Speaker 1: It is drink Chants, motherfucking podcast man. He's a legends
Speaker 1: eary queens rapper. He's agreed that your boy in O
Speaker 1: R E. He's a Miami hip hop pioneer. What Up
Speaker 1: is DJ E f N?
Speaker 2: Together they drink it up with some of the biggest players,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And the most professional, unprofessional podcast and your number one
Speaker 1: source for drunk drink chans most every day is New
Speaker 1: Year's e. Listen, it's time for drink Champs. Drink up,
Speaker 1: motherfuck mother? Would it good? Be hoping these winters should be.
Speaker 1: This is your boy in O R What up is
Speaker 1: d J E f N?
Speaker 3: And this drink Champs? Yeah, I will make something When
Speaker 3: when when? When we started this show, we wanted we
Speaker 3: wanted to dedicate your whole show to legends, to pie
Speaker 3: up is. This man is not only a legend of
Speaker 3: pioneer icon. He is I didn't even know he was
Speaker 3: writing songs in the nineties. He is stood the test
Speaker 3: of time, been out here and I being honest with you,
Speaker 3: I mean I have to see the process of you know,
Speaker 3: of of googling the artists, and I'll tell you this
Speaker 3: is probably the funnest Google I've ever had been a
Speaker 3: part of, Like I gotta ask because it's so much crazy.
Speaker 3: When you google him, it's like some of this shit
Speaker 3: can't be true, Like some of this can't be because
Speaker 3: it's so a luxurious. So the man is literally born
Speaker 3: into worrianty.
Speaker 1: Literally this is and and.
Speaker 3: It's a frame that I just found out was called
Speaker 3: blue Eyes so Ould. I did not know what that is.
Speaker 3: I did not know what it is. But we don't
Speaker 3: learn today. So in case you don't know, didn't know,
Speaker 3: who are we talking about? The one only?
Speaker 1: Why?
Speaker 4: That's Interdusty Now I got a access all top, Yes, sir,
Speaker 4: Wayne Gretsky. Baby, Well, my dad, you know, my dad
Speaker 4: was a devout Conde.
Speaker 5: You know, he was the American Canadian dad. So he
Speaker 5: came up with David Foster, the great producer songwriter and
Speaker 5: Wayne Gresky. Those were his two homies. So I was
Speaker 5: lucky enough. I was lucky enough. When I was young,
Speaker 5: David Foster would I'd get to visit my dad would
Speaker 5: take me to the studio because my dad knew I
Speaker 5: wanted to be a singer.
Speaker 1: When I was seven years old.
Speaker 5: He would take me to the studio to visit David
Speaker 5: Foster when he was working on the Natalie Cole Unforgettable album,
Speaker 5: when he was working on I Will Always Love You
Speaker 5: the Great. One of my favorite stories is I come
Speaker 5: home from school one day and David Foster is sitting
Speaker 5: at the piano with Kevin Costner and this tall, beautiful
Speaker 5: black woman right and they are working out how to
Speaker 5: do I Will Always Love You on my dad's piano
Speaker 5: in the living because David was working on another project
Speaker 5: around the corner at a different studio and he needed
Speaker 5: a piano in a room to practice the new this
Speaker 5: song that Kevin Costern wanted to do for the Bodyguard.
Speaker 5: So I walked in on that, you know, just coming.
Speaker 1: Home from school. My Wayne Gretzky story is even better.
Speaker 1: He was. He just threw that out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, pretty wild growing up, but yeah, well, my
Speaker 5: Wayne Gretzky story. My dad took my older brother to
Speaker 5: Russia for a summer vacation, and Wayne was dating Janet
Speaker 5: and needed a place to stay in La. They wanted
Speaker 5: to hang in La, so he stayed in my dad's
Speaker 5: bedroom for like two weeks. I'm going to Joe Tory
Speaker 5: baseball camp every day in the valley in Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: So the phone rings about seven thirty in.
Speaker 1: The morning one morning. I answered the phone. It's Bruce McNall,
Speaker 1: the owner of the Kings, and he says, can you
Speaker 1: please wake Wayne up? And I said no, no, no,
Speaker 1: he's sleeping. I'm not going in there.
Speaker 5: And he said, I need you to go and wake
Speaker 5: him up. So I go, I wake Wayne up. I
Speaker 5: go to Joe Tory baseball camp.
Speaker 1: I come home.
Speaker 5: Wayne's on the podium in Edmonton saying that he's been
Speaker 5: traded to the Kings. So I answered the phone. The
Speaker 5: day then Wayne Gretzky was traded the Gigs. Yeah, that's
Speaker 5: when he left camp. Should have woken him up early.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: But my one by one cool fabulous story with him
Speaker 5: was he took me the first time I'd ever been
Speaker 5: in a Rolls Royce. He had a white Rolls Royce
Speaker 5: and he convertible and he took me to McDonald's.
Speaker 1: I'll never agree being in the drive through with Wayne
Speaker 1: driving in a convertible Rolls Royce in the valley and
Speaker 1: uh yeah.
Speaker 5: So a lot of stories like that. Thanks to Pop.
Speaker 5: Shout out to allan thinks.
Speaker 1: Your mother was which show she was? She was on
Speaker 1: days of our lives. She was a singer.
Speaker 5: My mom also had a hit with an R and
Speaker 5: B singer named Carl Anderson. She had a number one
Speaker 5: song in the eighties, Friends and Lovers. That's my mom
Speaker 5: singing with Carl Anderson. So, you know, we've been trying
Speaker 5: to be black for generations. I had a joke beause
Speaker 5: my grandfather it was a jazz trumpet player. His father
Speaker 5: was a jazz trumpet player. So my joke is, we've
Speaker 5: been trying to be black for six generations.
Speaker 3: No, probably straight on different strokes. Your father wrote that
Speaker 3: and sang it. That's my singing.
Speaker 1: Strokes, super dudes, that's my dad's saying. I'm saying when
Speaker 1: I googled just that this is so amazing. But some
Speaker 1: of this at that point, No, No, he hadn't.
Speaker 5: Actually he uh was always a writer, and he wrote
Speaker 5: the original Wheel of Fortune theme song and my mom yeah,
Speaker 5: and my mom sang the facts of life.
Speaker 1: That's my mom singing the facts of my question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll take some.
Speaker 5: There was one funny story where I guess MERV. Griffin,
Speaker 5: you know who owned Wheel of Fortune. My dad wrote
Speaker 5: the original theme song, and after a few years, my
Speaker 5: dad was making bank and merv Griffin's like, who's this
Speaker 5: Canadian dude making all this money? So he rewrote his
Speaker 5: own theme songs and so he could own it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow, little noise for that. Man.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting there reading and by the way, we do this,
Speaker 3: wee be artist. And I'm sitting there and that's my
Speaker 3: friend over there, diego. He gets hyped for nothing and
Speaker 3: he's already like oh. He kept reading it and we
Speaker 3: were like it just kept going, kept going, and I
Speaker 3: was like, it was like, so, how is how was
Speaker 3: your childhood?
Speaker 1: Like? If you you ship like, I want to call
Speaker 1: it you a platinum spoon, not another silver spoon because
Speaker 1: you had Wayne Kresty babysit.
Speaker 5: Well, my dad was just the most friendly, sociable person
Speaker 5: you would ever meet.
Speaker 1: He loved He was from a small mining town in
Speaker 1: northern Canada, ten thousand people.
Speaker 5: He dreamed of Hollywood. Loved Hollywood. So, like I joke
Speaker 5: because people are like, oh you Hollywood. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 5: in Hollywood as a guest. I was born in the sign,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. But yeah, so I mean
Speaker 5: my dad loved it. My mom is a great singer
Speaker 5: and actress, and so I I just grew up in that.
Speaker 1: But what I really loved about my father.
Speaker 5: Was his ability to make friends right and legitimate long
Speaker 5: term friendships. That when when he passed away, the people
Speaker 5: that showed up for him, even if it's Leo DiCaprio,
Speaker 5: you know, like they just.
Speaker 1: Want to show together.
Speaker 5: That was Leo's first job pain And so Leo and
Speaker 5: I've been homies ever. We were sitting in the classroom
Speaker 5: together at fourteen years old.
Speaker 3: You know, so your homies list is it? I'm just saying,
Speaker 3: like I was googledness. I was like I was sitting
Speaker 3: there like some of this got to be made up.
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes you go google yourself and like people
Speaker 3: will say shit about you, but this is crazy.
Speaker 1: So okay, did you know growing up you you were royanty?
Speaker 1: Did you know that?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: Well, you feel you go somewhere you go.
Speaker 5: I think because I saw it so young and my
Speaker 5: dad handled it so well with such class, right and kindness,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I just really appreciated the way my father treated people,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to emulate that and following his
Speaker 1: foot what was he like his character in growing paints?
Speaker 1: Because that's what you're just very much very much. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know he's a little more naughty. You know that.
Speaker 5: He had his run hosting all the pageants and had
Speaker 5: a little fun with that for a while.
Speaker 1: But no, he was just he was just the most levelble.
Speaker 5: He was the kind of guy who would golf and
Speaker 5: play tennis. Like his whole his whole week was worked
Speaker 5: out from six a m. Till eleven pm. His whole
Speaker 5: week was planned. He had dinners every night with friends
Speaker 5: and somehow never.
Speaker 1: Paid for God, my dad go three times a week
Speaker 1: with friends who had memberships my dad. My dad would
Speaker 1: play tennis, you know, with people who had the cords
Speaker 1: to the hook ups. So he found a way to
Speaker 1: save his money, leave it to his kids. And I
Speaker 1: look up to my idol forever. But let let's make
Speaker 1: some mouse. That's all we could fire to be a parent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm trying to save some money for my children.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Now I'm always I'm always like when we have guests
Speaker 3: and we asked, they're drinkless. So that's that's that's my
Speaker 3: favorite part of the whole show. So when I got
Speaker 3: actually people's people said he drinks, do say, I say, oh.
Speaker 1: He hood, I support du I'm part of it. I'm
Speaker 1: part of the Duce family. They've been obviously.
Speaker 5: I'm with Rock Nations, Jay Brown and jay Z family.
Speaker 5: And when I was doing this residency in Los Angeles
Speaker 5: last year, we did about fifteen shows in LA at
Speaker 5: this small restaurant, only like two hundred and fifty people
Speaker 5: though people five hundred out the paget man again every week.
Speaker 1: No, this was just last year just because I wanted to.
Speaker 5: I wanted to do a real intimate show, no smoke,
Speaker 5: no lights, like right in front of people. So du
Speaker 5: Sy sponsored all these shows for us, and we got
Speaker 5: to have Little Wayne came out and two chains and.
Speaker 1: It has been a great run. You got Mad Records
Speaker 1: with a Little Wayne, I got like seven records. I
Speaker 1: was like, these niggas gott it was like a collaboration album.
Speaker 1: I'm looking that's not how how is that?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 3: You know, coming from R and B, you know, World
Speaker 3: and Collide and with hip hop, yeah.
Speaker 1: It's always especial.
Speaker 3: But when I'm hearing you guys together, it's like it
Speaker 3: doesn't seem forced at all. No, like it is because
Speaker 3: you and Waynam his friends, we were genuine fans of
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 1: Are we blue?
Speaker 5: Like when I heard go DJ. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: I mean he was already blown up. But when I
Speaker 5: heard go DJ, I was like, this is the next
Speaker 5: biggest artist period. I told Andre Hall and it was
Speaker 5: like you think. So I was like, trust me, Dre,
Speaker 5: this is the one. And so coincidentally he just reached
Speaker 5: out to me. The first song on my debut album,
Speaker 5: A Beautiful World, which is the twenty year anniversary, so
Speaker 5: we are celebrating, and so he heard this song called
Speaker 5: Oh Shooter on my debut album and he just hit
Speaker 5: me up out of nowhere and was like, Yo, I
Speaker 5: love this record. Can you send me the tracks you
Speaker 5: mind if I do something with it? And I was like, sure,
Speaker 5: I'll send it to you. And he didn't even take
Speaker 5: any of my parts out.
Speaker 1: He just wrapped in between where I wasn't singing wow,
Speaker 1: And it ended up being on the Carter two album
Speaker 1: You know it Amazing? How did you want from? OK?
Speaker 5: Well, actually, let me finish a good little Wayne story.
Speaker 5: So the first time that Lil Wayne ever did the
Speaker 5: Tonight Show and the first time I ever did The
Speaker 5: Night Show, we did it together.
Speaker 1: The first time either.
Speaker 5: One of us ever performed on the Grammys, we performed together.
Speaker 1: So we have. We did tie my Hands, you know,
Speaker 1: and he did the big New Orleans thing when he
Speaker 1: did the Year of the Card to three. So him
Speaker 1: and I have a real history together, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's a beautiful thing. Man. I
Speaker 1: like an y'all together. Yeah, I got mad notes.
Speaker 2: Want I want to go back to the relationship with
Speaker 2: Andre Herral Yes, yeah, lot there.
Speaker 1: How did you connect and what was that relationship? Well,
Speaker 1: he was moving to.
Speaker 5: LA to start a record label with Babyface, and they
Speaker 5: were looking for songs for these couple of artists that
Speaker 5: they had signed or interested in signing. So Dre had
Speaker 5: there was this artist who was kind of more of
Speaker 5: a dancer from Miami, like a more dancer first sing
Speaker 5: or second, you know. And so Dre comes to my
Speaker 5: house with Pete Farmer, a veteran A and R man
Speaker 5: from Arista, and Drake comes in and I play a
Speaker 5: couple of songs and he's like, that's cool.
Speaker 1: But the way you sing them, He's like, I like
Speaker 1: the way you singing these songs. You're singing.
Speaker 5: Artist, And it's like, but I like the way you
Speaker 5: sing He said, you got your own, you got any
Speaker 5: your own songs? Like for your own album, and and
Speaker 5: the funniest thing was just the way the world works.
Speaker 5: I had just devoted myself to making my debut album,
Speaker 5: actually creating. I was about twenty years old, you know
Speaker 5: when I met him, or no, a little old, like
Speaker 5: twenty two, twenty three, and so I was just started
Speaker 5: a beautiful world, and I had the first two songs
Speaker 5: that was going to put on the album.
Speaker 1: I sang those two songs for him, and he didn't
Speaker 1: want to work with the other artist anymore. He was like,
Speaker 1: I'm hanging with you.
Speaker 5: We're doing this, and he he lifted me into his
Speaker 5: New York City puff Daddy Naomi Campbell world. I remember
Speaker 5: I had a Halloween party before my album came out.
Speaker 5: Mariah's dancing on the dance floor, Naomi's there, Seal is there,
Speaker 5: Paul Thomas Anderson, the award winning director, and Ted Demi.
Speaker 1: These were These are the people just hanging out on.
Speaker 5: My balcony because of they were friends with Andrea and
Speaker 5: Yeah and the director, and they're in the studio. They're
Speaker 5: all sitting there listening to my album before it comes out.
Speaker 5: Naomi's in there. Mariah was in there for a while
Speaker 5: but couldn't handle the smoke. It had to walk out.
Speaker 5: She's like, it's just smoking here. She was wearing a
Speaker 5: wonder Woman costume with pom poms. I don't know, with
Speaker 5: some kind of combination.
Speaker 1: But so this is me at twenty five years old,
Speaker 1: before I even had an album out. That's what. That's
Speaker 1: what with Andrea herro was like. And because I also
Speaker 1: read somewhere that you wrote for Brandy.
Speaker 5: My first a cut that I ever had published was
Speaker 5: Brandy was fourteen and I was sixteen, and I wrote
Speaker 5: and I wrote a song for her on her debut album.
Speaker 1: But how do they start knowing that you know, you
Speaker 1: know how to write McKnight.
Speaker 5: Actually what happened? I did another great story. They used
Speaker 5: to call me bang the Light Mark Barby cutt you.
Speaker 3: But you notice every line he said, this is a
Speaker 3: bar okay, Brian Knight, So yeah, I got I call
Speaker 3: him Brian mcwhiteway.
Speaker 5: So I got another one. So I was in a
Speaker 5: singing group. We were called as One. It was me
Speaker 5: and three black guys, and one of the black guys
Speaker 5: his godfather was Algio. So I go to my father
Speaker 5: at thirteen years old, and I go, Dad, we need
Speaker 5: a thousand dollars to cut a demo.
Speaker 1: My dad goes, no, no, no, we're not starting that.
Speaker 1: You're too young. I'm not spending one thousand dollars on
Speaker 1: a demo, and so we went to Algiero.
Speaker 5: Algiero put the thousand dollars down paid for my first demo.
Speaker 5: I got to sing three songs on a mic and
Speaker 5: some kind of R and B hip hop fashion. Those
Speaker 5: three songs got heard by Brian McKnight and oh no, no, no, no, there's.
Speaker 1: One more step. I got more bars, there's one more step.
Speaker 1: No no. Those records were.
Speaker 5: Heard by Tricky Stewart, who was a young seventeen year
Speaker 5: old producer out of Chicago who had just moved to
Speaker 5: Los Angeles with his cousin and brother to start building
Speaker 5: their song basis. So we're in the studio working with
Speaker 5: the Braxton sisters and Brian McKnight is in the studio
Speaker 5: next door. So I started writing songs and cutting songs
Speaker 5: with Tricky Stewart. I'm like fifteen, fourteen, fifteen, and Brian
Speaker 5: here was young, yeah, leaving the leaving lead. I would
Speaker 5: ditch school every day at around one o'clock. I have
Speaker 5: my friends picked me up. My dad didn't know. I
Speaker 5: got kicked out of school later that year because I
Speaker 5: was going.
Speaker 1: To the studio every day at fourteen years old.
Speaker 5: But Brian ended up hearing that demo and then signed
Speaker 5: me to a record deal at Interscope Records when I
Speaker 5: was sixteen with Jimmy Ivan.
Speaker 1: Well, when I first heard of you, I haven't asked yes,
Speaker 1: when I first heard of you, like right here, yeah,
Speaker 1: I smoke with you, I thought it was Pharrell.
Speaker 3: Oh but before I get to the parrel day, I
Speaker 3: wanted to say something that you said something earlier? Did
Speaker 3: you said Wayne Gretzky was dating Janet Jackson.
Speaker 1: No, No, Janet Janet Gretzky who became Janet. Okay, wait,
Speaker 1: and that was exerting the Janet days she went to
Speaker 1: all the hockey games. That was like, that's the way
Speaker 1: love goes.
Speaker 3: No, I was thinking cause I'm like, I'm thinking for
Speaker 3: fans and the fans Like, wait a minute, he just said, yes,
Speaker 3: I had to make sure like keep my skills sharp.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? That makes all makes sense?
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, So again when I first heard of you,
Speaker 3: I heard of you through Pharrell. Then I hit the
Speaker 3: head is Brian McKnight stories. Yea Andre Harrell story. How
Speaker 3: did you want Forarrell initially get together in the first place?
Speaker 1: Well, Jimmy, I mean it was always the king of that. Ye,
Speaker 1: Jimmy knew the name drops. It's just get better.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The best story about Jimmy was Jimmy signed me. I
Speaker 5: remember the first time I met Jimmy. I mean I
Speaker 5: was in the room with John McClain. John McClain was
Speaker 5: actually the one who signed me and who runs Michael
Speaker 5: Jackson's counts and stuff like that. One of the great
Speaker 5: A and rs of all time. So John McClain was
Speaker 5: Jimmy's right hand man, and John loved my voice. He
Speaker 5: took me to the record store and bought me Marvin
Speaker 5: Gaye albums and blah blast. You need to listen to
Speaker 5: these guys for ad libs. You should practice it. And
Speaker 5: now thumb fifteen, sixteen years old. I remember the first
Speaker 5: time you meet Jimmy. I'm in the officer John Mclainjimmy
Speaker 5: walks in, he goes, John, we're going to the Laker
Speaker 5: game to night. I got court side seats. I go, hey,
Speaker 5: I'd love to go with you guys. I want court
Speaker 5: side seats. He goes, you can make a hit record first,
Speaker 5: and then.
Speaker 1: To sit on the car with me.
Speaker 5: It sounds so so cut to pretty much nine years later,
Speaker 5: because the records I made with Brian, they were good,
Speaker 5: but they weren't great, you know, they were like a
Speaker 5: B album and I didn't hadn't quite formulated an image yet.
