Speaker 1: Of course, Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora Yo
Speaker 1: Yo it Up.
Speaker 2: This is Fonte Fontigaelo with this week's QLs classic.
Speaker 1: This week we go deeply talking to my man, my.
Speaker 2: Brother, Dan Charnas, writer, radio hosts and music ezech. Dan
Speaker 2: talks about his early days, a say about journalists, some
Speaker 2: of the artists he did and didn't sign in the nineties,
Speaker 2: and how a simple grandma mistake can cause big trouble.
Speaker 2: This one was originally released February twenty second and twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: His new book, Diller Time, which is absolutely incredible.
Speaker 1: It releases February first.
Speaker 2: Of twenty twenty two and it is just an amazing
Speaker 2: book and a beautiful lergy too, and an incredible producer.
Speaker 2: Dan Charnas gls classic Fontigolo YEP.
Speaker 3: Crazy Suppriva Ro, Suppriva Suppriva roll call subprev some Supreme
Speaker 3: roll Suprema some SUBPRIMEO.
Speaker 1: Rod Harriet Tupman Rosa Parks. Yeah, a million more Black
Speaker 1: Americans America. What is today?
Speaker 3: Impact Supreva ro called Suprema son, Suprema Ro.
Speaker 1: My name is Fante. Yeah, shout out to my Jews. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Quest of Supreme, Yeah, fake news that suprema so supreva road.
Speaker 4: I met Darryl Yeah when he was defending on television.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And the people that were on the other side of
Speaker 5: the argument, Yeah, didn't stand a chance, right, Suprema suprema
Speaker 5: some Suprema.
Speaker 1: Rod called thank you Linda Bean, yeah of ll Bean
Speaker 1: Yeah for your great support. Yeah by ll B Suprima.
Speaker 1: That was like brama roll call.
Speaker 6: Very incredible people. Yeah, and I want to think, Carson,
Speaker 6: what's gonna be heading up hud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a big job. That's all you ever done
Speaker 1: in your life. Rics Suprema. My name is Dan.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I didn't meet Darryl, but I now missed the president.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was played by Will Ferrell. Suprea roll Suprema Suprema.
Speaker 3: Roll call, Suprema Suprema, roll call so Breema so Agreema.
Speaker 6: Roll call.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, we are This might be the most
Speaker 1: roguus episode of Quest Love Supreme, probably since the Christmas special.
Speaker 1: Yeah classic Yeah, uh wait llll Bean is black. No,
Speaker 1: it was I was reading the Trump tweet. We should
Speaker 1: explain what we were were well, Yeah, to celebrate month
Speaker 1: we read Trump's Those are excerpts that was Trump quotes
Speaker 1: Black quotes from his Black History speech that he gave. Okay, wait,
Speaker 1: was just a random tweet that that I was about
Speaker 1: to say. I'm sorry. I was like, I support ll
Speaker 1: Bean Yeah, New Hampshire be all Okay, ll Bean's a rapper, right, yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's ll cool J's Mexican cousin. Sometimes we've managed to
Speaker 1: immediately within five minutes. Okay, this is apparently the last
Speaker 1: episode that was his cousin and Thecammery is also Irish.
Speaker 1: I see what or that was his best version ever.
Speaker 1: We it would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge Black
Speaker 1: History Month. Yeah, you got. We figured the best way
Speaker 1: to do it is to quote Cheeto Jackson. That's just
Speaker 1: that's your man son. Yeah he Cheeto Jackson. Yeah yeah, man,
Speaker 1: he's yeah.
Speaker 7: He's making Herdergie trumpson.
Speaker 1: There he is. Yo.
Speaker 2: Listen, man, I feel like we need to do something.
Speaker 2: I feel like we need to do the photo negative
Speaker 2: version of Black History Month.
Speaker 1: Explain that was the rest of the month, yo, Well,
Speaker 1: because I feel like, you know, it's a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff going on now, and you know it's you know,
Speaker 1: we're having this war I think between like people that
Speaker 1: are globalists and nationalists and everything and.
Speaker 6: You know, pederalists, everything, all the I s T s
Speaker 6: all the so.
Speaker 2: I feel like every Black History Month we try to
Speaker 2: show like what black people have contributed to the country.
Speaker 2: I feel like, in order to really show people what
Speaker 2: we've done, I feel like maybe it might be time
Speaker 2: for us to just remove ourselves like a mon like
Speaker 2: just just for one month, day without yeah, a day
Speaker 2: without niggas, like an.
Speaker 6: The Mexicans did that and it worked.
Speaker 1: I feel like like every like for real, like we
Speaker 1: take like for one month we show you for all
Speaker 1: the people just like go back to your country if
Speaker 1: you don't like to hear for one month black people,
Speaker 1: we take away our music, We take away all our seasoning.
Speaker 6: About to make a living on the music.
Speaker 1: Well, no, I'm saying, listen, if I can go a month,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, do we have the discipline?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 1: Right now, a dude who's not eating any cereal or
Speaker 1: fried chicken or whatever cheese steaks that I've been noons
Speaker 1: and dulging for as of this taping, we're in the eighties.
Speaker 6: Your resistance down.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, that is one of the I think that's
Speaker 1: all I can I can't do no more. Ain't got
Speaker 1: no more. I can't do no more. You put in
Speaker 1: your time, man, I understand, but I thought about that,
Speaker 1: like what if we just did like a just a
Speaker 1: cultural enema, and well, we just removed ourselves just to
Speaker 1: really show, like all these folks that really won't black
Speaker 1: people go away if you go, and not just black
Speaker 1: people people of color, if we are like your your
Speaker 1: your uncle that like needs heart surgery, No doctor Patel
Speaker 1: can't help you. All the brown people, everybody, all the
Speaker 1: color people like your hedges outside that's growing over. Nah, nigga,
Speaker 1: get yourmo left. So you know what I mean. I'm
Speaker 1: just saying, like we if we did that, I think
Speaker 1: we should. We need to let our absence season start. Man,
Speaker 1: I see what you're doing. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's just a thought. It would never work. People. We
Speaker 1: ain't gonna do that.
Speaker 6: A good TV though, we should do like a TV
Speaker 6: should write it right it.
Speaker 1: Up, Which brings us to our guess.
Speaker 6: With us, this is all you dog today we kind
Speaker 6: of celebrate.
Speaker 1: Your own guest ship. Okay, welcome, I got the beats.
Speaker 7: What you did?
Speaker 2: Okay, man today on a quest of Supreme. We have
Speaker 2: a guy that is man has written the what I
Speaker 2: would consider like the hip hop Bible, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean. He wrote a book called The Big Payback
Speaker 2: and uh, the best way I can describe it, I've
Speaker 2: never seen Star Wars in my life but that. But
Speaker 2: you know, for the Star Wars people, it is this
Speaker 2: book that shows how all what still to this day still.
Speaker 1: I gave him last year and that was your first
Speaker 1: time seeing it. For Yeah, you ain't going to see
Speaker 1: Billy d.
Speaker 6: You ain't gone.
Speaker 1: I was four when that nigga was popping.
Speaker 6: I'm watching that, all right. I'm sorry to mean to digress.
Speaker 1: It was you know, I wasn't watching that. Okay, I
Speaker 1: missed Star Wars, but hey whatever, So as I was
Speaker 1: saying Billy G was in the Empire strikes back, that's
Speaker 1: the second one, right, Yeah, that's the one I heard
Speaker 1: was kind of live. I heard that one was dope.
Speaker 1: I can't believe we're having this conversation. No, I just
Speaker 1: missed that.
Speaker 4: Whole was like hip hop Bible for Star Wars people,
Speaker 4: Star Wars people.
Speaker 2: His book showed how all the Anakins became Darth Vader's
Speaker 2: like if you want to see how every all the
Speaker 2: major players in the game, the Russells, the Rick Rubins,
Speaker 2: the Jesus Christ, everybody, everyone who's someone in the world
Speaker 2: of hip hop. If you want to see how they
Speaker 2: became who they are, this book shows it, and it
Speaker 2: shows how hip hop played a role. It starts off
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy eight. I want to say, is it
Speaker 2: seventy sixty eight? Oh shit, I missed the whole decade technically.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, the beginning of the book, which is amazing
Speaker 1: to me, which I know, so we gotta build it up.
Speaker 1: So no, nineteen sixty eight. It starts with.
Speaker 2: DJ Hollywood, uh, and it ends with the election of
Speaker 2: Barack Obama, and it shows how hip hop played a
Speaker 2: role in all of that and all just the mini
Speaker 2: the thread.
Speaker 1: Hip hop was a thread that ran through all of that.
Speaker 1: And it's an incredible read. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: he's uh played a hand in some of my favorite
Speaker 1: hip hop records. And he's also the writer creator, well
Speaker 1: one of the writers co creators of The Breaks on
Speaker 1: v H one, which I played a small a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, big bro, and uh nah,
Speaker 1: And he's like you know, real good friend of mine,
Speaker 1: very knowledgeable guy. Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls. Give it
Speaker 1: up for mister Dan Charnis, Can I break it up?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 1: The thing was I the thing that grabbed me about
Speaker 1: the Payback book is the fact that you really started
Speaker 1: the book in the eighteen hundreds. And what I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you, what I always wanted to ask you,
Speaker 1: was what were your feelings about Hamilton? Because you now now,
Speaker 1: that's the one thing I wanted to ask on like,
Speaker 1: and I never got to ask him, like was he
Speaker 1: inspired by reading your book first? Or because you made
Speaker 1: the comparison and compared Alexander Hamilton to you put him
Speaker 1: in hip hop terms right in the same way that
Speaker 1: Hamilton actually does, so did you assuming that you've seen it?
Speaker 7: Or I think we both read Cherno's book at the
Speaker 7: same time and had different reactions to it. He was
Speaker 7: a playwright and he started on this amazing work, and
Speaker 7: I was working on a book about hip hop, and
Speaker 7: it just made sense. The guy who invented American money
Speaker 7: lived and died in Harlem. That's the first sentence of
Speaker 7: the book, and so it ends. And sugar Hill is
Speaker 7: Alexander Hamilton's estate.
Speaker 1: That's where he lived.
Speaker 7: So I when I heard about Hamilton, I.
Speaker 1: Just no, no.
Speaker 7: I thought, I was like, oh my god, he gets it,
Speaker 7: he really gets it. Somebody else gets it. And Lynn
Speaker 7: knew something else that I couldn't believe anybody else knew,
Speaker 7: is that the very first rap record, really the first
Speaker 7: rap on record, like like Bronx style, Harlem style. M
Speaker 7: Seeing was not sugar Hill Gang was not Rappers, Delight
Speaker 7: was not King Tim iid. It was on the soundtrack
Speaker 7: the Broadway recording of the original soundtrack recording for Runaways
Speaker 7: by Liz Suados in nineteen seventy eight. There was a
Speaker 7: rap song about the Blackout on that album, and Lynn
Speaker 7: tweeted about him, like, wow, he knows that I've never
Speaker 7: met the man. I mean we have the same like agent,
Speaker 7: but I've never I've never met him.
Speaker 1: Really, Yeah, that's brilliant. Lennon of Miranda, So you have
Speaker 1: you seen Hamilton? Yeah yeah, yeah, So okay, I always
Speaker 1: wanted to know what the feelings were. Yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's why you took that position though, because because we
Speaker 1: live in.
Speaker 7: Harlem, so we feel like really connected to the soil
Speaker 7: of the place, you know, and you know, my son.
Speaker 7: He plays little league baseball in Jackie Robinson Park, which
Speaker 7: is right on that cliff under sugar Hill, And it's
Speaker 7: it's like you you feel the presence.
Speaker 6: There of that and is that that's where you were
Speaker 6: born and raised or not?
Speaker 7: I was not born in Harlem.
Speaker 1: Where were you born?
Speaker 7: I was born a few blocks south of Harlem, Lennox
Speaker 7: Hill Hospital on seventy seventh Street.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, as a non New Yorker, how do you
Speaker 1: differentiate as a as a non New York or for
Speaker 1: me as a non New Yorker asking you, how do
Speaker 1: you differentiate what's Harlem and what six?
Speaker 7: You know, the border on the east Side.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, so ninety six is considered up upper west Side.
Speaker 7: That's your border between the Upper east Side and Harlem.
Speaker 7: Now I live in Harlem, but but that's in the
Speaker 7: traditional border.
Speaker 1: It gets a little tricky because I've been looking for
Speaker 1: a few cribs or whatever, and when I went to
Speaker 1: check out a spot in Harlem, they've now re christened
Speaker 1: sugar Hill as in Hamilton Row. And when I and
Speaker 1: when I asked they were they kind of yeah, they
Speaker 1: kind of kicked it to me, like, yeah, this does
Speaker 1: an excuse for us to add an extra extra.
Speaker 7: Zero zero to the yeah to the to the press,
Speaker 7: and a lot of a lot of that stuff gets
Speaker 7: named for real estate, like morning Side Heights two to
Speaker 7: be Harlem Heights, but then when the name was out
Speaker 7: of vogue, they changed.
Speaker 6: It's like stages of gentrification changed anything. Heights like that just.
Speaker 1: Sound real project to me, Like in around our way
Speaker 1: in the South, like heights, Garden, y'all have heights, heights, heights, gardens, homes,
Speaker 1: homes of the jack, any of them, Like oh yeah,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, it's real. Yeah, it's yeah. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of wik vouches, it's it's real. It's real out there.
Speaker 1: So that's where I stayed at. But so I want
Speaker 1: to go. In the words of our Coult leader, I
Speaker 1: want to start at the beginning. You've always wanted. I
Speaker 1: want to start. Want to start the beginning.
Speaker 2: So act as if you know, because we me and
Speaker 2: you have had a lot of conversations about, you know, everything.
Speaker 2: So it's like Eddie Murphy are sitting on home. I
Speaker 2: want to be okay, So tell us the beginning, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, what was your upbringing like as a kid.
Speaker 7: Uh, well, I guess the most important thing about my
Speaker 7: upbringing is that, you know, my mom raised me in
Speaker 7: this town that was in between Baltimore and Washington, d C.
Speaker 7: So I grew up with a lot of you know,
Speaker 7: soul and funk radio Columbia, Maryland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so are you from there to No.
Speaker 6: No, Columbia, alas, I'm from the DMV, but not like Columbia,
Speaker 6: because Columbia kind of not you know, like you said,
Speaker 6: it's on the edges in between DC and Baltimore. Your
Speaker 6: cooler in Baltimore.
Speaker 7: You know, I grew up listening to w h U
Speaker 7: R Howard University Radio, listening to uh, you know, V
Speaker 7: one O three in Baltimore. So it was an interesting
Speaker 7: sort of class and race integration of an interesting place
Speaker 7: to grow up, and yet it was the most segregated
Speaker 7: time in American culture. It was like post disco. You know,
Speaker 7: all the radio formats were really really strict, and you know,
Speaker 7: I had my sort of I mean, I grew up
Speaker 7: with Earth When in Fire and Stevie Won and all that,
Speaker 7: but I had my epiphany with you know, more Bounce
Speaker 7: than Ounce in nineteen eighty. That was my thing. Like
Speaker 7: I never heard this song on the radio stations that
Speaker 7: my preppy friends listened to what are these other radio stations?
Speaker 7: And that began. I sort of got politicized by that
Speaker 7: a little bit.
Speaker 1: What was your people's playing in the crib? What was
Speaker 1: mom and dad?
Speaker 7: Earth Wind and Fire? Marvin gane oh, Stevie Wonderer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, Oh so you was raised on the essential?
Speaker 7: Yeah. My mother still angry at me that I stole
Speaker 7: her Earth Wind and Fire records when I left for college.
Speaker 2: So that's dope, man, that they would listen to that.
Speaker 2: So that was was that your entry way of like saying, hey,
Speaker 2: I want to do this one day, like I want
Speaker 2: to do it for myself.
Speaker 7: I was actually when I went to college, I was
Speaker 7: actually thinking of becoming a like a school teacher, high
Speaker 7: school teacher. And my major was Afro American studies. They
Speaker 7: called it Afro American Studies at that point, and I
Speaker 7: did a I just decided that I would do my
Speaker 7: thesis on I called musical apartheid in America.
Speaker 6: Say what, wait? First, let me just ask you this.
Speaker 6: We talked about your background. This is radio. Let me
Speaker 6: just not assume you're not African American.
Speaker 7: I'm Jewish, So I always wonder.
Speaker 1: Y'all didn't know that either because y'all would have been celebrated.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, y'all didn't know you thought he was like
Speaker 1: John B.
Speaker 6: No, you'd never assume, because you know, black comes in
Speaker 6: many forms. You know what I'm saying. Mariah Carey is black,
Speaker 6: So why couldn't he didn't? Because I asked that because
Speaker 6: I'm always interested when non blacks do a major like
Speaker 6: Afro American studies, like that's interesting to me, Like what
Speaker 6: made you?
Speaker 1: I did? No for a major to West African? Still
Speaker 1: the Muppets every day has nothing to do with West African.
Speaker 1: I did. That's been to Africa more than you have.
Speaker 6: I've never been there, no, never, Most of us have
Speaker 6: never been there.
Speaker 1: You'll find that I've been that. I've been to the
Speaker 1: South Africa.
Speaker 6: They're artists. Most regular black people people don't. We've never
Speaker 6: been there.
Speaker 1: So the only people that can afford to get to
Speaker 1: Africa those a can exploited.
Speaker 6: So I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: Singular click.
Speaker 6: So now that we have, that's interesting. So now we
Speaker 6: have two Jewish men who majored in that, both of y'all,
Speaker 6: I will be interested in y'all.
Speaker 1: Like the Total song Africa Sugar for the Wind, I can't. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw, yeah, so I thought you do. Well. No,
Speaker 1: he's a member of the tribe. He's my brethren.
Speaker 7: M O T.
Speaker 6: Wait what's the answer for real? No, seriously, what makes
Speaker 6: you major in African Americans?
Speaker 7: More about to the house.
Speaker 1: Just okay, I just okay, okay, I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 1: I was kind of you. Yeah, I mean you had
Speaker 1: so much flavor. I just thought, okay, you one of us,
Speaker 1: like a Sean king. I didn't want to zoom. I
Speaker 1: think it's appeared in the glasses. I think that's I
Speaker 1: think that's what it is.
Speaker 7: Could be Latin too, you know, just hand but okay,
Speaker 7: if I come without the beard, it would have been
Speaker 7: completely different.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, the beard kind of you give it a
Speaker 1: little play tops at home and my pass.
Speaker 5: How come the Beastie Boys and Rick Rubin don't automatically
Speaker 5: give us credit right from the beginning.
Speaker 4: Well, okay for having bounce or funk or whatever you're
Speaker 4: talking about.
Speaker 1: It's weird when listen. As for me, when I first
Speaker 1: heard the original Maroon era parties getting rough, like, I
Speaker 1: thought they were Puerto Rican, Like have you heard rock hard?
Speaker 1: And all right, maybe not rock hard, but definitely with
Speaker 1: this party is getting rough? Have you have you heard
Speaker 1: this party is getting rough? Uh? Yeah, I have. I
Speaker 1: we talked about it in the previous Yeah. So, I
Speaker 1: mean basically I thought they were Puerto Rican and it
Speaker 1: wasn't until you know, I opened the inside leave a
Speaker 1: licensed to ill. I was like, oh, they are not
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican. Well, also, I guess the way they were
Speaker 1: dancing on cheese on it and crush groove, I should
Speaker 1: have known that. Yeah. Yeah, and I guess Puerto Rican.
Speaker 1: For me, it never because I was in the South,
Speaker 1: so we have a lot of Puerto Rican. So we
Speaker 1: just it was either black or white Salvadorian.
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh wow, that's a whole nother culture, right, do
Speaker 6: you not You don't remember this Dan in DC? This
Speaker 6: is no Okay, hadn't gotten there yet because that was
Speaker 6: like the early eighties.
Speaker 1: Okay, that was that was when all the coke was
Speaker 1: getting moved.
Speaker 6: Listen. I don't know so Dan after.
Speaker 1: Left.
Speaker 5: Man, Well, anyway, nobody answered my question. Just assume in
Speaker 5: the future that all Jewish people are funky. Well yeah,
Speaker 5: some of the I'm just joking, but I'm saying you shouldn't.
Speaker 5: I mean, certainly, you know, you can he was offended
Speaker 5: by s.
Speaker 7: There is a bit of a special relationship. I don't
Speaker 7: want to make too much of it, but there is
Speaker 7: a bit of a between me and between the three two.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling, what do you mean.
Speaker 7: Between uh, you know, black folks and Jews in America?
Speaker 1: Here we are, We're on the same game civil rights.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying you shouldn't be surprised that that there's
Speaker 4: a Jew in the room.
Speaker 1: I was never surprised. You know who has bounce or
Speaker 1: whatever you want to be said flavor flavor? I mean
Speaker 1: you know I Search episode. I said that Search had
Speaker 1: more flavor. Yeah, because that was the term of the time.
Speaker 1: That was what it was. He had flavor. So all right,
Speaker 1: if you're just joining us, uh, this is the prame.
Speaker 1: And if you're still with it for our Jewish listeners,
Speaker 1: hope we pitch no. We're here with Dan shahnis author
Speaker 1: of The Big Payback MESI Plas and also writer for
Speaker 1: The Breaks and a whole bunch of other flash ship
Speaker 1: be about to get into all right, so tell me
Speaker 1: how college you went to?
Speaker 7: Boston University.
Speaker 1: Boston University.
