Speaker 1: Of Course Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora This
Speaker 1: Sugar Steave.
Speaker 2: On this week's QLs classic hip hop artist, actor and
Speaker 2: poet Common talks about how being an NBA ball boy
Speaker 2: brought him court signed for Michael George's rookie season, his
Speaker 2: musical influences, and personal memories of his time with Jay Dillon.
Speaker 2: Recorded in front of a live audience, February twenty first,
Speaker 2: two thousand and eighty.
Speaker 1: Here we go, su Primo.
Speaker 3: It's up, Supremo, roll call Suprimo, Sun Supremo, roll.
Speaker 1: Call SUPREMEA wait, time out of timeout. Let y'all know,
Speaker 1: we never tell the guests what they're getting into. So
Speaker 1: those that are familiar that always wonder why the guests
Speaker 1: always mess up during the theme and why.
Speaker 4: His as so big right now, Like what the fuck?
Speaker 1: We literally don't tell them. We just pointed them and watched.
Speaker 1: We have fun at their expense all right. Time for
Speaker 1: the SI one two three.
Speaker 3: Supremo, Supremo, roll call Suprema s Supremo, roll call Suprema
Speaker 3: something something Supreme, roll call Subpremo something something Supremo.
Speaker 1: Roll com reck come from the shot. Yeah, they can
Speaker 1: looten large amounts. Yeah, Crochet and vegan free. You still
Speaker 1: can't count.
Speaker 3: Supremo, Suro Supremo something something Supremo roll call.
Speaker 1: My name ain't Sugar, My name ain't Bill. It's not
Speaker 1: like yah, my name is young.
Speaker 5: Sure, roll Suprema something Supremo.
Speaker 1: Roll was not nervous stage right. I want to make
Speaker 1: sure this roll call comes out just right.
Speaker 3: Supremo some some Supremo roll call Supremo some some Supremo roll.
Speaker 4: Yeah, here it testify, Yeah, and all his lies Supremo,
Speaker 4: Supremo roll call.
Speaker 6: Some Supremo roll call names common. Yeah, I'm for the people. Yeah,
Speaker 6: my boys from Philly. Yeah, grow Father Eagles, spre.
Speaker 5: Supremo, roll Suprema, some Supremo role call Supremo.
Speaker 3: Some some Supremo role called Supremo something something.
Speaker 1: Supremo roll call. Thank you, Thank you. Hey, ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: boys and girls. Uh, welcome to our very first live
Speaker 1: recording of Quest Love Supreme. Uh. I am Questlove. To
Speaker 1: the left of me is show producer. Uh and god
Speaker 1: boss Bill. That's right. I will try. My goal for
Speaker 1: this is not to make him angry with my rambling. Uh.
Speaker 1: And to his right, Uh, it's it's like yah as Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you're not broadcasting on Instagram.
Speaker 4: No, child, I would never do that.
Speaker 1: Uh. To the left of Uh. To the left of
Speaker 1: Liaiah is uh Sugar Steve, our longtime engineer UH for
Speaker 1: uh the hardest kind of the connecting force between uh
Speaker 1: common rash I'm talking about for he was h part
Speaker 1: of the engineering crew of Like Water for Chocolate and
Speaker 1: Electric Circus and Voodoo and all the Roots albums. Young Yea,
Speaker 1: we call him Young Gil. Yeah. And I'll say that
Speaker 1: we're recording right now in front of the live audience
Speaker 1: at the Grammacy Theater in Manhattan, kind of a part
Speaker 1: of a series of events hosted by the legendary Roots.
Speaker 1: I'm saying the Roots crew, like I don't know those
Speaker 1: guys crew celebrating the return of the Grammys in New
Speaker 1: York City. And yes, so I'll say that our guest
Speaker 1: today can be described I guess he's all things to
Speaker 1: all people. Uh. As an actor, he's appeared in over
Speaker 1: account at thirty Man, you've been your residuals must be nice, man,
Speaker 1: and over thirty TV Film and States productions from TV
Speaker 1: comedies as Scrubs, The Simpsons, The Mindy Project, UH to
Speaker 1: the AMC drama hell On Wills uh to acting alongside
Speaker 1: heavyweights like Denzel Washington and American Gangster Ryan Reynolds and
Speaker 1: Smoking Aces, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Joli and Want for Us,
Speaker 1: Whitaker and Street Kings, Tina Fey and Date Night. UH.
Speaker 1: Not to mention he's been in Selma, Suicide Squad, John
Speaker 1: Wick two, Let Me Give Yes, even his Oscar winning
Speaker 1: performance in the BT classic Brooklyn Babbelon. He's also an
Speaker 1: actorate actress. He's a damn man. He's an activist, community leader,
Speaker 1: a film and TV producer. But it's probably uh. I
Speaker 1: guess he's He's best loved as a street poet at MC.
Speaker 1: He's a two time Grammy winner, a Golden Globe and
Speaker 1: an Oscar winner, currently nominated for UH two time Oscar nominee.
Speaker 1: I should say uh. He has eleven studio albums, all
Speaker 1: ranging in different styles. I mean he's worked with some
Speaker 1: of the best in the business, from UH four forty
Speaker 1: four producer no I d who's currently for a Producer
Speaker 1: of the Year UH to Alicia Keys to Laurence Hill
Speaker 1: that they sold the cut Tip the Most Stuff to
Speaker 1: Ice Cue to Kanye West, to fro Yes Yes Yes,
Speaker 1: to the Roots, to the Great Jay Dillar to Kanye West,
Speaker 1: to Stevie Wonder. We don't have that much time. Come on,
Speaker 1: like he anyways shows over thanks every day.
Speaker 7: He's really trying to make a big someday.
Speaker 1: Welcome newcomer, common to quest Love, Superior, Lazy, thank you,
Speaker 1: Thanks y'all, Thank y'all for having me. I'm excited. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna put my headphones on so I can hear you.
Speaker 1: So you said you're excited.
Speaker 6: Yeah, man, I mean this feels good like I mean
Speaker 6: it's for me. It's like we're having a mirror and
Speaker 6: you is.
Speaker 7: The exciting thing probably ever feel well.
Speaker 6: In my top, in my top three hundred and sixty three,
Speaker 6: seriously and sixty two.
Speaker 1: It feels great to be coming on here. Thank you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like it's people. I know, it's great to see us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I forgot to warn you that this is going
Speaker 1: to be live in front of an audience as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah he did called him like, hey, you want to
Speaker 1: be on the show, just stop by.
Speaker 4: Already already got the warning, Like you don't do no, gotcha,
Speaker 4: Yeah I do god, he got he do? Gotcha good me?
Speaker 4: I know I'll get you good. No, I mean we're
Speaker 4: gonna warm up first.
Speaker 1: But actually, you know what, it's as long as I've
Speaker 1: known you, I mean, I've known you for like twenty years,
Speaker 1: but I don't know much about uh, your childhood or
Speaker 1: just your the beginning, your your your pre emc years.
Speaker 1: I assume that you were born in Chicago, correct, Yeah,
Speaker 1: born in Chicago? What part?
Speaker 6: I was born and raised on the South side of Chicago,
Speaker 6: the Hospital County Hospital to be specific. And the funny thing,
Speaker 6: my father always, my father, my father and my mother
Speaker 6: always argued over if it was raining or snowing when
Speaker 6: I was born. And that's I put that in one
Speaker 6: of my new raps now because it's it was always
Speaker 6: a significant thing. My father used to stick with that,
Speaker 6: even though when they weren't together. He was like, it
Speaker 6: was snowing when you was born, and my mother always
Speaker 6: say it was raining.
Speaker 1: But who knows? All right, So can you explain to me?
Speaker 1: I mean, because now, especially in the political climate that
Speaker 1: we're in, this whole like hashtag what about Chicago? What
Speaker 1: about Chicago? I mean, explain, explain to me what the
Speaker 1: South side of Chicago was like growing up in the
Speaker 1: seventies and the eighties, and then because my thoughts of
Speaker 1: it are just like, Okay, well there's good times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know that they've had the largest amount of housing projects.
Speaker 1: And then yeah in the United States with Kabete Green
Speaker 1: and but just I mean explain to you, like do
Speaker 1: you have fond memories or warm, fuzzy memories. They always
Speaker 1: make it seem like it's like Beroot Circuit nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: like don't you ever go to like that sort of thing?
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, well, Chicago is a very segregated city.
Speaker 6: Let me start there, and it was actually founded by
Speaker 6: a black man, a Haitian brother by the name of
Speaker 6: John Baptist Tusavo. Black culture has been there strong, like
Speaker 6: all the depth of black culture meaning church, liquor stores,
Speaker 6: gang banging, black excellence music, all that was so for
Speaker 6: me growing up, it was like I was around affluent
Speaker 6: black I was in a lower black middle class neighborhood,
Speaker 6: but I was around affluent black people and also around
Speaker 6: you know dudes that was gang banging.
Speaker 1: That was part of the culture. But it also was
Speaker 1: like a.
Speaker 6: Black love movement too, Like we had the Black peat
Speaker 6: Stones and the Black Panthers also existed, and they worked
Speaker 6: together at certain points, and then you know, we we
Speaker 6: at one point in the mid eighties had our first
Speaker 6: black mayor. He was our Barack Obama. His name was
Speaker 6: Harold Washington Mayor Harold Washington. So it gave our city
Speaker 6: a lot of a lot of pride to see a leader.
Speaker 6: In fact, at some point, I believe Barack Obama worked
Speaker 6: on some in some shape form of fashion on one
Speaker 6: of Harold Washington's campaigns. But it just really gave me
Speaker 6: a foundation, and a lot of black people growing up
Speaker 6: in Chicago a foundation and an identity like we knew
Speaker 6: who we we knew who we were. And it was
Speaker 6: not all violence. It definitely was some violence there, and
Speaker 6: crazy enough, in the mid nineties, the violent the rates
Speaker 6: of murder murders were higher at that time than they
Speaker 6: are now. But it's just like a big highlight going
Speaker 6: on right now. And it is really tough right now
Speaker 6: because of the fact that you have a lot of
Speaker 6: innocent and young and you know, people just walking bystanders
Speaker 6: being killed and it didn't seem like that was the situation.
Speaker 6: But no matter what, we don't want any of the
Speaker 6: violence but it's also such a beautiful city.
Speaker 1: You've been there, well, growing up close to a city
Speaker 1: that was also similarly affected across the river in Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: It's Camden, New Jersey. And because they had the Coca
Speaker 1: Cola bottling industry and also Campbell soup factories, everyone was
Speaker 1: employed and you know, it was kind of like a
Speaker 1: working class society over there. And then once those those
Speaker 1: two companies went elsewhere, and it was desolate and then
Speaker 1: there was a rising crime. Like was there an exodus or.
Speaker 4: What was the moment when they started to change?
Speaker 6: Well, I think the moment was was Obviously the war
Speaker 6: on drugs was part of it because that started taking
Speaker 6: men out of the homes, Black men out of homes.
Speaker 6: And then on another level, even to be honest, like
Speaker 6: the when the higher up ranking gang members started getting
Speaker 6: removed from that culture, then it was like the younger
Speaker 6: gang guys was like didn't have an order. It's almost
Speaker 6: like when you watch those mob movies. If somebody that
Speaker 6: that that's in the top gets taken away, then it's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: it's just it was part of that. That was part
Speaker 6: of it, but on a bigger scale, it was the
Speaker 6: it was the War on drugs and and also drugs
Speaker 6: just being in our neighborhood. And then like when a
Speaker 6: lot of opportunities got stripped away, and I don't know
Speaker 6: what industry it was, but just jobs started getting stripped away,
Speaker 6: so that that contributed with drugs was a big part
Speaker 6: of it.
Speaker 1: Did you how did you avoid uh? Gang bang and culture?
Speaker 1: Like how did you avoid or did you or could you?
Speaker 1: I mean like going walking to school? Is it like well,
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 6: It's it almost is no way to avoid it if
Speaker 6: you are I don't, din't. It didn't matter what Like
Speaker 6: I'm my mother's a teacher, my stepfather is a plumber.
Speaker 6: I grew up like for me, that was I had
Speaker 6: a decent home, like I had parents that cared. I
Speaker 6: had an opportunity to go to After the public schools
Speaker 6: went on strike, my mother was like, we're getting you
Speaker 6: into private school.
Speaker 1: She worked hard.
Speaker 6: I got into private school, so I had opportunities, but
Speaker 6: I also didn't. I still had to rub up against
Speaker 6: gang culture because on my.
Speaker 1: Block it's dudes. This this part of either.
Speaker 6: The Blackstones or four corner hustlers. That's when neighborhood. I
Speaker 6: grew up around vice lords, so it was no way
Speaker 6: I was avoiding it. My way was to be involved
Speaker 6: but not go too crazy. And that's just honestly what
Speaker 6: I did. I was like a part of it, but
Speaker 6: I was like, I'm not going over here to be
Speaker 6: to start shooting. I'm gonna go over here to just
Speaker 6: like make it through. And y'all know I'm down, but
Speaker 6: I ain't. You ain't gonna see me.
Speaker 4: Chill a little, smoke a little, drink a little.
Speaker 1: And be on your way right and no fight a little.
Speaker 4: Okay. I was about to say, what kind of in school,
Speaker 4: I'm wondering what that but.
Speaker 6: But but my point is it wasn't I had a
Speaker 6: What kept me out of it, to be honest, was
Speaker 6: that I had some type of vision for myself or
Speaker 6: a dream for myself. And honestly, that did start with
Speaker 6: like first it was basketball. Then it came into hip hop,
Speaker 6: and I know that sounds so traditional black like, but
Speaker 6: but then it was just more or less just being like, Okay,
Speaker 6: I see Muhammad Ali, I see Michael Jackson, I see
Speaker 6: these people that are thriving that I look as hero
Speaker 6: look up to as heroes. I want to be something.
Speaker 6: So I never decided to go like I knew dudes.
Speaker 6: That was like, there was the those guys, there was shooters.
Speaker 4: But did they look at you like that too? Did
Speaker 4: they look at you like, dude, look like he got
Speaker 4: a little potential wing?