Speaker 5: There really wasn't there besides a young white kid with
Speaker 5: a good voice singing R and B music. So they said,
Speaker 5: we'll put it out, but we're not going to really
Speaker 5: spend any money on promotion. I was like, you know it,
Speaker 5: just shelf it and I'll come back with something better
Speaker 5: later on. So literally four or five years later, I
Speaker 5: come back with long hair Andrea Herald Babyface and a
Speaker 5: whole new.
Speaker 1: Style of music. And Jimmy and I had when I
Speaker 1: Get You Alone when I came to the meeting, and
Speaker 1: Jimmy goes, didn't I sign you like eight years ago?
Speaker 1: Don't already have you signed here? Like what do you mean?
Speaker 1: I gotta sign you again? And that didn't whoa.
Speaker 5: So the first album was made with Andre Face was
Speaker 5: more of a friend he was, but it was that
Speaker 5: album was all onre like, you know, my musical and
Speaker 5: artistic development all.
Speaker 1: Came from Madre and my confidence.
Speaker 5: Like I had never met anybody who also believed in me,
Speaker 5: maybe even more than I believed in myself, who saw
Speaker 5: me bigger than I saw myself.
Speaker 1: Because Andre saw the whole thing.
Speaker 5: He saw the fashion, the tequila, he saw the future
Speaker 5: of everything for all of us, you know, and sometimes
Speaker 5: we didn't even think as big as he did.
Speaker 1: And that was the genius of Andre. Okay, we love you,
Speaker 1: miss but yeah, but how do you get mere? How?
Speaker 5: So then Pharrell, So after the first album, Jimmy's like,
Speaker 5: we got this super talent and but he he didn't connect,
Speaker 5: you know, we didn't find a way to sell records yet.
Speaker 5: So he says, I want you to meet with Farrell.
Speaker 5: So I go in this shoe with Pharrell. Luckily not good.
Speaker 5: Luckily I had lost without you in the meeting. So
Speaker 5: I show up to the meeting to meet Pharrell for
Speaker 5: the first time. And we had met like at parties,
Speaker 5: and he knew of my first album, so did jay Z.
Speaker 5: Like I knew all these guys and we'd hang out
Speaker 5: at parties and respect.
Speaker 1: But I hadn't had a hit yet. So I go
Speaker 1: in and I didn't I hadn't even.
Speaker 5: Recorded the vocal yet, so I sing Lost Without You
Speaker 5: Live in Jimmy Ivan's office for Pharrell the first time
Speaker 5: he hears it.
Speaker 1: Obviously right.
Speaker 5: I was signed to Star Trek you know, the next day,
Speaker 5: and ever since then, Farrell has done nothing but blessed
Speaker 5: me with his genius.
Speaker 1: Do you think having famous parents helped you among the way?
Speaker 5: I think it helps you young because you see an
Speaker 5: example of success, You see that it's possible, so you
Speaker 5: believe it's possible for you too.
Speaker 1: Do you know what I mean? It's just like anything
Speaker 1: in any family.
Speaker 5: If your dad's a good lawyer, dad's a good doctor,
Speaker 5: your mom does you can go, well, then I can
Speaker 5: do it.
Speaker 1: Your dad can do it. I can do it, you know.
Speaker 1: So it does breed confidence, but then you hit the
Speaker 1: reality of people judging right and then so yeah, that
Speaker 1: affected me at a younger age. Now, in hindsight, I
Speaker 1: realized that's what you have to earn as an artist.
Speaker 1: You have to earn your own individuality and your own
Speaker 1: impression that you bypass or at least parallel yourself to
Speaker 1: your parents accomplishments.
Speaker 2: Did you feel that anybody ever treated you as a
Speaker 2: novelty in that moment, like, oh, I.
Speaker 1: Feel like when Andre, because Andre had respect from everybody.
Speaker 5: He played music for us. So when Andre first started
Speaker 5: playing my music for people, there there was a people listened.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: And I remember when Rolling when he played some of
Speaker 5: it for somebody at the Rolling Stone in one of
Speaker 5: those popular magazines, and they were like.
Speaker 1: They think you sound like Maxwell, And I was like,
Speaker 1: this is a bad thing on the back. I like,
Speaker 1: the guy just sold the four million records and he's
Speaker 1: good sold out the forum. What's sounded a little like
Speaker 1: Maxwell because like one of the.
Speaker 3: New rappers out is a guy named Russ right, and
Speaker 3: Russ I see he receives a lot of slack because
Speaker 3: they say that his father was so powerful in the
Speaker 3: industry that they almost gave it the props to his father.
Speaker 5: And that's just we're always trying to knock one peg
Speaker 5: out people, you know what I mean, and take.
Speaker 1: Some away from their own accomplishments.
Speaker 5: And the truth is is that it does help to
Speaker 5: have a leg up, it does help to have connections,
Speaker 5: it does help to have some financial But my dad
Speaker 5: didn't give me.
Speaker 1: The first grand I didn't get the first thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: though it might have been the best thing you ever different,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And that's the thing, that's what we all like. I'm
Speaker 5: balancing my son. My thirteen year old son has an
Speaker 5: incredible voice. He's a natural singer, and he's way more
Speaker 5: comfortable being on.
Speaker 1: Stage than I was. Until I was thirty, I was
Speaker 1: a studio rat.
Speaker 5: I literally lived in the studio twelve hours a day
Speaker 5: until I released the first album and then I started performing.
Speaker 5: So I didn't become a good performer until, you know,
Speaker 5: maybe ten years later, you know.
Speaker 1: So I think with my son, I want to balance
Speaker 1: the support.
Speaker 5: Support, support, but you're going to have to go write
Speaker 5: your own songs, go play your own guitar, and have
Speaker 5: to make your own bones.
Speaker 1: You know. Did you have you ever had a regular day?
Speaker 1: I do now, and happily, Happily, I have four kids.
Speaker 5: I have a five year old daughter Mia, a four
Speaker 5: year old daughter Lola, and a two year old son,
Speaker 5: and they run my world.
Speaker 1: You know. I mean, my thirteen year old goes back
Speaker 1: and forth between my and Paul and my ex. But
Speaker 1: my kids are everything.
Speaker 5: And I think my dad was such a great dad,
Speaker 5: and I adored him so much. But he was so
Speaker 5: busy during my like ten to eighteen era, and he
Speaker 5: was gone on the weekends. Earn it because he was
Speaker 5: he was making he was everyone. He was he was everyone,
Speaker 5: and he didn't really turned down a job. He just
Speaker 5: hosted everything, you.
Speaker 2: Know now, you said, I remember as a kid seeing
Speaker 2: him post all those things.
Speaker 3: You didn't even realize because I didn't know that was
Speaker 3: work back then.
Speaker 1: I just know that I was having fun. That's crazy. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: So you literally have to share.
Speaker 5: Your father with the one I think a little bit
Speaker 5: of that time that I missed. I want to make
Speaker 5: sure I don't miss with my kids.
Speaker 1: You know. But my dad, he set the whole family up.
Speaker 1: He gave us a bar, a standard, you know, to
Speaker 1: live up to. Hell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I knew him my whole life.
Speaker 3: Forty five years old. I put on your dad my
Speaker 3: whole life.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: The best thing there isn't a set or a show
Speaker 5: I can go on, or any group of backstage p
Speaker 5: that I work with. If somebody doesn't come up and
Speaker 5: say how much they love they've worked with my dad
Speaker 5: in law, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the legacy, A great legacy. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tell you something.
Speaker 3: I can no longer watch movies because of how much
Speaker 3: I know about how film works. It like kind of
Speaker 3: ruins it for me. Like I kind of like the
Speaker 3: other day I re visited Seinfeld and I realized Seinfeld
Speaker 3: didn't shooting on one episode in New York City. Whoa
Speaker 3: the whole ship you think of that? Ever, the exterior,
Speaker 3: even the exteriors.
Speaker 1: Right was on set.
Speaker 3: It was a set, but they was showing. And so
Speaker 3: I'm watching Seinfeld. This is the show that I loved
Speaker 3: back then, I still love now, but I'm watching it
Speaker 3: now now that I know the difference. I feel like
Speaker 3: it took away from everything, just the magic. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: you're so much involved in entertainment. Does entertainment bore you now?
Speaker 1: No? I think that. I think I bore myself, and
Speaker 1: I think I have to sometimes.
Speaker 5: I think I like to live in the challenges of
Speaker 5: life and the struggles so I can create something that
Speaker 5: actually is meaningful to me. If life is too easy,
Speaker 5: if I don't, if I just go, oh, it's all
Speaker 5: flowers and everybody's happy, then I'm just gonna write flowers
Speaker 5: and happy songs.
Speaker 1: That's not who I am. I'm a soul. Man. I
Speaker 1: have to feel the soul of my experience so I
Speaker 1: can put that soul back into my music.
Speaker 3: God damn it, man with the flowers that man, let's go.
Speaker 3: Let's come on, come on, babe, God damn it. Our
Speaker 3: show is literally about giving people they flowers and literally
Speaker 3: want to give you y'all hours.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 3: I would say, it's like a Grammy coming from the people, right,
Speaker 3: thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you? Know what? The older way, I heard a
Speaker 1: great quote from Bob Dylan once.
Speaker 5: He said something like, it's always nice to be honored
Speaker 5: while you're still alive, right right, that's right. And the
Speaker 5: older we get all these little moments of appreciation or
Speaker 5: flowers or gratitude, you know, because we were so much
Speaker 5: more grateful now for everything that we've accomplished and been
Speaker 5: a part of.
Speaker 1: During the ride, you're just going, it ain't enough.
Speaker 5: I need another, I need more, And sure I want
Speaker 5: more more great music, you know, and I want more
Speaker 5: great friendships.
Speaker 1: But but I try not to be so hard on
Speaker 1: myself anymore, you know, good.
Speaker 2: And appreciate all the people that you've actually touched on
Speaker 2: the way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, exactly, And that's why it's good to get out
Speaker 5: because sometimes the artists, the older you get, you just
Speaker 5: end up staying inside with your friends and your circle
Speaker 5: and your family, and you don't even feel that love anymore,
Speaker 5: and you.
Speaker 1: Start thinking it's not out there. And then I go
Speaker 1: out and I and I see all the smiles and
Speaker 1: the faces and the handshakes and the people that want
Speaker 1: to say I love you, And if I'm staying in
Speaker 1: my house all day, I'll never get to feel that love.
Speaker 3: You know, It's probably one of the deepest shit I've
Speaker 3: ever heard just now, Like that shit makes so much
Speaker 3: sense to me.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I know you're talking to the world,
Speaker 1: but that moment was talking to me. Yeah, that shit is.
Speaker 1: You and I have both experienced similar parts of the adventure.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: You know it's crazy.
Speaker 3: I noticed that if if I'm even you know, have
Speaker 3: you ever woke up and you feel like you're having
Speaker 3: a bad day?
Speaker 1: Like you just feel it just on the moment you
Speaker 1: wake up.
Speaker 3: I literally can't go outside because if I go outside,
Speaker 3: someone's gonna be like, hey, nor you gotta take a
Speaker 3: picture that I'm saying I got a fucked updated.
Speaker 1: Certain they don't give a fuck about my fucking note.
Speaker 1: They're thinking about that, that music, They think that was
Speaker 1: all you made me feel good.
Speaker 3: So speaking of that, that's the one thing I hear
Speaker 3: about the music is it seems like you're a feel
Speaker 3: good person, like you want to feel good, except for
Speaker 3: when you tried to get your wife back.
Speaker 1: You was hurt. You was hurt. Yeah, well I was confused.
Speaker 1: He was confused.
Speaker 5: He was confused because because I knew that we weren't
Speaker 5: supposed to be together anymore. But I had just had
Speaker 5: a child and the last thing I wanted to do
Speaker 5: was spend half of my life away from my child
Speaker 5: the next eighteen years, only seeing him three and a
Speaker 5: half days a week.
Speaker 1: Real.
Speaker 5: So there is in a single thing you wouldn't try.
Speaker 5: So that album was the most jumbled and confused album
Speaker 5: because that was the most jumbled and confused part of
Speaker 5: my life. So I said everything I was going through.
Speaker 5: So one day I wanted to get her back. The
Speaker 5: next day I knew was over. You know, one day
Speaker 5: I wanted to make it work. The next day I
Speaker 5: knew there.
Speaker 1: Was no chance. So that period, oh yeah, music has
Speaker 1: always been my diary and my therapy. It's and sometime
Speaker 1: I guess that time it didn't work. You know, it
Speaker 1: didn't work, but.
Speaker 2: It might not have workedally, but internally then.
Speaker 1: And then you said it and I'm going to drop.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna drop. And then these are the beautiful moments.
Speaker 5: So I'm mad. I met a birthday, a big birthday party,
Speaker 5: all these people that I haven't seen this person in
Speaker 5: a long time. But his daughter, Zoe had been in
Speaker 5: the studio with me while I was making the Paula album.
Speaker 1: She had come to visit. Right, So Lenny Kravinz is
Speaker 1: sitting there.
Speaker 5: And he goes, yo, Zoe told me about the album
Speaker 5: because she heard it in the studio and I listened
Speaker 5: to it and I thought it was amazing.
Speaker 1: So right there here, here's another peer of mine that
Speaker 1: I love, and let me get it, let me get in.
Speaker 1: And he's telling me when I when.
Speaker 5: I sold barely sold anything, and everybody told me it
Speaker 5: was a big mistake, and he's saying, I thought it
Speaker 5: was amazing, that was beautiful. I said something to the
Speaker 5: respect of I really respected what you did on that album.
Speaker 1: And that's what we do as artists. We hit, we miss,
Speaker 1: but we have to try and share and tell our
Speaker 1: story right. And my story at that time was all
Speaker 1: over the place. Nah.
Speaker 3: I mean when I was listening, I was like, okay,
Speaker 3: I see what it was gonna happen. But you tried,
Speaker 3: you tried to get it back. You made a whole No.
Speaker 1: I tried to sell old idea, the idea.
Speaker 5: Of getting her back, but I wasn't actually working on
Speaker 5: getting her back at the time.
Speaker 1: And that's why, because we were already done. You wanted
Speaker 1: your family together, you want to.
Speaker 5: I wrote the songs in real time. I wrote the
Speaker 5: whole album in maybe two months, you know. But I
Speaker 5: knew we weren't going to be back together, and that
Speaker 5: was okay. You know, I heard this great quote recently
Speaker 5: by Jay Shetty and you guys know this guy, jaj
Speaker 5: doess a lot of inspirational stuff, and he said, people
Speaker 5: think that growing apart is a bad thing, but you're
Speaker 5: still growing. Just because you grew apart, does it mean
Speaker 5: you didn't grow? And that really touched me deep because
Speaker 5: I was like, you know what, that's what happened. We
Speaker 5: were both her careers taking off. She's got her own
Speaker 5: life from career. My career is taken off. I got
Speaker 5: my own thing. We've got a baby. We're both changing
Speaker 5: and growing but the problem is we grew apart, and
Speaker 5: that's just something you have to respect instead of take.
Speaker 1: As an L. That's not necessarily an L. Wow, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Meghan Marko write your wedding stations.
Speaker 5: And Megan Marco wrote our wedding invitations in collect, Yo,
Speaker 5: what kind of fucking life. She was a colligor, she's
Speaker 5: a calligraphy expert, and somehow when she was doing an
Speaker 5: interview getting married, she said that she did our wedding invitations.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of shit that happens in Hollywood. Yo.
Speaker 3: She's married, she's literally worried to you, and she happened
Speaker 3: to do your wedding invitations.
Speaker 1: How the fuck is that? Man? That's Hollywood. That's why
Speaker 1: I always just say this, man, it's Hollywood. Anything's possible, Wow,
Speaker 1: anything speaking of that?
Speaker 3: You know, growing up in Los Angeles, and like I see,
Speaker 3: I see how you kept saying the valley, And you notice.
Speaker 1: None of us was known what you're just talking about.
Speaker 1: Because when I say the valley in La, yes, in
Speaker 1: La everyone else. I looked at my already val den.
Speaker 1: I looked at a.
Speaker 3: Couple of couple of my friends and they look but
Speaker 3: like it's it's actually it's actually one of the toughest
Speaker 3: towns to be in, right, because it's almost like everyone's
Speaker 3: a fucking start in California.
Speaker 1: It's it's the person bringing you your burger.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was on Martin in nineteen eighty nine, and
Speaker 3: he's just out there living.
Speaker 1: It's just like it's just like that. Yeah, is that
Speaker 1: something that you're adapt you're just used to all.
Speaker 5: I think everything has its pluses and minuses, you know.
Speaker 5: I think people in Hollywood, they tend to think that
Speaker 5: they're this close to stardom, and the fact there's a
Speaker 5: few of them are right, you know.
Speaker 1: So I have I've seen it happen.
Speaker 5: I've literally seen somebody a month earlier and then the
Speaker 5: next month they're on the cover of Time magazine and
Speaker 5: nobody going me.
Speaker 1: It's like, things like this really do happen.
Speaker 5: And I've been lucky enough to see so many journeys
Speaker 5: realize their potential.
Speaker 1: So I do believe. Even when I see my kids,
Speaker 1: I don't tell them this is not possible. Anything is possible.
Speaker 1: I've seen it happen. I've made the impossible possible.
Speaker 2: You know, how do you prepare them for the rougher side?
Speaker 2: Of that because they're that's the percentages are against most.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't encourage any of them to get into
Speaker 1: entertainment business. I encourage them to have craft. Right to
Speaker 1: build craft something you love to do. If you do
Speaker 1: it long enough and you build a craft at it,
Speaker 1: you will success. You will find a place. You can't
Speaker 1: just want to be a star. You want to be
Speaker 1: a star, good luck, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: But you want to have craft and if you earn
Speaker 5: the hours that it takes to learn a craft. I
Speaker 5: spent twelve hours in the studio every day by the
Speaker 5: time I was from sixteen to twenty, you know what
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 1: So by the time I was twenty, by the.
Speaker 5: Time I was twenty two, I'd written and produced two
Speaker 5: dozen golden platinum records. Before I'd ever released one of
Speaker 5: my own songs. I had already had two dozen golden
Speaker 5: Plantinum albums.
Speaker 1: You know I was on Mark anton I wrote Mark
Speaker 1: Anthony's you Gotta Look for Solid right like No No.
Speaker 1: Then I had this lucky streak in my late teen
Speaker 1: years in my early twenties where I happened to be
Speaker 1: on everybody's biggest album. The song that I wrote for
Speaker 1: Usher Confessions. The song I wrote for Christina was her
Speaker 1: debut album, her biggest alum. The song I wrote for
Speaker 1: Mark Anthony his biggest selling American album. The song I
Speaker 1: wrote for Maya it was her Plantinum.
Speaker 5: So I had this incredible Pink Pink's biggest album was
Speaker 5: her first album Notes, So this was literally but and
Speaker 5: you know, by the time I was twenty two years old,
Speaker 5: I'm just amassed.
Speaker 1: Who's helping you get those placements? Because that's difficult publishers.
Speaker 1: You have publishing company.
Speaker 5: Luckily, I signed a publishing deal when I was about
Speaker 5: sixteen seventeen, and she would pitch me to all these
Speaker 5: artists and they'd come by our studio and we'd write
Speaker 5: a song for them and then.
Speaker 1: Just get lucky to be on. I never had the hit.
Speaker 1: I never had to hit, always had a cut on
Speaker 1: the biggest time. Yeah, that's all you need. You're ready
Speaker 1: to kick Thomas. Let's go. I'm doing you guys, might
Speaker 1: if I do it quick break. As you can see,
Speaker 1: I got the story you want to play in the game.
Speaker 1: If we're gonna give you two options, I just let
Speaker 1: them know. She said that I was looking a little shiny,
Speaker 1: So if they can step in. You can step in
Speaker 1: anytime you need. Yeah, come your on camera. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think she looks good.
Speaker 5: If you see me looking too shiny, I can do more. Hit,
Speaker 5: I'll do a little more right here, I guess some
Speaker 5: napkins paper, yes, sir, all right?
Speaker 1: No, actually I think that nothin's are good? Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: a little better? Thank you. I appreciate you money. All right.
