Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio, Ladies
Speaker 1: and Gentlemen. It's another episode of Quest Love Supreme. I'm
Speaker 1: your host Quest Love. We have the Almighty Team Supreme
Speaker 1: with us bon Tikolo Brother.
Speaker 2: How's it been going.
Speaker 3: I'm good man, I'm doing yoga.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 3: Hey, y'all to Flo Bro, I'm out here.
Speaker 4: We down with dog and Pigeon posing on all of
Speaker 4: your old niggasa.
Speaker 2: That's nice, all right? Cool? Cool?
Speaker 1: We Particulo is going to get is told. We've passed it.
Speaker 1: Go past eighty maybe to ninety or one hundred.
Speaker 5: Yes, I'm taking you to BIMs from taking hot yoga.
Speaker 3: I know, yo yoga. How about album with you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what's up, y'all.
Speaker 1: Steve as as Steve Slice's cigarette.
Speaker 6: I'm doing yoga too. How to start a Yet, everything's cool.
Speaker 2: Working on a lot of stuff you're doing.
Speaker 1: I don't know in your mind if it's like mocking
Speaker 1: or not mocking, like with the network and all that.
Speaker 1: But I got to say, in the last three weeks,
Speaker 1: but you're doing like major, major, major shit, Like you're
Speaker 1: not just like doing like RINKYDNK Jazz records. Like I
Speaker 1: almost feel like you're out here trying to save jazz music.
Speaker 2: Like, well, what's been going on? Man?
Speaker 6: We got a lot of records coming out. It's Jmi's
Speaker 6: name of the label. We're coming up on twenty Records.
Speaker 6: It's been like five years that we've been around and
Speaker 6: finally got you on the label. Recently we're mixing that
Speaker 6: record with David Murray and Ray Angry and yeah, I'm
Speaker 6: not Well, there's a lot of great jazz labels out
Speaker 6: there obviously still doing it, but we're doing it all
Speaker 6: analog with tape and never touching digital in any way.
Speaker 6: So we I can't find another label that's doing it
Speaker 6: like that, where it's completely purest in old school like that.
Speaker 6: So yeah, we're proud of it. And you know what
Speaker 6: else is turning five years old? The Sugar Network, Wait
Speaker 6: network is five years old, that's correct this month?
Speaker 2: Where you started in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, started shortly after course up Supreme.
Speaker 1: It's a movement, man. The Sugar Network is the Army
Speaker 1: better yet the Navy.
Speaker 6: Well, it's like a little fan club for the for
Speaker 6: this podcast. Basically that's how it's That's how it started,
Speaker 6: but it's expanding.
Speaker 1: It absolutely is all right, wait, so just let me know, JMI,
Speaker 1: is your logo at least close to the CTI label,
Speaker 1: like there are.
Speaker 6: Some similarities to we stole some of some of their
Speaker 6: design aspects for our stuff, but not not the logo specifically.
Speaker 2: All right, but yeah, keep it tr we keep it
Speaker 2: old school.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: How's it going.
Speaker 5: Oh it's going good. I'm I got the flu, but
Speaker 5: I don't want to miss speech. So you got yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, talking to a bunch of niggas doing Grammy weekend.
Speaker 5: I'll make you sick trying to book people. But in
Speaker 5: the good news, Oh quest love supreme Honey. I was
Speaker 5: on the strip with my leg and my skirt up, like,
Speaker 5: come on, nas, come on Leslie Jones like yep.
Speaker 2: Soies might just visit.
Speaker 5: But he said he would. He said to me he would.
Speaker 5: He said to me, Yeah, I went to.
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, that's what's up. That's what's up. Well, ladies
Speaker 2: and gentlemen, I will say that, you know.
Speaker 1: Uh. This interview is close to my heart because as
Speaker 1: a founder leader of one of the most legendary groups
Speaker 1: and hip hop, a group really really responsible for laying
Speaker 1: out the carpet for a group like the Roots to
Speaker 1: come down and be able to have a career.
Speaker 2: I will say that, you know, this gentleman has.
Speaker 1: Pretty much made a profound impact on the music industry
Speaker 1: just with the level of I guess the first wave
Speaker 1: of black Joy. Like we weren't using terms like black
Speaker 1: Joy back in nineteen ninety two, nineteen, you know, we
Speaker 1: just basically called it alternative rep. But it's almost like
Speaker 1: I never liked the term alternative rep because Lauren Hill
Speaker 1: once told me that alternative rep just means like no skills,
Speaker 1: and you know that's definitely not the case. You know,
Speaker 1: besides being one of two people in the hip hop
Speaker 1: field that have won Best New Artist for the Grammys.
Speaker 2: As far as hip hop winning Best New Artist, I.
Speaker 1: Will say that his group's debut album really just set
Speaker 1: a high water mark for just music period, just a feeling,
Speaker 1: definitely a blueprint that I followed, and it's this conversation
Speaker 1: is seriously long overdue. Ladies and gentlemen, Please welcome to
Speaker 1: Quest Left Supreme. I don't know if we ever had
Speaker 1: a one title person before, because I'm used to saying
Speaker 1: like the full name, I don't want to say Welcome.
Speaker 1: Todd Thomas Oh, professionally known Oh. You know, I'm trying
Speaker 1: to make it like you're a dignitary or or a
Speaker 1: head of state, not just like I'm not trying to
Speaker 1: be the popole. Please welcome speech to quest Left Supreme.
Speaker 1: Thank you man, yo, yo, that that.
Speaker 7: All of these words very much mean the world to me.
Speaker 7: I appreciate it. Man. It's good to be here. It's
Speaker 7: been a minute. Man, it's been a minute.
Speaker 1: It's been a good minute. It's been a good Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, where are you talking to us right now?
Speaker 1: From where are you at?
Speaker 7: This is my studio.
Speaker 8: I call it the podium, and I'm at my crib,
Speaker 8: so all my property. I have a separate building and
Speaker 8: it's my studio. So I'm in here.
Speaker 2: And the Georgia Ok.
Speaker 7: Yeah, stay with Georgia Fayetteville area.
Speaker 1: Yep, So you've stayed in Georgia that that entire time
Speaker 1: of your.
Speaker 7: Since yeah, since nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: Yo. Didn't we meet in Milwaukee?
Speaker 1: I know that you have roots in Milwaukee, but I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure out if I met you in Milwaukee once.
Speaker 8: You guys were rocking the show at Summerfest, which is
Speaker 8: one of the largest music festivals in the world. Actually,
Speaker 8: and I sell roasted corn at Summerfest. My father opened
Speaker 8: up a hot roasted corn stand business at Summerfest forty
Speaker 8: six years ago. And so my wife and I have
Speaker 8: been doing that business. Well, I was working at it
Speaker 8: since I was nine years old, but my wife and
Speaker 8: I started working that business taking it over for my
Speaker 8: dad for probably I'm going to say sixteen years or so.
Speaker 8: So one year the roots was rocking, I want to say,
Speaker 8: on the Miller stage, in one of the stages. Yeah,
Speaker 8: at Summerfest. And I came backstage and hung out with
Speaker 8: y'all while you were there.
Speaker 1: All right, So I'm totally just going to throw away
Speaker 1: my initial questions because now you piqued my curiosity because
Speaker 1: I too, am in the food world. But I gotta know, like,
Speaker 1: how do you maintain that business?
Speaker 8: My dad he was trying to get his foot in
Speaker 8: the door because we're the one and only black owned
Speaker 8: food company in Summerfest, and Summerfest is huge.
Speaker 7: I can't say that enough.
Speaker 8: So and so basically he wanted to get his foot
Speaker 8: in the door. They were offering soul food as an option,
Speaker 8: so on and so forth. But he was just studying
Speaker 8: the landscape and realized that roasted corn would kill for
Speaker 8: the audience that tended to go to Summerfest at that time,
Speaker 8: and so he was going in as a roast corn
Speaker 8: business and it started off literally bananas, like so many
Speaker 8: people were into it, like you were describing the dude
Speaker 8: that was outside of SOB's. It was lines around the
Speaker 8: block for this corn. And not to mention a black
Speaker 8: man selling it. All black workers creating his corn, roasting
Speaker 8: his corn, which is a big production, like unlike the
Speaker 8: dude that was on the streets, ours was a very
Speaker 8: big production. So we had tons of basically six seven
Speaker 8: hundred degree roasters that were lined up and we would
Speaker 8: put the corn on these big metal sheets and then
Speaker 8: turned the corn over on one side was done, and
Speaker 8: it was a production to watch as well, and people
Speaker 8: just loved it. And so as a nine years old,
Speaker 8: from that point on, I started doing it, just working there.
Speaker 8: And then you know, when I got old enough and
Speaker 8: my father was too old to run it, my queen
Speaker 8: and I took it over.
Speaker 2: And so or is he a chef by nature or no,
Speaker 2: not at all.
Speaker 8: In fact, he learned how to roast it the best
Speaker 8: that he could, and it was just dope.
Speaker 7: Everybody loved it.
Speaker 8: And it was way above any competitors at other, you know,
Speaker 8: state fairs, because Milwaukee also has a state fair which
Speaker 8: is really big, was way bigger than the people that
Speaker 8: sold it there. So everybody just started falling in love
Speaker 8: with Robbie's roasted corn. And that was my dad, whose
Speaker 8: name is Robert. Yeah, so he started that whole tradition.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: No, not on a stick, no, no, You roast it
Speaker 8: in a roast on a roaster, and then you pull
Speaker 8: back the husk and you let that husk you hold
Speaker 8: the hust, so you keep the hust.
Speaker 7: You know a lot of people take the husk off
Speaker 7: Mexican style exactly.
Speaker 8: And you hold that husk and then you wrap a
Speaker 8: paper towel around it.
Speaker 7: You dip it.
Speaker 8: We dip it in butter, like literally a crock pot
Speaker 8: full of butter. We dip it in there. And then
Speaker 8: we have various seasonings, you know what I mean, from
Speaker 8: anything from lemon pepper to Mexican style, which is like
Speaker 8: a mayonnaise and so on and so forth, rubbed on it.
Speaker 2: It's better than fried chicken, it really is.
Speaker 7: Actually, it's incredible. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just a local phenomenon. You guys never expanded
Speaker 1: outside of Milwaukee.
Speaker 7: Or not in a huge way, not yet.
Speaker 8: Like we strive to get into Disney World and stuff
Speaker 8: like that, and just we're unsuccessful doing that. But the
Speaker 8: truth is is that we've done like Atlanta, which is
Speaker 8: where I live. We've done Chicago, So this is regional
Speaker 8: to where we're sort of based out of.
Speaker 7: But we haven't taken it national or anything like that.
Speaker 5: Bruce Picnic, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. But even at that, consider it done.
Speaker 7: I would do that for real. Shit, all right, you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Are you growing your own corn? Do you have a farm?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 1: I know there's a music podcast, but I'm just really interested.
Speaker 7: And I get it. I get it. We source our
Speaker 7: corn from different growers.
Speaker 8: So obviously corn is very seasonal, so we try to
Speaker 8: make sure we get the best corn. We try to
Speaker 8: get a mixture of white and yellow corn, and so
Speaker 8: it's really really delicious and it's just it's more flavorful
Speaker 8: than your normal yellow corn. And so we get it
Speaker 8: sourced from different producers and you know, farmers and stuff
Speaker 8: like that.
Speaker 1: Oh his mind is yeah, I'm because I I mean,
Speaker 1: I just purchased a farm. I don't have plans on
Speaker 1: utilizing it as a farm farm farm. Yes, there's a
Speaker 1: greenhouse to grow like vegetables and whatnot, but that's just
Speaker 1: like my personal consumption. But again, because I'm getting into
Speaker 1: the alternative food space and all those things, and you know,
Speaker 1: not to mention, there's a brother from Milwaukee actually, Will
Speaker 1: Allen basically pioneered inner city urban farming and kind of
Speaker 1: really like what was the pioneer of that? He got
Speaker 1: a MacArthur's Genius Grant for doing it, and I became
Speaker 1: friends with his daughter, and you know, I thought it
Speaker 1: was silly. They're like, yo, man, no, we need to
Speaker 1: teach our people how to farm, how to because you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm a result of it.
Speaker 2: Like growing up in Philadelphia, I.
Speaker 1: Didn't realize that, you know, we had go outside to
Speaker 1: the suburbs. We had to go to Upper Darby to
Speaker 1: find fresh fruits, organic food, right.
Speaker 2: You don't have that in the inner city.
Speaker 1: And so that's what made me interested in plant based
Speaker 1: foods and developing that and not like, you know, I
Speaker 1: think people are tend to thinking like we want to
Speaker 1: replace it or whatever. Yes, granted, yes, I know, Patrick
Speaker 1: from impossible foods wants to replace you know, meat, which right,
Speaker 1: yea more power to I truly, I believe in twenty
Speaker 1: years what we know is food now will be phased
Speaker 1: out and will be like plant based. But yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just really interested when people get into the alternative space
Speaker 1: for those things.
Speaker 8: Yeah, totally totally shout out to Milwaukee. That's dope.
Speaker 1: Okay, so dope, yes, absolutely, Now I'll get it back
Speaker 1: to my real question.
Speaker 2: What was your very first musical memory?
Speaker 8: I would I would say it was seeing the Jackson
Speaker 8: five show on Saturday mornings. That was probably my first
Speaker 8: musical memory. And watching Michael Jackson and the Jackson five
Speaker 8: that cartoon slash. I think they might have had like
Speaker 8: real scenes as well, so I think it was a mixture.
Speaker 2: Well it was, Yeah, it was a cartoon.
Speaker 7: And then they had a variety show too, so.
Speaker 1: Right, the Variety Show of seventy seven. I just found
Speaker 1: out that when the Silvers moved from Tennessee to Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: you know, they the Silvers, you know, they had variety
Speaker 1: as a singing group. They've been singing together since they
Speaker 1: were kids. But when they got to Hollywood, one of
Speaker 1: the first jobs that two of the Brothers had. One
Speaker 1: of the brothers in the Silvers was the voice of Jackie.
Speaker 2: And I believe, I believe Jermaine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jackie and Jermaine were voiced by members of the Silvers.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: See, I did not know that.
Speaker 1: That is something that we never mentioned that on the
Speaker 1: Leon Silvers episode. Yeah, I think it was Edmund and
Speaker 1: Ricky Silvers. I believe, I believe it was them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so wow, could you tell me the very first album
Speaker 1: that you purchased with your own money, not given to you?
Speaker 8: But yeah, yeah, Well I don't remember the Joy with
Speaker 8: my own money, but I remember my grandmother gifting me
Speaker 8: a forty five of Michael Jackson.
Speaker 7: Well was it the Jackson five? It was damn what
Speaker 7: was that song.
Speaker 8: Down to the Ground Shake your body down to the ground?
