Speaker 1: Of Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: Ladies and Gentlemen.
Speaker 3: This is QLs Classic and we are going way back
Speaker 3: back into time. We're going to episode number three with
Speaker 3: the Great Dante Ross aka Dante the Scrub aka Dante
Speaker 3: who introduced you to so many acts you can name them.
Speaker 3: He either an art them or signed them himself. De
Speaker 3: La Soul, Queen Latifa, Digital Underground, Pete Roxiel, Smooth Brand
Speaker 3: Nubian name him Calca Paine, name them yes. Dante Ross
Speaker 3: Damn Nearrow wrote the soundtrack of your Life and he
Speaker 3: lived it. One of the most incredible humans ever, one
Speaker 3: of the best lovers of music ever. Dante the Scrub
Speaker 3: Ross QLs Classic.
Speaker 2: Let's go too.
Speaker 4: Suprema Son So, Suprema roll, Calm, Suprema son Son, Suprema
Speaker 4: role called Suprema some something. Supremo role called Suprema son Son,
Speaker 4: Suprema roll called.
Speaker 2: My name is Questlove. Yeah, We'll kimping nubs Yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: on it, chilling Yeah.
Speaker 4: Suprema Son, Suprema roll called Suprema something something, Suprema role called.
Speaker 5: My name is Fonte. Yeah, fontage low Yeah. Shout out
Speaker 5: to Chassy Yeah and jiggle.
Speaker 4: Roll call Supreme, Suprema, roll call, Suprema something, Suprema roll call.
Speaker 6: My name is Sugar, Yeah, Sugar Steve. Yeah, I keep
Speaker 6: my kit cats.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Suprema Suprema, roll call Suprema.
Speaker 2: Something something, Suprema roll call.
Speaker 8: My name is Bill, Yeah, got here late Yeah, now
Speaker 8: I'm single.
Speaker 2: Yeah, needed call.
Speaker 4: Suprema son son, Suprema, roll called, Suprema son something, Suprema
Speaker 4: roll called handboss Bill.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm fresh to death.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Shout out to that crab. Yeah from Quest Love Chef.
Speaker 4: Roll call Suprema something something trying to get me, roll
Speaker 4: call Suprema so something, Suprema roll call.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I got.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Suprema Suprema roll call Yeah, Supremo son son, Supremo.
Speaker 6: Roll call.
Speaker 2: Some people.
Speaker 1: How are you welcome to another edition of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say Suprema, but yeah, Quest Love Supreme. Uh,
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Amir Quest Love Thompson and uh brought
Speaker 1: a few friends with me. Uh my man a spoon coon, Uh,
Speaker 1: shorty do wop. I don't know what other titles to
Speaker 1: call you yet, bro. I got a lot of them, man,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of them, all right.
Speaker 2: So what do you tell my al Capua.
Speaker 5: Sh rolling Stone. Yeah, I'm I'm the Yen to the Yang.
Speaker 5: I'm the Robbin to the Batman. Yeah, Fontic, Yeah, I'm
Speaker 5: Jerome to the Morris.
Speaker 2: You know, I hold the mirror a bro. You know
Speaker 2: what I mean? Well, we both might just be Jellybean
Speaker 2: and Jesse and not know it. This is true. I
Speaker 2: kind of think Boss Bill is Mars. I think he
Speaker 2: could be Prince. Yeah, say, Boss Bill is Prince.
Speaker 5: He's Prince. He's definitely Prince. He's the he cracks the rip.
Speaker 10: Let's Grover Washington, the Actor's true.
Speaker 2: That ship was hilarious. All right, So, uh, front, how's
Speaker 2: how's the project been going. Everything's going good man, tipular Old.
Speaker 5: That's the project. Me and my man Eric Robinson is
Speaker 5: out right now. We've been doing some dates in support
Speaker 5: of it and everything, and uh yeah, man, it's going
Speaker 5: real well. I'm just thankful that people like it. Uh
Speaker 5: And I can pay my bills and feed my chair.
Speaker 2: You're cheering. That's about it. That's that's the life at
Speaker 2: the end of the day. That's what life is about.
Speaker 2: That's what it is. I'm thankful man, thankful happy. You're cheering.
Speaker 1: How's your cheering doing, Steve, I have no cheering. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I know I thought you had some cheerings.
Speaker 2: No, I have no cheerings. Hows how was life going? Bro? Good?
Speaker 1: All right, well I believe you as you took the
Speaker 1: pregnant pause. Now with no children to say good, I'm still.
Speaker 7: Trying to make the cheddar and so forth though.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, you can't say e R when you say cheddar,
Speaker 2: just be a at the end. I actually meant cheddar.
Speaker 2: Steve is actually, uh, maybe maybe we use this platform
Speaker 2: to help you.
Speaker 1: Steve has a lifelong obsession with collecting every ct I
Speaker 1: record that's ever been in existence.
Speaker 2: Oh wow. Most importantly, you're looking for the CTI CTI
Speaker 2: it's a not to be confused. Which one of you
Speaker 2: doesn't know what ct I is? Oh?
Speaker 8: Okay, and everyone listening.
Speaker 1: No, but I felt that you were asking facetiously and
Speaker 1: not literally.
Speaker 2: It's Creed Taylor.
Speaker 7: Okay, Well that's the famous it's one of his labels.
Speaker 2: It's a label that you're obsessed with. I am. I
Speaker 2: think E C M is another one of yours, too, right, CM,
Speaker 2: I'm still working on.
Speaker 7: But I think I have pretty much every ct I
Speaker 7: record at this point except forty five's, which is what
Speaker 7: Ameers talked anyway. Yeah, I love ct I, Yes, anything Retailer,
Speaker 7: Kudu A and m us that A first and then
Speaker 7: and before that verve.
Speaker 1: Is there is there a particular album that you're looking
Speaker 1: for that you haven't fought found yet.
Speaker 2: Or yes, it's called Soul Flutes. Soul Flutes, Yeah, I
Speaker 2: actually have that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yeah, you said you might have.
Speaker 2: I'm actually going to my storage in a couple of days.
Speaker 7: Well, that's one of the forty fives that Quest gave me.
Speaker 7: Was the Soul Flutes was uh it was Scarborough Fare
Speaker 7: on the A side and Deo on the B side.
Speaker 2: I think the album is called trust in Me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: was the name of the band. Yeah, yeah, wow, okay, And.
Speaker 11: It's like Herbie Hancock on keys and I think Ron
Speaker 11: Carter is playing on it and he's yeah, every it's.
Speaker 2: Good to be in a room with people that actually
Speaker 2: read the liner notes. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: That's That's the one thing I miss about record culture today,
Speaker 1: mainly because no one in our in my life particularly
Speaker 1: knows that I'm connected to a project with uh, William,
Speaker 1: I forgot. Oh oh, I was about to say William
Speaker 1: the Driver. No, I I forgot what title we have for?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 2: Paid Bill? I'm paid Bill? How you doing bro?
Speaker 8: Goodbye?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm just saying that people don't read the credits,
Speaker 1: so they don't know how the Hamilton's soundtrack came to be.
Speaker 8: So it's true, but people who listen to theater records
Speaker 8: do read the credits because they like to read the
Speaker 8: lyrics because it's.
Speaker 2: Not on it's not on streaming services.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they got to figure that out. I think that's
Speaker 5: the next step in the whole streaming thing. They're getting
Speaker 5: the lyrics together with the genius. They're kind of working
Speaker 5: the lyrics out. Credits are still yeah, still, they haven't
Speaker 5: done it yet.
Speaker 1: That's the main reason why I haven't really gone in
Speaker 1: on credit check because I feel like no one's reading it.
Speaker 1: And with social media and writing books, I don't feel
Speaker 1: the need to pepper albums with the album credits as
Speaker 1: much as I used to.
Speaker 2: So what's up though, Bill, House House, Life on the street.
Speaker 8: The streets Westchester, they're beautiful. I meant the street that
Speaker 8: you work for, Oh, that street, that street's good.
Speaker 2: The muppets are human to me by the way.
Speaker 8: I know. I thought i'd just let the world know
Speaker 8: that where do you work though I work at Sesame Street.
Speaker 8: I'm the music director Sesame Street. Thank you for asking
Speaker 8: and h quest love and I met because he because
Speaker 8: he worked on the Hamilton record, but then he then
Speaker 8: in turn wrote songs for Sesame Street.
Speaker 2: I asked you one too many questions about the actual muppets, like.
Speaker 8: There were real But I also learned later that you
Speaker 8: watched Sesame Street more than my own children and probably
Speaker 8: more than most people's children, which I was fully impressed by.
Speaker 8: And your your Almanaki knowledge encyclopedic knowledge of music is
Speaker 8: also in sort of the Sesame Street world too, which
Speaker 8: I envy because often people ask me some deep dark
Speaker 8: knowledge shit about Sesame Street and I have no idea
Speaker 8: what they're talking.
Speaker 1: You guys had crazy breaks, and you know, I just
Speaker 1: want to rummage through the entire collections.
Speaker 8: I would see about that the other day that in
Speaker 8: the same way you're going to your storage set to
Speaker 8: get the forty five's for Steve, we should go to
Speaker 8: the Sesame Street storage set and just go back to Yahaha,
Speaker 8: I know it exists. We could go and do it.
Speaker 8: I think, Yeah, I truly let you because I.
Speaker 2: Want the end thing. That was my favorite. You know what,
Speaker 2: I'm so mad freaking all right.
Speaker 1: So in the original like Roots demo, that was like
Speaker 1: one of the songs that we rhymed over and we
Speaker 1: put h. We put uh, Bobby Brown's hot pants, I'm coming,
Speaker 1: break on top of it.
Speaker 2: Bobby Bird, Bobby drop It on the two. That was
Speaker 2: that was project Drop It on the two. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Our first demo was the the end credits to Sesame Street,
Speaker 1: the break that I guess M F. Doom rhymed over
Speaker 1: uh and uh on the second JBC Force album.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: They that was the first single where they rhymed over
Speaker 1: over that that break with the Bobby Bird hot pants
Speaker 1: up coming.
Speaker 2: So yeah, man, it's a heartbreak. It was a heartbreak. Man,
Speaker 2: Boss Bill, what's up? How's life?
Speaker 11: When you're not bossing me around? When am I not
Speaker 11: bossing you around? I was like, man, life's great. Man,
Speaker 11: I got somebody to boss around now and and and
Speaker 11: and Boss Bill. He's he's very effective. I will say,
Speaker 11: that's why he's here. Nah, he's very undisciplined.
Speaker 2: I'm very unfocused, you know, I look I'm Ronald McDonald
Speaker 2: and Boss Bill is.
Speaker 8: The hamber ray Crop.
Speaker 2: Wait, how do you know ray Croft? Everybody knows who. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't know ray Crop, ray Crock, ray Kroc. He
Speaker 2: was the alder inventor of McDonald's. He was the guy.
Speaker 2: How do you know the history of McDonald's.
Speaker 11: I've known that since I was a kid. I think
Speaker 11: I did too.
Speaker 2: I read it in a book and you can just
Speaker 2: go and jump on that unpaid bill.
Speaker 8: No, no, no, I'm pretty sure. Like there's a plaque
Speaker 8: if you go to McDonald's that has him on it
Speaker 8: that says, actually, I think I think there's I actually
Speaker 8: knew that. I didn't know what ct I was, but
Speaker 8: I knew about that ship.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel horrible that I didn't know that. You know,
Speaker 2: all the weight that I put on over the years. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he was the one.
Speaker 5: He was famous for the quote, I'm not in the
Speaker 5: people think I'm in the said, people think I'm in
Speaker 5: the hamburger business.
Speaker 2: I'm in the real estate business. That was his. That
Speaker 2: was his.
Speaker 5: He write a book, he did. I read parts of it.
Speaker 5: It was I mean, this was it was a long
Speaker 5: time ago, but but yeah, he was dropping some real
Speaker 5: game in there.
Speaker 2: He was on some pip shit.
Speaker 5: He basically was like, look like they talk about how
Speaker 5: the McDonald's formula, I guess in the early days was
Speaker 5: just really the book was like really thin, but now
Speaker 5: the ship is like thick as hell. And basically his
Speaker 5: mantra is his whole thing was like, look, this is
Speaker 5: the way we do it, and y'all can either do
Speaker 5: it like this and you can step the funk off.
Speaker 5: And I respected that. So I forgot the name of
Speaker 5: the book. I mean, this was just I was an undergrad.
Speaker 5: It's called grinding it out. The making of McDonald's that
Speaker 5: is there is this was. I mean, this was years ago,
Speaker 5: but I feel.
Speaker 2: Really inadequate right now as foody as a human being.
Speaker 2: I have Google.
Speaker 8: So your your knowledge of of some deep dark ship is.
Speaker 2: Real? Yeah, what history of quote?
Speaker 8: I'm looking at you quote them? Wow, they are all
Speaker 8: in the standards, they except for themselves.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Nah, that was yeah, that was yeah, I remember that book. Yeah, man,
Speaker 5: Ray Krot he's the dude. That's that's incredible. That's why
Speaker 5: you guys are here to really pick up the slack man.
Speaker 2: Apparently I don't have Uh, did you know about ray
Speaker 2: Krot Steve or you thank you for being honest and
Speaker 2: saying that. I know that. Are you just saying that
Speaker 2: to make me feel better?
Speaker 11: You know the characters, all the characters me too, only
Speaker 11: Hamburglar who Grimace?
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mayor you have a little bit for a second,
Speaker 2: I mean McDonald about the mayor. That going to be
Speaker 2: just out of control mayor. I haven't seen Mayor mc
Speaker 2: cheese in the second bro. Yeah he still I think
Speaker 2: they didn't take him out of voted out. Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: not impeached. Is the Hamburgler? Is he still around? Hamburger?
Speaker 2: Hamburger is still around.
Speaker 7: He had a heart attack, but he's all right now,
Speaker 7: okay hamburg heart attack.
Speaker 5: That's like the mate, what was the guy the what
Speaker 5: was the Marlboro Man? Wasn't he the one to die
Speaker 5: of cancer? That's just like when people die of the
Speaker 5: thing they endorse. So really yeah, that's it is kind.
Speaker 2: Of what throw cancer.
Speaker 5: It was some kind of cancer, some kind of smoking
Speaker 5: ass cancer. They got his ass up out of the
Speaker 5: whatever it was.
Speaker 10: But that like.
Speaker 2: When he said that, did you envisit like Sam and
Speaker 2: Simms team right right exactly? The horse tied to the horse,
Speaker 2: the oh yeah, yeah, the horse did die. The horse
Speaker 2: did die, I would hope so after years. But I
Speaker 2: thought they knew the history of what the worst No, no,
Speaker 2: it was I was thinking because now I'm thinking of
Speaker 2: people who died from the products they endorsed, so supposedly
Speaker 2: I think the guy that was the guy in the
Speaker 2: actions that he'll be wrong.
Speaker 11: I just checked on the Marble Man and apparently four
Speaker 11: different Marlborough men died of cancer. So you know, if
Speaker 11: you if you get that job, it's a wrap.
Speaker 2: Yeah, your cursed. But is there still a quote unquote
Speaker 2: Marboro Man they're dead?
Speaker 11: I don't know, because I know, like there was all
Speaker 11: these all these regulations about advertising and smoking. You know,
Speaker 11: they got rid of Joe Campbell and all that, so
Speaker 11: maybe they got rid of the Marborough Man too, who knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they did get rid of Joe Cammel. Damn. That's right. Yeah,
Speaker 2: all right, Well this is going to be a very
Speaker 2: wod segue from music.
Speaker 1: Kind of want to do, uh a slight backtrack at least,
Speaker 1: you know, all all history is either revisionist or subjective.
Speaker 1: So you know, keep in mind that even though I
Speaker 1: could speak with a great deal of authority and clarity.
Speaker 2: I could be wrong, but.
Speaker 1: The guest we have today, I feel is important because
Speaker 1: I believe that he kind of ushered in what I
Speaker 1: like to dub the Renaissance era of hip hop, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times, especially people born after nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: that hear a bunch of adults sort of moaning and
Speaker 1: growing about classic hip hop and back in the day
Speaker 1: and all that stuff, and you know, you don't understand
Speaker 1: Eras it's my personal belief of how the era system
Speaker 1: runs in hip hop is kind of a five year
Speaker 1: increment in which I see things. I usually see the
Speaker 1: evolution of hip hop in the second year of the decade,
Speaker 1: the seventh year of the decade, and I guess if
Speaker 1: you look in the seventies, I feel like the most
Speaker 1: important as far as actual revolution and change of music.
Speaker 1: Even though nineteen seventy seven isn't my personal favorite year
Speaker 1: of the seventies, you can't deny the importance of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven.
Speaker 2: What is the importance in nineteen seventy seven?
Speaker 1: To me, probably the most important element of nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: seven and music wasn't even music or a person. I
Speaker 1: believe the velvet rope that separated you from the entry
Speaker 1: to Studio fifty four in itself spawned three different self cultures,
Speaker 1: not even by design. First of all, I'm in Studio
Speaker 1: fifty four. If you've heard the folklore of you know,
Speaker 1: like the sodom and gomor yeah, it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: the the pen ultimate debaucherus. I mean everything from Bianca
Speaker 1: Jagger coming in uh on nude on a horse or
Speaker 1: anything that could happen. Uh, it's it's proprietors who built
Speaker 1: Studio fifty four.
Speaker 2: Steve Bell and I. I.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where because now when you need to say
Speaker 1: Ian Schrager, I think of hotels. But I keep forgetting
Speaker 1: about Studio fifty four. But the point is that, uh,
Speaker 1: well literally for Studio fifty four. I mean every time
Speaker 1: that he had time off from shooting The Whiz, Michael
Speaker 1: Jackson was in Studio fifty four, studying its infrastructure, studying
Speaker 1: the DJ, studying the people, which I know played a
Speaker 1: big role in how he crafted Off the Wall. Even
Speaker 1: getting rejected by Studio fifty four gave Atlantic Records their
Speaker 1: biggest selling hit, Cheek Chic So the Freak The Freak,
Speaker 1: which was formerly fuck off from Freak out, freak out,
Speaker 1: fuck off. Now Rogers and Bernard Edwards get rejected after
Speaker 1: being invited by Grace Jones to come down to the club,
Speaker 1: and of course they just go to the studio after
Speaker 1: giving up and resigning to getting in, and they started
Speaker 1: jamming about.
Speaker 2: Studio fifty four and called it funk off.
Speaker 1: And then ten minutes and two it they were like, wait,
Speaker 1: this is a hit, freak out and then thus they're revenge.
Speaker 2: But not to mention.
Speaker 1: Lower East the village, the punk rock scene and the
Speaker 1: downtown art scene spawns on the west side, you know,
Speaker 1: the the a lot of underground gay disco clubs start formulating.
Speaker 1: I mean they've been in existence, but Lara Lavan will
Speaker 1: soon yeah, developed Paradise Garage in the starting in the
Speaker 1: early eighties, but he was also diciphle of Studio fifty
Speaker 1: four and kind of took their culture to the underground
Speaker 1: set that wasn't allowed in that and of course up
Speaker 1: in the Bronx. Yeah, hip hop now between seventy seven
Speaker 1: and eighty two, which you know, I call the kind
Speaker 1: of the post disco period of hip hop because a
Speaker 1: lot of what they were rhyming over was just the
Speaker 1: music at the time not to mention the five years
Speaker 1: before that, seventy two to seventy seven, the music from
Speaker 1: that period Africambotas finding these records in the basements and
Speaker 1: and sort of recontextualizing them as new music. So now
Speaker 1: a cut like give It Up or Turn Loose by
Speaker 1: James Brown has.
Speaker 2: A whole new meaning life. Yeah in a B boy nightclub.
Speaker 1: So that's from seventy seven to eighty two. Of course,
Speaker 1: you know rappers, the Light and I guess that the
Speaker 1: two most important songs of that period.
Speaker 2: I would think at the end of the period.
Speaker 1: Is The Message by Grand Master Flash and the Furious Five,
Speaker 1: the beginning of like Reality rap and Planet Rock, which
Speaker 1: Arthur Baker and Ben Bata, leading to what I call
Speaker 1: the Golden period eighty two to eighty seven enter Run DMC.
Speaker 2: Sort of like a slow well set or not quite yet.
Speaker 1: I would probably say that Marley mal is the figurehead
Speaker 1: that really pushed it for production wise.
Speaker 2: Also, I got a shout out full force.
Speaker 1: I mean, they were the first to start using actual
Speaker 1: breakbeats inside of their their records, and for me, the
Speaker 1: classic period. When people refer to a classic period, it's
Speaker 1: the next period. Eighty seven to ninety two. And the
Speaker 1: reason why I say the classic period. If you're born
Speaker 1: before eighty five, I'll say that there's a compilation, a
Speaker 1: twenty five record compilation called Ultimate Beats and Breaks which
Speaker 1: breakbeat shout out to Breakbeat Lou Flores. He compiles all
Speaker 1: the break beats that Bam Bada used to spin at
Speaker 1: his party, jams that you previously you previously couldn't find.
Speaker 1: So if you're older, I'd say this is the the
Speaker 1: the cliff notes of this is the cliff notes of breakbeats. Okay,
Speaker 1: So a breakbeat, of course, is the good part of
Speaker 1: the record. If there's a record that has a drum
Speaker 1: break in it that you're able to rhyme over.
Speaker 5: An instrumental drum break, no singing over it, no right,
Speaker 5: no keys, noot.
Speaker 1: So when you hear older producers refer to stuff like
Speaker 1: impeach the Prey, they're not talking about getting rid of
Speaker 1: your country's leader.
Speaker 2: They're talking about a certain break beat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's often debated, what's the greatest one
Speaker 1: for the folklore of James Brown's Funky Drummer. I will
Speaker 1: kind of say that I believe that impeach the President
Speaker 1: is the ultimate break beat, which even when you beat
Speaker 1: box as an older person, when you beat box, the
Speaker 1: beat that you do is always you're doing in piece
Speaker 1: to president, even without knowing it. So just saying that
Speaker 1: where previously they used to take these records and watch
Speaker 1: the labels off and you didn't have shizam to know
Speaker 1: where these breaks were coming from, that b boys were
Speaker 1: going crazy to lou Floor has now put compilations out and.
Speaker 2: Pretty much the hip hop nation ate it up from.
Speaker 1: Public Enemy to NWA. Anybody that was making stuff between
Speaker 1: eighty eight and ninety two was you sing and abusing
Speaker 1: ultimate beats and breaks, which leads to the next period,
Speaker 1: which I call the Renaissance period. Now on the East coast,
Speaker 1: this this this especially true on the West coast.
Speaker 2: Of course, doctor Dre will kind of.
Speaker 1: Take the rain and and and just just writhe till
Speaker 1: the wheels fall off, or did they ever fall They
Speaker 1: never fell off. But for the East Coast, what makes
Speaker 1: our guest Dante Ross so notable was the fact that
Speaker 1: he is starting to sign acts who they find ways
Speaker 1: to make music that's outside of the ultimate beats and breaks.
Speaker 2: Paradigm or or or just the boundaries. There's a line that.
Speaker 1: Dress from Black Sheep says to take funky drumming, give
Speaker 1: it back to James. So there was a period where
Speaker 1: James Brown and George Clinton was they played out. It
Speaker 1: was a played out idea because it got used and abused,
Speaker 1: like people just make songs out of whole entire volumes.
Speaker 1: I'll take the drums from track number two, and I'll
Speaker 1: add the bassline from track number three, and then put
Speaker 1: the keyboards and scratch in from track number five and
Speaker 1: all these different combinations.
Speaker 11: Like you could pretty much predict what hip hop would
Speaker 11: sound like for the next year by what Ultimate Breaks
Speaker 11: and Beat album was out exactly.
