Speaker 1: Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 3: This is Sugar Steven on this week's Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: Classic hip hop icon and R and B hit maker Jermaine.
Speaker 3: Dupree tell us thirty years of industry tales from fresh
Speaker 3: best days to career reviving remixes. Originally released August twenty second,
Speaker 3: two thousand and eighteen.
Speaker 4: Suprema Some Suprema roll call Supremo S Supremo. Ro called
Speaker 4: Suprema Sun Sun Supremo, roll call Suprema s Sun Supremo. Roll.
Speaker 1: My name is Questlove.
Speaker 2: Yeah, spitting hot tracks, Yeah, interviewing the man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the world's loudest high hand long time.
Speaker 4: Primo Supremo, roll called Suprema something Supremo, roll called.
Speaker 1: My name is Sugar.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Money ain't a thing, Yeah, because I don't have much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sucks for me. Supreme Supremo. You're going against Suprema
Speaker 1: something Supremo.
Speaker 7: It shows up the hook, Yeah, like escape second LP. Yeah,
Speaker 7: Boss Bill is my name? Yeah, O quls with JD.
Speaker 8: Supremo, So Supremo, Ro Supremo Supremo roll.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what the legend a D. Yeah, I've been down
Speaker 6: with him, Yeah, because that was.
Speaker 4: The roll Supremo Supremo roll call Suprema Son something Supremo roll.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's all about me.
Speaker 9: Yeah, celebrating twenty five years in this crazy ass industry.
Speaker 8: Yeah, h Suprema Subpremah Yeah sure, Son Sun Suppreva Subreeva
Speaker 8: Son Sun Supreme.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Question on
Speaker 1: the Supreme.
Speaker 2: All right, I gotta get this out once in the open.
Speaker 2: Why do you Why are your high hats so loud
Speaker 2: on your record? That is you do you be the
Speaker 2: only person that mentions, the.
Speaker 5: Only person that ever asks why?
Speaker 9: Right, and and I'm glad that you ask why because
Speaker 9: I feel like I don't get the credit for high
Speaker 9: hats being that loud on records. Now, and I'm glad
Speaker 9: that you're saying that because I did that deliberately. That's
Speaker 9: my thing to make you know, like when I first,
Speaker 9: I'm gonna tell you where I got it from, right,
Speaker 9: I got it from seven seven seven ninety three elevels.
Speaker 6: You have to ask because your.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, right, wait are you? Are we about
Speaker 1: to break this art right now? I'll let the credit ahead.
Speaker 9: Ahead, I mean the way that I hats sound on
Speaker 9: that record. That's the focus. When I was younger and
Speaker 9: I wanted I was playing drums, that's all. I used
Speaker 9: to try to play that beat, and my focus was
Speaker 9: that high hat. So then, you know, for some reason,
Speaker 9: when I started making beats on a drum machine, I
Speaker 9: just wanted my beats to sound like that. So once
Speaker 9: I started making one and people said something about the
Speaker 9: high head, I was like, oh, okay, this is my thing.
Speaker 9: So then I did it on You Make Me Wanted
Speaker 9: with Usher record, and it was like, that's the first.
Speaker 5: Time you've heard the.
Speaker 1: Loud as his voice.
Speaker 5: Yes, very loud, and that's how I wanted.
Speaker 9: I wanted you to be a turn the record down
Speaker 9: as low as you can possibly turn it down and
Speaker 9: hear the vocals and.
Speaker 1: The high hat though as well.
Speaker 2: Now we have like techno, you know, technology that doesn't
Speaker 2: we don't have to spin on records anymore, you know,
Speaker 2: because we used tourvive and whatnot. But the thing is
Speaker 2: is that, uh usually shuffles and high hats leave an
Speaker 2: imprint on the wax.
Speaker 1: Like if you look at Thriller.
Speaker 2: The shuffle of Billy Jean leaves a sort of spiral
Speaker 2: design inside the actual groove of the wax.
Speaker 5: So you're very technical.
Speaker 3: All of your Wait a second, you're staring at the
Speaker 3: final of.
Speaker 1: Come on, let me tell you something. This is something
Speaker 1: I noticed when I was like three years old.
Speaker 2: It looks like, yeah, the grooves of all the other
Speaker 2: songs and thriller a look normal, but Billy Jean like,
Speaker 2: that's when I noticed, like, oh, high end, high end
Speaker 2: Fidelogy stuff. They leave an imprint on the wax, which
Speaker 2: leads to any time I've spun anything produced by you,
Speaker 2: especially money, ain't the thing. There's this whole what's what's
Speaker 2: the game we used to get as kids where you
Speaker 2: do like spy?
Speaker 1: What was the spiral graph? It's not a game? But yeah,
Speaker 1: is that still a thing today? Or is that like
Speaker 1: did I just date myself? Sigh? Where you were?
Speaker 5: I don't know what that is?
Speaker 2: Come on, spiro graph, will you take us? They're like, okay, well,
Speaker 2: this is a classic quest of Supreme where I didn't
Speaker 2: even officially introduce our guests. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to
Speaker 2: another episode. I had to get the high hair. I'm
Speaker 2: a drummer. I had to get the high hat question
Speaker 2: out of the way. All right, So another episode of
Speaker 2: Quest Love Supreme. Hello, Team Supreme. I assume that Fante
Speaker 2: is fixing his countertop or his pool or whatever. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: I will say that enough has not been said about
Speaker 2: our next guest, and I believe that he also agrees
Speaker 2: with me that enough has not been said about him.
Speaker 2: That's sort of like one of the dangerous things about
Speaker 2: hip hop culture, or this disposable hip hop culture that
Speaker 2: we have, where you know, we discover great resources and
Speaker 2: we use them to the hilt, and then we kind
Speaker 2: of are onto the next thing, and revisionism sets in
Speaker 2: and usually the person with the biggest check gets to
Speaker 2: rewrite history, and suddenly everyone has a floggy memory on
Speaker 2: who pioneered what and and Whatnotuh. But I will say
Speaker 2: that numbers don't lie. And for thirty five plus years, uh,
Speaker 2: our guest today has been a figurehead and hip hop
Speaker 2: in all the areas, be it as a producer, as
Speaker 2: a songwriter, uh for some of the defining moments in
Speaker 2: hip hop and R and B culture, or as a
Speaker 2: label head, a manager, and as an artist in his
Speaker 2: own right. I can even say a dancer. This man
Speaker 2: is connected to more people that I care to announce.
Speaker 2: If I announced them all, the show will be over.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to Quest of Supreme, the
Speaker 2: one and only it shouldaine pre who.
Speaker 1: What an in?
Speaker 9: I didn't use that intro my djama, I'm gonna use
Speaker 9: that's what ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: So how's it going? Man? It's going all right? So
Speaker 1: for our listeners, And I'm trying to pack every question
Speaker 1: I can.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 2: First of all, I was shocked you were born in Asherville,
Speaker 2: North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Isn't that the hippie community?
Speaker 9: I'm I'm not sure I was. I left there when
Speaker 9: I was two, Okay, because I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: Usually for the roots, usually Asheville, North Carolina is like
Speaker 2: it's it's such a.
Speaker 1: Hippie territory.
Speaker 5: It's a mountain town.
Speaker 2: So yes, like some of the things of like the boundaries,
Speaker 2: but times a billion, Like there's always jam bands performing
Speaker 2: there and you know we've done many a show there.
Speaker 6: Because it sounds like jd ain't been back. You know,
Speaker 6: I was.
Speaker 5: I was put in Atlanta when I.
Speaker 1: Was two, Okay, So what what major family moved to Atlanta?
Speaker 9: Because Atlanta's the big city to Ashville, and you know,
Speaker 9: North Carolina is like that's what they look to I
Speaker 9: guess back then it is the place to go to
Speaker 9: have like fun. Like it's almost like how people go
Speaker 9: from La to Vegas and you know what I mean,
Speaker 9: it's like that type of situation.
Speaker 5: I think, I see, I think so.
Speaker 2: Uh, as far as you got in the business early,
Speaker 2: But what described what life was like in Atlanta? Because
Speaker 2: usually I'll say that for me, my first my first
Speaker 2: education on Atlanta, especially being how old I was, or
Speaker 2: the the the unfortunate, uh, the Atlanta child murder situation
Speaker 2: with Wayne Williams.
Speaker 1: Who looks.
Speaker 2: Boss Bill looking at me like, don't say nothing out
Speaker 2: the line, but then he kind of looked like Walter Clyde.
Speaker 2: Orange mccommodore's oh my god, wow wow, now that you
Speaker 2: said he looked like Walter Clyde. Everyone's saying their head Walter,
Speaker 2: I love you your gruman. Anyway, that was my introduction
Speaker 2: to Atlanta. But what was your childhood like in Atlanta?
Speaker 2: Like did they always have culture?
Speaker 9: And yeah, I think you know, you know, skating for
Speaker 9: kids was the culture of Atlanta. Like so when you
Speaker 9: see like at that movie was basically what child on
Speaker 9: my childhood was That was it for me to go
Speaker 9: to skate rink. You get away from your parents, you
Speaker 9: get to listen to music, you get to dance, you
Speaker 9: get to skate, you get to talk to girls. Everything
Speaker 9: happened at the skate rink. That was for young kids
Speaker 9: anyway coming up. Basically that was it for me. And
Speaker 9: then talent shows. Atlanta was full of talent shows. All
Speaker 9: the schools had talent shows. And you know, I was
Speaker 9: just doing that, hitting schools and doing talent shows and
Speaker 9: going to skate rink.
Speaker 5: It was not really much.
Speaker 9: It wasn't really much of a music scene in Atlanta,
Speaker 9: but it was a it was a scene for like
Speaker 9: dancers and the culture, like I'm saying, like skating and
Speaker 9: stuff like that. Musically, it wasn't really We had s
Speaker 9: O S Band and we had Brick and that was
Speaker 9: you know in Peebo Bryson and those were people was like,
Speaker 9: you know, he was like Rick Ross and Atlanta back then,
Speaker 9: like that was his that's Peobo's town. He had.
Speaker 5: He had the penthouse downtown. You know, you used to
Speaker 5: drive by my days.
Speaker 9: Like that's that's Ale's house and she'd be like, man,
Speaker 9: I'm gonna get me one of them shits one day
Speaker 9: like he's just.
Speaker 1: You know like that. So okay, Yeah, So was your
Speaker 1: father always in the music industry or Yeah?
Speaker 9: From from what I can remember, my dad was basically
Speaker 9: like a roadie that turned into like a road manager
Speaker 9: that turned into like a you know, a production manager
Speaker 9: more than anything. Because my dad played drums, so he
Speaker 9: was like more like a production guy for the drummers
Speaker 9: of Brick and you know, so Os band, and then
Speaker 9: he got into you know, morphed into more doing more
Speaker 9: production for you know, doing more production for all of
Speaker 9: these artists. And I used to just be there rehearsal,
Speaker 9: watching and looking and then cameo and you know, it
Speaker 9: started growing, but it was just those those were the
Speaker 9: main artists in Atlanta.
Speaker 6: How old were you at that point when you were
Speaker 6: watching these bands?
Speaker 5: Like nine.
Speaker 1: That sounds about right? Yeah, like nine that sounds about right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, uh, we've discovered here on Quest Loves the pre
Speaker 2: met all the name brand super producers have some sort
Speaker 2: of DJ history before they went into production. So did
Speaker 2: you have any DJ history prior to your Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 9: Well, when I went on the Fresh Vest at twelve,
Speaker 9: Grandmaster D basically was showing me how to DJ. Like
Speaker 9: I didn't know what to scratch, like scratch. He showed
Speaker 9: me how to scratch. I used to just want to
Speaker 9: always scratch. I used to go BEHD the turntables while
Speaker 9: they was doing sound check and try to scratch and
Speaker 9: he's like, yo, you know, don't don't don't touch my
Speaker 9: touch my set. I'm gonna show you how to do it.
Speaker 9: So I kind of, you know, I can say I
Speaker 9: got personal lessons from Grandmaster D and jam Ass the
Speaker 9: j of how to actually DJ and you know, actually
Speaker 9: scratch and you know, go back and forth on the records.
Speaker 9: Like that's what my introduction to DJing. So then I
Speaker 9: left the tour and went home and I told my
Speaker 9: parents that, you know, I want turntables for Christmas.
Speaker 2: That's so weird because like coming up because run DMC uh, well,
Speaker 2: because Jay actually scratched or run DMC records. I always
Speaker 2: wonder why Larry Smith never let Grandmaster D physically scratch,
Speaker 2: not until like the third record, when the open Sesame record.
Speaker 2: Then I finally heard scratch and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: he can't cut. But everybody and their mother swore to
Speaker 2: guy that like Grandmaster D was like stealing the show
Speaker 2: at the fresh Vest, doing like all these tricks on
Speaker 2: his head and so he was a legit bona fide DJ.
Speaker 9: Okay, yeah, I mean he was, you know, all the
Speaker 9: tricks and they'll pick him up and he scratched, you know,
Speaker 9: he with his mouth on the cross fader and yeah,
Speaker 9: he was doing it.
Speaker 5: He was going so.
Speaker 2: Being as though the fresh Fest was the first major
Speaker 2: stadium tour for hip hop one, how did you get
Speaker 2: on the fresh Fest to what was that shit?
