Speaker 1: Courest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
Speaker 1: episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 2: What Up y'all? It's like and this week's QLs classic.
Speaker 3: Continues from last week Yeah Root's Picnic Live.
Speaker 2: In New York. This aired October twenty six.
Speaker 3: Imagine it, Team Supreme hold up in a hotel across
Speaker 3: the street from the venue while everybody's performing there, runing
Speaker 3: cross the street to talk to us, even Questlove, so
Speaker 3: make sure you pay attention to.
Speaker 2: Hear when he pops in.
Speaker 3: Featured in this episode appearances from The Jungle Brothers, Emily Wells, Yuna,
Speaker 3: Daniel Bambada, Marley Freeway, and Easy Mode Breezy from Grits
Speaker 3: and Biscuits.
Speaker 4: Enjoy, y'all, What's up y'all?
Speaker 1: Welcome to a very special edition of Quest Love Supreme
Speaker 1: once again. This is a road trip, well not exactly
Speaker 1: a road trip. We're kind of up a block from
Speaker 1: Bryant Park in New York City. I'll say that twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, when the Roots were first formed, we made
Speaker 1: and cut our teeth on the festival circuit, and festivals
Speaker 1: are like now a thing in America that back in
Speaker 1: the early nineties, it was like really unheard of to
Speaker 1: have different genres together under one roof, like doing a festival.
Speaker 1: We always said that we had enough pull and of
Speaker 1: course enough finances, we were going to bring a festival
Speaker 1: to whatever city that we chose to do. And of course,
Speaker 1: I guess most of you guys are familiar with the
Speaker 1: Root's Picnic. That's our Philadelphia homegrown festival event. So this
Speaker 1: year we decided to take the Roots Picnic to Bryant
Speaker 1: Park in New York City and entertained over twenty thousand
Speaker 1: people for two days. So many acts played the picnic.
Speaker 1: David Byrne, Bu tang Quin, DiAngelo, John Mayer, even Alicia Keys,
Speaker 1: Dave Sappelle, Common, of course the Roots we performed as well.
Speaker 1: We even Adnle Rogers and She's That's a lot.
Speaker 5: Of line up. Anyway.
Speaker 1: We recorded these special episodes in Quest Love Supreme Live
Speaker 1: during the Roots Picnic.
Speaker 5: I was running around quite a bit too.
Speaker 1: I popped up in the show occasionally when I had
Speaker 1: a minute, but it was basically rehearsing.
Speaker 5: But don't worry, the team Supreme.
Speaker 1: Held it down and they really did an amazing job
Speaker 1: running the show with my absence that's right. We got Fante,
Speaker 1: Boss Bill still there, Unpaid Bills there, Sugar Steed is there,
Speaker 1: Lai is there, and.
Speaker 5: A whole cast of others.
Speaker 1: And during this episode you will hear some great interviews
Speaker 1: with the Jungle Brothers, you and Daniel Marley, the Freeway,
Speaker 1: the team behind particip Biscuits Party, and Emily Wells. And
Speaker 1: I really hope you enjoyed the show. This is part
Speaker 1: two of the Roots Picnic New York edition of Quest
Speaker 1: Love Supreme.
Speaker 5: Once one two y'all.
Speaker 6: This is Questlove Supreme only on Pandora Sponte Fontigelo holding
Speaker 6: it down for the boss Man and our coat leader,
Speaker 6: Quest Love.
Speaker 5: Who is busy working today.
Speaker 6: We're broadcasting live from the Roots Picnic in New York,
Speaker 6: in New York, New York City, the city and the state.
Speaker 6: We got, uh, we got lovely Unpaid Bill Sherman, my Man, Sugar, Steve,
Speaker 6: my Man, Scott Yo, Yo, Boss Bill, you know what
Speaker 6: I'm saying.
Speaker 5: We're all in here. We're having a good time. Man.
Speaker 6: I cannot say enough how much the brothers that we
Speaker 6: are honored to have in this building today, how much
Speaker 6: of an influence that they played on my life, on.
Speaker 5: My musical career.
Speaker 6: Just god, man, I don't know where to start. Straight
Speaker 6: out the Jungle the album man mess my head up,
Speaker 6: done by the forces of nature, messed my head up
Speaker 6: even more. Jesus christ Man, I'm gonna just let these
Speaker 6: brothers tell their story, lads and women. One of my
Speaker 6: biggest musical influences, the forefathers of the Native Tongue movement,
Speaker 6: who just gave voice to so many of us. I'm
Speaker 6: talking about Mike G, Sammy B Baby Bam, bladies and gentlemen.
Speaker 5: Give it up.
Speaker 6: The Jungle Brothers, thousand you bothman, watch sound System, State
Speaker 6: of the Odd Come on, man, man, thank you. First off,
Speaker 6: let me say okay, me and Mike G. We have
Speaker 6: been planning to get together for like the past decade.
Speaker 6: Mike G lives probably like twenty minutes from me. He's
Speaker 6: we're both North Carolina residents. I'm North Carolina born and raised.
Speaker 6: He is pretty much he's been there, and we are
Speaker 6: part of the growing community of rappers in North Carolina.
Speaker 6: I think special ed, I think so Dot is so
Speaker 6: that X's and well, I know at one point he
Speaker 6: was in Greensboro.
Speaker 5: I don't know if he's still there.
Speaker 7: I don't know I was on his tail somewhere in Raleigh.
Speaker 7: I got a good friend down there, he says, Yeah, Man,
Speaker 7: I was just here, you know, as folks live down there, Raleigh,
Speaker 7: got family down there, so yeah, yeah, yeah, you know.
Speaker 6: Caine is still in Durham. I believe Drma Raleigh.
Speaker 5: I believe.
Speaker 6: But but yeah, me and Mike g have been Yo. Man,
Speaker 6: let's get up, let's get dinner, let's do this, and
Speaker 6: this is the first time I think we've been in
Speaker 6: the same room. Yeah, I see him more on the
Speaker 6: road than I do actually in the city we live in.
Speaker 6: But now, Brothers, thank you'all so much for man, man,
Speaker 6: I cannot thank you enough. I guess let's just start
Speaker 6: with well, let's start kind of, let's.
Speaker 5: Go before we go back.
Speaker 6: Let's like start with one of my favorite records from y'all,
Speaker 6: which is fitting since the founder and our cut leader
Speaker 6: actually played on it, bring Uh Off the Raal Deluxe album.
Speaker 6: Tell Us tell me about that record. I remember at
Speaker 6: the time when it came out, it just sounded new.
Speaker 6: It sounded like it was the Jungle Brothers that I
Speaker 6: knew in love, but it just sounded like, man, like,
Speaker 6: this is a reinvention like my Boys is back, you
Speaker 6: know what I mean.
Speaker 5: Talk to us about that and too. It came off
Speaker 5: of the first single, uh, the How.
Speaker 6: You Want It, which is just like some raw, just
Speaker 6: straight loops. I was, but then y'all came with the
Speaker 6: Brains and I was like, ah, this is like some
Speaker 6: cool shit, like wow, So let's talk about that record
Speaker 6: around the time y'all did it. Where were y'all at
Speaker 6: mentally at that thing in your career, because that was
Speaker 6: that was after the whole crazy wisdom Master's situations.
Speaker 5: He was the masters we had. Uh.
Speaker 7: We had got back together with John Baker at G Street,
Speaker 7: who was h real instrumental in our in the first
Speaker 7: part of our career off of Straight Out the Jungle.
Speaker 5: It's funny how that all came together, but he.
Speaker 7: Was instrumental on the UK side, on the Europe side
Speaker 7: for Jungle Brothers went Straight Out the Jungle and Uh,
Speaker 7: we got together for the Raw Deluxe album and I
Speaker 7: want to say we were almost finished. We were probably
Speaker 7: sixteen some of our songs, but we still needed that
Speaker 7: that one, you know, really to help I guess capture
Speaker 7: the soul of the new audience that was out there.
Speaker 7: And somehow the the link. The link came and got
Speaker 7: us all in the studio. You know what I'm saying,
Speaker 7: quest thought they was they started early. By the time
Speaker 7: we got there, all it was, and I mean the
Speaker 7: rest is history. I mean, I think, like I said,
Speaker 7: as soon as we walked in it was.
Speaker 5: It was that.
Speaker 7: And then the chorus came on and then we just
Speaker 7: all split up, sat in the corner started.
Speaker 5: Writing, that's dope. That's dope. Man.
Speaker 6: To give out our listeners a little backstory at this
Speaker 6: point in their career. Well, just and if I misspeak,
Speaker 6: please correct me. First album, Straight out the Jungle, hip
Speaker 6: Hop classic. This was nineteen eighty seven, Well Warlock Rect eight.
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, Warlock Records. I was nine years old, a
Speaker 6: long time ago. But then the second album.
Speaker 5: Wasn't born yet. That's real, man, listen.
Speaker 6: So second album done by the Force of Nature ninety one,
Speaker 6: eighty nine, eighty.
Speaker 5: Eighty nine. I remember I was.
Speaker 6: It was probably fifth grade, I think, if I'm not mistaken,
Speaker 6: that record. So these were like two records that were
Speaker 6: I mean, really just cemented these brothers as just one
Speaker 6: of the most kind of forward thinking, forward moving groups
Speaker 6: in hip hop. After the second album, there was another
Speaker 6: record called Crazy Wisdom Masters, which was a record that
Speaker 6: was never officially released, and by all accounts, by all
Speaker 6: you know, the legend, everything, the record was incredible. I
Speaker 6: want to talk about that a little bit and talk
Speaker 6: about that record, kind of what happened to it and
Speaker 6: kind of the aftermath of that.
Speaker 7: Well, in the place of that record, the Crazy Wisdom
Speaker 7: record came JJ Remedy year that was also on Warner
Speaker 7: Brothers at the time. And you know, the time period
Speaker 7: was I think we were learning. You know, we had
Speaker 7: just we came off of touring done by the forces
Speaker 7: of nature. I mean we literally, I mean from straight
Speaker 7: out to jungle. We literally went from his graduation to
Speaker 7: touring Europe and then constantly touring. I mean we literally
Speaker 7: didn't take a break for a very long time, for
Speaker 7: a really long time. And for guys, you.
Speaker 5: Know we like.
Speaker 7: Seventeen eighteen nineteen, I mean it's like who does that?
Speaker 5: Who comes out of school? Get your passport? Travel of
Speaker 5: the world. The Berlin Wall was still up at the time. Wow, Wow,
Speaker 5: were doing crazy festivals. We're doing crazy festivals.
Speaker 7: I mean it was nuts. I mean, who does that?
Speaker 7: I mean, I'm haul and Brooklyn the Bronx. I mean
Speaker 7: at that time, the eighties n late eighties, I mean
Speaker 7: it was unheard of.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: By the time we got back to the studio to
Speaker 7: start that third record, it was like, I mean it
Speaker 7: was it was vomit.
Speaker 5: It was like, yo, look what we brought home.
Speaker 7: I mean, we got we got to build with the
Speaker 7: likes of Bill Liaswell, Bootsy mud Bone, George. I mean,
Speaker 7: it was just so much. We had so much that,
Speaker 7: I mean it was hard to interpret. Yeah, from the meters,
Speaker 7: I mean all the cats. I mean, I mean, you're artist,
Speaker 7: I mean where your soul comes from. I I mean
Speaker 7: I have to I have to throw this on you.
Speaker 7: When that Little Brother album came out, it's like it
Speaker 7: was a cheery moment. It was a cheery moment, you
Speaker 7: know what I'm saying, because you wouldn't think that that
Speaker 7: type of soul was in the audience, was in our
Speaker 7: you know, amongst our peers like that.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: But it's like we so when we came back and
Speaker 5: we we.
Speaker 7: Got to literally rub elbows and tour and do shows
Speaker 7: with the cast that we were sampling that we were
Speaker 7: sitting up in the sitting up in the Bronxe River
Speaker 7: Center listening to the Beach Jazzy and I'm going back
Speaker 7: and forth and were chilling with them in the tent,
Speaker 7: drinking bits and all of that.
Speaker 5: And I ain't gonna put us in the studio right
Speaker 5: after that. Wow, Warner Brothers, they couldn't understand that. And
Speaker 5: that was for the Crazy Master.
Speaker 7: Yeah, but it wasn't. It wasn't originally named the Crazy
Speaker 7: was the Master. It was I don't think we even
Speaker 7: had a name to.
Speaker 8: I don't think we had to lose the originals or
Speaker 8: something like that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, it was all it was all politics
Speaker 7: in short. In short, we created a spaceship. We made
Speaker 7: a spaceship. Warner Brothers ain't know how to fly. They
Speaker 7: was like, not hold up, we just need four wheels
Speaker 7: in the steering wheel.
Speaker 5: They wanted four wheels in the steering wheel. They did
Speaker 5: the okie doke with the mix.
Speaker 7: After we mastered it, they found, you know, they pulled
Speaker 7: what they felt was you know, relatable to the audience.
Speaker 7: They put out JB's with the Remedy.
Speaker 6: And that was the forty blow Trooper. That was yeah
Speaker 6: that way, And I liked that record. I mean it
Speaker 6: was it was funny because J the Remedy was one
Speaker 6: of those records that for me personally, had I not
Speaker 6: known the backstory, like I would have been like, Yo,
Speaker 6: this is dope.
Speaker 5: Like had I had, I I remember like reading I.
Speaker 6: Want to say it was in the source or something
Speaker 6: with you guys where y'all were, you know, telling them
Speaker 6: talking about the process and how disappointing it was and
Speaker 6: how the stuff y'all going through with the label and everything,
Speaker 6: And I just remember reading I was like, man, I
Speaker 6: had no clue, if you know. To me, it sounded
Speaker 6: like a junk Brothers record, but it was disappointing to
Speaker 6: hear that it wasn't you guys vision you know what
Speaker 6: I'm saying.
Speaker 5: But just for me, I remember for the blow truth
Speaker 5: came out. I love that record.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean it was a there was I think
Speaker 7: crazy wis the masters it held, I mean it held
Speaker 7: the whole story. But I think it was just ahead
Speaker 7: of a lot of people's time. They just wasn't ready.
Speaker 7: Like I said, we built a spaceship, but they wasn't ready.
Speaker 7: They weren't even they wouldn't even put out the test
Speaker 7: for how do you drive a spaceships?
Speaker 5: We don't know. Just keep making calls. You know, that's
Speaker 5: what it was, you know, all right, So we're gonna
Speaker 5: go into that.
Speaker 6: So coming out of Crazy Wism Masters into JB's with
Speaker 6: the Remedy, this is when you left JA.
Speaker 5: It was ninety three, was it was? It?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 8: It was it was probably like nine.
Speaker 6: Coming out of that record, you guys leave Warner Brothers,
Speaker 6: get with E Street and that brings us to the
Speaker 6: Rather Lucks album, which brings us to Brain, which was
Speaker 6: kind of like a reintroduction to you guys, what year
Speaker 6: is that?
Speaker 5: That was nineteen ninety six? Seven? It was ninety seven.
Speaker 5: It was ninety seven.
Speaker 6: Man, everything's almost twenty years ago, yeah, because I remember
Speaker 6: that was like my twenty senior year of high school.
Speaker 3: I'll say, and y'all about to have y'all thirtieth anniversary.
Speaker 5: Yeap next year.
Speaker 6: For I mean, that's like thirty years you guys are
Speaker 6: coming up on what keeps you going?
Speaker 5: I mean, thirty is a long fucking time, oh man.
Speaker 9: Just you know, the love for the music, that's really
Speaker 9: the love for the music, and in the chemistry chemistry too.
Speaker 5: Question. I think we friends before music.
Speaker 10: You know, we grew up together high school playing in
Speaker 10: the parks, going to the jams. I think that really
Speaker 10: kept us together because a lot of groups money comes
Speaker 10: in between them and all that kind of stuff. And
Speaker 10: I think at this point it really don't even matter,
Speaker 10: you know. I think that we're still friends and that
Speaker 10: makes a big difference.
Speaker 6: Yeah, do you guys feel like y'all were maybe more
Speaker 6: like better equipped to handle it now than you were
Speaker 6: when you were younger?
Speaker 5: I think so. Yeah, RelA so too. Yeah.
Speaker 9: We came along so early, you know where it was
Speaker 9: those pioneered years where you're just doing something in your
Speaker 9: circle or in your bedroom and not aware of what's
Speaker 9: out there. And we got a chance to go out
Speaker 9: there when no one saw us coming, you know, to
Speaker 9: fifty two different countries and see people experience hip hop
Speaker 9: for the first time and still be seventeen eighteen nineteen.
Speaker 9: So we had like a early jump where you know,
Speaker 9: you go from getting a radio in your room with
Speaker 9: a cassette, plugging turntables into it, baking a little makeshift
Speaker 9: studio and just doing it for yourself to actually being
Speaker 9: broadcasting on the radio on Red Alert show a mixed
Speaker 9: show that still was underground, to people taping you as
Speaker 9: far as Japan, and then you arrived there and they
Speaker 9: know who you are.
Speaker 5: But we still felt like we just stepped out of
Speaker 5: our bedrooms.
Speaker 6: Yet when you talk about like the bedrooms, you know,
Speaker 6: the Straight Out the Jungle, that was one of the
Speaker 6: albums that me and The Mirror have talked about as
Speaker 6: being in like and we mean this like in the
Speaker 6: best way. Technically it's like one of the worst mixed albums,
Speaker 6: but that's what makes.
Speaker 5: It well, there's a story behind that, Like Straight Out
Speaker 5: the Jungle.
Speaker 9: I used to first of all, that whole album was
Speaker 9: made off turntables.
Speaker 5: Wow, So that's.
Speaker 9: Not there's no sp twelves, there's no LINN drums, there's
Speaker 9: no NPC heads, there's no laptop. Of course, that was
Speaker 9: just straight off the turntables. So it's just straight r
Speaker 9: particularly Straight Out the Jungle. I would come home from school.
Speaker 9: I those two records were f from my dance record collection, okay,
Speaker 9: and I would backs. I only had one copy of
Speaker 9: each record, So the Bill Withers Break and I would
Speaker 9: play that on one turntable and the Mandrels on the other,
Speaker 9: and I only had eight bars, wow, and I love
Speaker 9: the way those two went together.
Speaker 5: I would just play it over and over and over
Speaker 5: and over, not even get a chance to write to
Speaker 5: it yet, And I just.
Speaker 9: Held that in my head until we finally got into
Speaker 9: a studio situation. Cause we were in a couple of
Speaker 9: studio situations where the producers would throw when the drum
Speaker 9: machine beat at us, and we was like, nah, that's
Speaker 9: not really the sound we want. But a lot of
Speaker 9: hip hop records back then was drum machine heavy. And
Speaker 9: then we got into the studio where there was turntables,
Speaker 9: and I took that same technique of straight out the
Speaker 9: h the breakbeat and then the groove.
Speaker 5: But now we have a tape machine.
Speaker 9: So on track one, you play those eight bars punching.
Speaker 9: On track two, play those eight bars of Bill Withers drums,
Speaker 9: and you keep doing that till you got five minutes.
Speaker 5: And I'm geeking off of that.
Speaker 9: Cause I was like, Okay, now I got a track
Speaker 9: machine instead of a cassette, you know, or even just
Speaker 9: doing it by hand. And then on track three and
Speaker 9: four you're throwing down the mandrills for five minutes.
Speaker 5: Yea, yeah.
Speaker 9: So a lot of that stuff was just made on
Speaker 9: the fly, you know, And that was the process of
Speaker 9: the whole album, Like Behind the Bush you know.
Speaker 5: We had insane the same process.
Speaker 9: I saw Sammy's standing there with the record we used
Speaker 9: for the melody, which was a remaker of Marvin Gaye's
Speaker 9: What's going On and it was on forty five and
Speaker 9: we had to tape it to you know, a vinyl
Speaker 9: and then blend that or over the beat for five minutes,
Speaker 9: you know, and then go in the booth, and then
Speaker 9: Mike and I would be in another example of Jim Browski.
Speaker 9: Sammy bo was in the control room with the two turntables,
Speaker 9: Mike and I was in the booth with our rhymes
Speaker 9: already rehearsed, and he had his mic, I had my mic.
Speaker 5: Sometimes we had one mic we share together.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna do because that sounds like yeah, yeah, But
Speaker 6: what you gotta understand the Jim Browski that was all
Speaker 6: three of us.
Speaker 9: The way we're doing on stage. We did that in
Speaker 9: the studio like a band. Like there's no you know,
Speaker 9: sampling or putting it on.
Speaker 5: Tape first and over. There's no overdose, there's no overdubes.
Speaker 5: It's like, okay, we're gonna press record.
