Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: What's up, y'all? This is Questlove And in our recent
Speaker 2: finale episode of Team Supreme, I mentioned that one of
Speaker 2: my most underrated episodes of QLs is this particular one
Speaker 2: right here, This QLs classic conversation with doctor Matthew Knowles,
Speaker 2: father too, Beyonce and Solange, and oh I love this
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one episode for so many reasons. You know,
Speaker 2: doctor Knowles got incredibly real, speaking openly about the trauma
Speaker 2: he's faced and how therapy helped him and heal and grow.
Speaker 2: He also shared very powerful moments about physical, mental, emotional health,
Speaker 2: and this one kind of resonated with me a little
Speaker 2: too much. Got emotional, which is nothing wrong with that,
Speaker 2: and I believe it's going to help you too. So
Speaker 2: here's an encore and recap redo of the Doctor Matthew
Speaker 2: Knowles episode of Question Love Supreme.
Speaker 3: Enjoy, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Quest
Speaker 3: Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Quest Love. We have Teams Supreme with
Speaker 2: us right now. Uh fanto, how are you? I?
Speaker 4: I'm Ernest and Juliaglo's brother. That's exactly now.
Speaker 2: I'm good Man I'm good.
Speaker 4: I'm chilling. I'm still still down stills down thirty one.
Speaker 5: I kind of hit like a plateau, so I think
Speaker 5: I'm kind of like I wait in the same thing
Speaker 5: like every week.
Speaker 4: But normally when I do that, the next week is
Speaker 4: like I have a big drop. So I'm seeing but
Speaker 4: I'm still on it.
Speaker 2: Man. Yeah, I'm there with you, bro. I'm doing a
Speaker 2: quarter pounds a week, so that's all. Really, That's what
Speaker 2: I'm hitting up Flatfield right now. I'm trying to hit
Speaker 2: the last sixty.
Speaker 4: So but you down like, should you love them there?
Speaker 4: A hundred though?
Speaker 2: Right, like, yeah, one, I'm going I'm going for in
Speaker 2: total one eight. I'm trying to get two hundred.
Speaker 4: You're trying to come out of the house looking like
Speaker 4: it's just chestnut nigga?
Speaker 2: Yes? Is that why? Burn's just that's trending today? Office
Speaker 2: sudden alcoh Blue. Anyway, Steve, how are you hello? Everybody?
Speaker 2: Nice to be here. That's good.
Speaker 6: I'm doing fine.
Speaker 2: You know, I gotta ask you how you're doing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm doing good. I'm just waiting for people to
Speaker 6: applaud after you say my name.
Speaker 2: But that didn't happen, right, that's that's your golf clap
Speaker 2: right there. Uh layah, Yeah, you're fine.
Speaker 7: I'm good and I'm necative. I'm good as yet last year.
Speaker 2: Yeah you.
Speaker 7: Still, Yeah, because I visited a couple of places last
Speaker 7: week and I was, like I was in Nashville.
Speaker 2: He's a little nervous. Yeah, you know, I I'm one
Speaker 2: of those people that fell I'm one of those people
Speaker 2: that fall asleep, and I'm too lazy to change the
Speaker 2: air conditioning situation. And you know, if you're a couple
Speaker 2: that really doesn't agree on the proper temperature of a
Speaker 2: particular room, you know, I'll go to sleep, sneak and
Speaker 2: put it on air, and then I'll sneak and put
Speaker 2: it on heat and whatnot. Yeah. So last week I
Speaker 2: woke up with the flu, and you know, I was
Speaker 2: out of my mind, right like I got it. But
Speaker 2: you know, basically.
Speaker 7: Old and you're still blaming the flu and stuff.
Speaker 2: Like that, Okay, or maybe I got it. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I took like six no, I took six steps. I
Speaker 2: definitely don't have it. Ladies and gentlemen, I will say
Speaker 2: that we've been on the air. What this this is
Speaker 2: our fifth anniversary almost Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's that's kind
Speaker 2: of weird that we've been doing this for five years.
Speaker 2: I still feel like we're on our second or third year. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we've been We've been on the air for about five seasons.
Speaker 2: And I'll say that the seed, uh, the seed of
Speaker 2: this episode was probably Planet I know that Salon's was
Speaker 2: definitely one of the first twenty episodes. I think she
Speaker 2: was like episode fifteen or early yeah, yeah, And she
Speaker 2: planted the seeds in that episode basically that her her
Speaker 2: dad wasn't just some random backstage dad, but rather an
Speaker 2: accomplished gentleman with both his his his NBA and his
Speaker 2: and his PhD and business like doctor that yeah, doctor
Speaker 2: and master. But she also let us down the rabbit
Speaker 2: hole of his involvement in the Civil rights movement and
Speaker 2: basically just told us other struggle and the sacrifice that
Speaker 2: it took to ensure that the Knowle's legacy lived on
Speaker 2: forever in the history books, not only with her sister,
Speaker 2: but yeahs as in her father and the rest of
Speaker 2: the family. I'm beyond certain that they are in mission
Speaker 2: accomplished land right now. One hundredfold as far as being
Speaker 2: in the history books. He is the creator of music, world, entertainment.
Speaker 2: He's a movie producer, a college professor, a successful kids
Speaker 2: label in print exec recording studio mogul, real estate tycoon,
Speaker 2: cannabis company owner, Oh.
Speaker 4: Wow podcast, did everything a president exactly.
Speaker 2: He even has his own podcast. Like our first conversation
Speaker 2: was me being a guest on his podcast. Not to mention,
Speaker 2: you know, he is a cancer survivor, breast cancer survivor
Speaker 2: and you know, yeah, incidentally father of two of the
Speaker 2: most dauntless, indomitable artists recording music today. Whoever those two
Speaker 2: people are, I don't know. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome
Speaker 2: finally to Course Love Supreme Doctor Matthew Knowles, Sir, Hey
Speaker 2: quest Love.
Speaker 8: Thank you for the introduction. Brother. I have much respect
Speaker 8: for you, so thank you for allow me having this opportunity.
Speaker 8: It was a little tough. We had a little start
Speaker 8: to stop, but that's like.
Speaker 4: We do the best you can in the pandemic.
Speaker 2: Bro. Yeah, it was a commitment. I will say that
Speaker 2: you you made the introduction easy because sometimes I have
Speaker 2: to add a lot more broth to the to the
Speaker 2: to the soup than you know deserve. You know, you
Speaker 2: can became well stocked, you know, I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 2: have to add any more flourishing words to your tier
Speaker 2: and pressed a resume. Where are you speaking to us
Speaker 2: right now?
Speaker 8: From You're California in my office. We have a corporate
Speaker 8: home here as well as in Houston. But I'm just
Speaker 8: I love here because I get to you know, when
Speaker 8: I was I was just shared this story today. Fifteen
Speaker 8: years ago, I was in my office at Sony at
Speaker 8: five fifty Madison, you guys know where that is. And
Speaker 8: the president told me they had just hired head of
Speaker 8: an R paid them five million dollars a year. And
Speaker 8: I asked him, I said, why the hell did you
Speaker 8: hire this guy? And he said to look out the window.
Speaker 8: And it took me five about seven years to understand
Speaker 8: truly what he meant by looking out of the window.
Speaker 8: That creative space we all get into. And here it
Speaker 8: allows me to just look out the window.
Speaker 2: And you're saying that that that sort of environment of
Speaker 2: looking out the window and that's where the ideas come
Speaker 2: into play, or.
Speaker 8: Just absolutely that's what the ideas come. That's where you know.
Speaker 8: I work now, my biggest thing that I work on.
Speaker 8: I'm very grateful the success of my kids and the
Speaker 8: success I had in corporate America and the music industry.
Speaker 8: But I work. I work on happiness. That's the number
Speaker 8: one thing I work. I work on each and every
Speaker 8: day is happiness.
Speaker 7: How long it take you to figure that out?
Speaker 8: It took me, Dawn near sixty some years to figure
Speaker 8: that out.
Speaker 7: Uh.
Speaker 8: You know, we work so hard to get plaques and
Speaker 8: b number one, and then we find ourselves in a
Speaker 8: space that we lack happiness. And that's what I work on.
Speaker 8: How can I be happy? And part of that is
Speaker 8: gratitude and not doing a damn thing I don't want
Speaker 8: to do.
Speaker 4: Man, listen, Oh wow, that's Mantra.
Speaker 2: That's the episode right there. Thank you very much that.
Speaker 4: I remember.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 5: I remember watching your interview you when you were on
Speaker 5: Breakfast Club, and you know, you were talking with Charlamagne
Speaker 5: and you were saying the way it was when you
Speaker 5: just put out your book, which I really enjoyed, The
Speaker 5: DNA of Achievers, the one did you and you were
Speaker 5: talking about how, you know, people compare Beyonce versus Slange
Speaker 5: or whatever, and you were saying how every artist has
Speaker 5: to develop success on their own terms for what they
Speaker 5: mean to be successful. And I was curious, like how
Speaker 5: did you learn that lesson in your career? Like, how
Speaker 5: did you you know, how did you make that realization?
Speaker 8: Well? I have really great parents and they were poor,
Speaker 8: but I never knew we were poor until I got
Speaker 8: older in life, and they instilled in me the same
Speaker 8: thing that I instilled in my kids, and that is
Speaker 8: you can dream and dream big because the same efforts
Speaker 8: and energy on a little small idea, it's the same
Speaker 8: energy and efforts on the big idea. So my parents,
Speaker 8: you know, I watched them work their day job but
Speaker 8: yet be entrepreneurs on the weekends and at night. My
Speaker 8: daddy was a truck driver by day, working for white folks,
Speaker 8: and by night he convinced the white folks to let
Speaker 8: him use the truck all the time, and he would
Speaker 8: tear down houses and sell the metals and sell the woods,
Speaker 8: scrap and yeah, scrap metals. Yeah, I see. You know that. Man.
Speaker 4: I'm from North Carolina, so this is home for me.
Speaker 4: The gall well, we make wine. So now I'm familiar.
Speaker 7: What did your mother what was her gig? You said
Speaker 7: your dad, Well.
Speaker 8: My mother was a color a colored maid. My dad
Speaker 8: made thirty dollars a week as a truck driver. My
Speaker 8: mom made fifteen dollars a week as a colored maid.
Speaker 8: She convinced the white woman she worked for to give
Speaker 8: her all of her hand me down clothes and own
Speaker 8: and convinced her to ask her her friends to give
Speaker 8: her the hand me down clothes. And on the weekend,
Speaker 8: my mom and a couple of her best friends would
Speaker 8: make these beautiful quotes and sell them. So I saw entrepreneurship.
Speaker 8: My grandfather was on both sides and grandmother on both
Speaker 8: sides were entrepreneurs. So entrepreneurship is part of our tradition
Speaker 8: and our family.
Speaker 4: And where did you grow up?
Speaker 7: What?
Speaker 4: Where's this?
Speaker 8: Gaston, Alabama?
Speaker 4: It's Alabama.
Speaker 8: Got a little small town, you know. I grew up
Speaker 8: on a dirt road with an outside bathroom until I
Speaker 8: was about thirteen, fourteen years old.
Speaker 2: An outhouse outhouse. Wow, Okay, yeah, I have a question.
Speaker 2: You said something really crucial at the top. Well, you
Speaker 2: said two crucial things. One to fine happiness, which you're right.
Speaker 2: That's that's something that we learned later in life. I
Speaker 2: noticed I think last week I forgot what I was watching.
Speaker 2: But I will say that one of the biggest mistakes
Speaker 2: that I think the average black household instills. And you
Speaker 2: know this is not strictly just black households. I know
Speaker 2: this is a universal thought. Is oftentimes parents will tell
Speaker 2: their kids, you know, it's better to be safe than sorry.
Speaker 2: Are you know, have have a plan, B, have a
Speaker 2: bland C. But you know, oftentimes when you said that,
Speaker 2: you know, following your dreams, especially when you're living kind
Speaker 2: of in a poverty level or at least below what
Speaker 2: the what the average what the average income is for
Speaker 2: survival for whatever time period you're speaking of. I know
Speaker 2: that oftentimes when people are in fight or flight modes
Speaker 2: for survival, they often think that daydreaming is kind of
Speaker 2: a waste of time. I sort of, I sort of
Speaker 2: grew up in my family structure was definitely more about
Speaker 2: survival than anything. My actual inner family, like my mother
Speaker 2: and my father, of course they were like the dreamers
Speaker 2: of My father was like one of nine kids, so
Speaker 2: you know, kind of like I'll say that his family
Speaker 2: was more or less about survival and in terms of
Speaker 2: getting a good job, making good money, surviving, and he
Speaker 2: pursued his dream. So how much of a risk is
Speaker 2: it when you are living in a situation in which
Speaker 2: you might not know where your next meal is coming
Speaker 2: from or that sort of thing. Yeah, like most people
Speaker 2: can't or it feel as though they can't afford to
Speaker 2: daydream when they have bills to pay, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: So how do you like how what was different about
Speaker 2: your situation than the average household?
Speaker 8: Well, I share what my parents did. I like to
Speaker 8: use the word rather than survival survival determination. Uh, they
Speaker 8: were determined. They weren't passionate about doing their day job.
Speaker 8: That was more determination to provide just like you just said, it.
Speaker 4: Was a means to an end.