Speaker 7: Graduated eighty nine. Okay, okay, you know so you got connected.
Speaker 1: I knew, but I don't want to play that game, like,
Speaker 1: you know, start naming proper nowns. Did you know a
Speaker 1: Lloyd Stare It? Okay?
Speaker 4: And I'm Google searching that ship.
Speaker 1: Alright.
Speaker 7: So however, I did go to college at the same
Speaker 7: time as Paul Batty.
Speaker 1: Okay, so there's that Paul Batty who's.
Speaker 7: Wrote to sell out just one of the man Booker Prize.
Speaker 1: Paul college friends. Man, damn read a book. I am
Speaker 1: read Dan's book. Okay. So what was your major in college?
Speaker 7: Afro American Studies?
Speaker 1: Oh, that was like your major major. Yet it wasn't
Speaker 1: like I got excited. That's real, Okay, especially in Boston,
Speaker 1: right exactly are.
Speaker 6: You looking at me like what's wrong? I'm to see
Speaker 6: if this makes sense. I'm like you, you went to
Speaker 6: Boston University. Yes, you majored in Afro American studies. You
Speaker 6: came from the DMV. That's like a lot of different things,
Speaker 6: Like you came from a whole freaking different culture in
Speaker 6: the DMV, went to Boston and then studied afrom like.
Speaker 1: Going up there from.
Speaker 7: Yes, because they didn't have any radio stations that played
Speaker 7: any funk soul, R and B you know.
Speaker 1: So that was graduated eighty nine, so I went there
Speaker 1: in eighty six eighty five, right, so this is so
Speaker 1: of course this is how okay, I know it was
Speaker 1: this leading Okay, So all I have to listen to
Speaker 1: the college stations and all they're playing is like this
Speaker 1: electro and hip hop.
Speaker 7: Right, So that was my induction into more hip hop,
Speaker 7: because hip hop was always just sort of like a
Speaker 7: subset of R and B to me, and then it
Speaker 7: just started to become more important to me. And then,
Speaker 7: you know, when you're in college, it's the first time
Speaker 7: I ever read Malcolm X. It was my sort of
Speaker 7: really like kind of getting politicized, and then the music
Speaker 7: was getting political at the same time. So by the
Speaker 7: time I graduated, it was the only thing that was important.
Speaker 7: It is the only thing I wanted to do. I
Speaker 7: wanted to be involved in the business, you know, somehow
Speaker 7: to help this culture become everything that it could and
Speaker 7: should be. And I think I said, I'd written this thesis,
Speaker 7: you know, honest thesis at the end of college called
Speaker 7: musical Apartheid in America and sort of analyzed white America's
Speaker 7: relationship to black culture over a four hundred year period
Speaker 7: and so the dynamic of right ambivalence, we love it,
Speaker 7: we hate it, right, we love you, we hate you.
Speaker 7: And I sort of tracked that throughout four hundred years
Speaker 7: and it ended with hip hop. And that's how I
Speaker 7: got to meet a lot of the people in the business,
Speaker 7: because I went and I interviewed them, and one of
Speaker 7: those people was Bill Stephanie, who was the president of
Speaker 7: Deaf Jam at the time. And Bill, you know, I
Speaker 7: sent him a copy of my thesis when it was done,
Speaker 7: and he, you know, said, when you come to New York,
Speaker 7: come look me up. You know, maybe I'm starting a
Speaker 7: record company. Maybe we can work together. And what was
Speaker 7: funny about that was right the evening that I was
Speaker 7: supposed to meet with him, the Village Voice story came
Speaker 7: out with Professor Griff talking about Jews and jewelry. So
Speaker 7: the record company got put on this and eventually became
Speaker 7: Soul Records.
Speaker 1: Right yot steps, Oh wait, Soul so first one.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So Bill and Hank, Bill left def Jam to
Speaker 7: form this record company with Hank and Chuck. And then
Speaker 7: you know, Griff you know, was talking to Dave Mills
Speaker 7: at the Washington Times and R. J. Smith at The
Speaker 7: Voice picked it up and then it was just it
Speaker 7: was like postponed for a year.
Speaker 6: What was the controversy for those that don't know.
Speaker 7: What happened, was that Professor Professor Griff said something to
Speaker 7: the effect of, why do you think they call it
Speaker 7: jewelry because of the Jews?
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, it is right. I'm like that, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's not that, it's not I assume, said Thompson.
Speaker 1: I've always assumed it was. But at that time that
Speaker 1: was crazy.
Speaker 2: I remember, I remember that ship was. Yeah, like Griff
Speaker 2: they cut him out. They had to kind of like
Speaker 2: excommunicating whatever, Like was no, no, for real, Like that
Speaker 2: ship was.
Speaker 6: Like I'm looking.
Speaker 1: That's one of the questions I forgot to ask MC
Speaker 1: search was there was a confrontation between him and Griff.
Speaker 1: The reason why that jam had to put guards in
Speaker 1: the you know, uh, that was one of the main reasons.
Speaker 8: Like, it was a lot of confrontations.
Speaker 1: I remember that summer. So that put everything on hold.
Speaker 1: Once that happened, that kind of put soul on hold.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So what I ended up doing was getting a
Speaker 7: job in the mail room of Profile Records, and that
Speaker 7: was the home of Rob Bass run DMC special ad
Speaker 7: right in the summer of like the fall of nineteen
Speaker 7: eighty nine. So my first job was answering phones and
Speaker 7: stuffing envelopes a profile.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that had that not happened, so would
Speaker 1: have gotten developed by nineteen eighty nine instead of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. That's right.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if those young Black teenagers and the
Speaker 1: Sun of Bersik album were ready to go in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety like earlier than when it got released, because it
Speaker 1: didn't come out to what like ninety ninety one.
Speaker 7: I do recall Bill still waiting for those things to
Speaker 7: be complete in nineteen ninety like it was.
Speaker 1: He was still you know, those two records, man, are
Speaker 1: like to me, I mean as far as like I
Speaker 1: loved anything and everything that the Bomb Squad has ever
Speaker 1: done as a production unit. But it is so weird
Speaker 1: because do you have a product musically it could be
Speaker 1: hip hop or whatever that you hold near and dear
Speaker 1: to your heart that you know won't translate to anyone
Speaker 1: else enough for you. Like to me, I like, if
Speaker 1: I were at the source at the time when those
Speaker 1: records came, I would have five mic both those records
Speaker 1: because it's just so many layers of genius to them,
Speaker 1: at least from the production side. But you know, I
Speaker 1: know the average person would just give it three whatever.
Speaker 1: The source love that song, well, they love changing the style. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they gave that a classic rate. Well they gave it
Speaker 1: a four the time.
Speaker 7: Remember that.
Speaker 1: Oh I've memorized record. Yeah, because I don't want to
Speaker 1: scare you and I hate to change the subject.
Speaker 7: But you know what I remember. I remember your columns.
Speaker 7: I think they were wrapped sheep right, yeah, we're a columnist.
Speaker 7: That's how I first got yeah, she she she she
Speaker 7: hooked me up.
Speaker 1: Man. So with those records of soul gets, it's those
Speaker 1: solos on whole you a profile. I was even one.
Speaker 1: We were talking about this today, man, like, like, do
Speaker 1: mail rooms still even exists anymore?
Speaker 7: I really don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know record labels, but NBC, NBC there's always
Speaker 1: someone putting mails flowing. That's the way I get record companies. Ghetto.
Speaker 6: I am.
Speaker 1: All my mail gets to the NBC now, so everything
Speaker 1: like cards from families. People be like what's your address,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, well, do you want me to get
Speaker 1: actually get letter or package or yeah? So all I
Speaker 1: just you know, that's my house and they'll bring it
Speaker 1: to you sleep there. Yeah, I mean some weekends, I'll
Speaker 1: make it a weekend there. I guess it is your house.
Speaker 6: Then record companies barely have offices, so do they because
Speaker 6: that's started.
Speaker 1: To get out of the mail room.
Speaker 6: Now was that?
Speaker 1: So at that time were you getting were you like
Speaker 1: getting to please listen to my demo? Like, were you
Speaker 1: getting that? Yeah?
Speaker 7: I mean it wasn't. It wasn't. The thing about Profile
Speaker 7: at the time, there really weren't any It was a
Speaker 7: hip hop label. I mean had a lot of hip
Speaker 7: hop on it. There were no like hip hop heads there.
Speaker 7: You know Brian Chin who signed Rob Bass and special Ed.
Speaker 7: He loved hip hop, but his first love was dance music, right,
Speaker 7: So I guess that's why Corey gave me a job,
Speaker 7: you know, listening to demo tapes and doing ain't R
Speaker 7: and I was not very good at it.
Speaker 1: But who were your signings? Why do you say you were? Well?
Speaker 7: I mean I just wasn't successful in getting anybody across.
Speaker 7: Like I found Geno Excel when I was you know,
Speaker 7: at Profile, but I was not successful in making the
Speaker 7: sale and getting him signed. So but it wasn't long.
Speaker 7: You know, while I was working at Profile, I also
Speaker 7: was writing for The Source. They had were in the
Speaker 7: process of moving from Boston to New York. Were you
Speaker 7: in that first summer issue, the one I wrote the
Speaker 7: ll cover story?
Speaker 1: Sorry a couple of years.
Speaker 7: All right, you wrote that cover story, the one the
Speaker 7: Mama said.
Speaker 1: Notack you out? Yes, I remember, oh Man, the nerd,
Speaker 1: the nerd of me is really about.
Speaker 7: To go in, go in, oh Man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Lego heart just like exploded exactly like that that issue.
Speaker 1: I mean that probably next to the first five issues
Speaker 1: of Grand Royal Magazine. Wow, like Royal somewhere in one
Speaker 1: of those eighteen storage units are like, I'm an I
Speaker 1: would buy the Source like three each and just preserve them.
Speaker 1: Because when I first got that l issue, am an
Speaker 1: easy issue. I'm like, that's the first time I ever
Speaker 1: saw people truly understand and really wax poetic about hip
Speaker 1: hop culture in a way that Rolling Stone would or
Speaker 1: Cream Magazine. Like. I'd read those magazines and just wonder,
Speaker 1: like damn, like wonder what it's like for someone to
Speaker 1: write about hip hop culture that way.
Speaker 2: I didn't know you wrote that cover story. I was
Speaker 2: just shot in the dark. That's crazy, and that was
Speaker 2: what nineteen ninety ninety.
Speaker 7: So I wrote the Public Enemy cover story, the ice
Speaker 7: Cube cover story, and then the the lo one.
Speaker 1: Oh man, did you review America's Most Wanted?
Speaker 7: I did, well, it was more like it was more
Speaker 7: like an essay on ice Cube.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I know that. Nice to give an issue
Speaker 1: you didn't know. Okay, okay, well, but I remember that
Speaker 1: was like the summer issue, right yeah, yeah, because the
Speaker 1: most One got a five. I want to say, yeah,
Speaker 1: Tribe got a five, Edu Teament got a five. It did, Yes,
Speaker 1: it did. A fourth album got a five that I
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety and I'm also shocked that I knew. I
Speaker 1: knew you guys were the deal. When some didn't sit
Speaker 1: right with me with Fear of a Black Planet, but
Speaker 1: it was kind of like, you know, I'll ride with it.
Speaker 1: You know, one of those things where it's just like
Speaker 1: probably how you feel about phrenology? Nah, yo, okay, now
Speaker 1: let's go there say kind of I mean there's you know,
Speaker 1: give you give your act like I'll let it slide
Speaker 1: and just but no, well, okay, we'll talk about phrenology.
Speaker 1: So Fear of a Black Planet, you didn't you wasn't
Speaker 1: all the way on board with that. Well here's the
Speaker 1: thing though, I mean, even though the thing that still
Speaker 1: holding in light now mind you, I mean it's twenty
Speaker 1: five years later or whatever, you know, the Pitchfork's right
Speaker 1: up of it. They gave it a perfect ten and
Speaker 1: really really made it like presented in the way that
Speaker 1: even I didn't see it back then, something was missing.
Speaker 1: And then I realized that that something was Sadler. So
Speaker 1: Sadler was sort of like on half the record, Eric
Speaker 1: Sadler had sort of made his graceful exit, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't quite place where was you know, some songs I
Speaker 1: was a little the probably when the Cracker was like okay,
Speaker 1: I like I fuck with that one. I mean, I look,
Speaker 1: it's a masterpiece of a record, but I still went
Speaker 1: for America's most wanted like that to me was now
Speaker 1: if we're doing of course presidential Bomb Squad and evenfore
Speaker 1: that matter, Bellbdevo's Poison album, No, that was Bomb Squads.
Speaker 1: It was I know, So for me, of those three records,
Speaker 1: like I was kind of it was kind of weird
Speaker 1: that it was like in the Brons Squaddy, well.
Speaker 7: No, it was.
Speaker 1: It was a bronze to me, and there was a review.
Speaker 1: They gave it three and a half mics in that
Speaker 1: Source issue, and I was like, whoa this is? I said, Wow,
Speaker 1: they're not salivating over this. And it wasn't like the
Speaker 1: dismissive you know, Spin magazine like this is a ghetto music,
Speaker 1: I hate this, you know. It was like a well
Speaker 1: informed and I was like, wait, I kind of feel
Speaker 1: I think I agree with this, so so weird that
Speaker 1: I didn't realize you were that era of old so
Speaker 1: how No, But it was it was those first five
Speaker 1: issues that from that to brand Nubian issue that one
Speaker 1: got five to right in two issues two issues later.
Speaker 7: There was so much ambition in that era and those
Speaker 7: issues like just to really have a voice that was
Speaker 7: exclusively dedicated to hip hop and and just smart and political,
Speaker 7: and just the people there were. I mean that was
Speaker 7: Dream and Kirna and you know, Maddie.
Speaker 1: Where was your era there? Well you there from the
Speaker 1: beginning too.
Speaker 7: I was there when they were still in Boston when
Speaker 7: that Summer issue was being written, and then I left
Speaker 7: to go work for Rick Rubin in ninety one ninety one,
Speaker 7: so ninety one was sort of my swan song with
Speaker 7: the Source.
Speaker 1: Do you remember your last issue the last article I wrote?
Speaker 7: Oh man, I don't even remember it was I don't remember.
Speaker 7: Sometime in ninety one, I think was my last piece,
Speaker 7: or ninety one or early ninety two.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's a classic as it gets. What do
Speaker 1: you remember the album's even reviewed?
Speaker 7: I did cover stories, I didn't and like feature articles.
Speaker 7: I didn't really do the album reviews because that was
Speaker 7: the the that was like the core group, the mind squad,
Speaker 7: you know. And I sometimes I regret not participly stopping
Speaker 7: my writing career to go into the record business now
Speaker 7: feels like, you know, I mean, because I had a
Speaker 7: lot of catching up to do. When I moved back
Speaker 7: to New York. I went to go work for Rick Rubin,
Speaker 7: you know, in LA for about thirteen It was ended
Speaker 7: up being there for thirteen years. But I like not
Speaker 7: having that that writing career going forward.
Speaker 1: I thought.
Speaker 7: So you went from Profile to the Source, went from Profile,
Speaker 7: and I'm you know, just wrote for the Source while
Speaker 7: I worked at Profile. Year was Profile eighty nine October
Speaker 7: eighty nine to April nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: So you were there for the first was Naughty by
Speaker 1: Nature's First John on no, no, that was it was
Speaker 1: Tommy Boy. That was right. So honestly the first honest yeah,
Speaker 1: the first on like this.
Speaker 6: Ah so wait what was the rosters?
Speaker 1: Just because I'm now I'm profile.
Speaker 7: Rob Bass special ed U Poor Righteous Teachers, which is
Speaker 7: my very first record that rocked this funky joint promotion.
Speaker 7: L A Star. I don't know if you remember her,
Speaker 7: I remember.
Speaker 1: Or yes she was.
Speaker 7: She was on B Boy Records for a while, then
Speaker 7: Brian Chin signed her and she made a pretty good album.
Speaker 7: But she got into this battle with Tretch at the
Speaker 7: New Music Seminar, this MC battle, and he said the
Speaker 7: only kind of star you could be as a mon star.
Speaker 6: Was she not cute?
Speaker 1: She was not I liked her. That was not would
Speaker 1: about l a star her career right there.
Speaker 6: Ship Yo, It seems like it'sunny because you said Poor
Speaker 6: Teacher was your first record that you promoted. For some reason,
Speaker 6: it seemed like you got really well received in my area,
Speaker 6: like the d m V area. Did you feel like
Speaker 6: it was easier to promote because you kind of felt.
Speaker 7: Yeah, although there weren't really a lot of mixed shows
Speaker 7: in DC at the time because remember they weren't playing
Speaker 7: it on WPGC at that time.
Speaker 1: What was it like, Okay, well you left in ninety one.
Speaker 1: Did you have to work back from him? Then I
Speaker 1: have to back back? Was that was that ninety one?
Speaker 7: Yes? Oh, so here's the story, right, here's the story.
Speaker 7: So man, Rick comes call. I literally just get a
Speaker 7: call out of the blue, and the receptionist says Rix
Speaker 7: on the phone, and I knew it was him. I
Speaker 7: knew it was Rick. Yeah, not because anybody told me
Speaker 7: he was calling, but because I don't know. Gino Excel
Speaker 7: and I had been working on some demos and we
Speaker 7: had been talking a little bit and we just did
Speaker 7: like this, It's almost like this little incantation to sort
Speaker 7: of bring him out of the ether. And when he
Speaker 7: said Rix on the phone, I said, this is him
Speaker 7: and I picked up It's Rick Rubin. So apparently Bill
Speaker 7: Stephanie had given him my number.
Speaker 1: Whatever.
Speaker 7: Anyway, why was hell was I telling you the story? Oh?
Speaker 1: The story? Right?
Speaker 7: So Rick brings me out to Los Angeles sort of
Speaker 7: like a courtship, you know. Uh, he's thinking of hiring
Speaker 7: me for Deaf American. And one morning I'm staying at
Speaker 7: the Riot High on Sunset and one morning he calls
Speaker 7: and he says, uh, come downstairs, We're going to breakfast
Speaker 7: with Russell. It's like Russell's in town. So we go
Speaker 7: to the Beverly Hills Hotel and Russell comes down and
Speaker 7: Russell's talking a mile a minute, and Rick is laughing
Speaker 7: and he recognizes me. Suddenly, Russell recognizes me as the
Speaker 7: kid at profile who promotes you know, his brother's record.
Speaker 7: He says, and the single at the time was a
Speaker 7: song called Faces.
Speaker 1: Which.
Speaker 7: You know, So what do you think of Faith?
Speaker 1: And I said, and I said, uh.
Speaker 7: I said, and I just the wrong answer. I was
Speaker 7: such a punk. I was like, well, Russell, you know,
Speaker 7: I just think as far as rap R and B fusion,
Speaker 7: I think the kids are really listening to in Vogue,
Speaker 7: and you know, they don't really want to hear rappers
Speaker 7: doing it the opposite way. Faith is a louder record
Speaker 7: than in Vogue.
Speaker 1: I went into a club that ship was so loud.
Speaker 7: It is much louder, and Rick is losing his mind.
Speaker 7: Rick must have called three different people in the car
Speaker 7: after we left that breakfast saying, and Russell said, it's
Speaker 7: a louder record and that's why it's better. And that's
Speaker 7: what I saw like the nature of their relationship is
Speaker 7: that Russell makes Rick laugh, you know, and so.
Speaker 1: It's like a bad way, right right, I think in
Speaker 1: a Rick way. I mean you remember Faces, Yes, dude,
Speaker 1: I had the Back from Hill album. Wait, just you know,
Speaker 1: I gotta this face is by nineteen ninety era Run
Speaker 1: dmcme fun and the thing was that because it was Faces.
Speaker 1: But the single before that was Pause, which was even
Speaker 1: more kind of new Jack swingy. But they got away
Speaker 1: with Pause. Ter J Jay something the trade and asked
Speaker 1: them bathing to my homie Stanley Brown car with the keyboard. Wait,
Speaker 1: since you always wanted to know, there's there's a moment
Speaker 1: the very last five seconds of the record where runs
Speaker 1: just like you'll take that bullshit off that that bullshit
Speaker 1: is bullshit. I always wanted to know if that was run.
Speaker 1: Finally having a realization that the second worst album of
Speaker 1: their career on that label.
Speaker 7: Le Or was so mad that didn't sell. I have
Speaker 7: a copy of a memo that he sent.
Speaker 1: To the ice Cube remix Ice Cree remix of Back
Speaker 1: from Hell. That happened. Oh, I think I remember that
Speaker 1: there was an ice cube. It was it was a
Speaker 1: Chuck d and ice Cube and Run Back from Hell
Speaker 1: remix that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So because at this time, and I wanted to ask
Speaker 2: you about this if you were involved, because at this
Speaker 2: time that was after Tougher than Leather and you know,
Speaker 2: run D m C had been kind of away for
Speaker 2: a minute because they were going they were worn with
Speaker 2: Death Jam, well War. You know, Russ wanted to get
Speaker 2: him on Dead Jam and Profile was like, no, the
Speaker 2: did you have any input or at that time, like
Speaker 2: you know, working directly with them, like to.
Speaker 1: Try to say like, hey, fellas, you know, no, no.
Speaker 7: I mean you know they were they were at that
Speaker 7: point working on their own. I mean I was just
Speaker 7: the kid, you know, bringing that tapes back and forth
Speaker 7: from the studio. That was.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So when you hear this record, like, I mean what,
Speaker 1: I have zero ownership of it spiritually, financially, So for
Speaker 1: you it's just straight up like I just gotta work
Speaker 1: it and it's just the job.
