Speaker 1: Of course, Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This
Speaker 1: classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: Yo Yo it Up.
Speaker 3: This is Fonte Fontigaelo with this week's QLs classic.
Speaker 2: This week we go deeply talking to my man, my.
Speaker 3: Brother, Dan Charnas, writer, radio hosts and music exec. Dan
Speaker 3: talks about his early days and say h about journalists,
Speaker 3: some of the artists he did and didn't sign in
Speaker 3: the nineties, and how a simple grandma mistake can cause
Speaker 3: big trouble. This one was originally released February twenty second
Speaker 3: and twenty seventeen. His new book, Diller Time, which is
Speaker 3: absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2: It releases February first.
Speaker 3: Of twenty twenty two and it is just an amazing
Speaker 3: book and a beautiful lergy too, and an incredible producer.
Speaker 3: Dan Charnas LS classic Fontigolo YEP.
Speaker 4: Crazy Suppriva Ro, Suppriva Suppriva roll call subprev some Supreme
Speaker 4: roll Suprema some.
Speaker 1: SUBPRIMEO, Rod Harriet Tupman Yeah, Rosa Parks Yeah, A million
Speaker 1: more Black Americans America.
Speaker 3: What is today?
Speaker 4: Supreva ro called Suprema Sun, Suprema Ro.
Speaker 2: My name is Fante. Yeah. Shout out to my Jews. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Quest of Supreme, Yeah, fake news.
Speaker 3: That Suprema supreva road.
Speaker 2: I met Darryl Yeah when he was defending on television. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the people that were on the other side of
Speaker 2: the argument, Yeah, didn't stand a chance, right.
Speaker 5: Sup.
Speaker 6: Suprema Suprema some Suprema Rod called thank you Linda Bean,
Speaker 6: yeah of ll Bean, Yeah for your great support.
Speaker 2: Yeah by LLB.
Speaker 3: That's Suprima. That brama roll call.
Speaker 7: Very incredible people. Yeah, and I want to think Carson,
Speaker 7: who's gonna be heading up hud. Yeah, that's a big job.
Speaker 3: That's ever done in your life. Suprema.
Speaker 2: My name is Dan.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I didn't meet Darryl, but I now missed the president.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was played by Will Ferrell.
Speaker 4: Suprema, roll Suprema, Suprema. Roll call, Suprema Suprema, roll call
Speaker 4: su Breema so Agreema.
Speaker 7: Roll call.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, we are This might be the most
Speaker 1: roguus episode of Quest Love Supreme, probably since the Christmas special.
Speaker 3: Yeah classic Yeah, uh wait llll Bean is black. No,
Speaker 3: it was I was reading the Trump tweet. We should
Speaker 3: explain what we were were well, Yeah, to celebrate month,
Speaker 3: we read Trump's those are excerpts that was Trump quotes
Speaker 3: black quotes from his Black History speech that he gave.
Speaker 2: Okay, wait, was just a random tweet that that I
Speaker 2: was about to say. I'm sorry. I was like, I
Speaker 2: support ll Bean Yeah New Hampshire be all Okay.
Speaker 3: Ll Bean's a rapper, right, yes, yeah, yeah, he's ll
Speaker 3: Cool J's Mexican cousin.
Speaker 2: Sometimes we've managed to.
Speaker 3: Immediately within five minutes. Okay, this is apparently the last
Speaker 3: episode that was his cousin and thecamery is also Irish.
Speaker 2: I see what or.
Speaker 3: That was his best version ever.
Speaker 1: We it would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge Black
Speaker 1: History Month.
Speaker 3: Yeah, got and we figured the best way to do
Speaker 3: it is to quote Cheeto Jackson. That's just that's your
Speaker 3: man son.
Speaker 2: Yeah he Cheeto Jackson. Yeah yeah, man, he's yeah, he's
Speaker 2: making Cardergie trumpson there he is.
Speaker 3: Yo, listen, man, I feel like we need to do something.
Speaker 3: I feel like we need to do the photo negative
Speaker 3: version of Black History Month. Explain that was the rest
Speaker 3: of the month, yo, Well, because I feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a lot of stuff going on now, and you
Speaker 3: know it's you know, we're having this war. I think
Speaker 3: between like people that are globalists and nationalists and everything and.
Speaker 7: You know, pederalists, everything, all the I S T s
Speaker 7: all the so.
Speaker 3: I feel like every Black History Month we try to
Speaker 3: show like what black people have contributed to the country.
Speaker 3: I feel like, in order to really show people what
Speaker 3: we've done, I feel like maybe it might be time
Speaker 3: for us to just remove ourselves like a mon like
Speaker 3: just just for one month, day without yeah, a day
Speaker 3: without niggas, like an.
Speaker 7: The Mexicans did that and it worked.
Speaker 3: I feel like like every like for real, like we
Speaker 3: take like for one month we show you for all
Speaker 3: the people, just like go back to your country if
Speaker 3: you don't like to hear for one month black people,
Speaker 3: we take away our music, We take away all our seasoning.
Speaker 7: About to make a living on the music.
Speaker 2: Well, no, I'm saying, listen, if I can go a month,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean? Do we have the discipline?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 3: Right now, a dude who's not eating any cereal or
Speaker 3: fried chicken or whatever cheese steaks that I've been noons
Speaker 3: and dulging for as of this taping.
Speaker 2: We're in the eighties.
Speaker 7: Your resistance down.
Speaker 3: That's yeah, that is one of the I think that's
Speaker 3: all I can.
Speaker 7: I can't do no more.
Speaker 2: Ain't got no more. I can't do no more.
Speaker 3: You put in your time, man, I understand, But I
Speaker 3: thought about that, like what if we just did like
Speaker 3: a just a cultural enema, and well, we just removed
Speaker 3: ourselves just to really show like all these folks that
Speaker 3: really won't black people go away if you go, and
Speaker 3: not just.
Speaker 2: Black people.
Speaker 3: People of color, if we are like your your your
Speaker 3: uncle that like needs heart surgery, No doctor Patel can't
Speaker 3: help you, he said, all the brown people, everybody, all
Speaker 3: the color people, like your hedges outside that's growing over.
Speaker 2: Nah, nigga, get yourmo left. So you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I'm just saying, like we if we did that, I
Speaker 3: think we should. We need to let our absence season start.
Speaker 7: Man, I see what you're doing.
Speaker 2: You know what I mean. It's just a thought. It
Speaker 2: would never work people. We ain't gonna do that.
Speaker 7: A good TV though, we should do like a TV
Speaker 7: should write it right it.
Speaker 2: Up, Which brings us to our guess.
Speaker 7: With us, this is all you dog today we kind
Speaker 7: of celebrate.
Speaker 2: Your own guest ship. Okay, welcome, I got the beats.
Speaker 2: What you did?
Speaker 3: Okay? Man today on a quest of Supreme. We have
Speaker 3: a guy that is man has written the what I
Speaker 3: would consider like the hip hop Bible, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. He wrote a book called The Big Payback
Speaker 3: and uh, the best way I can describe it, I've
Speaker 3: never seen.
Speaker 2: Star Wars in my life but that. But you know,
Speaker 2: for the Star Wars people, it is this book that
Speaker 2: shows how all what still to this day. Still I
Speaker 2: gave him last year and that was your first time
Speaker 2: seeing it.
Speaker 7: For Yeah, you ain't gonna see Billy d you ain't gone.
Speaker 2: I was four when that nigga was popping.
Speaker 7: I'm watching all right. I'm sorry to mean to digress.
Speaker 2: It was you know, I wasn't watching that. Okay, I
Speaker 2: missed Star Wars, but hey whatever, So as I was
Speaker 2: saying Billy G was in the Empire strikes back, that's
Speaker 2: the second one, right, Yeah, that's the one I heard
Speaker 2: was kind of live. I heard that one was dope.
Speaker 3: I can't believe we're having this conversation.
Speaker 2: No, I just missed that. Whole was like hip hop
Speaker 2: Bible for Star Wars people. Star Wars people.
Speaker 3: His book showed how all the Anakins became Darth Vader's
Speaker 3: Like if you want to see how every all the
Speaker 3: major players in the game, the Russells, the Rick Rubins,
Speaker 3: the Jesus Christ, everybody, everyone who's someone in the world
Speaker 3: of hip hop. If you want to see how they
Speaker 3: became who they are, this book shows it, and it
Speaker 3: shows how hip hop played a role. It starts off
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy eight. I want to say, is it
Speaker 3: seventy sixty eight?
Speaker 2: Oh shit, I missed the whole decade technically.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, the beginning of the book, which is amazing
Speaker 1: to me, which I know, so we gotta build it up.
Speaker 1: So no, nineteen sixty eight.
Speaker 2: It starts with.
Speaker 3: DJ Hollywood, uh, and it ends with the election of
Speaker 3: Barack Obama, and it shows how hip hop played a
Speaker 3: role in all of that and all just the mini
Speaker 3: the thread. Hip hop was a thread that ran through
Speaker 3: all of that. And it's an incredible read. And on
Speaker 3: top of that, he's uh played a hand in some
Speaker 3: of my favorite hip hop records. And he's also the
Speaker 3: writer creator, well one of the writers co creators of
Speaker 3: The Breaks on v H one, which I played a
Speaker 3: small a little bit, you know what I'm saying, big bro,
Speaker 3: and uh nah, And he's like, you know, real good
Speaker 3: friend of mine, very knowledgeable guy.
Speaker 2: Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls. Give it up for mister
Speaker 2: Dan Charnis, Can I break it up?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 3: The thing was I.
Speaker 1: The thing that grabbed me about the Payback book is
Speaker 1: the fact that you really started the book in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. And what I wanted to ask you, what
Speaker 1: I always wanted to ask you, was what were your
Speaker 1: feelings about Hamilton? Because you now now that's the one
Speaker 1: thing I wanted to ask on like, and I never
Speaker 1: got to ask him, like was he inspired by reading
Speaker 1: your book first? Or because you made the comparison and
Speaker 1: compared Alexander Hamilton to you put him in hip hop
Speaker 1: terms right in the same way that Hamilton actually does,
Speaker 1: so did you assuming that you've seen it?
Speaker 5: Or I think we both read Cherno's book at the
Speaker 5: same time and had different reactions to it. He was
Speaker 5: a playwright and he started on this amazing work, and
Speaker 5: I was working on a book about hip hop, and
Speaker 5: it just made sense. The guy who invented American money
Speaker 5: lived and died in Harlem. That's the first sentence of
Speaker 5: the book. And so it ends, and sugar Hill is
Speaker 5: Alexander Hamilton's estate that's where he lived. So I when
Speaker 5: I heard about Hamilton, I.
Speaker 2: Just no, no.
Speaker 5: I thought, I was like, oh my god, he gets it,
Speaker 5: he really gets it. Somebody else gets it. And Lynn
Speaker 5: knew something else that I couldn't believe anybody else knew,
Speaker 5: is that the very first rap record, really the first
Speaker 5: rap on record, like like Bronx style, Harlem style. M
Speaker 5: Seeing was not sugar Hill Gang was not Rappers, Delight
Speaker 5: was not King Tim iid. It was on the soundtrack
Speaker 5: the Broadway recording of the original soundtrack recording for Runaways
Speaker 5: by Liz Suados in nineteen seventy eight. There was a
Speaker 5: rap song about the Blackout on that album, and Lynn
Speaker 5: tweeted about him, like, wow, he knows that I've never
Speaker 5: met the man. I mean we have the same like agent,
Speaker 5: but I've never I've never met him.
Speaker 2: Really, Yeah, that's brilliant.
Speaker 1: Lennon of Miranda, So you have you seen Hamilton? Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So okay, I always wanted to know what the feelings were.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean it's why you took that position though,
Speaker 2: because because we live in.
Speaker 5: Harlem, so we feel like really connected to the soil
Speaker 5: of the place, you know, and you know, my son
Speaker 5: he plays Little League baseball in Jackie Robinson Park, which
Speaker 5: is right on that cliff under sugar Hill, And it's
Speaker 5: it's like you you feel the presence.
Speaker 7: There of that and is that that's where you were
Speaker 7: born and raised or not?
Speaker 5: I was not born in Harlem.
Speaker 3: Where were you born?
Speaker 5: I was born a few blocks south of Harlem, Lennox
Speaker 5: Hill Hospital on seventy seventh Street.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, as a non New Yorker, how do you
Speaker 3: differentiate as a as a non New york And for
Speaker 3: me as a non New Yorker asking you, how do
Speaker 3: you differentiate what's Harlem and what six?
Speaker 5: You know the border on the east Side?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so ninety six is considered up upper west Side.
Speaker 5: That's your border between the Upper east Side and Harlem.
Speaker 5: Now I live in Harlem, but but that's in the
Speaker 5: traditional border.
Speaker 1: It gets a little tricky because I've been looking for
Speaker 1: a few cribs or whatever, and when I went to
Speaker 1: check out a spot in Harlem, they've now re christened
Speaker 1: sugar Hill as in Hamilton Row. And when I and
Speaker 1: when I asked they were they kind of yeah, they
Speaker 1: kind of kicked it to me, like, yeah, this does
Speaker 1: an excuse for us to add an extra extra zero
Speaker 1: zero to the yeah to the to the press.
Speaker 5: And a lot of a lot of that stuff gets
Speaker 5: named for real estate, like morning Side Heights two to
Speaker 5: be Harlem Heights, but then when the name was out
Speaker 5: of vogue, they changed.
Speaker 7: It's like stages of gentrification changed anything.
Speaker 2: Heights like that just sound real project to me, Like
Speaker 2: in around our way in the South, like.
Speaker 3: Heights, Garden, y'all have heights, heights, heights, gardens, homes, homes
Speaker 3: of the jack, any of them.
Speaker 2: Like oh yeah, oh yeah, it's real. Yeah, it's yeah.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of wik vouches, it's it's real. It's
Speaker 2: real out there. So that's where I stayed at. But
Speaker 2: so I want to go. In the words of our
Speaker 2: cult leader, I want to start at the beginning. You've
Speaker 2: always wanted to. I want to start. Just want to
Speaker 2: start the beginning.
Speaker 3: So act as if you know, because we me and
Speaker 3: you have had a lot of conversations about, you know, everything.
Speaker 3: So it's like Eddie Murphy are sitting on home. I
Speaker 3: want to be okay, So tell us the beginning, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, what was your upbringing like as a kid?
Speaker 5: Uh, well, I guess the most important thing about my
Speaker 5: upbringing is that, you know, my mom raised me in
Speaker 5: this town that was in between Baltimore and Washington, d C.
Speaker 5: So I grew up with a lot of you know,
Speaker 5: soul and funk radio Columbia, Maryland.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so are you from there to No.
Speaker 7: No Columbia, as I'm from the DMV, but not like Columbia,
Speaker 7: because Columbia kind of you know, like you said, it's
Speaker 7: on the edges in between DC and Baltimore. Your cooler
Speaker 7: in Baltimore.
Speaker 5: You know, I grew up listening to w h U
Speaker 5: R Howard University Radio, listening to uh, you know, V
Speaker 5: one O three in Baltimore. So it was an interesting
Speaker 5: sort of class and race integration of an interesting place
Speaker 5: to grow up, and yet it was the most segregated
Speaker 5: time in American culture. It was like post disco. You know,
Speaker 5: all the radio formats were really really strict, and you know,
Speaker 5: I had my sort of I mean, I grew up
Speaker 5: with Earth When in Fire and Stevie Won and all that,
Speaker 5: but I had my epiphany with you know, more Bounce
Speaker 5: than Ounce in nineteen eighty Like that was my thing.
Speaker 5: Like I never heard this song on the radio stations
Speaker 5: that my preppy friends listened to what are these other
Speaker 5: radio stations? And that began. I sort of got politicized
Speaker 5: by that a little bit.
Speaker 2: What was your people's playing in the crib? What was
Speaker 2: mom and dad?
Speaker 5: Earth Wind and Fire? Marvin gane oh, Stevie Wonderer, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, Oh so you was raised on the Essential?
Speaker 5: Yeah. My mother still angry at me that I stole
Speaker 5: her Earth Wind and Fire records when I left for college.
Speaker 3: So that's dope, man, that they would listen to that.
Speaker 3: So that was was that your entry way of like saying, hey,
Speaker 3: I want to do this one day, like I want
Speaker 3: to do it for myself.
Speaker 5: I was actually when I went to college, I was
Speaker 5: actually thinking of becoming a like a school teacher, high
Speaker 5: school teacher. And my major was Afro American studies. They
Speaker 5: called it Afro American Studies at that point, and I
Speaker 5: did a I just decided that I would do my
Speaker 5: thesis on I called musical apartheid in America.
Speaker 7: Say what, wait? First, let me just ask you this.
Speaker 7: We talked about your background. This is radio. Let me
Speaker 7: just not assume you're not African American.
Speaker 5: I'm Jewish, So I always wonder.
Speaker 3: Y'all didn't know that either because y'all would have been celebrated.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, y'all didn't know you thought he was like
Speaker 3: John B.
Speaker 7: No, you'd never assume, because you know, black comes in
Speaker 7: many forms. You know what I'm saying. Mariah Carey is black,
Speaker 7: So why couldn't you? Because I asked that because I'm
Speaker 7: always interested when non blacks do a major like Afro
Speaker 7: American studies, like that's interesting to me, Like what made you?
Speaker 2: I did? No for a major to West Africa?
Speaker 3: Still the Muppets every day has nothing to do with
Speaker 3: West African I did.
Speaker 2: That's been to Africa more than you have.
Speaker 7: I've never been there, No, never, most of us have
Speaker 7: never been there. You'll find that.
Speaker 2: I've been that. I've been to the South Africa.
Speaker 7: They're artists. Most regular black people people don't. We've never
Speaker 7: been there.
Speaker 2: So the only people that can afford to get to Africa,
Speaker 2: those can exploited.
Speaker 7: So I'm interested in.
Speaker 2: Singular click.
Speaker 7: So now that we have that's interesting. So now we
Speaker 7: have two Jewish men who majored in that, both of y'all,
Speaker 7: I will be interested in.
Speaker 2: Y'all Like the Total song Africa Sugar for the Wind,
Speaker 2: I can't. Yeah, yeah, I saw, Yeah, so I thought
Speaker 2: you do.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: No, he's a member of the tribe, he's my brethren.
Speaker 5: M O T.
Speaker 7: Wait what's the answer for real? No, seriously, what makes
Speaker 7: you major in African Americans?
Speaker 5: More about the house?
Speaker 2: Just okay, I just okay, okay, I'll be honest with you.
Speaker 2: I was kind of you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you had so much flavor. I just thought, okay,
Speaker 1: you one of us, like a Sean king.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to zoom.
Speaker 2: I think it's appeared in the glasses. I think that's
Speaker 2: I think that's what it is.
Speaker 5: Could be Latin too, you know, just hand but okay,
Speaker 5: if I come without the beard, it would have been
Speaker 5: completely different.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, the beard kind of you give it a
Speaker 2: little play tops at home and my pass.
Speaker 9: How come the Beastie Boys and Rick Rubin don't automatically
Speaker 9: give us credit right from the beginning.
Speaker 2: Well, okay for having bounce or funk or whatever you're
Speaker 2: talking about. It's weird.
Speaker 3: When listen.
Speaker 1: As for me, when I first heard the original Maroon
Speaker 1: era parties getting rough, like, I thought they were Puerto Rican,
Speaker 1: Like have you heard rock hard? And all right, maybe
Speaker 1: not rock hard, but definitely with this party is getting rough.
Speaker 2: Have you have you heard this party is getting rough? Yeah?
Speaker 7: I have.
Speaker 2: I we talked about it in the previous Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, I mean basically I thought they were Puerto Rican
Speaker 1: and it wasn't until you know, I opened the inside
Speaker 1: leave a licensed to ill.
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, they are not Puerto Rican.
Speaker 1: Well, also, I guess the way they were dancing on
Speaker 1: cheese on it and crush groove, I should have known that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and I guess Puerto Rican. For me, it
Speaker 3: never because I was in the South, so we of
Speaker 3: Puerto Rican. So we just it was either black or
Speaker 3: white Salvadorian.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 7: Oh wow, that's a whole nother culture, right, do you
Speaker 7: not You don't remember this Dan in DC? This is
Speaker 7: no Okay, hadn't gotten there yet because that was like
Speaker 7: the early eighties.
Speaker 2: Okay, that was that was when all the coke was
Speaker 2: getting moved.
Speaker 7: Listen. I don't know. So Dan after.
Speaker 9: Left man, Well, anyway, nobody answered my question. Just assume
Speaker 9: in the future that all Jewish people are funky. Well yeah,
Speaker 9: some of the I'm just joking, but I'm saying you shouldn't.
Speaker 9: I mean, certainly, you know you can.
Speaker 7: He was offended by s there is a.
Speaker 2: Bit of a special relationship. I don't want to make.
Speaker 5: Too much of it, but there is a bit of
Speaker 5: a between me and between the three two.
Speaker 2: I'm feeling, what do you mean.
Speaker 5: Between uh, you know, black folks and Jews in America.
Speaker 2: Here we are, we're on the same game civil rights.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying you shouldn't be surprised that that there's
Speaker 2: a Jew in the room. I was never surprised. You
Speaker 2: know who has bounce or whatever you want to be
Speaker 2: said flavor flavor?
Speaker 1: I mean, you know I Search episode. I said that
Speaker 1: Search had more flavor. Yeah, because that was the term
Speaker 1: of the time.
Speaker 2: That was what it was. He had flavor. So all right,
Speaker 2: if you're just joining us, uh, this is supreme. And
Speaker 2: if you're still with it for our Jewish listeners, hope
Speaker 2: we pitch no.
Speaker 3: We're here with Dan shahnis author of The Big Payback
Speaker 3: MESI Plas and also writer for The Breaks and a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of other flash ship be about to get
Speaker 3: into all right, so tell me how college you went to?
