Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.
Speaker 2: Supremo, Rollbrivo Supremo, Roll Call, Suprema Supremo, Roll Call Suprivo
Speaker 2: roll Yo.
Speaker 3: Is the season?
Speaker 4: Yeah, like I sheared the light.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have a good reason yeah to talk about
Speaker 3: that site.
Speaker 2: Supreval Suprema.
Speaker 5: Roll Call.
Speaker 6: My name is Sugar.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Is this thing on? Yeah, this took so long to start. Yeah,
Speaker 6: my buzz is gone.
Speaker 2: Supprivo Rollbriva Sprevo roll.
Speaker 3: I'm unpaid bill.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and lordy lord, let's talk about Yeah and okay
Speaker 7: player boys Suprema so Suprema, Spriva.
Speaker 8: Sopri It's like yeah, oh my god, Yeah, yeah, okay
Speaker 8: made us.
Speaker 3: Suppriva Suprema.
Speaker 4: My name is Nick Yeah, and I'm a cancer. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm good at music, not much of a dancer.
Speaker 8: Supppreval roll Suprema Supremo Role called.
Speaker 3: My name is Fante. Yeah, and I won't be boring.
Speaker 3: Yeah and him had exchange.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now I'm whipping a form ship.
Speaker 9: Suppriva Role suprem Subprima, Oh call.
Speaker 3: Subprim Wow, we did it. Like no, it is a
Speaker 3: Japanese exactly. I mean it's technically a forum, but yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah it ain't Germany.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't wait what what what kind of car you
Speaker 3: got Alexis?
Speaker 8: Oh god, yeah yeah it isten't.
Speaker 3: Me great gas mileage? Toyotas are the best? Yeah, man,
Speaker 3: you right it think? Hey, I just got my sign.
Speaker 1: I'll fixed. I'm still hanging on what it is the
Speaker 1: twentieth anniversary of me getting my drivers like this?
Speaker 9: What's funnier the Quest Love and the Scion?
Speaker 3: Not much? I don't know.
Speaker 9: I don't know the answer, Like, am.
Speaker 1: I driving a classic car now that I've been driving
Speaker 1: the sign for twenty years?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Don't even make that car?
Speaker 2: You don't?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't think.
Speaker 3: So how do you get it serviced? So the guy
Speaker 3: that drives me around now he has a hook up
Speaker 3: in the heights where they got thing. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 3: lot of garages up there in the heights. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: uh yeah, shop shops understood.
Speaker 1: Let's just say that I'm good for at least maybe
Speaker 1: nine rounds of kneeding batteries.
Speaker 3: And this is a hell of a way to start
Speaker 3: this episode. We are live in New York. Well, we're
Speaker 3: not live. We're in New York City. We're in person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good to shout out to take a little for
Speaker 1: getting up early this morning. And I hear that you
Speaker 1: say that you did not get sleep.
Speaker 3: Not really, we didn't.
Speaker 8: We didn't really we had uh yeah, I got in
Speaker 8: this morning. Yeah, we had a movie that he scored.
Speaker 8: We had that yesterday. That was it Full Frame Documentary,
Speaker 8: Full Frame Festival. So that was like all day yesterday,
Speaker 8: and then we rolled out six this morning, got here
Speaker 8: like eight.
Speaker 3: Okay, it's been up ever.
Speaker 1: Since, well since Fonte already assisted us on that, we
Speaker 1: might as well introduce our steam guest. And I guess
Speaker 1: you can say that this is a special episode because
Speaker 1: of course this being five years, yes, twenty twenty five five, right,
Speaker 1: so being as though this is like twenty five years
Speaker 1: of what okay Player is, I guess we're still trying
Speaker 1: to define what okay Player was.
Speaker 3: But if there was ever a moment, I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Mind flexing the very played out what a time to
Speaker 1: be alive hashtag man, I would say that probably okay
Speaker 1: Player is one of those moments in which I think
Speaker 1: everything that I intended it for that site to be
Speaker 1: actually came to fruition, which is that people connected with
Speaker 1: each other way above than that just being a roots website,
Speaker 1: but people were able to do that and probably one
Speaker 1: of the most pioneering moments that will have defined how
Speaker 1: it is that we make music and how we stretch.
Speaker 1: You know, before Okay Player, like I lived at a
Speaker 1: time when you went to Europe that was Europe, when
Speaker 1: you did things in the States that was like now
Speaker 1: it's colonized and stretched out. And the fact that you
Speaker 1: know the storied journey of how Fontigolo and Nicola met
Speaker 1: and hooked up one Okay Player, you know even that
Speaker 1: this is a dream interview for us to finally get
Speaker 1: you guys, because you're such a YouTube to me, are
Speaker 1: are the actual physical result of what happens on the
Speaker 1: internet when it's a good thing.
Speaker 9: Yes, many different ways. I just want to point I'm
Speaker 9: not saying.
Speaker 3: Nothing else, So that's a welcome.
Speaker 4: Appreciate it.
Speaker 3: It's weird, I know, the legend of foreign exchange.
Speaker 1: Hopefully this will be what I initially intended the Jesus
Speaker 1: a Mural episode to be.
Speaker 3: Before today, before it went totally left.
Speaker 1: Maybe if you guys aren't familiar with that legendary episode.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of inside baseball talk about what Okay
Speaker 1: Player meant as a community. This hopefully will be a
Speaker 1: more nuanced, better version of that episode. So Jesus a
Speaker 1: m though that was definitely that to me is one
Speaker 1: of like are the funniest moments, at least for me,
Speaker 1: even though it was a lot of inside baseball Nikolay.
Speaker 3: What is your first musical memory?
Speaker 4: My first musical memory is hearing Secret Life of Plans
Speaker 4: by Stevie Wonder. I credit a lot of my musical
Speaker 4: interest and taste to my mother's music collection, and I
Speaker 4: have a distinct memory of being I must have been
Speaker 4: five or six years old and feeling the braille on
Speaker 4: the cover of Secret Life and Plants while taking in
Speaker 4: the sounds, and I think, looking back, the synthesizer pioneering
Speaker 4: more so than anything else, ecclesiastic and some of those
Speaker 4: create like that had a massive influence on me. And
Speaker 4: that must be one of the first, if not the first,
Speaker 4: true musical memories that happened sort of before I consciously
Speaker 4: got into music and was interested in music, and like,
Speaker 4: shout out.
Speaker 3: To my mom for that. How old were you in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine, I was five years old. That's so crazy.
Speaker 4: I'm a seventy four shout out to all the seventy
Speaker 4: four babies. Yeah, I distinctly remembered that record. Like now,
Speaker 4: I would argue with people a lot about songs of
Speaker 4: the Kia Life versus Secret Life of Plants and how
Speaker 4: they were kind of back to back right and so
Speaker 4: different in so many ways. And for me, I never
Speaker 4: had that connection with songs that I did with Secret
Speaker 4: Life Plans for the very and that it hit me
Speaker 4: so profoundly as a kid, and I have a specific
Speaker 4: memory with each of the songs with Black or Kid
Speaker 4: We'd comeback as a flower with Tree Race Babblin, Like
Speaker 4: I think it really shaped.
Speaker 3: Me all right.
Speaker 1: So just to give our listeners just a little backstory,
Speaker 1: because I had the opposite experience that you had, even
Speaker 1: though you and I had the same shared experience, you know,
Speaker 1: like when the classic hip hop records came out and
Speaker 1: we discussed it on an OK player and then it
Speaker 1: would be like nine hundred threads of just like that
Speaker 1: happened before the Internet and especially in my household in
Speaker 1: which there were so many musical experts, a Stevie Wonder
Speaker 1: record actually had the power to make someone have like
Speaker 1: almost a four hour summit meeting like the day as
Speaker 1: songs in the Key of Life came out September of
Speaker 1: seventy six. Both songs in the Key of Life and
Speaker 1: Spirit by Earth, Wind and Fire came out the same day.
Speaker 3: And that was also the first day of school for me.
Speaker 1: So, like you know, that day was like a major event,
Speaker 1: Like we got home early, we sat as a family,
Speaker 1: sat in front of the record player to see, like
Speaker 1: what the else because it's two years since Fulfilledness first finalite.
Speaker 1: So it was such an event in my household that
Speaker 1: come three years later in seventy nine, when we had
Speaker 1: that same anticipation opening the record and listening and man
Speaker 1: to watch it with my set, to watch my father's
Speaker 1: face during the Earth's creation. Yo, I just I've never
Speaker 1: seen my dad cry until maybe like nineteen eighty four
Speaker 1: at a funeral. But the day I saw the day
Speaker 1: that music died for my dad, and it was such
Speaker 1: a heartbreaking, like he just looked at the floor like
Speaker 1: I've lost.
Speaker 3: Hopeing to humanity.
Speaker 1: But for me, any albums that were rejected by like
Speaker 1: my dad's band or then I would wind up inheriting.
Speaker 1: And so I inherited that record and so just like you,
Speaker 1: that was my dark side of the Moon, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: mainly because it's like, oh, it's on my own and
Speaker 1: I would listened to it in the headphones and yeah, imagine,
Speaker 1: And I loved everything about it.
Speaker 4: I loved the photo of Stevie in the booklet. I
Speaker 4: love the fact that there were Japanese lyrics. I didn't
Speaker 4: know what that meant at the time, And then I
Speaker 4: think I asked my mother, like what is this and
Speaker 4: the lime green cover or if I have to describe it,
Speaker 4: maybe almost pistel like it was. So it wasn't just
Speaker 4: the music, It was the totality of that record, and
Speaker 4: it wouldn't have happened on it was vinyl.
Speaker 1: It was just a big, beautiful The one time I
Speaker 1: realized that there was such a major pushback on that record,
Speaker 1: like besides, I would dismiss my dad's thing, like him
Speaker 1: shit talking about Stevie lost it. I'm so disappointed. Was
Speaker 1: like when I started going back to read reviews and
Speaker 1: it got a lead review and Rolling Stone and they
Speaker 1: just they just talent. It's almost in a way, like
Speaker 1: I don't know if I should be this honest about it.
Speaker 3: When Glover's Camp got a one point nine and.
Speaker 1: Pitchfork, oh okay, there was an energy shift between he
Speaker 1: and I and almost felt like that devastated him so
Speaker 1: much to know that I knew about because I instantly
Speaker 1: hit him like, yeah, man, don't like.
Speaker 4: It, right, but I certainly have a view.
Speaker 1: But just until like maybe three years ago, I truly
Speaker 1: let the opinions of a critic go okay, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't go back to look at the movie like
Speaker 1: none of that stuff, like I'm just I now make
Speaker 1: art because like I want to make beautiful art and
Speaker 1: not like, oh this will keep our rating high or whatever.
Speaker 1: But I didn't realize how much of a beating he
Speaker 1: took for that record. Me neither, and in fact, like
Speaker 1: I weighed everything that I heard by Stevie after that.
Speaker 1: I compared it too secret life and it didn't always
Speaker 1: live up to me. But because of like and I think,
Speaker 1: like we could talk about this later, but like my
Speaker 1: love for synthesizer pioneering, what what Stevie was doing with
Speaker 1: the with the c S eighty on that record, Like
Speaker 1: I think it's looking back, it's clear why the larger
Speaker 1: public didn't really get it, but for the nerds, if
Speaker 1: you will, like it checked all the boxes because he
Speaker 1: was going further, and but I still think it had
Speaker 1: like come back as a flower is up there for me,
Speaker 1: Flowers for me, that black work.
Speaker 8: That's the only record I can think of that Stevie
Speaker 8: singing falsetto win. I can't think of no other song.
Speaker 6: That's good.
Speaker 8: He's not right, Yeah, he's not right. Yeah, I've never
Speaker 8: heard him sing falsetto on nothing Nose.
