November 6, 2025 • 38 mins
This week on Earsay, we’re exploring Mark Ronson's memoir Night People: How to Be a DJ in Nineties New York City. Kal sits down with legendary drummer, producer, and director Questlove to discuss Ronson's coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of New York's vibrant hip-hop scene.
Together, they unpack what it means to be a "night person," share stories of growing up immersed in music from childhood, and explore the intoxicating sense of control that comes from commanding a DJ booth. Questlove reflects on his own journey — from cutting gels in nightclubs as a child to an ego-crushing moment DJing at the Obama White House — and how those experiences shaped his creative path.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Hearsay, the iHeart and Audible Audio Book Club.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm At Helms, host of snaff Who.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
And I'm Cal Penn, host of Here We Go Again.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
You've been having a good run there, Cal, some great
guests on Here We Go Again.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
It's been a very fun launch. In first few episodes.
I've been having a great time also. It's just kind
of fun to like ask otherwise serious slash nerdy people
ludicrous questions in a way that I like actually get
something out of it. So it's been it's been last Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yes, Snapho has been great too. I just did an
insane interview with Scott Galloway and Karas Swisher. I watched
them through the snap who of the Palmer Raids, which
we're during the first Red Scare after World War One.
That was like a kind of a heavy episode but
very dense and cool. And then of course we've had
some super funny ones like Paul Sheer cool. Yeah, just yeah,
(01:09):
it's been a good sort of distribution of laughs and
like the meaty stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, that's a great mix and ed I'm really excited
about today's episode of Earsay. Today on the show, we're
talking about Night People, How to be a DJ in
nineties New York City. This is a coming of age memoir.
It gives an inside look at a very specific time
and place, and it shows how a young kid in
(01:36):
a vibrant music scene grew into an absolute industry powerhouse.
That kid, of course, was Mark Ronson Grammy Waning, producer,
DJ and musician behind some of the biggest hits in
the last twenty years. He's produced Adele, Lady Gaga, Queens
of the Stone Age, but he's maybe best known for
(01:58):
his collaboration with Bruno mar on Uptown Funk and for
co producing Amy Winehouse's Back to Black. Mark just narrated
his own audiobook again as one should sure discuss this previously,
and when you're listening you can make out this hard
to place, subtle accent, and then you find out that
(02:19):
he was born in England. He moved to the US
when he was five years old when his parents got divorced.
His mom moved them in with her new partner, Mick Jones,
who was the guitarist from Foreigner Amazing. He wrote the
song I want to know what love is? Get out
of here? Who want you to show me?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I mean that's that is like my dream dad. I
want him as my dad.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Well, so that song I want to Know All Love
Is is about Mark Ronson's mom, So he was surrounded
by no. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, right, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Wait.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
And also Mark Ronson's sister is the massive DJ Samantha Ronson.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Right, oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, this makes sense.
This is two They're two musical musical family. So Mark
was surrounded by music from a very early age. Clearly
this rubbed off on his sister as well, but he
also struggled to find a sense of belonging. And just
listen to this clip from the audiobook.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
When I returned to London for school holidays, my old
friends teased me for sounding like a Yanka. Ready, I
felt that I was no longer a brit and not
really an American. Barely twelve, I know I'd never fully
fit in anywhere.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Wow, it's kind of poignant.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
It is poignant, and it's what I enjoyed about listening
to that. The early life stuff was for so many
artists who feel like that have one foot in two
different places. Yeah, and then your art kind of comes
out of that. It's something I can relate to, but
just not you know, as an actor and writer, not
in the music space. So this is very much a
(04:00):
story of finding your place in the world. And I
will see you again after this interview.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
All right, good luck, have a great one.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Thank you, and we have a real treat today because
I got to talk to someone incredibly fitting about the
world of rhythm, hip hop and musical mastery. He's a
legendary drummer, producer, writer, and the host of the iHeart
podcast Questlove Supreme, Questlove, Questlove. Thank you for being here
(04:33):
with us on ear say. It's nice to see you.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
I always love running into you. I know we have
a bunch of mutual friends. We're both New Yorkers. You're
a musician, you're a producer, you're a writer. You're also
a director. You directed two docs that came out this year,
Ladies and Gentlemen, Fifty Years of SNL Music and Sly
Lives aka The Burden of Black Genius, which we're both
nominated for Emmy Awards. Congratulations, I appreciate that. Do you
(05:01):
see yourself doing more directing. Are you focusing more on
directing or are you doing a little bit of everything.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
To be honest with you, I don't know how I
got here, So I guess you could say I'm just
in the business of whatever the universe says that I
am that day.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
You're just going with where the journey takes you.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
Literally, how did I get here?
Speaker 6 (05:20):
Matter of fact, an hour ago, I just pick locked
my next project, which is the Earth Wound and Fire documentary.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Oh cool?
Speaker 6 (05:29):
And what self sabotaged was for the slide doc. Metaphysics
is for the Earth Wound and Fire doc. Awesome, thank you?
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yeah, all right, let's turn to the audiobook in question today.
Yes you know Mark Ronson a little bit, right.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
I know him well? Yes, absolutely?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Okay, So the title of this audiobook is night People,
and here's how he describes what night people are.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
There are people who enjoy night out, and then there
are night people, a different kind altogether, the ones who
become their best selves once the sun dies down.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
So he says that he's a night person. His parents
were night people, and the people he comes up with
in the story are largely knight people. Is that something
you relate to? Do you consider yourself a night person?
Speaker 5 (06:19):
I was raised as a night person.
Speaker 6 (06:22):
Okay, My father was an oldies duop legend of the
late fifties early sixties, who you know, of course rock
and roll being like the first modern culture of American
music as we know it for this generation. By the
time I was born, was a nostalgia period twenty years later,
(06:44):
of which you know, no one knew that, Like it's
literally like discovering gold. Like wait a minute, So the
same audience who was thirteen years old listened to Lollipop Lollypop,
now they're thirty five years old may still want to
hear that bubblegum music. And so by the time I
was born, my father was part of the first nostalgia
wave of American music, the idea of reselling the same
(07:07):
package for thirty and forty year olds, you know, the
same way that everyone's probably waiting for his Spice Girls
reunion right now. My father was part of that wave
back then, and I was one of the last generation
of people whose parents did not trust babysitters, like the oh,
the concept of a babysitter was really only acceptable after
(07:31):
like eighty five, maybe, like you know, late eighties, but
in the mid seventies, you know, it was like farm work,
you helped the family business.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
It was nothing for an.
Speaker 6 (07:43):
Eight year old to be in a nightclub in nineteen
seventy eight at the soundboard fixing the monitors. Ten year
old coming to a nightclub and cut jails just like here,
like my dressing room is all read, get a raiser
to cut some jails, set the lights.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
So being up at one am as a seven.
Speaker 6 (08:07):
Year old was nothing for my parents, Like keeping an
eye on me was important.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
So thus, yes, I became a night person.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
So you you it sounds like understood both the art
and the business very intimately from the time you were
five years old. Like if you're cutting gels and stuff,
you're not just going to shows and somebody's watching you.