Speaker 9: Take one the old fashioned way, but in the hip
Speaker 9: hop context, like we're gonna mc while he's DJing you
Speaker 9: know what I mean, and then it's like, yeah, let's
Speaker 9: listen down take two.
Speaker 5: You know what I mean, do take two and that's it.
Speaker 6: So just to give the listeners some understanding of just
Speaker 6: this process when they say no over the Generally, when
Speaker 6: you go into the studio, everything is kind of pre done.
Speaker 6: So if you're recording over a beat, the beat is
Speaker 6: already done and it is recorded and laid down, and
Speaker 6: then the singers of rappers come in on another track
Speaker 6: and they do you know, they do whatever they do
Speaker 6: to that prerecorded beat, and so forth and so on. Uh,
Speaker 6: what these buds were doing was just everything was live
Speaker 6: in one take.
Speaker 9: So yeah, on stage they were doing put that. In
Speaker 9: the studio, we were doing that. So at the end
Speaker 9: of that, Andre de Borg, the engineer for Salt and
Speaker 9: Pepper's records, and you know the quality of those records,
Speaker 9: he pulls up and I remember this in a in
Speaker 9: an army truck with all his outboard geary.
Speaker 5: Total like gear ahead.
Speaker 9: He pulls up, he comes downstairs in the basement and
Speaker 9: he looks at the board and it goes, you made
Speaker 9: a record like this. There's wires everywhere and he's like
Speaker 9: he said, before I even mix this record and master it,
Speaker 9: I have to take.
Speaker 5: Apart the whole studio and put it back together again. Wow,
Speaker 5: look at her face like.
Speaker 11: That, what.
Speaker 5: So what? I trying to make some.
Speaker 1: Extra mon But basically, but basically it was about It's
Speaker 1: about a vibe, going back.
Speaker 9: To what you you re quest level saying like like,
Speaker 9: technically this sounds wrong, but the vibe was captured and
Speaker 9: that was the most important thing on Girl, I House
Speaker 9: you on Straight out the Jungle, on Jambrowski, all the
Speaker 9: background vocals, the whoa, why why baby, and even bells
Speaker 9: ringing on my bracelet or tapping on the window or
Speaker 9: you hit the mic by accident, and the echoes, you know,
Speaker 9: all that stuff was captured live and that was the
Speaker 9: vibe and then the engineer just had to work with
Speaker 9: it make it sound like something.
Speaker 6: Yeah, one of the one of the lines I want
Speaker 6: to make the listeners aware of that is probably definitely
Speaker 6: kind of seeming that you guys in history h Q
Speaker 6: tip from a ward tour her me and.
Speaker 5: The eighty jvs on the promo.
Speaker 6: Yeah, for those who do not who don't know, uh
Speaker 6: Q tip from a trip called Quest was on Straight
Speaker 6: out the Jungle on a record that was called the promo.
Speaker 6: The promo was essentially back in the day like UH
Speaker 6: mcs would do promos for DJs, and so it was
Speaker 6: essentially just like UH, it could be like a little
Speaker 6: you know, it could be a minute, minute and a
Speaker 6: half thing of just you rhyming shouting.
Speaker 5: Out to the DJ. So yet in that case it
Speaker 5: was for Red Alert.
Speaker 6: But you know, all DJs were doing no Chuck chill
Speaker 6: out had them, you know, every all the DJs at
Speaker 6: that time. And q Tip was actually you guys actually
Speaker 6: gave q Tip his start. How did all you guys
Speaker 6: link up? And what was it that y'all heard in
Speaker 6: him to make you say, you know what, we'll let
Speaker 6: we'll let you get.
Speaker 9: On this m You used the class, Well, we went
Speaker 9: to school together, yea, we were classes.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we were in the same home room together. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you know where you meet and then you go
Speaker 9: out to your classes. We don't have all the same classes,
Speaker 9: but we were in the same home room together. So
Speaker 9: the in the what year was this this was.
Speaker 5: Uh from eighty four to eighty eight.
Speaker 9: If he would come with UH come to school with
Speaker 9: rhymes and you know, we all had a book of
Speaker 9: rhymes and he'd come to school with rhymes and we
Speaker 9: just kind of formed like a relationship through that.
Speaker 5: Gotcha.
Speaker 9: Actually what actually happened is Mike was m that's my dude,
Speaker 9: that's my jungle brother.
Speaker 5: But he was a great ahead of me.
Speaker 9: Ah, and like what I liked to what I loved
Speaker 9: about him is like he was well known in school,
Speaker 9: but he still was to himself, stuck with himself, you know,
Speaker 9: by himself.
Speaker 5: And I was the same.
Speaker 9: I was well known in school in my grade, but
Speaker 9: I wasn't in any circles. And we met because brother
Speaker 9: Jay from x Clan oh man Em linked us up
Speaker 9: for uh A talent show. M So, long story short,
Speaker 9: he graduated before me and then I had one more
Speaker 9: year left, so q tit would be around me, and
Speaker 9: it was like I don't know, space yeah, f f
Speaker 9: F for him, you know what I mean? Cause I
Speaker 9: wasn't around Mike as much and in school, so he
Speaker 9: would be around me, and he know I w at
Speaker 9: th he on the weekends, I'm going to the studio
Speaker 9: and then he'd hear the records on the way, the
Speaker 9: promos we were doing.
Speaker 5: He'd hear on the radio and stuff like that.
Speaker 9: So then he'd come around and you know, rap to
Speaker 9: me and stuff, do lyrics and he'd s you know,
Speaker 9: like complain that people was comparing him to l School
Speaker 9: j and he was Jane not at the time.
Speaker 5: That trip was compared to Yeah, he was. And he
Speaker 5: was wrapping, rapping like you know that I need to
Speaker 5: be now though, yeah, no, not that I need no, no, no,
Speaker 5: no, no that I need to beat you know, all the
Speaker 5: big words from the dictionary.
Speaker 9: Into a form of a battle rap where you know
Speaker 9: you're outwitting the person you're battling.
Speaker 5: So so I was just like, well.
Speaker 9: That is the thing right now, so good, Like if
Speaker 9: you're on that level, then that's cool. But slowly, but
Speaker 9: surely he was like embracing what was becoming Jungle Brothers.
Speaker 2: Slow down a little bit.
Speaker 9: And slowed down a little bit and that and that
Speaker 9: that was the That was the eraror of the Boogie
Speaker 9: Down productions where he was slowing it down and also
Speaker 9: rock him where he was torn and the boys down
Speaker 9: there and it wasn't all a yelling and Mike and
Speaker 9: I that's how we rapped as well.
Speaker 7: We was on some smooth MC ship, you know, That's
Speaker 7: that's what it was about. You know, we wasn't really battling.
Speaker 7: We was wasn't battling. We held were trying to get girls.
Speaker 12: You know.
Speaker 9: It was the smooth spoony G type rap Me and
Speaker 9: Mike love spoony G.
Speaker 5: And one of his first rhymes was like that.
Speaker 9: You know, so slowly but surely, Jane Nice was coming
Speaker 9: into his own, not into his own, but coming into
Speaker 9: the jungle brother vibe and then going away with that
Speaker 9: and developing into something that couldn't be compared to. And
Speaker 9: that's when I said, look, come down to the studio and.
Speaker 5: Let's do this promo joint. Wow.
Speaker 6: To know that q tit was compared to that's just amazing, ladies, gentlemen.
Speaker 6: Ques he just walked. I've been here the whole time.
Speaker 6: I mean when I heard this episode, y'all talked to
Speaker 6: Smack behind me as Margaret always.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, Eli quest Love is back.
Speaker 6: Ladies, gentlemen, Okay, so girl, I househ you what made
Speaker 6: y'all go? Because that was I mean, like you're said,
Speaker 6: that was a very bold direction and it was something that, uh,
Speaker 6: at that time, I didn't know.
Speaker 5: Of any other hip hop artists that were that were
Speaker 5: doing it. It kind of kicked off the hip house movement,
Speaker 5: which that was the first house song I ever heard.
Speaker 5: I didn't know.
Speaker 6: Same here and that really just kind of you know,
Speaker 6: there are a lot of imitators.
Speaker 5: That came in your way, and but that was still
Speaker 5: the one that was like.
Speaker 6: I think Latifa got it right, but coming to my
Speaker 6: house that she was dope, But I think was it
Speaker 6: was it top.
Speaker 5: Terry Yeah, and he did the house did house? Yeah?
Speaker 5: What made you guys do that? Like what was that session? Like?
Speaker 1: Obviously did some hours at the at Larry Levan's uh
Speaker 1: sparede Garage?
Speaker 5: Yes, obviously? Oh yeah, I mean I did.
Speaker 9: I think My mother was driving cabs when the Paradise
Speaker 9: Garage was happening and she took.
Speaker 5: Me there when I was twelve years old.
Speaker 9: She took me there when I was twelve years old,
Speaker 9: and I got a little taste of that.
Speaker 5: Crowd that early, the whole.
Speaker 1: You know, you know, the common denominators with all the
Speaker 1: guests on the show.
Speaker 5: To your parents.
Speaker 9: My mom was driving cabs like late that night and
Speaker 9: she was like, you're gonna come with me. I want
Speaker 9: to show you this place where I get all my
Speaker 9: rides and it was it was paradise.
Speaker 6: Garage for the listeners. This was Larry Levaughn, who was
Speaker 6: a incredible.
Speaker 5: Legend, legendary pioneer house. He laid everything open format.
Speaker 1: His best his best DJ gig was not playing records.
Speaker 1: He played the Wizard of Oz movie once and they
Speaker 1: said it was the most legendary night. I mean, he's
Speaker 1: had legendary DJ stories, but him playing Jackson Five's ABC
Speaker 1: his very last gig at the.
Speaker 5: Studio fifty four.
Speaker 1: It was defiantly playing ABC for three hours in a
Speaker 1: row in defiance Tanya Garter's heartbeat. He forced them like
Speaker 1: they they opposed to it. It was like too slow
Speaker 1: for them. They hated it, and he forced them. He says,
Speaker 1: I will, I will play this until y'all give me
Speaker 1: the respect I dessert And he's single handedly like said,
Speaker 1: you're gonna dance to some down tempo ninety bpm shit.
Speaker 5: So yeah, he's a monster.
Speaker 9: That's a good backstory for our house because you said
Speaker 9: it was a bold move, but we didn't see it
Speaker 9: that way. Because of the environment here in New York City,
Speaker 9: the birthplace of hip hop, you still had a strong
Speaker 9: dance scene, you know, just go High, you know, and
Speaker 9: downtown punk rock scene, so a lot and a lot
Speaker 9: of things were crossing together and together those scenes were
Speaker 9: linked together.
Speaker 5: You know. Hip hop was.
Speaker 9: Still young, so it didn't have what it has now,
Speaker 9: like its own click boundaries, you know, and with boundaries
Speaker 9: and rigid formulae structures. It was a jam. Everything was
Speaker 9: a jam everywhere. You could get away with playing the
Speaker 9: Wizard of Ours and Grand After Flash and get away
Speaker 9: with playing.
Speaker 5: The Clash, you know. So but yeah, it was nothing.
Speaker 5: It was. It was that's what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 5: I mean, I was going to clubs.
Speaker 9: I was going to clubs carrying records for Red Alert.
Speaker 5: We all were playing, we all had a crate. But
Speaker 5: then I would leave.
Speaker 9: That club and go to our house club like the
Speaker 9: World or some club with no name, holding the wall
Speaker 9: and being there till three four in the morning with
Speaker 9: just househeads, and at least four of the records they
Speaker 9: were playing was Todd Terry's records, and I could hear
Speaker 9: Todd Terry. It was a a is a producer from
Speaker 9: Brooklyn who was making hip hop and really wasn't getting
Speaker 9: that love and went into making house records and got
Speaker 9: a lot of love, and so I was hearing the
Speaker 9: hip hop samples in the house records he was making.
Speaker 9: I was like, he's the only guy doing this, you know,
Speaker 9: like all the house records were looping disco or having
Speaker 9: somebody preach over the record or mixing Martin Luther King
Speaker 9: or Malcolm XO. But Tod Terry was actually sampling breakbeats
Speaker 9: from hip hop crates and putting it into house music.
Speaker 7: So Chicago from the Chicago breaksgo, they was really the Chicago.
Speaker 9: Scene, Fast Freddy, Tyree Cooper. These were the guys that
Speaker 9: really they were setting it off because they were tired
Speaker 9: of doing house music, so they started rapping over it.
Speaker 5: But we didn't know about them. Uh you see what
Speaker 5: I'm saying.
Speaker 9: So one day we come in the studio at the
Speaker 9: end of Straight out the Jungle, we get out of school.
Speaker 9: We go to the studio and the studio that Todd
Speaker 9: Terry worked in, we worked in, and the engineer, Tony
Speaker 9: d said, do you guys want to make a house record?
Speaker 9: We was like, yeah, sure, didn't even think of it
Speaker 9: as a separate genre from hip hop.
Speaker 5: He put the record on and it was royal house
Speaker 5: party people.
Speaker 9: Now we used to see Royal House at the house
Speaker 9: go out and do shows. Four people who were just
Speaker 9: dancers who worked on Wall Street, and we were like,
Speaker 9: y'all don't rap, and you go out and do shows
Speaker 9: and you get five grand. So he put the record
Speaker 9: on and I was like, yo, I did I swept
Speaker 9: to that record party people by Royal House. So I said, yeah,
Speaker 9: let's do it. So we took the took the record,
Speaker 9: put it on the turnta. Me said, I don't have
Speaker 9: instrumental turntable press record on the eight track machine, recorded
Speaker 9: the whole record to the eight track machine, and then
Speaker 9: I in twenty minutes, I sang the hook girl, oule
Speaker 9: house shoe girl, loule house shoot you and my hut
Speaker 9: now because at.
Speaker 5: The time we were saying and hip hop, we would
Speaker 5: say we're.
Speaker 9: Gonna house househ you like I'll take you to And
Speaker 9: so immediately I caught the double meaning of our house
Speaker 9: shoe in house music. And so I was like buzzing
Speaker 9: off of that cause I was like, one side is
Speaker 9: gonna hear it and go that's legit.
Speaker 5: You know, hip hop's gonna hear and say that's legit.
Speaker 9: And the other side, the dance people was gonna hear
Speaker 9: and go yeah, house music all right long yeah, And
Speaker 9: so that set the hook off and then I just
Speaker 9: kind of freestyled in the booth overdubbed the vocals. Then
Speaker 9: Mike went in and you know, I guess two hours
Speaker 9: later the record was done, and then we did some
Speaker 9: cuts on it, and we felt like we broke it
Speaker 9: down to a hip hop level. So we and then
Speaker 9: I remember calling our least Shahid, and I was like, yo,
Speaker 9: I put the phone at the speaking I was like.
Speaker 5: I was proud. I was like, Yo, look at listen
Speaker 5: to what we just did.
Speaker 9: And and Tip was on the phone and you was
Speaker 9: listening down. And then I took the phone back when
Speaker 9: the record was over and I.
Speaker 5: Said, you heard that.
Speaker 9: That is the jam and Ali was like, oh wow.
Speaker 9: He was like, Yo, that sounded like a real house
Speaker 9: record too.
Speaker 5: That was crazy.
Speaker 9: I repeat, that sounds like a real record too, you know,
Speaker 9: like authentic, you know, And I was like yeah, And
Speaker 9: I was like, but you can hear the hip hop
Speaker 9: in it too, you know, Sammy doing the cut star
Speaker 9: Wars breakbeat. So it was just like an exciting time.
Speaker 9: Now that record was given to the record company.
Speaker 5: They laughed at it.
Speaker 9: They said, we're not putting it on the vinyl what,
Speaker 9: but we'll put it on the cassette.
Speaker 5: Wow. And what did the DJs do?
Speaker 9: From Limelight to Studio fifty four to Roseland to the Palladium,
Speaker 9: to Milky Way to pay Day to Land, what did
Speaker 9: all the DJs do? They took the cassette and at
Speaker 9: the end of the night was the last record they.
Speaker 5: Played and they said, red, we need this record on vinyl.
Speaker 5: We playing it on cassette.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 5: So they had to go back and.
Speaker 6: Remaster the album and repress Wow, which goes.
Speaker 7: Back to G Street because they was the first one
Speaker 7: to actually take the song and preuss it on the
Speaker 7: hour original.
Speaker 5: Yeah, was like what this is not an album. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 5: we won't do the deal if that record is not
Speaker 5: on the album.
Speaker 1: So what was the reception like at the Latin Quarter
Speaker 1: when they heard, Like, were they open to it?
Speaker 13: Like?
Speaker 5: Could they play that at the Latin Quarter? Yo? Not
Speaker 5: at Quarters? It was kind of passed, It was pasted. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it was yeah, Latin Quarter.
Speaker 9: I'm sorry sorry I mentioned Latin Quarter, but that reckon
Speaker 9: wasn't recorded yet in the Latin Quarter years. Part of
Speaker 9: me on that but that audience was still in those
Speaker 9: other clubs, especially Roseland and what was.
Speaker 5: The club that closed that They closed down a couple of.
Speaker 9: Times that we did the final party for and they
Speaker 9: had a freestyle night. You think about that your question
Speaker 9: as your question, though I just wanted it was tramps.
Speaker 5: No, no, it was it was the.
Speaker 7: Rock eighteen team, make the dream.
Speaker 8: Work the dream Work.
Speaker 9: Anyway, that record went down well with hip hop and
Speaker 9: the dance audience so much so that you had dudes
Speaker 9: that was like, yo, I hated house music until I
Speaker 9: heard that record.
Speaker 5: I didn't like music until I heard that record. But yo,
Speaker 5: y'all got one.
Speaker 9: And then you start seeing those dudes at those clubs,
Speaker 9: you know, the hardcore dudes that would be listening to
Speaker 9: m w A be like Yo, Jungle Brothers is playing
Speaker 9: here tonight. Ten eighteen were up in here, five thousand
Speaker 9: packed dudes in their first coach with the bottle of
Speaker 9: them away. It's like as soon as they go, as
Speaker 9: soon as that record come on, we're going straight.
Speaker 7: That's that's That was the one that old girls girls,
Speaker 7: they caught on.
Speaker 5: They housed them, no doubt, but question, it was an
Speaker 5: anomaly and you could see it. You can see that people.
Speaker 9: It broke through the whole genre of boundary thing because
Speaker 9: it became just music.
Speaker 5: People just danced to it and jammed to it.
Speaker 9: Whether they was like I'm in the hip hop or
Speaker 9: I'm in the house, they was everybody.
Speaker 3: Was together a universal battle song to, like dance battle
Speaker 3: song to. I always remember seeing people in the club
Speaker 3: and that must be crazy to see people dance battle
Speaker 3: into your song like what they.
Speaker 2: Do like house shoot exactly. It worked like Baltimore places
Speaker 2: there you.
Speaker 5: Go, there, you go exactly, oh man.
Speaker 9: And then we go overseas and we think we're gonna
Speaker 9: be doing like a hip hop tour, which we did
Speaker 9: hip hop dates, but then we being.
Speaker 14: Like raves raves they didn't even call them ridiculous and
Speaker 14: sometimes they just be like, guys, here's eight thousand dollars,
Speaker 14: just do this the one.
Speaker 5: That's what they because I got it like that, if
Speaker 5: we did our whole show of straight out the Jungle,
Speaker 5: people people will be just waiting for our house. Yeah.
Speaker 9: Sometimes, so at the same we have that now at
Speaker 9: the same time we was breaking straight out the Jungle
Speaker 9: and that new vibe of hip hop, the whole.
Speaker 5: Rockchem esque E. P.
Speaker 9: M d s vibe of hip hop to a new
Speaker 9: audience in Berlin. With the walls, we were also breaking
Speaker 9: into the Acid House and we were breaking grounds with.
Speaker 5: All the raveheads that were doing the big festival.
Speaker 3: Not for nothing you mentioned the wall coming down. I
Speaker 3: just want to say, y'all did a festival at Wimbley
Speaker 3: for Mandela like when he first got.
Speaker 7: Yeah, when the first release birthday, Yeah, when they released
Speaker 7: it from President from Prins Yeah nice, yeah, yes us
Speaker 7: that's a sonic Nana Cherry.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you two, you two. That was probably the biggest date.
Speaker 5: That was the biggest ever was at that time? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Wait was was I late for the recording techniques?
Speaker 1: And yeah we missed the techniques for Straight out the Jones.
Speaker 1: So you guys got all the stories. We got the story,
Speaker 1: all right. That's I have so many people, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I just want to make sure that you know, no doubt,
Speaker 1: no doubt.
Speaker 5: That some girlfriends where we right now and then and
Speaker 5: there in their journey we are.
