Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme. I'm your
Speaker 1: host Questlove with Me. Today is the Team Supreme family,
Speaker 1: featuring our newly minted Gotta operatee Sugar Steve.
Speaker 2: I'm the New York.
Speaker 1: How was the Steve?
Speaker 2: And you know it was really a joke, Like I mean,
Speaker 2: it was supposed to get a joke.
Speaker 3: Me just campaigned to try to get on the float,
Speaker 3: and then you got me on the float, and then
Speaker 3: it was a matter of like sort of figuring out
Speaker 3: what the hell was going on that day it was
Speaker 3: pouring rain, and it just ended up, long story short,
Speaker 3: just ended up being so much more enjoyable and so
Speaker 3: much more heartwarming than I thought my heart could get.
Speaker 3: You know, like, I'm so jaded at this point. And
Speaker 3: you know, being from New York, you never think you
Speaker 3: can see uh, you're supposed to be Jaden new right,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Just yeah, and I'm there.
Speaker 3: I was, and I was just just waving at kids
Speaker 3: and just taking it all in. Seeing the city from
Speaker 3: that perspective, it was just it was kind of magic.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I have to say that if you're a generation
Speaker 1: person raised on like faris Muler's day off. I highly
Speaker 1: recommend getting in a parade by hook or crook.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so now I'm just looking around for people with parades,
Speaker 3: you know, So if you know.
Speaker 1: You're available for parades, good birthday boy, Bill Houses, sir,
Speaker 1: how are you great?
Speaker 4: I'm so jada. I don't even go to the parade anymore.
Speaker 4: How about that? That's like next level jadedness that anyway.
Speaker 5: You once got me on a parade float.
Speaker 4: Honestly, my favorite part about the parade every year is
Speaker 4: seeing you guys, because you always are the float that's
Speaker 4: right next to the same street float, and so there's
Speaker 4: always like something, there's always something happening. But then one
Speaker 4: year you were on ours, which is like a weird
Speaker 4: kids Midtie meeting of all the worlds, which is super cool.
Speaker 1: My favorite part of being on your float was that
Speaker 1: was Carol Spinny's last time being on a float. Carol Spinny,
Speaker 1: who played Big Bird Spending at the time, was like
Speaker 1: at least eighty eighty eight, right, so still playing Big Bird,
Speaker 1: and they were concerned that him being inside that hot
Speaker 1: ass costume would be too much for him to handle
Speaker 1: at eighty eight years old.
Speaker 5: And so he was like, nah, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: I'll do it, and then maybe like two hours in
Speaker 1: he was sort of like, Okay, I need some mayor.
Speaker 1: And I know that one of the main things that
Speaker 1: you guys are vigilant about is not letting kids see
Speaker 1: a lifeless muppet, because the second that the characters out
Speaker 1: of him, it just looks dead like. And so the
Speaker 1: way that they had to cover this entire bird, this
Speaker 1: eight foot bird, so that he could unzip himself and
Speaker 1: get some breath was hilarious because they didn't do it
Speaker 1: all the way. So there's like people on his on
Speaker 1: the west side of the float that could clearly see
Speaker 1: a slumped over, dead big bird light yep, and.
Speaker 5: There was like one or two kids like but that
Speaker 5: was the most.
Speaker 1: Hilarious thing ever dream crushed. How was your vacation, your
Speaker 1: your Thanksgiving?
Speaker 6: Oh it was good, Yo. I just gotta say, I'm
Speaker 6: so proud of y'all. Y'all talk about people being off
Speaker 6: floats like this is a regular person thing, like on
Speaker 6: your be on my float, on your float, like it's
Speaker 6: a moment chill, but like, uh, and to really celebrate
Speaker 6: all of y'all, that's really dope. But plans was great.
Speaker 6: It was DC, it was great. Now I'm in Cardagena, Colombia.
Speaker 1: You're in Columbia right now, Jesus. I was like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm not even going to talk about her house because
Speaker 1: I was like, that's the room I've never seen before.
Speaker 6: Said yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, y'all got to get into this.
Speaker 6: I'm like, Colombia is a beautiful place.
Speaker 1: So, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to say, our
Speaker 1: guest needs no introduction. Yes, but I also write, I
Speaker 1: also realize that whenever you have such a unique talent,
Speaker 1: oftentimes that particular being might be the favorite of your
Speaker 1: favorite singer. This might be one of the rare situations
Speaker 1: in which our guest today might be the favorite singer
Speaker 1: of your favorite singer's favorite singer, Like.
Speaker 2: Your favorite singer's mama likes this guy too.
Speaker 1: Yes, you know, I'm working on less hyperbole, but having
Speaker 1: been a witness to our guest today some twenty five
Speaker 1: twenty six years ago in my living room, like I've
Speaker 1: never had someone literally like you remember the moment and
Speaker 1: back to the future when Martin McFly starts doing a
Speaker 1: modern guitar solo and nineteen fifties and you know, the
Speaker 1: entire band stops playing Johnny be Good and they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've never had a musician literally stopped me in my tracks.
Speaker 1: I remember we were playing in my living room and
Speaker 1: I think Anthony Tidd was next to me, and I
Speaker 1: was just like, yo, who. The only time I ever
Speaker 1: said like yo, who the fuck is that? Is usually
Speaker 1: like some girl that blows my mind. I've never had
Speaker 1: an artist just make me like what the hell is this?
Speaker 1: And more than that, how can I be down? And
Speaker 1: I'd stay consistent in saying that I absolutely squander no
Speaker 1: time to collaborate or work with this artist simply because
Speaker 1: like it gives me the best seat in the house
Speaker 1: sometimes just to really display a level of performance that
Speaker 1: you rarely, rarely truly get to see. Where we are
Speaker 1: and this sort of well rehearsed, well curated, instagram filtered
Speaker 1: perfected kind of creative cycle that we're in in which
Speaker 1: you know, you're not allowed to see any of the
Speaker 1: flaws or the bendit notes or whatever, and we're here
Speaker 1: to celebrate, of course, is his latest album of Just
Speaker 1: Brightness really is the entire history, Ladies and Gentlemen, one
Speaker 1: of my favorite. It's almost a disservice to call him
Speaker 1: a performance artist, because I can't say a singer.
Speaker 5: I can't say an artist.
Speaker 3: I can't even say people are beings like exotic answer, Maybe.
Speaker 1: May we all truly channel in our creative energy. I
Speaker 1: have not even channeled in half the creative energy that
Speaker 1: our guest today has displayed.
Speaker 5: Please welcome belowd.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much.
Speaker 6: Can we say our favorite sick? Our favorite?
Speaker 1: Yes? I felt bad making this personal introduction like it
Speaker 1: was just about me. Yes, but this far beyond giving
Speaker 1: you your flowers. My voice has been shot for the
Speaker 1: last like nine days. I assume that, yes, when you
Speaker 1: sing it's zero to one thousand on the autobond. As
Speaker 1: far as dynamics and wherever you think your voice should
Speaker 1: go at that particular moment, do you have a ritual
Speaker 1: to take care of your voice? Like how do you
Speaker 1: prevent what you're hearing right now?
Speaker 7: Me talking like I don't usually get vorse like that,
Speaker 7: but I've got different concoctions that I made to stop it,
Speaker 7: like different teas like when I'm on the road, I
Speaker 7: got to tea it I make every time because it's
Speaker 7: like I can be good all the way up until
Speaker 7: like maybe if I'm on the road for like a month.
Speaker 7: The last eat I start. It's not that I'm getting
Speaker 7: a horse, but I get like that. Uh. I can't
Speaker 7: sing soft no more, and I like to sing soft,
Speaker 7: so it's like I can't do nothing soft. I'm just
Speaker 7: straight power. But I boil Ginger, Limon and Kanye and
Speaker 7: Pepper got it, got it yeah, and the honey, Yeah
Speaker 7: for sure. When I'm mad horse, I put garlic in
Speaker 7: there and it works. Sometimes it works every time, like
Speaker 7: brand new voice.
Speaker 5: Damn.
Speaker 7: That's like if I'm horse and I don't have no voice.
Speaker 7: But if I'm like good, I still got my voice.
Speaker 7: Just the Kanye, Pepper, Ginger, Lemon things, got it ended
Speaker 7: up just making perfect. But if I sound like you,
Speaker 7: I put like a big ass piece of garlic in there,
Speaker 7: but a little bit of garlic in Man.
Speaker 1: Everyone tells me garlic a reguano, But I'm so anti
Speaker 1: bad breath, i'd really suffer.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 7: No, But it's it's like a tea, so it's not
Speaker 7: like you're eating it, so it's like you had something,
Speaker 7: some superor something.
Speaker 1: It's always the next day, man, I wake up with
Speaker 1: the dragon.
Speaker 7: So I'll never eat gard like in my life.
Speaker 1: I'm that serious. So like the next day, the dragon just.
Speaker 7: Completely I completely understand. I mean I grew up with
Speaker 7: the name Beloud when they had the movie A House
Speaker 7: Pardon and Right, and Martin was Stank breath Aloud, So
Speaker 7: like umble fifth grade to eighth grade, I was Bank
Speaker 7: breath Aloud and I was the singer. So like every
Speaker 7: time I sang, the whole auditorium was like, oh, I'll
Speaker 7: just smell it. It was just a movie. It like
Speaker 7: ruined my life till high school.
Speaker 1: All right. So for the benefit of audience members that
Speaker 1: don't know anything about your history, I'm gonna ask you
Speaker 1: some basic questions. Could you please tell us the glorious
Speaker 1: city what you first came to this earth?
Speaker 7: Philadelphia? Of course, yeah, German can't.
Speaker 5: I can't do the siren noise?
Speaker 1: Thank you. What was your first musical memory?
Speaker 7: First musical memory is probably in my pops house acting
Speaker 7: out Thriller, but shortly after that, like that's just me
Speaker 7: acting out music by myself. The Sterly used to always
Speaker 7: kind of scare me a little bit, but the video
Speaker 7: video scared and Ship, but also the album itself who
Speaker 7: all of that kind of Ship used to scare me.
Speaker 7: My pops used to play it. It kind of scooped
Speaker 7: me out.
Speaker 1: I was wondering when the fact did that song have
Speaker 1: on kids, Like at a young age when my dad
Speaker 1: used to always play Curtis Mayfield's If There's Hell below,
Speaker 1: We're all going to go Oh Yeah, which is essentially
Speaker 1: just a bunch of psychedelic echoes and yelling like I
Speaker 1: We're in hell. But to this day it scares me,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like I always wondered if
Speaker 1: Thriller truly scared people to that level where they just
Speaker 1: don't want to because also Michael Jackson makes it appear
Speaker 1: like fun, like hey, zombies are fun, But you know.
Speaker 7: No, that's scared. That's all scared me. Before the video
Speaker 7: came up. I was just that whole talking part in
Speaker 7: the intro. Scared needed to scare me and my brother
Speaker 7: ski the hell out of it. It's like my first musical,
Speaker 7: like early music memory. But then I've been singing shortly
Speaker 7: after that, like on a church choir, Like I've been
Speaker 7: singing on church choir since a really long like little kid,
Speaker 7: like maybe four years old.
Speaker 6: So when did they hear it in you? When did
Speaker 6: everybody else go wait minute? What's that your family?
Speaker 7: Every I think I got like the lead vocal. Like
Speaker 7: the day I joined the choir, I went to a
Speaker 7: church where everybody in my family had to be on fire.
Speaker 7: Like the whole church was my family. Anyway, Like what
Speaker 7: church is this? There was a second Baptist church in
Speaker 7: Franklin and it was just a little church. And I
Speaker 7: would say on the other side of Brower Street toward
Speaker 7: there because you go keep going down. But literally, everybody
Speaker 7: in the church is my family. My grandmam had thirteen kids,
Speaker 7: so I got a big ass family. And everybody in
Speaker 7: the church around that time, like the eighties, you know,
Speaker 7: everybody went to.
Speaker 1: Church around there had to go to church.
Speaker 7: Yeah, like everybody had to go church or passed through there.