You're like actually doing real work.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
I didn't know I was learning a trade. To me,
it was fun.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
Like at five, I was like the family GPS. Basically
someone has to be in the car to write down
you know, we'll be in the Catskills somewhere, and you
know how to get to the Bumpy's nightclub.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
Okay, so you go down four blocks and da da
da da.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
So as a five year old I knew how to
take dictation good. When I was seven, my dad taught
me how to iron, steam press clothes, run stuff to
the cleaners. By the time I was nine, I was
helping with and lights. And then one day at Radio
(09:05):
City Music Hall, my dad's drummer broke his arm in
an accident, and my dad was like, all right, well
you're the new band leader. So I at Radio City
Music Hall, I became my father's band leader. But at
no point that I think this was like an education
or I'm going to use these skills to run my
(09:26):
own career. But for me, the goal was like to
be the richest fourth grader. By the time September came,
Like at the end of the summer, I had about
two five hundred dollars, and I had new bikes and
jeans and mostly records.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
So Mark runs some details an interesting cultural moment here
in New York City, in New York City night life
the early to mid nineties and his obsession with hip
hop Yeah, and he writes about how the DJ booth
offered him a place to kind of embody himself and
offer a sense of control. Here's what he.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Said, Oh, how I love that control For someone who
grew up amid chaos and uncertainty. The DJ booth was
the perfect refuge, a one man command center where every
fader and dial bent the world to my will.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
How much of that description resonates with your own experience
as a producer and performer, And given what you said
about starting out so young when you were five to nine.
Speaker 6 (10:22):
I havn't gotten Mark's book the week it came out,
and I've read that He made it very clear to
me why I was willing to do those same things
that you know are both of our journeys as DJs
sort of like are parallel to each other.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
And I didn't realize that the.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
Serotonin that I was getting off one like, oh, I'm
responsible for your happiness with this next record, because all music.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
Is is a polaroid of a memory.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
Like anytime I hear Alanis Marsset's ironic, I'll forever remember
my first car accident, oh wow, and avoiding getting crushed
by an eighteen wheelers. So whenever it comes on, instantly
my mind goes, you know, sliding on the Jersey term bike.
But when he put it that way, it made me
(11:18):
almost take pause. Like I thought I was a humble guy,
but am I like a megalomaniac that gets off on
the fact that my DJ booth is like, am I
getting high off that level of intimacy? And I hit
him up about this. I was like, Yo, is this
better than sex? Is this a musical caligular fantasy where
(11:40):
you're commanding the center And the only time you really
realize that is when you fail?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 6 (11:47):
When I do a bad DJ gig, I mean I
take it to heart. Probably one of my best fels
but best life growth moments. Obama asked me to DJ
the very last party of the Obama administration in January
of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
And the way that I.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
Meticulously planned, like CSI level, beautiful mind yarn three records
a day, like putting the formulas together, and this song
blends with that song Da Da Da Da Da. And
I came with the attitude like, Yo, I'm gonna be
god Like. I really thought I was going to get
a MacArthur's Genius Grant for how I curated this set.
(12:34):
And an hour into it and people generally know don't
mess with the mirror when he's djaying, and this tap
is on my shoulder and I'm like shooing them away,
And then I happened to look at my manager, and
he's like looking at me like, motherfucker, you were a
turn amound and I turned, Oh, sir, hey how you doing?
And literally he's like, hey, you're doing a good job.
(12:56):
Like the first thing he does is he compliments me.
He says, man, the way you're uh mixing the jazz
and the disco and the cross genres, it's such a
genius presentation. But any points and Sasha Malia and all
their cousins and all their girlfriends and all their friends,
it's like thirty of them. They're having to sit in
(13:18):
They're sitting on the floor like this, and he's like,
they want to.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
Have fun too, so you know, include them. And in
my mind, I'm like, I'm at the White House.
Speaker 6 (13:30):
I'm curating every record and everything, and I'm like, with
all due respects there, like the stuff they want to
listen to, I don't think I can play here. And
he's like, uh, we're adult, timan, go ahead, dude, do
what you would normally do. And I was like, Sir,
I don't think I could play French Montana. Fuck that
fuzzy what's you working with? Like, I don't know if
I could do that? Go ahead, play it.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
Dude.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
When I played it, first of all, I was rocking
two thousand people, right.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Yeah, I remember this, by the way. I was there
night and you're taking me back.
Speaker 6 (14:02):
When I put French Montana on, suddenly it was like
five thousand people, and I was like, wait.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
Where all these people come from? Yeah? And they were like, yeah,
they was the way for you to play something that
they wanted to hear.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6 (14:16):
And so then I did the most ratchetest set I
ever did in my life, and they were elated, and
I felt like I got rejected by a girlfriend. And
next day I set like a four hour session with
my therapist and I didn't go anywhere near a DZ
booth until like maybe eight months later.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
It's rare for me to be able to talk to
a fellow artist about what failure feels like and how
our own metrics of success and failure are largely different
from what an audience necessarily thinks her feels and when
that interacts. I find it very difficult to explain to
friends who are not artists or athletes, by the way
athletes deal with similar emotions, on what that means. Mark
(15:00):
Ronson mentions working with you in the studio on a
Nika Costa project, and he details how you and James
Poyser transformed his demos with quote telekinetic mastery of rhythm.
And I want to flip that idea back on Mark.
From what you've seen and heard, what is it that
(15:21):
Mark Ronson brings to the projects he works on.
Speaker 6 (15:26):
Working with Mark on two particular projects that he did,
he offered grace in terms of really just giving me
this space to find myself. So with the Nika Costa project,
that project's happening smack dab in the middle of the
(15:46):
four year slow jinga building of what is DiAngelo's Voodoo album.
It takes four years for me to unlearn everything that
I ever knew about drumming from birth until the moment
D'Angelo calls me to collaborate on this record. And what
he does is he strips you to your core of
everything that you've learned, and you've got to relearn how
(16:09):
to enter his world. And his world's a very sloppy,
egoless world. Like if I were to put you on drums,
how amateur you would sound like when you're watching someone
on a sitcom, Like I had to sound that amateurs
because everything's so quantized and perfect. You know, you hear
(16:30):
a established Michael Jackson's song and just everything's perfect. The
snare drums are perfectly loud at every gasp, and you
hear the spit come out of his mouth to the microphone,
and D'Angelo is sort of the opposite. So we started
the Nika Costa project with Mark maybe about a good
year and a half after this unlearning and well oiled
(16:52):
machine of what Voodoo was, and now like, oh wait,
do I know how to play like my old self again?
Because her music is more nuanced and perfect. So he
basically just told me like, I want you to try
to give me something that's not derivative of what you
(17:14):
think I want. And I never thought of that because
I'm such a shape shifter. I always ask like, what
song were you listening to when you first envisioned this,
And they'll tell me like, I was.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Listening to Paul Simon's Da Da Da Da dah.
Speaker 6 (17:29):
And then I'll be like, Okay, let me get in
the mode of and I'll put myself back in nineteen
seventy seven and tune the drums to say I'll shape
shift into that.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
And Mark wanted me to undo that.
Speaker 6 (17:40):
Matter of fact, like every album I do with Mark Ronson,
especially like his work with Yebba, that's the only time
where you get a version of Questlove. It's almost like
what I wouldn't do. And there have been times where
I'll call Mark when said album comes out and I'll
seriously be like, look, dog, I won't be offended at
(18:02):
all like this someone else. Drummond, He's like, dude, it's you.
Speaker 5 (18:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
He talks a lot about crate digging and finding the
perfect obscure sample, and he obsessively tracked down the record
sampled by a trip called Quest and many Riperton's Adventures
in Paradise and Ronnie Foster's Mystic Brew. This is, by
the way, before the Internet made finding samples easier. My
(18:27):
only touch point to this is back in college. After college,
I remember going record shopping on Melrose with Yorma tacone
of Lonely Island fame, and we were scoping through records
and when he found out that in my apartment in
la I had a box of my dad's old records
and it was a combination of like old Bollywood records
(18:48):
plus whatever he had acquired. You know, he's an immigrant,
so like just old anyone who moved here in the
sixty years or seventies, and just watching his eyes open
and his mouth salivating, He's like, can I come over?
