Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to another episode of Quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: I'm your house, much love. We have some Supreme in
Speaker 2: the house. We have uh yea, what you doing out there,
Speaker 2: guys and all?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, I'm still here.
Speaker 1: I'm not not on fire. Okay, good, Yeah, that's good
Speaker 1: to hear.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: We have fun take alot right now? Yeah? Cooland man
Speaker 1: cooland was it was raining out here today?
Speaker 4: So uh.
Speaker 1: And uh Sugar.
Speaker 4: Steve Greetings, Hello everybody, Team Supreme.
Speaker 2: I love you, I love you back Sugar Steeds like
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson.
Speaker 4: Like.
Speaker 1: Network Hello, I like that, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, ladies and gentlemen, I will say that today
Speaker 2: is one of those those I guess you could say
Speaker 2: the special deep cut episode of Chus Love Supreme between
Speaker 2: the explore and sect work and the history some of
Speaker 2: our favorites.
Speaker 1: Who otherwise wouldn't receive their flowers.
Speaker 2: While here and our guess is that person in my book,
Speaker 2: he his resume is extensive and.
Speaker 1: Legendary and wrote down resume.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of sufficial there's a lot to drake
Speaker 2: to Taymour Braxton, the Faith Evans to jo Jo dan Nesby,
Speaker 2: Hark Faney, Mi Walston.
Speaker 1: Ursa Lebo Hathaway.
Speaker 2: But you know it's it's without no doubt that his
Speaker 2: work on the bona fide classic lp uh It's about
Speaker 2: Time by Sisters with Voices Study Dree, which he made
Speaker 2: his mark creating hit after hit, classic after classic, John
Speaker 2: after John. In my opinion, Week is probably neck and
Speaker 2: neck with Living Lift Every Voice.
Speaker 1: And Sing as as the national anthem.
Speaker 2: Actually I think we edges it out because unlike Lift
Speaker 2: Every Voice and Sing, I know the bridge to Week
Speaker 2: by heart.
Speaker 5: It's at least the anthem is at least that right hey,
Speaker 5: you know?
Speaker 2: But yeah, what more can I say? Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 2: We've been waiting for this one. Please welcome to Quest
Speaker 2: of Supreme, mister Brian Alexander Morgan. Thank you, thank you, sir,
Speaker 2: thank you.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you. Love all you guys, fans for life,
Speaker 4: fans forever forget it. I'm huge, huge, huge fans of everybody,
Speaker 4: so thank so.
Speaker 1: Where are you right now?
Speaker 3: Bro?
Speaker 4: Where am I right now? Is that what I'm at home?
Speaker 1: Okay? You know East West Coast?
Speaker 4: Oh oh oh la am i bad la. The valley
Speaker 4: out in.
Speaker 1: The valley, you know, you know, yeah.
Speaker 5: I think last time we hung out it was when
Speaker 5: you were in Sacramento.
Speaker 1: This was got.
Speaker 6: It was after after Foreign Shang Show and s Smith.
Speaker 6: She was like, yeah, y'all, yes, big shout to side
Speaker 6: man side knows everybody and she's like, yo, y'all want
Speaker 6: to go brand that was in the Morgan wants us
Speaker 6: to come back.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, yeah, that was God. That was
Speaker 1: ten years ago.
Speaker 4: It was easy and I was a huge fan of
Speaker 4: what you were doing then, just loving it.
Speaker 7: Bro.
Speaker 6: I had no idea you knew who we were when
Speaker 6: I When I got your care that's when I realized
Speaker 6: how much of a head you were when in your
Speaker 6: kitchen and you had CDs in your cabinets where the
Speaker 6: glasses should be.
Speaker 1: I said, he really about that life.
Speaker 4: And I'm a huge little Brother fan, huge roots fan,
Speaker 4: black Dog one of my Oh my god, we're talking
Speaker 4: about pins. Oh my god. I've been from day one.
Speaker 4: I was a I was a fan of Quest credits just.
Speaker 8: From day one because he appreciated Because he appreciated credits.
Speaker 4: I caught it all. I was like, okay, then there
Speaker 4: you go, man, Look, thank you that's real talking all day.
Speaker 2: Do we I believe, did we not? I don't know
Speaker 2: if we met at our very first show. We had
Speaker 2: a show in Sacramento, like back in ninety four, ninety five.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, I think I met you and
Speaker 1: Rafael Sad the same day at the very first.
Speaker 4: Killed in there that nightclub.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I remember that, Okay, So I do remember, yes.
Speaker 4: Sir, yes, sir. And then I saw you again.
Speaker 8: Next time I saw you again, it was years later,
Speaker 8: and I had on that Donny Hathaway joint, that Donny
Speaker 8: Hathaway shirt.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, Oh.
Speaker 2: Good, Okay, I know that you well, your home base
Speaker 2: was kind of Sacramento, but you were born in all places, Wichita,
Speaker 2: Kansas described growing up in Wichita. How long did you
Speaker 2: stay there before?
Speaker 4: Wow?
Speaker 8: Man, you know what Wichita is Some of the hottest
Speaker 8: talent you'll never hear, is what I like to say,
Speaker 8: because when you're there, it seems impossible to be on joy,
Speaker 8: at least back then, not now because you could do
Speaker 8: anything on the Internet now. But when I was there, listen,
Speaker 8: Charlie Wilson, Roger and Zach all that Midwest funk, all
Speaker 8: that stuff is the holy grail because we perceived them
Speaker 8: as people who got out of the Midwest. Like, okay,
Speaker 8: even Babyface and all that stuff from Cincinnati, Cleveland.
Speaker 4: Pick a thing. It's rude boys.
Speaker 8: There's always that Midwest funk, Shirley Murdoch and plus you
Speaker 8: get way back, you know, of course, Ohio players, James.
Speaker 8: So there's always been this element of whoever makes it
Speaker 8: out of there, we feel like, oh, the gods made
Speaker 8: it out. For example, Charlie himself, Gap Ben, they had
Speaker 8: been struggling for years before that before they finally broke through.
Speaker 8: So I feel like me being for which to I
Speaker 8: was just.
Speaker 4: Another one in that long line of oh my god,
Speaker 4: he made it out.
Speaker 2: So what was the music environment like in like, what's
Speaker 2: your first musical memory from your childhood?
Speaker 4: Oh? Man, I can tell you that right off the
Speaker 4: top of Michael Jackson.
Speaker 8: Of course, the purity of Michael's voice on I Want
Speaker 8: You Back, ABC, I'll be there, Touch Me Beyond beyond, right,
Speaker 8: and then you add Stevie Wonder to that, and the
Speaker 8: progressive stuff he was doing on those keys really got me.
Speaker 4: I wasn't playing yet. I just started playing until I
Speaker 4: was like ten in nineteen seventy seventy six.
Speaker 8: But between seventy and seventy five, man, it was Stevie,
Speaker 8: Donny Hathaway, Michael Jackson.
Speaker 4: Those were the three voices that really changed my life.
Speaker 8: Now, later on in the late seventies, it was the
Speaker 8: Clark sisters that changed everything else that turned. That was
Speaker 8: a paradigm shift from in seventy nine when it is
Speaker 8: my living in Vain. Everything changed again. But I don't
Speaker 8: want to get.
Speaker 4: Ahead of myself.
Speaker 1: I can tell what no I can tell how you
Speaker 1: stack your harmonies.
Speaker 2: I can see that influence in it. You hear that, Yeah,
Speaker 2: no doubt, I hear that. So yeah, are you from
Speaker 2: a musical family or like.
Speaker 4: Let me give it up to my pops.
Speaker 8: He made a record when I was like two and
Speaker 8: sixty eight to forty five, quest and I still have
Speaker 8: it and me and my dad is the only one.
Speaker 8: Let my mom's gone, my sister's gone, rest in peace,
Speaker 8: but my father and I. He thought he was Jimmy
Speaker 8: Hendrix back when Jimmy was you know the ship. So
Speaker 8: I grew up in a house that was he was
Speaker 8: playing not only the slide, the family stone stuff and
Speaker 8: the and the funk stuff, but he was also playing
Speaker 8: Hendrix and Santana and all those rock joints. He loved
Speaker 8: led Zeppelin, So I'm a truly amalgamation of all of that.
Speaker 4: Bro all of it.
Speaker 8: My dad thought he was Jimmy seriously with the friends,
Speaker 8: swearing the friends. We had beads in the house, and
Speaker 8: you know it was that.
Speaker 1: Beas before you entered the room. Yes, sir, I thought
Speaker 1: it was the only.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely, you know.
Speaker 8: But my dad was a guitar player, man, and that's
Speaker 8: the only musician that I ever saw first in my
Speaker 8: life was a guitar player. And he had rehearsals at
Speaker 8: the house too. That also was mind blowing to hear
Speaker 8: musicians play in your house, and your house is only
Speaker 8: a two bedroom house. It was very, very impactful to
Speaker 8: a little me.
Speaker 1: What did your folks do for a living?
Speaker 4: My crazy, crazy thing. Another thing I got from my
Speaker 4: dad reading reading.
Speaker 8: My dad worked as a librarian at a at a huge,
Speaker 8: big metropolitan library in Wichita, like the biggest in the city,
Speaker 8: and he drove a bookmobile to the hood to the
Speaker 8: hood books, letting black kids come read in the bookmobile.
Speaker 4: So that was a huge influence on me as well.
Speaker 2: Book I've heard I've seen that on television. So was
Speaker 2: that like the book version of the ice Cream Man.
Speaker 8: Totally just drive books to the hood, and you know
Speaker 8: what's crazy, Like I don't think you could do that now,
Speaker 8: Like it would be.
Speaker 4: Like people be like, what the hell?
Speaker 1: But no, it bring the book Man, the food Man,
Speaker 1: and the Bookman back and bringing back.
Speaker 4: Bro and you know what, thank God for get Harris Ye.
Speaker 4: Back to the influence. My mom knows what she did.
Speaker 8: She was just a secretary at a construction place. But
Speaker 8: it was her church going that was the dip where
Speaker 8: my mom and dad converged. My dad was absolutely not
Speaker 8: religious and all about African this African that. My mom
Speaker 8: was completely Jesus, Jesus, all church all the time.
Speaker 5: You didn't like saying in the church or playing the
Speaker 5: church and none of that.
Speaker 8: Of course I did, of course, okay, okay, that's the
Speaker 8: training right there, the beginning. But now I got to
Speaker 8: keep it one hundred because everybody listen, I got to
Speaker 8: keep it one hundred. I grew up Baptists, and so
Speaker 8: it was all about Andre Crouch and and James Cleveland and.
Speaker 4: Yes, which we love, but check this. It was when
Speaker 4: I went to the Koji Church for the first time
Speaker 4: right and heard that Corsist is.
Speaker 8: You know, I heard that little swag on and you know,
Speaker 8: drummers was really really drumming.
Speaker 4: I was like, oh so I kind of switched over
Speaker 4: a little bit.
Speaker 7: Cool.
Speaker 1: Explain that to me.
Speaker 2: So, what's the difference in you're saying in Baptist Church
Speaker 2: was just very traditional meat potatoes gospel.
Speaker 1: And you were allowed to be more so.
Speaker 2: Is this a non denomination in church or what was
Speaker 2: the second church the church got in Christ Christ Learned
Speaker 2: as the Kojik Church or Pentecostal.
Speaker 8: They they had a history of literally trying to play
Speaker 8: records that sounded like you know, the streets for for
Speaker 8: for lack of.
Speaker 2: A better word, Okay, I have a yeah, I have
Speaker 2: an obsession with collecting next to Jamaican music, I have
Speaker 2: a really large collection of like earl gospel acts, trying
Speaker 2: to turn secular songs into gospel joints like I Got
Speaker 2: a Second Time Around by Shallow.
Speaker 7: Mar I got hilarious.
Speaker 1: Oh I got yeah, I have so much.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do it on my DJ sets one night,
Speaker 2: Like just do it, bro you upside down by you
Speaker 2: gotta be kidding me. Oh dude, all I do is
Speaker 2: collect like really bad cover songs and gospel secularizing songs.
Speaker 1: There's a really good one for the Jacksons. Can you
Speaker 1: feel it? But yeah, it's like wow.
Speaker 8: Let me give you another thing about that particular subject.
Speaker 8: There were certain producers at the time that were capturing
Speaker 8: it though, they were really nailing it, like this guy.
Speaker 8: I gotta give you, Matt Probs, Bill Maxwell. He used
Speaker 8: to produce the Andre Krouch records. Them joints sounded like
Speaker 8: earth winning fire productions. You hear me, like pristine, ridiculous, funky,
Speaker 8: punchy mixes. And I was as a kid, you know,
Speaker 8: like the late seventies, me thirteen year old me. I
Speaker 8: was thirteen and seventy nine. That's when I started paying
Speaker 8: attention to mixing and the production. So you talk about
Speaker 8: off the walls out at the time, so is my
Speaker 8: living and Van came out at that time. Stevie hit
Speaker 8: his stride with Hotter than July eighty so a lot
Speaker 8: of things was happening in that mixing part. So my
Speaker 8: very first time in the studio making my own record
Speaker 8: was like eighty one, and it was gospel, but of
Speaker 8: course I was trying to do what was in the
Speaker 8: streets too, So I did a joint.
Speaker 4: It sounded like Sherylyn's got to be real. Think it didn't.
Speaker 7: Really?
Speaker 4: Hell, yeah, absolutely, joint. I need that, I need that's insane. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'll get you that.
Speaker 8: And I got a lot of gospel stuff that we
Speaker 8: did in that era. But trust me when I tell
Speaker 8: you it was it was. It was from a good
Speaker 8: reference point Thomas Whitfield and Detroit Production, Pristine on Vanessa
Speaker 8: bel Armstrong by the time, by the time Commission came
Speaker 8: out in eighty five, Can you explain?
Speaker 1: All right, So here's the deal.
Speaker 2: I grew up like my Arab musicianship, especially with all
Speaker 2: the cats that I encountered in my age range. Take
Speaker 2: all the jazz cats out, So those who were non
Speaker 2: jazz cats, you were either a prince head or you
Speaker 2: were commissioned head.
Speaker 4: Aha.
Speaker 2: And of course you know every cat I know now
Speaker 2: that's deep on gospel chops. Commission is their foundation. Can
Speaker 2: you explain to me, like a majority of R and
Speaker 2: B musicians' first generation from like nineteen ninety to like yeah,
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, two thousand and two, what is
Speaker 2: the obsession with Commission? Like, what was it about them
Speaker 2: that just grabbed. Was that like the closest y'all could
Speaker 2: get to secular music that mom and dad would allow
Speaker 2: in the house or whatever, like or live? Were they
Speaker 2: just some next level craziness?
Speaker 4: Great question.
Speaker 8: I can answer it like this for me speaking for
Speaker 8: my generation literally coming from like I said, the Hawkins
Speaker 8: and Andrea and those guys in the late seventies into
Speaker 8: the eighties when drum machine became a thing, production literally
Speaker 8: changed because of Prince right, So commission, now, remember all
Speaker 8: we had before that was the Whinings with voices like that,
Speaker 8: and they were incredible. And again but you're still talking
Speaker 8: live then that's Phil Maxwell again, same producer, same producer
Speaker 8: as Andre Krauss. That one guy gave us all those
Speaker 8: brilliant andre Krous records and all those brilliant Whinings Whinings
Speaker 8: records prior to Quincy signing them. Okay, so that production
Speaker 8: standard and that whole vibe came right into the eighties
Speaker 8: with drum machines and all the stuff that we grew
Speaker 8: up on. Quest So, like what happened was when we
Speaker 8: first heard Fred Hammond's voice, we are liking it.
Speaker 4: We likned it to the Whinings.
Speaker 8: You know that big, powerful voice coming like from Marvin Winers,
Speaker 8: but we had never heard it from such a young
Speaker 8: person prior. Besides Johnny Gill you know that, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. Somebody you feel me and shout out
Speaker 8: to Johnny.
Speaker 4: That's my guy.
Speaker 2: But there was a young boy in commission back in
Speaker 2: the back in yes eighty five. See the Fred Hammond
Speaker 2: I knows Uncle Fred No.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 4: Eighty five, the very first album.
Speaker 8: Get get familiar with all of their whole catalogs because
Speaker 8: what happened was it changed our lives. But what they
Speaker 8: did that I liked about them was that they not
Speaker 8: only had the gospel chops, but they had a David
Speaker 8: Foster flavor all through their whole mix.
Speaker 4: Like and I'm not joking, I'm talking about this. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but look but with the chops, but with the chops
Speaker 4: of a.