Speaker 5: Boston University.
Speaker 2: Boston University.
Speaker 5: Graduated eighty nine. Okay, okay, you know, so you got connected.
Speaker 2: I knew, but I don't want to play that game, like,
Speaker 2: you know, start naming proper nowns. Did you know a
Speaker 2: Lloyd stare It? Okay? And I'm Google searching that ship alright.
Speaker 5: So however, I did go to college at the same
Speaker 5: time as Paul Batty.
Speaker 2: Okay, so there's that Paul Batty who's wrote.
Speaker 5: To sell out just one of the man Booker Prize.
Speaker 2: Paul college friends. Man damn read a book. I am
Speaker 2: read Dan's book. Okay. So what was your major in college?
Speaker 5: Afro American Studies?
Speaker 3: Oh, that was like your major major. Yet it wasn't
Speaker 3: like I got excited. That's real, Okay, especially in Boston,
Speaker 3: right exactly?
Speaker 7: Are you looking at me like what's wrong? I'm sorry
Speaker 7: to see if this makes sense. I'm like you, you
Speaker 7: went to Boston University. Yes, you majored in Afro American studies.
Speaker 7: You came from the DMV. That's like a lot of
Speaker 7: different things, Like you came from a whole freaking different
Speaker 7: culture in the DMV, went to Boston and then studied afrom.
Speaker 2: Like going up there from.
Speaker 5: Yes, because they didn't have any radio stations that played
Speaker 5: any funk, soul, R and B. You know.
Speaker 2: So that was graduated eighty nine.
Speaker 3: So I went there in eighty six eighty five, right,
Speaker 3: so this is so of course this is how okay,
Speaker 3: I know it was this leading Okay, so all I
Speaker 3: have to listen to the college stations and all they're
Speaker 3: playing is like this electro and hip hop.
Speaker 5: Right. So that was my induction into more hip hop,
Speaker 5: because hip hop was always just sort of like a
Speaker 5: subset of R and B to me, and then it
Speaker 5: just started to become more important to me. And then,
Speaker 5: you know, when you're in college, it's the first time
Speaker 5: I ever read Malcolm X. It was my sort of
Speaker 5: really like kind of getting politicized, and then the music
Speaker 5: was getting political at the same time. So by the
Speaker 5: time I graduated, it was the only thing that was important.
Speaker 5: It is the only thing I wanted to do. I
Speaker 5: wanted to be involved in the business, you know, somehow
Speaker 5: to help this culture become everything that it could and
Speaker 5: should be. And I think I said, I'd written this thesis,
Speaker 5: you know, honest thesis at the end of college called
Speaker 5: musical Apartheid in America and sort of analyzed white America's
Speaker 5: relationship to black culture over a four hundred year period.
Speaker 5: And so the dynamic of right ambivalence we love it,
Speaker 5: we hate it? Right, we love you, we hate you.
Speaker 5: And I sort of tracked that throughout four hundred years
Speaker 5: and it ended with hip hop. And that's how I
Speaker 5: got to meet a lot of the people in the business,
Speaker 5: because I went and I interviewed them, and one of
Speaker 5: those people was Bill Stephanie, who was the president of
Speaker 5: def Jam at the time. And Bill, you know, I
Speaker 5: sent him a copy of my thesis when it was done,
Speaker 5: and he, you know, said, when you come to New York,
Speaker 5: come look me up. You know, maybe I'm starting a
Speaker 5: record company. Maybe we can work together. And what was
Speaker 5: funny about that was right the evening that I was
Speaker 5: supposed to meet with him, the Village Voice story came
Speaker 5: out with Professor Griff talking about Jews and jewelry. So
Speaker 5: the record company got put on this and eventually became
Speaker 5: Soul Records.
Speaker 2: Right yot steps, Oh wait, Soul.
Speaker 5: So first one. Yeah, So Bill and Hank, Bill left
Speaker 5: def Jam to form this record company with Hank and Chuck.
Speaker 5: And then you know, Griff you know, was talking to
Speaker 5: Dave Mills at the Washington Times and R. J. Smith
Speaker 5: at The Voice picked it up, and then it was
Speaker 5: just it was like postponed for a year.
Speaker 7: What was the controversy for those that don't know.
Speaker 5: What happened, was that Professor Professor Griff said something to
Speaker 5: the effect of, why do you think they call it
Speaker 5: jewelry because of the Jews?
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, it is right.
Speaker 7: I'm like that, I don't know, it's not that.
Speaker 2: It's not I assume, said Thompson. I've always assumed it was,
Speaker 2: but at that time that was crazy.
Speaker 3: I remember. I remember that ship was. Yeah, like Griff,
Speaker 3: they had cut him out. They had to kind of
Speaker 3: like excommunicating whatever, Like was no, no, for real, Like
Speaker 3: that ship was.
Speaker 7: Like, I'm looking.
Speaker 1: That's one of the questions I forgot to ask mc
Speaker 1: search was there was a confrontation between him and Griff.
Speaker 1: The reason why Jam had to put guards in the
Speaker 1: you know, uh, that was one of the main reasons.
Speaker 2: Like, it was a lot of confrontations.
Speaker 3: I remember that summer. So that put everything on hold.
Speaker 3: Once that happened, that kind of put soul on hold.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So what I ended up doing was getting a
Speaker 5: job in the mail room of Profile Records, and that
Speaker 5: was the home of Rob Bass run dmc special ad.
Speaker 5: Right in the summer of like the fall of nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty nine. So my first job was answering phones and
Speaker 5: stuffing envelopes a profile.
Speaker 1: So you're saying that had that not happened, so would
Speaker 1: have gotten developed by nineteen eighty nine instead of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 1: So I wonder if those young Black teenagers and the
Speaker 1: Sun of Bersik album were ready to go in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety like earlier than when it got released.
Speaker 2: Because it didn't come out to what like ninety ninety one.
Speaker 5: I do recall Bill still waiting for those things to
Speaker 5: be complete in nineteen ninety like it was. He was
Speaker 5: still you know.
Speaker 1: Those two records, man, are like to me, I mean
Speaker 1: as far as like I loved anything and everything that
Speaker 1: the Bomb Squad has ever done as a production unit.
Speaker 1: But it is so weird because do you have a
Speaker 1: product musically it could be hip hop or whatever that
Speaker 1: you hold near and dear to your heart that you
Speaker 1: know won't translate to anyone else enough for you. Like
Speaker 1: to me, I like, if I were at the source
Speaker 1: at the time when those records came, I would have
Speaker 1: five mic both those records because it's just so many
Speaker 1: layers of genius to them at least from the production side, but.
Speaker 2: You know, I know the average person would just give
Speaker 2: it three. Whatever. The source love that song, well, they
Speaker 2: love changing the style. Yeah, they gave that a classic rate.
Speaker 2: Well they gave it a four the time.
Speaker 5: Remember that.
Speaker 2: Oh I've memorized record. Yeah, because I don't want to
Speaker 2: scare you and I hate to change the subject.
Speaker 5: But you know what I remember. I remember your columns.
Speaker 5: I think they were wrapped sheep right, Yeah, we're a columnist.
Speaker 5: That's how I first got yeah, she she she, she
Speaker 5: hooked me up.
Speaker 2: Man. So with those records of soul gets, it's those
Speaker 2: solos on whole you a profile. I was even one.
Speaker 3: We were talking about this today, man, like, like do
Speaker 3: mail rooms still even exists anymore?
Speaker 5: I really don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know record labels, but NBC, NBC, there's always
Speaker 1: someone putting mails flowing.
Speaker 2: That's the way I get record companies.
Speaker 5: Ghetto. I am.
Speaker 1: All my mail gets to the NBC now, so everything
Speaker 1: like cards from famili People be like what's your address,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, well, do you want me to get
Speaker 1: actually get letter or package or yeah, so all I
Speaker 1: just you know, that's my house and they'll bring it
Speaker 1: to you sleep there, yeah, I mean some weekends, I'll
Speaker 1: make it a weekend there.
Speaker 2: We I guess it is your house.
Speaker 7: Then record companies barely have offices, so do they? Yeah,
Speaker 7: because that's started.
Speaker 2: To get out of the mail room.
Speaker 3: Now was that so at that time were you getting
Speaker 3: were you like getting to please listen to my demo?
Speaker 2: Like, were you getting that?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: I mean it wasn't It wasn't the thing about Profile
Speaker 5: at the time, there really weren't any It was a
Speaker 5: hip hop label. I mean had a lot of hip
Speaker 5: hop on it. There were no like hip hop heads there.
Speaker 5: You know, Brian Chin who signed Rob Bass and special Ed.
Speaker 5: He loved hip hop, but his first love was dance music, right,
Speaker 5: So I guess that's why Corey gave me a job,
Speaker 5: you know, listening to demo tapes and doing ain't R
Speaker 5: and I was not very good at it.
Speaker 2: But who were your signings? Why do you say you were? Well?
Speaker 5: I mean I just wasn't successful in getting anybody across.
Speaker 5: Like I found Geno Excel when I was you know,
Speaker 5: at Profile, but I was not successful in making the
Speaker 5: sale and getting him signed. So but it wasn't long,
Speaker 5: you know, while I was working at profile. I also
Speaker 5: was writing for The Source. They had were in the
Speaker 5: process of moving from Boston to New York. Were you
Speaker 5: in that first summer issue, the one I wrote the
Speaker 5: ll cover story.
Speaker 2: Sorry a couple of years.
Speaker 5: All right, you wrote that cover story, the one the
Speaker 5: mama said.
Speaker 2: Notack you out? Yes, I remember, oh Man, the nerd,
Speaker 2: the nerd of me is really about.
Speaker 3: To go in, go in.
Speaker 2: Oh Man. Yeah, Lego heart just like exploded exactly like
Speaker 2: that that issue.
Speaker 1: I mean that probably next to the first five issues
Speaker 1: of Grand Royal Magazine. Wow, like Royal somewhere in one
Speaker 1: of those eighteen storage units are like, I'm an I
Speaker 1: would buy the Source like three each and just preserve them.
Speaker 2: Because when I first got that l issue, am an
Speaker 2: easy issue.
Speaker 1: I'm like, that's the first time I ever saw people
Speaker 1: truly understand and really wax poetic about hip hop culture
Speaker 1: in a way that Rolling Stone would or Cream Magazine.
Speaker 10: Like.
Speaker 1: I'd read those magazines and just wonder, like damn, like,
Speaker 1: wonder what it's like for someone to write about hip
Speaker 1: hop culture that way.
Speaker 3: I didn't know you wrote that cover story. I was
Speaker 3: just shot in the dark. That's crazy, And that was
Speaker 3: what nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 5: I wrote the Public Enemy cover story, the ice Cube
Speaker 5: cover story, and then the lo one.
Speaker 2: Oh man, did you review America's Most Wanted?
Speaker 5: I did, well, it was more like it was more
Speaker 5: like an essay on ice Cube.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I know that nice to give an issue
Speaker 2: you didn't know.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, well, but I remember that was like the
Speaker 1: summer issue, right yeah, yeah, because the most One got
Speaker 1: a five.
Speaker 2: I want to say, yeah, Tribe got a five, Edu
Speaker 2: Teament got a five. It did, yes, it did. A
Speaker 2: fourth album got a five that I nineteen ninety And
Speaker 2: I'm also shocked that I knew.
Speaker 1: I knew you guys were the deal when some didn't
Speaker 1: sit right with me with Fear of a Black Planet,
Speaker 1: but it was kind of like, you know, I'll ride
Speaker 1: with it. You know, one of those things where it's
Speaker 1: just like probably how you feel about phrenology?
Speaker 5: Nah?
Speaker 3: Yo, okay, now let's go there say kind of I
Speaker 3: mean there's you know, give you give your act like
Speaker 3: I'll let it slide and just but no, well, okay,
Speaker 3: we'll talk about phrenology. So Fear of a Black Planet
Speaker 3: you didn't you wasn't all the way on board with that.
Speaker 1: Well, here's the thing though, I mean, even though the
Speaker 1: thing that still holding in light now mind you, I
Speaker 1: mean it's twenty five years later or whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: the Pitchfork's right up of it. They gave it a
Speaker 1: perfect ten and really really made it like presented in
Speaker 1: the way that even I didn't see it back then,
Speaker 1: something was missing. And then I realized that that something
Speaker 1: was Sadler. So Sadler was sort of like on half
Speaker 1: the record, Eric Sadler had sort of made his graceful exit,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't quite place where was you know, some songs.
Speaker 1: I was a little the probably when the Cracker was
Speaker 1: like okay, I like I fuck with that one. I mean,
Speaker 1: I look, it's a masterpiece of a record, but I
Speaker 1: still went for America's most wanted.
Speaker 3: Like that to me was now if we're doing of
Speaker 3: course presidential Bomb Squad and evenfore that matter, Bellbdvo's Poison album, No,
Speaker 3: that was Bomb Squads.
Speaker 2: It was I know.
Speaker 3: So for me, of those three records, like I was
Speaker 3: kind of it was kind of weird that it was
Speaker 3: like in the Brons squatty Well.
Speaker 2: No, it was it was a bronze to me.
Speaker 1: And there was a review they gave it three and
Speaker 1: a half mics in that Source issue, and I was like,
Speaker 1: whoa this is?
Speaker 2: I said, Wow, they're not salivating over this.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't like the dismissive you know, Spin magazine,
Speaker 1: like this is a ghetto music, I hate this, you know.
Speaker 2: It was like a well informed and I was like, wait,
Speaker 2: I kind of feel I think I agree with this,
Speaker 2: so so.
Speaker 3: Weird that I didn't realize you were that era of
Speaker 3: old so how No, But it was it was those
Speaker 3: first five issues that from that to brand Nubian issue.
Speaker 2: That one got five to right in two issues two
Speaker 2: issues later.
Speaker 5: There was so much ambition in that era and those
Speaker 5: issues like just to really have a voice that was
Speaker 5: exclusively dedicated to hip hop and and just smart and political,
Speaker 5: and just the people there were. I mean that was
Speaker 5: Dream and Kirna and you know, Maddie.
Speaker 2: Where was your era there? Well, you there from the
Speaker 2: beginning too.
Speaker 5: I was there when they were still in Boston when
Speaker 5: that summer issue was being written, and then I left
Speaker 5: to go work for Rick Rubin in ninety one ninety one,
Speaker 5: So ninety one was sort of my swan song with
Speaker 5: the Source.
Speaker 2: Do you remember your last issue the last article.
Speaker 5: I wrote, Oh man, I don't even remember it was
Speaker 5: I don't remember. Sometime in ninety one, I think was
Speaker 5: my last piece, or ninety one or early ninety two.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, that's as classic as it gets. What do
Speaker 1: you remember the album's even reviewed?
Speaker 5: I did cover stories, I didn't and like feature articles.
Speaker 5: I didn't really do the album reviews because that was
Speaker 5: the the that was like the core group, the mind squad,
Speaker 5: you know. And I sometimes I regret not participly stopping
Speaker 5: my writing career to go into the record business now
Speaker 5: feels like, you know, I mean, because I had a
Speaker 5: lot of catching up to do. When I moved back
Speaker 5: to New York. I went to go work for Rick Rubin,
Speaker 5: you know, in LA for about thirteen It was ended
Speaker 5: up being there for thirteen years. But I like not
Speaker 5: having that that writing career going forward. I thought, So
Speaker 5: you went from Profile to the Source, went from Profile,
Speaker 5: and I'm you know, just wrote for the Source while
Speaker 5: I worked at Profile. Year was Profile eighty nine, October
Speaker 5: eighty nine to April nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: So you were there for the first was Naughty by
Speaker 2: Nature's first John On No, No, that was it was
Speaker 2: Tommy Boy. That was right, So honestly the first honest yeah,
Speaker 2: the first on like this.
Speaker 7: Ah so wait what was the rosters? Just because I'm
Speaker 7: now I'm profile.
Speaker 5: Rob Bass special ed U Poor Righteous Teachers, which is
Speaker 5: my very first record that rocked this funky joint promotion.
Speaker 5: L A Star. I don't know if you remember her,
Speaker 5: I remember.
Speaker 3: Or yes she was.
Speaker 5: She was on b Boy Records for a while, then
Speaker 5: Brian Chin signed her and she made a pretty good album.
Speaker 5: But she got into this battle with Tretch at the
Speaker 5: New Music Seminar, this MC battle, and he said, the
Speaker 5: only kind of star you could be as a mon star.
Speaker 7: Was she not cute?
Speaker 2: She was not. I liked her. That was not would
Speaker 2: say about l A Star her career right there.
Speaker 7: Ship, Yo, it seems like it'sunny because you said Poor
Speaker 7: Us Teacher was your first record that you promoted. For
Speaker 7: some reason, it seemed like you got really well received
Speaker 7: in my area, like the d m V area. Did
Speaker 7: you feel like it was easier to promote because you
Speaker 7: kind of felt.
Speaker 5: Yeah, although there weren't really a lot of mixed shows
Speaker 5: in DC at the time, because remember they weren't playing
Speaker 5: it on WPGC at that time.
Speaker 3: What was it like Okay, well you left in ninety one.
Speaker 3: Did you have to work back from him? Then I
Speaker 3: have to back back?
Speaker 2: Was that was that ninety one?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 10: Oh?
Speaker 5: So here's the story, right, here's the story. So, man,
Speaker 5: Rick comes call. I literally just get a call out
Speaker 5: of the blue, and the receptionist says Rix on the phone,
Speaker 5: and I knew it was him. I knew it was Rick. Yeah,
Speaker 5: not because anybody told me he was calling, but because
Speaker 5: I don't know. Gino Excel and I had been working
Speaker 5: on some demos and we had been talking a little
Speaker 5: bit and we just did like this. It's almost like
Speaker 5: this little incantation to sort of bring him out of
Speaker 5: the ether. And when he said Rix on the phone,
Speaker 5: I said, this is him and I picked up It's
Speaker 5: Rick Rubin. So apparently Bill Stephanie had given him my number.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 5: Anyway, why was hell? Was I telling you the story? Oh?
Speaker 2: The story? Right?
Speaker 5: So Rick brings me out to Los Angeles sort of
Speaker 5: like a courtship, you know. Uh, he's thinking of hiring
Speaker 5: me for Deaf American. And one morning I'm staying at
Speaker 5: the Riot High on Sunset and one morning he calls
Speaker 5: and he says, Uh, come downstairs, we're going to breakfast
Speaker 5: with Russell. It's like Russell's in town. So we go
Speaker 5: to the Beverly Hills Hotel and Russell comes down, and
Speaker 5: Russell's talking a mile a minute, and Rick is laughing
Speaker 5: and he recognizes me. Suddenly, Russell recognizes me as the
Speaker 5: kid at profile who promotes you know, his brother's record.
Speaker 5: He says, and the single at the time was a
Speaker 5: song called Faces.
Speaker 4: Sing.
Speaker 5: You know, so, what do you think of Faith? And
Speaker 5: I said, and I said, uh, I said, and I's
Speaker 5: just the wrong answer. I was such a punk. I
Speaker 5: was like, well, Russell, you know, I just think as
Speaker 5: far as rap R and B fusion, I think the
Speaker 5: kids are really listening to in Vogue, and you know,
Speaker 5: they don't really want to hear rappers doing it the
Speaker 5: opposite way. Faith is a louder record than in Vogue.
Speaker 5: I went into a club that ship was so loud.
Speaker 5: It is much louder, and Rick is losing his mind.
Speaker 5: Rick must have called three different people in the car
Speaker 5: after we left that breakfast saying and Russell said, it's
Speaker 5: a louder record and that's why it's better.
Speaker 2: And that's what I saw.
Speaker 5: Like the nature of their relationship is that Russell makes
Speaker 5: Rick laugh, you know, and so it's like a bad way,
Speaker 5: right right, I think in a Rick way.
Speaker 2: I mean you remember Faces, Yes, dude, I had the
Speaker 2: Back from Hill album.
Speaker 1: Wait, just you know, I gotta this Face is by
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety era run DMCs.
Speaker 3: Fun and the thing was that because it was Faces.
Speaker 3: But the single before that was Pause, which was even
Speaker 3: more kind of New Jack swingy.
Speaker 2: But they got away with Pause. Ter J Jay something
Speaker 2: the trade and asked them bathing to my homie Stanley
Speaker 2: Brown Car with the keyboard.
Speaker 1: Wait, since you always wanted to know, there's there's a
Speaker 1: moment the very last five seconds of the record where
Speaker 1: runs just like.
Speaker 5: You'll take that bullshit off that that bullshit is bullshit.
Speaker 1: I always wanted to know if that was run. Finally
Speaker 1: having a realization that the second worst album of their
Speaker 1: career on that label.
Speaker 5: Le Or was so mad that didn't sell. I have
Speaker 5: a copy of a memo that he sent to.
Speaker 2: The ice Cube remix Ice Cree remix of Back from
Speaker 2: Hell that happened.
Speaker 1: Oh I think I remember that there was an ice
Speaker 1: Cube it was it was a Chuck d and ice
Speaker 1: Cube and run.
Speaker 3: Back from Hell remix that Yeah, So because at this time,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to ask you about this if you
Speaker 3: were involved, because at this time that was after Tougher
Speaker 3: than Leather and you know, Run d m C had
Speaker 3: been kind of a way for a minute because they
Speaker 3: were going they were worn with death Jam, well War.
Speaker 3: You know, Russ wanted to get him on Dead Jam,
Speaker 3: and Profile was like, no, the did you have any
Speaker 3: input or at that time, like you know, working directly
Speaker 3: with them, like.
Speaker 2: To try to say like hey, fellas, you know, no, no.
Speaker 5: I mean you know they were they were at that
Speaker 5: point working on their own. I mean I was just
Speaker 5: the kid, you know, bringing that tapes back and forth
Speaker 5: from the studio.