Speaker 7: Like the only person that didn't go to the church
Speaker 7: was my uncle, and he was always like he was
Speaker 7: like the black Panther. He was Nation of Islam. I
Speaker 7: mean really, nobody messed with him on that. But yeah,
Speaker 7: I was on a Sunbeam choir since four years old.
Speaker 6: So if everybody could sing, then the family wasn't easily
Speaker 6: impressed by your voice. Then everybody was like.
Speaker 7: No, everybody couldn't say okay. It was just on the choir.
Speaker 7: You had to be on the choir even if you suck.
Speaker 1: Just so that adults would know where you were twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven or Okay, So you mentioned Thriller, which, incidentally,
Speaker 1: by the way, as of this recording, today is the
Speaker 1: forty first anniversary of Thriller debuting on MTV, and also
Speaker 1: today's the forty second anniversary of Thriller the album. Well
Speaker 1: technically some say November thirtieth, some state December first, but yeah,
Speaker 1: we're Thriller's almost fifty, a full grown adult with some kids.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 1: But the thing that you mentioned now my church experience,
Speaker 1: especially in nineteen eighty three, that was the period where
Speaker 1: kind of two years after Ronald Reagan's kind of very
Speaker 1: conservative America agenda was really settling in. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of the hedonistic seventies adults were air quote atoning
Speaker 1: for their sins by becoming bored against Christians. So I
Speaker 1: once went to a church in which, like he had
Speaker 1: copies of Thriller in nineteen ninety nine and saying this
Speaker 1: demonic music you're letting your kids listen to, and.
Speaker 5: Da da da da da.
Speaker 1: So you grew up in a church heavy household and
Speaker 1: which secular music was allowed.
Speaker 7: Well, my pops was Muslim, so when I went to
Speaker 7: visit my pops, I was just listening to his but
Speaker 7: mom around my mom, she listened to everything. Even though
Speaker 7: we was going to church. I wouldn't say my mom
Speaker 7: was like even to this day, even though she's like Christian,
Speaker 7: she was, she was never like super heavy in the
Speaker 7: church like that. She got into the church heavy because
Speaker 7: you know, I started to sing on everybody until at
Speaker 7: a certain point I was just in the church sing
Speaker 7: in Philly. So my mom was like she became Joe
Speaker 7: Jackson after that.
Speaker 1: So you have one siblings I got, You're for Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: so I know some are on the books and off
Speaker 1: the books.
Speaker 7: So yeah, like from my mother, there's my older brother
Speaker 7: and my my younger sister, my cops. Uh. I got
Speaker 7: a few brothers and sisters all right.
Speaker 1: But in general, and I guess you could even count
Speaker 1: your cousins as whatever. I had cousins that were just
Speaker 1: as close to me and siblings.
Speaker 5: Was it pretty clear cut that.
Speaker 1: You had a gift that was beyond what the other
Speaker 1: kids of your ilk or age had mm hmm.
Speaker 7: Yeah. From early on, like as soon as I started
Speaker 7: to get in and on acchore by by the time
Speaker 7: I was and I was directed acquire yes.
Speaker 1: Me, Like, how did you discover you had this voice
Speaker 1: where you just always crying with someone notating a note
Speaker 1: to you, He's like.
Speaker 7: I don't know, I just it became apparent in church
Speaker 7: that I could, like, I guess I could really sing
Speaker 7: or like do leaves and stuff when I was good.
Speaker 7: But before, man, I don't know, I was just always
Speaker 7: the weird one. My little sister is a musician, and
Speaker 7: my brother he's he does he's just I would say gifted,
Speaker 7: But I don't know. I was always called like the
Speaker 7: weird cousin. I guess he's out. I always had that.
Speaker 1: It's the thing often, especially in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 1: at least my observation and my personal experience. Usually you know,
Speaker 1: if you display a gift, you're automatically ostracized, and depending
Speaker 1: on your kind of your capacity to withstand attention, it's
Speaker 1: sort of up in the air of how it develops.
Speaker 1: Like for me, I would pretty much say, like, up
Speaker 1: until the age of seven, I was a well rounded
Speaker 1: artistic person. Like first of all, like before they taught
Speaker 1: me to play drums, I had to learn to tap
Speaker 1: dance and like all this other stuff. But when it
Speaker 1: came to singing, yeah, I could tap my ass off,
Speaker 1: like I.
Speaker 7: Was like.
Speaker 6: Us too, yeah killing oh tap dancing really okay?
Speaker 1: Right, But the thing was is that I could sing.
Speaker 1: But then just because I got relentlessly ostracized for artistic ability,
Speaker 1: I tried to squash it or as we say today,
Speaker 1: like you dim your light. So the one thing that
Speaker 1: I sacrificed on the altar was my singing voice, which
Speaker 1: I believe that I could have been. Probably singing would
Speaker 1: have been my north star, but I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I got drums well, but I think by eight I
Speaker 1: psychologically killed my voice. I'm I can hold a tune.
Speaker 1: But being the oddball cousin of the black Sheep, how
Speaker 1: did you handle it? Or were you just like breakout
Speaker 1: in song? And I don't give a fuck I can sing.
Speaker 7: It was my cousins who everybody kind of didd like
Speaker 7: my brothers. The thing was to be able to dance
Speaker 7: real good, and I couldn't dance. I sucked. I could
Speaker 7: never like really dance well. So my brothers were the
Speaker 7: super stars because they can fucking dance all the dance
Speaker 7: is the running Man the wip like they would go
Speaker 7: to the parties and kill it, and I would always
Speaker 7: like clam up. So it's like the only time people
Speaker 7: even knew I could do anything was when we was
Speaker 7: in church, like that's where I was shying. But when
Speaker 7: we would go out and we was just kids, like
Speaker 7: it never it never really stood out. I could never
Speaker 7: really get it out or if somebody would be like, hey,
Speaker 7: you sing for me, I couldn't like do it like
Speaker 7: if it's just us like as kids, you know, even
Speaker 7: when like a song would come on, I had aunts
Speaker 7: that would just be like, oh, hey, boy, dance you
Speaker 7: know what I mean? Should I would even clam up
Speaker 7: in front of them, you know, But my brothers would
Speaker 7: push me aside and do all the moves they could sing,
Speaker 7: do all the Michael Jackson shit. I was always shy.
Speaker 7: I don't know I could. It could only come out
Speaker 7: when it was like a real audience, and then I
Speaker 7: was just like I felt like I was pretending or
Speaker 7: like escaping even though I was doing it.
Speaker 1: What is your go to song that you would sing?
Speaker 1: If adults made you, hey, sing something bloud?
Speaker 7: Like it would be like some Michael Jackson shit.
Speaker 1: You know from four to seven or eight? Who were
Speaker 1: your north stars?
Speaker 7: Four to seven? I think I'm By then, I was
Speaker 7: just listening to pop music shit, Like I was just
Speaker 7: watching him TV and whatever was on TV. You know,
Speaker 7: I didn't really have like a I would say, Michael
Speaker 7: Jackson and French you know, okay, or like whatever. I
Speaker 7: wasn't really I wouldn't say I was like so into
Speaker 7: music until like it really didn't hit me until I
Speaker 7: would say, like around seven. But by then I was
Speaker 7: like deep into church, like singing on white Like by
Speaker 7: the time I got to ten years old, I think
Speaker 7: that's fifth grade, right, yeah. Yeah. By the time I
Speaker 7: went to fifth grade, I had started to go to
Speaker 7: a Catholic school, and so I was just that was it.
Speaker 7: I went to Saint Maleky's right over there by break
Speaker 7: Brighthole Baptist Church, and I had this lady come into
Speaker 7: my like mother Brown and Mother Brown.
Speaker 8: She was the one that was like this motherfucker can say, like,
Speaker 8: you know, do.
Speaker 6: You remember would you preach them?
Speaker 7: Oh my god, come on, please obey your parents. Now.
Speaker 7: I don't know. I was just trying to work it
Speaker 7: all up to the park where you get to the
Speaker 7: bluesy part and the ogan gott to join in.
Speaker 1: If social media was out, then you would have been
Speaker 1: like one of these kids. I would have been liking,
Speaker 1: hell yeah, is there any documentation of you? Pretend like
Speaker 1: on taple or yo?
Speaker 7: Yeah. I was just at a concert the other day.
Speaker 7: I played at the Kimbel Center with Lauren Evans, a
Speaker 7: big band, and a lady came backstage was like, yo,
Speaker 7: I got a video tape, but you I think you're
Speaker 7: like nine years old, look oh younger singing that some
Speaker 7: church you was like so just like you do now.
Speaker 7: I was like, I need to fucking get that tape.
Speaker 7: It's like it's so hilarious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the way that I think I first heard of you,
Speaker 1: there was a girl that I was seeing and she
Speaker 1: might have graduated Kappa before your time, and maybe her
Speaker 1: younger sister went there. Whatever the case, was about the
Speaker 1: point when I had your demo and I was playing
Speaker 1: it in her car and never wanted to like people
Speaker 1: love their opportunity to dunk on me, like if I
Speaker 1: don't know something about music, and her dunk was like
Speaker 1: I know that out And the next week she brought
Speaker 1: in a cassette of you singing back when you were
Speaker 1: like ten years old or whatever. And the thing was
Speaker 1: that there wasn't a difference in I was like, there's
Speaker 1: no way you're telling me this person's ten eleven years old,
Speaker 1: Like he sounds like a fully formed range, like I
Speaker 1: hear three to four octaves already. And she was like, yes,
Speaker 1: he goes to my church. I wish I remembered her name,
Speaker 1: but for you, like poor girl, I wish I remember
Speaker 1: her name.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for you? Was there any other option?
Speaker 1: Did you have any other desire to do something in
Speaker 1: life besides singing?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I wanted to be an architect. I liked to
Speaker 7: draw cars as low as a little kids, So I
Speaker 7: wanted to be some type of life building. But it
Speaker 7: was always on the creative side. But yeah, I wanted
Speaker 7: to make cars.
Speaker 1: So Blau, what was the first creative project that you.
Speaker 5: Worked on the outside of the church, Like.
Speaker 7: As far as like the recording or.
Speaker 1: Just well, yeah, I mean as far as recordings concerned,
Speaker 1: or like just outside of church.
Speaker 7: I broke out at church, like I started breaking out
Speaker 7: of church. And hind not to mention, my pops always
Speaker 7: hated the fact that I.
Speaker 6: Was about to say, when did your daddy be like,
Speaker 6: this is enough.
Speaker 7: Dad always hated the fact that I was going to
Speaker 7: church and my dad's best friend is mister Ben buying
Speaker 7: them from down the hole zanzer bar ship. I've been
Speaker 7: grew up in there and yeah when when when Willhelmina's
Speaker 7: used to be zanza bar blue. I grew up in
Speaker 7: that one when it was like two different floors and ship.
Speaker 7: But my dad used to take me there. She's just
Speaker 7: kind of getting me out of the hole going to
Speaker 7: church ship because he just always felt like that was
Speaker 7: just not the thing, right, you know. So he wanted
Speaker 7: me to see jazz. He was like, this is music
Speaker 7: that ships just hollered and hollered, but then he would
Speaker 7: wind up saying calling some of the cats at the
Speaker 7: zazeb hollering. He hated holler. To this day, my papa
Speaker 7: has never been in not one of my contints, Like,
Speaker 7: I don't think he ever never, like.
Speaker 1: Your dad would you do?
Speaker 7: He knows what I do, but he ain't never heard
Speaker 7: of shit. I ain't never seen him at a concert ever.
Speaker 5: Are you fine with that?
Speaker 7: My papa say, is an eccentric guy like me, So
Speaker 7: whatever he does, I'm just like I remember one time
Speaker 7: My papa was so pissed at me singing in church.
