Speaker 1: Hey, what's up everybody. It's Quest Love and please make
Speaker 1: sure that you're up to date on my podcast, The
Speaker 1: Quest Love Show. However, it's Quest Love Supreme for life.
Speaker 1: Back in late twenty twenty, in the thick of the pandemic,
Speaker 1: QLs had my guys one Boys to Men for a
Speaker 1: two part podcast discussion. It's damn near three hours of
Speaker 1: conversation when we get real and all the stories behind
Speaker 1: this incredible record breaking group. So join me fon, tigelow Laiya,
Speaker 1: Unpaid Bill and Sugar Steve for this amazing touchstone interview
Speaker 1: with a lot of humor, candor and realness. Thank you
Speaker 1: to Nate, Sean and Wanye. Shout out to you, to
Speaker 1: Mike and Mark, You're all boys to Men to me,
Speaker 1: you guys humbled me and also gave one incredible conversation
Speaker 1: at a time when we needed it. So here's part
Speaker 1: one of Boys to Men on Quest Love Supreme. Quest
Speaker 1: Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Nobody else hear you record?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, okay, what his real name?
Speaker 2: I mean, that's what is Mama phone?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's it? Yes, I am immune.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, well, ladies and gentlemen, what can I
Speaker 1: say Our guest today are the pride of my hometown
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. They are, in my opinion, and I'm very biased,
Speaker 1: they are simply one of the finest, most talented singing
Speaker 1: groups in history.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: They have made classic records, they have broken records, and
Speaker 1: when those records got broken, they broke records with their
Speaker 1: own records. The three singles three singles single handedly have
Speaker 1: occupied the number one spot for forty three weeks.
Speaker 4: In a row.
Speaker 1: That is no small feet when it's just spread out
Speaker 1: through three singles. Only two other artists in recording history
Speaker 1: have achieved that feat. And know his name isn't Michael Jackson,
Speaker 1: Elvis and the Beatles. You know to be alive to
Speaker 1: watch Beatles fans cry over into the road record breaking
Speaker 1: the Beatles, that was one of the most craziest days
Speaker 1: I've ever seen. We can call them the last true
Speaker 1: R and B group. We can call them the forefathers. Uh.
Speaker 1: We know that every any any group of individuals that
Speaker 1: call themselves boys band, they know they owe this group
Speaker 1: everything from and sink to B t s they owe
Speaker 1: them greatly. Please welcome to questl Supreme. Finally, the one
Speaker 1: and only Boys to men.
Speaker 3: There you go, y'all finally because we only got one call.
Speaker 1: Damn wait wait wait wait, is this gonna be.
Speaker 5: You know, hey, hey, you know what's type of we're
Speaker 5: high school like like, yeah, it's gonna be real.
Speaker 1: Had a look on look right now, I'm all right,
Speaker 1: Jill Scott. Episode went somewhere, the music, episode went somewhere, boy, somewhere.
Speaker 3: This is this is this isn't really you're gonna get like,
Speaker 3: you know, we only know one way to talk to
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 1: Actually, wait, my first question. People are dying to know
Speaker 1: what the hell did y'all do this sudden impact?
Speaker 3: I don't know what we did in that wasn't I
Speaker 3: grew up. No, I'll tell you what. I'm pleasing to
Speaker 3: know what we did. We tried to save him after
Speaker 3: Mike Rivers got rid of him. We tried to sign
Speaker 3: the Stone Creek and Philly and took him over the
Speaker 3: time of the toll and he said, oh hell no.
Speaker 3: Then somebody named the Backstreet Boys came out and then
Speaker 3: they disappeared. Wow, what happened? Mother?
Speaker 2: Nathan?
Speaker 6: Everyone than you.
Speaker 1: I can tell it's gonna be a classic interview already.
Speaker 1: Where are you guys right now? I assume that, and
Speaker 1: I know you guys get tired of asking like when
Speaker 1: people see individually, like where the other group at as
Speaker 1: if you're attached to the hip together right now right,
Speaker 1: because I can never be nowhere without mister you know
Speaker 1: right exactly? So where are you guys right now?
Speaker 5: I'm in l A Wins in Vegas, and Nate's in
Speaker 5: a big old house in Tampa, Florida, sitting batty the big.
Speaker 3: Old house like everybody else. Everybody else is in a
Speaker 3: big old house too. Lake.
Speaker 1: I'm all right, I see when when? Okay, based on
Speaker 1: the reality that we're living right now, when's the last
Speaker 1: time that you three were physically in this in the
Speaker 1: room at the same time.
Speaker 5: February.
Speaker 3: I will tell you this, Yeah, March. But I'll tell
Speaker 3: you one even crazier. When we left each other in March.
Speaker 3: By the time we got to May or June, it
Speaker 3: was probably the longest that we've ever been apart from
Speaker 3: each other since high school.
Speaker 1: That's what I was going to say. What's has this
Speaker 1: been the biggest break that you guys have had?
Speaker 3: Yeah, without a doubt, without seeing each other or talk. Yeah, physically, yeah,
Speaker 3: we went on breaks, but we saw each other. We
Speaker 3: hung out one and Sean, you's living around the corner,
Speaker 3: stuff like that. But like physically being a part for
Speaker 3: this long, it's the longest I missed.
Speaker 1: All of those niggas, So how how does that affect?
Speaker 1: Especially when you've been singing together for so long, for
Speaker 1: so consistent, how does that affect you? Like when I
Speaker 1: hang up, I'm about to We're about to do like
Speaker 1: our first root show in eight months, and I'm actually
Speaker 1: nervous about it because like like we're we're gonna have rehearsal,
Speaker 1: which is I mean, we did it so much that
Speaker 1: the automatic pilot was good, But like, how does it
Speaker 1: when you're not in that rhythm anymore? Like, how does
Speaker 1: that affect?
Speaker 3: I mean, we don't know, we aint never did it.
Speaker 2: It's never happened before, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: But but like you said, you know, groups that have
Speaker 7: been together for this long and you know, working together,
Speaker 7: we we pretty much know our roles, We know what
Speaker 7: roles we play, so you know, I'm pretty sure it's
Speaker 7: more it's it's auto pilot pilot as well. It's just
Speaker 7: you know, getting in the room together and and you know,
Speaker 7: remembering our notes and the steps and all kinds of
Speaker 7: stuff like that.
Speaker 2: That's the only thing. But for the most part, man,
Speaker 2: this is this is weird. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: It's definitely weird, but you know, we got to make
Speaker 2: the most of it.
Speaker 1: Is this a welcome break? Most most artists that I
Speaker 1: talk to say like, this is the first real sleep
Speaker 1: I've gotten. This is the first like I mean, monetary issues,
Speaker 1: a side of worry about you know, how your life
Speaker 1: is going to be affected. Like, is is this a
Speaker 1: welcome break or is it just like I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's.
Speaker 2: More individual that that that that question to be answered.
Speaker 7: I mean, for me, I think two months that's that's
Speaker 7: a welcome break for me, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: But that the two months, I'm ready to see them,
Speaker 7: ready to you know, be where we where we are,
Speaker 7: you know, ready to get back on stage.
Speaker 2: I'm ready to see my brothers. I'm ready. You know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: You got to have that that that energy flow of
Speaker 7: people that are like minded around you and and create
Speaker 7: the same way and think the same way musically around you.
Speaker 7: So after two months, I'm like, yo, it's I gotta
Speaker 7: I gotta do it. But you know, it's it's it's
Speaker 7: welcome for about two months for me.
Speaker 2: I don't know about everybody else.
Speaker 1: Now you're just ANTSI to give back to Yeah whatever.
Speaker 5: I mean, yeah, I mean it's it's the same. So
Speaker 5: I think we were all due.
Speaker 8: There's there comes a ceiling that you know, you tour
Speaker 8: after a while, you know you want to say, okay,
Speaker 8: you know what, let's let's let's fall back for a
Speaker 8: second and kind of like, you know, look at our
Speaker 8: houses for a little while and go food shopping and
Speaker 8: do regular normal stuff. Because I think with us that
Speaker 8: that's the balance that's required for all of us. We've
Speaker 8: never really been about and you know what's in there.
Speaker 8: We've never been about all the the you know, the
Speaker 8: spectacle and all the other stuff that just came with
Speaker 8: the job. But for the most part, you would see
Speaker 8: us driving down Saladrie, you know what I'm saying, like,
Speaker 8: you know, in our cars getting some music or you know,
Speaker 8: getting some food or.
Speaker 5: Just hanging out or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's just what we like to do, right you know.
Speaker 8: And and the stage is is just another persona that
Speaker 8: when you know, when we're on stage, we go off
Speaker 8: and we do what we need to do. And we
Speaker 8: sing and we jump around and black fools and then
Speaker 8: after that, you know we're back to just being normal.
Speaker 5: Sean, Wynye and Nick you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: So you know that that's that's always been the ebb
Speaker 8: and flow and as it should be with most artists,
Speaker 8: like you know, we we require both in order for
Speaker 8: us to feel pole, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So you know, so so it's it's but yeah, it's
Speaker 5: it's I miss it. I think the guys miss it.
Speaker 8: We missed being out there and performing because, like I said,
Speaker 8: it feels like it's half of us that's kind of
Speaker 8: missing to some degree.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we'd like to be home. We like to chill
Speaker 5: and all this stuff, but you know, we didn't go lout.
Speaker 2: We like to entertain.
Speaker 3: This is what we do.
Speaker 6: One thing I was curious to know.
Speaker 1: I saw y'all.
Speaker 6: Y'all came to Raleigh. Man, this is probably like ten
Speaker 6: plus years ago.
Speaker 9: This is a minute ago, and y'all performed, and you know,
Speaker 9: it was outside and y'all was in suits, and the
Speaker 9: choreography I think y'all were doing like the motown. It
Speaker 9: was cover records, y'all done, and the show was amazing,
Speaker 9: and we all like we loved it. I was curious
Speaker 9: to know how do y'all preserve y'all voices after all
Speaker 9: these years? Man, because y'all still sounded exactly like the
Speaker 9: records twenty plus years later.
Speaker 3: I think part of it is exactly what we were
Speaker 3: saying earlier, is like, we haven't really been away from
Speaker 3: each other just long. I mean, I played the fifth
Speaker 3: on the other topic. But the fact that we've always
Speaker 3: we sang all the time. There hasn't been months that
Speaker 3: have gone by where we haven't sang or we haven't performed.
Speaker 3: So you know, it's like a muscle, if you work
Speaker 3: it out all the time, it'll be there for you.
Speaker 3: And because we've never really ever been separated in our
Speaker 3: whole lives, we sing almost every other week or so,
Speaker 3: and I mean definitely in the last five years or so,
Speaker 3: we've been extremely consistent. I mean with Vegas, we I
Speaker 3: mean there's probably not a week that's gone by in
Speaker 3: the last five years that we haven't tang. So it's
Speaker 3: up go it's in consistency.
Speaker 2: What are y'all doing now to make sure it is well?
Speaker 3: I mean we still we still sing, we just don't
Speaker 3: sing together. I mean, I'm sure you know, we know
Speaker 3: each other's personality. So you know, we sing around the house,
Speaker 3: we sing on stuff we create. I mean, we just
Speaker 3: we just sing, and I think we're just It's funny.
Speaker 3: When we first got started our role manager of years ago, Coyelle,
Speaker 3: you know, we would sing so much that every every
Speaker 3: time we would sing, he would pull out a cup
Speaker 3: almost as if you know, you guys trying to sing
Speaker 3: for some coins or whatever, because you know, we we
Speaker 3: hadn't quite been successful then, so he was like, you know,
Speaker 3: you got to learn when to tone it down and
Speaker 3: when you know, you just can't sing all the time.
Speaker 3: But I think that's one thing that he never really
Speaker 3: could take out of us, so over time, you know,
Speaker 3: it's just something that we've always done.
