Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: What up, y'all is Laiyah and It's time for another
Speaker 2: Quest Love Supreme classic. This time we take you back
Speaker 2: to twenty eighteen when Quests and Team Supreme sat down
Speaker 2: with legendary producer Salaam Remy. I mean we talk about everything,
Speaker 2: the craft of making hit songs, what is like Craig
Speaker 2: digging with biz Marky and his part in making the
Speaker 2: score with the fujis from April twenty fifth, twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: Salam Remy Part one.
Speaker 3: So why don't we have called sub Subpremo roll call
Speaker 3: Subprema su su Subpremo roll call Subremo.
Speaker 4: So my name ain't Lynnee, Minnie or Rene, but as
Speaker 4: a toddler, yeah, my shoes was kN.
Speaker 5: Son Son. My name is Fante. Yeah you can't believe it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, shout out to Salon.
Speaker 5: Yeah for the worker remix. So sullow roll my name
Speaker 5: is Sugar. Only work with the best.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's how I got to work on.
Speaker 7: Son Supremo roll.
Speaker 5: So Son ro Bill.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And you might not be a fan of me, yeah,
Speaker 6: but you definitely hate Yeah, Sean Handy.
Speaker 5: The son up brea roll You want to tell the same.
Speaker 2: Is my name?
Speaker 5: Yeah, tossed out the rule book? Yeah, hold up? Is
Speaker 5: that Lauren over there? Yeah?
Speaker 2: S Yeah, what's alarm by? Yeah, I'm trying people. One
Speaker 2: of my favorite songs. You got no damns roll come
Speaker 2: b Son.
Speaker 3: Supreme roll call su Breamer soup, breing my roll.
Speaker 5: My name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm on the spot. Yeah, I'm glad, super cat.
Speaker 1: Let me make get a red.
Speaker 7: Honrad Son Brea roll call breamer something something, bring my
Speaker 7: roll called up, Breamer son Son Soup, bring my roll call.
Speaker 5: Breamer something so supreme.
Speaker 4: I really hate the fact that I established how gullible
Speaker 4: I am, Like I'm the common person that I was
Speaker 4: told once that gullible isn't in the dictionary, And yeah,
Speaker 4: you just did that to me. Thank you foross Bill.
Speaker 4: I turned with the quickness. I wasn't sure if that
Speaker 4: was going to work either. I was surprised now that
Speaker 4: went off.
Speaker 1: That went off like gang busses right now, troll mirror.
Speaker 2: I was hoping all of you, look you knew it
Speaker 2: because your inflection went up, like.
Speaker 5: I saw that he looked over there.
Speaker 4: I was like yes at Landa only because that was
Speaker 4: the wrong name to say ladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5: Exactly.
Speaker 4: This is another episode of course Love Supreme. We have
Speaker 4: Teams Supreme.
Speaker 5: We have Tickeolo.
Speaker 4: Yeah you know what, we haven't had brothers sister rat
Speaker 4: at the beginning of the show for a second, and
Speaker 4: a lot has happened since then.
Speaker 5: How's it going to your record? It's going good. I'm
Speaker 5: redoing my master bathroom. First world problem, that's that's not
Speaker 5: a New World problems.
Speaker 4: Wait, you're redoing your master bathroom? Yeah yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 4: how many bathrooms do you? Well, there's a lot of houses.
Speaker 4: What three you got a good you got like a
Speaker 4: big daddy cane house.
Speaker 5: I got like two.
Speaker 4: I have too full baths and then a half bath downstairs,
Speaker 4: so it's technically three, but you know one is just that.
Speaker 5: So we were doing our master bedroom.
Speaker 4: We're at the tub and shower paint, redid the vanity
Speaker 4: counter top. Guys coming to measure them tomorrow. Uh marse, No,
Speaker 4: we don't do marble. Granted, we went with granted, and
Speaker 4: it's a it's a it's a it's a light it's
Speaker 4: a like a light color grind.
Speaker 5: I think the name is like black ice or something.
Speaker 8: So you're keeping the walls white?
Speaker 5: There, no, no, no wall. There was a leather couches
Speaker 5: that I never like leather though it's too hot.
Speaker 4: You go to sleep on that ship, you be sweating
Speaker 4: and ship single man's piece. I never owned a leather couch.
Speaker 5: That's the single man. I never did that.
Speaker 4: I was like, it's good, what you up to. I'm
Speaker 4: getting off.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, I mean, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Yes, I have recently, I'm getting off the couch and
Speaker 2: Los Angeles and I'm very excited.
Speaker 5: That I get off the couch. That sounds like therapy.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, I can, I can get off the couch.
Speaker 2: She wants to know I have a good girlfriend, wants
Speaker 2: me to stay.
Speaker 5: Okay, Kevin got a job, y'all.
Speaker 4: Where are you moving Hollywood? Yes, okay, Scott fly one bedroom.
Speaker 4: I was looking at the tourist video of it today.
Speaker 4: Had a nice toil and approval.
Speaker 2: You got to get your work husband's approval of your place.
Speaker 5: It was really nice. The layout was nice, it was good.
Speaker 5: Appliants is updated. Hey, I'm proud of you, thank you, sir.
Speaker 9: I'm feeling really good.
Speaker 5: Uh boss Bill Now I'm gonna try that. You're so happy,
Speaker 5: You're welcome. Thank you anyway, Bill, I love that. He
Speaker 5: just said, what bing the show for me? Goodbye?
Speaker 6: Oh that was so good. I've only I've only heard
Speaker 6: that on my phone, not in contact. That was fantastic.
Speaker 6: I'm good. I bought a new house too.
Speaker 5: Yeah, are you like fontage? Stand like? He do it up?
Speaker 5: He dorew it up high to me. He I just
Speaker 5: did a bathroom. He did like a whole studio. Yeah,
Speaker 5: the whole night. Where do you live?
Speaker 6: I live in and Crowton on Hudson, which sounds super
Speaker 6: for white bathroom. I don't know like two no, I
Speaker 6: used to know anymore. But I'm building a studio in
Speaker 6: the basement and that's that. And I've been parenting for
Speaker 6: two weeks and I'm fucking done with children. I was
Speaker 6: fucking like, uh ja, I've been by myself with kids
Speaker 6: for fucking way too long. Man, Hey man, patience struggle
Speaker 6: is real. He knows what I'm talking about because we
Speaker 6: know it's basically the same person we are.
Speaker 4: We're trying to figure out your theme song, ire.
Speaker 5: Your angle is.
Speaker 4: He needs motivation and you know, all right, sugar Steve
Speaker 4: how's life now that you're a big time celebrity with.
Speaker 1: Sugar good Man Good Yeah, I started my own talk
Speaker 1: show my own network, and I am also redoing my
Speaker 1: master bathroom as just a coincidence, but that's all that's also.
Speaker 4: Happening, seriously, or am ill bro I don't have like
Speaker 4: a master back. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Questlove Supreme
Speaker 4: Only on fan Do Only. It's been a minute since
Speaker 4: I've had an opportunity to break metaphorical bread with a favorite,
Speaker 4: you know, not not not to offend any of the
Speaker 4: other guests that've been on the show, I still love you,
Speaker 4: Leila Hathaway. She listens and I better come correct or
Speaker 4: she'll put a hex on me. I don't know, but
Speaker 4: our guest today is one of my favorite producers. I
Speaker 4: don't know how to describe salam Remy's production style, but uh,
Speaker 4: it's I guess you can can we use that. It's
Speaker 4: it's beautiful production. He has a he's a very cinematic.
Speaker 4: It's very boom bappish, but there's always for me extra layers.
Speaker 4: Like he's almost like a if hip hop were served
Speaker 4: in a three Michelin star restaurant.
Speaker 5: I feel like woe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're you know Primo where Primo is you know, uh,
Speaker 4: the local corner store dude giving you what you need.
Speaker 5: Then I feel that, you know, Salam's uh, He's say
Speaker 5: there you go. Welcome, Ladies and gentleman. Salt Bay.
Speaker 4: Crinkles a question, thank you, thank you. Usually when guests
Speaker 4: come on the show, ladies and gentlemen. Uh, I try
Speaker 4: to discourage small talk while we're waiting to record the
Speaker 4: show because usually the good things come out. And why
Speaker 4: he had started the small talk for Salim asking what
Speaker 4: he was doing in New York, But that was the
Speaker 4: first question, because you're never in New York.
Speaker 5: What are you doing here? Well, I got scared. I
Speaker 5: thought Shorn sent you up here to nah Na.
Speaker 1: Actually would I actually like to do is to make records.
Speaker 1: I've moved to Miami in two thousand and one, two
Speaker 1: thousand and two, so that's been my main base. And
Speaker 1: even though I kept a place here in La I
Speaker 1: looked at it like Miami is a bit of my
Speaker 1: farm where I'm really in my creator space, and then
Speaker 1: New York is my farmer's market.
Speaker 5: Per se.
Speaker 1: That's where I've been there for the last months, and
Speaker 1: I have a bunch of mango trees and fruit trees.
Speaker 1: I've been on my vegan chefing, growing trees, gardening.
Speaker 4: Literally, I thought, you're like me, speaking metaphorically and both.
Speaker 1: So I've been in that place like kind of trying
Speaker 1: to find my baseline. So I've actually been to New
Speaker 1: York since November for one day, October for one day,
Speaker 1: and then maybe September for a few days. I've been
Speaker 1: home for the longest I've ever been on really just
Speaker 1: digging into the music. But I was like, April's here,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, we got to put music out because
Speaker 1: I like to make music for the first day of spring.
Speaker 1: What I would call, you know, the a Marie whether
Speaker 1: the all I want is you should play on a
Speaker 1: street when Houseinuvian is open and I'm stelling college age
Speaker 1: and this is the day when it happens, And it
Speaker 1: didn't happen yet. So now I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: but this quarter is going mains coming now, what let
Speaker 1: me come up to New York start figuring out what
Speaker 1: I'm doing musically as far as releases for the year,
Speaker 1: visit all my business partners. Figure out what I'm going
Speaker 1: to do. And that's why it sounds like a beautiful life.
Speaker 7: Man.
Speaker 5: Yeah you sound professional. Yeah, I mean I don't feel
Speaker 5: professional at all my own pocket.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, okay, there's something like that. So I'm
Speaker 1: putting on my business hat. I'm trying to step out
Speaker 1: of my creative hat for a couple of days, figure
Speaker 1: out what I'm doing with it, and then dig back
Speaker 1: into the music.
Speaker 4: So do you already have the music?
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, you said music for Spring like that for
Speaker 2: at Spring song, So that means you already have the music?
Speaker 5: You just yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it's funny. In twenty sixteen, I
Speaker 1: put out like a bunch of songs. I called to
Speaker 1: it for the culture and I was like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to release a bunch of music. And then the song
Speaker 1: that kind of did the best out of that, which
Speaker 1: is Miguel Myself feature Miguel Come Through and Ill. Then
Speaker 1: that was December sixteen. He put on his album December seventeen,
Speaker 1: and now it's a single. The video was about to
Speaker 1: drop next week. Things to figure out what that So
Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, oh, I guess I should put out
Speaker 1: another one now. So now I'm just figuring out. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got these other songs. Let me figure out what
Speaker 1: I'm going with. How's it going? Visit streaming services of
Speaker 1: the planet. Come talk to you guys, because I wanted
Speaker 1: to do this for the last eight months plus.
Speaker 5: Besides Pandora, what other streaming services? Pandora is the only
Speaker 5: game in the mark. So, like I said, first stop,
Speaker 5: first place.
Speaker 4: So are you saying Monday? Are you saying that Miami is?
Speaker 4: Is Miami good for? I never understood cats that wanted
Speaker 4: to be in that comfortable of an environment to make
Speaker 4: music because I figured that it's distracting and it's yeah.
Speaker 5: You know what.
Speaker 1: I always thought that, like my whole life. You know,
Speaker 1: I carried the New Yorker mentality. I have this thing
Speaker 1: when RAT sit in the room, when you sit in
Speaker 1: New York and you watch people walking down the street.
Speaker 1: They normally walk a certain way, but I look at
Speaker 1: it like they're carrying something on their shoulders. Either I'm carrying,
Speaker 1: I'm walking real fast. I have it they're dragging and leaning.
Speaker 1: I always felt like New York was me. I had
Speaker 1: a mentality of you know, I used to hang out
Speaker 1: with bids a lot, so it would always be like,
Speaker 1: all right, cool, I got on a pair of levies
Speaker 1: and a sweatshirt. I don't want to see any plaques.
Speaker 1: I'm going to work. I lived in Midtown Manhattan with
Speaker 1: my dad, but I would always be in the studio mindset.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to keep it there and had a
Speaker 1: rough year in two thousand and one, you know, the
Speaker 1: towers fell, Mom past, Grandpa pass and I went to Miami,
Speaker 1: and I was actually as productive or more productive, because
Speaker 1: I thought that the studio had Studio fifty four space
Speaker 1: was making music. I thought my SSL was making the sound.
Speaker 1: I thought my Organs was actually doing it. And then
Speaker 1: I was on South Beach in a little room with
Speaker 1: Southeast Studios with this autisms dynamite. We did like thirty
Speaker 1: songs in three weeks. So I was like, oh wait
Speaker 1: a minute, but it's hot here, and you know, it
Speaker 1: was nice, and I realized that in the New York
Speaker 1: energy that I thought was only in New York was
Speaker 1: actually in me. So between then and the year after
Speaker 1: I made you know, the Major looks to whatever else,
Speaker 1: I would be even more productive because I get up
Speaker 1: and see the sun relaxed. But you know, it's my bloodstream.