Speaker 7: He literally came into church and like I was singing
Speaker 7: and took the mic and picked me up like and
Speaker 7: my mom was like, no, Melvine, no, and my papa
Speaker 7: was like, my son ain't gonna be gay. My son
Speaker 7: ain't gonna be gay. I'm like, ah, it was embarrassing, man,
Speaker 7: Like I think the keyboard player from Philly Meetzsche was
Speaker 7: the playing. It was like one of those workshop type
Speaker 7: things where you gotta pay to be in it. And
Speaker 7: my mom so high school, my papa was very happy
Speaker 7: that I had met he's cats, and so I went
Speaker 7: to Philadelphia Clup Club high school. Because all of my
Speaker 7: friends went to Clup Club, Jill jiel Shaw, George Burton,
Speaker 7: Lowie brothers. They all told me if I wanted to
Speaker 7: hang with them, I needed to learn jazz theory and
Speaker 7: I need to learn chords and play piano because they
Speaker 7: didn't want to hear me sing. I went to the
Speaker 7: clup Club to learn piano and chords.
Speaker 1: And ship and at the time was the instructor was yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: love it, Hans Okay, he was my instructor too. It's
Speaker 1: where you said that because we as people have a
Speaker 1: hard time expressing emotions that there's such a vulnerability in singing,
Speaker 1: that there's a certain level of generally on people that
Speaker 1: I feel like singing is such a soft.
Speaker 7: Experience.
Speaker 1: But yet we love Eddie Kendricks, we love Smoking Robinson,
Speaker 1: we love printing. Maybe I kind of sense that too,
Speaker 1: like because I definitely know that there was a period
Speaker 1: between like seventy four and eighty four where like if
Speaker 1: you sang, then you were just ridiculed, like you know,
Speaker 1: like you couldn't have a beautiful voice and surviving the
Speaker 1: hood like you soft because you you sing beautiful, which
Speaker 1: wasn't how.
Speaker 6: It was in our parents' time. In our parents' time,
Speaker 6: he were singing duo on the side. So something happened
Speaker 6: at disconnect.
Speaker 7: That's sweet. The hardest singers was joonas that.
Speaker 1: In school, were you trying to start like groups with
Speaker 1: people or were you just like.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I went through phases, Like my
Speaker 7: freshman year I was in a singing group. It was
Speaker 7: a gospel group with the singers. I was like hardcour
Speaker 7: in the vocal department everybody because this is the same ship.
Speaker 7: She was saying, that's breaking out singing and up, you know,
Speaker 7: in the hallway and ship. And I was in the
Speaker 7: gospel group and I switched sophomore year and I started
Speaker 7: trying to be in a jazz group. So I started
Speaker 7: going to jam sessions. I got my first gig as
Speaker 7: a vocalist Orn Evans band, the Blue Note or the
Speaker 7: Blue Moon. There was this club called the Blue Moon
Speaker 7: in Philly, and he used to do gigs. He had
Speaker 7: just graduated, but we he would hire, you know, he
Speaker 7: was still cats that was still in high school. So
Speaker 7: I played in his and like I did like one
Speaker 7: or two gigs then, and I shortly after that started
Speaker 7: trying to like make my own dad. But it was
Speaker 7: like a jazz trio. Like I from there, I got
Speaker 7: the jazz bub Like I didn't even want to sing,
Speaker 7: no other style of music until like maybe I got signed,
Speaker 7: Like I was hard for wanted to be the next
Speaker 7: Bobby McFerrin.
Speaker 6: Or some ship you got sign singing No R and
Speaker 6: b Copter No.
Speaker 7: When I first met in teammate, I was in a
Speaker 7: singing group because it was I was in the singing
Speaker 7: group in high school. My cousin dated dodmu uh In
Speaker 7: two Ma's son, and she would always talk about me
Speaker 7: to him. And at the time, they was doing that
Speaker 7: show New York Undercover, New York Undercover and yeah, and
Speaker 7: they would do the music stuff. So it got out
Speaker 7: that Tunes was looking for a group. So I put
Speaker 7: a group together just to go up there, and uh,
Speaker 7: Tunes didn't like the cats, but he liked my voice.
Speaker 7: So that was like the second time I put a
Speaker 7: group together. And I think I put another group together
Speaker 7: to try and win a competition one but it was
Speaker 7: like a jazz man.
Speaker 1: I gotta get to the moment where I discover you
Speaker 1: and I forget Amir.
Speaker 6: You say human saxophone. That was a part of the story.
Speaker 6: I remember you told me that that wasn't a part
Speaker 6: of the story too, the human Saxophone game.
Speaker 5: No, Like I believe James, he had me a cassette.
Speaker 1: And for him, besides the fact that he knew Bloo's
Speaker 1: voice was gonna blow my mind, there was one thing
Speaker 1: that was slightly more mind blowing about this cassette I
Speaker 1: was listening to, and Bloo's voice was the second thing
Speaker 1: that was mind blowing. The first thing he said to
Speaker 1: me was like, dude, the motherfucker from the Spin Doctors
Speaker 1: co produced this and he put it on and I
Speaker 1: was like, wait a minute, you trying to tell me
Speaker 1: the band of the stupid Just go ahead, now that's
Speaker 1: been Doctors. And he's like, yeah, that's been Doctors. It
Speaker 1: was almost like it was a party trick. I was like, yo,
Speaker 1: listen to this demo. Guess who produced this? And they
Speaker 1: just run out of shit, and you know, they would
Speaker 1: thinking like, oh, it's some d'angelo's working on this new
Speaker 1: group and that it and I was like, yo, let's
Speaker 1: spend Doctors produced this, and then it was like, well,
Speaker 1: who's that singer? So next to some village is fantastic demo?
Speaker 1: Blaud was in second place for like the demo. I
Speaker 1: would just make people listen to twenty four to seven
Speaker 1: and then like, guess who produced this? And then it
Speaker 1: went to like hey, make me a copy, make a copy,
Speaker 1: make me a copy. So can you tell the story
Speaker 1: of how that demo came to be and how that
Speaker 1: just started making the rounds.
Speaker 7: I met Aaron at the News School.
Speaker 1: Okay, he played Aaron Cornests, right, Yeah, yeah, he.
Speaker 7: Was going to the News School because he he had
Speaker 7: came back to like get he wanted to get his
Speaker 7: jazz shops better, and he wanted to get this. He
Speaker 7: always wanted to go back to school to get you know, hire,
Speaker 7: learn or whatever. He got hired by the guy that
Speaker 7: started our school. His name is slipping my mind. I
Speaker 7: don't know why, but he started the New Street. He
Speaker 7: passed away recently, but he would get students to play
Speaker 7: a gig. Probably not hear no more about the other
Speaker 7: side Start Walk Cafe or some shit like that. But
Speaker 7: our gig started at two o'clock in the morning and
Speaker 7: we would play from two to five. This was back
Speaker 7: when Club Jazzbuk stayed open like ever you know. Yeah,
Speaker 7: the only cats I would see at these ships was
Speaker 7: like ironically enough was like Rod harbro Ward harborow Never
Speaker 7: he would go to every game. I should always play, right,
Speaker 7: But he hired me while Aaron Coolness and I forget
Speaker 7: who was playing these but we we could never say
Speaker 7: up to get to the gig. So we would either
Speaker 7: go to a bunch of other clubs until it was
Speaker 7: time for us to play, or we would.
Speaker 1: And this is coming from Philadelphia or like your student
Speaker 1: at the New School.
Speaker 7: So I lived in Brooklyn and everybody else stayed at
Speaker 7: the dorm. So I didn't like to go all the
Speaker 7: way to Brooklyn, so I would just I wounded up
Speaker 7: staying at the dorm at Rob's dorm because I think
Speaker 7: the dude that he shared the room with was on
Speaker 7: some type of MTV show MT Road Rules or some
Speaker 7: shit like that. He had got accepted to do that,
Speaker 7: so he was never a school he was a superstar.
Speaker 7: We would just hang at rob spot, and we found
Speaker 7: out that Aaron had a full blown studio at his
Speaker 7: house in the basement, and we started hanging out there
Speaker 7: till it was time to go do that gig. And
Speaker 7: when I found out that he had that shit in there,
Speaker 7: I used to go to the practice rooms at school
Speaker 7: and just write blute ideas to try and record at
Speaker 7: his studio. And that's where that demo came from.
Speaker 1: As far as I know, I believe that When Will
Speaker 1: You Call and Queen of Sanity are those actual demos.
Speaker 1: I know that James and I replayed the drums and
Speaker 1: the keyboards for Queen of Sanity, but that vocal take
Speaker 1: is from that actual demo.
Speaker 7: Correct, yep.
Speaker 1: So here's the thing, Like, instantly when I hear that
Speaker 1: first verse, like you kind of displayed a nuanced range
Speaker 1: of singing that, especially during that time period, a lot
Speaker 1: of R and B singing was sort of post Stevie Wonder,
Speaker 1: like Stevie Wonder begats Charlie Wilson who begats Aaron Hall
Speaker 1: who begats R Kelly who begats Casey? And Jojo like
Speaker 1: this level of h oh type of pos Stevie I
Speaker 1: call it him like R and B sto of which
Speaker 1: you really didn't approach that And not since Prince have
Speaker 1: I heard a primitive screamer on a record like do
Speaker 1: it in a way that wasn't like HR from Bad
Speaker 1: Brains or like punk rock related.
Speaker 5: So is anyone M two may or whoever is an authority?
Speaker 1: Is anyone like telling you, like, hey, tone it down
Speaker 1: a little bit, Like why don't you just sing nuanced
Speaker 1: and discipline and leave all that crazy stuff because that's
Speaker 1: not going to get you a hit? Like what are
Speaker 1: people telling you during this phase before you figure out
Speaker 1: who you really are, before your first album comes out?
Speaker 7: I was always told the dumb it down, even as
Speaker 7: a little kid, so I just was just like I
Speaker 7: never really knew how to dumb ship down. But I
Speaker 7: think around this phase it was just they were trying
Speaker 7: a lot of things. It was mostly getting me to
Speaker 7: learn songwriting with other people, and then it was me
Speaker 7: trying to always fit what I was learning at school
Speaker 7: into a modern thing, you know, because I always wanted
Speaker 7: to get signed a blue note or something for single jazz,
Speaker 7: because it became a discussion it's mad old people in
Speaker 7: the audience like we ain't gonna never get chicks or jets.
Speaker 7: It sucks, you know. And literally we used to go
Speaker 7: to y'all's jam session that y'all used to deal with
Speaker 7: at the Wetlands come Back, and we would see cats
Speaker 7: like Kareen Riggins there, like see, now that's the jazz
Speaker 7: we see. We always considered what y'all was doing as jazz,
Speaker 7: so we'd be like, that's the ship, Like we need
Speaker 7: to do some ship more in that kind of fucking thing,
Speaker 7: but add our core changes and ship because we're just
Speaker 7: gonna be dating old chicks for the rest of our lives.
Speaker 7: Like we gotta be modern, like we gotta go to
Speaker 7: herbiejing Cock route like you know what I mean? So right, Okay,
Speaker 7: that kind of like shifted everything to where I was like,
Speaker 7: we got Aaron studio less experiment.
Speaker 1: What's the path that leads to your actual record deal,
Speaker 1: Like how many labels did you see? How many showcases
Speaker 1: did you have to do? How many close with no cigars?
Speaker 7: I want need to get signed to Peter R. Massenbird
Speaker 7: because I always felt like I didn't think he was
Speaker 7: doing me on soul, but I was like, that feels
Speaker 7: like we want to do And I always felt like
Speaker 7: that would be a way to kind of infuse other
Speaker 7: our jazz.
Speaker 6: Ship, you know, modernized it a little bit, but still
Speaker 6: keep it.
Speaker 7: Hard, right right right, like we could fit it in.
Speaker 7: And then we would start to notice like samples and
Speaker 7: be like, yo, that's the actual they sampled the actual
Speaker 7: album that we love, Like that's the actually jazz I
Speaker 7: know that song, you know. So I always saw what
Speaker 7: y'all was doing there like the gateway into like still
Speaker 7: being a jazz musician in the vein of that, but
Speaker 7: being more modern and kind of really like growing. And
Speaker 7: then once I met y'all, I was like, I can
Speaker 7: and ease things more and kind of take it to
Speaker 7: a different level to where I don't even think of
Speaker 7: myself as a jazz musician anymore. It's just music, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean? But it was a whole catalyst
Speaker 7: from going in them jam sessions at will of meanings.