Speaker 1: So when I when I heard songs after that, I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, it's cool you discovered songs proactively, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Anything like. I think the second thing I heard by
Speaker 4: Stevie was the musical of the Concoration that had original
Speaker 4: and it had like living for the City. I think
Speaker 4: it was like, all right, this is I'm hearing more
Speaker 4: of what I like. But like everything that I've heard after,
Speaker 4: and it's largely probably because of the warmth of the
Speaker 4: memories involved with it, everything thereafter didn't quite have the
Speaker 4: same magic for me.
Speaker 1: So now that I hear this, it makes even more sense.
Speaker 1: At you guys that man, the day you guys covered
Speaker 1: he if she breaks your heart to me, like, I
Speaker 1: still have a dream that somehow if the masters of
Speaker 1: the Jungle Jingle soundtrack bro get free. I have such
Speaker 1: a dream of just hearing that same I've never heard
Speaker 1: an album which song structure. I like it a lot,
Speaker 1: but if he changed the instrumentation on it like that,
Speaker 1: he could have pulled the winehouse. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if like Okay, if he did a fulfillment first menalitey
Speaker 1: or whatever like sonically made it sound like that would
Speaker 1: have had the same impact. But hearing you guys like
Speaker 1: update his sound but still.
Speaker 8: Keep ah Man, this is a beautiful song. Man, I
Speaker 8: just thought it needed to be updated, like, but it's
Speaker 8: a great record.
Speaker 3: I love that song.
Speaker 1: So let me ask for you guys the point where
Speaker 1: I realized that Okay player was just bigger than a
Speaker 1: website for some acts to post announcements on. You also
Speaker 1: just have to sift through the many personalities, because you
Speaker 1: guys are on a constant blind date. Like there are
Speaker 1: many people to whom I've had interactions with that you
Speaker 1: know you can't see what they look like or you
Speaker 1: don't you know, I don't know what trolling is or
Speaker 1: none of that stuff. But you guys have to find
Speaker 1: each other because even in my mind, even though you
Speaker 1: are definitely a charter member, I do have at least
Speaker 1: in my social circle. I have a like an inner
Speaker 1: circle like around one, around two, and you always around
Speaker 1: three person like even though we talked a lot, not
Speaker 1: to the level of no for sure.
Speaker 3: So how did you two meet? Yeah, it was I
Speaker 3: think this was back in like it was two thousand
Speaker 3: and what two.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think a one one sort of found each
Speaker 4: other in the same in.
Speaker 3: The same type of jazz. So with him, like, and
Speaker 3: I didn't know anything about this guy. I didn't know.
Speaker 8: We would even joke with the crew like it was
Speaker 8: Nikola is the girl the girl like we you know,
Speaker 8: it was just a name on the screen. We had
Speaker 8: no idea and so but I think I feel like
Speaker 8: I remember it was a radiohead topic and and he
Speaker 8: jumped in the thread. But I just kept seeing him
Speaker 8: in threads, and I would notice that he had a
Speaker 8: lot of the same taste that I did, Like we
Speaker 8: liked a lot of the same shit. And so I
Speaker 8: was like, okay, I kind of fucked with him. And
Speaker 8: so then one day he just came and was like, Yo,
Speaker 8: this is a new track by me, and I'm like okay,
Speaker 8: And so I listened and I was like, holy shit,
Speaker 8: this is amazing. And I reached out and I was like, hey, man,
Speaker 8: would you mind if I did something of this? You know,
Speaker 8: we got mczo here like what you know? He was like, nah, man,
Speaker 8: go for it and so famous d M.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, hit.
Speaker 8: And so the first time we did the first record
Speaker 8: was I think was it lighted up? Was that the
Speaker 8: first Yeah, that was the very first one lighted up?
Speaker 8: And Nick's groove was a two for that we did.
Speaker 4: And if I may rewind, like I think for me,
Speaker 4: I think I might have a unique perspective on Okay
Speaker 4: Player as a European. Yes, I want to know Cony
Speaker 4: like it was sort of finding connection with this completely
Speaker 4: different universe like I.
Speaker 3: Saw you. Okay.
Speaker 4: I bought Voodoo in two thousand and two. It must
Speaker 4: have been in April, right, something like that.
Speaker 3: It came out in January.
Speaker 4: Okay, Well I may have been late, but either way,
Speaker 4: like I was familiar with the Roots, but I hadn't
Speaker 4: really ever heard full albums. I was familiar with Common,
Speaker 4: but Voodoo was Voodoo brought me to Okay Player because
Speaker 4: I looked at the booklet and it said okay Player
Speaker 4: and I had no idea. So you brought me to
Speaker 4: Okay Player. That summer I saw you guys twice on
Speaker 4: the Voodoo tour, once in the Hague for the North
Speaker 4: Sea Jezz Festival's and once in Belgium, which was an
Speaker 4: open air daytime show. Didn't Third Base open up for us,
Speaker 4: I don't remember that. I know Slum Village open for
Speaker 4: y'all in Belgium. It wasn't with JD, but it was.
Speaker 4: But it was a religious experience in many ways in Belgium,
Speaker 4: specifically because it was during the daytime, so it was
Speaker 4: a very It hit very directly, and I remember you
Speaker 4: guys hitting send it on and I was crying, like
Speaker 4: I'm not saying that just to blow smoke.
Speaker 3: It was that.
Speaker 4: And so like two thousand is when I learned about
Speaker 4: Okay player. But then it took me a while to
Speaker 4: get to the boards because that was sort of the
Speaker 4: second layer, you know what I mean. And it took
Speaker 4: me a while to get to the boards, and then
Speaker 4: it took me a while to go from lurking to posting.
Speaker 4: I signed up, I got to use your name at
Speaker 4: that point, I was going under Nicolay, which is my
Speaker 4: first name. I have three I was baptized, I have
Speaker 4: three first names. And it seemed like the most international
Speaker 4: sounding one, So I registered that knew that Nicola Music
Speaker 4: user name.
Speaker 3: What if they call you back home? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Well yeah no, Matthias is like what I kind of
Speaker 4: would the person behind the you know screen, I guess
Speaker 4: the man behind the curtain. But so it took me,
Speaker 4: I think a year maybe to go from discovering the
Speaker 4: site to realizing that there was the lesson, particularly like
Speaker 4: I've never been on any of the other like I
Speaker 4: was specifically like I didn't really do General. I didn't
Speaker 4: really do.
Speaker 3: So the lesson.
Speaker 1: So he's basically saying that to our listeners out there,
Speaker 1: we would have boards, and the boards was like a
Speaker 1: playground sub section or yeah, like a nightclub.
Speaker 3: And then the lesson for the snobs, the music snobs.
Speaker 1: I was on the lesson, Yeah, more than I was
Speaker 1: supposed to be on like the General General the okay artist, like.
Speaker 3: Nobody went okayist. Newbies would go there like you know,
Speaker 3: is this really you? And that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, people either went to General when they were
Speaker 1: trying to get something yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man right, And the lessons were for.
Speaker 4: Like the dweeps and so for me, like just in Europe,
Speaker 4: I didn't have connection with a lot of people that
Speaker 4: liked the music that I liked for a variety of reasons.
Speaker 4: And I'm not really sure why. You earlier asked like,
Speaker 4: what was my first interaction with hip hop? And it
Speaker 4: was actually Three Feet High and Rising eighty nine. I
Speaker 4: guess yeah, and that like I was, I was kind
Speaker 4: of a metal head before that time, like ironically, but
Speaker 4: something about sampling really appealed to me. And so I
Speaker 4: heard three Feet Rising and then I started getting into
Speaker 4: you know, the first Tribe album and stuff like that.
Speaker 4: So by the time, like fast forward ten years, I'm
Speaker 4: full on and so I didn't have a lot of
Speaker 4: people around me.
Speaker 1: Can I ask something, yeah, yeah, yeah, and you can
Speaker 1: educate our viewers. Okay, So of course now because everything
Speaker 1: is colonized, you know, if Drake is to release a song,
Speaker 1: we're all going to stay at the same time. Can
Speaker 1: you explain what the process is like before the internet
Speaker 1: and how it trickled down and got to you.
Speaker 4: So in ninety the early nineties to maybe mid nineties,
Speaker 4: we started getting Yo MTV reps on the European MTV
Speaker 4: and that is when so it was I want to
Speaker 4: say a nightly and then on Saturday they had the
Speaker 4: Fab five Freddy Hours or whatever, right, and so I
Speaker 4: just started watching that and so anything like it wasn't
Speaker 4: like we had a lot of that on the radio.
Speaker 4: There was a hip hop show that every week would
Speaker 4: play like, you know, I remember hearing Come Clean for
Speaker 4: the first time, Jay Ruin, you know, like ice Cube
Speaker 4: and stuff like that, but it was jo MTV reps
Speaker 4: and then seeing everything like the leaders of the news
Speaker 4: school episodes, the all like I was taking all of
Speaker 4: that in yeah right, yeah right, what you say. Yeah,
Speaker 4: So it was like to TV, I guess and and
Speaker 4: just I don't know, I ate all that up. But
Speaker 4: at the same time, I was kind of like I
Speaker 4: had a best friend in high school was also very
Speaker 4: like his favorite stuff was duck Down, Like he was
Speaker 4: super into like UGK and all that stuff. And so
Speaker 4: together he and I went to hip hop shows in
Speaker 4: Amsterdam at the Paradiso, saw like stuff like Onyx and what.
Speaker 4: We went to all of the shit that we could
Speaker 4: find stuff my bad really so yeah, so okay, Player
Speaker 4: for me was literally a direct connection to the culture
Speaker 4: that I really really was interested in.
Speaker 1: This is the thing I've had conversations with people the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties generation that got hip hop, Like to hear
Speaker 1: Mooney Love describe that. She can hear her voice on
Speaker 1: those Public Enemy interludes on it Nation of millions, you know,
Speaker 1: like the the interstitials of which they're doing the top
Speaker 1: of the Fresh what are the who's the pump masterflex
Speaker 1: of the UK? West Wood West Yeah, Tim Westwood Show.
Speaker 1: Like if you listen to that funky drummer loop, somebody
Speaker 1: anybody scream here the girls screaming Himoney you love? That's
Speaker 1: her voice, like so to hear an eighties generation describe that.
Speaker 1: But we can all attest, especially Fonte and I, that
Speaker 1: there's a different type of hip hop fan like post
Speaker 1: ninety four but post ninety five that you fall under.
Speaker 1: And the thing is that I noticed and a lot
Speaker 1: of artists, especially now Jay, were the damage of had
Speaker 1: to move to Europe just to make a living. So yeah,
Speaker 1: lives there now? Oh really because that's like yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's it's a lot of acts that are doing that.
Speaker 1: At any point, did you realize, like really the essence
Speaker 1: of the hip hop that you that attracted you, the
Speaker 1: perceived on the ground thing. Did you have any clue
Speaker 1: whatsoever that that that's really a culture that is tailored
Speaker 1: for Europe, like there was no place in the United
Speaker 1: States in which like the Roots could sell out the
Speaker 1: Parisian version of Massive Square Garden La Zenith.
Speaker 3: Yeah you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, where prints played like a bunch of times. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you know, not at home.
Speaker 3: We can't do that right.
Speaker 1: At any point, did you realize that that level of
Speaker 1: hip hop like that was the true home of it
Speaker 1: or did you still think of it as an American
Speaker 1: thing like I looked at it.
Speaker 3: What did you think we were doing in America at
Speaker 3: that time? I didn't pick up on that, Like I didn't.
Speaker 4: I wasn't raised on you know, the classic run DMC
Speaker 4: stuff or something like that. I had no clue like I,
Speaker 4: Like you said, I came on board in the early nineties,
Speaker 4: but my true fandom was like ninety five, ninety six
Speaker 4: all the way up to two thousand, when when I
Speaker 4: bought like stuff like.