So that's my only touch point to this. But I
remember the magic of that pre digital, pre internet. Right,
you were playing music in the roots all through the
(19:10):
nineties when this story takes place, and you guys were
famously a very live band, but were you also looking
for samples? What were you guys digging in crates for?
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Leading back to my dad, One of my happiest memories
with my dad was we would bind shop. It's one
thing to beIN shop as a hip hop producer and
you know you're going to drop five hundred to thousands
on all these crates of records that.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
You're going to bring home with you.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
But pretty much that's what my dad had to do
for his nightclub back because you're doing five shows nightly,
and three of those shows have to be what his
backup band has to learn. As you know, DJ culture
wasn't in yet, so the band like wedding band style,
you have to play all the songs of the day.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Here's love Rollo Coaster bout the high.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
Here's brick House by the Commodoors, like Wild Cherry's play
that funky music, White Boy.
Speaker 5 (20:04):
I grew up in a.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
Three to four thousand record collection house, and as a result,
to be honest with you, like, you know, I would
only peruse maybe ten percent of that, like the popular stuff,
the said brick houses, the said play a funky you know.
But I look at James Brown like that, that's old
people's music. I won't touch that. And then Public Enemies
(20:29):
Nation of Millions comes out in nineteen eighty eight, which
is basically the first example of everything but the kitchen sink.
Every song is crambled like twenty samples, and you're sitting there.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
Like, wait, I know I heard that from somewhere. Where's
that guitar?
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Like?
Speaker 6 (20:46):
And then you're like, my dad has all these records
like Public Enemy, open up the doors of my parents'
record collection can be my future, you know. And on
top of that, because we were the Cosby Show seeing
Stevie Wonder on the Cosby Shows show the Huxtables, what a.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
Sampler was.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
Totally unlocked all of our minds, like we need that machine.
Speaker 5 (21:12):
So thus we all got little toy samplers.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
From Cassio and when Tarika and I are busking on
South Street as a drummer and an MC and I'm
figuring like, Okay, well this is what we'll do, but
when we get into a studio, we'll be like a
regular rap group. And so the first time we ever
(21:35):
enter a studio, like after a year busking in the
streets of Philadelphia, finally someone says, I want to record
you guys and make your first twelve innutes single. And
I come to the studio with like all these records
and they're looking at me like what do you playing
on doing with those? And I'm like, we're gonna make
a record, right, And they're like, no, exactly what I
(21:57):
saw when you guys were on South Street, that's what
I want on this record. And I was I fought
them tooth and nail, like, I don't think us being
a band in the studio is going to fly and
it's going to be whack. But they knew how to
Jedi mind tricked me, was like, look, check this out.
Just try it now for an hour and if it
doesn't work, then we'll do it your way. We knocked
(22:20):
out one song in ten minutes and they were like, well,
you got another and another, So by three hours we
had knocked out like seven songs and they were just like,
why would you ever want to go the other way
because it will take you like three days to make
one song. And then that's kind of how they wore
me down. So I reluctantly found a destination in my
(22:44):
future ironically.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
That's Yeah. There's another fascinating part of March's journey. It's
when he starts mixing rock into his sets, like playing
ac DC back in Black at Cheetah hip Hop Club.
He says he recognized that hip hop pioneers like Cool
Heirk and Africa Bambada integrated rock into their music, but
(23:08):
that rock had largely been absent from down downtown hip
hop clubs for a while. Yeah, so this might be
the wrong question, and tell me if it is. But
Mark plays back in Black, the crowd goes wild. What
do you think allowed him or maybe other DJs to
successfully like smuggle rock and other unlikely genres back into
(23:30):
the hip hop clubs in the late nineties? Like, is
that the wrong question or is there an actual art?
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Here's the thing, like the fact that Africa Membada could
put Mary Mary by the Monkeys on and the Bronx
River of Projects, the Monkeys and the Bronze River of Projects,
and people would go berserk, like just because that drum
(23:56):
break was so funky at the top of it, so
it becomes hip hop. People didn't realize, like the idea
of hip hop being high art was such a hard
fought battle that no one even stops to look at
the science of how hip hop works and how hip
(24:19):
hop helped the industry. Because the thing is is like now, like,
of course, thirty years into my career, I can take
victory lapse and you know, be the sage, the savant,
the mouthpiece for this culture. But just like everyone else,
like when I got licensed to ill and what played
during lunch break, of course my science teacher is going
(24:40):
to say, you guys never heard of led zeppelins when
the levy breaks, like that.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
Drum comes from that song.
Speaker 6 (24:48):
I mean he brought in the next day and it's like, ah,
even my DJ gigs the reason why I would play
the sample first, okay, and I played like sixteen bars before,
and so when a good part happens that you know about, right,
suddenly there's a smart that happens in you and you
(25:09):
feel smarter. So all I'm doing is value beat. Okay, like, hey,
I'm smart too, because I know what trical quests on
this comes from. Yeah, and so you know it's it's
just it's just me telling you, Hey, you're smart too.
It's like a compliment when you do that to people. Yeah,
(25:31):
it enlightens them.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I want to quickly go back to I appreciate what
you've shared about the White House gig for you, and
I still kind of can't shake it because we rarely
get to talk about this, right, It's like usually just
other other artists or athlete friends who you can like
chat about this with. So Ronson describes his late night hours.
He says he was, you know, lugging hundreds of pounds
(25:55):
of vinyl up five flights of stairs, four nights a week,
dealing with like lunatic cls, surviving on adrenaline an alcohol,
and he eventually realized he was burning the candle at
both ends with a blowtorch and talks about the physical
and emotional toll that it took on him. I have
my version of that. As an actor. Usually when you
(26:15):
have peaks more film than TV, definitely less theater, but
it's like when the demands on you feel like they
don't become your own. For me at least, that's usually
when I have to figure out the balance. As someone
who's been immersed in live music culture, how do you
find your balance? What have you seen that works and
doesn't work for.
Speaker 5 (26:33):
You, to be honest with you.
Speaker 6 (26:37):
So that moment in twenty sixteen broke me to where
I didn't want to DJ anymore. And of course my
managers are like, dude, you got some bills to pay.
So I was teaching at NYU, I have my own podcast,
I was doing the Tonight Show, I was DJ and
regularly I'm still in the roots.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
I was doing our merch or our fashion thing. I
was working for Nike.
Speaker 6 (27:00):
Literally decided to fill every space of second, not wasting
a second doing something creative. And I have fourteen gigs
and then the pandemic happens. Oh wow, and nothing. For
the first time in my life since five, I've not
been on a stage for like nine months. Ever since
(27:23):
the age of five, I'm at least on a stage
performing for people at least like once every fourteen days,
and some sort of capacity. And so when the pandemic
took everything away from me and one fell swoop. Not
to mention, my ex and I were teening on a
farm like upstate and isolation. You know, At first I
(27:45):
thought this is going to be hell, like I'm stuck
up here in silence with trees and birds and yeah.
And then about three weeks into it, I realized, like, oh,
wait a minute, doing nothing and sitting in silence is
where more ideas come to you. You know, some people
(28:06):
have to sort of dig for where the ideas come from.
Some people might have to drink a bottle of wine
or an idea.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
Comes, or smoke something or something worse.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
But I realized a guy who was addicted to always
distracting himself, suddenly I'm living a year.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
In which doing absolutely nothing.
Speaker 6 (28:31):
Was I tell people now, like, you know, boredom and
nothing is your best friend. But I also see this
moment now where we are as under the same guise
of what I saw in twenty twenty, which was, oh,
this is a time for me to go back to
the woodshed and do more work on myself so that
(28:55):
I can be my best creative self.
