Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: Hey, what's up, y'all?
Speaker 1: This is Quest Love And as you noticed throughout June,
Speaker 1: we are celebrating Black Music Month by releasing an episode
Speaker 1: every day, So every day you're either going to hear
Speaker 1: a specially pick QLs classic. Now for Part one, Part two.
Speaker 1: In part three of my all time favorite QLs episode,
Speaker 1: this is the legendary Jimmy Jam.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 1: This experience with Jimmy Jam, talking with him for almost
Speaker 1: six hours was such a dream come true. We never
Speaker 1: wanted it to end. This particular episode. We talked about
Speaker 1: working with Michael Jackson, a lot of career advice in
Speaker 1: running a record label, and a lot.
Speaker 2: Of it's so much too much information.
Speaker 1: We really hope you enjoyed this Jimmy Jam episode as
Speaker 1: much as we enjoy doing it all right here it
Speaker 1: is part three, the QLs Classic Interview with producer Jimmy Jam.
Speaker 1: There's a question I have about rhythmination, which I often
Speaker 1: debate with with Reebe's son, Michael's nephew Austin, about the effect,
Speaker 1: the crippling effect that I feel the knowledge add on
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson, or just at least the first three.
Speaker 2: Songs of that record. And you know, I've watched No, No, No,
Speaker 2: but I love this, I love where this is going.
Speaker 1: I've watched because I've watched a few interviews where he's
Speaker 1: mentioned in a kind of monastery or a way like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, Jens. But knowing what I know about his
Speaker 1: vocal style and what it became, I felt that I
Speaker 1: felt that what control was for Prince, Rhythm Nation was
Speaker 1: for Michael into a crippling effect because soon after, literally
Speaker 1: every thing that he released post nineteen ninety was him
Speaker 1: chasing those first three songs, Rhythm Nation, uh, State of
Speaker 1: the World and the Knowledge. Well, no, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: do you know the baby Face story about when he
Speaker 1: first flew them to Neverland Wrench to work on the
Speaker 1: Dangerous record? Did he ever tell you the his first Okay,
Speaker 1: so Babyface. So when they're working on Jermaine, as you
Speaker 1: said record, and suddenly they get a call saying I'm
Speaker 1: you know, helicopter to Havenhurst And when they first get there,
Speaker 1: they're like, well, so you know, what do you what
Speaker 1: do you like from us? Like they're trying to figure
Speaker 1: out what he knows of theirs, and he says, well,
Speaker 1: I really really like Rhythm Nation. A part of me
Speaker 1: actually feels like he was nagging them, Like I think
Speaker 1: he's I think he's intelligent enough to read album credits
Speaker 1: to know the difference between Ella and Babyface and Jimmy Zeanme,
Speaker 1: Terry Lewis.
Speaker 2: And you know they correct him. Was like, well, you know,
Speaker 2: we didn't do that right. It's like, I know, but
Speaker 2: I still like it. That's great.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's and again it's like, my favorite record
Speaker 1: of hers is Janet. I feel like the most important
Speaker 1: record was controlled, but I feel like the most impactful
Speaker 1: was probably at least with stylistically and how it affected Michael.
Speaker 1: I mean, when you make Michael Jackson's paradigm shift, then
Speaker 1: that says something. And I always felt as though that
Speaker 1: record crippled him in ways that he's never recovered. Like
Speaker 1: every song was like that sixteenth note, like off the Water,
Speaker 1: like everything was that, Like what was was there any
Speaker 1: feedback from him whatsoever? Or was it like in her
Speaker 1: head like it's really going to fuck him up now?
Speaker 2: Like there was Janet. Janet never had any sort of
Speaker 2: he was never competitive. Oh she was competitive, but not
Speaker 2: towards him in any way. She never had anything that
Speaker 2: I've ever since her that she ever said that was
Speaker 2: in any way like I'm gonna show Michael on this
Speaker 2: one or anything like that. There was never anything like
Speaker 2: that her. Her respect for him was way beyond any
Speaker 2: sort of competitiveness with him. He was competitive toward her.
Speaker 2: I will say that because I can tell you. I
Speaker 2: can tell you I can I can tell you the
Speaker 2: whole scream story. That was that. But but interestingly enough, yes,
Speaker 2: the knowledge. I have a handwritten note from Michael that
Speaker 2: talks about the bridge and the knowledge and the sound
Speaker 2: that's on there, and can I can we do something
Speaker 2: that sounds like that on the bridge of our song?
Speaker 2: He had taped it to my keyboard. Because I wasn't there,
Speaker 2: he taped it to my keyboard. And I still have that.
Speaker 2: Say you still have that? I actually my brief.
Speaker 3: Does he print or writing cursive? I'm sorry, I just
Speaker 3: need to print.
Speaker 2: No, this was print. I think this was a magulent cursive.
Speaker 2: All have to you know what. I never actually, honestly,
Speaker 2: I didn't pay attention. Maybe it is cursive. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I didn't pay attention. I just saw the note that
Speaker 2: just said, Jimmy jam can we use the sound that's
Speaker 2: whatever that sound is and the knowledge, but I actually
Speaker 2: got it. Was funny because when we were working with
Speaker 2: with Michael uh on the on that History album, and
Speaker 2: I remember him being obsessed with IF and he really
Speaker 2: liked IF. And I remember saying, no, I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: if it's cool, Michael, I said, I don't know. I said,
Speaker 2: you know, that's the Way Love Goes was a much
Speaker 2: bigger record it was, And I said, yeah, so that's
Speaker 2: the Way Love Goes was like number one for eight
Speaker 2: weeks or something. I said, you know, IF was like
Speaker 2: top five, I said, but it wasn't. I said no,
Speaker 2: I like, I really like that IF.
Speaker 1: And it's like no, like that brace yourself, that that
Speaker 1: five second stag yes, sizzle like and that's what like.
Speaker 1: Rhythm Nason was probably the first stadium black album because
Speaker 1: even with bad just that intro maybe the way you
Speaker 1: make Me feel like, it didn't have the grandiose m
Speaker 1: HM intro of every like every song was stadium ready
Speaker 1: yeah for rhythm Na.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, he definitely liked I mean he was. He
Speaker 2: told us how much he loved it, and and and
Speaker 2: wanted to and wanted to and always why would you
Speaker 2: never ask you guys to produce his records? What we
Speaker 2: did we did. We ended up doing songs on uh. Well,
Speaker 2: but after the fact, well, I mean, honestly we first
Speaker 2: of all, the records he made with Quincy Jones, to
Speaker 2: me were the greatest records ever. So I was like,
Speaker 2: I didn't even really want to work with Michael quite honestly,
Speaker 2: if he wouldn't have asked to do the Janet duet,
Speaker 2: you know, we probably never would have worked with him.
Speaker 2: That's the reason we worked with him. And it was
Speaker 2: interesting because I remember Janet or Michael called I'm trying
Speaker 2: to think where his folks called our folks or whatever, say,
Speaker 2: Michael wants to do a song as a duet with
Speaker 2: Janet and I my first thought was I'm calling it. No,
Speaker 2: it wasn't no. My first thought was I'm gonna call
Speaker 2: Janet and see is she cool? Is she aware with it?
Speaker 2: You know of this? And then my biggest thing was
Speaker 2: I feel, as a producer and also her friend and confidant,
Speaker 2: I'm there to protect her and I want to make
Speaker 2: sure that whatever the process is that's happening, that she's
Speaker 2: protecting at all times. And when I say that, it
Speaker 2: was interesting what you just said about Michael and kind
Speaker 2: of his you know, his story with La and Babyface.
Speaker 2: When when he said I really like Rhythm Nation. That's
Speaker 2: hilarious to me because I remember when we were doing
Speaker 2: and Scream, and I remember I told Janet to come
Speaker 2: to Minneapolis while we were doing the tracks because Michael said,
Speaker 2: just put together some tracks and we'll figure it out
Speaker 2: what it is. And I remember we put we put
Speaker 2: a bunch of tracks together and then we just kind
Speaker 2: of said, okay, I said, Janet, you need to just
Speaker 2: sit here. I just need your inspiration, you know. And
Speaker 2: so I remember when we did the track that ended
Speaker 2: up being Scream. I remember Janet said, that's the one
Speaker 2: he's gonna like. And I said, how do you know?
Speaker 2: And she said, because I know my brother. And I said, okay. So,
Speaker 2: but the song she really liked, and the song that
Speaker 2: we liked was ended up becoming Runaway because yeah, because
Speaker 2: he run Away. Yeah, we thought that that was yo. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we thought that was the record you know he could
Speaker 2: have right, That's what we thought. Yeah, man, so when
Speaker 2: we did so, when we did so, when we did
Speaker 2: run Away, Wow. When we did run Away, it was funny,
Speaker 2: and we didn't know it was gonna be called runaway.
Speaker 2: I mean obviously that the song didn't exist. It was
Speaker 2: just a track. But when we did the track, we
Speaker 2: just were like, wow, this feels so nice, this is
Speaker 2: so cool, right, And so she said, I remember, she said,
Speaker 2: put it on the cassette, but I hope he doesn't
Speaker 2: like it. I want it for me, And I said, okay, cool,
Speaker 2: so sirted off. We played the songs, we went to
Speaker 2: the Hit factory, flew to New York, went to Hit factory.
Speaker 2: He blasted these songs super loud, and then he would say, yeah,
Speaker 2: that sounds really good. Can I hear number two again? Please? Okay.
Speaker 2: So they'd played number two, and they played a couple
Speaker 2: other ones, and then he goes, Okay, I think I
Speaker 2: think we're gonna go with number two. I really like
Speaker 2: number two. And number two was ended up being screamed,
Speaker 2: and Jenna looked at me like I told you so,
Speaker 2: but also like I'm glad he didn't play so anyway,
Speaker 2: so the next day we went to ironically Trump Tower
Speaker 2: where he had uh where Michael had his penthouse and stuff,
Speaker 2: and we and Michael already had conceptually what he wanted.
Speaker 2: He wanted a record that lashed out at the press
Speaker 2: and everybody that doubted him or was critical of him.
Speaker 2: And that's why that track worked so well, because for him,
Speaker 2: it was the aggressiveness of doing that. Whose idea was
Speaker 2: fucking you know what? I honestly don't remember. I don't
Speaker 2: remember whether he said that as we were recording it
Speaker 2: or if. I don't think we suggested it, because I
Speaker 2: don't think we would ever. I was about to say,
Speaker 2: did you write the word stop fucking with me? No,
Speaker 2: it was it stopped pressuring me. But he wrote he
Speaker 2: wrote the lyrics on that. We didn't write the lyrics
Speaker 2: on screen. Okay, that was totally his thing. And even
Speaker 2: as he was writing the lyrics, we were like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: we get that. Oh, but why would you want to
Speaker 2: drudge up any animosity toward the press or anybody at
Speaker 2: this point? Because right now he was at it and
Speaker 2: he was at a really happy point of his life.
Speaker 2: He had just I don't know whether I think him
Speaker 2: and Lisa Marie had just gotten married, so he was
Speaker 2: a happy guy. Lisa couldn't have been nicer. You know.
Speaker 2: It was funny because I remember we asked Lisa, we said,
Speaker 2: what did you what did you see in Michael? You know,
Speaker 2: what did you how did you guys fall in love?
Speaker 2: And she just said he was the kindest person I've
Speaker 2: ever met in my life. And I totally got it.