Speaker 1: So by the time nineteen ninety two came, there were
Speaker 1: a group of producers Large Professor Pete Rock, Yeah, Q Tip,
Speaker 1: DJ Premier, Jazzy Jeff, I mean, a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: cats that were using Jazz Records stuff that wasn't on
Speaker 1: Ultimate Beats and Breaks and using it as their as
Speaker 1: their their canvas and their backdrop. And that's what I
Speaker 1: deemed the Renaissance period of hip hop. This is Quest
Speaker 1: Left Supreme font Ticcolo, Sugar, Steve, Unpaid, Bill Boss, Bill Welcoming,
Speaker 1: Doctor Renaissance himself give it up for Dante Ross ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, what up? What up?
Speaker 2: Dante? I have so many frequent questions right now.
Speaker 6: Man, you know it's scary.
Speaker 1: No, I'm like, dude, you if I mean, everyone always
Speaker 1: has this like, oh the soundtrack of my life.
Speaker 2: But I mean you you're like one of the unsung
Speaker 2: heroes of the Renaissance period of hip hop, like you
Speaker 2: were there to witness a lot of his historical firsts.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna try to come off like a professional
Speaker 1: journalist that I am and not not just a fan. Well, first,
Speaker 1: I got to know about your beginnings, Like where did
Speaker 1: you come from?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 6: I was born in San Francisco, California. I moved here
Speaker 6: when I was two, and I grew up on the
Speaker 6: Lower East Side of Manhattan. My mother was a school teacher,
Speaker 6: and I grew up on Ninth Street and Avenue B
Speaker 6: and then Second Street and Avenue B.
Speaker 1: So you were in the period of New York when
Speaker 1: that part wasn't even Gingrified.
Speaker 6: Or Spanish was the language of my blood?
Speaker 2: Really, Oh wow, that's when it was alphabet city.
Speaker 6: I grew up in almost entirely Puerto Rican neighborhood, so.
Speaker 2: A lot of us.
Speaker 1: Would you know, there was a period where I just
Speaker 1: thought a lot of the important white players of classic
Speaker 1: hip hop, I just thought you all were Puerto Rican
Speaker 1: because in my mind I couldn't even conceive, like I
Speaker 1: thought the Beastie Boys are Puerto Rican.
Speaker 6: I mean I wanted to be Puerto Rican. I couldn't
Speaker 6: wait to grow a mustache. My boys called me Serto
Speaker 6: Rican growing up, which was better than jew who the
Speaker 6: other one they called me?
Speaker 2: Ah? Wait these two?
Speaker 6: Like I definitely was. I passed for a Puerto Rican
Speaker 6: whenever possible as a job.
Speaker 2: So when, so, how did music enter your life?
Speaker 6: I mean music was always in my house. My mom
Speaker 6: loved music. She loves soul music like she loved Otis
Speaker 6: Redding and Bill Withers, Aretha Franklin. And she also liked
Speaker 6: singer songwriter stuff like Neil Young and Bob Dylan. And
Speaker 6: my pops is a he's an old like jazz dude,
Speaker 6: so he was like always into jazz. And I grew
Speaker 6: up up the block from a famous jazz drummer named
Speaker 6: Ed Blackwell, Okay, and he played with with uh or
Speaker 6: Nette Coleman and a ton of people. And I was
Speaker 6: in his house a lot, and I was just always
Speaker 6: around music. Like I remember going with him and his
Speaker 6: family even though, to Hero and Net andam Jam when
Speaker 6: I was like eight nine years old, so you know,
Speaker 6: and I lived on top of a social club and
Speaker 6: my bedroom was right on top of the jew box
Speaker 6: and they were playing stott Listics and dramatics everything that
Speaker 6: was popping back then.
Speaker 2: At Edward de.
Speaker 6: Vaughan and Superfly. I went to see it when I
Speaker 6: was nine or ten. My sister's boyfriend took me. And
Speaker 6: I just was always around music. We had block parties
Speaker 6: on my block, so I loved disco and all that
Speaker 6: kind of music when I was young, and I just
Speaker 6: grew up around it. It was always I'm the president
Speaker 6: in every environment I was in as a child.
Speaker 1: So was it to the point where you felt like
Speaker 1: this is a career or just like it just happened
Speaker 1: to be around?
Speaker 6: Definitely not. I had no idea, but I did. I
Speaker 6: always like read the back of record covers, and I
Speaker 6: always wanted to know like Steve Cropper was, so I
Speaker 6: was like, who's that Who's that guy? And Who's who's
Speaker 6: Jerry Wexler, And I always wanted to know who people were.
Speaker 6: You know who's this guy and that guy. Was just
Speaker 6: fascinated by by the names, like I wanted to know
Speaker 6: who the guys were who weren't the artist. And I
Speaker 6: had a family friend, Joel Brodsky. He's a famous photographer
Speaker 6: and he shot the Isaac Caye's movement album covers. He
Speaker 6: shot all the stacked stuff. And because being around Joel
Speaker 6: and he's coming to graff materia, I saw a lot
Speaker 6: of the imagery he shot, like Funkadelic records and all
Speaker 6: this stuff. So I was always into it. My sister's
Speaker 6: eight years older than me too, and she was a
Speaker 6: music head, so I always played her records whenever she
Speaker 6: was jamming. So I basically got into See my sister
Speaker 6: was madhood, true, she was like super hood when we
Speaker 6: were growing up.
Speaker 1: Trickled down, well oftentimes I noticed that people that, especially
Speaker 1: in music is today, a lot of it is trickled
Speaker 1: down from.
Speaker 2: Older cousins, older siblings. So are you the youngest of
Speaker 2: your brood.
Speaker 6: Or well, well, I have a younger sister, but I
Speaker 6: wasn't raised with my half sister, So yeah, I am,
Speaker 6: and I.
Speaker 2: Am asking what year were you born?
Speaker 6: Nineteen sixty five?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, And I.
Speaker 6: Inherited my sister's record collection and much later on, like
Speaker 6: Joel gave me a lot of his records as well,
Speaker 6: so and I got my mom's records. I was a
Speaker 6: lot of the records that I had came from my family,
Speaker 6: you know that I still even have. And so I
Speaker 6: was always like aware of records like just Begun and
Speaker 6: Solamcosa and all those records. I listened to him as
Speaker 6: a kid. I knew them all.
Speaker 2: So, so did you know about it from just having
Speaker 2: it or just from a hip hop perspective?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 6: I knew from having it, And because they had block
Speaker 6: parties in my neighborhood and they'd always play those kind
Speaker 6: of records just be Gone for sure, and stuff like
Speaker 6: Funky Penguin and all those kind of records got played.
Speaker 6: So you know, people were in the street dancing, and
Speaker 6: it was just the music around me as a child.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the first album you purchased?
Speaker 6: Definitely Jackson five Christmas album.
Speaker 2: Wow Crying Crying? Yeah, I used to. My parents used
Speaker 2: to make me perform that, uh, that Jermaine skit. Do
Speaker 2: you have it?
Speaker 5: The Christmas album? I do not have the Christmas album.
Speaker 5: My Christmas album was the James Bryan Christmas album.
Speaker 6: I mean I was a Jackson five fanatic.
Speaker 5: The Welfare one, Yeah, James, I was coming to the girl.
Speaker 2: That No, but there's one song where like James is
Speaker 2: talking about like he's so down on his luck that
Speaker 2: he even went to the welfare and couldn't find Santa Claus. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that was my ers album. That one spoke to my reality.
Speaker 6: I was a Jackson five fanatic. I bought all the
Speaker 6: forty five's ABC Want You Back at Bates Record Store
Speaker 6: on Delancey Street. My sister would take megget my line.
Speaker 6: I about forty five almost every week.
Speaker 2: How much were forty five back?
Speaker 6: Seventy five cents?
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ? Wow, So just a record, the weekend record
Speaker 2: a week. That's amazing.
Speaker 6: I bought all the hits any you know Casey in
Speaker 6: the Sunshine Band, sos or not.
Speaker 5: So.
Speaker 6: I spent on sending U so os, the Huges Corporation, right,
Speaker 6: all those records, you know, I bought all George mcraig,
Speaker 6: you know, whatever was popping right then, you know, whatever
Speaker 6: was out, I bought whatever was on the radio. I
Speaker 6: went and bought them.
Speaker 1: So that's that's probably the mom and pop record store.
Speaker 1: To me, like the local mom and pop record store
Speaker 1: is like the one.
Speaker 2: Element that I remember.
Speaker 6: The first rock record I ever bought was Queen Boheman Rhapsody.
Speaker 6: I heard it on the radio. I lost my mind.
Speaker 6: I couldn't I couldn't comprehend what it was. And I
Speaker 6: listened to radio all day till they played it again,
Speaker 6: and then I went and bought it a couple of
Speaker 6: days later.
Speaker 2: So did you record songs off the radio? Did before?
Speaker 2: Lining line out right there up against the speaker. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you used to do that with soul Train used to
Speaker 2: put the tap on audio records.
Speaker 6: So yeah, I wasn't that technically advanced that I was
Speaker 6: in savvy?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well we used to have soul trained parties too. Of
Speaker 6: my friend William Dickerson's house down the block. Sultry will
Speaker 6: come on a wheel and his mom would have a
Speaker 6: soul train line.
Speaker 2: Wow. Really Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah. I grew up on a block there was like
Speaker 6: seven Puerto Rican kids, two black kids and me.
Speaker 2: So you were just alone, just like same street it
Speaker 2: was McDonald no, So you were just a lone white kid. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Man, it was all good though.
Speaker 2: Did they hesitate to remind you of that every time
Speaker 2: I thought, I thought my middle name was white boy.
Speaker 6: So I was about fifteen, and.
Speaker 1: There was always there was always like one cool white
Speaker 1: boy like on the block though, like even it's pretty
Speaker 1: much white John was was a kid on in southwest Field.
Speaker 6: It's usually white Mike. Usually if you had a white mic.
Speaker 1: Now, did you have to overcompensate because Chappelle hilariously says
Speaker 1: that whenever you see the one lone white guy hated,
Speaker 1: had you know, telling what he did to get their respect?
Speaker 5: You could apply that to like light skinned black people too,
Speaker 5: like all the revolutionary lights, like they be the hardest.
Speaker 2: Most revolutionary. Yeah, Huey Newton was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, besides Marcus Garvey and Martin Luther King, every revolutionary
Speaker 1: we had was light skinned.
Speaker 6: Like in the seventies in New York, people just taking
Speaker 6: your ship. You were just people was getting robbed like
Speaker 6: you just got taken all the time if you didn't
Speaker 6: step up. So you know, just had to be strengthen numbers,
Speaker 6: and you had.
Speaker 2: To be you didn't have an older brother or older cousin.
Speaker 6: I had an older cousin. He was a dopian, so
Speaker 6: he wasn't helping all.
Speaker 2: So you didn't have the luxury of him.
Speaker 4: Not.
Speaker 6: My sister went out this big black cat named Sam
Speaker 6: Lewis and sam it down Samwich like I have respect
Speaker 6: from Sam.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the one thing.
Speaker 1: You never wanted to hear it on the playground, which
Speaker 1: was I'm gonna get my.
Speaker 2: Up like call it in the cavalry.
Speaker 6: I was a good athlete as a kid too, so
Speaker 6: I always like had some death because of that. I
Speaker 6: played at the boys club and I played basketball, baseball.
Speaker 6: I was like a real jock when I was young,
Speaker 6: so you know, I always got a pass because of that.
Speaker 1: All right, So as you got older, I mean, how
Speaker 1: did I know that black parties were always you know,
Speaker 1: in your life as you said, But I mean, did
Speaker 1: they have him Sez there or it was just it.
Speaker 6: Was pre EMCs there was. It was really pre rap.
Speaker 6: Rap wasn't on the map yet. And I remember, I
Speaker 6: think I was in sixth grade when I first heard
Speaker 6: rap and it was it was a sugar Hill gang.
Speaker 6: And my friend Columbus van Horn told me that that
Speaker 6: was that there was this dual grand Master Flash and
Speaker 6: he got me a tape. It was in seventh or
Speaker 6: sixth grade, and he lent me a tape, and that
Speaker 6: tape was it was one of the flash shapes, I
Speaker 6: think it was fifty beats, one of those, and had
Speaker 6: birthday party on it. I remember that clearly, and I
Speaker 6: used to just listen to it all the time. I
Speaker 6: didn't want to give back his tape and finally had
Speaker 6: to give it back to him because I didn't have
Speaker 6: a tape to tape back then. I don't I don't
Speaker 6: know if they were invented yet, but that's when I
Speaker 6: really started to be enamored by what was becoming rap
Speaker 6: and and kind of saw that there was something beyond
Speaker 6: just that.
Speaker 2: Sugar Hill record really yeah.
Speaker 6: And then and then I heard led Zeppelin and and
Speaker 6: all that shit, and I kind of like lost interest,
Speaker 6: you know, because it was it was uptown. It was like,
Speaker 6: you know, when sugar Hill came out, that was like
Speaker 6: a novelty hit that wasn't like it. There wasn't a
Speaker 6: lifestyle attached to it yet, at least where I lived, Like,
Speaker 6: we didn't know about that really.
Speaker 2: So there was a period in which you were going
Speaker 2: to just not go straight rock, but you discovered the Yeah.
Speaker 6: And I also like funk. I was really in the
Speaker 6: funk too. I was into like Brothers Johnson and stuff
Speaker 6: like that, Like I like Parliament, Brother Johnson, all that
Speaker 6: stuff that was out at that time, because funk was
Speaker 6: kind of like it was the middle ground, you know.
Speaker 6: It wasn't like it was it was kind of half rock.
Speaker 6: It was just kind of what you listened to back then.
Speaker 1: Funk was popping, and you weren't a DJ or had
Speaker 1: aspirations to be one.
Speaker 2: No, you just happen to know a lot of information
Speaker 2: about records.
Speaker 6: I know a lot about records. I always collected records.
Speaker 1: So that that must have been amazing too. At least
Speaker 1: there was a point where it was a novelty for
Speaker 1: a white person to know a lot about black music,
Speaker 1: you think, at least around my way, Like I remember
Speaker 1: being pressed with this kid, uh, I think Danny Digatanio.
Speaker 1: I forget his last name, but he knew he knew no, no, no,
Speaker 1: but he knew.
Speaker 6: Don't mess with my man, Columbus. If you call Columbus Columbus,
Speaker 6: he'd be like, yo, my name is Jackie.
Speaker 2: But he knew T Connections is like groove to get down,
Speaker 2: like something that was so obscure and so breakbeat black
Speaker 2: that I was like, Wow, you you really know your records.
Speaker 6: I mean we used to roller disco when we were young,
Speaker 6: like so that was also like you know, all those
Speaker 6: records were records we were rocking with, so you know,
Speaker 6: like Slave, Touch of Love, all the roller disco jams.
Speaker 2: So when you became a professional?
Speaker 6: Am I a professional? Has opened to debate?
Speaker 2: Man, Well how did how did you? Was def Jam
Speaker 2: your first label or like did you yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, Actually the myth is I worked at Depth Jam.
Speaker 6: I actually worked at Rush Productions. Then there was a
Speaker 6: difference that not really there was like well like if
Speaker 6: you worked at Rush you got Lere's lunch. If you
Speaker 6: worked at Depth Jam, you got Russells.
Speaker 2: So what's the difference between Well yeah, I mean both
Speaker 2: both logos held holy for anybody that was rushtown. Man,
Speaker 2: So what was the difference between the two worlds?
Speaker 6: About what I just said? Lee Or is meaner than Russell?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah? Please still even when he was younger, he
Speaker 6: was a meaner than he's nice. Now we are so gentle. Now, yeah,
Speaker 6: he's a nice I mean, I love Leor even when
Speaker 6: he was mean Leor like that, Lear might not have
Speaker 6: a life, So I love Leor he's he's my that's
Speaker 6: my Rabbi.
Speaker 2: All right, so leor uh can I can I do
Speaker 2: I have a liberty to say that Lear effectively replaced
Speaker 2: Rick Rubin.
Speaker 6: I wouldn't say that there was there was. There was
Speaker 6: a lot of there.
Speaker 2: Was Lear even at def Jam when Rick Rubin was
Speaker 2: at the Helm. Not really so Rick and Rick never
Speaker 2: went to the office.
Speaker 6: And and once Rick realized how important he was, he
Speaker 6: he wasn't around a lot, and he wanted to make
Speaker 6: rock records and and really the Beastie Boys and everything
Speaker 6: that happened licensed to ill was the divide between Rick
Speaker 6: and Lee. Or that's really when it all happened.
Speaker 1: Okay, So to update the those that are listening, Uh.
Speaker 1: Of course, deft Jam is probably believe the most important
Speaker 1: hip hop one hundred.
Speaker 6: It's also the first label or hip hop empty that
Speaker 6: was cognizant that cool white people were an active and
Speaker 6: participant and monetizable audience in rap music. And Russell's the
Speaker 6: first guy to see that. You know. That's why he's
Speaker 6: so smart. He realized he could sell run DMC to
Speaker 6: white America, that he could sell rap music to the
Speaker 6: middle of the country.
Speaker 2: I always wanted to know why he wouldn't put run
Speaker 2: DMC on Deaf Cham and he already signed a profile profile.
Speaker 2: They lost the contract that Yeah, they tried.
Speaker 6: They tried and and and those guys, you know.
Speaker 2: They lost years over that.
Speaker 6: They lost three years, kind of ruined their career.
Speaker 5: That was because it gives that gap between and back
Speaker 5: from no, no what back mail. It was uh, raising
Speaker 5: hell and tougher than leather. It was those years, hundred percent.
Speaker 2: That's when the ain't changed.
Speaker 5: Even in the book, the Run book, they talk about
Speaker 5: it because at the time when that came out, they
Speaker 5: were dated.
Speaker 2: They were done.
Speaker 5: They were like he said, DMC, he said, he knew
Speaker 5: it was over when I think I guess the tumble
Speaker 5: Leather came out and they were listening to Nation and
Speaker 5: millions and they just liked.
Speaker 2: Percent right, Yeah, I mean yeah.
Speaker 6: They wanted to get him off there, and Corey Robbins
Speaker 6: and c plot Nikki they had him, They had them
Speaker 6: hemmed up. They couldn't get him off the label. But
Speaker 6: but my my working at Deaf to him, like I so,
Speaker 6: I grew up kind of with the Beastie boys. I
Speaker 6: know him since junior high school and were all in
Speaker 6: the punk rock and then hip hop came along and
Speaker 6: we all got swept up in that. That was that
Speaker 6: kind of took our lives. So it was really run DMC.
Speaker 6: That was a band we heard and they sounded so
Speaker 6: punk rock, like they were so abrasive and and it
Speaker 6: was like they dressed like the audience. They didn't dress
Speaker 6: like a Brokereick James. So so we were like, Yo,
Speaker 6: this is the craziest shit ever. And that that was
Speaker 6: really what like, that's hooked us for life, That's what
Speaker 6: it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, cats have to know that. You know, early hip
Speaker 2: hop was just mirroring and p funk was still a thing,
Speaker 2: so you know, I mean people in Africa, Membata and
Speaker 2: then were trying to emulate the crazy d yeah fire
Speaker 2: ship exactly.
Speaker 1: If anything, Run DMC was. They were what Nirvana did
Speaker 1: to metal bands in ninety one.
Speaker 6: They change, and it happened to run DMC.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Cats, you know, Cat showed them the door, you know.
Speaker 2: Because they stopped because cats stopped, hollering stopped. It was
Speaker 2: intricate and you know that was it every five years.
Speaker 2: But yeah, but back to Leoris so okay, so Leor
Speaker 2: what was his position was, I.
Speaker 6: Mean it was the president of Rush Productions a rush
Speaker 6: Town management.
Speaker 2: Okay, so he was did he hire you?
Speaker 6: So I got hired? This is the craziest. So I
Speaker 6: got hired because my friends showing caras off rust in
Speaker 6: Peace aka the Cat, and he roll managed the Beasties.
Speaker 6: He was like my best friend and uh he plugged
Speaker 6: me with the job. Ricky Powell went on tour with
Speaker 6: the Beasties. I stayed and my lady wouldn't let me
Speaker 6: go into I had a girlfriend at the time when
Speaker 6: I lived with him. She was like, no way, you're
Speaker 6: going on tour with those guys.
Speaker 2: I could imagine because I met Ricky Powell in his
Speaker 2: later years. Ricky Powell was like, well by then he
Speaker 2: was there there. Uh, I'm about to say yes. Well,
Speaker 2: they called him the trim coordinator. Dave Skill can rest
Speaker 2: in Peace still was the trim coordinator. You're right, and Dave.
Speaker 6: Dave was the coolest cat ever. Dave and Ricky were
Speaker 6: like there, you know, I love Ricky, but Dave was
Speaker 6: infinitely cool than Ricky could ever be.
Speaker 2: I met.
Speaker 6: It was they've had game for days.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I guess I met the Beastie boys in there.
Speaker 2: Like responsible Buddhists.
Speaker 6: You met him in the Dalai Lama year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like Vegan stage, and they were all responsible and
Speaker 2: respectable and everything, and I was looking for were like
Speaker 2: the beer cans and the Phallan symbol and.
Speaker 6: That's what house the pain in them told me too.
Speaker 6: They wanted tour the Beastie Boys and they wanted to
Speaker 6: like where's exploding Dick. Yeah, they were like, yo, what
Speaker 6: do you mean, Like, you guys don't go out and
Speaker 6: get drunk and be people like you don't go craze.
Speaker 2: So by that point, yeah, he he was taking photos.
Speaker 2: He was taking a lot of photos.
Speaker 6: He was also, uh, he was being nefarious. I'll leave
Speaker 6: it at that, But I mean I.
Speaker 1: Could imagine how crazy Ricky Powell was during that license.
Speaker 2: So you went on license ill tour.
Speaker 6: I was on the first leg and then I came home.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what was that?
Speaker 12: Like?
Speaker 2: What was that like?
Speaker 6: It was a little whild man. I remember I went
Speaker 6: to La with with Eric Is, a graphic designer, and
Speaker 6: we hey, we ran around with them dudes, and we
Speaker 6: got them a skateboard deal that never came out. And
Speaker 6: that was like the first thing I ever did in
Speaker 6: the business when I first got a job. And I
Speaker 6: guess I'd hit a home run and they let me
Speaker 6: hang out for a while, and then I went home
Speaker 6: and stole Ricky Palell's job. Basically, Sean was like, yeah,
Speaker 6: Dante should do it, and I was off ae flunky
Speaker 6: and uh. But I went out every night. I went
Speaker 6: to night clubs every night, and I started to hang
Speaker 6: out with Russell a lot and all those guys. They
Speaker 6: took me out and and it always asked me what
Speaker 6: records were the records, like what's popping up here? What's
Speaker 6: I'll go to Latin quarters spots they weren't going to,
Speaker 6: and they always want to pick my brain. And I
Speaker 6: realized like, hey, I might know something. I might maybe
Speaker 6: be an A and R guy. And Bill Stephanie aka
Speaker 6: Mister Bill wanted to hire me as an A and
Speaker 6: R guy, and they didn't give me the job, but
Speaker 6: he always was like, yo, I want to hire you.
Speaker 6: He always told me you you really know music. And
Speaker 6: he was like one of the first guys who really
Speaker 6: let me know, and and and and the guy Chuck
Speaker 6: D two. Chuck D and me would rap about music forever.
Speaker 6: So so I give a lot of props to Chuck
Speaker 6: D two.
Speaker 2: Bill work at def JAMPI did he was.
Speaker 6: I think he was. I think President Biller was a publisher, Yeah,
Speaker 6: I think I think he might have been a president
Speaker 6: of Bill Stephanie, mister Bill.
Speaker 2: And he grew up a public enemy. Wow. So just
Speaker 2: during that period, like what I mean, I mean it
Speaker 2: was me.
Speaker 6: Faith Newman, Bill Stephanie, Bill Adler, Hank Chocolb. You all
Speaker 6: worked in the office for your Cohen and like you
Speaker 6: never knew who was coming in office. Run came in
Speaker 6: one day and yelled at l like it was just wild.