Speaker 8: Of a you're my inspiration by Chicago, you know what
Speaker 8: I mean. So that was the difference between the Winans
Speaker 8: and Commission. Commission gave you that no, no, no, those
Speaker 8: kind of melodies.
Speaker 1: That wasn't that way with Tomorrow with the Winings that
Speaker 1: was later.
Speaker 4: Well, no, there they were on it, but they weren't young.
Speaker 1: Okay. The Commission was young. I get it, okay, And that.
Speaker 8: Changed it because when they saw young people doing it.
Speaker 8: I went to their show so I could see the
Speaker 8: audience change, you know what I mean, like all of
Speaker 8: a sudden, it went from older.
Speaker 4: People vibing on the Winings and the Hawkins and.
Speaker 8: And all that to fool young kids that would have
Speaker 8: been otherwise in a club at a hip hop thing.
Speaker 4: Are all of a sudden that a commission, commission. That's
Speaker 4: right and so.
Speaker 8: But now but they got hip though, so Tremaine Hawkins
Speaker 8: and then got hipped, Clark Shisters got everybody got hit
Speaker 8: and was like yo, they start doing stuff that they
Speaker 8: could play all down on Tremaine as a direct result
Speaker 8: of that.
Speaker 1: And that's right, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 8: But because they got hip to the kids was picking
Speaker 8: it up and they would put it in the club
Speaker 8: and you brought the sunshine was the biggest, biggest, biggest
Speaker 8: joint of that type of thing.
Speaker 4: But that was just following Stevie.
Speaker 8: But I'm saying as far as really young people commission
Speaker 8: is the paradigm shift is what I want to say.
Speaker 5: Question y'all got me downloading a bunch of Gospels.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, uh, you know, there was
Speaker 2: some gospel in my crib, like and I see what
Speaker 2: you're saying. Andre Crouch's Perfect Piece is a great.
Speaker 1: Example, good record of that. Of that, uh yeah of that.
Speaker 2: And I think my dad had the the Hawkins Family
Speaker 2: album which Warrin's White actually did the first song with
Speaker 2: them or something like that.
Speaker 4: So they got joints, bro, they got joints. Holy One.
Speaker 4: Have you heard Tremaine's Holy One? Oh my goodness, you
Speaker 4: got a certain.
Speaker 1: First album, very the first album with the look at Me,
Speaker 1: look at Yeah.
Speaker 4: Holy One is on there.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, I know that whole album left and right.
Speaker 2: My parents went through a really weird Christian phase for
Speaker 2: like a good four years. So yeah, dope, yeah for
Speaker 2: every Prince album that got broken. And I had to,
Speaker 2: you know, be a exercise with Tremaine Hawkins record.
Speaker 4: So I got you stick a pin in this.
Speaker 8: When I got to Sacramento because I'm jumping I'm not
Speaker 8: jumping ahead to my Sacramento and how I got there.
Speaker 8: But when I got there, one of the first people
Speaker 8: that I got to meet was Fred Hammond and Mitchell
Speaker 8: Jones from Commission because Waynmon Tisdale was a Sacramento king
Speaker 8: and also an incredible musician, and he was there.
Speaker 4: He had a.
Speaker 1: Right yeah as a musician.
Speaker 4: Yeah wow, oh yeah.
Speaker 8: He was definitely a major athlete and came out Oklahoma.
Speaker 8: So we had the Gap connect Charlie connect.
Speaker 4: But trust me when I.
Speaker 8: Tell you all those people came through Wyman's house and
Speaker 8: I met them over there. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, just
Speaker 8: one of time.
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So what was your what was your what's the first
Speaker 1: concert you ever attended.
Speaker 4: When you were in That's a great question, man.
Speaker 8: The most significant one would have to be the Victory
Speaker 8: Tour opening day and and uh and were there too, Yes, sir, yes.
Speaker 1: Sir, you went. You went to the opening night, open
Speaker 1: the night, strip pants absolutely, yeah, strip pants night.
Speaker 2: Well, the Democrats, I believe the Democratic Convention was also
Speaker 2: in Kansas for that period. And you know, I did
Speaker 2: enough Bagan, but my my dad and.
Speaker 8: My mom, and I like said, amazing, amazing, I went
Speaker 8: to the third night. Were you by yourself? Like by yourself?
Speaker 1: No, my mom, my dad, and my sister, my dad.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 2: This is one of the times where like one of
Speaker 2: his brain hair schemes worked, which was he was like,
Speaker 2: we're gonna scalt the scalpers, and I was like, what
Speaker 2: does that mean? He's like, we're gonna wait five minutes
Speaker 2: into the show. See, you gotta be on immense faith
Speaker 2: to leave West Philadelphia drive all the way to get
Speaker 2: to Kansas City.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: And we're just sitting in that, you know. And I'm
Speaker 1: twelve man, so I'm my nerves are all. You know.
Speaker 1: I ain't paying no thirty.
Speaker 2: Dollars, no ticket, but I bet y'all get him down
Speaker 2: to town in about two minutes before the show. Bam, Wow,
Speaker 2: we got, we got.
Speaker 1: We got four Victory Tour tickets for ten bucks? Was
Speaker 1: the original stuff?
Speaker 5: Huh damn?
Speaker 4: Straight up, yo, that's crazy. And guess what.
Speaker 8: There's some footage somewhere floating around of Mary Hard from
Speaker 8: Entertainment Tonight interviewed my ask what nobody.
Speaker 1: Said her name? In a minute, Mary Hart no said
Speaker 1: her name, and it's not good.
Speaker 4: Here up.
Speaker 1: What I was You guys gotta choose his side right now, bro.
Speaker 4: That's I did not know that. You guys are hit
Speaker 4: the media. I did not know that, and you know
Speaker 4: I love her and yeah, wow, crazy wow.
Speaker 2: So what was it like in what was your your
Speaker 2: band situation or your like your high school situation like
Speaker 2: were you in any local bands at the time or yes,
Speaker 2: and you know what was your development moment that brought
Speaker 2: you to musicianship.
Speaker 4: Totally crazy?
Speaker 8: Okay, So starting in the church, I saw this thirteen
Speaker 8: year old little girl playing keys. It was the pastor's daughter.
Speaker 8: That was my first, Wow, a young person can do this.
Speaker 8: So that was huge for me to see her doing that.
Speaker 8: And then when they added drums at our church, it
Speaker 8: took us took them a while to let them let
Speaker 8: them do that because they were so conservative. But once
Speaker 8: they did that, my mom Look, my mom was the
Speaker 8: church secretary, so pete this.
Speaker 4: So the drummer would always leave his drums at the church.
Speaker 8: So when my mom would go to do the secretary
Speaker 8: stuff and on Saturdays, I would go with her just
Speaker 8: to jump on that dude's drums. Okay, So I started
Speaker 8: out drumming before I could play keys. And then and
Speaker 8: that changed my whole life because I was like, man,
Speaker 8: drumming is like the thing I thought, that's what I
Speaker 8: thought I was going to be doing. But then I
Speaker 8: kept getting on those keys trying to you know, how
Speaker 8: you pick out melodies and stuff. And I got better
Speaker 8: and better at picking out melodies, and I was like, man,
Speaker 8: maybe I'm supposed to play. So I just started listening
Speaker 8: and then I got embarrassed by better players than me,
Speaker 8: and I was like, whoa, I'm nowhere near I gotta
Speaker 8: get my you know, step my game up.
Speaker 4: These guys are playing Herbie Hancock. I'm in here playing
Speaker 4: soon and very soon. What the hell?
Speaker 2: You know, it's good to know that. I thought I
Speaker 2: was the only one that went through that, that whole thing.
Speaker 2: Like there was a period maybe like two months where
Speaker 2: I drummed in my local church.
Speaker 4: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: But you know, I was trying to play funk rhythms
Speaker 2: and whatnot, and they actually had to have a meeting
Speaker 2: or whether or not my playing was uplifting the lord.
Speaker 1: Or like that's how strict they were like, oh my god.
Speaker 2: So because the thing was when I would play all
Speaker 2: the you know, they'd be like, oh, like, I try
Speaker 2: to play like seprom seas By, like a popular break
Speaker 2: feat inside the music, and it's like the kids news.
Speaker 1: So they started doing the and everything. Church the deacons like.
Speaker 8: Sit down, so look, and hence that's why I left
Speaker 8: the particular church I was at and I went to
Speaker 8: play for a Kojak Church, And when I got to
Speaker 8: the Kojin church, I had my full on keyboard and
Speaker 8: drum machine in that bad bad When we play you
Speaker 8: about the Sunshine, it sounded like you about the sunshine?
Speaker 4: Wow, wow, you feel me?
Speaker 8: And then all my commission stuff. I programmed it the
Speaker 8: night before. QUEST programmed all the beats and feels and
Speaker 8: crashes and everything, and so when I played So when
Speaker 8: I played the commission joint, it sounded like the record.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was your whatpin of choice?
Speaker 4: Where were you using Leah Lindrum all day?
Speaker 1: Wow? You got lyndrum that early?
Speaker 4: I got Lyndrum And as soon as it came out,
Speaker 4: it was I got it in eighty three. I think
Speaker 4: it was eighty three. They all went out.
Speaker 8: They had one out in eighty two, but it was
Speaker 8: in California. My friends had I heard about it, but
Speaker 8: I got one in eighty three.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: How many LUNs did you have that mode to get that?
Speaker 7: You know what?
Speaker 8: Listen this here's the good news about how my development happened.
Speaker 8: In Wichita, there was this white guy named John Miller.
Speaker 8: John Miller owned what would be the equivalent of the
Speaker 8: guitar center in a major city. Okay, he had his
Speaker 8: own music story like that. So we had all the
Speaker 8: new keyboards, all the new drum machines, earlier than everybody,
Speaker 8: right and so. But he also had a recording studio,
Speaker 8: a sixteen track recording studio.
Speaker 4: So this is what happened.
Speaker 8: So he said, I used to go in there and
Speaker 8: just play on all his gear because of course, you know,
Speaker 8: being broke poor, that's where.
Speaker 4: I got a chance to play.
Speaker 8: So the people, the esecial, the white people that would
Speaker 8: cut and this is Kansas, so the white people that
Speaker 8: would come in.
Speaker 4: There and hear me playing on stuff would ask, you
Speaker 4: know what my name was? What am I doing?
Speaker 8: So John got hit piece like yo, you know what.
Speaker 8: I got a studio I want to promote, and if
Speaker 8: you come in there, I'll give you free studio time
Speaker 8: if you can go in there and do some work.
Speaker 8: I did a demo in there, bro That gospel demo
Speaker 8: is the demo that got me my record deal.
Speaker 4: On Warner Brothers. Wow. What yeah, Wow, Yes sir, yes sir.
Speaker 8: That demo I did in that studio got me the
Speaker 8: record deal that Bennie Medina signed me to in eighty seven.
Speaker 4: I did it in eighty five. I did it in
Speaker 4: eighty five eighty six. By eighty seven, J King came
Speaker 4: through Wichita, Kansas and heard that demo.
Speaker 1: And I cannot wait to hear you J King's story
Speaker 1: waiting and waiting for some King you know.
Speaker 6: Yes, so this is to give people some context. So
Speaker 6: this is TIMEX social club, Yes, club club, Yes, so
Speaker 6: this is that.
Speaker 4: So eventually absolutely all.
Speaker 8: Yes, right, he came from all that, and that's my people.
Speaker 8: So how did I get from which iss Tod to Sacramento?
Speaker 4: Just that way? A friend of mine named Steve Williams.
Speaker 4: I got a shout out, my.
Speaker 8: Boy, Steve Williams, because Steve Williams was the person who
Speaker 8: was the biggest club nouveaut fan I ever met in
Speaker 8: my life, like a full on stand right, And of
Speaker 8: course I was arrogant. I'm snooty nosed fred Ham and
Speaker 8: Clark sister's guy. Then people can't sing what are you
Speaker 8: talking about? I was. I was very I was a
Speaker 8: quest of very snob situation, like because I know Christen snob. Nah, bro,
Speaker 8: I'm talking like when I'm talking singing, we're talking about
Speaker 8: the female d you know what I'm saying. Look, and
Speaker 8: I'm not trying to be funny.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying I was just that that arrogant guy.
Speaker 4: You feel me? So I wasn't even paying no attention
Speaker 4: to the freaking club New Vau at that time. Now
Speaker 4: and rumors. I thought that was a joke. I was like,
Speaker 4: is that is that like a joke?
Speaker 8: I thought somebody record? Yeah, yeah, talking about how do
Speaker 8: rumor get? I was like, okay, what is that Eddie Murphy,
Speaker 8: what the fuck is this?
Speaker 1: And did know it was because then, because if you remember,
Speaker 1: that was the joke.
Speaker 8: But lost re short. The guys that put that put
Speaker 8: that record out was j King. He put that own
Speaker 8: label and that joint.
Speaker 4: Blew the hell up.
Speaker 8: And when Pop and They was on all of a
Speaker 8: sudden they were on tour with run DMC and motherfucking
Speaker 8: Beastie Boys.
Speaker 4: Okay, when that happened, I was like, wow, this is
Speaker 4: a real record, right, never thought nothing else about it.
Speaker 8: That was nineteen eighty six. Uh, and I still got
Speaker 8: my gospel demo. We're trying to get signed to A
Speaker 8: and M Records. We had a little manager and they
Speaker 8: was trying to get us signed to A and M
Speaker 8: because John McLean signed.
Speaker 4: Janet had just done the Fall Down record of Tremaine.
Speaker 1: What you mean, right?
Speaker 4: So we thought, hey, we could it was me And
Speaker 4: when I say we, it was a group called Cachet
Speaker 4: that I was in.
Speaker 7: It was.
Speaker 1: A light green drink right there. And hypnotic is a
Speaker 1: part of it.
Speaker 4: Listen. I was trying to be all in.
Speaker 8: Look since j K found me and signed me, I
Speaker 8: was trying to be all in the French state Club Nouveau.
Speaker 4: And you know, so I just said that stupid ship.
Speaker 4: It's just right, right right. It's just made a unique voice, supposedly,
Speaker 4: and it was spelled c A c h E T
Speaker 4: d E v O. I s, oh wow, that's right,
Speaker 4: that's right, that's right.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, And you know what, shout out to my
Speaker 8: girl Michelle mactheney, who I grew up with, my homegirl
Speaker 8: from witch Toad.
Speaker 4: She was in that group with me, and recipes to
Speaker 4: James Williams who was also in that group. We passed
Speaker 4: away that. But guess what, Jake One just.
Speaker 8: Sampled some something from that very album only last year,
Speaker 8: that unreleased, that unreleased Warner Brothers album, Can you feel Me?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 8: People find they find stuff? Brow that's dope, man, Ain't
Speaker 8: that crazy? But Anyway, long story, so back to J
Speaker 8: King's Okay, So Jay King blows up with time Ax
Speaker 8: Social Club. They fall out and then the only thing
Speaker 8: left is Denny and Tommy and and Uh and Jay
Speaker 8: King and then he puts in Samuel and Val. That
Speaker 8: becomes Club New vaut All right, So now I'm still
Speaker 8: in Wichita. My first visit to LA was trying to
Speaker 8: get signed to A and M with John McClain. John
Speaker 8: was actually interested and we thought we had a deal
Speaker 8: on the table. So I'm kind of feeling a little
Speaker 8: cocky and thinking that, oh, John McLain said he's interested.
Speaker 8: So when I get back to Wichita and I'm just
Speaker 8: in this in between times, my friend Steve the Club
Speaker 8: New vau stand calls me from J King's hotel room
Speaker 8: late like two in the morning, something crazy, and he
Speaker 8: calls me. I'm still living with my mom, so she's
Speaker 8: like what the hell?
Speaker 4: So I answered the phone. His name is Steve Williams.
Speaker 4: He goes, hey, you got to get down here.
Speaker 8: I'll let Ja King hear your demo, that same gospel demo,
Speaker 8: and then Jay King snatches.
Speaker 4: The phone and be like, come get this motherfucker. He's
Speaker 4: sucking up my pussy. But I do need you to
Speaker 4: let me. But I do need to let you. Let
Speaker 4: me take this tape, I said.
Speaker 8: And I was like, WHOA, I don't know, bro, And
Speaker 8: the only thing I had seen was bad press about
Speaker 8: them fighting right with Time at Social Club.
Speaker 2: Yes, listen, let me tell you to radio obviously, and
Speaker 2: I read right the lead singer Time Social Club like
Speaker 2: just throw J King under the bus.