Speaker 8: That was probably.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: That was my first like memory of having a record
Speaker 8: that was my own, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So I didn't buy it, but I owned it.
Speaker 8: It was my record, Like that was the beginning of
Speaker 8: my record collection and it was just a forty five.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: What did your parents do for a living?
Speaker 8: My mom, both of them are active, my mom and
Speaker 8: my mom is the owner of the largest black newspaper
Speaker 8: in Wisconsin. It's called the Milwaukee Community Journal. So that's
Speaker 8: my mom. My dad is an entrepreneur in any way.
Speaker 8: So he started gas stations, he started catering businesses, the
Speaker 8: first black owned fast food restaurant in Milwaukee. He started
Speaker 8: a nightclub called the Fox Trap, which turned into an arcade,
Speaker 8: and so you know, he was just a serial entrepreneur.
Speaker 8: He never owned all those things at one time, but
Speaker 8: he would do this business for a while that he
Speaker 8: would transfer to this business and that business.
Speaker 7: So that's what my mom and dad both did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I want to know how easy is it
Speaker 1: or how easy was it for black entrepreneurs to start
Speaker 1: a business, because you know, for most of us, you
Speaker 1: start a business first of all by getting.
Speaker 2: A bank loan.
Speaker 1: And usually for a lot of people that I hear
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, post civil rights experience for black people,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of the Jim Crowing attitudes three
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight were still happening, you know, long after,
Speaker 1: like way into the seventies, way into the eighties. Even
Speaker 1: one of the funniest stories I ever heard was George Johnson,
Speaker 1: who you know, started the Johnson Hare Empire in Chicago,
Speaker 1: you know, they single handedly funded soul trade, you know,
Speaker 1: with the after scene commercials and all that stuff. So
Speaker 1: he tells the story of going to at least twenty
Speaker 1: banks in Chicago and getting rejected by them all when
Speaker 1: he wants to start a business, and I believe he
Speaker 1: says that his uncle told him, I'm going to show
Speaker 1: you how to buck the system. I want you to
Speaker 1: return to blah blah blah blah blah bank. And instead
Speaker 1: of saying that you want to borrow two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: to start a business, say you want to want to
Speaker 1: borrow two thousand dollars to take your wife on vacation.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 2: And they did it.
Speaker 1: Wow Wow again like that, you know, like we don't
Speaker 1: talk about probably the main gripe of the systematic racism
Speaker 1: in the United States is the rampant denial of bank
Speaker 1: loans to start businesses exactly.
Speaker 2: And so how is your dad.
Speaker 1: Able to start all these businesses? Because you know, I've yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a rare situation for me to hear someone
Speaker 1: that has like a dream and it goes in fruition
Speaker 1: and manifested itself.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I'm glad you asked that they pulled money together
Speaker 8: from other black families and people, and so that was
Speaker 8: their startup money.
Speaker 7: And then my mother, she was a school teacher.
Speaker 8: And so after the riots of doctor Martin Luther King
Speaker 8: Junior being murdered, there was riots in Milwaukee, or of
Speaker 8: course across the nation, but in Milwaukee as well, and
Speaker 8: they were they looted and destroyed a lot of the
Speaker 8: black businesses. Well, while those black businesses were striving to
Speaker 8: get back on their feet and got back on their feet,
Speaker 8: they needed somebody to advertise the fact that they were
Speaker 8: open again and ready for business. And the major newspapers
Speaker 8: in Wisconsin were refusing to cover these stories. So they
Speaker 8: asked my mother to put together a pamphlet. Initially she
Speaker 8: did it. It's called the Soul City Shopper, and she
Speaker 8: was just doing it for free. Her goal was to
Speaker 8: try to get people in the community to realize that
Speaker 8: these stores were back open.
Speaker 7: That started to happen.
Speaker 8: Other black people that had a little bit of money
Speaker 8: scraped it together and helped them to start what's now
Speaker 8: called the Milwaukee Community Journal.
Speaker 7: My dad used that money to.
Speaker 8: Start his first business, which was a small gas station,
Speaker 8: and when that did pretty well, he used that money.
Speaker 8: So you get where I'm going with this to start
Speaker 8: his business, and he was the most in nineteen eighty
Speaker 8: he was one of the most successful black business people,
Speaker 8: well business people, not black people, business people in Milwaukee.
Speaker 8: But when he got to that level, the city literally
Speaker 8: systemically destroyed him tax wise, and they came after him.
Speaker 8: They targeted him. He had a huge target on his back,
Speaker 8: and they destroyed most of his businesses. My mom, on
Speaker 8: the other hand, was able to keep hers and move forward,
Speaker 8: but his he didn't have businesses. I would say past
Speaker 8: I'm going to say, like nineteen eighty seven, my dad
Speaker 8: didn't have any other businesses that he was able to
Speaker 8: do in Milwaukee. That's how bad they put him into
Speaker 8: bankruptcy tax issues that he had to fight all the
Speaker 8: money with lawyers. They spent tons of money trying to
Speaker 8: fight all of these things and just you know, fell
Speaker 8: under water. It actually destroyed my mom and dad's marriage
Speaker 8: at that time. So, I mean, all of these things
Speaker 8: obviously have effects, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Wow, I would think owning a newspaper would be seen
Speaker 1: more as a threat than starting an independent business. On
Speaker 1: your mom's sided, things like how was she able to
Speaker 1: run that community?
Speaker 7: The segregated mind state.
Speaker 8: We weren't literally segregated, but the segregation mind state really
Speaker 8: played a big role in her being able to sustain
Speaker 8: because the major newspapers refused to give coverage to a
Speaker 8: lot of the black stories, black death, black achievements, black joy.
Speaker 8: As you said earlier, her paper was that sole resource
Speaker 8: for quite a while and then later And that's the
Speaker 8: same by the way, with my father's drive through restaurant,
Speaker 8: he had called Robbie's and McDonald's.
Speaker 2: Name all of his businesses. Again I know it, And so.
Speaker 8: At that time period, McDonald's was afraid to have drive
Speaker 8: throughs in the black community. They didn't want to do it.
Speaker 8: They had some locations, but they refused to open a
Speaker 8: drive through. Well, my father use that their refusal as
Speaker 8: an opening to start a business that did have a
Speaker 8: drive through. Of course, just like any other people, black
Speaker 8: people needed convenience on their way to work. They wanted
Speaker 8: to grab something to eat, go to work, so on
Speaker 8: and so forth, and his business took off.
Speaker 7: So it was basically.
Speaker 8: Their own ignorance and their own refusal to serve black
Speaker 8: people that.
Speaker 7: Allowed my mom and dad both to have a career.
Speaker 1: Is your entire family based in Milwaukee or just like
Speaker 1: your mom and dad Like.
Speaker 8: No, So, my my father's family is from Tennessee, and
Speaker 8: then my mother's family is from East Saint Louis. So
Speaker 8: they both came to Milwaukee. For exactly, are you from
Speaker 8: East St.
Speaker 7: Louis?
Speaker 5: My mama is from Saint Louis.
Speaker 1: From everywhere, I learned something new every episode. I did
Speaker 1: not know you had Saint Louis roots.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, yeah, all that stuff. I'm sorry ahead, So no.
Speaker 7: It's all good.
Speaker 8: So then they came to Milwaukee and I met each
Speaker 8: other during college years, and you know, so there was
Speaker 8: some family there. But you know, back in these days,
Speaker 8: there was this huge diversion from the from the South
Speaker 8: to the Midwest to the West because of lack of
Speaker 8: job opportunities and so factories were opening in the Midwest
Speaker 8: and that's why, you know, Milwaukee was one of the
Speaker 8: places that was on our radar back then as black people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, ill, all right, I got this is a two
Speaker 1: party one. What year did you leave Milwaukee?
Speaker 8: Nineteen eighty seven, the year I graduated high school? So
Speaker 8: I left literally a week after I graduated.
Speaker 7: I came to Atlanta.
Speaker 1: All right, Now, Part two that question is and this
Speaker 1: is weird that you leave Milwaukee for Atlanta, in which
Speaker 1: the unfortunate commonality thread of the two cities is that
Speaker 1: both cities are well known for U two horrific crimes. Oh okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead, No, two horrific crimes against groups of black people,
Speaker 1: of course, the Atlanta child murderers and Jeffrey do Jeffrey.
Speaker 5: Forgetting Milwaukee right Milwaukee?
Speaker 1: And I, you know, I didn't know until the Netflix
Speaker 1: series that he started back in nineteen seventy eight, Like
Speaker 1: I thought this was happening like.
Speaker 2: Around like ninety eighty nine, ninety ninety one, But I
Speaker 2: didn't realize that his process was way slower.
Speaker 1: But did I never had a chance to interview anyone
Speaker 1: from Milwaukee that you know or know many black people
Speaker 1: from Milwaukee, So I'm asking you to represent your entire
Speaker 1: city here. But did you, like, did you have any
Speaker 1: family that was affected by what was happening with with
Speaker 1: Dahmer at the time, or like was that even in
Speaker 1: the news, like were they reporting like missing black people
Speaker 1: or or is this just like another murdered this week?
Speaker 7: No? No, it was definitely a huge story in Milwaukee.
Speaker 8: And my dad lived in the same complex, not in
Speaker 8: the same like area that Dahmer lived as Dahmer.
Speaker 7: So when my mother and father.
Speaker 8: Divorced, his apartment was there, and so it was a
Speaker 8: very big issue when we found out about it, when
Speaker 8: it became big news and nationwide news. As a family,
Speaker 8: we were affected in the sense of knowing dad was there.
Speaker 7: You know, my father was there. So wow, Yeah, it
Speaker 7: was a very very big deal.
Speaker 8: It wasn't just one of those sort of like things like, oh,
Speaker 8: something's happening over there.
Speaker 7: No, it was definitely. And by the way, Milwaukee is
Speaker 7: very black. So like Milwaukee in the.
Speaker 2: City, yeah, we just think of Laverne and Shirrely in
Speaker 2: Happy Days.
Speaker 7: Exactly, exactly.
Speaker 8: No, the city itself, I believe, I want to say,
Speaker 8: it's sixty or so percent black. So if you go
Speaker 8: to Milwaukee, the city itself, because you know, like like Georgia,
Speaker 8: I know, people come down to Georgia. Georgia is one thing,
Speaker 8: but Atlanta is another thing, right, and so it's the
Speaker 8: same difference with Milwaukee, and it's a very black, black,
Speaker 8: black city.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so Milwaukee, I'm going to talk about Atlanta.
Speaker 8: Milwaukee was a very like the difference the disparities between
Speaker 8: black and white people is is and.
Speaker 7: Was so crystal clear Milwaukee.
Speaker 8: Most Milwaukee Black populations were either poor or lower middle
Speaker 8: class somewhere in there. And white people, on the other hand, had,
Speaker 8: you know, a much better shot at being able to
Speaker 8: rise up the ladder in America in a sense. And
Speaker 8: so when I left Milwaukee in nineteen eighty seven, right
Speaker 8: out of high school, I came to Atlanta, and for
Speaker 8: the first time in my life, I saw black affluence
Speaker 8: and people being able, just black opportunity, black diversity, conscious
Speaker 8: blacks over here with daishiki's and locks and stuff like that,
Speaker 8: and corporate blacks over there.
Speaker 7: I mean that type of way.
Speaker 2: Wait, yeah, so that was in Atlanta.
Speaker 7: That was in Atlanta nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 2: I'll be very honest with you.
Speaker 1: I had a few friends and family members in Atlanta
Speaker 1: at the time, and really before the Renaissance, which I
Speaker 1: kind of I mean between you and like Bobby Brown, really,
Speaker 1: Bobby Brown was the first person I heard, like, wait,
Speaker 1: the success yet with this album, you're moving to Atlanta,
Speaker 1: Georgia instead of like Baldwin Hills and all that stuff.
Speaker 2: I just always wanted to.
Speaker 1: Know, like, like I thought, y'all created what we were
Speaker 1: know as the bojo lifestyle because I just thought, like,
Speaker 1: they're the pioneers of that.
Speaker 2: But you're saying that you.
Speaker 1: Saw the def alternative bojo scene in Atlanta.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So the West end of Atlanta, right, it's an
Speaker 8: area where there's a lot, well, especially before it got
Speaker 8: regentrified more recently, it was a very cultural landmark in
Speaker 8: Atlanta where you had you know, African priests and African
Speaker 8: dance companies and teaching about the importance of drumming and
Speaker 8: the importance of language through music and mathematics through music.
Speaker 8: Like these types of things were being taught and spoken
Speaker 8: of in the West into particular, which is where arrested
Speaker 8: development was really born in Atlanta. Like me and my
Speaker 8: brother Headliner, who you know, was the first person I
Speaker 8: asked to be in the group.
Speaker 7: He used to cut hair.
Speaker 8: I call him Headliner because he was incredible at barbering,
Speaker 8: like the man. And then of course you had all
Speaker 8: of these HBCUs there, right, So you have Spelman, Morehouse,
Speaker 8: Clark Atlanta University, so on, and so Morris Brown. So
Speaker 8: all of that area was bubbling with culture and with
Speaker 8: revolutionary you know, ideas and visions. So yeah, yeah, definitely,
Speaker 8: I think people who would later see Arrested Development, they
Speaker 8: would know, like if they were in that area, they
Speaker 8: would know that we we came from that sort of
Speaker 8: frame of mind, but I will say we added the
Speaker 8: more rural aspects, so like what you're talking about as
Speaker 8: far as the need, you know, when you said my
Speaker 8: man will Allen was a pioneer in the sense of
Speaker 8: us getting back to the land and understanding the importance
Speaker 8: of land growth. That's the tip Arrested Development in particular
Speaker 8: was on just trying to take us back to that route.
Speaker 8: So our videos were on purposely that kind of energy.
Speaker 8: If you remember the Tennessee video and people every day,
Speaker 8: it was always in that rural South, just to be
Speaker 8: able to bring us back to that, you know, that
Speaker 8: eco self determination, you know, saying grow our own food,
Speaker 8: do our own thing, type of energy.
Speaker 2: Do you hear you describe it?
Speaker 1: I would assume that your parents weren't were they musically
Speaker 1: inclined at all?
Speaker 2: Or did you have siblings?
Speaker 7: So yeah, I did. I had a brother brother, Yeah,
Speaker 7: my brother Terry.
Speaker 8: And then my mom was big on adoption and on fostering,
Speaker 8: So throughout my childhood my mom would foster numerous kids
Speaker 8: and then one of them that she actually adopted was
Speaker 8: from Acra Ghana. His name was Bright Bulleting, so he
Speaker 8: lived with me as a child. And yeah, so I
Speaker 8: did have siblings. No, my parents weren't particularly into music.
Speaker 8: But I will say my dad being an entrepreneur when
Speaker 8: he started his club, it was called the Fox Trap,
Speaker 8: one of the hottest clubs in Milwaukee at the time,
Speaker 8: I started falling in love with DJing at that time.