Speaker 9: Like? Well, I got on the fresh Fest because the
Speaker 9: fresh Fest was created in Atlanta by a guy by
Speaker 9: the name of Ricky Walker. Ricky Walker now create has
Speaker 9: created Universe Soul Circus. Oh, the same guy. I created
Speaker 9: that and then he went and did the circus thing now,
Speaker 9: but he created the fresh Fest. And my father was
Speaker 9: the production manager on the fresh Fest. And they just
Speaker 9: needed to open act. You know, at that time, it
Speaker 9: used to be like they need an opening act to
Speaker 9: kill time or buy time or whatever it was. And
Speaker 9: they just put anybody on, no in house music, playing
Speaker 9: no iPods, yeah nothing, It wasn't nothing like that. They
Speaker 9: needed somebody to you know, you know, I don't even
Speaker 9: understand what that was. But they was buying time basically,
Speaker 9: and you know, there was like we do y'all have
Speaker 9: anybody to put on? And they suggested that I could
Speaker 9: come out and dance, and they let me come out
Speaker 9: and dance. And the show in Atlanta was the first
Speaker 9: show of the fresh Fest and it worked well with
Speaker 9: the time. So then it was like, well, can Jermaine
Speaker 9: do this for the rest of the tour?
Speaker 5: And I ain't know what that was. My mother ain't
Speaker 5: know what it was. Nobody knew what it was. Won
Speaker 5: no money involved. It was just like, what was your routine?
Speaker 9: I had a dance routine where I came out to
Speaker 9: its time and a couple of other records where I
Speaker 9: just was just on stage freestyle and just dancing. And
Speaker 9: I was little, so you know when you were a
Speaker 9: little kid dancing the crowd goes crazy. So it was
Speaker 9: like a it was kind of like the circus kind
Speaker 9: of like you know what I mean, you just you
Speaker 9: don't know what you're looking at. You it's watching and
Speaker 9: it looks like I'm doing more than what I probably
Speaker 9: was doing.
Speaker 2: So how many acts work or well, I know it
Speaker 2: was fat boys who Denie and run DM Seed who
Speaker 2: like I'm sure there had to been.
Speaker 9: GTFO was on the tour, Grandmaster Flash was on the tour.
Speaker 9: Everybody was hot at that Arrow.
Speaker 5: Was on the tour.
Speaker 1: How long would each act get Probably.
Speaker 9: Like fifteen minutes. I mean they never had that many records,
Speaker 9: and and Run Run was really like, you know, this
Speaker 9: is my ship, so you gotta you know, oh, so
Speaker 9: ill better hurry out, you know. Run Reverend Run had
Speaker 9: a real you know, he had that real thing about him.
Speaker 9: And Curtis Blow was on the tour, so it was
Speaker 9: Curtis Blow, Run, DMC, the Fat Boys, who Denie, Grandmaster Flash,
Speaker 9: the Dynamic Breakers, and I think Old Zon and Turbo WHOA, yeah, yeah, See.
Speaker 2: This is what I appreciate because I know as a youngster,
Speaker 2: as a person that was young then you were definitely
Speaker 2: in a fly on the wall situation.
Speaker 1: Anyone else couldn't.
Speaker 2: Like if I were whatever thirty plus years old at
Speaker 2: the first, they'd be like, hey, get the fuck out
Speaker 2: of it. But with you as a kid, I'm certain
Speaker 2: that you allowed in spaces that.
Speaker 9: I wasn't supposed to be in. But at the same
Speaker 9: time they was trying to tell me to get the
Speaker 9: fuck out of there. But it was like I was
Speaker 9: just like, no, I you know, I'm here, I'm not
Speaker 9: paying attention to y'all doing this, and I'm not you know,
Speaker 9: I've seen everything.
Speaker 2: Anyone from that era never has a recollection like DMC
Speaker 2: might you know. I'll ask him a few things and he, man,
Speaker 2: my memory is fivevey, I don't remember man like you know.
Speaker 5: So I remember everything.
Speaker 9: And I've been trying to do this movie about basically
Speaker 9: about my life kind of like that. And I've been
Speaker 9: having people tell me that it's hard to do a
Speaker 9: movie for a kid showing what I want y'all to
Speaker 9: see that I saw.
Speaker 5: Go to Newtflix R rated and it's not.
Speaker 6: And it's not like a series too, because that's a
Speaker 6: long life.
Speaker 9: That's that's I mean, I don't know how far to
Speaker 9: get back, but I'm really more concerned about that because
Speaker 9: what he's saying is that people, this is I know
Speaker 9: the stuff. It's not even like history. It's like a
Speaker 9: kid seeing what you don't understand. The kids saw like
Speaker 9: I saw artists come to life, I saw artists doing drugs.
Speaker 9: I saw I just saw everything that at twelve, you
Speaker 9: don't really understand what you're seeing.
Speaker 10: And at the time, since you're going you're touring and whatnot.
Speaker 10: Is your dad your only chaperone because he's.
Speaker 9: Working, not really chaperon. I'm out there basically by myself.
Speaker 9: He's working, I'm running around all of these other guys
Speaker 9: on my chaperones.
Speaker 5: That's why. That's why, like for.
Speaker 9: Really, that's why Houdini actually became like my brothers, and
Speaker 9: you know, they became like the guys that was with
Speaker 9: me all the time. Not that my father wasn't paying attention,
Speaker 9: It was just that I saw that as a move
Speaker 9: for me to start getting away from him and just
Speaker 9: like hanging out more. And I wasn't like out late
Speaker 9: at night and nothing like that. None of them, none
Speaker 9: of the guys ever let me do anything like that.
Speaker 9: It was just all about the tour and like when
Speaker 9: the show was going on, I was everywhere at the show,
Speaker 9: all over the place.
Speaker 2: This is this is how nerdy I am because it
Speaker 2: didn't even occur to me to ask about like, oh,
Speaker 2: the relationship you saw my nerd ass is trying to
Speaker 2: figure out, well, wait a minute, what's the back line situation?
Speaker 1: So like what was sound check?
Speaker 2: Like I know, monitors are ringing, like I'm trying to
Speaker 2: figure out, like how does from a reduction standpoint, how
Speaker 2: does the show run concurrently and smoothly without this DJ
Speaker 2: being like who broke my mixer?
Speaker 5: And now they all had different sets, so it was
Speaker 5: like it was like.
Speaker 9: Probably like five tables sitting in the back right, so
Speaker 9: every time somebody come off, there'll move that table and
Speaker 9: put that guy set up there, and nobody was nobody
Speaker 9: was using the same turntables.
Speaker 5: That definitely wasn't happening on that tour.
Speaker 2: See, that error was scaring me because I know that
Speaker 2: with dancers there's always skipping records.
Speaker 9: And that's what made jam Master J to me one
Speaker 9: of the best live DJ ever because he knew, he
Speaker 9: knew how.
Speaker 5: To you know, move in a land of where that
Speaker 5: would never happen.
Speaker 9: He was like a drummer on He was like you
Speaker 9: on stage, like he could really just like do whatever
Speaker 9: he wanted with those turntables and make them, you know,
Speaker 9: play the way he wanted them to play.
Speaker 10: So when they asked you, I'm sorry, I just want
Speaker 10: when they asked you to do the record years later,
Speaker 10: what was it down with the King Joint? Because that
Speaker 10: was the that was the only time y'all worked together again.
Speaker 10: The next Yeah, that must have been like a whole
Speaker 10: full circle moment, since you know, going from a kid
Speaker 10: and what you were saying, how you know, run with
Speaker 10: such a boss on tour or whatever.
Speaker 9: I mean, it was all of us a full circle.
Speaker 9: I signed who didn't need so Like it was a
Speaker 9: complete full circle. Like I was a kid looking up
Speaker 9: to these guys and they was teaching me and telling
Speaker 9: me things, and then I felt so you know, connected
Speaker 9: to them that I wanted to sign them and give
Speaker 9: them what I felt like I was given to the
Speaker 9: rest of the world.
Speaker 1: So when it was over, like the last day of
Speaker 1: the fresh Vest, I don't even remember that. Well, well, okay,
Speaker 1: were they all were? I know there were like two
Speaker 1: or three Fresh fest Did you do it every year? Just?
Speaker 5: Yeah, eighty forty five and eighty six?
Speaker 2: Okay, So when the fresh Fest is officially over, like,
Speaker 2: how do you return to normalcy? How do you go
Speaker 2: back to Atlanta or whatever wherever your home base was,
Speaker 2: assuming that you lived in Atlanta, Like, how do you
Speaker 2: explain this to your friends?
Speaker 1: How do you explain what you saw?
Speaker 5: Like, well, that's that's what actually really happened.
Speaker 9: Is like when I was on I went on tour
Speaker 9: at twelve, right, and in Atlanta wasn't a city that
Speaker 9: was used to performing artists. We didn't we don't have
Speaker 9: a performing art school or nothing like that. When when
Speaker 9: I was twelve, so I was in a regular school
Speaker 9: and I had a tutor. But when I came back
Speaker 9: from tour and I took my grades back to the school,
Speaker 9: the school system told my tutor that they couldn't accept it,
Speaker 9: like they just like, we don't that's not We're not
Speaker 9: used to this. We're not going to accept all of
Speaker 9: this work. So I'm like, wait a minute, I did
Speaker 9: this work. You're not gonna really make it seem I'm
Speaker 9: not gonna ready be left back. I was on the
Speaker 9: bus doing work like I had a tutor, So right
Speaker 9: then and there, I was like, man, fuck this, I'm
Speaker 9: not I'm not I'm not doing this. So it was
Speaker 9: like my life changed right there, at like fourteen fifteen
Speaker 9: years old. My life just changed. Was like I became
Speaker 9: doing home study and I didn't go to school anymore.
Speaker 9: And then it was just like the drive to make
Speaker 9: sure that this didn't turn into something completely bad.
Speaker 1: But was it weird for you?
Speaker 2: Because you know, on tour, I don't know if you
Speaker 2: had anyone to relate to that was your age. And
Speaker 2: then you're not an environment in a school environment where
Speaker 2: you have stop hops or a prime or you know,
Speaker 2: just like regular.
Speaker 1: You know, sock hops causton. That's worse than this. What sop?
Speaker 1: What's sop?
Speaker 5: What is that?
Speaker 1: That's the sophomore prime?
Speaker 5: What's a sop?
Speaker 1: Hop? Sp stop hops?
Speaker 6: I think.
Speaker 1: Were you going to leave me out here alone? I
Speaker 1: don't know because I heard you say sophomore shop shop
Speaker 1: hops are.
Speaker 6: That's where John too, John, someone.
Speaker 1: That went to school in the eighties like that.
Speaker 6: It's a good reference.
Speaker 5: Please explained it to me.
Speaker 1: I thought you said so right? Where I get it? Jay?
Speaker 5: You your I mean I was in two thousand, I
Speaker 5: was twelve in the eighties.
Speaker 1: You're still twelve. Now, I get it what it was
Speaker 1: you're young? I get it right.
Speaker 2: Are like the senior dance things? You're going to your
Speaker 2: junior prom, then you go on your senior prom.
Speaker 6: But it happened in the fifties.
Speaker 1: No, that's sock sock you're thinking of Greece. S o P.
Speaker 1: I have a cold. So someone all right, okay, I'm
Speaker 1: the oldest person in the room. Thank you, Steve. I
Speaker 1: don't know what it is, your firstbeeing, your Hulu hoops,
Speaker 1: your nerve fall. All. Right, here's here's my point.
Speaker 2: My point is that you know not I mean, I
Speaker 2: don't know like what your relationships like with your cousins
Speaker 2: or your like your your family, but just to not
Speaker 2: to be isolated it from people your age, like, how
Speaker 2: was it? Was it a lonely isolated experience where it's
Speaker 2: just like hanging with these adults all the.
Speaker 9: Time and not nah, because I looked at it like
Speaker 9: this was the only way I was going to get
Speaker 9: close to what I was in love with at the time,
Speaker 9: and these guys was dancing all day to turn you said,
Speaker 9: you want to know what soundcheck was like? Soundcheck was
Speaker 9: like because we had two stages. We had a middle
Speaker 9: stage and we had a big stage right the rappers
Speaker 9: was on the main stage, and then the stage in
Speaker 9: the middle was all the dancers. So in soundcheck, all
Speaker 9: the dancers would be out there dancing together at all
Speaker 9: at one time, like just everybody dancing. So it's like
Speaker 9: I'm getting the opportunity to see moves and all of
Speaker 9: this stuff, and I'm not watching videos. I'm actually watching
Speaker 9: this and I'm learning so it was to me it
Speaker 9: was like being at school, but the school that I
Speaker 9: wanted to be at.
Speaker 2: I first heard about you, like I before the internet,
Speaker 2: right on magazine was like every every black teen is
Speaker 2: like religion.
Speaker 1: You know what that is?
Speaker 5: J Yeah, yeah, okay, you better know.
Speaker 1: I think that was his first article.
Speaker 5: I was in there, shout out to Cynthia Horn and
Speaker 5: she put.
Speaker 1: Me in there. Yeah. I was going to say, d
Speaker 1: do you remember being right?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So I think at the time was sometimes Leather your
Speaker 2: first project or how did you get into production?
Speaker 5: Well, let me sell you.
Speaker 9: Sometimes Leather were girlfriends of Hudini, right, Okay, So they
Speaker 9: was out on the tour doing with the girlfriends out
Speaker 9: on the tour do basically, and I was on the
Speaker 9: side of the stage when these girls came up and
Speaker 9: I was like, you know, checking them out. I'm young,
Speaker 9: so I'm checking the girls out and they was you know,
Speaker 9: they was a guy's performing. So then we just got
Speaker 9: to know each other because they was out there like
Speaker 9: I was out there and it was like, you know,
Speaker 9: I'm running around, they running around. So then they picked
Speaker 9: me up, take me what we go to catering or
Speaker 9: whatever it is. Was something that had something to do
Speaker 9: with touring. So, long story short, I learned that these
Speaker 9: girls were from Atlanta. So then it was like, oh shit,
Speaker 9: yeah from Atlanta. They was like, yeah, so we going
Speaker 9: back home. When you get back home, call us and
Speaker 9: we'll come pick you up. We got car, take you
Speaker 9: get something to eat. They was really super nice and this,
Speaker 9: that and the third. So when I got back at the.
