Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Supremo Supremo Roll Call, Supremo Suck Sun Supremo Roll Call,
Speaker 2: Suprema su su Supremo Roll Calm, Suprema Sun Suck suprem Roll.
Speaker 1: What's Loving crew?
Speaker 3: Yeah, next hour you stuck with Yeah, Sophia Chain, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Ain't nothing nothing.
Speaker 2: With Supreme Supremo roll Call, Suprema Sun Sun Suprema roll Call.
Speaker 1: My name is Sugar. Yeah, good afternoon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, from the baddest yeah jew in this room.
Speaker 3: Supreme So Supreme roll Call, Supreme Suck Suck Supreme roll Call.
Speaker 5: It's like e yeah and the baddest bitch.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: It's fia bad because we both speak French.
Speaker 3: Oh, I want to for that sub Frema roll So
Speaker 3: Suprema Supreme roll.
Speaker 1: My name is Boss Billy.
Speaker 7: If you're wondering who, Yeah, on my grind to be
Speaker 7: baddest bill in the room.
Speaker 2: Supreme Subprema roll Call, Suprema Subpremo Roll.
Speaker 5: My name is Sophia and I'm the baddest pitch in
Speaker 5: the room. And I think it's really important that you
Speaker 5: understand it. I'm not allowed to.
Speaker 1: Curse because.
Speaker 3: Supreme Wait is this a first for q l S.
Speaker 3: Were you about to give a dissertation?
Speaker 5: I was about to curse.
Speaker 6: I'm allowed to cur Yes.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, good to know because you.
Speaker 1: Sound effects for you.
Speaker 5: That was beautiful.
Speaker 3: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another exciting episode of Quest
Speaker 3: Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: I'm your Emperor, Questlove Emperor. Yeah.
Speaker 3: With me today is my Supreme team. We have a
Speaker 3: blue belt expert showgun Sugar Steve.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we got our red.
Speaker 3: Belt twin tongue sword since he laya over here. And
Speaker 3: of course the man who runs it all keeps us
Speaker 3: in line, black belt Boss Bill.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 3: So, for me, a lot of my favorite episodes that
Speaker 3: we do a Quest Love Supreme and that we conduct,
Speaker 3: my favorite ones always the behind the scenes episodes in
Speaker 3: which we kind of poke the pride and dissect the
Speaker 3: process from the perspective of the person who's usually behind
Speaker 3: the scenes, you know, the person that keeps the wheels
Speaker 3: turning behind the scenes, not necessarily in front of the
Speaker 3: camera or on the microphone. So I would say that
Speaker 3: Sophia Chang is definitely a legend in these circles. For
Speaker 3: the past thirty plus years, she's been near and dear
Speaker 3: to the soundtracks of our lives, especially that of the
Speaker 3: Shalloin variety. Her expertise and knowledge was key in the
Speaker 3: prime days of keeping the Wu Tang caravan, going be
Speaker 3: it A and R, managing building labels and management Sophia
Speaker 3: Chang and her legendary Gucci Fedor, which is actually not
Speaker 3: here today.
Speaker 5: There, but I have the head.
Speaker 3: Okay, I was about to say, that's your trademark. She's
Speaker 3: basically seen it at all, and now she's ready to
Speaker 3: share her story. Her exclusive audible memoir, entitled The Baddest
Speaker 3: Bitch in the Room navigates. It takes you on a
Speaker 3: journey through one of the most creative periods of music.
Speaker 3: Timeline Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our guests on Quest
Speaker 3: Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: Sophia Changy, thank you, Thank you, very glad to see today.
Speaker 5: You're so happy to be here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Kind of jealous, like you're killing it with the merch.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like five books and I think that I just
Speaker 3: made like one tea shirt, Like, yeah, I'm kind of
Speaker 3: I've been kind of scheming on this jacket, even though you.
Speaker 5: Know I'm not made this jacket. There may be another
Speaker 5: one too that I haven't.
Speaker 1: Even worn yet. I gotta talk to audible.
Speaker 5: There you go, let's talk to.
Speaker 1: Can I get a jacket?
Speaker 6: See what is that on the back? It says my
Speaker 6: mother lover hustler warrior.
Speaker 1: Indeed, mother love a hustler warrior. Right, I'll see that.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll start at the top asking why did you
Speaker 3: feel at this point in your career now is the
Speaker 3: time to share your story?
Speaker 1: And what do you think we can learn from your journey?
Speaker 5: Uh so, amir, I'm sure you were told this for
Speaker 5: years too. For years people said you got to write
Speaker 5: a book, You got to write a book. You know,
Speaker 5: because of our proximity to what we do, you're actually
Speaker 5: an artist. I was artist approximate and I just couldn't
Speaker 5: wrap myself around how that was not an exercise in narcissism.
Speaker 5: And you know what am I going to do?
Speaker 1: Talk about?
Speaker 5: Oh? I hung out here, I did this, and I
Speaker 5: was that's not interesting to me. But when I started
Speaker 5: working at Universal in twenty fourteen, and I took on
Speaker 5: a number of mentees like you built straight out of
Speaker 5: college twenty two right, And they were all women, and
Speaker 5: I understood that my vast and varied experience, particularly as
Speaker 5: a working mother, as a working single mother, could be instructive.
Speaker 5: Then I was like, Okay, if I can be of
Speaker 5: service to people, then I'll step into the spotlight. But
Speaker 5: before that I simply wasn't interested.
Speaker 3: So you just wanted to strictly stay behind the scenes,
Speaker 3: and I did.
Speaker 5: I did. I was, you know, don't look at the
Speaker 5: one behind the curtain. I skirted the red carpet. I
Speaker 5: never wanted to be in the interviews. I never wanted
Speaker 5: any of that. And now you know, I'm going to
Speaker 5: be everywhere. But in terms of what people can glean
Speaker 5: from my memoir, I mean, what I say is that
Speaker 5: my memoirs for anybody who ever felt undervalued, underheard, under scene,
Speaker 5: anybody who said yes in the face of so many
Speaker 5: nos was, you know, anybody who kind of pushed up
Speaker 5: against whatever confines were placed on them, in any boxes
Speaker 5: that were placed on them, and anybody who dared to
Speaker 5: tell their story. And the lessons that I hope people
Speaker 5: can glean is that I think that what you will
Speaker 5: gather is that I'm pretty fearless. Now, granted, I have
Speaker 5: always had a middle class safety net, so it gives
Speaker 5: you a privilege to be a little bit more fearless
Speaker 5: than others. But I got fired, I got hired, I
Speaker 5: quit many many times over my you know, my LinkedIn
Speaker 5: profile is like reading one piece, but it's you know,
Speaker 5: it's just a matter of I think it's really important
Speaker 5: to pursue your passion. And for first gen Asian immigrants,
Speaker 5: that is really not something that we're taught to do. Right,
Speaker 5: exactly we are so it is so narrowly prescribed lawyer, doctor, scholar, engineer, right,
Speaker 5: And if you want to stray from this path, it's very,
Speaker 5: very difficult. And I understand it now as a mother,
Speaker 5: but also looking at my parents and thinking of the
Speaker 5: sacrifices that they made as immigrants, leaving everything they knew
Speaker 5: behind and coming to Canada. In my case, they don't
Speaker 5: really want to hear me say I want to be
Speaker 5: a sculptor, right, because in their mind they're like, well,
Speaker 5: that we didn't leave everything we know and we love
Speaker 5: so that you could go do this profession that we
Speaker 5: see as kind of unsafe in a way.
Speaker 1: Right. Are you the only child or do.
Speaker 5: You have an older brother of an older brother?
Speaker 1: Did he follow the family?
Speaker 6: Did he did?
Speaker 5: But he's also extremely passionate about it. My brothers. He
Speaker 5: saw Chang. He's a tenured English professor at Vassar. He's
Speaker 5: the tense, smartest people I know, and that's his passion.
Speaker 5: So French Lit was my passion until I heard the
Speaker 5: message and I went.
Speaker 6: On a second.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I was curious about how French Lit became your passion.
Speaker 8: I was reading about that and I was like, is
Speaker 8: it Canada?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Right, yeah, but that that still doesn't mean it that
Speaker 8: becomes your passion to study in college and speak it
Speaker 8: fluently because.
Speaker 5: You are well. What I will say is that I'm
Speaker 5: fluent in speaking English with a French accent, which is
Speaker 5: far more interesting and much more fun. You know. I
Speaker 5: grew up in a family of academics. My father, god
Speaker 5: Rest the Soul, was a mathematician, you know. Again, my
Speaker 5: brother became a professor. My mother was a librarian. So
Speaker 5: I grew up in a household where everybody was reading,
Speaker 5: you know, and my parents were reading the classics in English,
Speaker 5: which I think is extraordinary. And again, because it was
Speaker 5: just always assumed that I would follow suit, it didn't
Speaker 5: occur to me to think outside of that paradigm.
Speaker 8: So that was the suit, that was that was within
Speaker 8: the suit, right, so now do they understand, Well, I
Speaker 8: know your father isn't with us anymore, but your mom does.
Speaker 8: She noticed you're a pioneer because like you said, you
Speaker 8: you said you want the first Asian woman in hip hop.
Speaker 8: That's a pioneer because they are a lot now.
Speaker 5: I wonder not a lot, But I don't think my
Speaker 5: mother would describe as a pioneer. And to be honest
Speaker 5: with you, did you give your mom this jacket?
Speaker 1: Yes? Wear it?
Speaker 5: No for thirty two years up until right now when
Speaker 5: she can actually tell her friends that her daughter wrote
Speaker 5: a book. My mother couldn't tell you what I did.
Speaker 5: There's no way, Like she wouldn't understand what it means,
Speaker 5: Like what does it mean to do A and R?
Speaker 5: My mother was born in North Korea nineteen thirty two.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, Like, she's not because she needs.