Speaker 1: Gone?
Speaker 6: I wasn't that now. It wasn't like I was a
Speaker 6: superstar basketball player. Nobody like where they like, we're gonna
Speaker 6: leave him alone. It just is like they they saw
Speaker 6: it went and go go all the way over there.
Speaker 6: And then some of them dudes are just doing that stuff.
Speaker 6: That man, they ain't have no no parents in the house.
Speaker 6: And it's like and I had, yeah, two and my
Speaker 6: mother is a strong figure in my life.
Speaker 1: You know. So you were a ball boy doing the
Speaker 1: classic Jordan era of the Bulls. Correct, Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: like what year, like idyt was?
Speaker 6: Okay, So I was a ball boy from like eighty
Speaker 6: four to eighty six. So I remember Michael Jordan's first
Speaker 6: exhibition game. I remember specifically he had a red radio
Speaker 6: playing Houdini and Rod throwing.
Speaker 1: The general manager was like, no, you can't play this music.
Speaker 6: And after that first exhibition game, he could play whatever
Speaker 6: he wanted.
Speaker 1: Basically, did you did you know then that? All right?
Speaker 1: You know, like we knew Diyla and we knew Dila
Speaker 1: was God even when he was lifting. Was Shee and
Speaker 1: Michael Jordan that level? Did you already know that this
Speaker 1: guy is like on another level? That? Yeah? It was.
Speaker 6: It was that that rookie year that I really because
Speaker 6: it was something electrifying about him. And we had never
Speaker 6: seen anybody hanging in the air enough respect to doctor
Speaker 6: j but we we hadn't seen we hadn't seen anybody
Speaker 6: hanging away in the air away Mike did the flare
Speaker 6: he brought. He brought an energy and a flare and
Speaker 6: the area that we hadn't seen in the NBA. And
Speaker 6: then they knew how to market it too, Like I could.
Speaker 6: I could remember watching his local commercials for Chevrolet and
Speaker 6: different things that he did, and I was like, he
Speaker 6: just became immediately one of our greatest heroes and people
Speaker 6: we looked up to.
Speaker 1: And in Chicago.
Speaker 6: But then it started translating across the NBA, so we
Speaker 6: knew after that first season, we knew and it was
Speaker 6: like when he came out and started wearing his own
Speaker 6: Air Jordan gear, we were like, damn, this is incredible.
Speaker 6: In Chicago, we just embraced it like this is our guy.
Speaker 6: You got to think we had Oprah.
Speaker 1: Around that starting to come at that time too.
Speaker 7: So Steve Kerr, that's my dude.
Speaker 4: You did you have one of them corny moments with
Speaker 4: him as a ball boy?
Speaker 1: He said, he ever give you like a pair of
Speaker 1: sneakers from the first year? Oh man, I had, I gotta.
Speaker 6: I got a pair of his shoes, and I actually
Speaker 6: ended up giving them to my father.
Speaker 1: No, oh, okay, no, it's just father. Yeah, I heard it,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to walk it back. The words
Speaker 1: you know already came out to my dad. My dad,
Speaker 1: the one who got me the job or whatever.
Speaker 6: But my dad used to wear them to my shows
Speaker 6: and I'd be like, what are you doing when Michael
Speaker 6: Jordan's actual actual sneakers off the seat?
Speaker 1: What year? What year?
Speaker 6: This was eighty five? It was the first one, the
Speaker 6: first one. Yeah, and we used yo, the first Jordan's.
Speaker 6: I mean, I had him off his feet, he signed
Speaker 6: them and everything. But in all truth, I used to
Speaker 6: get all types of nothing as great as MIC's. But
Speaker 6: I used to get Magic's Isaiahs because I worked the
Speaker 6: visiting team's locker room, so I would get Magic Isaiah's.
Speaker 6: I would you know you remember those weapons. Yes, I
Speaker 6: used to get those. But you know what I would do.
Speaker 6: I would my teachers would. I would when I would
Speaker 6: get in trouble, I would either trade the seekers fuck
Speaker 6: but or I used to sell them. Honestly, A crazy
Speaker 6: story that happened with me. And when Michael was like
Speaker 6: these kids was I mean, they were my age and
Speaker 6: maybe a little older. They was like, man, can you
Speaker 6: get us Mike Michael Jordan's autograph? Can you get us
Speaker 6: the autographs pregame and I was like, yeah, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: I'll do it.
Speaker 6: I need five dollars and then so I went to
Speaker 6: get Yeah. I when I got the you know paper,
Speaker 6: went down to Mic and was like, man, you know,
Speaker 6: can you sign this for me?
Speaker 4: Man?
Speaker 1: I want take it up to these kids. He's like, oh, Man,
Speaker 1: you sign it. You know.
Speaker 6: He was just kind of in a joking mood. You
Speaker 6: signed it, you could. So I signed it, took it
Speaker 6: up to the kids and it was like, hey man,
Speaker 6: I got my five out of and they was like
Speaker 6: just the worst part. They was like, wait, Michael was
Speaker 6: spelled wrong. Man, Michael, get.
Speaker 4: The money back.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they had to get that money back. I wasn't
Speaker 6: the best house Sler, but I was in de.
Speaker 1: Mi e A l Ex. I always used to mess
Speaker 1: that up.
Speaker 4: It's a lot of prices.
Speaker 1: I made that mistake when when uh I had a
Speaker 1: T shirt made before uh, one of those Iron one
Speaker 1: T shirts that you get on the boardwalk before I
Speaker 1: went to the Victory Tour and the guy let me
Speaker 1: spell Michael Mike Hill instead of A E L.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I wasn't. The only one was the victory was
Speaker 6: the victory? The victory to it? That wasn't your first
Speaker 6: concert because that was my first concert I ever went to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, mine was trying and then Victory Tour.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they got that question.
Speaker 7: Okay, mine was Steve Kerr. I went to Steve Kerr concert.
Speaker 1: So bad. I never saw Michael concerts. But what was
Speaker 1: I will not admit that. You gotta say it, you
Speaker 1: gotta say it. Remember that song, Gangstalyn, this song dedicated
Speaker 1: That was my first concert, Steve?
Speaker 7: What was your That was Billy Joel at the Garden?
Speaker 1: I mean he's trying to be cool. I think yours
Speaker 1: was weird. Yank Victor. I mean you just want to
Speaker 1: be cool on the record and be like, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Billy Joe. When did oh God, this is such a
Speaker 1: cliche movement. So when did hip hop? When did you
Speaker 1: fall in love with him? Like way back? No, so
Speaker 1: what what was my life? What was what was by
Speaker 1: things fall apart? I know? What was hip hop's culture
Speaker 1: in Chicago growing up? I mean, well, who were the
Speaker 1: local heroes? Who? Who did you see? It was like
Speaker 1: I want to do that.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean it was honestly just us loving just
Speaker 6: anything that came out of New York, West Coast Philly.
Speaker 6: You know, we we were up on any We were
Speaker 6: just seeking out hip hop because once by the time
Speaker 6: you know, obviously Africa, Bambarda and and you know grand
Speaker 6: Master Flash and the Furious Five, that was early. But
Speaker 6: by the time run DMC that it had us Run
Speaker 6: demn c l L. Then Eric being Rock Kim came.
Speaker 6: But so we were we were like just soaking up everything.
Speaker 1: We weren't.
Speaker 6: That's why even when I listened to some of my
Speaker 6: first early some of the earlier music I made, first albums,
Speaker 6: it was like I could hit a mixture of the
Speaker 6: influence of k Arrest to Ice n W A two
Speaker 6: to rock Him, you know, like I could hear those
Speaker 6: influences because we were soaking it all in.
Speaker 1: And you know, so, yeah, that's what. That's what.
Speaker 6: Because Chicago had a real strong house music scene. So
Speaker 6: the people that were the Chicago heroes as far as
Speaker 6: hip hop goes, was more like DJ's on the radio.
Speaker 6: It wasn't really a lot of rap artists that was like,
Speaker 6: y'all put Chicago on the map. In fact, our first
Speaker 6: artist was Twister. They came out for Chicago.
Speaker 4: Really that's the first.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean it came out on record, like that
Speaker 6: was the first.
Speaker 4: So when did you know you could put it? When
Speaker 4: did you know you could put pen the paper?
Speaker 1: Well, I was with my cousin.
Speaker 6: I used to visit my cousin in Cincinnati like every summer,
Speaker 6: and I don't have a big family, so we that
Speaker 6: was like one of my best friends and uh we
Speaker 6: we had these dudes that was a little bit older
Speaker 6: than us. They was like Cincinnati's run DMC. Their name
Speaker 6: was the bond Hill Crew, so we used to that
Speaker 6: was the neighborhood my cousin and stayed at bond Hill,
Speaker 6: So we were like they were. He wrote, So I
Speaker 6: was like, man that said, this is seventh grade. I
Speaker 6: remember sitting there. We was we were up late night
Speaker 6: and I was like, man, let's write some raps. But
Speaker 6: my cousin might have said let's write some raps. So
Speaker 6: I wrote my I wrote my rap, he wrote his,
Speaker 6: and then that next day when we started saying it,
Speaker 6: everybody was like responding to my rap, and I was like, Yo,
Speaker 6: this is a great feeling. Like I was like, this
Speaker 6: is incredible, and and then uh.
Speaker 1: Like they knew my rap.
Speaker 6: And then I started writing for some of my friends
Speaker 6: and it was just like, oh man, I.
Speaker 1: Could really really do this.
Speaker 6: And it came from me loving I loved like James
Speaker 6: Bowing and Langston Hughes and and then I loved hip hop.
Speaker 6: Hip Hop was the thing that I'm not like as
Speaker 6: gifted as this guy over here with with the music
Speaker 6: and all like her.
Speaker 1: Now a man knows all this music.
Speaker 6: So so anyway, I'm gonna kick some of my first rap.
Speaker 4: Oh ship, all right, let's go.
Speaker 1: The first wrap wrote BeBox Force Wait I gotta be
Speaker 1: no wait wait wait wait wait wait, hang on, hang on,
Speaker 1: hang on, hang on Today today Uh.
Speaker 6: Well, let me tell you about a trip A time
Speaker 6: was go. I was going there to run a cold
Speaker 6: bloody show. When I was there, I saw some people
Speaker 6: jamming too. They called themselves the Bond. He'll Cool, Doctor Ice,
Speaker 6: Romeo and Master eat all of the Bond hell Cool
Speaker 6: rapp into her tea. I still could day rock with me,
Speaker 6: that's all.
Speaker 1: I remember your first your first, Come on, man, I
Speaker 1: remember my first verse. I don't. I was always the
Speaker 1: beat maker. I was. I was the oneach table guy.
Speaker 4: He killed the last night you were rock and y'all
Speaker 4: know you be boxing?
Speaker 1: Was she?
Speaker 4: She? She style?
Speaker 1: It was probably the highlight, and I wasn't expecting it
Speaker 1: to be the highlight at all, but it was. We
Speaker 1: did the Death Fresh Crew tonight to get out to.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was. It was dope anyway. Yeah, for those
Speaker 1: that are listening, Uh, the roots have nightly jam sessions
Speaker 1: all throughout Grammy weekend. Last night we had wide Cleft Jean,
Speaker 1: We had Roxane Chante. Uh, we had Tatha g from
Speaker 1: him to me. She came and did juicy fruit. What
Speaker 1: it sounded, Yeah, it was I'm coming tonight. Yeah, rock
Speaker 1: on all right, so we might see some August green
Speaker 1: action happen tonight. So were you I can't hear you anyway,
Speaker 1: So did you? Were you always common sense? No? What
Speaker 1: was your first? Yeah? Give me the evolution of your names,
Speaker 1: because no one that's their names now was ever their names. Like,
Speaker 1: what was your first few names?
Speaker 6: One of my first names was the Black Poet Cayden,
Speaker 6: I don't know, I don't know where that came. And
Speaker 6: then I was just in a group called c DR,
Speaker 6: which was just still for Corey Dion and Rashid Dian
Speaker 6: has no idea who we talked about earlier. So yeah,
Speaker 6: he actually rhymed, but he was more producing, but he
Speaker 6: was kind of doing the producer rhyme thing. Pete Rackish, yeah,
Speaker 6: but so them those are the only names. Only Rashied
Speaker 6: and then the Black Poet K and then I had
Speaker 6: some other name but I can't remember. Man, they were whack.
Speaker 6: I came up with common sense. I was going to
Speaker 6: school down at Florida and them, and they used to
Speaker 6: call weed senci over.
Speaker 1: They may still have it done.
Speaker 6: And one boy was sitting there smoking some weed one
Speaker 6: time and I was like, my mother used to always say, boy,
Speaker 6: you better use common sense, and I for some reason
Speaker 6: the two just connected and I was like, man, I'm
Speaker 6: gonna use the name common sense, and I just shouted
Speaker 6: it out. My friends were like, yeah, that's that's decent.
Speaker 6: Always thought it was like a name that was unique
Speaker 6: but still kind of every day.
Speaker 1: And when when.
Speaker 6: The band actually sued me for my name, that's when
Speaker 6: I lost my hand.
Speaker 1: Man, you know I was I was stressed out.
Speaker 6: Really yeah, you know I was gonna lose my hand anyway.
Speaker 6: But but but the gist of it was, you can't
Speaker 6: be your name no more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't.
Speaker 6: You know you think you're like, man, I've built up.
Speaker 6: This was after the resurrection. My second I'm like, I'm
Speaker 6: just getting to be known as something. Somebody knows who
Speaker 6: I am. And now y'all taking away the name common
Speaker 6: sense I was, you know, all the.
Speaker 1: Greats go through it, like Biggie Smalls couldn't have been
Speaker 1: Biggie Smalls. We couldn't have been Square Roots. Yeah that's right.
Speaker 4: You couldn't have been Square Roots.
Speaker 1: Because there was a band in Philly.
Speaker 6: Uh that threaten Are you glad?
Speaker 1: I know you glad you took off the squad now
Speaker 1: and I'm glad. Are you? Do you still miss Commons?