Speaker 4: At this point, what does it say about me that
Speaker 4: I want to be the most uncomfortable atmosphere to make music.
Speaker 4: We would need a psychiatrist to unpack that state, or.
Speaker 5: We could just all move to Miami.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and plus aren't you afraid of are you there
Speaker 4: around August September or yeah?
Speaker 5: So any of the flooding your house?
Speaker 1: I mean this summer, this last September when they act that,
Speaker 1: you know, after Houston had the big issues. I really
Speaker 1: was in New York looking there like that, It's all
Speaker 1: my stuff going on. My guys, like, do you want
Speaker 1: me to fedext you something? I'm like my house, my life, HASSL,
Speaker 1: my e M T plates, Like what do you send me?
Speaker 5: Everything?
Speaker 1: All my disc But then I kind of sat here
Speaker 1: for a couple of days thinking, wow, this might be.
Speaker 4: It is your studio protected at least for floods, and
Speaker 4: it is for the most part, but you know, for
Speaker 4: anything can happen. Anything can happen.
Speaker 1: So I mean, realistically, everything I own, you know, at
Speaker 1: this point I pushed all into one big house. I
Speaker 1: think actually you were like my studio house. It's all
Speaker 1: set up with every other room. Every room in the
Speaker 1: house is wired together, record room into pocketed kits, and
Speaker 1: every other.
Speaker 5: Oh I know stuff, he told me. He told me.
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I just feel like it's sacrilegious to be that comfortable happy.
Speaker 5: When I look at my house.
Speaker 4: You're joking, serious, I know you. Like I'll say that
Speaker 4: an artist that I'm known working with, like his mo
Speaker 4: is like, I got to get in an argument with
Speaker 4: one of my joints so I can write.
Speaker 2: And so I hope you not making love music.
Speaker 5: Oh shit, Okay, I'm not the only one in the room. Okay.
Speaker 1: So I mean, honestly, I think that me being there
Speaker 1: actually just been great for the life work balance. I've
Speaker 1: read NASA put me on the Barry Whites book, and
Speaker 1: he basically had one house that he lived in and
Speaker 1: one house that he worked in across from each other.
Speaker 1: So it was just that was part of it.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: I was looking at warehouses. Okay, I build out a warehouse.
Speaker 1: I have the incredible studio. Now I have to find
Speaker 1: somebody that wants to buy a couple million dollars worth
Speaker 1: of studio in order to sell it. Cool, Okay, Cool.
Speaker 1: I get the house on the acre and I make
Speaker 1: it into the studio. Okay, Now I just take it
Speaker 1: all out and now it becomes you know, it's like
Speaker 1: I thought about the Rudy van Guel, the Blue oat house,
Speaker 1: or the Motown space or anything else. I at my
Speaker 1: space is kind of a place to be comfortable. And
Speaker 1: then also I focus so much on lyric writing. It's
Speaker 1: like you don't feel like you're not where you are
Speaker 1: and then let's go forward, so.
Speaker 5: You write lyrics too. I co write a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, I push people who are around me to write,
Speaker 1: like the story is more important to me than to beat,
Speaker 1: because I can make the beat ninety times while they're sleeping,
Speaker 1: I can change it. I'm a remixer from start, so
Speaker 1: I actually push the story to be the best thing
Speaker 1: it's coming, kind of like getting the script and then
Speaker 1: shooting the movie.
Speaker 4: So when you create a song, what's the first thing
Speaker 4: you're thinking about? Are you're thinking about.
Speaker 5: What's my hook?
Speaker 4: Like even before you developed, like take us through the
Speaker 4: process that gave you made you look, just from the
Speaker 4: beginning to from the rooted to.
Speaker 1: The tutor made you look started with the conversation that
Speaker 1: Nas and I were having about Flavor Flame that when
Speaker 1: we saw Flavor Flavor, I ain't no joke video that
Speaker 1: we didn't know who he was because we hadn't really
Speaker 1: seen Public Enemy perform like that before we heard their
Speaker 1: first album, but they didn't have any videos. So when
Speaker 1: we saw I Ain't no joke and it was a guy,
Speaker 1: and just that whole energy of how that looked, the
Speaker 1: energy of how BDP looked rushing down the stairs, and
Speaker 1: I guess that was Union Square, possibly the energy of
Speaker 1: Run's house, how it looked like everybody outside that. Those
Speaker 1: were the times that felt like it had a certain
Speaker 1: energy to it. And then I was working on a
Speaker 1: lot of Latin stuff when I first moved to Miami,
Speaker 1: so I was working with Ricky Martin, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to use Apatchee for Ricky. But I always remember the
Speaker 1: lost refessor. I had the trick when he was doing
Speaker 1: stuff on the twelve hundred, slow the sample all the
Speaker 1: way down to make sure that your chop was right
Speaker 1: on B. So I was shopping up, you know, it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be boom Ricky Ricky like, that was
Speaker 1: my that was my thought process. That's what I was
Speaker 1: going for. And I pitched the you know, a patchy
Speaker 1: a little bit and kind to mess with it. But
Speaker 1: I was sitting there messing with it, and then I
Speaker 1: played it really slow, kind of trying to make sure
Speaker 1: that my chop was on point. And then when I
Speaker 1: played it, I just moved to Miami. So so my
Speaker 1: gys from New York with it and they just busted
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yo, what's that? And I was like, ah,
Speaker 1: this is it? But it really it filled the spot
Speaker 1: that Nas and Aari already had a conversation about what
Speaker 1: that felt like. So then I just basically took it
Speaker 1: and you know, did the first ball, first ball, first ball,
Speaker 1: going to the second ball, loop took the hit. Nah,
Speaker 1: I did that on in PC two thousand, so did that,
Speaker 1: and then I just took the hit, filtered it, made
Speaker 1: played the baseline on it, and then I called Nas
Speaker 1: and he answered his phone. He was actually in Orlando
Speaker 1: at the time writing and then I left it on
Speaker 1: his voicemail. I was like, yo, I think I got
Speaker 1: what we were talking about, and then he heard it.
Speaker 5: He was like yo.
Speaker 1: Then he just hit me back on the two way
Speaker 1: or something come through. So then I basically drove cassette basically.
Speaker 5: Close to that.
Speaker 1: I had a CD burner and the who was it?
Speaker 1: The Who's the HHB CD burner. So I burned it
Speaker 1: on my HHB CD burner and took the disc and
Speaker 1: I threw a world or something like that in the
Speaker 1: truck I just bought, and I drove up to my
Speaker 1: to Orlando. And when I got there, that's not a
Speaker 1: close drive. That's four hours just to play him. Not
Speaker 1: not just to play, he just like come through because
Speaker 1: he'd already been. Basically the process was when we did.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 1: My mom passed in May of two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: I was working on a shot, a remix for Lovers Rock.
Speaker 1: I put nads on that remix.
Speaker 5: He came through.
Speaker 1: He's looking at me, like what you're doing. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: my mom passed. Me going to the funeral, but then
Speaker 1: I'll be back. You can furnish your verse. So he's
Speaker 1: looking at me like you're an alien. What are you
Speaker 1: doing when you just say what's happening? But you know,
Speaker 1: as you know, I worked through it and then shot it.
Speaker 1: Called me that they like, hey, do you want to
Speaker 1: do this? Dreamis you gotta be done on Friday? So
Speaker 1: I was like, I gotta do it. That wasn't something
Speaker 1: I was giving out every day. Shot They said remixed
Speaker 1: Lovers Rock really that was maybe maybe one person. I
Speaker 1: think maybe Farrell had done something prior around that time,
Speaker 1: and that was it, and off the same album, I
Speaker 1: was getting my shot, So that was that. But basically
Speaker 1: that kind of cement in our bond and I ended
Speaker 1: up doing what goes around for Stematic. So then now
Speaker 1: next year, his mom passed but I didn't know his
Speaker 1: mom was sick when he was watching me. So he
Speaker 1: was basically like, yo, I got off tour, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go to Orlando with my daughter. And he stayed in
Speaker 1: Orlando in some times share house. Then he was like,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm ana record here. So he had
Speaker 1: about five or six houses. He got a large professor
Speaker 1: Aca La Alchemists, a few other people. So when he
Speaker 1: boy Chuckie Thompson, and by the time he called me like, yo,
Speaker 1: come through and come to Orlando, they were already there.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, so it was already there. We were working
Speaker 1: at Transcontinental Studios where you know Lou Pearlman's place or
Speaker 1: whatever it was.
Speaker 5: So we were doing that.
Speaker 1: I drove up Alchemists and now we're driving to the
Speaker 1: studio and I was like, yo, this is the track.
Speaker 1: It can be crazy. I actually had Amy talking. I
Speaker 1: had Amy Wyne. I was talking on the track because
Speaker 1: I was starting to work on Frank right around then.
Speaker 1: Actually I started in May. So yeah, I was like,
Speaker 1: had to do some stuff. I wanted to put Curtis
Speaker 1: Blow on it, so I'll be flipping on these niggas
Speaker 1: like we're meals. I had all these these ideas and
Speaker 1: he was like, yeah, cool. And I had to go
Speaker 1: to New York for a wedding and come right back.
Speaker 1: I left the track there. I came back and he
Speaker 1: had basically the first first and we had the first
Speaker 1: person the chorus, and basically the thing was that with
Speaker 1: that track, I was busy trying to say, this has
Speaker 1: a lot of energy. It was like a lot of norri.
Speaker 1: I was like, nah, just get on the track and
Speaker 1: go for it. But he decided to do his lean
Speaker 1: back on it and rob him instead. Back to our
Speaker 1: original conversation, if I ain't no joke, so rather than
Speaker 1: going at the track, and you know, he has the
Speaker 1: thing where he refers to rhyming on the one as
Speaker 1: basically he'll skip the one, let the one go hard,
Speaker 1: and then fall in the middle of it.
Speaker 5: Basically that was he thinks in that sort of mathematicals.
Speaker 1: He says that, yeah, what's also that? And then also,
Speaker 1: you know, the father's being musicians like that, so he
Speaker 1: thinks like a musician, and if he plays something, he'll
Speaker 1: think about it musically speaking as he's writing to it.
Speaker 4: It's weird because in my head I thought he was
Speaker 4: trying to do a rob Bass flow because Rob based
Speaker 4: also sort of rhymes on the end instead of so
Speaker 4: speaking of an old episode of references Rob Base. His
Speaker 4: his approach was straight rock him. He was thinking about
Speaker 4: how rock Kim would have sat back on the Lets
Speaker 4: get it all in perspective, right, That was that was
Speaker 4: the thought process, but I didn't catch it at the time.
Speaker 4: I was like, all right, cool is where we're going
Speaker 4: with it. And then as the song grew, we just
Speaker 4: kept adding legs.
Speaker 5: He finished the.
Speaker 1: Verses, I through the birds with a thousand people.
Speaker 5: I gotta tell you that. Wait then I tell you
Speaker 5: I never knew y'all were saying brave hearts.
Speaker 4: I thought, see, I had my whole theory about made
Speaker 4: you look, and I thought that was his him bucking
Speaker 4: the shot.
Speaker 5: Back at jay Z, which was still at that time.
Speaker 5: I was so.
Speaker 10: I thought y'all were saying airball, Oh god, wow, And
Speaker 10: I was thinking, like, Yo, why is it so little
Speaker 10: the mixes that'd be so great at basketball games that
Speaker 10: you know, like a jay Z you missed me, motherfucker
Speaker 10: bought like that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: And even when we did that, like part of my
Speaker 1: theory was just being in the clubs and being in
Speaker 1: different spaces that I faded it out because I wanted
Speaker 1: it to play, but I wanted you also to be
Speaker 1: in the club and feel like the people on the
Speaker 1: other side were doing it or whatever it was. So
Speaker 1: then now you start singing along with it, and by
Speaker 1: the time it creeps up, that was a play game.
Speaker 5: But I mean that was the main part of it.
Speaker 1: Cut the record, took it to Miami, played around a
Speaker 1: little bit, and by his birthday kind of played through it.
Speaker 1: And then you know, during that time, you know, he
Speaker 1: was still going through drama with the radio and everything else.
Speaker 1: So I was like, take and peach to president and
Speaker 1: just use it by itself. Alchemist was like, really, Alchemist
Speaker 1: was with me during those days because he knew where
Speaker 1: the studio was from the rental houses we were staying in.
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, I'm just impeached to president,
Speaker 1: I'm not a I had eight or eight or nothing, really,
Speaker 1: go ahead do it. So he's just sitting there looking
Speaker 1: at me like what are you doing? And basically I
Speaker 1: just took the piano. It was a little off, and
Speaker 1: I had a story from Greg Nice where he was
Speaker 1: there when they made the bridges over, and basically he
Speaker 1: said that uh Cares was going to play the bass
Speaker 1: line on the juno and he's like, yeah, what about
Speaker 1: that piano in it. They went where the Musicians Union
Speaker 1: is at the old A and R Studios building and
Speaker 1: basically Cars went to the piano even though it was off,
Speaker 1: and played played the super cat boops bassline on the piano.
Speaker 1: Then said sampled it and made the bridges over. So
Speaker 1: when I saw the piano and it was like it's
Speaker 1: not tuned, I'm like, nah, good leave it. So then
Speaker 1: I went to the piano and I was like, no, what,
Speaker 1: Why don't you feature Alicia Keys playing piano instead of singing?
Speaker 5: Is that her playing? For at least that's me playing.
Speaker 1: But my thought process was to get her to play
Speaker 1: it and then feature her that way rather than making
Speaker 1: the typical R and B. Alicia Keys comes out of
Speaker 1: nowhere with the hook record. That was my thought, but
Speaker 1: then she ended up producings Warrior Song for the album,
Speaker 1: and then you know, it was like, I know I can.