Speaker 2: That was Yeah.
Speaker 5: So when you hear this record, like, I mean what,
Speaker 5: I have zero ownership of it spiritually, financially.
Speaker 2: So for you it's just straight up like I just
Speaker 2: got to work it and it's just the job.
Speaker 5: Like and I mean listen, they gotta they got they
Speaker 5: got a certain amount of respect, you know regardless, right,
Speaker 5: you know, I take the record the Red Red Bull,
Speaker 5: play it, take it to Chuck, Chuck will play it.
Speaker 2: It's not Uh, that was okay. What else Sticky did
Speaker 2: you work special ads? Legal album?
Speaker 3: Did that wow, ship, well let's move it. So no,
Speaker 3: but that whole know that whole that could the five
Speaker 3: due the five minute of my yes, Yes, that entire
Speaker 3: I just I just.
Speaker 1: Found that record, uh, to p astronomical amount of it
Speaker 1: for the CD. Yeah it is, yes, but yeah, that's
Speaker 1: so slept on. It was so entirely t was great.
Speaker 7: So I just want to know how did Rick feel
Speaker 7: about your answer to Russell? Because remember you said the
Speaker 7: whole reason that you were coming to l A is
Speaker 7: because of the possibility of you working with Rick, And
Speaker 7: then you said you felt uncomfortable with the way that
Speaker 7: you made him answer the question with Russell.
Speaker 5: So Rick was laughing his ass.
Speaker 7: What you said, and so you were you were you hired?
Speaker 5: And then well then then Russell called and left the
Speaker 5: message on Rick's machine. He said, Uh, if you don't
Speaker 5: hire that kid, I'm gonna hire him. He don't know nothing,
Speaker 5: but like his attitude.
Speaker 3: I'm glad they were amicable. At least I really were.
Speaker 5: Russell used to call me, like in the mid nineties
Speaker 5: when I was working for him, when they were really
Speaker 5: when Russell was trying to put together his PolyGram deal
Speaker 5: and get off of Sony, they were heading into their
Speaker 5: they're trying to put their tenth anniversary thing together, and
Speaker 5: Rick still had not finished the negotiations, and he was like,
Speaker 5: can you you know, can you get to Rick is
Speaker 5: not doing anything? He needs to move forward. So he
Speaker 5: would call me sometimes and ask if I could push
Speaker 5: it forward.
Speaker 1: So when you went to Rick, is this before or
Speaker 1: after the original Ghetto Boys uh debut on his label?
Speaker 5: That was during Yeah, so he had just signed them
Speaker 5: and then Geffen dropped Deaf American because of it, right,
Speaker 5: and that's when I started to, you know, have that
Speaker 5: little like four month courtship period, and that's when you know,
Speaker 5: we got the I guess we can't be stopped?
Speaker 2: Right. That was when that was drop.
Speaker 5: And I think that Rick felt some pressure, not really
Speaker 5: pressure because Mo Austin, So he had.
Speaker 2: An option to have we can't be stopped before they
Speaker 2: went to rap a lot.
Speaker 5: That's right, That's right. And I think he decided once
Speaker 5: he moved to Warner Brothers that you know, he had
Speaker 5: fought well enough for the first one, and then he
Speaker 5: didn't feel very strongly about we can't be stopped, which
Speaker 5: is ironic.
Speaker 2: Really that was the one that was the one. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 2: the first one was that was it was Gripping on
Speaker 2: It was Gripping Level, which is.
Speaker 1: Basically the same record. Yeah, some engineering was was a
Speaker 1: little different. And did they not add an H to
Speaker 1: Ghetto Boys on the original I think the original pressing
Speaker 1: of g yeah, right, but then they went back to
Speaker 1: G E C O. Right, but there initially when they
Speaker 1: were on Deaf American, they tried.
Speaker 5: They were he was on Deaf American when he got shot, right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: he got shot in the eye, and so that was
Speaker 5: you know, we were still like concerned about his health
Speaker 5: and everything. And but you know, now we're getting the
Speaker 5: era where like the sum of my A and R
Speaker 5: mistakes far outweigh any success, you know, I mean, what
Speaker 5: were your mistake? Okay, here's an example. Paul Stewart was
Speaker 5: probably the best you know, all around uh talent scout
Speaker 5: in Los Angeles at the time. And you know, Paul
Speaker 5: brings me House of Pain's demo and there's this song
Speaker 5: on it called jump Around, and I love it, and
Speaker 5: I give the tape to Rick. I'm duble tape for Rick,
Speaker 5: and Rick calls me and I said, did you listen
Speaker 5: to how the Pain? He said, yeah, I love that
Speaker 5: song jump around a lot of jumping.
Speaker 2: That's a good Rick, That's a good and uh and he.
Speaker 5: Says, I really like that song. So I like it too.
Speaker 5: He says, but do you think there are any other
Speaker 5: Do you think they have any other songs on this?
Speaker 5: Like do you think thing? And I said no, I
Speaker 5: think this is the only one they've got. And then
Speaker 5: we just let it go and we were right, but
Speaker 5: we were so wrong.
Speaker 2: Who else?
Speaker 7: Give us another one day?
Speaker 2: And I was just like, this is your greatest missus?
Speaker 5: Really the far Side demo?
Speaker 3: What what if you're just now quest love supreme? And
Speaker 3: he was talking about all his greatest missus? So how
Speaker 3: did how did you? How did you miss out on that?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 2: What was the story?
Speaker 5: Yet another you know sort of Paul Stewart incredible demo?
Speaker 5: And I liked it. I guess you know what was
Speaker 5: I was just on some ship. I was like, I
Speaker 5: work for Rick Rubin and everything I do has to
Speaker 5: be perfect, and you know, I just don't know, I
Speaker 5: don't know if this adds up. It seems kind of silly,
Speaker 5: you know, and I don't, you know, stupid, you know,
Speaker 5: because once.
Speaker 2: I heard for Better for Worse?
Speaker 5: Wait, that was one of the demos, not on the demo.
Speaker 5: It was not a demos. It was it was mister.
Speaker 2: Officer and uh in its current state.
Speaker 5: But passing me by was.
Speaker 2: Passed you or didn't feel it.
Speaker 5: It's not that I didn't feel it. I just didn't
Speaker 5: get behind it fast enough, you know what I.
Speaker 2: Didn't. So yeah, it took me a minute because your
Speaker 2: Mama came out. I fronted on it. Yeah, your Mama
Speaker 2: was like your Mama, and then the remix.
Speaker 1: Of your Mama when no, the remix of your Mama
Speaker 1: that was and even they said that your Mama remixes whack.
Speaker 2: Dude, it sucks dick in the album.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But then when we got the record and when for
Speaker 1: Better for Worse came on, Yeah, that was one of
Speaker 1: those moments. That's the first time that like I heard
Speaker 1: Fender Roads sound like water right, and to look at
Speaker 1: the album cover and to hear that song like it
Speaker 1: just the personality, like I think that's the last time
Speaker 1: I got lost and watching it, you know, like when
Speaker 1: you're a kid that when people talk about like seventies
Speaker 1: experiences of looking at album covers and listening like I
Speaker 1: just got lost in a total trance like that song.
Speaker 2: Perfectly encapsulated to me what they were about, and and
Speaker 2: and that that song made me higher.
Speaker 1: Maybe that was my triun no, but I that that's
Speaker 1: also the song that made me instantly hire Scott Storch
Speaker 1: to the roots. We were keyboard lists and then when
Speaker 1: I heard that, I was like, no, I want that
Speaker 1: on my record. And then Rich was like, I got
Speaker 1: this guy looking at my crib on my floor. He
Speaker 1: can played that, damn. He brought Scott to the studio
Speaker 1: next day and it was like, all right, you're in
Speaker 1: the group.
Speaker 2: Damn. So that was so.
Speaker 3: So he fronted on the forest side, but I won
Speaker 3: the farest side. So that was man, that was what
Speaker 3: ninety one this point. Man, So I'm talking about your
Speaker 3: time at Death America and I was. I was just
Speaker 3: always curious, like it was something. I don't know if
Speaker 3: it was a branding thing. I don't know what it was,
Speaker 3: but like they never that label never seemed to I
Speaker 3: mean other than sir mixed Lot, which I mean we
Speaker 3: can you know, go into depth about, but other than that,
Speaker 3: it was I don't know, like just as a fan
Speaker 3: at that time, their releases didn't seem to have like that.
Speaker 2: I guess that kind of like a deaf jam.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. That just I gotta buy this,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying. But the records were dope
Speaker 3: like that. The number fault?
Speaker 7: How was that?
Speaker 2: Your fault was fault?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 2: Because I mean like the Knots, that was like world the.
Speaker 7: Knots was on.
Speaker 2: Yeah you signed them?
Speaker 3: Yeah Yo, I swear to God, dog I listened to
Speaker 3: on the air maybe no saggeration, maybe nine hours in
Speaker 3: a row.
Speaker 2: I kept that ship on loop all Christmas Day, just
Speaker 2: on the edge God, that whole. Like when we first
Speaker 2: came to Los Angeles, the mixtapes was.
Speaker 3: And see mixtapes, I wasn't big on I was. Bus
Speaker 3: Stops was the ship though. Bus Stops was the one.
Speaker 3: That's how we met the Jazzy vad Nasties. They were
Speaker 3: in that video. They were in the video for bus Stops.
Speaker 1: We when we first came to Los Angeles, I met
Speaker 1: Dawn on her way to shoot uh like shoot announce video.
Speaker 3: They were in a bus Stop video and they gave
Speaker 3: me cossette of it and.
Speaker 2: We were listening to it. We kind of clown like
Speaker 2: you should.
Speaker 1: Sell buddy, got them beats, you know, tap, you know,
Speaker 1: like the songs that you make that suddenly we made
Speaker 1: fun of it so much that suddenly became our ship.
Speaker 1: And then it was like, yo, we gotta get him
Speaker 1: on stage and rock with us, like like just okay,
Speaker 1: so you're producing, so we didn't. We gotta get into
Speaker 1: that your time as a producer. So how did you
Speaker 1: make that transition?
Speaker 5: It was more like these were artists, like you know,
Speaker 5: Chino and Quest back in New York. They didn't have
Speaker 5: a place mad Lad Yeah, so you know, they would
Speaker 5: come to my apartment, you know, on ninth and twentieth
Speaker 5: right there in Chelsea when it wasn't a getrified neighborhood,
Speaker 5: and uh, you know, so it was just they liked
Speaker 5: some of the stuff they were doing with me, and
Speaker 5: I managed to, you know, get a couple in there,
Speaker 5: which was good.
Speaker 2: So you were and you were making beats on the
Speaker 2: SP at that time.
Speaker 5: I was making beats on an ASR ten and a
Speaker 5: rolling W thirty And then I bought King Texts SP
Speaker 5: twelve hundred from him and added that to the repertoire.
Speaker 2: And how did you learn it? How did you?
Speaker 3: Because I mean it wasn't no manuals, no shit I
Speaker 3: imagine it's just just trial and error.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and error and error in error. What did you
Speaker 2: produce on on their records?
Speaker 5: Well, for Tino Excel, I did a song called Rise,
Speaker 5: which was the last song on the album, and Question
Speaker 5: Mad Lad, I did a song called one hundred and
Speaker 5: one Thing to Do while I'm with your Girl.
Speaker 3: So you you yo. I was so mad at you
Speaker 3: for using that Brick sample. Oh yeah, that was my wait.
Speaker 3: I hate that.
Speaker 1: Every everything that he's done is like a childhood memories mind. No,
Speaker 1: that Living from the Mind sample is like I got
Speaker 1: that ship when I was six years old. That was
Speaker 1: the first eight track I ever got as a kid. Damn,
Speaker 1: you actually got an eight track for.
Speaker 2: Wow during this is Sleepy Brown's pop.
Speaker 3: Singing Wow.
Speaker 1: Record, Yeah, living Living from the Mind from Brick. They
Speaker 1: were from Atlanta's Sleepy his dad, Jimmy Brown.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But when that was like not even like you know,
Speaker 1: like records when you're making beats and like, oh I'm
Speaker 1: a sample that one day, but then there's like records
Speaker 1: from your childhood.
Speaker 2: When I heard that ship, I was so I've never
Speaker 2: been so mad at a sample use. I'm sorry. I
Speaker 2: was like, no, but it was perfect man, Like even
Speaker 2: the wait, when was the drum break? It was new birth?
Speaker 2: Did you flip it?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a new it's a kick boom boom, it
Speaker 5: was a yeah.
Speaker 7: So what a point in your career did you know
Speaker 7: because you went from I'm just I'm backtracking. I'm like,
Speaker 7: you went from mail room and our writer and then
Speaker 7: you when did you know that you could even make beats?
Speaker 9: Like?
Speaker 7: When did you even did.
Speaker 2: It all along?
Speaker 5: You know, like even in college, you know, worked on
Speaker 5: music and stuff. I was in the Inner Strength Gospel Choir.
Speaker 5: I was the bass player the Inter Strength Gospel Choir.
Speaker 2: Whoa, that's that's the African American States. Yeah, the Inner
Speaker 2: Strength Gospel Choir.
Speaker 7: You're a musician by nature anyway, that's just something that
Speaker 7: you left out at the beginning. But I mean a
Speaker 7: bass player, that's not something that just you do.
Speaker 5: You failed musicians become producer? Was this a failed producers become.
Speaker 2: Was this was this a black gospel choir? Yes? Someone
Speaker 2: wants to I forgot who it was? Shut up, Bill,
Speaker 2: when's the last white gospel choir you saw? I'm just
Speaker 2: saying I don't think there's a lot of them. Literally
Speaker 2: looking on you know someone during the voodoo toward joke,
Speaker 2: it was like, what made a new penal that?
Speaker 7: Well?
Speaker 3: He said, Man, if your bass player is a white
Speaker 3: boy in an all black group, you know he a motherfucker. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so you're the bass player? It was, And did you
Speaker 3: learn like, were you formally training music? Was it all
Speaker 3: just about ear? Or how did you learn mostly by ear?
Speaker 1: But so wait, because we're just giving through his whole history.
Speaker 1: That quest record was so slept on though. It was
Speaker 1: how did you feel when he got the rap page Discovery?
Speaker 5: Well, here's the story behind that, kause Shehena was at
Speaker 5: it at the time and Shea was a friend and
Speaker 5: she heard the advance and assigned Bobby Garcia to do
Speaker 5: the cover story. So Barbito wrote that cover story. But
Speaker 5: here's the thing. We were putting our rap releases not
Speaker 5: through Weia, which was the big Warner distribution company. We
Speaker 5: were putting him through Tommy Boy's independent distribution. And Tom
Speaker 5: Silverman felt that we didn't have enough radio play on
Speaker 5: the two singles we had put out to justify putting
Speaker 5: out the album right away, and you know, we sort
Speaker 5: of panicked, and I'm like, you know, I don't know
Speaker 5: if we have another single on this, let's do four
Speaker 5: more songs. And it was a terrible time for a
Speaker 5: question and unfair to him, you know, in terms of
Speaker 5: he'd done this beautiful album, and you know, we were
Speaker 5: finding ourselves doing more records. And then finally Sena came
Speaker 5: along and said, well, listen, you're either going to release
Speaker 5: that album and I'll put the cover out, or if
Speaker 5: you don't really see, I'm not doing the cover. So
Speaker 5: that's when I decided to put on the schedule anyway
Speaker 5: because of Shena.
Speaker 2: Yeah, dude, I.
Speaker 1: Mean, you know, in case you think that you threw
Speaker 1: pebble out there and didn't ripple and didn't dog.
Speaker 3: I love that record, man, Yeah, like yeah, yeah, Death
Speaker 3: American like again, Like y'all made the records that I
Speaker 3: bought and they were dope, but it was just something
Speaker 3: And maybe it was like the distribution that you mentioned.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it just seems like they didn't
Speaker 3: get that same love that I guess a lot of
Speaker 3: other records were getting. I don't know why that was,
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying, because the ship was dope.
Speaker 1: But Bill, did you know about question? Manlet Nope, all right,
Speaker 1: I gotta play. I gotta play.
Speaker 7: You're not alone Alone was always hit a song I.
Speaker 2: Know, just like question mad lad, one hundred and one
Speaker 2: things to do while I'm with your girl. It's a
Speaker 2: great title.
Speaker 3: Hell's us.
Speaker 10: Speaking of all the niggas out there that got girls
Speaker 10: on the rail, you gotta stop hitting them and mistreating
Speaker 10: them and neglecting them, because no, no joke, no, I'll
Speaker 10: fuck them. Well checkie, Now this when it sounds about
Speaker 10: messed up waring machine. But if you and your girl ain'txite,
Speaker 10: you know, I'll fuck your lady. Get better good of
Speaker 10: a chat because it only takes one more move to
Speaker 10: make me get.
Speaker 2: Right in case. It so much classic ship man and yeah,
Speaker 2: it just got a little story about that. You hear
Speaker 2: that eight oh eight?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's an actual eight oh eight drum machine. It's
Speaker 5: ricks eight o eight that's making that.
Speaker 3: We're into the first hour of Quest Love supprint only
Speaker 3: on Pandora. Here with Uh, the Illustrious and print Worth
Speaker 3: the Dan shawnas Uh renaissance Man, Jack of all Trades,
Speaker 3: the Black Black, the Black whites Player, the whack basel
Speaker 3: Yes Black, the white bass player in the Black Ensemble,
Speaker 3: Black Gospel Man, Yeah, that's that's some ship, sir, mix
Speaker 3: a lot.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, that was like the biggest song ever. Like
Speaker 2: what was it like working that ship?
Speaker 5: So that starts, you know, Rick calls me at Profile
Speaker 5: Records says, I'm in town. I'd like to meet you,
Speaker 5: you know, uh, And so he he asked me to
Speaker 5: come to ninety eight Elizabeth Street, which was the old
Speaker 5: Rush def Jam offices, and he still had his apartment
Speaker 5: on the top two floors and he threw down his
Speaker 5: keys from the fifth floor so I could let myself
Speaker 5: in because the buzzer wasn't working or whatever, and def
Speaker 5: Jam had moved out. It was just Rick in this
Speaker 5: abandoned uh, you know, brownstone in the middle of the village.
Speaker 5: And so he decided that what we should do our
Speaker 5: first you know sort of meeting or you know, evening together,
Speaker 5: is we would go to Tower Records and he would
Speaker 5: buy me records that he liked, and I would buy
Speaker 5: him records that I liked, and I bought like EPM D,
Speaker 5: Big Daddy, Kane, bismarck Y Main Source, and he didn't
Speaker 5: like any he was not interested in any of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, some that's not surprising. And so I can kind
Speaker 2: of it just was not his era, you know, he
Speaker 2: that was the era that he left.
Speaker 5: Hip hop, right, And then what did he play me?
Speaker 5: He played me Audio two Milk DA and Sir Mix
Speaker 5: a Lot, both to MC's with really hazily voices, and
Speaker 5: I'm like, they both sound like ad rock? Does he
Speaker 5: just like MCS? And then so for whatever reason, he
Speaker 5: hires me anyway, which I thought was a great leap
Speaker 5: of faith for him, right to give me a shot.
Speaker 5: And then a month after that he says, I signed
Speaker 5: Sir Mix a Lot, Right, So his first rigor is
Speaker 5: swa I can't remember the the one with beepers was yet,
Speaker 5: don't forget that was.
Speaker 2: That wasn't on Defam.
Speaker 5: That was on Nasty Mix of Seattle. So he signed
Speaker 5: Sir Mixed a Lot off for that, got him out
Speaker 5: of that deal, put him on his new deal with
Speaker 5: Warner Brothers, and had a finished album and he sent
Speaker 5: it to me and he says, listen to it and
Speaker 5: tell me what the single is. And I am not
Speaker 5: looking forward to listening to this Sir Mix a Lot
Speaker 5: album because I am not a fan and I'm supposed
Speaker 5: to pick a single. So I'm listening into the album
Speaker 5: and then third track is Oh my God, right, And
Speaker 5: but I had just you know, it completely changed my
Speaker 5: mind about Sir Mix a lot because I had just
Speaker 5: read this article in The Village Voice by Lisa Jones,
Speaker 5: was a Mary Baraka's daughter, and she wrote about, you know,
Speaker 5: the sort of resurgence of the you know, afrocentric beauty aesthetic,
Speaker 5: and you're seeing her more curvacous women in magazines. Beverly Peel,
Speaker 5: I think was the mo model back then.
Speaker 2: Yes, first was or Jesus.
Speaker 5: So I was like, he's doing you know, exactly, He's
Speaker 5: saying exactly what Lisa Jones was saying. So it makes
Speaker 5: lots of feminist right. So, uh Rick calls me. He says, sod,
Speaker 5: you listen to the album, Like, yes, Baby Got Back
Speaker 5: it's a single. He says, I think so too.
Speaker 1: So was that all your conversations like yeah, did he
Speaker 1: ever have like a conversations where you were like.
Speaker 5: Hey, Dan, how you do it? It was always no
Speaker 5: that he would. He would like come back from Lollapaluz.
Speaker 5: I say, hey, Rick, how was la Palooz? He said,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of jumping. He had a crazy sense
Speaker 5: of humor and not to get off the topic. But
Speaker 5: he would he would come into a recording studio and
Speaker 5: if he didn't like what he was hearing, he would
Speaker 5: just say, I've got to leave. My doctor says, my
Speaker 5: homeopathic doctor says, I can't be allowed around a lot
Speaker 5: of heavy electronic equipment. Would say, Wow, I had to
Speaker 5: make a I wanted to make a video for the
Speaker 5: Art of Origin. He only gave me five thousand dollars
Speaker 5: to make it. And I'm like, listen, I got a treatment,
Speaker 5: but I need twenty thousand dollars to make this video.