Speaker 7: Like and I mean, listen, they gotta they got they
Speaker 7: got a certain amount of respect, you know regardless, right,
Speaker 7: you know, I take the record the Red Red Bull,
Speaker 7: play it, take it to Chuck, Chuck will play it.
Speaker 7: It's not Uh that was.
Speaker 1: Okay, what else? Sticky did you work special ads legal album?
Speaker 1: Did that wow? Ship well let's move it? So no,
Speaker 1: but that whole know that whole that could the five
Speaker 1: due the five minute of my Yes, Yes, that entire
Speaker 1: I just I just found that record, uh, to p
Speaker 1: astronomical amount of it for the CD. Yeah it is, yes,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that's so slept on. It was so entirely
Speaker 1: t was great.
Speaker 6: So I just want to know how did Rick feel
Speaker 6: about your answer to Russell? Because remember you said the
Speaker 6: whole reason that you were coming to l A is
Speaker 6: because of the possibility of you working with Rick, And
Speaker 6: then you said you felt uncomfortable with the way that
Speaker 6: you made him answer the question with Russell.
Speaker 7: So Rick was laughing his ass.
Speaker 6: What you said, and so you were you were? You hired?
Speaker 7: And then well then then Russell called and left the
Speaker 7: message on Rick's machine. He said, Uh, if you don't
Speaker 7: hire that kid, I'm gonna hire him. He don't know nothing,
Speaker 7: but like his attitude.
Speaker 1: I'm glad they were amicable at least I really were.
Speaker 7: Russell used to call me like in the mid nineties
Speaker 7: when I was working for him, when they were really
Speaker 7: when Russell was trying to put together his PolyGram deal
Speaker 7: and get off of Sony. They were heading into their
Speaker 7: they're trying to put their tenth anniversary thing together and
Speaker 7: Rick still had not finished the negotiations, and he was like,
Speaker 7: can you you know, can you get to Rick is
Speaker 7: not doing anything? He needs to move forward. So he
Speaker 7: would call me sometimes and ask if I could push
Speaker 7: it forward.
Speaker 1: So when you went to Rick, is this before or
Speaker 1: after the original Ghetto Boys uh debut on his label?
Speaker 7: That was during Yeah, so he had just signed them
Speaker 7: and then Geffen dropped Deaf American because of it, right,
Speaker 7: and that's when I started to, you know, have that
Speaker 7: little like four month courtship period, and that's when you know,
Speaker 7: we got the I guess we can't be stopped?
Speaker 1: Right. That was when that was drop.
Speaker 7: And I think that Rick felt some pressure, not really
Speaker 7: pressure because Mo Austin, So he had an.
Speaker 1: Option to have we can't be stopped before they went
Speaker 1: to rap a lot.
Speaker 7: That's right, that's right. And I think he decided once
Speaker 7: he moved to Warner Brothers that you know, he had
Speaker 7: fought well enough for the first one, and then he
Speaker 7: didn't feel very strongly about we can't be stopped, which
Speaker 7: is ironic.
Speaker 1: Really, that was the one that was the one. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: the first one was that was it was Gripping on
Speaker 1: It was Gripping Level, which is basically the same record. Yeah,
Speaker 1: some engineering was was a little different. And did they
Speaker 1: not add an H to Ghetto Boys on the original
Speaker 1: I think the original pressing of g yeah, right, but
Speaker 1: then they went back to G E C O. Right,
Speaker 1: but there initially when they were on Deaf American, they
Speaker 1: tried they were.
Speaker 7: He was on Deaf American when he got shot, right, yeah,
Speaker 7: he got shot in the eye, and so that was
Speaker 7: you know, we were still like concerned about his health
Speaker 7: and everything. And but you know, now we're getting the
Speaker 7: era where like the sum of my A and R
Speaker 7: mistakes far outweigh any successes, you know, I mean, what
Speaker 7: were your mistake? Okay, here's an example. Paul Stewart was
Speaker 7: probably the best you know, all around uh talent scout
Speaker 7: in Los Angeles at the time. And you know, Paul
Speaker 7: brings me House of Pain's demo and there's this song
Speaker 7: on it called jump Around, and I love it and
Speaker 7: I give the tape to Rick. I'm duble tape for Rick,
Speaker 7: and Rick calls me and I said, did you listen
Speaker 7: to how the Pain. He said, yeah, I love that song.
Speaker 7: Jump around a lot of jumping.
Speaker 1: That's a good Rick, That's a good and uh.
Speaker 7: And he says, I really like that song, so I
Speaker 7: like it too. He says, but do you think there
Speaker 7: are any other Do you think they have any other
Speaker 7: songs on this? Like do you think thing? And I
Speaker 7: said no, I think this is the only one they've got.
Speaker 7: And then we just let it go and we were right, but.
Speaker 1: We were so wrong. Who else give us another one day?
Speaker 1: And I was just like, this is your greatest missus?
Speaker 7: Really the Far Side demo?
Speaker 1: What what if you're just now quest love supreme? And
Speaker 1: he was talking about all his greatest missus? So how
Speaker 1: did how did you? How did you miss out on that? What?
Speaker 1: What was the story?
Speaker 7: Yet another you know sort of Paul Stewart incredible demo?
Speaker 7: And I liked it. I guess you know what was
Speaker 7: I was just on some ship. I was like, I
Speaker 7: work for Rick Rubin and everything I do has to
Speaker 7: be perfect, and you know, I just don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if this adds up.
Speaker 7: It seems kind of silly, you know, And I don't,
Speaker 7: you know, stupid, you know, because once I heard for
Speaker 7: Better for Worse.
Speaker 1: Wait, that was one of the demos.
Speaker 7: Not on the demo. It was not a demos, it
Speaker 7: was it was mister.
Speaker 1: Officer and uh in its current state.
Speaker 7: But passing me by was.
Speaker 1: You didn't feel it.
Speaker 7: It's not that I didn't feel it. I just didn't
Speaker 7: get behind it fast enough, you know what I.
Speaker 1: Didn't. So yeah, it took me a minute because your
Speaker 1: Mama came out. I fronted on it. Yeah, your Mama
Speaker 1: was like your Mama, and then the remix of your
Speaker 1: Mama when no, the remix of your Mama that was
Speaker 1: and even they said that your Mama remixes whack dude,
Speaker 1: it sucks dick in the album. Yeah. But then when
Speaker 1: we got the record and when for Better for Worse
Speaker 1: came on, Yeah, that was one of those moments. That's
Speaker 1: the first time that like I heard Fender Roads sound
Speaker 1: like water Run and to look at the album cover
Speaker 1: and to hear that song like it just the personality,
Speaker 1: like I think that's the last time I got lost
Speaker 1: and watching it, you know, like when you're a kid
Speaker 1: that when people talk about like seventies experiences of looking
Speaker 1: at album covers and listening like I just got lost
Speaker 1: in a total trance like that song perfectly encapsulated to
Speaker 1: me what they were about, and and and that that
Speaker 1: song made me higher. Maybe that was my triun no,
Speaker 1: but I that that's also the song that made me
Speaker 1: instantly hire Scott Storch to the Roots. We were keyboard
Speaker 1: lists and then when I heard that, I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I want that on my record. And then Rich was like,
Speaker 1: I got this guy looking at my crib on my floor.
Speaker 1: He can played that, damn. He brought Scott to the
Speaker 1: studio next day and it was like, all right, you're
Speaker 1: in the group. Damn. So that was so. So he
Speaker 1: fronted on the forest side, but I won the farest side.
Speaker 1: So that was man, that was what ninety one this point. Man,
Speaker 1: So I'm talking about your time at Death American and
Speaker 1: I was. I was just always curious, like it was something.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a branding thing, I
Speaker 1: don't know what it was, but like they never that
Speaker 1: label never seemed to I mean other than sir mixed lot,
Speaker 1: which I mean we can you know, go into depth about,
Speaker 1: but other than that, it was I don't know, like
Speaker 1: just as a fan at that time, their releases didn't
Speaker 1: seem to have like that. I guess that kind of
Speaker 1: like a deaf jam. You know what I'm saying. That
Speaker 1: just I gotta buy this, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But the records were dope like that. The number fault,
Speaker 1: How was that? Your fault was fault?
Speaker 6: You know?
Speaker 1: Because I mean like the Knots, that was like world the.
Speaker 6: Knots was on.
Speaker 1: Yeah you signed them? Yeah yo, I swear to God,
Speaker 1: dog I listened to on the air maybe no saggeration,
Speaker 1: maybe nine hours in a row. I kept that ship
Speaker 1: on loop all Christmas Day, just on the edge God,
Speaker 1: that whole. Like when we first came to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: the mixtapes was and see mixtapes. I wasn't big on
Speaker 1: I was. Bus Stops was the ship though. Bus Stops
Speaker 1: was the one. That's how we met the Jazzy vat Nasties.
Speaker 1: They were in that video. They were in the video
Speaker 1: for bus Stops. We when we first came to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: I met Dawn on her way to shoot uh like
Speaker 1: shoot announce video. They were in a bus Stop video
Speaker 1: and they gave me cossette of it and we were
Speaker 1: listening to it. We kind of clown like you should
Speaker 1: sell buddy got them beats you know tap, you know,
Speaker 1: like the songs that you make that suddenly we made
Speaker 1: fun of it so much that suddenly became our ship.
Speaker 1: And then it was like, yo, we gotta get him
Speaker 1: on stage and rock with us, like like just okay,
Speaker 1: so you're producing, so we didn't. We gotta get into
Speaker 1: that your time as a producer. So how did you
Speaker 1: make that transition?
Speaker 7: It was more like these were artists, like you know,
Speaker 7: Chino and Quest back in New York. They didn't have
Speaker 7: a place, mad lad Yeah, so you know, they would
Speaker 7: come to my apartment, you know on ninth and twentieth
Speaker 7: right there in Chelsea when it wasn't a getrified neighborhood,
Speaker 7: and uh, you know, so it was just they liked
Speaker 7: some of the stuff they were doing with me, and
Speaker 7: I managed to, you know, get a couple in there,
Speaker 7: which was good.
Speaker 1: So you were and you were making beats on the
Speaker 1: SP at that time.
Speaker 7: I was making beats on an ASR ten and a
Speaker 7: rolling W thirty And then I bought King Texts SP
Speaker 7: twelve hundred from him and added that to the repertoire.
Speaker 1: And how did you learn it? How did you? Because
Speaker 1: I mean it wasn't no manuals, no shit. I imagine
Speaker 1: it's just just trial and error, yeah, and error and
Speaker 1: error in error. What did you produce on on their records?
Speaker 7: Well, for Tino Excel, I did a song called Rise,
Speaker 7: which was the last song on the album, and Question
Speaker 7: Mad Lad, I did a song called one hundred and
Speaker 7: one to do while I'm with your Girl.
Speaker 1: So you you yo? I was so mad at you
Speaker 1: for using that Brick sample. Oh yeah, that was my wait.
Speaker 1: I hate that. Every everything that he's done is like
Speaker 1: a childhood memories mind. No, that Living from the Mind
Speaker 1: sample is like I got that ship when I was
Speaker 1: six years old. That was the first eight track I
Speaker 1: ever got as a kid. Damn, you actually got an
Speaker 1: eight track for Wow. This is Sleepy Brown's pop singing Wow.
Speaker 6: Record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, living Living from the Mind from Brick. They were
Speaker 1: from Atlanta's Sleepy his dad, Jimmy Brown. Yeah, but when
Speaker 1: that was like not even like you know, like records
Speaker 1: when you're making beats and like, oh, I'm a sample
Speaker 1: that one day, but then there's like records from your childhood.
Speaker 1: When I heard that ship, I was so I've never
Speaker 1: been so mad at a sample use. I'm sorry I
Speaker 1: was like, no, but it was perfect, man, Like even
Speaker 1: the wait, when was the drum break? It was new birth?
Speaker 1: Did you flip it?
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's a new it's a kick. Boom boom, it
Speaker 7: was a yeah.
Speaker 6: So what a point in your career did you know?
Speaker 6: Because you went from I'm just I'm backtracking. I'm like,
Speaker 6: you went from mail room and our writer and then
Speaker 6: you when did you know that you could even make beats?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 6: When did you even did.
Speaker 1: It all along?
Speaker 7: You know, like even in college, you know, worked on
Speaker 7: music and stuff. I was in the Inner Strength Gospel Choir.
Speaker 7: I was the bass player the Inter Strength Gospel Choir.
Speaker 1: Whoa, that's that's the African American States. Yeah, the Inner
Speaker 1: Strength Gospel Choir.
Speaker 6: You're a musician by nature anyway. That's just something that
Speaker 6: you left out at the beginning. But I mean a
Speaker 6: bass player, that's not something that just you do.
Speaker 7: You failed musicians become producer? Was this a failed producers become.
Speaker 1: Was this? Was this a black gospel choir?
Speaker 7: Yes?
Speaker 1: Someone wants to I forgot who it was? Shut up, Bill,
Speaker 1: when's the last white gospel choir you saw? I'm just
Speaker 1: saying I don't think there's a lot of them literal. Look,
Speaker 1: you know someone during the voodoo toward joke, it was like,
Speaker 1: what made a new penal that? Well, he said, Man,
Speaker 1: if your bass player is a white boy in an
Speaker 1: all black group, you know he a motherfucker. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you're the bass player? It was, And did you
Speaker 1: learn like, were you formally training music? Was it all
Speaker 1: just about ear or how did you learn mostly by ear?
Speaker 1: But so wait, because we're just giving through his whole history.
Speaker 1: That quest record was so slept on though. It was
Speaker 1: how did you feel when he got the rap page discovery?
Speaker 7: Well, here's the story behind that, kause Shehena was at
Speaker 7: a at theime and Shea was a friend and she
Speaker 7: heard the advance and assigned Bobby Garcia to do the
Speaker 7: cover story. So Barbito wrote that cover story. But here's
Speaker 7: the thing. We were putting our rap releases not through WEIA,
Speaker 7: which was the big Warner distribution company. We were putting
Speaker 7: him through Tommy Boy's independent distribution. And Tom Silverman felt
Speaker 7: that we didn't have enough radio play on the two
Speaker 7: singles we had put out to justify putting out the
Speaker 7: album right away, and you know, we sort of panicked,
Speaker 7: and I'm like, you know, I don't know if we
Speaker 7: have another single on this, let's do four more songs.
Speaker 7: And it was a terrible time for a question and
Speaker 7: unfair to him, you know, in terms of he'd done
Speaker 7: this beautiful album and you know, we were finding ourselves
Speaker 7: doing more records. And then finally Sena came along and said, well, listen,
Speaker 7: you're either going to release that album and I'll put
Speaker 7: the cover out, or if you don't really see, I'm
Speaker 7: not doing the cover. So that's when I decided to
Speaker 7: put on the schedule anyway because of Shena.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, I mean, you know, in case you think
Speaker 1: that you threw pebble out there and didn't ripple and
Speaker 1: didn't dog.
Speaker 2: I love that record, man, Yeah, like yeah, yeah, Death
Speaker 2: American like again, like y'all made the records that I
Speaker 2: bought and they were dope, but it was just something
Speaker 2: And maybe it was like the distribution that you mentioned.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but it just seems like they didn't
Speaker 2: get that same love that I guess a lot of
Speaker 2: other records were getting.
Speaker 1: I don't know why that was, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: because the ship was dope. But Bill, did you know
Speaker 1: about question matlet. Nope, all right, I gotta play. I
Speaker 1: gotta play.
Speaker 6: You're not alone alone? Was hit a song?
Speaker 1: I know, just like question mad lad, one hundred and
Speaker 1: one things to do while I'm with your girl. It's
Speaker 1: a great title. Hell's us speaking of all the niggas
Speaker 1: out there that got girls on the rail, you gotta
Speaker 1: stop hitting them and mistreating them and neglecting them, because no,
Speaker 1: no joke, no, I'll fuck them.
Speaker 4: Wa chackie. Now this when it sounds about messed up
Speaker 4: war on machine.
Speaker 1: But if you and your girl ain'txite, you know, I'll
Speaker 1: fuck your lady. Get better. Good of a chat because
Speaker 1: it only takes one more move to make me get
Speaker 1: right in case? It so much classic ship man and yeah,
Speaker 1: it just got a little story about that.
Speaker 7: You hear that eight oh eight? Yeah, that's an actual
Speaker 7: eight oh eight drum machine. It's ricks eight o eight
Speaker 7: that's making that.
Speaker 1: We're into the first hour of Quest Love supprint only
Speaker 1: on Pandora. Here with Uh, the Illustrious and Press were
Speaker 1: the Dan shawnas Uh renaissance man, Jack of all trades,
Speaker 1: the Black Black, the Black whites player, the white basel
Speaker 1: yes black, the white bass player in the Black ensemble
Speaker 1: Black gospel man. Yeah, that's that's some ship, sir, mix
Speaker 1: a lot, Yes, sir, that was like the biggest song ever.
Speaker 1: Like what was it like working that ship?
Speaker 7: So that starts, you know, Rick calls me at Profile
Speaker 7: Records says, I'm in town. I'd like to meet you,
Speaker 7: you know, uh, And so he he asked me to
Speaker 7: come to ninety eight Elizabeth Street, which was the old
Speaker 7: Rush def Jam offices, and he still had his apartment
Speaker 7: on the top two floors and he threw down his
Speaker 7: keys from the fifth floor so I could let myself
Speaker 7: in because the buzzer wasn't working or whatever, and def
Speaker 7: Jam had moved out. It was just Rick in this
Speaker 7: abandoned uh, you know, brownstone in the middle of the village.
Speaker 7: And so he decided that what we should do our
Speaker 7: first you know sort of meeting or you know, evening together,
Speaker 7: is we would go to Tower Records and he would
Speaker 7: buy me records that he liked, and I would buy
Speaker 7: him records that I liked, and I bought like EPM D,
Speaker 7: Big Daddy, Kane, bismarck Y Main Source, and he didn't
Speaker 7: like any he was not interested in any of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some that's not surprising, and so I can kind
Speaker 1: of it just was not his era, you know, he
Speaker 1: that was the era.
Speaker 7: That he left hip hop, right, And then what did
Speaker 7: he play me? He played me Audio two Milk Da
Speaker 7: and Sir Mix a Lot, both to MC's with really
Speaker 7: hazily voices, and I'm like, they both sound like ad Rock?
Speaker 7: Does he just like MCS? And then so for whatever reason,
Speaker 7: he hires me anyway, which I thought was a great
Speaker 7: leap of faith for him, right to give me a shot.
Speaker 7: And then a month after that he says, I signed
Speaker 7: Sir Mix a Lot, right, So.
Speaker 1: His first rigor is swah, I can't remember the the
Speaker 1: one with beepers was yet, don't forget that was. That
Speaker 1: wasn't on Deafam.
Speaker 7: That was on Nasty Mix ofle. So he signed Sir
Speaker 7: Mixed a Lot off for that, got him out of
Speaker 7: that deal, put him on his new deal with Warner Brothers,
Speaker 7: and had a finished album and he sent it to
Speaker 7: me and he says, listen to it and tell me
Speaker 7: what the single is. And I am not looking forward
Speaker 7: to listening to this Sir Mix a Lot album because
Speaker 7: I am not a fan and I'm supposed to pick
Speaker 7: a single. So I'm listening into the album and then
Speaker 7: third track is oh my god, right, and but I
Speaker 7: had just you know, it completely changed my mind about
Speaker 7: Sir Mix a lot because I had just read this
Speaker 7: article in The Village Voice by Lisa Jones, was a
Speaker 7: Mary Baraka's daughter, and she wrote about, you know, the
Speaker 7: sort of resurgence of the you know, afrocentric beauty aesthetic
Speaker 7: and you're seeing her more curvacous women in magazines. Beverly Peel,
Speaker 7: I think was the mo model back then.
Speaker 1: Yes, first or Jesus.
Speaker 7: So I was like, he's doing you know exactly, He's
Speaker 7: saying exactly what Lisa Jones was saying. So makes lots
Speaker 7: of feminist right. So, uh Rick calls me, he says, sod,
Speaker 7: you listen to the album, Like, yes, Baby got Back
Speaker 7: it's a single, says I think so too.
Speaker 1: So was that all your conversations like yeah, did he
Speaker 1: ever have like a conversations where you were like, hey, Dan,
Speaker 1: you do it?
Speaker 7: It was always no that he would. He would like
Speaker 7: come back from Lollapaluz. I say, hey, Rick, how was
Speaker 7: la Palooz? He said, there's a lot of jumping. He
Speaker 7: had a crazy sense of humor and not to get
Speaker 7: off the topic. But he would. He would come into
Speaker 7: a recording studio and if he didn't like what he
Speaker 7: was hearing, he would just say, I've got to leave.
Speaker 7: My doctor says my homeopathic doctor says, I can't be
Speaker 7: allowed around a lot of heavy electronic equipment. Would say, Wow,
Speaker 7: I had to make a I wanted to make a
Speaker 7: video for the Art of Origin. He only gave me
Speaker 7: five thousand dollars to make it. And I'm like, listen,
Speaker 7: I got a treatment, but I need twenty thousand dollars
Speaker 7: to make this video. And he says, all right, I'll
Speaker 7: give you the twenty thousand dollars, but now you have
Speaker 7: to make four videos.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 7: So the first thing I did when I moved to
Speaker 7: LA was, you know, go to the Chaplain stage was
Speaker 7: the old A and M lot, and that's where we
Speaker 7: shot Baby Got Back. And I walked into the set
Speaker 7: and I thought, oh my god, this is a cartoon,
Speaker 7: Like they're going to totally ruin the politics of this song.