Speaker 5 (28:57):
And I know it sounds woo woo, but.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Not really, man, I mean to be able to take
stock of things and look inward and say, it's not
a distraction right now to be horrified by anything happening
in the world. But I think I'll put myself in
this situation. When I do that too much, I lose
control over what I actually have control over and who
I am and being able to look inward. So I
(29:21):
appreciate you saying that we're going to pause for a
quick break, but we'll be right back. Quest Love. All right,
We're going to do a few quick fire questions now
in a segment we're calling plot Twist.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
Ready, this is a mirror you're talking to you. I
won't overanalyze everything.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Good.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
So, Mark Ronson describes his greatest moment of validation as
when DJ Premier, his hero, heard Ronson's track like a
Feather and gave him this stank face. What's the ultimate
non monetary compliment you've ever received that made you feel
like you truly made it?
Speaker 5 (30:06):
I was there to witness Mark Ronson get that thing. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
I was the third guy in the DJ booth. I'm
in Prince's living room. Whoa, I'm on drums. Stevie Wonder's
on keyboard.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
Some of Prince's band is there, Alicia Keys and Jamie
Fox is over there like a hippie white girl dancing
in the corner. And I look at Sheila E and
Mars Day at the time and Prince and they're just
(30:46):
you remember how those two kids and back to the future,
we're looking at Martin McFly when he invented the skateboard.
Look at him, go, look at him, go like watching
those three watch me and give each other that validation,
look like wow, Like everything that we did twenty years ago,
(31:10):
he's doing right now in those drums. And they kind
of had a future safe sort of thing like that
kid really has the goods.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
And I was like, man, if you only knew the amount.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
Of rats and roaches and vermin in that basement at
fifty two twelve those Sage Avenue, Like the amount of
hours I had to put in spider webs, like mildew,
like snow turning into water and flooding my basement, the
amount of hell I had to go through imagining one
(31:46):
day I would do this as you know, as a
nine year old, imagining Prince in Mars Day like high
fiving each other like he's good that moment. The next
thing I did was I went to Prince's bathroom and.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Cry, man, that is such a cool story. Yeah, yeah,
that's awesome. That is awesome all right. Like we talked
about before, Mark Ronson found sanctuary in the DJ booth,
what's a tool or piece of equipment in the studio
or on stage that gives you the most comforting sense
of control?
Speaker 5 (32:18):
Control?
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah, and if control is not comforting, then then take
control out of it. Just what's the most comforting?
Speaker 5 (32:27):
You know what? So I have two microphones on stage.
Speaker 6 (32:31):
We have the microphone that you hear as the audience
us doing the lyrics and singing the background vocals. Then
we have a second microphone in which we communicate with
each other. Okay, And we learned this and we learned
this trick from the Dave Matthews Band on tour with them.
We're like, wait, you can have a microphone to talk
to each other that the audience can't hear. And when
(32:53):
I tell you, I feel like that second microphone kind
of saved all of our friendships.
Speaker 5 (32:59):
No been.
Speaker 6 (33:01):
Likes each other After twenty years, the Beatles broke up
in seven and a half years, you know what I mean.
And we're going on thirty five, and I will say
that the second communication microphone, Yeah, is some of the
best jokes told, some of the craziest bets.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yo.
Speaker 6 (33:22):
I'll bet you yo, Row fourteen white T shirts is
going to fall up over sea.
Speaker 5 (33:26):
Fel see fel like.
Speaker 6 (33:28):
It's made me look forward to Root shows, like I
can't wait to get on stage with the Roots to
you know that fun.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Uh. There's a lot of specific talk about nineties clubs
in this audiobook. What was the best venue in the
nineties in New York City for a DJ?
Speaker 6 (33:44):
There's a place in the main packing district called we
called it APT the apartment, okay, and it.
Speaker 5 (33:54):
Was basically a lounge.
Speaker 6 (33:57):
There wasn't a dance floor, but where you stood like
having to be the dance floor. But Bobbido and Stretch
Armstrong would spin at the APT. To me, that was
my education. Like I'd just stand in the corner and
all of us would take notes. Like the way that
Mark sort of like says woefully and shamefully that he
(34:19):
would hear a mix or a combo and then he
go home and practice it and then it becomes his mix.
I believe that some of the gods of the universe
got to get inspired and then they take it and
they improve on that idea. So I highly recommend that,
Like if anyone says zaming a set, yeah, that's the
best compliment I can get if you're just zaming all right.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Last question, what's next on your reading list? And what's
one audiobook or traditional reading recommendation.
Speaker 6 (34:47):
Brianna Weist is an author that you know, really aided
in saving my life during the pandemic. She has a
brand new book that she just announced me yesterday. She's like,
I'm sending you my new book. I forget the title
of it, but anything that she's written after The Mountain
(35:10):
Is You, which I think I believe every creative should
read The Mountains You because it will explain to you
why you have the tendency to subconsciously self sabotage. Oh man,
right now I'm falling in a rabbit hole like anything
to do with metaphysics. And really it's because when I
(35:32):
did the Earth Wind and Fire doc, I had to
also read all the books that Maurice.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
White read to form earth Wind and Fire.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
And you know, suddenly I'm anything to do with metaphysics
or like self betterment.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
I just fell down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 6 (35:50):
So right now I'm somewhere in between the David Nevins
anthology and right now Neville Goddard.
Speaker 5 (36:01):
I'm going through all of his books.
Speaker 6 (36:04):
I'll just say, like between Brianna Wis, Neville got It,
David Nivens, Joe Despenza, and my fifth person is I
guess you can say, uh, Jose Silva.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (36:17):
I highly recommend really immersing yourself in those books, in
those audiobooks as a means to figuring out how to
rise above where we are right now.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Quest Love, it was excellent having you on Earsay, my friend.
Thanks for being a member of our club, and it
was great to talk to you.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
Man.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Nice to see you.
Speaker 5 (36:39):
I'll see you next time.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Yeah, man, thank you all right, man, see.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
You lat.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
Okay, Sometimes you just have to admit that someone is
just immensely cooler than you, Like I knew so many
of the cultural reference points, but there were others that
I'm just like, I've heard these names. I had no
idea how deep the stories went.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, as someone who is immensely cooler than you, I
have to say I really connected.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
No incredible stuff. Very well done, sir.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Oh well, thank you I'm glad we get to do
this together, and also thank you to those listening for
tuning into this episode of Earsay The Audible and iHeart
Audiobook Club. The audiobook we discussed Night People, How to
Be a DJ in nineties in New York City is
available on Audible now. Earsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook
(37:39):
Club is a production of Iheart's Ruby Studio. We're your
hosts Kalpen.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
And Ed Helms.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Our executive producer is Matt Schultz, with theme music and
post production by Marcus Bagala.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
For Ruby's Studio. Our managing EP is Matt Romano, our
EP of post production is Matt Stillo, and our production
coordinator is Abby Equin.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
And of course a big thank you to our friends
at Audible. Don't forget.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
You can listen to what we're listening to on the
Audible app or at audible dot com. Sign up for
a free thirty day Audible trial and your first audiobook
is free. Visit audible dot com. Slash Earsay until next time.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah, seriously, thank you, We appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
I had to get the last word
Welcome to Hearsay, the iHeart and Audible Audio Book Club.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
I'm At Helms, host of snaff Who.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
And I'm Cal Penn, host of Here We Go Again.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
You've been having a good run there, Cal, some great
guests on Here We Go Again.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
It's been a very fun launch. In first few episodes.
I've been having a great time also. It's just kind
of fun to like ask otherwise serious slash nerdy people
ludicrous questions in a way that I like actually get
something out of it. So it's been it's been last Yeah.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Yes, Snapho has been great too. I just did an
insane interview with Scott Galloway and Karas Swisher. I watched
them through the snap who of the Palmer Raids, which
we're during the first Red Scare after World War One.