Speaker 6: Like it was like there was antics going around. And
Speaker 6: I became friends with jam Master J. I used to
Speaker 6: play ball with J a lot because I was like
Speaker 6: I was really into playing basketball back then.
Speaker 2: Were you official? Did you have a first edition Deaf
Speaker 2: jam jacket?
Speaker 6: I did. I had a Burgundy jacket for sure.
Speaker 2: So did that mean everything?
Speaker 6: That meant you could get into any club for free
Speaker 6: and definitely meant that chicks were checking for you. So
Speaker 6: in the coincide, I was in the Stuicy Ad back
Speaker 6: then too. So between those two things, between those two things,
Speaker 6: it was like I was like nineteen twenty years old,
Speaker 6: you know, I could do a lot of things. I
Speaker 6: was brand named below Fourteenth Street.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned the Latin Quarter, Latin Quarters, was I
Speaker 1: I've never heard a club more name dropped in acid
Speaker 1: hip hop.
Speaker 6: I mean, because that's where the changing the guard comes from,
Speaker 6: That's where that next wave came to.
Speaker 2: Can you tell me what a typical night was in
Speaker 2: the Latin Quarter?
Speaker 6: Typical night of the Latin Quarters was?
Speaker 2: What night was it?
Speaker 6: It was? It was Friday? Was the night you wanted
Speaker 6: to go so red alert DJ and and it was
Speaker 6: always Brooklyn violator beef that was always possible to jump off.
Speaker 6: So he said beef beef, like serious beef, like for real,
Speaker 6: real live beef. Because when you went to rap shows
Speaker 6: back then, it was dangerous like and and and you
Speaker 6: didn't care. I mean, I didn't have nothing to take.
Speaker 6: What do you can take my deaf jam backet? No,
Speaker 6: I didn't have. No, I had thirty six dollars.
Speaker 2: Man. So someone would come in profiling light with a
Speaker 2: bunch of slick ricked gold on they.
Speaker 6: Were taking your ship? Was it for Green Mission Posse?
Speaker 6: All the dudes on the back of Eric's album, they
Speaker 6: might grab your ship or some other people, but the
Speaker 6: A Team Cane's people, you know there was. There was
Speaker 6: a lot of people out there who were doing a
Speaker 6: lot of things, and I was friends with Red, so
Speaker 6: so I had to pass. I didn't have to check
Speaker 6: my coat. I could go upstairs hang out with Red.
Speaker 6: That's how I met I met, That's I met d Nice.
Speaker 6: I knew karras one back then. Search is the only
Speaker 6: other white dude I've ever seen that. Oh and Dave
Speaker 6: Funk and Klein Rest in Peace. You know it was
Speaker 6: it was a wild environment, but uh, you know, you'd
Speaker 6: see like a great act might to justice and Kara
Speaker 6: rest would come out. I seen Dougie battle Bismarcky on
Speaker 6: the beat box at the anniversary and Dougie pulled out
Speaker 6: the harmonica and slayed biz what played a harmonic MV
Speaker 6: Bucks at the same time and did the cool ast
Speaker 6: Dougie dance and he was just I mean, doug to
Speaker 6: me is the greatest student. Didn't have the biggest record ever,
Speaker 6: because he was the best performer pretty much. I mean,
Speaker 6: he was amazing. I said MC lights for a show.
Speaker 6: I seen Kane DJ for Schante. He was he was
Speaker 6: the DJ back then. He was DJ for everybody before
Speaker 6: he was an artist and my friend, my friend Key.
Speaker 6: Oh he's another white guy, but he's he was so
Speaker 6: extra extra.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 6: My man Blake Latham, he told me that Kane was
Speaker 6: the best rapper in Brooklyn, and I wanted to bring
Speaker 6: Kane in the office and and Russell and said, noah,
Speaker 6: he's fucking with flat tying them and we can't steal
Speaker 6: artists because we're doing their deal at Warner Brothers. I
Speaker 6: remember that Chris Rocky used to do comedy up there.
Speaker 6: I mean it was you know, Carris, one of.
Speaker 2: Them, and it was just club like how many people.
Speaker 6: Maybe a thousand people, not even maybe No, forty six
Speaker 6: Street right right there, right there it was. It was
Speaker 6: you know what's stairs? It was Heather Hunter was the
Speaker 6: co check girl.
Speaker 2: What's the soul food? What's the soul food spot on
Speaker 2: forty fifth Uh.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean Popeys Virgils.
Speaker 2: Ye, that is the Latin Quarter. No, well, at least
Speaker 2: across the street. The hotel That's.
Speaker 6: Quarter was on Broadway. It was right on the block
Speaker 6: between Broadway and Seventh. It's not there anymore. It's a
Speaker 6: parking lot now in a big building. It's been torn down.
Speaker 2: So it's not on forty sixth Street or forty fifth,
Speaker 2: forty six.
Speaker 6: It's not there anymore. Popey's was right across the street.
Speaker 6: McDonald's was.
Speaker 2: I remember where the oh guys in bad that. I
Speaker 2: remember where the Popeyes is.
Speaker 6: So I saw Salt and Pepper. I've seen Sandy get
Speaker 6: a chain take it right in front of Popeyes. It
Speaker 6: was like, yeah, that's a nice thing. Bang Is that
Speaker 6: just typical?
Speaker 2: Like that was how it was.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, you know who I knew back then,
Speaker 6: Clark Kent. That was my man from back then. He
Speaker 6: was always the coolest cat. He was cool back then.
Speaker 2: Love Clark. He got me my deal with Nike.
Speaker 6: That's my big guy, Clark, that's my brother.
Speaker 2: So you would go there just on the weekend, I know.
Speaker 6: Every Friday. Every Friday for about a year, I go
Speaker 6: to Latin Quarters and it was just a wild spot.
Speaker 2: Other spots to this.
Speaker 6: Red Parrot was was popping on fifty seven occasionally that
Speaker 6: that became the Copa. Then there was downtown parties like Payday,
Speaker 6: Milky Way.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 6: I mean I went to like I went everywhere. Man,
Speaker 6: I went to the rooftop, I want to everything, you know.
Speaker 6: I went to skate Key.
Speaker 2: So was there a difference between the Harlem parties and
Speaker 2: the oh hell yeah, So what's a rooftop party. What's
Speaker 2: the difference between I mean cars one go to Harlem and.
Speaker 6: Of course he would he would kill it. I mean
Speaker 6: the rooftop was like, for one hundred percent, I'm the
Speaker 6: only white guy there. And downtown parties, you know, they
Speaker 6: had much hotter girls, less threat of violence.
Speaker 2: You know, the rooftop was more.
Speaker 6: Quarters. No, Quarters was the most violent because dudes from
Speaker 6: Brooklyn went go to the rooftop right because they didn't
Speaker 6: check your coder to get in or anything to check
Speaker 6: your coat everywhere, except if you knew people at the quarters,
Speaker 6: you have to check your coat. So if you came,
Speaker 6: if you came with red alert, you don't have to
Speaker 6: check your coat. Ah, depending who you came in the
Speaker 6: door with. So you know it was hierarchy. So this
Speaker 6: guy rend the land Quarter's name is Mike, Mike Goldberg.
Speaker 6: He was a Jewish guy. He'd be at the door
Speaker 6: count he'd be at the door and he would all
Speaker 6: and this dude pee we got killed was the bouncer
Speaker 6: in this dude house. And I knew them all. They
Speaker 6: would all be like, oh you're good. Who you with like,
Speaker 6: come on, you're good. So I got to know them all, sure,
Speaker 6: so much history and quarters were I saw everybody. That's
Speaker 6: where everyone came from. Though karras One came Bismarcky Jewish
Speaker 6: crew rock him everybody.
Speaker 2: All right? Can I ask you? Have you seen somebody.
Speaker 1: Not make a good impression on the Latin Quarter club
Speaker 1: that otherwise?
Speaker 6: Because hammer, wow, wait a minute, new music seminar formed
Speaker 6: at the Latin Quarter in the New Music Seminar when
Speaker 6: the Quarters wasn't even a spot no more, and he
Speaker 6: didn't rock. I mean you, is this the chronological orders bad?
Speaker 6: But I know Grand Pooball was there too because we
Speaker 6: were laughing.
Speaker 11: So would this would possibly be the incident that's being
Speaker 11: referred to at the of the turn this mother out video.
Speaker 2: You ain't hting a new hitting shout? Okay? So that
Speaker 2: was eighty seven, eighty eight, eighty.
Speaker 6: Eighty eight because Cors was on the way down.
Speaker 2: Wow, because this album was eighty eighty seven. So in
Speaker 2: my in my head, I'm thinking like you're speaking of
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight, eighty nine to ninety, so you's saying
Speaker 2: that it was on the decline even in eighty eight
Speaker 2: eighty eight.
Speaker 6: It was, it was on it. It was starting to
Speaker 6: be a little too violent. Little it just wasn't popping
Speaker 6: like it was because you could go to downtown on
Speaker 6: parties and it wasn't as violent, right, and there was
Speaker 6: more girls.
Speaker 2: All right. So a nerd like myself, where would I go?
Speaker 6: What year.
Speaker 2: Eighty nine? Now? Mind you if.
Speaker 6: You might go to Nels or you might go to
Speaker 6: to Milky Way, depending what you want to do.
Speaker 2: McDonald all right, So should we get into block of
Speaker 2: music before we start talking about his life? As in
Speaker 2: r Yo man I I gotta geek out just on
Speaker 2: on hipp hop folklore. This is Dante Ross on Quest
Speaker 2: Love Supreme only on Pandora. I guess we're gonna go
Speaker 2: into uh some st fifty stimulating what is stimulated dummies?
Speaker 6: Give us a name because he was like, yeall some
Speaker 6: stimulated dummies. When we were working with l O. N.
Speaker 6: S way back, who were the stimulated dumb was me,
Speaker 6: my partner John Gamble, and my partner GiB did John
Speaker 6: and uh we all had various roles at different times.
Speaker 6: John was the engineer, me and GiB You war the diggers.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 13: Three strikes the fop dous three strikes, the fove thousand three.
Speaker 2: Strikes, the FOP thousand three.
Speaker 13: Strikes, the five douts three strikes, the five thousand three strikes,
Speaker 13: the FOP thousand three strikes, the FOP thousand man starting
Speaker 13: FOP thoutans ritchy written.
Speaker 2: So that was three strikes, five thousand third base on
Speaker 2: Quest Love Supreme, produced by our guest Dante Ross and
Speaker 2: the Stimulated Dummies that' Steve fifties. So I guess we
Speaker 2: should start.
Speaker 6: You know what those drums are?
Speaker 2: Right? Uh M?
Speaker 6: I just capt a clean copy of the forty five
Speaker 6: again too?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 6: Super Fine from behind Woman by the Cleveland Wrecking Crew.
Speaker 2: Wow, I never guess that.
Speaker 6: I was a large the other day and I was like,
Speaker 6: you got this?
Speaker 2: He was like, damn, so you're still digging.
Speaker 6: I still dig for forty five is larger than Diamond
Speaker 6: got me back into it recently.
Speaker 2: I'm yeah, I've running around again.
Speaker 6: The large bro is like he just he took me back.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I thought I was out the game of digging, and
Speaker 1: then I saw Diamond cutting, Diamond cutting, uh these records
Speaker 1: on YouTube forty five and then like and then it
Speaker 1: pulled me right back into it.
Speaker 6: Like he was cutting the booker t he was killing it.
Speaker 2: I want to get out. I literally wanted to get
Speaker 2: out the game of digging. And now it's calling me.
Speaker 6: It's I'm just on the forty fives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, same here, like I'm only collecting forty fives now?
Speaker 2: And is it because we're bored or we just called
Speaker 2: we're bored?
Speaker 6: I bought every sneaker. I don't need any more. Jordan's
Speaker 6: got a house.
Speaker 2: What am I going to do?
Speaker 5: So?
Speaker 2: How did you become an R? Was it by designer? Just?
Speaker 4: Nah?
Speaker 6: It was the fault man. I was just I knew
Speaker 6: music and I was always around and and uh daddy
Speaker 6: O from stettsosnic He loved me. That's that's my og.
Speaker 6: And he they offered him a job at Tommy Boy
Speaker 6: and he plugged me in and he was like, I
Speaker 6: don't want to do it, but my little homie right here.
Speaker 6: And I went to meet Monica and she liked me
Speaker 6: and I had a second interview. She played me De
Speaker 6: La Soul's demo and I lost my mind and she
Speaker 6: hired me A couple of days later. This Monica Lynch, yep,
Speaker 6: Monica Lynch was also She's like one of my mentors.
Speaker 6: She's one of the smartest people and the most intense
Speaker 6: people I've ever worked with. She's a wonderful person.
Speaker 2: So well, not what was it like working at Tommy Boy.
Speaker 6: Tommy Boy was wild?
Speaker 2: That was.
Speaker 6: Man, That was a wild job.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 6: I was a wild kid back then too. It was
Speaker 6: like a whole different life.
Speaker 2: The one thing that post told me that blew my mind.
Speaker 6: I'm scared right now.
Speaker 2: The one thing that posted news told me that blew
Speaker 2: my mind about making.
Speaker 1: Three feet High and Rising was the fact that they
Speaker 1: made that entire record for about twenty five thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: which if you know what record budgets are, I mean,
Speaker 1: even in the height of over indulgent recording budget.
Speaker 2: Figures. Let's let's pick it, let's say nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 2: If you're successful.
Speaker 1: R and B act I know that in Vogue was
Speaker 1: I think that the second budget for their budget for
Speaker 1: Funky Devers was like in the area of two million,
Speaker 1: whereas you know, a cat like Michael Jackson, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm certain that his budget was closer to ten million
Speaker 1: for like even a compilation like History History.
Speaker 2: But somebody had to pay for that statue.
Speaker 6: That's a lot of animals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but how in God's name were these budgets? Being like,
Speaker 1: that's the first thing I would ask. I mean, one
Speaker 1: of my favorites about like what were the recording budgets?
Speaker 1: Like cnipers Hill told me like, well, we had a
Speaker 1: good budget ninety thousand, and I'm like what.
Speaker 6: Yep, how I mean? People were just so happy to
Speaker 6: get on, you know what I mean, And studio time
Speaker 6: was cheap. And the crazy thing about Daylave is they
Speaker 6: made most of the record in the studio. It wasn't
Speaker 6: like they came with like anything. We were all recording analogs.
Speaker 6: Everything's done in real time, you know. And they came
Speaker 6: in with the records and sampled half of them right there.
Speaker 6: It wasn't like Paul was showing up with discs. It
Speaker 6: was like most of that stuff got made right then
Speaker 6: and there.
Speaker 2: And with the samples. How did you guys handle that
Speaker 2: at all the time? Well, we cleared, we.
Speaker 6: Cleared all except one. The one we got caught for.
Speaker 2: It doesn't count.
Speaker 6: And I mean, the one thing I'll say about Dayla
Speaker 6: and Paul is they had a lot of those ideas already.
Speaker 6: And and you know this, you know this question It's
Speaker 6: like you have a lot of that stuff mapped out
Speaker 6: in your head already. You know, I'm gonna use this
Speaker 6: with this, with this, with this, with this. So when
Speaker 6: you get in the studio, because you don't have any
Speaker 6: home equipment, you do your stuff, man quick. You know
Speaker 6: exactly what you're gonna use. It's kind of like you've
Speaker 6: already sorted it out in your mind, all right.
Speaker 1: So we have Bob Power, uh, also on Quest Love Supreme,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to get him.
Speaker 6: So Powers did some of that record, not that much though, right,
Speaker 6: But my.
Speaker 2: Point was that the most important element of what made
Speaker 2: three feet High and Rising three and Rising, or the skits,
Speaker 2: and I was trying, I mean the way that it felt,
Speaker 2: It felt like it was happening in real time. Right,
Speaker 2: It felt spontaneous, Right, but I know that you know,
Speaker 2: MIC's have to be set up and samplers have to
Speaker 2: be pressed and looped and all these things. So something
Speaker 2: like take it off, Uh, just a.
Speaker 1: Mindless litany of of of of them dissing fads and
Speaker 1: hip hop sounds. Rather, it sounds that spontaneous at the time,
Speaker 1: or even can you keep a secret? Where I first
Speaker 1: heard Dante is a scrub. I mean, why did they
Speaker 1: call you a scrub by the way, because this is great?
Speaker 1: So like you were you the boss Bill of three Rising.
Speaker 2: I don't know about that.
Speaker 6: I was really in a playing sports back then and
Speaker 6: just athletic, like it's like a skateboard and all that.
Speaker 6: And we want to play basketball in LA with some
Speaker 6: the rhyme syndicate and those dudes couldn't play ball. I
Speaker 6: was like, Jesus christy fucking scrubs. I was like, look
Speaker 6: at you guys, like really, And that's really where it
Speaker 6: came from. And then another time we went to Houston
Speaker 6: it was like one hundred and ten degrees and they
Speaker 6: wouldn't go swimming, and I like, you know, I was
Speaker 6: in the pool like are you kidding me? Scrubs, Like
Speaker 6: you ain't going in the water, and they like wouldn't
Speaker 6: go in the water. So that was that, and that's
Speaker 6: they were like, Okay, we got you.
Speaker 2: So when they're turning this into you guys like I mean,
Speaker 2: how how do you an r three ft high?
Speaker 6: I mean I was there the whole time they made
Speaker 6: it pretty much, so it wasn't like they were turning
Speaker 6: it into me. I was like I was in the
Speaker 6: studio like ninety percent of the time, and and we
Speaker 6: were just namored. Because the first two singles had hit.
Speaker 6: We knew we had something. And the biggest quandary was
Speaker 6: do we put the album out in October November? We
Speaker 6: save it to next year, and we pushed it back.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, you released it in January of
Speaker 2: eighty nine.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because we didn't want to put it out at
Speaker 6: the end of the year and the fourth quarter and
Speaker 6: have it miss and and you know, me myself and I.
Speaker 6: It's funny because that was not one of the first
Speaker 6: songs they gave us, But when we heard it, we
Speaker 6: knew what was a hit and what was What was
Speaker 6: ironic is that the first two records we had, we
Speaker 6: had K Day on retainer basically, and so they had
Speaker 6: they had a big West Coast audience. We would go
Speaker 6: to k every time we're out there. I one with them.
Speaker 6: We did shows at World on Wheels, which was the
Speaker 6: craziest crypt out spot ever, and man, we had an
Speaker 6: audience out there, so.
Speaker 2: That that was the Latin quarter of the West Coast.
Speaker 6: That's when we first seen Gang Bang and me and
Speaker 6: Pos almost got arrested Jay walking on the Street. We
Speaker 6: seen dude of Jerry Crows all that, I met Dre
Speaker 6: back then I met Drey and and ice Cube. It
Speaker 6: was it was bugged out. We met seven eight three,
Speaker 6: We met Cypress before they were Cypress, like all that.
Speaker 2: Oh cool and Cali I forgot about seven three. That
Speaker 2: was the Alchemist. That was mugs. Oh sorry. Alchemist was like,
Speaker 2: we don't, we don't know, look alike? Who was who
Speaker 2: it was? I was hooligan hooligans. Damn, I'm tripping. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna getting my West Coast history mixed up? Bludfoot Wow.
Speaker 12: So how.
Speaker 2: I mean, how do you sell? They are sold? Because well, we.
Speaker 6: Already had a captive audience, so it wasn't a hard sell.
Speaker 6: That's you know, that's what you're taking out of the equation.
Speaker 6: They already had a validated fan base. We knew it.
Speaker 6: Those singles were selling. But we were on the radio
Speaker 6: daytime radio in New York, in LA We knew they
Speaker 6: could sell tickets. People were going to see them. When
Speaker 6: Deylas Soul played, everyone would go to see them. They
Speaker 6: were the coolest band. So to us it was more like, oh,
Speaker 6: where's the single? We have a single, Now, how do
Speaker 6: we run with this, Let's run and Monica came up
Speaker 6: with a lot of the imagery. She she just poured water.
Speaker 6: She like she put growth powder on like what they
Speaker 6: already had, Like she threw grow lights on the hippie image,
Speaker 6: you know, and they kind of that was them naturally.
Speaker 6: They were just different. And she instead of you know,
Speaker 6: pondering it, she was like, oh, let's run with this.
Speaker 6: This is great. And until her credit, she somehow knew
Speaker 6: that collegiate White America eat it up. And they did.
Speaker 2: I mean it went.
Speaker 6: It went quick, man, it was it was It was
Speaker 6: not slow, like really they they were on. They were
Speaker 6: on from from the minute the album came out.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I always say that that album literally cut
Speaker 2: a lot of the bullying around my neighborhood off. It
Speaker 2: became cool to be weird. Yeah, literally because even before
Speaker 2: like before then, uh, my only black hippie reference was
Speaker 2: like maybe Princess Sign of the Times period, of which
Speaker 2: it was still shaky in the hood.
Speaker 1: But once eighty nine rolled around and Kat saw me,
Speaker 1: especially after the potholes in my lawn video, they were
Speaker 1: just like, oh, oh okay, you crazy like the daylight guys,
Speaker 1: and like that was my past like suddenly I became cool.
Speaker 2: It was validated. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 6: I mean they were just dressing like a lot of
Speaker 6: kids were dressing downtown. They were just from Long Island.
Speaker 6: But it wasn't rap dudes dressing like that. It was
Speaker 6: kids who were younger and more progressive.
Speaker 1: But the thing was because of the defensive nature of
Speaker 1: the Lost Soul is dead, I am too, am I
Speaker 1: to believe that they did more fighting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, defending themselves.
Speaker 6: I mean, if you ever talked to Pass, you know,
Speaker 6: I mean, man, me and Mace got.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they got kicked off the nichel. How do you
Speaker 2: get kicked off the ll to it?
Speaker 6: I mean they were got in a fight. They were
Speaker 6: always you know, they weren't having it like Mace's you know,
Speaker 6: he was all of them. I mean, they're not soft kids,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean. I mean, you know, they're
Speaker 6: still young black men, even if they have some hippie imagery,
Speaker 6: they're like still down to go for that.
Speaker 2: Were they getting in fights because people because of.
Speaker 6: The people tried to test them for sure? For sure? Wow,
Speaker 6: nobody in the BK lounge just as well, you know,
Speaker 6: I mean, granted that's funny because because Pass hit me
Speaker 6: up today. I just those That's one of the greatest
Speaker 6: groups I ever worked with. They're like just even now,
Speaker 6: they're just such great rappers. And that's the other thing.
Speaker 6: They invented an entire new way of rapping, right like
Speaker 6: they were unique and original. They weren't. They were sands
Speaker 6: cliche and tough guy bullshit.
Speaker 2: So the whole time, there wasn't any fear of this
Speaker 2: might not make it or.
Speaker 6: Not really man because we we knew we had a
Speaker 6: captive audience. It wasn't it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: We did two singles before you got to Remember and
Speaker 6: both those singles hit plug tuning in and poddles hit.
Speaker 6: We knew we had something.
Speaker 2: Uh. Also, I guess Latifa, you did you a r
Speaker 2: her album? Yeah?
Speaker 6: No, I didn't do the whole album. I signed her.
Speaker 6: I signed her because of Latin quarters. Forty five King
Speaker 6: came up to me and knew who I was and
Speaker 6: played me a beat tape, and I knew who he
Speaker 6: was because his promas weren't read alert and him and
Speaker 6: Fact five Freddy called me up like I think it
Speaker 6: was that Monday on the phone and played me a
Speaker 6: bunch of Latifa records over the phone, And I don't
Speaker 6: know why Freddy didn't come to the meeting that week,
Speaker 6: but they came without Freddy, and he brought the whole
Speaker 6: flavor unit and we played around. Now it was four
Speaker 6: or fives a patchy patchy, No, it's just a patchy Ltzi,
Speaker 6: Marky Fresh, Who's who's a slept on maybe member? And
Speaker 6: forty five King and and we decided we're going to
Speaker 6: sign on the tief. I called Monika and and I said,
Speaker 6: play that again. We played it again and we ended
Speaker 6: up signing her. We signed up for peanuts too.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 6: And and I will tell you this, she's wanted. Unlike Dayla.