Speaker 3: Like water for chocolate, which was a.
Speaker 4: And I don't think I realized that if In fact,
Speaker 4: I felt kind of isolated over there, specifically musically, because
Speaker 4: what I liked was in my group of people perceived
Speaker 4: as American.
Speaker 3: Okay, not even my sound.
Speaker 4: When I first started making music. A lot of people
Speaker 4: over there felt it was kind of slick and a
Speaker 4: little American, and I didn't realize at all later like, now,
Speaker 4: what you're saying makes perfect sense, But for me at
Speaker 4: the time, it was an American thing, and it I
Speaker 4: think subconsciously realized that if I wanted to make music
Speaker 4: like that, I needed to connect with Americans.
Speaker 3: That's weird.
Speaker 1: So the slur word over there is it sounds America,
Speaker 1: whereas that same type of music here, I think they
Speaker 1: would just say, like, oh, that's soft, you know, yes, smooth, emotional.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: Over there, like the type of hip hop that exists
Speaker 4: there natively is more abstract, you know, it's not necessarily
Speaker 4: purely musical per se, but it's very aggressive and lot
Speaker 4: of it is local language based.
Speaker 3: At this point, who was the biggest local artist that
Speaker 3: had the biggest poll over there, That's a great question.
Speaker 4: I didn't really listen to any of it because, like
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of them were Dutch language artists,
Speaker 4: and I never thought that sounded very good and that
Speaker 4: was probably a little snobbish of me, but I really liked.
Speaker 3: Was everyone trying to be like DJ Premiere or.
Speaker 4: Like even even more abstract, just not really any people,
Speaker 4: maybe like Company Flow or some stuff like real Deaf Jus.
Speaker 4: Not definitely not what I did. Definitely not with like
Speaker 4: chord progressions or like baselines that fit the.
Speaker 1: Key or let me let me, let me just let
Speaker 1: me clean it up. I'm a massive fan like cannibal Ox,
Speaker 1: like the first generation.
Speaker 4: I didn't mean that as I meant that more style.
Speaker 3: There's always one troll that's going to be like no, no, no.
Speaker 4: I definitely didn't mean that.
Speaker 3: I don't want to Detroit singer effect.
Speaker 9: To myself.
Speaker 4: Now, I guess I mean it more as a style
Speaker 4: that is more marked by a certain level of expression
Speaker 4: versus like again, like when I heard like Water for
Speaker 4: Chocolate like production Wise, or when I first heard Fantastic
Speaker 4: Volume two, or even when I later heard Things Fall Apart,
Speaker 4: which was a little bit later for me, or Voodoo.
Speaker 4: Those were the albums that made me realize like, Okay,
Speaker 4: so you can make hip hop and make it beautiful
Speaker 4: versus you have to make hip hop that is aggressive.
Speaker 4: Not that there wasn't you know what I'm saying, but
Speaker 4: like it was for me a realization because when I
Speaker 4: first came into contact with hip hop I had a
Speaker 4: very naive understanding of like, there's a guy with turntables
Speaker 4: who is making the beats, for instance, Tribe Cold Quest.
Speaker 4: That's how I sort of saw it.
Speaker 3: You know, you have.
Speaker 4: It's making the beats with the vinyl. And it wasn't
Speaker 4: until later that I not, like, Okay, there's actually people
Speaker 4: doing this that that are more musical inclined. And so
Speaker 4: that was for me sort of like really kind of
Speaker 4: the eye opener of like, Okay, I understand now that
Speaker 4: there's something that I could contribute to this music.
Speaker 1: This is real important for me to hear that, because
Speaker 1: there's part of me that has this negative slash glass
Speaker 1: half empty view of how the community sees the music.
Speaker 1: And for the most part, I always felt like whatever
Speaker 1: nariety that we got, we were.
Speaker 3: Only chosen because we weren't gangster rap.
Speaker 1: Like the amount of times that someone will performably come
Speaker 1: up to me backstage to differentiate themselves like yo, man,
Speaker 1: like I like y'all because you know, y'all don't be
Speaker 1: killing bitches, y'all don't be so with drugs like and
Speaker 1: y'all don't care about success, you don't care about getting paid.
Speaker 9: Definitely wrong.
Speaker 3: So again the idea. And that's the thing.
Speaker 1: I know in their mind they're thinking like, wow, they're
Speaker 1: trying to give me a quotable that I remember, like yeah,
Speaker 1: that one fan and Boise Idaho that just like me
Speaker 1: and looks right, And really I only walk away thinking like, man,
Speaker 1: they just they hate Snoop Doggie Dogs, so they only
Speaker 1: like us because we're the opposite of that, which is
Speaker 1: really not saying you like, So this is like one
Speaker 1: of the rare times in which like I felt chosen. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: I know that for everyone to be on OK player.
Speaker 3: But then because of just you know, an artist being
Speaker 3: over analytical and.
Speaker 1: Self deprecating for me, like the fact that I allow
Speaker 1: people just slander us and talk shit over there more
Speaker 1: or less about me just feeling to justify like my
Speaker 1: non deservedness. But I will say that this is a
Speaker 1: really good time for me to hear that, oh, someone
Speaker 1: actually just liked the music and gravitated.
Speaker 4: Towards Not only that, but it it made me feel
Speaker 4: like I had something to contribute, Like I wasn't a DJ.
Speaker 4: I've never really truly done vinyl. I'm an instrument guy.
Speaker 4: I started out playing guitar, bass, drums, some keyboards, and
Speaker 4: so I had always played in bands. I didn't have
Speaker 4: a beat making background in that sense. But what I
Speaker 4: heard in those records, y'all's records, the common was musical
Speaker 4: layers on top of drums. If I had to just
Speaker 4: put it very basic, that told me that there was
Speaker 4: a place for a musical approach to production. To me,
Speaker 4: like it wasn't just about two turntables, but like added keyboards,
Speaker 4: added guitars, added like basically whatever y'all I would like,
Speaker 4: you know, road like obviously the roads ear candy. That
Speaker 4: made me think like okay, wow, like I can actually
Speaker 4: probably contribute something to this.
Speaker 3: But did you realize that?
Speaker 1: Because the thing is is that at least back then
Speaker 1: if I'm going to Europe the same way that you
Speaker 1: got to fill up your gas tank like I know
Speaker 1: in Prime Roots time in ninety five, ninety six, in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, two thousand and two, that I'm
Speaker 1: going to go bend shopping with Dayles Peterson or do
Speaker 1: a lot of I'm almost certain I.
Speaker 3: Still believe to this day I had.
Speaker 1: I did like two thousand dollars worth of record shopping
Speaker 1: in Amsterdam, and I think the records are still in
Speaker 1: their basement because I forgot.
Speaker 3: To nail at home. But like I would have to
Speaker 3: go to Europe and to.
Speaker 1: These these whatever, the cosmopolitan European, westernized European cities to
Speaker 1: get the music that's going to help me make the
Speaker 1: music that's crazy that you think is coming from America,
Speaker 1: but really like it's coming from you. It is those
Speaker 1: obscure bands from Holland or the frog rock groupers. So
Speaker 1: at any point is it registering to you that you're
Speaker 1: actually kind of at an advantage where you live in
Speaker 1: the place where a lot of taste makers, the Giles
Speaker 1: Peterson's of the world, are exposing you all to music
Speaker 1: that otherwise only.
Speaker 3: Very few people are doing it in the United States
Speaker 3: right now.
Speaker 4: I think it's a great question. Actually I don't think
Speaker 4: to that extent, But like there were a lot of
Speaker 4: Europeans trends of music at that time happening that I
Speaker 4: think I was influenced by that gave me a leg
Speaker 4: up over here, like for Hero in UK, like jazz
Speaker 4: and Nova in Germany, like some of the more down
Speaker 4: tempo stuff in France. So when when I put my
Speaker 4: music out to the world in the States, people said
Speaker 4: it had a European feel, and you know, again ironically,
Speaker 4: back home, people were saying that stuff sounds American. I
Speaker 4: had no idea. I think I perceived all of this
Speaker 4: music as as purely American, and I don't think I
Speaker 4: had this sophistication of knowledge at the time to realize
Speaker 4: that it was kind of a full circle.
Speaker 3: That's really places where. Yeah, no, not at all, not
Speaker 3: at all. So did you think like we were like
Speaker 3: on America, having like, you know, poetry slammed me like
Speaker 3: everything that you talk about.
Speaker 1: Journals on the capreia, Like did you think like we
Speaker 1: were just like, you know, cutting up coconuts?
Speaker 4: And I don't think it was erratic sand but I
Speaker 4: definitely heard I think I think maybe it was because
Speaker 4: of the perception of the Roots as a band. I
Speaker 4: heard something that was not a guy on a beat machine.
Speaker 4: I heard a more richer kind of sound that made
Speaker 4: me think like a lot of it was played by instruments.
Speaker 4: And again the instruments is what appealed to me because
Speaker 4: I didn't know how to make a beat, but I
Speaker 4: knew how to play a bass.
Speaker 3: Guitar, you know what I mean? Like, how far were
Speaker 3: you from Amsterdam? So I grew up in Utrecht, which.
Speaker 4: Is half an hour where the you would call it
Speaker 4: a suburb of which is Atrat used to be. It's
Speaker 4: a thousands years old city that used to be a
Speaker 4: Roman outpost. But it and that's where the North Sea
Speaker 4: Jazz festivals hill, right or No, that was in the
Speaker 4: Hague and now I think nowadays it's in Rotterdam. They
Speaker 4: moved it from the Hague to Rotterdam. But I went
Speaker 4: to school in Amsterdam because that was the thing that
Speaker 4: you did. Like when I finished high school, I went
Speaker 4: to school in Amsterdam, largely because I didn't know what
Speaker 4: to do. So I started musicology at the University of
Speaker 4: Amsterdam and I started going to the Paradiso, which is
Speaker 4: a venue you would be familiar with. Yeah, that was
Speaker 4: you know, we got a lot of great Like I
Speaker 4: remember seeing Wu Tang for the first time they were
Speaker 4: in Holland, and can.
Speaker 1: Ask a question, Yeah, okay, as a Holland resident, how
Speaker 1: frustrating was it for you?
Speaker 3: Because here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Now it's twenty twenty four, so kind of perception and
Speaker 1: the relationship with cannabis and weed. Oh man, now it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's getting nationalized and slowly, but surely.
Speaker 1: I think right now Germany's voting to see they'll legalize
Speaker 1: it totally.
Speaker 3: So you know, the world's open up the rains.
Speaker 1: But like of course in the late nineteen nineties early
Speaker 1: two thousand and people's minds like the whole pulp fiction
Speaker 1: thing that the glorious story of, like you gotta go
Speaker 1: to only in Amsterdam and Holland, Yeah, can you get
Speaker 1: fucked up and not get fucked rusted?
Speaker 3: Right? Great?
Speaker 1: And so as a result, like the amount of shows
Speaker 1: that I saw, just the amount of artists, because a
Speaker 1: lot of artists when they start there, you were being toured,
Speaker 1: they would make Amsterdam the hub.
Speaker 3: First, go there a few days earlier and go to
Speaker 3: all these coffee shops and the.
Speaker 1: Right and so you know, I do know in my
Speaker 1: mind a lot of the most adventurous roots shows were
Speaker 1: in Amsterdam.
Speaker 9: And what's an adventurous root shows ount.
Speaker 1: Like it's where they might hit four or five coffee
Speaker 1: shops before we get on stage. So even though the
Speaker 1: muscle memory is strong, like we've the most closest to
Speaker 1: freestyle shows where it's just like it's a fish show
Speaker 1: that I wasn't taking so at least like I could.