Speaker 2: I was like, I get it, totally get it. And
Speaker 2: I thought, now's the opportunity to you know, if it
Speaker 2: was the runaway track or we had heard the the
Speaker 2: r Kelly track you Are Not Alone, and we were like,
Speaker 2: that should be the single. To me, it's like, that's
Speaker 2: where you're at in your life right now. Why go
Speaker 2: back and go pressure me. I gotta get the last word.
Speaker 2: He's got to get the last word. And that was
Speaker 2: the thing. And we told we told Sony, We told uh, well,
Speaker 2: it wasn't even Sony at the time. I think it
Speaker 2: was still CBS Records at the time, but we told him,
Speaker 2: we said, that's the wrongest, that's the wrong record for
Speaker 2: the first single. To me, also, I said, just strategically,
Speaker 2: wouldn't if everybody wants that duet, why give it to
Speaker 2: him at first? Give him something different? I said, he's
Speaker 2: never given the whole big record as the first one
Speaker 2: ever has throwaway song should have been and then yes,
Speaker 2: well that's what I meant. Yeah, yeah, but I mean
Speaker 2: but that was my thing was you are not alone.
Speaker 2: I said, you just gotten married to Lisa Marie. You're
Speaker 2: in love. We had already done the love thing with Janet, right.
Speaker 2: We knew that's the way love goes was the song
Speaker 2: for that album. That it was. It introduced, it said
Speaker 2: what the album was, the album was not. We argued
Speaker 2: with the record company over that. They wanted it for
Speaker 2: the single and we're like, no, but if it's like
Speaker 2: the last of rhythm names. But remember the last impression
Speaker 2: you had of Janet was love will never do without you.
Speaker 2: So going from that too, that's the way love goes
Speaker 2: is the next logical step. And they almost talked her
Speaker 2: out of it. Thank god for Chuck d and Hank
Speaker 2: Shockley who we played the record for, and they told us, yeah,
Speaker 2: that if is cool, but that that's the way love goes. Man,
Speaker 2: it's like some shot ship. She wanted to know. I'll
Speaker 2: tell you, I'll tell you. I'll tell you what I
Speaker 2: can real hopefully, real quick. I can tell you what happened.
Speaker 2: We had finished the whole album. We were the last
Speaker 2: song we did with State, not State of the World,
Speaker 2: but new Agenda with Chuck did right right, So we're
Speaker 2: finishing up. We finished it like three in the morning
Speaker 2: when Janet had left. Janet had left for about two
Speaker 2: three days to meet with virgin about you know whatever.
Speaker 2: And of course now we're the climate of biggest recording
Speaker 2: delever Ton of pressure and whatever. When Jordan Harris and
Speaker 2: Jeff A. Roff were the two guys who were running
Speaker 2: Version when we were working on the album, they came
Speaker 2: to town one day and they said, we just want
Speaker 2: to hear whatever you're working on. That particular day we
Speaker 2: were working on IF. To crank that up. I turned
Speaker 2: it on. They were blown away. They left. They said
Speaker 2: that we don't need to hear anything else. We're good, right.
Speaker 2: So in their minds from that day forward, IF was
Speaker 2: the single because that's what they heard, and it was
Speaker 2: so straight down the middle of Janet from what Janet
Speaker 2: was on Rhythm Nation. They hadn't heard any of the
Speaker 2: other songs, didn't know any of the concepts. So that's
Speaker 2: the way Love Goes had a long kind of you
Speaker 2: know life because in creating the song, because when I
Speaker 2: did the song, I was like my whole thing was.
Speaker 2: First of all, I'm the biggest James Brown fan ever. Right,
Speaker 2: Papa Don't Take No Mess was one of my favorite songs.
Speaker 2: I said, if I could take Papa Don't Take No Mess,
Speaker 2: put chords over it like a real song and chak
Speaker 2: Hord changes stuff and make it all still work with
Speaker 2: the with the thing, if I could put the impeached
Speaker 2: President's sample in it. I was trying to make like
Speaker 2: the ultimate hip hop you know, like like a record
Speaker 2: Mary J. Blige would make, was what I was trying
Speaker 2: to make on that record, right, but with the texture
Speaker 2: the Janet would sing on right. And I remember there
Speaker 2: was this guy named Mark Mazzetti used to work at
Speaker 2: A and M Records, and Mark Mazzetti. Okay, so so
Speaker 2: Mark came up. You know she she was on Virgin,
Speaker 2: but he just he came up and he said, hey,
Speaker 2: I know she's not on our label. Can I hear
Speaker 2: something you're working on? And I said, oh, yeah, well
Speaker 2: I just finished this track and I played him That's
Speaker 2: the Way Love Goest track and he went crazy. He said,
Speaker 2: oh my god, this is the greatest. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: I'm so I wish I was working this record whatever whatever, anyway,
Speaker 2: played it, played it for Janet. Janet goes, it's okay
Speaker 2: and I said wow, I said, oh really, she said, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's okay. So anyway, I said, okay, cool. So then
Speaker 2: about you know, a couple of weeks later, we were
Speaker 2: taking a break over Christmas and uh, she said, just
Speaker 2: put everything on a cassette for me to listen to.
Speaker 2: I said, okay, cool. So I put the track on
Speaker 2: the cassette right when she got back. A couple of
Speaker 2: weeks later, she landed. I said, what song do you
Speaker 2: want to start with? She said, oh my god, that track?
Speaker 2: That track, Oh my god. And I said, what track
Speaker 2: are you talking about? That track you gave me? Oh
Speaker 2: my god, the track you gave me, I said, the
Speaker 2: one you don't like? Oh, I was no, I love
Speaker 2: that track. Oh my god. We listened to it and over.
Speaker 2: So something about she was in Anguila, so something about
Speaker 2: being in Guila on the beach and whatever, and something
Speaker 2: about it connected. And I think what also happened she
Speaker 2: was over there with a bunch of her dancers and stuff,
Speaker 2: and I think they all heard it and were like
Speaker 2: kind of like what they did in the middle, and
Speaker 2: that was kind of that. That's what I think kind
Speaker 2: of happened over there.
Speaker 1: So when that happened, she said tribe to or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not actually, but yeah, but that was that was
Speaker 2: sort of the idea. So anyway, we actually did this
Speaker 2: song and we all agreed that that was sort of
Speaker 2: the direction of the album. Like that was the first
Speaker 2: you know, kind of Entrea what the album was going
Speaker 2: to be. When she went to La, we warned her,
Speaker 2: We said, they're going to try to talk you in
Speaker 2: if I already know it, and she said, no, it's cool,
Speaker 2: but you know what, a second single maybe whatever, It's okay, cool.
Speaker 2: She comes back, she goes, yeah, the single changed to if.
Speaker 2: We were like, don't don't you know? And they were
Speaker 2: like and she told me all the reasons, Oh we
Speaker 2: can do a big dance video and it's Janet returns
Speaker 2: and it's whatever, and we're like no, but we know
Speaker 2: that's changed my whole perspective of that record, right if
Speaker 2: came out. Yeah, So anyway, so now, okay, so we
Speaker 2: fast forward. We're finishing New Agenda. So three o'clock in
Speaker 2: the morning, I said Janet, I said, can we play
Speaker 2: them the two records? Thinking this singles? And she said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: that'd be great. I said, okay, cool. So we went
Speaker 2: in in the studio. I played That's the Way Love
Speaker 2: Goes and they listened to it and they were like vibing.
Speaker 2: And we played IF and they were vibing and we
Speaker 2: were like, okay, so what do you think and they said, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: that that IF man, that you know, that just sounds
Speaker 2: like Janet. Man, you know that's that you know, that's
Speaker 2: that janis back, and you know, we get it man.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's like, you know, it's like and as
Speaker 2: he's saying that, I'm just going like, no, right, and
Speaker 2: she's looking at me, like Jane's looking at me like
Speaker 2: see you know whatever, and I'm like damn. And then
Speaker 2: they go, but but what was that other song called
Speaker 2: That's the Way Love Goes? That other song? You know
Speaker 2: what that song is like, that's like some shah Day shit.
Speaker 2: That's like when shah Day puts a record out, you know,
Speaker 2: and it is no fanfare to it. It's just like
Speaker 2: she just got the CD and she just kind of
Speaker 2: slips it down on the table and you go, oh,
Speaker 2: what is that. Oh it's a shiny record. Let's check
Speaker 2: that out. You know. He said, that's like that ship
Speaker 2: and he said, that's something about that, and I looked
Speaker 2: at her like and that was it, and that was
Speaker 2: so the decision was made. And thank god they were
Speaker 2: there and said that because then she said, she like
Speaker 2: came back to her senses and she said, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the way Love Goes is a single, and yeah,
Speaker 2: it changed the whole direction of what the record would
Speaker 2: have been. And so yeah, I mean, you know, there's
Speaker 2: all kinds of things like that that happened. Man, it's
Speaker 2: it's like it's like we can sit here and talk.
Speaker 2: We ain't even got to damn two thousand have we. Which,
Speaker 2: by the way, everybody clowned us about the length of
Speaker 2: the of the Bull interview that we did. Whatever that was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: whatever that is, And it was funny because I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: but you know the problem is is that you can
Speaker 2: really pick an era and spend a couple hours talking
Speaker 2: about it if you want to go in depth with it,
Speaker 2: it's tough to really do it because I said, we've
Speaker 2: just been around too damn long. That's the that's the problem.
Speaker 2: And there's a story that leads to another story that
Speaker 2: leads to another story. But there's so many angles of
Speaker 2: things of the way they turned out. At the end
Speaker 2: of the day, I say about all of this, it's
Speaker 2: God that does this flows through us. Luckily we've got
Speaker 2: the blessing to actually do it. But I guarantee you
Speaker 2: there's song, there's chord changes and songs we were talking about.
Speaker 2: Somebody asked me the other day about come back to Me,
Speaker 2: the bridging come back to Me.
Speaker 4: It's the same as money came by love?
Speaker 2: Is it? That's money can mean fine, Oh you're right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: you're right, Yeah, you're sort of well, you're right. I mean,
Speaker 2: you're right. There are there are the same There are
Speaker 2: the same chords in there, absolutely the same chords. But
Speaker 2: I don't know where those chords came from, right because
Speaker 2: when I was doing come Back to Me, the track
Speaker 2: for that, that is not where I would go for
Speaker 2: a change. Like if somebody said, oh, we need a
Speaker 2: B section, I wouldn't have gone to that, you know.
Speaker 2: And even sometime today, you know, if somebody says, hey,
Speaker 2: play such and such and such. I love the change
Speaker 2: in that song, and I can't remember what it was.
Speaker 2: We were Brunel Mars the other day, who, by the way,
Speaker 2: can sing every damn song we've ever done and really well,
Speaker 2: which is which is something? But we were doing I
Speaker 2: don't know whether it was coming back to me or
Speaker 2: one of the other that might have been abanded years something,
Speaker 2: and we were he was singing, and he went to
Speaker 2: the change, and I'm like going, oh wait, I don't wait.
Speaker 2: What was what was I thinking that day? I don't
Speaker 2: even know, but it was what whatever was planted in
Speaker 2: me that day that made me come up with those changes.
Speaker 2: So at the end of the day, man, it's just, uh,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just a blessing. And I get to
Speaker 2: do it with somebody who I love to see every
Speaker 2: single day. And uh, but there's so many twists and
Speaker 2: turns that you can't really get stuck on yourself about
Speaker 2: it because there's so many other factors, man, like if
Speaker 2: Chuck d wouldn't have been in our life or Hank
Speaker 2: Shockley wouldn't have been in our life at that moment,
Speaker 2: it would have taken a different turn, and and that
Speaker 2: stuff we can't control, you know. So there's a lot
Speaker 2: of good fortune that that happens.
