Speaker 1: Of Course Love Supreme is a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of Course Love Supreme. Yo,
Speaker 1: man dog, I ain't got time to waste, Steve, I'm
Speaker 1: forgetting many questions to even start with the seven minute tribute.
Speaker 1: You already know you're the man, Robaila. Okay, I'll start
Speaker 1: with Okay, of course, I believe I knew that you
Speaker 1: were born in Oakland. I don't know, but tell me
Speaker 1: where were you born? I was actually born in Oakland, California. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: right in East Suckland Hating Hospital. I'm born and raised.
Speaker 1: The rest of my family is from Louisiana, from Louisiana,
Speaker 1: Sweet Port, Louisiana. And I'm the only out of fourteen,
Speaker 1: I'm the only city slicker that was born in the city. Wait,
Speaker 1: you have thirteen other siblings? Yeah? Are you the year
Speaker 1: of the baby? A baby boy? But I have a
Speaker 1: sister that's younger than me. What is it that like
Speaker 1: in the household? Well, everybody wasn't the household. It was
Speaker 1: it was a little bit of your dad. It's a
Speaker 1: little bit of that. But we were like, uh, my
Speaker 1: father has some kids before he married my mom, before
Speaker 1: he's my mom and then you know my brother Duayne,
Speaker 1: he had a different mother, So me and Dwayne have
Speaker 1: different mothers. Okay, got you bind the family? Yeah? Is
Speaker 1: the entire family musically inclined or just you and Duayne? No, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a few of us. My brother Randy, as you
Speaker 1: probably heard him seeing on a record called Holy Smokes
Speaker 1: and Gee whiz Y. That's that's the real talent in
Speaker 1: the in the family. We were all like an afterthought
Speaker 1: when he came to music. We just kind of snuck
Speaker 1: in there a little bit. Where does Randy fall into
Speaker 1: the bruce? He's like the He's like the fourth from
Speaker 1: the oldest. He's like another brother named Alvey Wiggins. Who's
Speaker 1: uh he's saying country music. Charlie Pry was his favorite
Speaker 1: uh uh singer. So he was a country singer, but
Speaker 1: he was he was a street thug though he he
Speaker 1: was a real hardcore He was not no thunk. He
Speaker 1: was a classy like gangster, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But he was he's saying country music. Yeah, this explains
Speaker 1: a lot of your wait, where does where does that?
Speaker 1: Where does Dwayne fall in line with you? Wayne's Dwayne
Speaker 1: is we had another brother in between me and Duanne
Speaker 1: named Desmond. Desmond was the drummer in the family, and
Speaker 1: Desmond passed away when I was seventeen years old. And
Speaker 1: the Wayne is the older than him, one a couple
Speaker 1: of years older than Desmond, So Dwayne would be Dwayne
Speaker 1: would be like the six youngest boy. Okay, that's confused,
Speaker 1: And actually I started thinking about it like that. I'm
Speaker 1: like totally confused. Okay, So I know Thanksgiving and Christmas
Speaker 1: has been hell of crazy. Yeah, it was actually good
Speaker 1: because you know, it's just a lot of music in
Speaker 1: the house and a lot of Teddy. You know, my
Speaker 1: step mom loved Teddy Pendergrass and Osley Brothers. So that's
Speaker 1: where we that's where our guitar stuff comes from because
Speaker 1: we get to stay outside as long as we could.
Speaker 1: If you know, if they if they was having a
Speaker 1: little party, but in the house, it will be Teddy
Speaker 1: Pendergrass and it'd be uh Osly brother So this is
Speaker 1: the first time I got a chance to say ship
Speaker 1: was on Fight to Power Fun Parents. What what is
Speaker 1: your actual first musical memory that you I think for me,
Speaker 1: I was like a kid who like who had you know,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to be outside playing with individuals
Speaker 1: and your friends and I'm not really great friends and um,
Speaker 1: but I think mine was when I first got my
Speaker 1: first UM based amplifier. I had this uh unifox and
Speaker 1: I had a copy fended jazz called the Orlando, and
Speaker 1: I opened up the case and I thought it was
Speaker 1: real fur. I thought I was rich because I had
Speaker 1: this basic guitarist fur. It was this fur inside of it.
Speaker 1: That was my first musical experiment experience really, And then
Speaker 1: I played trump. I played first trumbone and jazz man too,
Speaker 1: So I wanted to play saxophone, but they I wanted
Speaker 1: to play saxophone but didn't have anymore. What ages this again?
Speaker 1: This isn't just in grade school? Well, grade school I
Speaker 1: was just starting to play. But by the time I
Speaker 1: got to high school, I sat in the first chair
Speaker 1: playing trumbone. Okay, So I mean, what what is it
Speaker 1: like to grow up in Oakland? Um? Kind of watching?
Speaker 1: You know, at least from my point of view. You know,
Speaker 1: the legend of Oakland is it's slid on the family
Speaker 1: Stone and Graham Central Station and Taro Power and all
Speaker 1: all these like powerful musicians that are making like you know,
Speaker 1: they're international stars. Like what kind of impression is that
Speaker 1: leaving on you? For me, it was it was everything
Speaker 1: because we're basically a Larry Graham was more of the
Speaker 1: idol for for me because I'm a bass player, right
Speaker 1: but right, so, you know, like one block you would have,
Speaker 1: you know, a band plan and it was a band
Speaker 1: in every garage everywhere we looked. It was like Natty
Speaker 1: Natalie Cole had a band that was played in Oakland.
Speaker 1: So when they were off and not touring, they would
Speaker 1: be playing in the garage. So Willie Wild who played
Speaker 1: with Graham, Central Station, and we would see like you know,
Speaker 1: Larry Graham and Um, you know, riding through the neighborhood
Speaker 1: on the Harley Davidson and then slide. That was their thing,
Speaker 1: rides like Harley's, like the Choppers, the Short Choppers, and
Speaker 1: so they were like our comic books characters for us
Speaker 1: because I saw all we knew was like it was
Speaker 1: almost like a like MCS, like Rappers. It was like
Speaker 1: Battle the Bands. It was Battle Battle Rappers, Battle Battle
Speaker 1: of the Band's Battle Base players. If you couldn't play
Speaker 1: like um the jam or the Son called pile on
Speaker 1: the base, how I got you that's a head country
Speaker 1: and going to rock. I got that you will get
Speaker 1: yours wrong. I mean everybody in our neighborhood. Everybody in
Speaker 1: our neighborhood to play base, our our guitar or drums.
Speaker 1: So I was about ten or eleven. You were walking
Speaker 1: into a garage and the band was playing. Somebody would say, hey,
Speaker 1: my little brother could play bass. So you you couldn't
Speaker 1: really get on the base unless you knew how to
Speaker 1: play pile, because somebody was gonna test you out. They
Speaker 1: were gonna that was gonna say, and you play pile
Speaker 1: and then you have to do like this, like yeah,
Speaker 1: as soon as you say yes, they only give you
Speaker 1: two seconds before the drummer just kick it off. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute. This is how I knew you're a special individual.
Speaker 1: Literally last week. Last week the roots like did our
Speaker 1: like our first run in in like eighteen months. And
Speaker 1: so I don't know how, but I think, uh, one
Speaker 1: of the one of these songs from star Walk came on.
Speaker 1: I think it was Sneaky Freak, and my band was
Speaker 1: asking me about it, and the way I was putting
Speaker 1: it to them was I was like, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to accurately judge Larry Graham's cannon because I know,
Speaker 1: like hit wise, you know, the first three gram Central
Speaker 1: Station albums were like national hits like up until Ain't
Speaker 1: no about to doubt it, but somehow it got a
Speaker 1: little weird around not or Mirror was like a hit.
Speaker 1: I remember that being a hit when I was a kid.
Speaker 1: But it's something about now do you want to dance?
Speaker 1: And my radio sounds good to me? And the star
Speaker 1: Walk album albums that didn't have hits on them, but
Speaker 1: every from Prince to every musician I know, they swear
Speaker 1: by those three records. And we were watching Graham Central
Speaker 1: Station do pow last week and we were kind of
Speaker 1: I was I was laughing because I was like, I
Speaker 1: know this is good, but it wasn't a hit. So
Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out, like, am I the only
Speaker 1: one that got this song? And you mentioned so you're
Speaker 1: saying to me in Oakland that song is a writer
Speaker 1: of passage to everybody. I mean, I mean you could
Speaker 1: walk up to a guy in Oakland and I have
Speaker 1: a friend named Lord Nell and I didn't know this,
Speaker 1: and um and um, he's just one day he asked
Speaker 1: me what I know about Larry Graham and I'm like
Speaker 1: looking at him like what this dude. All this dude say,
Speaker 1: he's a security guy stand quin in prison. That's all
Speaker 1: I know about him. He just goes but they'll smoke
Speaker 1: a mama, And I'm like so and Oakland and and
Speaker 1: oh Glinn, Larry is bigger than then this slid. Larry
Speaker 1: is like Larry is like um. When I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I went I was going on the snow trip and
Speaker 1: Tahoe and I went to buy some mittens like ten
Speaker 1: or eleven. And I was walking the store called Lungs Drugs.
Speaker 1: It's in Saliandro and I walk in the store. I
Speaker 1: walk in the grocery store in Larry Graham and Chockolate
Speaker 1: is getting out of a black Thunderberg suicide doors with
Speaker 1: the wig on, with the album released. How they looked
Speaker 1: and release yourself when they're in the air jumping up
Speaker 1: to sitting there is that Larry Graham. Wo So I
Speaker 1: started following him around the grocery store, looking through boxes
Speaker 1: and and everything. So before he walks out, I run
Speaker 1: out and said at the bus stop right in front
Speaker 1: of the store. But I'm not looking back at him.
Speaker 1: I'm just looking at the street. So Larry and Chocolate
Speaker 1: walk up to me in front of bus stop and
Speaker 1: look dead at me and go how are you doing?
Speaker 1: And I'm like freaking out, Like it's like a Star
Speaker 1: Wars moment for me. I should not go like and
Speaker 1: I go, are you Larry Graham? He was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm Larry Graham. It's a chocolate And I was like
Speaker 1: freaking out. Bro. So yeah, he was like a superhero
Speaker 1: to us. But Pop, you have to answer your question.
Speaker 1: How the jam David dynamite? But what about earthquake? Earthquake? Um?
Speaker 1: They were trying to destroy their base with the towel
Speaker 1: and all that stuff that year. And if you listen
Speaker 1: to sit today the song today, right, So we used
Speaker 1: to sit in the room as kids and just sit
Speaker 1: by the turntable and wait for that bill to go off.
Speaker 1: Every time we let somebody hear that song, we would
Speaker 1: never let them leave for the first time into the
Speaker 1: bell rings all the way out. When I let D'Angelo
Speaker 1: here today for the first time, I made D'Angelo listened
Speaker 1: to it, to the bill win all the way off,
Speaker 1: because that's how we kind of grew up. Everybody had
Speaker 1: to listen to the bill the first time. Dog, what's
Speaker 1: rain for? Like? What three minutes. That's what I was
Speaker 1: For those who don't know about the song, he's saying
Speaker 1: for three minutes. You know, I'm also hating that I'm
Speaker 1: having this conversation because I think I was ready to
Speaker 1: just dismiss it because one of the one of the
Speaker 1: one of the playlists that I have or my Spotify
Speaker 1: is called Songs and and E Minor and Songs and
Speaker 1: the Minor that I hate. I know for bass players
Speaker 1: like E Minor is like a rite of passage key,
Speaker 1: but for me, it's like unless you're trying to top
Speaker 1: the Jam or shigning Star or thank you for let
Speaker 1: Me be Myself like or or a song like Glide,
Speaker 1: like I almost feel like that's such a taboo key
Speaker 1: for bass players. But yet like the amount of songs
Speaker 1: that I hear people trying to attempt to to hop
Speaker 1: that Jump, that Cliff that film and Louise Cliff and
Speaker 1: they never make it. Now now you got me, Like,
Speaker 1: now I gotta go back and reconsider that just because
Speaker 1: it's it means something in Oakland. That's that's very true.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean I can't I've never I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever wrote a song that was worth anything
Speaker 1: any Minor. I care from Oakland. I don't think you
Speaker 1: is that even on purpose, Like I just don't think.