Speaker 1: It was just harder to control the guys as a
Speaker 1: traffic cop. Oh I was a designated driver, right because
Speaker 1: you know, Tarik might forget the third verse to mel
Speaker 1: my Man and then we gotta you know. But I
Speaker 1: also feel as though those those shows excited me because
Speaker 1: I didn't know what to expect. So basically, I think
Speaker 1: I just revealed to the world that what you already
Speaker 1: knew is like I'm tightly wound, and I rehearse no
Speaker 1: no no, no no no, no no no, I'm tightly wound,
Speaker 1: just in terms of like my spontanees rehearsed as a band,
Speaker 1: as a band leader. And so I always wonder if
Speaker 1: people in the audience get frustrated looking at us, like
Speaker 1: dumb Americans they always get fucked up before they come
Speaker 1: on stage and now they're falling all over and forget
Speaker 1: their lyrics. Like I can confirm that, Like, have you
Speaker 1: seen a good hip hop show in Holland where nobody
Speaker 1: was so fucked up they couldn't perform?
Speaker 4: Yes, I've seen both. So I've seen like Lords of
Speaker 4: the Underground CIRCA Funky Child, amazing, amazing show. They were focused,
Speaker 4: they were focused, sounded incredible, like parodies, as you know,
Speaker 4: is an old church. Yeah, sound can be very finicky there,
Speaker 4: but it was amazing. But I'm not afraid to relate
Speaker 4: this anecdote. The first time came to them, Joe apparently like,
Speaker 4: you know how Paradiso has the dressing rooms in the basement.
Speaker 3: Yes, you go up the stairs to the stay the balcony.
Speaker 4: Yes, And and so Jizza apparently was so high that
Speaker 4: he wouldn't come out of the dressing room, and they
Speaker 4: brought the microphone down using the stairs. So there were
Speaker 4: a lot of shows where you could tell like it
Speaker 4: was impacted.
Speaker 3: So you just expected.
Speaker 4: And the thing for people in Amsterdam is like it
Speaker 4: is legal, so a lot of people don't really bother
Speaker 4: to partake because you know how that kind of becomes
Speaker 4: a thing of like, ah whatever. So we were not
Speaker 4: we you know, I've seen both. I've seen incredible hip
Speaker 4: hop shows where it seemed like and and maybe they
Speaker 4: were still but like but but largely we loved the
Speaker 4: record so.
Speaker 3: Much that you wanted to get some of that. You
Speaker 3: wanted to get what you loved about the record.
Speaker 4: And I remember really really great show like Onyx was incredible.
Speaker 4: Onyx opened up for run DMC because they were being
Speaker 4: manage at the time and it was down with the
Speaker 4: and that was an incredible show. Yeah, obviously cypress Hill
Speaker 4: worked out really well In answer them, because.
Speaker 1: You're saying that we, like I enjoyed many of our
Speaker 1: shows over there, but I will also acknowledge in the
Speaker 1: same with LA, like all of our LA shows are
Speaker 1: so high pressurized because you knows in the crowd while
Speaker 1: I'm black, it's watching you over there, so you're like
Speaker 1: going on out or showing off, and it's not like
Speaker 1: the shows that I wish you guys could see, like
Speaker 1: one of them nondescript shows that we did in Italy
Speaker 1: or in France that we didn't care about and we
Speaker 1: just retired and went on state, Like those shows are
Speaker 1: the best route shows that we'll never get seen. But
Speaker 1: I always wondered if you guys you're getting think about
Speaker 1: it going another question I have because the thing is,
Speaker 1: and this is for the both of you to me,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, like I had such a flag planning moment
Speaker 1: with like, yeah, this this thing called the super Information
Speaker 1: Highway and the Internet, like I'm bringing a real life
Speaker 1: magazine or the way that Rozelle described it, He's like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: you just open up your own mall and you're selling
Speaker 1: stories to everybody to come and do their thing, and
Speaker 1: that's what okay player is. So I thought that's as
Speaker 1: far as I could take it. So the day that's
Speaker 1: someone and they explained to me like I was a
Speaker 1: sixty five year older. He's like, no, you don't understand,
Speaker 1: Like they made their music on computer. I was like, wait,
Speaker 1: you can make a studio like it sounds like I
Speaker 1: came from battery studios.
Speaker 3: Like a real song like that.
Speaker 1: So the way that people were explaining to me that
Speaker 1: you can now make an entire album on your computer
Speaker 1: and check this out of here. You can email it
Speaker 1: somebody and they could add vocals, And I was trying
Speaker 1: to like the way that somebody was explaining to me
Speaker 1: what it was like why it was such a big
Speaker 1: deal that this pairing was happening. It was one of
Speaker 1: them things where I didn't know what fruity loop even
Speaker 1: though like I heard you guys mentioned we lose fruity loops.
Speaker 1: I've never to this day seen fruity loops or like
Speaker 1: I'm also the guy's just a shame to admit I
Speaker 1: make records in.
Speaker 3: The old way, hey man, Steve is very cl Steven
Speaker 3: is smiling right now.
Speaker 6: I've never saw fruity loops either. I really haven't.
Speaker 3: Well, I know that.
Speaker 1: I'm just like you're very glad that I'm very with
Speaker 1: my pretty much like I don't know that. I think
Speaker 1: my whole record was the age yet. So at what
Speaker 1: point did you guys decide to like, Okay, this worked out?
Speaker 1: Like why don't we make something of this? Because I
Speaker 1: would have never even if you did that, Like can
Speaker 1: I rhyme over this? You never met each other, So
Speaker 1: how did you know this would work?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 8: It could be music. It was just the music. It
Speaker 8: was just a belief in the music. I didn't Again,
Speaker 8: I didn't know him. I didn't know nothing about him.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: And so finally, you know, we you know, we would
Speaker 8: just use instant messenger. And at the time we made Connected,
Speaker 8: I didn't even have a computer.
Speaker 3: Of my own.
Speaker 8: So all that whole making your vocals, So how I
Speaker 8: was doing my vocals back back then? We had a studio,
Speaker 8: I mean, we had our studio. We were recording chop shop,
Speaker 8: we were making all the LB records. But I didn't
Speaker 8: have a personal computer in my crib. So I would
Speaker 8: go to the chop shop do my vocals, and then
Speaker 8: I would either I would mix down the MP three
Speaker 8: and I would go to my homeboys crib my man MC.
Speaker 3: I would use his computer, my man Meetian.
Speaker 8: He had a pass to the computer lab at NC State,
Speaker 8: and so he would let us all kind of we
Speaker 8: would be on some bootleg shit like using his credentials
Speaker 8: to get into the computer lab at NC State, and
Speaker 8: I would like log on and be like, yo, bro,
Speaker 8: I just did this, and I would like, you know,
Speaker 8: get on im.
Speaker 3: AIM. I oul send it to him. How long would
Speaker 3: it take to email files back?
Speaker 8: It wasn't bad, So it wasn't email because this again,
Speaker 8: this is prior to like Gmail or any of that shit.
Speaker 3: Sens face, none of that. This is AIM. This is
Speaker 3: AIM instant messenger and you just mail file. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And I think we never shared wave files because that
Speaker 4: wasn't possible. You would. He would send me an MP
Speaker 4: three and then when we were like okay, this is
Speaker 4: really it, like he actually snail mailed me some cd
Speaker 4: some CDRs so that I.
Speaker 3: Waved on it. Yeah, and you're doing this straight to
Speaker 3: MP three. Yeah, I'm doing this. I mean not sending
Speaker 3: like the drum track and keyboard tracking. Oh no, no,
Speaker 3: this is just straight two track. So how do you
Speaker 3: line up? Like? Are you lining stuff Jimmy Jam style?
Speaker 1: Like Jimmy Jam revealed that for at least eighty to
Speaker 1: ninety percent, they never used sympty at all, right, and
Speaker 1: he would just blend the vocals like when they would
Speaker 1: do a remix or something.
Speaker 3: Are you essentially just so.
Speaker 4: Basically I had to beat. I had the track, and
Speaker 4: then Fante would send me a ref like he would
Speaker 4: do the vocals, and he would mail me a ref
Speaker 4: and then I would essentially line them up using the ref.
Speaker 3: So I'd be like, okay, this is my session.
Speaker 4: This is what I would literally and then normally it
Speaker 4: would be like no, I push it back for like
Speaker 4: a little you know, give it like it was sort
Speaker 4: of like a trial and error and when it sounded right,
Speaker 4: you kind of knew like, okay, it sits right, but
Speaker 4: it was there was no process.
Speaker 3: You would tell them sometimes like nudge the drums back
Speaker 3: with vocals.
Speaker 8: I would the track out, you know, I would let
Speaker 8: him do that, but my vocals. You dialitize your vocals
Speaker 8: to absolutely every time this day, like to this day,
Speaker 8: nudge to the right. Everything's for for him to the
Speaker 8: right in the whole world all the time.
Speaker 3: Everything. Yeah, man, that's you know is four frames the right.
Speaker 3: Everybody is four frames the rect Yeah, I gotta admit though, no.
Speaker 1: But but the thing is is that I thought you
Speaker 1: were on some Steph Curry shooting from half court like
Speaker 1: some of these vocals, you know, the with thieve behind this,
Speaker 1: And I was like, yo, yeah.
Speaker 4: So magular that in many ways he is, but like
Speaker 4: it was still we would exaggerate it.
Speaker 8: I mean, I, you know, naturally I would kind of
Speaker 8: be you know, on it, but but I would always like,
Speaker 8: kind of nudget it look to the right.
Speaker 3: But that was how we did the first album.
Speaker 8: So he was he was in the Netherlands and I
Speaker 8: was in Durham and so little Brother had a show
Speaker 8: at Parody.
Speaker 4: So this was what they didn't get high.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we didn't get high, save that we came at
Speaker 3: Queens Day. I was very high. But we did.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: It was like three that was four four April four.
Speaker 8: That was our first time ever meeting each other face
Speaker 8: to face. We came over and by that time we
Speaker 8: had connected damn near done you know good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had it pretty much So what was the
Speaker 1: first meeting like, because I also feel like the reflection
Speaker 1: of the music there has to be some sort of
Speaker 1: social camaraderie.
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, man, listen, bro, if you can you know,
Speaker 8: if you have the level of trust to send your
Speaker 8: raw vocals to somebody, I mean, that's you know, that's
Speaker 8: a bond that you know, you know, just regardless of
Speaker 8: them person not being in your physical space. That's just
Speaker 8: a level of intimacy and trust that it supersedes, you know,
Speaker 8: any kind of physical or any kind of whatever, you know,
Speaker 8: because you're just you're essentially like putting yourself out there
Speaker 8: and you send it to this guy that you don't know,
Speaker 8: and it's like, hey, man, I trust you with this.
Speaker 3: Make it happen, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: And so when we met each other face to face
Speaker 8: that first time, it was just like, oh right, what
Speaker 8: up this Nick?
Speaker 3: Okay? Cool?
Speaker 4: It was like almost like yeah, I saw you yesterday,
Speaker 4: but I hadn't.
Speaker 8: Yeah, because because we had literally been working on this
Speaker 8: album like for months and months, and at that time,
Speaker 8: you know, that was when LB we were touring heavy,
Speaker 8: So it was really, oh we just lost the contact.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I was what I got I got it.
Speaker 3: I got it right, you know, like Kevin Nel, look
Speaker 3: look at.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: So we so I was at the mercy of LB's
Speaker 3: touring schedule.
Speaker 8: So that first album Connected, it took a long time
Speaker 8: to get done, well longer in a long time back then,
Speaker 8: but because it was just kind of all right, I
Speaker 8: get a couple of songs done, then we go on.
Speaker 3: Tour for six weeks whatever, come back. How long did
Speaker 3: it take to make Connect? We started in two We
Speaker 3: started at the beginning too, and we were done at
Speaker 3: the end of yeah, yeah, because right then we had that.