Speaker 8: I was thirteen, and I became a DJ at that
Speaker 8: club because of just falling in love with music. So
Speaker 8: I wouldn't say he taught me from like being musically inclined,
Speaker 8: but getting all those promo records back in the day
Speaker 8: because as a nightclub he would get promo records from
Speaker 8: all the major labels. So you know, I remember you
Speaker 8: posting recently about Yellow Magic Orchestrue, right, And I remember
Speaker 8: I remember getting you know, vinyl from those days. They
Speaker 8: used to poke a hole in the bottom of it
Speaker 8: to say that it was promotional college. Yeah, and so
Speaker 8: I would get Vinyl and my dad, not knowing about music,
Speaker 8: would ask me to basically curate what his DJs would
Speaker 8: play that night. So I was like always digging into
Speaker 8: the Crates, you know, as they say. So, yeah, I
Speaker 8: think that's where I was sort of taught music in
Speaker 8: a in a in a sense was through that as
Speaker 8: opposed to them teaching me, you know, them having musically
Speaker 8: inclined skills, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Why did you leave Milwaukee in the first place.
Speaker 8: The opportunity was very rare Milwaukee, Like, no one had
Speaker 8: made it out of Milwaukee except for Aljio before us.
Speaker 2: He's from Milwake.
Speaker 7: Milwaukee. Yeah, he's from Milwaukee.
Speaker 8: And so it was much later later yeah wait who yeah,
Speaker 8: so that's.
Speaker 4: Yeah on Amazon. I you should check it out. Yeah
Speaker 4: yeah yeah.
Speaker 8: So you know, so like at that time, nobody was
Speaker 8: making it from Milwaukee. Eric Banaa's from Milwaukee. That was later,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. So there was a lot
Speaker 8: of things that was later, but at that time there
Speaker 8: was nobody making it. There was no opportunities. I used
Speaker 8: to tour Detroit to try to spend time with Jan Atkins.
Speaker 8: I'm sure you're familiar with Wan Atkins. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: so like wine act music got electronic music god.
Speaker 2: So like wait, he was nice to you.
Speaker 7: He was very nice to me.
Speaker 8: In fact, he liked my group at the time, which
Speaker 8: was before arrested development called attack, and so that was
Speaker 8: like the closest opportunities we had was like Detroit, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean. And obviously in hip hop even
Speaker 8: Detroit wasn't on yet, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: Chicago wasn't on.
Speaker 5: Yet, So Atlanta wasn't either though really no it wasn't.
Speaker 8: But Atlanta had much more opportunity than Milwaukee. So that's
Speaker 8: why I chose Atlanta. Plus I wanted to be in
Speaker 8: the South, like I spent all my summers with my
Speaker 8: grandmother in Tennessee, and I fell in love with the South.
Speaker 7: I fell in love with the whole idea of the.
Speaker 8: South, especially the nature aspect, not obviously, you know, oppression
Speaker 8: of slavery, you know, not that, but like the realities
Speaker 8: of land ownership and self determination, of growing your own food,
Speaker 8: exchanging food from one household to another. So if you
Speaker 8: didn't have money, which my grandmother didn't, she still had
Speaker 8: everything because the next door neighbor had college, and the
Speaker 8: other neighbor had you.
Speaker 7: Know, sugar, and the other neighborhod yams and meat.
Speaker 8: And so it was this self determined community or communal
Speaker 8: of the South that I fell in love with you know.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's progressive thinking because I would just
Speaker 1: think in the late eighties, like everyone I knew was
Speaker 1: still trying to migrate to the north, especially where hip
Speaker 1: hop was going. I meanmained to pre himself like moved
Speaker 1: to New York City. And you know, it wasn't until
Speaker 1: like you know, the kind of gentrification and outsource or
Speaker 1: not even outsourcing, but just the overpricing of city living
Speaker 1: is now made a reverse where now people are, yeah,
Speaker 1: people are coming considering back down south now. So all right,
Speaker 1: so now that you're in Atlanta, what are well, what
Speaker 1: was your first musical experience in terms of starting a
Speaker 1: band or or starting a group.
Speaker 8: And yeah, so I came to Atlanta to go to
Speaker 8: school because I sucked a school in Milwaukee.
Speaker 7: I graduated with a zero point nine average, which is
Speaker 7: a big time.
Speaker 8: Fight exactly, that's under f you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: that's a g And so so I came to Atlanta
Speaker 8: because the Art Institute of Atlanta was the only school
Speaker 8: that I had applied to that would.
Speaker 7: Allow me to come.
Speaker 8: And I even had to write a letter of acceptance
Speaker 8: there to tell them that I was going to change
Speaker 8: my tune, so and so forth. So the first week
Speaker 8: I got there, I put up a flyer because I
Speaker 8: wanted to start a crew, and I was a DJ,
Speaker 8: but I was.
Speaker 7: Rapping more and more and more.
Speaker 8: So I put up a flyer for a DJ, and
Speaker 8: I hung it up at the lunch counter area, you
Speaker 8: know where people were, you know, hanging out, and his
Speaker 8: brother named Tim Barnwell later Headliner, was looking at the
Speaker 8: flyer and so I said, Yo, you know, my name
Speaker 8: is Speech blah blah blah, and we just connected from
Speaker 8: there and then we just started doing music vibing. I
Speaker 8: started working for a brother named Butch Winston at Kiss
Speaker 8: one oh four as the DJ because back then, you know,
Speaker 8: DJ's not every dj knew how to scratch, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. So a lot of DJs we was
Speaker 8: still mixing old school where it was the record faded
Speaker 8: out and the next record faded in, but it wasn't
Speaker 8: on beat and all that. You know, this is early
Speaker 8: years of hip hop. So you know, I was a
Speaker 8: DJ that actually knew how to scratch. I was studying
Speaker 8: DST and you know all of these types of cats,
Speaker 8: you know, Jazzy Jeff, you know what I mean.
Speaker 7: And so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: You said you went your reduce yourself to the tempt
Speaker 1: headliner as speech. How did you what Keith tell us
Speaker 1: the origins of you choosing that name?
Speaker 7: Yeah, so I in Milwaukee when I DJ, I was
Speaker 7: named DJ Peach p E E C H.
Speaker 8: And it's because of the size of my head and
Speaker 8: the light skinned complexion and you know, saying like that
Speaker 8: kind of vibe being extra nice.
Speaker 2: And was taken already.
Speaker 7: Exactly, and LL cool J was taken already.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: By the way, we're both scorpios, me and LL but
Speaker 8: both of us are named Todd.
Speaker 7: Both of us are named Todd. Well.
Speaker 8: So, yeah, so I I put an in front of
Speaker 8: Peach when I started rhyming, and to me, I wanted
Speaker 8: to rebrand myself. I knew I was going to the
Speaker 8: Peach state and I didn't want to be known as
Speaker 8: m C Peach.
Speaker 7: I thought that was why. And so I was like, okay,
Speaker 7: let me put an S in front of it. Now
Speaker 7: it makes sense. I'm rhyming.
Speaker 8: Now I'm doing the you know, I'm letting the DJ
Speaker 8: sort of go to the background and my DJ and
Speaker 8: I should say, go to the background of my movement and.
Speaker 7: Let me take speech. So I just put ans in
Speaker 7: front of peach.
Speaker 1: Hip hop wise before you go to Atlanta, who were
Speaker 1: you sort of I guess more attracted to you in
Speaker 1: terms of like where hip hop was at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, there was kind of a West Coast or whatever,
Speaker 1: but like what was hip hop in Milwaukee at the time.
Speaker 8: Well, Milwaukee was interesting because we liked all of it.
Speaker 8: So we liked world class rerecing crew from the West Coast,
Speaker 8: We liked Egyptian lover from the West Coast, but we
Speaker 8: loved house music from neighboring Chicago, you know, saying, so
Speaker 8: we were heavy on house music, but we loved DC
Speaker 8: and the go go scene. We loved hip hop obviously
Speaker 8: from the whole East Coast New York. So we liked
Speaker 8: all of it. And as a DJ, I played all
Speaker 8: of that, you know what I mean. So I liked
Speaker 8: all of it like that. I think that was the
Speaker 8: unique sort of entry for me musically, and my musicality
Speaker 8: was such that all of it to me was dope
Speaker 8: as opposed to just one or two groups that really
Speaker 8: sort of dictated my direction or what.
Speaker 7: I thought was ill. I liked all of it, you
Speaker 7: know what I mean. It was all dope to me.
Speaker 1: So in going to Atlanta for you, like, how how
Speaker 1: do you take it from a social connection to Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's see we have something here as a musician.
Speaker 2: First of all, did you break your promise to the
Speaker 2: art school? Did you finish? You did?
Speaker 7: I finished?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I finished.
Speaker 8: I finished with a three point three, mind you, which
Speaker 8: I totally repented.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying. I came back.
Speaker 5: I came back doing something that you liked.
Speaker 7: So yeah, well it's funny I was doing something I liked.
Speaker 8: But I'll be honest, it really was my black consciousness
Speaker 8: that made me do well at school because I wanted
Speaker 8: to be excellent as a black man, Like that was
Speaker 8: my That was really my intention.
Speaker 7: Like I felt like I wasn't.
Speaker 8: Being excellent prior, and I wanted to to really come
Speaker 8: with it, Like I wanted to come with it. So
Speaker 8: I studied harder. I was studying the Black Panthers. I
Speaker 8: was studying groups that was about our development, and they motivated.
Speaker 7: Me to do better, Like okay, I need to do better,
Speaker 7: you know what I'm saying. So I did I see that?
Speaker 2: Well? Wait, you had a group before less of development?
Speaker 7: Yeah, I did called Attack.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, good, So what was who was in at
Speaker 1: tech and like what what were you?
Speaker 2: Guys were less like like stylistically, what were you like?
Speaker 8: I think we were a mix between UTFO and run
Speaker 8: DMC if I had to say.
Speaker 7: And you know, you know I do.
Speaker 8: In fact, we got records that we released back then
Speaker 8: and they're they're like classic joints that you know, collectors
Speaker 8: got and because we only pressed to three hundred copies,
Speaker 8: so it's nothing huge, but in Milwaukee that was huge
Speaker 8: because we was the first rap group to put out
Speaker 8: records and to do our things.
Speaker 7: So a lot of the things that we had in
Speaker 7: Milwaukee loved it.
Speaker 8: But as I was saying, we couldn't break past Milwaukee,
Speaker 8: so even working with wyan Ackett, so it just never
Speaker 8: happened for us. But in the group was myself, a
Speaker 8: brother named t A Whiz rest in Peace, and Special
Speaker 8: K who was now who is now named DJ Kimmitt
Speaker 8: who's a beast as a DJ DJ KIMMITTT and myself
Speaker 8: and Ta Whiz was the group Attack.
Speaker 3: Wow, I never knew that that's my guy, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah. TJ.
Speaker 8: Kimmitt's the dude. Yeah, he crushes it. To this day,
Speaker 8: and yeah, he was. He was our DJ, and I
Speaker 8: was a DJ slash rapper and Ta was a rapper.
Speaker 7: Ta was murdered. Unfortunately. In the early nineties.
Speaker 1: Were you guys opening for established acts or like what
Speaker 1: were shows like in Yeah.
Speaker 8: So, like with Attack, one of the sort of ways
Speaker 8: that we tried to get recordize was throwing parties ourselves.
Speaker 7: So my father, being an.
Speaker 8: Entrepreneur, would would spend the money and hire DJ Jazzy
Speaker 8: Jeff and the Fresh Prince, who at that time only
Speaker 8: had a single parents don't understand and one or Girls
Speaker 8: of the World and nothing but trouble I think it was.
Speaker 8: And back then they didn't have covers on singles a
Speaker 8: lot of times, so I didn't know what they looked like.
Speaker 8: We hired them, and I say it in quotes because
Speaker 8: it wasn't them.
Speaker 7: I learned that later.
Speaker 8: We hired them for like three thousand dollars or what
Speaker 8: have you, and they came and performed their one song
Speaker 8: and a few other things. It wasn't even it wasn't
Speaker 8: Jazzy Jeff, and it wasn't Fresh Prince.
Speaker 7: Fresh Prince.
Speaker 8: The guy I saw that night was like three four
Speaker 8: hundred pounds it didn't look anything like the first prints
Speaker 8: that we now know, and so that was our opportunity
Speaker 8: to open up for people.
Speaker 7: So we were.
Speaker 8: Striving to use this entrepreneurial attitude to find ways to
Speaker 8: expose ourselves.
Speaker 7: Was that crazy, that's crazy?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: For a second, I was thinking, Okay, Cash Money Marvelous
Speaker 1: were there, because all right, I'm from Philadelphia and both
Speaker 1: groups were sort of like kind of the same ILK skill,
Speaker 1: tablest huguristic humor mc oh, that's crazy. That's not the
Speaker 1: first time I heard stories of, you know, grifting from
Speaker 1: the hip hop side. I think there's one dude that
Speaker 1: made a killing as Redhead Kingpin.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember been in the FBI, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for like a good year and a half, this
Speaker 1: guy was making a killing off of, you know, scamming
Speaker 1: people doing nightclub gigs or whatever as Redhead.
Speaker 2: When'd you realize the jig was up?
Speaker 7: For like as far as those catfish open I mean.
Speaker 8: Ax or yes, yeah, there there were more when no,
Speaker 8: I wasn't any more of that particular thing. But when
Speaker 8: DJ Jazzy Jeff at Fresh Prince when I first saw them,
Speaker 8: and I forget what single it was, they the label
Speaker 8: allowed them to have a you know, a picture on
Speaker 8: a cup and I was like, damn, I think there's
Speaker 8: like a year later or so, and I'm like, wow,
Speaker 8: we got ripped off. They and the show was whack.
Speaker 8: Their show was horrible. But I was like, even scratch
Speaker 8: now and you know, like you know that that was
Speaker 8: at DJ Chassi Jeff, who for me is my favorite DJ.
Speaker 2: So like, did you ever tell them that story?
Speaker 7: Actually I haven't told him that story.
Speaker 2: Wow, I can't wait to call Jeff about that one. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: that's crazy. It's crazy. I think in Seattle.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't want to say, like, hey, we pulled
Speaker 1: the same skin, but there's a festival called Bumper Shoot
Speaker 1: in Seattle, and the stars just weren't in line for
Speaker 1: me and Tariq the b at that show. But you know,
Speaker 1: we were heavy believers in the show must go on,
Speaker 1: like we couldn't afford to give up one show, right,
Speaker 1: and so like everyone but me and Tariq were And.
Speaker 2: It was early enough for people to not know.