Speaker 2: We're gonna give you two options. You can kick one
Speaker 2: and we don't. But if you say both or neither,
Speaker 2: be politically correct. If you're if you give the politically
Speaker 2: correct answer, we're all drink.
Speaker 1: But we said we don't leave you by yourself.
Speaker 2: But if you pick one, nobody drinks, and feel free
Speaker 2: to give us a story or anything that comes to mind.
Speaker 2: Many of these two things we tell you. Okay, you
Speaker 2: want to start, you ont me just start?
Speaker 1: You just talk, all right? Usher or Chris Brown?
Speaker 5: Oh well, artistically I love both, but but I'm gonna
Speaker 5: have to pick my man, Usher, just because we go
Speaker 5: back twenty You got a Grammy together, say yeah, that's
Speaker 5: my book.
Speaker 1: Fair enough? Like we we go to each other's kids,
Speaker 1: birthday parties and stuff.
Speaker 5: I gotta see Breezey don't text me back. Sometimes I'll
Speaker 5: be sending it in front of video. I'll be saying
Speaker 5: we hung out recently, had a blast together, but but
Speaker 5: I send them a video because my my girl and
Speaker 5: her friends love Chris Brown. Like when it's when it's
Speaker 5: girls night, is it starts with these joisean loyal you know?
Speaker 1: So it ready. So I'll be texting him from the
Speaker 1: party bus on the birthday night. Give it him one
Speaker 1: of these. You know. Sometimes he hits back. So so
Speaker 1: so what is it we we seen? What do you mean? Like?
Speaker 1: Like I like no, I would just be like yo,
Speaker 1: party Indio jams tonight. You know what I mean?
Speaker 5: I like to send videos to my friends when we're
Speaker 5: partying to their music.
Speaker 1: But I thought you meant like you know you know
Speaker 1: when Usher answered, So that's why I'm a pareush the
Speaker 1: face time in the party.
Speaker 5: Bush Face signed with us while we were listening to
Speaker 5: Daddy's Home.
Speaker 1: Okay, by the way, I don't want to ask this one.
Speaker 1: You can do guys na kiss. Oh well, I got
Speaker 1: records with both. That's another drop. Yeah, I was letting
Speaker 1: you go. I want you to. I don't know how, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know how you can pick between those drinking
Speaker 1: drinking cheers, cheers, Thanks, I love blessed, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I got I got ship to do today. Yep,
Speaker 3: drink tests. I'm okay, this is a good one. Marvin
Speaker 3: Gate or Stevie Wonda, Oh.
Speaker 1: Well, h.
Speaker 5: That's that's a both that you guys are gonna We're
Speaker 5: gonna be drunk, because first of all, there's nothing that
Speaker 5: you can't learn from either one of those catalogs and
Speaker 5: and and artists and Hartley what I love that. Andre
Speaker 5: Andre Herrel always knew that those were my two favorites
Speaker 5: because they sang about love, and that's that's my core
Speaker 5: has always been to sing about love or to sing
Speaker 5: about trying to make love better.
Speaker 1: That shot, Yeah, yeah, thank you, and Marvin, thanks a
Speaker 1: lot for both being amazing by the way. We got
Speaker 1: that just in case, you know, that's that the best.
Speaker 1: I'm good.
Speaker 3: I'm planning a nap after this. Yeah, yeah, I'm the
Speaker 3: best on the planet. Mother loyal, dig over there smoking
Speaker 3: it down. Goddamn, it.
Speaker 1: Is good. It is good. I never heard nobody. Are
Speaker 1: you ready, Jodasy or black Street?
Speaker 5: Oh once again, Teddy, that's Andre Herrel family.
Speaker 1: So Teddy, I have a record with Teddy. We did
Speaker 1: Sex in the Morning together a Snoop with Snoop Dogg
Speaker 1: on it. I love Teddy, but Jodas.
Speaker 5: Jodasy taught me so much vocally like I worshiped Casey
Speaker 5: and Jojo and as a listener, as a listener is
Speaker 5: just the songs of production like that era I was thirty.
Speaker 5: I think I don't think anybody influenced me more as
Speaker 5: a teenager than Jodasy vocally and musically like that was
Speaker 5: I seen come and talk to me in a cappella
Speaker 5: in my show.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like great record and the
Speaker 1: remix even better and yeah, and you know what's you
Speaker 1: know what's so great about?
Speaker 5: And I know you experienced this too growing up, idolizing
Speaker 5: these artists and then here I am, and him and
Speaker 5: I I have been texting about doing a song together.
Speaker 1: I need a song like what was the last thing
Speaker 1: you said me? I need a song like forgetting the artists?
Speaker 1: Who's just texting you, Casey? See now this is this
Speaker 1: ship is catching up to me. Now now I can't
Speaker 1: remember my favorite No.
Speaker 5: Casey and I've been texting, yeah, because you know when
Speaker 5: Andre passed and just all the all of the Disciples
Speaker 5: of Andre. You know what I mean, we all have
Speaker 5: stayed in touch and become friends and and yes, so
Speaker 5: Casey and I've been talking about doing a song together.
Speaker 1: I can't remember the artist right now. You got to
Speaker 1: be incredible. Okay, so you picked Jodysy. I definitely picked
Speaker 1: joas do now.
Speaker 2: So I don't have to drink, you don't have to drive,
Speaker 2: But shout out to Teddy and black streets.
Speaker 1: Shout out to Teddy, Biggie or Big Al. Definitely Biggie
Speaker 1: for me. Okay, little Wayne or Drake. I gotta pick Wheezy,
Speaker 1: gotta pick Weezy. I should take a shot for you
Speaker 1: for me, no one, you gotta pick. And you know
Speaker 1: I mean Drasey.
Speaker 5: I'm literally we're in the car every week for the
Speaker 5: for the last fifteen years to Drizzy. So but but yeah,
Speaker 5: there's something about Wayne. There's something about Wayne. I feel
Speaker 5: that that just has never existed and will never exist.
Speaker 5: Like it's just such an individual, lyrical, vocal perspective that
Speaker 5: he brings.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a cool dude too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, your love, But your father was like the first
Speaker 3: king of Canada, and then Drake is like the King
Speaker 3: of Canada.
Speaker 1: Drake is Canada. It's the King of Central Page twisted. Damn.
Speaker 1: That's a good one, Okay, Brian mcmight, well keep.
Speaker 5: Sweat, gotta go with McKnight because yeah, that was my Keith,
Speaker 5: those records that Keith I remember I was.
Speaker 1: That was what was so great about Remember I told
Speaker 1: you about al Giro's god.
Speaker 5: His name is Tabiso and Kane and he's become a
Speaker 5: very successful an R and publisher himself. And he was
Speaker 5: my first Andre Herrell when I was like fourteen. Oh,
Speaker 5: here's another good story. So I'm fourteen years old and
Speaker 5: I'm hanging out with my The other guys in my
Speaker 5: singing group were nineteen to twenty years old. Right, they
Speaker 5: had a hookup at the Palladium in La So they
Speaker 5: decided to take me to the Palladium. It's a boys
Speaker 5: to men, Joe to C and I believe ABC like,
Speaker 5: let's go back kind of night. Right, I'm fourteen years old.
Speaker 5: I'm literally walking around No, no, no, that's why they
Speaker 5: had the hook at the Pladium.
Speaker 1: I don't even know how I got there.
Speaker 5: I was just with my older Hollywood like David Faustino,
Speaker 5: Brian Austin Green, white boyfriends, right.
Speaker 1: That's who it was. I was with the white boys.
Speaker 1: I was with the White Boy crew. I was with
Speaker 1: the white boy crew. I was with the white boy young.
Speaker 5: TV crew, the nine O two one oh crew, and
Speaker 5: so Brian also getting them. They loved hip hop, right,
Speaker 5: They're all these hip hop has and I was the
Speaker 5: same way.
Speaker 1: Somehow we become friends through.
Speaker 5: My dad taking me to young Hollywood parties whatever. So
Speaker 5: they took me. So they're all like nineteen twenty years old.
Speaker 5: I'm fourteen, and and they end up somewhere else. I
Speaker 5: ended up wandering through the party and I find myself
Speaker 5: seeing these three black guys, well dressed, kind of sitting there,
Speaker 5: and I don't even.
Speaker 1: Know how this happens. I just kind of walk up
Speaker 1: and I go, hey, what's what's your name? What you
Speaker 1: guys doing? Do you guys? You guys sing? And they said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we sing. I don't know how I had that feeling,
Speaker 1: and I said, yeah, I sing too. I sang for
Speaker 1: them right there in the in the palladium at the
Speaker 1: table on the spot. Made friends.
Speaker 5: We ended up starting a singing group together, and that
Speaker 5: ended up in this guy to be so ended up
Speaker 5: teaching me about the culture of black music, and about
Speaker 5: A and R and about how to get a record deal.
Speaker 5: So when I he took me to Warner Brothers Records,
Speaker 5: in the first two songs, I sang to get a
Speaker 5: record deal, where Jodases got a love Wow and commissions.
Speaker 1: Running back to you had a fourteen year old whie
Speaker 1: boy chose I'm about to act man like you ain't
Speaker 1: never listen to the Beach Boys, you know. I think
Speaker 1: we all like maybe I wanted to. I love black
Speaker 1: music and black culture so much naturally, Michael Jordan, Eddie
Speaker 1: Murphy like that whole era. As a wife, I.
Speaker 5: Remember listening to n w A with my headphones and
Speaker 5: my walkman in the kitchen and my mom doesn't know
Speaker 5: I'm listening to Bitch, you know.
Speaker 1: A Bitch is a bit like that, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Mom, if you know what I'm listening.
Speaker 5: I'm so obsessed with the whole thing, you know, And
Speaker 5: so it's always just felt like like that was where
Speaker 5: I belonged to.
Speaker 1: That culture is where I belonged, you know.
Speaker 3: I don't know, we still don't quick time with slim,
Speaker 3: but how come like you know, there's people who are
Speaker 3: obviously white that make black music and there and sometimes
Speaker 3: they call them a culture volture.
Speaker 1: What do you feel about that work a coat of volture? Like,
Speaker 1: what do you think? I think that that you know,
Speaker 1: if you're using something, then you're just using it. If
Speaker 1: you love something, if it's in your so if it's
Speaker 1: in your blood, if you if you like walk it daily,
Speaker 1: and you treat every person that's a part of that
Speaker 1: movement and culture with the same respect and dignity they deserve.
Speaker 1: Like that you don't have to answer to nobody. I
Speaker 1: like that. I get yeah, growing pains or different strokes.
Speaker 1: I think Trey Songs of Jeremiah mm hmm, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go Jeremiah. I like that that that record he did
Speaker 1: with fifteen Okay, you got a song trade songs too,
Speaker 1: do I? Yeah? You got song with everybody? Yeah? Oh
Speaker 1: you know it's funny. I totally forgot. I was like,
Speaker 1: this is this is what happens when you, you know,
Speaker 1: drink too much kill you. I remember I did. I
Speaker 1: totally forgot that.
Speaker 5: I was on the Quins Jones redo of like pyt
Speaker 5: that I did this whole vocal and t pains on it.
Speaker 5: That was because I think what happens is you get
Speaker 5: into a.
Speaker 1: Place like where blurred lines and that that year, a
Speaker 1: couple of years and you're just doing it, literally getting
Speaker 1: calls for everything, and of course Quincy Jones calls and
Speaker 1: wants you to drop a verse. You just do it.
Speaker 1: Six years later totally forgot I'd ever done that record.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's the beauty of the business. Okay, podcast
Speaker 1: or radio. You know, I haven't gotten totally into the
Speaker 1: podcast thing yet. My girl loves it. I think it's
Speaker 1: it's my impatience, do you know what I mean? I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's for me to sit down and
Speaker 1: do long form like I don't. I don't like watching series.
Speaker 1: I like movies. I have a tough time.
Speaker 5: I like when it when I'm into a series and
Speaker 5: the new episode drops once a week, so there's a
Speaker 5: separation and anticipation and I only watch for an hour
Speaker 5: or plus.
Speaker 1: But me trying to sit there and watched like ten.
Speaker 5: Episodes in no way, man, No, I gotta go write,
Speaker 5: I gotta go do something.
Speaker 1: Radio well, I mean yeah, I mean I'm as school.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking radio. Okay, I am, And you know Beyonce,
Speaker 1: Oh both ain't no answer to that exactly forever Missy
Speaker 1: or Eve Oh, I gotta pick Missy just I mean Eve,
Speaker 1: I I did a record with Eve. I think too,
Speaker 1: and but I love Uh. I think Missy was.
Speaker 5: Just one of the most game changing presence. I mean,
Speaker 5: and her ability to wrap and sing and write and
Speaker 5: murder for other other artists.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, Missy's and.
Speaker 2: Similar entrance because she started writing. Yeah, and the connection
Speaker 2: there's a lot of connection's.
Speaker 1: Just I mean, wow, if when you go back on
Speaker 1: her catalog, Virginia not She's Timberland, but con and the
Speaker 1: songs she wrote for s w V and I mean
Speaker 1: like peace, Bobby Brown or Johnny Gill.
Speaker 5: I gotta go Bobby Brown. I love, I love all
Speaker 5: that and I sang my my my, like repeatedly. It
Speaker 5: was huge Johnny. I'm a huge Johnny gil fan.
Speaker 1: But my progate the Boby Brown, the dope be cruel,
Speaker 1: the humping on the ground, the tender Ronnie like when
Speaker 1: I was a fourteen, I'm talking.
Speaker 5: And you know, and and we did the Real Husbands
Speaker 5: of Hollywood together, so we're family on that talk about it.
Speaker 1: I just think Bobby Brown. When Bobby Brown hit and
Speaker 1: he was rapping and singing and dance like that was
Speaker 1: That was and the run going back to you, This
Speaker 1: is gonna be here on Friday. That was Chris. That
Speaker 1: was the show I got to I don't want to. Oh,
Speaker 1: I get a lost you know who?
Speaker 3: The reason why I know that Fat Joe hit me
Speaker 3: He's gonna be here Friday, and I think he's coming
Speaker 3: just to go to the He's a big like that
Speaker 3: fan of like because isn't it tour's Yeah?
Speaker 1: Who else? And that's the wave of entertainment is that
Speaker 1: you go through.
Speaker 5: Your hot phase and then all of a sudden it's
Speaker 5: just hot and everyone wants to see it and it's
Speaker 5: coming to test comes back and mentalities and remembering. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's the beauty of music is how it connects to
Speaker 5: the journey of your life and reminds you of those
Speaker 5: eras and times.
Speaker 1: You know, and some of the best times your life.
Speaker 3: Music is a time machine absolutely for real or Kanye
Speaker 3: got to pick for real of course, which I wouldn't.
Speaker 5: I wouldn't u for Rell, you know, out of everybody
Speaker 5: that I've ever been around as an artist, married Ja recording,
Speaker 5: Mary J. Blige vocals or recording Jay Z vocals. That's
Speaker 5: hard to surpass. But being in the studio and watching
Speaker 5: for real create has got to be one of the
Speaker 5: most magical things you can be around. The speed, the authenticity,
Speaker 5: the passion, and just the cleverness that he and the lyricism,
Speaker 5: the melody like there isn't a part of it. He
Speaker 5: can't do all on his own. That's there's so many
Speaker 5: of us. We need someone to help us with the
Speaker 5: base and we need someone to help us with the lyric.
Speaker 5: I mean, someone to help us with the melodies. But
Speaker 5: that guy, there's nothing.
Speaker 1: He can't do. Just a genius.
Speaker 5: When you use the word genius lightly, you know, use
Speaker 5: it lightly on Pharrell, he's a genius.
Speaker 1: So Brandy or Monica, gotta pick Brandy. That's my girl.
Speaker 1: We did that. We had our first song together, our
Speaker 1: first cut. He's like a quick time.
Speaker 5: But some of them are easy if they're if they're
Speaker 5: so connected, you know what I mean, Because I'm not
Speaker 5: picking music over music.
Speaker 1: I'm picking connections music Mariah or Janet. Janet gotta pickure
Speaker 1: now Mariah vocally.
Speaker 5: When she came out with Visions of Love, I remember
Speaker 5: I was proud and this is when I before my
Speaker 5: voice changed.
Speaker 1: I could hit all the octaves, I could hit the
Speaker 1: fifth octave. Mariah high notes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but for puberty, eleven year old right when Mariah
Speaker 5: hit was Business of Love is eighty nine, you know,
Speaker 5: so maybe I'm twelve, so it's right before, so I'm
Speaker 5: still the last year I could hit that high note.
Speaker 5: But I remember I learned every single riff of Maria's
Speaker 5: and I didn't even realize most of my cons most
Speaker 5: of my most of my studying of riffs and runs
Speaker 5: came from Take six. I listened to the Take six albums,
Speaker 5: and if you learn how to sing like Take six,
Speaker 5: you can pretty much do anything.
Speaker 1: So that's where I learned most of my riffs.
Speaker 5: But Mariah when she came out, I didn't even realize
Speaker 5: until I would listen back to my records, like the
Speaker 5: earlier records I made, how many Mariah riffs I was running,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: How much he influenced me vocally. So justin Biebo or
Speaker 1: justin Timberlake, that's a tough one. Take a shot.
Speaker 3: The people closet the world, they want you to not pick.
Speaker 3: I'm just telling you they don't want white car.
Speaker 1: They don't want that no white on white Cry. But
Speaker 1: I made that one up that I was like. I
Speaker 1: was like, let's go. That's good. I know, you know,
Speaker 1: because I want to be respectful. I'm going through I'm
Speaker 1: going to Hi Buster eminem Oh. I got to pick
Speaker 1: Bus the Bus.
Speaker 5: We got a few records together and once again, remember
Speaker 5: remember when they had this thing that.
Speaker 1: You could order videos back in the box Man marked
Speaker 1: the box the box. I remember when my dad first
Speaker 1: got the first of the box bill. But you came
Speaker 1: home and I had ordered three hundred dollars worth of videos.
Speaker 1: My dad was like, no more than box.
Speaker 5: Most of the I remember I watched the Leaders of
Speaker 5: the New School at least twenty times. I thought that video,
Speaker 5: that first video of Bus a UH and Leaders of
Speaker 5: the New School was incredible. And then of course the
Speaker 5: scenario and the whole tribe connections and and and so
Speaker 5: when you and then you get to Uh, the different
Speaker 5: vocal stylings that he's done, you know what I mean,
Speaker 5: how he can change his voice up so much, and
Speaker 5: lyrical styles. I really think that he's one of the
Speaker 5: most influential we've ever had.
Speaker 1: Bust give you Yeah, it hurts.
Speaker 5: Shout out to Bus and Bus shout out the bus
Speaker 5: the first one that called me. Bussell was one of
Speaker 5: the first people that called me when I got divorced.
Speaker 5: When I got separated, when it was public news, he
Speaker 5: called me. I remember I was at the airport. He
Speaker 5: called me and just let me know he was there
Speaker 5: for me and if I needed anything or needed someone
Speaker 5: to talk to, that he.
Speaker 1: Had been through these things and then he would be
Speaker 1: there for me. Shout out to bus.
Speaker 3: YEA, I mean, such a great dude, like Bussell is
Speaker 3: my my friend that I called for motivation, like when
Speaker 3: it's time to Like if I could call bus and
Speaker 3: be like, yo, man, it ain't right, He's not. He'd
Speaker 3: be like, you mean, he'll give you that motivation that
Speaker 3: you need. I'm like, I just needed that.
Speaker 1: I quean back. He would be like, he ain't let
Speaker 1: you have a bad day. He ain't letting you have
Speaker 1: a bad day.
Speaker 5: I'm just He's a great one of my He reminds
Speaker 5: me of one of my favorite lines from the Godfather
Speaker 5: with Brando is you can act like.
Speaker 1: I'm mad, you know what I mean, Like like I'm
Speaker 1: there for you. I'll hold you and we could have
Speaker 1: a we can hug it out. But come on, smack
Speaker 1: you around, Let's get the work done. You know this one.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest, I don't know what's really this
Speaker 1: is going go.
Speaker 5: Tupac or Jay z Oh Jay for me, I mean
Speaker 5: Tupac of course, that there's no way to deny anything
Speaker 5: that he gave us, but Jay has because we've gotten
Speaker 5: longer and more from Jay.
Speaker 1: Also, we continue right now to be inspired by.
