QLS Classic: Dan Charnas

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Of course, Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This
classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yo Yo it Up.

Speaker 3 (00:09):
This is Fonte Fontigaelo with this week's QLs classic.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
This week we go deeply talking to my man, my.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Brother, Dan Charnas, writer, radio hosts and music exec. Dan
talks about his early days and say h about journalists,
some of the artists he did and didn't sign in
the nineties, and how a simple grandma mistake can cause
big trouble. This one was originally released February twenty second
and twenty seventeen. His new book, Diller Time, which is
absolutely incredible.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
It releases February first.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Of twenty twenty two and it is just an amazing
book and a beautiful lergy too, and an incredible producer.
Dan Charnas LS classic Fontigolo YEP.

Speaker 4 (00:51):
Crazy Suppriva Ro, Suppriva Suppriva roll call subprev some Supreme
roll Suprema some.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
SUBPRIMEO, Rod Harriet Tupman Yeah, Rosa Parks Yeah, A million
more Black Americans America.

Speaker 3 (01:13):
What is today?

Speaker 4 (01:17):
Supreva ro called Suprema Sun, Suprema Ro.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
My name is Fante. Yeah. Shout out to my Jews. Yeah,
Quest of Supreme, Yeah, fake news.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
That Suprema supreva road.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I met Darryl Yeah when he was defending on television. Yeah.
And the people that were on the other side of
the argument, Yeah, didn't stand a chance, right.

Speaker 5 (01:47):
Sup.

Speaker 6 (01:49):
Suprema Suprema some Suprema Rod called thank you Linda Bean,
yeah of ll Bean, Yeah for your great support.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Yeah by LLB.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
That's Suprima. That brama roll call.

Speaker 7 (02:10):
Very incredible people. Yeah, and I want to think Carson,
who's gonna be heading up hud. Yeah, that's a big job.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
That's ever done in your life. Suprema.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
My name is Dan.

Speaker 8 (02:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:28):
I didn't meet Darryl, but I now missed the president.

Speaker 7 (02:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
It was played by Will Ferrell.

Speaker 4 (02:37):
Suprema, roll Suprema, Suprema. Roll call, Suprema Suprema, roll call
su Breema so Agreema.

Speaker 7 (02:49):
Roll call.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Ladies and gentlemen, we are This might be the most
roguus episode of Quest Love Supreme, probably since the Christmas special.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah classic Yeah, uh wait llll Bean is black. No,
it was I was reading the Trump tweet. We should
explain what we were were well, Yeah, to celebrate month,
we read Trump's those are excerpts that was Trump quotes
black quotes from his Black History speech that he gave.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Okay, wait, was just a random tweet that that I
was about to say. I'm sorry. I was like, I
support ll Bean Yeah New Hampshire be all Okay.

Speaker 3 (03:32):
Ll Bean's a rapper, right, yes, yeah, yeah, he's ll
Cool J's Mexican cousin.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Sometimes we've managed to.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Immediately within five minutes. Okay, this is apparently the last
episode that was his cousin and thecamery is also Irish.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
I see what or.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
That was his best version ever.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
We it would be remiss if we didn't acknowledge Black
History Month.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah, got and we figured the best way to do
it is to quote Cheeto Jackson. That's just that's your
man son.

Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah he Cheeto Jackson. Yeah yeah, man, he's yeah, he's
making Cardergie trumpson there he is.

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yo, listen, man, I feel like we need to do something.
I feel like we need to do the photo negative
version of Black History Month. Explain that was the rest
of the month, yo, Well, because I feel like, you know,
it's a lot of stuff going on now, and you
know it's you know, we're having this war. I think
between like people that are globalists and nationalists and everything and.

Speaker 7 (04:51):
You know, pederalists, everything, all the I S T s
all the so.

Speaker 3 (04:55):
I feel like every Black History Month we try to
show like what black people have contributed to the country.
I feel like, in order to really show people what
we've done, I feel like maybe it might be time
for us to just remove ourselves like a mon like
just just for one month, day without yeah, a day
without niggas, like an.

Speaker 7 (05:14):
The Mexicans did that and it worked.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
I feel like like every like for real, like we
take like for one month we show you for all
the people, just like go back to your country if
you don't like to hear for one month black people,
we take away our music, We take away all our seasoning.

Speaker 7 (05:29):
About to make a living on the music.

Speaker 2 (05:30):
Well, no, I'm saying, listen, if I can go a month,
you know what I mean? Do we have the discipline?

Speaker 7 (05:37):
You know?

Speaker 3 (05:38):
Right now, a dude who's not eating any cereal or
fried chicken or whatever cheese steaks that I've been noons
and dulging for as of this taping.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
We're in the eighties.

Speaker 7 (05:53):
Your resistance down.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
That's yeah, that is one of the I think that's
all I can.

Speaker 7 (05:58):
I can't do no more.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Ain't got no more. I can't do no more.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
You put in your time, man, I understand, But I
thought about that, like what if we just did like
a just a cultural enema, and well, we just removed
ourselves just to really show like all these folks that
really won't black people go away if you go, and
not just.

Speaker 2 (06:16):
Black people.

Speaker 3 (06:19):
People of color, if we are like your your your
uncle that like needs heart surgery, No doctor Patel can't
help you, he said, all the brown people, everybody, all
the color people, like your hedges outside that's growing over.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Nah, nigga, get yourmo left. So you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (06:38):
I'm just saying, like we if we did that, I
think we should. We need to let our absence season start.

Speaker 7 (06:46):
Man, I see what you're doing.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
You know what I mean. It's just a thought. It
would never work people. We ain't gonna do that.

Speaker 7 (06:54):
A good TV though, we should do like a TV
should write it right it.

Speaker 2 (06:56):
Up, Which brings us to our guess.

Speaker 7 (07:02):
With us, this is all you dog today we kind
of celebrate.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Your own guest ship. Okay, welcome, I got the beats.
What you did?

Speaker 3 (07:18):
Okay? Man today on a quest of Supreme. We have
a guy that is man has written the what I
would consider like the hip hop Bible, you know what
I mean. He wrote a book called The Big Payback
and uh, the best way I can describe it, I've

(07:38):
never seen.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Star Wars in my life but that. But you know,
for the Star Wars people, it is this book that
shows how all what still to this day. Still I
gave him last year and that was your first time
seeing it.

Speaker 7 (07:51):
For Yeah, you ain't gonna see Billy d you ain't gone.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
I was four when that nigga was popping.

Speaker 7 (07:56):
I'm watching all right. I'm sorry to mean to digress.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
It was you know, I wasn't watching that. Okay, I
missed Star Wars, but hey whatever, So as I was
saying Billy G was in the Empire strikes back, that's
the second one, right, Yeah, that's the one I heard
was kind of live. I heard that one was dope.

Speaker 3 (08:15):
I can't believe we're having this conversation.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
No, I just missed that. Whole was like hip hop
Bible for Star Wars people. Star Wars people.

Speaker 3 (08:25):
His book showed how all the Anakins became Darth Vader's
Like if you want to see how every all the
major players in the game, the Russells, the Rick Rubins,
the Jesus Christ, everybody, everyone who's someone in the world
of hip hop. If you want to see how they
became who they are, this book shows it, and it

(08:45):
shows how hip hop played a role. It starts off
in nineteen seventy eight. I want to say, is it
seventy sixty eight?

Speaker 2 (08:53):
Oh shit, I missed the whole decade technically.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Okay, Well, the beginning of the book, which is amazing
to me, which I know, so we gotta build it up.
So no, nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
It starts with.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
DJ Hollywood, uh, and it ends with the election of
Barack Obama, and it shows how hip hop played a
role in all of that and all just the mini
the thread. Hip hop was a thread that ran through
all of that. And it's an incredible read. And on
top of that, he's uh played a hand in some
of my favorite hip hop records. And he's also the
writer creator, well one of the writers co creators of

(09:39):
The Breaks on v H one, which I played a
small a little bit, you know what I'm saying, big bro,
and uh nah, And he's like, you know, real good
friend of mine, very knowledgeable guy.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls. Give it up for mister
Dan Charnis, Can I break it up?

Speaker 5 (10:00):
Well?

Speaker 3 (10:01):
The thing was I.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
The thing that grabbed me about the Payback book is
the fact that you really started the book in the
eighteen hundreds. And what I wanted to ask you, what
I always wanted to ask you, was what were your
feelings about Hamilton? Because you now now that's the one

(10:25):
thing I wanted to ask on like, and I never
got to ask him, like was he inspired by reading
your book first? Or because you made the comparison and
compared Alexander Hamilton to you put him in hip hop
terms right in the same way that Hamilton actually does,
so did you assuming that you've seen it?

Speaker 5 (10:49):
Or I think we both read Cherno's book at the
same time and had different reactions to it. He was
a playwright and he started on this amazing work, and
I was working on a book about hip hop, and
it just made sense. The guy who invented American money
lived and died in Harlem. That's the first sentence of
the book. And so it ends, and sugar Hill is

(11:11):
Alexander Hamilton's estate that's where he lived. So I when
I heard about Hamilton, I.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Just no, no.

Speaker 5 (11:21):
I thought, I was like, oh my god, he gets it,
he really gets it. Somebody else gets it. And Lynn
knew something else that I couldn't believe anybody else knew,
is that the very first rap record, really the first
rap on record, like like Bronx style, Harlem style. M
Seeing was not sugar Hill Gang was not Rappers, Delight

(11:44):
was not King Tim iid. It was on the soundtrack
the Broadway recording of the original soundtrack recording for Runaways
by Liz Suados in nineteen seventy eight. There was a
rap song about the Blackout on that album, and Lynn
tweeted about him, like, wow, he knows that I've never
met the man. I mean we have the same like agent,

(12:05):
but I've never I've never met him.

Speaker 2 (12:08):
Really, Yeah, that's brilliant.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Lennon of Miranda, So you have you seen Hamilton? Yeah yeah, yeah,
So okay, I always wanted to know what the feelings were.

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yeah. I mean it's why you took that position though,
because because we live in.

Speaker 5 (12:29):
Harlem, so we feel like really connected to the soil
of the place, you know, and you know, my son
he plays Little League baseball in Jackie Robinson Park, which
is right on that cliff under sugar Hill, And it's
it's like you you feel the presence.

Speaker 7 (12:44):
There of that and is that that's where you were
born and raised or not?

Speaker 5 (12:48):
I was not born in Harlem.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Where were you born?

Speaker 5 (12:50):
I was born a few blocks south of Harlem, Lennox
Hill Hospital on seventy seventh Street.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
So, yeah, as a non New Yorker, how do you
differentiate as a as a non New york And for
me as a non New Yorker asking you, how do
you differentiate what's Harlem and what six?

Speaker 5 (13:12):
You know the border on the east Side?

Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, okay, so ninety six is considered up upper west Side.

Speaker 5 (13:22):
That's your border between the Upper east Side and Harlem.
Now I live in Harlem, but but that's in the
traditional border.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
It gets a little tricky because I've been looking for
a few cribs or whatever, and when I went to
check out a spot in Harlem, they've now re christened
sugar Hill as in Hamilton Row. And when I and
when I asked they were they kind of yeah, they

(13:48):
kind of kicked it to me, like, yeah, this does
an excuse for us to add an extra extra zero
zero to the yeah to the to the press.

Speaker 5 (13:55):
And a lot of a lot of that stuff gets
named for real estate, like morning Side Heights two to
be Harlem Heights, but then when the name was out
of vogue, they changed.

Speaker 7 (14:04):
It's like stages of gentrification changed anything.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
Heights like that just sound real project to me, Like
in around our way in the South, like.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
Heights, Garden, y'all have heights, heights, heights, gardens, homes, homes
of the jack, any of them.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Like oh yeah, oh yeah, it's real. Yeah, it's yeah.
It's a lot of wik vouches, it's it's real. It's
real out there. So that's where I stayed at. But
so I want to go. In the words of our
cult leader, I want to start at the beginning. You've
always wanted to. I want to start. Just want to
start the beginning.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
So act as if you know, because we me and
you have had a lot of conversations about, you know, everything.
So it's like Eddie Murphy are sitting on home. I
want to be okay, So tell us the beginning, Like,
you know, what was your upbringing like as a kid?

Speaker 5 (14:56):
Uh, well, I guess the most important thing about my
upbringing is that, you know, my mom raised me in
this town that was in between Baltimore and Washington, d C.
So I grew up with a lot of you know,
soul and funk radio Columbia, Maryland.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Yeah, so are you from there to No.

Speaker 7 (15:18):
No Columbia, as I'm from the DMV, but not like Columbia,
because Columbia kind of you know, like you said, it's
on the edges in between DC and Baltimore. Your cooler
in Baltimore.

Speaker 5 (15:32):
You know, I grew up listening to w h U
R Howard University Radio, listening to uh, you know, V
one O three in Baltimore. So it was an interesting
sort of class and race integration of an interesting place
to grow up, and yet it was the most segregated
time in American culture. It was like post disco. You know,
all the radio formats were really really strict, and you know,

(15:54):
I had my sort of I mean, I grew up
with Earth When in Fire and Stevie Won and all that,
but I had my epiphany with you know, more Bounce
than Ounce in nineteen eighty Like that was my thing.
Like I never heard this song on the radio stations
that my preppy friends listened to what are these other
radio stations? And that began. I sort of got politicized
by that a little bit.

Speaker 2 (16:12):
What was your people's playing in the crib? What was
mom and dad?

Speaker 5 (16:15):
Earth Wind and Fire? Marvin gane oh, Stevie Wonderer, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
Wow, Oh so you was raised on the Essential?

Speaker 5 (16:22):
Yeah. My mother still angry at me that I stole
her Earth Wind and Fire records when I left for college.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
So that's dope, man, that they would listen to that.
So that was was that your entry way of like saying, hey,
I want to do this one day, like I want
to do it for myself.

Speaker 5 (16:42):
I was actually when I went to college, I was
actually thinking of becoming a like a school teacher, high
school teacher. And my major was Afro American studies. They
called it Afro American Studies at that point, and I
did a I just decided that I would do my
thesis on I called musical apartheid in America.

Speaker 7 (17:01):
Say what, wait? First, let me just ask you this.
We talked about your background. This is radio. Let me
just not assume you're not African American.

Speaker 5 (17:09):
I'm Jewish, So I always wonder.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Y'all didn't know that either because y'all would have been celebrated.
Oh wow, y'all didn't know you thought he was like
John B.

Speaker 7 (17:20):
No, you'd never assume, because you know, black comes in
many forms. You know what I'm saying. Mariah Carey is black,
So why couldn't you? Because I asked that because I'm
always interested when non blacks do a major like Afro
American studies, like that's interesting to me, Like what made you?

Speaker 2 (17:37):
I did? No for a major to West Africa?

Speaker 3 (17:41):
Still the Muppets every day has nothing to do with
West African I did.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
That's been to Africa more than you have.

Speaker 7 (17:47):
I've never been there, No, never, most of us have
never been there. You'll find that.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
I've been that. I've been to the South Africa.

Speaker 7 (17:54):
They're artists. Most regular black people people don't. We've never
been there.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
So the only people that can afford to get to Africa,
those can exploited.

Speaker 7 (18:00):
So I'm interested in.

Speaker 2 (18:08):
Singular click.

Speaker 7 (18:12):
So now that we have that's interesting. So now we
have two Jewish men who majored in that, both of y'all,
I will be interested in.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Y'all Like the Total song Africa Sugar for the Wind,
I can't. Yeah, yeah, I saw, Yeah, so I thought
you do.

Speaker 3 (18:27):
Well.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
No, he's a member of the tribe, he's my brethren.

Speaker 5 (18:31):
M O T.

Speaker 7 (18:33):
Wait what's the answer for real? No, seriously, what makes
you major in African Americans?

Speaker 5 (18:37):
More about the house?

Speaker 2 (18:38):
Just okay, I just okay, okay, I'll be honest with you.
I was kind of you.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Yeah, I mean you had so much flavor. I just thought, okay,
you one of us, like a Sean king.

Speaker 3 (18:54):
I didn't want to zoom.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
I think it's appeared in the glasses. I think that's
I think that's what it is.

Speaker 5 (18:58):
Could be Latin too, you know, just hand but okay,
if I come without the beard, it would have been
completely different.

Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah, yeah, the beard kind of you give it a
little play tops at home and my pass.

Speaker 9 (19:15):
How come the Beastie Boys and Rick Rubin don't automatically
give us credit right from the beginning.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Well, okay for having bounce or funk or whatever you're
talking about. It's weird.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
When listen.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
As for me, when I first heard the original Maroon
era parties getting rough, like, I thought they were Puerto Rican,
Like have you heard rock hard? And all right, maybe
not rock hard, but definitely with this party is getting rough.

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Have you have you heard this party is getting rough? Yeah?

Speaker 7 (19:50):
I have.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
I we talked about it in the previous Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
So, I mean basically I thought they were Puerto Rican
and it wasn't until you know, I opened the inside
leave a licensed to ill.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
I was like, oh, they are not Puerto Rican.

Speaker 1 (20:05):
Well, also, I guess the way they were dancing on
cheese on it and crush groove, I should have known that.

Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yeah. Yeah, and I guess Puerto Rican. For me, it
never because I was in the South, so we of
Puerto Rican. So we just it was either black or
white Salvadorian.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (20:22):
Oh wow, that's a whole nother culture, right, do you
not You don't remember this Dan in DC? This is
no Okay, hadn't gotten there yet because that was like
the early eighties.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
Okay, that was that was when all the coke was
getting moved.

Speaker 7 (20:36):
Listen. I don't know. So Dan after.

Speaker 9 (20:41):
Left man, Well, anyway, nobody answered my question. Just assume
in the future that all Jewish people are funky. Well yeah,
some of the I'm just joking, but I'm saying you shouldn't.
I mean, certainly, you know you can.

Speaker 7 (20:57):
He was offended by s there is a.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
Bit of a special relationship. I don't want to make.

Speaker 5 (21:01):
Too much of it, but there is a bit of
a between me and between the three two.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
I'm feeling, what do you mean.

Speaker 5 (21:08):
Between uh, you know, black folks and Jews in America.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Here we are, we're on the same game civil rights.
I'm just saying you shouldn't be surprised that that there's
a Jew in the room. I was never surprised. You
know who has bounce or whatever you want to be
said flavor flavor?

Speaker 1 (21:34):
I mean, you know I Search episode. I said that
Search had more flavor. Yeah, because that was the term
of the time.

Speaker 2 (21:43):
That was what it was. He had flavor. So all right,
if you're just joining us, uh, this is supreme. And
if you're still with it for our Jewish listeners, hope
we pitch no.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
We're here with Dan shahnis author of The Big Payback
MESI Plas and also writer for The Breaks and a
whole bunch of other flash ship be about to get
into all right, so tell me how college you went to?

Speaker 5 (22:13):
Boston University.

Speaker 2 (22:15):
Boston University.

Speaker 5 (22:17):
Graduated eighty nine. Okay, okay, you know, so you got connected.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
I knew, but I don't want to play that game, like,
you know, start naming proper nowns. Did you know a
Lloyd stare It? Okay? And I'm Google searching that ship alright.

Speaker 5 (22:34):
So however, I did go to college at the same
time as Paul Batty.

Speaker 2 (22:38):
Okay, so there's that Paul Batty who's wrote.

Speaker 5 (22:42):
To sell out just one of the man Booker Prize.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Paul college friends. Man damn read a book. I am
read Dan's book. Okay. So what was your major in college?