That was like a kind of a heavy episode but
very dense and cool. And then of course we've had
some super funny ones like Paul Sheer cool. Yeah, just yeah,
(01:09):
it's been a good sort of distribution of laughs and
like the meaty stuff.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, that's a great mix and ed I'm really excited
about today's episode of Earsay. Today on the show, we're
talking about Night People, How to be a DJ in
nineties New York City. This is a coming of age memoir.
It gives an inside look at a very specific time
and place, and it shows how a young kid in
(01:36):
a vibrant music scene grew into an absolute industry powerhouse.
That kid, of course, was Mark Ronson Grammy Waning, producer,
DJ and musician behind some of the biggest hits in
the last twenty years. He's produced Adele, Lady Gaga, Queens
of the Stone Age, but he's maybe best known for
(01:58):
his collaboration with Bruno mar on Uptown Funk and for
co producing Amy Winehouse's Back to Black. Mark just narrated
his own audiobook again as one should sure discuss this previously,
and when you're listening you can make out this hard
to place, subtle accent, and then you find out that
(02:19):
he was born in England. He moved to the US
when he was five years old when his parents got divorced.
His mom moved them in with her new partner, Mick Jones,
who was the guitarist from Foreigner Amazing. He wrote the
song I want to know what love is? Get out
of here? Who want you to show me?
Speaker 2 (02:38):
I mean that's that is like my dream dad. I
want him as my dad.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Well, so that song I want to Know All Love
Is is about Mark Ronson's mom, So he was surrounded
by no. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy, right, that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Wait.
Speaker 1 (02:56):
And also Mark Ronson's sister is the massive DJ Samantha Ronson.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Right, oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, this makes sense.
This is two They're two musical musical family. So Mark
was surrounded by music from a very early age. Clearly
this rubbed off on his sister as well, but he
also struggled to find a sense of belonging. And just
listen to this clip from the audiobook.
Speaker 4 (03:22):
When I returned to London for school holidays, my old
friends teased me for sounding like a Yanka. Ready, I
felt that I was no longer a brit and not
really an American. Barely twelve, I know I'd never fully
fit in anywhere.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Wow, it's kind of poignant.
Speaker 3 (03:39):
It is poignant, and it's what I enjoyed about listening
to that. The early life stuff was for so many
artists who feel like that have one foot in two
different places. Yeah, and then your art kind of comes
out of that. It's something I can relate to, but
just not you know, as an actor and writer, not
in the music space. So this is very much a
(04:00):
story of finding your place in the world. And I
will see you again after this interview.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
All right, good luck, have a great one.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Thank you, and we have a real treat today because
I got to talk to someone incredibly fitting about the
world of rhythm, hip hop and musical mastery. He's a
legendary drummer, producer, writer, and the host of the iHeart
podcast Questlove Supreme, Questlove, Questlove. Thank you for being here
(04:33):
with us on ear say. It's nice to see you.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 3 (04:37):
I always love running into you. I know we have
a bunch of mutual friends. We're both New Yorkers. You're
a musician, you're a producer, you're a writer. You're also
a director. You directed two docs that came out this year,
Ladies and Gentlemen, Fifty Years of SNL Music and Sly
Lives aka The Burden of Black Genius, which we're both
nominated for Emmy Awards. Congratulations, I appreciate that. Do you
(05:01):
see yourself doing more directing. Are you focusing more on
directing or are you doing a little bit of everything.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
To be honest with you, I don't know how I
got here, So I guess you could say I'm just
in the business of whatever the universe says that I
am that day.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
You're just going with where the journey takes you.
Speaker 5 (05:18):
Literally, how did I get here?
Speaker 6 (05:20):
Matter of fact, an hour ago, I just pick locked
my next project, which is the Earth Wound and Fire documentary.
Speaker 3 (05:28):
Oh cool?
Speaker 6 (05:29):
And what self sabotaged was for the slide doc. Metaphysics
is for the Earth Wound and Fire doc. Awesome, thank you?
Speaker 3 (05:39):
Yeah, all right, let's turn to the audiobook in question today.
Yes you know Mark Ronson a little bit, right.
Speaker 5 (05:46):
I know him well? Yes, absolutely?
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Okay, So the title of this audiobook is night People,
and here's how he describes what night people are.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
There are people who enjoy night out, and then there
are night people, a different kind altogether, the ones who
become their best selves once the sun dies down.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
So he says that he's a night person. His parents
were night people, and the people he comes up with
in the story are largely knight people. Is that something
you relate to? Do you consider yourself a night person?
Speaker 5 (06:19):
I was raised as a night person.
Speaker 6 (06:22):
Okay, My father was an oldies duop legend of the
late fifties early sixties, who you know, of course rock
and roll being like the first modern culture of American
music as we know it for this generation. By the
time I was born, was a nostalgia period twenty years later,
(06:44):
of which you know, no one knew that, Like it's
literally like discovering gold. Like wait a minute, So the
same audience who was thirteen years old listened to Lollipop Lollypop,
now they're thirty five years old may still want to
hear that bubblegum music. And so by the time I
was born, my father was part of the first nostalgia
wave of American music, the idea of reselling the same
(07:07):
package for thirty and forty year olds, you know, the
same way that everyone's probably waiting for his Spice Girls
reunion right now. My father was part of that wave
back then, and I was one of the last generation
of people whose parents did not trust babysitters, like the oh,
the concept of a babysitter was really only acceptable after
(07:31):
like eighty five, maybe, like you know, late eighties, but
in the mid seventies, you know, it was like farm work,
you helped the family business.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
It was nothing for an.
Speaker 6 (07:43):
Eight year old to be in a nightclub in nineteen
seventy eight at the soundboard fixing the monitors. Ten year
old coming to a nightclub and cut jails just like here,
like my dressing room is all read, get a raiser
to cut some jails, set the lights.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
So being up at one am as a seven.
Speaker 6 (08:07):
Year old was nothing for my parents, Like keeping an
eye on me was important.
Speaker 5 (08:11):
So thus, yes, I became a night person.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
So you you it sounds like understood both the art
and the business very intimately from the time you were
five years old. Like if you're cutting gels and stuff,
you're not just going to shows and somebody's watching you.
You're like actually doing real work.
Speaker 5 (08:27):
I didn't know I was learning a trade. To me,
it was fun.
Speaker 6 (08:30):
Like at five, I was like the family GPS. Basically
someone has to be in the car to write down
you know, we'll be in the Catskills somewhere, and you
know how to get to the Bumpy's nightclub.
Speaker 5 (08:41):
Okay, so you go down four blocks and da da
da da.
Speaker 6 (08:44):
So as a five year old I knew how to
take dictation good. When I was seven, my dad taught
me how to iron, steam press clothes, run stuff to
the cleaners. By the time I was nine, I was
helping with and lights. And then one day at Radio
(09:05):
City Music Hall, my dad's drummer broke his arm in
an accident, and my dad was like, all right, well
you're the new band leader. So I at Radio City
Music Hall, I became my father's band leader. But at
no point that I think this was like an education
or I'm going to use these skills to run my
(09:26):
own career. But for me, the goal was like to
be the richest fourth grader. By the time September came,
Like at the end of the summer, I had about
two five hundred dollars, and I had new bikes and
jeans and mostly records.
Speaker 3 (09:42):
So Mark runs some details an interesting cultural moment here
in New York City, in New York City night life
the early to mid nineties and his obsession with hip
hop Yeah, and he writes about how the DJ booth
offered him a place to kind of embody himself and
offer a sense of control. Here's what he.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Said, Oh, how I love that control For someone who
grew up amid chaos and uncertainty. The DJ booth was
the perfect refuge, a one man command center where every
fader and dial bent the world to my will.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
How much of that description resonates with your own experience
as a producer and performer, And given what you said
about starting out so young when you were five to nine.
