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December 18, 2024 120 mins

Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys joins Questlove Supreme to discuss his incredible journey. This conversation includes AdRock looking back to the early days of the Beasties and how the Punk band made an authentic and passion-fueled segue into Hip Hop. AdRock also speaks about his distinct voice, a lifelong passion for crate-digging, and how his career has allowed him to experiment with creativity now. This two-hour discussion has been years in the making, and it's worth the wait.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This is
one of the moments where I don't even want to
waste time, but I think I should say, first of all,
if you don't know what you're listening to, this is
Quest Love Supreme, your host Quest Love. I'm here with

(00:22):
on pay Bill the Great.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
How you don't Bill fantastic?

Speaker 1 (00:27):
This is quite a day, Steve. How are you your home?

Speaker 3 (00:33):
Yeah, I'm home. I am on the East Coast. I
don't have kids, so I just woke up.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
There you go, let's here, let's here for the child. Listen,
cat dudes. All right. So one of the coolest things
that I enjoy about my charmed life being the passenger
seat of the first twenty years of recorded hip hop
is also being witnessed to a lot of pioneering first

(01:02):
and some thirty years ago on his fourth album, the
late Keith Allen aka Guru instructed us on It's Hard
to Earn album that it's mostly the voice. Mostly the voice.
Our guest today is absolutely no exception. I will go

(01:22):
on record and saying that our guest today probably possesses
one of the greatest voices intonations. He's in my top
ten favorite voices in all of hip hop, and kind
of the Domino effect shows it, you know, when hip

(01:42):
hop really came to an existence on Wax. At least,
I feel like most MC's were kind of derivative of
what we call the wonder Mike voice. Early Chucky was
also that Meli Mel of course, ushered in the old MC,
so they're you know your LL's, your your runs. Most

(02:06):
will credit Mellie mel Is being the first authoritative Rah
screaming MC. Of course, we can't forget Slick Rick's voice
and his storytelling intonation and who he's inspired. Snooping down
the line our Guest today is one of my favorite
textures in hip hop. I don't know a thing for

(02:29):
sort of animated nasal, whiny, high end above tenor below
soprano voices. Not to mention the amount of history that
Our Guest possesses today and these pioneering albums. As we speak,
we're two years late of the thirty seventh anniversary of

(02:51):
his debut album, Licensed to Ill. This is also the
thirty fifth anniversary of his mind blowing sophomore album, Paul's Boutique,
the thirty first anniversary of Check Your Head. I Can
Go on and on.

Speaker 4 (03:06):
All right, it's been it's a lot of time. It's
a lot of decades.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Come on, dog, you listen to the show, you know
each intro seventeen.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
Forty all right, all right again.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Adam Harwinz aka King of Rock formerly still of the
Beastie Boys, to cost Little of Supreme. When people talk
of you, I know, they speak in terms of like
lifetime achievement, awards, introductions. They just don't say. And our
guest today is Adam harwinz the Beastie Boys. Like, did
you imagine one day this would happen?

Speaker 4 (03:37):
Short answer, no, No, there was no plan, no thought,
no nothing past. You know, what's the weekend?

Speaker 1 (03:45):
I will say for our audience that, first of all,
one of my favorite all time audiobooks is is The
Beastie Boys memoir, which I can't recommend enough if our
audience isn't familiar with that book and how it's crafted
the way, you know, it's almost like a hip hop
version of Prairie Home Companion. So I'm actually going to

(04:09):
spare this particular show of the kind of soup the
nuts questions that I would normally ask on the show
that's been covered in other interviews and also been thoroughly
covered in the book. But there's a lot of in
between the cracks that I'm curious about. So where are
you speaking to us now from.

Speaker 4 (04:29):
I'm in the mountains. I have a cabin a studio
smart in California.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Without giving you a way, is this the uh everyone's
recommending to me? Wherever Stevie Wonder took that photo in
talking book? It begins with the letter E. It's like
the mountains of It's like an hour north.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
Of LA I don't know, but it's that.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
I'm about to say air one, but that's the supermarket.

Speaker 4 (04:57):
I'm up in the mountain. Here we get there's bears
andcats and stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
So what I was going to ask, is the mountains
more serene for you? Is that?

Speaker 4 (05:04):
Like?

Speaker 1 (05:05):
Why that location?

Speaker 4 (05:07):
Just it's not at my house. It's a different place.
It's my own space.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Okay, So you don't like to shit where you eat
as far as creativity is concerned, you want to go
to a place to be creative or not.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
I'll eat wherever and I'll ship wherever. That's not you know,
I'm fine shitting and eating.

Speaker 1 (05:23):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (05:24):
It was COVID, you know, like you know, we were
just all together so much that I want to get
my own little space smart. I was lucky enough to
get my own little space, A little smart.

Speaker 1 (05:37):
There you go. Sometimes you need your own real man cave.

Speaker 4 (05:40):
I get you, I get you, or nap zone, whatever
you want to call it.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Hey dog, I get it. And you know the fact
that you two are still a unit speaks volumes. That's
why sometimes space is important. I get that. What was
your first musical memory?

Speaker 4 (05:58):
My first musical memory? My memory is very bad, but yeah,
you know, driving in the vw vand with my dad
and my brother and sister and my dad would just
blast music eight tracks always and sing along really loud.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
And it were you allowed to curate the selections or
was it like don't touch my stereo?

Speaker 4 (06:22):
No, no, no. He would drive, he'd you know, be driving
really fast and be reaching for the eight tracks and
trying to push you know, the one, two, three four thing.
And that's when I really got into music as a
little kid, especially from the radio. But I also knew.
I was like, what is it? What's the deal with
Neil Young? Like my dad would scream sing Neil Young songs?

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Got it? Okay?

Speaker 4 (06:45):
It's a tough thing. To listen to. It's like a
five year old.

Speaker 1 (06:49):
Well, yeah, I was gonna say that. I two lived
in a don't touch my stereo household, so a lot
of the music that I went touch with a ten
foot pole suddenly you know, you know, I'll give you
a great example. So my dad was like pre pre
yacht rock, free am radio pop, like he liked vocals

(07:13):
like Johnny Mathis, Barbara Streisan, Nat King Cole, anyone that
flexed harmony as well. So we have pet sounds in
the house, but I'd never touch it right. And then
when I read a review that wasn't the Rolling Stone
Lever review Paul's Boutique, someone said, oh, this is Sergeant Pepper.

(07:36):
He's like, I disagree. This is the pet Sounds of
hip hop. There's more pioneering. And I was like, wait,
dad has that record. So actually, like Paul's Boutique opened
my mind to something I would otherwise resist before the
age of eighteen, I'm now open to. So I'll ask you, like,
because if you're listening to all of the music that

(07:58):
you guys and all your refer and if you're familiar
with the rapid fire way that you guys craft records.
I would have thought that coming out the wound, that
you guys were just like music savants that you know,
grew up with the pedigree at the age of one
of all this music. So I might have believed that
at least with the first ten years of your life

(08:19):
is more like force learning or Stockholm syndrome.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Like no, no, no, no. So so that's an ingrained memory,
you asked, like, my first memory, that's an ingrain. It's
not it's not a pleasant one, but it it's a memory.
But I have an older brother and sister, and this
is you know, early seventies, when forty fives, you know,
forty fives and I and the AM radio. It was

(08:44):
a certain time in the radio where it wasn't like
this type of music was played on this station. This
type was played on this station. That you know, the
music being made in the early seventies was a little
taste of all of this different stuff, right, And you know,
the radio kind of reflected that for a minute, and
we had a sort of lesson from the radio for
a very brief time. And also, growing up in New

(09:05):
York City, just walking down the street, you hear so
much different music that you're you're being taught every day.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
Okay, I would say probably in my mind, you're one
of the figures I think of whenever someone's talking about
the folklore of what New York City used to be
or what New York City was. In your mind, what
is the best version of New York City that we'll
never get back.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
You can't ask a fifty eight year old that question,
you know what I'm saying, because I don't go to clubs,
I don't go to parties, and shit, do you know
what I'm saying. Like when I was, you know, in
my teens and twenties, I was out all the time
having fun, doing this that and the other, running around
rooftop parties, this that and the other. You know what
I mean. And now you know I love my life,

(09:58):
but it's a different light. So if you put me
at a rooftop party with a bunch of twenty year
olds right now, it's not for me.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Right now, smart answer.

Speaker 4 (10:08):
In my twenties, Yes, I'm at the rooftop party. I
got a forty. I'm having the best time right now, fifty.
I have fifty eight. I have a Knicks game on,
I got a chicken parmesan and I'm good. So those
are those are my two happy places?

Speaker 2 (10:28):
Forty or Chicken parm one or the other done and
done buggae.

Speaker 1 (10:32):
I think for me, though, the one thing that I
miss more than anything is just I mean, there was
a period in which, like whatever the equivalent of the
best orgasm you ever had, like music did that to me,

(10:53):
not daily, but weekly, like it was a guarantee that
four to five songs were going to be played. That
just made you like, holy shit, what the fuck is this?
Sometimes it's replaced with you know, someone does something really
cool on Instagram and I'm like, oh, that's dope. But
for me, it's I think I'm more or less asking

(11:16):
because music is so central to your life, and I
know you're a serious record collector. Do you miss the
time of which you were discovering music as opposed to
where you are now, which is like a know it
all expert of music?

Speaker 4 (11:33):
Again asking if any grown up is really it's just
it's a different time of life, do you know what
I mean? I do I listen to my old records,
not that much. I have them, and I used to
listen to them. I don't really listen to him that much,
am I jaded in terms of music, and you know
all types of arts, Like you see a band or

(11:55):
a performer and you're like, yeah, I know what that is.
I don't really like it. And you don't really give
that a chance because you're you've heard it a thousand
times or so you think that makes sense. Yeah, And
so as you get older, the sad thing is that
you end up cutting yourself off to that type of experience.

(12:15):
That's just what happens.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
So are you still open?

Speaker 4 (12:20):
No?

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Okay, I.

Speaker 4 (12:25):
Couldn't care less.

Speaker 3 (12:27):
It's open to chicken palms.

Speaker 4 (12:29):
Yeah, you know what I mean, Like I had, you know,
like I could get the Interest Mohammed record right now,
and I'm telling you it would be just as good
as not better. I could get a meters record. It
would be just as good as not better than whatever. Whatever.
Maybe that's me, but maybe that's fifty eight year olds.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
So what I do now, I'll pick like maybe there's
always three to five kids or maybe three to five
parents that will put me hip to their kids and
the kids like curiosity of record collecting. And you know,
I'll usually around this time, I'll do my Santa quest

(13:07):
stick and I'll just so that gonna, I can have
an excuse to go record shopping and go digging, like
I gotta do that. So I'm not doing it for me,
but I'll record shop for you know, a bunch of
eight to ten year olds. Now, you know, come to
Christmas Day, they're going to have like an amazing record

(13:29):
collection to start on. So I was shopping yesterday. My
main spot is a one Records in the village, and
you know, there's always someone on the turntables just playing
like something cool whatever. And this guy's playing side to
of the Ohio players, mister mean album, an album that

(13:50):
I otherwise would have passed up owned. But I realized
in going through all the alphabet and him letting it
play that Yo, I've been listening to records from the
hip hop standpoint, where you know, in the very beginning,
in such a rush for that, you know, dopamine of

(14:12):
where's the break or where's those four bars? I need
listening to it on forty five or just perusing through
it and that sort of thing. And I realized that
I stop listening to records just as records without a
purpose of this is going to inspire me to write
a song or go to DJ this next week, And

(14:34):
so now I realize I got to go through my
entire collection again just to go back to my childhood
before hip hop existed. Like when you listen to records
now is it? I'm certain in post eighty nine you
were listening to records for what's going to help build
the machine of my art, But for now, how do

(14:59):
you records? Like are you still in that place where.

Speaker 4 (15:03):
There's a few things that I want to say that
happened real quick, because there's a lot we just discussed. Yes,
So I play softball with my friends right and to
old people, and we all bring our kids, and some
of the kids play. And my friend's kid Nat Show.
He's nine, and we have walk up everybody have to
pick a walk up song before you play softball. The

(15:26):
kid played Travis Scott Fiend Fiend or whatever, and me
and my friend and it's blasting, and I'm like, I
was like, this is what parents must have thought when
people were listening to Slayer, you know what I mean.
It's like just this thing that was like, I don't
you know, this is not for me. It's not for me.

