. Okay right, literally when they came up the
Speaker 5: top fifty basketball players of all time, Scottie Pippen.
Speaker 1: Was on it.
Speaker 5: He was on the Bulls. So he was on the
Speaker 5: Bulls with Michael Jordan. So Scottie Pippen being one of
Speaker 5: the top fifty. Of all, every other person in the
Speaker 5: top fifty was the alpha male on their time, everyone
Speaker 5: except Scottie Pippen. In every other group, Scottie Pippen would
Speaker 5: have been y'all for male r. But he was on
Speaker 5: a team and he was behind MJ. And this is
Speaker 5: how I'm introducing to you Jermaine Jackson. Mmm, Jermae, I'm
Speaker 5: introducing you to Jermaine Jackson. Castles of sand, My touch
Speaker 5: of Madness. You like me, don't you? His Marvin Gay
Speaker 5: influenced vocals, along with his bass playing at the age
Speaker 5: of sixteen in Arenas.
Speaker 1: Goes under noticed.
Speaker 5: Going back to Indiana, find on YouTube or on record
Speaker 5: and listen to the Base playing on the first they
Speaker 5: have a live it's a stand feeling all right on
Speaker 5: one of the one of the first three cuts. Just
Speaker 5: listen to him take off on the base and realize
Speaker 5: he is a sixteen year old who has no studio trickery,
Speaker 5: who's making the base do that live and in person
Speaker 5: while singing singing nobody else in the We don't recounting
Speaker 5: Tito as a vocalist, right, we not? We just we
Speaker 5: were good. We love the Tito. We wouldn't have the
Speaker 5: Jackson five without Tito. But my point is Jermaine had
Speaker 5: to sing and play at the same time and nail
Speaker 5: them both as a sixteen year old, and his voice
Speaker 5: only got better as he got older. On any other
Speaker 5: team except the Jackson five, he is the alpha male.
Speaker 5: He is behind him.
Speaker 1: J got you. I like the way you frame that.
Speaker 1: I love it right there.
Speaker 3: That was because I got a couple of guys like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, you got Jojo from jo Tosy. Yeah, he
Speaker 3: got from voice to man as yes you giving me
Speaker 3: a yes yes.
Speaker 5: And I have to say I because I have to
Speaker 5: say out loud Luther Vanros uh uh r, Kelly, Earth
Speaker 5: Wind and Fire. Uh uh wait wait wait wait uh.
Speaker 3: You can't with the top of the top Okay you yeah, talking.
Speaker 5: About I want, I want, I want, say George Michael
Speaker 5: and because you want people to think about like voices
Speaker 5: that that don't usually get mentioned up there, and they
Speaker 5: may not be your top five, but like they they
Speaker 5: brought it in a way that yeah, that that that
Speaker 5: that I just want I want to shout out.
Speaker 3: I want to shout out, want to.
Speaker 1: S Stephen Hill your top five R and B songs.
Speaker 5: Adore by Prince.
Speaker 1: Why not just kick it off that song?
Speaker 6: That song song turns uh what he what do you?
Speaker 1: What? Do you?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 1: He six?
Speaker 6: This year thirty six, thirty six. This year it turns
Speaker 6: thirty six this year.
Speaker 5: I still hear new things in that song every time
Speaker 5: I listen what a song it's? It's to your point
Speaker 5: about as a producer, like there's there's things buried, and
Speaker 5: I swear like there's a way he produced it, Like Okay,
Speaker 5: it's time release. So you're not going to hear this
Speaker 5: in the year nineteen eighty seven. You're not going to
Speaker 5: hear this into the year two thousand and three. It's
Speaker 5: not going to pop up in the groove into two
Speaker 5: thousand and three, right, okay, okay, And then this was
Speaker 5: not gonna pop up until twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Seven, because you don't even know what it is until
Speaker 2: you've evolved enough to be able to hear.
Speaker 5: I think that way we're putting it, it's a great
Speaker 5: way of putting it.
Speaker 2: Like some of these guys, like you're talking about Prince,
Speaker 2: he was completely ahead of his time on everything. Everything
Speaker 2: He set standards, yes, yes, and then a lot of
Speaker 2: them can't be replicated.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true at all at all.
Speaker 5: He couldn't even recommend it like replicated, but he tried
Speaker 5: to with the whole nineteen ninety nine thing. He tried to.