Speaker 2: Okay, real quick, real quick, what do you mean by
Speaker 2: you pleaded the fifth one the last question? Then I
Speaker 2: need to.
Speaker 3: Oh no, well see again. The difference for me is that,
Speaker 3: unlike you guys, I fly before we did this. For
Speaker 3: the last five years, I fly almost five thousand miles
Speaker 3: a week for Vegas. So when you talk about needing
Speaker 3: time away, I probably need a lot more than you
Speaker 3: guys do because I just it's just too much for
Speaker 3: me to do. I mean, I'm flying east west, east
Speaker 3: west every single week.
Speaker 1: So it's not for that residency you were doing. Come
Speaker 1: to Vegas.
Speaker 3: I live in Florida. I've been flying back and forth
Speaker 3: for the last five years every week.
Speaker 2: And are you still Nate?
Speaker 1: Were you still doing your show as well?
Speaker 3: We see? See the thing is I'm answering. I'm answering
Speaker 3: why's question because I know what he's saying.
Speaker 2: It's like, I just need a clarification, because you know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I just I need clarification.
Speaker 3: I know, but that's what I was saying. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, it's not it's not it's not the group
Speaker 3: per se. It's just when you get it. My grind
Speaker 3: is a little bit different than you guys because you
Speaker 3: guys on the West Coast, you're right there, thirty minutes away.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. But when you got to
Speaker 3: wake up at four thirty every every Thursday or Friday,
Speaker 3: fly out every week and turn right back around, and
Speaker 3: that's not counting what we do during the week. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: nigga need a break.
Speaker 1: Right, I get it. So that means Nat is James
Speaker 1: Poyser and a mirror. I was like, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: in Manhattan. I moved to Manhattan. James is like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go further down, further down south to Delaware
Speaker 1: and drive every day for three hours. All right, I
Speaker 1: get it down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right about it.
Speaker 1: But you about right this This leads to my next question.
Speaker 1: So you know I was. I was immersed in my
Speaker 1: particular culture at Creative and Performing Arts High School.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 1: For those that don't know, we always.
Speaker 3: Never made it, never made it, never ever made it
Speaker 3: to advisory. Because he sat right next to me, I
Speaker 3: know he wasn't.
Speaker 1: Now the thing is, the thing is is that you
Speaker 1: know there's I don't know much about the singing culture
Speaker 1: at Creative and Performing Arts. So my particular experience there
Speaker 1: was all right. First of all, like I had a
Speaker 1: kind of a bloods and crips uh environment. The bloods
Speaker 1: were like the jazz heads. In order to get Chris
Speaker 1: and Joey's respect, I just study all this forties jazz
Speaker 1: to let them know I speak their language. And then
Speaker 1: on the other side, Kurt rosewink. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you remember Kurt rose Awekle, but he's like, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: he's a massive deal right now in the world of jazz.
Speaker 1: So he would try to force me to unlearn all
Speaker 1: the old ship that christ and Joey wanted me to learn, right,
Speaker 1: and then I'm going behind both their backs and doing
Speaker 1: hip hop with Tarik kind of like whatever gang was
Speaker 1: winning that That's the side I was on. But what
Speaker 1: was what was the culture for vocal majors on the
Speaker 1: fourth floor? Oh I can, I can, I can, and
Speaker 1: like take me through it.
Speaker 5: I could break that down because because honestly, I wasn't
Speaker 5: in any of it.
Speaker 1: Because when I y'all would break out in song.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But yeah, here's the thing. When when when I came in,
Speaker 5: Whydy wasn't in yet. I came in in eighty six,
Speaker 5: and why I came in eighty.
Speaker 1: Seven and there was a freshman okay, and I can't.
Speaker 5: When I came in, you had your clicks, you know
Speaker 5: what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: You had your gospel kids, you know the ones that
Speaker 4: just straight up saying gospel all day, every day, her.
Speaker 5: Jesus all day, you know what I'm saying. And then
Speaker 5: you had the cool kids, you know what I'm saying
Speaker 5: That Nate used to hang around.
Speaker 3: No no, no, no, no, no, don't even know that.
Speaker 10: No no no no no no no, I don't do it.
Speaker 3: If you don't do it, be right, be right, hang over,
Speaker 3: I'll not be right. I did not hang around them.
Speaker 3: They hung around me. Let's get it right, let's not
Speaker 3: even you know, no, no, I need that, I need
Speaker 3: we got to clear it up.
Speaker 8: They hung around me because most of them was from
Speaker 8: North Philly, and thank you so Kapa was in South Philly.
Speaker 8: And you know every day after the Columbo kids will
Speaker 8: come outside and try to beat our asses every day
Speaker 8: because we could sing and dance right, and I didn't
Speaker 8: have that bro A lot of those A lot of
Speaker 8: those dudes hung around Nate, as he says it, because
Speaker 8: you know that that was the cool kids.
Speaker 3: That's my neighborhood. So they don't want to get their assa.
Speaker 1: How real? How real was the pulump because again I
Speaker 1: was so when you're in that basement, you could hide
Speaker 1: all day and nobody would miss you until so I
Speaker 1: was separated from all that ship because we just stay
Speaker 1: in the basement. How real was that Polympic?
Speaker 5: Bottom line is one of my friends got is those
Speaker 5: broken by the little kids.
Speaker 3: Okay, here, here, here.
Speaker 1: Those let's plumb all right. Let me girls, plumbo, let me,
Speaker 1: let me, let me, let me explain to you. I
Speaker 1: got you, okay, okay, help little kids.
Speaker 3: They're big brothers were from the project, so they lived
Speaker 3: in my neighborhood. I went to the school because I
Speaker 3: was local. Most of the other guys went to the
Speaker 3: school because they were from Northeastern the It was a
Speaker 3: magnet school. So when they came down, you know what
Speaker 3: they little you know, so called Gucci shoes and whatnot.
Speaker 3: My my neighborhood guys wasn't happy about that. And then
Speaker 3: they would be in the school and they would mess
Speaker 3: with the little Columbian kids and they go tell their
Speaker 3: big brothers. And by the end of the day, the
Speaker 3: big brothers be waiting outside and I'm the only one
Speaker 3: that can walk outside, and I have a problem. So
Speaker 3: they hung around me.
Speaker 1: They was they was like based kids, no.
Speaker 3: Money, yeah, because they had to be split high school
Speaker 3: that would share them.
Speaker 5: It was their bigger brothers that I got you. So
Speaker 5: it wasn't the actual.
Speaker 2: But they was causing the issue though.
Speaker 3: Well what it was was the school was it was
Speaker 3: a big high school. One of those older schools, and
Speaker 3: you know, it's a neighborhood with no money. So they
Speaker 3: split our high school at the same building with lower
Speaker 3: grade kids that were like seventh and eighth grade, so
Speaker 3: they were on one side of the building. We won
Speaker 3: the other side. Those upper crusty so called Kappa choir
Speaker 3: people that like to you know, mess with little broke
Speaker 3: kids would call them up all kinds of names. They
Speaker 3: go home and tell their family and then they'd have
Speaker 3: to deal with it after school.
Speaker 7: But you know that, you know what, it wasn't always
Speaker 7: them calling them names and stuff. It was the fact
Speaker 7: that we were if that that the the you know,
Speaker 7: artists are eccentric, you know what I'm saying. So we
Speaker 7: walk different, we talk different, we act different.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: And I'm not gonna I'm not going to front. I mean,
Speaker 7: of course there was some interaction. I'm sure the interaction
Speaker 7: escalated it to be what it became. But the thought
Speaker 7: process behind it is there was a lot of fucking
Speaker 7: kids in that school and the fact that we all
Speaker 7: had to interact at some point in time, whether it
Speaker 7: was crossing the hallways, I'm sure there was a little
Speaker 7: bit of eyeing and things like that. But when you
Speaker 7: left the school, you're not thinking that what happened in
Speaker 7: school is going to check.
Speaker 3: You're thinking that.
Speaker 7: So when you walk outside and you see all these
Speaker 7: dudes standing on the wall, like did he go right there?
Speaker 2: Or did it go? It didn't even have to be
Speaker 2: that person.
Speaker 7: It's just they wanted to make sure that they made
Speaker 7: themselves known and seen that this is their neighborhood.
Speaker 2: And y'all gonna have to run if y'all come out here.
Speaker 3: That's what.
Speaker 5: Anyway, I digress, I digress back to the to the
Speaker 5: vocal coachure.
Speaker 1: So you had the so called this is my favorite episode.
Speaker 3: I just said the same.
Speaker 8: You had the so called cool kids right that all
Speaker 8: hung out with me, and then you had the geeks, right,
Speaker 8: the nerds, right, spazoids, the.
Speaker 5: Horrible You weren't a weep, No I was.
Speaker 1: He was pulling George though I.
Speaker 10: Was pulling when he got in the group. Always no, no, no, no, Let.
Speaker 5: Me let me explain.
Speaker 2: I don't think I got nothing.
Speaker 8: That was very true, which is one of the reasons why,
Speaker 8: one of the reasons why I had somewhat of an
Speaker 8: issue because listen, I was the same nigga when I
Speaker 8: went into school right right, I could sing the same
Speaker 8: I hung around the same people even when I was
Speaker 8: in the group, the whole nine yards then the group
Speaker 8: you know that show of Eyuary fourteen.
Speaker 1: And one, y'all cheat with the Sparkles, Yeah, okay with
Speaker 1: the cheat.
Speaker 8: You know.
Speaker 5: Y'all had the whole house business. O.
Speaker 3: Listen, listen, you didn't kill that ship for they sparkles
Speaker 3: in the hand and like something. If you and boys
Speaker 3: to man, you going all the way.
Speaker 1: That's the only way we know how to do it,
Speaker 1: all right, Yeah, to bring our people up to date.
Speaker 1: There's a Valentine's Day performance in school, and you know
Speaker 1: this is the moment where you felt like, all right.
Speaker 3: Your instrument was just gonna do it now, Sparkles.
Speaker 5: Because I lied, he ran it too, the Sparkles.
Speaker 3: I lied to you. Not niggas got beat by Sparkles.
Speaker 1: No, but I'm dead serious. When y'all walked on stage,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, ship, They're like a real group.
Speaker 1: Like this isn't unique attraction anymore. This is this is
Speaker 1: like a real group. And the thing was, girls were
Speaker 1: screaming in the audience like it was Ed Sullivan on
Speaker 1: the Beatles. Absolutely and I was like, yo, but dude,
Speaker 1: like I just said that, he still might owe me
Speaker 1: seventy five cents, like this is still them. They're not
Speaker 1: a real group. But for that, for that ten minute performance, y'all,
Speaker 1: y'all transformed into like it was like the Jackson's came
Speaker 1: to school and ship And I was like, wow, let me.
Speaker 3: Tell you, dude, Honestly, we didn't really realize it until that.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It was one of those things where I think the
Speaker 3: same way you felt it at that moment, it's the
Speaker 3: same way we felt it. And we literally had no
Speaker 3: idea what the hell was happening?
Speaker 2: None that none.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was a transformative moment.
Speaker 7: It's crazy you bring that up, because, like Sean said,
Speaker 7: it was girls that you know. I'm pretty sure we
Speaker 7: all tried to like, you know, send my holler at
Speaker 7: during the year, you know what I mean, and they
Speaker 7: basically gave us no attention whatsoever. Bro, when we were
Speaker 7: when because you remember, the principal came.
Speaker 2: And stopped it.
Speaker 1: Yes, he was gonna stop it because right because it
Speaker 1: was so crowd.
Speaker 2: Was like, this is not a concert, this is not
Speaker 2: you remember that.