Speaker 1: I just don't every time I don't. I heard, I
Speaker 1: mean I heard through the grapevine that you know, um
Speaker 1: through one of my friends. Um she does does she
Speaker 1: does that. She has a podcast What what What? Most Steps? Mom?
Speaker 1: Um and UM erica' connor and and she talked to
Speaker 1: you spoke to your mom, I think, and they said
Speaker 1: you had perfect your mom's that you have perfect pitch
Speaker 1: as a kid. Yeah, so I only have perfect pitch
Speaker 1: for a natural because of Larry Graham. Wow. Anything past that,
Speaker 1: I'm done. You tell me because I played every every
Speaker 1: Graham song and I could just now I know where
Speaker 1: I'm Yeah, I mean I based all my things on
Speaker 1: whatever the song is. You know, like if you say
Speaker 1: b Minor, I just instantly think, don't stop the year enough.
Speaker 1: If you say it's also based on the print of
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson's on g I'm like, oh, that's shake your
Speaker 1: body down to the ground, So it's not. And even
Speaker 1: I spoke to Billy Graham one time I was hanging
Speaker 1: outside of Oakland collis in. I think you meant Reverend
Speaker 1: Billy Graham. I'm like, well, no, Bill Graham, the proter,
Speaker 1: the promoter. He saw me trying to sneak in this concert.
Speaker 1: He left me in the concert and he's said, are
Speaker 1: you musician? I said yes, And he says, what do you?
Speaker 1: What do you play outside of play bass? Who's your
Speaker 1: favorite musician? I said Larry Graham. He said Larry would
Speaker 1: be much better if you stopped making battle records and
Speaker 1: so and by him saying that, who know I was
Speaker 1: gonna be ever making records? I didn't know. I never
Speaker 1: tried to be a singer or anything. I just want
Speaker 1: to play in the band. I never wanted to be
Speaker 1: a singer. I never wanted to be a lead singer.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to play for a band and work
Speaker 1: at a record store. That was probably it. And um,
Speaker 1: but once he said that I started making music, it
Speaker 1: always stayed in my head. Never tried to be a
Speaker 1: battle band trying to make records. That makes sense because
Speaker 1: even his songs were about how good of a band
Speaker 1: we are and you'll never get to this level of
Speaker 1: perfection that I'm iNTS to battist group from East to West.
Speaker 1: What was it like the first time you got Larry
Speaker 1: Graham's ere for real. When when I first got his yere,
Speaker 1: I was I was at Eddie Murphy's house and he
Speaker 1: was hanging out with Eddie Murphy and I'm like wow.
Speaker 1: So he was just yeah, he was hanging out in
Speaker 1: the garage. It was just me and him in the garage,
Speaker 1: and I was like, Okay, when am I going to
Speaker 1: break this to this dude? Did I've been like the
Speaker 1: stalking my whole life and I'm because we're talking on
Speaker 1: some creeens, just real cool, and I was just like,
Speaker 1: forget it. Here we go. We're sitting in the garage
Speaker 1: next to some jet skis. I said, hey, man, I
Speaker 1: grew up in Oakland. I was in a band with
Speaker 1: your son, Derek Graham and um in my high school band.
Speaker 1: He was like really, I said, yeah, man, I played bass,
Speaker 1: so I didn't have a bass on me. I had
Speaker 1: an acoustic. So I tried to play something on acoustic
Speaker 1: that was his and it just didn't work. Tony didn't
Speaker 1: mean anything to him at that time. He I think
Speaker 1: he knew about the Tonys, but he didn't know when
Speaker 1: I played bass. Remember, nobody thought I was like everybody dance,
Speaker 1: you know, Nobody knew that I was only made to
Speaker 1: play Base because when we first came out, there were
Speaker 1: no bands out and and everybody wanted us to be like,
Speaker 1: you know, we had to compete with Guy and everybody
Speaker 1: was out. So I had to put the base down
Speaker 1: and had to become this other thing. So nobody really
Speaker 1: knew me for playing bass, which I felt like Lioness
Speaker 1: and Charlie Brown like, I put down my security blanket,
Speaker 1: which was what's what's my base? That made me feel
Speaker 1: very manly and tough and made me feel all these
Speaker 1: different things. So when I put it down and became
Speaker 1: and had to sing, I wasn't really confident about singing,
Speaker 1: so he would have no way of knowing that I
Speaker 1: was a bass player even though I played. I played
Speaker 1: all the records on the base on based on the
Speaker 1: Tony's album Wow. Got Graham in my studio and Blastlee
Speaker 1: and he came over and I got on the base,
Speaker 1: and I completely cannot play base in front of Ground.
Speaker 1: It hasn't worked yet. Everything on I tried to play,
Speaker 1: I was like bro for some reason, it just stopped
Speaker 1: working right now, so I just left it alone. But
Speaker 1: when he leaves, I'm like killing it. You got mine
Speaker 1: control over Larry Graham. Yeah, stop talking, Yeah we we.
Speaker 1: He played on my album, like two albums ago. We
Speaker 1: did a slung together it's a hiding track and I
Speaker 1: played guitar and Rob Bacon play guitar and he played
Speaker 1: bass and he played right in front of me, and
Speaker 1: I was just sitting there. I was playing guitar, like
Speaker 1: this is crazy. And still you ain't playing bass in
Speaker 1: front of him. Damn wow. I think I sat in
Speaker 1: front of Slide and um Slide and and and George
Speaker 1: Clinton maybe two times, and this is weird. Every time
Speaker 1: I get around Slide it's weird too. I kind of
Speaker 1: just staring Slide and I have to leave because I'm
Speaker 1: like this dude is like right. I just kind of
Speaker 1: walked out and George says, George told Slide he said, uh,
Speaker 1: he said, yeah, boy did. He said, that's the answer
Speaker 1: to you right here in Oakland. It's me. He said,
Speaker 1: that's about me. And I was sitting there looking at
Speaker 1: them because I'm friends with his daughter, and I was like,
Speaker 1: all this greatness in the room, George and the Slot.
Speaker 1: It was actually sitting in the mobile home in front
Speaker 1: of Eddie Murphy's house for two hours, and so Eddie goes,
Speaker 1: who is that in that in that mobile home? And
Speaker 1: I goes and you' nobody was uh uh slide slide,
Speaker 1: And George and Eddie started laughing. But I knew it
Speaker 1: was them. They just sat in the in the in
Speaker 1: the in the mobile home for two hours before they
Speaker 1: walked in. What was they doing? You know? This was
Speaker 1: this is no longer getting this is maybe four or
Speaker 1: five years ago. Okay, gee yeah, yeah, he together, man,
Speaker 1: I can see all this for hours. We gotta push
Speaker 1: a little bit. Um. Before you started the group, I
Speaker 1: know that you you you cut your teeth, uh playing
Speaker 1: with bands, and I know that why I knew of
Speaker 1: you because of your association with Sheila. But what acts
Speaker 1: were you playing with? Was she like like the first
Speaker 1: national act that you got to and how that situation happened?
Speaker 1: Was there anyone before that? No? Really before that, I
Speaker 1: was I was playing locally. Um that really started to Tony's.
Speaker 1: I played a lot of local bands and I played
Speaker 1: I played for the Hawkins family a bit. Yeah. Joel
Speaker 1: Smith was sort of my um my idol bass player.
Speaker 1: He passed away one of the best bass players in
Speaker 1: the world and drummers and Um, besides you. You you're
Speaker 1: probably my one of my best favorite basing drummers. I
Speaker 1: tell everybody said one thing about Quest. No bass player
Speaker 1: can hey on Quest. If you play bass, you should
Speaker 1: just murder him. Because the kids una understand that I
Speaker 1: had is It's like what I used to look for
Speaker 1: as a kid. I would knock on if I hear
Speaker 1: a drummer in the house, I would knock on the
Speaker 1: door and say, hey man, I'll play bass. That's how
Speaker 1: I grew up. So I started playing with the Hawkins family.
Speaker 1: I played with the Nette Hawkins. I played with Shirley Miller,
Speaker 1: I played with Vanessa Bill Armstrong, and then I started
Speaker 1: playing with Sheila and eight six audition. Levi caesar Um
Speaker 1: got me the gig. He called me and said, you
Speaker 1: know you want auditioned for Sheiley and Eddie six audition
Speaker 1: And we went on on the Cherry Moon tour in Japan,
Speaker 1: and when Lisa was still playing with where in Japan?
Speaker 1: Well the way that he fired the revolution After Purple Rain,
Speaker 1: it finally made the Internet. It's it's the Clippers on
Speaker 1: the Internet. But there's a moment where Wendy and Lisa
Speaker 1: say they knew that they knew the band was over.
Speaker 1: He took the cloud guitar and and destroyed it on stage,
Speaker 1: walked off stage, came back, did another solo, and then
Speaker 1: destroyed that Cloud guitar. And then when they and Lisa
Speaker 1: and Bobby looked at each other and it's like, yeah
Speaker 1: it's over, it was over. So yeah, it was pretty
Speaker 1: It was pretty much over on that tour. But you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I was like eighteen years old, so
Speaker 1: I just had a good time hanging out with Like
Speaker 1: Cobby was a sound guy, um round Mark. I used
Speaker 1: to get play out of his rig and and because
Speaker 1: the band was breaking up, Prince would use us to
Speaker 1: play all the after gigs. So I would play like
Speaker 1: You Need Another Lover or the whole album. Um every
Speaker 1: club Prince would call us to play instead of them.
Speaker 1: Is that why one of our listeners asked me to
Speaker 1: ask you about the opportunity to be in Princess band.
Speaker 1: Was it from them? Well, I was. I was gonna
Speaker 1: be an original band from Madhouse, the group called Madhouse
Speaker 1: joint right. It wanted to be in being a band
Speaker 1: called Madhouse. But when we heard the band was going
Speaker 1: be wearing like mask over their face, which would have
Speaker 1: could have been dope. We had already sort of formed
Speaker 1: because at the time it was me and Tim to him.
Speaker 1: Tim Riley who played with the Tony's, he was a
Speaker 1: drummer and Um, I got the gig first, and then
Speaker 1: Sheila was like, don't bring back a drummer. I brought
Speaker 1: to him back anyway, he auditioned and and my friend
Speaker 1: Carl Wheeler, he played keyboards, and all three of us went.
Speaker 1: We rehearsed for like two months, fifteen hours a day.
Speaker 1: Prince hired us to play for it because he was
Speaker 1: paying the bills basically, and I was seeing his parts
Speaker 1: in Erotic City. He would say stuff to me. But
Speaker 1: the first time he walked up to us, he he
Speaker 1: walked up to us with a yellow suit on, and
Speaker 1: they came and he walks out and he goes, um,
Speaker 1: what's your name? And you know, everybody said he name,
Speaker 1: and then he goes, Hi, Prince. We're looking like, oh ship,
Speaker 1: I mean we're in the middle of this, We're in
Speaker 1: the middle of the stadium, like all this sound. I've
Speaker 1: never heard this much power before. Because when we came out,
Speaker 1: it was like when he came out, he would come
Speaker 1: out around the world in the day and the curtains
Speaker 1: would just be that the Yeah, And so I was
Speaker 1: sitting I was sitting in a baseball dugout, which is
Speaker 1: a folded like makes a folded cat movie, so you
Speaker 1: can hear all the base and I'll just say the
Speaker 1: Revolution was the best band he ever had, except you know,
Speaker 1: I wish you, you know, death Daz would have been there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was it. That was pretty much at school high school.
Speaker 1: I played in jazz band, I played for choirs, I
Speaker 1: played gospel, I played funk, I play every club there was.
Speaker 1: And then it was then right off the back, it
Speaker 1: was Prince and she like, look, I feel like this
Speaker 1: is probably the only time I me get the opportunity
Speaker 1: to ask you. And you know, I'm a print head,
Speaker 1: but you already mentioned the Hawkins family, and I just
Speaker 1: literally like, I, what is what is that circuit? Like
Speaker 1: like that whole hospool circuit in in in the Hawkins.
