Speaker 1: Quest Love Show is a production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, what's up? This is the Quest Love Show.
Speaker 2: This is the Double Love Show. I guess where this
Speaker 2: is the love I mean, yeah, I'm meeting the love
Speaker 2: Kate right now. We're talking to the Love Kate. What
Speaker 2: can I say, Ladies and gentlemen from the d m V.
Speaker 2: All right, So, whenever I mentioned the d m V,
Speaker 2: it's like, only DMV people know what that means.
Speaker 3: Anywhere else that's the department vehicle.
Speaker 2: But I'm like, is it a thing where it's just like,
Speaker 2: is that really your tri state area?
Speaker 1: Like do people call that area of the d m V.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I would never say it on the record.
Speaker 2: God, because everyone thinking of the Department of the got
Speaker 2: you got.
Speaker 3: The DMV for life?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, our guest today is a singer, songwriter, activists,
Speaker 2: a legendary radio show host. I'm an hr I'm I'm
Speaker 2: secretly jealous when I heard you got that gig man.
Speaker 2: I'm like, he has worked with a lot of our favorites,
Speaker 2: of course, start with Jazz, Jeff Body, James, Jill Scott,
Speaker 2: my own band The Roots. Actually, you're the last voice
Speaker 2: on the last official Roots album so much. Of course,
Speaker 2: we know him as the Love King, so I respect
Speaker 2: that title. His latest EP, of course, is The Quiet
Speaker 2: Storm Lover Own. Yes, right now, he's a part of
Speaker 2: what I'm am sure is going to be like one
Speaker 2: of the top tickets of twenty twenty six they say
Speaker 2: Yes tour with Flower Tree and Teacher Moses representing the
Speaker 2: Department of Motor Vehicles to the fullest right here, welcome,
Speaker 2: all right.
Speaker 1: So I have to ask you this question. What is
Speaker 1: love truly?
Speaker 4: Oh man, I'm gonna ask you a lot of weird questions.
Speaker 4: It's a connection spiritually with the Creator. It's God for me.
Speaker 4: It's a connection to community. It's random acts of kindness
Speaker 4: in it's prayers form when nobody's watching. Besides this, you
Speaker 4: know the universe and the Creator and got that part. Yeah,
Speaker 4: When it's not performing, it's not When it's not performative, yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, it's painful. It's a brutal truth and looking
Speaker 4: yourself in the mirror, diving deep within.
Speaker 2: You're saying that to the dark places.
Speaker 3: In your mind and shadow work and a lot of things.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: So yeah, again, you're you're taking the Love King title
Speaker 2: because I think there's too much pressure on me. But
Speaker 2: to be the love king, I think that one should
Speaker 2: be able to name for me five songs that must
Speaker 2: be on every mixtape. Like for me, my first job
Speaker 2: as like a mixtape master is the roots tour bus,
Speaker 2: especially in the lean years when like nineteen of us
Speaker 2: had to be on a tour bus really just made
Speaker 2: for like thirteen again, I'm talking about like us living
Speaker 2: on the road. The mixtape was always just like the
Speaker 2: moment of relief. Initially, Hub, our bass player, was the
Speaker 2: king of what we called the mellow tapes, where he'd
Speaker 2: be the first on the bus and he would have
Speaker 2: like at least six or seven ninety minute tapes of
Speaker 2: like what we call the Sunday afternoon cleaning music Royers
Speaker 2: Steve like the usual Suspects and whatnot. And then like
Speaker 2: I took over once I realized, like, oh well, I'm
Speaker 2: tired of hearing everybody that was sunshine every time I
Speaker 2: get on the tour bus. So what five songs do
Speaker 2: you think must be on every mixtape of love?
Speaker 3: Stevie wonder?
Speaker 2: What's on ass as?
Speaker 1: Okay, you're going fast? Are we going faster? Slow?
Speaker 4: Let's lets let's go, Let's go, let's go slow, let's
Speaker 4: go Joinie. I get five sons to Stevie wanted to
Speaker 4: joy inside my tears. Shot a cherished today, okay. Marvin
Speaker 4: Gaye distant Lover.
Speaker 1: Okay, that's my that's three three.
Speaker 3: And three, Luther van Dross.
Speaker 2: Which one house is not a home?
Speaker 1: Okay? All right? And I got my one?
Speaker 4: I got my one left right, yep, I'm gonna go
Speaker 4: with uh Prince Darling.
Speaker 1: Nikki. Damn what that's the record?
Speaker 2: Scrashsmas, my camera, touch yourself?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was not expected.
Speaker 2: In my mind, I'm like, okay, well he scandalous when
Speaker 2: you are in love or do me?
Speaker 1: Baby? You went there? All right?
Speaker 4: Of course I have to have some other things there
Speaker 4: to make it, to make it, to make it click,
Speaker 4: to make it all work.
Speaker 2: You see what happens, It happens, all right. So what
Speaker 2: was your first musical memory in life?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 4: Man, it was Green Hill Preschool and there's this photo
Speaker 4: of me conducting. I think it was like it was
Speaker 4: like the kids choir.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 4: So it's just like this photo, this nostalgica photo of
Speaker 4: my mother, you know the photos we have on the wall, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know it's like twenty photos of it in.
Speaker 1: The whole wall.
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, so I would probably say that. And then
Speaker 4: my dad was always on the road. So there was
Speaker 4: one night he was like in town. I literally got
Speaker 4: to see him for like five minutes. It was like
Speaker 4: the beast five minutes of my life. See my dad
Speaker 4: every day, So different household, but my life. And he
Speaker 4: was actually on tour with Stevie this particular time, and
Speaker 4: I just remember like, ooh, this is amazing, like the
Speaker 4: concert and walking into this concert hall, Camember we were
Speaker 4: we went in DC. If this is in DC, like
Speaker 4: around nineteen eighty an he wanted was he on tour
Speaker 4: Gil Scott heron or because I know that he did
Speaker 4: a series of shows in d C.
Speaker 3: Gil might have been on that show.
Speaker 2: So initially, the whole history of Master Blaster Jamming is
Speaker 2: that Stevie was a big giant Bob Marley fan, and
Speaker 2: they decided in nineteen seventy nine, after like the Secret
Speaker 2: Life of Plants sort of settled now it's hotter than
Speaker 2: July time, and him and Bob Marley going to go
Speaker 2: on tour together and Bob had cancer complications and whatnot,
Speaker 2: and so then Gil Scott Heron filled in for him,
Speaker 2: but I know he did a slew of a lot
Speaker 2: of shows in the DMV era, mainly to garner up
Speaker 2: support for King's birthday. Like, so your father is a
Speaker 2: do Okay, the cellis yep Okay.
Speaker 1: Who else? Do you know who he played with.
Speaker 4: Or Julius Hempfield, A couple of different I know he
Speaker 4: played with David Murray, all different different trios.
Speaker 2: Okay, give me your your fondest memory of growing up
Speaker 2: in d C.
Speaker 4: Probably just hearing like the Go Go, Like Go Go
Speaker 4: was always in the midst of things. But I wasn't outside,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like as you know, I
Speaker 4: was outside as a kid, But like you know, I
Speaker 4: didn't jump off the poort. I didn't go to my
Speaker 4: first go go to. I was like maybe like twenty twenty,
Speaker 4: twenty one, nineteen, you know what I mean. So I
Speaker 4: didn't get the experience like going to the Go Go
Speaker 4: at fifteen fourteen, sixteen seventeen, you know.
Speaker 1: All right, So I caught rare essence.
Speaker 2: We just we happen to be in DC one night
Speaker 2: and it was like a three show thing we were doing,
Speaker 2: and like we were there for four days, so we
Speaker 2: had like one of these nights off and I realized
Speaker 2: I'd never been to a go go show before. And
Speaker 2: I was like, all right, well, let me go to
Speaker 2: my first go go experience because my manager went to
Speaker 2: college and the DMV area, you know, Layah, like we
Speaker 2: know everyone in the you gotta go to a go
Speaker 2: go show. And this is this is definitely after the pandemic,
Speaker 2: so maybe like twenty twenty one. Oh wow, okay, and
Speaker 2: so there's this new wave of go go like whatever
Speaker 2: trap and drill are to boombat hip hop, Like it's
Speaker 2: a whole nother bounce beat. The bounce beat, Yeah, it
Speaker 2: was a whole nother rhythm, and like I didn't realize
Speaker 2: that the heartbeat of go go, which you know hates
Speaker 2: when I say this because we always argue. I argue
Speaker 2: and say that, you know, go Go's based off of
Speaker 2: Grover Washington Juniors, mister Magic Dun Dunk Dun Dunk, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I would say, where's that from? Layah? Anyway, So
Speaker 1: the whole.
Speaker 2: Point is they didn't play that bounce Like I was like, wow,
Speaker 2: I never went to a go go show, which just
Speaker 2: the prime rhythm of go go was never played, like
Speaker 2: it was a whole another and I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: so now there's a transition period where that rhythm where
Speaker 2: they slowed it down way down, almost like halftime exactly.
Speaker 2: So like when did you go to your first go
Speaker 2: go show?
Speaker 4: And my first go go experience was Rare Essence at
Speaker 4: the time. I was a writer at that period of
Speaker 4: my life and Droopy Rest in Peace, Droopy and he
Speaker 4: had his hit or Sam. They took me to my
Speaker 4: first rare essence go go experience.
Speaker 1: Miss Kim was in the.
Speaker 4: Band at the time, was there? It was I think
Speaker 4: Mickey was there at the time. They were taking me
Speaker 4: to me white Boy and to write for you know,
Speaker 4: white Boy took a liking to me and my penmanship,
Speaker 4: and the goal was for me to write for Kim
Speaker 4: and write records for the band. But that was my
Speaker 4: first experience. I think it was that. I think we
Speaker 4: did the Black Hole. Okay, maybe black Hole or Tunnel.
Speaker 4: I can't remember what venue was, but I just remember
Speaker 4: like going and instantly being like it was turned out.
Speaker 2: Can one make a good living as a go go
Speaker 2: musician playing in the absolutely?
Speaker 4: I mean it was you got to remember at this
Speaker 4: stage it was already a national, global thing, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, because you know.
Speaker 2: But for the most part, I know that they stick
Speaker 2: to DC. Yeah, I mean, I mean maybe Virginia, Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: But like you talk about the success of of EU,
Speaker 4: you know, school Days and that whole movement on top
Speaker 4: bands making seven figures six figures a year, not having
Speaker 4: to leave the city or leave it, you know. Besides,
Speaker 4: when you want to do a destination trip or you know,
Speaker 4: what's unique about the go Go community is that your
Speaker 4: super fans they follow you. So you have go go
Speaker 4: live in Miami. You got you know, there are annual
Speaker 4: trips that have been happening for.
Speaker 2: So they do come outside.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's been I mean, they have a go Go,
Speaker 4: Go Go night in Japan. I went to my first
Speaker 4: time going to what my first time going to Japan
Speaker 4: as Raheem Devna Artists. We were coming in and I
Speaker 4: ran into Sweet Shari and Chuck Brown, like Chuck was
Speaker 4: leaving Japan from playing and had been there maybe two
Speaker 4: three weeks. Sold out every night, Like it's a phenomenon.
Speaker 1: You know, Go Go.
Speaker 4: I would say, go Go is equivalent to what for
Speaker 4: DC to what you know, Big Trombone Shorty is to
Speaker 4: New Orleans, you know what I mean? And to see
Speaker 4: how you know some of these bands been together, you know,
Speaker 4: rare essence is what fifty years and maybe you know
Speaker 4: Backyard Band with Big G.
Speaker 3: I think they got thirty forty years in now.
Speaker 2: Like So as far as like music venues are concerned, yeah,
Speaker 2: like right now, would you say that DC is still
Speaker 2: strong in the game as far as having music outlet
Speaker 2: because the thing is is that the reason why the
Speaker 2: Roots really existed, or at least to the to the
Speaker 2: the fast lane that we got ushered in on, was
Speaker 2: that there were no music venues in Philly. So it
Speaker 2: was like you had the creative, let's go on the
Speaker 2: streets now. I meant, had the Roots come out fifteen
Speaker 2: twenty years later, we would have probably been like, all right.
Speaker 1: Let's get a YouTube page and do that.