Speaker 1: But for that time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I had to limit myself to I made
Speaker 5: sure I limited myself to one Prince record or else.
Speaker 1: Just ist.
Speaker 5: Anytime, any place, m come on anytime any place is
Speaker 5: just it feels it just it you.
Speaker 3: Start moving and not even know that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, all the way through the sound the sounds.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're still in Mina. That's what I said.
Speaker 1: We still We're still in Minnesota.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, so and I got it. I didn't realize
Speaker 5: had two jam and Lewis's until just now. On bended me,
Speaker 5: ah On, bended on, bended me. I'm a sucker for
Speaker 5: a modulation. We know this.
Speaker 6: I'm a I'm a sucker for a modulation.
Speaker 5: And I just think that that song is so it's
Speaker 5: just so well crafted. The little vamp at the end,
Speaker 5: the harmonies. Uh, I just love I just love love that.
Speaker 1: It's it's verse B section hook. They're all separate parts. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 5: They're not the same. They're not the same. They are
Speaker 5: not the same. We talked about what we talked about
Speaker 5: one Late in my Life again as a as A
Speaker 5: as A as a Jackson fan, and for me, Jackson
Speaker 5: five were on the same leg is on the same
Speaker 5: level as Michael Jackson. I loved the Jackson five. But again,
Speaker 5: I think that was his last that was his last
Speaker 5: soul song. That was a last one. That's last one
Speaker 5: where you believed he wasn't in this. I mean he
Speaker 5: was crooning at the end, like, I just love the breakdown.
Speaker 5: It's funny. One of the shows I worked on the
Speaker 5: Billboard Awards a while ago, celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Thriller.
Speaker 5: We had Maxwell do it. We had Maxwell do it
Speaker 5: and Maxwell did the whole physical, physical breakdown.
Speaker 1: In my life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, where did you were not alone? Is that not
Speaker 3: an R and B?
Speaker 1: So, I mean, like I don't, I mean it doesn't.
Speaker 3: In the end, like he really he getting to it
Speaker 3: at the end too.
Speaker 1: I'm just asking he's getting.
Speaker 3: It's not about it being Lady in my Life. I
Speaker 3: get that part. But I'm saying as far as the
Speaker 3: soul in that record for him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like my just crying out, He's crying out, He's
Speaker 5: crying out. The song structured the song with its imitation,
Speaker 5: doesn't It doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's not the soul. That's what it is, delivery the soul.
Speaker 5: And then I feel comfortable saying this because you've you've
Speaker 5: heard you've heard it.
Speaker 1: Know what it is, the live version of Chantey Morris.
Speaker 1: It's all right.
Speaker 5: I have heard it a hundred times.
Speaker 1: Good about yourself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, As a side note, and when we come up
Speaker 5: we are on the way, I was nervous and I
Speaker 5: tell my wife I was nervous, and her pep talk
Speaker 5: was to me. It was like, don't worry about it,
Speaker 5: just be comfortable. You're one of the corniest guys that
Speaker 5: we know. So that was that was That was the
Speaker 5: pep talk. That was.
Speaker 1: The pep talk.
Speaker 5: So because because I say that, because I did that
Speaker 5: so I could have time to get I've heard it
Speaker 5: a hundred times and every single time, and it's not
Speaker 5: just the dolphin tone at the end, it is it
Speaker 5: is what that's And another thing, it's it's what that
Speaker 5: song means and how it sounds different every time, and
Speaker 5: how she how it's just to feel it's not.
Speaker 3: And I can find it. It is.
Speaker 1: It's new.
Speaker 5: It feels new every every time. And so uh, I
Speaker 5: like the recorded version, but it wouldn't make my top five.
Speaker 5: Live version makes my top five live version makes my
Speaker 5: top five.
Speaker 1: I love that. Yeah, that was yeah, I felt that
Speaker 1: one's the Corneus guy. We know I love man.
Speaker 2: You're all right, mister, yes, sir man many wonders. Let's
Speaker 2: make a vulturon. You're a super r and b artists.
Speaker 2: We want to know where you're going to get the
Speaker 2: vocal from the performance style, the styling of the artists.
Speaker 6: Oh passion, they're different people.