Speaker 5 (22:55):
Afro American Studies?

Speaker 3 (22:56):
Oh, that was like your major major. Yet it wasn't
like I got excited. That's real, Okay, especially in Boston,
right exactly?

Speaker 7 (23:04):
Are you looking at me like what's wrong? I'm sorry
to see if this makes sense. I'm like you, you
went to Boston University. Yes, you majored in Afro American studies.
You came from the DMV. That's like a lot of
different things, Like you came from a whole freaking different
culture in the DMV, went to Boston and then studied afrom.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Like going up there from.

Speaker 5 (23:25):
Yes, because they didn't have any radio stations that played
any funk, soul, R and B. You know.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
So that was graduated eighty nine.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
So I went there in eighty six eighty five, right,
so this is so of course this is how okay,
I know it was this leading Okay, so all I
have to listen to the college stations and all they're
playing is like this electro and hip hop.

Speaker 5 (23:48):
Right. So that was my induction into more hip hop,
because hip hop was always just sort of like a
subset of R and B to me, and then it
just started to become more important to me. And then,
you know, when you're in college, it's the first time
I ever read Malcolm X. It was my sort of
really like kind of getting politicized, and then the music

(24:09):
was getting political at the same time. So by the
time I graduated, it was the only thing that was important.
It is the only thing I wanted to do. I
wanted to be involved in the business, you know, somehow
to help this culture become everything that it could and
should be. And I think I said, I'd written this thesis,

(24:31):
you know, honest thesis at the end of college called
musical Apartheid in America and sort of analyzed white America's
relationship to black culture over a four hundred year period.
And so the dynamic of right ambivalence we love it,
we hate it? Right, we love you, we hate you.
And I sort of tracked that throughout four hundred years
and it ended with hip hop. And that's how I

(24:53):
got to meet a lot of the people in the business,
because I went and I interviewed them, and one of
those people was Bill Stephanie, who was the president of
def Jam at the time. And Bill, you know, I
sent him a copy of my thesis when it was done,
and he, you know, said, when you come to New York,
come look me up. You know, maybe I'm starting a

(25:13):
record company. Maybe we can work together. And what was
funny about that was right the evening that I was
supposed to meet with him, the Village Voice story came
out with Professor Griff talking about Jews and jewelry. So
the record company got put on this and eventually became
Soul Records.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
Right yot steps, Oh wait, Soul.

Speaker 5 (25:35):
So first one. Yeah, So Bill and Hank, Bill left
def Jam to form this record company with Hank and Chuck.
And then you know, Griff you know, was talking to
Dave Mills at the Washington Times and R. J. Smith
at The Voice picked it up, and then it was
just it was like postponed for a year.

Speaker 7 (25:55):
What was the controversy for those that don't know.

Speaker 5 (25:58):
What happened, was that Professor Professor Griff said something to
the effect of, why do you think they call it
jewelry because of the Jews?

Speaker 2 (26:08):
You know, yeah, it is right.

Speaker 7 (26:11):
I'm like that, I don't know, it's not that.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
It's not I assume, said Thompson. I've always assumed it was,
but at that time that was crazy.

Speaker 3 (26:21):
I remember. I remember that ship was. Yeah, like Griff,
they had cut him out. They had to kind of
like excommunicating whatever, Like was no, no, for real, Like
that ship was.

Speaker 7 (26:32):
Like, I'm looking.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
That's one of the questions I forgot to ask mc
search was there was a confrontation between him and Griff.
The reason why Jam had to put guards in the
you know, uh, that was one of the main reasons.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
Like, it was a lot of confrontations.

Speaker 3 (26:49):
I remember that summer. So that put everything on hold.
Once that happened, that kind of put soul on hold.

Speaker 5 (26:55):
Yeah, So what I ended up doing was getting a
job in the mail room of Profile Records, and that
was the home of Rob Bass run dmc special ad.
Right in the summer of like the fall of nineteen
eighty nine. So my first job was answering phones and
stuffing envelopes a profile.

Speaker 1 (27:10):
So you're saying that had that not happened, so would
have gotten developed by nineteen eighty nine instead of nineteen
ninety one.

Speaker 2 (27:20):
That's right.

Speaker 5 (27:21):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
So I wonder if those young Black teenagers and the
Sun of Bersik album were ready to go in nineteen
ninety like earlier than when it got released.

Speaker 2 (27:34):
Because it didn't come out to what like ninety ninety one.

Speaker 5 (27:37):
I do recall Bill still waiting for those things to
be complete in nineteen ninety like it was. He was
still you know.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Those two records, man, are like to me, I mean
as far as like I loved anything and everything that
the Bomb Squad has ever done as a production unit.
But it is so weird because do you have a
product musically it could be hip hop or whatever that

(28:07):
you hold near and dear to your heart that you
know won't translate to anyone else enough for you. Like
to me, I like, if I were at the source
at the time when those records came, I would have
five mic both those records because it's just so many
layers of genius to them at least from the production side, but.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
You know, I know the average person would just give
it three. Whatever. The source love that song, well, they
love changing the style. Yeah, they gave that a classic rate.
Well they gave it a four the time.

Speaker 5 (28:45):
Remember that.

Speaker 2 (28:46):
Oh I've memorized record. Yeah, because I don't want to
scare you and I hate to change the subject.

Speaker 5 (28:56):
But you know what I remember. I remember your columns.
I think they were wrapped sheep right, Yeah, we're a columnist.
That's how I first got yeah, she she she, she
hooked me up.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Man. So with those records of soul gets, it's those
solos on whole you a profile. I was even one.

Speaker 3 (29:13):
We were talking about this today, man, like, like do
mail rooms still even exists anymore?

Speaker 5 (29:19):
I really don't know.

Speaker 1 (29:21):
I don't know record labels, but NBC, NBC, there's always
someone putting mails flowing.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
That's the way I get record companies.

Speaker 5 (29:30):
Ghetto. I am.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
All my mail gets to the NBC now, so everything
like cards from famili People be like what's your address,
and I'm like, well, do you want me to get
actually get letter or package or yeah, so all I
just you know, that's my house and they'll bring it
to you sleep there, yeah, I mean some weekends, I'll

(29:54):
make it a weekend there.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
We I guess it is your house.

Speaker 7 (29:56):
Then record companies barely have offices, so do they? Yeah,
because that's started.

Speaker 2 (30:10):
To get out of the mail room.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Now was that so at that time were you getting
were you like getting to please listen to my demo?

Speaker 2 (30:21):
Like, were you getting that?

Speaker 3 (30:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (30:22):
I mean it wasn't It wasn't the thing about Profile
at the time, there really weren't any It was a
hip hop label. I mean had a lot of hip
hop on it. There were no like hip hop heads there.
You know, Brian Chin who signed Rob Bass and special Ed.
He loved hip hop, but his first love was dance music, right,
So I guess that's why Corey gave me a job,

(30:44):
you know, listening to demo tapes and doing ain't R
and I was not very good at it.

Speaker 2 (30:50):
But who were your signings? Why do you say you were? Well?

Speaker 5 (30:54):
I mean I just wasn't successful in getting anybody across.
Like I found Geno Excel when I was you know,
at Profile, but I was not successful in making the
sale and getting him signed. So but it wasn't long,
you know, while I was working at profile. I also
was writing for The Source. They had were in the
process of moving from Boston to New York. Were you

(31:16):
in that first summer issue, the one I wrote the
ll cover story.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Sorry a couple of years.

Speaker 5 (31:29):
All right, you wrote that cover story, the one the
mama said.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
Notack you out? Yes, I remember, oh Man, the nerd,
the nerd of me is really about.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
To go in, go in.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Oh Man. Yeah, Lego heart just like exploded exactly like
that that issue.

Speaker 1 (31:47):
I mean that probably next to the first five issues
of Grand Royal Magazine. Wow, like Royal somewhere in one
of those eighteen storage units are like, I'm an I
would buy the Source like three each and just preserve them.

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Because when I first got that l issue, am an
easy issue.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
I'm like, that's the first time I ever saw people
truly understand and really wax poetic about hip hop culture
in a way that Rolling Stone would or Cream Magazine.

Speaker 10 (32:23):
Like.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
I'd read those magazines and just wonder, like damn, like,
wonder what it's like for someone to write about hip
hop culture that way.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
I didn't know you wrote that cover story. I was
just shot in the dark. That's crazy, And that was
what nineteen ninety nine.

Speaker 5 (32:38):
I wrote the Public Enemy cover story, the ice Cube
cover story, and then the lo one.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Oh man, did you review America's Most Wanted?

Speaker 5 (32:46):
I did, well, it was more like it was more
like an essay on ice Cube.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Okay, well, I know that nice to give an issue
you didn't know.

Speaker 1 (32:53):
Okay, okay, well, but I remember that was like the
summer issue, right yeah, yeah, because the most One got
a five.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
I want to say, yeah, Tribe got a five, Edu
Teament got a five. It did, yes, it did. A
fourth album got a five that I nineteen ninety And
I'm also shocked that I knew.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
I knew you guys were the deal when some didn't
sit right with me with Fear of a Black Planet,
but it was kind of like, you know, I'll ride
with it. You know, one of those things where it's
just like probably how you feel about phrenology?

Speaker 5 (33:34):
Nah?

Speaker 3 (33:36):
Yo, okay, now let's go there say kind of I
mean there's you know, give you give your act like
I'll let it slide and just but no, well, okay,
we'll talk about phrenology. So Fear of a Black Planet
you didn't you wasn't all the way on board with that.

Speaker 1 (33:54):
Well, here's the thing though, I mean, even though the
thing that still holding in light now mind you, I
mean it's twenty five years later or whatever, you know,
the Pitchfork's right up of it. They gave it a
perfect ten and really really made it like presented in

(34:14):
the way that even I didn't see it back then,
something was missing. And then I realized that that something
was Sadler. So Sadler was sort of like on half
the record, Eric Sadler had sort of made his graceful exit,
and I couldn't quite place where was you know, some songs.

(34:36):
I was a little the probably when the Cracker was
like okay, I like I fuck with that one. I mean,
I look, it's a masterpiece of a record, but I
still went for America's most wanted.

Speaker 3 (34:52):
Like that to me was now if we're doing of
course presidential Bomb Squad and evenfore that matter, Bellbdvo's Poison album, No,
that was Bomb Squads.

Speaker 2 (35:02):
It was I know.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
So for me, of those three records, like I was
kind of it was kind of weird that it was
like in the Brons squatty Well.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
No, it was it was a bronze to me.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
And there was a review they gave it three and
a half mics in that Source issue, and I was like,
whoa this is?

Speaker 2 (35:22):
I said, Wow, they're not salivating over this.

Speaker 1 (35:24):
And it wasn't like the dismissive you know, Spin magazine,
like this is a ghetto music, I hate this, you know.

Speaker 2 (35:31):
It was like a well informed and I was like, wait,
I kind of feel I think I agree with this,
so so.

Speaker 3 (35:38):
Weird that I didn't realize you were that era of
old so how No, But it was it was those
first five issues that from that to brand Nubian issue.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
That one got five to right in two issues two
issues later.

Speaker 5 (35:57):
There was so much ambition in that era and those
issues like just to really have a voice that was
exclusively dedicated to hip hop and and just smart and political,
and just the people there were. I mean that was
Dream and Kirna and you know, Maddie.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Where was your era there? Well, you there from the
beginning too.

Speaker 5 (36:22):
I was there when they were still in Boston when
that summer issue was being written, and then I left
to go work for Rick Rubin in ninety one ninety one,
So ninety one was sort of my swan song with
the Source.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
Do you remember your last issue the last article.

Speaker 5 (36:39):
I wrote, Oh man, I don't even remember it was
I don't remember. Sometime in ninety one, I think was
my last piece, or ninety one or early ninety two.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
Well, yeah, that's as classic as it gets. What do
you remember the album's even reviewed?

Speaker 5 (36:53):
I did cover stories, I didn't and like feature articles.
I didn't really do the album reviews because that was
the the that was like the core group, the mind squad,
you know. And I sometimes I regret not participly stopping
my writing career to go into the record business now

(37:13):
feels like, you know, I mean, because I had a
lot of catching up to do. When I moved back
to New York. I went to go work for Rick Rubin,
you know, in LA for about thirteen It was ended
up being there for thirteen years. But I like not
having that that writing career going forward. I thought, So
you went from Profile to the Source, went from Profile,
and I'm you know, just wrote for the Source while

(37:36):
I worked at Profile. Year was Profile eighty nine, October
eighty nine to April nineteen ninety one.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
So you were there for the first was Naughty by
Nature's first John On No, No, that was it was
Tommy Boy. That was right, So honestly the first honest yeah,
the first on like this.

Speaker 7 (37:56):
Ah so wait what was the rosters? Just because I'm
now I'm profile.

Speaker 5 (38:02):
Rob Bass special ed U Poor Righteous Teachers, which is
my very first record that rocked this funky joint promotion.
L A Star. I don't know if you remember her,
I remember.

Speaker 3 (38:17):
Or yes she was.

Speaker 5 (38:19):
She was on b Boy Records for a while, then
Brian Chin signed her and she made a pretty good album.
But she got into this battle with Tretch at the
New Music Seminar, this MC battle, and he said, the
only kind of star you could be as a mon star.

Speaker 7 (38:38):
Was she not cute?

Speaker 2 (38:39):
She was not. I liked her. That was not would
say about l A Star her career right there.

Speaker 7 (38:49):
Ship, Yo, it seems like it'sunny because you said Poor
Us Teacher was your first record that you promoted. For
some reason, it seemed like you got really well received
in my area, like the d m V area. Did
you feel like it was easier to promote because you
kind of felt.

Speaker 5 (39:02):
Yeah, although there weren't really a lot of mixed shows
in DC at the time, because remember they weren't playing
it on WPGC at that time.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
What was it like Okay, well you left in ninety one.
Did you have to work back from him? Then I
have to back back?

Speaker 2 (39:18):
Was that was that ninety one?

Speaker 5 (39:19):
Yes?

Speaker 10 (39:19):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (39:20):
So here's the story, right, here's the story. So, man,
Rick comes call. I literally just get a call out
of the blue, and the receptionist says Rix on the phone,
and I knew it was him. I knew it was Rick. Yeah,
not because anybody told me he was calling, but because
I don't know. Gino Excel and I had been working
on some demos and we had been talking a little

(39:40):
bit and we just did like this. It's almost like
this little incantation to sort of bring him out of
the ether. And when he said Rix on the phone,
I said, this is him and I picked up It's
Rick Rubin. So apparently Bill Stephanie had given him my number.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
Whatever.

Speaker 5 (39:53):
Anyway, why was hell? Was I telling you the story? Oh?

Speaker 2 (39:55):
The story? Right?

Speaker 5 (39:56):
So Rick brings me out to Los Angeles sort of
like a courtship, you know. Uh, he's thinking of hiring
me for Deaf American. And one morning I'm staying at
the Riot High on Sunset and one morning he calls
and he says, Uh, come downstairs, we're going to breakfast
with Russell. It's like Russell's in town. So we go
to the Beverly Hills Hotel and Russell comes down, and

(40:19):
Russell's talking a mile a minute, and Rick is laughing
and he recognizes me. Suddenly, Russell recognizes me as the
kid at profile who promotes you know, his brother's record.
He says, and the single at the time was a
song called Faces.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
Sing.

Speaker 5 (40:41):
You know, so, what do you think of Faith? And
I said, and I said, uh, I said, and I's
just the wrong answer. I was such a punk. I
was like, well, Russell, you know, I just think as
far as rap R and B fusion, I think the
kids are really listening to in Vogue, and you know,
they don't really want to hear rappers doing it the

(41:01):
opposite way. Faith is a louder record than in Vogue.
I went into a club that ship was so loud.
It is much louder, and Rick is losing his mind.
Rick must have called three different people in the car
after we left that breakfast saying and Russell said, it's
a louder record and that's why it's better.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
And that's what I saw.

Speaker 5 (41:25):
Like the nature of their relationship is that Russell makes
Rick laugh, you know, and so it's like a bad way,
right right, I think in a Rick way.

Speaker 2 (41:36):
I mean you remember Faces, Yes, dude, I had the
Back from Hill album.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
Wait, just you know, I gotta this Face is by
nineteen ninety era run DMCs.

Speaker 3 (41:55):
Fun and the thing was that because it was Faces.

(42:20):
But the single before that was Pause, which was even
more kind of New Jack swingy.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
But they got away with Pause. Ter J Jay something
the trade and asked them bathing to my homie Stanley
Brown Car with the keyboard.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
Wait, since you always wanted to know, there's there's a
moment the very last five seconds of the record where
runs just like.

Speaker 5 (42:53):
You'll take that bullshit off that that bullshit is bullshit.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
I always wanted to know if that was run. Finally
having a realization that the second worst album of their
career on that label.

Speaker 5 (43:11):
Le Or was so mad that didn't sell. I have
a copy of a memo that he sent to.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
The ice Cube remix Ice Cree remix of Back from
Hell that happened.

Speaker 1 (43:25):
Oh I think I remember that there was an ice
Cube it was it was a Chuck d and ice
Cube and run.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
Back from Hell remix that Yeah, So because at this time,
and I wanted to ask you about this if you
were involved, because at this time that was after Tougher
than Leather and you know, Run d m C had
been kind of a way for a minute because they
were going they were worn with death Jam, well War.

(43:55):
You know, Russ wanted to get him on Dead Jam,
and Profile was like, no, the did you have any
input or at that time, like you know, working directly
with them, like.

Speaker 2 (44:05):
To try to say like hey, fellas, you know, no, no.

Speaker 5 (44:09):
I mean you know they were they were at that
point working on their own. I mean I was just
the kid, you know, bringing that tapes back and forth
from the studio.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
That was Yeah.

Speaker 5 (44:20):
So when you hear this record, like, I mean what,
I have zero ownership of it spiritually, financially.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
So for you it's just straight up like I just
got to work it and it's just the job.

Speaker 5 (44:32):
Like and I mean listen, they gotta they got they
got a certain amount of respect, you know regardless, right,
you know, I take the record the Red Red Bull,
play it, take it to Chuck, Chuck will play it.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
It's not Uh, that was okay. What else Sticky did
you work special ads? Legal album?

Speaker 3 (44:50):
Did that wow, ship, well let's move it. So no,
but that whole know that whole that could the five
due the five minute of my yes, Yes, that entire
I just I just.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Found that record, uh, to p astronomical amount of it
for the CD. Yeah it is, yes, but yeah, that's
so slept on. It was so entirely t was great.

Speaker 7 (45:24):
So I just want to know how did Rick feel
about your answer to Russell? Because remember you said the
whole reason that you were coming to l A is
because of the possibility of you working with Rick, And
then you said you felt uncomfortable with the way that
you made him answer the question with Russell.

Speaker 5 (45:37):
So Rick was laughing his ass.

Speaker 7 (45:41):
What you said, and so you were you were you hired?

Speaker 5 (45:44):
And then well then then Russell called and left the
message on Rick's machine. He said, Uh, if you don't
hire that kid, I'm gonna hire him. He don't know nothing,
but like his attitude.

Speaker 3 (45:56):
I'm glad they were amicable. At least I really were.

Speaker 5 (46:00):
Russell used to call me, like in the mid nineties
when I was working for him, when they were really
when Russell was trying to put together his PolyGram deal
and get off of Sony, they were heading into their
they're trying to put their tenth anniversary thing together, and
Rick still had not finished the negotiations, and he was like,
can you you know, can you get to Rick is
not doing anything? He needs to move forward. So he

(46:21):
would call me sometimes and ask if I could push
it forward.