Speaker 5: In our poses looking stupid as ship.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like, that's really weird. I'm the only one that
Speaker 1: remembered this moment. I was like, I wasn't even want
Speaker 1: to bringing up I'm like, I don't remember that.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you when we talked. We used to
Speaker 3: talk about it on the tour bus all the time, dude,
Speaker 3: like Wan said, and Sean said, nobody wouldn't talk to us, dude.
Speaker 3: We we all had our own little clicks. But when
Speaker 3: we were doing boys to men stuff, because everybody in
Speaker 3: the group in the school could sing, you know, a
Speaker 3: male could see like everybody could sing. It was just
Speaker 3: like okay, well everybody could sing. But it wasn't just
Speaker 3: in the school. It was after school, when we stayed
Speaker 3: there until ten o'clock at night, or when we went
Speaker 3: down the subway at ten o'clock at night. It was
Speaker 3: all that stuff that that put us a little bit
Speaker 3: ahead of everybody else and it became normal for us.
Speaker 3: That's just the way we're supposed to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't stop at three o'clock.
Speaker 7: And it was just crazy because those girls man after
Speaker 7: that performance, the same girls I remember them, Cadijia, she.
Speaker 2: Sat right next to me right after the after the
Speaker 2: class and.
Speaker 5: She was like well he didn't give me a rose,
Speaker 5: and I was like, that's.
Speaker 2: Why you didn't give me a number.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna make it.
Speaker 8: You know how important it was like you know, bag
Speaker 8: of upper class and I was like in this everywhere
Speaker 8: eh grade and I had life classmen for a girlfriend,
Speaker 8: like a straight singor like right like weeks after the show,
Speaker 8: like I had a baddie.
Speaker 6: I'll went from virgens to not.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna tell you what's crazy though, when you look
Speaker 3: at and you look at the whole musical landscape to
Speaker 3: the school at that time, it's like, you know, we
Speaker 3: used to try to do new audition stuff like that
Speaker 3: and sound modern and that was kind of our niche.
Speaker 3: But like you guys and stuff was interesting to us
Speaker 3: because it was like our we knew our parents would
Speaker 3: hear y'all do y'all jazz stuff and be like, we'd
Speaker 3: be like, that's my friend, Like he's not playing on
Speaker 3: old stuff like and it's it's you could you knew
Speaker 3: the vibe because it was like if older people fell
Speaker 3: in love with you guys and stuff, it was fire.
Speaker 3: Not that young people didn't, but we couldn't mentally soak
Speaker 3: in all that deep jazz stuff y'all had going on.
Speaker 3: So we would just watch and watch older people just
Speaker 3: lose their mind, like these guys are so deep in
Speaker 3: there and they're you know, they're you know, so rich,
Speaker 3: and we be like, we can't even read have the music,
Speaker 3: the stuff that they playing. It's like it was, it
Speaker 3: was interesting. It was you guys were more cultured than
Speaker 3: we could ever get at that age in our life musically.
Speaker 8: And let me tell you, let me tell you, man,
Speaker 8: like even now like we will we would tell people
Speaker 8: in interviews that those four years with probably some of
Speaker 8: the best years arguably in that school, because so much
Speaker 8: talent came out of those four years that it.
Speaker 5: Was it was something going on.
Speaker 11: Can you talk about it real quick, Sean, because this
Speaker 11: is common knowledge to y'all, but to the rest of
Speaker 11: the world, people don't know what came out of Kappa Like.
Speaker 5: It was Tarika and our Mirror, it was a Melo rule,
Speaker 5: it was Chris Christian.
Speaker 8: Like, there was so many established now established still touring
Speaker 8: the world, making money, you know, winning awards, the whole
Speaker 8: nine yards that happened in that four years, and we
Speaker 8: all went to the Stady School to god.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I came to Kappa. You came in eleventh
Speaker 1: grade as well.
Speaker 3: No, but the year you came in, I was already
Speaker 3: I was already there, right.
Speaker 1: So the thing was is that the first incarnation of
Speaker 1: the group was unique attraction. How did that dissolve and
Speaker 1: how did it morph into boys them?
Speaker 3: In the first incarnation was in eighty five?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that was me.
Speaker 3: That was none of the guys that you know other
Speaker 3: than me. So not even Mark Nelson, not even Mark Nelson,
Speaker 3: no matter of fact, yeah Mark, No, not even Mark Nelson.
Speaker 3: Mark was right after that we had one guy kick out.
Speaker 3: So right on the end of that was guys you
Speaker 3: don't know other than Mark. And as people would graduate
Speaker 3: school and lead a group or quit the group, or
Speaker 3: they girl pull them out, you know, all the great stuff,
Speaker 3: you know, I would just put you know, other people
Speaker 3: back in the group. Now. It's funny because one was
Speaker 3: actually picked before anybody else before he actually got into
Speaker 3: school because I watched him auditioned the year before and
Speaker 3: I knew somebody was leaving. So I was like, all right,
Speaker 3: well he leaving, I'm get that little negga. So as
Speaker 3: he get in there, he just don't really know how
Speaker 3: his thing is going down. So then you know, Wan
Speaker 3: was at it when we had you know, me Win
Speaker 3: and it was a girl and two other guys and
Speaker 3: then Sean. Actually again, like Sean said, he kind of
Speaker 3: had his own little nerdy click. We didn't really know
Speaker 3: how well he could sing. We knew he could sing.
Speaker 3: He's in the choir because he you know, at school,
Speaker 3: don't pick nobody. But he had a solo one year
Speaker 3: and I was like, I need him. So the next
Speaker 3: year somebody else left put him in, and then it
Speaker 3: was me and him, Wan and Mark and it was
Speaker 3: just us. Mike just snuck in by a mistake. It
Speaker 3: wasn't like we really hand picked the guy. He was.
Speaker 3: We were singing the bathroom rehearsing. Mike walked past us
Speaker 3: while we were rehearsing, and he went to the bathroom
Speaker 3: taking pits, and while we were singing, he sang along
Speaker 3: with what we were singing. You know, Mike boys, you know,
Speaker 3: so it filled up the bathroom. Yeah, so it was like, uh,
Speaker 3: all right, well, you know, let's let's see how he
Speaker 3: works in here. And then that that was that was
Speaker 3: what you know, and that all came together around eighty eight, right,
Speaker 3: sean yes eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So okay for those that don't know what actually
Speaker 1: I don't know. I know the legend of the Civic
Speaker 1: Center story, but how exactly did you finagle your way
Speaker 1: backstage to.
Speaker 11: VIV?
Speaker 1: Was it a new edition performance? Like what was the
Speaker 1: actual story that?
Speaker 5: Okay, it was it was it was the powerhouse that
Speaker 5: year and uh that was the year that uh Bell
Speaker 5: BIV Duvaux was actually being announced like they Mike and
Speaker 5: Rick and Ron went to Philly to make an announcement
Speaker 5: that they were going to be a singing group together.
Speaker 5: But the thing was was.
Speaker 8: Obviously Charlie knew knew Nate Charlie, and Charlie was like, Yo,
Speaker 8: I'm gonna have I'm gonna have you let y'all. You
Speaker 8: know hear y'all sing, you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 8: he was like, all right, cool. So we're sitting out
Speaker 8: you know, front, waiting to show up or whatever. He
Speaker 8: never showed, but we knew. Uh we ran into Teddy
Speaker 8: Pendergrass's daughter. Yeah, okay, the Pendergrads, right, So she was
Speaker 8: and she was like, Yo, I'm gonna get y'all in.
Speaker 3: So we got.
Speaker 5: That's another story.
Speaker 3: So so so.
Speaker 5: Yo, so so so we okay, so we did with
Speaker 5: you right, right, so we got it.
Speaker 8: And and so we're waiting around the backstage area, right
Speaker 8: so I don't know, and then you can help me out.
Speaker 5: Who was the first person to kind of started talking
Speaker 5: to her whatever?
Speaker 3: And she was there, say her dad. So she had
Speaker 3: a friend with her and they had one extra pass.
Speaker 3: I guess it was somebody else was waiting for it.
Speaker 3: So Mark kind of enabled to pass from him and
Speaker 3: he went backstage and they were kicking or whatever, and
Speaker 3: then he borrowed one of theirs and came back out
Speaker 3: gave it to uh one of the guys. Then we
Speaker 3: kind of switching the pass back and forth till everybody
Speaker 3: got back there. And by the time we got back there,
Speaker 3: Rick and Ron and them was coming off stage because
Speaker 3: they was actually hosting the show, so they was coming
Speaker 3: off stage from introducing the group. And when they came
Speaker 3: off stage, he was like, yo, we have Ricky first,
Speaker 3: Like yo, dude, we got you know, can we sing
Speaker 3: for you? And he was like, you know, y'all got
Speaker 3: a tape, you know, tape back then, y'all got a
Speaker 3: tape And we was like, no, we ain't gonna tape.
Speaker 3: We could just sing it right now. He's like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, y'all got to send us a tape. And
Speaker 3: then Ron was like, yeah, well, you know y'all for
Speaker 3: sending He writing an address and I was like, man,
Speaker 3: fuck that, so asked. Mike was like, yo, dude, can
Speaker 3: we sing for you? Mike was like right now. We
Speaker 3: was like yeah, he said all right, cool, and we
Speaker 3: just rocked in the uh freaking uh what was it?
Speaker 3: I can't remember, yeah, can stand the ring and everybody
Speaker 3: was standing around watch and by the time we finished,
Speaker 3: Charlie showed up.
Speaker 7: And it was talking wow, what Look Keith Sweat was
Speaker 7: there when we finished, surrounding us with Keith Sweat, Paul
Speaker 7: Abdul Charrell.
Speaker 3: All like Will Smith, Yeah, yeah, No.
Speaker 8: Will came in after after finished singing Will we were
Speaker 8: finished singing. Will came in with a heather jumpsuit yup
Speaker 8: and and Harry Bone that said fresh Prince and with
Speaker 8: y'all and then that's yeah.
Speaker 3: What's funny is after we finished, Rick was like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, y'all still got to send us a tape.
Speaker 3: Mike was like, no, y'all, niggas ain't gonta send me
Speaker 3: nothing here. I'm gonna be here this time, right, No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: call me in about a week and a half and
Speaker 3: that was it.
Speaker 1: Wow, just to hear that story, it's almost like creative
Speaker 1: Russian Roulette, because if it's five minutes, if it's had
Speaker 1: Charlie mac showed up in time, it would have been
Speaker 1: a whole different trajectory need anybody standing backstage could have
Speaker 1: had it could have been a different result.
Speaker 3: That's learned at that moment not to be late. We
Speaker 3: learned not to depend on Charlie Mack.
Speaker 5: You know, I had the same conversation with chear and
Speaker 5: he denies this whole story.
Speaker 3: Of course he did, of course that this is no no, no,
Speaker 3: no no. And first of all, Sean, you know what's
Speaker 3: funny is that a man checked this out. We not
Speaker 3: only did we have to get backstage, we didn't even
Speaker 3: have tickets to get in. I can't even remember how
Speaker 3: we snuck in the building in itself.
Speaker 11: Right, it's quite a few people's story for Powerhouse, though,
Speaker 11: you know, is own legacy in that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know what, honestly, we started to realize
Speaker 3: that everybody was sneaking in the Powerhouse after that after
Speaker 3: we told the story, everybody sneaking.
Speaker 1: Oh dude, I hate y'all for this story simply because
Speaker 1: then suddenly comes the onslaught of YO can spend quick
Speaker 1: because he hears the story. And then they're like.
Speaker 3: And just having funny if they do it for us too,
Speaker 3: and now we'll be like, yeah, is there somebody is?
Speaker 1: Is there someone established right now that has the story
Speaker 1: for y'all? Like I came to y'all first, and y'all
Speaker 1: didn't hear a lot of people people who ntablished now.
Speaker 7: Who'll music came to us when we were at the
Speaker 7: Vibe video shoot.
Speaker 3: Too, and I didn't even know. I didn't even stink.