Speaker 2: They are all different people to make one great yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So who you're going to get the vocal from? One
Speaker 2: vocal for your super r and b artists.
Speaker 5: I am going back to my tweet of two Thy eleven.
Speaker 1: I'm going with my wife, my wife, my wife. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad that's on record.
Speaker 3: I'm so glad.
Speaker 5: I showed that to her early relationship, so she did
Speaker 5: not think I was fronting.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 5: I'm like, like, I'm going to her because I'm going
Speaker 5: to need emotion. I'm going to want a I think
Speaker 5: Freddie Mercury did a brilliant job on Bohemian Rhapsody of
Speaker 5: taking us up and down and all the way through
Speaker 5: so many I think, I think too many places. Absolutely
Speaker 5: in one song five minutes fifty five seconds. If I'm
Speaker 5: not mistaken, that's what that song was. I believe my
Speaker 5: wife could do the same thing if given the task.
Speaker 2: Soote voice voice Johntey Moore performance style on stage.
Speaker 5: That one's tough. That one's tough because I love energy
Speaker 5: and I'm taking I'm taking nineteen ninety, nineteen ninety prints,
Speaker 5: I'm taking new I'm taking Nude Tour prints, Nude Nude Tour.
Speaker 5: Prince was athletic, was he was? Yeah, nineteen ninety New Tour,
Speaker 5: the long the long hair, you had, the long hair.
Speaker 5: The tour never came to the States, but it was,
Speaker 5: I mean he was. You can look it up, you
Speaker 5: can say it online, you can sit it online. So
Speaker 5: that nineteen ninety Prince performance style. And it was hard.
Speaker 1: It's hard.
Speaker 6: It was hard not to take Michael Jackson Victory Tour.
Speaker 1: It was hard.
Speaker 5: It was hard not taking that one. But overall, I
Speaker 5: gotta take nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: Prints, okay, Chante Moore, Prince, the styling of the artists,
Speaker 1: the drip, the presentation, kink.
Speaker 5: M h that one okay, because I am not a
Speaker 5: man of sartorial splendor. I don't dress that good, so
Speaker 5: I don't really it really? Is it a thing I
Speaker 5: gotta go with? In nineteen oh, I didn't pick I
Speaker 5: know cause I picked prin I don't feel bad nineteen
Speaker 5: seventy one. Jackson five, Easy good, I'm good nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 5: Jackson five, Yes, loved it, Love loved. They were the
Speaker 5: first group who understood they didn't have to have uniforms
Speaker 5: on to be dope. They were the first real singing
Speaker 5: group who weren't wearing matching suits matching. They were individual
Speaker 5: They allowed themselves to be individuals.
Speaker 1: Jackson five were first. I don't know that. The history
Speaker 1: yeah yeah yeah, and the passion of the artists, the
Speaker 1: heart of the artists who who what you mean?
Speaker 3: It mean it?
Speaker 1: Okay? Okay?
Speaker 5: So I since I mentioned my wife already and I
Speaker 5: mentioned that's exactly the thing that she does, and I
Speaker 5: mentioned that about Prince, I kind of want to I
Speaker 5: kind of want to go with someone else and challenge
Speaker 5: myself to go with someone else on that.
Speaker 1: Bruno Mars, Bruno Mars.
Speaker 3: I feel comfortable that, I feel good, Yeah, I feel
Speaker 3: good with that.
Speaker 1: With that, I feel good with that. I feel I
Speaker 1: feel great about that. Actually, I'm extremely gonne.
Speaker 5: My favorite, my favorite, my favorite former to come to
Speaker 5: prominence in the twenty first century is Bruno.
Speaker 2: I liked him, I liked him on radio, and then
Speaker 2: you say I became a fan of him live.
Speaker 1: That's it I mean when I say that, I mean love.
Speaker 3: I mean love.
Speaker 1: I'm always so. He delivers on record, for sure, no
Speaker 1: doubt about it.
Speaker 3: You're supposed to love the artist more after you get
Speaker 3: to see him, yes.
Speaker 2: Live, Yes, I said, Oh he's him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's a guy.
Speaker 5: He does that thing that I love when artists do.
