March 4, 2025 • 37 mins
A legendary LA music producer offers to help the band record their comeback album - but do they still have what it takes, now that they’re being given the chance? The band heads to LA and quickly learns that working with the biggest hit-makers of today feels a whole lot different than when they were just writing for themselves in prison. Creative differences make for an uncertain outcome.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
An A and E original podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
As Loveting off You as we wove You'll go, bless
you enough for load, Let's see abowt.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Load That is Edged Daybreak. In August of twenty twenty two,
the band was together in Richmond preparing for what they
hoped might be their biggest break yet. In one week,
the band would be in Los Angeles with a proper
studio session, musicians and a big time producer. They'd be
(00:39):
making their first music together since nineteen seventy nine. In
that week leading up to LA we booked an apartment
in Richmond so they'd have a spot to meet up
in practice.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
As a loing off you, andoove.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Okay as a lout a love off.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Your gloves and remove your gold.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Jamal was in a T shirt and cupcake, looked ready
for the beach with her muscle shirt and freshly bleached hair.
Neil had on a loose fitting three piece cream suit.
He just come from church. My job for the next
few weeks was to document the process them coming back
together as a group and finding their voices. I'd be
(01:27):
joined by my co producers and a camera crew to
get behind the scenes footage for the band members. It
was an added layer of pressure.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
We've been together in forty two.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
I just said.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
We got to get this expected that we're going in
the studio, and like I said, they gonna give us
time to do.
Speaker 6 (01:45):
This, and I ain't going to be in those studios
sounding like Avenue and the Chipmunks.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Neil had brought his songbook with him. It's a huge
old notebook, jammed with extra pages. There had to be
dozens of songs in there. In preparation for the new album,
Neil had put together a bunch of demos of his tracks,
seventeen in all. He'd sent most of them to me
on cassettes.
Speaker 7 (02:08):
Oh, I'm sious Kings, and I like to do a
selection of songs that I originally wrote and composed.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
I'll also be planning to get to.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
For a few of them, he sang to me over
the phone.
Speaker 7 (02:24):
I don't know how I got all this volume, said,
but I'm going to leave it like.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
It is and do it again.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It sounds great, Okay, here would go the song is cold.
Speaker 8 (02:30):
I can't seem to contact you now.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Neil didn't know exactly which songs he'd be singing. That
part would happen in La but in the meantime, he
was determined to remember them all.
Speaker 7 (02:42):
I want to sing by my Sessa bling, I want
to shout shout until a drop, and I want to
dress look my very best. I got it.
Speaker 8 (02:51):
It's in my mind. Now I'll play a little bit
of it.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Neil had been way waiting for this moment for years.
He'd even written a song about Los Angeles, a city
he'd never been to. It's called bad old Hollywood.
Speaker 7 (03:09):
Well, I say, this is a place that needs a song,
like New York got on New York, New yek you know,
they got their own song. And I say, what would
people identify with people out in Hollywood? So I thought about, Okay,
people masquerade, uh change love of each day? I mean, no,
that's wrong, people mask, Yeah, love of the exchange every day.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
And I said, let me go a little bit further.
Speaker 7 (03:35):
I say, there were plenty of games, people with two names,
and that's that's that's represented Hollywood, because that's really what's
going on out there.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Neil's Hollywood was made up of characters who put on
false appearances. But here in Richmond, two days before his flight,
he seemed genuinely really excited, as only Neil can be
soft spoken and boastful at the same time.
Speaker 7 (03:58):
And people don't recognize what I got and what I
can do, and I won't be there. And I made it
in my line. I told him when I get ye,
I'm won't be the most sought out the song right
it is out there, That's.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
What I planned to be.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
But he still had one major concern. He developed arthritis
in his hands and it was starting to affect his playing.
Speaker 7 (04:19):
But my fingers, my tell it gone. Yeah, that's that's
my problem.
Speaker 8 (04:23):
I had to change up everything I used to play.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
M hmmm.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
He wasn't alone in his concerns.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
My voice is mellowed out.
Speaker 6 (04:37):
I'm not as all over the places I used to
be with my voice, and I'm just hoping that everything
works out the way I wanted.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
To Jamal and Cupcakes. Vocal chemistry was also a big
question mark.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
You still got your voice at.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Times, depending on what the song is.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Four years earlier, i'd met big picture dreamers with unrelenting confidence.
Now they were working through the details, thinking about how
they were actually going to deliver. Nobody said it in
the room, but I think we all knew they weren't
going to get another shot like this. Dorian joined us
(05:39):
our second day at the apartment. He was excited he
had something to share with the group, something to hype
them up for the new recording. A few months earlier,
one of the band's original songs had been sampled on
a hip hop.