Speaker 4: What's your day to day like now?
Speaker 5: Like in terms of you and Tary writing songs, like,
Speaker 5: what's the typical day like?
Speaker 4: In your life.
Speaker 2: Wow, Well, a typical day in our life is a
Speaker 2: lot of family kid raising. Quite honestly, we have our
Speaker 2: kids go to the same school. Six Well, I have
Speaker 2: a six I have sixteen year old twins and he
Speaker 2: has a sixteen year old son. But he has a
Speaker 2: thirty six year old son. You know, he's Terry has
Speaker 2: been busy for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ain't nobody bad.
Speaker 2: Sorry, but Terry. Terry taught me everything that I know
Speaker 2: about parenting. And he's like the most unselfish, giving person
Speaker 2: ever in life. And uh so I got a chance
Speaker 2: to watch him raise his kids and then I had mine.
Speaker 2: But then he remarried and had more kids, you know,
Speaker 2: because he just he's the kind of person that should
Speaker 2: should have kids. And he always said that to me
Speaker 2: because I went through most of my life I figured
Speaker 2: I was never going to have kids. I just I
Speaker 2: didn't want kids. And he said, jam, you know, you
Speaker 2: have to have kids. And I'm like why and he said,
Speaker 2: because you have so much to office. And he says,
Speaker 2: and somebody's got an offset all the knucklehead kids, so
Speaker 2: you need to raise some good kids so we kind
Speaker 2: of have some balance. And I thought, okay, Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: absolutely right. And I always feel like with my kids,
Speaker 2: it's like, y'all better do something with your life because
Speaker 2: there's no there's no.
Speaker 4: Excuse, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's that's the thing. So anyway, a lot of
Speaker 2: our life is being uber driving kids to school in back.
Speaker 2: My daughter just got her license, so that's scary as
Speaker 2: she's sixteen. I have an older son at Arizona State
Speaker 2: University and he's I think going to transfer ad end
Speaker 2: of the year maybe, but we'll see whatever he wants
Speaker 2: to do. But I mean a lot of it is
Speaker 2: just spending kids time. The nice thing is I wake
Speaker 2: up and now the way studios are studios in your
Speaker 2: laptop now. So I have an office at home, and
Speaker 2: anytime I come up with an idea, and thank goodness,
Speaker 2: the idea is just keep coming for some reason, and
Speaker 2: I can just walk over to my laptop and I
Speaker 2: have my little keyboard and stuff, and I can just
Speaker 2: bang an idea out. And sometimes I don't even develop it.
Speaker 2: I just kind of I just kind of put a
Speaker 2: little idea down and I just kind of leave it.
Speaker 2: And then what happens most of the time is Terry
Speaker 2: will take my hard drive and he'll say, hey, jam
Speaker 2: let me get something off to your hard drive. Okay, cool.
Speaker 2: He'll go through, listen to everything, and the next thing,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll have We just did a People Bryson album, Wow,
Speaker 2: And he pulled some songs off of my hard drive
Speaker 2: that I swear to god he because we were trying
Speaker 2: to well, we never talked about how we work together,
Speaker 2: but this is this is one example. So he said, man,
Speaker 2: you got I'm we need some stuff for people. Man,
Speaker 2: but I want it to be like R and B.
Speaker 2: But it's got to be forward, you know, it's got
Speaker 2: to be whatever whatever. And it's like, okay, cool. He said,
Speaker 2: you got anything like that? And I said, nine got
Speaker 2: anything like that? I said, but I'll figure something out.
Speaker 2: So anyway, he takes my hard drive, he goes down
Speaker 2: to it, he records people. He comes back two songs
Speaker 2: that I had done I don't know, five years ago
Speaker 2: or something, just as kind of a thing. One of
Speaker 2: them I was singing on, which was pretty bad. And
Speaker 2: and anyway, he's got people on these songs. These are
Speaker 2: like I probably are singles on the album. And but
Speaker 2: he hears it and he goes, I mean one of
Speaker 2: them he played for people and people like lost his mind.
Speaker 2: He said, oh my god, I love this, and so
Speaker 2: Terry's like, okay, yeah, you know, so sometimes it just
Speaker 2: happens like that. But that's the great thing about having
Speaker 2: a partner, you know. Even that's even we talked about
Speaker 2: a little bit earlier. What have you done for me lately?
Speaker 2: So Terry walked in the studio when I was cutting
Speaker 2: the track, and the part that ended up being used
Speaker 2: was actually the bridge to the song. It was like
Speaker 2: a whole different song. Wait what what It was a
Speaker 2: whole different song, but the bridge went ding ding ding
Speaker 2: ding ding ding thin thing. So what is your name?
Speaker 2: I don't even remember now, I don't remember what the
Speaker 2: main part of the song is. I just know Terry
Speaker 2: walked in and he said, oh I like that, dun
Speaker 2: I like that. And I said, oh, no, that's just
Speaker 2: the bridge of the song, Terry. The real song goes
Speaker 2: like this. And he said, no, no, no, no, just
Speaker 2: right to that bridge. You know what he told you? Right?
Speaker 6: I have a question, have you ever had to deal
Speaker 6: with writer's block or does having a partner kind of
Speaker 6: prevent that from him?
Speaker 2: It helps, It helps a lot because normally we don't
Speaker 2: have it at the same time. But yeah, you definitely
Speaker 2: go through writer's block. You go through I mean, we've
Speaker 2: done it so long now that we've gone through a
Speaker 2: ton of periods where we just thought, oh, we're never
Speaker 2: ever going to write another song again. It's just it
Speaker 2: just ain't there. Terry went through it for a while,
Speaker 2: and I remember though, it was because the stuff that
Speaker 2: was being offered us to do was not inspiring. And
Speaker 2: who did you say no to? Oh? Many people, many, many, many,
Speaker 2: many many people. Everyone, not everyone, huh Stevie Wonder. No,
Speaker 2: we never said who did you say you felt didn't
Speaker 2: make sense to do?
Speaker 1: Like the Prince come to you guys one day and
Speaker 1: like you guys got something or I mean like no,
Speaker 1: we actually were Michael Jackson's situation.
Speaker 2: Like well, I mean early early on Madonna, Donald Ritchie
Speaker 2: at one point in time, I mean in the no
Speaker 2: because he wanted one song and we wanted to do
Speaker 2: more than one song. We didn't feel like we could
Speaker 2: do oh dance initially well initially right around that, right
Speaker 2: after that, probably right after Dancing on the ceiling or
Speaker 2: right around that time. Yeah, I mean he was, he
Speaker 2: was huge, but we just didn't feel like we were
Speaker 2: going to make an impact with one song that we didn't.
Speaker 2: When we thought lot of him, we didn't think of
Speaker 2: him as one song. We thought of him as the
Speaker 2: Commodore's linel Rich album. We thought of him as the
Speaker 2: you know, the yeah, oh we did, you know, but
Speaker 2: we did, though, we did an album with him that
Speaker 2: did absolutely nothing. What wait we stop red headphone? Man?
Speaker 2: I know about this? Louder Louder than words? Right? Uh?
Speaker 2: What's a lot of the world? Yeah, great cover? Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's right. You did the entire album, no, no, but we
Speaker 2: did the great the good songs on there, which so
Speaker 2: don't so don't want to lose you? Okay, you got
Speaker 2: that on your on your laptop of yeah songs, look,
Speaker 2: so don't want to lose you now. And we did
Speaker 2: a song called say I Do, which he actually got
Speaker 2: married to when he got married, say I Do. And
Speaker 2: we did a song that one of my favorites called
Speaker 2: take You Down that we actually sampled. Uh. I think
Speaker 2: it was What's the Name of Ecstasy by the Ohio? Wow?
Speaker 2: What wait? Louder than words? Yeah, louder than words? What
Speaker 2: us this? So here's so, Here's the funny thing about
Speaker 2: Lionel is that when he finally did come to us,
Speaker 2: and we said, no, we want to do more than
Speaker 2: one song, and he said, okay, cool, He said, I
Speaker 2: get it. Whatever, I'll come to Minneappol. It was a
Speaker 2: whole different Linel at that point, right, I will come
Speaker 2: to Minneapolis, I'll do I'll work with you guys, whatever
Speaker 2: you guys want to do. We said, hey, we miss
Speaker 2: the linel the Commodore's Lionel. Can we do a Commodore's
Speaker 2: Lionel song? And he said yeah, yeah, he said absolutely,
Speaker 2: we got it. We got it, and so I remember
Speaker 2: when we played it for him, and I think I
Speaker 2: had sung the demo, which not very good, and he
Speaker 2: started cracking up. He just laughed and I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: I know, I don't sing really good and he said, no, man,
Speaker 2: it ain't that. He said, what's weird about it is
Speaker 2: that that is so me. But I can't write that song.
Speaker 2: You guys can write it. I can't write that song anymore.
Speaker 2: But the fact that you all wrote that for me,
Speaker 2: he said, I'm totally with it. So anyway, that album
Speaker 2: got caught up with I remember a record company thing
Speaker 2: with pol I think it was PolyGram at the time,
Speaker 2: and it just kind of got caught up in a
Speaker 2: bunch of in a bunch of crap and we actually
Speaker 2: played with him at the PolyGram convention. Okay, so that
Speaker 2: was cool, but you know, I mean, that's for me,
Speaker 2: the greatest compliment that we get is when we got
Speaker 2: a chance to work with the classic artists, the people
Speaker 2: like we grew up with, and we got to work
Speaker 2: with Barry White, and we got to work with Barry
Speaker 2: White was the best. We played a song for Barry White.
Speaker 2: We did the song called come On for Barry White,
Speaker 2: and you know, we did the whole big long love
Speaker 2: unlimited intro and the whole big thing right, and we
Speaker 2: said when it got done, we say, hey, what do
Speaker 2: you think man? And he said, sounds like me. And
Speaker 2: that's that's the best complim. When we did a song
Speaker 2: called You're All I Need for the Isisley Brothers, and
Speaker 2: I remember Ernie was listening to it and he said, hey, man,
Speaker 2: you got an acoustic guitar and we were like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: He said, man, man, hook me up. Hooked me up.
Speaker 2: He said, I already know where this is going. I
Speaker 2: already know where the chord changes are going. And when
Speaker 2: you do that and you like somebody so much, but
Speaker 2: you can kind of get into their heads and make
Speaker 2: them feel like the song is for them. That's the
Speaker 2: best man, particularly with you know, like I say, with
Speaker 2: the classic artists, because you have a chance to actually
Speaker 2: study and know and as a fan, you know, just
Speaker 2: with anybody, you know where they went wrong, where they
Speaker 2: made the left turn. You just talked about it. With
Speaker 2: Michael he made a left turn at one point and
Speaker 2: he got into Rhythm Nationland and he never recovered that
Speaker 2: was his left turn that he made. Or it can
Speaker 2: be any of your favorite artists. It's like, ok, they
Speaker 2: get to a certain point, then they make a left
Speaker 2: turn and it's like, if you can just bring them back.
Speaker 2: We worked with When It Fire. We did a song
Speaker 2: called Pure Elimination. Okay, and that's the last record by
Speaker 2: the way that Maurice White sang on and we insisted
Speaker 2: did he sing?
Speaker 4: And that sounded like that was a great that was
Speaker 4: a great song.