Speaker 2: But you know, we only played the streets and busks
Speaker 2: because there was no place to play. And only then
Speaker 2: people were like, you know, they did did the whole
Speaker 2: thing like, well, you know, you know, we're not into
Speaker 2: rap music, but we like you guys, and we were
Speaker 2: suddenly like the first rap group to play like all
Speaker 2: these if we were a rock band.
Speaker 4: Y'all to hip hop rolling Stones and me, oh man,
Speaker 4: thank you, like straight up, like I appreciate, Like this
Speaker 4: is you know, before the world knew my name. I
Speaker 4: was at the nine to thirty Club in the front
Speaker 4: row at the Roots con service. I remember the night
Speaker 4: where y'all came out with the what was it, the
Speaker 4: mister Miyagi joints and like walk through the whole crowd
Speaker 4: like yeah, so you know what I mean? So like that,
Speaker 4: you know, I was at the Black Lilies and the
Speaker 4: Cut with nobody, you know, just just you know, it's
Speaker 4: part of my story.
Speaker 1: I talk I talk about it often.
Speaker 2: You know, DC is our number one market.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, And the reason why DC loves you guys
Speaker 4: so much is the connection of like live music and
Speaker 4: what it's the live exchange of energy live like there's
Speaker 4: nothing like it. There's nothing like seeing your top go
Speaker 4: go bands in DC or anywhere and hearing the music
Speaker 4: is nothing like a roots experience, you.
Speaker 1: Know, thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 2: Is there any unspoken pressures as a native.
Speaker 1: There to represent go go or nah? Not at all?
Speaker 4: I mean you know it's funny man, you know now
Speaker 4: and that half a century living out my childhood, drunitless
Speaker 4: like my bucket list stuff like I'm you know, from
Speaker 4: doing a Choiet Storm to I have a go go band.
Speaker 1: It's called the Crank Crusaders. I didn't know this.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: We do a First Sunday's event at the conver Station
Speaker 4: Tavern every first Sunday unless I'm on the road, you know,
Speaker 4: on tour, and we'll kind of either navigate around and
Speaker 4: take the month off or you know, pick another Sunday,
Speaker 4: which we may be increasing the Sundays.
Speaker 1: Right, you know, but I've been in a go go band.
Speaker 4: We've been you know, shout out to Bootsy Vegas, Yazra
Speaker 4: who I know, you know, yaz was on the front line,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, like all the rest of
Speaker 4: the guys in the band, and it's been an experience
Speaker 4: like the first this band has actually been together since
Speaker 4: like twenty nineteen. You know, we've talked about principal members
Speaker 4: and going through different you know, musicians. Our big show
Speaker 4: was like twenty nineteen at the Kennedy Center. It was
Speaker 4: it was Raheem DeVaughn and Backyard Band right New Year's Eve,
Speaker 4: And I use that as an opportunity to introduce Crank
Speaker 4: Crusaders to DC.
Speaker 3: You know, and then boom covid hit.
Speaker 1: So that was your last creative product.
Speaker 2: I was so said I was the last.
Speaker 4: We were still figuring out the records and creating and
Speaker 4: you know, and you know, we're building a catalog or
Speaker 4: we haven't put out official album yet, which is in
Speaker 4: under the you know, in the works right now, and uh,
Speaker 4: you know, we just lost one of our main producers.
Speaker 4: Rest in peace that I can and uh, you know,
Speaker 4: but from the minute I saw a rare essence, I
Speaker 4: always wanted to be part of.
Speaker 1: A go go band, you know.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, and I'm mainly just I'm not even asking
Speaker 2: us for interview, like because I just I'm so obsessed.
Speaker 1: With that culture.
Speaker 2: But I wouldn't even know I'm gonna get us. I
Speaker 2: see it almost like as akin to jazz or another
Speaker 2: genre where a lot of times, I mean I've.
Speaker 1: Seen cats, I've seen non jazz cats like Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I can sold it good, so let me.
Speaker 2: But there's there's a whole nother nuance that you have
Speaker 2: to know about that culture. And for go go at least,
Speaker 2: I know, it's it's groove, its format, it's cover songs,
Speaker 2: it's a lot.
Speaker 1: Of those things.
Speaker 4: So when you are and it's letting the beat ride,
Speaker 4: Like that's what That's what I want to know. How
Speaker 4: do you know one of the main things I had
Speaker 4: to learn and I'm still and it's still a learning
Speaker 4: process for me. Like like sometimes my you know, my
Speaker 4: my band members, you know, my front line member, he
Speaker 4: gets pssed with me because you know me because he's like,
Speaker 4: I'm so used to being a conductor, right, and being
Speaker 4: the orchestrator and being the leader. What I do love
Speaker 4: about being part of the Crank Crusaders is and being
Speaker 4: in this go Go band is like, you know, the
Speaker 4: pressure is not on me to always lead, and it
Speaker 4: puts me in a position to follow, which makes me
Speaker 4: a student to have to learn, you know where we're
Speaker 4: in rehearsals and you know, we rehearsed once a week literally.
Speaker 1: Like you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Like it's just it's just a discipline, right, and uh
Speaker 4: so we're always experimenting with the different you know, whether
Speaker 4: it's bounce beat or you know, the first time I
Speaker 4: heard them saying like, all right, we're gonna do this record,
Speaker 4: and Bootsy's communicating with like the drummer he's like and
Speaker 4: they're saying Oh yeah, we're gonna do the mister Magic beat,
Speaker 4: or we're not gonna do the mister magic. Like, let's
Speaker 4: do the mister magic. I didn't get it, now, you know,
Speaker 4: right high sight twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Now I get it. So when you said it, I
Speaker 2: just kind of like chuckle. But in other words, like
Speaker 2: I listen to mixtapes and the leader won't say anything
Speaker 2: for like thirty two bars and just let the beat right.
Speaker 2: And I'm trying to you know, I'm not watching on videotape,
Speaker 2: but I'm just imagining, like, so what does the rest
Speaker 2: of the band do? They just what you know, what
Speaker 2: it is, But it is to be in the room
Speaker 2: and the experience, because what you're probably hearing is a
Speaker 2: lot YEA. Remember you're probably hearing a live recording aka
Speaker 2: to PA tape right right, And what's happening in that
Speaker 2: moment is the walls are sweating, it's packed wall to wall.
Speaker 4: The ladies, you know, are doing a thing. You know,
Speaker 4: it's it's a party, man, it's a vibe. It's not
Speaker 4: it's not just you're hearing the after effect of a
Speaker 4: night that can't be duplicated, you know, thinking, you know,
Speaker 4: I will compare it to like a theater theatre of Broadway, right,
Speaker 4: versus doing film and television, which I've done both right,
Speaker 4: and theater is very improvisational. Like theater is very much
Speaker 4: read the room in the moment, because I remember resting
Speaker 4: the Love Jones musical years back, and literally a fight
Speaker 4: broke out because there was some guy there on a
Speaker 4: date with his wife. When his lady came in, he was,
Speaker 4: he was on a date, he was, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. It was a situation and I think you're so.
Speaker 2: So we're doing light and so MC light is.
Speaker 4: Doing your line and we're doing our lines, and literally
Speaker 4: a fight breaks out or something, and it's just like
Speaker 4: it became and we turned it into a moment because
Speaker 4: the show bus go on.
Speaker 1: What is your shout out getting? Like? Because I know
Speaker 1: that any effective go go vocalists has to know all
Speaker 1: the areas.
Speaker 4: Yet I get to be a team member and not
Speaker 4: have to, Like you don't have that pressure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know Boosey does. He's a lead talker
Speaker 3: of the band.
Speaker 4: So it's just his job is to conduct the band,
Speaker 4: communicate with us, lead us. You know, read the room,
Speaker 4: know who's in the room. Sometimes you know, you work
Speaker 4: the room before you get to know your fans. I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm sure that even if you don't know the names,
Speaker 4: I'm sure that that with the super fan cult following
Speaker 4: Basic y'all have, like you, it's people that y'all have
Speaker 4: been coming to see y'all for since the beginning. Like
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, you don't there's no way
Speaker 4: you don't, you know, unless you just in it for
Speaker 4: the wrong reasons that you don't connect or no, you know,
Speaker 4: and you have boundaries. But sometimes that's that's right though,
Speaker 4: no doubt, because you have to have you know, their boundaries.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: Fan is short for fanatic, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: So you know, but I watched like the communities and
Speaker 4: all these bands have different communities, which is you know,
Speaker 4: you have some of them where they share certain communities, right,
Speaker 4: but Backyard has a very distinct crowd that comes to
Speaker 4: see them, right, right, and they might come to see
Speaker 4: them four or five nights a week. And that's what
Speaker 4: the vibe is, you know, It's all I've never seen
Speaker 4: anything like it, you know what I mean, other than
Speaker 4: you know, how I would describe you know, say, like
Speaker 4: social media now or Instagram, right how you know, we
Speaker 4: build these communities and people support them, and you know,
Speaker 4: they can never get enough of what you put out.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm asking a lot of this simply because
Speaker 2: for those that you know don't get access to the
Speaker 2: roots as much as you know, we went from two
Speaker 2: hundred nights on the year. Yeah, we do normal now
Speaker 2: we probably do maybe fifty shows a year like a
Speaker 2: regular group. But a lot of these gigs we've been doing,
Speaker 2: we've been on the jam band circuit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And for me, like I know that Go Go
Speaker 4: is Black people's jam band circuit.
Speaker 2: And a lot of these like especially in the Northeast,
Speaker 2: like above Connecticut, above New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts and
Speaker 2: Maine and whatnot, Rhode Island.
Speaker 1: They have like a lot of these.
Speaker 2: Festivals, like hippie festivals for jam bands all day long.
Speaker 2: And for me, I don't know how it's going to happen,
Speaker 2: but I'm trying to figure out, like between New Orleans
Speaker 2: and d C. Wondering how come the two worlds have
Speaker 2: never collided to at.
Speaker 4: Least it's happening organically. And that's why why you know,
Speaker 4: we we know myself in Bootsy. First of all, this
Speaker 4: is it's a little it's more personal for us. Bootsy
Speaker 4: was experiencing you know, he was he had a he
Speaker 4: had a death date, like stage four cancer and it
Speaker 4: was a phone conversation like, hey man, you beat the cancer. Man,
Speaker 4: You're gonna start a gogle band. And he's been cancer
Speaker 4: free for some years now, and he was like I
Speaker 4: remember when he rang the bell and I'm like, all right,
Speaker 4: well time start the band. Figure ot, we're gonna name it.
Speaker 4: And you know here we are the crank Crusaders.
Speaker 1: You know, so ill to see this. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to see this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speak of which, what was the first live show
Speaker 2: that you ever attended?
Speaker 3: Okay it was New Year's Eve? Okay, Whitney Houston.
Speaker 1: That's impressive.
Speaker 4: Wait was Whitney there? Did she perform? I feel like
Speaker 4: she performed. I can't remember she was on a ticket,
Speaker 4: but Bobby was there. I think maybe it's a new addition.
Speaker 4: I know it was Whitney.
Speaker 1: Bobby.
Speaker 2: Wait, it became an item in ninety one. Well, you
Speaker 2: were like twenty when.
Speaker 4: You saw your first contract, so it had this is
Speaker 4: like maybe they weren't a thing then, Okay, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. But it was it was like, uh,
Speaker 4: when you leave in DC, which is also like kind
Speaker 4: of destination. Definitely a teenager though I was in high
Speaker 4: school because I remember miss pat was the one that took
Speaker 4: us to see this particular concert. Really yeah, she was
Speaker 4: like the neighborhood mom. You know what was the impact
Speaker 4: of you seeing this concert. It's one thing to I
Speaker 4: guess hear the music live and hear the records and
Speaker 4: you know, and sing them in the shower, And there's
Speaker 4: another thing like to see the artist. So the only
Speaker 4: thing I probably could have wished for was better seats.
Speaker 4: But like tripping off that as a kid, you're like
Speaker 4: at the concert, you know what, I'm.
Speaker 1: Happy to be there.
Speaker 2: I always ask what television show or movie would you
Speaker 2: say best describes what your childhood experiences were like growing up?
Speaker 3: I don't know, man, I can't say that. I can't
Speaker 3: say that there was one really yeah.