Speaker 2: Yep, he's one. It's it's a couple of them, Bro,
Speaker 2: I don't music.
Speaker 5: Wow, he.
Speaker 3: Got I gave us, gave us a CD or something
Speaker 3: was on the bush, a.
Speaker 2: Lot of the whole lot of records.
Speaker 11: Bro.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a kN I could have he would
Speaker 2: have he was writing music for us. It would like crazy,
Speaker 2: Oh that would have been yeah a voice.
Speaker 3: Man. Wow, it happens, Man, it happens.
Speaker 1: It happens. So all right, when the whatever whatever data,
Speaker 1: whatever day that stands in your mind for for officially
Speaker 1: arriving right, What lesson would you tell yourself back then
Speaker 1: that you wish you knew? As as a precautionary tale.
Speaker 1: I'm only asking this because I tell people I told
Speaker 1: someone like I think last episode, I said, I spent
Speaker 1: my entire events in three weeks not knowing that that
Speaker 1: was it records, right, I blew my whole advance on
Speaker 1: like four stopping stopping spreeze, and that was it. One lesson?
Speaker 1: Did you did you wish you knew then the first
Speaker 1: time you got put on like that first year, it's
Speaker 1: it's yeah, well, okay, Oh my god, am I dj vlad?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 5: I thought I knew you're absolutely not you're in the culture.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I thought I had lad, you.
Speaker 5: Are not dead.
Speaker 3: I thought I had my business and order. I thought
Speaker 3: when my group signed a fifty to fifty publishing deal
Speaker 3: with Mike Members that it was a fifty fifty publishing deal,
Speaker 3: and without me going too deep into it, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you wish you would have fought for that.
Speaker 3: I wish. I wish y'all would have known a little
Speaker 3: bit more at that moment. Then I knew four months
Speaker 3: after that because it didn't take much longer to figure
Speaker 3: it out, but it was. It was. It was a
Speaker 3: life changing this decision that if it was made early
Speaker 3: for all of us at that point, yeah, four months,
Speaker 3: five six years later, things would have been a lot different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Uh, Well to ask, was it was the
Speaker 1: parting with Viv amicable?
Speaker 3: It was not at first. I mean to this day,
Speaker 3: are you fine now? I think we're better now, But
Speaker 3: at that time it was not amicable at all. No,
Speaker 3: it was.
Speaker 7: Actually The funny thing is is he was literally forced
Speaker 7: to part with us, that's right, you know what I mean,
Speaker 7: because it was it was between Boys Too Men and
Speaker 7: Big ten Records, you know what I mean. And we
Speaker 7: were both involved with Motown Records at the time, so
Speaker 7: you know, he had to make a choice because they
Speaker 7: said it was a conflict of interests and he chose
Speaker 7: BIV ten Records.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, taking away from the fact that he had that
Speaker 2: he had publishing and.
Speaker 3: Writers.
Speaker 1: Was was Gerald Buzzby a part of that?
Speaker 5: How it was a difficult part of it at the
Speaker 5: time that we split.
Speaker 8: It was during the time was going through a major
Speaker 8: transition of being sold to a larger record.
Speaker 5: Late and we were a key piece.
Speaker 8: We were Yeah, and we let we basically let him
Speaker 8: know we were at that time, we were about nine
Speaker 8: million records in or eighty something like that.
Speaker 5: Whatever, It was a lot, and.
Speaker 8: You know, we saw all of the you know, bad
Speaker 8: deals surrounding us, and we were like yo, in order
Speaker 8: for us to kind of continue and make records, you know,
Speaker 8: we basically very kindly said, well, you got to fix
Speaker 8: this deal or else we're.
Speaker 5: Not making any more records.
Speaker 8: So, in you know, trying to fix the whole situation,
Speaker 8: Jerald presented bid with the big ten deal, Bid ten
Speaker 8: records because we were signed up.
Speaker 3: Actually actually that deal was that Yeah, that deal was
Speaker 3: predicated on Mike finding three artists, which he did before
Speaker 3: we even met Mike. It was set up for him
Speaker 3: to find artists and then if his artist were successful,
Speaker 3: he would roll over into that record label, which the
Speaker 3: artist was us another bad creation, and at that time
Speaker 3: mc brains he had three successful artists. But because we
Speaker 3: were on the back end of that, like Sean said,
Speaker 3: we you know, our numbers weren't right for us. Gerald
Speaker 3: pretty much said, listen, I got this deal with you,
Speaker 3: but you can't be in these guys pockets too. You
Speaker 3: got to figure something out because these guys are holding
Speaker 3: up my company now, so if they don't make a record,
Speaker 3: I got a problem with you. So he jammed him up, saying, listen,
Speaker 3: you can take one of the other. You take this
Speaker 3: big ten, big ten deal and roll and rock with that,
Speaker 3: or you can rock with them. And he knew we
Speaker 3: weren't really happy because early on, you know, we figured
Speaker 3: this thing, like I said it was, it wasn't too far.
Speaker 3: We figured this thing out about two and a half
Speaker 3: million records. I'm like, this money ain't right, so we
Speaker 3: roll hold it out fourteen million records, knowing that it
Speaker 3: was wrong. So by the time we got there, he
Speaker 3: chose to go with Big of ten because he he
Speaker 3: produced his three records that the artists that was supposed
Speaker 3: to be you know, were successful, and then we ventured off.
Speaker 3: So Gerald made that split happen. Otherwise Mike would still
Speaker 3: be a part of Boys to Men in some kind
Speaker 3: of way, right now, Wow, damn sure.
Speaker 1: So I guess the boy fruit Punch didn't deliver too much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he didn't get out much.
Speaker 2: Didn't get out much.
Speaker 1: All right, So who what's the what's the uh? I
Speaker 1: guess the the process of deciding what the creative vision
Speaker 1: is at least for your records. Like, Okay, you got
Speaker 1: a record deal and I know that you know the
Speaker 1: characters and in Dallas, uh collaborate with you guys, but
Speaker 1: who decides, Like who says that, okay, let's start off
Speaker 1: with I'd never besides the SOS band, I don't know
Speaker 1: many groups that have thrived starting their album off with
Speaker 1: three ballots.
Speaker 6: That's the listen heard. I was like, wait a minute, may.
Speaker 1: Please don't go boy right exactly? So well, you know what,
Speaker 1: it wasn't who's navigating.
Speaker 3: We didn't have any records. They didn't know what to
Speaker 3: do with us. They signed the R and B group
Speaker 3: that could sing and they loved it. But once we
Speaker 3: made they once we got signed, they didn't have any songs.
Speaker 3: So like you know, all the songs that is on
Speaker 3: the first album, if you look at we wrote all
Speaker 3: those and performing arts, we wrote those in those hallways
Speaker 3: and those.
Speaker 2: Before we even had a deal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, before we had a deal. We had those songs
Speaker 3: done and they were like, Dallas, we're gonna put you
Speaker 3: with this group. What songs you got? Dallas had Motown
Speaker 3: Philly sitting around from the Joyce Herby days, but other
Speaker 3: than that, Dallas Austen had no more records, so we
Speaker 3: was like, oh well we got you know, we do
Speaker 3: it so hard to say about it the extra day
Speaker 3: it's a cover. You know, we wrote please Don't Go
Speaker 3: and only hard this morning, like we wrote all So
Speaker 3: we just start recording them.
Speaker 7: Dallas put the production, he produced the record. We sung
Speaker 7: it to him and he sat there and figured it
Speaker 7: all out and produced the record. And you know, those
Speaker 7: songs that you actually hear were already pre written.
Speaker 3: And as far as the ballots is concerned, you gotta
Speaker 3: people tend to forget that Motown Philly was the first single.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a ballot, right, Okay, No, I just meant
Speaker 1: in terms of the record and who was the alpha
Speaker 1: that decides, Okay, this is this is the title of
Speaker 1: the album. This is going to be like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was big and I think you know him
Speaker 5: talking to us, he kind of understood our strengths and
Speaker 5: in the albums, specifically this this specific album.
Speaker 8: Uli high Harmony and the ballads had such a presence
Speaker 8: that we all agreed that, you know, the the Adagio
Speaker 8: side was the best side.
Speaker 3: You know, the performing we stole, right, So we went
Speaker 3: We wanted that just as.
Speaker 8: Much because those hit different with us, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying, And it hit different with our friends. We
Speaker 8: would bring friends over and stuff like that. I mean,
Speaker 8: they loved the ups, but the ballads just kind of
Speaker 8: that kind of made it real fuss.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I went through that list kind of fast.
Speaker 5: I'm just curious.
Speaker 11: Those songs that you said that you wrote in high
Speaker 11: school were what and then how did that division? I'm
Speaker 11: so curious the songwriting process of the division.
Speaker 8: Nate wrote Please Don't Go and Lonely Heart in School.
Speaker 8: Right as we were going along with the process of
Speaker 8: doing the record, you know, we started coming up with ideas.
Speaker 8: Uh Winya and Nate wrote, uh.
Speaker 1: Well no me and you.
Speaker 2: We wrote this is my Heart in school with my
Speaker 2: heart me.
Speaker 12: And well, yeah, I wrote, I wrote my part on
Speaker 12: the train on the l that's right. And then I
Speaker 12: came and Wine wrote his you know the love and time.
Speaker 3: Like he he you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: And and he wrote that in the studio.
Speaker 3: And wrote Moto Philly.
Speaker 7: We wrote we wrote that in mister Walker's room, bro,
Speaker 7: I promise you which one holding?
Speaker 3: Yes? I think I remember that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, mister Walker, you know which just to reiterate what
Speaker 11: y'all said earlier for the novices of people who just listening.
Speaker 11: Y'all wrote these songs in high school, and yet and
Speaker 11: still you only got fifty of these songs.
Speaker 3: And that's when that's when you look at like me
Speaker 3: and Sean sitting in my backyard right Motown Philly. You
Speaker 3: know when I mean again, I give viv All the
Speaker 3: credit for, you know, a lot of the creative stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, the idea of creating a song called Motown Philly,
Speaker 3: the idea of coming up with a song called titles
Speaker 3: and concepts are great, but none of that. That song
Speaker 3: rattled you to having my song, and that's where things
Speaker 3: started to go left. And we, you know, we looked
Speaker 3: up to him a lot. So our thing was you know,
Speaker 3: that's our guy. You know what I'm saying. It's cool,
Speaker 3: we understand. But once we start to realize money is
Speaker 3: coming through and we're still in South Philly, something's gotta change.
Speaker 3: But I don't want to get back on the negative.
Speaker 3: I'mna stay more on the other stuff. As far as
Speaker 3: the songs. Like I said, me and Sean did Motown
Speaker 3: Philly in my backyard and then wine we was We
Speaker 3: were all sitting in my brother's room and like I said,
Speaker 3: Bib came up with the idea, you guys need to
Speaker 3: write a Sean call oh and Niggas was like so
Speaker 3: it was like who nobody wanted to write it? So
Speaker 3: we should? There we we all flipped the coin and
Speaker 3: Wan lost, so he had to write it. So he
Speaker 3: started writing, so we all went back in the studio. Yeah,
Speaker 3: remix Sean. I think me and Sean did the remix.
Speaker 3: I think I did. Yeah, anyway, why started writing it?
Speaker 3: He came to the studio and he couldn't finish it,
Speaker 3: so he's like, yo.
Speaker 2: Dude, finished it, but you said it ain't nazty y'all.
Speaker 3: I said it ain't nasty enough. And he was like
Speaker 3: he was like, well, dude, I mean you know what
Speaker 3: what are we supposed to do? I said, ye, yeah,
Speaker 3: get here? So I rewrote some of it. I rewrote
Speaker 3: it and wrote wrote what parts of it and then
Speaker 3: we had we started singing it and I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, my dad ain't gonna be proud
Speaker 3: of me with this song. Were like just we just
Speaker 3: pushed record and just kept going. It was like there
Speaker 3: was we ain't we ain't trying to pressure that right now.