Speaker 1 (46:25):
So when you went to Rick, is this before or
after the original Ghetto Boys uh debut on his label?

Speaker 5 (46:35):
That was during Yeah, so he had just signed them
and then Geffen dropped Deaf American because of it, right,
and that's when I started to, you know, have that
little like four month courtship period, and that's when you know,
we got the I guess we can't be stopped?

Speaker 2 (46:57):
Right. That was when that was drop.

Speaker 5 (47:01):
And I think that Rick felt some pressure, not really
pressure because Mo Austin, So he had.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
An option to have we can't be stopped before they
went to rap a lot.

Speaker 5 (47:10):
That's right, That's right. And I think he decided once
he moved to Warner Brothers that you know, he had
fought well enough for the first one, and then he
didn't feel very strongly about we can't be stopped, which
is ironic.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Really that was the one that was the one. I mean, yeah,
the first one was that was it was Gripping on
It was Gripping Level, which is.

Speaker 1 (47:32):
Basically the same record. Yeah, some engineering was was a
little different. And did they not add an H to
Ghetto Boys on the original I think the original pressing
of g yeah, right, but then they went back to
G E C O. Right, but there initially when they

(47:55):
were on Deaf American, they tried.

Speaker 5 (47:57):
They were he was on Deaf American when he got shot, right, Yeah,
he got shot in the eye, and so that was
you know, we were still like concerned about his health
and everything. And but you know, now we're getting the
era where like the sum of my A and R
mistakes far outweigh any success, you know, I mean, what

(48:18):
were your mistake? Okay, here's an example. Paul Stewart was
probably the best you know, all around uh talent scout
in Los Angeles at the time. And you know, Paul
brings me House of Pain's demo and there's this song
on it called jump Around, and I love it, and

(48:39):
I give the tape to Rick. I'm duble tape for Rick,
and Rick calls me and I said, did you listen
to how the Pain? He said, yeah, I love that
song jump around a lot of jumping.

Speaker 2 (48:49):
That's a good Rick, That's a good and uh and he.

Speaker 5 (48:53):
Says, I really like that song. So I like it too.
He says, but do you think there are any other
Do you think they have any other songs on this?
Like do you think thing? And I said no, I
think this is the only one they've got. And then
we just let it go and we were right, but
we were so wrong.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
Who else?

Speaker 7 (49:12):
Give us another one day?

Speaker 2 (49:15):
And I was just like, this is your greatest missus?

Speaker 5 (49:17):
Really the far Side demo?

Speaker 3 (49:20):
What what if you're just now quest love supreme? And
he was talking about all his greatest missus? So how
did how did you? How did you miss out on that?

Speaker 8 (49:39):
What?

Speaker 2 (49:39):
What was the story?

Speaker 5 (49:40):
Yet another you know sort of Paul Stewart incredible demo?
And I liked it. I guess you know what was
I was just on some ship. I was like, I
work for Rick Rubin and everything I do has to
be perfect, and you know, I just don't know, I
don't know if this adds up. It seems kind of silly,
you know, and I don't, you know, stupid, you know,
because once.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
I heard for Better for Worse?

Speaker 5 (50:01):
Wait, that was one of the demos, not on the demo.
It was not a demos. It was it was mister.

Speaker 2 (50:07):
Officer and uh in its current state.

Speaker 5 (50:10):
But passing me by was.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Passed you or didn't feel it.

Speaker 5 (50:21):
It's not that I didn't feel it. I just didn't
get behind it fast enough, you know what I.

Speaker 2 (50:27):
Didn't. So yeah, it took me a minute because your
Mama came out. I fronted on it. Yeah, your Mama
was like your Mama, and then the remix.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
Of your Mama when no, the remix of your Mama
that was and even they said that your Mama remixes whack.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Dude, it sucks dick in the album.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
But then when we got the record and when for
Better for Worse came on, Yeah, that was one of
those moments. That's the first time that like I heard
Fender Roads sound like water right, and to look at

(51:16):
the album cover and to hear that song like it
just the personality, like I think that's the last time
I got lost and watching it, you know, like when
you're a kid that when people talk about like seventies
experiences of looking at album covers and listening like I
just got lost in a total trance like that song.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
Perfectly encapsulated to me what they were about, and and
and that that song made me higher.

Speaker 1 (51:52):
Maybe that was my triun no, but I that that's
also the song that made me instantly hire Scott Storch
to the roots. We were keyboard lists and then when
I heard that, I was like, no, I want that
on my record. And then Rich was like, I got

(52:13):
this guy looking at my crib on my floor. He
can played that, damn. He brought Scott to the studio
next day and it was like, all right, you're in
the group.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
Damn. So that was so.

Speaker 3 (52:24):
So he fronted on the forest side, but I won
the farest side. So that was man, that was what
ninety one this point. Man, So I'm talking about your
time at Death America and I was. I was just
always curious, like it was something. I don't know if

(52:46):
it was a branding thing. I don't know what it was,
but like they never that label never seemed to I
mean other than sir mixed Lot, which I mean we
can you know, go into depth about, but other than that,
it was I don't know, like just as a fan
at that time, their releases didn't seem to have like that.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
I guess that kind of like a deaf jam.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
You know what I'm saying. That just I gotta buy this,
you know what I'm saying. But the records were dope
like that. The number fault?

Speaker 7 (53:16):
How was that?

Speaker 2 (53:16):
Your fault was fault?

Speaker 7 (53:18):
You know?

Speaker 2 (53:18):
Because I mean like the Knots, that was like world the.

Speaker 7 (53:21):
Knots was on.

Speaker 2 (53:22):
Yeah you signed them?

Speaker 3 (53:24):
Yeah Yo, I swear to God, dog I listened to
on the air maybe no saggeration, maybe nine hours in
a row.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
I kept that ship on loop all Christmas Day, just
on the edge God, that whole. Like when we first
came to Los Angeles, the mixtapes was.

Speaker 3 (53:56):
And see mixtapes, I wasn't big on I was. Bus
Stops was the ship though. Bus Stops was the one.
That's how we met the Jazzy vad Nasties. They were
in that video. They were in the video for bus Stops.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
We when we first came to Los Angeles, I met
Dawn on her way to shoot uh like shoot announce video.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
They were in a bus Stop video and they gave
me cossette of it and.

Speaker 2 (54:21):
We were listening to it. We kind of clown like
you should.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
Sell buddy, got them beats, you know, tap, you know,
like the songs that you make that suddenly we made
fun of it so much that suddenly became our ship.
And then it was like, yo, we gotta get him
on stage and rock with us, like like just okay,

(54:46):
so you're producing, so we didn't. We gotta get into
that your time as a producer. So how did you
make that transition?

Speaker 5 (54:54):
It was more like these were artists, like you know,
Chino and Quest back in New York. They didn't have
a place mad Lad Yeah, so you know, they would
come to my apartment, you know, on ninth and twentieth
right there in Chelsea when it wasn't a getrified neighborhood,
and uh, you know, so it was just they liked

(55:16):
some of the stuff they were doing with me, and
I managed to, you know, get a couple in there,
which was good.

Speaker 2 (55:21):
So you were and you were making beats on the
SP at that time.

Speaker 5 (55:24):
I was making beats on an ASR ten and a
rolling W thirty And then I bought King Texts SP
twelve hundred from him and added that to the repertoire.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
And how did you learn it? How did you?

Speaker 3 (55:38):
Because I mean it wasn't no manuals, no shit I
imagine it's just just trial and error.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Yeah, and error and error in error. What did you
produce on on their records?

Speaker 5 (55:49):
Well, for Tino Excel, I did a song called Rise,
which was the last song on the album, and Question
Mad Lad, I did a song called one hundred and
one Thing to Do while I'm with your Girl.

Speaker 3 (56:02):
So you you yo. I was so mad at you
for using that Brick sample. Oh yeah, that was my wait.
I hate that.

Speaker 1 (56:11):
Every everything that he's done is like a childhood memories mind. No,
that Living from the Mind sample is like I got
that ship when I was six years old. That was
the first eight track I ever got as a kid. Damn,
you actually got an eight track for.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
Wow during this is Sleepy Brown's pop.

Speaker 3 (56:31):
Singing Wow.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
Record, Yeah, living Living from the Mind from Brick. They
were from Atlanta's Sleepy his dad, Jimmy Brown.

Speaker 5 (56:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:45):
But when that was like not even like you know,
like records when you're making beats and like, oh I'm
a sample that one day, but then there's like records
from your childhood.

Speaker 2 (56:56):
When I heard that ship, I was so I've never
been so mad at a sample use. I'm sorry. I
was like, no, but it was perfect man, Like even
the wait, when was the drum break? It was new birth?
Did you flip it?

Speaker 5 (57:08):
Yeah, it's a new it's a kick boom boom, it
was a yeah.

Speaker 7 (57:18):
So what a point in your career did you know
because you went from I'm just I'm backtracking. I'm like,
you went from mail room and our writer and then
you when did you know that you could even make beats?

Speaker 9 (57:29):
Like?

Speaker 7 (57:29):
When did you even did.

Speaker 2 (57:30):
It all along?

Speaker 5 (57:31):
You know, like even in college, you know, worked on
music and stuff. I was in the Inner Strength Gospel Choir.
I was the bass player the Inter Strength Gospel Choir.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Whoa, that's that's the African American States. Yeah, the Inner
Strength Gospel Choir.

Speaker 7 (57:52):
You're a musician by nature anyway, that's just something that
you left out at the beginning. But I mean a
bass player, that's not something that just you do.

Speaker 5 (57:59):
You failed musicians become producer? Was this a failed producers become.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Was this was this a black gospel choir? Yes? Someone
wants to I forgot who it was? Shut up, Bill,
when's the last white gospel choir you saw? I'm just
saying I don't think there's a lot of them. Literally
looking on you know someone during the voodoo toward joke,

(58:25):
it was like, what made a new penal that?

Speaker 7 (58:27):
Well?

Speaker 3 (58:28):
He said, Man, if your bass player is a white
boy in an all black group, you know he a motherfucker. Yeah, yeah,
so you're the bass player? It was, And did you
learn like, were you formally training music? Was it all
just about ear? Or how did you learn mostly by ear?

Speaker 1 (58:44):
But so wait, because we're just giving through his whole history.
That quest record was so slept on though. It was
how did you feel when he got the rap page Discovery?

Speaker 5 (58:56):
Well, here's the story behind that, kause Shehena was at
it at the time and Shea was a friend and
she heard the advance and assigned Bobby Garcia to do
the cover story. So Barbito wrote that cover story. But

(59:17):
here's the thing. We were putting our rap releases not
through Weia, which was the big Warner distribution company. We
were putting him through Tommy Boy's independent distribution. And Tom
Silverman felt that we didn't have enough radio play on
the two singles we had put out to justify putting

(59:39):
out the album right away, and you know, we sort
of panicked, and I'm like, you know, I don't know
if we have another single on this, let's do four
more songs. And it was a terrible time for a
question and unfair to him, you know, in terms of
he'd done this beautiful album, and you know, we were
finding ourselves doing more records. And then finally Sena came

(01:00:02):
along and said, well, listen, you're either going to release
that album and I'll put the cover out, or if
you don't really see, I'm not doing the cover. So
that's when I decided to put on the schedule anyway
because of Shena.

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Yeah, dude, I.

Speaker 1 (01:00:19):
Mean, you know, in case you think that you threw
pebble out there and didn't ripple and didn't dog.

Speaker 3 (01:00:26):
I love that record, man, Yeah, like yeah, yeah, Death
American like again, Like y'all made the records that I
bought and they were dope, but it was just something
And maybe it was like the distribution that you mentioned.
I don't know, but it just seems like they didn't
get that same love that I guess a lot of
other records were getting. I don't know why that was,
you know what I'm saying, because the ship was dope.

Speaker 1 (01:00:46):
But Bill, did you know about question? Manlet Nope, all right,
I gotta play. I gotta play.

Speaker 7 (01:00:53):
You're not alone Alone was always hit a song I.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
Know, just like question mad lad, one hundred and one
things to do while I'm with your girl. It's a
great title.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Hell's us.

Speaker 10 (01:01:12):
Speaking of all the niggas out there that got girls
on the rail, you gotta stop hitting them and mistreating
them and neglecting them, because no, no joke, no, I'll
fuck them. Well checkie, Now this when it sounds about
messed up waring machine. But if you and your girl ain'txite,
you know, I'll fuck your lady. Get better good of
a chat because it only takes one more move to

(01:01:33):
make me get.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
Right in case. It so much classic ship man and yeah,
it just got a little story about that. You hear
that eight oh eight?

Speaker 5 (01:01:42):
Yeah, that's an actual eight oh eight drum machine. It's
ricks eight o eight that's making that.

Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
We're into the first hour of Quest Love supprint only
on Pandora. Here with Uh, the Illustrious and print Worth
the Dan shawnas Uh renaissance Man, Jack of all Trades,
the Black Black, the Black whites Player, the whack basel
Yes Black, the white bass player in the Black Ensemble,
Black Gospel Man, Yeah, that's that's some ship, sir, mix

(01:02:15):
a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Yes, sir, that was like the biggest song ever. Like
what was it like working that ship?

Speaker 5 (01:02:21):
So that starts, you know, Rick calls me at Profile
Records says, I'm in town. I'd like to meet you,
you know, uh, And so he he asked me to
come to ninety eight Elizabeth Street, which was the old
Rush def Jam offices, and he still had his apartment
on the top two floors and he threw down his

(01:02:42):
keys from the fifth floor so I could let myself
in because the buzzer wasn't working or whatever, and def
Jam had moved out. It was just Rick in this
abandoned uh, you know, brownstone in the middle of the village.
And so he decided that what we should do our
first you know sort of meeting or you know, evening together,
is we would go to Tower Records and he would
buy me records that he liked, and I would buy

(01:03:05):
him records that I liked, and I bought like EPM D,
Big Daddy, Kane, bismarck Y Main Source, and he didn't
like any he was not interested in any of it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Yeah, some that's not surprising. And so I can kind
of it just was not his era, you know, he
that was the era that he left.

Speaker 5 (01:03:26):
Hip hop, right, And then what did he play me?
He played me Audio two Milk DA and Sir Mix
a Lot, both to MC's with really hazily voices, and
I'm like, they both sound like ad rock? Does he
just like MCS? And then so for whatever reason, he

(01:03:46):
hires me anyway, which I thought was a great leap
of faith for him, right to give me a shot.
And then a month after that he says, I signed
Sir Mix a Lot, Right, So his first rigor is
swa I can't remember the the one with beepers was yet,
don't forget that was.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
That wasn't on Defam.

Speaker 5 (01:04:06):
That was on Nasty Mix of Seattle. So he signed
Sir Mixed a Lot off for that, got him out
of that deal, put him on his new deal with
Warner Brothers, and had a finished album and he sent
it to me and he says, listen to it and
tell me what the single is. And I am not
looking forward to listening to this Sir Mix a Lot
album because I am not a fan and I'm supposed

(01:04:28):
to pick a single. So I'm listening into the album
and then third track is Oh my God, right, And
but I had just you know, it completely changed my
mind about Sir Mix a lot because I had just
read this article in The Village Voice by Lisa Jones,
was a Mary Baraka's daughter, and she wrote about, you know,

(01:04:50):
the sort of resurgence of the you know, afrocentric beauty aesthetic,
and you're seeing her more curvacous women in magazines. Beverly Peel,
I think was the mo model back then.

Speaker 2 (01:05:00):
Yes, first was or Jesus.

Speaker 5 (01:05:03):
So I was like, he's doing you know, exactly, He's
saying exactly what Lisa Jones was saying. So it makes
lots of feminist right. So, uh Rick calls me. He says, sod,
you listen to the album, Like, yes, Baby Got Back
it's a single. He says, I think so too.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
So was that all your conversations like yeah, did he
ever have like a conversations where you were like.

Speaker 5 (01:05:30):
Hey, Dan, how you do it? It was always no
that he would. He would like come back from Lollapaluz.
I say, hey, Rick, how was la Palooz? He said,
there's a lot of jumping. He had a crazy sense
of humor and not to get off the topic. But
he would he would come into a recording studio and
if he didn't like what he was hearing, he would
just say, I've got to leave. My doctor says, my

(01:05:51):
homeopathic doctor says, I can't be allowed around a lot
of heavy electronic equipment. Would say, Wow, I had to
make a I wanted to make a video for the
Art of Origin. He only gave me five thousand dollars
to make it. And I'm like, listen, I got a treatment,
but I need twenty thousand dollars to make this video.

(01:06:12):
And he says, all right, I'll give you the twenty
thousand dollars, but now you have to make four videos.

Speaker 2 (01:06:20):
Wow.

Speaker 5 (01:06:21):
So the first thing I did when I moved to
LA was, you know, go to the Chaplain stage was
the old A and M lot, and that's where we
shot Baby Got Back. And I walked into the set
and I thought, oh my god, this is a cartoon,
Like they're going to totally ruin the politics of this song.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
This is a serious, dude, you thought you were going
to make a political statement. I just thought the direction
You're not look at the did you not look at
the treatment where it's like this big.

Speaker 5 (01:06:48):
Ass was Apparently the treatment was Mixed a Lot told
the director, it's me rapping on a big ass.

Speaker 2 (01:06:56):
So you didn't tell Sir mix a Lot that there
was a political that we could win with.

Speaker 5 (01:07:02):
It was his angle to have. I just walked into
and I'm like, oh my god, is this going to
be a cartoon? How's this gonna be? Because now we
see it as an iconic video, But walking into that
room it felt like because then mixed Lot was upset
because he said none of the dancers had asses right,
so that was a problem for him. Then they put.

Speaker 2 (01:07:21):
Yeah, I've heard all right, I got a minute now.

Speaker 5 (01:07:24):
I was like, yeah, baby, bad ones in gold, not
the one in yellow. The one in yellow is fine.

Speaker 8 (01:07:30):
In the beginning, the ones din't gold with the little shorts,
the shorts, and then there was a woman of color
who they were dressing as a mermaid for some reason,
and they put a blonde wig on her and.

Speaker 5 (01:07:40):
That was like no, no, no, no, no, what are
you doing? So mix Lot's getting ready to walk off
the set. Adam Bernstein's the director is getting ready to
walk off the set. Ricardo the man, Ricardo Frader, his
able manager, managed to, you know, pull everything together the
video happened, and it ended up being fantastic, and all
my fears and anxiety d's you know.

Speaker 3 (01:08:01):
It ended up not being warranted, all right, So baby
got back, shit goes through the roof. Did you feel
a little, I guess vindicated as an an R, like
did you pick the right one that time?

Speaker 5 (01:08:13):
I didn't because I wanted I signed to become a hit.
So I had put a lot of faith in Quest
and a lot of energy into Chino cell and Gino Excel.
That was another story because he was part of a
group called the Art of Origin, a duo from East Orange,
New Jersey, and his partner was Carrie Chandler. Now, if

(01:08:36):
you know the house music carry Chandler was then an
incredible deep house producer. But now he's a legendary, you know.
And I learned so much about producing from Carrie. I mean,
Carrie took me from here to there.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
What happened with Chino's record?

Speaker 3 (01:08:53):
I remember there was a got what was the It
was a sample clearance that I think you guys had
problems with because he's said it was a line about
Miles Davis or something, and it was everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
Yeah, yeah, he was talking everyone. I think lightly after after.