Speaker 5: They put the bangers that will never be played on radio,
Speaker 5: but are so soulful as the very last song on
Speaker 5: the record. You can go back, you can check the
Speaker 5: very last song on the record. I Cat Gorilla, Uh,
Speaker 5: the one, the one he wrote with Babyface is on
Speaker 5: Uh is on the one, there's on twenty four Carrot
Speaker 5: and then blast off on on on Silk Sonic.
Speaker 6: His last songs of every album are just.
Speaker 3: What he chooses.
Speaker 6: His last song is done on purpose.
Speaker 3: You're like, I'm gonna be black at.
Speaker 1: Show.
Speaker 2: You are really show you what I really did? Well,
Speaker 2: You're you're an Almanack.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 5: I love this stuff. I love this stuff. I appreciate you.
Speaker 5: I appreciate I appreciate it. I just do appreciate it.
Speaker 3: So we at the very very important part of the show,
Speaker 3: and what's that? Will you tell us the story funny
Speaker 3: or fucked up? Are funny and fucked up? The only
Speaker 3: route to this game is you can't say no name.
Speaker 3: I can't say any name. That's the name. You can't
Speaker 3: say no names.
Speaker 5: I'm kind of looking for a nod baby, you're looking
Speaker 5: for Okay, no names. The thing is no names. So
Speaker 5: I was I'm not gonna say the name of the show.
Speaker 5: I feel better if I do.
Speaker 1: Don't.
Speaker 5: Okay, there was a show. There was a show that
Speaker 5: myself and and other people were working on. We were
Speaker 5: celebrating an accomplishment. I can't use any names. It's good.
Speaker 5: We celebrating an accomplishment of an artist. And they had
Speaker 5: a milestone number to their album. We wanted this artist
Speaker 5: for it, and we questioned it and we thought about
Speaker 5: it and we're like, let's go, and so to do this.
Speaker 5: I was not an MTV. I wasn't a bet at
Speaker 5: the time. So I was with a company, and we
Speaker 5: had to get a network approval. And we'll say that
Speaker 5: there are two people who were with, two people who
Speaker 5: worked with directly, and two people.
Speaker 3: Who were in the clouds, like the head of everything to.
Speaker 1: Be work with.
Speaker 5: So we go to two people we work with and
Speaker 5: go like, we would like to have this this uh,
Speaker 5: this person do this thing for this artist and they're like, uh,
Speaker 5: the person's a male. It would be awesome if we
Speaker 5: could find some female talent to also do this thing.
Speaker 5: But that made sense every with everything there was in
Speaker 5: the atmosphere, that made perfect sense. So we go to
Speaker 5: the artists and go like, can you find female talent?
Speaker 5: And this person found amazing female talent to be part
Speaker 5: of this, to be part of this, and so we're excited.
Speaker 5: Go back to our two people of the network. They're excited,
Speaker 5: Oh this will work, this will this will absolutely work.
Speaker 6: We go back, You're in. It's going to be great.
Speaker 5: This artist gets to work right away because this artist
Speaker 5: understands gets to work right away and is really ensconsin
Speaker 5: and really has every brings every for rehearsals and makes
Speaker 5: videos of the progress and sends them sends them to us,
Speaker 5: and we're blown away. M right, and we show them
Speaker 5: to the little and all great the uh, the two
Speaker 5: people here didn't tell the two people here, uh what
Speaker 5: like what the what the plan was and who who
Speaker 5: was going to do it and was and and for
Speaker 5: whatever reason that the two people uh in the stratosphere
Speaker 5: uh did not like.
Speaker 1: What was going to go down.
Speaker 5: And after lots of back and forth, as an aside,
Speaker 5: I admit I was used to bt I got to
Speaker 5: be the final word, like when it came to the orgin,
Speaker 5: I got to be the final word. So I'm I'm kind.
Speaker 3: Of used to that, thinking it is about to go
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 5: Right, especially since we got network sign off. So but
Speaker 5: one of the things I had the final word, enters
Speaker 5: into the next conversation cause I'm like, well, there's no
Speaker 5: way we just got to convince that's going to happen
Speaker 5: because we get to do this, and that's not the
Speaker 5: way it worked with the structure, And so we had
Speaker 5: to pull the offer from that artist, and three months
Speaker 5: later I wasn't working at that place anymore, and that
Speaker 5: was fine. But what I've articulated to you is literally,
Speaker 5: of all of the experiences I've ever had in my career,
Speaker 5: the one I am most sad about the one I
Speaker 5: am most apologetic to that artist about not everything is
Speaker 5: not everything is perfect. But what I've always what I've
Speaker 5: always said, no matter who you represent, you can give
Speaker 5: me a yes, you can give me a no. Don't
Speaker 5: give me a yes and turn it into a no. Right,
Speaker 5: I've got to be able to depend on these read
Speaker 5: these representatives have done the thing they're supposed.