Speaker 1: Was it Walter or Edwin? It was Walter at this
Speaker 1: at this time, it was more Walter that Edwin is
Speaker 1: the pioneer who you know kind of produced that the
Speaker 1: version of Old Happy Days because that's really an old song,
Speaker 1: but he actually reproduced it his way, But honestly, playing
Speaker 1: for playing for like the Hawkins family for us was
Speaker 1: that's equivalent to like Tower power in Oakland. You know
Speaker 1: we had Tower power then we had the Hawkins family
Speaker 1: and they were the whole circuit. They were the whole gamute.
Speaker 1: If you want to play gospel, that was the biggest god.
Speaker 1: Besides you know, if you go down a little south,
Speaker 1: you've got Andre Crouch. Did you play with Crouch at all? No? No,
Speaker 1: justink my I'm a huge fan and I listened to
Speaker 1: him like every every week. I listen to Dre Crouch.
Speaker 1: But it's it's a big circuit. It was. It was
Speaker 1: great music every Sunday morning every week. Uh. Right next
Speaker 1: to to my high school was Love Centers First Church
Speaker 1: where they recorded like follow Me in all these records.
Speaker 1: So we would go to we would go to lunch
Speaker 1: and we will listen to Joel Smith and Um Johnson
Speaker 1: the boast rehearse at lunchtime. What yeah, How was the
Speaker 1: money's gospel money? How's gospel money? As a teenager in
Speaker 1: a band, how's the gospel money? Man? Let me tell
Speaker 1: you something. I'm never worried about no money in the
Speaker 1: music industry till now wait what now, I donunderstand. I
Speaker 1: don't understand how much I love music. I made money
Speaker 1: being an artist now, but I play so many gigs
Speaker 1: because I love music. You know, whatever money I got Oakland,
Speaker 1: Hey man, if he wasn't getting murdered or killed when
Speaker 1: you wake up, everyone else is extra. I mean, we
Speaker 1: used to. We had our sound managed to cost the Tony's.
Speaker 1: Our sound managed to cost us a hundred and fifty dollars,
Speaker 1: and we was making a hundred and fifty dollars playing
Speaker 1: the clubs we just had. We just got rid of
Speaker 1: the idle time that we didn't need to be hanging
Speaker 1: out in the street because we were. We pretty much
Speaker 1: just not no band. Dudes, if you're in Oakland, you
Speaker 1: gotta do Oakland things too. When to you know, til
Speaker 1: you get done with doing Oakland things? Okay? Since Too
Speaker 1: Short was on the show and he kind of outed
Speaker 1: himself as a nerd disguise as a gangster, we what
Speaker 1: was I mean, how did how did you? Because I'm
Speaker 1: I'm thinking that that life chooses you like you don't
Speaker 1: have a choice to say I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: that or I will do that, because I feel like
Speaker 1: that life chooses you, like, you don't have a choice
Speaker 1: but to walk past this corner and past this group
Speaker 1: and either get jumped in or beat down whatever. Like,
Speaker 1: how did you avoid what I know to be Oakland?
Speaker 1: Because Oakland is probably want to be Rasies. I mean
Speaker 1: the Bay Area in general, especially when we first started
Speaker 1: going there, like in the nineties, so I know that
Speaker 1: in the eighties and in the seventies. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: you're forever gonna look thirty six, So I don't know
Speaker 1: how old you are, but I know although you look
Speaker 1: like old as hell? What was it I avoided? Because
Speaker 1: you know, like I have a lot of families from Chicago,
Speaker 1: a lot of family in Chicago on the South Side
Speaker 1: and the West Side, and and you know, your your
Speaker 1: parents on the phone, you're hearing about everything just happened
Speaker 1: to your family. And also with all those brothers and sisters.
Speaker 1: I lost three brothers and sisters. On one of my
Speaker 1: brothers committed suicide. One of my brothers, Alvi got was murdered,
Speaker 1: and my other's sister hit by a car some cop
Speaker 1: running from a kid, uh a kid running from a
Speaker 1: copy this car or kill my sister at permanent brain damage.
Speaker 1: It when you see trauma like that, you know, and
Speaker 1: you've My father would say to me all the time.
Speaker 1: He was like, if you see somebody um when my
Speaker 1: brother killed himself because he couldn't get off dope. So
Speaker 1: my father was saying, if you see somebody shooting the
Speaker 1: gun and wrapid rapid fire, what you're gonna do? At
Speaker 1: this point, I was so young, I don't even know
Speaker 1: what rapp it men. And I said, I'm gonna turn
Speaker 1: around and go the other way. That's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: He was just so frustrated. And he also said, if
Speaker 1: you know, when you go to jail, it's a very
Speaker 1: difficult thing. Down there is a system. It's hard to understand.
Speaker 1: And you know, so when I do know one thing,
Speaker 1: they give you one phone call. So I if you
Speaker 1: go to jail, I think you should call somebody to
Speaker 1: understand that system because I don't know anything about it.
Speaker 1: And that's what KEPT mean, I'm not coming for you.
Speaker 1: And my father wasn't only want to carry a pocket
Speaker 1: full of money, a water full of money. So with that,
Speaker 1: and and how much I love music, I will I'll
Speaker 1: say that you know instrumentation musicians like earth wind and Fire,
Speaker 1: and you know even like the mom was, the pop
Speaker 1: was all the music I used here in Berkeley and
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and the hippie stuff that I used to
Speaker 1: here in all the gospel. It really saved my life.
Speaker 1: So when I when I run into people like Rest
Speaker 1: in Peace, like Maurice White, and I see Verdine and
Speaker 1: those guys, I just tell them you basically saved my
Speaker 1: life about making great music because it kept me in
Speaker 1: my room making music, making music. But on the other side,
Speaker 1: I felt like my life was like the the narration
Speaker 1: of the movie City of Gods. Like I was with
Speaker 1: I was like the kid with the camera. I had
Speaker 1: a moped and I would ride around Oakland. I would
Speaker 1: witness some murderers because I was everywhere. I would see stuff.
Speaker 1: I would keep going and I would be listening to
Speaker 1: in my headphones and my Sony walking in with a cassette.
Speaker 1: I'll be listening to Ronnie run to Russia. Ron didn't
Speaker 1: run to the Russia before It's too late, you know,
Speaker 1: But that nobody knew what I'd be listening to. And
Speaker 1: um so between the hood of everybody listening to Needy
Speaker 1: and Funkadelic and everything, my neighborhood was listening. My neighborhood
Speaker 1: was big on funkadelic, right, So I think the music
Speaker 1: sort of like you said, the street is the street.
Speaker 1: The streets could be your father and your mother. But
Speaker 1: my father was my father, my mother was my mother,
Speaker 1: and music was like my god. Parents. Can I have
Speaker 1: the word, because um, I know most parents I know
Speaker 1: well sort of drift towards safety more than pursuing a dream.
Speaker 1: So assuming that you know you're that you were passionate
Speaker 1: about your your your musical pursuits were your parents and
Speaker 1: like encouraging and nurturing on that end, or were they
Speaker 1: just like nah boyd like go to post office, get
Speaker 1: a job. Like my mother was like get you fifty
Speaker 1: years in over at the Highland Hospital and you're my age,
Speaker 1: you can retire. Uh. My father was a little bit um.
Speaker 1: My father could play guitar a little bit. He could
Speaker 1: see my dad kind of seeking like Sam Cook. But
Speaker 1: my dad was just like I used to work in
Speaker 1: you you know, in the parcel for for a minute,
Speaker 1: I had all kind of like I had jobs. I
Speaker 1: was doing landscaping. It was another like you couldn't be
Speaker 1: at my house and and tell somebody you're gonna be
Speaker 1: a start and leave me alone. That ship was not
Speaker 1: gonna lie. So uh, I think my father told me
Speaker 1: when I told him I got this gig, he just
Speaker 1: told me said, hey, if you want to, if you could,
Speaker 1: because everybody was saying, you know, church people, you're going
Speaker 1: to here because you're playing R and B, and my
Speaker 1: dad would stay son the church KYFG is the same
Speaker 1: key as R, R and B, the same KYRG. If
Speaker 1: you don't, if you want to, if that scares you,
Speaker 1: I got some work for you at it's a naval
Speaker 1: air you know, if you've been come and work here.
Speaker 1: But other than that, I just I think I got
Speaker 1: a job playing this gig at this club called Lucky
Speaker 1: Lion with this band. And I told my father because
Speaker 1: I bust my fingers at ups, I bust three of
Speaker 1: my fingers on the conveyor belt and then my nails
Speaker 1: came right off. I quit because I didn't want to.
Speaker 1: You know, they had these safety working days, and if
Speaker 1: you're ringing the bell, you mess up the whole staff
Speaker 1: safety working days. I tried to hold it for a minute,
Speaker 1: but when the nails came out hit the alarm, called
Speaker 1: my dad and said, I got this gig. I wanna
Speaker 1: do this gig up and my dad said, well, don't
Speaker 1: tell your mom. Do not tell your mother. If you
Speaker 1: need some money, call me. And I never had to
Speaker 1: call him because I had those little undred fifty dollar gigs.
Speaker 1: But my mother didn't find out that I quit that
Speaker 1: job until she saw me on the Tonys on arseni
Speaker 1: or Hall Wow, And what did she say? She did?
Speaker 1: My mother didn't know I could sing. She she know,
Speaker 1: she knew, she saw me kind of thing. Unf I mean,
Speaker 1: but that's not Nobody knew I could sing. Nobody in
Speaker 1: my high school because I was singing at home. You
Speaker 1: don't mess around. But my mother didn't realize that I
Speaker 1: wasn't working at you ups until she turned to Arsenio
Speaker 1: on it was Tony Tony an Tony and I was all,
Speaker 1: you know, going for it, dog, yo, man, you don't
Speaker 1: even know between between your love of pal and that story.
Speaker 1: No one believes me when I tell my dad wanted
Speaker 1: to say that my dad didn't know about the Roots
Speaker 1: until our our second album. They're like, yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: hide that ship yo, Wow hid you can't. It's none
Speaker 1: of that. Come on, when I got a dream or
Speaker 1: what wowdream? What a dream he won college and he
Speaker 1: wasn't having that like just hang with that, Tarik. No,
Speaker 1: you go sa that insurance that Tarik believe that hold
Speaker 1: him right. Um, around eighties six, I know that. Um.
Speaker 1: You know Foster McElroy produced the first Tony record. But
Speaker 1: what was what was like the relationship? Did you guys
Speaker 1: have any runnings with like j King the club New
Speaker 1: Vot Click. Yeah. Well I lived in Sacramento for after
Speaker 1: I moved out of Oakland. I came back off the
Speaker 1: tour by first tour after the eight my mom had
Speaker 1: moved to Sacramento. I came into my house and it
Speaker 1: said we moved to Sacramento, and now the house I
Speaker 1: bought my mom bought her on house. Everybody think I
Speaker 1: bought my mother house. It was in Jet magazine and
Speaker 1: he bought his MoMA house. My mother here, by the
Speaker 1: damn thing. Good night. When you first saw the roots
Speaker 1: in Sacramento, you still living in your mom's house. No, No,
Speaker 1: I had bought a house in Sacramento. I followed. I
Speaker 1: followed her. I lived there at the first couple of years.
Speaker 1: I wasn't buying nothing, but I had a toyo. The
Speaker 1: trade here wrapped all from my sister. I wasn't buying nothing,
Speaker 1: but I was very fruble. I wasn't. I didn't believe
Speaker 1: the hype either. They scared me so much about being
Speaker 1: an artist. I never really bought into the whole artist thing. Really.
Speaker 1: I kept I kept a very low pro but I
Speaker 1: wrote just Me and you and my Mother's in my
Speaker 1: room in my mother's house on an MP and a
Speaker 1: T three accord. And I wasn't I wrote that in
Speaker 1: my room. Wow. Yeah, So then I was. I just
Speaker 1: so I didn't run into j King a lot um
Speaker 1: Club New Vau, because he actually spun off Danny and Tommy,
Speaker 1: and Denny and Tommy went on to get a production
Speaker 1: deal with Ed Exstein over at um Wing Records, which
Speaker 1: he became the predent president of PolyGram. And after that, right,
Speaker 1: I'm Billy ex Stein and x Stein was Ed x
Speaker 1: Stein was R. Clive Davis. After that, we never had one.