Speaker 5 (01:09:12):
You know, he had been trying to get a deal
since nineteen eighty nine, nineteen ninety and it was already
ninety four, ninety five, and he just had it. Says,
you know what, I'm just going to tell the truth
the way that I you know, I'm going to say
what I what everybody's afraid to say. You know, the
relationship between you know, Eddie Murphy and another actor who

(01:09:35):
should name unnamed. You know, like we made a poster,
like a black and white poster out of all of
his punchlines and really yeah, and that's what got him
on it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
And she was gonna say what offended to I don't
know the line that offended. I know that it must
have got under his.

Speaker 3 (01:09:54):
Skin because I've never heard the words fuck you utter
so hard and.

Speaker 2 (01:10:02):
With like you heard the scheme of venom, fucking fucking
what was?

Speaker 5 (01:10:07):
What was? Now that I am a professor at the
Clive Davis Institute, I understand the importance of writing instruction
and the importance of a misplaced modifier. That's the problem
with Gino, Excel and TUPAC because Chino said, by this industry,
I'm trying not to get fucked like Tupac in jail.

(01:10:30):
What he meant was Tupac's trying not to get fucked right.

Speaker 3 (01:10:35):
But what was.

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
This is not? This is a cactus turn had his
mother out. Yeah, this is a second grammatical era. That's
like some ship.

Speaker 5 (01:10:45):
This is.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
A ship, That's what it was. Did they have you know,
they have to make bees there squashed?

Speaker 5 (01:10:54):
You know Tupac died.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Yeah, because that's you're hears it all come out ninety five.
I can't.

Speaker 5 (01:11:01):
I do remember though, when Tupac died, Chino called me
and he was crying because he really liked Tupac. I mean,
he liked him as an m MC, he liked him
as a lyricist. He I think he wished it had
gone another way. And I remember going to we went
to Vegas with James Lopez. Was when Mackavelly came out

(01:11:23):
and James and I went up to the up to
the room and Chino stayed in the car just to
listen to Macavelly alone, you know, like to have that moment.

Speaker 2 (01:11:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
Man, So after so your two main extitute signed Chino
Inquest and then Baby got back like goes through the roof.

Speaker 2 (01:11:44):
The follow up to that album, it was was it
put him on the.

Speaker 5 (01:11:48):
Glass, which didn't become a huge hit, but it made Seinfeld,
so that made me proud.

Speaker 2 (01:11:55):
Video She's not going to put him on the glass
because that was okay, mack Daddy was the baby Baby?
What was that album? The one after to put them
on a glass album?

Speaker 5 (01:12:09):
They'll make a liar out of me, Chief, Chief, Chief
boot knocks.

Speaker 7 (01:12:13):
How do you know that?

Speaker 2 (01:12:14):
Chief? I could see it, but I couldn't call it.
Was that the one with fake Louis on it?

Speaker 5 (01:12:19):
That was Swap meet Louis?

Speaker 2 (01:12:20):
That was mac Daddy. That was That was mack Daddy.

Speaker 7 (01:12:24):
Did you ever see the Lauras Tucker?

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
Was that like that?

Speaker 8 (01:12:27):
No?

Speaker 5 (01:12:27):
We were not important or successful enough to ever. That's
the one good thing about my in R career sort
of flew under the radar with old.

Speaker 2 (01:12:37):
Little Time Warner controversy, nothing.

Speaker 5 (01:12:39):
But I was there during that whole thing. I mean,
that's actually one of the scenes that ended up in
the book that Moe Austin and Lady Warnicker called a
huge meeting of all of the important rap artists and
their managers. So everybody came, Tom Silverman, came Bill Stephanie, came,
uh Coolgie rap came, Ice t came, Georgie and Josa came.
You know, everybody was in one room. Paris was in
the room, right, was it h So that this is

(01:13:02):
for context. This is in nineteen ninety two. There's a
big controversy over Ice ice teas heavy metals song and
his heavy metal band body Count. Somehow rap music gets
blamed for that, and so Warner has you know, been
basically the board of Warner read the Riot Act to

(01:13:25):
the music group and he said, listen, if we're going
to have a lyrics board here, it's going to examine
all the lyrics and if you don't want to you know,
if you don't want to be put through that, we understand,
and we're going to let you go right if you
if you can, will release you. You know, no problem.
Moe was a good guy and he was in a really,
really bad position and put in a really bad position

(01:13:45):
by Bob Morgato and Jerry Livin who had you know,
we're over him.

Speaker 7 (01:13:51):
How long did Ela?

Speaker 5 (01:13:53):
It didn't last long because once there were two phases
to the culture Wars in the nineteen nineties, right, the
first phase was nineteen ninety two, which was the body
Count cop Killer where the police unions all of the
country were boycotting Time Warner. That subsided after the because
that was an election year, right I was in Clinton
got elected. Then it happened again. The ce Delores Tucker

(01:14:14):
Face was like five something like that, and her big
goal was to get Time Warner to drop Inner Scope
and she succeeded. But then Innerscope basically walked with all
its masters and got paid double by Universal to set

(01:14:35):
up shop over there. So I think everybody knew.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
Here, Oh you're I had.

Speaker 7 (01:14:42):
That actually scared me.

Speaker 5 (01:14:44):
Now you can't. In other words, it's you can't. It's
like whack them all, you know, you beat it down
over here, It's just going to end up over there.
And so that ended pretty much ended the culture Wars.

Speaker 2 (01:14:54):
So when did you leave Deaf America?

Speaker 5 (01:14:57):
When Rick lost his Warner b Others deal when he
sort of had got a smaller deal over at Sony
in ninety God what year was it? Ninety seven?

Speaker 1 (01:15:11):
Okay, I won't to have a chance to ask him
this unless he does the show, but would you happen
to know what his opinion was of the Paul's Boutique record?
Did he ever mention or the BC Boys at that
point in that moment, like.

Speaker 5 (01:15:30):
I'll tell you this, I can only give you sort
of little vignettes, right. So the first vignette is me
going to LA for the first time with Rick and
him being in line at Club Lingerie I think it was,
and like ad Rock is in front of us, you know,
and just having a very terse conversation with him, like

(01:15:51):
these were best friends, you know, and they're being civil
to each other, but there's no like, there's no connection there.
The second vignette is a couple of years later, I'm
walking around the office or whatever, and he stops me
and he points to my shirt and he said, I
like that shirt, that shirt that Adam would wear. And

(01:16:11):
I realized at that point of my mind went back
to that first thing. I realized, he misses his friend,
you know, but he just didn't know how to do
the things he needed to do to keep that friend.

Speaker 2 (01:16:21):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:16:21):
They were financial betrayals, there were you know, friendship betrayals.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
But I do know that he.

Speaker 5 (01:16:31):
I think he liked Paul's boutique. He really admired Matt Dyke,
you know, Matt Dyke was his friend. And I think
Dyke helped on that album a bit, but I think
he was more sort of there was a little bit
of shotenfreude because Paul's boutique lost money for capital, you know,

(01:16:53):
because they had caused him so much tumult when they left,
you know, So I mean it was you a.

Speaker 2 (01:17:00):
Good businessman or was he a creative man?

Speaker 5 (01:17:03):
Rick is a creative man. There's no question. He didn't
have a Russell.

Speaker 2 (01:17:08):
That's the problem.

Speaker 5 (01:17:09):
That's why that's why American Recordings did not do well
really ever. I mean they had a few hits, but
he didn't. He didn't have somebody, a partner who could
do what Russell did, and that's why they were so
good together. And you know, Russell never found a creative

(01:17:30):
person like Rick again, but he found another kind of
symbiotic relationship with.

Speaker 3 (01:17:34):
Lee or m Yeah, if you could call it symbiotic,
but I would say it. So ninety seven you leave, Uh,
you leave American?

Speaker 2 (01:17:50):
Where do you go? From that point?

Speaker 5 (01:17:51):
I went to work for Forst Whittaker. Forst Whittaker was
starting a record company, and yeah, Spirit Dance Music distributed
through Epic, and I tried to sign the Far Side
again in ninety seven because they wanted off of Delicious
Vinyl or whatever, and and I was trying to make
a way from We ended up signing Trey.

Speaker 3 (01:18:13):
Oh just train from the Far Side. Oh Man, did
anything ever happened?

Speaker 8 (01:18:22):
No?

Speaker 2 (01:18:22):
Because with not Doogie howser? Uh, Parker Lewis can't lose. No, no, no,
it wasn't. No, you're talking about Green. That was for yeap.
That was yep. Okay, that album actually wasn't bad. It
wasn't It wasn't bad. I heard, I heard it was
you never heard it.

Speaker 3 (01:18:43):
But if you've heard everything not, that album wasn't bad.
I mean, Bill, you'll be if you really knew what
we were talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
I just love that you got to Brian as the
Green from Dougie House.

Speaker 3 (01:18:54):
You know White Boy TV. Come on, no, Brianross the Green.
The album was called one Carnival. Yeah, one stop Calling.

Speaker 7 (01:19:03):
I do remember a video that do you send me?

Speaker 3 (01:19:05):
It was like Trey was singing on it. It was
respectable joint. He was like the first Drake. He was
like the first like TV star. No, damn, we haven't
had a good rabbit hole in a second.

Speaker 5 (01:19:18):
You know what though, when I work for Forrest, I tried,
like hell to sign Crosswalk, Crosswalk, Cody Chestnut.

Speaker 2 (01:19:31):
To for.

Speaker 5 (01:19:33):
Before, but it wasn't it was it was like Beatles
esque rock.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
It was dope.

Speaker 5 (01:19:40):
He was dope, and uh, you know I remember seeing
him live. This is really early on this before I
think he was ever making music with you guys, and
he's like this next song is white record. Companies can't
sign my group because of me, you know. Ship like
that just funny and really good. And I bagged Forrest

(01:20:00):
to sign him, and so so.

Speaker 1 (01:20:03):
Far as was really doing his business. It wasn't like
a vanity thing where it's just like, no, it wasn't
van anything like like Michael Jordan's wasn't hidden beat.

Speaker 7 (01:20:13):
Yeah, so Trey was like the start I was.

Speaker 5 (01:20:17):
That was Acclaim else they never released anybody Ghost. Uh,
that was happening right when I was there. Actually there
there was a film with Jim Jarmush and Rizza's first score.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
Yep, it was I remember.

Speaker 7 (01:20:31):
They were doing radio promotions behind that because they came
to see is Rizza and Forrest.

Speaker 5 (01:20:35):
But that's when I decided I kind of had enough
for the music business.

Speaker 3 (01:20:40):
You wanted to tell them about themselves.

Speaker 2 (01:20:42):
I wanted to write again. So since I was in LA.

Speaker 5 (01:20:45):
The first thing I did was, you know when you
when you're in l A and you want to write,
you you tend to think of writing for the screen.
So I ended up writing for the Lyricist Lounge show
and and then for You'll Love This be ET's Comicview.
For Comic View they had sketch comedy for a little while,
so I helped out for a season.

Speaker 7 (01:21:06):
How was that experience?

Speaker 5 (01:21:07):
It was great. I mean I loved writing comedy and
in a way it set me up for the breaks
later on, you know, just in terms of that being
in a room of writers, really really funny people Alison
Foos and oh Man, they're just really you know, a
lot of them had worked for a Living Color and
I just learned a lot.

Speaker 7 (01:21:24):
Well, Lyrics's Lounge was phenomenal, Like that was a that
was the that's where I don't know what and.

Speaker 5 (01:21:30):
Most words were like he had a chance to write
with most a little bit like not like on the
sketch side. So he wrote the rhymes and I sort
of contributed ideas for the sketch, but most came, and
common came, and Erica came. It was a really good,
really good, tough.

Speaker 2 (01:21:49):
I believe there did an episode or not.

Speaker 5 (01:21:52):
I don't remember.

Speaker 7 (01:21:57):
When did you know you were funny in the realm
of you? You've had a lot of hats. Okay, So
what I'm just saying, Well, well.

Speaker 5 (01:22:04):
Here's what I used to do. I used to do
this segment, you know, the wake up show, King Tech
and Sweat. So I used to do this thing where
I would read, I would read like the Steve Allen
gag right, I would read rap lyrics as poetry, and
I ended up doing a bunch of sketches for them,
and so that led to the gig with with lyrics.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
Why did you think that worked?

Speaker 5 (01:22:26):
Man?

Speaker 2 (01:22:26):
Because I thought that was I mean, I thought it
costs too much.

Speaker 5 (01:22:30):
Did great in the arratings, but it costs too much
to make.

Speaker 2 (01:22:32):
What would the what would the twelve hours late?

Speaker 5 (01:22:38):
I think he was on time. I think he was.

Speaker 2 (01:22:42):
In South Africa?

Speaker 5 (01:22:45):
What was the what was the what was you wait,
fooling nobody? He was. There was like a presidential debate
between him and uh master fool remember yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
Mean f u o l oh my god?

Speaker 8 (01:22:57):
What what?

Speaker 2 (01:22:58):
Why was it so expensive? What were the what were
the call involved?

Speaker 5 (01:23:00):
Just sketch comedy wardrobe and union and I mean it
was a real production and it was not something that
MTV was used to doing. I mean they were doing
reality shows which are just bank Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:23:12):
Yeah, what was it about TV that you love? Because
I mean at some point you were like, I'm staying.

Speaker 5 (01:23:17):
The ability to write something and then have it uh
you know produced and on TV media it was so
immediate and I got a chance to actually act and
like to be a part of that thing, and that
was it was dope. It was his favorite jobs.

Speaker 1 (01:23:34):
It's also ahead of his time because MTV still has
uh next show while 'nout yeah, which.

Speaker 2 (01:23:45):
The cheaper version, much cheaper version.

Speaker 3 (01:23:48):
But no, yeah, it was I think it's a show
that would do much better now in like the snapchat
you know, uh meme era then you know back then.
So at some point you decide, okay, you want to
you're writing. When does the I guess the beginnings of

(01:24:09):
the Big payback the Bible, Like when does when do
you start writing?

Speaker 5 (01:24:14):
It started when I wanted to do hip hop journalism again,
and so I pitched, Uh, I pitched an article that
nobody would buy. Vibe wouldn't Vibe wasn't interested in it.
Double XL wasn't interested in it. It was called Last Night,
a DJ Saved My Business, and it was about these
guys who owned these disco labels in the eighties who

(01:24:34):
thought they were going to be disco kings and ended
up wrap fell into their laps and saved their asses. Basically,
so we're talking about Corey Robbins, a profile, Tom Silverman,
Tommy Boy, Fredmanao at Select right, the the record companies
that basically funded the golden age of hip hop. Unwittingly
they didn't because they weren't you know, they became hip

(01:24:56):
hop fans, but they weren't of hip hop. So nobody
cared about it. And so I decided at one point
that I really really missed New York and I wanted
to come home. And so I just remember I was
at a party with an editor of yet another magazine
and I was pitching this article at him, and he

(01:25:18):
turned away from me in mid pitch and walked away.

Speaker 2 (01:25:22):
Damn.

Speaker 5 (01:25:22):
And I was like, all right, you know what, maybe
this is a book. So I had enrolled at Columbia
Journalism School to get my masters, and I did a
lot of things there, like I ended up I did
my master's project in the West Bank in Palestine, and
I was either going to do a book on that

(01:25:43):
or I was going to do this hip hop business history,
and so it ended up being that. And my mentor
there was the great Sam Friedman, who teaches this book
writing class every year and only twenty five people a year.
Getting you have to pitch him a book I did
to get into.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
The class, and was the big payback was that your pitch.

Speaker 5 (01:26:02):
The big payback was it was called Beats, Rhymes and
cash at first, right, And so I got in and
then the very first day we're supposed to bring in
like a sample chapter, and NPR is taping the class
for a piece on the class because like so many
people get published out of this class, and so on
NPR to this day, there is a First of all,
I won the Cliche Award, like every the most most

(01:26:26):
cliches per It was like, you know, so I having
a bad day anyway, and we got into this argument
about whether old school was a cliche or a genre,
and I was maintaining it was a genre, and he
was maintaining it was a cliche. And he says, and
this is still on NPR ten years later. He says,
as they say on the basketball as they say on
the basketball court, Dan, stop bringing that weak shit.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):
Dang, that's my, that's my.

Speaker 5 (01:26:53):
But he's the guy. He's like that tough love Sorry,
he's like that tough love teacher that got that treatment
out of me. And I got out of that class,
you know. A month later that treatment was sold, and
then I spent the next three years reporting the book.

Speaker 2 (01:27:10):
So how did you?

Speaker 3 (01:27:11):
How did that make you a better writer? Because I've
only known you, I only know you now, So what
did that class do for you as a writer? How
did it make you stronger?

Speaker 5 (01:27:20):
Just pouring over every word in every comma, trying to
make every sentence as as elegant and efficient as it
can be. You know, every every sentence has a function,
Every word has a function. But even more than that,
I kept getting sidetracked because I'm a nerd, you know,
about music, and I wanted to talk about the emergence
of the AO eight drum machine, and I wanted to

(01:27:43):
take these divergent paths into what Marley did and how
much the bridge was so important.

Speaker 2 (01:27:48):
You sound a lot like somebody I know.

Speaker 5 (01:27:50):
Yea, So he says, right there, So he says, Dan,
it's about the music. Sorry, he says, Dan, It's about
the business, not the music. It's about the business. It's

(01:28:10):
about the business. He kept saying that mantra to me,
and and so I listened to him, and that's I
remember that first chapter. I turned and he says, you
can't write this chapter without getting the voices of Sylvia
Robinson and Bobby Robinson, Like I need to know what
they were doing while jay Z was getting his Grammy
Where were they not Grammy?

Speaker 2 (01:28:31):
Oh?

Speaker 5 (01:28:31):
Sorry? When he was at the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame awarding the uh you know, the Grandmaster Flash
of the Furious Five for the first people to get inducted.
So that was a motif for the book. J D
was a jay Z was inducting them, and he wanted
to He knew the reader would want to know where
the founding mother and one of the founding fathers of
the business were at that moment, and if all the

(01:28:54):
listeners were they Sylvia was in the hospital and Bobby
Robinson was at home watch them.

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
So do you acknowledge this as the hip hop Bible?

Speaker 5 (01:29:05):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:29:06):
I kind of see it more as the the forty
forty eight Laws of power. You know, that that one
book that every guy that went to jail has that like, like,
it's no, I don't mean your book. I'm just saying,
like you, I always see the forty eight Laws of
Power book and every like when Jay first got his

(01:29:27):
office at Deaf Chair that book. I was like, are
you strategically placing in this areas? He had a nerf
ball and it's forty eight Loss of Power book.

Speaker 2 (01:29:40):
But I mean it is very.

Speaker 1 (01:29:42):
Informative and and sort of detailing people's journeys. And why
did you feel that was important?

Speaker 5 (01:29:52):
Because it wasn't out there or hip hop is so
big that there are so many stories you can tell
about it. And I couldn't have written my book without
Jeff Chang having written Can't Stop the Albums Right, And
I couldn't have written it without Brian Coleman having done
check the technique. And not to even mention the smaller
books that that the earlier ones that you know, David

(01:30:15):
Tube had done and Nelson George had done a pretty
good book hip Hip Hop America. I think it was
called UH. And then of course like the smaller UH,
you know, the books on smaller parts of the subject,
like Ronan Roe's book on. Yeah, so all of them
are really important, and I stand on the shoulders of

(01:30:36):
all those folks. But my issue was people really didn't
understand that hip hop almost didn't happen, right. They didn't
understand like when I would read accounts of hip hop history,
it was almost like run DMC made a record and
then they were huge, right, And that's not how it happened.