Speaker 1: Who the roots were, right, but until the last minute,
Speaker 1: one guy was like, wait a minute, that drummer is skinny. No,
Speaker 1: And then like it went from like one person to
Speaker 1: five people and then was like, damn near a riot,
Speaker 1: but they dice raw was black thought, and you know,
Speaker 1: they just was in the mail like we we just
Speaker 1: ran out of town. So yeah, yeah, we can't fished
Speaker 1: the city once.
Speaker 2: Sorry, Seattle. I apologized for that.
Speaker 1: Why did you choose the name Arrested Development when you
Speaker 1: started the group? Like, was Arrested Development the next step after.
Speaker 7: My group attack?
Speaker 2: Yeah, after you imploded or yeah?
Speaker 8: So basically we you know, I left Milwaukee because I
Speaker 8: wanted to go to school and I wanted to get
Speaker 8: to another atmosphere, another vibe. We started off as a
Speaker 8: group called Secret Society in Atlanta. Then he had Disciples
Speaker 8: of a Lyrical Rebellion as our name. Then it was
Speaker 8: Arrested Development, and that's when we got our deal, right,
Speaker 8: So all of those names was just conceptual if you
Speaker 8: remember that in hip hop at the time, there was
Speaker 8: a lot of concept going on. So Public Enemy, for instance,
Speaker 8: was not just a music group, but they were a concept.
Speaker 7: You got the S one ws, you you got.
Speaker 8: Slave exactly, terminator acts, you know, and even in other
Speaker 8: music styles, like even with Prince from the eighties on out,
Speaker 8: like he had Prince of the Revolution and the keyboards
Speaker 8: was a doctor, you know what I'm saying. And it
Speaker 8: was like in the time, you know, had had that
Speaker 8: character that they that they play, you know, the whole
Speaker 8: mirror thing with Jerome. So it's like, so the concept
Speaker 8: thing was something that was just it was accessible. It
Speaker 8: was things that people were into, and I loved the name,
Speaker 8: so I loved like punk rock stuff as well at
Speaker 8: that time, and Dad Kennedy's.
Speaker 7: And stuff like this.
Speaker 8: It just had the certain ring to it for me.
Speaker 8: Arrested Development just felt right for what we was doing
Speaker 8: and the vibe.
Speaker 5: We were on and in that moment, what was your
Speaker 5: concept for Arrested Development when you first started?
Speaker 7: It was pretty much the same as what it is now.
Speaker 8: So like, you know, our whole thing was almost like
Speaker 8: a play on soul to soul where you had jazz
Speaker 8: who jazzy b who's like the DJ, but then he
Speaker 8: would have guests of different types singing on it, you know,
Speaker 8: saying exactly right, so like.
Speaker 7: Exactly right, exactly right.
Speaker 8: So that that was sort of the energy with us,
Speaker 8: but it was more of headline is the DJ. I'm
Speaker 8: the producer MC, and I would invite every show, I
Speaker 8: would invite African drummers on I would invite African dance
Speaker 8: troops to come and rock with us. So painters, live
Speaker 8: painters to come and rock with us on stage. So
Speaker 8: that was the energy of Arrested Development then. And you know,
Speaker 8: to some extent or another.
Speaker 5: Now, Funk Jazz got it from you.
Speaker 8: I would say, yes, yeah, yeah, Funk Jazz my man
Speaker 8: Jason Orr definitely was inspired.
Speaker 7: By you know what we were doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, I'll be very remissed if I didn't ask
Speaker 1: this question now. I mean, I'm a pop culture junkie
Speaker 1: and you know, one of my favorite comedies of all time. Also,
Speaker 1: HAPs us to share the name of your band. Now,
Speaker 1: I knew there was a situation with Vernon Reed and
Speaker 1: the Wayans family in terms of Living Color and in
Speaker 1: Living Color. But actually, in I believe in Vernon situation,
Speaker 1: I believe Living Color. Actually maybe for the pilot took
Speaker 1: the logo of Living Color, so I know that it
Speaker 1: got to relegigious proportions.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I always wanted to know.
Speaker 1: When you own a name like Arrested Developments, that you
Speaker 1: own the name of arrest Development.
Speaker 7: We do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even if you're in and I know you guys
Speaker 1: are still active, But do you have to be wholly
Speaker 1: active in order to maintain the name? And does that
Speaker 1: allow you? Like, how does that happen when another entity
Speaker 1: comes along with your name? Like I knew there was
Speaker 1: a situation where Prince actually owned the term the Family. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so when the Family the nothing that Nothing compares
Speaker 1: to you Want and Done group that he produced in
Speaker 1: eighty five, Yeah, when they imploded, he still retained the
Speaker 1: night rights to the name of the family. So when
Speaker 1: did he wanted to name his album, you know, puff
Speaker 1: Daddy in the Family for the No Way Out album,
Speaker 1: he actually had to break off Prince a little something, yeah,
Speaker 1: just to least the name from him, but still Prince
Speaker 1: still maintained that name. So when Arrested Development came out,
Speaker 1: was it like is it a separate copyright for television shows?
Speaker 1: Or when you own a rested Development, it's for any
Speaker 1: entity that's named that, Like if I wanted.
Speaker 2: Cereal or yeah, a sport or just something, you own it.
Speaker 2: So how does that happen? Like are you talking to
Speaker 2: Ron Howard or like.
Speaker 7: Yeah, definitely yeah.
Speaker 8: So what we you know how trademarks work is that
Speaker 8: if it is if the consumer is going to be
Speaker 8: confused about your product called arrested development and our product
Speaker 8: arrested development.
Speaker 7: Then there's a trademark issue.
Speaker 8: So if there was a restaurant called arrested Development, probably
Speaker 8: no problem. If there was, you know, a corn stead
Speaker 8: called arrest of Development, probably no problem.
Speaker 7: But TV shows tend to or can.
Speaker 8: If they're successful, have soundtracks that they put out on
Speaker 8: CD or a record or whatever version is out at
Speaker 8: the time.
Speaker 7: Of music mediums as they make movies.
Speaker 8: In those movies, you know, there could be confusion as
Speaker 8: to when they put out a soundtrack and when we
Speaker 8: do it. And so we we had trademarked the name
Speaker 8: back in ninety two or something.
Speaker 7: It wasn't like before we came out.
Speaker 8: We trademarked it after we came out because this was
Speaker 8: our first album. We're learning like, oh, hell, you know,
Speaker 8: we need to trademark the name. So so we did
Speaker 8: have to take Ron Howard and Fox to court because
Speaker 8: they had stolen the name, and you mentioned a few
Speaker 8: other examples.
Speaker 2: They were still in the name.
Speaker 8: Definitely, No, they knew, they knew, they knew, they knew,
Speaker 8: but they assumed that we were washed up, we had
Speaker 8: no money, and that we couldn't fight, and so what
Speaker 8: was the wrong assumption. Yeah, they they felt like, we'll
Speaker 8: take it and just basically, you know, just steamroll them.
Speaker 8: And they tried to do that because you know, these
Speaker 8: big corporations, they have a lot of money, They have
Speaker 8: long money, so they could go into court for they.
Speaker 7: Could go a long time.
Speaker 8: And so I had to go into court to fight,
Speaker 8: and I had to tell the story of how we started,
Speaker 8: which some of which I shared here in front of
Speaker 8: the court to show the blood, sweat and tears of
Speaker 8: what this group meant to me. So it wasn't just
Speaker 8: a trademark to me, it was it was a thing,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. It was a baby in
Speaker 8: a sense. And so when the people that was in
Speaker 8: court then heard that story, Fox and Ron Howard just said, okay,
Speaker 8: we need to settle, and so we settled out of court.
Speaker 8: The show was already out at the time when we
Speaker 8: went to court, and we settled out of court.
Speaker 1: Always always wanted to do that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was a night, and you were satisfied. I'm
Speaker 5: trying not to be in your pocket. You were heavily satisfied.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, we were satisfied to an extent because
Speaker 8: they offered it. You know, they could put our music
Speaker 8: on the show. You know, there was all types of
Speaker 8: things we were negotiating, but we didn't know if the
Speaker 8: show was going to go well or not. So we
Speaker 8: just decided to go, you know, with an X amount
Speaker 8: and just just move on and then if it went
Speaker 8: to streaming, we get another X amount.
Speaker 7: So things like that, you know, saying we went into
Speaker 7: that kind of deal.
Speaker 1: Wait, since we already did h a mal jam episode,
Speaker 1: I correct me if I'm wrong. When Malcolm Jamal Warner
Speaker 1: left the Cosby Show, I.
Speaker 2: Believe that he did. All right, you're already agreeing with me.
Speaker 2: I knew when he did his episode.
Speaker 1: I didn't know the name of the show, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know if I imagined that THEO became a teacher
Speaker 1: of a bunch of elementary school kids. But I definitely remember.
Speaker 1: I believe that Tennessee Yep was the theme.
Speaker 2: Song to.
Speaker 1: You know, Malcolm Joamalon Warner's. But I don't know if
Speaker 1: he was THEO or if he just played a teacher.
Speaker 1: But I believe that, Yeah, I believe he was THEO.
Speaker 8: He wasn't He wasn't THEO. And it was his first
Speaker 8: spin off spin off. It was just his first debut
Speaker 8: as the star of his own show, and they they
Speaker 8: did use Tennessee as his theme song.
Speaker 2: I didn't know if I imagine that or not.
Speaker 7: Yeah, we went to the taping of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they only did like nine I think.
Speaker 7: Nine episodes, but exactly it didn't last.
Speaker 1: I forgive the name of the show or you know,
Speaker 1: it's always exactly black siico yep, facts, here we go again,
Speaker 1: starring Malcolm jamal One.
Speaker 7: Right exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So in terms of musicianship or at least you as
Speaker 1: a producer, you know, is anyone teaching you production by
Speaker 1: this point?
Speaker 2: Yea?
Speaker 3: And what were you using? What were you making tracks
Speaker 3: on the that time?
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, nobody taught me. Unfortunately, I wish I probably
Speaker 8: would have had that evivent though. I was on a
Speaker 8: HR sixteen eleases drum Machine and uh in Sonic ASR
Speaker 8: ten or before that, and then Sonic EPs sixteen, So
Speaker 8: that was like my primary ways of like the whole
Speaker 8: first album for instance, and second album was on those
Speaker 8: two instruments pretty much unless we hire somebody to come
Speaker 8: in play horns, like on the song you to play
Speaker 8: horns or so on and so forth.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, pretty much my production was from that. You know
Speaker 7: those two things.
Speaker 1: So how do the other members that we know of
Speaker 1: the group speaking of like Deonne Faris and.
Speaker 2: We know headline and story?
Speaker 1: But well, first of all you said it was sort
Speaker 1: of a community of people, but the rest of the
Speaker 1: development that we know, how did you finally round up
Speaker 1: the final numbers in terms of word group and let's
Speaker 1: go for a record deal?
Speaker 7: And how do you can able to sign all these
Speaker 7: people like exactly?
Speaker 8: So that actually you hit it on the nail because
Speaker 8: we actually already had all of these members. But when
Speaker 8: when we got signed to the deal, you can't tour
Speaker 8: with twenty members, you know what I'm saying, You can't.
Speaker 8: It's not financially feasible right for a new group to
Speaker 8: go on a tour. So I had to try to
Speaker 8: make the best decision as possible of who to bring
Speaker 8: out on the road and make this a sort of
Speaker 8: an official thing. In my mind at the time, it
Speaker 8: wasn't necessarily the official group members.
Speaker 7: It was just the people we could take on the road.
Speaker 7: It made sense. We all had.
Speaker 8: Different roles that we could play, and this was sort
Speaker 8: of stage one, but it sort of got solidified into
Speaker 8: that because that album was so big for us that
Speaker 8: you know, those members was those members.
Speaker 7: Now we'll say Dion wasn't ever in the group as
Speaker 7: a member. She was just a guest vocalist.
Speaker 8: But how me in particular, and how we as a
Speaker 8: group rolled, is we we blurred the lines between who
Speaker 8: was in the group and who wasn't in the sense
Speaker 8: of all of our you know, appearances, all of our
Speaker 8: press tours. If she was down with us, then she
Speaker 8: was down like, come on with us, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying, Just come rock with us, even though she
Speaker 8: wasn't actually in the group. And that's how it sort
Speaker 8: of got confused that she was actually in the group.
Speaker 2: Got okay, yeah, wait, since who was the dancer? I
Speaker 2: forget her name?
Speaker 1: Yeah es she yes, okay, So how did you meet
Speaker 1: them or incorporate them into the group?
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, so is she was? Basically she auditioned.
Speaker 8: She was thirteen years old, and we auditioned her sister
Speaker 8: who was older than her, probably about five years older
Speaker 8: than her. And her sister was going on tour for
Speaker 8: the first time in her life with James Brown, I
Speaker 8: want to say, and so she couldn't do it, and
Speaker 8: so she suggested her sister, her younger sister Ishi, which
Speaker 8: her real name is Tamika, and so she suggested Tamika.
Speaker 8: She came to audition for US. I actually didn't feel
Speaker 8: to Mika. I loved her dancing, but she she was
Speaker 8: dressed sort of like Quame with the polka dots and
Speaker 8: that that energy it wasn't the energy that arrested development
Speaker 8: was on.
Speaker 7: So I didn't totally feel her.
Speaker 8: Headliner, on the other hand, loved her style and her
Speaker 8: vibe and felt like she could change it to the
Speaker 8: more the afrocentric vibe.
Speaker 7: And he was right. I mean, she she.
Speaker 8: Totally changed on her own, like once she got in
Speaker 8: the group, she changed her whole look. She cut off
Speaker 8: her hair, she had a bald head, She was like
Speaker 8: dope as ever, and she just had this total energy
Speaker 8: that I.
Speaker 7: Totally missed, you know, but he saw that, Yeah she did.
Speaker 7: She did, you know.
Speaker 8: I mean, I guess how most groups, do you know,
Speaker 8: people change their name when they start to sort of
Speaker 8: go into the entertainment realm as opposed to just using
Speaker 8: like Todd Thomas.
Speaker 7: You know, I'm saying like I used speech. Her name
Speaker 7: was just Tamika Gather.
Speaker 2: That that was her name.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: So she looked up black and and what's her name,
Speaker 8: step of emotional Ishi.
Speaker 7: So anyway, it's something like black life.
Speaker 8: I think this black life, And she looked that up
Speaker 8: and came up with the name monsho Ishi.
Speaker 1: See in my mind, I thought, like, all right, speeches
Speaker 1: the ringleader. So he's like paving titles giving these titles to.
Speaker 7: No, No, not at all, not at all.
Speaker 8: The only name that I gave, and it was more
Speaker 8: of just a you know, a term of endearment, was
Speaker 8: Headliner because he was, you know, he was so dope
Speaker 8: as a barber that you know, he was known for real,
Speaker 8: like in the West End. He was that guy that
Speaker 8: the line was outside of the store waiting for him
Speaker 8: to cut hair. So I gave him the name headliner,
Speaker 8: which made sense to me in a sense of you know,
Speaker 8: somebody you know on the marquee being a headliner and
Speaker 8: stuff like that.