(15:49):
And I think that's okay for me. At least I've
accepted that, you know, it's not for me, it's not
made for me. I can like it or not, like whatever,
it's I'm kind of irrelevant from that group of people
that are listening to that. To modern music, that makes sense.
Also listening to when you hear Ohio Players, you're like,

(16:14):
bunt you worm players ball and you know all of
their songs. You're like, you know, mister Mean was like
a later record. It's okay, it's not I wouldn't put
that on. And so the time that you have in
a day to pick a record out from all the
records you have, you're not gonna pick mister mean. Makes sense.
But at the same time, in our early years we

(16:38):
listen to songs, We listen to music, That's what we did.
And then when we started record shopping in terms of
sampling and all of that, we didn't really listen to music,
do you know what I mean. It was like mathematical,
it was a hobby. It was a thing, and it
was all of that needle dropping and trying to find
the thing and cool and then you made something from that,
which is great. But now I don't do that anymore,

(17:00):
and so I just actually listened to my.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Records and do you let it go all the way through? Yeah,
I mean we now live in a time in which
the remote post remote control shuffle culture, you just skip
to the part you like, again, the dopamine rush of it.

Speaker 4 (17:15):
There's also the thing of if you listen to something
on a platform, you know, Spotify, one of those things,
then it plays the song that you want to listen to,
and that starts playing all this algorithm shit and then
all the next thing you know, you're listening to fucking
Tom Petty or some shit. You're like, this is not
what I started out with. I don't want this.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
Just saying so you're primarily a wax person, Like what's
your weapon or choice as far as how you consume music.

Speaker 4 (17:40):
That's it. But but yes, the downside of it is
that you only listen to things you already know. So
I'm not listening trying to find new music very occasionally,
but not so much. Okay, all of the music, you know,
it's sort of stopped at a certain year or time.

(18:00):
Dub records are my favorite, right, So I'll put on
Prince Jasbo and then you know, how are forty five
minutes have gone by and I've listened to that record,
and then I listened to Lee Perry record, and then
so I'm not listening for the newer record. But the
drawback is that you kind of you're stuck in the
past of you only need things, you know.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
I specifically want to hone in on your creativity in
the world of hip hop. I would think that some
of my peers that are hip hop experts know that
you have aded in creating the very first twelve inch

(18:48):
for def Jam, which is you programmed the eight to
weight and telarox. It's yours correct, No, the world things
that you helped do that.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
No, Rick Rubin did that. I'm I was at the
recording and I'm in the party track in the background.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
See you're the d like it. Yeah, yeah, you're the crowd. Okay.

Speaker 4 (19:11):
The story is l LL's first single.

Speaker 1 (19:15):
I made the beat for, So you made a beat
for I need a beat.

Speaker 4 (19:18):
I made the beat that he needed.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah. That's even more pioneering because I don't even think
LLL told me that story. Oh shit, Okay, I thought
it was it's yours, my bet. So what was the
day that you guys collectively said that, Okay, we need
to sort of morph or pivot more to hip hop,
Like what was the seed? That was Planet That was like, Okay,

(19:43):
we can either travel this punk way or we can
try another route. Like what how did that happen?

Speaker 4 (19:50):
I don't know how it exactly happened, but we were
a hardcore band playing you know, hardcore shows, punk shows,
and the scene was changing, right the hardcore scene. It
was getting into like a real tough guy thing, and
we were feeling sort of we didn't want to be
part of it. We were kind of edging out of

(20:10):
that scene. But we were also listening to rap a
lot of rap music at the time.

Speaker 1 (20:15):
Wait, you cannot stop you one second. So you're saying
that at one point the punk scene was a more
pure for us.

Speaker 4 (20:22):
We were you know, as kids. It was like we
had a little we had our little group of friends
and you know, it was we were teenagers, boys and girls,
and it wasn't the thing. And then hardcore show started.
You would see like the guy from the football team
at school would be at the hardcore show and you'd
be like, what's you know, they were just making fun
of him.

Speaker 1 (20:40):
So you're saying that you had a bridge and tunnel
kind of that sort of thing.

Speaker 4 (20:43):
Started issue Okay, so we wanted to do something different
and our music started. The music. We stopped kind of
playing so much hardcore where were started experimenting with different
music and then we just I don't know, we had
a show oh jumping a little bit after we wanted
to try it. But we had met this guy Rick Rubin,

(21:04):
and because we were gonna do a show, we wanted
a bubble machine for the show. And my friend Nick
Cooper was like, oh, I know this guy Rick Rubin
has access to a bubble machine, and so we need
him to get the bubble machine. And we saw he
had turntables and he was a DJ, and we're like,
oh shit, let's we got the show. Do you want
to try to you know, to rap?

Speaker 1 (21:24):
Right?

Speaker 4 (21:25):
So we just kind of did that and he brought
his turntables and it was fun and we did We
did like, you know, twenty minutes of hardcore songs and
then like fifteen minutes of rap.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Was the audience throwing off.

Speaker 4 (21:37):
I mean there was like maybe thirty people there.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
Maybe the less people the more hard it is, like
is more intimate, So.

Speaker 4 (21:49):
Yes, being booed by thousands is easy.

Speaker 1 (21:52):
It kind of is. I was booed by thousands before.
But it's way harder than like the fear of me
comes if I'm playing under if it's under two hundred people,
like if it's Blue Note size or Village Vanguard size,
I'm scared out of my mind. But any other place
I can just channel them out. So well, obviously, I mean,

(22:12):
it went good enough for you guys to say, like,
let's do it again. But what's the point in which
it's like, Okay, this is what we're gonna do for real.

Speaker 4 (22:21):
I don't know, you know, so long ago we then
we're playing shows and we were doing that, and then
Rick had his record label. He wanted to try to
make that, like he wanted to put out rap records
because he had already had Deaf Jam. He had a
he had like a noise art band called Hose, and
he put out his own record under deaf Jam. Got

(22:43):
he wanted to you know, partner with somebody and make
rap records, and so he met we We were all
at this club dan Seyria, and he had a meeting
with this guy, Russell Simmons. He was Run's brother and
Running the Thing's manager, and we were excited.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Was Rick Riggins pursuing always what we know it is
to now.

Speaker 4 (23:01):
I don't know him now, so I wouldn't know. He
was really into wrestling, so he wanted He was very
loud and like that kind of like over the top
wrestling guy. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:09):
I don't think he was going back then. He's been
on our show, so he's very's in.

Speaker 4 (23:15):
That's very not at all what he was like when
I knew him.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Got It, Got It, Beastie Groove one. Can you were
you there at all when the Latin Rascals were doing
edits for you?

Speaker 4 (23:30):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, all right? Can you just explain that whole entire process, because.

Speaker 4 (23:36):
Somehow we ended up at Shakedown Studios, which is Arthur
Baker's studio, and Arthur Baker made Planet Rock. He did
like he made a couple of really big records right
and remixed in the eighties, and he had these guys,
the Latin Rascals who would do his edits.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
And the edit. They're under his tutelage.

Speaker 4 (23:57):
They well, they worked at Shakedown Studios and he yeo yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, oh god dog, we gotta get author on the
show Man.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
And I know this because Adam Yao worked at Shakedown
Studios at that time he was a gopher. He would
go get the you know with the sodas or whatever,
you know, whatever sandwiches for the Latin rascals.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Ah.

Speaker 4 (24:17):
And these guys they were in like a closet sized
little side studio at shakedown with just you know, two
reel turreels and they were taking you know, just the
razor blade and the tape and they would just cut
this little fraction of word and cut it and then
you know, splice it, tape it in and then re

(24:38):
record it and then tape another one, then splice that
and tape it on to the next one, and it'd
be like bla bla blah. They would literally do that
with tape. It was crazy.

Speaker 2 (24:47):
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
You're saying to me that on BC grus or parties
getting rough when you guys are like, ah, all that
stuff is handstopped. It's so they would have to make
like ten copies of a song.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
Forever, for hours and hours and hours, and if you
splice the tape wrong, well, oh well I don't know
what you're gonna do. So they were so precise and
so talented at what they did. Nobody could fuck with them.
They were so good at Latin rascals. I mean, it's
a thing that you can't even understand. Now what the

(25:25):
thing of slicing tape was the idea of Slidestone taking
a two inch tape his song and just slicing it
is crazy. You would never do that.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
Yeah, So just having finished his dock and getting privy
to his master reels and all that stuff. I was
rather shocked at how air quote hip hop sly really was,
especially with Loose Booty, which I mean a lot of
post Riot stuff was just him sampling himself and you know,

(26:03):
like to hear the original jam sessions those things came from,
and then.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
Then those to me whenever you feel like it, I
would like to have those.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
I got Yo. You'll you'll be You'll be shocked. Probably
the biggest revelation that so much in the movie that
we had to take a lot out, and a lot
that we had to take out was the just the
nerdy stuff. Uh. There's a period there's a moment during
Fresh there's at least four songs in which the only

(26:34):
way I can describe it is it's almost like he
had Fela's army assault, Like there's a baby's making babies.
There's a a bloated version of a skin I'm in Like,
at one point Fresh was going to be just like
a just a sonic assault of like at least with

(26:57):
Specter's Wall of Sound thing. It was side of a compressed.

Speaker 4 (27:03):
To have like four drummers playing at the same time.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
Yes, dude, I was like, okay, dude, it was her
pat rizzo, like all right, beyond forty eight, but go ahead, no,
it was over. I mean what we wound up with
was the better record stripped down. But the initial Fresh sessions,

(27:27):
like four of those songs were just like just an
army of the.

Speaker 4 (27:34):
Brothers beat where there's two drummers playing.

Speaker 1 (27:37):
Oh, get into it so good? Yeah, yeah, yeah, get
into it. Okay, just two getting into it. Yeah two. Now,
this this.

Speaker 4 (27:46):
One is full the Niagara beat.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
I'm familiar with it.

Speaker 4 (27:50):
That's two drummers. That's a good one of each other. Okay, wow, okay. Oh.
Also in Dante Carfona No Hit Me to It, I
was on tour in we were on tour in ninety eight.
We had the day off. I want to find a
record store for record stores. Okay, I think this this

(28:12):
whole thing is in the book, is in bac Boys book.

Speaker 3 (28:15):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (28:16):
We had a day off and I went through the
Yellow Pages and I found like all the used record stores,
and I took a cab to the first one and
I go in the record store and there's some some
records playing whatever, and I'm flipping through. It's a huge
record store, and all of a sudden, I hear something
that I'd never heard before, some breakbead and some crazy
like some crazy shit. And there's nobody in the store
and it's like ten in the morning, and I'm trying

(28:37):
to look and I see this guy in the back
at the turntable behind the counter, and he's like pointing
at me and looking at me and laughing, and I
go right over to him. We start talking blah blah blahh.
He's like, my name's Dante. He's like, I work here,
but I'm the one who buys the records when people
sell a record, so I sift through them before anybody
else says. And he's like, I'm gonna go want break

(29:00):
in an hour, Let's hang out. And I went to
his house and he just played me these records that
I've never heard before. Since he is a record collector,
he's put out tons of compilations. I can't even begin
Dante Carfona. I'm I'm surprised you don't know him.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
Hey man, I'm not to know at all. I'm the student.

Speaker 4 (29:23):
I just wanted to give his little shout out because
he's amazing. Okay, a couple of records and having the
good stuff. There you go blaming. I agree. He's like
you ever heard this? I was like, no, never heard this?
Wow that I still get excited about hearing a break
that I've never heard before.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
And do you still go in those missions?

Speaker 4 (29:46):
I've got like twenty five hundred records I've never listened
to in crates that just say listen.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
To right your record. So yeah, I mean that's kind
of where I am now, where I don't necessarily go.
I'm digging as much as I used to. Now it's
the first generation of record collectors dying. So I'll get
a lot of calls from daughters that are like, hey,

(30:11):
dad had a seven thousand records, do you want them? Or?
Sadly enough, a lot of colleges are ending their jazz
programs right, radio stations shutting down, so like, I know, oh,
two hundred thousand records, that's a lot of records quest
but I don't want people thinking like I'm going to
record store. First of all, I don't think there's two

(30:32):
hundred thousand individual good albums. I mean, you know, I
have at least three hundred Billy Jean forty fives. So
like kind of the new thing now is whoever would
service jukeboxes at diners and bars and whatnot, they would

(30:53):
have a warehouse or that sort of space where all
of their forty fives and that they were serviced to
mom and pop stores. Those people are dying and you know,
either the mom has passed and the kids are just like,
we don't know what to do with it. Whirred. Do
you like music? You know, it's fourteen forty fives if
you want them, So right now I'm kind of hoarding,

(31:16):
uh record collections.

Speaker 4 (31:18):
But all right, two things, Yeah, do you miss the
good old days when people sold their records for drugs?
I mean, come on, you know and two three hundred
copies of a Billy Jean forty five? Why what are
you doing?

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Well? No, I buy collections again. Like there's a guy
in Atlanta three hundred is like what well, why I
realized after the fact, you know like it'll.