Speaker 8: Right. But but my parents, you know, I think in
Speaker 8: the day daydreaming process, at least for me with my kids,
Speaker 8: it was always about finding that thing you were passionate
Speaker 8: about and how soon and how early you can find
Speaker 8: that passion. And if you think about when we think
Speaker 8: about the Williams sisters or Michael Jordan or Michael Jackson
Speaker 8: or Tiger Woods, they found their passion very very early.
Speaker 8: And so my parents gave me that that space, gave
Speaker 8: me that that ability to daydream and supported it, just
Speaker 8: like I supported my kids with whatever their passion. And
Speaker 8: I always say, you know, had Beyonce or Clanche both
Speaker 8: said Daddy, I want to I want to be a doctor.
Speaker 8: I would have supported that. I would have sent them
Speaker 8: to a school of that had science. I would have
Speaker 8: gone to the you know library, let them read about
Speaker 8: science and medicine and surround them with that. But I
Speaker 8: would have said, though, once you get your your your
Speaker 8: license and graduate from med school, your daddy would will
Speaker 8: have a hospital. Think about that. It was never you
Speaker 8: gonna work for somebody. It was you're gonna be in
Speaker 8: a position of entrepreneurship and wealth, which black people we don't.
Speaker 8: We always hesitate and are shy about talking about building wealth.
Speaker 2: Not even.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I you know, I meant that in my
Speaker 2: personal situation, like you know, and even now I still
Speaker 2: wrestle with that because you know, I come from West Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: and I mean, like you can attest to this, like
Speaker 2: I'm when I'm in Philadelphia, I still feel the need
Speaker 2: to drive my first raggedy car. I have sentimental value
Speaker 2: to it. But of course, you know, I also have
Speaker 2: a grown man's car. I have a may Bat, but.
Speaker 5: And you have an Oscar winning documentary puts right.
Speaker 4: We're trying to play broke, nigga.
Speaker 7: Trying to play broke and also break us down. How
Speaker 7: you diversify because some of us are trying to get
Speaker 7: there because it's dope the way that you do the
Speaker 7: way you do with the product job.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he got it, Matthew.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing though, here's okay, So again, you two
Speaker 2: have been following me the last year, so you know,
Speaker 2: I kind of been running the same narrative on the show.
Speaker 2: I'm now learning that, Okay. When I when I was
Speaker 2: doing the nineteen job thing where I said yes to everything,
Speaker 2: Ye'll do that, I'll produce that. No, no, no. According
Speaker 2: to someone nameless, she said that that was me being
Speaker 2: the mayor. She's like, you enjoy being the mayor, Like
Speaker 2: the mayor is the person that is sort of like
Speaker 2: the super of the apartment, you know, like bookmen like
Speaker 2: fixing the pipes and I'll fix your electricity d D.
Speaker 2: And she's like, first of all, you know, because you're
Speaker 2: in fight or flight mood, you know, that's why you
Speaker 2: keep saying yes to everything. And she's like, it's the
Speaker 2: moment you let those things go and give yourself a
Speaker 2: chance to breathe and look out the window. Which is
Speaker 2: why when he said looking out the window, I knew
Speaker 2: exactly resonate because you know, I finally discovered that lookout
Speaker 2: the window moment during the pandemic.
Speaker 5: You know, not a person who said this was this
Speaker 5: that their names start with G and rhyme with race.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was race.
Speaker 7: So why didn't we pick up on this looking out
Speaker 7: the window thing when Good Times came on? Because we
Speaker 7: knew that what they were motivator. Yeah, that was depressing
Speaker 7: just looking out of the window watching the as far.
Speaker 2: It's daydreaming. You know what, there's a really interesting episode
Speaker 2: of Soul Train in seventy five, Don Cornelius asks, you
Speaker 2: know this point, Michael Jackson's like seventeen, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's like his senior year of high school. So you know,
Speaker 2: Donn is joking with Michael Jackson about like him and
Speaker 2: Danny Botten JUGI in the same high school and how
Speaker 2: Danny always gets in trouble and Mike doesn't get in trouble.
Speaker 2: And you know, he asked Mike, like, what are you
Speaker 2: doing in your spare time like as a seventeen year old,
Speaker 2: And Mike had a very very interesting answer that he
Speaker 2: used to always laugh at until now. Mike's first answer was,
Speaker 2: you know, I'd just like to sit in daydream, which right,
Speaker 2: that sounded silly, but I didn't realize the importance of
Speaker 2: day dreaming. That that puts your mind space in the
Speaker 2: space of achievement. And if you you know, if you
Speaker 2: follow Michael Jackson's career, especially in the Spike Lee documentaries,
Speaker 2: like he was world famous for like documenting his day dreams.
Speaker 2: One day, I want to achieve the Internet and then
Speaker 2: I want to be the dinner. So I'm realizing that now,
Speaker 2: you know, in this late stage of my life. But
Speaker 2: you know, I I really wish I could I could
Speaker 2: hone in and tell people at least listen to this
Speaker 2: episode how it's so important to encourage your kids to dream,
Speaker 2: to you know, really really take the time out to
Speaker 2: sit in silence into to daydream, because you know, I
Speaker 2: kind of came from a school where it was like,
Speaker 2: you know, burn the hand, be's doing the bush and
Speaker 2: you know, you know, if you don't work, you can't eat,
Speaker 2: like all those idioms that my grandmom used to stay
Speaker 2: like wait, how boy, you know it ain't gonna feed itself,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing. Like I grew up in that
Speaker 2: sort of household when my parents were on the road,
Speaker 2: and you know, I always thought, like you can't afford
Speaker 2: to daydream, like you gotta work to survive, and now
Speaker 2: I'm realizing it's the the opposite.
Speaker 8: So and daydreaming allows us also to visualize, to visualize
Speaker 8: where we can be in the future, because if we don't,
Speaker 8: if we don't visualize and see it, like people ask
Speaker 8: me all the time, like did you ever think I
Speaker 8: think that you know, Deskin y'all or Beyonce or Solange
Speaker 8: would be as successful. Absolutely, I used to visualize it.
Speaker 8: I actually used to see it. And that's one of
Speaker 8: the things that daydreaming and just taking time out sometimes,
Speaker 8: just like you just said, quest love just to take
Speaker 8: time out. And the older I get, and I think
Speaker 8: it also has to do as you get older and
Speaker 8: experience life more, you begin to see life differently. I'm
Speaker 8: you know, I'll be seventy years old than five months,
Speaker 8: and so I'm a reality I'm in reality mode that
Speaker 8: you know, time is my window is getting short, and
Speaker 8: so I see life differently as well. So that's part
Speaker 8: of it.
Speaker 2: Well, you just reminded me that it's going to be
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two in five months. In my mind, right,
Speaker 2: it might be made I was doing minute now you
Speaker 2: was born in January, that's like next year. And now
Speaker 2: I'm realizing that.
Speaker 4: January is next year exactly.
Speaker 7: Can I ask a question about your upbringing a little bit,
Speaker 7: because I know that one of the things that brought
Speaker 7: folks to the attention of how kind of dope you
Speaker 7: are for lack of a better term, was the Solange
Speaker 7: album And when you do the piece, yeah it's got
Speaker 7: the right to be mad, which she wrote, but it's
Speaker 7: your story and it made me think about you talking
Speaker 7: about fantasy and how you basically were raised and yeah,
Speaker 7: you can fantasize, but you also have this reality in
Speaker 7: your face of being like a first Can you just
Speaker 7: talk about like that piece?
Speaker 8: And yeah, I tell you, people just don't know Solange. Solange.
Speaker 8: You know, we made a big, big mistake on her
Speaker 8: first album. You know, Solanche was fifteen.
Speaker 4: Was that the Hadley Street Dreams record.
Speaker 8: No No, No, that was a great record, solo star.
Speaker 8: You know, I made a big mistake. Columbia Records made
Speaker 8: a big mistake of trying to make her something she
Speaker 8: really wasn't and trying to make her a pop artist. Uh,
Speaker 8: and that's not really who she is. And it was
Speaker 8: with Hadley Street Dreamed dreams that she really took a
Speaker 8: stand about her artistry and she was right, and she
Speaker 8: wrote her way and performed her way out of the
Speaker 8: shadow of her sister. You know, we used to say
Speaker 8: and Beyonce the little sister Solange. People don't say that anymore.
Speaker 8: And people don't even know that Kelly Rowland's first album,
Speaker 8: which people don't know Kelly Rowland either. Most people don't
Speaker 8: know Kelly Rowland's album. First album sold four million records
Speaker 8: outside of America, four a million, and that album half
Speaker 8: of it Solange wrote, right, or the songs she wrote
Speaker 8: for Beyonce or Destiny's Child or all the other mini artists.
Speaker 8: So you know, I really, uh look back. You know,
Speaker 8: it's crazy because the next book I'm doing is called
Speaker 8: When I Look Back. But when I look Back. That's
Speaker 8: the one thing I'm proud is that Solange stood up
Speaker 8: for her artists, her artistic expression and to become part
Speaker 8: of the process. Because you know, when you're small, you're young,
Speaker 8: rather you don't become you don't really get an opportunity
Speaker 8: to be part of the process. So I'm proud of Solunge.
Speaker 7: I still wanted you to just talk about the interlude, though,
Speaker 7: with you got the right to be mad, and how
Speaker 7: you felt.
Speaker 8: When she came Oh that well, it was it was
Speaker 8: really an interesting moment. What you don't know is Solons orchestrated.
Speaker 8: I had never seen my former wife from since our divorce,
Speaker 8: and we actually didn't know it, but we walked into
Speaker 8: a room in New Orleans and so that that was
Speaker 8: a special moment in itself. You know. You know Solane
Speaker 8: with her creativity, she knew how to I think she
Speaker 8: knew also how to bring something out of me. Uh
Speaker 8: and took me back to my childhood, which as a child,
Speaker 8: I never went to a black school growing up in Gaston, Alabama.
Speaker 8: George Wallace l the governor al Lingo my my age
Speaker 8: from Alabama. You know that name, because this guy was
Speaker 8: over the state. True, you know, it was really tough
Speaker 8: for me being the very first one of the first
Speaker 8: and going to a Catholic elementary school in Gaston, Alabama.
Speaker 8: Who does that? I mean, who does that? And then
Speaker 8: going to a junior high school with a thousand white
Speaker 8: kids and first days. You know, George Wallace had this
Speaker 8: thing about freedom of choice. You can go to any
Speaker 8: school you want to, but you own your damn own
Speaker 8: don't ask me to save, you support tect you protect you,
Speaker 8: You own your own, So that those were tough times,
Speaker 8: being one of the first. And my mother was so
Speaker 8: frightened in my junior high that she actually took a
Speaker 8: job in the UH at the school, in the elect
Speaker 8: room so that she could be there as a cook,
Speaker 8: so she could be there with her. Because we never
Speaker 8: knew what was going to happen. We got in fights,
Speaker 8: you know, the white kids would circle us and here
Speaker 8: we are in the middle of a fight. We didn't
Speaker 8: know what was going to happen that day.
Speaker 4: And mister Nosle, you're only child at the time. You
Speaker 4: have any brothers and sisters?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, I have my brother, it has passed on.
Speaker 8: He was nine years older, and my sister, who my
Speaker 8: parents adopted, is nine years younger. So we all in
Speaker 8: a way we're the only child.
Speaker 4: There's always experiencing stuff by ourself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, when do you consider Solons made a lot
Speaker 2: about your involvement in the civil rights period? Of course,
Speaker 2: you know, when if you're in Gatsa in Alabama as
Speaker 2: a elementary school student, I'm certain that every day was
Speaker 2: a day for civil rights. But when do you con
Speaker 2: your actual entry into participating in the civil rights period.
Speaker 8: It would be my first demonstration. You know, most people,
Speaker 8: of course love don't realize how young we were as
Speaker 8: kids participating in demonstrations. And when the state troopers were beating,
Speaker 8: they didn't care of you a woman, a man, or child.
Speaker 8: And so that period of leaving your church, going to
Speaker 8: a Penny's store and sitting at the counter there in
Speaker 8: the cafeteria and state troopers companying people running screaming, those
Speaker 8: were the experiences. I've been beaten, I've been spit on,
Speaker 8: I've been electric pride, and those of you that don't
Speaker 8: know what that is, it's like a tool of the battle. Yeah,
Speaker 8: that's you for cattle. And they used that a lot,
Speaker 8: that electric product on us, and it was really time.
Speaker 8: I remember one time I was demonstrating and they made
Speaker 8: the older men take off their shoes and walk barefoot,
Speaker 8: and it was like a hundred degrees, so you can
Speaker 8: imagine that. Or when we would demonstrate, I remember many
Speaker 8: times at night we would demonstrate at the courtroom and
Speaker 8: we had no outside facilities. The ladies had to surround,
Speaker 8: the men had to dig holes in the dirt. We
Speaker 8: did what we had to do. To survive. People don't
Speaker 8: realize what really went through that civil rights movement and
Speaker 8: how people risked their lives to get us to where
Speaker 8: we are today. That's why I get I still hold
Speaker 8: people accountable because COVID and a lot of what's happened
Speaker 8: is because when Donald Trump ran for president, black folks
Speaker 8: we didn't vote like we did eight years previous. And
Speaker 8: I'm most always hope and remind black folks the accountability
Speaker 8: of that.