Speaker 7 (05:52):
Track, When You Gonna Get Us That the people that
did a sample out some.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Of it, right, that's what we're about. The track was
on the new Black Star record, their first release since
nineteen ninety eight. For those who don't know, and the
band certainly didn't, black Star is a big deal in
the world of hip hop. It's a collaboration between two
major mcs, to Lib Quali and Yasin Bay, formerly known
(06:18):
as most Deep. For this record, the duo also enlisted
the help of the producer Madlib, another huge name in
hip hop. The track samples led us and Madlib chopped
up and looped some of the vocals. As big fans.
Dorian and I were really excited. We couldn't wait to
share it with the band.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
He did a good job.
Speaker 9 (06:40):
We kind of let me tell you, I dropped jewel
like a nist name, breaking up or to bed frame,
to the police, came Black Done.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
But it didn't go over exactly as we had hoped.
What didn't you like about it?
Speaker 4 (06:57):
No, it's confusing.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Just knew.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Whatever they rapping the ball has nothing to do with
the song.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Looking back, their response wasn't entirely surprising. Neil, Jamal and
Cupcake don't come from the hip hop generation. They didn't
love hearing their song chopped up like that. So when
Dorian and I got to talk to tallib Quali, we
weren't exactly looking forward to sharing the band's response. It
was kind of like, you know, playing that song to
(07:27):
like your grandparents or something, or or you know. They
they were like, Oh, that's that's that's nice. I'm glad
that those young men.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
I'm glad, thank you for sharing that with me.
Speaker 9 (07:36):
Yeah, about those about those moments, because I don't get
to see those moments.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
You know, that's something that's never sat easy with this group,
or at least these three members. The making of their
first album was so contained, restricted to just that prison
band room in the band, it made it easy for
them to control their creative decisions. When James Carrington sold
their album, he put a new type of decision making
(08:04):
in the hands of the record label. Licensing band members
get royalties based on what they contributed to each song.
They tell me they didn't know about the Black Star
sample ahead of time, and now Jamal's in disagreement with
Neil over their split. When Madlib used led Us to
create a new beat, he actually hadn't even made a
(08:25):
note where he pulled the sample from. He was just
doing his thing.
Speaker 9 (08:29):
Madlib, as he describes it, freestyle samples. And so I
paid a bunch of people to try and figure out
what the sample was, and they couldn't figure it out,
and I ended up just shazaming it one day.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Uh you know, I was like, well, maybe there's.
Speaker 9 (08:46):
A significant amount of the sample that I can catch
or shazam, and that worked and let us buy Edge.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Dave ray pooled up Black Star, experimented with having live
musicians play the track just in case they couldn't clear
us of the original, but it didn't have that same magic.
Speaker 9 (09:04):
That vibe those guys who met in that prison, pouring
their heart and soul into that tape, that vibe that
gets captured or tape that you can't really capture digitally
as much as you try.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
In the end, it all worked out. They came to
an agreement to license the original. But hearing that from
t LIB did give me a little pause. After all,
we were asking Neil, Jamal and Cupcake to do the
same thing, capture their distinct sound in a professional studio environment.
Jamal was already thinking about how they could make a
(09:36):
new version of their sound work for them, something more
polished than contemporary.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
We don't have to tye to catch the y'all a generation?
What's that generation too? Because I know for a fact, yeah,
but I talked to man that over forty years old,
they want to hear somebody they used to like, old school, right,
So that's why they get funked a dance music because
people still.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Want to dance.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
You know if you look at kids and then kids
literally don't know how to dance.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Man, they jumping in like little bunnets.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Cupcake had her own ideas.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
I got a long weeks at home.
Speaker 10 (10:08):
Don't don't, don't start.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I will blend one need bitches and a hot I'd
be beyond it.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
If if it's what to take for them to buy
every record that we put out there, just Margaret, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Oh, you know, because all the green and green, that's
one thing that people don't really all the money.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
It's the same the way they were thinking about this.
Once the record was out, their stage show would be
part of the draw, and, just like their performances in
the seventies, a big part of the plan with sex.
Speaker 11 (10:37):
Appeal to little shitki yell yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
It's like I saying, look, but you better.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Than not to the crows, the ivy.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
I'm very respectful them, and make sure that my friends
and follow us be very respectful.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
The man that was getting thrown into all of this,
the one that they hoped would help them find their sound,
was across the country in la and they had yet
to meet him in person. His name is Steve Lindsay.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
How you doing with the Steve?