Speaker 1: Was basically, come on, we love the kids.
Speaker 5: Man played on the radio. You love the kids. You
Speaker 5: got to do for the kids.
Speaker 6: I know I can't.
Speaker 1: That was Son, Yeah, basically, and that vocalist is actually
Speaker 1: uh for a while, okay, there it goes, thank you
Speaker 1: the vocal so.
Speaker 5: I know I can.
Speaker 1: It's actually Angela Hunt, who is was also in the
Speaker 1: group of seven sixty six nine.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, Yeah, she's the kids so high the.
Speaker 1: Kids voice is actually so high exactly, so that's her voice.
Speaker 1: And then she has vote Empire state of mind.
Speaker 5: She's she came up.
Speaker 1: And she has no big soaka record party done.
Speaker 5: You know, it was big for the last few years
Speaker 5: or whatever.
Speaker 4: I always wanted what happened to? Yeah, that one album,
Speaker 4: Well damn you you out rabbit hole being. But I'm
Speaker 4: still going back to the beginning. Yeah, waited a while
Speaker 4: to go back to the beginning now, like he you know,
Speaker 4: he went on a tangent. It was good rabbit holes
Speaker 4: and tangents hand in hand.
Speaker 5: Uh, where were you born?
Speaker 1: I was born uh, Manhattan, Saint Luke's Woman's Hospital up
Speaker 1: in East Harlem, and then I grew up. At that time,
Speaker 1: my parents lived Brooklyn Heights. But then I grew up
Speaker 1: in Queens mainly North side Jamaica, Queen's Camberg Heights.
Speaker 8: Holding on to that accent.
Speaker 5: Now, who's your Your father? Is my father? Okay? It's
Speaker 5: a bit of a rabbit hole. Should I go over? Yes? Yes? Perfect?
Speaker 5: All right?
Speaker 1: So my dad, his name is Van Gabbs, producer, manager, musician,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Basically, the story how I came about is this.
Speaker 1: My dad comes from Trinidad, eighteen years old. His father
Speaker 1: already lived here in Brooklyn. He's working at some place
Speaker 1: New York Insurance Company. He's been getting older, so I've
Speaker 1: been asking him, re asking him the questions to kind
Speaker 1: of get the story straight straight. Now you can tell
Speaker 1: me to grow man version of what happened. So basically,
Speaker 1: he was working at a place called New York Insurance
Speaker 1: Company and there was a guy in there named Bernard something.
Speaker 1: Bernard lived in Queen's Saint Albans. He's like, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what you played?
Speaker 5: Guitar? Okay? Cool?
Speaker 1: My dad acoustic guitar? Or was starting to play electric.
Speaker 1: He's like, yo, come around my way. There's some guys
Speaker 1: that do a band. So he takes him around Queen's
Speaker 1: Saint Albans two hundred and second Street. My uncle Joseph Wiggins,
Speaker 1: who's my mother's brother, actually was the local musician, and
Speaker 1: I had another uncle named Thomas who played keys. Joseph
Speaker 1: played sacks, guitar or whatever it was. Introduces them. My
Speaker 1: uncle Joe goes, yeah, all right, but not out of here,
Speaker 1: and we can probably go start a band somewhere else.
Speaker 1: So they started a band called Stone Free, and actually
Speaker 1: Larry Smith was also rolling with them, and they made
Speaker 1: play bass with them, doing different stuff. So my dad,
Speaker 1: my uncles and Larry and probably I think it was
Speaker 1: somebody else named Raddy or something like that from the
Speaker 1: neighborhood all had a band called Stone Free that they
Speaker 1: were doing stuff. And then that's where my dad CITs
Speaker 1: my mom, and then my grandfather takes his him away
Speaker 1: and he still has a call. Hey, you know I
Speaker 1: could drive you to work whatever is. And that's where
Speaker 1: I came from, basically, you know, from a garage around
Speaker 1: the way band in nineteen seventy up to seventy two,
Speaker 1: did they make albums.
Speaker 5: Never did that.
Speaker 1: They just performed. I think it's there was a club call.
Speaker 1: I think there was a cheet that I used to
Speaker 1: be where Siri is on fifty second somewhere over there.
Speaker 1: So they performed in different places. And when I've asked
Speaker 1: other musicians of the day, they're like, oh, yeah, remember
Speaker 1: they played whatever it was. But they never really made
Speaker 1: records like that. And then my dad continued to you know,
Speaker 1: produced and stayed in the music business as one of
Speaker 1: those people who kind of stayed, you know. He did Broadway,
Speaker 1: He did Joam So who show up the box, reguard,
Speaker 1: Don't bother Me, I Can cope, went on the road,
Speaker 1: did jazzm Bill. He basically was the first arranger according
Speaker 1: to Kenton next on Facebook, but he was the person
Speaker 1: who really knew how to put records together. Bert Reeve
Speaker 1: from Crime he's a fair and helped my dad up
Speaker 1: with Kenton who was his friend, saying hey, maybe you
Speaker 1: can help them put together stuff. So the first time
Speaker 1: of guarding the album worked. That body was my dad's
Speaker 1: pretty much production. He's listed as a ranger, but Kenton,
Speaker 1: who was the producer and I guess co writer and
Speaker 1: up to Heartbeat, which was actually one of the leftover
Speaker 1: tracks off the album heard didn't happen, but basically they
Speaker 1: went and redid it. So when I eventually sampled from here,
Speaker 1: it comes to Hot Stepper, that kickback, and you have
Speaker 1: the master.
Speaker 6: I don't.
Speaker 5: I think Dope has it, but you know exactly, I
Speaker 5: think he has it.
Speaker 1: But basically no, just in that conversation, I was able
Speaker 1: to get a really favorable sample Clarence Steal because because
Speaker 1: it was lifted from Dad's you know, original works, and
Speaker 1: you know, still just feel like the legacy comes around.
Speaker 1: Pops is always I'll say it now. He said, that
Speaker 1: was this jam that he created, you know, with his band,
Speaker 1: basically off of It's a Shame. You know, it's basically
Speaker 1: he was playing It's a Shame?
Speaker 5: Does your father? Did you ever hear the story of
Speaker 5: Larry Levin and the four Hours of Heartbeat? No? I
Speaker 5: don't know. Do you know the story?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: I don't know that story. Larry Levan is right, he
Speaker 4: deal with Larry all the time. So yeah, the legend
Speaker 4: has it, you know. Larry Levan like, if I say that,
Speaker 4: then then I know it sounds familiar. Okay, He to
Speaker 4: me he's like one of my DJ idols, but he
Speaker 4: in seventy seven when uh, you know, Studio fifty four
Speaker 4: spawns off sort of rejection culture, like you can't come in,
Speaker 4: but you can come in, but you can't come in
Speaker 4: you can, So all the rejects were like, well, fuck it,
Speaker 4: We're going to start our own culture. So, you know,
Speaker 4: three subgenres and subcultures started. So there's there's the punk,
Speaker 4: the punk scene in the East Village, the have nots,
Speaker 4: and then like hip hop in the Bronx. Seventy seven
Speaker 4: also helped to the blackout and them looting all the
Speaker 4: DJ equipment.
Speaker 2: Sounds very okay, get down and then and then uh,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, that was the wrong reference to make good.
Speaker 5: Well yeah, because Bill's face just started.
Speaker 8: You know, it sounded familiar to I wasn't angry, I
Speaker 8: was laughing.
Speaker 5: I thought it was funny.
Speaker 4: Yeah anyway, so uh and then I guess you could
Speaker 4: say that the ground you gotta get another build theme
Speaker 4: that goes deeper than darker than that.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So uh and you know, just a lot of uh
Speaker 4: the underground, uh, gay night clubs and whatnot.
Speaker 2: Oh like what they're about to the new Ryan Murphy
Speaker 2: John is based off of I'm sorry, I just went
Speaker 2: into a rabbit hole.
Speaker 7: But there's a.
Speaker 5: In the abyss now. So the thing is is that
Speaker 5: the most popular?
Speaker 4: Well, he also DJ'ed at the Studio fifty four, but
Speaker 4: Lara Levan like wanted to build his own spot.
Speaker 5: Leave Studio fifty four and build balls.
Speaker 2: That's what they're called.
Speaker 8: They used to do.
Speaker 4: They used to host balls. Come on, Okay, I see,
Speaker 4: but this was more. I mean, he built the ultimate
Speaker 4: warehouse with with speakers, like it was probably the most
Speaker 4: like it's it's it's DJ's dream to spin in a
Speaker 4: spot like this. Anyway, you know, he had an amazing following,
Speaker 4: I mean, like, and he would do the most creative
Speaker 4: things like me, reading about a set list is what
Speaker 4: prompts me to think that I can get away with
Speaker 4: playing like Kerrent the Frog and DMX in the same setting.
Speaker 4: Like one night he infamously just played the entire Wizard
Speaker 4: of Oz movie and had a light show, and it
Speaker 4: was like, so, I guess once he got larger than life,
Speaker 4: then uh, he started experimenting more and he was getting
Speaker 4: a lot of shade from his main dancers, and they
Speaker 4: were like protests, like we don't like this song, so
Speaker 4: we're not so we're not going to dance like in protests.
Speaker 4: And so he went and I don't know did he
Speaker 4: commission Heartbeat or did he produce the dancers just because
Speaker 4: it was too slow?
Speaker 5: But did he did he just do an edit to
Speaker 5: it or was it did he have anything to do
Speaker 5: with the creator?
Speaker 1: He did an ed as as I know, actually created,
Speaker 1: but he did.
Speaker 5: Beat, made Tiny Guarden a Heartbeat.
Speaker 4: So he and pro and the next week he came
Speaker 4: back and basically played Heartbeat for four hours in a
Speaker 4: row and they relentlessly bowed.
Speaker 5: It was like just a standoff.
Speaker 4: We're gonna sit on the floor and protest and protest
Speaker 4: and protest, and finally they're like, look, let's just dance
Speaker 4: of the ship so you can play the next record
Speaker 4: because the ain't no other club going to let us in,
Speaker 4: so listen just you know, So anyway, that.
Speaker 1: Was part of culture kept going because that record means
Speaker 1: a lot to you know, the Barbecue Flex and everything
Speaker 1: else that you know came after it.
Speaker 4: And plus also like Frankie Crocker used to, you know,
Speaker 4: like he was the type of leader that other DJs
Speaker 4: would come and watch. So Frankie Crocker would look over
Speaker 4: you it, you play it and then start playing it
Speaker 4: on the radio, and then.
Speaker 1: That's exactly so within that, you know, back to Pops,
Speaker 1: he was, uh, you know, producer ranger doing all that stuff.
Speaker 1: He did promotions, street promotions that Arista, worked underneath Vincent
Speaker 1: Davis who had Ventons Hayman at the time, and then
Speaker 1: he became Northeast regional for Arista like during the time,
Speaker 1: like he broke like jumped to it for Rita and
Speaker 1: different stuff like that, and had relationships with Frankie Kraker,
Speaker 1: would you know, go and produce stuff. Took first person
Speaker 1: to take Dougie Fresh in the studio for the first
Speaker 1: Before that, there was a record called Past the Buddha
Speaker 1: by the Buddha Buss Crew where he got Slime Robbie,
Speaker 1: who he had kind of helped out a lot when
Speaker 1: they first came to New York, hooked him up with
Speaker 1: Gwen Guthrie, took him around to Lyry Levan all the
Speaker 1: other stuff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Seventh Heaven right, all.
Speaker 1: That type of So he basically was the person that
Speaker 1: you know, when I talked to Slian Robbie. Now they're
Speaker 1: like nah, your father took us around and let everybody
Speaker 1: know us and whatever else it was. So he was
Speaker 1: just basically a connector through the musician scene, the jazz
Speaker 1: mobile scene, you know, part of the Jamaica boys. Know
Speaker 1: all the Hanky Great and how We Great and all
Speaker 1: those guys who are on that side were like my
Speaker 1: godfather's to say. He basically was just like a guy
Speaker 1: that was in the middle of everything. But he took
Speaker 1: Dougie in the studio to record a record with Spoony
Speaker 1: Ge and Spivey called Past the Buddha, which was a
Speaker 1: Past the Duchy rap version. They put it out. He
Speaker 1: got jerked. He put another record with Alison Williams called
Speaker 1: The Fair. It was called Please Don't Break My Heart,
Speaker 1: which was another of one of those basically heartbeat, just
Speaker 1: that vibe, that New York energy church chords.
Speaker 5: Exactly more of that stuff.
Speaker 1: And then you know, through his connections while he was
Speaker 1: at PolyGram, eventually he bought Gwyne Guthrie in even though
Speaker 1: he was promotion was supposed to be doing it, but
Speaker 1: the whole it ain't nothing going on but the rent time.
Speaker 1: But he was just like connected on both sides, management
Speaker 1: and music.
Speaker 4: So was he an independent person because you just mentioned
Speaker 4: like a bunch of labels in a short period of time,
Speaker 4: Like how does one go from like.
Speaker 5: Like James Evans of music? He basically he, I mean,
Speaker 5: he went through all the stuff. Basically.
Speaker 1: His thing was that when he made his first records,
Speaker 1: he got jerked and he wanted to learn, So he
Speaker 1: went into ARIS as an intern and then ended up
Speaker 1: being Northeast Regional, and then as he left it, then
Speaker 1: he ended up going to PolyGram. You know, his whole
Speaker 1: flow was always I'm gonna he basically would be in
Speaker 1: the studio but then still be doing promotion, but then
Speaker 1: still be with whatever else, doing a little broadway in
Speaker 1: between whatever needed to happen. He always kept the I'm
Speaker 1: gonna work twenty hours out of the day aspect.