Speaker 1: To do before we go to artists.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, And I'm like, I didn't mention any names, right,
Speaker 5: but if you want to see a really good tribute
Speaker 5: to an iconic artist, look that thing up on YouTube
Speaker 5: because it is there. And an epilogue was people saying
Speaker 5: we were trying to say no, they didn't tell us.
Speaker 3: We didn't know, and they didn't know.
Speaker 5: And finally we had to go, like, you see the
Speaker 5: amount of work that was put into this video.
Speaker 6: Do you think that just happened after a day.
Speaker 5: Don't you think we had had the yes for a
Speaker 5: while for this amount of work to go in it?
Speaker 1: Yep?
Speaker 6: And the response was a very very eloquent, articulate.
Speaker 3: Mhm. It is my least favorite time of my entire career.
Speaker 1: It was. It was I think it's horrible.
Speaker 5: I By the way, I haven't seen that artist since,
Speaker 5: and I hope I do one day because I want
Speaker 5: to apologize.
Speaker 1: And I know because I know that artist was was.
Speaker 1: It was a my.
Speaker 5: Favorite moment because now I got I gotta turned around,
Speaker 5: because that was that that that got me in a
Speaker 5: place I don't like to go. Watching Prince take over
Speaker 5: a band. As we were celebrating Shaka Khan with Prince,
Speaker 5: Yolanda Adams, Stevie Wonder and India are on stage. That
Speaker 5: was a tribute and we're we're so we we booked
Speaker 5: them all and we're out out at uh sound stage.
Speaker 1: It's called sound stage near the airport. Airport.
Speaker 5: We're out of sound stage and the music director because
Speaker 5: it's not Prince's band, it's the band that we had.
Speaker 1: For the show. The Prince walks in and he listened.
Speaker 5: Prince has that moment when he expresses exactly how he
Speaker 5: feels on.
Speaker 6: His face and then he fixes it right. That's you
Speaker 6: can see that.
Speaker 5: You can see that a lot of plays, there's a
Speaker 5: lot of memes of him.
Speaker 6: The mic is own. Yeah, you know all these so
Speaker 6: there was that moment.
Speaker 5: You see it, and then he couldn't have been kinder
Speaker 5: He went to the music record and said, do you
Speaker 5: mind if I talked to the musicians about how we
Speaker 5: approached this, and watching Prince go to every instrument and
Speaker 5: being really like, he's freaking Prince, So every instrumentalist it
Speaker 5: was like I'm being talked to by Prince. And Prince
Speaker 5: could have gone anyway, but he could not have been
Speaker 5: kinder and more gentle about what about trying this approach?
Speaker 1: We try what if we try this approach? Oh? What
Speaker 1: if this?
Speaker 5: We do this segue? And to watch him do that
Speaker 5: was masterful and then the results you can just watch
Speaker 5: it up. I think it was two thousand and six
Speaker 5: Chaka Khan tribute and he's having a blast. He had
Speaker 5: a he had a blast.
Speaker 1: On the guitar.
Speaker 5: He didn't he sang background. I think his favorite, his
Speaker 5: favorite I was singing tell Man, tell him and tell
Speaker 5: me So that that was that was it was. It
Speaker 5: was anytime I got to work with Prince. It was
Speaker 5: just it was just time I got into work with princes.
Speaker 1: Save Prince.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry I mention that, and I mentioned that stay
Speaker 5: with friends with Prince, But you weren't there, were you?
Speaker 1: Okay?
Speaker 3: Save you friends?
Speaker 1: Oh time to go.
Speaker 6: I've taken up to I've taken up far too much
Speaker 6: of your time. What he used to make fun of
Speaker 6: me because I like, like I would.
Speaker 5: I was the guys, you know, I'm at the content,
Speaker 5: I'm at the guy in the concert and I'm screaming
Speaker 5: on the lungs out I'm dancing, and I don't care
Speaker 5: if I'm an executive like that.