Speaker 1: This is a serious, dude, you thought you were going
Speaker 1: to make a political statement. I just thought the direction
Speaker 1: You're not look at the did you not look at
Speaker 1: the treatment where it's like this big.
Speaker 7: Ass was Apparently the treatment was Mixed a Lot told
Speaker 7: the director, it's me rapping on a big ass.
Speaker 1: So you didn't tell Sir mix a Lot that there
Speaker 1: was a political that we could win with.
Speaker 7: It was his angle to have. I just walked into
Speaker 7: and I'm like, oh my god, is this going to
Speaker 7: be a cartoon? How's this gonna be? Because now we
Speaker 7: see it as an iconic video, But walking into that
Speaker 7: room it felt like because then mixed Lot was upset
Speaker 7: because he said none of the dancers had asses, right,
Speaker 7: so that was a problem for him. Then they put.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've heard all right, I got a minute now.
Speaker 7: I was like, yeah, baby, ones in gold, not the
Speaker 7: one in yellow. The one in yellow is fine.
Speaker 6: In the beginning, the ones din't gold with the little shorts,
Speaker 6: the shorts, and.
Speaker 7: Then there was a woman of color who they were
Speaker 7: dressing as a mermaid for some reason, and they put
Speaker 7: a blonde wig on her and that was like no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 7: what are you doing? So mix Lot's getting ready to
Speaker 7: walk off the set. Adam Bernstein's the director is getting
Speaker 7: ready to walk off the set. Ricardo the man, Ricardo Frader,
Speaker 7: his able manager, managed to, you know, pull everything together,
Speaker 7: the video happened and it ended up being fantastic, and
Speaker 7: all my fears and anxiety d's you know.
Speaker 1: It ended up not being warranted, all right, So baby
Speaker 1: got back, shit goes through the roof.
Speaker 2: Did you feel a little, I guess vindicated as an
Speaker 2: an R, like did you pick the right one that time?
Speaker 7: I didn't because I wanted I signed to become a hit.
Speaker 7: So I had put a lot of faith in Quest
Speaker 7: and a lot of energy into Chino cell and Gino Excel.
Speaker 7: That was another story because he was part of a
Speaker 7: group called the Art of Origin, a duo from East Orange,
Speaker 7: New Jersey, and his partner was Carrie Chandler. Now, if
Speaker 7: you know the house music, carry Chandler was then an
Speaker 7: incredible deep house producer. But now he's a legendary, you know.
Speaker 7: And I learned so much about producing from Carrie. I mean,
Speaker 7: Carrie took me from here to there.
Speaker 1: What happened with Chino's record?
Speaker 2: I remember there was a got what was the It
Speaker 2: was a sample clearance that I think you guys had
Speaker 2: problems with because he's said it was a line about
Speaker 2: Miles Davis or something, and it was like everybody, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he was talking everyone.
Speaker 1: I think lightly after after.
Speaker 7: You know, he had been trying to get a deal
Speaker 7: since nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety and it was already
Speaker 7: ninety four, ninety five, and he just had it. Says,
Speaker 7: you know what, I'm just going to tell the truth
Speaker 7: the way that I you know, I'm going to say
Speaker 7: what I what everybody's afraid to say. You know, the
Speaker 7: relationship between you know, Eddie Murphy and another actor who
Speaker 7: should name unnamed. You know, like we made a poster,
Speaker 7: like a black and white poster out of all of
Speaker 7: his punchlines and really yeah, and that's what got him
Speaker 7: on it.
Speaker 1: And she was gonna say what offended to I don't
Speaker 1: know the line that offended. I know that it must
Speaker 1: have got under his skin because I've never heard the
Speaker 1: words fuck you utter so hard and with like you
Speaker 1: heard the scheme of venom, fucking fucking what was?
Speaker 7: What was? Now that I am a professor at the
Speaker 7: Clive Davis Institute, I understand the importance of writing instruction
Speaker 7: and the importance of a misplaced modifier. That's the problem
Speaker 7: with Gino, Excel and TUPAC because Chino said, by this industry,
Speaker 7: I'm trying not to get fucked like Tupac in jail.
Speaker 7: What he meant was Tupac's trying not to get fucked, right.
Speaker 1: But what was this is not this is a cactus
Speaker 1: turn had his mother out. Yeah, this is a second
Speaker 1: grammatical era. That's like some ship. This is a ship,
Speaker 1: That's what it was. Did they have you know, they
Speaker 1: have to make bees there squashed?
Speaker 7: You know Tupac died.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because that's you're hears it all come out ninety five.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 7: I do remember though, when Tupac died, Chino called me
Speaker 7: and he was crying because he really liked Tupac. I mean,
Speaker 7: he liked him as an m MC, he liked him
Speaker 7: as a lyricist. He I think he wished it had
Speaker 7: gone another way. And I remember going to we went
Speaker 7: to Vegas with James Lopez. Was when Mackavelly came out
Speaker 7: and James and I went up to the up to
Speaker 7: the room, and Chino stayed in the car just to
Speaker 7: listen to Macavelly alone, you know, like to have that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Man, So after so your two main extitute signed Chino
Speaker 2: inquest and then baby got back like goes through the roof.
Speaker 1: The follow up to that album it was was it
Speaker 1: put him.
Speaker 7: On the Glass, which didn't become a huge hit, but
Speaker 7: it made Seinfeld, so that made me proud.
Speaker 1: The video.
Speaker 7: She's not going to put him on the glass.
Speaker 1: Because that was okay, mack Daddy was the baby Baby?
Speaker 1: What was that album? The one after to put them
Speaker 1: on a glass album?
Speaker 7: They'll make a liar out of me, Chief, Chief, Chief
Speaker 7: boot knocks.
Speaker 6: How do you know that?
Speaker 1: Chief? I could see it, but I couldn't call it.
Speaker 1: Was that the one with fake Louis on it?
Speaker 7: That was Swap Meet Louis?
Speaker 1: That was mac Daddy. That was that was mack Daddy.
Speaker 6: Did you ever see the Lauras Tucker?
Speaker 1: Was that like that?
Speaker 7: No, we were not important or successful enough to ever.
Speaker 7: That's the one good thing about my in R career
Speaker 7: sort of flew.
Speaker 1: Under the radar with old little Time Warner controversy, nothing.
Speaker 7: But I was there during that whole thing. I mean,
Speaker 7: that's actually one of the scenes that ended up in
Speaker 7: the book that Moe, Austin and Warnicker called a huge
Speaker 7: meeting of all of the important rap artists and their managers.
Speaker 7: So everybody came, Tom Silverman, came, Bill Stephanie came, uh Coolgie,
Speaker 7: Rap came, Ice t came Georgie, and Josa came. You know,
Speaker 7: everybody was in one room. Paris was in the room,
Speaker 7: right was so that this is for context. This is
Speaker 7: in nineteen ninety two. There's a big controversy over Ice
Speaker 7: ice teas heavy metals song with his heavy metal band
Speaker 7: body Count. Somehow rap music gets blamed for that, and
Speaker 7: so Warner has you know, been basically the board of
Speaker 7: Warner read the Riot Act to the music group and
Speaker 7: he said, listen, if we're going to have a lyrics
Speaker 7: board here, it's going to examine all the lyrics and
Speaker 7: if you don't want to you know, if you don't
Speaker 7: want to be put through that, we understand, and we're
Speaker 7: going to let you go right if you if you can,
Speaker 7: will release you.
Speaker 1: You know, no problem.
Speaker 7: Moe was a good guy and he was in a
Speaker 7: really really bad position and put in a really bad
Speaker 7: position by Bob Morgato and Jerry Livin who.
Speaker 1: Had you know, we're over him.
Speaker 6: How long did Elas?
Speaker 7: It didn't last long because once there were two phases
Speaker 7: to the culture Wars in the nineteen nineties, right, the
Speaker 7: first phase was nineteen ninety two, which was the Body
Speaker 7: count Cop Killer where the police unions all of the
Speaker 7: country were boycotting Time Warner. That subsided after the because
Speaker 7: that was an election year, right I was in Clinton
Speaker 7: got elected. Then it happened again. The ce Delores Tucker
Speaker 7: Face was like ninety five something like that, and her
Speaker 7: big goal was to get Time Warner to drop Inner Scope,
Speaker 7: and she succeeded. But then Innerscope basically walked with all
Speaker 7: its masters and got paid double by Universal to set
Speaker 7: up shop over there. So I think everybody knew here,
Speaker 7: Oh you're.
Speaker 6: That actually scared me.
Speaker 7: Now you can't. In other words, it's you can't. It's
Speaker 7: like whack them all, you know, you beat it down
Speaker 7: over here, It's just going to end up over there.
Speaker 7: And so that ended pretty much ended the culture Wars.
Speaker 1: So when did you leave Deaf America?
Speaker 7: When Rick lost his Warner b Others deal when he
Speaker 7: sort of had got a smaller deal over at Sony
Speaker 7: in ninety god what year was it? Ninety seven?
Speaker 1: Okay, I won't to have a chance to ask him
Speaker 1: this unless he does the show, but would you happen
Speaker 1: to know what his opinion was of the Paul's Boutique record?
Speaker 1: Did he ever mention or the BC Boys at that
Speaker 1: point in that moment, like.
Speaker 7: I'll tell you this, I can only give you sort
Speaker 7: of little vignettes, right. So the first vignette is me
Speaker 7: going to LA for the first time with Rick and
Speaker 7: him being in line at Club Lingerie I think it was,
Speaker 7: and like ad Rock is in front of us, you know,
Speaker 7: and just having a very terse conversation with him, like
Speaker 7: these were best friends, you know, and they're being civil
Speaker 7: to each other, but there's no like, there's no connection there.
Speaker 7: The second vignette is a couple of years later, I'm
Speaker 7: walking around the office or whatever, and he stops me
Speaker 7: and he points to my shirt and he said, I
Speaker 7: like that shirt, that shirt that Adam would wear. And
Speaker 7: I realized at that point of my mind went back
Speaker 7: to that first thing. I realized, he misses his friend,
Speaker 7: you know, but he just didn't know how to do
Speaker 7: the things he needed to do to keep that friend.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: They were financial betrayals, there were you know, friendship betrayals.
Speaker 1: But I do know that he.
Speaker 7: I think he liked Paul's boutique. He really admired Matt Dyke,
Speaker 7: you know, Matt Dyke was his friend. And I think
Speaker 7: Dyke helped on that album a bit, but I think
Speaker 7: he was more sort of there was a little bit
Speaker 7: of shadenfreude because Paul's boutique lost money for capital, you know,
Speaker 7: because they had caused him so much tumult when they left,
Speaker 7: you know, So I mean.
Speaker 1: It was you a good businessman or was he a
Speaker 1: creative man?
Speaker 7: Rick is a creative man. There's no question. He didn't
Speaker 7: have a Russell.
Speaker 1: That's the problem.
Speaker 7: That's why that's why American Recordings did not do well
Speaker 7: really ever. I mean they had a few hits, but
Speaker 7: he didn't. He didn't have somebody, a partner who could
Speaker 7: do what Russell did, and that's why they were so
Speaker 7: good together. And you know, Russell never found a creative
Speaker 7: person like Rick again, but he found another kind of
Speaker 7: symbiotic relationship with Lee or.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, if you could call it symbiotic, but I
Speaker 1: would say it. So ninety seven you leave, uh, you
Speaker 1: leave American? Where do you go? From that point?
Speaker 7: I went to work for Forst Whittaker. Forst Whittaker was
Speaker 7: starting a record company, and yeah, Spirit Dance Music distributed
Speaker 7: through Epic, and I tried to sign the Far Side
Speaker 7: again in ninety seven because they wanted off of Delicious
Speaker 7: Vinyl or whatever, and and I was trying to make
Speaker 7: a way from We ended up signing Trey.
Speaker 1: Oh just train from the Far Side. Oh Man, did
Speaker 1: anything ever happened?
Speaker 6: No?
Speaker 1: Because with not Doogie howser? Uh, Parker Lewis can't lose. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. No, you're talking about Green? That was yeah?
Speaker 1: That was yep. Okay, that album actually wasn't bad. It
Speaker 1: wasn't It wasn't bad. I heard I heard it was
Speaker 1: you never heard it. But if you've heard everything not,
Speaker 1: that album wasn't bad. I mean, Bill, you'll be if
Speaker 1: you really knew what we were talking about. I just
Speaker 1: love that you got to Brian as the Green from
Speaker 1: Dougie House, you know White Boy TV. Come on, no,
Speaker 1: Brianross the Green. The album was called one Carnival. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one Stop Calling.
Speaker 6: I do remember a video that do you send me?
Speaker 1: It was like Trey was singing on it. It was
Speaker 1: respectable joint. He was like the first Drake. He was
Speaker 1: like the first like TV star. No, damn, we haven't
Speaker 1: had a good rabbit hole in a second.
Speaker 7: You know what, though, when I work for Forrest, I
Speaker 7: tried like hell to sign Crosswalk, Crosswalk, Cody Chestnuts before,
Speaker 7: but it wasn't it was it was like Beatles esque rock.
Speaker 1: It was dope.
Speaker 7: He was dope, and uh, you know I remember seeing
Speaker 7: him live. This is really early on this before I
Speaker 7: think he was ever making music with you guys, and
Speaker 7: he's like this next song is white record Companies can't
Speaker 7: sign my group because of me, you know.
Speaker 1: Ship like that just funny and really good. And I
Speaker 1: bagged for us to sign him, and so so far
Speaker 1: as was really doing his business. It wasn't like a
Speaker 1: vanity thing where it's just like, no, it wasn't van anything,
Speaker 1: just like like Michael Jordan's wasn't hidden beat.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so Trey was like the start I was.
Speaker 7: That was Acclaim else they never released anybody Ghost. Uh,
Speaker 7: that was happening right when I was there. Actually there
Speaker 7: there was a film with Jim Jarmush and Rizza's first score.
Speaker 1: Yep, it was I remember.
Speaker 6: They were doing radio promotions behind that because they came
Speaker 6: to see is Rizza and Forrest.
Speaker 7: But that's when I decided I kind of had enough
Speaker 7: for the music business.
Speaker 1: You wanted to tell them about themselves. I wanted to
Speaker 1: write again. So since I was in LA.
Speaker 7: The first thing I did was, you know when you
Speaker 7: when you're in l A and you want to write,
Speaker 7: you you tend to think of writing for the screen.
Speaker 7: So I ended up writing for the Lyricist Lounge show
Speaker 7: and and then for You'll Love This be ET's Comic View.
Speaker 7: Comic View, they had sketch comedy for a little while,
Speaker 7: so I helped out for a season.
Speaker 6: How was that experience?
Speaker 7: It was great? I mean I loved writing comedy and
Speaker 7: in a way it set me up for the breaks
Speaker 7: later on, you know, just in terms of that being
Speaker 7: in a room of writers, really really funny people Alison
Speaker 7: Foos and oh Man, they're just really you know a
Speaker 7: lot of them had worked for a Living Color and
Speaker 7: I just learned a lot.
Speaker 6: Well, Lyris's Lounge was phenomenal, like that was a that
Speaker 6: was the that's where I don't know what, and.
Speaker 7: Most words were like he had a chance to write
Speaker 7: with most a little bit like not like on the
Speaker 7: sketch side. So he wrote the rhymes and I sort
Speaker 7: of contributed ideas for the sketch, but most came, and
Speaker 7: common came, and Erica came. It was a really good,
Speaker 7: really good tough.
Speaker 1: I believe there did an episode or not.
Speaker 7: I don't remember.
Speaker 6: When did you know you were funny in the realm
Speaker 6: of you? You've had a lot of hats. Okay, So
Speaker 6: what I'm just saying, Well, well, here's.
Speaker 1: What I used to do.
Speaker 7: I used to do this segment, you know, the wake
Speaker 7: up show, King Tech and Sweat. So I used to
Speaker 7: do this thing where I would read, I would read
Speaker 7: like the Steve Allen gag right, I would read rap
Speaker 7: lyrics as poetry and I ended up doing a bunch
Speaker 7: of sketches for them, and so that led to the
Speaker 7: gig with with lyrics.
Speaker 1: Why did you think that worked? Man? Because I thought
Speaker 1: that was I mean, I thought it costs too much.
Speaker 7: Did great in the arratings, but it costs too much
Speaker 7: to make.
Speaker 1: What would the what would the twelve hours late?
Speaker 7: I think he was on time. I think he was.
Speaker 1: In South Africa.
Speaker 7: You what was the what was the what was you wait,
Speaker 7: fooling nobody? He was. There was like a presidential debate
Speaker 7: between him and uh master fool remember yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Mean f u o l oh my god? What what?
Speaker 1: Why was it so expensive? What were the what were
Speaker 1: the call involved?
Speaker 7: Just sketch comedy, wardrobe and Union, and I mean it
Speaker 7: was a real production and it was not something that
Speaker 7: MTV was used to doing. I mean they were doing
Speaker 7: reality shows which are just bank Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, what was it about TV that you love? Because
Speaker 6: I mean at some point you were like, I'm staying.
Speaker 7: The ability to write something and then have it uh
Speaker 7: you know produced and on TV media it was so
Speaker 7: immediate and I got a chance to actually act and
Speaker 7: like to be a part of that thing, and.
Speaker 1: That was It was dope. It was his favorite jobs.
Speaker 1: It's also ahead of his time because MTV still has
Speaker 1: uh next show while 'nout yeah, which the cheaper version,
Speaker 1: much cheaper version. But no, yeah, it was I think
Speaker 1: it's a show that would do much better now in
Speaker 1: like the snapchat you know, uh meme era then you
Speaker 1: know back then.
Speaker 2: So at some point you decide, okay, you want to
Speaker 2: you're writing. When does the I guess the beginnings of
Speaker 2: the Big payback the Bible, Like when does when do
Speaker 2: you start writing?
Speaker 7: It started when I wanted to do hip hop journalism again,
Speaker 7: and so I pitched, Uh, I pitched an article that
Speaker 7: nobody would buy. Vibe wouldn't Vibe wasn't interested in it.
Speaker 7: Double XL wasn't interested in it. It was called Last Night,
Speaker 7: a DJ Saved My Business, and it was about these
Speaker 7: guys who owned these disco labels in the eighties who
Speaker 7: thought they were going to be disco kings and ended
Speaker 7: up wrap fell into their laps and saved their asses. Basically,
Speaker 7: So we're talking about Corey Robbins, a profile, Tom Silverman,
Speaker 7: Tommy Boy, Fredmanao at Select right, the the record companies
Speaker 7: that basically funded the golden age of hip hop. Unwittingly
Speaker 7: they didn't because they weren't you know, they became hip
Speaker 7: hop fans, but they weren't of hip hop. So nobody
Speaker 7: cared about it. And so I decided at one point
Speaker 7: that I really really missed New York and I wanted
Speaker 7: to come home. And so I just remember I was
Speaker 7: at a party with an editor of yet another magazine,
Speaker 7: and I was pitching this article at him, and he
Speaker 7: turned away from me in mid pitch and walked away.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 7: And I was like, all right, you know what, maybe
Speaker 7: this is a book. So I had enrolled at Columbia
Speaker 7: Journalism School to get my masters, and I did a
Speaker 7: lot of things there, like I ended up I did
Speaker 7: my master's project in the West Bank in Palestine.
Speaker 6: And.
Speaker 7: I was either going to do a book on that
Speaker 7: or I was going to do this hip hop business history,
Speaker 7: and so it ended up being that. And my mentor
Speaker 7: there was the great Sam Friedman, who teaches this book
Speaker 7: writing class every year and only twenty five people a year.
Speaker 7: Getting you have to pitch him a book I did
Speaker 7: to get into.
Speaker 1: The class, and was the big payback was that your pitch.
Speaker 7: The big payback was it was called Beats, Rhymes and
Speaker 7: cash at first, right, And so I got in and
Speaker 7: then the very first day we're supposed to bring in
Speaker 7: like a sample chapter, and NPR is taping the class
Speaker 7: for a piece on the class because like so many
Speaker 7: people get published out of this class, and so on
Speaker 7: NPR to this day, there is a First of all,
Speaker 7: I won the Cliche Award, like every the most most
Speaker 7: cliches per It was like, you know, so I having
Speaker 7: a bad day anyway, And we got into this argument
Speaker 7: about whether old school was a cliche or a genre,
Speaker 7: and I was maintaining it was a genre, and he
Speaker 7: was maintaining it was a cliche. And he says, and
Speaker 7: this is still on NPR ten years later, he says,
Speaker 7: as they say on the basketball as they say on
Speaker 7: the basketball court, Dan, stop bringing that weak shit.
Speaker 1: Dang, that's my, that's my. But he's the guy. He's
Speaker 1: like that tough love Sorry, he's.
Speaker 7: Like that tough love teacher that got that treatment out
Speaker 7: of me. And I got out of that class.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: A month later that treatment was sold, and then I
Speaker 7: spent the next three years reporting the book.
Speaker 1: So how did you?
Speaker 2: How did that make you a better writer? Because I've
Speaker 2: only known you, I only know you now, So what
Speaker 2: did that class do for you as a writer? How
Speaker 2: did it make you stronger?