Speaker 4: Who was the most popular artist that he was associated
Speaker 4: with that was sort of a no name back then,
Speaker 4: like son, I want you to meet a Sissy Houston's
Speaker 4: eleven year old daughter, Whitney.
Speaker 5: I can say it.
Speaker 1: I mean, even during the time he worked with Balafonte,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of hard for me to say. Wow,
Speaker 1: like even some of that ton of garden and stuff,
Speaker 1: it says if you look at that work. The Body
Speaker 1: album says recorded by David Bellefonte, fan, can you take
Speaker 1: your man?
Speaker 5: Take David with you. I can help him.
Speaker 1: He needs something to do, you know. He was an
Speaker 1: engineer and actually and a lot of stuff.
Speaker 5: I can't say it was.
Speaker 1: It's kind of weird because I saw so much so young,
Speaker 1: you know. So that first time Dougie was in the
Speaker 1: studio he called me in for birthday.
Speaker 2: Yo.
Speaker 1: I remember how I went to the studio and he
Speaker 1: was touching everything.
Speaker 5: I just remember, you was submitted to do that?
Speaker 2: Hi?
Speaker 4: You was? Then you was?
Speaker 8: How was you?
Speaker 5: You touched everything in the studio and then you still
Speaker 5: do it? You know? That's still what does this do?
Speaker 5: What is this? Dude? It was almost that.
Speaker 1: But I remember, like the first time I heard doing
Speaker 1: dunk dunk, don't don't I know how to play.
Speaker 5: Dunk?
Speaker 1: Don't bug? Yo, Yogi want a clapp ornet? And I
Speaker 1: remember Bert Reid actually looking at me and going, who
Speaker 1: told you how to do that?
Speaker 5: Like? Really?
Speaker 1: So I was around like so basically, the way it
Speaker 1: worked on the Daily Planet Block is that there was
Speaker 1: a Planet studios in the basement, and up above that
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people who had studio like
Speaker 1: little lost spaces. So Belafonte had a lost space kind
Speaker 1: of like right on the third floor, and that's where
Speaker 1: my dad would actually be taking care of Harry Belafante's business,
Speaker 1: but also rehearsing the band, which was like Bernard Wright
Speaker 1: was coming through at that point, you know, coming from
Speaker 1: music and art, and he'd be playing on stuff or
Speaker 1: Crown Heights. A fear had a loft down the block,
Speaker 1: so they would be coming back and forth at different points.
Speaker 1: But that's when Bert Read is killing, you know, the
Speaker 1: must be the music's raw silks, everything else. So everything
Speaker 1: was kind of happening in that space. And I was
Speaker 1: living in Queens with my mom, but whenever I would
Speaker 1: be with my dad for a couple of days, I
Speaker 1: literally was seeing more than I thought, more than I
Speaker 1: can put the piece to it.
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess for me.
Speaker 1: It also started because all my uncles were musicians and
Speaker 1: my father's brothers as well. So my third birthday, there
Speaker 1: used to be a drum store on forty seventh and
Speaker 1: kind of like right where Unique was somewhere right in
Speaker 1: that space forty seventh right off of Broadway. It was
Speaker 1: upstairs on the second floor, and I think Philly Joe Jones'
Speaker 1: son owned the drum store, and I went there and
Speaker 1: I was messing around with stuff, and Elvin Jones was
Speaker 1: there and saw me messing around and actually put together
Speaker 1: a drum kit for me that was like of a
Speaker 1: floor tom turned into a big floor turn and turned
Speaker 1: into a kick and basically set up a drum. Caits like, man,
Speaker 1: get him this, this is what it needs. Would so
Speaker 1: he put it together. My dad bought it. But that
Speaker 1: was like my third birthday. It was almost like it's
Speaker 1: where I have pieces of it. I don't have the
Speaker 1: whole thing exactly. It was in my grandmother's church. Somebody
Speaker 1: must have got baptized.
Speaker 5: In I went earlier.
Speaker 4: You mentioned Larry Smith's name, and he's also like one
Speaker 4: of the uh the great pioneers of hip hop production
Speaker 4: that never ever gets mentioned in right pathana greats? And
Speaker 4: did you have any DMC Did you have an any
Speaker 4: relationship like with him or have any stories of just
Speaker 4: not really.
Speaker 1: I mean the only time that I saw Larry wasn't
Speaker 1: until later, like when we had studios in the city
Speaker 1: and he kind of came by and he was just
Speaker 1: always like man, he basically the times when I saw Larry.
Speaker 1: He was talking to me about my uncles who had
Speaker 1: passed on by that my mother's brother, like Joe Wiggins,
Speaker 1: uncle Thomas, just about stuffing, you know, the Hollists, saying
Speaker 1: all in his neighborhood where they all were around, and
Speaker 1: then he be talking about dad. Hey man, we gotta
Speaker 1: do something again. But it was kind of like at
Speaker 1: the point when Larry was passed his prime. It's really
Speaker 1: when I personally got to talk to him. I heard
Speaker 1: about him earlier and I kind of saw stuff, but
Speaker 1: I didn't never. I didn't have any of that eighty
Speaker 1: three to eighty seven prime Larry Smith and it YEA
Speaker 1: heard his name, but I didn't. And actually I heard
Speaker 1: him say, yeah, you know Larry. Oh that's Larry Smith.
Speaker 5: That's a guy.
Speaker 1: But I didn't really correlate it until later on.
Speaker 5: So did you is your first production Black Biproperty Demand
Speaker 5: or was it the album before Dim before McGill. I
Speaker 5: was just gonna say, did you do mcgilla Gorilla?
Speaker 1: So Igrilla was more please play this song for y'all.
Speaker 5: I don't know what it is.
Speaker 4: Let me just play I'll say this no, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: don't even set it up, Boss Bill, do we have
Speaker 4: your permission to not to not even back sell this thing?
Speaker 4: I just want to just play.
Speaker 5: This is the story about.
Speaker 2: Let me tell you.
Speaker 5: A little story and the whole dad. It's this is
Speaker 5: the first song on my My Good and Terrible List.
Speaker 9: WHOA his name.
Speaker 5: Is Miguilla.
Speaker 2: Now on.
Speaker 5: That sounded kind of fur realist right there. Oh actually yeah,
Speaker 5: he got up. What it does kind of sound like
Speaker 5: it's like straight up you had to go. Damn, I'm
Speaker 5: just waiting to get to the course. I'm like, I'm
Speaker 5: waiting to get to it to this is all you right.
Speaker 2: Just.
Speaker 5: Watified right there, I can see this ship.
Speaker 8: We speech.
Speaker 5: There. It is about it. You're about to get a
Speaker 5: check for this. Okay.
Speaker 4: Now you were thirteen at the times the are fourteen.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry. That was Curtis Blow. Well you did not
Speaker 5: know that, Curtis. You didn't have Kingdom Blow. No, the
Speaker 5: record on the IL would have been Yeah, I remember
Speaker 5: that one.
Speaker 1: So I'll tell you Mgilla. Gorilla was my light involvement.
Speaker 1: It was an artist that my dad had named Essence,
Speaker 1: and Essence was a beat box and he would he
Speaker 1: kind of took the big thing to another level, but
Speaker 1: he'd be doing baselines and stuff. So part of it
Speaker 1: was essence. Part of it was my dad. My dad
Speaker 1: also produced Falling in Love for the Fat Boys, so
Speaker 1: that's their signature, their seven h seven drum machine, all
Speaker 1: other little pieces, and you know, I'm helping out on it,
Speaker 1: but that wasn't so much me personally being.
Speaker 5: In the studio. So but you get the credit on
Speaker 5: the album, I get the credit. But then also to
Speaker 5: Alan Smith, you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got I got put into it. And then
Speaker 1: also he was working that PolyGram as a promotion person
Speaker 1: at the time for otherwise. So if you look at
Speaker 1: that record, his name is not on it, but mine is.
Speaker 4: It's like it's like a grace Grace Yeah, Edie, Eddie Hazel.
Speaker 1: Okay, Mikael Riley. Yeah, basically, so that record was but
Speaker 1: I was doing records.
Speaker 5: I don't know that.
Speaker 4: I didn't realize that what Markel Teddy Teddy was using Markel's.
Speaker 1: Name sometimes that too, Yeah, sometimes because I know about
Speaker 1: well sometimes he's doing using Markel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, because produced my prerogative.
Speaker 8: So I'm like why but was taking everybody's credit and money?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So uh, how did that? First of all, how
Speaker 5: old were you I was fourteen.
Speaker 4: Okay, that's highly usual. So that means that you must
Speaker 4: have displayed an advanced level of some sort of musical
Speaker 4: wizardry that they're just like good, let's alarm. Like at fourteen,
Speaker 4: I wasn't. I don't even think at forty seven, I'm
Speaker 4: thinking about it.
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, it's crazy.
Speaker 1: I actually, you know when I was a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: I when I was playing some drums, I was doing
Speaker 1: some different stuff. But then I also, let's see, me
Speaker 1: and Aconelly went to junior high together. So I had
Speaker 1: in junior high, which would have been eighty three, was eleven,
Speaker 1: I had a little I still have a Yamaha Portal
Speaker 1: sound keyboard that I could program, and in that I
Speaker 1: was able to program beats, so I would really be
Speaker 1: on the cheesebox program and stuff. And then for my
Speaker 1: birthday in eighty five, I got a seven or seven
Speaker 1: in the Yamaha DX twenty one in the four track,
Speaker 1: so I was actually making tracks and beats that I'll
Speaker 1: be proud to say sounded better than that. That was
Speaker 1: just something that happened in the middle of whatever was
Speaker 1: and when my dad was on is while he was
Speaker 1: doing promotion that PolyGram. Sometimes he'd had to pick up Curtis,
Speaker 1: blow off the Red Eye. He swooped through Queens, picked
Speaker 1: me up with Curtis in the car, drive me to school. Yo,
Speaker 1: what you're doing? No, Dad is sweet? T's my beat?
Speaker 5: Like out.
Speaker 1: All the influence for the beats and the records were
Speaker 1: kind of coming from me, and I was like, nah,
Speaker 1: this is this Listen to that one. I'd be giving
Speaker 1: them my pause tapes, like take it, but just make
Speaker 1: a copy, bring it back for me. Here's another one
Speaker 1: I got. So I was actually somewhat in the record street,
Speaker 1: totally his head to the street and just watching what
Speaker 1: I was doing, because he was still a musician, but
Speaker 1: he was into hip hop. You know, he was helping
Speaker 1: Belafalte with Beatch Street. He was taking dug Andy Stuitus
Speaker 1: so all that stuff. And with that record, it wasn't
Speaker 1: like my hands were on it the way that I
Speaker 1: wanted to, because I would have changed it, but that
Speaker 1: was part of their production and then you know Curtis,
Speaker 1: and Curtis was at a different point in his career.
Speaker 5: Two he was still trying. He didn't come up with
Speaker 5: the concept NA.
Speaker 1: That one wasn't me back by popular demand was my concept,
Speaker 1: but okay, I'll get off mcgilla gorilla just like what
Speaker 1: made him like was there a movie picture essence had
Speaker 1: something and he was fun and they took whatever the
Speaker 1: energy that was. And that's really what it was, almost
Speaker 1: like a jingle studio version of what's something that was
Speaker 1: dope raw four track.
Speaker 4: It just got to you know something, it's just hard
Speaker 4: to even even after tonight's show, like when we try
Speaker 4: to make like mock mock TV theme like bad hip
Speaker 4: hop or whatever, like there's almost there's almost an art
Speaker 4: to that which even if intentional or trying to be
Speaker 4: funny or whatever, like I kind of you know, I
Speaker 4: delve into I love that type of stuff. So I
Speaker 4: actually respected what was what was the first like drum
Speaker 4: machine that you were given that you that was your tool.
Speaker 1: That was my actual I mean, well, that Yamaha Porter
Speaker 1: Sound I was able to program on, and then seven
Speaker 1: or seven I had a Yamaha seven h seven, So you.
Speaker 4: Just skipped the whole Cassio SK one discovery your sample thing.
Speaker 1: I had a SK one more like eighty seven eighty eight,
Speaker 1: But before that it was kind of like here's a
Speaker 1: drum machine figure out how to program.
Speaker 5: So I started. I actually went to college first, and yeah,
Speaker 5: I actually.
Speaker 1: Had programmed on like I said, in the Yamaha Porter sound.
Speaker 1: I was able to take that and it had like
Speaker 1: four little things where I was able to you know,
Speaker 1: boom boom, and then I could record little keyboard things.
Speaker 1: So I was really doing that eighty three, eighty four,
Speaker 1: and then it was like, okay, well we're gonna give
Speaker 1: you this seven o seven now, and then I actually
Speaker 1: got on that. But then I was mad because I
Speaker 1: was like, the seven oh seven snare don't sound like Mally's.
Speaker 1: It's a demo snare?
Speaker 5: What am I doing it?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 5: How am I gonna get this? So then I got
Speaker 5: to get your your crack at the infamous Maley uh
Speaker 5: uh it real, Nah, I got.
Speaker 1: What I got was what was it the it's one
Speaker 1: of those gated reverbs Eleasa's reverb or something like that. Oh,
Speaker 1: you just need reverb, man, and the reverb was trying
Speaker 1: to make it and it was still cool. I figured
Speaker 1: it out, but nah, that wasn't the case. And then eventually, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a seven or seven twenty one an Elasa's
Speaker 1: drum machine.
Speaker 5: Eventually I don't remember what that came.