Speaker 8: Worse than that, though, I would read like black beaten,
Speaker 8: you know, come on, man, so look so but here's
Speaker 8: the thing that changed my mind talking to him.
Speaker 4: I saw an image and the TV was on, and
Speaker 4: it sounds like I'm making it up, but it's not.
Speaker 4: It's true. Joan Rivers had her first show on Fox
Speaker 4: and she had a little talk show.
Speaker 8: I'd be damned when that shit played on repeats in
Speaker 8: which tah, there's Joan Rivers talking to J King.
Speaker 4: And Club newvau with and handing them a gold album.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 8: I was like, uh, whoa, Now do I want to
Speaker 8: say this at my mama's house or I don't want
Speaker 8: to worry about whether Jay is a crook or not?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 8: And so I said, man, let it take the tape, Bro,
Speaker 8: take the tape. And he said, and he said this
Speaker 8: to me, and he made a promise to me. He said, bro,
Speaker 8: I promise you, I'll have you a record deal in
Speaker 8: two weeks. This tape is phenomenal. Benny Medina is going
Speaker 8: to love it, and you're going to be ready to
Speaker 8: leave Wichita and move to Sacramento, which is where he
Speaker 8: lived at the time.
Speaker 4: And this is nineteen eighty seven. He absolutely.
Speaker 8: I was washing dishes one day phone rang, picked up
Speaker 8: that thing on you know, the old school phone, off
Speaker 8: the wall, put it on my shoulder, kept washing the dishes.
Speaker 4: Jak said, you ready to leave? I said, who is this?
Speaker 7: Jay Man?
Speaker 8: Get to pay your mama's bills. You're moving this Sacramento.
Speaker 8: You guys are signing the Warner Brothers. That's how I
Speaker 8: got in the record business.
Speaker 1: Wow, nikes.
Speaker 6: Now that the Cats Sims you mentioned Samuel that was
Speaker 6: in that group. Was that the same Samuel? So you
Speaker 6: like what you see Samuel?
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, absolutely for sure. And that was you know,
Speaker 8: that was the club devote part of it. When I
Speaker 8: got to Sack, I met all of those dudes. They
Speaker 8: were still recording Tony Tony. Tony hadn't happened.
Speaker 1: Yet and where can you answer this for me? Where
Speaker 1: the hell is Tommy Denny right now?
Speaker 4: I talked to him.
Speaker 8: I talked to him all the time. Tommy follows me
Speaker 8: on on on Instagram, and Denny is out here. I
Speaker 8: think he's managing them joints.
Speaker 4: The producer. Oh wow wow ye folks.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and we're talking about we're talking about Denzel Thomas
Speaker 6: Backro and Denzel Foster.
Speaker 8: That's right, right, absolutely, so, I mean you get the Sacramento.
Speaker 8: I get the Sacramento and it's the first time in
Speaker 8: California ever. No, No, that was my second time because
Speaker 8: I had just been in La trying to meet with
Speaker 8: John McLain in the year before, in eighty six.
Speaker 4: In eighty six, Right, how did that fall through?
Speaker 1: Or it was just like quickly beating happened and it
Speaker 1: fell through?
Speaker 4: Because this is my only big Griffy tie ever in
Speaker 4: my whole life.
Speaker 8: It felt because the guy that we thought was our
Speaker 8: manager was a crook and he had been doing business with,
Speaker 8: said Dick Griffy at some kind of international shipping weird something.
Speaker 4: He went to jail, and when he went to jail,
Speaker 4: we had to go.
Speaker 8: Back to Kansas, right, Yeah, So the j King coming
Speaker 8: through was a literal savior of my life.
Speaker 5: That was a lifeline.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, well is.
Speaker 3: Jay King from Sacramento?
Speaker 4: He actually is from Sacramento. Yeah, okay, sounds like what.
Speaker 2: Have y'all noticed that no one, no black artists not
Speaker 2: born in the in the sixties, that gets to our show.
Speaker 2: It's like they cannot even get to California without running
Speaker 2: to either Ronnie Simmons. We're now j King like is
Speaker 2: completely I mean, the good side of that story is
Speaker 2: also clearance. But yeah, it's like, you're gonna get You're
Speaker 2: gonna run into four people on your journey.
Speaker 4: That's said a lot about them though the success or
Speaker 4: epic failure one or the other.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, wow, it's crazy.
Speaker 8: But Yo, here's the thing though, the j King part
Speaker 8: of my my experience taught me a lot because not
Speaker 8: only did they get me in the studio and kept working,
Speaker 8: but unfortunately I did very horrible drum sound during that era.
Speaker 4: Don't don't don't go find that cash album quest and
Speaker 4: talk about the drum. Oh god, it's horrible.
Speaker 5: But look Jake, I made up Jake and get it
Speaker 5: from him.
Speaker 4: That bad Boy is on disc. Gods, it's horrible. They're
Speaker 4: selling on on which call it too Amazon. That shit
Speaker 4: is on Amazon. So look anyway, it.
Speaker 1: Never so it never was released. It never officially released.
Speaker 4: It never but I have it on CD.
Speaker 8: Got you you know, we got it that far cover,
Speaker 8: about to be released on the schedule and everything, and
Speaker 8: then Jay like pissed off the top brass and they
Speaker 8: dropped his whole ship.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: So yes, describe j King as CEO because he was
Speaker 1: on the come up.
Speaker 4: Yeah he was.
Speaker 1: And then you know what, so what happened?
Speaker 4: I think you know what?
Speaker 8: Like and the jail tell you this himself. When he
Speaker 8: was young, girl, he had a serious like energy problem.
Speaker 8: He could not control his.
Speaker 4: Energy, like meaning like if he got pissed, he let
Speaker 4: you know. He did not edit himself. He did not care.
Speaker 8: I remember one time a security guy said something crazy
Speaker 8: to him as we was walking through the mall.
Speaker 4: He went and got a gun.
Speaker 8: He said, like he was triggered, Like this guy was
Speaker 8: not the one playing with seriously seriously, and.
Speaker 7: That was it.
Speaker 4: Maybe I don't know, I don't know, but I'm telling
Speaker 4: you this. People did not play with Jay.
Speaker 8: Jay was about his business and he definitely but one
Speaker 8: thing he was to me was like a kind of
Speaker 8: an older brother. And he was protective and he was
Speaker 8: and he nurtured me, I give him.
Speaker 4: And you know what he also did. He left me alone.
Speaker 4: He left me do my thing. And and I'm telling
Speaker 4: you right now, those years.
Speaker 8: Taught me the most, probably because it was the time
Speaker 8: where I thought I had made it.
Speaker 4: You know, when you get signed and you think you
Speaker 4: made it and then all of a sudden beginning.
Speaker 8: Man, look that was just the beginning. You know all
Speaker 8: about that funtation, So it's just it was crazy. But
Speaker 8: when we got dropped because of his actions, and now
Speaker 8: I'm stuck like not having product out, and I thought,
Speaker 8: my dream You listen, when you think your whole dreams
Speaker 8: are over at twenty two, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: It was devastating. It was devastating.
Speaker 8: But Jay was so much of volatile person that it
Speaker 8: made it difficult to deal with.
Speaker 1: In the moment, he reminded me of the way he talks.
Speaker 1: He talks just like J Prince.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.
Speaker 2: I know, like a very quiet little least the interviews
Speaker 2: I saw which something said, don't mess.
Speaker 1: With that guy.
Speaker 5: Do you want to have any.
Speaker 4: Go ahead? Go ahead?
Speaker 6: And I was gonna say, do you ever have any
Speaker 6: What was your interactions like with Benny madeena at that time?
Speaker 1: If you had any?
Speaker 4: I did several And you know what, this is the
Speaker 4: funny one of the funny stories about Bennie.
Speaker 8: He at that time he was really trying to transition
Speaker 8: into television, so he was kind of over it in
Speaker 8: a lot of ways. He was already over the record
Speaker 8: thing he was because he was really about to do
Speaker 8: Fresh Press of bel Air, because he started that immediately
Speaker 8: when he left. But what he was for me was
Speaker 8: just a real honest person, like he was like, Nope,
Speaker 8: that sucks, Yep, that's dope.
Speaker 4: Nope. At one time I used to.
Speaker 8: Make these phone messages on my phone and sat him
Speaker 8: in where I would do all these big ass productions quests.
Speaker 8: I would do, like whole productions just to say that
Speaker 8: I'm not home.
Speaker 1: We all did.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know what I'm saying right right. So I
Speaker 4: had this one joint and it was funky as hell,
Speaker 4: and he called me.
Speaker 8: Benny called me. I was like, what the hell Benny
Speaker 8: mcgeena was telling me. He went, Yo, that's your first
Speaker 8: fucking single right there. Wow, And he literally chose it
Speaker 8: for the album that never came out, but it was
Speaker 8: a song called wrong and he said, man, that's just.
Speaker 4: So that happened. And then I didn't see Benny for
Speaker 4: decades until he was trying.
Speaker 8: I heard he was trying to find me throughout the
Speaker 8: whole successful SWV period in the nineties.
Speaker 4: He never could find me.
Speaker 8: And when I finally saw him again was recently at
Speaker 8: a La Read book signing. It was me, him and
Speaker 8: Usher and La Reid, and that was probably twenty sixteen.
Speaker 4: He hadn't seen me since eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Right, how's he doing?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 1: She's still like good health and everything.
Speaker 4: As far as I know. Bennie's great. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 4: when you're that rich man, j the Man, Diddy, Babyface,
Speaker 4: you know. Please.
Speaker 2: There's another legendary person that enters your sphere and I
Speaker 2: don't know much about him or like I know his
Speaker 2: music well, and that's Robert Brookins.
Speaker 1: Oh, how like how does he enter your story?
Speaker 8: So when I got to Sacramento, I found out that
Speaker 8: there was this rivalry between j King and Robert Brookins.
Speaker 8: Robert Brookins had been a child star in the Sacramento
Speaker 8: He's from Sacramento as well, so they were like from
Speaker 8: the same hood, and it was like, you know, I'm
Speaker 8: gonna be famous before you type of thing. So Robert
Speaker 8: was a genius really on the keys vocals, I mean,
Speaker 8: talk about fred Hammon. Robert sound like fred Hammon before
Speaker 8: fred Hammon.
Speaker 4: Wow, Okay, so pete.
Speaker 8: So when I get there, it was only a matter
Speaker 8: of time before I I would meet Robert because I
Speaker 8: was always he was like a legend and I hadn't
Speaker 8: met him yet.
Speaker 4: I was only twenty two.
Speaker 8: I kept hearing about him, and then when Jay would
Speaker 8: talk about him, it was always brother.
Speaker 4: I beat Robert's ass, So I was like, what is
Speaker 4: the deal with Jking and Robert?
Speaker 8: So they had this rivalry. When Robert Brookings met me,
Speaker 8: it was by accident. I had this girlfriend I was
Speaker 8: seeing the time. Her name is Donna. Donna answered the
Speaker 8: phones for Robert's office front office. So one time I
Speaker 8: wrote Week and I wanted to play Week for her
Speaker 8: to see what she thought of it.
Speaker 4: As a female, I went into her office. She introduced
Speaker 4: me to Robert.
Speaker 8: That was my first time meeting him, and he didn't
Speaker 8: know nothing about me singing or playing and none of
Speaker 8: that stuff. When I pushed the button play on Week,
Speaker 8: my demo of Week Donna.
Speaker 4: I looked up. Her ass was in tears. Robert was like,
Speaker 4: that's too many motherfucking words, yes, he said, he said,
Speaker 4: why are you saying something? Words? Make it most simple?
Speaker 4: That's too many.
Speaker 5: I was only if only Robert had an on the
Speaker 5: bone thugs is right around the corner.
Speaker 8: But look, but look what Robert did at that moment.
Speaker 8: Though he showed me a couple of chords, he showed
Speaker 8: me he was working with Jackie Jackson at the time.
Speaker 8: He took me to Tito Jackson's house here in LA.
Speaker 8: He took me under his wing, is what he did.
Speaker 8: And that's how I ended up on his second album.
Speaker 8: I'm doing backgrounds on there on a song called United.
Speaker 8: But Robert literally, what he really was trying to do
Speaker 8: was take J Kings thing from J King.
Speaker 4: You feel me. He's trying to get me squarely into
Speaker 4: Robert camp. He's like, and what you doing with that?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 4: Jking?
Speaker 8: Them niggas can't sing, they can't. He's like, you too,
Speaker 8: You're too bad to be in that camp, bro, what
Speaker 8: you doing? And I think he tried to show me,
Speaker 8: like the life Hollywood life with the Jackson's and the that,
Speaker 8: and he was also playing keys for Earth Wind and Fire.
Speaker 4: Eventually Robert was doing everything long story short, you.
Speaker 1: Know, Okay, yeah, I know, I know he passed away
Speaker 1: like ten years ago.
Speaker 4: I think, yes, yes, yes, but he ultimately became very
Speaker 4: good friends and.
Speaker 2: And he was He's just one of those cats where
Speaker 2: that I always knew about or you know that that
Speaker 2: never you know, got a shine or really got the
Speaker 2: light of day, but always saw his name on credits
Speaker 2: and all that stuff.
Speaker 4: And that's funny, man.
Speaker 8: And listen to a record by him called uh in
Speaker 8: Our Lives, In our Lives, check that one out.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, look that up.
Speaker 5: Did you sing your demo for for a week?
Speaker 4: Did I sang all the demos for all those songs? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So how long before.
Speaker 2: You're able to at least get back up on your
Speaker 2: feet again once the j King deal goes? Like did
Speaker 2: you try to tell Benny like why don't you just
Speaker 2: sign me directly? Or like you were already under contract.
Speaker 8: To listen when Jay did what he did, I think
Speaker 8: that in that building it was a rap for anything
Speaker 8: having to do you feel me, like any food from
Speaker 8: that tree was done.
Speaker 4: It's a rap.
Speaker 8: And I didn't have the power as a young kid
Speaker 8: like that to be walking up in those rooms talking
Speaker 8: about anything. Really shit, We fucked up and went tried
Speaker 8: to get a manager to get out of the j dial, and.
Speaker 4: That backfired on us. It was just all bad. I
Speaker 4: was depreved on.
Speaker 1: Did it take you to be free of him?
Speaker 4: A couple of years?
Speaker 8: Man?
Speaker 4: Like a couple of years.
Speaker 8: And then even after that though, I was just struggling
Speaker 8: just to be able to be a working musician. So
Speaker 8: all of a sudden I start taking I start taking
Speaker 8: any calls, any calls, if anything, I would take it
Speaker 8: and go do the work.
Speaker 4: That's how I got Stevie Wonder Gig.
Speaker 8: And the Bobby Brown Gig in nineteen ninety and nineteen
Speaker 8: ninety one, respectively.
Speaker 4: Can I shall tell you that story?
Speaker 1: Nice?
Speaker 4: Okay, So this is what we lived for. Think this.
Speaker 8: So now me and Robert at this time had fallen
Speaker 8: out because Robert made me buy a car that I
Speaker 8: couldn't afford and put it in He said he was
Speaker 8: gonna go sign for it, but then he didn't do it.
Speaker 8: Then I was stuck with the things. I was mad,
Speaker 8: so I was like not feeling Robert, and then Robert
Speaker 8: I also had done multiple songs for Robert that he
Speaker 8: was supposed to pay me for and then he didn't
Speaker 8: pay me for them. So I was really really mad
Speaker 8: at Robert in this moment. I understand that when I
Speaker 8: told you, you know, for these for these artists, it
Speaker 8: was the There was some people that he was working with,
Speaker 8: but I had demoed, I had written and demoed them,
Speaker 8: and he told me he's gonna pay me x amount
Speaker 8: and he didn't do it.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 8: Remember I had Donnad working in there, so Donna could
Speaker 8: tell me what was really going on, right, So what
Speaker 8: I found out was that he really never was gonna
Speaker 8: pay me.
Speaker 4: Okay, so I was I was heeded.
Speaker 8: So now I'm down to La hustling for gigs and
Speaker 8: ship I get a call from a guy named Derek Allen,
Speaker 8: bass player.
Speaker 4: He plays bass.
Speaker 8: That's right, d o A, yes, you know the So
Speaker 8: shout out to Derek Allen. So Derek was Bobby Brown's
Speaker 8: musical director for his tour at that time.
Speaker 5: He did College Girl on Bobby Bobby.
Speaker 4: Exactly check you out. So yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 8: So look he hit me and my man, Dennis Austin
Speaker 8: was in the band he's a keyboard player, Dope drough
Speaker 8: from Sacramento as well, Derek's homeboy. They called me and said, Brian,
Speaker 8: we need somebody that can sing and play. Can you
Speaker 8: do this Bobby Brown gig? I said, what's the gig?