Speaker 1: Well we still call you common sense? Yeah, but I
Speaker 1: mean I don't miss common sense.
Speaker 6: I actually felt like it was all divine order, you
Speaker 6: know how you want some bad and then you look
Speaker 6: look back and be like, oh, this's worked out right,
Speaker 6: because you know, common kind of represents the every day
Speaker 6: person that I believe I am, and I think people
Speaker 6: just really.
Speaker 1: Really that to day. Come on, just because he has
Speaker 1: this perception that because you have a specific gig that
Speaker 1: you're just disconnected from people like you don't have cousins
Speaker 1: like you don't have the same friends like you don't.
Speaker 1: Just because you have that journey to another level doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that the nine other people in your life are
Speaker 1: in that position.
Speaker 4: Both regular people, I got it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're common folks. Look, I'm learning sneakers by a kid.
Speaker 4: I want to say nothing, but I was wondering if
Speaker 4: that was a fascist thing.
Speaker 1: Man, I did Pete that. I was like, I have
Speaker 1: you have a deal with that. I'm trolling Kanye So
Speaker 1: we're you know, even though Adidas is our sponsor. You know, suddenly, uh,
Speaker 1: when it's time for okay, I just said I was
Speaker 1: a man of the people, but then I'm about to
Speaker 1: do someone i'm talking about's office to get my new yeezies.
Speaker 4: You're right, what common people do?
Speaker 1: Suddenly I feel like I feel like, well, no, it's
Speaker 1: just my way of hustling. Uh. For some reason, there's
Speaker 1: been a shutdown of me getting There's a rumor out
Speaker 1: that I've been disrespecting his brand and by dogging them,
Speaker 1: And my my argument was like, who told you to
Speaker 1: make such a comfortable ass sneaker?
Speaker 4: Of course I'm gonna work well because you do wear
Speaker 4: them to the Oh you're supposed to rock them fresh.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I've rocked a few pair of Yeezis that
Speaker 1: I've rocked so much that they look like broken down
Speaker 1: convert sneakers, like sneakers be leaning to the side and
Speaker 1: all that stuff and so much. Disagreeted, he was sort
Speaker 1: of like, stop disrespecting my brand, Like, get you some
Speaker 1: new Yeezy's, Like I can now that's a one percent shit,
Speaker 1: spend another three thousand dollars on my sneakers like that
Speaker 1: sort of thing.
Speaker 4: Enough, do you automatically get the new Yeasis when they
Speaker 4: come out or does he let you know what is it?
Speaker 1: Well? Sometimes I get them, sometimes I don't. Actually, you
Speaker 1: know crochets are You're right?
Speaker 6: Oh man, he does need to make me some special
Speaker 6: some like water for chocolate additions.
Speaker 1: So anyway, my electric circus, my my protests my protests
Speaker 1: to UH to his UH blocking me from getting his
Speaker 1: easies was I took all of my white easies and
Speaker 1: had them custom pain Holy Ikia Walmart level comm have
Speaker 1: some money? Yeah she does anyway. So in Florida, A
Speaker 1: and M like, I became aware of you because of
Speaker 1: source onund sign hight Uh Okay for those that were
Speaker 1: born after do we really have to explain that ninety
Speaker 1: Yes we do because it's twenty eighteen and some people
Speaker 1: might not know what the source was, like why he
Speaker 1: was born in nineteen ninety sources? Oh you do, you're
Speaker 1: born in eighty six. Okay, y'all know.
Speaker 4: What the source is magazine these grown folks, that's right.
Speaker 1: But we're broadcasting over on Pandora for four point five
Speaker 1: million people. So anyway, there's there's a section in the
Speaker 1: former Bible of hip hop whatever that is called unsigned hype,
Speaker 1: and we just went through that. Right, Well, I'll do it.
Speaker 1: See this is what I'm talking about. I don't have
Speaker 1: anger anyway, so common that's how I knew of you
Speaker 1: because you were in the unsigned hype back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one ninety two. So did you work on your
Speaker 1: demo at.
Speaker 6: Florida A and m or I worked on the demo
Speaker 6: before we got to a FAM, before I got to
Speaker 6: Florida and them, and then we sent that demo out
Speaker 6: and we heard that we had got selected for I'm
Speaker 6: saying we because they always felt like it was collective.
Speaker 6: It was me and no I d Twilight Tone, even
Speaker 6: our manager Derek.
Speaker 1: You know how everything feels. Wait, r no, not rhyman. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: let's let's keep things.
Speaker 6: I know Derek, I was like, what, yeah, But I mean,
Speaker 6: you know, like most managers, he wanted to rhyme or
Speaker 6: do something creative, but nah, he's he stuck to the business.
Speaker 6: But when we got selected for for that Unsigned Hype,
Speaker 6: that was like a big moment for me, Like it
Speaker 6: was being from Chicago and and also like being at
Speaker 6: a black college. It's just everybody was like, whoa, you
Speaker 6: actually might be able to do something with this MC
Speaker 6: and thing. Because my mother was like, she barely even
Speaker 6: knew I rapped, really when I first got offered, Like
Speaker 6: that's honestly how we got signed that because they were
Speaker 6: Relativity Records was doing an album with the Unsigned Hype.
Speaker 6: They had Biggie, they had Mob Deep, they had all
Speaker 6: of us all these because Biggie was unsign Hype, so
Speaker 6: it was mob deep. They had all of was doing
Speaker 6: an album and it never the project never went through.
Speaker 6: So they ended up pulling me and saying, man, we're
Speaker 6: gonna sign you to you know, we're thinking about signing you.
Speaker 6: So we had a meeting and man, that's how I
Speaker 6: got signed from from that source unsigned hype.
Speaker 1: And as you said, the source was the I mean.
Speaker 6: Every time I made an album project at that time,
Speaker 6: like please, can I get five mics in the source?
Speaker 1: You know we all wanted that, did you all? You
Speaker 1: all got five mics for we got to four and
Speaker 1: a half, but you got a I think four and
Speaker 1: a half is better than the five, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So be got four and a half? Right, yeah? Probably?
Speaker 6: So yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 4: You were an unsigned Hype longer than you were at them.
Speaker 4: Is that dumb? I've heard one semester, I've heard a month.
Speaker 6: I was there for a year and a half. But
Speaker 6: I will say, no, you're not gonna tell the story,
Speaker 6: are you.
Speaker 1: No? I got straight a's.
Speaker 6: I got straight a's my second's at FAM so and
Speaker 6: I was majoring in business administration, like going to professional
Speaker 6: development classes and all that.
Speaker 1: What story was you talking about? Man? No, Well, the
Speaker 1: you remember the Canada border story with so you know,
Speaker 1: you know you have to tell the story now. No, okay, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: it's okay. Basically, he was on tour with us. Let him,
Speaker 1: let him tell the Well, let me set up the preface.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that this was ninety This was ninety nine,
Speaker 1: two thousand and Probably it's easier now because I think
Speaker 1: now that we're of age, that a lot of officers
Speaker 1: and people in authority are kind of our age, so
Speaker 1: they recognize us now. But back then, you know, to
Speaker 1: get into Canada, Like it's easier for me to get
Speaker 1: into the Middle Eastern Dubai than it is to fly
Speaker 1: into Canada.
Speaker 4: Yeah, y'all had a few situations the roots. I remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we had a lot. So the silliest one of
Speaker 1: all was they made to, you know, the beginning of
Speaker 1: The Simpsons when Bart has to write on the board
Speaker 1: like I will not talk in class, I will not
Speaker 1: like just to mess with Rashid and Tarique for small stuff,
Speaker 1: like they had to write a two page book report
Speaker 1: on the merits of human responsibility and how they're you know,
Speaker 1: And then I asked roch, like, what happened? What's on
Speaker 1: your record? And you told me the okay, So I mean,
Speaker 1: just to be real open and stuff.
Speaker 6: It's all good. So I was, you know, at college,
Speaker 6: and you know, I'm a Chicago kid. We had a
Speaker 6: little bit of just slickness to us, hustle and stuff,
Speaker 6: and like I said, I was doing different things.
Speaker 1: But so so.
Speaker 6: One of my one of the guys we knew from Chicago,
Speaker 6: had a roommate who they kind of looked alike. So
Speaker 6: me and my guys talked to him and say, yo,
Speaker 6: you need to get his I D and and checks
Speaker 6: and we're going to shopping.
Speaker 1: So we ended up made so sweet ended real week
Speaker 1: that this is.
Speaker 6: The story we ended up. He got the checks in
Speaker 6: the in the in the I D. We ended up
Speaker 6: going all around Tallahassee buying TVs, buying sweatsuit.
Speaker 1: Whoa, this is another story. I was you might want
Speaker 1: to walk this back, Brora.
Speaker 6: Obviously I got caught up on this one. I wouldn't
Speaker 6: be talking about giving a convention to a murder making
Speaker 6: a murder of course.
Speaker 1: Love.
Speaker 6: So so we we go shopping everywhere sweatsuits, everything.
Speaker 1: We down to the last store.
Speaker 6: It's been an all day excursion and and uh, man,
Speaker 6: we see he taking a long time in that at
Speaker 6: the mars called Government Square mall.
Speaker 1: He taking a long time in Themorrow. He come.
Speaker 6: We see him coming out. He coming out handcuffs. Now
Speaker 6: mind you, I'm just the dude driving and you know,
Speaker 6: taking them around at every store. So we're like, damn,
Speaker 6: he got caught. He got locked up. So we were
Speaker 6: waiting at the house and I remember specifically, we was
Speaker 6: watching American Music Awards Michael Jackson. We watching it on
Speaker 6: the new TV, Michael Jackson sitting there and we're telling it,
Speaker 6: eating it like, man, we got to wait to get
Speaker 6: that car.
Speaker 1: And we had Yeah, We're like, what's up? Who is that?
Speaker 1: And then it's the police. We got your house around it.
Speaker 6: They come in on us, and mind you, it was
Speaker 6: other it was other cats there with us. Actually it
Speaker 6: was one of my friends that kind of led the
Speaker 6: way that actually was a good persuader and led the
Speaker 6: way out. Like I said, I was the driver, but
Speaker 6: for some reason a guy who got caught only pointed
Speaker 6: me out. So I ended up getting knocked up and
Speaker 6: I ended up having to do the thing where you
Speaker 6: pick up trash on the on the highway. Yeah, community
Speaker 6: service community, you said FAM because the other situation was
Speaker 6: another thing.
Speaker 1: But it was this other thing.
Speaker 4: If people do.
Speaker 1: Look, look, you know that that years it happened. It happened.
Speaker 1: So sorry for bringing that up. I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: I love that you lived all these lives.
Speaker 6: I mean, I feel like I feel like at the
Speaker 6: end of the day, you grow and learn. You know,
Speaker 6: I ain't you know, ain't nobody trying to move like
Speaker 6: that now. But you know that was that was the
Speaker 6: thing where you kind of like get influenced to I
Speaker 6: take responsibility, but for what what I do?
Speaker 1: You know? But it was what I did too.
Speaker 6: But it was like, man, you really can't like at
Speaker 6: a group like because I wasn't initially my idea, but
Speaker 6: I'm like, okay, I'm driving and what's so crazy on
Speaker 6: some on some serious stuff like you know, I've been
Speaker 6: going to visit, you know, going to visit prisons and
Speaker 6: talking with people inside it that's incarcerated, and I've met
Speaker 6: people that are doing life sentences for being in the
Speaker 6: car for something.
Speaker 1: So it put things in perspective.
Speaker 6: For me, like, yeah, how many times I don't mean
Speaker 6: it gets so serious, but it's real.
Speaker 7: How many times that night did you say the following sentence,
Speaker 7: I'm just the driver, I'm.
Speaker 1: Just the driver.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they weren't going for that man, they you know
Speaker 6: I was. I was sitting there thinking like, why did
Speaker 6: you only point me out? Not that I wanted to
Speaker 6: point anybody else, but just like be quiet at that point.
Speaker 4: But and this is postman post raight A's just to
Speaker 4: be clear, I mean.
Speaker 1: This is doing fam. This was faum straight A's day.
Speaker 4: So that's ill because now you got a daughter. It's
Speaker 4: funny because I look on Instagram and I see your
Speaker 4: daughters in college. So it's a totally different experience looking
Speaker 4: at what she's going through versus what you went through
Speaker 4: and you sharing those stories with her.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean that's why I'm grateful that I went
Speaker 6: through those things. Obviously, I'm grateful that I came out
Speaker 6: of it on a on a positive side, because one
Speaker 6: thing I did I always say no matter how much
Speaker 6: like things that I did, I wasn't like, like I said,
Speaker 6: I want no killer, but my.
Speaker 1: Heart was always good.
Speaker 6: I never really wanted to damage people, but I just
Speaker 6: get caught up in stuff and do certain things. But
Speaker 6: you know, I know, obviously stealing from somebody was damaging
Speaker 6: some way or another.
Speaker 4: But you made it sound real, innocent and good though.
Speaker 4: But it was a college Obviously. You a lover, not
Speaker 4: a fighter. I hear it in your spirit.
Speaker 1: I only fight for the right. How can we get
Speaker 1: to the first record?
Speaker 6: So that.
Speaker 1: God? Well you you were first signing Relativity Records? Correct,
Speaker 1: So just that whole? What was your whole? I don't know,
Speaker 1: like your aspirations. Once you had a record deal, did
Speaker 1: you feel like well, first of all, how did you
Speaker 1: explain to your mom that you're not going to go
Speaker 1: back to school? And you know, my story was that
Speaker 1: my dad didn't know about the Roots until the second album? No, seriously,
Speaker 1: he didn't know until do you want more? So Olive
Speaker 1: organics like I just hit you and he thought I
Speaker 1: was still going to college and I wasn't. But how
Speaker 1: did you get out of telling your mom, well, you're
Speaker 1: not going back to college?
Speaker 6: And I think, I mean similar to a certain degree.