Speaker 1: Since I've been pretty much on my own, I never
Speaker 1: had to go to I had no connect after that.
Speaker 1: After that was just connecting with artists and just kind
Speaker 1: of just um doing myself. But Danny and Tommy was
Speaker 1: definitely the ones who who spun us into making songs
Speaker 1: because we had just left Print and I don't know
Speaker 1: what what happened to us right after that. I don't
Speaker 1: think we had any we we didn't have any producer
Speaker 1: skills or any like. We knew structure, song structure, but
Speaker 1: we wasn't studying it. We would have came out trying
Speaker 1: to be probably Monserati and somebody if it wasn't for
Speaker 1: those too. One, if Prince is offen you an opportunity
Speaker 1: to do something, in your mind, it's like, yo, we're
Speaker 1: about to make it. Like not how much courage did
Speaker 1: it take? But obviously you gave them a note and
Speaker 1: at one point, like was basically park even trying to
Speaker 1: sign you guys, you never got it, never got that far.
Speaker 1: I was just like Sheila was gonna fire us pretty
Speaker 1: soon because she was going on to play on the
Speaker 1: Signs at the Times tour. So like Prince will get
Speaker 1: on the bus, he would play. He would play Signs
Speaker 1: at the Times the whole album mark. He would he
Speaker 1: would see me in the club and were like he's like,
Speaker 1: come over here, I want to play you something, and
Speaker 1: then we'll walk to the speaker. He would look at
Speaker 1: the DJ and he was like, hold on he like,
Speaker 1: put your head in the speaking, so both of us
Speaker 1: would put our head inside of a folded cabinet in
Speaker 1: like this, and then he'll points to the DJ and
Speaker 1: then he played house Quake. And at that point I
Speaker 1: knew Sheila was on our way and we was on
Speaker 1: our way home. And then they put like they put
Speaker 1: like her role manager Roy uh got his name at
Speaker 1: the time. They put McDonald applications in our and our
Speaker 1: bunks on the tour circle back again? So wait, circle
Speaker 1: back again, Tony, Tony, Tony, what was your circle back
Speaker 1: with Prince and Sheila? Appreciate that I did? I did,
Speaker 1: I did? I said, let us sit for a second.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I didn't know. I didn't when I considered
Speaker 1: take the moment he walked up with Mickey d applications
Speaker 1: in our bumps. Yeah, because that was it, and we
Speaker 1: were going home because he was playing all these hits,
Speaker 1: you know, offishing coffee was like damn. So he took
Speaker 1: Levin Caesar, he took Sheila, and he took Bonnie Boy
Speaker 1: and we were all in the band together with Sheila
Speaker 1: talking about I know nothing about like Bonnie came from
Speaker 1: Old correct, Bonnie was from Oakland. She was funky. I
Speaker 1: mean she would pick up my basse and showed me
Speaker 1: some funk licks that I didn't know. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: her boyfriend growing up was in this band called Windstorm. Right.
Speaker 1: Her boyfriend and back in the day was Rusty Allen.
Speaker 1: Rusty Allen. She did that Rusty Allen's uh Larry's replacement
Speaker 1: and family. So she knew all that bass stuff from him.
Speaker 1: So she used to show me licks that I one day,
Speaker 1: we're sitting down and I'll show you what she showed me.
Speaker 1: She took my basse in the in the back of
Speaker 1: the buzz and just took my basse like give me that.
Speaker 1: It just started like and almost like damn like. So yeah,
Speaker 1: Bonnie was. She was a Oakland on the Oakland's Greatest
Speaker 1: she Um. She was a vocal colt. She was a
Speaker 1: keyboard player with Sheila. She doubled Sheila vocals on the tour.
Speaker 1: If you listen to Kissing you did, I did. I
Speaker 1: produced for a Puffies group. Total um. That that the backgrounds,
Speaker 1: that's her. That's Bonnie Boye. Wow, did not know. That's awesome.
Speaker 1: So she was she was. She was. She was all
Speaker 1: that man so that experience. Hey, one more quick question.
Speaker 1: I know also know, I know that um around. Wait
Speaker 1: was was Rosie from Oakland or was she from l A.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know exactly what she's from, but
Speaker 1: she lived in Oakland most of her life. She was
Speaker 1: like she was in that circle as well, and didn't
Speaker 1: come until the second draft wouldn't be g but I
Speaker 1: wanted to know if she made her rounds in the
Speaker 1: local Oh, she was like, she had like local gigs
Speaker 1: and everybody play with her. She had a I mean,
Speaker 1: Prince pretty much adopted everybody out of Oakland, from Miko
Speaker 1: Weaver to Sheila's first bandakand Too. Yeah, bro, everybody getting him? Man, Oh,
Speaker 1: everybody Prince used after the Revolution was all Oakland based,
Speaker 1: mostly a Latin the next two bands obviously. Okay, that
Speaker 1: makes that makes total sense. Okay, so circle back now
Speaker 1: after the McDonald's applications are on your bed but you're grown.
Speaker 1: You're right, Tony, Tony, Tony, what's the first running the
Speaker 1: Prince and Sheila Eli, now that you have proven your
Speaker 1: stelf to the world, Yeah, well, I think, uh, the
Speaker 1: first one was when I wrote this song on my
Speaker 1: first song called Born Out to Know, and I wrote
Speaker 1: this line said for no reason. It's only because I'm
Speaker 1: a lazy songwriter and I just wrote this lyric that said, uh,
Speaker 1: things are getting crazy. I'm not wearing Paisley because I
Speaker 1: was born out to know. So Prince must have heard that.
Speaker 1: Invited me into a show in Hamptonsvirginia on the Love
Speaker 1: Sexy tour and he asked me if I wanted to
Speaker 1: come on stage, and I'm like, yeah, sure. So I
Speaker 1: come on stage and he said, you want to come
Speaker 1: up and play basketball. So we're just shooting basketball on
Speaker 1: the court. He's shooting around and then he goes Then
Speaker 1: it gets to Mike and he goes out, here's a
Speaker 1: little boy who made the pays the rhyme. And I'm like, damn,
Speaker 1: he heard that, and so right, boy, that's where I was.
Speaker 1: I was at boy now, But to him, here's a
Speaker 1: little boy who made the pays and rhyme. And I'm
Speaker 1: like wow. So he gives me the microphone. He leaves
Speaker 1: me on the stage. Now this is Pat and I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I've got a couple of band members up there. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what to do, like you know, so
Speaker 1: I started singing Heylo Walter and the crowd, and she
Speaker 1: loves on drums, Bonny and everybody. And this time Prince
Speaker 1: had from what I heard, princes never really invited people
Speaker 1: on the stage for that, No Leanney, nobody, and he
Speaker 1: invited me on the stage. And so everybody in the
Speaker 1: band that knew me, they was all crying, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: why are they crying Because they were saying because he
Speaker 1: was being so nice to me. But he always been really,
Speaker 1: really really nice to me. He always like invited me
Speaker 1: out to dinner in Japan. You wanna go, you wanna
Speaker 1: get something to eat, You want to go do this.
Speaker 1: You need some girls, you need some models. He was
Speaker 1: always like that to me. Um, it was weird because
Speaker 1: nothing about Princess when Um, when when I was gonna
Speaker 1: be in Madhouse, he told me, he told Levi to
Speaker 1: tell me to go listen to the Chamber Brothers. I
Speaker 1: never heard of the Chamber Brothers. So when I got
Speaker 1: back home off the tour, after I decided not to
Speaker 1: go back with friends like the Prince thing never came
Speaker 1: to a few fuishtion like people thought, but I remember
Speaker 1: him saying I should listen to the Chamber Brothers. So
Speaker 1: I went to this place called Leopold's in Berkeley, and
Speaker 1: I bought every Chamber Brothers album there was and when
Speaker 1: I listened to it, they had a son called the
Speaker 1: Spiritual Negro Spiritual called Wade in the Water and they
Speaker 1: it was so dark and how they did it. And
Speaker 1: my first single ever what the Tony's was hey little Walter.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, so Prince was like, uh kind of responsible
Speaker 1: for giving me a little light on that, which became
Speaker 1: it Tony's first ever ever single hit song and Sindbad's
Speaker 1: first video appearance. That's right. Wait, I just want to
Speaker 1: put it in perspective because a little confused. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: way that the Love Sex Tour was set up was
Speaker 1: Prince also had a basketball court on the stage. Stage
Speaker 1: it was it was the show was in the round.
Speaker 1: I mean like his last rounce of shows worth so
Speaker 1: it was like an elaborate It was probably his most
Speaker 1: expensive setup. So yeah, uh wait, speaking of which, speaking
Speaker 1: of who the song to six to one five, especially
Speaker 1: the pre internet, whose idea was that was in mine?
Speaker 1: Was that your brother? All right? First of all, can
Speaker 1: you explain because I feel like the songs that your
Speaker 1: brother produces sounds the way that you guys work like,
Speaker 1: is there an alpha for the person that brings the
Speaker 1: song to to the forefront or does he just work
Speaker 1: on a song by himself and you work on a
Speaker 1: song by yourself and you just figure like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: here's our tony album or how does that work? And
Speaker 1: then in the later albums it was really exactly what
Speaker 1: you said. And the other one maybe the second album around.
Speaker 1: The first album was mainly you know, Danny and Tommy
Speaker 1: and us, but the first single, like Little Walter was
Speaker 1: just me, uh, Danny and Tommy, those guys we got
Speaker 1: our first song. They didn't even show up to the
Speaker 1: studio at all, so um for the first song. And
Speaker 1: so but Dwayne, Dwayne will come up songs at home.
Speaker 1: He will he'll come in and will get together and
Speaker 1: figure him out. But he will come up with a
Speaker 1: title like two six one point five that's actually a
Speaker 1: peno call for messing with. Yes, you know that's that's
Speaker 1: that's crazy. You're the only one everybody we know who
Speaker 1: knows that. I had to ask you, how would he
Speaker 1: know that? Should I ask that? I didn't mean, I
Speaker 1: don't think I think I think he was At the time,
Speaker 1: he had dated a younger lady he was his friend,
Speaker 1: and um, I think her auntie was an attorney. She was,
Speaker 1: but she was pretty much a fast as one of
Speaker 1: the fast as little girls who was like, you know, smart,
Speaker 1: they're really smart, and was just like, you know, this
Speaker 1: is like a two six one point five, and so
Speaker 1: like that's the song. And so he wrote a song
Speaker 1: about it, and we sort of took it from that. People,
Speaker 1: let me tell you about a best friend. He's the
Speaker 1: one first in and look and I always I always
Speaker 1: love that show as a kid. So I added that
Speaker 1: part the vamp of the song, and um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: just yeah, that's the way and answer you a question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was gonna say in an interview, you guys wants
Speaker 1: to describe yourself, you said that you were seventy yourselves
Speaker 1: the time and then ten percent the monkeys. That that
Speaker 1: was the way. I had nothing to do with any
Speaker 1: of that, the monkey. But the thing the thing is, though,
Speaker 1: I mean I understood the monkey's reference. Mind you, he
Speaker 1: said it on Soulturing, so like that would have thrown
Speaker 1: everyone off, but I got it that you guys like
Speaker 1: humor the time. The time definitely showed that humor because
Speaker 1: we was none of that. If I could just clear.
Speaker 1: If I could just say who we were, I would
Speaker 1: say we were We were like everything that the Oakland
Speaker 1: but Oakland gave us, and we were a bit of
Speaker 1: trying to be like an earth Wind and Fire and
Speaker 1: the Commodore's And like my brother used to singing like
Speaker 1: this song called Hello Sunshine, Hello sun Shine. Dwayne was that.
Speaker 1: Dwayne was more like the Pbow Bryson who played guitar.
Speaker 1: We were a little bit of We were a little
Speaker 1: bit of the Isley Brothers, a little bit of earth
Speaker 1: Wind and Fire in the Commodores, and we we were
Speaker 1: like a funk band. We were more like a brick.
Speaker 1: I think that's who we were. I think doing Dwayne
Speaker 1: would say things that he thought sounded great on TV.