Speaker 3: So why came in the studio late the day we
Speaker 3: was recording and we had a girl in the studio.
Speaker 3: Didn't make the record, but we had a girl in
Speaker 3: the studio making these sounds and stuff on the right. Yes,
Speaker 3: but I mean like some of the stuff that we
Speaker 3: didn't make the record. But anyway, video Wine came in.
Speaker 3: I was I was on the console. Wine came in
Speaker 3: and he heard the girl. He looked at the move
Speaker 3: was like, what is what? What's this? What's what is that?
Speaker 3: We're just trying to, you know, get the song where
Speaker 3: it needs to be. It's like, dude, I told you
Speaker 3: my dad ain't gonna be proud of and he ran
Speaker 3: out and slammed the door on me and other like
Speaker 3: all try to get one more time where you go
Speaker 3: from the top.
Speaker 5: With the song.
Speaker 3: So again, most of those songs, almost all those songs
Speaker 3: except two on the first album, we all wrote either
Speaker 3: in high school or on the way to the studio
Speaker 3: and houses getting ready to make that record because Motown
Speaker 3: had no songs for us.
Speaker 2: They didn't know what to do with us at all.
Speaker 1: Wow, So how difficult was the transition in your personal
Speaker 1: lives again. I can only speak from an experience that
Speaker 1: your life drastically changes, and probably the people that change
Speaker 1: the most on you are your are family members, like
Speaker 1: people that are close to you and whatnot, how awkward
Speaker 1: or not awkward. What's that adjustment like with your your
Speaker 1: your first year into coming out with as far as
Speaker 1: like interacting with friends from your your your childhood and
Speaker 1: people that feel entitled.
Speaker 5: I can't say.
Speaker 8: I can't say that there's been like some metal dramatic
Speaker 8: like change personally from people that I knew. The people
Speaker 8: that I knew were actually in support of me even
Speaker 8: before all this, so when it happened for me personally,
Speaker 8: they were like, okay, that makes sense because I was
Speaker 8: the kid that was in the Philadelphia Boys Choir and
Speaker 8: you know I did these things and that, you know,
Speaker 8: all the other stuff. So when it came down to oh,
Speaker 8: I'm in the group, you know, you had a couple
Speaker 8: little knuckleheads's like oh, I don't believe until you know
Speaker 8: it all happened.
Speaker 5: But it was never like oh, you know, give me
Speaker 5: some money or some it was. It wasn't a movie scene.
Speaker 5: It was it was it was all. It was all
Speaker 5: all supported in a sense where when I came back
Speaker 5: to my neighborhood, everybody was like, Yo, what's up? And
Speaker 5: I was sit my old stupid just with my you know,
Speaker 5: the same friends that I had, and we'd hang out
Speaker 5: and kick it. I think it's the same with everybody.
Speaker 3: I mean, because no, dude, like, Yo, you're supposed to come,
Speaker 3: You're supposed to get us up all out of here.
Speaker 3: And I'm sitting here going through it because I'm a
Speaker 3: logical thinking guy. So I go through my head. I'm like,
Speaker 3: and I asked, this, dude, is five y'all out here,
Speaker 3: let's just just just play this game for a second
Speaker 3: with you. I'm supposed to make it and come back
Speaker 3: and get all of y'all out. So if I come
Speaker 3: get off five of y'all out and give y'all all
Speaker 3: my stuff, y'all gonna be going, and I'm gonna be
Speaker 3: back here on this corner by myself. I'm not gonna
Speaker 3: be here by myself. I'm not giveing y'all nothing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And that's how that went well with me. It was
Speaker 3: with me.
Speaker 7: It was a little different because I'm from the Project
Speaker 7: for Richard Island Project.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and Northern Liberties.
Speaker 3: Homes exactly.
Speaker 7: So, so I'm from Richard Island and a lot of
Speaker 7: people that when I became famous, they were my age.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. There's a lot of cats
Speaker 2: that was my age. But they were doing other things.
Speaker 3: What I'm saying.
Speaker 7: They were street pharmacists, you know what I'm saying. They
Speaker 7: were you know, they was hustling, they was doing all
Speaker 7: the different stuff. But they always supported me, you know
Speaker 7: what I'm saying. Once we became uh you know famous,
Speaker 7: uh sort of sick sort of speak, we actually you know,
Speaker 7: when I would come back, every time I would come back,
Speaker 7: somebody was in jail or dead, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: And it was their.
Speaker 7: Brothers and sisters who are now older and in the
Speaker 7: place where they were.
Speaker 2: So they didn't have the same respect for.
Speaker 7: Me as their brothers, brothers, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 7: who was like, yeah, we we finally made it, you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: That's how they felt.
Speaker 7: But then as they started going you know, the prison
Speaker 7: and you know, passing away and stuff, that there was
Speaker 7: no respect there. I even had to move my grandma
Speaker 7: out of and she loved the project. She loved it
Speaker 7: even when I was making money. She really literally wanted
Speaker 7: to stay there, you know what I'm saying, because that's
Speaker 7: really all she knew for so long. But I had
Speaker 7: to move her out of there because I couldn't go
Speaker 7: and sit out in front of her house.
Speaker 2: With my with my bends, now you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 2: with my bends.
Speaker 7: Or in my truck and people just walk by. It
Speaker 7: was always something and my grandma was here to getting
Speaker 7: a lot from it. And she basically was like, yeah,
Speaker 7: they talking crazy. I said, well, you got to move
Speaker 7: out of here.
Speaker 3: And I just bought her the heat. The heat was
Speaker 3: coming for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I mean, it's it's it's different.
Speaker 7: I mean family is a little different too, of course,
Speaker 7: because like you said, there's always an entitlement somewhere somewhere.
Speaker 7: It's not necessarily always the immediate, but there's always an
Speaker 7: entitlement of a cousin, of a cousin, a cousin, you know,
Speaker 7: I what's you know, But they're not really you know
Speaker 7: a part of your life like that, you know.
Speaker 3: I tell you what's funny with me is that I
Speaker 3: had to try to, uh, because I always try to
Speaker 3: think a little bit ahead. I had to try to
Speaker 3: think for family members who don't really understand the change
Speaker 3: of the lifestyle. And in some cases, you know, obviously
Speaker 3: when he becomes a chestful, you can't bring your whole family,
Speaker 3: you know, out of the ghetto. I mean, there are
Speaker 3: people still live there and whatnot. To the point where
Speaker 3: I had to start seeing my family at my house
Speaker 3: because I always felt like me driving up in my
Speaker 3: car going in their house, I'm kind of endangering because
Speaker 3: when I leave, whoever saw that car pull up, It's like, well,
Speaker 3: why was he going in there? What's in there that
Speaker 3: I don't know about? So I would always have to
Speaker 3: wind up having my family come to me, and I
Speaker 3: had to kind of pull up from going to see
Speaker 3: my family just not to put them in those spots.
Speaker 6: It's a controlled environment if they come to see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: How how burdensome is in the end of the road
Speaker 1: and retrospect, how burdens them?
Speaker 3: Is it?
Speaker 2: Like I understand what he's said, is it?
Speaker 11: Is it?
Speaker 1: How do you feel like, no, no, no, even when
Speaker 1: it was happening. When it was happening, you know, Okay,
Speaker 1: So I was obsessively reading billboard like this is right
Speaker 1: before we got put on. So I was always handing
Speaker 1: in industry circles. I was interning at rough House. So
Speaker 1: when it got to that twelfth week, like every forty
Speaker 1: year old white guy was like, yo, they're about to
Speaker 1: break the Beatles. It was like Santa Claus wasn't real,
Speaker 1: had no idea, no for real, there was like it
Speaker 1: was like Santa Claus wasn't real and they're going to
Speaker 1: break this record in the nex and it happened. Like
Speaker 1: did did it feel anyway or was it just like, yeah.
Speaker 5: We got Yeah. When we got the news, we were
Speaker 5: in London and you know, we were overseas most of
Speaker 5: the time. That end of the road was doing what
Speaker 5: it was doing.
Speaker 8: So when we finally got the news, we were literally
Speaker 8: ten minutes in going on stage at the Hippodrome in
Speaker 8: London and someone told us, hey, guys, you know, you
Speaker 8: guys broke the record. Uh you know, longest number run
Speaker 8: blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: We're like, oh cool, Wow, I think there was more
Speaker 5: so I think it was.
Speaker 3: Honestly, we didn't really know how much it meant. Like again,
Speaker 3: the same way we were in high school was the
Speaker 3: same exact way we were in the business for a
Speaker 3: long time. It was just find a song, learn the song,
Speaker 3: sing the song better than any damn other group can
Speaker 3: ever sing it on the planet, and keep doing it
Speaker 3: again and again and again and every single day. That's
Speaker 3: all everything was about. So all the other stuff that
Speaker 3: was going on that didn't even matter. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: well now we're finished with Thomas rehearsal. Rehearsal was at seven.
Speaker 3: We gotta get we got to get these harmonies right
Speaker 3: for the next thing. It was just never a time
Speaker 3: to even think about that. We just didn't know how
Speaker 3: big that was.
Speaker 7: Right, And the funny thing was, at the same time,
Speaker 7: if we were if we knew that the the record
Speaker 7: even existed, like you said, you were around that circle Mire,
Speaker 7: so you know what I mean, people were saying, oh god,
Speaker 7: this is about to happen. We didn't even know that
Speaker 7: there was a record that existed that needed to be broken,
Speaker 7: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So if we were like waiting for it, like all,
Speaker 2: we're about to do it, We're about to do it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, But what I'm saying, we didn't do it.
Speaker 1: I guess if you're living it, if you guys are
Speaker 1: actively working living it and I'm observing it, it's different
Speaker 1: like at that point I was observing it. So for me,
Speaker 1: like me observing those first two years was just like wow,
Speaker 1: like someone that I actually know is doing something, Yeah,
Speaker 1: doing something fucking big and let me let.
Speaker 3: Me tell you and that let me tell you one
Speaker 3: real quick. We got the same vibe with y'all and
Speaker 3: this was crazy. We was running around doing all this stuff.
Speaker 3: Went up to Canada. Now you know Canada, they got
Speaker 3: the all the all the gear and whatnot. The first
Speaker 3: time we ever heard Roots was the clothing line in Canada.
Speaker 3: We was like, Jackets is nigga we heard about We
Speaker 3: heard y'all as the Roots. We was like, we know
Speaker 3: that's up fun. What that's dude, that's that's a mirror.
Speaker 3: It was for us, it was like we just felt like, yo,
Speaker 3: his other brother made it, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Like that was just so like because that's the only
Speaker 3: way we That was our only time we ever heard
Speaker 3: anything about the Roots, like, oh, it's the group and
Speaker 3: they oh that's oh, we know the biggest y'all. That
Speaker 3: was it.
Speaker 11: That was it because I wish they forgot about your
Speaker 11: ass after high school.
Speaker 1: Home here, it was like, dude, I'm gonna wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna know for real, I gotta tell
Speaker 1: you that I had to throw that shirt away because
Speaker 1: all right, so it's weird. I know your lives have changed,
Speaker 1: but imagine a two point six a two point six
Speaker 1: second cameo. Yeah, a two point six second cameo. It
Speaker 1: literally it changed my life at that point, to the
Speaker 1: point where like Tarik would come by the crib, we
Speaker 1: go by and he's like, wait, what are you doing.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know. He's like, you're not
Speaker 1: wearing the shirt. I said, I'm not wearing that shirt. Yo,
Speaker 1: go get the shirt.
Speaker 6: Man's dirty.
Speaker 1: I'll wait, Like that outfit had to been worn. The
Speaker 1: worst it ever got was at my grain mom's funeral. Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm not lying. I'm not lying to you.
Speaker 2: It's like it's.