Speaker 6: My mother didn't even know I was rapping, you know,
Speaker 6: she just and I said, look, man, I got a contract,
Speaker 6: and I want to leave school and go pursue my
Speaker 6: rap career. She like rap you know, she kind of
Speaker 6: wasn't even she knew about it, like as a maybe
Speaker 6: saw something out there, but she didn't think of it
Speaker 6: as a profession. She was like, man, you need to
Speaker 6: stay in school. And I was like, look, min, this
Speaker 6: is a dream. Blah blah. She was like, Okay, I'm
Speaker 6: gonna give you a year and a half and then
Speaker 6: if it doesn't work. If it doesn't work, then you
Speaker 6: need to be back in school. And she saw how
Speaker 6: hard I was pursuing my goals. Initially was just to
Speaker 6: be like to make a record, you know. I mean,
Speaker 6: you know, as when you look when we used to
Speaker 6: look at like Rap City and all these artists out there,
Speaker 6: you would think once you see Big Daddy Kane or
Speaker 6: you see KRS or you see the NWA, you think
Speaker 6: they just rich and they got it made. When you
Speaker 6: see that, you got a video. So I was like, man,
Speaker 6: if I get a video and get a record out,
Speaker 6: then life is done.
Speaker 1: Life is good.
Speaker 6: I made it, but man, it was such an awakening
Speaker 6: when I released my first single and went around doing promo,
Speaker 6: going to every city, doing all the work, and it
Speaker 6: still didn't really get to radio or get to that
Speaker 6: level of what I saw big records on the box.
Speaker 1: Y'all remember the box, right, So your video exactly had
Speaker 1: everybody calling up and that I was like, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I did. Yeah, you best believe a call from Motown,
Speaker 1: Philly like every five minutes, don't blinks it right exactly.
Speaker 4: So wait, your first deal? What kind of I mean,
Speaker 4: not to be in your business, but what kind of
Speaker 4: money is that? Because I'm like, is that your mother
Speaker 4: was like, Okay, that's that's a couple of dollars. I
Speaker 4: can chill.
Speaker 6: I advanced and to this day, I think, you know,
Speaker 6: it was a little like Twilight and No Idea. It
Speaker 6: was like, what the hell? We split five thousand dollars?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, man, we spit. We split five thousand dollars.
Speaker 6: As far as what went into I think, and I
Speaker 6: think our recording budget may have been forty thousand dollars
Speaker 6: or something of that nature. I literally remember signing a
Speaker 6: contract for Relativity at Relativity in Queens, New York and
Speaker 6: getting in the car and I sat in the hatchback
Speaker 6: of Peter King, who was our A and R's car,
Speaker 6: because he ain't have enough room.
Speaker 1: So it was like it was.
Speaker 6: I said, in the hatch, back in the back in
Speaker 6: the Yeah. So it was like one of those things
Speaker 6: where it really became the journey. And I'm super grateful
Speaker 6: for the journey because when we talk about every day
Speaker 6: people and stuff like that, like being common, me nor
Speaker 6: the roots were able to be like come out and
Speaker 6: just have a big single and things just your life
Speaker 6: just changes. It's always been like a yeah, a gradual thing,
Speaker 6: working class works, working classroom. See, as simple as that,
Speaker 6: And so it makes you value things more. You like
Speaker 6: you you also know how to stay humble because you
Speaker 6: know it's ups and downs in this in this whole thing,
Speaker 6: and and you don't get too shook by the by
Speaker 6: the lows either, like because it's gonna be lows, and
Speaker 6: then you don't get too shook by that because you know,
Speaker 6: as a working class artist, you're like, this is what
Speaker 6: I love to do. Times go get times go heat up,
Speaker 6: times go get colder, but you just keep striving.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and in the early nineties, I mean that
Speaker 1: was typical for I mean rap record deals. It is
Speaker 1: sort of like what junk bonds are to Wall Street.
Speaker 1: No real talk. Deyla Soul's entire first album was twenty
Speaker 1: five thousand, three Rising cost twenty five thousand. Everything. That's
Speaker 1: the entire budget. Cypress Hill's debut album seventy five thousand,
Speaker 1: just to put in perspective, invokes Funky Divas their debut,
Speaker 1: their sophomore album, that budget was two point five million. Wow.
Speaker 1: The Metallica Black album that was five million. Michael Jackson's
Speaker 1: Dangerous was ten million. So you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: the early hip hop staples like a trib call Quest
Speaker 1: celebrated because they at least had a six figure deal.
Speaker 1: But even then, there's like two hundred thousand dollars, which
Speaker 1: is pennies, you know, compared to That's how much of
Speaker 1: the Redhead step child hip hop was compared to the
Speaker 1: to the rest of the industry. So I'll say that
Speaker 1: probably your most notable single, well, your most iconic single
Speaker 1: is I Used to Love Her weird uh weird uh
Speaker 1: uh acronym. I won't talk about the yeah, but what
Speaker 1: what was the what was the genesis of I used
Speaker 1: to Love Her? Well?
Speaker 6: I was I can think about specifically where I was
Speaker 6: at and when the.
Speaker 1: Time hip hop in its everyday hip hop.
Speaker 6: Hip you got revealed. No, that was it? No, that's
Speaker 6: not it.
Speaker 1: Does that makes sense?
Speaker 6: No, it's hip hop and its essence and real ah okay, yeah,
Speaker 6: but in the acronym, you know, you don't put in it.
Speaker 6: You don't put an acronym. You don't have to put
Speaker 6: the little small words get semester.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: That your official official. Okay, Burbon I've been I've been
Speaker 1: teasing you forever for that anyway. So yeah, for those
Speaker 1: that don't know, it's it's a story in which he
Speaker 1: personifies hip hop as a girlfriend, his first girlfriend, and
Speaker 1: describes her. I guess her movements her, you know, how
Speaker 1: they first met and how she grew up, and how
Speaker 1: they fell apart and got back together. And it really
Speaker 1: touched a lot of people. I guess it struck a nerve,
Speaker 1: I'll say, But what was the what was the genesis
Speaker 1: of that creation?
Speaker 6: Well, it was, as I said, I've been a fan
Speaker 6: of just all aspects of hip hop, and what struck
Speaker 6: me was I started to see people on the East
Speaker 6: Coast imitating West Coast artists and that was really like
Speaker 6: for me, one of the things that hip hop was
Speaker 6: always you would hear people from Queen's be like, Yo,
Speaker 6: this is like this is what we represent. We East
Speaker 6: Coast New York, and I saw artists that was like
Speaker 6: doing West Coast stuff, like rolling around in cars like
Speaker 6: that they don't do out here, and I just felt
Speaker 6: like some of the culture was being lost, some of
Speaker 6: the periody of it was being lost, and that just
Speaker 6: was the thought actually came to my mind because I
Speaker 6: was just sitting around and once again I don't really
Speaker 6: smoke weeds, so my friends were smoking and I probably
Speaker 6: was just chilling like it was ninety ninety three and
Speaker 6: a lot of hip hop I was listening to, from
Speaker 6: Midnight Marauders to Balloon Mind State to Sol's a Mischief.
Speaker 6: But I also was kind of in a hip hop work,
Speaker 6: not a workshop, but like a camp almost because it
Speaker 6: was no Id had these other dudes there that was rhyming,
Speaker 6: this dude herb G and Cap and Milo from they
Speaker 6: were from Indiana, so it was always rhyming and we
Speaker 6: were just freestyling and doing stuff. So I was kind
Speaker 6: of sharpening myself and getting more introduced to all these
Speaker 6: new things, whether it was jazz music, which I wasn't
Speaker 6: up on like to be honest, and then it was
Speaker 6: like I just was sitting there one night and said, man,
Speaker 6: what if I made hip hop a woman and just
Speaker 6: and don't tell that I'm talking about hip hop until
Speaker 6: the end.
Speaker 1: And couldn't you find a real woman? Hey?
Speaker 6: You know this is like a real love story that like,
Speaker 6: I mean, I could have found a real woman. But no,
Speaker 6: you know what was so what was so crazy was
Speaker 6: like and I thought about this this the other day,
Speaker 6: like when you're young in nineteen and you do a
Speaker 6: love song, your friends look like, why are you giving
Speaker 6: this girl heart his love? Because I was rapping I
Speaker 6: used to love it in the booth and one of
Speaker 6: my best friends, ra Son, was looking frowning while I
Speaker 6: was rapping it until I said, who I'm talking about
Speaker 6: y'all's hip hop?
Speaker 4: And he was like, oh shit, but that's kind of
Speaker 4: fucked up up.
Speaker 1: I know it is. I was saying, it's a messed
Speaker 1: up child.
Speaker 6: Yes, I mean the reason why I thought about it
Speaker 6: because I was, you know, you know, with so much
Speaker 6: going on and we're talking about the change and the
Speaker 6: culture and stuff women and women, I was thinking like, damn,
Speaker 6: I couldn't even rap a love song at nineteen, and
Speaker 6: my somebody supported But eventually, obviously we know, as we know,
Speaker 6: I went out because when you said when you was
Speaker 6: like one of or you were talking about one of
Speaker 6: when I thought you was gonna say the light was
Speaker 6: my most I forgot.
Speaker 1: About the light? How you?
Speaker 4: I just thought we was going to.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you my light story. But we when
Speaker 1: we get to when we get to the chocolate ears.
Speaker 1: But did you were you? First of all? I mean,
Speaker 1: as an MC, I'll say that you you're probably the
Speaker 1: most evolved human. I know that's an artist, because I mean,
Speaker 1: as an MC, you've stuck to hip hop's rules of
Speaker 1: just I feel like you right in the moment and
Speaker 1: just be like all right, I'm gonna suff the consequence later.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just say, like you said, some of the
Speaker 1: wildest shit ever on Wax offensive, non offense, whatever, just whatever,
Speaker 1: and like and I'll be like, Russ, what's gonna happen?
Speaker 1: Like when you, at least for I used to love her? Like,
Speaker 1: were you not thinking at all? Like maybe Dosa Effects
Speaker 1: might take offense to this? Maybe the West Coast might
Speaker 1: take offense to this, and I'll just let me go
Speaker 1: for it. Like did you have any idea that people
Speaker 1: would I was or did you just not think like
Speaker 1: this single? Just be like my little single no it's
Speaker 1: not no no no no.
Speaker 6: I said, Man, you brought up a good point because
Speaker 6: when that was also part of it. Why I Used
Speaker 6: to Love Her came about too is because it was
Speaker 6: like once Dots Effects would do something, everybody would start
Speaker 6: rhyming like that, and I was I was like, the
Speaker 6: rigid hip hop was always about like what are you
Speaker 6: doing this fresh? That's why we use the word fresh,
Speaker 6: what's the original? What's your waist? And I felt like
Speaker 6: when I wrote I used to Love Her, I had
Speaker 6: enough courage and like my heart and I felt like
Speaker 6: I'm speaking my truth, so if my truth gets i
Speaker 6: catch some repercussions because of it.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 6: I didn't think it was gonna come from the West
Speaker 6: Coast because I kind of said she broke to the
Speaker 6: West Coast and that was cool around the same time
Speaker 6: I went away to school, and I'm a man of expanding.
Speaker 1: Well, I know that, but I'm just saying that I
Speaker 1: know that you meant, and now I see motherfucker slamming
Speaker 1: and taking her to the sewer. I didn't think that
Speaker 1: you meant like Dots Effects onyx ice Cube. You meant
Speaker 1: the clones of those guys clones, But did you ever
Speaker 1: see Dosa effects or onyx and then not think like, oh,
Speaker 1: you were talking about us, not our clones or well
Speaker 1: what that.
Speaker 6: Was The one thing that that that I have to say,
Speaker 6: going back to the South Side that I was still had.
Speaker 1: In me was a crew A crew crew.
Speaker 6: So so that's effects I actually thought they dis on
Speaker 6: the song and my boys just brought this up. I
Speaker 6: went down to their dressing room and with my guys Chicago.
Speaker 1: And was doing the forty years. Yeah, I was like,
Speaker 1: what's up? What's up now? You know, like how you
Speaker 1: came in the door. They just steal their TV right away.
Speaker 6: But by the way, man, I had some yo, my friends,
Speaker 6: some of my crew. I mean I remember doing the
Speaker 6: show with Koogi Rap opening up for Coogie Rapping Red
Speaker 6: Man and this is the we my friends just was
Speaker 6: didn't know, but they straight went into that dressing room
Speaker 6: and ate that food from the rider.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it like took there for and I had to
Speaker 6: pay for it. Like anyway, My point is you minuted
Speaker 6: they minuted it. No, but they just knew like cause
Speaker 6: we were the first ones there.
Speaker 1: I had. It was in my neighborhood. The show was
Speaker 1: at the Regal Theater.
Speaker 6: So it's like, yeah, so anyway, I don't remember what
Speaker 6: the initial thing.
Speaker 1: What were we saying.
Speaker 4: Do we just taught lessons?
Speaker 1: Yeah? No, I had to learn that.
Speaker 6: I learned that and and I was like, look, man,
Speaker 6: we getting the list and this is what we can do,
Speaker 6: and we you know, we start you grow from that.
Speaker 6: You start learning. I can't just roll and just roll
Speaker 6: have like forty people with me. It just is not productive.
Speaker 6: And especially once you start putting in perspective this is this.
Speaker 1: Is my profession. Oh that's what I was talking about.
Speaker 6: Even when when I did the West Coast, I mean
Speaker 6: even when mac ten and Ice Ice Q to them
Speaker 6: came out with the disc record. We were in Atlanta
Speaker 6: doing the show with Grand Pooba Outcast and mac Ten
Speaker 6: and these and those guys, and uh we saw them
Speaker 6: at the show and they you know, they kind of
Speaker 6: just walked past and.
Speaker 1: Then when they got to the.
Speaker 6: End of the hallway, they was like they hollowed out
Speaker 6: west Side and we was like, we south side. What
Speaker 6: that means to us? You know, Like so it was
Speaker 6: it was put it this way. I was able to
Speaker 6: speak my truth because I spoke that same truth around people.
Speaker 1: I was around.