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean because you guys had you guys
Speaker 1: were funny. You guys showed humor in like your pop
Speaker 1: culture references and all that stuff that the wrong isn't
Speaker 1: the wrong kid? Yeah, I mean, but for me, I
Speaker 1: was always trying to be honestly. For me, I was
Speaker 1: only trying to I was more of a hip hop
Speaker 1: East Coast hip hop head, so I was always trying
Speaker 1: to find out how why was those drums so dirty
Speaker 1: and hip hop, and our drums were so clean. So
Speaker 1: my whole quest was to find out how to you
Speaker 1: to get dirty drums on my music. And how I
Speaker 1: found out was I was I s ice Cube on
Speaker 1: our first tour and because we toured in w as
Speaker 1: it was, it was it was crazy because there were
Speaker 1: no other bands, and I think they needed us on
Speaker 1: the tour because it was for insurance reasons. It wasn't
Speaker 1: you know, and it was for insurance reasons. Nobody told
Speaker 1: me that. I had to figure that out. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I was hanging out ice Cube and he told me
Speaker 1: that the reason why drums sound like that, it's these
Speaker 1: It's called break beats, and you could get up. You
Speaker 1: could get these records from like forty five kings from
Speaker 1: the Swap Meat to the Swap Meet, and I bought
Speaker 1: every break beat and that's when I started hearing the
Speaker 1: meters and that's the music I really love. And then
Speaker 1: hip hop was like tried and everybody was sampling Slide
Speaker 1: and the songs that I like, and I was like,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm gonna get into was more of that,
Speaker 1: and then I try to marry the both. So what
Speaker 1: was that project that came after that, after you had
Speaker 1: that conversation with I c me, you went out and
Speaker 1: brought all that stuff. What was the Tony Tony proct?
Speaker 1: So no revival? I was gonna say, what lessons did
Speaker 1: you learn, assuming that you guys took the lead on it,
Speaker 1: what lessons did you learn on revival um that you
Speaker 1: didn't know on the Who record? And how did you
Speaker 1: break to Danny and Tommy? Because I mean the Who
Speaker 1: record was a hit. I mean, you guys have three
Speaker 1: hits on it, So what's the like are you talking
Speaker 1: to Ed x Stein saying like, look, I think we
Speaker 1: could do this on our own. Let us I think
Speaker 1: we just said that we wanted to do it on
Speaker 1: our own. I don't know if we knew what the
Speaker 1: hell we were doing it all. We were definitely you know,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, I'll give kudos to add because he
Speaker 1: let us actually do it. But we've we've never had
Speaker 1: to end our person nowhere near our rooms ever. We
Speaker 1: just we just spent too much money figuring out on
Speaker 1: that second album. I think we rented a Sinclavera for
Speaker 1: like two hundred fifty dollars for the whole time, So
Speaker 1: we got ripped off on that. So that's what I learned,
Speaker 1: uh on how not to spend money on something you
Speaker 1: didn't really need about to say that, y'all even use
Speaker 1: it on that album, were using on the whole album.
Speaker 1: That's why it sounds so clean, like whatever you want
Speaker 1: to it's like, so it sounds like crisp. We just
Speaker 1: we just interviewed Pat mcfenny, who also, like you know,
Speaker 1: he's the think King. Yes, exactly. So he was explaining,
Speaker 1: like the early stages of that was like very expensive
Speaker 1: to operate when we looked at it. We looked at
Speaker 1: the budget and I was like, okay, we'll never do that. Also,
Speaker 1: I knew that, Um, you guys worked with Keith Crouch
Speaker 1: on that album as well. He Keith, Yeah, Keith played um.
Speaker 1: He's played This is a funny story. Keith. Keith played um,
Speaker 1: he played He played bass synthesizer on maybe one of
Speaker 1: the songs he tore with us. He didn't really he
Speaker 1: played on those with the days I think okay, um,
Speaker 1: but so and so me and Keith got into a
Speaker 1: little altercation over this girl like when it was funny.
Speaker 1: So right after he played almos So when I did
Speaker 1: Tony's in the wrong key. I introduced everybody who played
Speaker 1: with us. He heard it. His name used to be
Speaker 1: on it. But when it got to his name, I said,
Speaker 1: and we had this one man and his name is
Speaker 1: and his name and his name is So and you
Speaker 1: know Betty. So we're really cool. We're really cool. He
Speaker 1: told me. A long time ago, he said, bro, I
Speaker 1: was in the room with all my friends, and he said,
Speaker 1: I was listing the record and said, by the name
Speaker 1: of I was petty those days. I was very petty.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I can't believe that ship. So you got
Speaker 1: the game? Say it again? Did you get to PS five?
Speaker 1: Just wait, Rol? You see him a PlayStation? Is that?
Speaker 1: What's going on? Right? No, you don't want to answer
Speaker 1: that question, Raphael. You want to finish the interview. Oh, okay,
Speaker 1: your gamer? I am now, Yes, I was an ex gamer.
Speaker 1: I thought I got out the game, and then when
Speaker 1: I got this, uh my, my entire staff was like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: your life is about to change. I'm afraid you open it.
Speaker 1: The box is blacked out, Yes it is. Can we
Speaker 1: see it? He want? Can we see it? Yes? Blackouts?
Speaker 1: My game company is called il Phonic, and I've never
Speaker 1: really questioning. He was like, what is this? So I
Speaker 1: sent him a game to say, you know, we got
Speaker 1: a game called r K getting. It's me and my engineer.
Speaker 1: We started a game company called il Phonic and I'm
Speaker 1: a nas is one of my favorite m sees. So
Speaker 1: I called it Illphonic after Ilmatic and um yeah, so
Speaker 1: we it's a guy in the world again. Thirteen years
Speaker 1: of uh so, my partner Chuck brun Gard, we started
Speaker 1: the game. We started this game coming together because we
Speaker 1: were finding the heart of the music industry to like,
Speaker 1: even we make records like record industry, people wouldn't even
Speaker 1: let us makes our own records for other people that
Speaker 1: we produced. So I came up with another game, a
Speaker 1: game that we used to laugh about called Ghetto Golf
Speaker 1: because they wouldn't let me in the fighting game on
Speaker 1: Russell Simmons label. I knew I could never be on
Speaker 1: the game. It was an RB, it was a rap game.
Speaker 1: So we started this coming. We started this company back
Speaker 1: then and we split up to start the game. He
Speaker 1: moved to Denver. We started at my studio and like
Speaker 1: after thirteen years, we did Predator Friday the thirteen and
Speaker 1: doing really well. And then this is the first year
Speaker 1: I started I said something about it because really, in
Speaker 1: the gaming world, people don't really care about you being
Speaker 1: a musician. They just want to have funny you know,
Speaker 1: video games is about gameplay, and um, one of our
Speaker 1: guys that Steve Wetman, is the visual guy who get
Speaker 1: all the styles of music, which is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: like the music is kind of based on like if
Speaker 1: it was a futuristic dealer or fifty years from now
Speaker 1: or like jungle funk, and it's a lot of different
Speaker 1: people who um, a lot of different musicians who did
Speaker 1: I didn't do any music in the game. Usually when
Speaker 1: I talk about the video game, people go, oh, you
Speaker 1: put music in the game. I'm like, uh no, No,
Speaker 1: I owned the game company last game. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: want invested invested in it, and it's doing really well.
Speaker 1: And in Quest is the first person that I actually
Speaker 1: sent a personalized lacked out. It's a multiplayer Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a multiplayer game. Um um, you could play, you can play,
Speaker 1: you could play it in the configuration on one on one,
Speaker 1: you could do the way. But it's a quroberative multiplayer game.
Speaker 1: If you know anything about games, and we just really, uh,
Speaker 1: I just want to get into this world because I
Speaker 1: just felt I found it kind of hard beauty in
Speaker 1: the music injury so clicky, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Like I said, I haven't had a goal to person
Speaker 1: since Edex time. So I said, you know what, the
Speaker 1: way the way the music industry is now with streaming.
Speaker 1: You know, my music is not a game, and in
Speaker 1: games they stream, so I was figured I should get
Speaker 1: into something where streaming was gonna be very popular. Game.
Speaker 1: So how many games you got in game? Like you
Speaker 1: can go? How many games you got out Friday the thirteen,
Speaker 1: the last one in Predator and be working on Ghostbusters
Speaker 1: right now? And RK in his art right now it's
Speaker 1: it's an Epics store in two thousand and twenty two.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a lot more platforms and um a
Speaker 1: lot more platforms than just PS five, But right now
Speaker 1: was the Epics Store. On PS five, I was game,
Speaker 1: what games do you play? Like? What some of your
Speaker 1: games that you just play to be a game? I
Speaker 1: could play Caller do you a little bit a lot?
Speaker 1: But I'm really I'm really like a sports junkie, like
Speaker 1: I'm a statement man two K something like people like
Speaker 1: to play nice my son, my son? They be on
Speaker 1: two K he got new when he's been killing it,
Speaker 1: does he play he plays two K he's on he's
Speaker 1: on two K. I mean he was you know, like
Speaker 1: all the kids when he was on Fortnite, you know
Speaker 1: heavy when that was that was popular. But he's more
Speaker 1: of a two k uh guy. I'm more of I
Speaker 1: do first I could do first person shooter, but I'm
Speaker 1: more so like you know, Resident Evil survival horror, like
Speaker 1: I'm in the story type ship. You know what. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what this is. This is check it out. I
Speaker 1: gotta P five too, I gotta P five. But I
Speaker 1: want to say to question, congratulations on on the documentary.
Speaker 1: I must have watched it like seven times on my couch.
Speaker 1: And so you don't think you're about to leave a
Speaker 1: maror he thinks he's satting down like he's thinking about
Speaker 1: the clothes. I'm not sure. I just want to make
Speaker 1: sure that I said that because when that comes up
Speaker 1: in my queue, like, I get chills watching the Fifth Dimensions.
Speaker 1: I've never seen the move, so to watch it come
Speaker 1: to life and to know that that happened, and to know,
Speaker 1: like I mean, people that need they were black. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so much question is always passing out history like
Speaker 1: I'm definitely using it for my next project because yeah,
Speaker 1: oh wow, yes you know what he told me his
Speaker 1: daughter to me, Yeah, that's amazing. I shall be calling you.
Speaker 1: What was how not? How or why? What was the process?
Speaker 1: How was Lisa Bonne the deciding factor in directing uh
Speaker 1: the California video? M hm for never end, A lot
Speaker 1: of people turned the treatments. She just had the best.
Speaker 1: She had the best treatment, honestly, And we were always
Speaker 1: trying to we were always trying to be different. At
Speaker 1: the same time, we didn't want to. We didn't want
Speaker 1: to out our our the audience that we gained, right,
Speaker 1: but we felt like we could gain a new audience
Speaker 1: and we could. You know, we felt like Lisa just
Speaker 1: she had to adge, she had to edge on them
Speaker 1: all the interior decorating that that I like, Um, she
Speaker 1: kind of gave me an apartment that I've never had
Speaker 1: at that time, you know, um, just at that time,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that she was heavily direct like into
Speaker 1: directing videos or whatever. So she had like a rep
Speaker 1: that said, like open, yeah, I guess she did. I
Speaker 1: don't think she did it too much to think she
Speaker 1: I think she disliked the record, and she just offered
Speaker 1: a treatment, and we just chose her to to direct.
Speaker 1: If the Prince was about to hire for one of
Speaker 1: the songs on Diamonds Pros, the thing like walk don't Walk. Okay,
Speaker 1: whether they shot it, I'm not certain, but I believe
Speaker 1: that she was. I don't think they shot it, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, Prince is the kind of guy that will
Speaker 1: do a movie and then put it away for like
Speaker 1: forty two seconds. But you know, Oh, my boy wanted
Speaker 1: me to ask you, how did you talk Don Cornelius
Speaker 1: into the House Party video which I think Don does
Speaker 1: a cameo. Don Cornelius has a cameo and the I
Speaker 1: don't know what you come to do? Uh, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't think Don is gonna like me too much.
Speaker 1: I don't know, Wait what what you do? Don? I
Speaker 1: love we loved, I love Don on me, I said.