Speaker 5 (11:06):
Hey, how's it going. Okay, we're going to do it
on my phone. We're turning it on my computer. But
it's so good week see you.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
A few months earlier, the band had gotten on a
zoom call with Steve. Jamal was at home and Steve
was at his home studio in Malibu. Cupcake and Neil
were on the call too, dialing in from the Downtown
Public Library in Richmond.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
If you want to do this and be an honor
to work with you guys. Love.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
If I had to create a character that's a larger
than life LA music producer, I drawn Steve for inspiration.
Steve's been part of the LA studio scene since the
nineteen seventies, when he worked as a session musician on
the keyboards. By the mid eighties, he started doing production
work as well. To hear Steve tell it, he worked
with everyone and then.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
Some Leonard Cohen and then Aaron Neville, The Temptations, Marvin
gay Elton, John Seline Dion. I mean, just you know,
I went on a tear for a long time.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
And Steve's the kind of guy who'll casually tell a
story about jamming with Luther Vandros or recording Willie Nelson.
But one artist that Steve mentioned really made Jamal's eyes
light up.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
But Lord, I said, I would little found somebody that
worked with Booing on more.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
I been coming to find out if you worked with
Booing on his Chris PRIs.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
I worked with almost everything. We're actually we're starting another
record Friday.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
The band had talked to some other producers before meeting
with Steve, but now they were sold. Steve had the
sensibilities and the big time experience they were looking for.
Neil had done his homework and he liked what he saw.
Speaker 11 (12:49):
Everything about you went over everything.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
I made up my mind being in there.
Speaker 7 (12:52):
This is the man that I want to be, you know,
associated with as far as taking me to the next
level of music.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And in classic Neil fashion, he made sure to squash
any concerns about whether Edge of Daybreak was up for
the challenge. We read it right now.
Speaker 7 (13:08):
We're definitely gonna make yell some albums and some good
old fashion awards.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
But Steve gave them a warning. This wasn't going to
be easy.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
Songwriting is easy, Rewriting is hard. That's get you know,
that's really the truth of the matter. I mean, if
you want to work with me, this is what I
would suggest you guys coming out here. We go through
the songs. We picked the best five and really work them,
you know, dial them in, get them as good as
(13:39):
they can be, make them incredible, and then let's go.
You know, pick a studio. I like working at Sunset Sound.
It's a historic studio. There's a room there that prints
did Purple Rain in that are working all the time.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Suddenly there was a concrete plan in place. The band
would fly to LA at the beginning of some they'd
spend a week hold up at Steve's place in Malibu
and work on the songs. Steve would help them write
and rewrite four new tracks, plus a new version of
one of their original songs. Fittingly, Your Destiny was the
(14:15):
song that got chosen. Then they would get into the
studio a few days to record instrumentals, mostly handled by
session musicians that Steve would hire, and a few days
to record vocals that would all be on the band.
Three months after that call with Steve, the band was
(14:38):
practicing in Richmond.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Sit it out.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
I had to find the cute, That's all I was
all im doing.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Steve told them not to worry about any big decisions.
He already had some arrangements in mind. The band just
needed to bring their voices, he said.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Man, he said, Look, don'tch your world about the thing.
Don't be trying to get all nervous and bush. You
good trying to do this, he said, because you can
practice all you wanted. He said, Well, we don't put
the music to the songs, and we already know the
songs we want y'all to do. So what you practice
on and how you practice it might not be the
way that we got to arrange, so you had to
do it all over again, and that it makes a
(15:29):
lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
The one song they knew they'd be doing was your Destiny.
It felt like a full circle moment to come back
to this track in particular.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Now I feel like I'm stepping into my destiny and
it's just about tangible. I can read it. This is
still like a dream to me. Man, even though all
this is unfolding before my eyes, it's still.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Like a dream to me.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
You know.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
It was poetic for sure, but actually singing the song,
they hadn't done that in decades.
Speaker 10 (16:05):
Let's do it one, two threes, yo, dey.
Speaker 11 (16:12):
Check it out.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Just keep The first couple takes were a little rough,
but it was truly a joy to watch them adjust
and calibrate. They're scientists about their harmonies, and with Jamal
leading them, they started to come together.
Speaker 10 (16:29):
Take it out pour one, two, three, four, Yo, that's
the need.
Speaker 11 (16:38):
Check it out.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
You better check it out.
Speaker 11 (16:41):
Tick tick tick check it out, yo, de.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Check it out.
Speaker 10 (16:48):
Because if we stay on the picture, you here passing
all the walk I see Oh that little b bops
cross set of shit I used to do, ran out
the window, did it in a way?