Speaker 6: So if I couldn't do it into into the culture,
Speaker 6: then what am I really doing? Plus we used to
Speaker 6: say stuff in hip hop like you could. I was
Speaker 6: listening to Pooh Bah and he was like talking about
Speaker 6: Oprah or something. You know, you would say stuff like
Speaker 6: this raw stuff ignorant.
Speaker 4: It don't go viral like it does now. But wait,
Speaker 4: can we talk about beefs? Can I just ask about
Speaker 4: fair Con? Because I always thought that was ill and
Speaker 4: I think maybe it was like one more beef after
Speaker 4: you guys were he intoed. But what was that like
Speaker 4: for fara con into your situation like that and being
Speaker 4: from Chicago? How did that happen?
Speaker 6: It was really it was pretty I would say power.
Speaker 6: It was really powerful in many ways because it was
Speaker 6: right after First of all, I kind of, you know,
Speaker 6: got introduced more to fairy con through hip hop through
Speaker 6: Public Enemy, and people would bring up fairy con and rap.
Speaker 6: So then you know, some of the cats I worked with,
Speaker 6: like No Idea eventually with being the Nation at one point,
Speaker 6: but read yeah, this is around the time they were
Speaker 6: Derek my manager. They all had been through the Nation
Speaker 6: of Islam and were fruits of Islam. But so by
Speaker 6: the time Farah Khan was squashing the beef, it was
Speaker 6: right after Biggie's death, which you know, what preceded Biggie's
Speaker 6: death was Tupac's death.
Speaker 1: So it was like, you know, it's weird I'm around
Speaker 1: at this point. You didn't even know that he squashed
Speaker 1: the beef. I never add to I think maybe the
Speaker 1: third time we met, you played me uh verse one
Speaker 1: of the bitching you your response to ice Cube.
Speaker 4: And they had beef, y'all.
Speaker 1: If you didn't know, well you already skipped to the making.
Speaker 4: Up part, right, But I loved.
Speaker 1: You like anyway. But no, they won't get it anyway.
Speaker 1: So I didn't. I didn't know that it got that
Speaker 1: bad that he had to come and intervene.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well it definitely. I mean, like I said, Mike
Speaker 6: ten and all those guys are real guys on the
Speaker 6: West Coast, and I gotta respect that, and I know
Speaker 6: that they will take it there. And like I said,
Speaker 6: it was people on my side that also would defend
Speaker 6: me and defend I would defend myself. So it was
Speaker 6: the tension. We weren't mature enough to be like, yo, man,
Speaker 6: let's squash this ourselves. It was like that you know
Speaker 6: that young ego, like, man, you said this and that,
Speaker 6: and so it was Yo, fay Con had to squash it.
Speaker 6: People people were dying, and that's the point. We were like, man,
Speaker 6: we got into hip hop to live, like this is
Speaker 6: something we love to do and I'm not out here
Speaker 6: trying to destroy another human being.
Speaker 1: So it was like, man, we got to squash this.
Speaker 1: He had a meeting.
Speaker 6: It was us, Fat Joe, I think some of the
Speaker 6: Goodie Mob. It was a lot of just just people
Speaker 6: from hip hop. And he was like, man, do y'all
Speaker 6: know this is like this is like that Willie Lynch
Speaker 6: letter where where you know, you pit the pit people
Speaker 6: against each other East coast and West coast.
Speaker 1: Do y'all own the land? He started breaking it down.
Speaker 1: Do you own the land?
Speaker 6: Like you know that whole theory of like man, light
Speaker 6: skin versus dark skin. He started breaking it down. Or
Speaker 6: you on this side and this side. It's just like, man,
Speaker 6: don't let the master.
Speaker 1: Don't let it.
Speaker 6: Not that they were our masters, but don't let them
Speaker 6: pit us against each other. Is what the gist of it.
Speaker 6: All of us recognized that is.
Speaker 4: Like the money to be made in beef sometimes too,
Speaker 4: So yeah.
Speaker 6: I mean it was like, shoot, think about it, Like
Speaker 6: all the money that was made in.
Speaker 4: They didn't go in your pocket.
Speaker 1: Right, So for first of all, your next album, one
Speaker 1: day it all makes sense. Crazy, For one day it
Speaker 1: all makes sense, which I kind of like now when
Speaker 1: I look at the at your can, I almost see
Speaker 1: one day it all makes sense, sort of as the
Speaker 1: flyer that someone hands out at the nightclub that will
Speaker 1: announce the things to come, like it's its own album,
Speaker 1: But really it was the preview of because I mean
Speaker 1: you're you brought Tarik and Q Tip and Erica and
Speaker 1: me and uh not Dilla yet, but who else was
Speaker 1: on it? Daya Selo too, right, yes, yeah, So it's
Speaker 1: like the idea of bringing the community together. And Lauren,
Speaker 1: I have a question about uh retrospectful life.
Speaker 4: Oh god do we have to Well here's the thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, you know, according to Fox News,
Speaker 1: you're super liberal rapper or whatever. So I mean, I
Speaker 1: know I know that your pro choice. I know that
Speaker 1: your your pro choice in your everyday life. But the
Speaker 1: narrative of that song seems very conservative, like it's and
Speaker 1: I know that for you. I mean you're really talking
Speaker 1: to your daughter who's now a full grown woman in
Speaker 1: college and whatnot. But just at the time, what was
Speaker 1: what was your mind state? Because just when I went
Speaker 1: on Genius and just read the lyrics, I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: like this could almost seem like a conservative, pro life rap.
Speaker 4: That's the teenage girl who was making some mistakes. It
Speaker 4: was like, I can't get through this song right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it was it was it was sort of
Speaker 1: a heartstring your first a comment like sort of a
Speaker 1: hearing but.
Speaker 4: I am about to be in somebody in mamadel comment,
Speaker 4: so you can just.
Speaker 1: I'm just mad. I'm just mad that you made the
Speaker 1: second song. That's the first thing, Like what do you
Speaker 1: think of my record? I'm like, why did you make
Speaker 1: that the second song? Like I was mad at your
Speaker 1: sequences and work on my next record. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: bet I will you need some help? But yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just talking about like did you and Lauren go through that? Uh?
Speaker 1: Talk about that together there? Like how did that collaboration come?
Speaker 6: Well, first of all, like it was a I am
Speaker 6: pro choice. I believe every woman human woman should have
Speaker 6: that choice to be able to do what they want
Speaker 6: with their body and their bodies and.
Speaker 1: So so I.
Speaker 6: Really when I wrote Retrospect for Life, which is about abortion,
Speaker 6: I just really was writing it from a perspective of
Speaker 6: what I felt like as a human being, like some
Speaker 6: of the the fact of just being more responsible for
Speaker 6: me and not just you know, being out here raw,
Speaker 6: you know, you know not. So it was more like,
Speaker 6: I'm I'm playing a part in this and let me.
Speaker 6: I shouldn't have to put people that I care about,
Speaker 6: meaning a woman through this, and at the end of
Speaker 6: the day, I shouldn't put an unborn child through this.
Speaker 1: So I kind of was just not wanting to be
Speaker 1: a deadbeat dad and that cliche.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And I just was, you know, it was talking
Speaker 6: about all the emotions. I remember writing it because I
Speaker 6: used to go see a lot of poets and this
Speaker 6: is writer named Gwendolen Brooks and I and I went
Speaker 6: to an event that she had and I kind of.
Speaker 1: All that sparked me to just write it.
Speaker 6: I wrote that more as a poetry, so you know,
Speaker 6: as you know, I mean, you always be like you
Speaker 6: need to rhyme more on beat, you can't count, yeah,
Speaker 6: so so so uh, you know, I kind of took
Speaker 6: that poem and made it into a song. And what
Speaker 6: I had been talking about talking to Lauren while you
Speaker 6: all were on tour with her, wasn't you all? It
Speaker 6: was you all, the goodie mom and the foods. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 6: I was talking to Lauren about doing the song, and
Speaker 6: it's you know, she was on the move a lot.
Speaker 6: And then I finally came across that song and she
Speaker 6: with her about to have a child and I was
Speaker 6: about to have a child. It was like our babies
Speaker 6: were doing the same day. It was kind of like
Speaker 6: this this thing that was going on. And we went
Speaker 6: through the song because you had introduced us to James Poison,
Speaker 6: I had James come through and and we just.
Speaker 1: Started messing with it.
Speaker 6: No id did the drums we had because we were
Speaker 6: going through the process of the song evolving, and Lauren
Speaker 6: just started trying different ideas and she I think she
Speaker 6: wanted to do it because you know, she was just supporting.
Speaker 6: But at the same token, I think she felt that
Speaker 6: the story was important, and I was super grateful that
Speaker 6: she wanted to direct the video, and I do agree
Speaker 6: that one day it all makes sense. Was also a
Speaker 6: foreshadowing of what the evolution would be at that time,
Speaker 6: because that was the first time I really started like
Speaker 6: just using some live instrumentation and trying out different things.
Speaker 6: And it's fun when you start exploring and learning about
Speaker 6: new music, like you've been a great musician from a baby.
Speaker 6: But I was like learning new music like that. I
Speaker 6: didn't know. So that's when the album came out.
Speaker 1: Like that, Why did it take three years? Though? Man?
Speaker 6: I was stressing out, like over I was going. I
Speaker 6: was going out touring to get to just support myself.
Speaker 6: I wasn't happy with the lab, like trying to figure
Speaker 6: out and they were trying to talk me into They
Speaker 6: was using peers like Naves or different people to be
Speaker 6: like yo, you see they making hit records, And I
Speaker 6: was like, man, it just wasn't I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 6: have it in me to try to just cook up
Speaker 6: a hit like like yo, I'm about to make a
Speaker 6: hit record. I just didn't know how to do that,
Speaker 6: to be honest, and that just wasn't my everything I did.
Speaker 6: I had to feel it like for me to create it.
Speaker 6: So anyway, I was going through that process with the label,
Speaker 6: and I also was like, man, just trying to grow.
Speaker 6: I was trying to think you ever been through that
Speaker 6: point where you figured out like what am I going
Speaker 6: to create next, like I got to be inspired to create.
Speaker 6: And from a writer's level too, it's like where do
Speaker 6: I want to write about? What am I experiencing in life?
Speaker 6: So I think that's what took some time.
Speaker 1: Well that that would also be your last record with
Speaker 1: New Idea, who at that point YouTube were closely associated
Speaker 1: with each other for your first three records. How did
Speaker 1: you was the partying amicable or how did you two
Speaker 1: stop working? Yeah?
Speaker 6: No, I think it was more it wasn't like, man,
Speaker 6: we got beef. It was more like, man, I gotta
Speaker 6: go grow, and this growth is going to be I
Speaker 6: don't know. I got to move from Chicago because at
Speaker 6: the end of the day, it wasn't just like me
Speaker 6: musically just needing to.
Speaker 1: Grow, but I just needed to grow as a human being.
Speaker 6: And it was like being in Chicago, even around some
Speaker 6: of my friends I grew up with, their mentality was
Speaker 6: still boxed, and I was like, man, I can't I'm
Speaker 6: out of this box. I was going up to which
Speaker 6: seemed like nothing to y'all now because everybody experienced it.
Speaker 6: But I was going to eat at tay Foo restaurants.
Speaker 6: I was watching like like I was watching movies like
Speaker 6: four rooms, you know, you know.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying exactly.
Speaker 6: So I was I would be like, hey, y'all watch
Speaker 6: the four rooms, and they'd be looking like, man.
Speaker 1: What is this superset?
Speaker 6: Like so and and and me not being like at
Speaker 6: that point strong enough to be like, look, this is it,
Speaker 6: and I just like, I'm going to I'm going to
Speaker 6: book exactly.
Speaker 1: And I came out to.
Speaker 6: I came out to New York, were like two weeks
Speaker 6: worth of clothing maybe less than that, thinking I was
Speaker 6: just gonna stay for two weeks.
Speaker 1: I never went back.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, I went back for home to go,
Speaker 6: but I moved here to New York and it was
Speaker 6: just it was one of the best things that happened
Speaker 6: in my life because I got to you know, I
Speaker 6: would get to go to the studio with y'all bumping
Speaker 6: the I would bump in the Primo. I was introduced
Speaker 6: to a shack of givings. Who was you know, did
Speaker 6: the crochet said it like? It just was like I
Speaker 6: would go see a Gordon Parks display and at at
Speaker 6: a museum in New York. I could go me and belive.
Speaker 6: I would go to jazz clubs and just listen. So
Speaker 6: it was like, you know what, you know where New
Speaker 6: York is, it's just a culmination of so many artists.
Speaker 6: So I got to spread my wings.
Speaker 1: Well I'll say that, you know, of course i'd be
Speaker 1: supervised to say that. Well, yeah, your Chocolate Electric phase
Speaker 1: is my favorite period, not because I was involved with it,
Speaker 1: But no, it wasn't. I mean what you sure, No,
Speaker 1: But what you did was you provided me with the
Speaker 1: greatest front seat ever, which is getting to watch Dila
Speaker 1: work in real time. And I mean that was my excitement.
Speaker 1: That's the thing, like all the dial of fan worship
Speaker 1: we do now that he's gone, I mean it took everything.
Speaker 1: He's one of those people that he's really uncomfortable and
Speaker 1: he would always say like yo, geek down, geek down,
Speaker 1: like you weren't allowed to praise him. You weren't allowed to,
Speaker 1: you know, call him up for five and be like, okay,
Speaker 1: is this snare drum from Uh? He would have never
Speaker 1: done the show, right, Yeah, he would have done it.
Speaker 1: He would have done it because he's my boy.
Speaker 4: But but talk about that though, because how did he
Speaker 4: come into the picture then, because we don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm gonna get to that. So so in in
Speaker 1: making like Water for Chocolate, I mean was your because
Speaker 1: with that album you also went platinum, which is weird
Speaker 1: because you wanted to make such a radical left turn
Speaker 1: with your career. I know that you wanted to make
Speaker 1: an artistic statement and then you just messed around and
Speaker 1: also went platinum at the same time, which you know,
Speaker 1: none of us even at the time when well maybe
Speaker 1: Voodoo because DeAngelo was a singer and all it's stuff,
Speaker 1: but during the time of things fall apart and all
Speaker 1: these records that get made at the same time, none
Speaker 1: of us ever thought that we were all getting one
Speaker 1: million people to shell out this money to buy the music.