Speaker 2: I had to take it more more of Sunce just
Speaker 2: to just to iggest that in terms of, well, when
Speaker 2: you were knee deep in these protests or whatever, like,
Speaker 2: did you you're saying you did this at a young age? Correct?
Speaker 8: Yes, I'm talking twelve years old around that age.
Speaker 2: So even then you had the wherewithal to even comprehend
Speaker 2: what you were doing and why you were doing it.
Speaker 2: Did you, and you're at twelve, did you feel as
Speaker 2: though there was going to be an endgame or a
Speaker 2: time period in which you wouldn't have to do this anymore?
Speaker 2: Or I just feel I just.
Speaker 8: Knew it was wrong. I was a child. My mother
Speaker 8: was an activist. My mother grew up in Maryon, Alabama.
Speaker 8: My mother went to high school with Coreta King and
Speaker 8: Andrew Young's wife. They all went to high school the
Speaker 8: same grade, Lincoln Memorial High School and Marion and Alabama.
Speaker 8: By the way, we don't know the proper story now
Speaker 8: Martin Luther King and Andrew Young married these two women
Speaker 8: from Marion, which is about eight nine miles from Selma.
Speaker 8: We don't know about brother Jackson who got hung and
Speaker 8: Marian because of what you know, we talked about Selma.
Speaker 8: It really started at Marion. But not to get on that,
Speaker 8: but my mother was really engraved in the civil rights movement,
Speaker 8: so I understood a lot. We're a kid, you don't
Speaker 8: totally understand it, but you know wrong and you know
Speaker 8: you're being treated differently. And I had to go to therapy,
Speaker 8: years of therapy, years of therapy for racial trauma. And
Speaker 8: if today women can talk about things that happened thirty
Speaker 8: forty fifty years ago and sexual trauma, then we have
Speaker 8: to acknowledge that also racial trauma impacts us.
Speaker 5: When would you When did you start that journey of
Speaker 5: going to therapy and addressing that boy?
Speaker 4: How old were you?
Speaker 8: Well, this was my adult I'm talking in two thousand
Speaker 8: and four or five.
Speaker 7: Yeah, definitely a new trend for black men to talk
Speaker 7: about going to therapy.
Speaker 8: I was in therapy for I mean back to back
Speaker 8: weekly therapy for almost ten years, and at the beginning
Speaker 8: didn't quite understand it because I had this personality and
Speaker 8: still have to work on it, still have to work
Speaker 8: on it, this compulsive, compulsive personality, you know, Uh, I love.
Speaker 8: I don't know if that impacted cranes in the sky,
Speaker 8: but when line say I drank too much, dance too much,
Speaker 8: a party too much, that was me. You know, I
Speaker 8: did everything to damn much.
Speaker 4: Try to drink it.
Speaker 8: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, And so that that was me
Speaker 8: and doing that period just compulsive, gotta do more, gotta
Speaker 8: do more, gotta do more, got to do more, not enough,
Speaker 8: And so I had to come to grips of that.
Speaker 8: It actually cost me my marriage, uh that that behavior,
Speaker 8: and I hold I take responsibility and accountability for that.
Speaker 8: I don't run a high from that, but you know
Speaker 8: it was up. When I finally met and got a
Speaker 8: black male therapist, things change for me.
Speaker 5: You find one of them, Oh my god.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's that's one in Dallas, Texas. A brother there
Speaker 8: that uh really really impacted because I had been going
Speaker 8: to a Jewish, white woman from New York who was traditional. Uh,
Speaker 8: you know all the acromyms. Uh. And and this brother said, no, no,
Speaker 8: let's go back to your childhood from a different perspective.
Speaker 8: Let's what was the trauma. And the trauma was you
Speaker 8: were a kid fearful of your life. The trauma was,
Speaker 8: you know, you were taught to feel not as as
Speaker 8: as equal, less than that. You had to do all
Speaker 8: of this stuff to get acknowledgment. Uh. And it's when
Speaker 8: I began to understand that better. And I still have
Speaker 8: to work on it. I can see up touches up touching.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna tell y'all, this is almost I want you
Speaker 2: to to take over this interview because, like you don't know,
Speaker 2: in my head, in my head right now, I'm like
Speaker 2: really trying to hold back the team, like this is ship.
Speaker 2: I wish, like my my main regret was like right now,
Speaker 2: I'm just really overwhelmed talking to hear an older black
Speaker 2: man talk this way, because like I'm in my head,
Speaker 2: I'm like, damn man, like this is ship. This is
Speaker 2: the evolution I wish my dad had went through before
Speaker 2: he passed away, Like he kinda he kind of landed
Speaker 2: the plane nicely maybe in like the last sort of
Speaker 2: like the last year of his life when he knew
Speaker 2: he was gonna leave, you know, and then we finally
Speaker 2: like you know, because like black men just didn't talk
Speaker 2: about feelings.
Speaker 7: Boomers, especially boomers, like I have math, doctor Knowles is
Speaker 7: the exception to the rule.
Speaker 2: But yeah, like this is really I really have no
Speaker 2: questions left, Like I'm just.
Speaker 7: And I just asked, Okay, so this is my question
Speaker 7: because you said you did some racial therapy, and it's
Speaker 7: interesting because I thought about something when a mir said
Speaker 7: said something about the way his parents raised him about
Speaker 7: not being daydreamers and stuff, and it seems like the
Speaker 7: reason to go toward the racial part is because and
Speaker 7: the reason sometimes for a black therapist is because it's
Speaker 7: so the trauma is so deep and generational that you
Speaker 7: need to understand why that generation before didn't allow for
Speaker 7: day dreaming because they didn't feel like it was allowed.
Speaker 4: That was how to protect themselves.
Speaker 7: Everything that we do has such a cause, and a
Speaker 7: lot of us just don't even we think that it's
Speaker 7: just something fresh and new and something wrong with us,
Speaker 7: but it's so generational and generational trauma.
Speaker 4: It's just and every generation is Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 8: No, no, no, no, you're all on the right path here.
Speaker 8: And again I I I learned and and and learned
Speaker 8: so much. I mean, there was a part of me,
Speaker 8: a chaotic part of me, and I think we all
Speaker 8: have a chaotic part of ourselves that we have come
Speaker 8: to come to grips with. And in that process was
Speaker 8: just a lot I learned, Uh, like a rotticized rage.
Speaker 8: Probably a word you never heard before.
Speaker 4: Rage, Yes, okay, got it?
Speaker 8: Okay, sure, he's a therapeutic term. I because I was
Speaker 8: the skinny black kid. The coaching junior high school asked
Speaker 8: me to play basketball. And I was always the last
Speaker 8: kid to get picked on the sand loot with the
Speaker 8: black kids. But he thought I could play, but I couldn't.
Speaker 4: Uh, but you looked the part.
Speaker 5: But yeah, like.
Speaker 8: Black talk of must playing basketball. But you know, I
Speaker 8: picked up kind of quickly and and and then something happened.
Speaker 8: I understood quickly that by being a basketball star, it
Speaker 8: gave me privileges, and so I started dating white girls,
Speaker 8: and started dating white girls only in Alabama. But it
Speaker 8: was you know, it wasn't over. You couldn't just be
Speaker 8: out there with it you know, but it made me
Speaker 8: and my mother was a good mom, but some things
Speaker 8: as all of us. She used to tell me, and
Speaker 8: it was embedded, don't you ever bring no black napping
Speaker 8: head girl in my house? Trauma?
Speaker 5: So from so hearing it from your and you were
Speaker 5: hearing that from your mother. Your mother told you not
Speaker 5: to bring no not to bring no black girls home.
Speaker 8: Right, no nappy, But she would have been okay if
Speaker 8: she was light complexion.
Speaker 2: She passed the paperbag test.
Speaker 7: Then right, mister knows you're making me so happy with
Speaker 7: this conversation right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the first. I didn't even think conversations
Speaker 2: like this could happen with any black person, at least
Speaker 2: not born before nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 7: Because are you basically admitting that she had an effect
Speaker 7: on your choices in that way too, like subconsciously, because yeah.
Speaker 2: She.
Speaker 8: Understood that, you know she, but a lot happened, a
Speaker 8: lot happened to black folks that we don't understand those impacts.
Speaker 8: And I'll just let you guys ask the question, because
Speaker 8: this is is going to a place, this conversation that
Speaker 8: I think the universe wanted it to go.
Speaker 7: I think so.
Speaker 2: For it serious question.
Speaker 4: I got, so how did you okay?
Speaker 5: So in this and throughout this journey, one thing that
Speaker 5: came to mind was once you got to the point
Speaker 5: where you were successful and you know, you got your
Speaker 5: girls careers kind of off the ground, and Deston Strode
Speaker 5: was pointing everything, how did you fight against that? I
Speaker 5: guess that survivor's guilt or that survivors were more kind
Speaker 5: of like seeing how far you've come and realizing like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, like I actually made it, so to speak,
Speaker 5: you know, how did you fight against when you talk
Speaker 5: about just those old traumas, old uh no, bad behaviors.
Speaker 5: How did you stop from I guess self sabotaging yourself
Speaker 5: in that way or were you able to you know.
Speaker 8: I had to go through this process of understanding why.
Speaker 8: Like I said, it cost me dearly. But to your
Speaker 8: question of feeling guilty about success, you know, my dad
Speaker 8: again my parents, My dad was a volunteer fireman. He
Speaker 8: wanted to be that was his dream, was to be
Speaker 8: a fireman. But you couldn't be a fireman in Alabama, Gaston, Alabama.
Speaker 8: We're talking the sixties if you were black. So my
Speaker 8: dad used to my dad was six or four hundred pounds.
Speaker 8: Call him big mac.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 8: And there's one word to describe my dad gentle. Gentle.
Speaker 8: All he did was help people. So this whole thing
Speaker 8: about giving back, I don't feel guilty about success because
Speaker 8: I learned as a kid watching my parents give back
Speaker 8: to their communities and giving back to help people. So
Speaker 8: I can I can say I never felt guilt guilt
Speaker 8: from success because I worked very hard for it and
Speaker 8: was fortunate to find my passion early in life, which
Speaker 8: was the ability to communicate effectively.
Speaker 5: In the early days when y'all were when you were
Speaker 5: when you were misnos and y'all were working with the
Speaker 5: girls and doing Justin's Child. How did you learn, I guess,
Speaker 5: to kind of differentiate between being the dad and being
Speaker 5: the manager, being the coach. You know what I'm saying, like,
Speaker 5: how did you know? How did you kind of, I
Speaker 5: guess compartmentalize all those roles.
Speaker 8: Well, that was That's a good question, you know. I
Speaker 8: have to say I'm guilty of last night watching Jermaine Dupries,
Speaker 8: the show called something.
Speaker 4: Rap the Kids, the one with the Kids.
Speaker 8: I mean I watched six or seven episodes. In every
Speaker 8: episode had about five or six I mean, I was
Speaker 8: up about four hours. I couldn't and they had the
Speaker 8: parents and the kids. They were all between twelve and sixteen.
Speaker 8: You know. Fortunate for me again, I did twenty years
Speaker 8: of corporate America, so I brought a different skill set
Speaker 8: to the music industry than most. And you know, most
Speaker 8: people and media would have what I call the Jedi
Speaker 8: mind trick. Have you to believe that I left corporate
Speaker 8: America to be Beyonces manager and that's not true. I
Speaker 8: left and they always say Xerox. Well, I left Xerox
Speaker 8: in nineteen eighty eight, and then I was one of
Speaker 8: the first blacks, and in my life have followed this
Speaker 8: pattern of one of the first blacks, So listen to
Speaker 8: me through I was fortunately and grateful to work at
Speaker 8: Xerox Corporation in the eighties, which was a number one
Speaker 8: corporation for blacks, and I was the president of Minorities
Speaker 8: United and othern Region, which was about four hundred black employees.
Speaker 8: I was a president of that organization for three years.
Speaker 8: I was fortunate to be the number one sells rep
Speaker 8: worldwide at Xerox Medical Systems three out of four years.
Speaker 8: To be the first or one of the first blacks,
Speaker 8: I'm not sure to sell mri CT scanners in America
Speaker 8: what and to be a neural surgical specialist with Johnson
Speaker 8: and Johnson. That's how I ended my career. People don't
Speaker 8: know my career is a neurosurgical specialists. I would work
Speaker 8: with neurosurgeons and implants and certain surgical procedures dealing with
Speaker 8: the head and neck.
Speaker 2: Okay, we kind of went way eep into the future
Speaker 2: of the eighties. But one question I had one When
Speaker 2: did you leave Gaston, Alabama? And how did you wind
Speaker 2: up in Houston.
Speaker 8: I left Gaston, Alabama in nineteen seventy. I was fortunate
Speaker 8: to have a number of scholarships and my mother wanted
Speaker 8: me to stay close to home, so I accepted University
Speaker 8: of Tennessee. That's where I played basketball for two years
Speaker 8: and then transferred because I had never been to a
Speaker 8: black school. And we had scrimmage. You know how major
Speaker 8: white school scrimmage a little small black schools. We had scrimmage
Speaker 8: Fisk University in Nashville, and coach Ronald Lawson, when he
Speaker 8: was leaving the floor, whispered in my ear knows if
Speaker 8: you ever want to come to black school, you have
Speaker 8: a full scholarship, and so I ended up ansferring to
Speaker 8: Fist University, uh and and graduated there in seventy four.