Speaker 11 (17:01):
They talk back to you your destiny.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Okay, yeah, it is all good. I canna say.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
You know, it'll come back to you. That's why you
don't be nervous, man, because this is natural. You know
the you know people say, if you swim, it's about
to throw you in the water. You still know how
to swim. If you rode a bicycle, you still know
how to ride a bicycle.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Probably excitement and the hope and the promise. There was
another big question mark. These guys hadn't played together in
a while, but they also hadn't really hung out together
as much as they were about to.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
A Okay, thank got me.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
See what you got?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Change that says you're don mess with me.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Oh so you changed your key and we didn't know
nothing about it.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Go forward you.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
You hate it, just man, you the loss of that quick.
Speaker 8 (18:05):
Don't worry about that. I get it at you don't
need to criticize it.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
I get it.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I do a lot.
Speaker 7 (18:12):
I gotta do here and here, so don't worry about that.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I will get it.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Beyond their vocals, there were also tensions brewing about what
this album would mean for their futures as a band
and as individual artists. For Neil, getting noticed as a
songwriter was a top priority.
Speaker 7 (18:31):
I put in my mind, I gonna make it regardless
of how what goes on, because I got too much
material to be sitting back on the shift like it's
been sitting all these years and I saying I'm doing
modifications and all that at all time.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
And that was concerning for Jamal.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
I'd like to add to that, man that this is
about the end of the day break. We're not trying
to see nothing else to nobody else, just the ends
of the day break with the people band. You know
what I mean, And you know it's just as simple
and as clear as it, you know, because I got
songs that I do. Other people got songs that they do,
but that's not what they're pand for.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
By the end of the week, I wasn't sure whether
I felt more or less confident about how this whole
thing was going to go. Their vocals were certainly much
stronger than they'd been at the beginning of the week.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
I can't see you are.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
I'd rather do.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Than to be in the aws of the one I love,
So just.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Bring me you.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
But between the personality conflicts and this new friction about
their goals, one thing was crystal clear. The success of
this new album hinged on whether or not the band
could gel not only as artists, but as collaborators and teammates.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
We liked a wealthy nage for the Los angele And International.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Airport, but there was no more time to work on it.
Edge of daybreak was heading to Los Angeles.
Speaker 12 (20:31):
You have arrived at your destination, Jamal.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
You want to coffee? No, good man, I've been drinking
some of as gaty.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
We picked the band members up one by one the
next morning, headed to Richmond International Airport. Jamal had a
bag full of supplements and workout clothes with him. He
was hoping to lift weights at Muscle Beach in Venice.
Speaker 13 (20:53):
Mister Cade, how's it going, hey?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Neil showed up with a small bag, his songbook and
his case is that all you got. You're lightweight, You're easy.
Speaker 13 (21:05):
Let's go to Los Angeles make an album.
Speaker 7 (21:07):
Let's go make some money.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
That's my co producer, Warren Osterguard, talking to Neil as
we drove away from his house. Last up was Cupcake. Hey,
we're here to take you to Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
We're here to take you to Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Okay, y'ah. I was at just okik my way all right.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
Bye bye.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Right away, something didn't feel quite right with Cupcake. Normally
she'd be the most energetic person in the group. I
knew her uncle had just died. She told me that
during the practice sessions, but even the day before she
hadn't been this withdrawn. And then when we stopped at
a convenience store, she shared some news about her partner,
(21:55):
the once she'd been with more than thirty years.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
I got my heart broke, but today he ended it.
He said he wasn't good enough for me, and that
he didn't want to eat a few. But you know
what's going on with me now?
Speaker 4 (22:09):
A smart man.
Speaker 11 (22:11):
That is a smart man.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
You don't have to think about it.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
Why we took thirty three years to tell me that?
Why why this happened thirty three years later this week?
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Things is, if this wouldn't happen, he want to tell
I mean, if this wasn't happen, he's going to tell
you that it hits terrible.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Tupcake was really struggling. She didn't have any time to grieve.
A few hours later, she was on her first airplane.
Speaker 6 (22:40):
Finally, after seventy.
Speaker 12 (22:42):
Two years, hor rental shuttles may be boarded. I'm the side.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
When we touched down in Los Angeles, one of the
first things we did was take a driving tour around
the city.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
You see the girl when one walking down the beach.
No one of 'em had on a bikini. That was
soup bikini.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
It was almost gone.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
No, this is the place they come to hope to
be superstars and marbles.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Oh, they got to show what they got in one
of those sweating pants.
Speaker 5 (23:23):
Oh she was mm.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
They want somebody to pick 'em up.
Speaker 10 (23:26):
I'n't even looking at.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Women, fit of your girls or whatever, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
That's what they were like.
Speaker 10 (23:30):
It had your most beautiful tan.
Speaker 6 (23:34):
It's strangest things I see at the palm trees.
Speaker 7 (23:36):
We don't have those, but they funny looking at it.