Speaker 5: And he says, all right, I'll give you the twenty
Speaker 5: thousand dollars, but now you have to make four videos.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: So the first thing I did when I moved to
Speaker 5: LA was, you know, go to the Chaplain stage was
Speaker 5: the old A and M lot, and that's where we
Speaker 5: shot Baby Got Back. And I walked into the set
Speaker 5: and I thought, oh my god, this is a cartoon,
Speaker 5: Like they're going to totally ruin the politics of this song.
Speaker 3: This is a serious, dude, you thought you were going
Speaker 3: to make a political statement. I just thought the direction
Speaker 3: You're not look at the did you not look at
Speaker 3: the treatment where it's like this big.
Speaker 5: Ass was Apparently the treatment was Mixed a Lot told
Speaker 5: the director, it's me rapping on a big ass.
Speaker 2: So you didn't tell Sir mix a Lot that there
Speaker 2: was a political that we could win with.
Speaker 5: It was his angle to have. I just walked into
Speaker 5: and I'm like, oh my god, is this going to
Speaker 5: be a cartoon? How's this gonna be? Because now we
Speaker 5: see it as an iconic video, But walking into that
Speaker 5: room it felt like because then mixed Lot was upset
Speaker 5: because he said none of the dancers had asses right,
Speaker 5: so that was a problem for him. Then they put.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard all right, I got a minute now.
Speaker 5: I was like, yeah, baby, bad ones in gold, not
Speaker 5: the one in yellow. The one in yellow is fine.
Speaker 8: In the beginning, the ones din't gold with the little shorts,
Speaker 8: the shorts, and then there was a woman of color
Speaker 8: who they were dressing as a mermaid for some reason,
Speaker 8: and they put a blonde wig on her and.
Speaker 5: That was like no, no, no, no, no, what are
Speaker 5: you doing? So mix Lot's getting ready to walk off
Speaker 5: the set. Adam Bernstein's the director is getting ready to
Speaker 5: walk off the set. Ricardo the man, Ricardo Frader, his
Speaker 5: able manager, managed to, you know, pull everything together the
Speaker 5: video happened, and it ended up being fantastic, and all
Speaker 5: my fears and anxiety d's you know.
Speaker 3: It ended up not being warranted, all right, So baby
Speaker 3: got back, shit goes through the roof. Did you feel
Speaker 3: a little, I guess vindicated as an an R, like
Speaker 3: did you pick the right one that time?
Speaker 5: I didn't because I wanted I signed to become a hit.
Speaker 5: So I had put a lot of faith in Quest
Speaker 5: and a lot of energy into Chino cell and Gino Excel.
Speaker 5: That was another story because he was part of a
Speaker 5: group called the Art of Origin, a duo from East Orange,
Speaker 5: New Jersey, and his partner was Carrie Chandler. Now, if
Speaker 5: you know the house music carry Chandler was then an
Speaker 5: incredible deep house producer. But now he's a legendary, you know.
Speaker 5: And I learned so much about producing from Carrie. I mean,
Speaker 5: Carrie took me from here to there.
Speaker 2: What happened with Chino's record?
Speaker 3: I remember there was a got what was the It
Speaker 3: was a sample clearance that I think you guys had
Speaker 3: problems with because he's said it was a line about
Speaker 3: Miles Davis or something, and it was everybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he was talking everyone. I think lightly after after.
Speaker 5: You know, he had been trying to get a deal
Speaker 5: since nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety and it was already
Speaker 5: ninety four, ninety five, and he just had it. Says,
Speaker 5: you know what, I'm just going to tell the truth
Speaker 5: the way that I you know, I'm going to say
Speaker 5: what I what everybody's afraid to say. You know, the
Speaker 5: relationship between you know, Eddie Murphy and another actor who
Speaker 5: should name unnamed. You know, like we made a poster,
Speaker 5: like a black and white poster out of all of
Speaker 5: his punchlines and really yeah, and that's what got him
Speaker 5: on it.
Speaker 1: And she was gonna say what offended to I don't
Speaker 1: know the line that offended. I know that it must
Speaker 1: have got under his.
Speaker 3: Skin because I've never heard the words fuck you utter
Speaker 3: so hard and.
Speaker 2: With like you heard the scheme of venom, fucking fucking
Speaker 2: what was?
Speaker 5: What was? Now that I am a professor at the
Speaker 5: Clive Davis Institute, I understand the importance of writing instruction
Speaker 5: and the importance of a misplaced modifier. That's the problem
Speaker 5: with Gino, Excel and TUPAC because Chino said, by this industry,
Speaker 5: I'm trying not to get fucked like Tupac in jail.
Speaker 5: What he meant was Tupac's trying not to get fucked right.
Speaker 3: But what was.
Speaker 2: This is not? This is a cactus turn had his
Speaker 2: mother out. Yeah, this is a second grammatical era. That's
Speaker 2: like some ship.
Speaker 5: This is.
Speaker 2: A ship, That's what it was. Did they have you know,
Speaker 2: they have to make bees there squashed?
Speaker 5: You know Tupac died.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because that's you're hears it all come out ninety five.
Speaker 2: I can't.
Speaker 5: I do remember though, when Tupac died, Chino called me
Speaker 5: and he was crying because he really liked Tupac. I mean,
Speaker 5: he liked him as an m MC, he liked him
Speaker 5: as a lyricist. He I think he wished it had
Speaker 5: gone another way. And I remember going to we went
Speaker 5: to Vegas with James Lopez. Was when Mackavelly came out
Speaker 5: and James and I went up to the up to
Speaker 5: the room and Chino stayed in the car just to
Speaker 5: listen to Macavelly alone, you know, like to have that moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Man, So after so your two main extitute signed Chino
Speaker 3: Inquest and then Baby got back like goes through the roof.
Speaker 2: The follow up to that album, it was was it
Speaker 2: put him on the.
Speaker 5: Glass, which didn't become a huge hit, but it made Seinfeld,
Speaker 5: so that made me proud.
Speaker 2: Video She's not going to put him on the glass
Speaker 2: because that was okay, mack Daddy was the baby Baby?
Speaker 2: What was that album? The one after to put them
Speaker 2: on a glass album?
Speaker 5: They'll make a liar out of me, Chief, Chief, Chief
Speaker 5: boot knocks.
Speaker 7: How do you know that?
Speaker 2: Chief? I could see it, but I couldn't call it.
Speaker 2: Was that the one with fake Louis on it?
Speaker 5: That was Swap meet Louis?
Speaker 2: That was mac Daddy. That was That was mack Daddy.
Speaker 7: Did you ever see the Lauras Tucker?
Speaker 2: Was that like that?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 5: We were not important or successful enough to ever. That's
Speaker 5: the one good thing about my in R career sort
Speaker 5: of flew under the radar with old.
Speaker 2: Little Time Warner controversy, nothing.
Speaker 5: But I was there during that whole thing. I mean,
Speaker 5: that's actually one of the scenes that ended up in
Speaker 5: the book that Moe Austin and Lady Warnicker called a
Speaker 5: huge meeting of all of the important rap artists and
Speaker 5: their managers. So everybody came, Tom Silverman, came Bill Stephanie, came,
Speaker 5: uh Coolgie rap came, Ice t came, Georgie and Josa came.
Speaker 5: You know, everybody was in one room. Paris was in
Speaker 5: the room, right, was it h So that this is
Speaker 5: for context. This is in nineteen ninety two. There's a
Speaker 5: big controversy over Ice ice teas heavy metals song and
Speaker 5: his heavy metal band body Count. Somehow rap music gets
Speaker 5: blamed for that, and so Warner has you know, been
Speaker 5: basically the board of Warner read the Riot Act to
Speaker 5: the music group and he said, listen, if we're going
Speaker 5: to have a lyrics board here, it's going to examine
Speaker 5: all the lyrics and if you don't want to you know,
Speaker 5: if you don't want to be put through that, we understand,
Speaker 5: and we're going to let you go right if you
Speaker 5: if you can, will release you. You know, no problem.
Speaker 5: Moe was a good guy and he was in a really,
Speaker 5: really bad position and put in a really bad position
Speaker 5: by Bob Morgato and Jerry Livin who had you know,
Speaker 5: we're over him.
Speaker 7: How long did Ela?
Speaker 5: It didn't last long because once there were two phases
Speaker 5: to the culture Wars in the nineteen nineties, right, the
Speaker 5: first phase was nineteen ninety two, which was the body
Speaker 5: Count cop Killer where the police unions all of the
Speaker 5: country were boycotting Time Warner. That subsided after the because
Speaker 5: that was an election year, right I was in Clinton
Speaker 5: got elected. Then it happened again. The ce Delores Tucker
Speaker 5: Face was like five something like that, and her big
Speaker 5: goal was to get Time Warner to drop Inner Scope
Speaker 5: and she succeeded. But then Innerscope basically walked with all
Speaker 5: its masters and got paid double by Universal to set
Speaker 5: up shop over there. So I think everybody knew.
Speaker 2: Here, Oh you're I had.
Speaker 7: That actually scared me.
Speaker 5: Now you can't. In other words, it's you can't. It's
Speaker 5: like whack them all, you know, you beat it down
Speaker 5: over here, It's just going to end up over there.
Speaker 5: And so that ended pretty much ended the culture Wars.
Speaker 2: So when did you leave Deaf America?
Speaker 5: When Rick lost his Warner b Others deal when he
Speaker 5: sort of had got a smaller deal over at Sony
Speaker 5: in ninety God what year was it? Ninety seven?
Speaker 1: Okay, I won't to have a chance to ask him
Speaker 1: this unless he does the show, but would you happen
Speaker 1: to know what his opinion was of the Paul's Boutique record?
Speaker 1: Did he ever mention or the BC Boys at that
Speaker 1: point in that moment, like.
Speaker 5: I'll tell you this, I can only give you sort
Speaker 5: of little vignettes, right. So the first vignette is me
Speaker 5: going to LA for the first time with Rick and
Speaker 5: him being in line at Club Lingerie I think it was,
Speaker 5: and like ad Rock is in front of us, you know,
Speaker 5: and just having a very terse conversation with him, like
Speaker 5: these were best friends, you know, and they're being civil
Speaker 5: to each other, but there's no like, there's no connection there.
Speaker 5: The second vignette is a couple of years later, I'm
Speaker 5: walking around the office or whatever, and he stops me
Speaker 5: and he points to my shirt and he said, I
Speaker 5: like that shirt, that shirt that Adam would wear. And
Speaker 5: I realized at that point of my mind went back
Speaker 5: to that first thing. I realized, he misses his friend,
Speaker 5: you know, but he just didn't know how to do
Speaker 5: the things he needed to do to keep that friend.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: They were financial betrayals, there were you know, friendship betrayals.
Speaker 2: But I do know that he.
Speaker 5: I think he liked Paul's boutique. He really admired Matt Dyke,
Speaker 5: you know, Matt Dyke was his friend. And I think
Speaker 5: Dyke helped on that album a bit, but I think
Speaker 5: he was more sort of there was a little bit
Speaker 5: of shotenfreude because Paul's boutique lost money for capital, you know,
Speaker 5: because they had caused him so much tumult when they left,
Speaker 5: you know, So I mean it was you a.
Speaker 2: Good businessman or was he a creative man?
Speaker 5: Rick is a creative man. There's no question. He didn't
Speaker 5: have a Russell.
Speaker 2: That's the problem.
Speaker 5: That's why that's why American Recordings did not do well
Speaker 5: really ever. I mean they had a few hits, but
Speaker 5: he didn't. He didn't have somebody, a partner who could
Speaker 5: do what Russell did, and that's why they were so
Speaker 5: good together. And you know, Russell never found a creative
Speaker 5: person like Rick again, but he found another kind of
Speaker 5: symbiotic relationship with.
Speaker 3: Lee or m Yeah, if you could call it symbiotic,
Speaker 3: but I would say it. So ninety seven you leave, Uh,
Speaker 3: you leave American?
Speaker 2: Where do you go? From that point?
Speaker 5: I went to work for Forst Whittaker. Forst Whittaker was
Speaker 5: starting a record company, and yeah, Spirit Dance Music distributed
Speaker 5: through Epic, and I tried to sign the Far Side
Speaker 5: again in ninety seven because they wanted off of Delicious
Speaker 5: Vinyl or whatever, and and I was trying to make
Speaker 5: a way from We ended up signing Trey.
Speaker 3: Oh just train from the Far Side. Oh Man, did
Speaker 3: anything ever happened?
Speaker 8: No?
Speaker 2: Because with not Doogie howser? Uh, Parker Lewis can't lose. No, no, no,
Speaker 2: it wasn't. No, you're talking about Green. That was for yeap.
Speaker 2: That was yep. Okay, that album actually wasn't bad. It
Speaker 2: wasn't It wasn't bad. I heard, I heard it was
Speaker 2: you never heard it.
Speaker 3: But if you've heard everything not, that album wasn't bad.
Speaker 3: I mean, Bill, you'll be if you really knew what
Speaker 3: we were talking about.
Speaker 2: I just love that you got to Brian as the
Speaker 2: Green from Dougie House.
Speaker 3: You know White Boy TV. Come on, no, Brianross the Green.
Speaker 3: The album was called one Carnival. Yeah, one stop Calling.
Speaker 7: I do remember a video that do you send me?
Speaker 3: It was like Trey was singing on it. It was
Speaker 3: respectable joint. He was like the first Drake. He was
Speaker 3: like the first like TV star. No, damn, we haven't
Speaker 3: had a good rabbit hole in a second.
Speaker 5: You know what though, when I work for Forrest, I tried,
Speaker 5: like hell to sign Crosswalk, Crosswalk, Cody Chestnut.
Speaker 2: To for.
Speaker 5: Before, but it wasn't it was it was like Beatles
Speaker 5: esque rock.
Speaker 2: It was dope.
Speaker 5: He was dope, and uh, you know I remember seeing
Speaker 5: him live. This is really early on this before I
Speaker 5: think he was ever making music with you guys, and
Speaker 5: he's like this next song is white record. Companies can't
Speaker 5: sign my group because of me, you know. Ship like
Speaker 5: that just funny and really good. And I bagged Forrest
Speaker 5: to sign him, and so so.
Speaker 1: Far as was really doing his business. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: a vanity thing where it's just like, no, it wasn't
Speaker 1: van anything like like Michael Jordan's wasn't hidden beat.
Speaker 7: Yeah, so Trey was like the start I was.
Speaker 5: That was Acclaim else they never released anybody Ghost. Uh,
Speaker 5: that was happening right when I was there. Actually there
Speaker 5: there was a film with Jim Jarmush and Rizza's first score.
Speaker 2: Yep, it was I remember.
Speaker 7: They were doing radio promotions behind that because they came
Speaker 7: to see is Rizza and Forrest.
Speaker 5: But that's when I decided I kind of had enough
Speaker 5: for the music business.
Speaker 3: You wanted to tell them about themselves.
Speaker 2: I wanted to write again. So since I was in LA.
Speaker 5: The first thing I did was, you know when you
Speaker 5: when you're in l A and you want to write,
Speaker 5: you you tend to think of writing for the screen.
Speaker 5: So I ended up writing for the Lyricist Lounge show
Speaker 5: and and then for You'll Love This be ET's Comicview.
Speaker 5: For Comic View they had sketch comedy for a little while,
Speaker 5: so I helped out for a season.
Speaker 7: How was that experience?
Speaker 5: It was great. I mean I loved writing comedy and
Speaker 5: in a way it set me up for the breaks
Speaker 5: later on, you know, just in terms of that being
Speaker 5: in a room of writers, really really funny people Alison
Speaker 5: Foos and oh Man, they're just really you know, a
Speaker 5: lot of them had worked for a Living Color and
Speaker 5: I just learned a lot.
Speaker 7: Well, Lyrics's Lounge was phenomenal, Like that was a that
Speaker 7: was the that's where I don't know what and.
Speaker 5: Most words were like he had a chance to write
Speaker 5: with most a little bit like not like on the
Speaker 5: sketch side. So he wrote the rhymes and I sort
Speaker 5: of contributed ideas for the sketch, but most came, and
Speaker 5: common came, and Erica came. It was a really good,
Speaker 5: really good, tough.
Speaker 2: I believe there did an episode or not.
Speaker 5: I don't remember.
Speaker 7: When did you know you were funny in the realm
Speaker 7: of you? You've had a lot of hats. Okay, So
Speaker 7: what I'm just saying, Well, well.
Speaker 5: Here's what I used to do. I used to do
Speaker 5: this segment, you know, the wake up show, King Tech
Speaker 5: and Sweat. So I used to do this thing where
Speaker 5: I would read, I would read like the Steve Allen
Speaker 5: gag right, I would read rap lyrics as poetry, and
Speaker 5: I ended up doing a bunch of sketches for them,
Speaker 5: and so that led to the gig with with lyrics.
Speaker 2: Why did you think that worked?
Speaker 5: Man?
Speaker 2: Because I thought that was I mean, I thought it
Speaker 2: costs too much.
Speaker 5: Did great in the arratings, but it costs too much
Speaker 5: to make.
Speaker 2: What would the what would the twelve hours late?
Speaker 5: I think he was on time. I think he was.
Speaker 2: In South Africa?
Speaker 5: What was the what was the what was you wait,
Speaker 5: fooling nobody? He was. There was like a presidential debate
Speaker 5: between him and uh master fool remember yeah, I.
Speaker 2: Mean f u o l oh my god?
Speaker 8: What what?
Speaker 2: Why was it so expensive? What were the what were
Speaker 2: the call involved?
Speaker 5: Just sketch comedy wardrobe and union and I mean it
Speaker 5: was a real production and it was not something that
Speaker 5: MTV was used to doing. I mean they were doing
Speaker 5: reality shows which are just bank Yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, what was it about TV that you love? Because
Speaker 7: I mean at some point you were like, I'm staying.
Speaker 5: The ability to write something and then have it uh
Speaker 5: you know produced and on TV media it was so
Speaker 5: immediate and I got a chance to actually act and
Speaker 5: like to be a part of that thing, and that
Speaker 5: was it was dope. It was his favorite jobs.
Speaker 1: It's also ahead of his time because MTV still has
Speaker 1: uh next show while 'nout yeah, which.
Speaker 2: The cheaper version, much cheaper version.
Speaker 3: But no, yeah, it was I think it's a show
Speaker 3: that would do much better now in like the snapchat
Speaker 3: you know, uh meme era then you know back then.
Speaker 3: So at some point you decide, okay, you want to
Speaker 3: you're writing. When does the I guess the beginnings of
Speaker 3: the Big payback the Bible, Like when does when do
Speaker 3: you start writing?
Speaker 5: It started when I wanted to do hip hop journalism again,
Speaker 5: and so I pitched, Uh, I pitched an article that
Speaker 5: nobody would buy. Vibe wouldn't Vibe wasn't interested in it.
Speaker 5: Double XL wasn't interested in it. It was called Last Night,
Speaker 5: a DJ Saved My Business, and it was about these
Speaker 5: guys who owned these disco labels in the eighties who
Speaker 5: thought they were going to be disco kings and ended
Speaker 5: up wrap fell into their laps and saved their asses. Basically,
Speaker 5: so we're talking about Corey Robbins, a profile, Tom Silverman,
Speaker 5: Tommy Boy, Fredmanao at Select right, the the record companies
Speaker 5: that basically funded the golden age of hip hop. Unwittingly
Speaker 5: they didn't because they weren't you know, they became hip
Speaker 5: hop fans, but they weren't of hip hop. So nobody
Speaker 5: cared about it. And so I decided at one point
Speaker 5: that I really really missed New York and I wanted
Speaker 5: to come home. And so I just remember I was
Speaker 5: at a party with an editor of yet another magazine
Speaker 5: and I was pitching this article at him, and he
Speaker 5: turned away from me in mid pitch and walked away.
Speaker 2: Damn.
Speaker 5: And I was like, all right, you know what, maybe
Speaker 5: this is a book. So I had enrolled at Columbia
Speaker 5: Journalism School to get my masters, and I did a
Speaker 5: lot of things there, like I ended up I did
Speaker 5: my master's project in the West Bank in Palestine, and
Speaker 5: I was either going to do a book on that
Speaker 5: or I was going to do this hip hop business history,
Speaker 5: and so it ended up being that. And my mentor
Speaker 5: there was the great Sam Friedman, who teaches this book
Speaker 5: writing class every year and only twenty five people a year.
Speaker 5: Getting you have to pitch him a book I did
Speaker 5: to get into.
Speaker 2: The class, and was the big payback was that your pitch.
Speaker 5: The big payback was it was called Beats, Rhymes and
Speaker 5: cash at first, right, And so I got in and
Speaker 5: then the very first day we're supposed to bring in
Speaker 5: like a sample chapter, and NPR is taping the class
Speaker 5: for a piece on the class because like so many
Speaker 5: people get published out of this class, and so on
Speaker 5: NPR to this day, there is a First of all,
Speaker 5: I won the Cliche Award, like every the most most
Speaker 5: cliches per It was like, you know, so I having
Speaker 5: a bad day anyway, and we got into this argument
Speaker 5: about whether old school was a cliche or a genre,
Speaker 5: and I was maintaining it was a genre, and he
Speaker 5: was maintaining it was a cliche. And he says, and
Speaker 5: this is still on NPR ten years later. He says,
Speaker 5: as they say on the basketball as they say on
Speaker 5: the basketball court, Dan, stop bringing that weak shit.
Speaker 2: Dang, that's my, that's my.
Speaker 5: But he's the guy. He's like that tough love Sorry,
Speaker 5: he's like that tough love teacher that got that treatment
Speaker 5: out of me. And I got out of that class,
Speaker 5: you know. A month later that treatment was sold, and
Speaker 5: then I spent the next three years reporting the book.
Speaker 2: So how did you?
Speaker 3: How did that make you a better writer? Because I've
Speaker 3: only known you, I only know you now, So what
Speaker 3: did that class do for you as a writer? How
Speaker 3: did it make you stronger?