Speaker 8: Worked at AT and T for a year and a half,
Speaker 8: and then me and my frat brothers a Miliga five
Speaker 8: for Turner.
Speaker 4: T blowing up. What was amazing before we go? What
Speaker 4: was what did you study in this?
Speaker 8: I had a degree in economics and one in business okay,
Speaker 8: got business administration. Uh and we we actually, me and
Speaker 8: three frat brothers got in my ninety eight ozamobile at
Speaker 8: the University of Tennessee. Gave me you know, used to
Speaker 8: get cars and stuff. It was legal work there back
Speaker 8: back in the seventies. You know, you can do that. Uh.
Speaker 8: And we Tennessee State played Texas Southern and we got
Speaker 8: to Houston and we were like, man, wait a minute,
Speaker 8: something's wrong. These frat brothers got these good jobs, man,
Speaker 8: and they weren't even smart as us. So I just
Speaker 8: got in the car December sixth, nineteen seventy six and
Speaker 8: made one stop, which was a crazy stop, but got
Speaker 8: to Houston and had a job. I mean I literally
Speaker 8: worked at the Near Business Products and Pidney Bowls at
Speaker 8: the same time for a month for the same at
Speaker 8: the same time for a month. Because what they used
Speaker 8: to do was to give you a big book and
Speaker 8: you would go and study at your apartment and then
Speaker 8: they would send you to training. So I wouldn't. I
Speaker 8: would say, wait a minute, I could do that at
Speaker 8: my apartment and get paid by both of them. So
Speaker 8: I got paid by both of them, and then I
Speaker 8: ended up taking the Pitney bowls job.
Speaker 9: They used to be the leader, and you used to
Speaker 9: have to if you were in a business, you had
Speaker 9: to machine that did the mailing and postage.
Speaker 8: It was still envelopes and stamp stamp envelopes. It was
Speaker 8: like the number one leader in that area, but it
Speaker 8: was I was. I was in sales and marketing.
Speaker 7: You're telling us you're like the ultimate salesperson, and I
Speaker 7: think oftentimes people don't realize the talent that it takes
Speaker 7: to be a sales person like that, like especially on
Speaker 7: equipment and things of that nature, Like that's a whole
Speaker 7: nother talent that now I see the transitions well into management.
Speaker 4: Now you're selling yourself. You ain't selling the product. You
Speaker 4: hit it.
Speaker 8: You hit it on the head. People by you then
Speaker 8: your product. And in the music industry always tell my
Speaker 8: artists you. I call it the three second rule. When
Speaker 8: you see a new person for the first time, in
Speaker 8: three seconds, your brain comes up with what you think
Speaker 8: about them. You say they're attracted, they're not so smart,
Speaker 8: or whatever. It is your brain in three seconds, and
Speaker 8: it's hard to change that opinion once someone has opinion
Speaker 8: of you. Hmm, three seconds.
Speaker 2: Okay, So okay, if you apply that, I'm certain that
Speaker 2: you well, you're at least in a field in which
Speaker 2: you know you have to make an impression. It's okay
Speaker 2: now that you say that. Now I really regret a
Speaker 2: lot of life decisions because in my profession, now, I'll
Speaker 2: be honest with you. In my profession, I thought our
Speaker 2: advantage was if you underestimated me. And that's a lesson
Speaker 2: that Richard taught me. Because here's the thing. My late manager, Richard,
Speaker 2: who passed away from leukemia. He rich rich was a
Speaker 2: guy who's I mean to say mensa. To say mensa
Speaker 2: level genius would be an understatement when it comes to
Speaker 2: rich But because of rich also taught me the value
Speaker 2: of what he would call primitive exotica, which was he
Speaker 2: knew that there was a sort of curious fetishize factor
Speaker 2: about him that interest certain prominent white people. Here's a
Speaker 2: great example, Norman Lear creator.
Speaker 8: I mean I met him and yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Norman is actually ninety nine now, like he's still alive.
Speaker 2: We happen to be at an event in la and
Speaker 2: Rich is the kind of guy that, you know, like
Speaker 2: when white people discover like that smart black guy that
Speaker 2: really impresses them, almost like it's like their new toy,
Speaker 2: that sort of thing, like that's the person that Rich was.
Speaker 2: Rich was the guy that read science books and all
Speaker 2: these things, and so you know, he would sort of
Speaker 2: just work his stick, knowing that people were underestimating him
Speaker 2: as he spoke, but realizing like wow, how amazingly smart
Speaker 2: he is. And next thing, you know, like Norman Lear
Speaker 2: literally said, can you go on tour with me? And
Speaker 2: Rich trying to explain like no, I'm actually a manager
Speaker 2: of like a band and I have a real job,
Speaker 2: but Norman's like, no, I just I want you to.
Speaker 2: And Rich actually spent two weeks with Norman Lear in
Speaker 2: Beverly Hills and Norman just took him to every all
Speaker 2: this friends, like look at my new I know this
Speaker 2: sounds really weird, like it's the update of the toy.
Speaker 7: But I know Richard looks like and rich is a
Speaker 7: nice chocolate brother with locks, and it's very right.
Speaker 2: But Rich also knew that the scary factor, like the
Speaker 2: fact that if you see rich in the first three seconds,
Speaker 2: you're thinking of the scariest thing, and then you know,
Speaker 2: he starts with this Harvard you know, intelligency a thing,
Speaker 2: and that just totally throws you off. And I don't know,
Speaker 2: like I think in our service, I'm now trying to
Speaker 2: unlearn everything that rich taught me. And because the way
Speaker 2: that we entered through the gates was to always be
Speaker 2: under estimated. Like people see the roots and like, oh
Speaker 2: my god, what are you all like arrest development PM
Speaker 2: doing like yellow whack wearing birkenstocks and all those things.
Speaker 2: But then we start playing and be like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like when when Dame Dash shit on Kanye's Westing, like,
Speaker 2: oh shit, it's not whack, Like, oh, these guys are good.
Speaker 2: We I sort of used that factor for the longest.
Speaker 2: Instead of trying to make a good impression, I would
Speaker 2: always try.
Speaker 4: To go through the door to make lower the expectation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I lived life trying to lower expectations and
Speaker 2: then I'm now noticing now thirty years later that maybe
Speaker 2: that didn't serve me too well.
Speaker 8: Well, you know, we all learned and and I'm sure
Speaker 8: he was a really really good manager, but we have
Speaker 8: different perspectives. I think for me, it's the reveal, just
Speaker 8: similar to when you see an artist for the first
Speaker 8: time come out on stage. You know, we have use
Speaker 8: the world we work on that reveal those first three seconds.
Speaker 8: Think about it for a second when you see Solange
Speaker 8: and Beyonce, what happens in the first three seconds of
Speaker 8: their show.
Speaker 2: Dude, you don't even have to tell me. Matter of fact,
Speaker 2: the first time I ever met you, the first time
Speaker 2: I met you, you know, Beyonce was starting her uh
Speaker 2: her first solo tour, the one that she did with
Speaker 2: Missy and Alicia and my first yeah, first tour.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And by that point I had seen maybe three of
Speaker 2: her shows, in which you know, I always told her
Speaker 2: like I was, really, I'm really impressed with your interests,
Speaker 2: like you do these amazing The way that you enter
Speaker 2: the stage is really, you know, crazy, like I So,
Speaker 2: so when they came to town to Phi, I'm from Philadelphia,
Speaker 2: right before she goes on, I was like, Okay, so
Speaker 2: what's the interest, Like, She's like, you're gonna see run
Speaker 2: in the audience, stay stay by the soundboards. I didn't realize. Okay,
Speaker 2: So she did the thing where she entered from the
Speaker 2: back of the stadium with the gentleman carrying her on
Speaker 2: the right. And the thing was is that I came
Speaker 2: just to see how she was going to enter the stage,
Speaker 2: because by that point, next to Michael Jackson, I've never
Speaker 2: met anyone that really really concentrated hard on making a
Speaker 2: first one, like a good impression on the first minute.
Speaker 2: And I also I learned another thing that show at
Speaker 2: least five minutes later. Okay, So the way that the
Speaker 2: stage is set up at one point, if you if
Speaker 2: those who were listening to the podcast, if you remember
Speaker 2: like those old like sort of like Vegas review shows
Speaker 2: where the person's name would be spelled out in lights
Speaker 2: like a bunch of light bulbs. There was one light
Speaker 2: bulb out on the letter oh of Beyonce, and I
Speaker 2: saw you lose your mind in the sound and then
Speaker 2: suddenly I stopped watching her show for like twenty minutes,
Speaker 2: and suddenly I'd never seen like this is my Malcolm
Speaker 2: X moment where the guy goes up to him in
Speaker 2: the cafeteria.
Speaker 1: Talk police like that exactly, like I've.
Speaker 2: Never seen one person bark in order and sent twelve
Speaker 2: people absolutely running to the hills for their lives to
Speaker 2: fix one light bulb on stage. I've never seen that
Speaker 2: in my life.
Speaker 8: And and you know why, because that light bulb was blinking,
Speaker 8: which could affected Beyonce's concentration.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, hit at the show.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I watched you for the next twenty minutes
Speaker 2: because you know, normally, Matt Setting, I'm on stage, and
Speaker 2: I'd never get to see, you know, the running by show,
Speaker 2: because if I'm at a concert, I'm watching the show
Speaker 2: or I'm on stage. So this is one of the
Speaker 2: rare moments where I'm watching someone run the show in
Speaker 2: a way that I never ever.
Speaker 8: Ever And most people don't realize Destiny's Child entire performance
Speaker 8: career Beyonce's first three or four world tours, so lunge
Speaker 8: first tours, I did the front of the house sound,
Speaker 8: Oh wow, And I did that because Destiny's Child did
Speaker 8: if their first tour was with Boys to Men, And
Speaker 8: when you have four ladies singing and everyone played a
Speaker 8: role one person in between songs, that's who talk to
Speaker 8: the audience, and so I would in and out, punch
Speaker 8: in and out vocals, and we had the back ground
Speaker 8: tracks on the tape. And so the engineer back then
Speaker 8: you paid the junior engineer fifty dollars a show, but
Speaker 8: he didn't know who was singing and when he didn't
Speaker 8: know the show, and so it sounded awful. And I said, hey,
Speaker 8: teach me, teach me. And so from that point when
Speaker 8: we're doing TV tracks, and then when we got to
Speaker 8: when Beyonce was doing band, I didn't do the band,
Speaker 8: but I always did Beyonce's and vocals.
Speaker 7: How long did it take for you to master that?
Speaker 8: I mastered it quick. I mastered like two or three
Speaker 8: shows because I just knew when to put the delays,
Speaker 8: when to punch in, punch out. I mean, these are
Speaker 8: things people don't know about mequest Love. You know, they
Speaker 8: don't know this at all.
Speaker 2: Okay. So the thing is is that, Okay, so when
Speaker 2: you when you get to Houston, I don't know the
Speaker 2: exact year that you moved.
Speaker 8: But December sixteen, sixty seventy six, okay, all right, nineteen
Speaker 8: seventy six.
Speaker 2: When you are developing, first of all, how do you
Speaker 2: know that the talent that your kids have, how do
Speaker 2: you know that? It's it's beyond just like performing at
Speaker 2: family functions and Thanksgiving Like I used to be called
Speaker 2: to the table all the time to do the robot.
Speaker 2: I mean, do the Michael Jackson real quick. That's where
Speaker 2: it comes from. Every parent has that story where they
Speaker 2: you know, they wake up the kid from sleep and
Speaker 2: you know they're having a party downstairs. All right, A right,
Speaker 2: go singing reatha Franklin. Right, Wait what you.
Speaker 7: Saying, Teddy? You My parents was good parents.
Speaker 4: I know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: What I'm cur I'm just trying what song did you sing?
Speaker 5: I'm trying to hear what keys like? What he've been singing?
Speaker 5: Oh you would sing close the door.
Speaker 4: I don't know what I'm saying, close the door. You
Speaker 4: would get that load, you could get that deep. That
Speaker 4: was I was waiting all day long.
Speaker 8: That was your point. You would have to know what
Speaker 8: Keitt did she say? That is.
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 7: Did I knew the words? It's that I knew the words.
Speaker 5: I think you just might have won the animated the
Speaker 5: real like you're seeing closed the door and ship.
Speaker 8: That wasn't that was Teddy made pendograss.
Speaker 2: You I have jokes.
Speaker 8: I'm quick if I jokes man, what's your sign? I'm sorry,
Speaker 8: I'm just coppricoid.
Speaker 4: Indeed, yes, indeed, where's your birthday?
Speaker 8: January night?
Speaker 4: Okay German, I'm December twenty eighth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Capricorn. Sorry, Steve, we are, yeah, we are. Steven's
Speaker 2: your birthday soon? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 6: September sixth, Virgos, We're amazing people. We just can't figure
Speaker 6: out what to order in a restaurant. But other than that,
Speaker 6: it's pretty great.
Speaker 8: You are amazing people. Beyonce September fourth.
Speaker 1: Damn ye, what's there?
Speaker 2: You go? All right? So when how do you know
Speaker 2: that this is much more than yeah, just you know,
Speaker 2: good for good for the church choir? How do you
Speaker 2: know that? Okay, my my daughter might have something.