Speaker 1: So we were just like, let's just make the best
Speaker 1: music possible. But for you, like what described First of all,
Speaker 1: just describe working with Dila because of all of us,
Speaker 1: I mean, you sleep on his couch more than anything.
Speaker 1: You got to watch him real time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, okay, So first I met Dyla when I was
Speaker 6: out with day La Soul and they had some beats
Speaker 6: and maces like you gotta check out Deyla.
Speaker 1: No, actually I met him with Q Tip.
Speaker 6: We had went and did this Vibe conference that Quincy
Speaker 6: Jones had and and we left the conference and went
Speaker 6: to Q Tip's house. And at his house, Dyla was
Speaker 6: down like fingering through these records and he was sitting
Speaker 6: there and I didn't He was real quiet, So I
Speaker 6: did I know Dealer's like Detroit Hood's side to a
Speaker 6: certain degree because he was just a quiet, good, you
Speaker 6: know dude. And then Q Tip started playing me all
Speaker 6: these these beasts that Dila did and I was like,
Speaker 6: this dude is incredible. So then I got a beat
Speaker 6: tape from him, and that's when I.
Speaker 1: Was thinking about.
Speaker 6: I was on the road with Daylight and I said,
Speaker 6: JD can you come, can we like lay some stuff?
Speaker 6: And he flew himself to Chicago and laid some beats
Speaker 6: for me. I worked on him, and this is in
Speaker 6: the process of me being I think it was right
Speaker 6: after that was before one day. It all makes sense.
Speaker 6: So I never used the beats, but I think it
Speaker 6: was ninety eight. I went to Deler's house with you
Speaker 6: all with the roots while you always going to do
Speaker 6: ill a fifth Dynamite. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. You
Speaker 6: were with us in Detroit. Yeah, we went to Detroit.
Speaker 6: I just got you know, we were all on the
Speaker 6: same label. So when I hooked up with Dila at
Speaker 6: that point with y'all, it was like, yeah, we got
Speaker 6: to do some music. So I would just make those
Speaker 6: trips to to Detroit, and it was it was a
Speaker 6: combination of just me watching the greatest in his his spirit,
Speaker 6: to him going to the strip club and then coming
Speaker 6: back making beats, to him us going to Korean barbecue,
Speaker 6: you know, and just chilling us going to play video
Speaker 6: games or I'm not video you know, go to the
Speaker 6: game place where you shoot basket. I remember Delly used
Speaker 6: to love shooting those you know, you know the basketball
Speaker 6: We go to those joints, or go watch the matrix.
Speaker 6: All this was part of our bonding in relationship. It
Speaker 6: wasn't nothing like playing. It's just what we did. But
Speaker 6: they would definitely go to strip club. And I'm not
Speaker 6: a strip club dude, so not that I'm like judging.
Speaker 6: It just wasn't my thing. But that's part of the
Speaker 6: culture of Detroit. Yeah so so they yeah, exactly so.
Speaker 6: But just to watch him pull out records and just
Speaker 6: work and just something changed my life man Like it was.
Speaker 6: It was incredible and I would always if I wasn't there,
Speaker 6: he even you know, when he was just making beats
Speaker 6: he would send me a batch. He'd like, I got
Speaker 6: a batch coming, and I would call his mother, you
Speaker 6: know my dukes would be like, okay, I'm sending it
Speaker 6: to your place, and I would get a CD of
Speaker 6: she would mel it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so so.
Speaker 6: You know, and then to watch him like start making
Speaker 6: songs with me. Jad would do what he wanted because
Speaker 6: I wanted him to rhyme on the song Funky for You.
Speaker 6: I wanted all the slum village to rhyme on that
Speaker 6: song on like Water for Chocolate, Funky for You. And
Speaker 6: he sat in the studio in and he was he
Speaker 6: was like trying to come up with something. I guess,
Speaker 6: but I don't think he really His heart was in
Speaker 6: the rhyming on that one. But so that night he
Speaker 6: went home and I thought he was done. He came
Speaker 6: back the next morning pick me up and had to
Speaker 6: be for Thelonius and had the hook Yeah yeah, play
Speaker 6: at your own wrist like like you know, bitch, I'm
Speaker 6: on some grown ship. I was like, he's I said
Speaker 6: what yo? He said, Yo, this this, I think we
Speaker 6: should do this one. I was like, man, if you
Speaker 6: give us this, this is incredible. So my point is
Speaker 6: he would do what he wanted to do somebody operated
Speaker 6: strictly from a passion level. That was one of the
Speaker 6: dudes that I really felt like if he ain't feeling
Speaker 6: you or feeling it, he ain't rocking with it, but
Speaker 6: he would put his heart and soul into that music.
Speaker 6: And you know, I mean it's just man. I mean,
Speaker 6: I got to before delap passed. We were roommates, so
Speaker 6: it was like in my front room, I just got
Speaker 6: to see him sitting there just making beats like and
Speaker 6: at the Saint token physically like in a way deteriorating,
Speaker 6: but just still just making.
Speaker 1: To me because even the last time I visited him,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that he could barely communicate or talk
Speaker 1: or hold his hands up. And I'm trying to figure out, like,
Speaker 1: especially the last period of his life, that the whole
Speaker 1: deal with his phase where he was, I mean, the
Speaker 1: deal with his face is close to the Donuts album,
Speaker 1: where it's just the beats were so advanced that MCS
Speaker 1: didn't even belong on those beats, Like he was basically communicating.
Speaker 1: If you listen to Donuts and you listen to all
Speaker 1: the samples that he used and the words that he uses,
Speaker 1: that's him sort of communicating his last will and testament,
Speaker 1: his goodbye. You know, him breaking down. I don't want
Speaker 1: to see you cry, like to his mother and even
Speaker 1: the TENCC Johnny, don't do it to his little brother John,
Speaker 1: like just the way that he weaves samples in. I
Speaker 1: didn't realize that it was that bad. But his mind
Speaker 1: was still sharp. Physically, it took. He was slower at
Speaker 1: making the stuff, but the ideas in his mind were
Speaker 1: sharper than ever.
Speaker 6: Which man his mind was that, But it was really
Speaker 6: it was difficult for I mean, obviously it was difficult
Speaker 6: to see somebody you know, like is one of the
Speaker 6: greatest and then just one of your friends, like not
Speaker 6: be able to do the things that they were just
Speaker 6: like two years ago he was coming to pick me
Speaker 6: up in the range, Robbo. It might be the escalade
Speaker 6: and bumping beats and just having fun. And to see
Speaker 6: him like laying on the couch sick, just not being
Speaker 6: able to move and whenever you could get that energy
Speaker 6: going to make beats was just it.
Speaker 1: Was hard for me.
Speaker 6: I actually like wouldn't stay at the house as much
Speaker 6: because it just was like, man, this is tough. But
Speaker 6: then I was like, I gotta be there at a
Speaker 6: certain point. But it brought you know, my own humanity
Speaker 6: or what's the word, you know, like when you what's
Speaker 6: the word on trying to search for totality my own
Speaker 6: mortality in the play. But more than anything, I just
Speaker 6: felt for my brother like that, and I remember him
Speaker 6: being like telling his mother he one of the main
Speaker 6: things he didn't want to do was be in the
Speaker 6: hospital on his birthday, and he died three days later
Speaker 6: after his birthday, February seventh. He died on February tenth
Speaker 6: in the physical form, and it was like he was like, man,
Speaker 6: I just don't want to be in the hospital on
Speaker 6: my birthday. But it was deep, man, it was you know,
Speaker 6: that's one of the greatest bonds I've ever had as
Speaker 6: a person, as a creator, and like we all been
Speaker 6: in all of him. When you when you talk about
Speaker 6: people like you said, you ain't want to just jump
Speaker 6: out and be like, yo, you're great. I can remember
Speaker 6: instant like specific instances like me and me and JD
Speaker 6: walked into a for ral session for real, got down
Speaker 6: on his knees and started just bound down. So Kanye
Speaker 6: came to our house. JD gave him a record of
Speaker 6: forty five with some drums. It was Kanye used to
Speaker 6: sample JD's drums off his beat tapes and he was like,
Speaker 6: come on, man, right, just take my tru off my
Speaker 6: feet tape. But you know, so JD gave him this
Speaker 6: this record. I mean, we went to me and Ye
Speaker 6: went to the studio. YA was like telling everybody, Yo, Jay,
Speaker 6: Dila gave me these Dila gave me these Jonks. It
Speaker 6: just was to see people's reaction when they saw Dyla.
Speaker 6: It made me be like, oh man, this dude is
Speaker 6: the god. We knew he was the god, but he
Speaker 6: was god.
Speaker 1: You know. He and I, He and I had one.
Speaker 1: It was weird because my the fan worship was so
Speaker 1: was so big on my level that as executive producer
Speaker 1: of that record, I also did want to make a
Speaker 1: misstep and I was wrestling with in my mind on
Speaker 1: how to tell him I didn't like a particular beat.
Speaker 1: Which one was it? The light man, that's why you record. Listen, listen.
Speaker 1: I listened to a mirror a lot to it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know what, you know what it was though. There
Speaker 1: was a week. I don't know what I had to do.
Speaker 1: I think it was touring. There was a week I
Speaker 1: took off and I came back and you already rhyme
Speaker 1: to it, and I was like, okay, But it was
Speaker 1: just that it was just at that point because it
Speaker 1: was so because the amount of work that we were
Speaker 1: doing was so radical and again it was voodoo like
Speaker 1: water for chocolate, even the other stuff we were working on.
Speaker 1: It was just like, to me, the light was so
Speaker 1: I mean, in my mind, I felt like we had
Speaker 1: to push everything to the left and so hardcore, and
Speaker 1: it sounded so normal to me that I was just like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: that's that's it, that's normal. I was like, well, no,
Speaker 1: I mean just at the time, I was just like
Speaker 1: I wasn't thinking like you got to make something palatable
Speaker 1: for you know, people to grasp. Yeah. I didn't know
Speaker 1: about that back in two thousand, keeping a simple and
Speaker 1: I never liked it. And it kept on winding up
Speaker 1: on the you know, like the monthly. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get all the beat together and figure out and that
Speaker 1: was always on my like my probe, my con I
Speaker 1: was like, I don't like that. Lights on whatever, It's
Speaker 1: all right, but it's nothing exciting, you know, And because
Speaker 1: I always thought like doing it was that was going
Speaker 1: to be the single, like you know, it's hardcore hip.
Speaker 4: Hop, and but also at the time you don't want it,
Speaker 4: but this was you.
Speaker 1: You also have to understand that the rules the rules
Speaker 1: of of like the hip hop elite. I mean, we
Speaker 1: were knee deep still in that hole. Like we had
Speaker 1: yet to work with jay Z. So back then jay
Speaker 1: Z was still the devil.
Speaker 4: But you still had your you Got Me formula by
Speaker 4: the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we were the roots. We were never accepted
Speaker 1: as quote real hip hop. We were always alternative hip hop.
Speaker 1: So we get away with murder.
Speaker 4: But the light was like that you Got Me. I
Speaker 4: always thought it looked at it.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is that even common moving to
Speaker 1: Brooklyn was seeing as a radical how could you move?
Speaker 1: You know? And I was more afraid of the perception
Speaker 1: that I brought him down or that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: So I just didn't like it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I mean that's you know, I'd like it now, but
Speaker 1: I love it now. Man. Look, I honestly that I
Speaker 1: don't help people for my Mama house, I'm fine for it.
Speaker 6: I mean I have to say, like I never looked
Speaker 6: at that song like it was commercial. I know, I
Speaker 6: just went on when I heard that beat, and he
Speaker 6: honestly had that beat on a beat CD, right, yeah,
Speaker 6: and it was it was for fife or something, God
Speaker 6: bless his soul something. It was just on a beat
Speaker 6: CD that I think ffe it either got to and
Speaker 6: it wasn't complete.
Speaker 1: He had just made it.
Speaker 6: It was drums, right, So when I heard it, I
Speaker 6: was like, yo, Dad, what's up with this?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 6: And then he was like, man, I'm about to I'll
Speaker 6: redo it for you, and he put those drums and
Speaker 6: he started scratching the hook a little bit and I
Speaker 6: was like, man, it was that song just hit my soul.
Speaker 6: And at the time, you know, as you know, I
Speaker 6: was like in love with earthy girls and all that,
Speaker 6: so I could just write, that's.
Speaker 4: What were you feeling like that first?
Speaker 1: Lie your mind? Your mind. Erica wasn't the first choice
Speaker 1: for the video. Who was Who was it? We had
Speaker 1: Lisa Bone for like a week. We had Lisa you
Speaker 1: don't remember, I forgot man. We had Lisa for a
Speaker 1: week and then she couldn't do it.
Speaker 4: She's never been in a video.
Speaker 1: She's been in liney stuff. Oh yeah, I mean, don't
Speaker 1: count man.
Speaker 4: That's what his wife or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah, we we had. We had and I
Speaker 1: wanted and the thing was, I'm not that dude. That
Speaker 1: was like, yo, we can exploit the relationship because again
Speaker 1: I felt that there was danger in the Erica thing
Speaker 1: because I didn't want the friction of Dungeon family versus
Speaker 1: so queery things going on, because back then y'all were
Speaker 1: still friends. It was friends at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: they were absolutely friends, and so I just felt that
Speaker 1: was more danger making abundantly clear. No we were I
Speaker 1: ain't even front we were friends. I mean obviously, I
Speaker 1: mean no, but it was there was I mean, there
Speaker 1: was potential. Could feel a certain way about a certain situation,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, yo, man, just go with
Speaker 1: just go with Lisabo name man, it's safer route and that.
Speaker 1: And when she dropped out and Eric's like I'm doing it,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, man, this is just going to
Speaker 1: add fuel to the fire.
Speaker 4: And then came to essence covering, it was like, well.
Speaker 1: That was like two years later.