Speaker 5: Jay every week, every month, the things he does, the
Speaker 5: way he handles some different ways, right, I mean, there's
Speaker 5: so much to be inspired by still to this moment,
Speaker 5: as a husband, as a father, as a businessman, as
Speaker 5: a as an artist, you know, as a genius. So
Speaker 5: he's actually one of my favorite people in the world, wow,
Speaker 5: you know, and one of the one of the few
Speaker 5: people that that when my father passed that I've continued
Speaker 5: to just kind of once in a while check in
Speaker 5: with and ask for advice and when I need a
Speaker 5: when I need a grown man theory.
Speaker 1: He's a beautiful person. Digital our analog.
Speaker 5: I'm liking. I'm liking digital now. I think that there's
Speaker 5: more to uh, there's more to play with on the
Speaker 5: canvas with digital, right, you know, I'm starting to get it.
Speaker 1: I was I was an.
Speaker 5: Analog ahead until recently, and now I'm starting to realize
Speaker 5: that the way that Travis Scott, you know, bends those
Speaker 5: notes and bends those basses and tweaks that the the
Speaker 5: the tuning.
Speaker 1: I've always been a straight ahead singing. He's singing tune,
Speaker 1: you're playing tune. You know, you know you could have.
Speaker 1: I like the imperfections.
Speaker 5: That's what I use live music mostly, and that's why
Speaker 5: I don't auto tune myself, because I like the imperfections
Speaker 5: of music. But I do think that the originality of
Speaker 5: what people are doing now with the sonics is pretty
Speaker 5: pretty I.
Speaker 3: Always like analog because to me, music sounded better when
Speaker 3: we had to be in a room together, like right now,
Speaker 3: if we want to do a record together and I'm
Speaker 3: in du Ludolph, Germany and you could be in you
Speaker 3: could be in Austria or Australia and we can do
Speaker 3: it and we'll be on the same level. But when
Speaker 3: you're in that room, like like you said, with for
Speaker 3: a role, like when you're in that room seeing him
Speaker 3: make that magic, it makes you want to bring out
Speaker 3: the best on yourself. So that's the reason why I
Speaker 3: like the analog. You like the culture of anaalogic the
Speaker 3: culture of but you're.
Speaker 5: Right that the culture of analog is really just the culture.
Speaker 1: Of doing it together in the same space.
Speaker 5: It inspired collaboration, Like collaboration, it expires different phrasing, It
Speaker 5: inspires like somebody like I know that some of those
Speaker 5: like the Drake and twenty one records, and you know,
Speaker 5: they have to be made in the same room because
Speaker 5: the way they're bouncing off each other and the way
Speaker 5: they're complimenting each other's verses and styles and they're changing up.
Speaker 1: We're not just doing sixteen and sixteen and sixteen whatever
Speaker 1: it is. I think it really lends itself to a
Speaker 1: completely different and now it used to be we'd have
Speaker 1: the same lupe run for three minutes. All that it
Speaker 1: is over everybody's changing beats in the middle of the song,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. You know so so, and this is great.
Speaker 5: This is great for music, and it makes it more
Speaker 5: fun for the DJs and everything. So I think we
Speaker 5: continue to love the nostalgia of the old school, but
Speaker 5: we have to appreciate and embrace that.
Speaker 1: You can easily put a plug into it's just because
Speaker 1: then you love what Bruno does. You know, then You're like, hey, Bruno,
Speaker 1: you know you murdered.
Speaker 5: You know, the analog sound and the old school and
Speaker 5: great songwriting and strings and when somebody can do that,
Speaker 5: you know, you're like, well.
Speaker 1: Here here, but but not everybody can do what Bruno,
Speaker 1: it can do with the analog.
Speaker 3: Just so you don't wanted to correct you because you
Speaker 3: said the back and forth, so you can do back
Speaker 3: and wolf.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, like I've done it before. You're right,
Speaker 1: I've done it before. I've never done it.
Speaker 5: You know, I haven't done a livestream vocal. Uh yeah,
Speaker 5: collaboration session. You're right, but it does happen.
Speaker 3: I mean, like you gotta realize all the technology is
Speaker 3: like available, it's available album right here.
Speaker 1: But see just the way you that you said about movies.
Speaker 5: How so maybe I want to envision twenty one and
Speaker 5: Drake in the studio.
Speaker 1: I don't say it was start that I don't want.
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I'm not saying what they have done.
Speaker 3: I'm saying I've done before where I had to go
Speaker 3: back and forth with Capone and uh he also the
Speaker 3: skeleton all of like you know, him saying such and
Speaker 3: such and he knowing I'm gonna say this and then.
Speaker 3: And we've been on the phone too a couple of times,
Speaker 3: like yo, send me a send me this, this, this,
Speaker 3: the leaders far open, leaders far open.
Speaker 1: So it's been done before. So that's what I say.
Speaker 1: But I didn't say want to. It wasn't a missed
Speaker 1: the day. I did not say that. Okay, Okay, so
Speaker 1: we ain't take no shot for that, right, No, we're good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Tory Lanez of the Weekend. The Weekend. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: Canada ship right there. Yeah, Canada connected. And you know
Speaker 1: what I like? I like I like that he uh
Speaker 1: it really shares his truth lyrically, do you know what
Speaker 1: I mean?
Speaker 5: A lot of R and B or pop uh singers
Speaker 5: and they they try to just go for the hit
Speaker 5: a lot of the time. You know, he finds a
Speaker 5: way to make hits by really truly telling his journey
Speaker 5: and his stories.
Speaker 1: And on the Weekend, Yeah that's right. Yeah, and he's
Speaker 1: got an amazing voice. Thriller off the wall. Oh that's
Speaker 1: a tough one. That's about. I can't but I can't.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say, but I'm.
Speaker 5: Gonna go thriller Because the age that I was at,
Speaker 5: I had to go back to Off the Wall.
Speaker 1: It was my older friends at Homie. You need to
Speaker 1: go back to Off the Wall Thriller. I was seven
Speaker 1: years old and the thriller Vivent.
Speaker 5: It's no coincidence that thriller came out when I was seven,
Speaker 5: and at seven I decided I.
Speaker 1: Wanted to be a singer. There's no coincidence. Why, Okay,
Speaker 1: you took a shot anyway, Yeah, I'm joining you. I joined.
Speaker 1: He's all kind of guy I have. I have a driver,
Speaker 1: so cool. Yes, I'm not driving. Thank you, Drey or Puff.
Speaker 1: You know Dre obviously as the producer as the one
Speaker 1: of the greatest producers in the history of music, one
Speaker 1: of the great But.
Speaker 5: I've spent so much time around Puff and his family
Speaker 5: because of Andre Herrel, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And I've been a part of that that culture and
Speaker 1: the party culture. What I love about what Puff does
Speaker 1: also is and what Andre inspired and they did together.
Speaker 1: What is celebrating all of these achievements together and continuing
Speaker 1: to lift each other up.
Speaker 5: Not we're having a party and you can't come. No,
Speaker 5: we're having a party and everybody's coming, right, and we're
Speaker 5: all gonna be great, and we're all gonna lift up
Speaker 5: and we're all gonna take pictures together and we're all
Speaker 5: gonna support this movement that started, you know, with guys
Speaker 5: like Andre and Russell and Puff and Dr Dre.
Speaker 1: Okay Al Green or Teddy Pinogram. Ah, I'm so weird
Speaker 1: love with you. It's gentle. Just go gentle, sleep gentle,
Speaker 1: and I'm a Teddy p Manda, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I'll turn the lights off. Don't get me wrong, we'll
Speaker 1: do that too, but do something about it that I
Speaker 1: just I go for Okay, this one right here, it's
Speaker 1: classic m J or Prince. That's that's the that's the big,
Speaker 1: the big question. When the jay z right like, that's
Speaker 1: the Yeah, that's the baby Jesus and the adult Jesus. Jesus,
Speaker 1: that's awesome.
Speaker 2: So with Jesus going, I'm gonna I'm gonna go with Jesus,
Speaker 2: no wrong answer.
Speaker 5: One of the great thing is they both taught me
Speaker 5: different things in different ways. Prince I learned my falsetto
Speaker 5: or I improved my falsetto by practicing. Prince that was
Speaker 5: because his control of his falsetto was extraordinary and unrivaled
Speaker 5: in some ways. So when I when I can sing
Speaker 5: a door and hit every note in the song.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. I'm proud of myself and Michael.
Speaker 1: I mean what. Michael was the pioneer of all things.
Speaker 1: And Prince was ill. He literally has asked out and
Speaker 1: nobody was offended and he was showing his head and
Speaker 1: he is. But whatever. I like this song, no one,
Speaker 1: no one places, no judgment, there's no judgment. I love
Speaker 1: this record. Did you ever link with Prince I did?
Speaker 1: I have some great Prince stories? Give us something we'd
Speaker 1: love Prince stories. I'm at one. Oh every time l A, okay, no,
Speaker 1: this is New York. Okay, New York. Every time I
Speaker 1: would show up.
Speaker 5: At a club and Prince was there, somebody would come
Speaker 5: over to me and say, Princess here and he wants
Speaker 5: you to, you know, come say hi. And so I
Speaker 5: would come and say hi the first couple of times,
Speaker 5: but then he would just sit there all quiet and
Speaker 5: wouldn't talk, wouldn't say.
Speaker 1: Now you're sitting next to him, you were just like
Speaker 1: you just kind of like say hi, And then he
Speaker 1: just wants you to sit there with him, do you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? Just be with me, you know,
Speaker 1: and hang and I'm like, I get that, but I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I want to go get wild over here.
Speaker 5: And you on this witness stuff, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: After he got back to the really most of yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean most of I think he was. That was
Speaker 5: the last twelve to fifteen years, yeah, window stuff.
Speaker 1: And so so. So one night we're at one Oak
Speaker 1: and I go to the booth on you usually I
Speaker 1: with Richie.
Speaker 5: He was shout out to Richie my boy, and Prince
Speaker 5: is there and he's got a lovely lady with him
Speaker 5: and another friend, and I say hi and we shake hands.
Speaker 5: And then I'm sitting there and he's just just doing
Speaker 5: his you know, sit still kind of thing. He's not
Speaker 5: even moving his shoulders or dance. I'm like, you you
Speaker 5: can dance, you as you're not even grow So I
Speaker 5: tell Richard like you you'll get the mic and tell
Speaker 5: the DZ to play a kiss, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So I'm sitting about as far away from him as
Speaker 5: we are now, and the Eric comes on.
Speaker 1: I just go, you don't have to be the fuck
Speaker 1: and I sing note for note the whole song.
Speaker 5: So as he's sitting there, but after a few lines,
Speaker 5: he like leans over and he says then to the lady, like,
Speaker 5: who's that singing?
Speaker 1: She goes, it's Robin. He's right there and he looks
Speaker 1: at me and he just goes on the next two minutes.
Speaker 1: Just make Prinson. You got a story, Michaels Prince Mo,
Speaker 1: I wrote Michael sang a song of ut. Yes, I
Speaker 1: wrote a song by Michael. Story is.
Speaker 5: It was the day after the Grammys. It was Madonna
Speaker 5: and Ricky Martin. Uh, you know Ricky Martin. Ricky Martin
Speaker 5: comes out on the Grammys and has this big blow up.
Speaker 1: Moment, right, he does a couple of life blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: So the next day, Tommy Mottola is looking for a
Speaker 5: duet for Ricky Martin and Madonna. Right, Madonna wants to
Speaker 5: do a duet with Ricky Martin and Tommy needs the song.
Speaker 5: He calls Walter Afanasif, who was the producer of the
Speaker 5: Titanic Celindi on song and all of Mariah's first three albums.
Speaker 1: So Walter.
Speaker 5: And I had started a song a few months earlier,
Speaker 5: and so he calls me up and said, I got
Speaker 5: I got.
Speaker 1: A call from Tommy Mottola. He's looking for a song
Speaker 1: from Madonna and Ricky Martin, and I think that song
Speaker 1: we started would be perfect for him. I'm in LA
Speaker 1: because it was the day after the Grammys. Can I
Speaker 1: come up to your studio? And we finished that song right.
Speaker 5: So, the day after the Grammys, Walter Finasif comes to
Speaker 5: my studio, we finished the vocals on Fall Again. We
Speaker 5: send it to Tommy Mattola. Tommy says the next day,
Speaker 5: this is so good, I'm sending it to Michael see
Speaker 5: bypass Don and Ricky Marty sends it right to Michael.
Speaker 5: Michael loves it instantly wants to cut it. A couple
Speaker 5: days later, Tommy Mattola flies me to New York, puts
Speaker 5: me up at the Trump Hotel to write for Sony
Speaker 5: for the next ten days while Michael's next door. I'm
Speaker 5: not allowed to be in the room with Michael, but
Speaker 5: I'm next door writing for other artists. And that's when
Speaker 5: I wrote with Mark Anthony. So I'm writing with Mark
Speaker 5: Anthony while Michael's in the studio next door.
Speaker 1: Singing my song and I think I'm twenty one, you know,
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 5: And so Michael ended up releasing it on his History album,
Speaker 5: and he kept all my vocals in the chorus. So
Speaker 5: it's him singing the verses and him ad libbing, and
Speaker 5: it's all my voice on the chorus.
Speaker 1: So I do it. That's crazy. I'll wrap up.
Speaker 5: I'll wrap up my Michael Jackson's story with I was
Speaker 5: supposed to I had I had released when I Get
Speaker 5: You Alone, and he was a big fan of that song.
Speaker 5: Because I was doing Michael and so I was supposed
Speaker 5: to open up for him at the O two Arena
Speaker 5: on July twelfth and fourteenth.
Speaker 1: My whole family was going to fly out from Canada
Speaker 1: and my dad was coming. They were about to book
Speaker 1: the tickets and Michael passed away. Yeah, so.
Speaker 2: Stories stories, Uh, Otis reading or Sam Cook, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: go Otis.
Speaker 5: Just because he had I had some kind of connection
Speaker 5: with his vocals and that I can explain. I think
Speaker 5: Otis might be in the end my very favorite singer. Hmmm,
Speaker 5: because there's the pain turned into.
Speaker 1: Any particular, the open the Door, He's got a lot, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just the way he sings is just there's something
Speaker 1: to own it.
Speaker 5: Oh no, the classic what's the tri Little Tenderness? If
Speaker 5: you if you there's some footage of him performing Try
Speaker 5: Little Tenderness in the UK as this big, strong, powerful
Speaker 5: black man in the sixties for all these white kids,
Speaker 5: and it is it's very special to watch and the
Speaker 5: way he sings and the I mean, you feel something
Speaker 5: like the world has to change after a person like
Speaker 5: this sings like this in front of these people, the
Speaker 5: world has to change. Erica bad or Mary J. Blas,
Speaker 5: I gotta go marry Jay love Erica. But Mary Jay
Speaker 5: and I have through the Andre family and you know,
Speaker 5: and and because also so she came first, and you know,
Speaker 5: when you're younger, things can hit you a little harder,
Speaker 5: do you know what I mean? The more you see
Speaker 5: and the more the more it all relates to who
Speaker 5: you first fell for.
Speaker 1: Mary J. Blige and Joe to see and guy and
Speaker 1: that that was that was the.
Speaker 5: Foundation of And that's when Andre Herrel came to my house.
Speaker 5: I was like, what he's Uptown Records all the thing
Speaker 5: for him?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well he did with Uptown was incredible and then
Speaker 2: eventually with Puff and bad Boy, with with that.
Speaker 1: All created was crazy. Yeah. The next one, uh D'Angelo,
Speaker 1: Blao D'Angelo.
Speaker 5: I used to play D'Angelo albums first. When people would
Speaker 5: walk into my after parties. It would always start with D'Angelo.
Speaker 5: That was the warm upe.
Speaker 1: You start with D'Angelo, now addition or Jackson five, you know, uh,
Speaker 1: for me generationally, it would be New Addition obviously, uh
Speaker 1: or obviously in my opinion catalog wise, you know, the
Speaker 1: Jackson five catalog is is so deep.
Speaker 5: But I grew up in the New Edition era, and
Speaker 5: when they split, I had all the album. I had
Speaker 5: the Johnny gil album. I had their album Treasure Red album.
Speaker 1: I had the B v D album, I had the
Speaker 1: you know, so there was there was the first back
Speaker 1: then definitely like we said, and then everything broke off
Speaker 1: and the remixes and the out in the style to
Speaker 1: the outfits the b he had. I had the backwards
Speaker 1: overalls with the writing. Absolutely that run that they've had.
Speaker 1: Absolutely no, That's what I'm saying even till now, but incredible.
Speaker 3: TLCOR SWV.
Speaker 1: Vocally SWV. Yeah, I would have.
Speaker 5: For me, I would have because I'm a singer, you know,
Speaker 5: I'm a sang sanger. So when I think of Week
Speaker 5: in the Knees, like the people that I literally would
Speaker 5: sing and practice their vocals over and over again. TLC
Speaker 5: was more like these They're just the coolest, funnest and
Speaker 5: you jam along and they make they have the most
Speaker 5: incredible personnel these but the vocals of wu V really
Speaker 5: got to me.
Speaker 1: Okay, loyalty or respect, man, that's a I gotta go both.
Speaker 1: That's the one time. God I got it for that one.
Speaker 1: You can't really have one without the other. Make goo
Speaker 1: for that. But I like that you can't have one
Speaker 1: without the other because you got to think about it,
Speaker 1: have one without what's that? Love and marriage?
Speaker 3: Marriage, loyalty and respect. I always start out the Black
Speaker 3: album anyway is there? But we played this game all
Speaker 3: the time, and the thing is, that's the one time
Speaker 3: that we're not trying to be tricky. Is I think
Speaker 3: loyalty and respect is just hand in hand.
Speaker 1: I think you.
Speaker 3: I think you have to have both in order to exist.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so let's get now that we got that
Speaker 3: out the way, let's get to.
Speaker 1: Blurred line. Oh God, to take a smoke break, you
Speaker 1: know what? Smoking cigarette in here? Man? I still want
Speaker 1: to do it on camera? Yeah, I just didn't want
Speaker 1: to do it. You don't want to do it on camera?
Speaker 1: Cool a little sugar yet, Okay, I'll do I'll do it.
Speaker 1: I don't want to get on camp all right, cool, cool, cool.
Speaker 1: I respect that. I don't want to let's go straight
Speaker 1: right into it. Sure got it, boy. Yeah, So I
Speaker 1: know we left off.
Speaker 3: Very lines, but I want to get back to that
Speaker 3: because one of the things is, uh, the Malleable fires.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how did that happen?
Speaker 5: Well, it had started over on the other side of
Speaker 5: the hill in the valley, stamping in the valley, and
Speaker 5: it was b lining straight for our neighborhood during the night.
Speaker 5: So wife he was checking, you know, the updates and everything.
Speaker 5: And then around six thirty am, I got up to
Speaker 5: get ready to take my son to school.
Speaker 1: I had a nine month old daughter and wife he
Speaker 1: was pregnant. So the fumes and the smoke that were
Speaker 1: coming were so bad that I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: we got to get out of here. I don't want
Speaker 1: any of us breathing this stuff, so let's just get
Speaker 1: out of here. So we started packing up.
Speaker 5: And then around eight am, right when we were about
Speaker 5: to leave, it was a mandatory evacuation for the whole city,
Speaker 5: so we knew something was wrong.
Speaker 1: So I went and grabbed my music. First.
Speaker 5: I went and got the computer that you know, got
Speaker 5: that all the music, and I got my guitars. I
Speaker 5: got my dad's photo albums, loaded up everything I could
Speaker 5: into the car. I got a few suits, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. And my son packed a bag. I
Speaker 5: was like, pack up. He just put like a pair
Speaker 5: of underwear in a book and I was like, dude,
Speaker 5: you better grab some cit.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so we got in the.
Speaker 5: Car, headed north to Santa Barbara and then went around
Speaker 5: to her family who's down in Huntington Beach and spend
Speaker 5: the night with them. And when we woke up the
Speaker 5: next morning, if somebody sent a neighbor sent us pictures
Speaker 5: of you know, are just rubble. The whole thing brubble, Yeah,
Speaker 5: just into rubble. The funny thing was I have a carport.
Speaker 5: The carport wasn't touched. I could have taken all the furniture.
