Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This is
Speaker 1: one of the moments where I don't even want to
Speaker 1: waste time, but I think I should say, first of all,
Speaker 1: if you don't know what you're listening to, this is
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme, your host Quest Love. I'm here with
Speaker 1: on pay Bill the Great.
Speaker 2: How you don't Bill fantastic?
Speaker 1: This is quite a day, Steve. How are you your home?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm home. I am on the East Coast. I
Speaker 3: don't have kids, so I just woke up.
Speaker 1: There you go, let's here, let's here for the child. Listen,
Speaker 1: cat dudes. All right. So one of the coolest things
Speaker 1: that I enjoy about my charmed life being the passenger
Speaker 1: seat of the first twenty years of recorded hip hop
Speaker 1: is also being witnessed to a lot of pioneering first
Speaker 1: and some thirty years ago on his fourth album, the
Speaker 1: late Keith Allen aka Guru instructed us on It's Hard
Speaker 1: to Earn album that it's mostly the voice. Mostly the voice.
Speaker 1: Our guest today is absolutely no exception. I will go
Speaker 1: on record and saying that our guest today probably possesses
Speaker 1: one of the greatest voices intonations. He's in my top
Speaker 1: ten favorite voices in all of hip hop, and kind
Speaker 1: of the Domino effect shows it, you know, when hip
Speaker 1: hop really came to an existence on Wax. At least,
Speaker 1: I feel like most MC's were kind of derivative of
Speaker 1: what we call the wonder Mike voice. Early Chucky was
Speaker 1: also that Meli Mel of course, ushered in the old MC,
Speaker 1: so they're you know your LL's, your your runs. Most
Speaker 1: will credit Mellie mel Is being the first authoritative Rah
Speaker 1: screaming MC. Of course, we can't forget Slick Rick's voice
Speaker 1: and his storytelling intonation and who he's inspired. Snooping down
Speaker 1: the line our Guest today is one of my favorite
Speaker 1: textures in hip hop. I don't know a thing for
Speaker 1: sort of animated nasal, whiny, high end above tenor below
Speaker 1: soprano voices. Not to mention the amount of history that
Speaker 1: Our Guest possesses today and these pioneering albums. As we speak,
Speaker 1: we're two years late of the thirty seventh anniversary of
Speaker 1: his debut album, Licensed to Ill. This is also the
Speaker 1: thirty fifth anniversary of his mind blowing sophomore album, Paul's Boutique,
Speaker 1: the thirty first anniversary of Check Your Head. I Can
Speaker 1: Go on and on.
Speaker 4: All right, it's been it's a lot of time. It's
Speaker 4: a lot of decades.
Speaker 1: Come on, dog, you listen to the show, you know
Speaker 1: each intro seventeen.
Speaker 4: Forty all right, all right again.
Speaker 1: Adam Harwinz aka King of Rock formerly still of the
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys, to cost Little of Supreme. When people talk
Speaker 1: of you, I know, they speak in terms of like
Speaker 1: lifetime achievement, awards, introductions. They just don't say. And our
Speaker 1: guest today is Adam harwinz the Beastie Boys. Like, did
Speaker 1: you imagine one day this would happen?
Speaker 4: Short answer, no, No, there was no plan, no thought,
Speaker 4: no nothing past. You know, what's the weekend?
Speaker 1: I will say for our audience that, first of all,
Speaker 1: one of my favorite all time audiobooks is is The
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys memoir, which I can't recommend enough if our
Speaker 1: audience isn't familiar with that book and how it's crafted
Speaker 1: the way, you know, it's almost like a hip hop
Speaker 1: version of Prairie Home Companion. So I'm actually going to
Speaker 1: spare this particular show of the kind of soup the
Speaker 1: nuts questions that I would normally ask on the show
Speaker 1: that's been covered in other interviews and also been thoroughly
Speaker 1: covered in the book. But there's a lot of in
Speaker 1: between the cracks that I'm curious about. So where are
Speaker 1: you speaking to us now from.
Speaker 4: I'm in the mountains. I have a cabin a studio
Speaker 4: smart in California.
Speaker 1: Without giving you a way, is this the uh everyone's
Speaker 1: recommending to me? Wherever Stevie Wonder took that photo in
Speaker 1: talking book? It begins with the letter E. It's like
Speaker 1: the mountains of It's like an hour north.
Speaker 4: Of LA I don't know, but it's that.
Speaker 1: I'm about to say air one, but that's the supermarket.
Speaker 4: I'm up in the mountain. Here we get there's bears
Speaker 4: andcats and stuff.
Speaker 1: So what I was going to ask, is the mountains
Speaker 1: more serene for you? Is that?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: Why that location?
Speaker 4: Just it's not at my house. It's a different place.
Speaker 4: It's my own space.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you don't like to shit where you eat
Speaker 1: as far as creativity is concerned, you want to go
Speaker 1: to a place to be creative or not.
Speaker 4: I'll eat wherever and I'll ship wherever. That's not you know,
Speaker 4: I'm fine shitting and eating.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: It was COVID, you know, like you know, we were
Speaker 4: just all together so much that I want to get
Speaker 4: my own little space smart. I was lucky enough to
Speaker 4: get my own little space, A little smart.
Speaker 1: There you go. Sometimes you need your own real man cave.
Speaker 4: I get you, I get you, or nap zone, whatever
Speaker 4: you want to call it.
Speaker 1: Hey dog, I get it. And you know the fact
Speaker 1: that you two are still a unit speaks volumes. That's
Speaker 1: why sometimes space is important. I get that. What was
Speaker 1: your first musical memory?
Speaker 4: My first musical memory? My memory is very bad, but yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, driving in the vw vand with my dad
Speaker 4: and my brother and sister and my dad would just
Speaker 4: blast music eight tracks always and sing along really loud.
Speaker 1: And it were you allowed to curate the selections or
Speaker 1: was it like don't touch my stereo?
Speaker 4: No, no, no. He would drive, he'd you know, be driving
Speaker 4: really fast and be reaching for the eight tracks and
Speaker 4: trying to push you know, the one, two, three four thing.
Speaker 4: And that's when I really got into music as a
Speaker 4: little kid, especially from the radio. But I also knew.
Speaker 4: I was like, what is it? What's the deal with
Speaker 4: Neil Young? Like my dad would scream sing Neil Young songs?
Speaker 1: Got it? Okay?
Speaker 4: It's a tough thing. To listen to. It's like a
Speaker 4: five year old.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I was gonna say that. I two lived
Speaker 1: in a don't touch my stereo household, so a lot
Speaker 1: of the music that I went touch with a ten
Speaker 1: foot pole suddenly you know, you know, I'll give you
Speaker 1: a great example. So my dad was like pre pre
Speaker 1: yacht rock, free am radio pop, like he liked vocals
Speaker 1: like Johnny Mathis, Barbara Streisan, Nat King Cole, anyone that
Speaker 1: flexed harmony as well. So we have pet sounds in
Speaker 1: the house, but I'd never touch it right. And then
Speaker 1: when I read a review that wasn't the Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: Lever review Paul's Boutique, someone said, oh, this is Sergeant Pepper.
Speaker 1: He's like, I disagree. This is the pet Sounds of
Speaker 1: hip hop. There's more pioneering. And I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: dad has that record. So actually, like Paul's Boutique opened
Speaker 1: my mind to something I would otherwise resist before the
Speaker 1: age of eighteen, I'm now open to. So I'll ask you, like,
Speaker 1: because if you're listening to all of the music that
Speaker 1: you guys and all your refer and if you're familiar
Speaker 1: with the rapid fire way that you guys craft records.
Speaker 1: I would have thought that coming out the wound, that
Speaker 1: you guys were just like music savants that you know,
Speaker 1: grew up with the pedigree at the age of one
Speaker 1: of all this music. So I might have believed that
Speaker 1: at least with the first ten years of your life
Speaker 1: is more like force learning or Stockholm syndrome.
Speaker 4: Like no, no, no, no. So so that's an ingrained memory,
Speaker 4: you asked, like, my first memory, that's an ingrain. It's
Speaker 4: not it's not a pleasant one, but it it's a memory.
Speaker 4: But I have an older brother and sister, and this
Speaker 4: is you know, early seventies, when forty fives, you know,
Speaker 4: forty fives and I and the AM radio. It was
Speaker 4: a certain time in the radio where it wasn't like
Speaker 4: this type of music was played on this station. This
Speaker 4: type was played on this station. That you know, the
Speaker 4: music being made in the early seventies was a little
Speaker 4: taste of all of this different stuff, right, And you know,
Speaker 4: the radio kind of reflected that for a minute, and
Speaker 4: we had a sort of lesson from the radio for
Speaker 4: a very brief time. And also, growing up in New
Speaker 4: York City, just walking down the street, you hear so
Speaker 4: much different music that you're you're being taught every day.
Speaker 1: Okay, I would say probably in my mind, you're one
Speaker 1: of the figures I think of whenever someone's talking about
Speaker 1: the folklore of what New York City used to be
Speaker 1: or what New York City was. In your mind, what
Speaker 1: is the best version of New York City that we'll
Speaker 1: never get back.
Speaker 4: You can't ask a fifty eight year old that question,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying, because I don't go to clubs,
Speaker 4: I don't go to parties, and shit, do you know
Speaker 4: what I'm saying. Like when I was, you know, in
Speaker 4: my teens and twenties, I was out all the time
Speaker 4: having fun, doing this that and the other, running around
Speaker 4: rooftop parties, this that and the other. You know what
Speaker 4: I mean. And now you know I love my life,
Speaker 4: but it's a different light. So if you put me
Speaker 4: at a rooftop party with a bunch of twenty year
Speaker 4: olds right now, it's not for me.
Speaker 1: Right now, smart answer.
Speaker 4: In my twenties, Yes, I'm at the rooftop party. I
Speaker 4: got a forty. I'm having the best time right now, fifty.
Speaker 4: I have fifty eight. I have a Knicks game on,
Speaker 4: I got a chicken parmesan and I'm good. So those
Speaker 4: are those are my two happy places?
Speaker 2: Forty or Chicken parm one or the other done and
Speaker 2: done buggae.
Speaker 1: I think for me, though, the one thing that I
Speaker 1: miss more than anything is just I mean, there was
Speaker 1: a period in which, like whatever the equivalent of the
Speaker 1: best orgasm you ever had, like music did that to me,
Speaker 1: not daily, but weekly, like it was a guarantee that
Speaker 1: four to five songs were going to be played. That
Speaker 1: just made you like, holy shit, what the fuck is this?
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's replaced with you know, someone does something really
Speaker 1: cool on Instagram and I'm like, oh, that's dope. But
Speaker 1: for me, it's I think I'm more or less asking
Speaker 1: because music is so central to your life, and I
Speaker 1: know you're a serious record collector. Do you miss the
Speaker 1: time of which you were discovering music as opposed to
Speaker 1: where you are now, which is like a know it
Speaker 1: all expert of music?
Speaker 4: Again asking if any grown up is really it's just
Speaker 4: it's a different time of life, do you know what
Speaker 4: I mean? I do I listen to my old records,
Speaker 4: not that much. I have them, and I used to
Speaker 4: listen to them. I don't really listen to him that much,
Speaker 4: am I jaded in terms of music, and you know
Speaker 4: all types of arts, Like you see a band or
Speaker 4: a performer and you're like, yeah, I know what that is.
Speaker 4: I don't really like it. And you don't really give
Speaker 4: that a chance because you're you've heard it a thousand
Speaker 4: times or so you think that makes sense. Yeah, And
Speaker 4: so as you get older, the sad thing is that
Speaker 4: you end up cutting yourself off to that type of experience.
Speaker 4: That's just what happens.
Speaker 1: So are you still open?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: Okay, I.
Speaker 4: Couldn't care less.
Speaker 3: It's open to chicken palms.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I mean, Like I had, you know,
Speaker 4: like I could get the Interest Mohammed record right now,
Speaker 4: and I'm telling you it would be just as good
Speaker 4: as not better. I could get a meters record. It
Speaker 4: would be just as good as not better than whatever. Whatever.
Speaker 4: Maybe that's me, but maybe that's fifty eight year olds.
Speaker 1: So what I do now, I'll pick like maybe there's
Speaker 1: always three to five kids or maybe three to five
Speaker 1: parents that will put me hip to their kids and
Speaker 1: the kids like curiosity of record collecting. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'll usually around this time, I'll do my Santa quest
Speaker 1: stick and I'll just so that gonna, I can have
Speaker 1: an excuse to go record shopping and go digging, like
Speaker 1: I gotta do that. So I'm not doing it for me,
Speaker 1: but I'll record shop for you know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: eight to ten year olds. Now, you know, come to
Speaker 1: Christmas Day, they're going to have like an amazing record
Speaker 1: collection to start on. So I was shopping yesterday. My
Speaker 1: main spot is a one Records in the village, and
Speaker 1: you know, there's always someone on the turntables just playing
Speaker 1: like something cool whatever. And this guy's playing side to
Speaker 1: of the Ohio players, mister mean album, an album that
Speaker 1: I otherwise would have passed up owned. But I realized
Speaker 1: in going through all the alphabet and him letting it
Speaker 1: play that Yo, I've been listening to records from the
Speaker 1: hip hop standpoint, where you know, in the very beginning,
Speaker 1: in such a rush for that, you know, dopamine of
Speaker 1: where's the break or where's those four bars? I need
Speaker 1: listening to it on forty five or just perusing through
Speaker 1: it and that sort of thing. And I realized that
Speaker 1: I stop listening to records just as records without a
Speaker 1: purpose of this is going to inspire me to write
Speaker 1: a song or go to DJ this next week, And
Speaker 1: so now I realize I got to go through my
Speaker 1: entire collection again just to go back to my childhood
Speaker 1: before hip hop existed. Like when you listen to records
Speaker 1: now is it? I'm certain in post eighty nine you
Speaker 1: were listening to records for what's going to help build
Speaker 1: the machine of my art, But for now, how do
Speaker 1: you records? Like are you still in that place where.
Speaker 4: There's a few things that I want to say that
Speaker 4: happened real quick, because there's a lot we just discussed. Yes,
Speaker 4: So I play softball with my friends right and to
Speaker 4: old people, and we all bring our kids, and some
Speaker 4: of the kids play. And my friend's kid Nat Show.
Speaker 4: He's nine, and we have walk up everybody have to
Speaker 4: pick a walk up song before you play softball. The
Speaker 4: kid played Travis Scott Fiend Fiend or whatever, and me
Speaker 4: and my friend and it's blasting, and I'm like, I
Speaker 4: was like, this is what parents must have thought when
Speaker 4: people were listening to Slayer, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It's like just this thing that was like, I don't
Speaker 4: you know, this is not for me. It's not for me.