Speaker 7: Just pouring over every word in every comma, trying to
Speaker 7: make every sentence as as elegant and efficient as it
Speaker 7: can be. You know, every every sentence has a function,
Speaker 7: Every word has a function. But even more than that,
Speaker 7: I kept getting sidetracked because I'm a nerd, you know,
Speaker 7: about music, and I wanted to talk about the emergence
Speaker 7: of the AO eight drum machine, and I wanted to
Speaker 7: take these divergent paths into what Marley did and how
Speaker 7: much the bridge was so important.
Speaker 1: You sound a lot like somebody I know. Yea, So.
Speaker 7: He says, right there, So he says, Dan, it's about
Speaker 7: the music. Sorry, he says, Dan, It's about the business,
Speaker 7: not the music. It's about the business. It's about the business.
Speaker 7: He kept saying that mantra to me, and and so
Speaker 7: I listened to him, and that's I remember that first chapter.
Speaker 7: I turned and he says, you can't write this chapter
Speaker 7: without getting the voices of Sylvia Robinson and Bobby Robinson,
Speaker 7: Like I need to know what they were doing while
Speaker 7: jay Z was getting his Grammy Where were they not Grammy?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 7: Sorry? When he was at the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 7: of Fame awarding the uh you know, the Grandmaster Flash
Speaker 7: of the Furious Five for the first people to get inducted.
Speaker 7: So that was a motif for the book. J D
Speaker 7: was a jay Z was inducting them, and he wanted
Speaker 7: to He knew the reader would want to know where
Speaker 7: the founding mother and one of the founding fathers of
Speaker 7: the business were at that moment, and if all the
Speaker 7: listeners were big Sylvia was in the hospital and Bobby
Speaker 7: Robinson was at home watch them.
Speaker 1: So do you acknowledge this as the hip hop Bible?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: I kind of see it more as the the forty
Speaker 1: forty eight Laws of Power. You know that that one
Speaker 1: book that every guy that went to jail has that like, like,
Speaker 1: it's no, I don't mean your book. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: like you, I always see the forty eight Laws of
Speaker 1: Power book and every like when Jay first got his
Speaker 1: office at Deaf Chair that book, I was like, are
Speaker 1: you strategically placed in this areas? He had a nerf
Speaker 1: ball and it's forty eight Loss of Power book. But
Speaker 1: I mean it is very informative and and sort of
Speaker 1: detailing people's journeys. And why did you feel that was important?
Speaker 7: Because it wasn't out there or hip hop is so
Speaker 7: big that there are so many stories you can tell
Speaker 7: about it. And I couldn't have written my book without
Speaker 7: Jeff Chang having written Can't Stop the Albums Right? And
Speaker 7: I couldn't have written it without Brian Coleman having done
Speaker 7: check the technique. And not to even mention the smaller
Speaker 7: books that that the earlier ones that you know, David
Speaker 7: Tube had done and Nelson George had done a pretty
Speaker 7: good book hip Hip Hop America. I think it was
Speaker 7: called UH. And then of course like the smaller uh,
Speaker 7: you know, the books on smaller parts of the subject,
Speaker 7: like Ronan Roe's book on.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: So all of them are really important, and and I
Speaker 7: stand on the shoulders of all those folks. But my
Speaker 7: issue was people really didn't understand that hip hop almost
Speaker 7: didn't happen, right. They didn't understand like when I would
Speaker 7: read accounts of hip hop history, it was almost like
Speaker 7: run DMC made a record and then they were huge, right,
Speaker 7: And that's not how it happened. People fought tooth and
Speaker 7: nail to make this stuff successful. It almost didn't happen.
Speaker 7: I mean, when we think about New York in nineteen
Speaker 7: ninety radio was backing away from hip hop all over, right,
Speaker 7: mix shows were going away, So we were hot ninety
Speaker 7: seven as we know it, you know today was felt
Speaker 7: a million light years away. But people fought for it,
Speaker 7: and so people I wanted to tell the story of
Speaker 7: people like Keith Naftali, the very first pop radio programmer
Speaker 7: to play hardcore hip hop in the daytime. We're talking NWA,
Speaker 7: Public Enemy, and other pop programmers across the country like
Speaker 7: Rick D's you know, thought it was laughable, you know
Speaker 7: that dangerous even and he did it, and he was
Speaker 7: so successful that he convinced other radio programmers eventually that
Speaker 7: this was, you know, something that was worth doing and
Speaker 7: ended decades of segregation in radio because of it. So
Speaker 7: I felt like that was the important story to tell
Speaker 7: just for hip hop's sake. And then it's a great
Speaker 7: American story, you know. That's why it starts with Alexander
Speaker 7: Hamilton because I believe it embodies the same ethos.
Speaker 1: Can I ask, so since you were in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: for the greater part of the nineties, I mean, of course. Now,
Speaker 1: it's just it's such a different way, different feelium vibe
Speaker 1: and quick, quick backstory. So usually when guests come on,
Speaker 1: notable guests, especially New York based guests, come on the show,
Speaker 1: I'm always fascinated. One of the common denominator stories and
Speaker 1: experiences they have is they always have a tunnel not
Speaker 1: a tunnel Latin court iss story to tell. But for me,
Speaker 1: it's like, I'm more amazed to the fact that they're
Speaker 1: willing to court this danger and almost romanticize about this
Speaker 1: period in which from my protected childhood eyes, it's like, Yo,
Speaker 1: why would you even go to a building and you
Speaker 1: might might be shot? Is it really that much? Is
Speaker 1: it really worth it to hear? Nobody beats the biz? Like, like,
Speaker 1: do you if that's the only place you're going you
Speaker 1: know you can hear it. Yeah, well that said living.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember, like now when I go to La,
Speaker 1: it's such a joyful feeling, like I'm going to LA
Speaker 1: and like I enjoy that feeling of landing you know La. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, hang with my friends and go to nice
Speaker 1: restaurants and it's fun. But there was a period in
Speaker 1: LA where it's like, you know, we used to always
Speaker 1: make sure we don't wear no blue, no red. Know
Speaker 1: where you you know, just know where you stand, don't
Speaker 1: cross anybody, you know, Mad Shug sightings Mad.
Speaker 7: It was like that.
Speaker 1: Yo. It's like Santha Nico so in to be in
Speaker 1: La during the period of Shug's rain, where any moment
Speaker 1: could be the moment where you could get got Like
Speaker 1: what was that like in that period? Like was it
Speaker 1: an enjoyable time or did you feel like you were
Speaker 1: so out of the circle that you could I wasn't
Speaker 1: that close to power, I guess in that way. And
Speaker 1: I didn't fetish death row, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 7: I didn't want to be around those folks. I didn't
Speaker 7: you know what I mean, You.
Speaker 1: Couldn't avoid it, Like the roots are the furthest thing
Speaker 1: from death row. But you know, Sugar and Pok once
Speaker 1: came to a show and I swear to God, even
Speaker 1: the air just suck out the room like it was
Speaker 1: like it was like unavoidable. So how like, how did
Speaker 1: you manage m a atmosphere and musically magical but also
Speaker 1: questionable as.
Speaker 7: Far as being naive and also the feeling that it's
Speaker 7: it was normal, you know, like when you're you know,
Speaker 7: that whole thing about the frog and water or whatever,
Speaker 7: and you you know, it was just that was part
Speaker 7: of the environment. And I I just also have this
Speaker 7: philosophy that bullies go away. You know, if you wait
Speaker 7: long enough, they're going to fuck themselves up. So seven
Speaker 7: years man, well, you know, in terms of his power,
Speaker 7: you know, his power was very short. And it turns
Speaker 7: out a lot of the things that people think he
Speaker 7: did or legendary you know that he did, didn't do.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Now I'm like, yeah, I didn't, he didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, did you have first an experiences
Speaker 1: with any besides Russell? And uh? I mean first hand
Speaker 1: experience is non interview, but just like and just daily
Speaker 1: interaction with any of the uh, the subject matters that
Speaker 1: you profiled. Like as far as you being in the business, well,
Speaker 1: there are a few run ins with Dame Moore that
Speaker 1: that's sort of There's just a few.
Speaker 7: Things that you know in the book that I was
Speaker 7: present for.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 7: So there's that meeting, you know, that big cabal meeting,
Speaker 7: you know, I mean there's that. You know that that
Speaker 7: that fake email that's been going around for years about
Speaker 7: the secret meeting in la you know where the prison
Speaker 7: industrial complex and getting all the rappers this like.
Speaker 1: That wasn't really I.
Speaker 7: Mean, but I did attend the real meeting, which was
Speaker 7: you know, mo Austin calling all of his artists, the
Speaker 7: extended family of artists and into a conference room and saying, look,
Speaker 7: here's the deal, you know, And it was a very
Speaker 7: sad meeting. You know, I think he was sad as
Speaker 7: the person who signed to Prince and Joni Mitchell and
Speaker 7: James Taylor and you know all these other Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 7: held uh you know, to be in that position it
Speaker 7: was humiliating for him. And then I was the person
Speaker 7: who had to go and basically create a dummy record
Speaker 7: company for Paris because Paris had gotten dropped off of
Speaker 7: his And Rick said, I'm gonna put him on I'm
Speaker 7: gonna put on an American, but I can't put him
Speaker 7: on Americans. So we're going to create a whole new
Speaker 7: label for him. So I went to the Bay Area
Speaker 7: basically helped create a label for Paris.
Speaker 1: Came scarface, scarface because that was that the one that's
Speaker 1: sleeping with the enemy came out on which which Ricord
Speaker 1: was it? Was it because that was the one he
Speaker 1: wanted to call bush Killer.
Speaker 7: Originally I think bush Killer remained dude, but uh, I
Speaker 7: have to actually read The Big Payback to remember. So
Speaker 7: after this you write the Big Payback? Was it anyone
Speaker 7: that was reluctant to talk to you? Like anyone that
Speaker 7: was just like nah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just writes itself.
Speaker 7: There were people like I really wanted to talk to
Speaker 7: Cindy Campbell, like Kirk's sister, because Jeff had done herk
Speaker 7: right the artist, but I wanted a profile the business side,
Speaker 7: and I approached Cindy Campbell and she wanted money, and
Speaker 7: I said this, I just don't do that. I'm a journalist.
Speaker 7: I don't pay anybody for an interview. So by you know,
Speaker 7: and obviously you're never gonna get Jay. You know, Jay
Speaker 7: Z in a room to interview him. So what you
Speaker 7: do is you report around people as a journalist. You
Speaker 7: started the edges, and you go around and around in circles, circle,
Speaker 7: and finally there's only one person left right, and you
Speaker 7: can say to that person, you know, I'm not saying
Speaker 7: that I did this with Jay Z, but I'm about to,
Speaker 7: you know, release a book that has a after on
Speaker 7: you or a section on you. I want to give
Speaker 7: you a chance to hear it before it goes out,
Speaker 7: you know, and comment on it. So usually you know,
Speaker 7: people will want to hear what you're going to write
Speaker 7: about them, and if you approach them respectfully. And whenever
Speaker 7: I interviewed somebody for the book, I always, you know,
Speaker 7: I always uh offer them a readback, just because it's
Speaker 7: their story.
Speaker 2: So you never just do it blind. Just like everyone
Speaker 2: got yeah, they know, they knew what it was going
Speaker 2: to be before.
Speaker 1: Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 7: There were people who were mad. More more people were
Speaker 7: mad when they got left out of the book.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, like it wasn't disrespect no,
Speaker 1: no at all.
Speaker 7: Search was mad at me for a little while because
Speaker 7: he gave me a lot of time and I the
Speaker 7: section that he was in ended up getting cut and
Speaker 7: I apologize to him over that.
Speaker 1: Now search has a lot of stories.
Speaker 7: Great, he was great and he's still great.
Speaker 1: We'll put it this way. We barely got to the
Speaker 1: Cactus CD for de second album. Yeah, we barely got
Speaker 1: to Derrelick's dialect before. It's like, oh, hey's trying to
Speaker 1: wrap like three hours.
Speaker 7: Talk about the Latin Quarter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, the quintessential Latin Quarter stories, the Big Pigback.
Speaker 1: So how does this go from because now you've never
Speaker 1: even told me this story, I don't know. How does
Speaker 1: that go from book to movie to series on h one? Okay,
Speaker 1: what was that journey?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 7: Even before the book came out, there were some Hollywood
Speaker 7: types calling, you know, hey, like a meeting whatever, and
Speaker 7: you know, so originally I wanted to do it. Have
Speaker 7: you ever seen the HBO movie The Late Shift, Yes,
Speaker 7: about the whole letter let fight. Yeah, so I wanted
Speaker 7: to do a you know, a drama, but with the
Speaker 7: real characters, right a Rick Russell dre you know, hiring
Speaker 7: actors to play the real people. And that's a real
Speaker 7: problem for Hollywood, Like they have to buy all kinds
Speaker 7: of life rights even though it may be true. You know,
Speaker 7: so Eventually it came down to, you know, that wasn't
Speaker 7: going to happen, and I sort of gave up because
Speaker 7: I didn't. I didn't want to do a fictional, fictionalized
Speaker 7: version of hip hop history. It was coiny to me,
Speaker 7: you know, especially because anytime you had a portrayal of
Speaker 7: hip hop in some dramatic fashion, it was always like
Speaker 7: just wrong. Like I remember the Sopranos had Bokeen Woodbine
Speaker 7: as massive genius, right, like I didn't want to do that,
Speaker 7: you know, and and to make how you're gonna make
Speaker 7: the music sound good period, right, And this is where
Speaker 7: you come in. So what happened was actually Boz Lherman
Speaker 7: to Boz Lehman. You know, my people have read my
Speaker 7: team has read your book, and my team has read
Speaker 7: your book, and team told me I should meet with you.
Speaker 7: And this was in the early stages of what would
Speaker 7: be come to get down. But he was in the
Speaker 7: middle of doing Gatsby. He was very nice. But what
Speaker 7: happened was I had an opportunity at VH one to
Speaker 7: pitch them, but I could only pitch them if it
Speaker 7: was a dramatic, you know, fictionalized dramatic. So I just
Speaker 7: did it. I came up with a story. You know,
Speaker 7: I eventually got over myself, and I came up with
Speaker 7: a story about three college friends who graduate in the
Speaker 7: summer of nineteen ninety. Sort of aligns with my own
Speaker 7: personal story. But also I think it's a really really
Speaker 7: important time in hip hop. It's like that time where
Speaker 7: it could have become everything or nothing. Right.
Speaker 1: It was the year that.
Speaker 7: Run DMC and Beastie Boys were blown away in sales
Speaker 7: by Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and it looked like the
Speaker 7: future was going to be this minstrel show, right, So
Speaker 7: UH shout out to a little brother.
Speaker 1: So he bought.
Speaker 7: But I'm not.
Speaker 1: Now let's talk about it, okay.
Speaker 7: So Uh, I worked on the on the on the pitch,
Speaker 7: and I pitched it in a room in about ten
Speaker 7: minutes and they bought it. And then there's the long
Speaker 7: process of developing it. And the first part of development
Speaker 7: is to find a director, writer who can actually get
Speaker 7: this stuff on the screen. And I just I wasn't
Speaker 7: selling myself as that person, so I remained as an
Speaker 7: executive producer. But seeth Man was the the guy we
Speaker 7: luckily found to helmet.
Speaker 1: And Seeth is uh for those Seeth is a god
Speaker 1: TV director. He's done Man, several episodes of The Wire,
Speaker 1: He's done did he do? Did he work on t
Speaker 1: did he do?
Speaker 7: Or did? But he did Walking Dead? I want to
Speaker 7: believe and Elementary at least did.
Speaker 1: He Yeah, I don't want to give that away with you.
Speaker 7: So Seith is great and Seeth, you know, I grew
Speaker 7: up in Columbia, Maryland. He grew up in Silver Spring.
Speaker 7: Were up listening to the same stations. We both listen
Speaker 7: to hip hop and and and Go go, and so
Speaker 7: we have even though he's like seven feet tall and
Speaker 7: I'm four feet tall, and you know, he's black and
Speaker 7: I'm white, and he's got dreads and I got no hair,
Speaker 7: we were you know, we uh, he's my brother, you know,
Speaker 7: and he has done so. He did a great job
Speaker 7: on the pilot script. And then it came whore, how
Speaker 7: are we going to create this musical universe? And prem
Speaker 7: DJ Premiere was first on the list, and I reached
Speaker 7: out to him, and you know, I met Pream when
Speaker 7: I interned for.
Speaker 1: A while Pitch.
Speaker 7: There was like a little slumber of time before I
Speaker 7: worked for Profile.
Speaker 1: I did it.
Speaker 7: I interned for eighty nine.
Speaker 1: So was that Uh as a jet sledge, as a
Speaker 1: hip hop astorian? Do you have multiple copies of Bust
Speaker 1: to Move Boy? And if you do, can you share
Speaker 1: gang stars?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 1: I had three twelve inches before no more mistic a
Speaker 1: nice guy out.
Speaker 7: I'm afraid I do not, damn, but I think I
Speaker 7: know somebody might.
Speaker 1: No, I knows a guy. Yeah, I'm looking for Bust
Speaker 1: to Move boy. I would do anything to have a
Speaker 1: one records back in running order, not online, but like
Speaker 1: not a one the sound library, Oh.
Speaker 6: Celebrary man, Well, guys, a writer question, when you went
Speaker 6: to bah one with your pitch, what did you have exactly?
Speaker 6: Because you didn't have a rundown of with the show
Speaker 6: totally was gonna be for the season.
Speaker 1: I did.
Speaker 7: It was just in my head. So I pitched in
Speaker 7: a room from off the dome freestyle.
Speaker 6: That son and what was so what was the line?
Speaker 6: Like what was the tag? Like the one line the
Speaker 6: long line of the show kind of that way like
Speaker 6: the really summer Yeah, I.
Speaker 7: Mean I think we may have said something like it's
Speaker 7: sort of like the hip hop mad Men. You know,
Speaker 7: we might have said something like that, but you know,
Speaker 7: it's it was about the business and what was really
Speaker 7: important is that we had a really strong female lead character,
Speaker 7: really interesting and very complex, and you know, a liar,
Speaker 7: a pathological liar makes her interesting.
Speaker 6: I didn't pick up in the pilot.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, is fucking oh god, she's And we
Speaker 2: talked about it how and you know the way it
Speaker 2: worked out, we're we kind of have a I don't
Speaker 2: know if it's a renaissance, but there's a lot of
Speaker 2: you're seeing kind of the black female anti hero character
Speaker 2: on TV now where you have you know, I mean
Speaker 2: Cookie and Mary Jane and Olivia Pope.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, where you have anti they're
Speaker 1: not the typical well anti hero in the sense that
Speaker 1: they are people that you They're not just a foil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're not just like the good person like I mean,
Speaker 2: they're they're complex people, you know what I mean, And
Speaker 2: they're not just totally all good. And Nikki's character when
Speaker 2: I when you sent me the script, I read it,
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, she's gonna fall.
Speaker 1: And I didn't know who you were gonna cast. I
Speaker 1: didn't know who.
Speaker 7: We didn't know either.
Speaker 8: You get involved in the show.
Speaker 1: How did I get involved in the show. I don't
Speaker 1: even how did I get hired. Preme was the first
Speaker 1: step right, the music right.
Speaker 7: So I wanted to make sure that we had somebody
Speaker 7: who understood the vocabulary, the sonic vocabulary at the time,
Speaker 7: and would be able to make beats that sounded like
Speaker 7: they were because if we have a character who's a
Speaker 7: rapper and another character who's a producer, the producer has
Speaker 7: to make beats exactly like they would be made in
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety, using the same samples, and using samples, using breaks,
Speaker 7: very important, very important. And then we needed to have
Speaker 7: an MC who also spoke in the vocabulary and cadence
Speaker 7: of the time. And I knew only what there was.
Speaker 7: I had a list and Preem was at the top
Speaker 7: of it. But there was only one person. There was
Speaker 7: only one person that I wanted to get for lyrics
Speaker 7: producer for the show, and that was Fante Coleman. And
Speaker 7: I will tell you why, because Fante had again shout
Speaker 7: out to James Lopez, who hit me to all of
Speaker 7: this stuff. James had given me when I moved back
Speaker 7: to New York a copy of the story of Us
Speaker 7: Oh my God. And Fante plays like basically, he plays
Speaker 7: the part of a you know, a rapper, trying to
Speaker 7: see trying to get a deal by being basically everybody
Speaker 7: else in the game. So at one point, Fante is
Speaker 7: all the guys in the Wu Tang clan know, uh,
Speaker 7: you do the you know, sort of the lyrical miracle, Yeah,
Speaker 7: the underground and then your Percy miracles. And it was
Speaker 7: just like that you are the master of voices, and
Speaker 7: I knew that you would understand in a way that
Speaker 7: it was just like could just let go, and even
Speaker 7: even more like the more that you and Prem. First
Speaker 7: of all, you and Prem have a fantastic working relationship
Speaker 7: together and he trusts you implicitly, and when Prem produces,
Speaker 7: he has you, honest his co producer. By just that's it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was that was wild. That was wild.
Speaker 2: I mean when y'all reached out to about it, I
Speaker 2: was just coming off of an HBO pilot that I
Speaker 2: was working on, and so I mean TV, you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Maya thing, the thing with Mayam Buthar.
Speaker 1: Maya Maya. So yeah, so I was coming off of that,
Speaker 1: and so so you were like, yeah, man, so I
Speaker 1: got this thing. I'm like TV, I'm like, oh god,
Speaker 1: I'm ready for like a million rewrites a million edits whatever.