Speaker 4: They were felt like so lightish.
Speaker 1: The light that was that was a little later.
Speaker 6: That's when that was obviously together were that's when he's
Speaker 6: wearing footies.
Speaker 4: In the light.
Speaker 1: We weren't dating, and they weren't lay stop trying to
Speaker 1: got you.
Speaker 4: I'm not I'm trying to get today.
Speaker 6: We were not dating like then we say that Bill and.
Speaker 4: I just dating.
Speaker 6: So it was more more like one of those things
Speaker 6: that like I really liked her and we had a
Speaker 6: real connection, but it wasn't we hadn't crossed the line.
Speaker 6: And maybe maybe it was like it wasn't because of
Speaker 6: the Dungeon family, but maybe you know, I don't know
Speaker 6: why we hadn't crossed the line, but it was just like, man,
Speaker 6: I definitely looked at her. It was like this woman
Speaker 6: is incredible and I was digging her, but there wasn't
Speaker 6: that time yet.
Speaker 1: He looked her in the eye. To this day, I
Speaker 1: don't look Erica in the six seconds because.
Speaker 4: By the time Come Close came around, it was like, oh.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, that was then. It was we were together
Speaker 6: at that point. So but but the light was the
Speaker 6: light was the first time that uh and by the way,
Speaker 6: Come Close, Amya came with the idea for that video,
Speaker 6: but I guess I forgot that. Yeah, it was he
Speaker 6: was like we need to do something like say anything.
Speaker 6: Wasn't that the movie with John? Yeah? Yeah, sometimes people
Speaker 6: love the idea of somebody holding up something to a building,
Speaker 6: and I was like, we need to black say anything. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and then and then we and then somewhere down the
Speaker 6: line was centered me or somebody's idea was like, man,
Speaker 6: let's just make the woman death.
Speaker 1: You know that way makes sense that you're holding the scientist.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they just gave it another dementia. But I wanted
Speaker 6: to tell you something about the light. It was like
Speaker 6: the first time.
Speaker 1: First.
Speaker 6: First of all, I laid the rap down and didn't
Speaker 6: I didn't even finish it. That's why I was like,
Speaker 6: took a time, I'll tell you the rest of it.
Speaker 6: I see peace, you know that. And I kept trying
Speaker 6: to go back in the studio and relay it, and
Speaker 6: it never felt the same. So I knew that record
Speaker 6: was just about a feeling. But it was the first
Speaker 6: time that I ever saw little black girls like singing
Speaker 6: my song. They didn't know who common was, they didn't
Speaker 6: know common sense, none of that. So it was like incredible.
Speaker 1: Because you were living when they came home maybe nine.
Speaker 6: Yeah, So it was like I remember being on the radio,
Speaker 6: you know those radio shows that they have.
Speaker 1: I was on One Earth Real radio underground.
Speaker 6: I was on the radio on the show and I
Speaker 6: was like, damn, like girls are singing my songs and
Speaker 6: like it just it was another feeling.
Speaker 1: It felt.
Speaker 6: It felt like rewarding that little black girls was singing
Speaker 6: my song like they didn't because they not singing I
Speaker 6: used to love her. They not singing retrospect for life.
Speaker 6: They probably didn't know who I was. So it just
Speaker 6: moved me to see that, and yeah, I was grateful.
Speaker 6: Man the Light To this day, DJ Dummy said to me, Man,
Speaker 6: do you know the Light is like eighteen years old? Now,
Speaker 6: I said, eighteen years.
Speaker 4: And what a full circle moment about that. I used
Speaker 4: to love a moment too because now you are rhyming
Speaker 4: about love exactly and now it's cool.
Speaker 6: And to this day, I think, you know, probably the
Speaker 6: Light is the biggest song that I've had.
Speaker 1: I mean I might have, I think, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but more than Glory.
Speaker 4: Well no, you have got my radio play, yeah yeah.
Speaker 6: But but yeah, so I mean it's a love song.
Speaker 6: So it is like full circle to be like yo,
Speaker 6: to me, the whole journey has been like man, you
Speaker 6: gotta like grow grow into who you are and know
Speaker 6: who you are at a certain point and then keep
Speaker 6: learning more and more of what you.
Speaker 4: Said a standard for yourself at that moment too, because
Speaker 4: then it was like, as we started singing light, we
Speaker 4: were like, oh, I want him to do something else for.
Speaker 1: Me, you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: Like so then it would come close, and then with
Speaker 4: the B albums a couple of records, but.
Speaker 6: By the time we got to Electric Circus, it was
Speaker 6: like I was telling Amya, we gotta go out there,
Speaker 6: like let's go.
Speaker 1: Let's go out there, and like we went out there. Well, wait,
Speaker 1: I gotta ask questions. Uh wait, one question I have.
Speaker 1: Do you regret giving D'Angelo Chicken Grease? No? No, you're
Speaker 1: fine with Ghetto Heaven, Ghetto Heaven. I love for those
Speaker 1: about that trade for those that don't know, I mean
Speaker 1: not the competition, but just the amount of work that
Speaker 1: was put on all those records. It wasn't even like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we're working on this record, work on this record. It
Speaker 1: was just like we make a jam and then sell
Speaker 1: to the highest bidder, like who wants you? Who wants
Speaker 1: he wants it? And we were making Chicken well, we
Speaker 1: were making the song that was Chicken Grease for D'Angelo,
Speaker 1: for Commons record and Colin is ready. He just started
Speaker 1: writing whatever. And then DiAngelo kind of snuck in and
Speaker 1: had the scowl on his face and like called me,
Speaker 1: called me like out in the hallway, and he's like, yo, man, yo,
Speaker 1: as I live. He was like, as I live and breathe, man,
Speaker 1: y'o for real on yall wy man, Yo, you can't
Speaker 1: give you can't give that nigga that funk man, Yo,
Speaker 1: bruh yo bro you know, and I know that funk
Speaker 1: belonged to me, And I was like, yo, man, you
Speaker 1: can't just jack his song, man, Yo, man, he don't
Speaker 1: know what to do with that funk. That's my funk.
Speaker 1: And so then I see, I went, I went to you.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, wait a minute, because that
Speaker 1: morning D'Angelo was we were still waiting for Lauren Hill
Speaker 1: like to come and do her verse on whatever song
Speaker 1: they were going to do, Like they had a trade off.
Speaker 1: He did nothing, nothing even matters well her record, and
Speaker 1: she was supposed to do something for his. So we
Speaker 1: had made Ghetto Heaven that morning, uh for his record.
Speaker 1: And so then I was like, yo, the trade off,
Speaker 1: like y'all trade songs.
Speaker 6: And then it worked. I remember you you called me.
Speaker 6: I was the first time I was in Brazil. He
Speaker 6: was like, man, man, come on, man, get this beat
Speaker 6: to D'Angelo.
Speaker 1: And I was like yes.
Speaker 6: I was like yes because it was a funky joint
Speaker 6: that I didn't think I'd already had a funk like
Speaker 6: cold Blood. It was already and I'm not like the
Speaker 6: funk master, to be honest, So.
Speaker 1: So it was like, it's like I got Heaven was
Speaker 1: more emotion. You know.
Speaker 6: I liked the soul, jazzy blah blah blah. So it
Speaker 6: was like it was the perfect trade off for me.
Speaker 6: I was just I was excited and and it had d'
Speaker 6: angelo already singing on it, because you know, it was
Speaker 6: gonna be tough for me to try to get D'Angelo
Speaker 6: right right, So I was like, we're good.
Speaker 1: Wait on. It just hit me that even during that period,
Speaker 1: you were going to Cuba regularly, even before you were
Speaker 1: doing shows in there, you were you technically or you
Speaker 1: were the second hip hop act to performing Cuba or y.
Speaker 6: I know, I don't know what, you know, where I
Speaker 6: fall in as far as acts to perform out there,
Speaker 6: but we you know, we would go out there with
Speaker 6: Black August, which was an organization that you know, was
Speaker 6: raising money for political prisoners, and I went out there
Speaker 6: a couple of times with them.
Speaker 1: Most and I went out there and.
Speaker 6: To lib and you know, it wasn't probably legal to
Speaker 6: go out there at that time or whatever, but we
Speaker 6: fly through whatever country we had to go to and
Speaker 6: get to Cuba. Cuba was one of the best places
Speaker 6: I ever went to. And along with that, you know,
Speaker 6: I just met I just felt like, I was like, man,
Speaker 6: this is a country where the people are poor economically,
Speaker 6: but some of the richest spirits I ever you know,
Speaker 6: come across music, everything, the joy, the you know, the architecture, everything,
Speaker 6: and it became a real important part of my life.
Speaker 6: And you know, one of the reasons I even wanted
Speaker 6: to go more was because of Asida Shakur, who I
Speaker 6: read her book, and her books helped, you know. I
Speaker 6: named my daughter. My daughter's middle name is Asada because
Speaker 6: ASADA's book just changed me. And when I would go
Speaker 6: to Cuba, I got to connect with Asada and you
Speaker 6: know what was she like. She was like really up
Speaker 6: on a lot of things that you wouldn't think she
Speaker 6: was up on. That was the stage for me where
Speaker 6: I really understood you could be revolutionary and conscious and
Speaker 6: still be fun because you know, when you first started
Speaker 6: getting into consciousness, you think like you got.
Speaker 1: To stay super serious like brother exactly. So, but she was,
Speaker 1: you know, we would have drinks, have fun.
Speaker 6: She started freestyling with me one time, and she was like, yeah,
Speaker 6: I first got up on you since I used to
Speaker 6: love Ah, I love the roots.
Speaker 1: I loved it. I was like, yo, you up on
Speaker 1: all this?
Speaker 6: Just the woman that's like it was in a shootout
Speaker 6: with the state troopers and got shot and fought foot
Speaker 6: and you've been fighting and you were in exile in
Speaker 6: Cuba and they after you, and you still like enjoying life,
Speaker 6: having fun up on what it was. It was life
Speaker 6: enhancing for me to get to experience that with her.
Speaker 6: And it was crazy, man, Because fast forward. I'm just
Speaker 6: getting off the subject a little bit. But I just
Speaker 6: recently was doing a film where I was these FBI
Speaker 6: agents were I played the detective and FBI agents was
Speaker 6: involved in it. It's not out here, it's called three seconds,
Speaker 6: it'll be coming out. But I was sitting with this
Speaker 6: lady that was the FBI, like one of the top
Speaker 6: FBI people. I was just like so, man, who was
Speaker 6: on your most wanted list? And then she was like,
Speaker 6: maybe you never heard this woman, joe Ane Chesamart. I said, still, still,
Speaker 6: I said, what, that's where y'all going. That's one of
Speaker 6: the top people that you gonna name me that America
Speaker 6: is after to me. But I mean, even not even
Speaker 6: knowing my history, but the fact that that she is
Speaker 6: at one of the people that they put on the
Speaker 6: top of the list of most wanted with all this
Speaker 6: going on in the world, like she's a threat to
Speaker 6: American freedom. How old is She's got to be in
Speaker 6: a sixties, like sixty something. Anyway, Man, it was Cuba.
Speaker 6: All that experience was incredible. It was the first time
Speaker 6: I ever had to write. I had to write down
Speaker 6: my lyrics because they was like they wanted to make
Speaker 6: sure I wasn't saying no anti common and stuff like
Speaker 6: they was like, and I had to like straight write
Speaker 6: down the songs.
Speaker 1: You still love her, write it down and be like really, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh before you performed there, before you performed damn, damn,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know that. So electric circus. Now he's
Speaker 1: sixteen years down the line, we can celebrate and say,
Speaker 1: you know, man, it was so ahead of his time.
Speaker 1: But that was such a dangerous record and I felt,
Speaker 1: I mean, I stand by it even when we turned
Speaker 1: it in and you know, we got to work with
Speaker 1: prints on that record and stuff. First of all, just
Speaker 1: talk about Prince, like you hung out with him a lot.
Speaker 1: You got him to play on your record, which yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's what was it like like just hanging with him?
Speaker 1: And how'd you avoid all those religious talks? And wait
Speaker 1: a minute, I forgot you didn't.
Speaker 6: I didn't avoid Like okay, the first my first encounter
Speaker 6: with Prince was like when the light was out and
Speaker 6: he was We were at the Riviera in in Chicago
Speaker 6: and he came up to me like it was like, man,
Speaker 6: I love the light and it's He was like, it's
Speaker 6: crazy that you know that song still sounds so for
Speaker 6: and it's in D major and I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 6: I know, you know, don't please don't test so so
Speaker 6: we we you know. He saw me kind of just
Speaker 6: brush over that and was like this, thanks anyway.
Speaker 1: Damn he is right analy head.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah yeah, so and every time I play with musicians,
Speaker 6: if I'd be like, yo, it's in D major, you know,
Speaker 6: but anyway, Yeah, so he was like we you know,
Speaker 6: we actually got to do a show for his birthday
Speaker 6: at at Paisley Park, and of course we got to
Speaker 6: we were sitting down talking they had to curse. But
Speaker 6: in the in the in the room, he was talking
Speaker 6: about spirituality. The doves were in. The doves were right
Speaker 6: in one of the rooms. As you know, when we
Speaker 6: eventually went to Paisley Park as a basketball court, everything
Speaker 6: Dave Chappelle described as Charlie, Charlie Murphy, God bless her
Speaker 6: soul was in that house, in that place.
Speaker 1: So we did the show.
Speaker 6: We opened it was me Erica and the time during
Speaker 6: his birthday party, and from that point we kind of
Speaker 6: built a good rapport and you know, we was, like
Speaker 6: I said, he said that you can come back and
Speaker 6: record at Paisley Park, So we took everybody, Steve, Steve
Speaker 6: came out there. We all we went to Paisley Park
Speaker 6: and worked on some of electric circuits, which was for
Speaker 6: all of us. Just like I don't know if y'all remember,
Speaker 6: but his father was playing piano.
Speaker 1: So his father, princess father, John Nelson, he came to
Speaker 1: visit and it's just playing piano. I just remember that.