Speaker 1: All right, there's no character that you wish you were
Speaker 1: like watching TV or any of those things.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 4: I mean I would probably say good times because I
Speaker 4: spent the school years with.
Speaker 1: My mom did the DNVA my dad was in.
Speaker 4: My dad was in Jersey in Newark, Jerseys between East
Speaker 4: East Orange and Newark, so when he was in it
Speaker 4: but he was in the Newark Okay, so it's kind
Speaker 4: of like I should just say middle class, you know.
Speaker 4: But I would go spend time with Dad and it
Speaker 4: would end up in backsin terrist projects. So I got
Speaker 4: a chance to see like which was like walking distance
Speaker 4: from the Colonnades where when he moved back into Newark, Like,
Speaker 4: you know, I spent a lot of time. Even when
Speaker 4: he lived in East Orange, we spent a lot of
Speaker 4: I spent a lot of time with my cousins. And
Speaker 4: you know that's in the housing projects. Yeah, so so
Speaker 4: you know I saw that whole crack era. I saw light,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, eighty eight or I would
Speaker 4: see you know, you see different you see different rappers
Speaker 4: and you know Caine and you know back then you
Speaker 4: know coming through you know what I mean. And I
Speaker 4: saw my first shootouts there, you know, as a kid,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. But most important, I saw
Speaker 4: a lot of love in those housing projects. I saw
Speaker 4: a lot of love. I saw a family, you know,
Speaker 4: and it's and it's something I just always look forward to,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. So it wasn't nothing to
Speaker 4: play hoop hoops on the I mean I played basketball
Speaker 4: on the regular basketball court. But when we were when
Speaker 4: I was there, we played the hoops on the crates.
Speaker 2: The crates.
Speaker 4: They try to take the crates right, cut the bottom
Speaker 4: out real good, you know, and then you know.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna create. I'm gonna creat Master.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know you're Michael Jordan at that point.
Speaker 1: Can you name me three albums that changed your life?
Speaker 4: Quincy Jones, it's Cusey Jones' album Saved the Which album
Speaker 4: was that, Marvin's album or Quincy's Save the Children?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 2: So Save the Children was a It's funny you mentioned this, yeah, because.
Speaker 1: I don't think the world news about it.
Speaker 2: For all of you that have showed me love for
Speaker 2: Summer Soul, there's a film that was directed by sons
Speaker 2: father Stan Lathan, and it's called Save the Children, and
Speaker 2: it's basically Jesse Jackson's operation Push Expo in Chicago. This
Speaker 2: is nineteen seventy two, and pretty much all the luminaries
Speaker 2: were there, the Jackson five, Marvin Gay. There's a very
Speaker 2: curious moment where you know, times haven't changed much. Sammy
Speaker 2: Davis Junior decided, I guess the mind stage. James Brown
Speaker 2: did the same thing, like they were coming from the
Speaker 2: mind state of like, Okay, well we're trying to get
Speaker 2: a seat at the table, so let me endorse Nixon
Speaker 2: so that way I have I can have influence on him.
Speaker 2: And you know, I mean, their intentions were good, but
Speaker 2: it's also like, clearly that was just for the other side.
Speaker 1: It was for the photo op of it and got it.
Speaker 3: That's when they label him to uncle Tom right exactly.
Speaker 2: And so Sammy Davis Junior shows up and I'm telling you,
Speaker 2: that was the most I mean, the way he ate
Speaker 2: that bullet, like imired him for it.
Speaker 1: That was the hardest seven minutes to watch.
Speaker 2: He walked on that stage and like the Jackson five
Speaker 2: just came off and they are losing and everything, and
Speaker 2: so you know, and then I remember that and he's
Speaker 2: like he let it calm down, and then he and
Speaker 2: he's and then he's sing the most defiant version of
Speaker 2: I Gotta be Me.
Speaker 1: And it kind of went from this.
Speaker 2: To this too, like he he really sold it. But yeah,
Speaker 2: Saving Children was It was on Motown, so that's yeah,
Speaker 2: it was. It was a great live.
Speaker 4: Record, I would say, Saving Children Michael Jackson thriller album
Speaker 4: and a two way tie self titled earth Wind and
Speaker 4: Fire album, Okay, And I wasn't supposed to be listening
Speaker 4: to it, but Prince Purple ring, I would think I
Speaker 4: was just drawn to to the movie, to the film,
Speaker 4: to the like you know.
Speaker 3: It was there were things that they were.
Speaker 4: Going on that what I was seeing as a child,
Speaker 4: that I could identify to you know, that that he
Speaker 4: was going through as you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was just it was just everything to me.
Speaker 2: Like you know, so as far as singers are concerned,
Speaker 2: who's your north star? Who is the singer for which
Speaker 2: you I want to know the moment that it was
Speaker 2: like the calling of this is what I want to do?
Speaker 4: Three way time Marvin Princeton and Michael Jackson right around
Speaker 4: at nineteen eighty four eighty five, Yeah, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, Like I remember seeing the Award Show and
Speaker 4: just like definitely Michael and seeing him on when in
Speaker 4: American Musical. Yeah, and like that's what I got the
Speaker 4: bug I want to do that, Like I could not
Speaker 4: remember where I was, what I had on, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean?
Speaker 3: And that's where I caught the like the bug.
Speaker 1: All right, So this is what I'm curious about.
Speaker 2: So my early friendship with DiAngelo was based on the
Speaker 2: trauma that we had over Marvin Gay. So you know,
Speaker 2: before April first of eighty four, I pretty much you know,
Speaker 2: I lived in a very large record house, and Dad's
Speaker 2: records was just old people's stuff, and my records was
Speaker 2: the cool stuff. And so I always looked at Marvin
Speaker 2: kind of with an eye roll like old people like
Speaker 2: aunt comes over and start playing the OJ's and Marvin
Speaker 2: Gay and stuff, and I'm just like And when he
Speaker 2: passed away, when he was murdered by his dad in
Speaker 2: eighty four, I mean, one of that gave me nightmare
Speaker 2: effects because I'm twelve at the time, and I'm trying
Speaker 2: to wrestle with the fact that, like, wait, your.
Speaker 1: Father's allowed to kill you? Like I didn't learn about
Speaker 1: that part.
Speaker 2: I was heartbroken.
Speaker 3: I remember that. I remember it distinctly.
Speaker 1: I want no, no, no, no, but go ahead.
Speaker 2: But I want to know what was it about, because
Speaker 2: when I finally came to Marvin, there was a lot
Speaker 2: of fear there, you know. And how did you come
Speaker 2: to Marvin, Like was there any fear or knowledge of
Speaker 2: like what happened to his life or.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely again, parallel things that I saw, you know,
Speaker 4: one degree separation in my family that I've experienced as
Speaker 4: an adult now, you know, from childhood into adulthood.
Speaker 3: But I just revered them. I like, I thought it
Speaker 3: was just so brilliant how.
Speaker 4: He could go from the from the bedroom to you know,
Speaker 4: speaking as a you know, social activist, you know, musically,
Speaker 4: I was drawn to him. I was drawing to Bob
Speaker 4: Miley for the same reason, you know, knowing that he
Speaker 4: started out as a top forty artist and then transitioning
Speaker 4: into strictly socially conscious music. It's something earlier in my
Speaker 4: career that I just proud of myself in doing and
Speaker 4: saying that that's what I would I had to do that,
Speaker 4: you know. I remember the night that Marvin Gaye passed.
Speaker 4: I remember the night that melvill Linzy like announced it.
Speaker 4: I remember being heartbroken. I remember that defect the Red
Speaker 4: Fiat that I rode in with my mother. We were
Speaker 4: just leaving the movie theaters. I can't remember what we saw,
Speaker 4: but coming out of the movie it was it was it.
Speaker 1: Was an eerie night.
Speaker 4: It had rained, had just finished raining, so there was
Speaker 4: a light rain and it was just like hearing Melvilenzi
Speaker 4: say it on the airwaves, like I'll never forget it
Speaker 4: like you know, and during COVID kind of giving you
Speaker 4: an exclusive here me. During COVID, me and Kenny Dope
Speaker 4: Cazales came up with the craziest idea to remake the
Speaker 4: entire to remake an entire Marvin Gaye album, which which
Speaker 4: will be coming out.
Speaker 3: I want to say, we.
Speaker 4: Have remade an entire Marvin Gaye album. I sang all
Speaker 4: the vocals over. And this was during COVID, So this
Speaker 4: was my first time. So imagine COVID going on and
Speaker 4: then taking your first ride to the studio and being
Speaker 4: outside and getting gas.
Speaker 3: And like being living.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, like you know, being super annoyed about what
Speaker 4: you're touching, and then going and being around like shit
Speaker 4: down and other human people, like a cough is like
Speaker 4: a gun. Yeah, I remember, this is like a uzzi.
Speaker 4: Like my first interaction and hugging. So I hugged someone
Speaker 4: and then being like it was intense, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. Shout out to Raquel rob Brown that you
Speaker 4: know we we she came to the studio and it
Speaker 4: was like we're not supposed to hug, right, but I
Speaker 4: remember like a freedom in doing that, right and and yes,
Speaker 4: over the course of a few days. It was deep
Speaker 4: man to remake these records and to because you know,
Speaker 4: we didn't have all the masters. You know, we didn't
Speaker 4: have everything's not split up, you know, but you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: there's a lot of masters and things floating around out
Speaker 4: there there. So so Kenny gave me what he had
Speaker 4: access to and then the master master. Yeah, and then
Speaker 4: I had to do all of these things. I had
Speaker 4: to do this shiit off the ear, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. And in that process of recording it, it
Speaker 4: was like wow, like I felt like I said, I
Speaker 4: would never say this publicly, but I felt like it
Speaker 4: was left behind for me to do it.
Speaker 1: Like in the moment, it was like really like like eerie,
Speaker 1: you know, what did you learn about that process?
Speaker 2: So even even in listening to some of the reels
Speaker 2: that I got probably the best example. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you have access to any of the Hear My
Speaker 2: Dear reels, but you know, we acknowledge that Marvin's like
Speaker 2: the well the someone will say the background master. I
Speaker 2: will actually say he's the master at hiding plaining sight.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. And when you listen to if you ever
Speaker 2: get a chance to hear Sparrow.
Speaker 1: A cappella.
Speaker 4: Once you take the music away, I'm like, wait, this clashes.
Speaker 4: But he is a very unique way his time. His
Speaker 4: timing is crazy. Yeah, it's correct. Like his timing was crazy,
Speaker 4: Like I have no formal training, right, and I remember
Speaker 4: I did. It was a record I did in particular
Speaker 4: with Frederico from DC I want Butcher of Frederico's last name,
Speaker 4: but it's this record we did called Never Never Land
Speaker 4: right ever And he says to me, like, yo, how
Speaker 4: did you do what you did on this record? The
Speaker 4: way he was explaining it was like scientifically or like
Speaker 4: musically as it relates to like musical theory, it ain't
Speaker 4: supposed to be able to be done or feel like
Speaker 4: the way it feels. Like the timing and just like
Speaker 4: my choice of where I laid the vocal and what
Speaker 4: I heard over top of it, And I thought I
Speaker 4: was the ship until I set out to remake these
Speaker 4: songs and like start listening to the timing and wanting
Speaker 4: to honor still making it mine, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: and breathing life into it right in hopes that you
Speaker 4: know it'll be received. How that was received, But it
Speaker 4: just man the timing and then the relevancy more importantly
Speaker 4: of where they've been, meaning you know, our parents and
Speaker 4: our grandparents and where we y are now and at
Speaker 4: the stage we were when I we made these songs,
Speaker 4: you know, at the stage of where we were when
Speaker 4: I set out to do my version of a uh
Speaker 4: you know, of a socially conscious record, and you know,
Speaker 4: like like bulletproof, you know, and how I fought for that.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that there are certain things that there are
Speaker 4: certain records that are out there that shouldn't be touched.
Speaker 4: And then I think that there's certain things that are
Speaker 4: like left behind for us to make sure that we
Speaker 4: breathe life into them so that it's never a race
Speaker 4: from history.
Speaker 1: When do you think the project will be finished?
Speaker 4: The project is finished the right time. It's going to
Speaker 4: be coming out on bbe okay and I'm in it
Speaker 4: talks about some visual stuff with Cootie and cheek, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So, what was the.