Speaker 4: And I think that's okay for me. At least I've
Speaker 4: accepted that, you know, it's not for me, it's not
Speaker 4: made for me. I can like it or not, like whatever,
Speaker 4: it's I'm kind of irrelevant from that group of people
Speaker 4: that are listening to that. To modern music, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Also listening to when you hear Ohio Players, you're like,
Speaker 4: bunt you worm players ball and you know all of
Speaker 4: their songs. You're like, you know, mister Mean was like
Speaker 4: a later record. It's okay, it's not I wouldn't put
Speaker 4: that on. And so the time that you have in
Speaker 4: a day to pick a record out from all the
Speaker 4: records you have, you're not gonna pick mister mean. Makes sense.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, in our early years we
Speaker 4: listen to songs, We listen to music, That's what we did.
Speaker 4: And then when we started record shopping in terms of
Speaker 4: sampling and all of that, we didn't really listen to music,
Speaker 4: do you know what I mean. It was like mathematical,
Speaker 4: it was a hobby. It was a thing, and it
Speaker 4: was all of that needle dropping and trying to find
Speaker 4: the thing and cool and then you made something from that,
Speaker 4: which is great. But now I don't do that anymore,
Speaker 4: and so I just actually listened to my.
Speaker 1: Records and do you let it go all the way through? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean we now live in a time in which
Speaker 1: the remote post remote control shuffle culture, you just skip
Speaker 1: to the part you like, again, the dopamine rush of it.
Speaker 4: There's also the thing of if you listen to something
Speaker 4: on a platform, you know, Spotify, one of those things,
Speaker 4: then it plays the song that you want to listen to,
Speaker 4: and that starts playing all this algorithm shit and then
Speaker 4: all the next thing you know, you're listening to fucking
Speaker 4: Tom Petty or some shit. You're like, this is not
Speaker 4: what I started out with. I don't want this.
Speaker 1: Just saying so you're primarily a wax person, Like what's
Speaker 1: your weapon or choice as far as how you consume music.
Speaker 4: That's it. But but yes, the downside of it is
Speaker 4: that you only listen to things you already know. So
Speaker 4: I'm not listening trying to find new music very occasionally,
Speaker 4: but not so much. Okay, all of the music, you know,
Speaker 4: it's sort of stopped at a certain year or time.
Speaker 4: Dub records are my favorite, right, So I'll put on
Speaker 4: Prince Jasbo and then you know, how are forty five
Speaker 4: minutes have gone by and I've listened to that record,
Speaker 4: and then I listened to Lee Perry record, and then
Speaker 4: so I'm not listening for the newer record. But the
Speaker 4: drawback is that you kind of you're stuck in the
Speaker 4: past of you only need things, you know.
Speaker 1: I specifically want to hone in on your creativity in
Speaker 1: the world of hip hop. I would think that some
Speaker 1: of my peers that are hip hop experts know that
Speaker 1: you have aded in creating the very first twelve inch
Speaker 1: for def Jam, which is you programmed the eight to
Speaker 1: weight and telarox. It's yours correct, No, the world things
Speaker 1: that you helped do that.
Speaker 4: No, Rick Rubin did that. I'm I was at the
Speaker 4: recording and I'm in the party track in the background.
Speaker 1: See you're the d like it. Yeah, yeah, you're the crowd. Okay.
Speaker 4: The story is l LL's first single.
Speaker 1: I made the beat for, So you made a beat
Speaker 1: for I need a beat.
Speaker 4: I made the beat that he needed.
Speaker 1: Yeah. That's even more pioneering because I don't even think
Speaker 1: LLL told me that story. Oh shit, Okay, I thought
Speaker 1: it was it's yours, my bet. So what was the
Speaker 1: day that you guys collectively said that, Okay, we need
Speaker 1: to sort of morph or pivot more to hip hop,
Speaker 1: Like what was the seed? That was Planet That was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we can either travel this punk way or we can
Speaker 1: try another route. Like what how did that happen?
Speaker 4: I don't know how it exactly happened, but we were
Speaker 4: a hardcore band playing you know, hardcore shows, punk shows,
Speaker 4: and the scene was changing, right the hardcore scene. It
Speaker 4: was getting into like a real tough guy thing, and
Speaker 4: we were feeling sort of we didn't want to be
Speaker 4: part of it. We were kind of edging out of
Speaker 4: that scene. But we were also listening to rap a
Speaker 4: lot of rap music at the time.
Speaker 1: Wait, you cannot stop you one second. So you're saying
Speaker 1: that at one point the punk scene was a more
Speaker 1: pure for us.
Speaker 4: We were you know, as kids. It was like we
Speaker 4: had a little we had our little group of friends
Speaker 4: and you know, it was we were teenagers, boys and girls,
Speaker 4: and it wasn't the thing. And then hardcore show started.
Speaker 4: You would see like the guy from the football team
Speaker 4: at school would be at the hardcore show and you'd
Speaker 4: be like, what's you know, they were just making fun
Speaker 4: of him.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that you had a bridge and tunnel
Speaker 1: kind of that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Started issue Okay, so we wanted to do something different
Speaker 4: and our music started. The music. We stopped kind of
Speaker 4: playing so much hardcore where were started experimenting with different
Speaker 4: music and then we just I don't know, we had
Speaker 4: a show oh jumping a little bit after we wanted
Speaker 4: to try it. But we had met this guy Rick Rubin,
Speaker 4: and because we were gonna do a show, we wanted
Speaker 4: a bubble machine for the show. And my friend Nick
Speaker 4: Cooper was like, oh, I know this guy Rick Rubin
Speaker 4: has access to a bubble machine, and so we need
Speaker 4: him to get the bubble machine. And we saw he
Speaker 4: had turntables and he was a DJ, and we're like,
Speaker 4: oh shit, let's we got the show. Do you want
Speaker 4: to try to you know, to rap?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: So we just kind of did that and he brought
Speaker 4: his turntables and it was fun and we did We
Speaker 4: did like, you know, twenty minutes of hardcore songs and
Speaker 4: then like fifteen minutes of rap.
Speaker 1: Was the audience throwing off.
Speaker 4: I mean there was like maybe thirty people there.
Speaker 1: Maybe the less people the more hard it is, like
Speaker 1: is more intimate, So.
Speaker 4: Yes, being booed by thousands is easy.
Speaker 1: It kind of is. I was booed by thousands before.
Speaker 1: But it's way harder than like the fear of me
Speaker 1: comes if I'm playing under if it's under two hundred people,
Speaker 1: like if it's Blue Note size or Village Vanguard size,
Speaker 1: I'm scared out of my mind. But any other place
Speaker 1: I can just channel them out. So well, obviously, I mean,
Speaker 1: it went good enough for you guys to say, like,
Speaker 1: let's do it again. But what's the point in which
Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, this is what we're gonna do for real.
Speaker 4: I don't know, you know, so long ago we then
Speaker 4: we're playing shows and we were doing that, and then
Speaker 4: Rick had his record label. He wanted to try to
Speaker 4: make that, like he wanted to put out rap records
Speaker 4: because he had already had Deaf Jam. He had a
Speaker 4: he had like a noise art band called Hose, and
Speaker 4: he put out his own record under deaf Jam. Got
Speaker 4: he wanted to you know, partner with somebody and make
Speaker 4: rap records, and so he met we We were all
Speaker 4: at this club dan Seyria, and he had a meeting
Speaker 4: with this guy, Russell Simmons. He was Run's brother and
Speaker 4: Running the Thing's manager, and we were excited.
Speaker 2: Was Rick Riggins pursuing always what we know it is
Speaker 2: to now.
Speaker 4: I don't know him now, so I wouldn't know. He
Speaker 4: was really into wrestling, so he wanted He was very
Speaker 4: loud and like that kind of like over the top
Speaker 4: wrestling guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't think he was going back then. He's been
Speaker 1: on our show, so he's very's in.
Speaker 4: That's very not at all what he was like when
Speaker 4: I knew him.
Speaker 1: Got It, Got It, Beastie Groove one. Can you were
Speaker 1: you there at all when the Latin Rascals were doing
Speaker 1: edits for you?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right? Can you just explain that whole entire process, because.
Speaker 4: Somehow we ended up at Shakedown Studios, which is Arthur
Speaker 4: Baker's studio, and Arthur Baker made Planet Rock. He did
Speaker 4: like he made a couple of really big records right
Speaker 4: and remixed in the eighties, and he had these guys,
Speaker 4: the Latin Rascals who would do his edits.
Speaker 1: And the edit. They're under his tutelage.
Speaker 4: They well, they worked at Shakedown Studios and he yeo yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh god dog, we gotta get author on the
Speaker 1: show Man.
Speaker 4: And I know this because Adam Yao worked at Shakedown
Speaker 4: Studios at that time he was a gopher. He would
Speaker 4: go get the you know with the sodas or whatever,
Speaker 4: you know, whatever sandwiches for the Latin rascals.
Speaker 1: Ah.
Speaker 4: And these guys they were in like a closet sized
Speaker 4: little side studio at shakedown with just you know, two
Speaker 4: reel turreels and they were taking you know, just the
Speaker 4: razor blade and the tape and they would just cut
Speaker 4: this little fraction of word and cut it and then
Speaker 4: you know, splice it, tape it in and then re
Speaker 4: record it and then tape another one, then splice that
Speaker 4: and tape it on to the next one, and it'd
Speaker 4: be like bla bla blah. They would literally do that
Speaker 4: with tape. It was crazy.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: You're saying to me that on BC grus or parties
Speaker 1: getting rough when you guys are like, ah, all that
Speaker 1: stuff is handstopped. It's so they would have to make
Speaker 1: like ten copies of a song.
Speaker 4: Forever, for hours and hours and hours, and if you
Speaker 4: splice the tape wrong, well, oh well I don't know
Speaker 4: what you're gonna do. So they were so precise and
Speaker 4: so talented at what they did. Nobody could fuck with them.
Speaker 4: They were so good at Latin rascals. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: a thing that you can't even understand. Now what the
Speaker 4: thing of slicing tape was the idea of Slidestone taking
Speaker 4: a two inch tape his song and just slicing it
Speaker 4: is crazy. You would never do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So just having finished his dock and getting privy
Speaker 1: to his master reels and all that stuff. I was
Speaker 1: rather shocked at how air quote hip hop sly really was,
Speaker 1: especially with Loose Booty, which I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: post Riot stuff was just him sampling himself and you know,
Speaker 1: like to hear the original jam sessions those things came from,
Speaker 1: and then.
Speaker 4: Then those to me whenever you feel like it, I
Speaker 4: would like to have those.
Speaker 1: I got Yo. You'll you'll be You'll be shocked. Probably
Speaker 1: the biggest revelation that so much in the movie that
Speaker 1: we had to take a lot out, and a lot
Speaker 1: that we had to take out was the just the
Speaker 1: nerdy stuff. Uh. There's a period there's a moment during
Speaker 1: Fresh there's at least four songs in which the only
Speaker 1: way I can describe it is it's almost like he
Speaker 1: had Fela's army assault, Like there's a baby's making babies.
Speaker 1: There's a a bloated version of a skin I'm in Like,
Speaker 1: at one point Fresh was going to be just like
Speaker 1: a just a sonic assault of like at least with
Speaker 1: Specter's Wall of Sound thing. It was side of a compressed.
Speaker 4: To have like four drummers playing at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yes, dude, I was like, okay, dude, it was her
Speaker 1: pat rizzo, like all right, beyond forty eight, but go ahead, no,
Speaker 1: it was over. I mean what we wound up with
Speaker 1: was the better record stripped down. But the initial Fresh sessions,
Speaker 1: like four of those songs were just like just an
Speaker 1: army of the.
Speaker 4: Brothers beat where there's two drummers playing.
Speaker 1: Oh, get into it so good? Yeah, yeah, yeah, get
Speaker 1: into it. Okay, just two getting into it. Yeah two. Now,
Speaker 1: this this.
Speaker 4: One is full the Niagara beat.
Speaker 1: I'm familiar with it.
Speaker 4: That's two drummers. That's a good one of each other. Okay, wow, okay. Oh.
Speaker 4: Also in Dante Carfona No Hit Me to It, I
Speaker 4: was on tour in we were on tour in ninety eight.
Speaker 4: We had the day off. I want to find a
Speaker 4: record store for record stores. Okay, I think this this
Speaker 4: whole thing is in the book, is in bac Boys book.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 4: We had a day off and I went through the
Speaker 4: Yellow Pages and I found like all the used record stores,
Speaker 4: and I took a cab to the first one and
Speaker 4: I go in the record store and there's some some
Speaker 4: records playing whatever, and I'm flipping through. It's a huge
Speaker 4: record store, and all of a sudden, I hear something
Speaker 4: that I'd never heard before, some breakbead and some crazy
Speaker 4: like some crazy shit. And there's nobody in the store
Speaker 4: and it's like ten in the morning, and I'm trying
Speaker 4: to look and I see this guy in the back
Speaker 4: at the turntable behind the counter, and he's like pointing
Speaker 4: at me and looking at me and laughing, and I
Speaker 4: go right over to him. We start talking blah blah blahh.
Speaker 4: He's like, my name's Dante. He's like, I work here,
Speaker 4: but I'm the one who buys the records when people
Speaker 4: sell a record, so I sift through them before anybody
Speaker 4: else says. And he's like, I'm gonna go want break
Speaker 4: in an hour, Let's hang out. And I went to
Speaker 4: his house and he just played me these records that
Speaker 4: I've never heard before. Since he is a record collector,
Speaker 4: he's put out tons of compilations. I can't even begin
Speaker 4: Dante Carfona. I'm I'm surprised you don't know him.
Speaker 1: Hey man, I'm not to know at all. I'm the student.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to give his little shout out because
Speaker 4: he's amazing. Okay, a couple of records and having the
Speaker 4: good stuff. There you go blaming. I agree. He's like
Speaker 4: you ever heard this? I was like, no, never heard this?
Speaker 4: Wow that I still get excited about hearing a break
Speaker 4: that I've never heard before.
Speaker 1: And do you still go in those missions?
Speaker 4: I've got like twenty five hundred records I've never listened
Speaker 4: to in crates that just say listen.
Speaker 1: To right your record. So yeah, I mean that's kind
Speaker 1: of where I am now, where I don't necessarily go.
Speaker 1: I'm digging as much as I used to. Now it's
Speaker 1: the first generation of record collectors dying. So I'll get
Speaker 1: a lot of calls from daughters that are like, hey,
Speaker 1: dad had a seven thousand records, do you want them? Or?
Speaker 1: Sadly enough, a lot of colleges are ending their jazz
Speaker 1: programs right, radio stations shutting down, so like, I know, oh,
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand records, that's a lot of records quest
Speaker 1: but I don't want people thinking like I'm going to
Speaker 1: record store. First of all, I don't think there's two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand individual good albums. I mean, you know, I
Speaker 1: have at least three hundred Billy Jean forty fives. So
Speaker 1: like kind of the new thing now is whoever would
Speaker 1: service jukeboxes at diners and bars and whatnot, they would
Speaker 1: have a warehouse or that sort of space where all
Speaker 1: of their forty fives and that they were serviced to
Speaker 1: mom and pop stores. Those people are dying and you know,
Speaker 1: either the mom has passed and the kids are just like,
Speaker 1: we don't know what to do with it. Whirred. Do
Speaker 1: you like music? You know, it's fourteen forty fives if
Speaker 1: you want them, So right now I'm kind of hoarding,
Speaker 1: uh record collections.