Speaker 9 (23:40):
Yeah, they look funny.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
It's a I thought they were.
Speaker 8 (23:45):
Things up there.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
They praid of God.
Speaker 6 (23:47):
Then they cook a little palms ever falled on your head.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
We made a stop at the Hollywood Walking Family.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
It's this It's the longest walk of fame I ever say.
Speaker 10 (23:57):
It's about a bunch of people on this thing and.
Speaker 8 (24:02):
Getting this picture. Some of this stuff here, elam Levine, Journey,
Hey Journey, Oh Russell, black actors.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
I wanna take a picture of black actor. I don't
know fool with those people. I just told the guy
I said that one right there.
Speaker 6 (24:24):
When y'all mix, it gonna be for me yet, vibe
hope they.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Got all the old ones on this side.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
Read the Staff. I got him in one of my songs.
Bad old Hollywood. Really you're gonna hear it. I told
you gonna hear it. I want to dance as good
as fread as Staff.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
And then we were back in the car on our
way to the Marina Delray apartment complex where they be
crashing for the night. Neil was singing his way back
to a song on the radio, singer REFI.
Speaker 6 (24:55):
Why does he think he can speak Spanish?
Speaker 4 (24:58):
He is on me here? Do you know me?
Speaker 7 (25:03):
Hey, Mama's easy John, y'all made me movies?
Speaker 8 (25:08):
Oh.
Speaker 7 (25:09):
In hollyo Woods.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
The night before their first writing session, when they'd finally
meet Steve in person, everyone was a little nervous, and
Cupcake decided to relax the way she does in Richmond.
Speaker 6 (25:23):
The Joy of Painting by bob ROAs.
Speaker 10 (25:26):
It's just him painting a bunch of different pictures, show
after show after show. I'm crazy about barb ROAs.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
The next morning, we drove out to Steve's studio in Malibu.
It's part of a largest state that feels more country
than city. There's a house there too, and that's where
the singers first began talking with Steve in his big
living room with a giant mounted surfboard. They needed their
plan of attack, and Steve laid it down for them.
Speaker 5 (26:04):
So here's here's what I thought we would do. Well,
Neil's gonna have two songs. You're gonna have two songs,
and Cupcake's gonna write all the rest of the songs, right,
test kiddy. Yeah, So here's here's what I thought we did.
I want to start with the songwriting part of it.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 5 (26:25):
Don't want to build a foundation and the weight the house.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So for that songwriting portion, the band would be working
with Steve's partner, Dylan O'Brien. Dylan's a pianist, vocalist and
songwriter who's worked with artists like Bonnie Rait and Shakira.
He'd be the one helping Jamal Cupcake and Neil get
their songs into shape. To Steve, nobody does that better
than Dylan.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
I can tell you this much. No Dylan O'Brien, no
Bruno Mars. He understands the record making as well as I,
but he really understands the interior of a lyric and
a melody and how to make it get to the radio.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
The writing sessions would be spread out across the next
couple of days. Up first was one of Neil's songs,
Beautiful Brown Eyes from New Orleans. It's a slow song
that Neil had originally thought about as an interlude. This
was the first of two of Neil's demos that Steve
(27:30):
had chosen for the album.
Speaker 5 (27:31):
There's something honest about the lyric, and both Dylan and
I felt that way.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
It leaned heavily on the band's harmonies.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
I think the.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Beautiful will be like just in Unison, where everybody's going
beautiful both together right, instead of harmony hit beautiful night.
Speaker 13 (27:59):
They come in because there's nothing's gonna be nothing else.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And Stephen Dylan had some ideas for taking what was
on Neil's Barebones cassette and fleshing it out into something
more lush and textured from I.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
Don't think the background vocals need to say from We
went over to Dylan's place and started working on brown
Eyes over there and started restructuring the chords a little
bit and making it into uh, you know, turning it
from what it was into a more commercial song.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Cupcakes song still in Love came together a little more
in the moment we.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Gotta make some ship up.
Speaker 11 (28:56):
Cupcake takes a licks.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
It was a work in progress, but Dylan was happy
with the way it was progressing.
Speaker 13 (29:23):
Well, I'll tell you what, that's money. I know the
smell of money.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
That is money.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
The group was getting a taste of collaboration and working
in a studio. They sounded like they were having a blast.
But there was another track, Neil's favorite, called I Want
to Be a Classic. It's one he'd actually written at
Powatan around the same time he'd written Our Love. That
one was going to prove to be more of a challenge.
Speaker 5 (29:52):
It's interesting because with any writer or any artist, when
you're taking their baby and and sing like, hey, you
know what, this is a beautiful baby, but it needs
a nose job, everybody, you know, everybody immediately gets defensive.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
That's Neil's original demo of I Want to Be a classic.