Speaker 8: We're doing the American Music Awards. We're doing a medley
Speaker 8: of all his hits at the American Music Awards. Okay,
Speaker 8: and now this is nineteen ninety. Now this is a
Speaker 8: question you were asking how long it took. This is
Speaker 8: about a year after we had gotten dropped.
Speaker 4: And when this is happening in nineteen ninety Okay, Okay,
Speaker 4: So I take the gig. I get the gig, I
Speaker 4: get down to La uh and I do the gig.
Speaker 4: It was amazing. I met Val Young, who's also a legend.
Speaker 4: Shout out to Val Young. I know you know that.
Speaker 8: Vow was on the record. That's right, uh and goat
Speaker 8: banned but check this. Yes, So it's me Val and
Speaker 8: this other guy named Harold. We're doing the backgrounds for
Speaker 8: Bobby Bobby. Uh.
Speaker 4: For for reasons I won't mention, could not really do it.
Speaker 4: You couldn't do the show okay, live like it was
Speaker 4: supposed to be.
Speaker 8: So Dick Clark said, you're not coming up on here.
Speaker 8: You know, Dick Clark did not play. He's like, you're
Speaker 8: not coming out here and messing up my ship.
Speaker 4: Go go record it. You got to go record it.
Speaker 4: So we went to excuse that it was bad. So
Speaker 4: we rec or the whole thing in the studio.
Speaker 8: Now, when I was supposed to leave the next day
Speaker 8: to go back to Sacramento, I'm in the hotel room.
Speaker 8: I'm getting my bags are all packed. I'm in the
Speaker 8: hotel lobby waiting on a cab or something, and look,
Speaker 8: I jump on the piano and I start playing what
Speaker 8: a commission song?
Speaker 1: M hm?
Speaker 8: And it probably was running Back to You or something
Speaker 8: like that. So a guy walks by me and he goes, yo,
Speaker 8: you know that you want you know about the commission
Speaker 8: and say, man, come on, and so we start doing
Speaker 8: two part harmony to it in the lobby of this hotel.
Speaker 4: I looked up and I was like, Bro, you are Keith.
Speaker 6: John hunh Wow, Stevie, Yeah, Stevie, and you yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 8: Yes, yes so Pete. So I go bro, and before
Speaker 8: I can say anything else, he said, what's your name?
Speaker 8: I said, I'm Brian Morgan and he goes, not.
Speaker 4: Brian Alexander Morgan and I said, wait a minute, you
Speaker 4: know my name? Bro? How do you know my name?
Speaker 4: He said, Bro? That Cache album. Stevie plays it on
Speaker 4: the bus all the time.
Speaker 8: What I even get it because they gave promos out
Speaker 8: all the time tables.
Speaker 4: I said, what.
Speaker 8: He said, check this out, Bro, we're having a rehearsal.
Speaker 8: Stevie's doing the Grammys and we're having a rehearsal for it.
Speaker 8: Would you like the audition for it?
Speaker 4: I say what? Of course?
Speaker 8: I said, what you'all doing? He said, we're gonna do
Speaker 8: we can work it out the Beatles joint because Paul
Speaker 8: McCartney's gonna be there.
Speaker 4: I said, oh my god. Yeah, So I did it.
Speaker 8: I went to the form, a line around the form, waiting,
Speaker 8: everybody doing twenty thousand runs warming up, Keith John walking
Speaker 8: me in, got me into that audition and I got
Speaker 8: that gig.
Speaker 4: So if you look at this you can you can
Speaker 4: YouTube it. Nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 1: I think I know that performance. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's right, and I'm in there. That's me right there.
Speaker 5: That is crazy around up you you the R and
Speaker 5: B Forrest Gump out here cuz.
Speaker 1: That's what this is.
Speaker 7: How he came.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, it's a conversation.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Hey. But yo,
Speaker 4: but from there back home and broke right, okay, and.
Speaker 8: It's cool to be on TV and your mama was like,
Speaker 8: look at my baby on TV with Stevie Wonder.
Speaker 4: But you know, Stevie didn't call me after that until
Speaker 4: about four years later when.
Speaker 8: The girls were out. But when I went back home
Speaker 8: something I'm gonna switch. I'm gonna make it easy, just
Speaker 8: transition for y'all. I was like, I cannot be broke
Speaker 8: no more. I got to write something for somebody that
Speaker 8: I already know has has has a standing, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean.
Speaker 4: So I in eighty nine, Martha wash.
Speaker 8: Had out everybody, everybody, and I love that joint right,
Speaker 8: And I've always been a househead and a dance head.
Speaker 8: So I was like, man, I can write. I can
Speaker 8: write a joint for Martha. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 8: when she had out everybody does now that, I was like,
Speaker 8: somebody right, So that's ninety one.
Speaker 4: So I'm like, this is my opening.
Speaker 8: Because she got a record deal on RCA as a
Speaker 8: result of her getting suing C and C. So she
Speaker 8: got that deal. So I said, that's my opening right there.
Speaker 8: She got a brand new album that she's gonna need songs.
Speaker 4: So I went home.
Speaker 8: I had a listen to what I had quest This
Speaker 8: is the equipment I had. It's pathetic, but I made
Speaker 8: these joints on it.
Speaker 1: You made it work.
Speaker 4: I had a motherfucking nine O nine rolling nine on
Speaker 4: nine house.
Speaker 1: You need that, you need that.
Speaker 8: I needed that, And then I had a horrible release
Speaker 8: since HR sixteen B.
Speaker 4: Remember that joint, it was progressive joint, Oh my god,
Speaker 4: for percussion.
Speaker 1: Right, you made it work, bro.
Speaker 8: I mated them joints together and used the nine O
Speaker 8: nine for the kick and snare stuff and the HR
Speaker 8: sixty B for the percussion stuff.
Speaker 4: Right, and them two joints go together. It sound like
Speaker 4: a whole new drum machine. So boom. And then I
Speaker 4: wrote and I was like, I did my best.
Speaker 8: Everybody everybody right, And it's a song called give It
Speaker 8: to You and when number one dance for me and
Speaker 8: Martha on RCA in nineteen ninety two, early nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 8: But it got me in the door at RCA and
Speaker 8: our person of the of the Martha Wash record was.
Speaker 2: Kenny or T T Kenny or ts okay Okay, that's
Speaker 2: how we get to s WV WOWTA got you in
Speaker 2: the door, got.
Speaker 4: Me in that door? And I did. And I had
Speaker 4: only done two songs on the demo for Marcus. She
Speaker 4: liked them so much. This is what Martha Wah said
Speaker 4: to me when she heard them demo songs. She said,
Speaker 4: I don't know who you are or where you come from,
Speaker 4: but you're doing what we want the A and our
Speaker 4: guy has not given us what we want until he
Speaker 4: played us. You can you can you do more?
Speaker 8: So I ended up doing five joints on that on
Speaker 8: Martha's debut on r C A five songs on them,
Speaker 8: and that literally changed my life because I was able
Speaker 8: to get a new car by say fuck you to
Speaker 8: Robert Brookins.
Speaker 4: See say say to j King, I could you know
Speaker 4: I'm out here?
Speaker 8: I'm still working, you know it was And I was
Speaker 8: never malice towards him because I knew that if it
Speaker 8: wasn't for him, I wouldn't even be there, So I
Speaker 8: would never talk shit about Jay. But at the end
Speaker 8: of the day, I was just like, yo, I'm working,
Speaker 8: and I got an apartment and I started working and
Speaker 8: if I didn't have that money that I made for
Speaker 8: Martha wash about my first MPC that I did, I'm
Speaker 8: swim to you and all the rest of the stuff.
Speaker 5: On wow, So aka right, got it?
Speaker 1: Got it?
Speaker 7: Now?
Speaker 1: All right?
Speaker 4: Go?
Speaker 1: How do you developed this stuff?
Speaker 2: We came first the songs or or did the songs
Speaker 2: come first? Or you meeting the ladies of s WV
Speaker 2: first songs first?
Speaker 4: Remember I told you I did Week before I ever
Speaker 4: met him.
Speaker 8: I did that, right, okay eighty nine and that's when
Speaker 8: when the whole thing fell apart with Jay, and then
Speaker 8: Chante Moore came into the picture, and then that's kind
Speaker 8: of I wrote that out of a sadness about.
Speaker 1: You were writing that song for her record or I
Speaker 1: wrote it.
Speaker 4: About her, and I was writing it for Charlie Wilson.
Speaker 1: Week was about Chante Moore.
Speaker 4: You didn't know that?
Speaker 7: Every yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, bro, yes, wow, speak on it.
Speaker 8: I had a huge crush on Chante Bro and I
Speaker 8: couldn't but that was Jay's woman at the time.
Speaker 4: Chaunte was Jay's woman at the time. Big Time.
Speaker 7: Got a man.
Speaker 1: This is.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 4: I'm saying yea, yeah, yeah, and you.
Speaker 8: Know what, and it was just about boundaries and I
Speaker 8: need didn't want to cross no boundaries with my that's
Speaker 8: my boss.
Speaker 4: And j K was still crazy, don't get it sucked up.
Speaker 5: So with that like that and she got that voice
Speaker 5: though that was, Oh my god, make a connection.
Speaker 1: Brooy, Yes, yes, yes, bro bro So.
Speaker 4: Long story short, but I tell the body still Charlie
Speaker 4: Wilson fan though, me thinking where I'm coming from. So,
Speaker 4: Wednesday Lover had.
Speaker 8: Been my favorite gap band song at that right, Oh god,
Speaker 8: I gotta write something for charge. So that was Wednesday
Speaker 8: Lover came on eighty eight, so I wrote week in
Speaker 8: eighty nine. It was only a week a year later,
Speaker 8: not even a whole year later, right, So I'm thinking
Speaker 8: Wednesday Lover. I got to do something at least as
Speaker 8: strong as that, right, And so but Chante was the
Speaker 8: fuel for the subject of it because it was just
Speaker 8: about unrequited things. You can't you know, something's happened, but
Speaker 8: you can't do nothing about it type of energy, hence
Speaker 8: the whole I don't know what it is, but this
Speaker 8: is this is crazy.
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
Speaker 3: Why is she not exclaiming this from the rooftops?
Speaker 4: Does she?
Speaker 5: What was her reaction?
Speaker 7: To knowing that.
Speaker 4: She didn't know that then and.
Speaker 8: Now she definitely knows it now, she's known it for years,
Speaker 8: But back then she had no idea. And not only that,
Speaker 8: she was trying to get the hell away from Sacramento
Speaker 8: and j too. She had a whole little life she's
Speaker 8: about to live. But but my point, but my point
Speaker 8: is thank god I wrote something so honest, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean, from my heart and and she was
Speaker 8: the inspiration for it.
Speaker 4: And I'm not ashamed to say, you know what Wednesday Love.
Speaker 5: Yeah, man, when the one that's that's just hard, Oh
Speaker 5: my god, it still all right?
Speaker 2: You two are an anomaly to y'all, so puzzling because
Speaker 2: I know that's not on that's on the round Trip record.
Speaker 4: That's right, there's nothing else on. There's horrible.
Speaker 1: Listening. Nobody in eighty nine that like, but when look
Speaker 1: at You Sucker wasn't on there, like.
Speaker 4: Man, right, right? So when's they level?
Speaker 6: What for for my generation I think is when Jagged
Speaker 6: Edge covered it, Yeah, that kind of sent a lot
Speaker 6: of people back like, oh, this is a cover and
Speaker 6: then you know we checked that one.
Speaker 5: It was the same thing when Mary covered I'm in
Speaker 5: Love Like that was a lot of that was a gap.
Speaker 6: Band record, a brilliant gap band record that it kind
Speaker 6: of just went under the radar.
Speaker 1: And honestly, after Gap Band eight so I no na listen.
Speaker 8: They were on Capitol and we're about to get dropped,
Speaker 8: and it was a whole lot of screwed up stuff
Speaker 8: happening at Capito. At the time, it wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 8: a good it wasn't their fault. That was a bona
Speaker 8: fide smash it should have been, but no money was
Speaker 8: put behind it.
Speaker 4: It was just horrible. But that record just did.
Speaker 8: Something to my heart at the time. So when I
Speaker 8: wrote week, I was coming from Matt's face like it's
Speaker 8: gotta be doping up for Charlie to do it.
Speaker 7: Now.
Speaker 8: The ironic thing is I never even gave it to him, wow,
Speaker 8: because so much stuff started happening in a different direction
Speaker 8: for me when like Martha happened and then it didn't
Speaker 8: really blow blow up like I hoped it would, but
Speaker 8: we got the number one dance record out of it,
Speaker 8: and then it kind of went away. But when I
Speaker 8: met when I heard Coco's voice though, this is the connection.
Speaker 8: So when Kenny Ortiz was like all this Suden when
Speaker 8: he's finishing up Martha Watch. He's like, b I got
Speaker 8: these girls. I'm gonna need you to write some stuff
Speaker 8: for these girls. And you hear that all the time
Speaker 8: from an rd's and be like, oh God, here we go.
Speaker 4: But wait.
Speaker 8: He FedEx the joint a cassette to me back in
Speaker 8: those days. I opened the cassette up, I put it on.
Speaker 8: Soon as I heard Coco's voice, I was like, oh
Speaker 8: my god, that's another Shirley Murdock all day. Right, So
Speaker 8: when you put my energy, which is a Charlie Wilson
Speaker 8: heavily influenced thing, with a Shirley Murderer, now you got
Speaker 8: a potential computer love about to happen.
Speaker 1: That's so scientific.
Speaker 4: It's the truth, right it is. And I knew it
Speaker 4: as soon as I heard it. So I'm like, okay.
Speaker 8: So that demo that had been floating around a week
Speaker 8: of me, I knew in the back of my mind
Speaker 8: Coco would murder it. But I was trying to get
Speaker 8: a solo deal for myself. So out of all the
Speaker 8: stuff I sent Kenny for them, I didn't send him.
Speaker 4: That Wow, I sent him right here.
Speaker 8: I send him some other stuff, and I did not
Speaker 8: send him Week. Now, listen how he found out about Week.
Speaker 1: Before you do that? What who was working on their
Speaker 1: music that got to you?
Speaker 2: Because I'm under the impression that you did all their music,
Speaker 2: Like how did how did their demo get to you?
Speaker 1: And what was on that demo? Like what was the music?
Speaker 8: That's a great question. There's a guy that what they
Speaker 8: were work with called Donald Donald Brown. I'm a bolding,
Speaker 8: I think if I'm saying it right, he passed away.
Speaker 8: He was there's a song on the first album called
Speaker 8: a Couple of Things he did on there.
Speaker 4: Look on the credits and check his joints out. But
Speaker 4: he's on the first album. But that's the stuff I
Speaker 4: heard was from him.
Speaker 8: But now what I learned on Coco's voice at the time,
Speaker 8: I was like, man, she's got to have somebody to
Speaker 8: be able to control what she's doing because it was
Speaker 8: like very church. You know, it's all over the place, church, church, church,
Speaker 8: and alands were wild. I was like, if I could,
Speaker 8: if I could harness that entertainment.
Speaker 4: It's going to be dope. And I knew that.
Speaker 8: But here's how Kenny found out about Week and went
Speaker 8: crazy there back to J King at J King when
Speaker 8: I worked there, there was this janitor working there named
Speaker 8: Jeff Bowen's okay, So Jeff Bowens would clean up the
Speaker 8: office after everybody would leave.
Speaker 4: But what we didn't know was that he would also
Speaker 4: take help himself to taste and concept to me. Oh okay.
Speaker 8: So now that was eighty nine, cut to ninety two,
Speaker 8: ninety one somewhere in there, not even ninety two, It
Speaker 8: is ninety one. I get a phone call from Kenny Ortiz.
Speaker 8: He's at a meeting at RCA Records in Hollywood. He goes, nigga,
Speaker 8: you have been holding out on me. How in the
Speaker 8: hell am I hearing this song from Jeff Bowens because
Speaker 8: Jeff Bowens is now an an R person at RCA Records. Wow,
Speaker 8: And he goes and Kenny Otez goes, that sounds like
Speaker 8: my dude, Brian Morgan, And Jeff Bowen goes Brian Alexander
Speaker 8: Margan and he goes, hell yeah, And Kenny goes, I'm
Speaker 8: working with this nigga right now. And so Kenny called me, go,
Speaker 8: b are you crazy? You've been holding out on me? Bro,
Speaker 8: I got you gotta cut this on that stuff. Even
Speaker 8: you gotta cut this on them when you finished mixing, Martha,
Speaker 8: please come to New York and cut this on them
Speaker 8: when you finish mixing Martha, I said no, because I
Speaker 8: was like, bro.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to get a deal myself. You hear me
Speaker 4: on that joint cup. Why don't you sign me? He said,
Speaker 4: be later. I need them on that record now. And
Speaker 4: he said because he wanted to do like a female guy.