Speaker 4 (31:42):
Oh my third thing, yes, which lids to a fourth thing.
You live in New York storage, Like you're bleeding money,
just bleeding money. Why are you going to a one
it's like the most expensive record store. What are you doing?

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Because I need some to do?

Speaker 4 (31:57):
Yo.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
You always complained about how busy you are, you need
something to do. Now that seems like bullshit.

Speaker 1 (32:04):
I almost feel like listening to the record is almost
like the last part. Like for me, the excitement of
all right, I'm gonna take three hours out and go
record shopping. I get the joy of going to a
record store and buying a shit little records and I'll
take this that this is. I could easily go in
my storage and do that. But you're right, so right

(32:28):
now I brought in the pandemic a farm and I
will on this acreage build something that will house and
store this. But right now, yeah, I got like somewhere
between eight to eleven storage units, and it's killing me inside.

Speaker 3 (32:45):
Like in your defense question, though Billy Jean is a
very important record, I.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Was given a hypothetical example, but yeah, the forty five's
I buy are from people that were servicing jukeboxes, like
back in the day, you buy like seventy eight juke boxes,
go to each restaurant, Hey, you want a jukebox, and
then you strike a deal and you service. This particular
guy in Atlanta had ninety over ninety bars and diners

(33:14):
that his jukeboxes were utilized.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
So that's the trick for when you get older and
you're a record collector is to switch over to forty
fives seven inches. They're smaller, lighter, and just as fun.

Speaker 4 (33:27):
Well I consider that part of I much prefer forty
five too in LP.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
So right now, I would say the first generation of
renaissance hip hop producers, your large professors, your Diamond D's,
your Lord Finess's, they're in their anti Serado phase and
like forty five's only I mean, it's a cool flex.

(33:53):
Like I've never been one of those, Like I don't
own a Macintosh.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
I'm not.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
Like, Yes, I acknowledge that the the vinyl is more superior,
but I've never been a vinyl head that like worships
at the altar of the most purest form of.

Speaker 4 (34:11):
Well, the thing about it is nobody else cares.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Exactly exactly, So it's only a flex for the quest
loves of Uh.

Speaker 4 (34:21):
There's three people in the room out of you know whatever,
two hundred and fifty that care about that. You're playing
a forty five time out?

Speaker 1 (34:28):
Timeout.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
Oh I have a timeout too, Go ahead. Yeah. I
wanted to go back to this though. Yeah, go to memories,
and I'm bummed because I didn't. I wanted to get
here earlier to go through my forty fives. I have
a stack of forty five's that were my mind when
I was a kid, and because me and my brother

(34:50):
had the room, I used to put every forty five
that I bought, I put a number on and my
initials when I was like seven years old. So I
have like one to fifty of my first fifty forty five's.

Speaker 1 (35:05):
See you never got rhythm, no, no.

Speaker 4 (35:08):
But I have not gone back, and I wanted to
do it for this to look to see which was
the first one to get. What was I don't know
the first album I ever bought, But I don't know
the first forty five, and I wish I could remember
because it literally has a number on it.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
What's the first album you ever purchased?

Speaker 4 (35:24):
Well, the first album I ever got. I was with
my dad in the VW van. He had to stop
and we're getting sandwiches, and he ran into like this
thrift store real quick and it's like I'll be right back,
and he came back out with Rolling Stones Out of
Our Head, Out of Our Head album, like here, you
should have this. And I didn't have a record player
or anything. I was like okay. And then when I

(35:45):
got a record player and was listening to records, the
first record I bought album with my own money was
the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack. That's a stretch like.

Speaker 1 (35:57):
There you go, all right, that's you need more?

Speaker 2 (36:00):
That's well, just because you liked the show, just because
it was there.

Speaker 4 (36:05):
It was just a phenomenon in New York at the time.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
Yeah, okay.

Speaker 4 (36:10):
I think I hadn't seen it yet because I was
too young, but it was right in my neighborhood where
they would it would, they'd line up on the street
to see it, and it's like a big deal.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Another thing I want to know is at the time
when you guys were first recording, was there an immediate
plan to make a full album? Like why did it
take three years for you guys to finally get license?
Still a little out of.

Speaker 4 (36:35):
There, I don't know you know, like you'd asked if
I would have seen this coming, like where I'm at
now or all of the stuff that's happened. Like I
was a teenager, you know, I was still in school.
I was going to high school, and you know, we
made a couple of singles. I didn't I didn't know
that we were going to keep doing this. I didn't

(36:57):
know that we were going to stop doing it. But
I didn't know. I didn't know, like anybody who had
an album, but you know, the bad brains, But like
I didn't you know, it wasn't a just made some singles.
I didn't know that it was a bigger thing was
gonna happen, and I was cool with it. We were
playing shows. I had a little money. I'd never had
that before, so I was like I could buy tapes.

(37:17):
That was cool.

Speaker 1 (37:20):
I know. The legend of the story is that that
Freddie Demand wanted run DMC to open up for Madonna.
But you know, the amount of money that they were
willing to pay for an opening act was way below
run DMC's market price, And then they would I guess

(37:40):
they asked Russell if he knew the Fat Boys or
could get them, and instead he pivoted them to you guys.
But what I always wanted to know was, Okay, So
in nineteen eighty five, yeah, with just won twelve inch,
I mean, if you two, if you count the Bazoodi

(38:00):
MCA thing, and there's season on it, so maybe with
just two and a half singles exactly.

Speaker 4 (38:08):
Cookie Puss and Polly Watch do we had a few
little records out.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
I was gonna ask what was the show like if
you had no album behind it? Like, how long was
the slot? Were you doing? Like a half hour? Forty
five minutes? Ten?

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (38:26):
So all we had ten minutes.

Speaker 4 (38:28):
I mean, it couldn't have been more than ten. I
don't know what we would have done for longer than
ten minutes. All of the hits, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (38:37):
I would imagine for a lot of that audience that
was their first hip hop experience.

Speaker 4 (38:41):
Yeah. Sure, And it goes back to the Rick Rubin
wrestler thing. And so when we were like getting ready
to go on the tour, We're like, what are we
gonna do? We've never really done a show at like
an amphitheater or anything like that, so we were trying
to figure out what to do whenever. So Rick was
very involved with that.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (39:03):
He was like, you have to do like wrestler stuff
where you have to like fuck with the audience and
just be an asshole, and you know you're gonna.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
You know, he wanted you to be a provocateur.

Speaker 4 (39:12):
Oh absolutely, yeah, I didn't know you walk into the
Paramount Theater and be like, I'm the King of the
Paramount anybody. You know, they could burn this place down
after we leave, you know all that stuff. What's the
Eddie Harris record one of my favorite albums of all
time where he's talking in between the songs. Oh that's
why I'm talking shit, Eddie Harris.

Speaker 1 (39:33):
Okay, fucking great, and that's that was your modus operandi four.

Speaker 4 (39:38):
I hadn't heard that record yet, but it's that type
of thing where I got it. Just fuck it. And
they did not want that at all. It was little
kids and their parents to see Madonna.

Speaker 2 (39:49):
This.

Speaker 4 (39:49):
It was just be major thing was her.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
Can't worried at all, like, oh, we might have chosen
them wrong. Actor.

Speaker 4 (39:57):
Yeah, they wanted to kick us off the tour after
like the second.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Showy, but you did the entire show.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
Madonna was like, no, keep them, they're great Madonna's I
Love Madonna's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (40:10):
Great person. Yes, okay, so you guys were sort of
our first experience and I was wondering that as well. Like, okay,
we had basically been living in Europe for the longest
and us coming back to the States to start the
second half of Ill Communication tour, and you know, at

(40:34):
this point, I wasn't fully aware if you know, the
audience would be with it or not with it. And
you had us going on in between Atari Teenage Riot
and John Spencer's Oh Dog a Tari Teenage Riot and
John Spencer's Blues Explosion, then the Roots, then the Beast,

(40:56):
show your Money's worth at that show, No Dog. Everything
I've ever learned in my professional life I learned in
those six weeks touring with you guys literally everything a
writer to hotels to oh I can shop for records

(41:17):
like anything that I've ever learned that I still do
to this day. I learned on that tour.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
You never read Krs's book.

Speaker 1 (41:25):
I absolutely you want to know something hilarious. So mid
we were in I don't know what city we were
in California. We were at a truck stop and we
saw that Karris one book, and God we purchased it,
but kind of as a joke, like, wow, Carris One's
given instructional on how to be an MC. So I

(41:47):
will admit that we would mockingly read that book on
the tour bus in carras One's voice when you ride
to the fin You.

Speaker 4 (41:56):
You're not the only one that did that. I think
most people that have that book did that.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Here's the thing, though, we would joke about everything he
said and then kind of like on stage, do what
he said, yeah, and then like, holy shit, that actually worked,
Like he did this thing called when you come on stage,
he said, always come layered, wear a T shirt, a shirt,

(42:24):
a vest, a jacket and a coat, and time out
when like every four minutes take off a jacket. That
tells the audience late, I'm rolling my sleeves up, I'm
ready to work. And so one.

Speaker 4 (42:40):
There's so many gems in that book.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
I always thought it was a jinx. If you give
an eating establishment an eight by ten and autograph eight by.

Speaker 4 (42:49):
Ten always, your tour manager should always have three periodicals
on him at all time. Newspapers magazines should have a
pair of slacks, a pair of black jeans, and some
other specific thing about pants and have eight by tens
for when you go to a restaurant, specifically when you

(43:11):
go to Burger King and you need to cut the line,
tell him that you have a pregnant woman on tour
with you need to get through it immediately. It's so deep.
But he also tells bottles of water to have on stage,
how many what speakers, like everything, It's amazing.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Probably the best thing that we still do to this
day is dynamics. He's like, sometimes start the song at
a whisperer. Yeah, then you get loud, Like we went
from playfully mocking it so like wearing it by like
a tattoo. Yes, but no, everything I've learned touring was

(43:50):
was with you guys and so, but I always wanted
to know, like what was the repertoire at a time
when you didn't have music out?

Speaker 4 (44:02):
So we did whatever songs we had. We had the
rock card, the rock.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Card, parties getting loud, Beastie groof.

Speaker 4 (44:10):
We did, Uh, she's on it, probably right, Yaouk did
a verse of spoony ge freaking and spanking, and I did.
I did like a verse of Jimmy Speiser.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Hip hop covers. Okay, early to the game, got it.

Speaker 4 (44:29):
And then I might have did the electric boogie for
like thirty seconds. I don't know, some sort of breaking
robin and lock in something really embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
Were they were they even? Like I'm certain then, especially
hip hop's shows, the usual car and response. Somebody say,
HEO thing was a staple. Was it at all responsive
or were they just ten thousand no, we don't want this.

Speaker 4 (44:53):
No, no, no, no, tear crying, like literally crying, hatred,
just hated, hated.

Speaker 1 (45:01):
Us, not knowing they worship at the altar three to
four years later, none of them did. I've met many people.
Oh what's her name? I think she told me that,
uh uh Portlandia, Harry Brown seen, yeah, Carrie. So like
everyone tells me, like, oh I first saw them open
before Madonna, and then later I became a fan. That's

(45:25):
what I'm saying.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
Like they were like if your parents promised you a
big wheel for Christmas all year, every other night getting
the big wheel, You're getting the big wheel, and then
you'd get like a piece of shit.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
At the time, did you mind it? Did you feel like, oh,
we're fucked, or like what do you think that.

Speaker 4 (45:48):
Was our thought processes? So long as they remember us,
so long as they know who we are. If we
just went up there and did a couple of songs,
we'd be unmemorable and they'd forget who we are.

Speaker 1 (46:00):
So at no point, no one's saying, hey, this is
one of the biggest artists of all time. You might
wanna I'm a gonna made her ecosystem.

Speaker 4 (46:09):
To her manager was definitely like, you gotta go. We're
gonna get somebody else because you guys are terrible. She
I don't know this is fact, but I'm sure she knew,
like they hated us so much that by the time
she got on stage, it was like, sure it got
it was like, you know, a dozen big wheels.

Speaker 1 (46:27):
I see it now, I see it. I see it
so strategic, strategic planning. I get that. When does the
official process of making license to ill start?

Speaker 4 (46:38):
Is this forty years ago? That's yes, And like, I
don't know the day. I'm not like you, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
I would assume sometime in eighty five, holding out hit
his early eighty six I would assume.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
Yeah, around after the Madonnas were I guess we came
home and started recording. We found you know, we Rick
I guess found a studio Chunk King Studio, and we
would just.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
We found out that LL named that studio when he
was making a radio it was John King Studios.