Speaker 6: The guys, like, but it was the moment when she
Speaker 6: met she.
Speaker 5: Did and they were all really gracious and she Yeah,
Speaker 5: she met a bunch of the artists that I managed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, Like I know, people don't understand.
Speaker 3: They kind of collectively eye roll whenever whenever I mentioned that.
Speaker 3: It took me two albums to tell my dad that
Speaker 3: I was in the roots.
Speaker 8: What.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's that that fear of wanting to disappoint
Speaker 3: your parents or not wanting to disappoint your parents. And
Speaker 3: you know, like my dad was busting his ass since
Speaker 3: I was five to.
Speaker 1: Play in private school, yes, like to go his route, yes.
Speaker 3: And so for you to like sneak out of it
Speaker 3: to do something you want to do is hard. So like,
Speaker 3: when did you well, First of all, Vancouver, what was
Speaker 3: the environment like before I know that you come to
Speaker 3: Jesus moment was hearing the message by Grand Master Flash
Speaker 3: and the Furious Five, But before then, what was your
Speaker 3: life generally like in Vancouver?
Speaker 5: So it was very comfortable. You know, Vancouver is beautiful
Speaker 5: and it's green and lovely. Again middle class went to
Speaker 5: public schools. But I was very much a yellow girl
Speaker 5: in a white world who wanted to be white, no question.
Speaker 5: I was born in nineteen sixty five, and so when
Speaker 5: I'm ten, right, and I'm coming of age, so to speak,
Speaker 5: everything I see in the media, whether it's television, film, commercials,
Speaker 5: or magazines is whiteness. Every representation of beauty and power
Speaker 5: and sex appeal is white. And so I wanted to
Speaker 5: be white and to be frank, I kind of wonder,
Speaker 5: how does a person of color growing up in that, yeah,
Speaker 5: not want to be white? Right? And as I shared
Speaker 5: this story, I've had so many people say to me,
Speaker 5: I felt the exact same way. And so I was,
Speaker 5: you know, I'm watching these shows and these movies, and I, yeah,
Speaker 5: it was. You know, I grew up getting called chink
Speaker 5: jap gook for sure. I got you know, Chinese, Japanese
Speaker 5: dirty knees. Look at these all of that stuff, because
Speaker 5: racism then was just simply not as codified, and so
Speaker 5: kids would be in your face. And the thing that
Speaker 5: I learned very early on too, was you're learning this
Speaker 5: from somewhere right right, And you're probably learning some of
Speaker 5: it from your parents. Maybe they're not teaching you that
Speaker 5: charming little song, but they are somehow instilling in you,
Speaker 5: or rather not instilling in you, the the you know,
Speaker 5: the virtue that you shouldn't be a shitty person and
Speaker 5: judge people by, you know, and make prejudgments about somebody
Speaker 5: based on their skin.
Speaker 1: So you were just in an isolated community.
Speaker 3: You weren't and you weren't amongst like your family, and
Speaker 3: there was never I'll get my cousin's fuck you up
Speaker 3: or yeah.
Speaker 5: No, it wasn't. It wasn't really like that. We weren't
Speaker 5: that isolated because my parents were part of a burgeoning
Speaker 5: Korean community, but we were all immigrants. Everybody's parents spoke
Speaker 5: with accents, right, We all ate food that looked and
Speaker 5: smelled and tasted different. All of our parents had quote
Speaker 5: unquote funny names. So there were all of these things,
Speaker 5: all of these markers that clearly indicated that we were other, right,
Speaker 5: And the world never stopped telling us that we were other,
Speaker 5: whether it was making fun of my parents' names again,
Speaker 5: saying something about our food. Thank you white people for
Speaker 5: now acknowledging in the kimchies is superfood, and that you
Speaker 5: think you involved, you think you had invented bone broth.
Speaker 5: I don't think so. You know, all of the all
Speaker 5: of these things that kind of diminished, right, who who
Speaker 5: we were. And you know, I've been thinking a lot
Speaker 5: lately about visibility and erasure, right, And I think that
Speaker 5: any of us who live on the margins understand what
Speaker 5: it is like to be systematically and institutionally erased, and
Speaker 5: so in kind of denying my parents' history, their heritage,
Speaker 5: their culture, and making fun of it. To me, you
Speaker 5: are diminishing and you are erasing them. And I certainly
Speaker 5: I didn't have this language when I was a child,
Speaker 5: but I really felt that I was that I would.
Speaker 5: You know, in making somebody feel other, you are necessarily
Speaker 5: making them feel lesser.
Speaker 3: I see, was Sophia your birthday or was it at.
Speaker 5: That's a good question.
Speaker 8: No.
Speaker 5: So everybody in my extended family has a Korean name.
Speaker 5: I was the first person in my family born outside
Speaker 5: of Korea, and my father chose to name me after
Speaker 5: a Polish mathematician. And that was a conscious decision on
Speaker 5: his part.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, I see.
Speaker 3: So not many people know this about Vancouver, besides having
Speaker 3: one of the best, most adventurous ice cream polos of
Speaker 3: all time. Shout out to La Casa Gelato over five
Speaker 3: hundred flavors.
Speaker 1: They didn't pay for that plug.
Speaker 3: Sorry, but you know, not many people know that the
Speaker 3: national anthem of hip hop was created in Vancouver in
Speaker 3: mushroom studios. The incredible bongo bands Apache was actually created
Speaker 3: in mushroom studios in Vancouver.
Speaker 5: Holy shit, I didn't know that. That's amazing in mushroom studios,
Speaker 5: that's amazing.
Speaker 1: More you know.
Speaker 3: So yeah, So for me, it's not shocking at all
Speaker 3: that your passion for hip hop culture because I'm sure
Speaker 3: that you know people Vancouver, how did you find that moment?
Speaker 3: But you know, the national anthem of hip hop was
Speaker 3: was born. So tell us about that moment where you
Speaker 3: heard the message, and I you know, for a lot
Speaker 3: of us that were around in real time, like, the
Speaker 3: message was definitely one of the besides rappers delight. To me,
Speaker 3: the message was one of the first what I call
Speaker 3: war the world's moment where you stare at the speaker
Speaker 3: and you're undering, what the hell is this?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 3: What was that experience like for you? And how did
Speaker 3: that transform you?
Speaker 5: I want to talk about that, and then I want
Speaker 5: to ask you about your experience. I'd be very curious
Speaker 5: to hear about your experience the first time you heard
Speaker 5: it too. So for me, you know, all I'm seeing
Speaker 5: around me is whiteness, and then I'm seeing yellowness because
Speaker 5: there are Asian immigrants there. There are lots of Chinese
Speaker 5: and Vancouver, and then there are some brown folks meaning
Speaker 5: South Asians, right, But I have no exposure to black
Speaker 5: folks and Latin X folks. And again all of the
Speaker 5: representations of people of color are coming through the media,
Speaker 5: and that at the time and still largely is the case,
Speaker 5: is who the white male lens now? And I also
Speaker 5: wasn't because I grew up in Vancouver. I'm listening to
Speaker 5: top forty radio. I am listening to white music. I
Speaker 5: have no exposure to this remarkably robust and rich tradition
Speaker 5: of gospel, R and B jazz, none of that. I'm
Speaker 5: not exposed to any of it. So when I hear
Speaker 5: the message, I'm in twelfth grade. There's this kid, Ray,
Speaker 5: this Greek kid. He loved music, and he brings this
Speaker 5: twelve inch record to school. We're in the lunch room.
Speaker 5: We're in this music room at lunchtime, and he puts
Speaker 5: on the record. Now, the thing that I always loved
Speaker 5: was dancing, and so but I listened to disco. Actually,
Speaker 5: to be fair, I always love dancing. And so immediately
Speaker 5: the beat hits me in the solar plexus, right, So
Speaker 5: I have a viscial response, and then I hear the
Speaker 5: lyrics and I just think, I don't even know what
Speaker 5: I was thinking, but I remember I found it so compelling,
Speaker 5: and in retrospect, when I think about it. I think
Speaker 5: it's because it's the first time. And again I didn't
Speaker 5: I certainly didn't have this language. It's sixteen seventeen that
Speaker 5: I heard people of color talk about themselves and represent
Speaker 5: their own world as opposed to white Hollywood saying, this
Speaker 5: is what brown people, yellow people, black folks.
Speaker 1: Do, right.
Speaker 5: And also there was a sense of urgency and anger
Speaker 5: and pride that resonated with me really deeply, because again,
Speaker 5: being a yellow girl growing up in a white world
Speaker 5: who wants to be white, I didn't feel pride. I
Speaker 5: felt shame and embarrassment, right, And so I hear the
Speaker 5: message and then I think wow. And also I'm a
Speaker 5: French major, so I'm a literature major, and I studied poetry,
Speaker 5: and I knew it was poetry. There was no part
Speaker 5: of me that was I don't understand what people don't
Speaker 5: think it's poetry. I think it's poetry, and I think
Speaker 5: it's literature. And then I see the run DMC video
Speaker 5: for King of Rock. So I've only heard the message,
Speaker 5: and then I see King of Rock and I'm.
Speaker 9: Like, oh, oh my god, right, you know arms rocks,
Speaker 9: you know, and just exactly the bee boy stance and
Speaker 9: just this claiming of me, and this is who I.
Speaker 5: Am, and I will not let anybody else define me,
Speaker 5: nor will I let anybody else tell you who I am.
Speaker 5: I'm fucking telling you who I am. That was revelatory.
Speaker 5: But I'd love to ask you because the message is
Speaker 5: the first song that I heard, right, certainly not the
Speaker 5: first hip hop song that you heard. What struck you
Speaker 5: as being different about it?
Speaker 1: About the message? All right?