Speaker 8: So parenting, you know, my I think the role of
Speaker 8: a parent with their kids is to surround them with
Speaker 8: as much as they can. I would take the girls,
Speaker 8: and me and my former wife, who would take the
Speaker 8: girls to, like I said, to the library. We would
Speaker 8: take them and support their science fairs. We would get
Speaker 8: them in dance lessons and so that they could figure
Speaker 8: out and we could see what they gravitated towards and
Speaker 8: both Solange and Beyonce gravitated towards music, and so then
Speaker 8: we surrounded them even more with support. So for Beyonce,
Speaker 8: she was in the she was eight years old. She
Speaker 8: was in a talent show against twelve thirteen year old
Speaker 8: kids and we were sitting there. It was her first
Speaker 8: time performing, and she said, mom, dad, I'm ready to go,
Speaker 8: so we can go eat because I need to win
Speaker 8: one hundred dollars and get my trophy. And we said, well,
Speaker 8: how do you know gonna win this talent show? And
Speaker 8: we weren't paying attention to a practicing or anything, and
Speaker 8: she said, I just know, I just know, And sure
Speaker 8: enough she got a stand innovation. Well, after she won
Speaker 8: thirty one consecutive talent shows, we then start thinking, huh,
Speaker 8: maybe maybe this is what she really likes and maybe
Speaker 8: this is what she might be one day entertainer. And
Speaker 8: the same with Solon's, the same kind of story. I
Speaker 8: gotta say this, Solon's did something really different. Solons when
Speaker 8: she was about nine. One day we came home, she
Speaker 8: was with the maids. She dismantled about twelve of Beyonce's
Speaker 8: trophies totally completely dismantled them. I understand it now as
Speaker 8: a parent, she would say, what about me?
Speaker 2: What about me?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 7: Trophies don't mean nothing?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 2: Okay, so I know that and and sort of that,
Speaker 2: uh what's his name? Blink? And the tipping point, Oh,
Speaker 2: Malcolm Gladwell, Malcolm Gladwell out yeah, and outliers that you know,
Speaker 2: he says that ten thousand hours of preparation equals genius.
Speaker 2: I've seen, you know, some clips about you know, camp
Speaker 2: Knowles or whatever, how you would train them how? Okay?
Speaker 2: First of all, can you explain about the decision to
Speaker 2: leave your cushy comfort job as as a salesman.
Speaker 4: How your wife worked that out? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, what's the what was the decision to
Speaker 2: really make the leap into Okay, I'm going to now
Speaker 2: steer this, steer this empire to where it should go
Speaker 2: so that we can have a legacy.
Speaker 8: So you know, when I was at Xerox Medical Systems,
Speaker 8: I told you I was highly successful there, highly successful
Speaker 8: at Phillips, not so much successful at Johnson and Johnson
Speaker 8: and that neurosurgic position. I didn't like it because you know,
Speaker 8: I came from selling a five million dollar piece of
Speaker 8: equipment to selling a whole bunch of thousand dollars instruments.
Speaker 8: And I didn't like that. I didn't like on the
Speaker 8: weekends going to the operating room and having a pager
Speaker 8: every other weekend. I just didn't like getting up at
Speaker 8: four in the morning going to surgery.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 8: One of the hospitals in the medical system center after
Speaker 8: a procedure, I got paid. So I thought, did the
Speaker 8: patient die? Did I say something wrong? Did I do
Speaker 8: something wrong? So I run up to the neurosurgeon's office
Speaker 8: and he tells me, miss knows, I can't use your
Speaker 8: instruments anymore. And I asked him why. He said, showed
Speaker 8: me the letter that if he didn't reduce his cost
Speaker 8: per procedure. If he didn't reduce that he was not
Speaker 8: he was going to lose his privileges at that hospital. Wow,
Speaker 8: And no surgeon wants that because that's their livelihood. At
Speaker 8: that point, I call Tina, my former wife, and said,
Speaker 8: I can't do this shit anymore. Quote That's exactly what
Speaker 8: I said, because I was like, I'm not selling quality,
Speaker 8: I'm selling costs, and I just can't do that. I'm
Speaker 8: not really ready selling a whole bunch of little stuff,
Speaker 8: and I just didn't like what I was doing. So
Speaker 8: I realized at that moment that was a defining moment,
Speaker 8: and we all have the any moments in our lives
Speaker 8: that I had to do something else. I was gonna
Speaker 8: get fired anyway. So I knew I had to do
Speaker 8: something else, and I decided I wanted to change my career.
Speaker 8: What people don't know is when I was a kid,
Speaker 8: my dad had four hundred pounds, could dance his butt off.
Speaker 8: And they would go, my mom and dad on Sundays
Speaker 8: into the living room that had that plastic on it.
Speaker 8: Y'all too young to understand.
Speaker 4: Oh no, we're talking about my grandma still got plastic
Speaker 4: on the couch now.
Speaker 8: So they would go in there. Man, they started dancing,
Speaker 8: and my job was to put. I had a nickel
Speaker 8: of diamond a quarter, and we had vinyl, and my
Speaker 8: job was to put and look at that vinyl and finally,
Speaker 8: you know more, I heard it. I knew so it
Speaker 8: went scratched because my dad would get really mad when
Speaker 8: he was dancing if the record scratched. And so I
Speaker 8: then start reading the line of notes and I didn't realize,
Speaker 8: but I became a DJ every Sunday. They did this
Speaker 8: every Sunday, you know they I knew I could tell
Speaker 8: by my dad's emotions what songs to play, and that's
Speaker 8: really what the DJ does. Anyway. I knew peaches and earths,
Speaker 8: closed my you know I do. I better put close
Speaker 8: my eyes on right now. Fast, fast dumbino. You know
Speaker 8: that was one of his jams. I knew if he
Speaker 8: wanted to do some tempo, I better do fast dumbino.
Speaker 8: But and most people not mostly hardly anybody knows that.
Speaker 8: In high school, I was actually we had a boy group.
Speaker 8: You know, back in the day, talent shows was a
Speaker 8: big thing in the black community. Uh but at our
Speaker 8: high school, we had a talent you know. We we won.
Speaker 8: Actually we did Psychedelic Shock by the tim Taste Temptations.
Speaker 4: That's where it's at.
Speaker 8: Yeah. And I just love music. I always love love
Speaker 8: the music. And so I decided. And at the same time,
Speaker 8: Beyonce was in this girl group called Girls Time. All
Speaker 8: I did because my former wife was we owned a
Speaker 8: hair salon and so on the weekends was her big days,
Speaker 8: and that's when the girls would practice Fridays and Saturdays. Uh,
Speaker 8: So I would drop her off at practice, go play basketball,
Speaker 8: come back and pick her up. Uh. And then they
Speaker 8: got to Star Search, which is like American Idol, and
Speaker 8: they lost, and I'm there. They asked me to come
Speaker 8: to bring all the wardrobe because the then managers thought
Speaker 8: they were gonna win for a month and had a
Speaker 8: whole room just for the wardrobe. And then when they lost,
Speaker 8: I came up. I went up to air McMahon. I said, well,
Speaker 8: these kids are crying their hearts out. What what do
Speaker 8: I do? And he said, I don't know why, mister know,
Speaker 8: Actually I don't know why. He had a Don Conelia's voice.
Speaker 8: He said, but everyone that consistently win on the show
Speaker 8: professionally go on to do nothing. It's the people that
Speaker 8: lose Aliyah justin timberlay Usser Alanas Marce said, I can
Speaker 8: go on and on that lost, they went on to
Speaker 8: be successful because they recommitted, rededicated, changed their organization. And
Speaker 8: I never forgot those words, and that.
Speaker 5: That makes sense because people that win think they want
Speaker 5: they think, oh I made it, and right, you didn't.
Speaker 8: Ray and so it's so it's interesting. It's like eighteen
Speaker 8: A list artists google it. Sometimes you'd be surprised all
Speaker 8: the people. But but, but I actually ended up because
Speaker 8: I have always believe in knowledge is power. So I
Speaker 8: went back to junior college, Houston Community College here in Houston,
Speaker 8: and on the weekends I took artist management, music production,
Speaker 8: and I took publishing on the weekends on Saturdays, and
Speaker 8: over a year period and went to every seminar I could,
Speaker 8: and I would be the guy you want to shut
Speaker 8: up because I keep asking every question. Everybody's shy and quiet.
Speaker 8: I'd be like, oh well how about this? And why
Speaker 8: do you do this? And and I understood relationships. Now
Speaker 8: this is what's going to surprise you. The first artists
Speaker 8: and Google is the first artist that I ever signed
Speaker 8: to a major record deal. And the first artist that
Speaker 8: I signed as a manager was not Destiny's Child who
Speaker 8: was it Little Old? His single is Can't Stop. He
Speaker 8: was signed to m c A Records in the peak
Speaker 8: when they had Mary J. Blige, Joessy P. Diddy. I
Speaker 8: can go on and on, little, oh, little Little, and
Speaker 8: the single is called can't Stop and it features Destiny.
Speaker 8: How the hell did I convince m c A Records
Speaker 8: to put a Columbia Records artist that didn't even have
Speaker 8: a record on his first single, but I did, but
Speaker 8: Little Oh was my first artist, a rap artist. The
Speaker 8: sample is loose ends.
Speaker 4: Wow, yeah, you can't stop the rain.
Speaker 2: Wait question, okay, because I didn't ask this about your
Speaker 2: Xerox thing, But who is is your communications expertise? Is
Speaker 2: that self taught or is this something you learned in college?
Speaker 2: Because yes, I do know that the key to a
Speaker 2: successful business person is one that remembers names and you know,
Speaker 2: it's personable as a people person, all things I kind
Speaker 2: of don't like about this industry. But I realized that
Speaker 2: I have to jump in the pool someone begrudgingly, but like,
Speaker 2: who taught you the art of communication? You know?
Speaker 8: My foundation is and was from Xerox Corporation. And if
Speaker 8: you reach the search, there's been so many presidents of corporations,
Speaker 8: black men and women that in the eighties talking back
Speaker 8: in the day seventies and eighties that worked at Xerox
Speaker 8: in Leedsburg, Virginia. There was actually a college that we
Speaker 8: would go to. I credit Xerox Corporation or all of
Speaker 8: my success and communications and understanding people and understanding how
Speaker 8: to sell myself build relationships. I always will credit them
Speaker 8: because they taught me and many others foundation that is unparallel.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't get exhausting like remembering names and terrible
Speaker 2: with that have have to.
Speaker 4: I remember faces faces I would never face.
Speaker 8: I remember sales calls, and I would have everybody come
Speaker 8: into the to the to the meeting in a comforence
Speaker 8: room and I have on a piece of paper a chart.
Speaker 8: Well I had everybody's names. I can remember their name.
Speaker 8: See thea art. I'm terrible with names. I'm still bad
Speaker 8: at names. That's what it is.
Speaker 2: Some people get the joy out of you don't remember me,
Speaker 2: do you? And I just now I'm just blatant, like
Speaker 2: absolutely not.
Speaker 4: I don't remember.
Speaker 8: Yeah, absolutely terrible with names. But you know that's where
Speaker 8: I learned it. I learned from Zeros Corporation.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about pounding the pavement actually landing a
Speaker 2: record deal?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I can, because uh were I got a number
Speaker 8: of letters that said we formerly passed on your group
Speaker 8: called Destiny Stahl. Uh. Then you know the group went
Speaker 8: from Girls Time, then they signed with Darryl Simmons l
Speaker 8: A and Baby Face Partner still to the day in
Speaker 8: writing UH and Solid Partner production. They got dropped by
Speaker 8: Electra Records. Sylvia was the president. Then she hates when
Speaker 8: I say that. He hates when I say that. But
Speaker 8: but it was she she literally Daryl had a new
Speaker 8: production deal and he had three artists. H the girls
Speaker 8: were called the Dolls, a name I really dislike then,
Speaker 8: and she ended up ending the production deal. But she
Speaker 8: had the right to continue with the girls. But I
Speaker 8: understood that she had this girl group called InVogue, and
Speaker 8: so why the hell would you want another girls group
Speaker 8: and a bunch of parents. I get it, So I
Speaker 8: understand that now. But yes, the girls, you know, I
Speaker 8: came up with this idea when they came back from Atlanta.
Speaker 8: I changed the name to something fresh, and then we
Speaker 8: did a photo shoot and I sent out packages. I
Speaker 8: used to spend a lot of time way I didn't
Speaker 8: have a clue. Then I would have a package with
Speaker 8: maybe twenty pages, photos and all kind of stuff, not
Speaker 8: understanding less was more, uh, And then I would get
Speaker 8: these past letters. And then I came up with another
Speaker 8: name of the girls. And then we came up with
Speaker 8: the name Destiny, and then Destiny came Destiny's child. So
Speaker 8: this this started, this journey started when Beyonce was eight
Speaker 8: years old and she got signed. When she was fifteen also.
Speaker 2: So you're telling me that you would get a round
Speaker 2: of news and then your idea was, Okay, we're going
Speaker 2: to come back as another name, Like how do you
Speaker 2: convince them? Like, okay, let's let's regroup and this time
Speaker 2: we're going to call ourselves this and do it all
Speaker 2: over again.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was a bad idea.
Speaker 2: And I would assume that you would also try to
Speaker 2: do the usual pavement pounding at the jack the Rappers
Speaker 2: of the world and all those commissions.