Speaker 5: Just pouring over every word in every comma, trying to
Speaker 5: make every sentence as as elegant and efficient as it
Speaker 5: can be. You know, every every sentence has a function,
Speaker 5: Every word has a function. But even more than that,
Speaker 5: I kept getting sidetracked because I'm a nerd, you know,
Speaker 5: about music, and I wanted to talk about the emergence
Speaker 5: of the AO eight drum machine, and I wanted to
Speaker 5: take these divergent paths into what Marley did and how
Speaker 5: much the bridge was so important.
Speaker 2: You sound a lot like somebody I know.
Speaker 5: Yea, So he says, right there, So he says, Dan,
Speaker 5: it's about the music. Sorry, he says, Dan, It's about
Speaker 5: the business, not the music. It's about the business. It's
Speaker 5: about the business. He kept saying that mantra to me,
Speaker 5: and and so I listened to him, and that's I
Speaker 5: remember that first chapter. I turned and he says, you
Speaker 5: can't write this chapter without getting the voices of Sylvia
Speaker 5: Robinson and Bobby Robinson, Like I need to know what
Speaker 5: they were doing while jay Z was getting his Grammy
Speaker 5: Where were they not Grammy?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 5: Sorry? When he was at the Rock and Roll Hall
Speaker 5: of Fame awarding the uh you know, the Grandmaster Flash
Speaker 5: of the Furious Five for the first people to get inducted.
Speaker 5: So that was a motif for the book. J D
Speaker 5: was a jay Z was inducting them, and he wanted
Speaker 5: to He knew the reader would want to know where
Speaker 5: the founding mother and one of the founding fathers of
Speaker 5: the business were at that moment, and if all the
Speaker 5: listeners were they Sylvia was in the hospital and Bobby
Speaker 5: Robinson was at home watch them.
Speaker 2: So do you acknowledge this as the hip hop Bible?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 1: I kind of see it more as the the forty
Speaker 1: forty eight Laws of power. You know, that that one
Speaker 1: book that every guy that went to jail has that like, like,
Speaker 1: it's no, I don't mean your book. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: like you, I always see the forty eight Laws of
Speaker 1: Power book and every like when Jay first got his
Speaker 1: office at Deaf Chair that book. I was like, are
Speaker 1: you strategically placing in this areas? He had a nerf
Speaker 1: ball and it's forty eight Loss of Power book.
Speaker 2: But I mean it is very.
Speaker 1: Informative and and sort of detailing people's journeys. And why
Speaker 1: did you feel that was important?
Speaker 5: Because it wasn't out there or hip hop is so
Speaker 5: big that there are so many stories you can tell
Speaker 5: about it. And I couldn't have written my book without
Speaker 5: Jeff Chang having written Can't Stop the Albums Right, And
Speaker 5: I couldn't have written it without Brian Coleman having done
Speaker 5: check the technique. And not to even mention the smaller
Speaker 5: books that that the earlier ones that you know, David
Speaker 5: Tube had done and Nelson George had done a pretty
Speaker 5: good book hip Hip Hop America. I think it was
Speaker 5: called UH. And then of course like the smaller UH,
Speaker 5: you know, the books on smaller parts of the subject,
Speaker 5: like Ronan Roe's book on. Yeah, so all of them
Speaker 5: are really important, and I stand on the shoulders of
Speaker 5: all those folks. But my issue was people really didn't
Speaker 5: understand that hip hop almost didn't happen, right. They didn't
Speaker 5: understand like when I would read accounts of hip hop history,
Speaker 5: it was almost like run DMC made a record and
Speaker 5: then they were huge, right, And that's not how it happened.
Speaker 5: People fought tooth and nail to make this stuff successful.
Speaker 5: It almost didn't happen. I mean, when we think about
Speaker 5: New York in nineteen ninety radio was backing away from
Speaker 5: hip hop all over, right, mix shows were going away,
Speaker 5: So we were hot ninety seven as we know it,
Speaker 5: you know today was felt a million light years away.
Speaker 5: But people fought for it, and so people I wanted
Speaker 5: to tell the story of people like Keith Naftali, the
Speaker 5: very first pop radio programmer to play hardcore hip hop
Speaker 5: in the daytime. We're talking NWA, Public Enemy, and other
Speaker 5: pop programmers across the country like Rick D's you know,
Speaker 5: thought it was laughable, you know that dangerous even and
Speaker 5: he did it, and he was so successful that he
Speaker 5: convinced other radio programmers eventually that this was, you know
Speaker 5: something that was worth doing and ended decades of segregation
Speaker 5: in radio because of it. So I felt like that
Speaker 5: was the important story to tell just for hip hop's sake.
Speaker 5: And then it's a great American story, you know. That's
Speaker 5: why it starts with Alexander Hamilton because I believe it
Speaker 5: embodies the same ethos.
Speaker 1: Can I ask, so since you were in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: for the greater part of the nineties, I mean, of course. Now,
Speaker 1: it's just it's such a different way, different feelium vibe.
Speaker 2: And quick, quick backstory.
Speaker 1: So usually when guests come on, notable guests, especially New
Speaker 1: York based guests, come on the show, I'm always fascinated.
Speaker 1: One of the common denominator stories and experiences they have
Speaker 1: is they always have a tunnel not a tunnel Latin
Speaker 1: court iss story to tell. But for me, it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm more amazed to the fact that they're willing to
Speaker 1: court this danger and almost romanticize about this period in
Speaker 1: which from my protected childhood eyes, it's like, Yo, why
Speaker 1: would you even go to a building and you might
Speaker 1: might be shot?
Speaker 2: Is it really that much? Is it really worth it
Speaker 2: to hear nobody beats the biz? Like, Like, do you
Speaker 2: if that's the only place you're going. You know, you
Speaker 2: can hear it. Yeah, well that said living.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember, like now when I go to La,
Speaker 1: it's such a joyful feeling, like I'm going to LA
Speaker 1: and like I enjoy that feeling of landing you know La. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, hang with my friends and go to nice
Speaker 1: restaurants and it's fun. But there was a period in
Speaker 1: LA where it's like, you know, we used to always
Speaker 1: make sure we don't wear no.
Speaker 2: Blue, no red.
Speaker 1: Know where you you know, just know where you stand,
Speaker 1: don't cross anybody, you know Mad Shug sightings Mad.
Speaker 5: It was like that.
Speaker 3: Yo.
Speaker 2: It's like Santha Nico so in to be in La.
Speaker 1: During the period of Shug's rain, where any moment could
Speaker 1: be the moment where you could get got.
Speaker 2: Like what was that like in that period? Like was
Speaker 2: it an enjoyable time.
Speaker 5: Or did you feel like you were so out of
Speaker 5: the circle that you could I wasn't that close to power,
Speaker 5: I guess in that way. And I didn't fetish death row,
Speaker 5: you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: I didn't.
Speaker 5: I didn't want to be around those folks. I didn't
Speaker 5: you know what I mean, You.
Speaker 1: Couldn't avoid it, Like the roots are the furthest thing
Speaker 1: from death row. But you know, Sugar and Pok once
Speaker 1: came to a show and I swear to God, even
Speaker 1: the air.
Speaker 2: Just suck out the room like it was like it
Speaker 2: was like unavoidable.
Speaker 3: So how.
Speaker 1: Like, how did you manage m a atmosphere and musically
Speaker 1: magical but also questionable as.
Speaker 5: Far as being naive and also the feeling that it's
Speaker 5: it was normal, you know, like when you're you know,
Speaker 5: that whole thing about the frog and water or whatever,
Speaker 5: and you you know, it was just that was part
Speaker 5: of the environment. And I I just also have this
Speaker 5: philosophy that bullies go away. You know, if you wait
Speaker 5: long enough, they're going to fuck themselves up.
Speaker 2: So seven years man, well, you know, in terms of
Speaker 2: his power, you know, his power was very short.
Speaker 5: And it turns out a lot of the things that
Speaker 5: people think he did or legendary you know that he did,
Speaker 5: didn't do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Now I'm like, yeah, I didn't, he didn't.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, did you have.
Speaker 3: First an experiences with any besides Russell?
Speaker 2: And uh?
Speaker 1: I mean first hand experience is non interview, but just
Speaker 1: like and just daily interaction with any of the uh,
Speaker 1: the subject matters that you profiled. Like as far as
Speaker 1: you being in the business, well, there are a few
Speaker 1: run ins with Dame Moore that that's sort of There's
Speaker 1: just a few.
Speaker 5: Things that you know in the book that I was
Speaker 5: present for.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: So there's that meeting, you know, that big cabal meeting,
Speaker 5: you know, I mean there's that. You know that that
Speaker 5: that fake email that's been going around for years about
Speaker 5: the secret meeting in la you know where the prison
Speaker 5: industrial complex and getting all the rappers this like.
Speaker 2: That wasn't really I.
Speaker 5: Mean, but I did attend the real meeting, which was
Speaker 5: you know, mo Austin calling all of his artists, the
Speaker 5: extended family of artists and into a conference room and saying, look,
Speaker 5: here's the deal, you know, And it was a very
Speaker 5: sad meeting. You know, I think he was sad as
Speaker 5: the person who signed to Prince and Joni Mitchell and
Speaker 5: James Taylor and you know all these other Jimmy Hendrix
Speaker 5: held uh you know, to be in that position it
Speaker 5: was humiliating for him. And then I was the person
Speaker 5: who had to go and basically create a dummy record
Speaker 5: company for Paris because Paris had gotten dropped off of
Speaker 5: his And Rick said, I'm gonna put him on I'm
Speaker 5: gonna put on an American, but I can't put him
Speaker 5: on Americans. So we're going to create a whole new
Speaker 5: label for him. So I went to the Bay Area
Speaker 5: basically helped create a label for Paris.
Speaker 3: Came scarface, scarface because that was that the one that's
Speaker 3: sleeping with the enemy came out on which which Ricord
Speaker 3: was it?
Speaker 2: Was it because that was the one he wanted to
Speaker 2: call bush Killer.
Speaker 5: Originally I think bush Killer remained dude, but uh, I
Speaker 5: have to actually read The Big Payback to remember. So
Speaker 5: after this you write the Big Payback? Was it anyone
Speaker 5: that was reluctant to talk to you? Like anyone that
Speaker 5: was just like nah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just writes itself.
Speaker 5: There were people like I really wanted to talk to
Speaker 5: Cindy Campbell, like Kirk's sister, because Jeff had done herk
Speaker 5: right the artist, but I wanted a profile the business side,
Speaker 5: and I approached Cindy Campbell and she wanted money, and
Speaker 5: I said this, I just don't do that. I'm a journalist.
Speaker 5: I don't pay anybody for an interview. So by you know,
Speaker 5: and obviously you're never gonna get Jay. You know, Jay
Speaker 5: Z in a room to interview him. So what you
Speaker 5: do is you report around people as a journalist. You
Speaker 5: started the edges, and you go around and around in circles, circle,
Speaker 5: and finally there's only one person left right, and you
Speaker 5: can say to that person, you know, I'm not saying
Speaker 5: that I did this with Jay Z, but I'm about to,
Speaker 5: you know, release a book that has a after on
Speaker 5: you or a section on you. I want to give
Speaker 5: you a chance to hear it before it goes out,
Speaker 5: you know, and comment on it. So usually you know,
Speaker 5: people will want to hear what you're going to write
Speaker 5: about them, and if you approach them respectfully. And whenever
Speaker 5: I interviewed somebody for the book, I always, you know,
Speaker 5: I always uh offer them a readback, just because it's
Speaker 5: their story.
Speaker 3: So you never just do it blind. Just like everyone
Speaker 3: got yeah, they know, they knew what it was going
Speaker 3: to be before.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 5: There were people who were mad. More more people were
Speaker 5: mad when they got left out of the book.
Speaker 2: I was going to say, like it wasn't disrespect no,
Speaker 2: no at all.
Speaker 5: Search was mad at me for a little while because
Speaker 5: he gave me a lot of time and I the
Speaker 5: section that he was in ended up getting cut and
Speaker 5: I apologize to him over that.
Speaker 2: Now search has a lot of stories.
Speaker 5: Great, he was great and he's still great.
Speaker 3: We'll put it this way.
Speaker 1: We barely got to the Cactus CD for de second album. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we barely got to Derrelick's dialect before. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: hey's trying to wrap like three hours.
Speaker 5: Talk about the Latin Quarter.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, the quintessential Latin Quarter stories, the Big Pigback.
Speaker 3: So how does this go from because now you've never
Speaker 3: even told me this story, I don't know. How does
Speaker 3: that go from book to movie to series on h one?
Speaker 2: Okay, what was that journey?
Speaker 4: Like?
Speaker 5: Even before the book came out, there were some Hollywood
Speaker 5: types calling, you know, hey, like a meeting whatever, and
Speaker 5: you know, so originally I wanted to do it. Have
Speaker 5: you ever seen the HBO movie The Late Shift, Yes,
Speaker 5: about the whole letter let fight. Yeah, so I wanted
Speaker 5: to do a you know, a drama, but with the
Speaker 5: real characters, right a Rick Russell dre you know, hiring
Speaker 5: actors to play the real people. And that's a real
Speaker 5: problem for Hollywood, Like they have to buy all kinds
Speaker 5: of life rights even though it may be true. You know,
Speaker 5: so Eventually it came down to, you know, that wasn't
Speaker 5: gonna happen, and I sort of gave up because I didn't.
Speaker 5: I didn't want to do a fictional, fictionalized version of
Speaker 5: hip hop history. It was coiny to me, you know,
Speaker 5: especially because anytime you had a portrayal of hip hop
Speaker 5: in some dramatic fashion, it was always like just wrong.
Speaker 5: Like I remember the Sopranos had Bokeen Woodbine as massive genius, right,
Speaker 5: like I didn't want to do that, you know, and
Speaker 5: and to make how you're gonna make the music sound
Speaker 5: good period, right, And this is where you come in.
Speaker 5: So what happened was actually Boz Lherman to Boz Lehman.
Speaker 5: You know, my people have read my team has read
Speaker 5: your book, and my team has read your book, and
Speaker 5: team told me I should meet with you. And this
Speaker 5: was in the early stages of what would be come
Speaker 5: to get down. But he was in the middle of
Speaker 5: doing Gatsby. He was very nice. But what happened was
Speaker 5: I had an opportunity at VH one to pitch them,
Speaker 5: but I could only pitch them if it was a dramatic,
Speaker 5: you know, fictionalized dramatic. So I just did it. I
Speaker 5: came up with a story. You know, I eventually got
Speaker 5: over myself, and I came up with a story about
Speaker 5: three college friends who graduate in the summer of nineteen ninety.
Speaker 5: Sort of aligns with my own personal story. But also
Speaker 5: I think it's a really really important time in hip hop.
Speaker 5: It's like that time where it could have become everything
Speaker 5: or nothing. Right.
Speaker 2: It was the year that.
Speaker 5: Run DMC and Beastie Boys were blown away in sales
Speaker 5: by Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and it looked like the
Speaker 5: future was going to be this minstrel show, right, So
Speaker 5: UH shout out to a little brother.
Speaker 2: So he bought.
Speaker 7: But I'm not.
Speaker 2: Now let's talk about it, okay.
Speaker 5: So Uh, I worked on the on the on the pitch,
Speaker 5: and I pitched it in a room in about ten
Speaker 5: minutes and they bought it. And then there's the long
Speaker 5: process of developing it. And the first part of development
Speaker 5: is to find a director, writer who can actually get
Speaker 5: this stuff on the screen. And I just I wasn't
Speaker 5: selling myself as that person, so I remained as an
Speaker 5: executive producer. But seeth Man was the the guy we
Speaker 5: luckily found to helmet.
Speaker 3: And Seeth is uh for those Seeth is a god
Speaker 3: TV director. He's done Man, several episodes of The Wire,
Speaker 3: He's done did he do?
Speaker 2: Did he work on t did he do?
Speaker 5: Or did? But he did Walking Dead? I wanted to
Speaker 5: believe and Elementary at least did.
Speaker 2: He Yeah. I don't want to give that away with you.
Speaker 5: So Seith is great and Seeth, you know, I grew
Speaker 5: up in Columbia, Maryland. He grew up in Silver Spring.
Speaker 5: Were up listening to the same stations. We both listen
Speaker 5: to hip hop and and and Go go, and so
Speaker 5: we have even though he's like seven feet tall and
Speaker 5: I'm four feet tall, and you know, he's black and
Speaker 5: I'm white, and he's got dreads and I got no hair.
Speaker 5: So we were you know, we uh, he's my brother,
Speaker 5: you know, and he has done so. He did a
Speaker 5: great job on the pilot script. And then it came whore,
Speaker 5: how are we going to create this musical universe? And
Speaker 5: prem DJ Premiere was first on the list, and I
Speaker 5: reached out to him, and you know, I met Pream
Speaker 5: when I interned for a while Pitch. There was like
Speaker 5: a little slumber of time before I worked for Profile.
Speaker 2: I did it.
Speaker 5: I interned for.
Speaker 2: Eighty nine.
Speaker 1: So was that Uh as a jet sledge, as a
Speaker 1: hip hop a historian, do you have multiple copies of
Speaker 1: Bust to Move Boy?
Speaker 2: And if you do, can you share.
Speaker 3: Gang stars?
Speaker 7: Uh?
Speaker 2: I had three twelve inches before no more mistic a
Speaker 2: nice guy out.
Speaker 5: I'm afraid I do not, damn, but I think I
Speaker 5: know somebody might.
Speaker 1: No, I knows a guy. Yeah, I'm looking for Bust
Speaker 1: to Move boy. I would do anything to have a
Speaker 1: one records back in running order, not online, but like
Speaker 1: not a one the sound library.
Speaker 2: Oh, celebrary man.
Speaker 7: Well, guys, a writer question, when you went to bah
Speaker 7: one with your pitch, what did you have exactly? Because
Speaker 7: you didn't have a rundown of with the show totally
Speaker 7: was gonna be for the season.
Speaker 5: I did. It was just in my head. So I
Speaker 5: pitched in a room from off the dome freestyle that.
Speaker 7: Son and what was so what was the line? Like
Speaker 7: what was the tag? Like the one line the long
Speaker 7: line of the show kind of that way like the
Speaker 7: really summer.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think we may have said something
Speaker 5: like it's sort of like the hip hop mad Men.
Speaker 5: You know, we might have said something like that, but
Speaker 5: you know, it's it was about the business. And what
Speaker 5: was really important is that we had a really strong
Speaker 5: female lead character, really interesting and very complex, and you know,
Speaker 5: a liar, a pathological liar makes her interesting.
Speaker 7: I didn't pick this up in the pilot. Wait a minute, is.
Speaker 3: Fucking oh god, she's And we talked about it how
Speaker 3: and you know the way it worked out, we're we
Speaker 3: kind of have a I don't know if it's a renaissance,
Speaker 3: but there's a lot of you're seeing kind of the
Speaker 3: black female anti hero character on TV now where you
Speaker 3: have you know, I mean Cookie and Mary Jane and
Speaker 3: Olivia Pope, you know what I'm saying, where you have
Speaker 3: anti they're not the typical well anti hero in the
Speaker 3: sense that they are people that you They're not just
Speaker 3: a foil. Yeah, they're not just like the good person
Speaker 3: like I mean, they're they're complex people, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean, And they're not just totally all good. And
Speaker 3: Nikki's character when I when you sent me the script,
Speaker 3: I read it, I was like, yeah, she's gonna fall.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know who you were gonna cast. I
Speaker 2: didn't know who.
Speaker 5: We didn't know either.
Speaker 2: You get involved in the show, How did I get
Speaker 2: involved in the show? I don't even how did I
Speaker 2: get hired.
Speaker 5: Preme was the first step right, the music right. So
Speaker 5: I wanted to make sure that we had somebody who
Speaker 5: understood the vocabulary, the sonic vocabulary at the time, and
Speaker 5: would be able to make beats that sounded like they
Speaker 5: were because if we have a character who's a rapper
Speaker 5: and another character who's a producer, the producer has to
Speaker 5: make beats exactly like they would be made in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 5: using the same samples, and using samples, using breaks, very important,
Speaker 5: very important. And then we needed to have an MC
Speaker 5: who also spoke in the vocabulary and cadence of the time.
Speaker 5: And I knew only what there was. I had a
Speaker 5: list and Preem was at the top of it. But
Speaker 5: there was only one person. There was only one person
Speaker 5: that I wanted to get for lyrics producer for the show,
Speaker 5: and that was Fante Coleman. And I will tell you why,
Speaker 5: because Fante had again shout out to James Lopez, who
Speaker 5: hit me to all of this stuff. James had given
Speaker 5: me when I moved back to New York a copy
Speaker 5: of the story of Us Oh my God. And Fante
Speaker 5: plays like basically, he plays the part of a you know,
Speaker 5: a rapper trying to see trying to get a deal
Speaker 5: by being basically everybody else in the game. So at
Speaker 5: one point, Fante is all the guys in the Wu
Speaker 5: Tang clan know, uh, you do the you know sort
Speaker 5: of the lyrical miracle, Yeah, the underground and then your
Speaker 5: Percy miracles. And it was just like that you are
Speaker 5: the master of voices, and I knew that you would
Speaker 5: understand in a way that it was just like could
Speaker 5: just let go, and even even more like the more
Speaker 5: that you and Prem. First of all, you and Prem
Speaker 5: have a fantastic working relationship together and he trusts you implicitly,
Speaker 5: and when Prem produces, he has you, honest his co producer.
Speaker 5: By just that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was that was wild. That was wild.
Speaker 3: I mean when y'all reached out to about it, I
Speaker 3: was just coming off of an HBO pilot that I
Speaker 3: was working on, and so I mean TV, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: the Maya thing, the thing with Mayam but she Maya Maya.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So I was coming off of that, and
Speaker 2: so so you were like, yeah, man, so I got
Speaker 2: this thing.