Speaker 3: So up until that point, of course, like I was
Speaker 3: eight when rappers Ali came out, so that was just
Speaker 3: what the hell is this? And the second time I
Speaker 3: had that moment was not Many people will write about
Speaker 3: the Adventures of grand Master Flash and the Furious the
Speaker 3: Ventures a grand Master Flash on the Wheels of Steel
Speaker 3: basically the first record that demonstrates cutting. So I'm trying
Speaker 3: to decipher how this noise is made? And can I
Speaker 3: do this on my dad's think, oh, you know, whippons
Speaker 3: and all that shit.
Speaker 1: So but with the message stop scratching my isa K records, right,
Speaker 1: I would say that.
Speaker 3: Sitting in my dad's car and it came on the
Speaker 3: radio and even he had to take a pause, like,
Speaker 3: but everything in that song hit me because I didn't
Speaker 3: know none of what none of those street terms were.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what a pimp was.
Speaker 3: Like my six year old cousin had to tell eleven
Speaker 3: year old me, Like I was like, she had to
Speaker 3: get a pip like last night and the pips.
Speaker 1: She couldn't make it on her own.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but literally everything like you know, if the front
Speaker 3: of the train, I'm like, wait, they're pushing people on
Speaker 3: the train.
Speaker 7: Platforms and midnight train and Georgia platform But to me,
Speaker 7: to me, the last minute of that song when they
Speaker 7: got arrested, Yo, that's scared the shit out me.
Speaker 3: And then that's that was That was a moment where
Speaker 3: I feel like the first father and son talk really happened,
Speaker 3: where my dad told me like, you know, that could
Speaker 3: be you, that that might be your cousins, that could
Speaker 3: be the boys on the forty ninth Street.
Speaker 1: And just the whole Like.
Speaker 3: You know, my first lecture about police came because of
Speaker 3: that song. I was like, wait, why are they getting arrested?
Speaker 3: And what's what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Like you don't remember the ending? Like what is that
Speaker 1: a game? Getting the car? Getting a car? I didn't do.
Speaker 3: Nothing, Like I wasn't old enough to understand when Stevie
Speaker 3: Wonder did that on Living for the City. But hearing
Speaker 3: that that definitely, I'll say the last minute of the
Speaker 3: message was such just a paradigm shift in my life.
Speaker 3: That's where I was taught, taught fear the police and
Speaker 3: whatever you do, like straight up and you know all
Speaker 3: that stuff. So yeah, that that affected me in ways
Speaker 3: that I can't even imagine.
Speaker 1: Definitely my father.
Speaker 5: They impacted people. I really hope they know how they
Speaker 5: impacted different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, them all the time when you know, whenever I
Speaker 3: see them, how that is?
Speaker 5: That's that's amazing. Thank you for sharing.
Speaker 4: It really seems like from so many of the interviews
Speaker 4: that we've done here that the message is like the
Speaker 4: the equivalent of the Beatles uh Ed Sullivan performance. You know,
Speaker 4: the people who saw that or people who heard that
Speaker 4: that's when their life changed.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean Ed Sullivan in that way, I mean TV.
Speaker 3: I mean the way viral viralness is now with YouTube.
Speaker 3: Like everyone watched The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday nights
Speaker 3: at nine pm on CBS. So if you had the
Speaker 3: platform of being on The Ed Sullivan Show, your career
Speaker 3: was made. And the Beatles made their American debut on
Speaker 3: The Ed Sullivan Show, and everything changed.
Speaker 6: After that, Like you think my parents was watching that?
Speaker 1: Did they have a television?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Were they born? You just won't be difficult, don't you?
Speaker 6: Like, No, I just don't think. I just I don't
Speaker 6: think that that was forever. Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's the thing, my relationship with the Beatles.
Speaker 6: Steve, I was just saying no, no, no, Actually, I'm.
Speaker 3: Kind of with you my relationship with the Beatles. Actually,
Speaker 3: I knew all the black artists who covered the Beatles
Speaker 3: before I even got into the Beatles. So it took
Speaker 3: a lot of unpacking at the age of fifteen and realized, like, oh,
Speaker 3: Gladys Knight and the Pips didn't do that song first,
Speaker 3: and Bill Withers didn't do this song first, and wait,
Speaker 3: Stevie Wonder didn't.
Speaker 8: Do we Out and not for nothing, our households were
Speaker 8: different in a way. That's like my I asked my mom,
Speaker 8: you wasn't.
Speaker 6: At what stock?
Speaker 5: She was like, girl, what the fuck?
Speaker 1: No, No, I get it.
Speaker 3: But I mean the Beatles definitely impacted a lot of
Speaker 3: music lovers, not just their their target demographic, but you know,
Speaker 3: you were even if you were black, you were watching
Speaker 3: at Sullivan's show. So, how when did you make your
Speaker 3: move to America?
Speaker 5: Like I was, I was twenty two and I was
Speaker 5: literally writing out my graduating essay and I went straight
Speaker 5: to the airport. I skipped graduation. We were just talking
Speaker 5: Bill and I were just talking about this. I was
Speaker 5: so anxious to get back to New York. So I
Speaker 5: have to I have to give a little bit of context.
Speaker 5: So as a French major, first of all, living in Vancouver,
Speaker 5: I knew I wanted to break out of Vancouver, and
Speaker 5: as a French major, maybe she'll see right. Of course,
Speaker 5: it's three pairs. And then I went to Paris and
Speaker 5: I met the French and I was like, oh no,
Speaker 5: I'm not doing this. And then in my final year
Speaker 5: of college, I came to New York and I met
Speaker 5: Joey Ramone. I thought he was Johnny. I called him
Speaker 5: Johnny Joey God rest his soul. And I had I
Speaker 5: had heard the message. I had visited New York and
Speaker 5: I knew, okay, this is where I want to be.
Speaker 5: As a French would say, I was like a like
Speaker 5: a fish to water. So when I moved here, I
Speaker 5: stayed with a legendary rock critical named Legs McNeil and
Speaker 5: his girlfriend, and they introduced me that she got me
Speaker 5: a job working at Paul Simon and then I kind
Speaker 5: of in eighty seven and then I exactly on the
Speaker 5: you're so scold, you really are like this. How do
Speaker 5: you keep it on your head? Yeah, so it was
Speaker 5: he's coming off of the world wide Graceland tour.
Speaker 6: So do you have a regular job during this time?
Speaker 6: I'm trying to figure out you said.
Speaker 5: So, my regular job is I'm the distant to his
Speaker 5: tour managers, coming off of.
Speaker 6: Grade before Paul time.
Speaker 5: And like, how you I think I might like, I
Speaker 5: had a little job working at a studio. But also
Speaker 5: at that time, yeah, New York was not as expensive.
Speaker 5: Okay when me and my friends talked. So this is
Speaker 5: in the late eighties, early nineties, right when me and
Speaker 5: my friends talk about it. Where we lived in that time,
Speaker 5: none of us could afford to live there now, no
Speaker 5: fucking way we're part of So I was living well.
Speaker 5: I lived on the Upper West Side with Columbia students
Speaker 5: for a while, but then I lived downtown at fourteenth
Speaker 5: and seventh, and then I lived at the Archives, which
Speaker 5: is this really beautiful white glove building. Elevator Doorman Building
Speaker 5: in the West Village. Not a shot. Could I afford
Speaker 5: to live there now? Not a shot. I mean when
Speaker 5: I was when I was coming up, nobody lived nobody
Speaker 5: lived in Brooklyn, Sure as fuck, nobody lived in Queens.
Speaker 5: And now all of my friends live in Brooklyn and
Speaker 5: Queens because we can't afford Manhattan anymore, like nobody can
Speaker 5: afford the city anymore.
Speaker 1: So I can't afford the apartment. I moved to Brooklyn
Speaker 1: in two thousand and two.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that apartment, it's really tough. But there were also
Speaker 5: three of us living in a three hundred and sixty
Speaker 5: square foot studio. But we were like in our early twenties,
Speaker 5: and who gives a shit, it was probably like one
Speaker 5: hundred dollars.
Speaker 3: What was the environment like back then, because it's I
Speaker 3: would imagine that mid late eighties was more that was
Speaker 3: post danceitaria. So that's the first era of Downtown New
Speaker 3: York scene. So what was the scene into So.
Speaker 5: What was really amazing about the scene at the time
Speaker 5: was that it was really small and I'm not going
Speaker 5: to say insular, because it wasn't insular. It was small
Speaker 5: and it was focused, but it was also very inclusive
Speaker 5: and we were all at the same clubs. So you
Speaker 5: had DJ's, MC graph, artists, be boys all there. But
Speaker 5: you also had managers, A and R, publicist, agents, attorneys.
Speaker 5: I mean, you had every single sector of the industry there,
Speaker 5: because in nineteen eighty seven hip hop is still a
Speaker 5: relatively nascent industry, okay, right, and so and again it's
Speaker 5: localized and it's centralized. And you had DJs like Red Alert,
Speaker 5: you know, and we would go anywhere where Red was spinning.
Speaker 5: You had Clark spinning. We would go anywhere that Clark
Speaker 5: was spinning. So there were there were different clubs. There
Speaker 5: was a there was a moving club called there was
Speaker 5: pay Day, and it was these three promoters. It was
Speaker 5: Chuck Beaver and Patrick Marxy and they would they would
Speaker 5: move around and they started to name so they named
Speaker 5: the clubs after chocolate bars. So there was pay Day.
Speaker 1: There was one.
Speaker 5: Hundred grand I know, and right, so they were named
Speaker 5: after a bunch of chocolate bars. And they could roam.
Speaker 5: Now this was at a time where you could do this.