Speaker 6: She exuded superstar energy from the minute I met her.
Speaker 6: She had a million dollar smile, and she was funny
Speaker 6: and engaging. She had it like I was like this,
Speaker 6: she got it. She could sing hi rap too. I
Speaker 6: didn't know. She didn't write raps back then, so.
Speaker 2: She knew instantly. Blamo like we were like, I'm a star.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't know she knew it, but we knew it.
Speaker 2: Did you sign anyone else? Tommy Boyd?
Speaker 6: Is your underground? But then I left. I didn't. I
Speaker 6: didn't stay to make the record. I found what you
Speaker 6: liked because I didn't make any money.
Speaker 2: How they how do they come across your radar?
Speaker 6: Even this dude named Adrian Gregory who had TNT Records.
Speaker 6: I knew him from from Cats in the Bay. I
Speaker 6: have a lot of family in the Bay and I
Speaker 6: met him when I was in the Bay. I can't
Speaker 6: remember what I was doing. And he was like, yo,
Speaker 6: I got this record, do what you Like and bang
Speaker 6: bang bang, like yeah, exactly. And he was working with
Speaker 6: Digital back then, and they gave me. They had Underwater
Speaker 6: Rhymes was the record he gave me. And then he
Speaker 6: sent me do what you Like. And then I was like, oh,
Speaker 6: this one's popping, and we signed him. And I played
Speaker 6: do what you Like in the commers room at Tommy
Speaker 6: Boy for Daylight and they were like you better sign that.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 6: And then we signed them. And then you know, I
Speaker 6: wasn't making any money. I started getting offers to get
Speaker 6: jobs elsewhere. I almost went to work at Capital for
Speaker 6: my man Tim Carr, who stole the Beasties from from
Speaker 6: Russell and them like a thief in the night. My
Speaker 6: man he tried to get me over there and and
Speaker 6: and I didn't take the job. And I remember he
Speaker 6: had signed Mantronics and and he played me man Tronics
Speaker 6: new music, and I was like, I'm not feeling it.
Speaker 2: Was that the Brooklyn way to get into.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah it wasn't popping though.
Speaker 2: I like that one, like that one.
Speaker 6: I like Joyce Simms. Yeah, I liked all that. I
Speaker 6: think that's that's hop. But so people were offering me jobs.
Speaker 6: Ended up taking a job at Electric because I like
Speaker 6: the guy. I mean it was Tommy Silverman upset or well,
Speaker 6: Tommy Silverman was mad cheap, like I'm gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 6: just say it straight up. My lawyer was Andy tavel
Speaker 6: at the time, and we wanted to get me like
Speaker 6: forty thousand a year, and he offered me like thirty.
Speaker 6: I was making like twenty five. Maybe it's thirty something.
Speaker 6: And he offered me a company credit card too, and
Speaker 6: and my man was like Andy Tavl was like, I
Speaker 6: got mad in the meeting and he was like Dante, Relax.
Speaker 6: And after the meeting he took me out. He said,
Speaker 6: that guy's small potatoes. There's a whole world for you
Speaker 6: out here. Relax. You have a big record. We're gonna
Speaker 6: we're gonna, I'm gonna shake some trees an article mentioned
Speaker 6: me in the New York Times, and he started calling people.
Speaker 6: People started offering me jobs. Russell tried to get me
Speaker 6: to work there again. Capital offered me a job, and
Speaker 6: I took a job. Literally, I took a job at
Speaker 6: Electric Records cause I really liked the boss, Bob Krasnow.
Speaker 6: He told me he had signed Parliament Funkadelic back in
Speaker 6: day ambertra Pryor and I had had I had a
Speaker 6: three finger ring on and he took my ring off.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 6: He asked me if he could try to ring on
Speaker 6: and he gave me some big diamond pinky ring and
Speaker 6: I was like, yeah, we should trade rings. He's like,
Speaker 6: I don't think so, kid, And I just thought his
Speaker 6: whole his whole style was he was real cool and uh.
Speaker 6: He offered me real money, and I decided that's where
Speaker 6: I wanted to go. So you're saying that a hip
Speaker 6: hop A and R, there was no such was a
Speaker 6: hitting off an R yet. Okay, So what would a
Speaker 6: regular an R If you're working at Atlantic sixty to
Speaker 6: a Hundle as a director maybe sixty maybe one hundred.
Speaker 2: So the cat that like signs led Zeppelin or she
Speaker 2: back then they're making at least six figures. Yes, at
Speaker 2: least and this is only because Tommy Boy was a
Speaker 2: small label. And why why did they may like when
Speaker 2: did the Warner deal go down?
Speaker 6: Like why Brothers deal was already in place, so even then, yeah,
Speaker 6: and Monica. The crazy thing is Monica don't want me
Speaker 6: to leave, and I didn't want to leave. And I
Speaker 6: told Andy that. He was like, they're never going to
Speaker 6: pay you. He's like, I was like, but I love
Speaker 6: my groups. He's like, they won't love you. Don't worry
Speaker 6: about it. Go get a check straight up. He told
Speaker 6: me he kicked the real to me, and he was right.
Speaker 2: And and.
Speaker 6: I wanted to sign Grand Pooba because I love Masters
Speaker 6: of Ceremony and I had the Brand Nubian demo and
Speaker 6: Monica Lynch said, I just want to say to you,
Speaker 6: I don't think it's ethical if you signed Grand Poohba.
Speaker 6: And I was like, don't worry, I ain't gonna sign
Speaker 6: Grand Pooba because I signed Brand Nubian's.
Speaker 2: That was that was so was that your first signing
Speaker 2: at his man Fante's man.
Speaker 6: And that it was fire because she flopped. I was
Speaker 6: on the ropes. And then an article came out Nelson George,
Speaker 6: my man, who he Monica got so tight? She said,
Speaker 6: Dante didn't really sign Dayla Soul and and he's taking credit.
Speaker 6: He's executed. Nelson George wrote some little thing about me
Speaker 6: in his column, and yeah.
Speaker 2: He's trying to do a takedown.
Speaker 6: I don't think he did it on purpose. I don't
Speaker 6: know what it was. You know, Nelson's my man. Whatever,
Speaker 6: blah blah blah, want on the bridge. And then this
Speaker 6: lady I worked with, she she put she photocopied and
Speaker 6: put it in front of a couple of people and
Speaker 6: they called me in the office and I thought they
Speaker 6: were going to fire me. Hat a flop and that
Speaker 6: came out and my boss was like, I don't care
Speaker 6: about all that. He's like, go make a hit. No
Speaker 6: one remembers. No one remembers the flops. That's what he
Speaker 6: told me. And Brand Nubian, So we talked about Dayla.
Speaker 6: Brand Nubian was signed for fifty five thousand dollars and
Speaker 6: they went over budget, and I thought I was going
Speaker 6: to get fired. And I told my boss, I said,
Speaker 6: I'm twelve thousand dollars over budget. He said, who cares?
Speaker 6: Metallica record cost a million? Dollars to make.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, like, at what point.
Speaker 5: Is it?
Speaker 6: At one point is it a good record? I said,
Speaker 6: I think it's great.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: See you're saying that hip hop, even in its classic phase,
Speaker 1: was so cheap Baltic Avenue, Mediterranean Avenue.
Speaker 2: That majorly just saw it as a quickie cash.
Speaker 6: Who knew? I mean you know what, I'll even blame
Speaker 6: myself a little bit on that, right because I thought
Speaker 6: that's what you paid for a record. I didn't say
Speaker 6: they need two hundred thousand dollars. I didn't know. I
Speaker 6: was coming from the Tommy Boy paradigm of making records,
Speaker 6: So I thought you made a rap record for fifty
Speaker 6: thousand dollars. I thought that was good. You didn't know
Speaker 6: the scale was Yeah, I had no concept. Even being
Speaker 6: super cool at the b SE's and seeing how rich
Speaker 6: they got, I still had no concept. I really didn't.
Speaker 6: I was young and naive. I did not know.
Speaker 5: So shout out to the Beasties for realizing that over
Speaker 5: saw the niggas for what they did to the Cold Crush.
Speaker 2: So Brand Nubian now.
Speaker 6: My favorite record I ever made. I'm just gonna say
Speaker 6: it right now.
Speaker 5: Dude, I'm gonna ask you are you gonna add because
Speaker 5: I think I know where you're going.
Speaker 2: But well, you know, I gotta ask by the five
Speaker 2: mics or what?
Speaker 6: Well they got five mics, right, hell yeah, first five
Speaker 6: mics when I see you know they had tried to
Speaker 6: do me. It still got five. But you know something
Speaker 6: though it don't say it was hot, I'm it was.
Speaker 2: It wasn't hot.
Speaker 5: It wasn't hot, But I understood why because all every
Speaker 5: record had that had that record at the time.
Speaker 2: Well, it's weird you said it because Okay, so the
Speaker 2: day you remember when every seminal hip hop release required
Speaker 2: like a mass listening amongst you and your boys, like
Speaker 2: you all sit in the room like this and you
Speaker 2: overanalyze it.
Speaker 6: They smoke. We when we do that too, at least
Speaker 6: I did.
Speaker 2: So the day that we listened to Ready to Die,
Speaker 2: there was.
Speaker 6: One song I ain't like on it?
Speaker 2: What what was the one? What was your one? Respect?
Speaker 6: Yeah? How you knew that?
Speaker 2: But even that, to me, it was like, even though
Speaker 2: it was the worst song, it was still pretty good.
Speaker 6: Before that record came out, the way I heard it
Speaker 6: was I was driving to the Hamptons with Jessica Rosenbom
Speaker 6: and she said, you want to hear the Biggie record.
Speaker 6: I was like, for hell yeah, and I the only
Speaker 6: song I didn't like.
Speaker 1: Well, my manager at the time said, oh, I see
Speaker 1: what they did. And I was like what and he says,
Speaker 1: you know, like and he used the brand Nubian Alumics example.
Speaker 1: He says, you know how the try to Do Me
Speaker 1: song was supposed to be like that one small attempt
Speaker 1: at getting an R and B hit on an otherwise
Speaker 1: hip hop record. He's like yeah, He's like, you know
Speaker 1: that unbelievable is to try to do men of this?
Speaker 1: Well no, no, no, I mean but no, no, but
Speaker 1: just in terms of where you had a hip hop
Speaker 1: record with just the one token arm.
Speaker 2: Big attempt, well no, no no. But he's basically saying
Speaker 2: that they reversed a formula and made every song was
Speaker 2: single potential, but the one on the ground so wound
Speaker 2: up being the underground record, which was, you know, unbelievable,
Speaker 2: which you know it's it's kind of reversed, but at
Speaker 2: the time, like I didn't. I guess I think I
Speaker 2: knew if Masters's ceremony, I haven't seen it in the
Speaker 2: record bins.
Speaker 6: But ceremonies. Fire. All I know is that cracked out.
Speaker 2: Was fire really fire?
Speaker 6: Fire? They were fired. Pooba was fire back then.
Speaker 2: But how are you sold on? Like, what was it
Speaker 2: about the group? You just wanted Pooba and whatever whatever
Speaker 2: you wanted to do.
Speaker 6: Also, I was hung out with Poolba. He was just
Speaker 6: so cool. I sang out him and paus K back
Speaker 6: then and they were just man cool. I just wanted
Speaker 6: to fuck with both of them.
Speaker 2: See why weren't they a crew? They should have been,
Speaker 2: but because of the first priority situation possible.
Speaker 6: They should have been.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I felt disclaimeron tried to do me.
Speaker 6: That was one of percent grand Poolba is doing. That
Speaker 6: was him because man, Dave hall is from mount that's
Speaker 6: his man, and he's dope. Dave was Mariah Carey joint.
Speaker 2: He was trying to eat Dave jam Hallam. He was
Speaker 2: trying to eat do me. That was the thing, because
Speaker 2: then it was well the genius he had come do
Speaker 2: me like that was the That was a couple of
Speaker 2: years before that. Did you have a hand and sign
Speaker 2: the genius? No, No was on top.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Rize was on yo rizzle when I went when
Speaker 6: I signed dirty, I you probably heard the story how
Speaker 6: I signed Dirty Stretching by Beatle movie I Plug Plug
Speaker 6: I heard, I was so, I was loving Wu Tang
Speaker 6: protecting neck was and Maddie c my man who worked aloud.
Speaker 6: He told me that they weren't all signed, like almost
Speaker 6: going like grab one of them while you can, like me,
Speaker 6: throw me the rock. So I heard him up on
Speaker 6: Stretching Bob and I and I jumped in the cab
Speaker 6: and I went up there and I walked in and
Speaker 6: Rizza was there, and I was like, oh Ship. He
Speaker 6: was like, yo, I know you from the God mil Kwan.
Speaker 6: I was like, yeah, I remember you used to be
Speaker 6: on time. But it's like, yeah, you knew me when.
Speaker 2: I was whack, straight up, straight up.
Speaker 6: I'll never forget it. And I was talking those dudes
Speaker 6: for a while and I was like, yo, I I
Speaker 6: love Dirty, I love Meth. Come see me. And I
Speaker 6: was Thursday, supposed to see me Friday. They came Monday
Speaker 6: and I and I remember they came to my office
Speaker 6: and I told Rizza, I want to sign Dirty and Meth.
Speaker 6: That's a new run DMC. And he told me, yo,
Speaker 6: that's an ill thought. But now I'm gonna put methanem
Speaker 6: over there with Russell, but I'm gonna give you dirty
Speaker 6: because he fits in with the gods. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 6: And he had a map, he had a master, he
Speaker 6: had a mapped out. He like he wanted to put
Speaker 6: him there straight up, all right, so many questions, wait
Speaker 6: and and I'll say this too. Rizza was like the coolest, smartest,
Speaker 6: most insightful. Like that guy is like back, I mean
Speaker 6: from then to now, he's just like a gracious individual
Speaker 6: like he always. I was just had great vibes with
Speaker 6: that guy.
Speaker 2: He is. Wait, since since we're on to try to
Speaker 2: do me? All right? So this is the significance of
Speaker 2: trying to do me was that this is was there
Speaker 2: attempt at trying on the radio, right, didn't get on
Speaker 2: the radio. I can see that urban outfit of love
Speaker 2: shirts right now with the floppy I'll see if Heavy
Speaker 2: D were on this, it'd be you know, that's what
Speaker 2: it is.
Speaker 6: It's a heavy D record.
Speaker 4: See baby.
Speaker 14: Shot the dhote.
Speaker 2: Why you want to be so found? You know, swinging
Speaker 2: one for something is not my style. I'm the text
Speaker 2: tove min to die in the camp. But I because
Speaker 2: that's one that could be just.
Speaker 12: So your first rip is that I'm never hold and
Speaker 12: you're sick and tired.
Speaker 2: Of being alone. But baby, I got what to do,
Speaker 2: and they ain't.
Speaker 12: No, we're gonna stop me for being bron How about
Speaker 12: your rings and things.
Speaker 14: And all that good stuff, but you still beeping that
Speaker 14: dast not.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 14: Let's sit down at discots, baby buster. When I'm still
Speaker 14: a sleep friend. When I get out of close out
Speaker 14: window friends, I think the best thing for you and
Speaker 14: me is just to play g.
Speaker 6: You know what Johnson.
Speaker 2: But I'm saying that when I got this record, I
Speaker 2: wasn't exactly fast forwarding it. Matter of fact, I did
Speaker 2: fast forward. It was too fast forward when because there
Speaker 2: was too this too? Okay? Was this one in my
Speaker 2: ministry dance ministry? Yeah, I love Dan there is?
Speaker 6: That was a military.
Speaker 2: That's what didn't I didn't pass forward as my ministry.
Speaker 2: I used to run that way.
Speaker 1: I knew was that I read the Okay, So this
Speaker 1: is when I knew the source was the Bible, because
Speaker 1: when I saw the review. First of all, they got
Speaker 1: a five mic review and.
Speaker 6: They had a song that wasn't on there on that tape.
Speaker 6: They had a song that didn't make the album, which
Speaker 6: it was a song with the scrolled jettis of where
Speaker 6: is poo Bah? And it and the drums for it
Speaker 6: became what's the four one one?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 6: No, not what's the four and one? It was the
Speaker 6: Bismark drums Loafia Alfa rock and and that's why Puff
Speaker 6: was fucking with Poohba back then. Oh where is Pool?
Speaker 6: I need that song? John Scheckter has it and I
Speaker 6: was like his and when the record make the record?
Speaker 6: I have no idea why. There's several songs.
Speaker 2: There's several songs.
Speaker 6: She did that never made the record. Like there was
Speaker 6: also the Pete Rock song on this on a solo album.
Speaker 6: What Yeah, you don't know about the song?
Speaker 2: Pete Rock song didn't make the Bober.
Speaker 6: Maxwell Yes, their honey how You Live in It's It's
Speaker 6: on YouTube and Penguin. I have no Let me just
Speaker 6: say this. There was no explaining the Grand Pooba.
Speaker 2: There is no rhyme or reason the wait he had
Speaker 2: the final sale. Weren't you a r on the records?
Speaker 6: I mean I never got the master They made it
Speaker 6: in Peach House on Peach peased to have the eight
Speaker 6: track cassette in the house they made it on that.
Speaker 6: I I had a cassette, it made it to taste.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that, Okay, when we get to Pete Rock,
Speaker 2: you're saying that half that stuff was just made on
Speaker 2: an A track.
Speaker 6: No, I mean just that was. He made all his
Speaker 6: demos like that. That's why they were so bright. So
Speaker 6: when he went to Chunk Camp, I mean to Green Street,
Speaker 6: that's why his records were so bright because he wanted
Speaker 6: to match what he's doing in the house on the cassette.
Speaker 1: Chase, the demo Chase, the demo with Bob Powers is Chase,
Speaker 1: the demo demo Whitest Wow. So all right, So the
Speaker 1: first line of the Source review was brand Nubian is
Speaker 1: New York and that just checked to write the review.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he did, but it just because
Speaker 1: I haven't even heard of him. But the fact that
Speaker 1: in the previous Source uh uh there's Summer issue in
Speaker 1: which uh, I mean they gave trial. They reviewed a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of records, and America's Most Wanted.
Speaker 2: Got five did so the record they reviewed like thirty
Speaker 2: albums and the only five's awarded was People's Instincts of Travels.
Speaker 2: America's most Wanted.
Speaker 6: Go Back, Let's Go back because people's instinctual travels of
Speaker 6: five mic record.
Speaker 2: No. I think at the time it came out, it
Speaker 2: was it was different from what it came. It came
Speaker 2: it was not to me like it's actually my least
Speaker 2: it's not my favorite, least favorite.
Speaker 6: What about beach Rhymes in Life and the love movement?
Speaker 6: Let's get real beast rhymes?
Speaker 2: That was the album.
Speaker 5: I didn't know people hate it until I got on
Speaker 5: it right right, that was bumping Beast.
Speaker 2: Rhymes of Life saying somebody had to here you. I
Speaker 2: bought Chassy so Hey, I mean.
Speaker 6: And killed me and I made Chassy so and I
Speaker 6: know respect. Those records are good records. They're just not
Speaker 6: like they're just not as good as as min Marauders
Speaker 6: and low End Theory, you know, because their bar was
Speaker 6: so high they're competing against themselves.
Speaker 2: Well here's the thing though, because even on Okay Player
Speaker 2: they had one of these like okay twenty five years later,
Speaker 2: how was this hold up? And when it came time
Speaker 2: for Off for One, people were like, no, this is
Speaker 2: definitely not a five mic record, and I had to
Speaker 2: My defense was that it was it was be all
Speaker 2: for One, was beyond the music. It was more the lifestyle.
Speaker 6: I would give it, honestly, I wouldn't give it a
Speaker 6: five mic. That's a four to four and a half.
Speaker 6: There's two duds on it. Five mic record has no duds.
Speaker 2: See, he's coming from a technical standpoint, and I guess
Speaker 2: the industry standard has has sort of Stockholm syndrome me
Speaker 2: to now make the product of the artists more than
Speaker 2: just the album itself.
Speaker 6: Yeah, America, Americas Just Wanted is better than One for All.
Speaker 2: I can rap with you on that.
Speaker 6: So is the first cypress album to me, know what,
Speaker 6: I'll give you that one too.
Speaker 2: Wait, we about to have.
Speaker 6: You have to have because Chris Midnight Marauders better than
Speaker 6: One for All two so was theory.
Speaker 2: But it's a matter of significant importance. The thing is
Speaker 2: is that you're right. You're right, You're right.
Speaker 11: That's how it is.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's a particular song or whatever, but
Speaker 2: it's just the meaning of all for one I mean
Speaker 2: and one fell Swoop, I mean, even all right, take
Speaker 2: it this way. Even a record like New York, New
Speaker 2: York by the Dog Pound, right, and in the first
Speaker 2: twenty seconds of them mocking what they think New York
Speaker 2: is their first reference is what's up God? Indeed, God
Speaker 2: your peace? God? Like making fun of five percent rappers.
Speaker 2: I think brand Nubians image and and and Ara was
Speaker 2: more important than all for one.
Speaker 6: I get it now, you're right, it's a capsule. It's
Speaker 6: a it's a you're like, it's a capsule picture of
Speaker 6: New York at that time, Perreo, the Gods and urths.
Speaker 2: And I gotta ask you how that's the white guy?
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's my question, half Jewish.
Speaker 2: White guy about to say that's the question. That the question.
Speaker 2: I'm like, how did you? Because I remember?
Speaker 5: Because I mean, I think we're just saying it's true
Speaker 5: for me because I grew I came up in the South,
Speaker 5: so I'm in North Carolina. So for me, Off of
Speaker 5: One was the first album that I remember really hearing
Speaker 5: and seeing, you know, the the guys on Earth in
Speaker 5: the five percent terminology and like, okay, well what is that?
Speaker 2: And I remember the wake Up video where they had
Speaker 2: like the white Man as the devil.
Speaker 6: And shit like fab five Freddy did that video okay
Speaker 6: and it got banned from m Did it got about that?
Speaker 6: Think about that.
Speaker 2: This video? But but that well yeah, it was it
Speaker 2: was just learning the terminology and all that.
Speaker 6: I mean that was my first ye crazy is that
Speaker 6: I did so the remix version wake Up's original version,
Speaker 6: and they did that other version second, and that version
Speaker 6: was actually better. Yeah the Warriors joint that one's way better?
Speaker 2: Are you were the.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so my version is really the original version, but
Speaker 6: they wanted to run with that one, and there was
Speaker 6: no arguing with the gods. And the one thing I'll
Speaker 6: say about their version of that song, it did not
Speaker 6: knock in the club, didn't hit it was it was thin.
Speaker 2: All right. There mixes, oh wow, man.
Speaker 6: They love mixes on the first album too, Man.
Speaker 2: How do you? I mean? But again it's like do
Speaker 2: you mess with their progress because they were just loop
Speaker 2: ship and put eight to weight under its it. And
Speaker 2: it wasn't until Pete Rock, which I had actual definition of.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: Even then, like Jungle Brothers in Tribe were.
Speaker 6: Just I don't know, man, JB's coming through was knocking.
Speaker 6: That was but I mean a song like but a
Speaker 6: song like it was done in your house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm saying a song like feeling all right.
Speaker 6: It was just But then when it got to like
Speaker 6: the second I mean, date raping all those records on
Speaker 6: the win through. Those things are knocking.
Speaker 2: Because Bob was there, but you know, I mean after
Speaker 2: he rocks shut him down.
Speaker 6: Even listening to Public Enemy, like I listened to him recently,
Speaker 6: there's no bottom.
Speaker 1: It's all mid range, no definition, zero definition in their mixes.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Like your your era of of.
Speaker 1: Of hip hop was redefined, I guess we now we
Speaker 1: got to have a Pete rock section.
Speaker 2: All right, let's.