Speaker 4: But all right, two things, Yeah, do you miss the
Speaker 4: good old days when people sold their records for drugs?
Speaker 4: I mean, come on, you know and two three hundred
Speaker 4: copies of a Billy Jean forty five? Why what are
Speaker 4: you doing?
Speaker 1: Well? No, I buy collections again. Like there's a guy
Speaker 1: in Atlanta three hundred is like what well, why I
Speaker 1: realized after the fact, you know like it'll.
Speaker 4: Oh my third thing, yes, which lids to a fourth thing.
Speaker 4: You live in New York storage, Like you're bleeding money,
Speaker 4: just bleeding money. Why are you going to a one
Speaker 4: it's like the most expensive record store. What are you doing?
Speaker 1: Because I need some to do?
Speaker 4: Yo.
Speaker 2: You always complained about how busy you are, you need
Speaker 2: something to do. Now that seems like bullshit.
Speaker 1: I almost feel like listening to the record is almost
Speaker 1: like the last part. Like for me, the excitement of
Speaker 1: all right, I'm gonna take three hours out and go
Speaker 1: record shopping. I get the joy of going to a
Speaker 1: record store and buying a shit little records and I'll
Speaker 1: take this that this is. I could easily go in
Speaker 1: my storage and do that. But you're right, so right
Speaker 1: now I brought in the pandemic a farm and I
Speaker 1: will on this acreage build something that will house and
Speaker 1: store this. But right now, yeah, I got like somewhere
Speaker 1: between eight to eleven storage units, and it's killing me inside.
Speaker 3: Like in your defense question, though Billy Jean is a
Speaker 3: very important record, I.
Speaker 1: Was given a hypothetical example, but yeah, the forty five's
Speaker 1: I buy are from people that were servicing jukeboxes, like
Speaker 1: back in the day, you buy like seventy eight juke boxes,
Speaker 1: go to each restaurant, Hey, you want a jukebox, and
Speaker 1: then you strike a deal and you service. This particular
Speaker 1: guy in Atlanta had ninety over ninety bars and diners
Speaker 1: that his jukeboxes were utilized.
Speaker 3: So that's the trick for when you get older and
Speaker 3: you're a record collector is to switch over to forty
Speaker 3: fives seven inches. They're smaller, lighter, and just as fun.
Speaker 4: Well I consider that part of I much prefer forty
Speaker 4: five too in LP.
Speaker 1: So right now, I would say the first generation of
Speaker 1: renaissance hip hop producers, your large professors, your Diamond D's,
Speaker 1: your Lord Finess's, they're in their anti Serado phase and
Speaker 1: like forty five's only I mean, it's a cool flex.
Speaker 1: Like I've never been one of those, Like I don't
Speaker 1: own a Macintosh.
Speaker 2: I'm not.
Speaker 1: Like, Yes, I acknowledge that the the vinyl is more superior,
Speaker 1: but I've never been a vinyl head that like worships
Speaker 1: at the altar of the most purest form of.
Speaker 4: Well, the thing about it is nobody else cares.
Speaker 1: Exactly exactly, So it's only a flex for the quest
Speaker 1: loves of Uh.
Speaker 4: There's three people in the room out of you know whatever,
Speaker 4: two hundred and fifty that care about that. You're playing
Speaker 4: a forty five time out?
Speaker 1: Timeout.
Speaker 4: Oh I have a timeout too, Go ahead. Yeah. I
Speaker 4: wanted to go back to this though. Yeah, go to memories,
Speaker 4: and I'm bummed because I didn't. I wanted to get
Speaker 4: here earlier to go through my forty fives. I have
Speaker 4: a stack of forty five's that were my mind when
Speaker 4: I was a kid, and because me and my brother
Speaker 4: had the room, I used to put every forty five
Speaker 4: that I bought, I put a number on and my
Speaker 4: initials when I was like seven years old. So I
Speaker 4: have like one to fifty of my first fifty forty five's.
Speaker 1: See you never got rhythm, no, no.
Speaker 4: But I have not gone back, and I wanted to
Speaker 4: do it for this to look to see which was
Speaker 4: the first one to get. What was I don't know
Speaker 4: the first album I ever bought, But I don't know
Speaker 4: the first forty five, and I wish I could remember
Speaker 4: because it literally has a number on it.
Speaker 1: What's the first album you ever purchased?
Speaker 4: Well, the first album I ever got. I was with
Speaker 4: my dad in the VW van. He had to stop
Speaker 4: and we're getting sandwiches, and he ran into like this
Speaker 4: thrift store real quick and it's like I'll be right back,
Speaker 4: and he came back out with Rolling Stones Out of
Speaker 4: Our Head, Out of Our Head album, like here, you
Speaker 4: should have this. And I didn't have a record player
Speaker 4: or anything. I was like okay. And then when I
Speaker 4: got a record player and was listening to records, the
Speaker 4: first record I bought album with my own money was
Speaker 4: the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack. That's a stretch like.
Speaker 1: There you go, all right, that's you need more?
Speaker 2: That's well, just because you liked the show, just because
Speaker 2: it was there.
Speaker 4: It was just a phenomenon in New York at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 4: I think I hadn't seen it yet because I was
Speaker 4: too young, but it was right in my neighborhood where
Speaker 4: they would it would, they'd line up on the street
Speaker 4: to see it, and it's like a big deal.
Speaker 1: Another thing I want to know is at the time
Speaker 1: when you guys were first recording, was there an immediate
Speaker 1: plan to make a full album? Like why did it
Speaker 1: take three years for you guys to finally get license?
Speaker 1: Still a little out of.
Speaker 4: There, I don't know you know, like you'd asked if
Speaker 4: I would have seen this coming, like where I'm at
Speaker 4: now or all of the stuff that's happened. Like I
Speaker 4: was a teenager, you know, I was still in school.
Speaker 4: I was going to high school, and you know, we
Speaker 4: made a couple of singles. I didn't I didn't know
Speaker 4: that we were going to keep doing this. I didn't
Speaker 4: know that we were going to stop doing it. But
Speaker 4: I didn't know. I didn't know, like anybody who had
Speaker 4: an album, but you know, the bad brains, But like
Speaker 4: I didn't you know, it wasn't a just made some singles.
Speaker 4: I didn't know that it was a bigger thing was
Speaker 4: gonna happen, and I was cool with it. We were
Speaker 4: playing shows. I had a little money. I'd never had
Speaker 4: that before, so I was like I could buy tapes.
Speaker 4: That was cool.
Speaker 1: I know. The legend of the story is that that
Speaker 1: Freddie Demand wanted run DMC to open up for Madonna.
Speaker 1: But you know, the amount of money that they were
Speaker 1: willing to pay for an opening act was way below
Speaker 1: run DMC's market price, And then they would I guess
Speaker 1: they asked Russell if he knew the Fat Boys or
Speaker 1: could get them, and instead he pivoted them to you guys.
Speaker 1: But what I always wanted to know was, Okay, So
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five, yeah, with just won twelve inch,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you two, if you count the Bazoodi
Speaker 1: MCA thing, and there's season on it, so maybe with
Speaker 1: just two and a half singles exactly.
Speaker 4: Cookie Puss and Polly Watch do we had a few
Speaker 4: little records out.
Speaker 1: I was gonna ask what was the show like if
Speaker 1: you had no album behind it? Like, how long was
Speaker 1: the slot? Were you doing? Like a half hour? Forty
Speaker 1: five minutes? Ten?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So all we had ten minutes.
Speaker 4: I mean, it couldn't have been more than ten. I
Speaker 4: don't know what we would have done for longer than
Speaker 4: ten minutes. All of the hits, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would imagine for a lot of that audience that
Speaker 1: was their first hip hop experience.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Sure, And it goes back to the Rick Rubin
Speaker 4: wrestler thing. And so when we were like getting ready
Speaker 4: to go on the tour, We're like, what are we
Speaker 4: gonna do? We've never really done a show at like
Speaker 4: an amphitheater or anything like that, so we were trying
Speaker 4: to figure out what to do whenever. So Rick was
Speaker 4: very involved with that.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: He was like, you have to do like wrestler stuff
Speaker 4: where you have to like fuck with the audience and
Speaker 4: just be an asshole, and you know you're gonna.
Speaker 1: You know, he wanted you to be a provocateur.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely, yeah, I didn't know you walk into the
Speaker 4: Paramount Theater and be like, I'm the King of the
Speaker 4: Paramount anybody. You know, they could burn this place down
Speaker 4: after we leave, you know all that stuff. What's the
Speaker 4: Eddie Harris record one of my favorite albums of all
Speaker 4: time where he's talking in between the songs. Oh that's
Speaker 4: why I'm talking shit, Eddie Harris.
Speaker 1: Okay, fucking great, and that's that was your modus operandi four.
Speaker 4: I hadn't heard that record yet, but it's that type
Speaker 4: of thing where I got it. Just fuck it. And
Speaker 4: they did not want that at all. It was little
Speaker 4: kids and their parents to see Madonna.
Speaker 2: This.
Speaker 4: It was just be major thing was her.
Speaker 1: Can't worried at all, like, oh, we might have chosen
Speaker 1: them wrong. Actor.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they wanted to kick us off the tour after
Speaker 4: like the second.
Speaker 1: Showy, but you did the entire show.
Speaker 4: Madonna was like, no, keep them, they're great Madonna's I
Speaker 4: Love Madonna's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Great person. Yes, okay, so you guys were sort of
Speaker 1: our first experience and I was wondering that as well. Like, okay,
Speaker 1: we had basically been living in Europe for the longest
Speaker 1: and us coming back to the States to start the
Speaker 1: second half of Ill Communication tour, and you know, at
Speaker 1: this point, I wasn't fully aware if you know, the
Speaker 1: audience would be with it or not with it. And
Speaker 1: you had us going on in between Atari Teenage Riot
Speaker 1: and John Spencer's Oh Dog a Tari Teenage Riot and
Speaker 1: John Spencer's Blues Explosion, then the Roots, then the Beast,
Speaker 1: show your Money's worth at that show, No Dog. Everything
Speaker 1: I've ever learned in my professional life I learned in
Speaker 1: those six weeks touring with you guys literally everything a
Speaker 1: writer to hotels to oh I can shop for records
Speaker 1: like anything that I've ever learned that I still do
Speaker 1: to this day. I learned on that tour.
Speaker 4: You never read Krs's book.
Speaker 1: I absolutely you want to know something hilarious. So mid
Speaker 1: we were in I don't know what city we were
Speaker 1: in California. We were at a truck stop and we
Speaker 1: saw that Karris one book, and God we purchased it,
Speaker 1: but kind of as a joke, like, wow, Carris One's
Speaker 1: given instructional on how to be an MC. So I
Speaker 1: will admit that we would mockingly read that book on
Speaker 1: the tour bus in carras One's voice when you ride
Speaker 1: to the fin You.
Speaker 4: You're not the only one that did that. I think
Speaker 4: most people that have that book did that.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, though, we would joke about everything he
Speaker 1: said and then kind of like on stage, do what
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, and then like, holy shit, that actually worked,
Speaker 1: Like he did this thing called when you come on stage,
Speaker 1: he said, always come layered, wear a T shirt, a shirt,
Speaker 1: a vest, a jacket and a coat, and time out
Speaker 1: when like every four minutes take off a jacket. That
Speaker 1: tells the audience late, I'm rolling my sleeves up, I'm
Speaker 1: ready to work. And so one.
Speaker 4: There's so many gems in that book.
Speaker 1: I always thought it was a jinx. If you give
Speaker 1: an eating establishment an eight by ten and autograph eight by.
Speaker 4: Ten always, your tour manager should always have three periodicals
Speaker 4: on him at all time. Newspapers magazines should have a
Speaker 4: pair of slacks, a pair of black jeans, and some
Speaker 4: other specific thing about pants and have eight by tens
Speaker 4: for when you go to a restaurant, specifically when you
Speaker 4: go to Burger King and you need to cut the line,
Speaker 4: tell him that you have a pregnant woman on tour
Speaker 4: with you need to get through it immediately. It's so deep.
Speaker 4: But he also tells bottles of water to have on stage,
Speaker 4: how many what speakers, like everything, It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Probably the best thing that we still do to this
Speaker 1: day is dynamics. He's like, sometimes start the song at
Speaker 1: a whisperer. Yeah, then you get loud, Like we went
Speaker 1: from playfully mocking it so like wearing it by like
Speaker 1: a tattoo. Yes, but no, everything I've learned touring was
Speaker 1: was with you guys and so, but I always wanted
Speaker 1: to know, like what was the repertoire at a time
Speaker 1: when you didn't have music out?
Speaker 4: So we did whatever songs we had. We had the
Speaker 4: rock card, the rock.
Speaker 1: Card, parties getting loud, Beastie groof.
Speaker 4: We did, Uh, she's on it, probably right, Yaouk did
Speaker 4: a verse of spoony ge freaking and spanking, and I did.
Speaker 4: I did like a verse of Jimmy Speiser.
Speaker 1: Hip hop covers. Okay, early to the game, got it.
Speaker 4: And then I might have did the electric boogie for
Speaker 4: like thirty seconds. I don't know, some sort of breaking
Speaker 4: robin and lock in something really embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Were they were they even? Like I'm certain then, especially
Speaker 1: hip hop's shows, the usual car and response. Somebody say,
Speaker 1: HEO thing was a staple. Was it at all responsive
Speaker 1: or were they just ten thousand no, we don't want this.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, no, tear crying, like literally crying, hatred,
Speaker 4: just hated, hated.
Speaker 1: Us, not knowing they worship at the altar three to
Speaker 1: four years later, none of them did. I've met many people.
Speaker 1: Oh what's her name? I think she told me that,
Speaker 1: uh uh Portlandia, Harry Brown seen, yeah, Carrie. So like
Speaker 1: everyone tells me, like, oh I first saw them open
Speaker 1: before Madonna, and then later I became a fan. That's
Speaker 1: what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Like they were like if your parents promised you a
Speaker 4: big wheel for Christmas all year, every other night getting
Speaker 4: the big wheel, You're getting the big wheel, and then
Speaker 4: you'd get like a piece of shit.
Speaker 1: At the time, did you mind it? Did you feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're fucked, or like what do you think that.
Speaker 4: Was our thought processes? So long as they remember us,
Speaker 4: so long as they know who we are. If we
Speaker 4: just went up there and did a couple of songs,
Speaker 4: we'd be unmemorable and they'd forget who we are.
Speaker 1: So at no point, no one's saying, hey, this is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest artists of all time. You might
Speaker 1: wanna I'm a gonna made her ecosystem.