Speaker 2: But the point was so earth Wind and Fire comes
Speaker 2: to us and they go, man, we want to get
Speaker 2: back on the radio, and we were like, you're on
Speaker 2: the radio all the time. The reasons that's the way
Speaker 2: to worcept them. You're on the radio. No no, no,
Speaker 2: we want you know, we want to be on the radio.
Speaker 2: I said, no, no, So what does it tell you
Speaker 2: that those songs are being played on the radio? So
Speaker 2: what does radio want to hear from Earth, Wind and
Speaker 2: Fire those type of songs. And so we did Pure
Speaker 2: Gold and you know it was a very popular record
Speaker 2: in the whole thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, y'all, you guys have always kind of been
Speaker 5: like I can compare You'll call you like the Shang
Speaker 5: Song of.
Speaker 4: Music because like.
Speaker 5: Mott was the character who could morphine to like any
Speaker 5: of the other characters. Because the record y'all did disrespectful
Speaker 5: for Mary Jay. Yes, I would have bet my firstborn
Speaker 5: child at Rich Harrison did that record?
Speaker 2: Right? And love Rich Harison?
Speaker 5: I mean, and I was just so I was just
Speaker 5: curious as to how you channeled that, Like where does
Speaker 5: that come from?
Speaker 4: Like in order to get it?
Speaker 2: It comes from it comes from Uh, it comes from
Speaker 2: respect of of people like that of Rich Harrison. I
Speaker 2: remember hearing what was the record Amrie one thing, No, No, No,
Speaker 2: the very first Fall in Love? Oh my god. Okay,
Speaker 2: so of records that changed my life as far as
Speaker 2: just appreciation of production and the songs and what that
Speaker 2: was one of them. I mean there's there's probably I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I've never I always think about it,
Speaker 2: but then I never do it. But like there's certain
Speaker 2: songs on You by the way, well, there's certain songs
Speaker 2: that there's certain songs in my life they'd really changed
Speaker 2: and I go back, I can go back, way way far.
Speaker 2: But I mean I remember happening on to a Brenda Russell.
Speaker 7: Album, right, so good okay, and think it over, and
Speaker 7: those songs on that, those major seventh chords on that record,
Speaker 7: in the way it's put together changed the way I
Speaker 7: wrote music totally.
Speaker 2: Right, I can think of hearing just trying to think
Speaker 2: it's something to come to mind. Just a Touch of
Speaker 2: Love by Slave totally changed the way that whole that drum,
Speaker 2: that Steve Arrington with that little hiccup tie hat thing
Speaker 2: that you know ended up watching You and all that
Speaker 2: other stuff. But just to Touch of Lovers Man, that
Speaker 2: was such an amazing record and her and star Leading
Speaker 2: Young's voice and that whole thing was just amazing. Right,
Speaker 2: So there's certain records like that that just do that
Speaker 2: to me. And so yeah, so the Amaree record did
Speaker 2: that to me. That record was just like come on
Speaker 2: so and the My Life album by mary Ja was
Speaker 2: like that, Like I stopped everybody in our in the
Speaker 2: studio and made them listen to that album, like you
Speaker 2: gotta listen to this. You liked it. I loved it.
Speaker 2: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: That's the first day we met, by the way, or
Speaker 1: at least that I remember, I am, yeah in DC.
Speaker 4: Really I loved it, loved I didn't believe that again,
Speaker 4: I can see it.
Speaker 2: Why wouldn't I like it? Well because.
Speaker 4: It was karaoke.
Speaker 1: It broke so many rules, Like we were like just
Speaker 1: that month of us being in a van and analyzing
Speaker 1: every record as we're going from gig to gig, we
Speaker 1: got My Life record. We were just dumbfound it because
Speaker 1: all we kept asking was is this allowed?
Speaker 2: She allowed it?
Speaker 1: Now if it were rappers singing over Everybody Loves the
Speaker 1: Sunshine and be.
Speaker 2: Like, okay, that's normal.
Speaker 1: But we never heard a singer sing over break theeas
Speaker 1: And we didn't know how to feel about that record,
Speaker 1: like we were just like we just kept asking. Well,
Speaker 1: soon thereafter I was like, if you ask if this
Speaker 1: is allowed, then it must be right.
Speaker 5: Because she started because she was kind of on the
Speaker 5: what's the four one one remixes. That was kind of
Speaker 5: the dress rehearsal for My life because that was when
Speaker 5: she started.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: But we just I never thought like, Okay, I'm listening
Speaker 1: to everybody loves the Sunshine. She's just changing like it was.
Speaker 1: I was so conflicted to be happy. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: so conflicted that.
Speaker 2: Jam.
Speaker 8: Can you still listen to records and not listen to
Speaker 8: them clinically? I always ask these guys that, like, can
Speaker 8: you just listen to.
Speaker 2: A record I analyze everything and.
Speaker 8: Just hear the goodness, the emotion that it looks side
Speaker 8: of the technicalities of the break b how many.
Speaker 2: Sort of That's a great question. I think I can.
Speaker 2: I definitely get the emotion of records. I was listening. Ironically,
Speaker 2: there's a record by there's a guy like an EDM,
Speaker 2: guy like Porter Robinson, and I love his chord structures
Speaker 2: and his textures that he does. And there's a song
Speaker 2: he had out about four or five years ago. No,
Speaker 2: it wasn't even four five years ago. It's maybe two
Speaker 2: or three years ago that I remember he played at
Speaker 2: Coachella and it was the first time I taken my
Speaker 2: kids to Coachella, and I remember we walked into the
Speaker 2: tent and that song came on, and my kids put
Speaker 2: their hands in the air, and I just was like,
Speaker 2: wow this because everybody was like, well EDM is just
Speaker 2: kind of soul list and it's whatever. But it hit
Speaker 2: my kids and I actually put a little snippet of it.
Speaker 2: I sent it to my kids today because we're going
Speaker 2: to Coachella tomorrow, and I sent them that little snippet
Speaker 2: and they both like sent me back a bunch of
Speaker 2: smiling faces because there was this moment where And I
Speaker 2: never have analyzed that song because it's I'm not an idiom.
Speaker 2: I don't really do idiom, but that song, Yes, the
Speaker 2: emotion in that song, there was no I didn't have
Speaker 2: a desire to try to dissect it. I just something
Speaker 2: about it all. And it could have been the moment,
Speaker 2: or because I was with my kids, or because there
Speaker 2: was a shared experience or whatever. But yeah, I don't
Speaker 2: I think I probably can listen to things without doing it.
Speaker 2: The thing that is I don't like is when I
Speaker 2: can hear the plan that somebody had for the song.
Speaker 2: That bugs me. If a song is put together really well,
Speaker 2: it's like a magic trick or something like if a
Speaker 2: magic trick has done really well. You don't see the magic.
Speaker 2: You don't see the magic. It's just like, oh shit, wow,
Speaker 2: that was cool. But if you know what it is,
Speaker 2: what they're trying to do, and some songs are so
Speaker 2: I'm gonna push a button here to try to get
Speaker 2: this emotion and then I'm gonna do this here because
Speaker 2: and I'm gonna use this sound here because it's reminds
Speaker 2: people of this here and it's almost like a laboratory.
Speaker 5: That's like I said, I've never been inspired by inspirational
Speaker 5: music ever, like anyone that says like the well not
Speaker 5: I mean optimixic.
Speaker 4: No, that's that. That wasn't That was a song that
Speaker 4: was inspirational, but it wasn't.
Speaker 5: Like I'm going to try to inspire you like a
Speaker 5: lot of like I don't want to say Christian music,
Speaker 5: but music that seeks to like be like self help
Speaker 5: books in music form.
Speaker 4: I hate that shit.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: So how well rounded are you? How well rounded are
Speaker 1: your kids with music? Or do you leave them to
Speaker 1: their devices?
Speaker 2: They school you all of that, all all of the
Speaker 2: above and all in and all in different ways. I mean,
Speaker 2: I'm around my sixteen year olds all the time. My older,
Speaker 2: my older one. I remember his probably his most influential
Speaker 2: phase of music before he kind of I won't say matured,
Speaker 2: but I guess matured is the right word. Anything that
Speaker 2: little John did where it was where it was a
Speaker 2: loop of a synthesizer low and then high. So if
Speaker 2: it was snap your fingers, it was every song had
Speaker 2: that same pattern. He loved all those songs, right, and
Speaker 2: he eventually got he's more. He's interesting now. He's much
Speaker 2: more of an ed M guy. Now he's into the
Speaker 2: all the DM stuff.
Speaker 1: So I mean, what did they think of what your
Speaker 1: life was like? Do they understand that?
Speaker 2: Yo?
Speaker 1: I know you'll see me his dad, but I'm the
Speaker 1: ship kind of that new.
Speaker 2: Like, what do they think of when they No, they don't,
Speaker 2: they don't. They have no, they don't get it. No,
Speaker 2: not at all. So the time means none of them. Well, no,
Speaker 2: they enjoyed the time. Now. It was interesting when.
Speaker 6: We before after the Rihanna performance.
Speaker 2: No, after the Rihanna performance we did because the time
Speaker 2: didn't exist, because we didn't really my kids weren't born
Speaker 2: until ninety six. We did. My first one was ninety six,
Speaker 2: the twins were two thousand, so we didn't do the
Speaker 2: We had done the Panemonia Molment what ninety but we
Speaker 2: hadn't done another album since then, so they didn't really
Speaker 2: know the time. So it was just yeah, a band
Speaker 2: I used to play with, but they had no you know,
Speaker 2: thought about what it was. Yeah, no reference. I remember
Speaker 2: the first time I took we did a song with
Speaker 2: Sting called my Funny Friend in Me from a it
Speaker 2: was from a Disney movie. I can't remember what it's
Speaker 2: called now, and we at the end of the premiere
Speaker 2: of the movie, they raised the curtain and we actually
Speaker 2: performed with Sting, and I remember my son, who probably
Speaker 2: four at the time, he loved it, like he thought
Speaker 2: that was so cool that I was, but he didn't
Speaker 2: know who Sting was. He just thought that it was
Speaker 2: cool that after this movie there was a band on stage. Right.
Speaker 2: Eventually he got it and he went with us, like
Speaker 2: to Janet, because he was old enough. I mean he
Speaker 2: was what five, I think when when Janet did or
Speaker 2: six when Janet did the Velvet Rope not Velvet Rope
Speaker 2: but All for You tour. So when we took him
Speaker 2: to Hawaii with us when we did the HBO thing
Speaker 2: and the whole thing, take me to that chair. No,
Speaker 2: she had Kevin Garnett in the chair though, Yeah, she
Speaker 2: did it. She did it so anyway. So yeah, but
Speaker 2: my younger, my younger boy is he's everything. He's the
Speaker 2: Coachella Sponge Like I took him and he was everything.
Speaker 2: At that year was a c d C. He loved
Speaker 2: a c d C. He loved Tyler the Creator, he loved.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, viz a c DC. It was
Speaker 1: because of rocket tar rock band or no, no guitar.
Speaker 2: I was wondering if it. Yeah, right, because his kids
Speaker 2: are into Yeah, why do you know this? Yeah? Why
Speaker 2: do you know the songs? That's interesting? No, he always
Speaker 2: for some reason, he always had a very big palette
Speaker 2: of he was always an old soul. Like he would
Speaker 2: listen to led Zeppelin, but I mean he'd hear me
Speaker 2: play it. But then he'd go seek and find more stuff.