Speaker 3: I'm like TV, I'm like, oh god, I'm ready for
Speaker 3: like a million rewrites a million edits whatever.
Speaker 2: I'm like, all right, whatever.
Speaker 3: So you're like, yo, man, I got this thing and
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what it's gonna be, but you
Speaker 3: know this is what it is. I'm like, look, dude,
Speaker 3: send it to me.
Speaker 2: Let's do it. And yeah, those records that for those
Speaker 2: first records, we did.
Speaker 8: The arm.
Speaker 3: God it was the arm song his song God at
Speaker 3: least expected Yeah, God, we did that. Those are records
Speaker 3: that I cut in my house, and I mean we
Speaker 3: pretty much. I wanted to make it so that it's
Speaker 3: kind of tricky because you're writing in nineteen ninety. You're
Speaker 3: writing for nineteen ninety, but you're writing for an audience
Speaker 3: that is current day.
Speaker 2: So it has to work on both levels.
Speaker 3: It has to be true to the times, but at
Speaker 3: the same time, it has to while the audience of
Speaker 3: now so that they can understand why this guy.
Speaker 2: Would be the shit in nineteen ninety, you know what
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 3: And the fact that it's fictional makes it a little
Speaker 3: bit harder, as you know, as MC, because you know
Speaker 3: it's fiction. So it's like, you know, the zamp always
Speaker 3: give the scene in Notorious where Biggie is freestyling outside
Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying, and they're kicking his actual
Speaker 3: that was his actual freestyle, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And that freestyle lyrically, it ain't miraculous, you know what
Speaker 3: I'm saying, but it's accurate to what he was saying
Speaker 3: at that time. The freestyle where he's dissing the dude
Speaker 3: in front of the side. Yeah, in Notaria when he's
Speaker 3: dising the dude. Love that freestyle, No, I love it,
Speaker 3: But I'm just saying it was dope because that was
Speaker 3: accurate to what he said then. From now in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: I mean, someone that's hurt Royster five to nine or
Speaker 3: black thought hearing that shit is like, okay, it was cool, you.
Speaker 2: Know what I mean, But at the time it was ahead.
Speaker 2: So so that's kind of the trick.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you how important like I'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: a showrunner's nightmare on social media, Like I think Nelson
Speaker 1: is just about talking to me again right now to
Speaker 1: get down Well, you know, for me, the reason why
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you said that about like you wanted
Speaker 1: to really portray the times as they were. How important
Speaker 1: is it to you at least from uh in doing
Speaker 1: this project. Are the music cues to you?
Speaker 2: Because like that's the show? Is the whole show?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: Well, now not not to I'm not trying to you know,
Speaker 2: play you know, Devil's not not Devil's advocate. What do
Speaker 2: you call it. I'm not trying to instigate. No, no,
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to be an instigate.
Speaker 1: Assuming you watched the other show, how did you feel,
Speaker 1: like did you notes like, Okay, that's not accurate.
Speaker 2: That's not accurate, Matt qu' is not accurate, And.
Speaker 5: I will be honest. One of the problems with making TV,
Speaker 5: especially making TV while you accurate teaching, uh you know,
Speaker 5: as a profession, is that you don't get to watch
Speaker 5: a lot of TV. So I watched the first couple
Speaker 5: episodes and I understood right away that you get down
Speaker 5: to a very different animal. And it's magical realism. And
Speaker 5: that's not what we were trying to do. We're we're
Speaker 5: doing you know, realism, right, And there's nothing wrong with
Speaker 5: magical realism. Like it's an interesting term.
Speaker 7: It sounds like alternative facts.
Speaker 5: It's like what it's like what Tony Morrison does right,
Speaker 5: except for film, right, It's like it's it's it is
Speaker 5: a beautiful, romantic vision of what the Bronx was and
Speaker 5: is in people's minds. And even that it's funny because
Speaker 5: you would people from the Bronx from that time, that's
Speaker 5: how they remember it as beautiful, right, even though it
Speaker 5: was a really really I mean, there were parts of
Speaker 5: The Bronx that felt and looked desolate, but it didn't
Speaker 5: wasn't desolate culturally to them. So I'm not mad at
Speaker 5: the get down, but it's just a very different show.
Speaker 5: And also about five times the budget, maybe ten times
Speaker 5: the budget of The Breaks, you know, so it's a
Speaker 5: very different kind of.
Speaker 1: But it's like, okay, so after you developed something and
Speaker 1: then you put it in the hands of the production company,
Speaker 1: the producers, the directions like other people.
Speaker 5: And.
Speaker 1: How much are you willing to let your child metaphorically speaking,
Speaker 1: play with others? Are you willing to turn your back
Speaker 1: for a little bit and do something else and trust
Speaker 1: that it's okay?
Speaker 2: Is it just like all right, let's cut corners?
Speaker 1: Like for me, I've sat in many a room with
Speaker 1: many a writer and I just really have this disdain
Speaker 1: for their attitude of like music as such an afterthought.
Speaker 1: I it's really not that important you know, like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 3: We're in nineteen seventy nine and we gonna play a
Speaker 3: song that came out in eighty four.
Speaker 1: You know it's cool, Yeah, okay, okay, So the New
Speaker 1: Addition film, shout out to my brother Barrycole, I'm not
Speaker 1: coming at your neck.
Speaker 2: But he.
Speaker 1: Kind of corrected me on Twitter. I mean, there was
Speaker 1: a scene where Ricky and Bobby and Ron were on
Speaker 1: the tour bus. We're talking to each other and Ricky
Speaker 1: takes his walkman off, his cassette walkman off, But I
Speaker 1: clearly heard the shack up drum break that was you
Speaker 1: in the belbe deevo Ain't nothing change, which was you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is eighty five. They're in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty five Greyhound tour bus going back to the Boston projects,
Speaker 1: listening to a breakbeat that Ricky Bell himself will use
Speaker 1: seven years now. But you know, he kind of had
Speaker 1: that that correction, like no, that was talking to all
Speaker 1: that jazz by stut of Sonic, and I wanted to come.
Speaker 2: Back like, well still that was still nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 1: That was for but I mean, for me, how I
Speaker 1: know that people cut corners and okay, well, we couldn't
Speaker 1: clear that song, and we just want to move time
Speaker 1: along and using music's used for moving time along. So
Speaker 1: it's like, how much of a stickler are you for
Speaker 1: keeping that as accurate as possible.
Speaker 5: I'm a stickler because Seeth believes in it, you know
Speaker 5: what I mean. Seeth really values the authenticity part of it.
Speaker 5: And we have this sort of language with each other
Speaker 5: where we talk about the Authenticity Bank account, right, and
Speaker 5: you know you're gonna make withdraws right, we have like
Speaker 5: I think it takes place in the summer nineteen ninety,
Speaker 5: but maybe looking at the front door, I think was
Speaker 5: something that we made a slight you know, exception for
Speaker 5: it did come out in nineteen ninety, but it came
Speaker 5: out later in nineteen ninety. I think also Just to
Speaker 5: Get a Wrap came out later on in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 5: but it was it was that's the kind of trade
Speaker 5: off we're we're willing to make. There are other trade offs.
Speaker 5: There are other sort of withdrawals from the Authenticity Bank
Speaker 5: account that don't pay off. Like I'm not going to allow,
Speaker 5: you know, a breakbeat from another time.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, you know, premull get away
Speaker 1: with one in this business of repna.
Speaker 2: No, we kept it.
Speaker 3: Now we keep it well, all of our you know,
Speaker 3: with the scratches, we keep them so far we keep
Speaker 3: it all you know stuff. Oh yeah, stuff that was
Speaker 3: of that time, well before that time actually.
Speaker 5: So we've actually been in the studio right with Preem
Speaker 5: and there's been something that he wanted to do or whatever,
Speaker 5: and we're like, oh no, that's too it's too early.
Speaker 5: And even with lyrics, we've had a few. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: think it was the lyrics I said it was. It
Speaker 5: was one lyric in the in the uh in the pilot,
Speaker 5: I said something like, oh god, what was it? It was.
Speaker 3: Puff mad l's I think was the line. And we
Speaker 3: was like, in nineteen ninety it wasn't puffing mad ls.
Speaker 3: So we changed it to something else because the original
Speaker 3: line was, how was it, girlies on my job? Puff
Speaker 3: mad lsu till I see blue like gargamele. So we
Speaker 3: changed it to girlies on my job hard as hell.
Speaker 2: Make him do the smurf like gargamele.
Speaker 5: And so that was what that was. That was even
Speaker 5: but even the chorus we were talking about the chorus
Speaker 5: right in your chorus was Joe Rock Baby Baby.
Speaker 3: And I thought it was even and that's something I
Speaker 3: got it was, but I thought it was too much
Speaker 3: of town Baby, which is I was totally not even
Speaker 3: thinking that.
Speaker 5: So I was like, we'll just do Joe rock y'all, NonStop,
Speaker 5: y'all more.
Speaker 2: But I think we kept rock Baby, rock Baby, Joe Baby.
Speaker 3: What is the quintessential hook in nineteen ninety, Well, the
Speaker 3: thing is like Trive had no hook or well in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety, what it was was it wasn't really hooks.
Speaker 3: Your hook was the last two bars of your rhyme.
Speaker 3: So it would be the last two bars of your song,
Speaker 3: so what you're saying, and then it goes into the
Speaker 3: break the scratches or an instrument or horn or whatever
Speaker 3: the fuck.
Speaker 2: So that was kind of the way we play it.
Speaker 2: And uh, yeah, man, I mean I'm lucky that we are.
Speaker 3: We have actors like Antoine is just a motherfucker unbelievable.
Speaker 7: Can y'all break down how many different personality like rap
Speaker 7: did you have to write for different personalities from Antoine?
Speaker 5: Who are so I said, tough job this season?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was, but we made it through it though for
Speaker 3: this one, okay, So uh for those that watch the show,
Speaker 3: it's the story of you know, it tells, like Dan
Speaker 3: was saying earlier, tells these different stories of different people
Speaker 3: in the business at that time. And so, uh, the
Speaker 3: main guy that I write for is played by Antoine Harris.
Speaker 2: Big ups to him. He is like the street guy
Speaker 2: who is you know, really talented. So he's a guy.
Speaker 3: And I don't know if this is something that we
Speaker 3: can maybe if y'all are still figuring out, I think
Speaker 3: we're still last conversation we had. I think we're still
Speaker 3: trying to see if he's gonna be the guy or
Speaker 3: if he's gonna be the guy who inspires the guy,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, Like that's still because he's
Speaker 3: a motherfucker, but like is he gonna be jay Z
Speaker 3: or is.
Speaker 2: He gonna be Jazz?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Like that's still that still
Speaker 2: remains to.
Speaker 7: Be because he's like hell respected in the streets. Like
Speaker 7: it's like you got to go through hell people to
Speaker 7: get to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like the he's the man. And then in
Speaker 2: like season one, this you know, as this season.
Speaker 3: Goes on, you'll see other stuff that solidifies, like he's
Speaker 3: really like the fucking he's the guy. So it's him,
Speaker 3: He's the He's the main guy. Then there's uh oh Man.
Speaker 3: Then there's uh Imani X played by Tianna Taylor.
Speaker 2: She's the girl who is like, she's like a like
Speaker 2: a Latifa like, she's kind of tom boyish. Me isis
Speaker 2: revel So she's that ship.
Speaker 3: And the kind of the conflict that we'll see later
Speaker 3: on uh is her mother played by Kim Wayns a
Speaker 3: hilarious fucking Kim Wayns plays by Kim Wayns. Her mother
Speaker 3: kind of wants her to be more of like a
Speaker 3: kind of salt and pepper, you know, uh female lem see.
Speaker 3: So that's you know, her thing. So I had to
Speaker 3: write for her. And so the not really the conflict
Speaker 3: that we had, but just the thing that we hit
Speaker 3: towards the end of this season was that I didn't
Speaker 3: want Imani to sound like a female version of So
Speaker 3: you have to I had to. You have to approach
Speaker 3: it in a way. It's like, all right, I want
Speaker 3: her to be dope, but she can't just be just
Speaker 3: the female, the female.
Speaker 2: Version of this guy. She has to have something about her.
Speaker 3: How do you channel all these I mean, you're like
Speaker 3: the hip hop version of Split man, how do you
Speaker 3: how do you channel all of these in an authentic
Speaker 3: way at that I mean on the spot, do you
Speaker 3: find that working? Okay?
Speaker 1: Now finding someone that I can relate to, like on
Speaker 1: working on television when you have to instantly come up
Speaker 1: with something.
Speaker 2: I don't overthink it. Yeah, Like, how do you deal
Speaker 2: with that?
Speaker 8: Man?
Speaker 2: You just gotta you just gotta just write it. I mean,
Speaker 2: what is your process? You just sit alone? Yeah? I
Speaker 2: generally always work alone.
Speaker 3: I never really work with anyone, you know, record myself
Speaker 3: and like injureding myself and uh, I pretty much just
Speaker 3: in the time of like for arm for his main song,
Speaker 3: the idea was, without giving away too many plot points, well,
Speaker 3: in the within the pilot, you know, his friend has
Speaker 3: been killed. So the idea was, okay, we got I
Speaker 3: gotta take him through the stages of death, the stages
Speaker 3: of grief. So the first song that he does is
Speaker 3: you know, it's just straight anger. It's just like we're
Speaker 3: gonna get them niggas, y'all kill ma homie.
Speaker 2: We about to set it. It's just anger.
Speaker 3: And then later on in this season you'll see he
Speaker 3: has some other stuff that takes him through the other
Speaker 3: stages of grief.
Speaker 2: So it's just putting yourself in that character and what
Speaker 2: they would feel.
Speaker 5: First of the first season feels more like denial.
Speaker 3: They're not exacts, so it's just I try to put
Speaker 3: myself in each character's shoes and seek how they would
Speaker 3: feel and just you know, right in from that perspective.
Speaker 7: But what's interesting is and just by talking to you,
Speaker 7: like those are the two dope people, right, So is
Speaker 7: it easier to write for the dope lyrics or because
Speaker 7: now you got to write for like mediocre purpose?
Speaker 3: This fun.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's fun to write for.
Speaker 3: It's well, okay, loves it. I had, but I run
Speaker 3: into a problem I just drew on. Yeah, I have problems.
Speaker 3: So we have battle scenes as well, right, so we
Speaker 3: have battles.
Speaker 7: That you have to right and so battling yourself basically.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a mirror match. It's like the fucking mirror
Speaker 3: match in fucking uh In in Mortal Comeback. So for me,
Speaker 3: the problem I was running into was that I like
Speaker 3: to be the villain. So like my villain versus was
Speaker 3: murder and the guy that was actually spposed to win
Speaker 3: the battle on camera them versus was like cool, Like
Speaker 3: my first draft would be like it's cool, but you
Speaker 3: need a little more.
Speaker 5: So I had to and that was the only network
Speaker 5: note you got on the pilot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was like she was like, She's like I
Speaker 2: really think it feels like uh yeah yeah. So thenother
Speaker 2: guy won and so I empires good.
Speaker 7: You corrected that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I went back and like I did another draft
Speaker 2: and they okayed it.
Speaker 3: And so the thing was in that first battle with
Speaker 3: in the pilot with Sig and Uh Sig played by
Speaker 3: u Si play by, the idea was that, Okay, toy.
Speaker 2: Ray is gonna the main guy.
Speaker 3: Is gonna win the war, so to speak, but to
Speaker 3: Ray is still gonna kind of win the battle. And
Speaker 3: to me that felt authentic because I remember coming up battling.
Speaker 3: You would see all those guys who would win all
Speaker 3: the battles. They would just be freestyling and could just
Speaker 3: go on and talk about your mom and make.
Speaker 2: Up ship whatever.
Speaker 3: But they couldn't make records to save their fucking lives,
Speaker 3: Like they fucking suck.
Speaker 2: I have a story.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: The first week that we mixed do You Want More?
Speaker 1: At Battery Studios, we were next in the b room
Speaker 1: was supernatural. Now if you remember, wait I just said,
Speaker 1: I just coughed, all right, all right, So okay, boys
Speaker 1: and girls.
Speaker 2: And he was on East West. Yes.
Speaker 1: So when in nineteen ninety three at the New Music Seminar,
Speaker 1: I remember it was all about skills and it was
Speaker 1: all about Supernatural that particular year, and Supernat signed to
Speaker 1: East West and so he was in the b room
Speaker 1: of Battery Studios, and we were in the a room
Speaker 1: a Battery Studios, mixing our stuff and we occasionally That's
Speaker 1: kind of how we met Roselle. Roselle was kind of
Speaker 1: in Supernat's like and Supernatural totally.
Speaker 2: Just freestyle everything, his shows, his his aulus and all
Speaker 2: I remember it was I went in his room.
Speaker 3: Me and Jerik sat in his room and he had
Speaker 3: the single if I was King, If I was King,
Speaker 3: I ruled everything if I was King, And then he
Speaker 3: did a verse, right's let me take it from the
Speaker 3: top again, if I was King, if they he took
Speaker 3: a totally different verses, Ah no, no.
Speaker 1: No, forget, let me do it again, And he went
Speaker 1: through like nine drafts of like one free, totally different
Speaker 1: than the others, and.
Speaker 3: I was like, the whole record's going to be made
Speaker 3: that way.
Speaker 2: They're like yeah, man freestyle record and no nah.
Speaker 3: It was just one of those things that like it
Speaker 3: works good live and even still live sometimes against novelty.
Speaker 3: That's what I was getting to like, It's something you know,
Speaker 3: you can only pull the rabbit out of hat so
Speaker 3: many times.
Speaker 7: You know, I meantyle union.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I used to friz. I mean, that was what
Speaker 3: I did. But after a while, Yeah, it kind of
Speaker 3: it's like a parlor trick. Otherwise, like, look, write a
Speaker 3: fucking song, dude.
Speaker 5: So we need to talk about the best part of
Speaker 5: that battle, which is the character, the impromptu character we
Speaker 5: created with Fante's blessing named mom Ali. Yes, talk about
Speaker 5: it because we really, we really wanted to. I mean,
Speaker 5: it's an afrocentric period and you know, not to make
Speaker 5: light of it, but there was always that dude who
Speaker 5: came to a battle to teach, to educate, you know.
Speaker 2: So, uh, I knew you were going to make I
Speaker 2: knew you were going to make it. See that damn
Speaker 2: verse shout out to Caitlin. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So this was one of the one of the times.
Speaker 3: I remember we was up I was up there, and
Speaker 3: so we had to do this battle. So there's a
Speaker 3: battle in season in episode one of the pilot where
Speaker 3: Arm is battling this guy six hours and so this
Speaker 3: is essentially the battle where Arm wins the battle. And
Speaker 3: this is where DV the producer sees the battle and realizes, Yo,
Speaker 3: Arm is the dude. I gotta fuck with this is
Speaker 3: the guy. And so I had to write that battle
Speaker 3: between Torrey and Antoine, and so that came out. So
Speaker 3: before that, there's all these other battles that take place
Speaker 3: before their battle, which.
Speaker 2: Is like the main event. So I come up there
Speaker 2: and I'm in New York and Dan hits me.
Speaker 3: He's like, yo, man, you know these other people we
Speaker 3: got doing battles, it ain't really working. Would you be
Speaker 3: willing to step in? And I'm just like yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean I can write some shit for whatever. I'll write
Speaker 3: somebody some shit.
Speaker 2: It's cool.
Speaker 3: He's like no, no, no, no, no, I need you
Speaker 3: to write it. Yeah, but I need you to step in.
Speaker 3: And I'm like, fuck you me step in. He's like
Speaker 3: like step in, like be on camera, Like oh shit,
Speaker 3: I said okay. So he's like, well, I got an
Speaker 3: idea for this character. His name is he Mama Lee.
Speaker 3: I was like, say no more.
Speaker 2: I just knew what that meant.
Speaker 11: Sort of like doctor York meets you know, my man,
Speaker 11: Doctor York, Doctor York meets whatever you.
Speaker 2: Add with that.
Speaker 7: I told he did it so well. I saw the
Speaker 7: pilot the pilot episode, and I was like, I think
Speaker 7: I thought you were ode or something, because I really
Speaker 7: did not know.
Speaker 5: That was you.
Speaker 2: That was me and the Koofie in coof the in
Speaker 2: the Shades.
Speaker 5: So the good news is that that Mamiley comes back,
Speaker 5: go back in the season. I really really wanted a
Speaker 5: whole subplot around in Mama Lee. I didn't get it,
Speaker 5: but I'm still angling for it. If there's a season two.
Speaker 7: Yeah that means you can't share it because you'll want
Speaker 7: to that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah we uh we shot that, and yeah, I hope
Speaker 2: well I spin off. Yo.
Speaker 3: I just saw him like I just want mam he
Speaker 3: gotta have a white woman, because that's what all like
Speaker 3: the whole dude, you gotta I.
Speaker 2: Was really you. I thought it was due. Now you
Speaker 2: gotta have a white woman. You gotta be authentic hotep.
Speaker 3: Come on, like, there's no one that wants to fight
Speaker 3: for black people more than the nigga with a white woman.
Speaker 3: So like it got It's gotta work. So yeah, man,
Speaker 3: we shot that and it was funny, like that was
Speaker 3: like my culture shock. So the scene was supposed to
Speaker 3: be imam Ali is the guy. He's like the old
Speaker 3: guy that is, you know, he's out of touch and
Speaker 3: he can rap, but he's trying to he would be
Speaker 3: he doing push ups. I mean, he's doing push ups
Speaker 3: with the perfect form, but he's trying to educate and shit.