Speaker 2: Journey that led to you getting a record deal on Jive?
Speaker 2: Like getting inside the system.
Speaker 3: I always wanted to be a artist, you know.
Speaker 4: I always found myself wanting to be part of things, right,
Speaker 4: So I did different groups and things that was part
Speaker 4: of they swing.
Speaker 3: All in the Mind was the first group.
Speaker 4: All in the Mind was the first group that was
Speaker 4: kind of formed out of like comp and State University.
Speaker 4: So we're taking you back to like nineteen ninety three
Speaker 4: and like going to Coppin and ninety three summer.
Speaker 1: Of ninety three. Where'd you go to high school?
Speaker 3: I went to High Point in Beltsville, Maryland.
Speaker 2: You're the first DC person that I know with talent
Speaker 2: that didn't say Duke Ellington, Oh wow, yeah, did you
Speaker 2: want to go there?
Speaker 1: Or like, were you pursuing music in high school?
Speaker 3: I totally didn't.
Speaker 1: Wait, you didn't have what did you realize we had
Speaker 1: a voice? I was.
Speaker 4: I realized I had a voice in the elementary school.
Speaker 4: But I was just you know, there was ever things
Speaker 4: going on. Life was life, and I was very shy,
Speaker 4: you know, stand offish, and I mean, of course like
Speaker 4: once I'm like, man, if I know what I know now,
Speaker 4: and I would been singing in high school. So no church,
Speaker 4: no little church background, but definitely had the voice. I
Speaker 4: remember I remember distinctly being sixth grade, Calventon Elementary. Don't
Speaker 4: remember the music teacher's name, but we were having one
Speaker 4: on one she was going up the scales, and she
Speaker 4: just was like, Yo, your voice, you're special.
Speaker 1: You're gonna do something one day. But did your family
Speaker 1: know you other voice?
Speaker 4: Nah? When I when I when I told my dad
Speaker 4: and my mom, you know, first year of college that
Speaker 4: I'm dropping out after three semesters, They was like, you're
Speaker 4: doing what?
Speaker 3: Like what like you're going to do music?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: Do we have the same story, Like you're gonna do what?
Speaker 4: I mean, it was a whole thing, Like I couldn't
Speaker 4: you know, it was a whole thing, dude. I retreated
Speaker 4: to grandma's. Grandma, Yeah, Grandma's gonna God blessed her soul.
Speaker 4: But that you know, I didn't. And I slept on
Speaker 4: some couches too, because you know, I grew Grandma's you
Speaker 4: know what I mean?
Speaker 1: You know this audience knews.
Speaker 2: The inside joke is my dad didn't know about the
Speaker 2: Roots until our second album.
Speaker 1: Wow do you want more? Because look, my dad was
Speaker 1: like a singer. I think we've had the same Yeah.
Speaker 2: Man, it's crazy that we're just chopping it up now
Speaker 2: after like being in circles.
Speaker 4: But so I drop out in the process of like
Speaker 4: being there for three years. I befriend people in because
Speaker 4: I was going to Coppon State. So I'm in Baltimore City,
Speaker 4: so I'm in the war working baker. I'm like spending
Speaker 4: time like a couple of blocks down from the school,
Speaker 4: and had a buddy that wrapped and we would we
Speaker 4: had to make shift studio.
Speaker 3: We're doing the tricks with the.
Speaker 4: Tapes and just all the things that drop out.
Speaker 3: Moved back to Grandma's in Hyattsville.
Speaker 4: Always was a kid though in high school that would
Speaker 4: read the credits and stuff.
Speaker 3: So I'm singing around the house and that type of thing.
Speaker 4: So I'm a huge fan of Chuckie Thompson, like I like,
Speaker 4: and then when I found out he was from DC,
Speaker 4: I'm like, I gotta, I gotta. I got to find
Speaker 4: him right all right, and ended up infiltrating chuck Life.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: There was some girls I used to hang out with
Speaker 2: that went to Howard University.
Speaker 1: They went, you know, they went to.
Speaker 3: Howard McDonald, right. They had a crib at this time.
Speaker 4: By Dude's album just hits, right, So yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 4: her album just hits. That's like the whole Like I'm
Speaker 4: kind of hanging out this crib. One of the girls
Speaker 4: happens to work as an intern at Chuck Life at
Speaker 4: Chucky Studio, which he has in Southeast at the time,
Speaker 4: and I get over there one day and never Guru
Speaker 4: was there at the time, Young and Google's there kind
Speaker 4: of you know Tracy Leaves popping Nonchalant early in my
Speaker 4: you know, songwriting career, and like Nam was one of
Speaker 4: those people who took an interest in me.
Speaker 3: I used to roll with not like heavy shout out
Speaker 3: to Nonchalant.
Speaker 4: We just kind of just like we like reached out
Speaker 4: recently on like social media. But she was just like
Speaker 4: somebody was just like always in my corner, would pick
Speaker 4: me up and dropped me off, and she had access
Speaker 4: to studios, let me come in there and record, and
Speaker 4: but I was over there where Chucky was at and
Speaker 4: just like just engulfed myself in that situation.
Speaker 2: How were you trying to enter the game as a
Speaker 2: songwriter as a singer.
Speaker 4: As a songwriter first to then get in there as
Speaker 4: the singer, right, gotcha?
Speaker 3: Always part of different little quirky groups and things.
Speaker 4: And then I went to a place called bar Nunne
Speaker 4: one night, okay, and bar nunn changed my life because
Speaker 4: that's where I started to go in bar None was
Speaker 4: our version of Black Lily, but it happened like once
Speaker 4: a week, okay, right, and bar none. The list was
Speaker 4: ran by Roquel rob Brown, who's a poet who I
Speaker 4: reconnected with Sacksville, Philly, and I reconnected with her a
Speaker 4: few years back and she's, you know, to to say, hey,
Speaker 4: like you need to do your first album, and you
Speaker 4: know he's often doing her thing now, right, Yeah, So
Speaker 4: I do part none. I end up winning this contest.
Speaker 4: In the process, I've become part of a group called
Speaker 4: Urban AF thirty one, which was like we put out
Speaker 4: that was my first official album. It's a project out
Speaker 4: called The Healing that You Can Find, and then we
Speaker 4: did a follow up project called The Antidote. I connect
Speaker 4: with Hilton Felton's son, w Ellington Felton, you know West.
Speaker 4: Some of us call him dub l. He has many
Speaker 4: many attributes. We form a group called The Crossroad. So
Speaker 4: now I'm in like two groups in DC. I'm in
Speaker 4: the Urban AF thirty one is like DC Wu Tang
Speaker 4: kind of vibes, but very high level socially conscious. It's
Speaker 4: like a fusion of like Dad preis Wu Tang and
Speaker 4: I'm like the only singer and these guys which is
Speaker 4: some of the members of that group. They went on
Speaker 4: to be a man shout out to why you Diamond?
Speaker 4: Yeah is that Yeah? So he's one of the original
Speaker 4: members of They had their whole crew called the Remains
Speaker 4: Super Talented man. It's just you know, we didn't have
Speaker 4: the outlets in the city. Bar None is another place
Speaker 4: where I met. Two guys pulled up on me one
Speaker 4: night by the name of keV.
Speaker 1: Brown and Cy Young, legendary keV Brown.
Speaker 4: So keV Brown and so Young put me to the
Speaker 4: sign and say, hey, we want to take to Philly
Speaker 4: to meet DJ Jazz Jeff.
Speaker 1: That's tally made.
Speaker 4: And now now, prior to that, I got so englfed
Speaker 4: in the open mic scene. I would do none on
Speaker 4: Monday nights. I would do warm Wednesdays in Baltimore. And
Speaker 4: then I found out about Black Lily, so I'd come
Speaker 4: to Black Lily because I feel like Black Lily was
Speaker 4: like once a month or I could only get out there.
Speaker 3: Once a month.
Speaker 2: No, we were weekly, but it was something that was
Speaker 2: it was like, well, there was a New York one
Speaker 2: and a Philly one. I was coming to the Philly
Speaker 2: one at the five Spot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it was just like, oh man, it was like, hey, okay,
Speaker 4: so let me I want your perspective this all right.
Speaker 1: This is you're saying this, yes.
Speaker 2: Because for me this two Faces of Black Lily pre
Speaker 2: things fall apart Black Lily, which was basically in my crib.
Speaker 1: And yeah, pretty much every one in that room eventually
Speaker 1: got a record record deal. Like you know, Jasmine was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: nine years old. Hell's this nine year old game my crib.
Speaker 2: And you know, by the time Malik started bringing beans
Speaker 2: in them around like my bucks, burning beadies on my
Speaker 2: couch and whatever, and beer on the floor whatever, Like
Speaker 2: I was like.
Speaker 1: Get out.
Speaker 2: So then that's how once it came to the five spot,
Speaker 2: we had to go on tour and just basically fund it.
Speaker 1: But occasionally if we're home.
Speaker 2: Or whatever, play a song or two whatever, just to
Speaker 2: you know, keep up appearances. But I mean, for the
Speaker 2: outsider coming in, is this like a game of double
Speaker 2: Dutch in which you're trying to figure out it was
Speaker 2: like game with Thrones?
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me it was. Everything was cutthroat.
Speaker 2: Oh man.
Speaker 4: It was just like, first of all, it's very intimidating
Speaker 4: to be out of your element, right, I'm like jumping
Speaker 4: on the Amtrak hiding in the restroom to get.
Speaker 1: Everyone, hides in the restaurant.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean ship man, That's how he did it.
Speaker 4: You know, you did what you had to do. And
Speaker 4: then you know, finding my you know, I'm in I'm
Speaker 4: out of my element. I'm in Philadelphia, like you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. But I found the spot. This is
Speaker 4: a nostalgic spot. Then the getting in and then and
Speaker 4: just the vibe. But like I think I might have
Speaker 4: got on the mic once or twice, but it would
Speaker 4: be like at the end people walking now like like
Speaker 4: who are you? Like? But it was, oh, every time
Speaker 4: I went, it was like something nostalgic happening. And it
Speaker 4: was like and then and then if you're lucky you come.
Speaker 4: I come on a night like you're there, or like
Speaker 4: some of the guys from the band are actually there,
Speaker 4: or like I remember hearing Jasmine there for the first time.
Speaker 4: I want to say, like she was like how did
Speaker 4: she even get in the club?
Speaker 2: She used to sleep in the back of the car
Speaker 2: with her dad, and it's time for her to do
Speaker 2: her three songs?
Speaker 3: And yeah, and then like how does how does this?
Speaker 3: Who is this little girl?
Speaker 4: And how would she who ends up being my label
Speaker 4: mate later on Jive Records, and like, you know, I
Speaker 4: knew her mom, her first manager.
Speaker 2: It was just dope.
Speaker 4: Like I remember seeing Kendrick there for the first time.
Speaker 4: It was a lot of talent man and you know, again,
Speaker 4: I was one of those guys that was like reading
Speaker 4: the credits. I was a Roots fan anyway, so I'm
Speaker 4: like it was it was a vibe, you know, so
Speaker 4: when you're there, are you like, who do I connect
Speaker 4: with to get to the next time.
Speaker 3: I'm totally just trying to figure it out.
Speaker 2: It was a it was a meat market because literally,
Speaker 2: once it really started to catch on, like it started
Speaker 2: getting ridiculous where like one night, like Janet would come
Speaker 2: with her musical director, Yeah, and then we come back
Speaker 2: the next week and like, oh, seven musicians aren't here,
Speaker 2: and then someone else comes, yeah, and they take three
Speaker 2: musicians yeah, Mary J. Block Like literally started becoming like
Speaker 2: almost a market.
Speaker 4: So what ended up happening was because I had the
Speaker 4: Urban AF thing, Urban AF thirty one thing going on
Speaker 4: that started to kind of like really start thanks to
Speaker 4: d Chase and started get popping and move around doing colleges,
Speaker 4: and my end for Philly was Jen Bragg and what's
Speaker 4: the brother her part They to do a lot of parties.
Speaker 4: It was Jen and uh ah man, forgive me forgiving
Speaker 4: a name. That's where I started to kind of like
Speaker 4: learn like.
Speaker 1: Philly, you know what I mean. And because actually I
Speaker 1: thought you were from Philly.
Speaker 2: Nah.