Speaker 4 (47:11):
But someone named John King owned the place. Duty was
the engineer Okay Day Burnett, who was also the engineer.

Speaker 1 (47:20):
For Planet Rock, also worked at Chun King.

Speaker 4 (47:23):
He was the engineer who also found an apartment for
Adam and Mike in Chinatown, which is a whole other.

Speaker 1 (47:29):
Situation, the rat apartment.

Speaker 4 (47:32):
Yes, I.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
Live about three blocks away from I can see it
from here. I don't know the exact apartment, but my
eyes are on it.

Speaker 4 (47:42):
No.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
LL says that there was a Chinese spot with food
so good that he liked the He's like, yo, man,
you should name this Chunk King Studios. History made. That's
the focalore of LL saying that he named it went
from John King to Chunk King. Whose idea was it

(48:04):
to put the a cappella version of hold It Now?
Hit it on the twelve inch.

Speaker 4 (48:10):
I think that was Rick. I don't I don't believe
it wasn't me. Okay, So you know, it could have
been youks, it could have been could have been any
could have been anyone other than myself, because I don't
think it was mine. It was prob it could have
been Rustles. I don't know. Rick was part of the
like the djool think.

Speaker 1 (48:30):
Back then, but it never occurred to anyone. Hey, why
don't we put the actual instrumental on the B side
so we could perform this shit in concert because people
were still like rhyming over their vocals.

Speaker 4 (48:45):
You know, the details weren't as important to me at
the time. It was more like trying to get free drinks,
you know, like going to clubs, meeting people. It was
kind of more my head's face, right, you know, getting
phone numbers, that kind of thing. Really more where my
focus was.

Speaker 1 (49:05):
Okay, I think I told you previously that the initial
pressings of that twelve inch actually had the a cappella
on the A side and the drum version on the
B side, of which when Lady B started playing it.
The first time I ever heard the drum machine version
of Hold It Now hit it was when I got

(49:27):
licensed to ill, but for a year and a half
before Power ninety nine only played the a cappella version,
and in my mind, it was the most mensa genius
shit ever. I was like, yo, they're so dope. They
don't need no music, Like.

Speaker 4 (49:45):
We don't need no music.

Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yeah, So when I got the album version, I was
like disappointed, Like, wait, where are these drum machines coming from?
Like what the fuck? I mean? At the time, though,
like what was it like to get finally like latt
Storm in terms of like getting respect from because the
single caught on in New York and elsewhere?

Speaker 4 (50:09):
Correct, Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of stories
about all of this. But the Lady Be thing, I'm
just going to say, I can't remember what's in the
book or not because it's it's a lot of pages
in that book. But Lady B. I love Lady B.
She booked a show for us at that time at
this is not going to make her.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Look great at day, right, but at the after midnight?

Speaker 4 (50:32):
No, this was this was at a hotel. This was
at like the you know, like the brunch center of
a hotel, you know, like the meeting area. Okay, And
it was on a whatever night and we drove down
to Philly to play. Here it's like somewhere near Philly
but not in Philly and not Jersey. I don't know
where it was, right, No, but only Lady B showed up.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
That's it.

Speaker 4 (50:56):
That's it, and the you know, the couple of people
that work there, and so we just did it. It
was basically like we did a show, but it was,
you know, a practice and that was when DJ jazzy
J was our DJ jazzy J was our DJ for
a minute.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
Really, Oh yeah, nice, Okay. I didn't know that any
other tippets from this era that I should know, at
least in the pre licensed ill.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
Oh, you mean that we played with the Rap and Duke,
Now we do?

Speaker 1 (51:23):
You did a show with the Rap and Duke? Yeah,
Cali based.

Speaker 4 (51:28):
Or it was somewhere, and it was one of those
shows where it was like, you know, ten different rap
groups and we would just do you know, two songs,
and obviously I don't remember who else was on the
bill because Rapp and Duke was, you know, the main event.
We did it. We go somewhere in Jersey maybe, and

(51:49):
a limo picked us up to go to the show,
and then it stopped to pick up just Ice and
we drove in a limo out to Jersey and we
were blasting like le Zeppelin and he hated and he
got a ride with someone else. Back home a lot
of stuff like that.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Ah, No, I live. I live for stories like that. Now.
I mean kind of the elephant in the room is
based on just assuming I thought groups of average white
bands Tina Maurice caliber was a once in a fifty
year occurrence. I just assume that you guys wrapped that

(52:31):
you had to have been Puerto Rican. Okay, that's all right.
So the story is that you guys, you guys made
a you guys made a stop in Philly during your tour,
and I had the cassette of licensed Ill so there
was no like inside sleep or anything, and there's no

(52:53):
pictures of you guys and shout out to uh Don Robinson,
this is ninth grade. Great, we meet you guys. You
guys are staying at a hotel on like sixteenth and
Locusts in downtown Philly. So like school's let in now,
obviously like are letout. Time. Might have been your lobby

(53:16):
call to get to the spectrum. And as we're walking
home from school, you it was you and uh yea,
we didn't see Mike sugar ANNs Quick and Don was like, yo,
I didn't know they were white. I was like, now,
they're not white. They're Puerto Rican. It's like, nah, I

(53:37):
think they're white. And there was a listening booth like
a block away and we had like a you know,
you know the one smart guy that works at the
record store.

Speaker 4 (53:46):
I don't you would.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
Have been that guy. It's but we go there and
his name is Mark and we're like Mark, Hannah's the
licensed ill album and it's the inside gatefold, and Don's like,
look at the inside, look at them. They're clearly white.
I was like, I don't know, man, I think they're
Puerto Rican. And he's like, dude, and he pulls out

(54:10):
the things like Horowitz, that's a Jewish name, and the
whole time I was just like, yo, I didn't know
they were white. I mean, at the time, were you
guys aware that you were in even though yes, I
know that there were a pioneer and hip hop artists
of all ilk and all cartures and backgrounds in the

(54:33):
game of hip hop, but as far as being marketed
to us, we thought that hip hop was a black
guy's game, a brown guy's game sometimes. But at the time,
were you guys aware of it? Do you think that
Russell was aware of it in terms of like you
not being on the album cover of those things.

Speaker 4 (54:50):
Certainly wasn't thinking about marketing, and I was, you know,
I was a dumb teenager, so I wasn't really sort
of wise to the to the ways of the world
and how you know, white people have been doing this
for a very long time, and so I wasn't aware
of like Russell being like, clearly in his mind he's like,

(55:10):
this is what's gonna catapult all of my other artists.
Do you know what I mean? This is unfortunately the
game that has to be played to get the white
people out there so then I can get run dam
seeing Houdini and all my other groups out there. I
don't know that Russell ever saw us artistically as the
thing that's you know, going to propel him. You know,

(55:32):
as I grew up, I clearly understood that. But we
came from a background of all types of music and
all types of people. Growing up in you know, Greenwich
Village in New York. There's kind of everything for you.
There's everybody and everything. And the interesting, you know, thing
I was going to say is very inspired by the Clash,

(55:53):
and the Clash kind of did what we did right
they and we did it because they did it, and
so they took reg and they played reggae music.

Speaker 1 (56:02):
The thing that was just amazed at, and I don't
think a lot of people noted, is that, you know,
you guys could have easily played the caricature card, but
you didn't, you know what he like, what you could have,

(56:25):
I mean, you could have do you mean like for me,
you guys never came out trying to sound black, you
know what I mean? Like you sounded like your voice
is clearly your voice. I just my thirteen year old
self would not think instantly but that white people can

(56:46):
rap as good as black people do. But I will
say that, you know, you guys could have easily cashed
in on the because there were groups after you, the
white boys, like people kind of cashing in on the
novelty of being an outcast in hip hop. But y'all

(57:08):
never played that card at all, Like you were naturally
yourselves and you just made dope music that you know
was pioneering a death. So y'all could have did that,
but y'all didn't. And I think that's kind of why,
like the respect was always there, you know what I mean,
I just didn't.

Speaker 4 (57:27):
Know, but we you know, we just really loved the music,
so we weren't trying to make fun of the music.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
And I clearly knew that, Yeah, I clearly knew that.

Speaker 4 (57:36):
We don't. We never thought that rapp was a novelty,
do you know what I'm saying. It wasn't like, oh,
it's funny, let's do that. We it's we we love it,
Let's try to see if we can do it. And
when we first started doing it, I just wanted to
sound like Jimmy Spicer, and so I was doing that
thing where I wanted to sound like a specific somebody
and that changed very quickly because I don't sound like that.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
What's your voice?

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Something developed over time or was that the first Like
how did you get to the voice that is the
iconic voice that you rap with? Was it something you
worked on or was it just what came out?

Speaker 4 (58:09):
I think it just worke came out, Yeah, because at
first I tried to sound like a baritone.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
Your speaking voice is lower, clearly.

Speaker 4 (58:16):
Yeah, I just something happens when I start yelling.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
October too.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Yeah, you nailing air quote the voice? You nailing that.
That's some rare shit, because like again, it took Chuck
d an album to really get into Chuck d space, like,
there's very few people you you nailed it. Q Tip
nailed it all.

Speaker 4 (58:41):
Right, So I was going to start. I was trying
to start a band in the nineties called the Nasal Tongues,
me and Q Tip and mc milk and be Real,
be Real Yeah, And it was one of those things
like yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll do it, we should do it,
and then it never happened.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
Ah, okay, well, I mean you did a song with Milk, Yes,
I did. So. I have a theory, especially when it
comes to hip hop music and soul music, which is
I feel like most of the time acts are not
living in the studio to really know what their sound is.
It's like, we got an hour, let's get in, let's

(59:22):
get out, one take, We're done. Whereas you can tell
who had time to Like Prince obviously had all the
time in the world to figure out what his sound
is and all that stuff, which is why he's so developed.
I'm certain Michael Jackson's budget same thing allows that. But
there's a lot of groups who had to be in,

(59:43):
had to be out. So in general, like, were you
guys like living in the studio, were you always like
demoing stuff, or because even when it comes to the
chemistry of the delivery, like the whole tug of war
were played between you three, Like how you guys developing that.

Speaker 4 (01:00:01):
Well, there's a few things. One the thing that can't
just comes to mind now about our voices is that
the three of us, it's kind of like siblings and
you have to fight for your space, you know what
I mean, right, And so we're trying to each try
to fit in and be louder than the other one,
or try to make ourselves fit, fit in and stand out,
if that makes sense. That could be bullshit, I don't.

Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
Know, but no, that's what I think. I think you
found the high register that obviously YUT can't do.

Speaker 4 (01:00:27):
What we used to do is we would go to
Mike's apartment and we would just write rhymes over an
instrumental of whatever, and we would just listen to whatever
it was over and over, whether it was our song,
a demo of a beat that we had, or a
beat that I made, or some other record that we

(01:00:49):
just listened over and over again, and we would write
rhymes and write them and then sift through them and
pick what we liked, and then we would put three
copies all together and underline who was going to say what?
So we knew and we were this at Mike's apartment.

Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
Ah, okay that I mean.

Speaker 4 (01:01:04):
We also just tried to copy run DMC, you know,
Fearless four and all the you know, all the greats.
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:01:10):
Well, I've heard a demo of a I think I
heard a demo of looking down the barrel of a gun,
in which all three of you are saying the same things.
So I always wonder, like, was it the thing of
also punching in, Like would you all just say the
same verse in the way that you would say it
and then decide?

Speaker 4 (01:01:30):
Not that I remember that might have happened. But the
only time I remember was there's a specific song of
polls would take re out because like we got to
do it all three at the same time, and me
and Mike were like, that's a terrible idea.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Well, I definitely heard looking down the barrel of a
gun that way, where all three of you could have
been oh no, no, no, no, no, no, over working underpage,
staring at the floor. Oh stop that train.

Speaker 4 (01:01:54):
Yeah, that's the song. It's got all three of us.

Speaker 1 (01:01:55):
It's on stop yes, stop that train.

Speaker 4 (01:01:58):
Yeah, all right, I thought was a terrible idea. And
it doesn't matter. It's fine. It's like one minute on
the whole album.

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
So when you guys are doing your vocals, are you
doing it all at the same time in the studio
together or not? Going on?

Speaker 4 (01:02:13):
Not always but often.

Speaker 1 (01:02:15):
But doesn't that make it harder to get a perfect take?
Or you just do a take and then you punch
in whatever you have to take?

Speaker 2 (01:02:24):
What's a perfect precision?

Speaker 4 (01:02:27):
That's not something We always got a perfect take. What
are you talking about? That's not that's the perfect take?
Wasn't a concern? Making each other laugh was more important?
And so our studio in when we got our studio
in La there was like the live room here and
the control room here, and the pass through was like

(01:02:49):
a phone booth thing, and be like one of us
in the studio, one in the phone booth and one
in the live room with a window. It always just
you know, I know, yeah, fun to do it all together.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
How many Licensed to Ill songs wound up on the
cutting room floor? Besides I'm down and there's a song
that sounded like a reverse PSK. I think it's all scenario.

