Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Quest Love Supreme. I'm your
Speaker 2: host Quest Love. Yo, it's a hot summer. It's hot, man,
Speaker 2: that's talking.
Speaker 3: Take I know that. Fonte and why are not in
Speaker 3: New York City right now?
Speaker 4: Yo?
Speaker 5: It's hot everywhere, y'all. I just love DC. It's hot.
Speaker 5: I'm in LA. It's hot.
Speaker 6: It's just it's just wet, hot, hot hot.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 2: I'm on hiatus right now, so you know, if I'm
Speaker 2: at work, then it's always sixty seven degrees, so I
Speaker 2: always have a sweater on. But you know, this is
Speaker 2: one of the rare times in which I'm not under
Speaker 2: freezing conditions.
Speaker 3: Sugar Seed? Are you? Are you an uber driver right now?
Speaker 3: Sugar Steve, what are you doing?
Speaker 4: I'm in a limousine heading to power lunch.
Speaker 7: Uh time?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 8: And I was telling Neo and about this earlier before
Speaker 8: the interview started.
Speaker 7: I can't dispose.
Speaker 8: It's a very big thing, very big thing happening.
Speaker 3: And so you're basically going to see Elvis scot Stella right, oh, ship,
Speaker 3: it's bigger than that.
Speaker 2: Whenever he gets a secret of it, it's always Elvis
Speaker 2: Scots Stella, I met I met one of your comrades
Speaker 2: on the play this morning.
Speaker 3: He kept waking me up out of my sleep. Who
Speaker 3: was that?
Speaker 8: Jeffrey Miller is a great, great trombone player.
Speaker 9: So he's on one of our records on JMI Recordings
Speaker 9: dot Com check it out.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He he woke me up twice, once to tell me
Speaker 2: that he records to you.
Speaker 3: Uh. The second time he woke me up out of
Speaker 3: my sleep to share a.
Speaker 2: Joke with me about carrying his uh, his plunger, his
Speaker 2: toileble plungers that he uses for his sex for his
Speaker 2: uh trom boones. Well, you know you could have You
Speaker 2: could have bumped into worse friends of mine.
Speaker 3: Anyway, y'all we're here today.
Speaker 2: I will say that our guests probably doesn't need I
Speaker 2: won't say I will say that he doesn't need an introduction.
Speaker 7: But he's one of my favorite bridge writers. Bridges, Yo,
Speaker 7: you're now rare bridges and undefeated.
Speaker 2: Our guest is indeed, he's a three time Grammy Award
Speaker 2: winning singer, songwriter, producer, actor, collaborated with the best of them,
Speaker 2: from Jiga to Beyonce, to Pitbull, to Rihanna and to
Speaker 2: Kanye the Fabulous.
Speaker 3: I mean, the list goes on and on and on
Speaker 3: and on and on and on and on.
Speaker 2: Uh. He's released seventh albums and his eighth, which is
Speaker 2: entitled Self Explanatory, will be out by this recording in July.
Speaker 3: I believe the platforms Yes July fifteenth eight track as well.
Speaker 2: Here three platinum albums. Prolific songwriter and producer and entertainer. Yo,
Speaker 2: ladies and gentlemen, please give it up for the one
Speaker 2: and only, the one, Neil, the one.
Speaker 3: What's loves to pree? What's up? Brother? How you doing?
Speaker 8: That was a hell of an introduction. I needed done
Speaker 8: like that from now on.
Speaker 2: Hey man, every every hero needs is its theme music
Speaker 2: and his own fanfare.
Speaker 8: I love it. I love it.
Speaker 7: Greeting brother.
Speaker 2: So for our listeners who can't see you right now, Yes,
Speaker 2: you're in a house that looks like it's nothing but
Speaker 2: art deco lights.
Speaker 8: Like, yeah, I'm at home currently. This This is my
Speaker 8: recording studio that I'm currently And I tell people all
Speaker 8: the time that they be like, so what do you
Speaker 8: do with your spare time? What do you do when
Speaker 8: you're not doing music? I'm like music, That's that's that's
Speaker 8: pretty much. I do this because I love it, man.
Speaker 8: And with that being said, I couldn't have a house
Speaker 8: without a studio and it had to happen, so I
Speaker 8: built my own.
Speaker 7: I love it same as I'm in my mind.
Speaker 3: That's dope, man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to say, fante you you got
Speaker 2: your your blue light on as well.
Speaker 7: I feel like I had to keep the vibe going.
Speaker 8: Got to.
Speaker 3: Where where are you from? Where were you born?
Speaker 8: Was born in Camden, Arkansas? Yes, deep deep deep South.
Speaker 8: Don't feel bad if you don't know where Camden is.
Speaker 8: No one knows where Camden people people from Arkansas don't
Speaker 8: know where camp I.
Speaker 5: Always thought it was vague, the Nevada, That's what I
Speaker 5: was confused.
Speaker 10: Why did the majority of my growing up in Vegas?
Speaker 8: Like I went to high school in Vegas, whole nine,
Speaker 8: Like all of that happened in Vegas. My dad was
Speaker 8: a truck drive.
Speaker 5: Oh that's a cool that's a cool job.
Speaker 6: You rode in the back of the camp He had
Speaker 6: one of those cats with the beds in the back
Speaker 6: and everything like.
Speaker 10: With the reason he wasn't ever because he was driving
Speaker 10: trucks and doing other stuff.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, do.
Speaker 2: You have any siblings. Your parents are they musically inclined?
Speaker 4: Uh?
Speaker 8: My, everybody in my family does something in regard to
Speaker 8: you music. Did playing an instrument or singing or rapping.
Speaker 7: Or with whatever what happened?
Speaker 8: Everybody does something like my mom used to sing, my
Speaker 8: dad plays bas he sings, My sister sings ridiculously. She's
Speaker 8: she's a she's an alien.
Speaker 10: Well I have I have two two sisters and a brother.
Speaker 8: One one sister sister and one one half sister and
Speaker 8: half brother. You know, Papa was a bit of a
Speaker 8: rolling stone.
Speaker 10: We passed no judgments. It is what it is.
Speaker 8: But but yeah, yeah, closest closest to my my main
Speaker 8: I don't know if I call it my main sister.
Speaker 8: How does that work? The sister that I share a
Speaker 8: mother and father with that that system where the where
Speaker 8: the we're the closest. You know.
Speaker 3: No, I have that situation too, So.
Speaker 8: You know, I go no disrespect to my to my
Speaker 8: other sister and my other brother. You know, they just
Speaker 8: they they moved around and did their own thing, and
Speaker 8: it is what it is. But but yeah, I grew
Speaker 8: up in Las Vegas under a very very musically inclined mother.
Speaker 8: She did everything the music, every sing the thing you
Speaker 8: can think of being cleaning up the house to watching
Speaker 8: TV with the stereo playing type type situation.
Speaker 10: So yeah, it was just always there, right, just all there.
Speaker 3: What was your first musical memory.
Speaker 10: First musical memory sitting in this sitting in the living
Speaker 10: room in front of the stereo, crying and not understanding
Speaker 10: why as I was listening to Billy Ocean's sudden.
Speaker 3: Steve that is.
Speaker 5: An eighties baby. That is an eighties baby.
Speaker 8: Right though.
Speaker 2: I know I know, Steve, he is hitting your he's
Speaker 2: sitting your groove right now.
Speaker 5: Has no meaning to me.
Speaker 4: Suddenly, No life has new meaning.
Speaker 5: Mean, that's what I meant. That's what I said.
Speaker 3: He wasn't suicidal, His life has new meaning.
Speaker 6: You know I always fuck it up a mirror. You're right,
Speaker 6: I fed it up.
Speaker 8: Wow, I'm good.
Speaker 2: No, No, that's actually dope to hear it, because oftentimes
Speaker 2: I think people were rather shame that. I think that's
Speaker 2: the purpose of music is to either document a time period,
Speaker 2: like music to me is always like a musical polar
Speaker 2: y because it helps me remember what year it was,
Speaker 2: or what time it was, or what happened at a party,
Speaker 2: like oh yeah, like whenever I hear, you know, ironic
Speaker 2: by Lance Marsette, I'm forever gonna remember, like, oh, my
Speaker 2: first car accident. You know, I'm just giving an example,
Speaker 2: but I'm just saying that music does that. What do
Speaker 2: you think it was about that song that touched you?
Speaker 10: You know what?
Speaker 8: To be completely honest with your man, I might have
Speaker 8: been maybe maybe five or six or something somewhere in
Speaker 8: there when this happened, but even now as a forty
Speaker 8: two year old man, it's something about some of the
Speaker 8: melodies that just gets you.
Speaker 4: Bro.
Speaker 8: It's just I think it was just I think that
Speaker 8: was the first time I realized the power of melody.
Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying that hitting a certain chord
Speaker 8: on a guitar or a certain note on a piano
Speaker 8: could like I put goosebumps on your arm type thing,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. Like I didn't in mind
Speaker 8: at the time, I didn't know that's what it was.
Speaker 8: But but thinking back now, it's like that's that had
Speaker 8: to be what it was because I couldn't have understood
Speaker 8: what he was talking about him from five, I don't
Speaker 8: know what I'm talking about, but the music, the way
Speaker 8: the melodies was hitting me. I think that's what it was.
Speaker 2: Again, And I have to ask in light of what
Speaker 2: what I what I lovingly d up as the versus
Speaker 2: Comedy Hour.
Speaker 3: Hey, bruh, you going there?
Speaker 5: I didn't know. I'm not.
Speaker 4: I'm not.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm not about gotcha journalism, not about putting the next
Speaker 2: man down?
Speaker 3: But are you rather perplexed? And the thing is, I
Speaker 3: don't believe that music is dead.
Speaker 2: I just believe that the particular music I like, I
Speaker 2: have to search, like very very far and wide for it,
Speaker 2: like I have to search for it. But for you,
Speaker 2: are you kind of perplexed at what what passes for
Speaker 2: music now?
Speaker 3: The fact that.
Speaker 2: That type of melody might not necessarily be exposed to
Speaker 2: a mainstream audience as.
Speaker 3: It once was. Mm hmm uh.
Speaker 7: That that's a beautiful question.
Speaker 8: And I have to say I definitely share in and
Speaker 8: where you are with that?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
Speaker 8: Now? Mind you, I've I've put myself in a place
Speaker 8: where if I'm going to be a part of this industry,
Speaker 8: I have to find a way to.
Speaker 10: Like a little bit of everything, you know, maybe not
Speaker 10: love it.
Speaker 8: I probably I wouldn't turn around in my car, But
Speaker 8: if it's on, I'm not gonna sit here and bad
Speaker 8: mouth it or sit here and not have a good time,
Speaker 8: because then not playing a kind of music that I
Speaker 8: want to hear quote unquote.
Speaker 3: Do you still listen to the radio?
Speaker 8: Not as often as I once did. Uh nah, not really.
Speaker 8: Normally I'll go on you know, one of the streaming
Speaker 8: streaming joints or whatever and pull up what it is
Speaker 8: I'm looking for it. That's that's that's easier for me
Speaker 8: than then sitting and trying to tolerate some of the
Speaker 8: things that because I mean, I'm I'm I'm from that
Speaker 8: place too, I'm from the place where you know it was.
Speaker 8: It was the intricacy of that that three part harmony,
Speaker 8: like that place and and and that's just you said it.
Speaker 8: You said it in my intro bridges Like nobody writes
Speaker 8: bridges anymore. It's like people like people ain't got time
Speaker 8: for it to be good no more?
Speaker 10: Like which like what are we all rushing towards?
Speaker 8: Songs are like a minute long? Now, Like where are
Speaker 8: y'all going so fast?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 5: I mean they fast?