Speaker 1: Time, because I don't even remember it sometimes like now,
Speaker 1: so they were older.
Speaker 5: Yeah that's not cool, but you don't remember.
Speaker 1: I remember.
Speaker 5: It's not good. I wasn't born then, Yo, you were
Speaker 5: born when was on Yeah, that's when he was born.
Speaker 5: When it came, when Rap City.
Speaker 1: Came home whatever, all right.
Speaker 9: So so yeah, so you know they lived in Atlanta,
Speaker 9: and basically at this particular point time, I was so
Speaker 9: deep into hip hop and I was paying attention to
Speaker 9: everybody's movement. And Herbie Lovebug was moving. At this particular
Speaker 9: point time, he had Salt Pepper. I think he had
Speaker 9: just dropped Kid and Play and Kwame was you know,
Speaker 9: he had what I thought I was, you know, what
Speaker 9: I was looking at trying to figure out, yeah movement.
Speaker 9: So the girls, they was, you know, they was into
Speaker 9: Salt pepper, and some kind of way, I found out
Speaker 9: that they wanted to be rappers or they was rapping
Speaker 9: or whatever, and out of nowhere, I just said, well,
Speaker 9: y'all should let me write y'all songs. I don't know
Speaker 9: what I was thinking about, because I ain't have no
Speaker 9: drum machines or nothing, but I just felt like I
Speaker 9: could do it. And they was like, Okay, well, how
Speaker 9: are you gonna do it? And I'm like, we'll figure
Speaker 9: it out, right, So, and I'm guessing that I'm thinking
Speaker 9: that when I said this to them, I didn't. I
Speaker 9: didn't think they was gonna take me up on it.
Speaker 9: They called my phone when I got back home, or
Speaker 9: they called my house and they was like, we're gonna
Speaker 9: come over your house. So they came up with my
Speaker 9: house and they came. They got really familiar with my
Speaker 9: mom and got you know, really friendly, and my mother
Speaker 9: trusted them, and I start going out hanging out with them,
Speaker 9: and it was all about just hanging out. And then
Speaker 9: I was always talking about making music. So then I
Speaker 9: figured out how to call the drummer from Brick Eddie Irons.
Speaker 5: He was the drummer for Brick. I called him. He
Speaker 5: had a studio called twenty five sixteen in Atlanta. So
Speaker 5: I called him.
Speaker 9: I'm like, yo, I want to make some records and
Speaker 9: he was like, okay, what you want to do and
Speaker 9: I'm and I'm and I'm bartering his services. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 9: bartering his services, like yo. And at this point, come fifteen, Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 9: that's the thing that's amazing me because there's for you
Speaker 9: soject either technically yeah, well nah, well yeah I did
Speaker 9: so so ultimately, like my first song, Shoddy wrote my
Speaker 9: first song and this is yeah. MC shoddy wrote the
Speaker 9: first song that I ever did, and that he taught
Speaker 9: me how to write songs basically watching him write this
Speaker 9: song for me. So when he wrote this song it's
Speaker 9: called It's Me that I used to perform on the
Speaker 9: Fresh Fest, it was a song that he wrote, but
Speaker 9: he wasn't really saying everything that I wanted to say.
Speaker 9: So I was in this position where I had this
Speaker 9: song while I was saying these lyrics that he wrote,
Speaker 9: but I wanted to say something else, and I wasn't
Speaker 9: skilled enough to change the lyrics. While I was on stages,
Speaker 9: I thought I was just gonna destroy the song. So
Speaker 9: so I did the song the way I had learned
Speaker 9: the song because I wasn't skilled enough to change it,
Speaker 9: but I knew in my mind I wanted to change
Speaker 9: the lyrics. So long story short, he got me into writing.
Speaker 9: So from the Fresh Fest. I came off the Fresh
Speaker 9: Fest in eighty six with a rapping and writing songs, right,
Speaker 9: so and and I jumped the piece because I met
Speaker 9: Chad Elliott?
Speaker 5: Who was who was? He came in second place to
Speaker 5: the Fat Boys in the Disco Fever dude.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, you remember crash Groove. Yeah, so he's real.
Speaker 11: Oh my god, Yeah, where is Chad Elliott? He's here,
Speaker 11: He's in New York.
Speaker 1: Chad.
Speaker 9: Chad actually is gonna induct me into the Songwriters Hall
Speaker 9: of Fame Thursday.
Speaker 5: Yes, so wait he has a oh some give you.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna give you all this history.
Speaker 9: So so you know Chad, Me and Chad because you
Speaker 9: said nobody I hung out with. So I met Chad
Speaker 9: later on in the Fresh Fest in like eighty five.
Speaker 9: So eighty eighty three, eighty four, eighty five, eighty forty five,
Speaker 9: and eighty six was the fresh Fest.
Speaker 5: So in eighty five I met Chad.
Speaker 9: We started. They put Charlie Stetler. You know Charles Stetler,
Speaker 9: you know child steps Man. Yeah, okay, Charles Stetler was
Speaker 9: the fat Boy, his manager, He managed Chad. He started
Speaker 9: managing Chad after the Disco Fever contest. He came to
Speaker 9: the tour and said, if the Fat Boys stay on
Speaker 9: this tour, y'all gotta put Chad Elliott on this tour
Speaker 9: because Jermaine's opening. So he made Chad the second opener
Speaker 9: after me. So it was like, I go in, Chad go,
Speaker 9: and then people start trying to pit us together and
Speaker 9: it never worked.
Speaker 5: We weren't you know, we didn't really care about it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: well that didn't happen. It was just like kicking it.
Speaker 9: And then it was like we should be a group.
Speaker 9: So this was like the first version of Chris Cross actually,
Speaker 9: if you think about it, one dark skinned, light skin kid.
Speaker 9: So fast forward to that, Me and Chad really start
Speaker 9: hanging out. So at the end of the tour, you
Speaker 9: want to know what happened at the At the end
Speaker 9: of the tour, I moved to Brooklyn with Chad Elliott,
Speaker 9: so he lives he lives in Brooklyn. I came here
Speaker 9: to Brooklyn and I lived almost a year with him
Speaker 9: in Brooklyn, basically soaking up every bit of hip hop
Speaker 9: and New York culture that I could actually right rebit
Speaker 9: of it everything.
Speaker 1: Were you in Brooklyn eighty six, eighty seven, eighty eight.
Speaker 9: Yeah, right when everything happened, Everything's got you know, jay
Speaker 9: Z's coming to life in Fort Green and Big Daddy
Speaker 9: Knees recording demos in Fresh Gordon's house in Fort Green projects,
Speaker 9: all of this stuff. I'm right down the street from
Speaker 9: this and knowing that this is happening, right, So I'm
Speaker 9: staying in in.
Speaker 5: Brooklyn on No.
Speaker 9: Stern, New York Street, Eastern Parkway just for anybody's listening to. Yeah,
Speaker 9: who's staying over there? And I don't actually know that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, that's right after there's a certain night
Speaker 1: club I whant they ask you about? But yeah, I
Speaker 1: was about to say, cueue that up? Do you have
Speaker 1: a Latin quarter story?
Speaker 6: No, thank you Lord.
Speaker 5: I couldn't get in there.
Speaker 6: That was too young.
Speaker 9: So so yeah, So Chad actually introduced me to break
Speaker 9: beats and the sound of New York at that particular time,
Speaker 9: and that's when my appetite for production and making records
Speaker 9: came to life.
Speaker 5: So what happened was.
Speaker 9: I would take break beats and I would play the
Speaker 9: breaks and I would start writing, and I knew.
Speaker 5: That you had to, you know, catch the break and
Speaker 5: play another one.
Speaker 9: So we was we you know, we had a box
Speaker 9: and we started pause taping and making these beats with
Speaker 9: break beats. So that's basically how I started. So when
Speaker 9: I got back to Atlanta, that's the part of the story.
Speaker 9: That's when I made the call and I'm like, yo,
Speaker 9: I want to.
Speaker 1: Make some record culture to Atlanta.
Speaker 5: Well, I don't think people heard it.
Speaker 9: That's what made me become more of a producer because
Speaker 9: I told this guy sample these beats.
Speaker 5: I told him, I want this beat to be the song.
Speaker 1: What was your weapon of choice back then? Like? What
Speaker 1: machine did they?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think they had.
Speaker 9: He had a what was it, DM DMX That's what
Speaker 9: he had, right, So you couldn't really sample. So then
Speaker 9: I found these these white guys across on the other
Speaker 9: side of town. They had an emulator. Emulator could sample,
Speaker 9: so I'm like, shit, they could do it with this machine.
Speaker 9: They didn't want to do it either. They didn't understand
Speaker 9: what I was saying. It was like, you want us
Speaker 9: to take people's music and I'm like, yes, take moral culture.
Speaker 5: I'm like, yo, take the beat.
Speaker 9: I want to wrap over this beat. So then they
Speaker 9: try to recreate the breaks with drum sounds and I'm like, ew, like,
Speaker 9: this is not what I'm talking about, right, So the
Speaker 9: frustration of this made me become a producer. So then
Speaker 9: I just started like, I'm gonna figure this out.
Speaker 1: See this is weird. So you're the first person of
Speaker 1: a note that I know that's not from New York.
Speaker 2: That persisted until they found a satisfactory production technique that
Speaker 2: they knew in their heart they felt with hip hop
Speaker 2: because usually anyone else that I talked to from other territories,
Speaker 2: it's just like, okay, well I'll just do it on
Speaker 2: the drum machine, and you know, I hate it.
Speaker 5: I hate it.
Speaker 9: Like when I heard you, I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 9: this is is he real? Like this guy understands what
Speaker 9: I'm talking about. I'd be hating to hear drummers just
Speaker 9: play beats and it don't sound.
Speaker 1: Like like that.
Speaker 5: I wanted to sound like, like, tune the snail a
Speaker 5: little bit, make it do something right. So this was
Speaker 5: what I was going through.
Speaker 9: So the frustration that I was going through and not
Speaker 9: hearing beats the way I wanted forced me to become
Speaker 9: a producer and start like hitting the drum machines and
Speaker 9: whatever whatever. So long story short, I got in there
Speaker 9: and I started getting Eddy to, you know, let me
Speaker 9: touch the drum machine and give him ideas about the
Speaker 9: Silk Times Leather record. And I wrote a song called
Speaker 9: the Woman in Me or something like that, and I think, no,
Speaker 9: work it out, work it out by Silk Times leathern
Speaker 9: we gotta deal with Warner Brothers.
Speaker 5: They got signed.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, they was pretty girls.
Speaker 9: And you know, I think that's what they was going
Speaker 9: for more than the music. They didn't really care about
Speaker 9: the music. They didn't really care about me. But I
Speaker 9: think they was into the girls and they thought they
Speaker 9: could sell them based on how they look.
Speaker 2: So at what point are the training wheels taking off?
Speaker 2: And then you are like, okay, I can make these beats.
Speaker 2: Now supposed to sample this and sample that?
Speaker 9: Well, Silktimes Love I think they sold fifteen thousand copies.
Speaker 9: So fifteen thousand copies to the writer of all the
Speaker 9: music is like, you know, fifteen thousand dollars maybe or
Speaker 9: something like. You know, So I took that money and
Speaker 9: I went and put my drum machine on Layoway and
Speaker 9: I got a five h five drum machine. I put
Speaker 9: on Layoway right because I didn't really have all my money,
Speaker 9: but I had enough to put the drum machine on Laiway.
Speaker 9: When I got the back end of my money, I
Speaker 9: went and got the drum machine. So then I start
Speaker 9: making beats, but the beat still didn't sound like I
Speaker 9: wanted them. So I was like, Okay, I'm just gonna
Speaker 9: make this beat of how I wanted to be. When
Speaker 9: I get to the studio, I'm gonna change the sounds.
Speaker 9: I'm gonna have him change the sound. So I started
Speaker 9: going to the studio and I was telling Eddie changed
Speaker 9: the sound or the kick. I wanted to sound like this,
Speaker 9: and I wanted to sound like this, and nobody was
Speaker 9: getting what I was saying. It's like, okay, this is
Speaker 9: just killing me. So then I got another check from
Speaker 9: the Silk Times Leather album that allowed me to get
Speaker 9: en Sonic EPs. Ah okay, right, So when I got
Speaker 9: the n Sonic EPs, I thought I had walked into
Speaker 9: heaven because I could sample and I could do everything
Speaker 9: that I've been telling everybody else to do.
Speaker 5: So I just stayed up night after night after night.
Speaker 5: I stayed. I ain't read nothing.
Speaker 1: I just read.
Speaker 5: I don't read nothing.
Speaker 9: I just started messing with it because I because I
Speaker 9: already dreamed that. They told me at the store that
Speaker 9: it would do what I wanted. So if I'm thinking,
Speaker 9: if you tell me it's gonna do what I want,
Speaker 9: then I'm gonna start trying to do what I want.
Speaker 9: I seen the sample button. I'm trying to do what
Speaker 9: I want. And I learned immediately that it didn't do
Speaker 9: what I want. But you know that's the learning car thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I caught on.
Speaker 9: So with that, I just started making songs because the
Speaker 9: EPs was easier, And I started making songs and just
Speaker 9: doing my own little demos. And I met Left Eye
Speaker 9: and then she started living with me, and she was.
Speaker 1: So she moved from Philly to Atlanta.