Speaker 6 (10:22):
I havn't gotten Mark's book the week it came out,
and I've read that He made it very clear to
me why I was willing to do those same things
that you know are both of our journeys as DJs
sort of like are parallel to each other.
Speaker 5 (10:40):
And I didn't realize that the.
Speaker 6 (10:43):
Serotonin that I was getting off one like, oh, I'm
responsible for your happiness with this next record, because all music.
Speaker 5 (10:54):
Is is a polaroid of a memory.
Speaker 6 (10:58):
Like anytime I hear Alanis Marsset's ironic, I'll forever remember
my first car accident, oh wow, and avoiding getting crushed
by an eighteen wheelers. So whenever it comes on, instantly
my mind goes, you know, sliding on the Jersey term bike.
But when he put it that way, it made me
(11:18):
almost take pause. Like I thought I was a humble guy,
but am I like a megalomaniac that gets off on
the fact that my DJ booth is like, am I
getting high off that level of intimacy? And I hit
him up about this. I was like, Yo, is this
better than sex? Is this a musical caligular fantasy where
(11:40):
you're commanding the center And the only time you really
realize that is when you fail?
Speaker 3 (11:46):
What do you mean by that?
Speaker 6 (11:47):
When I do a bad DJ gig, I mean I
take it to heart. Probably one of my best fels
but best life growth moments. Obama asked me to DJ
the very last party of the Obama administration in January
of twenty sixteen.
Speaker 5 (12:07):
And the way that I.
Speaker 6 (12:09):
Meticulously planned, like CSI level, beautiful mind yarn three records
a day, like putting the formulas together, and this song
blends with that song Da Da Da Da Da. And
I came with the attitude like, Yo, I'm gonna be
god Like. I really thought I was going to get
a MacArthur's Genius Grant for how I curated this set.
(12:34):
And an hour into it and people generally know don't
mess with the mirror when he's djaying, and this tap
is on my shoulder and I'm like shooing them away,
And then I happened to look at my manager, and
he's like looking at me like, motherfucker, you were a
turn amound and I turned, Oh, sir, hey how you doing?
And literally he's like, hey, you're doing a good job.
(12:56):
Like the first thing he does is he compliments me.
He says, man, the way you're uh mixing the jazz
and the disco and the cross genres, it's such a
genius presentation. But any points and Sasha Malia and all
their cousins and all their girlfriends and all their friends,
it's like thirty of them. They're having to sit in
(13:18):
They're sitting on the floor like this, and he's like,
they want to.
Speaker 5 (13:22):
Have fun too, so you know, include them. And in
my mind, I'm like, I'm at the White House.
Speaker 6 (13:30):
I'm curating every record and everything, and I'm like, with
all due respects there, like the stuff they want to
listen to, I don't think I can play here. And
he's like, uh, we're adult, timan, go ahead, dude, do
what you would normally do. And I was like, Sir,
I don't think I could play French Montana. Fuck that
fuzzy what's you working with? Like, I don't know if
I could do that? Go ahead, play it.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
Dude.
Speaker 6 (13:52):
When I played it, first of all, I was rocking
two thousand people, right.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Yeah, I remember this, by the way. I was there
night and you're taking me back.
Speaker 6 (14:02):
When I put French Montana on, suddenly it was like
five thousand people, and I was like, wait.
Speaker 5 (14:08):
Where all these people come from? Yeah? And they were like, yeah,
they was the way for you to play something that
they wanted to hear.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6 (14:16):
And so then I did the most ratchetest set I
ever did in my life, and they were elated, and
I felt like I got rejected by a girlfriend. And
next day I set like a four hour session with
my therapist and I didn't go anywhere near a DZ
booth until like maybe eight months later.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
It's rare for me to be able to talk to
a fellow artist about what failure feels like and how
our own metrics of success and failure are largely different
from what an audience necessarily thinks her feels and when
that interacts. I find it very difficult to explain to
friends who are not artists or athletes, by the way
athletes deal with similar emotions, on what that means. Mark
(15:00):
Ronson mentions working with you in the studio on a
Nika Costa project, and he details how you and James
Poyser transformed his demos with quote telekinetic mastery of rhythm.
And I want to flip that idea back on Mark.
From what you've seen and heard, what is it that
(15:21):
Mark Ronson brings to the projects he works on.
Speaker 6 (15:26):
Working with Mark on two particular projects that he did,
he offered grace in terms of really just giving me
this space to find myself. So with the Nika Costa project,
that project's happening smack dab in the middle of the
(15:46):
four year slow jinga building of what is DiAngelo's Voodoo album.
It takes four years for me to unlearn everything that
I ever knew about drumming from birth until the moment
D'Angelo calls me to collaborate on this record. And what
he does is he strips you to your core of
everything that you've learned, and you've got to relearn how
(16:09):
to enter his world. And his world's a very sloppy,
egoless world. Like if I were to put you on drums,
how amateur you would sound like when you're watching someone
on a sitcom, Like I had to sound that amateurs
because everything's so quantized and perfect. You know, you hear
(16:30):
a established Michael Jackson's song and just everything's perfect. The
snare drums are perfectly loud at every gasp, and you
hear the spit come out of his mouth to the microphone,
and D'Angelo is sort of the opposite. So we started
the Nika Costa project with Mark maybe about a good
year and a half after this unlearning and well oiled
(16:52):
machine of what Voodoo was, and now like, oh wait,
do I know how to play like my old self again?
Because her music is more nuanced and perfect. So he
basically just told me like, I want you to try
to give me something that's not derivative of what you
(17:14):
think I want. And I never thought of that because
I'm such a shape shifter. I always ask like, what
song were you listening to when you first envisioned this,
And they'll tell me like, I was.
Speaker 5 (17:27):
Listening to Paul Simon's Da Da Da Da dah.
Speaker 6 (17:29):
And then I'll be like, Okay, let me get in
the mode of and I'll put myself back in nineteen
seventy seven and tune the drums to say I'll shape
shift into that.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
And Mark wanted me to undo that.
Speaker 6 (17:40):
Matter of fact, like every album I do with Mark Ronson,
especially like his work with Yebba, that's the only time
where you get a version of Questlove. It's almost like
what I wouldn't do. And there have been times where
I'll call Mark when said album comes out and I'll
seriously be like, look, dog, I won't be offended at
(18:02):
all like this someone else. Drummond, He's like, dude, it's you.
Speaker 5 (18:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
He talks a lot about crate digging and finding the
perfect obscure sample, and he obsessively tracked down the record
sampled by a trip called Quest and many Riperton's Adventures
in Paradise and Ronnie Foster's Mystic Brew. This is, by
the way, before the Internet made finding samples easier. My
(18:27):
only touch point to this is back in college. After college,
I remember going record shopping on Melrose with Yorma tacone
of Lonely Island fame, and we were scoping through records
and when he found out that in my apartment in
la I had a box of my dad's old records
and it was a combination of like old Bollywood records
(18:48):
plus whatever he had acquired. You know, he's an immigrant,
so like just old anyone who moved here in the
sixty years or seventies, and just watching his eyes open
and his mouth salivating, He's like, can I come over?
So that's my only touch point to this. But I
remember the magic of that pre digital, pre internet. Right,
you were playing music in the roots all through the
(19:10):
nineties when this story takes place, and you guys were
famously a very live band, but were you also looking
for samples? What were you guys digging in crates for?
Speaker 6 (19:21):
Leading back to my dad, One of my happiest memories
with my dad was we would bind shop. It's one
thing to beIN shop as a hip hop producer and
you know you're going to drop five hundred to thousands
on all these crates of records that.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
You're going to bring home with you.