Speaker 4: To her manager was definitely like, you gotta go. We're
Speaker 4: gonna get somebody else because you guys are terrible. She
Speaker 4: I don't know this is fact, but I'm sure she knew,
Speaker 4: like they hated us so much that by the time
Speaker 4: she got on stage, it was like, sure it got
Speaker 4: it was like, you know, a dozen big wheels.
Speaker 1: I see it now, I see it. I see it
Speaker 1: so strategic, strategic planning. I get that. When does the
Speaker 1: official process of making license to ill start?
Speaker 4: Is this forty years ago? That's yes, And like, I
Speaker 4: don't know the day. I'm not like you, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would assume sometime in eighty five, holding out hit
Speaker 1: his early eighty six I would assume.
Speaker 4: Yeah, around after the Madonnas were I guess we came
Speaker 4: home and started recording. We found you know, we Rick
Speaker 4: I guess found a studio Chunk King Studio, and we
Speaker 4: would just.
Speaker 1: We found out that LL named that studio when he
Speaker 1: was making a radio it was John King Studios.
Speaker 4: But someone named John King owned the place. Duty was
Speaker 4: the engineer Okay Day Burnett, who was also the engineer.
Speaker 1: For Planet Rock, also worked at Chun King.
Speaker 4: He was the engineer who also found an apartment for
Speaker 4: Adam and Mike in Chinatown, which is a whole other.
Speaker 1: Situation, the rat apartment.
Speaker 4: Yes, I.
Speaker 1: Live about three blocks away from I can see it
Speaker 1: from here. I don't know the exact apartment, but my
Speaker 1: eyes are on it.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: LL says that there was a Chinese spot with food
Speaker 1: so good that he liked the He's like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: you should name this Chunk King Studios. History made. That's
Speaker 1: the focalore of LL saying that he named it went
Speaker 1: from John King to Chunk King. Whose idea was it
Speaker 1: to put the a cappella version of hold It Now?
Speaker 1: Hit it on the twelve inch.
Speaker 4: I think that was Rick. I don't I don't believe
Speaker 4: it wasn't me. Okay, So you know, it could have
Speaker 4: been youks, it could have been could have been any
Speaker 4: could have been anyone other than myself, because I don't
Speaker 4: think it was mine. It was prob it could have
Speaker 4: been Rustles. I don't know. Rick was part of the
Speaker 4: like the djool think.
Speaker 1: Back then, but it never occurred to anyone. Hey, why
Speaker 1: don't we put the actual instrumental on the B side
Speaker 1: so we could perform this shit in concert because people
Speaker 1: were still like rhyming over their vocals.
Speaker 4: You know, the details weren't as important to me at
Speaker 4: the time. It was more like trying to get free drinks,
Speaker 4: you know, like going to clubs, meeting people. It was
Speaker 4: kind of more my head's face, right, you know, getting
Speaker 4: phone numbers, that kind of thing. Really more where my
Speaker 4: focus was.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think I told you previously that the initial
Speaker 1: pressings of that twelve inch actually had the a cappella
Speaker 1: on the A side and the drum version on the
Speaker 1: B side, of which when Lady B started playing it.
Speaker 1: The first time I ever heard the drum machine version
Speaker 1: of Hold It Now hit it was when I got
Speaker 1: licensed to ill, but for a year and a half
Speaker 1: before Power ninety nine only played the a cappella version,
Speaker 1: and in my mind, it was the most mensa genius
Speaker 1: shit ever. I was like, yo, they're so dope. They
Speaker 1: don't need no music, Like.
Speaker 4: We don't need no music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when I got the album version, I was
Speaker 1: like disappointed, Like, wait, where are these drum machines coming from?
Speaker 1: Like what the fuck? I mean? At the time, though,
Speaker 1: like what was it like to get finally like latt
Speaker 1: Storm in terms of like getting respect from because the
Speaker 1: single caught on in New York and elsewhere?
Speaker 4: Correct, Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of stories
Speaker 4: about all of this. But the Lady Be thing, I'm
Speaker 4: just going to say, I can't remember what's in the
Speaker 4: book or not because it's it's a lot of pages
Speaker 4: in that book. But Lady B. I love Lady B.
Speaker 4: She booked a show for us at that time at
Speaker 4: this is not going to make her.
Speaker 1: Look great at day, right, but at the after midnight?
Speaker 4: No, this was this was at a hotel. This was
Speaker 4: at like the you know, like the brunch center of
Speaker 4: a hotel, you know, like the meeting area. Okay, And
Speaker 4: it was on a whatever night and we drove down
Speaker 4: to Philly to play. Here it's like somewhere near Philly
Speaker 4: but not in Philly and not Jersey. I don't know
Speaker 4: where it was, right, No, but only Lady B showed up.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 4: That's it, and the you know, the couple of people
Speaker 4: that work there, and so we just did it. It
Speaker 4: was basically like we did a show, but it was,
Speaker 4: you know, a practice and that was when DJ jazzy
Speaker 4: J was our DJ jazzy J was our DJ for
Speaker 4: a minute.
Speaker 1: Really, Oh yeah, nice, Okay. I didn't know that any
Speaker 1: other tippets from this era that I should know, at
Speaker 1: least in the pre licensed ill.
Speaker 4: Oh, you mean that we played with the Rap and Duke,
Speaker 4: Now we do?
Speaker 1: You did a show with the Rap and Duke? Yeah,
Speaker 1: Cali based.
Speaker 4: Or it was somewhere, and it was one of those
Speaker 4: shows where it was like, you know, ten different rap
Speaker 4: groups and we would just do you know, two songs,
Speaker 4: and obviously I don't remember who else was on the
Speaker 4: bill because Rapp and Duke was, you know, the main event.
Speaker 4: We did it. We go somewhere in Jersey maybe, and
Speaker 4: a limo picked us up to go to the show,
Speaker 4: and then it stopped to pick up just Ice and
Speaker 4: we drove in a limo out to Jersey and we
Speaker 4: were blasting like le Zeppelin and he hated and he
Speaker 4: got a ride with someone else. Back home a lot
Speaker 4: of stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Ah, No, I live. I live for stories like that. Now.
Speaker 1: I mean kind of the elephant in the room is
Speaker 1: based on just assuming I thought groups of average white
Speaker 1: bands Tina Maurice caliber was a once in a fifty
Speaker 1: year occurrence. I just assume that you guys wrapped that
Speaker 1: you had to have been Puerto Rican. Okay, that's all right.
Speaker 1: So the story is that you guys, you guys made
Speaker 1: a you guys made a stop in Philly during your tour,
Speaker 1: and I had the cassette of licensed Ill so there
Speaker 1: was no like inside sleep or anything, and there's no
Speaker 1: pictures of you guys and shout out to uh Don Robinson,
Speaker 1: this is ninth grade. Great, we meet you guys. You
Speaker 1: guys are staying at a hotel on like sixteenth and
Speaker 1: Locusts in downtown Philly. So like school's let in now,
Speaker 1: obviously like are letout. Time. Might have been your lobby
Speaker 1: call to get to the spectrum. And as we're walking
Speaker 1: home from school, you it was you and uh yea,
Speaker 1: we didn't see Mike sugar ANNs Quick and Don was like, yo,
Speaker 1: I didn't know they were white. I was like, now,
Speaker 1: they're not white. They're Puerto Rican. It's like, nah, I
Speaker 1: think they're white. And there was a listening booth like
Speaker 1: a block away and we had like a you know,
Speaker 1: you know the one smart guy that works at the
Speaker 1: record store.
Speaker 4: I don't you would.
Speaker 1: Have been that guy. It's but we go there and
Speaker 1: his name is Mark and we're like Mark, Hannah's the
Speaker 1: licensed ill album and it's the inside gatefold, and Don's like,
Speaker 1: look at the inside, look at them. They're clearly white.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know, man, I think they're
Speaker 1: Puerto Rican. And he's like, dude, and he pulls out
Speaker 1: the things like Horowitz, that's a Jewish name, and the
Speaker 1: whole time I was just like, yo, I didn't know
Speaker 1: they were white. I mean, at the time, were you
Speaker 1: guys aware that you were in even though yes, I
Speaker 1: know that there were a pioneer and hip hop artists
Speaker 1: of all ilk and all cartures and backgrounds in the
Speaker 1: game of hip hop, but as far as being marketed
Speaker 1: to us, we thought that hip hop was a black
Speaker 1: guy's game, a brown guy's game sometimes. But at the time,
Speaker 1: were you guys aware of it? Do you think that
Speaker 1: Russell was aware of it in terms of like you
Speaker 1: not being on the album cover of those things.
Speaker 4: Certainly wasn't thinking about marketing, and I was, you know,
Speaker 4: I was a dumb teenager, so I wasn't really sort
Speaker 4: of wise to the to the ways of the world
Speaker 4: and how you know, white people have been doing this
Speaker 4: for a very long time, and so I wasn't aware
Speaker 4: of like Russell being like, clearly in his mind he's like,
Speaker 4: this is what's gonna catapult all of my other artists.
Speaker 4: Do you know what I mean? This is unfortunately the
Speaker 4: game that has to be played to get the white
Speaker 4: people out there so then I can get run dam
Speaker 4: seeing Houdini and all my other groups out there. I
Speaker 4: don't know that Russell ever saw us artistically as the
Speaker 4: thing that's you know, going to propel him. You know,
Speaker 4: as I grew up, I clearly understood that. But we
Speaker 4: came from a background of all types of music and
Speaker 4: all types of people. Growing up in you know, Greenwich
Speaker 4: Village in New York. There's kind of everything for you.
Speaker 4: There's everybody and everything. And the interesting, you know, thing
Speaker 4: I was going to say is very inspired by the Clash,
Speaker 4: and the Clash kind of did what we did right
Speaker 4: they and we did it because they did it, and
Speaker 4: so they took reg and they played reggae music.
Speaker 1: The thing that was just amazed at, and I don't
Speaker 1: think a lot of people noted, is that, you know,
Speaker 1: you guys could have easily played the caricature card, but
Speaker 1: you didn't, you know what he like, what you could have,
Speaker 1: I mean, you could have do you mean like for me,
Speaker 1: you guys never came out trying to sound black, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Like you sounded like your voice
Speaker 1: is clearly your voice. I just my thirteen year old
Speaker 1: self would not think instantly but that white people can
Speaker 1: rap as good as black people do. But I will
Speaker 1: say that, you know, you guys could have easily cashed
Speaker 1: in on the because there were groups after you, the
Speaker 1: white boys, like people kind of cashing in on the
Speaker 1: novelty of being an outcast in hip hop. But y'all
Speaker 1: never played that card at all, Like you were naturally
Speaker 1: yourselves and you just made dope music that you know
Speaker 1: was pioneering a death. So y'all could have did that,
Speaker 1: but y'all didn't. And I think that's kind of why,
Speaker 1: like the respect was always there, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: I just didn't.
Speaker 4: Know, but we you know, we just really loved the music,
Speaker 4: so we weren't trying to make fun of the music.
Speaker 1: And I clearly knew that, Yeah, I clearly knew that.
Speaker 4: We don't. We never thought that rapp was a novelty,
Speaker 4: do you know what I'm saying. It wasn't like, oh,
Speaker 4: it's funny, let's do that. We it's we we love it,
Speaker 4: Let's try to see if we can do it. And
Speaker 4: when we first started doing it, I just wanted to
Speaker 4: sound like Jimmy Spicer, and so I was doing that
Speaker 4: thing where I wanted to sound like a specific somebody
Speaker 4: and that changed very quickly because I don't sound like that.
Speaker 1: What's your voice?
Speaker 2: Something developed over time or was that the first Like
Speaker 2: how did you get to the voice that is the
Speaker 2: iconic voice that you rap with? Was it something you
Speaker 2: worked on or was it just what came out?
Speaker 4: I think it just worke came out, Yeah, because at
Speaker 4: first I tried to sound like a baritone.
Speaker 2: Your speaking voice is lower, clearly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just something happens when I start yelling.
Speaker 2: October too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you nailing air quote the voice? You nailing that.
Speaker 1: That's some rare shit, because like again, it took Chuck
Speaker 1: d an album to really get into Chuck d space, like,
Speaker 1: there's very few people you you nailed it. Q Tip
Speaker 1: nailed it all.
Speaker 4: Right, So I was going to start. I was trying
Speaker 4: to start a band in the nineties called the Nasal Tongues,
Speaker 4: me and Q Tip and mc milk and be Real,
Speaker 4: be Real Yeah, And it was one of those things
Speaker 4: like yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do it, we should do it,
Speaker 4: and then it never happened.
Speaker 1: Ah, okay, well, I mean you did a song with Milk, Yes,
Speaker 1: I did. So. I have a theory, especially when it
Speaker 1: comes to hip hop music and soul music, which is
Speaker 1: I feel like most of the time acts are not
Speaker 1: living in the studio to really know what their sound is.
Speaker 1: It's like, we got an hour, let's get in, let's
Speaker 1: get out, one take, We're done. Whereas you can tell
Speaker 1: who had time to Like Prince obviously had all the
Speaker 1: time in the world to figure out what his sound
Speaker 1: is and all that stuff, which is why he's so developed.
Speaker 1: I'm certain Michael Jackson's budget same thing allows that. But
Speaker 1: there's a lot of groups who had to be in,
Speaker 1: had to be out. So in general, like, were you
Speaker 1: guys like living in the studio, were you always like
Speaker 1: demoing stuff, or because even when it comes to the
Speaker 1: chemistry of the delivery, like the whole tug of war
Speaker 1: were played between you three, Like how you guys developing that.
Speaker 4: Well, there's a few things. One the thing that can't
Speaker 4: just comes to mind now about our voices is that
Speaker 4: the three of us, it's kind of like siblings and
Speaker 4: you have to fight for your space, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, right, And so we're trying to each try
Speaker 4: to fit in and be louder than the other one,
Speaker 4: or try to make ourselves fit, fit in and stand out,
Speaker 4: if that makes sense. That could be bullshit, I don't.
Speaker 1: Know, but no, that's what I think. I think you
Speaker 1: found the high register that obviously YUT can't do.
Speaker 4: What we used to do is we would go to
Speaker 4: Mike's apartment and we would just write rhymes over an
Speaker 4: instrumental of whatever, and we would just listen to whatever
Speaker 4: it was over and over, whether it was our song,
Speaker 4: a demo of a beat that we had, or a
Speaker 4: beat that I made, or some other record that we
Speaker 4: just listened over and over again, and we would write
Speaker 4: rhymes and write them and then sift through them and
Speaker 4: pick what we liked, and then we would put three
Speaker 4: copies all together and underline who was going to say what?
Speaker 4: So we knew and we were this at Mike's apartment.
Speaker 1: Ah, okay that I mean.
Speaker 4: We also just tried to copy run DMC, you know,
Speaker 4: Fearless four and all the you know, all the greats.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Well, I've heard a demo of a I think I
Speaker 1: heard a demo of looking down the barrel of a gun,
Speaker 1: in which all three of you are saying the same things.