Speaker 9: Yeah, okay, So she moved from Philly to Atlanta, and
Speaker 9: she hooked up with this guy named Ian Burke who
Speaker 9: brought her to my house. Now I didn't have nothing
Speaker 9: at this and I just had equipment that I had
Speaker 9: just bought, and I was working, and he was like,
Speaker 9: you should go over to Jad's house and y'all work.
Speaker 9: So she came up to my house. We started working
Speaker 9: and we was writing songs basically together. And then I
Speaker 9: went to the mall with the DJ from Silk Tom's
Speaker 9: Leather and I saw Criss Cross and they was in
Speaker 9: the mall already just chilling.
Speaker 5: So that's a real story, Okay.
Speaker 1: All this time I thought, I was like, Oh, that's
Speaker 1: marking a story like church.
Speaker 5: One real story. I went to the mall.
Speaker 9: I'm in the mall shopping and I'm looking in the
Speaker 9: corner and it's these kids that people are actually paying
Speaker 9: attention to. And I'm like, why are y'all paying so
Speaker 9: much attention to these kids? And I'm thinking, like, okay,
Speaker 9: maybe it's like one of these Nickelodeon groups. I don't know,
Speaker 9: something like that. So I walk over to him. I'm like, yo,
Speaker 9: what's up? They like, what's up? I'm saying, like, what
Speaker 9: do y'all do? They're like, we don't do nothing. We
Speaker 9: just kick it, Like y'all just kick it. I'm like,
Speaker 9: why is people? Why the girls like all that y'all
Speaker 9: and they like, that's cause that's what we do. We
Speaker 9: got girls like that. What's happening? And it was like
Speaker 9: eleven eleven eleven eleven, twelve years old, and I'm like,
Speaker 9: they knew what swag was. They swag was. They was
Speaker 9: the definition of swag to me at that time, I
Speaker 9: didn't even have that type of swag.
Speaker 5: I was just trying to be a producer.
Speaker 9: These guys was in the mall flexing, talking to girls,
Speaker 9: spending money, all kinds of things and getting sneakers. So
Speaker 9: I was like, damn, where y'all get all this from?
Speaker 9: All y'all a group. They're like, Nah, we don't rap,
Speaker 9: we don't do none of that. We just come to
Speaker 9: the mall.
Speaker 5: We cool.
Speaker 9: Everybody like us because we cool, and I'm like, okay.
Speaker 9: Immediately I just stopped and my mom was like, s
Speaker 9: if I write them a song.
Speaker 5: This shit is gonna go.
Speaker 1: Did they know who Jermaine Dupre was?
Speaker 10: No?
Speaker 9: They thought I was like a pervert or something. I
Speaker 9: swear they thought they was like, why do you want
Speaker 9: my number? Because I asked them for their number. And
Speaker 9: then luckily one of the the mothers, one of their mothers,
Speaker 9: walked up and she read Jet magazine. So in the
Speaker 9: Jet magazine that had just come out, there was like
Speaker 9: a little issue about article about female rappers and it
Speaker 9: had Salt and Pepper and the girls grew girl groups
Speaker 9: that are coming behind them, and Silktimes Love It happened
Speaker 9: to be one of those groups. So she recognized the
Speaker 9: DJ from being in the Jet magazine, so she was like,
Speaker 9: I know her. I seen her in the Jets, So
Speaker 9: they are somebody that saved me because Chris, and Chris
Speaker 9: was like, nah, I'm not giving you my number like
Speaker 9: you said.
Speaker 5: It was or in Atlanta about the.
Speaker 9: Missing, missing and murdered kids, and they was from that neighborhood,
Speaker 9: so you know, it was a stranger danger, you know
Speaker 9: of a situation. So I'm telling them like, y'all want
Speaker 9: you to come over to my house and kick it,
Speaker 9: and they were still like come over to your house
Speaker 9: and kick it?
Speaker 5: What is what are we doing?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 9: Cause they weren't into music, so they didn't even understand
Speaker 9: what I was trying to get them to do. So
Speaker 9: you know, that passed and I would like go get
Speaker 9: them from school and just try to hang out with them,
Speaker 9: and I become their friend more than just talk about music.
Speaker 9: So I did that and then I started noticing that
Speaker 9: they was in the back seat rapping to music that
Speaker 9: I was playing and they was rapping all the lyrics
Speaker 9: and really doing that shit in the car like that.
Speaker 9: Ice Cube America's Most Wanted the whole album.
Speaker 1: Wow, I heard pays some mother fuck.
Speaker 5: They was going crazy in my car.
Speaker 1: Let's word for me, Tomath.
Speaker 2: The kids actually gravitating towards it that I actually like
Speaker 2: because usually, like the generation with the Divide, kids are
Speaker 2: always liking the ship that I don't like.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: I was about the same age as as Chris Carson
Speaker 7: came out hold On and like America's Most Wanted, like
Speaker 7: ice Cube was my shit around and avoidable.
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's that's what they was like ice Cube fanatics,
Speaker 9: but it's all they wanted to hear was ice Cube.
Speaker 9: So we play a whole ice Cube tape from their
Speaker 9: house to my house, and they was rapping all the lyrics.
Speaker 9: So I was thinking, like, okay, so if they like
Speaker 9: this like this and they rapping every word and they
Speaker 9: doing all the inflections, they sound just like he sound
Speaker 9: when he moves his voice. I said, if I figure
Speaker 9: I how to do that and write a song for
Speaker 9: them that they like, they possibly could do the same
Speaker 9: thing for me. So then I just went in the
Speaker 9: house and I told them, so, I'm gonna write a
Speaker 9: song for y'all and if y'all like it, I need
Speaker 9: you all to rap it, just like y'all doing this
Speaker 9: ice cube shit. And they was like, okay, whatever. So
Speaker 9: I did this song where I sampled Michael Jackson and
Speaker 9: Paul McCartney called the Girl's Mind, and I was trying
Speaker 9: to make them fight about the girl is Mine. And
Speaker 9: this was the song that I wrote and I sampled
Speaker 9: Paul McCartney Michael Jackson, and I put Left Eye on
Speaker 9: the record because she was the girl.
Speaker 5: Girl listen, listen never she's the girl.
Speaker 9: So it was like my idea, like the girl is mine,
Speaker 9: he's Paul McCartney, he's Michael Jackson, and she's the girl.
Speaker 5: This was my whole little scheme.
Speaker 1: Okay, even though you won't let the public ever hear this.
Speaker 1: Do you know where that tape is?
Speaker 5: I mean, it's a tape. Yeah, I know, it's a tape.
Speaker 9: Okay, So you know that was the beginning. I'm starting
Speaker 9: to make these songs. And then I realized that they
Speaker 9: weren't Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson. They were little ice
Speaker 9: cubes like they want. They were from the south west
Speaker 9: side of Atlanta, which people call the Watots, that's where
Speaker 9: they're from. And they would come home from school and
Speaker 9: tell me stories about how Jamay, you don't even know.
Speaker 9: It's little kids in my school. It's eleven years old.
Speaker 9: They selling all a dope. They got all the dope,
Speaker 9: and they had like socks where they wear shorts and
Speaker 9: they have like multiple socks and they put all the
Speaker 9: work inside the socks and they go to school. So
Speaker 9: they used to give me all this game and I
Speaker 9: ain't know about because I didn't finish school like that
Speaker 9: and I ain't go with these kids. So I used
Speaker 9: to just listen to them and be amazed, like damn,
Speaker 9: this is crazy, and I'm like, who knows about this?
Speaker 9: So then I just start thinking about them wrapping ice
Speaker 9: cube and the stories they was telling me, and I'm like,
Speaker 9: little boys in the hood, this is what y'all are.
Speaker 5: Y'all are little boys in the hood.
Speaker 9: It's boys in the hood with y'all are little boys
Speaker 9: in the hood, and y'all see the crazy shit that
Speaker 9: everybody else sees, but don't nobody actually believe it. So
Speaker 9: that was my goal to write a song called Little
Speaker 9: Boys in the Hood. I wrote this song, and I
Speaker 9: sent the song to Jodah Butcher and Pilly. And when
Speaker 9: I sent the song to Jodah Butcher, he hit me
Speaker 9: right back like I love it, let's sign them. And
Speaker 9: I was like, what, oh shit, we got a deal.
Speaker 9: Just like that, he was ready to go. So then
Speaker 9: he brought us the rough house for basically it wasn't
Speaker 9: real deal. It was you know, development deal. So it
Speaker 9: was a five song development deal. I didn't have five songs.
Speaker 9: I had four songs, and he was like, well, we
Speaker 9: need five songs. So on the night or the day
Speaker 9: before we was going to Philly, I wrote jump.
Speaker 1: Classics always written.
Speaker 5: I wrote this song. I wrote this song in thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: Yo, everything song?
Speaker 6: Where did it start from?
Speaker 11: What?
Speaker 6: Jump start?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 6: What was the first thought in your mind?
Speaker 5: Kids?
Speaker 9: Something something something kitty, something kitty. So I went after
Speaker 9: Michael Jackson like he was a kid. This was they
Speaker 9: was they was kids. So he was a kid artist,
Speaker 9: sample something Michael Jackson. So I started playing with the
Speaker 9: turntables and I heard this ABC and I was like,
Speaker 9: I shouldn't let it play all the way out of
Speaker 9: shitch it and just catch something. And I don't know
Speaker 9: what made me do that, and I just caught the
Speaker 9: first part boom boom boom, and I left it and
Speaker 9: I was like, this ship sounds crazy. I went back
Speaker 9: and I did it again. Boom boom stopped it and
Speaker 9: I'm like, I'm not letting the.
Speaker 5: Rest of it play. I'm gonna just keep doing like that.
Speaker 1: Wait mother trying to wait to do not say do
Speaker 1: not say it like we all know that's I want
Speaker 1: you back, And.
Speaker 5: I mean I said the wrong song. My bad.
Speaker 1: I got to say, come on, dog, you know that
Speaker 1: I do now.
Speaker 5: I want you, I said a b C. I said
Speaker 5: ABC because I was she still.
Speaker 1: Didn't know that I want you.
Speaker 2: Here's the ship that's killing me. The ship that's killing
Speaker 2: me was the whole genius of that song is the
Speaker 2: fact that you managed to find a way to make
Speaker 2: funky worm oh sh match perfectly in key. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: I love the bomb Squad to death, but we know
Speaker 2: the calling card was just throw it on the wall
Speaker 2: and see what works. They were not atonal and you
Speaker 2: know radical. So when I first heard that ship, I
Speaker 2: was like, yo, there's some genius ship, Like how do
Speaker 2: he know that these ships are going to seem to
Speaker 2: be in the same bpms and in the same key.
Speaker 2: So I'm thinking this whole time you scientific experience. But
Speaker 2: as with every producer that comes on the show, their
Speaker 2: their PEACI resistance is always like some afterthought, like ten
Speaker 2: minutes ship, like I got, well, no, what the.
Speaker 5: Funky worm part. I played with it for a minute
Speaker 5: to get it to sound like that, or you bend
Speaker 5: it down to yeah, yeah, yeah, I was.
Speaker 9: That was that was like, oh, let's go, because you know,
Speaker 9: like I said, you got to think about it. I
Speaker 9: just explained to you exactly who Chris Crust was. Chris
Speaker 9: Cruss was two kids from the Hood that I was
Speaker 9: in love with, the West Coast Rappers basically ice Cube
Speaker 9: at that point in time, right, So the Funky Worm
Speaker 9: was me grabbing what I thought was the West Coast
Speaker 9: for them so that they would like it. The sample
Speaker 9: was me trying to find something that was like Kitty
Speaker 9: because Michael Jackson was a kid in this era. So
Speaker 9: I was just trying to put all these elements into
Speaker 9: this one song out of every song. I mean, we
Speaker 9: already had to deal with little boys in the Hood,
Speaker 9: but I was just like, it could be better than this,
Speaker 9: and it could be better than this, and I just
Speaker 9: started and I started thinking about every element of hip
Speaker 9: hop that I could give these kids, because I knew
Speaker 9: that they could rap at this point, like if they
Speaker 9: was really rapping what I was doing, they I mean,
Speaker 9: for whatever reason I said they could rap, they was rapping.
Speaker 9: Whatever I sent them, they would do it. So I
Speaker 9: was like, shit, let's diss ABC and let's just let's
Speaker 9: just go all the way here.
Speaker 10: Can I just asked, this might be a crazy question,
Speaker 10: But now that the bail is up and Chris I
Speaker 10: know now that Chris Cross didn't write their lyrics leave
Speaker 10: me alone? Is that that was a surprise me A
Speaker 10: little bit just not a little bit of a surprise.
Speaker 10: I thought more of a collaboration. But does that mean
Speaker 10: the same thing for another bad creation in that way?
Speaker 10: Like I used to to assume that, like Michael Bimins
Speaker 10: did the same thing.
Speaker 1: You were. I get it.
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 10: The first like child rappers or bow Wow, the first
Speaker 10: kid rapper to really start writing.
Speaker 5: Then you know.
Speaker 1: JD wrote everything.
Speaker 6: No, he didn't know bow Wow wrote some stuff? Right,
Speaker 6: come on?
Speaker 2: Can I get to the science of him as a producer?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, question, but listen, wait, act, but I'm just
Speaker 2: saying that in terms of of of who taught you,
Speaker 2: because this is the thing. You're the first producer that
Speaker 2: I've spoken to since the show that it is putting
Speaker 2: marketing savvy also in his production thoughts, because even me
Speaker 2: as a producer, I'm certain that there's some you know,
Speaker 2: like the equivalent of when you lose your glasses and
Speaker 2: they're on your forehead. Now I'm thinking like, damn, what
Speaker 2: hopper shit should the Roots have done to really grab
Speaker 2: fans of like live music that we didn't do? Because
Speaker 2: never once in my history did I think of, Oh,
Speaker 2: what's what's the marketing thing?