Speaker 1: Even I had shrimp and I was told Prince wouldn't
Speaker 1: allow any meat or animal products inside the the you
Speaker 1: know the building, and I was like, you know, it's
Speaker 1: like tim below zero outside, like I'm supposed to go
Speaker 1: outside neath this, And I remember them saying that he
Speaker 1: made Magic Johnson outside need a filet of fish and
Speaker 1: it was like twenty below So I defiantly snuck those
Speaker 1: shrimps under my tom time. And I remember, like all
Speaker 1: my demos were named after meat, like that's where I
Speaker 1: ate shrimp and studio behind like all my titles for
Speaker 1: your demos were like hcakes, Yeah, named after foods that
Speaker 1: I snuck in the Paisley Park because he didn't improve it.
Speaker 4: But I want the Jimmy rock star question. I know
Speaker 4: about the session. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm really excited as
Speaker 4: you were talking about Paisley Park.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to use my own platform to disassociate
Speaker 1: the perception that I was behind the wheel of this
Speaker 1: entire album, least for the the radical movement of it. Okay, No,
Speaker 1: I think we definitely got some phone calls from some
Speaker 1: of your friends. Well I know that I know that
Speaker 1: No Idea was concerned.
Speaker 4: Oh, they must have been flipping out the Chicago homies.
Speaker 1: Like what doing. But it was just like, what's weird
Speaker 1: is that Jimmy was a rock star? Dyla was. Dyla
Speaker 1: brought all these silver Apple records, all of these like
Speaker 1: these prog these crazy prog rock albums, gentle giant silver
Speaker 1: apples like giant. Yeah, like just stuff that we never
Speaker 1: heard before, and like we would just sit and listen
Speaker 1: to them. It was like a seance almost. He just sit,
Speaker 1: We sit in the room, look at the turntable and
Speaker 1: then whatever. We just listened to. We let a process
Speaker 1: for ten minutes and then we just run in the
Speaker 1: studio and I remember maybe four minutes into making Jimmy
Speaker 1: was a rock Star and even though I was playing
Speaker 1: it and I don't know if you guys are familiar,
Speaker 1: but it's a very just a radical rock, electric rock
Speaker 1: song about the life of Jimmy Hendrick and said, I
Speaker 1: was like, Yo, man, I'm gonna go down for this record. Man.
Speaker 1: I feel like I enjoyed it, but I was just like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: everybody's gonna blame me for this record. Man, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be my fault. Well, we don't do that. Oh we're yes,
Speaker 1: we're live. But you know, I will say that. I
Speaker 1: will say that in retrospect that album needed a good
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen years to grow on the people, because
Speaker 1: now it feel as though that was definitely the beginning
Speaker 1: of the kind of alternative area. That group's like the
Speaker 1: Internet and and I mean j Davey even like their
Speaker 1: their early stuff and and just a lot of the
Speaker 1: electronica hip hop movement. That's that's Kate Tranona, like that's
Speaker 1: happening now.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I think you know I can remember not
Speaker 6: only like, first of all the sessions with Jimmy was
Speaker 6: a rock star. I am music that all those are
Speaker 6: made in one session. I had you Pinot Deyla and
Speaker 6: and James Poys are.
Speaker 1: All stereo lab. I forgot we had stereo.
Speaker 6: Lab on that like two so we were I mean,
Speaker 6: Electric Circus was a result of me being like, man,
Speaker 6: I gotta keep growing, I gotta keep it. I felt
Speaker 6: like I hit a ceiling of and I wanted to
Speaker 6: go high it, like I wanted to knock off the
Speaker 6: ceiling and be like, man, hip hop has no ceiling.
Speaker 6: And because I was listening to Jimmy Hendricks and listening
Speaker 6: to stereo.
Speaker 1: Labs, don't listen to a lot of Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd.
Speaker 1: What was up that, like you and Erica just went
Speaker 1: through this pink Floyd face.
Speaker 6: I just loved Pink Floyd. I wasn't like. I can
Speaker 6: remember being young and my and my cousin wanted up.
Speaker 6: He would play me Jimmy Hendricks and the Pink Floyd's stuff,
Speaker 6: and I wasn't really into it. I was like, man,
Speaker 6: this is cool, and it didn't hit me. But for
Speaker 6: some reason at that point I got to appreciate it.
Speaker 6: It's funny how things. And I was listening to you know,
Speaker 6: obviously The Wall, but I was listening to Dark Side
Speaker 6: of the Moon. That's what I was really and and
Speaker 6: then you know, also listening to Radiohead. Not just only
Speaker 6: older rock, but just for me, Like I said, discovering
Speaker 6: new music was always opening me up as a as
Speaker 6: a hip hop artist. So when Jimmy was a rock
Speaker 6: star was made, I couldn't really wrap on that beat
Speaker 6: and I'm not a singer, but I just went and
Speaker 6: approached it. I remember not I say, I don't smoke weed,
Speaker 6: but I remember going smoking with smoking you admit it,
Speaker 6: going in there and just being like because I had
Speaker 6: to be courageous enough to just just be out there
Speaker 6: and be singing with Erica, and Erico would be like,
Speaker 6: you know, she would be like she was be supportive,
Speaker 6: like you could do it, you could do it, and
Speaker 6: then just yeah, that's it right there, and it was
Speaker 6: just it was it was like a stress, but then
Speaker 6: it became like fun in a way, just to even
Speaker 6: explore that. And it's funny you talk about Electric Circus
Speaker 6: because when I first played it for one of my
Speaker 6: good friends, it was two thousand and two when we
Speaker 6: released it, he was like, man, this album need to
Speaker 6: come out in twenty twelve. Man, what are you doing?
Speaker 6: It's too I was like, He's like, this is too
Speaker 6: ahead of his time. You're doing too much. And you know,
Speaker 6: some people felt that way. But now, like as you said,
Speaker 6: even with the re release of it, I felt like
Speaker 6: I felt proud. Even then I didn't feel like because
Speaker 6: somebody was just talking to me like, man, they had
Speaker 6: wrote you off at that time.
Speaker 4: They was like we divided the common fans. That's what
Speaker 4: it did. Yeah, yeah, because Niggas was like we lost
Speaker 4: them Earth.
Speaker 1: It was like we got killed. Yeah.
Speaker 6: But I mean, but how you feel it? Did you
Speaker 6: feel at the time, dude.
Speaker 1: It's still The thing is just in general, if I
Speaker 1: love something a lot that I know that not saying
Speaker 1: it's not good, but it probably won't hit with the
Speaker 1: rest of Like my personal tastes are the opposite of
Speaker 1: what I feel regular mainstream society is into or not into.
Speaker 6: I want to ask Steve, because Steve, you was there
Speaker 6: for what did you what did you think when we
Speaker 6: was doing it?
Speaker 1: Was you like, this ship is too crazy?
Speaker 7: You need this well for the for the technical side
Speaker 7: of things, It's it's funny how it went down actually,
Speaker 7: because we were in the middle of converting, like we
Speaker 7: were turning over from from reels from from tape to
Speaker 7: start to use pro tools more and so on electric
Speaker 7: circus that that's literally when the turnover was so we
Speaker 7: were using tapes and pro tools and we were sending
Speaker 7: out tapes to people, and then other people wanted files
Speaker 7: and they were sending back files and sending back so
Speaker 7: we're using both formats at the time, and so we
Speaker 7: were sort of busy with that and we were high,
Speaker 7: so we're.
Speaker 1: Not really paying attention to the creative side, right, But
Speaker 1: Steve like, wait, y'all did we did Wait, here's the thing.
Speaker 1: This show format was supposed to be ninety minutes and
Speaker 1: we went to two hours. It would I would get
Speaker 1: murdered if I don't mention working with Kanye West on
Speaker 1: the B record, So I'm sorry we didn't get to
Speaker 1: his acting career and in part two, but Obama, at
Speaker 1: least with at least with B. How did you feel
Speaker 1: having a new lease on life?
Speaker 6: It felt, It felt invigorating. I felt like I really
Speaker 6: loved and this sounds crazy, I love the the challenges
Speaker 6: I was getting from Electric Circus.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, meaning like oh man, you done and being underestimated.
Speaker 1: I loved. That's a good feeling because that motivated you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it motivated me for real.
Speaker 6: And and at the same choke, and I'd been like
Speaker 6: opening myself up to acting, which was like studying it,
Speaker 6: and that was opening me up to a certain degree
Speaker 6: just as far as creativity. And then it was like
Speaker 6: almost was starting. I look at it career and think
Speaker 6: of it like a cycle, and I kind of was
Speaker 6: starting at it on a new cycle at that point,
Speaker 6: and like a new cipher was starting even and not
Speaker 6: that I was going down and like it it's not
Speaker 6: like just on one level, it's actually vertical like the cycles.
Speaker 6: So it was like, Okay, this is a new cycle
Speaker 6: that's starting, and I just felt the hunger of a
Speaker 6: new MC, like like man, I remember Kanye gave me
Speaker 6: get Him High because he had been telling me I
Speaker 6: want you on this song or maybe this song. I
Speaker 6: was like, all right, just let me know, and then
Speaker 6: he gave me get Him High, and I was like, man,
Speaker 6: I'm about to tear this ship up, like I'm about
Speaker 6: to let them know what it is. This this is
Speaker 6: one of them opportunities. And from that point, Yay Yay
Speaker 6: was making a beat. He was in the studio session
Speaker 6: for Eve and we both were in LA and he
Speaker 6: said come by the studio and I came by and
Speaker 6: he was playing to beat the food and it was like, man,
Speaker 6: I'm just making beats and he was like, yo, you
Speaker 6: want this and he just gave me that beat and
Speaker 6: I went and rolled in my car and wrote that
Speaker 6: and that was the start of us being like, man,
Speaker 6: we about to just start working on this album project.
Speaker 1: I told him.
Speaker 6: I remember calling him saying, man, I'll be on your
Speaker 6: label and then he was like man, you sure that.
Speaker 6: He's like that's incredible. So I was just on his label,
Speaker 6: and what that process started was us going. I would
Speaker 6: go buy records, CDs and I would listen to as
Speaker 6: many CDs, all the stuff like from all I learned
Speaker 6: from Dyla, from no I d from the beat Nuts,
Speaker 6: from you all whatever records, like names, records I knew
Speaker 6: in I would buy blindly, just records. I would listen
Speaker 6: to him, put the best records in front of YA.
Speaker 6: He would listen to him, mark the ones he liked.
Speaker 6: If it's something that sparked, he would put all these
Speaker 6: samples into his simpler and then whatever he got motivated,
Speaker 6: he just started cooking up. And it was like for me,
Speaker 6: the jolt and the renewing was like, Okay, I'm working
Speaker 6: with ya who was around when No Idea and I
Speaker 6: was doing one day, that makes all makes sense. And
Speaker 6: he comes from you know, is from Chicago, and we
Speaker 6: already knew each other, but now we never worked.
Speaker 1: At this level.
Speaker 6: And he's like even like more like confident and just
Speaker 6: he not even just more confident, he's just more culture
Speaker 6: because he was confident then he was confident beyond his
Speaker 6: level at that point, but that confidence caught up with
Speaker 6: his ability and he was and he just was really
Speaker 6: a producer. He started being like, nah, rash rewrite this verse,
Speaker 6: or man, this is what this hook is gonna go like,
Speaker 6: And so it was really good like combination because we
Speaker 6: both was hungry and we felt He wrote about it
Speaker 6: in one of this this some table book he had.
Speaker 6: It's kind of was the meeting of like what I've
Speaker 6: done and have built, what we've done and built in
Speaker 6: hip hop, combining with where he was in his career.
Speaker 6: It was like the perfect like combination of and we
Speaker 6: both just love like with Yay, I can still reference
Speaker 6: a trial call quest or he would reference a trial
Speaker 6: call quest or or some brand new beings, but he
Speaker 6: still also listened to some of the stuff that I
Speaker 6: didn't listen to, which was, you know, like some of
Speaker 6: the more commercial hip hop. Or he would be like, man,
Speaker 6: Mace is one of my favorite rappers. And I'd be like, really,
Speaker 6: but ill due respect to Mace now because I know him,
Speaker 6: and you know, when I listened back, I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 6: that's what you you know. But ultimately we had different
Speaker 6: tastes in certain areas, but it just was a man,
Speaker 6: it was an incredible energy. Yeah that and just great
Speaker 6: songmaking and vision and like that passion. I remember specifically
Speaker 6: being like, Yay used to do listening sessions. You know
Speaker 6: how we used to do listening sessions for journalists, and
Speaker 6: Yay would like jump up on the table and be
Speaker 6: rapping his songs and fit people. Yeah, you'd be like
Speaker 6: not spitting on purpose, but just you know, just passionately
Speaker 6: doing this thing. And I was like, damn, you know
Speaker 6: that ain't necessarily what I need to do jump up
Speaker 6: on the table, but it kind of made me, I mean,
Speaker 6: I needed to do it my way, like being confident
Speaker 6: in what I was, what I was presenting, if I
Speaker 6: really believed in it that way instead of just being
Speaker 6: like kind of like just check it out, humble you
Speaker 6: like it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
Speaker 6: So it was a lot of things I learned doing
Speaker 6: that process for him. But creatively, you know, he definitely
Speaker 6: is one of the best man to me, It's like
Speaker 6: he knows how to push the envelope. But and he
Speaker 6: has a knack for making He's rooted in hip hop
Speaker 6: and soul music, but he still has something that he's
Speaker 6: The stuff he chooses ends up being like really catchy
Speaker 6: stuff that can reach new audiences.
Speaker 1: So but it's rooted and soul. So thank you Rob,
Speaker 1: thank you for doing the show. Thank you, thank you'
Speaker 1: all for having me.
Speaker 6: This has been an incredible Thanks Steve Layah Deal, thank
Speaker 6: you comparable a miya.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we'd like to thank our audience for
Speaker 1: for joining us and hopefully we'll do a feature live
Speaker 1: broadcast of course, Love Supreme enjoy it. Thank you very much,
Speaker 1: We appreciate it. See you on the next course. Love
Speaker 1: Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic episode was
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