Speaker 3: So in the scene when shot, it was supposed to
Speaker 3: be that a Mama a Lee lost the battle and
Speaker 3: he's like the laughing stock. But when we shot the
Speaker 3: scene and we had real extras and we told him
Speaker 3: like real twenty twenty one years old of today, we
Speaker 3: told him like, look react if some shit is whack,
Speaker 3: say it's whack. If y'all here a hot line like
Speaker 3: this is live. And so when I did Diverse, they
Speaker 3: actually were cheering for me and shit like they.
Speaker 2: Liked it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Well, the thing was the guy who was facing he
Speaker 5: was a real MC, but he he was very nervous
Speaker 5: because his first time on TV, so he kept forgetting
Speaker 5: his lines. So now Fante's oh, you know, improvising in
Speaker 5: characters like well, come to the youth center.
Speaker 2: We have memory pills.
Speaker 3: We got genkkobal Bo. It was just I was just
Speaker 3: saying all kind of shit and so, and the thing
Speaker 3: was my verse. I had to write it the night before,
Speaker 3: and that's something you know, it's extremely hard to do,
Speaker 3: like to write something and then have to memorize it.
Speaker 3: So I'm an extra end the scene, and in between takes,
Speaker 3: I'm going out and listening to my phone, like playing
Speaker 3: the verse over and over and over again. And so
Speaker 3: finally we shoot it, and you know, the kids reacted
Speaker 3: to my shit. They was like yo, this they was
Speaker 3: laughing and like they was hooting hollar. And so afterwards
Speaker 3: me and Dan was talking. I was like, man, what
Speaker 3: the fuck was that? That wasn't supposed to happen. And
Speaker 3: he was like, well, you know what, dude, that audience
Speaker 3: like that that you like now, they didn't get x claned,
Speaker 3: they didn't get poor righteous teachers, they didn't get you know,
Speaker 3: just that super pro black time and rap where we
Speaker 3: just thought we was like gonna be black ay black.
Speaker 3: They didn't get it. So to them it was cool
Speaker 3: to see. So to them it wasn't a joke because
Speaker 3: they didn't even get the reference to stuff that we were.
Speaker 2: Represent at that time.
Speaker 7: So it's just like in the pilot.
Speaker 2: This is in the pilot. This is the pilot.
Speaker 5: How my wish is that people can hear the whole
Speaker 5: verse unbelievable and listen. Jay Smooth was an extra in
Speaker 5: one of our scenes. I remember you your demo came
Speaker 5: in when Jay Smooth was and Jay Smooth and I
Speaker 5: had such fun listening to that demo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I cut the demo that because you because again
Speaker 2: you hit me that night.
Speaker 3: It's like eleven twelve o'clock and I was I just
Speaker 3: left blue note with glassper and it's like twelve o'clock.
Speaker 3: I'm getting back in the joint and he's like, so
Speaker 3: I need you to do this scene. And by the way,
Speaker 3: we're taping tomorrow, you know, like afternoon, so be read.
Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, So I literally cut the demo
Speaker 3: in hotel room with my little bull speaker, my iPad
Speaker 3: and my iPhone and I just wrapped into that and
Speaker 3: that was how we did it.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, that was it. So that was a
Speaker 2: character I had to write for. It was what else your.
Speaker 3: Girl im Imani imam a lee. Uh, there is a
Speaker 3: but I'll give you away too much. There is a audition,
Speaker 3: audition scene scene coming up. Uh say, it's like three
Speaker 3: or four acts I had to write for them. Uh,
Speaker 3: you did a great job on that one, Thank you man.
Speaker 5: I mean, well, here's the thing is, it's not just
Speaker 5: lyrics because again this gets back to my horrible an
Speaker 5: R career. You know, we had to decide because there's
Speaker 5: the banger at the end of the season, right, and
Speaker 5: and what is the beat that we're going to use.
Speaker 5: But there's a problem. And the problem is there's a
Speaker 5: there's a plot line that involves a using a particular
Speaker 5: Bob James sample and or rather use a sample a
Speaker 5: record by Bob James, and which record was it going
Speaker 5: to be? And I felt really boxed in. I felt like,
Speaker 5: oh my god, you know, none of these things is
Speaker 5: going to make something that hasn't already been done. And
Speaker 5: I'm panicking because.
Speaker 3: We couldn't use knowledge. I was like, we can't use
Speaker 3: knowledge and it was so great. Well it's nineteen it
Speaker 3: was nineteen ninety. But the thing was with preing, like
Speaker 3: I mean, just fucking preing. So we're talking samples and he's.
Speaker 5: Like, oh yeah, I'm about chop that back in ninety two.
Speaker 2: You know, what I mean. It's like, ah, shit, you
Speaker 2: did do that, you know what I mean. So a
Speaker 2: lot of that stuff.
Speaker 5: So I'm not going to mention the Bob James song,
Speaker 5: but you suggest it, and I think I.
Speaker 2: Was just thinking, I tell you after it's over, but nah,
Speaker 2: it's not that.
Speaker 5: And I thought I was like, oh, that is never
Speaker 5: going to work. It's never gonna work. And I'm busy, like, Okay,
Speaker 5: you know what, maybe it doesn't have to be Bob James.
Speaker 5: Maybe we do a cooler gang song. Here's ten cooler
Speaker 5: gang songs you can sample. I'm you know, panicking and
Speaker 5: Funk is back, I mean co cool is back.
Speaker 2: We had that that was like it were.
Speaker 5: Possular, like four different artists that we could use to
Speaker 5: make this plot line work. And Cream takes Fante's suggestion
Speaker 5: and makes this. It's just unbelievable, the coolest no no,
Speaker 5: no no Bob James record that that you have heard
Speaker 5: in another classic Golden era hip hop hit that I
Speaker 5: never thought could have been flipped in the way it
Speaker 5: was flipped.
Speaker 3: And if you know, I'm I guess it right, I
Speaker 3: want you to guess it. I know I'll confirm it,
Speaker 3: all right, Yeah, I say, you probably guess it was No, Steve,
Speaker 3: I don't think it is Holy Ship. He's a tappan
Speaker 3: Zee Tap Records. Yeah, yes, he's a tappan Ze. Matt,
Speaker 3: you're saying that. No, I'm just saying that.
Speaker 2: I didn't give it away the west Tester lady. Nah, No,
Speaker 2: ain't that. Wait a minute, hang on, he I mean
Speaker 2: take me to the Marty Ground was the that's that's
Speaker 2: cat yet?
Speaker 3: Well here's the thing though, See, flipping was really not
Speaker 3: a thing in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so all right, just for I remember.
Speaker 5: Age act that used this particular Bob James record didn't
Speaker 5: exist yet, so it had not been used. So it
Speaker 5: wasn't really a flip. It's a flip to us, Yeah,
Speaker 5: in twenty seventeen. But uh, the producer DV thought it
Speaker 5: up all himself in nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2: It's not Westchester lady. Nah. Well it's not the on example.
Speaker 7: Nah Nah, that one is flip like a technical thing.
Speaker 2: Well, just to flip.
Speaker 5: Take my sample that's already been used in using it.
Speaker 1: In other words, if you have a roob excube, once
Speaker 1: all the sides are completely done, that's nineteen ninety. Cats
Speaker 1: just started mixing it all up and you know, all
Speaker 1: the colors up and messing it up like by.
Speaker 5: N It's like, you know, you know, player's anthem by
Speaker 5: Junior Mafia, right, So Prem and Jabul to sort of
Speaker 5: poke fun at it, they take the same sample, which
Speaker 5: is a new birth sample and they flip it.
Speaker 3: Yeah so yeah, so but nah, that was I mean,
Speaker 3: it's been an incredible like just to be able to,
Speaker 3: you know, do that shit like so I like it.
Speaker 3: It puts me in his own where I like to
Speaker 3: be like kind of behind the scenes and like live
Speaker 3: my life through different people. And you know, it's that's
Speaker 3: just fun to watch, Like with hearing other people interpret
Speaker 3: your words. That shit is amazing to me. It's a
Speaker 3: lot of fun.
Speaker 2: The first episode of season one is aired.
Speaker 3: What can you tell us about where these characters are
Speaker 3: going without giving stuff away?
Speaker 5: Well, you know, they're on a collision course with destiny,
Speaker 5: I think, you know. I they're dealing with what we
Speaker 5: were dealing with in nineteen ninety. They're dealing with major
Speaker 5: labels coming in and sniffing money and sniffing around and
Speaker 5: offering a lot of personal opportunity to folks. Do you
Speaker 5: take that or do you not take that and what
Speaker 5: what do you you know, what are the risks taking
Speaker 5: that big, cushy, major label job and what do you
Speaker 5: sacrifice in the process? You know, what does DV do
Speaker 5: to you know? How much does he want to work
Speaker 5: with them? And how much danger is he willing to
Speaker 5: put himself in? You know, for David who works at
Speaker 5: the you know, the quote unquote urban radio station. You
Speaker 5: know how he wants hip hop to be on the
Speaker 5: air so much, But is he is he willing to
Speaker 5: understand that, you know, it's business not just you know,
Speaker 5: to give people moral lessons on you know, the hip
Speaker 5: hop should be. You know that there he may have to,
Speaker 5: you know, take a little advice from his father to
Speaker 5: do some of the things he wants to do.
Speaker 7: What Harris his character? I want to ask you about
Speaker 7: him because I feel like some of these characters are
Speaker 7: like an amalgamation of a few people. Some of them
Speaker 7: may be just one person that you knew, But what
Speaker 7: Harris's character a few people, one person.
Speaker 5: Few people, you know, I think they're definitely shades of
Speaker 5: Russell there would when he plays them, he channels a
Speaker 5: lot of Dame you know. Yeah, there's a manic energy
Speaker 5: there that even Russell. Can't you know, it's not it's
Speaker 5: more Dame or Puff than it is Russell. But he's
Speaker 5: also he's the great thing about watching this season, one
Speaker 5: of the best things anyway, was watching these characters make
Speaker 5: like Barry Foray is his own thing. Now. He's not Russell,
Speaker 5: he's not Dame. He's Barry for Ray and you can
Speaker 5: see him there in nineteen ninety and it makes sense
Speaker 5: and the character has some integrity.
Speaker 7: I love the way into it for the lead character,
Speaker 7: the female, I'm start forget her name after the actress charge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she is.
Speaker 7: You are introducing the concept of the intern and really
Speaker 7: that because you know that time is over now. So
Speaker 7: it's interested in telling the story of a music intern
Speaker 7: and what they had to go to a female music
Speaker 7: intern in that world. And I almost wonder with two
Speaker 7: males in the situation, who like, is there another female
Speaker 7: to kind of come in and be like, this is
Speaker 7: a whole different aspect that you don't made me know
Speaker 7: or did you just already?
Speaker 5: Like Nikki will have a few mentors to choose from, say,
Speaker 5: over the course of the season, and Mac, I mean
Speaker 5: yeah for me, didn't even talk about the DJ battle.
Speaker 5: Mac enrolled himself in Scratch Academy to learn how to
Speaker 5: DJ so he could participate.
Speaker 2: And wow, what's that? What's his name? Your boy?
Speaker 1: Ryan gosling Uh took up six months of piano lessons
Speaker 1: to play all the actual he's actually playing all that
Speaker 1: jazz stuff and the fingerings correct and the chords are correct.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's him actually playing.
Speaker 7: We'll talk about back in that way. And also his
Speaker 7: like history with music because he's like a different kind
Speaker 7: of actor in the sense of playing a role like this,
Speaker 7: his relationship with hip hop and his commitment, it's different.
Speaker 5: I feel like, yeah, well, he grew up in stat
Speaker 5: Ny and his father cut all the dudes from the
Speaker 5: Wu Tang clan's hair.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: He he's known method man since he was a kid.
Speaker 5: Who plays his dad, right, who plays his dad?
Speaker 2: Fun fact, but actually read for that role.
Speaker 3: Somewhere, hopefully on a hard drive, fucking buried way somewhere
Speaker 3: audition audition for for his role, and I didn't think
Speaker 3: it would work. I was like, I'm gonna just do
Speaker 3: this shit anyway.
Speaker 2: I don't think I maybe play his uncle, but he
Speaker 2: didn't play that.
Speaker 5: That dream had to die. So in MoMA Leve yes.
Speaker 2: Yet there was also a character we had. It was
Speaker 2: a scene we cut the.
Speaker 3: Fred Jamal, the record store guy, and that was one
Speaker 3: of the things that like, really I like because we
Speaker 3: kind of get the show. You know, we're playing with
Speaker 3: history and you sometimes you get to show how wrong
Speaker 3: people got it. And so there was one scene where
Speaker 3: the guy David, he goes to the record store and
Speaker 3: he asked the guy in the record store, hey, give
Speaker 3: me I want to take some pictures of the customers who.
Speaker 2: Are in here buying hip hop, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: And so he then takes those pictures and goes to
Speaker 3: his uh you know, goes to his boss and it's like, yo,
Speaker 3: these people are like whip hop. But the thing is,
Speaker 3: the guy at the store is saying, Hey, I don't
Speaker 3: want them to play hip hop on the radio because
Speaker 3: if they played on the radio, they're not gonna buy it.
Speaker 3: Not yeah, not even getting that, Like, no, motherfucker, that
Speaker 3: is what will bring people to me. But he was just,
Speaker 3: you know, he got it so fucking wrong, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. And there's little things that you'll see
Speaker 3: in the season where you know, people will make statements
Speaker 3: and it's just like, oh my god, yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't.
Speaker 2: Once told us that Pete crap, are you serious?
Speaker 1: When he was doing his long time first he was like, yo, man,
Speaker 1: I don't want to come out with a record because like,
Speaker 1: once you make a record, you're whack. I don't it's
Speaker 1: like seeing you want to just do mixtapes all your life.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a mystery to it, like people are
Speaker 1: still waiting for me. But like once the now comes out.
Speaker 2: Wow, then.
Speaker 7: You know, wow, I don't think he never did he.
Speaker 2: Never he could be an aquarium. I'm sorry, but yeah,
Speaker 2: but but yeah, we.
Speaker 3: Have little moments like that that are really uh you know,
Speaker 3: you're watching it with the knowledge of what happens to
Speaker 3: these people or people will held those thoughts.
Speaker 2: And that's been fun for me, like kind of seeing
Speaker 2: how that plays out, just tuning in before you. I
Speaker 2: I'm looking, Okay, is it.
Speaker 8: This?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 7: Damn?
Speaker 2: Wow?
Speaker 3: No, I guess it's right up under your nose, like you.
Speaker 3: I gotta watch it again on television. No, no, no,
Speaker 3: you ain't gotta know this is. This doesn't happen till later,
Speaker 3: So it ain't. It ain't air yet. It hasn't air yet.
Speaker 2: It's the final episode. Yeah, it's coming.
Speaker 1: So but you closed though, saying when I hear this joint,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna want to kick my television off the plasmas.
Speaker 3: Like yes, because that's something that's so obvious and it's
Speaker 3: something that has been and it's not Artilus.
Speaker 2: No, it's not that.
Speaker 3: That was one of the ones that we were looking at.
Speaker 3: But he Prema already used part. No, it's not all
Speaker 3: less because PREMI used it. My mind spray already did
Speaker 3: that for Jay Rue Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, did my
Speaker 3: spray and the and the group home.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, that sounds like, yeah I did that one.
Speaker 5: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: We did that one and the night ju you know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying. And then my mind spray. You know
Speaker 2: what I'm saying, we did that one.
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, Primo, so yeah, but no, it
Speaker 3: ain't that one. It ain't that But I mean you
Speaker 3: it's right up on your nose like you he be like,
Speaker 3: what the fuck? The only last one that he used
Speaker 3: was did he use it before?
Speaker 2: No, Preme never used it before.
Speaker 5: He never used it, which is why it sounds fresh.
Speaker 2: Oh man, did red Man use it before? I know
Speaker 2: what you think?
Speaker 7: Not?
Speaker 2: No, one just tuning in is ques Low Supreme. We
Speaker 2: got him playing bitch you guessed, I'm right, God, I
Speaker 2: got a question? Can I ask a questions? Quose your
Speaker 2: show bill?
Speaker 12: First of all, Dan is also a teacher, and we
Speaker 12: didn't we haven't got to that part. Yeah, we teach
Speaker 12: at the same school, I know, which is amazing.
Speaker 2: I forgot fantastic.
Speaker 12: But you walked in you said, you said Martin Man
Speaker 12: was in my class, and I feel like that was
Speaker 12: a big thing that we then went into this whole
Speaker 12: crazy batshit show and the real because he was on
Speaker 12: this show and he was it was amazing. And I'm
Speaker 12: sure you have a story too well.
Speaker 5: I mean, he's just first of all, to even come
Speaker 5: to a small class and to and to talk about
Speaker 5: his career. You know, we were really just talking. I'm
Speaker 5: teaching a class on the Golden Age of hip hop
Speaker 5: and we're sort of pinning it between the years eighty
Speaker 5: seven and ninety three for a few reasons. And you know,
Speaker 5: he came to talk about the bridge, he came to
Speaker 5: talk about that jump to sample drums right that, uh,
Speaker 5: And I never knew and this is a whole sort
Speaker 5: of nerd thing, but I never knew I always thought
Speaker 5: that the bridge was made on an SB twelve hundred.
Speaker 3: No, he talked about dude, when he told us that
Speaker 3: we just that, and when he told us that the shakers,
Speaker 3: oh my god, the shakers that make the music is him.
Speaker 2: That's him doing He's literally making the music. Was the
Speaker 2: whole four hours? Was like, no, you didn't, Yes, it did.
Speaker 2: That was pretty much. I mean next to Whitney and Swine.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. So apparently there was a story that
Speaker 2: was close to being a Whitney and TJ. Swan duett
Speaker 2: there's no place right, Yeah, Whitney.
Speaker 5: Exactly make the music with your mouth Bobby.
Speaker 3: Whitney and Thomas Jerome Swan together. Yeah, Bro, Marty had
Speaker 3: crazy stories. So like did the kids like, so when
Speaker 3: you have someone like Marty come in, are they aware
Speaker 3: of who they're looking at?
Speaker 2: And like, you know what that means?
Speaker 5: Surprisingly? This class really was so, you know, because they're young,
Speaker 5: and I'm not saying surprising because they're really good students,
Speaker 5: but I mean they were born after Tupac died, you know,
Speaker 5: so what do they know what?
Speaker 2: And ap right?
Speaker 3: Right? Wow?
Speaker 5: Yeah, but I love I love teaching.
Speaker 2: One of your students was Maggie Rogers. That's right, that
Speaker 2: was Oh she's dope.
Speaker 3: I can't claim her either.
Speaker 2: No, No, she's my student too, but she's more. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, she was my first student, my very first class
Speaker 5: that I ever taught.
Speaker 3: She Maggie Rogers is she's a young singer songwriter. Pharrell
Speaker 3: did a video Yo, this has been your Bob power
Speaker 3: where they just you know, they played records.
Speaker 2: You know, you could play your records for phar real,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: He came in and and kind of gave him notes,
Speaker 3: and so Maggie played her joint and that was the
Speaker 3: joint where he was just like, yo, I have no
Speaker 3: notes for this.
Speaker 2: This ship is crazy, and she ended up getting the deal.
Speaker 1: She's yea, I will back up my student in a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks on the Tonight show.
Speaker 5: Yeah so great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but she's she's dope. She's really she has her
Speaker 3: it's completely singular. She sounds like nothing else.
Speaker 2: How many semesters do you do at the school?
Speaker 5: Fall and spring?
Speaker 2: You do too? Yeah, I can only do this is
Speaker 2: the first year that I opted not to do it.
Speaker 1: I wanted you to teach the Dela Della class. Well, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna still come in good. But you know what
Speaker 1: when they first when when when they approached me about
Speaker 1: doing it, the idea of doing it because they wanted it,
Speaker 1: like last year's or whatever. I felt weird about it
Speaker 1: because there were there was no no curriculum and no
Speaker 1: periodicals or or or books that I could use to teach.
Speaker 1: And I don't even know if I'm eloquent enough to
Speaker 1: really convey how special he was as a human being
Speaker 1: and as a musician, especially in the age of now,
Speaker 1: which you can easily with the click of a button
Speaker 1: get results, where all your stuff is quantized and if
Speaker 1: you want to, you know, chop up your stuff in
Speaker 1: a certain way. And you know, I'm trying to explain
Speaker 1: to these people like he was making these miracles with
Speaker 1: his bare hands and brain, like before this technology existed,
Speaker 1: like the only way to describe it. H Hendrix's second album,
Speaker 1: Access Bold as Love. You know, we take for advantage,
Speaker 1: we take it for granted. No well, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: just the whole album in general. Like Hendricks Damn Near
Speaker 1: invented the Hendricks and Eddi Kramer invented the technology that
Speaker 1: we take for granted.
Speaker 2: Now, the idea of phasing and and certain echo effects
Speaker 2: and chambers as instrument.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, so, how what is your goal
Speaker 1: in teaching about Dila that will make it as mind
Speaker 1: blowing for them as it was for me.
Speaker 3: To see that stuff firsthand as he's doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have a theory like what you've told to me.
Speaker 5: For like the three inventors I called the three Kings
Speaker 5: of American rhythm. There's Louis Armstrong who basically established swing,
Speaker 5: you know, as sort of the American approach to meter
Speaker 5: in rhythm, James Brown who turned every instrument into a
Speaker 5: drum and the one obviously, and then Dila, who freed
Speaker 5: us from the grid.
Speaker 2: You know, he established I had to It's only right,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 5: He he sort of renegotiated the relationship between man and machine.
Speaker 5: To me, now, it's different because if you look at
Speaker 5: I know, you got soul right. You have these two
Speaker 5: breakbeat records that really made hip hop funky in a
Speaker 5: way that a quantized drum machine couldn't. But there was
Speaker 5: something about what Dila was doing that for the first time,
Speaker 5: traditional musicians are trying to do what he did. And
Speaker 5: I feel very funny laying this out here because the
Speaker 5: very first traditional musician to you know, to try to
Speaker 5: succeed in doing that as you oh wait.