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, whatever. So you're like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: I got this thing and I don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: it's gonna be, but you know, this is what it is.
Speaker 1: I'm like, look, dude, send it to me. Let's do it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, those records that for those first records, we
Speaker 1: did the arm.
Speaker 2: God it was the arm song his song God at
Speaker 2: least expected Yeah, God, we did that. Those are records
Speaker 2: that I cut in my house, and I mean we
Speaker 2: pretty much. I wanted to make it so that it's
Speaker 2: kind of tricky because you're writing in nineteen ninety. You're
Speaker 2: writing for nineteen ninety, but you're writing for an audience
Speaker 2: that is current day.
Speaker 1: So it has to work on both levels. It has
Speaker 1: to be true to the times, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: it has to while the audience of now so that
Speaker 1: they can understand why this guy would be the shit
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And the fact that it's fictional makes it a little
Speaker 2: bit harder as as you know, as MC, because you
Speaker 2: know it's fiction. So it's like, you know, the Zample
Speaker 2: always give the scene in Notorious where Biggie is freestyling outside,
Speaker 2: you know, what I'm saying, and they're kicking his actual
Speaker 2: that was his actual freestyle, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: And that freestyle lyrically, it ain't miraculous, you know what
Speaker 2: I'm saying, but it's accurate to what he was saying
Speaker 2: at that time. The freestyle where he's dissing the dude
Speaker 2: in front of the side. Yeah, in Notaria when he's
Speaker 2: dising the dude. Love that freestyle, No.
Speaker 1: I love it, But I'm just saying it was dope
Speaker 1: because that was accurate to what he said then. From
Speaker 1: now in twenty seventeen, I mean, someone that's hurt Royster
Speaker 1: five to nine or black thought hearing that shit is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it was cool, you know what I mean, But at
Speaker 1: the time it was ahead. So so that's kind of
Speaker 1: the trick. Can I ask you how important like I'm
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a showrunner's nightmare on social media, like I
Speaker 1: think Nelson is just about talking to me again right
Speaker 1: now to get down Well, you know, for me, the
Speaker 1: reason why I'm so glad you said that about like
Speaker 1: you wanted to really portray the times as they were.
Speaker 1: How important is it to you at least from uh
Speaker 1: in doing this project? Are the music cues to you
Speaker 1: because like, that's the show. Is the whole show? Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: now not not to I'm not trying to you know,
Speaker 1: play you know, Devil's not not Devil's advocate. What do
Speaker 1: you call it. I'm not trying to instigate. No, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to be an instigate. Assuming you watched
Speaker 1: the other show, how did you feel, like did you
Speaker 1: notes like, Okay, that's not accurate. That's not accurate, Matt qu'
Speaker 1: is not accurate.
Speaker 7: And I will be honest. One of the problems with
Speaker 7: making TV, especially making TV while you accurate teaching, uh
Speaker 7: you know, as a profession, is that you don't get
Speaker 7: to watch a lot of TV. So I watched the
Speaker 7: first couple episodes and I understood right away that you
Speaker 7: get down to a very different animal. And it's magical realism.
Speaker 7: And that's not what we were trying to do. We're
Speaker 7: we're doing you know, realism, right, And there's nothing wrong
Speaker 7: with magical realism.
Speaker 1: Like it's an interesting term.
Speaker 6: It sounds like alternative facts.
Speaker 7: It's like what it's like what Tony Morrison does right,
Speaker 7: except for film, right, It's like it's it's it is
Speaker 7: a beautiful romantic vision of what the Bronx was and
Speaker 7: is in people's minds. And even that it's funny because
Speaker 7: you would people from the Bronx from that time, that's
Speaker 7: how they remember it as beautiful, right, even though it
Speaker 7: was a really really I mean, there were parts of
Speaker 7: The Bronx that felt and looked desolate, but it didn't
Speaker 7: wasn't desolate culturally to them. So I'm not mad at
Speaker 7: the get down, but it's just a very different show.
Speaker 7: And also about five times the budget, maybe ten times
Speaker 7: the budget of The Breaks, you know, so it's a
Speaker 7: very different kind of.
Speaker 1: But it's like, okay, so after you developed something and
Speaker 1: then you put it in the hands of the production company,
Speaker 1: the producers, the directions like other people, and how much
Speaker 1: are you willing to let your child metaphorically speaking, play
Speaker 1: with others? Are you willing to turn your back for
Speaker 1: a little bit and do something else and trust that
Speaker 1: it's okay? Is it just like all right, let's cut corners?
Speaker 1: Like for me, I've sat in many a room with
Speaker 1: many a writer and I just really have this disdain
Speaker 1: for their attitude of like music as such an afterthought.
Speaker 1: I it's really not that important, you know, Like Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I know we're in nineteen seventy nine and we gonna
Speaker 1: play a song that came out in eighty four. You
Speaker 1: know it's cool. Yeah, okay, okay, so the New Addition film,
Speaker 1: shout out to my brother Barrycole, I'm not coming at
Speaker 1: your neck. But he kind of corrected me on Twitter.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was a scene where Ricky and Bobby
Speaker 1: and Ron were on the tour bus. We're talking to
Speaker 1: each other and Ricky takes his walkman off, his cassette
Speaker 1: walkman off. But I clearly heard the shack up drum
Speaker 1: break that was you in the Belbe deevo Ain't nothing change,
Speaker 1: which was you know, I mean, this is eighty five.
Speaker 1: They're in the nineteen eighty five Greyhound tour bus going
Speaker 1: back to the Boston Projects, listening to a breakbeat that
Speaker 1: Ricky Bell himself will use seven years now. But you know,
Speaker 1: he kind of had that that correction, like no, that
Speaker 1: was talking all that jazz by stut of Sonic, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to come back like, well still that was
Speaker 1: still nineteen eighty eight. That was for but I mean
Speaker 1: for me, how I know that people cut corners and okay,
Speaker 1: well we couldn't clear that song, and we just want
Speaker 1: to move time along and using music's used for moving
Speaker 1: time along. So it's like, how much of a stickler
Speaker 1: are you for keeping that as accurate as possible.
Speaker 7: I'm a stickler because Seeth believes in it, you know
Speaker 7: what I mean. Seeth really values the authenticity part of it.
Speaker 7: And we have this sort of language with each other
Speaker 7: where we talk about the Authenticity Bank account, right, and
Speaker 7: you know you're gonna make withdraws right, we have like
Speaker 7: I think it takes place in the summer nineteen ninety,
Speaker 7: but maybe looking at the front door, I think was
Speaker 7: something that we made a slight you know, exception for
Speaker 7: it did come out in nineteen ninety, but it came
Speaker 7: out later in nineteen ninety. I think also Just to
Speaker 7: Get a Wrap came out later on in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 7: but it was it was that's the kind of trade
Speaker 7: off we're we're willing to make. There are other trade offs.
Speaker 7: There are other sort of withdrawals from the Authenticity Bank
Speaker 7: account that don't pay off. Like I'm not going to allow,
Speaker 7: you know, a breakbeat from another time.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, you know, premull get away
Speaker 1: with one in this business of Repnah. No, we kept it.
Speaker 1: Now we keep it well, all of our you know,
Speaker 1: with the scratches, we keep them so far, we keep
Speaker 1: it all you know stuff. Oh yeah, stuff that was
Speaker 1: of that time, well before that time actually.
Speaker 7: So we've actually been in the studio right with Preem
Speaker 7: and there's been something that he wanted to do or whatever,
Speaker 7: and we're like, oh no, that's too it's too early.
Speaker 7: And even with lyrics, we've had a few. Yeah, I
Speaker 7: think it was the lyrics I said it was. It
Speaker 7: was one lyric in the in the uh in the pilot,
Speaker 7: I said something like, oh god, what was it? It was.
Speaker 1: Puff mad l's I think was the line, and we
Speaker 1: was like, in nineteen ninety it wasn't puffing mad ls.
Speaker 1: So we changed it to something else because the original
Speaker 1: line was, how was it girlies on my job? Puff
Speaker 1: mad ls till I see blue like gargamele. So we
Speaker 1: changed it to girlies on my job hard as hell,
Speaker 1: make him do the smurf like gargamele.
Speaker 7: And so that was what that was.
Speaker 1: That was even but even the chorus.
Speaker 7: We were talking about the chorus right in your chorus
Speaker 7: was Joe Rock Baby Baby, And.
Speaker 1: I thought it was even and that's something I got.
Speaker 1: It was, but I thought it was too much of
Speaker 1: town Baby, which is I was totally not even thinking that.
Speaker 7: So I was like, we'll just do Joe rock y'all NonStop,
Speaker 7: y'all is more.
Speaker 1: But I think we kept rock Baby, rock Baby, Joe Baby.
Speaker 1: What is the quintessential hook in nineteen ninety, Well, the
Speaker 1: thing is like Trive had no hook.
Speaker 2: Or well in nineteen ninety what it was was it
Speaker 2: wasn't really hooks. Your hook was the last two bars
Speaker 2: of your rhyme. So it would be the last two
Speaker 2: bars of your song, so what you're.
Speaker 1: Saying, and then it goes into the break the scratches
Speaker 1: or an instrument or horn or whatever the fuck. So
Speaker 1: that was kind of the way we play it. And uh, yeah, man,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm lucky that we are. We have actors
Speaker 1: like Antoine is just a motherfucker unbelievable.
Speaker 6: Can y'all break down how many different personality like rap
Speaker 6: did you have to write for different personalities from Antoine?
Speaker 7: Who are so I said, tough job this season?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was, but we made it
Speaker 1: through it though for this one.
Speaker 2: Okay, so uh for those that watch the show, it's
Speaker 2: the story of you know, it tells, like Dan was
Speaker 2: saying earlier, tells these different stories of different people in
Speaker 2: the business at that time. And so, uh, the main
Speaker 2: guy that I write for is played by Antoine Harris.
Speaker 1: Big ups to him. He is like the street guy
Speaker 1: who is you know, really talented. So he's a guy.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this is something that we
Speaker 1: can maybe if y'all are still figuring out, I think
Speaker 1: we're still last conversation we had, I think we're still
Speaker 1: trying to see if he's gonna be the guy or
Speaker 1: if he's gonna be the guy who inspires the guy,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like that's still because he's
Speaker 1: a motherfucker, but like is he gonna be jay Z
Speaker 1: or is he gonna be Jazz?
Speaker 7: Oh?
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like that's still that still
Speaker 1: remains to.
Speaker 6: Be because he's like hell respected in the streets. Like
Speaker 6: it's like you got to go through hell people to
Speaker 6: get to him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like the he's the man. And then in
Speaker 1: like season one, this you know, as this season.
Speaker 2: Goes on, you'll see other stuff that solidifies, like he's
Speaker 2: really like the fucking he's the guy.
Speaker 1: So it's him, He's the He's the main guy. Then
Speaker 1: there's uh oh Man. Then there's uh Imani X played
Speaker 1: by Tianna Taylor. She's the girl who is like, she's
Speaker 1: like a like a Latifa like, she's kind of tom boyish.
Speaker 1: Me isis revel So she's that ship.
Speaker 2: And the kind of the conflict that we'll see later
Speaker 2: on uh is her mother played by Kim Wayns a
Speaker 2: hilarious fucking Kim Wayns plays by Kim Wayns.
Speaker 1: Her mother kind of wants her to be more of
Speaker 1: like a kind of salt and pepper, you know, uh
Speaker 1: female lem see. So that's you know, her thing. So
Speaker 1: I had to write for her. And so the not
Speaker 1: really the conflict that we had, but just the thing
Speaker 1: that we hit towards the end of this season was
Speaker 1: that I didn't want Imani to sound like a female
Speaker 1: version of So you have to I had to. You
Speaker 1: have to approach it in a way. It's like, all right,
Speaker 1: I want her to be dope, but she can't just
Speaker 1: be just the female, the female version of this guy.
Speaker 1: She has to have something about her. How do you
Speaker 1: channel all these I mean, you're like the hip hop
Speaker 1: version of split Man. How do you how do you
Speaker 1: channel all of these in an authentic way at that
Speaker 1: I mean on the spot, do you find that working okay?
Speaker 1: Now finding someone that I can relate to, like on
Speaker 1: working on television when you have to instantly come up
Speaker 1: with something, I don't overthink it. Yeah, Like how do
Speaker 1: you deal with that?
Speaker 6: Man?
Speaker 1: You just gotta you just gotta just write it. I mean,
Speaker 1: what is your process? You just sit alone? Yeah? I
Speaker 1: generally always work alone. I never really work with anyone,
Speaker 1: you know, record myself and like injureding myself and uh,
Speaker 1: I pretty much just in the time of like for
Speaker 1: arm for his main song, the idea was, without giving
Speaker 1: away too many plot points, well, in the within the pilot,
Speaker 1: you know, his friend has been killed. So the idea was, okay,
Speaker 1: we got I gotta take him through the stages of death,
Speaker 1: the stages of grief.
Speaker 2: So the first song that he does is you know,
Speaker 2: it's just straight anger. It's just like, we're gonna get
Speaker 2: them niggas, y'all kill my homie.
Speaker 1: We about to set it. It's just anger. And then
Speaker 1: later on in this season you'll see he has some
Speaker 1: other stuff that takes him through the other stages of grief.
Speaker 1: So it's just putting yourself in that character and what
Speaker 1: they would feel.
Speaker 7: First of the first season feels more like denial.
Speaker 2: They're not exacts, so it's just I try to put
Speaker 2: myself in each character's shoes and seek how they would
Speaker 2: feel and just you know, right in from that perspective.
Speaker 6: But what's interesting is and just by talking to you,
Speaker 6: like those are the two dope people, right, So is
Speaker 6: it easier to write for the dope lyrics or because
Speaker 6: now you got to write for like mediocre purpose fun.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's fun to write for It's well, okay,
Speaker 1: loves it. I had, but I run into a problem
Speaker 1: I just drew on. Yeah, I have problems. So we
Speaker 1: have battle scenes as well, right, so we have battles.
Speaker 6: That you have to right and so battling yourself basically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a mirror match. It's like the fucking mirror
Speaker 2: match in fucking uh In in Mortal Comeback. So for me,
Speaker 2: the problem I was running into was that I like
Speaker 2: to be the villain. So like my villain versus was
Speaker 2: murder and the guy that was actually spposed to win
Speaker 2: the battle on camera them versus was like cool, Like
Speaker 2: my first draft would be like it's cool, but you
Speaker 2: need a little more.
Speaker 7: So I had to and that was the only network
Speaker 7: note you got on the pilot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was like she was like, She's like, I
Speaker 1: really think it feels like uh.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, the other guy won and so I empires good.
Speaker 6: You corrected that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I went back and like I did another draft
Speaker 1: and they okayed it. And so the thing was in
Speaker 1: that first battle with in the pilot with Sieg and
Speaker 1: uh Sig played by u Si play by the idea
Speaker 1: was that, Okay, toy Ray is gonna the main guy.
Speaker 2: Is gonna win the war, so to speak, but to
Speaker 2: Ray is still gonna kind of win the battle. And
Speaker 2: to me that felt authentic because I remember coming up battling.
Speaker 2: You would see all those guys who would win all
Speaker 2: the battles. They would just be freestyling and could just
Speaker 2: go on and talk about your mom and make up
Speaker 2: ship whatever. But they couldn't make records to save their
Speaker 2: fucking lives. Like they fucking suck.
Speaker 1: I have a story.
Speaker 6: Uh.
Speaker 1: The first week that we mixed do You Want More?
Speaker 1: At Battery Studios, we were next in the b room
Speaker 1: was supernatural. Now if you remember, wait, I just said
Speaker 1: I just coughed all right, all right, so okay, boys
Speaker 1: and girls. And he was on East West. Yes. So
Speaker 1: when in nineteen ninety three at the New Music Seminar,
Speaker 1: I remember, it was all about skills and it was
Speaker 1: all about Supernatural that particular year, and Supernat signed to
Speaker 1: East West and so he was in the b room
Speaker 1: of Battery Studios, and we were in the a room
Speaker 1: a Battery Studios, mixing our stuff and we occasionally That's
Speaker 1: kind of how we met Roselle. Roselle was kind of
Speaker 1: in Supernat's like and Supernatural totally just freestyle everything, his shows,
Speaker 1: his his aulus and all I remember it was I
Speaker 1: went in his room. Me and Jerik sat in his
Speaker 1: room and he had the single if I was King.
Speaker 1: If I was King, I ruled everything if I was King,
Speaker 1: And then he did a verse right, let me take
Speaker 1: it from the top again, if I was King. If
Speaker 1: they he took a totally different verses, Ah, no, no, no, forget,
Speaker 1: let me do it again. And he went through like
Speaker 1: nine drafts of like one free totally different than the others,
Speaker 1: and I was like, the whole record's going to be
Speaker 1: made that way. They're like, yeah, man, freestyle record. And no, nah,
Speaker 1: it was just one of those things that like it
Speaker 1: works good live and even still live sometimes against novelty.
Speaker 1: That's what I was getting to like. It's something you know,
Speaker 1: you can only pull the rabbit out of hat so
Speaker 1: many times.
Speaker 6: You know, I meantyle union.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I used to Friz. I mean, that was what
Speaker 1: I did. But after a while, Yeah, it kind of
Speaker 1: It's like a parlor trick. Otherwise, like, look, write a
Speaker 1: fucking song, dude.
Speaker 7: So we need to talk about the best part of
Speaker 7: that battle, which is the character, the impromptu character we
Speaker 7: created with Fante's blessing named mom Ali. Yes, talk about
Speaker 7: it because we really, we really wanted to. I mean,
Speaker 7: it's an afrocentric period and you know, not to make
Speaker 7: light of it, but there was always that dude who
Speaker 7: came to a battle to teach, to educate, you know.
Speaker 1: So, uh, I knew you were going to make I
Speaker 1: knew you were going to make it. See that damn
Speaker 1: verse shout out to Caitlin. Yeah. So this was one
Speaker 1: of the one of the times. I remember we was
Speaker 1: up I was up there, and so we had to
Speaker 1: do this battle. So there's a battle in season in
Speaker 1: episode one of the pilot where Arm is battling this
Speaker 1: guy six hours and so this is essentially the battle
Speaker 1: where Arm wins the battle. And this is where DV
Speaker 1: the producer sees the battle and realizes, Yo, Arm is
Speaker 1: the dude. I gotta fuck with this is the guy.
Speaker 1: And so I had to write that battle between Torrey
Speaker 1: and Antoine, and so that came out. So before that,
Speaker 1: there's all these other battles that take place before their battle,
Speaker 1: which is like the main event. So I come up
Speaker 1: there and I'm in New York and Dan hits me.
Speaker 1: He's like, yo, man, you know these other people we
Speaker 1: got doing battles, it ain't really working.
Speaker 2: Would you be willing to step in? And I'm just
Speaker 2: like yeah, I mean I can write some shit for whatever.
Speaker 2: I'll write somebody some shit.
Speaker 1: It's cool. He's like no, no, no, no, no, I
Speaker 1: need you to write it. Yeah, but I need you
Speaker 1: to step in. And I'm like, fuck you me step in.
Speaker 1: He's like like step in, like be on camera, Like
Speaker 1: oh shit, I said okay. So he's like, well, I
Speaker 1: got an idea for this character. His name is he
Speaker 1: Mama Lee. I was like, say no more. I just
Speaker 1: knew what that meant, sort of like doctor York meets
Speaker 1: you know, my man, doctor York, Doctor York meets whatever
Speaker 1: you add with that.
Speaker 6: I told he did it so well. I saw the
Speaker 6: pilot the pilot episode, and I was like, I think
Speaker 6: I thought you were ode or something because I really
Speaker 6: did not know.
Speaker 1: That was you. That was me and the cooofie in
Speaker 1: coof the in the Shades.
Speaker 7: So the good news is that that mam Alee comes back,
Speaker 7: go back in the season. I really really wanted a
Speaker 7: whole subplot around in Mama Lee. I didn't get it,
Speaker 7: but I'm still angling for it. If there's a season two.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that means you can't share it because you'll want
Speaker 6: to that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah we uh we shot that, and yeah, I hope
Speaker 1: well I spin off.
Speaker 6: Yo.
Speaker 1: I just saw him like I just want mam he
Speaker 1: gotta have a white woman, because that's what all like
Speaker 1: the whole dude, you gotta I was really you. I
Speaker 1: thought it was due. Now you gotta have a white woman.
Speaker 1: You gotta be authentic hotep, come on, like, there's no
Speaker 1: one that wants to fight for black people more than
Speaker 1: the nigga with a white woman. So like it got,
Speaker 1: it's gotta work. So yeah, man, we shot that and
Speaker 1: it was funny, like that was like my culture shock.
Speaker 1: So the scene was supposed to be imam Ali is
Speaker 1: the guy. He's like the old guy that is, you know,
Speaker 1: he's out of touch and he can rap, but he's
Speaker 1: trying to He would be doing push ups. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's doing push ups with the perfect form, but he's
Speaker 1: trying to educate and shit. So in the scene when shot,
Speaker 1: it was supposed to be that a Mama a Lee
Speaker 1: lost the battle and he's like the laughing stock. But
Speaker 1: when we shot the scene and we had real extras
Speaker 1: and we told him like real twenty twenty one years
Speaker 1: old of today, we told him like, look react if
Speaker 1: some shit is whack, say it's whack. If y'all here
Speaker 1: a hot line like this is live. And so when
Speaker 1: I did Diverse, they actually were cheering for me and
Speaker 1: shit like they liked it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: Well, the thing was the guy who was facing he
Speaker 7: was a real MC, but he he was very nervous
Speaker 7: because his first time on TV, so he kept forgetting
Speaker 7: his lines. So now Fante's oh, you know, improvising in
Speaker 7: characters like well, come to the youth center. We have
Speaker 7: memory pills.