Speaker 4: I was going to Philly and Baltimore. And like I said,
Speaker 4: I was doing that circuit so much Monday's bar none
Speaker 4: Wednesdays Wednesdays in Baltimore and Philly that people started to
Speaker 4: think that I was from Philly. People thought that I
Speaker 4: lived in Baltimore. But when I met keV Brown and
Speaker 4: Cy Young that night and they took me to Jeff Morpheus,
Speaker 4: Jeff Morpheus Professor X, you know, like that's.
Speaker 1: Where it all opened up, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: That's where he had the studio for Fourth Street and
Speaker 4: you know all the rooms going. That's where I met
Speaker 4: Eric Roberson for the first time. You know, he has
Speaker 4: this story he tells where he feels like I was
Speaker 4: writing the songs with the two pins, but I didn't
Speaker 4: use a pen.
Speaker 3: I was just doing everything off the brain, and.
Speaker 2: It was just it was like a kid.
Speaker 4: It's just a kid in a candy store, you know,
Speaker 4: at that point, I haven't physically sat down and written
Speaker 4: a song pinned the paper in a very in decades.
Speaker 2: That's literally was my next question. I was like, what
Speaker 2: is your songwriting process? Yeah, it's just to sit there
Speaker 2: and channel with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's improvisational, like I sit there and it's having
Speaker 4: a great engineer, you know, shout out the face.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I prefer to like record one place or you know,
Speaker 4: or I've grown into the understanding like the vibe is
Speaker 4: in you. You should be able to you know, if
Speaker 4: you have people that are there in the room that
Speaker 4: are professional and know what to do, the vibe is
Speaker 4: in you. So I'll meet an engineer in LA and
Speaker 4: like insane, Okay, like I'm he reminds me of my engineer,
Speaker 4: and we'll lock in and then when I need to
Speaker 4: do things in LA, I'm known for doing recording after
Speaker 4: concerts and going to the studio and.
Speaker 1: And vibing out right.
Speaker 4: And but yeah, my process is very improvisational. I would
Speaker 4: describe it as like a you know, it's like a download.
Speaker 4: You know, it doesn't necessarily come I've heard Al Green,
Speaker 4: I think describe it the same way, where it doesn't
Speaker 4: come from me. But through me, and I just I
Speaker 4: honor it. To borrow a quote from Eric robertson, you know,
Speaker 4: I know that every time I write a song, I
Speaker 4: know that God is real.
Speaker 3: Is this, you know, the Creator is as a real.
Speaker 4: Thing, and it makes you really want to respect the
Speaker 4: gift even more so to make sure that you use
Speaker 4: it for the right reasons.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So there's a real I forget what song that Stevie
Speaker 2: Wonder is doing, but because he doesn't traditionally write lyrics
Speaker 2: down or whatever, usually when he's tracking, so you listen
Speaker 2: to like some of those reels or whatever, he'll get
Speaker 2: to the end of the song and then it's always like,
Speaker 2: oh garyl keep the tape rolling, and he'll just sit
Speaker 2: there and he'll be on the roads, and then suddenly
Speaker 2: you'll hear things like.
Speaker 1: You got it, you got that real quick.
Speaker 3: Another one comes to me.
Speaker 2: You always hear like a sparkling like keep the tape on,
Speaker 2: I got an idea like it's But I admire that
Speaker 2: process more than anything because and I do think that
Speaker 2: writing on the spot is probably the most honest way
Speaker 2: to channel what you feel. So you'll say that eighty
Speaker 2: ninety percent of the time it's yeah, ninety nine percent.
Speaker 4: You know, there's records where different stages of my career
Speaker 4: with somebody delivered me a record like a neo record
Speaker 4: and that you know that I love and traditional. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm like, I want to cut this, you know, I
Speaker 4: mean right, but and even then, like you know, they're
Speaker 4: not there, so I got to do it off the
Speaker 4: ear and and and figure it out.
Speaker 2: That said, because I think anyone else would have just
Speaker 2: chosen the number ten. How hard was it to construct
Speaker 2: the twenty.
Speaker 1: Lessons of Love? Then?
Speaker 2: What in terms of well, I mean, because the thing
Speaker 2: is is that you're giving twenty lessons of love. But oh,
Speaker 2: it was just a concept thing.
Speaker 4: So twenty Lessons of Love came about, you know, shout
Speaker 4: out to my business partner, Tone Walters back and forth
Speaker 4: talking and you.
Speaker 1: Know, I know too in a long time, you know.
Speaker 4: He Groove Gumbo is where we first like met, right,
Speaker 4: and we were bouncing ideas for the tour, and he
Speaker 4: said at this point, I'm like, you know, I'm at
Speaker 4: a stage in my life where I like input and
Speaker 4: I've realized you can't do it all and figure out everything, right,
Speaker 4: So he's like, yo, twenty lessons of love and I
Speaker 4: was like, yo, I love that because you know, he
Speaker 4: was coming off the twenty year anniversary of The Love Experience. Yes,
Speaker 4: and I said, the only thing is missing is not
Speaker 4: it's not there's no record.
Speaker 1: I got to do that.
Speaker 3: That's an ill record right there, you know. And that's
Speaker 3: how it happens.
Speaker 4: Once that right one thing, Now, Nah, once that happens,
Speaker 4: I'm a hell been on getting it done. So I
Speaker 4: immediately called my man KP from the colleagues, who's in Atlanta,
Speaker 4: and said, Hey, I wanted to feel like this, you know,
Speaker 4: I want to honor I feel like the nineties for
Speaker 4: R and B was the best, one of the best
Speaker 4: errors ever. Maybe it's just because that's where I you know,
Speaker 4: I feel like that birthed me, It raised me, you know,
Speaker 4: so many ways, right, And I told him what I
Speaker 4: wanted it to feel like, and he sent me the track.
Speaker 4: And you know, we communicate well together musically, so he
Speaker 4: sends me the track, and like once he sent it,
Speaker 4: I went to the studio and just like it just
Speaker 4: it really came out. I probably cut that record in
Speaker 4: like three four hours and then like revisited, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, And then I'll be on to the
Speaker 4: next thing, or you know, I'm definitely in a space
Speaker 4: of like being a perfectionist at what I do now,
Speaker 4: where you know, I can walk away from it and
Speaker 4: go back to it and hear it, and you know,
Speaker 4: try different things, and you know, ask myself what's missing
Speaker 4: or what's too much?
Speaker 1: Right? Great?
Speaker 2: Good at editing, Oh yeah for sure, Yeah that's what
Speaker 2: where I'm weak.
Speaker 1: I got to have everything but the kitchen sinking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're so dense, yeah yeah, yeah, so so so
Speaker 4: and just you know, and just understanding sound and where
Speaker 4: I am as where I've grown and continue to grow
Speaker 4: as a vocalist and as a writer. But even like
Speaker 4: back when I really started locking in with Jeff before
Speaker 4: the deal at Jive, I just realized that how important
Speaker 4: time is, and it's nothing. There's no worse feeling than
Speaker 4: being an artist and wanting to be in the studio
Speaker 4: and knowing you have to leave because your time is up.
Speaker 3: Right, you know what I mean? Like that right there?
Speaker 4: So I always told myself and have myself had it
Speaker 4: in my mind that like whenever the opportunity presents itself,
Speaker 4: that doesn't have to be like that, that I'll just
Speaker 4: be in there as much as I want, you know,
Speaker 4: so by the time, you know, when I got to
Speaker 4: deal with Job Records back in two thousand and you're like, I.
Speaker 1: Did that right.
Speaker 3: I'm just finishing answering your question when I got.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 4: So when I got the deal back in two thousand
Speaker 4: and two, I had so much going on Urban after
Speaker 4: thirty one, the Crossroads with West Felton. At that stage,
Speaker 4: the Magnificent had already came out from meeting Jazzy Jeff,
Speaker 4: I met Kenny and Louis for the first time. We
Speaker 4: were working on V's album at the time.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Jeff sent me out on a mission to go work
Speaker 4: with Kenny to write a record for V. It was
Speaker 4: like a house record that I did and went to
Speaker 4: just make, you know, just kind of produce the vocal
Speaker 4: on it. And then I'm like working with V and
Speaker 4: I'm like, man, he don't need me to do nothing.
Speaker 1: Is just dope, right.
Speaker 2: And Kenny, that's my big bro, Like we got what
Speaker 2: was it like working with Kenny. He's so legendary.
Speaker 4: Kenny and his guys at the time diego with them.
Speaker 4: Kenny was the first person to show me my worth
Speaker 4: and value. Okay, as an artist and where I went
Speaker 4: to go. You know, I went out there to go
Speaker 4: do the thing that Jeff sent me out there to do.
Speaker 4: And then he was like blown away and was just like, yo, yo,
Speaker 4: you just did that at the top of your head
Speaker 4: and da da da da, and he was like yo.
Speaker 4: He pulled up some stuff and was like, yo, can
Speaker 4: you I think it was kind of like let me
Speaker 4: see what you do with this.
Speaker 3: And it was like oh, and I was like boom,
Speaker 3: and I was like you got another one?
Speaker 2: And then you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And then we started it and I started to go
Speaker 4: back and forth and do things. And the first the
Speaker 4: thing I did for him I came up with it
Speaker 4: was but he was like, yo, how much you need
Speaker 4: for this or whatever? And I probably was like give
Speaker 4: me like two three hundred or whatever. And Kenny was
Speaker 4: like nah be he was like and he set me
Speaker 4: down and the like, I feel like he was the
Speaker 4: first one, one of the first to it was like
Speaker 4: three maybe three.
Speaker 1: Four five bands.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: I ain't never seen that, and I ain't never had
Speaker 4: nobody like sit me down and like and it wasn't
Speaker 4: like I'm giving you three four bands and I'm finna
Speaker 4: take advantage of you or hey, along with just three
Speaker 4: four bands, I need you to sign this paperwork right here,
Speaker 4: and they taking half of your publishing. And just like
Speaker 4: it was, it was just never no weird business. It
Speaker 4: was just like big homie brotherhood love and the same
Speaker 4: thing with Jeff, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: And why got all this going on?
Speaker 4: I still got managers down and I have already been
Speaker 4: on the road and left and quit from working with genuine.
Speaker 4: Genuine was my first introduction to the industry in terms
Speaker 4: of superstar status, like and this.
Speaker 1: Is a songwriting with them or singing background, singing.
Speaker 4: Background, okay, you know which he had this? I met
Speaker 4: Cliff and Jerry. So because I was still in DC
Speaker 4: and I still was doing things, I still was working
Speaker 4: on wanting to be that independent artist. But there's all
Speaker 4: these part of different things. I just had multiple things
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 2: So what was that like in your version of twenty
Speaker 2: Feet from Stardoms? So do you learn?
Speaker 4: So I got these managers, is in my ear who
Speaker 4: who I'm loyal to at this point? And they and
Speaker 4: they you know, and they're actively shopping a record deal
Speaker 4: for me with these records that I've done with Jeff
Speaker 4: Right Records, I've done with them right stuff I've done
Speaker 4: with Kenny Right. But they're also kind of like probably
Speaker 4: on pins and needles because they've had other artists that
Speaker 4: they've worked with who are not loyal, Like I.
Speaker 2: Am gotcha, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: So I'm going, I'm going like so I think I'm
Speaker 4: probably you know, maybe every time I go to Philly
Speaker 4: out of New York, they don't know if I'm going
Speaker 4: to you know, it gets a little convoluted.
Speaker 1: I got all this going on.
Speaker 4: And what are you doing with the you know, you're
Speaker 4: doing the head wrap stuff? It's the Urban A thirty
Speaker 4: one and you know heving help us all.
Speaker 2: And you know, for us it's always the backpack versus
Speaker 2: ya in commercial so.
Speaker 4: And my thing it's like I do it, and my
Speaker 4: thing is like I do it all. You know, I
Speaker 4: had to figure it out.
Speaker 2: You know, are they looking down on head wrapping? Like
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I mean, I'm gonna say they're looking
Speaker 2: down on it.