Speaker 5: No way could you do this now, not a shot, right,
Speaker 5: Like I lived down in the Lower East Side, and
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure that one of the clubs that I
Speaker 5: went to back in the day was housed in one
Speaker 5: of the high schools, like they rented out high school auditoriums,
Speaker 5: they rented out abandoned like Chinese restaurants and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: And it was so amazing because again this is before
Speaker 5: the internet. There's nowhere out yeah, and we would they would,
Speaker 5: they would hand out flyers and then we would just
Speaker 5: all call each other and leave messages on each other's
Speaker 5: answering machines, google it, and we would, you know, we
Speaker 5: would just make sure that we were all there and
Speaker 5: there was a feeling of community because we were all
Speaker 5: there for the music. This is where records were broken.
Speaker 5: Clark Kent single handedly broke Color me bads, I want
Speaker 5: to sex you up, sex you up. I remember being there.
Speaker 5: I think it was actually Ditty's house. When Puffy had
Speaker 5: a club over here on fifty four Street, and you know,
Speaker 5: none of us had heard the song. Literally, none of
Speaker 5: us had heard the song. He had a white label
Speaker 5: and the opening strains come on, and you know, you're
Speaker 5: on the dance when you're dancing, and then you just
Speaker 5: stop because you don't know the record, and the record
Speaker 5: came on and then and then the bee came in
Speaker 5: and we were like, oh shit. And years later, at
Speaker 5: twenty fourteen at Universal, I was in the in an
Speaker 5: A and R doing A and R admin at Island. Sam,
Speaker 5: who was one of the members of Color Me Bad,
Speaker 5: said that they were in the club that night and
Speaker 5: that was the first time they heard their record played.
Speaker 3: Sam, was that George Michael Vanilla James or the Kenny
Speaker 3: G Kenny G.
Speaker 1: How did you know? Because I used to be a
Speaker 1: Color Me Bad fan. I got the two.
Speaker 6: Albums broke, Yeah, two albums, little bit.
Speaker 7: I didn't even know the Time and Chance was the
Speaker 7: second one.
Speaker 1: Oh that was my joy.
Speaker 5: So they So it was a really really close It
Speaker 5: was a really really close knit community. And you know,
Speaker 5: it was such a privileged.
Speaker 1: To make me feel bad for like coloring Wait, time out?
Speaker 1: Wait what side new? Do you know?
Speaker 3: Right right before a Fat Cat on Fantastic Body whin,
Speaker 3: they're doing Time and Chance.
Speaker 1: They talk about time and Chance, right, all right? Good?
Speaker 1: But it was we were a rabbit.
Speaker 5: But it's this beautiful community and I was welcomed into
Speaker 5: the community and I was embraced and I'm really grateful
Speaker 5: for that. And that was a privilege because hip hop
Speaker 5: was obviously was not of my making, you know, it
Speaker 5: was not my world. And yet hip hop was like,
Speaker 5: come in so and you know the first people were
Speaker 5: Crazy Legs and DJ Scratch brilliant at the New Music Seminar. Yeah,
Speaker 5: Legs has the store where he's like, I'll never forget
Speaker 5: the first time I saw you. I was looking across, going,
Speaker 5: who is that little Asian woman that knows all the
Speaker 5: words of brand Nubian stepped to the rear.
Speaker 3: Oh shit, right, So you were there, like I'll say,
Speaker 3: in the early nineties and not oh see, that's the
Speaker 3: era are the era that people mostly tell us about
Speaker 3: this show is like Latin Quarter and all that stuff,
Speaker 3: but kind of that SOBS period. I don't hear a
Speaker 3: lot about, so I don't always wondered.
Speaker 5: L Q and all that predated me. For sure. I
Speaker 5: never went to Latin Quarter. I never went to dance Aetyria.
Speaker 5: Most of my friends all certainly my friends grew up
Speaker 5: in New York did so. But you know the other
Speaker 5: thing that's interesting about that era is that so you
Speaker 5: have these small roaming clubs, right, but you also have
Speaker 5: mega clubs and they're all gone. Palladium.
Speaker 1: It's a dorm, tunnel, tunnel.
Speaker 5: Right the tunnel, limelight, these places were you dare go
Speaker 5: to the tunnel?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I did.
Speaker 5: I did at a certain point, though I stopped because
Speaker 5: I think Chris Lighty, God Restless Soul. I think Lighty
Speaker 5: was like, don't come self. It is like, don't come?
Speaker 6: Can I ask you a question?
Speaker 8: I don't know if this is uncomfortable, but I'm just
Speaker 8: as I'm listening, because you are to me a pioneer
Speaker 8: in ways, because you were in the club, you knew
Speaker 8: all the lyrics and stuff like that. How did you
Speaker 8: navigate around the N word? And how did you realize
Speaker 8: that that was like a hot button because you're from
Speaker 8: Vancouver and there weren't we weren't around to be like,
Speaker 8: well this ain't cool and this is cool.
Speaker 5: And because even before hip hop, I grew up knowing
Speaker 5: that even though I was called chink, jap and gook,
Speaker 5: I knew that the N words it's used against people
Speaker 5: the way that those words were used against me. So
Speaker 5: even if it's in the lyrics and my favorite artists
Speaker 5: are saying it, it never felt right to me.
Speaker 8: Ever, because I do know it's that weird thing where
Speaker 8: it has been made it's different than most slurs because
Speaker 8: it has been made cool in a way.
Speaker 6: So that's why I was.
Speaker 8: Like, and others have issues dealing with that, like I
Speaker 8: don't get it.
Speaker 6: It's so cool to say.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I yeah, I yeah.
Speaker 1: I can't yeah.
Speaker 3: So what was your first inside industry job as far
Speaker 3: as hip hop is concerned?
Speaker 1: Where did you first?
Speaker 5: It was the job doing A and R at jive?
Speaker 5: So I met the Captain A K. Shawn Karasov God
Speaker 5: Rest his soul. He was doing A and R jive.
Speaker 5: He signed a troupal quest and he said, I'm moving
Speaker 5: to the West Coast because at the time, the West
Speaker 5: Coast was had a burgeoning hip hop scene. Right he said, Sealthie,
Speaker 5: I'm moving to I'm moving to Wila. I think you
Speaker 5: should interview for my job. So I interviewed for his
Speaker 5: job with Barry Weiss, very very very smart president of
Speaker 5: Drive Records, and Barry gave me the job, although he
Speaker 5: did tell me he said the second I walked in
Speaker 5: the door, he went, oh, she'll never get the job.
Speaker 3: What what is Barry like? I meet many people that
Speaker 3: work with him. What is he like as because really,
Speaker 3: I mean Barry was to me he was almost deaf
Speaker 3: Jam before death Jam, because he's the one that signed
Speaker 3: like Philly artists like Shell, took the entire Powart label
Speaker 3: and made it his own and all that stuff. Before
Speaker 3: you know, Russell and Rick got established him.
Speaker 1: What was he like? Just Barry?
Speaker 5: I think I believe Barry is a Cornell grad. Barry
Speaker 5: is also the son of High Weiss, and High was
Speaker 5: also in the music business. And Barry is so smart,
Speaker 5: so smart. You know, you're in rooms with people and
Speaker 5: as soon as they start talking, you go, oh, holy
Speaker 5: sh you're so smart. He is also one of the
Speaker 5: funniest people I know. Like literally, if Barry was sitting here,
Speaker 5: in thirty seconds, he could add me laughing. He did
Speaker 5: incredible impersonations. He was amazing as a boss. He could
Speaker 5: be pretty exacting. And you know Barry, So, there were
Speaker 5: all these trades back in the day. There's Billboard, but
Speaker 5: then there's Gavin, there's R and R, there's FMQB. There
Speaker 5: are all these trades, and all of these trades, many
Speaker 5: of them have local record sales reports, right, Barry would
Speaker 5: go through every single one and if he saw that
Speaker 5: an artist sold fifty copies of a cassette in Kansas.
Speaker 5: He'd be like, call that person. So you're absolutely right.
Speaker 5: I mean Barry signed Short, I mean not Barry, but
Speaker 5: you know Jive signed Short. Yeah, they signed Spice one.
Speaker 5: You know, they had their tentacles out really far. And
Speaker 5: I think that was Barry's vision to understand really early
Speaker 5: on that hip hop would expand far beyond New York.
Speaker 5: So I loved working for Barry. I learned so much.
Speaker 1: Who did you what artists were you under? Did you
Speaker 1: sign anybody a job? Doing your terrain?
Speaker 5: I signed foh Nickens, Casual Souls and Mischief. I signed
Speaker 5: an amazing artist named Miss Kilo from the West Coast.
Speaker 5: Unfortunately I left and that that didn't ever happen. So
Speaker 5: those are the artists that I said, yes, oh what
Speaker 5: a memory, Oh my god, you're in the safe place.
Speaker 5: And then I worked with Tribe and karras One and
Speaker 5: UGK and you know a bunch of other I mean,
Speaker 5: they had an amazing roster.
Speaker 1: How did you guys? All right?
Speaker 3: So speaking of UGK, you know kind of the globalization
Speaker 3: or no that not the globalization, for I guess hip
Speaker 3: hop really going nationalization? How how are you guys able
Speaker 3: to because even before Depthtam again, you guys were first
Speaker 3: and going to other terries, not New York, signing artists
Speaker 3: first with Philly with Jeff and Will and Steady being Schooley,
Speaker 3: and then expanding out. So what was it about you?
Speaker 3: UGK and Spice one and well too short? And it
Speaker 3: wasn't Volume ten also no, no, he was on RCA proper.
Speaker 3: But what was it about those artists? Especially with UGK?
Speaker 5: I think, for I didn't sign any of those, I
Speaker 5: can't take credit for signing any of them, but I
Speaker 5: think a lot of it was, like I said, I
Speaker 5: think a lot of it was seeing sales figures. I
Speaker 5: think a lot of it was understanding that. But it
Speaker 5: couldn't be that alone, right, So then we get in,
Speaker 5: We get an indication that there is a buzz around
Speaker 5: a certain artist, and I would literally call a record
Speaker 5: store and say, so, you have this artist name so
Speaker 5: and so, how is he selling? How is she selling?