Speaker 8: Okay, okay, okay, So but who but who who influenced
Speaker 8: Aaron Charlie? So we still we're still back at Charlie. Right,
Speaker 8: So when I get back to New York, I agree
Speaker 8: to it after you agreed to drop a little coinage, uh.
Speaker 1: De right?
Speaker 8: So yeah, we went in there were in the studio
Speaker 8: called Homeboy, which is legendary robinesque. Shortly after we did that,
Speaker 8: did show me Love in there Andrew Martin whichever one
Speaker 8: you believe, And.
Speaker 1: Is that the story is that Andrew Martin is singing that.
Speaker 4: Yes, Lord, that's what that's the Yeah, that's what. That's
Speaker 4: the big, big big. I saw it on the internet, man,
Speaker 4: and then and then Andreas, y'all got to google it.
Speaker 7: She she sings it.
Speaker 8: And then when you hear her sing it, you can
Speaker 8: be like holy wow. So anyway, but Fred Fred shout
Speaker 8: out to Fred McFarlane and and uh the guy that
Speaker 8: own Homeboy not forgive me, Matt Foster, forgive me. Y'all
Speaker 8: worked there, Fred and Allen, George Jesus, the writers of
Speaker 8: Show Me Love.
Speaker 4: But we're recording this salam Rima, recording a lot of
Speaker 4: joints in there as a very famous room. Ask everybody
Speaker 4: Homeboy recordings, Ask them about that. Anyway, history So got
Speaker 4: that cut. Coco hated it was difficult to record her
Speaker 4: on it.
Speaker 1: But the good news every hit starts right.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Well, let me ask you, well, I was
Speaker 2: gonna say, you're you're basically being set up, uh, kind
Speaker 2: of as a blind playdate. So like, how do you
Speaker 2: even start to nurture the relationship of trust and whatnot?
Speaker 2: Like do you just immediately day one to start recording
Speaker 2: these joints? Do you like spend time with them? For
Speaker 2: like jam and Lewis spent two weeks with Janet before
Speaker 2: they even hit the studio.
Speaker 1: Man with you, what was the process to gain the
Speaker 1: trust that was?
Speaker 8: That is a great question, and let me tell you
Speaker 8: the answer is not good because that level of commitment
Speaker 8: that Jam m Lewis, and I'm a huge fan of
Speaker 8: Jimmy jan Terry Lewis my guy. They influenced they influenced
Speaker 8: me producer wise, like almost more than everybody.
Speaker 4: Uh my key style, my bass, left hand bass is Jimmy.
Speaker 4: We talked, We talked very often. That's my guy. But
Speaker 4: they spent a time with Janet like that to do that,
Speaker 4: I had no such luxury.
Speaker 8: I got these three girls thrown in my face with
Speaker 8: attitude out the Yin yang right like all this whole
Speaker 8: New York attitude, and they was like they didn't know me,
Speaker 8: they didn't care. But what the difference was with me
Speaker 8: and Coco was she had been used to running these
Speaker 8: hip hop producers crazy because they couldn't sing, and they
Speaker 8: could and she and they couldn't tell her what to
Speaker 8: do because they could not reproduce it with their own mouth.
Speaker 8: I walk in, I did the whole beat, the whole
Speaker 8: record and everything, and I'm also can.
Speaker 4: Sing this, and I can sing, and I can tell
Speaker 4: you how to sing it.
Speaker 8: So that changed the game for her, and she resisted
Speaker 8: it big time, like in a big way, like it
Speaker 8: was it was very hard to get anything done. However,
Speaker 8: once she got it, done, and I was satisfied with
Speaker 8: how it sounded.
Speaker 4: That's what you hear?
Speaker 2: Did you have to go line for line? And what
Speaker 2: you're basically saying is and I've heard this story before,
Speaker 2: the story of u uh. We once had Linda Perry
Speaker 2: on the show and she was talking about how, you
Speaker 2: know Christina Aguilera when she first got beautiful. You know,
Speaker 2: of course Christina thought she was going to do some
Speaker 2: you know, crazy and you know, just as a way
Speaker 2: for her to learn the song. She's like, all right,
Speaker 2: put the mic up, let me just sing this real quick,
Speaker 2: and I'll come back in two weeks and knock this
Speaker 2: joint out.
Speaker 1: And she's saying in her dry voice, and Linda, news
Speaker 1: is the take.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let you struggle for three weeks and make
Speaker 2: you think you're gonna top it and didn't do it
Speaker 2: so like? But what's what's the You know, I've made
Speaker 2: it known on this show that I hate nothing more
Speaker 2: than recording vocals with artists.
Speaker 1: But how do you like, how do you get them
Speaker 1: to just straight up chill and go.
Speaker 4: That's a great question as well. Listen with me and Coco.
Speaker 8: It was very very easy in one sense because she
Speaker 8: surrendered because she wasn't a person who could ad lib.
Speaker 8: She wasn't an improv person at all, and she was
Speaker 8: really fearful of it, Like she would be so terrified
Speaker 8: that she might have to create an ad lib or
Speaker 8: do any of that stuff. So in order to make
Speaker 8: her feel more comfortable, I would just do every single
Speaker 8: thing that I wanted her to do, literally, like I
Speaker 8: would just sing it down the way.
Speaker 4: Literally that I wanted her to do it. I'm talking
Speaker 4: about every single thing. Listen, I'm saying to you at
Speaker 4: the end, even down to the even that I sang
Speaker 4: that like every single run, every single thing. So really
Speaker 4: what you're hearing when you hear those records is just
Speaker 4: me doing it first and then she does it. And
Speaker 4: it was so it worked so well.
Speaker 8: It's like it was magic how it worked, Like it
Speaker 8: was like I was I was able to have a
Speaker 8: female voice be my voice.
Speaker 1: Does she feel like she was being inauthentic if she
Speaker 1: just followed you verbatim?
Speaker 8: No, Because she was so young, that wasn't didn't cross
Speaker 8: her mind. Now I'm sure now here's what I feel
Speaker 8: like happened. Later, Cocho, you tell me if I'm wrong,
Speaker 8: because if I know you're gonna see this. She probably
Speaker 8: got really sick of people that are like musicians and
Speaker 8: singers asking her questions about shit, about how we did
Speaker 8: shit and whether and how they do this and how
Speaker 8: we do that, And it was really just she just
Speaker 8: copied the demo.
Speaker 4: It was not a big a big answer, right.
Speaker 8: But the whole thing was it was always back to me.
Speaker 8: So I think as a person young person is trying
Speaker 8: to develop and be who they are, it would be
Speaker 8: a no.
Speaker 4: I could get that. I see that.
Speaker 8: It could be annoying to constantly be reminded that somebody
Speaker 8: else gave you all your licks or somebody else.
Speaker 6: When you go into a studio with another producer and
Speaker 6: they expecting you to do what they've.
Speaker 1: Heard it before, exactly you can't. You can't replicate that shit.
Speaker 4: And then but she learned, and that's why I think
Speaker 4: her learning process started right there. And she'll tell you
Speaker 4: that to shout out to Coco.
Speaker 8: She'll tell you those hard sessions taught her how to
Speaker 8: do all that stuff that that eventually came to her naturally.
Speaker 4: Can I just ask a question.
Speaker 3: Real quick because I noticed that, I just I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: just because I noticed that you keep saying Coco and
Speaker 3: for s WV fan like, we all know that Coco's
Speaker 3: voice is like, of course she is the but how
Speaker 3: did the work low work in the dynamic work with
Speaker 3: the group, because at the same time, as an s
Speaker 3: WV fan, you still was like, I want to hear Taj.
Speaker 7: I want to hear Li, Like like how did that?
Speaker 4: You know what?
Speaker 1: On my records and everyone their place or every listen.
Speaker 8: I made sure that they were on every one of
Speaker 8: my joints, all my hits. But this is we just
Speaker 8: having a discussion about this recently. Kenny Ortiz would always
Speaker 8: try to get me to re record Coco doing the
Speaker 8: girl's parts as just as a safety just in case,
Speaker 8: and I didn't believe in that because what I like,
Speaker 8: I loved their blend, the true authentic blend from Coco,
Speaker 8: Taj and Lelee is you can't replace, just like you
Speaker 8: can't replace Queen. That sound of those guys's voices together
Speaker 8: is their sound. You can't replace backgrounds, that blend of
Speaker 8: those people.
Speaker 1: So how long were they together before they got to you.
Speaker 4: I think a couple of years, and that's why their
Speaker 4: blend was so smooth and so perfect. What I would
Speaker 4: always do.
Speaker 8: Was record them individually so I could have control of
Speaker 8: each note and I would make sure they would blended
Speaker 8: into the record properly.
Speaker 4: So if you listen to every one of my joints,
Speaker 4: they're always there. They're on my joints.
Speaker 5: But can you commonize it, but never like as solo like.
Speaker 8: You oh leaves well no, no, that came later because
Speaker 8: remember most of my joints were on the first album
Speaker 8: where we just trying to find our feeling right because
Speaker 8: clearly sounds amazing on that faith Avage joints and she
Speaker 8: did or you kid me on.
Speaker 4: The second album and they all can sing this is
Speaker 4: sis exactly. That's exactly. It's truly systems with voices.
Speaker 8: But at the same time, the placement of what they
Speaker 8: do on the hit records is as important to me as.
Speaker 4: The lead because everybody loves those backgrounds. You kidding me
Speaker 4: so firm?
Speaker 8: So or if it's a everyone sings, come on bro,
Speaker 8: everything they do, I'll tell a legally this who's who
Speaker 8: felt underappreciated and under it's not real.
Speaker 4: I'm like, no, you can't sing none of those songs
Speaker 4: without those.
Speaker 2: Background without them, yeah, man, you having them singing unison
Speaker 2: like because I love how there the way that you
Speaker 2: stack their background vocals, it starts off unison and then
Speaker 2: it blossoms into harmony.
Speaker 1: Is that the Clark sisters influence.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, absolutely all day. Thank you, Twinkie elber Neva Clark. Yes, ma'am, sir, exactly.
Speaker 3: Give me example on the s w B record of
Speaker 3: when you do that, because just for the layman is listening.
Speaker 8: Okay, uh so and then saying you you harmony, your
Speaker 8: harmony yes, and then back you don't know what, and
Speaker 8: then you don't go harming against confuse. Yeah, maybe that's
Speaker 8: what you give him something to look forward to and
Speaker 8: back and forth with it.
Speaker 4: That's commission, commission to commission. That's that's that's a style man.
Speaker 1: Yeahah. George Clinton.
Speaker 2: Would often say if you you look at Funkadelic records,
Speaker 2: like look at Flash Flashlight, they would always sing in
Speaker 2: unison because he had a theory that he once gave
Speaker 2: a theory about like how you know, when you're in
Speaker 2: an Irish pub or whatever and people sing the song,
Speaker 2: they get drunk, like they all sing together what he calls.
Speaker 1: A Greek chorus.
Speaker 2: Greek chorus, right, it's more down to earth and it's
Speaker 2: it's more inviting to make you want to remember the
Speaker 2: song if everyone sings in unison, like in the same
Speaker 2: voice as opposed to like yes he wasn't to take
Speaker 2: six you just want to watch him like Wow, they're amazing,
Speaker 2: but you feel like.
Speaker 1: Never need them now.
Speaker 2: But yeah, that's the things where they had just enough
Speaker 2: unison to make people feel like, oh, I can sing
Speaker 2: this too, and then you had a little.
Speaker 1: Spice in there to let them know with me and Rain.
Speaker 4: Same thing.
Speaker 2: I have another I have another question production wise, and
Speaker 2: I always wanted to know this. What makes It's about
Speaker 2: time somewhat?
Speaker 4: Uh uh?
Speaker 2: I guess revolutionary is also in the production because you
Speaker 2: could easily.
Speaker 1: Succumb to what was happening in the and that time
Speaker 1: with with New Jack Swing.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm certain that like Guys the Future, uh
Speaker 2: TLC's first record, like everybody was using you know, James
Speaker 2: Brown's think about It loop and all that stuff like
Speaker 2: or that post Dallas Austin, like basically the boomerangsund track
Speaker 2: like that sort of right exact.
Speaker 1: Post Public getting Me one hundred Noise. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I for this album to come out in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two. It is very unnew jack swinging.
Speaker 4: Like it's right right, and it was a bridge to.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, like, can Henot feel like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, this doesn't sound like in Vogue or
Speaker 2: TLC or whatever was you know, the time you're competing
Speaker 2: with Dallas Austin and Teddy Riley and what if I'm
Speaker 2: going to be made you purposely go the opposite direction
Speaker 2: with the production.
Speaker 8: As we when we started, I'm so in to you
Speaker 8: didn't exist, so remember that, right, So when we started recording,
Speaker 8: we started from week and then went into the only
Speaker 8: the first up tempo we did was right here, So
Speaker 8: technically I'm still slightly new Jackie on right here, my
Speaker 8: original right here if you listen to it.
Speaker 4: But I was trying to do it in a breakbeat
Speaker 4: kind of way, right So, but Pete, but I knew.
Speaker 8: I knew from coming New York and coming being in
Speaker 8: New York and being in the energy. I was around Fanta,
Speaker 8: I was in the heads sessions, I was in Eric
Speaker 8: sermon sessions. I was in sessions that didn't have anything
Speaker 8: to do with R and B. So my my instinct was,
Speaker 8: I gotta go harder. I can't just do New jack
Speaker 8: swinging that's the pop sound and radio fuck that. I
Speaker 8: don't want to do something that's different because the reason
Speaker 8: why guy was so hard was because they did their
Speaker 8: thing in their in their style. Yous gotta show their
Speaker 8: thing in their own style. They can't be new Jack
Speaker 8: swing because then they they're trying to be guys, is
Speaker 8: what my mind would be.
Speaker 4: So I'm like, no, this is me right.
Speaker 8: So by the time as we recorded, and listen to
Speaker 8: the record, because I'm gonna keep it really one hundred,
Speaker 8: there's two new Jack swingy things on there.
Speaker 1: You gonna like it. Bro come all right, but that's.
Speaker 4: The remnants of what had been. You can hear. I
Speaker 4: think you're gonna like it almost. Yeah, I like that song.
Speaker 1: I mean, I definitely see the news. But that was
Speaker 1: not a bad song at all. But I appreciate it.
Speaker 8: But I'm saying that happened when I first met them,
Speaker 8: and then my whole once he got quest asked about
Speaker 8: the comfortable comfortability factor by the time as far as
Speaker 8: getting to know them and who they were. By the
Speaker 8: time we did, I'm swim to you. I had recorded
Speaker 8: them many many times. So now they trust me and
Speaker 8: they trust what I'm going to tell them to do,
Speaker 8: and then we had that level. So when we get
Speaker 8: to I'm swim to you, I knew that this was
Speaker 8: going to be the ones for me, even if it
Speaker 8: never succeeded. I said, personally, I think I nailed this
Speaker 8: one because it's my own sound. And I purposely went
Speaker 8: straight with the straight sixteenth thing because it was so
Speaker 8: un knew Jack it was not.
Speaker 2: It was actually not trying to say sixteen on the
Speaker 2: high end. I was like, yeah, I was like, uh,
Speaker 2: is there some controversial about that right here?
Speaker 1: Story? Oh god, the remix? Oh yes, God, I just
Speaker 1: wanted to know about right here. Oh okay, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 8: Everybody has a story about it. But here's my thing.
Speaker 8: All Star, the one that that did the vocal the
Speaker 8: work on the record is my man. Now, I didn't
Speaker 8: know that Teddy did anything on it at all until
Speaker 8: I became aware of it through Kenny Ortiz and Teddy
Speaker 8: and them saying exactly what he did.
Speaker 1: But we're talking about right here, human nature rem.
Speaker 4: So just to be clear, everybody had a hand in it.
Speaker 8: But the truth of the matter is the whole beat
Speaker 8: itself was done by All Star, then touched up by
Speaker 8: Teddy and others with certain things. Teddy recorded her vocal,
Speaker 8: Coco's vocal on their some other Teddy's.
Speaker 4: Right, and Teddy did.