Speaker 5: The only and the thing that really bugged was my
Speaker 5: piano that I wrote all of those songs on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that one hurs. But thanks shout out to Yamahab
Speaker 1: sending me a new one because the new one's supposed
Speaker 1: to be on the way.
Speaker 3: That's that's what's crazy about California is you guys actually
Speaker 3: have earthquakes. You guys have fires, Like like like why
Speaker 3: is California, this beautiful place that you still stay at.
Speaker 1: I think it's just seventy degrees every day. It's just
Speaker 1: like I remember Jimmy, I mean told me that. He
Speaker 1: was like, I moved out to.
Speaker 5: Califoried but worked in, you know, New York my whole life.
Speaker 5: Then we moved out to California, and I was like,
Speaker 5: I'm never going back.
Speaker 1: And I think some people have that.
Speaker 5: You know, some people are die hard New Yorkers and
Speaker 5: some people are like, man, you know, the the New
Speaker 5: York struggle is hard to you know, and sometimes you
Speaker 5: looking for a little That's why a lot of New
Speaker 5: Yorkers like to go to Florida too, you know. But
Speaker 5: but there's nothing nothing makes you stronger than New York,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And like my New York friends, I wouldn't be like
Speaker 1: I wouldn't have been able to handle Like when I
Speaker 1: need when I need shoulders, I call my New York friends,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and they know how to
Speaker 1: how to you know, give you that that pep talk
Speaker 1: and that let's get back to a game, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And sometimes I think that's uh, Californians
Speaker 1: were just wallowing that Sunshownny again. But you learn a
Speaker 1: lot from New York from New Yorkers.
Speaker 3: But Vallible was one of my favorite places on earth.
Speaker 3: It's a retirement spot.
Speaker 5: And I didn't realize that that that when I when
Speaker 5: I moved out there was because I had a son
Speaker 5: and this new lovely lady shout out aper love and uh,
Speaker 5: and I wanted to have a big family, you know,
Speaker 5: And so we had three kids and and it's beautiful
Speaker 5: and it's gorgeous, but also I really missed the the
Speaker 5: I used to live in the Hollywood Hills and I
Speaker 5: have Andre stoped by every couple of days and we'd
Speaker 5: smoke one and I'd pick up on some culture. He'd
Speaker 5: bring some friends by, get some new information, and that
Speaker 5: really inspires the music, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 5: so so once you get out into your little bubble
Speaker 5: and it's just me having to create out of thin
Speaker 5: air all the time, and I don't have all this
Speaker 5: invasion and flow, you know, it's a little more challenging sometimes,
Speaker 5: you know. So I miss I missed the energy and
Speaker 5: the flow might be moving to Miami.
Speaker 1: Let me let me actually, because all right really happened
Speaker 1: in Miami was.
Speaker 3: People had hurricane insurance, yeah, but not flood insurance, which
Speaker 3: was like like I remember, like me when I first
Speaker 3: moved out here, and it was some type of storm
Speaker 3: or whatever, right, I forget one of it is, but.
Speaker 2: It was it was sandy. It was Sandy, Sandy New York.
Speaker 2: I thought that was no that went all the way
Speaker 2: and Katrina.
Speaker 1: My studio. Yeah, so my studios people had hurricane assurance.
Speaker 1: That's how people got over. I mean, it wasn't getting over.
Speaker 3: They've said, well, it wasn't the hurricane that caused damage
Speaker 3: to it. It was the actual flooding, which was the
Speaker 3: whole difference. It's mandatory now though.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So when your situation happened, did you have insurance
Speaker 3: for that?
Speaker 1: I got lucky. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I actually about a month before, I was going through
Speaker 5: my bills and I called my business manager and I
Speaker 5: was like, why am I paying so much for insurance?
Speaker 1: Right? And she was like, there's a lot of fires
Speaker 1: out there? Thank god.
Speaker 5: Months later, Wow, thank god, I paid that bill. And
Speaker 5: you know, four years, four years later, in hindsight, I
Speaker 5: got a brand new home, you know, that I built
Speaker 5: for my kids and I built for I got my
Speaker 5: own little man cave outside with my fireplace and a barbecue,
Speaker 5: and I got everything lined up so the kids are
Speaker 5: right there and the players right there and the treehouse
Speaker 5: and all that.
Speaker 1: So, you know, I think that you get through your
Speaker 1: toughest times.
Speaker 5: But what was important to me, especially when that happened
Speaker 5: with my son, was just to show him how we
Speaker 5: survive as a family. That's when you have to lead
Speaker 5: by example and keep the laughs coming, keep the joy coming.
Speaker 1: And let let them know that you're going to be okay.
Speaker 1: We're going to be okay, and tough times make us strong,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: And metaphorical rebuilding your home is just showing your kids, like, look,
Speaker 2: you just it comes apart, you rebuild it, and.
Speaker 1: We have each other, Like really, let's focus on rat
Speaker 1: We're alive, we're healthy, we're together, and we have a home.
Speaker 1: We have a room, our heads. Sounds like a chain
Speaker 1: of events for I think house.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I had a run, I had I got divorced,
Speaker 5: sued house, my father passed away, my manager passed away,
Speaker 5: my house burned down, and then Andre passed away. I
Speaker 5: lost all three of my my big brother father figures,
Speaker 5: you know, in a.
Speaker 3: Couple of years now now me as you know, being
Speaker 3: a fellow entertainer. I always knew that I never got
Speaker 3: over my father's death, right, I never.
Speaker 1: I never did. I never, Like I buried it with music.
Speaker 1: To tell the truth, I'll be honest.
Speaker 3: I met the end of the day my father died,
Speaker 3: Chris Lidy came to see me as my manager who
Speaker 3: passed away, Chrislidiers love you, Chris, And he told me
Speaker 3: straight up. He was like, Yo, it's either we can
Speaker 3: get off of this tour house. On tour, I had
Speaker 3: a number one record as my father died, right, number
Speaker 3: one record, number one album in the country. Don't know
Speaker 3: what it means at this time, twenty two twenty whatever,
Speaker 3: but I remember him saying to me, like, yo, either
Speaker 3: we could get his money back or we can have stayed.
Speaker 1: And in high that was the right decision.
Speaker 3: It was you worked through that. It was the right decision.
Speaker 3: But later on in life, I could still feel that
Speaker 3: I never got over.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I mean as a person who lost my
Speaker 1: father to Obviously, my father wasn't as famous as your
Speaker 1: father was, but he was your hero. But he was.
Speaker 1: He was my hero. He was he was literally my hero.
Speaker 1: I hear you talking about your father, So how is
Speaker 1: that coping with this, how do you do? You will? I?
Speaker 1: I had three kids in a row. That was him
Speaker 1: working for you in heaven. No, no, no, you know what,
Speaker 1: I had to feel the void. I had to fill
Speaker 1: the void. And I don't know if ten kids could
Speaker 1: fill the void of my father, you know, but but
Speaker 1: they definitely have given me a purpose, given me love,
Speaker 1: smiles and and made and it made me wake up
Speaker 1: every day with something to do that I love doing.
Speaker 2: How much as being a father changed the day to
Speaker 2: day business, I'm doing this.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Well, let's just say we don't drink
Speaker 1: tequila unless we're on drinks one.
Speaker 5: But no, I think that, you know, if you're gonna
Speaker 5: get up at six thirty and be present, and I take.
Speaker 1: My kids to school every morning, I'm I'm up at
Speaker 1: six thirty. I want. I like to be the first
Speaker 1: face they see.
Speaker 5: I like to give them their muffins and their pancakes,
Speaker 5: and and I like to take them to school. And
Speaker 5: then once I know they're at school and they're loved
Speaker 5: and they're uh, they're they're feeling good, then.
Speaker 1: I can go to my job, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So that's that's I like to prioritize my day as
Speaker 5: my kids come first. They know the dead Dad loves
Speaker 5: them and got them to their thing on time, well
Speaker 5: sometimes on time, and then Dad goes to get his
Speaker 5: exercise or work on his music, blah blah, and then
Speaker 5: we finished.
Speaker 1: The day as a family.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: That was that was the one thing about you. I
Speaker 3: was super impressive. Off top was we know we do
Speaker 3: this a lot, and you were on time. You were
Speaker 3: three minutes early.
Speaker 1: I was like, and then I've seen you had to
Speaker 1: sit together, you had to people coming out, they start
Speaker 1: filming you. I said, oh they yeah, I was very professional.
Speaker 1: I was out there like this out there thing. Watched it.
Speaker 1: You broke the blinds that could have been I don't know,
Speaker 1: but I looked and I was I was just so impressed.
Speaker 1: Because that's the thing about.
Speaker 3: The business is a lot of us take ship for granted,
Speaker 3: especially earlier. And I'll tell you who taught me. This
Speaker 3: is one of my idols. His name is Leo cohnbes Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I could never beat Leo Cohens to a meeting.
Speaker 3: Never once could I ever beat him. Like I would
Speaker 3: try to come half an hour early and he'll be looking.
Speaker 3: I knew he was gonna try.
Speaker 1: This and I'll come an hour early and he'll he'll
Speaker 1: always like, we'll have a meeting at f and he'll
Speaker 1: be there at one thirty. I'm like, look you're doing
Speaker 1: Like He's like, I knew you try to beat me.
Speaker 1: I'm saying.
Speaker 3: To me that was always impressive, Like because you don't
Speaker 3: waste no one's time. Yeah, one person, Sime is so
Speaker 3: valuable and the fact I know what I mean, like
Speaker 3: fully knowing you, I know that you are a great
Speaker 3: person because it's a certain things about a person that
Speaker 3: I have to assess in fifteen seconds. You met every criteria,
Speaker 3: particular as I walk in my father's shoes. And he
Speaker 3: he loved people, he loved the business, he loved you know,
Speaker 3: just doing this whole thing.
Speaker 1: Man. And I used to get scared when I was.
Speaker 1: I used to hold onto my music too precious, and
Speaker 1: so I wouldn't show myself. I would hide myself. And
Speaker 1: that's why it took me time to become a performer,
Speaker 1: because I just wanted the music to do all the talking.
Speaker 1: I didn't want anything else to matter except the music.
Speaker 1: And then that's with this Mass Singer Show has been
Speaker 1: so great for me because working with a guy like
Speaker 1: doctor Can and letting him make fun of me, letting
Speaker 1: everybody make fun of me.
Speaker 5: It's really become my new superpower, which is I can
Speaker 5: laugh at myself and I can appreciate the things that
Speaker 5: I'm good at and what I can do, and then
Speaker 5: I can laugh at what I'm not good at and
Speaker 5: what I can you know what I mean. And that
Speaker 5: has really changed my life myself. I mean, because I
Speaker 5: don't know if I would have done this ten years ago.
Speaker 5: You know, I would have been too scared of anything
Speaker 5: that I didn't want to be known for or say.
Speaker 5: But I've become comfortable in my skin by being the
Speaker 5: butt of the.
Speaker 1: Joke every once in a while. And it's relieving. It's really, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. Now let's talk about sex. Therapy. Is sex
Speaker 1: your therapy? I think that the therapy comes in all forms.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, a little jay watching the sun
Speaker 1: go down his therapy. I think me swimming with my
Speaker 1: two year old son in the pool is therapy. I
Speaker 1: think it's all making sure that you balance enough of
Speaker 1: your life to get the joys of everybody in your
Speaker 1: life and all.
Speaker 5: The experiences you can accumulate daily, weekly, and monthly. So
Speaker 5: for me, the therapy is really just a change of
Speaker 5: whatever I'm doing right now. The next happy thing is therapeutic.
Speaker 5: The next happy thing is that making dinner for my kids?
Speaker 1: Is there? Do you know what I mean? I like
Speaker 1: to go to costcos. Yeah, I like to go to extent.
Speaker 1: I put on a mask, a little little sunglasses. It
Speaker 1: doesn't work. It doesn't work. You put on a mask,
Speaker 1: by the way. I love the mask, like because you
Speaker 1: know I want to be you mean COVID. Yes, you
Speaker 1: put that on now, like I mean, and then yeah,
Speaker 1: I put it on.
Speaker 3: I go, you know, when I want to go somewhere
Speaker 3: to a hotel or something like that, Like I'll put
Speaker 3: it on, put the glasses on. But it's like it
Speaker 3: didn't matter because I'll be walking through and somebody black,
Speaker 3: what's up North? I did everything for you not to
Speaker 3: recognize me. And that's the first thing, Like it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter my eyebrows.
Speaker 1: Robin Dick, I can't hold it bolls.
Speaker 3: Okay, but all right, let's look, I got so much
Speaker 3: notes because your life, your life is really dope.
Speaker 1: It's really dope. It's been interesting, it's been interesting. It's
Speaker 1: been interesting.
Speaker 3: Still is so okay, let's let's get to magic. Okay,
Speaker 3: let's talk about magic for a second. How where was
Speaker 3: you at?
Speaker 1: Well, this was this is when I was going through.
Speaker 5: I had just had my first success, real success with
Speaker 5: Loss Without You and the Evolution album, and everything was
Speaker 5: happening very fast. I did Oprah a couple of times,
Speaker 5: and and you know, it was really feeling like, you know,
Speaker 5: I remember.
Speaker 1: Paula at the time. She would say, we're not crazy,
Speaker 1: We're not crazy.
Speaker 5: You know your music like people do like sitting there
Speaker 5: like thinking these songs are really good. And then you know,
Speaker 5: finally it reaches the people and gets that kind of
Speaker 5: response and you're like, Okay, we're not crazy, let's keep going.
Speaker 1: So, you know, Magic was really about believing. And and
Speaker 1: also it was Paula.
Speaker 5: Paula was becoming very successful and her and I wrote
Speaker 5: that song together. She came up with a lot of
Speaker 5: that wait what yeah, magic, Yeah, that's a lot of.
Speaker 1: That's Paula on that.
Speaker 5: Paula was great at being able to throw out lyrical ideas,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. When I would get stuck
Speaker 5: on something, I'd be like, I got this great track,
Speaker 5: but I just need to I don't I don't know,
Speaker 5: I don't like what I'm singing over it, And she
Speaker 5: would come up with a little something and give me
Speaker 5: a spark, and she was amazing at that. So she,
Speaker 5: her and I wrote Magic together. I think some of
Speaker 5: it was based on remember the book The Secret, So
Speaker 5: the the the idea of the Secret is I got it,
Speaker 5: you got it, We got the magic. We can make
Speaker 5: the pain disappear, you know, and we can erase the past.
Speaker 1: Stuff like that.
Speaker 5: We can make the future sign so bright, and we
Speaker 5: can make right now all right. So it was about
Speaker 5: the power of having magic and all of us to
Speaker 5: have a magic that we can change our lives, change
Speaker 5: our futures, and change our course.
Speaker 3: By the way, that your record with Trey song was
Speaker 3: bad Girl with Tray Song, Bad Girl, you got so
Speaker 3: much hits.
Speaker 1: He was that boogie with the hoodie I remember being
Speaker 1: a boogie record. I forgot Trey was on it too,
Speaker 1: that's by the way. That's like you went to the
Speaker 1: bathroom and I was just sitting there talking just now.
Speaker 1: It was like, yo, you forgot he had a hit record,
Speaker 1: Like who forgets you have a hit record?
Speaker 3: That is a dope problem that well, that's a dope
Speaker 3: problem trade a little mad you don't even remember, but
Speaker 3: it's still a good problem.
Speaker 5: That's that's because it was more recent. Yeah, it was
Speaker 5: more recent. And that was one once again digitals that
Speaker 5: was like where I wasn't with Bookie, So I don't
Speaker 5: have a studio experience.
Speaker 1: I don't picture.
Speaker 5: I wasn't there with Trey, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: So when I hear it, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 5: So yeah, some of those things don't register as much
Speaker 5: when you have that visual.
Speaker 1: That experience. Right, And you got a song called Brown Liquor.
Speaker 1: That's the new one with Gotti here Wagatti, that's the
Speaker 1: new one with got you know what's you know? It's
Speaker 1: so dope about you, all the accolades we spoke about earlier.
Speaker 1: Everything we spoke about was you went through to see
Speaker 1: your passion when you just played your new record, Do
Speaker 1: you still have that passion? I lost my shit a
Speaker 1: long time ago.
Speaker 3: Like like what I'm trying to tell you is I
Speaker 3: don't want to say we have similar lights, but we
Speaker 3: have you know, I believe you forty five years old.
Speaker 1: I'm forty five, just turned forty six. Oh don'tkay Dan,
Speaker 1: you older me By one.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, so soone you look at the years
Speaker 3: and the thing is our maya you still having passion
Speaker 3: like that ship because because this is the reason why
Speaker 3: I like a lot of times people ask me for
Speaker 3: a verse or they asked me to be a part
Speaker 3: of their music, and I'm kind of like done with
Speaker 3: that life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's a good thing and I'm done with
Speaker 1: that life.
Speaker 3: What I mean by that is if I'm not one
Speaker 3: hundred percent, I can't do it right right, So I
Speaker 3: wouldn't waste nobody's time. But for me to see you
Speaker 3: just now, I just was I was doing my peripheral vision,
Speaker 3: so I didn't want you.
Speaker 1: To know I was just watching you. But I was
Speaker 1: watching and when I seen your smile, come on the
Speaker 1: fact that you still have passion, yeah for music is
Speaker 1: but nomen no, well you used to have passion period
Speaker 1: because you have such a dope light. You have so
Speaker 1: much things and you can still I saw that smile.
Speaker 1: But you know what, I love.
Speaker 5: I love the There's nothing better than love, and there's
Speaker 5: nothing harder than love, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And so I always have something to write about always
Speaker 1: because I'm in love, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: And I love my kids, and I miss my dad,
Speaker 5: and I miss Andre, and there's so much love in
Speaker 5: my heart for so many people in my life that
Speaker 5: all I need to do is have the space and
Speaker 5: the choiet to tap into that love and there's.
Speaker 1: Something to talk about, you know.
Speaker 5: Now this song is more of a fun sex but
Speaker 5: in the sense the lyrics are still I'm talking about
Speaker 5: someone in particular and I'm saying I only.
Speaker 1: Drink this liquor. And this is a long Empire Records.
Speaker 5: Right I think this one the last album was with Empire.
Speaker 5: This is independent.
Speaker 1: This is just with Me is an Empire independent as well?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean this is it would be going through
Speaker 2: Empire as an imprint.
Speaker 1: But not this particular song right now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, because I'm actually I'm formulating the new album
Speaker 5: and looking for the new distribution deal.
Speaker 1: But I want to have most of the album done,
Speaker 1: you know. I want to have the recorce like that.
Speaker 1: This is This was the teas like the teaser single, yeah,
Speaker 1: but teaser singles was not even I don't know if
Speaker 1: it's got you know, don't The radio hasn't quite picked
Speaker 1: it up, So I think it's going to be more
Speaker 1: of just an underground jam.
Speaker 3: But I gotta act this because you said this is independent,
Speaker 3: So you paid for the video or did you get?
Speaker 1: Yes? Did you get? You got to ask the question though, No, No,
Speaker 1: I I I'm going I got, I got a little money,
Speaker 1: but no, most of this is self finance, okay, self mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because we have another famous question that we always ask,
Speaker 3: major or independent.
Speaker 5: Oh well, I think for a young artist, a major
Speaker 5: label deal is can be very helpful.
Speaker 1: I think you think today in today's environment, No, I mean.
Speaker 5: I'm I think that there's just so many different outlets.
Speaker 5: But I do think that the support of a major
Speaker 5: label system. I do think that the deals need to
Speaker 5: be red reworked. Obviously, I don't think there's a there's
Speaker 5: fairness within the structure, but I do believe.
Speaker 1: That I do miss the Jimmy Ivean roundhouse. That's what
Speaker 1: he misses. I mean, why when Jimmy Ivan.
Speaker 5: Calls you at seven thirty in the morning and says,
Speaker 5: this is the best record you've ever made, It's going
Speaker 5: to be number one all over the world, and then
Speaker 5: it is right, you missed that.
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry. It seemed like a practice answer.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, I'm a big Jimmy ivan fan shout
Speaker 5: out to Jimmy ivanen Old.
Speaker 3: The time I says, as long as you had a
Speaker 3: good deal, majors is not the problem. As long as
Speaker 3: you have a good deal, meaning like you negotiate what
Speaker 3: you want, right.