Speaker 4: It's just like it's that era where that's where you know,
Speaker 4: I think me and West with the Crossroads was made
Speaker 4: us so unique is that you know we would come
Speaker 4: up with different turn jiggy conscious or you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. It's like, you know what I'm like, Why
Speaker 4: can't I have my v's on and my you know,
Speaker 4: my role like that my mama gave me.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Why can't I have a love for R and B
Speaker 4: the same way that I do for soul music right
Speaker 4: or rock? And you know when you listen to my
Speaker 4: first album, it's a fusion of a lot of different things.
Speaker 3: It's kind of fast forwarding.
Speaker 4: I knew that the love experience could be received a
Speaker 4: lot of different ways and it could be confusing. And
Speaker 4: that's where really the R and B Hippie Do Soul
Speaker 4: rock Star title came from. And they when people I
Speaker 4: came up with that because I knew that if I
Speaker 4: couldn't explain it or formulated into words, and I didn't
Speaker 4: just want to be like neo soul like I knew
Speaker 4: where that came from. And it was nothing wrong with that, right,
Speaker 4: but I knew that that was like I come from
Speaker 4: an era of like and grew up like where you
Speaker 4: don't bite somebody's titles or you know what I'm saying
Speaker 4: phrases you know or sound right. So I feel like
Speaker 4: there was a time period with that started. I'm not
Speaker 4: gonna say who I feel like started that, but.
Speaker 3: It was that was it, But it was.
Speaker 4: And I sample things too, So I love sampling, right,
Speaker 4: But there's nothing more dope and original than like original music,
Speaker 4: gotcha right? And I was drawn to both, right, So
Speaker 4: I figured out a way to diffuse it too. So
Speaker 4: being on the road with like Genuine, which is more
Speaker 4: like a conventional R and B but also futuristic. You
Speaker 4: gotta remember G's first two three albums like he was
Speaker 4: part of He was part of a movement that changed
Speaker 4: music sonically. That don't happen every day, right, that don't
Speaker 4: happen every decade. Yeah, you know what I mean. So
Speaker 4: like that whole Missy player, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: So I was getting I was in the best of
Speaker 4: worlds because I get to be kind of like underneath
Speaker 4: that experience that and sing the songs that you know
Speaker 4: that I loved singing, and you know that I was.
Speaker 3: I was a genu Wine fan when I got the gig,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 4: And you know, he don't get the credit and the
Speaker 4: roses and his prom and I think he was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: all the all them cats was like wanted to beg
Speaker 4: or if they never said it or whatever, but like
Speaker 4: before there was a Chris Brown, before there was you know,
Speaker 4: and and while there was this they were like, but
Speaker 4: G was like that guy, like I was. I was
Speaker 4: there before differences, I was there after. I was there
Speaker 4: you know when before he met so late after like
Speaker 4: on tour with him with Janet Jackson and Backstreet Boys
Speaker 4: and in sync, Like what's bigger at the time?
Speaker 1: What was that like?
Speaker 3: Oh, it was crazy.
Speaker 4: It was crazy, like it was it was It was
Speaker 4: like it let me know that I had to quit
Speaker 4: because I could. I had to make a decision because
Speaker 4: I would you know, people give their lives to artists,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like, you know a lot
Speaker 4: of times we don't look at the fact that the
Speaker 4: people who helped be helped shape it right. And so
Speaker 4: although I enjoyed that and I loved that, I remember
Speaker 4: distinctly like the last gig I did was in Vegas,
Speaker 4: and I made a decision on that ride back that
Speaker 4: like I wanted to be, I wanted more. I knew
Speaker 4: that it was out there was something out there, There
Speaker 4: was a driving force still was out there for me.
Speaker 1: A lot of people would get stuck. We comforted living and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I was actively, you know, always coming back
Speaker 4: and forth to New York and doing showcases and things
Speaker 4: like that, and Cliff Jones Jerry Vonn shout out to
Speaker 4: Cliff and Jerry Cliff was shopping songs and shopping artists.
Speaker 3: He went into Job Records to shop.
Speaker 4: A totally different artist that he was hell bent on
Speaker 4: getting in the record deal for and played a couple
Speaker 4: of my records and they were like, what's that?
Speaker 2: Go back to that, who's that whatever?
Speaker 4: And then you know, they started doing their homework and
Speaker 4: I had a buzz and we got They said they
Speaker 4: wanted me to come to Jive Records to do a showcase,
Speaker 4: which was supposed to be for fifteen minutes and it
Speaker 4: ended up being like an hour and a half that
Speaker 4: I performed and yikes, they were, you know, this is
Speaker 4: this is like this is right after like the whole
Speaker 4: r Kelly and the Olympics and the tape and you
Speaker 4: know what I mean, And this is kind of the
Speaker 4: kind of like everybody's wasn't there but everybody Pete at
Speaker 4: THEIA Parry might have.
Speaker 2: But no, no, no, I mean physically there was He's still
Speaker 2: it was oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: So I remember feeling like though in the process, you know, Jeff,
Speaker 4: this was Jeff's old label though, right, and I feel
Speaker 4: like I was concerned about it, like sucking up the relationship,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: I had a lot of respect for him.
Speaker 4: He told me to What I don't think he knew
Speaker 4: was that he had equipped me for to kind of
Speaker 4: go in there to know what I needed to do.
Speaker 4: So I already knew I was going to be there
Speaker 4: for a good time, not a long time, gotcha, right,
Speaker 4: And you know high Sight twenty twenty, I was, you know,
Speaker 4: I was only I did my first deal in two
Speaker 4: thousand and two. The album came out in two thousand
Speaker 4: and five. That right there, that three year span showed
Speaker 4: me everything I needed to see to know. Okay, because
Speaker 4: you get the deal and then you get in the
Speaker 4: building and then you realize, like, oh then it starts.
Speaker 4: This is just the this is just the start.
Speaker 2: Once you knew you were getting a deal, how long
Speaker 2: was it before you realized, Okay, now this ship is real.
Speaker 2: Because there was a point where for us, you know,
Speaker 2: we got our advanced and started acting.
Speaker 3: It was real when I got the advance.
Speaker 4: But I got the advanced, and I ain't tell nobody
Speaker 4: first move I made. Somebody put me on the Tarry
Speaker 4: Reid hmm. And I got with Terry Read and I
Speaker 4: put the money up or whatever. But then, but what
Speaker 4: I would do, though, is I would always go to
Speaker 4: the like I was. I had that club, like going
Speaker 4: to the club, and like I started and started to
Speaker 4: deal with trying to dibble and dabbling bottle service and
Speaker 4: how fast were you broken? Oh man, nah, it ain't
Speaker 4: get not because I did have some put up over
Speaker 4: there with Terry, like it ain't you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Like I was able to hold on to what I
Speaker 4: got for the you know, a couple of years. But
Speaker 4: it was just it was, you know, I had a
Speaker 4: I had a little green camera ninety six camera that
Speaker 4: I bought. I didn't like, I didn't realize, like you know,
Speaker 4: back then, I really had to. I had a financial literacy,
Speaker 4: so I didn't know about you know, the taxes and
Speaker 4: all like you know, and or to get the car,
Speaker 4: like I remember Cliff and Jerry telling me like man,
Speaker 4: you gotta you gotta you can't be riding around here
Speaker 4: and that you gotta look you gotta look the part,
Speaker 4: you know what I'm saying. And that's when I went
Speaker 4: and got like a truck, like we got my avalanche.
Speaker 4: But like that three year span out went through two
Speaker 4: mergers and one selling of the company, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean. So just just that boom that happens right
Speaker 4: after I do the deal.
Speaker 3: So you don't even know.
Speaker 4: So you hear the whispers, but you don't know if you're.
Speaker 3: Gonna even stay, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: And if you got to management or teams like keeping
Speaker 4: it funky with you, they gonna let you know, so
Speaker 4: they which they did, you know, and they let me
Speaker 4: know and then and then and then they had a split,
Speaker 4: you know, the managers had to split and not like
Speaker 4: right after you know what I mean, Like I had
Speaker 4: to just choose a side. I had to pick a
Speaker 4: side that which which I had never been in that
Speaker 4: situation before things, you know, learning about loyalty, you know,
Speaker 4: being paranoid about the money and not at how it
Speaker 4: can change you or change the people around you.
Speaker 3: It was like bet on you.
Speaker 4: And that's you know, that's where I started doing the mixtapes,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. And I was the first
Speaker 4: you know, the first singer soul, R and B singer
Speaker 4: to make to make to make mixtapes. And I did
Speaker 4: that because of that's coming back and forth in New
Speaker 4: York seeing what fifty was doing with g Unit, right,
Speaker 4: and that's where I got the whole blueprint, watching fifty
Speaker 4: with g Unit and watching Mike Jones, and I had,
Speaker 4: you know, and the mixtapes with is what you know
Speaker 4: and getting them out to the DJs, and then got
Speaker 4: the burner and burning and burning the tapes and selling
Speaker 4: them out the trunk and out the north face and
Speaker 4: the winter and going in the club.
Speaker 3: It was a period of time. I go in the
Speaker 3: club and like you.
Speaker 4: Got Gilbert's arenas by getting a couple and throwing me
Speaker 4: a stack.
Speaker 3: Real quick, you got you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: I leave the club with like like a dope man,
Speaker 4: like the dope man with you know, five six, you know,
Speaker 4: thousand dollars like and not in in a half an hour,
Speaker 4: I just posts up at the bar and you got
Speaker 4: that value one, you got that value two. I didn't
Speaker 4: realize what I was doing at the time, but I
Speaker 4: was creating my own destiny. I was creating an ownership.
Speaker 4: I was doing album I was doing Street Team promo.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize that, you know, I was providing. It
Speaker 4: was like, you know, merch in its own cool way.
Speaker 3: But I learned that.
Speaker 4: I mean, I learned that from like bar None and
Speaker 4: and like my guy Wes Felton, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: and seeing him have something that was you know, I
Speaker 4: realized early I'm doing open mics. People want to take
Speaker 4: you home with them. Have something that that people can
Speaker 4: that's tangible.
Speaker 2: So that lead me to like at the time when
Speaker 2: I was on a major, like I would have nightmares
Speaker 2: about us getting dropped and no, I'm not going back
Speaker 2: on to my mama, you know that whole thing, which
Speaker 2: I'll say that a lot of that sort of just
Speaker 2: the fear of getting dropped back when you just have
Speaker 2: one thing to do, which you know, now I have options,
Speaker 2: So like I'm now creating from my heart and not
Speaker 2: from out of fear. How liberating did it feel or
Speaker 2: how frightening was it once you were without the backing
Speaker 2: of a major and now you're deciding I'm gonna do
Speaker 2: this on my own as an independent.
Speaker 3: That started in twenty ten, and it was cool. It
Speaker 3: was never no fear factor.
Speaker 4: It was the fact that I already at that stage,
Speaker 4: I already knew I had built something. I had already
Speaker 4: built something prior to getting signed a job.
Speaker 1: Yay, like you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: So you know I mean, I guess that's why I
Speaker 4: worked the way that I work now. I never want
Speaker 4: to go back to that that fear, like it's still lingers,
Speaker 4: like you know what I mean, especially if you don't
Speaker 4: have like the financial literacy and to know, you know,
Speaker 4: it's one thing to make the money, it's another thing
Speaker 4: to know how to you know, be able to touch
Speaker 4: it when you need it. And then you know, wise
Speaker 4: manager once told me, when you make the decision based
Speaker 4: upon money, you're going to always make the wrong decision
Speaker 4: typically you know you know so. But yeah, I feel
Speaker 4: like at that point I had the matrix figured out.
Speaker 3: I got out of my deal. I didn't get dropped.
Speaker 4: I got out of the deal because they didn't want
Speaker 4: to honor the next period that I would have been
Speaker 4: going into, which would have been a seven figure period.
Speaker 1: You know, if you.
Speaker 4: Talk about the advance and then the promo budget and
Speaker 4: the album budget and all the things. And I distinctly
Speaker 4: remember Peter Thea sitting me down and saying like, hey, like,
Speaker 4: we're not selling the records we used to sell it anymore.
Speaker 1: If we got our.
Speaker 4: Hands on you five years prior to when we did,
Speaker 4: you would be huge. You would be a household name
Speaker 4: more than what you are now, Like you would be huge.
Speaker 4: But the reality is people aren't being by records like
Speaker 4: they used to.
Speaker 3: The business model is changing.