Speaker 7 (30:23):
The song was meant to be reaching out to people
that had ideas and want to be like so and
so artists or icon or you know, give them my
ideas and keep.
Speaker 13 (30:32):
That up and go and shoot for that.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
But when Stephen Dylan heard the track, they had a
different reaction.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
That's an ego driven song. You could do it. I'm
not telling you not to, but I'm gonna say it.
It's a song that it's all about you. You can't
just be talking about yourself, just saying I want to be,
you know, the most incredible person, because guess what, nobody cares.
But when you're talking, you always got to talk to
(31:05):
the girls.
Speaker 13 (31:06):
So if you want to, it's close on that first line,
I want to make love all night, yeah, because then
you you're talking to somebody.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Dylan and Steve were trying to figure out how to
bring someone else into the song, someone Neil could be
singing too. They wanted to make it more of a love.
Speaker 13 (31:21):
Song, so I just started writing lines that were like
like that, except you know, don't want to be you See.
I was making the verses don't want to be this,
don't want to be this, you know, like, don't want
to be No. One night, don't want to be just
what right? Like in other words, to you, I want
to be the guy that you look back on and
(31:41):
say like that was the one, you know?
Speaker 5 (31:44):
Can I give you some insight on that?
Speaker 7 (31:46):
Said, I want to be a classic. It's going to
tell you about all the different ways and people you
know that will make you a classic, people that's already classic.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
And stuff that.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Neil seemed a little uneasy with the changes. He told
me so later on in the car.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
I didn't get the meaning at first. Steve want me
to project all the words.
Speaker 8 (32:07):
It's like an him, women, well them the ones, gonta
be man and all like that. So if you don't,
what do you wand up changing the whole song man.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
When I asked Cupcake about it, she told me she
liked Steven Dillon's changes.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
It sounds better when you want to you ain't no classic.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
It's just you know, stubborn ass old man that's not classic.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Eventually they landed on the final lyrics. I wouldn't exactly
call it a compromise. It's still Neil song, but the
revised lyrics are in there.
Speaker 13 (32:41):
On you know that that.
Speaker 5 (32:46):
Right then.
Speaker 10 (32:55):
Nos better to be I want to be, You're free
to stay.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
I want to.
Speaker 6 (33:05):
Fix your breakfast and be.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
You want to do that for a classic you don't
want to do that for brook Dale.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Jilapp Steve certain it was the right call.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
Dylan. I have this kind of theory. I mean, Dylan
believes there's three songs. I think there's two. So this
goes back thousands of years to tribal times. So there's
the fertility dance and there's the war chant.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Neil's song had become a fertility dance. It has been
mellowed down, you know.
Speaker 7 (33:38):
They was in the process and making it better and
making it sellable.
Speaker 8 (33:42):
On the radio.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Now that Neil's had some time to think about all
of it, he seems at peace with the new track.
But as an observer and the recipient of many of
Neil's voicemails, I can say it was a tense battle.
I try to explain to him what he didn't listen.
Speaker 7 (33:59):
That the song was meant for people that type thea
that want to be somebody, that want to be like
classic people.
Speaker 5 (34:04):
That song would inspire him to keep trying to be
that way.
Speaker 13 (34:07):
You know.
Speaker 12 (34:07):
But then the way he don't know why I relieve.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
By the end of the writing sessions, the lyrics and
the melodies were locked on four new songs, but as
the process moved forward, there were always new issues to
be worried about. They'd gotten the songs put together, but
would Neil actually be able to sing the new lyrics?
Speaker 11 (34:28):
Ah?
Speaker 13 (34:31):
Yeah, classic, Okay, you want to try it?
Speaker 8 (34:36):
Yeah, okay, I just in my mind.
Speaker 13 (34:38):
I can't beat Okay.
Speaker 7 (34:39):
I'm thinking all the more words coming back in my mind.
Speaker 8 (34:42):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
And when it came time to perform all these love
songs or fertility dances, as Steve would say, could Cupcake
put her own heartbreak aside?
Speaker 10 (34:53):
I'm homesickn man, I'm home signal to the to a
point and it's just a little too much for day.
Speaker 5 (35:02):
I thought I could handle stuff like this, but I can't.
I can't.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
They were about to put all of this to the
test in a big way, finally recording their songs with
seasoned musicians. These next sessions would be their moment to
shine or lose it all. That's next time on Soul Incarcerated.
(35:30):
If you want to hear more of Edged Day Breaks Music.
Their new EP, New Horizon, is available on all digital platforms.
Soul Incarcerated was written and hosted by me Jamie Petris,
co hosted and produced by Dorian Missik, story edited by
Yasmine Kahan, and sound designed by Bill Moss and Isaac Lee.