Speaker 2: That was always his thing. Like he'd like he ended
Speaker 2: up liking the Black Keys because he liked led Zeppelin,
Speaker 2: and then he you know, and he would make the
Speaker 2: connections on stuff. He was very very much at an
Speaker 2: early age. Now he's sixteen. His he's literally discovered now
Speaker 2: the Michael Jackson off the Wall album now is his
Speaker 2: probably his favorite album of all time. He thinks sonically
Speaker 2: it's the best record ever made. And you let him
Speaker 2: discover it. Yeah, you forced it, know I no, No,
Speaker 2: I let him discover it. I got in the I
Speaker 2: got in the car. It's funny. I got in the
Speaker 2: car the other day. So after the Grammys, we went
Speaker 2: to this one after party aeg. There are people that
Speaker 2: own the stables and and all that. We went to
Speaker 2: their party. They were playing all this kind of old
Speaker 2: school music and they played bad Mamma Jamma. They played
Speaker 2: knee deep funkadelic. Right. He had never heard these songs
Speaker 2: in his life. Right. He's asking me, Dad, who is this?
Speaker 2: And I said, oh, bad Mamajama Carl Carlton. Ok okay, Dad,
Speaker 2: who's this? Not just needy funkadelic? Okay cool. About two
Speaker 2: weeks later, I'm taking him to school. He's playing Funkadelic,
Speaker 2: but not knee deep. He's playing like this album cuts,
Speaker 2: That album cuts, right. Bad Mammajamma is like his favorite
Speaker 2: song ever. He's telling me, how lyrically, what's the lyric?
Speaker 2: There's a lyric in the song that he loves. What
Speaker 2: is it? What is the line, yes, the look at
Speaker 2: her anatomy line whatever that line is poetry most excited
Speaker 2: excited feeling an anatomy. Yeah, he loved that, he said, man,
Speaker 2: those are great lyrics. I'm like, okay, cool. So he
Speaker 2: loves so, he loves that. He loves the like I say,
Speaker 2: he's into the Michael Jackson thing. He the other day
Speaker 2: he found heat Wave. He said, Dad, doesn't this sound
Speaker 2: just like Michael Jackson song? I said, that's because Rod
Speaker 2: Temperton wrote it. So then he went on a Rod
Speaker 2: Temperton binge. Right, So he's that kid that Yes, he
Speaker 2: got me and I love that right, and me too.
Speaker 2: I mean I was the same way, So I see
Speaker 2: myself in him. So anyway, he's totally into that stuff.
Speaker 2: But after he gets through that stuff, Travis Scott, big
Speaker 2: tar whosy vert is okay to him, He's really, He's
Speaker 2: really Travis Scott is his that's his all time favorite.
Speaker 2: He likes Kanye a lot, he likes Drake a lot.
Speaker 2: He liked the early weekend stuff, the mixtapes, weekend stuff.
Speaker 2: But he's but he likes Sam Fa. He likes a
Speaker 2: little dragon. No. He loves oh love, Oh No. He's
Speaker 2: he's got a very like I said, he's got a
Speaker 2: very wide music.
Speaker 4: My son, my son, who is also.
Speaker 2: Sixteen, So Coachella is like perfect for him, Like he's
Speaker 2: gonna be he's gonna love it. Like he's already got
Speaker 2: his list of of folks he wants to see Schoolboy
Speaker 2: Q Kendrick Lamar. You know he's got his He's got
Speaker 2: his folks.
Speaker 5: One question I have for you was in regards to
Speaker 5: just like your we talk about all your hits, uh
Speaker 5: some of your misses. I guess, like you know records
Speaker 5: that you've done that you know maybe didn't do what
Speaker 5: you want him to do and what you learned from
Speaker 5: and like when you and Terry might sit back and say,
Speaker 5: you know what, that didn't really hit the mark and
Speaker 5: this is why it didn't hit the mark.
Speaker 2: That's a good question. I'm sure there's a lot of them.
Speaker 2: I don't think a lot about them.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean, like was expected to if I'm project
Speaker 5: like whatever like.
Speaker 1: So that I did, Like it was the little down
Speaker 1: there to shape.
Speaker 2: But that's right, it was it was so u no
Speaker 2: raj no listen Rajene was good. It wasn't. I don't
Speaker 2: think it was great, like listening to it now, like
Speaker 2: some things I go back and listen to and I go, man,
Speaker 2: that was really some great ship we did, or you know,
Speaker 2: at least I think that, and some things I go
Speaker 2: back and listen to and I go, that's okay. But
Speaker 2: I would have done that different, and I would have
Speaker 2: done that. Rogen is one of those records I probably
Speaker 2: would have done, you know, a little different than we
Speaker 2: did it. But also we didn't have at that point
Speaker 2: in time. We just didn't have the backup with the label,
Speaker 2: so maybe the record could have been better. I don't
Speaker 2: think it probably reached its potential, but I don't think
Speaker 2: we probably made the best record. And that's that's in
Speaker 2: all honesty. But yeah, I mean it happens a lot
Speaker 2: when records don't do it. I'll tell you one of
Speaker 2: the ones that was really surprising to me, But it
Speaker 2: had nothing to do with us, because I think it's
Speaker 2: a great record is God till It's gone by Janet
Speaker 2: And And what happened with that record was, wait, it
Speaker 2: went straight to number one. Something happened that we don't
Speaker 2: know about it. Well, it went straight to number one.
Speaker 2: Urban pop radio didn't touch it. Yeah, wait, what didn't
Speaker 2: touch it like it didn't exist, didn't touch it. And
Speaker 2: and here's the thing that's interesting about it, We since
Speaker 2: that when we made it, because Janet had always straddled
Speaker 2: that line very carefully. I remember when we were we
Speaker 2: went to a marketing meeting at the end of the well, yeah,
Speaker 2: toward the end of the Janet album, right, and we
Speaker 2: had already had you know, uh, that's the way love
Speaker 2: goes if again because of Love were the four singles
Speaker 2: I think. And then so it was now what is
Speaker 2: the fifth single going to be? And there was a
Speaker 2: cut on the album called where Are You Now, which
Speaker 2: we thought would be a great single on the radio
Speaker 2: all the time before the album. That was the problem.
Speaker 2: It had already been played so much on the radio
Speaker 2: that they were scared that they couldn't get you know,
Speaker 2: the Judges arts. It charted, Yeah, it was. It was
Speaker 2: like it was like a top literally a top ten
Speaker 2: record just on airplay. And so anyway, we went to
Speaker 2: this meeting and uh, you know, we're sitting in there
Speaker 2: and there they have all their charts and their graphs,
Speaker 2: and you know, summertime we should go up tempo. Maybe
Speaker 2: we go with Throb. That would be a great one.
Speaker 2: And whatever, and they had all their graphs and all
Speaker 2: their their stuff. And Janet had told us before we
Speaker 2: went in the meeting, and us at that time was
Speaker 2: my It was myself and actually Renee or second husband,
Speaker 2: I guess. So anyway, we had gone in there, and
Speaker 2: so she was waiting for us. She said, when you
Speaker 2: guys are done, we'll go eat. I'm like, okay, cool.
Speaker 2: So we called her and we said are you close
Speaker 2: and she said yeah. And I said, why don't you
Speaker 2: come in and listen to these what these guys are saying,
Speaker 2: because I know what you're thinking for the single, but
Speaker 2: they're not anywhere near it, right, And she said, okay, cool.
Speaker 2: So she comes in and everybody gives her whole spiel
Speaker 2: and everything and you know, whatever, whatever, whatever, whatever, and
Speaker 2: this is why this and it's up tempo and it's
Speaker 2: summer and here's what we do and blah blah blah,
Speaker 2: and Janet goes, well, I want to thank everybody very
Speaker 2: much for obviously everybody's put a lot of work into this,
Speaker 2: and I really appreciate that. And I think the next
Speaker 2: single should be anytime anyplace room is silent. And somebody goes, yeah, great, sure, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: so what do you think should we get a remix
Speaker 2: going Nerd? Who do you think we could do? That's
Speaker 2: what I said. I said, I think R Kelly could
Speaker 2: probably do a really good remix. And then they were like,
Speaker 2: oh cool, okay remix, Okay, yeah, that's good. Yeah. Where
Speaker 2: the B side came in?
Speaker 6: Is this also where the B side came in, which
Speaker 6: it is one of my favorite.
Speaker 2: Jane because we said, because their whole thing was a concern,
Speaker 2: we don't have a tempo record in the summertime, we said,
Speaker 2: we'll just do a B side, temple B side, So
Speaker 2: start this is a song about summertime, right exactly.
Speaker 4: Let me just spell it out for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: One of the records that I was surprised that, like
Speaker 5: didn't go wash Man when I need somebody.
Speaker 4: I thought that. I was like, man, this ship is
Speaker 4: sensitivity on steroids.
Speaker 2: I love this. Thank you. I did too. I I
Speaker 2: loved Whosa Mac and didn't it didn't. It didn't connect.
Speaker 6: I used to about the single and used to rock
Speaker 6: the instrumental more than the to be honest.
Speaker 2: Well, we always saw Ralph as sort of a you know,
Speaker 2: sort of a Marvin Gaye ish type thing, so that
Speaker 2: was our attempt to kind of do that kind of
Speaker 2: Marvin Gay, you know, kind of trouble man type, you know,
Speaker 2: cinematic thing, and you know, at the end of the
Speaker 2: day it didn't work. When when I need somebody, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that kind of surprised me. But honestly, the label at
Speaker 2: that point in time wasn't in to Ralph at that point,
Speaker 2: just for a lot of reasons, and so we just
Speaker 2: kind of knew it was going to kind of fall
Speaker 2: flat at that point.
Speaker 4: How do you feel about this?
Speaker 2: How do you feel about.
Speaker 1: The the well you executive produced the new edition playing
Speaker 1: you and amazingly yes, I agree, Yes, I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you feel that now that a whole new generation
Speaker 1: has latched dooring and you know, like my friend's kids are.
Speaker 2: You know, discovering this group, and how how do you?
Speaker 2: I love it? I love it because to me, that's
Speaker 2: what music really should be. It should connect us, it
Speaker 2: should connect generations, it should connect races, that should connect ethnicities, religions,
Speaker 2: and you do. That's what music is. It's the ultimate connector.
Speaker 2: And to me, it's the most divine art of all
Speaker 2: the arts. And the reason I say that is Maine
Speaker 2: something else. That's if I say to you questlove, where
Speaker 2: were you on this date in nineteen ninety Do you
Speaker 2: know what you were doing?
Speaker 1: I'm that Mary Lou Henner person that can you can
Speaker 1: name it date and I can tell you.
Speaker 2: What I realize.
Speaker 1: Okay, because music and soul train episodes like connect.
Speaker 2: Yes, but what's right because of the music? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's my point.
Speaker 6: I say it's to my mom all the time that
Speaker 6: it's it's my time machine.
Speaker 2: It's how I remember things. It's how I transport you,
Speaker 2: transport you. If I play you a song from the
Speaker 2: day eight, it transports you. You remember everything about.
Speaker 4: It and it smells.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Like I can go back to, like even
Speaker 2: because we talked about earlier what I grew up listening
Speaker 2: to and it was like a bunch of pop music.
Speaker 2: But I can go back to like stuff like a
Speaker 2: strawberry alarm clock or the Turtles or you know all
Speaker 2: these right, And I remember that they will play me
Speaker 2: the Turtles Happy Together or whatever, and I remember the
Speaker 2: school bus they're taking me to a field trip, and
Speaker 2: you know that kind of stuff. I mean, it's like
Speaker 2: it's all exists in your head, but you can access it.