Speaker 1: Before after the nine to fifty A nine hundred, probably
Speaker 1: that later after nine hundred, because what I did was
Speaker 1: I helped my dad. He had signed mc rail and
Speaker 1: Chuck chill Out to his label eighty eight eighty nine,
Speaker 1: late eighty seven, and mc rail was from Philly rock him.
Speaker 5: Seven like you working on that ship. Yeah. On the
Speaker 5: album Yo Yo.
Speaker 4: I with someone my AGEIK loses min right now, do
Speaker 4: y'all remember mc ral.
Speaker 5: Rail dog.
Speaker 4: A rock I put an mc I put em c
Speaker 4: rail post in the askbaan, Yeah, you.
Speaker 5: Didn't say I produced this.
Speaker 1: I didn't produce all of it. I did one song,
Speaker 1: That's why I got my.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 1: But that was actually on my dad's label. Chuck Chill
Speaker 1: Out and cree Chip and mc rail.
Speaker 5: What was your dad's label.
Speaker 1: It was called Palm Tree at the time, but he
Speaker 1: had Palm Tree PolyGram. He basically left PolyGram as a
Speaker 1: promotion person and got a label deal and put those
Speaker 1: two artists out. And mc rail's life of an entertainer
Speaker 1: was actually mc ral in the House Rockers with some
Speaker 1: casts that were from I think they were from Columbia,
Speaker 1: South Carolina, the House Rockers and then ral was from Philly.
Speaker 5: Where from Yeah, where from Philly was he? I can't remember.
Speaker 5: I feel like he was from West Really.
Speaker 4: See this, this this really helped. This really helped the
Speaker 4: root situation out all right. The way this is mcrail's
Speaker 4: life of entertainer base. What he's sounding just like rocking feet.
Speaker 4: Say you're playing drums in the video everybody wants to
Speaker 4: rap will be a thing. Guy Todder working on that
Speaker 4: job at Chapelinga's the boss Stone buses back. But you're
Speaker 4: bringing it all out six now. And this casey had
Speaker 4: his care his noise. There is sign he was more.
Speaker 4: This is more spooney geus, but there's some joints. There
Speaker 4: was a commercial that used to always come on Lady
Speaker 4: B Street Beat Hour on para ninety nine that was
Speaker 4: mc rail and it was like straight rock him like
Speaker 4: Philly had.
Speaker 9: These two acts that it was like it did us
Speaker 9: no justice, like em c rail was like our ore
Speaker 9: are broke?
Speaker 5: Uh rock him? And and then there was the.
Speaker 4: Rhythm Radicals and they were like are fake public getting.
Speaker 5: You ever heard the rhythm? Yeah? Did you produce them to?
Speaker 4: I feel like I feel like when this episode is
Speaker 4: done that you're gonna reveal like two artists that you
Speaker 4: know most likely it was your dad's label. Was that
Speaker 4: the same label the Chu the Chuck Shot Out and
Speaker 4: the Cool Chup album with slaves to the rhythm?
Speaker 1: Okay, you produced that all the time. No, The only
Speaker 1: thing I did on that was I'm Large. I went
Speaker 1: and changed the mix. They had a mix where they
Speaker 1: programmed like I was like Tommy Road that sounded like
Speaker 1: MC night, turned that up and they had boy White,
Speaker 1: Rob White who Rob Lewis was his name. He had
Speaker 1: programmed on top of it, kind of some loud want
Speaker 1: to be Freddy being the mic master. Drums that weren't
Speaker 1: exactly it, and it was just like it sounded like
Speaker 1: they put seven to seven drums on top of Tommy
Speaker 1: Row and I was like, what are you doing? Take
Speaker 1: that down, turn this sample up, turn this other part up,
Speaker 1: and then that is in. My dad's partner went and
Speaker 1: replayed the James Bond sample and kind of put that together.
Speaker 5: So him and you remember I'm Large when it was
Speaker 5: on like video jukebox doing that. We didn't have we
Speaker 5: didn't have vide.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I'm Large was Uh. It was one of
Speaker 4: those things where at the end of the video was
Speaker 4: something to be continued.
Speaker 5: Shit.
Speaker 4: But then they show a commercial and then be like, yo,
Speaker 4: save us from help the bond from detonating, detonating one
Speaker 4: eight hundred one nine hundred no no.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, save us. And I'm like the secker
Speaker 5: on the phone, like trying to come up with those
Speaker 5: pops he got you. Yeah, you look he was good.
Speaker 1: Greg Knight still be like, you'll tell you pops. He
Speaker 1: owed me thirty five dollars from talking to girl because
Speaker 1: they had a thing where you could dial up and
Speaker 1: talk to certain artists, right, so rich Knights when he
Speaker 1: was an artist.
Speaker 5: Greg Nice.
Speaker 1: Different people will come to the office and now they
Speaker 1: be able to you know, you Dillar number and you
Speaker 1: for a dollar in it, and he's like, yo, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna give you twenty five cent a minute. And so
Speaker 1: people be over there talking to different people from all
Speaker 1: over the country and they think, tell your pots. Healed
Speaker 1: me thirty five.
Speaker 5: Hours the first Internet. Yeah, his first chat room.
Speaker 2: He must he used that whole Northeast regional to his
Speaker 2: his advantage when it came along with.
Speaker 5: I mean was a hustler. He's still a hustler.
Speaker 2: Use I mean to have his ear on air, like
Speaker 2: especially the cities on the East coast because he already
Speaker 2: had had to do that.
Speaker 5: Work and whatnot.
Speaker 1: Definitely that and then in the music space, like I'm
Speaker 1: skipping all types of stuff, but just in general, he
Speaker 1: was always in it, always in Jazz Mobile and different places.
Speaker 1: So he had his basically my with the music that
Speaker 1: I work on, he pretty much did all of it.
Speaker 1: I'm just expanding on it in different ways and kind
Speaker 1: of going from this. So I was born into that
Speaker 1: basically when I came and graduated from high school in
Speaker 1: eighty nine, I went to from living with my mom
Speaker 1: and Queen's moving into the building where he had Classic Concepts,
Speaker 1: which was Video Music Box, basically subletting one space and
Speaker 1: you know, getting them all the video stuff they did,
Speaker 1: the chunk and chill out videos, the BBD Poison Your
Speaker 1: Slick Blow. That was in our studio that was underneath
Speaker 1: where Classic Concepts was, So that was all in our space.
Speaker 1: So that's the same studio room that I would have recorded.
Speaker 1: Ain'ty Comosi and or Jaggy or whatever else it was
Speaker 1: that was.
Speaker 8: Like that was you toss it up shit, you know,
Speaker 8: we gotta go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yo, did you have anything to do with the
Speaker 4: Payback mix, the Payback mix, the James Brown Mega mixed thing.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I did that game. It's called bit you
Speaker 5: produced it where you throw some or no, I did that.
Speaker 1: That was That was Harry. He Harry Wenger came to
Speaker 1: me at that time and was like like sixteen. But
Speaker 1: my dad worked at PolyGram branch with Harry Wingo. So
Speaker 1: I met Harry when I was thirteen years.
Speaker 5: I was trusted twenty six year older now, let alone
Speaker 5: with a sixteen year old.
Speaker 1: I was in the vaults. I know you were in
Speaker 1: the vaultes early and I was in there. You know,
Speaker 1: I was sample police early.
Speaker 5: Hey, that's you. I was in there. I was going
Speaker 5: to say, here's.
Speaker 1: But I got access. Okay, I was Rick FROs Fed.
Speaker 1: I was helping people out.
Speaker 4: Do me, give us three acts, give us three acts
Speaker 4: or three joints?
Speaker 5: That you kind of that you snitched. I can't even
Speaker 5: remember right now, But were you bad? Were you like, okay,
Speaker 5: that's the drumming snare that's ours or no, no, no no.
Speaker 1: I was like if there were like whole records, it's
Speaker 1: basically what I was doing. Like the Funky People Part three,
Speaker 1: I think had the version I did of blow your
Speaker 1: head without the noise on it. Yes, so that was
Speaker 1: something I went and did. So I was telling them like,
Speaker 1: look if we have some of these records where.
Speaker 4: He was laying traps, because you also did that for
Speaker 4: Things got to Get Better for Marvel Whitney.
Speaker 5: So I did that.
Speaker 1: So there were the three versions of the mostly there
Speaker 1: was a James version of him singing things got to
Speaker 1: get Better, there was a Lynn Collins version, and it
Speaker 1: was a Marvel Whitney version. So then I made a
Speaker 1: mix where I put all three of them together and
Speaker 1: I put the drum beat on the beginning unwind yourself,
Speaker 1: Unwind yourself.
Speaker 5: I did that? Was you, Yeah, so you was laying
Speaker 5: little traps so yeah, but cats were coming jacket and
Speaker 5: he was so basically well, but it was it was.
Speaker 1: That I was trying to get the drums out of
Speaker 1: records that we couldn't get.
Speaker 5: I see that, but it's also I thought you.
Speaker 4: Were basically he would take the original reels and make versions,
Speaker 4: put little drum injoyers on it, and then motherfuckers like
Speaker 4: me like yo, you're in the open drums and start
Speaker 4: taking it.
Speaker 2: And then you think because you think he was the
Speaker 2: original source, but he just kind of yeah, I'm knew.
Speaker 5: I did it.
Speaker 1: And then back to the James Brown Payback mix. It
Speaker 1: was like a lot of stuff that I pulled off
Speaker 1: for Rails and I think at that time Most's fortieth
Speaker 1: the anniversary or whatever it was, so I actually was
Speaker 1: in there and I just went through and made one
Speaker 1: big mix. But then I think his publishers wouldn't allow
Speaker 1: us to put it out because we were going to
Speaker 1: add it to the whatever Harry did at the time
Speaker 1: fortieth anniversary box set. So we were going to add
Speaker 1: it to it, but they said, you know, you got
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty five records whatever I did, so we couldn't
Speaker 1: do it. So I had Bugsy talk on the end,
Speaker 1: had Flex say something on the beginning, and then somehow
Speaker 1: we find this way on the vinyl.
Speaker 5: I don't know how.
Speaker 1: Because it was just like whe did I work on
Speaker 1: that for five days for you know, just basically going
Speaker 1: through it just to sit there. But you know, once again,
Speaker 1: it was for the culture. That is crazy for the culture.
Speaker 1: But I had access to James Brown stuff because my
Speaker 1: dad was at PolyGram, because I knew people, nay, you know,
Speaker 1: asked Oscar Wang Harry Waninger.
Speaker 5: Did you work in the Jungle Groove?
Speaker 1: Jungle Groove was out before me, before I was around,
Speaker 1: but I had a copy of it early, so I
Speaker 1: had a copy of the.
Speaker 5: Do Do Do Do Do? What is that load? That
Speaker 5: was the mother load? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, jungle Groove actually had That's what we used for
Speaker 1: Curtis blow from back By.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, that was you. That's what should be called.
Speaker 1: But though that stuff helped me out later when I
Speaker 1: was doing NASA's Get Down, having a nice clean, exactly
Speaker 1: great shot.
Speaker 5: That helped me when I was doing where are they now?
Speaker 5: You know, clean damp tamp? Wait, get on, I'm getting
Speaker 5: to is on? I put Yeah, is there a stereo
Speaker 5: version of that? Because only I just had to clean.
Speaker 1: I had the drums I had, I had the clean parts,
Speaker 1: so I was able to make it.
Speaker 5: Okay, that's it to something else.
Speaker 4: Yo, man, I'm highly amazed that what he's saying. I know,
Speaker 4: we're talking to my al a minute about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I was also thinking, I'm like, so does
Speaker 2: this mean too that you were like of the privilege,
Speaker 2: you didn't have the issues that a lot of people
Speaker 2: had with the estate and whatnot.
Speaker 8: Did I was okay, all right.
Speaker 5: So he had no no, he had the clear like
Speaker 5: everyone else.
Speaker 4: But he whereas we would take it from the records,
Speaker 4: he would take it from He just went to the
Speaker 4: now in twenty eighteen we can get but back in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety something to get access to that on the reels?
Speaker 2: Were you the only one at the time of your
Speaker 2: age that was.
Speaker 5: That? I was beyond?
Speaker 1: I mean actually it was on the Jiggy album. Even
Speaker 1: there's a couple.
Speaker 5: Not on that. It's funny how I ended up doing that,
Speaker 5: but not not on that. On all that.
Speaker 1: Glitters ain't gold, and a couple of the songs, I
Speaker 1: might have used some pieces and some cleaner pieces of
Speaker 1: different stuff.
Speaker 5: So how did how did you come in contact with you? Jiggy? Good?
Speaker 1: Rap a hole here? So Dennis Davis runs into my dad.
Speaker 1: Dennis Davis is the drummer who played with boy Airs
Speaker 1: on Stevie your cousin. Oh there you goes wow? All right,
Speaker 1: So Dennis.
Speaker 5: Dennis playing by himself, man exactly.
Speaker 1: So Dennis ran into my dad on forty eighth Street. Man,
Speaker 1: he's somewhere one of the record stores. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: my stepdaughters got this boyfriend. He can rap whatever it was.
Speaker 1: So I was like, okay, so they exactly he can rap.