Speaker 1: It's like you guys were so popular, so when.
Speaker 11: They asked you to be in a video a mir
Speaker 11: you just how long did you take to say yes?
Speaker 3: Hell? Yeah?
Speaker 9: Like that man being in a video was like and
Speaker 9: that's why the funny thing verified on Instagram?
Speaker 3: What's the funnier man?
Speaker 13: Is that back?
Speaker 1: Like you wing up at four in the morning, all
Speaker 1: excited looking at you outfit.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, it's like but it's funny because back then, dude,
Speaker 3: as soon as we got the word that we was
Speaker 3: doing motown Philly and we knew he was doing in Philly,
Speaker 3: I mean just nature for us was like who do
Speaker 3: we know? Who's our people? Amyor but would anybody we
Speaker 3: grew up with like yeah Johnson, Yeah, we tried our
Speaker 3: best to get we wanted. We wanted Philly to be
Speaker 3: finally on the map with us. We couldn't go on
Speaker 3: the map without everybody else.
Speaker 1: Hanso was in it. Yeah, it was like all the.
Speaker 2: Might be I don't know what respect to Hanso.
Speaker 1: Yes he's reverend Reverend Hansel.
Speaker 6: Yeah, let's talk about it.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about Jesus money.
Speaker 1: I'm working with the tax.
Speaker 3: I know that I know that I know to get
Speaker 3: up come on man, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah for real, Like I had to throw the shirt
Speaker 1: away and not rock that ship. No more crazy man,
Speaker 1: that's that's yeah, but it got it got crazy. What
Speaker 1: I actually, what I do want to know is can
Speaker 1: you guys speak on Khalil Roundtree like a relationship with
Speaker 1: him and the effect that that had on you.
Speaker 3: Gritish man.
Speaker 8: Kyliloo Big because Kyli was road manager for the edition.
Speaker 5: And we met him in Philly, right, guys, we met
Speaker 5: him in a used to forears on at r PM.
Speaker 3: At uh RPM on on Delaware Avenue.
Speaker 2: Right, Delaware Avenue.
Speaker 8: Baby, Yeah, And you know, to make a long story short,
Speaker 8: you know, Khalil became our father figure, you know, somebody
Speaker 8: that looked out for us and protected us from everything
Speaker 8: and everybody.
Speaker 5: And and you know, even though Big brought him.
Speaker 8: Brought him in, and initially his loyalty was to Big,
Speaker 8: you know, that slowly turned it turned into something else.
Speaker 8: Like you know, he he started to love us, just
Speaker 8: like we started to love him, and it became us.
Speaker 6: You know when you when you talk about that where
Speaker 6: your father's like in you guys lives, Like what was.
Speaker 2: The status to that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: You know, they weren't on the road with us, gotcha,
Speaker 6: got you?
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Like when we were on the road and we were
Speaker 8: traveling and doing all the stuff that we were doing,
Speaker 8: he took on that father you know figure you know.
Speaker 3: Mon was mine was out but yeah.
Speaker 8: Right, but but for the most part, he took care
Speaker 8: of all of us and he made sure that you know,
Speaker 8: we were not only safe, but that we were carrying
Speaker 8: ourselves the right way, and that you know, we stay
Speaker 8: motivated and even doing rehearsals and all the other stuff.
Speaker 8: Like he he was something special because you know, he
Speaker 8: really gave a shit about us. It wasn't just a paycheck,
Speaker 8: you know, to Khalil, like he became an integral part
Speaker 8: of all of our families.
Speaker 5: He would talk all of my mothers on the road,
Speaker 5: and you know, because the mothers were.
Speaker 8: We calling on the road making sure that we're all right,
Speaker 8: he would talk to each and every one of them,
Speaker 8: making sure that they knew that, you know, we were
Speaker 8: safe and all that.
Speaker 5: He became something different than just the average Roman.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, he actually, uh my dad was was
Speaker 2: only comfortable with.
Speaker 7: Me being on the room we met kyl Once he
Speaker 7: met he was like, okay, I'm cool.
Speaker 3: That was like he was like the partner for me.
Speaker 11: Man.
Speaker 3: Like I said, my dad wasn't around. So you know,
Speaker 3: I think I got the call first from Viv about
Speaker 3: a guy that he was looking into and Kylil had.
Speaker 3: It was the night before we all met him. He
Speaker 3: was staying at an airport, Marriott or whatever, and you
Speaker 3: know he had with a big giant silver case with
Speaker 3: all his cassettes lined up on his on his thing
Speaker 3: in his room. And when I first walked in, dude,
Speaker 3: I mean I was a little intimidated because you know,
Speaker 3: kylil big dude. I mean he's a big, big guy.
Speaker 3: So and that real deep voice, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So you was it was almost like the father figure
Speaker 3: that kind of you know, put you in line without
Speaker 3: you mentally knowing it. But you know, once you got
Speaker 3: to know him, you knew he was a big teddy
Speaker 3: bear overall. But he was just always he was never
Speaker 3: going to tell you something that either wasn't right or
Speaker 3: something that was bullshit. That just was not the guy.
Speaker 3: You know, if someone tried to, you know, say hey,
Speaker 3: well you know I need you to do this or
Speaker 3: you know in the business with it, like yeah, we
Speaker 3: need you to get your artists to do he was
Speaker 3: never that guy like I'm not getting my artist to
Speaker 3: do anything. Like I'm going to tell them what it
Speaker 3: is and then we're going to talk about it. He
Speaker 3: was that guy. So he taught us early on the
Speaker 3: ins and out of that whole business thing. So, like
Speaker 3: Sean said, you know he was. He was more than
Speaker 3: a father. He was he was everything we could have
Speaker 3: possibly asked for.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, what year was it when you passed? I
Speaker 9: remember seeing y'all. This was I mean god, I was
Speaker 9: in like seventh grade. Y'all came to Greensboro colisee him
Speaker 9: and I want to say it was the boy White Superfest,
Speaker 9: but I remember it was.
Speaker 6: It was y'all, Jo Desy and Hammer was the was
Speaker 6: the headliner.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it was ninety.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like ninety two. Yeah, that was around the year
Speaker 6: when he passed.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, yeah it was ninety two. Yeah, the Hammer Tour.
Speaker 5: Yea, it was in Chicago.
Speaker 8: We just finished playing the rosemand Horizon No and and
Speaker 8: and what was funny is we all kind of like, uh,
Speaker 8: kind of key in on this particular moment the night
Speaker 8: that he passed away that got murdered. Kyler was a
Speaker 8: very confident dude. Every move that he made, everything that
Speaker 8: you know, he wanted us to do, he said it
Speaker 8: with with calculated you know what I'm saying, We're gonna
Speaker 8: do this, We're gonna do that, We're gonna do this.
Speaker 8: This was the first night I don't know that we
Speaker 8: ever seeing Kyl say where y'all what hotel y'all want
Speaker 8: to stay?
Speaker 5: I don't know which hotel.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, he came to us with the promoter's idea.
Speaker 3: I guess the promoter wanted us to stay. You know, promoters,
Speaker 3: they got a cheaper hotel over where you know all
Speaker 3: the crew is staying. So I want to move the guys.
Speaker 3: And like Sean said, Kyleel was never never indecisive. He
Speaker 3: was always well, just where they're going, you're doing this?
Speaker 3: This where they're going? Because I said so, and he
Speaker 3: came to us and a dress for him. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, the promoter, you know, save him some money
Speaker 3: if you guys did this so forth and so on.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't, I don't really know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of on the fence. What do y'all want
Speaker 3: to do? And we were like, I mean, carry us
Speaker 3: up to you whatever. You know what I'm saying, We
Speaker 3: don't really whatever you want to do. And he picked
Speaker 3: the hotel and unfortunately that was the hotel where guys
Speaker 3: came in. And you know, I don't like to talk
Speaker 3: about it, so.
Speaker 1: About sharing that, I'm sorry. I do have to ask though,
Speaker 1: because I know that singing is I always see singing
Speaker 1: as an intimate thing, and I know that you guys
Speaker 1: are like brothers. You know, when Tarika and I are
Speaker 1: angry with each other, like the Root show can still happen,
Speaker 1: you know, because we're not facing each other. But how
Speaker 1: do you guys handle if if there's friction between y'all
Speaker 1: and you still have to do the intimate act of
Speaker 1: singing with each other and harmonizing.
Speaker 2: We do it because actually, the funny thing is is
Speaker 2: that music it actually.
Speaker 7: Supersedes everything, you know what I mean, what we do
Speaker 7: together is magic, and it's like, you know, literally, you know,
Speaker 7: sometimes I literally listen to how we create and figure
Speaker 7: out certain parts without even thinking about it, you know
Speaker 7: what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So when we're on stage, we all know that we
Speaker 2: have a job to do, for one but at the same.
Speaker 7: Time, we also know that this person next to me
Speaker 7: is going to do that job better than anybody that
Speaker 7: I could ever, you know what I'm saying. So the
Speaker 7: respect level is really like, I know what he's here
Speaker 7: to do, I know what Sean head. I could be
Speaker 7: pissed off and me mad at me, but we know
Speaker 7: what we gotta do because our integrity is involved.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying it.
Speaker 1: Singing, singing your version of don't go to bed mad, so.
Speaker 2: Almost again, because.
Speaker 7: If we are having issues, most of the time, after
Speaker 7: we finished performing, somebody will come to somebody's room, somebody
Speaker 7: will say something or something. It will always it takes
Speaker 7: away everything because of what we just did on stage,
Speaker 7: that right there together is greater than the anger that.
Speaker 2: We have, you know for each other.
Speaker 1: Was it always like that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I mean we we have fish fights and
Speaker 3: then go back there and go out on stage and rock. Literally,
Speaker 3: I mean it's just I mean again, we grew up
Speaker 3: as brothers literally, like I have three brothers. I have
Speaker 3: my brother and then I have my brothers. I mean,
Speaker 3: we don't know anything else. I mean I always say that.
Speaker 3: You know, when we started earlier talking about how much
Speaker 3: time we've been together, we've been together longer than any
Speaker 3: of us have been together with any family member. That
Speaker 3: even our mothers like you, spend more time with each
Speaker 3: other than our own parents, like any there's not one
Speaker 3: family member in any of our families that we have
Speaker 3: spent more time around than each other.
Speaker 7: So I mean right there, like, I mean, it's really that.
Speaker 7: It answers itself. You know what I'm saying, like, that's
Speaker 7: what That's what family do?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 7: Of course, you know you go through things, you like argue,
Speaker 7: but at the end of the day, you know we're
Speaker 7: still family and we do something together better than any body,
Speaker 7: I believe, And.
Speaker 3: We're the only one that can say what we said
Speaker 3: about each other. And you can't call my brother that
Speaker 3: I can say it.
Speaker 5: You can't say it.
Speaker 3: It's that facts.
Speaker 9: Because we were getting into the two album, we're end
Speaker 9: of the role. Before we got there, I wanted to
Speaker 9: go back a little bit. So one of my boys
Speaker 9: men hot Takes. I have several uh as a as
Speaker 9: a longtime fan. My favorite album for y'all Cooliu Harmony.
Speaker 9: I love Coolie Harmony. Outside of COOLi Out Harmony. I
Speaker 9: always thought that some of the best just writing, songwriting, vocal,
Speaker 9: everything was on Christmas Interpretations.
Speaker 6: I fucking love that album. Man, like y'all niggas was
Speaker 6: in y'all bag on that ship.
Speaker 3: We had to fight, We had to fight for that well.
Speaker 3: The label wanted, you know, a typical Jackson five, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, ho Santa Claus Christmas record, and we weren't
Speaker 3: going to do that, like, we didn't want to fall
Speaker 3: into that platform, whether the whole whole hole and jingle bells.