Speaker 6: We talked about Rough Deluxe, we went Straight Out the Jones.
Speaker 5: We talked about Crazy Wisdom Mass. We talked Crazy Wisdom Mass,
Speaker 5: but I'm sure.
Speaker 2: We didn't talk about how they ended up at the
Speaker 2: Roost Picnic.
Speaker 5: But you know, well, because.
Speaker 7: But we was here, okay, okay, so we were in Japan, yeah,
Speaker 7: showing performing on stage.
Speaker 5: You already know the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just one person. Everybody else Japan.
Speaker 9: Performing on stage at the festival Soul Camp and Sean
Speaker 9: g who was tour manager for Jill Scott, yeah, and
Speaker 9: the roots manager and the roots manager was in the audience.
Speaker 9: And then after the show he told me he was texting.
Speaker 5: He showed me the show.
Speaker 1: Sean was like, I was watching the show twelve hours behind.
Speaker 5: Like four in the morning. That's technology is crazy.
Speaker 9: I went, I went, I went into the catering to eat,
Speaker 9: and Sean was like, yo, I was just texting quest
Speaker 9: Love and telling him, you know the show. You guys
Speaker 9: got to come to the picnic. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 9: you know live Leap of Faith, because it's like that
Speaker 9: was just a week agos two weeks ago. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 9: we moved, were only in Japan, made the Work show,
Speaker 9: that MTV show, then one of the show after that,
Speaker 9: and then I was still in Japan for two weeks.
Speaker 9: After that, I just flew from Japan to Turkey to
Speaker 9: London to here.
Speaker 2: Because you don't live in this country.
Speaker 5: Don't live in country. Where are you? Where are you living?
Speaker 9: Don't ask me about politics, no clue.
Speaker 2: I asked you about the Brexit that's where.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I'm in Brexit world in London.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I live in London, but I've lived in a
Speaker 9: lot of places, and I just recently been in London
Speaker 9: for a year.
Speaker 5: I lived in Panama, moving around. But yeah, that's how,
Speaker 5: that's how we arrived here. Thank you, Sean Chief, Yeah,
Speaker 5: no doubt, thank you for you're for the jungle.
Speaker 2: You don't do a long ago.
Speaker 5: All right, So we're sitting here.
Speaker 1: Right now, uh with really one of one of my
Speaker 1: one of my favorite people ever.
Speaker 8: Uh.
Speaker 1: You are a one human operating, just walking machine of
Speaker 1: of of of of talent. I think the first time
Speaker 1: I saw you in Brooklyn, you were doing h Biggie's. Yes,
Speaker 1: you did Biggiest Juice and then I I haven't left
Speaker 1: your side. We've been signed these twins ever since. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the Court of Supreme Ladies and Gentlemen. Emily Wells, y'all.
Speaker 3: The third roop picnic for Emily, right, like how many picnics?
Speaker 2: Okay you did, Phil?
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yeah, she's been am I like her. Her
Speaker 1: and Chill Moody are just like the are our our
Speaker 1: go to always, you know, give them.
Speaker 5: Because you're cool.
Speaker 2: Well you know, but you welcomed me with like your love.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I feel like Barry White.
Speaker 6: Now wait wa wow, wait a minute, yes, now why
Speaker 6: was it so white?
Speaker 3: You?
Speaker 5: Wow?
Speaker 1: Wait, that's the whitest thing you've ever thought thirty years
Speaker 1: I've known you.
Speaker 5: Wait a minute, I'm assaulted because.
Speaker 1: Because when she said it, it filtered to you as
Speaker 1: a creed.
Speaker 5: So but to me, I was going very white with it, Creed.
Speaker 5: I know. Hey man, it's it's real. We already know
Speaker 5: Sante is the is the Jedi Master.
Speaker 1: No, but yeah you I well, first of all, how
Speaker 1: was your set?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 2: It was really fun playing for me.
Speaker 15: It's unusual play, you know on stage in the day,
Speaker 15: watching people trying to figure out what what.
Speaker 2: Does she do? There's no computer?
Speaker 1: Yeah, they always get it in the third or fourth minute.
Speaker 1: And that's how it was because when I you know,
Speaker 1: because it takes you for those that don't know, I
Speaker 1: guess what what is what is your go to device
Speaker 1: that you do to loop?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 15: It's actually.
Speaker 5: It's that green device on this.
Speaker 15: Talking about and samplennulas kind of it's kind of like
Speaker 15: having like a really accessible quick like you know.
Speaker 1: Four track, but like plus you know, so when you
Speaker 1: do that, is there a click track inside of your ears?
Speaker 1: Because when I watch you do this, you always start
Speaker 1: off with this kind of long ethereal note. And I'm
Speaker 1: trying to figure out if you're counting the metronome in
Speaker 1: your head because you wind up, you loop everything perfect,
Speaker 1: but it's just such a.
Speaker 4: Yello like.
Speaker 1: Moldless form of time, but you always seem to catch it.
Speaker 5: The strings.
Speaker 15: I think they have that sort of femeral thing going
Speaker 15: on by their very nature.
Speaker 16: And I like to get a little and everything just
Speaker 16: let everything swim. But yeah, I I it's a lot
Speaker 16: of practice for sure, and it's a lot of yeah, just.
Speaker 2: Just knowing where my one is, even if not obvious.
Speaker 5: It's a good lesson knowing where you want is one?
Speaker 5: Where the is it there? I wish.
Speaker 1: Morning certain members of the roots hEDS fired.
Speaker 5: That's good? No, well, okay, so yeah.
Speaker 15: I also have as on the stage with Okay, like
Speaker 15: I put some of my beats in there. I put
Speaker 15: all sorts of random simples that anything I want, so
Speaker 15: that really helped me open up your arrangements. So I'm
Speaker 15: not just stuck on these loops. So if I wanna
Speaker 15: go to a A B.
Speaker 1: Section or whatever, I can just like yeah, I think
Speaker 1: at one point I you were I don't know if
Speaker 1: you were playing keyboard with your right hand and the
Speaker 1: the the SPD drump pad with your left hand and
Speaker 1: looping and sing. You know, it's you really have to
Speaker 1: see it like it's it's it's it's it's next level,
Speaker 1: uh performance.
Speaker 5: How long did it take you to to figure that
Speaker 5: all out?
Speaker 13: Oh?
Speaker 15: Well, it it took some time. I mean it started
Speaker 15: really simple. I think I think it really started with
Speaker 15: strings and the loop pedal for me because violin and
Speaker 15: never knew how to incorporate that into a set, because
Speaker 15: I I'm not gonna play like I can schedule in
Speaker 15: the club.
Speaker 17: You know what I mean, like, oh what ill again?
Speaker 15: But that's not gonna apply for an an hour and
Speaker 15: so and strings are meant to, you know, rub next
Speaker 15: to each other, so I wanted that's so it kind
Speaker 15: of sort of with that and then oh.
Speaker 2: Can I just p.
Speaker 18: I was.
Speaker 2: Plugging stuff on st like really stupid.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, you're your own uh tech
Speaker 1: as well, like what if it what if the equipment
Speaker 1: breaks down?
Speaker 5: Then what you just go a cappella? It can't it
Speaker 5: just has it ever broken down?
Speaker 15: I've had, But I don't, really, like I said, on
Speaker 15: any computers, cause that stuff will break down more than
Speaker 15: any day.
Speaker 5: Really. I was about to say, you're you're.
Speaker 1: You're one of the the sh should I say the
Speaker 1: Brooklyn elite that don't usually like when those Brooklyn act
Speaker 1: Brooklyn e acts come on our show, I'll see more
Speaker 1: MacBook pros on.
Speaker 5: Stage and yeah than anything else.
Speaker 1: But uh, yeah, I was about to say that you're
Speaker 1: you're old school and your digital embrace. Sure, sure so
Speaker 1: kind of like D'Angelo with floppy discs.
Speaker 5: Oh so many.
Speaker 4: That I love that.
Speaker 11: And then yeah, uh it's like you can't even call
Speaker 11: that analog. It's like what what what what did you
Speaker 11: call that?
Speaker 1: Well, it's yeah, it's I don't care about electronic. It's electronic,
Speaker 1: it's not analog. So at So how do you apply this?
Speaker 1: I always wanted to know when when you're recording, uh
Speaker 1: your music in the studio, how do you apply what
Speaker 1: you do live on stage to your cause, y, your
Speaker 1: music is more fleshed out it's in the studio than
Speaker 1: it is uh on stage.
Speaker 15: To try to bring that feeling of the live thing,
Speaker 15: as it is for anyone into a into a recording studio.
Speaker 15: I mean, I I try to make it a mixture
Speaker 15: of those samples. And some things are just created in
Speaker 15: the moment, and I wanna take the moment I was
Speaker 15: writing that song into the record then.
Speaker 12: And let it be forever. Some things I wanna reperform
Speaker 12: over and over again, lots and lots of layers of strings.
Speaker 12: I mean some of my records all but viola, violin
Speaker 12: and many.
Speaker 15: Like you know, twenty one layers or what you know.
Speaker 5: Whatever, and then try to you can layer that much?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I do it live.
Speaker 15: I just play it over. I mean it's like it's.
Speaker 1: Too oh you just uh uh uh you know, to
Speaker 1: sound fuller, okay, make it sound.
Speaker 15: Really really big and.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 15: I but some things are you know, are sampled right
Speaker 15: into that little pedal. And and as I'm writing the
Speaker 15: songs and I don't, I don't bring those samples into
Speaker 15: I kind of treat them as though I kind of
Speaker 15: treat those samples like I was taking it off the
Speaker 15: record or something like that.
Speaker 2: I kind of create the loop that I would make
Speaker 2: that I would.
Speaker 5: That you would wanna take off of want it? I
Speaker 5: smart cause when I drama do the same thing, might
Speaker 5: work your own break.
Speaker 1: That's dope, exactly make it alright? God, So what's your future?
Speaker 1: And t So you just uh released your record? Uh
Speaker 1: what three months ago?
Speaker 15: Or yeah, well a few months ago you promise?
Speaker 19: Yeah, and I put it out on my own record label.
Speaker 12: And yeah, I just just I have I have a
Speaker 12: next the next and he has the next record. But
Speaker 12: it's a hard one to write because it's it's kind
Speaker 12: of about.
Speaker 1: And you mean, what will life be like after November?
Speaker 1: I've seen the future and boys.
Speaker 2: Rough, how do you make That's the question with a
Speaker 2: lot of artists face. So I'm.
Speaker 5: It's gonna be great.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what he's gonna do if he gets
Speaker 3: he's not gonna get it though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well uh on you know, once again, I thank
Speaker 1: you for doing the Roots picnic and anytime you you
Speaker 1: uh do anything with us collaborating whatever, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a treat. We're probably gonna work on this next roots
Speaker 1: album together because we've been we've been threatening to do
Speaker 1: this for for three albums. Now, so we're gonna make
Speaker 1: it happen. Emi Walls, ladies and gentlemen. I want to
Speaker 1: go to can we play? Oh we can.
Speaker 5: Wake up? Just seen it the entire room, like we can. Glad.
Speaker 2: Shout out to Emily and her class. Thank you man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, shout out for her being a trooper. She was
Speaker 5: on the couch.
Speaker 17: Oh, thank you, so happy on the couch.
Speaker 2: They of the record that was and the idea. I
Speaker 2: have this idea in my head. I will make it happy.
Speaker 2: I loved it so much.
Speaker 5: That's what's up. That's good.
Speaker 1: Well, we're gonna go to Passenger by Emily wells Uh
Speaker 1: on Quest of Supreme only on Pandora.
Speaker 5: We will be right back. We are lots from the
Speaker 5: roach picnic in y C.
Speaker 2: I'm my person, Joe, I'm my person.
Speaker 5: Jin give me the keys, I'm the job.
Speaker 2: I'm a person. I'm the person.
Speaker 20: If you give me the keys, you know s pull
Speaker 20: for its own my throat and need it just to
Speaker 20: go a gid a kidny say it ain't so. I'm
Speaker 20: driving on tomorrow and losing on my rope. Boom over
Speaker 20: the wall, and I've just lost the rope.
Speaker 5: I had a feeling this mynd.
Speaker 20: Is so hard, So tell me, tell me that you
Speaker 20: know how to make it to give me a a
Speaker 20: you mad just sing, give me all your bills, your
Speaker 20: bed siding, just to kill my l's.
Speaker 1: I'm support for Quest Love Supreme and Pandora's provided by
Speaker 1: boost Mobile.
Speaker 5: Boost Mobile where you're at.
Speaker 6: This is Quest Love Supreme only on Pandora, Fonte Fontagelo, Sugar,
Speaker 6: Steve Lovely, Layah, Boss, Bill Scott, motherfucking yea yo.
Speaker 5: That was passenger and lactating unpaid be unpaid correction, we
Speaker 5: forgot it. Unpaid. Bill is paid now, but we can
Speaker 5: still call my.
Speaker 15: Here.
Speaker 5: It's called continuity, so we gotta exactly. We were too
Speaker 5: far in the.
Speaker 8: Story to change it about underpaid.
Speaker 5: Under Okay, nicknames.
Speaker 1: My Maya Rudolph is still talking about the radio show,
Speaker 1: and she still calls you black Bill and white Bill.
Speaker 5: She said, wait, wait, who's some people like I said,
Speaker 5: I've had nickname.
Speaker 3: She's like the only one that can do that because
Speaker 3: shepped both sides. But wait, so Boston.
Speaker 5: She was the first guest on our show. She still knows.
Speaker 1: But she was the first lady of She was the
Speaker 1: first lady question. She was the first and fell asleep
Speaker 1: for I get it.
Speaker 3: She still you know she could play BOTHA. I was
Speaker 3: about to give you some love, boss, because you've been
Speaker 3: busy the last few days.
Speaker 5: Tell them the name of the jam though for yeah,
Speaker 5: you did, we did. I don't think we did well.
Speaker 5: That was Passenger five minutes after the fact. Okay, so Liaiah,
Speaker 5: you were saying, no, I'm just.
Speaker 3: Saying that I wanted the bosses about to leave because
Speaker 3: he got to go on stage the main show, which
Speaker 3: is tonight, D'Angelo, John Maye.
Speaker 1: Mayor, John Mayor, and uh, a friend of mine from
Speaker 1: Chicago is going to come by as well.
Speaker 11: By the time everybody here's this, you know, it'll the
Speaker 11: show be in the past. So you can go ahead
Speaker 11: and tell us.
Speaker 1: Now let's keep it a mystery alone. Alchoh, Michael Jordan,
Speaker 1: I was going I wish it was.
Speaker 5: Going to be out shut off, asshole.
Speaker 1: Okay, So I just wanted to say, Kirby Bucket just
Speaker 1: restored he's from Minneapolis, Steve doing what he missed the irony.
Speaker 5: Of saying your joke from your joke. Yes, okay, this
Speaker 5: is love supreme.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so tonight is uh the roots and uh we
Speaker 1: got common We got uh.
Speaker 5: John Mayor, and we got D'Angelo.
Speaker 1: The reason why I'm like struggling to remember things is
Speaker 1: because I mean, the way that I do business is
Speaker 1: I kind of I tend.
Speaker 5: To agree to things fourteen months ahead of time.
Speaker 1: Like right now, we are planning the Philly Roots picnic
Speaker 1: right now, and with a very monumental record that came
Speaker 1: out as of this taping, we're now talking to that
Speaker 1: particular young lady about headlining. Yeah, you just tend to
Speaker 1: plan things way ahead of time, and so at I
Speaker 1: don't know for me. Once it was proposed to me
Speaker 1: that we should do a Roots picnic on steroids and
Speaker 1: instead of the Roots back in the one act, why
Speaker 1: don't we back like everybody, six of them? And I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, yeah, of course I'll do that. And
Speaker 1: then once crunch time comes, you know, man, just the
Speaker 1: daggers in the stairs of all the Roots family members
Speaker 1: looking at me, I feel horrible, Like all of them
Speaker 1: are libras, or I guess they're still libras even with
Speaker 1: the addition of.
Speaker 5: That unspoken the astrological sign.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but all of them all their birthdays of this week,
Speaker 1: so most of them have had to uh not hang
Speaker 1: with their families.
Speaker 5: And rehearse and wait and rehearse and wait.
Speaker 2: And he said they looked like zombie, like.
Speaker 5: They were Kung Fu zombies. It just it just seems
Speaker 5: it just seemed like I was in mood.
Speaker 1: But you know, I had a few triple espressos, so
Speaker 1: I was like normal while everyone else was like that's
Speaker 1: what you do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but no, I don't sleep. Drive.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, you don't sleep.
Speaker 5: No, I do sleep. But I'm just saying that this
Speaker 5: this show is packed.
Speaker 1: With a lot of cues and a lot of modulations
Speaker 1: and tricks and and and you know, I'm hoping that
Speaker 1: I remember everything. It's going to be a monster show.
Speaker 1: But I just hope that I remember everything.
Speaker 6: I think even if you don't remember, everything will be nonetherwiser.
Speaker 6: I think the crowd would just be happy. I know,
Speaker 6: to you, you be like, fuck, I missed that. Whatever,
Speaker 6: But I'm willing to let the small stuff slide. But
Speaker 6: just the kind of neurotic nature of the guests that
Speaker 6: we had, like that are other show. You know they're
Speaker 6: gonna want it like perfect note for note for note.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but miss it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah they're missing and like get over yourself, dude,
Speaker 6: like I'm paying, I'm playing for eighteen other motherfuckers.
Speaker 5: Right, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But they never understand, they never understand that, they never
Speaker 1: understand that she's witness to this stuff. Howard rehearsals. In
Speaker 1: your opinion, the first night of rehearsals with D'Angelo was
Speaker 1: probably that was the most beautiful thing I ever seen,
Speaker 1: because like common also happened to be rehearsal next door.
Speaker 5: That's how you post that on Instagram.
Speaker 1: And he had like his room was the epicenter collective
Speaker 1: of all like neo neo blackatism. We quoted new terms here,
Speaker 1: it was neo blackatism. Like it was like you know,
Speaker 1: Jamila of the.
Speaker 5: Mew and and and Ava and like all of yeah,
Speaker 5: Robert Glasper, like just all.
Speaker 1: The ensigns whining candles set of twenty fifteen sixty and
Speaker 1: it was like we were the pie piper. We we
Speaker 1: were going over the root from Voodoo and just one
Speaker 1: by one, like it was like all the children of
Speaker 1: you Voodoo just came like we looked up and then
Speaker 1: there was like at least like twenty of them, like
Speaker 1: it was a closed versal, but hap they all just
Speaker 1: came in, you know, and family it was less a
Speaker 1: family reunion and more like and Dangel has never seen that,
Speaker 1: Like it's really hard for him to even imagine the
Speaker 1: Foodoo effect because he's so isolated from the world, so
Speaker 1: he doesn't get like he doesn't know what the Dirty
Speaker 1: Projectors are and.
Speaker 5: How like their whole harmony.
Speaker 1: Game is based on you know, like Dave's hold Steeze
Speaker 1: is like Yo Voodoo is how I stack my harmonies
Speaker 1: and all this stuff, and like all these references that
Speaker 1: even I missed, So just to see, I mean, the
Speaker 1: collective story is always like, yeah, when I was eight,
Speaker 1: my older sister got that record and I grew up
Speaker 1: on that record. So just to watch them as food
Speaker 1: grown adults watching D'Angelo do that shit like it was,
Speaker 1: it was, it was some beautiful.
Speaker 3: Well boss, speaking of d Angelo, I just got to
Speaker 3: call from the officials at Brian Park.
Speaker 5: You got to go, Yeah, I gotta go.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, this is not the question of supreme.
Speaker 6: So we're so completely happy and honor today to be
Speaker 6: joined by a young lady that I am a fan of,
Speaker 6: you know, looking at the photo right now, and she
Speaker 6: first captured my heart when she put out a record.
Speaker 5: God, I want to say, was it twenty twelve? Was
Speaker 5: it was that when life came up?
Speaker 13: Yeah, Christ and two thousand and Oh my.
Speaker 6: God, it was oh man, wow, time keep on slipping
Speaker 6: into the future. Nah Man, Live your Life. It was
Speaker 6: a record she put out, produced by Pharrell, and uh,
Speaker 6: it was just something that was just I was amazed
Speaker 6: just by the simplicity of it.
Speaker 5: It was something that drove.
Speaker 6: It was at a you know, very driving beat, very
Speaker 6: mellow uh you know, keyboard, you know, arrangement and her voice.