Speaker 6: One they know about about Brand Nubian. So Brand Nubian
Speaker 6: was a snapshot of New York at that time period,
Speaker 6: much like cipercill was a snapshot of l A at
Speaker 6: that time period. There's certain records that capture or in
Speaker 6: place too Short Born the Mac. They captured that place,
Speaker 6: that that vibe of that city at that time period.
Speaker 6: And that's why those records were all important. Very different records,
Speaker 6: but all kind of have the same cultural importance to me.
Speaker 2: All Right, So wait, let's let's peep one of my
Speaker 2: all time favorites from Awful One Step to the Rear.
Speaker 2: I got in there with a sample.
Speaker 6: Which one Salame Street record No Yes Hurt and Ernie
Speaker 6: singing no Yep.
Speaker 8: Full circle.
Speaker 2: Ah here we go. Okay, every sring, my s.
Speaker 13: Sring, my sring, my al stuck steps of the rear.
Speaker 2: Grand Plu was on a rival, raised in.
Speaker 12: The ghetto, singing songs, cost a vible, running around town
Speaker 12: giving all the girls bool but snacks. I wouldn't try
Speaker 12: to scale a style. You just my kats Katia figure.
Speaker 12: The way to get paid is the grand the microheightson
Speaker 12: move is to mainson, honey, don't take a person. There's
Speaker 12: no need to trying to just to swing up baby
Speaker 12: on your two snaps up in the fringer. The marbleloon
Speaker 12: babe went to the path and all you try to
Speaker 12: step the list, it's void.
Speaker 2: A new hit from the grand Man, working nights like
Speaker 2: the sand Man game four away in case I gotta
Speaker 2: stop like that once. It is a trick that's not up.
Speaker 12: My sleeves, possessed waiting for that sin that works when
Speaker 12: I blave it paint in the shade with the a
Speaker 12: as the grade, with the papes that I made from
Speaker 12: this trade. So get him too, the grip you know
Speaker 12: were it's a lot of TIMPs if you want to
Speaker 12: cash in on the winds grand people and I love
Speaker 12: to hit skins, and you.
Speaker 10: Know what I've done song to sing. I've done song
Speaker 10: to sing. I've done song to sing.
Speaker 4: Who I've done song to sing?
Speaker 2: Fun Now hear everybody don't care?
Speaker 6: Every pard.
Speaker 2: Don't hear everybody.
Speaker 4: Don't care every pardy.
Speaker 2: Hear everybody? Yeah, dog, I used to make pause tapes
Speaker 2: to Okay, a pause tape was before looping culture with
Speaker 2: Serado and other devices. Today, when you wanted to hear
Speaker 2: your favorite part, you would just take a cassette tape
Speaker 2: and do the edits yourself by hand.
Speaker 1: So I would just make of just this section of
Speaker 1: the song, trying to figure out. I cannot leave this
Speaker 1: earth without owning the source of the record of the sam.
Speaker 6: I have the record. I know what the cover looks like,
Speaker 6: but I don't know what the name of the song is.
Speaker 6: So a long time ago, and it's definitely a sesame
Speaker 6: street record that CAMD was fucking with too.
Speaker 8: I'm sure we can find it.
Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, I was about to say our next episode,
Speaker 2: of course Left seventeen will be at unpaid Bill's job.
Speaker 2: Let me come, I need to get some little reds.
Speaker 6: So Pete Rock love him, just easiest gotta work with
Speaker 6: of all time. Really, oh man, So man, it was
Speaker 6: like making that record was so easy. I'd just go
Speaker 6: to the studio like every couple of days and they'd
Speaker 6: be finishing another record, Megan. So even when he did
Speaker 6: the EP, which which he didn't, I wasn't really around
Speaker 6: a whole lot with that one. But the set, you know,
Speaker 6: because we had the creator. We had a hit song, right,
Speaker 6: so we knew we had to hit. So we're making
Speaker 6: an album. And I would just cruise by Green Street
Speaker 6: and we'd smoke a little weed and then we ordered
Speaker 6: some food. And he also had like twenty five songs,
Speaker 6: thirty songs, like a bunch of records didn't go on
Speaker 6: the album, and and he would just play me ship
Speaker 6: and I'd be like, Yo, what is that? And he'd
Speaker 6: be like, oh, you know that's Esen Brothers. Take an
Speaker 6: inventory or whatever. He'd tell me what the record was,
Speaker 6: so I catch knowledge he'd filtered the baseline. Oh yeah,
Speaker 6: I used these drums like it was not only was
Speaker 6: it a pleasure to hear the records, it was like
Speaker 6: I was going to beat school.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 6: He knew A lot he.
Speaker 2: Played in the car was that he would play these
Speaker 2: beats in this car.
Speaker 6: Yeah, play in the car and then and Amy style
Speaker 6: was an engineering and I ended up feeling Jamie to
Speaker 6: do ever less later because I thought his mix has
Speaker 6: sounded so good and Green Street was just a really
Speaker 6: nice environment. So and and Pete never beefed about anything ever.
Speaker 6: He never beefed once, never had a complaint. It was
Speaker 6: like he was really he was really, he was really
Speaker 6: young that way, and he was quiet back then.
Speaker 2: As a record digger, there is no fear like the
Speaker 2: look on a record merchant's face when he might have
Speaker 2: to face the wrath of Pete Rock right Pete is
Speaker 2: if Pete finds out that someone else has purchased a
Speaker 2: record that Pete was intending on using.
Speaker 6: Another thing about Peter is when you shop with him,
Speaker 6: he didn't really show you a lot of shit. We're
Speaker 6: like I would shop with the beat nuts and be like,
Speaker 6: you know this, even Dyla, I want shopping. One time
Speaker 6: he showed me some ship, but like Pete would would
Speaker 6: never say anything. I'd be like, hey, you notice, and
Speaker 6: he'd do the beat he knew about it, wouldn't tell
Speaker 6: you anything. Dog.
Speaker 2: It would be to the point where like he put me.
Speaker 6: Up on the t Swift, he put me up on
Speaker 6: a few joints, Eddie say a couple of joints.
Speaker 1: Oh, okay, okay, for a second, when you said t Swift,
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, huh wasn't she like three.
Speaker 2: Years old back then? No, I'm playing that's a second.
Speaker 6: No, No, I'm just saying record are you Jimmy Hendrick?
Speaker 6: Are you experience the drums?
Speaker 2: But I'm saying that he.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I would go to places and I'd be like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're the good record tight and and they just be like,
Speaker 1: you know, I said what Pete, It's like yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: you know. And then it'd be a time where like
Speaker 1: maybe a month or two go by and be like,
Speaker 1: did Pete pick up the record yet?
Speaker 2: And he'd be like well, And then that's how I
Speaker 2: would be like, here, I need these records mirror.
Speaker 6: I went to his house one time in Spring Valley
Speaker 6: and he let me look at his record collection, and
Speaker 6: every record I had he had doubles of, damn near,
Speaker 6: and he had everything to the point where I wanted
Speaker 6: to give up. I was like, God, damn it. He everything.
Speaker 1: He would notoriously actually buy triples and quadruples of the.
Speaker 6: Else could get so that no one else didn't get
Speaker 6: the record, so he gave me some records too. He
Speaker 6: I traded doubles with them a couple of times. He uh, so,
Speaker 6: you know, I helped him out a lot, so you know,
Speaker 6: but he was a pleasure to deal with. Man. And
Speaker 6: I always hear people like, you know, he may get
Speaker 6: a difficult tag now and again, but but he was
Speaker 6: really cool back then. And he didn't smoke a lot,
Speaker 6: and I was a mad potted and I started getting
Speaker 6: them high a lot. He like he got that. We
Speaker 6: started smoking.
Speaker 7: Spring Valley, New York County live, yes, where he lived.
Speaker 6: That's where he had his first house. And and I
Speaker 6: don't know if you guys noticed that Pooba wrote the Creator.
Speaker 6: He wrote it for beats, he didn't get paid. And
Speaker 6: he also wrote he wrote what's the other one? With
Speaker 6: Pete's rocking on it? He's wrapping up.
Speaker 2: So by the number one brother number one can play
Speaker 2: that real quick. Yeah, that's great, Boss Bill looking at
Speaker 2: me like that song. He's a sweet soul brother, so
Speaker 2: so so.
Speaker 11: So comes you, So comes your soul.
Speaker 15: Soul brother number one year where I come on the NTO.
Speaker 15: That's the coded white because I'm rich, stick and chocolate.
Speaker 15: You lug up and you like up at Chippy Rocker's pocket.
Speaker 15: Un Zobiezax, what's the bulls in my pocket? I tell him, player,
Speaker 15: I've rocked the top pick bottom never hesitate to say,
Speaker 15: I'm rested on the hill side, over on the chill side,
Speaker 15: up town, So let's.
Speaker 6: Get down funk.
Speaker 2: He is the word describbers brother on the souls.
Speaker 8: Listens.
Speaker 15: Look it was herds more souls than the soul KITCHI see, yes,
Speaker 15: the scratch sober won't keep the itchest white people even safe.
Speaker 15: He rocking shitch caught it in the hottest, outer than
Speaker 15: the hottest. I guess that's just because I'm smarter than
Speaker 15: the smartest.
Speaker 2: So back up, clear the path. Funny because come soul
Speaker 2: brother number one, number one? All right, So I just
Speaker 2: realized that the number one soul brother sample. No, it's
Speaker 2: it's MERV. Griffin introducing James Brown. It is okay, So
Speaker 2: there's a copy of there's a song called World that
Speaker 2: James Brown did, and it's it's MERV. Griffin introducing and now, gentlemen,
Speaker 2: it's the number one soul brother James Brown. And then
Speaker 2: it goes so like James has a perfectly edited introduction
Speaker 2: of MERV Griffin from The MERV Griffin Show Before the
Speaker 2: World song starts Crazy.
Speaker 6: There's a lot of samples in it. There's bubblegum in
Speaker 6: at on red more importantly pain.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That that's my favorite song on that record.
Speaker 6: Because night Creation in there on the bottom.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So by this point, how do you clear these samples?
Speaker 2: Like if it's super obvious or.
Speaker 6: Do you nice rolling?
Speaker 2: Do people come to you? Do people come to you
Speaker 2: and you're like, hey, I was holding your money in
Speaker 2: es growth?
Speaker 6: No, no, no none. I would sit there with Pete
Speaker 6: and I'd be like, yo, I know you used this,
Speaker 6: this and this. He might divulge another one he might not,
Speaker 6: so I mightn't catch And we didn't catch everything. We
Speaker 6: definitely clear everything on those records, like without it.
Speaker 2: What about the interludes?
Speaker 6: Just oh man, we didn't clear any of those. Those
Speaker 6: were sure there's been you know, everyone knows everything now,
Speaker 6: so I'm sure he's had suit after suit. Well, I'll
Speaker 6: tell you it's crazy. Step to the Rear Electric Records
Speaker 6: clear Tramp by Little folsom it's not tramp. And they
Speaker 6: did that retroactively, and I've already had a publishing deal
Speaker 6: and they were like, hey, there's a claim against when
Speaker 6: you're I was like, that's not what that sample is
Speaker 6: because it's it's uh, you know, it's the marquis Ah.
Speaker 1: Even on Beats Rhymes in Life, they gave a good
Speaker 1: chunk of the portion of Pat and Pin to the
Speaker 1: gap band.
Speaker 6: Really what for chess a little to a minuscule from Yearning? Yeah,
Speaker 6: but you.
Speaker 2: And I'm like, yeah, it was like thirty percent And
Speaker 2: I'm like, why did you even clear it?
Speaker 6: Like that dude owns a published No, he goes after everybody.
Speaker 6: He's trying to catch it.
Speaker 5: Have you?
Speaker 2: I don't even want to bring this into existence.
Speaker 5: Have you?
Speaker 2: Have you had had an air fugue situation? No?
Speaker 6: I got caught for Camille Yarborough on the everlast record
Speaker 6: She Caught Me. She caught me. She I had to
Speaker 6: pair some dough.
Speaker 2: She did the Fat Boy.
Speaker 6: And I used to interlude just a little no what
Speaker 6: sorry not familiar, bro, my bad Von Gray the Gray
Speaker 6: Lady album, I used a little into it's a whole
Speaker 6: new thing like I used just a little vocal and
Speaker 6: I didn't clear and we settled with it was cool.
Speaker 6: It was no big deal. And I did roll the
Speaker 6: dice on I'm not gonna down myself out on a
Speaker 6: bunch of on several records that are big records that
Speaker 6: I didn't clear things on I never got caught. Knock
Speaker 6: on wood good, Wow, there's someone wo's gonna hear this
Speaker 6: and go through my entire cattle.
Speaker 2: It's probably already up on who's sampled already.
Speaker 6: Really and on rock records, people don't look as much.
Speaker 6: So because I did all these remixes, I used man
Speaker 6: ship and people didn't.
Speaker 2: Catch What did you say, John Spencer Blues Explosion.
Speaker 6: I mean I didn't clear any of that, and you
Speaker 6: know there's something real prominent that one, So go sue John.
Speaker 6: I have no publishing.
Speaker 1: I miss touring with those guys like they. We went
Speaker 1: on the Beastie Boys tour with John Spencer Blues.
Speaker 6: Explosion Orange right when they had banging. They were a
Speaker 6: great band.
Speaker 2: Old Russell Simmons on drums, he man, that guy, he
Speaker 2: it's hard. Yeah, he would go through like a drumhead
Speaker 2: a night.
Speaker 6: I mean I recorded him and his time was in tremendous.
Speaker 6: Chuck Trees had better time. They played on. They both
Speaker 6: played on a record for me and Chuck's stuff, I
Speaker 6: didn't have to play with. I had to play with
Speaker 6: with Russell's stuff a bunch.
Speaker 2: Wow. You know about the legend of Chuck Cheries.
Speaker 6: That's my man. I used to skateboard with him, Nick rad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chuck ches forever nineteen year olds.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's my man with the green eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the man. So how long was your tenure
Speaker 2: at Electra?
Speaker 6: I think it was almost eight years? Seven years. I
Speaker 6: think it was a long time, close to eight years.
Speaker 2: Who am I missing besides cam d Old.
Speaker 6: Dirty bastard. I gave Bus for a solo record. I
Speaker 6: wasn't there by the time he finished it. But but
Speaker 6: after Leaders flopped and and even while when.
Speaker 2: They turned Leaders first album, second.
Speaker 6: Second album, first album was it? To say it, the
Speaker 6: second album was very joined it. I sent them back
Speaker 6: in to do it again. They didn't want to do it.
Speaker 6: When I wanted to go do the second album, I
Speaker 6: actually pulled Tip in. I said, Yo, you should be
Speaker 6: the executive producer and just oversee it because there's too
Speaker 6: many moving parts. It's chaos. And Tip was down and
Speaker 6: I pitched the idea to those guys and Buster wanted
Speaker 6: to do it and the rest of them didn't. And
Speaker 6: that's when I knew that Buster was.
Speaker 2: Why did they go against their own interest?
Speaker 6: Because they said, Yo tribes stole the East Coast stomp
Speaker 6: from us. And it wasn't Buster who said that. I'm
Speaker 6: just gonna I'm not. You know someone who is?
Speaker 2: Who is the Who's the hardest group to babysit.
Speaker 6: Leaders of the New School because they they might get
Speaker 6: a fist fight in the middle of everything. It was
Speaker 6: always always rough with them. Brand Nubians were like, they
Speaker 6: might beat me up, but not each other.
Speaker 1: I'm about to say each group has a fistfight m
Speaker 1: v A and R office story.
Speaker 2: Even Tarika and I had a fist fight NB A and.
Speaker 6: R office knew me in never had I never had
Speaker 6: drama with him like that. Me and Jamar drawed at
Speaker 6: each other one time and that was that And and
Speaker 6: jam Jamaar was definitely down the hook off on me too,
Speaker 6: and and it didn't happen so so, and I love
Speaker 6: Lord Jamar like much respective he's about his business. I
Speaker 6: love that guy and leaders. Yeah, I got into a
Speaker 6: Charlie Brown one time in office and and just it
Speaker 6: was all fucked up. And I knew Buster was a star.
Speaker 6: Everyone knew it. So me and Chris Lighty I had
Speaker 6: told him, I say, yo, we can bustle, got to
Speaker 6: do solo record. He's like, you're right, And we've worked
Speaker 6: on Buster for a minute. And Buster finally saw the
Speaker 6: light and he did a solo record.
Speaker 2: And so do most acts just break up or do
Speaker 2: you have to say, okay, we're now?
Speaker 6: They all broke up. Every act broke up. It was
Speaker 6: never me. I never had anything to do with breaking
Speaker 6: up any act. Specifically. I did offer a solo record
Speaker 6: a Buster while they were still a band, that is true.
Speaker 6: But it was me and Chris Lighty and and and
Speaker 6: you know, big shout out to Chris light and my brother.
Speaker 6: I love him and miss him. He was the one
Speaker 6: of the greatest people well I ever know from his
Speaker 6: business and in d nice sitting in a place of
Speaker 6: very few other people sitting. But but that said, and
Speaker 6: and Buster, you know, finally opened his eyes. He's seen
Speaker 6: it wasn't gonna happen, and it was time for him
Speaker 6: to do what he had to do, and he did it.
Speaker 6: And at that point in my life, me and Buster
Speaker 6: were super close. He was going through a lot of
Speaker 6: personal ship and that's what my little brother. I love
Speaker 6: him He's a great man.
Speaker 2: Were you there for the whole, uh Black Bastards scenario
Speaker 2: with cam d I was.
Speaker 6: That was that was really what disillusioned me about working
Speaker 6: at a major label. And I'd probably brought the camel's
Speaker 6: back cynical.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 6: I stayed because it's hard to walk away from that
Speaker 6: much money, especially you know, my mom's a school teacher,
Speaker 6: my dad's a writer. Like I grew up, you know,
Speaker 6: very blue collar. So so I can't say that I'm super,
Speaker 6: mister principle. And I walked away because this, that and
Speaker 6: the other. I didn't but but I but I was,
Speaker 6: I thought tooth and nail, and I lost.
Speaker 2: To explain it.
Speaker 6: Backstory, so black Bastards, so well, you gotta explain MD.
Speaker 6: I mean km d Is was was doing his of
Speaker 6: the sub Rock and Onyx. It was like he was
Speaker 6: like the third guy, but he wasn't really in the process.
Speaker 6: And I met them from third base. They were on
Speaker 6: gas Face. He helped produce gas Face Doom. He was
Speaker 6: my little homie, my man, and we went and made
Speaker 6: the first record. We made it in my studio. Basically,
Speaker 6: who did peach us? Who he did peach? Was him
Speaker 6: or sub Rock?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's.
Speaker 6: Because no one was.
Speaker 2: Playing no no way. You remember the video when was
Speaker 2: playing the well thought, oh my god, I played percussions.
Speaker 6: Popa did.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 6: He might help with nitty gritty though. But but those guys,
Speaker 6: you know, they those two were symbiotic in their relationship,
Speaker 6: resting piece of sub Rock and and they were just
Speaker 6: like family to me. And we made the first record
Speaker 6: and it it wasn't a big hit, but it had
Speaker 6: some some some lasting impact. And their imagery was always
Speaker 6: based around the sambo character, about eradicating the stereotype of sambo.
Speaker 6: They were Muslims, they were part of the ansar A
Speaker 6: law community. Brooklyn followed doctor you know, Dr York blah
Speaker 6: blah blah, and so that said, you know, between the
Speaker 6: first and second record, they had changed a lot of people.
Speaker 6: They've grown a lot. They experimented a lot of mind
Speaker 6: altering drugs. You know, they're not ashamed to say it.
Speaker 6: I think acid became a you know, a part of
Speaker 6: the program. Blah blah blah. They're hanging out uptown with Curius,
Speaker 6: George and them a lot. And and sub Rock died.
Speaker 6: He got hit by a car and he passed. We
Speaker 6: buried him and and in awake of that Doom when
Speaker 6: it finished the record he turned in It's called Black Bastards,
Speaker 6: It's the Hangman game, and they had sample and they
Speaker 6: were hanging him and uh Havelock Nelson, Terry ROSSI, I'm
Speaker 6: gonna call him out. I don't care my Facebook for
Speaker 6: end and half a mile too, and I talked him
Speaker 6: about it and anything I'm gonna say right now, I'll
Speaker 6: say I said to him. And he's apologized. They condemned
Speaker 6: the artwork and the band and the label putting it
Speaker 6: out without ever giving an audience to Doom to defend
Speaker 6: his rhetoric, his his vision, and they never let him
Speaker 6: talk about what what his messaging was. And I think
Speaker 6: I think that was uh.
Speaker 2: So what did they see when they saw said it
Speaker 2: was racist.
Speaker 6: That no, a major label can't put out a record
Speaker 6: with samble on the cover it's called black.
Speaker 2: Bastards, and knowing who was behind.
Speaker 6: It and and not right and and not also noting
Speaker 6: that symbal is getting hung right, so they're hanging in
Speaker 6: effigy the stereotype of and they always use samble with
Speaker 6: the line through it. Yet they did not give him
Speaker 6: a chance to defend his vision. And his messaging and
Speaker 6: and they condemned him and Terry Rossi wrote about it
Speaker 6: in her column, and so to Havelock circulated around my
Speaker 6: building where I worked, and it was post the the
Speaker 6: the body count Fiasco.
Speaker 2: Billboard. Yes, because I remember that, like I religiously read
Speaker 2: Billboard every week and remember that.
Speaker 6: George Rhythm and Blues column I think it was called.
Speaker 6: So so they circulated. My boss called me off us
Speaker 6: and he said, there's a lot of contentious feelings about
Speaker 6: this artworking and we're gonna put this before the review
Speaker 6: board at uh, you know, at the MG, and we're
Speaker 6: going to see, you know, what people said. And he
Speaker 6: said that Vincent Davis, who had Keatswett, found this offensive,
Speaker 6: and Sylvia Rome finds this defensive. And it's been deemed
Speaker 6: offensive by several black people that I didn't say that
Speaker 6: certain things I can't say the jack so, you know,
Speaker 6: so they wouldn't let the record come the They shelved
Speaker 6: the record. But my man came to the office today.
Speaker 6: We're going to meet the Warner Music what's got. Richard
Speaker 6: Parsons was supposed to be there and various other people
Speaker 6: Parsons and we're going to meet all these people, and
Speaker 6: and my boss said, they've canceled the meeting. We're not
Speaker 6: gonna have the meeting. I'm not gonna put the record out,
Speaker 6: Bob kraz now. And he said, but I am going
Speaker 6: to give you back your masters, and I know you've
Speaker 6: been through a lot of stuff with your brother, and
Speaker 6: I'm going to also give you basically a like get
Speaker 6: out of jail free check. So he gave him a
Speaker 6: I think it was twenty thousand dollars check. And we
Speaker 6: went to my office and I had all this wine.
Speaker 6: Someone sent me a case of wine, Sweet Premium wine.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 6: They have that song Sweet Premium Wine, right. So we
Speaker 6: always used to drink the wine in my office, and
Speaker 6: we drank a couple of bottles and Doom said, you know,
Speaker 6: I should get dropped more often. I haven't got a
Speaker 6: twenty thousand dollars check in my entire life.
Speaker 2: And that's real.
Speaker 6: The fallout is that no one would touch the record.
Speaker 6: Faith Newman, I know, wanted to sign them, and they wouldn't.
Speaker 6: She wasn't allowed to, and the record sat there and
Speaker 6: do him went in and he put on you know,
Speaker 6: he put on the mask, and he reinvented himself as
Speaker 6: MF Doom and power too. Man, that's the power of
Speaker 6: black man in America right there. Reinvention, right, this is
Speaker 6: crazy because we invented underground hip hop more or less
Speaker 6: on the heels of catching the biggest ll of his life,
Speaker 6: his brother dying and dropped. But you know what, he
Speaker 6: empowered himself. And I love that man. That's my brother forever,
Speaker 6: and you know he was We had a lot of stuff. Man,
Speaker 6: I'll never forget burying his brother. War well. You know,
Speaker 6: every time I see him, one of the only people
Speaker 6: who talks about Skype and I have to tell him
Speaker 6: take the mask off. But I love that cat and
Speaker 6: he's a He's a wonderful person. And you know that's
Speaker 6: that's the rap game right there.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 6: You know, you got to deal with some bullshit.