Speaker 1: So then they gonna bring him by. Hey, so long
Speaker 1: you know I ran to Dennis. Okay, yeah, you know
Speaker 1: Dennis comes by at that time, he had like short
Speaker 1: dreads probably up the head, so Stevie looking exactly. So
Speaker 1: he was like, yeah, I'm gonna come by and bring
Speaker 1: this kid by. So he brings by this kid. You know,
Speaker 1: they got to looking stuff. So it was actually a
Speaker 1: sound can he from Jiggy He was at the time
Speaker 1: dancing for YZ And when he comes in, he's like, yo,
Speaker 1: you know I can rhyme, and he starts rhyming. He's
Speaker 1: on his black Power. So I'm looking at him like,
Speaker 1: I'm not giving you none of my real, real exclusive
Speaker 1: exclusive breaks. I'm gonna see what you can do. So
Speaker 1: I gave him Simonde. I had a version of Zion
Speaker 1: and I kind of chopped up with a little substitution
Speaker 1: on it, and he did something that sounded decent, you know,
Speaker 1: which actually ended up being on an album. Then he's like, well,
Speaker 1: next time, can I bring my boys? Because we all
Speaker 1: robbed and the whole crew we dressed this way, we
Speaker 1: dressed flies Jiggy this and that, and you know my
Speaker 1: other boys danced with Special Ed and everybody else. So
Speaker 1: can we come through we have really a jiggy try.
Speaker 1: So now I have you know, half of exactly there
Speaker 1: was ten of probably there was actually all of them,
Speaker 1: plus Aunt who had lyricist Lounge was with them, Aunt Marshall,
Speaker 1: so he's actually on a Jiggy album and so they
Speaker 1: were all just part of the crew. But basically we
Speaker 1: had automatic you know, the crowd tossed it up. It's
Speaker 1: like ninety people in there, but they were all mark
Speaker 1: Quests from the Misfits, like their whole crew was all
Speaker 1: this exactly wow. So they were all together because I
Speaker 1: lived across at the time. My studio was on the
Speaker 1: next block from Red Zone, so we were like in
Speaker 1: and out. But basically I was like your own studio
Speaker 1: or the studio that my dad had. It was directly
Speaker 1: across from Red Zone, like on fifty third between Ninfe
Speaker 1: and Time. And basically I'm looking at them like I'm
Speaker 1: not giving y'all a real beat because diamond dealers, like,
Speaker 1: why did you just use like cramp your styles.
Speaker 5: Joints? You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I put a little that thing, Oh cool, that was
Speaker 1: all for the James Brown. But he's like diamonds, like
Speaker 1: why did you ever do that? Like I see you
Speaker 1: at the break conventions with us, why did you do that?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, cause they had dances, you know, they
Speaker 1: they flex had the thing like champion feet, happy feet
Speaker 1: through sit down, I'm about to play something else, so
Speaker 1: he'd always be going at him. So I was like, cool,
Speaker 1: I gave them that seeing what they could do, but
Speaker 1: they may toss it up.
Speaker 4: Cosmic keV played the ship out there in Philly like
Speaker 4: you're you're feeling royalty checks wasn't been high because that
Speaker 4: was like toss it up was like the anthem there.
Speaker 4: But it's funny you said that because if you remember
Speaker 4: when Premiere was on the show and I was trying
Speaker 4: to explain to you what he said that that did,
Speaker 4: what Large Professor was doing for the like why would
Speaker 4: you give him such obvious shit? All the all the
Speaker 4: drums on Jay Rue's first record was kat and obvious shit.
Speaker 4: So I was either like, either you were like, no,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to give you my good shit? Did
Speaker 4: you just get my throwaway payday money shit? Or I'm
Speaker 4: gonna challenge myself to turn all this crap into right now, which.
Speaker 1: Is something I did as an exercise anyway. But it
Speaker 1: was still like, you know, yeah, but could you.
Speaker 4: Could you really afford your reputation to be I'm a substitution?
Speaker 5: Wasn't that old?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 5: This was ninety or ninety one? Z he was ninety two.
Speaker 1: It came out ninety two, But yeah, when that happened,
Speaker 1: it was ninety one.
Speaker 5: Substitution was having to It was like.
Speaker 1: Substitution, amen, brother, cramp your style, but Isaac Cay's it
Speaker 1: was just like all basic obvious stuff. But then once
Speaker 1: again it was about the song, and that's where we
Speaker 1: got together because the beat was in.
Speaker 5: But then they all came out of nowhere that work.
Speaker 5: The shit worked in the club.
Speaker 1: And that's that's And then also I was with Flex
Speaker 1: and Chuck chill Out at all time, because basically Chuck
Speaker 1: chill Out had this group Deuce as Wild Non Double
Speaker 1: m Centipede and funk Master Flex. So everywhere that Chuck
Speaker 1: went from eighty nine when he lived in the building
Speaker 1: in the studio with us, I was there with him.
Speaker 1: So when he got to funk Master Flexes on the
Speaker 1: one and two they were using my turntables.
Speaker 4: Wait, so Flex wasn't How about Chuck chiller Out was
Speaker 4: the main DJ in funk Master. Flex was like this
Speaker 4: record guy, yeah, and I was the other person with Flex.
Speaker 4: So you would have to carry the crates and all
Speaker 4: that stuff, all that stuff. How many crates was Chuck
Speaker 4: chill Out using at the time.
Speaker 1: Probably about four or five. But then when Chuck was talking,
Speaker 1: he was also when basically Chuck got fired off a kiss.
Speaker 1: When Chuck would mess up a kiss, Flex had the
Speaker 1: DJ for him Chuck is late your Flex quoters mess up.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't show up sometimes.
Speaker 5: I thought that sniff meant something.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he wouldn't show up or he'd be all over
Speaker 1: the place. But basically when he got to bls now
Speaker 1: cause my dad had the relationship with Franky Kraker and
Speaker 1: Mally was no longer on due to whatever drama was
Speaker 1: in control was not there.
Speaker 5: I don't know what that was.
Speaker 1: Then basically my dad was like, well, Chuck, you gotta talk.
Speaker 1: So Chuck got turned to talking, and now funk Master
Speaker 1: flexes on the one and two became a phrase. And
Speaker 1: then they were using my turntables because Mallie was always
Speaker 1: working on the basic you know, pretty much mixing on
Speaker 1: the board, right. Yeah, So now they're like, nah, we
Speaker 1: gotta bring some twelve hundreds, and so they were using
Speaker 1: my twelve hundreds basically.
Speaker 5: And so you were there doing the whole magic of
Speaker 5: with BLS or yeah, yep, wow.
Speaker 1: So basically my Fridays and Saturdays would be at the
Speaker 1: radio station all the way from that BLS time being
Speaker 1: in the clubs with Flex in the view day.
Speaker 4: Being So this explains the freaking Fuji's remixed and why
Speaker 4: Flex played it so goddamn much.
Speaker 5: He actually liked it. No, no, no, I mean it's
Speaker 5: a classic, but so help that relationship helped.
Speaker 1: It no more than a relationship. I'll tell you what
Speaker 1: happens from the time that Flex is in the clubs,
Speaker 1: whether it's Red Zone, Powerhouse, the Muse home base. I'm
Speaker 1: there with him because he used to having me everywhere
Speaker 1: and I lived in midtime. So as I'm in the clubs,
Speaker 1: I'm watching the door. Yo, Buster just walked in play
Speaker 1: the Leaders. He's trying to get no leverage. He asks
Speaker 1: Jessica to manage him. You know, Jessica is doing everything else,
Speaker 1: but then he's upstairs in the room at the red
Speaker 1: zone Triple C and Ky Capri and Clark are downstairs
Speaker 1: in the red zone. He's trying to get on. So
Speaker 1: whenever he goes different places, I'm his I'm watching the room.
Speaker 1: I'm seeing what's happening. So it's almost like how reggae
Speaker 1: has a selector that's kind of picking the songs, and
Speaker 1: then the guy that's actually mixing it, he's on the
Speaker 1: radio at BLS. I'm watching what's going on. I'm writing
Speaker 1: down in the names of the songs that you're playing
Speaker 1: to give it to the guy who's gonna say it.
Speaker 1: Whatever was so when he first got the Hot ninety seven,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing, Yo, so long, I need you
Speaker 1: to come with me. Why because you know the I'm
Speaker 1: the safety net producing the show pretty much but not
Speaker 1: really being so where the guy's always whispering okay now yo.
Speaker 1: So just went the commercial, play the the right, the
Speaker 1: Ray Kwong, play the Wu Tang like I'm watching the
Speaker 1: room because I'm seeing what's happening, And that just gave
Speaker 1: me a sharp edge on when I'm making records, the
Speaker 1: same way that Larry Levan would know how to make
Speaker 1: it something right for the dance floor. Then now my
Speaker 1: record's also sharper, So really what got nappy Heads going?
Speaker 1: Because he wasn't a fan of the foodies from Boothba,
Speaker 1: nobody was Jamaican be like Baduf Badaf, like real baduf
Speaker 1: bof you Siris. So he was really upset. But he's like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing this week? The food gie's booff's
Speaker 1: bringing boof off. But then I also knew as that
Speaker 1: record starts number one, I started real really quiet. Your
Speaker 1: Nappi has laid some trea on us worse, so I
Speaker 1: understood that it's quiet and the snare comes in the
Speaker 1: ward to it turns up.
Speaker 5: Can I ask you this question? Yeah, how do you
Speaker 5: feel about that mix of.
Speaker 1: Nappi Heads. Yes, the bass is very loud, very very loud.
Speaker 1: The studio that I mixed it in had a really
Speaker 1: compression room, so if you didn't catch it, the base
Speaker 1: is super loud.
Speaker 6: But it worked.
Speaker 5: It sounded great on the radio. I was gonna say,
Speaker 5: it sounds better on the radio.
Speaker 4: No song frustrates me more to spend back when I
Speaker 4: was using wax to spend in the clubs than the
Speaker 4: Napiers remix because it was so freaking silent. It was
Speaker 4: so low because the bass was so loud, right, but
Speaker 4: then you hear like to hear flex mix that ship
Speaker 4: on the radio. Found, Yo, how come.
Speaker 2: I'm not getting and it comes in low and then
Speaker 2: it goes no.
Speaker 1: Just the way that the record is. Basically the room
Speaker 1: that I had it sound works and that's where I
Speaker 1: mixed that. It was a compression room, so if I
Speaker 1: turned it up basically even if the base was loud,
Speaker 1: like he comes the Hot Step, I had a loud
Speaker 1: base like that. Different records I did kind of were
Speaker 1: just super bass heavy, but then the top end of
Speaker 1: it was crystal clear. So really today we would have
Speaker 1: had a multi brand compressor that would have just took
Speaker 1: the low end and pulled it down the freaking BB
Speaker 1: and then everything else with the sound that is clear.
Speaker 1: But at that time that was just the way it went,
Speaker 1: and I got away with it.
Speaker 5: But yeah, you're right, the.
Speaker 4: Age of I definitely remember like having to do I
Speaker 4: would make my own Uh well, I do, like I said,
Speaker 4: different Kanye like re eq is because.
Speaker 1: He uses way too much base exactly, so with in that,
Speaker 1: but also I knew that as a snare started but
Speaker 1: put that that's DJ then cheap with cheaper, y'all, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna leave, but y'all, okay, cool, what this one's a right?
Speaker 1: She would cheaper y'all, I'm gonna leave with y'all. You
Speaker 1: know what, it's not bad, all right, it's the Fujis.
Speaker 1: And then when he was writing his verse, I played
Speaker 1: the come Clean instrumental Come Clean a cappella and it
Speaker 1: ain't hard to tell a cappella over the track, So
Speaker 1: then he just fit into that pocket. So basically the
Speaker 1: record was set up in a way where the DJ's
Speaker 1: going cheap, a cheaper y'all. Cheap, cheap, y'all, cheap with y'all,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. You got a water that we already do
Speaker 1: halfway through the first verse before you can get the
Speaker 1: next record. So that was my DJ mind that was
Speaker 1: already knowing how to make the record that if you
Speaker 1: didn't like it, you're already gonna like something about it
Speaker 1: and start going.
Speaker 4: Okay, So explain your work with the Fujis and just
Speaker 4: what was that like? You came you had nothing to
Speaker 4: do with one on reality? No all, she came at
Speaker 4: the tailing of how did you manage to.
Speaker 5: Even get to them? Well, not weaselly a weigh in,
Speaker 5: but trust because I know that basically what ended up
Speaker 5: happening was that.
Speaker 1: I'd done Megabanson sond Boy Killer remix, which had the.
Speaker 5: Barry White you know whatever it was exactly, so I
Speaker 5: was doing it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So so I did those pieces. But basically
Speaker 1: that came from being at b LS Bugs, the m D.
Speaker 1: Bobby Condas is working the BLS. Bobby Conda sees me
Speaker 1: going to Hole Jackson's Records plucking out samples.
Speaker 5: Yo, I'm going to studio.
Speaker 1: Can you come with me? Maybe you could program some
Speaker 1: bets with me. So, now, in between whatever else I'm
Speaker 1: doing trying to make the real hip hop, trying to
Speaker 1: keep up with the piets and premiers and large pros,
Speaker 1: I'm able to go with Bobby Condas and just sell
Speaker 1: him breaks that everybody used already for dance mixes, R
Speaker 1: and B mixes, reggae mixes.
Speaker 5: So he wasn't a producer per se.
Speaker 1: Bobby was a producer, but you did word. I was
Speaker 1: the promote. I was doing programming for him of certain things,
Speaker 1: so he'd have a keyboard, dude, but just like some
Speaker 1: real hip hopes, because he saw me coming in there
Speaker 1: snatching brakes out of the library and that's what it
Speaker 1: was his office. That's what he said, Yo, what you
Speaker 1: got so cool? Now I'm going to studio making three hundred,
Speaker 1: four hundred, five hundred a thousand, just giving him breaks
Speaker 1: that everybody already used in hip hop for another purpose.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna ask you something. I'm gonna ask you something.