Speaker 6: The thing I liked about it was that it just
Speaker 6: sounded really pure. It was just not a lot of
Speaker 6: vocal tricks, not a whole lot of just not a
Speaker 6: whole lot of a dormant It was just really simple
Speaker 6: and it cut through and she just sang the song
Speaker 6: and the lyrically really spoke to me was a you know,
Speaker 6: live if you really want to, you know, and sess
Speaker 6: that's something that you know, living is a choice, you know,
Speaker 6: and and that really spoke to me. So, uh, ladies
Speaker 6: and gentlemen, give a big quest love Supreme Team Supreme
Speaker 6: Brown of applause for incredibly talented Una ladies jumping.
Speaker 5: Bang bang bang. When this joint off stage, Fresh out stage.
Speaker 5: How was your performance? Time to go?
Speaker 13: It went really really well, like you know, the crowd
Speaker 13: was amazing, and yeah, it was just kind of like
Speaker 13: we we drove from yesterday. Oh my god, we were
Speaker 13: from Rhode Island yesterday. Oh wow, Providence, Rhode Island. So
Speaker 13: I'm on tour right now, you know. So yeah, we've
Speaker 13: been on the road, so coming out here is like
Speaker 13: a like a treat and I've always like, I've been
Speaker 13: looking forward to perform at the Roots Picnic. So yeah,
Speaker 13: I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 5: That's dope. What so your show?
Speaker 6: I was unfortunate, you know, I wasn't able to see
Speaker 6: your show because I was stuck over here.
Speaker 5: Doing this ship.
Speaker 6: Our cult leader of Mirror Thompson had us locked up
Speaker 6: in here like like hostages.
Speaker 5: No food, no food we had had and we had
Speaker 5: to ask for the water. We had to ask for that.
Speaker 5: It's a cushy gig, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 6: But not so, I wasn't able to see your show, unfortunately.
Speaker 6: What does your show for people that you know haven't
Speaker 6: had the fortune of singing? What is your show like?
Speaker 6: Do you of course you're singing? Do you playing the
Speaker 6: instruments like what is your what's your state show?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 13: Well, I sing mostly. You know, I used to do
Speaker 13: a lot of acoustic performances, so I used to play
Speaker 13: a lot of the acoustic guitar and then you know,
Speaker 13: like I couldn't hire a guitar player, so I play
Speaker 13: electric guitar on my set. But now that I can
Speaker 13: finally do that, you know, like I would love to
Speaker 13: play the guitar my shows. Is just that I just
Speaker 13: feel like, you know, I'm not like exactly like it's
Speaker 13: a guitar guitar player. Yeah, I'm not there yet, So
Speaker 13: we'll just focus on just performing. And you know, like
Speaker 13: I've been touring for four years and it's really just
Speaker 13: I'm just growing into it a real artist. Like I
Speaker 13: never get to do that. I never got to do
Speaker 13: that back home in Malaysia where I'm from. Yeah, so
Speaker 13: coming out here was just like going on tour and
Speaker 13: kind of like just slowly learning how to you know,
Speaker 13: give a really good performance for the fans.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's sellous.
Speaker 6: So Malaysia, Like what is that like in this this
Speaker 6: what's the city's music scene?
Speaker 13: The music scene? Oh, it's like it's a small country,
Speaker 13: but it's constantly growing. Like we went from like having
Speaker 13: singers like just doing ballads and traditional Malay music like
Speaker 13: I'm Malay. So the traditional music is more kind of
Speaker 13: like you know, like a cross between like Indonesian and
Speaker 13: kind of like Thai and so that the Southeast Asian sound,
Speaker 13: you know. And but now it's like slowly growing. Like
Speaker 13: the hip hop scene started like I think like twenty
Speaker 13: years ago or so, you know, so it was it's
Speaker 13: pretty interesting to see Like when I I kind of
Speaker 13: like grew up just watching like Okay, well there's a
Speaker 13: Malaysian hip hop artist. I'm like, oh okay, there's a
Speaker 13: Malaysian like indie rock artists, and yeah, so I kind
Speaker 13: of like grew up in that setting.
Speaker 2: Any of them crossed over as much as you have.
Speaker 2: I feel.
Speaker 13: No to America. No, I think.
Speaker 6: You're kind of like the first stop the limo, like
Speaker 6: you're the one's Charlie Mat' Charlie Mat like thank you.
Speaker 5: You know that kind of is putting on.
Speaker 6: Do you feel any like in hip hop in you know, America,
Speaker 6: there is a big the big thing of putting on,
Speaker 6: you know what I'm saying, Like, you know, I put
Speaker 6: on for my city, Like so wherever I come from.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna put on for wherever? Do you feel the
Speaker 6: need to put on for the Lasia the whole country?
Speaker 6: Like I'm Yuna and I'm doing it, but.
Speaker 13: Everybody, I mean, you know, I started out in Malaysia,
Speaker 13: Like I was already doing music for three four years
Speaker 13: back home before I move out to Los Angeles.
Speaker 5: You when did you come to LA.
Speaker 13: Twenty eleven? Around that time?
Speaker 2: The time is short.
Speaker 13: Yeah, So I started making music like two thousand and seven,
Speaker 13: two thousand and eight pretty much. So it's it's quite
Speaker 13: an interesting journey.
Speaker 6: You started making music in two thousand and seven, Yeah,
Speaker 6: that was when you really started.
Speaker 13: So writing, Yeah, writing songs and just kind of like
Speaker 13: producing my own album. Like I didn't want to sign
Speaker 13: to any labels back home. I don't know, like you know,
Speaker 13: inside I felt like inside, I was just like in
Speaker 13: my heart, like okay, well I want to be a
Speaker 13: singer songwriter, but I don't want to be signed. I
Speaker 13: don't want to sign with any labels because I know
Speaker 13: if I do that, I'm like kind of like trapped
Speaker 13: in Malaysia for a long long time. So I didn't
Speaker 13: want to do that because I knew, like I want
Speaker 13: to get out of Malaysia. I want to come out
Speaker 13: to the UK or the US and really just make
Speaker 13: music out there.
Speaker 6: How does a person get because that's I mean, that's
Speaker 6: pretty amazing. How does a person get from making music
Speaker 6: starting off making music in two thousand and seven to
Speaker 6: working with for real Williams who is one of the
Speaker 6: biggest producers in the three years man, I mean four
Speaker 6: years man.
Speaker 2: How does the friend of a friend.
Speaker 13: Or like kind of a little bit like that. I
Speaker 13: think it's a little bit of kind of like when
Speaker 13: you work really hard and then you you know, like
Speaker 13: just meeting the right people, and I guess the mixture
Speaker 13: of both. Like I got really lucky, you know, like
Speaker 13: I was in Malaysia just doing my my music thing,
Speaker 13: and then my management from Los Angeles indiepop. My manager
Speaker 13: Ben found me on my Space music. Oh yeah that
Speaker 13: was that time.
Speaker 6: Shout out.
Speaker 19: Where is Tom these days?
Speaker 13: So I know our first friend, but yeah, so I
Speaker 13: don't know, like he hit me up and then emailed me.
Speaker 13: I didn't. I didn't respond to his emails for a
Speaker 13: long time because I thought it was a scam. It
Speaker 13: was just like all these things like I'm not gonna
Speaker 13: reply to an American dude, you know, like just like
Speaker 13: fly out to l A, not not doing what to do.
Speaker 13: But he came out to call A Lumpur, the city
Speaker 13: where I'm from, met up with me, and you know,
Speaker 13: we got to know each other, kind of talk about
Speaker 13: our the music career that could be, you know, like
Speaker 13: a potential music career out here. And I was like
Speaker 13: all for it, you know, okay, final, let's do it.
Speaker 13: And so Ben he's been in the music industry for
Speaker 13: a very long time. He just just started a music
Speaker 13: management like label, and he worked in radio for like
Speaker 13: a long long time time. So yeah, I mean, like
Speaker 13: I guess like I got really lucky that he was
Speaker 13: kind of like this fun, like nice and friendly person
Speaker 13: you know as a manager, because like getting a good
Speaker 13: manager's car. Yeah, so yeah, that's dope.
Speaker 6: So when you guys were working on uh on the
Speaker 6: track the work you did with for real, was that
Speaker 6: you guys working together in the studio or was it
Speaker 6: like he did the track and then you came in
Speaker 6: and did it?
Speaker 5: Like how did that come together?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 13: I know I was. I was in the studio with him. Yeah,
Speaker 13: so we were that magic. Yeah we Wow. I was
Speaker 13: traveling from Malaysia to Los Angeles and then I took
Speaker 13: a flight to Miami and then from Miami like took
Speaker 13: the I remember this, like from Miami airport, we took
Speaker 13: the taxi and I didn't like shower for three days
Speaker 13: and just like went to the studio and then I
Speaker 13: was like, okay, well, maybe I get to put some
Speaker 13: makeup on and I nope. He comes out from his car.
Speaker 13: I'm just like all right, well to sit high. I'm
Speaker 13: you know, yeah, I haven't shot in three days.
Speaker 2: But he would.
Speaker 13: He was really sweet, you know, like we got into
Speaker 13: the studio, start working and live your life was like
Speaker 13: the song that kind of just like I was kind
Speaker 13: of like afraid of moving forward with the music because
Speaker 13: he made that beat, like I remember like maybe like
Speaker 13: we've been in the studio for five days and he
Speaker 13: was like do you like this? You know, he was
Speaker 13: working on something and I thought, I legit thought that
Speaker 13: he was doing that beat for someone else. And I'm like,
Speaker 13: oh no, this is dope.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 13: And he's like, okay, cool write on this. I'm like
Speaker 13: wait what you know, like how do I do this?
Speaker 13: But he guided me through it, you know, so it
Speaker 13: was fun, like it was a learning process. Like I've
Speaker 13: never worked with a hip hop producer before, so it
Speaker 13: was it kind of like bought me to be more
Speaker 13: experimental if you can, you know, like or open to
Speaker 13: new genres because back then I was really just doing acoustic.
Speaker 13: I was in my own bubble, you know.
Speaker 6: So yeah, you're doing like when you're creative process, when
Speaker 6: you're writing, what comes first? Is it melody first? Or
Speaker 6: is it like lyrics words first? How does that come together?
Speaker 13: It depends really like I can. I'm pretty much, you know,
Speaker 13: flexible when it comes to songwriting. I've been doing I've.
Speaker 19: Been doing it for a long long time.
Speaker 13: So it's like either I'm like I come out with lyrics,
Speaker 13: I write down some words.
Speaker 6: Are you one of these people because I'm I do it?
Speaker 6: Do you keep notes in your phone?
Speaker 13: Oh yeah, definitely.
Speaker 5: Three albums with material in your phone?
Speaker 4: I have.
Speaker 13: I have like a lot of materials in my phone,
Speaker 13: like chapters for example my my the new album. Yeah,
Speaker 13: most of it was just like me writing on my
Speaker 13: my phone, like my notes.
Speaker 2: Yeah for all. It's like not the only like living
Speaker 2: legend that you work with. It's weird, this is a
Speaker 2: short career, but you're working with like.
Speaker 5: Great knocking down.
Speaker 11: That's like with David Foster, you you have to have
Speaker 11: like twenty years under your So how did that, how
Speaker 11: did that happen?
Speaker 13: Well, So when I first came out to LA, obviously
Speaker 13: we went to meet up with a lot of an
Speaker 13: R people, you know, like a lot of labels, like
Speaker 13: shopping for labels, and we met out with UH and
Speaker 13: an R from verth And at the time, that was
Speaker 13: like five years ago. Like the first person that I
Speaker 13: met was this this lady from from Verve Records and
Speaker 13: Universal and she was she she was in love with me,
Speaker 13: you know that she really believed in my career. And uh,
Speaker 13: back then, like David Foster was not in the picture yet.
Speaker 13: So after a while, you know, like he joined verf
Speaker 13: and he found out about me, and then like he
Speaker 13: was like, oh, you know, like why didn't we sign
Speaker 13: this girl like in the So it was really cool
Speaker 13: to be able to you know, come to see him
Speaker 13: and then like played some songs for him and you know,
Speaker 13: like work with him like for for a song on
Speaker 13: this album.
Speaker 6: So yeah, did you know that familiar of like who
Speaker 6: with who he was like before?
Speaker 13: Oh yeah, definitely, He's huge in Malaysia. He would come out,
Speaker 13: he would come out and like do his own concerts do.
Speaker 2: They go crazy over you? Yet when you go home?
Speaker 4: Did they?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And you must get a lot of love too, because
Speaker 3: like you, you haven't changed who you are. I'm sure
Speaker 3: at some point there was some resistance about you being
Speaker 3: of course the broad Muslim woman that you are, and
Speaker 3: how you dressed the way you dress, even though you
Speaker 3: had funkied it up to a level that is.
Speaker 2: Like, but was there ever any resistance to you being you?
Speaker 13: Oh?
Speaker 4: No not.
Speaker 13: I mean like I've never faced any like, you know,
Speaker 13: anything challenging like.
Speaker 2: That labels because people always yeah.
Speaker 13: No, I mean, uh no, not at all. You know
Speaker 13: what's weird though, I went through that back home in
Speaker 13: Malaysia because like, yeah, like covering up it was just
Speaker 13: something like weird, like if you want to be an artist,
Speaker 13: it's not it's something That's another reason why I stayed
Speaker 13: independent for a very long time, because Okay, well they're
Speaker 13: not going to accept me for who I am. I
Speaker 13: gotta change. So I'm not going to change. I'm just
Speaker 13: going to do my thing. And but coming out here
Speaker 13: was surprisingly like super easy. Everyone was just like I
Speaker 13: you know, I was with the Fader label for for
Speaker 13: a while and they were super sweet, super supportive and
Speaker 13: really believed in like my my work and my talent,
Speaker 13: and yeah, just like it was just easy for me.
Speaker 2: Are you doing anything in the fashion line?
Speaker 5: Uh?
Speaker 13: Yeah, I am a little bit, A little bit.
Speaker 2: I feel like I really want you.
Speaker 6: To know it seemed like it would be fit for you.
Speaker 6: Your newest record, Chapters. You were talking about how this
Speaker 6: was written. If I'm not mistaken, it was written after
Speaker 6: the end of a relationship or was it it was
Speaker 6: inspired by a breakup?
Speaker 4: You're like, you're not sure it was.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, I just want to I know, I know.
Speaker 6: It was a record, every army record, I know, one
Speaker 6: of the motherfuckers.
Speaker 5: I'm just saying, I just want to make you represent
Speaker 5: the right record.
Speaker 6: It was Chapters, and you were saying that you wanted
Speaker 6: to write a record. You know, previously you were in
Speaker 6: a relationship and you were I guess too dependent co
Speaker 6: dependent on that relationship that you're in, and so you said,
Speaker 6: you know, I want to write a record that you know,
Speaker 6: I was single, I'm free, and I want to write
Speaker 6: something in that state of mind. Yeah, what is the
Speaker 6: difference between those two states of mind in terms of
Speaker 6: creating from a place of I'm in this relationship and
Speaker 6: maybe I'm a little to dependent on it versus I'm
Speaker 6: free and you know, I let that go.
Speaker 13: I mean, I guess, like you being a singer, song
Speaker 13: I do you just tend to write like obviously what
Speaker 13: you know best, you know, like you know what's in
Speaker 13: your heart. And for me, at the time, I was
Speaker 13: going through like you know, like a breakup and it
Speaker 13: was really hard, you know, and but now I'm kind
Speaker 13: of you know, like I've moved on obviously by the time,
Speaker 13: like I was really in that moment, So like what
Speaker 13: do I do, Like, okay, like I'm in that moment
Speaker 13: and then I have to write an album like duh,
Speaker 13: always like you'll end up just writing you know what
Speaker 13: you what you're feeling, and that's how it's supposed to be,
Speaker 13: you know, instead of just like writing happy songs or
Speaker 13: like you know, faking a song, and uh, yeah, I
Speaker 13: guess it's a It really depends. Like for chapters, I
Speaker 13: I wanted to write about okay, like at the time
Speaker 13: I was going through a breakup, and then in the present,
Speaker 13: like I feel kind of like in the limbo. You know.
Speaker 13: So there's a song called Mannequin where I just kind
Speaker 13: of feel that way and then and the future is
Speaker 13: like best love, like the kind of love that I
Speaker 13: want for the future, you know, so you want for
Speaker 13: the future. That's kind of love.
Speaker 6: Let everyone know because I mean, hey, this is Quess
Speaker 6: Love Supreme, and you never know your best love could
Speaker 6: be listening right now.
Speaker 5: So let the people know.
Speaker 6: You know, Let what what does the best love look like?
Speaker 13: You know, someone who's just like who have the best
Speaker 13: intentions for you, you know, like who just wants you
Speaker 13: to be happy inside out, like without expecting anything back.
Speaker 13: Not that I'm not going to give you anything back,
Speaker 13: you know, obviously there there will be like it's a
Speaker 13: two way thing. But someone someone who's just purely like
Speaker 13: like lovely. I just want someone lovely, you know.
Speaker 6: And yeah, that was that was beautiful.
Speaker 5: In here.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 6: Well you to thank you so much for taking time
Speaker 6: and coming through and chopping it up with us about
Speaker 6: being lovely.
Speaker 13: And and everything.
Speaker 6: Lazies, gentlemen, give it up for un on quest. This
Speaker 6: is Questlove Supreme. Fine Tivolo like ea unpaid Bill Boss Bill, Hello,
Speaker 6: Sugar Steve. It's not Scott Yayo in the building us
Speaker 6: quest love Supreme y'all Team Supremes in the buildings, how
Speaker 6: we go down. Listen, we are here today, this is
Speaker 6: we're live in New York.
Speaker 5: City at the Broots Picnic.
Speaker 6: So if you hear any background noise or whatever, that
Speaker 6: is the noise from musicians doing what they do getting
Speaker 6: paid and uh from a few times we do actually
Speaker 6: get goddamn paid. Really on your show, on your show,
Speaker 6: you know what I'm saying. But but nah, man, so listen,
Speaker 6: we're live here and we're here today while with the
Speaker 6: young man who is by birthright music Royalty, Royalty.
Speaker 5: Royalty.
Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying, man, I'm not I mean, no, no,
Speaker 6: no bullshit, no over selling.
Speaker 5: I mean, this is is actual facts. Bro.
Speaker 6: Ladies and gentlemen, give it up, big question of supreme
Speaker 6: rad applause, Mister Daniel Marley, y'all give.
Speaker 5: You man, thank you for being here.
Speaker 19: Half human, half ninja ninjaja.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 5: For tell us tell us about because because the note
Speaker 5: that we got was that you know you're half human
Speaker 5: half ninja.
Speaker 6: You're saying your full ninja like yeah, I mean, of course, okay,
Speaker 6: tell us about the life of a ninja.
Speaker 5: I mean we live this life, okay.
Speaker 2: This bro because Nina doubles.
Speaker 6: That is, It's one of those words we can you know,
Speaker 6: half human also ninja.
Speaker 19: But I'm not half no ninja, your ninja, okay, because
Speaker 19: I'm a ninja. You know, I'm very much into martial
Speaker 19: arts fully. You know, I grew up very into Bruce Lee,
Speaker 19: into his philosophy, you know, into everything he says, into
Speaker 19: his trainer as well, and so that that culture of
Speaker 19: martial arts is is a big deal to me. And
Speaker 19: and how they live their life and you know Charlie
Speaker 19: Monks and very spiritual folks, and that's pretty much, uh
Speaker 19: path that I would love to take. If I had choice,
Speaker 19: I would have been in the Shanin Temple, like just training.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you have a usually bought a pet.
Speaker 19: I do, like pitbull labrador mixed a little baby named
Speaker 19: Shain young animal nin you know that's dope.
Speaker 6: What what like the principles that they teach in that uh,
Speaker 6: what if any have you applied that to your music career?
Speaker 6: Like how do they mirror each other in any way?
Speaker 19: Well, mainly being like water, you know as in keeping
Speaker 19: a flow, you know, never never locking yourself into a
Speaker 19: corner like this bottle. It's filled with water. The water
Speaker 19: can't go anywhere else. If you put a hole in here,
Speaker 19: it's out and it keeps going wherever it wants to go.
Speaker 19: It just you know, and and always not to be
Speaker 19: never get phased by things. You know, And that's pretty
Speaker 19: much one of the main things where if you take
Speaker 19: that and apply it, it leads you to a lot
Speaker 19: of other aspects of it as well.
Speaker 6: Got you, uh, at the beginning of the interview, I,
Speaker 6: you know, referred to you as being you know, royalty,
Speaker 6: and that certainly is no you know, no overstatement.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: He is Daniel, your dad, Ziggy Ziggy Marley, who is
Speaker 6: of course the sun Uh, legendary Bob Marley. When you
Speaker 6: talk about being like water and you know you do
Speaker 6: not want to be restricted. Was there every point in
Speaker 6: your life where you felt like being a son of
Speaker 6: such luminaries? Did you almost kind of feel like at
Speaker 6: times that like, man, I have to do music, like
Speaker 6: I have no other choice than anything else.