Speaker 2: Wait, who is it? Like, I gotta know who it is?
Speaker 2: I forgot. I mean, yeah, it's it's it's weird, man.
Speaker 1: It's just like during that period, I was the exact
Speaker 1: opposite because I had such a chip on my sto. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to be perfect and and it took d
Speaker 1: and Dyla for the most part to unravel that, that
Speaker 1: that yarn that I had wrapped myself in a perfection
Speaker 1: and coldness that.
Speaker 2: It's is hard to describe.
Speaker 1: Like even today, I think, uh, the the cats from
Speaker 1: the Lumineers were on the show today and we were
Speaker 1: just in our zone. We did like three or four
Speaker 1: Dila joints in a row, and you know, I mean
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of downtime in the show like that.
Speaker 1: You don't see speaking of the tonight show, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of downtime in which sets have to be changed whatever.
Speaker 1: So we're just jamming amongst ourselves and we just got
Speaker 1: lost in a rabbit hole of crazy timing.
Speaker 2: And you know, I was trying to explain.
Speaker 3: To them it was like some new you know, the
Speaker 3: way you guys did that crazy thing with the beat.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to describe it, and it was weird,
Speaker 3: Like I couldn't describe it to them either.
Speaker 2: So it's like.
Speaker 1: That, that's the fear that I feel like I will
Speaker 1: drop history or or drop you know, misrepresent his his importance.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm glad that you you know that
Speaker 1: you're you're stepping up to Well.
Speaker 5: I don't claim to be a Della expert by any stretch.
Speaker 5: I mean, my personal history is weird in this sense
Speaker 5: because my very first trip to Detroit was to work
Speaker 5: with him Gino and Gino excel and I flew to Detroit. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and the other one, the one would Sphere and how
Speaker 5: it Goes, I think is the name of that song.
Speaker 2: So we flew to Detroit.
Speaker 5: We stayed, you know, downtown, We drove out to car Gardens.
Speaker 5: We yeah, athanaeum right, and we went to his house
Speaker 5: on Nevada and met my duke's and went downstairs and
Speaker 5: Common was recording like Water for Chocolate with him. Around
Speaker 5: that time, we went to the Mongolian Barbecue and deeborn
Speaker 5: dearborn across from studio A like the whole thing and
Speaker 5: what was really weird is that Dilla laid the tracks
Speaker 5: and then vanished. Oh wow, and that was it, basically,
Speaker 5: you know. And I understand that sometimes that was the
Speaker 5: way he worked or whatever, and that I would never
Speaker 5: have imagined that moment that I would have sort of
Speaker 5: another part of my life in Detroit many years later.
Speaker 5: My wife is from Detroit. I'm back there all the time,
Speaker 5: and every time i'm there, I think of that first time.
Speaker 5: And that's where the genesis of the class came from.
Speaker 2: So does she say what up? Though she does not.
Speaker 2: She does.
Speaker 5: She's a poet and a tenured professor at the New School,
Speaker 5: so she does not say, yeah, but I want to
Speaker 5: here's the theory. Here's the theory about Dila time. I
Speaker 5: wanted to run it by you, and I'm thinking of
Speaker 5: sort of staking a claim that because everybody's talking about
Speaker 5: what is what is Diyl time? Oh well, it's just
Speaker 5: he doesn't quantize the beasts. That's good, that's not exactly it.
Speaker 5: And oh it's septuplet swing. But yeah, but that doesn't
Speaker 5: account for the for the rushed snare. So my feeling
Speaker 5: is that Dila time, what Dila time really is? What
Speaker 5: what all of the traditional and electronic musicians are trying
Speaker 5: to do. Is it's the deliberate cultivation, uh of tension
Speaker 5: between straight and swung elements in a song, and that
Speaker 5: tension is dynamic, it changes over time.
Speaker 1: That's that's that's the Thelonious Monk theory, remember his idea
Speaker 1: of subnes But there's the rhythm version of it. And
Speaker 1: it's weird because between Dyla there's Prince and the risk,
Speaker 1: both of them, both of whom I consider the risk
Speaker 1: more the accidental tourist where you take a song like, uh.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Verbal Intercourse is a perfect example of that, where it's
Speaker 1: just like sounds funky, leave it like it is. And
Speaker 1: Prince well Susan Rodgers recently admit it because if you
Speaker 1: listen to the Prince's stuff, you'll notice that he'll program
Speaker 1: almost uh kind of like in sixty four bars, you're
Speaker 1: really supposed to do four, maybe eight, maybe sixteen of
Speaker 1: your club, but sixty four bars. That means you're planning
Speaker 1: ahead of time with drum feels that only will come
Speaker 1: around maybe once in your song, right, And that's how
Speaker 1: Masi was. But he would also save tracks and which
Speaker 1: he would do stuff by hand just so it can
Speaker 1: Sound Human.
Speaker 5: Well, you were the person who described the toree in
Speaker 5: his book, the the straight clap from the drum machine
Speaker 5: and Lady cab Driver. But he's playing by hand, right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: then he does this other thing rhythmically with the bass. Right.
Speaker 5: If you listen to like Irresistible, Bitch or Tricky, he
Speaker 5: will give you almost a shell of what the baseline is.
Speaker 5: He'll play like two notes out of eight, right, but
Speaker 5: for the eight, so you hear the eight, but you
Speaker 5: don't hear the eight.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, we're brothers. That's why I was surprised
Speaker 2: that I had never met each other.
Speaker 5: I was like, you have you have met.
Speaker 3: Boys show?
Speaker 2: Wait? Were you there at the time?
Speaker 5: I may have been there, But here's where we met.
Speaker 5: We met when I worked for Forrest. I came to
Speaker 5: Sigma Sound to meet with Richard right who rest in
Speaker 5: peace man. I never had a chance to tell you
Speaker 5: in person. I was so sad to hear his passing.
Speaker 5: And then after that, the next saw you was out
Speaker 5: in the musicology tour in the meadowlands. It was it
Speaker 5: was you were just walking and getting a drink from
Speaker 5: the water fountain in the middle, you know, in the
Speaker 5: middle of this Prince concert for college and I just
Speaker 5: walked up to you. I didn't even introduce myself. I
Speaker 5: just said, you're my favorite drummer. That's all I said.
Speaker 5: That's all I said. And then I think the next
Speaker 5: time I saw you was when I did the Experienced
Speaker 5: Music Project thing on Breakbeats and you were That's when
Speaker 5: you played the Rod Temperton uh demo for rock with you.
Speaker 2: Wo Yes, what did I tell you already? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm waiting. I'm waiting. Yeah, we'll talk, Okay, we'll talk after.
Speaker 5: But it's a pleasure to be here now.
Speaker 2: Better late than never.
Speaker 3: Like I want to talk about meats and plots, man,
Speaker 3: I want to talk about you know, so this book
Speaker 3: it was after you wrote The Big Payback. Uh, this
Speaker 3: is a book about how shifts can teach you how
Speaker 3: to organize your life. So tell us about like the
Speaker 3: principles of that, like what are the and by the way,
Speaker 3: I actually bought this book, I have to read it.
Speaker 3: Work clean is the name, So tell us about that,
Speaker 3: like just the philosophy of meats and plots and what
Speaker 3: that means.
Speaker 5: After I wrote The Big Payback. You know, it's a
Speaker 5: six hundred and sixty page book, and I just was drained,
Speaker 5: you know, and I had a wife and a baby
Speaker 5: and a you know, I didn't I couldn't imagine myself
Speaker 5: writing another book, and you know, we were developing the breaks,
Speaker 5: so you know, I had other things to do.
Speaker 2: And how long did it take you to write the back?
Speaker 5: Just four years? Really really heavy. But my first interview
Speaker 5: I did for The Big Payback was ten years before
Speaker 5: the both came out, So you know, work Clean came
Speaker 5: out of the pain of the interim, you know, after
Speaker 5: The Big Payback came out, and I was still working
Speaker 5: at a corporate media company which shall be unmentioned, and
Speaker 5: it was just painful to see.
Speaker 2: At you working there with boss Bill with a branch
Speaker 2: out that's.
Speaker 5: Right, that's right where where This is a very funny
Speaker 5: story when when Bill came in to interview for the
Speaker 5: job and I found out that he was actually DJ brainchild,
Speaker 5: I got down on my knees, literally got down on
Speaker 5: my knees and bowed to him. And Jerry Barrow said
Speaker 5: to me, you know, that's really not going to help
Speaker 5: with the salary negotiations. Yeah, well, he's a genius and
Speaker 5: I'm sorry he's not here right now. But uh so
Speaker 5: the pain of seeing waste on such a broad scale,
Speaker 5: you know, waste of time, waste of resources, waste of space,
Speaker 5: waste of relationships. And at the time I was just
Speaker 5: to sort of unwind or whatever. I would read chef
Speaker 5: narratives all the time. So I read Anthony Bourdain and
Speaker 5: Michael Roohman and oh the book Heat by Bill Buford,
Speaker 5: like just the amazing books about the culinary world, not cookbooks,
Speaker 5: but about chef's lives in the kitchen. And these are
Speaker 5: you know, wild people and wild narratives. But the one
Speaker 5: thing that ties them all together is this discipline that
Speaker 5: they call meson plas.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: It's a way of relating to time, space, energy, and motion.
Speaker 5: And it was the only thing that I really wanted
Speaker 5: to write about, and the reason I wanted to write
Speaker 5: about it because I look for a book on meson
Speaker 5: plas and nobody had ever written one. So I just
Speaker 5: used the tools of the journalist again, and I interviewed
Speaker 5: over one hundred people from the culinary field over the
Speaker 5: course of two years. I did an NPR story based
Speaker 5: on that sort of boiled it down to ten principles, right,
Speaker 5: But they're all about relating to time, space, motion resources,
Speaker 5: and just like the way that chefs think about things
Speaker 5: are is not the way that we think. And for
Speaker 5: each of the ten principles, I you know, tell a
Speaker 5: story of a chef. And one of those chefs happened
Speaker 5: to be Jerobi White of a Tribe call Quest, whom
Speaker 5: I had never met, even though I had interviewed. I
Speaker 5: did the very first press day for trib call Quest,
Speaker 5: like when they came out in nine, but I never
Speaker 5: met Jeroby all this time, We've probably been in a
Speaker 5: million rooms together and never met. And I'm so lucky
Speaker 5: to count him as a friend now. But I get
Speaker 5: to tell his story in that book We're Clean. It's
Speaker 5: a great story. And his his story is about perfecting movements, right,
Speaker 5: how he learned to stop wasting motion and to be
Speaker 5: really focused in the kitchen. And Jerobi actually came up
Speaker 5: with the science of the magic triangle, right man, that
Speaker 5: everything we do is basically a triangle, you know, and
Speaker 5: we're a circle within a triangle, and that's how we
Speaker 5: should arrange our space.
Speaker 2: Have you seen have you seen the founder the Michael
Speaker 2: Doug Michael Douglas, Michael.
Speaker 3: Keaton knowing about McDonald's across you saw it.
Speaker 1: I seen it and almost broke my my. Uh my
Speaker 1: vegan run cheeseburger right after.
Speaker 3: Man, they talk about, oh, it's it's really good. It's
Speaker 3: like it's cold blood as fun but it's good. But
Speaker 3: they kind of the McDonald brothers, they kind of were
Speaker 3: doing that, like the way they set up their original
Speaker 3: you know, McDonald's restaurant. It was based on you know,
Speaker 3: economy of movement like everything. It's funny to hear, like
Speaker 3: choreograph perfect it was. Yeah, it was really like a
Speaker 3: routine like the like they practiced in the court on
Speaker 3: the tennis court.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they.
Speaker 1: Practiced before they even got McDonald's, Like okay, you do
Speaker 1: that most in that motion, like not even carrying anything.
Speaker 3: They were just practicing the body motion of how to
Speaker 3: get you once is off they go here and then
Speaker 3: we switch and then like this ship is crazy.
Speaker 5: Y'all have like a quest love supreme movie night where
Speaker 5: y'all just go to the Marines together.
Speaker 7: Don't we need just you know, I mean a book
Speaker 7: list a movie night.
Speaker 3: Well, now we won't get the should we barely watch?
Speaker 3: Uh we did watch what's called as a family kind
Speaker 3: of not sleep out with Meili's joint.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah twice. Don't watch that. We did
Speaker 2: the musical lesson. Uh, that was good exactly.
Speaker 3: There's one that you one of their principles that really
Speaker 3: spoke to me. You talk about clean as you go.
Speaker 5: Very important.
Speaker 2: Talk about that one. Well.
Speaker 5: The science behind clean as you go is that anybody
Speaker 5: and create a system, like you decide you're going to
Speaker 5: organize your desk, right, and you spend two hours or
Speaker 5: three hours or a whole day organizing your space, and
Speaker 5: it's great, right, And it doesn't mean shit because unless
Speaker 5: you maintain a system, you can't keep a system. And
Speaker 5: the only way to maintain a system is to clean
Speaker 5: as you go, is to keep the system through motion. Right.
Speaker 5: A system is not to be looked at, right, Oh,
Speaker 5: I've organized things. It's like you know, the system is
Speaker 5: not a noun, it's a verb. Right, So you have
Speaker 5: to be able to move through things. So you have
Speaker 5: to make that commitment to you know, put things back
Speaker 5: where they go, right. And that doesn't just work for
Speaker 5: the physical world. It also works for the virtual world.
Speaker 5: It works for the emotional world, right. And it's just
Speaker 5: about taking that extra two seconds to put something away
Speaker 5: so that you're not costing yourself, you know, a minute
Speaker 5: or two later, or you know, making a real mistake.
Speaker 5: You know I did. One of the stories I tell
Speaker 5: that book is how my burn my I got like
Speaker 5: second degree burns on my hand because my dear wife
Speaker 5: put very hot pan down on top of the garbage
Speaker 5: can where hot pant is not supposed to go. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, and but it was my failure for not
Speaker 5: being aware. That's one of the principles is awareness. And
Speaker 5: you know she wasn't, you know, maintaining her system as
Speaker 5: she went. So we both had to learn from.
Speaker 2: How do you apply this to your life?
Speaker 3: Because I know you're like we like, I mean, you
Speaker 3: talk a lot about like meditation and stuff. You're like
Speaker 3: heavy into yoga orly you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 3: you were telling me about like last time it was
Speaker 3: a it was like some kind of squat that you
Speaker 3: do that transfers the sexual energy out of your body
Speaker 3: so you don't be thinking about fucking these holes.
Speaker 2: I can't I can't remember the name of that squad,
Speaker 2: but it was no but he no, he was. He
Speaker 2: was giving me game for focus.
Speaker 7: I'm saying, I'm really real, I like everybody list.
Speaker 3: So how do you applow this because I mean, dude,
Speaker 3: like from I know what life was like for me
Speaker 3: when we were working on the breaks, and I can
Speaker 3: only imagine what the fuck was like for you in
Speaker 3: between that and NYU and you know, family, how do
Speaker 3: you apply this to your life?
Speaker 5: I'm not perfect at it. I mean I have I
Speaker 5: do too much and I get sick, you know, and
Speaker 5: that's not good. You know, I got pneumonia last year.
Speaker 2: Like it was it was bad. Yeah, damn.
Speaker 5: But uh, you know for me, you know, one of
Speaker 5: the principles that's really helped me is, you know, the
Speaker 5: idea of what do you do? What do you choose
Speaker 5: to do first?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: And all of the systems of organization that are very
Speaker 5: popular talk about you do the worst first, right. Stephen
Speaker 5: Covey all of his books like talks about you put
Speaker 5: the big rocks in the jar first, not the small rocks,
Speaker 5: because the big rocks are what counting. If you don't
Speaker 5: get the big rocks in first, you know, and you
Speaker 5: put the small rocks in, how are you ever going
Speaker 5: to get the big rocks in?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 5: All that do the worst first, And the thing is
Speaker 5: you don't do the worst first out that takes it
Speaker 5: out of you, like you don't do it else. For
Speaker 5: another reason is that chefs actually see the world in
Speaker 5: two separate, like parallel kinds of time. There's process time
Speaker 5: and then there's intensive time, right, processed hands on and
Speaker 5: hands off time essentially, right, something intensive like oh, I
Speaker 5: need to make a beat, or I need to write
Speaker 5: this essay, or I need to do whatever with my hands. Right,
Speaker 5: you can't delegate that. You can't. You know, you have
Speaker 5: to be there. So three hours is worth three hours
Speaker 5: of you know, your work is worth three hours. But
Speaker 5: there are other things called that set processes in motion
Speaker 5: that you can do called process time. Like I need
Speaker 5: to make the rice for dinner, right, I can't do
Speaker 5: that at the end of it because it takes a
Speaker 5: while to make the rice, right, So I have to
Speaker 5: do it first. It only takes five seconds, but that
Speaker 5: five seconds is worth the you know, thirty minutes that
Speaker 5: it takes to make that rice. So sometimes you can't
Speaker 5: do the worst first. Sometimes you have to start processes
Speaker 5: so you can get hours of work for just minutes,
Speaker 5: hours of worth for just minutes of the minutes. That's
Speaker 5: how chefs think, damn. So that's helped me I gotta
Speaker 5: redo my book again. I feel inadequately. Now you're you're
Speaker 5: working on a Box Wiley or something.
Speaker 2: I heard.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, no, I did mind. I mean
Speaker 1: mine was more or less about the creative process.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bought both yos something the food about. I
Speaker 2: bought both y'alls on the same.
Speaker 1: It's about the creative process. But I mean, yeah, you
Speaker 1: go to the ninth level of hell to get that
Speaker 1: these theories that I didn't even think about. Like, I'm
Speaker 1: just thinking that chefs are like musicians in their creative process,
Speaker 1: but you're taking it to a whole other level.
Speaker 7: It's still parallel. It's interesting because y'all too, still went parallel.
Speaker 7: It's still the same as you know, the food, the music,
Speaker 7: the teaching. It rounds out. It's just interesting.
Speaker 2: That's what I learned.
Speaker 1: Well, we were about to wrap up, but I was
Speaker 1: about to say I learned that I really have a Yeah,
Speaker 1: who knew we look alike. We love Dylan and Prince
Speaker 1: and Prince bootlegs and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, we both loved Bill Johnson, Bill Johnson unpaid Bill,
Speaker 3: and we have.
Speaker 2: Projects that use Night on ball Ball by Bob James. No, no,
Speaker 2: it's so obvious that like, it's yeah, tell him, is
Speaker 2: that what we do?
Speaker 5: Is that this story end.
Speaker 2: I totally forgot about.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yes, oh yes, give it to him.
Speaker 2: May give it he said, He said that he kind
Speaker 2: of gave it away.
Speaker 5: I did.
Speaker 2: I played it, Yeah, you played it good? Wow? I
Speaker 2: think I got it on my phone out. I learned
Speaker 2: that Steve is the jazz master of the circle.
Speaker 7: I just said, cheated late like he said it like
Speaker 7: an hour ago.
Speaker 5: All right, Well what he did with that beat, it's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Is the intro I play it I live. I think
Speaker 2: it was the intro is.
Speaker 1: Used because I never get past arrested development right, there's
Speaker 1: other parts of the song, no, but I couldn't get
Speaker 1: past me.
Speaker 5: I said, how can anybody make anything not corny?
Speaker 7: This?
Speaker 5: Sorry?
Speaker 2: And I sent him. I was like, yo, I think
Speaker 2: this part is you know in prim Us you were right,
Speaker 2: you were so right.
Speaker 5: And what makes it great is that prem also flips
Speaker 5: the NT drums. I think I think he uses the
Speaker 5: you know that right, the one that everybody.
Speaker 3: Likes because they originally I think the first draft of
Speaker 3: that song it was it was he he had used
Speaker 3: misdemeanor and at that time I'm just like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: this is nineteen ninety so it's funky enough.
Speaker 2: Pretty much killed misdemeanor. So I was like, I don't
Speaker 2: think we could you know, use that. But uh but yeah,
Speaker 2: y'all take it into the next level. Even I would
Speaker 2: have let that slide.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was like, nah, that's that's DC so but
Speaker 3: uh but nah, man. So right now, how are your
Speaker 3: days spent? I mean it's it's, you know, teaching once
Speaker 3: the breaks is, once this season finishes, we get word
Speaker 3: on you know, season twoog, you know, one way or another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if its assuming it is, when do you go back?
Speaker 8: It is?
Speaker 5: It is?
Speaker 2: When do you go back into the writer's room next month?
Speaker 5: Ship?
Speaker 2: Are you serious? So get back to work.
Speaker 3: And wake up call.
Speaker 5: Wow. I'm also working on a bit of a I
Speaker 5: told you a little project for Russell as well. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so you actually did hire me after all those years.
Speaker 3: I feel like you say, a little project for Russell
Speaker 3: will be like Crush Groove two. All right, So Dan,
Speaker 3: i'd like to thank you for doing our show.
Speaker 2: We appreciate it, thank you, sir. It's very hard.
Speaker 5: I'm like, it's the normal length of the show. Y'all
Speaker 5: going to edit this down to like fifteen minutes.
Speaker 2: This is Quest Love Supreme. We go along.
Speaker 3: This is I mean wow, yeah the breaks. Check us
Speaker 3: out Monday nights nine eight Central on v H one
Speaker 3: every Monday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nope, come come, I let us Well, thank you
Speaker 2: very much.
Speaker 3: On behalf of the Question Love Supreme team.
Speaker 2: This is Quest Love apparently not the.
Speaker 3: Bob Jeams expert.
Speaker 5: I thought I was, uh.
Speaker 2: Whatever.
Speaker 1: We will see you next week Wednesday at one pm
Speaker 1: with an all new episode of Question Love Supreme.
Speaker 2: All right, y'all next week.
Speaker 1: Court Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more
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