Speaker 1: We need? A new earthworod and fire. Why don't you guys?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm I've never heard a producer talk like
Speaker 2: a manager. So what I really want to know is
Speaker 2: where did you get your manager marketing savvy from?
Speaker 5: Because that from the doors being closed? Right.
Speaker 9: So, when I was here in New York and I
Speaker 9: had Silk Times Leather, I knew Red Alert and Chuck
Speaker 9: Chill Out from being on the Fresh Fest and I
Speaker 9: knew them as a kid. And then when I started
Speaker 9: making records, I'm thinking like, oh, I'm gonna just run
Speaker 9: up on here and they gonna play my records.
Speaker 5: It's cool. I know these guys.
Speaker 9: So I went up to you know, to radio shows,
Speaker 9: and Red was like, this shit is wack, like this
Speaker 9: ain't this, ain't no, this ain't a ork Jed.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, and they told you at the time,
Speaker 1: you're like fifteen.
Speaker 5: They told me.
Speaker 9: And they also was like, Atlanta's not you know, it's
Speaker 9: a country y'all niggas country and blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 9: So I started building this mindset that it was gonna
Speaker 9: be hard for me to make music anyway or to
Speaker 9: put my music out because people weren't gonna listen to it.
Speaker 9: That's what I just started thinking. So I started thinking
Speaker 9: about everything that I could possibly do to get people
Speaker 9: to pay attention to my artists besides the music as
Speaker 9: well as the music. So and then left I was
Speaker 9: big on helping me do that because she was starting
Speaker 9: to put this condom over her left eye and just
Speaker 9: thinking of crazy shit. So I was cutting my eyebrows off,
Speaker 9: and I was doing all you know, haircuts and ear
Speaker 9: rings and nose and we was doing everything that we
Speaker 9: could possibly do to make people pay attention to us.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 9: So then it was like, we need something else. We
Speaker 9: got the song I got jumped, We need something else.
Speaker 9: When I did a jump. When we did jump, they closed,
Speaker 9: weren't even on back was when we did jump, they
Speaker 9: didn't have braids. Let me say this, they didn't have
Speaker 9: braids on the first on the jump cover. They don't
Speaker 9: have braids. If you look up, they got fla they
Speaker 9: got flat tops, right, they didn't have braids. So then
Speaker 9: it was like, we gotta take this another level. We
Speaker 9: gotta take it to another level. We're gonna go to
Speaker 9: the mall. You're gonna put your jump on backwards, and
Speaker 9: we're gonna see how this works. And they was like
Speaker 9: why and I'm like, just listen to me. Put the
Speaker 9: jump on backwards. He had to jump on already. I
Speaker 9: just said, flip the shit around.
Speaker 5: Let's go to the mall.
Speaker 9: He put his jump on backwards and we went to
Speaker 9: Linux Square and it looked like he had a sign
Speaker 9: on his chest that said come towards me. People was
Speaker 9: walking up to this kid, and I was like and
Speaker 9: I just sat back, like, oh, this is it. It's
Speaker 9: over It's over with.
Speaker 1: This is over with.
Speaker 9: Because once these people hear this song and they see
Speaker 9: that they dressed like this were gone And I don't
Speaker 9: know what was the attraction with the backward James.
Speaker 5: It just happened like that.
Speaker 6: You don't know what made you go turn it around
Speaker 6: or do something I do.
Speaker 2: No, I mean, he's the only person I knew that
Speaker 2: spoke of a marketing angle and shit that I never
Speaker 2: even once bothered to think about.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we was trying to do things.
Speaker 9: We was in the house making tied our shirts and
Speaker 9: tied our jeans and just trying to you know, because
Speaker 9: you ain't got shit, you try.
Speaker 5: To make something right. So that's what it was.
Speaker 9: We didn't have nothing, so it was like, what can
Speaker 9: you do to make that sweatshirt look better than what
Speaker 9: it does?
Speaker 5: Right now? Cut the sleeves off. You know, we just
Speaker 5: try anything right.
Speaker 1: So it's just to try to get attention and put
Speaker 1: the word quest love over it.
Speaker 4: And that.
Speaker 9: This jumper was already one hundred sizes too big. It
Speaker 9: was like a Jibo jumper where you could get in
Speaker 9: there with him, right, So it's just like just flip
Speaker 9: it around, just flipping around. So he flipped it around
Speaker 9: and it you know, people were like bugging out, like
Speaker 9: where did you buy this at?
Speaker 5: And I'm like, it's the same shit you got on.
Speaker 2: But were they fearless enough to be like any crazy shit,
Speaker 2: I'll do it, because I would have.
Speaker 1: Been like.
Speaker 5: They they started doing talent shows.
Speaker 9: I started taking them to do talent shows and performing
Speaker 9: songs before we had jumped. So they started getting the
Speaker 9: bug to be artists. And they started seeing how more
Speaker 9: people liked him than what was liking them in the mall.
Speaker 9: So once you get that going, then you start trying
Speaker 9: to make sure that people recognize you.
Speaker 2: So how did you feel about when another bad creation
Speaker 2: was starting to garner steam and you know, in your
Speaker 2: head you're like, Okay, this is good for us, like
Speaker 2: we have someone to compare them to, And no.
Speaker 9: Nah, I wasn't really paying too much attention to that.
Speaker 9: It's time because another bad creation is from College Park.
Speaker 9: We all from College Park, right, say all of my
Speaker 9: like me and Dallas Austin is like this, that's my dude,
Speaker 9: Like so we all they was all at my house,
Speaker 9: Like when.
Speaker 5: He making ABC, I was at the studio with him.
Speaker 5: He was doing this, like we all cool.
Speaker 1: They feel a certain way with inside out that.
Speaker 9: I mean, you know, at one point it was like listen,
Speaker 9: JD got a little boy group. We got a little
Speaker 9: boy group. It's a competitiveness going on. So I started
Speaker 9: feeling that this competitiveness of people talking. So I was like,
Speaker 9: you know what, y'all gonna be real rappers. And if
Speaker 9: you're gonna be a real rapper, we're gonna We're gonna
Speaker 9: make sure that people know that they want to be
Speaker 9: an R and B group and y'all over real rappers.
Speaker 9: And that's the only way we could make people understand
Speaker 9: that was to say something about them.
Speaker 10: So at this point, how are you splitting up your
Speaker 10: brain because you said that you and Left Eye or
Speaker 10: y'all are friends. She just got to the condom in
Speaker 10: the eye and where is the where's the TLC bus?
Speaker 5: No, no listen.
Speaker 9: So at the same time that I'm making Chriss cross,
Speaker 9: Ian introduces Left Eye to t Bos. So then they
Speaker 9: become a group in my house called second Nature and
Speaker 9: they become my group. And the way t Bos sings
Speaker 9: is did Jermaine do pre style of singing? Like the
Speaker 9: way she sounds? The way reason why she sounds that's
Speaker 9: me because you can hear me, that's me doing that. Now,
Speaker 9: that's how she sounds because I demoed the songs and
Speaker 9: I told her she should sing like me and for
Speaker 9: the rest of her life. I mean, it became the
Speaker 9: It just became the cool thing for her. So the
Speaker 9: first song that I did for her was this song
Speaker 9: called I Got It Going On and it was like,
Speaker 9: oh God, it going and that's the tone that she took.
Speaker 9: And Dallas heard that and started making these TLC records
Speaker 9: and they used that tone for the rest of her
Speaker 9: their career.
Speaker 1: But why didn't you.
Speaker 5: Sign them?
Speaker 9: Because the boys got signed first, right, So I was
Speaker 9: more connected to Chriss Cross and more into their project, right,
Speaker 9: and then left. I called me one day and she
Speaker 9: was like, Yo, we just had this meeting with Pebbles.
Speaker 9: If y'all watch the VH one movie, she makes this
Speaker 9: phone call and she calls somebody, but they don't say
Speaker 9: it's me. She's calling me, and she's calling me to
Speaker 9: see if I'm cool with them having the meeting, right,
Speaker 9: And I said, yeah.
Speaker 5: Go ahead having me. I'm cool.
Speaker 9: At that point, I wasn't thinking about having all of
Speaker 9: the artists under my unbrother. I was thinking about them
Speaker 9: getting signed so I could get some more money to
Speaker 9: make records. So I was like, shit, if they gonna sign,
Speaker 9: you just make sure I produce it when I get
Speaker 9: some money. So I encouraged them to get signed to
Speaker 9: the face and you know that was my group walking
Speaker 9: out the door.
Speaker 5: But they all started at my house.
Speaker 1: With UH. I believe.
Speaker 2: I believe my internship at UH at Roughhouse was the
Speaker 2: first day that you guys went to Europe to open
Speaker 2: up for Michael Jackson. Because I know, I know that
Speaker 2: Chris Cross opened up for Michael Jackson on the Dangerous Tour.
Speaker 2: Then yes, so what was were you a part of
Speaker 2: their setup it?
Speaker 1: What was that ship like?
Speaker 2: And how could like where the audience is as familiar
Speaker 2: with you guys there as it was in the States.
Speaker 9: Totally jump was crazy, Oh it did. Being on tour
Speaker 9: Michael Jackson was just like nothing that you could ever imagine,
Speaker 9: you know what I mean. It's like the way this
Speaker 9: guy came into his show. Just just the whole setup
Speaker 9: of the whole ship, like save f instance, this was
Speaker 9: like the cafeteria area when you're eating right, and you
Speaker 9: know how cafeterias are when you're in tour, it's the
Speaker 9: open or it's a place that you go into. Well,
Speaker 9: on his tour, it was always an open space. They
Speaker 9: did it in the open space. They didn't do it
Speaker 9: inside the thing because he wanted everybody to see when
Speaker 9: he was coming in, and how they draped us off
Speaker 9: so we wouldn't see him where he went.
Speaker 5: It was like like they would like, he's coming.
Speaker 9: So you're sitting there knowing that he's going, and he's
Speaker 9: walking by, but you could see him on the way
Speaker 9: in because he had a police following him.
Speaker 5: He would do this was real ship.
Speaker 9: He would come in and then he'll cross and then
Speaker 9: he would and he would you know, he had He
Speaker 9: would tell the managers, you know, tell Chris, I'm in
Speaker 9: the you know, I'm in my dressing room, come hog,
Speaker 9: let me whatever before they whatever. So he never let
Speaker 9: me go because it was just like, you know, not
Speaker 9: too many people go in the dress room. So christ
Speaker 9: Nam there go back there kicking with them, and they'll
Speaker 9: come back and they be like, yo, he fucking with us,
Speaker 9: Like he really be like he know who we are?
Speaker 5: Da da da da dah.
Speaker 9: Because that's why I was always trying to figure out
Speaker 9: if Sony made the move, because everybody was on Sony
Speaker 9: to put crisscross on there, and he was really more
Speaker 9: like really focused on Crisscross being on his tour, and
Speaker 9: he liked the fact that they.
Speaker 5: Was young and they had that energy to give before
Speaker 5: his show came on.
Speaker 2: Was it was it easy to teach them, like, uh,
Speaker 2: things that you don't learn. Uh you know, I mean
Speaker 2: they're they're in stadiums, in soccer stadiums. I know he's
Speaker 2: playing like eighty five thousand people, Like, how do you
Speaker 2: teach them how to project to eighty five thousand.
Speaker 5: People's That's what I tell people all the time.
Speaker 9: You know, I got this TV show, The Rap Game, Well,
Speaker 9: I teach these kids and I try to tell these
Speaker 9: kids all the time, like everybody think they can rap,
Speaker 9: and everybody think they got the swag, but they ain't
Speaker 9: really got that shit like what I've seen Crisscross, Like
Speaker 9: I said, when I met them, they had a whack
Speaker 9: that I had never seen in eleven and.
Speaker 5: Twelve year olds.
Speaker 9: So they was instantly easy to grab on to what
Speaker 9: they were supposed to do to continue to have that
Speaker 9: swag that they thought they had before. So when their
Speaker 9: record blew up, they was doing shows every day. Chris
Speaker 9: Cross was like the first rap group to do K
Speaker 9: and O Summer Jam. Then catch a helicopter to do
Speaker 9: Power one oh six in the same day, and then
Speaker 9: get on a plane and come back to New York
Speaker 9: and do something the next day.
Speaker 5: Like that's how they was. They were performing because of
Speaker 5: that song.
Speaker 9: So they got the practice in and they got enough
Speaker 9: practicing to know that when we get out here, we're
Speaker 9: gonna go into a stadiums.
Speaker 5: They their mentality was we gonna kill this, and they
Speaker 5: just was into it.
Speaker 2: Was it overwhelming for them, Like it's to start at
Speaker 2: that level, Like how do you how do you come
Speaker 2: down from that level when you're you know, one of them.
Speaker 2: I'm certain that you didn't have any idea that this
Speaker 2: I just want to sound like seven eight million units.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you don't know what to do. You're just going
Speaker 5: with the flow, you know.
Speaker 9: It's like I said, it's like a it was a
Speaker 9: thing that wasn't even supposed to happen, and I've learned
Speaker 9: that these kids could rap and they did it and
Speaker 9: it just turned into that and you just like sitting
Speaker 9: back watching like this is crazy.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't hard to keep them focused at all
Speaker 1: on nah.
Speaker 9: I mean, because like I said, once again, once they
Speaker 9: realized that they was rappers, and people was looking at
Speaker 9: them like this. They were so into it.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't. I didn't have any problem they was so
Speaker 5: their appetite was worse than mine.