Speaker 19: Well, I have no other choice because this is what
Speaker 19: I'm good at. It's not really you know, we tried
Speaker 19: a couple other things. Try to go to school, you know,
Speaker 19: you know what I'm saying, like got picked out of that.
Speaker 19: You know, it wasn't for me. The school thing.
Speaker 5: What were you going to for?
Speaker 19: I was going to school for music production and music,
Speaker 19: orchestra orchestral music. I was really into classical and I
Speaker 19: wanted to basically just like take courses in that lane
Speaker 19: and learn how how that world went. And it just
Speaker 19: didn't work out.
Speaker 5: You know, I didn't. It didn't work out.
Speaker 19: I couldn't afford the tuition, man financial aid. They won't
Speaker 19: give me financial aid because of what you said earlier.
Speaker 5: They see that fast.
Speaker 19: You don't need no financial I'm like, yeah, I'm trying
Speaker 19: to go to school. Yeah, but life is what it is.
Speaker 18: You know.
Speaker 19: I grew up with my mom, so it's a different
Speaker 19: it's a different thing. So the whole royalty side of it,
Speaker 19: you know, I look up to my granddad and my
Speaker 19: old man for what they're doing, what they do, what
Speaker 19: he's doing right now, what my granddad has done. But
Speaker 19: like my granddad does not. He never think of hisself
Speaker 19: in that way. And that's where I take Like, when
Speaker 19: I talk about music and the whole mission, I go
Speaker 19: from his perspective. I don't really go from the perspective
Speaker 19: of after his death and what people perceived. You know,
Speaker 19: I kind of still listen to his words and understand
Speaker 19: that it's not about that. You know, we grew up
Speaker 19: knowing it's not about that. Some of us, me and
Speaker 19: my sister. That was the lessons we grew up with.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 19: It was never a silver spoon thing. I grew up
Speaker 19: around studios, but they weren't. You couldn't just use the studio.
Speaker 19: You really you had to be good, you know what
Speaker 19: I mean, Like you had to first learn how to
Speaker 19: wrap the cables up. You know what I mean, like
Speaker 19: all of that.
Speaker 4: Yeah you are.
Speaker 19: Yeah, pretty much like you couldn't use the studio just
Speaker 19: because and so and that was my uncle Steven growing
Speaker 19: me like that and pretty much grew around him uncle
Speaker 19: Damien in Florida, and you know it was like that.
Speaker 5: So were you raised and where were you I.
Speaker 19: Was raised in Jamaica. I moved to moved to Miami
Speaker 19: when I was fifteen. Oh okay, right, So I lived
Speaker 19: in Florida from fifteen to like i'd say, twenty one,
Speaker 19: and then I went to La So.
Speaker 5: Is that where you are now right now? In La now?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Yeah, man, that's that's so dope to hear you say
Speaker 6: about how you know, uh, you know, before you get
Speaker 6: in the studio, you had to wrap the cables up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, like learning that.
Speaker 19: Yeah, really you got to appreciate all parts of it
Speaker 19: in order to really be about it. And I'm very
Speaker 19: passionate about it. So I do want to know how
Speaker 19: to do it, and I do it a lot. A
Speaker 19: lot of the things I do is by myself. So
Speaker 19: I'm home and I you know, I hooked my whole
Speaker 19: plug up, plug up everything. You know, I break it
Speaker 19: down when I need to, but I record my self
Speaker 19: all instruments usually, And that's really where it came from.
Speaker 19: That teaching of starting from the ground is really what
Speaker 19: my whole passion in my life is about. Like we
Speaker 19: start from zero, you know, we don't start from he's
Speaker 19: Bob Marley's grandson. We start from this is Bambata. What
Speaker 19: are you going to do? Who are you?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 19: What are you about? Are you good enough? You know
Speaker 19: what I'm saying? So totally and so from there, that's
Speaker 19: what I say.
Speaker 5: That's dope, man. Thanks.
Speaker 6: When you start off, you know you first started making
Speaker 6: your early record, first of all, how old were you
Speaker 6: when you first started recording.
Speaker 19: I'd say the first record I recorded I was, I'd say,
Speaker 19: like eighteen okay, yeah, was.
Speaker 5: That what records you did with your dad?
Speaker 19: No, I did that when I first got to La.
Speaker 19: So I was about twenty one when I did that.
Speaker 19: You know that happened right real random, you know what
Speaker 19: I'm saying, Like, I went to La. He lives in LA.
Speaker 19: I was in Miami, me and my sister for years
Speaker 19: and years. I want to let you go check him.
Speaker 19: He was like, oh, you want to do a song.
Speaker 19: I'm like, well, yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Okay, why not?
Speaker 19: So then you know, he just asked me to write
Speaker 19: something down, like, you know, a little fifteen minute, I
Speaker 19: wrote a verse, did it, and I just went back
Speaker 19: to the crib.
Speaker 5: And that was it. That was just wow, Yeah, that's dope, man.
Speaker 6: So like with when you were working with your dad,
Speaker 6: you know, keeping you know, that spirit of you know
Speaker 6: how you're saying, just having to kind of work your
Speaker 6: way up. What was it like for you when when
Speaker 6: he was that kind of it was definitely kind of
Speaker 6: like no sign. It was to me, it was like,
Speaker 6: you know, this is a good time. Let's let's do
Speaker 6: this right now. It's a good time. No, I don't
Speaker 6: look for validation from family members. I'm really looking for
Speaker 6: y'all to like my stuff. You know, No, they could
Speaker 6: like it too, but that's my family. But really it's
Speaker 6: about the people, you know, the people. It's like, we
Speaker 6: can't hate him.
Speaker 3: Yesterday we had smashing hearts here and they're like the
Speaker 3: sons of Dwayne Wiggins, Tony. We're saying that Raphael is
Speaker 3: a deec and are very hard on us.
Speaker 19: Yeah, you know, it's not an easy thing when you
Speaker 19: come from a family of music, right you know, it's
Speaker 19: the pressure is applied. You know, you really have to
Speaker 19: live up to certain things. But I don't put that
Speaker 19: pressure on myself because I don't even do the same
Speaker 19: sound like. You know, I'm a different being.
Speaker 5: I have.
Speaker 19: I have different dreams because of how I grew up,
Speaker 19: and so the things that I'm looking to do and
Speaker 19: looking for are a little bit different than that.
Speaker 5: What is it that you're looking for? Like, what are
Speaker 5: your goal?
Speaker 19: Respect in music? First? This is a big deal. I
Speaker 19: feel like a lot of people have to appreciate when
Speaker 19: someone really is doing it. We have a lot of
Speaker 19: cats that just do things. But some folks are actually
Speaker 19: doing it. They live it every day, you know, they
Speaker 19: want to get better every day. There's not a day
Speaker 19: that goes by where I'm not practicing something or trying
Speaker 19: to learn something new. When it comes to the guitar, drums, vocals,
Speaker 19: just always push myself. It's never like, yeah, I'm just
Speaker 19: going chill and then I'm gonna go to the studio.
Speaker 19: You know what I'm saying. Every day we're at it,
Speaker 19: like yo, we gotta write a better song. Let's keep
Speaker 19: pushing so that that coming from the family like that too,
Speaker 19: is a part of that where it makes you, you know,
Speaker 19: hungry for it.
Speaker 6: Do you record with when you say you know you're
Speaker 6: working every day and it's really dope to hear that
Speaker 6: you record yourself because that's something that I think a
Speaker 6: lot of artists, maybe a little bit more now they
Speaker 6: do it because you know, you can actually have a
Speaker 6: studio at home and get right down. But it's still
Speaker 6: you know, you don't see too too many guys that
Speaker 6: really take the time to learn that stuff. Do you
Speaker 6: collaborate mainly, you know with a band? Do you you
Speaker 6: say you play like get.
Speaker 19: I'll play like a program before before I started writing
Speaker 19: lyrics or singing or rapping. I used to just spell
Speaker 19: beats so I would make beats using reasons and drum machine,
Speaker 19: you know, So we just made beats. At first, it
Speaker 19: was just all producing stuff. So I grew up producing
Speaker 19: playing piano a bit. I don't know it like that,
Speaker 19: I really know the drums. I grew up playing the drums,
Speaker 19: and I picked up the guitar. Like I'd say from
Speaker 19: this point four years ago, three years ago, because I
Speaker 19: went on a small tour. I had a dream, literal
Speaker 19: sleep and had a dream like, yo, take all the
Speaker 19: money you make from this run, go buy yourself a
Speaker 19: guitar and start writing a whole bunch of different songs
Speaker 19: based on what was happening. Is like I was doing
Speaker 19: a lot of hip hop, but when you put it
Speaker 19: out on a SoundCloud, people could take They just take,
Speaker 19: you know what I'm saying. So I had to add
Speaker 19: situations where my music was just being taken and.
Speaker 6: So and this is like full songs with vocals and
Speaker 6: everything on it, Like yeah, like somebody will take the hook,
Speaker 6: you know what I mean?
Speaker 19: You know what I'm saying, Like you know, and I
Speaker 19: mean they'll do it on the same beat, you know,
Speaker 19: because that's what you could do when you're talking about
Speaker 19: mixtape stuff, you know. And then I realized, like, I
Speaker 19: have more love for this, so I have to do
Speaker 19: something that you can't just RecA you can't just take it.
Speaker 19: And so I got the guitar and I just started
Speaker 19: teaching myself how to play and just started writing different songs,
Speaker 19: songs that you know, everything came came more from inside
Speaker 19: because when you have that connection to a live instrument,
Speaker 19: you can find more things inside of yourself. You know,
Speaker 19: it's so much more so that that helped.
Speaker 5: That's what happened.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Yeah, when you we were I was looking online.
Speaker 6: We were like trying to find some music and what's
Speaker 6: the status of everything? Are you working on an album
Speaker 6: when you just have stuff like on soundclouds?
Speaker 19: So right now the album, the album is about i'd
Speaker 19: say ninety five percent finish. There's a few things I
Speaker 19: want to record while I'm out here, just to seal
Speaker 19: it up, but the album is pretty much ready. It's
Speaker 19: called UNX and the definition at this point is unknown.
Speaker 19: That's the definition. I feel like we searched the things
Speaker 19: we don't know in life. That's what we're all you know,
Speaker 19: that's what we do. We're like, Yo, we don't know this,
Speaker 19: so we're gonna learn it. We don't know this, so
Speaker 19: we're gonna you know what I mean? So I call
Speaker 19: it unknown based on that that drive of seeking. You know,
Speaker 19: why are we here? What's my point?
Speaker 5: You know?
Speaker 19: Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing and
Speaker 19: really being connected to yourself to know if you're on
Speaker 19: the right track?
Speaker 4: You know?
Speaker 19: So I call it the unknown and it's basically open
Speaker 19: space of unlimited possibilities. That's what the unknown is.
Speaker 6: Was there a moment with where you realize like or
Speaker 6: I mean, do you still do you maybe kind of oscillate?
Speaker 6: Do you when you feel like, yo, I'm on the
Speaker 6: right track, Like I know this is where I'm posting.
Speaker 19: I'm definitely on the right track right now. The music
Speaker 19: that's coming out, the things I'm talking about and singing
Speaker 19: are really really powerful to me. And you know, to
Speaker 19: the close friends around who know it, you know, they
Speaker 19: give you, they'll give you more insurance, you know, your people,
Speaker 19: you know. But definitely I'm on the right track for sure.
Speaker 19: Come in here to play this gigas is the craziest
Speaker 19: thing you know, well, is that, like, I mean true, Yeah,
Speaker 19: it's the first show like this, you know, first that's
Speaker 19: like in terms of in terms of in this vein,
Speaker 19: you know, in this lane of where what I'm trying
Speaker 19: to do. You know, this is pretty much like, yo,
Speaker 19: this is what I'm trying to do. I played. I
Speaker 19: played a lot of shows. It's mainly reggae shows based
Speaker 19: on the name, you know, but this shows what you
Speaker 19: want to Yeah, it's based on the music. Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 19: It's like this is the sound. It is a lot
Speaker 19: of different things. It's not one thing. There's influences of
Speaker 19: all types of music within it. But it's it's not reggae.
Speaker 19: You know, it's not pop. It's not just hip hop.
Speaker 19: You know, it's it's rockets. So you know, it's funkus,
Speaker 19: R and b's jazz.
Speaker 6: I heard, Yeah, I was surprised because I didn't because
Speaker 6: I was walking up and I caught.
Speaker 5: Like maybe the last five ten minutes said.
Speaker 6: Because I was we had to come up here to
Speaker 6: set up, and so I was walking in and I
Speaker 6: saw it.
Speaker 5: I was like, well, who's that on? And so I
Speaker 5: looked at the schedule.
Speaker 6: I was like, oh that's I was like, oh wow,
Speaker 6: that's and so you know I saw you.
Speaker 5: I was like, man, like, it sounded really dope from here.
Speaker 6: I was, but I had to come up and you know,
Speaker 6: get to work for us. But we're coming, man, I
Speaker 6: had to get up so but but but no, man,
Speaker 6: it's sounds.
Speaker 19: Did you was the thing fixing to come upstairs?
Speaker 5: Many? Because there was?
Speaker 19: I'm sure it was like real life, You're right right,
Speaker 19: that's why the name thing, you know, I kind of
Speaker 19: that's why my name is African. You know by this
Speaker 19: African name, you know, you.
Speaker 2: Better go straight by to know Daniel Marley at all.
Speaker 19: Or yeah, it's my sound. It's me, you know, and
Speaker 19: you know you get to know me. You know that
Speaker 19: this this is him?
Speaker 5: How did you choose?
Speaker 19: That's my name? Like birth name, it's my middle name.
Speaker 2: See y'all like Margaret.
Speaker 5: Margret, She's like yeah.
Speaker 2: Another one.
Speaker 6: One of the things I think is dope about uh,
Speaker 6: the younger generation. You know when you say that your
Speaker 6: music is not just reggae, you know, it's a mixture
Speaker 6: of a lot of things.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 6: The thing about the younger generation I think is that
Speaker 6: you guys seem to be open to a lot more indeed,
Speaker 6: a lot more music, and I think, you know, I
Speaker 6: have a son that's fifteen, and he listens to everything,
Speaker 6: and I think largely in part because that generation now
Speaker 6: like there they can get everything for free, I mean everything.
Speaker 6: They can just go to YouTube and look up whatever
Speaker 6: genre they want. Did you feel any kind of pushback
Speaker 6: from anyone.
Speaker 5: That you know?
Speaker 6: You said, you do the reggae festivals, but this is
Speaker 6: kind of where you want be. Do you feel me
Speaker 6: pushback from people felt you should be doing more traditional everybody.
Speaker 19: A lot of people once they first hear about me,
Speaker 19: they think I should only play reggae. I actually don't
Speaker 19: play any at all. I have some songs that are
Speaker 19: out from before, but everything I create, it's just what
Speaker 19: I feel, you know, And I can't really I'm never
Speaker 19: gonna just feel what somebody else felt and do it,
Speaker 19: you know. And so this music that's coming out of
Speaker 19: me right now is how I feel. It is what
Speaker 19: I feel. I can do a reggae song in ten years.
Speaker 19: You know, you got people doing reggae songs right now,
Speaker 19: Drake and stuff. You know, people, it's not about but
Speaker 19: it's how I feel. And that's my goal, is to
Speaker 19: really put my feeling on wax and get it out there,
Speaker 19: you know, and try to have people. I know people
Speaker 19: feel the same way. We're singing about real things, you know,
Speaker 19: we're singing about life, Like there's nothing that you didn't
Speaker 19: go through that I'm not singing about.
Speaker 6: And so yeah, talk to me about some of your
Speaker 6: hip hop influences. I was reading about you, and I
Speaker 6: was like, man, like this kid, like really you know
Speaker 6: nahs and that you you had like a lot of.
Speaker 19: Yeah, you know, as far as hip hop goes, it's
Speaker 19: like mainly East Coast for me, you know, Big L Guru,
Speaker 19: I usually wake up, I wake up, I wake up.
Speaker 5: How did you? Okay? Okay, just listen. You're how old?
Speaker 5: How old are you?
Speaker 19: Twenty seven?
Speaker 5: You're twenty seven? Okay, Big L? How did you?
Speaker 19: How that happened? Just based on I love old school rap.
Speaker 19: I love old school hip hop. For me, music like
Speaker 19: like Jamaica and hip hop has a great relationship based
Speaker 19: on the starting of hip hop. You know, cool her
Speaker 19: coming through right exactly. So with that and and that
Speaker 19: knowledge is the knowledge I use and take and applied
Speaker 19: to my music where it's like we can do that.
Speaker 19: It's all that reggae music is influenced by everything else too,
Speaker 19: that was happening James Brown Beatles, you know, the rock era,
Speaker 19: like it's all that come by, and then the Island flavor,
Speaker 19: which is you know, that's the feeling of the people,
Speaker 19: that's how they feel and so that's why that is
Speaker 19: a different sound. But it's all music is all from,
Speaker 19: it's all parts, you know, every genre is here for
Speaker 19: us to use. And like when you were saying about
Speaker 19: your son being able to have access to any type
Speaker 19: of music, any sound he wants to put inside his brain,
Speaker 19: is really an evolution that we're going through as people musicians,
Speaker 19: you know, where you can't be blocked off because the
Speaker 19: world is so much bigger for us right now. You know,
Speaker 19: it's only natural that we're gonna apply. You know, it's
Speaker 19: like without without internet, all right, maybe you'll do what
Speaker 19: it's only happening in your community because that's what you got,
Speaker 19: that's what you know, that's where you are. But you
Speaker 19: have the whole world right now, so it's like, why
Speaker 19: why stop?
Speaker 5: Why stop?
Speaker 6: We live from Bruce Picnic here in New York City,
Speaker 6: So if you hear any noise, it's just me and
Speaker 6: the boys getting it all right now, Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 6: I'm so happy.
Speaker 5: It's funny. Me and his brother know a.
Speaker 6: Lot of the same people's ran a lot of the
Speaker 6: same circles, but this is actually our first time meeting
Speaker 6: face to face, and it's crazy. Uh, this brother is
Speaker 6: one of the the I would say, the the next
Speaker 6: school or the of Philly MC's. You know, when I
Speaker 6: was coming up, you know, I was listening to you know,
Speaker 6: just the Ogs three times, the cool see Steady, you
Speaker 6: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Of course, schooly d of course.
Speaker 6: And uh then once I guess college, Uh, this was
Speaker 6: when you know, the rock took over and really it
Speaker 6: was Philly that.
Speaker 2: Was on the back of Philly.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like totally. And you know, and this brother was
Speaker 6: a cat I always admired. He always had just really
Speaker 6: unconventional rhyme schemes, kind of unconventional in the way that
Speaker 6: he would kind of wrap around his rhymes, like he
Speaker 6: would start with one bar and then go on that
Speaker 6: for a little while, but then break off and then
Speaker 6: go back to another one, kind of like a boomerang
Speaker 6: kind of thing. And I always thought that was really dope. Yeah, man,
Speaker 6: And I'm such an honor to happen here with us
Speaker 6: to days and gentleman, give it up for my man's
Speaker 6: freeway on question.
Speaker 5: How you feel man? How was it? How did it
Speaker 5: go today?
Speaker 8: Oh? Man, I feel great, man. It's wonderful experience.
Speaker 5: Man.
Speaker 8: You know, shout out Derek, you know, for bringing me out.
Speaker 5: He was on stage.
Speaker 8: We just performed, did a legendary cipher with all legends. Man,
Speaker 8: I'm still caught up in a moment right now. It
Speaker 8: was me, it was black Thought, it was Smith and Wesson,
Speaker 8: it was Big Daddy King, it was oh my god,
Speaker 8: it was Royce five now wow, Pharaoh Munch and we
Speaker 8: were and were stuck in and we at the end
Speaker 8: we did it. We did a cipher to the symphony.
Speaker 8: Coolie Rat came and Craigey kicked the original verses.
Speaker 11: Wow, okay, I'm.
Speaker 8: Over here. I don't know what y'all doing over here.
Speaker 5: What y'all missed it? We're over here failing at life.
Speaker 6: Apparently we don't know either. Welcome to quest, supream. That's dope, man,
Speaker 6: that's really dope.
Speaker 8: I was happy birthday, Black Thought many and I want
Speaker 8: to take my hat off to him because the brother
Speaker 8: really put it together and he had the most craziest
Speaker 8: job because he did versus like before before we did
Speaker 8: the actual cipher, he brought each of us out and
Speaker 8: we did some of our records and he like actually
Speaker 8: did a couple verses to each person's record. And that's hard.