Speaker 3: So we fought to try to do an original Christmas
Speaker 3: record and we didn't have any songs again, so we
Speaker 3: all sat around and said, all right, well here, Sean,
Speaker 3: you do too, Why you do too? I'm gonna do too, Mike,
Speaker 3: you do too. And then we we we we said, okay,
Speaker 3: well since we did, you know, since we rock out
Speaker 3: with the night, because that's our boy, you know, we'll
Speaker 3: have him come in and he will have him produce
Speaker 3: it with us, and if he's got a song or too,
Speaker 3: will throw it on and we'll rock out like that.
Speaker 3: Everybody just wrote two songs and we just went for it.
Speaker 2: Hyeah nah.
Speaker 9: I love that because it was, you know, like hearing
Speaker 9: you say you didn't want to do just a typical,
Speaker 9: you know, jingle bells, you know kind of record. But
Speaker 9: all the songs, I mean, they were just great songs
Speaker 9: that could have been They could have worked year round,
Speaker 9: like they weren't relegated.
Speaker 6: Like I would listen to that album in March, you
Speaker 6: know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Like that was you know what that that that's the
Speaker 5: cop I appreciate that find you.
Speaker 8: But you know, going back to the question that you
Speaker 8: you said like a little while ago, as parts things
Speaker 8: that you have written, I don't think I'm credit just
Speaker 8: more or less. I wish that there was more emphasis
Speaker 8: applied on me and my guys h ability to write music,
Speaker 8: because we tried our best to even even they you know,
Speaker 8: we tried to be the next La and face of
Speaker 8: jam and Lewis or something like that.
Speaker 5: Right, we felt like that that was like a natural
Speaker 5: progression for us to kind of go into that realm.
Speaker 8: And you know, I'm speaking of all of us, Wan
Speaker 8: Ye got a crazy pan like you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: Like we've we've all written records.
Speaker 2: For us and for other people.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that that that, you know, I wish for my
Speaker 8: guys that we were I guess more. I guess that
Speaker 8: that was more emphasized on. But because Boys to Men
Speaker 8: was such a phenomenon and it was such a juggernaut
Speaker 8: in itself, it seemed like all of our folks, honestly,
Speaker 8: to look at looking at it in retrospect, a lot
Speaker 8: of people, even down to Gerald, who's just like Wanye said,
Speaker 8: they didn't know what to do with us.
Speaker 5: So when we were successful, they were like, what.
Speaker 3: The fuck is this right?
Speaker 8: You understand what I'm saying, Like everybody was kind of like, well,
Speaker 8: how long is this candle gonna bark? So everybody's mentality
Speaker 8: wasn't hey, let's move these gentlemen forward to the next stage.
Speaker 8: As I looked back at all the events that's happened
Speaker 8: to us and the people that came in and out
Speaker 8: of our lives, it almost felt.
Speaker 5: Like, let's get this money now because we don't we
Speaker 5: don't know how long.
Speaker 8: This train is gonna lie. So a lot of our
Speaker 8: folks had that mentality. They didn't they didn't look beyond
Speaker 8: the fact that Yo Nate was a great songwriter. Yo
Speaker 8: Wan could have been a solo artist, you know, Sean
Speaker 8: could have, Mike could have had you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 8: they didn't go.
Speaker 5: That far with us.
Speaker 8: They just said, Okay, they're a moment, let's snatch and
Speaker 8: grab and then let's move on to the next thing.
Speaker 5: And the case in point of that is when during
Speaker 5: the Evolution album.
Speaker 8: When we came out with the Evolution album, this was
Speaker 8: around the time the boy the boy Band things started
Speaker 8: uh to come up. So you felt from our standpoint,
Speaker 8: you actually felt the shift of people's priorities going from
Speaker 8: us to them, like like literally like our literal budget
Speaker 8: in Motown was literally taken from us and given to
Speaker 8: ninety eight degrees.
Speaker 3: Wow, wow, Like it's real, like they they like.
Speaker 5: These these things happened, and it was it was it
Speaker 5: was almost like they they were done, like everybody was
Speaker 5: done with us.
Speaker 11: Almost mind boggling that they couldn't just add singer songwriter
Speaker 11: to any time y'all names were sick because really thinking
Speaker 11: about that, what.
Speaker 3: Happened when we did the first record, Like we said,
Speaker 3: we had records that were ours. They didn't know what
Speaker 3: to do with it. So it was almost like, well,
Speaker 3: we don't know if this record's gonna do well. Let's
Speaker 3: let the guys do whatever they're gonna do and we'll
Speaker 3: see if the project does well. Project sold twelve million records,
Speaker 3: So at that point the label was like, Okay, so
Speaker 3: we need to make it bigger. Let's who else can
Speaker 3: we get on this record. Now here's the caveat that
Speaker 3: people tend to forget. The original Koolie High Army album
Speaker 3: did not have Endo the Road on it. It wasn't
Speaker 3: part of the original album. That song was done for
Speaker 3: the soundtrack for the Eddie Murphy Boomerang after Koulil Harmony
Speaker 3: was already out. So what if you notice the original
Speaker 3: Koliail Harmony album had us with the shirting coats on
Speaker 3: the canes and the little squares around it. I think
Speaker 3: that original album probably might have gotten to about four
Speaker 3: and a half five million records when they did the
Speaker 3: boomerang deal. They did the deal to Okay, well they
Speaker 3: can use on the soundtrack. We'll have the guys perform
Speaker 3: the song. They'll perform it, we'll put it on that
Speaker 3: set the record, and then we'll also have to put
Speaker 3: it on we'll have the rights. Motown took to put
Speaker 3: it somewhere else. So they repackaged the Koolier Harmony album
Speaker 3: because they saw the new color and have a pop start.
Speaker 3: We had a pop audience, so they said, okay, well
Speaker 3: let's get the bright color. The bow Ties, throw this
Speaker 3: song on air, re released this as a single off
Speaker 3: that album, and then that album goes to twelve million.
Speaker 3: So now their mine is like, okay, well, now we
Speaker 3: need those kind of songs and those kind of songwriters,
Speaker 3: not koli Our Harmony songs, but those kinds so then
Speaker 3: they went to Jimmy and Terry, they went to Babyface,
Speaker 3: and as we were trying to grow as artists, like
Speaker 3: artists always say hey, well we wrote some of those
Speaker 3: songs on the one that did five six, can we
Speaker 3: write Oh yeah, well you could write some stuff, but
Speaker 3: right now we need these guys. So, you know, us
Speaker 3: taking the approach of just let's focus on making sure
Speaker 3: we sing the right notes to do what we gotta do,
Speaker 3: we didn't hammer home right away with trying to be
Speaker 3: on top of it. We got pushed away to the
Speaker 3: point where it was like, okay, well bring Dallas Austin
Speaker 3: back because he's a producer. Artists and producers back then
Speaker 3: they wouldn't let get They didn't. You know, the producer
Speaker 3: was always more important than the artists because the producer
Speaker 3: could produce fifteen to thirty records home on fifteen twenty
Speaker 3: artists that the label had. The artist is just one entity,
Speaker 3: so it was always more important for labels to make
Speaker 3: allegiances with producers and songwriters, keeping us from becoming super
Speaker 3: producers and songwriters took the power away from us to
Speaker 3: just be singers. So they wrapped that land Face and
Speaker 3: everybody around it and not not knockative that it didn't
Speaker 3: do well, but it did stifle what Sean was talking
Speaker 3: about our ability to grow as songwriters. And they kind
Speaker 3: of threw us a bone like, well, here go go
Speaker 3: hang out with you know, Dallas's beat producers, Tim and
Speaker 3: Bob and see what you come up with. So we
Speaker 3: started writing some songs with them, which we happened to
Speaker 3: get on two albums, and one of them we had
Speaker 3: to tell them that Dallas wrote in order to get
Speaker 3: it on the record because they wouldn't put it.
Speaker 6: On that.
Speaker 5: Exactly wows.
Speaker 3: No, no, it wasn't. But we had to lie to
Speaker 3: the record label and tell them that Dallas Austin wrote
Speaker 3: that song and produced it because they weren't gonna put
Speaker 3: it on the album. Wow.
Speaker 9: And my favorite songs on that album were the ones
Speaker 9: that y'all did like vibing.
Speaker 3: But to the record labels point as they were trying
Speaker 3: to And and then again I understand it now because
Speaker 3: when you really look at it, we can all talk
Speaker 3: about those records, but if you went to Istanbul, they're
Speaker 3: talking about in the road, they're talking about all make
Speaker 3: love to you. They're not talking about please don't go
Speaker 3: they're not talking, you know what I'm saying, So I
Speaker 3: understand what they were trying to do. But if it
Speaker 3: was explained to us a little bit more back then
Speaker 3: as we were going through, we would understand it other
Speaker 3: than people feeling other than us feeling like artists, like, ah, well,
Speaker 3: we're gonna get the big names and y'all just go
Speaker 3: take the ride.
Speaker 8: You know, here's the irony of all of the irony
Speaker 8: of all of that name is the fact that, yes,
Speaker 8: those guys wrote those songs and things that nature. And
Speaker 8: this is no disrespect because there are records, so I
Speaker 8: can't disrespect my all songs, but the biggest one was
Speaker 8: written by us, right, so so you know, despite what
Speaker 8: they thought, despite what they might have thought, we were.
Speaker 5: Or what we needed or what we was always here.
Speaker 5: It was always with us.
Speaker 8: But they never wanted to see that, so they tried
Speaker 8: to literally manipulate the situation to even make us think that, yo.
Speaker 5: We y'all need them. And and it wasn't like it
Speaker 5: wasn't a disrespect.
Speaker 8: It's not a disrespect because we Uncle, Terry, Jimmy, Jeff
Speaker 8: there are we love them, you understand, with all of
Speaker 8: all our.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying, we love Babyface with all
Speaker 5: of our hearts.
Speaker 8: So we understand that this was all a business move,
Speaker 8: but at the same time one benefited a little bit
Speaker 8: more than the other from that standpoint, And and me
Speaker 8: being forty eight years oh, I'm under and and now
Speaker 8: that life is all about relationships, Life is about growth,
Speaker 8: Life is all about being able to develop and go from.
Speaker 5: This point to that point, and we all need the.
Speaker 3: Help to do it.
Speaker 8: There's not anybody alive that has not become successful without
Speaker 8: some sort of leg up by somebody that was in
Speaker 8: a better position than them. So when I look back
Speaker 8: at this, this was by design. They wanted us to
Speaker 8: be here, stay here, and then they.
Speaker 3: Want us to sing. That's all they wanted for them.
Speaker 3: They didn't want us to dabble in too much. And
Speaker 3: then it's been said a couple of times throughout. And
Speaker 3: what made it even tougher was that even when we
Speaker 3: tried to write and produce on somebody else, the name
Speaker 3: of the group was so overshadowing that all people wanted
Speaker 3: was I just want to hear y'all singing. Y'all do something.
Speaker 3: I don't really want NAT's record, or vice versa. And
Speaker 3: not that I don't like it, but I like this better.
Speaker 3: And that's you know, it's a double ed sword. The
Speaker 3: success is great, but you you, at some at that
Speaker 3: point in our career we had to either live with
Speaker 3: one or the other. We weren't going to be able
Speaker 3: to get hot.
Speaker 13: When it comes to the technical aspect of the creating
Speaker 13: of a song, is it clear who's going to sing
Speaker 13: what part? Because to me, like the three of you
Speaker 13: have very similar voices and voice rangers. I know there
Speaker 13: are different you know, uh strong suits for each of you.
Speaker 13: But like when you're when you're writing a song and
Speaker 13: you're creating it, it's it clear who's going to sing
Speaker 13: what part. It's like it's like, Nate, you're gonna sing
Speaker 13: the melody, Sean, You're gonna sing.
Speaker 5: The Writing for my group is probably the easiest thing in.