Speaker 6: I feel comfortable saying.
Speaker 5: He's an executive you've ever experienced who acts at a concert
Speaker 5: like I do?
Speaker 1: I feel comfortable.
Speaker 3: I feel comfortable saying.
Speaker 5: And so I would do it at a Prince concert
Speaker 5: and I and I loved seeing Prince, and so it
Speaker 5: was this kind of way of making fun of me.
Speaker 5: He'd bring me up when he brought people on stays
Speaker 5: to dance, bring me on stage to dance. But this
Speaker 5: one time, Uh, he had one of those parties in
Speaker 5: his house, in his living room, and the band's playing
Speaker 5: here and they're here, and uh, I forget the woman
Speaker 5: who was the singer at the time.
Speaker 1: No, I don't.
Speaker 5: I don't forget uh Tamar Tamar.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 5: And we didn't know each other. Time said who knows
Speaker 5: who knows play that funky music? And so I put
Speaker 5: my hand up and I come on stage. I come,
Speaker 5: you know, it's not stage like you step over the
Speaker 5: monitor and you're right there, and and she goes, what's
Speaker 5: your name?
Speaker 3: I said, my name is Stephen Hill.
Speaker 5: And so Prince is on his on on stage stage right,
Speaker 5: just playing guitar like do love, and Stephen Hill was like,
Speaker 5: Stephen Hill, Oh, this is gonna be fun, and so
Speaker 5: they kick into it. I sing the first verse of
Speaker 5: I'll play that funky music. It was like playing in
Speaker 5: the rock and roll band, no problems rolling down in
Speaker 5: the I stay and so I do.
Speaker 1: I do it. I'm dancing and singing and they're playing
Speaker 1: along and I'm having a great time.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, okay, I think this one vodka making
Speaker 3: me sound good.
Speaker 11: Playing that music, white boy playing me And so you
Speaker 11: played it funk music till you die, till you die,
Speaker 11: And something made me turn to my right and so go, Prince,
Speaker 11: why don't you playing one of those funk guitar solos
Speaker 11: for me right now?
Speaker 6: She looks at me, stumps.
Speaker 7: The pedal on and gives one of those of like
Speaker 7: and then and then rips off and goes and goes bananas,
Speaker 7: and I walk.
Speaker 1: Off the stage.
Speaker 3: So I'm not going to your band with you.
Speaker 2: I'm like, this is fucking great, bro.
Speaker 5: I walk I walked off the stage because it's never
Speaker 5: going to get better than that.
Speaker 3: Never. And then it got better than that. That was
Speaker 3: your bit though, and then but then it got better than.
Speaker 5: That because he had After that he finished performing, I
Speaker 5: go sit on side, and I'm sitting on side with
Speaker 5: like all of my peers at BT at the time,
Speaker 5: and most of them were out there because they didn't
Speaker 5: really care about the music. There was only a couple
Speaker 5: of in there. They didn't really see it. And I
Speaker 5: was telling you about it, and like someone are like, yeah, whatever.
Speaker 5: Prince walks out, walks by and said, get you gear.
Speaker 5: You gotta be in the tour bus pretty soon. Keeps walking.
Speaker 3: Is great.
Speaker 1: One more story, enough, cook.
Speaker 3: More sorry, one more.
Speaker 1: Story and now I promise you'll stop it. I'll stop
Speaker 1: at this good story. Uh.
Speaker 5: He was doing twenty one nights in London. I'll make it, really,
Speaker 5: I'm making I'm gonna get quick. I'm gonna and I'm
Speaker 5: going to leave. I'm gonna leave the Amy Whitehouse and
Speaker 5: fade done away part out of.
Speaker 3: It because it'll take too long.
Speaker 1: Uh. He had a song came out.
Speaker 5: I think it was he had some video that had
Speaker 5: a friend that had a Spanish title, Uh, Corazon meet Corason.
Speaker 5: I think it was called video We wanted me to
Speaker 5: He wanted me to see it. I was there with
Speaker 5: my with my boy Ashley, and so there's that, there's
Speaker 5: that the big room where everybody else, and then there's
Speaker 5: like his his room where he is. And we go
Speaker 5: back to his room and there's a keyboard and there's
Speaker 5: a monitor, and there's a computer where he was on
Speaker 5: Prince dot org. I remember that very well. He was
Speaker 5: on Prince dot org.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 5: And then he played he played, Uh, he played the video.