Speaker 1: We got genkkobal Bo. It was just I was just
Speaker 1: saying all kind of shit and so, and the thing
Speaker 1: was my verse.
Speaker 2: I had to write it the night before, and that's
Speaker 2: something you know, it's extremely hard to do, like to
Speaker 2: write something and then have to memorize it. So I'm
Speaker 2: an extra end the scene, and in between takes, I'm
Speaker 2: going out and listening to my phone, like playing the
Speaker 2: verse over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: And so finally we shoot it, and you know, the
Speaker 1: kids reacted to my shit. They was like yo, this
Speaker 1: they was laughing and like they was hooting hollar. And
Speaker 1: so afterwards, me and Dan was talking. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: what the fuck was that? That wasn't supposed to happen,
Speaker 1: and he was like, well, you know what, dude, that
Speaker 1: audience like that that you like now, they didn't get
Speaker 1: x claned, they didn't get poor righteous teachers, they didn't
Speaker 1: get you know, just that super pro black time and
Speaker 1: rap where we just thought we was like gonna be
Speaker 1: black ay black. They didn't get it. So to them
Speaker 1: it was cool to see. So to them it wasn't
Speaker 1: a joke because they didn't even get the reference to
Speaker 1: stuff that we were represent at that time.
Speaker 6: So it's just like in the pilot.
Speaker 1: This is in the pilot. This is the pilot.
Speaker 7: How my wish is that people can hear the whole verse.
Speaker 7: Unbelievable and listen. Jay Smooth was an extra in one
Speaker 7: of our scenes. I remember you your demo came in
Speaker 7: when Jay Smooth was and Jay Smooth and I had
Speaker 7: such fun listening to that demo.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I cut the demo that because you because again
Speaker 1: you hit me that night.
Speaker 2: It's like eleven twelve o'clock and I was I just
Speaker 2: left blue note with glassper and it's like twelve o'clock.
Speaker 2: I'm getting back in the joint and he's like, so
Speaker 2: I need you to do this scene. And by the way,
Speaker 2: we're taping tomorrow, you know, like afternoon, so be read.
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right. So I literally cut the demo
Speaker 2: in hotel room with my little bull speaker, my iPad
Speaker 2: and my iPhone and I just wrapped into that and
Speaker 2: that was how we did it.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, that was it. So that was a
Speaker 1: character I had to write for. It was what else
Speaker 1: your girl im imani imam a lee. Uh, there is
Speaker 1: a but I'll give you away too much. There is
Speaker 1: a audition audition scene scene coming up. Uh, it's like
Speaker 1: three or four acts I had to write for them. Uh,
Speaker 1: you did a great job on that one, thank you man.
Speaker 7: I mean, well, here's the thing is, it's not just
Speaker 7: lyrics because again this gets back to my horrible an
Speaker 7: our career. You know, we had to decide because there's
Speaker 7: the banger at the end of the season, right, and
Speaker 7: and what is the beat that we're going to use.
Speaker 7: But there's a problem. And the problem is there's a
Speaker 7: there's a plot line that involves a using a particular
Speaker 7: Bob James sample and or rather use a sample a
Speaker 7: record by Bob James, and which record was it going
Speaker 7: to be? And I felt really boxed in. I felt like,
Speaker 7: oh my god, you know, none of these things is
Speaker 7: going to make something that hasn't already been done. And
Speaker 7: I'm panicking because.
Speaker 1: We couldn't use knowledge.
Speaker 2: I was like, we can't use knowledge and it was
Speaker 2: so great, Well it's nine, it was nineteen ninety. But
Speaker 2: the thing was with Preing, like, I mean, just fucking Preing.
Speaker 2: So we're talking samples and he's.
Speaker 1: Like, oh yeah, I'm about chop that back in ninety two,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's like, ah shit, you
Speaker 1: did do that, you know what I mean? So a
Speaker 1: lot of that stuff.
Speaker 7: So I'm not going to mention the Bob James song,
Speaker 7: but you suggest it, and I think I.
Speaker 1: Was just thinking, I tell you after it's over, but nah,
Speaker 1: it's not that, And I thought I was.
Speaker 7: Like, oh, that is never going to work. It's never
Speaker 7: gonna work. And I'm busy, like, Okay, you know what,
Speaker 7: maybe it doesn't have to do Bob James. Maybe we
Speaker 7: do a cooler gang song. Here's ten cooler gang songs
Speaker 7: you can sample. I'm you know, panicking and Funk is back,
Speaker 7: I mean co Cools back.
Speaker 1: We had that that was like it were.
Speaker 7: Posular, like four different artists that we could use to
Speaker 7: make this plot line work. And Cream takes Fante's suggestion
Speaker 7: and makes this. It's just unbelievable. The coolest no no,
Speaker 7: no no Bob James record that that you have heard
Speaker 7: in another classic Golden era hip hop hit that I
Speaker 7: never thought could have been flipped in the way it
Speaker 7: was flipped.
Speaker 1: And if you know, I'm I guess it right, I
Speaker 1: want you to guess it. You know, I'll confirm it
Speaker 1: all right? Yeah, I mean ye say you probably guess
Speaker 1: it was No, Steve, I don't think it is Holy Ship.
Speaker 1: He's a tappan Zee Tap Records. Ye, yes, he's a
Speaker 1: tappan Ze. Matt. You're saying that the name of No,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that I didn't give it away the
Speaker 1: west Tester lady. Nah, No, ain't that Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: hang on, he I mean take me to the Marty
Speaker 1: Ground was the that's that's cat yet? Well here's the
Speaker 1: thing though, See, flipping was really not a thing in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety. Yeah, so all right, just for I remember.
Speaker 7: Age act that used this particular Bob James record didn't
Speaker 7: exist yet, so it had not been used. So it
Speaker 7: wasn't really a flip. It's a flip to us, Yeah,
Speaker 7: in twenty seventeen. But uh, the producer DV thought it
Speaker 7: up all himself in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 1: It's not Westchester lady.
Speaker 7: Nah.
Speaker 1: Well it's not the on example.
Speaker 6: Nah Nah, that one is flip like a technical thing.
Speaker 1: Well, just to flip.
Speaker 7: Take my sample that's already been used in using it.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you have a roof excube, once
Speaker 1: all the sides are completely done, that's nineteen ninety. Cats
Speaker 1: just started mixing it all up and you know, all
Speaker 1: the colors up and messing it up like by n.
Speaker 7: It's like, you know, you know, player's anthem by Junior Mafia, Right,
Speaker 7: So Prem and Jabru to sort of poke fun at it,
Speaker 7: they take the same sample, which is a new birth sample,
Speaker 7: and they flip it.
Speaker 1: Yeah so yeah, so but nah, that was I mean,
Speaker 1: it's been an incredible like just to be able to,
Speaker 1: you know, do that shit like so I like it.
Speaker 1: It puts me in his own where I like to
Speaker 1: be like kind of behind the scenes and like live
Speaker 1: my life through different people. And you know, it's that's
Speaker 1: just fun to watch, Like with hearing other people interpret
Speaker 1: your words. That shit is amazing to me. It's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun. The first episode of season one is aired.
Speaker 2: What can you tell us about where these characters are
Speaker 2: going without giving stuff away?
Speaker 7: Well, you know, they're on a collision course with destiny,
Speaker 7: I think, you know. I they're dealing with what we
Speaker 7: were dealing with in nineteen ninety. They're dealing with major
Speaker 7: labels coming in and sniffing money and sniffing around and
Speaker 7: offering a lot of personal opportunity to folks. Do you
Speaker 7: take that or do you not take that and what
Speaker 7: what do you you know, what are the risks taking
Speaker 7: that big, cushy, major label job and what do you
Speaker 7: sacrifice in the process? You know, what does DV do
Speaker 7: to you know? How much does he want to work
Speaker 7: with them? And how much danger is he willing to
Speaker 7: put himself in? You know, for David who works at
Speaker 7: the you know, the quote unquote urban radio station. You
Speaker 7: know how he wants hip hop to be on the
Speaker 7: air so much, But is he is he willing to
Speaker 7: understand that, you know, it's business not just you know,
Speaker 7: to give people moral lessons on you know, the hip
Speaker 7: hop should be. You know that there he may have to,
Speaker 7: you know, take a little advice from his father to
Speaker 7: do some of the things he wants to do.
Speaker 6: What Harris his character? I want to ask you about
Speaker 6: him because I feel like some of these characters are
Speaker 6: like an amalgamation of a few people. Some of them
Speaker 6: may be just one person that you knew, But what
Speaker 6: Harris's character a few people, one person.
Speaker 7: Few people, you know, I think they're definitely shades of
Speaker 7: Russell there would when he plays them, he channels a
Speaker 7: lot of Dame you know. Yeah, there's a manic energy
Speaker 7: there that even Russell. Can't you know, it's not it's
Speaker 7: more Dame or Puff than it is Russell. But he's
Speaker 7: also he's the great thing about watching this season, one
Speaker 7: of the best things anyway, was watching these characters make
Speaker 7: like Barry Foray is his own thing. Now. He's not Russell,
Speaker 7: he's not Dame. He's Barry for Ray and you can
Speaker 7: see him there in nineteen ninety and it makes sense
Speaker 7: and the character has some Integrity's.
Speaker 6: Love the way into it. For the lead character, the female,
Speaker 6: I'm start forget her name after the actress Chage.
Speaker 1: Yeah she is.
Speaker 6: You are introducing the concept of the intern and really
Speaker 6: that because you know that time is over now. So
Speaker 6: it's interested in telling the story of a music intern
Speaker 6: and what they had to go to a female music
Speaker 6: intern in that world. And I almost wonder with two
Speaker 6: males in the situation, who like, is there another female
Speaker 6: to kind of come in and be like, this is
Speaker 6: a whole different aspect that you don't made me know
Speaker 6: or did you just already?
Speaker 7: Like Nikki will have a few mentors to choose from, say,
Speaker 7: over the course of the season, and Mac, I mean
Speaker 7: yeah for me, didn't even talk about the DJ battle.
Speaker 7: Mac enrolled himself in Scratch Academy to learn how to
Speaker 7: DJ so he could participate.
Speaker 1: And wow, what's that? What's his name? Your boy? Ryan
Speaker 1: gosling Uh took up six months of piano lessons to
Speaker 1: play all the actual he's actually playing all that jazz
Speaker 1: stuff and the fingerings correct and the chords are correct. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's him actually playing.
Speaker 6: We'll talk about back in that way. And also his
Speaker 6: like history with music because he's like a different kind
Speaker 6: of actor in the sense of playing a role like this,
Speaker 6: his relationship with hip hop and his commitment, it's different.
Speaker 7: I feel like, yeah, well, he grew up in stat
Speaker 7: Ny and his father cut all the dudes from the
Speaker 7: Wu Tang clan's hair.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 7: He he's known method man since he was a kid.
Speaker 7: Who plays his dad, right, who plays his dad?
Speaker 1: Fun fact, but actually read for that role somewhere, hopefully
Speaker 1: on a hard drive, fucking buried way somewhere audition audition
Speaker 1: for for his role, and I didn't think it would work.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm gonna just do this shit anyway.
Speaker 1: I don't think I maybe play his uncle, but I
Speaker 1: didn't play.
Speaker 7: That dream had to die. So in MoMA leve Yes.
Speaker 1: Yet there was also a character we had. It was
Speaker 1: a scene we cut the Fred Jamal, the record store guy,
Speaker 1: and that was one of the things that like, really
Speaker 1: I like because we kind of get the show. You know,
Speaker 1: we're playing with history and you sometimes you get to
Speaker 1: show how wrong people got it. And so there was
Speaker 1: one scene where the guy David, he goes to the
Speaker 1: record store and he asked the guy in the record store, hey,
Speaker 1: give me I want to take some pictures of the
Speaker 1: customers who are in here buying hip hop, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean.
Speaker 2: And so he then takes those pictures and goes to
Speaker 2: his you know, goes to his boss and it's like, yo,
Speaker 2: these people are like hip hop. But the thing is,
Speaker 2: the guy at the store is saying, Hey, I don't
Speaker 2: want them to play hip hop on the radio because
Speaker 2: if they played on the radio, they're not gonna buy it.
Speaker 2: Not yeah, not even getting that, Like, no, motherfucker, that
Speaker 2: is what will bring people to me. But he was just,
Speaker 2: you know, he got it so fucking wrong, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. And there's little things that you'll see
Speaker 2: in the season where you know, people will make statements
Speaker 2: and it's just like oh my god, Yeah, you know, you.
Speaker 1: Don't once told us that Pete crap, are you serious?
Speaker 1: When he was doing his long time first he was like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: I don't want to come out with a record because like,
Speaker 1: once you make a record, you're whack. I don't it's
Speaker 1: like seeing you want to just do mixtapes all your life.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a mystery to it, like people are
Speaker 1: still waiting for me. But like once the now comes out, wow,
Speaker 1: then you know wow.
Speaker 6: I don't think he never did.
Speaker 1: He never he could be an aquarium. I'm sorry, but yeah,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, we.
Speaker 2: Have little moments like that that are really uh you know,
Speaker 2: you're watching it with the knowledge of what happens to
Speaker 2: these people or people will held those thoughts, and that's
Speaker 2: been fun for me, like kind of seeing how that
Speaker 2: plays out, just tuning in before you.
Speaker 1: I I'm looking, Okay, is it.
Speaker 6: This?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: Damn wow? No, I guess it's right up under your
Speaker 1: nose like you. I gotta watch it again on television. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: you ain't gotta know this is. This doesn't happen till later,
Speaker 1: So it ain't. It ain't air yet. It hasn't air yet.
Speaker 1: It's the final episode. Yeah, it's coming so but you
Speaker 1: closed though, saying when I hear this joint, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: want to kick my television off the plasmas.
Speaker 2: Like yes, because that's something that's so obvious and it's
Speaker 2: something that has been and it's not Artilus.
Speaker 1: No, it's not that. That was one of the ones
Speaker 1: that we were looking at. But he Prema already used part. No,
Speaker 1: it's not all less because PREMI used it. My mind spray.
Speaker 7: Already did that for Jay Rue.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah did my spray and the and
Speaker 1: the group home? Yeah yeah, that sounds like, yeah I
Speaker 1: did that one. You know what I'm saying. We did
Speaker 1: that one and the night ju you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And then my mind spray. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: we did that one. I was like, okay, Primo, so yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, it ain't that one. It ain't that But
Speaker 1: I mean you it's right up on your nose like
Speaker 1: you he be like, what the fuck? The only last
Speaker 1: one that he used was did he use it before? No,
Speaker 1: Preme never used it before.
Speaker 7: He never used it, which is why it sounds fresh.
Speaker 1: Oh man, did red Man use it before? I know
Speaker 1: what you think?
Speaker 6: Not?
Speaker 1: No, one just tuning in is ques Low Supreme. We
Speaker 1: got him playing bitch. You guess I'm right, God, I
Speaker 1: got a question? Can I ask a questions? Quose your
Speaker 1: show bill?
Speaker 8: First of all, Dan is also a teacher, and we
Speaker 8: didn't we haven't got to that part. Yeah, we teach
Speaker 8: at the same school, I know, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: I forgot fantastic.
Speaker 8: But you walked in you said, you said Martin Man
Speaker 8: was in my class, and I feel like that was
Speaker 8: a big thing that we then went into this whole
Speaker 8: crazy batshit show and the real because he was on
Speaker 8: this show and he was it was amazing. And I'm
Speaker 8: sure you have a story too well.
Speaker 7: I mean, he's just first of all, to even come
Speaker 7: to a small class and to and to talk about
Speaker 7: his career. You know, we were really just talking. I'm
Speaker 7: teaching a class on the Golden Age of hip hop
Speaker 7: and we're sort of pinning it between the years eighty
Speaker 7: seven and ninety three for a few reasons. And you know,
Speaker 7: he came to talk about the bridge, he came to
Speaker 7: talk about that jump to sample drums, right that, uh,
Speaker 7: And I never knew And this is a whole sort
Speaker 7: of nerd thing, but I never knew. I always thought
Speaker 7: that the bridge was made on an SB twelve hundred.
Speaker 1: No, he talked about dude. When he told us that
Speaker 1: we just that, and when he told us that the shakers,
Speaker 1: oh my god, the shakers that make the music is him,
Speaker 1: that's him doing. He's literally making the music. Was the
Speaker 1: whole four hours was like, No, you didn't, Yes, it did.
Speaker 1: That was pretty much. I mean, next to Whitney and
Speaker 1: TEJ Swin. Oh my god. So apparently there was a
Speaker 1: story that was close to being a Whitney and TJ.
Speaker 1: Swan duett there's no place right, Yeah, Whitney.
Speaker 7: Exactly make the music with your mouth, Bobby.
Speaker 1: Whitney and Thomas Jerome Swan together. Yeah, Bro, Marty had
Speaker 1: crazy stories. So like did the kids like, so when
Speaker 1: you have someone like Marty come in, are they aware
Speaker 1: of who they're looking at? And like, you know what
Speaker 1: that means?
Speaker 7: Surprisingly? This class really was so, you know, because they're young,
Speaker 7: and I'm not saying surprising because they're really good students,
Speaker 7: but I mean they were born after Tupac died, you know,
Speaker 7: so what do they know what?
Speaker 1: And ap right? Right? Wow?
Speaker 7: Yeah, but I love I love teaching.
Speaker 1: One of your students was Maggie Rogers. That's right. That
Speaker 1: was Oh she's dope. I can't claim her either. No, No,
Speaker 1: she's my student too, but she's more. Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, she was my first student, my very first class
Speaker 7: that I ever taught.
Speaker 1: She Maggie Rogers is she's a young singer songwriter. Pharrell
Speaker 1: did a video, Yo, this has been your Bob power
Speaker 1: where they just you know, they played records. You know,
Speaker 1: you could play your records for phar real, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. He came in and and kind of
Speaker 1: gave him notes, and so Maggie played her joint and
Speaker 1: that was the joint where he was just like, yo,
Speaker 1: I have no notes for this. This ship is crazy,
Speaker 1: and she ended up getting the deal. She's yea, I
Speaker 1: will back up my student in a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: on the Tonight show.
Speaker 7: Yeah so great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but she's she's dope. She's really she has her
Speaker 1: it's completely singular. She sounds like nothing else. How many
Speaker 1: semesters do you do at the school?
Speaker 7: Fall and spring?
Speaker 1: You do too? Yeah, I can only do. This is
Speaker 1: the first year that I opted not to do it.
Speaker 1: I wanted you to teach the Dela Della class. Well, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna still come in good. But you know what
Speaker 1: when they first when when when they approached me about
Speaker 1: doing it, the idea of doing it because they wanted it,
Speaker 1: like last year's or whatever. I felt weird about it
Speaker 1: because there were there was no no curriculum and no
Speaker 1: periodicals or or or books that I could use to teach.
Speaker 1: And I don't even know if I'm eloquent enough to
Speaker 1: really convey how special he was as a human being
Speaker 1: and as a musician, especially in the age of now,
Speaker 1: which you can easily with the click of a button
Speaker 1: get results, where all your stuff is quantized and if
Speaker 1: you want to, you know, chop up your stuff in
Speaker 1: a certain way. And you know, I'm trying to explain
Speaker 1: to these people like he was making these miracles with
Speaker 1: his bare hands and brain, like before this technology existed,
Speaker 1: like the only way to describe it. H Hendrix's second album,
Speaker 1: Access Bold as Love. You know, we take for advantage,
Speaker 1: we take it for granted. No well, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: just the whole album in general. Like Hendricks Damn Near
Speaker 1: invented the Hendricks and Eddi Kramer invented the technology that
Speaker 1: we take for granted now, the idea of phasing and
Speaker 1: and certain echo effects and chambers udo as instrument. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, so, how what is your goal in
Speaker 1: teaching about Dila that will make it as mind blowing
Speaker 1: for them as it was for me to see that
Speaker 1: stuff firsthand as he's doing. Yeah, you have a theory
Speaker 1: like what you've told to me.
Speaker 7: For like the three inventors I called the three Kings
Speaker 7: of American rhythm. There's Louis Armstrong who basically established swing,
Speaker 7: you know, as sort of the American approach to meter
Speaker 7: in rhythm. James Brown who turned every instrument into a
Speaker 7: drum and the one obviously, and then Dila, who freed
Speaker 7: us from the grid. You know, he established.
Speaker 1: I had to it's only right, you know.
Speaker 7: He he sort of renegotiated the relationship between man and machine.
Speaker 7: To me, now it's different because if you look at
Speaker 7: I know, you got soul right. You have these two
Speaker 7: breakbeat records that really made hip hop funky in a
Speaker 7: way that a quantized drum machine couldn't. But there was
Speaker 7: something about what Dila was doing that for the first time,
Speaker 7: traditional musicians are trying to do what he did. And
Speaker 7: I feel very funny laying this out here because the
Speaker 7: very first traditional musician to, you know, to try to
Speaker 7: succeed in doing that as you Oh.
Speaker 1: Wait, wait, who is it? Like, I gotta know who
Speaker 1: it is? I forgot. I mean, yeah, it's it's it's weird, man.