Speaker 2: But I don't even think you mean that though, to
Speaker 2: be honest with you, a good deal, because I think
Speaker 2: you're talking for it to be to have a hit record.
Speaker 1: I think yes, the artist that hell, I don't think
Speaker 1: a major. I don't think a major is good for
Speaker 1: a hit record. I think a major is helpful in
Speaker 1: the overall international, worldwide promotion of a brand new art.
Speaker 2: If the labels behind you, that's always been our debaker,
Speaker 2: that the labels behind you. For every artist that had
Speaker 2: a great experience out of that label, there's ten below
Speaker 2: one hundred more. I'm just but yeah, a ton that
Speaker 2: didn't have it, they didn't have the label backing then.
Speaker 1: But I'll tell you this, as an artist, there's no
Speaker 1: worse a feeling in the world. I know. Worst is
Speaker 1: not a word. I get it. It's a dream chance word.
Speaker 3: It's a dream chance world. There's no worse of feeling
Speaker 3: and dropping a hit record. You knowing this a hit
Speaker 3: record and then not becoming a hit record that it hurts,
Speaker 3: and a major label gives you more of an opportunity
Speaker 3: for your dream to come to fruition. Because what I'm
Speaker 3: trying to tell you is like after a while, remember
Speaker 3: you make a hit record and then they say, well
Speaker 3: it's not as good as your last year.
Speaker 1: You fell off, so you got to go in and
Speaker 1: make another hit record. And as an artist, when you
Speaker 1: give it to an independent who who's not familiar with
Speaker 1: the radio station in Atlanta, not familiar with there's one
Speaker 1: station in Las Vegas, you do the proper thing. You
Speaker 1: automatically added.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what you made all that you went wrong
Speaker 2: already you said when you give it to an independent,
Speaker 2: you should be the dependent.
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be given it to another independent label. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I ain't mean that.
Speaker 3: You're right, So okay, when you hire when you're independent,
Speaker 3: you have to hire a staff. You still have to
Speaker 3: try to do everything. A major label is to do
Speaker 3: it because you want that major label win. And boy,
Speaker 3: when if you if you don't have that great nothing like.
Speaker 1: The machine, nothing like there's nothing like the machine. You
Speaker 1: can all agree to that we love you.
Speaker 3: Jimmy's wherever you're at Kevin Leo's, Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 1: Don't think work that.
Speaker 3: Don't think that the work that you're doing at these
Speaker 3: major labels is going unnoticed. Because still I'm being honest,
Speaker 3: and this is what I recommend for every new artist.
Speaker 3: The first three albums, you go on to major, and
Speaker 3: then after they spend that twenty million hours on you,
Speaker 3: then you can spend that twenty million hours on yourself.
Speaker 1: I would say backwards.
Speaker 2: In today's in today's climate, you could go on through
Speaker 2: social media, don't do much and just to make whatever
Speaker 2: music that resonates with your audience. Get these followers and
Speaker 2: these likes or whatever you need to do. And the
Speaker 2: labels they're lazy.
Speaker 1: Now they're not. They're not. They're not developing artists anymore.
Speaker 1: And you'll be able to control you can control you.
Speaker 1: You can have a better deal at a major. Use
Speaker 1: the machine, come up as an independent, and then come
Speaker 1: out of that machine a lot more whole.
Speaker 5: But most of those records come from the streets, and
Speaker 5: the streets have the urgency and the and the that
Speaker 5: deserve the immediate attention of the listeners. You know what, right,
Speaker 5: Because when there's some fresh on the street, you know
Speaker 5: that they like when fifty was coming or these records
Speaker 5: are come and these artists are coming, you know, the labels.
Speaker 1: Know and uh. And that's why I agree with you.
Speaker 1: I think if you, if you already have heat, but
Speaker 1: if you need the producers and you need the songwriters.
Speaker 5: So you need, then the label is going to connect
Speaker 5: you with those. If you if you're Gotti's camp.
Speaker 1: And you just got records and video directors and guys
Speaker 1: coming straight from the streets in your neighborhood, then you
Speaker 1: got to I mean, he's got a cash machine.
Speaker 3: I think that's a greate example is fifty fifty had
Speaker 3: the streets already like did before it d independent god
Speaker 3: independent mix.
Speaker 1: But when he got with that label, he got with it.
Speaker 2: Was I've always said that he independent, so you can
Speaker 2: take advantage of the machine.
Speaker 3: I think that he could have still been one of
Speaker 3: the biggest artists without them, but he became one of
Speaker 3: the biggest superstars with them, like he became Like I
Speaker 3: love looking at Tony Yale's Instagram and seeing these motherfuckers
Speaker 3: in places I can't pronounce.
Speaker 1: And they just sitting here. I love that ship. I'm
Speaker 1: like like this is this is it? Like because I
Speaker 1: saw it from the beginning. So again I love this argument.
Speaker 1: Just to give a quick analogy, super independent.
Speaker 2: The quick analogy I would give is like you're a
Speaker 2: small business owner doing it on your own and you're
Speaker 2: you're you're succeeding at us. You reached your your ceiling
Speaker 2: of success, but you're succeeding, and now you can go
Speaker 2: to the bank and ask for that credit line that's
Speaker 2: like a million dollars. You know, that's what That's what
Speaker 2: the labels are. They're they're credit lines. You know they're
Speaker 2: they're bad. But but you also no, I mean with experts,
Speaker 2: I want to appreciate it.
Speaker 5: And because as we've had the owner to work with
Speaker 5: the other people below the CEOs, there are great.
Speaker 1: Video heads, marketers, marketers, there are great there are people
Speaker 1: with can've worked under some people that know how to
Speaker 1: talk to people that the artists can't. Absolutely and the
Speaker 1: artists can't get on the phone and hold a conversation
Speaker 1: with the marketing team and with the blah blah blah team,
Speaker 1: and you know, and so.
Speaker 5: They need those teams to go out into the world
Speaker 5: for them and and do the talking for them. So
Speaker 5: I think it's their strength in numbers, you know.
Speaker 1: What I mean?
Speaker 5: And you you can do as much you want to do,
Speaker 5: as much as you can individually. Even me is And
Speaker 5: now I say I want to write the song.
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to try to do everything
Speaker 1: on my own.
Speaker 5: Now, if someone else comes in and has a better
Speaker 5: idea or wants to make it better, I'm all for it.
Speaker 5: I've got to generate the magic from scratch and then
Speaker 5: the other.
Speaker 1: Things will come. You know what I mean? You know
Speaker 1: what else?
Speaker 3: The problem is to you get to a certain lifestyle
Speaker 3: that the label has provided for you.
Speaker 1: He cannot dumb that. That's hard. Like that's what you
Speaker 1: really understand about. That's hard? You like that? Like that?
Speaker 3: Like on that one I watched him pull up and
Speaker 3: I said, see that's recolation with ship, that's recogetion, recolletel.
Speaker 1: Ship down. You would like. What I'm saying is if
Speaker 1: you were to sit here and just to say, as
Speaker 1: he pulled up, was he major Independent? You would know?
Speaker 1: You would know off top listen he's rolling like a major.
Speaker 1: That's because I got it. I'm on the TV shows.
Speaker 1: That's where the car money. By the way, that's hilarious.
Speaker 1: I love that. Holy I got man more truth.
Speaker 3: Okay, I wrote for Brandy, you wrote for brianan Knight,
Speaker 3: You wrote for Christina Aguilero, You wrote for Color.
Speaker 1: Me Bad, Oh Man, color Me Bad? What did you
Speaker 1: write for them their second album? I was sixteen and.
Speaker 5: I was working with Tricky Stewart and their second album.
Speaker 5: Tricky was working with them, and I wrote a song
Speaker 5: called sexual Capacity or something like that that ended up
Speaker 5: being their single off their second album.
Speaker 1: Ninety eight Degrees. Yes, I wrote a song with Brian McKnight. Actually,
Speaker 1: we wrote a song together that ended up on ninety degrees.
Speaker 1: Mark Anthony Jordan Knight. Now, Jordan was a big, very
Speaker 1: important part of my musical development.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you why. When I signed to Interscope with
Speaker 5: John McClean and Brian McKnight and Jimmy Ivy in that
Speaker 5: team at sixteen, they had just signed John had just
Speaker 5: signed Jordan Knight as a solo artist coming off of
Speaker 5: the New Kids on the Block. So John was very
Speaker 5: New Kids on the Block, right, So Jordan I was
Speaker 5: the lead singer New Kids. So Jim John's like, I
Speaker 5: think you should get in the studio with Robin. So
Speaker 5: Jordan and I meet in the studio and I ended
Speaker 5: up writing and producing like seven of the ten songs
Speaker 5: on his debut album, Wow.
Speaker 1: And my first hit top ten record was a baby
Speaker 1: you Know I Can Give It to You, which was
Speaker 1: produced with Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis. Wow and so amazing.
Speaker 1: One the amazing thing.
Speaker 5: About Jordan what he did for me because they thought
Speaker 5: I was a great songwriter, but I wasn't a producer.
Speaker 5: I wasn't a real producer yet, so Jordan took me
Speaker 5: with him. That's how I met Walter afanassy if I
Speaker 5: got to work with Raphael.
Speaker 1: Sadik right after he worked with D'Angelo.
Speaker 5: I got to work with Teddy Riley. We got to
Speaker 5: go see I mean we literally went. I got to go, Oh, Jimmy, Jamey,
Speaker 5: Terry Lewis. I got to go from the best producers
Speaker 5: camps in the world at the time and learn from
Speaker 5: all of them.
Speaker 1: When I was eighteen years old. How did they treat you?
Speaker 1: Were they? Because I could sing and write? They you know,
Speaker 1: I always got that kind of a oh they you
Speaker 1: would know they were just like this kid's got talent.
Speaker 1: You know, he wouldn't be here if he didn't, you know.
Speaker 1: So I was very lucky.
Speaker 5: But as far as they were concerned, as long as
Speaker 5: you come up, you come up with stuff.
Speaker 1: So when you come up with a great chorus and
Speaker 1: Jimmy sitting there doing the baseline live, Jimmy Jam one
Speaker 1: of the most incredible musicians, I mean, Jimmy Jam, and
Speaker 1: I learned so much from Jimmy. Those sessions with Jimmy
Speaker 1: were just life changing for me as a producer, Brian
Speaker 1: as a vocalist, being in the studio session with Brian
Speaker 1: learning how to do harmonies and record them, and then
Speaker 1: being in the studio Jimmy Jam. And this is all
Speaker 1: by eighteen years old, so I was blessed. We talk
Speaker 1: about going to college, you know what I mean. You
Speaker 1: also wrote for Miam Pink too, I did.
Speaker 5: I got to work with Maya on her debut album
Speaker 5: or I think it was maybe a second album. We
Speaker 5: did three songs together Pink. That was again from the
Speaker 5: Tricky Stewart sessions. It was a song that we just
Speaker 5: wrote and then Pink ended up cutting it because that
Speaker 5: was the La Face. That was when Ellie Reid and
Speaker 5: Babyface were still together at La Face and they were
Speaker 5: feeding le Face songs.
Speaker 1: In La was putting them on his different artists, So
Speaker 1: I can't. And then so as i'm you know, going
Speaker 1: through your discography, there's a there's a straight up song.
Speaker 1: I thought it was like hitting, but it's a straight
Speaker 1: up song called Cocaine. Yes. Straight. It's a good one too.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's a great Ocaeka. People gonna cut it.
Speaker 1: Look came So I'll say this just for fun because
Speaker 1: the lyrics this is this is a true story. You're
Speaker 1: like a true story, Beverly. He so tell for me
Speaker 1: him it's my birthday. I wanna stay young, I wanna
Speaker 1: have fun. I don't want to be only one no way.
Speaker 1: Movie stars, models and bloods and coldcage Ellen is all same,
Speaker 1: the angels, not the other way. Because they couldn't understand
Speaker 1: Mo pame cocaine diango was about to go to I've
Speaker 1: been doing that. I've been doing that at the shows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would be racially profiled right now.
Speaker 2: Because we are not richly profilaus to guys.
Speaker 1: He used to be like other than this Sugarhill gang.
Speaker 1: There was no one that ever said said that.
Speaker 5: Actually, I think I remember when we were going to release,
Speaker 5: the label said that there was some challenges. They wanted
Speaker 5: me to change the title, and.
Speaker 1: Then they realized. Then they realized that Eric.
Speaker 5: Clapton had released a very famous song just to notice that.
Speaker 1: So then then they let it go. They let it
Speaker 1: go White. That was sugar white. You know, he's not
Speaker 1: like he says, coke. I think it's called flash and furious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's called cocaine. You can't pat in the word cocaine,
Speaker 1: so you could just call it right, you can't, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think so not own throw the label. So
Speaker 1: you make this record and the label comes to you
Speaker 1: and says, probably I.
Speaker 5: Don't remember, I mean label, you know, a manager called
Speaker 5: somebody says that there we're having an issue with the
Speaker 5: song tel cocaine.
Speaker 1: Obviously I was coming. Your father was on. Yeah, my
Speaker 1: dad's a growing Pain's dad. And I'm still trying to
Speaker 1: pitch market me as a as an R and D
Speaker 1: exactly the soul singer, slash pop.
Speaker 5: Star or whatever, trying to market me as when and
Speaker 5: so I just h I said, well, I don't really
Speaker 5: want to change the song title. I mean, it's kind
Speaker 5: of what the song's about.
Speaker 1: It's about cocaine, and you know, I had never tried it,
Speaker 1: and it was really about the culture that I was seeing.
Speaker 5: As my presence in young Hollywood, and how much I
Speaker 5: saw of it and how much it scared me. And
Speaker 5: so it's all about the fears of I don't want
Speaker 5: to be the only one who's not doing it, and
Speaker 5: I don't want to be you know, but you're you're
Speaker 5: It's really about the peer pressure of being around movie
Speaker 5: stars and models and all these things and everybody's doing it,
Speaker 5: and you know, you don't want to be the only one.
Speaker 1: You don't want to be the you don't be.
Speaker 3: The proved one of my first uh times in California.
Speaker 3: I'm sitting up there and I didn't know how much
Speaker 3: of a commodity having cigarettes was for this community.
Speaker 1: And the God comes I ain't a community. God comes
Speaker 1: up to me, said go for Newport you and then
Speaker 1: you sold it to Diego.
Speaker 3: But by the way, by the way, guys, I'm green,
Speaker 3: and I'm like just coming to Ali.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: So I'm looking like what he's like, yo right now,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, holy ship. And then I didn't realize.
Speaker 3: And then I realized I was the only one in
Speaker 3: the party.
Speaker 1: That wasn't a little neck okay, But I felt like
Speaker 1: that that's that's that was ill for you to like
Speaker 1: say that. You know what I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: be up up front. I think I think that was
Speaker 1: like genius. I think, yeah, very much. Well, I mean
Speaker 1: the things, like I said, I always just try to
Speaker 1: say what I'm going through. And that's why my songs
Speaker 1: are very.
Speaker 5: Chronological, you know, like what I wrote and my album titles,
Speaker 5: it's all what I.
Speaker 1: Was going through literally at the time. You know, Love
Speaker 1: after war, sex therapy, Oh, I got that. I got
Speaker 1: all my notes, Love Knows the evolution. There were all literal.
Speaker 3: Periods of my life, you know. So all right, now
Speaker 3: let's get the blurred line. Okay, I can remember I
Speaker 3: can remember me hearing about this lawsuit. Yes, the record
Speaker 3: is phenomenal.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: I started well, I don't want to say I started
Speaker 3: with Forrell, but my second album, my big is oh yeah,
Speaker 3: what what what? What super Doug was with Forarrell? I
Speaker 3: seen how he works and I seen so when I
Speaker 3: listened to it, because we listened to it today. We
Speaker 3: listened to Marvin Gaye's record, then we listen to your record,
Speaker 3: Then we listened to Blurred Lines, then we listened to
Speaker 3: getting back to back back to back. I can hear
Speaker 3: with Pharrell didn't sample he you know what I mean?
Speaker 3: But the average the average person. How we were speaking
Speaker 3: about earlier, how sometimes being smart is actually being dumb,
Speaker 3: like because you know when too much, you know too much.
Speaker 3: So when I kept doing it today, I kept listening
Speaker 3: back and forth to each each each record, I can
Speaker 3: see it. Did you think that you guys.
Speaker 1: Was doing was doing wrong by showing love? No? I
Speaker 1: mean you know we uh.
Speaker 5: I mean there's been so much said about it that
Speaker 5: there's not I don't know if there's anything new I
Speaker 5: can really say.
Speaker 1: You just knew you could say. So. The fact is
Speaker 1: that my respect level of Pharrell's abilities and the fact
Speaker 1: that I was lucky to be in the room and
Speaker 1: he chose to write a song. The thing that the
Speaker 1: genius about him is he will look he literally wouldn't
Speaker 1: have written that song for anybody else. Wow, Or I
Speaker 1: mean I helped write it, of course, but you know
Speaker 1: the mastermind that he is. If any other artist is
Speaker 1: in that room, he won't write. He's not going to
Speaker 1: write that song.
Speaker 5: He looks at me, my energy, the way we are,
Speaker 5: the thing he thinks I'll sound good doing blah blah, blah.
Speaker 1: It's all his mind works.
Speaker 5: On many different masterful levels at the same time, and
Speaker 5: he knows exactly what he's trying to conceptualized for this
Speaker 5: particular artist, different from Ed shar and different from Timberlake,
Speaker 5: different from North. He knows this person, I'm going to
Speaker 5: do something completely different than I've.
Speaker 1: Done for anyone else. That's what we got. It's it was,
Speaker 1: it's still it's still you put it on live.
Speaker 5: When we do the live shows, people go nuts as
Speaker 5: soon as and so all we really wanted to do
Speaker 5: when we got into music was do what we love
Speaker 5: and make people feel like that. So I no matter
Speaker 5: what has happened since or in hindsight, this feeling it
Speaker 5: still gives people right in front of my face is
Speaker 5: worth everything.
Speaker 3: It's It's like I say this story. Were on drink
Speaker 3: Champs a couple of times when I met James Brown.
Speaker 3: First thing James Brown said, because they came They came
Speaker 3: up to him and they must have told him, like
Speaker 3: his nephew or someone.
Speaker 1: He didn't know what the funk I was. So he's like,
Speaker 1: that's Noriega, he's a rapper, and James mind looked up.
Speaker 1: He said, keep sampling my ship, get a five a selfie.
Speaker 1: But but what it is is.
Speaker 3: Those pioneers. They understand that we want our music to
Speaker 3: live on forever. And it's something that I had to
Speaker 3: deal with because I hate when people sample my music.
Speaker 1: I can't stand it. I'm sorry, I know that's being petty. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you are being petty on that that I don't like
Speaker 1: it what you picked them up for saying keep sampling ship? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't like it.
Speaker 5: But I'm saying we've had George Clinton, so this doesn't
Speaker 5: become an issue afterwards. Let's clarify that none of us
Speaker 5: would ever speak for Marvin Gate or his intentions. We
Speaker 5: are we are pontificating because we're reflecting our own feelings.
Speaker 1: Say partificated, Yeah, what does that mean? Just yeah? Projected
Speaker 1: you and I how we feel about how we feel.
Speaker 5: Yes, and we are insinuating that Marvin might have felt
Speaker 5: the same way.
Speaker 1: We do not know. Let's make sure like this, but
Speaker 1: without any confusion, we're not telling any other artists how
Speaker 1: to feel about somebody being inspired by our sampling their music,
Speaker 1: et cetera. To me in my own world, if I
Speaker 1: if somebody did a similar and it was inspired similarly
Speaker 1: by my sound or music or vocals, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: the same response person, So I can only speak for myself.
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that we didn't have to
Speaker 1: and get it thank you speaking yes, yes.
Speaker 3: Please, I mean because you know and and also I
Speaker 3: want to, you know, say like there's certain records that
Speaker 3: they do as I do, like.
Speaker 1: Like like like like girls girls do my record over.
Speaker 1: That is God the very Maybe I took that part out, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe take the learner. And maybe speaking for was hard.
Speaker 1: We don't want to say baby was hard. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of others.