Speaker 1: All right, When I DJ, I don't look at the
Speaker 1: audience and I think that, you know, it's like a
Speaker 1: there's somewhat of a fear because I know that I'm
Speaker 1: doing something different and my whole thing is like, you know,
Speaker 1: force you to my will, to my side of the street.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna play with on radio, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: trick you into dancing to music that you might not know,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna make it sound good and artistic. Are
Speaker 1: you channeled into the energy of the audience, because for me,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to see a Blouse show when I'm
Speaker 1: drumming with you, but it's a whole nother. I feel
Speaker 1: like the very first time I saw a Blouse show
Speaker 1: in terms of to see how he does in the world,
Speaker 1: it was a teachable lesson.
Speaker 5: So do you remember the run that you did?
Speaker 1: You and music Soul Child did a series of shows together,
Speaker 1: like in two thousand, slightly.
Speaker 5: Before your album came out.
Speaker 1: He was pretty much established by then, and for me,
Speaker 1: I was there and I was really excited to see
Speaker 1: how would a quasi mainstream audience take to you. I
Speaker 1: can say this in shinsight twenty five years later, like,
Speaker 1: much to my chagrine, they were frozen.
Speaker 5: And it was so jarring to.
Speaker 9: Them that, like, you know, I was trying to figure out, like, well, wait,
Speaker 9: how come they didn't get the elation magic I felt
Speaker 9: when I first heard his voice.
Speaker 1: And then I started like, ah, man, people are just dumb.
Speaker 1: They don't know what real art is and d they
Speaker 1: just want the hits. Like I was in a mind
Speaker 1: state of really not understanding subculture mainstream and you can't
Speaker 1: do what I did for at least the first ten
Speaker 1: years and really have a knowledge of the science of
Speaker 1: it all.
Speaker 6: I remember those shows on the flip side was too
Speaker 6: from an artist's respective, it seemed like I don't know
Speaker 6: how to say this politically correctly, so I'm just saying
Speaker 6: what it felt like. It felt like music was a
Speaker 6: little intimidated.
Speaker 1: I knew he respected it, but it was for me.
Speaker 1: I was more mad that the audience didn't instantaneously have
Speaker 1: the same reaction I did, and it made me doubt myself.
Speaker 6: Like it was a shock, but still not like it
Speaker 6: was bad. It was just like whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1: With you though, And I seen like four of those
Speaker 1: shows in a row, like during that month. Either we
Speaker 1: were like on the same circuit or you just did
Speaker 1: a lot of shows in LA and each show you
Speaker 1: would get even more intense or like you didn't shie
Speaker 1: away from it, whereas like I would have instantly chicken
Speaker 1: shit it and brought it down like Okay, they don't
Speaker 1: feel this, let me let me sneak this on you.
Speaker 1: And your reaction was the exact opposite, like, oh really,
Speaker 1: now I'm really show y'all motherfuckers was up? And so
Speaker 1: how aware are you or can I ask sort of
Speaker 1: in hindsight, did you have a conscious fear of rejection
Speaker 1: and your main reaction is, well, let me triple down
Speaker 1: on this ship and show y'all mother because you know
Speaker 1: I was. I was Michael Jackson popcorn Jiff all day,
Speaker 1: Like the crazy you are, the more I love it, Like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, he's he's this, this.
Speaker 5: Is the greatest shit ever. What was in your head
Speaker 5: at that time period.
Speaker 7: I came from just street just being an artist, and
Speaker 7: I thought, if I don't get in the applau, as
Speaker 7: long as I get a shot, it's it don't matter,
Speaker 7: you know, Sony.
Speaker 1: Any reaction is better than no reaction.
Speaker 7: I looked at it like, oh man, they fucked up.
Speaker 6: That's what it was. That's exactly what it was.
Speaker 7: I was always like looked at as, oh man, this
Speaker 7: ship is out. Even when I was in the choir,
Speaker 7: like I would lose solos because casts would be like,
Speaker 7: you know, singing the straight way. I've never sang ship
Speaker 7: the straight way, so I'm used to just doing ship
Speaker 7: even at church up to them where people get like
Speaker 7: what the fuck and even singing jazz, I was scatting
Speaker 7: more so than even singing. So I always saw that this.
Speaker 6: You've always been a proud weird though, like, and I
Speaker 6: love that because I.
Speaker 7: Always I always looked out the audience and saw this
Speaker 7: like I was like, ah, they got they get it.
Speaker 10: I guess I'm misconstrued you effect when I.
Speaker 7: Started thinking that was the that was the smile that
Speaker 7: was on the other side.
Speaker 6: Is that insulting to say you've always been a proud
Speaker 6: weirdo to me? Like, because I'm a weirdo too in
Speaker 6: a way, So it's crazy. Yeah, yeah, fuck it, like
Speaker 6: you want it anyway. They just don't know what they want.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm just like I always liked the black sheeps
Speaker 7: or the cast that was being out Like I remember
Speaker 7: reading Miles Davis books and him being like, man, I
Speaker 7: just got to a point I was like, fuck it,
Speaker 7: not just we're doing the whole show with my ass
Speaker 7: to the crowd. Fuck this ship, like you know what
Speaker 7: I mean? So I guess I could get into us.
Speaker 7: Sometimes I can't get into a place like fuck this
Speaker 7: ship and going inside and perform.
Speaker 1: You know, is there a memory of a show in
Speaker 1: which you might have felt you took it too far
Speaker 1: that you recall.
Speaker 6: And what Jack?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, singing with fucking Jack.
Speaker 11: Oh my god, that's a jack Jack will go. She's
Speaker 11: a shop job too. So it was like almost trying
Speaker 11: to see in my head. I was like, let me
Speaker 11: see how far she'll go. I guess in her.
Speaker 7: Mind she's like, let me see how it was like,
Speaker 7: oh ship, all right?
Speaker 1: So let me ask this question then, So, when you
Speaker 1: know you are headed to a jam session, are you
Speaker 1: thinking this is about to be like gladiator wartime? Like
Speaker 1: it's going to be an arm wrestling match? And who
Speaker 1: can I outdo? Who can I?
Speaker 5: Son?
Speaker 1: Can I? There was moments where like again Michael Jackson, Popcorn, Jeff,
Speaker 1: where it's just like what's going to happen tonight? Like no,
Speaker 1: I mean and shout out to all of them, especially
Speaker 1: I remember coming home from tour, honest to God, and
Speaker 1: you know, frightened of Fategene in Asia, like somehow they
Speaker 1: they whooped that Toy Story band into shape in the
Speaker 1: summer of two thousand and one, like you know, and
Speaker 1: then it was like, oh shit, we gotta come. I
Speaker 1: remember having a conversation with the Roots like the last
Speaker 1: two minutes of their show, we gotta get to that
Speaker 1: level and shit. So I was feeling the pressure. But
Speaker 1: would you often go especially during the period between ninety
Speaker 1: seven and two thousand and five, when black little like
Speaker 1: these jam sessions are happening, are you thinking in terms
Speaker 1: of like hmm, battle or just like it's how you
Speaker 1: feel at that moment.
Speaker 7: I just know wanted to get up there and make
Speaker 7: it state. You know what I'm saying. I knew that,
Speaker 7: Oh man, I hope I get up here tonight, like
Speaker 7: I had that feeling like this.
Speaker 1: Okay, so John Legend back, I means John Stevens, not
Speaker 1: knowing he was in the audience at for a majority
Speaker 1: of these jam sessions. We're basically just say that you know,
Speaker 1: whenever Black would come on, then it'd be like, uh huh,
Speaker 1: I'll do it next week.
Speaker 5: I'll come back next week.
Speaker 7: I'll come back next week.
Speaker 1: I'll come back. One of my one of my favorite
Speaker 1: moments of yours is in Dallas where we're doing Erica's
Speaker 1: birthday and yo, look, this is a very this is
Speaker 1: a very old reference. But if our listeners could pause
Speaker 1: the podcast and go to YouTube and watch Ralph Carter
Speaker 1: aka Michael Evans of Good Times Fame sing when You're
Speaker 1: Young and in Love at a rent party for Helen
Speaker 1: and Helen on Town, and every line James Evans is
Speaker 1: the audience like, that's my boy, that's you know, like
Speaker 1: that person. Because the way that Prince would often enter
Speaker 1: our lives, you know, by this point in his thirtieth year,
Speaker 1: Prince knows the myth of Prince is a thing, and
Speaker 1: you know, he would just appeer out of nowhere, and
Speaker 1: I knew he was there simply because I know the
Speaker 1: size of his bodyguard. So even though you're watching silhouettes,
Speaker 1: there's a point where you know, Prince enters the nightclub
Speaker 1: and in my head.
Speaker 5: I'm looking at Shames.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, we about to show him what's up? And
Speaker 1: I'm looking based on where Prince is sitting, I can
Speaker 1: see the bodyguards way in.
Speaker 5: The back and Omar just finishing it.
Speaker 1: And I think Omar did a Little Boys Saturdays and
Speaker 1: he did a cover of Golden Brown, and then Bloud
Speaker 1: comes up. I knew I wanted to start with Soul
Speaker 1: Sister first and then warm him up, and then I
Speaker 1: knew when Sometimes comes, it's gonna be on. And sure
Speaker 1: enough we did a very nuanced Soul Sister. You know,
Speaker 1: this isn't a bag watching. And then when we get
Speaker 1: to Sometimes Dog, it's like Prince levitated. It was in
Speaker 1: the front row. Now I know that game because he
Speaker 1: did it once to another singer where this other singer
Speaker 1: was giving a concert in his hometown and there was
Speaker 1: very strict instructions, like you know, like no distractions, no whatever. Prince,
Speaker 1: knowing who the fuck he is, decides I'm gonna stand
Speaker 1: right in the wings and watch you.
Speaker 5: And sure enough, you know, the singer like.
Speaker 1: Looks to the laugh and gets paralyzed and literally freaks out,
Speaker 1: even though you know, he goes through the song and
Speaker 1: walks off stage screams at the staff like get rid
Speaker 1: of him, Get rid of him, you know that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, and I could tell, uh, this is a
Speaker 1: flex thing.
Speaker 5: But again, Bloud never.
Speaker 1: Cowers to any He's one of the most fearless performers.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 1: He just he was in the front row without the
Speaker 1: bodyguards and belowd him back down. He just went even crazier.
Speaker 1: Do you remember that moment at all?
Speaker 7: I do. I don't remember the performance, but I remember
Speaker 7: coming off the stage and you coming over and sing
Speaker 7: we got him and you didn't need to let him
Speaker 7: come up on stage. Man, And I was like, what
Speaker 7: are you talking about? And he was like, France was
Speaker 7: at the front and you didn't even let him come
Speaker 7: up on stage. I think he wanted to come up
Speaker 7: and jam with us, and you just ignored them. Bro.
Speaker 7: That was awesome, y'all. I felt like shit. I was
Speaker 7: like I was. That was the one time I was
Speaker 7: too doled out.
Speaker 6: I know you made up for I know, y'all, y'all
Speaker 6: sell each other again.
Speaker 7: It was weird.
Speaker 1: I want you to tell this version of the story,
Speaker 1: all right, And I apologize listeners.
Speaker 7: I know.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a group disgusting more than it is.
Speaker 6: Like it was not because Loud did so much stuff
Speaker 6: after Prince died and stuff and did a lot of
Speaker 6: performances and older him. So no, this makes this is good? Please,
Speaker 6: I want to know.