Speaker 6 (19:40):
But pretty much that's what my dad had to do
for his nightclub back because you're doing five shows nightly,
and three of those shows have to be what his
backup band has to learn. As you know, DJ culture
wasn't in yet, so the band like wedding band style,
you have to play all the songs of the day.
Speaker 5 (19:58):
Here's love Rollo Coaster bout the high.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
Here's brick House by the Commodoors, like Wild Cherry's play
that funky music, White Boy.
Speaker 5 (20:04):
I grew up in a.
Speaker 6 (20:06):
Three to four thousand record collection house, and as a result,
to be honest with you, like, you know, I would
only peruse maybe ten percent of that, like the popular stuff,
the said brick houses, the said play a funky you know.
But I look at James Brown like that, that's old
people's music. I won't touch that. And then Public Enemies
(20:29):
Nation of Millions comes out in nineteen eighty eight, which
is basically the first example of everything but the kitchen sink.
Every song is crambled like twenty samples, and you're sitting there.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
Like, wait, I know I heard that from somewhere. Where's
that guitar?
Speaker 3 (20:45):
Like?
Speaker 6 (20:46):
And then you're like, my dad has all these records
like Public Enemy, open up the doors of my parents'
record collection can be my future, you know. And on
top of that, because we were the Cosby Show seeing
Stevie Wonder on the Cosby Shows show the Huxtables, what a.
Speaker 5 (21:04):
Sampler was.
Speaker 6 (21:07):
Totally unlocked all of our minds, like we need that machine.
Speaker 5 (21:12):
So thus we all got little toy samplers.
Speaker 6 (21:15):
From Cassio and when Tarika and I are busking on
South Street as a drummer and an MC and I'm
figuring like, Okay, well this is what we'll do, but
when we get into a studio, we'll be like a
regular rap group. And so the first time we ever
(21:35):
enter a studio, like after a year busking in the
streets of Philadelphia, finally someone says, I want to record
you guys and make your first twelve innutes single. And
I come to the studio with like all these records
and they're looking at me like what do you playing
on doing with those? And I'm like, we're gonna make
a record, right, And they're like, no, exactly what I
(21:57):
saw when you guys were on South Street, that's what
I want on this record. And I was I fought
them tooth and nail, like, I don't think us being
a band in the studio is going to fly and
it's going to be whack. But they knew how to
Jedi mind tricked me, was like, look, check this out.
Just try it now for an hour and if it
doesn't work, then we'll do it your way. We knocked
(22:20):
out one song in ten minutes and they were like, well,
you got another and another, So by three hours we
had knocked out like seven songs and they were just like,
why would you ever want to go the other way
because it will take you like three days to make
one song. And then that's kind of how they wore
me down. So I reluctantly found a destination in my
(22:44):
future ironically.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
That's Yeah. There's another fascinating part of March's journey. It's
when he starts mixing rock into his sets, like playing
ac DC back in Black at Cheetah hip Hop Club.
He says he recognized that hip hop pioneers like Cool
Heirk and Africa Bambada integrated rock into their music, but
(23:08):
that rock had largely been absent from down downtown hip
hop clubs for a while. Yeah, so this might be
the wrong question, and tell me if it is. But
Mark plays back in Black, the crowd goes wild. What
do you think allowed him or maybe other DJs to
successfully like smuggle rock and other unlikely genres back into
(23:30):
the hip hop clubs in the late nineties? Like, is
that the wrong question or is there an actual art?
Speaker 6 (23:35):
Here's the thing, like the fact that Africa Membada could
put Mary Mary by the Monkeys on and the Bronx
River of Projects, the Monkeys and the Bronze River of Projects,
and people would go berserk, like just because that drum
(23:56):
break was so funky at the top of it, so
it becomes hip hop. People didn't realize, like the idea
of hip hop being high art was such a hard
fought battle that no one even stops to look at
the science of how hip hop works and how hip
(24:19):
hop helped the industry. Because the thing is is like now, like,
of course, thirty years into my career, I can take
victory lapse and you know, be the sage, the savant,
the mouthpiece for this culture. But just like everyone else,
like when I got licensed to ill and what played
during lunch break, of course my science teacher is going
(24:40):
to say, you guys never heard of led zeppelins when
the levy breaks, like that.
Speaker 5 (24:46):
Drum comes from that song.
Speaker 6 (24:48):
I mean he brought in the next day and it's like, ah,
even my DJ gigs the reason why I would play
the sample first, okay, and I played like sixteen bars before,
and so when a good part happens that you know about, right,
suddenly there's a smart that happens in you and you
(25:09):
feel smarter. So all I'm doing is value beat. Okay, like, hey,
I'm smart too, because I know what trical quests on
this comes from. Yeah, and so you know it's it's
just it's just me telling you, Hey, you're smart too.
It's like a compliment when you do that to people. Yeah,
(25:31):
it enlightens them.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I want to quickly go back to I appreciate what
you've shared about the White House gig for you, and
I still kind of can't shake it because we rarely
get to talk about this, right, It's like usually just
other other artists or athlete friends who you can like
chat about this with. So Ronson describes his late night hours.
He says he was, you know, lugging hundreds of pounds
(25:55):
of vinyl up five flights of stairs, four nights a week,
dealing with like lunatic cls, surviving on adrenaline an alcohol,
and he eventually realized he was burning the candle at
both ends with a blowtorch and talks about the physical
and emotional toll that it took on him. I have
my version of that. As an actor. Usually when you
(26:15):
have peaks more film than TV, definitely less theater, but
it's like when the demands on you feel like they
don't become your own. For me at least, that's usually
when I have to figure out the balance. As someone
who's been immersed in live music culture, how do you
find your balance? What have you seen that works and
doesn't work for.
Speaker 5 (26:33):
You, to be honest with you.
Speaker 6 (26:37):
So that moment in twenty sixteen broke me to where
I didn't want to DJ anymore. And of course my
managers are like, dude, you got some bills to pay.
So I was teaching at NYU, I have my own podcast,
I was doing the Tonight Show, I was DJ and
regularly I'm still in the roots.
Speaker 5 (26:56):
I was doing our merch or our fashion thing. I
was working for Nike.
Speaker 6 (27:00):
Literally decided to fill every space of second, not wasting
a second doing something creative. And I have fourteen gigs
and then the pandemic happens. Oh wow, and nothing. For
the first time in my life since five, I've not
been on a stage for like nine months. Ever since
(27:23):
the age of five, I'm at least on a stage
performing for people at least like once every fourteen days,
and some sort of capacity. And so when the pandemic
took everything away from me and one fell swoop. Not
to mention, my ex and I were teening on a
farm like upstate and isolation. You know, At first I
(27:45):
thought this is going to be hell, like I'm stuck
up here in silence with trees and birds and yeah.
And then about three weeks into it, I realized, like, oh,
wait a minute, doing nothing and sitting in silence is
where more ideas come to you. You know, some people
(28:06):
have to sort of dig for where the ideas come from.
Some people might have to drink a bottle of wine
or an idea.
Speaker 5 (28:15):
Comes, or smoke something or something worse.
Speaker 6 (28:17):
But I realized a guy who was addicted to always
distracting himself, suddenly I'm living a year.
Speaker 5 (28:27):
In which doing absolutely nothing.
Speaker 6 (28:31):
Was I tell people now, like, you know, boredom and
nothing is your best friend. But I also see this
moment now where we are as under the same guise
of what I saw in twenty twenty, which was, oh,
this is a time for me to go back to
the woodshed and do more work on myself so that
(28:55):
I can be my best creative self.