Speaker 1: So I always wonder, like, was it the thing of
Speaker 1: also punching in, Like would you all just say the
Speaker 1: same verse in the way that you would say it
Speaker 1: and then decide?
Speaker 4: Not that I remember that might have happened. But the
Speaker 4: only time I remember was there's a specific song of
Speaker 4: polls would take re out because like we got to
Speaker 4: do it all three at the same time, and me
Speaker 4: and Mike were like, that's a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: Well, I definitely heard looking down the barrel of a
Speaker 1: gun that way, where all three of you could have
Speaker 1: been oh no, no, no, no, no, no, over working underpage,
Speaker 1: staring at the floor. Oh stop that train.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's the song. It's got all three of us.
Speaker 1: It's on stop yes, stop that train.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right, I thought was a terrible idea. And
Speaker 4: it doesn't matter. It's fine. It's like one minute on
Speaker 4: the whole album.
Speaker 1: So when you guys are doing your vocals, are you
Speaker 1: doing it all at the same time in the studio
Speaker 1: together or not? Going on?
Speaker 4: Not always but often.
Speaker 1: But doesn't that make it harder to get a perfect take?
Speaker 1: Or you just do a take and then you punch
Speaker 1: in whatever you have to take?
Speaker 2: What's a perfect precision?
Speaker 4: That's not something We always got a perfect take. What
Speaker 4: are you talking about? That's not that's the perfect take?
Speaker 4: Wasn't a concern? Making each other laugh was more important?
Speaker 4: And so our studio in when we got our studio
Speaker 4: in La there was like the live room here and
Speaker 4: the control room here, and the pass through was like
Speaker 4: a phone booth thing, and be like one of us
Speaker 4: in the studio, one in the phone booth and one
Speaker 4: in the live room with a window. It always just
Speaker 4: you know, I know, yeah, fun to do it all together.
Speaker 1: How many Licensed to Ill songs wound up on the
Speaker 1: cutting room floor? Besides I'm down and there's a song
Speaker 1: that sounded like a reverse PSK. I think it's all scenario.
Speaker 4: Yes, scenario which is in a movie.
Speaker 1: But who's controlling the drum machine on that? Might have
Speaker 1: been youk Okay, you gotta understand there's BC boys fans
Speaker 1: that like listening see the music annually, whereas I get
Speaker 1: that you recorded and you probably haven't heard it since
Speaker 1: it was made forty years ago.
Speaker 4: So it's you know, in life, you remember what you did,
Speaker 4: or more important, you remember what you didn't do.
Speaker 1: Got it?
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying. So I remember if I
Speaker 4: didn't do something like I didn't program that that beat,
Speaker 4: So I know that I didn't Who did? I don't know?
Speaker 1: Yao?
Speaker 4: Probably yeah?
Speaker 1: Musically, were you loud in the input on licensed?
Speaker 4: Ill?
Speaker 1: As far as like what you want to diff.
Speaker 4: Like when Rick wasn't there, we got to have fun
Speaker 4: and do stuff.
Speaker 1: So what songs were those where mister.
Speaker 4: Ed you know, like all of the weird little bits
Speaker 4: and pieces that's us having fun.
Speaker 1: On the title track, got It? Got It?
Speaker 4: Oh wait, there's one other song that's not on that
Speaker 4: record that was a public Enemy song that wasn't going
Speaker 4: to get used that we recorded at Electric Ladyland. That
Speaker 4: was terrible and I think it might have been cold
Speaker 4: lamping and it was like Flavor gave it to us
Speaker 4: and then oh we also Oh I was going to
Speaker 4: say we also did Slow and Low, but we ended
Speaker 4: up using that. But yeah, we did cold Lamping. We're
Speaker 4: one of those Flavor songs that they ended up they used.
Speaker 1: So initially that was going to you guys.
Speaker 4: They I guess they recorded and didn't like it, and
Speaker 4: then they were like, you guys have it, and we
Speaker 4: recorded and it was so bad that they must have
Speaker 4: been a yad, well really bad. WHOA.
Speaker 1: I gotta find that, motherfucker.
Speaker 4: I have all these things on cassette somewhere there.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait for that. Okay. As far as the
Speaker 1: infamous White House album follow up, was that ever completed
Speaker 1: or was Desperado the only thing recorded before you guys left?
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's a long I don't even know what
Speaker 4: I'm like legally allowed because there was so much weird
Speaker 4: shit that happened at the end of our relationship with
Speaker 4: Rick and Russell. But the threat was that if we
Speaker 4: didn't record an album that Russell was going to get
Speaker 4: some producers to put our vocals, which I don't know
Speaker 4: what vocals he was going to use to this new
Speaker 4: music called house music that people were into, and he
Speaker 4: was going to put out a record called White House
Speaker 4: and it was going to be huge because people really
Speaker 4: like this new house music thing. Really, I don't know, Yeah,
Speaker 4: sounds great.
Speaker 1: I see, Okay, that's interesting. Well yeah I heard Desperado.
Speaker 4: But that's that's not house music.
Speaker 1: Far from it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, just than that. Jungle Brothers had a song called
Speaker 4: house Music All Night Long, so good.
Speaker 1: He wanted you to cast you on that. All right,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. So your time in Los Angeles because you
Speaker 1: guys were the first to really experience hip hop success.
Speaker 1: How jarring was it to be not only hip hop successful,
Speaker 1: but like worldwide level of success? In hindsight, was it
Speaker 1: more of a burden or was it just like something
Speaker 1: you didn't care for?
Speaker 4: Or no, it's fucking crazy. I mean, this shit just
Speaker 4: it really happened quickly. I don't know how to sort
Speaker 4: of explain it. It's like, uh, you go to a
Speaker 4: party and you wear like ear muffs, and everybody in
Speaker 4: the party is like, whoa, those ear muffs are cool,
Speaker 4: And then you're like, Okay, I guess I'm gonna wear
Speaker 4: ear muffs every day now for the rest of my
Speaker 4: life because fucking everybody loves my ear muffs. I'm getting
Speaker 4: paid to wear these ear muffs. It's awesome. It wasn't
Speaker 4: the plan. It was like, we had no plan. We
Speaker 4: are also a hardcore but we're a punk band. We're punks,
Speaker 4: and so we approached rap music as such, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, Like we just we're just doing what
Speaker 4: we're doing and other people responding to it was weird
Speaker 4: enough that all of our shows were like, you know,
Speaker 4: our twenty five friends or people that we sort of knew,
Speaker 4: friends of friends. Then it got a little bigger, and
Speaker 4: then all of a sudden, like we're on tour with Madonna.
Speaker 4: We're like, whoa shit, that's crazy. As we come home,
Speaker 4: and then all of a sudden, we're on tour opening
Speaker 4: for we run DMC and Time Ex Social Club. It's
Speaker 4: like this massive thing. And then so we're like, okay,
Speaker 4: I guess we're this massive thing now. And so when
Speaker 4: the record came out, it was fucking huge. We're on
Speaker 4: the cover and the newspaper in England every day was
Speaker 4: like crazy. I don't know how. I don't know how
Speaker 4: people do it. I don't know how solo artists do
Speaker 4: stuff like that, because it seems so crazy, and you
Speaker 4: have people that like, all these people love you, but
Speaker 4: just as many people are like fuck you, you suck. Who
Speaker 4: do you think you are?
Speaker 1: At the time, was the just the constant worship and
Speaker 1: being a goldfisher in a goldfish tank? Was that tiring
Speaker 1: at the time?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it got weird. It's a hard call
Speaker 4: because a lot of people are saying they love you
Speaker 4: and you're great. That's not bad, that's right, that's good
Speaker 4: in theory, right, So you you have that with you
Speaker 4: and so it's nice people like what you do. That's great.
Speaker 4: But the other stuff that comes with it, and interviews
Speaker 4: and you know, busy, busy schedule and all of that stuff,
Speaker 4: that's not something that anybody's used to. But we didn't
Speaker 4: sign up for all of that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: I wasn't aware of how you guys were perceived in
Speaker 1: the press. I wasn't deep on the press until like
Speaker 1: check your head, you know what I mean. So you know,
Speaker 1: if you weren't in right on magazine, I wouldn't know
Speaker 1: too much. I think once you guys.
Speaker 4: Made it, we weren't right on a magazine.
Speaker 1: No, I know, that's I mean, that's how I'm aware.
Speaker 1: But it was the press contentious of you guys doing the.
Speaker 4: All right, so nineteen eighty seven Licensed to Ill. It's
Speaker 4: growing really fast, right right, We're gonna go on tour
Speaker 4: in the UK. This is in our book, available now
Speaker 4: at your local.
Speaker 1: I've read the book.
Speaker 4: So we're coming and writing articles about us in the newspaper,
Speaker 4: not magazines. I'm talking like the cover of the Sun
Speaker 4: and the Sun. And they had a parliament meeting should
Speaker 4: they allow us to come because we're these awful people,
Speaker 4: Like word has gotten out now that we're like the
Speaker 4: sex pistols that were like fucking up the youth of America.
Speaker 4: You know, we're like death metal music that's gonna do whatever.
Speaker 1: Isn't that the rockers dream to be parents worst nightmare?
Speaker 4: That's the record company's dream. So oh, it's all building
Speaker 4: and building, and we're on the cover of newspaper and
Speaker 4: everything we're doing, and we're feeding into it because that's
Speaker 4: what we're getting attention. We're you know, you're like a kid.
Speaker 4: Pay People are paying attention how you pick your nose,
Speaker 4: So you keep picking your nose that way because people
Speaker 4: love it. So we're doing it and doing it not
Speaker 4: to not to let us off the hook. I'm saying,
Speaker 4: we are responsible, we all are for what we do,
Speaker 4: but it's building and building and building. And so when
Speaker 4: we finally get to England and we're playing our shows,
Speaker 4: they start getting fucking weird and tense and different. And
Speaker 4: then we play a show in Liverpool and basically everybody there,
Speaker 4: not everybody there, a lot of people there are like
Speaker 4: singing football songs. It's like hooligan shit. They're throwing beer
Speaker 4: bottles at us. They're like, fuck you. You say you're
Speaker 4: you know, you're the shit. You say you're tough, but
Speaker 4: you're nothing, and beer bottles are raining down on us,
Speaker 4: and we're like, okay, now it's gotten to be too much.
Speaker 1: So you're saying the audience was going there just to
Speaker 1: heckle you.
Speaker 4: More than heckle. Yeah, because we've already told everybody and
Speaker 4: we've become this thing, and like we're definitely responsible for
Speaker 4: saying the things that we said and doing the things
Speaker 4: that we do. But like it caught fire in terms
Speaker 4: of press and newspapers and all this shit, and it
Speaker 4: was like, wait.
Speaker 1: Okay, I didn't know that was with the fan. I
Speaker 1: thought it was depressed.
Speaker 4: I didn't know it was like I went to jail
Speaker 4: for a few nights. It was like fucking crazy, sucked.
Speaker 4: But at the time, for the first time ever, I
Speaker 4: had some money.
Speaker 1: It was nice, got it? Okay? So was there an
Speaker 1: official meeting of the creative direction of what Paul's boutique
Speaker 1: should be?
Speaker 4: I'm the official meeting was me out of a mic,
Speaker 4: meaning like we got to get the fuck away from Rick,
Speaker 4: from Russell. I was like getting an end of it.
Speaker 1: So you don't think had you been on DEFTM, you
Speaker 1: guys wouldn't made an album as adventurous.
Speaker 4: There's no way, absolutely no way.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean even they imploded in what eighty eight?
Speaker 4: So rick Ball fell apart at the same time, the
Speaker 4: whole thing fell apart at the same time, between and
Speaker 4: Rick and us, and Russell, Russell and Rick, all of us.
Speaker 1: It just okay. So I'd take it that you guys
Speaker 1: met with the dust Brothers and whatnot. Well, the legend
Speaker 1: is that one of you heard some tracks at a party.
Speaker 4: Was it you? That was me?
Speaker 1: Yes, okay.
Speaker 4: I went to some weird Hollywood party with a friend
Speaker 4: and these guys are there just like kind of in
Speaker 4: the back out outside listening to cassette A cassette tape
Speaker 4: with demos that they made, and so we have crazy
Speaker 4: beats and instrumentals and all samples and stuff, and I
Speaker 4: was just like, what the hell is this? And one
Speaker 4: of them was this guy Matt Dyke, who eventually started
Speaker 4: Delicious Vinyl. We met a couple of years earlier because
Speaker 4: he flew us to La to put on a show
Speaker 4: at his club. He promoted a show which was a
Speaker 4: very pivotal moment for us.
Speaker 1: Why was that pivot?
Speaker 4: So he flew us down to this club, power Tools,
Speaker 4: which was like a club, like a well known club
Speaker 4: here in history books of La. And we played the
Speaker 4: show like all the like hipsters are there and we
Speaker 4: come on to do the show and the first eight
Speaker 4: o eight that kicks in boom, and it's like and
Speaker 4: the speakers are dead, and that's the beginning and end
Speaker 4: of the show. Eight oh eight was just too much
Speaker 4: for the speaker system at all. Mario Caldado goes over
Speaker 4: to Matt Dik and he's like, this is a fucking joke.
Speaker 4: I got my own PA system. I'm bringing it next week.
Speaker 4: You're hiring me to do sound. He does it.
Speaker 1: That's how Mario c comes into the fold.
Speaker 4: He does it, and he ends up being the engineer
Speaker 4: for Delicious Vinyl, for Tonelow Young MC all those records,
Speaker 4: and then we work together forever.
Speaker 1: Side note, Steve, you know the Roots reputation for being
Speaker 1: the loudest band in music at one hundred and and
Speaker 1: I'm talking Richard Nichols era, like one hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: eight dbs, like way above the legal limit. Like our
Speaker 1: face is plastered on every sound systems company, like the
Speaker 1: post office, like do not rint systems to this guy.
Speaker 1: As I said, everything we've ever learned in life we
Speaker 1: learn on toward the Beastie Boys. But probably the most
Speaker 1: important thing we learned was the importance of sound mixing
Speaker 1: and how important basis to a concert. So I will
Speaker 1: say the first two years of the Roots and the
Speaker 1: whole folklore of oh my god, you guys are so
Speaker 1: incredible a concert. What we learned on that tour was
Speaker 1: if you guys are loud and the sound is pristine,
Speaker 1: like for us, the sound, most people would say, an
Speaker 1: audience waving their hands in the air is the sign
Speaker 1: of like you made it. For us, the sound was
Speaker 1: the sign was if their hands were covering their stomachs
Speaker 1: like I can't take this too much base then that
Speaker 1: was like pretty much we learned. So I will say
Speaker 1: that for the most part, Mario would let me on
Speaker 1: the soundboard to help code mix with them and learn
Speaker 1: like so learning live engineering was that was my crash
Speaker 1: course and end that. So it's kind of weird that
Speaker 1: so you guys break into speaker is what brings Mario
Speaker 1: to the full. Oh yeah, that is some crazy shit man. Wow.