Speaker 8: I guess there's some other guys that work with Teddy
Speaker 8: in the studio as well.
Speaker 4: They got at me on Instagram. Those are all great
Speaker 4: guys and everybody's cool people.
Speaker 8: I'm just saying the German nation of that song and
Speaker 8: that production and that beat was done by All Star.
Speaker 4: The person who grabbed also.
Speaker 1: Did anything remix killed it?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: Wait, even.
Speaker 2: Teddy even the drums, because I could have sworn the
Speaker 2: drums were Teddy.
Speaker 4: No, Teddy's drums are on. I'm swinging to you his
Speaker 4: remix on that. Have you heard that?
Speaker 1: It's so rough?
Speaker 4: So yeah, he.
Speaker 5: Played that, telling me that that that swing.
Speaker 4: Know that that is All Star. And then they told
Speaker 4: me what sample he used. And I'm just gonna say this.
Speaker 8: I'm just gonna say this, this is how I got
Speaker 8: because I mean, I'm just like y'all, I wasn't sure
Speaker 8: who did what at this point. When I hear something,
Speaker 8: you know Teddy, they say one thing Teddy's people and
Speaker 8: his and his guys that did it with him.
Speaker 1: No, we was there.
Speaker 8: We did this this is and I can't argue because
Speaker 8: I wasn't there. But here's what I told all Star,
Speaker 8: who had told me that he did the basic beat.
Speaker 8: I said, all Star, tell me this then, because I'm
Speaker 8: like you quest I'm like, let's get down to the
Speaker 8: germination of this whole what you just did, Like, okay,
Speaker 8: where's that beat from bro? And he broke it down
Speaker 8: and told me the samples, and I went and checked
Speaker 8: it against what he told me, and that is it.
Speaker 8: So I said, if y'all, and I went on Instagram
Speaker 8: and said this to those people who was claiming that
Speaker 8: they did it, I said, tell me what the samples
Speaker 8: are that made that drum loot?
Speaker 4: Just tell me? And then it's like remember that showman.
Speaker 2: And I was like, important, more importantly, what were the
Speaker 2: comments like when he rocked it on versus?
Speaker 4: Well, that's how all this man, that's how this all happened.
Speaker 4: Because when that when.
Speaker 2: I'm madly yeah night that night, I didn't see that part.
Speaker 4: Of then when he opened his whole thing with that joint.
Speaker 1: Oh so he had a story for it and everything and.
Speaker 4: People ready with the receipts. No, he just opened it
Speaker 4: as if it was his. Yeah, that's what he did.
Speaker 4: And so and I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa you
Speaker 4: know that one? Hold on?
Speaker 8: And then I called All Star because I wanted clarity.
Speaker 8: I was like, bro, before I say anything on this
Speaker 8: internet about anything, tell me once again, who did what
Speaker 8: on this joint?
Speaker 4: For real?
Speaker 1: He lose at his ship when he was.
Speaker 4: All Star was laughing. He's like, these people are hilarious.
Speaker 2: He's like, bro, okay, So you know it's obviously that
Speaker 2: Dinah Ross presents the Jackson five story, you know.
Speaker 1: Right exactly right, right right value.
Speaker 2: I felt with Hooklon singing, I'm like, yeah, well, Teddy's
Speaker 2: work of Michael Jackson. He got this sample clear, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: I get it.
Speaker 4: And that's not why the sample, Claire, trust me.
Speaker 8: The girls had been just number one with week a
Speaker 8: million selling single, number one, and this is at the
Speaker 8: time that Michael had just done his OPRAH interview, so
Speaker 8: the publicity wasn't the greatest, and then being associated with
Speaker 8: something really really black, like a number one pop girl
Speaker 8: group that has a song called week Out. And that's
Speaker 8: why the follow up is right here human Nature with
Speaker 8: number two and Michael, those girls went crazy number two pop.
Speaker 8: It would have went number one if it wasn't for
Speaker 8: Mariah's dream Lover. Woamn, that's right, by the way, shout
Speaker 8: out to myself a remixing dream Lover.
Speaker 4: Mariah called me out.
Speaker 3: To myself son, Hey, Brian, what did you say when
Speaker 3: you heard Joe Joe's version a week.
Speaker 4: And then she kind of knocked me out. Well, I
Speaker 4: did it. I produced it.
Speaker 3: So oh fuckaby, It's the only reason I love her
Speaker 3: so hard still.
Speaker 1: To this day.
Speaker 4: So thank you. You're welcome.
Speaker 8: Vincent Herbert called me on that one said, listen to this.
Speaker 8: I put the phone in my ear. I just heard
Speaker 8: a kid singing.
Speaker 4: She said. She said she's thirteen. I said what anyway?
Speaker 4: And she's white.
Speaker 6: I said what, And it's right, yeah, Tamar.
Speaker 4: For people who are on the light in the music exactly,
Speaker 4: so Vincent yoga yo and the mirror.
Speaker 8: They fled me down, fluted me down to l A
Speaker 8: and I cut that on Jojo.
Speaker 4: How long did that take?
Speaker 5: But she like it just seemed like she just had it.
Speaker 4: Oh man, that was nothing. That was like, oh my god,
Speaker 4: Yeah she did that. She did and she's been.
Speaker 8: Singing it every since. Sorry to talk on Susan that
Speaker 8: my boy killed it.
Speaker 4: He saw it on Instagram a year ago she was
Speaker 4: doing it.
Speaker 7: I was like, happy at my.
Speaker 8: Boy Steve Mackie's house. Hell yeah, shout out Steve mackeiy
Speaker 8: j Loo's vocal coach.
Speaker 1: Hello, okay man.
Speaker 6: She still maintained that the original version of Anything is
Speaker 6: better than the remix.
Speaker 4: That was Thank you so much, bro, dude.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love the remix.
Speaker 6: But man, I first when I when I heard when
Speaker 6: you just hear you talk about that album the uh
Speaker 6: you know that's off your record? And how I can
Speaker 6: hear now as you talk about it, now you know
Speaker 6: the thing, you're gonna like it? That was kind of
Speaker 6: new Jack screen but Anything. When I heard that, I
Speaker 6: was just like, Nah, this ain't on some other ship.
Speaker 8: Yeah, man, let me tell you how I wanted to.
Speaker 8: I really approach that one. Coco at that time. I
Speaker 8: was impressed with She was her own, she was solent
Speaker 8: in her diva is very very early, right, and I'm
Speaker 8: just wanting with Mark the watch I'm on the hills
Speaker 8: of Martha watch an actual diva, right. But I was like,
Speaker 8: Coco is a little young diva in training for real,
Speaker 8: for real, I.
Speaker 4: Said to myself when I thought about how that album.
Speaker 8: When that album starts, broke you got it, man, I
Speaker 8: was like, I need a joint that not only sets
Speaker 8: up the whole mood, but it's got to be a
Speaker 8: joint that sets Coco's voice.
Speaker 4: Out there like that.
Speaker 8: And I was thinking about Diana Ross's how there's the
Speaker 8: slow intros on uh ain't a mountain high enough? You
Speaker 8: feel me where it's just the slow building it builds
Speaker 8: up to the ben boom boom bam, right. But I
Speaker 8: wondered it when it came on to be so sexy,
Speaker 8: I was like, what can I do atmospherically quest to
Speaker 8: set up a sexy thing?
Speaker 4: So I sampled.
Speaker 8: I turned on my water foster in my apartment and
Speaker 8: I sampled, uh, the water dripping. Then I sampled me
Speaker 8: dropping a fifty piece into a glass, and so I
Speaker 8: got that PLoP that I wanted.
Speaker 4: And I was like all these and then I breathed
Speaker 4: into the mic. I was just going so all those sounds.
Speaker 2: I said to myself, you didn't use the library records,
Speaker 2: that the studios, right, you just.
Speaker 8: Know I was in my apartment, bro I was like,
Speaker 8: nobody's joint is going to sound like this because it's
Speaker 8: so just me literally making up sounds.
Speaker 4: And so by the time I put those keys to.
Speaker 8: All those weird and all those snaps and all that
Speaker 8: breathing and stuff, it created a mood. And it's the
Speaker 8: perfect mood for Coco's voice to come in and do
Speaker 8: what it does. And look how good the background sound
Speaker 8: on that. There they are again laying taj killing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Nah, And the unison and harmony thing theory is still
Speaker 4: an effect on that.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 2: So what I want to know is that once this
Speaker 2: album really hits pay dirt and becomes your your lottery ticket,
Speaker 2: well one, how does your life change? But can you
Speaker 2: talk about the phone calls that come in after, like
Speaker 2: the artist that you had to turn down and whatnot?
Speaker 4: What is that? What is that?
Speaker 1: Downpouring of water feels like like, how does your life change?
Speaker 4: Again?
Speaker 8: I was being that kid from Kansas who always lived
Speaker 8: in those credits like we do. When I tell you,
Speaker 8: when Charlie called me and said I want to come by,
Speaker 8: just come by the house, you know, I'm in tears.
Speaker 4: Damn.
Speaker 8: They're like, oh my god, my hero's coming. And then
Speaker 8: we sit down and jam and get on the drums
Speaker 8: and the keys and back and trade back and forth.
Speaker 8: He on keys, I'm on drums, he's on drums, I'm
Speaker 8: on keys. Recording it, videotaping it. I got all that footage.
Speaker 8: It was amazing.
Speaker 4: But when Stevie called and said, what are you doing
Speaker 4: with that girl's voice? How are you doing it? Can
Speaker 4: you come down and hang out? What? And I was like,
Speaker 4: And I said to him, do you remember me? I said,
Speaker 4: I said background, so we can work that.
Speaker 8: He did not remember that, Okay, But the point was,
Speaker 8: now he's calling me, and I'm and I'm and I'm there.
Speaker 4: Man, I'm like, this is crazy. Who another one that called, Oh,
Speaker 4: Ray Parker Jr.
Speaker 8: One of my heroes came up and flew up in
Speaker 8: his plane and came out to hang out with me
Speaker 8: and Sacramento.
Speaker 4: Just stupid stuff.
Speaker 8: Man, All the heroes you can think of that you
Speaker 8: want to call that you love? They called, and and
Speaker 8: and Mariah called, and I went to meet Tommy Mottola
Speaker 8: and her.
Speaker 4: That's how I got dream Lover. Clyde Davis called.
Speaker 8: And signed a girl group that I had at the time,
Speaker 8: and he wanted me to do my production deal with them.
Speaker 4: It was amazing.
Speaker 1: What was that? What was the name of the girl
Speaker 1: the Groogle.
Speaker 4: They never came out, but they were called Oliver Twists.
Speaker 1: All of her spell it no, no, no, no, how
Speaker 1: they spell it, just like, oh my god, oh wow,
Speaker 1: we have some joints.
Speaker 4: We had some joints on it.
Speaker 1: Wow. I want a collection of all the groups that
Speaker 1: didn't make it with these with the.
Speaker 4: Hilarious right.
Speaker 6: So man, so on the second record, Man, before we go,
Speaker 6: I just got to nerve and give you your props.
Speaker 5: There's a baseline, a base you play on anything.
Speaker 4: It's yes, sir, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 8: You feel me because you know why that you know
Speaker 8: where that came from, always hanging out with with his
Speaker 8: fretless Yeah. So I did that as a nod to
Speaker 8: Waymen Tisdell, Like, yo, bro, I'm thinking about you right here.
Speaker 4: That's you. I just wanted to play with my hands
Speaker 4: on the keyboard, like let me play this thing like
Speaker 4: a fretless dude would do. Thank you, Thank you for
Speaker 4: noticing that.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 5: That's no, that's that's like my favorite part of song.
Speaker 4: By the way, women tis deal is on that first album.
Speaker 4: He did that's what I need, That's what I need.
Speaker 4: That's right. Yeah, shout out to and Danielle Tillsdale.
Speaker 6: So, man, what happened on the second record the and
Speaker 6: when they did because you did the single the well
Speaker 6: no no, before you.
Speaker 1: Get ahead of myself, Layla love you.
Speaker 4: Yeah I heard that.
Speaker 1: I was like, Yo, this doing this ship?
Speaker 5: Look what went down with with with the second album
Speaker 5: and the girls?
Speaker 8: My six six degrees in Separation's crazy quest check this out.
Speaker 4: Do you guys know who Jeff Foreman is?
Speaker 1: Yes? He was Layla's may he and yeah we had
Speaker 1: her on the show.
Speaker 8: When I got that Warner Brother still way back in
Speaker 8: eighty nine and I was thinking I'm about to come
Speaker 8: out on Wonder.
Speaker 4: I met Jeff and through a friend here in La.
Speaker 4: He just was a friend. But what I what I
Speaker 4: learned was that Jeff Foreman's brother is James and two May.
Speaker 1: What damn right right?
Speaker 4: He's just so yeah yeah, so James and Too May's
Speaker 4: kid brother is my buddy, my best friend. Jeff Foreman.
Speaker 4: Shout out to Jeff Foreman.
Speaker 8: Also shout out to DJ Khalil, who Jeff Foreman meant
Speaker 8: and gave his first gig. Jeff Foreman introduced me to
Speaker 8: Layla right when he signed her to Virgin Records in
Speaker 8: nineteen ninety. So that's why I already had a relationship
Speaker 8: with Laila four years before let Me Love You.
Speaker 6: Ah got that crazy, And so by the time when
Speaker 6: that came out, were you and the girls with y'all beefing,
Speaker 6: like what was your relationship?
Speaker 4: Like, no, let me no, no, let Me Love You
Speaker 4: came out in between the second album. I didn't know
Speaker 4: that that was right.
Speaker 1: That was ninety four, yeah, and then the beginning was
Speaker 1: ninety five, right.
Speaker 4: So I spent I did let Me six, right, but
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 2: Camember when ladelp Half Life came out, I remember exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he came out in ninety six.
Speaker 8: I did Let Me Love You in ninety four and
Speaker 8: Usher Crazy in ninety four, and they both came to
Speaker 8: Sacramento and recorded up there.
Speaker 4: That was Usher's first album, that Diddy A and R
Speaker 4: and the whole thing.
Speaker 8: But Pete after that, Layla first of all, came to
Speaker 8: Sacramento and murdered that that's a that's one take that
Speaker 8: lead vocal and let Me Love You.
Speaker 4: Is one take.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 8: She was smirking cigarette playing my Gallaga machine. When I
Speaker 8: walked up on her, I said, you ready to do
Speaker 8: this vocal? She said yeah, let's knock it out, put
Speaker 8: a cigarette out, got on that mic, sung that entire.
Speaker 4: Vocal from top to bottom. Really killed it. Yes, so
Speaker 4: let me let me love you a special to me.
Speaker 4: I really really love love her on that.
Speaker 5: I totally forgot you did crazy on the USh album.
Speaker 5: I forgot about that record.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I don't like I don't like talking about that
Speaker 8: when I said that was my first Diddy experience.
Speaker 4: And it wasn't great.
Speaker 1: Really, let's talk about it exactly.
Speaker 8: Well, I mean, in a nutshell, as much as I
Speaker 8: tried to not swing on my debut with I'm Swinging
Speaker 8: to You and all that. Of course, it was a
Speaker 8: big east well east coast, west coast thing going on
Speaker 8: at that time. And and did he just had been
Speaker 8: just put in charge of that kid Ussher and and
Speaker 8: I was like, yo, this is how I hear this tune.
Speaker 8: And I did it really straight.
Speaker 4: Well, he didn't like it and wiped it and had
Speaker 4: Chucky Chucky Thompson was one of.
Speaker 8: My good friends redo the whole really, so that's it.
Speaker 8: So I never could listen to it because that's what
Speaker 8: happened to that. However, us should call me recently after
Speaker 8: we had saw each other that book toward LA's book thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, He's like, Yo, do you still have a copy of.
Speaker 8: That old way we did it? I was like, hell yeah,
Speaker 8: that's just like, let me get a copy of that.
Speaker 8: We want to do that in my live show. Wow
Speaker 8: wow yeah yeah yeah so that that that made me
Speaker 8: feel better. And Babyface liked my version better, by the
Speaker 8: way too. At the time when it happened, I gotta
Speaker 8: check that.
Speaker 1: You gotta see me that.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I loved that first US album. I mean, he was
Speaker 6: it's totally not age appropriate. He shouldn't have been seeing.
Speaker 5: That shit at twelve, I hold, he was, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I do like that.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 6: So so when they do New Beginning, what's your status
Speaker 6: with the with the group at that time, I come.
Speaker 8: Out just like we did on the first album. I
Speaker 8: come out to New York. I'm hanging out, I'm working.