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 9: My son, my son, he has a I don't know
Speaker 9: if you're up on her. He has an artist. He
Speaker 9: listens to is his girl, Pink Pantherist. I don't know
Speaker 9: if you're up on her. She put out an album
Speaker 9: I think it was last year, ten songs, eighteen minutes.
Speaker 3: That's like fantastic Volume one.
Speaker 7: And this is the whole album.
Speaker 9: Yeah up, but he this my sixteen year my youngest son.
Speaker 7: But yeah, that's that's kind of where the young is.
Speaker 3: That's what it is.
Speaker 8: I'm really I'm really curious as to why that is, Like,
Speaker 8: like because even even when I was even when I
Speaker 8: was sixteen, like it was about it was about.
Speaker 10: The story of it, you know what I mean, Like
Speaker 10: like I don't know, maybe maybe I was.
Speaker 8: A different little sixteen year old, but like, uh, what's
Speaker 8: what's the joint? What's the joint?
Speaker 10: The song is ten minutes long Luther Vandrus.
Speaker 7: Okay long ago as Superstar.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's a ten minute song, and it feels like
Speaker 8: two minutes because you just enjoy that shit so much
Speaker 8: that it passes quickly. But that song is ten minutes
Speaker 8: long and you wuldn't even you didn't even know it.
Speaker 7: But it's about.
Speaker 8: The beginning, middle, and end of a story. I used
Speaker 8: to listen to music for that. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 8: you get that no more?
Speaker 9: Yeah, now, bro, I think we got like it's the
Speaker 9: tail wagging the dog like in that. You know, people
Speaker 9: are making music specifically for streaming services, and so they
Speaker 9: know a one minute or one and a half minute
Speaker 9: song will naturally be streamed more in five minutes than
Speaker 9: a five minute song would be once you know what
Speaker 9: I mean.
Speaker 8: You know, from a business and commerce standpoint, that's that's
Speaker 8: that's smart at hell. Music art is not supposed to
Speaker 8: be inspired by commerce, at least not in my personal opinion.
Speaker 8: That's just supposed to come from the heart somewhere. And
Speaker 8: if it's coming from the heart, it might take a
Speaker 8: little longer than a minute to give my point across,
Speaker 8: But that means that my song is played on the radio.
Speaker 8: Now damn all right, Well here we are, ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 3: I learned that lesson with I think really with the
Speaker 3: Old Town Road. I spun it at a party once
Speaker 3: and thought, you know, okay, I'll put it on.
Speaker 2: Like back when it was red hot, I would that
Speaker 2: would be my first record, my stalling record until I
Speaker 2: find out what I really want to play.
Speaker 3: And I looked at the thing and.
Speaker 2: It was like two minutes and twenty seven seconds, and
Speaker 2: I really whoa like I had to play it twice.
Speaker 2: I meant the Billy Ray Cyrus thing stretches it a.
Speaker 7: Little bit to like, yeah, a.
Speaker 2: Seventeen seconds, but yeah, man, it's it's also maybe that
Speaker 2: this generation doesn't need a lot of time to express itself.
Speaker 3: I won't say that doesn't much to say.
Speaker 5: They do have the language. They have the words.
Speaker 10: It's like mean culture, yeah, statement, next statement.
Speaker 5: But they also have new words that we didn't have before.
Speaker 6: Where we used to be taken forever to say a
Speaker 6: gas like trigger, you used to have to think, come on,
Speaker 6: that shit didn't exist. You a whole sentence about what
Speaker 6: that ship really was, like like.
Speaker 8: Trump, the lingo is gonna change with the times, as
Speaker 8: you know, as long as it's young people, it's alway gonna.
Speaker 7: Be do lingo.
Speaker 8: I ain't mad at that part. Yes, I just wish
Speaker 8: that I wish that everybody would just slow the hell down.
Speaker 8: I feel like, you know what I felt why music
Speaker 8: is suffering is because nobody's taking the time to keep
Speaker 8: it good. No more like everybody is, as you said,
Speaker 8: everybody trying to get their streaming numbers up. And it's
Speaker 8: like listen. We'll worry about quality later. Right now, it's
Speaker 8: just let's just get it out there. We can get
Speaker 8: these numbers up. That sucks. I just I just hate
Speaker 8: that we in this place now.
Speaker 5: Man, I really, it's not all young people.
Speaker 6: That's not that's not everybody understand because there is a
Speaker 6: section of young people that are appreciating the nineties right
Speaker 6: now that are we discovering neo soul and all of
Speaker 6: that and making it new against I mean, you know,
Speaker 6: let's just get a baby some love.
Speaker 10: There's always exceptions, you know.
Speaker 8: The mass is the mass situation right now is you know,
Speaker 8: a song need to be a minute long because I
Speaker 8: got something to do?
Speaker 10: What do you have to do? You ain't got trying
Speaker 10: to listen to some good music.
Speaker 8: I don't get it.
Speaker 6: I don't get I used to tell people on the radio, listen,
Speaker 6: if you want to find good music, it's not going
Speaker 6: to be the ship that easily comes to you.
Speaker 5: You're gonna have to go find it.
Speaker 6: And I'm on the radio telling you that the good
Speaker 6: ship is not what you're easy on the radio. Okay,
Speaker 6: we had we we we repeating some things, but I'm sorry,
Speaker 6: go back there.
Speaker 2: I feel like I feel like this shows now turning
Speaker 2: into the corner of do the right thing.
Speaker 8: There's there's one other element of this that I feel
Speaker 8: like might play a very very strong factor. Okay, now,
Speaker 8: I am not anywhere near good enough to say that
Speaker 8: I am a piano player or a guitar player or
Speaker 8: a drum player.
Speaker 7: I'm good enough to tap around and find what I need.
Speaker 8: Right, But I recall a time where music was kind
Speaker 8: of like a really really exclusive club. You had to
Speaker 8: know what you were doing, you had to be good
Speaker 8: at you had to be good at what you was doing.
Speaker 10: Like now, anybody can do it.
Speaker 8: Anybody can do it. It's it's the door, it's the
Speaker 8: y m c A. Come on in, y'all's that's where.
Speaker 8: That's where we're at now. So of course, if you
Speaker 8: got just anybody doing whatever, of course things are going
Speaker 8: to suffer.
Speaker 7: That the quality is gonna suffer.
Speaker 8: There was a point in time where the quality was
Speaker 8: up because the cats that was doing it was quality.
Speaker 8: Taking nothing from anybody today, I'm not saying the names.
Speaker 8: I'm not doing that for my bashing. I'm just saying
Speaker 8: that now I mean to take something to take something
Speaker 8: like DJ. You remember when you had to like learn
Speaker 8: timing and like like figure out how to mix records
Speaker 8: and now.
Speaker 10: You push your button and you got and you're done.
Speaker 10: You're done. You push your button.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, I think those tools are just gonna have
Speaker 9: to push people to like be creative in a different way,
Speaker 9: because I mean even though, like even with DJing, it's like,
Speaker 9: if you have the records, you can give me a
Speaker 9: mirror's hard drive right now, and I wouldn't know what
Speaker 9: to do with it, you know what I'm saying, Like
Speaker 9: you still have to know how.
Speaker 7: To play the records. You know, there's just still skills,
Speaker 7: a skill set that's evolved.
Speaker 9: But with now, with technology, in many ways good and bad,
Speaker 9: it's leveled the plan field so that the barrier of
Speaker 9: entry is pretty much non existent.
Speaker 8: Well. No, it's the same thing with with like bro
Speaker 8: with with with auto tune for example, Yeah, you got
Speaker 8: to know what you're doing with auto tune to make
Speaker 8: it do what it do, right, you're gonna be auto
Speaker 8: you go and and and so it's the same thing
Speaker 8: with DJ.
Speaker 10: I understand it.
Speaker 8: There's a technique to it, but you can't deny that
Speaker 8: back day, before the buttons came, you had to be
Speaker 8: a little bit better at what you was doing.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying. You had to be good.
Speaker 8: You had to be that dude a little bit like
Speaker 8: and the same thing came to playing instruments, the same
Speaker 8: thing came with singing.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: That's that's why we're kind of seeing what we're seeing
Speaker 8: right now, is it's not the craft itself. I don't
Speaker 8: feel like it's as respected as it once was. Like
Speaker 8: nobody's blood sweating heres to get good at this no more?
Speaker 5: You know that means the bottom is going to fall out, right,
Speaker 5: y'all know that, right?
Speaker 8: The bottom fell out, or God willing, somebody comes along
Speaker 8: and saves us.
Speaker 2: Do you remember the first album that you purchased with
Speaker 2: your own money?
Speaker 8: The first album I purchased with my own money, surprisingly
Speaker 8: was not an R and B album. It was The
Speaker 8: Far Sides Wild Was it the Wild Ride? It was
Speaker 8: all right?
Speaker 10: Yes, the first one? Yeah, huge, huge far side fan Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, see you're thirteen, okay.
Speaker 8: Easily something like that.
Speaker 3: Wow, you know what's where? Uh?
Speaker 2: That album was a hard sell for me in the
Speaker 2: very big I didn't like Your Mama.
Speaker 3: It was cool, But.
Speaker 5: Was it the remix that turned you around? Or was
Speaker 5: it just no?
Speaker 3: When I heard for Better for Worse?
Speaker 6: Ah yeah, oh damn y'all, alright, all right, when I
Speaker 6: heard your Mama, I just started corny and I ignored them.
Speaker 2: And well, you know, like when Richard Nichols and AJ
Speaker 2: Shine were producers. AJ Shine was like Philadelphia's stretching Barbido,
Speaker 2: and he had a copy of the album and I
Speaker 2: looked at the album cover and it was just the
Speaker 2: craziest thing I ever seen, which is really weird because
Speaker 2: when he put for Better for Worse one, I feel
Speaker 2: like the album cover, that's the that's the soundtrack to
Speaker 2: the album cover Worse. But when I heard those Fender roads,
Speaker 2: like that just totally I don't know, it's just it
Speaker 2: just opened the whole portal. Literally after I heard for
Speaker 2: Better for Worse, I told rich like, we need a
Speaker 2: keyboard player, and he was like, I know this, like
Speaker 2: this guy living in my house named Scott Storch. And
Speaker 2: that's how Scott came into the group. Wait, speaking of which,
Speaker 2: I'm just realizing I didn't realize that you were the
Speaker 2: third writer of Let Me Love You. I've always thought
Speaker 2: that was just Scott and Cam.
Speaker 8: Yeah, shout out to my man, Cam. No, that was me.
Speaker 10: Yes, I was absolutely there for that.
Speaker 5: Ah.
Speaker 2: Man, Yo, man, I've known Cam like I've known Cam
Speaker 2: since I k known Scott since they were like yay Hi,
Speaker 2: I thought Cam wrote those lyrics.
Speaker 6: Yo.
Speaker 8: I was like no, no, no, no, We definitely we
Speaker 8: definitely went back and forth on that. That was.
Speaker 10: That was my first time ever.
Speaker 8: Working with Cam and it was I just remember it
Speaker 8: because I remember it being such an easy situation because
Speaker 8: I worked with other writers since then, and it's egos
Speaker 8: getting away and you know, well I will I'll route
Speaker 8: this much, you know, and all of that stuff gets
Speaker 8: in a way that was not the case when this
Speaker 8: song came to be. I feel like that might be
Speaker 8: why the song this so well, because it was just
Speaker 8: such a uh it was it was like it was
Speaker 8: just love. The whole situation was just love. Nobody was
Speaker 8: was tripping off of who got what percentage, Nobody was
Speaker 8: was trying to do more than they did. Like it
Speaker 8: was just a love situation, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: Shout out to them, man, man, Shout out to Camp,
Speaker 8: Shout out to Scott Storge. That's to a large degree,
Speaker 8: that's where my career started because that was the song
Speaker 8: that that finally got me the attention. You know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying. For a long time, I was I was
Speaker 8: dub the little nigga that wrote the Mario song. That
Speaker 8: was that was my name.