Speaker 1: So all right. One of my favorite moments, I believe
Speaker 1: allows in town when the finishing touches on. Jimmy was
Speaker 1: a rock star and star sixty nine at Electric Lady
Speaker 1: for it, Common some Electric Circus album and this back
Speaker 1: when it was just Mammoth twenty four hours, like you know,
Speaker 1: and Steve can also attest to this. Like usually vocals,
Speaker 1: Common would do vocals like in the day eleven am
Speaker 1: till yeah to three or something, and then like Al
Speaker 1: Mousey and James comes in, we'll work on some music
Speaker 1: and then Colin thumbs up thumbs down it, and we'll
Speaker 1: create the music at night, and then he'll work on
Speaker 1: the song on the day right to it and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. So I knew that Blaal was doing his vocals,
Speaker 1: and we decided to take a dinner break. And it's
Speaker 1: two thousand and two, so kind of the this is
Speaker 1: the beginning of the nariety of everything catching on, like
Speaker 1: we're no longer these unknown, obscure underground artists, like everyone's
Speaker 1: going golden platinum, and with that you get invited to
Speaker 1: industry events. So the first like major thing that we
Speaker 1: go to is somewhere like I think the Apollo Theater
Speaker 1: had a nightclub attached to it, and Kelly Clarkson and
Speaker 1: what's the old boy's name with a bro justin.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: So it was like the first year of American Idol
Speaker 1: and those two were kind of doing like a tour.
Speaker 5: I don't know what project they had.
Speaker 1: Was justin Loves they had a movie ye, yeah, like
Speaker 1: they were there.
Speaker 5: To promote something.
Speaker 1: And so they invited us to like come up to
Speaker 1: the Apollo and and we went there for a bit
Speaker 1: and then it was me Common and blau Steve.
Speaker 5: What did you roll with us?
Speaker 7: Then?
Speaker 5: I think you were part of this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hang out at the Apollo all the time.
Speaker 1: It was Apollo was like it was like a club
Speaker 1: next to it, like Club Apollo.
Speaker 5: But whatever the case was.
Speaker 1: This was also the period in which Prince was indeed
Speaker 1: deep and it's Jehovah's witness phase and and that's the
Speaker 1: Prince that I'd like to avoid because he would do
Speaker 1: nothing but preach at you for hours. And so someone
Speaker 1: comes up and says, oh, Prince is on his way
Speaker 1: there and that was literally like our check please moment.
Speaker 1: I never thought I'd run away from my idol the
Speaker 1: way we did. Like we are like, hey, let's get
Speaker 1: out here because he's just going to keep us here
Speaker 1: all night and talk about God. So let's go.
Speaker 5: So we snuck out.
Speaker 1: We snuck out, the bat got back to Electric Lady
Speaker 1: Studios to start mixing Jimmy was a rock Star and
Speaker 1: then the phone rings.
Speaker 5: Brand new receptionist.
Speaker 1: Says, Amir, there's someone named Prince asking for Prince and
Speaker 1: I was like, what someone from named Prince asking for Prince?
Speaker 1: And I pick up the phone and he says hello,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, hello, this is Prince. I said, huh,
Speaker 1: I'm speaking to Prince. I said, a mere meets Prince.
Speaker 1: So he would always do that game with me, and
Speaker 1: he's like, how long will you guys be down there?
Speaker 1: And I'm like trying to think of a lie, but
Speaker 1: you know, he makes me. We're yeah. But we were
Speaker 1: mixing the song, so I was like, yeah, we're here
Speaker 1: all night, meet me sure.
Speaker 5: So Prince shows.
Speaker 2: Up, did he knock?
Speaker 5: Yeah, a puffa smoke.
Speaker 1: He shows up at two thirty of the morning, and
Speaker 1: we're mixing Jimmy was a rock Star was a very
Speaker 1: very intricate song, and we play it for him and
Speaker 1: his mind is blown, Like he gives us all the
Speaker 1: praise and like, wow, he really likes it. And by
Speaker 1: the way, Prince is on Star sixty nine. He's playing
Speaker 1: keyboards all over it. So him in Common like had
Speaker 1: a really good relationship. Anyway, it's a point where he's like,
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you guys, and it's like
Speaker 1: it's a fourth person and it's not Erica and it's
Speaker 1: not Steve Rush.
Speaker 5: Maybe it was glassper It was a fourth person with us.
Speaker 1: But the only way I could describe it is if
Speaker 1: you google the album cover to the who's the kids?
Speaker 1: All right? You know they're all sleeping like on each
Speaker 1: other's shoulders. It became a religious battle, and all I
Speaker 1: remember was like Blow was basically going toe to toe
Speaker 1: with Prince.
Speaker 12: Oh Christianity, dude, me Common and whoever the third person
Speaker 12: is just sitting on the floor sleep on each other's shoulders.
Speaker 6: Good for you, Good for you?
Speaker 7: Remember that?
Speaker 1: And I just wake up occasionally and bloud prints are
Speaker 1: just do you remember battling him at all? Like just
Speaker 1: with theology, Like it was a two hour comed was just.
Speaker 7: He was saying, uh, he had different takes on versus
Speaker 7: from the Bible, and I think I was just trying
Speaker 7: to relate to him and I was like, oh you know,
Speaker 7: oh that's in the Qur'an too, And I was trying
Speaker 7: to have a conversation with him, but I don't think
Speaker 7: it was working out.
Speaker 10: I just remember you going behind. You kept going behind
Speaker 10: and been going stop and I was like, I'm trying
Speaker 10: to stop. If he had a question, oh yeah, well
Speaker 10: what about this? And I would just be like, ah.
Speaker 6: That was a long time before he passed. So like
Speaker 6: y'all kept seeing each other throughout the years. I mean
Speaker 6: the meror I know y'all did y'all have a whole relationship,
Speaker 6: But what about you and Frience? Like how did that
Speaker 6: that one conversation kind of evolved or did it?
Speaker 7: No? It was just like a he evolved into. I
Speaker 7: think the way I broke out of it was I
Speaker 7: started asking him about his shoes because he had on
Speaker 7: dope ass white shoes that the zipper was diamonds Like,
Speaker 7: the zipper was full on dim It looked like a
Speaker 7: diamond ring, but it was the zipper was made out
Speaker 7: of diamonds. So I just started talking to him about that.
Speaker 2: Sounds like a very religious man him.
Speaker 7: His boots. And then then we kind of like skip
Speaker 7: skipped everything. Yeah, I think what stopped? Did D'Angelo come
Speaker 7: in or something? No, something happened.
Speaker 1: Well, well no, I said, basically like Russell, because we
Speaker 1: were mixing Jimmy on forty eight tracks and it was
Speaker 1: very old school. Of course, now twenty five years later,
Speaker 1: you can do everything on your computer. Things are remembered.
Speaker 1: But if you're working on like an old school SSL board,
Speaker 1: a guy like Steve has to it'll take him like
Speaker 1: three hours to notate everything that we did on the mix.
Speaker 1: Like you just can't go to the studio and be
Speaker 1: like they put my song up, like Steve, we'll have
Speaker 1: to take you know, an hour to two hours of
Speaker 1: readjusting all mix. It's called it's called recalling a mix.
Speaker 2: Correct, correct, you're absolutely correct.
Speaker 6: Fantasy. And my whole like thought of Prince being like, oh,
Speaker 6: but you you the next I can see and said.
Speaker 7: Well he said, yo, you're the black Bet. You remind
Speaker 7: me of Bet. And I was like that, don't meet
Speaker 7: your hair and I was like, don't be I was like,
Speaker 7: Beck like you gotta. He's like, you got a little bit.
Speaker 7: You could go wop if you want to. You could
Speaker 7: bring that sensibility into your stay away from guess. But
Speaker 7: I was like totally like that. He was like, you
Speaker 7: know your you mean? But I was like, I don't.
Speaker 1: Look man begs my boy. I respect that he calmed down.
Speaker 1: He calmed down, like as with most people, and maybe
Speaker 1: this will happened to me too, like after you do
Speaker 1: like seven years of your spirituality phase or your religious phase,
Speaker 1: urs back into your regular self.
Speaker 5: Sown two thousand and seventy calmed down a lot.
Speaker 1: But I do remember saying, like, yo, we gotta wrap
Speaker 1: this mix up. When he left, it was like five
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning, and you're not really supposed to
Speaker 1: mix when you're tired. So kind of the the radical
Speaker 1: drawing way that song sounds to me is sort of
Speaker 1: indicative of the night we had to endure of that
Speaker 1: two and a half hour preaching that that that's ceremony
Speaker 1: or whatever. So what were your expectations with firstborn second one?
Speaker 1: Why did you name it firstborn second and did you
Speaker 1: have expectations for it?
Speaker 7: I named it firstborn second that was my second name.
Speaker 7: I was just trying to do like a weird name.
Speaker 7: So I think it was called uh hot class of
Speaker 7: or a cold glass of hell fire and change Haiti.
Speaker 7: So I was like, I want something this kind of
Speaker 7: double line condre or whatever. I don't even think that's
Speaker 7: what it was. I was just like, I want to
Speaker 7: be out and he's like, that don't even make sense.
Speaker 7: So I was I'm my mom's second child, so I
Speaker 7: was like, this is my first album, second job, got it.
Speaker 7: He was like, that's weird. But alright, you know, was.
Speaker 5: The title track biographical the closing.
Speaker 7: Song, No, yeah, it was just some wild shit. It
Speaker 7: wasn't order biography. It was writing something wild, something strange.
Speaker 7: I guess he always had like a rock wildness to
Speaker 7: our ship.
Speaker 1: Right, this is where become professional. I'm totally skipping the
Speaker 1: sometimes story because I don't think I could tell that
Speaker 1: story better than I told it at the Glasshouse Live
Speaker 1: the Glasshouse album.
Speaker 7: But you did a good job.
Speaker 6: You left something out though, because I did hear you
Speaker 6: tell the story, because I don't want you to skip
Speaker 6: this sometimes just in the sense of like since we
Speaker 6: talked about it. No, no, you didn't skip nothing in
Speaker 6: the sense of how it came together. However, y'all did
Speaker 6: skip on the sense of like how this is the
Speaker 6: most beloved Blouse song and like it never became a
Speaker 6: single off that album, and why that was a thing.
Speaker 7: It was almost a single. It was almost as it
Speaker 7: was like the last shot. They wanted to make it
Speaker 7: a single for starting on a new album. I think
Speaker 7: it was yes, met she Stout wanted to do a
Speaker 7: video and he was like, this is the we needed
Speaker 7: to do on this, But I think he picked.
Speaker 6: Fast Lading but loud. I remember being a radio and
Speaker 6: I was like, this is really because of doctor Dress.
Speaker 1: Stout went on record to say on this podcast that
Speaker 1: he really regrets kind of how the ball got dropped
Speaker 1: with you, because you know, he felt that you were
Speaker 1: that supernova figure that really you know, and I hate
Speaker 1: that whole could have been a contenter talk because you know,
Speaker 1: for a lot of artists that do get to the mountaintop,
Speaker 1: we see what happens to them. From my perspective, when
Speaker 1: when I did this record, I wanted to be a
Speaker 1: part of the filler cuts because I feel that the
Speaker 1: mark of a great artist like Stevie Wonder, like Prince.
Speaker 1: I don't like the singles like Prince Singles, Delirious, Let's
Speaker 1: go Crazy.
Speaker 5: Now I'm gonna listen to Dorothy Parker, Like.
Speaker 6: For me, great tradition, Why does singles? I gotta be
Speaker 6: that way Like I've been I've been screaming this to
Speaker 6: you for years about these singles, like.
Speaker 1: I just don't pick the It was hardcore, but I
Speaker 1: feel like the margaret artist is who has the best
Speaker 1: feller like and to me, a lot of our favorite
Speaker 1: songs on this record are the outcuts.
Speaker 6: The radio songs were fast Lane, Soul Sister, and Love
Speaker 6: Love It. But we was on Queen of Sanity sometimes
Speaker 6: when would you talk.
Speaker 1: Like because you're a different mind state, Like I was working.
Speaker 6: Urban radio at the time, and I was like, y'all
Speaker 6: are not listening to the women. All the men are
Speaker 6: making songs. I'm making these decisions about the doctor.
Speaker 5: Dre had something to do with it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm saying that was Interscope Records. Like I that's
Speaker 7: why I wanted to be signed to UH. Initially I
Speaker 7: wanted to be signed to Kadar because I wanted the
Speaker 7: core of the album was songs like this and then
Speaker 7: the singles we did after everything was done, you know,
Speaker 7: I was happy to work with Drado, you know, so
Speaker 7: I didn't really have no complaints us doctor.