Speaker 8: Whole connected leak okay, player off places of course, which wait,
Speaker 8: the lesson the less.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, how like I'm assuming the entire
Speaker 1: creations under your yeah, like possessions.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean it was at that time. I
Speaker 3: mean it was just so loose.
Speaker 8: I mean, so like we would record, but then at
Speaker 8: the end of the session, whoever was engineering the session,
Speaker 8: if it was Name or if it was Crisis or whoever, like,
Speaker 8: all right, who want to copy? And we didn't think anything.
Speaker 8: It's like, yeah, it's just getting around. Yeah, it was
Speaker 8: just getting around. So I'm on to a high road,
Speaker 8: and I see, like, oh, oh ship is out. This
Speaker 8: even before Lime Wire, I don't even know. I don't
Speaker 8: even know how will people get it? It was so
Speaker 8: see so I'm like, damn, the album leaked, and you know,
Speaker 8: in my mind, I'm thinking like that Dead in the
Speaker 8: Water thought it was we always it was like damn.
Speaker 8: But we saw the response and it was like, well, damn,
Speaker 8: people really fuck with this. So it really was kind
Speaker 8: of a it was validation a lot of ways after,
Speaker 8: you know, it affirmed what we kind of believed that
Speaker 8: we had. And so when I came back from tour,
Speaker 8: we did a couple extra bonus tracks. It was like,
Speaker 8: all right, it leaked, but let's do a couple extra
Speaker 8: joints and bb came and we did the deal with
Speaker 8: them that was like yeah we four.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, well I think if I remember we
Speaker 4: had to deal when it leaked, I remember thinking like,
Speaker 4: is this going to be the end of our journey? Like,
Speaker 4: like do they will the label still mess with us?
Speaker 4: And it was one of those leaks where the response
Speaker 4: was greater than the loss of not being new, and
Speaker 4: so it worked out. But at the time we were
Speaker 4: kind of devastated by it because like, but leaks at
Speaker 4: the time were very normal, like jay Z would leak
Speaker 4: and like you know, like there it was that time
Speaker 4: of like when people started carrying CDs out of the
Speaker 4: plan under their belts and shit.
Speaker 1: So it also means that there is like excitement because
Speaker 1: there's some people that just it's a million and I'll
Speaker 1: never hear, I'll never download.
Speaker 4: I think at the end of the day we took
Speaker 4: it this track, I.
Speaker 7: Was gonna ask just with with the track making, like
Speaker 7: you were, you know, talking about roads and guitars and
Speaker 7: stuff like what comes first for you. I'm always interested
Speaker 7: in when people are making beats, is it is it
Speaker 7: rhythm heavy or is it I.
Speaker 4: Think I think the musical idea comes first, and that
Speaker 4: might be a chord progression, that might be a sample,
Speaker 4: that might be a bassline. But that's what I built
Speaker 4: around and drums under, if that makes sense. At the time,
Speaker 4: it was a combination. I really was interned as Samply,
Speaker 4: but I didn't have I didn't have an NPC, I
Speaker 4: didn't have I had a computer and had a keyboard
Speaker 4: and a bass guitar and I used a tracker, which
Speaker 4: is there was a tracking scene at the time yo
Speaker 4: my plug.
Speaker 8: Yeah, he showed me that ship, dude, it looked like
Speaker 8: he was about to launch a fucking missile.
Speaker 3: I'm like, dog, what is this?
Speaker 8: Like that was when I really saw like the way
Speaker 8: his brain works is just different because it's.
Speaker 3: Not my plug is a program and I'm not like
Speaker 3: the super techy guy.
Speaker 8: But like, we recorded that first album in cool Letted Pro,
Speaker 8: which is now Adobe Audition, but it was cool Letted.
Speaker 3: That was what we did all the vocals in.
Speaker 8: And it's just a basic just a basic daw So
Speaker 8: it's you know, it's side to side.
Speaker 3: My plug is vertical. So he matris.
Speaker 8: On the beat and he just starts see all this
Speaker 8: ship flying. I was like, bro, what the fuck is that?
Speaker 8: And but that's what he made beats on and I
Speaker 8: was like, yeah he did, So is this okay?
Speaker 1: True to the legend of other beat bankers that I know,
Speaker 1: what was the standard at the time and what Like
Speaker 1: when I found out that Joe Ron Bombay was making
Speaker 1: these beats on Sony Acid, like these really cheap, like
Speaker 1: my first Sony kind of yeah, what were you using?
Speaker 4: I didn't know what the standard was. And my brother,
Speaker 4: my younger brother, had introduced me to trackers, which is
Speaker 4: essentially a machine code kind of thing where you can
Speaker 4: load little wave files in and trigger them by using
Speaker 4: certain codes. And so it started with you have four tracks,
Speaker 4: and then they like all of a sudden, it was
Speaker 4: a tracks. I think by the time I started working
Speaker 4: with them, it was like a tracks and at some
Speaker 4: point you had sixteen tracks of having sounds together.
Speaker 3: See doing a song like Daykeeper with this sort of
Speaker 3: a keeper.
Speaker 4: At that point I had at least sixty. But yeah,
Speaker 4: I did Daykeeper like that. I did take off like
Speaker 4: all of the first album, all the new kind of
Speaker 4: the leave it all behind the album. I started getting
Speaker 4: into pro tools because somebody told me, like.
Speaker 3: Look, dog, like if you need just another way.
Speaker 4: You need to really professionalize or need to was a
Speaker 4: big word, but like they were like, yo, most of
Speaker 4: the pros use pro tools, and so I started.
Speaker 1: But like, I don't feel bad now because one of
Speaker 1: the things that I feel horrible about. You see the
Speaker 1: smug look on Steve's face, the way that I've been,
Speaker 1: like I've been. I'm in such a zone with his
Speaker 1: in game record right now with the roots. But when
Speaker 1: I tell you the embarrassingly kind of primitive way that
Speaker 1: I'm building this record, like yes, I read how half
Speaker 1: of Nason and Millions was built by them as an
Speaker 1: actual jam session, each guy at a twelve hundred manually
Speaker 1: pressing the samples by themselves, not programming.
Speaker 3: Even the mixes too. They would mix and the.
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys admitted that every sample on Paul's boutique was
Speaker 1: basically just lined up one by one and then they
Speaker 1: would just do that. But there's no like programming and stuff,
Speaker 1: and so like I'm also inspired by like again like
Speaker 1: the whole Sony Acid story and that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: So like I've been.
Speaker 6: Like you're thinking of the lost Bomb Squad member, I
Speaker 6: just you know, I do.
Speaker 1: But it's just the fact that like James teases me
Speaker 1: about it, and like sometimes I let it get to
Speaker 1: me that, see, you're not a real beat maker, like
Speaker 1: you're actually looping the stuff from your soerrado DJ thing like.
Speaker 4: Exactly. And I think I think I had a little
Speaker 4: bit of that. I guess what you called imposters where
Speaker 4: you're like, okay, I'm not using the Like I remember
Speaker 4: the first time I after we met for the first
Speaker 4: time and connected had been pressed up. We met in
Speaker 4: New York in July of four and we did something
Speaker 4: called Beat Society, which is where producers come out and
Speaker 4: essentially play their beats. And so I came out with
Speaker 4: my little leptop.
Speaker 3: You did Beat Society, I did.
Speaker 4: I did Beat Society and Knitting Factory, and that's when
Speaker 4: of the first time we literally performed together. But I
Speaker 4: came out with my laptop and I realized like, okay,
Speaker 4: like like everybody else is using MPCs and I'm just
Speaker 4: here like as though I'm checking my email, you know, look,
Speaker 4: you know, right, like craft for it. But it was
Speaker 4: one of the first times where I realized like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I had no idea, I had no real knowledge of
Speaker 4: how the music was made, and I saw I just
Speaker 4: used what I know. Again, my brother had introduced me
Speaker 4: to I knew Q base existed and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: but I didn't know I didn't have that. So it became.
Speaker 3: A weapon of choice.
Speaker 4: It became my secret weapon because I learned to use
Speaker 4: it in such a way that I could really make
Speaker 4: it do whatever I wanted.
Speaker 3: And that was our story.
Speaker 8: I think, like a big part it was really just
Speaker 8: about using the tools you have, just making do with
Speaker 8: what you have.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 3: It was when people would.
Speaker 8: Ask like, oh man, so making the internet, like, oh
Speaker 8: man making an am that's so crazy, Like it was
Speaker 8: just this crazy idea.
Speaker 3: And I'm one of those people. Yeah, yeah, Like dude,
Speaker 3: he was in the Netherlands, I was in Durham.
Speaker 4: For us, it was kind of we never even thought
Speaker 4: about it, like we were just like, yo, like you,
Speaker 4: I like what you're doing.
Speaker 3: He likes what I'm doing, let's do it.
Speaker 1: When you're part of the analogic generation though, and I
Speaker 1: was very much stuck in my ways person I just
Speaker 1: couldn't fathomm like wait, I don't see how they're doing that,
Speaker 1: like emailing stuff at the same time, and like it
Speaker 1: was just such a storied, uncharted thing, and like when
Speaker 1: did garage band come out?
Speaker 8: Garage band was yeah, that was later garage band for
Speaker 8: me personally. I started in garage band two thousand and nine. Yeah,
Speaker 8: two thousand and nine. That was when I built my
Speaker 8: studio at home and so I had we had worked everything,
Speaker 8: all the old LB stuff, like the first two Foreigners
Speaker 8: Change albums. That was at the chop shop in Durham
Speaker 8: and we tracked all those vocals and cool let it
Speaker 8: and then oh nine, I built my studio up the
Speaker 8: crib and I used garage band.
Speaker 3: So like Authenticity.
Speaker 8: My first solo album, Charity Starts at Home, Yeah all that,
Speaker 8: all those records like those are all garage man, garage man.
Speaker 3: It was, Yeah, it was free. What is it the
Speaker 3: game changer that people claim that it was or it? Well,
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 8: Well, I don't know if I say for me, it
Speaker 8: wasn't so much a game changer. I think it was
Speaker 8: just by that time I had learned that, like listen,
Speaker 8: it doesn't matter what you're recording into. It's all about
Speaker 8: the signal that you're sending. You gotta in the in
Speaker 8: the recording process. Really, the recording engineer is god, you
Speaker 8: know what I mean.
Speaker 3: Because it's not gonna your your.
Speaker 8: The record the recording engineer, because your song is not
Speaker 8: gonna rise above whatever the signal is. So, you know,
Speaker 8: if you got a choice between buying you know, a
Speaker 8: crazy Mike, a three thousand dollar mic or whatever, but
Speaker 8: you haven't treated your room first, that Mike is just
Speaker 8: gonna pick up your room, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: So you probably would be better off spending some money
Speaker 8: treating your room. And you get a little, you know,
Speaker 8: a little two hundred dollars something and you know, you
Speaker 8: can make that work, and so that was kind of
Speaker 8: my approach. And so I started doing those records in
Speaker 8: Garage Man. And what I liked about it it was
Speaker 8: very it was simple. And then also when I upgrade
Speaker 8: it to logic in like twenty twelve, logic is basic
Speaker 8: garage band on steroids. So how I learned logic was
Speaker 8: I would take my old Garage Man sessions and open
Speaker 8: them up in logic and just kind of work backwards
Speaker 8: and you're like, oh, okay, so this is what reverb is,
Speaker 8: this is where the delays is, and I would learn
Speaker 8: it like that. So garage band for me, I mean,
Speaker 8: you know, people clowned on it, but I made crazy
Speaker 8: records in Garage Man.
Speaker 7: But logic was around for a long time before it
Speaker 7: turned into the logic we know today.
Speaker 3: There was a yeah logic.