Speaker 5 (28:57):
And I know it sounds woo woo, but.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Not really, man, I mean to be able to take
stock of things and look inward and say, it's not
a distraction right now to be horrified by anything happening
in the world. But I think I'll put myself in
this situation. When I do that too much, I lose
control over what I actually have control over and who
I am and being able to look inward. So I
(29:21):
appreciate you saying that we're going to pause for a
quick break, but we'll be right back. Quest Love. All right,
We're going to do a few quick fire questions now
in a segment we're calling plot Twist.
Speaker 5 (29:40):
Ready, this is a mirror you're talking to you. I
won't overanalyze everything.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
Good.
Speaker 3 (29:49):
So, Mark Ronson describes his greatest moment of validation as
when DJ Premier, his hero, heard Ronson's track like a
Feather and gave him this stank face. What's the ultimate
non monetary compliment you've ever received that made you feel
like you truly made it?
Speaker 5 (30:06):
I was there to witness Mark Ronson get that thing. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (30:11):
I was the third guy in the DJ booth. I'm
in Prince's living room. Whoa, I'm on drums. Stevie Wonder's
on keyboard.
Speaker 4 (30:23):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (30:25):
Some of Prince's band is there, Alicia Keys and Jamie
Fox is over there like a hippie white girl dancing
in the corner. And I look at Sheila E and
Mars Day at the time and Prince and they're just
(30:46):
you remember how those two kids and back to the future,
we're looking at Martin McFly when he invented the skateboard.
Look at him, go, look at him, go like watching
those three watch me and give each other that validation,
look like wow, Like everything that we did twenty years ago,
(31:10):
he's doing right now in those drums. And they kind
of had a future safe sort of thing like that
kid really has the goods.
Speaker 5 (31:18):
And I was like, man, if you only knew the amount.
Speaker 6 (31:22):
Of rats and roaches and vermin in that basement at
fifty two twelve those Sage Avenue, Like the amount of
hours I had to put in spider webs, like mildew,
like snow turning into water and flooding my basement, the
amount of hell I had to go through imagining one
(31:46):
day I would do this as you know, as a
nine year old, imagining Prince in Mars Day like high
fiving each other like he's good that moment. The next
thing I did was I went to Prince's bathroom and.
Speaker 3 (31:59):
Cry, man, that is such a cool story. Yeah, yeah,
that's awesome. That is awesome all right. Like we talked
about before, Mark Ronson found sanctuary in the DJ booth,
what's a tool or piece of equipment in the studio
or on stage that gives you the most comforting sense
of control?
Speaker 5 (32:18):
Control?
Speaker 3 (32:20):
Yeah, and if control is not comforting, then then take
control out of it. Just what's the most comforting?
Speaker 5 (32:27):
You know what? So I have two microphones on stage.
Speaker 6 (32:31):
We have the microphone that you hear as the audience
us doing the lyrics and singing the background vocals. Then
we have a second microphone in which we communicate with
each other. Okay, And we learned this and we learned
this trick from the Dave Matthews Band on tour with them.
We're like, wait, you can have a microphone to talk
to each other that the audience can't hear. And when
(32:53):
I tell you, I feel like that second microphone kind
of saved all of our friendships.
Speaker 5 (32:59):
No been.
Speaker 6 (33:01):
Likes each other After twenty years, the Beatles broke up
in seven and a half years, you know what I mean.
And we're going on thirty five, and I will say
that the second communication microphone, Yeah, is some of the
best jokes told, some of the craziest bets.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yo.
Speaker 6 (33:22):
I'll bet you yo, Row fourteen white T shirts is
going to fall up over sea.
Speaker 5 (33:26):
Fel see fel like.
Speaker 6 (33:28):
It's made me look forward to Root shows, like I
can't wait to get on stage with the Roots to
you know that fun.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
Uh. There's a lot of specific talk about nineties clubs
in this audiobook. What was the best venue in the
nineties in New York City for a DJ?
Speaker 6 (33:44):
There's a place in the main packing district called we
called it APT the apartment, okay, and it.
Speaker 5 (33:54):
Was basically a lounge.
Speaker 6 (33:57):
There wasn't a dance floor, but where you stood like
having to be the dance floor. But Bobbido and Stretch
Armstrong would spin at the APT. To me, that was
my education. Like I'd just stand in the corner and
all of us would take notes. Like the way that
Mark sort of like says woefully and shamefully that he
(34:19):
would hear a mix or a combo and then he
go home and practice it and then it becomes his mix.
I believe that some of the gods of the universe
got to get inspired and then they take it and
they improve on that idea. So I highly recommend that,
Like if anyone says zaming a set, yeah, that's the
best compliment I can get if you're just zaming all right.
Speaker 3 (34:41):
Last question, what's next on your reading list? And what's
one audiobook or traditional reading recommendation.
Speaker 6 (34:47):
Brianna Weist is an author that you know, really aided
in saving my life during the pandemic. She has a
brand new book that she just announced me yesterday. She's like,
I'm sending you my new book. I forget the title
of it, but anything that she's written after The Mountain
(35:10):
Is You, which I think I believe every creative should
read The Mountains You because it will explain to you
why you have the tendency to subconsciously self sabotage. Oh man,
right now I'm falling in a rabbit hole like anything
to do with metaphysics. And really it's because when I
(35:32):
did the Earth Wind and Fire doc, I had to
also read all the books that Maurice.
Speaker 5 (35:38):
White read to form earth Wind and Fire.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
And you know, suddenly I'm anything to do with metaphysics
or like self betterment.
Speaker 5 (35:49):
I just fell down a rabbit hole.
Speaker 6 (35:50):
So right now I'm somewhere in between the David Nevins
anthology and right now Neville Goddard.
Speaker 5 (36:01):
I'm going through all of his books.
Speaker 6 (36:04):
I'll just say, like between Brianna Wis, Neville got It,
David Nivens, Joe Despenza, and my fifth person is I
guess you can say, uh, Jose Silva.
Speaker 3 (36:16):
Okay.
Speaker 6 (36:17):
I highly recommend really immersing yourself in those books, in
those audiobooks as a means to figuring out how to
rise above where we are right now.
Speaker 3 (36:32):
Quest Love, it was excellent having you on Earsay, my friend.
Thanks for being a member of our club, and it
was great to talk to you.
Speaker 6 (36:38):
Man.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Nice to see you.
Speaker 5 (36:39):
I'll see you next time.
Speaker 3 (36:40):
Yeah, man, thank you all right, man, see.
Speaker 5 (36:42):
You lat.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
Okay, Sometimes you just have to admit that someone is
just immensely cooler than you, Like I knew so many
of the cultural reference points, but there were others that
I'm just like, I've heard these names. I had no
idea how deep the stories went.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah, as someone who is immensely cooler than you, I
have to say I really connected.
Speaker 2 (37:12):
No incredible stuff. Very well done, sir.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Oh well, thank you I'm glad we get to do
this together, and also thank you to those listening for
tuning into this episode of Earsay The Audible and iHeart
Audiobook Club. The audiobook we discussed Night People, How to
Be a DJ in nineties in New York City is
available on Audible now. Earsay the Audible and iHeart Audiobook
(37:39):
Club is a production of Iheart's Ruby Studio. We're your
hosts Kalpen.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
And Ed Helms.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
Our executive producer is Matt Schultz, with theme music and
post production by Marcus Bagala.
Speaker 3 (37:51):
For Ruby's Studio. Our managing EP is Matt Romano, our
EP of post production is Matt Stillo, and our production
coordinator is Abby Equin.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
And of course a big thank you to our friends
at Audible. Don't forget.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
You can listen to what we're listening to on the
Audible app or at audible dot com. Sign up for
a free thirty day Audible trial and your first audiobook
is free. Visit audible dot com. Slash Earsay until next time.
Speaker 3 (38:20):
Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Yeah, seriously, thank you, We appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
I had to get the last word
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