Speaker 3: Can you talk about the process of you discovering your voice?
Speaker 8: So, yeah, my sister was born with with just she
Speaker 8: she came out to womb High Sea like just in
Speaker 8: there easy. It takes her, takes nothing. I'd work for
Speaker 8: my a little bit. You know, I knew I could,
Speaker 8: I could hold the note. I wasn't tone death, but
Speaker 8: I wasn't.
Speaker 7: I wasn't.
Speaker 8: I wasn't my sister, you know what I mean. And
Speaker 8: and in our house, you know, the standard became my sister.
Speaker 8: So and so you know, I felt a few not
Speaker 8: just below that. So it took a little minute for
Speaker 8: me to just really really get comfortable with my voice.
Speaker 8: A lot of Michael Jackson, a lot of Stevie Wonder,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. Moms actually put me on
Speaker 8: to both of these gentlemen, uh, and it helped me
Speaker 8: get more more comfortable with just how my voice sounded.
Speaker 10: I used to really not like the sound of my voice.
Speaker 8: Because from what I couldn't do what my sister could
Speaker 8: do technically she had the ad libs.
Speaker 10: And all of that stuff right.
Speaker 8: And then my mom was like my hero, and she
Speaker 8: used to listen to a lot of like, you know,
Speaker 8: husky voiced singers, the Ojys and your Teddy P's and
Speaker 8: you take them all that, and I didn't have that,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. So I didn't like I
Speaker 8: didn't really like singing at first. And then she introduced
Speaker 8: me to uh, to Michael Jackson's Off the Wall, not thriller,
Speaker 8: Off the Wall.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 10: She introduced me to songs in the kid life.
Speaker 8: She introduced me to to what they just how they
Speaker 8: were doing, what they were doing with their voices, and
Speaker 8: they helped me become more comfortable with my own because
Speaker 8: there was a similar tambre there, kind of that nasally
Speaker 8: high thing, you know what I mean, And it just
Speaker 8: helped me get more comfortable with it, but not comfortable
Speaker 8: enough to sing for people. It was at the height
Speaker 8: of what I was doing. I'm in the tenth grade,
Speaker 8: and if ever I'm upset about something, mad at something,
Speaker 8: whatever the case may be, I got a little red
Speaker 8: notebook under my bed.
Speaker 7: I pull that joint out I'll write a quick.
Speaker 8: Song, sing it to myself, throw a note up back
Speaker 8: under the bed, and gone by my business. Like my
Speaker 8: friends didn't know for a long long time. I didn't
Speaker 8: because it wasn't for them, it was it was for me.
Speaker 8: It was therapy for me, you know what I mean.
Speaker 8: So I went to a performing arts high school for
Speaker 8: visual designers, a drawing paint and whatnot. And every year
Speaker 8: this high school, Las Vegas Academy for Theater, Performing and
Speaker 8: Visual Arts, every year they would do something called pop Concert.
Speaker 8: And this was primarily for the dancers and the choir
Speaker 8: majors and you know the.
Speaker 7: Techie guys that do the lights and all of that.
Speaker 8: It was like a like a like a super glorified
Speaker 8: talent show. Think you know they got smoke machines and
Speaker 8: the biggest thing going on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So of course this is a major deal to
Speaker 8: the whole school. Everybody except the art majors. We were
Speaker 8: kind of left out of that.
Speaker 10: They ain't really there weren't really nothing for us to do.
Speaker 8: You make your back drop now we find we got
Speaker 8: lights the right couls. So we were kind of like
Speaker 8: the grassy old kids, like they wasn't wasn't nobody studding
Speaker 8: us because the whole the rest of the school is.
Speaker 10: On pop concert pop, console, popcorns.
Speaker 8: These kids crying in the cafeteria over choreography, you this
Speaker 8: fucking six.
Speaker 3: Like so it sounds like someone I know.
Speaker 8: So this particularly year, me and me and the grassy
Speaker 8: old kids, we decided, you know what, we're gonna do
Speaker 8: something to just to just kind of take the piss
Speaker 8: out this whole situation, right, so.
Speaker 10: We pulled straws. Of course, I pulled the short straw.
Speaker 8: The plan was to somehow get into the talent show,
Speaker 8: because you had audition to get into the talent show.
Speaker 8: So that was the hard part, get into the talent show.
Speaker 8: And then once you got on stage, turn around moon
Speaker 8: the crowd run off like that was that was what
Speaker 8: we were gonna do. That was our plan.
Speaker 7: I pulled the.
Speaker 8: Short This is a plan. It was. It was kind
Speaker 8: of like just a big fuck you to everything that
Speaker 8: y'all making such a big dollar. No one's getting signed
Speaker 8: from this, this this this talent show.
Speaker 10: Guys, calm down, And that was always saying that to everybody.
Speaker 6: Okay, so how you gonna get on stage?
Speaker 3: You aren't majors were always assholes.
Speaker 7: Man, I'm sorry, completely on purpose.
Speaker 8: We thrived on being an asshole. We did it on purpose.
Speaker 8: But okay. So so I go to the choir the
Speaker 8: choir room to audition. I sang boysmen, end of the row. Uh.
Speaker 8: The choir major instantly asked me, why are you not
Speaker 8: in my class? Because I'm not a singer. He was like,
Speaker 8: yes you are whatever, Yeah, you in?
Speaker 7: All right?
Speaker 8: Cool? Bye, gone, all right, I got in. How'd you
Speaker 8: get in? Don't worry about I got in? All right, cool,
Speaker 8: get there. It's the day of everybody's excited. All my
Speaker 8: own boys are sitting in the front. I don't know
Speaker 8: how the hell they manage that, because it was just
Speaker 8: something that you had to get tickets to. But we
Speaker 8: found our way in, damn it. We always the grassy
Speaker 8: old kids always find a way. Anyways, it's my turn
Speaker 8: to go up. They introduced me, show your love for
Speaker 8: Schaeffer Smith that's my real name, Shafford Schmithson. I walk
Speaker 8: out on stage to no applause, because, mind you, the
Speaker 8: kids at this school know me as the little dude
Speaker 8: with the braids that will draw you a picture if
Speaker 8: you give them ten dollars. Right, this is who I
Speaker 8: was at this. So the music starts and I, I
Speaker 8: can't make this up. The music starts and I look
Speaker 8: up at the crowd, and all of a sudden, nobody's there.
Speaker 8: Everybody's gone. I don't know it just it's just in
Speaker 8: my in my head, everybody's gone. The crowd is gone.
Speaker 8: All I can hear is the song. So I just
Speaker 8: start singing. I sang the whole song, set said to
Speaker 8: one place, eyes closed, sang the whole song, A libs
Speaker 8: and all all of that, all of that song and
Speaker 8: no applause.
Speaker 10: All of a sudden, it was like a I can't it.
Speaker 7: Was slow clap to us, to the roar.
Speaker 10: Because it was it was it was like, where the
Speaker 10: hell did this come again?
Speaker 3: They were shock the nigga with the braves.
Speaker 8: That'll draw you a picture for ten dollars. This is
Speaker 8: who I was all of a sudden, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying. So so that at that moment, suddenly, you know,
Speaker 8: the following days it's girls saying hi in the hall
Speaker 8: and ship that that. I knew all of that. You know,
Speaker 8: A buddy of mine, hey, me and some friends, we
Speaker 8: had a singing group going up. You want to join
Speaker 8: the group. Uh yeah, sure, all right. And then once
Speaker 8: I got into the group and met you know, some
Speaker 8: like minded gentlemen that wanted to do the same thing.
Speaker 8: We sent around creating three four part harmonies and whatnot.
Speaker 8: That's when it That's when it was finally like I
Speaker 8: could I could do this for a living, like I
Speaker 8: could really, Yeah, I could, I could do this.
Speaker 5: So you just left the grass, you old people like
Speaker 5: you just rode out on him like.
Speaker 10: Friends and friends.
Speaker 8: And we was always at but you know, it's it's
Speaker 8: at the same time I'm in the I'm spending a
Speaker 8: little bit more time in the choir room and.
Speaker 2: The little bits ask this question, your class.
Speaker 8: Of ninety eight, nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 2: So that said, did you go back to your twenty
Speaker 2: three reunion in twenty eighteen?
Speaker 8: Say yes, I did? I did.
Speaker 3: Did you stunt on them?
Speaker 8: I don't. I'm not. I'm not a stunter. If that
Speaker 8: my flex is real light. It's like, you know what
Speaker 8: I'm saying, I'm gonna put this ship on, but not
Speaker 8: say I put this shit on. I'm gonna just wait
Speaker 8: for you to notice that I got that ship on,
Speaker 8: like you know, that's me. That's me, you know, I'm
Speaker 8: not gonna draw attention to the diamonds, but should you
Speaker 8: see them?
Speaker 7: Goddamn you know what?
Speaker 8: That's me right imply everlyam So you know I went
Speaker 8: and mind you the most famous people that was myself.
Speaker 8: Apparently the drummer from the group The Killers went to
Speaker 8: the same high school as me. Yeah, Vega and.
Speaker 5: Seven o two, right and seven o two.
Speaker 10: Seven o two seven oh two on their way out
Speaker 10: as I was on my way here.
Speaker 5: Okay, I just knew, y'all.
Speaker 7: Okay, I just knew.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but uh, she's an actress, beautiful chocolate actress. She
Speaker 8: was on the True Blood show Routina. Yes, we went
Speaker 8: to we went to school together. Yeah, man, yes, old,
Speaker 8: I mean routine.
Speaker 5: You're not old. But you know what I'm saying, Queen Sugar.
Speaker 8: Wow, man, listen, nowadays it is a blessing to ghettols.
Speaker 8: I ain't even trip hell yeah you So.
Speaker 2: The thing is you're saying that your gift of journaling
Speaker 2: or writing poetry was sort of your your stress reliever.
Speaker 2: You're that you let off steam. Did anyone ever hire
Speaker 2: your services as like, uh, you know, quasi here no
Speaker 2: divergiac as right, write.
Speaker 8: Me something all the time, Yes, all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I used to do a lot of that for football players.
Speaker 8: That's the football player at our school, because there was
Speaker 8: no football at our school, but Rancho was down the street.
Speaker 8: And yeah, I know a lot of them guys. Yeah,
Speaker 8: I'll write write poems. Then they getting their girlfriends or yeah, listen, but.
Speaker 6: Okay, ten dollars and dollars dollar got you, I'll let
Speaker 6: you say, you go for it, ten bucks.
Speaker 7: I'll never went hungry.
Speaker 2: I would like to know what your process was then
Speaker 2: as opposed to now, as far as.
Speaker 3: Writing with the song.
Speaker 2: Are you a person that can get an idea of
Speaker 2: just words without melody or knowing what type of song
Speaker 2: it is, or you know, do you have to sit
Speaker 2: and listen to the song or how different is your
Speaker 2: songwriting process high school, post high school versus what you
Speaker 2: do for a living now.
Speaker 8: I can honestly say that when it was, you know,
Speaker 8: back in high school, before before the stakes got high,
Speaker 8: you know, so to speak, there was a there was
Speaker 8: a freedom to my writing that that dwindled over time,
Speaker 8: you know, as as I got into that place where
Speaker 8: it's like, all right, you've had success, now you got
Speaker 8: to do it again. And so now you're overthinking every
Speaker 8: fucking thing you do because it's like, oh, isn't as
Speaker 8: good as that thing. Before that, it was kind of
Speaker 8: just writing whatever came to mind, and it was no
Speaker 8: wrong way, you know. Sometimes it was it was a
Speaker 8: cadence that came to me, no melody, just no words,
Speaker 8: just a cadence now whatever the case. And then sometimes
Speaker 8: it was words I used to so I used to
Speaker 8: uh my training, so to speak.
Speaker 10: But if you want to call it that, I would
Speaker 10: just go.