Speaker 2: What's the key that accesses it music that's divine. There's
Speaker 2: no other explanation for that.
Speaker 8: So question because you said earlier when we first started
Speaker 8: this interview, there's gonna be a movie at some time,
Speaker 8: at some point, if we can't get through this story
Speaker 8: in full hours.
Speaker 2: It's gonna be the new route. Now that.
Speaker 1: Certain unfortunate situations have occurred in the past year, Yes,
Speaker 1: where does that leave the original seven in terms of
Speaker 1: being the time, in terms of doing the movie or
Speaker 1: you I'm going to have to see one of the
Speaker 1: smoke clears with the States.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I don't. Honestly, I don't think we've even
Speaker 2: thought about it. I don't even I don't think it's
Speaker 2: been a thought mine as well, be I mean you saw.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, if Steven were still at BT, I think
Speaker 1: it could be a possibility or could have been a possibility.
Speaker 5: But no, we were joking, like on the New Edition's story.
Speaker 5: We were on Twitter joking like, yo, if they did
Speaker 5: a Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis story, that shit could
Speaker 5: be a Netflix original thirteen episodes.
Speaker 4: Like dad Ass that you could be.
Speaker 1: I don't even consider it, Like we don't have to
Speaker 1: be chronological. I think if you just picked thirteen experiences
Speaker 1: that are somewhere between ninety to two hours.
Speaker 2: I mean people can handle it, right, or an hour?
Speaker 4: An hour? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Fuck it, I mean we're here for nine hours. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just I feel like, yes, a thirteen episode arc.
Speaker 2: That would be cool of Jam and Lewis, Like, just.
Speaker 1: That would be awesome. Okay, listen, we have to stop.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, just grant us because
Speaker 1: I know that. Look, I know you're being super polite.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you for granted.
Speaker 2: This is a five hour interview, so look, I just
Speaker 2: want to make sure we broke the record. I want
Speaker 2: to guess. So look, can we all just get one
Speaker 2: question each? Oh? Man?
Speaker 1: Okay, one question each? Mine is rather short, and this
Speaker 1: goes back to nineteen eighty two? Okay, did you ever
Speaker 1: question the abrupt ending of I Don't want to leave you?
Speaker 1: H Did you ever question that?
Speaker 2: No? Even now you don't question it. No, I remember it,
Speaker 2: but I don't question it. Was that supposed to be
Speaker 2: something else or just not that I know of. I
Speaker 2: wasn't involved, like I say, I wasn't involved in making
Speaker 2: the record though, so I don't know it's whatever it was.
Speaker 2: But never like, hey, well, why did you never know?
Speaker 2: I think the leader on the tape came up and
Speaker 2: that was wasted. My question, who's next? Boss Bill?
Speaker 6: A few years ago, there was a project you guys
Speaker 6: announced called the Jam and Lewis Project. I guess it
Speaker 6: was going to be the solo record. Is that still happening?
Speaker 2: Yes? And what's what's this the latest from that? Okay?
Speaker 2: So the latest is the project is pretty you know
Speaker 2: we've been we've been working on this project you could say,
Speaker 2: since the Secret album. So so we never we always
Speaker 2: thought it would be great to do our own album,
Speaker 2: but we never put aside the time to do it,
Speaker 2: like we would always try to kind of do it
Speaker 2: in between other things, and we felt like we were
Speaker 2: kind of selling ourselves short because you'd always clear the
Speaker 2: decks for a project and do it. And as a
Speaker 2: matter of fact, when we did Unbreakable, that time period
Speaker 2: was when we were going to really finish the Jam
Speaker 2: and Lewis record, but we put it aside to do
Speaker 2: Unbreakable because that was the right thing to do. So
Speaker 2: we are pretty much recorded and actually had already mixed
Speaker 2: the record. But the technology we used to mix, where
Speaker 2: you the surround technology to mix the record, and we
Speaker 2: are going to go with a different uh technology now
Speaker 2: to do it because it's been developed now that we've
Speaker 2: waited another couple of years. The songs won't be dated
Speaker 2: because the songs are all sam loose. Well yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: they're just they don't they don't have an expiration date.
Speaker 2: They're not trendy. There's nothing trendy about any of the songs.
Speaker 2: Baby Face.
Speaker 6: It actually said that you guys had a couple of
Speaker 6: songs that you produced on him. We are some of
Speaker 6: those going to be included, Yes, okay, yes, sir.
Speaker 2: And and the thing is about it is that I
Speaker 2: think conceptually the album is simply artists that we really
Speaker 2: like doing the songs. We want to hear them do. Okay.
Speaker 2: So baby Face is a great example of I will
Speaker 2: say without spoiler well, now without a spoiler alert, I
Speaker 2: just I don't like to I'm not a brag guy
Speaker 2: or boast guy or anything like that. But I will
Speaker 2: say I will say the baby Face records the baby
Speaker 2: Face record, because it's just gonna be one that you'll hear. Uh,
Speaker 2: the baby Face record you hear will be the best
Speaker 2: baby Face record you've heard since whatever your favorite baby
Speaker 2: Face record, whatever, whatever, it was, your favorite baby Face record.
Speaker 2: And I will say that about all the artists on there.
Speaker 2: Tony Braxton, it will be the best Tony Braxton record
Speaker 2: you've heard. Your favorite one. Mary J. Blige will be
Speaker 2: your favorite Mary J. Blige record you've heard. Usher record
Speaker 2: will be the favorite Usher record you've heard. Mariah record
Speaker 2: will be the best Mariah record you heard. Janet record
Speaker 2: will be the best Janet record you heard. And we
Speaker 2: even go back to Alexander Neon cherrell S o s
Speaker 2: band newly recorded songs. They are all himeless songs. Okay,
Speaker 2: we will say got you got you? Whose whose origins have?
Speaker 2: You know? Started at some point but are finishing now
Speaker 2: you know some some of them been you know. I'll
Speaker 2: give I give you one example. I'll give you one example.
Speaker 2: So the Alexander O'Neil song. We did this song as
Speaker 2: the idea of the song was a follow up to
Speaker 2: Saturday Love. Alex sang his part Cherrelle never sang hers
Speaker 2: until Lord until six months ago. Wow.
Speaker 6: So eighty seven Alexander O'Neil is dueting with twenty seventeen sir.
Speaker 2: That's there you go, and that and there is and
Speaker 2: therein lies the beauty of what the record is because
Speaker 2: the months. Yeah so sometimes so sometimes that's that's just
Speaker 2: the way the things that things happen, and you know,
Speaker 2: and the technology allows us obviously to take you know,
Speaker 2: we have stuff all on tape and we have analog
Speaker 2: tape and all that stuff, and of course we we
Speaker 2: digitize it and make it sound a little better, so
Speaker 2: that sounds good. But then the the other piece of
Speaker 2: it is a techno technological piece, which is just as
Speaker 2: you could do with a Blu Ray movie right where
Speaker 2: you're listening to like the director's commentary, if you want
Speaker 2: to listen to it in that way, the way the
Speaker 2: record is made. We're doing that on this right the
Speaker 2: way I'll listen to it. Yeah, So we're doing that
Speaker 2: on this record. So the commentary of the artists, ourselves,
Speaker 2: the engineer, whatever, and we talk about the choices we
Speaker 2: make and so on and so forth. So if you
Speaker 2: want to listen to it like that, you can. Otherwise
Speaker 2: you can just listen to it as a regular album.
Speaker 2: I can't wave for that. Yeah, it's gonna be and
Speaker 2: we think that and we think it does a few things.
Speaker 2: We think that and we're going to do it in
Speaker 2: volumes because we actually now when people got win we
Speaker 2: were doing it, then people started coming to us and going, wait,
Speaker 2: why why aren't I have part of it? You know
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. So now we have a Now
Speaker 2: we have a stokely record. I feel like DJ Khaled. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So I mean it's it's like that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: But and you're gonna call it the Jimmy Jame. It's
Speaker 2: just gonna be. It's just gonna be. Yeah. Right now,
Speaker 2: it's just called Jam and Lewis Volume one. I think
Speaker 2: it's what No, Jam Lewis Project Volume you know, should
Speaker 2: be Lewis and Jam.
Speaker 4: All right, Who's I go?
Speaker 2: Quickly?
Speaker 5: More Money soundtrack? The New Style? Was that something that
Speaker 5: you guys? Well, first off, is that you saying the
Speaker 5: new Style?
Speaker 2: Is that you? Yes?
Speaker 4: Okay? And also is that you saying the blackness? I
Speaker 4: thought it was.
Speaker 5: Did you guys ever do any more kind of club
Speaker 5: stuff like that? Or was that like gonna be a
Speaker 5: side project or something? Was that was or was that
Speaker 5: just something I did for the movie?
Speaker 2: Okay? So that was We did a song with Janet
Speaker 2: that never came out called beat Crazy, and one of
Speaker 2: the lines in the songs. She said, control my mind,
Speaker 2: and we just took We just took that piece and
Speaker 2: then we just looped it and you hear it right
Speaker 2: at the beginning, but it slowed down, I think, and
Speaker 2: then the mine, just the saying mind mine, and then
Speaker 2: we just built a track around it because they needed
Speaker 2: it for a scene in the movie.
Speaker 4: They needed uh why.
Speaker 2: They just need us. They just needed and so we
Speaker 2: just whipped it up. It was like, literally, I don't know,
Speaker 2: two hours whipped us up and that was it.
Speaker 9: Oh wow, Yeah, next, I gotta go, we'll talk about
Speaker 9: all the hits that you know are hits straight up?
Speaker 9: Have you ever gotten tunes that like you kind of
Speaker 9: and they wind up being hits too?
Speaker 2: Well? Saturday Love is definitely one of them that we
Speaker 2: talked about that one earlier, trying to Redhead step Child
Speaker 2: Saturday Love.
Speaker 5: Man, No, I mean, I just I just never It's
Speaker 5: one of those things that's so simple you just think like, no,
Speaker 5: this can't be it.
Speaker 4: But that's totally.
Speaker 2: Funny, right right, we're suckers. Yeah, I'll take it. I
Speaker 2: love it. I get it now, I get it. I
Speaker 2: get it. I get white people. White people liked it.
Speaker 2: But no, we definitely have had some other ones like that.
Speaker 2: I'm just not I'm just not recalling them, but we've
Speaker 2: definitely had somewhere. I hadn't really thought that much of them,
Speaker 2: but somebody said, oh man, that should be the single
Speaker 2: and whatever, and we're kind of like, okay, and then
Speaker 2: it actually did well. Yeah, here's we felt pretty good about.
Speaker 2: If it is in love, there's I mean, most of
Speaker 2: the songs we feel good about. The Funny thing is
Speaker 2: when people come up to me sometimes and they'll say,
Speaker 2: oh man, I love everything you did, and I go.
Speaker 4: I don't even love everything I did.
Speaker 2: Everything is that everything's good, It's just not. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's just that's life. But I mean, you always have
Speaker 2: good intentions for stuff, but it doesn't always. It doesn't
Speaker 2: always happen. I'll tell you. The most excruciating record to
Speaker 2: make was there was a hit was Karen White Romantic?
Speaker 4: Because that was the number one hit, number one?
Speaker 2: Yeah. But my question the whole time we were making
Speaker 2: the record, why aren't Ala and Babyface making this record?
Speaker 2: It does kinda sound like a totally totally does I
Speaker 2: tried to make the record they would have made. That
Speaker 2: was the idea that was excruciating and Terry was married
Speaker 2: to her that that was tough. And then nothing and
Speaker 2: nothing against Karen, but man, that was just an excruciating record.