Speaker 8: All of those, all of them. I was there. I
Speaker 8: was there with a whole stack of business cards, you know,
Speaker 8: but a whole stack of CDs. So who actually had then?
Speaker 2: I'm amazed that you never gave up, because from the
Speaker 2: story that I'm hearing is that you have to make
Speaker 2: a few rounds to the same labels over and over
Speaker 2: again with new names or you know, like a new
Speaker 2: an R that fits. And I mean you never once
Speaker 2: worried about like the proverbial eye roll of whoever is
Speaker 2: at you know this particular Oh god, Matthew, no matt
Speaker 2: Noles again. Okay, I'll take the car.
Speaker 8: Y, But you gotta remember about my background. I was
Speaker 8: the number one sales up in the world. It sells
Speaker 8: you're gonna hear No, No, it's just I didn't present
Speaker 8: it correctly. That's when I get to know. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 8: I didn't present that right.
Speaker 2: And there was and the girls weren't taking this person
Speaker 2: or any of those things like you just like, how
Speaker 2: do you break it to them that it didn't work
Speaker 2: out or it's not our time that like, how how
Speaker 2: do you break bad news to them that doesn't break
Speaker 2: their spirit?
Speaker 8: Well, it was being honest, first of all, and they
Speaker 8: weren't I mean, in reality, they weren't ready. They really
Speaker 8: weren't ready. And they accepted the fact that they weren't ready,
Speaker 8: that they had to improve, they had to grow, they
Speaker 8: had to practice, they had to get more focals. This
Speaker 8: was their passion and they accepted that and they did
Speaker 8: the things because they also were best friends and they
Speaker 8: got to spend time and had a lot of fun
Speaker 8: as little girls do together.
Speaker 2: Can I ask, because I'm now realizing I have a
Speaker 2: rare chance to ask a question of this manner that
Speaker 2: I probably wouldn't have. You know, it comes into twenty
Speaker 2: years ago to ask you, and I'm kind of jumping
Speaker 2: ahead a little bit, but that that period between like
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety nine in two thousand and one where you're
Speaker 2: making personnel changes and whatnot. And I know, you know,
Speaker 2: just from the line of work that I come in,
Speaker 2: how discipline, rigorous discipline.
Speaker 8: And.
Speaker 2: You know, you kind of have to be on your
Speaker 2: p's and q's in this business and oftentimes you might
Speaker 2: have weak links. I mean not to just dismiss people
Speaker 2: as weak links or whatnot, but you know, I know
Speaker 2: that especially pre or the beginning stages of the Internet,
Speaker 2: a lot has been said of your sort of backstage
Speaker 2: dad control of the group. But what is the biggest
Speaker 2: miss perception of your role during that period in which
Speaker 2: you're changing personnel, like right before Michelle Williams came into
Speaker 2: the group, what do you feel the of course, now
Speaker 2: you know post two thousand and one and two thousand
Speaker 2: and two, two thousand and three, like post Survivor then
Speaker 2: you know, now it's like, you know, your dad of
Speaker 2: the century. But there was that period where we didn't
Speaker 2: know what was happening, like was was this going to
Speaker 2: be a dream girl's supreme situation or was it going
Speaker 2: to be a destiny fulfilled situation? But what did you
Speaker 2: feel during that period was a major sort of misconception
Speaker 2: of just like how that situation went down.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I just never I just never really cared what
Speaker 8: people said about me. I understood again from Xerox's leadership
Speaker 8: and what true leadership really means. People aren't gonna and
Speaker 8: when you're a visionary, people aren't gonna get that most people.
Speaker 8: Matter of fact, I'm glad most people don't get it,
Speaker 8: because for those of us that are visionaries, if everybody
Speaker 8: got it, to make it really tough to be successful.
Speaker 8: So I had a vision, I had leadership, I had
Speaker 8: amazing team, and I just said earlier, the team has
Speaker 8: been together for a long time, from road manager to
Speaker 8: accountants to you know, music directly publicist Yvette Noel Shore
Speaker 8: twenty plus years. These guys have been together, and so
Speaker 8: I built a really good team. It wasn't just me,
Speaker 8: but we had our own vision. You know, Tina, my
Speaker 8: former wife, did an exceptional job on the imaging. You know,
Speaker 8: back then those girl groups were in boots and baggy jeans,
Speaker 8: and we wanted to do glamour and bring back the Supremes.
Speaker 8: We always had a vision that we had and we
Speaker 8: didn't stray from that. And if you know, anyone quest
Speaker 8: Love that actually really worked in the record label and
Speaker 8: really was there, I think you would get a totally
Speaker 8: different perspective of the role I played and what really happened.
Speaker 8: I mean, fans, you know, we are in the industry,
Speaker 8: fans are you know, fans are gonna have their perspective,
Speaker 8: but they don't really know. Fans don't really know what's happening.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: From an outsider's perspective, I my I think my kind
Speaker 5: of Matthew knows moment. I had heard like all the
Speaker 5: Desert Child stuff and you know, I were going through
Speaker 5: the group change and everything. For me, I understood the
Speaker 5: type of businessman you were when I saw you signed
Speaker 5: Daylight Soul. When when you signed them, I was like,
Speaker 5: word the fuck up?
Speaker 4: Yes, like you get it, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 4: I was so happy to see.
Speaker 8: You like that first single shopping Bags. Yeah, people don't
Speaker 8: know this about me. You know that, we mean.
Speaker 4: Me, We don't know, we know, we know everybody else
Speaker 4: about to know, we don't know.
Speaker 8: In two thousand and two, I sold music well it's
Speaker 8: you can google it for ten million dollars and thirty
Speaker 8: million in stock and we Sanctuary was at that time,
Speaker 8: in two thousand and two, the largest independent record label.
Speaker 8: Rock was their thing. They had all the major Rocks.
Speaker 8: And we formed the Urban Division and I was the
Speaker 8: president of it, and we had the Urban Record Label,
Speaker 8: the largest urban management company in the world. You know,
Speaker 8: we had Nelly young men. I made all these these
Speaker 8: kids were all in their twenties. The men, I shouldn't
Speaker 8: say kids. These young men were all in their twenties
Speaker 8: and became millionaires. And when I look back and I
Speaker 8: see at you know, can do Isaac's you know, we
Speaker 8: brought him on board. He was at that time producing
Speaker 8: for Mary j Uh. We brought in from Philadelphia. Uh,
Speaker 8: doctor doctor, God's basketball player. I just had a mental.
Speaker 8: Julius Irving the third Yeah, they had Floor Tree and
Speaker 8: they had Eve. I brought those guys only Carter and
Speaker 8: Troy Carter, who was my number one draft pick. When
Speaker 8: I tell you this young man, absolutely And just the
Speaker 8: other day I heard on one of the social media
Speaker 8: platforms he talked about it. Uh, where Troy was my
Speaker 8: number one The first person I brought on board. I
Speaker 8: didn't know Jay Irving at that time, but I had
Speaker 8: really followed this kid with Eve and he had a rapper.
Speaker 8: They had a rapper also, I can't.
Speaker 10: Remember his name, but journalists, Yes, that's a journalist when
Speaker 10: he was journalist.
Speaker 8: And then I brought in the management for D twelve
Speaker 8: and so this is who what I management roster was.
Speaker 8: Now you'll understand when they had the MTV tour and
Speaker 8: Destiny's Child Nelly and Eve was only now you understand
Speaker 8: why now you understand Kelly and Kelly, Well I was.
Speaker 8: I was just about to say, now you understand that
Speaker 8: just wasn't happenstance. That was because they were part of
Speaker 8: music World, I mean Sanctuary Music World, Sanctuary Urban Management. Uh.
Speaker 8: And then on the record labels side, we I signed
Speaker 8: earth Winner Fire.
Speaker 4: I say, you did the Illumination record.
Speaker 8: Right, Illumination ray J's biggest hit one wish you know.
Speaker 8: I did a deal with ray J and his mother.
Speaker 8: We did the Ojays cooling the game. I convinced Shaka
Speaker 8: Khan to go to London and do a standards records
Speaker 8: with the London Symphony. You know, we did a whole
Speaker 8: lot there. Now, as the media on the record label side,
Speaker 8: they gave me the black eye because Sanctuary ended up
Speaker 8: going downhill. Obviously they always looked for Who's going to
Speaker 8: be Escapegoat? But on the record label, on the management side,
Speaker 8: we made plenty of money. On the record label side.
Speaker 8: You know, it takes time to recoup those you know,
Speaker 8: I spent money with these artists. I believe in spending
Speaker 8: money with my artists, and it takes a minute to
Speaker 8: recoup those investments. But it was a great, great time,
Speaker 8: wonderful time that I had got a little too a
Speaker 8: little too, like we talked earlier, questlove had too much
Speaker 8: going on uh at the time. UH. And during this
Speaker 8: period is where I began to unravel, when the stress
Speaker 8: came with all the travel. Because I had an office
Speaker 8: on Sunset Boulevard, I had an office in New York.
Speaker 8: I had two offices in New York. I had an
Speaker 8: office of Sony at five fifty Medisine. I had an
Speaker 8: office downtown in New York. My corporate office was in London.
Speaker 8: I was in London then near every other week. We
Speaker 8: had an office my fifteen oh five Hatley, which is
Speaker 8: where Hatley Street dreams, because that's where we own the
Speaker 8: whole block with records, labels, studios, rehearsal. You were there,
Speaker 8: you been there, You've been there.
Speaker 2: How did you know I was there. I was about
Speaker 2: to say compound. I went there for some reason. I
Speaker 2: forget why I went down there, And it wasn't even
Speaker 2: to work with your daughters.
Speaker 8: But yeah, it was something we did with one of
Speaker 8: you know, we used to rent it out to different good.
Speaker 2: That's right, because when you were saying that, I was like,
Speaker 2: wait a minute, did not visit music worlds.
Speaker 8: It was one of those power drinks.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, right now, that was like to see that
Speaker 2: was that was important for me to also see the development.
Speaker 2: Like when I went inside Music world I was really
Speaker 2: impressed because the only other oh god, okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: I'm a prince basis about to come down on me
Speaker 2: for this statement. I mean, the last time I went
Speaker 2: to something as close to that was Paisley Park, and
Speaker 2: during that time period, you know, it wasn't that well kept,
Speaker 2: and you know, it was basically just by that point
Speaker 2: just his vanity studio, Like it was far from the utopia. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it as far from the utopian vision that I think
Speaker 2: that he envisioned where it was like a full scale
Speaker 2: video in a Latinot video like a arsal spot and
Speaker 2: a club and all those things. But like to see
Speaker 2: it in real time, like in full operation. I was
Speaker 2: very I was really impressed with how that that operation was,
Speaker 2: what was running down there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and then we had you know, we had not
Speaker 8: only we had the we built the largest gospel label
Speaker 8: only Sony. Sony beat us out one year by like
Speaker 8: ten and market share. You know. We did a partnership
Speaker 8: with B. E. T. Sunday best Leandrea Johnson, Grammy Award
Speaker 8: winner number one Female Gospel Trinity five seven, six six
Speaker 8: records on them. That's I'm soft, I'm strong. I can
Speaker 8: go on and on. We had a real burgering gospel label.
Speaker 8: Most people don't know this stuff, you know, they just trophy.
Speaker 8: They just know I'm Beyonce. That's not a bad thing. Yeah,
Speaker 8: that's not a bad thing at all. But but I
Speaker 8: you know, at one point we had one hundred and
Speaker 8: forty employees. At one point, my overhead was three hundred
Speaker 8: thousand dollars a month's business a month. And as you know,
Speaker 8: Ques Love, Uh, you know, I'm very proud as a
Speaker 8: black man we own the city block. Let me change
Speaker 8: that when I say when I say we, people think
Speaker 8: Beyonce and sluntch I fucking own a city block. In
Speaker 8: downtown Houston.
Speaker 7: Yes, look and the land that it says on too
Speaker 7: grow right. People don't understand about that lane heavy land
Speaker 7: from Alabama owning his land in the corner.
Speaker 2: I'll ask how hard or how easy was it for
Speaker 2: you to let Beyonce, in the last stages of her
Speaker 2: caterpillar period, blossom into a butterfly and basically go handle
Speaker 2: her business on her own, which, well, I.
Speaker 8: Think it was the same for Beyoncelunge and even some
Speaker 8: other artists.
Speaker 2: Well, I'll ask how hard was it to not walk
Speaker 2: away but to let your artists fly?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I always say we forget that most artists I
Speaker 8: worked with, not most, I would say half of them
Speaker 8: were teenagers. You know, how you manage a fifteen year
Speaker 8: old in the business is different than how you manage
Speaker 8: her thirty five year old or a thirty year old
Speaker 8: in the business. As you know, I always say this,
Speaker 8: We don't in the industry let fourteen fifteen year olds
Speaker 8: make million dollar decisions at all on the business side.