Speaker 2: I don't want to well, I mean there is the
Speaker 2: situation where the estates get to listen to it and.
Speaker 1: Approve it is you're going through those channel.
Speaker 3: It's different because the person themselves none of that music
Speaker 3: that they sample in, so the feeling for you is different. Yes,
Speaker 3: and so if you actually do my record over trying
Speaker 3: to pick me up, you're actually not you're actually doing well.
Speaker 3: But let's get let's I love that. But guess what,
Speaker 3: Guess what, Guess what? Guess guess what something that I
Speaker 3: had to notice. Have you ever seen, for well, post
Speaker 3: one of those remakes?
Speaker 1: Not once? Because you know what I think me and
Speaker 1: him don't get we don't get what we deserve.
Speaker 3: So when a person samples our record and don't have
Speaker 3: to go through us, I can't understand it.
Speaker 1: Yes, like he said, like he said, so so yeah so.
Speaker 3: Sometimes so sometimes I do like when they sampled it,
Speaker 3: and sometimes I don't.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been sampled? And I have been sampled.
Speaker 1: My favorite version, or one of my favorites, was Drake
Speaker 1: and one of his early mixtapes, did Teach You a Lesson?
Speaker 1: One of my songs? And he sampled Teach You a Lesson?
Speaker 5: And then that's the same record that a Boogie with
Speaker 5: the Hoodie sample is teaching a lesson?
Speaker 1: Did you feel like Nori?
Speaker 5: I'll tell you a funny story when when I just
Speaker 5: because I love I love a boogie with the Hoodie, Uh,
Speaker 5: that's my man. But when he sent me the first
Speaker 5: version and here I wrote, this song is such a sweet,
Speaker 5: intimate and like the first few lines were so hard,
Speaker 5: That's what.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: So so I did.
Speaker 1: I kind of hit him. I kind of hit him up,
Speaker 1: and I was like hit my manager too, And I
Speaker 1: was like, you know, maybe he could just lighten up
Speaker 1: the beginning a little bit so we could sink into it,
Speaker 1: you know, and he was cool, he didn't mind just
Speaker 1: kind of adjusting it out of respect for the okay,
Speaker 1: you know, it was it was only just the It
Speaker 1: was like the entrance to the record and here because
Speaker 1: I'm hearing my music, you know, and I'm like, and
Speaker 1: I'm expecting this feeling. And he came in with something
Speaker 1: and I was like, maybe we could just change the
Speaker 1: first couple of lives. But I listened. They a couple
Speaker 1: of times.
Speaker 3: People sample sometimes sometimes it's the record about my.
Speaker 1: Father and him passing away. Yeah, and that's so when
Speaker 1: when when? When?
Speaker 3: When when people come on there and then they joyful
Speaker 3: about this record? Like that wasn't my intention. Like I
Speaker 3: cried this whole session, laying this down. I had literally
Speaker 3: tears in there. And you taking this record and you
Speaker 3: making it over a happy way.
Speaker 1: I did so so so I don't like that sometimes,
Speaker 1: But hold on, I got come on and blurred lines.
Speaker 3: We got through that, right, Yeah, lost without you. You
Speaker 3: already answered that question without me, which one is without me?
Speaker 3: Oh no, I'm talking about about me. Actually, I was like,
Speaker 3: I remember that sound.
Speaker 1: So many these questions I was asking you, I have
Speaker 1: on my notes you already answered earlier. Yeah, we got
Speaker 1: a good loss without your story.
Speaker 5: Yes, and you have you have a passion for Latin
Speaker 5: music here, Oh yeah, I mean I actually listened to uh,
Speaker 5: you know, Salsa and Boston Nova when I when I
Speaker 5: exercise or when I'm relaxing. Like though, maybe it's because
Speaker 5: I don't understand all the words too, and the music
Speaker 5: is so good that it takes me away and I
Speaker 5: don't focus on all the words as much.
Speaker 1: Well, what salsa art is you like? Oh? I like
Speaker 1: the old school.
Speaker 5: Stuff, you know, Cecily Cruz, And I mean I just
Speaker 5: have like the Apple playlists and I just it's it's
Speaker 5: just a great backdrop.
Speaker 1: For me to But I have Louis Bonfa is one
Speaker 1: of my favorites.
Speaker 5: He's one of the originators of Brazilian guitar, Like he
Speaker 5: came before Joe Beam. So once I got into Joe Beam,
Speaker 5: then I got into Louis Bonfa and he has a
Speaker 5: playlist that's just and I love the But if it's
Speaker 5: a social clubs.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And you said Cuba, you know, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: So this is something I've been runner in this whole time.
Speaker 3: You came in with your shirt off, but your chest
Speaker 3: is red, but your face is not.
Speaker 1: I'm irish. What the hell is going on? Is it
Speaker 1: rare a little red? It's because I've been playing tennis
Speaker 1: and ship you're taking your shirt off playing tennis? Is
Speaker 1: I know? I was in Cabo and that's what I took.
Speaker 5: I took wife you the Cabo last week and we
Speaker 5: got four days and I got burnt.
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay, she got burned too, So it was a
Speaker 1: team burnt. Okay, we're making noise for team burns, team
Speaker 1: burn Hey, you know a family, a family that burns
Speaker 1: together and stays together. So what what? What? What I mean?
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be honest with you, man, just to see
Speaker 3: you in person and to see like, like, your story
Speaker 3: is amazing man, Like you know the stuff you've been
Speaker 3: through in life, stuff that you navigated through life, even
Speaker 3: when you say like a sad days to be covering.
Speaker 1: This an amazing life to me. Like I'm sitting back saying, whoa,
Speaker 1: but is there something that you feel like you didn't
Speaker 1: do yet? Oh? You know, I would have liked I
Speaker 1: would have liked my dad to have been around with
Speaker 1: the grandkids more to see the grand kids. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think when I think of.
Speaker 5: Myself, I've already had so much, and I still feel
Speaker 5: like at this moment, I have so much. I'm so grateful,
Speaker 5: And I have this great theory that you can't simultaneously
Speaker 5: be grateful and feel anything negative at the same time.
Speaker 1: It's impossible. You can't do it.
Speaker 5: If you're grateful, you can't feel envy, you can't feel jealousy,
Speaker 5: you can't feel rage.
Speaker 1: You're grateful.
Speaker 5: The only thing you can be is gluttonous. So I
Speaker 5: try to make sure my I put my gratitude forward.
Speaker 1: Most of my day.
Speaker 5: I get anxious in the mornings. I worry about all
Speaker 5: my kids in their future. I have trouble sleeping. I
Speaker 5: worry about the day, the week, the bills, you know.
Speaker 1: Paying for private school for the next fifteen years for
Speaker 1: four kids or whatever. All these things make it hard
Speaker 1: to wake up, you know, or make it hard to sleep.
Speaker 1: But then I just before I even get out of bed,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you. I'm so sorry. They're healthy. Here,
Speaker 1: I'm getting out of bed.
Speaker 5: I'm still here, you know, because because the things that
Speaker 5: I that I had, like my dad and Andre herrel
Speaker 5: that my go tos are gone. You know, so my
Speaker 5: not and my manager or my new go tos are
Speaker 5: my kids and my lady and the friends I got,
Speaker 5: and and then it's just being grateful for those people
Speaker 5: that are still here that I.
Speaker 1: Get them, you know, and I got them. Is there
Speaker 1: anybody you ever tried to work with that didn't want
Speaker 1: to work with you? I'm sure, But you.
Speaker 5: Know, I've always probably I believe that that's why I've
Speaker 5: never asked for help. And maybe it comes from my
Speaker 5: dad not helping me right from the jump, like when
Speaker 5: I needed that grant and he was like, yeah, don't
Speaker 5: need everybody.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: He always told me if I was writing a good song,
Speaker 5: he said, now you need to learn how to produce.
Speaker 5: And if I was producing, he said, now you should
Speaker 5: learn how to play guitar. If I was learning guitar,
Speaker 5: is it now you should learn how to do hard resourceful.
Speaker 5: He was always trying to make sure that I had
Speaker 5: enough resources because he went through the same experience. He
Speaker 5: had some ups and downs in his career, and when
Speaker 5: they when he had an L took an L on
Speaker 5: one of his shows or whatever, he almost got canceled.
Speaker 5: You know, from the whole system, people turned their backs
Speaker 5: on him and this and that. So he was like,
Speaker 5: I'm never gonna let that happen again. I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 5: gonna take every job.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make sure I have everything lined up so
Speaker 1: they can't kick me out or make me feel like
Speaker 1: I was kicked out. You know. I saw an interview
Speaker 1: that ETV.
Speaker 2: He posted it, but it's an old interview with you
Speaker 2: and him, I think on the set of Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he looked he just seems so proud of you, and
Speaker 2: he was.
Speaker 5: He It's funny how he was always trying to get
Speaker 5: me to be better and do better. And that's what
Speaker 5: I remember. But then you hear how much he was
Speaker 5: telling all of his friends, all his friends. Tell me, now, oh,
Speaker 5: your dad was always talking about you, always bragging about
Speaker 5: you always, you know.
Speaker 1: And that's how That's how our parents are. You know.
Speaker 5: They challenge us, but they're usually out there bragging about
Speaker 5: us the whole time.
Speaker 1: Also, so I'm not gonna lie. It seems like because
Speaker 1: they say Jamaica has got the most jobs, whose dame?
Speaker 1: My dad was definitely Jamaican. My dad was definitely is
Speaker 1: definitely part Jamaican.
Speaker 3: So now let me ask you, you know, me. I've
Speaker 3: been making music since nineteen ninety seven. I've been all over,
Speaker 3: all over, I've been places, and there's always like certain
Speaker 3: fans that come up to me that look nothing like me,
Speaker 3: who are nothing like me, and they'll come up to
Speaker 3: me and they'll be like, what's up, normal, and they'll
Speaker 3: actually know my story? What's what's one of the craziest
Speaker 3: stories of fans ever came up to you and just
Speaker 3: like and just like.
Speaker 1: Talk to you and just like and you were like,
Speaker 1: you're looking at you you like me? Oh, you mean
Speaker 1: like like somebody that I really like? Old people always
Speaker 1: regular fan, regular what's the crazy interaction with a Reglar fans? Oh? Man,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even know. Your life is too dope. It's
Speaker 1: just it's no, it's just like no, no, because it's
Speaker 1: it's been fun.
Speaker 5: The different age groups, like you know, first of all,
Speaker 5: ninety percent of my audience is black women, Black women
Speaker 5: like you coming to my show.
Speaker 1: There's a few scattered Pepperdin like Gary Owens.
Speaker 5: You know what I mean, Like, yeah, I don't, I
Speaker 5: don't get a and so like if I walk through
Speaker 5: the airport, let's say twenty thirty percent white people recognize
Speaker 5: men black people would recognize me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And that's how for me. And that's even if I
Speaker 1: make I call everybody, walk by somebody, I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, we know each other, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So and the beauty, and that's
Speaker 1: what I mean is that I'm not I.
Speaker 5: That is my brother, that's these are, this is my culture,
Speaker 5: this is my fans, this is these are my my godfather,
Speaker 5: my mentor, and my ex wife. But you know what
Speaker 5: I mean, there's nothing in my life that hasn't been
Speaker 5: me being a part or wanting to be embraced and
Speaker 5: appreciate black culture.
Speaker 1: You know. And and so that when I walk it,
Speaker 1: I live it. And that's why I think it's possible
Speaker 1: for all of us to walk and live with that
Speaker 1: kind of harmony. You know. Damn I love that so much.
Speaker 1: I tell you the truth. You know.
Speaker 3: That's that's one of my friends over there, that my
Speaker 3: friend diego and I use his white privilege.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm just being honest. Like if we go outside,
Speaker 1: we jogging, I'm like, they go in the front, they
Speaker 1: ain't gonna hit you in the car and then go
Speaker 1: around this motherfucker Like yeah, we were outside at night time.
Speaker 3: They're going around him and listen. No, I said this
Speaker 3: story on Dream Chances before, but I remember this. I
Speaker 3: was probably still at the highlight of my rap career.
Speaker 1: Whatever, right, still rapping. We're in Amsterdam at a bar.
Speaker 1: Already sounds good. It actually gives me a little wicked though.
Speaker 1: So I walk out. I'm the platinum artist, I'm the
Speaker 1: guy who got us all here, were here. I walk out.
Speaker 1: They stopped me, say you can't bring that beer outside?
Speaker 3: Sir say all right, cool, no problem, go to Smoer cigarette,
Speaker 3: smooth s cigatta at a time. They go clearly picked
Speaker 3: up both of the beers and walked right out. And
Speaker 3: we did that six times the whole night, and every
Speaker 3: single time the man stopped and let him you cannot
Speaker 3: drink out here.
Speaker 1: And I could have easily been like, listen, listen, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: why you.
Speaker 3: Had the moments where we're like, you know what the fuck?
Speaker 3: Like I could have easily been like, you know what?
Speaker 3: The fun and I was just like, you know what,
Speaker 3: I still win. My beer is still outside.
Speaker 1: You think, yeah, you think you did something.
Speaker 3: I still get my beer outside, and I swear to God,
Speaker 3: so uh yeah, because no, that's that's real. Like me
Speaker 3: thinking about it to this day, it still actually hits me.
Speaker 3: It hits me because you know what I grew up.
Speaker 3: I grew up in Queens, and in Queens, you literally
Speaker 3: cannot be racist.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you why. Your neighbor's wife, your other
Speaker 1: neighbors for the pino, your other.
Speaker 3: Neighbors Haitian melting pot, your other neighbor's Russian.
Speaker 1: This is for Queens. We are the United Nations of everybody.
Speaker 3: If you're Chinese, I literally would come home at night
Speaker 3: from from where I live, I would smell Chinese food,
Speaker 3: Russian food, Hatien food, Filipino food of course, Puerto Rican food,
Speaker 3: have Puerto Rican, and then soul food. God damnit, Jamaican food.
Speaker 3: I was outside eat jamaking food already.
Speaker 1: It was outside.
Speaker 3: I already eat you making foods. But literally, literally you
Speaker 3: can't be racist. So is that something that you have
Speaker 3: to ever navigate through? Like you know, I'm paying around
Speaker 3: with my white friend like saying that, But it's something
Speaker 3: that literally we do you sometimes at certain points, I
Speaker 3: do use them.
Speaker 1: I do, I say, you go, I know, I know.
Speaker 3: Is that something you have to have to go through
Speaker 3: for your one of your friends for us. Clearly you
Speaker 3: have black friends.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean I just I just Oh I
Speaker 5: do remember a scenario. Yeah, when I was with I
Speaker 5: was about fourteen, and I was with my singing group Buddies,
Speaker 5: and they had a girl at a mall out and
Speaker 5: you know, an hour out of town or something, who
Speaker 5: had to hook up on a discount of some clothes
Speaker 5: or something.
Speaker 1: Right, so we were going to go raid the store
Speaker 1: and get the fifty percent discount. Blah blah blah. Right,
Speaker 1: So I'm in my basketball uniform from my prep school.
Speaker 1: It even says Montclair Prep on it.
Speaker 5: Wow, and we run in. We come out to the
Speaker 5: stories with clothes. We get in the car and the
Speaker 5: two police cars show up. It's you know, maybe they're
Speaker 5: just closing hours, right, cops pulled me. It's me and
Speaker 5: my three in my singing buddies, my singing group, my
Speaker 5: three black friends.
Speaker 1: And they pulled me out of the car.
Speaker 5: And asked me and pulled me aside and asked me
Speaker 5: if I was safe and if they had been kidnapped
Speaker 5: and if I mean.
Speaker 1: Fun literally.
Speaker 3: This is they brought me here to get free closed
Speaker 3: my boy.
Speaker 1: They teaching me how to say and I was so offend.
Speaker 1: Then that's when the white offended gets it. That's where
Speaker 1: the Karen kicks in. How tere you? These are my friends.
Speaker 1: I'm polling my mother right now. I'm probably my mother
Speaker 1: and Sherman Oaks, and I want you to get on
Speaker 1: the phone with her. Oh it's when the white boy
Speaker 1: kicks in and we have an attorney, I know two attorneys.
Speaker 1: I'll see you at coast of Mexic corn. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I mean that that shit is real. And the thing
Speaker 1: is is that, you know, we just it's out there, man.
Speaker 1: And that's why we.
Speaker 5: Love the big cities because at least more influence, more information,
Speaker 5: more cultural difference is more and more more.
Speaker 1: And I have this theory that whatever a family does,
Speaker 1: patriarch or a matriarch, they just don't want this in
Speaker 1: their family. Whatever it is, I just don't want that.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to have that in this house. I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna have that. It always shows up, of course,
Speaker 1: well it always shows up.
Speaker 5: Whatever thing, whatever you whatever, your grandfather was afraid never
Speaker 5: wanted to happen in his family.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's it's in the kitchen now. It's making right,
Speaker 1: you count on that. Yeah, it's making it.
Speaker 5: And I think that's the beauty of that's the work
Speaker 5: of God in some ways. You know, we need to
Speaker 5: keep If your mind is that closed and your family's
Speaker 5: not moving forward, and you're not opening your heart and
Speaker 5: your mind and your spirit, then something is going to
Speaker 5: force you to open it or close it forever. But
Speaker 5: something's going to happen in your family or your life.
Speaker 5: It's going to open you to force your heart. So
Speaker 5: let me ask you to force you to open your heart.
Speaker 3: Let me is probably one like serious, serious question I'm
Speaker 3: gonna ask, right, Like I said, with the story of
Speaker 3: one friend, like literally I had the best idea. I
Speaker 3: was like, I'm not going to let this guy ruin
Speaker 3: my vacation or ruin well I'm not doing right. But
Speaker 3: at that same time, you know, there's black children that's
Speaker 3: getting killed every single day by the hands of the police,
Speaker 3: and you have mixed children. And I remember one of
Speaker 3: the illest stories I ever heard what Steve Rifkins telling me.
Speaker 3: It was at Wally's, you know Waally's in Beverly Hills,
Speaker 3: and Steve Rickman telling me literally because he has his kids,
Speaker 3: well some one of his kids looked white, and then
Speaker 3: the two others look black, and how his kids would
Speaker 3: leave his house and the black kids would get pulled
Speaker 3: over that looked but they both, they both, they all
Speaker 3: three was his kids. I'm sorry, I'm paraphrasing how I'm
Speaker 3: saying the story. But what I'm saying is is that
Speaker 3: something I'm sorry this is it's a serious question, but
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's something that I think about all
Speaker 3: the time. Is is that something that you worry about?
Speaker 1: I don't. My kids are pretty fair, okay.
Speaker 5: And and because I grew up with all of these
Speaker 5: being pulled over experiences. That wasn't the only time my
Speaker 5: friends were pulled over. We were We would be on
Speaker 5: our way to my father had a place out in
Speaker 5: Santa Barbara, and I'd be driving with my friends and
Speaker 5: we just get pulled over and have to get searched out,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. Luckily none of them spoke.
Speaker 5: I just before I ever smoked weed, and they were singers.
Speaker 5: But we get pulled over just for being black for
Speaker 5: most of us.
Speaker 1: Then I started, man, we got pulled over for being black.
Speaker 1: Somebody slapper, somebody slapped this white boat. Please, it's wrong
Speaker 1: with this young man.
Speaker 5: But yeah, No, I grew up because I was always
Speaker 5: around the culture and and and and all my and
Speaker 5: most of my friends were black. That yeah, I experienced
Speaker 5: it all the time, and I would be the first
Speaker 5: I remember fighting my extended family.
Speaker 1: My dad was very open minded. My dad wrote jokes
Speaker 1: with Richard Pryor. You know my dad managed Felippe.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he worked one of the early He would sit
Speaker 5: any We always bragged about it and said, you know,
Speaker 5: I would just uh, I could get him going and say, hey,
Speaker 5: mud boone, what did you do with that girl last night?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Let me.
Speaker 5: Then Richard would go on his rants and but they
Speaker 5: would have these writing sessions, and so my dad always
Speaker 5: felt felt like he was a white man in the
Speaker 5: midst of you know, black culture in some ways. And
Speaker 5: I respected his open mindedness and my mom saying, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, had her hit with a black man. So
Speaker 5: I literally come from an open minded Hollywood hippie you
Speaker 5: know type family.