Speaker 7: Logic that looked that looked what I think is like
Speaker 7: you're like matrix. It was it was really hard to understand,
Speaker 7: and that's think there was like a pro tool sequencer,
Speaker 7: and then finally logic became the visual thing that it
Speaker 7: is today. And I think that's that's what people liked
Speaker 7: about Garage Man was we looked at it and it
Speaker 7: was pleasing to look at and easy easy to you.
Speaker 8: Nah, because you I mean, because you got to think
Speaker 8: about it, like if you mixing something, I mean, you're
Speaker 8: looking at that screen for fucking hours. So it was
Speaker 8: really from my experience, it was really intuitive. It was
Speaker 8: just very easy to use, and I was not the
Speaker 8: super techy like engineer guy. I just kind of knew
Speaker 8: what I liked and just kind of how to get
Speaker 8: that and that.
Speaker 3: Was it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: So when do you think you'll ever have enough money
Speaker 6: to buy pro tools?
Speaker 3: Nah, I'm logic. I'm logic to the.
Speaker 1: What was the session? Like when you guys are in
Speaker 1: the same time zone together and in the studio together?
Speaker 3: Wait? What no chemistry to this day? Now?
Speaker 4: We this is kind like I like, this is the
Speaker 4: rule of the group.
Speaker 3: You must emails.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I liken it to prints, not wanting to meet,
Speaker 4: like we had such a chemistry going in this way,
Speaker 4: like I've always explained it to people, like we each
Speaker 4: take care of our part of the music in such
Speaker 4: an inhibited personal way that we can fully realize what
Speaker 4: we have in mind and then we send it to
Speaker 4: the other person versus like being in the same room here, right, right,
Speaker 4: or are you sure about that word or you know
Speaker 4: what I mean? Like, we always sort of kept it
Speaker 4: our fifty to fifty percent of the total separate and
Speaker 4: would send each other, I guess fully realized versions of
Speaker 4: stuff that we thought could work, and by the time
Speaker 4: that I came to the States and started my career here,
Speaker 4: it almost felt like it would really break the magic.
Speaker 3: So we never have like to this day.
Speaker 1: So can you just briefly tell our listeners viewers how
Speaker 1: you guys built the FI community of Like the Cat
Speaker 1: because it takes a village and obviously, yeah, we're invested
Speaker 1: in you guys, but also like Zara and Carlita and
Speaker 1: just how and Zoe, like how how did the community
Speaker 1: of musicians come together for these projects?
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 3: So, Zoe was someone I actually met. Zoe.
Speaker 8: This was in two thousand and five, maybe six h
Speaker 8: This is right after Mintell Show it came out, and
Speaker 8: Zoe had been remixing here, did remixes for a couple
Speaker 8: LB records. And the thing I always listened for for
Speaker 8: producers when they would remix our stuff. Our stuff had
Speaker 8: hooks and singing hooks in it, so every producer could
Speaker 8: always lock.
Speaker 3: In on the rhymes. It's like you're hear it. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: y'all got it, y'all match the beat? Okay, cool? What
Speaker 3: this goddamn hook? Boy to signd like is this ship
Speaker 3: in the same key? Right?
Speaker 8: And the hook would come in and it would just
Speaker 8: be a fun and you know what I mean. And
Speaker 8: so Zoel was one of the guys like he had
Speaker 8: put up a remix that he had did the way
Speaker 8: you do it, and I was like, that's the way
Speaker 8: you do it, man, come on, I hope he fucked
Speaker 8: this up. I did not know who he was at all,
Speaker 8: and I just heard it. I was like, oh, he
Speaker 8: smoked this shit. So we did a show LB show
Speaker 8: and I think Ann Arbor or something, but he pulled
Speaker 8: up gave me a copy of his record.
Speaker 3: He was like, I'm Zoe.
Speaker 8: I was like, oh man, yo, yeah, yeah, check it.
Speaker 8: So he gives me a copy of his record. It
Speaker 8: was the I think it was the Passion and Definition
Speaker 8: album and so it's just an instrumental record he did.
Speaker 8: And again I'm still kind of cynical because we had
Speaker 8: just been getting trashed that whole fucking tour and so
Speaker 8: I finally got it home I'm like, all right, let
Speaker 8: me I'm gonna give him a shot.
Speaker 3: Let me put it on.
Speaker 8: Track one was dope. I'm like, all right, I bet
Speaker 8: track two won't be dope. Track two is dope. I'm like, okay,
Speaker 8: is he gonna go three in a row? He went
Speaker 8: like twelve in a row or whatever.
Speaker 3: How many songs on that. He was just smoking that shit.
Speaker 3: So I reached out to him.
Speaker 8: I was like, hey, man, like your shit is hard, bro,
Speaker 8: like you know, you want to do something whatever, And
Speaker 8: we just started collap Braiden And so that was how
Speaker 8: he came into the fold. And then when we did
Speaker 8: If She Breaks Your Heart, Nick and I had the
Speaker 8: idea of like, okay, zoel like he does like the
Speaker 8: first half, and then Nick did like the second second,
Speaker 8: you know, four hero Yeah, Boston. Yeah, we got shot
Speaker 8: to Mark Mack, who did the string range.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Mark Man.
Speaker 3: But yeah, So that was kind of how he came.
Speaker 8: And everybody else, man, they were just all they were
Speaker 8: just all people that, like, you know, Carlita was a
Speaker 8: student at Central at the time, and we needed a
Speaker 8: hook for a song, and yazirob. She and I went
Speaker 8: to school together. We went to Central together, Darien Brockington.
Speaker 8: He and I we went to Central together. Carlita, she
Speaker 8: was a Central student.
Speaker 3: Yaz A. I was supposed to sing on the song
Speaker 3: one night and I called her to do the hook.
Speaker 3: She was out of town. Called my man. He was like, yo, dog,
Speaker 3: I know this singing chick from Central.
Speaker 8: I'm like okay, And he shows up and it was
Speaker 8: Carlita and she did the hook for Life of the
Speaker 8: Party for the LB song and from that he just
Speaker 8: started working together. Man, I mean shit, Mosina was somebody.
Speaker 8: My man shots my man. Cousin B, who's uh he
Speaker 8: run you know, he's the NPR Tiny desk guy. Now
Speaker 8: Mosina had a MySpace page and we had just started.
Speaker 3: I think we had kind of started leaving all. We
Speaker 3: might have had maybe one two tracks, but he had.
Speaker 8: She had a MySpace page and she had a song
Speaker 8: on it called Millions and me and Darien brox and
Speaker 8: we want to it what They'll be and we were roommates.
Speaker 8: Cousin B sends me the link. He's like, yo, man,
Speaker 8: check this chick. She sounded like Georgia and I was like,
Speaker 8: oh shit, you talk about Georgia. M Modreaux and I
Speaker 8: listened to millions, and if that song had a thousand
Speaker 8: plays on her MySpace, nine hundred and ninety of them.
Speaker 3: Was me and we played that shit.
Speaker 8: I was like, holy shit. And I just reached out
Speaker 8: to her and I was like, yo, man, I'm working
Speaker 8: on a new FE album.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know who I am whatever,
Speaker 3: but I think you dope. A couple months later, she
Speaker 3: came down to the crib, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: We locked in and we did Daykeeper, her House of
Speaker 8: Cards and Something to behold for Leave it all behind
Speaker 8: everybody else.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I just I always looked at because you know, our
Speaker 8: division of labor, Nick is very much the music, and
Speaker 8: I'm more like personnel, you know what I'm saying production
Speaker 8: in that side. So I always looked at Fie albums.
Speaker 8: Whenever people would ask me like, yo, what do you
Speaker 8: listen to? I put the people that I was listening
Speaker 8: to on the albums. I'm like, Yo, Mussina, this is
Speaker 8: who I'm wucking with, you know. Gwen Bunn shouts to her.
Speaker 8: She was just another artist out of Atlanta and she
Speaker 8: did a record for my man Daryl Reeve. She did
Speaker 8: a cover of every Time I See You by Roy
Speaker 8: Ayers and smoked that ship.
Speaker 3: I was like, dude, who the fuck is this?
Speaker 8: He was like, it's my girl, Gwen. She came to
Speaker 8: the show that night, you know what I mean. We
Speaker 8: hooked up and did Kate turn around and we did
Speaker 8: like a couple of after the show, or this was
Speaker 8: maybe a couple of months afterward. Be my fiasco. Who's
Speaker 8: like the latest signing on our label. She was somebody
Speaker 8: who was based out of Dallas and she would just always.
Speaker 3: Twitter.
Speaker 8: There's another kind of like the Okay player next the
Speaker 8: kind of way. She was someone who big fie fan
Speaker 8: would come to our shows. And one day, much like Nikolay.
Speaker 3: She came on Twitter and was like, Yo, this is
Speaker 3: a new record by me. Check this out.
Speaker 8: It's very foreign exchange influence, and I thought it was dope.
Speaker 8: So she and I hit her one time and I
Speaker 8: was like, hey, man, do you have the ability to
Speaker 8: record at your home?
Speaker 3: You got your own setup? She was like yeah.
Speaker 8: So I put her on the record deal with Glass Violets,
Speaker 8: the Miles Davis. That's her singing on that. And I
Speaker 8: would just put her on records, you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: I'm like, yo, sing this? She she sings something and
Speaker 8: like you know, we.
Speaker 3: Was just rock like that. So guys are meeting or like, nah,
Speaker 3: this is all online. So smith called blind date. Yeah man,
Speaker 3: try I mean, listen, it's just you known to me,
Speaker 3: it's just jailuso.
Speaker 1: The final result jels are good that I imagine that
Speaker 1: you guys were in the room together.
Speaker 8: We were in all those records. All that stuff was
Speaker 8: done pretty much remotely, I think, uh.
Speaker 3: No, listen.
Speaker 8: So when COVID hit, that's crazy. So when COVID hit,
Speaker 8: because a lot of times for the vocals, like that
Speaker 8: was my side. So my house used to be the
Speaker 8: spot where everyone recorded because I had to set up
Speaker 8: and everything. So that's why we would track the vocals.
Speaker 8: But COVID hit and it was just like, well, we
Speaker 8: can't do that. So we just pretty much invested and
Speaker 8: set all our team up. It's like, all right, look
Speaker 8: y'all need this. We're gonna get y'all this the mic,
Speaker 8: you need this, compressor, you need this, you need that,
Speaker 8: And we just set our team up remotely.
Speaker 3: So all through COVID, we were still cooking. We ain't
Speaker 3: miss a beat, you know, I mean, so that always
Speaker 3: the right equipment for each other.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, man, just like, Okay, you need this compressor.
Speaker 8: I'm a big fan of the I'm a big fan
Speaker 8: of La two A. I do't'ta go too nerdy with it,
Speaker 8: but I'm a big fan of La two A compressor.
Speaker 3: That's just my favorite. It's just two knobs.
Speaker 8: It's like, you know what I mean, It's it's it's simple,
Speaker 8: like you know, it's like it's like the big Green
Speaker 8: Egg of compressors.
Speaker 9: Know you have that Steve Green that's a barbecue and microphone.
Speaker 3: I'm trying to think.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Sismith her, we did her album she came and God,
Speaker 8: when did I come on?
Speaker 4: I met Cy and O four, I did a record
Speaker 4: with SiGe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then we had a show.
Speaker 4: In twenty ten where we needed a new female vocalist
Speaker 4: and I was like, well, I could call Sy, but
Speaker 4: she's gonna have to have a chemistry with Fante.
Speaker 3: We're gonna have to see and that worked out.
Speaker 4: Nah, they well, So so I went to Europe with us,
Speaker 4: you know, and I think with all of the people
Speaker 4: that we've ever had on our roster, it was partly
Speaker 4: musical talent, partly like the hangability factor.
Speaker 3: That's the big part.