Speaker 4 (01:03:16):
Yes, scenario which is in a movie.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
But who's controlling the drum machine on that? Might have
been youk Okay, you gotta understand there's BC boys fans
that like listening see the music annually, whereas I get
that you recorded and you probably haven't heard it since
it was made forty years ago.

Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
So it's you know, in life, you remember what you did,
or more important, you remember what you didn't do.

Speaker 1 (01:03:45):
Got it?

Speaker 4 (01:03:46):
You know what I'm saying. So I remember if I
didn't do something like I didn't program that that beat,
So I know that I didn't Who did? I don't know?

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
Yao?

Speaker 4 (01:03:56):
Probably yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:03:58):
Musically, were you loud in the input on licensed?

Speaker 4 (01:04:01):
Ill?

Speaker 1 (01:04:02):
As far as like what you want to diff.

Speaker 4 (01:04:04):
Like when Rick wasn't there, we got to have fun
and do stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
So what songs were those where mister.

Speaker 4 (01:04:09):
Ed you know, like all of the weird little bits
and pieces that's us having fun.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
On the title track, got It? Got It?

Speaker 4 (01:04:18):
Oh wait, there's one other song that's not on that
record that was a public Enemy song that wasn't going
to get used that we recorded at Electric Ladyland. That
was terrible and I think it might have been cold
lamping and it was like Flavor gave it to us
and then oh we also Oh I was going to

(01:04:38):
say we also did Slow and Low, but we ended
up using that. But yeah, we did cold Lamping. We're
one of those Flavor songs that they ended up they used.

Speaker 1 (01:04:48):
So initially that was going to you guys.

Speaker 4 (01:04:50):
They I guess they recorded and didn't like it, and
then they were like, you guys have it, and we
recorded and it was so bad that they must have
been a yad, well really bad. WHOA.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
I gotta find that, motherfucker.

Speaker 4 (01:05:03):
I have all these things on cassette somewhere there.

Speaker 1 (01:05:06):
I cannot wait for that. Okay. As far as the
infamous White House album follow up, was that ever completed
or was Desperado the only thing recorded before you guys left?

Speaker 4 (01:05:24):
So yeah, it's a long I don't even know what
I'm like legally allowed because there was so much weird
shit that happened at the end of our relationship with
Rick and Russell. But the threat was that if we
didn't record an album that Russell was going to get
some producers to put our vocals, which I don't know

(01:05:44):
what vocals he was going to use to this new
music called house music that people were into, and he
was going to put out a record called White House
and it was going to be huge because people really
like this new house music thing. Really, I don't know, Yeah,

(01:06:06):
sounds great.

Speaker 1 (01:06:09):
I see, Okay, that's interesting. Well yeah I heard Desperado.

Speaker 4 (01:06:14):
But that's that's not house music.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
Far from it.

Speaker 4 (01:06:19):
Yeah, just than that. Jungle Brothers had a song called
house Music All Night Long, so good.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
He wanted you to cast you on that. All right,
that's crazy. So your time in Los Angeles because you
guys were the first to really experience hip hop success.
How jarring was it to be not only hip hop successful,
but like worldwide level of success? In hindsight, was it

(01:06:49):
more of a burden or was it just like something
you didn't care for?

Speaker 4 (01:06:56):
Or no, it's fucking crazy. I mean, this shit just
it really happened quickly. I don't know how to sort
of explain it. It's like, uh, you go to a
party and you wear like ear muffs, and everybody in
the party is like, whoa, those ear muffs are cool,
And then you're like, Okay, I guess I'm gonna wear
ear muffs every day now for the rest of my

(01:07:17):
life because fucking everybody loves my ear muffs. I'm getting
paid to wear these ear muffs. It's awesome. It wasn't
the plan. It was like, we had no plan. We
are also a hardcore but we're a punk band. We're punks,
and so we approached rap music as such, you know
what I mean, Like we just we're just doing what

(01:07:37):
we're doing and other people responding to it was weird
enough that all of our shows were like, you know,
our twenty five friends or people that we sort of knew,
friends of friends. Then it got a little bigger, and
then all of a sudden, like we're on tour with Madonna.
We're like, whoa shit, that's crazy. As we come home,
and then all of a sudden, we're on tour opening

(01:07:58):
for we run DMC and Time Ex Social Club. It's
like this massive thing. And then so we're like, okay,
I guess we're this massive thing now. And so when
the record came out, it was fucking huge. We're on
the cover and the newspaper in England every day was
like crazy. I don't know how. I don't know how
people do it. I don't know how solo artists do

(01:08:20):
stuff like that, because it seems so crazy, and you
have people that like, all these people love you, but
just as many people are like fuck you, you suck. Who
do you think you are?

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
At the time, was the just the constant worship and
being a goldfisher in a goldfish tank? Was that tiring
at the time?

Speaker 4 (01:08:41):
Yeah, I mean it got weird. It's a hard call
because a lot of people are saying they love you
and you're great. That's not bad, that's right, that's good
in theory, right, So you you have that with you
and so it's nice people like what you do. That's great.

(01:09:04):
But the other stuff that comes with it, and interviews
and you know, busy, busy schedule and all of that stuff,
that's not something that anybody's used to. But we didn't
sign up for all of that sort of stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:09:17):
I wasn't aware of how you guys were perceived in
the press. I wasn't deep on the press until like
check your head, you know what I mean. So you know,
if you weren't in right on magazine, I wouldn't know
too much. I think once you guys.

Speaker 4 (01:09:35):
Made it, we weren't right on a magazine.

Speaker 1 (01:09:37):
No, I know, that's I mean, that's how I'm aware.
But it was the press contentious of you guys doing the.

Speaker 4 (01:09:43):
All right, so nineteen eighty seven Licensed to Ill. It's
growing really fast, right right, We're gonna go on tour
in the UK. This is in our book, available now
at your local.

Speaker 1 (01:09:56):
I've read the book.

Speaker 4 (01:09:57):
So we're coming and writing articles about us in the newspaper,
not magazines. I'm talking like the cover of the Sun
and the Sun. And they had a parliament meeting should
they allow us to come because we're these awful people,
Like word has gotten out now that we're like the
sex pistols that were like fucking up the youth of America.

(01:10:18):
You know, we're like death metal music that's gonna do whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:10:22):
Isn't that the rockers dream to be parents worst nightmare?

Speaker 4 (01:10:26):
That's the record company's dream. So oh, it's all building
and building, and we're on the cover of newspaper and
everything we're doing, and we're feeding into it because that's
what we're getting attention. We're you know, you're like a kid.
Pay People are paying attention how you pick your nose,
So you keep picking your nose that way because people
love it. So we're doing it and doing it not
to not to let us off the hook. I'm saying,

(01:10:49):
we are responsible, we all are for what we do,
but it's building and building and building. And so when
we finally get to England and we're playing our shows,
they start getting fucking weird and tense and different. And
then we play a show in Liverpool and basically everybody there,
not everybody there, a lot of people there are like

(01:11:10):
singing football songs. It's like hooligan shit. They're throwing beer
bottles at us. They're like, fuck you. You say you're
you know, you're the shit. You say you're tough, but
you're nothing, and beer bottles are raining down on us,
and we're like, okay, now it's gotten to be too much.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
So you're saying the audience was going there just to
heckle you.

Speaker 4 (01:11:31):
More than heckle. Yeah, because we've already told everybody and
we've become this thing, and like we're definitely responsible for
saying the things that we said and doing the things
that we do. But like it caught fire in terms
of press and newspapers and all this shit, and it
was like, wait.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Okay, I didn't know that was with the fan. I
thought it was depressed.

Speaker 4 (01:11:52):
I didn't know it was like I went to jail
for a few nights. It was like fucking crazy, sucked.
But at the time, for the first time ever, I
had some money.

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):
It was nice, got it? Okay? So was there an
official meeting of the creative direction of what Paul's boutique
should be?

Speaker 4 (01:12:14):
I'm the official meeting was me out of a mic,
meaning like we got to get the fuck away from Rick,
from Russell. I was like getting an end of it.

Speaker 1 (01:12:23):
So you don't think had you been on DEFTM, you
guys wouldn't made an album as adventurous.

Speaker 4 (01:12:28):
There's no way, absolutely no way.

Speaker 1 (01:12:31):
Well, I mean even they imploded in what eighty eight?

Speaker 4 (01:12:36):
So rick Ball fell apart at the same time, the
whole thing fell apart at the same time, between and
Rick and us, and Russell, Russell and Rick, all of us.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
It just okay. So I'd take it that you guys
met with the dust Brothers and whatnot. Well, the legend
is that one of you heard some tracks at a party.

Speaker 4 (01:12:55):
Was it you? That was me?

Speaker 1 (01:12:58):
Yes, okay.

Speaker 4 (01:12:59):
I went to some weird Hollywood party with a friend
and these guys are there just like kind of in
the back out outside listening to cassette A cassette tape
with demos that they made, and so we have crazy
beats and instrumentals and all samples and stuff, and I
was just like, what the hell is this? And one
of them was this guy Matt Dyke, who eventually started

(01:13:19):
Delicious Vinyl. We met a couple of years earlier because
he flew us to La to put on a show
at his club. He promoted a show which was a
very pivotal moment for us.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
Why was that pivot?

Speaker 4 (01:13:34):
So he flew us down to this club, power Tools,
which was like a club, like a well known club
here in history books of La. And we played the
show like all the like hipsters are there and we
come on to do the show and the first eight
o eight that kicks in boom, and it's like and
the speakers are dead, and that's the beginning and end

(01:13:56):
of the show. Eight oh eight was just too much
for the speaker system at all. Mario Caldado goes over
to Matt Dik and he's like, this is a fucking joke.
I got my own PA system. I'm bringing it next week.
You're hiring me to do sound. He does it.

Speaker 1 (01:14:12):
That's how Mario c comes into the fold.

Speaker 4 (01:14:14):
He does it, and he ends up being the engineer
for Delicious Vinyl, for Tonelow Young MC all those records,
and then we work together forever.

Speaker 1 (01:14:24):
Side note, Steve, you know the Roots reputation for being
the loudest band in music at one hundred and and
I'm talking Richard Nichols era, like one hundred and thirty
eight dbs, like way above the legal limit. Like our
face is plastered on every sound systems company, like the
post office, like do not rint systems to this guy.

(01:14:47):
As I said, everything we've ever learned in life we
learn on toward the Beastie Boys. But probably the most
important thing we learned was the importance of sound mixing
and how important basis to a concert. So I will
say the first two years of the Roots and the

(01:15:09):
whole folklore of oh my god, you guys are so
incredible a concert. What we learned on that tour was
if you guys are loud and the sound is pristine,
like for us, the sound, most people would say, an
audience waving their hands in the air is the sign
of like you made it. For us, the sound was

(01:15:31):
the sign was if their hands were covering their stomachs
like I can't take this too much base then that
was like pretty much we learned. So I will say
that for the most part, Mario would let me on
the soundboard to help code mix with them and learn
like so learning live engineering was that was my crash

(01:15:54):
course and end that. So it's kind of weird that
so you guys break into speaker is what brings Mario
to the full. Oh yeah, that is some crazy shit man. Wow.
After that tour, then that's when we became like serious
about everything we ever done. So I believe that you
guys revealed to me that the Paul's Boutique album was

(01:16:21):
not sequenced in a way that traditionally you would sequence
hip hop albums at the time, but that you guys
basically looped everything on individual tracks and that's how the
album was made. Did I ask that correctly in way
that you understood how I asked the three things? One,
I don't know that I understood the question the question right,

(01:16:44):
But the second I.

Speaker 4 (01:16:46):
Was really high at that time. I was smoking. It's
just so much pot that I don't I wasn't dealing
with the you know, fine tuning of that type of stuff, right,
the dust brothers, that's all they did. They went to
school for computer stuff, so they were they were very involved.
That was like their thing was like we control the board,

(01:17:08):
not like how it gets mixed, but like in terms
of how the samples are getting you know, right stop, physically,
how they're getting put on new tape. They were doing that.
So I was really involved with that. I would make
beats here and there, I would you know, write the
lyrics and have my input or whatever. But they were
really the ones that did that.