Speaker 1: So that gave me the right perspective to to grow
Speaker 1: into that world. Man.
Speaker 3: That dope answer I ever heard, because like, you know,
Speaker 3: I got just like I'm somewhat of a therapist, right.
Speaker 1: You saying you're somewhat of a therapist or a comedian
Speaker 1: Clearly I didn't make the right choice in friends. Clearly
Speaker 1: they just laughed. They just laugh.
Speaker 3: No, But what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is
Speaker 3: I assess people I have to like. And what I'm
Speaker 3: trying to say is man like, I like, we went
Speaker 3: through your lisography.
Speaker 1: I have never seen like so much. Stories just keep
Speaker 1: popping up and it's like, wow, how are you? How
Speaker 1: are you not? Insane?
Speaker 3: How are you not Britney Spears halfway your your hair
Speaker 3: cut off and insane? One the weekend?
Speaker 1: You know what I gotta say, Good woman, This good
Speaker 1: woman will do that for you. He is called I'm
Speaker 1: going home at night myself, sir. Yes, yes, good woman.
Speaker 5: You know she'll just should make you think the right
Speaker 5: way and make you clean up what you need to
Speaker 5: clean up up, and make you respect what needs to
Speaker 5: be respected and and uh and if you love that woman.
Speaker 1: Enough, you'll you'll get it right. Okay. So I mean
Speaker 1: that's my next lyric. Can we can you guys send
Speaker 1: me that? Yeah, right now, you got I'm gonna turn
Speaker 1: that into falsetto. I'm gonna turn that into something falsetto.
Speaker 1: Listening to the album and I want you, I want you.
Speaker 1: Please don't cut that part out. No, no, no, got you, No, no,
Speaker 1: that part of the one points.
Speaker 3: But I get home, but I want to ask you
Speaker 3: as as a And I met Porter before I met
Speaker 3: with shot him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh love, shot shot him. Shot Damn.
Speaker 3: I don't even know because I still go out there.
Speaker 3: Well I can say it, so whole house amountable. I
Speaker 3: met her, probably one of the sweetest women I ever met.
Speaker 3: Everyone say one man garbage is the next man's trash
Speaker 3: or whatever. That's not what I'm asking. What I'm asking
Speaker 3: is to me from the outside. Can Yeah, one may
Speaker 3: be sent look like a perfect woman. Did you mess
Speaker 3: that up? Or you know that's that's one of those things. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: because we already went over this. It was there's a growth,
Speaker 3: there's a thing that goes apart. I mean, and what
Speaker 3: you you know, what you see is not always what's
Speaker 3: going on at home, you know what I mean? And
Speaker 3: it Yeah, and I think that there was so there
Speaker 3: was endless love and partnership and creativity, but also two
Speaker 3: careers that we're spending six to eight months away from
Speaker 3: each other, baby going back and forth.
Speaker 1: We're not she's working twelve hour days. I'm working twelve
Speaker 1: hour days, we're in different cities.
Speaker 5: We didn't see each other for six months of the
Speaker 5: year for a few years in a row, even more maybe,
Speaker 5: And that that takes a toll, you know, it just
Speaker 5: naturally it takes a toll. And you and I think
Speaker 5: that doesn't matter how much love.
Speaker 1: And respect you have. Sometimes time apart, you know, breeds
Speaker 1: different lives, two different lifestyles, two different lives to different
Speaker 1: thought processes, you know. And I just think we had
Speaker 1: it all and and we grew apart. Is the is
Speaker 1: the nicest way to put it. Man, I'm taking a
Speaker 1: shot for you, not for that forgot. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: and I don't. And honestly, in hindsight, it was the
Speaker 1: best it was. It was the right thing. Like, there's
Speaker 1: no regret there, if that's what you're asking.
Speaker 3: What I'm you know, what's the best thing about it
Speaker 3: is regardless he was right wrong, in between whatever, you
Speaker 3: didn't have a messy breakup to us outside looking at it, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: I looked at it like it was amicable.
Speaker 1: Well, you must have missed a fut stories I was trying. Honestly,
Speaker 1: we're way past all that. Her and I are excellent
Speaker 1: co parents.
Speaker 5: She's an amazing mother and I got you know what
Speaker 5: you there's luck in picking or being able to start
Speaker 5: a family with a woman of that quality. I know
Speaker 5: that my son has a great influence for the rest
Speaker 5: of his life. She has a great mother. She's a
Speaker 5: great mother, and so there's only positive things have come
Speaker 5: out from that sense.
Speaker 1: Damn man, God that he answered everything supposed to be
Speaker 1: a good way. That's where I only feel that way
Speaker 1: that's got matter is how your son comes out of And.
Speaker 5: One thing that that we can say at the time,
Speaker 5: she didn't want to have any more kids and I
Speaker 5: wanted to have many, And that's a that's an important
Speaker 5: factor in a relationship.
Speaker 1: You can here, no, I want it was different women.
Speaker 1: That's Nick Cannon here. I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 1: This is my friend. I cannot you at just wit
Speaker 1: you are all here busting in every day a TV show.
Speaker 5: She sees the What I love about Nick is there's
Speaker 5: he's got this bulletproof you know sense about himself, like
Speaker 5: he's just he's one of the most hard working, he's
Speaker 5: a great, one of the most helpful to his community,
Speaker 5: to everyone around him. Like he is just a solid
Speaker 5: upon solid so we all are laughing and enjoying this.
Speaker 5: But you know, him and I have had a serious conversation,
Speaker 5: like I am devoted, have devoted my life to my
Speaker 5: four kids. You get your spread yourself in and you
Speaker 5: do have a big heart like him.
Speaker 1: And you are a great.
Speaker 5: He's such a great guy and and you know it's
Speaker 5: it's hard to give all of that love that he
Speaker 5: has to everybody, you know.
Speaker 1: So we have spoken about that. But if anyone can
Speaker 1: do it, Nick Cannon can't. Let's take a shot to
Speaker 1: n anybody can. If anybody can do it, you can, Nick.
Speaker 3: God, Damn God, damn Nick Cannon. Whatever, Nick, wrap it up,
Speaker 3: super Nick.
Speaker 1: We love you. I get to play. Were doing it?
Speaker 1: Yoh on my one man? I got, I got, I
Speaker 1: got Okay, I still need a smoke breaks look at
Speaker 1: the picture. Okay, Yeah we can wrap it up. Okay,
Speaker 1: we spoke about love at the walk. I'm good. I
Speaker 1: think as long as it's okay, as long as he
Speaker 1: takes this, that's a fact. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I had this Yugoslavian billionaire fly me out to this
Speaker 5: southest south of Spain, to Barbia, right to work on
Speaker 5: his daughter's album.
Speaker 1: She was like fourteen years old, and and that was
Speaker 1: the first time I ever smoked cash. Half this fantastic.
Speaker 1: You know you're still listen, you still owe me. You
Speaker 1: gotta smoke, No, no, you gotta smoke. I know math, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know math, math too, and I know what I
Speaker 1: agree change it. I know math. Math. It's getting there yet,
Speaker 1: bet I'll tell you about it. Oh what's your what's your?
Speaker 1: What's what? What do you like more? Making the record
Speaker 1: or performing the record? Oh? They both have their joys
Speaker 1: the the we were doing it. You need to explain
Speaker 1: why both. Please explain.
Speaker 5: The creation of the record is a connection to God.
Speaker 5: It's something that is between me and God. The moment
Speaker 5: I'm at the piano, something's happening, the feeling comes.
Speaker 1: Through you, the words start to come through you.
Speaker 5: You know you're connected to something that's larger than you
Speaker 5: in some way. Because it's going to become larger than you.
Speaker 5: Somebody else will hear it, someone else will feel it.
Speaker 5: Ause you know it's that good. I don't feel that
Speaker 5: way about most songs. I do feel that way every
Speaker 5: once in a while, I'm writing a song and I
Speaker 5: know what I'm writing, and I know that it means
Speaker 5: that much to me, and if it means that much
Speaker 5: to me, it's going to mean that much to someone else.
Speaker 5: And so when it's pure that way, that's your moment
Speaker 5: with God as you flow the the.
Speaker 1: The feeling of being on stage is the feeling.
Speaker 5: Of community, of state, of family, of friendship, of connection.
Speaker 5: It's the It's the moment where you are connected to
Speaker 5: the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: But the creation is go straight up. The performance goes
Speaker 1: straight out and comes back. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Deepest ship ever.
Speaker 3: By the way you're a party to only gets worth
Speaker 3: both that you are you are you are drinking and
Speaker 3: getting deeper.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to trick you and it's not working well.
Speaker 5: I spend a lot of I'm working on myself, for
Speaker 5: better or worse, and that's what That's what the evolution
Speaker 5: of Robin Thick and a Lot and my last album
Speaker 5: was called On Earth and in Heaven because it was
Speaker 5: about the people. It was about losing Andre and my dad,
Speaker 5: the people that are in heaven and the people that
Speaker 5: are still here. So I'm constantly working on my place
Speaker 5: in this world, my place in my family, my place
Speaker 5: within myself. And that self analyzation sometimes makes you get stuck,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. You have to remind yourself
Speaker 5: to get out of it, because maybe you're doing too
Speaker 5: much inner work that you're not present with the people
Speaker 5: that are right there in front of you. So as
Speaker 5: an artist, I can sometimes be walking around and creating
Speaker 5: and working but not being present enough.
Speaker 1: So I try to balance it too, because as I'm
Speaker 1: hearing you talk, it just sounds like you work work, work, work,
Speaker 1: work work. What does a vacation I feel like even
Speaker 1: when I'm on vacation.
Speaker 5: I got my headphones, yeah, and my lyric pad, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean? Because that that means because it
Speaker 5: doesn't It just doesn't come enough. It doesn't come as
Speaker 5: much as it used to. I don't have as much time,
Speaker 5: and I don't I don't have as much space for creativity,
Speaker 5: thank you. So I try to remind myself to be
Speaker 5: ready for that lightning bolt, because that when that lightning
Speaker 5: bolt comes it usually I usually write the song in
Speaker 5: five to ten minutes, and the all the other ones
Speaker 5: take hours and hours and hours. But those lightning bolts
Speaker 5: that are pure and they might not even come for
Speaker 5: two years. It might take two years to have a
Speaker 5: lighting bolt, and then you get five in a row,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean. So I think you, just
Speaker 5: as an artist, you can also excuse yourself in the
Speaker 5: presence of others by saying you're creating, so it becomes
Speaker 5: an excuse.
Speaker 1: It can at times, it can.
Speaker 5: It can be a way to create some separation or
Speaker 5: space when I need it, because I I really do
Speaker 5: wake up every day trying to give to either give
Speaker 5: to the art, give to the family, give to your
Speaker 5: give to just give more than you ask for, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean, And then you end up receiving
Speaker 5: a lot because you're giving more than you're asking for.
Speaker 1: I don't know you're gonna leave, So let me ask you.
Speaker 1: They said a great artists have to go through pain.
Speaker 1: Is that something that you feel like you have to
Speaker 1: go through in order for you to make great music?
Speaker 1: You have to go through? Yeah? I think that. Are
Speaker 1: you a masochist? Because you know what we talked about
Speaker 1: this earlier.
Speaker 5: I think that I I don't mind swimming in it
Speaker 5: because I know that I'm I'm swimming in it for
Speaker 5: a purpose, for an end game. I'm swimming in it
Speaker 5: to make something from it that will make me feel
Speaker 5: better and will make others feel better, and because I've
Speaker 5: I've gotten to have that connection with the evolution.
Speaker 1: That album was so personal.
Speaker 5: Every lyric on that album was me literally trying to
Speaker 5: find myself, get through the fact that I had a
Speaker 5: failed album, and and everything that I that everyone told
Speaker 5: me was gonna happen didn't happen. We had this whole
Speaker 5: peak that was supposed Jimmy Ivy, Andre Herrel Puff Day,
Speaker 5: Naomi Campmel's at the sorry here comes the album, you.
Speaker 1: Know what I mean?
Speaker 5: And then so two years later, I'm doing yoga, I'm
Speaker 5: going through all, I'm doing therapy, I'm trying to figure
Speaker 5: and all that evolution of Robin Thick album was based
Speaker 5: on who am I if I'm not a star? Who
Speaker 5: am I if I'm not famous? Who can I love
Speaker 5: myself if I don't make it?
Speaker 1: And that that's why that album ended up resonating with
Speaker 1: a lot of people, because who are you if you're
Speaker 1: not important?
Speaker 3: I related to that so much. Let me just say
Speaker 3: tell you something. I had an album called Melon Flood
Speaker 3: the Hustlers, my first album. I feel like Prel had
Speaker 3: like the most part, like he did like seven records.
Speaker 3: Every other album probably did one or two. Unflint the
Speaker 3: Hustle came out, did three and a half mics in
Speaker 3: a sauce. If you don't get four mics, you don't
Speaker 3: go go, don't go platinum. I've went to a stated depression.
Speaker 3: It's it's like the third time I heard you say,
Speaker 3: I had an album that didn't work, and it was
Speaker 3: a great album. I had an album I didn't work,
Speaker 3: was Mom the Hustle. But guess what it worked later?
Speaker 3: Do you feel like the people were wrong or do
Speaker 3: you feel like you were wrong?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: No, I think that I think that some things are
Speaker 1: too soon, some things are you know, before their time.
Speaker 1: And and that's with the beauty of art.
Speaker 5: Is it a great movie and a great one of
Speaker 5: your songs will end up on a thing and it
Speaker 5: and then it gets another life for him and and
Speaker 5: and and it's only supposed to be appreciated by those
Speaker 5: that are that.
Speaker 1: It reaches, you know, and we can't reach everybody all
Speaker 1: the time. I'm sorry, I'm taking another shot. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: You gotta be wropped up like the going on.
Speaker 3: I'm just being honest because I heard I heard him
Speaker 3: saying that, and he said it three times, or maybe
Speaker 3: even more than three times, and you're like, yo, I
Speaker 3: how to artist? And the thing is, we still got
Speaker 3: to come outside when you have something that to the
Speaker 3: people's perception. Instead it didn't come out, and it didn't
Speaker 3: come we still got to come outside, and we still
Speaker 3: got to smile. We still have the smartestie being entertained
Speaker 3: of fameous going to you went too bad?
Speaker 1: Are you doing it? I got so.
Speaker 3: I appreciate you being so honest and being so humble
Speaker 3: about it saying that because we still got to be
Speaker 3: who we are. And these people thought that we had
Speaker 3: a failure moment, right right, So the fact that you
Speaker 3: kept saying that all night. One, you're not avoiding it,
Speaker 3: You're saying it straight up.
Speaker 1: And then two did this.
Speaker 3: Because my album that people thought fail eventually went eventually
Speaker 3: went platinum.
Speaker 5: I love this, it eventually went platinum. So this moment
Speaker 5: you're setting me up perfectly. We're talking about my first album.
Speaker 5: I believe my first album is my greatest artistic achievement.
Speaker 1: Wow. Did you believe it then? Though?
Speaker 5: And I did then and we all did and I
Speaker 5: still do, and and the fans and the friends and
Speaker 5: the and the peers. The fact that before evolution, before
Speaker 5: lost without you that ushered jay Z for real, Naomi
Speaker 5: Seal like Puff Daddy. They were all saying, you're this
Speaker 5: is great, this music is great. So that that was
Speaker 5: enough for me at the time. Then, because Jimmy spent
Speaker 5: so much money and it didn't hit, I was all scared.
Speaker 1: I had to go to the drawing board.
Speaker 5: I wrote all these that I just had this piano
Speaker 5: and it was just me at the piano, just drilling
Speaker 5: these songs one after the other, and then something magical happened.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you, though, did those same piers that
Speaker 2: told you was a great album did they change when
Speaker 2: the sales didn't reflect that.
Speaker 1: No, No, all the because they didn't need to. Like
Speaker 1: it's always it's always the B level people that are
Speaker 1: wishy washy. And you know, usually the people who are
Speaker 1: that great, they have so much confidence in themselves because
Speaker 1: they should that they can appreciate your greatness too. Jay
Speaker 1: Z knows he's great to be sounds great too, because
Speaker 1: I'm pretty great.
Speaker 5: Yes, But but I I've learned that the more the
Speaker 5: people accomplished and really truly have genuine confidence in themselves,
Speaker 5: they're okay telling you that you're great.
Speaker 2: Also, we've told I've told Nori plenty of times with
Speaker 2: men Flint that and a lot of people have told
Speaker 2: you we all thought it was an amazing album.
Speaker 1: He always was like, this is my worst album only
Speaker 1: because you created it. And I believe the fan. No, no,
Speaker 1: that's not what happened. You created that album in a
Speaker 1: in a difficult time for your life.
Speaker 3: Yes, right after my father was around where you should
Speaker 3: have said that. I was right after my father died.
Speaker 1: Dad gave me all this money and they told me
Speaker 1: you still got to perform, and I'm just carrying. When
Speaker 1: I was in the studio, I wasn't there. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about, like, why the does this happen? You know,
Speaker 1: I remember, please man, you were asking that we do
Speaker 1: it part two my father say that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, me hearing you say that, I would identify
Speaker 3: with you so much because one I could tell you
Speaker 3: still came outside.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what happened was the beauty of it.
Speaker 1: And that's what Andrea was teaching me at the time.
Speaker 1: Was I just wanted to paint.
Speaker 5: When I made the first album, I just I had
Speaker 5: so many ideas, so many desires that I wanted to
Speaker 5: be different from anyone who had ever existed.
Speaker 1: Period. I wanted to be the only me that ever happened,
Speaker 1: and that's what that album was about. The second album
Speaker 1: was about I didn't connect Somehow How do I connect?
Speaker 1: How do I tell a more personal story that will
Speaker 1: connect with people personally?
Speaker 5: Because the first album was sonically, you know, all in
Speaker 5: my opinion, sonically impressive production. But the lyrics on the
Speaker 5: second album is why is the loss without you? The
Speaker 5: complicated is the Angels to the sky? Cocaine? You know,
Speaker 5: got to be down lyric after lyric of I'm trying
Speaker 5: to connect with you. I reached out and I opened
Speaker 5: my arms and I wanted everybody to hug me back,
Speaker 5: and that's what that album was.
Speaker 1: Well, let me just tell you something. This was a pleasure.
Speaker 1: I've really, I really, I've really had my expectations up here.
Speaker 1: But you just through the roof around the corner. We're
Speaker 1: on a fire hydrant. A compliment. I'm just being honest
Speaker 1: and you and you guys, you guys are the best
Speaker 1: at this. So that's very nice. What you did above
Speaker 1: and beyond.
Speaker 3: Your story is so beautiful and you got to continue
Speaker 3: telling it because I'm just saying, this ship is great.
Speaker 5: Well, this is the most stories I've ever told in
Speaker 5: one you know, because I've seen this, I've seen you guys,
Speaker 5: and I see the way you talk, and I see
Speaker 5: how real it is, and I know your story. I'm
Speaker 5: a fan of yours and what you're doing now and
Speaker 5: just being real and being yourself on the daily and
Speaker 5: letting people into your world and your heart as a
Speaker 5: big tough man who's you know, hit pop game, and
Speaker 5: you're sharing your heart in your world. And so I
Speaker 5: felt safe here and I felt like, you know, this
Speaker 5: was a place where I could tell these I ain't
Speaker 5: gonna lie.
Speaker 1: Thank you. I appreciate it, thank you, No, I appreciate man. Man.
Speaker 1: Let me just be honest with you.
Speaker 3: You really opened up you really, you really didn't hold
Speaker 3: back on nothing. And that's really dope because you are
Speaker 3: a rock star, superstar.
Speaker 1: Take that, honey, your royalty, you take that, honey, rock star.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get points. I'm gonna get points at home, man,
Speaker 1: and we respect the ship out of you with.
Speaker 2: Drink Champs is a Drink Champs LLC production in association
Speaker 2: with Interval Presents. Hosts and executive producers n O.
Speaker 1: R E and d J. E.
Speaker 2: F N from Interval Presents Executive producers Alan Coy and
Speaker 2: Jake Kleinberg. Listen to Drink Champs on Apple pot, Amazon Music, Spotify, Stitcher,
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us
Speaker 2: for another episode of Drink Champs, hosted by Yours Truly,
Speaker 2: dj e f N and n O r E. Please
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