Speaker 8: Somewhere and look around the room, find a word, a phrase,
Speaker 8: a picture of something, create a story around it, and
Speaker 8: then write a song based on that story, just to
Speaker 8: just to sharpen, you know, just to sharpen the tube.
Speaker 8: So it could be it could be a word, It
Speaker 8: could be you know, somebody sitting with guitar and we
Speaker 8: sit and create melodies that way, and the words over the melodies.
Speaker 8: Like there's no wrong way as long as it got
Speaker 8: to that that thing you feel when you know, like, yeah,
Speaker 8: that thing, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I want to thank you for validating me.
Speaker 7: Oh yeah, thank you for.
Speaker 3: Validating me right now. No, because you know.
Speaker 2: I wrote a book on creativity and I was trying
Speaker 2: to give various exercises. Well, the first thing I told
Speaker 2: people is that they have to embrace boredom more because
Speaker 2: when you're silent, when you're bored, when you're still, that's
Speaker 2: when the ideas come to you. And you know, I
Speaker 2: was just suggesting games that you could do, like brand exercises,
Speaker 2: where you know, I think Carly Simon used to randomly
Speaker 2: open a National geographic page and look at one sentence
Speaker 2: and then base a whole song on that. And so
Speaker 2: to hear you say that, yes, I'm glad that you
Speaker 2: validated me, because I don't consider myself a songwriter, but
Speaker 2: I figured that for writing, that's a great exercise to do.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, yeah. I mean it's because if you don't,
Speaker 8: your songs tend to become stagnant, you know what I mean,
Speaker 8: Like there's there's the okay, there's let's write about love,
Speaker 8: Let's write about sex, Let's write about money, let's write
Speaker 8: about girls. These four things are always gonna, you know,
Speaker 8: flow to the top for the for the younger generation,
Speaker 8: that's just kind of is what it is to be young.
Speaker 7: I get it.
Speaker 8: But if you just focus on those four things, then
Speaker 8: all of a sudden, your songs kind of start sounding alike.
Speaker 8: It's like, all right, well, well you need you need
Speaker 8: new ways to say the same ship, if that makes
Speaker 8: any sense. And the only way to do that is
Speaker 8: to step outside your comfort zone to find a word
Speaker 8: that it's actually difficult write a song about graphight what
Speaker 8: but how?
Speaker 7: Hold on?
Speaker 8: How? What? What?
Speaker 7: How do you sing?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Because because you can rap, but singing something.
Speaker 10: Step away from from I love you, so never let
Speaker 10: me go, you know what I mean?
Speaker 8: Like, step away from that and figure out another way
Speaker 8: to say to to get that same that same point across,
Speaker 8: but with different words and different phrases and different melodies
Speaker 8: like I used to I still do.
Speaker 7: I can't lock into one.
Speaker 8: Specific genre of music because you know, if it's if
Speaker 8: it's hip hop, is these these three melodies that every
Speaker 8: hip hop artist is using, right, So that's a very
Speaker 8: small bowl. If it's R and B, you know, it's
Speaker 8: these chords, it's the church chords. It's that type of vibe.
Speaker 7: Okay, that's cool.
Speaker 10: Step outside of that.
Speaker 8: Listen to some country music, listen to them melodies over there,
Speaker 8: step outside. I listened to some some some Hindi music
Speaker 8: or whatever, just melodies that you wouldn't typically go to too,
Speaker 8: and it helps just expand your your your library of sound.
Speaker 10: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: When you sit down and do it, you got more
Speaker 8: ship to play with as opposed to I love you
Speaker 8: so never let me go. And you know the latest
Speaker 8: church song made over with R and B lyrics on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to ask, what are your tabooed no
Speaker 2: no in songwriting?
Speaker 3: Like, okay, I hate your on my mind all the time.
Speaker 3: Maybe you on my mind. I think about you all
Speaker 3: the time, right.
Speaker 10: Yeah, those those hurt those hurts song.
Speaker 8: It's just so come on, man, like you ain't even
Speaker 8: tried you you phoned you phoned it in the death
Speaker 8: like that's yeah, I hate that. I hate the phone
Speaker 8: in lyric, not nothing mind you, the phone in lyric,
Speaker 8: not the simple lyric, because you can say it simply
Speaker 8: and it's still be clever, it's still have have you know,
Speaker 8: a little kick to it.
Speaker 3: Smokey Robinson's the king of.
Speaker 8: That, the king of I'm gonna just say it, but
Speaker 8: I'm the.
Speaker 3: King of simplicity.
Speaker 8: Yeah, but it's but but still but still fly, oh
Speaker 8: like simple but fly, not just simple for the sake
Speaker 8: of simple. Like I used to have an issue with
Speaker 8: the whole concept of repeating one word over and over
Speaker 8: and over and over and over and over and over.
Speaker 8: It used to it used to bug me, cause it's like,
Speaker 8: why there's so many words. There's so many words?
Speaker 2: You mean rhyming, rhyming words with words, or you mean
Speaker 2: like my my my, my, my my mom, like just
Speaker 2: saying one word baby.
Speaker 8: This is why. That is why I have the utmost
Speaker 8: respect for the Dream, because the Dream found a way
Speaker 8: to do that ship and it don't bug you. I
Speaker 8: don't know how, but it don't. But hey, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. It works for him. Shout out to
Speaker 8: the Dream. How the hell you do that, bro, because
Speaker 8: I'll be trying that. It's like, nah, it's crumble, No,
Speaker 8: this ain't.
Speaker 10: It, This is not it.
Speaker 2: Of your contemporaries, who are the you know, the people
Speaker 2: that you respect the most, and who are your I
Speaker 2: guess you could say you're I'm about to say Mount
Speaker 2: Saint Helen's uh before president?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Who?
Speaker 8: Who?
Speaker 3: Who's the Mount Rushmore of of songwriters? For you?
Speaker 8: Of songwriters? See, that's that's that's an interesting question. I've
Speaker 8: actually never been asked that question before. It's always who's
Speaker 8: just your mount rushmore like a favor like so, so
Speaker 8: if for that question, the question you didn't answer, you
Speaker 8: didn't ask, well.
Speaker 2: Okay, let me let me reask instead of who do
Speaker 2: you respect now? Who writes a song today that you're like, Damn,
Speaker 2: I wish I wrote that?
Speaker 10: Like?
Speaker 3: Is there a song that's like man, I wish I
Speaker 3: had a crack at that?
Speaker 8: Like Damn, I've I've I've heard one or two Drake
Speaker 8: records where the lyric was clever enough to where I'm like, oh,
Speaker 8: I did not think of that. That was that was good?
Speaker 8: That was good? Yeah, that hurt I've heard.
Speaker 10: I've heard one of two records from him. Uh in
Speaker 10: that space.
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 8: I'm gonna be real honest with you. I don't know
Speaker 8: a lot of the newer newer generation and I don't
Speaker 8: know their names. You know. No no disrespect or anything
Speaker 8: like that, but it's just I have to be I
Speaker 8: have to be enthralled in the record today and take
Speaker 8: it upon myself to go back and be look be
Speaker 8: look at who wrote it, who produced it. And if
Speaker 8: I don't, if I don't feel like that, then I'm
Speaker 8: not I'm not gonna waste the time.
Speaker 10: I'll let it be what it is and keep it moving.
Speaker 3: Are you up up?
Speaker 7: Victoria Money, she's a writer. I really like her.
Speaker 8: Victoria Money, I consider an artist. But yeah, she's a
Speaker 8: she's a.
Speaker 9: Oh she's Arianna she but she's an artist, like you know,
Speaker 9: like he said.
Speaker 8: But yeah, I love her music.
Speaker 3: Yeah, her music is yeah.
Speaker 8: Yeah, shout out to Victoria Money, shout out to shout
Speaker 8: out to the girl her.
Speaker 2: Who's your Mount Rushmore before you as in, that's the
Speaker 2: level of the pending game that I would like.
Speaker 8: My Mount Rushmore, ultimate Mount Rushmore, be an artist writer.
Speaker 8: Hold on because all of these guys kind of embody
Speaker 8: all of that five gentlemen Michael Jackson, Prince Samit Davis Junior,
Speaker 8: Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye.
Speaker 5: Said that list like five. Yes, that's a nice.
Speaker 8: Group in Vegas. A group in Vegas. There is the
Speaker 8: rat Pack. I was I. I fell in love with
Speaker 8: the rat Pack. My mom brought it home and of
Speaker 8: course I gravitated. It's the same because he was the
Speaker 8: one that looked like me. So yeah, man, that's what
Speaker 8: it was.
Speaker 2: If you're in a run, what's the process of you
Speaker 2: dealing with it? Do you have other hobbies or other
Speaker 2: other things that you get into. Like sometimes if I
Speaker 2: I'm a great example is whatever the movie or I
Speaker 2: write a book, or I do something else creative, and
Speaker 2: that'll make me miss music. So do you have like
Speaker 2: another pivot that you go to if you're ever in
Speaker 2: a trap of not being able to finish the song?
Speaker 8: I think I think the key word is pivot because
Speaker 8: you kind of have to pivot because if you don't,
Speaker 8: you sit there and force it until paralysis. Yeah, exactly that. So,
Speaker 8: so the thing for me has always been a step
Speaker 8: away from it, you know, as hard as that may
Speaker 8: be sometimes because you know that that whole defeated thing
Speaker 8: starts setting in. It's like damn, I let the song
Speaker 8: beat me. No, you're not defeated. It's not done. Relax,
Speaker 8: you can come back. I'll step away and not normally
Speaker 8: for me, I'll you know, play street fighter. I'm a
Speaker 8: I'm an absolute beast that street fighter. Challenge me anyone
Speaker 8: who's your people, don't need nobody, your body, nobody me?
Speaker 8: Or are you on dragging dragon for you? So I'll
Speaker 8: do that or you know, uh, remember the practice I
Speaker 8: was telling you about where I just look around the
Speaker 8: room and find another word and just just something, something
Speaker 8: to get the wheels turning again.
Speaker 7: That's all I really need.
Speaker 8: And that's and that normally helps. That normally helps.
Speaker 3: See, that's that's how I play word.
Speaker 2: So I guess I should sort of channel on to
Speaker 2: actually writing lyrics because I actually I treat my word
Speaker 2: o game like I'm writing a song. I should have
Speaker 2: been writing songs by this point.
Speaker 8: Tell not as hard as people make it.
Speaker 2: What's the average time that you'll spend writing the song?
Speaker 7: Like?
Speaker 3: How fast does it come to you?
Speaker 7: I like that?
Speaker 3: So what song? To get the longest the right? Yeah,
Speaker 3: to get the longest the right.
Speaker 8: So when I first started getting attention, so to speak,
Speaker 8: I used to prove myself on how fast I could
Speaker 8: write a song. That's kind of where my name. That's
Speaker 8: kind of where the name Neo came from. Dion Evans,
Speaker 8: the Evans main Recipees. He gave me the name because
Speaker 8: he like, we'll talk, give me an hour. I could
Speaker 8: give you seventeen records. Now, mind seventeen records. I didn't
Speaker 8: say seventeen smashes, right, right, say seventeen seventeen records, you know,
Speaker 8: other seventeen you might three of them joints might be something,
Speaker 8: but seventeen records now, So now it's definitely more of
Speaker 8: a quality versus quantity thing. Whereas in that same hour
Speaker 8: that where I could get where I gave you seventeen,
Speaker 8: I'd take that hour to give you two, but it'd
Speaker 8: be two smashes, you know what I mean, two that
Speaker 8: I know, two that I know are going to hit
Speaker 8: the mark because I've just been there with Yeah, because
Speaker 8: I took the time to make sure that I was
Speaker 8: doing what is exactly what I what happened up here.
Speaker 8: That's always been the hardest part for me, because I
Speaker 8: can hear it done up here already.