Speaker 4: In y'all's episode of Unsung, you may mention of like,
Speaker 4: I think your original you and Headliner's original arrangement was
Speaker 4: ninety ten. It was a space was nine year I
Speaker 4: guess teen him. That was your rationale in that in
Speaker 4: terms of like division of labor, and you know what
Speaker 4: made that a fair deal to you?
Speaker 8: For me, it was a matter of, you know, I'm
Speaker 8: producing the music. I'm the main writer of the lyrics,
Speaker 8: so you know, just go back and listen to the record.
Speaker 8: And even on like Raining Revolution, right, one of the
Speaker 8: songs on the debut, I would like when the song
Speaker 8: comes on, I'm saying on the mic, Yo, this is
Speaker 8: headliner from Arrested Development, and I come here tonight to
Speaker 8: give thanks to the Rain, and I'm talking, talking, talking,
Speaker 8: and throughout the record, I'm saying things. I would often
Speaker 8: do that on records as a.
Speaker 7: What do you call it?
Speaker 3: Reference reference?
Speaker 8: It's a reference exactly right for him to come back
Speaker 8: and do it. That's my point, is that. Yeah, And
Speaker 8: so like when those things happened, these songs were concepts
Speaker 8: that I came up with on my own.
Speaker 7: So that's why.
Speaker 8: And so managers generally speaking got like ten to fifteen
Speaker 8: maybe twenty percent max in my mind at that time.
Speaker 8: And I'm not saying I was a business dude, because
Speaker 8: I wasn't. I was twenty one years old, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. So you're along the way, right, I'm
Speaker 8: learning very much along the way. So in my mind,
Speaker 8: I was like, even though you didn't write these joints,
Speaker 8: I still want to give you And that was my viewpoint.
Speaker 5: So you thought you were and I thought, but you
Speaker 5: were giving him something for work that actually hadn't been facts.
Speaker 7: I mean, that's that's that was my view at the time,
Speaker 7: you know what I'm saying. So sore.
Speaker 4: So in terms of your deal, y'all's deal with Chrysalist
Speaker 4: was that who was actually signed, like on paper like
Speaker 4: to that deal?
Speaker 7: Yeah, just me and Headliner were signed to that deal.
Speaker 8: And I tell you why that happened because, as I
Speaker 8: said earlier, you know, we had twenty members, so we're
Speaker 8: there's a lot of people. And so when we got
Speaker 8: the deal, which was very unexpected, but of course we
Speaker 8: were hoping for a deal, but we got turned down
Speaker 8: by all the other labels. So when this deal finally
Speaker 8: came through, which was initially a single deal actually that
Speaker 8: led to an album deal, I didn't exactly know at that.
Speaker 7: Time who was gonna be out in the road. Who
Speaker 7: is this group? You know what I'm saying. Because we
Speaker 7: got twenty people, who is the group? Like? So it
Speaker 7: was tough.
Speaker 8: So I knew me and Headliner that part I knew,
Speaker 8: So when it was time to sign the deal, I
Speaker 8: went ahead and did it that way, and you know,
Speaker 8: obviously then things blew up. But that's that's tough because
Speaker 8: when you sign stuff, you don't know how it's gonna
Speaker 8: go at the time, Like you don't know the record's
Speaker 8: gonna go, you know, crazy and all of that.
Speaker 1: So were the members who weren't in the nucleus of
Speaker 1: arrested development? Did they wind up being you? You had
Speaker 1: an offspring group called Gumbo?
Speaker 2: Correct? Yeah, Oh I was yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like, I know, yeahbum and shit, I was
Speaker 1: about to say, I thought you had something to do
Speaker 1: with Gumbo.
Speaker 2: The rest of them members is go to Gumbo.
Speaker 8: No, So Gumbo was a whole new like to me,
Speaker 8: they were they were my like you know, family tree
Speaker 8: starting to develop a family tree, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: like sort of a native tongues if you will, you
Speaker 8: know where you know, they were gonna be my Fuji's
Speaker 8: in a sense, but the Fujis weren't out yet.
Speaker 1: Okay, how long did it take to source a record deal?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: How long was the process of making a demo?
Speaker 5: To?
Speaker 7: Three years, five months and two days.
Speaker 2: Oh, so that's where the title comes from.
Speaker 7: Literally literally wow, And what songs are y'all shopping? Like?
Speaker 3: What was on y'all's demo at the time?
Speaker 8: You know, it changed over the over those years, you know,
Speaker 8: saying so when we first started shopping, it was a
Speaker 8: different version of Fisher For religion, it might have had
Speaker 8: mister Wendell, I forget, definitely not Tennessee, because in fact,
Speaker 8: the last, the last song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always that way exactly.
Speaker 7: Tennessee was the.
Speaker 8: Last joint man and and it was only because I
Speaker 8: lost my grandmother, who I told you I spent all
Speaker 8: my summers with, and in that same week I lost
Speaker 8: my brother Terry, and so the last place I saw
Speaker 8: both of them was at her funeral in Tennessee.
Speaker 7: So Tennessee was the last.
Speaker 8: Joint that I wrote, and it ended up being our
Speaker 8: first single, our first hit, two.
Speaker 4: Man the Prince sample in Tennessee. Yeah, how did y'all?
Speaker 4: How did y'all pull that?
Speaker 2: All?
Speaker 3: Because he wouldn't let nobody.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, actually he was, but I know he was
Speaker 1: because like Nicest Smooth used I want to be a lover,
Speaker 1: and Hammer used prey yep, oh no, they use.
Speaker 2: They used then this guy is the limited.
Speaker 3: They also use what you call it.
Speaker 2: They usedtar fishing starfishing coffee too. I forget.
Speaker 8: You know, Prince was he was against sampling at that time.
Speaker 8: You know, he didn't think it was music, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying, and he was sort of offended. He
Speaker 8: was one of those people at the time that thought
Speaker 8: it was stealing basically. But I will say, you know,
Speaker 8: when we were released to stuff, the sampling world wasn't
Speaker 8: really solidified, like the whole we were saying rumors like
Speaker 8: if you were using less than three seconds, you're you're good.
Speaker 8: If you're not using a melody, you're good. If you're
Speaker 8: just using the beat, it's fine. So these were the
Speaker 8: sort of rules that were going around. It wasn't really
Speaker 8: solidified as to how that worked. And so when I
Speaker 8: sampled the word tones, see, I didn't feel like it
Speaker 8: was even a thing because I'm like, it's just the words.
Speaker 8: So it's like if you use something from a record
Speaker 8: like yo, you know, or you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: it's like it was sort of like that.
Speaker 7: To me, it wasn't a thing, you know.
Speaker 3: What I mean.
Speaker 7: That was how I was thinking at the.
Speaker 1: Time, you know, as much as a prince head that
Speaker 1: I am. I will actually say, it might have taken
Speaker 1: me like four to five months for me to even
Speaker 1: realize that was a prince sample.
Speaker 7: Right, exactly exactly. That's the other thing.
Speaker 1: Alphabet Street just one word take on the back seat.
Speaker 1: I gotta ask, I gotta ask, how much did they
Speaker 1: get you all for?
Speaker 7: So Prince did something?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 7: Go ahead? Go ahead, bro?
Speaker 1: No, no, typical you know, typically most groups will pay
Speaker 1: twenty five to fifty thousand and four something.
Speaker 2: But for one word. I get the feeling you're about
Speaker 2: to tell me it's it's expensive.
Speaker 8: Good it was, And what he did and this is
Speaker 8: pretty this is pretty shrewd on Prince's behalf.
Speaker 7: What he did is he waited for it to hit
Speaker 7: to the top of the charts.
Speaker 8: And so we had already won on the rap charts,
Speaker 8: we hit number one on the R and B charts,
Speaker 8: we got to number six, I believe on the pop charts, right,
Speaker 8: And the moment it went down to number seven, we
Speaker 8: got a call. And I'm not joking, it was literally
Speaker 8: the moment it went down, yeah, and he was like, yo, I.
Speaker 7: Want one hundred grand for that word.
Speaker 8: And at the time I thought that was crazy though.
Speaker 8: I thought that was crazy, But I get him and
Speaker 8: I was young. That's him being nice, bro. And I
Speaker 8: didn't realize.
Speaker 2: That, Yeah he cut break, He cut me a.
Speaker 7: Break, He cut me a break.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that he could have put some sting
Speaker 2: shit and just could ye.
Speaker 7: Yo, I was half the record, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: All the publishing and all that stuff. That's all publishing yep.
Speaker 5: In those three years and stuff, did you guys have
Speaker 5: management and whatnot? And they were helping with things? Because
Speaker 5: I know, so how did the whole Michael Mauldine.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so our man, Yeah, Jermaine's dad was our manager.
Speaker 2: Wow, Okay, yeah, I didn't know that.
Speaker 8: And so you know, back then we had released a
Speaker 8: record in Atlanta and pressed about two hundred copies and
Speaker 8: we were, you know, passing it around the industry people.
Speaker 8: One of those people was Ian Burke, who's a very
Speaker 8: big music dude here in Atlanta, and then he passed
Speaker 8: it to Michael Malden. Michael Maldon at that time wasn't
Speaker 8: really huge. He had he was, I want to say
Speaker 8: he was managing or to be the tour manager still
Speaker 8: times Leather, which was Jermaine Dupriez's first major label signing.
Speaker 8: But they weren't huge, you know, they were just one
Speaker 8: act on a shelf of acts, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: And so he said it to Michael Maldon.
Speaker 7: He was sort of just like a tour.
Speaker 8: Manager for Brick, you know, the R and B band,
Speaker 8: and he was just wanting to break off into the industry.
Speaker 8: He got the Stiltimes Leather hook up with his son, Jermaine.
Speaker 8: I knew Jermaine really well too, so you know, it
Speaker 8: was just a matter of Okay, well he's bigger than
Speaker 8: anybody else that we knew.
Speaker 7: Let's go with Michael Malden.
Speaker 8: He was dope and he got us the deal between
Speaker 8: him and his partner Philip Callaway.
Speaker 1: Are you having any social interaction whatsoever with anyone in
Speaker 1: the lineage of Atlanta hip hop by the time you
Speaker 1: get down there, like are you do you know members
Speaker 1: of the Dungeon family?
Speaker 2: Do you know Drean Big Boy or the good moun guys?
Speaker 1: Like are you running to anyone that six degrees to
Speaker 1: hip hop in Atlanta?
Speaker 8: By that point, Yes, and no, no, none of the
Speaker 8: Dungeon family because I didn't know them, like they weren't
Speaker 8: a thing when we were first coming out. So when
Speaker 8: we were first coming out, it was other acts, you know,
Speaker 8: mcshi D and people like that that was really making
Speaker 8: moves in Atlanta on the local scene. And it was
Speaker 8: more like, well, as you well know, it's like that
Speaker 8: sort of Miami based type of style. One twenty beats
Speaker 8: permitted a more type of style, and it wasn't really
Speaker 8: where we were at, but we knew all these cats
Speaker 8: and all of the showcases that we did, they were
Speaker 8: on those same showcases or people like them were on
Speaker 8: those exact same showcases. So it was very much the
Speaker 8: scene of Atlanta, and we changed that, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean, like bringing a different energy to the Atlanta scene.
Speaker 1: Did you think that you had to leave Atlanta in
Speaker 1: order to make it, like we got to move to
Speaker 1: New York in order to get it a deal or
Speaker 1: la or.
Speaker 7: No, we didn't feel that.
Speaker 8: In fact, I didn't go to New York until right
Speaker 8: before we got our deal.
Speaker 7: That was my first time ever being in New York period.
Speaker 8: So I felt like Atlanta had a good shot, Like
Speaker 8: we had a good shot.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 8: It took us some years obviously to make some things happen,
Speaker 8: but I felt like we had a shot and there
Speaker 8: was a scene there that was very musical, very different,
Speaker 8: you know than what was going on in New York
Speaker 8: at the time.
Speaker 1: Were there any other labels that were considering you guys before,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 8: I mean, we tried all the labels, but at that
Speaker 8: time we were just getting turned down left and right,
Speaker 8: left and right, left and right. And this is prior
Speaker 8: to like, you know, obviously Black Eyed Peas.
Speaker 7: Or PM don or any of those things.
Speaker 8: Well PM down actually did put out a record, it
Speaker 8: just wasn't it wasn't huge just yet.
Speaker 7: But yeah, so it was it was tough for them
Speaker 7: to imagine, you know what I'm.
Speaker 1: Saying, you know, because the thing is is that, at
Speaker 1: least now that I look in sort of an aerial
Speaker 1: view of it, for me, the beginning of what they
Speaker 1: call the alternative movement of hip hop starts with the
Speaker 1: Jungle Brothers, and well, you guys are technically the penultimate.
Speaker 1: I will say that it ended in my eyes with
Speaker 1: diggable planets. Really before before the I guess you could say,
Speaker 1: the eclipse of what we call the chronic came right
Speaker 1: and yeah, yeah, part of my dis not at the time.
Speaker 1: And you know, I've said this to Dre millions of
Speaker 1: times that it took me really fifteen years to really
Speaker 1: open up an admit that. Okay, I like the chronic,
Speaker 1: but I hated the Chronic when it first came out,
Speaker 1: really because I saw, you know, the night that you
Speaker 1: guys when year Grammy was like, right when to Reconnie,
Speaker 1: we're starting the roots, and I was like, okay, now,
Speaker 1: you know, this is the first step into alternative hip hop,
Speaker 1: getting you know, a seat at the table. So by
Speaker 1: the time we get our thing together, it's going to
Speaker 1: be on and popping. And then after you know, and
Speaker 1: then and then diggable planets was next. I was like,
Speaker 1: all right, great, first restive plant development and diggable planets
Speaker 1: and the roots the next you watch, and then we
Speaker 1: get our when we get to the train platform and
Speaker 1: the doors closed, and then we have to wait until
Speaker 1: like the late nineties in order to get the second
Speaker 1: wave in. But you know, in your mind, how did
Speaker 1: you feel about the alternative hip hop tag? Because you know,
Speaker 1: what I will say is that I mean people that
Speaker 1: listen to the show know kind of my obsession with
Speaker 1: sort of like journalism music journalism in particular. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: so one of the most impossible, like Steph Curry from
Speaker 1: half Shot, Eyes Closed, Op Direction, Shot going in Moments
Speaker 1: and hip hop history to me was you guys winning
Speaker 1: the Coveted Pass and Job Awards of ninety two, which
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if you were aware of
Speaker 1: it at the time, but for those of you who
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, I'll say that Lester Bangs was
Speaker 1: the first like rock journalist that was like a star,
Speaker 1: you know, like a journalist that was bigger than he
Speaker 1: was a part of the story. Yeah, saw himself as
Speaker 1: you know, which is kind of a dangerous thing. And
Speaker 1: then after the age of Lester Bangs, then a gentleman
Speaker 1: named Robert Christigal who started working at the Village Voice,
Speaker 1: of which you know that's where like Greg Tad and
Speaker 1: all these other like black writers are coming up Dreamampton,
Speaker 1: like basically the first wave of what we'll run like
Speaker 1: the Source and Vibe in the nineties. But you know,
Speaker 1: in eighty six, eighty seven, eighty eight, what's happened is
Speaker 1: is Robert Christgau is letting like a lot of black
Speaker 1: rioters get a seat at the table to start reviewing
Speaker 1: hip hop. And this is the first time that I'm
Speaker 1: reading reviews, sort of said in the native tongue of
Speaker 1: like a.