Speaker 1: I watched, So I think I found is that it
Speaker 1: wasn't that he didn't like me. I remember doing soult
Speaker 1: Train one time, and I just remember all these girls,
Speaker 1: like I call it halftime when everybody's taking a break.
Speaker 1: First time doing SoulTrain, and you're like, oh, this is Soultrained.
Speaker 1: But then when I saw all the girls like feed
Speaker 1: herding and eating Kentucky Fried Chicken and half time, I
Speaker 1: was like, this ship is kind of cheesy a little bit,
Speaker 1: right they feed them KFC and then um it was bad,
Speaker 1: you know. And so but then we was on there
Speaker 1: with a new edition, in a new edition, like they took,
Speaker 1: they did one take, they looked at the monitor, they
Speaker 1: came back, they did it over. They did over about
Speaker 1: four or five times until they liked it. And Little
Speaker 1: Rest in Peace Little Silas was an m c A
Speaker 1: Records at the time, and so when we got up
Speaker 1: there to our performance, man, we performed once and they
Speaker 1: were like, got it. I'm like, we don't get to
Speaker 1: look at the monitor, you see if we like what
Speaker 1: I What I realized is that, you know, our label
Speaker 1: probably wasn't spending spending the sponsor money. It's a nice
Speaker 1: way to phrase that, you know. So we were pretty
Speaker 1: much a one and done. And when I found out out,
Speaker 1: I just I was kind of just a little disheartening with,
Speaker 1: you know, the way that I was learning on the
Speaker 1: fly how the industry was. So so when I did
Speaker 1: get involved, I was done with Soul Trained. So when
Speaker 1: I did get involved. Um yeah, they they they wanted
Speaker 1: me to do to perform on Soul Train, and I
Speaker 1: was like, and I'm not doing Soul Trained, so they
Speaker 1: begged me to do it. So I was like, I
Speaker 1: stood outside the paramount until it was time for me
Speaker 1: to walk and say, I don't want to be in
Speaker 1: the dressing room. I stood outside. I walked in and
Speaker 1: I performed and I walked out. And then um years later,
Speaker 1: I was up the street called whitenecka as it's a
Speaker 1: little golf, a little driving range, and I went to
Speaker 1: this little driving range just to hang out some balls
Speaker 1: and Don Canuees was there just hitting balls and he
Speaker 1: just walked up to me and we had a amazing conversation.
Speaker 1: He was just giving me props in Solb'm watching you.
Speaker 1: I'll see what you're doing. And he didn't he he
Speaker 1: didn like me. But I was young and I was
Speaker 1: confused about the politics. You know what I mean. Nobody,
Speaker 1: nobody was spinning on bread with him at my label.
Speaker 1: You know that you have dreams of like being on
Speaker 1: this legacy show and then you get to see how
Speaker 1: the sausage just made and it's not like how you
Speaker 1: think it is. And that is disappointing. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: you could be like, you know, like you mean to
Speaker 1: actually throw these saucers on the ground and kick him
Speaker 1: around and then put him in the bun exactly. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: I gotta jump to suns and Soul. So the first
Speaker 1: time that I had I didn't have an interaction with you.
Speaker 1: This is weird enough. We had an audition, uh with
Speaker 1: that x Stein and we were going to sign to
Speaker 1: PolyGram H And I went to I went to some
Speaker 1: dinner uptown. I forget where it was. You were also
Speaker 1: at this restaurant, and I can overhear your conversation, and
Speaker 1: you were talking about this tour and you were telling
Speaker 1: the craziest stories I've ever heard in my life. Like
Speaker 1: I would think that you were talking about like like
Speaker 1: Hammer the God's era led Zeppelin, and you weren't talking
Speaker 1: about You were talking about touring with Janet Jackson, now
Speaker 1: without you burning bridges from one to ten And I'm
Speaker 1: not talking about the Tony Tony Tony side of things
Speaker 1: for one to ten. How crazy was that Janet Jackson tour?
Speaker 1: It was a ten that planted a lot of seeds
Speaker 1: in my head on like those things can happen on
Speaker 1: the route. Yeah, it was just you know what it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, we're of course we were like huge, j
Speaker 1: I'm gonna use Michael. I'm a Jackson five fan, you know.
Speaker 1: So I grew up with the Brothers, the first black families,
Speaker 1: So I mean, you know, I love Randy, loved to Jackson.
Speaker 1: So just to get on the tour and learning tour,
Speaker 1: you just learned tour politics right, and the tour politics
Speaker 1: were I took two guys. They were just out of
Speaker 1: high school, really had nowhere to live. There were dancers.
Speaker 1: I took him on the tour. I met him in Sacramento.
Speaker 1: I just moved to San Francisco. Just oh hip hop
Speaker 1: world and documental that I found and I used to
Speaker 1: play with him freestyle. You know, I should play bass.
Speaker 1: Was this thing called sixty seconds direct MC has come up.
Speaker 1: It was based playering the drummer and so I will
Speaker 1: meet all these mcs and and it was a couple
Speaker 1: of dancers live in my neighborhood. So I took him
Speaker 1: on the tour and Janet people said it was a
Speaker 1: it was conflicting with their show with these two dancers
Speaker 1: that we had no I think that Janet had like
Speaker 1: thirty five whatever if you look at Pleasure Principle or whatever,
Speaker 1: those those videos and she has the whole real nation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they told us we had to like get rid
Speaker 1: of the dances. What right her At the time, her
Speaker 1: husband was his name was Renee. He kind of walked
Speaker 1: in and said, you know, Janet thinks it's in conflict
Speaker 1: with her. And I was like, man, look, we got
Speaker 1: two dancers. If that's I'm leaving, I'm like, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm not telling them kids. They got to go home.
Speaker 1: These two kids are like eighteen years old, twenty but
Speaker 1: no money, you know what I mean. We we only
Speaker 1: they only had two sets of two suits to tour with,
Speaker 1: I mean, and we had no lights on the stage
Speaker 1: and nothing. I mean, you couldn't even see something that tour.
Speaker 1: I should tell people on the radio, if you want
Speaker 1: to see us, bring a flashlight. And then we never
Speaker 1: really met Jannet, and she invited us on the tour.
Speaker 1: So I remember I came. I came to the show
Speaker 1: once and my whole band in the row cruise in
Speaker 1: this big line and they by her room and they
Speaker 1: were all walking to her room. She was in the
Speaker 1: front door shaking their hand, and I just was walking
Speaker 1: by and I'm like, I'm not standing in the line
Speaker 1: and shake her hand. Like when you go on tour,
Speaker 1: you supposed to like introduced to come say hi to
Speaker 1: the group and say hey, you invited this. So that
Speaker 1: was kind of that for me. And I think I
Speaker 1: was on the radio station and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: from Oakland something. They asked me, how was it, you know,
Speaker 1: being you know, meeting Jenn I was like at this point,
Speaker 1: it was We've been on tour a long time. I said,
Speaker 1: I've never met her, but I think, you know, she
Speaker 1: probably the same girl from Good Times Penny, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, I had jokes, but you know, we
Speaker 1: we love Janet and we mean, I love Jimmy and Terry,
Speaker 1: and it was, you know, we well it was to
Speaker 1: our support. We're only making like three thousand dollars a night,
Speaker 1: so we had to pay for our tour bus. And
Speaker 1: then like what happened was Michael started that Michael thing
Speaker 1: has started to happen. So some shows we will get
Speaker 1: to and it would be tours will be canceled. And
Speaker 1: instead of somebody calling us and saying the show is canceled,
Speaker 1: we will find out like the fans. So we still
Speaker 1: have to pay the crew the buses. And it happened
Speaker 1: like three or four times. I think she was kind
Speaker 1: of helping Michael move around, which we understand that, but
Speaker 1: we we didn't know, so she couldn't tell us right.
Speaker 1: So but I said, if it happens again, I'm going home.
Speaker 1: So I left in Philly the night he got canceled.
Speaker 1: In Philly. Yes, well that was my last night. I
Speaker 1: went to the I took I told the bus to
Speaker 1: take me to the airport, and then they hired many
Speaker 1: conditions a nice parallel move. Okay, I was gonna ask
Speaker 1: you they did a makeup show and you guys weren't
Speaker 1: the opener. And I was so disappointed and wanted to
Speaker 1: know what happened. What happened? So needless to say, you
Speaker 1: are the best person to tour with because you know
Speaker 1: what the worst is like. You know what the worst
Speaker 1: is like. Is I I treat people people toured us.
Speaker 1: I mean I treat people like kings. Because the first
Speaker 1: tour that Tony's ever did was really uh with the
Speaker 1: Rare Rocks. We opened up for Earth Wind and Fire
Speaker 1: when more Rese White was in the group, and they
Speaker 1: wanted a band that was more of like a track
Speaker 1: day band because since we had to set up, we
Speaker 1: couldn't do as many shows within and Fire. But when
Speaker 1: we did play with them more reach White brought us
Speaker 1: to the back of the room and said, Hey, I
Speaker 1: love you guys. Whenever you need you can have asked
Speaker 1: for it, you got it. However much time you need,
Speaker 1: you got it. And that's how we treated people when
Speaker 1: we Uh, I think Joe opened up for us and
Speaker 1: my and my tour manager was get off the stage.
Speaker 1: I've walked in and saw that. I walked right in
Speaker 1: the middle of them and said, Joe, take as much
Speaker 1: time as you want, will be in the dress room.
Speaker 1: When you're done, you come tell us and so yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean we just told with Bobby Brown, Bobby
Speaker 1: Brown is just unplugged our instruments. Well, right, we when
Speaker 1: we I love Bobby to this day, I see we
Speaker 1: like this. But Bobby used to come and be just
Speaker 1: like and just at take the big socket and just
Speaker 1: unplug it. We up there just to ah damn. But
Speaker 1: now that was like how tour was. Tour was like
Speaker 1: R and b was kind of ghost back in the day. Okay,
Speaker 1: I will say for me, Sons a Soul like every
Speaker 1: person that every musician has, like that one the album
Speaker 1: that's like they're they're saving grace. There's in m sort
Speaker 1: of thing, and you know, the just during the time
Speaker 1: and which like we were searching for a deal. I
Speaker 1: mean we were traveling like the flint Stones inside of
Speaker 1: a beat up two hundred dollars station wagon with no
Speaker 1: floorboard in the back, like we have to elevate our
Speaker 1: feet in the air to not hit the ground, like
Speaker 1: traveling like the Middle Passage, and like you know, just
Speaker 1: that whole period of like will we get a deal?
Speaker 1: Will we not get a deal? And living in poverty
Speaker 1: and all, and like just listening to that record like man,
Speaker 1: one day I'm gonna play music like this and front
Speaker 1: audiences and like I don't know, like Sons of Soul
Speaker 1: wound up being that record from me. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: the one for me too, yea. And I know that
Speaker 1: your your relationship with which he really solidified with that record,
Speaker 1: assuming that he assisted on drums on like Tony's a
Speaker 1: long key and all that stuff. I mean the drums
Speaker 1: are definitely boombastic and loud like that just during that
Speaker 1: time period how are you guys uh connecting as a group, Like,
Speaker 1: how are decisions made? How are you know? Is it
Speaker 1: every man like gets an equal vote or that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, or is it like you're starting to see
Speaker 1: the the kind of uh seems starting to break. Well,
Speaker 1: I don't think. I think we were just I think
Speaker 1: we were like so happy to be on. I think
Speaker 1: my brother Dwayne is more of the person who was
Speaker 1: in search of a deal more than any of us.
Speaker 1: He was a couple of years older. Um, but once
Speaker 1: we got in, you know, Duwayne was this party time
Speaker 1: and I was more in a state of mind like
Speaker 1: we could fall off. This is not promised to us,
Speaker 1: and uh, I was just looking at things that our lives.
Speaker 1: I think I became pretty much the the person that
Speaker 1: was steering the boat. But I had a wall of
Speaker 1: people behind me that was very talented. I always felt
Speaker 1: like if you know, you're the best person in the
Speaker 1: room and you're in the wrong room, and um, I
Speaker 1: had a lot of great musicians around me that could,
Speaker 1: you know, do the things that I needed to do
Speaker 1: to make the records that I wanted to make. Now,
Speaker 1: did I know that people are gonna like those records? No?