Speaker 8: We had, you know, in all the spots, hitting all
Speaker 8: the studios.
Speaker 4: Quad. We recorded half of it at Quad, you know
Speaker 4: where Tupac was. It was. It was very energetic and good.
Speaker 4: I thought I was going good.
Speaker 8: I knew something was gonna be weird when their management
Speaker 8: kept saying, hey, they got to write they have to
Speaker 8: write on this song.
Speaker 4: They have to write.
Speaker 1: Here we go.
Speaker 4: So I was like, okay, you know, if they can contribute,
Speaker 4: I'm not mad at it.
Speaker 8: Of course you can write, write right, Well, nothing really
Speaker 8: ever materialized from the writing, and so I didn't think
Speaker 8: nothing else about it. Well, the record gets done and
Speaker 8: then all of a sudden, none of my joints are singles,
Speaker 8: and I'm like, oh, this has been a concentrated effort
Speaker 8: to sideline me, really because they just probably didn't.
Speaker 4: They were like, yo, he made all the money because
Speaker 4: he wrote and produced.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so they was like they just tried to side
Speaker 8: but they knew they couldn't take me off the record
Speaker 8: because they needed my sound.
Speaker 4: But at the same time, they didn't release anything that
Speaker 4: I did as a single.
Speaker 3: Did they write on any of those other songs that
Speaker 3: you didn't do?
Speaker 8: I don't think so, especially certainly not the ones that
Speaker 8: hit like You're the One. Maybe they did they write
Speaker 8: on that. I don't know, but I know all Star
Speaker 8: was responsible for killing it. And but see all Star
Speaker 8: was a part of the original success via the remixes,
Speaker 8: So to me that made sense. That was a continuation,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. But at the end, of
Speaker 8: the day, same subject things. You're the one, it's the
Speaker 8: same thing.
Speaker 4: It's the subject of I'm gonna it's the same subject again.
Speaker 2: You feel so even this time around with the proven history, like,
Speaker 2: there's not a more of a bonding between you guys.
Speaker 2: It's just strictly business and that's that's such a great Okay,
Speaker 2: let's not ruin a good formula, because there's nothing harder
Speaker 2: than doing your second album and having to prove that.
Speaker 4: You know, no, it went the exact other way.
Speaker 8: Unbeknownst to me, I had no idea that it was
Speaker 8: so hostile towards me until it happened.
Speaker 4: And when you call the album new beginning, you're trying
Speaker 4: to tell me something. Damn.
Speaker 5: So how long did that circle back take? Because y'all
Speaker 5: are you know, y'all are back to good.
Speaker 8: Beautiful she's been good for a while. Yeah, But I mean,
Speaker 8: but then but they left that particular manager was the day.
Speaker 8: Was was the reason for all the drama sounds like
Speaker 8: between me, between them, between the.
Speaker 4: Messenger, it was bad. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So I was so happy to see y'all get back
Speaker 6: together for rain Man, Like when y'all when they did.
Speaker 1: The yeah, the release, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I was so house, like, yes, if he's back with Bron,
Speaker 5: you know it wasn't.
Speaker 4: Because I chose to really that moment little backstory quest. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: all right, peep this.
Speaker 8: So I was so hurt by the whole not releasing
Speaker 8: songs like Fine Time that people consider should have been
Speaker 8: a single the ballot or what's it gonna be?
Speaker 4: That's what I'm here for. I got five solid joints on.
Speaker 8: That album that I thought at least one or two
Speaker 8: of them could have been singles and sold most of
Speaker 8: the fans.
Speaker 4: So I was like, in my mind, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 4: I'm done with them. I'm moving on. Uh so Brandy.
Speaker 8: I was focusing on Brandy because Sylvia Ron reached out
Speaker 8: and gave her and.
Speaker 4: Maryland Bob I know, you guys remember that name, Marlin Bob.
Speaker 8: They reached out and gave me a production deal a
Speaker 8: song deal rather, and they're like, Yo, we're gonna do
Speaker 8: like a five song deal with you.
Speaker 4: Can you give us some joints? I'm like hell, oh yeah.
Speaker 8: And I was like, but I want to work on
Speaker 8: Brandy though, and she's not really you know, she was
Speaker 8: on Atlantic, she wasn't on East West Atlantic. So she said, well,
Speaker 8: that's in our family word. So I wrote three joints.
Speaker 8: One is called Don't Change, one is called Rain, and
Speaker 8: the other one was a third one that I have.
Speaker 8: I never titled it. It was just a third joint.
Speaker 8: So look, so I let them hear them. They're like, Yo,
Speaker 8: that's crazy. You need to get in with Brandy right away.
Speaker 8: So I'm in New York. They put me in Daddy's
Speaker 8: house the studio, and were going in there and we're
Speaker 8: about to cut it. And I remember distinctly, Kelly Price
Speaker 8: was working with Diddy in one room. Di Angeletti might
Speaker 8: have been in another room, and I was in this
Speaker 8: room that me and Brandy were supposed to potentially start
Speaker 8: cutting Rain in. I remember playing Rain for Diddy. He
Speaker 8: said as all right, and then yeah, and then and
Speaker 8: then you know, just and I'm still not over my
Speaker 8: I'm still not over my crazy thing, you know, crazy.
Speaker 8: So I'm thinking I'm a get in with this one.
Speaker 8: And then he's like, eh, anyway, So I get a
Speaker 8: phone call and it's this an R guy, Anthony Morgan
Speaker 8: at r c A.
Speaker 4: He's like, YO, check this out me, Please don't cut
Speaker 4: that on Brandy.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: And I was like, what it's like, yo, man, that's
Speaker 4: a s w V. Join. So it has circulated in
Speaker 4: the in the in the you know, somehow circulated.
Speaker 2: You the most circulating talked about producer man of social industry, right,
Speaker 2: so p.
Speaker 4: So then the net it's crazy, right, But when Rodney.
Speaker 8: Listen, when Rodney Jerkins took over the Janet, I mean
Speaker 8: the Brandy record, he and this is the Boy's Mind album.
Speaker 8: So I think, and Rodney will tell you this, he
Speaker 8: loves Rain as well, but somebody I don't know who
Speaker 8: got it.
Speaker 4: Who's here, But it ended up being we're not going
Speaker 4: to cut this on Brandy?
Speaker 1: Yeah, So then which is Angel in disguise? Okay?
Speaker 8: So you see so look at so I'm cool because
Speaker 8: Sylvia and them already broke me off for these songs.
Speaker 8: So I'm like, oh, that was just a demo that
Speaker 8: I just got paid a couple hundred thousand word awesome.
Speaker 8: And so then I said to Anthony Morgan the next day,
Speaker 8: you know what, Okay, I'm here, we can cut it on.
Speaker 4: We can cut it on this WV. And that's how
Speaker 4: that got on that Wow.
Speaker 6: So during the so during that session where y'all, what
Speaker 6: was it like with you and Co. Yeah we all
Speaker 6: still cool or how was it?
Speaker 4: Now? I understand this.
Speaker 8: By this time, a whole new paradigm shift had happened.
Speaker 8: Missy and Timberland are part of the equation now.
Speaker 4: Because they come out with That's right.
Speaker 8: So absolutely, and so Missy called me to be to
Speaker 8: hang out on the set of the Rain video, which, ironic,
Speaker 8: both these songs I'm doing have to do with water
Speaker 8: and Rain. I went hung out, and because because she
Speaker 8: had cameos at the end of that video. Remember seven
Speaker 8: o two was in there, and yes he's not in there, Coco.
Speaker 8: Miss Missy and Coco were beefing at the time over
Speaker 8: some bullshit. Wow yeah, some some stupid shit, probably some
Speaker 8: ego ship but anyway, so Coco was not invited to
Speaker 8: the video of that Missy Elliott video, which I was.
Speaker 4: So I went and hung out.
Speaker 8: We recorded the vocals to the backgrounds to reign On
Speaker 8: Taj and Leelee at Electric Lady Land.
Speaker 4: Hello, very did, and then we did. I did Coco's
Speaker 4: lead vocal at right track. Remember right track?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep.
Speaker 4: So so those those are my two days of recording
Speaker 4: in New York. And in between that's me that's me
Speaker 4: from the demo let you just follow me. That's me.
Speaker 4: That's me of course right, and it's.
Speaker 1: Also you singing uh, because I never thought.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we can't forget.
Speaker 8: I always on my mind tribute to my hero Charli
Speaker 8: Wilson and the gay band earning all day.
Speaker 4: And I did it unabashedly, very clearly.
Speaker 8: And by the way, just while we're in this moment
Speaker 8: quest I made sure after I saw you know, your
Speaker 8: Charlie thing on on the on the on the other show,
Speaker 8: I was like, yo, I feel like he lightweight kind
Speaker 8: of came after me on week somebody I made a
Speaker 8: lot of money a week and it was basically he
Speaker 8: thought it was another record.
Speaker 4: Truth of the matter.
Speaker 8: I never thought about that record. I was only thinking
Speaker 8: about Wednesday Lover, the one me and font are talking
Speaker 8: about and and so. But but he but it got
Speaker 8: back to him that I said that, and he called
Speaker 8: me any any thanked me. He's like, yo, bro, no,
Speaker 8: he said this, you are a gap band by your
Speaker 8: damn self. Praise its huge, right, And so I was like, man,
Speaker 8: I love you so and I got this joint for
Speaker 8: him called better man right now.
Speaker 4: But if he does it, who it's crazy quest, wait too, Quest,
Speaker 4: we got to start sharing. Okay.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So once Rain came out and uh and Missing
Speaker 8: Him came out, now we're in a new whole paradigm shift.
Speaker 4: Thank god. I got to play Rain for Timblin right
Speaker 4: in the studio as he was mixing down.
Speaker 8: Are you that somebody show? So in the studio I
Speaker 8: walked in. I kept hearing don't, don't, don't.
Speaker 4: I don't want to.
Speaker 8: Play in this black ass ballad shit. Okay, And you
Speaker 8: know who brought me there to that session with Static Major?
Speaker 4: Rest in Peace?
Speaker 1: Yes, rest in peace?
Speaker 8: Everybody else from Player, all my homies form Player too, man,
Speaker 8: that funky, smokey everybody bro.
Speaker 4: It was crazy black man.
Speaker 8: And so again, that was a moment in time I
Speaker 8: will never forget. And I played it for Tim though,
Speaker 8: and you know what he said, because his ears are incredible.
Speaker 8: He went, I played him my demo version versus the
Speaker 8: album version, and he's like, your demo version sounds better, bro,
Speaker 8: And I said, I know right, he said a fatter.
Speaker 4: He just got it right away. And guess who else
Speaker 4: was sitting there, Jimmy Douglas.
Speaker 2: I was like, I know, God, Jimmy Douglas. You feel
Speaker 2: me so, I mean, yo, man, he's the greatest dude
Speaker 2: ever ever. Jimmy Man me too, man, god Man crazy.
Speaker 2: But that's you know, that's how rain happened. Look how
Speaker 2: the ripple effect of.
Speaker 4: Rain has been so crazy? I can't even tell you like.
Speaker 5: Pulling me back?
Speaker 1: Yeah, come on, bro, favorite change jam, call away?
Speaker 5: I did like one call right now.
Speaker 4: I don't even know that one called away. It was
Speaker 4: with I like that exactly.
Speaker 1: It was with with who was on the hook on that?
Speaker 7: I think we.
Speaker 1: Weave on the hook nice. Nice. That's the two chingy jams.
Speaker 4: And that's what you know.
Speaker 8: It's out right now on Rick Ross Summer rain yesh ship.
Speaker 7: I got it?
Speaker 5: Now you're gonna make me listen to That's.
Speaker 1: What can I ask uh? From the pastorious point of view,
Speaker 1: How easy was.
Speaker 4: It to to clear that? Yes, very very easy because
Speaker 4: at the time in ninety seven.
Speaker 8: Wasn't a whole lot of people sampling Jocko or doing
Speaker 8: anything having to do with Joco at all, So it
Speaker 8: was very easy.
Speaker 2: It's just weird because like I almost like you know,
Speaker 2: there's some samples out there that are so quasi obscure
Speaker 2: that you might be tempted to be like I can
Speaker 2: get away with this.
Speaker 4: You know it's crazy. I didn't. I didn't let me
Speaker 4: say this. I did not sample it. Let's get played it.
Speaker 1: I know that I know you inmp it.
Speaker 2: That's the thing like when you when you when you're
Speaker 2: creating something like you know all the time. I'll put
Speaker 2: it this way, I'll say that eighty I do.
Speaker 7: Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but just like eighty percent of the outperield I
Speaker 1: do usually starts with a sample.
Speaker 6: I'm not I'll tell you after we stop recording, but.
Speaker 4: I want to know that. That's one of my favorite
Speaker 4: What I'm saying.
Speaker 2: Is it'll start with this sample, and then I'll make
Speaker 2: the decision on whether or not I'm gonna ride with
Speaker 2: it all the way out, or if I'm gonna freak
Speaker 2: it so that.
Speaker 1: No one knows what it is or whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: and then I.
Speaker 2: Dress it up and then I take the sample away
Speaker 2: and then blame it's a it's a song on its own,
Speaker 2: but Portrait of Tracy could be one of them things
Speaker 2: where it's like, yo, this is man familiar. I mean, yes,
Speaker 2: you definitely stuck with the melody or whatnot. But in
Speaker 2: the beginning, did you definitely say like I'm gonna make
Speaker 2: a joint to Portrait of Tracy.
Speaker 4: No, let me tell you this. I'm gonna do this
Speaker 4: story right here. Is really quick. It's very quick.
Speaker 8: The only reason I even know about Jocko at all
Speaker 8: is because of Layla Hathaway. And so when I was
Speaker 8: doing let Me Love You like You described with Janet
Speaker 8: and Jimmy and Terry, I went to her apartment. We
Speaker 8: hung out, trying to get a vibe, just to get
Speaker 8: between us right energy. She pulled out all this vinyl.
Speaker 4: One of the vinyls was the Jocko debut, the black
Speaker 4: and white joint with tra Just on the cover. I
Speaker 4: was intrigued with the cover.
Speaker 8: So when I pulled out and I saw that Herbie
Speaker 8: Hancock did the notes, I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 8: So when I started listening listen that, when Portrait of
Speaker 8: Tracy came on, It's my whole soul and spirit was
Speaker 8: just snatched and transformed.
Speaker 4: Right. So I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 8: So when I went back to Sacramento, before I even
Speaker 8: did Let Me Love You, I did my homework.
Speaker 4: I went and bought that CD. So I just lived
Speaker 4: with it.
Speaker 8: Now when I heard it again I listened to it,
Speaker 8: I was like, oh, that's crazy. When if I ever
Speaker 8: used that, it's gonna be dope, and then forgot all
Speaker 8: about it.
Speaker 4: Four years later, ninety seven, ninety six, whatever.
Speaker 8: But three years later, I'm in the shower a hook
Speaker 8: comes to me and it's full entirety never happened before
Speaker 8: in my life. A whole hook with the words and
Speaker 8: everything came to me as I was showering. Water is
Speaker 8: always involved in my shit.
Speaker 4: So I fucking the whole rain down on me like
Speaker 4: love this all Like man, it just came to me,
Speaker 4: and I said, hold on, man, hold on, hold on,
Speaker 4: hold on. In my mind I heard it clearstay. I said,
Speaker 4: if that jacko thing works with what this hook is,
Speaker 4: it's gonna go together. Well. So I ran to my
Speaker 4: studio with a.
Speaker 8: Towel on, put the Jocko joint, put the Jocko joint on,
Speaker 8: and I took it as divine intervention.
Speaker 4: When it was in the same key, I heard the damn.
Speaker 8: And when I went I said it. I sung it
Speaker 8: out loud on my voy ain't not me, And I
Speaker 8: put the record and went.
Speaker 4: And my hands went up.
Speaker 8: I turned on that NPC. I did that beat right,
Speaker 8: then and there too. Yeah, absolutely wow. In a towel,
Speaker 8: I said, no, nah, I'm doing this joint right now.
Speaker 8: I didn't want to lose the feeling.
Speaker 4: Of what I felt. And I'm gonna tell you something.
Speaker 8: My sample that I never told nobody and Rain, this
Speaker 8: is a beat they ain't got nothing doing with no
Speaker 8: melody nothing.
Speaker 4: There's a beat on Michael Jackson's solo.
Speaker 8: Album where he redoes Bill Withers use me. So you
Speaker 8: gotta check this out.
Speaker 1: It starts with a beat or ain't no sunshine?