Speaker 2: A project it just was because it because it was
Speaker 2: a record that was an example of a project that
Speaker 2: I didn't feel we should be doing, you know. I
Speaker 2: kind of felt like, why why aren't Alien Babyface doing
Speaker 2: the project? You know, and for whatever reason, they weren't
Speaker 2: doing it. But it was funny because I felt that
Speaker 2: way about another project, and that was when we did
Speaker 2: with Mary Jay. We did Love Is All We Need
Speaker 2: and uh and everything and uh and I remember I
Speaker 2: did do everything that's right, yeah, and I and I
Speaker 2: remember when Mary came came to Minneapolis and she and
Speaker 2: we played her stuff and it was the stuff we
Speaker 2: were playing her I thought, was like really good, but
Speaker 2: it was assuming that she was working with Puffy, so
Speaker 2: we weren't playing her any sample stuff. It was just
Speaker 2: like this different kind of stuff. And she was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's okay, that's okay, that's okay, that's okay. And we said, well,
Speaker 2: what are you looking for? And she said, you know
Speaker 2: something that sounds like me And we're like okay, well okay,
Speaker 2: Well here listen to this, and I said, she said
Speaker 2: something that sounds like me, and I said, like what
Speaker 2: and she said, you know, like you know, like my life,
Speaker 2: like you know, like that kind of vibe. And we
Speaker 2: were like, oh, but isn't Puffy doing those kind of
Speaker 2: records on you? And she said, I'm not working with
Speaker 2: Puffy and we said, oh okay in that case, and
Speaker 2: we put out we need and then instantly that track
Speaker 2: came on and she got up and started dancing and
Speaker 2: she said, oh, yeah, this is it. This is it
Speaker 2: right here, this is it. And I was like, oh
Speaker 2: you like that? Okay? When we got this other one
Speaker 2: and she was like, oh yeah, this is it, and
Speaker 2: we were We've been good ever since.
Speaker 5: So y'all be beautiful for her too, though, right you
Speaker 5: know the beautiful Yeah, thank you. I'm shocked that it
Speaker 5: was on the Stella Sounds track.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm shockautiful.
Speaker 1: I'm shocked that you guys play pre made work and
Speaker 1: the artist are with it, because a lot of the
Speaker 1: time I get resistance from people, uh, because they want
Speaker 1: it made in real time or to feel part of
Speaker 1: this immersive process sure and not like oh okay, let's
Speaker 1: just pull something out.
Speaker 2: The you know the work and no, no, no, but
Speaker 2: we had done them for her with her in mind.
Speaker 2: We just didn't think that's what she wanted. We thought
Speaker 2: we just assumed. When they said you're gonna do you
Speaker 2: guys want to work with Mary J. Blige, I was
Speaker 2: like yes and no because yes because I'm her biggest
Speaker 2: fan and no because I'm her biggest fan, Like, I
Speaker 2: don't want to screw it up with her. I don't
Speaker 2: want to be the person that kills MARYA j his
Speaker 2: career because she's coming off of My Life, which is
Speaker 2: one of my favorite records. So the way we approached
Speaker 2: it was like, well, if we were making a record
Speaker 2: with her, this Rick James sample would be dope, and
Speaker 2: this stylistic sample would be dope. But we know Puffy's
Speaker 2: already going to take care of that, so we're not
Speaker 2: going to do that. But we just worked him up anyway.
Speaker 2: So they were ready, but they weren't off the shelf.
Speaker 2: We've never been off the shelf, guys, whatsoever, never, never, never, never.
Speaker 2: We tailored, always tailored everything to the artist. That was
Speaker 2: always very important to us to Dopton. Yeah, except for people,
Speaker 2: yeah no, but even that stuff is obviously Taylor because
Speaker 2: that's see, that's one of those things where Terry just
Speaker 2: knows what he's looking for because Terry was working intimately
Speaker 2: with people. I never did any vocals with people. Terry
Speaker 2: did that, and so Terry knew what he was looking
Speaker 2: for and he heard it in the track and the
Speaker 2: way he flipped the track was totally not what I
Speaker 2: was thinking for it. But it turned out real cool.
Speaker 2: You know, It's like, Okay, damn, that wasn't what I
Speaker 2: was hearing. And he actually took like my melodies and
Speaker 2: stuff and some and some stuff, but he just made
Speaker 2: it just fit. You know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: as long as it fits, that's the that's the big thing.
Speaker 2: But you're right, some people want to be involved. Some
Speaker 2: people just want you to hand them a record. There's
Speaker 2: there's I remember we worked with a Kisha Cole and
Speaker 2: remember she came to the studio and she said, yeah,
Speaker 2: she says, what am I play me something? And I
Speaker 2: was like, no, We're gonna make up something right now.
Speaker 2: Huh what do you mean? And I said, no, we're
Speaker 2: gonna make up something right now. Like I'm gonna play
Speaker 2: some stuff. See whether you like this key, you like
Speaker 2: this key. Yeah, yeah, but what do we But where's
Speaker 2: the track? It's like, no, We're gonna make the track
Speaker 2: right now, like you like, please please? No. It was
Speaker 2: great and we ended up doing a song. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: it's slipping my mind the name of the record, but
Speaker 2: it was. It came out real cool, and at the
Speaker 2: end of it, she said, that's the first time ever
Speaker 2: anybody's made a record like that with me, like just
Speaker 2: with me just putting input into it and actually you
Speaker 2: know doing it. Usually I just walk in and people
Speaker 2: play me a bunch of tracks and that's what I do.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, we try not to do that. We
Speaker 2: try to try to create it. We might have something
Speaker 2: on standby that we think might work just to kind
Speaker 2: of jump start something if we ain't got something going.
Speaker 2: But nah, we like that, you know, Taylor make it.
Speaker 8: You know, you know I was going to do it
Speaker 8: really because I didn't want to keep us here longer. Okay, fine,
Speaker 8: I did want to know today, like, are there any singer,
Speaker 8: what songwriters producers in this R and B field that
Speaker 8: you feel like, you know what?
Speaker 3: I feel like they they're taking the baton like.
Speaker 2: They hmm, that's a that's a great question. I don't.
Speaker 2: I feel like I think there's a bunch of batons,
Speaker 2: so I'm gonna keep.
Speaker 3: Mine right, keep yours h But other.
Speaker 2: People with a baton, well, I mean you know.
Speaker 3: That are ready to that are ready to receive, when
Speaker 3: you're ready to hand.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm ever gonna hand it. I think
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go down with my with my baton. I
Speaker 2: don't you know what I think it's I know what
Speaker 2: the word would be. I think in a way it's
Speaker 2: a little bit arrogant to think that we have a
Speaker 2: baton that we would hand to somebody anyway, Like I
Speaker 2: don't even think of it.
Speaker 3: So then let me re raise this question. Then, are
Speaker 3: there anybody?
Speaker 8: Is there anybody that moves you in a way they
Speaker 8: make them move you?
Speaker 2: Today makes tons of people, tons and tons of people
Speaker 2: that Yeah, No, there's a lot. There's a lot of
Speaker 2: people that I really that I really really like, but
Speaker 2: all for different reasons in different ways. I mean, Bruno's
Speaker 2: top of my list. I think Bruno is uh, Bruno
Speaker 2: is interesting because Bruno we actually helped Bruno with with
Speaker 2: some of his grooves, and we are yeah for free. No,
Speaker 2: I don't mean he borrowed them from us. I mean
Speaker 2: we actually went in the studio where helped him with
Speaker 2: some stuff on the last record, on this one. Yeah. Yeah, well,
Speaker 2: in fact that that song, oh wow, well we got.
Speaker 2: What we did for him is we got him out
Speaker 2: of a rut. Okay, he tends to. I remember the
Speaker 2: first time we ever went to the studio, he played
Speaker 2: us this song and I can't remember what it was,
Speaker 2: and he said he had been working on the bass
Speaker 2: part for six months, and he played it and we
Speaker 2: were like, okay. I said, yeah, yeah, but something about
Speaker 2: that bass part. Man, I've been trying to I've been
Speaker 2: dealing with this for about six months man, and whatever, whatever, whatever,
Speaker 2: And Terry looked at me and I just said, plug
Speaker 2: in the bass. I plugged in the bass, and thirty
Speaker 2: minutes later we had the bassline. And he said, oh
Speaker 2: my god. He said, that's why I need y'all. And
Speaker 2: I said no. I said no, I said, that's easy.
Speaker 2: But I said, you're trying to recreate what we've already done.
Speaker 2: I said, so that's easy. So no. I mean, I
Speaker 2: think the attention was that we would actually do something
Speaker 2: that The thing that happened, though, honestly, was he is
Speaker 2: very meticulous, like he's somewhere between Prince and Michael. Right,
Speaker 2: so Prince is one day like, okay, if a girl answers,
Speaker 2: don't hang up. For instance, on Vanity six, that song
Speaker 2: was started and finished the same day, like right, you
Speaker 2: go on, you play the bad You know, Terry played
Speaker 2: the bass, Prince I think Prince played the no More
Speaker 2: played the drums on that, or Princes played the drums,
Speaker 2: I can't remember. I think Prince might have played the
Speaker 2: drums on that. Anyway, I put a little keyboard part
Speaker 2: on and he took my keyboard part off. Okay, fine,
Speaker 2: so they go through the you go through the whole day.
Speaker 2: You do the thing. He wrote it, he had the girls.
Speaker 2: I think the girls might have sang it on a
Speaker 2: different day. But the track's done and there's no three
Speaker 2: thinking it or whatever. You just move right on to
Speaker 2: the next thing. The Michael Jackson way of working is
Speaker 2: you do the song and at the end of the
Speaker 2: day he would say, make me a dad. Okay, next
Speaker 2: day we come back. What do you think, Michael, can
Speaker 2: we turn the hand claps up a little bit? Sure? Okay,
Speaker 2: hand claps are up. We're good. Oh yes, make me
Speaker 2: a dad, and that could go on for a week.
Speaker 2: And it's like Michael in the same place we've been.
Speaker 2: We just turn the handclaps up. Are we good to go?
Speaker 2: Because we have other songs that we want to do right.
Speaker 2: Bruno is somewhere between there. Right, he's very spontaneous, but
Speaker 2: then he thinks it through to death. Now at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, the end result is great, and
Speaker 2: the end result comes off very spontaneous. But all of
Speaker 2: Bruno's stuff is a series of loops. But it's just
Speaker 2: done very well, very subtly, and very well. Twenty four Carrot,
Speaker 2: he played it for us. He said, I don't know.
Speaker 2: He said, it's this. He said, he knew it. He said,
Speaker 2: this is my single, twenty four kid. I got the
Speaker 2: video concept, I got the every this is my single.
Speaker 2: We said, okay, he said, but I ain't. He said,
Speaker 2: the problem is that doesn't make me want to dance.
Speaker 2: He said, okay, what song makes you want to dance?
Speaker 2: And he said, well, I really like I can't remember
Speaker 2: even what the songs he said, and I said, I said, okay, cool,
Speaker 2: I said, plug me in right, So what we I
Speaker 2: just took the track and made it into a sound
Speaker 2: alike of a song he liked to dance to. And
Speaker 2: then we played it and he said, oh, hell yeah,
Speaker 2: and he loved it right, and he said, okay, I
Speaker 2: get it. Then he tried to put like the chords
Speaker 2: and stuff that he had before back in it. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, now you're just going back to what
Speaker 2: you already had, and he said, y yeah, you're right,
Speaker 2: You're right, You're right. Okay, cool, right. Three four months later,
Speaker 2: twenty four, Carrot is done. He doesn't use what we did,
Speaker 2: but he went He took not so much what we did,
Speaker 2: but he took up the kind of the inspiration or
Speaker 2: the idea of it, but figured out how to then
Speaker 2: incorporate what he wanted in the song, which were the
Speaker 2: little stabs and the little you know, those kinds of
Speaker 2: little things like that. And you know, so we didn't.