Speaker 2: Black person, you know.
Speaker 1: And so when I saw y'all win the Past Job
Speaker 1: Awards and the Past Job Awards, basically Chris Degau gathers
Speaker 1: like three hundred journalists across the United States and he
Speaker 1: asked them for their top ten singles and records of
Speaker 1: the year, and it varies so to get like, the
Speaker 1: last time I seen a hip hop album win that
Speaker 1: award was a nation of millions. Before that, a hip
Speaker 1: hop album hadn't won. So when you guys won that,
Speaker 1: I was like, Yo, this is a fucking moment. At
Speaker 1: the time when you won that the Past Job Awards,
Speaker 1: did that mean anything to you or.
Speaker 2: Was it just like, oh, that's cool.
Speaker 7: Oh it's cool.
Speaker 8: I didn't even know anything about it. I fact, I
Speaker 8: didn't know anything about it. You just said it down,
Speaker 8: I'm serious about it.
Speaker 7: Nothing about it.
Speaker 8: You mean, I'm telling you, I'm telling you wait time out.
Speaker 1: You mean, I'm telling you right now that, like right now,
Speaker 1: you wont like three Mischelin stars for your restaurant and
Speaker 1: you had no clue, no clue that you got like
Speaker 1: fives in the source and you had no no clue.
Speaker 4: I remember, I remember the past job, but like I
Speaker 4: ain't carried the white people thought like, what was the
Speaker 4: source saying?
Speaker 2: But no, no, no, no, it wasn't that.
Speaker 1: I know, I know that that's that's a very easy deflection, Fonte.
Speaker 1: But what I'm saying was Chris de Gal made it
Speaker 1: in a very even seat at the table. So this
Speaker 1: is a mixture of black critics white critics. So that
Speaker 1: ship meant a lot more to me than the A
Speaker 1: and job and instead of jazz and pop they spell
Speaker 1: it passing job.
Speaker 7: Word up, you know.
Speaker 3: And I wasn't saying that it wasn't you know that
Speaker 3: it wasn't important.
Speaker 4: I just meant from the standpoint for us, for me
Speaker 4: as a hip hop fan, right, we weren't really checking
Speaker 4: for what their opinion was on hip hop, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, Like it was just you know, that
Speaker 4: was kind of what it was.
Speaker 7: I was.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: To me, that was like some of me like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, like, yeah, often hard to achieve, and you
Speaker 1: guys did it. But the fact that you didn't even
Speaker 1: know about it no even more crazier than me.
Speaker 8: Well you know, also, I hated the term alternative hip
Speaker 8: hop because I didn't. For me personally, I.
Speaker 7: Didn't get it.
Speaker 8: It didn't feel like it was an alternative or an
Speaker 8: alternative to the other hip hop. Like I'm listening to
Speaker 8: like Yo bum Rush the Show album and they're sophisticated,
Speaker 8: you know, which is a rock song, and there's all
Speaker 8: these live drum loops and stuff like this on Yo
Speaker 8: bum Rush the Show record coming from Death Jam, which
Speaker 8: was obviously a very legitimized labeling hip hop, and it
Speaker 8: wasn't called an alternative record. Chuck d sounded one percent
Speaker 8: different than any in my opinion, at least any MC
Speaker 8: prior to him, and it totally you know, a flave,
Speaker 8: the concept of a flav or flave and everything he
Speaker 8: did in same with Nation of Millions to hold his
Speaker 8: back record. Don't get me wrong, it was clearly we
Speaker 8: all celebrated that music. But I'm saying, like to me,
Speaker 8: if you know too much posse and these type songs
Speaker 8: aren't gonna be considered alternative hip hop, then I didn't
Speaker 8: get it.
Speaker 7: I didn't get what made it so alternative or why
Speaker 7: it started with.
Speaker 1: Us, you know what, something though, If I'm really, really
Speaker 1: truly honest I was twenty one when the album came out,
Speaker 1: and I didn't buy the album until mister Wendell started
Speaker 1: until after I'm plugged.
Speaker 2: Okay, then I brought the record. God I spun.
Speaker 1: I'm a DJ, so I had when I buy singles
Speaker 1: and forty five's is for the purpose of like playing
Speaker 1: in ne club. So here's the thing though, when I
Speaker 1: hear Tennessee and essentially people every day, I remember having
Speaker 1: a little hip hop debate arguments about is the rest
Speaker 1: of development a hip hop group or an R.
Speaker 2: And B group?
Speaker 7: Fucked up?
Speaker 2: He rapping I was twenty one dog but even then
Speaker 2: because he was singing, because he was delivering so melodically, I.
Speaker 1: Just in my mind rap was glo wan too throw
Speaker 1: the MIC's one Wan two want Too.
Speaker 2: And I didn't see that.
Speaker 1: So in my mind, I was like, yo, this is
Speaker 1: one of the most innovative R and B groups ever. No, hey,
Speaker 1: another disclosure, One of my first debates with Missy Elliott
Speaker 1: was over the same thing, because I made the mistake
Speaker 1: of letting my opinion on on Twitter that I didn't
Speaker 1: consent to Missy Elliott and MC. More than I considered
Speaker 1: her a singer, I consider her a singer that had
Speaker 1: skills as an MC.
Speaker 2: Well she lived my dms up.
Speaker 1: Boy Wow the lyrics to the second verse or I
Speaker 1: guess the first verse of people every day? How much
Speaker 1: resistance were you on a daily basis meeting from the
Speaker 1: hip hop guard that saw you guys as weirdos.
Speaker 8: Ironically, we weren't getting, like from a in my own
Speaker 8: body experience.
Speaker 7: We weren't getting a lot of.
Speaker 8: People doubting the hip hop origin of who we were
Speaker 8: being in my own body.
Speaker 7: We were getting a lot of.
Speaker 8: Pushback from gangs to hip hop at the time. I
Speaker 8: mentioned ice Cube on people every day and Earlie to read.
Speaker 7: From our group says who after I say his name?
Speaker 8: So there's like a Now I'm meant for it to
Speaker 8: be a slight in a sense, right, because I'm trying
Speaker 8: to compare how I'm going to handle this situation compared
Speaker 8: to how Ice Cue portrayed himself.
Speaker 7: Oh exactly right.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, now, I'm just hearing now I'm one
Speaker 2: second years old.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that who Yep, I didn't realize it
Speaker 1: was a question.
Speaker 2: I just thought, Hey, all.
Speaker 8: We all knew who Ice Cue was. Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 8: she was, but at the time. He he did, and
Speaker 8: so did therefore Snoop And so did you know others
Speaker 8: who were on the West Coast that were more so
Speaker 8: repping gangs to hip hop in a more direct way, right,
Speaker 8: So there was that sort of and not to mention
Speaker 8: every show that I did, and I'm talking about for
Speaker 8: twenty thousand people or arrested development did, I'm saying, I
Speaker 8: would say that we're not calling black women bitches and holes.
Speaker 7: We don't do that. Our peers do that. We don't
Speaker 7: do that.
Speaker 8: So I'm making a very clear statement about who we are,
Speaker 8: what we're doing, and why it's different than what this
Speaker 8: dude's doing. So those types of things came off as basically,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying, like, Okay, you better than Yeah.
Speaker 2: What happens the first time that you meet them?
Speaker 8: Cube Cube did that signature growl look that he does?
Speaker 8: You know how he just it's it's a cover of
Speaker 8: every magazine you've ever seen. Cbe Grace, the cover of
Speaker 8: He gave me that cube scal one oh one. He
Speaker 8: gave me that scowl, right, and then Snoop gave me
Speaker 8: this sort of like cold thing at the Grammys, And
Speaker 8: it was that kind of energy iced tea. At the time,
Speaker 8: me and him, prior to us really blowing up, we're friends.
Speaker 8: But after we started to blow up, he distanced himself
Speaker 8: from me. So it's those kind of things that I felt.
Speaker 8: But it wasn't necessarily the whole R and B versus
Speaker 8: hip hop thing. It was more of the stance that
Speaker 8: we were taking. And I think, now, mind you, we're eating.
Speaker 8: We're eating at this time, like we're wrapping up awards shows,
Speaker 8: So this.
Speaker 7: Is this is scary. Also said, so this is this.
Speaker 8: Is like competition now, like, okay, their stance is very
Speaker 8: juxtaposed to what we're doing.
Speaker 7: And they're winning. Like this is not an underground sensation.
Speaker 8: This is something that's actually taking awards from them, like
Speaker 8: the chronic.
Speaker 1: It's become because because of the yeah, I mean, you
Speaker 1: guys owned, you guys own ninety two.
Speaker 2: Did it ever become a burden?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 2: Winning that much and selling that much?
Speaker 1: Because then again, it's also like, and I do remember
Speaker 1: like Cypress Hill went through situation where you know, the
Speaker 1: source decided to just start going out on them for
Speaker 1: their second album because they thought, like, oh, y'all ain't
Speaker 1: making hip hop for the heads. No, more like we
Speaker 1: see you know, white people dancing and slam dancing in
Speaker 1: your videos and you're doing like Wlapalooza and all this
Speaker 1: other stuff. Yeah, so were you feeling as though that
Speaker 1: you were in danger of hindering the.
Speaker 7: Group without a question?
Speaker 8: Like, for me as a leader of the group, I'm
Speaker 8: worried about that every day, Like every day, I'm worried
Speaker 8: about this, this transference of black heads and fans loving
Speaker 8: our music and it starting to transform into mainly white
Speaker 8: audiences now loving the music, mainly white critics, you know,
Speaker 8: heroin the music.
Speaker 7: It was like, oh man, what is this? What does
Speaker 7: this mean?
Speaker 8: Like because everything we're talking about is these black issues.
Speaker 8: But then the people that's starting to you know, come
Speaker 8: to all the shows is different. We did Lollapalooza, you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. We we did these huge which
Speaker 8: I love these festivals, don't get me wrong. Like I'm
Speaker 8: with bands that I absolutely adore, Primise and and you know,
Speaker 8: I love these bands.
Speaker 7: So I'm loving this experience.
Speaker 8: But it's a it's a it's a hard thing to
Speaker 8: sort of reckon, right because you're this.
Speaker 7: We're an underground hip hop group talking about black liberation.
Speaker 8: And yet we're doing these big rock tours and we're
Speaker 8: doing things that I wouldn't take back to this day.
Speaker 8: But it was tough, right to try to understand the trajectory,
Speaker 8: you know, what.
Speaker 7: Was going on.
Speaker 1: Carol Lewis of course gets immortalized and paintingful. You know,
Speaker 1: Nobrie Walker's our agent. Carol Lewis is our agent, word up,
Speaker 1: indeed whatever. And so I remember the reason why my
Speaker 1: manager chose Carol Lewis is because you guys were a
Speaker 1: client and always working, and he saw the basic group
Speaker 1: that you took, you know, the festivals you were doing.
Speaker 1: And again this was unheard of at the time in
Speaker 1: the early nineties. We live now in a America just
Speaker 1: got onto festival fever. But right and so, but one
Speaker 1: of the most shocking things was you guys wanting to do.
Speaker 2: A Chitlin circuit kind of.
Speaker 1: You basically wanted to un Yeah, it seemed like you
Speaker 1: wanted to undo the progress of the first album with
Speaker 1: zing Lamadouni. Because I remember this whole campaign of you know,
Speaker 1: we're going to do a Chitlin circuit or we're going
Speaker 1: to do like small clubs and that sort of hanging.
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait, a minute, y'all sold four million. I've
Speaker 1: seen you guys open for en Vogue in the summer,
Speaker 1: like now it's your turn. Really, I was just mad
Speaker 1: because I wanted you guys in the shed so that
Speaker 1: way the roots get open for y'all. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm thinking, like, wait, why are y'all in
Speaker 1: these small venues where you're not going to make money?
Speaker 2: Like go back to the big venues.
Speaker 1: But you know, so why what was your mind the
Speaker 1: mind state of doing what you called the Chitlin circuit
Speaker 1: run for you know, the.
Speaker 2: Launch of zing A Lamaduni.
Speaker 8: I felt like we had lost track with the roots,
Speaker 8: no put un intended. I felt like like we weren't
Speaker 8: connected with the people, and the machine had gotten so
Speaker 8: it became so much a part of everything that I
Speaker 8: felt scared. To be honest, I felt like I was
Speaker 8: floating and my feet weren't on the ground, like I
Speaker 8: didn't know what I was connected to and so we
Speaker 8: went that direction. To me, it reminded me of what
Speaker 8: Dayla did after their success with three Feet Right, So
Speaker 8: their next record was DayLA's Dead Right. So to me,
Speaker 8: I don't know, I know them, but I've never talked
Speaker 8: to them about this, but I have a feeling that
Speaker 8: it was their way of saying, Okay, let's get back
Speaker 8: to something that has more I don't know roots for
Speaker 8: something then the whole hippie thing, Like we could take
Speaker 8: that and we could keep going with the hippie thing.
Speaker 8: But I think that they purposely wanted to kill that
Speaker 8: and go, you know, to something that they that that
Speaker 8: felt more real to them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I say, man, I was surprised. You know, I
Speaker 4: was very surprised. I thought, ease, my mind was going
Speaker 4: to be like out of here. I thought that would
Speaker 4: be like a big yeah, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: because I was like, okay, this is them. It sounded
Speaker 4: like y'all like, okay, this.
Speaker 3: Is this is them.
Speaker 2: But you know that was my gym.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what was the relationship with the label like at
Speaker 4: the time when y'all would make it that well, so.
Speaker 8: It was the perfect storm because the label was going
Speaker 8: through huge changes, so that we just made them I
Speaker 8: don't even know how.
Speaker 3: Many millions right, right.
Speaker 8: And what tends to happen with these big labels is
Speaker 8: then their presidents start getting changed and people start getting changed,
Speaker 8: and you know.
Speaker 3: They start it brought you into building.
Speaker 8: Facts, you start losing your team and the people that
Speaker 8: you're working with. Simultaneously, the group is going through it.