Speaker 4: I mean, ain't no sunshine. It ain't no sunshine. Drums,
Speaker 4: ain't no sunshine at the beginning. I'm sorry, you know
Speaker 4: what I'm talking about.
Speaker 7: So when.
Speaker 4: Boom, right, So if you listen to Rain, there's a
Speaker 4: little tiny thing.
Speaker 8: I didn't want my beat to feel so stiff on
Speaker 8: the NPC, right, So my beat.
Speaker 4: Is bum bum bum bum. That little is the dreams.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 4: I love it, and that gives you that that real
Speaker 4: human feel in there. So when people try to.
Speaker 8: Recreate it on whatever devices that they have, they forget
Speaker 8: that human element, like James Gad saying or somedamn body.
Speaker 8: But it's like, you know what I mean, and I
Speaker 8: did that, and then I just played the keys, and
Speaker 8: then when I wanted to sample Jocko, but something told
Speaker 8: me no because I didn't want to stretch it and
Speaker 8: have it sound all weird. So I called one of
Speaker 8: my favorite uh bass and guitar players over to my
Speaker 8: house of Sacramento, and he just replayed what I wanted
Speaker 8: him to play.
Speaker 4: And I didn't want all the notes.
Speaker 2: I just said, dude, yeah, I was going to say,
Speaker 2: every bass player worth a green of salt, like that's
Speaker 2: their entry into the world of jazz. You gotta know
Speaker 2: Team Town by Jacko well Weather Report, and you gotta
Speaker 2: know Portrait of Tracy Damn right like modern jazz.
Speaker 1: Like that's just without.
Speaker 4: Saying, but you know what the first person, as sambled
Speaker 4: it was master.
Speaker 1: P Nigga, what's doing?
Speaker 4: It's called you just don't Know? It was the only
Speaker 4: only like nine months later and it's called you just
Speaker 4: don't know? What you did to me?
Speaker 1: I missed that one.
Speaker 8: Missed that one though, that him doing that without getting
Speaker 8: permission paid off my publishing debt to Universal at the
Speaker 8: time way back and by two thousand that record because
Speaker 8: he sold four million albums that was on his album
Speaker 8: called The Last Dawn.
Speaker 1: It was on the last song because that was the
Speaker 1: double CD. It was right, Damn, I forgot about that record.
Speaker 8: And yes, four million albums so way before CHINGI master
Speaker 8: P did it within a year of me putting it
Speaker 8: out right.
Speaker 4: Paid off my All of a sudden.
Speaker 8: I knew what I had gotten from him as an
Speaker 8: advance like in ninety eight, and then in two thousand
Speaker 8: it was already paid off.
Speaker 4: I was like, wow, yeah, and it was because of that. Okay,
Speaker 4: So one big.
Speaker 6: Is it ever as you look back over your career,
Speaker 6: is it ever a part I guess where you're at
Speaker 6: now where you still have the yearning like to be
Speaker 6: an artist that'd be all the just the great things
Speaker 6: you've done as a producer. Is it still a part
Speaker 6: of you that yearns to just like put out your
Speaker 6: own music and still sing because you still got it.
Speaker 5: I mean, you still got the chops and you could
Speaker 5: still do it.
Speaker 8: So not only that I am doing it, and I
Speaker 8: finally got myself into a position financially where I can
Speaker 8: do it and do it and do it right. So
Speaker 8: that's exactly what I'm doing right now, like putting something
Speaker 8: together for you guys and the fans that love all
Speaker 8: the stuff that we talked about, plus stuff I'll be
Speaker 8: slipping out to certain people.
Speaker 4: I'm totally doing that and with artists I find that's.
Speaker 8: What I just gave a quest, that was those exclusives
Speaker 8: that he can play if he wants to, because it's
Speaker 8: a couple of new artists on there or and then
Speaker 8: some old me and Coco's on one, and then this
Speaker 8: new girl, Nephutitiavanni is on another. She's a badass writer
Speaker 8: and a dope ass singer. Check that out joint called
Speaker 8: do It Again. I think you guys are gonna appreciate
Speaker 8: what we got going. And I'm about to put out
Speaker 8: a lot of stuff that I wanted to do on
Speaker 8: other people that I never did do, Like those other
Speaker 8: two songs that I did on Brandy. I want to
Speaker 8: put those out. So I'm trying to get I'm just
Speaker 8: grabbing folks and putting them on joints.
Speaker 4: And I call it BAM's rare, remixed and unreleased. I
Speaker 4: love it. You're gonna put that, I'm gonna put No,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna put the new crazy with this new dude
Speaker 4: that's a crazy singer, all right.
Speaker 5: That makes it's cheaper.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's a whole nother joint. Hey, hey, it's trapped out.
Speaker 4: It's dope, it's dope.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about well, I know that there's not
Speaker 2: even I won't say resurgence, but you worked on with Drake.
Speaker 2: What was that situation? How did that situation come to be?
Speaker 4: Came to be? Wow?
Speaker 8: You know what's crazy I learned about Toronto is that
Speaker 8: they're Detroit adjacent. And let me tell you something. The
Speaker 8: Toronto fans of as far as sw vegos are voracious.
Speaker 8: They know their ship.
Speaker 4: Like I was shocked to know that Noah like forty yea.
Speaker 1: Champion.
Speaker 4: Them dudes know their ship. So when they reached out.
Speaker 4: I have been working with DJ Khalil, who was one
Speaker 4: of my best friends here in l A. Thank thank god. Man. Yeah, man,
Speaker 4: I love him to death.
Speaker 8: And he's the guy that said, man just moved to
Speaker 8: La stopped playing, just moved to La because I was
Speaker 8: just kind of like not wanting to live in La ever.
Speaker 1: And but why is that? Because wouldn't it be easier
Speaker 1: for you to go to where the water well is?
Speaker 8: You know, it's funny, that would be true usually, but
Speaker 8: since I had made such of my own little lake
Speaker 8: in Sacramento.
Speaker 4: It was easier to just stay in it, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean. I was a small in my own
Speaker 4: little I created my own thing there, and I was
Speaker 4: doing my dance stuff. I was just doing my thing.
Speaker 8: But it's it's when Chris Brown redid she Ain't You?
Speaker 8: In twenty eleven to right here and it did so well,
Speaker 8: and then pulling me back in eight It was just
Speaker 8: all these little things kept telling me, man, maybe I
Speaker 8: do need to step my toe back into it, just
Speaker 8: because I had I had.
Speaker 4: This is what happened.
Speaker 8: I was over the fact that we couldn't seem to
Speaker 8: get any traction with black artists, and that it seemed
Speaker 8: like that all the black stuff was getting done in
Speaker 8: white face.
Speaker 6: It and and that, and that was frustrating and I
Speaker 6: was just over it. So I started doing one that
Speaker 6: done in white face. It was being called pop and
Speaker 6: it wasn't mean called R and B exactly right.
Speaker 8: And then you all of a sudden relegated our chart.
Speaker 8: All of a sudden it looked like the gospel chart
Speaker 8: used to look what is wrong with you? Are y'all
Speaker 8: kidding me right now?
Speaker 1: And that was did somebody said white face I'm right here.
Speaker 4: I love it. Question hear me?
Speaker 1: Know?
Speaker 4: So like I dipped out?
Speaker 8: I mean you know why because my mailbox money was
Speaker 8: so crazy I could afford to didn't.
Speaker 4: I wasn't really tripping on.
Speaker 1: What was that money?
Speaker 4: That's the dream right there? That phrase is amazing. My
Speaker 4: mailbox money. Listen. Let me tell you something. Pulling Me
Speaker 4: Back was a big pop record. Let me tell you
Speaker 4: Jermaine Deprie.
Speaker 8: Shout out to Jermaine dupri and a big not to
Speaker 8: Jermain Depres for real because a lot of producers don't
Speaker 8: want use some other producers stuff. That was huge that
Speaker 8: he did that, and I want to thank him publicly
Speaker 8: right now. Thank you your main love you. And then
Speaker 8: again with Chris Brown with she Ain't You?
Speaker 4: And that did well.
Speaker 8: So that was the year that I decided I'm gonna
Speaker 8: move to LA. That was twenty eleven. I actually did
Speaker 8: it in twenty twelve. And DJ Khalil is the person
Speaker 8: who received me with open arms. And as you know,
Speaker 8: because he told a story about It's About Time album
Speaker 8: that brings me to tears. He was playing basketball, thinking
Speaker 8: he was about to be a basketball start riding on
Speaker 8: the bus and they gave them promos out for free
Speaker 8: to a lot of people that he knew in the business,
Speaker 8: and he put that on as a as a college
Speaker 8: basketball player, put it on the headphones and on a bus.
Speaker 4: He said, by the time he got that through playing
Speaker 4: at this about time, that changed his life.
Speaker 8: So that and then the fact that Jeff Foreman is
Speaker 8: the one who mentored him and gave him his first
Speaker 8: gig in television doing music for what's that show?
Speaker 4: It's an entertainment Tonight show called the Other One the
Speaker 4: Troll with.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's how Khalil became. I got back in his
Speaker 8: life because Jeff Foreman was working with him, you know
Speaker 8: what I mean. So if I don't know if you
Speaker 8: guys believe in divine stuff like that, but to me.
Speaker 4: Absolutely that right there was.
Speaker 8: It's a lot, so long story short, thank god I
Speaker 8: got in it. Khalil had already worked with Drake, so
Speaker 8: he knew what that camp was like. And I was like, man,
Speaker 8: I want to get down. I think forty found me
Speaker 8: from somebody. I don't know how he found me, but
Speaker 8: he found me and he asked me if I had
Speaker 8: anything original.
Speaker 4: And I did.
Speaker 8: And that's how the song nine got done is because
Speaker 8: I already had it and I sent it to them
Speaker 8: and him and Boy wondered to touch it up. And
Speaker 8: that's how that got on there turn of six two
Speaker 8: or nine now, And that's how I ended up on views.
Speaker 8: And as a result, I think the producer nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 8: who's amazing himself, we started working and that's how I ended.
Speaker 4: Up on the Khalead on the Way record.
Speaker 7: And on that could.
Speaker 8: If y'all listen, I'm just I'm just doing my best
Speaker 8: Jimmy Jam invitation on the keys, all of that, all
Speaker 8: of that keys, baby, you know the nice Roads chords.
Speaker 8: You feel me everything I miss at home, warmth and
Speaker 8: all that. Yes, I'm trying to give it.
Speaker 5: All this stuff come back around, man, and I'm hopefully
Speaker 5: bringing it.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to you feel me like quest, what do
Speaker 4: you think about the on the Way record? Are you familiar? Oh?
Speaker 1: The colliding No?
Speaker 4: It?
Speaker 1: Yes? Absolutely?
Speaker 4: Word? Okay good, I'm sure if you look okay good.
Speaker 4: So that's that's how that happened.
Speaker 1: That Nigga. I ain't feeling that ship.
Speaker 4: Hey, I'm hoping you is dope.
Speaker 6: Khalid is dope, bro. That record he got the talk record,
Speaker 6: he got with disclosure.
Speaker 4: Crazy shit hardest, yeah crazy. He don't do no whack ship.
Speaker 4: Everything he does is cool. And you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 4: shout out to.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah yeah, shout yeah, that's the homie over it
Speaker 6: and keep cool, Tungey and Josh.
Speaker 4: Absolutely and and thank you for making sure that that
Speaker 4: all went down with with with Khalid, I mean.
Speaker 2: Out here where you are right now, and you know,
Speaker 2: I guess as evidenced by especially with where we are
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty and as we witnessed, especially watching the
Speaker 2: Monica and Brandy sort of resurgence, it's I almost feel
Speaker 2: like there is finally there's a respect with a K
Speaker 2: put on the name of really good R and B,
Speaker 2: Like do you feel as though this is now? Did
Speaker 2: you was ever a point where you felt like it
Speaker 2: was a little hopeless, Like well, yeah, this doesn't exist anymore,
Speaker 2: because you know, I'll go to the iTunes charts and
Speaker 2: I'll be shocked that, like you know, like get Lifted
Speaker 2: by by John Legend is still like the still in
Speaker 2: the top ten of the R and B charts or
Speaker 2: iTunes like it amaze you how deserted that you know
Speaker 2: those charts are right now? But wow, you know do
Speaker 2: you wish or envision a day where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 2: we could bring the art form of singing back.
Speaker 8: I think Bruno has has brought it a long way
Speaker 8: with records like lucky for me. That's what I like
Speaker 8: where you I mean them kind of joints. Uh my
Speaker 8: people out here, my guy Mars Uh yeah, man, shout
Speaker 8: out to all of the guys at fifteen hundred other
Speaker 8: James Boloyd, everybody like that.
Speaker 4: To me understand where it comes from.
Speaker 7: And so.
Speaker 4: From Sacramento, absolutely, yeah, absolutely, so they get it. They
Speaker 4: totally get it. And so I think they're.
Speaker 8: Bringing it back around. And I'm just happen to be here,
Speaker 8: still here doing it and I'm just happy to be
Speaker 8: doing it. So now to me, it's more exciting than
Speaker 8: ever to be doing it with the authenticity that I have,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean, And I still have the
Speaker 8: understanding of today's stuff and what it is.
Speaker 4: You know, I'm not one of them old heads that
Speaker 4: don't get it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: No, man, you know when we when we hung out, man,
Speaker 6: that was the thing I was just so surprised by
Speaker 6: because you were, you know, a producer that like I
Speaker 6: grew up listened to, but yet we still listen to.
Speaker 1: The same things.
Speaker 5: Absolutely you had you know, you had like donuts and
Speaker 5: I was like, like, like you was you know.
Speaker 6: So I think that was something that just the lesson
Speaker 6: I took from you from that from that meeting was
Speaker 6: just how important it is too.
Speaker 5: And I tell you know, artists at this all the time.
Speaker 5: You don't have to like new music, but you do.
Speaker 6: I think it's important to understand it, understand why it works,
Speaker 6: and understand why people gravitate to it. And that was
Speaker 6: something I always admired about you, Like you just worked.
Speaker 6: I mean you was up on everything, like you knew
Speaker 6: all the ship I was listening, was like, yeah, I
Speaker 6: got that list.
Speaker 1: You was right up on it. Man.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I'm a DJ, and that makes it. You have
Speaker 4: to know.
Speaker 8: I mean, how could you not know you're trying to
Speaker 8: spend I mean I play dance, I play hip hop, I.
Speaker 4: Play house, Like you gotta know what's what? You ain't
Speaker 4: seen none of my.
Speaker 1: Dude, I've seen your set.
Speaker 4: I'll be fucking around.
Speaker 8: Man.
Speaker 4: I can never do what you do, but you know
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: Man, It's it's you being creative.
Speaker 2: That's everybody that you see DJing right now in the
Speaker 2: in the age of quarantining, is.
Speaker 1: Trying to get the creative, creative juices working.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: I love watching DJ sets online you know, and see
Speaker 1: what people are because.
Speaker 8: You guys are so damn intimidating. I'm like, oh, fuck it,
Speaker 8: they don't done. Seven hours before I even get the
Speaker 8: funk up, I was like, I ain't.
Speaker 1: Seen you pop up on them alive? Man, what's going on?
Speaker 4: You know what's crazy? After so much I started doing
Speaker 4: this album trying to get it ready for you guys.
Speaker 5: I need wah.
Speaker 8: But I'm so happy just to even be in the
Speaker 8: conversation about stuff that we love like this, bro, Like
Speaker 8: it's still here doing it.
Speaker 4: You feel me. That's my most important thing. I'm like, man,
Speaker 4: thank god, I'm still here actually doing it.
Speaker 1: You know, we thank you, We appreciate it, We thank
Speaker 1: you for coming on the show with us.
Speaker 4: Man, this is thank you. Guys.
Speaker 1: We've been trying to make this happen a long time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I told you I was gonna get you.
Speaker 4: So I ain't heard no call.
Speaker 1: From Like, yeah, I'm like, bro, I'm looking on it.
Speaker 7: I love it.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 8: For you.
Speaker 4: You know what day because we made it happen. I
Speaker 4: love you, guys man. Thank you so much back there.
Speaker 1: We appreciate it.
Speaker 4: This is a jump off of a whole lot of
Speaker 4: stuff to come.
Speaker 2: Once again, Brian Alexander Morgan the Great on Quest up
Speaker 2: Supreme when we have a lot of sugar.
Speaker 1: Steve take alot, paid Bill somewhere else there in the world.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for listening. Thank you, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you.
Speaker 7: Much.
Speaker 1: Of Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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