Speaker 5: He's a great video. And in the other monitor, he's
Speaker 5: looking at while I'm looking at the video, he's looking
Speaker 5: at a he's looking at his show from that night.
Speaker 5: He's he's because you know, again, artist development, you stay,
Speaker 5: you stay on it like he's Prince and he's still
Speaker 5: watching it to find a way to get better in
Speaker 5: I forget the year now two thousand and call it
Speaker 5: nine ten. I don't I can't remember whatever that twenty
Speaker 5: one days and so and so uh finished look oh
Speaker 5: love the video, and we were all kind of looking
Speaker 5: at the at the at the screen for that, and
Speaker 5: there was the point where he did a mixture of
Speaker 5: Freak Out the Freak and Sexy Dancer. We mashed them together,
Speaker 5: and uh, my friend was like, oh, I really loved
Speaker 5: I really loved the way he did Uh he did
Speaker 5: Sexy Dance. Wait, Sexy Dancer in the Freak And then
Speaker 5: either I or he said like, but I really what
Speaker 5: I really missed was like, I really always loved the
Speaker 5: piano solo in Sexy Dancer. And he goes, you mean
Speaker 5: this and plays little solo on the keyboard and just
Speaker 5: turns back to the screen.
Speaker 1: That was Prince.
Speaker 5: No, I don't know. It's only one and we're both
Speaker 5: and we to this day we look at each other
Speaker 5: like we're both glad the other.
Speaker 1: One was there so we can.
Speaker 3: Here like that.
Speaker 1: Oh you mean like this anyhow? Wow?
Speaker 2: Anyhow, Bro's it feels like there's no place you haven't been.
Speaker 5: I am Forrest Gump. I am, I am. There's a
Speaker 5: way to say black Forest Gump. I'm figuring that out
Speaker 5: Forrest Gump. But yeah, and the luckiest and the luckiest
Speaker 5: guy in the world. I love music and I can't
Speaker 5: perform it.
Speaker 2: But I feel like you've been in all of but
Speaker 2: you're so deserving of it because you're appreciative of.
Speaker 5: Great yes and respectful, constantly, constantly thank you. I love
Speaker 5: that that is. I love that you recognize that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I just I just I so.
Speaker 5: Respect talent and talent. I think that that hones their
Speaker 5: craft and really keeps moving it forward is everything.
Speaker 3: And we'll tell you why you're here. You're a reason
Speaker 3: why we do our show. What do you mean Like
Speaker 3: you are somebody that we would have pitched this show to,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm saying. So we thought about like doing
Speaker 3: something like this is like you know, you're you're a
Speaker 3: thought of like oh no, like with Steven Hill with.
Speaker 1: This, well, how would he approach it?
Speaker 3: And now that you're here.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, but thank you man, No, thank you. I'm not
Speaker 5: I'm not kidding. I was really nervous coming in. Uh,
Speaker 5: but this was one of the best conversations I've had
Speaker 5: about I love having conversations about music and and with
Speaker 5: with musicians top five and so thank you.
Speaker 2: I think we more importantly felt like people needed to
Speaker 2: really know what you are because people people will hear
Speaker 2: the name, people will will have light interaction, people will
Speaker 2: will understand your position, but not necessarily understand you.
Speaker 1: Not necessarily hear you, listen to me. I am.
Speaker 5: I am in a whole bunch of therapy, trying to
Speaker 5: understand me.
Speaker 1: Understand me.
Speaker 2: I mean, for me, in my mind, you are the
Speaker 2: You are the ultimate creative, and you are the ultimate
Speaker 2: champion of creatives. And and for that again we say,
Speaker 2: we say thank you you like like you are. You
Speaker 2: are important, highly important.
Speaker 5: That that means a lot us to this universe, really
Speaker 5: means a lot to me. I mean that so thoroughly
Speaker 5: and wholeheartedly.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Tank, and this is
Speaker 2: the Army Money Podcast, the authority on all things R
Speaker 2: and B and all things everywhere anywhere. Prince Friends was
Speaker 2: in his band. That's all I'm gonna say. That is
Speaker 2: the gentleman, steeping head of your com