Speaker 4: I know we're supposed to do give you this, and
Speaker 4: do this, but did you think you could do an
Speaker 4: album three hundred thousand And I'm sitting across from them,
Speaker 4: like absolutely I could do that. You know, I probably
Speaker 4: just might do the whole album for twenty bands fifty bands,
Speaker 4: and then use a portion of it to get the
Speaker 4: radio record going and you know what I mean, and
Speaker 4: all the things. But it was like, nah, I want
Speaker 4: which I was supposed to give me though, right, like right,
Speaker 4: And it was just that thing like, well, we can't
Speaker 4: do that, so we'll give you to December thirty first, two.
Speaker 3: Thousand and nine to this side.
Speaker 4: But I think I told them, like, I'll give you
Speaker 4: to the side and if it don't play out, then
Speaker 4: I'll go my separate weight.
Speaker 3: I mean, they gave me a release and then you
Speaker 3: know what I.
Speaker 4: Mean, and I think the biggest lesson in that was
Speaker 4: not being prepared and not having a plan, like, well,
Speaker 4: what's gonna be my plan?
Speaker 3: So I kind of like dormant for three years.
Speaker 4: I started doing what was a podcast before it was
Speaker 4: called the podcast where I did the Raheem Devan Show
Speaker 4: every Sunday and that like blew up. But the business
Speaker 4: wasn't right on that and in terms of the monetization
Speaker 4: of it for me. But I sat down with everybody
Speaker 4: from Kendrick Lamar to t I, the Bony James too,
Speaker 4: you know, Marsha came through Spike Lee. I mean like
Speaker 4: it was, it was. It was an incredible time. And
Speaker 4: so now when I see like the podcasting and I'm like, wow, man,
Speaker 4: I was I've been a blueprint for a lot.
Speaker 3: I didn't understand it. It didn't click.
Speaker 4: Until after I left one of those Jazzy Jeff Secret retreats. Yes,
Speaker 4: one of the playlists, Yes, one of I was like
Speaker 4: an early playlist attender, and he has me on this
Speaker 4: my trailer that was staying in in my trailers. Dj
Speaker 4: Z Trip, yeah, the cat who started GoPro and dj Eddie.
Speaker 4: Oh you know how Jeff like labels names that I
Speaker 4: should said the blueprint nice, but I didn't. It ain't
Speaker 4: clicked to like years later, like right, and I started
Speaker 4: thinking about like the innovative stuff that i've you know,
Speaker 4: done or been part of, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: from being you know, doing the mixtapes or you know,
Speaker 4: to having a podcast before the podcast, you know, from
Speaker 4: twenty ten to twenty thirteen. But I needed that time
Speaker 4: to grow, to learn to you know, end up, you know,
Speaker 4: changing management. You know, we all grew the relationship, but
Speaker 4: were still the best of friends and do business. You know,
Speaker 4: I can put them on the business moves now, they
Speaker 4: can put me on the business moves now, but I
Speaker 4: never stopped.
Speaker 2: What's the process now? Okay, so if you're as an independent, yeah,
Speaker 2: what are.
Speaker 1: The new rules?
Speaker 2: What's the new lay of the land as far as
Speaker 2: knowing how to successfully roll out? You know, the thing was,
Speaker 2: for a long time, I still thought you were on
Speaker 2: a major because, like you one of these video of
Speaker 2: rollouts you had was was crazy and I was just
Speaker 2: like damn, like I'm want a major and they're not
Speaker 2: even rolling out like this.
Speaker 1: Maybe you were just in my algorithm like crazy.
Speaker 3: What's the rules? The first rule is you gotta be
Speaker 3: prepared to spend your own bread.
Speaker 4: You gotta you know what I mean, yourself. You gotta
Speaker 4: bet on yourself. You gotta you know, know not. You
Speaker 4: gotta be self contained. You gotta be able to spend
Speaker 4: your own bread, you know, and and and then and
Speaker 4: allow of times to do that. As an independent artist,
Speaker 4: you you may find yourself and you have to be
Speaker 4: uncomfortable in other areas. You gotta have to sacrifice in
Speaker 4: other areas.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: As an ending, you can hire the same team that
Speaker 4: the major's higher. It ain't, but there's so many people
Speaker 4: that they can use for you know, radio promotion, it's
Speaker 4: not so many.
Speaker 1: It's radio still priority to you now.
Speaker 4: Absolutely radio still pays the biggest payout. Radio is relevant.
Speaker 4: Who cares about radio Live Nation? No, who cares about
Speaker 4: radio Black Promoter Collective. And I know this because that's
Speaker 4: where they where they're going to go to do the
Speaker 4: advertisement for the show you ain't popping on the radio
Speaker 4: and they got an ad running for you the radio
Speaker 4: for people to come see you, like, who's going to come?
Speaker 1: Who? You know?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean? Now, do you need radio
Speaker 4: to create a movement? Absolutely not can be you can be.
Speaker 1: You know, if you.
Speaker 4: Look at one of our hometown heroes, Brent Fires for example, right,
Speaker 4: who's from PG County, Right, huge fan of what he's
Speaker 4: done with his movement. If you look at like an
Speaker 4: artist like logic, who I discovered by the way, and
Speaker 4: drop the ball on that right?
Speaker 1: Wait what I was about? Seriously?
Speaker 4: Yeah, explain previous manager still big homie. Jerry Vons reaches out. Well, actually,
Speaker 4: Jerry and my previous partner Dreda Mayor. You know, I
Speaker 4: had a label at one point three since say music
Speaker 4: group say, oh we got this kid, and you know
Speaker 4: at the time, we didn't know he was you know,
Speaker 4: he's a black wizard. Yeah, it was a wizard, right right,
Speaker 4: And and so they're like, we got this white boy
Speaker 4: we want you to meet. And I instantly fell in
Speaker 4: love with him as an artist, like he reminded of me.
Speaker 3: He reminded me.
Speaker 4: Of me so much, like like his passion for it,
Speaker 4: his hunger for it, his humility, you know, not knowing
Speaker 4: how dope he he always knew he was dope, but
Speaker 4: just to see him growing to the confidence. And you know,
Speaker 4: ultimately we didn't sign him to our label because we
Speaker 4: had an artist that we you know, we felt like
Speaker 4: when my partner had an artist that we felt like
Speaker 4: it was too you know, it was it was in
Speaker 4: the same space we'd be you know, yeah, and we
Speaker 4: you know, it wouldn't be fair to our artists, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. But I can wholeheartedly say it.
Speaker 4: It's not the first time I would say it or
Speaker 4: the last that had we done that, it might not
Speaker 4: even pad out for him the way it was supposed
Speaker 4: to play out. It played out how it was supposed
Speaker 4: to play out for him, and I'm like super proud
Speaker 4: of him and happy for him, you know. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I got stories like that for days, you know what
Speaker 4: I mean of like different you know, hey, can you
Speaker 4: pull up to the radio station. We got somebody we
Speaker 4: want you to meet and just kind of like put
Speaker 4: some words of encouragement on them. Looking back on it,
Speaker 4: I could have been involved while a you know what
Speaker 4: I mean, like different things, you know, But again, everybody
Speaker 4: has their their path and the course to take, you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. So I've always taken even now,
Speaker 4: like the big homie approach in terms of like like
Speaker 4: Jazzy Jeff and what Kenny and them have like you know,
Speaker 4: taught me and and you know the Cliff Jones and
Speaker 4: jer like anybody who's ever been like I take the good,
Speaker 4: the bad, the ugly and and and be able to
Speaker 4: apply that to you know, that next artist out there
Speaker 4: that is I want to come up that you know
Speaker 4: that I repost or they I slide in the DM
Speaker 4: just to say, hey, you're dope.
Speaker 2: Who is there an artist right now that we might
Speaker 2: not be aware of that we should be looking out
Speaker 2: for someone that's bubbling under.
Speaker 1: I mean there's so many.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so many. Man, I want to get you
Speaker 2: in trouble because if you name one, like what did
Speaker 2: you No? No?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: I mean of course, like I'm gonna always shout out
Speaker 4: you know my you know people that I work with
Speaker 4: in real time. You know like Yasarah, Who's who's on
Speaker 4: another run right now?
Speaker 2: Grenek?
Speaker 4: You know who put out a project on Grenek. We
Speaker 4: did a project. Chose the collaborators. When you do like
Speaker 4: collaborative records, usually like it's friends, man, it's friendships. Its
Speaker 4: organically happens, you know what I mean. Like I don't
Speaker 4: really push you know what I mean. Shout to Brendla
Speaker 4: McKinney in Houston, Neptune twenty one, Who's Crazy Neptune?
Speaker 3: I introduce you to Neptune.
Speaker 4: When we did the rehearsal for oh okay, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: she's Yeah, she's super dope. She currently lives in Philly,
Speaker 4: but it's originally from you know, from the DC area. Gotcha,
Speaker 4: it's so many man, Kennedy ryne In who I'm a
Speaker 4: super fan, you know. Shout to her and her manager,
Speaker 4: like they get it obviously. You know, I've been following
Speaker 4: and watching Larrussell for a very long time. I started
Speaker 4: using even do biz directed Consumer because of Larussell. Okay, right,
Speaker 4: and you know, yeah, those are the artists. And to
Speaker 4: bring it full circle, like be willing to spend your
Speaker 4: own bread, you know, be frugal about it. You're gonna
Speaker 4: need a team. You know, it's gonna be a lot
Speaker 4: of You're gonna have to work ten times. It's harder, right,
Speaker 4: and understand that we are in a director consumer era now,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean? Like, you know, this is
Speaker 4: an NFC card right here, like on the back, it's
Speaker 4: got like the stats and that's that's you.
Speaker 3: By the way, you can do it? Yeah, I was like,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, you can.
Speaker 4: You tap that to your phone, unlock your phone and
Speaker 4: just tap it and you can pull up literally and
Speaker 4: enjoy the entire album. You know, on even die Biz,
Speaker 4: you know I did. We're approaching like forty thousand mark
Speaker 4: right now on even Do Big is. You know, the
Speaker 4: first three weeks of me putting out the album, from
Speaker 4: three four weeks from February thirteenth into you know, rolling
Speaker 4: over into the you know, the fourth week, I did
Speaker 4: over twenty five thousand Director consumer you know, only a
Speaker 4: little over six hundred fans at the time had supported
Speaker 4: the platform. When we do our roots album, I know
Speaker 4: you guys, when we do our roots album Manifest, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: the Roots featuring Rye. When we do the album, let
Speaker 4: me just say this man, as a diehard, I'll stand
Speaker 4: on this ten toes down. The roots are the are
Speaker 4: the hip hop rolling stones, and we want more music.
Speaker 2: We want more albums. I promise you and.
Speaker 4: You guys would do very well in the director consumer space.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean, y'all would do very well
Speaker 4: the director consumer space. Like you know, it's so many
Speaker 4: things that you can do. You know, I'll give you
Speaker 4: all this one for free. Just do the album and
Speaker 4: just put it on vinyl. Do an album where you
Speaker 4: can only get it on vinyl, like every this should
Speaker 4: be doing. I'm going to do it. Do it, run
Speaker 4: with it. Can everybody can do it? Like you know
Speaker 4: what I mean?
Speaker 2: Like Vinyl is back, take Cassetta back.
Speaker 1: Yes they are.
Speaker 2: They just did it.
Speaker 4: Vinyl just did a billion dollar evaluation this year, like
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Like just in Vinyl, like
Speaker 4: if I never went away though, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm just finding I just ordered a batch of heavy
Speaker 4: you know, CDs as you know, and recently and bought
Speaker 4: burners and all the things right and disc Makers, which
Speaker 4: is right there, and what's like right outside Philly. They've
Speaker 4: been in business for eighty years. I get on the
Speaker 4: phone and get to talking to the guy on the
Speaker 4: phone and he's like, yeah, I've been here.
Speaker 1: I've been here.
Speaker 3: He's been there longer than I've been on job, you know, like.
Speaker 2: He's been there before.
Speaker 4: I was with Job Records, right of us, and I
Speaker 4: said and I said, I said, hey, are you seeing
Speaker 4: a resurgence? And he was like in CDs and he
Speaker 4: was like yeah, I said, I'm thinking it's like right now.
Speaker 3: He's like, oh no, it started during COVID.
Speaker 4: We had to literally make space and create another room
Speaker 4: where we could to be able to do with the
Speaker 4: supply and demand of.