(35:52):
Executive producers are mckamie, Lynn, Jesse Katz, and Wren Ostguard.
Special thanks to everyone who helped us research this story.
To Marv Hyman, Bill Crawley, and Sanethia Lewis. To the author,
Dale Broomfield, Attorneys David Baugh and Mara Meltzer Cohen. To
doctor Heather Thompson and Lisia McCarney for lending insights on
(36:13):
American carceral history. Thanks to the entire staff of the
Library of Virginia and to Ben Himofharb from the Henrico
County Public Library. To the vocal coaches kJ Rose and
Elise tunyak A and Ese Jennifer and Sonia, Michael Greenwald
and Elaine Fontaine Bryant. Thanks to the team at silver
(36:34):
Lining Entertainment, One Story Up Productions, the Numeral Group, the
crew at Sunset Sound and In Your Ear Studios, Alex
Lambert Lucas Benkett, Will Bethel, and Marty Keyth Thanks to
all of the band's friends, family members, and associates who
took the time to talk to me for this story,
and most of all, to the Edge of Daybreak Harry Coleman,
(36:55):
Jamal Nuby and Neil Cade for sharing it with me.
Speaker 11 (37:02):
It's long The ba Hatter
An A and E original podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
As Loveting off You as we wove You'll go, bless
you enough for load, Let's see abowt.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Load That is Edged Daybreak. In August of twenty twenty two,
the band was together in Richmond preparing for what they
hoped might be their biggest break yet. In one week,
the band would be in Los Angeles with a proper
studio session, musicians and a big time producer. They'd be
(00:39):
making their first music together since nineteen seventy nine. In
that week leading up to LA we booked an apartment
in Richmond so they'd have a spot to meet up
in practice.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
As a loing off you, andoove.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
Okay as a lout a love off.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Your gloves and remove your gold.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Jamal was in a T shirt and cupcake, looked ready
for the beach with her muscle shirt and freshly bleached hair.
Neil had on a loose fitting three piece cream suit.
He just come from church. My job for the next
few weeks was to document the process them coming back
together as a group and finding their voices. I'd be
(01:27):
joined by my co producers and a camera crew to
get behind the scenes footage for the band members. It
was an added layer of pressure.
Speaker 4 (01:36):
We've been together in forty two.
Speaker 5 (01:37):
I just said.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
We got to get this expected that we're going in
the studio, and like I said, they gonna give us
time to do.
Speaker 6 (01:45):
This, and I ain't going to be in those studios
sounding like Avenue and the Chipmunks.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Neil had brought his songbook with him. It's a huge
old notebook, jammed with extra pages. There had to be
dozens of songs in there. In preparation for the new album,
Neil had put together a bunch of demos of his tracks,
seventeen in all. He'd sent most of them to me
on cassettes.
Speaker 7 (02:08):
Oh, I'm sious Kings, and I like to do a
selection of songs that I originally wrote and composed.
Speaker 5 (02:15):
I'll also be planning to get to.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
For a few of them, he sang to me over
the phone.
Speaker 7 (02:24):
I don't know how I got all this volume, said,
but I'm going to leave it like.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
It is and do it again.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It sounds great, Okay, here would go the song is cold.
Speaker 8 (02:30):
I can't seem to contact you now.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Neil didn't know exactly which songs he'd be singing. That
part would happen in La but in the meantime, he
was determined to remember them all.
Speaker 7 (02:42):
I want to sing by my Sessa bling, I want
to shout shout until a drop, and I want to
dress look my very best. I got it.
Speaker 8 (02:51):
It's in my mind. Now I'll play a little bit
of it.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Neil had been way waiting for this moment for years.
He'd even written a song about Los Angeles, a city
he'd never been to. It's called bad old Hollywood.
Speaker 7 (03:09):
Well, I say, this is a place that needs a song,
like New York got on New York, New yek you know,
they got their own song. And I say, what would
people identify with people out in Hollywood? So I thought about, Okay,
people masquerade, uh change love of each day? I mean, no,
that's wrong, people mask, Yeah, love of the exchange every day.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
And I said, let me go a little bit further.
Speaker 7 (03:35):
I say, there were plenty of games, people with two names,
and that's that's that's represented Hollywood, because that's really what's
going on out there.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Neil's Hollywood was made up of characters who put on
false appearances. But here in Richmond, two days before his flight,
he seemed genuinely really excited, as only Neil can be
soft spoken and boastful at the same time.
Speaker 7 (03:58):
And people don't recognize what I got and what I
can do, and I won't be there. And I made it
in my line. I told him when I get ye,
I'm won't be the most sought out the song right
it is out there, That's.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
What I planned to be.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
But he still had one major concern. He developed arthritis
in his hands and it was starting to affect his playing.