Speaker 1: What was all right?
Speaker 5: So can you describe that process? Like how do you
Speaker 5: meet doctor Dre, how do you work with him?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 1: What was it?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 7: It was polarizing, Like, uh, one minute we just in
Speaker 7: Jimmy's offices and the next day we're riding up to
Speaker 7: like this place don't even look like a studio though,
Speaker 7: and just like some geek but it was back and
Speaker 7: it's like all these dope bass cars. We go in there,
Speaker 7: and that was the first time I saw that maybe
Speaker 7: speakers in the studio and it was like six speakers,
Speaker 7: like six up, like it was like three at the top,
Speaker 7: three wolfers at the bottom. And then he had to
Speaker 7: I've never seen anybody turn the console all the way
Speaker 7: up to eleven, and he turned it all the way
Speaker 7: up playing I think fascinating was the first joint he did.
Speaker 7: And it was the loudest shit I've ever heard in
Speaker 7: my life. But it's nothing that broke, nothing in the
Speaker 7: speaker's crackle. It was amazing, but it was painful at
Speaker 7: the same time. That was when I noticed he was
Speaker 7: the only one in the studio that didn't have earbudd
Speaker 7: and here everybody that was working there had it like
Speaker 7: they knew what was up. But I didn't want to
Speaker 7: tell him to turn it down? Was that doctor Drake?
Speaker 7: So might he has to? Because that was the loudest
Speaker 7: shit I've heard about, Like it was stadium loud but
Speaker 7: in a small room.
Speaker 2: Soon we're going to have a hearing age by Drake.
Speaker 1: So I will get murdered if I do not ask
Speaker 1: this question. Can you tell us where in the hell
Speaker 1: is the Love for Sale album? This is probably of
Speaker 1: all Soul Quarium related projects, not related to is this
Speaker 1: the year that makes a record your fan base? I
Speaker 1: almost feel like you should never release Love for Sale
Speaker 1: or whatever, because it's like the legend of.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 1: More than what it will equal. But what is What
Speaker 1: is the story of Love for Sale? Just never coming.
Speaker 13: Out tied up in a bunch of shit with Inner
Speaker 13: School and Loyol and change Past and go moved past,
Speaker 13: And that was their label. So it got shifted over
Speaker 13: to Faulu, who's the brother.
Speaker 7: And for a long time I had I didn't even
Speaker 7: know where the files were, but I think Fad as
Speaker 7: the files now, so right now he might have got
Speaker 7: we might have gotten we might have gotten the files
Speaker 7: from after movecast. He got his hands on it or something.
Speaker 7: But I know file has the files.
Speaker 6: I got his fingers on a lot of things because
Speaker 6: I'm like, man, those two past all that.
Speaker 7: History, but the inner schoope, I think in school booms.
Speaker 7: But we had the files, we have the mix because
Speaker 7: everything was mixed.
Speaker 1: Do you have a desire to see you through or
Speaker 1: release it?
Speaker 7: Or I did at one time, but they're not. Just
Speaker 7: every time I put my mind into wanting to release it,
Speaker 7: it just kind of like doesn't work out. I was
Speaker 7: trying to get it. He had came up to try
Speaker 7: and release it again. I remember I was talking to
Speaker 7: Naim from Universal and there he said that there was
Speaker 7: me an interest, but I'm just on this thing where
Speaker 7: it happened, and it happened, you know, it was already
Speaker 7: a lot of people claiming it and having claims to
Speaker 7: it anyway, so right, not just fucking while It was
Speaker 7: so funny because while I was doing this ship, the
Speaker 7: people that want to hold on to it didn't like it.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've heard it. So I was going
Speaker 1: to say, what direction was it that made it so jarring?
Speaker 1: Like people know what they're getting when they get with you, correct,
Speaker 1: I would think, But.
Speaker 7: I mean around the time that I started doing it,
Speaker 7: I was kind of full on, like that was pile
Speaker 7: and spas I was in. I was heavy and drinking,
Speaker 7: you know, just I wasn't the easiest to kind of
Speaker 7: work with. So I think that kind of lent itself
Speaker 7: to what where it happened and WHYTT never went out.
Speaker 7: And then towards the end, I just went on strikers
Speaker 7: showing up to make wait, year is this yan.
Speaker 1: Jude two thousand and three, two thousand and three, I
Speaker 1: was gonna say, I just doing this last run of Detroit.
Speaker 1: I did in the summer, to my pleasant surprise, heard
Speaker 1: like five to six other j Dilla collapsed that I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that you did, like.
Speaker 7: Because Dyla was going to They had agreed to let
Speaker 7: me produce half and then let Dyla produce the other half.
Speaker 7: But then Dyla started getting sick. I was going out
Speaker 7: there to the Detroit. He was working happy. That's what Duke.
Speaker 7: That was my vision for the record to have Bylla
Speaker 7: like executive produced, but just let me get get my
Speaker 7: get my ship off and then him come in and
Speaker 7: kind of like dollar, because I was like, I've led
Speaker 7: Dylar dollar back because it'll still be a little bit out.
Speaker 7: And then he had brought James and so I was like,
Speaker 7: it's in good hands. But then he had started to
Speaker 7: get sick, so that kind of threw me into a loop,
Speaker 7: and I started drinking more, just upset and shit and
Speaker 7: then just arguing with everybody about it and just trying
Speaker 7: to keep the vision of what I wanted alive, but
Speaker 7: like not knowing how to finish his tubes, you know,
Speaker 7: and Dyla has started making some out shit for me
Speaker 7: to do, Like he did this one track. I just
Speaker 7: didn't even know how to put it together because it was.
Speaker 1: So out I know exactly what about.
Speaker 7: I was like, he's the only one that can fucking
Speaker 7: help me. What am I going to do?
Speaker 1: Like yeah, I didn't know whether he programmed it in
Speaker 1: his NBC and I didn't know where the one was.
Speaker 14: And he would be like, Yo, you can't understand this
Speaker 14: is quite here and you would have to be in
Speaker 14: the book, like and what And I'm like God, So
Speaker 14: like when he passed, I was like, that's it.
Speaker 7: I'm lost. Fun. I hear that date to this day
Speaker 7: because randomly I don't know who played me.
Speaker 1: I found that beat, and to this day, I don't
Speaker 1: know where the one is and I'm the king of
Speaker 1: be rating someone for not knowing where the one is.
Speaker 5: And yeah, so for you now.
Speaker 1: And I guess that this could also tie into I
Speaker 1: love surreal and also air tight and in another life
Speaker 1: like this period especially you kind of leaving them two
Speaker 1: maate organization and whatnot, and like how do you how
Speaker 1: do did you manage to kind of on your own
Speaker 1: figure out how to navigate with you kind of at
Speaker 1: the driver's seat, whereas you would have a team in
Speaker 1: management and people to make decisions for you. But as
Speaker 1: an indie artist, like what were your basic plans like
Speaker 1: in terms of getting your art out there?
Speaker 7: I didn't really have a plan. I had went just
Speaker 7: for a long time after that album got bootleg, and
Speaker 7: I didn't have a plan. It was just hanging out
Speaker 7: at my girl's house, making shit up on the roget
Speaker 7: not really knowing what was going on, like syn to
Speaker 7: if I was still signed, if I wasn't. If I
Speaker 7: wasn't signed, you know, if I was able to kind
Speaker 7: of get a record deal people that I would. I
Speaker 7: had fell out of contact with the Jumys, So I
Speaker 7: didn't know what the hell was going on. And my
Speaker 7: boy Steve McKee, he was fielding the studio in Philly,
Speaker 7: so I just I started going there because he knew
Speaker 7: like whenever we would do shows, I would just be
Speaker 7: in my hotel room making beats on my garage band. Right,
Speaker 7: So he was like, I got the studio, played me
Speaker 7: the shit that you've been doing on your garage gand
Speaker 7: and I played him with shit and that turned into
Speaker 7: every Tice revenge. But I was just making sh up
Speaker 7: on my computer, just waiting around to know when we
Speaker 7: could get back in and then you know, to deal
Speaker 7: all that shit fill the parcel. I was kind of
Speaker 7: like self conscious, but I can go into my head
Speaker 7: and just entertain myself at any point. So like that's
Speaker 7: what I just did, you know. And then from doing that,
Speaker 7: I started hanging out and I became friends with Cyro
Speaker 7: Creative partners working on their stuff, and Feet was introduced
Speaker 7: me to Andrew Maharo, who works with Adrian Young now,
Speaker 7: but he's had this small label that he was putting
Speaker 7: Shot Feat's records out and Shot Feet. I was like, man,
Speaker 7: your ship is funky, but it's Electronic and they're letting
Speaker 7: you do whatever you want. And we just hanging out
Speaker 7: with Flying Lotus and just that whole crew. I was like,
Speaker 7: y'all remind me of the New York Crew, but I'll
Speaker 7: here in LA and Plug Research cast was like, we's
Speaker 7: sign what you doing? And you know, I had this
Speaker 7: ship that I was you know, shit, I was just
Speaker 7: working out on at Steve's studio and they dug it,
Speaker 7: you know. So I was like, I don't know if
Speaker 7: I'm still signed. I don't know if I put ship
Speaker 7: out of whatever. Fuck it, Let's get sued so we
Speaker 7: could find out where I'm at.
Speaker 5: So what happened, like business plans.
Speaker 7: Well, nothing happened, you know, nothing happened. So it was like, oh,
Speaker 7: let's got going.
Speaker 1: So for a lot of people, especially gen Z and
Speaker 1: Jen Alpha, they got the new ones. Hud Alpha's Jen Alpha.
Speaker 1: You gotta start back after gen Z, you gotta start
Speaker 1: to the letter. Ay, yeah, the new ones. Your work
Speaker 1: with Kensick Lamar is kind of their introduction or your
Speaker 1: your reintroduction. How deep involved were you with the Pimple Butterfly, Like,
Speaker 1: were you guys as always? Was it like a second
Speaker 1: coming up? So aquariums where you're just always on standby,
Speaker 1: or were you there to just specifically work for one song.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I just came to the first I did like
Speaker 7: a few sessions, but I came in at the last
Speaker 7: half of the record, like they are already butt Ler
Speaker 7: Roy had already wrote the chorus for that song these Walls.
Speaker 7: I just came in to do that and I kind
Speaker 7: of recorded it so fast that Keintrick was like, oh, well,
Speaker 7: throw this up, put this up, put this up. Let
Speaker 7: me see what you can do. And it kind of
Speaker 7: just turned into that.
Speaker 1: And uh, was he familiar with you or was it
Speaker 1: just like ar boys things like how much did he
Speaker 1: know about you?
Speaker 7: No, he had wanted me to be on the first album,
Speaker 7: but I don't know what happened. It didn't work out
Speaker 7: in time, And so we had always said that we
Speaker 7: wanted because he's cool with the whole SOB creative partners, right,
Speaker 7: So I knew from then and then Fly Low and
Speaker 7: of course Thundercat so and Kerris Martin like those are
Speaker 7: all my cats. I've known him for years.
Speaker 6: So did they recognize you in a way of like, yo,
Speaker 6: so I can blow And that's because you're older A
Speaker 6: couple of years older than these folks, right, not wrong,
Speaker 6: talk about uh Ken drum about to Leroy.
Speaker 7: Ironically they thought I was their age. I don't know.
Speaker 1: When you're youngest, like even now, like you look the
Speaker 1: same way you did. Mine's the dreadlocks like this, this
Speaker 1: is like talking to you back in the day.
Speaker 6: So and being a weirdo will keep you fresh and
Speaker 6: open a new thing. So that keeps you young.
Speaker 7: Too, Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker 1: So now now that you're in a space where like
Speaker 1: your your level of artistry and I'm talking about like
Speaker 1: even the stuff that's happened in Australia right now, like
Speaker 1: with like uh you know, like Hiatus Coyote and you know,
Speaker 1: like do you now feel as though the world has
Speaker 1: caught up to you and you're able to like for
Speaker 1: you you where is your market at? Like who what
Speaker 1: marketplace embraces you the most?