Speaker 1: So it was through them that you got to develop
Speaker 1: your label.
Speaker 9: Yeah, so Chris crossed SOA eight million, and then Sony
Speaker 9: wanted to do more business with me, right, and they
Speaker 9: wanted me to have my own label, and they wanted
Speaker 9: to see what I could bring. They didn't know they
Speaker 9: I was nineteen years old, by the way. They didn't
Speaker 9: know what I could do.
Speaker 2: So what did you see an Escape that told you, Okay,
Speaker 2: you guys are next. I see how I can well.
Speaker 9: Escape came to my house. The same guy I who
Speaker 9: brought Left out of my house. He brought Escape to
Speaker 9: my house to sing for my birthday. And there was
Speaker 9: this girl group from College Park that was out there
Speaker 9: doing things and they came and they sung Happy Birthday
Speaker 9: to me, and I was just like, y'all sound different
Speaker 9: than regular happy birthday than I'm usually here. I'm just
Speaker 9: I'm liking this happy birthday, right, So I'm like, when
Speaker 9: I get my label, I'm gonna sign y'all. And they
Speaker 9: was like, yeah, okay, what if I ain't have social death.
Speaker 9: I just told them I was gonna do it, same
Speaker 9: thing I did with Sometimes, Like I just said, I'm
Speaker 9: gonna do it. I ain't have no label yet, but
Speaker 9: I knew I was gonna get one because we was
Speaker 9: selling too many records. So they came and like, I
Speaker 9: got my deal, and I'll call in. I say, y'all
Speaker 9: want to sign these girls? And at that point, I
Speaker 9: knew that I had to define myself as a producer,
Speaker 9: because that's what I wanted people to pay attention to me.
Speaker 9: As as a producer, you have to show people that
Speaker 9: you have the skill to do more than what people
Speaker 9: thought you could do as you know, just rap music
Speaker 9: or whatever.
Speaker 5: This that and the third. And I had all of
Speaker 5: this other.
Speaker 9: Musical talent inside my body that I hadn't let out
Speaker 9: on the Crisscrush record. And I signed Escape and I
Speaker 9: started writing their songs. And the first song I wrote
Speaker 9: for them was just kicking It and I, you know,
Speaker 9: and and I made Candy sing just like I made
Speaker 9: Tea Boss sing that's why She's low in that song,
Speaker 9: and you know, it was the same. I had already
Speaker 9: been setting myself up for this type of stuff, so
Speaker 9: I just was sending whoever came in through the same
Speaker 9: process that I had already started earlier.
Speaker 2: Now, I mean around ninety three, ninety four, ninety five.
Speaker 2: I mean we're getting into what I feel like the
Speaker 2: true the business element of hip hop, where now bad
Speaker 2: boys developing, bad boys developing, Death Row's developing. But then
Speaker 2: there's also like kind of we're entering the danger zone,
Speaker 2: like it's not well. I mean, you've been around since
Speaker 2: you was twelve, so I'm sure you saw some dark
Speaker 2: shit that.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, twelve years shouldn't be seeing.
Speaker 5: But I mean I've seen people get stabbed after midnight
Speaker 5: in Philly.
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ the spaghetti Factory.
Speaker 6: I wasn't born yet.
Speaker 1: It was on Spring Garden Spring Gardens who anyway, but it's.
Speaker 2: At least at that time in ninety four, I considered, okay,
Speaker 2: now the business mecca to be New York, which is
Speaker 2: Puffy La, which is sug and Atlanta which is you
Speaker 2: and Okay, I'll throw in uh Houston, which, of course
Speaker 2: because I fear for my life.
Speaker 1: Jay. Friends.
Speaker 2: So now that you're you're empire, how do you deal
Speaker 2: with the not the muscle aspect, but now you're playing
Speaker 2: with the big dogs, and you see what's going on
Speaker 2: rivalry wise and all that stuff. You've kind of been
Speaker 2: Switzerland with all this stuff. As far as Neutral been
Speaker 2: cool with New York Cats, he's.
Speaker 1: Been cool with LA.
Speaker 2: How hard was it to maneuver, you know, through what
Speaker 2: was developing and hip hop at the time in ninety
Speaker 2: three ninety four.
Speaker 9: Well, it wasn't for me because I felt like, you know,
Speaker 9: I started out on the fresh face. So I started
Speaker 9: out with everybody being my friend. So that was my mentality.
Speaker 9: So like when Puff started doing parties here in New York,
Speaker 9: I heard about him. I come to New York and
Speaker 9: come to Puff parties and see what it was. I
Speaker 9: wanted to be around all my competition to see what
Speaker 9: they was doing. So I came to New York. I
Speaker 9: became Puff's friend. We called it hang it Out. I
Speaker 9: go to his party's party kick and see how he's
Speaker 9: throwing parties. And I go back to Atlanta. I throw
Speaker 9: my parties right.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 9: Once I would come back to Atlanta and throw my parties,
Speaker 9: I would say, like, Yo, I met these guys. I
Speaker 9: need to call them down to Atlanta and come, you know,
Speaker 9: come party with what I'm doing, right, And they and
Speaker 9: they I think my non interest in what they was
Speaker 9: doing was interesting to them. Like I wasn't interested in
Speaker 9: what whatever they was, Whatever they was doing, that was cool.
Speaker 9: I was still trying to do what I was doing,
Speaker 9: you know what I'm saying. So, like when all the
Speaker 9: artists or record labels was doing rap, I went and
Speaker 9: did R and B album, so they wouldn't really they
Speaker 9: couldn't follow.
Speaker 5: I didn't have no pattern that everybody was going on.
Speaker 5: I was going through. Like when I did Escape, nobody
Speaker 5: else was making R and B. You know R and
Speaker 5: B groups.
Speaker 9: Everybody wanted the rat right, So then when I would
Speaker 9: did the Brat, nobody wouldn't fucking with female rappers. They
Speaker 9: was all trying to do guys, and it was like
Speaker 9: so I just kept seeing this like, oh, I'm a
Speaker 9: maneuver like this, I'm gonna do something differ, I'm gonna
Speaker 9: do something different. So long story short, I just I
Speaker 9: saw that as my place. I saw these guys just
Speaker 9: trying to fight for the same space, and I'm like, shit,
Speaker 9: I'm cool, I'm getting my money, I'm doing I'm doing
Speaker 9: in my own space, and I'm gonna just be cool
Speaker 9: with them. I didn't even know like how serious this
Speaker 9: East Coast West coast thing was getting. So I invited
Speaker 9: both Puff and Shug to my birthday party in Atlanta
Speaker 9: and not thinking about anything, like, you know, just come.
Speaker 9: I want you all to be there. I want to
Speaker 9: have that flavor in Atlanta and at my birthday party,
Speaker 9: I don't know, somewhere around before well, this is when
Speaker 9: it hit the fan.
Speaker 5: I remember, this is this is when it hit fans.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, that was your birthday in the movie,
Speaker 1: but they never said it was.
Speaker 5: It was my birthday party when the ship hit the fan.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and I didn't I didn't realize that that was
Speaker 9: what was happening. But they both were brought to Atlanta
Speaker 9: by me, and they came to Atlanta and you know,
Speaker 9: they were eyeing each other throughout the party and it
Speaker 9: was like a thing. But I'm thinking, you know, that's
Speaker 9: how hip hop is. And then it got to it
Speaker 9: after my after my party, went to an after party,
Speaker 9: and you know, words was said and somebody got killed.
Speaker 1: Y'all. I didn't even know. Okay, that's course. Now I'm
Speaker 1: like trying to figure out where, like where does the
Speaker 1: B side fit into this okay, so so so there's
Speaker 1: so many stories.
Speaker 9: But all right, So, when like I said, me and
Speaker 9: Puff was cool throughout this whole period of making music,
Speaker 9: and at this time, Functified came out, and it was
Speaker 9: three hot records that came out. One was super Hot,
Speaker 9: which was Flavoring in Your Ear, the second one was
Speaker 9: Functified with Me and the Brat, and then the third
Speaker 9: was Juicy Fall of Hip Hop. People that it wasn't
Speaker 9: a successful record like Functified and Plaving Year, so Big
Speaker 9: was all. Big was so frustrated with the fact that
Speaker 9: we was having success and Flavor Year was killing him
Speaker 9: and he was coming on stage and people weren't really
Speaker 9: like understanding who they was looking at. So then Big thought,
Speaker 9: I'm gonna get cool with JD and I'm gonna get
Speaker 9: him to make me a beat. So every day we
Speaker 9: went on this tour, we went on a chintlest circuit
Speaker 9: tour where it was just these three artists to Brad,
Speaker 9: crag Back and Biggie and we went all around the
Speaker 9: little chitting thirds and did all these shows. So in
Speaker 9: that time period, me and Biggie became really cool, and
Speaker 9: he talked to me all the time about how did,
Speaker 9: like how did you get honeyed?
Speaker 5: How you get honey popping?
Speaker 6: Like that?
Speaker 9: Like why people don't like my record? Like he used
Speaker 9: to asked me all kind of crazy questions, like because
Speaker 9: he was under the impression that nobody like she was nobody,
Speaker 9: like because we was in the South, but what this
Speaker 9: is not New York, this is the South. We was
Speaker 9: in Florida, we was doing in Atlanta. Juicy wasn't nothing serious,
Speaker 9: nothing but the numbers.
Speaker 1: So that was all New York. That's all Northeast, all Northeast.
Speaker 2: That's crazy because even culturally, I would think that when
Speaker 2: the smoke clears mm hmm, Juicy sort of inched everybody
Speaker 2: freestyle over yeah, out of your ear.
Speaker 1: But I feel like Juicy is more iconic.
Speaker 5: It is, but it was like it took forever.
Speaker 1: You had to die too.
Speaker 5: No, No, it wasn't that. It was it just had
Speaker 5: to be worked. It was just, you know, it was
Speaker 5: the beginning of working your rap records.
Speaker 1: Hard sell.
Speaker 9: It was a hard sell work. The Juicy record was
Speaker 9: a hard sell for for for the other areas, like
Speaker 9: the South, you know what I mean. It's almost like yeah,
Speaker 9: so you know, Biggie was like, yo, you know, make
Speaker 9: me a record, do something for me, man, let me
Speaker 9: do something, do something. So he asked me so many
Speaker 9: times that once they released Big Papa, he wanted me
Speaker 9: to do the Big Papa. So he told Puff JD's
Speaker 9: doing the remix of Big Papa. Because he didn't believe
Speaker 9: in the success of Big Paper. He didn't think it
Speaker 9: was gonna work. He thought they was gonna have to
Speaker 9: put out the JD version.
Speaker 1: In Indiana where I grew up. That's the version. That's
Speaker 1: the version we heard on the radio all the time. Damn, goddamn.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 9: So when Biggie, when Biggie came to do well what
Speaker 9: So Biggie said, Yo, I want to do a real remix.
Speaker 9: I want you to redo the beat. I don't want
Speaker 9: to rap over this, I want you to take Let's
Speaker 9: do a real remix. So he wanted to actually make
Speaker 9: a new song. In his mind, he was like, Yo,
Speaker 9: I'm gonna go to Atlanta. I'm gonna make a new
Speaker 9: record and it's gonna relaunch my career. So he came
Speaker 9: to Atlanta. I said, we're gonna re vocal Big I
Speaker 9: mean Big Papa. I'm gonna give you a beat and
Speaker 9: you could do the rap over. So I made the
Speaker 9: beat and he rapped the song over when he finished rapping,
Speaker 9: because he rapped the song so fast and he was
Speaker 9: done so quick. When he finished, He's like, let's make
Speaker 9: another song. And he was like, where honey at? And
Speaker 9: I'm like, who you talking about it? He was like, Brat,
Speaker 9: what's she hit her over here? Brad Brat actually lived
Speaker 9: upstairs in my mother's house, so she was upstairs and
Speaker 9: he ain't no, So I was like, she upstairs, I
Speaker 9: tell her come now, So he came downstairs. He was like, Yo,
Speaker 9: I want to do so on honeyman make a record
Speaker 9: and do some on honey. I'm like, all right, let's
Speaker 9: do it. So I wouldn't. I was just like I
Speaker 9: know what he want. I was just trying to think of,
Speaker 9: like what would be a jump fast record for Biggie
Speaker 9: if I could give him that record, and I wanted
Speaker 9: to give him a loop.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't.
Speaker 9: I wasn't trying to just make a beat. I was like,
Speaker 9: we're gonna sample something. You know, we're gonna figure it out.
Speaker 9: And I put up the outstanding beat the loop, and
Speaker 9: I was like, rap over this, and you know this
Speaker 9: guy's look incredible. He made that beat sound like it
Speaker 9: had a bass line on it before I even put
Speaker 9: the bassline on there. So then I was just like,
Speaker 9: he was like, brat, you're gonna come in after me.
Speaker 9: So he started making the song and I'm trying to
Speaker 9: make the beat at the same time while he's rapping,
Speaker 9: and this song just happened. That's why we don't have
Speaker 9: no titles called the B side. It was just like,
Speaker 9: what's the name of this song?
Speaker 5: Went fuck? That just rap and it was like that's
Speaker 5: how the song came about.
Speaker 2: So man, all right, so I okay, I'm skipping a
Speaker 2: little bit because I know we got limited time. But
Speaker 2: even though I mean, you're you're associated with many artists,
Speaker 2: I always feel like your crowning achievement as a producer
Speaker 2: was working with Usher.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And.
Speaker 2: First of all, how does that happen? Because you you spearheading,
Speaker 2: like how do you take the little kid who did
Speaker 2: just call me a mac? And how did you how
Speaker 2: did you take him and fully develop him into the
Speaker 2: artist as far as like choosing his songs and like
Speaker 2: what was it that?