Speaker 2: The single, what's the single that sampled the Jody Whiteley Loop?
Speaker 2: It was hot, that was my s I knew that
Speaker 2: it was gonna hit.
Speaker 6: And know the Ledge jacked him, right, You're right, they
Speaker 6: jacked loop.
Speaker 2: You're right, Shot, You're right jacked it.
Speaker 6: He was around. I love you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: Jack what it is you've been knowing the Jack.
Speaker 2: Loops and Steve. I cannot wait to get some of
Speaker 2: the dice on question.
Speaker 6: Probably because you stole someone's loop.
Speaker 2: It just gets turned off and ringo number ring.
Speaker 8: Wow.
Speaker 2: I actually have urshot Smith number seven. I have like
Speaker 2: seven phone numbers on him.
Speaker 6: I got a bunch myself. He's a talented cat though. Man,
Speaker 6: he did doing it. People don't know that. He's a god.
Speaker 6: I did more records that people don't know he did
Speaker 6: than anyone ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah he did one more chance.
Speaker 6: Yep, he did know the ledge he did Pep.
Speaker 10: Paul C.
Speaker 6: Might have done more records than people ain't know.
Speaker 2: Hello, man, please shot.
Speaker 10: Shot exactly number Sorry, sorry, just.
Speaker 6: Think how stupid is how stupid is the idea of
Speaker 6: stealing a because we were stealing them from the guys
Speaker 6: who made the records.
Speaker 2: So it's like, you know whatever, that's crazy, all right.
Speaker 1: So you're saying, so the last record that you A
Speaker 1: and R at Electra was Black Bastard.
Speaker 2: Nope, it was Dirty first.
Speaker 6: Ye thirty and the second Pete Rocket. Chronologically, I can't
Speaker 6: remember any ingredient. Okay, an ingredient, but no Dirty came
Speaker 6: out in ninety five, so maybe it's that one.
Speaker 2: Dude, How do you even how do you even Smith?
Speaker 2: It might have been how do you even communicate with
Speaker 2: old dirty bastard man? Wow? So so who put that
Speaker 2: record together?
Speaker 6: So they came to me with seven, maybe eight, anywhere
Speaker 6: from six to eight songs done. The rest of the
Speaker 6: music was basically on reels on two inches. A lot
Speaker 6: of the vocals were aready done, not all of them,
Speaker 6: and Rizza was like peace and Rizza he wasn't gonna
Speaker 6: babysit dirty. He had money to go get, and he
Speaker 6: went and got his money and he left dirty in
Speaker 6: my lap. I had to figure out with an engineer
Speaker 6: how to mix those records. And if you've ever had
Speaker 6: a multi from Rizza, his science is not my science.
Speaker 6: His periodic table is very Staten Island, and I'm from Manhattan.
Speaker 6: I had trouble understanding it. And he would literally take
Speaker 6: the base tone from the two inch reel from the
Speaker 6: two inch machine and play bass lines out of that,
Speaker 6: and I didn't know what the hell he was doing.
Speaker 6: And I did struggle, but I got the mixes done eventually,
Speaker 6: and he okayed them all. It took a year to
Speaker 6: get the record made, but in that year, the Wu
Speaker 6: Tang Clan because I signed before his album came out,
Speaker 6: had grown in leaps and bounds. So I knew I
Speaker 6: had to get to the finish line. And I had
Speaker 6: a very patient woman I live with at the time,
Speaker 6: and I spent an in or an inordinate amount of
Speaker 6: time and trying to finish that record. But I also
Speaker 6: knew that because the way Dirty lived his life.
Speaker 2: How many five am phone calls you get, man from studios? Man, Man,
Speaker 2: tell you one man.
Speaker 6: There's so much shit he did, Man, But but but Man.
Speaker 6: I walked in the studio one time. This is the
Speaker 6: best and my partner John Gamble, when I asked, he fifties,
Speaker 6: who didn't engineer a lot of sessions. Was the engineer
Speaker 6: in the session? And I called earlier? I said, Yo,
Speaker 6: it was Dirty there. Yeah, Dirty Saire. I'm a swing
Speaker 6: bying while I swing over there. A couple hours later,
Speaker 6: trunk King and I walked in and no one's there,
Speaker 6: and I said, and my man had a weird look
Speaker 6: on his face. I said, where's Dirty. He's like he's here.
Speaker 6: I was like, where He's like, here's the vocal boo.
Speaker 6: I said, why the light's out? He said, go in
Speaker 6: there and see.
Speaker 2: Oh Lloyd.
Speaker 6: I walked in there and they're running and training on
Speaker 6: this chick and and I I walked in and dirty
Speaker 6: wasn't dirty, I guess had Irrety had already had his ride,
Speaker 6: and he's like, Yo, do you want to get down?
Speaker 6: I said, no, man, I don't rock caboose. And those
Speaker 6: guys said that to me for like six months straight, Yo,
Speaker 6: you rock caboose. Yet that was like their favorite thing
Speaker 6: to say to me. And that was like one of
Speaker 6: the thousands of I mean, you know, he fucking took
Speaker 6: the loll plaque off the wall and pissed on it.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm saving that for my book. But needless
Speaker 6: to say, I was in between him and Chris Leidy
Speaker 6: about the It was a Mexican standoff and and it
Speaker 6: was fuck. It was yo and dirty, just like you know.
Speaker 6: I took him to La and he did this show
Speaker 6: and he, I mean he tore it down water ride
Speaker 6: off stage and started to do another show in front
Speaker 6: on like a street lamp and like just stood there
Speaker 6: in front of the palladium on Highland and started rocking again.
Speaker 6: And I had to drag him to the hotel.
Speaker 2: It was like.
Speaker 6: He was so wild in his it was the he
Speaker 6: would eat a box of donuts every day for breakfast,
Speaker 6: ceplate donuts and then drink Cisco.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 6: And he would fart and laugh, and I mean he
Speaker 6: just everything he did was larger than life. He got
Speaker 6: kicked out of so many hotels. And I will say
Speaker 6: this though, I knew I had to get it to
Speaker 6: the finish line, because there are times in life when
Speaker 6: you only know you have that moment in time, and
Speaker 6: you got to get there right. And I had to
Speaker 6: get there because I strongly suspected it never gonna happen again.
Speaker 6: Me get it while I can. And I dedicated a
Speaker 6: large part of that year to getting that record made.
Speaker 6: And we got a maide and and true master and
Speaker 6: Dirty got in a fistfight at the mastering session and
Speaker 6: if you look at the record, it says mastered by
Speaker 6: Tom the Referee Coin because Tom up got up and
Speaker 6: he he broke up the fight and he ended the
Speaker 6: mastering session and told me to come back the next
Speaker 6: without it.
Speaker 8: And so we were mastering the Hamilton record. If he
Speaker 8: told us this exact story, you know, Tom Coin is
Speaker 8: a G. Tom Coin, He's a G.
Speaker 6: Yes, I love that man.
Speaker 8: Shoes ready to go golfing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Always, he's the least hip hop dude to master the
Speaker 6: most hip hop.
Speaker 2: Tom coins story of.
Speaker 1: Tom told me the story of how when he mastered
Speaker 1: only Built for Cuban linkx uh, they stopped at mint
Speaker 1: Master and said, yo, we got to put some some
Speaker 1: killer h interludes on here from the movie The Killer,
Speaker 1: but none of them had uh you know, the technology
Speaker 1: wasn't out back then to go on the internet.
Speaker 2: So they're like, wait, I'll bear it back.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna run to i'mna run to the Allen and
Speaker 1: get my KILLO tape and Tom Coins like well, He's
Speaker 1: like they left for four hours, came back, got the
Speaker 1: Killer tape, but there's no television.
Speaker 2: To watch it, so they just had a BCR with
Speaker 2: no TV. They hook it up and they start acting
Speaker 2: out the entire movie. They literally act out the entire movie.
Speaker 2: Tom Coin recorded. He's like, all right, what part do
Speaker 2: we use? He's like, oh, wait, started again from the top,
Speaker 2: so then wow.
Speaker 1: So then he's like, all right, I'm gonna take notes.
Speaker 1: And after a while they drifted off, stopped taking notes,
Speaker 1: and it was like it was ill the Seen God.
Speaker 1: And then it got to the end and Tom Coin's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you guys have your notes. It's like, ah, man, damn
Speaker 1: play it one more time. He had to play the
Speaker 1: Killer three times in a row.
Speaker 6: P Rock showed up, did the interludes on a made
Speaker 6: ingredient with his twelve hundred, and did him in the
Speaker 6: studio really out of it right to mastering right there later,
Speaker 6: right there, that incredible whole joint. He did that right there. Ah,
Speaker 6: So y'all gotta add this Tom Coin game. That looked
Speaker 6: like you again, Tom Coin. Man, he's a master of patience.
Speaker 6: I've seen so many of my records and he was
Speaker 6: always my dude.
Speaker 2: I've seen old dirty pro tools and it's a mystery
Speaker 2: on how that just to hear it in its naked form,
Speaker 2: especially with his vocals. There's at least eight or nine
Speaker 2: tracks the.
Speaker 6: Punches, I mean like you can hear them like totally.
Speaker 6: I mean in all the bultangs, like.
Speaker 2: There's a Brooklyn zoo where the and I'm trying to
Speaker 2: figure out how did you cut? How did y'all cut
Speaker 2: in pieces? Right?
Speaker 6: So shimmy, shimmy. I tried to get him to do
Speaker 6: a second verse for months.
Speaker 2: He would not do it. He was like backwards.
Speaker 6: He did it backwards, and I walked in the studio
Speaker 6: said yo, I did shimmy shimmy, and he played it
Speaker 6: and I was like you mother, and then he was like,
Speaker 6: yoq tube did it. I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 6: He's like yeah. I was like, that's not Oh my god.
Speaker 6: He's like, whatever, my shirt's gonna knock.
Speaker 2: He was right, he was right as let me tell
Speaker 2: you something.
Speaker 6: Those records like they still hold up and and there's
Speaker 6: a real oh also Brooklyn Zoo So drums, I couldn't
Speaker 6: get the drums sound and right, and I chopped up
Speaker 6: the Brethren and I put the kick in snare in there,
Speaker 6: and Rison never knew He's yeah, I just put the
Speaker 6: kick in snare in there because I couldn't get the
Speaker 6: drums to sound right. So if you listen to a
Speaker 6: close you clearly hear the Brethren snare in there by
Speaker 6: the Brethren, which you know it's been in hundreds of
Speaker 6: records I made.
Speaker 2: So why did you after that record? Then? Why did
Speaker 2: you leave?
Speaker 6: Electra silver Rowe was my boss and and and I
Speaker 6: don't think she necessarily liked me. I can't say that
Speaker 6: she was a fan of Dante Ross. And you know what,
Speaker 6: I can't blame her.
Speaker 2: I was I was. I was.
Speaker 6: It was a wild style. You know, you couldn't tell
Speaker 6: me a lot, and you know I was living a
Speaker 6: crazy life.
Speaker 2: And she didn't care about your reputation or your legacy.
Speaker 6: Nah, she didn't care about that. She she probably wanted
Speaker 6: like she might have wanted to just get me out
Speaker 6: to own my legacy because I because I signed Missy too,
Speaker 6: and Buster will tell you that. So I did a
Speaker 6: deal with Davante Swing and she hated that deal. So
Speaker 6: she dropped Missy when she was in Sister and signed
Speaker 6: her again. But but I had signed her the first time,
Speaker 6: and she was like, this deal is bullshit. You know,
Speaker 6: what do you know about R and B? And she
Speaker 6: would really like talk. She was very belittling to me
Speaker 6: and meetings and.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, how does how does she negate your
Speaker 2: deal for the label? But then restructure is the deal
Speaker 2: for the label?
Speaker 6: Like I mean she did, but wouldn't she bringing Missy
Speaker 6: to the she got she she didn't sign, by the way.
Speaker 6: It took a year later or two. But that said,
Speaker 6: and Missy was like, yo, you I know you're the
Speaker 6: person really signed. She always held me that and it
Speaker 6: was just like a bustle will tell you that it
Speaker 6: was just a bugged out period and and so we're
Speaker 6: making a second Dell record and she wanted him to
Speaker 6: work with Tremaine dupre and on.
Speaker 2: The second and it was.
Speaker 6: Bad vibe. It was bad vibes and she wasn't feeling me,
Speaker 6: and and you know, I tried to hold my tongue,
Speaker 6: but I'm not good at that. And Chris Lighty. So
Speaker 6: Chris Lighty was like, Yo, she's not feeling you. One
Speaker 6: day we went to dinner and I was like, you're right.
Speaker 6: He's like, come work over at deaf Jam. So I took.
Speaker 6: I got a deal over at deaf Jam for an
Speaker 6: astronomical amount of money, and deaf Jam went g funk
Speaker 6: and they didn't give a fuck about me. I signed
Speaker 6: Trigger the Gambler and that was it. Wow, that was
Speaker 6: the only thing I ever signed. I helped on the
Speaker 6: Nutty Professor. I was miserable, but paid paid, and I
Speaker 6: linked up with Everlast and we made White for Things
Speaker 6: of Blues on Deaf Jam's done. Deft Jam was paying
Speaker 6: me and I never went to work, and I went
Speaker 6: to California. I moved to LA and made the record
Speaker 6: with with Everlast and sold a lot of records, and
Speaker 6: that was.
Speaker 2: One of the most surprising comebacks.
Speaker 6: He talked to me for like a year over there.
Speaker 6: She's like, I hate you. He gave Tom Silhiman the
Speaker 6: biggest record. I gave you eight h and fifty thousand
Speaker 6: dollars give me nothing, wow. And I was like, you
Speaker 6: were from Warren g Lamb Man, you fucking the South
Speaker 6: Central Cartel. Yeah, And I'll tell you I was so
Speaker 6: disgusted with rap music at that point in my life. Like,
Speaker 6: I was so disgusted by where it was that I
Speaker 6: was listening to Radiohead and Massive Attack and DJ Shadow
Speaker 6: and you know whatever, Oasis and and all kinds of
Speaker 6: rock music. I grew up, you know, like I was
Speaker 6: a teenage punk rocker, so I had an affinity for
Speaker 6: that stuff. I played drums a little bit, and I
Speaker 6: just like, you know, we were our minds were in
Speaker 6: different places. I was in the sound Garden, I wasn't
Speaker 6: really like, I wasn't juiced on where hip hop was.
Speaker 6: I didn't like Foxy Brown straight up and the puff stuff.
Speaker 6: I liked it when I was in the club, but
Speaker 6: I didn't I didn't care for you know, it wasn't
Speaker 6: it wasn't going on life. It didn't speak the culture
Speaker 6: to me at that time. It spoke another culture and
Speaker 6: hats off the puff respect And I like those records
Speaker 6: a lot more in retrospect now, but when they were out,
Speaker 6: I like them in the club when I'm trying to
Speaker 6: dance with the chick. But I didn't want to live
Speaker 6: those records, so you know, I wanted to something else.
Speaker 2: Wow, I followed my heart. Did you have anything to
Speaker 2: do with the Everlast solo record that came out in
Speaker 2: ninety five before the Whitey four?
Speaker 6: No, but I know him. I met him with Dayla
Speaker 6: the but it didn't come out in ninety five.
Speaker 2: That was the one that was the knack I got that.
Speaker 2: I got the neck in sending No no, I'm talking
Speaker 2: about there was. It was Guru ever Last and the
Speaker 2: Big Crew.
Speaker 13: The.
Speaker 6: Gangstar Joint.
Speaker 2: Oh fed up, fed up?
Speaker 6: Yeah, but but the remixes played the remix the remixes,
Speaker 6: the joint with the with the Jean Jock Perah fed.
Speaker 2: What's that? Don't turn around to your back? I got
Speaker 2: the Great Town Board for you, chunked that act on
Speaker 2: the ones bag and Jack's Pack and guns hacking. See
Speaker 2: Guru dancing in the videos right there.
Speaker 6: You know Peter Green is the actor he okay see
Speaker 6: full fiction right?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 6: Remember zed that kills me in that video?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 6: So so needless to say, I was in La with
Speaker 6: Saddat before I worked with Everlast. I got I managed Saddat.
Speaker 6: I can't manage a fucking shoelace, but but I managed
Speaker 6: Saddad and and I got him signed. Allow, we did
Speaker 6: the Wild Cowboys. We're in La on tour or something,
Speaker 6: and Guru came and he hung out with us, got drunk.
Speaker 6: He was in the hotel, the Mandre on and and
Speaker 6: he was like, yo, you know my man ever Less
Speaker 6: us A, yeah, I know him, little bit. He's cool,
Speaker 6: and he's like he's gonna come meet me. And then
Speaker 6: he's like, yall two motherfuckers are like the same, dude,
Speaker 6: you need to hang out. And I was like word
Speaker 6: and And what I didn't tell him was that mugs
Speaker 6: and then and Eric knew this. They never wanted us
Speaker 6: to hang out together because we were both threw a
Speaker 6: wild back then and the chances of someone getting arrestled
Speaker 6: were pretty high. So me and him know, we linked up,
Speaker 6: and then Sadat did the record with him him for
Speaker 6: that album was.
Speaker 2: That The Heart Full of Sorrow?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 6: That was a hot record and I went out there
Speaker 6: with them when they did it, and we just linked.
Speaker 6: We went to the super Bowl the guy yeah, and
Speaker 6: it was like I met my twin brother. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 6: he's just like me. And then we stayed tight and
Speaker 6: we ended up doing that record.
Speaker 11: So so I have a question, how did how did
Speaker 11: the the I guess the genre switch happened forever last night?
Speaker 6: So, like I said, we were really disgusted with the
Speaker 6: state of rap music, right, so you know, we we
Speaker 6: liked the aggressive rap music, right, and aggressive rap music
Speaker 6: wasn't really winning right then, you know, Like so he's
Speaker 6: a soul assassin and and that's the kind of music
Speaker 6: he liked, and we were listening to a lot of
Speaker 6: all kinds of shit like Neil you know, I love
Speaker 6: Neil Young. Like I said earlier, my mom was into
Speaker 6: singer songwriter stuff, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, Fan Morse
Speaker 6: and so I grew up with that around me kind of,
Speaker 6: and and so did he because he's he's around my age,
Speaker 6: a little younger, and uh, I had we were in
Speaker 6: the studio, we're working on a rap record, and we
Speaker 6: did the song dollar Bill, the one with him in
Speaker 6: X and we did the We did another version of Ends,
Speaker 6: I was a rap version, and then we did I
Speaker 6: think we did the song a Letter, and we were
Speaker 6: making a rap record. And I had a guitar. I
Speaker 6: had a guitar and I played guitar a little, a
Speaker 6: little bit. I play a couple of a CDC songs
Speaker 6: and I had an acoustic like a hummingbird in my
Speaker 6: studio and he picked it up and he was like, Yo,
Speaker 6: can I take this back to the pad he was
Speaker 6: staying with me. I said yeah, whatever, So he went
Speaker 6: to my house and he, uh, yo, this is the best.
Speaker 6: He always tells his story. I can't tell it as
Speaker 6: good as him. So back then I was like, I
Speaker 6: was just I was smashing everything in sight. I was
Speaker 6: just I was on one. So I was a young man.
Speaker 6: So I had this chick in my house in my
Speaker 6: room and I literally heard him playing what It's Like
Speaker 6: and I ran out my boxer shorts and I was like, Yo,
Speaker 6: you need to record that ship. I finished my It's
Speaker 6: crazy too because I never messed with white girls back then.
Speaker 6: I always remember It's like I remember it because when
Speaker 6: homegirl came over. He said you said, he said, Yode,
Speaker 6: what do you He was like, Yode, what's open that.
Speaker 6: I was like, sometimes you gott to fuck with the
Speaker 6: home team because because you know, if you know me,
Speaker 6: I mess with I mess with the Spanish mommy's and
Speaker 6: the Asian girls, so.
Speaker 2: So so perfect.
Speaker 6: So man, I heard them play the record and I
Speaker 6: was like, we got to record that. He's like, I
Speaker 6: don't know. And the next day I was on him again,
Speaker 6: you gotta play that.
Speaker 2: And that was him actually playing the guitar.
Speaker 6: He was playing that song and singing it and and
Speaker 6: and I said, play me the song again next morning
Speaker 6: because it'd stuck in my head. And he was like,
Speaker 6: he played again. I said, yo, we got to record.
Speaker 6: They said, I'm not ready to do that. Once I
Speaker 6: do that, I can't ever do what I do now.
Speaker 6: I said, now you can do everything. He said, I
Speaker 6: don't want to do it. I said, yo, you should
Speaker 6: do it. He didn't want to do it. So I
Speaker 6: told him for two days straight, you gotta do it,
Speaker 6: you gotta do it. He I said, bring the guitar
Speaker 6: back to the studio. So I was I was being
Speaker 6: a producer. So he brought the guitar back. I said, yo,
Speaker 6: play that song. Play it from my engineer. He played
Speaker 6: for John gay Amble gambles like that shit is fire.
Speaker 6: I said yeah. What he didn't know was I had
Speaker 6: the La fayete for rock drums hooked up already. I said, yeah,
Speaker 6: play that played. I hit the hit the MP bonk
Speaker 6: drums I had hit it on. He played it right too.
Speaker 6: I said, that's it, that's the song, and he was
Speaker 6: like really. I said we're going to record that tomorrow
Speaker 6: and recorded the next day. First pass of his vocals
Speaker 6: is that version that made it to the record because
Speaker 6: I recorded on a sixteen track tape machine, a task
Speaker 6: scam that I had at MS sixteen right a one
Speaker 6: inch sixteen, so we could never find that machine again.
Speaker 6: I literally couldn't overdub when I took the tape la.
Speaker 6: We couldn't find a machine, so I took it in
Speaker 6: transfer to a two inch, but we just used the
Speaker 6: vocals over there and then we added to strings.
Speaker 2: That was that. So when the song hit, and really.
Speaker 6: Dude, it hit six months after it came out the
Speaker 6: What It's Like, What It's Like? It was we thought
Speaker 6: we were gonna We thought we were over. We sold
Speaker 6: thirty eight hundred copies the first week that album wow
Speaker 6: so and Steve Rifkin had given me a job. Steve
Speaker 6: Rifkin loved Steve Rifkin. Always had a check for me,
Speaker 6: always had a consulting gig, always, always, always, always.
Speaker 2: Check for me.
Speaker 6: He wanted me to work a loud. I was gonna
Speaker 6: be the first president UH vice president allowed a and
Speaker 6: or departmer. I didn't do it, but he always wanted
Speaker 6: me to work with him. And I gave him the
Speaker 6: album before it came out, and he was like, this
Speaker 6: is the best thing you've ever done in your whole life.
Speaker 6: And when it sold thirty eight hundred copies the first week,
Speaker 6: he called me up. He's like, I want to call
Speaker 6: Tom Silverman right now and try and buy the record.
Speaker 6: And I was like, he's not gonna sell to He's like, well,
Speaker 6: I'm going to see and and I don't know if
Speaker 6: you ever made that call, but the record stumbled out
Speaker 6: the gate. He went on the road and actually the
Speaker 6: first show he did in New York was at Conan
Speaker 6: Allen Hine Saint Mark's Place, and he killed it. And
Speaker 6: I want to say John Perells or John Leland. Sometimes
Speaker 6: someone named John who wrote for The Times was there
Speaker 6: and he gave it a stellar, stunning review and keep
Speaker 6: going on and on and on the end in Seattle
Speaker 6: started playing the record, which is like the k Rock
Speaker 6: of Seattle Indicator station, and because of that, k Rock
Speaker 6: started playing it and almost by accident, that record became
Speaker 6: his song. And it was six months. I remember the
Speaker 6: week going into Christmas, I saw Jeff Finster and he
Speaker 6: sold He said, you sold seventy thousand albums this week, Nante,
Speaker 6: and I was like really. He's like yeah, He's like
Speaker 6: that record is a huge record. And I was like,
Speaker 6: thanks Jeff.