Speaker 10: I just need to get it out of here and
Speaker 10: into the world.
Speaker 8: And somehow through that process of that transition from my
Speaker 8: mind to the world, shit changes and things happen, and
Speaker 8: all of a sudden, it don't.
Speaker 7: Sound like it sounded in my head no more.
Speaker 8: And now it's like, ah, shit, I felt right, step away,
Speaker 8: be somebody on the street fighter, Ah, come back, fix
Speaker 8: the problem.
Speaker 5: That sound like fine?
Speaker 4: Tap process now yeah, now you have to walk over.
Speaker 7: That's not straight up for real.
Speaker 9: I want to ask you man specifically about your work
Speaker 9: with Stargate because I have like really great chemistry together.
Speaker 9: And I remember we've met on a few occasions, but
Speaker 9: I remember this was probably like god, this is like
Speaker 9: oh seven oh six, but your first album in my
Speaker 9: own words, had just dropped and we was in Atlanta
Speaker 9: and it was a drama.
Speaker 7: Drama was having a party if I feel like it was.
Speaker 3: It was drama.
Speaker 7: But anyway, some part in Atlanta and I saw you.
Speaker 9: I was like, oh man, it's Neo and you were
Speaker 9: like in there. I was surprised that you even there,
Speaker 9: you like had to had all you like super chill.
Speaker 9: I was like, oh wow, like you were like super
Speaker 9: quiet enough, and I just walked Abu. I was like, yo, man,
Speaker 9: Sexy loves the join.
Speaker 7: Off new record, And he was like, Yo, appreciate it.
Speaker 9: You know what I mean, but but I love that
Speaker 9: song man, and you and Stargate like y'all have chemistry, man,
Speaker 9: Like talk about that process of working with them, what
Speaker 9: it's like.
Speaker 8: Well, firstly, I was I was so chill that night
Speaker 8: because I was I was shipping on myself in my
Speaker 8: soul inside because I'm like, oh my god, it's this it's.
Speaker 7: People in here.
Speaker 8: I know that person.
Speaker 7: I know that person too.
Speaker 8: I just calm down, relax, three two four. In my mind,
Speaker 8: this is what happened in my mind. Outside it's like, yeah,
Speaker 8: I've been there, Oh no I was, I was, I
Speaker 8: was losing it. But Stargate, the beauty of Stargate is
Speaker 8: how genuinely humble and just kind of I hate to
Speaker 8: use the term regular because it's there's nothing regular about
Speaker 8: their level of talent. But they're just ordinary people. Like
Speaker 8: you'll never see these cats with the big dumb jewelry.
Speaker 8: You'll never hear yeah Stargate at the top of the joint.
Speaker 8: They don't do that. They let the music speak for itself.
Speaker 8: These cats have figured out simplicity. It's like they came
Speaker 8: along right on time where it was like, you know, again,
Speaker 8: no direspect to anybody, but we got to that place
Speaker 8: where the producer is a celebrity to now right. So
Speaker 8: you you so enthralled and making sure that everybody know
Speaker 8: that this is you, and you do so much to
Speaker 8: the track that you ain't leave a room for the song.
Speaker 8: Now where does the song fit over all of this beautiful,
Speaker 8: amazing shit that you done done on this track? Here
Speaker 8: comes Stargate with listen, We're gonna give you a skeleton
Speaker 8: and let you put the meat on. We're gonna let
Speaker 8: you let the song create the body because that's what
Speaker 8: because technically that's kind of what it's supposed to be.
Speaker 8: It's a marriage between the two. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: It's the foundation that's holding up the structure, that's holding
Speaker 8: up the structure.
Speaker 10: And that's what they do to the point where you know,
Speaker 10: they'll give me like so sick.
Speaker 8: For example, was that that harp and a drum and
Speaker 8: that was it and that's what I wrote to And
Speaker 8: then later on they went back and put the chords
Speaker 8: and like filded up. You know what I'm saying, sexy love,
Speaker 8: same way, doom doom, doom, doom doom that and uh,
Speaker 8: that's it. Wrote the song. They go in later and
Speaker 8: put into the bells and whistles later on because it
Speaker 8: could to make to make the track meld to the song,
Speaker 8: you know what I mean. No, it's like it's like
Speaker 8: cat's what Cat's ain't doing that. It's like, no, I
Speaker 8: got to make sure eybody know this my track. I
Speaker 8: did this damn that song. Yeah whatever the song, I
Speaker 8: did it, all right.
Speaker 7: They're sweedish if.
Speaker 8: There from Norway brothers from Rueigian Mothers.
Speaker 10: Yes, which kind of again speaks to your point quest.
Speaker 8: It's it's different over there because there's a there's a
Speaker 8: different level of respect for the craft over there. Like
Speaker 8: these cats that they will sit on that piano, they
Speaker 8: will get on that guitar, they will get on their drums,
Speaker 8: they playing everything, you know what I'm saying, and and
Speaker 8: it's it's it's fun for them. It's like the fringe
Speaker 8: benefit of it is that you make money, but that
Speaker 8: ain't why you're doing it. You're doing it because, like you,
Speaker 8: when we finished So Sick, Bro, we sent the studio
Speaker 8: listen to that ship ninety times that night, just on
Speaker 8: some yo yo yo, like just just joy, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying like that, and then comes out and
Speaker 8: does well, and it's like, all right, cool. But in
Speaker 8: that moment, honestly, even if the song come out and
Speaker 8: not done well, just what we felt when we finished
Speaker 8: that joint was like that, that was it. That's what
Speaker 8: you do it for, not the not the screaming your name,
Speaker 8: and not the money of it. Those are those are
Speaker 8: all fringe benefit. Those should be fringe benefit based on
Speaker 8: the fact that you did something from your soul and
Speaker 8: the world agreed with you. That's how that's supposed to work,
Speaker 8: not the other way around.
Speaker 2: I would like you to talk about, uh the Left
Speaker 2: Eye Show.
Speaker 10: All the cuts. Yeah, so the cut that was that
Speaker 10: was me.
Speaker 8: And remember the guys told you right after that that
Speaker 8: situation with the with the talent show that a friend
Speaker 8: of mine was like, hey, at the singing group. I
Speaker 8: won't know if you wanted to say that was the.
Speaker 7: Group that was us.
Speaker 10: Uh we caught ourselves envy.
Speaker 8: Because we were from Nevada. Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 10: I went into it, but but not a lot.
Speaker 8: Yeah. The cut was after Apollo. We did Apollo, Amateur Night,
Speaker 8: Apollow and things did not go to plan. I'll say
Speaker 8: that what you're saying, uh, well, I mean, well, I
Speaker 8: put it this way. Samman didn't come out Okay, he
Speaker 8: was double he was double dutchy in the corner though
Speaker 8: he was ready.
Speaker 5: What did what did you sing? What did you say?
Speaker 8: We sang? We sang Players in the Hood by Donelle Jones,
Speaker 8: And to this day, every time I see Donnelle Jones,
Speaker 8: I apologize to that man for murdering his song the
Speaker 8: way we did on that stage. It was it was Yeah,
Speaker 8: it was not good. It was not good. But we
Speaker 8: was young and we was cute and there was a
Speaker 8: lot of girls in the audience, so they kept us alive.
Speaker 8: But it had not been for that. He was he
Speaker 8: was in the corner like, am I going?
Speaker 7: Am I going?
Speaker 8: Man? It was bad?
Speaker 7: It was bad.
Speaker 8: So you after that.
Speaker 3: Walk Wait, you gotta walk me through the process? What
Speaker 3: is it to do?
Speaker 2: Like everything, even to the house band, like, what is
Speaker 2: the process when you do uh show time?
Speaker 10: So so basically you you you send them at the.
Speaker 8: Time, you send them, You send them a tape of
Speaker 8: what you do and they say, yeah, we'd love to
Speaker 8: have you. Uh come on down. Mind you. They don't
Speaker 8: pay for you to get there. They just if you
Speaker 8: can make it, come on follow. So you get down there.
Speaker 8: Now what's supposed to happen is you're supposed to come
Speaker 8: down a day early so that you can rehearse your
Speaker 8: song with rap You and the Cruise who it was
Speaker 8: at the time when we was a shout out to
Speaker 8: my man, rape you. I do not blame you, bro.
Speaker 8: That was us. That was our fault. We didn't do that.
Speaker 8: We showed up the day of the show with a
Speaker 8: tape because we thought that they was gonna let us
Speaker 8: play our music off our tape, and it was like, no,
Speaker 8: singers have to use the band. We haven't rehearsed with
Speaker 8: the band. Well while were y'all not here yesterday. Anyway,
Speaker 8: it turns out Rache and the crew didn't even know
Speaker 8: the damn song at the time. They had no idea
Speaker 8: what the song was, so they had to learn the
Speaker 8: song and then had to learn how we wanted to
Speaker 8: come out to the song.
Speaker 10: It was, Yeah, it was. It was completely messed up.
Speaker 2: Oh many lessons learned, so many Lets you've chosen another
Speaker 2: song in hindsight, Oh no.
Speaker 8: No, no, that that had to happen. That had to happen.
Speaker 8: It had to happen exactly the way it did. We
Speaker 8: needed to be knocked down a couple of pigs because
Speaker 8: we we had We had done all that could be
Speaker 8: done in Vegas. We did every talent show one you
Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. We did all that and we
Speaker 8: just we went in there like I should didn't think
Speaker 8: like we really literally walked into place needed that. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 8: oh oh yeah yeah this Vegas.
Speaker 7: Yeah we do that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, No, when ill you after we got off that
Speaker 8: stage and got back to the back. We all ran
Speaker 8: in the bathroom and just stood around and staired at
Speaker 8: each other for like fifteen seconds and all bust out
Speaker 8: crying at the same time.
Speaker 5: It was bad.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So after the Apollo, we was like, man, we
Speaker 8: gotta redeem ourself. We got so you know, uh, shout
Speaker 8: out to my man Corey. Corey was like our manager.
Speaker 8: He was a part of the group, but he was
Speaker 8: the manager. He was the one that was you know,
Speaker 8: he was the one that wasn't afraid to talk to people.
Speaker 8: You know, we ran up on Diddy one time. Hey
Speaker 8: let us sing for you.
Speaker 7: That's Corey.
Speaker 8: But Corey was also the one that could never be
Speaker 8: on time for anything. He was like, hey, did he
Speaker 8: told us be there by eight twelve? Oo shower type situation?
Speaker 6: Now?
Speaker 8: Was that was Corey?
Speaker 5: Where is.
Speaker 8: I don't know where Corey is currently still probably shout
Speaker 8: that after my man Corey Clark, we got to the
Speaker 8: cut uh two days earl right, because he was like,
Speaker 8: is there a band we need to rehearse with it?
Speaker 8: After that, it was like no, no, no, no, no, no, y'all
Speaker 8: got y'all got tape of your music? Yeah, okay, cool?
Speaker 8: We can use to take? Why are we used to take?
Speaker 8: We went in with an original song that we were
Speaker 8: written called pillow Talk.
Speaker 10: I think we did okay. It wasn't terrible.
Speaker 8: It wasn't great by any means, but it wasn't terrible,
Speaker 8: and we wound up losing to a girl that got
Speaker 8: on stage and got.
Speaker 10: Next to Neked and Icy gave her two more points
Speaker 10: than he gave us.
Speaker 5: Yeah, wore to judges other cut. I couldn't remember it.
Speaker 10: No, I think it was it was it was guest judges.
Speaker 8: Everything different every every episode, so I think want to judgesus.
Speaker 8: He literally said it on the show. He was like,
Speaker 8: he was like, you know what, I wasn't really crazy
Speaker 8: about the song, but when she started stripping, I gave
Speaker 8: her a nod.
Speaker 4: Damn, Like.
Speaker 5: Damn, But everything happened for a reason.