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You're a pure artist, like and I think it's important.
Speaker 7: To every tour, every tour, different audience shows up.
Speaker 6: It's we like we just know that's a blessing.
Speaker 7: We still get the cats that show up that I
Speaker 7: want to hear the the first album and more and
Speaker 7: more like cats than what a year the newer stuff,
Speaker 7: and they don't necessarily look like the first album audience
Speaker 7: per se, you know, so it's kind of a mix.
Speaker 7: I never know. If I knew, I would be probably
Speaker 7: further along.
Speaker 1: Kimber told me that, well, the way that radio is
Speaker 1: in Australia, like the way that your radio show was Laya,
Speaker 1: that is actually mainstream radio in Australia, which really explains well, yeah,
Speaker 1: but the thing is is like over in Australia you
Speaker 1: can still hear Balal and then they'll put on Sabrina
Speaker 1: Carpenter and then they'll put on Charlie xx and then
Speaker 1: they'll put on Hiatu's kind of right, which is I mean, shit,
Speaker 1: we're doing our New Year's Christmas shit over there in
Speaker 1: very big venues because Australia hasn't fallen under the way
Speaker 1: of like where Clear Channel takes over radio and segregates
Speaker 1: it and makes you a niche artist. For you now though,
Speaker 1: especially with the Just Brightness project, do you feel like
Speaker 1: people are slowly now coming around after having you know,
Speaker 1: been on this journey for twenty five years.
Speaker 7: Yeah, people are has happened where you know. It's the
Speaker 7: thing that I'm doing is starting to settle. I feel
Speaker 7: that a little yeah, And I've been a little bit
Speaker 7: of getting a little bit more grounding on the on
Speaker 7: the business side too. So you know, for a long time,
Speaker 7: I didn't really give a shit about the business ship.
Speaker 7: I just wanted to make enough money to smoke leed
Speaker 7: and you know they rent. Then you had kids, so
Speaker 7: a lot of ship changed. I got kids, like you know.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, you got children.
Speaker 7: My approaches.
Speaker 1: You've done so much work with so many other people.
Speaker 1: I gotta ask you about like some of our favorites.
Speaker 1: One of the last complete albums of a hip hop
Speaker 1: group that I totally love was Hell Half the Fury,
Speaker 1: and I didn't look on the credits to know that
Speaker 1: you were singing on Nightmares a Sergey voice, Like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, that's how did you hook up with the
Speaker 1: clips for Hell Have No Fury?
Speaker 7: I was down there working on my record they Want
Speaker 7: with the Neptunes. Yeah, I went through this. I went
Speaker 7: through had me working with everybody. So it was why
Speaker 7: after he did the record for Justin Timberley, you know,
Speaker 7: he was doing it just banger after banger, and so
Speaker 7: every time I would get into a room with with
Speaker 7: with cats on that well.
Speaker 1: Talk about your working relationship with Beyonce.
Speaker 6: And the Fight in Temptations collaborations at all.
Speaker 7: Oh, that was dope. I think she she she asked
Speaker 7: for me to be a part of that, so that
Speaker 7: was dope. I didn't even I think they had in
Speaker 7: mind it to be something else, but she she like
Speaker 7: specifically has for me to join that joint, which is dope.
Speaker 7: You know. Yeah, I think I always thought she was
Speaker 7: ill and just such a student of the music, you know.
Speaker 6: I mean, y'all that in the studio together. We all
Speaker 6: recorded it together.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, yeah, she was there with with Jimmy jam
Speaker 7: and Cherry Lewis. They wrote the song, so we we
Speaker 7: all was in the studio working on it. That was
Speaker 7: a learning experience too, because they are very like particular
Speaker 7: about what they want, very particular. And I'm like, I
Speaker 7: half the time don't know what I'm doing. I like
Speaker 7: to make what I call beautiful mistakes, and they're like, no,
Speaker 7: you gotta do it, like yeah, you gotta do it
Speaker 7: like this or you know. And every time they would
Speaker 7: tell me to do something, I would do it different,
Speaker 7: like I wouldn't even know what I'm doing, you know.
Speaker 7: They're like, dude, that again. I'm like, I don't know
Speaker 7: you did you record it? I hear it?
Speaker 1: What was one of the hardest sessions you have to do?
Speaker 7: That was probably one of the hardest sessions because Beyonce
Speaker 7: is like a professional in the studio. She just she's
Speaker 7: got her Her studio technique is ill, you know what
Speaker 7: I mean. She can knock shout out nose all right,
Speaker 7: put this on through this double it, you know. And
Speaker 7: I was just in there, like I said, making beautiful mistakes.
Speaker 7: So everybody was just.
Speaker 1: Like, didn't Jermaine to pre produce you on Jay's Falling?
Speaker 15: Yep?
Speaker 7: Yeah, how did that come to be?
Speaker 1: That was an American gangster?
Speaker 14: Yeah?
Speaker 7: That was a random phone call and it was like, hello,
Speaker 7: is this allowed Jay Z would like for you to
Speaker 7: come to the studio and this is the address, and
Speaker 7: then randomly I showed her. I got there. It's like
Speaker 7: some random building. You go up and kay Z and
Speaker 7: Beyonce was in the studio waiting for me, like hello.
Speaker 7: I was like, what it's like being summoned by the
Speaker 7: president or something.
Speaker 6: Put the bug in his eir.
Speaker 7: Like I don't know, maybe, but when I got there,
Speaker 7: he knew everything. He wanted me to do. He was
Speaker 7: kind of he knew what he was looking for me
Speaker 7: to do. I was like, man, I didn't even know
Speaker 7: you knew about my ship like that, But wait a.
Speaker 1: Minute, didn't Did I not use you once for any
Speaker 1: of those Jay Giggs? Yeah, I was about to say,
Speaker 1: I think he came aboard for Carnegie Hall, but I
Speaker 1: think this was before that. Okay, okay, it was Carnekie.
Speaker 7: The Carnegie Hall thing happened after that.
Speaker 1: But I definitely remember he asked for you. You know,
Speaker 1: I know for the fact that those two were big
Speaker 1: expearens of yours. Did you have any clue whatsoever? But
Speaker 1: at the time, when you're recording Master Teacher with its
Speaker 1: infamous hook, I stay woke. Did you have any idea
Speaker 1: about how you singing that hook would wind up almost
Speaker 1: being like kind of the zeitgeist of where we are
Speaker 1: right now politically?
Speaker 7: Nah, that was.
Speaker 1: Like talking about Master Teacher because it's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite songs on New America, but it also it's just
Speaker 1: such a beautiful mess of a song, like I don't
Speaker 1: know where the hook starts. I don't know. Georgia Georgia
Speaker 1: had Matt, Yeah, what does she like to work with
Speaker 1: because I was such a fan of herse but I've
Speaker 1: never really got to chop it up in a way
Speaker 1: that I wanted to.
Speaker 5: I've never got to watch her make beats or anything.
Speaker 7: She is a genius. Georgia is a genius, incredible, incredible musician.
Speaker 15: And nasty beat maker. Like wow, yes she's dirty, like
Speaker 15: so working with hers dope.
Speaker 7: You know, she went to the New School.
Speaker 5: What year did you first go there?
Speaker 7: Ninety I went there from ninety seven to like ninety
Speaker 7: like the end of ninety eight.
Speaker 1: So the weird thing is that had I did what
Speaker 1: my dad wanted me to do, I would have been
Speaker 1: a senior because you know, I took years off to
Speaker 1: I called myself paying for the Roots Demo. My dad
Speaker 1: thought I was saving up for college. Really I was
Speaker 1: saving up for the Roots Demo. So you know, by
Speaker 1: ninety four, I was like, all right, I gotta get
Speaker 1: into a college. Like I let four years go by.
Speaker 1: So I'm either it was cheaper to go to the
Speaker 1: New School than it was the Juilliard. So if there
Speaker 1: wasn't a record deal in my future, I would have
Speaker 1: probably started going to the New School from ninety three
Speaker 1: to ninety seven. So somehow our our paths would a
Speaker 1: quasi crossed for sure had I done that? But who
Speaker 1: else was there besides you and glaspar Was Chris there
Speaker 1: as well?
Speaker 7: Or no, Chris wasn't there? Cedric Mitchell was there, Kean
Speaker 7: Harrold Marcus and E. J. Strickland brothers saxophone cat they
Speaker 7: was there?
Speaker 5: Is this under Ellie Howe's tutelage.
Speaker 7: Yep, okay, y know, shout out Ksey Benjamin, it's there, rust.
Speaker 5: Pe Case Benjamin.
Speaker 6: I wonder y'all are So?
Speaker 1: Were they all as advanced as now?
Speaker 5: Or is it just like mm hmm? Was it intimidating?
Speaker 7: I wasn't intimidating. I was. It was just right back
Speaker 7: to high school though, Like I always felt like as
Speaker 7: the singer, just trying to prove myself to be around
Speaker 7: the bad cats, you know what I mean? Like, oh
Speaker 7: you know, hey, what about that suspended forth? Huhuh?
Speaker 5: You got their respect?
Speaker 7: Oh yeah? Well yeah, because Rob was the first one
Speaker 7: to be like this shit is dope. He's dope, y'all,
Speaker 7: you know. But he his mother was a vocalist, so
Speaker 7: he kind of like warmed them up to me. But
Speaker 7: I was kind of the weird though, because I really
Speaker 7: didn't fit in with the singers either, because I was
Speaker 7: I'm still had PTSD from high school. So I came
Speaker 7: to jazz school just scatting, nothing but scatting.
Speaker 1: Like, So, how confident were you in your scatting skills?
Speaker 5: Like did you first adapt to.
Speaker 7: I was mad by then. I was mad confident because
Speaker 7: I started to learn all the store like I had
Speaker 7: learned all Lee Morgan solos. I learned all fucking Miles Davis's.
Speaker 7: So what I remember I had? I had them on memory, like.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I didn't know he was the outcasts.
Speaker 7: That was my way, that was my way in. I
Speaker 7: had to like I had to like go to the
Speaker 7: jam sessions and just battle trade trade bars with these cats.
Speaker 7: And I had learned changes by then, So I was
Speaker 7: I was cutting some of them cats back then.
Speaker 5: So did you?
Speaker 1: Of course I couldn't now, but so, but did you
Speaker 1: have to like did you subscribe to the John Hendricks
Speaker 1: Vocalist House?
Speaker 5: Wait, you knew Hendricks?
Speaker 7: Yeah, because I was.
Speaker 1: I had tried to talk about that.
Speaker 5: Y'allknew each other.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I try right out for the Manhattan transfer in
Speaker 7: college and me and me and Rob used to go
Speaker 7: over to John Hendrick's house and jam with him. Oh
Speaker 7: my god, he used to cut both me and Rob
Speaker 7: whistling and I would be in there scatting all my
Speaker 7: scatting shit and he would just whistle some of the
Speaker 7: baddest shit. But yeah, that would go over his house
Speaker 7: and do duo all the time. That was a cool
Speaker 7: thing about the News School because they could get in
Speaker 7: contact with whoever they knew if they had it in
Speaker 7: the rollo decks, and then they would just ask them
Speaker 7: right out. You know, we got a young cat that
Speaker 7: just wants to chill with I was like, John Hendricks,
Speaker 7: what all right?
Speaker 1: So for our listeners, let me explain for our listeners.
Speaker 1: In the jazz world, there's a thing called technical vocalist,
Speaker 1: which is basically it's kind of version of we invented
Speaker 1: the remix where they were taking established If a song
Speaker 1: becomes an established standards and it was just traditionally jazz,
Speaker 1: then a figure like Eddie Jefferson or John Hendricks or
Speaker 1: his other group Lambert Hendricks and Ross. Yeah, they would
Speaker 1: add lyrics to these songs. But the thing was you
Speaker 1: had to be faithful to the definitive solo. So for
Speaker 1: a great example, listen to John Hendricks Freddy Freeloader with
Speaker 1: Bobby McFerrin, Aljiou, George Benson and John Hendricks, in which the.