Speaker 5: It was always a hea though, how is he selling?
Speaker 5: And then whoever was running the local record store would
Speaker 5: give me a sense of what was going on there,
Speaker 5: and if it sounded promising, I would then say can
Speaker 5: you please put me in touch with his manager? And
Speaker 5: then it would kind of go from there. But UGK,
Speaker 5: how did YOUGK come to us? I don't remember, but
Speaker 5: everybody had it couldn't It couldn't simply be data, which
Speaker 5: is different from now because a lot of artists, I
Speaker 5: think now can get signed purely off of data. It
Speaker 5: was data driven, but then it was also talent, you know,
Speaker 5: and you know there was something so unique god Ress's soul, pimpsy,
Speaker 5: about pimp and about bun and about what they were presenting.
Speaker 5: Now we had the ghetto boys from Texas as well, right,
Speaker 5: But UGK, I don't know. I just remember the first
Speaker 5: time I heard them they felt really new and fresh,
Speaker 5: but dirty and grime in a way that I really appreciated,
Speaker 5: you know, So it was probably a combination of the two.
Speaker 3: Well, this is would I always ask an arts when
Speaker 3: they come on the show. Can you name three acts
Speaker 3: that got away that you really that you had a
Speaker 3: chance to sign, or that you had like the sort
Speaker 3: of buzz on before they got became a thing and
Speaker 3: they went elsewhere.
Speaker 5: Well, everybody's going to tell you Wu tang because we
Speaker 5: all had the demo, but there's no way I was
Speaker 5: going to be able to sign them. Dos effects were
Speaker 5: at my house four days a week and didn't get
Speaker 5: to sign them. Yeah, House of Pain. I was friends
Speaker 5: with Mugs from back in the Cypress Hill days Wu
Speaker 5: Tang Grave Diggers. I wanted to sign and wasn't able
Speaker 5: to sign. But the funny thing about the House of
Speaker 5: Pain story is that again I was friends with Mugs
Speaker 5: and I had the demo. And now the thing that
Speaker 5: was really frustrating to Clive Calder, the owner of Jive Records,
Speaker 5: was that Dots Effects and House of Pain went pop.
Speaker 5: Now before summertime, none of Jive's hip hop artists went pop, right,
Speaker 5: I think that, Oh my god, what's that little boy group?
Speaker 5: They did a song it was five Little Boys. Oh,
Speaker 5: I'm bugging that. I'm not remembering. Anyway, they had a
Speaker 5: song about kiss and that was the first, I feel
Speaker 5: like that was the first number one Billboard song for
Speaker 5: oh five, the Kissing Game. So it really got under
Speaker 5: Clive's skin that I wanted to sign Dos Effects and
Speaker 5: I wanted to sign House of Pain and they were
Speaker 5: they were big pop hits. And so after House of Pain,
Speaker 5: after Jump Around came out, he said, you know he's
Speaker 5: South African. Sophia come down to my office. Do you
Speaker 5: do you still have the House of Pain demo? And
Speaker 5: I said yeah, And so in his mind, when I
Speaker 5: played the demo, the you know, the noise. I always
Speaker 5: say that Mugs was kind of the the the the
Speaker 5: next generation of the Bomb Squad bringing the noise that
Speaker 5: that he he was convinced that when I played him
Speaker 5: the demo original demo, that that sound wasn't in the demo,
Speaker 5: but it was. And in fact, when I.
Speaker 1: That's not it, it is it is? It is not
Speaker 1: all right?
Speaker 3: We will have again, we will have arguments, all right,
Speaker 3: So the big debate is.
Speaker 1: Here's the deal. So that's not Prince's voice. Is Rosie Wan's.
Speaker 1: We've been having that. I didn't know that. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what. Okay, so Muggs and them keep saying that
Speaker 1: it's Junior walking the All Star but I when distorted.
Speaker 5: And so we will.
Speaker 3: They're saying that it's Junior walking the All Stars. I
Speaker 3: forget the name of the song, but okay, I'm still
Speaker 3: maintaining that it's Prince's get Off intro.
Speaker 5: So essentially, when I went back to So, I played
Speaker 5: it for Clive and he was like, oh damn it.
Speaker 5: And when I went back to mugs. I said, how
Speaker 5: close is this to the version, the demo version to
Speaker 5: the one that got on the radio, And he said,
Speaker 5: it's the version that got on the radio. There's virtually
Speaker 5: no distance between.
Speaker 3: So you're saying that if they lost the yelp scream
Speaker 3: all right, horn line, that you guys would have signed it,
Speaker 3: Like that.
Speaker 5: Was going to scare you know what he said? What
Speaker 5: Clive was saying was and he when House of Pain
Speaker 5: went jump Around became a big pop hit, he was
Speaker 5: so frustrated that he hadn't let me sign it. And
Speaker 5: he said, Sophia, when you play me the demo, that
Speaker 5: sound was not in them. You see what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So it was like, do you still.
Speaker 1: Have made a difference? That is funny.
Speaker 8: So wait, at this point, had you started the relationship?
Speaker 6: Will will yet?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 5: Okay, that's why you said you summer ninety three?
Speaker 3: Ok So okay, Well that is weird of all, the
Speaker 3: label like Jive was just not a label that signed
Speaker 3: any member of the WOU like not even inspected deck.
Speaker 5: So my guess is they were too expensive, really, I guess, Yeah,
Speaker 5: neither did Tommy Boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah they already messed up with Yeah, but they had they.
Speaker 6: Had a chance, right, right, So that's difference. I'm sorry,
Speaker 6: I'm just catching up.
Speaker 1: On budget wise. Budget wise, Jive really.
Speaker 5: Didn't have a they were we were. We were a
Speaker 5: scrappy little independent and we were we had to be
Speaker 5: really competitive in other ways.
Speaker 3: That is so weird because I, at least with the
Speaker 3: look of it and the ads that you guys purchased
Speaker 3: and the artist that you represent it, I was always
Speaker 3: I never looked at you guys as a Tommy Boy
Speaker 3: underling or even a rough house boutique label, like I
Speaker 3: considered you guys absolutely super major.
Speaker 5: No, I think that we were. I think we were major,
Speaker 5: major players. But that had to do with the fact
Speaker 5: that everything else other than big advances compensated for that, right,
Speaker 5: So I'm I was competing for hieroglyphics. That was a
Speaker 5: competitive deal. Well, I can't offer as much as a
Speaker 5: major label can, but what can I offer. We'll look
Speaker 5: at our roster, right, And what people need to know
Speaker 5: is that talent can be an amazing talent magnet. So
Speaker 5: when we can talk about the fact, so those boys
Speaker 5: are from the Bay, they're from the East Oakland, and
Speaker 5: we have Spice one and we have too short and
Speaker 5: we have pooh right, and so they So there is
Speaker 5: also thinking about who your label mates are going to be,
Speaker 5: and that's how we were. That's how we were able
Speaker 5: to be competitive. But it wasn't by spending a ton
Speaker 5: of money.
Speaker 1: I see.
Speaker 3: Wait, I got to ask, since you're associated with him,
Speaker 3: what what effect do you think that that battle with
Speaker 3: Safir had on their momentum? Uh Solz Mischief did a
Speaker 3: infamous battle against Sofia in on Bay Area radio, and.
Speaker 1: All I know is that that's all we listen to.
Speaker 3: To me was the equivalent of if you watch kill
Speaker 3: Bill when oh my god, I.
Speaker 5: Was just gonna I'm so bizarre with Lucy.
Speaker 3: Lou Yes, well, no, no, no, I mean both battles.
Speaker 3: But actually I was thinking of when when Uma Thurman
Speaker 3: just took out the crazy eighty eight.
Speaker 5: The yeah, taken out.
Speaker 3: That's what I wouldn't say taken out, but I will
Speaker 3: say that Sophir just one like it's for them, and
Speaker 3: they had.
Speaker 1: Casual so it was like really eight of.
Speaker 3: Them versus one of him, and he just took them
Speaker 3: all one by one and we just never I know
Speaker 3: that that had an effect on Tarik Treek was like
Speaker 3: I have to be that good where I can take
Speaker 3: out ten mcs or that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But I mean, did that do you think that affected their.
Speaker 3: Momentum and their or yeah, their confidence at all or
Speaker 3: was it just like whatever?
Speaker 5: Ah, if it did, I didn't see any sign of that.
Speaker 5: And also, you know, being around those guys, you know
Speaker 5: kung fu, we say sharpen your blade every day and
Speaker 5: at the time when I was around them and they're sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,
Speaker 5: nineteen years old, right, they sharpened their blades all day
Speaker 5: every day. I mean, to be around them was to
Speaker 5: hear them freestyle more than you would hear them talk. So, yes,
Speaker 5: is there this epic battle and you know Sophie is
Speaker 5: is dominant. Absolutely, But I don't think that made them
Speaker 5: kind of shrink and go, oh my god, where we're
Speaker 5: not good anymore? To this day, I don't think that
Speaker 5: they that they have any doubt as to as to
Speaker 5: their skills.
Speaker 3: Real okay, oh they're still going strong. Yeah, And I
Speaker 3: kind of wish Opio didn't cut his hair.
Speaker 6: From it again, say it again, that was like when he.
Speaker 1: Cut his hair. I was just like, man, they lost
Speaker 1: their angle like.
Speaker 6: And me because I was like where's he at?
Speaker 8: I can't want is he now?
Speaker 1: Which one is he? For real? I was like, Opio,
Speaker 1: come on, dude, like.
Speaker 5: He did a beautiful hair.
Speaker 1: He did go on all right.