Speaker 8: Everything happens for a reason. That was one of the
Speaker 8: last shows that we did as a group before we
Speaker 8: finally decided you know what, let's just.
Speaker 3: Do you remember performing with us out in Vegas.
Speaker 10: When Jay brought me out?
Speaker 8: Was that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? All right?
Speaker 2: So I literally okay, So you know, as president of
Speaker 2: def Jam, you know, by that point I felt comfortable
Speaker 2: enough with Jada, you.
Speaker 8: Know, to.
Speaker 2: Rib him or you know, joke with him, like you know,
Speaker 2: most people just treat him like the King, like the
Speaker 2: good version of Ed.
Speaker 3: I mean, like they don't mix words or whatever.
Speaker 2: But you know, I felt like a little comfortable where
Speaker 2: I just call him up randomly about something and I
Speaker 2: would say that you were one of the artists that
Speaker 2: he always he always advocated for. He always fought for it,
Speaker 2: like he was basically trying to figure out which one
Speaker 2: of you guys that he wanted on the next roots record,
Speaker 2: you know prominently, either like Crissette or you or you know,
Speaker 2: tr like one of And so when he got word
Speaker 2: that you were in town, he's like, all right, keep
Speaker 2: your eye on him, because at that point I was
Speaker 2: not familiar. You know, I have my head under the
Speaker 2: stand when it came to like any music that you know,
Speaker 2: wasn't the music already had my record collection and you
Speaker 2: came out like someone owed you money, Like I didn't realize.
Speaker 5: Oh you didn't know he had it like that talk.
Speaker 2: And the first I wish there was a videotape because
Speaker 2: there's a thing, there's a thing with Jay where he
Speaker 2: turns around real slow like and I hate.
Speaker 3: When that's Smuggie.
Speaker 2: I told you so, look he'll give me.
Speaker 3: He's like.
Speaker 6: Yeah, because it's like the cherry on top. You're like,
Speaker 6: well wait a minute, now.
Speaker 8: You was killing it.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, he's going for James
Speaker 2: Brown Tammy Show levels.
Speaker 8: But I knew the importance of where I was at.
Speaker 8: I'm like, let me get this straight. The roots and
Speaker 8: jay Z and me, oh, show my ass.
Speaker 2: All right, So you leave Envy and then what's the
Speaker 2: process of how do you get the attention of record labels?
Speaker 8: So I left left Envy. But in the while we
Speaker 8: were in and me again shout out to my man Corey,
Speaker 8: you know, constantly moving around trying to trying to get
Speaker 8: things in pop for us. We met this cat who
Speaker 8: had a boy band signed to Hollywood Records, you know
Speaker 8: at the time that was a Disney's with me. Yeah,
Speaker 8: a group by a group called Youngstown. They were they
Speaker 8: were never got huge, huge hues, but they did well enough.
Speaker 8: So it was like it was a concept where it
Speaker 8: was like, write some songs from my group and I'll
Speaker 8: try and I'll help y'all get y'all, help y'all get signed.
Speaker 8: Type of situation. So you know, we wrote the songs,
Speaker 8: was what it was like at this time. I know
Speaker 8: nothing of publishing. I know nothing of any of that.
Speaker 8: I'm just like, we're.
Speaker 7: Gonna get it.
Speaker 10: We're gonna get a deal. Yeah yeah, write a song.
Speaker 8: Whatever. So after I broke up, after the group broke up,
Speaker 8: I basically started being managed by that guy is now
Speaker 8: his name, his names Dubbs. Everybody called him Dubbs, Dubbs Wilson,
Speaker 8: and he was the one that was kind of moving
Speaker 8: moving me around, you know, showing me the different people.
Speaker 8: I was living with. This cat by the name of Paul.
Speaker 8: Paul the producer. He did uh Teacher Moses' first album.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, yes.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, I actually met we actually met Teacher. I
Speaker 8: met Teacher through that whole situation. I vocal both vocal producing,
Speaker 8: and arranged that whole first album.
Speaker 7: I didn't I didn't write.
Speaker 10: I didn't know she wrote. She did all the writing herself.
Speaker 7: I was, I was. I was infatuated with record himself.
Speaker 8: I'll just come in and you know, through harmonies here
Speaker 8: and that type.
Speaker 5: Okay, Still, that's dope, That's that's music history.
Speaker 3: Like, what is your patient's level with vocal producing?
Speaker 10: Because I hate it.
Speaker 8: I don't do it anymore. I say that, you see, yeah,
Speaker 8: I'm not so, so shout out to my man's sauce
Speaker 8: U Curtis Wills, and make a sauce of Fumberly of
Speaker 8: the group. Something for the people, you remember, something for
Speaker 8: the people. All right?
Speaker 10: Sauce is my vocal producer, ranger. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: And so if I wrote it, he's normally the one
Speaker 8: that's gonna take it with the artists and and and
Speaker 8: get it, get it recorded properly because he has the
Speaker 8: patience for that.
Speaker 10: I do not see that's what you need, don't all right?
Speaker 2: So can I say or I won't ask for specific
Speaker 2: specific names, but you know, because it's real, Like there's
Speaker 2: certain artists that I hate working with because you got
Speaker 2: a Jedi mind trick them.
Speaker 3: You know, they don't want to do another take.
Speaker 2: So are there artists that you've had that situation with
Speaker 2: where like they catch an attitude or don't want to
Speaker 2: do it the way that you.
Speaker 3: Give you one more take? Yes, your silence is telling
Speaker 3: me everything I've been in.
Speaker 8: So I've been in with people that that people that
Speaker 8: you know, I've been in with people and it's like
Speaker 8: it's either it's either that or they're so antal, like, yo,
Speaker 8: did you hear the breath from the beginning of that?
Speaker 8: Let me just get that breath one more time? No one,
Speaker 8: no one hears, no just the just the on the
Speaker 8: very on the very top. Let me get that. Let
Speaker 8: me get again one more time, No, one more time,
Speaker 8: one more time for the breath. I just gotta get
Speaker 8: the breath.
Speaker 2: That sounds like Beyonce Rihanna Manress took an hour and
Speaker 2: thirty minutes for the breath.
Speaker 10: It's not a word.
Speaker 8: It's just a breath at the top of the word.
Speaker 8: Hour and thirty minutes.
Speaker 3: Wait, I gotta be I gotta ask you. Was it Beyonce?
Speaker 8: It was not?
Speaker 3: Okay, it was not Wait.
Speaker 2: Do you remember do you remember uh uh a bronx
Speaker 2: tail when they had that now you can't leave moment.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I had that with her once and never again.
Speaker 2: Like it was about figuring out the ending of a song,
Speaker 2: and I was like, I said the wrong thing. I said, no, no,
Speaker 2: maybe it's too vance. It's cool, we could just do
Speaker 2: with the regular ending.
Speaker 8: We're good challenges and be like.
Speaker 2: And she's like, oh, we're gonna get this right and
Speaker 2: I said, well, it's lunch break now, so we can
Speaker 2: just come back into He says, no, we're gonna do
Speaker 2: it right now. I don't care if it takes three hours. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was that now you can't leave moments.
Speaker 8: So yeah, that's the that is, That is the Beyonce
Speaker 8: that I'm familiar. But it was but when I when
Speaker 8: I worked with her, I wasn't needed, like I wasn't
Speaker 8: there for a lot of it like she she had it.
Speaker 8: I didn't have to. That was that was one of
Speaker 8: the things that made me fall in love with her
Speaker 8: even more, like I didn't have to feed her no notes.
Speaker 7: I here's the next note. I got it.
Speaker 8: Okay, all right, She's like, I went and got coffee,
Speaker 8: I came back, the song was done. Okay, Well, well
Speaker 8: what y'all got doing today? What y'all doing?
Speaker 7: Because I'm.
Speaker 6: If that's the case, then what's your what's your favorite
Speaker 6: what's your favorite song of hers that you've done? That
Speaker 6: you you come back and heard her finished product and
Speaker 6: was like, oh ship.
Speaker 8: Yeah, thinking one that I deal with her, that I
Speaker 8: didn't fare that way about everything you did because mind
Speaker 8: you so so at this point, at this point, I
Speaker 8: know a little bit about how to sell a record, right,
Speaker 8: I know that you can't sing the record ridiculously well
Speaker 8: because you mess around scared artist offs.
Speaker 7: Right, you have to keep it.
Speaker 8: Kind of middle of the road, just just good enough.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 3: Oh you're talking about making the demo. You're talking about
Speaker 3: making the demo.
Speaker 7: Yeah, okay, yeah, I did not know. Oh yeah no.
Speaker 8: So anything that I did for anybody, I sing the
Speaker 8: demo and send it to them and they and they
Speaker 8: like it, dislike it, whatever it may be. So Beyonce,
Speaker 8: and you do it dry, you do it dry. One
Speaker 8: you know one takedown. I have melody. I have harmony
Speaker 8: ideas here and here and not in stone, but here
Speaker 8: would be a good place for a harmony. Here would
Speaker 8: be a good place. That's all that's always needed when
Speaker 8: I come back. And it's the irreplaceable that you we
Speaker 8: all know in love now, so irreplaceable flaws and all.
Speaker 3: You know what.
Speaker 8: I'm very I'm them on and I'm a bit yes,
Speaker 8: do do that dry? Every everything, all the all of
Speaker 8: that that's heard, that's all heard. I wrote if There's
Speaker 8: a Joint on that same album called if If You
Speaker 8: Let Him Take Me From You another where she just
Speaker 8: went Church on ship, like just yeah, I've never felt
Speaker 8: so useless in a session then a session with Beyonce,
Speaker 8: like I did not need to be there at all.
Speaker 2: Is there a song of yours that vocally you wish
Speaker 2: he could have been there in the room for it,
Speaker 2: just because it wasn't the way that you envisioned it.
Speaker 8: Yes, okay, yes, it just didn't do what it was
Speaker 8: supposed to do. So I love Luke James. Luke James
Speaker 8: is my guy. Luke James has one of the best
Speaker 8: voices that I've heard.
Speaker 5: In a long he do.
Speaker 8: I wrote a song for Luke James and what happened
Speaker 8: was the original the original kid of the song was
Speaker 8: way higher than he was than he sings in his
Speaker 8: regular voice, so they had to drop it down to
Speaker 8: where he sang. And if anybody knows anything about when
Speaker 8: you take a high key song and drop it down,
Speaker 8: it kind of takes a little energy and a little
Speaker 8: energy from the record. So when I heard it back,
Speaker 8: it was like, damn near three notes lower. Then I
Speaker 8: initially gave it to him, and I wasn't there when
Speaker 8: he cut it.
Speaker 7: So I'm like, as.
Speaker 8: Much as I love Luke, this is not no, this
Speaker 8: is not that's not what the song's supposed to be.
Speaker 8: But by that time it was too late. The song
Speaker 8: came out didn't really do anything.
Speaker 6: We didn't.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
Speaker 10: I like the shine I did.
Speaker 7: It didn't.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it didn't. It didn't do much of anything but
Speaker 8: taking nothing from Luke again, an amazing singer, just amazing dude.
Speaker 7: Period.
Speaker 8: That was just that was just a moment in time
Speaker 8: where it's like, Ah, if I knew that they were
Speaker 8: gonna drop it down that many, that many keys, I
Speaker 8: would have I would have just been like, nah, do
Speaker 8: let's something else. Let me let me do something that
Speaker 8: makes more sense in the realm of where you like write.
Speaker 10: Yeah, because it just it just took. It just took
Speaker 10: all the all the energy from the record.
Speaker 8: Like, yeah, it happen.
Speaker 3: Like when I first heard Champagne Life, man.
Speaker 5: I was like, yo, dog, that's the one right there, This's.
Speaker 3: Gonna be the one.