Speaker 8: You know, it's hard enough just remembering your own ship,
Speaker 8: you know what I'm saying. So because then that man,
Speaker 8: hats off to that man.
Speaker 6: One of the greatest, one of the greatest. Definitely one
Speaker 6: thing I wanted to wrap about. Man, it was it
Speaker 6: was interesting. I had was doing some work.
Speaker 5: This is a couple of years back.
Speaker 6: Uh, my man, brother I leave rom says yeah. Man
Speaker 6: and me and him we actually toured together the first
Speaker 6: little Brother tour that we went on with Hieroglyphics. We toured, Uh,
Speaker 6: we did a couple of dates with Brother a Lee
Speaker 6: in the Atmosphere And so he was telling me at
Speaker 6: the time, he was like, Yo, Man, I got this
Speaker 6: new record about to come out with Freeway.
Speaker 5: She's gonna be crazy. I was like, well, we didn't
Speaker 5: take ship. It's gonna be crazy because he don't.
Speaker 6: Brother Ali is like the coolest like most is in
Speaker 6: like dude ever. But he was like, yo, it's crazy.
Speaker 6: He's like I got to join. I was like cool
Speaker 6: and so later out it came out. It was the record,
Speaker 6: The Truth, It was the Truth record. It was talk
Speaker 6: to me about that with you and being with rom Says.
Speaker 6: I thought it was so dope. How someone like you
Speaker 6: that was on you know, the rock and like was
Speaker 6: on like that major major you know label could then
Speaker 6: fuck with someone like ry Sayers. That's like yo, for
Speaker 6: those who don't know, Rhyme Sayers is like a great experience.
Speaker 8: Great experience working with them. Man, you know, they really
Speaker 8: care about the music. You know, me and Jake put
Speaker 8: the album together and it's like a critically claimed album,
Speaker 8: like everybody let the album, and you know, when a
Speaker 8: whole rock split up came, I just went back to
Speaker 8: what I normally do, and that's worked hard, you know
Speaker 8: what I'm saying. I was trying whatever I could do.
Speaker 8: Like before I did the project with Jake One and
Speaker 8: rom Sais, I did something called Month of Madness where
Speaker 8: I dropped a record every day for the whole month.
Speaker 8: Like I just went hard. Like you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 8: I'm like, man, I can't go back to doing what
Speaker 8: I was doing before this, so I gotta go hard,
Speaker 8: and you know, by the grace of God, I've been
Speaker 8: able to maintain a successful career throughout the whole time
Speaker 8: I've been doing it.
Speaker 5: So what blessed a transition?
Speaker 6: Like man going from you know when you say like
Speaker 6: once the Rock split up and then saying, Okay, well
Speaker 6: I got.
Speaker 5: To go back to doing what it is I normally do.
Speaker 6: What is that transition like going from working like being
Speaker 6: with the major to then kind of being more independent
Speaker 6: than having to do things on your own.
Speaker 5: What was that a big transition for?
Speaker 8: I mean, everybody can't do it, like you know, a lot.
Speaker 5: Of people didn't. A lot of people could get.
Speaker 8: Fucked up in the head. But you gotta understand where
Speaker 8: I'm coming from and the type of person that I am.
Speaker 8: Like in the middle of me being super successful, like
Speaker 8: in the middle of rock the mic, what we do
Speaker 8: when them junkers getting like five thousand spinds a week?
Speaker 8: I went to Mecca, I went to Saudi Arabia, made
Speaker 8: my pilgrimage. I went with like twenty o her brothers.
Speaker 8: I was sleeping on the floor. I was doing everything
Speaker 8: everybody else was doing. So just taking that trip in general,
Speaker 8: just getting here. It takes a lot of patients because
Speaker 8: we had to switch a couple of flights. We had
Speaker 8: to wait in the airport six seven hours, like you know.
Speaker 8: So I'm used to having patients and dealing with certain situations.
Speaker 8: So when a breakup first happened, it probably took me
Speaker 8: like a couple of weeks just to get myself together
Speaker 8: and just dig what's really going on with everything. And
Speaker 8: then I just went back to what I normally do,
Speaker 8: and that's worked hard and grind, you know. So I'm
Speaker 8: still here man, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I wanted to speak with you. I was this
Speaker 6: was I mean a couple I was reading on. It
Speaker 6: might have been on an Okay player, I believe, or
Speaker 6: I might be an Okay player. In terms of your
Speaker 6: health right now with your kidneys, speak to us a
Speaker 6: little bit about that, what kind of led to it
Speaker 6: and how was that changed life.
Speaker 8: On September of twenty fifteen, I was diagnosed with in
Speaker 8: stage renal failure, that's kidney failure. So as of right now,
Speaker 8: I gotta do dialysis three times a week, four hours
Speaker 8: a day. I'm actually active on a transplant list, so
Speaker 8: they could call me any time with a new kidney,
Speaker 8: and I gotta go to the hospital and they gonna
Speaker 8: do the operation, just like with the rock break up,
Speaker 8: like when it first happened, fucked me up. I got
Speaker 8: the call from my doctor. It was like, you need
Speaker 8: to get to the emergency room right now. So the
Speaker 8: first thing I did. You know, I'm a devote Muslim,
Speaker 8: So the first thing I did was I went to
Speaker 8: the mass yed. I prayed, asked God to help me
Speaker 8: deal with whatever the situation is is. I didn't really
Speaker 8: know to what extent it was, you know. I did that,
Speaker 8: went to the hospital. They diagnosed me with kidney failure.
Speaker 8: That day, they kept my chest open, put a cafe
Speaker 8: in my chest, and the next day I was doing
Speaker 8: dialysis and I've been doing it ever since then. Any differences. Now,
Speaker 8: I got a fistula in my arm, which is when
Speaker 8: they take your main vein from the bottom of your
Speaker 8: arm and bring it up to the top of your
Speaker 8: arm so they can access it. Then they tie the
Speaker 8: artery off and that's how they access my dialysis. They
Speaker 8: put two needles in each in my arm. Each time
Speaker 8: I go. One needle drains the blood out, putting the
Speaker 8: machine cleans the blood, and the other needle pumps the
Speaker 8: blood back in. It's a four hour process and everything
Speaker 8: is going good, you know. So, but what led up
Speaker 8: to it was in like twenty twelve, eyes diagnosed with
Speaker 8: high blood pressure and diabetes with your two of the
Speaker 8: leading risk factors for kidney failure. I actually have three
Speaker 8: risk factors. One is being African American, the other is
Speaker 8: high blood pressure.
Speaker 5: The other is diabetes.
Speaker 8: You know, so anybody out there to have any of
Speaker 8: those risk factors, just being black is.
Speaker 5: A risk factor.
Speaker 8: So you need to keyboard with your routine physicals. Man,
Speaker 8: make sure you see the doctor at least once a year,
Speaker 8: check get checked up. And you know, because once I
Speaker 8: was diagnosed with high blood pressure and diabetes, I took
Speaker 8: it serious in the beginning, but just like with everything else,
Speaker 8: you know, as time passes, you tend to like not
Speaker 8: pay as much attention to it. Like I was taking
Speaker 8: my medicine. But then I remember, like when I first
Speaker 8: got on, when I first got it, I was like,
Speaker 8: I remember one day I went to go see beans
Speaker 8: and beans beans, he got high blood pressure and diabetes.
Speaker 8: Also he was eating a cheese steak.
Speaker 5: I'm like, what you're doing? Steak cheese steak.
Speaker 8: Like three months later, I was eating cheese steaks. So
Speaker 8: you know, it's just about being aware and standing and
Speaker 8: staying on point and you know, taking care of yourself
Speaker 8: and keeping up with your routine physical.
Speaker 6: That's dope, man, in terms of like during you know,
Speaker 6: because I mean being MCS, anyone, not just MCS, but
Speaker 6: being anyone working in the business will tell you traveling
Speaker 6: is like the biggest diet killers. Like anything you're trying
Speaker 6: to do right, being on the road just fucks that up.
Speaker 8: Come, I'm gonna tell you some real shit, like when
Speaker 8: we like with the first tour, first couple of tours
Speaker 8: with Jay, Jay was eating crab cakes, fish sticks.
Speaker 5: I'm not even paying attention.
Speaker 8: I'm fucking burgers up steaks, eating whatever I want. Like, man,
Speaker 8: I'm telling you better eat right, and you know, you
Speaker 8: see what happens. Man, You know you it's more than
Speaker 8: just rat. You gotta take care of everything. You gotta
Speaker 8: make sure everything is up the park man.
Speaker 5: That's how it is with you. Do you have a
Speaker 5: family like kids, wife, Yeah, yep.
Speaker 8: Yep, everything, family, kids, everything, two kids fifteen and sixteen.
Speaker 8: Oh wow, you know so they well.
Speaker 3: Aware it was dope children too, winning awards and what Yeah, yeah, you.
Speaker 5: Know your children.
Speaker 8: Please my daughter, you know she she women was that
Speaker 8: like last year of the year before she won the
Speaker 8: award for for a poem that she made and like
Speaker 8: she uh, she read the poem like in front of
Speaker 8: the commissioner and the maryor and a bunch of different
Speaker 8: people in the city, which was real good for me.
Speaker 8: And she get good, great grades in school, like you know,
Speaker 8: so I'm very proud of her. My son, you know,
Speaker 8: her a little knucklehead, but he tries best. You know,
Speaker 8: he trying to do his rap thing too, so you
Speaker 8: know I let him do his thing a little bit.
Speaker 6: Does he like are your kids? Because you know, we
Speaker 6: asked a lot of guests that have kids. You know,
Speaker 6: I have boys myself, I was fifteen and ten. Do
Speaker 6: they know like who their dad is or they aware.
Speaker 8: They've been they've been aware.
Speaker 2: It's not a choice.
Speaker 5: You gotta think about what we do.
Speaker 8: They was on my lap in that joint, so you
Speaker 8: know they they already was gone. We'll see my son.
Speaker 8: You can't tell him he in a star.
Speaker 5: Oh wow?
Speaker 6: So he do they like come to you for like
Speaker 6: your son? You know you say he wants to rap?
Speaker 6: Does he come to you for advice or does he
Speaker 6: look at you like he do now? Like he tried
Speaker 6: to do his thing on his own in the beginning,
Speaker 6: like you know, he was he was making a look
Speaker 6: like his homies love his music and everybody like his
Speaker 6: little friends love his music.
Speaker 5: But you know, I know how to do it, and
Speaker 5: I know you know the.
Speaker 8: Route that you gotta take and everything you gotta do.
Speaker 8: And he tried not to listen to me in the beginning,
Speaker 8: but now you know he on point.
Speaker 5: He learned, he learned. That's dope, man.
Speaker 8: You know, kids think they know everything. I'm like, man,
Speaker 8: I'm a whole successful role model and you're talking about
Speaker 8: you think you know.
Speaker 5: More than me. I like that.
Speaker 17: There's always one good one in one knucklehead. It doesn't
Speaker 17: matter what. There's two, there's always yeah.
Speaker 6: Because your daughter is like you got one daughter that's
Speaker 6: like the cool daughter and then the other one's knucklehead.
Speaker 5: That's a great word. What is That's what's up?
Speaker 12: Man?
Speaker 5: That's up? So in terms of right now, what what
Speaker 5: are you working on? What's coming up?
Speaker 8: All right now? You know, I got a new situation
Speaker 8: on the table that I'm working out, which is gonna
Speaker 8: be great for me and for hip hop.
Speaker 2: So something looks laid.
Speaker 8: Something, something to look forward to, something I'm very excited about,
Speaker 8: you know. You know, I just you know, since my situation,
Speaker 8: instead of like hotting what I'm going through, I chose
Speaker 8: to stand in front of it.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 8: So I've been doing a lot of work with different
Speaker 8: kidney foundations. In March tenth for twenty sixteen, I was
Speaker 8: a ordered the Patient Advocacy Award by the National Kidney Foundation,
Speaker 8: which was great for me.
Speaker 2: You know, at the d n C this year.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I was at the d n C this year.
Speaker 8: I just just was at the White House last week.
Speaker 3: Wowal Museum African American No.
Speaker 8: I was there for the Actually they actually did a
Speaker 8: health summit, Millennial Outreach Health Summit. It was last Tuesday,
Speaker 8: you know, so I uh participated in that.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 8: I just was with uh Michelle when she came to
Speaker 8: Philly last Wednesday, first name, you know, I was with
Speaker 8: Bill Clinton Made in America and I performed two days
Speaker 8: in a row in Maine in America too, which is
Speaker 8: a huge accomplishment for me. I actually performed Maine America
Speaker 8: Exists for five years. I performed four out of the
Speaker 8: five years.
Speaker 3: For the first announcement of Made in America to Philadelphia,
Speaker 3: so as it should be.
Speaker 8: Yes, sir, So you know, I'm just I'm just trying
Speaker 8: my best to do as much as I can and
Speaker 8: get act as much as I can, you know. So
Speaker 8: that's what I'm.
Speaker 5: That's dope, man, that's dope. We for yoll.
Speaker 6: We appreciate you taking this time to come through man
Speaker 6: after the performance anytime and chop it up with us,
Speaker 6: and I really salute you, just you know, for everything
Speaker 6: you've done and also just for like you said, getting
Speaker 6: in front of.
Speaker 5: You know, that health issue.
Speaker 6: You know, I've lost relatives to you know, diabetes and
Speaker 6: high blood pressure, and we've seen particularly twenty sixteen, a
Speaker 6: lot of people going, yeah, rest in peace, fightd out
Speaker 6: and you know, man, just for you to be out
Speaker 6: there and to be an advocate for it and bring
Speaker 6: more awareness to it and just to really you know,
Speaker 6: let brothers know. I mean, your health is something that
Speaker 6: is you know, that's everything.
Speaker 5: That's the basis.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, it's important man, you know, because it's
Speaker 8: so many people is just unaware, you know, and awareness
Speaker 8: is the key. Man, Like if I would have been
Speaker 8: aware of how serious it was when I was diagnosed
Speaker 8: with high blood pressure and diabetes. I couldn't avoid getting
Speaker 8: getting Kenny Fuller because it was already.
Speaker 4: In a world.
Speaker 8: But I could have prolonged it, you know, if I
Speaker 8: would have been more aware of what was going on
Speaker 8: in my body. So awareness is the key man, you know.
Speaker 8: And just me being here and being able to perform
Speaker 8: for the people, and and just them seeing me out
Speaker 8: here still going hardest motivation. I just want people to know, like,
Speaker 8: even though I have a disease, I have kidney failure,
Speaker 8: it's not a death sentence. I'm still living a productive life,
Speaker 8: still doing like I told you, I performed two days
Speaker 8: in a row Made in America, just shut it down
Speaker 8: at the Roof's picnic. If I never told y'all was sick,
Speaker 8: nobody would never know. And I'm about to go back
Speaker 8: to Philly six o'clock tomorrow morning. I'm right back on
Speaker 8: the Diallasi's machine.
Speaker 3: Take care of yourself, because when you when you drop
Speaker 3: that Instagram with you in the hospital on the first day, I.
Speaker 2: Don't cry over Instagram. But the teachers was like, while
Speaker 2: it's free in the hospital.
Speaker 5: I'm good. I'm good.
Speaker 8: God willing not be here for a minute.
Speaker 5: That what's up. We all love you, brother, thank you
Speaker 5: so m pleasure me and YouTube.
Speaker 6: Yeah sure, yeah for sure, and yo, thanks for coming through.
Speaker 6: And when you know, whenever you whenever, your situation is final.
Speaker 5: You know, so once it's done soon, you gotta come
Speaker 5: back and.
Speaker 8: We can talk about I got problem.
Speaker 6: Lazy gentlemen, free way get it up. Yes, our it's
Speaker 6: a lazy gentlemen. Boys and girls. Give a big quest
Speaker 6: love supreme round applause to Easy Moore Breezy, the founders
Speaker 6: and creators of grits and biscuits.
Speaker 2: That's going on part.
Speaker 21: In this thing like a chicken wing on the string
Speaker 21: in the middle of the spring.
Speaker 6: Damn right listen, okay, So okay, so there are.
Speaker 5: Three of you in this collective. Easy More Breeze is
Speaker 5: then able to collective and individually. It's also Erica DJ
Speaker 5: squib is.
Speaker 6: Yes, sir, okay, Erica, I'm gonna start with you because
Speaker 6: me and you have some some ties, uh in that
Speaker 6: you had the misfortune of going to North Carolina Anti
Speaker 6: State University, which is which is a great online college.
Speaker 5: I didn't even go to an T I went to
Speaker 5: another HBCU. But I'm gonna have to square.
Speaker 22: My partner like that, you know, appreciate.
Speaker 21: Just so you got your associates univers University of Phoenix.
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 22: Carolina Central Central College, Central Central College.
Speaker 23: I got from Central and she's a she's an They
Speaker 23: gave degrees then.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, all the division is stepping up. Yeah, man,
Speaker 6: but no, she's a she's a she's an age. I'm
Speaker 6: an eagle, So I give her a joke a little bit.
Speaker 6: I actually grew up like right down the streets, man,
Speaker 6: So it was too much. It was just like, dude,
Speaker 6: I'm going to school in my back yard.
Speaker 5: I can't yet. I was at every homecoming up until
Speaker 5: I graduated.
Speaker 22: And you were there last year too.
Speaker 5: I was the last year I was.
Speaker 2: When the last time you've been.
Speaker 5: I haven't been a Central home coming a long time
Speaker 5: because I'll be working. I'm always I'm always on tour,
Speaker 5: and so the one time I'm home and I go,
Speaker 5: I went to Grits and biscuits. Let me be. I
Speaker 5: wasn't at the homecoming.
Speaker 2: I don't even know who's at the game they played
Speaker 2: against Central.
Speaker 23: They did Central only played flag football. So all right,
Speaker 23: so all HBCU slander aside Erica, she is a graduate
Speaker 23: of North Carolina Anti State University. And you were, as
Speaker 23: I understand it, pretty much the kind of the creator.
Speaker 22: Oh no, it wasn't just me. It was definitely a
Speaker 22: collective unit. So okay, but we were all three of
Speaker 22: us for living in Brooklyn, but we're all from the
Speaker 22: South originally, and so the concept of the party really
Speaker 22: came up out of just a friendly friends first, a
Speaker 22: friendly conversation about at the time two thousand and nine, Yeah,
Speaker 22: you didn't hear a lot of Southern hip hop music
Speaker 22: the way you do now in New York, and at
Speaker 22: the time, the majority of the parties that we you know,
Speaker 22: you saw in New York were very different in that
Speaker 22: it was velvet rope and bottle service. And so we
Speaker 22: decided just to come together and throw one party for
Speaker 22: friends and a party we would want to go to.
Speaker 22: That was very reminiscent of the black college experience because
Speaker 22: we all went to HBCUs.
Speaker 6: Okay, so you went to you went to t out,
Speaker 6: So where'd you go? Priview and m University?
Speaker 21: Right, that's where that's no DJ Premier his pops was
Speaker 21: my dean of science.
Speaker 5: That are you serious?
Speaker 11: Me?
Speaker 5: And it was tight. That's dope. That's dope. Shout out
Speaker 5: DJ Premier.
Speaker 6: I'm working with him on the breaks right now. That's dope.
Speaker 6: And where'd you go when the Fam?
Speaker 2: Okay Common dropped out of there?
Speaker 5: Yep, no Fam? Yeah, Fam, I think FAM. That was
Speaker 5: one of my choices. Actually it was. I was that
Speaker 5: you went to Central Central?
Speaker 2: What's funny?
Speaker 3: Central my high school counselor, because I went to academic
Speaker 3: high school but I got real bad grades. And she
Speaker 3: was like, I said, so what colleges can I get into?
Speaker 3: And she was like, have you heard a Prairie View?
Speaker 5: I feel like that.
Speaker 4: Up here?
Speaker 5: No, seriously, I was. I was looking at FM.
Speaker 6: And the reason why I wanted to go to FAM
Speaker 6: at the time it was it was it was the.
Speaker 5: Band and it was Luke. Oh yeah, I was a Loop.
Speaker 6: Fan and so kind of cap d coming come on
Speaker 6: what and so yeah, so as a kind of I
Speaker 6: guess as a partying gift. So I didn't go to Fan.
Speaker 6: But my first year at Central, our homecoming show was Luke.