Speaker 1: Like I just never thought that, like, because I've seen
Speaker 1: situations where new members will get inducted into shows and
Speaker 1: the chemistry might not be right and that affects the
Speaker 1: show that you see. You guys are like torn together
Speaker 1: doing shows and always wondered how and actually doing like
Speaker 1: nice little presentational things like I'm wondering, like how you
Speaker 1: guys even rehearsing, well, rehearsing, that's.
Speaker 8: What we got to do that in person, you can't.
Speaker 8: You can't rehearse online. But right we were rehearsing, not
Speaker 8: a whole lot.
Speaker 3: Not a whole lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because it's still the first show of the tour was.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean we would just like start with
Speaker 3: that and Zoe.
Speaker 8: Actually, when we did Leave It All Behind, that was
Speaker 8: really a thing where Nick and I we kind of
Speaker 8: saw ourselves more as like a steely Dan kind of
Speaker 8: studio band. We had no intentions of touring whatsoever, like none,
Speaker 8: and so Leave It All Behind came out and our
Speaker 8: management director of opsite the time, Amy she was, She
Speaker 8: called me one day and was like, Yo, this is
Speaker 8: right after the album came out, and she was like, Yo,
Speaker 8: no kid, theater they want to book y'all for a show.
Speaker 6: And we was like a show.
Speaker 8: What are you talking about? She was like, they want
Speaker 8: a Foreign and Shane show. Nick and I had no
Speaker 8: idea how we were going to present this material playing
Speaker 8: m P three listen. I mean, you could have did that,
Speaker 8: but it was when I called, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 8: we gotta build this up. So that was when I
Speaker 8: hit zol and I was like, yo, bro, like you
Speaker 8: know you want to help with this, and he became
Speaker 8: our m D.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So that was kind of how it came. But yeah, man,
Speaker 8: we were just making records purely just to make the records.
Speaker 8: We had no idea, no clue of wanting to present
Speaker 8: it live like.
Speaker 1: That just was not on our RADI so what response
Speaker 1: was it when you guys got nominated for a Grammy?
Speaker 1: Like what at that point was it, Like, were you
Speaker 1: guys actively campaigning for it? I had, and they were
Speaker 1: like congratulations, No.
Speaker 3: That's leg legit. I was knocked out. And what had
Speaker 3: happened was.
Speaker 4: We we never really submitted it, you know how normal
Speaker 4: like nowadays, somebody has to submit. At the time, there
Speaker 4: were these committees. I think they at this point have
Speaker 4: done away with them because there were some concerns about
Speaker 4: democracy and they.
Speaker 3: Don't even have I think the category we nominate for
Speaker 3: is not.
Speaker 4: The category doesn't even exist. But essentially, yeah, what happened
Speaker 4: was somebody on the committee at the time and I
Speaker 4: know who it is, but that's not really super relevant,
Speaker 4: entered that record as a record with merit that hadn't
Speaker 4: been selected by the members, just as another suggestion, and
Speaker 4: it made it through the nominations list, which is kind
Speaker 4: of miraculous because we never campaigned. And so Yazra called
Speaker 4: me and she was like, are you sitting down? And
Speaker 4: I was like, I don't know, like should I be?
Speaker 4: And she was like, she's like, tomorrow the nominations are
Speaker 4: gonna come out and we're in it.
Speaker 3: And I just didn't really.
Speaker 4: It took a while to register because like, as much
Speaker 4: as I was very sure of our merit, like that
Speaker 4: was beyond my wildest dreams, as I'm sure you would
Speaker 4: have been the first time, Like as much as you
Speaker 4: strive for that sort of professional acknowledgement, we were so
Speaker 4: niche in a lot of ways. And at the same time,
Speaker 4: I guess we had touched enough people that it that
Speaker 4: it went all the way up there. So I called
Speaker 4: Fantee was asleep. I don't know if I left you
Speaker 4: a voiceman.
Speaker 3: We talked. I remember that I was not there. You were.
Speaker 3: You woke up. You were like, oh, bro, we want grant.
Speaker 3: Well we up for a Grammy. I was like, oh, Ship,
Speaker 3: word up, all right, and I went back to until
Speaker 3: I woke up.
Speaker 8: And then I saw because this is back on the
Speaker 8: BlackBerry days, you know, bro my yeah, man, my ship
Speaker 8: was going crazy.
Speaker 3: This is like birthday Twitter. Yeah.
Speaker 8: It was just I was like, oh shit, we got
Speaker 8: nominated for a Grammy, and so yeah, it was it
Speaker 8: was just yeah crazy. I think for us, it really
Speaker 8: was just a validation of our art. And it just
Speaker 8: was like, you know, we did that record ourselves, Like
Speaker 8: we had no machine behind us. It was no major label, like,
Speaker 8: it was none of that. It was just me, Nick
Speaker 8: and Amy just thugging that shit out and so, you know,
Speaker 8: it was it was a real It was a moment
Speaker 8: for me because that was I mean, we I talked
Speaker 8: about it in the Doctor.
Speaker 3: Just on the business side.
Speaker 8: Foreign Exchange was the first time that I in my
Speaker 8: time in the music business, that was the first time
Speaker 8: I was ever really paid for my work, like ever,
Speaker 8: you know, that was the first time I really.
Speaker 3: To enjoy some oh yeah, yeah, like we we did
Speaker 3: when we did.
Speaker 8: Leave It All Behind, and you know, we just put
Speaker 8: it out and we had talked about because at that
Speaker 8: time I think.
Speaker 3: BBE they was knocking. They wanted to real, they wanted
Speaker 3: to do they were interested.
Speaker 8: And we looked at the deal and the deal was
Speaker 8: cool and BBE shouts to b B shouts to pe
Speaker 8: p Eddie b eddib No, they did it right by
Speaker 8: it so on on connected.
Speaker 3: So we were open. Was like all, yeah, let's see.
Speaker 3: But by that time, you know, Nick and I was like, yo, man, like, bro,
Speaker 3: let's what if we try to do this ourselves. Man,
Speaker 3: I think we can be pretty much. I think we
Speaker 3: can do this.
Speaker 8: And so uh, you know Neo over here he ran
Speaker 8: the numbers through his matrix. He was like, yeah, man,
Speaker 8: so I think, yeah, I'm like, all right, fucking let's go.
Speaker 6: And so we did it.
Speaker 8: And so yeah, my first check, like our first statement
Speaker 8: off the first month of sales to Leave It All Behind,
Speaker 8: was like twenty five grand. That was more than I
Speaker 8: had seen off the last four or five Little Brother
Speaker 8: albums four three albums at that time.
Speaker 3: Wow, and so and It wasn't so much. It was
Speaker 3: again just.
Speaker 8: Having what I saw was just the transparency of like, listen, dude,
Speaker 8: if I owe you, if if I owe you a dollar,
Speaker 8: just show me a piece of paper showing that saying
Speaker 8: that how I owe you this dollar?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. But I had never had
Speaker 3: that at no point in my career. I know that
Speaker 3: moment was right fam. It was like four since hanging
Speaker 3: up in the studio.
Speaker 8: So so finally when we put out that record, man,
Speaker 8: that was really the start of our label. And we
Speaker 8: started it in eight so this is like right around
Speaker 8: the time. This is like when the economy is like
Speaker 8: going crazy, right around the crash and everything. And I
Speaker 8: think my mentality was, I if we can launch a
Speaker 8: label during a fucking recession and survive, then we can
Speaker 8: make this ship.
Speaker 3: And it's been sixteen years, I got admit, Man, I
Speaker 3: say this with a little bit of shame.
Speaker 1: The two thousand and eight for that year, that was
Speaker 1: the first year that I actively voted in the Grammys,
Speaker 1: even the three that I won before, I didn't vote
Speaker 1: in that. Like, we just happened to win, but you know,
Speaker 1: it was on the road and I missed the ballot yeah.
Speaker 8: I tried to be a part like because after we
Speaker 8: got the nomination, they hit us it was like, hey,
Speaker 8: you know, do you want to be in whatever?
Speaker 3: And I'm like, all right, cool, But then I saw
Speaker 3: like you had to go to meetings and ship.
Speaker 9: I was like, I want to do this process itself
Speaker 9: is so like there's so much yeah stuff.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it's politics, it's it was just a lot of
Speaker 8: things that I saw. It didn't really I just wanted
Speaker 8: to make music this period and that was just side
Speaker 8: of the game. I understood it, and I understood the
Speaker 8: importance of it. But yeah, I remember my my Grammy lesson.
Speaker 8: We were at like the Grammy post Grammy brunch or
Speaker 8: whatever for Grammy dinner or whatever, and I was in
Speaker 8: line like greating to get some food and stuff. And
Speaker 8: it was this older lady that was in front of
Speaker 8: me and we just started talking and she was like, so,
Speaker 8: you know what what brings what you doing here? And
Speaker 8: I was like, yeah, my group for in Exchange. We
Speaker 8: were nominated for a Grammy and I said, you know
Speaker 8: we lost this year. I said we lost to Indie.
Speaker 8: I re because that year we lost to uh Indi Ira.
Speaker 8: She did a cover of Pearls by Shade, and so
Speaker 8: she was just like, I'll never get it. I said, yeah,
Speaker 8: you know, we lost lost to India, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean. And she said, yeah, it's hard to vote
Speaker 8: against her. And I was just like, vote for Tracy Flick.
Speaker 8: I understand, you know what I mean, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: It's an election, you know what I mean. It's I'm like,
Speaker 8: I got it. It's this is a campaign. You know,
Speaker 8: It's not a meritocracy. And once I understood that, I
Speaker 8: was just like, Okay, cool. It wasn't no bitterness or nothing.
Speaker 8: I'm like, Okay, that's what the game is, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean.
Speaker 3: But but now, man, the.
Speaker 8: Grammy nod was no, it was. It was incredible. Just
Speaker 8: have that experience. And I think me and I we went,
Speaker 8: we had our suits and all that ship.
Speaker 3: I remember, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: There were two related memories, like you invited us to
Speaker 4: the Roots Jam Grammy Jam, which was a big We
Speaker 4: did day Keeper that night, but you also said it
Speaker 4: with us like I remember, like, so it was me
Speaker 4: and Tay and Yazra on stage and I was just
Speaker 4: doing the keyboards and I remember hearing some drums at
Speaker 4: some point. This was not pre planned and you just
Speaker 4: sat in with us and it was like one of
Speaker 4: those things that I'll never forget because it was really
Speaker 4: kind of a It was a moment for us that
Speaker 4: felt like we were accepted by a larger Like obviously
Speaker 4: you had been a champion of us in general through
Speaker 4: Okay Player, but like it was kind of that moment
Speaker 4: where you realize, like, Okay, we might have a future
Speaker 4: in this, Like this might be you know, there were
Speaker 4: a lot of people that we.
Speaker 8: Met, nah seeing the getting props from the Ogs. I'm like,
Speaker 8: we did like we did Kissing Grind. We performed at
Speaker 8: Victor's thing, and we performed with a pickup band for
Speaker 8: the first and last time ever. We never doing that
Speaker 8: shit no more. But like, but during sound check, you know,
Speaker 8: weird singing is me yahs. Yeah, it was me and
Speaker 8: Yards at that time. We I don't think Darien wasn't
Speaker 8: it was. It was just it was just me and
Speaker 8: y'alls are singing. And so afterwards, you know, I walk
Speaker 8: off stage and it's this lady there and I'm looking
Speaker 8: at trying to figure out who she is, and she's
Speaker 8: like that was some.
Speaker 3: Real singing right there, and I love that was some
Speaker 3: good singing.
Speaker 8: I like that it's fucking Anne Nesby from Sounds of Black,
Speaker 8: and I'm just like, holy shit, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: So that's that was the year we met every like.