Speaker 2: So what we did is I think we got him
Speaker 2: unstuck from the rut and got him to look at
Speaker 2: it in a different way. But we didn't technically, we
Speaker 2: didn't produce anything. So I think we were just more
Speaker 2: I think, as it turned out, kind of a sounding
Speaker 2: board or whatever. And we did that for a few
Speaker 2: things for him, and that's fine. I enjoyed the process.
Speaker 2: He's amazing. I think he's probably my overall, my favorite dude.
Speaker 2: And he's you know, he's obviously an artist, but I
Speaker 2: think he's one of the artists that in any era
Speaker 2: would be he'd be good, he'd be a great artist
Speaker 2: in any Uh. Do we have everything out of our asistance?
Speaker 2: I mean, I still wanted to ask about that. I'm sorry, Steve,
Speaker 2: I forgot about you. Oh yes, shocker.
Speaker 10: You didn't forget about me. The two times I spoke tonight,
Speaker 10: you said, shut up all that's not forgetting about some ready. No,
Speaker 10: I have one question. Me and Bill Sherman over here.
Speaker 10: We recently started a singing group called the Sounds of Jewess,
Speaker 10: and we could use.
Speaker 2: A track or two, Just a track or two. Just
Speaker 2: whip it up, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 6: Okay, So is it true there's a rumor going around
Speaker 6: that Control Album and Rhythm Nation and them wanted Janet
Speaker 6: to do an album with outside, with producers other than
Speaker 6: you guys.
Speaker 2: Is that true?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: Well, there's some truth in it. She did. She did.
Speaker 2: She did go in the studio and and and make
Speaker 2: some records with some other folks that I know.
Speaker 4: She did something with.
Speaker 2: I was just guessing that yeah, yeah, but yeah, there
Speaker 2: was a little, uh, I don't know what I call it.
Speaker 2: There was a few bumps in the road between Control
Speaker 2: and Rhythm Nation for sure, and uh. But Clarence Avon
Speaker 2: solved that problem. Mentioned his name earlier about five hours
Speaker 2: ago in the in the broadcast yesterday. But but no,
Speaker 2: we had we we you know, it was one of
Speaker 2: those interesting things where you know, Janet heard we were
Speaker 2: saying something about her and whatever, and we heard she
Speaker 2: was saying something about us and whatever. And she finally
Speaker 2: called me and she said, Jimmy, do you want to
Speaker 2: do the record? And I say, yeah, you want us
Speaker 2: to do the record? She said yeah, And I said, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: and I called Clarence and I just said Clarence, I said,
Speaker 2: we want to do the record, so let's can we
Speaker 2: get this done? And Clarence called up Jerry Moss and said, Jerry,
Speaker 2: give them a million dollars and let's go. And that
Speaker 2: was it. We were and we were literally in the
Speaker 2: studio making Miss You Much, which was the first song
Speaker 2: we recorded on the on the Rhythm Nation album, like
Speaker 2: in the next week.
Speaker 6: So the stories of songs like You Need Me was
Speaker 6: that a leftover from the Rhythm Nation sessions or the
Speaker 6: period in between.
Speaker 2: Uh you need Me? Okay, now refresh my memory. You
Speaker 2: need Me ended up being a B side miss to
Speaker 2: miss you much. You Need Me was during the Wow,
Speaker 2: that's a great question. When did we record that?
Speaker 1: Well, sounds like it's from the era, so yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: it definitely it's I don't know, I don't know. It's
Speaker 1: probably between Control it definitely. No, it definitely wasn't one
Speaker 1: of the Control songs, did I think so?
Speaker 2: I think it was. It was probably part of the
Speaker 2: Rhythm Nation.
Speaker 6: So I was asking if it was like a before
Speaker 6: Rhythm Nation actually officially started or.
Speaker 2: That's a really good question. I'm gonna have to I'm
Speaker 2: gonna have to find that out myself. I truly don't
Speaker 2: remember then.
Speaker 6: Like the other BC has, like Skin Game, where those
Speaker 6: after the album was already.
Speaker 2: Done, yes, and after the album was done, and these.
Speaker 5: Love Groove and Play, well that was the decade.
Speaker 6: Yeah, those were all done after the album was albums
Speaker 6: were completed.
Speaker 2: Yees, seventies Love Groove, I remember, I remember we did that.
Speaker 2: That was a day. We did that in a day,
Speaker 2: and we just did a groove. We just did a
Speaker 2: groove and I said, just talk and she said okay.
Speaker 1: And how does that work? Especially with the interludes and
Speaker 1: especially with the morphing. I mean we always joke about
Speaker 1: the orgasms every album, yeah, right.
Speaker 2: Except no but well yeah, yeah, but how like how
Speaker 2: hard or to go from.
Speaker 1: The shinness of funny how time Flies, which I'm sure
Speaker 1: was hard to do. Was the room completely empty? Like
Speaker 1: how did you get.
Speaker 2: That out of her? Yeah? The room was completely empty,
Speaker 2: like all those the vocals on all the I mean
Speaker 2: I did all the vocals on those records, and the
Speaker 2: room was always dark, and we always just we just,
Speaker 2: I don't know, trusted each other. I guess I would
Speaker 2: put it like that. But Janna would say just the
Speaker 2: way she was. She would say things and they would
Speaker 2: come out wrong. You know, how you say something and
Speaker 2: it comes out in a sexual way, or you can
Speaker 2: be you know, it can be misconstrued as that. Jana
Speaker 2: would always do that, And even on the end of
Speaker 2: oh the end, well, yeah, funny how time Flies? At
Speaker 2: the end of it, she's talking in French, right, and
Speaker 2: then she says one more time, an American, I don't
Speaker 2: know that you are an English You hear yep. So
Speaker 2: one more time was her asking did I want another take?
Speaker 4: But it sounded like le.
Speaker 2: So I just left it gay as another day. Yeah
Speaker 2: it is. So there's a there's a lot of that
Speaker 2: kind of thing that that goes on. But she, you know,
Speaker 2: she's an actress. She can put herself in the mood
Speaker 2: for sure, and if the track is right, it's always
Speaker 2: but it's about the vibe. My favorite one of those was,
Speaker 2: because I remember I totally shocked people, was would you mind? Yes?
Speaker 2: Would you mind? That's yeah, yeah, would you mind? Would
Speaker 2: you mind? Was? Would you mind? And I'll tell you
Speaker 2: the other great thing about would you mind was that
Speaker 2: Rock Wilder did that track? And I remember when we did,
Speaker 2: I gave like all the producers. We worked with a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of different producers on that record, but Rock
Speaker 2: Wilder was the only one that actually ended up making
Speaker 2: that was.
Speaker 4: A twenty year old.
Speaker 2: Joe. Okay, no, no, no, no, you no, it wasn't all
Speaker 2: for you. It was all for you. It was it
Speaker 2: was all for that moment. Yeah, yes, yes, yes, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: all for you. And we did. We did what we
Speaker 2: did is we did like account of a camp we
Speaker 2: called a flight Time summer camp. We had a bunch
Speaker 2: of different producers come up. We put them in different rooms,
Speaker 2: which kind of happens nowadays. It's funny everybody does writing
Speaker 2: camp things. So we did that. So we we put
Speaker 2: everybody in the rooms. We said, let's see what you
Speaker 2: come up with. And I remember we liked what rock
Speaker 2: Wilder had done with uh Missy and a couple other folks,
Speaker 2: and we were like, okay, we'll put you in a room.
Speaker 2: So then you say to him, Okay, here's what we want.
Speaker 2: We love what you do. Don't do that. We wanted
Speaker 2: you to come up with something different, specifically for Janet.
Speaker 2: And it's a what a weird thing to ask somebody, right,
Speaker 2: And so I remember and I said, okay, what do
Speaker 2: you need man? And he says, I just need an
Speaker 2: MPC and a XP sixty and I can't remember the
Speaker 2: other keyboard he had, but that was it. I think
Speaker 2: it was XP sixty. So I just needed XP sixty
Speaker 2: with the with the Asian card and the the something
Speaker 2: card the jung I didn't remember what he called it.
Speaker 2: There was two different kind of sound cards you could
Speaker 2: get and he says, I just need these, right, And
Speaker 2: so I'm like, okay, cool. So these other producer I'm
Speaker 2: not even gonna mention names. These other producers are like
Speaker 2: bringing in orchestras, doing all kinds of crazy stuff in
Speaker 2: one studio, bringing in black at Rodney. No it ain't Rodney,
Speaker 2: black lights and fog machines and all kinds of craziness. No, no,
Speaker 2: not Rodney. And then another producer, or actually set of
Speaker 2: producers were very prolific and came up with probably twenty
Speaker 2: different ideas, but none of them were quite and they
Speaker 2: never really caught right Rock Wilder, I walked next door
Speaker 2: and I hear do do Do Do Do Doom Do
Speaker 2: Doom Do Do Doom Boo boo boo do do Do
Speaker 2: Do Do do doo, And I go, what the fuck?
Speaker 2: I said, dude, what is this? He said, oh, this
Speaker 2: this is concept uh whatever? And I said okay. And
Speaker 2: I just called Janet right away and I said okay.
Speaker 2: I said, Rock's the dude. Listen to this right And
Speaker 2: he had the kind of the thing and we put
Speaker 2: you know, we put a couple of little things on
Speaker 2: it to make it a little more her. But and
Speaker 2: then I gave her I said, I hear this melody,
Speaker 2: and I said, but I don't. You can write it
Speaker 2: whatever it is. I said, but when you get to
Speaker 2: the course, it should just be whatever you want to
Speaker 2: do to somebody, right, So if you say I just
Speaker 2: want to and I give her the melody the rhythm
Speaker 2: of it. She came back the next day and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, and we were at record plan I
Speaker 2: think in La, recording this and she he just nailed
Speaker 2: this thing. And I can't remember who. It might have been,
Speaker 2: Robin think Er, somebody was in the studio next door
Speaker 2: or something and came in and was like, what are
Speaker 2: y'all working on? And it's like, oh, we got this
Speaker 2: new Janet song, let me check it out, and never listened.
Speaker 2: It was him, and I can't remember who all else
Speaker 2: was with him. It might have been Jordan Knight. We
Speaker 2: might have been working with Jordan Knight. Give it to you, yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: joint Yeah. So anyway, they were oh my god, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, good yeah. But that said, it was just
Speaker 2: it was just of all those songs that was that
Speaker 2: one is really my probably my favorite one of those
Speaker 2: types of records. That one was just so good. But man,
Speaker 2: hats off the rock for that one. Man, because he
Speaker 2: really brought some. He did exactly what we said, we
Speaker 2: like you do something that's not you, that's her that
Speaker 2: you know whatever, and he totally total brought Yeah. Thank
Speaker 2: you very much. Jimmy jam Man.
Speaker 4: Giveth but yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: On behalf of Boss Bill, Sugar Steve, Unpaid, Bill.
Speaker 2: By and Fontiicula. This is a special.
Speaker 1: Meredith Baxter Bernie editions of Course Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: We'll see you on the next go round. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.