Speaker 5: He came, he closed, and then they never let him
Speaker 5: come back. It was over.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like girls dancing, they were stripping and that was okay,
Speaker 6: just to show you, like how life can come at
Speaker 6: you fast. Okay, So this was ninety seven. Jay Z
Speaker 6: was there. This is jay Z. He performed at that
Speaker 6: homecoming show and he was just off of in My
Speaker 6: Lifetime Volume one. Volume one was out, and so just
Speaker 6: to kind of show you how stuff we changed hip up.
Speaker 6: At the time, he wasn't even the guy. He was
Speaker 6: doing his show and it was cool. He brought out Aconnellynlly.
Speaker 5: Shut ship down.
Speaker 6: He bodied it, he did, but put it in your
Speaker 6: mouth to all of the people, to Scott, to people,
Speaker 6: to to just those just not tuning in to give
Speaker 6: you kind of the the lineage of the Southern in
Speaker 6: the tradition applied.
Speaker 5: To a number of black He say, apply.
Speaker 2: But back to you can lick it, you can stick it,
Speaker 2: you can Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, this was yeah.
Speaker 6: Jay Z was like the guy, but he wasn't the guy.
Speaker 6: Just then he was becoming the guy. So acon Nelly
Speaker 6: came in on his set, who was a rapper at
Speaker 6: the time, had a big hit put it in your
Speaker 6: mouth and also the B side fucked me for free.
Speaker 5: Another another another negro spiritual drake Draken call, oh that's right,
Speaker 5: that's right, that's right, you're right.
Speaker 6: So yeah, man, but but yeah, so that was at
Speaker 6: the time my black college spirits. So so back to
Speaker 6: back to you guys with grits and biscuits.
Speaker 5: So you wanted to bring the black college.
Speaker 6: Experience to it was that that was where the idea
Speaker 6: came from, wanting to bring that kind.
Speaker 5: Of up here up North.
Speaker 21: Yeah, yeah, to a certain extent, like it was, you know,
Speaker 21: to Erica's point, it was like the bougie dress code,
Speaker 21: bottle service, sparklers, all that, you know, and if you
Speaker 21: were if you if you were there with your homeboy,
Speaker 21: you couldn't get in the club unless you had ten
Speaker 21: seemingly good looking girls, you know, seemingly unattracted women couldn't
Speaker 21: get in the club, you know. And then if you
Speaker 21: did get in and nobody was dancing, they in heels
Speaker 21: and dresses and stuff. And then the other extreme was
Speaker 21: like the super duper bohemian house parties, which is dope.
Speaker 21: You know, they playing Feliu, which is amazing, you know
Speaker 21: what I'm saying. And those are the folks that's in there.
Speaker 21: They you know, they're trying to save the world and
Speaker 21: all that, but every once in a while, we're gonna
Speaker 21: save it to night, you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 21: stress trying to save the world, so when sometimes we
Speaker 21: need to take a break and get loose, you know,
Speaker 21: and so we create, you know, we created a party
Speaker 21: we want to go to and who knew that other
Speaker 21: folks want to come to it too. And six years
Speaker 21: fast forward and we sitting here talking to y'all clowns.
Speaker 6: One of the things I think is so beautiful about
Speaker 6: you guys, party man, is that, you know, a lot
Speaker 6: of times hip hop it gets the rep of you know,
Speaker 6: when you talk about the parties that win the city
Speaker 6: and you talk about how you know they would be
Speaker 6: very subtly racist ship that they would do like no
Speaker 6: ball caps, no like no hoodies, no hoodies, like you know,
Speaker 6: little shit that it's like, Okay, we know who the
Speaker 6: fuck y'all talking to, but you know what I mean. So,
Speaker 6: because there's this stigma that hip hop creates ute unquote violence,
Speaker 6: I would say I've been to three of you guys parties,
Speaker 6: and this is a you know, Southern rap part so
Speaker 6: all the violence inciting rap songs, so like a knuck
Speaker 6: if you buck, or like any tet a club up,
Speaker 6: those songs go off and there has never been I've
Speaker 6: never seen any fight in the parties I've been through.
Speaker 6: There's never been any kind of foolishness. It's never been
Speaker 6: just as you say, it's very much as a come
Speaker 6: as you are. I mean, it is a party you
Speaker 6: can walk up in if you just got on your
Speaker 6: jeans and a T shirt, then you can rock like that.
Speaker 5: And it's the parties I've been to.
Speaker 6: There has never been just a more just easy going,
Speaker 6: just it's very familiar atmosphere and I really appreciate.
Speaker 5: You guys for doing that.
Speaker 6: When you first started off, What was it like trying
Speaker 6: to bring that here?
Speaker 5: Were in New York or in the North. Was it
Speaker 5: any difficulty with that?
Speaker 18: Erica is okay talk about that because they were trying
Speaker 18: to go to the different venues and getting no love.
Speaker 22: Yeah, no, I think at first it was just people
Speaker 22: weren't It was they didn't understand the concept. And then
Speaker 22: we also got the question like, are you guys party
Speaker 22: promoters in New York?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 22: Were you guys throwing parties in New York before?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 22: So you know, really it was just like one venue
Speaker 22: the guy was like, oh, I like your vibe, you know,
Speaker 22: we'll give you a shot. And the first party They
Speaker 22: asked us before the doors opened. They were like, how
Speaker 22: many people you are going to show up? And we
Speaker 22: were like, we hope two hundred.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 22: The funny thing is the only thing we did to
Speaker 22: promote was we created a really fly flyer and we
Speaker 22: sent it out via email and then we announced it
Speaker 22: at our Bible study.
Speaker 6: You announced the party?
Speaker 5: No I no I do? Okay, okay, So do we
Speaker 5: need to give the listeners some context? Problem? Okay? Bible study?
Speaker 5: Do I think to break down what Bible study? Jesus?
Speaker 5: We're good? All right? Okay.
Speaker 6: So in the in the in the South, Uh, there
Speaker 6: is you know, church folks, you know there's this Saturday
Speaker 6: night is the club and then Sunday Sunday morning is church.
Speaker 5: Sunday morning, you pray with all the su you pray with.
Speaker 6: All the rest is that you did the night before,
Speaker 6: and these audiences very much overlapped. So I mean, so
Speaker 6: that's I never would have thought of that.
Speaker 5: That's genius.
Speaker 6: That's almost like that's almost like on Breaking Bad when
Speaker 6: Jesse went to narcotics and to sell man.
Speaker 5: Wow, that is that is you know, did you just
Speaker 5: compare our guess? You know, we ain't gonna tolerate too much.
Speaker 5: You know, this ship is a genius.
Speaker 6: I never would have thought because because seriously, no real
Speaker 6: most people wouldn't even say, like the people that are
Speaker 6: like qute unquote church folk, they kind of keep that
Speaker 6: ship to the side.
Speaker 5: They don't say that.
Speaker 3: So no, don't as many people show up the Bible
Speaker 3: study as they do the actual service. So that's interesting too,
Speaker 3: because it's like, why not just you know, put it.
Speaker 11: This is what I'm curious, But this is this is
Speaker 11: very fascinating.
Speaker 22: This was it was a Bible study for young people,
Speaker 22: and so we announced it at the Bible Study and
Speaker 22: we also, you know, the first party, we said we'd
Speaker 22: have two hundred people. We were like, we'll do We're
Speaker 22: gonna do it like old school, like we did in college.
Speaker 22: We're gonna have first hour five dollars. After that it's
Speaker 22: ten dollars. We were like, for fun, we made church
Speaker 22: fans because we were like, we need to have things
Speaker 22: that represent the South. Had no signage, had no website,
Speaker 22: had no nothing, and this is all we did. And
Speaker 22: when they asked us how many people are gonna show,
Speaker 22: we said, hopefully two hundred. First people in.
Speaker 21: The doorway, the manager, we told that to the manager
Speaker 21: and the manager was like, Yo, if you get two
Speaker 21: hundred people to hear, that would be amaze.
Speaker 22: And we were like, okay, hopefully and then doors open.
Speaker 22: First people at the party Bible study, Yeah, wow, five
Speaker 22: dollars and then by the end of the night there
Speaker 22: were like five hundred people the majority. We did not
Speaker 22: know when we realized that. And at the end they
Speaker 22: were asking when's the next one? When's the next one?
Speaker 22: We had no idea because we only planned for one.
Speaker 11: When I used to DJ my my answer to that
Speaker 11: question was talk to the manager.
Speaker 21: Well, the manager was like, can y'all come back next week?
Speaker 21: Were like, whoa bro?
Speaker 5: Is it tiger? Easy?
Speaker 3: So are y'all somebody completely different in the daytime or
Speaker 3: were y'all somebody still?
Speaker 5: Yeah? We all have we all have jobs. This is
Speaker 5: what are your What are your day jobs? What are you?
Speaker 5: I work at rock Nation?
Speaker 22: Okay, I work at Viacom.
Speaker 21: These day jobs are amazing, and you I'm advertising for
Speaker 21: talk for and I teached for lots of fell wow.
Speaker 21: I teached philosophy at the college in New Rochhale Brooklyn Campus.
Speaker 5: Oh okay, I'm an adjunct professor.
Speaker 2: What a essence a marked article.
Speaker 5: That's dope.
Speaker 6: So, so d square is with you as a DJ?
Speaker 6: Was this your How how long you been DJing?
Speaker 18: And was this your I was fifteen or sixteen years
Speaker 18: Oh wow, okay to stay out of trouble thanks to
Speaker 18: so Actually, my brother.
Speaker 5: I always got like real brothers, Like okay.
Speaker 18: So I was like messing up in school and I
Speaker 18: met one of his friends and he taught me how
Speaker 18: to DJ, and I wanted turntables bad. My mom was like,
Speaker 18: if you get your grades right, if you stopped acting
Speaker 18: up in school, you can get your turntables. And then
Speaker 18: my brother taught me how to dj. Once I got
Speaker 18: my turntable, so it was cool.
Speaker 5: So where you guys, where were you raised that? Where
Speaker 5: were all texas and texts?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 5: Oh wow, okay, yeah gotch you got you gotcha. That's dope.
Speaker 6: So in terms of when you first started DJing, what
Speaker 6: kind of stuff were you first playing?
Speaker 5: Like? What was your first I.
Speaker 18: Was really in like early on, when I was like fifteen,
Speaker 18: I was really into like hip hop, hip hop, like
Speaker 18: sugar Hill Game, Grand Master Flash Run fifteen because of
Speaker 18: my brother, Beastie Boys, like Beastie Boys, Lords of the
Speaker 18: Underground Tribe day so especially daylight, so outcast for sure.
Speaker 11: So I was the older of the two. Yeah yeah, no,
Speaker 11: the trickle down effect that we're always talking.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 5: The older sibling a lot of times will set the tone.
Speaker 18: And because what ma would be playing in the house,
Speaker 18: Oh yeah, she was Luther Van Draws. And so my
Speaker 18: brother was raised in Florida while I was like until
Speaker 18: I was until I was nine. Then he moved to
Speaker 18: Texas to go to school. Okay, so from zero to
Speaker 18: nine it was Luther Van Drass, Anita Baker, Marvin Gaye
Speaker 18: like throughout the house. And then my brother was like, yo,
Speaker 18: you should listen to this hip hop thing and I
Speaker 18: was like what he.
Speaker 5: Put it in?
Speaker 18: Like he was playing Lords of the Underground Tribe called quest.
Speaker 5: I was like, what is this? What is this? From there?
Speaker 18: Like took off, it took off. And then like Chris
Speaker 18: Cross was like my favorite.
Speaker 11: Oh man, it's not no yo, Okay, Chriss Cross had jams.
Speaker 5: No they did.
Speaker 6: I missed the Now that's something again that she was
Speaker 6: so traumatic missing the bus because you were missing because
Speaker 6: what is she missed the bus?
Speaker 5: It was you miss it and then you know you
Speaker 5: got to go in and.
Speaker 6: Tell you she gotta take you to now, I gotta
Speaker 6: go now, I go put on my house coat and
Speaker 6: take you to school.
Speaker 22: My mother wouldn't take me to school. She'd find a
Speaker 22: bus and drive around and city.
Speaker 5: Look at that bus. They go to your school. I
Speaker 5: like your mother. That's awesome. That's that's that's the kind
Speaker 5: of parandim.
Speaker 22: Wait where are you from North Carolina?
Speaker 5: Yeah, she's a men. I live in the city place.
Speaker 6: I live in the city now that she was she's
Speaker 6: from and she went to school where I was in Greensboro.
Speaker 5: So that's that's that's what's up.
Speaker 6: So this is going on six years and six years
Speaker 6: what keep y'all in?
Speaker 5: This seems to be a recurring thing. Who else were
Speaker 5: talking to?
Speaker 6: Guess he was talking about how they kind of kept
Speaker 6: their day job until it was mom it was a
Speaker 6: moment another DJ. He was saying that, So when do you, guys,
Speaker 6: do you ever feel that you will one day say, okay,
Speaker 6: grits and biscuits one hundred percent, I'm leaving my day job.
Speaker 6: I'm leaving philosophy these kids. Do you ever do you
Speaker 6: ever feel that one day that one day y'all would
Speaker 6: just make the full leap into doing Christ and biscuits
Speaker 6: one hundred.
Speaker 5: That is the question. I don't know the job.
Speaker 6: I know, good job, I mean with benefits I got,
Speaker 6: I got a cavity.
Speaker 5: I can go handle that.
Speaker 21: Yeah, I think I think if like it have to,
Speaker 21: we we expanded to something beyond Grits and biscuits, because
Speaker 21: you know, to leave your job to just be a
Speaker 21: party promoter, that's not that's not how we was raised.
Speaker 5: Real shit, that's really fun. Yeah.
Speaker 6: I was surprised because when I found out that you
Speaker 6: that you still do all this and still do a job.
Speaker 6: I mean, how do y'all find time for yourself? Like
Speaker 6: is there any personal time?
Speaker 5: Right? She was like, what is that? That's my job?
Speaker 18: Is kind of cool with it. They kind of see
Speaker 18: it as like an add on to like what I do.
Speaker 18: Gotcha is like you know when we when we throw
Speaker 18: on parties or doing stuff, it kind of gives me
Speaker 18: a name or a leverage when I'm talking to artists,
Speaker 18: like like I know how to sell out a venue
Speaker 18: because this is what we do with Grits and biscuits.
Speaker 18: I know how to put on the performance because that's
Speaker 18: what we do with grits and biscuits. So when I
Speaker 18: talk to artists, they kind of see me as someone
Speaker 18: who has the knowledge already to kind of tell them
Speaker 18: nothing like a player coach type of thing.
Speaker 5: Totally totally.
Speaker 22: What about your Erica, No, I mean I definitely think
Speaker 22: the job I'm in now, I made it very clear
Speaker 22: from the beginning that this is what I do on
Speaker 22: the side, so they've been very understand I think, yeah,
Speaker 22: I mean, it hasn't been as far as finding balance.
Speaker 22: I mean, you just have to force yourself to do it,
Speaker 22: you know, and sometimes it's you know, not going to
Speaker 22: be able to make every show. I mean, this is
Speaker 22: kind of a new reality as we continue to grow,
Speaker 22: and it's something that we haven't talked about before. But
Speaker 22: for me, like the role I play, I'm very much
Speaker 22: behind the scenes, and so if someone else is in
Speaker 22: my place, then I mean that may just have how
Speaker 22: it may have to play out. And then you know,
Speaker 22: the other times, it's just like we are very you know,
Speaker 22: deliberate and like blocking out time. Like we have a
Speaker 22: calendar and if someone's like I am not available for
Speaker 22: this week, and we don't schedule anything for that week
Speaker 22: because that person needs their time.
Speaker 5: So we y'all might need to give some lessons to
Speaker 5: quest love support organization.
Speaker 2: They don't have as many jobs.
Speaker 5: Well has a lot of jobs. I wonder what my
Speaker 5: employer thinks about what I do.
Speaker 6: Here man, Yeah, okay, Bill Sean works for Sesame Street.
Speaker 6: He does yeah, yeah, so he goes from el Mo
Speaker 6: to put it in your mouth.
Speaker 5: So what about you? What about you? You think you know?
Speaker 21: Well, I don't. I don't have a full time job.
Speaker 21: So like I'm a freelance photographer. I'm an adjunct professor.
Speaker 21: I just teach once a week. I hadn't really worked
Speaker 21: for anybody since I was twenty four. Twenty Yeah, so
Speaker 21: I realized a long time ago that I don't make
Speaker 21: a good employee. I don't like people telling me what
Speaker 21: to do, so I have to figure out on my own.
Speaker 21: And so like I think, you know, in terms of balance,
Speaker 21: like these these guys like they figured it out like
Speaker 21: out of balance. And for me, it's just about negotiating
Speaker 21: the relationship between all of the different things that I do.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 21: So if I'm teaching, I teach every Thursday. So you know,
Speaker 21: if it's a party on Thursday night, we got to
Speaker 21: get to as soon as I finish class, I want
Speaker 21: a plane. And it's interesting how like sometimes my students
Speaker 21: think they figured out a secret, like, oh, we know
Speaker 21: that you throw parties.
Speaker 5: I'm like, can we come?
Speaker 21: Sure, you can come, but just know that your paper
Speaker 21: on emanual con will be due next Thursday morning. You
Speaker 21: know what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: That's what's up.
Speaker 2: Sorry, no, what I was just gonna say.
Speaker 3: It's interesting because you said I hop on a plane
Speaker 3: and y'all are on another level. Y'all aren't just party promoters,
Speaker 3: like y'all take this around the country, right, Yeah, And
Speaker 3: so at this point where of some of the cities
Speaker 3: that y'all touched with Grits and Briskets.
Speaker 21: La, Chicago, d C, Detroit, Philly, Houston, Atlanta, We're going
Speaker 21: to the Bay Area this year or next year, Charlotte
Speaker 21: Greensboro Movement done?
Speaker 5: Have you done overseas?
Speaker 6: Have you been out of the country to go for
Speaker 6: next for twenty seventeen? Okay, okay, yeah, it's one of
Speaker 6: the things. I think it's dope when I go to
Speaker 6: the parties I've been to. I've been looking enough to
Speaker 6: catch the party in a.
Speaker 5: Few different cities.
Speaker 6: And the guy was he when I was at the
Speaker 6: show Charlotte. When I saw you guys in Charlotte a
Speaker 6: couple of weeks ago, and when my homies he was like, Yo,
Speaker 6: this show is crazy, and I was like, Yo, man,
Speaker 6: this this is crazy.
Speaker 5: Chicago.
Speaker 6: House of Blue nothing.
Speaker 5: And the thing about it is like I was.
Speaker 18: Lost my mind in the Yeah, I literally lost It
Speaker 18: was bad. It was I had to be taking off
Speaker 18: the I literally lost my mind.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I turned into big Brother that moment.
Speaker 22: I was, yeah, yeah, that might have been the one
Speaker 22: you were there.
Speaker 5: It might have been.
Speaker 6: It might have been the party was So they did
Speaker 6: two nights the House of Blues, and I want to
Speaker 6: say maybe I was the second night.
Speaker 19: I can't read that the second night.
Speaker 5: It was the second night. So this is total. I mean,
Speaker 5: it was a pandemonium.
Speaker 6: And the thing that's so interesting about it is that
Speaker 6: how when you play the records in the South like
Speaker 6: a Charlotte, like people are having fun, But it.
Speaker 5: Seems like the records get an even bigger response outside
Speaker 5: of the South because all the time, all the time,
Speaker 5: and all the transplants. Yeah, right, right, right, right right, yes,
Speaker 5: I mean, I mean the Chicago was retarded.
Speaker 6: One particular joint that I want to talk about because
Speaker 6: I feel that y'all are single handedly responsible for reviving
Speaker 6: this song, and I wonder if the people who made
Speaker 6: it if God, I can't remember the name, but the
Speaker 6: song Swacksurfing, it was the group's name, Fly Fly Fly Fly,
Speaker 6: swag Surfing. This was a song that it was. This
Speaker 6: was a song that came out in the height of
Speaker 6: what I would kind of call like.
Speaker 5: The ring Tone era.
Speaker 6: So this is like, oh my god, yeah, oh six
Speaker 6: right as I dropped an album called The Minster Show
Speaker 6: but right right, perfect timing and terrible time at the
Speaker 6: same time. But nah, man, it was a guy like
Speaker 6: shop Boy. It's probably like a rock star. And just
Speaker 6: like all these records that were at the time, Defour
Speaker 6: l Laughing Taffy, all those records, and so these were
Speaker 6: records that were used, I mean in a lot of
Speaker 6: ways that they sold Ringtones when Ringtones were hot.
Speaker 5: I mean, that was the thing.
Speaker 6: I remember La was telling us, like, yo, y'all need
Speaker 6: a song, we can sell some Ringtones for it.
Speaker 5: I remember that.