(01:30:57):
People fought tooth and nail to make this stuff successful.
It almost didn't happen. I mean, when we think about
New York in nineteen ninety radio was backing away from
hip hop all over, right, mix shows were going away,
So we were hot ninety seven as we know it,

(01:31:19):
you know today was felt a million light years away.
But people fought for it, and so people I wanted
to tell the story of people like Keith Naftali, the
very first pop radio programmer to play hardcore hip hop
in the daytime. We're talking NWA, Public Enemy, and other
pop programmers across the country like Rick D's you know,

(01:31:40):
thought it was laughable, you know that dangerous even and
he did it, and he was so successful that he
convinced other radio programmers eventually that this was, you know
something that was worth doing and ended decades of segregation
in radio because of it. So I felt like that
was the important story to tell just for hip hop's sake.

(01:32:02):
And then it's a great American story, you know. That's
why it starts with Alexander Hamilton because I believe it
embodies the same ethos.

Speaker 1 (01:32:12):
Can I ask, so since you were in Los Angeles
for the greater part of the nineties, I mean, of course. Now,
it's just it's such a different way, different feelium vibe.

Speaker 2 (01:32:33):
And quick, quick backstory.

Speaker 1 (01:32:36):
So usually when guests come on, notable guests, especially New
York based guests, come on the show, I'm always fascinated.
One of the common denominator stories and experiences they have
is they always have a tunnel not a tunnel Latin
court iss story to tell. But for me, it's like,

(01:32:58):
I'm more amazed to the fact that they're willing to
court this danger and almost romanticize about this period in
which from my protected childhood eyes, it's like, Yo, why
would you even go to a building and you might
might be shot?

Speaker 2 (01:33:16):
Is it really that much? Is it really worth it
to hear nobody beats the biz? Like, Like, do you
if that's the only place you're going. You know, you
can hear it. Yeah, well that said living.

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
I mean I remember, like now when I go to La,
it's such a joyful feeling, like I'm going to LA
and like I enjoy that feeling of landing you know La. Oh,
you know, hang with my friends and go to nice
restaurants and it's fun. But there was a period in
LA where it's like, you know, we used to always
make sure we don't wear no.

Speaker 2 (01:33:53):
Blue, no red.

Speaker 1 (01:33:55):
Know where you you know, just know where you stand,
don't cross anybody, you know Mad Shug sightings Mad.

Speaker 5 (01:34:05):
It was like that.

Speaker 3 (01:34:06):
Yo.

Speaker 2 (01:34:06):
It's like Santha Nico so in to be in La.

Speaker 1 (01:34:11):
During the period of Shug's rain, where any moment could
be the moment where you could get got.

Speaker 2 (01:34:21):
Like what was that like in that period? Like was
it an enjoyable time.

Speaker 5 (01:34:27):
Or did you feel like you were so out of
the circle that you could I wasn't that close to power,
I guess in that way. And I didn't fetish death row,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:34:37):
I didn't.

Speaker 5 (01:34:38):
I didn't want to be around those folks. I didn't
you know what I mean, You.

Speaker 1 (01:34:42):
Couldn't avoid it, Like the roots are the furthest thing
from death row. But you know, Sugar and Pok once
came to a show and I swear to God, even
the air.

Speaker 2 (01:34:53):
Just suck out the room like it was like it
was like unavoidable.

Speaker 3 (01:35:00):
So how.

Speaker 1 (01:35:03):
Like, how did you manage m a atmosphere and musically
magical but also questionable as.

Speaker 5 (01:35:10):
Far as being naive and also the feeling that it's
it was normal, you know, like when you're you know,
that whole thing about the frog and water or whatever,
and you you know, it was just that was part
of the environment. And I I just also have this
philosophy that bullies go away. You know, if you wait

(01:35:31):
long enough, they're going to fuck themselves up.

Speaker 2 (01:35:34):
So seven years man, well, you know, in terms of
his power, you know, his power was very short.

Speaker 5 (01:35:43):
And it turns out a lot of the things that
people think he did or legendary you know that he did,
didn't do.

Speaker 2 (01:35:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:35:51):
Now I'm like, yeah, I didn't, he didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:35:54):
I mean, you know, did you have.

Speaker 3 (01:35:55):
First an experiences with any besides Russell?

Speaker 2 (01:35:59):
And uh?

Speaker 1 (01:36:02):
I mean first hand experience is non interview, but just
like and just daily interaction with any of the uh,
the subject matters that you profiled. Like as far as
you being in the business, well, there are a few
run ins with Dame Moore that that's sort of There's

(01:36:22):
just a few.

Speaker 5 (01:36:23):
Things that you know in the book that I was
present for.

Speaker 2 (01:36:26):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:36:27):
So there's that meeting, you know, that big cabal meeting,
you know, I mean there's that. You know that that
that fake email that's been going around for years about
the secret meeting in la you know where the prison
industrial complex and getting all the rappers this like.

Speaker 2 (01:36:42):
That wasn't really I.

Speaker 5 (01:36:46):
Mean, but I did attend the real meeting, which was
you know, mo Austin calling all of his artists, the
extended family of artists and into a conference room and saying, look,
here's the deal, you know, And it was a very
sad meeting. You know, I think he was sad as
the person who signed to Prince and Joni Mitchell and
James Taylor and you know all these other Jimmy Hendrix

(01:37:06):
held uh you know, to be in that position it
was humiliating for him. And then I was the person
who had to go and basically create a dummy record
company for Paris because Paris had gotten dropped off of
his And Rick said, I'm gonna put him on I'm
gonna put on an American, but I can't put him

(01:37:27):
on Americans. So we're going to create a whole new
label for him. So I went to the Bay Area
basically helped create a label for Paris.

Speaker 3 (01:37:35):
Came scarface, scarface because that was that the one that's
sleeping with the enemy came out on which which Ricord
was it?

Speaker 2 (01:37:41):
Was it because that was the one he wanted to
call bush Killer.

Speaker 5 (01:37:45):
Originally I think bush Killer remained dude, but uh, I
have to actually read The Big Payback to remember. So
after this you write the Big Payback? Was it anyone
that was reluctant to talk to you? Like anyone that

(01:38:06):
was just like nah.

Speaker 2 (01:38:08):
Yeah, it just writes itself.

Speaker 5 (01:38:14):
There were people like I really wanted to talk to
Cindy Campbell, like Kirk's sister, because Jeff had done herk
right the artist, but I wanted a profile the business side,
and I approached Cindy Campbell and she wanted money, and
I said this, I just don't do that. I'm a journalist.
I don't pay anybody for an interview. So by you know,

(01:38:37):
and obviously you're never gonna get Jay. You know, Jay
Z in a room to interview him. So what you
do is you report around people as a journalist. You
started the edges, and you go around and around in circles, circle,
and finally there's only one person left right, and you
can say to that person, you know, I'm not saying
that I did this with Jay Z, but I'm about to,

(01:38:58):
you know, release a book that has a after on
you or a section on you. I want to give
you a chance to hear it before it goes out,
you know, and comment on it. So usually you know,
people will want to hear what you're going to write
about them, and if you approach them respectfully. And whenever
I interviewed somebody for the book, I always, you know,

(01:39:18):
I always uh offer them a readback, just because it's
their story.

Speaker 3 (01:39:24):
So you never just do it blind. Just like everyone
got yeah, they know, they knew what it was going
to be before.

Speaker 2 (01:39:31):
Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:39:33):
There were people who were mad. More more people were
mad when they got left out of the book.

Speaker 2 (01:39:38):
I was going to say, like it wasn't disrespect no,
no at all.

Speaker 5 (01:39:44):
Search was mad at me for a little while because
he gave me a lot of time and I the
section that he was in ended up getting cut and
I apologize to him over that.

Speaker 2 (01:39:52):
Now search has a lot of stories.

Speaker 5 (01:39:55):
Great, he was great and he's still great.

Speaker 3 (01:39:56):
We'll put it this way.

Speaker 1 (01:39:58):
We barely got to the Cactus CD for de second album. Yeah,
we barely got to Derrelick's dialect before. It's like, oh,
hey's trying to wrap like three hours.

Speaker 5 (01:40:09):
Talk about the Latin Quarter.

Speaker 1 (01:40:11):
Yeah, yes, the quintessential Latin Quarter stories, the Big Pigback.

Speaker 3 (01:40:17):
So how does this go from because now you've never
even told me this story, I don't know. How does
that go from book to movie to series on h one?

Speaker 2 (01:40:30):
Okay, what was that journey?

Speaker 4 (01:40:31):
Like?

Speaker 5 (01:40:32):
Even before the book came out, there were some Hollywood
types calling, you know, hey, like a meeting whatever, and
you know, so originally I wanted to do it. Have
you ever seen the HBO movie The Late Shift, Yes,
about the whole letter let fight. Yeah, so I wanted
to do a you know, a drama, but with the

(01:40:54):
real characters, right a Rick Russell dre you know, hiring
actors to play the real people. And that's a real
problem for Hollywood, Like they have to buy all kinds
of life rights even though it may be true. You know,
so Eventually it came down to, you know, that wasn't
gonna happen, and I sort of gave up because I didn't.

(01:41:15):
I didn't want to do a fictional, fictionalized version of
hip hop history. It was coiny to me, you know,
especially because anytime you had a portrayal of hip hop
in some dramatic fashion, it was always like just wrong.
Like I remember the Sopranos had Bokeen Woodbine as massive genius, right,

(01:41:39):
like I didn't want to do that, you know, and
and to make how you're gonna make the music sound
good period, right, And this is where you come in.
So what happened was actually Boz Lherman to Boz Lehman.

(01:42:01):
You know, my people have read my team has read
your book, and my team has read your book, and
team told me I should meet with you. And this
was in the early stages of what would be come
to get down. But he was in the middle of
doing Gatsby. He was very nice. But what happened was
I had an opportunity at VH one to pitch them,
but I could only pitch them if it was a dramatic,

(01:42:23):
you know, fictionalized dramatic. So I just did it. I
came up with a story. You know, I eventually got
over myself, and I came up with a story about
three college friends who graduate in the summer of nineteen ninety.
Sort of aligns with my own personal story. But also
I think it's a really really important time in hip hop.
It's like that time where it could have become everything

(01:42:47):
or nothing. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:42:48):
It was the year that.

Speaker 5 (01:42:51):
Run DMC and Beastie Boys were blown away in sales
by Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and it looked like the
future was going to be this minstrel show, right, So
UH shout out to a little brother.

Speaker 2 (01:43:06):
So he bought.

Speaker 7 (01:43:10):
But I'm not.

Speaker 2 (01:43:12):
Now let's talk about it, okay.

Speaker 5 (01:43:15):
So Uh, I worked on the on the on the pitch,
and I pitched it in a room in about ten
minutes and they bought it. And then there's the long
process of developing it. And the first part of development
is to find a director, writer who can actually get
this stuff on the screen. And I just I wasn't

(01:43:37):
selling myself as that person, so I remained as an
executive producer. But seeth Man was the the guy we
luckily found to helmet.

Speaker 3 (01:43:46):
And Seeth is uh for those Seeth is a god
TV director. He's done Man, several episodes of The Wire,
He's done did he do?

Speaker 2 (01:43:55):
Did he work on t did he do?

Speaker 5 (01:43:57):
Or did? But he did Walking Dead? I wanted to
believe and Elementary at least did.

Speaker 2 (01:44:06):
He Yeah. I don't want to give that away with you.

Speaker 5 (01:44:10):
So Seith is great and Seeth, you know, I grew
up in Columbia, Maryland. He grew up in Silver Spring.
Were up listening to the same stations. We both listen
to hip hop and and and Go go, and so
we have even though he's like seven feet tall and
I'm four feet tall, and you know, he's black and
I'm white, and he's got dreads and I got no hair.
So we were you know, we uh, he's my brother,

(01:44:33):
you know, and he has done so. He did a
great job on the pilot script. And then it came whore,
how are we going to create this musical universe? And
prem DJ Premiere was first on the list, and I
reached out to him, and you know, I met Pream

(01:44:54):
when I interned for a while Pitch. There was like
a little slumber of time before I worked for Profile.

Speaker 2 (01:45:00):
I did it.

Speaker 5 (01:45:00):
I interned for.

Speaker 2 (01:45:01):
Eighty nine.

Speaker 1 (01:45:03):
So was that Uh as a jet sledge, as a
hip hop a historian, do you have multiple copies of
Bust to Move Boy?

Speaker 2 (01:45:13):
And if you do, can you share.

Speaker 3 (01:45:17):
Gang stars?

Speaker 7 (01:45:18):
Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:45:20):
I had three twelve inches before no more mistic a
nice guy out.

Speaker 5 (01:45:28):
I'm afraid I do not, damn, but I think I
know somebody might.

Speaker 1 (01:45:35):
No, I knows a guy. Yeah, I'm looking for Bust
to Move boy. I would do anything to have a
one records back in running order, not online, but like
not a one the sound library.

Speaker 2 (01:45:49):
Oh, celebrary man.

Speaker 7 (01:45:50):
Well, guys, a writer question, when you went to bah
one with your pitch, what did you have exactly? Because
you didn't have a rundown of with the show totally
was gonna be for the season.

Speaker 5 (01:46:00):
I did. It was just in my head. So I
pitched in a room from off the dome freestyle that.

Speaker 7 (01:46:10):
Son and what was so what was the line? Like
what was the tag? Like the one line the long
line of the show kind of that way like the
really summer.

Speaker 5 (01:46:19):
Yeah, I mean I think we may have said something
like it's sort of like the hip hop mad Men.
You know, we might have said something like that, but
you know, it's it was about the business. And what
was really important is that we had a really strong
female lead character, really interesting and very complex, and you know,
a liar, a pathological liar makes her interesting.

Speaker 7 (01:46:43):
I didn't pick this up in the pilot. Wait a minute, is.

Speaker 3 (01:46:46):
Fucking oh god, she's And we talked about it how
and you know the way it worked out, we're we
kind of have a I don't know if it's a renaissance,
but there's a lot of you're seeing kind of the
black female anti hero character on TV now where you
have you know, I mean Cookie and Mary Jane and

(01:47:08):
Olivia Pope, you know what I'm saying, where you have
anti they're not the typical well anti hero in the
sense that they are people that you They're not just
a foil. Yeah, they're not just like the good person
like I mean, they're they're complex people, you know what
I mean, And they're not just totally all good. And
Nikki's character when I when you sent me the script,
I read it, I was like, yeah, she's gonna fall.

Speaker 2 (01:47:29):
And I didn't know who you were gonna cast. I
didn't know who.

Speaker 5 (01:47:33):
We didn't know either.

Speaker 2 (01:47:34):
You get involved in the show, How did I get
involved in the show? I don't even how did I
get hired.

Speaker 5 (01:47:39):
Preme was the first step right, the music right. So
I wanted to make sure that we had somebody who
understood the vocabulary, the sonic vocabulary at the time, and
would be able to make beats that sounded like they
were because if we have a character who's a rapper
and another character who's a producer, the producer has to
make beats exactly like they would be made in nineteen ninety,

(01:48:01):
using the same samples, and using samples, using breaks, very important,
very important. And then we needed to have an MC
who also spoke in the vocabulary and cadence of the time.
And I knew only what there was. I had a
list and Preem was at the top of it. But
there was only one person. There was only one person

(01:48:22):
that I wanted to get for lyrics producer for the show,
and that was Fante Coleman. And I will tell you why,
because Fante had again shout out to James Lopez, who
hit me to all of this stuff. James had given
me when I moved back to New York a copy
of the story of Us Oh my God. And Fante

(01:48:46):
plays like basically, he plays the part of a you know,
a rapper trying to see trying to get a deal
by being basically everybody else in the game. So at
one point, Fante is all the guys in the Wu
Tang clan know, uh, you do the you know sort
of the lyrical miracle, Yeah, the underground and then your

(01:49:07):
Percy miracles. And it was just like that you are
the master of voices, and I knew that you would
understand in a way that it was just like could
just let go, and even even more like the more
that you and Prem. First of all, you and Prem
have a fantastic working relationship together and he trusts you implicitly,

(01:49:28):
and when Prem produces, he has you, honest his co producer.
By just that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:49:35):
Yeah, that was that was wild. That was wild.

Speaker 3 (01:49:37):
I mean when y'all reached out to about it, I
was just coming off of an HBO pilot that I
was working on, and so I mean TV, you know, yeah,
the Maya thing, the thing with Mayam but she Maya Maya.

Speaker 2 (01:49:57):
So yeah, So I was coming off of that, and
so so you were like, yeah, man, so I got
this thing.

Speaker 3 (01:50:01):
I'm like TV, I'm like, oh god, I'm ready for
like a million rewrites a million edits whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:50:07):
I'm like, all right, whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:50:08):
So you're like, yo, man, I got this thing and
I don't know exactly what it's gonna be, but you
know this is what it is. I'm like, look, dude,
send it to me.

Speaker 2 (01:50:13):
Let's do it. And yeah, those records that for those
first records, we did.

Speaker 8 (01:50:18):
The arm.

Speaker 3 (01:50:20):
God it was the arm song his song God at
least expected Yeah, God, we did that. Those are records
that I cut in my house, and I mean we
pretty much. I wanted to make it so that it's
kind of tricky because you're writing in nineteen ninety. You're
writing for nineteen ninety, but you're writing for an audience

(01:50:41):
that is current day.

Speaker 2 (01:50:44):
So it has to work on both levels.

Speaker 3 (01:50:46):
It has to be true to the times, but at
the same time, it has to while the audience of
now so that they can understand why this guy.

Speaker 2 (01:50:55):
Would be the shit in nineteen ninety, you know what
I mean.

Speaker 3 (01:50:57):
And the fact that it's fictional makes it a little
bit harder, as you know, as MC, because you know
it's fiction. So it's like, you know, the zamp always
give the scene in Notorious where Biggie is freestyling outside
you know what I'm saying, and they're kicking his actual
that was his actual freestyle, you know what I mean.

(01:51:18):
And that freestyle lyrically, it ain't miraculous, you know what
I'm saying, but it's accurate to what he was saying
at that time. The freestyle where he's dissing the dude
in front of the side. Yeah, in Notaria when he's
dising the dude. Love that freestyle, No, I love it,
But I'm just saying it was dope because that was
accurate to what he said then. From now in twenty seventeen,

(01:51:39):
I mean, someone that's hurt Royster five to nine or
black thought hearing that shit is like, okay, it was cool, you.

Speaker 2 (01:51:45):
Know what I mean, But at the time it was ahead.
So so that's kind of the trick.

Speaker 1 (01:51:50):
Can I ask you how important like I'm I'm I'm
a showrunner's nightmare on social media, Like I think Nelson
is just about talking to me again right now to
get down Well, you know, for me, the reason why

(01:52:14):
I'm so glad you said that about like you wanted
to really portray the times as they were. How important
is it to you at least from uh in doing
this project. Are the music cues to you?

Speaker 2 (01:52:30):
Because like that's the show? Is the whole show?

Speaker 3 (01:52:35):
Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:52:35):
Well, now not not to I'm not trying to you know,
play you know, Devil's not not Devil's advocate. What do
you call it. I'm not trying to instigate. No, no,
I'm not trying to be an instigate.