Speaker 1: After that tour, then that's when we became like serious
Speaker 1: about everything we ever done. So I believe that you
Speaker 1: guys revealed to me that the Paul's Boutique album was
Speaker 1: not sequenced in a way that traditionally you would sequence
Speaker 1: hip hop albums at the time, but that you guys
Speaker 1: basically looped everything on individual tracks and that's how the
Speaker 1: album was made. Did I ask that correctly in way
Speaker 1: that you understood how I asked the three things? One,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I understood the question the question right,
Speaker 1: But the second I.
Speaker 4: Was really high at that time. I was smoking. It's
Speaker 4: just so much pot that I don't I wasn't dealing
Speaker 4: with the you know, fine tuning of that type of stuff, right,
Speaker 4: the dust brothers, that's all they did. They went to
Speaker 4: school for computer stuff, so they were they were very involved.
Speaker 4: That was like their thing was like we control the board,
Speaker 4: not like how it gets mixed, but like in terms
Speaker 4: of how the samples are getting you know, right stop, physically,
Speaker 4: how they're getting put on new tape. They were doing that.
Speaker 4: So I was really involved with that. I would make
Speaker 4: beats here and there, I would you know, write the
Speaker 4: lyrics and have my input or whatever. But they were
Speaker 4: really the ones that did that.
Speaker 1: Okay. I was told that every sample on Paul's boutique,
Speaker 1: like for instance, Sounds of Science, that everything would just
Speaker 1: get like you would start with the drums and then
Speaker 1: try to match each sample to the drums. But basically
Speaker 1: instead of okay, the opposite of that is when when
Speaker 1: talking to public Enemy's engineer whose name I'm forgetting right now,
Speaker 1: that made Nation of Millions. Basically in making Nation of Millions,
Speaker 1: the best example, of course is not to Living Base.
Speaker 1: It's like literally there's a tracking sheet that accounts for
Speaker 1: every bar that happens in that thing. So literally, like
Speaker 1: they write it out as a science experiment, like all right,
Speaker 1: third verse planet rock sample comes in this you know,
Speaker 1: this salt and pepper snippet comes in at exactly bar
Speaker 1: seventy eight. We tuned down eighty five eatpm for Bowie's whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's completely detailed, soup the nuts and execute it
Speaker 1: as such and pre eqed, so they barely did any
Speaker 1: equing on them. They did all the pre work, whereas
Speaker 1: I was told that for this album, you guys weren't like, okay,
Speaker 1: only on this when this baseline comes in on verse two,
Speaker 1: we'll program it. No, it's just like we will loop
Speaker 1: everything as is and then we'll automate it that way,
Speaker 1: which is a harder way to make a record. In
Speaker 1: other words, if there's sixteen tracks, Am I saying it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: I knew drum machine. I can use a drum machine, right, okay,
Speaker 4: And I can program drum machine dx DMX whatever eight
Speaker 4: await whatever the thing is. I've been doing that for
Speaker 4: a long time for a while, a few years. The
Speaker 4: licensed ill o. I know, there's a lot of tape loops, right.
Speaker 1: And that was Cincento, see what I was talking about.
Speaker 4: Sorry, Nick, shout out to Nick Sansano, And so that
Speaker 4: was tricky to get those things lined up. And I
Speaker 4: remember the dust for this had all this shit lined up,
Speaker 4: was like, it seemed very magical. And then they had
Speaker 4: a computer, so I was like, I don't know what
Speaker 4: I did. I didn't understand what computers did, so like
Speaker 4: that it was the music was coming out of a
Speaker 4: computer was fascinating to me. I was like, is that
Speaker 4: like craft work? I don't understand what that means. I
Speaker 4: didn't have much to do with it, and you know,
Speaker 4: so I couldn't. I can't answer the questions of the
Speaker 4: specifics of how those tracks were made because I kind
Speaker 4: of sort of dipped out when it came to that.
Speaker 4: What a reaction to that was For the next record,
Speaker 4: I was very, very involved in terms of I got
Speaker 4: a you know, SB twelve hundred, and I got I
Speaker 4: didn't like that. I wasn't able to touch everything.
Speaker 1: So you were in a studio in which engineers would
Speaker 1: not let you. No, no, no.
Speaker 4: I didn't understand it. I didn't understand computers, so I
Speaker 4: didn't know how to to do it, do you know
Speaker 4: what I mean? And Yak understood tape loops and me
Speaker 4: and him knew drum machines. He knew tape loops from
Speaker 4: working with the Latin rascals, all right.
Speaker 1: So can you explain. I'm still trying to understand when
Speaker 1: you guys talk about looping when the levy breaks for
Speaker 1: riman and still and how you had to have a
Speaker 1: pencil over here and tape around the room, Like exactly
Speaker 1: what is that process? Like, I've never seen that done.
Speaker 4: Is that?
Speaker 1: Are you saying to me that's the only way that
Speaker 1: you could loop something?
Speaker 4: Okay, So if music is on a on a tape,
Speaker 4: not like like on the tape and say the tape
Speaker 4: space where it goes around the loop that it goes
Speaker 4: around in the actual machine, say that's like whatever, like
Speaker 4: four inches of a loop from start to finish, right,
Speaker 4: and you take the piece of music. But that piece
Speaker 4: of music is actually like a bar of music that's
Speaker 4: like six point seven inches, So you can't just play
Speaker 4: it in the tape loop. You can't play it in
Speaker 4: the tape machine. So some of it has to come
Speaker 4: out of the tape machine to go back into the
Speaker 4: tape machine. It needs that extra space you're creating a loop,
Speaker 4: So you just make a bigger loop than it is
Speaker 4: on the actual machine.
Speaker 1: And this requires like the entire room of the studio.
Speaker 4: No, just some space, some good space, good amount.
Speaker 1: Are you there for when rhyming and still in is
Speaker 1: being a yeah.
Speaker 4: And I feel like, if my memory is right, we
Speaker 4: just hand played the kicks and snares. Could be wrong,
Speaker 4: but I definitely remember hand playing kicks and snares on
Speaker 4: a bunch of songs.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, I see, I'm sorry. I have to also
Speaker 1: just visualize it, so I get very over analytical with
Speaker 1: this stuff. What were your feelings after the mastering session
Speaker 1: of Paul's boutique?
Speaker 4: You know, I didn't actually say that I was a
Speaker 4: musician until into the nineties, right, Like I didn't know
Speaker 4: that was my job. I was still whatever, like early twenties, right,
Speaker 4: I was eighty nine, I was with twenty two, twenty three,
Speaker 4: twenty three, right. So I'm just still winging it. I'm
Speaker 4: just going like we live in La now, I can
Speaker 4: drive a car, I've got cash, I can get pot
Speaker 4: and sandwiches, you know what I mean. Like, I'm not
Speaker 4: really thinking like this is my career path. And I
Speaker 4: just assumed, like, oh, we put a record out and
Speaker 4: then we'd go on tour. I guess because that's what
Speaker 4: people do, That's what we did last time. We got
Speaker 4: to make sure. I don't know, I didn't. It didn't
Speaker 4: really give it a thought of, like I've never particularly
Speaker 4: given a thought of like demographics to sell to or
Speaker 4: to cater to, or how record sales are going to
Speaker 4: go or any of that stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean part of you had to get
Speaker 1: some sort of goosebump shit like, yeah, this is some shit,
Speaker 1: Like no one's making shit like this.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you this. So for our book, I wrote
Speaker 4: this short chapter called a short chapter called I Hate
Speaker 4: Dayla Soul.
Speaker 1: Okay, right, And so when.
Speaker 4: The record was all sat and downe and we're ready
Speaker 4: to go fucking three feet high and Rising came out, did.
Speaker 1: You know that was coming down the pike at all?
Speaker 4: No, I don't know. I mean I knew who they were.
Speaker 4: I listened to their twelve inch a lot, right, or
Speaker 4: the two ones they had out, and I was I
Speaker 4: was like, this is way better. So I was, you know,
Speaker 4: that didn't like, didn't ruin my day. I'm just saying
Speaker 4: it was a sort of in a way, I thought
Speaker 4: that we had done this weird thing that no other
Speaker 4: rappers that did. We made like this huge medley at
Speaker 4: the end of the second side. That's you know, it's
Speaker 4: like a beautiful yeah, right, and like, no one's done
Speaker 4: that on a rap record, and so we did all
Speaker 4: these things that we thought that were different, and so
Speaker 4: we thought it was cool. And right when the record
Speaker 4: came out, I went to Tower Records and they didn't
Speaker 4: have any okay, And I was like, oh, this is
Speaker 4: weird because also because the Tower Records was like ten
Speaker 4: blocks from the record label, right, like did someone just
Speaker 4: walk over with a box to sell so that nobody
Speaker 4: it just sort of died early.
Speaker 1: Were you at all impressed with the lead review from
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone at the time.
Speaker 4: I don't read reviews, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: So you did not read the lead review of Paul's
Speaker 1: boutique when it came.
Speaker 4: Out hair Less? Seriously, you know I'm paying rent off
Speaker 4: this stuff. I get it about my music. I don't care.
Speaker 4: You're not the person who's buying the records. You get
Speaker 4: it for free, no offense to anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, are you aware that it existed? And
Speaker 1: are you at least aware that nothing was aware that existed?
Speaker 4: Because we probably did a photo session for it, and
Speaker 4: that's the extent of any way.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm just saying that you know it was really
Speaker 1: hard for mainstream hip hop to get any sort of
Speaker 1: like real critical attention, like deserved critical attention. And normally,
Speaker 1: you know, at least that particular era of Rolling Stone,
Speaker 1: most guys born in the early forties or whatever, it
Speaker 1: was hard to impress them. Like they got Nation of Millions,
Speaker 1: and they were kind I really iffy on anything else
Speaker 1: that came down the pike. So you know, for Paul's
Speaker 1: boutique to get a lead review was like a major
Speaker 1: big deal and like I didn't even look at the stars,
Speaker 1: Like I held the hand over the review as I
Speaker 1: was reading, and I was like, yo, this, I've never
Speaker 1: seen a glowing I mean, besides the Village Voice, which
Speaker 1: you know, if you're kind of under the mentorship of
Speaker 1: the leader passing job, Robert Christigal, then you know that's
Speaker 1: a certain level of writing that's just you know, some
Speaker 1: of the greatest writers under the Village Voice. But that
Speaker 1: review was like poetic and for me, like that was
Speaker 1: the first time in which I felt like, yo, I
Speaker 1: want to create and you know, the roots didn't exist yet,
Speaker 1: but it was almost like yo, I could create something
Speaker 1: and get a glowing review like like this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I wasn't in the jaded, like fuck critics. And but
Speaker 1: for me, that was like a big fucking deal for
Speaker 1: you guys to get a glowing review that's usually reserved
Speaker 1: for like a certain act, but it wasn't because of
Speaker 1: the act. Like I think they had knives out ready
Speaker 1: to crucify you guys, and it was like, holy shit,
Speaker 1: they're artists and like knives down and it wound up
Speaker 1: being the opposite of that. So that's amazing that you
Speaker 1: weren't even aware of that.
Speaker 4: I'm sure I was aware of it, and probably our managers,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying. I just mean in terms
Speaker 4: of they were happy, but even us in general, I don't.
Speaker 4: I've always looked at it like coming from a punt,
Speaker 4: you know, upbringing right, They're not rolling Stone's not giving
Speaker 4: a huge review to the Germs or to the Slits
Speaker 4: or Eddie Bow or any you know, anybody that, like
Speaker 4: I I'm trying to think of anybody's names that like
Speaker 4: they're not giving Yeah, Prince Jasbo isn't getting a lead
Speaker 4: view or whatever. A lead review is like a big
Speaker 4: review and then there's other reviews.
Speaker 1: Is that what that means? Meaning like hear you, hear you?
Speaker 1: This is some life changes the shit right here is which.
Speaker 4: And because I guess we we gotta. You're saying that
Speaker 4: we got a good review Nobody Records, So what does
Speaker 4: it matter.
Speaker 1: I brought that record, damn it.
Speaker 4: Thank you?
Speaker 1: Have you guys at least changed your feelings towards it.
Speaker 1: I know that oftentimes if something doesn't work, you tend
Speaker 1: to cast it to the side, like in your canon,
Speaker 1: if there's one album that has to represent your life's work, like,
Speaker 1: what is that album that's.
Speaker 4: The last record we made, Well, it's too it's Hello
Speaker 4: Nasty and the last record we ever made, so for
Speaker 4: you hot, So the last record we ever made isn't.
Speaker 1: Like our best record, but I gotta understand for centimental
Speaker 1: reasons with y'all, can it well.
Speaker 4: It's also like full circle because as a band, we
Speaker 4: played all the music on record, all the samples. It
Speaker 4: was like sampling and all of the stuff, and we
Speaker 4: did all of it. We weren't sampling other records, so
Speaker 4: it was like full circle for a lot of different things.
Speaker 1: But basically, Paul's not even close to your that's just
Speaker 1: under the inside the storage unit, like it's not important
Speaker 1: to you. I think it's great.
Speaker 4: There's some there's definitely some lyrics on there that I'm like,
Speaker 4: I would, you know they're fucked up that I would
Speaker 4: you know, still in a sort of eighties mentality, do
Speaker 4: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: I get it, I get it. Well, just as a
Speaker 1: piece of work, man, just accept the flowers.
Speaker 4: Yo. That well, thank you?
Speaker 1: That almost goddamn like that.
Speaker 4: You can't go back and change things, but you can
Speaker 4: go forward and change things.
Speaker 1: So I fully understand that. How was it introduced to
Speaker 1: incorporate live musicianship for the Check your Head record? And
Speaker 1: just how much different than that was besides the actual
Speaker 1: outcome of Paul's boutique versus Check your Head?
Speaker 2: What was the goal?
Speaker 4: And I have fun? You know, it's similar I guess
Speaker 4: from starting to rap, from you know, playing hardcore, playing
Speaker 4: punk music to rap music. We were We didn't go
Speaker 4: on a big tour for that record. We went, we
Speaker 4: played like we did a tour of maybe six discos.
Speaker 4: I don't know. It was such a bad idea literal disco.
Speaker 4: And it was when Business second album came out, and
Speaker 4: that's all we listened to is Business second album was
Speaker 4: so good?
Speaker 1: The Diabolical mart Yeah, it's.
Speaker 4: So good, and we we did a promotional thing where
Speaker 4: we took a train from New York to Philly or
Speaker 4: Philly to d C with Will Smith. It was just like,
Speaker 4: what are we doing? What are we doing? What's happening?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 4: And so we just we had these apartments in LA
Speaker 4: We were having fun there, making friends, and uh Yauk
Speaker 4: was just like, oh, I bought a drum kit at
Speaker 4: a yard sale.
Speaker 1: Mm hm.