Speaker 6: But anyway, this song swag Surfing, y'all have like reignited
Speaker 6: that song. And so swag Surfing for the people who
Speaker 6: have never been.
Speaker 5: To Biscuits party. That is like the come to Jesus
Speaker 5: moment of biscuits. We all come together as a family.
Speaker 6: I want you all to talk about it, like tell
Speaker 6: them like the essence of the swag surf, like take
Speaker 6: us there, now you.
Speaker 5: And also this he is on the mic and this
Speaker 5: is like he is so right, he makes you feel.
Speaker 21: So we all have different roles, right and that and
Speaker 21: uh so this is how we say it. So my
Speaker 21: reason that was what to play. I know what to say,
Speaker 21: and Erica knows who to pay right, that is so
Speaker 21: and so on the the in the parties, my brothers
Speaker 21: obviously play, you know, spinning the records, and I'm on
Speaker 21: the mic just to make sure the crowd is where
Speaker 21: they need to be, creating a certain energy that we
Speaker 21: like to think is hospitable. But like the swag surf
Speaker 21: is one of those things where it's the epitome of
Speaker 21: the energy of our party that we want to create
Speaker 21: and maintain.
Speaker 5: Right, so we we.
Speaker 21: Don't care, like we say, we don't care if you
Speaker 21: bow legg is, slew foot of a pigeon. Told, we
Speaker 21: don't care if you tas short, gaze, straight, fat, ugly,
Speaker 21: it doesn't matter, like if you come to have a
Speaker 21: good time, you in the right place, and so you
Speaker 21: could be standing next to somebody you don't even know, right,
Speaker 21: and we ask you to put your arms out, and
Speaker 21: you put your arms around the people. And then once
Speaker 21: my brother drops the track, we start swaying from side
Speaker 21: to side. Right, we start swinging from side to side.
Speaker 21: And then right before the beat drops, we just got
Speaker 21: to let everybody know to get your motherfucking hands up.
Speaker 5: And it's not a request, a demand.
Speaker 6: Yeah, every time, like I've seen, I've seen it, you know,
Speaker 6: in a few different places, and every time, the energy
Speaker 6: is just through the fucking group. And the thing that's
Speaker 6: so dope about it, man, is like, well, for one thing,
Speaker 6: white people, our listeners. I need y'all to stop butchering
Speaker 6: the swag surf. I was watching something on It was
Speaker 6: some white university. It was a huge they were doing it.
Speaker 6: They tried the swag surf and it just there was
Speaker 6: no swag or surf at all. It was it was
Speaker 6: totally swag, body board, swag kayak.
Speaker 5: But but no, it was. It was so bad.
Speaker 6: But now you guys have just created a brand that
Speaker 6: is you know, coming from you know, HBCU I mean
Speaker 6: we joking, joke, but uh, just to see three of
Speaker 6: you guys from a fellow HBCU uh attendees.
Speaker 5: Just the stuff that y'all are doing. I just applaud
Speaker 5: you guys, man, and just.
Speaker 22: Thank out so much.
Speaker 6: The party is a great time. If they're ever in
Speaker 6: your city, go like go. And I was seeing clips.
Speaker 6: We was in here working, so I couldn't even come
Speaker 6: out there to get my swagsurf on.
Speaker 5: But did.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I saw someone g I saw some of the
Speaker 6: videos was going down. So so now, man, ladies, gentlemen, man,
Speaker 6: this has been an incredible uh two day affair of
Speaker 6: quest Love supreme fantee of myself lovely ea uh boss
Speaker 6: Bill unpaid Bill Scott yeo up in here. And also
Speaker 6: I must it's never gonna not make me laugh. And
Speaker 6: also in the background we got Chilling, the mother of
Speaker 6: this whole movie. We must, I mean, we must shot
Speaker 6: her out because she has been responsible in many ways
Speaker 6: for bringing us all together with the Like okay, player Angela, yeah,
Speaker 6: how many it's like six e's at the end of
Speaker 6: that the screen, she's laughing right now, you knew, I knew, Like, okay,
Speaker 6: let me explain it.
Speaker 5: Okay. So all the people out there and listen were okay.
Speaker 6: So so you know on social media now when you
Speaker 6: get if you're on Twitter and you get like the
Speaker 6: blue check, that's like you were verified.
Speaker 5: Like that's like, okay, you're the fucking man.
Speaker 6: Right before the verification, there was okay player, and there
Speaker 6: was the okay that was beside your screen. Now when
Speaker 6: you got the okay, like I was tay gravy, I'm
Speaker 6: still take gravy, Okay player, and like I'm take gravy,
Speaker 6: and it was like all right, whatever, I'm take gravy.
Speaker 6: When I became take gravy, okay, you made it? What yo?
Speaker 5: What?
Speaker 2: I still don't know the criteria.
Speaker 6: Okay, we can't talk about it as part of our
Speaker 6: Illuminati package, but it.
Speaker 5: Was part of it.
Speaker 6: Was we can't you can't speak on none of that.
Speaker 6: It was it was a part of our Illuminati NBA
Speaker 6: that we had to sign. But okay, but but nah
Speaker 6: man shouts to Angie Okay player for bringing us all together.
Speaker 6: It has been an incredible and fellas, ladies and gents,
Speaker 6: I start to my left with lovely, what have you learned?
Speaker 5: What do we learn this?
Speaker 6: Over this two day period picnics work.
Speaker 2: That's what I have learned.
Speaker 3: I have learned that as much as I like to
Speaker 3: tease our boss and you know, leader, fearless, Leader, re quest, love,
Speaker 3: that nigga works hard. And I don't know what kind
Speaker 3: of vitamins you know, he takes, but it's good.
Speaker 2: It's got to be something he's keeping.
Speaker 5: From us cocaine. It's got to be something.
Speaker 2: But I wish that he took drugs.
Speaker 11: I really don't know what the man is superhuman, he's.
Speaker 5: Got to be. Yeah, that's all I'm saying.
Speaker 3: And I've learned that I can be in a room
Speaker 3: with y'all for over eight hours, and especially you know,
Speaker 3: I paid bill here ship.
Speaker 5: You liked it the whole time. Sit next to me. Stop.
Speaker 5: I think that like what well you said, you liked
Speaker 5: it the whole time. That and like you were talking
Speaker 5: about being trapped in a room with that sounds bad.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that sound I'm sure that was like the same
Speaker 6: thing that Rick James said to that girl.
Speaker 5: You know what this.
Speaker 13: Was?
Speaker 5: No, maybe it's like an episode of Breaking Bad. So
Speaker 5: I want unpaid bill. What have you learned? Brother? Days? Man?
Speaker 5: I've had to really surreal fucking days, man.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Okay, so your whole phase updated? Yeah, yes, up,
Speaker 6: Apparently something went down last night.
Speaker 5: I went down last night.
Speaker 4: He wasn't.
Speaker 5: I you know, Uh, everything is good. That's how you're
Speaker 5: supposed to do it.
Speaker 11: That's how you're supposed to do it.
Speaker 5: Don't leave me hanging over there. I'm sorry, I didn't
Speaker 5: see that. I was laughing and I closed my eyes.
Speaker 5: That's how I was supposed to do it.
Speaker 3: Can you at least tell your wool story because it
Speaker 3: was funny?
Speaker 5: Oh my wool story? Okay, all right.
Speaker 17: So so the WU tank Plan are playing at the
Speaker 17: Ruth Picnic, and so I went to the rehearsal today
Speaker 17: because I had some time to kill between the end
Speaker 17: of my whole phase in the beginning of the afternoon
Speaker 17: exactly if you will, just for just understand time in
Speaker 17: relation to me, all right. So I got into the
Speaker 17: WU thing and I was there, and they were all there.
Speaker 17: But there's you know how many guys, There's nine of
Speaker 17: them or eight of them, right, and there was like
Speaker 17: forty people there, forty other dudes with like shoolin woo
Speaker 17: shit happening. And I fit right in as I off
Speaker 17: do in these situations. Clearly, I'm a plaid. So I
Speaker 17: sat there for a while. So I sitting there with
Speaker 17: Steve and and all of a sudden they're getting the
Speaker 17: songs together. So Rizza gets up and he starts to rap,
Speaker 17: and then and then a few of the guys get
Speaker 17: up to do whatever song they were doing.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, two of them.
Speaker 17: Are set up a chess board and just start playing chess,
Speaker 17: like that's what you do during rehearsal. That's what you
Speaker 17: do during rehearsal, absolutely every time. So and I thought like,
Speaker 17: oh man, they're gonna get up and get on the
Speaker 17: stage because that's what you do in rehearsal. But lo
Speaker 17: and behold, it got to like Jesus verse and he
Speaker 17: was playing chess and he just rapped while he was
Speaker 17: playing chess. He was like, Chess move, Chess move. And
Speaker 17: I was like, that's the most surreal thing I've seen
Speaker 17: in a really long time. They didn't have to get up.
Speaker 17: Oh and there was a teleprompter, because you know, they
Speaker 17: forgot all that. They thought they thought it was the
Speaker 17: funniest thing ever, because they don't when those kind of
Speaker 17: words are written on it tell it was very very
Speaker 17: funny to them.
Speaker 6: Wowverybody else shout out to the making chess moves and
Speaker 6: rap moves at the same time simultaneously.
Speaker 2: That happened such a big catalog.
Speaker 5: You got the mystery of chess wrapping.
Speaker 17: It was and then and then Steve tried to make
Speaker 17: a joke about Bobby Fisher, but he called them Bobby
Speaker 17: Fisher Stein or something like that. And so then the
Speaker 17: joke on his face. That's the end of the Steve
Speaker 17: Steve screwed up a joke. Yes, Steve not geting jokes man.
Speaker 5: It's the weed, it's the West that it doesn't It
Speaker 5: doesn't work for him. So anyway, Scotty, what did you learn?
Speaker 2: Must have learned?
Speaker 11: Okay man, And we're not talking about the QLs after
Speaker 11: Dark session.
Speaker 5: The conversations which I missed. QULS after Dot was so real.
Speaker 5: It was so real. What makes that its own radio show? Yeah,
Speaker 5: ql S fe Q talk. It's like, yeah, who's been
Speaker 5: offs a couple of things.
Speaker 24: One, the roots are really creative when they need to
Speaker 24: stall for time.
Speaker 2: Story.
Speaker 5: Yes, yes, Chappelle loved that five minutes. I'm sure he did.
Speaker 5: He looked very enthused to be.
Speaker 6: Up there that forget about Oh yeah, we had rosel
Speaker 6: got fa noise that was seeing rosell in a long time. Yeah,
Speaker 6: shut up, you know, I'm just saying that was one
Speaker 6: the first time seeing him in a long time. I
Speaker 6: see him there was Yeah, you missed it.
Speaker 5: Rose showed up. We know.
Speaker 2: Oh he was whole fas.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 6: He was whole phasing, but it was he was old phasing.
Speaker 6: But Roselle showed up and did his thing.
Speaker 5: What else?
Speaker 24: The biggest thing I learned is that I had a
Speaker 24: really good time spending time with you guys, especially this
Speaker 24: whole weekend. And what people may or may not know
Speaker 24: is doing a radio show is really hard, and you
Speaker 24: guys make it look easy.
Speaker 5: So I think you guys all just thank you, thank you,
Speaker 5: thank you.
Speaker 17: I just think three months ago we had no idea dance.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, he can also teach dance. You will need
Speaker 5: to check the QLs instagram. Seven eight and ship time
Speaker 5: was impressed you.
Speaker 11: You guys will need to check the QLs instagram. You
Speaker 11: can see the video of Fonticelo and stepping in the
Speaker 11: name of Questlove.
Speaker 5: In the name of Questlove, people filming it.
Speaker 24: We have a bunch of together.
Speaker 5: There's all kinds of.
Speaker 3: Competition on the subject of fante real quick, can I
Speaker 3: just do another thing I learned.
Speaker 2: I learned that Fante was in the Color.
Speaker 11: Purple, right, man, you can tell everybody about that because
Speaker 11: that was off off Mike.
Speaker 5: It was off Mike. Okay, So for the people who care.
Speaker 6: Everybody, everybody. I was an extra in the Color Purple. Uh,
Speaker 6: long time ago.
Speaker 5: What it was.
Speaker 6: My uncle at the time, he was The film was
Speaker 6: shot in North Carolina, and so my uncle at the
Speaker 6: time was working. My uncle Mike shot at my uncle Mike,
Speaker 6: he was working at ants in Tech, which was the
Speaker 6: county they shot it in Anson County, and so he
Speaker 6: was working in ants in Tech as like a financial
Speaker 6: aid advisor, and so they that's where they were having
Speaker 6: the auditions. So he hits us, he hits my mom.
Speaker 6: He's like, hey, they're having auditions for this movie. And
Speaker 6: at the time the movie, the code name or the
Speaker 6: production name was called Moon Song, and they were kind
Speaker 6: of you know, keeping it under wraps whatever, and so
Speaker 6: they was like, they were having auditions for this movie.
Speaker 5: You should come down. So my mother came down. She's
Speaker 5: like cool. She brought me with me, and it was
Speaker 5: in the summer.
Speaker 6: Of eighty five. I want to say, I was six
Speaker 6: years old. I was about to go to first grade,
Speaker 6: I think. But anyway, so we go down we auditioned
Speaker 6: and at the time, and during the audition I remember
Speaker 6: specifically I had to I was going up against this girl.
Speaker 5: I was six years old and the girl was nine,
Speaker 5: and the.
Speaker 6: Audition was we had to pretend that we were angry
Speaker 6: and we were hungry and we wanted a mother whoever
Speaker 6: to make us some jam.
Speaker 5: Sandwiches make a jam sound, so you.
Speaker 6: Had to act like I'm hungry, I want some jam
Speaker 6: like that was the I remember specifically, that was it.
Speaker 5: I'm hungry, I want some jam. And so, you know, the.
Speaker 6: Girl was older than me, and she was big, and
Speaker 6: she was fucking like, I mean, she was really scary.
Speaker 6: I was scared of shit, but she was really give
Speaker 6: me some jam, like she really hadn't ate, like maybe
Speaker 6: like her wik vouchers hadn't appeared that month.
Speaker 5: She really might have been hungry. It was real, so
Speaker 5: you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: So she did her thing or whatever, and I was
Speaker 6: just like, man, so I did mine and I was
Speaker 6: kind of shook. So I remember leaving auditions just thinking like, man,
Speaker 6: I don't think they're gonna choose me.
Speaker 5: Can you like, how you did it A little bit?
Speaker 5: Give me some jam. I'm hungry. I wouldn't have gave
Speaker 5: you the qua. Yeah I wouldn't. Yeah, I would have
Speaker 5: been I lost it, so h.
Speaker 6: I thought it was I figured that I had fucking
Speaker 6: bombed or whatever. And so I just came home. We left,
Speaker 6: come home one night to my grandmother's house. Phone rings
Speaker 6: and and my mother answers it, and I'm in the
Speaker 6: other room and I hear her just start screaming. But
Speaker 6: it wasn't like a bad scream. It wasn't like somebody
Speaker 6: died scream. It was like a shit we hit the
Speaker 6: lottery screen. Yeah, she was like happy, and so I
Speaker 6: came out. I was like, what is it? So she
Speaker 6: was telling me. She was like, yo, you got a
Speaker 6: part in The Color Purple. So that was when they
Speaker 6: let her know that it was The Color Purple was
Speaker 6: the movie. And we went down the next day, and
Speaker 6: you know, I remember getting fitted for everything, like I
Speaker 6: remember meeting Oprah. And the only reason I knew she
Speaker 6: was Oprah was because at the time she used to
Speaker 6: be in the Jet magazine. And like when you go
Speaker 6: to the barber shops, like barber shops always used to
Speaker 6: have a jet, So like I was read like the
Speaker 6: albums and then see the Beauty of the Week, and
Speaker 6: then like a few other pages after that. It was
Speaker 6: like Oprah, she was on the bottom of like top
Speaker 6: ten influential square in the Black Squares. She was one
Speaker 6: of the Black Square implorant people. And so I remember
Speaker 6: seeing her and we met at No Old Joke, like
Speaker 6: we were at the Daily Tray and we met and
Speaker 6: we met at craft services and uh yeah her, I
Speaker 6: remember me whoopee, I remember all that stuff. And so
Speaker 6: it wasn't until afterwards when the movie came out. My
Speaker 6: mother took me to see it, and it was then
Speaker 6: I understood this while we shot a fucking movie, like
Speaker 6: I got it. But uh yeah, it was a fun experience.
Speaker 6: Steven Spielberg. At the time, he was married to Amy Irving,
Speaker 6: And I remember she was breastfeeding and that was the
Speaker 6: first time I've ever seen that stuff. Yeah, because it's
Speaker 6: just white women putting their titties out, like you just
Speaker 6: don't see that shular.
Speaker 5: I mean, I was like, what the fuck? And so
Speaker 5: I remember my mom like you was like, Mama, that
Speaker 5: woman's got a titt out, and she's like, boy, put
Speaker 5: you don't point at them people like it was crazy.
Speaker 6: So it was just totally different being like a small
Speaker 6: southern like kid, you know, small town southern kid being
Speaker 6: around all these like la people like that was of
Speaker 6: my boy.
Speaker 5: And your actual careers just jumped off.
Speaker 6: Since then, Yeah, I have since been in uh what
Speaker 6: have I been? I've been in the breaks on v
Speaker 6: H one. I was also in the gospel production Mama,
Speaker 6: please don't it's grown by leaps and bounds. But no, man,
Speaker 6: that was That was my story And I may post
Speaker 6: some pics. Maybe I'll post some pics on QLs, like
Speaker 6: that a little.
Speaker 2: Boy running through the street, running through the sheets that
Speaker 2: hit Sealy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, they was.
Speaker 6: I ran through and tumbled so you can see me.
Speaker 6: But I'll post. I'll send pictures to uh like we
Speaker 6: can put it up on the q LS Instagram.
Speaker 2: That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Uh, boss Bill, what did you What have you learned? Man?
Speaker 5: What have you learned this?
Speaker 11: I learned that everybody that we talked to today was
Speaker 11: very intelligent. H had everybody had their head on straight
Speaker 11: like that was refreshing. It was very refreshing because I've
Speaker 11: talked to a lot of people, you know, in various
Speaker 11: capacities in the in the industry, and not everybody.
Speaker 5: Is all there. Yeah, but everybody we talked to this weekend,
Speaker 5: I have I have a going to do big things.
Speaker 6: And I have hope for the future. Like for all
Speaker 6: the people, like millennials, I think get a very bad
Speaker 6: rap and it's just old millenniums, this, millenniums, this, But
Speaker 6: the young people that we spoke to over this past
Speaker 6: week Yeah, y'all right with me, particularly like Tiss just
Speaker 6: specifically saying like Lean is some bullshit, and you know,
Speaker 6: to hear I've been body to hear Damn Alley talking
Speaker 6: about you know, you know I write, you know who
Speaker 6: I am. I'm not gonna try to I want to
Speaker 6: work my I'm not going to coast all my name.
Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying. Yeah, Una saying the same thing.
Speaker 6: So yeah, the uh, the young artist that y'all giving
Speaker 6: me hope. You know what I'm saying, y'all ain't just
Speaker 6: all bouncing and shooting and killing the ship, y'all. Yeah, yah, yah,
Speaker 6: gotchas on straight. I'm hopeful, thank you. Yeah man, Well, y'all,
Speaker 6: this has been yet another fun field episode of Quest
Speaker 6: Love Supreme.
Speaker 5: In this two day haul. Good god, man, we've been
Speaker 5: this has been nuts, but we got through it.
Speaker 6: On behalf of Myself, Fonticelo, Lovely Boss, Bill, Unpaid Bill, Scott,
Speaker 6: Ya Yo, Sugar Steve and our absent cult leader Massa Thompson.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I'm our slave, Motisa the Motiza Trial. I
Speaker 5: heard the Motsasa.
Speaker 2: It's not funny, say.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was real. It was funny.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're gonna rename this podcast, this radio show twelve
Speaker 6: years of Tompson.
Speaker 5: Listen, he's gonna hate this up.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, he gonna be he'll be cussing all this
Speaker 6: funk out, but it's all good. Listen on behalf of
Speaker 6: all of Us, Team Supreme Here at Question of Supreme. Man,
Speaker 6: thank all of y'all for checking us, and we'll be
Speaker 6: back next week on YA another episode of Question.
Speaker 5: Love Supreme with an all new Team Supremes. All yeah,
Speaker 5: last one be a good run.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's been real.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, I'll see y'all letting up the plumbing line together.
Speaker 5: Quest Love Supreme only on Pandora. We'll see y'all next week.
Speaker 1: Pe of Course, Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.