Speaker 1: It's just like during that period, I was the exact
Speaker 1: opposite because I had such a chip on my sto. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be perfect and and it took d
Speaker 1: and Dyla for the most part to unravel that, that
Speaker 1: that yarn that I had wrapped myself in a perfection
Speaker 1: and coldness that it's just hard to describe. Like even today,
Speaker 1: I think, uh, the the cats from the Lumineers were
Speaker 1: on the show today and we were just in our zone.
Speaker 1: We did like three or four Dila joints in a row,
Speaker 1: and you know, I mean there's there's a lot of
Speaker 1: downtime in the show like that. You don't see speaking
Speaker 1: of the tonight show, there's a lot of downtime in
Speaker 1: which sets have to be changed whatever. So we're just
Speaker 1: jamming amongst ourselves and we just got lost in a
Speaker 1: rabbit hole of crazy timing. And you know, I was
Speaker 1: trying to explain to them it was like some new
Speaker 1: you know, the way you guys did that crazy thing
Speaker 1: with the beat. I don't know how to describe it,
Speaker 1: and it was weird, like I couldn't describe it to
Speaker 1: them either. So it's like that that's the fear that
Speaker 1: I feel like I will drop history or or drop
Speaker 1: you know, misrepresent his his importance. But you know, I'm
Speaker 1: glad that you you know that you're you're stepping up
Speaker 1: to well.
Speaker 7: I don't claim to be a Della expert by any stretch.
Speaker 7: I mean, my personal history is weird in this sense
Speaker 7: because my very first trip to Detroit was to work
Speaker 7: with him Gino and Gino excel and I flew to Detroit. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and the other one, the one would Sphere and how
Speaker 7: it Goes, I think is the name of that song.
Speaker 1: So we flew to Detroit.
Speaker 7: We stayed, you know, downtown, We drove out to Gardens
Speaker 7: we yeah, athanaeum right, and we went to his house
Speaker 7: on Nevada and met my duke's and went downstairs and
Speaker 7: Common was recording like Water for Chocolate with him. Around
Speaker 7: that time, we went to the Mongolian barbecue and deeborn
Speaker 7: dearborn across from studio A like the whole thing, And
Speaker 7: what was really weird is Adilla laid the tracks and
Speaker 7: then vanished. Oh wow, and that was it, basically, you know.
Speaker 7: And I understand that sometimes that was the way he
Speaker 7: worked or whatever, and that I would never have imagined
Speaker 7: that moment that I would have sort of another part
Speaker 7: of my life in Detroit many years later. My wife
Speaker 7: is from Detroit. I'm back there all the time, and
Speaker 7: every time i'm there, I think of that first time.
Speaker 7: And that's where the genesis of the class came from.
Speaker 1: So does she say what up? Though she does not.
Speaker 1: She does.
Speaker 7: She's a poet and a tenured professor at the New School,
Speaker 7: so she does not say, yeah, but I want to
Speaker 7: here's the theory. Here's the theory about Dila time. I
Speaker 7: wanted to run it by you, and I'm thinking of
Speaker 7: sort of staking a claim that because everybody's talking about
Speaker 7: what is what is Diyl time? Oh well, it's just
Speaker 7: he doesn't quantize the beasts. That's good, that's not exactly it.
Speaker 7: And oh it's septuplet swing. But yeah, but that doesn't
Speaker 7: account for the for the rushed snare. So my feeling
Speaker 7: is that Dila time, what Dila time really is? What
Speaker 7: what all of the traditional and electronic musicians are trying
Speaker 7: to do. Is it's the deliberate cultivation, uh of tension
Speaker 7: between straight and swung elements in a song, and that
Speaker 7: tension is dynamic, it changes over time.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's the Thelonious Monk theory, remember his idea
Speaker 1: of subnes. But there's the rhythm version of it. And
Speaker 1: it's weird because between Dyla there's Prince and the risk,
Speaker 1: both of them, both of whom I consider the risk
Speaker 1: more the accidental tourist where you take a song like
Speaker 1: uh yeah. Verbal Intercourse is a perfect example of that,
Speaker 1: where it's just like sounds funky, leave it like it is.
Speaker 1: And Prince well, Susan Rodgers recently admit it because if
Speaker 1: you listen to the Prince's stuff, you'll notice that he'll
Speaker 1: program almost uh kind of like in sixty four bars,
Speaker 1: you're really supposed to do four, maybe eight, maybe sixteen
Speaker 1: of your club, but sixty four bars that means you're
Speaker 1: planning ahead of time with drum feels that only will
Speaker 1: come around maybe once in your song, right, And that's
Speaker 1: how Masi was. But he would also save tracks and
Speaker 1: which he would do stuff by hand just so it
Speaker 1: can sound human.
Speaker 7: Well, you were the person who described the toree in
Speaker 7: his book, the the straight clap from the drum machine
Speaker 7: and Lady cab Driver. But he's playing by hand, right, Yeah,
Speaker 7: then he does this other thing rhythmically with the bass. Right.
Speaker 7: If you listen to like Irresistible Bitch or Tricky, he
Speaker 7: will give you almost a shell of what the baseline is.
Speaker 7: He'll play like two notes out of eight, right, but
Speaker 7: for the eight, so you hear the eight, but you
Speaker 7: don't hear the eight.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, we're brothers. That's why I was surprised
Speaker 1: that I had never met each other. I was like,
Speaker 1: you have you have met boys show? Wait?
Speaker 7: Were you there at the time? I may have been there,
Speaker 7: But here's where we met. We met when I worked
Speaker 7: for Forrest. I came to Sigma Sound to meet with
Speaker 7: Richard right who rest in peace man. I never had
Speaker 7: a chance to tell you in person. I was so
Speaker 7: sad to hear his passing. And then after that, the
Speaker 7: next saw you was out in the musicology tour in
Speaker 7: the meadowlands. It was it was you were just walking
Speaker 7: and getting a drink from the water fountain in the middle,
Speaker 7: you know, in the middle of this Prince concert for
Speaker 7: college and I just walked up to you. I didn't
Speaker 7: even introduce myself. I just said, you're my favorite drummer.
Speaker 7: That's all I said. That's all I said. And then
Speaker 7: I think the next time I saw you was when
Speaker 7: I did the Experienced Music Project thing on Breakbeats and
Speaker 7: you were That's when you played the Rod Temperton uh
Speaker 7: demo for you. Wo.
Speaker 1: Yes, what did I tell you already?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I'm waiting. I'm waiting. Yeah, we'll talk. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll talk after hey, but it's a pleasure to be
Speaker 1: here now.
Speaker 7: Better late than never.
Speaker 2: Like I want to talk about meats and plots, man,
Speaker 2: I want to talk about you know, so this book
Speaker 2: it was after you wrote The Big Payback. Uh, this
Speaker 2: is a book about how shifts can teach you how
Speaker 2: to organize your life. So tell us about like the
Speaker 2: principles of that, Like what are the and by the way,
Speaker 2: I actually bought this book, I have to read it.
Speaker 2: Work clean is the name, So tell us about that,
Speaker 2: like just the philosophy of meats and plots and what
Speaker 2: that means.
Speaker 7: After I wrote The Big Payback. You know, it's a
Speaker 7: six hundred and sixty page book, and I just was drained,
Speaker 7: you know, and I had a wife and a baby
Speaker 7: and a you know, I didn't I couldn't imagine myself
Speaker 7: writing another book, and you know, we were developing the breaks,
Speaker 7: so you know, I had other things to do.
Speaker 1: And how long did it take you to write?
Speaker 7: Just four years? Really really heavy. But my first interview
Speaker 7: I did for The Big Payback was ten years before
Speaker 7: the book came out, So, you know, work Clean came
Speaker 7: out of the pain of the interim. You know, after
Speaker 7: The Big Payback came out, and I was still working
Speaker 7: at a corporate media company which shall be unmentioned, and
Speaker 7: it was just painful to see.
Speaker 1: At you working there with boss Bill with a branch
Speaker 1: out that's.
Speaker 7: Right, that's right where where This is a very funny
Speaker 7: story when when Bill came in to interview for the
Speaker 7: job and I found out that he was actually DJ brainchild,
Speaker 7: I got down on my knees, literally got down on
Speaker 7: my knees and bowed to him. And Jerry Barrow said
Speaker 7: to me, you know, that's really not going to help
Speaker 7: with the salary negotiations. Yeah, well, he's a genius and
Speaker 7: I'm sorry he's not here right now. But uh so,
Speaker 7: the pain of seeing waste on such a broad scale,
Speaker 7: you know, waste of time, waste of resources, waste of space,
Speaker 7: waste of relationships. And at the time I was just
Speaker 7: to sort of unwind or whatever, I would read chef
Speaker 7: narratives all the time. So I read Anthony Bourdain and
Speaker 7: Michael Roohman and oh the book Heat by Bill Buford,
Speaker 7: like just the amazing books about the culinary world, not cookbooks,
Speaker 7: but about chef's lives in the kitchen. And these are
Speaker 7: you know, wild people and wild narratives. But the one
Speaker 7: thing that ties them all together is this discipline that
Speaker 7: they call meson plas.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 7: It's a way of relating to time, space, energy, and motion.
Speaker 7: And it was the only thing that I really wanted
Speaker 7: to write about, and the reason I wanted to write
Speaker 7: about it because I look for a book on meson
Speaker 7: plas and nobody had ever written one. So I just
Speaker 7: used the tools of the journalist again, and I interviewed
Speaker 7: over one hundred people from the culinary field over the
Speaker 7: course of two years. I did an NPR story based
Speaker 7: on that sort of boiled it down to ten principles, right,
Speaker 7: But they're all about relating to time, space, motion, resources,
Speaker 7: and just like the way that chefs think about things
Speaker 7: are is not the way that we think. And for
Speaker 7: each of the ten principles, I, you know, tell a
Speaker 7: story of a chef. And one of those chefs happened
Speaker 7: to be Jerobi White of a Tribe call Quest, whom
Speaker 7: I had never met, even though I had interviewed. I
Speaker 7: did the very first press day for trib call Quest,
Speaker 7: like when they came out in ninety nine, But I
Speaker 7: never met Jeroby all this time, We've probably been in
Speaker 7: a million rooms together and never met. And I'm so
Speaker 7: lucky to count him as a friend now. But I
Speaker 7: get to tell his story in that book We're Clean.
Speaker 7: It's a great story. And his his story is about
Speaker 7: perfecting movements right, how he learned to stop wasting motion
Speaker 7: and to be really focused in the kitchen. And Jerobi
Speaker 7: actually came up with the science of the magic triangle,
Speaker 7: right man, that everything we do is basically a triangle,
Speaker 7: you know, and we're a circle within a triangle, and
Speaker 7: that's how we should arrange our space.
Speaker 1: Have you seen have you seen the founder the Michael
Speaker 1: Doug Michael Douglas, Michael Keaton knowing about McDonald's across you
Speaker 1: saw it? I seen it and almost broke my my
Speaker 1: uh my vegan run cheeseburger right after they talk about
Speaker 1: oh it's it's really good. It's like it's cold blood
Speaker 1: as fun but it's good.
Speaker 2: But they kind of the McDonald brothers they kind of
Speaker 2: were doing that, like the way they set up their
Speaker 2: original you know, McDonald's restaurant. It was based on you know,
Speaker 2: economy of movement like everything. It's funny to hear, like
Speaker 2: choreograph perfect it was. Yeah, it was really like a
Speaker 2: routine like the like they practiced in the court on
Speaker 2: the tennis court.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they practiced before they even got McDonald's, Like, okay,
Speaker 1: you do that most in that motion, like not even
Speaker 1: carrying anything. They were just practicing the body motion of
Speaker 1: how to get you once is off, they go here
Speaker 1: and then we switch and then like this ship is crazy.
Speaker 7: Y'all have like a quest love supreme movie night where
Speaker 7: y'all just go to the Marines together.
Speaker 1: We need just you know, I mean a book list,
Speaker 1: a movie night.
Speaker 2: Well, now we won't get the should we barely watch
Speaker 2: Uh we did watch what's called as a family kind
Speaker 2: of not sleep out with meis joint? Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah twice don't they watch that we did the musical lesson?
Speaker 1: Uh, that was good exactly. There's one that you one
Speaker 1: of their principles that really spoke to me. You talk
Speaker 1: about clean as you go.
Speaker 7: Very important.
Speaker 1: Talk about that one. Well.
Speaker 7: The science behind clean as you go is that anybody
Speaker 7: and create a system, like you decide you're going to
Speaker 7: organize your desk, right, and you spend two hours or
Speaker 7: three hours or a whole day organizing your space. And
Speaker 7: it's great, right, And it doesn't mean shit because unless
Speaker 7: you maintain a system, you can't keep a system. And
Speaker 7: the only way to maintain a system is to clean
Speaker 7: as you go, is to keep the system through motion.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 7: A system is not to be looked at, right, Oh,
Speaker 7: I've organized things. It's like, you know, the system is
Speaker 7: not a noun, it's a verb. Right, So you have
Speaker 7: to be able to move through things. So you have
Speaker 7: to make that commitment to you know, put things back
Speaker 7: where they go, right. And that doesn't just work for
Speaker 7: the physical world. It also works for the virtual world.
Speaker 7: It works for the emotional world, right, And it's just
Speaker 7: about taking that extra two seconds to put something away
Speaker 7: so that you're not costing yourself. You know, a minute
Speaker 7: or two later, or you know, making a real mistake.
Speaker 7: You know I did. One of the stories I tell
Speaker 7: that book is how my burn my I got like
Speaker 7: second degree burns on my hand because my dear wife
Speaker 7: put very hot pan down on top of the garbage
Speaker 7: can where hot pant is not supposed to go. Yeah,
Speaker 7: you know, and but it was my failure for not
Speaker 7: being aware. That's one of the principles is awareness. And
Speaker 7: you know she wasn't, you know, maintaining her system as
Speaker 7: she went. So we both had to learn from.
Speaker 1: How do you apply this to your life?
Speaker 2: Because I know you're like we like, I mean, you
Speaker 2: talk a lot about like meditation and stuff. You're like
Speaker 2: heavy into yoga orly you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: And you were telling me about like last time it
Speaker 1: was a it was like some kind of squat that
Speaker 1: you do that transfers the sexual energy out of your
Speaker 1: body so you don't be thinking about fucking these holes.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't remember the name of that squad,
Speaker 1: but it was no but he no, he was. He
Speaker 1: was giving me game for focus.
Speaker 6: I'm saying, I'm really real, I.
Speaker 1: Like everybody, So how do you applow this? Because I mean, dude,
Speaker 1: like from I know what life was like for me
Speaker 1: when we were working on the breaks, and I can
Speaker 1: only imagine what the fuck was like for you in
Speaker 1: between that and NYU and you know, family, how do
Speaker 1: you apply this to your life?
Speaker 7: I'm not perfect at it. I mean I have I
Speaker 7: do too much and I get sick, you know, and
Speaker 7: that's not good. You know, I got pneumonia last year.
Speaker 1: Like it was. It was bad, Yeah, damn.
Speaker 7: But uh, you know, for me, you know, one of
Speaker 7: the principles that's really helped me is, you know, the
Speaker 7: idea of what do you do? What do you choose
Speaker 7: to do first?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 7: And all of the systems of organization that are very
Speaker 7: popular talk about you do the worst first, right. Stephen
Speaker 7: Covey all of his books like talks about you put
Speaker 7: the big rocks in the jar first, not the small rocks,
Speaker 7: because the big rocks are what counting. If you don't
Speaker 7: get the big rocks in first, you know, and you
Speaker 7: put the small rocks in, how are you ever going
Speaker 7: to get the big rocks in?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 7: All that do the worst first, And the thing is
Speaker 7: you don't do.
Speaker 1: The worst first out that it takes it out of you,
Speaker 1: Like you don't do it else.
Speaker 7: For another reason is that chefs actually see the world
Speaker 7: in two separate, like parallel kinds of time. There's process
Speaker 7: time and then there's intensive time, right, processed hands on
Speaker 7: and hands off time essentially, right, something intensive like oh,
Speaker 7: I need to make a beat, or I need to
Speaker 7: write this essay, or I need to do whatever with
Speaker 7: my hands, right, you can't delegate that. You can't. You know,
Speaker 7: you have to be there. So three hours is worth
Speaker 7: three hours of you know, your work is worth three hours.
Speaker 7: But there are other things called that set processes in
Speaker 7: motion that you can do called process time. Like I
Speaker 7: need to make the rice for dinner, right, I can't
Speaker 7: do that at the end of it because it takes
Speaker 7: a while to make the rice, right, So I have
Speaker 7: to do it first. It only takes five seconds, but
Speaker 7: that five seconds is worth the you know, thirty minutes
Speaker 7: that it takes to make that rice. So sometimes you
Speaker 7: can't do the worst first. Sometimes you have to start
Speaker 7: processes so you can get hours of work for just minutes,
Speaker 7: hours of worth for just minutes of the minutes. That's
Speaker 7: how chefs think.
Speaker 1: Damn.
Speaker 7: So that's helped me.
Speaker 1: I gotta redo my book again. I feel inadequately.
Speaker 7: Now you're you're working on a box Wiley or something.
Speaker 1: I heard. Oh no, no, no, no, I did mind.
Speaker 1: I mean mine was more or less about the creative process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I bought both yos something the food about. I bought
Speaker 1: both y'alls on the same it's about the creative process.
Speaker 1: But I mean, yeah, you go to the ninth level
Speaker 1: of hell to get that these theories that I didn't
Speaker 1: even think about. Like, I'm just thinking that chefs are
Speaker 1: like musicians in their creative process, but you're taking it
Speaker 1: to a whole other level.
Speaker 6: It's still parallel. It's interesting because y'all too still went parallel.
Speaker 6: It's still the same. It's you know, the food, the music,
Speaker 6: the teaching, it rounds out. It's just interesting.
Speaker 1: That's what I learned. Well, we were about to wrap up,
Speaker 1: but I was about to say I learned that I
Speaker 1: really have a Yeah, who knew we look alike. We
Speaker 1: love Dylan and Prince and Prince bootlegs and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we both loved Bill Johnson, Bill Johnson unpaid Bill, and
Speaker 1: we have projects that use night on ball Ball by
Speaker 1: Bob James. No, no, it's so obvious that like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: tell him. Is that what we do is that this
Speaker 1: story end I totally forgot about.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, oh yes, give it to him.
Speaker 4: May give it he said, He said that he kind
Speaker 4: of gave it away.
Speaker 1: I did. I played it, Yeah, you played it good? Wow?
Speaker 1: I think I got it on my phone. I learned
Speaker 1: that Steve is the jazz master of the Circle. I
Speaker 1: just said, cheated late like he said it like an
Speaker 1: hour ago.
Speaker 7: All right, Well what he did with that beat, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Is the intro I play it I live. I think
Speaker 1: it was the intro is used because I never get
Speaker 1: past arrested development right, There's other parts of the song, no, but.
Speaker 7: I couldn't get past me. I said, how can anybody
Speaker 7: make anything not corny? This? Sorry?
Speaker 1: And I sent him. I was like, yo, I think
Speaker 1: this part is you know in prim us you were right,
Speaker 1: you were so right.
Speaker 7: And what makes it great is that prem also flips
Speaker 7: the NT drums. I think I think he uses the
Speaker 7: you know that right, the one that everybody likes.
Speaker 1: Because they originally I think the first draft of that
Speaker 1: song it was it was he he had used misdemeanor
Speaker 1: and at that time, I'm just like, well, you know,
Speaker 1: this is nineteen ninety so it's funky enough. Pretty much
Speaker 1: killed misdemeanor. So I was like, I don't think we
Speaker 1: could you know, use that, but uh but yeah, y'all
Speaker 1: take it into the next level. Even I would have
Speaker 1: let that slide. Yeah, I was like, nah, that's that's
Speaker 1: DC so but uh but nah. Man. So right now,
Speaker 1: how are your days spent? I mean it's it's, you know,
Speaker 1: teaching once the breaks is, once this season finishes, we
Speaker 1: get word on you know, season two Google, you know,
Speaker 1: one way or another. A. Yeah, if it's assuming it is,
Speaker 1: when do you go back?
Speaker 6: It is? It is?
Speaker 1: When do you go back into the writer's room next month?
Speaker 7: Ship?
Speaker 1: Are you serious? So get back to work, gran wake
Speaker 1: up call. Wow.
Speaker 7: I'm also working on a bit of a I told
Speaker 7: you a little project for Russell as well. Yeah, so
Speaker 7: you actually did hire me after all those years.
Speaker 1: I feel like, you say, a little project for Russell
Speaker 1: will be like Crush Groove two. All right, So, Dan,
Speaker 1: i'd like to thank you for doing our show.
Speaker 7: We appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Thank you, sir. It's very hard.
Speaker 7: I'm like, it's the normal length of the show. Y'all
Speaker 7: going to edit this down to like fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: This is Quest Love Supreme. We go along.
Speaker 7: This is.
Speaker 1: I mean Wow Yeah the Breaks. Check us out Monday
Speaker 1: nights nine eight Central on v H one every Monday. Yeah, nope,
Speaker 1: come come, I let us well, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: On behalf of the Question Love Supreme team, this is
Speaker 1: Quest Love apparently not the Bob Jeams expert. I thought
Speaker 1: I was h whatever. We will see you next week
Speaker 1: Wednesday at one pm with an all new episode of
Speaker 1: Question Love Supreme. All right, y'all next week. Court Love
Speaker 1: Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was
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