Speaker 4: So I set up this this shitty drum kit in
Speaker 4: my bedroom and I had a guitar and an amp,
Speaker 4: and Yaouk was just like, I'm gonna do you have
Speaker 4: a wah wah pedal? And I was like, I actually
Speaker 4: do have a wawa pedal. He's like, all right, I'm
Speaker 4: gonna come over tomorrow with my bass and Mike's gonna
Speaker 4: come over and we're just gonna play music. And because
Speaker 4: Mike plays drums, right, I was like okay. And then
Speaker 4: that just that's how it started.
Speaker 1: And then was Yauk always the lighthouse or the sort
Speaker 1: of anchor that starts whatever ideas next.
Speaker 4: No, he was the like task master, like he could
Speaker 4: get it done. Like everybody has like ideas, like oh shit,
Speaker 4: we should do this, but Yea was like yeah, we'll
Speaker 4: figure out how to do that in two hours. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I went from we should be a band to yeah.
Speaker 4: No, tomorrow we're a band, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It was like, tomorrow, this is what we're doing. Tomorrow
Speaker 4: we're not. This isn't just an idea, this is what
Speaker 4: we're doing. We're gonna go back to a year before.
Speaker 4: We're all living together at this house off of mulhalland Drive,
Speaker 4: and Mike drove his car through the front gate, this
Speaker 4: wooden gate, and so Mario, Mario Caldado had a friend,
Speaker 4: this guy Mark Nasheeda, who is a carpenter who also
Speaker 4: played keyboards. He came and he fixed the gate. And
Speaker 4: then the year when we started playing, Mario was like,
Speaker 4: you should get my friend Mark to come and play keyboards.
Speaker 4: And it just literally that's like the next day, and
Speaker 4: then it just started.
Speaker 1: So whenever a disaster happens so uncrucial in the development
Speaker 1: of your sound enters the fold nice. So eventually you
Speaker 1: guys wind up platinum status, newfound fan base back in Arenas.
Speaker 1: Can you explain basically how that journey starts. There's just
Speaker 1: like every day it's just oh, this is happening, Like
Speaker 1: I don't think you can plan a comeback or I
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily call it comeback because you guys were consistent
Speaker 1: part of my listening. So I never once felt like
Speaker 1: a lack of Beastie boys, even though I know there's
Speaker 1: a difference between nine million units and five hundred thousand units.
Speaker 4: But well, I guess we learned the thing of like
Speaker 4: we severed ties with our manager who was the one
Speaker 4: during the Paul's Wutique thinger had his play at the
Speaker 4: discos in the train with Will Smith, right, and we
Speaker 4: got a new manager who's still our manager, John Silva.
Speaker 1: John yep Silva is still wrong with y'all. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: damn son.
Speaker 4: We mat him because he was Sonic Youth manager and
Speaker 4: Vona's manager. And this is before Nevermind came out and
Speaker 4: we went and had like brunch, like a Hollywood brunch
Speaker 4: with him, and he was like, I'm not sure that
Speaker 4: I want to do this anymore. I'm thinking about moving
Speaker 4: to San Francisco and working with my brother. We're like, okay,
Speaker 4: that seems very on Hollywood, and so that's what we
Speaker 4: liked about him, and then we ended up pursuing him,
Speaker 4: and then he became our manager and he approached it
Speaker 4: more like something that we understood in terms of his
Speaker 4: background as a punk rock background, and he was just like,
Speaker 4: you gotta play shows, just play shows. And so we
Speaker 4: got back into that and the thing of like actually
Speaker 4: enjoying being on tour as opposed to license to ill,
Speaker 4: where it sucked after a while, it sucked pretty quick,
Speaker 4: and then on tour, you know, in ninety two was
Speaker 4: really fun and different. It was different. It was a
Speaker 4: whole different scene.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: We were playing clubs, punk clubs and wherever.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 4: Just it made sense, got it got it was going
Speaker 4: to get bigger and bigger, but it did.
Speaker 1: So second time around it felt better for you.
Speaker 4: Oh definitely.
Speaker 1: This is December when we're talking, and my birthdays in January.
Speaker 1: You know what a really cool gift would be. What
Speaker 1: are you able to locate every last issue of Grand
Speaker 1: Royal magazine?
Speaker 4: You're gonna have to talk to him about that.
Speaker 1: I hate you right now, Come on, dog your history.
Speaker 4: It wasn't my thing.
Speaker 1: You have articles in Grand Royal.
Speaker 4: Well, I was involved in like the first, first or
Speaker 4: second one, but then I lost interest. Man. I don't
Speaker 4: have any Latin quarter stories either. Man.
Speaker 2: I know I was gonna ask you, there's no Latin
Speaker 2: Quarter stories.
Speaker 1: Look, man, oh, I got plenty of everyonce.
Speaker 2: Everybody we talked to is like the Beastie Boys were
Speaker 2: at the fucking Latin Quarter.
Speaker 4: But apparently the stories in the Roxy though, but not
Speaker 4: Latin Quarters.
Speaker 1: The fuck all right, Look, man, no one enjoys the
Speaker 1: slow pin to a balloon deflation of any fantasies I
Speaker 1: have about what life was like back in the day
Speaker 1: than this guy right here.
Speaker 4: Green Roy was great though, because our studio we had
Speaker 4: in La, because we we also on pullsic. We spent
Speaker 4: all our money. We thought it was like we were
Speaker 4: rock stars and we would record these really expensive we
Speaker 4: record at these really expensive studios, and we were used
Speaker 4: to recording at Chunk King, which was nothing. When we
Speaker 4: recorded there, right literally, there was like a it was
Speaker 4: there were no lights on, there was a fish tank
Speaker 4: with dead fish in it. It was like it wasn't nice.
Speaker 4: There was no leather couches, right, And so we wanted
Speaker 4: to find a spot that we could record at and
Speaker 4: not have to pay an hourly fee or a lockout
Speaker 4: or anything. So Mike and Mario found a place out
Speaker 4: in at Water outside of La in La but outside
Speaker 4: of LA that was like this little mini ballroom and
Speaker 4: we just took over the whole thing and one room
Speaker 4: was Grand Royal Records, one room was the magazine or
Speaker 4: all these little closets that like people were working in
Speaker 4: and it was a good scene. A lot of creatives
Speaker 4: happened to them.
Speaker 1: Wait, I have signed questions to ask about certain songs
Speaker 1: get it together. Were you guys just in a circle
Speaker 1: just freestyling every four bars or like? Was that was
Speaker 1: that a written song? Because at some point it just
Speaker 1: sounds like y'all freestyling.
Speaker 4: Yes. So Mike and Mario made that track and Q
Speaker 4: Tip was visiting the studio and he was hanging out.
Speaker 4: We're like, do you want to get you know, do
Speaker 4: you want to do a song with us? And he
Speaker 4: was like yeah, and he was like, give me a mic.
Speaker 4: I think it was I don't know if he was
Speaker 4: serious and I was something of that, and we're like, oh,
Speaker 4: we on a track, you know, blah blah blah. So
Speaker 4: he just freestyled for like a bunch and so we
Speaker 4: somehow edited just the parts that of his and we
Speaker 4: weaved our way in through him. So somewhere there's a
Speaker 4: bunch of stuff that he said that we didn't use.
Speaker 1: Oh just random stuff and then yeah, ah so smart, Okay,
Speaker 1: that makes sense now. And the biz at that time
Speaker 1: was give me a good bit story man.
Speaker 4: First time it he came this the studio, he came in,
Speaker 4: it was nighttime. The area where our studio was at
Speaker 4: was nothing. It was like there were there were houses
Speaker 4: in this one area, but the rest was this big
Speaker 4: street and everything was closed. It was deserted except for
Speaker 4: a liquor store like kind of over there. And his
Speaker 4: first thing he said, was there a candy store. We're like,
Speaker 4: what's that? And he's like a candy store? Is there
Speaker 4: a candy store? And we're like, is this guy on
Speaker 4: fucking Heroin?
Speaker 1: Like why is he?
Speaker 4: Like why does he need an indy? It's like eleven
Speaker 4: at night or whatever it was. And so we went
Speaker 4: to the liquor store and he bought like a bag
Speaker 4: of fucking candy and then just was like every time
Speaker 4: we hung out with him was amazing, every every time,
Speaker 4: And all he wanted to do was sing weird songs
Speaker 4: from the seventies, and we'd have our instruments and he'd
Speaker 4: be like, do you know how to play Yesterday by
Speaker 4: the Beatles. He's like, you know Yesterday and we're like what,
Speaker 4: and he's like Yesterday by the Beatles. We're like, yeah,
Speaker 4: we know that song, and he's like, do you know
Speaker 4: how to play it? I'm like, I don't know how
Speaker 4: to just play Yesterday or top of my head and
Speaker 4: he would just start singing it. It just We've got
Speaker 4: a lot of tape of Biz just being.
Speaker 1: Biz bugging out. Yeah yeah. Biz is probably the second
Speaker 1: person to whom my pop culture boarding addiction. He started
Speaker 1: that shit like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, an old friend of mine. God, I'm a rock
Speaker 4: and socking robots, like still in a box and he's
Speaker 4: still mad that Biz never paid him for it. Biz
Speaker 4: also stole my Funkadelic Rennium my album really well. He
Speaker 4: never gave it back.
Speaker 1: Never gave it back.
Speaker 4: Okay, didn't steal it, he just kept it.
Speaker 1: This is something I gotta know the long term, and
Speaker 1: I won't give it away again. I insist that you guys,
Speaker 1: like it's hard doing this interview because the questions I
Speaker 1: want to ask I think are better told in the
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys book. But the long, long term prank that
Speaker 1: Yaouk played on you, oh yeah, with the ring do
Speaker 1: you still have that ring. No, no, no Ah, you
Speaker 1: don't have that ring.
Speaker 4: I mean it might be in a storage locker of yox.
Speaker 4: I threw it in a fountain in a hot outside
Speaker 4: of a hotel in South Paolo or somewhere in South America.
Speaker 1: All right, short version, guys is basically some random stranger
Speaker 1: gives Adam a ring, and I guess.
Speaker 4: It's the early nineties, where in San Francisco doing a
Speaker 4: record signing for Check your Head right out at a
Speaker 4: tower records, and so there's you know, kids are lined up,
Speaker 4: we signed the records. Say hi, you know, nice to
Speaker 4: meet you, nice to meet you know, everybody's interesting. It's
Speaker 4: fun to say hi. And then this one kid comes
Speaker 4: up very very very long arms, like oddly aren't long arms? Right,
Speaker 4: There's something about him that's weird. Maybe the it's like
Speaker 4: a like extra amount of piercings or something. And he's like,
Speaker 4: can I give you my ring? No? No, no no.
Speaker 4: So I meet this kid that night after the show
Speaker 4: in San Francisco. That guy who I was like, whoa,
Speaker 4: that guy was weird is backstage talking to him. He's like,
Speaker 4: can I give you my ring? I'm like no, it's cool.
Speaker 4: I don't wear jewelry. And he's like, no, it's really
Speaker 4: important to me. And he was like cornering me and
Speaker 4: it was getting weird. Gives me this weird ring that
Speaker 4: was like like a hot topp of ring. It wasn't
Speaker 4: like a family crester. This is like some random thing, right,
Speaker 4: And so I took it and I put it in
Speaker 4: my bag. And then when I got home New York,
Speaker 4: like weeks later, I put it on my shelf in
Speaker 4: my apartment. And then we were on the train going
Speaker 4: to play show in Philly and I found the ring
Speaker 4: in my bag. So I was really scared. Didn't know
Speaker 4: what happened. I don't know how the ring got in
Speaker 4: from the thing to the thing. It's just some fucking
Speaker 4: weird thing about this fucking ring. Throw on an Amtrak
Speaker 4: and I tell everybody, like, this thing, this ring that
Speaker 4: I'm holding is is doing something weird to my life.
Speaker 4: I throw it down the end of the train. Then
Speaker 4: I go to the bar the you know, the food
Speaker 4: cart truck area, and I get a metro Liner sandwich
Speaker 4: and I come back blah blah blah blah blah. Fourteen
Speaker 4: years later, twelve years later, we're in South America, and
Speaker 4: I opened my backpack and the fucking ring is in
Speaker 4: my backpack. Yes, And I'm telling you, I was shaking,
Speaker 4: almost crying. I don't know. And I told everybody like
Speaker 4: the shit telling me about the ring. And the next
Speaker 4: day adam ucause like, look I put I held onto
Speaker 4: the ring this whole time.
Speaker 1: I went, Ah, I wish he would have told you
Speaker 1: that to a long gig shit.
Speaker 4: He went to the end of the train and got
Speaker 4: the ring and held onto it for years. And so
Speaker 4: that is the luck of my life. Is one of
Speaker 4: the two lucks of my life. Well you know, I
Speaker 4: guess we all have several, but one of the main
Speaker 4: lucks of my life so to have my best friends
Speaker 4: in my band so I got to do all of
Speaker 4: this stuff with out of the mike. How what would
Speaker 4: have happened if it wasn't for them? You know, literally
Speaker 4: my bandmate played a preak on me for twelve years.
Speaker 1: I love that story so much.
Speaker 4: Man, the best year. And I did want to say something.
Speaker 4: My best best friend since kindergarten, not into Johnny. You
Speaker 4: DJ her party every year, and I want to say
Speaker 4: thank you. If I haven't thanked you, say thank you.
Speaker 4: It means a lot to her.
Speaker 1: Not he's my heart man. That's wait. So that party's
Speaker 1: been going on since like eighty four, for a long time,
Speaker 1: long time. All right, so quick backstories. Basically, I found
Speaker 1: out through this party that the night before Thanksgiving is
Speaker 1: the biggest bar night in America. I thought it was
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve. It's not. That's the second biggest bar night,
Speaker 1: but the night before Thanksgiving is the biggest bar night
Speaker 1: in America. And when I moved to New York, I
Speaker 1: don't know invited me. I think at the time is
Speaker 1: like Rassida Jones. Somebody invited me to this party and
Speaker 1: it was a private party in a bar and it
Speaker 1: was just actors, and you know, it felt like a
Speaker 1: hole in the wall thing, but it just happened to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, the cast of The Good Wife and
Speaker 1: the cast of Long Orders for you people from Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Live. And you know, like if you were a
Speaker 1: New York actor, a New York kind of legend, then
Speaker 1: you're at this party. And I think at the time
Speaker 1: Mark Ronson had started dejaying it. So you started first,
Speaker 1: and then Ronston was next, and then I started spending
Speaker 1: I think like twenty ten and what's really weird is that.
Speaker 1: I mean, we used to go hard, like I would
Speaker 1: end and it's like six seven in the morning, like
Speaker 1: that hard. And man, Thanksgiving was last week and I
Speaker 1: did the party and I'm going all in, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's just like you got topped last year and everyone's dancing,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, like, yeah, man, I'm all right. I
Speaker 1: made my mark. And I look at my I look
Speaker 1: at the clock and I'm like, it's got to be
Speaker 1: two thirty in the morning. And I look and it's
Speaker 1: like eleven nine.