Speaker 2: I just wish Champagne Life was You're magnum Opus. That
Speaker 2: is my all time favorite song of yours, And I
Speaker 2: wish that ship would have because I felt it was
Speaker 2: like an anthem there ever was a black Excellence anthem.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, I mean.
Speaker 2: I've seen it and I wish that song was just
Speaker 2: like way way bigger. Are there songs of yours that
Speaker 2: are not your your, your out the gate hits that
Speaker 2: you you know, wish were bigger singles or that that
Speaker 2: jam worked.
Speaker 8: I'm not a I'm not a dictator, meaning I'm not
Speaker 8: the dude going, you know what, the hell with your opinion?
Speaker 10: Hell with your opinion? I like this song that's a single,
Speaker 10: Levan Long.
Speaker 8: I'm not that dude. Right. There's a small group of
Speaker 8: people that we all get together and we pick what
Speaker 8: song is gonna make the album, what songs gonna be singles,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying, And everybody respects everybody's opinion.
Speaker 8: My managers Tango. This is one of the oddest creatures
Speaker 8: on the face of the planet because Tango don't even
Speaker 8: listen to music. Yet Tango can always one that's gonna
Speaker 8: go okay, whatever reason.
Speaker 10: But that's always knows like no, no, no.
Speaker 8: The whole room would be like, hey, he's like, nah,
Speaker 8: trust me be and damn it it to b B.
Speaker 10: I'm telling you it's It's the most frustrating thing in
Speaker 10: the world.
Speaker 8: But so him, just just a small group people that
Speaker 8: I do this with which means that there's been a
Speaker 8: multitude of times wherever songs that I wanted to be
Speaker 8: singles that didn't wind up singles. Mirror from the first.
Speaker 7: Album I wanted to be a single.
Speaker 5: I wanted that to be a single.
Speaker 7: This was before depth Jen realized that I could be sexy.
Speaker 8: They didn't view me as sexy, so it was like, hey,
Speaker 8: it's all good. And you know what, at the time,
Speaker 8: I was priding myself on not being that R and
Speaker 8: B dude, you know what I mean, Like, Okay, if
Speaker 8: I can step on stage you're in a three piece
Speaker 8: suit and get the same screens that.
Speaker 7: You can with your chest out, who win it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 8: All right? Cool? Right?
Speaker 10: So because of that, I guess they was like, you know,
Speaker 10: marror nah nah, when't work?
Speaker 8: All right?
Speaker 7: Cool U?
Speaker 8: Champagne Life, that whole that whole album, the Libra Scale
Speaker 8: album was just man, it was just so many things
Speaker 8: that went wrong, so many things that went wrong. I
Speaker 8: take I take my I take responsibility for the things
Speaker 8: that went wrong. So the Libri Scale album, which is
Speaker 8: what Champagne Life was on, when we went to when
Speaker 8: I came back from doing the Red Tales movie, and
Speaker 8: then I did another movie called Battle Los Angeles. So
Speaker 8: I so in the process of doing these movies, I'm
Speaker 8: sticking real close to the writers, real close to the directors,
Speaker 8: because like this, I want to I'm learning, Yo, I
Speaker 8: want to learn how to do this. I know I
Speaker 8: can tell a story in three minutes. I want to
Speaker 8: know how to tell a story in two hours. I
Speaker 8: do this right, I guess I'm not asking the right question.
Speaker 8: So I go back to dev Jam and I say
Speaker 8: to them, so for my fourth album, I want to
Speaker 8: do like a thirty minute maybe forty five minute little
Speaker 8: mini movie and let the album be the soundtrack to
Speaker 8: the movie. And they're like, okay, that's that's a pretty dope.
Speaker 8: I daal, okay, bring us a script. Cool. Notice, I said,
Speaker 8: thirty forty five minutes. Right, This is before I learned
Speaker 8: that in the world of screen and script writing a
Speaker 8: page it creates to a minute. I didn't know this.
Speaker 8: So whereas I told them thirty forty five minutes, I
Speaker 8: brought them a script with one hundred and forty five
Speaker 8: pages in it, and they were like, what you what
Speaker 8: we're doing? What you want us to do with this?
Speaker 8: What did this is not thirty minutes? This this hang.
Speaker 8: So I had to then take the one hundred and
Speaker 8: forty five pages and bust it down to thirty pages,
Speaker 8: which took way way long, because again I'm green to this.
Speaker 8: I know what I want to do, I just don't
Speaker 8: know how to do it. So bust it down to thirty.
Speaker 8: By that time, the clock is ticking. We ain't got
Speaker 8: time to shoot no movie. All right, you know what,
Speaker 8: Let's do this, Let's do four, let's do five long
Speaker 8: form music videos. So the video for Champagne Life, video
Speaker 8: for UH one million, the video for for Beautiful Monster.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I just it.
Speaker 10: It didn't It just didn't go the way it was
Speaker 10: supposed to go.
Speaker 8: Man, it just didn't go. Households go. We got three
Speaker 8: videos in de Jen said, we can't give you no
Speaker 8: more damn money. To hell with your to be continued,
Speaker 8: We're not doing it. Champan like was all supposed to
Speaker 8: be the first single, and then we come to Beautiful Monster.
Speaker 8: But then all of a sudden, in the ninth inning,
Speaker 8: everybody switches up and goes, well, no, we think beautiful
Speaker 8: Monster should go first. And I'm like no, because I
Speaker 8: know what beautiful Monster is. Beautiful monsters chasing closer. I
Speaker 8: don't want to do that with the moment. Let that
Speaker 8: be that.
Speaker 10: Let's let's you hear this record.
Speaker 8: Let's go here. Nah nah nah you gotta you got
Speaker 8: an international fan base. Now you gotta feed your fan base?
Speaker 5: Oh international?
Speaker 3: Can I ask? Is this Jay Brown talking?
Speaker 2: Is this La Reid? Like, who's the who's at the drive?
Speaker 2: Who's the will uh deliver?
Speaker 8: All of them?
Speaker 3: Is?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Everybody, everybody, everybody got the hand on the wheel, and
Speaker 8: this pushing him at this point, at this point, this
Speaker 8: is the fourth album, This is after you're the gentleman.
Speaker 8: So everybody's hands on at this point, right, so, right,
Speaker 8: and you're you're the gentleman there with so so now
Speaker 8: it's like all right, all right, he's proving. Let's you know,
Speaker 8: let's let's let's pay more attention than we ever had before.
Speaker 8: Almost to a fault because I did to go Beautiful
Speaker 8: Monster first. Michaero managed Beautiful Monster. Did you know what
Speaker 8: it did? It did well overseas, which we knew what
Speaker 8: was gonna do, because that's what it's for. I didn't
Speaker 8: do it over here. And then and then they put
Speaker 8: out Champagne Life, trying to pick trying to clean up
Speaker 8: behind Beautiful Monster. Because Beautiful Monster. They let it rock
Speaker 8: for a little while it wasn't picking up, so they
Speaker 8: all right, we're moving on, moving on to Champagne Life.
Speaker 8: Champagne Life comes out, it's moving, it's moving, it's moving.
Speaker 7: We want to drop another single?
Speaker 10: Why let it know?
Speaker 8: Let Why would you chop the legs off of this
Speaker 8: is going? You got a heat rock with this next one. Okay,
Speaker 8: if it's a heat rock, now it's gonna be a
Speaker 8: heat let it live. They don't want to let it live.
Speaker 8: Chop the legs off of Champagne Life with the next single,
Speaker 8: which did not do well either. Then we went we
Speaker 8: ended ended everything off with one of another, which which
Speaker 8: kind of you know, at the very least level of
Speaker 8: us out, you know, I wouldn't. I wasn't in the
Speaker 8: red after Damn Album. One of the million level was out,
Speaker 8: but it didn't it didn't do what everyone anticipated. Uh yeah,
Speaker 8: I was really really down at them at that period
Speaker 8: of time. I just remember being real sad a lot
Speaker 8: because it just.
Speaker 7: Just so many things went wrong.
Speaker 8: I'm like, there's no way that this is just bad
Speaker 8: of an idea for all of these things to be
Speaker 8: happening like this, and then I'll never forget that year
Speaker 8: I got invited to Princess Grammy party. I mean us
Speaker 8: always used part of his house, so so you know,
Speaker 8: that was silver lining in the dark clouds. So we
Speaker 8: went to the party. I remember we're in in the
Speaker 8: pool house and there's like a like a plexiglast thing
Speaker 8: over the pools, literally standing on the pool. I thought
Speaker 8: that was cool. So he's on the little stage with
Speaker 8: his band rocking out. He sees me, puts his guitar down,
Speaker 8: b lines to me and say what comes to my
Speaker 8: ear and whispers and says.
Speaker 10: Leber Scale was a good album and don't let anybody
Speaker 10: tell you different.
Speaker 6: Wow, but Emir, this is But did you know what
Speaker 6: was with Neo? Did you know what he was whispering
Speaker 6: in everybody's ear? Sorry, this reminds me of all the
Speaker 6: stories that you told me that night.
Speaker 5: That doesn't even do.
Speaker 10: That's kind of what he does.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 8: We had one other encounter where I was I was
Speaker 8: drinking Sivaka and he leaned over to me at the
Speaker 8: party and said, God's bad for you and the party
Speaker 8: that was That was the thing that he did.
Speaker 4: Before we before you rap.
Speaker 9: I just wanted to I always want to know, uh
Speaker 9: the song time look for Sherman Showcase.
Speaker 7: About it.
Speaker 5: Let's talk about it?
Speaker 4: Yeah man, and that's me and my.
Speaker 7: Credit the way, do you know?
Speaker 8: Take no credit?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we met.
Speaker 9: We met on set. I think the day that you
Speaker 9: that y'all take. We met because I sang the demo
Speaker 9: on that and like right right now yeah that he
Speaker 9: was like, he was like, yeah, man, you saunded just
Speaker 9: like walk to the Scotty on the joint. But but yeah,
Speaker 9: they yeah, we did that man, And I was like, Yo,
Speaker 9: this is like crazy, how I don't know who the
Speaker 9: fuck they gonna get to sing it? And then I
Speaker 9: guess maybe like a month later, Diallo shout to Diallo.
Speaker 9: He came like, yeah, man, we got Neo to do it.
Speaker 9: I was like, fuck, yeah, that's perfect. So what was
Speaker 9: it like for you? How did that song like come
Speaker 9: to you? Like what did you think?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 7: What was it like on your side?
Speaker 4: Brouh.
Speaker 8: Diallo reached out and sent me, told me about the show,
Speaker 8: the Sherman Showcase Show and asked me if I wanted
Speaker 8: to be a part of it. I'm like, yeah, man,
Speaker 8: I've always want to do funny stuff. I don't never
Speaker 8: get the funny roles. It just for whatever reason, I
Speaker 8: got something funny, all right, I thought I was. I
Speaker 8: guess I'm not anybody. You killed that shit man, Well, well.
Speaker 10: Thank you tell some man the damn casting directors that
Speaker 10: I'm funny.
Speaker 7: It's like, it's funny shit. I don't never get it.
Speaker 8: I'm always always get the music rolls all right, you're
Speaker 8: a starving artist, and then me treating that's what That's
Speaker 8: what I get all the time. So he sent me
Speaker 8: the record. At first I asked, I was like, I
Speaker 8: need to write something. He was like, you can, but
Speaker 8: I have an idea, and then he sent it to him.
Speaker 8: I'm like, oh, I don't need to do none of this.
Speaker 8: That joint like it was a real song, like like
Speaker 8: that's they'll realized that. Like all of us words that
Speaker 8: watched the show. We was like all them songs.
Speaker 6: We were like yo, yeah with an album word.
Speaker 4: But now I'm down to do more now that I
Speaker 4: know you down to do more?
Speaker 8: Wow?
Speaker 4: Because yeah, now that I know that, oh yeah.