Speaker 2: CD CD collecting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, CDs are I just yo, it's crazy.
Speaker 4: I just did a show prior to going, you know,
Speaker 4: last one of the last shows I did.
Speaker 3: It was the last show I did for twenty Lessons
Speaker 3: of Love tour in Augusta.
Speaker 4: And literally I was the headliner, so I only had
Speaker 4: like this very small window of time to do meet
Speaker 4: and greet like literally five to ten minutes, and we
Speaker 4: did like six hundred dollars in like CDs like that quick.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, ah, man, if we was out.
Speaker 2: Here for a good hour, yep, oh, it'd.
Speaker 4: Been crazy, you know. And cassettes. This project is out
Speaker 4: right now. Quad Storm lover to may own dm me
Speaker 4: if you want, I'll send you personally, send you the
Speaker 4: link all right on Instagram, Uh, Facebook, hit me up.
Speaker 4: That's that's my version of j Cole being outside, right, Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm outside digitally.
Speaker 2: I mean I'm in that. I'm I'm in the DMS.
Speaker 2: I'm heavy, you know what I mean. Oh, I mean
Speaker 2: you talked about CDs having a resurgence during COVID twenty
Speaker 2: twenty was definitely a Mason Dixon line if you will. Yeah,
Speaker 2: of life lessons, we either that's involved or devaulved.
Speaker 1: What did you learn in twenty twenty?
Speaker 4: That's where director consumer began, right, I learned to stay
Speaker 4: ready so you don't have to get ready.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 4: I did WRINT parties. I did mortgage parties during you
Speaker 4: did Good Times WRINT parties. But I did online mortgage
Speaker 4: parties during COVID, you know what I mean? That was
Speaker 4: my stage it it was it was a platform called
Speaker 4: stage it okay, and I found out about Yeah, I
Speaker 4: would do it. I would literally do a concert on
Speaker 4: stage it. It still exists agent dot com.
Speaker 2: You can go there.
Speaker 4: You can literally set up in here, put a concert
Speaker 4: up on stage and set a date. They can pre
Speaker 4: sell tickets the whole thing and do a concert and
Speaker 4: you know, be safe and not have to worry about contact.
Speaker 3: That was you know back then, that was the thing.
Speaker 1: The first time you did the rollout, Like what was that? Like?
Speaker 4: I mean, it's always a nervousness of like, is anybody
Speaker 4: going to like trust the process of this? And then
Speaker 4: you start seeing people buy tickets and then you know,
Speaker 4: you do you know I'm in there doing everything myself
Speaker 4: because it's COVID, so I'm you know, I'm like down
Speaker 4: to the you know, troubleshooting they got, I got somebody
Speaker 4: on the phone. I'm doing the whole thing, and then
Speaker 4: it's a countdown the show's about to start, and then
Speaker 4: boom and then I'm.
Speaker 3: Like ticking the tracks.
Speaker 4: And I would do that like once a month, and
Speaker 4: it was like, you know, it's my sanity.
Speaker 1: And are they're giving you live feedback as yeah, you're there.
Speaker 3: In the chat. They can tip. It's a tip, they
Speaker 3: can tip you.
Speaker 4: So I already bought a ticket, So you got like
Speaker 4: five hundred people in there who bought a you know
Speaker 4: ticket for twenty dollars, right, and then they tip you
Speaker 4: on top of that.
Speaker 2: And then after you.
Speaker 4: Log off the after parties on Instagram and then and
Speaker 4: I'm playing and I'm playing music, you know, like d Nights,
Speaker 4: but I'm not I'm not DJing. I'm just I'm just
Speaker 4: triggering songs. Like I didn't realize that when I was
Speaker 4: doing you know, mixtape Mondays or Woke Wednesdays or sage
Speaker 4: and slow jams on a clubhouse before it was public
Speaker 4: that I was preparing myself to have the number one
Speaker 4: night time music show, the original choirt story that Melvillnzy
Speaker 4: used to do.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm leading to.
Speaker 2: What is it like to inherit such a like a
Speaker 2: landmark institution as the Quiet Storm.
Speaker 4: It's I'm humbly saying this like I didn't feel any pressure,
Speaker 4: but it is a lot of pressure though, Like it's
Speaker 4: like I know what's on the line, so I respect it,
Speaker 4: I honor it.
Speaker 3: I always try to move with authenticity.
Speaker 1: Of what it means.
Speaker 3: Gotcha what it means to the d m V Right.
Speaker 4: I respect what it means because I grew up listening
Speaker 4: to it. It's the most trippy thing to be able.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm sure it was your first day like
Speaker 4: taking the rings. Oh man, it was just like I cried.
Speaker 4: I cried when I saw my contract. I had my
Speaker 4: holy ghost moment in the car, you know. I went
Speaker 4: to my mama's crib to go listen to it, you know,
Speaker 4: the first night. And yeah, man, I never take for
Speaker 4: granted even this moment right here, because I'm a huge
Speaker 4: roots fan.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't know if you know, you're not specificated.
Speaker 4: And so I remember getting a call one time for
Speaker 4: my manager that it was almost opportunity where I don't
Speaker 4: know if it was like Martin Luther was going to
Speaker 4: sit it out or Belloud was going to sit it out.
Speaker 3: Remember this, and I was supposed to go. I was
Speaker 3: supposed to go overseas with y'at.
Speaker 4: I remember I've been singing all the singing prods and
Speaker 4: then it fell through it.
Speaker 1: The loud was crushed.
Speaker 4: Sorry, man, I was like, but but yeah, like to
Speaker 4: break it full circle. There's moments that you have where
Speaker 4: you're blessed if like the people who who you like
Speaker 4: grew up listening to they become like your friends, are
Speaker 4: your associates or your mentors, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: And you know when that happens, it's just like ah, man,
Speaker 4: it's just like so cool. That's what I you know,
Speaker 4: that's the feeling of like being at HU. I had
Speaker 4: to go by there, you know, yesterday obviously I'm in
Speaker 4: New York, so I pre recorded my show for tonight,
Speaker 4: right and I'm pre recording doing a tour, and you know.
Speaker 3: Like that's the other thing.
Speaker 4: I haven't missed a beat, like you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: Like I'm you know, I'm hey, I'm live, I'm remote
Speaker 4: from from this spot and that spot. And it's interesting
Speaker 4: man to see that this is overwhelming, like to be
Speaker 4: able to I've done numbers, and I've been you know,
Speaker 4: number one, and like I went from having the number
Speaker 4: one urban show to the number one night time show
Speaker 4: and like time with like white contemporary Christian radio or
Speaker 4: talk radio, like things that they told me, like it
Speaker 4: would happen.
Speaker 2: Right Because I don't live in the DMV area, I
Speaker 2: haven't heard it.
Speaker 1: The cool thing is.
Speaker 4: They got to have a free app, you know for
Speaker 4: Android iPhone, just download the ninety six point three w
Speaker 4: h U R app and you know tap in.
Speaker 2: So format wise, do you ever say and the songs
Speaker 2: that are chosen, I actually do.
Speaker 4: Like It's it's cool, like to be able to make
Speaker 4: suggestions and they actually be honored or to be able
Speaker 4: to be like they actually loved with us saying, Hey,
Speaker 4: I got.
Speaker 3: A record I did last night. Can I just play it?
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, can you can you? It was
Speaker 2: there was a point where I think when Busy Body
Speaker 2: came out, Luther Vandros would do a tour. He would
Speaker 2: do w D A.
Speaker 1: S Howard state, he would do all the black.
Speaker 2: Stations and sing live on the air, like three songs
Speaker 2: each now, haven't I haven't took it there yet. I've
Speaker 2: had guests.
Speaker 4: You know, people already know what I do when I'm
Speaker 4: not on air. So my thing is, like I want
Speaker 4: to church and state. Yeah, it's cool to be able
Speaker 4: to break the Kindred record though, got you what I'm
Speaker 4: saying last year, you know what I mean? Or like,
Speaker 4: you know, to break the new Eric Roberson record Every
Speaker 4: Sunshine Sweeter than You, Like I broke that record in DC.
Speaker 4: It's what Melvin was known for doing, so, you know, traditionally,
Speaker 4: and you know, it's one of the things I love
Speaker 4: about being at h u R, you know, in particular
Speaker 4: because the legacy, you know, fifty years plus of what
Speaker 4: they've created. And of course we got to give the
Speaker 4: legendary the Queen, you know, Kathy.
Speaker 2: Hughes or Roses, Yeah, for being.
Speaker 4: The brainchild of you know, having a vision and you know,
Speaker 4: and whispering that into breathing life into Melvin like that.
Speaker 4: You know, It's been great, man, and it's a new
Speaker 4: career path for me. I know at some point I
Speaker 4: will be syndicated and we need that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like when I was of course, like you know,
Speaker 2: Philly had quiet storm like when I was like ten
Speaker 2: eleven twelve and I wasn't in the slow jams at
Speaker 2: ten eleven twelve, but now I can appreciate it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it needs to be sitting there.
Speaker 2: It's interesting.
Speaker 4: I get stopped in the street at that venue, in
Speaker 4: the grocery store and just like different places. And it's
Speaker 4: not about being Rahiem Devin the artists. It's about being
Speaker 4: Raheem Devine the radio guy and radio to rest. Your
Speaker 4: radio will always exist, it will always matter.
Speaker 1: One.
Speaker 4: It's free, you don't have you don't need a subscription
Speaker 4: right right and it just connects you to community in
Speaker 4: a different way. With all this going on in the world,
Speaker 4: in the country, on the planet, Monday through Friday, from
Speaker 4: seven thirty to midnight, it's my opportunity to remind people
Speaker 4: that you know that five twenty eight mega hurts.
Speaker 3: Energy is a real thing. It's a frequency. Love is
Speaker 3: the answer.
Speaker 4: You're not alone, even if you are if you feel
Speaker 4: like you're alone, no matter you know what you went
Speaker 4: through today, Like this is a safe space to unplug
Speaker 4: and the hill and to just you know, and just
Speaker 4: and just be on the vibration of what we all love.
Speaker 4: You know, good, bad, are and different. We got to
Speaker 4: slow jam for every occasion and it's great man, you know.
Speaker 4: And I'm doing serious XM on the weekends now too,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: H U R h U R Voices Channel one forty one. Yeah,
Speaker 4: from ten from ten pm to twelve midnight. It's a
Speaker 4: quick two hour show.
Speaker 1: Thing, you know. Wow, you are the love king.
Speaker 4: Thank you, my brother, Thank you you are quest Love.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much man, thank you.
Speaker 1: For us showing us love, brother, and I appreciate it. Wait,
Speaker 1: I have one question.
Speaker 2: What's that?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: When I first met you and I know you get
Speaker 2: this a lot, I don't know if you get this
Speaker 2: a lot. I just naturally thought the way that epigenetics work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was like, oh.
Speaker 2: That must be William Devon's son or nephew. How many times?
Speaker 2: How many times do you get that? But more importantly,
Speaker 2: have you ever covered be thankful for what you got?
Speaker 2: I get it?
Speaker 3: I get it a lot?
Speaker 1: Okay say that for us?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Where your band for that?
Speaker 4: But hey, say say say say no more. Let's let'st
Speaker 4: the circle we got We got a lot of work
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 1: Got you for sure? Well? This is a Quest Love show.
Speaker 1: And I'll see our next go around ya.
Speaker 2: Quest Love Shows hosted by me Amir quest Love Thompson.
Speaker 2: The executive producers are Sean g Brian Calhoun and Me.
Speaker 2: Produced by Britney Benjamin and Jake Paine. Produced for iHeart
Speaker 2: by Noel Brown, Edited by Alex Conwoy. iHeart Video support
Speaker 2: by Mark Canton, Logos Graphics and animation by Nick Lowe.
Speaker 2: Additional support by Lance Coleman. Special thanks to Kathy Brown.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Sugar Steve Mandel. Please subscribe, rate, review,
Speaker 2: and share the Quest Love Show wherever you stream the podcasts,
Speaker 2: make sure you follow us on social That's at q LS.
Speaker 2: Check out hundreds and hundreds of QLs episodes, including the
Speaker 2: Quest Loves pre shows and our podcast archives.
Speaker 1: Mustlam Shows. The production of iHeart radioh