Speaker 5: Four of them note for note nail.
Speaker 1: Miles Adderley's like all the solos on the original, and
Speaker 1: I just to me, it just seems so intimidating one
Speaker 1: to study a solo, but then to memorize it. So
Speaker 1: like as a singer, am I able to put like
Speaker 1: a fake book in front of you? Fake book is
Speaker 1: a jazz bible. To put a fake book in front
Speaker 1: of you and you instantly read the note to notate
Speaker 1: and know exactly where to go, or do you have
Speaker 1: a listen and study the song?
Speaker 7: And back then I could now no. Ever since I
Speaker 7: got signed, I fucking forgot everything but.
Speaker 5: Back then, and I'm glad you did.
Speaker 7: Back then, I played enough piano. I was on All
Speaker 7: City Jazz band as piano in Philly. What they had
Speaker 7: they had beaten, beat me over the head to the
Speaker 7: point where I was reading charts in the big band.
Speaker 7: I forgot all that shit though. But yeah, in college,
Speaker 7: I didn't want to study with none of the vocalists,
Speaker 7: so I studied with Reggie Workman, the bass player for
Speaker 7: for training. I studied Reggie Reggie Workman, and I studied
Speaker 7: with his guitar player, uh arm and arming the Danilian.
Speaker 7: But he's like a jazz virtuo so guitar player, but
Speaker 7: his whole shit was, man, you gotta ear like him.
Speaker 7: And Reggie would always say, you gotta ear like a musician,
Speaker 7: so you should lean into that, like just hearing things
Speaker 7: as a musician. And from then on, like I, they
Speaker 7: had me buying saxophone concerto books and learning the concerto
Speaker 7: the saxophone concertos, and then Arman introduced me to Robbie
Speaker 7: Shankar's music, and then we just started learning all of
Speaker 7: the Middle Eastern scales and all of that. And by
Speaker 7: then I was just on a whole nother level as
Speaker 7: far as just hearing shit and scatting to where the
Speaker 7: cast I was hanging with. They saw me as a
Speaker 7: musician right when that around, I would say like yeah,
Speaker 7: by the time I got to college, like I wasn't
Speaker 7: intimidated by that anybody, no more, especially a musician like
Speaker 7: I was just I heard just like a musician, like
Speaker 7: I heard everything.
Speaker 1: Now I believe that you are the last anointed vocalist,
Speaker 1: just in terms of the Masters of the sixties who
Speaker 1: wrote the blueprint, like you're you're naming people whom like
Speaker 1: you know I find in Dyla's record collection.
Speaker 6: In terms of sampling, he said he tried off with
Speaker 6: a Manhattan Transfer, is what he said. You said he
Speaker 6: tried off with a Manhattan Transfer. That's what he said.
Speaker 1: Is there a project that you long to do that
Speaker 1: you haven't done yet? Like Manhattan Transfer type groups like uh,
Speaker 1: the boy the their their counterpart group voices.
Speaker 5: I forget no, no, no, not.
Speaker 7: Them, not like Take six or.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean that, but there's there's another group that
Speaker 1: I'm I'm I'm forgetting.
Speaker 6: Right now and transfer don't talk about.
Speaker 5: That's what I'm do.
Speaker 1: You have a desire to ever put a vocal group
Speaker 1: together to try some ship out or hm hmmm. See
Speaker 1: he lives in the present. You didn't think about that
Speaker 1: once in your thirty year a journey.
Speaker 7: Did you? No? No, I did it one time with Erica,
Speaker 7: just on like a skit. We was playing around and
Speaker 7: in electric lead, and we did it sometimes I'm happy
Speaker 7: by king pleasure, okay, And we did sometimes in that
Speaker 7: bame and we wrote out the harmonies and did it.
Speaker 7: But I never thought that would be cool. Though. I
Speaker 7: was seriously a jazz hit before I got signed, Like
Speaker 7: I got talked into like doing R and B and
Speaker 7: ship from like the two and to make brothers Like
Speaker 7: I was really wanted to be like Kirk Elling or
Speaker 7: some ship. Steve, guess what time it is going to
Speaker 7: be kir Elling a record project?
Speaker 2: Jam my time?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, we always say this twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: A real project, twenty twenty.
Speaker 6: Five black, real black projects.
Speaker 5: Yes, I want to do that.
Speaker 6: What is so great about working with Robert glassper Did
Speaker 6: y'all work together?
Speaker 7: Say?
Speaker 5: We never mentioned Glass properly?
Speaker 6: Yes? Please tell me about this this working relationship that
Speaker 6: you guys have and why it just works well.
Speaker 7: Robert, it is like it feels like it feels like
Speaker 7: I'm working with my like with myself, because he we
Speaker 7: have the same kind of thoughts on music, on how
Speaker 7: to blend the genres and kind of like I have
Speaker 7: the same sensibility of jazz but go anywhere with it,
Speaker 7: you know. So that's like my musical brother. A lot
Speaker 7: of times when we were we're not even we don't
Speaker 7: even if it's not even planned, you know, it's just
Speaker 7: once again, like these just cool mistakes and in the
Speaker 7: middle of the mistake, we make it mean something, you know,
Speaker 7: but uh.
Speaker 6: It's a beautiful mistakes.
Speaker 7: Yeah, when I work a rob I don't even it's
Speaker 7: so home, you know what I mean, where I don't
Speaker 7: really I don't really think too much while I'm doing it.
Speaker 1: I think that's how it has to be, like again
Speaker 1: when I say in the present, it's how you feel
Speaker 1: at that moment with your children, as has the epigenetic
Speaker 1: effect happened? Like are they singers as well? Do they
Speaker 1: have musical talent? What do they think when they watch you? Before?
Speaker 7: My kids think I'm an odd bird. None of them
Speaker 7: are are musicians, even though I've tried my best. You know,
Speaker 7: they've been in piano and drums and everything. But my
Speaker 7: kids like art, they like all things, are all things anime.
Speaker 7: They're in that kind of a world. So I think
Speaker 7: they could possibly maybe raped Like when they were little kids.
Speaker 7: They used to represent ta live Quali's son Amani. We
Speaker 7: lived across the hall from I lived across the hall
Speaker 7: from from Tai lived for for a while and his
Speaker 7: son Amani used to watch my kids. And I think
Speaker 7: that's another way that I got into learning these the
Speaker 7: young kids like Pink Seafood or Live and all these
Speaker 7: young musicians out today because they would always hang out
Speaker 7: at Amani's house and they had my kids rapping like
Speaker 7: as little kids. So I know they have the skill
Speaker 7: to rap, but they want to be like anime cats.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 7: My wife says that my son Paris can sing, but
Speaker 7: he's very secretive with his town. It's like he did
Speaker 7: you know, he's shy about it. I don't know why.
Speaker 1: There's one of the fruit falling far from the tree
Speaker 1: moments where I'm like, I know that one of them
Speaker 1: has a voice in them.
Speaker 7: But you know, I was the only musician in my
Speaker 7: family though, you know that kind of like made this
Speaker 7: step to be a musician. Like my only musician in
Speaker 7: my family. Everybody else is like my sister is an electrician,
Speaker 7: my brother does construction, like my my father does construction.
Speaker 7: Come from a family construction workers, really want to be
Speaker 7: an architect. Wow. Yeah, I'm like the only one that
Speaker 7: kind of like leaned into music. I don't come from
Speaker 7: like a musical family or anything like that. So like
Speaker 7: everything that I do, I kind of like or maybe
Speaker 7: all the talent.
Speaker 3: You do and inherited a lot of people ask me
Speaker 3: what are my favorite sessions have been over the years,
Speaker 3: and a lot of times I'll talk about Hard Groove,
Speaker 3: the Roy Hargrove album with Russ at Electrical Lydy and
Speaker 3: that whole amazing record. And then I also mentioned my
Speaker 3: time with Bellile up in studio see at Electrical Lyady
Speaker 3: working on I Guess Are We?
Speaker 2: Is it called Love for Sale? The album that we
Speaker 2: were working on. Yeah, those sessions just.
Speaker 7: Mandar a lot of that shit.
Speaker 3: You were the first artist who really gave me just
Speaker 3: complete freedom in the studio to experiment and to you know,
Speaker 3: we'd lay stuff down during the day and then I'd
Speaker 3: stay late and come in early and sort of do
Speaker 3: rough mixes for you and just you just let me
Speaker 3: do whatever. We were doing some some real experimental stuff,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to thank you for that because that
Speaker 3: was really when I first started to feel my own voice,
Speaker 3: I guess as an engineer and producer and stuff like that. Also,
Speaker 3: if anybody is am I the second, yeah you're somewhere
Speaker 3: down the list, but yeah, yeah, But if anyone's out
Speaker 3: there looking for a Bloo song that they've probably never
Speaker 3: heard before, check out Black Coffee and bed A Squeeze
Speaker 3: song that blows gracious enough to sign with Nikki Jean.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just it's forty.
Speaker 2: Five right, yeah, yeah, it's how you can stream it.
Speaker 7: Black Coffee and Bed.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that. That was a big, big song. Yep.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we just some real experimental ship. Those were the days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those were the days. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well look, man, this being our first professional interview with you. Look, man,
Speaker 1: what more can I say? You're still one of my
Speaker 1: favorite creative humans. Uh And oftentimes I have many what
Speaker 1: will Blow do moment when it comes to figuring out
Speaker 1: what daredevil artistry I want to leash on my audience,
Speaker 1: like from my DJ gigs to like a lot of my.
Speaker 5: Boulder the hell is he doing what I think he's doing?
Speaker 1: Any any of those times where people have asked that,
Speaker 1: usually the green light starts with kind of what would
Speaker 1: Blau do? So you're you're literally like, I know people
Speaker 1: think of North Stars as a person in the past
Speaker 1: who's like died and you're holding something, but you know,
Speaker 1: you're you're really an exemplary fearless performance artist. Even Howard
Speaker 1: Stern says you're one of his favorite singers and he
Speaker 1: had no clue why so we did a tribute to
Speaker 1: John Lennon and Steve had introduced a song to me
Speaker 1: called Mother that you know, Yoko Ono kind of got
Speaker 1: John Lennon too. He didn't want to go to therapy,
Speaker 1: so he went to screaming therapy. And if you listen
Speaker 1: to the song Mother, that's kind of where the anger
Speaker 1: of being an orphan really comes out. Starts very gentle,
Speaker 1: but by the end John Lennon start raging mad about
Speaker 1: his childhood. And I knew that if we got if
Speaker 1: we were given permission to do that song at Madison
Speaker 1: Square Garden for the John Lennon tribute, we would steal
Speaker 1: the show. And if you listen to the Stern show
Speaker 1: the day after that concert, he didn't know you by name,
Speaker 1: but he's like, there's a singer with Jimmy Fallon's band
Speaker 1: who just absolutely stole you know, people correct him, that
Speaker 1: was the Roots, That was the Roots, and he's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, at first he was like, what are these
Speaker 1: guys doing on the stage and they're gonna rap, like
Speaker 1: give visa chance, and you know, you absolutely floored him.
Speaker 7: So yeah, that's what's up.
Speaker 5: Keep going, man.
Speaker 1: I appreciate your artistry and thank you very much for
Speaker 1: doing our podcast.
Speaker 7: Thank you for having me. Jay, You're one of my
Speaker 7: biggest inspirations and reasons I'm here. You know I appreciate
Speaker 7: early champions.
Speaker 5: Thank you for the honor of that man. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: Yes, Sir, I want to be having Layah and Bill
Speaker 1: and Steve this Quest though signing out this Quest Love Supreme,
Speaker 1: but the one only below. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 4: This podcast is hosted by a Mere Quest Love Thompson,
Speaker 4: Liyah Saint, Clair Sugar, Steve Vandel, and myself unpaid Bill Sherman.
Speaker 4: The executive producers are Mere just walked into the goddamn
Speaker 4: room Thompson, Sean g and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Brittany Benjamin,
Speaker 4: Jake Paine and Liah Sinclair. Edited by Alex Conroy I
Speaker 4: know Alex Conray. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.