Speaker 3: Can we get a Sherman show case to say what's
Speaker 3: taking on so long?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 9: But the day that well, it's I mean, you know,
Speaker 9: like everything else COVID pushes back, but the new season
Speaker 9: I believe is coming in the fall. We did the music,
Speaker 9: with all the music and all that has been done,
Speaker 9: but you know, we got pushed back from COVID, but
Speaker 9: the new season is coming.
Speaker 8: This fall though all led me I will happily revived
Speaker 8: the character.
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, did that's what's up?
Speaker 5: Can I ask about self explanatory real quick?
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, yes, I just want to know because back
Speaker 6: to this conversation that we were having in the beginning
Speaker 6: of the show about music and whatnot, I'm curious to
Speaker 6: how you continue in the legacy on this album and
Speaker 6: while still keeping it fresh.
Speaker 10: Okay, So so this album I started decidum in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 10: and then you know, of course COVID, pandemic, quarantine and
Speaker 10: all of that stuff hit and just threw a monkey
Speaker 10: rinch and everybody's situation that happens. So a good half
Speaker 10: of this album I had, I wound up having to
Speaker 10: kind of do over, you know, because it's like, are
Speaker 10: you work with a producer in twenty eighteen you do
Speaker 10: a song as all r Yeah, it's for the album.
Speaker 10: You didn't pay him yet, and then and y'all ain't
Speaker 10: spoke and then you call him in twenty twenty two
Speaker 10: and he's like.
Speaker 8: What, oh, bro, so are you like that happens like that?
Speaker 8: So good? So so we had we had to reduce
Speaker 8: some stuff. But overall this album is it's definitely me
Speaker 8: as me. I mean I called itself explanatory because I
Speaker 8: feel like I've been here damn in twenty years. You
Speaker 8: really need an explanation to a Neil record at twin
Speaker 8: Not really, not.
Speaker 10: Really, not really you understand what it is.
Speaker 8: But on top of that, this is this is me
Speaker 8: acknowledging what's going on right now. I can never become it.
Speaker 8: I'm forty two, let alone. I can never become it.
Speaker 8: But I could acknowledge it, you know, I can acknowledge it.
Speaker 8: I can acknowledge the parts of it that I dig,
Speaker 8: you know, so so Uh there's one song in particular,
Speaker 8: so actually the first song on the on the album,
Speaker 8: uh Cat from the Newer Generation.
Speaker 10: His name is a France If you ever heard the
Speaker 10: name before, look him up.
Speaker 8: Yeah he got some. He got some to the point
Speaker 8: where I let him feature on the album. The name
Speaker 8: of the Join is landlowd is is quality the record,
Speaker 8: but it doesn't sound like typical Neo, it's more the song.
Speaker 8: The song leans a little bit more towards his generation,
Speaker 8: and I'm just kind of you know, uncle on the
Speaker 8: side of the thing. But I'm never I'm never the
Speaker 8: cat that's gonna jump on the record and not be me.
Speaker 10: I can that that.
Speaker 8: That could never.
Speaker 7: I can't do that.
Speaker 8: So even if it sounds a little more uh contemporary
Speaker 8: than than than normal, it's just me acknowledging the changes
Speaker 8: and the evolutions that have happened in R and B. Well,
Speaker 8: at the same time, I'm gonna still give my bridges.
Speaker 8: I'ma still give my three four five par harmonies where
Speaker 8: I I can get him in there. All of that
Speaker 8: is going to be on this album as well. It's
Speaker 8: it's just me celebrating the fact that I get to
Speaker 8: do music for a living smoke.
Speaker 10: That's That's pretty much what this album is.
Speaker 3: That's dope, man.
Speaker 9: Oh and I be able to tell you too, man
Speaker 9: like good man, I love that. God, yeah, I thought
Speaker 9: that was so dope, Like y'all up, how does.
Speaker 3: It feel like? That was? Yeah?
Speaker 8: That was That was another one that I felt like
Speaker 8: should have got way more attention than it did. But
Speaker 8: you know, I can't. I can't tell people what to do.
Speaker 6: And she's got her own, like you'd be creating anthems
Speaker 6: for the fellas and the ladies. It's kind of amazing
Speaker 6: and like progressive to think progressively in a way that's
Speaker 6: kind of dope.
Speaker 5: It's misindependent. I know that. But I like to say
Speaker 5: she got her own.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, black people, I like we.
Speaker 5: Say she got her own.
Speaker 4: Oh, I want to see you. You're seeing working with her?
Speaker 4: We gotta yeah, I gotta her.
Speaker 3: Yeah see it.
Speaker 7: Man, she's like an amazing writer.
Speaker 4: Love to talk about work with her.
Speaker 8: Yeahn man. So so she wrote the hook to let
Speaker 8: Me Love You and I Love you you learn to
Speaker 8: Love Yourself. Funniest thing I was like, because I heard
Speaker 8: that lyric, I'm like, yo, where did you come up
Speaker 8: with that? And she said, oh my aa meeting, that's
Speaker 8: what they said, We're gonna love you to love yourself.
Speaker 8: I'm like, y'all for that time. The realest person alive
Speaker 8: I remember that is actually that session. We were sitting
Speaker 8: in the back we said west Lake Studios on Santa
Speaker 8: Monica and we were sitting in the back room off
Speaker 8: of the A room, and uh, I was looking at
Speaker 8: the tattoos on her arm. She has pictures of dogs,
Speaker 8: but it looked like a four year old drew a
Speaker 8: dog and it's just a bunch of them, like all
Speaker 8: over her arm. I'm like, what is anyway? I'm I'm
Speaker 8: sitting there because I'm I'm in awe of her, because
Speaker 8: mind you, I'm I'm zero seven, you know what I'm saying, Like,
Speaker 8: I'm from there. I finally to work with her, so
Speaker 8: I'm geeking out and I'm like, yo, I'm sorry. You're
Speaker 8: just supposed to be way bigger than you are. And
Speaker 8: she was like, yeah, but I don't want it. I
Speaker 8: want to go to Taco Bell. And I'm like what,
Speaker 8: She's like, I want to go to Taco Bell. I
Speaker 8: want to be able to go to Taco Bell and
Speaker 8: get a taco if I feel like, if I get any.
Speaker 7: Bigger and people don't know, I can't go to Taco Bell.
Speaker 8: I'm like that there's a lot of damn sense. So
Speaker 8: I guess we got to figure out a way for
Speaker 8: your music to get the recognition in love would you
Speaker 8: being able to still go to Taco Bell?
Speaker 7: She's like.
Speaker 8: Publishing, she said, I'm working on it, and the next thing,
Speaker 8: you know, he comes up with the video with little
Speaker 8: Maddie dancing, and and half the world don't know what's
Speaker 8: see it look like, yet the whole world loves of music.
Speaker 8: I'm like, she figured it out, and it's just victory.
Speaker 8: Stories like that just just make my heart smile, man,
Speaker 8: because because I just remember sitting there with her, like,
Speaker 8: how are we gonna get you the Taco Bell?
Speaker 10: They need to hear this music, but we need we
Speaker 10: got to get you to Taco Bell.
Speaker 8: How are we gonna do this?
Speaker 5: She did it, she figured it out.
Speaker 2: Now, Now I have one question, because I was one
Speaker 2: day old, I didn't realize that you wrote Mac Wilds's
Speaker 2: own it. Yeah, man, I still spend that to this day.
Speaker 3: Songs that you wish you would have kept for yourself, not.
Speaker 8: When they do well.
Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 8: I look at it like if it came out and
Speaker 8: it was a hit on it came out clearly that's
Speaker 8: where it was supposed to be. Now when it come
Speaker 8: out in it don't do well, I'm like, well, damn,
Speaker 8: that's all you was gonna do.
Speaker 7: I should have kept it.
Speaker 2: I could have did better than another Another question, because
Speaker 2: you were one of the staff writers of the Empire series.
Speaker 2: How much how much pressure was that, Like at the
Speaker 2: top of the season or I would imagine even the
Speaker 2: summer before, it's like you gotta have like whatever fifteen
Speaker 2: songs or whatever, Like what's the division of labor?
Speaker 3: Where like how do they assign those songs to get
Speaker 3: done for it?
Speaker 2: Because every episode of Empire had at least like six
Speaker 2: to seven ready made, like real sounding songs, not just
Speaker 2: like you know whatever they would just play on the
Speaker 2: background of a different world, but like really fully produced
Speaker 2: no no, no Gordon gartreel songs. But how much how
Speaker 2: much pressure was that? Like was this this stuff inside
Speaker 2: your your cannon that you had in the back already
Speaker 2: or were you like custom making these songs on the spot.
Speaker 8: Well, I didn't. I didn't come in until the following season,
Speaker 8: the first first season that none of that was me.
Speaker 8: I didn't. I didn't none of that second season is
Speaker 8: when they when they when they pulled me, And it
Speaker 8: was honestly a really painless process.
Speaker 3: Bro.
Speaker 8: They they and I don't know if it was just
Speaker 8: because it was me, but they was basically like, well,
Speaker 8: what what you got for us?
Speaker 7: What do you need?
Speaker 8: What you got? Oh?
Speaker 10: Well, damn all right, well, well let me look into
Speaker 10: you know.
Speaker 8: And then I got to meet Jesse, I got to
Speaker 8: meet you know, yeah, and and I got to meet
Speaker 8: Surrey and all of them and like kind of really
Speaker 8: developed kind of a friendship with them to where it's like,
Speaker 8: all right, I know how to write a song for you. Now,
Speaker 8: I know what your voice does. Now I know I
Speaker 8: know what works. What doesn't you know what I mean?
Speaker 8: So they they really rolled out the red carpet for me.
Speaker 8: It made it very easy for me to produce anything
Speaker 8: that I needed to produce for the show.
Speaker 2: Definitely did sweet Well, I want to thank you for
Speaker 2: you know, doing the show with us, and you know.
Speaker 5: Thank you for thank you for the records, thank you
Speaker 5: for the records, thank you.
Speaker 7: For thank you for the Bridges.
Speaker 3: Put it up, especially the Bridges.
Speaker 6: And you should audition, maybe start auditioning for like some
Speaker 6: romantic comedies.
Speaker 5: I see like a maybe.
Speaker 6: Starting out as like a sidekick situation and being the
Speaker 6: funny funny if you want to do.
Speaker 5: I just I see that. I see that for you.
Speaker 5: You're doing it.
Speaker 8: No no no no no no no no. I feel
Speaker 8: I don't want to do I won't say I don't
Speaker 8: want to do a romantic comedy because if the rag
Speaker 8: will come on, I'm gonna do it. But I want
Speaker 8: to be I'm gonna play a paraplegic white man who
Speaker 8: just realized.
Speaker 5: Kind of going there just the MoMA is black.
Speaker 10: I want to do something that's so not me.
Speaker 8: You want to, Lieutenant, then come on, man, I'm trying
Speaker 8: to tell you I want to be something that's so
Speaker 8: not me that when people learn this meeting.
Speaker 7: Oh what damn?
Speaker 8: I said, Okay, that's what I want to do.
Speaker 5: I understand that what I want to do. I understand
Speaker 5: you went real far to the left left.
Speaker 8: I need that. I need a German chef, got shipwrecked
Speaker 8: in Africa, have to learn how to make.
Speaker 3: A Sherman Showcase Season three.
Speaker 5: Familyte Did you hear that?
Speaker 3: Come on, he's gonna write He's going to write that
Speaker 3: song for you. I can tell it all right. So
Speaker 3: I'm ready. I'm gonna be having light.
Speaker 2: Here and fan take Alot and Sugar Steve, and I'm
Speaker 2: paid Bill and uh Lieutenant Dan over here.
Speaker 3: This is quest Love Supreme. Thank you Neil for doing this,
Speaker 3: and we'll see you on the next round. That's what's.
Speaker 1: H West Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio.
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