Speaker 3: So I'll admit when I first saw Protect your Neck,
Speaker 3: that was a little too low budget for me.
Speaker 1: I saw it.
Speaker 3: No, No, you know, I've seen it on like a
Speaker 3: local like we had our own local uh aj Shine
Speaker 3: from w KDU and and Philly had his own like
Speaker 3: show of the avenue on Jacksonell University and he would
Speaker 3: show it and it was just like, ah, this is
Speaker 3: so cheap.
Speaker 1: I mean, I got it though, but.
Speaker 3: I kind of feel like people have recontextualized and and
Speaker 3: sort of the way that people will talk about Princess
Speaker 3: Dirty Mind. Like I was there at the beginning like
Speaker 3: that sort of thing. I was like, where you really
Speaker 3: so for you with the with the early Wu tang,
Speaker 3: like you were truly aboard and you knew that.
Speaker 1: This was going to be a thing. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And I also think that there's a little bit of
Speaker 5: civic pride going on there because simultaneously, if I remember correctly,
Speaker 5: the West coast was on the come up, oh no,
Speaker 5: and so there was a sense of like New York,
Speaker 5: New York. We got this shit, right, yeah, like we
Speaker 5: you know it's from That's right. And then you have
Speaker 5: nine guns and they're from Staten Island, and you're like,
Speaker 5: how could it? Does anybody care about Staten Island? And
Speaker 5: they and they did this thing, and I think that
Speaker 5: it wasn't Look you could talk about Rizzz Beats all
Speaker 5: day long, and I remember what it felt like to
Speaker 5: me was I think it impacted me on so many
Speaker 5: different levels. So at that point, I'm considering myself a
Speaker 5: proud New Yorker, even even though I've been there for
Speaker 5: less here for less than a decade, but it was
Speaker 5: so New York, right, Like I feel like Rizzes beats
Speaker 5: and he describes them as grimy were this really unflinching
Speaker 5: look at the dirty underbelly of the city, and I
Speaker 5: and then and then you have their rhymes and he
Speaker 5: somehow Harness's nine guys on what we used to call
Speaker 5: a posse track.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 5: So now, if we made that record, you would fly
Speaker 5: somebody the beat and they'd send you their eight or
Speaker 5: their sixteen. Right. But back in the day, they were
Speaker 5: all in the studio, they're all sleeping on Rizz's floor
Speaker 5: in Staten Island, right, and so you have this kind
Speaker 5: of you have this osmosis happening, and it just felt huge.
Speaker 5: That's how it felt. It felt in terms of volume
Speaker 5: of how many MC's there were, but also the fact
Speaker 5: that I'd never heard beats like Rizzes before. I was like,
Speaker 5: oh shit, what is he doing? And I am far
Speaker 5: from the musicologist you are, and I could never deconstruct
Speaker 5: it the way that you can.
Speaker 3: But the A and R and you wasn't thinking like
Speaker 3: I would think that, Yeah, A and rs are thinking
Speaker 3: fight or flight. I gotta find the next big thing
Speaker 3: to keep justify my job in my position, So my
Speaker 3: first thought would be, oh, this is way too low.
Speaker 1: Fight like this go on radio? Right?
Speaker 3: Oh like that your your inner A and R wasn't
Speaker 3: already tainted and taking over your consciousness?
Speaker 5: Well what the What tainted it was the deal that
Speaker 5: they asked for. So none of us could sign Wu
Speaker 5: Tang Klan right, right, So it was already off the table.
Speaker 5: But it in the same way that the message hit
Speaker 5: me viscerally. It hit me viscerally, and remember I met
Speaker 5: them really soon thereafter, So it is one thing to
Speaker 5: hear the record. It is another thing to see that
Speaker 5: really grainy, g low fi time going five thousand dollars
Speaker 5: video where they're not even I don't even think they're
Speaker 5: even all in that video. And then to meet them,
Speaker 5: and I think because I had the privilege of being
Speaker 5: in proximity to them really really early on before the
Speaker 5: first album came out, I it was it was really
Speaker 5: really clear to us. Certainly in New York, all of
Speaker 5: us knew like, oh, this shit's gonna blow. It's it's
Speaker 5: gonna blow. Not necessarily because we thought Protecting Neck was
Speaker 5: a commercial song. None of us thought this is like summertime, right,
Speaker 5: but it just felt like this swell uh you know.
Speaker 5: I say in my memoir there there's this really great
Speaker 5: Victor Hugo quote which has been kind of loosely translated
Speaker 5: as something like you you can't fight an idea whose
Speaker 5: time has come and so, but literally translated is you
Speaker 5: can resist an invasion of armies. You cannot resist an
Speaker 5: invasion of ideas. But in my mind they were both.
Speaker 5: They were this army who had these incredible ideas and
Speaker 5: that was all resist vision. Look, he couldn't have done
Speaker 5: it with that Wu Tang, but it was you know,
Speaker 5: he was the Abbott and that was his creative genius.
Speaker 3: So was he the first member that you met? How
Speaker 3: did you start working with an organization?
Speaker 5: And what were so heard the Wu Tang demo. Loved it.
Speaker 5: I became a wvangelist. I played it for anybody that
Speaker 5: would listen. I was like, listen, listen to my shitty
Speaker 5: little yellow walk sports walkman. Google it and then I
Speaker 5: uh and but couldn't sign them, but I was a
Speaker 5: huge fan. And then the Grave digg Is demo came
Speaker 5: across my desk, and the Grave digger Is he wasn't
Speaker 5: asking for the same non exclusive, so that was something
Speaker 5: that I could definitely try to sign. And I arranged
Speaker 5: to meet him, and I remember like it was yesterday.
Speaker 5: I remember the weather, what I wore, what I ate,
Speaker 5: where we ate like, I remember so much about it.
Speaker 5: And in that first interaction, of course we talked about
Speaker 5: the Grave Diggas and the parameters of the deal and
Speaker 5: the creative vision, but we also talked about Wu Tang.
Speaker 5: But you know this as well as I do. When
Speaker 5: you get a new conversation with Rizza, it's never just
Speaker 5: about music, right, And you know I've been saying for
Speaker 5: a while that to me, Rizza is the Bruce Lee
Speaker 5: of music. And when I say that, I mean that
Speaker 5: Bruce Lee was took a lot of different traditions. Bruce
Speaker 5: Lee grew up studying wing shun right, and that is
Speaker 5: a very traditional kung fu form, but he studied many
Speaker 5: other forms and then he made his own form called jikundo.
Speaker 5: And I kind of feel like that's what Rizza did,
Speaker 5: as have many producers, like kind of take all of
Speaker 5: these and not disrespect any of them, honor them, all
Speaker 5: of these different musical and sonic traditions, and then to
Speaker 5: blend them and to make his own thing. Now again,
Speaker 5: many producers have done that. Why I call him the
Speaker 5: Bruce Lee of hip hop is because he is additionally
Speaker 5: a philosopher, and I do not I cannot think of
Speaker 5: other artists or producers that I think are true philosophers.
Speaker 5: And this stems from an intense intellectual, cultural, and spiritual curiosity.
Speaker 5: So riz is the guy that has, like any artists,
Speaker 5: traveled the world a number of times over. But he
Speaker 5: is also the guy that doesn't go to whatever city
Speaker 5: in whatever country and whatever corner of the world and say,
Speaker 5: you know, just find me the nearest McDonald's, so I
Speaker 5: can eat food that I'm comfortable with. He will eat
Speaker 5: that food right. He will find out where is the
Speaker 5: place of prayer and where is the faith here? What
Speaker 5: is the language, what is the culture? And he will
Speaker 5: immerse himself in that. And I think it really comes
Speaker 5: out in everything that he does now that that's expanded
Speaker 5: far beyond music. So he was the first one that
Speaker 5: I met, and I describe it as being, you know,
Speaker 5: the first time I met Riza was like going through
Speaker 5: many different chambers, and then after I met him, I
Speaker 5: met all the rest of them. And the last one
Speaker 5: that I met was dirty God rest his soul.
Speaker 1: How is it navigating his life?
Speaker 3: There's two people on earth that I've met, both of
Speaker 3: their tour managers with the Roots Organization, My boy Silbert
Speaker 3: when we were interviewing him, and my first question was, so,
Speaker 3: what qualifications do you have that you feel would be
Speaker 3: beneficial to us? And he said one thing he said,
Speaker 3: he says, I've been Public Enemies tour manager for the
Speaker 3: last twenty years.
Speaker 1: Flavor Flav has never been late or missed a show. Wow.
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, you're hired. So what is the
Speaker 3: amount of Jedi mind tricks that you have to do
Speaker 3: to keep them organized.
Speaker 5: So I could never say that they were never late
Speaker 5: working with me at all, or that they didn't miss
Speaker 5: the show. But to talk about Dirty first, I call
Speaker 5: him Ason. I call him a you know, managing old
Speaker 5: dirty bastard could certainly seem oxymoronic, but I think that
Speaker 5: I did as good a job as anybody could look.
Speaker 5: Ason had an addictive personality, There's no doubt about it, right.
Speaker 5: He was addicted to sex, he was addicted to alcohol,
Speaker 5: and he became addicted to drugs. But when I managed him,
Speaker 5: he didn't even smoke wheat, Like I remember him being like, wet,
Speaker 5: get that shit out of here. I hate the smell
Speaker 5: of that. So I knew him before he did drugs.
Speaker 5: But he did drink a lot, and he did love women,
Speaker 5: and so there was a lot of there was a
Speaker 5: lot of damage control, as you can imagine. But the
Speaker 5: thing that I want people to know about Ason is
Speaker 5: that he was so smart. He was he was so smart,
Speaker 5: and he had such a creative vision. But he was
Speaker 5: also intellectually very smart, and he was really really good
Speaker 5: with people. He was so winsome and he could charm
Speaker 5: anybody when he wanted to. He was super protective of me,
Speaker 5: and he was dead loyal. And I keep quoting my
Speaker 5: friend Julius Ono, who's a Nigerian American director who made
Speaker 5: this movie earlier this summer called Loose and it's about
Speaker 5: a transracial adoptee, and he said in a Q and
Speaker 5: A that I think that every person in this world
Speaker 5: should be granted access to the full spectrum of humanity.