Speaker 2: And that was that. Wow. That record was everywhere. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Wow was on VH one. They used to play it.
Speaker 6: Bought me in my house. That's why I bought my house.
Speaker 6: Wow from that and I got a big publishing deal
Speaker 6: and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: So Vence is sweet, say if the Ross.
Speaker 6: I remember, this is great. I saw Leon Russell and
Speaker 6: Leo said, I am not fucking with you still and
Speaker 6: and Russell said, Leon, stopped being a dick, Yo, I
Speaker 6: love you, d congratulations and Leo he was like, stop
Speaker 6: being a dick. And he was like you're right. I'm
Speaker 6: happy for you.
Speaker 1: I love everyone like I know no one in this
Speaker 1: industry that doesn't have their version of what they think.
Speaker 6: That's your yours.
Speaker 2: No, I mean I'm scared.
Speaker 5: No.
Speaker 2: But my relationship it's different. He says, you have to
Speaker 2: DJ for it this again, like my my, my leeor
Speaker 2: thing is I always DJ for uh?
Speaker 4: His?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 2: I guess his then wife.
Speaker 6: Tory, Yeah, Tory, his wife is lady married.
Speaker 2: They never married. Okay, I still don't know if they're
Speaker 2: item or not. That's how much I'm out of it.
Speaker 6: He gave me my job that I kind of have
Speaker 6: now at her house on a Saturday afternoon, like I
Speaker 6: love Lee or like that's my guy. I can't. I
Speaker 6: can't front.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have good Lee or stories like I have
Speaker 2: a long.
Speaker 6: Very complicated relationship with them.
Speaker 2: But I love.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 2: You didn't put like hot pep is on the tune
Speaker 2: in fish sandwich or like.
Speaker 6: Definitely he threw many sandwiches at the back of my head,
Speaker 6: you stupid fuck.
Speaker 2: I just want one classic story of like God, just one,
Speaker 2: all right?
Speaker 6: So I worked there, I went out one night drink
Speaker 6: a lot, and I used to fight a lot and
Speaker 6: Hank Shockley and me edwards. He slapped me in the
Speaker 6: back of my head and I dropped him, and then
Speaker 6: his brother Keith ran over and my man, this Albanian
Speaker 6: kid snuffed him and then flashed the gun I'm thinking of, like,
Speaker 6: I found this record in.
Speaker 2: And I went back to it.
Speaker 6: Russell was there and he was like, you stupid motherfucker.
Speaker 6: He said that man makes hits for me.
Speaker 2: What the fuck do you do?
Speaker 6: I said, I'm sorry. He's like, yeah, right. And on
Speaker 6: Monday he called me to his house and I thought
Speaker 6: I was getting fired and he was like, yo, you're
Speaker 6: lucky I love you because I should fire you. And
Speaker 6: I kept my job and Griff called me up at work.
Speaker 6: I was like, you know, motherfuckers want to come see you.
Speaker 6: Who was the kid?
Speaker 2: Who?
Speaker 6: Who was the Puerto Rican kid who snuffed Keith? And
Speaker 6: I was like, you don't want to know him. And
Speaker 6: that kid who did that later on went to jail
Speaker 6: for murder. He was a wild Umanian kid on the Armando. Wow,
Speaker 6: that's a deaf jam story.
Speaker 2: And then there's.
Speaker 6: One one time me and Jam assad Jay, you know,
Speaker 6: me and DMC. We're at the show at the World
Speaker 6: Davy DMX and Public Enemy where the performers opening night
Speaker 6: and they had these pained windows and DMCs to wear
Speaker 6: a uh ring, an old English ring, and he was
Speaker 6: punching panes of the windows, breaking them and I said
Speaker 6: I could do that, and he said do it. And
Speaker 6: I did it once and I broke one and he
Speaker 6: did it. He broke another one. I did another one.
Speaker 6: I cut my finger up and I had to get stitches.
Speaker 6: I still get the scar on my day, right on
Speaker 6: my finger wow, from punching windows with them. Who drove
Speaker 6: me to the hospital left me there and I don't know, man,
Speaker 6: there's a million stories like you know. That was a
Speaker 6: wild time in my life, but it was super duper fun.
Speaker 6: And I met after and I remember when I met
Speaker 6: Chuck D there. I had his demo before he came
Speaker 6: out for months, and I didn't believe he was Chuck
Speaker 6: D because he wasn't big enough to be Chuck D.
Speaker 2: Oh you have this giant Yeah, I thought he was
Speaker 2: like six ft nine figures here.
Speaker 6: It's like, wait, you're Chuck D. He's like yeah. I
Speaker 6: was like, no, you're not. And he was Chuck D.
Speaker 2: That's crazy, all right. The blind test, all right, what
Speaker 2: we do is we play you songs and you give
Speaker 2: have to be blind. No, no, no, it's like downbeat.
Speaker 1: We'll randomly play you stuff that's significant to your career
Speaker 1: or you know, just to get your taste on things, and.
Speaker 2: We'll rate that record. Uh not, you don't have to
Speaker 2: rate it, just talk about it all right. This one
Speaker 2: should be very interesting. We'll see. I'm that you know
Speaker 2: about your own history.
Speaker 6: Oh that's Homeboys. Shit, I didn't even know that. That
Speaker 6: ol't me. Notice is Dirty's Joint?
Speaker 2: Did you know at the time it was?
Speaker 6: I didn't.
Speaker 2: I didn't know it to just now you just figured
Speaker 2: out right now.
Speaker 6: I just heard it right now, it's like, oh, that's
Speaker 6: dirty Joint. I didn't even know. I never knew that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's probably the greatest sample revealed.
Speaker 6: I no idea.
Speaker 2: I'll give a shout out to Jay Rock for.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like, wow, I had no idea exactly the thousands
Speaker 6: of times and I'm a Stevie Wonder fanatic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who knew?
Speaker 6: That's wild.
Speaker 2: I hope the lawyers don't call that's a beautiful it's.
Speaker 6: A beautiful record. They're gonna go catch Risen.
Speaker 2: Now, Wow, how how would you did you negotiate with
Speaker 2: the artists that you have to remix everything on their
Speaker 2: records or you just did just kind of did it.
Speaker 6: I was like, I'll just go remixes and they'd be like, oh,
Speaker 6: that's cool, we'll put it out and they didn't care. Nah,
Speaker 6: because I would do them like I would just grab
Speaker 6: bag of polls.
Speaker 2: I just do them.
Speaker 6: I literally would sit there with the vocals and I
Speaker 6: would fuck I would sample them line by line by line.
Speaker 6: How crazy is that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, because that's my question. How did you keep it
Speaker 5: in time? Because I mean it wasn't pro tous, you
Speaker 5: couldn't line it up.
Speaker 6: Time stretched a little though.
Speaker 2: Oh really, even even with tape.
Speaker 6: With I'd make sure whatever I made was the same tempo.
Speaker 2: Ah, okay, gotcha. Do you remember the first digital record
Speaker 2: you did? The first recording, White Ford Things Blues. That
Speaker 2: was the first one, okay, and then after that.
Speaker 6: Everything Meryl Caldato told me I had to get up
Speaker 6: on digital recording, and he actually, yeah, And when I
Speaker 6: started the second ever last record, I had a little
Speaker 6: bit of knowledge and I wanted to hung out with
Speaker 6: Mario and he just taught me everything, and he was like,
Speaker 6: here's what we gotta do, here's what you gotta do
Speaker 6: good because I had I had a I had an
Speaker 6: aid that moment on the first Whitey Foy record that
Speaker 6: made me cry. I lost background vocals, like eight tracks
Speaker 6: of background vocals. I had to do again, and I
Speaker 6: literally like was crying.
Speaker 2: All right, Uh, we're gonna give you your second.
Speaker 1: Blind test song, Sir Dante Ross right here, of course,
Speaker 1: mister yes, mister Dante Ross.
Speaker 2: I know what that is.
Speaker 6: That's mc a andi, that's drum machine. I remember when
Speaker 6: they made that. That ship was crazy right there.
Speaker 2: Do you know anything about the history of the Latin
Speaker 2: rascals or it's just I do.
Speaker 6: I knew those guys. I you know, I know a
Speaker 6: lot about freestyle.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, this why this song never took off on
Speaker 2: death Jam, I'll never know.
Speaker 6: Yeah right, it's bugged out Budi. He was Brazius guy
Speaker 6: Jay Burnett. He was one of one of the engineers
Speaker 6: at Chun King and and the Beasties well Mike and
Speaker 6: Ad Mike and MCA lived in his building on Christie Street,
Speaker 6: sixty nine Christie Street with the Chinese whole house in
Speaker 6: the in the first floor.
Speaker 2: They called us sixty nine kids. When was the significance
Speaker 2: of it.
Speaker 6: There was Club sixty nine. It was right there, sixty
Speaker 6: nine Christian Street, and his dad, this Chinese gangster who
Speaker 6: was the landlord. He was like, your boy's never come
Speaker 6: to the club. Plus it's nine, come on, come on,
Speaker 6: hang out. And we would always we'd always make fun
Speaker 6: of him. He'd always do his voice. And it was
Speaker 6: this place that was like basically there's a whole house
Speaker 6: on the first floor, the Chinese club, and and it
Speaker 6: was like what do they call fucking uh sweatshops? So
Speaker 6: they can make as much noise as they wanted in
Speaker 6: this fucked up loft that had rats that they lived in.
Speaker 6: And Brazudi lived in the building too. He got them
Speaker 6: I think the apartment and and it was like they
Speaker 6: could practice her all the time. Brazudi lived upstairs. And
Speaker 6: he was friends with Steve at and Steve Steve and
Speaker 6: and obviously Rick and everybody. And he made the record
Speaker 6: with with m c A and Russ. Rick put it
Speaker 6: out and they never won anywhere, but it was an
Speaker 6: ill record and uh yeah, he programmed it, he did
Speaker 6: everything on it, and mc A just wrote the raps
Speaker 6: and did the raps.
Speaker 2: That same Stevett ended up doing bigger and Deffer. They
Speaker 2: did everything that he did. Back then.
Speaker 6: It was Rick's guy, Steve Vett. He died to rust
Speaker 6: in peace.
Speaker 2: Steve had passed away.
Speaker 6: Long time ago. What long long time ago? Stevett? Hat
Speaker 6: I mean he is you know his engineering man. Just
Speaker 6: think about great the Beasties record sounds, and how great
Speaker 6: Raising Hell sounds. He was a beast ll he's a beast.
Speaker 6: He's a beast.
Speaker 2: Wow. I can't even imagine, Like at your tenure at
Speaker 2: def jam Light, what was the one what was the
Speaker 2: your your your top moment of.
Speaker 6: Like alert rebel without a pause. I gave him the
Speaker 6: test pressing and he played it, Like.
Speaker 2: What was the reaction when you first heard that record play?
Speaker 6: It was in a land quarters he played I hadn't
Speaker 6: really heard it, and he played it and he was like, Yo,
Speaker 6: this shit is ill. And he played it about forty
Speaker 6: five minutes later and the club jumped off crazy and
Speaker 6: I was like, oh my god, that's a hit record.
Speaker 6: I was like, that's a hit record. Well. Another great
Speaker 6: memory of Deaf Jam is I tried to sign Boogie
Speaker 6: Down Productions, so I brought them in and it was
Speaker 6: Eric B. Was there rock him No, just Eric B.
Speaker 6: Russell Leor and go, and Scottie Morris was there. I
Speaker 6: think d was there, but he never remembers this. And
Speaker 6: Carris Won was like, they were like, yo, we don't
Speaker 6: want to be on deaf jam. Why Carris was like, yo,
Speaker 6: I'm deaf. I don't need the deaf JAM. I already
Speaker 6: got that. Like he didn't want to fuck because he
Speaker 6: didn't trust them. He's he just was paranoid. So he
Speaker 6: didn't trust them and we didn't get them. And if
Speaker 6: you notice, he took shots.
Speaker 2: He was always taking shots.
Speaker 6: Run Run DMC. He took some shots and I think
Speaker 6: that had something to do with it too. You know,
Speaker 6: he didn't want to fuck with them, and he was
Speaker 6: you know, he was all the Juice crew. He was
Speaker 6: trying to just you know, he was ready to go out.
Speaker 6: He was ready to whatever at any time.
Speaker 2: But in his head he thought it was better to
Speaker 2: be on Bee Boy Records.
Speaker 6: Well then no, So here's what happened. They knew that
Speaker 6: they could get out of the b Boy Records contract
Speaker 6: that had been voided, so they were free agent kind of.
Speaker 6: And and then Scott got killed. And then we had
Speaker 6: another meeting with Karis One and he said I'm not
Speaker 6: really trying to sign it, but you should sign my
Speaker 6: man D Nice and we didn't sign D Nice. Wow
Speaker 6: signed the job, and I remember there was a lot
Speaker 6: of confusion because George and the host was saying he
Speaker 6: managed them and he didn't manage them. I think there
Speaker 6: was a little problem over.
Speaker 1: That before I do the last record? Are there any
Speaker 1: other near misses that you could have signed?
Speaker 6: So many dos effects I didn't sign it.
Speaker 2: I had it series.
Speaker 6: The biggest miss I ever read was trib Call Quest.
Speaker 6: I left my job at Tommy Boy with the intent
Speaker 6: of signing trib Call Quest from Brand Nubian's and the
Speaker 6: DC at Electric Records, and I lost two out of
Speaker 6: three of them.
Speaker 2: The DC doc you had a relationship with Dre to
Speaker 2: do that or Jerry Heller was in.
Speaker 6: My office with doctor Dre and Michell l a Easy
Speaker 6: and they wanted to bring him there because they had
Speaker 6: a song called Bridget that they wouldn't put out. If
Speaker 6: you've ever heard it, it's it's out there on the net.
Speaker 6: It's a filthy record, It's amazing. Bridget was a dumb hope.
Speaker 6: Bridget was a dumb hold Bridget. I think the I
Speaker 6: think she fucked the midget Bridget. It was wow, this
Speaker 6: is a wild record. So and it's all about them
Speaker 6: running the train on her right and her and.
Speaker 2: How that Tommy Silverman.
Speaker 6: So Tom didn't want to spend the money because we
Speaker 6: had it was one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars deal.
Speaker 6: He didn't want to spend it. I went over to
Speaker 6: work at Electro. I tried to get the deal but
Speaker 6: and they thought they could get out of East West deal.
Speaker 6: My lawyer, Gary Cassen, said, we can't compete against one
Speaker 6: of the labels in Warner Music Group. We can't go
Speaker 6: and do this. And my boss told me, Jerry Heller,
Speaker 6: don't trust that guy. I remember him told me that
Speaker 6: he's like, he's not trustworthy. And and when I read
Speaker 6: Jerry's book, he told the story and omitted me from
Speaker 6: the story and told a bullshit version of it. But
Speaker 6: that's okay because Jerry Heller's Jerry Heller, right, And I
Speaker 6: have no, no, you know, bad feelings for him. But
Speaker 6: he didn't tell the truth and and I didn't sign
Speaker 6: that and Tribe I had three hundred thousand dollars, which
Speaker 6: was a gang a loot on the table back then
Speaker 6: it was and I think I went up to three
Speaker 6: seventy five and they signed a jive and they came
Speaker 6: up after publishing. Oh, they didn't know the game back then.
Speaker 6: And Chris lightighty for years, I'd be like, you could
Speaker 6: have kept your publishing and that should have been my group,
Speaker 6: and yikes, I have a long intricate history with those guys.
Speaker 6: And yeah, I mean it was like me and Chris,
Speaker 6: you know, remained very close friends throughout all of that.
Speaker 6: And those were bands that I lost. There's some others
Speaker 6: along the way. I lost stuff recently, even that did well,
Speaker 6: and you know, there's a bunch of stuff I've lost,
Speaker 6: but those are ones that really stick out and do's effects. Honestly,
Speaker 6: I didn't believe in it. I was like, I don't
Speaker 6: believe in it. I was like, either it was novelty,
Speaker 6: thought it was novelty. I lost Souls of Mischief signed Dell,
Speaker 6: and I should sign Souls, And I didn't sign Souls
Speaker 6: because Stretch on Front and Daddy Reef worked the big
Speaker 6: beat and those are my sons, and I was like,
Speaker 6: they were like, we want to sign Souls. I was like,
Speaker 6: get that. Get that kind of Maddie gave me dirty
Speaker 6: and and Sophia stepped in and got it. Yeah, but
Speaker 6: that was supposed to be on big beat and and yeah,
Speaker 6: and I should have signed them. I didn't sign him.
Speaker 6: And they had they had ninety three two on the
Speaker 6: demo and all that, all of that.
Speaker 2: So were you behind artifacts? Were you only beat that was?
Speaker 6: That was reef di that you know? I didn't do that?
Speaker 6: What else did I miss? Those?
Speaker 2: Are?
Speaker 6: Those are noticeable? Missus? I tried to swing Third Base
Speaker 6: to Tommy Boy and and Tommy Boy didn't like them.
Speaker 6: They didn't want to sign them. I helped make Third
Speaker 6: Basic group Sam sever.
Speaker 2: Part of like your stimulated No No, but he was
Speaker 2: he was my man and ship.
Speaker 6: He was my boy. And he showed me how to
Speaker 6: use some equipment, and he brought a few records here
Speaker 6: and there, and he put me up on the Ultimate
Speaker 6: breaks and beats, and he kicked some knowledge my way.
Speaker 6: He was definitely younger than me, but like my mentor.
Speaker 2: On some level.
Speaker 1: What would you use like at twelve hundred hun and
Speaker 1: then we went to the MPs and twelve hundred drummer.
Speaker 6: She yeah, that's the one, that's the that's the box.
Speaker 6: I mean you know who the master of the of
Speaker 6: the of the s P twelve was. I just got
Speaker 6: a big up as someone who no one talks about.
Speaker 6: Paul C. He was the master the sp I know
Speaker 6: him well, my man. That's probably how I know Large.
Speaker 6: And the other day Large gave me the biggest compliment.
Speaker 6: He said, Yo, when it comes to like beat knowledge,
Speaker 6: I always held you up there with Paul C and
Speaker 6: almost like damn because he's the king of kings. He
Speaker 6: showed me. He's the one who told me by every
Speaker 6: get out my life woman. He showed me skull snaps.
Speaker 6: It took me shopping. He was that guy.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 6: He was an amazing producer and he would have he
Speaker 6: would have got paid. I mean he did a lot
Speaker 6: of records. You don't know he did, you know, including
Speaker 6: stuff ever being rock him. Give the drummers something for
Speaker 6: ultra magnetic steezo. It's my turn. Let the rhythm hit him.
Speaker 6: He did. He did Duth James, James, that's him, and
Speaker 6: they killed the peach the best. To me, he did
Speaker 6: all those records and he mixed them in the room.
Speaker 6: That was about this big. He was a nasty, nasty,
Speaker 6: nasty one.
Speaker 2: So was he primarily an engineer.
Speaker 6: And producer and a digger. He was a serious digger,
Speaker 6: for real, real real digger.
Speaker 2: I heard the legends.
Speaker 6: I heard the legend of Paul nineteen ninety right, I
Speaker 6: think so eighty nine. And he did organize Confusions demo.
Speaker 6: They're called simply too Positive STP. And I wanted to
Speaker 6: sign him. And he had Brad looped up, he had
Speaker 6: bron he had the Eddie Harris joined too, the one
Speaker 6: that that brand Nuby used. So he was nasty and
Speaker 6: asked Paul about him if you ever get large pro
Speaker 6: up here? So so whenever I when I when I
Speaker 6: think about Large, I always think about Paul cy too.
Speaker 6: So you know, Paul c. He was a legend man.
Speaker 6: He got taken up before this time.
Speaker 2: Well the last record. I'm just of course he signed
Speaker 2: l O N S. But it's something about this album
Speaker 2: that just.
Speaker 6: This nasty Lords Missus, buster Buster those solo because of this.
Speaker 2: Yes, this man Backspin did this really?
Speaker 6: Back Spin was ill. I don't know what I mean.
Speaker 16: He was plugged out, like their feminine patat like the girls.
Speaker 2: Not fat Girl the way. Yeah. To me, feminine fat
Speaker 2: should have been a single and always for.
Speaker 6: A minute, girl fat, that's Phil Cosby no booking tm MG,
Speaker 6: oh yeah, yeah yeah sing a simple song joint.
Speaker 2: No the uh that that?
Speaker 6: I know what you mean.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't have that luck if it wasn't for.
Speaker 6: The silver album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's on that. I always that's the question I
Speaker 2: played this to ask you.
Speaker 6: Why was this not a rest of the band wouldn't
Speaker 6: go for it? That's bust. And I always thought, like
Speaker 6: when I heard that bus, I was like, damn, he
Speaker 6: got that yard Man ship. He's ill. It was like
Speaker 6: a real that sound like a real Brooklyn record too.
Speaker 6: I can't even explain why this has that yard Man field.
Speaker 6: Buster was so he was so incredible, you know, he
Speaker 6: was just so charismatic from day one to.
Speaker 2: This to this day. I still spend feminine fat by
Speaker 2: leaders of the news that.
Speaker 6: Record in at least ten years. That's an ill one.
Speaker 2: It's incredible.
Speaker 6: Chemist backspin at he was ill. He did he had
Speaker 6: a couple of joints on that album. I don't think
Speaker 6: he ever did so. He produced this and that was
Speaker 6: Buster's man from Brooklyn.
Speaker 2: What else did he do?
Speaker 6: He did a couple of songs on an album. I
Speaker 6: have to see the album and my memories a little hazy.
Speaker 2: But he didn't have any other productions that time that
Speaker 2: I'm aware of.
Speaker 6: Maybe something here or there, but nothing significant.
Speaker 1: Okay, So there's so much that we have not touched on.
Speaker 1: We didn't even get onto Santana. Oh yeah, yeah, is
Speaker 1: there only Grammy the Santana record?
Speaker 6: I only got one? Sorry, bro?
Speaker 2: And can I still hang? Of course he can't.
Speaker 6: Guys want to make sure. Yeah, yeah, I got that.
Speaker 6: I did a ever Last That was the first song
Speaker 6: we did after he because he had a heart attack.
Speaker 6: If did Whitey Ford sings a blues that I've got
Speaker 6: to mention. He was more in congeneral heart disorder and
Speaker 6: his kuminin was misprescribed and he had a heart attack.
Speaker 6: He almost died. I mixed the album without him. He
Speaker 6: was in hospital couperating and then he got better. One
Speaker 6: on tour and I got a call from Pete Gamberg
Speaker 6: and he was like, do you guys have a song
Speaker 6: for Santana? And I said, yeah, sure, we didn't, And
Speaker 6: Everlass was in town coincidentally doing Good Morning America, and
Speaker 6: he was like, Yo, let's track the song. And I
Speaker 6: took a beat that was from an old casual song
Speaker 6: that had a Latin feel to it with the bongo
Speaker 6: in it. And I was like, yo, I think these
Speaker 6: drums are rock. He's like, those are perfect, and we
Speaker 6: used those drums and he recorded it and then I
Speaker 6: basically ripped off the illea drum break and won in
Speaker 6: a million and I used that and break and that
Speaker 6: was the song. And I gave Pete the demo like
Speaker 6: thirty six hours later, and he was like, when can
Speaker 6: you go do it? And I was like, when can
Speaker 6: you write a check? He said, how much do you need?
Speaker 6: And I asked him for the biggest check I'd ever
Speaker 6: asked anyone for him my whole life, to produce a record.