Speaker 1 (01:17:26):
Okay. I was told that every sample on Paul's boutique,
like for instance, Sounds of Science, that everything would just
get like you would start with the drums and then
try to match each sample to the drums. But basically
instead of okay, the opposite of that is when when

(01:17:47):
talking to public Enemy's engineer whose name I'm forgetting right now,
that made Nation of Millions. Basically in making Nation of Millions,
the best example, of course is not to Living Base.
It's like literally there's a tracking sheet that accounts for
every bar that happens in that thing. So literally, like

(01:18:09):
they write it out as a science experiment, like all right,
third verse planet rock sample comes in this you know,
this salt and pepper snippet comes in at exactly bar
seventy eight. We tuned down eighty five eatpm for Bowie's whatever. Yeah,

(01:18:30):
like it's completely detailed, soup the nuts and execute it
as such and pre eqed, so they barely did any
equing on them. They did all the pre work, whereas
I was told that for this album, you guys weren't like, okay,
only on this when this baseline comes in on verse two,

(01:18:53):
we'll program it. No, it's just like we will loop
everything as is and then we'll automate it that way,
which is a harder way to make a record. In
other words, if there's sixteen tracks, Am I saying it?

Speaker 2 (01:19:09):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:19:10):
I knew drum machine. I can use a drum machine, right, okay,
And I can program drum machine dx DMX whatever eight
await whatever the thing is. I've been doing that for
a long time for a while, a few years. The
licensed ill o. I know, there's a lot of tape loops, right.

Speaker 1 (01:19:26):
And that was Cincento, see what I was talking about.

Speaker 4 (01:19:28):
Sorry, Nick, shout out to Nick Sansano, And so that
was tricky to get those things lined up. And I
remember the dust for this had all this shit lined up,
was like, it seemed very magical. And then they had
a computer, so I was like, I don't know what
I did. I didn't understand what computers did, so like
that it was the music was coming out of a

(01:19:49):
computer was fascinating to me. I was like, is that
like craft work? I don't understand what that means. I
didn't have much to do with it, and you know,
so I couldn't. I can't answer the questions of the
specifics of how those tracks were made because I kind
of sort of dipped out when it came to that.
What a reaction to that was For the next record,

(01:20:12):
I was very, very involved in terms of I got
a you know, SB twelve hundred, and I got I
didn't like that. I wasn't able to touch everything.

Speaker 1 (01:20:21):
So you were in a studio in which engineers would
not let you. No, no, no.

Speaker 4 (01:20:27):
I didn't understand it. I didn't understand computers, so I
didn't know how to to do it, do you know
what I mean? And Yak understood tape loops and me
and him knew drum machines. He knew tape loops from
working with the Latin rascals, all right.

Speaker 1 (01:20:42):
So can you explain. I'm still trying to understand when
you guys talk about looping when the levy breaks for
riman and still and how you had to have a
pencil over here and tape around the room, Like exactly
what is that process? Like, I've never seen that done.

Speaker 4 (01:21:01):
Is that?

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
Are you saying to me that's the only way that
you could loop something?

Speaker 4 (01:21:06):
Okay, So if music is on a on a tape,
not like like on the tape and say the tape
space where it goes around the loop that it goes
around in the actual machine, say that's like whatever, like
four inches of a loop from start to finish, right,
and you take the piece of music. But that piece
of music is actually like a bar of music that's

(01:21:27):
like six point seven inches, So you can't just play
it in the tape loop. You can't play it in
the tape machine. So some of it has to come
out of the tape machine to go back into the
tape machine. It needs that extra space you're creating a loop,
So you just make a bigger loop than it is
on the actual machine.

Speaker 1 (01:21:48):
And this requires like the entire room of the studio.

Speaker 4 (01:21:52):
No, just some space, some good space, good amount.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
Are you there for when rhyming and still in is
being a yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:22:01):
And I feel like, if my memory is right, we
just hand played the kicks and snares. Could be wrong,
but I definitely remember hand playing kicks and snares on
a bunch of songs.

Speaker 1 (01:22:12):
Oh okay, I see, I'm sorry. I have to also
just visualize it, so I get very over analytical with
this stuff. What were your feelings after the mastering session
of Paul's boutique?

Speaker 4 (01:22:27):
You know, I didn't actually say that I was a
musician until into the nineties, right, Like I didn't know
that was my job. I was still whatever, like early twenties, right,
I was eighty nine, I was with twenty two, twenty three,
twenty three, right. So I'm just still winging it. I'm

(01:22:47):
just going like we live in La now, I can
drive a car, I've got cash, I can get pot
and sandwiches, you know what I mean. Like, I'm not
really thinking like this is my career path. And I
just assumed, like, oh, we put a record out and
then we'd go on tour. I guess because that's what
people do, That's what we did last time. We got

(01:23:08):
to make sure. I don't know, I didn't. It didn't
really give it a thought of, like I've never particularly
given a thought of like demographics to sell to or
to cater to, or how record sales are going to
go or any of that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:23:23):
Yeah, but I mean part of you had to get
some sort of goosebump shit like, yeah, this is some shit,
Like no one's making shit like this.

Speaker 4 (01:23:31):
I'll tell you this. So for our book, I wrote
this short chapter called a short chapter called I Hate
Dayla Soul.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
Okay, right, And so when.

Speaker 4 (01:23:41):
The record was all sat and downe and we're ready
to go fucking three feet high and Rising came out, did.

Speaker 1 (01:23:47):
You know that was coming down the pike at all?

Speaker 4 (01:23:49):
No, I don't know. I mean I knew who they were.
I listened to their twelve inch a lot, right, or
the two ones they had out, and I was I
was like, this is way better. So I was, you know,
that didn't like, didn't ruin my day. I'm just saying
it was a sort of in a way, I thought
that we had done this weird thing that no other
rappers that did. We made like this huge medley at

(01:24:10):
the end of the second side. That's you know, it's
like a beautiful yeah, right, and like, no one's done
that on a rap record, and so we did all
these things that we thought that were different, and so
we thought it was cool. And right when the record
came out, I went to Tower Records and they didn't
have any okay, And I was like, oh, this is

(01:24:31):
weird because also because the Tower Records was like ten
blocks from the record label, right, like did someone just
walk over with a box to sell so that nobody
it just sort of died early.

Speaker 1 (01:24:48):
Were you at all impressed with the lead review from
Rolling Stone at the time.

Speaker 4 (01:24:55):
I don't read reviews, so I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
So you did not read the lead review of Paul's
boutique when it came.

Speaker 4 (01:25:01):
Out hair Less? Seriously, you know I'm paying rent off
this stuff. I get it about my music. I don't care.
You're not the person who's buying the records. You get
it for free, no offense to anybody.

Speaker 1 (01:25:16):
I'm just saying, are you aware that it existed? And
are you at least aware that nothing was aware that existed?

Speaker 4 (01:25:24):
Because we probably did a photo session for it, and
that's the extent of any way.

Speaker 1 (01:25:29):
Well, I'm just saying that you know it was really
hard for mainstream hip hop to get any sort of
like real critical attention, like deserved critical attention. And normally,
you know, at least that particular era of Rolling Stone,

(01:25:50):
most guys born in the early forties or whatever, it
was hard to impress them. Like they got Nation of Millions,
and they were kind I really iffy on anything else
that came down the pike. So you know, for Paul's
boutique to get a lead review was like a major

(01:26:11):
big deal and like I didn't even look at the stars,
Like I held the hand over the review as I
was reading, and I was like, yo, this, I've never
seen a glowing I mean, besides the Village Voice, which
you know, if you're kind of under the mentorship of
the leader passing job, Robert Christigal, then you know that's

(01:26:33):
a certain level of writing that's just you know, some
of the greatest writers under the Village Voice. But that
review was like poetic and for me, like that was
the first time in which I felt like, yo, I
want to create and you know, the roots didn't exist yet,
but it was almost like yo, I could create something

(01:26:54):
and get a glowing review like like this. I mean,
I wasn't in the jaded, like fuck critics. And but
for me, that was like a big fucking deal for
you guys to get a glowing review that's usually reserved
for like a certain act, but it wasn't because of
the act. Like I think they had knives out ready

(01:27:15):
to crucify you guys, and it was like, holy shit,
they're artists and like knives down and it wound up
being the opposite of that. So that's amazing that you
weren't even aware of that.

Speaker 4 (01:27:30):
I'm sure I was aware of it, and probably our managers,
you know what I'm saying. I just mean in terms
of they were happy, but even us in general, I don't.
I've always looked at it like coming from a punt,
you know, upbringing right, They're not rolling Stone's not giving
a huge review to the Germs or to the Slits
or Eddie Bow or any you know, anybody that, like

(01:27:52):
I I'm trying to think of anybody's names that like
they're not giving Yeah, Prince Jasbo isn't getting a lead
view or whatever. A lead review is like a big
review and then there's other reviews.

Speaker 1 (01:28:05):
Is that what that means? Meaning like hear you, hear you?
This is some life changes the shit right here is which.

Speaker 4 (01:28:11):
And because I guess we we gotta. You're saying that
we got a good review Nobody Records, So what does
it matter.

Speaker 1 (01:28:20):
I brought that record, damn it.

Speaker 4 (01:28:22):
Thank you?

Speaker 1 (01:28:23):
Have you guys at least changed your feelings towards it.
I know that oftentimes if something doesn't work, you tend
to cast it to the side, like in your canon,
if there's one album that has to represent your life's work, like,
what is that album that's.

Speaker 4 (01:28:40):
The last record we made, Well, it's too it's Hello
Nasty and the last record we ever made, so for
you hot, So the last record we ever made isn't.

Speaker 1 (01:28:49):
Like our best record, but I gotta understand for centimental
reasons with y'all, can it well.

Speaker 4 (01:28:55):
It's also like full circle because as a band, we
played all the music on record, all the samples. It
was like sampling and all of the stuff, and we
did all of it. We weren't sampling other records, so
it was like full circle for a lot of different things.

Speaker 1 (01:29:09):
But basically, Paul's not even close to your that's just
under the inside the storage unit, like it's not important
to you. I think it's great.

Speaker 4 (01:29:20):
There's some there's definitely some lyrics on there that I'm like,
I would, you know they're fucked up that I would
you know, still in a sort of eighties mentality, do
you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (01:29:29):
I get it, I get it. Well, just as a
piece of work, man, just accept the flowers.

Speaker 4 (01:29:34):
Yo. That well, thank you?

Speaker 1 (01:29:35):
That almost goddamn like that.

Speaker 4 (01:29:37):
You can't go back and change things, but you can
go forward and change things.

Speaker 1 (01:29:41):
So I fully understand that. How was it introduced to
incorporate live musicianship for the Check your Head record? And
just how much different than that was besides the actual
outcome of Paul's boutique versus Check your Head?

Speaker 2 (01:30:00):
What was the goal?

Speaker 4 (01:30:01):
And I have fun? You know, it's similar I guess
from starting to rap, from you know, playing hardcore, playing
punk music to rap music. We were We didn't go
on a big tour for that record. We went, we
played like we did a tour of maybe six discos.
I don't know. It was such a bad idea literal disco.

(01:30:24):
And it was when Business second album came out, and
that's all we listened to is Business second album was
so good?

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):
The Diabolical mart Yeah, it's.

Speaker 4 (01:30:32):
So good, and we we did a promotional thing where
we took a train from New York to Philly or
Philly to d C with Will Smith. It was just like,
what are we doing? What are we doing? What's happening?

Speaker 1 (01:30:45):
All right?

Speaker 4 (01:30:46):
And so we just we had these apartments in LA
We were having fun there, making friends, and uh Yauk
was just like, oh, I bought a drum kit at
a yard sale.

Speaker 1 (01:30:59):
Mm hm.

Speaker 4 (01:31:00):
So I set up this this shitty drum kit in
my bedroom and I had a guitar and an amp,
and Yaouk was just like, I'm gonna do you have
a wah wah pedal? And I was like, I actually
do have a wawa pedal. He's like, all right, I'm
gonna come over tomorrow with my bass and Mike's gonna
come over and we're just gonna play music. And because

(01:31:21):
Mike plays drums, right, I was like okay. And then
that just that's how it started.

Speaker 1 (01:31:27):
And then was Yauk always the lighthouse or the sort
of anchor that starts whatever ideas next.

Speaker 4 (01:31:35):
No, he was the like task master, like he could
get it done. Like everybody has like ideas, like oh shit,
we should do this, but Yea was like yeah, we'll
figure out how to do that in two hours. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:31:47):
So I went from we should be a band to yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:31:50):
No, tomorrow we're a band, you know what I mean.
It was like, tomorrow, this is what we're doing. Tomorrow
we're not. This isn't just an idea, this is what
we're doing. We're gonna go back to a year before.
We're all living together at this house off of mulhalland Drive,
and Mike drove his car through the front gate, this
wooden gate, and so Mario, Mario Caldado had a friend,
this guy Mark Nasheeda, who is a carpenter who also

(01:32:13):
played keyboards. He came and he fixed the gate. And
then the year when we started playing, Mario was like,
you should get my friend Mark to come and play keyboards.
And it just literally that's like the next day, and
then it just started.