Speaker 4: Did you use a Willie Hutch sample for Bobby Condors
Speaker 4: the the iced tea high.
Speaker 5: Roll his joint use that ship for a Mel before
Speaker 5: she group and the mail was on the record.
Speaker 1: That was her singing it and she couldn't finish the
Speaker 1: vocal and he actually took her lead off. So that
Speaker 1: was mels first recording.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she played me that ship and you did that ship? Yeah,
Speaker 5: that was me.
Speaker 1: So I was working with Bobby and we did mac
Speaker 1: Daddy and we did that.
Speaker 5: You did Macdaddy? Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: I did probably most of the hip hop stuff on
Speaker 1: that album. So I did that, which is a massive
Speaker 1: Sounds album. He had a song called mac Daddy that
Speaker 1: was like huge.
Speaker 11: You don't remember Macdaddy Bobby's Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was
Speaker 11: in the it was in the dance hall set.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so basically that set.
Speaker 1: So the dance all set at that time, from say
Speaker 1: ninety ninety one ninety two was a combination of me
Speaker 1: staying in the booth with Flex and then being around
Speaker 1: Bobby and saying, okay to go from dance hall, which
Speaker 1: was heavy at the time, to hip hop. How we're
Speaker 1: gonna bring it. So now I was taking the hip
Speaker 1: hop putting together. So back to the food Geez, which
Speaker 1: was your original question. They heard Jeff Burrows was their
Speaker 1: product manager, and Jeff Jeff Burrows that Columbia as their
Speaker 1: product manager, and he heard the Megabanson mix because I've
Speaker 1: been doing all this reggae and hip hop. He's like,
Speaker 1: and he's cast a Haitian. I need something like that.
Speaker 1: That's what we need for the food jies to help
Speaker 1: get them off the ground. It's ain't working. So then
Speaker 1: I think he might have been roommates or lived somewhere
Speaker 1: there Jessica, who was managing Flex at the time. Yo,
Speaker 1: this guy Jeff that knows Jessica, wants your number. All right, cool,
Speaker 1: I go up to Columbia. I'm already in the building
Speaker 1: working on Shabo whatever else around there at the time.
Speaker 1: Shaba Patra. You know what was that I had tingling.
Speaker 1: I did Original Woman where I flipped the Jay Rue sample.
Speaker 1: I did all the remixes. I did Patra's Think with
Speaker 1: Lynn Collins on it. I got all my Link Collins reconssign.
Speaker 5: Remix.
Speaker 1: I did all those pieces. I was just like, in
Speaker 1: the middle of the reggae and hip hop mix?
Speaker 5: Was that you playing keys on that remix? Yeah?
Speaker 1: On one of them, because I think one is Chris
Speaker 1: you know, I did the one I did on there
Speaker 1: was actually I think I used a little Richard drums
Speaker 1: on there or something like that.
Speaker 5: Seventy two ye the real thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 5: real thing. Choice.
Speaker 1: Well, basically my whole mo was I was able to
Speaker 1: take these West Indian records and get them on the radio,
Speaker 1: get it going you for the reason we.
Speaker 2: Were grinding the hip hop.
Speaker 4: So how come you never work with Carris One, who
Speaker 4: was such a champion of mixing reggae and hip hop together?
Speaker 1: Because Carris One would ask me, salom So, I'm making
Speaker 1: an album right now, why aren't you in my face?
Speaker 5: That type of stuff? I left that on my voicemail
Speaker 5: one time.
Speaker 4: Well, has there ever been an artists that's been on
Speaker 4: this show that hasn't More times Terris Know that just
Speaker 4: hasn't used inflections.
Speaker 5: His impressions are great. This show never met that doesn't
Speaker 5: have a chress person like.
Speaker 2: The articulation is just that it was.
Speaker 1: It was basically I was there when he made madism
Speaker 1: that went over the place.
Speaker 4: Every time someone like Karas One, they make him sound
Speaker 4: like a James Bond feeling.
Speaker 5: There's like a person like a person.
Speaker 1: Trying to figure out how you detail your thoughts charrass one.
Speaker 1: And I was sitting there and I've been working with
Speaker 1: Channel Live. Dang, I'm all over the place.
Speaker 4: Basically I've been working with Channel Live and so were
Speaker 4: you on the well the first one that Matification, So
Speaker 4: I did probably four or five songs, So basically.
Speaker 5: No Charris One did it.
Speaker 1: But basically while I was that the studio, I did
Speaker 1: bush Babies and Tough. He was that working at the
Speaker 1: studios intern So he's like, when I get my deal,
Speaker 1: I want you to work on my album. So when
Speaker 1: he got the deal eventually through care Res was Capital
Speaker 1: for Station Identification, He's like, yah, I want you to
Speaker 1: work on it. So I'm doing beats for them. But
Speaker 1: Karras hadn't met me in person, so the day they
Speaker 1: were doing mad Is and was the first day I
Speaker 1: was going to D and D and you know, the
Speaker 1: premier room over all right cool. So I'm sitting there
Speaker 1: and he starts, so slum, do you specialize in jazz beats?
Speaker 1: Our jazz beats your specialty? And I was like, nah,
Speaker 1: specialized in black music. And when I said to them,
Speaker 1: I specialized and He's like, oh okay. Then later on
Speaker 1: he was like, oh yo, your boy kind of shut
Speaker 1: me up. He said, specialized in black music?
Speaker 5: Did you do? I'm just I remember.
Speaker 1: Here, okay, So I'm coming. I'm coming back, not bead.
Speaker 1: So basically, Jeff Burrows is like, you can make the
Speaker 1: Caribbean stuff work. Can you get with this group? He comes,
Speaker 1: I was like, all right cool. At the time, they
Speaker 1: were managed by David Sonenberg and Bernard like Sandra so exactly,
Speaker 1: and at that time they had bizz wait let me
Speaker 1: say this, there we go. So David, who was definitely
Speaker 1: a character, was a fan of my personality because we
Speaker 1: had an earlier business arrangement through Anie Comosi. So there
Speaker 1: was a time when there was a group called Natural
Speaker 1: Selection asked me to produce them.
Speaker 5: The East West and.
Speaker 1: They basically had a record, and the guy, the black guy,
Speaker 1: who was a black guy and white guy in the group,
Speaker 1: and the black guy really wanted me to do some beats.
Speaker 1: He evented my studio was like, you'll heard you doing
Speaker 1: these beats. So I went to meet with David. I
Speaker 1: listened to it. I was like, nah, it's a pop record.
Speaker 1: You're rating your money. Keep your money.
Speaker 5: I'm good.
Speaker 1: But but for me being eighteen and nineteen years old
Speaker 1: and not taking his money and telling them, oh, you're
Speaker 1: nice on Riverside Drive, keep your money. I don't need
Speaker 1: your record because I always pick with records I wanted
Speaker 1: to work on and didn't just work with.
Speaker 5: Anybody they were.
Speaker 1: So now when the come up there managed by David,
Speaker 1: and he's like, oh wow, Slam, I can get back
Speaker 1: to him. He'd already sent me Ain'ty Camosi probably around
Speaker 1: that time to start working on the demos that be
Speaker 1: came Here comes a hot Stepper, And then also Jeff
Speaker 1: Burrow said it, and I was like, oh, Columbia, all right, cool,
Speaker 1: I know what to do here. I know who I'm
Speaker 1: dealing with. So then it was Christmas. It was right
Speaker 1: after Thanksgiving of ninety three, and you know that last
Speaker 1: check after, you know, being in the business at that time,
Speaker 1: I understood that after Thanksgiving you couldn't get the two
Speaker 1: signas you check until probably like after the Grammys, So
Speaker 1: then you're gonna be stuck. And if you didn't get
Speaker 1: your check from Sony before April, you was dead. So
Speaker 1: I understood what was going on, and I was like,
Speaker 1: y'all need to get one more check. Christmas is coming.
Speaker 1: So then Eric Sermon wanted fifteen grand I think I
Speaker 1: agreed to do it for ten or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: got a couple of dollars, and then they came by
Speaker 1: my apartment at that time. I was living on fiftieth
Speaker 1: between eighth and nine. I had part of the beat.
Speaker 1: Praz was like, Yo, you know my friend Kobe, you know,
Speaker 1: big Up Kobe Brown was always talking about you at college.
Speaker 1: Why Cleup's like, yeah, you gotta meet the girl. I
Speaker 1: played them basically the loop of the drums and you
Speaker 1: know the what did I use them?
Speaker 5: Yeah? That was the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well not the bust of Wins, but I just
Speaker 1: basically had the vibes and that, and it was the
Speaker 1: same album that Pete used for Pete's sake. I can't
Speaker 1: remember what it is the white album. But basically I
Speaker 1: was just like kind of chopped that up and then
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, we're going to the studio. So
Speaker 1: we went in the studio and why Cleft freestyle for
Speaker 1: two full times on the rail. I have still a
Speaker 1: recordings of like twenty minutes of him just freestyling. Then
Speaker 1: I went back and took the different.
Speaker 5: Parts, so you just pieced it together.
Speaker 1: Well, I went back and told him, Okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: keep that that your mona Lisa, that's the hook. You're
Speaker 1: just a flyaway. You know, we're gonna keep that part.
Speaker 1: Your cheap achiap like I basically took he had a
Speaker 1: cheap a cheaper y'all numba leave y'all.
Speaker 5: Rapp was something I.
Speaker 1: Was the last reason dinosaur, Like, he had all these
Speaker 1: pieces and I just took like four or five pieces
Speaker 1: to what he said during that twenty minutes and said,
Speaker 1: this is your verse. Now we're gonna say that with
Speaker 1: the chill out, wild cleft tone rather than the loud
Speaker 1: wild clift tone. And basically that's where the record started.
Speaker 1: Pre pro tools, pre pro tools. Yeah, but I didn't didn't,
Speaker 1: I didn't actually edit it. I actually told him this
Speaker 1: is the part we're gonna keep. This is the part
Speaker 1: we're gonna keep. This is the part we're gonna keep it.
Speaker 5: Then cut it again, he said.
Speaker 1: Then he read said it in the more because wyd
Speaker 1: Cleft has this MENI mony to him a voice that
Speaker 1: I kind of referred to where he kind of talk
Speaker 1: raps and you know that other space. So that's basically
Speaker 1: how Nappyheads came up. Lauren had her verse, we kind
Speaker 1: of it was all miss Hill to you.
Speaker 5: At the times.
Speaker 1: Before she had the Miss on the Hill basically, No,
Speaker 1: but basically before it was there, it was just like
Speaker 1: her priests. And then Proz had his part and that
Speaker 1: session became the Napiads basically, and that you know, started
Speaker 1: it going. Then I did a remix of Vocab. Then
Speaker 1: they did a remix of Vocab that really became the
Speaker 1: real proper one.
Speaker 5: Mom, did you do that like the slow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was Shelley Man with a black sab of drums.
Speaker 4: Okay, so what I guess by this point, did you
Speaker 4: decide that your injury is going to be like hard
Speaker 4: ass drums with this sort of psycho psychedelic Uh?
Speaker 5: I don't think.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I could tell salam Remy like,
Speaker 4: there's always there's a beautiful flute, breezy element to your
Speaker 4: work with.
Speaker 5: Some hard ass drums under.
Speaker 1: I think that's there's always like when people are ask
Speaker 1: me my favorite producer back then, it was like Munk Higgins,
Speaker 1: and it was munk Higgins because he always had all
Speaker 1: this orchestral stuff happening on the top and then boom boom,
Speaker 1: boom boom. It was like a groove that was rocking.
Speaker 1: So I still love the juxtaposition of you know, a
Speaker 1: vamped out groove that still got me there.
Speaker 5: But then I love melodies.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: I like Marvin Gaye for the same reason, like that
Speaker 1: I Want You album. I feel like the drums, the
Speaker 1: bass and drums put me in the pocket, but then
Speaker 1: the orchestrations of the music and the vocals kind of
Speaker 1: take me somewhere. So that's kind of like My Beauty
Speaker 1: and the Beasts.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 1: My Jamaican engineer called it Chris and Karanni, or the
Speaker 1: top end Chris, but the base Kranni.
Speaker 5: Like it's it's always an energy.
Speaker 1: That we go for that we want to have, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty facing the fat ass basically both.
Speaker 4: Who was your go to engineer back then or do
Speaker 4: you just work with who you were giving or did
Speaker 4: you ever not?
Speaker 1: I had my own studios, so I was always kind
Speaker 1: of keep my people around. So at first my father's partner, Edison,
Speaker 1: who actually produced a lot of stuff with him and
Speaker 1: was doing a lot of stuff. But then Gary Noble
Speaker 1: saw to work with me in ninety ninety one, and
Speaker 1: you know, to this day, Gary still makes a lot
Speaker 1: of my records. But yeah, he from ninety ninety one,
Speaker 1: he would just he'd be working at the hospital, then
Speaker 1: you come see me after between we'd be doing stuff,
Speaker 1: and he was pretty much the main recording and you know,
Speaker 1: my main recording and mixing engineering probably from ninety three
Speaker 1: forward at least something like that.
Speaker 4: Now, you mentioned Biz earlier, and I know that you're
Speaker 4: good friends with Biz. Yeah, have you just ever had
Speaker 4: a normal moment where Biz where it wasn't just like
Speaker 4: trying to one up you? Like anytime I see Biz.
Speaker 4: I mean it's like twenty years ongoing, it's always a
Speaker 4: one up game.
Speaker 5: Yeah, quest, you got this, I got this? Come all right.
Speaker 4: First of all, what is your take on Mardi Grassa
Speaker 4: one of his situations?
Speaker 1: I mean, Biz's got stories, and he always would find
Speaker 1: a way to do something. I had it over here,
Speaker 1: I put it over there.