Speaker 1: I didn't have a clue about record sales or number one.
Speaker 1: I never cared about Billboard. I never looked at bill
Speaker 1: Board for number one record. I was really trying to
Speaker 1: impress the people before me. I just really wanted you know,
Speaker 1: you know, hip hop, hip hop artists. You know. I
Speaker 1: was really big on making hip hop people like my records,
Speaker 1: all the records like we don't like and we don't know.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, you're gonna like this. R and B.
Speaker 1: I had a chip on my shoulder about that and
Speaker 1: was my joint on that record. It was just to
Speaker 1: break be fun. That was my one. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that. Yeah, Like I was definitely anti R
Speaker 1: and B and ninety two, Like I just thoughted was
Speaker 1: like warded down in corner understill why And I heard
Speaker 1: it and if you know, first I was like front
Speaker 1: like Tony, Tony got a record like whatever, And I
Speaker 1: heard and I was like, wait a minute, Like there's
Speaker 1: break beats and things that I like, like if a
Speaker 1: trap called Quest made music, this is what it would be.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and that's that's that's because Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: it's like the beginning seeds of that's that's the thing
Speaker 1: I want to ask you were you were you are
Speaker 1: aware what the state of emergency was for the Black Band,
Speaker 1: because technically Tony Tony Tony is probably either the last
Speaker 1: pure soul group you know, And that's where you mentioned
Speaker 1: Chambers Brothers, because I was trying to find a band
Speaker 1: that was self contained, not led by someone not slying
Speaker 1: the family stone, not jeans around the famale. But okay,
Speaker 1: man out, Okay, So the last batch between main condition
Speaker 1: and and Tony Tony to like you guys are are
Speaker 1: the last it's it's it's endangered species. You were you
Speaker 1: guys even aware that there was like you guys were
Speaker 1: about to be a novelty. I mean ten years later,
Speaker 1: even the idea of groups being together would be like
Speaker 1: a thing like to to even collaborate with people in
Speaker 1: a unit. Were even aware of the time that time
Speaker 1: is running out for the Black Band? Um, I don't
Speaker 1: think we were aware of it. I think we we
Speaker 1: just we were so blinded by what happened before us,
Speaker 1: and um we were so stuck in the past and
Speaker 1: living in the future at the same time. Because we
Speaker 1: loved hip hop, we love what was going on, but
Speaker 1: we always thought we were a part of I always
Speaker 1: thought I could be a part of it. Like when
Speaker 1: I got to New York and I saw rock Him
Speaker 1: walking down the street where I was sitting in a
Speaker 1: limo or something and getting ready to do an in store,
Speaker 1: I see Eric being rock Him with a crew with
Speaker 1: dapper dance, sweat suit tune, and I was just sitting
Speaker 1: there like what. So as soon as I got to
Speaker 1: New York, man I was. I broke free to every
Speaker 1: studio and found everything I wanted to find. Um are as,
Speaker 1: you know, tribe and um by powers and different people,
Speaker 1: different outboard gear for studios, different you know, needs and
Speaker 1: different were you saying, like was the rest of your
Speaker 1: band sort of on line with you? Like, yo, we
Speaker 1: need to we need to sound progressive like these people.
Speaker 1: Now it was just me. They'll they'll tell you that too.
Speaker 1: But everybody playing a good part, like tim was Timothy Riley.
Speaker 1: Christian Riley is like like slide on the organ on
Speaker 1: the B three. He's a drummer, but he's a great
Speaker 1: Oregon player. So where he was at, he wanted to
Speaker 1: be there, you know, um where Dwyane was at, he
Speaker 1: Dwayne was like a guy who played football his whole
Speaker 1: life and was in shape, and then when football was over,
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm not working out no more. So once
Speaker 1: we got on, Dwayne was like, we are you know
Speaker 1: that's it? And I was like, man, I don't know
Speaker 1: if we're really. I've seen too many groups when I
Speaker 1: go to record stores and I'm going through vinyl and
Speaker 1: all these groups that I've seen it we don't know about.
Speaker 1: We never heard of. I wasn't really they thought they
Speaker 1: were on too, so I was more. I was more
Speaker 1: like I knew it was. It was a novelty. But
Speaker 1: just because of the tours that we had to go on,
Speaker 1: there was no space. I remember Salt and Pepper wanted
Speaker 1: us to. We toured MC Hammer, Candy Man, I w
Speaker 1: A and I remember Salton Pepper was like, pickt the
Speaker 1: Tony's off the tour. They got a band to the
Speaker 1: set changes too long, you know what I mean. It
Speaker 1: wasn't like being nasty towards us, but the set change
Speaker 1: had to be. They didn't like the set change. The
Speaker 1: only person the only reason why we stayed on that
Speaker 1: to us because Hammer Hammer kept us on the turk.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you all the questions since this is
Speaker 1: a rare moment, especially with you and Mirror and Raphael
Speaker 1: on the line because I'm translating, and I always thought
Speaker 1: in my mind, and now that you've clarified that you
Speaker 1: were such a hip hop head and you had to
Speaker 1: be you had to be there. This is the pivotal
Speaker 1: start of Mirror, right of what we would call I mean.
Speaker 1: So I just want to stay it out loud because
Speaker 1: the father of that, and I hate to term. I
Speaker 1: hate to term Neil. So everybody give me to give
Speaker 1: me the everybody hate it, But what's the replace? But
Speaker 1: it's like, it's the shortest way to describe you. Guys.
Speaker 1: Definitely started something new, Okay, So I'm gonna kill it.
Speaker 1: I've grown past it. I'm not like I used to
Speaker 1: be about the word. Let me tell you why I
Speaker 1: say it, why I was sending it back to And
Speaker 1: I did this album called very right. On the back
Speaker 1: I had a schoolstone it says Neo Soul rest in peace, right,
Speaker 1: So I was all about that. So my thing was Neil.
Speaker 1: Like like hip hop was a fresh, great brand, a
Speaker 1: great idea, Neil Soul was more of a budget that
Speaker 1: kid R. Massenberg kind of came up with for Erica
Speaker 1: Bad and everybody ever thought about it, and it was
Speaker 1: like the way to go to a marketing meeting and
Speaker 1: say this group was not the Temptations are the Slide
Speaker 1: and it's like new So it's neo. So when you
Speaker 1: go to a meeting, instead of explaining they're not gonna
Speaker 1: sell a million, they might do anywhere from two to three,
Speaker 1: you just say for short neo soul. It had nothing
Speaker 1: to do about the filling in the music like hip hop.
Speaker 1: But but you do know to the fans it actually
Speaker 1: so it might have started that way, but then it
Speaker 1: kind of matriculated to fans to something else, to just
Speaker 1: something that they could say, that's what it's can I ask, right,
Speaker 1: so what would you have? What would you have called it?
Speaker 1: Because it's your ship, so what would you were called?
Speaker 1: I mean it was a moment. I mean someone didn't
Speaker 1: when I did, When I didn't answer advantage, I was,
Speaker 1: you know, I was striking a different thing, a couple
Speaker 1: of things that didn't really stick, but I was trying,
Speaker 1: and I came out with gospel delic for me, for
Speaker 1: my own gospel. Man, it's gospel delic is mean, there's
Speaker 1: some truth to it, and there's the funking the psychedelic
Speaker 1: in what I do so I called Mommy is a
Speaker 1: gospel delic. There's some truth, there's some funk psychedelic, that's
Speaker 1: what I called it. Anything but that, but we would
Speaker 1: have been called gospel. But honestly, look, look, I understand
Speaker 1: any group that was under it. I understand because it
Speaker 1: was a budget and everybody was getting on. It was
Speaker 1: a deal with money behind it, So there's nothing really
Speaker 1: wrong with it. It's just to me, it's a whack
Speaker 1: ass name. But it's a beautiful movie. Man, it's a
Speaker 1: wag name. I mean, it's great. Groups came out of it,
Speaker 1: but none of those artists. I feel like it gave
Speaker 1: it gave everybody a clock. But in hip hop, right,
Speaker 1: it's forever. No, it's not backpacker hip hop, that's forever.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's the thing, Like, the reason why I
Speaker 1: don't it's so weird, especially with neo soul, It's just
Speaker 1: that everyone in that category was helping on making sure
Speaker 1: that you knew they're not in that category. And then
Speaker 1: it just became funny to me because the thing is,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. I thought I was the only
Speaker 1: everybody wants to people nobody under quote ar umbrella wants
Speaker 1: to claim it. I mean, yes, I think kidar uh,
Speaker 1: what do you call it? U copyrighting the word? Like?
Speaker 1: And I told him this. I was like, you ended
Speaker 1: the genre when you made a public that you copy
Speaker 1: wrote the word, like who who's gonna like? You just
Speaker 1: ended your own movement. But the thing is is like
Speaker 1: as a guy who shops at Amiba or Raspputants or
Speaker 1: Jerry's records, you know, I want to know where's the
Speaker 1: quickest what like fine, Like it's an identifier for me,
Speaker 1: so I know exactly what section to go to something
Speaker 1: by the record I want to and not have to
Speaker 1: scrounge through thousand records. But I mean I digress, like
Speaker 1: I definitely feel as though you guys were a part
Speaker 1: of something. And you know this, it's not only for
Speaker 1: this genre. I remember when Luther and Anita was scoffing
Speaker 1: at Nelson George's description where he called it retro noeuvou.
Speaker 1: And you know, people, it's it's just hard to categorize
Speaker 1: something or given opinion on something until like twenty years
Speaker 1: has passed. But you know, especially now that thirty years
Speaker 1: has passed since that movement, it's it's and I'm just
Speaker 1: lazy well, yeah, you know, I don't know kind of
Speaker 1: like to say to like if you listen to so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean when you look at music like I look
Speaker 1: at all music like this, if it's early country music
Speaker 1: like blues, early Muddy Waters, and you can go you
Speaker 1: can go back before people was making records to beat
Speaker 1: for Hot Sunny Hawks. Before you can go back to
Speaker 1: when it was making records in the field, in the country,
Speaker 1: all the way to now two. Black music is one
Speaker 1: music to me, if you have to categorize it to
Speaker 1: make money, to put in the categorize its categories to
Speaker 1: differentiate and make money, but really it's all one. It's
Speaker 1: all one music. It's it's because black people are so creative,
Speaker 1: but it's all our music and basketball. We gotta crossover.
Speaker 1: We do all these different things so good. So that's
Speaker 1: when you listen to music like Trapp now Trapp is trapped,
Speaker 1: now you got Drill right, It's just it's just I
Speaker 1: feel like we're just it's all one thing. Like when
Speaker 1: hip hop came out, I always wanted to see hip
Speaker 1: hop get old. I always want to see the last
Speaker 1: like the tribe, the generation before that. I wanted to
Speaker 1: know how they were going to react as older men
Speaker 1: because I got a chance to see the Temptations and
Speaker 1: the Shalamars and and the whispers get old, and how
Speaker 1: do they always want to see how the coolest cats
Speaker 1: in the world hip hop was the coolest. We don't
Speaker 1: like thorn. I want to see what they were gonna
Speaker 1: be like as older men. And it's so funny to
Speaker 1: watch when you see like hip hop casts like talking
Speaker 1: about trap artists. That would have been the way whispers
Speaker 1: what I've been talking about somebody rapping, Like what the
Speaker 1: hell are you talking about? I don't know, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Now you hear artists, hip hop artists saying that about
Speaker 1: trap artists, And it's just because now our generation is
Speaker 1: at PTA meetings. Let me just say this too. As
Speaker 1: a former black radio person, you should know that neo
Speaker 1: soul to a lot of people was rebellious music, and
Speaker 1: especially to black radio people, because this was music that
Speaker 1: we weren't necessary allowed to play. Literally, Raphael, I planned
Speaker 1: to tell you the story about how I got fired
Speaker 1: for interviewing you live on the radio, and I think
Speaker 1: that a lot of times. Yes, y'all don't know, huh.
Speaker 1: It was my pleasure. It was. It was my pleasure.