Speaker 8: So internally, me and the headliner are going at war
Speaker 8: with each other behind the scenes, and we're going through everything,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, And that that was demoralizing
Speaker 8: and horrible, and the music industry was changing, you know
Speaker 8: I'm saying WU was coming in. It was a different
Speaker 8: energy from what was happening in the early nineties, and
Speaker 8: well it still was the early nineties, but like ninety
Speaker 8: one ninety two had a different energy than what would
Speaker 8: start to happen. We were becoming more and more popular,
Speaker 8: Naza's Ellmatic was hout, so it was like it's just
Speaker 8: all of those things combined made it a little bit
Speaker 8: of a different landscape, you know what I'm saying that
Speaker 8: that landscape internally group wise, musically on the outside and
Speaker 8: label wise.
Speaker 1: So with the remix for people every Day, Wait, did
Speaker 1: you make both at the same time or was it
Speaker 1: after the fact, after the album was done.
Speaker 8: After the album was done, and in fact, when Tennessee
Speaker 8: blew Up, which again was the last song we did
Speaker 8: on the album, right right, So, and so if you
Speaker 8: could imagine the whole hip hop argument versus melodic singing argument.
Speaker 8: There was not really a melodic singing record on the
Speaker 8: record on our album except for there was two songs,
Speaker 8: a song called You and a song called Rainy Revolution,
Speaker 8: but none of those were planning to be singles for us.
Speaker 8: So by the time we released Tennessee as our first single,
Speaker 8: unexpected but last minute move, it was a melodic style.
Speaker 8: It did so well that I didn't feel confident. I
Speaker 8: wanted to make a run of this, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying, because I wanted this to work. So I
Speaker 8: didn't feel confident that the version of People every Day
Speaker 8: that was on the record was going to do it.
Speaker 8: But the label wanted to release that as a single,
Speaker 8: People every Day. The version that's from the record, that's
Speaker 8: not the version that.
Speaker 3: Became the one. Yeah right exactly.
Speaker 7: So I was like, Yo, I'm doing the singing style
Speaker 7: on Tennessee.
Speaker 8: Let me try to basically recreate that same song, different
Speaker 8: groove and different lot of styles. So I resang it,
Speaker 8: went into the studio, brought the rest of the group,
Speaker 8: and we did that.
Speaker 7: We did that version. I felt like that was the
Speaker 7: right call, and it was.
Speaker 2: The right call.
Speaker 3: It took off question.
Speaker 1: Yeah, basically, you know between Tennessee and uh uh people
Speaker 1: every day and mister Wendell and Natural, you know, I
Speaker 1: never have that much faith in record companies for like
Speaker 1: having a plan and successfully executing that plan.
Speaker 7: Either.
Speaker 1: So who's the person that's going to claim the credit
Speaker 1: of it? Was my mastermind think because you know, not
Speaker 1: for nothing. But we followed. We saw that blueprint and
Speaker 1: was like, oh, this is obviously a blueprint for success. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like well the label claim that, oh we we had
Speaker 1: a plan all along, We knew this was going to happen, Like.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I would credit a team and it was Michael Maldon,
Speaker 8: it was myself.
Speaker 7: And it was Lindsay Williams. Those are the people.
Speaker 8: Lindsay Williams was our A and R guy at Chrisli's.
Speaker 8: He also signed Gang Star and released Step in the
Speaker 8: Arena album and stuff after that. So Lindsey knew hip hop.
Speaker 8: He was from, he is from Harlem. Michael Malden knew us.
Speaker 8: He understood our vibe, and I knew us. So I
Speaker 8: feel like between us, we were sort of coming up
Speaker 8: with what should be this, how should we navigate that?
Speaker 8: And the label just really follows suit. I'll never forget
Speaker 8: being a twenty two I think I was twenty two
Speaker 8: year old dude going for the first time up.
Speaker 7: To these tall high rises on.
Speaker 8: Avenue of America's New York and having these meetings with
Speaker 8: these all these execs at this long table, trying to
Speaker 8: explain to them why and how rest of development can
Speaker 8: make it, you know what I mean, And having marketing meetings,
Speaker 8: like talking about marketing strategies.
Speaker 7: So it's just it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Usually like record labels usually stories like yours in which
Speaker 1: other groups, I mean, for every it's development.
Speaker 2: I can name other alternative hip hop groups that you know.
Speaker 1: It could be the Boogey Monsters, it could be me
Speaker 1: by me, it could be shit the Roots for the
Speaker 1: first three or four records, and which the alternative But
Speaker 1: well no, no, I'm just saying which the label just
Speaker 1: doesn't have a clue on how to market. And let's
Speaker 1: be honest, a lot that was selling was also due
Speaker 1: to the momentum of a controversy. You know, if someone
Speaker 1: gets shot, if someone goes to jail, if someone has
Speaker 1: a backstory, then that's easy marketing.
Speaker 2: But that's not on the label's part. They're just exploiting
Speaker 2: that and.
Speaker 1: Always just you know, the stars was was aligning for this.
Speaker 1: You got to talk about working with in the Malcolm X.
Speaker 1: I can only imagine, like I was really excited seeing
Speaker 1: revolution for the end of it. I have to know, though,
Speaker 1: when Spike's approaching you about this in your mind, especially
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety two, are you seeing having the flagship
Speaker 1: song for a Spike Lee film?
Speaker 2: Is it pressure?
Speaker 1: Because I mean we pretty much are thinking like, oh,
Speaker 1: you got to come with someone on the level of
Speaker 1: Fight the Power something like of that level or the button,
Speaker 1: you know, like there was one point where a song
Speaker 1: associated with the Spike Lee film could elevate this, so
Speaker 1: like what is that like?
Speaker 2: Like how did that all come about?
Speaker 7: It was?
Speaker 8: It was incredibly stressful because Public Enemy smashed it with
Speaker 8: Fight the Power and the way Spike position Fight the
Speaker 8: Power throughout the film made it such a pivotal.
Speaker 7: Part of that film.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's an undeniable part of that film, right,
Speaker 8: you know, it's part of the fabric of the film,
Speaker 8: not just the soundtrack, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: So coming in after that was.
Speaker 8: Extremely tough and I felt a lot of pressure, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean to like to try to make
Speaker 8: sure that it was Look, I mean, Bomb Squad is
Speaker 8: a whole crew, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7: But for me as a producer, still with that ASR ten.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: In HR sixteen, Yeah, I'm striving to make sure that
Speaker 8: it has the layers and that it has the potency
Speaker 8: of something that deserves to be in this film, but
Speaker 8: also making sure that it's still us and not somebody else,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying, making sure it's still who
Speaker 8: we are as a group and what we do.
Speaker 1: Knowing how tenacious Spike is, you know, even for like
Speaker 1: we did a song for Bamboos or whatever, So I
Speaker 1: know how Spike is in terms of him putting the
Speaker 1: pressure on you.
Speaker 7: Facts.
Speaker 1: How many times did he have to come to you
Speaker 1: to be like because even Chuck will say I think.
Speaker 1: I think Keith Shocky told me that Spike didn't like
Speaker 1: the first three drafts to Fight the Power, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: the fourth time they finally nailed it. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: because I was asking Keith, like why name some of
Speaker 1: them fight the power and not have like the Isisley
Speaker 1: Brothers or reference of that, And he talked about like
Speaker 1: we did a whole other thing. And then Spike was like, Nah,
Speaker 1: this ain't it, This ain't it or whatever. And I
Speaker 1: often know that sometimes it's hard to take criticism from
Speaker 1: a non musician. Yeah, they just don't know or whatever.
Speaker 1: And you know, you guys have like four top ten
Speaker 1: singles at the time, so it was like you could
Speaker 1: have easily been and can't tell me Nutingville. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: like how much back and forth was it until he
Speaker 1: was like, that's it, that's the one.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 7: What's funny.
Speaker 8: We didn't get a lot of back and forth from
Speaker 8: Spike on that, and he was very hands on though,
Speaker 8: so he was in the studio when we were that.
Speaker 8: He was shouting revolution. He insisted that it be an
Speaker 8: anthem right from the jump, and so he really trusted
Speaker 8: in me to deliver and he didn't give me any
Speaker 8: The only only fighting back that he gave me was
Speaker 8: the video because I wanted to have a more militant
Speaker 8: video and he shoot it. Yes, he shot it. He
Speaker 8: shot it in Brooklyn. We shot it in Brooklyn with him.
Speaker 8: It was amazing experience. We shot that entire video in
Speaker 8: seven hours and if you look at that video again,
Speaker 8: you'll see probably two, three, four five hundred people, I'm
Speaker 8: not sure, marching down the street with us in one
Speaker 8: scene another to maybe one or two hundred people in
Speaker 8: a classroom with us in the school. I mean, there's
Speaker 8: a lot of sets and we did all of that
Speaker 8: in seven hours. Just amazing, amazing. So yeah, it was
Speaker 8: definitely his hands on experience all over it. But he
Speaker 8: didn't give me a lot of fight back. And prior
Speaker 8: to us, Gangstar had did It's a jazz thing for
Speaker 8: Mobetta Blues and that that took a little bit of
Speaker 8: the pressure off. But for me personally, as big as
Speaker 8: the group, our group was, I was really wanting to,
Speaker 8: you know, go somewhere near that fight the power energy.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, I gotta ask the question.
Speaker 1: So again, long time listeners know of my journalism obsession,
Speaker 1: so without really getting into the specifics of it, I
Speaker 1: kind of want to ask you about the aftermath of it.
Speaker 1: And we actually did an entire episode with Danielle Smith,
Speaker 1: writer and at the time I was living in London
Speaker 1: and there weren't American publications, uh they you know, it
Speaker 1: was hard to get you know, now like everything's digitally colonized,
Speaker 1: so I can get the same magazines that you're getting
Speaker 1: all across the world. So you know, I'm getting care
Speaker 1: packages from my publicists in the States to London, and
Speaker 1: of course, you know, the Princess you A Vibe magazine
Speaker 1: comes out, and you know, I had never experienced a
Speaker 1: black takedown article before, and I internalized, like I almost
Speaker 1: felt like that was my group she was talking about.
Speaker 1: I think maybe these questions I'm asking you simply because
Speaker 1: like vicariously, I was living in your footsteps and whatnot,
Speaker 1: and Okay, what they do, that's what I'm doing, and
Speaker 1: they do that, students that stuff. And then so you know,
Speaker 1: I get the magazine. I read the Prince article and
Speaker 1: everything I was like, all right, read the rest of
Speaker 1: development article.
Speaker 7: And Trouble in Paradise was I was.
Speaker 1: Like, yo, like, you know, I'm used to in black journalism.
Speaker 1: I'm used to like ride on magazine, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like, Hey, what opposites do you find attractive
Speaker 1: in the opposite sex? And what kind of foods do
Speaker 1: you like? So this level of journalism I'd never seen before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never seen a takedown And for those of you
Speaker 1: who know, takedown article is kind of where I believe
Speaker 1: the artist doesn't realize that they're being ambushed facts in
Speaker 1: the interview. Can you walk me through the process from
Speaker 1: which you found out that this article was not going
Speaker 1: to be the glowing A plus report card that a
Speaker 1: re development had been getting up until that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like what can you just walk me through it?
Speaker 2: Like it was?
Speaker 7: It was literally a kick in the ass because I
Speaker 7: was cool with Danielle, Like she came to it at
Speaker 7: last and she said this. We hung out with Danielle
Speaker 7: and it was all love, Like it was so much love.
Speaker 8: And we needed that article because we had already been
Speaker 8: facing backlash. We had already been getting a lot of
Speaker 8: different narratives about where we're going, who we are. Not
Speaker 8: from a like internal group like any beefs going on
Speaker 8: in a group, but just from a standpoint of what
Speaker 8: I was saying earlier, as far as you know, now
Speaker 8: we're sort of these pop music darlings, which we never
Speaker 8: were on that tip, but that's what we had sort
Speaker 8: of become to some extent.
Speaker 7: We're winning all these.
Speaker 8: Awards, We're going to these big lollapalooza rock tours and
Speaker 8: all of this. So that article was dear to me,
Speaker 8: and it for me, it was a sister, a black
Speaker 8: sister that's come down to Atlanta to hang with us,
Speaker 8: so she had total access to everybody. And long story
Speaker 8: short goes on to me.
Speaker 2: Oh, is that always the protocol?
Speaker 1: Like because even now, like me and Tarique do the
Speaker 1: Roots interviews, there's eleven of us, but right now it's
Speaker 1: micking Keith right.
Speaker 2: You you felt comfortable and just letting hey talk to everybody.
Speaker 7: I did.
Speaker 2: I did, and you didn't know I was coming.
Speaker 8: Not at all, Like that was one hundred one of
Speaker 8: those like damn when I read it is when I
Speaker 8: knew that that's what the take was, because that's not
Speaker 8: what I was getting from Danielle in person like eye
Speaker 8: to eye right and with the other members with me
Speaker 8: too by the way, so like we're with her and
Speaker 8: I'm not getting that now, min she talks to everybody
Speaker 8: separately as well, and you know this article starts to.
Speaker 7: Listen. There was there was.
Speaker 8: Turmoil in the group. I'm not denying that, but that
Speaker 8: wasn't the narrative of where we even were at as
Speaker 8: a group. So we were going through turmoil, but we
Speaker 8: were marching on, like that's where we're at.
Speaker 3: Going through y'all were going through turmoil, but y'all weren't
Speaker 3: trying to sell it.
Speaker 8: We were definitely not trying to sell it. And also
Speaker 8: we weren't it wasn't the major narrative of where we
Speaker 8: were at as a group. It was a narrative. It
Speaker 8: was a narrative, but it wasn't the narrative. So when
Speaker 8: I saw that article and it was the narrative of
Speaker 8: the entire article, I was like, I lost my faith
Speaker 8: in journalism from that point forward because I was like, damn,
Speaker 8: like that was like you said, it was a takedown.
Speaker 7: And I don't know what she said.
Speaker 8: I don't even if y'all addressed this when you interview her,
Speaker 8: but it even had to been some type of thing
Speaker 8: where you know, it's it was a good look for
Speaker 8: her to do some kind of story or maybe or
Speaker 8: boss or Uppers was like yo, come in at this
Speaker 8: way or whatever. I don't know what it was, but
Speaker 8: it was.
Speaker 7: It was crazy.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to put words in Dan
Speaker 1: Danielle's mouth, but I definitely I don't.
Speaker 2: I can't even write it. It wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Wasn't a yeah I did it, and so what like
Speaker 1: it was definitely a remorseful, like sort of afterthoughts, and
Speaker 1: she explained, like you you have to understand that I
Speaker 1: wasn't coming mean spirited. I believe that there was a
Speaker 1: pressure to not make and again, you know, as I
Speaker 1: explained earlier, or black journalism before the source, before Vibe
Speaker 1: magazine was basically just limited to either Ebony magazine where
Speaker 1: everything was glowing or ride On magazine, where everything was kind.