Speaker 9: It's basically the same situation that I had already been through,
Speaker 9: right I started Usher, Usher came to me when Chris
Speaker 9: Crust was popping and he asked me to sign him.
Speaker 9: I told him no because I was tired of dealing
Speaker 9: with parents at this particular point point Whence Chris Cruss
Speaker 9: was getting big and they parents was like arguing and fighting.
Speaker 9: It was all a parents and I'm like, I'm not
Speaker 9: dealing with this shit no more. I don't want no
Speaker 9: kid rappers, I mean kid artists. So I passed on
Speaker 9: signing Usher, and then Face signed Usher, right, So then
Speaker 9: that called me a mac album didn't really really work,
Speaker 9: but everybody felt like Jamaine could revive your career if
Speaker 9: you go to a remix. So they brought me, what's
Speaker 9: the song think of You?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 9: So they brought me think of You and they said, Jamae,
Speaker 9: please do a remix to think of You. So I
Speaker 9: did a remix to think of You. And in the
Speaker 9: midst of that, I felt like the song needed a
Speaker 9: bridge cause I was just trying to figure out some
Speaker 9: way to make my remix feel different than the record.
Speaker 9: So I added a bridge to the song and I
Speaker 9: told Usher he had to come in and sing the
Speaker 9: bridge over. So when he came in, he sung the
Speaker 9: bridge that I had written for him and he sung
Speaker 9: it just like I had him, like I did it.
Speaker 9: And then they heard his vocals and they was like,
Speaker 9: oh shit, what did you do to him? And I'm like,
Speaker 9: I just told him to sing the bridge? And they
Speaker 9: was like, well, would you work on his next album?
Speaker 9: Like just take him and do whatever the hell you
Speaker 9: want to do with him, And I'm like that sounds crazy,
Speaker 9: but okay, and I ain't know what to do, you know,
Speaker 9: I mean, I didn't know. They just put it in
Speaker 9: my hands and I felt and I found out that
Speaker 9: if it didn't work with me, Usher would have probably
Speaker 9: got dropped, right, So yeah, So, I mean, you know,
Speaker 9: Usher came to my house and he became like a
Speaker 9: social death artist. He basically stayed in my house every
Speaker 9: night and we just talked and worked and talked and
Speaker 9: worked and talked and worked until we got to my way.
Speaker 2: Well, what's the process of you getting these songs album?
Speaker 2: Because I mean, these aren't like average songs, these are
Speaker 2: like staples you make me wonder and all that stuff like.
Speaker 1: How did you.
Speaker 2: What's your process of getting to know the artists and
Speaker 2: what type of songs the right song?
Speaker 1: And hoot it?
Speaker 9: I mean, well, I went through a bunch of record
Speaker 9: I've started making songs that I thought were like I
Speaker 9: don't even know what you could call the first songs,
Speaker 9: but I know that he said, y'all, I don't want
Speaker 9: to be like that. I want to be like Bobby Brown.
Speaker 9: I want Bobby Brown to fear me. So then I
Speaker 9: started looking at my prerogative.
Speaker 1: Check.
Speaker 9: So I started looking at my prerogative and I'm like, okay, well,
Speaker 9: I'm thinking like, I can't.
Speaker 5: Make no harder record than my prerogative.
Speaker 9: This shit is crazy, and Teddy Rowley's my idol, so
Speaker 9: I'm not. I'm like, he, I can't make a better
Speaker 9: record than my prerogative. So I was just trying to
Speaker 9: make records that I felt like would go to bat
Speaker 9: with these songs at least, right. So I made Nice
Speaker 9: and Slow and I played it for La and he
Speaker 9: didn't like that song, and I'm like, how do you
Speaker 9: don't like this song? And I'm like, nobody's doing this,
Speaker 9: nobody's doing you hear how Usher's singing seven on the
Speaker 9: top top dudes in the streets.
Speaker 5: I'm saying, who you know talking like this?
Speaker 9: As an R and B artist, they wonn't getting none
Speaker 9: of that shit, so that song was like put to
Speaker 9: the side. So then Usher was like, man, this I
Speaker 9: need something like prerogative. This is my I want this
Speaker 9: ship my way and I was like, oh, my way, okay,
Speaker 9: let's do that. Let's do it your way, and we
Speaker 9: started making my way and then we got to my way.
Speaker 9: My way was probably gonna be the first single. I
Speaker 9: didn't have You Make Me Want him, and my Way's
Speaker 9: probably gonna be the first single. And I wrote him
Speaker 9: a rap.
Speaker 5: He was rapping it. It just felt like it was
Speaker 5: like the new sounds for Usher, but I still wasn't convinced.
Speaker 9: I wasn't sold yet. I was like, uh, d ain't
Speaker 9: like nice and slow and I was on the nice
Speaker 9: and slow shit. I was trying to get that off
Speaker 9: like the singing rap type singing right, and they weren't
Speaker 9: really soul on it. So LA was like, we're gonna
Speaker 9: put out My Way as the first single. And when
Speaker 9: he told me that, I left the office and I
Speaker 9: went home and I started making you make Me Want him?
Speaker 9: And I was like, I just felt like he didn't
Speaker 9: have that one yet. I was didn't he didn't have
Speaker 9: that one, So I started making you make Me want
Speaker 9: and I wrote the first verse and I had to
Speaker 9: hook and I played it for USh and he was like, man,
Speaker 9: I ain't really what I'm talking about, because he wanted
Speaker 9: tomorrow way. He wanted the prerogative, you know, he wanted that.
Speaker 9: So I was like, I say, you tripp him. So
Speaker 9: I left and I took this song back to the
Speaker 9: Face and I played the song for l A and
Speaker 9: he was like, yo, go finish that song right now.
Speaker 5: That's it.
Speaker 9: So I went back to the studio and I finished
Speaker 9: you know you make me want to and I got
Speaker 9: Usher on the song and he sung the song like
Speaker 9: he loved it, and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: How often do you have to browbeat your artist when
Speaker 1: it comes to vocals?
Speaker 5: Bribe?
Speaker 1: No, browbeat. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: I've made it known on the show that the one
Speaker 2: process of production I hate the most is vocal takes.
Speaker 2: I hate that shit. So usually I have someone else
Speaker 2: because I don't have a good chemistry. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: have the patience.
Speaker 1: So how do you.
Speaker 2: Especially at the time, I mean, I mean, pro tools
Speaker 2: was the thing here and there, but you weren't mid nineties,
Speaker 2: early mid nineties.
Speaker 1: You work, yeah, literally working this well.
Speaker 5: See, my thing is this.
Speaker 9: You know, if you can really sing and you understand
Speaker 9: music and you listen to my demo, then automatically it's
Speaker 9: gonna sound better than what I'm listening to anyway, or
Speaker 9: what I'm thinking anyway.
Speaker 5: Right, So that's how I make my records.
Speaker 9: I'm like, listen to me first, and do exactly what
Speaker 9: I'm doing, but do it the way you would do
Speaker 9: it in your real singing voice. So most of the
Speaker 9: time when they do that, that shit starts starting to
Speaker 9: sound way better than what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1: So for every for every hit that you have that
Speaker 1: I wrote.
Speaker 9: So I mean, I did this last like two weeks ago,
Speaker 9: three weeks ago at the ASCAP convention in LA and
Speaker 9: it was like going start play go under the Hood
Speaker 9: of Confessions, and I gave them basically a snap look
Speaker 9: at how I wrote that song and how the song
Speaker 9: came about and let them, you know, listen to me
Speaker 9: actually sing a song like that.
Speaker 1: That's interesting. I would know. I would love to hear that.
Speaker 7: No, not just because it's interesting, Like I was the
Speaker 7: type of kid that took all my toys apart because
Speaker 7: I wanted to see how they worked. So like to
Speaker 7: be able to hear a demo, your demo of a
Speaker 7: song like nice and Slow or something like that, but
Speaker 7: just is fascinating to me. It's bad, but you know,
Speaker 7: but it's still but if I heard it, I could
Speaker 7: still hear how from that to the version that we do.
Speaker 9: And that's why when you introduce when you sound get
Speaker 9: the credit. I feel like people don't really understand that
Speaker 9: those Usher records is why Trey songs sound the way
Speaker 9: he sounded and the way Chris Brown started singing the
Speaker 9: way he sings.
Speaker 5: This is these records created that sund Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: Definitely the template for it. I know that. Also, Mariah
Speaker 1: came to you at a crucial point in her career.
Speaker 1: Not a crucial point.
Speaker 5: I did always be my baby, That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: That wasn't crucial.
Speaker 2: She was the thing was you gotta understand though, always
Speaker 2: be my baby in Fantasy Remix. That was a very
Speaker 2: radical term for her, at least from the tutelage that
Speaker 2: she was under with Tommy Mintolan with making sure that
Speaker 2: I mean okay, like dude, dream Lover had the break
Speaker 2: being and all that stuff. It was cute, but it's
Speaker 2: still like it was in major key like it wouldn't
Speaker 2: start no riot at no mall in America, but at
Speaker 2: least with nineteen ninety five, with her insistent like yo,
Speaker 2: I'm trying to make some shit that like I would
Speaker 2: listen to in the club, like her going to Wu
Speaker 2: Tang and Puffy and going to you. It's like that
Speaker 2: was in my eyes radical, which you know, getting the
Speaker 2: record and being a connoisseur of credits, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 2: they're loosening the reins on her.
Speaker 1: They're letting her work with us. Yeah, and that's what it.
Speaker 2: So first of all, in working with her, was it
Speaker 2: a thing of like you getting extrustions like don't go
Speaker 2: to hardcore, don't you know we already have one moot tak,
Speaker 2: so only just try to give her no.
Speaker 9: We had this conversation last night. I'm I'm the musical
Speaker 9: person when it comes to Mariah Carey, she's the rapper.
Speaker 9: It completely a flip when we go in the studio.
Speaker 9: We had the same conversation last night.
Speaker 1: Oh, so you're the conservative one and she's the one that's.
Speaker 9: Yeah, because I'm like, I'm trying to protect who she
Speaker 9: is at all times because I feel like I feel like,
Speaker 9: you know, she has an image that you can you know,
Speaker 9: if you can keep it in this space, just don't.
Speaker 9: You ain't got to go overboard. You could just keep
Speaker 9: it in this space and put like you just said,
Speaker 9: she had a loop, but it wouldn't get people killed.
Speaker 9: It was still what we liked, but it was not crazy.
Speaker 9: And I'm always like, let's make records like that, like
Speaker 9: let's continue the seventeen million, twenty million spot. I'm cool,
Speaker 9: what's wrong with it? Was never broken? Let's let's do
Speaker 9: it or you on the Grunde came out and like
Speaker 9: that's basically what she wants to do. So it's like
Speaker 9: Mariah's a rapper. The first day I worked with Mariah
Speaker 9: where I came to the student, she brought cream and
Speaker 9: she said I wanted to sing over this.
Speaker 5: And when she was.
Speaker 1: And I said, so, how were you like back a
Speaker 1: little bit?
Speaker 9: And I'm like what And I and Tomy Mattle was
Speaker 9: standing there when she did this, and I'm thinking, like
Speaker 9: you said, I'm like, I'm not fucking with this cream ship.
Speaker 5: That's not going to happen. I'm not doing this. Was
Speaker 5: it the fear of you didn't want to be the
Speaker 5: guy that the career? Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Knew because that would have been a great idea.
Speaker 5: At the time when she asked me to do.
Speaker 1: It would have made amazing, but you didn't want to
Speaker 1: be a guy holding the.
Speaker 9: And I and like, like I said, I'm I have
Speaker 9: a super super musical side of me. Right when I
Speaker 9: start doing R and B records, I turned into a
Speaker 9: very musical person that wants to hear a lot of
Speaker 9: different chords and different things and the way the song
Speaker 9: is supposed to go.
Speaker 5: So and I had just did you know usher? So
Speaker 5: it was it was R and B time for me, right,
Speaker 5: So I was like, I need.
Speaker 9: Something that fits into what I just did with so
Speaker 9: I'm having success here, Let's do something that has this field.
Speaker 9: So then Manuel started playing the boom and I'm like,
Speaker 9: see if we put some eight o weight on that ship,
Speaker 9: it's oh we that's all. I believe in eight o
Speaker 9: weight on anything.
Speaker 1: And that's it.
Speaker 2: It's about this period. Okay, Now I'm using a fantine term.
Speaker 2: What's the division of labor as far as uh, who
Speaker 2: is in your team, your production team? As far as Okay,
Speaker 2: it's nineteen ninety seven and I'm riah carry I want
Speaker 2: to get it. Make sure that you know I'm rya
Speaker 2: carry Okay, I work with my car. I'm like, yo,
Speaker 2: produce a record? What is team dupre like, what's going on?
Speaker 1: Songwriting? So what's the songwriting session? Like?
Speaker 5: He's like, do you have something or is it like
Speaker 5: you work?
Speaker 9: Yeah, he's you just work right off the you know,
Speaker 9: right off the cop he's he's an extra keyboard player,
Speaker 9: guitar player, you know, he plays instruments. And I play
Speaker 9: what I play, and then I make the beats and
Speaker 9: I have the ideas basically, and I write, I write
Speaker 9: the lyrics. Basically it will have it, you know if
Speaker 9: with Usher, that's how it was. It was me and
Speaker 9: him and we basically did the song that whole album
Speaker 9: like that, and we went Tim Mariah was me and
Speaker 9: Emay when we made always be my baby.
Speaker 1: The engineer or or mix your own records as well.
Speaker 5: Nah, yeah, I mean I do it, you know, I
Speaker 5: do my rough before it goes. But I don't yeah,
Speaker 5: don't touch that.