Speaker 1 (01:52:51):
Assuming you watched the other show, how did you feel,
like did you notes like, Okay, that's not accurate.

Speaker 2 (01:53:02):
That's not accurate, Matt qu' is not accurate, And.

Speaker 5 (01:53:05):
I will be honest. One of the problems with making TV,
especially making TV while you accurate teaching, uh you know,
as a profession, is that you don't get to watch
a lot of TV. So I watched the first couple
episodes and I understood right away that you get down
to a very different animal. And it's magical realism. And

(01:53:30):
that's not what we were trying to do. We're we're
doing you know, realism, right, And there's nothing wrong with
magical realism. Like it's an interesting term.

Speaker 7 (01:53:37):
It sounds like alternative facts.

Speaker 5 (01:53:42):
It's like what it's like what Tony Morrison does right,
except for film, right, It's like it's it's it is
a beautiful, romantic vision of what the Bronx was and
is in people's minds. And even that it's funny because
you would people from the Bronx from that time, that's
how they remember it as beautiful, right, even though it

(01:54:06):
was a really really I mean, there were parts of
The Bronx that felt and looked desolate, but it didn't
wasn't desolate culturally to them. So I'm not mad at
the get down, but it's just a very different show.
And also about five times the budget, maybe ten times
the budget of The Breaks, you know, so it's a
very different kind of.

Speaker 1 (01:54:27):
But it's like, okay, so after you developed something and
then you put it in the hands of the production company,
the producers, the directions like other people.

Speaker 5 (01:54:41):
And.

Speaker 1 (01:54:45):
How much are you willing to let your child metaphorically speaking,
play with others? Are you willing to turn your back
for a little bit and do something else and trust
that it's okay?

Speaker 2 (01:55:00):
Is it just like all right, let's cut corners?

Speaker 1 (01:55:02):
Like for me, I've sat in many a room with
many a writer and I just really have this disdain
for their attitude of like music as such an afterthought.
I it's really not that important you know, like, okay, well,
I know.

Speaker 3 (01:55:22):
We're in nineteen seventy nine and we gonna play a
song that came out in eighty four.

Speaker 1 (01:55:26):
You know it's cool, Yeah, okay, okay, So the New
Addition film, shout out to my brother Barrycole, I'm not
coming at your neck.

Speaker 2 (01:55:34):
But he.

Speaker 1 (01:55:37):
Kind of corrected me on Twitter. I mean, there was
a scene where Ricky and Bobby and Ron were on
the tour bus. We're talking to each other and Ricky
takes his walkman off, his cassette walkman off, But I
clearly heard the shack up drum break that was you

(01:56:01):
in the belbe deevo Ain't nothing change, which was you know,
I mean, this is eighty five. They're in the nineteen
eighty five Greyhound tour bus going back to the Boston projects,
listening to a breakbeat that Ricky Bell himself will use
seven years now. But you know, he kind of had

(01:56:21):
that that correction, like no, that was talking to all
that jazz by stut of Sonic, and I wanted to come.

Speaker 2 (01:56:27):
Back like, well still that was still nineteen eighty eight.

Speaker 1 (01:56:32):
That was for but I mean, for me, how I
know that people cut corners and okay, well, we couldn't
clear that song, and we just want to move time
along and using music's used for moving time along. So
it's like, how much of a stickler are you for
keeping that as accurate as possible.

Speaker 5 (01:56:54):
I'm a stickler because Seeth believes in it, you know
what I mean. Seeth really values the authenticity part of it.
And we have this sort of language with each other
where we talk about the Authenticity Bank account, right, and
you know you're gonna make withdraws right, we have like
I think it takes place in the summer nineteen ninety,

(01:57:16):
but maybe looking at the front door, I think was
something that we made a slight you know, exception for
it did come out in nineteen ninety, but it came
out later in nineteen ninety. I think also Just to
Get a Wrap came out later on in nineteen ninety,
but it was it was that's the kind of trade
off we're we're willing to make. There are other trade offs.
There are other sort of withdrawals from the Authenticity Bank

(01:57:37):
account that don't pay off. Like I'm not going to allow,
you know, a breakbeat from another time.

Speaker 1 (01:57:44):
I was going to say, you know, premull get away
with one in this business of repna.

Speaker 2 (01:57:50):
No, we kept it.

Speaker 3 (01:57:51):
Now we keep it well, all of our you know,
with the scratches, we keep them so far we keep
it all you know stuff. Oh yeah, stuff that was
of that time, well before that time actually.

Speaker 5 (01:58:02):
So we've actually been in the studio right with Preem
and there's been something that he wanted to do or whatever,
and we're like, oh no, that's too it's too early.
And even with lyrics, we've had a few. Yeah, I
think it was the lyrics I said it was. It
was one lyric in the in the uh in the pilot,
I said something like, oh god, what was it? It was.

Speaker 3 (01:58:25):
Puff mad l's I think was the line. And we
was like, in nineteen ninety it wasn't puffing mad ls.
So we changed it to something else because the original
line was, how was it, girlies on my job? Puff
mad lsu till I see blue like gargamele. So we
changed it to girlies on my job hard as hell.

Speaker 2 (01:58:44):
Make him do the smurf like gargamele.

Speaker 5 (01:58:46):
And so that was what that was. That was even
but even the chorus we were talking about the chorus
right in your chorus was Joe Rock Baby Baby.

Speaker 3 (01:58:59):
And I thought it was even and that's something I
got it was, but I thought it was too much
of town Baby, which is I was totally not even
thinking that.

Speaker 5 (01:59:08):
So I was like, we'll just do Joe rock y'all, NonStop,
y'all more.

Speaker 2 (01:59:12):
But I think we kept rock Baby, rock Baby, Joe Baby.

Speaker 3 (01:59:17):
What is the quintessential hook in nineteen ninety, Well, the
thing is like Trive had no hook or well in
nineteen ninety, what it was was it wasn't really hooks.
Your hook was the last two bars of your rhyme.
So it would be the last two bars of your song,
so what you're saying, and then it goes into the

(01:59:39):
break the scratches or an instrument or horn or whatever
the fuck.

Speaker 2 (01:59:43):
So that was kind of the way we play it.
And uh, yeah, man, I mean I'm lucky that we are.

Speaker 3 (01:59:48):
We have actors like Antoine is just a motherfucker unbelievable.

Speaker 7 (01:59:57):
Can y'all break down how many different personality like rap
did you have to write for different personalities from Antoine?

Speaker 5 (02:00:03):
Who are so I said, tough job this season?

Speaker 2 (02:00:07):
Yeah, yeah, it was.

Speaker 3 (02:00:08):
It was, but we made it through it though for
this one, okay, So uh for those that watch the show,
it's the story of you know, it tells, like Dan
was saying earlier, tells these different stories of different people
in the business at that time. And so, uh, the
main guy that I write for is played by Antoine Harris.

Speaker 2 (02:00:27):
Big ups to him. He is like the street guy
who is you know, really talented. So he's a guy.

Speaker 3 (02:00:35):
And I don't know if this is something that we
can maybe if y'all are still figuring out, I think
we're still last conversation we had. I think we're still
trying to see if he's gonna be the guy or
if he's gonna be the guy who inspires the guy,
you know what I mean, Like that's still because he's
a motherfucker, but like is he gonna be jay Z
or is.

Speaker 2 (02:00:52):
He gonna be Jazz?

Speaker 5 (02:00:53):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (02:00:53):
You know what I mean? Like that's still that still
remains to.

Speaker 7 (02:00:57):
Be because he's like hell respected in the streets. Like
it's like you got to go through hell people to
get to him.

Speaker 2 (02:01:01):
Yeah, he's like the he's the man. And then in
like season one, this you know, as this season.

Speaker 3 (02:01:07):
Goes on, you'll see other stuff that solidifies, like he's
really like the fucking he's the guy. So it's him,
He's the He's the main guy. Then there's uh oh Man.
Then there's uh Imani X played by Tianna Taylor.

Speaker 2 (02:01:23):
She's the girl who is like, she's like a like
a Latifa like, she's kind of tom boyish. Me isis
revel So she's that ship.

Speaker 3 (02:01:38):
And the kind of the conflict that we'll see later
on uh is her mother played by Kim Wayns a
hilarious fucking Kim Wayns plays by Kim Wayns. Her mother
kind of wants her to be more of like a
kind of salt and pepper, you know, uh female lem see.
So that's you know, her thing. So I had to

(02:01:59):
write for her. And so the not really the conflict
that we had, but just the thing that we hit
towards the end of this season was that I didn't
want Imani to sound like a female version of So
you have to I had to. You have to approach
it in a way. It's like, all right, I want
her to be dope, but she can't just be just

(02:02:20):
the female, the female.

Speaker 2 (02:02:21):
Version of this guy. She has to have something about her.

Speaker 3 (02:02:24):
How do you channel all these I mean, you're like
the hip hop version of Split man, how do you
how do you channel all of these in an authentic
way at that I mean on the spot, do you
find that working? Okay?

Speaker 1 (02:02:40):
Now finding someone that I can relate to, like on
working on television when you have to instantly come up
with something.

Speaker 2 (02:02:48):
I don't overthink it. Yeah, Like, how do you deal
with that?

Speaker 8 (02:02:51):
Man?

Speaker 2 (02:02:51):
You just gotta you just gotta just write it. I mean,
what is your process? You just sit alone? Yeah? I
generally always work alone.

Speaker 3 (02:02:58):
I never really work with anyone, you know, record myself
and like injureding myself and uh, I pretty much just
in the time of like for arm for his main song,
the idea was, without giving away too many plot points, well,
in the within the pilot, you know, his friend has
been killed. So the idea was, okay, we got I

(02:03:23):
gotta take him through the stages of death, the stages
of grief. So the first song that he does is
you know, it's just straight anger. It's just like we're
gonna get them niggas, y'all kill ma homie.

Speaker 2 (02:03:36):
We about to set it. It's just anger.

Speaker 3 (02:03:38):
And then later on in this season you'll see he
has some other stuff that takes him through the other
stages of grief.

Speaker 2 (02:03:44):
So it's just putting yourself in that character and what
they would feel.

Speaker 5 (02:03:47):
First of the first season feels more like denial.

Speaker 3 (02:03:50):
They're not exacts, so it's just I try to put
myself in each character's shoes and seek how they would
feel and just you know, right in from that perspective.

Speaker 7 (02:04:02):
But what's interesting is and just by talking to you,
like those are the two dope people, right, So is
it easier to write for the dope lyrics or because
now you got to write for like mediocre purpose?

Speaker 3 (02:04:13):
This fun.

Speaker 2 (02:04:14):
I feel like it's fun to write for.

Speaker 3 (02:04:16):
It's well, okay, loves it. I had, but I run
into a problem I just drew on. Yeah, I have problems.
So we have battle scenes as well, right, so we
have battles.

Speaker 7 (02:04:29):
That you have to right and so battling yourself basically.

Speaker 3 (02:04:33):
Yeah, it's a mirror match. It's like the fucking mirror
match in fucking uh In in Mortal Comeback. So for me,
the problem I was running into was that I like
to be the villain. So like my villain versus was
murder and the guy that was actually spposed to win
the battle on camera them versus was like cool, Like

(02:04:54):
my first draft would be like it's cool, but you
need a little more.

Speaker 5 (02:04:58):
So I had to and that was the only network
note you got on the pilot.

Speaker 2 (02:05:02):
Yeah, that was like she was like, She's like I
really think it feels like uh yeah yeah. So thenother
guy won and so I empires good.

Speaker 7 (02:05:10):
You corrected that.

Speaker 2 (02:05:11):
Yeah, I went back and like I did another draft
and they okayed it.

Speaker 3 (02:05:14):
And so the thing was in that first battle with
in the pilot with Sig and Uh Sig played by
u Si play by, the idea was that, Okay, toy.

Speaker 2 (02:05:28):
Ray is gonna the main guy.

Speaker 3 (02:05:32):
Is gonna win the war, so to speak, but to
Ray is still gonna kind of win the battle. And
to me that felt authentic because I remember coming up battling.
You would see all those guys who would win all
the battles. They would just be freestyling and could just
go on and talk about your mom and make.

Speaker 2 (02:05:49):
Up ship whatever.

Speaker 3 (02:05:50):
But they couldn't make records to save their fucking lives,
Like they fucking suck.

Speaker 2 (02:05:55):
I have a story.

Speaker 3 (02:05:57):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:05:58):
The first week that we mixed do You Want More?
At Battery Studios, we were next in the b room
was supernatural. Now if you remember, wait I just said,
I just coughed, all right, all right, So okay, boys

(02:06:23):
and girls.

Speaker 2 (02:06:23):
And he was on East West. Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:06:26):
So when in nineteen ninety three at the New Music Seminar,
I remember it was all about skills and it was
all about Supernatural that particular year, and Supernat signed to
East West and so he was in the b room
of Battery Studios, and we were in the a room

(02:06:49):
a Battery Studios, mixing our stuff and we occasionally That's
kind of how we met Roselle. Roselle was kind of
in Supernat's like and Supernatural totally.

Speaker 2 (02:07:04):
Just freestyle everything, his shows, his his aulus and all
I remember it was I went in his room.

Speaker 3 (02:07:14):
Me and Jerik sat in his room and he had
the single if I was King, If I was King,
I ruled everything if I was King, And then he
did a verse, right's let me take it from the
top again, if I was King, if they he took
a totally different verses, Ah no, no.

Speaker 1 (02:07:30):
No, forget, let me do it again, And he went
through like nine drafts of like one free, totally different
than the others, and.

Speaker 3 (02:07:43):
I was like, the whole record's going to be made
that way.

Speaker 2 (02:07:46):
They're like yeah, man freestyle record and no nah.

Speaker 3 (02:07:51):
It was just one of those things that like it
works good live and even still live sometimes against novelty.
That's what I was getting to like, It's something you know,
you can only pull the rabbit out of hat so
many times.

Speaker 7 (02:08:02):
You know, I meantyle union.

Speaker 3 (02:08:04):
Yeah, I used to friz. I mean, that was what
I did. But after a while, Yeah, it kind of
it's like a parlor trick. Otherwise, like, look, write a
fucking song, dude.

Speaker 5 (02:08:11):
So we need to talk about the best part of
that battle, which is the character, the impromptu character we
created with Fante's blessing named mom Ali. Yes, talk about
it because we really, we really wanted to. I mean,
it's an afrocentric period and you know, not to make

(02:08:35):
light of it, but there was always that dude who
came to a battle to teach, to educate, you know.

Speaker 2 (02:08:40):
So, uh, I knew you were going to make I
knew you were going to make it. See that damn
verse shout out to Caitlin. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:08:55):
So this was one of the one of the times.
I remember we was up I was up there, and
so we had to do this battle. So there's a
battle in season in episode one of the pilot where
Arm is battling this guy six hours and so this
is essentially the battle where Arm wins the battle. And
this is where DV the producer sees the battle and realizes, Yo,

(02:09:19):
Arm is the dude. I gotta fuck with this is
the guy. And so I had to write that battle
between Torrey and Antoine, and so that came out. So
before that, there's all these other battles that take place
before their battle, which.

Speaker 2 (02:09:32):
Is like the main event. So I come up there
and I'm in New York and Dan hits me.

Speaker 3 (02:09:37):
He's like, yo, man, you know these other people we
got doing battles, it ain't really working. Would you be
willing to step in? And I'm just like yeah, I
mean I can write some shit for whatever. I'll write
somebody some shit.

Speaker 2 (02:09:49):
It's cool.

Speaker 3 (02:09:50):
He's like no, no, no, no, no, I need you
to write it. Yeah, but I need you to step in.
And I'm like, fuck you me step in. He's like
like step in, like be on camera, Like oh shit,
I said okay. So he's like, well, I got an
idea for this character. His name is he Mama Lee.
I was like, say no more.

Speaker 2 (02:10:06):
I just knew what that meant.

Speaker 11 (02:10:08):
Sort of like doctor York meets you know, my man,
Doctor York, Doctor York meets whatever you.

Speaker 2 (02:10:19):
Add with that.

Speaker 7 (02:10:20):
I told he did it so well. I saw the
pilot the pilot episode, and I was like, I think
I thought you were ode or something, because I really
did not know.

Speaker 5 (02:10:28):
That was you.

Speaker 2 (02:10:28):
That was me and the Koofie in coof the in
the Shades.

Speaker 5 (02:10:32):
So the good news is that that Mamiley comes back,
go back in the season. I really really wanted a
whole subplot around in Mama Lee. I didn't get it,
but I'm still angling for it. If there's a season two.

Speaker 7 (02:10:47):
Yeah that means you can't share it because you'll want
to that's right.

Speaker 2 (02:10:50):
Yeah we uh we shot that, and yeah, I hope
well I spin off. Yo.

Speaker 3 (02:10:55):
I just saw him like I just want mam he
gotta have a white woman, because that's what all like
the whole dude, you gotta I.

Speaker 2 (02:11:01):
Was really you. I thought it was due. Now you
gotta have a white woman. You gotta be authentic hotep.

Speaker 3 (02:11:06):
Come on, like, there's no one that wants to fight
for black people more than the nigga with a white woman.
So like it got It's gotta work. So yeah, man,
we shot that and it was funny, like that was
like my culture shock. So the scene was supposed to
be imam Ali is the guy. He's like the old
guy that is, you know, he's out of touch and
he can rap, but he's trying to he would be

(02:11:30):
he doing push ups. I mean, he's doing push ups
with the perfect form, but he's trying to educate and shit.
So in the scene when shot, it was supposed to
be that a Mama a Lee lost the battle and
he's like the laughing stock. But when we shot the
scene and we had real extras and we told him
like real twenty twenty one years old of today, we

(02:11:51):
told him like, look react if some shit is whack,
say it's whack. If y'all here a hot line like
this is live. And so when I did Diverse, they
actually were cheering for me and shit like they.

Speaker 2 (02:12:02):
Liked it, you know what I mean.

Speaker 5 (02:12:03):
Well, the thing was the guy who was facing he
was a real MC, but he he was very nervous
because his first time on TV, so he kept forgetting
his lines. So now Fante's oh, you know, improvising in
characters like well, come to the youth center.

Speaker 2 (02:12:17):
We have memory pills.

Speaker 3 (02:12:21):
We got genkkobal Bo. It was just I was just
saying all kind of shit and so, and the thing
was my verse. I had to write it the night before,
and that's something you know, it's extremely hard to do,
like to write something and then have to memorize it.
So I'm an extra end the scene, and in between takes,
I'm going out and listening to my phone, like playing

(02:12:42):
the verse over and over and over again. And so
finally we shoot it, and you know, the kids reacted
to my shit. They was like yo, this they was
laughing and like they was hooting hollar. And so afterwards
me and Dan was talking. I was like, man, what
the fuck was that? That wasn't supposed to happen. And
he was like, well, you know what, dude, that audience
like that that you like now, they didn't get x claned,
they didn't get poor righteous teachers, they didn't get you know,

(02:13:05):
just that super pro black time and rap where we
just thought we was like gonna be black ay black.
They didn't get it. So to them it was cool
to see. So to them it wasn't a joke because
they didn't even get the reference to stuff that we were.

Speaker 2 (02:13:19):
Represent at that time.

Speaker 7 (02:13:20):
So it's just like in the pilot.

Speaker 2 (02:13:21):
This is in the pilot. This is the pilot.