Speaker 2: Of frothy, you know what I mean, but not like
Speaker 2: real journalism.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 1: I remember her feeling, like I believe she said that
Speaker 1: it was a very conflicting thing to do, like as
Speaker 1: a journalist, do I tell the truth or do we
Speaker 1: protect because you know, also I know the rules of
Speaker 1: black people is that you don't spill your dirty laundry
Speaker 1: in front of the world to see.
Speaker 2: And me reading.
Speaker 1: That article made me uber obsessive in terms of who
Speaker 1: we talked to, Like that was the points. That was
Speaker 1: the point in which I started, you know, studying every journalist,
Speaker 1: every botty line, looked at other articles they wrote.
Speaker 2: Even to this day.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not as vigilant now as I was,
Speaker 1: but yeah, it just for me, I was just like, yo,
Speaker 1: like this group is might might never recover from this,
Speaker 1: How we didn't How did you so mentally and physically
Speaker 1: to go that high and then to be in a
Speaker 1: car crash that wasn't by your intentional design, It's still
Speaker 1: a car crash. Nevertheless, how did you guys continue with
Speaker 1: promoting the album or like, was it a rap after that?
Speaker 7: It was a rap after that?
Speaker 8: I mean, by and large, And so for me, I'm
Speaker 8: I'm literally pissed at her, Like dude, I saw her.
Speaker 8: I saw her at events and I literally, you know,
Speaker 8: I'm saying I won't go there, and I was pissed
Speaker 8: and I didn't talk to her at all. I just
Speaker 8: I was literally bitter towards her. I think for me,
Speaker 8: it was the first time I saw sensationalistic journalism. For me,
Speaker 8: it was my first introduction to it. So, like you said,
Speaker 8: articles prior were one thing and different magazines covered things
Speaker 8: in one way. But after I saw that, I was like, oh, okay,
Speaker 8: because it's one thing to say the truth about there's
Speaker 8: some beef going on behind the scenes. To me, I
Speaker 8: think I was cool with that, Like I was alright
Speaker 8: with that, and that's why I was allowing everybody to speak.
Speaker 8: But to make the whole trajectory of the story. It
Speaker 8: damaged us and Vibe was very much a huge deal
Speaker 8: at the time, and from a black perspective, we needed
Speaker 8: that co sign at the time, like we needed that
Speaker 8: from a marketing standpoint for this group. We needed that
Speaker 8: love in order to you know, validate the direction we're
Speaker 8: continuing to go with and without it, it was tough.
Speaker 5: It was really no circle back for you and Danielle.
Speaker 7: I mean at this age I'm now fifty four. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I could summer black with her, but but.
Speaker 8: I'll be honest, like during that time period, probably for
Speaker 8: probably ten years probably I couldn't talk to her.
Speaker 5: Those are our petty years too.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean, I couldn't. I
Speaker 7: couldn't do it.
Speaker 4: You talked about around like ninety six, like when you
Speaker 4: did your solo record and you know you were you know,
Speaker 4: you were feeling suicidal at the time.
Speaker 3: What took you to that mind stake?
Speaker 7: I think it was what you just talked about.
Speaker 8: Quest was like it was the drop and how far
Speaker 8: it was, you know what I mean Like that that's
Speaker 8: tough to digest for any person.
Speaker 9: In my opinion, Yeah, dude, I was gonna say, we
Speaker 9: that's You're literally the first person to call me to
Speaker 9: do something, so I forgot like you did a first project.
Speaker 7: It was my first music video.
Speaker 2: I was in your video you Fully be Myself.
Speaker 7: You Foley Dallas Austin.
Speaker 2: That's right. He was playing keyboards, right.
Speaker 7: Yep, he was playing organ on Ramone.
Speaker 2: Harvey was your manager. I remember you and Ramone honking
Speaker 2: me up.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you and.
Speaker 2: Ramone picking me up from the hotel exactly.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I didn't want here to speak.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, I mean, but I mean I was a
Speaker 8: fan of y'alls already, Like before I met you. The
Speaker 8: label showed me y'all's album and was like, Yo, peep
Speaker 8: this out. So I was a fan already. And at
Speaker 8: that time the label that was no longer Christalist, it
Speaker 8: was called EMI and it was sort of morphine and
Speaker 8: D'Angelo was signed as well, but he wasn't out yet.
Speaker 8: So I was hearing a lot of the stuff that
Speaker 8: they was about to go into the direction of. And
Speaker 8: that's how I knew about y'all. So I was like, yo,
Speaker 8: I love this group. And so that's why I know
Speaker 8: reached out to you.
Speaker 4: For y'all when you were talking about you know, being
Speaker 4: in that like kind of deep depressive period.
Speaker 3: What got you out of it? How did you get
Speaker 3: through it?
Speaker 8: You know, it was through time but also spirituality. In
Speaker 8: ninety six, I released my solo album. In ninety six,
Speaker 8: I was very suicidal and a woman that I auditioned
Speaker 8: for a tour I was doing in Amsterdam was a
Speaker 8: Christian and she started talking to me and my wife,
Speaker 8: and long story short, I became a Christian and that
Speaker 8: truly saved my life and truly made me think of
Speaker 8: things differently and see myself as valuable outside of wherever
Speaker 8: a record was at and where you know, whatever the
Speaker 8: industry was saying in my music career was going. So
Speaker 8: I saw a value outside of that.
Speaker 5: That changed my ninety six was also around the time
Speaker 5: I used to see you on campus. So you were
Speaker 5: going through all kinds of enlightening.
Speaker 8: Facts, and that was I went back to school at Clark.
Speaker 8: I never went to Clark prior, but I went to
Speaker 8: school in general, back to college to really, like to
Speaker 8: I wanted to be around academia in a sense, and
Speaker 8: I wanted to be around that sense of learning and
Speaker 8: curiosity and things that I felt was more pure in life.
Speaker 2: Wait, you two weren't to Clark at the same time
Speaker 2: he went.
Speaker 5: To Clark as speech emir very brave.
Speaker 2: What was that like?
Speaker 1: I dream of going back to college, but time won't
Speaker 1: allow that. So what is that like? Like not starting
Speaker 1: over again?
Speaker 8: But just yeah, it was tough because we had already
Speaker 8: blown up. This is prior to Zingo LAMADOONI, but it
Speaker 8: was after three years album so we're huge. I'm very noticeable,
Speaker 8: very known, and so it was tough and our schedule
Speaker 8: was absolutely insane. So honestly, I could only stay for
Speaker 8: a semester. I had to drop back out because it
Speaker 8: just was it wasn't doable pretty long term unless I
Speaker 8: would have quit the industry, which I wasn't willing to
Speaker 8: do it that at that point.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, you were still actively releasing music and you
Speaker 1: guys were, you know, still there. There was a momentum
Speaker 1: and outside of the United States facts you know very much.
Speaker 5: So yeah, Mace did the same thing, though I don't
Speaker 5: know what it is about Clark, but Mace went to
Speaker 5: Clark after he was Mace too.
Speaker 7: So yeah, reach your Mace, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 7: think his ministry was in the was on Clark initially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thirty years into this business, can you tell me, like,
Speaker 1: what have you learned?
Speaker 2: What have you like?
Speaker 1: What your overall experiences in terms of what you learned,
Speaker 1: things that you could have changed, or experiences that you've had.
Speaker 1: I didn't even ask about, like what does success feel
Speaker 1: like in nineteen ninety two ninety three amongst the people
Speaker 1: you meet, Like did you even have an inner circle?
Speaker 1: Like did you become friends with other artists or not?
Speaker 7: Or so to answer that last part, yes or no.
Speaker 8: I mean I was cool with, you know, certain artists,
Speaker 8: but not really friends friends because everybody was in the
Speaker 8: East coast or West coast and we was down in Atlanta,
Speaker 8: and it just was a different energy. You know, back
Speaker 8: then hip hop was still very divided. You know, it
Speaker 8: was West coast, East coast. The South was still not
Speaker 8: thoroughly respected. If you remember Andre's speech at the awards,
Speaker 8: It's like and that was that was after us, So
Speaker 8: imagine prior to that, how little respect you know, the
Speaker 8: South got in many ways.
Speaker 7: So so the answered the question, no, I don't think so.
Speaker 8: And also I'm a very like everyday people kind of guy,
Speaker 8: so by nature I didn't find super value in hanging
Speaker 8: with like clicks in the industry type thing like that.
Speaker 7: Wasn't my thing.
Speaker 8: So if we if we clicked, it was good, but
Speaker 8: that just not that that wasn't what I was searching
Speaker 8: for in a sense.
Speaker 1: So you weren't going like making pilgrimage in New York
Speaker 1: to go record shopping with blah blah blah blah blah
Speaker 1: or no, and when you come to Atlanta, come hang
Speaker 1: with us, And.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I would start doing that later, like much later,
Speaker 8: but no, I wouldn't. I wasn't doing that.
Speaker 7: At the time.
Speaker 5: Does the Atlanta hip hop community look to you to
Speaker 5: know that you kind of like kind of started this
Speaker 5: ball rolling in a way, like do you feel the
Speaker 5: respect from Atlanta in net work?
Speaker 8: Yes, and no just when they meet me in person. Know,
Speaker 8: when it comes to documenting it like whenever there's a
Speaker 8: documentary about Atlanta, somehow we're sort of left out of
Speaker 8: it and it starts with organized noise and it starts
Speaker 8: without castid goodie Mobb, it's funny, let.
Speaker 1: Me go on record to give you the flowers and
Speaker 1: basically says that, yeah, you know, and we really haven't
Speaker 1: running to each other all that much because it would.
Speaker 5: Have been in person, by the way, in Atlanta, if
Speaker 5: speech was in Atlanta when we was getting Lantah. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he was gonna be party Atlanta run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, facts facts, Yeah, I see, I see.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, I mean interrupted wisdom. No, God, go ahead, no, no.
Speaker 2: No, but I'm just saying that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I I do acknowledge that you guys, you know,
Speaker 1: planted a seed and oftentimes, yeah, history doesn't remember pioneers
Speaker 1: like often people that come after the fact and sort
Speaker 1: of perfect a formula, that sort of thing. They get
Speaker 1: the flowers and they get the accolades, and you know,
Speaker 1: you guys definitely, whether people really want to admit it
Speaker 1: or not, Like you know, you guys are onsible for
Speaker 1: a movement. You're definitely responsible for the movement that I'm
Speaker 1: still allowed to participate, you know, thirty years later into
Speaker 1: my life.
Speaker 2: So I definitely I thank you for that. Man.
Speaker 7: Well, that means everything. It really does. It means a lot.
Speaker 5: And then you just do a show with Christian and Tariq.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I did a show in New Jersey at the Pack
Speaker 8: Center with Black Thought with Yah seen with Christian.
Speaker 2: Showed up on time.
Speaker 8: He did he actually was on time, he was before time.
Speaker 8: Actually he rocked. He did his thing. Rak Kim was
Speaker 8: supposed to be on it and he broke his foot
Speaker 8: our ankle, and then Chuck d was supposed to be
Speaker 8: on it he got COVID.
Speaker 5: So but you killed it.
Speaker 1: So have you had any communication whatsoever with the the
Speaker 1: initial original members of the band?
Speaker 2: What's the relationship like now?
Speaker 7: It's dope. It's dope.
Speaker 8: It's never gonna be like it was in the early days.
Speaker 8: But we're like mad, cordial with one another.
Speaker 3: Mad.
Speaker 8: You know, when we see each other, it's literally like
Speaker 8: seeing an old best friend. Right, So, in particular me
Speaker 8: and Headliner, because that's where the main split was, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean, and the group sort of split
Speaker 8: on one side or the other according to that main split,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. So Headline and I were cool,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. The issues are what it was,
Speaker 8: and I don't think it will ever not be there.
Speaker 7: But we're real cool and.
Speaker 8: You know, like if he has issues with his family,
Speaker 8: I'm the first to call him and try to see
Speaker 8: what I could do, you know what I'm saying, and
Speaker 8: to help a vice versus. So there's a lot of
Speaker 8: love there and I think as the older we've gotten,
Speaker 8: the more we're able to dead the stuff that you
Speaker 8: know is sort of irrelevant in the gist of time,
Speaker 8: you know, as time moves on.
Speaker 1: Well, not to hint too much, but you know, it
Speaker 1: is kind of the thirtieth anniversary of that movement.
Speaker 2: So if there ever was a time to.
Speaker 1: Sort of rekindle or respark or flame whatever, like, you know,
Speaker 1: just having participated in an event in which we're celebrating
Speaker 1: our history. And I know, I know hip hop has
Speaker 1: a lot of disdain for being seen as old or
Speaker 1: ancient or sages or whatever. You know, the non sexy
Speaker 1: term is for for having age of wisdom. But I've learned,
Speaker 1: probably after the Grammy experience, how important it is to
Speaker 1: acknowledge and celebrate a history.
Speaker 2: And I agree you guys have that.
Speaker 1: So I you know, I really hope that one day
Speaker 1: I see it all come back full circle because you
Speaker 1: know the world needs that, because I still I still
Speaker 1: spend the music and the magic.
Speaker 2: You know, the magic still works, you know.
Speaker 5: Pility sixty. We were thinking, we're thinking, no, I.
Speaker 8: Mean, it's it's way He's gotten way better than that.
Speaker 8: Now we've worked all of that out.
Speaker 5: Now also, it can really oh make it happen. Oh,
Speaker 5: last question, this is such a random question. But you
Speaker 5: talked about land and stuff in Georgia earlier, and I
Speaker 5: was just curious if you're linked in with those families
Speaker 5: that bought that ninety seven acres in Georgia.
Speaker 8: No, but I that that movement has been something that's important.
Speaker 5: For nineteen black families bought ninety seven acres for a
Speaker 5: safe space for black people. They're building a community. So
Speaker 5: I was just seems so in speeches like.
Speaker 2: Lane, it doesn't have anything to do with doctor yorick.
Speaker 8: No, no, no, what nope, and it's dope houses too,
Speaker 8: dope they they're building it.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll send you an article on mereor yeah, I
Speaker 2: want to see about that.
Speaker 1: Well speech brother, brother, thank you, thank you for taking
Speaker 1: the time out just to speak with us, and thank you.
Speaker 1: You know again you're a legend and I thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you so much for for doing this
Speaker 1: with us. This is q US, y'all another classic episode,
Speaker 1: uh speech our guests on the show, Sugar Steve, thank you, speech.
Speaker 8: Man, thank you' all, thank you, And I'll send you
Speaker 8: then article on me of course.
Speaker 2: On on behalf. I know once I hang up, I
Speaker 2: know it's like a question. I forgot to ask I
Speaker 2: know you.
Speaker 3: Last question, Oh yes, can we horseshoes?
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