Speaker 1: But understand that like people fought people like myself, tim
Speaker 1: Me Bagon and like DJ's around the country that wasn't
Speaker 1: it was called trauma. We was fighting for this ship.
Speaker 1: When they when they said to me, yo, I'm a
Speaker 1: real quick rock Field. They said to me rock Fails
Speaker 1: is doing our music conference and we want you to
Speaker 1: interview him and tape it and we're gonna play it
Speaker 1: back after we start playing his record. Right, But this
Speaker 1: was during the time when you put out the record
Speaker 1: that was kind of Stacks inspired, right, and I'm on
Speaker 1: the hip hop right, so I'm like, this is Philadelphi. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you remember because I was drilling you about
Speaker 1: Josh Stone and stuff. We had a good time. So
Speaker 1: so what's funny is when they said that they was
Speaker 1: gonna play this ship back, I was like, that's a lie,
Speaker 1: because you're not gonna never play no songs from this
Speaker 1: record because they don't fit our format. Right. So when
Speaker 1: you walked into the studio live, I was like, this
Speaker 1: is fucking Rafael Sad, the father of this fucking ship.
Speaker 1: That is the height. That's the reason that Philadelphia is
Speaker 1: doing what it's doing right now. How would I be
Speaker 1: like to sit here and lie and do a fake
Speaker 1: interview with this person. So we went up live and
Speaker 1: a week later they was like, you disobeyed what I did,
Speaker 1: which we told you to do. That was part of
Speaker 1: the story. So another funny story about that record when
Speaker 1: I went to this radio station in South Carolina and
Speaker 1: so the radio guy at the time, he was the
Speaker 1: regional guy, was in Atlanta, so he took me in
Speaker 1: this radio station. So my whole radio promo was a
Speaker 1: fake out with Colombia. It was all fake, I believe it.
Speaker 1: But they had to take me because of the respect
Speaker 1: for the records that I was producing. They didn't just
Speaker 1: want to let me go, so they took me on
Speaker 1: this fake radio run that I was doing interviews. But
Speaker 1: nobody was at the label cared about the records. So
Speaker 1: they did tell me. Some of the guys that Columbia
Speaker 1: told me just get his record away because streaming was
Speaker 1: about to happen, and they didn't. They were spending money
Speaker 1: on records and records weren't selling, so they were confused
Speaker 1: because like Bruce Springsteen wasn't selling, None of the records
Speaker 1: were selling because it was streaming, right, So I get
Speaker 1: in the crop with this guy, and he says, he said, man,
Speaker 1: your record is actually where they spinning that what the
Speaker 1: numbers were like was was high on the record. So
Speaker 1: he said, he said, he said because he said, well,
Speaker 1: they told me, he said between me Columbia told me
Speaker 1: just to take this record out and tell him it's
Speaker 1: it's experimental record and just play it real late at night.
Speaker 1: So like, but the record kind of caught fire, like
Speaker 1: love that Girl, because people was like listening to it.
Speaker 1: And so what happened was Europe ended up calling France.
Speaker 1: Actually France called parents called they they called uh Strainger
Speaker 1: over in Columbia. They said, I don't know about in
Speaker 1: the States, but this is a real record over here.
Speaker 1: And so that's when I started playing in front of
Speaker 1: like fifteen thousand people by myself and Europe different venues.
Speaker 1: But yeah, the whole record was like a fake out
Speaker 1: and end up being one of my Yeah, that's that's funny.
Speaker 1: I remember that. Wait, all right, things are coming back
Speaker 1: to me now that I know I'll never get to
Speaker 1: ask you again. I gotta go back to Sons and
Speaker 1: Soul for this one question. All right, So you worked
Speaker 1: with a guy who I had hope for to be
Speaker 1: the future. And it's not who you think I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: You work with director Sangi and this is hot office
Speaker 1: passed me by success like black videos, we've never seen
Speaker 1: somebody with like Spike Jones is aesthetic for black videos.
Speaker 1: But dog the Pillow video, how did Homie talk to
Speaker 1: you all into doing that video? Naked? But that wasn't
Speaker 1: sun That wasn't That wasn't sund and leaving. I thought
Speaker 1: he did all three of your videos. Okay, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: have never done that. That was who did that? I
Speaker 1: don't know. And those the people that're standing up those
Speaker 1: are those are not us? That's not us. On the
Speaker 1: doubles that spinned around bloodass neck that was that wasn't
Speaker 1: Pillow forgot. I'm like, trust me, everybody was drinking. So
Speaker 1: my my brother, my brother's thing was this. This is
Speaker 1: all Dwayne he was. I'm not I'm not throwing him
Speaker 1: under the bus because he stands by it. He stands
Speaker 1: by trust me. My brother has no regrets about nothing
Speaker 1: he does. I love you. Try to do the video.
Speaker 1: Oh not in the in the part when the three
Speaker 1: dudes are standing together and they spin and then when
Speaker 1: you watch them they spend like really like it looked
Speaker 1: real bad TV showing the video and they clouded up
Speaker 1: all the private areas. So that's how like it's like
Speaker 1: my brother. So my brother walks in like we like
Speaker 1: the red hot chili peppers in his mind, so he's like,
Speaker 1: he like, this could be like a real like this
Speaker 1: could be like one of those what's the what's the cartoon?
Speaker 1: Um George Clinton the tour bus? This could be like
Speaker 1: the Tales of the tour Bus because like you know
Speaker 1: when they showed George Clinton, just jump out their kid, right.
Speaker 1: So it's like my brother walked in the room. And
Speaker 1: my brother walks in the room and goes, hey, guess what, guys,
Speaker 1: he could be the first band into a neked video.
Speaker 1: And I was like what So so this is what
Speaker 1: I said. I said, Well, if Tim Tim is a square,
Speaker 1: was square this time it's nerd church boy, church of
Speaker 1: God in Christ, I said Tim. I said that Tim agrees,
Speaker 1: I'll do it. It's no way in hell Tim is
Speaker 1: agreeing on this. Right. We walk in the room and
Speaker 1: said what do you think Tim? Tim goes, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Ship That's how that happened. Wow, man, man, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: had another Sons of Soul question the interlude don't be bashfood,
Speaker 1: don't be Was that a real hold guy? Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: we we we are. Engineer Jerry Brown took this record
Speaker 1: out in the middle of Manhattan and gave this guy
Speaker 1: some money and he sang that he brought it back.
Speaker 1: I was like that ship at speaking when when you
Speaker 1: spoke of your engineer helping you develop, were you talking
Speaker 1: about Jerry Jerry Brown? Is he still setting up Christmas
Speaker 1: lights in the studio? Y'all gotta know, you know, Jerry
Speaker 1: Brown is the first cat, first black cat I've ever
Speaker 1: heard say. Yeah, man, you just gotta find your enerjoy.
Speaker 1: And for me, every day is Christmas and there's no
Speaker 1: when we did what they do, it was Christmas and
Speaker 1: we did what they do and like we did it
Speaker 1: in May, and he had that he had your studio
Speaker 1: looking like Christmas. And then when he was working with
Speaker 1: Alicia Keys, same thing. I walked in and saw this
Speaker 1: Christmas decorations. I was like, oh, raphaels Deep must be
Speaker 1: here because it's Christmas time. And Jerry came out. What
Speaker 1: is what is the deal with Jerry? And as obsession
Speaker 1: with every day is Christmas to him? You know what.
Speaker 1: I never knew that's what he was doing until you
Speaker 1: just said it. But you're right, because because the one
Speaker 1: thing I do remember about Jerry is this. You know,
Speaker 1: he's still around. You know he he makes a lot
Speaker 1: of John legends. It's funny. He makes the John Leston
Speaker 1: Christmas legend. Like YO, did Jerry? He's like, yes, he did. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the funny thing about Jerry. What I remember about
Speaker 1: Jerry the Moostes. He talks about when songs in the
Speaker 1: Kid of Life came out and he went and he
Speaker 1: stood in line and Tower records on the sinset this
Speaker 1: long line and he bought that record and he came
Speaker 1: home and Christmas Eve and he played that record, so
Speaker 1: he has to think about Christmas. You're right, that is crazy?
Speaker 1: Is that? I was asking? Is that the same? Is
Speaker 1: it Ali and Jerry? Is it the same? From Jerry?
Speaker 1: Not him? Mixed the group called Climax. He Climax back
Speaker 1: in the day. Um used to be a stud ABC.
Speaker 1: He worked at ABC back in the day as an engineer.
Speaker 1: FRANTI that Jerry is Jerry Knight who Jerry Knight Jack
Speaker 1: and Jel radio singer? Okay, I was is that the
Speaker 1: is that the largest hit tony believe it or not,
Speaker 1: if I had no alluders, if I had alluded as
Speaker 1: the highest charting record. But the biggest record to me
Speaker 1: is probably it depends when you're talking, and that's me
Speaker 1: and you was not a that's my first solo record. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's okay only because at x tein wouldn't let me
Speaker 1: put my name on the record. So what really? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that record was just done and my
Speaker 1: that's that's the record that was done in Sacramento in
Speaker 1: my mother's house, in the room on the teeth on
Speaker 1: the teeth three, which I and I put it out.
Speaker 1: I gave it it John and the John Singleton they Polygraham,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't say ed, but they said I couldn't use
Speaker 1: my arm, I couldn't use my name. So the second
Speaker 1: record I did was asked if you was on higher
Speaker 1: learning and they told me I couldn't use my name again,
Speaker 1: And I told John Singleton they couldn't use a song,
Speaker 1: and John called PolyGram and said, this record is gonna
Speaker 1: say rod fel sadik um. So the first my first
Speaker 1: solo record would have been just me and you. And
Speaker 1: the funny thing about it is Uh. That's when I
Speaker 1: first figured out I had this pass called Jocko on
Speaker 1: the T three, I was like, I called my godfather
Speaker 1: James Levi. I used to play for the drummer for
Speaker 1: with Herbie head Uh the head Hunters, and I called
Speaker 1: him almost like who's that? Gave me a ride home
Speaker 1: and it took his bass album played for me when
Speaker 1: I was like fifteen. He was like Joao Jaco Jacko
Speaker 1: played for me and my mom. He so, I'm in
Speaker 1: velvet here in Oakland, James Levi is my godfather. Paul
Speaker 1: Jackson all those the whispers used to come and watch
Speaker 1: his plague and this band I was called tick Band.
Speaker 1: And so I'm at the house one day and James go, hey, man,
Speaker 1: give him a ride home and talk to him and
Speaker 1: open up his heads. We got this four fifth y
Speaker 1: s L convertibly drive. He stopped buying phone booth, get
Speaker 1: on the phone and they take me about ten moles
Speaker 1: to my house. He pulls his base out, he gets
Speaker 1: on the ports. He plays for me and my mom
Speaker 1: for like thirty minutes and talk to me and my mom,
Speaker 1: which my mom don't know. My mom wouldn't know who
Speaker 1: anybody is in R and b R nobody so Jazz,
Speaker 1: you don't even know that. So when I and then
Speaker 1: he leaves, and then I'm in my house making this record.
Speaker 1: When I made that record years later, and then once
Speaker 1: I make the record years later, I called, I said,
Speaker 1: I've seen this, passee Jocko. Now I knew all about Jocko.
Speaker 1: I'm like I called James, I said, who was that
Speaker 1: to gave me a ride home? Without blinking? He goes,
Speaker 1: what do you think it was? With Jocko? Stories? Oh? God, man,
Speaker 1: you know how many other random stories do you have
Speaker 1: like that? M Ladies and gentlemen. I know you hate
Speaker 1: when my voice comes on and tells you you gotta
Speaker 1: come back next week. But you know good and well
Speaker 1: that we weren't going to give you the whole Angelotta
Speaker 1: this one episode. So make sure you come back next
Speaker 1: week when Rathiolsa Dick talks to you know, Layah Sugar,
Speaker 1: Steve and Fon Tikolo and pay filled myself about his
Speaker 1: solo work, about touring, about songwriting, about movie scoring, about bacon,
Speaker 1: yes Bacon, and he drops a really awesome exclusive Jim,
Speaker 1: So next week quest Love Supreme, I will see you
Speaker 1: guys there much Love Supreme is a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Cupredio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple Poe Podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.