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 1: The funny part is that during that time when I
Speaker 1: was working with him, he had a period where he
Speaker 1: would just come to my house, which was no I
Speaker 1: had a room basically that had like three crates of records,
Speaker 1: and it was a room that I basically made the
Speaker 1: ghetto at hots and everything else. And I had a
Speaker 1: half broken chair, like a chair where the back wasn't
Speaker 1: on it. And Biz would come there and sit at
Speaker 1: my house for five, six, seven hours a day and
Speaker 1: just be sitting there.
Speaker 5: Come on, what you got?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 5: You got something else in here? Funky? What else you got?
Speaker 1: And I would always be in the city going through stuff.
Speaker 1: My boy Raheem that worked the downstairs records in different
Speaker 1: places would be with us, so we'd always be coming
Speaker 1: through doing stuff. But Biz would just sit there all day, like,
Speaker 1: what else you got? That's funky? So I had different beats,
Speaker 1: and you know, that was the time when he was
Speaker 1: doing I guess it was the album with what he
Speaker 1: Got sample, the one he got suit for I Need
Speaker 1: a Haircut, So around the time he was doing it,
Speaker 1: I Need a haircut. He would always be at my
Speaker 1: crib just going through stuff, looking for beats, looking for
Speaker 1: little pieces. Raggedy Man might show up sometimes be writing
Speaker 1: violence for him.
Speaker 4: You mentioned like those record conventions, like for our listeners,
Speaker 4: by our listeners, I mean me describe. That's one thing
Speaker 4: I never got to do because like just the whole
Speaker 4: like where a bunch of hotel hotel record vendors rnt
Speaker 4: out of a ballroom and you like, who's the first
Speaker 4: in line, like who's basically been outside?
Speaker 1: Who's yeah, really happened? What was really happened? With the
Speaker 1: record conventions. It was great because we found out before that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we would get together and you know, go shopping,
Speaker 1: go to Princeton, go to a one. You know, me
Speaker 1: and Rashon might go here, or me and Lynn Funk
Speaker 1: was my boy. So we would always go to different places.
Speaker 1: A lot of us kind of met and downstairs at
Speaker 1: different points, and some of them actually worked there. Trouble
Speaker 1: that worked in downstairs still works for me now. It's
Speaker 1: my studio manager in Miami. Like different people would be around.
Speaker 1: But with the record convention, basically we discovered this place.
Speaker 1: I don't know who've discovered it first, but where all
Speaker 1: these people would come and sell rare records, but of
Speaker 1: course they knew that they were rare, and they were
Speaker 1: kind of playing the game. And there were certain people
Speaker 1: who would actually go to some of the vendors before
Speaker 1: the day of the record convention and try to buy
Speaker 1: whatever the key stuff was or already have DIBs on it.
Speaker 1: So t Ray would do that with certain people. It
Speaker 1: was a guy Gary from Connecticut that would have certain records, like,
Speaker 1: so Gary would be doing stuff.
Speaker 5: There was just certain people.
Speaker 1: You know, Bob Gibson from Boston would have a lot
Speaker 1: of records, so I would always be dealing with him
Speaker 1: and sometimes he would send me like a box of
Speaker 1: records and let me pick what I want and send
Speaker 1: the rest back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Crust System somewhat.
Speaker 1: He probably got burned a couple of times, but you know,
Speaker 1: things happened, you know, But but in general that was
Speaker 1: kind of like the energy of it. But at the
Speaker 1: record convention, just off the top of my head, who's there,
Speaker 1: like Pete Rock, Q Tip uh Primi will pop up
Speaker 1: sometimes Juju from beating nuts less sometimes Uh t Ray, Prince,
Speaker 1: b Craig Caleman, of course who else would be there
Speaker 1: just Breakhas you know, most of Buck Wow Finesse.
Speaker 5: Show.
Speaker 1: Sometimes Diamond would definitely be there with Shaw to be there.
Speaker 5: When did it start?
Speaker 4: When did it start to get ugly? Like I I
Speaker 4: came up in a time in which, like you know,
Speaker 4: Pete would allegedly and I'm winking, you know, b rate
Speaker 4: certain dealers for giving records out or you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah that bis records, And I mean certain times
Speaker 1: because people didn't like the fact that you would go
Speaker 1: and try to buy something that's exclusive and then you're
Speaker 1: giving it to three other people who are in the
Speaker 1: same business as you making beats. So if somebody had
Speaker 1: something and I found this singing, I asked him to
Speaker 1: find this record for me, but then he found two
Speaker 1: copies and sold to somebody else just like me. And
Speaker 1: at that time, you know, I might go there and
Speaker 1: spend two thousand dollars on records three thousand, and my
Speaker 1: dad would be like, Looper Vandros, what are you doing?
Speaker 1: Like why are you doing this? Why won't you actually
Speaker 1: play some music? And I'd be like, uh, well, if
Speaker 1: I sell this one beat, I just made ten, so
Speaker 1: why are you complaining like I made ten or fifteen?
Speaker 1: This is just part of the craft, you know, but
Speaker 1: in general that whole space, you know, it just got
Speaker 1: ugly after a while because it was just too many
Speaker 1: people looking in the same space.
Speaker 4: So was it like, was it a breathless race of
Speaker 4: the finish if you found like a certain many Alexander record.
Speaker 5: Or that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: It was just elbows and too many people because now
Speaker 1: you were going to I think certain people like Tip
Speaker 1: and Premier just stopped going because they didn't want to
Speaker 1: go shop and wear everybody else was and it became
Speaker 1: too much. You know, after a while, it's like Christmas.
Speaker 1: You felt like everybody's getting you because they know that
Speaker 1: they can get you, and they want you to spend
Speaker 1: more money. And you know, of course you had Prince
Speaker 1: b would be there buying, you know, paying top top dollar,
Speaker 1: coming there walking out with three big bags before some
Speaker 1: people would even get there. And then they started letting
Speaker 1: some people in early and become favoritism, you know, just
Speaker 1: like a club to turn into bottle service table and
Speaker 1: everything else. Hey what about the music, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So it just became a little bit of that.
Speaker 1: But I kind of faded off her after a while.
Speaker 1: It was cool, but I faded off it because I
Speaker 1: preferred so you know, the beginning of the up years,
Speaker 1: it was a dollar bend records Like it's like, I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to get something that's right. And I started
Speaker 1: playing a lot more and that kind of switched a
Speaker 1: little bit of my perspective on it. But once again,
Speaker 1: it was a good resource and the exercise to have
Speaker 1: because you go there and you know, you see everybody
Speaker 1: on a Sunday morning. Some people breath was definitely humming,
Speaker 1: some drive spit around their mouth. We know who they are,
Speaker 1: you know. It was just like that type of energy.
Speaker 1: But you know, it was a great hip hop space,
Speaker 1: you know, after we didn't have the break beats and
Speaker 1: certain things giving us a whole lot of automatic breaks.
Speaker 1: It was just a great place to be and camaraderie.
Speaker 1: You know, I remember Diamond being a yo. You can
Speaker 1: introduce me to the Fuji's, you know.
Speaker 5: That's how that happened.
Speaker 4: Yea, who's the mastermind behind the score? Like because there
Speaker 4: were so many producers like who gets the.
Speaker 1: I Well, basically the fujis as an element.
Speaker 5: I'm clear that.
Speaker 1: Lauren is soul to the max, wy Clef is eclectic
Speaker 1: and that's what he's still if you look at you know,
Speaker 1: just their voices and what they do.
Speaker 5: They continue to be that.
Speaker 1: But Pros was the popper if you look at the score.
Speaker 1: If you look at the score, it says executive producer
Speaker 1: Pros co executive producers wy Clef and Lauren Proz has the.
Speaker 5: The Beasts not loud enough. What's the hook? I don't
Speaker 5: get it? You know.
Speaker 1: Just Staying Alive was produced by Plas I mean on
Speaker 1: on why Clep's Carnival, Pros Dick Guatana Mayor and Staying Alive.
Speaker 1: The rest of the album was pretty much done, but
Speaker 1: it was like we need singles. That was Proz going, Yo,
Speaker 1: I need to put something together that's actually gonna stick
Speaker 1: this together. Then you know later on his Ghetto Superstar Records,
Speaker 1: that's him, that's his air of certain types of records
Speaker 1: in the middle. Even though why Cleff is more hands on,
Speaker 1: talented and has other things to it, his heir was
Speaker 1: the person that put it together. And then also a
Speaker 1: lot of the score was built around Fuji La which
Speaker 1: I did first. I was working on songs for Clockers
Speaker 1: and I did a song with the fujis that we
Speaker 1: have a song that never came out called Project Heads,
Speaker 1: and basically it was real jazzy and that type of
Speaker 1: Spike Lee in my mind zone.
Speaker 5: But Spike didn't want to use it really.
Speaker 1: And then during that session, why Clef, Lauren's like, play
Speaker 1: the fat joby, play the beat, you different Joe because
Speaker 1: I made the foolgielyot beat for Fat Joe. At Joe
Speaker 1: came to the crib, He's like, you keep giving them
Speaker 1: the beats. He it ain't damns the beat, it's the beat.
Speaker 1: So Fat Joe and Chris Lightdy came to my apartment.
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, cool, it's Tuesday. Come back
Speaker 1: on Friday. Joe comes back by hisself with another dude,
Speaker 1: Chris is and with him He's like, I don't know
Speaker 1: what see the fat or it's not fat at all?
Speaker 5: I can't tell. Lauren comes by.
Speaker 1: I'm playing them some beats, the beat that I use
Speaker 1: for Greg Naxon's let's take it back to the whole school.
Speaker 1: Let's take so the actual record is what I wanted
Speaker 1: to get. The foodie She's like, it sounds like we
Speaker 1: did it already. It sounds kind of try we did
Speaker 1: that already. That sounds like Nappy has is so then
Speaker 1: the next beat comes on in this Fuji line, She's like,
Speaker 1: see that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 5: That's disgusting.
Speaker 1: So during that session for the Project Heads record, she
Speaker 1: was like, yo, play the Fat Joe beat.
Speaker 5: I'll play it. And then.
Speaker 1: Cleft jumps up we used to be number ten and
Speaker 1: spits his verse. Wow, and it was just like that
Speaker 1: was a moment, all right, cool, so you know what,
Speaker 1: we need to record that. So before they even really
Speaker 1: had the budget for the score, I had a studio.
Speaker 1: They came back and we finished recording Fujila. They got
Speaker 1: their second budget open. And then if you listen to
Speaker 1: how Cowboys sounds, which I think Forte did Cowboys or
Speaker 1: a co producer whatever, a lot of the records were
Speaker 1: made to kind of fit around the eclectic sound. The
Speaker 1: eclectic sound of what other records did you do on
Speaker 1: the score? I can't, It was just Fuji. So, I
Speaker 1: mean they ran out of the budget to pay me.
Speaker 1: So basically they took their budget and got their equipment.
Speaker 1: I told them the story, Oh my dad did it.
Speaker 1: You know, It's like go to the music store, Yo,
Speaker 1: I got this. I'm gonna give you this much in
Speaker 1: this many days we're gonna get this budget, and they
Speaker 1: used it to buy the MCI board, put it in
Speaker 1: the booget basement, did all their pieces recorded whatever it
Speaker 1: was there, hired Warree Reker to do what it needed
Speaker 1: to be, and then you know, Sean King did how
Speaker 1: many mics in a couple of beasts. Jerry was of
Speaker 1: course getting his chops on, playing bass, putting stuff together
Speaker 1: and then even Killing Me Softly, which Lauren originally wanted
Speaker 1: me to do her solo record for the album. Pro
Speaker 1: called me and said, Yo, you know the.
Speaker 5: Record Killing Me Softly? Who was gonna do that record?
Speaker 5: How would you do that? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I probably do kind of like flip flipped like the
Speaker 1: Apple bomb. Oh that's the same thing I was thinking.
Speaker 1: I call you right, yo, I know what happens, Yo,
Speaker 1: what's that record?
Speaker 2: Apple?
Speaker 5: I got an idea, I got an idea. I know
Speaker 5: you just said that Yo, this and that.
Speaker 1: Then if you listen to Killing Me Softly, the beat,
Speaker 1: the baseline on it is just like nappy Heads, boom boom, boom,
Speaker 1: boom boom. I never said something on nappy Heads. The
Speaker 1: bass notes are like the.
Speaker 5: The and.
Speaker 1: So it's boom boom boom. If you took that boom
Speaker 1: and unfiltered it. You hit typical drastic.
Speaker 5: No, no, what, it's super yo, and it's just filtered
Speaker 5: like a motherfucker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I don't know somehow, I don't know how
Speaker 1: I ended up having that, but I ended up having
Speaker 1: it and the piece and I actually just filtered. Well,
Speaker 1: I think I mighty just recorded it with just the
Speaker 1: base up.
Speaker 5: But that is fun. It gets drastic, you bastard.
Speaker 1: So you know that's so Killing me Softly is basically
Speaker 1: a copy of.
Speaker 4: That in hindsight, and you know, part family member and
Speaker 4: part outside of looking at whatever. Do you think that
Speaker 4: after eighteen million copies of that album sold, did it
Speaker 4: serve them well or not?
Speaker 5: H ah?
Speaker 12: Sorry to interrupt you, but you know to hear Salam's
Speaker 12: answer to that question. Tune in next week for Part two,
Speaker 12: West Love Supreme Minities just aalt Remen. We'll also talk
Speaker 12: more about nas Amy, White House, Cannabis.
Speaker 5: And much much more. All Right, see you next time.
Speaker 1: West Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more
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