Speaker 14: The world because you can literally know, you know exactly
Speaker 14: who does what that like you you don't even got
Speaker 14: to like question or have a you know, tribunal about
Speaker 14: who's going to sing this verse or that verse or whatever.
Speaker 8: You know, who's going to sing it, who's going to
Speaker 8: send it home? And then the harmonies is just something
Speaker 8: that most people don't know how we do it, so.
Speaker 3: We just do that like that.
Speaker 1: But but I want to know silent night, Silent night
Speaker 1: is that's how so here you guys the craft that
Speaker 1: here's the deal is that everybody has their own style
Speaker 1: with this.
Speaker 3: The reason why I think that a lot of a
Speaker 3: lot of it seems more difficult than it is a
Speaker 3: lot of producers, I, Jimmy, Jame, Terry faces like working
Speaker 3: with us because and this is not you know, not
Speaker 3: trying to blow smoke in any way. But honestly, there's
Speaker 3: not many songs that we can not sing because vocally
Speaker 3: we cover the gamut from here to here. Whether it's
Speaker 3: one guy, two guys, or whatever, we cover the whole spectrum.
Speaker 3: We're gonna sing every single You can't, you can't out
Speaker 3: key us.
Speaker 4: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: You can't. Oh that's the wrong key. You can't. You
Speaker 3: can't do that with us because vocally we just it's
Speaker 3: it's all over the place. So with that being said,
Speaker 3: like Shawn said, it's easy to write for us because
Speaker 3: throw it against the wall. And to answer your second question,
Speaker 3: because we grew up in a coral environment, we automatically
Speaker 3: know where the parts fall. But even after that, what
Speaker 3: made boys men different from just people singing chorl is
Speaker 3: we moved out of that realm a little bit. So
Speaker 3: if Win's background part is the first songs background part
Speaker 3: is a second tenor, he'll start singing it and eventually
Speaker 3: somewhere he'll end up on an alto second alto part,
Speaker 3: and most people will say, well, he went out of
Speaker 3: his range. He's got to stay there. He doesn't have
Speaker 3: to because when he's singing that, Wan's already singing where
Speaker 3: he left the spots open, right, and I'm already hearing
Speaker 3: the spots that they both left open. So it's just
Speaker 3: a mental to jump down place. It's like, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: make it this simple. You ever have Connect four, You
Speaker 3: know how when you drop the thing down and go
Speaker 3: cock cook cook, cook cook, That's pretty much what it is.
Speaker 3: Wherever that lands, you know when you drop the next
Speaker 3: one where it's got to go to, you just know
Speaker 3: where it's got to go.
Speaker 7: And I'll be totally honest. And that's what I was
Speaker 7: talking about earlier, is the magic. You know, the crazy
Speaker 7: thing is is Okay, let's just say Sean's in the
Speaker 7: vocal booth and I'm out in the lobby and Sean
Speaker 7: sings his.
Speaker 2: Note blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. He
Speaker 2: sings his note.
Speaker 7: When I come in and hear the note that Sean's doing,
Speaker 7: I automatically know where I'm supposed to go.
Speaker 2: And it's not even a song that I ever heard before.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So then I'll go in and I'll do my part,
Speaker 7: and then I'll leave, then natle come in, and by
Speaker 7: the time we finished it, it has turned into this place.
Speaker 3: And it doesn't have to be in sequential order. One
Speaker 3: could start, then I'll come in second, then Shawn will
Speaker 3: come in, or I'll start, or vice versa. It's just
Speaker 3: it's just a natural and you know, ability to just
Speaker 3: feel what each guy the idea for that song is
Speaker 3: gonna be. I mean it, And it hasn't even haven't
Speaker 3: even gotten more difficult with three people because I was
Speaker 3: doing both parts anyway, So it's just now it's just rapid.
Speaker 3: It's just it's quicker actually.
Speaker 13: And all actually, So the intention always to sound like
Speaker 13: a choral group, or was the intention to sound like
Speaker 13: I mean, look, I'm a white kid from Long Island.
Speaker 13: I listened to voice to men religiously as forever and
Speaker 13: I as from Africa this time, no fuck you.
Speaker 3: But like, but.
Speaker 13: What I'm fascinating by it is like I always felt
Speaker 13: like you guys were four guys at the time, but
Speaker 13: you sounded like about twenty and like, I don't know,
Speaker 13: I don't think that there was like ultimate stacking.
Speaker 1: It was just like the the notes that you pill
Speaker 1: and the way that you did it.
Speaker 13: And I think what what I'm getting a Nate is
Speaker 13: like what you said is like is when you would
Speaker 13: get to someplace, you would hand it off to one
Speaker 13: and Salent.
Speaker 3: Night, Silent Night is the perfect example. And now I'm
Speaker 3: grabbing me or mentioned because that's not normal, because because
Speaker 3: we because we we what it is is that we
Speaker 3: we sang some of it something like that in high school, right,
Speaker 3: But what we did was we we added R and
Speaker 3: B to it when we when we took it for
Speaker 3: our own. And if you notice there are some chords
Speaker 3: where literally, I mean you may have a second, a
Speaker 3: third or seventh, it sounds like it's twelve people, but
Speaker 3: it's not. And especially when you get to that that
Speaker 3: quarter at the end, the that that that real big strong,
Speaker 3: it sounds like it's fifteen people, but it's just the
Speaker 3: notes that we chose and with Mike underneath of it,
Speaker 3: which a lot of people never really had. You could
Speaker 3: sing three notes and he would only be a fourth away,
Speaker 3: but it would just make it sound like it's thirteen people.
Speaker 13: But like was was was the was the intention always
Speaker 13: like that cluster harmonies would be the thing I mean,
Speaker 13: because like the gospel gospel for the record is like
Speaker 13: it's more the qurt I'm getting real nerdy the course
Speaker 13: out in gospel, right, it's like it's like rude fifth.
Speaker 3: Right, like third above that.
Speaker 1: Right, you guys, we intentionally did you don't want nobody
Speaker 1: follow you and car Yeah, no, no, you're right right
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 8: We intentionally did that because one those progressions are boring
Speaker 8: to us, Like they're boring, you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: you know, like.
Speaker 5: To do one, three, five, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: It's like, okay, we do that, but there's so many
Speaker 8: sweet spots in the seventh and then the thirteenth and
Speaker 8: like in between and all those other you know, uh
Speaker 8: sustained you know, chords and harmonies and stuff like that.
Speaker 8: So those sus chords and all that, So it so
Speaker 8: to be able to do that was always the goal.
Speaker 8: I mean, we grew up on Take six and the
Speaker 8: carpenters and and all those guys who did all of
Speaker 8: that stuff.
Speaker 5: So that's what we grew up listening to, even before
Speaker 5: we met each other.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I was gonna ask because I didn't ask earlier.
Speaker 3: I know that.
Speaker 1: You know, Take six is an influence, but the intricate
Speaker 1: level of of how you guys do your harmonies this
Speaker 1: is Yeah, it's beyond that. Like was their influence from
Speaker 1: Brian Wilson, like, who are your whore harmony gods?
Speaker 3: Here's that I'm gonna tell you. Take six honestly is
Speaker 3: the key. But the difference is when, like I said,
Speaker 3: when you got six guys and they're moving pretty tight,
Speaker 3: there's not There's not a whole lot of space for
Speaker 3: a guy to sing a soprano party and end up
Speaker 3: all the way down at the baritone because there's six
Speaker 3: guys in there. But what we did was we tonally
Speaker 3: we would listen to them because we knew we didn't
Speaker 3: have six parts. We found the parts that made it
Speaker 3: sound just like them without all six. Yeah, even if
Speaker 3: you had to go from the top to the bottom,
Speaker 3: just make that chord sound like their chord. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: what we would do. So we would jump all over
Speaker 3: the place, we move right, so.
Speaker 7: That they actually created those subscords in the middle and
Speaker 7: then spread out to become something else.
Speaker 1: So as three some as a threesome, do you guys
Speaker 1: have the ability to recreate so much to say no,
Speaker 1: we're just three people?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 8: But you know what, that's okay, because when you're listening
Speaker 8: to an album, you just want to capture the moment.
Speaker 8: You want to create the space, you want to create
Speaker 8: the pain, and and that's all that matters. Like it's
Speaker 8: three of us. But if we feel six parts, we're
Speaker 8: gonna sing those six parts, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: because that's needed.
Speaker 3: But I will say, but I will say, there are
Speaker 3: things that can sound that strong with three people. And
Speaker 3: I use I use our Star Spangled banner as an example. Right,
Speaker 3: we used to sing that with four people. But again,
Speaker 3: now that Mike's not here, we just took that other
Speaker 3: leg and kind of folded it under. Yeah, put put
Speaker 3: it put. We we took the meat of what we
Speaker 3: needed to make it sonically sound the same way people
Speaker 3: just jump in different spots to make it sonically sound
Speaker 3: the same way. It's just not for people, and the
Speaker 3: average ear is not going to hear when that one
Speaker 3: note is not. When you got a triad and it's
Speaker 3: a triad of a maybe a fifth or third and
Speaker 3: a seventh, you're not worried about what the other note
Speaker 3: was because it was probably unison with any other group anyway,
Speaker 3: You're only focusing on that. So we make sure we
Speaker 3: give you that, and then we'll peel one off to
Speaker 3: where it feels like it's open, and then we'll bring
Speaker 3: them back in. So it's ways to twist it. Like
Speaker 3: Sean said, Obviously, records give us a lot more flexibility,
Speaker 3: but if we have to narrow it down, that's normally
Speaker 3: how we'll do it.
Speaker 1: So what happens if a member has laryngitis.
Speaker 5: Or which carts that's happened?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And how long does it take you to just
Speaker 1: even when Mike had to leave the group, how how
Speaker 1: much work and adjustment did you have to do to
Speaker 1: figure out how to how to cover what was missing.
Speaker 8: It's literally us being backstage or somewhere and just arranging
Speaker 8: it mentally, preparing ourselves because you know when you're when
Speaker 8: you're when you're doing someone else's part, you're doing someone
Speaker 8: else's character. That that a lot of people understand that, Yo,
Speaker 8: that's Yanye sing. So there's no way I'm gonna sing
Speaker 8: like Kuan Ye so because he puts a stamp on
Speaker 8: everything that he sings, so there has to be a
Speaker 8: way to get around it.
Speaker 5: So you just make a way around it.
Speaker 8: And you know, obviously it's not gonna sound like Kanye,
Speaker 8: but we try our best for us not to suck.
Speaker 5: And and and and if if it doesn't suck, then
Speaker 5: that's good enough.
Speaker 8: And and honestly, we have the type of fans and
Speaker 8: people that we can be on stage to say, yo,
Speaker 8: man wayu's got langitis.
Speaker 5: He's here, he's here, Guys, he's here. He's gonna sing
Speaker 5: his best for you.
Speaker 3: And people know what.
Speaker 8: They hear it, they see it. They hate se am struggling,
Speaker 8: or they see me struggling or whatever. We'll sing their
Speaker 8: parts and they sing our sing our parts too. So
Speaker 8: we have that type of like people have seen us
Speaker 8: enough to know that.
Speaker 5: We can sing.
Speaker 8: That's never been a doubt or question. So when somebody
Speaker 8: has an off day, we just have an off day,
Speaker 8: and our people understand it. And we just go about
Speaker 8: the show and we do it and our people.
Speaker 3: Ride with us.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen. Sorry to do it to you, but
Speaker 1: you know we're gonna have to cut it short right now,
Speaker 1: or trust me, we'll be back next week with more
Speaker 1: talking with Nate, Sean and Wan Ye Boys to men,
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme. All right, come next time, see.
Speaker 2: Yo, what's up? It's a sponte.
Speaker 9: Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at
Speaker 9: quls and let us know what you think and who
Speaker 9: should be next to sit down with us.
Speaker 6: Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast, all right, peace.
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