Speaker 8: So I managed them differently. But my kids got to
Speaker 8: see their mother on the business, their dad own the
Speaker 8: business be in corporate America. They got to grow as
Speaker 8: they got older, and I hope, and I've seen them
Speaker 8: say it now and I'm very proud of even Beyonce's
Speaker 8: on the cover of magazine. She just just recently said
Speaker 8: that it was me that instilled in her to be
Speaker 8: a writer, to be a producer, not just to be
Speaker 8: a singer artist, but to be an entertainer. But to
Speaker 8: watch them grow and as they got older they got
Speaker 8: more information. When they were younger, wanted them to focus
Speaker 8: on their artistry, not on the music business, because the
Speaker 8: music business is most of this stuff, and if you're
Speaker 8: trying to do both at eighteen nineteen twenty two, it's
Speaker 8: gonna fail. It's just too much. At the level of
Speaker 8: success that they had. That's why we had one hundred
Speaker 8: and fifty employees. How does one person who understand marketing,
Speaker 8: understand the international marketplace, understand all the financial nook One
Speaker 8: artist at seventeen, eighteen years old can do that. So
Speaker 8: it's ludicrous when people say that, well, he was controlling.
Speaker 8: That's what you do when you manage teenagers. You control
Speaker 8: their business, and as they get older, they get involved
Speaker 8: as they understand it. That's why I teach this in class.
Speaker 8: I have a in my classes. I've been doing this
Speaker 8: in a classroom for fifteen years. There's one hundred and
Speaker 8: ninety three definitions starting with A and R going all
Speaker 8: the way through. Like a lot of people, ninety percent
Speaker 8: of all the people in the industry don't know it.
Speaker 8: It's a lot to know on the business side.
Speaker 5: So they so when they kind of went and when
Speaker 5: beyond sat Silan's gotten to that point where they wanted
Speaker 5: to control their careers or have more of a say,
Speaker 5: or however you look at it.
Speaker 4: You just saw that.
Speaker 5: As like a natural progression, like you kind of anticipated
Speaker 5: that coming.
Speaker 8: To It was a combination. It was a combination of that.
Speaker 8: And it also, as I spoke candidly earlier, there was
Speaker 8: a period in those mid two thousand that I unraveled
Speaker 8: as a father, as a husband, and that impacted it.
Speaker 8: You know, when you when you're a father and you
Speaker 8: have daughters, they look at you way more than just
Speaker 8: as their manager.
Speaker 7: That's why I felt so full circle. I feel like
Speaker 7: at a certain part of their careers Beyonce with Lemonade
Speaker 7: and the songs and Solange with Cranes, it felt like
Speaker 7: such a full circle moment for y'all family. Just as
Speaker 7: a person who don't know y'all, but just kind of
Speaker 7: been watching for a long way, but it just felt
Speaker 7: like a like you said, that moment of you being
Speaker 7: in the studio with Miss Tina and just hearing your
Speaker 7: words and hearing your story and them now embracing those
Speaker 7: stories as a part of their art form. It just
Speaker 7: felt like such a full circle like moment, right.
Speaker 8: And you know, I always say that when we make mistakes,
Speaker 8: we have failures, it's an opportunity to grow, not a
Speaker 8: reason to quit. And most of us we first don't
Speaker 8: face up in the knowledge that we made a mistake.
Speaker 8: That's the only way we grow is first of all
Speaker 8: saying hey, I fucked up, and then go get help
Speaker 8: and grow from it. And I'm fortunate that I'm, you know,
Speaker 8: my eighth year married to an amazing woman that has
Speaker 8: impacted my life, Gina. I would marry Tina and a Gina.
Speaker 8: Sometimes I sometimes get confused.
Speaker 7: Man, you knows me like my former wife, so I
Speaker 7: don't have to even say the names, right.
Speaker 8: But you know, Tenda and I are really friends. She's
Speaker 8: an amazing woman and I will always honor her. I
Speaker 8: never use that word X because I think that diminishes
Speaker 8: and it's a negative uh, and out of respect, I
Speaker 8: don't use that word. Just say my former wife and
Speaker 8: Gina Jena was Vanessa Williams assistant and international road manager
Speaker 8: for ten years. Uh, my former real model, So she
Speaker 8: has experience in entertainment. And our co key is we
Speaker 8: don't talk business unless unless I need a sounding board.
Speaker 8: But we don't talk business. And that can really devastate
Speaker 8: a family when you you can be talking about dinner
Speaker 8: and that becomes yeah, but what about this song? What
Speaker 8: if we did this? Yeah?
Speaker 4: And that's what I was asking earlier. I'm like, Yo,
Speaker 4: how do you draw that line?
Speaker 5: Because it's so work with business? Yo, I just working
Speaker 5: with family, Like Yo, that is so oh my god,
Speaker 5: that's such a.
Speaker 8: And that that became a real challenging and our family
Speaker 8: dynamics is separating the two. When are you a dad
Speaker 8: and when are you a manager? And especially it's easy
Speaker 8: with all my other artists because I was their manager,
Speaker 8: or actually I was, most people think I was the manager.
Speaker 8: I did more record label stuff than the management. But
Speaker 8: which you're with Destiny's Child. It was difficult because I
Speaker 8: have a fiduciatory duty to all four of the ladies
Speaker 8: or three of the ladies and actually Beyonce actually probably
Speaker 8: got hurt more than anybody because I was tougher on
Speaker 8: her than the others.
Speaker 7: I appreciate you all this evolution.
Speaker 8: You can tell when somebody's lying. Man, I'm just giving
Speaker 8: you truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: It sounds so easy, but it's not easy for everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hey, doctor knows. Can you talk about your your
Speaker 2: battle with cancer and how you've handled it and you know,
Speaker 2: to be honest with you, it's it's very rare that
Speaker 2: I hear men speak of breast cancer. I didn't even kind.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that was a thing. Mm hm, Can
Speaker 2: you and I most of us didn't even know that
Speaker 2: you were going through this. Can you walk us through
Speaker 2: the process of your discovery of it? And how? Yeah?
Speaker 8: I love to I love to you know. Oddly enough,
Speaker 8: when I was the number one sales rep at Xerox
Speaker 8: Medical System, oddly enough, what I sold was zero radiography,
Speaker 8: which in the eighties was the leading modality for breast
Speaker 8: cancer detection. Go figure, wow wow, Okay, And even back
Speaker 8: in the eighties we realized and talked about men and
Speaker 8: breast cancer. I'm really about messaging, so I chose not
Speaker 8: to message as male breast cancer but mail chest cancer.
Speaker 8: And I've gotten support but from the medical communities and
Speaker 8: every man that I've talked to, because a lot of
Speaker 8: the stigma and it brings the embarrassment for men to
Speaker 8: use that word breast and also in respect to women,
Speaker 8: because it's three four guys now and one woman. None
Speaker 8: of us would be other guys would think hardly twice
Speaker 8: to take our shirt off. A woman's not gonna do that.
Speaker 8: That's a special sanctuary place for a woman. So I
Speaker 8: choose to say male chest cancer and a lot of
Speaker 8: that stigma, And the way I make it really come
Speaker 8: home is for women, if you are going to have
Speaker 8: to open a door that said male prostate exam, I
Speaker 8: think you'll be quite embarrassed. And for men, when we
Speaker 8: have to open a door that says female breast center,
Speaker 8: a women's breast center, that's quite embarrassing. That's not something
Speaker 8: you feel good about. So first of all, I like
Speaker 8: to just really on the messaging of how we say it.
Speaker 8: The second thing for me, I knew because I sold
Speaker 8: the equipment and I had I used to wear I
Speaker 8: still do white T shirts a lot under my shirts,
Speaker 8: and I noticed one day a dot. So imagine you
Speaker 8: had a white sheet of paper and you had a dot.
Speaker 8: I didn't think anything. I actually thought my wife had
Speaker 8: bought some new T shirts and maybe it was just
Speaker 8: a little manufacturing malfunction. The next day I noticed five
Speaker 8: or six dots. Then I the next day I said
Speaker 8: to my wife. I was like, Hugh, did you buy
Speaker 8: some new T shirts? I see these little red dots.
Speaker 8: And she was like, that's interesting because when I cleaned
Speaker 8: your sheets today there was a bunch of red dots
Speaker 8: of blood on your side of the bed. Again, just
Speaker 8: imagine several dots, like on a white sheet of paper. Well,
Speaker 8: through my training of selling zero radiography, that is a
Speaker 8: very common sign for men, and so I knew that.
Speaker 8: And when immediately got a mammogram, then got a biopsy,
Speaker 8: and then literally a week later, had surgery. That's not
Speaker 8: the end of the story, that's just the beginning doing surgery.
Speaker 8: And there was a delay. We should have done this before,
Speaker 8: but we didn't. I won't get into that. But when
Speaker 8: we did the pathology, it turned out that genetically, which
Speaker 8: is where medicine is going, that I had a genetic
Speaker 8: malfunction and because of that genetic malfunction, called BRAKA two
Speaker 8: mutation means that for men that we have a higher
Speaker 8: risk of prostate cancer, mal chest cancer, cancer, pancreatic cancer,
Speaker 8: and melanoma from a genetic standpoint. And so a lot
Speaker 8: of men are walking around thinking prostate when the real
Speaker 8: cost of it, real cause of it rather is because
Speaker 8: they have mal chest cancer. And we're finding this out.
Speaker 8: And I'm part of research at the University of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 8: Actually I've come been there. That's where I'm part of
Speaker 8: the research there. This is my second year of recovery.
Speaker 8: I always say today I'm cancer free, but it also
Speaker 8: meant a lifestyle change, and I get really excited quest
Speaker 8: love when I hear you talk about weight loss. It's
Speaker 8: a sensitive subject in a Black cammunity. My dad was obese.
Speaker 8: I've been obese myself. I was up to to sixty eight.
Speaker 8: I'm now at two thirty five. My goal is to
Speaker 8: get to to thirty, which is easy, you know, should
Speaker 8: be something that I can obtain. It meant also in
Speaker 8: that lifestyle change stopping drinking alcohol. It also meant in
Speaker 8: that life because of the sugar and because also just
Speaker 8: the effect of being crazy on alcohol.
Speaker 4: So you're a big drinker. Was that was that a
Speaker 4: thing for you, A big drink.
Speaker 8: I wouldn't say a big but celebratory drinker. But when
Speaker 8: I did drink, I drank. You know it meant it
Speaker 8: meant changing my diet. I don't sell them. I eat meat,
Speaker 8: and what I do is only chicken, a fish this week,
Speaker 8: most weeks is many vegetables. So I changed my eating habits.
Speaker 8: I exercised. I just got a knee replacement four and
Speaker 8: a half months ago, which is doing really good. Just
Speaker 8: my basketball days. But I was up to jogging two
Speaker 8: miles a day and I'm getting there. I'm on the
Speaker 8: bike five miles on the bike.
Speaker 4: Back peloton, a peloton only.
Speaker 8: If it's the Beyonce version. You know, you know.
Speaker 4: The one thing I'm selling, the one.
Speaker 8: Thing I brought to the music industry was branding an
Speaker 8: endorsement which the industry was selling records. I was selling
Speaker 8: a brand which is totally different. But to get back,
Speaker 8: so admit the lifestyle change for me, and I've accepted that.
Speaker 8: I've seen the results. Every six months I've been getting
Speaker 8: a mammogram MRI. I sold MRI.
Speaker 7: So is it more painful for you? Doctor knows? Because
Speaker 7: I was wondering for men and a mammogram. I'm gonna
Speaker 7: just have a truthful moment. I'm having my first one.
Speaker 7: I'm having my first one this year, and my biggest
Speaker 7: fear is just how painful I've heard that it is,
Speaker 7: but especially maybe if you don't have a lot of
Speaker 7: tissue up there. So I imagine that.
Speaker 8: Well, I put things in perspective. If I can save
Speaker 8: my life because of two minutes of fucking pain.
Speaker 7: Okay, you and get tested.
Speaker 8: I don't want it.
Speaker 7: I just don't want it.
Speaker 2: Bus it ain't gonna it's not gonna bunutes.
Speaker 8: Two minutes, two minutes each one, I mean at most,
Speaker 8: but it's based on the different angles. Well overall it'll
Speaker 8: be about twenty minutes. But that's about it. But we
Speaker 8: put it in perspective, just the rewards and early detection
Speaker 8: and and this is for men and women. As medicine
Speaker 8: is changing, we'll understand I say we. I'm not a
Speaker 8: medical doctor. I just say we, as I'm a cancer survivor.
Speaker 8: Are understanding family history? We know black people. We don't
Speaker 8: pay attention to our family history. It's right there in
Speaker 8: front of you. If you just take a moment to
Speaker 8: ask what the mom and them and uncle nem and
Speaker 8: Grandma and them died of You might see you might
Speaker 8: see a common thread.
Speaker 2: Sugar Steve, how you doing in your uh your journey.
Speaker 2: There's a reason we call him sugar Steve.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah, everything as long as you manage stuff,
Speaker 6: you know you can. It's something you can live with.
Speaker 2: I got the diabetes doctor.
Speaker 8: Well, well you understand weight loss and diet and you
Speaker 8: under standing the exercise.
Speaker 6: Yeah, try and trying to be good.
Speaker 8: No, we don't try, ship Sugar Street.
Speaker 4: We don't talk.
Speaker 8: We don't use trying our vocabulary. We fucking do.
Speaker 4: Do or do not? There is no trying.
Speaker 8: Yes, you don't try.
Speaker 2: Your daughters? Can Can I get adopted in this family?
Speaker 8: Like?
Speaker 4: Don't? There is no.
Speaker 8: I always thank you. I I can't begin to tell
Speaker 8: you how grateful I was to see that time when you,
Speaker 8: out of all the people in the world, you say
Speaker 8: the ten people you like to have dinner with, and
Speaker 8: you said me, I was like, what why you.