Speaker 5: And I think that any of us who live on
Speaker 5: the margins are not granted access to the full spectrum
Speaker 5: of humanity. I think rappers in particular are not granted
Speaker 5: access to the full spectrum of humanity. And so what
Speaker 5: I try to communicate in my memoir is who were
Speaker 5: these artists to me? So I am far from a
Speaker 5: Wou Tang expert. I could not tell you what sequence
Speaker 5: the albums came out, in the names of all the
Speaker 5: solo none of that that samples any of that. The
Speaker 5: only thing that I am an expert on, and I
Speaker 5: am an expert on this, it's who they are as
Speaker 5: men people to me. And I think that I have
Speaker 5: a unique lens into the wouniverse because of who I am,
Speaker 5: but also who they allowed me to be. And how
Speaker 5: they let me come into their world, and I think
Speaker 5: that speaks volumes about them. I also managed, so I
Speaker 5: managed all three three letter members of WU, tang Od,
Speaker 5: b r z A and GZA. I managed Riza what
Speaker 5: I call his extracurricular activity. So I did not manage
Speaker 5: him as an MC and I did not manage him
Speaker 5: as a producer, but I managed him as a composer
Speaker 5: and then his beginnings his transition into Hollywood. Yes, so
Speaker 5: his first his first GID composing was ghost Dog. That
Speaker 5: was not me. That was Nemo, who was very close.
Speaker 5: I believe he's Jim Jarmis his nephew, and Nemo brought
Speaker 5: Riza into UH to Jim, and then I kind of
Speaker 5: picked it up from there. So it was kill Bill
Speaker 5: and it was Blade and I believe it did soul Plane.
Speaker 5: So we did that stuff together, and he had already
Speaker 5: started writing and directing. But you know, the thing that
Speaker 5: I say about Rizza is he is truly living his
Speaker 5: childhood dream. So when I was a kid, I wanted
Speaker 5: to be a doctor. I wanted to be a fashion designer.
Speaker 5: I never thought that I'd be doing this and I
Speaker 5: love my life. But Riza as a child growing up
Speaker 5: one of I believe eleven children of a single mother,
Speaker 5: growing up in the projects of Staten Island in Brooklyn.
Speaker 5: He watched Kung Fu movies and he imagined and dreamt
Speaker 5: that he would one day direct. And now he's directing
Speaker 5: Kumfu movies and he is writing them and he is
Speaker 5: starring in them. And I actually don't know anybody else
Speaker 5: who had this vision. And he is truly a visionary
Speaker 5: from when he was a child. So managing Rizza was
Speaker 5: a delight. Managing Jizsu was also incredible. I would say
Speaker 5: that Jisse was my favorite client because and you know
Speaker 5: Jizz like I do. He's incredibly low key, and he's
Speaker 5: so gracious, and he is so magnanimous, and he doesn't
Speaker 5: want to be recognized, and he doesn't want to be famous.
Speaker 5: He doesn't want to be any of those things. And
Speaker 5: he is so kind. And I really love managing him
Speaker 5: because he allowed me to transition him into lecturing, and
Speaker 5: not every client lets you do that, right, So somebody
Speaker 5: might say I've thought about it, so but I don't
Speaker 5: really want to do it because there's this thing I
Speaker 5: do and I'm so comfortable and I've been doing it
Speaker 5: for decades and I'm getting paid and I know how
Speaker 5: to do this, whereas lecturing is very very different. You're
Speaker 5: basically standing naked. There are no pyrotechnics, you don't have
Speaker 5: a hype man, there's no DJ, there's no lights, there's
Speaker 5: no sound, and your and your audience they're not drunk,
Speaker 5: they're not high, right, they're just all sitting there and
Speaker 5: they're looking at you, and you're standing at a podium
Speaker 5: and you are speaking. And literally the first place he
Speaker 5: lectured was Harvard. That's the Korean in me. And literally
Speaker 5: the first words out of his mouth was were I'm
Speaker 5: so nervous, and that's jes what yeah, yeah, and you
Speaker 5: know what, the same and you know what, I did
Speaker 5: the same thing with Joey Badass and saying he said
Speaker 5: the exact same thing.
Speaker 6: What was I'm just curious? What was just his first
Speaker 6: lecture on.
Speaker 5: So he spoke about his love of science. You know,
Speaker 5: he is deeply intellectually curious. He spoke of his love
Speaker 5: of science. He spoke about his his inspiration and his
Speaker 5: creative process.
Speaker 6: Can you can you talk about real quick?
Speaker 8: In the prologue, I had a moment I had to
Speaker 8: mama where I was jealous of you in describing the
Speaker 8: relationship with Wu Tang because of a situation that happened
Speaker 8: with metha man and the god Jamal. And I was
Speaker 8: jealous because as a woman who's been in the industry
Speaker 8: for years, we all know what it's like. You know,
Speaker 8: you're telling beautiful stories, but at some points, being that
Speaker 8: woman in the room can be adversarial. It can be dismissive, yes,
Speaker 8: and question in that moment of no protection, right, yeah,
Speaker 8: So I don't know if you want to reiterate that story,
Speaker 8: but sure Also in a way, I also wanted you
Speaker 8: to tell the the opposite of that story when it
Speaker 8: wasn't that protection ere with methad.
Speaker 5: Man, Right. I mean, so when I when I started
Speaker 5: doing A and R, I was insecure around it. Right,
Speaker 5: I'm thinking, I'm a Korean, Canadian French lip major, and
Speaker 5: do I really deserve this job of being a gatekeeper
Speaker 5: and an arbiter of a culture? Again that is not mine? Right?
Speaker 5: And so, but the way that hip hop embraced me
Speaker 5: was really fortifying and gave me a lot more confidence,
Speaker 5: but nothing more than when Wu Tang claimed me. So
Speaker 5: it was very very early on I might have met
Speaker 5: Meth once before I go to the studio to see them,
Speaker 5: and he says, Sophie, you got to see I just
Speaker 5: got my video in for method man. And so he
Speaker 5: takes me to the back lounge, whisks me past everybody,
Speaker 5: takes me to the back lounge and he sits me
Speaker 5: down and he plugs in the tape and he stands
Speaker 5: on the wall, doesn't sit with me, stands against the
Speaker 5: wall to watch me because he wants to see my
Speaker 5: response to the video, and sitting next to the television
Speaker 5: facing me. So this gentleman is not watching the screen.
Speaker 5: He's looking at me as Meth is is this guy Jamal.
Speaker 5: So the video plays and I'm super excited. I'm like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, because
Speaker 5: I'm already in love with Meth. And so the video
Speaker 5: plays and as soon as the video ends, he looks
Speaker 5: at me and he says, where are you from? Now? Anybody,
Speaker 5: any person of color, will tell you that's a lot question.
Speaker 5: If you ask a white person that they're going to
Speaker 5: be like, oh, I'm from Columbus right or or you
Speaker 5: know my parents are whatever. But this is this is
Speaker 5: a loaded question. So I am a petit Asian woman
Speaker 5: in the inner inner sanctum of Wu Tang, of Wu
Speaker 5: Tang's world. And it is clear to him, and I
Speaker 5: could see the calculations. It is clear to him, I'm
Speaker 5: not sleeping with any of those boys. He also knows
Speaker 5: that I don't manage any of them. At this point,
Speaker 5: I don't A and R any of them. So who
Speaker 5: is this and how did she get in? And again
Speaker 5: to this day, when I'm around Wu Tang, I am
Speaker 5: almost always the only woman in the room. And this
Speaker 5: is a very privileged place where I sit. So he
Speaker 5: keeps and so I feign innocence, and I say, well,
Speaker 5: what are you asking me? Where are you from?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 5: I don't really know what that means. Where are you from?
Speaker 5: And then I broke and I said, okay, Well, if
Speaker 5: you're asking where I was born, I was born in Vancouver.
Speaker 5: My parents are Korean. If you asking me where my
Speaker 5: parents are from, there from you know, Korea, if you're
Speaker 5: asking where I live. But before I could even finish
Speaker 5: answering this in this very methodical way, Meth just flew
Speaker 5: in between us.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 5: I don't know if you've ever met him in person.
Speaker 5: He is six' four and he is notoriously the nicest
Speaker 5: with his hands of The, klan and, yeah, no, no, no oh,
Speaker 5: boy no he can they can all throw the fuck. Down,
Speaker 5: yeah But meth And ghost forget about. It so he
Speaker 5: flies in between us and she just expands like The
Speaker 5: hulk and he was, like That's Sophie chang and she's
Speaker 5: down with wu. Tag she's some shallon. Motherfucker don't you
Speaker 5: ever who the fuck are you to ask her where she's?
Speaker 5: From don't you ever disrespect her? Again AND i was,
Speaker 5: like oh my, god my. God now nobody had ever
Speaker 5: defended me like, this AND i was just it was
Speaker 5: just this extraordinary. Moment but so the demonstration was. Amazing
Speaker 5: but to deconstruct in WHAT i THINK i want people
Speaker 5: to understand is he knew exactly what the fuck that
Speaker 5: guy was. Saying do you know What i'm? Saying he
Speaker 5: totally understood that it was there was there was a
Speaker 5: racial subtext to, it and there was a gender subtext to. It,
Speaker 5: right he didn't give a shit WHERE i was, from
Speaker 5: because essentially he wasn't asking a. Question he was, saying
Speaker 5: what the fuck are? You and what the fuck are?