Speaker 6: He was like, no problem, and I went and did
Speaker 6: the record.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 6: And I worked with Santana two times after that, and
Speaker 6: it was cool. I worked with him at Anthony Hamilton
Speaker 6: that was that was badass because I wrote the lyrics
Speaker 6: on that song too, and I never really write lyrics,
Speaker 6: So so, yeah, Carlos Santana, he's ill. He's the coolest,
Speaker 6: and Anthony Hamilton is the coolest too, so so you know,
Speaker 6: I don't produce records anymore, but but I always think
Speaker 6: the Santana records like the last significant record I produced,
Speaker 6: The Wane with Anthony Hamilton.
Speaker 2: And to me that that's you know which album was
Speaker 2: this with Santa Anason all that I am okay?
Speaker 6: I was like, I think that was the last one
Speaker 6: NE did on Jay. And when I did the song,
Speaker 6: they made me Josh Stone did the original vocal and
Speaker 6: I had to change the whole register of the song
Speaker 6: for her and it didn't rock right and she didn't
Speaker 6: sing it right. And I took it to Clive and
Speaker 6: he handed me the demo back and I was like, oh,
Speaker 6: put the guy on it. That doesn't work, and I
Speaker 6: want to recut the entire record again in the original
Speaker 6: register with the band. And then Anthony came and sang it,
Speaker 6: and and what's crazy is I played keyboards on it,
Speaker 6: and I don't really play keyboards all that well, but
Speaker 6: I just, you know, chopped my shit up. I played
Speaker 6: the Warlitter on it, and they had Serban mix it
Speaker 6: and he bricked the mix. He didn't because he didn't
Speaker 6: know how the records supposed to sound. It's supposed to
Speaker 6: sound like.
Speaker 2: A Donny Hathaway.
Speaker 6: So I went out to Cali and I sat with
Speaker 6: him and he said what do I do? I said,
Speaker 6: how much I pay you? And he told him. I said,
Speaker 6: maybe you should do it yourself. And then I was like, now,
Speaker 6: I sat down and I fixed it around and I said,
Speaker 6: that's the record.
Speaker 2: And so initially he sent it to Surban Blinds and
Speaker 2: he did.
Speaker 6: They wouldn't do that. They did that.
Speaker 2: That's okay. I'm about to say, I want to Bob.
Speaker 6: Howers a mixer keeping hundred or Jamie Stoub They just
Speaker 6: wasn't trying.
Speaker 2: To hear that.
Speaker 1: Serving is the first and probably the the exception of
Speaker 1: Jimmy Douglas, the only cat that I've ever just Douglas
Speaker 1: sent a mix to and it's like, yeah.
Speaker 8: We know what we do. I know what you want, man.
Speaker 6: I mean, he just you know, I wanted to sound
Speaker 6: like a Donnie Hathaway record. I wanted to sound I
Speaker 6: didn't want it to sound. He thought it was all
Speaker 6: about the drums and it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, Jimmy Douglas is awesome for that's like he
Speaker 1: just you give him a reference.
Speaker 2: He's like, yeah, I did that back in seventy.
Speaker 6: Fourth, right, he probably did.
Speaker 2: He did.
Speaker 6: He did slave black, slave, foreigner white, like a stuff
Speaker 6: and he's He's and he did Timland He's the g Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I mean so so after I mean I got this
Speaker 6: stuff after it, Yeah, I did. I did the second
Speaker 6: ever last record. I did a you know, I did
Speaker 6: all these remix for every rock rap band in the
Speaker 6: world that I made a lot of money doing that,
Speaker 6: Like I did like six corn remixes and Incubis and
Speaker 6: fucking all that bullshit, and I was just polishing more
Speaker 6: and more turns. I got to be honest, I was
Speaker 6: just like, you know, it was like it was, it
Speaker 6: wasn't getting better, it was getting worse. And I got
Speaker 6: this big publishing deal and I was like, I'm going
Speaker 6: to be a songwriter. There's one problem with me being
Speaker 6: a songwriter. I can't really play an instrument that well
Speaker 6: and I don't know how to write lyrics, so so
Speaker 6: being a songwriter is probably pretty hard for me. But
Speaker 6: but I got a couple of songs off and and uh,
Speaker 6: you know, I did this. I did this last two
Speaker 6: recordsigning and name what they are, but they were not
Speaker 6: artistically fulfilling. And then I started working with Travis Barker
Speaker 6: and I helped him out make his solo record, and
Speaker 6: I was living in l A. And Uh, my dad
Speaker 6: passed and le York called me up, so he knew
Speaker 6: how close to me and my dad were. An e
Speaker 6: from me a job at Warner Brothers, and I went
Speaker 6: and I took a job working at Warner Brothers in
Speaker 6: New York. I moved back. I was living in l A.
Speaker 6: And I did a third ever last record to that
Speaker 6: tank and Leo one, what was the throne call? I
Speaker 6: had White Tress Beautiful, So I did it and Lee
Speaker 6: York lew York gave him the deal and then lee
Speaker 6: Or quit like a month eight weeks before the record
Speaker 6: came out, and I got stuck with La Reed trying
Speaker 6: to explain what the record was about and that you
Speaker 6: know you can tell that you know it is what
Speaker 6: it is. So lear he owed me one and he
Speaker 6: he asked me if I wanted a in our job,
Speaker 6: and I was like, yeah, you know, there's a couple
Speaker 6: of things in my life I've been good at. That's
Speaker 6: one of them. So uh, I took the job in
Speaker 6: New York and I worked there for a couple of years,
Speaker 6: and I got to tell you, it was very frustrating.
Speaker 6: For the first few years. I found this guy named
Speaker 6: Maclamore and and Tom Moskowitz told me sucked and uh
Speaker 6: and I told Leora I was gonna quit. Yeah, right,
Speaker 6: So I told Lear I was gonna quit. Todd wouldn't
Speaker 6: let me sign anything, said take it to a DA
Speaker 6: see if Kenny wants to do and Kenny Wiggley I
Speaker 6: connected him and Zach Quol and he ended up doing
Speaker 6: the deal. The record came out, and I went to
Speaker 6: work at Adam became vice prosident Ada and I still
Speaker 6: worked there now, you know. So so it all worked
Speaker 6: out in the end amazing and uh, you know, I
Speaker 6: mean I can't necessarily say I was like, I'm recognized
Speaker 6: as Macmore's A and R because the the way we
Speaker 6: do records at ADAS, we kind of take finished records.
Speaker 6: It's a distribution coming to label services. But since then
Speaker 6: I signed and I signed a little Dicky you know,
Speaker 6: saved that money as my record. Oh really yeah, and
Speaker 6: that's like a platinum single. And I signed Maide in
Speaker 6: Tokyo who have the Uber Everywhere, which is just one
Speaker 6: platinum too. So I had a little, you know, a
Speaker 6: nice little run in downtown. The other record didn't sell.
Speaker 6: The singles sold, and so it's been a good little
Speaker 6: you know, twelve months over there for me, I'm about
Speaker 6: to be senior vice president and blah blah blah ah
Speaker 6: that bullshit, all the bells and whistles. But it's ironic
Speaker 6: that twenty five years later, I'm kind of back where
Speaker 6: it started, you know, doing A and R in the
Speaker 6: Warner Music Group again and and having a very good
Speaker 6: run right now. But the disparity in the music I
Speaker 6: work on is is really mind boggling. Like, my, how
Speaker 6: do you My good friend Pete said, he used to
Speaker 6: do all dirty bastard. It's okay, you have enough credibility,
Speaker 6: you can do whatever you want to do. I mean
Speaker 6: I had this record, this Jordan Belafert record. Man, I
Speaker 6: mean that's a gold record. But like you guys would
Speaker 6: punch me if you heard the record, so, you know
Speaker 6: you you'd be like, yo, I gave you crab tonight, Like.
Speaker 2: Here's the here's the thing though. The thing is is
Speaker 2: that now that you're older and wiser one and you
Speaker 2: know that the tastes of your youth are not exactly
Speaker 2: in line with what is out today, Like how do
Speaker 2: you trust yourself when you know? How do you know
Speaker 2: this is going to work? I mean versus I really love.
Speaker 6: This analytics right that that plays into it. I do
Speaker 6: heavy analytics. I helped run the research department for for
Speaker 6: Atlantic because I also work at Atlantic, so I am
Speaker 6: one of the heads of that so research driven. And then,
Speaker 6: like in the case of Maclamore, I just really believed
Speaker 6: in what he was, Like I saw it live and
Speaker 6: I was like, Oh, this this I connect to. So
Speaker 6: however you feel about him, he's exceptional on what he does, right,
Speaker 6: and I recognize his exceptionalness. I thought he was he
Speaker 6: was great at what he does. And we talk about
Speaker 6: little Dickey, so same thing. I thought he was great
Speaker 6: at what he did, Like he's really good at what
Speaker 6: he does, like.
Speaker 2: Him or not.
Speaker 6: So I guess I do my job with less sentiment, right,
Speaker 6: with less of my heart and more of my brains.
Speaker 6: And I also am keyed into knowing it's a singles market,
Speaker 6: it's a streaming world. Your album may never sell. And
Speaker 6: the end result of that twofold one, I've become much
Speaker 6: smarter at my job, much less emotionally connected and attached,
Speaker 6: which allows me to leave my job at my desk
Speaker 6: and enjoy my life a little life, right, and I
Speaker 6: reaped the benefits financially. But two, I feel like me
Speaker 6: and and lots of other people who do what I
Speaker 6: do for a living, we have killed the art form
Speaker 6: of the classic great rap record album. That rap album
Speaker 6: is no longer important due to streaming, and we have
Speaker 6: to we have to if we want to survive in
Speaker 6: the business, accept that fact. And I've accepted that fact begrudgingly,
Speaker 6: but I accept that fact. And that is what it
Speaker 6: is right now. And you know, when I when I,
Speaker 6: you know, I do a lean and mean man. I
Speaker 6: don't much like my early days. I don't spend a
Speaker 6: lot of money picking these records up. I allow people
Speaker 6: to own themselves. You own your masters and a large
Speaker 6: or large royalty. It's a whole different way of doing business.
Speaker 6: But but I think for me exciting because I feel
Speaker 6: like I'm continuing to the independent side of the culture.
Speaker 6: And for me, that's exciting. And I balance it out
Speaker 6: by going to play records with just Blaze and large
Speaker 6: Pro and digging and and you know, doing all the
Speaker 6: other things I like. So, you know, kind of my
Speaker 6: life has a lot of balance to it.
Speaker 1: Do you ever pray that it will come full circle
Speaker 1: again and there will be a generation in that I
Speaker 1: believe that once to dig again and that that I
Speaker 1: don't know if that.
Speaker 6: Will ever happen me because of finances, right, Clearing records
Speaker 6: cost too much money. But I do believe there are
Speaker 6: great rappers in the world. Jay elect, for one, is
Speaker 6: a great rapper. Chance the rappers phenomenal. There's lots of
Speaker 6: us election. Where is that guy? But you know, and
Speaker 6: and I even like Future it's a different thing. But
Speaker 6: once again, for what he does, he's phenomenal. And there's
Speaker 6: polarizing artists like a little YACHTI who I have to
Speaker 6: respect because he's polarizing, right, But but there are people
Speaker 6: who still really can rap. You know, I believe yg
Speaker 6: makes really good music. A chance the rapper vic mensa.
Speaker 6: You know, there's lots of guys out there who still
Speaker 6: spit and and still rap really great. And then there's
Speaker 6: lots of guys who make good music. Maybe they're not
Speaker 6: the greatest rappers because my bar is set with rock him, right,
Speaker 6: So so my bar is here. But that's okay because
Speaker 6: I look at music and chambers. Everything has their own chamber.
Speaker 6: So I can't expect the trap rap dude of the day.
Speaker 6: If I expected that I'll always be miserable. I'll be
Speaker 6: the cranky old man in my size thirty eight jeans
Speaker 6: beefing with the fitted hat. And that's not me.
Speaker 2: You know, you know I have to be. I have
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 6: I have to be abreast of what's popping right now.
Speaker 2: And you know I mean this.
Speaker 6: That's how I am culturally too. I never wanted see
Speaker 6: because when I was young, the old bitter dude. I
Speaker 6: didn't like that dude. So I don't want to be
Speaker 6: that old bitter dude that no one want. No one
Speaker 6: wants to be ro you know that dude's corny.
Speaker 2: But we're that bit.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm not. I'm not bitter man. And I
Speaker 6: find things I love and you know, I'm trying to
Speaker 6: do a couple of things right now I believe in
Speaker 6: and whether it gets done or not, who knows. But
Speaker 6: that said, you know, the problems with doing A and
Speaker 6: R now is no secrets. Everybody knows everything, so everything
Speaker 6: goes zero to sixty right away, right right away. Even
Speaker 6: from when I when we found Maclamore to now, things
Speaker 6: have changed dramatically. So the kind of artist that I
Speaker 6: work with wants to remain independent. He doesn't necessarily want
Speaker 6: to be part of a big machine because we have
Speaker 6: seen so many guys get signed to that big label
Speaker 6: and the breaks come on and that's that, and that's
Speaker 6: been since forever, but we really see it now, right
Speaker 6: And I can aim ten guys who had a big
Speaker 6: buzz and they got signed in that major that came
Speaker 6: to break.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 6: The other thing, the other side of is for me
Speaker 6: to bring something in the building that's at zero and
Speaker 6: think I'm gonna go zero to sixty with it. It's
Speaker 6: probably not gonna happen. He asked that that artist has
Speaker 6: to be to build it. You gotta be able to
Speaker 6: do it himself. And we all can do it because
Speaker 6: right there, Quest got his laptop. That's that's your whole
Speaker 6: world right there. That's that's your record company, that's your
Speaker 6: recording studio. That's your marketing tool, that's your vice president
Speaker 6: of marketing, that's your promo team. That's everything everything right
Speaker 6: and and you know, man, just get it on iTunes
Speaker 6: and can end up in the streaming world and you
Speaker 6: can win. And I mean, look at chance, man, he
Speaker 6: said fuck you to everybody, most punk rock shit ever.
Speaker 6: I tried to sign him when he put out ten
Speaker 6: days I flew to Chicago. He was like, nah, right, so,
Speaker 6: and he told me I wasn't the first one there.
Speaker 13: Wow.
Speaker 2: And he's that shrewd enough to say no.
Speaker 6: He said no to Sylvia Rome before he said no
Speaker 6: to me.
Speaker 10: Somebody.
Speaker 6: His manager has a lot of money, but he makes
Speaker 6: a lot of money. He's a touring act. Look, man,
Speaker 6: it's a hard ticket world right now. If you're out
Speaker 6: there touring amazing. I can name five guys, and I'm
Speaker 6: not giving away no secrets. Who are touring acts who
Speaker 6: don't need a record deal. The Suicide Boys don't need
Speaker 6: a record deal. Pooh, yeah, I don't need a record deal.
Speaker 6: I mean, little young Doff don't need a record deal.
Speaker 6: These dudes don't need record deals. They are on the
Speaker 6: road making money, selling merch doing whatever they doing. And
Speaker 6: they're not selling thousands, hundreds of thousands of records. But
Speaker 6: let's be real. The New Gold records one hundred thousand,
Speaker 6: the New Gold albums one hundred thousand. A single might
Speaker 6: sell a million. I caught a couple this year, but
Speaker 6: my albums are not selling like that. Nobody's are. It's
Speaker 6: a different game. But you know what, I'm shrewd enough.
Speaker 6: And I've always been involved in technology enough because I
Speaker 6: was a producer, like and I shifted with time that
Speaker 6: that I see where it goes and where it's going.
Speaker 6: And hopefully I can continue to do that. If I don't,
Speaker 6: I don't got a job, right, and I don't know
Speaker 6: how to do that many other things. I pray for
Speaker 6: the practice of acceptance. I have like a serious meditation
Speaker 6: practice and all this other tree hugger bullshit I do.
Speaker 2: And that's important, That's very important. That is important.
Speaker 6: Every day I gotta I gotta wake up in the morning.
Speaker 6: I have to make conscious contact with maharre power.
Speaker 2: That's at all he got on me about that about meditating.
Speaker 6: I mean, I'm meditating, pray. I've After my father died,
Speaker 6: I just developed a much deeper connection to my higher power.
Speaker 6: So I had to deal with a lot. So you know,
Speaker 6: you get closer to God when things happened, right, So
Speaker 6: so as you know, I live one hundred percent sober
Speaker 6: life for a long time now, and and you know
Speaker 6: I don't smoke or drink anymore. And you know, I'm
Speaker 6: still bad with ladies. That's that's progress, not perfection. But
Speaker 6: it's like I'm I'm happy where I am. You know,
Speaker 6: it's like I'm blessed to still have a job and
Speaker 6: still have, uh you know, a source of income doing
Speaker 6: what I love it. And I have all these great
Speaker 6: relationships with with people I worked with for my whole life.
Speaker 6: And you know, it's damn I talked to Positive News today.
Speaker 6: You know, it's like I spoke the mugs over the weekend.
Speaker 6: Like I have these friends who I'm going to. It's
Speaker 6: like I always say, we didn't go to college, We
Speaker 6: went to hip hop.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a quote for your ass right there.
Speaker 6: You know, that's what we did. And this was our
Speaker 6: hip hop. Whether you know was hanging out with with
Speaker 6: all these Shahid recently or whoever. It's like we we
Speaker 6: are part of this thing that's so much bigger than us.
Speaker 6: And I'm just I always wanted to be Steve Cropper
Speaker 6: or Jerry Wexhan. I'm not going to say I'm those guys,
Speaker 6: but but I have a little a little piece of
Speaker 6: the history of of what this is about and continue
Speaker 6: to write my history. And for me, that's enough.
Speaker 2: You signed o dB and got a completed record, TV
Speaker 2: record brou Well. You know I can go on forever
Speaker 2: thank you for fulfilling, thank you for having me my
Speaker 2: nerd fantasy on just the whole renaissance era of hip
Speaker 2: hop dance, Ross, ladies and gentlemen, Thank you, thank you guys.
Speaker 2: That that was amazing.
Speaker 1: Gentlemen, we've learned a lot about renaissance hip hop. Tikeolo,
Speaker 1: any final.
Speaker 5: Thoughts, Man, I'm just, man, I'm just it's just so amazing,
Speaker 5: how like I want to there's a correlation between you know,
Speaker 5: hearing him talk about how the records were cheap, How
Speaker 5: cheap the records were, you know, for a record, you know,
Speaker 5: like a daylight to get made for like ninety thousand
Speaker 5: or whatever, for something so groundbreaking be made for so cheap,
Speaker 5: and you look at what rap budgets became later on.
Speaker 5: You know, it's I think there's something to be said,
Speaker 5: you know, doing sometimes you can do more with less.
Speaker 5: I think that forces you to be in some ways,
Speaker 5: that forces you to be a lot more creative, because
Speaker 5: you really you got to make every everything count, every dollar,
Speaker 5: every minute in the studio, you every every real like everything,
Speaker 5: you know what I'm saying, So you can't really fuck around.
Speaker 11: And they always say that like necessity is a mother invention.
Speaker 11: So you know, if you don't have the money to
Speaker 11: pay for you know, whatever whatever studio equipment you need,
Speaker 11: and you can come up with something, you gotta make it. Yeah,
Speaker 11: you got to figure it out. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I gotta say that. My rule number one is
Speaker 1: I hate those comfort studios. I mean a lot of
Speaker 1: them are shutting down now. But like one of the
Speaker 1: biggest things about like roots albums was the fact that
Speaker 1: when we track the music, when I did like the
Speaker 1: music and the stuff, I wanted it in the most uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: unsavory none. I mean we always joke like fruit basket
Speaker 1: situation and non fruit basket situation, Like Tarik needs to
Speaker 1: be comfortable in a you know, sunshine and fruit baskets
Speaker 1: and all that stuff and free pastries that that sort
Speaker 1: of man. I mean, he got to be in his
Speaker 1: zone and you know he needs fresh praise series and
Speaker 1: fruit baskets. But like, you know, I wanted the opposite.
Speaker 1: Like even now, when I make roots records, I record
Speaker 1: them in our dressing room at thirty Rock, which is
Speaker 1: essentially our you know, it's like a closet.
Speaker 2: I just have this this this.
Speaker 1: Fear of going soft if I'm in a comfortable environment.
Speaker 1: So maybe it's a good thing that, you know, what
Speaker 1: would the l O and S records sound like with
Speaker 1: a seven hundred thousand dollars budget a budget? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean who would know if if they were giving them
Speaker 1: righteous budget. But then it kind of also makes me
Speaker 1: mad that that even labels didn't see the art that
Speaker 1: they had on their hands to you know, give it justice.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, I think that was the selling point
Speaker 5: kind of a lot of hip hop. And you talked
Speaker 5: to you know, a lot of the OG's in the game,
Speaker 5: they all say that like the selling point of hip hop.
Speaker 2: It wasn't.
Speaker 5: I don't think the label really understood the music. It
Speaker 5: was just it could be produced for so cheap. The
Speaker 5: profit margin on it was so high, so it was like, okay,
Speaker 5: you mean, we ain't got to bring a drummer, a bassis,
Speaker 5: a guitarist, and we just need just you and your records.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool, we'll sign it. So hip hop is truly
Speaker 2: even the New Blues, oh my god, the New Blues
Speaker 2: and labels are just Alan lomax is walking around with.
Speaker 5: Field recordings and shit, young thug natural environment life here
Speaker 5: at the Trap House with certain Gucci talking about so
Speaker 5: I'm still a flare himself.
Speaker 1: Unpaid Billed Steve. Uh, you know, you guys are are intricate,
Speaker 1: vital parts of this show. Did you learn anything special?
Speaker 8: Dante Ross is some Jedi Yoda hip hop god. Yes,
Speaker 8: I learned that. I was also impressed by the someone
Speaker 8: who has a career in music and is somewhere in
Speaker 8: the middle of it at this point. To have that
Speaker 8: kind of longevity and continue to do groundbreaking ship at
Speaker 8: each turn is really unbelievable. And I don't you know
Speaker 8: something to aspire to, I said, I suppose.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we all want to be Dante Ross.
Speaker 8: We went that far.
Speaker 1: I want to be Dante Ross when I grow up.
Speaker 1: If you're like, yeah, this is our new single, it's
Speaker 1: called Troy, Yes, right, acronym Troy, so you know, uh,
Speaker 1: boss Bill. Any any final thoughts?
Speaker 11: Really, the whole Black Bastard situation kind of stuck in
Speaker 11: my head, like just kind of you know, hearing names
Speaker 11: of people who are kind of voted it down kind
Speaker 11: of made me angry. Sense it made perfect sense, but
Speaker 11: it's still insensed me because of the fact that, you know,
Speaker 11: just learning that they didn't even bother listening to the
Speaker 11: album or to get to get the rationale behind the artwork.
Speaker 2: You know, it's I cannot wait to get on Facebook
Speaker 2: half block about in their defense in the labels defense,
Speaker 2: and I'm being granted this is probably the only time
Speaker 2: I will ever come to defense.
Speaker 5: Get clear in their defense. You know they that's this
Speaker 5: was post cop killer, right right. I understand it, But
Speaker 5: like they wasn't. I mean, you get a letter from
Speaker 5: it was you really get a letter from the government.
Speaker 5: It was a borner too, so yeah, it's the same ship.
Speaker 5: It's like, okay, I can't find me. I got a
Speaker 5: letter from the government for real gun shot.
Speaker 2: I get it, I get it. I get it. Wow.
Speaker 11: But I mean if it hadn't happened, then you know,
Speaker 11: we probably would have never had Mad Villain and yep
Speaker 11: and them food and food and yeah, so I guess
Speaker 11: it all worked out for the best. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 11: I guess it did work out for the best.
Speaker 2: We me having fond Tikela Coleman, Sugar, Steve On, paid
Speaker 2: Bill and Bossville. Uh. This is Quest Love Supreme. Thank you,
Speaker 2: and I'll talk to you all later. Quest Love Supreme.
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