Speaker 2: Just the backstories? Basically I did this thing, and oh
Speaker 2: when I did, uh when I when I did my
Speaker 2: my my food book, uh up mixtape and New York
Speaker 2: Times asked me to name. I'm known up here for
Speaker 2: my dinner parties, and uh so they asked me, you
Speaker 2: know who who that I think would make an interesting,
Speaker 2: uh dinner guest. And you know, at the time when
Speaker 2: Solons really really sold us on you, it was doing
Speaker 2: that period. And then I just really went down a
Speaker 2: rabbit hole of like all of your interviews and I
Speaker 2: was just like, yo, like he really he has a
Speaker 2: story to tell that I really wasn't expecting because I
Speaker 2: think men in your position, like we we've been sold
Speaker 2: all of our lives. We've been sold the hustler, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, the hustler that you know, even
Speaker 2: even the hustler like wins the game and that sort
Speaker 2: of thing. But we we haven't been sold like the strategist,
Speaker 2: visionary or yeah, that sort of thing. And and that's why.
Speaker 7: Because black people can't vision, they can't do that, right.
Speaker 8: That's the media, you know, that's the Jedi man trick.
Speaker 8: That's you know, behind the decision and making a TV
Speaker 8: and you know it's typically a white person. Uh you know,
Speaker 8: I just uh, this summer, this is my second summer
Speaker 8: going to Harvard and taking professional development, and so I
Speaker 8: took this summer cultural Intelligence, which really increased my awareness
Speaker 8: of how culturally different that we are.
Speaker 4: And these are classes that you're taking that you're.
Speaker 8: That I took ethical leadership last summer. You know, you
Speaker 8: get to know me. I'm not the guy that they
Speaker 8: picture at all. We know I I see I played
Speaker 8: the media like they play us.
Speaker 4: Okay, okay, talk about it.
Speaker 8: I won't get into that one. But you know, they
Speaker 8: want to always paint a picture of who we are
Speaker 8: and success that it can't be because as you said,
Speaker 8: that we're strategists or that we're smart. It has to
Speaker 8: be or we had a vision. It has to be
Speaker 8: with swing. Golly, you know, We've got to always be that,
Speaker 8: you know, and that was always Black radio. My challenge,
Speaker 8: the Black radio and when they used to have like
Speaker 8: an entertainers segment and and it would always be negativity
Speaker 8: on black artists. That look, guys, we need you to
Speaker 8: do the reverse. But unfortunately, how social media has impacted
Speaker 8: our young people negativity and the Jedi mind trick is
Speaker 8: how they're played every day. You know, I've sat in
Speaker 8: meetings our young people have no idea how and when
Speaker 8: we learned through the last election Russia, we found who
Speaker 8: did they go to Black people on social media?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 8: You know, we get played on this social media stuff.
Speaker 8: It's not news anymore, It's it's social conversation.
Speaker 2: I gotta know, I mean really like, you know, I
Speaker 2: haven't I haven't had goosebunk moments like this from someone
Speaker 2: talking since like my mom used to religiously like watch
Speaker 2: less brown talk less brown boy, and that's brown. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like less.
Speaker 8: I like less a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I know my well, yeah, I do know
Speaker 2: that you've done TED talks and you're teaching universities and whatnot.
Speaker 2: But I mean, have you really considered like motivational speaking.
Speaker 8: I do a lot of that.
Speaker 2: I'm about to say, where can we see you? Because yeah, even.
Speaker 8: Talk my TED talk is a motivational is on the
Speaker 8: DNA of achievers and what is that? I mean I talked.
Speaker 8: I do a lot of motivational stuff on even in entrepreneurship,
Speaker 8: you know, and motivating our people and understanding the who,
Speaker 8: the what, the why, who is the customer, what is
Speaker 8: the product and why does somebody should buy it? And
Speaker 8: motivating them to understanding that process. You know, we've been gosh,
Speaker 8: we go back to the culture of black people and
Speaker 8: slavery and how it still impacts us in a negative way.
Speaker 8: You know, policing came about through slavery. If you go back,
Speaker 8: you see in eighteen hundreds, just post slavery, BAM policing started.
Speaker 8: You know, this whole thing of colorism started in slavery.
Speaker 8: When it got off the ship. There was babies that
Speaker 8: came out looking white. It's just such a cultural conditioning
Speaker 8: that we have to overcome as black people, cultural conditioning.
Speaker 7: You we're speaking on that colorism too, because I know
Speaker 7: that you in the media even try to speak on that.
Speaker 7: But it's things that we need to talk about and don't.
Speaker 8: We don't grow without being uncomfortable. My job in life
Speaker 8: is to make people uncomfortable. And I had fun with Charlemagne.
Speaker 8: I kicked his ass. You did, you spanked his ass,
Speaker 8: actually just spanked his ass all over the room.
Speaker 4: That Charlamaine episode was because it was the moment, the
Speaker 4: moment where it went left, like the moment I saw. Listen,
Speaker 4: I'm telling you the moment.
Speaker 5: You know the recap so like Charlamagne is doing and
Speaker 5: it's a piece of Charlemagne. He in Carolina, He's South Carolina.
Speaker 5: But you know all of that, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: So it's all whatever but listen though, now. So they're
Speaker 5: going for whatever, and Charlemagne is kind of trying to
Speaker 5: get at him. So mister Knowles just stops and he's like,
Speaker 5: you really sad? Why are you so sad?
Speaker 4: And Yo, the look on Charlomagne, she was like, oh ship,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't expected like it was so it was. It was,
Speaker 4: Oh god, it was so brilliant.
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, Jabs and yeah he was.
Speaker 8: He was left and left and left and yeah. And
Speaker 8: I asked him, I said, you know, Charlemagne, this mama,
Speaker 8: what feelings are coming up for you?
Speaker 7: That's a black man in therapy.
Speaker 8: So he already know and that's a black man at therapy.
Speaker 8: And we continue to talk and I said, Charlemagne, you're
Speaker 8: on that short bus, brother. And by the way, you
Speaker 8: got too much fucking makeup on.
Speaker 4: Lazy Get your dad.
Speaker 5: Come here, come here, come get your daddy out of
Speaker 5: the paint. Huh No, okay, So why are we talking
Speaker 5: about it? So being that you, you know, you manage
Speaker 5: your daughters.
Speaker 4: You were over their careers.
Speaker 5: You know you're going they're gonna write songs that are
Speaker 5: personal and you know, may talk about family stuff and
Speaker 5: all that. How what was your response to Eliminade and
Speaker 5: hearing that record, what was your thought on it?
Speaker 8: Well, I think everybody should occasionally have a glass of
Speaker 8: lemonade and have a seat and have a seat at
Speaker 8: the table.
Speaker 7: Always marketing. It's about the brand.
Speaker 2: It's about the brand.
Speaker 5: Okay, Well, I ain't got to eliminade. I got me
Speaker 5: some ging a.
Speaker 8: You should have a seat at the table there.
Speaker 7: I want you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 8: This has been fun. You just got me unapologetically.
Speaker 4: You know, I knew what it was gonna be.
Speaker 7: Take all this appreciation, and it represents at least a
Speaker 7: million black folks that have been appreciating you, like for real.
Speaker 8: Like I know, and I thank you for acknowledging.
Speaker 2: That the work, your rigorous, honesty, your your your messaging.
Speaker 2: You know we should, we should, you know, happiness and
Speaker 2: and enjoy.
Speaker 5: Just the work you've done on yourself. Man, the work. Yes,
Speaker 5: it's very common.
Speaker 2: I'm really this was not the phone call the conversation
Speaker 2: that I did.
Speaker 7: Right here.
Speaker 2: I'm just you know, thank you. This was me watching
Speaker 2: this episode. I don't even feel like I participated.
Speaker 8: Happened when you know, when you interviewed with me. I
Speaker 8: got to listen to your journey, and it was similar
Speaker 8: because you shared your journey well. And I think the
Speaker 8: more we share our journeys with people and let them
Speaker 8: know the challenges that we have to overcome, that we're
Speaker 8: no different than anybody else, no better, none of that.
Speaker 8: We wake up in the morning and we go to
Speaker 8: bed at night hoping for another day. And the beauty
Speaker 8: about that is I like to always leave you know.
Speaker 8: I travel, as you know, a lot. And I was
Speaker 8: in La back in the two thousands and I was
Speaker 8: going down an escalator at lax and there was a
Speaker 8: non for Mexico who gave had a jar that said
Speaker 8: please give to the missionary. And I learned not to
Speaker 8: be judgmental. I give when people ask. And she gave
Speaker 8: me a card and literally because I used to have.
Speaker 8: You know, you can imagine in the heyday how many
Speaker 8: business cards and CDs people were giving me. And I
Speaker 8: finally looked at that card. It might have been a
Speaker 8: month later. And that's what I like to leave you with.
Speaker 8: It said, pray not for a life free from trouble,
Speaker 8: Pray for triumph over trouble. For what you and I
Speaker 8: call adversity, the universe, God, whatever name calls opportunity for
Speaker 8: what you and I call adversity the universe God Allah
Speaker 8: calls opportunity. We pray too much that bad shit ain't
Speaker 8: gonna happen. It is. Look when it happened, what is
Speaker 8: the opportunity. When I came with mel chest cancer, it
Speaker 8: gave me the opportunity to share that with other people,
Speaker 8: hopefully save some lives just by being honest about it
Speaker 8: and open and for everybody. When bad stuff happened, look
Speaker 8: at it as an opportunity rather than oh, I man,
Speaker 8: and bad shit happened.
Speaker 5: Listen those how do you in the artists that you
Speaker 5: work with when you're working with younger guys. Because I'm
Speaker 5: just sitting there listening to this conversation now, and I
Speaker 5: mean I'm forty two now, so now a lot of
Speaker 5: this shit is resonating with me. But had I heard
Speaker 5: it at twenty two, you know, maybe not so much.
Speaker 5: So with all just the experience and knowledge and game
Speaker 5: that you have, when you're working with younger artists, how
Speaker 5: do you make that knowledge palatable to them?
Speaker 8: Well, you know, I don't know. I'm done with that
Speaker 8: side with that. I'm quickly eager excited to say I'm
Speaker 8: done on the music site. I do have three or
Speaker 8: four film and TV projects that we're working on. You know,
Speaker 8: when I was in the business, it used to really
Speaker 8: surprise the artists. They come to music World and ready
Speaker 8: to sing rap, have their band, and I wouldn't do that.
Speaker 8: I would want them to sit down on the sofa
Speaker 8: in my office and I wanted to talk to them.
Speaker 8: I wanted to get to know and understand is this
Speaker 8: really truly your passion or a hobby? And for most people,
Speaker 8: poor boy, it's hobbies. And that's what I always look
Speaker 8: for if they were passionate. If they were passionate, then
Speaker 8: I could work with that. But most people really aren't
Speaker 8: passionate because they don't know what their passion. They don't
Speaker 8: understand when you live this thing called passion that you
Speaker 8: never work a day in your life. They don't know
Speaker 8: what coexists with passion. It's work ethics. You find somebody
Speaker 8: that passionate, they work their butts are because they love it.
Speaker 8: And when even quest love when you said it earlier
Speaker 8: about all the things you were doing, I was asking,
Speaker 8: but was he passionate about that? Because if you were,
Speaker 8: it wouldn't work. To you it was fun and I
Speaker 8: see my girls and Beyonce and Salons, and they work hard,
Speaker 8: but they actually love to the core. What they do
Speaker 8: to the core.
Speaker 7: What a blessing through your journey. That's what your babies
Speaker 7: can do. That's what a blessing.
Speaker 2: Yeoh, just thank you, Doctor knows that appreciate it. I
Speaker 2: gotta wreck this episode up, man.
Speaker 5: Now, this is this is service. This, this is this
Speaker 5: is sermon right here.
Speaker 2: I say this a lot. I'm definitely sticking to it.
Speaker 2: This is in my top five episodes of this five year.
Speaker 2: I don't know, maybe since today I don't know the
Speaker 2: moon whatever I needed.
Speaker 8: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I needed to hear this today for real.
Speaker 4: This is necessary.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call my mom and my girlfriend right now.
Speaker 8: So he's not gonna cry old Air.
Speaker 4: He's gonna cry in the car he was. He's gonna
Speaker 4: try the car.
Speaker 2: Won't sugar Steven Finiclo.
Speaker 8: And when you come this way, we gotta get together.
Speaker 8: And if I come your way, let's promise we go.
Speaker 8: Let's promise we're gonna have a mill.
Speaker 2: Yes, I will contact you through like I promised. I
Speaker 2: really needed this conversation. Thank you very much, Doctor Knowles.
Speaker 2: This is quest Low. We will see I don't even
Speaker 2: think we need to do no more episodes.
Speaker 4: Like this might be.
Speaker 8: Right, No, no no.
Speaker 4: On the series finale, West Love Supreme starting about to know.
Speaker 2: Yes exactly all right, Thank you guys. We'll see you
Speaker 2: on the next go around.
Speaker 4: Thank you, yo. What's up? This is Fonte.
Speaker 5: Make sure you keep up with us on Instagram at
Speaker 5: QLs and let us know what you think and.
Speaker 4: Who should be next to sit down with us. Don't
Speaker 4: forget to subscribe to our podcast, all right peace.
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