Speaker 5: You what the fuck are you doing? Here because you
Speaker 5: don't belong. HERE i belong. Here you don't belong. Here
Speaker 5: and you, know again wanting to tell people about the
Speaker 5: humanity Of Wu. Tang, Now meth has known this guy
Speaker 5: For i'm sure a long ass. Time this might be
Speaker 5: the second or third time he's met, me and his
Speaker 5: feeling was, like, Nah, bie we're not fucking doing that
Speaker 5: because she's. Ours and WHAT i say About Wu tang is, that,
Speaker 5: LOOK i had several friendships in hip hop and enduring
Speaker 5: ones THAT i have to this day Before Wu. TANG
Speaker 5: i was embraced AND i was, welcomed But Wu tang claimed.
Speaker 5: Me so it's a thing that you're talking about to
Speaker 5: mere Right, Like so What i'm saying is that everybody
Speaker 5: knew that they were going to be, huge and there
Speaker 5: were hordes and hordes and hordes of people surrounding, them
Speaker 5: and for whatever, reason they just went.
Speaker 1: Like, this you're coming with.
Speaker 5: Us we're keeping her right. Here AND i feel that
Speaker 5: way to this day THAT i will never ever leave
Speaker 5: that breast.
Speaker 6: Pocket and CAN i get.
Speaker 3: People right, now layah, Me Bill, Sugar steve and Other
Speaker 3: bill And fonte are claiming.
Speaker 1: You, OH i appreciate.
Speaker 5: That that's.
Speaker 8: Beautiful we'll protect you CAN i also just make a
Speaker 8: point to F y because some people might be, thinking,
Speaker 8: oh she's she's The asian woman and the. Click so
Speaker 8: she's the one that brought the awareness to all the. Colleges,
Speaker 8: no can you clear? THAT?
Speaker 5: U oh Yeah. No and first of, all WHEN i say,
Speaker 5: That I'M i was in love with math is the
Speaker 5: platonic love of my? Life, yeah because.
Speaker 6: Yeah he's been married.
Speaker 5: Forever, yeah and he and his Wife tamika is just this,
Speaker 5: gorgeous luminous creature THAT i. Adorre, no he's a platonic
Speaker 5: love of my. Love, no, no, no, no, no. No in, fact,
Speaker 5: no they grew up Watching Kung fu. Movies it was their.
Speaker 5: Escape but they also you, know the themes of brotherhood
Speaker 5: and loyalty and defiance and oppression really resonated with. Them
Speaker 5: and so again going back to, It i'm a White
Speaker 5: i'm a yellow girl growing up in a white. WORLD
Speaker 5: i want to be. WHITE i come To New, YORK
Speaker 5: i get you, KNOW i get into the hip hop,
Speaker 5: world AND i understand that there's another way to be
Speaker 5: and that is proud of who you. Are and Then
Speaker 5: Wu tang embraces me and it is the first time
Speaker 5: THAT i truly see the beauty and the profundity and
Speaker 5: the power of my culture BECAUSE i see it through their.
Speaker 5: Eyes that's. Amazing because they introduced me To John wu
Speaker 5: And Chaalian. Fat, wow this is the love of my.
Speaker 5: Life this is my life and kung fu. Movies so before, that.
Speaker 1: Before, then none of the folk you Weren't saturday, afternoons.
Speaker 5: None of, it because it was total cultural. Denial for. Me,
Speaker 5: wow it was cultural denial and it was cultural. Rebellion
Speaker 5: and SO i start watching kung fu movies with my Girlfriend,
Speaker 5: mariam who's time when He's. American we're, like let's starty Kung.
Speaker 5: Fu so we go around and we're. Looking we're looking
Speaker 5: at all these different schools and then we hear there's
Speaker 5: a shallon monk teaching kung. Fu and that's that's like
Speaker 5: hearing that quest love is teaching giving drum, lessons, right
Speaker 5: or it's like looking here in The Tiger woods is
Speaker 5: going to teach you golf down the. Street we're like,
Speaker 5: What so we hunt him down and we find him
Speaker 5: and that we go in, there we talk to. Him
Speaker 5: he Speaks mander and she Speaks mander and he speaks No.
Speaker 5: ENGLISH i don't Speak. Mandarin AND i go home that
Speaker 5: night AND i call my parents AND i, SAID i
Speaker 5: met the Man i'm going to marry. TODAY i knew,
Speaker 5: empirically empirically and. Absolutely and THEN i left the music.
Speaker 5: BUSINESS i stopped managing dirty hard right out of the.
Speaker 6: Music you said he's A shallon, monk and they, said.
Speaker 5: They, said they were, like hang on a. Second my dad's,
Speaker 5: like hang on a. Second he looks. Up he's, Like
Speaker 5: shallon monks can. MARRY i don't know what the fuck.
Speaker 5: REFERENCE i don't know what. Reference But Bomshi, Chang god,
Speaker 5: rest his soul was right there with his crazy. Daughter
Speaker 5: and SO i leave the music. BUSINESS i HAVE i
Speaker 5: don't even think about.
Speaker 6: IT i.
Speaker 5: Run his name is shri Yen. MING i Run Yen ming's.
Speaker 5: Temple he's a thirty fourth Generation Shalon. Monk he has
Speaker 5: a vision that he wants to replicate The Shallon temple In.
Speaker 5: AMERICA i introduce him To Wu. Tang so THIS i.
Speaker 5: DID i introduce an Actual shalon mulk To Wu. TANG
Speaker 5: i also was the person who orchestrated and planned and
Speaker 5: produced the tour that Brought riza To Shallon. Temple and
Speaker 5: he was the first artist in fifteen hundred years to
Speaker 5: ever perform in front Of Shallon. Temple also took him
Speaker 5: To Wu Tang mountain where the abbot Of Wu tang
Speaker 5: clan met the abbot Of Wu Tang. Mountain and SO
Speaker 5: i created those historical. Moments but had it not been
Speaker 5: For Wu Tang, CLAN i wouldn't have the two extraordinary
Speaker 5: children THAT i do right. NOW i wouldn't have an
Speaker 5: almost a twenty five year practice Of shallan kung fu
Speaker 5: THAT i did BEFORE i came. Here and that's WHY
Speaker 5: i was so. Hungry SO i am eternally grateful To
Speaker 5: Wu tang because they brought me back to myself in
Speaker 5: the most essential and important and critical. Way and so
Speaker 5: in going back to myself again and going through these
Speaker 5: chambers with, them they know they brought me around to
Speaker 5: my own. Heritage and you know what's extraordinary is That
Speaker 5: meth said this to. Me he, said you, know in
Speaker 5: a funny, way we kind of introduced you back To asian.
Speaker 5: Culture AND i was, like how he's so ASTUTE i
Speaker 5: HAVE I meth is like my. Son he's a he's
Speaker 5: a piss so he is super in tune with energy
Speaker 5: and he's deeply empathetic and he knew that in the
Speaker 5: same way that he knew When jamal said where are you?
Speaker 5: From he understood that this is a hostile. State this
Speaker 5: is this is not a, question it's a hostile.
Speaker 3: Statement, wow, man that's.
Speaker 1: Stop.
Speaker 3: Playing of, course, Yes Method, man we want you on,
Speaker 3: this BUT i think stop. Gushing if we Get Method
Speaker 3: man booked on the, show she's gonna come dressed like.
Speaker 6: Have you met him in?
Speaker 5: Person mathe like once that they get.
Speaker 3: Interviewed we gotta have method on just as head dressed
Speaker 3: up like she did for the.
Speaker 8: Lin she has a wife And i'm just trying to
Speaker 8: Bring lenny back to the other.
Speaker 1: Side, Anyway, mary.
Speaker 6: And she a little older if she got.
Speaker 8: A girlfriend a little older than you, anyway and she
Speaker 8: ain't been this coloring a long.
Speaker 6: Time, Hello SORRY.
Speaker 1: I was telling.
Speaker 3: You sorry, Anyway, sophia we can talk. Forever we can talk,
Speaker 3: forever but we we have to wrap it. UP i
Speaker 3: really appreciate.
Speaker 1: You coming on the show and and and sharing your.
Speaker 8: Story opening the door for all My asian girlfriends who
Speaker 8: are now manager shout out Since Jennya, zuomi all My
Speaker 8: korean girlfriends shout, out And Don white like, yes doing.
Speaker 5: It thank.
Speaker 1: YOU i forgot my.
Speaker 5: Man your Manager's.
Speaker 1: ASIAN i got nine. Managers, yes, Woman, yeah what's your?
Speaker 3: Name?
Speaker 1: John she even taught me how to.
Speaker 5: Drive oh my, god we taught yay taught me how
Speaker 5: to drive, anyway thank, you thank you for having. ME
Speaker 5: i was so excited for this conversation BECAUSE i was,
Speaker 5: like your mind and your historical, knowledge like that's kind
Speaker 5: of your left, brain you, know like That. Wikipedia but
Speaker 5: then there's also this, amazing insane creative challenge and, all
Speaker 5: and there just aren't that many people like. That so
Speaker 5: thank you, WELL i thank you so.
Speaker 1: YEAH i took a.
Speaker 3: Compliment, Guy i'm in therapy now. BREAKING i wanted to
Speaker 3: run out the door right now like Ques. No, well
Speaker 3: thank you very much for coming on the. Show ladies and,
Speaker 3: gentlemen that's another episode Of Quest Love. Supreme thank you very.
Speaker 10: Much her audio book in The room exclusively On audible
Speaker 10: all right on to Be Having, Sugar Steve layah And
Speaker 10: Boss bill and On.
Speaker 1: Paid bill And Fine. Diklob thank you very. Much this
Speaker 1: is another episode Of quest Pre. People see you on
Speaker 1: the next go. Round thank.
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