Speaker 10: Amir mentioned nineteen ninety seven, and I always I feel
Speaker 10: like with Atlanta something happened between like ninety six and
Speaker 10: I don't know ninety nine where of course, starting with you,
Speaker 10: the music industry just built faster than any other industry
Speaker 10: in most major cities.
Speaker 1: Can you kind of or Jack the Rapper, Well, all.
Speaker 6: I mean you got to consider all those things, like
Speaker 6: conferences were coming.
Speaker 10: You did have Freaknick, but like it just was a
Speaker 10: crazy like five years in Atlanta, and I don't know
Speaker 10: if everybody understands and how it broke down and whatnot.
Speaker 9: I mean, well, like you said, it was Freaknick. It
Speaker 9: was things weren't happening in other major cities that that
Speaker 9: people were like looking like in post Olympics.
Speaker 1: So what point?
Speaker 2: What point was Atlanta seeing as you know, because I
Speaker 2: know that Northeast Northeastern people are very cocky and whatever,
Speaker 2: like you country five, Suddenly Atlanta's the ship.
Speaker 1: Like when do you feel that Atlanta like.
Speaker 9: Arrived, Like when when I was when I was having
Speaker 9: parties and everybody started coming. When when when if JERMAINI
Speaker 9: pre have a party, everybody was going to Atlanta for
Speaker 9: the party. Freak Nick was the start of this, But
Speaker 9: then I started, you know, I did this. How can
Speaker 9: I live weekend where.
Speaker 1: Your version of the n W a pool party? No?
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no, no, matter of fact, it wasn't.
Speaker 9: It was My thing was called can I live right,
Speaker 9: because I had just did I had just did the
Speaker 9: Money Anything record. And what what was interesting, what I
Speaker 9: was getting back was that people felt like in the South,
Speaker 9: I introduced them to jay Z right because people in
Speaker 9: the South weren't listening to Reasonable Hell, you know, that
Speaker 9: wasn't their album. They weren't into that, none of those
Speaker 9: records in Atlanta, none of that was happening. So people
Speaker 9: was like they felt like I was introducing them to
Speaker 9: them and and Jay and everybody was coming to Atlanta,
Speaker 9: you know, taking this love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people come to you to besides.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So that's what happened, so people, I think people
Speaker 9: started paying attention to this, like this momentum. You know,
Speaker 9: Mace came to Atlanta for my birthday party to get signed.
Speaker 9: Nelly came to Atlanta to try to get me to
Speaker 9: sign him. At my birthday party, I had this crazy
Speaker 9: birthday party at the High Museum on P Street, and
Speaker 9: I had all of.
Speaker 5: Those guys there.
Speaker 9: I had new Audition there, I had Maya, Elton John,
Speaker 9: everybody was you know, whoever was somebody was trying to
Speaker 9: be at Jamaine the pre party and people were like,
Speaker 9: I remember like yesterday that even the paper. It said,
Speaker 9: what does Jamaine Dupree have just making everybody wanted like
Speaker 9: Elton John, what do you have a reason to be
Speaker 9: around BBD and Maya and Jermaine Deprie.
Speaker 5: What's the purpose? What's what's internection?
Speaker 1: I'm trying to imagine that conversation.
Speaker 5: Now, Well, you know Elton John like for real, like
Speaker 5: he loves black.
Speaker 1: Music, but still it's just an odd parent.
Speaker 9: Yeah. Well, I mean he wanted me to know he
Speaker 9: was cool and he came to party. But I think
Speaker 9: that's what it was, what you're talking about. It was
Speaker 9: just like people saw that happening, and it was it
Speaker 9: was just like like I said, I wasn't paying attention
Speaker 9: to everybody else. Whatever people was doing in New York,
Speaker 9: that's what they was doing in New York. I. I
Speaker 9: was determined to make Atlanta stand out just like New
Speaker 9: York in LA Like.
Speaker 10: See, then there was a point when Atlanta started taking
Speaker 10: in this and pushing his chest out with pride to
Speaker 10: the point where like it wasn't so much the Northeast
Speaker 10: record would get played first. Now Atlanta is supporting each
Speaker 10: other on the radio, and it's records that you would
Speaker 10: never hear other places. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I just
Speaker 10: think that people don't really understand that about Atlanta in
Speaker 10: that way, Like I always say that about like somebody
Speaker 10: like Rashida, Like Rashida is a star in Atlanta because
Speaker 10: of Atlanta and Atlanta Radio and everybody embracing her.
Speaker 5: When she was seeing Yeah, I mean it was you know,
Speaker 5: it was a it was a it.
Speaker 9: It was a tug of war type of mentality because
Speaker 9: people weren't really receptive of things that was coming from
Speaker 9: Atlanta like that, almost to the point where Jermaine Duprex
Speaker 9: was getting the success. So a lot of people in
Speaker 9: Atlanta was mad at me because I was getting success
Speaker 9: that a lot of them weren't getting at the same time.
Speaker 9: So it was like they didn't understand why my records
Speaker 9: was working. So then they that I've heard people say
Speaker 9: crazy shit about my records and you know, jd ain't
Speaker 9: from Atlanta and here I don't sound like outcasts and
Speaker 9: this that and the third like it was. But my
Speaker 9: my childhood and my life was different than that.
Speaker 5: I wasn't. I didn't grow up in Atlanta. I grew
Speaker 5: up on tour.
Speaker 2: So can you explain can you explain the science of
Speaker 2: what would be now known as trap culture because initially
Speaker 2: I thought that you guys were more of a refined
Speaker 2: what was supposed to be Miami's identification of bass music.
Speaker 2: I always felt that you guys were a more refined
Speaker 2: bass music, Like you guys did better work with those
Speaker 2: type of planet rock beats and stuff, you know, and
Speaker 2: then trap culture.
Speaker 1: Develops. How how do you feel, like, are you in
Speaker 1: your heart the old.
Speaker 2: I know, you're technically not supposed to agree with this,
Speaker 2: like are you the old schooler that's sort of looking
Speaker 2: like okay whatever, or like are you still about like
Speaker 2: if kids are about it, then that's the future and
Speaker 2: I support it and that sort of well, I.
Speaker 9: Mean, it's it's hard to it's hard for me to
Speaker 9: even have talk about this because if you listen to
Speaker 9: Jermain du Pre records that are like some non social
Speaker 9: death artist records, the records are trap. Like if you
Speaker 9: listen to Grills by Nelly. Okay, this was before people
Speaker 9: start saying trap records, this is, but but it's by
Speaker 9: Nelly and it became a number one that top one
Speaker 9: hundred records and it's not connected to the trap.
Speaker 5: It don't come off like that's.
Speaker 1: What that is.
Speaker 5: But the sound of the record. The sound of the
Speaker 5: record is one.
Speaker 8: Boom.
Speaker 5: It's all the same elements.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 9: The eight eight is overbearing, the small little kick, the
Speaker 9: Franchise Boys, Bone Crusher, young Bloods, all of this shit
Speaker 9: is what you're basically listening to now. So to me,
Speaker 9: i'm i'm I think people disconnect me from being with
Speaker 9: that sound. But that's that's been the sound like you
Speaker 9: make me wanted to me, sounds like a trap record.
Speaker 5: Guitars on it, right.
Speaker 1: Music.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So I just I don't look.
Speaker 9: At it as I look at it as like people
Speaker 9: were listening to that sound and they just decided what
Speaker 9: to do. I also feel like trap music ultimately, I
Speaker 9: don't like that title because I think people use that
Speaker 9: title to let us in as opposed to just saying
Speaker 9: it's the Atlanta sound. I wish people would stop calling
Speaker 9: it trap and say Atlanta music like they say everybody else.
Speaker 9: That's that La sound, that's that New York sound, That's
Speaker 9: that Atlanta sound. Stop saying trap because trap makes it.
Speaker 9: Puts it in a box and it's like, Okay, you
Speaker 9: got a trap set. No, this is two hours of
Speaker 9: Atlanta music. Music from all of the artists in Atlanta.
Speaker 9: You go to New York right now, you're gonna hear
Speaker 9: two hours of records from Atlanta. Stop saying trap. That's
Speaker 9: what I wish people would do.
Speaker 1: So what do you feel now? Is the future like
Speaker 1: are you done with Atlanta or is it just starting?
Speaker 1: Like for you? Is there more to reveal to the
Speaker 1: world as far as what your next move is going
Speaker 1: to be? I don't know.
Speaker 9: As executive or nah, I mean I you know, you
Speaker 9: have to continue to keep finding ways to open the
Speaker 9: doors for Atlanta. So I got the TV show, and
Speaker 9: you know, with the TV show, I bring five kids
Speaker 9: to Atlanta and expose them to what kids in Atlanta
Speaker 9: are exposed to. Kids in Atlanta have it better than
Speaker 9: mostly every other city kids out here period.
Speaker 5: Like in Brooklyn.
Speaker 9: I don't think they have talent shows for kids with
Speaker 9: kids can do do things. I don't think they have
Speaker 9: skating rinks where they allow you to perform. I don't
Speaker 9: think they have it just when you want to be
Speaker 9: an entertainer. In Atlanta, we have more elements than you know.
Speaker 9: I find out because these kids coming, they're like, yo,
Speaker 9: we don't have nothing. Like one of the kids came
Speaker 9: from Chicago and she was talking about how they close
Speaker 9: the skating rinks and kids don't really have anything to do.
Speaker 5: Right in Atlanta, the kids got they can go.
Speaker 9: To things and perform and people see them and do
Speaker 9: just so many different outlets that people are opening that
Speaker 9: we already had Wednesday, every Wednesday, every Monday, every Sunday.
Speaker 5: This is going on.
Speaker 9: So with all of this stuff going on, I'm still
Speaker 9: pushing Atlanta culture. I think that that's that's the most
Speaker 9: you know, that's the most important thing. And I still
Speaker 9: feel like Atlanta's yet to have their Kendrick Lamar or
Speaker 9: their j Cole or.
Speaker 5: Their jay Z. Yet in this era.
Speaker 9: We had it prior to No No, No, No No,
Speaker 9: I'm saying we had it prior. I'm just saying I'm
Speaker 9: saying in this era. In this era, it feels like,
Speaker 9: you know, it's a new artist every week, right, feel
Speaker 9: like it's a new hot artist every week. So I'm
Speaker 9: just saying, I still feel like the city is so
Speaker 9: hot that one of these rappers that people look at
Speaker 9: as a problem rapper, because like I said, they label
Speaker 9: everything in Atlanta so much as trapped that they don't
Speaker 9: fear anything, right, you know what I mean? If you say, oh,
Speaker 9: he's just that's that's just trapped. So it don't it
Speaker 9: don't ever get into the box of oh ship you
Speaker 9: know this guy. You know what I'm saying, it's never that.
Speaker 1: Who do you feel that's unbeknowns to us?
Speaker 2: But who do you feel that's bubbling under that's gonna
Speaker 2: make an impact right now?
Speaker 1: Like what artists do you feel that are?
Speaker 9: I mean, it's a lot of underground artists in Atlanta
Speaker 9: that really raped that that could possibly do this. I
Speaker 9: feel like I felt like Saha was gonna be that
Speaker 9: guy for a second. You know, he's with the right
Speaker 9: crew and he understands what I'm talking about. Like a
Speaker 9: lot of people might not even know that this is
Speaker 9: from Atlanta, Chicago. No, he's from He's from He's from
Speaker 9: the East side.
Speaker 1: Of Atlanta, and he I know that Kanye was from Atlanta, Atlanta.
Speaker 9: Too, So I mean, you know, like I said, it's
Speaker 9: it's it's we still got room because of how people
Speaker 9: put it in the box. If people open up the
Speaker 9: box and do what I'm doing, and it might be
Speaker 9: a little different. But I'm saying I wish people would
Speaker 9: stop that because I think trap the word trap music.
Speaker 5: Came from E D E.
Speaker 9: M d j's wanting the ability to play rap music,
Speaker 9: and they said, and call it and not call it
Speaker 9: rap music.
Speaker 1: Let me as we're talking about wait, can I can? I?
Speaker 5: It's what I pushed open the trap.
Speaker 6: No, it's never a battle, boss, it's never a battle.
Speaker 1: I'm about to about the reign on parade.
Speaker 2: How happy are you to do an interview in which
Speaker 2: no one has to ask you any Jana Jackson questions, Yes,
Speaker 2: it is, that's why.
Speaker 6: No, Actually I didn't. I have little John questions that one.
Speaker 1: I want to be the first.
Speaker 5: I mean, listen me, let me say this. I don't.
Speaker 9: I don't look at any of that as a problem
Speaker 9: because my life is not regular, right, And if you
Speaker 9: if you don't understand that your life is not regular,
Speaker 9: then you won't be celebrating your life the way you're
Speaker 9: supposed to write. I had a girl tell me, like, Nigga,
Speaker 9: do you even know that I don't know another person
Speaker 9: that's dated James Jackson. This is what the girl told me, right,
Speaker 9: And I'm like, I'm thinking, I'm listening to her. I'm like,
Speaker 9: and I'm listening to her in a in a not
Speaker 9: paying attention to what she's saying, mindset. But then it
Speaker 9: hit me like that's what people actually think. So if
Speaker 9: you don't ask me the questions, and it didn't, it
Speaker 9: wasn't something that resonated in your life.
Speaker 5: But I'm saying.
Speaker 9: And it overshadows, but I'm saying, she's such a cultural
Speaker 9: staple in our culture that it's hard for people to
Speaker 9: ignore it.
Speaker 5: Right, so I understand it. It's not something that you know.
Speaker 1: It is what it is. Okay, well, ask one question.