Speaker 5 (02:13:23):
How my wish is that people can hear the whole
verse unbelievable and listen. Jay Smooth was an extra in
one of our scenes. I remember you your demo came
in when Jay Smooth was and Jay Smooth and I
had such fun listening to that demo.

Speaker 2 (02:13:40):
Yeah, I cut the demo that because you because again
you hit me that night.

Speaker 3 (02:13:43):
It's like eleven twelve o'clock and I was I just
left blue note with glassper and it's like twelve o'clock.
I'm getting back in the joint and he's like, so
I need you to do this scene. And by the way,
we're taping tomorrow, you know, like afternoon, so be read.
I'm like, all right, So I literally cut the demo
in hotel room with my little bull speaker, my iPad
and my iPhone and I just wrapped into that and

(02:14:06):
that was how we did it.

Speaker 2 (02:14:08):
And so yeah, that was it. So that was a
character I had to write for. It was what else your.

Speaker 3 (02:14:13):
Girl im Imani imam a lee. Uh, there is a
but I'll give you away too much. There is a audition,
audition scene scene coming up. Uh say, it's like three
or four acts I had to write for them. Uh,
you did a great job on that one, Thank you man.

Speaker 5 (02:14:31):
I mean, well, here's the thing is, it's not just
lyrics because again this gets back to my horrible an
R career. You know, we had to decide because there's
the banger at the end of the season, right, and
and what is the beat that we're going to use.
But there's a problem. And the problem is there's a

(02:14:51):
there's a plot line that involves a using a particular
Bob James sample and or rather use a sample a
record by Bob James, and which record was it going
to be? And I felt really boxed in. I felt like,
oh my god, you know, none of these things is
going to make something that hasn't already been done. And

(02:15:13):
I'm panicking because.

Speaker 3 (02:15:14):
We couldn't use knowledge. I was like, we can't use
knowledge and it was so great. Well it's nineteen it
was nineteen ninety. But the thing was with preing, like
I mean, just fucking preing. So we're talking samples and he's.

Speaker 5 (02:15:26):
Like, oh yeah, I'm about chop that back in ninety two.

Speaker 2 (02:15:29):
You know, what I mean. It's like, ah, shit, you
did do that, you know what I mean. So a
lot of that stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:15:33):
So I'm not going to mention the Bob James song,
but you suggest it, and I think I.

Speaker 2 (02:15:40):
Was just thinking, I tell you after it's over, but nah,
it's not that.

Speaker 5 (02:15:45):
And I thought I was like, oh, that is never
going to work. It's never gonna work. And I'm busy, like, Okay,
you know what, maybe it doesn't have to be Bob James.
Maybe we do a cooler gang song. Here's ten cooler
gang songs you can sample. I'm you know, panicking and
Funk is back, I mean co cool is back.

Speaker 2 (02:16:00):
We had that that was like it were.

Speaker 5 (02:16:01):
Possular, like four different artists that we could use to
make this plot line work. And Cream takes Fante's suggestion
and makes this. It's just unbelievable, the coolest no no,
no no Bob James record that that you have heard
in another classic Golden era hip hop hit that I

(02:16:22):
never thought could have been flipped in the way it
was flipped.

Speaker 3 (02:16:25):
And if you know, I'm I guess it right, I
want you to guess it. I know I'll confirm it,
all right, Yeah, I say, you probably guess it was No, Steve,
I don't think it is Holy Ship. He's a tappan
Zee Tap Records. Yeah, yes, he's a tappan Ze. Matt,

(02:16:47):
you're saying that. No, I'm just saying that.

Speaker 2 (02:16:53):
I didn't give it away the west Tester lady. Nah, No,
ain't that. Wait a minute, hang on, he I mean
take me to the Marty Ground was the that's that's
cat yet?

Speaker 3 (02:17:05):
Well here's the thing though, See, flipping was really not
a thing in nineteen ninety.

Speaker 2 (02:17:13):
Yeah, so all right, just for I remember.

Speaker 5 (02:17:18):
Age act that used this particular Bob James record didn't
exist yet, so it had not been used. So it
wasn't really a flip. It's a flip to us, Yeah,
in twenty seventeen. But uh, the producer DV thought it
up all himself in nineteen ninety.

Speaker 2 (02:17:38):
It's not Westchester lady. Nah. Well it's not the on example.

Speaker 7 (02:17:44):
Nah Nah, that one is flip like a technical thing.

Speaker 2 (02:17:47):
Well, just to flip.

Speaker 5 (02:17:49):
Take my sample that's already been used in using it.

Speaker 1 (02:17:52):
In other words, if you have a roob excube, once
all the sides are completely done, that's nineteen ninety. Cats
just started mixing it all up and you know, all
the colors up and messing it up like by.

Speaker 5 (02:18:05):
N It's like, you know, you know, player's anthem by
Junior Mafia, right, So Prem and Jabul to sort of
poke fun at it, they take the same sample, which
is a new birth sample and they flip it.

Speaker 3 (02:18:20):
Yeah so yeah, so but nah, that was I mean,
it's been an incredible like just to be able to,
you know, do that shit like so I like it.
It puts me in his own where I like to
be like kind of behind the scenes and like live
my life through different people. And you know, it's that's
just fun to watch, Like with hearing other people interpret

(02:18:40):
your words. That shit is amazing to me. It's a
lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (02:18:47):
The first episode of season one is aired.

Speaker 3 (02:18:52):
What can you tell us about where these characters are
going without giving stuff away?

Speaker 5 (02:18:58):
Well, you know, they're on a collision course with destiny,
I think, you know. I they're dealing with what we
were dealing with in nineteen ninety. They're dealing with major
labels coming in and sniffing money and sniffing around and

(02:19:20):
offering a lot of personal opportunity to folks. Do you
take that or do you not take that and what
what do you you know, what are the risks taking
that big, cushy, major label job and what do you
sacrifice in the process? You know, what does DV do
to you know? How much does he want to work

(02:19:41):
with them? And how much danger is he willing to
put himself in? You know, for David who works at
the you know, the quote unquote urban radio station. You
know how he wants hip hop to be on the
air so much, But is he is he willing to
understand that, you know, it's business not just you know,

(02:20:02):
to give people moral lessons on you know, the hip
hop should be. You know that there he may have to,
you know, take a little advice from his father to
do some of the things he wants to do.

Speaker 7 (02:20:16):
What Harris his character? I want to ask you about
him because I feel like some of these characters are
like an amalgamation of a few people. Some of them
may be just one person that you knew, But what
Harris's character a few people, one person.

Speaker 5 (02:20:30):
Few people, you know, I think they're definitely shades of
Russell there would when he plays them, he channels a
lot of Dame you know. Yeah, there's a manic energy
there that even Russell. Can't you know, it's not it's
more Dame or Puff than it is Russell. But he's
also he's the great thing about watching this season, one

(02:20:53):
of the best things anyway, was watching these characters make
like Barry Foray is his own thing. Now. He's not Russell,
he's not Dame. He's Barry for Ray and you can
see him there in nineteen ninety and it makes sense
and the character has some integrity.

Speaker 7 (02:21:08):
I love the way into it for the lead character,
the female, I'm start forget her name after the actress charge.

Speaker 2 (02:21:16):
Yeah, she is.

Speaker 7 (02:21:16):
You are introducing the concept of the intern and really
that because you know that time is over now. So
it's interested in telling the story of a music intern
and what they had to go to a female music
intern in that world. And I almost wonder with two
males in the situation, who like, is there another female
to kind of come in and be like, this is
a whole different aspect that you don't made me know
or did you just already?

Speaker 5 (02:21:37):
Like Nikki will have a few mentors to choose from, say,
over the course of the season, and Mac, I mean
yeah for me, didn't even talk about the DJ battle.
Mac enrolled himself in Scratch Academy to learn how to
DJ so he could participate.

Speaker 2 (02:21:57):
And wow, what's that? What's his name? Your boy?

Speaker 1 (02:22:09):
Ryan gosling Uh took up six months of piano lessons
to play all the actual he's actually playing all that
jazz stuff and the fingerings correct and the chords are correct.

Speaker 2 (02:22:22):
Wow, that's him actually playing.

Speaker 7 (02:22:24):
We'll talk about back in that way. And also his
like history with music because he's like a different kind
of actor in the sense of playing a role like this,
his relationship with hip hop and his commitment, it's different.

Speaker 5 (02:22:34):
I feel like, yeah, well, he grew up in stat
Ny and his father cut all the dudes from the
Wu Tang clan's hair.

Speaker 3 (02:22:40):
You know.

Speaker 5 (02:22:40):
He he's known method man since he was a kid.
Who plays his dad, right, who plays his dad?

Speaker 2 (02:22:46):
Fun fact, but actually read for that role.

Speaker 3 (02:22:50):
Somewhere, hopefully on a hard drive, fucking buried way somewhere
audition audition for for his role, and I didn't think
it would work. I was like, I'm gonna just do
this shit anyway.

Speaker 2 (02:23:03):
I don't think I maybe play his uncle, but he
didn't play that.

Speaker 5 (02:23:06):
That dream had to die. So in MoMA Leve yes.

Speaker 2 (02:23:10):
Yet there was also a character we had. It was
a scene we cut the.

Speaker 3 (02:23:15):
Fred Jamal, the record store guy, and that was one
of the things that like, really I like because we
kind of get the show. You know, we're playing with
history and you sometimes you get to show how wrong
people got it. And so there was one scene where
the guy David, he goes to the record store and
he asked the guy in the record store, hey, give

(02:23:37):
me I want to take some pictures of the customers who.

Speaker 2 (02:23:40):
Are in here buying hip hop, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (02:23:42):
And so he then takes those pictures and goes to
his uh you know, goes to his boss and it's like, yo,
these people are like whip hop. But the thing is,
the guy at the store is saying, Hey, I don't
want them to play hip hop on the radio because
if they played on the radio, they're not gonna buy it.
Not yeah, not even getting that, Like, no, motherfucker, that

(02:24:05):
is what will bring people to me. But he was just,
you know, he got it so fucking wrong, you know
what I mean. And there's little things that you'll see
in the season where you know, people will make statements
and it's just like, oh my god, yeah, you know,
you don't.

Speaker 2 (02:24:17):
Once told us that Pete crap, are you serious?

Speaker 1 (02:24:22):
When he was doing his long time first he was like, yo, man,
I don't want to come out with a record because like,
once you make a record, you're whack. I don't it's
like seeing you want to just do mixtapes all your life.
So yeah, there's a mystery to it, like people are
still waiting for me. But like once the now comes out.

Speaker 2 (02:24:43):
Wow, then.

Speaker 7 (02:24:46):
You know, wow, I don't think he never did he.

Speaker 2 (02:24:49):
Never he could be an aquarium. I'm sorry, but yeah,
but but yeah, we.

Speaker 3 (02:24:57):
Have little moments like that that are really uh you know,
you're watching it with the knowledge of what happens to
these people or people will held those thoughts.

Speaker 2 (02:25:06):
And that's been fun for me, like kind of seeing
how that plays out, just tuning in before you. I
I'm looking, Okay, is it.

Speaker 8 (02:25:23):
This?

Speaker 2 (02:25:26):
No?

Speaker 7 (02:25:26):
Damn?

Speaker 2 (02:25:28):
Wow?

Speaker 3 (02:25:29):
No, I guess it's right up under your nose, like you.
I gotta watch it again on television. No, no, no,
you ain't gotta know this is. This doesn't happen till later,
So it ain't. It ain't air yet. It hasn't air yet.

Speaker 2 (02:25:42):
It's the final episode. Yeah, it's coming.

Speaker 1 (02:25:45):
So but you closed though, saying when I hear this joint,
I'm gonna want to kick my television off the plasmas.

Speaker 3 (02:25:56):
Like yes, because that's something that's so obvious and it's
something that has been and it's not Artilus.

Speaker 2 (02:26:06):
No, it's not that.

Speaker 3 (02:26:07):
That was one of the ones that we were looking at.
But he Prema already used part. No, it's not all
less because PREMI used it. My mind spray already did
that for Jay Rue Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, did my
spray and the and the group home.

Speaker 2 (02:26:22):
Yeah yeah, that sounds like, yeah I did that one.

Speaker 5 (02:26:25):
You know what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (02:26:25):
We did that one and the night ju you know
what I'm saying. And then my mind spray. You know
what I'm saying, we did that one.

Speaker 3 (02:26:34):
I was like, okay, Primo, so yeah, but no, it
ain't that one. It ain't that But I mean you
it's right up on your nose like you he be like,
what the fuck? The only last one that he used
was did he use it before?

Speaker 2 (02:26:47):
No, Preme never used it before.

Speaker 5 (02:26:49):
He never used it, which is why it sounds fresh.

Speaker 2 (02:26:54):
Oh man, did red Man use it before? I know
what you think?

Speaker 7 (02:27:06):
Not?

Speaker 2 (02:27:06):
No, one just tuning in is ques Low Supreme. We
got him playing bitch you guessed, I'm right, God, I
got a question? Can I ask a questions? Quose your
show bill?

Speaker 12 (02:27:22):
First of all, Dan is also a teacher, and we
didn't we haven't got to that part. Yeah, we teach
at the same school, I know, which is amazing.

Speaker 2 (02:27:27):
I forgot fantastic.

Speaker 12 (02:27:28):
But you walked in you said, you said Martin Man
was in my class, and I feel like that was
a big thing that we then went into this whole
crazy batshit show and the real because he was on
this show and he was it was amazing. And I'm
sure you have a story too well.

Speaker 5 (02:27:43):
I mean, he's just first of all, to even come
to a small class and to and to talk about
his career. You know, we were really just talking. I'm
teaching a class on the Golden Age of hip hop
and we're sort of pinning it between the years eighty
seven and ninety three for a few reasons. And you know,
he came to talk about the bridge, he came to
talk about that jump to sample drums right that, uh,

(02:28:09):
And I never knew and this is a whole sort
of nerd thing, but I never knew I always thought
that the bridge was made on an SB twelve hundred.

Speaker 3 (02:28:16):
No, he talked about dude, when he told us that
we just that, and when he told us that the shakers,
oh my god, the shakers that make the music is him.

Speaker 2 (02:28:28):
That's him doing He's literally making the music. Was the
whole four hours? Was like, no, you didn't, Yes, it did.
That was pretty much. I mean next to Whitney and Swine.
Oh my god. So apparently there was a story that
was close to being a Whitney and TJ. Swan duett

(02:28:49):
there's no place right, Yeah, Whitney.

Speaker 5 (02:28:54):
Exactly make the music with your mouth Bobby.

Speaker 3 (02:28:58):
Whitney and Thomas Jerome Swan together. Yeah, Bro, Marty had
crazy stories. So like did the kids like, so when
you have someone like Marty come in, are they aware
of who they're looking at?

Speaker 2 (02:29:11):
And like, you know what that means?

Speaker 5 (02:29:12):
Surprisingly? This class really was so, you know, because they're young,
and I'm not saying surprising because they're really good students,
but I mean they were born after Tupac died, you know,
so what do they know what?

Speaker 2 (02:29:26):
And ap right?

Speaker 3 (02:29:33):
Right? Wow?

Speaker 5 (02:29:36):
Yeah, but I love I love teaching.

Speaker 2 (02:29:39):
One of your students was Maggie Rogers. That's right, that
was Oh she's dope.

Speaker 3 (02:29:45):
I can't claim her either.

Speaker 2 (02:29:47):
No, No, she's my student too, but she's more. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:29:50):
Yeah, she was my first student, my very first class
that I ever taught.

Speaker 3 (02:29:54):
She Maggie Rogers is she's a young singer songwriter. Pharrell
did a video Yo, this has been your Bob power
where they just you know, they played records.

Speaker 2 (02:30:05):
You know, you could play your records for phar real,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (02:30:09):
He came in and and kind of gave him notes,
and so Maggie played her joint and that was the
joint where he was just like, yo, I have no
notes for this.

Speaker 2 (02:30:16):
This ship is crazy, and she ended up getting the deal.

Speaker 1 (02:30:19):
She's yea, I will back up my student in a
couple of weeks on the Tonight show.

Speaker 5 (02:30:31):
Yeah so great.

Speaker 3 (02:30:33):
Yeah, but she's she's dope. She's really she has her
it's completely singular. She sounds like nothing else.

Speaker 2 (02:30:39):
How many semesters do you do at the school?

Speaker 5 (02:30:43):
Fall and spring?

Speaker 2 (02:30:44):
You do too? Yeah, I can only do this is
the first year that I opted not to do it.

Speaker 1 (02:30:51):
I wanted you to teach the Dela Della class. Well, no, no, no,
I'm gonna still come in good. But you know what
when they first when when when they approached me about
doing it, the idea of doing it because they wanted it,
like last year's or whatever. I felt weird about it

(02:31:13):
because there were there was no no curriculum and no
periodicals or or or books that I could use to teach.
And I don't even know if I'm eloquent enough to
really convey how special he was as a human being

(02:31:39):
and as a musician, especially in the age of now,
which you can easily with the click of a button
get results, where all your stuff is quantized and if
you want to, you know, chop up your stuff in
a certain way. And you know, I'm trying to explain
to these people like he was making these miracles with
his bare hands and brain, like before this technology existed,

(02:32:05):
like the only way to describe it. H Hendrix's second album,
Access Bold as Love. You know, we take for advantage,
we take it for granted. No well, no, no, no,
just the whole album in general. Like Hendricks Damn Near
invented the Hendricks and Eddi Kramer invented the technology that

(02:32:26):
we take for granted.

Speaker 2 (02:32:26):
Now, the idea of phasing and and certain echo effects
and chambers as instrument.

Speaker 1 (02:32:32):
Yeah, and you know, so, how what is your goal
in teaching about Dila that will make it as mind
blowing for them as it was for me.

Speaker 3 (02:32:47):
To see that stuff firsthand as he's doing.

Speaker 2 (02:32:50):
Yeah, you have a theory like what you've told to me.

Speaker 5 (02:32:53):
For like the three inventors I called the three Kings
of American rhythm. There's Louis Armstrong who basically established swing,
you know, as sort of the American approach to meter
in rhythm, James Brown who turned every instrument into a
drum and the one obviously, and then Dila, who freed

(02:33:14):
us from the grid.

Speaker 2 (02:33:14):
You know, he established I had to It's only right,
you know.

Speaker 5 (02:33:23):
He he sort of renegotiated the relationship between man and machine.
To me, now, it's different because if you look at
I know, you got soul right. You have these two
breakbeat records that really made hip hop funky in a
way that a quantized drum machine couldn't. But there was
something about what Dila was doing that for the first time,

(02:33:45):
traditional musicians are trying to do what he did. And
I feel very funny laying this out here because the
very first traditional musician to you know, to try to
succeed in doing that as you oh wait.

Speaker 2 (02:34:01):
Wait, who is it? Like, I gotta know who it is?
I forgot. I mean, yeah, it's it's it's weird, man.

Speaker 1 (02:34:15):
It's just like during that period, I was the exact
opposite because I had such a chip on my sto. Yeah,
I wanted to be perfect and and it took d
and Dyla for the most part to unravel that, that
that yarn that I had wrapped myself in a perfection

(02:34:37):
and coldness that.

Speaker 2 (02:34:40):
It's is hard to describe.

Speaker 1 (02:34:41):
Like even today, I think, uh, the the cats from
the Lumineers were on the show today and we were
just in our zone. We did like three or four
Dila joints in a row, and you know, I mean
there's there's a lot of downtime in the show like that.
You don't see speaking of the tonight show, there's a

(02:35:03):
lot of downtime in which sets have to be changed whatever.
So we're just jamming amongst ourselves and we just got
lost in a rabbit hole of crazy timing.