Speaker 4: Quincy Jones, Charlie Charlie will Wilson. Like it was really
Speaker 4: kind of we were rubbing shoulders with everybody that we admired,
Speaker 4: and we went to all of the events that you know,
Speaker 4: like the irony is like as a Grammy nominee, you
Speaker 4: don't get to go for free.
Speaker 3: It's still a pricey endeavor.
Speaker 4: And we didn't really have the money to campaign, so
Speaker 4: we just like, look, we're gonna go. We're gonna go
Speaker 4: to all of these events, like there's a producer thing
Speaker 4: at the Village Studio, like you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: like the things that you were very familiar with. We
Speaker 4: did hire a publicist to help us through the red
Speaker 4: carpet thing, like because that was like I recommended that
Speaker 4: we would to make the most of it.
Speaker 3: But it was kind of like one of.
Speaker 4: Those things where we realized, like as much fun as
Speaker 4: it is, like I don't know if we truly belong
Speaker 4: here and at the same time, the acceptance of it
Speaker 4: felt really good. I remember personally feeling very proud because
Speaker 4: this was something I could tell my parents and my family,
Speaker 4: and it made what I did very real versus like,
Speaker 4: oh I just make me you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: It was kind of thing in the United States. Yeah, right,
Speaker 4: It was a moment of like, Okay, this is like
Speaker 4: kind of a real thing, and so you know, but
Speaker 4: I haven't really ever pursued another number and that like
Speaker 4: like in the same way, because like, ultimately, I think
Speaker 4: we both realized that for us, it was much more
Speaker 4: important to make the music versus being the campaigners.
Speaker 8: Like literally, as soon as it was over with, as
Speaker 8: soon as like, you know, Jam announced, you know, the
Speaker 8: India Wan for the joint, I think me and Nick
Speaker 8: just kind of look at Jones like, all right, bro,
Speaker 8: you're ready to get back in the studio.
Speaker 4: Looking like a lount of time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Well yeah, we were like all right with you the time.
Speaker 8: I'm like, yeah, we can you go back to the studio.
Speaker 8: He was just cool year with us.
Speaker 2: That was.
Speaker 4: The actual twenty ten Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: I'm dropping wah nine So yeah, twenty nine is one
Speaker 5: of the nominations twenty ten how hard was it for
Speaker 5: you to sort of uproot yourself from living over there
Speaker 5: in the Netherlands and coming to the.
Speaker 4: United States to be yeah, to be dead ass in
Speaker 4: the middle of it.
Speaker 3: Weird? Did you move?
Speaker 4: I moved in six Basically what happened was connected did
Speaker 4: really good.
Speaker 3: And bb our Man Eddie b was our.
Speaker 4: A n R guy at like he was he and
Speaker 4: the American part of BBE, which we were. We never
Speaker 4: dealt with the UK guys so much. And Eddie had
Speaker 4: a vision of like a roster of releases that were
Speaker 4: all foreign exchange related, like a Nicola album, maybe a
Speaker 4: Darian album, maybe a Yazra album. And so he first
Speaker 4: brought up to me, he was like, look like, if
Speaker 4: you want, we could sponsor you.
Speaker 3: For a visa because that's what would be required. And
Speaker 3: so they ended up they ended up doing it.
Speaker 4: I realized that at the time, kind of going back
Speaker 4: to our conversation of how my sound was perceived, that
Speaker 4: I knew that back in Europe I didn't have a
Speaker 4: chance to really pursue a music career, certainly not in
Speaker 4: a touring capacity or otherwise. And my dream was again
Speaker 4: like as this music that I saw as inherently American.
Speaker 4: It felt like it made sense to come to the
Speaker 4: States and pursue a music career, and so I was
Speaker 4: awarded with a one visa, which was a big deal.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it involved leaving, like and that's what leave
Speaker 4: it All Behind partly alludes to. It did involve leaving
Speaker 4: my family, like my parents are still there, my brother
Speaker 4: and sister. So it's been it's been bittersweet in the
Speaker 4: sense that it was the right decision to make, but
Speaker 4: it wasn't an easy decision to make, and it will
Speaker 4: always be something where I realized that I did have
Speaker 4: to leave something behind that that is not necessarily easy
Speaker 4: to replace.
Speaker 3: Which city did you?
Speaker 6: So?
Speaker 4: I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Because so this is kind of a yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 3: a it's a beach beach sign right on.
Speaker 4: This just got like a cool, sort of quick anecdote
Speaker 4: that made me realize that North Carolina was kind of
Speaker 4: always in my crosshairs. As a kid, I had a puzzle,
Speaker 4: a jigsaw puzzle, and it was a mansion, just like
Speaker 4: a Southern man who would all to Magnolia's. And I
Speaker 4: really like jigsaw puzzles as a kid, and I would
Speaker 4: make this jigsaw puzzle.
Speaker 3: And basically what I.
Speaker 4: Found out once I moved to the Wilmington area was
Speaker 4: that that mansion on that puzzle is actually a mansion
Speaker 4: that is there in that local area, which I would
Speaker 4: have never known. So that made it almost like a
Speaker 4: serendipity kind of thing. I remember, like North Carolina had
Speaker 4: this sort of magic to it by way of Fante
Speaker 4: and everybody that was there, like it seemed like foreign
Speaker 4: exchange already before I moved, was a North Carolinian group,
Speaker 4: and so he would talk about Raleigh, he would talk
Speaker 4: about Durham, and it always like I always thought, like
Speaker 4: what if one day I actually get to be there
Speaker 4: and sort of like know what that is like. And
Speaker 4: even yesterday we took a little trip to sort of
Speaker 4: see a lot of those early locations where Fonte is
Speaker 4: like first apartment after college.
Speaker 3: And I wrote all those songs.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, this near.
Speaker 3: So when I think of North Carolina and beach life,
Speaker 3: I think of Cape Fear.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, literally Cape here River.
Speaker 3: I'm on the k yeah for Taraka and I.
Speaker 1: The soundtrack to Organics is we get home from recording
Speaker 1: at like two three in the morning, we watched do
Speaker 1: the Right thing and Cape fear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like just night after night. It's weird selection. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's the most opposite. Okay, sorry yo, No, it's just
Speaker 3: like but it was a tradition.
Speaker 1: We would get famous same as cookies, a half gallon
Speaker 1: of Barns juice and then you just get in the
Speaker 1: crib and put because the news will be on it.
Speaker 1: It's like ninety two, like you know, I mean, cable
Speaker 1: culture was sort of the thing, but you know, we
Speaker 1: didn't have like the Internet, so it's just like, all right,
Speaker 1: get your VHS tape that has to do the right
Speaker 1: thing and.
Speaker 3: Kp here like six in the morning, watch it every night.
Speaker 4: So was that the remake or the original with gregor.
Speaker 3: Not like both versions, but Scorsese versions my favorite. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: So back to your question, Like, it's been, like I think,
Speaker 4: in a lot of ways, like I've I've learned a
Speaker 4: lot about America in those years, a lot through the
Speaker 4: people that I've surrounded myself with. I came here sort
Speaker 4: of when it was Obama era, felt very yeah, I've
Speaker 4: been now through that going now right, So it's been
Speaker 4: really interesting. Obviously it's politically a completely different world from
Speaker 4: what I'm used to, but that's a whole other story.
Speaker 3: But it's been. It's been interesting. It's been.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 4: I often tell people that in order to appreciate where
Speaker 4: you're from, it is sometimes helpful to not be there
Speaker 4: for a while. And so, like, the interesting thing is,
Speaker 4: once I moved, I gained a much greater appreciation for
Speaker 4: where I'm from, going back, going back home, and it
Speaker 4: just all of a sudden started looking a little bit
Speaker 4: like different. And that's been. That's been very interesting.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: So to wrap it up, this is a for me
Speaker 1: in an important moment in development history, and hopefully you know,
Speaker 1: history is kind to you guys in terms of really
Speaker 1: acknowledging how early guys were in the game of how
Speaker 1: we now make music, Like you know, you guys were
Speaker 1: so early, and this this level of the first digital generation,
Speaker 1: pre SoundCloud.
Speaker 3: Pre you know, like pre Gmail, yes, right, social media Google?
Speaker 3: Like what was Google back then? So no, man, it
Speaker 3: was really not it was okay, player really was.
Speaker 8: I mean, it was just you know, I don't think
Speaker 8: y'all understood what y'all built, but you know it really was, uh,
Speaker 8: you know, just you were able to really find your
Speaker 8: tribe there, and you know, I don't think Nick and
Speaker 8: I would have found each other on any other site.
Speaker 3: We wasn't wouldn't found each other on you know, anywhere else.
Speaker 8: It was just that fucking online asylum that is, okay, player,
Speaker 8: we found each other and uh you know our movement
Speaker 8: with Fie, it really was a lot of it was
Speaker 8: inspired you know by so Quariums of course, by you know,
Speaker 8: Dungeon family, just understanding the power of having a crew
Speaker 8: and that y'all each work to make each other better
Speaker 8: and like collaborate with each other, and you know, you're
Speaker 8: able to keep records out without burning yourself out.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: If like, if you got to do a fantee solo
Speaker 8: album every year for five years, you done, like it's over,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. But if it's okay, I
Speaker 8: got feel Yeah, we can produce for other people, we
Speaker 8: can write, we can do things, you know, we can
Speaker 8: do sesame street songs like you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: All kind of so so now I'm man.
Speaker 8: It was that that level of community was certainly influenced
Speaker 8: by uh so aquarians again, you know, organized noise, just
Speaker 8: all of just those big collectors just you know, just
Speaker 8: seeing seeing y'all in that that vibe, the infamous vibe picture.
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean it got us real though, but yeah,
Speaker 3: but seeing that and being like, okay, like we can
Speaker 3: do that, and y'all's a right.
Speaker 8: At the time, she was singing for Erica Team background
Speaker 8: for Erica, So she was one of the first people
Speaker 8: that I saw as a professional musician and like saw
Speaker 8: what that grind was, like you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: and so yeah, man, yeah, I'm just thankful.
Speaker 3: But you know, it was all came full circle.
Speaker 1: Well, we're gonna have to also do like a part
Speaker 1: two stories because we didn't even get to my favorite
Speaker 1: like getting you talked about flying colors or or like
Speaker 1: authenticity or like any of my my favorite moments off
Speaker 1: the records.
Speaker 6: But could you a part you on online or whatever?
Speaker 3: Yes? Absolutely, yeah, yeah, they do it online. Do it
Speaker 3: for the shame?
Speaker 6: That would makes sense actually right right right.
Speaker 3: At one time we said, definitely did it that way?
Speaker 3: All right, go back home, both, y'all.
Speaker 1: No, I want be having a okay player, Yes, thank you, Yes,
Speaker 1: I want to be having a k play and then
Speaker 1: won't be haalf of q ls uh Bill, Steve, Wait.
Speaker 3: Where did like to go?
Speaker 1: She was just here, Uh myself and of course like
Speaker 1: the Famo of the q l S. Thanks Foreign Exchange
Speaker 1: for joining us for this episode. That person episode of
Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme. We'll see on the next go around.
Speaker 3: Y'all peace, Thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 8: This podcast is hosted by a Mere Quest Love Thompson,
Speaker 8: Big Boss Man, Light Here, Saint Clair, So Black and
Speaker 8: the Black, Myself, Fan, tigelow Fante Goldman Sugar.
Speaker 3: Steve Mandell, and Unpaid Bill Sherman.
Speaker 8: The executive producers are a Mere Quest Love Thompson, Sean
Speaker 8: g and Be Unbothered Brian Calhoun. Produced by Britta and
Speaker 8: Benjamin my dog cousin, Jake Payne, my motherfucking man, and
Speaker 8: like is Saint Clair my work wife.
Speaker 3: Edited by Alex Conroy. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown.
Speaker 3: What's Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.