Speaker 4: Perfect time.
Speaker 1: I blew my I blew my shot, and party wound
Speaker 1: up ending at like one fifteen, which I consider a
Speaker 1: major defeat, being as though we used to go till
Speaker 1: six in the morning. But now that's where we are
Speaker 1: in life. Napping early. You're not even a parent.
Speaker 2: It's a whole other shit show.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: You don't even have to be up at six in
Speaker 2: the morning.
Speaker 1: I do, dude. I had to do the parade.
Speaker 2: That's well, that's once one day. What you're gonna ask
Speaker 2: I was gonna ask, Adam, you have a kid, what
Speaker 2: is parenthood like when you're the you know, when you're
Speaker 2: in a beastie boy, But what is that relationship like
Speaker 2: with your kid and I don't you relate.
Speaker 4: Well, it's different because he never saw his play, right
Speaker 4: because he's eleven, it's been a while. He doesn't care,
Speaker 4: you know, natural could really doesn't care. He likes kathleic
Speaker 4: he likes my wife's music way better. He's seen her play.
Speaker 4: I get it. It's okay. I'm not hurt. I'm not hurt.
Speaker 4: I'm just angry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but does he at least understand that you have history? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah, because the weird dad's at school, you.
Speaker 1: Know, or like at the let your dad's Okay, I
Speaker 1: get it now.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So that's it's awkward and he doesn't like it.
Speaker 4: He doesn't like it, but whatever, maybe when he gets
Speaker 4: to high school or when he understands it, like, you know,
Speaker 4: because he doesn't like that his parents are famous. And
Speaker 4: when he gets a little older and understands it like
Speaker 4: he has a swimming pool, like maybe being it's not.
Speaker 1: That bad, then they get it. Leading to Kathleen. First
Speaker 1: of all, I loved their book immensely, and especially with
Speaker 1: the story of how you two met and the pull
Speaker 1: out poster and all those things. But yeah, I was
Speaker 1: about to say, coming from two people that are sort
Speaker 1: of call figures in their respective areas like that, how
Speaker 1: do you make it work? I know that's a general question,
Speaker 1: but I think I'm more or less asking for advice because,
Speaker 1: you know, as a person with a career and a
Speaker 1: personal struggling to keep a girlfriend.
Speaker 4: Like I mean, I don't know, I don't know. I
Speaker 4: think things worked out differently because you know, we have this,
Speaker 4: We have our son, Julius. You know, my my band
Speaker 4: stopped being a band, you know, right before he was born.
Speaker 4: And so I just I love I don't need to,
Speaker 4: you know, And Cathleen tours a lot, so we're used
Speaker 4: to that because we used to tour. First whole part
Speaker 4: of our you know, relationship with us touring. You know,
Speaker 4: she'd be on here, I'd be there all over the
Speaker 4: you know whatever. But I really like being home.
Speaker 1: So are you still in the tender moments when Bridget
Speaker 1: goes out in the road.
Speaker 4: Oh, I left the tender moments. Bridget evert in the
Speaker 4: tender moments. I left when we moved left, I left.
Speaker 4: I was a bass player for my friend Bridget's band,
Speaker 4: and and the first gig of the new bass player,
Speaker 4: my friend Andre was like, oh man, that new bass player.
Speaker 4: He's doing all these walks and runs and he's so good.
Speaker 1: I just finished the SNL fifty documentary, and a big
Speaker 1: part of that is the Elvis Past Boys hookups. Wait,
Speaker 1: what's the infatus of the idea of you guys doing
Speaker 1: radio radio together?
Speaker 4: You know, I don't know. I feel like Kathleen said
Speaker 4: that it was her idea, so I want to say
Speaker 4: that it was my idea, but I'm not one hundred
Speaker 4: percent sure I know that.
Speaker 1: How long did it take you to learn those keyboard parts?
Speaker 4: My friend Michael Rohattan taught me how to play is
Speaker 4: my far fisa. I played keyboards and everything, but I
Speaker 4: don't actually know how. I never I never learned, so
Speaker 4: I don't really know what I'm doing. So he showed
Speaker 4: me a couple of chords.
Speaker 1: I was really impressed when you ran back there. I
Speaker 1: was just like, yo, I don't really knows this shit.
Speaker 4: I recorded records with that far fisa back in bec Boys.
Speaker 4: But anyway, I grew up listening to Elvis Costello. It
Speaker 4: was like one of my He's in my top ten,
Speaker 4: if not top five, okay, as his with my my
Speaker 4: older brother and sister, and so you know, Elvis is
Speaker 4: a big deal and that performance that he did was
Speaker 4: a big deal to us. Sound Live was a big
Speaker 4: deal to us. And so I don't know. I feel
Speaker 4: Kathleen is claiming that it was her idea, but it
Speaker 4: could have been my sister Rachel. I don't I don't remember,
Speaker 4: but got it fantastic. It was one of those things
Speaker 4: where like I didn't want to meet Elvis because you know,
Speaker 4: you don't want to meet people that are here of
Speaker 4: that statue to you, and uh, but we did.
Speaker 1: It was really Elvis lives up to it. So Steve
Speaker 1: one of his lifelong dreams was to produce an Elvis record.
Speaker 4: And so I really you're saying, Steve naive, okay, Steve.
Speaker 1: No, No, Steve. Steve has been a long time Electric
Speaker 1: Lady engineer. So back when I was starting my tenure there,
Speaker 1: like in the late nineties with you know, the D'Angelo
Speaker 1: record and the Common all the albums I worked on
Speaker 1: for that period of time.
Speaker 4: Was recorded an Electric Lady Land.
Speaker 1: Yeah, d'angelo's Voodoo comments like Water for Chocolate and Electric Circus.
Speaker 4: And it was at a real low point in the
Speaker 4: in the eighties when we were there, Nah, man.
Speaker 1: I mean anything that's going through has been legendary and so.
Speaker 1: But Steve's dream was to produce an Elvis record, and
Speaker 1: you know, not only that, but you really started in
Speaker 1: authentic friendship with him.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's not even true though I couldn't dream
Speaker 3: that big to produce it was. My dream was to
Speaker 3: meet him, have a monograph, a record. That was my dream.
Speaker 3: But yeah, thanks to quest to turn into something much larger.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean you know, like obviously you wanted
Speaker 1: to do something with him creatively, so so yeah, basically
Speaker 1: saying Elvis is one of the rare cases in which
Speaker 1: meeting your heroes can actually result into to something.
Speaker 4: Dope, you actually did it and it's done, it's been out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's called Wise Up Ghosts. He came out what
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, Yeah, twenty thirteen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: it's a quality album and I enjoyed immensely making it.
Speaker 1: The one thing I didn't get to ask you before
Speaker 1: we pull is, at one point you had a budding
Speaker 1: acting career.
Speaker 4: Why didn't you pursue Let you talk about myself because
Speaker 4: I want a Best Actor award at the Turks and
Speaker 4: Kekos Film Festival. It was and KOs, but it was somewhere.
Speaker 1: What was this?
Speaker 4: And I have a statue. They send it to me.
Speaker 4: They said, if you're here, we would love to have
Speaker 4: you at the film festival if you have it to
Speaker 4: be and cake, I didn't have the plans, but you know, so, yeah,
Speaker 4: Illustrious is a word that's been thrown out a lot
Speaker 4: about my acting career.
Speaker 1: What does creativity mean to you now in terms of
Speaker 1: all I mean, you know you've achieved a lot. Are
Speaker 1: you insatiable? Are you fine with it?
Speaker 4: Is?
Speaker 1: Just day at a time, your thing? Do you make? Beats? Sometimes?
Speaker 2: Like what do you do?
Speaker 4: I have in the past little while. But this is
Speaker 4: why I got this cabin, my little studio. I came
Speaker 4: here every day and I made a piece of music
Speaker 4: every day, a different piece of music. So I got
Speaker 4: a lot of music. I don't just to have I
Speaker 4: don't know, but just to be is different from what
Speaker 4: it used to be. What it is to other people,
Speaker 4: what it means to me is different. I'm in a
Speaker 4: fortunate situation that people really like fight your right to party,
Speaker 4: and so I can afford to just be creative and
Speaker 4: not put things out, you know what I mean? And
Speaker 4: my house is paid for like I bought a house,
Speaker 4: you know, you know what I mean? And so creativity
Speaker 4: is different. If I had to hustle, I couldn't just
Speaker 4: come here and make just weird little music every day.
Speaker 4: I'd have to fucking work at it and really take
Speaker 4: seriously what creativity means, what it means to me, what
Speaker 4: it means to who I'm putting it out to. Will
Speaker 4: I be able to pay my rent with this fucking music?
Speaker 4: Do you know what I mean? And if not, I
Speaker 4: can just be creative whatever where I want, But I
Speaker 4: have to work a job. So creativity is is it's tricky.
Speaker 3: What's your music like these days? What kind of things
Speaker 3: are you creating?
Speaker 4: Depends on you know, the drive over whatever. If I
Speaker 4: hear something that'd be like, oh, should make classical music today,
Speaker 4: and then I don't know how to do that, so
Speaker 4: it comes out with something and I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 4: I should just put a eight a weight on it,
Speaker 4: So don't be way better, you know, like guitar music
Speaker 4: or whatever. I just you know, I have the modern era.
Speaker 4: You can have any instrument you want, so you know, timpanies.
Speaker 1: What have you got it?
Speaker 4: Experimenting, which is another thing about creativity if you can
Speaker 4: afford it, you can be experimental.
Speaker 1: That's that's what I aim to be. All Right, Before
Speaker 1: I close, can you give.
Speaker 4: Me a relationship advice? I really don't you know.
Speaker 1: I'm going I'm going another oute.
Speaker 4: I'm going another I love Kathleen. That's the only thing
Speaker 4: that I can Kathleen's amazing, so.
Speaker 1: I can accept that and I absolutely just stand why
Speaker 1: you love Kathleen. All right. So in closing, what three
Speaker 1: hip hop factoids of your life? Do do you think
Speaker 1: I not know of me personally? You had to have
Speaker 1: been there for an important recording of someone's song.
Speaker 4: Or like I already told you that I was in
Speaker 4: the background of it's Yes, I was there is a
Speaker 4: little thing I was there for, like a bunch of
Speaker 4: the stuff. Oh. Also, do you know this fact to it?
Speaker 4: My best friend Nadia the Johnny who your DJ. Do
Speaker 4: you know her brother was yes? Uh?
Speaker 1: Nadia is her? Her brother was part of the st
Speaker 1: fifties the Stimulated Dummies, Yes, with John Gamble. Uh.
Speaker 4: Dante Ross Dante, he's been a guest on your show. Yes. First,
Speaker 4: first you called Dante? You didn't you didn't call me?
Speaker 4: That's that's okay.
Speaker 3: I've been the best for last.
Speaker 1: You know how long it took to make this happen.
Speaker 4: You have my phone number? What are you talking about?
Speaker 1: I know, by the way. Yeah, I was about to
Speaker 1: say Adam is probably responsible. None of you two are
Speaker 1: in it. But you know I'm currently in various New
Speaker 1: York Times games groups. Oh, I'm in wordle groups various
Speaker 1: word but Adam's the og. We play one online scrabble
Speaker 1: game together. I'm not lying, though. I'm in eight word
Speaker 1: groups right now and I can't take it anymore.
Speaker 4: I'm for these things. Is it like group therapy? It is?
Speaker 1: Especially now, are you kidding?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 1: This is what I can say. One of my wordle
Speaker 1: groups who also has a secret spelling bee unit that
Speaker 1: I'm not a part of. Okay, So, as of late,
Speaker 1: the Lonely Island guys have kind of been talking about
Speaker 1: their prowess at getting Queen Bee, which is the highest
Speaker 1: rating that you can get, and so there's almost like
Speaker 1: a Jets and Sharks, Bloods and Crips level of shit
Speaker 1: talking going on. Really, so I'm gonna have to do
Speaker 1: some Michael Jacksons and just dance between them and get
Speaker 1: them to stop.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Seriously, like game groups are now that's the new game night,
Speaker 1: even though I do have regular ass game nights, like
Speaker 1: where are you currently playing right now?
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm in a cross for puzzle I do every day.
Speaker 4: I do the month Archive times Monday, New York Times
Speaker 4: cross for a puzzle?
Speaker 1: Why Monday as opposed to the Sunday?
Speaker 4: Or I got sick and spelling Bee?
Speaker 2: Do you do connections?
Speaker 4: I get a lot of way too much spelling be.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of study. By the way, is Queen
Speaker 2: Bee like you get all the words?
Speaker 1: Yes, you have to get every last word right.
Speaker 2: That's that's insanity level.
Speaker 1: I can't do that. Ship.
Speaker 4: I've written to the person that does the thing because
Speaker 4: Tom tom is there's a lot of words that are
Speaker 4: like that, and there's other food things that are like that.
Speaker 4: We're like soake, the wine counts, but like some other
Speaker 4: thing doesn't count.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Whenever I complained to my plug at the times,
Speaker 1: they tell me that it's the machine generator and is
Speaker 1: not what we could do about that.
Speaker 2: But I love that you write to them.
Speaker 4: That's fantastic. Yeah, I know, not all I'm not. Like.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest hours of my life was during
Speaker 1: the time one hundred I got to write the word
Speaker 1: creator's entry for the time one hundred and I used
Speaker 1: only five letter words highlight of my life. You got
Speaker 1: to google it. I don't know by memory, but I
Speaker 1: wrote his entry in all five letter words and one
Speaker 1: of them no plural plurals.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, party, yeah no, No.
Speaker 1: For Adam, you're our a legend. That's all I can
Speaker 1: statement without making you feel uncomfortable. Your generosity and your
Speaker 1: creativity and your band literally did a lot for me
Speaker 1: just as a creative and also helped me a lot
Speaker 1: in my career. I mean, I'm not even exaggerating how
Speaker 1: much that has helped me and still has me here
Speaker 1: to this day with a career and my own house.
Speaker 1: So I thank you for that, and I appreciate it
Speaker 1: because you guys didn't have to bring us under the
Speaker 1: wing and all that stuff, but I appreciate that, man,
Speaker 1: and thank you for doing this episode.
Speaker 4: Finally, welcome, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Thank you all right on behalf of Adam Horwitz and
Speaker 1: Sugar Steve and Unpaid Bill. This is Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: Y'all see you next go around. Thank you, Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to Quest Love Supreme hosted by I'm here,
Speaker 1: a Quest, Love, Thompson, Are You Saying? Claire Sugar, Steve Mandel,
Speaker 1: and unpaid Bill Sherman. The executive producers are Amir Quest, Love, Thompson,
Speaker 1: Sean Che and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Britney, Benjamin Cousin,
Speaker 1: Jake Payne, Eliah Saint Clair, edited by Alex Convoy. Produced
Speaker 1: by iHeart by Noel Brown West. Love Supreme is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.