Speaker 2 (02:35:14):
And you know, I was trying to explain.

Speaker 3 (02:35:17):
To them it was like some new you know, the
way you guys did that crazy thing with the beat.
I don't know how to describe it, and it was weird,
Like I couldn't describe it to them either.

Speaker 2 (02:35:31):
So it's like.

Speaker 1 (02:35:34):
That, that's the fear that I feel like I will
drop history or or drop you know, misrepresent his his importance.
But you know, I'm glad that you you know that
you're you're stepping up to Well.

Speaker 5 (02:35:51):
I don't claim to be a Della expert by any stretch.
I mean, my personal history is weird in this sense
because my very first trip to Detroit was to work
with him Gino and Gino excel and I flew to Detroit. Yeah,
and the other one, the one would Sphere and how

(02:36:11):
it Goes, I think is the name of that song.

Speaker 2 (02:36:13):
So we flew to Detroit.

Speaker 5 (02:36:16):
We stayed, you know, downtown, We drove out to car Gardens.
We yeah, athanaeum right, and we went to his house
on Nevada and met my duke's and went downstairs and
Common was recording like Water for Chocolate with him. Around
that time, we went to the Mongolian Barbecue and deeborn
dearborn across from studio A like the whole thing and

(02:36:37):
what was really weird is that Dilla laid the tracks
and then vanished. Oh wow, and that was it, basically,
you know. And I understand that sometimes that was the
way he worked or whatever, and that I would never
have imagined that moment that I would have sort of
another part of my life in Detroit many years later.
My wife is from Detroit. I'm back there all the time,

(02:36:58):
and every time i'm there, I think of that first time.
And that's where the genesis of the class came from.

Speaker 2 (02:37:04):
So does she say what up? Though she does not.
She does.

Speaker 5 (02:37:10):
She's a poet and a tenured professor at the New School,
so she does not say, yeah, but I want to
here's the theory. Here's the theory about Dila time. I
wanted to run it by you, and I'm thinking of
sort of staking a claim that because everybody's talking about
what is what is Diyl time? Oh well, it's just
he doesn't quantize the beasts. That's good, that's not exactly it.

(02:37:32):
And oh it's septuplet swing. But yeah, but that doesn't
account for the for the rushed snare. So my feeling
is that Dila time, what Dila time really is? What
what all of the traditional and electronic musicians are trying
to do. Is it's the deliberate cultivation, uh of tension
between straight and swung elements in a song, and that

(02:37:56):
tension is dynamic, it changes over time.

Speaker 1 (02:37:59):
That's that's that's the Thelonious Monk theory, remember his idea
of subnes But there's the rhythm version of it. And
it's weird because between Dyla there's Prince and the risk,
both of them, both of whom I consider the risk
more the accidental tourist where you take a song like, uh.

Speaker 3 (02:38:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:38:22):
Verbal Intercourse is a perfect example of that, where it's
just like sounds funky, leave it like it is. And
Prince well Susan Rodgers recently admit it because if you
listen to the Prince's stuff, you'll notice that he'll program
almost uh kind of like in sixty four bars, you're

(02:38:45):
really supposed to do four, maybe eight, maybe sixteen of
your club, but sixty four bars. That means you're planning
ahead of time with drum feels that only will come
around maybe once in your song, right, And that's how
Masi was. But he would also save tracks and which
he would do stuff by hand just so it can

(02:39:06):
Sound Human.

Speaker 5 (02:39:07):
Well, you were the person who described the toree in
his book, the the straight clap from the drum machine
and Lady cab Driver. But he's playing by hand, right, Yeah,
then he does this other thing rhythmically with the bass. Right.
If you listen to like Irresistible, Bitch or Tricky, he
will give you almost a shell of what the baseline is.

(02:39:32):
He'll play like two notes out of eight, right, but
for the eight, so you hear the eight, but you
don't hear the eight.

Speaker 2 (02:39:43):
Oh my god, we're brothers. That's why I was surprised
that I had never met each other.

Speaker 5 (02:39:47):
I was like, you have you have met.

Speaker 3 (02:39:51):
Boys show?

Speaker 2 (02:39:52):
Wait? Were you there at the time?

Speaker 5 (02:39:53):
I may have been there, But here's where we met.
We met when I worked for Forrest. I came to
Sigma Sound to meet with Richard right who rest in
peace man. I never had a chance to tell you
in person. I was so sad to hear his passing.
And then after that, the next saw you was out

(02:40:17):
in the musicology tour in the meadowlands. It was it
was you were just walking and getting a drink from
the water fountain in the middle, you know, in the
middle of this Prince concert for college and I just
walked up to you. I didn't even introduce myself. I
just said, you're my favorite drummer. That's all I said.

(02:40:38):
That's all I said. And then I think the next
time I saw you was when I did the Experienced
Music Project thing on Breakbeats and you were That's when
you played the Rod Temperton uh demo for rock with you.

Speaker 2 (02:40:56):
Wo Yes, what did I tell you already? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
I'm waiting. I'm waiting. Yeah, we'll talk, Okay, we'll talk after.

Speaker 5 (02:41:06):
But it's a pleasure to be here now.

Speaker 2 (02:41:07):
Better late than never.

Speaker 3 (02:41:08):
Like I want to talk about meats and plots, man,
I want to talk about you know, so this book
it was after you wrote The Big Payback. Uh, this
is a book about how shifts can teach you how
to organize your life. So tell us about like the

(02:41:32):
principles of that, like what are the and by the way,
I actually bought this book, I have to read it.
Work clean is the name, So tell us about that,
like just the philosophy of meats and plots and what
that means.

Speaker 5 (02:41:44):
After I wrote The Big Payback. You know, it's a
six hundred and sixty page book, and I just was drained,
you know, and I had a wife and a baby
and a you know, I didn't I couldn't imagine myself
writing another book, and you know, we were developing the breaks,
so you know, I had other things to do.

Speaker 2 (02:42:04):
And how long did it take you to write the back?

Speaker 5 (02:42:07):
Just four years? Really really heavy. But my first interview
I did for The Big Payback was ten years before
the both came out, So you know, work Clean came
out of the pain of the interim, you know, after
The Big Payback came out, and I was still working
at a corporate media company which shall be unmentioned, and

(02:42:33):
it was just painful to see.

Speaker 2 (02:42:36):
At you working there with boss Bill with a branch
out that's.

Speaker 5 (02:42:38):
Right, that's right where where This is a very funny
story when when Bill came in to interview for the
job and I found out that he was actually DJ brainchild,
I got down on my knees, literally got down on
my knees and bowed to him. And Jerry Barrow said
to me, you know, that's really not going to help
with the salary negotiations. Yeah, well, he's a genius and

(02:43:04):
I'm sorry he's not here right now. But uh so
the pain of seeing waste on such a broad scale,
you know, waste of time, waste of resources, waste of space,
waste of relationships. And at the time I was just
to sort of unwind or whatever. I would read chef
narratives all the time. So I read Anthony Bourdain and

(02:43:27):
Michael Roohman and oh the book Heat by Bill Buford,
like just the amazing books about the culinary world, not cookbooks,
but about chef's lives in the kitchen. And these are
you know, wild people and wild narratives. But the one
thing that ties them all together is this discipline that
they call meson plas.

Speaker 2 (02:43:47):
Right.

Speaker 5 (02:43:48):
It's a way of relating to time, space, energy, and motion.
And it was the only thing that I really wanted
to write about, and the reason I wanted to write
about it because I look for a book on meson
plas and nobody had ever written one. So I just
used the tools of the journalist again, and I interviewed
over one hundred people from the culinary field over the
course of two years. I did an NPR story based

(02:44:09):
on that sort of boiled it down to ten principles, right,
But they're all about relating to time, space, motion resources,
and just like the way that chefs think about things
are is not the way that we think. And for
each of the ten principles, I you know, tell a

(02:44:30):
story of a chef. And one of those chefs happened
to be Jerobi White of a Tribe call Quest, whom
I had never met, even though I had interviewed. I
did the very first press day for trib call Quest,
like when they came out in nine, but I never
met Jeroby all this time, We've probably been in a
million rooms together and never met. And I'm so lucky
to count him as a friend now. But I get

(02:44:51):
to tell his story in that book We're Clean. It's
a great story. And his his story is about perfecting movements, right,
how he learned to stop wasting motion and to be
really focused in the kitchen. And Jerobi actually came up
with the science of the magic triangle, right man, that
everything we do is basically a triangle, you know, and
we're a circle within a triangle, and that's how we

(02:45:14):
should arrange our space.

Speaker 2 (02:45:15):
Have you seen have you seen the founder the Michael
Doug Michael Douglas, Michael.

Speaker 3 (02:45:21):
Keaton knowing about McDonald's across you saw it.

Speaker 1 (02:45:25):
I seen it and almost broke my my. Uh my
vegan run cheeseburger right after.

Speaker 3 (02:45:33):
Man, they talk about, oh, it's it's really good. It's
like it's cold blood as fun but it's good. But
they kind of the McDonald brothers, they kind of were
doing that, like the way they set up their original
you know, McDonald's restaurant. It was based on you know,
economy of movement like everything. It's funny to hear, like

(02:45:55):
choreograph perfect it was. Yeah, it was really like a
routine like the like they practiced in the court on
the tennis court.

Speaker 2 (02:46:02):
Yeah, yeah, they.

Speaker 1 (02:46:03):
Practiced before they even got McDonald's, Like okay, you do
that most in that motion, like not even carrying anything.

Speaker 3 (02:46:08):
They were just practicing the body motion of how to
get you once is off they go here and then
we switch and then like this ship is crazy.

Speaker 5 (02:46:16):
Y'all have like a quest love supreme movie night where
y'all just go to the Marines together.

Speaker 7 (02:46:20):
Don't we need just you know, I mean a book
list a movie night.

Speaker 3 (02:46:25):
Well, now we won't get the should we barely watch?
Uh we did watch what's called as a family kind
of not sleep out with Meili's joint.

Speaker 2 (02:46:36):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah twice. Don't watch that. We did
the musical lesson. Uh, that was good exactly.

Speaker 3 (02:46:45):
There's one that you one of their principles that really
spoke to me. You talk about clean as you go.

Speaker 5 (02:46:51):
Very important.

Speaker 2 (02:46:52):
Talk about that one. Well.

Speaker 5 (02:46:54):
The science behind clean as you go is that anybody
and create a system, like you decide you're going to
organize your desk, right, and you spend two hours or
three hours or a whole day organizing your space, and
it's great, right, And it doesn't mean shit because unless
you maintain a system, you can't keep a system. And

(02:47:18):
the only way to maintain a system is to clean
as you go, is to keep the system through motion. Right.
A system is not to be looked at, right, Oh,
I've organized things. It's like you know, the system is
not a noun, it's a verb. Right, So you have
to be able to move through things. So you have
to make that commitment to you know, put things back

(02:47:39):
where they go, right. And that doesn't just work for
the physical world. It also works for the virtual world.
It works for the emotional world, right. And it's just
about taking that extra two seconds to put something away
so that you're not costing yourself, you know, a minute
or two later, or you know, making a real mistake.

(02:48:02):
You know I did. One of the stories I tell
that book is how my burn my I got like
second degree burns on my hand because my dear wife
put very hot pan down on top of the garbage
can where hot pant is not supposed to go. Yeah,
you know, and but it was my failure for not
being aware. That's one of the principles is awareness. And
you know she wasn't, you know, maintaining her system as

(02:48:25):
she went. So we both had to learn from.

Speaker 2 (02:48:26):
How do you apply this to your life?

Speaker 3 (02:48:28):
Because I know you're like we like, I mean, you
talk a lot about like meditation and stuff. You're like
heavy into yoga orly you know what I'm saying. And
you were telling me about like last time it was
a it was like some kind of squat that you
do that transfers the sexual energy out of your body
so you don't be thinking about fucking these holes.

Speaker 2 (02:48:48):
I can't I can't remember the name of that squad,
but it was no but he no, he was. He
was giving me game for focus.

Speaker 7 (02:48:56):
I'm saying, I'm really real, I like everybody list.

Speaker 3 (02:49:07):
So how do you applow this because I mean, dude,
like from I know what life was like for me
when we were working on the breaks, and I can
only imagine what the fuck was like for you in
between that and NYU and you know, family, how do
you apply this to your life?

Speaker 5 (02:49:22):
I'm not perfect at it. I mean I have I
do too much and I get sick, you know, and
that's not good. You know, I got pneumonia last year.

Speaker 2 (02:49:29):
Like it was it was bad. Yeah, damn.

Speaker 5 (02:49:34):
But uh, you know for me, you know, one of
the principles that's really helped me is, you know, the
idea of what do you do? What do you choose
to do first?

Speaker 2 (02:49:45):
Right?

Speaker 5 (02:49:45):
And all of the systems of organization that are very
popular talk about you do the worst first, right. Stephen
Covey all of his books like talks about you put
the big rocks in the jar first, not the small rocks,
because the big rocks are what counting. If you don't
get the big rocks in first, you know, and you
put the small rocks in, how are you ever going
to get the big rocks in?

Speaker 2 (02:50:05):
Right?

Speaker 5 (02:50:05):
All that do the worst first, And the thing is
you don't do the worst first out that takes it
out of you, like you don't do it else. For
another reason is that chefs actually see the world in
two separate, like parallel kinds of time. There's process time
and then there's intensive time, right, processed hands on and

(02:50:26):
hands off time essentially, right, something intensive like oh, I
need to make a beat, or I need to write
this essay, or I need to do whatever with my hands. Right,
you can't delegate that. You can't. You know, you have
to be there. So three hours is worth three hours
of you know, your work is worth three hours. But

(02:50:47):
there are other things called that set processes in motion
that you can do called process time. Like I need
to make the rice for dinner, right, I can't do
that at the end of it because it takes a
while to make the rice, right, So I have to
do it first. It only takes five seconds, but that

(02:51:09):
five seconds is worth the you know, thirty minutes that
it takes to make that rice. So sometimes you can't
do the worst first. Sometimes you have to start processes
so you can get hours of work for just minutes,
hours of worth for just minutes of the minutes. That's
how chefs think, damn. So that's helped me I gotta

(02:51:30):
redo my book again. I feel inadequately. Now you're you're
working on a Box Wiley or something.

Speaker 2 (02:51:37):
I heard.

Speaker 1 (02:51:39):
Oh no, no, no, no, I did mind. I mean
mine was more or less about the creative process.

Speaker 2 (02:51:45):
Yeah, I bought both yos something the food about. I
bought both y'alls on the same.

Speaker 1 (02:51:49):
It's about the creative process. But I mean, yeah, you
go to the ninth level of hell to get that
these theories that I didn't even think about. Like, I'm
just thinking that chefs are like musicians in their creative process,
but you're taking it to a whole other level.

Speaker 7 (02:52:10):
It's still parallel. It's interesting because y'all too, still went parallel.
It's still the same as you know, the food, the music,
the teaching. It rounds out. It's just interesting.

Speaker 2 (02:52:20):
That's what I learned.

Speaker 1 (02:52:22):
Well, we were about to wrap up, but I was
about to say I learned that I really have a Yeah,
who knew we look alike. We love Dylan and Prince
and Prince bootlegs and.

Speaker 3 (02:52:38):
Yeah, yeah, we both loved Bill Johnson, Bill Johnson unpaid Bill,
and we have.

Speaker 2 (02:52:46):
Projects that use Night on ball Ball by Bob James. No, no,
it's so obvious that like, it's yeah, tell him, is
that what we do?

Speaker 5 (02:53:03):
Is that this story end.

Speaker 2 (02:53:09):
I totally forgot about.

Speaker 7 (02:53:11):
Yeah, yes, oh yes, give it to him.

Speaker 2 (02:53:19):
May give it he said, He said that he kind
of gave it away.

Speaker 5 (02:53:23):
I did.

Speaker 2 (02:53:24):
I played it, Yeah, you played it good? Wow? I
think I got it on my phone out. I learned
that Steve is the jazz master of the circle.

Speaker 7 (02:53:34):
I just said, cheated late like he said it like
an hour ago.

Speaker 5 (02:53:38):
All right, Well what he did with that beat, it's unbelievable.

Speaker 2 (02:53:42):
Is the intro I play it I live. I think
it was the intro is.

Speaker 1 (02:53:50):
Used because I never get past arrested development right, there's
other parts of the song, no, but I couldn't get
past me.

Speaker 5 (02:53:56):
I said, how can anybody make anything not corny?

Speaker 7 (02:54:00):
This?

Speaker 5 (02:54:01):
Sorry?

Speaker 2 (02:54:01):
And I sent him. I was like, yo, I think
this part is you know in prim Us you were right,
you were so right.

Speaker 5 (02:54:08):
And what makes it great is that prem also flips
the NT drums. I think I think he uses the
you know that right, the one that everybody.

Speaker 3 (02:54:22):
Likes because they originally I think the first draft of
that song it was it was he he had used
misdemeanor and at that time I'm just like, well, you know,
this is nineteen ninety so it's funky enough.

Speaker 2 (02:54:35):
Pretty much killed misdemeanor. So I was like, I don't
think we could you know, use that. But uh but yeah,
y'all take it into the next level. Even I would
have let that slide.

Speaker 3 (02:54:43):
Yeah, I was like, nah, that's that's DC so but
uh but nah, man. So right now, how are your
days spent? I mean it's it's, you know, teaching once
the breaks is, once this season finishes, we get word
on you know, season twoog, you know, one way or another.

Speaker 2 (02:55:05):
Yeah, if its assuming it is, when do you go back?

Speaker 8 (02:55:09):
It is?

Speaker 5 (02:55:09):
It is?

Speaker 2 (02:55:10):
When do you go back into the writer's room next month?

Speaker 5 (02:55:13):
Ship?

Speaker 2 (02:55:14):
Are you serious? So get back to work.

Speaker 3 (02:55:18):
And wake up call.

Speaker 5 (02:55:20):
Wow. I'm also working on a bit of a I
told you a little project for Russell as well. Yeah,
so you actually did hire me after all those years.

Speaker 3 (02:55:30):
I feel like you say, a little project for Russell
will be like Crush Groove two. All right, So Dan,
i'd like to thank you for doing our show.

Speaker 2 (02:55:40):
We appreciate it, thank you, sir. It's very hard.

Speaker 5 (02:55:46):
I'm like, it's the normal length of the show. Y'all
going to edit this down to like fifteen minutes.

Speaker 2 (02:55:51):
This is Quest Love Supreme. We go along.

Speaker 3 (02:55:54):
This is I mean wow, yeah the breaks. Check us
out Monday nights nine eight Central on v H one
every Monday.

Speaker 2 (02:56:08):
Yeah, nope, come come, I let us Well, thank you
very much.

Speaker 3 (02:56:11):
On behalf of the Question Love Supreme team.

Speaker 2 (02:56:15):
This is Quest Love apparently not the.

Speaker 3 (02:56:19):
Bob Jeams expert.

Speaker 5 (02:56:20):
I thought I was, uh.

Speaker 2 (02:56:24):
Whatever.

Speaker 1 (02:56:26):
We will see you next week Wednesday at one pm
with an all new episode of Question Love Supreme.

Speaker 2 (02:56:33):
All right, y'all next week.

Speaker 1 (02:56:53):
Court Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. This classic
episode was produced by the team at Pandora. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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