Speaker 1 (01:32:28):
So whenever a disaster happens so uncrucial in the development
of your sound enters the fold nice. So eventually you
guys wind up platinum status, newfound fan base back in Arenas.
Can you explain basically how that journey starts. There's just

(01:32:51):
like every day it's just oh, this is happening, Like
I don't think you can plan a comeback or I
didn't necessarily call it comeback because you guys were consistent
part of my listening. So I never once felt like
a lack of Beastie boys, even though I know there's
a difference between nine million units and five hundred thousand units.

Speaker 4 (01:33:14):
But well, I guess we learned the thing of like
we severed ties with our manager who was the one
during the Paul's Wutique thinger had his play at the
discos in the train with Will Smith, right, and we
got a new manager who's still our manager, John Silva.

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
John yep Silva is still wrong with y'all. Oh yeah,
damn son.

Speaker 4 (01:33:35):
We mat him because he was Sonic Youth manager and
Vona's manager. And this is before Nevermind came out and
we went and had like brunch, like a Hollywood brunch
with him, and he was like, I'm not sure that
I want to do this anymore. I'm thinking about moving
to San Francisco and working with my brother. We're like, okay,

(01:33:57):
that seems very on Hollywood, and so that's what we
liked about him, and then we ended up pursuing him,
and then he became our manager and he approached it
more like something that we understood in terms of his
background as a punk rock background, and he was just like,
you gotta play shows, just play shows. And so we
got back into that and the thing of like actually

(01:34:19):
enjoying being on tour as opposed to license to ill,
where it sucked after a while, it sucked pretty quick,
and then on tour, you know, in ninety two was
really fun and different. It was different. It was a
whole different scene.

Speaker 2 (01:34:34):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:34:34):
We were playing clubs, punk clubs and wherever.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
It was.

Speaker 4 (01:34:37):
Just it made sense, got it got it was going
to get bigger and bigger, but it did.

Speaker 1 (01:34:43):
So second time around it felt better for you.

Speaker 4 (01:34:46):
Oh definitely.

Speaker 1 (01:34:47):
This is December when we're talking, and my birthdays in January.
You know what a really cool gift would be. What
are you able to locate every last issue of Grand
Royal magazine?

Speaker 4 (01:34:59):
You're gonna have to talk to him about that.

Speaker 1 (01:35:00):
I hate you right now, Come on, dog your history.

Speaker 4 (01:35:03):
It wasn't my thing.

Speaker 1 (01:35:05):
You have articles in Grand Royal.

Speaker 4 (01:35:07):
Well, I was involved in like the first, first or
second one, but then I lost interest. Man. I don't
have any Latin quarter stories either. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:35:19):
I know I was gonna ask you, there's no Latin
Quarter stories.

Speaker 1 (01:35:22):
Look, man, oh, I got plenty of everyonce.

Speaker 2 (01:35:25):
Everybody we talked to is like the Beastie Boys were
at the fucking Latin Quarter.

Speaker 4 (01:35:29):
But apparently the stories in the Roxy though, but not
Latin Quarters.

Speaker 1 (01:35:33):
The fuck all right, Look, man, no one enjoys the
slow pin to a balloon deflation of any fantasies I
have about what life was like back in the day
than this guy right here.

Speaker 4 (01:35:51):
Green Roy was great though, because our studio we had
in La, because we we also on pullsic. We spent
all our money. We thought it was like we were
rock stars and we would record these really expensive we
record at these really expensive studios, and we were used
to recording at Chunk King, which was nothing. When we

(01:36:12):
recorded there, right literally, there was like a it was
there were no lights on, there was a fish tank
with dead fish in it. It was like it wasn't nice.
There was no leather couches, right, And so we wanted
to find a spot that we could record at and
not have to pay an hourly fee or a lockout
or anything. So Mike and Mario found a place out

(01:36:34):
in at Water outside of La in La but outside
of LA that was like this little mini ballroom and
we just took over the whole thing and one room
was Grand Royal Records, one room was the magazine or
all these little closets that like people were working in
and it was a good scene. A lot of creatives
happened to them.

Speaker 1 (01:36:55):
Wait, I have signed questions to ask about certain songs
get it together. Were you guys just in a circle
just freestyling every four bars or like? Was that was
that a written song? Because at some point it just
sounds like y'all freestyling.

Speaker 4 (01:37:11):
Yes. So Mike and Mario made that track and Q
Tip was visiting the studio and he was hanging out.
We're like, do you want to get you know, do
you want to do a song with us? And he
was like yeah, and he was like, give me a mic.
I think it was I don't know if he was
serious and I was something of that, and we're like, oh,
we on a track, you know, blah blah blah. So
he just freestyled for like a bunch and so we

(01:37:32):
somehow edited just the parts that of his and we
weaved our way in through him. So somewhere there's a
bunch of stuff that he said that we didn't use.

Speaker 1 (01:37:42):
Oh just random stuff and then yeah, ah so smart, Okay,
that makes sense now. And the biz at that time
was give me a good bit story man.

Speaker 4 (01:37:53):
First time it he came this the studio, he came in,
it was nighttime. The area where our studio was at
was nothing. It was like there were there were houses
in this one area, but the rest was this big
street and everything was closed. It was deserted except for
a liquor store like kind of over there. And his
first thing he said, was there a candy store. We're like,

(01:38:15):
what's that? And he's like a candy store? Is there
a candy store? And we're like, is this guy on
fucking Heroin?

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):
Like why is he?

Speaker 4 (01:38:22):
Like why does he need an indy? It's like eleven
at night or whatever it was. And so we went
to the liquor store and he bought like a bag
of fucking candy and then just was like every time
we hung out with him was amazing, every every time,
And all he wanted to do was sing weird songs
from the seventies, and we'd have our instruments and he'd

(01:38:44):
be like, do you know how to play Yesterday by
the Beatles. He's like, you know Yesterday and we're like what,
and he's like Yesterday by the Beatles. We're like, yeah,
we know that song, and he's like, do you know
how to play it? I'm like, I don't know how
to just play Yesterday or top of my head and
he would just start singing it. It just We've got
a lot of tape of Biz just being.

Speaker 1 (01:39:07):
Biz bugging out. Yeah yeah. Biz is probably the second
person to whom my pop culture boarding addiction. He started
that shit like.

Speaker 4 (01:39:21):
Yeah, an old friend of mine. God, I'm a rock
and socking robots, like still in a box and he's
still mad that Biz never paid him for it. Biz
also stole my Funkadelic Rennium my album really well. He
never gave it back.

Speaker 1 (01:39:39):
Never gave it back.

Speaker 4 (01:39:40):
Okay, didn't steal it, he just kept it.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
This is something I gotta know the long term, and
I won't give it away again. I insist that you guys,
like it's hard doing this interview because the questions I
want to ask I think are better told in the
Beastie Boys book. But the long, long term prank that
Yaouk played on you, oh yeah, with the ring do

(01:40:07):
you still have that ring. No, no, no Ah, you
don't have that ring.

Speaker 4 (01:40:13):
I mean it might be in a storage locker of yox.
I threw it in a fountain in a hot outside
of a hotel in South Paolo or somewhere in South America.

Speaker 1 (01:40:26):
All right, short version, guys is basically some random stranger
gives Adam a ring, and I guess.

Speaker 4 (01:40:35):
It's the early nineties, where in San Francisco doing a
record signing for Check your Head right out at a
tower records, and so there's you know, kids are lined up,
we signed the records. Say hi, you know, nice to
meet you, nice to meet you know, everybody's interesting. It's
fun to say hi. And then this one kid comes
up very very very long arms, like oddly aren't long arms? Right,

(01:40:58):
There's something about him that's weird. Maybe the it's like
a like extra amount of piercings or something. And he's like,
can I give you my ring? No? No, no no.
So I meet this kid that night after the show
in San Francisco. That guy who I was like, whoa,
that guy was weird is backstage talking to him. He's like,

(01:41:19):
can I give you my ring? I'm like no, it's cool.
I don't wear jewelry. And he's like, no, it's really
important to me. And he was like cornering me and
it was getting weird. Gives me this weird ring that
was like like a hot topp of ring. It wasn't
like a family crester. This is like some random thing, right,
And so I took it and I put it in
my bag. And then when I got home New York,
like weeks later, I put it on my shelf in

(01:41:41):
my apartment. And then we were on the train going
to play show in Philly and I found the ring
in my bag. So I was really scared. Didn't know
what happened. I don't know how the ring got in
from the thing to the thing. It's just some fucking
weird thing about this fucking ring. Throw on an Amtrak
and I tell everybody, like, this thing, this ring that
I'm holding is is doing something weird to my life.

(01:42:05):
I throw it down the end of the train. Then
I go to the bar the you know, the food
cart truck area, and I get a metro Liner sandwich
and I come back blah blah blah blah blah. Fourteen
years later, twelve years later, we're in South America, and
I opened my backpack and the fucking ring is in
my backpack. Yes, And I'm telling you, I was shaking,

(01:42:30):
almost crying. I don't know. And I told everybody like
the shit telling me about the ring. And the next
day adam ucause like, look I put I held onto
the ring this whole time.

Speaker 1 (01:42:41):
I went, Ah, I wish he would have told you
that to a long gig shit.

Speaker 4 (01:42:47):
He went to the end of the train and got
the ring and held onto it for years. And so
that is the luck of my life. Is one of
the two lucks of my life. Well you know, I
guess we all have several, but one of the main
lucks of my life so to have my best friends
in my band so I got to do all of
this stuff with out of the mike. How what would

(01:43:10):
have happened if it wasn't for them? You know, literally
my bandmate played a preak on me for twelve years.

Speaker 1 (01:43:17):
I love that story so much.

Speaker 4 (01:43:19):
Man, the best year. And I did want to say something.
My best best friend since kindergarten, not into Johnny. You
DJ her party every year, and I want to say
thank you. If I haven't thanked you, say thank you.
It means a lot to her.

Speaker 1 (01:43:31):
Not he's my heart man. That's wait. So that party's
been going on since like eighty four, for a long time,
long time. All right, so quick backstories. Basically, I found
out through this party that the night before Thanksgiving is
the biggest bar night in America. I thought it was

(01:43:53):
New Year's Eve. It's not. That's the second biggest bar night,
but the night before Thanksgiving is the biggest bar night
in America. And when I moved to New York, I
don't know invited me. I think at the time is
like Rassida Jones. Somebody invited me to this party and
it was a private party in a bar and it
was just actors, and you know, it felt like a

(01:44:17):
hole in the wall thing, but it just happened to
be like, oh, the cast of The Good Wife and
the cast of Long Orders for you people from Saturday
Night Live. And you know, like if you were a
New York actor, a New York kind of legend, then
you're at this party. And I think at the time
Mark Ronson had started dejaying it. So you started first,

(01:44:41):
and then Ronston was next, and then I started spending
I think like twenty ten and what's really weird is that.
I mean, we used to go hard, like I would
end and it's like six seven in the morning, like
that hard. And man, Thanksgiving was last week and I

(01:45:05):
did the party and I'm going all in, and you know,
it's just like you got topped last year and everyone's dancing,
and I'm thinking, like, yeah, man, I'm all right. I
made my mark. And I look at my I look
at the clock and I'm like, it's got to be
two thirty in the morning. And I look and it's
like eleven nine.

Speaker 4 (01:45:27):
Perfect time.

Speaker 1 (01:45:28):
I blew my I blew my shot, and party wound
up ending at like one fifteen, which I consider a
major defeat, being as though we used to go till
six in the morning. But now that's where we are
in life. Napping early. You're not even a parent.

Speaker 2 (01:45:48):
It's a whole other shit show.

Speaker 4 (01:45:49):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:45:49):
You don't even have to be up at six in
the morning.

Speaker 1 (01:45:52):
I do, dude. I had to do the parade.

Speaker 2 (01:45:54):
That's well, that's once one day. What you're gonna ask
I was gonna ask, Adam, you have a kid, what
is parenthood like when you're the you know, when you're
in a beastie boy, But what is that relationship like
with your kid and I don't you relate.

Speaker 4 (01:46:09):
Well, it's different because he never saw his play, right
because he's eleven, it's been a while. He doesn't care,
you know, natural could really doesn't care. He likes kathleic
he likes my wife's music way better. He's seen her play.
I get it. It's okay. I'm not hurt. I'm not hurt.

(01:46:29):
I'm just angry.

Speaker 1 (01:46:30):
Yeah, but does he at least understand that you have history? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:46:34):
Yeah, because the weird dad's at school, you.

Speaker 1 (01:46:37):
Know, or like at the let your dad's Okay, I
get it now.

Speaker 4 (01:46:40):
Yeah, So that's it's awkward and he doesn't like it.
He doesn't like it, but whatever, maybe when he gets
to high school or when he understands it, like, you know,
because he doesn't like that his parents are famous. And
when he gets a little older and understands it like
he has a swimming pool, like maybe being it's not.

Speaker 1 (01:46:59):
That bad, then they get it. Leading to Kathleen. First
of all, I loved their book immensely, and especially with
the story of how you two met and the pull
out poster and all those things. But yeah, I was

(01:47:20):
about to say, coming from two people that are sort
of call figures in their respective areas like that, how
do you make it work? I know that's a general question,
but I think I'm more or less asking for advice because,

(01:47:44):
you know, as a person with a career and a
personal struggling to keep a girlfriend.

Speaker 4 (01:47:49):
Like I mean, I don't know, I don't know. I
think things worked out differently because you know, we have this,
We have our son, Julius. You know, my my band
stopped being a band, you know, right before he was born.
And so I just I love I don't need to,
you know, And Cathleen tours a lot, so we're used

(01:48:10):
to that because we used to tour. First whole part
of our you know, relationship with us touring. You know,
she'd be on here, I'd be there all over the
you know whatever. But I really like being home.

Speaker 1 (01:48:22):
So are you still in the tender moments when Bridget
goes out in the road.

Speaker 4 (01:48:27):
Oh, I left the tender moments. Bridget evert in the
tender moments. I left when we moved left, I left.
I was a bass player for my friend Bridget's band,
and and the first gig of the new bass player,
my friend Andre was like, oh man, that new bass player.
He's doing all these walks and runs and he's so good.

Speaker 1 (01:48:47):
I just finished the SNL fifty documentary, and a big
part of that is the Elvis Past Boys hookups. Wait,
what's the infatus of the idea of you guys doing
radio radio together?

Speaker 4 (01:49:05):
You know, I don't know. I feel like Kathleen said
that it was her idea, so I want to say
that it was my idea, but I'm not one hundred
percent sure I know that.

Speaker 1 (01:49:15):
How long did it take you to learn those keyboard parts?

Speaker 4 (01:49:17):
My friend Michael Rohattan taught me how to play is
my far fisa. I played keyboards and everything, but I
don't actually know how. I never I never learned, so
I don't really know what I'm doing. So he showed
me a couple of chords.

Speaker 1 (01:49:29):
I was really impressed when you ran back there. I
was just like, yo, I don't really knows this shit.

Speaker 4 (01:49:34):
I recorded records with that far fisa back in bec Boys.
But anyway, I grew up listening to Elvis Costello. It
was like one of my He's in my top ten,
if not top five, okay, as his with my my
older brother and sister, and so you know, Elvis is
a big deal and that performance that he did was
a big deal to us. Sound Live was a big

(01:49:55):
deal to us. And so I don't know. I feel
Kathleen is claiming that it was her idea, but it
could have been my sister Rachel. I don't I don't remember,
but got it fantastic. It was one of those things
where like I didn't want to meet Elvis because you know,
you don't want to meet people that are here of
that statue to you, and uh, but we did.

Speaker 1 (01:50:19):
It was really Elvis lives up to it. So Steve
one of his lifelong dreams was to produce an Elvis record.

Speaker 4 (01:50:26):
And so I really you're saying, Steve naive, okay, Steve.

Speaker 1 (01:50:30):
No, No, Steve. Steve has been a long time Electric
Lady engineer. So back when I was starting my tenure there,
like in the late nineties with you know, the D'Angelo
record and the Common all the albums I worked on
for that period of time.

Speaker 4 (01:50:49):
Was recorded an Electric Lady Land.

Speaker 1 (01:50:51):
Yeah, d'angelo's Voodoo comments like Water for Chocolate and Electric Circus.

Speaker 4 (01:50:55):
And it was at a real low point in the
in the eighties when we were there, Nah, man.

Speaker 1 (01:51:03):
I mean anything that's going through has been legendary and so.
But Steve's dream was to produce an Elvis record, and
you know, not only that, but you really started in
authentic friendship with him.

Speaker 3 (01:51:15):
So yeah, that's not even true though I couldn't dream
that big to produce it was. My dream was to
meet him, have a monograph, a record. That was my dream.
But yeah, thanks to quest to turn into something much larger.

Speaker 1 (01:51:29):
Well yeah, I mean you know, like obviously you wanted
to do something with him creatively, so so yeah, basically
saying Elvis is one of the rare cases in which
meeting your heroes can actually result into to something.

Speaker 4 (01:51:43):
Dope, you actually did it and it's done, it's been out.

Speaker 1 (01:51:46):
Yeah, it's called Wise Up Ghosts. He came out what
twenty thirteen, Yeah, twenty thirteen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really
it's a quality album and I enjoyed immensely making it.
The one thing I didn't get to ask you before
we pull is, at one point you had a budding
acting career.

Speaker 4 (01:52:07):
Why didn't you pursue Let you talk about myself because
I want a Best Actor award at the Turks and
Kekos Film Festival. It was and KOs, but it was somewhere.

Speaker 1 (01:52:21):
What was this?

Speaker 4 (01:52:22):
And I have a statue. They send it to me.
They said, if you're here, we would love to have
you at the film festival if you have it to
be and cake, I didn't have the plans, but you know, so, yeah,
Illustrious is a word that's been thrown out a lot
about my acting career.

Speaker 1 (01:52:41):
What does creativity mean to you now in terms of
all I mean, you know you've achieved a lot. Are
you insatiable? Are you fine with it?

Speaker 4 (01:52:52):
Is?

Speaker 1 (01:52:52):
Just day at a time, your thing? Do you make? Beats? Sometimes?

Speaker 2 (01:52:56):
Like what do you do?

Speaker 4 (01:52:58):
I have in the past little while. But this is
why I got this cabin, my little studio. I came
here every day and I made a piece of music
every day, a different piece of music. So I got
a lot of music. I don't just to have I
don't know, but just to be is different from what
it used to be. What it is to other people,
what it means to me is different. I'm in a

(01:53:21):
fortunate situation that people really like fight your right to party,
and so I can afford to just be creative and
not put things out, you know what I mean? And
my house is paid for like I bought a house,
you know, you know what I mean? And so creativity
is different. If I had to hustle, I couldn't just

(01:53:42):
come here and make just weird little music every day.
I'd have to fucking work at it and really take
seriously what creativity means, what it means to me, what
it means to who I'm putting it out to. Will
I be able to pay my rent with this fucking music?
Do you know what I mean? And if not, I
can just be creative whatever where I want, But I
have to work a job. So creativity is is it's tricky.

Speaker 3 (01:54:06):
What's your music like these days? What kind of things
are you creating?

Speaker 4 (01:54:10):
Depends on you know, the drive over whatever. If I
hear something that'd be like, oh, should make classical music today,
and then I don't know how to do that, so
it comes out with something and I'd be like, oh,
I should just put a eight a weight on it,
So don't be way better, you know, like guitar music
or whatever. I just you know, I have the modern era.
You can have any instrument you want, so you know, timpanies.

Speaker 1 (01:54:32):
What have you got it?

Speaker 4 (01:54:34):
Experimenting, which is another thing about creativity if you can
afford it, you can be experimental.

Speaker 1 (01:54:41):
That's that's what I aim to be. All Right, Before
I close, can you give.

Speaker 4 (01:54:46):
Me a relationship advice? I really don't you know.

Speaker 1 (01:54:51):
I'm going I'm going another oute.

Speaker 4 (01:54:52):
I'm going another I love Kathleen. That's the only thing
that I can Kathleen's amazing, so.

Speaker 1 (01:54:57):
I can accept that and I absolutely just stand why
you love Kathleen. All right. So in closing, what three
hip hop factoids of your life? Do do you think
I not know of me personally? You had to have
been there for an important recording of someone's song.

Speaker 4 (01:55:16):
Or like I already told you that I was in
the background of it's Yes, I was there is a
little thing I was there for, like a bunch of
the stuff. Oh. Also, do you know this fact to it?
My best friend Nadia the Johnny who your DJ. Do
you know her brother was yes? Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:55:32):
Nadia is her? Her brother was part of the st
fifties the Stimulated Dummies, Yes, with John Gamble. Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:55:41):
Dante Ross Dante, he's been a guest on your show. Yes. First,
first you called Dante? You didn't you didn't call me?
That's that's okay.

Speaker 3 (01:55:53):
I've been the best for last.

Speaker 1 (01:55:54):
You know how long it took to make this happen.

Speaker 4 (01:55:57):
You have my phone number? What are you talking about?

Speaker 1 (01:56:00):
I know, by the way. Yeah, I was about to
say Adam is probably responsible. None of you two are
in it. But you know I'm currently in various New
York Times games groups. Oh, I'm in wordle groups various
word but Adam's the og. We play one online scrabble

(01:56:21):
game together. I'm not lying, though. I'm in eight word
groups right now and I can't take it anymore.

Speaker 4 (01:56:27):
I'm for these things. Is it like group therapy? It is?

Speaker 1 (01:56:32):
Especially now, are you kidding?

Speaker 4 (01:56:35):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:56:36):
This is what I can say. One of my wordle
groups who also has a secret spelling bee unit that
I'm not a part of. Okay, So, as of late,
the Lonely Island guys have kind of been talking about
their prowess at getting Queen Bee, which is the highest

(01:56:58):
rating that you can get, and so there's almost like
a Jets and Sharks, Bloods and Crips level of shit
talking going on. Really, so I'm gonna have to do
some Michael Jacksons and just dance between them and get
them to stop.

Speaker 2 (01:57:14):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:57:14):
Seriously, like game groups are now that's the new game night,
even though I do have regular ass game nights, like
where are you currently playing right now?

Speaker 4 (01:57:24):
Oh, I'm in a cross for puzzle I do every day.
I do the month Archive times Monday, New York Times
cross for a puzzle?

Speaker 1 (01:57:33):
Why Monday as opposed to the Sunday?

Speaker 4 (01:57:36):
Or I got sick and spelling Bee?

Speaker 2 (01:57:39):
Do you do connections?

Speaker 4 (01:57:43):
I get a lot of way too much spelling be.

Speaker 2 (01:57:45):
It's a lot of study. By the way, is Queen
Bee like you get all the words?

Speaker 1 (01:57:49):
Yes, you have to get every last word right.

Speaker 2 (01:57:51):
That's that's insanity level.

Speaker 1 (01:57:53):
I can't do that. Ship.

Speaker 4 (01:57:54):
I've written to the person that does the thing because
Tom tom is there's a lot of words that are
like that, and there's other food things that are like that.
We're like soake, the wine counts, but like some other
thing doesn't count.

Speaker 1 (01:58:14):
Yeah. Whenever I complained to my plug at the times,
they tell me that it's the machine generator and is
not what we could do about that.

Speaker 2 (01:58:23):
But I love that you write to them.

Speaker 4 (01:58:25):
That's fantastic. Yeah, I know, not all I'm not. Like.

Speaker 1 (01:58:30):
One of the biggest hours of my life was during
the time one hundred I got to write the word
creator's entry for the time one hundred and I used
only five letter words highlight of my life. You got
to google it. I don't know by memory, but I
wrote his entry in all five letter words and one

(01:58:50):
of them no plural plurals.

Speaker 2 (01:58:53):
Oh okay, party, yeah no, No.

Speaker 1 (01:58:59):
For Adam, you're our a legend. That's all I can
statement without making you feel uncomfortable. Your generosity and your
creativity and your band literally did a lot for me
just as a creative and also helped me a lot
in my career. I mean, I'm not even exaggerating how

(01:59:22):
much that has helped me and still has me here
to this day with a career and my own house.
So I thank you for that, and I appreciate it
because you guys didn't have to bring us under the
wing and all that stuff, but I appreciate that, man,
and thank you for doing this episode.

Speaker 4 (01:59:40):
Finally, welcome, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:59:43):
Thank you all right on behalf of Adam Horwitz and
Sugar Steve and Unpaid Bill. This is Quest Love Supreme.
Y'all see you next go around. Thank you, Thank you
for listening to Quest Love Supreme hosted by I'm here,
a Quest, Love, Thompson, Are You Saying? Claire Sugar, Steve Mandel,
and unpaid Bill Sherman. The executive producers are Amir Quest, Love, Thompson,

(02:00:08):
Sean Che and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Britney, Benjamin Cousin,
Jake Payne, Eliah Saint Clair, edited by Alex Convoy. Produced
by iHeart by Noel Brown West. Love Supreme is a
production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio,

(02:00:34):
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
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Laiya St. Clair

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Questlove

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