Speaker 7 (04:19):
But my fingers, my tell it gone. Yeah, that's that's
my problem.
Speaker 8 (04:23):
I had to change up everything I used to play.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
M hmmm.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
He wasn't alone in his concerns.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
My voice is mellowed out.
Speaker 6 (04:37):
I'm not as all over the places I used to
be with my voice, and I'm just hoping that everything
works out the way I wanted.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
To Jamal and Cupcakes. Vocal chemistry was also a big
question mark.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
You still got your voice at.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
Times, depending on what the song is.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Four years earlier, i'd met big picture dreamers with unrelenting confidence.
Now they were working through the details, thinking about how
they were actually going to deliver. Nobody said it in
the room, but I think we all knew they weren't
going to get another shot like this. Dorian joined us
(05:39):
our second day at the apartment. He was excited he
had something to share with the group, something to hype
them up for the new recording. A few months earlier,
one of the band's original songs had been sampled on
a hip hop.
Speaker 7 (05:52):
Track, When You Gonna Get Us That the people that
did a sample out some.
Speaker 1 (05:57):
Of it, right, that's what we're about. The track was
on the new Black Star record, their first release since
nineteen ninety eight. For those who don't know, and the
band certainly didn't, black Star is a big deal in
the world of hip hop. It's a collaboration between two
major mcs, to Lib Quali and Yasin Bay, formerly known
(06:18):
as most Deep. For this record, the duo also enlisted
the help of the producer Madlib, another huge name in
hip hop. The track samples led us and Madlib chopped
up and looped some of the vocals. As big fans.
Dorian and I were really excited. We couldn't wait to
share it with the band.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
He did a good job.
Speaker 9 (06:40):
We kind of let me tell you, I dropped jewel
like a nist name, breaking up or to bed frame,
to the police, came Black Done.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
But it didn't go over exactly as we had hoped.
What didn't you like about it?
Speaker 4 (06:57):
No, it's confusing.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Just knew.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
Whatever they rapping the ball has nothing to do with
the song.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Looking back, their response wasn't entirely surprising. Neil, Jamal and
Cupcake don't come from the hip hop generation. They didn't
love hearing their song chopped up like that. So when
Dorian and I got to talk to tallib Quali, we
weren't exactly looking forward to sharing the band's response. It
was kind of like, you know, playing that song to
(07:27):
like your grandparents or something, or or you know. They
they were like, Oh, that's that's that's nice. I'm glad
that those young men.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
I'm glad, thank you for sharing that with me.
Speaker 9 (07:36):
Yeah, about those about those moments, because I don't get
to see those moments.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
You know, that's something that's never sat easy with this group,
or at least these three members. The making of their
first album was so contained, restricted to just that prison
band room in the band, it made it easy for
them to control their creative decisions. When James Carrington sold
their album, he put a new type of decision making
(08:04):
in the hands of the record label. Licensing band members
get royalties based on what they contributed to each song.
They tell me they didn't know about the Black Star
sample ahead of time, and now Jamal's in disagreement with
Neil over their split. When Madlib used led Us to
create a new beat, he actually hadn't even made a
(08:25):
note where he pulled the sample from. He was just
doing his thing.
Speaker 9 (08:29):
Madlib, as he describes it, freestyle samples. And so I
paid a bunch of people to try and figure out
what the sample was, and they couldn't figure it out,
and I ended up just shazaming it one day.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
Uh you know, I was like, well, maybe there's.
Speaker 9 (08:46):
A significant amount of the sample that I can catch
or shazam, and that worked and let us buy Edge.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Dave ray pooled up Black Star, experimented with having live
musicians play the track just in case they couldn't clear
us of the original, but it didn't have that same magic.
Speaker 9 (09:04):
That vibe those guys who met in that prison, pouring
their heart and soul into that tape, that vibe that
gets captured or tape that you can't really capture digitally
as much as you try.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
In the end, it all worked out. They came to
an agreement to license the original. But hearing that from
t LIB did give me a little pause. After all,
we were asking Neil, Jamal and Cupcake to do the
same thing, capture their distinct sound in a professional studio environment.
Jamal was already thinking about how they could make a
(09:36):
new version of their sound work for them, something more
polished than contemporary.
Speaker 3 (09:41):
We don't have to tye to catch the y'all a generation?
What's that generation too? Because I know for a fact, yeah,
but I talked to man that over forty years old,
they want to hear somebody they used to like, old school, right,
So that's why they get funked a dance music because
people still.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
Want to dance.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
You know if you look at kids and then kids
literally don't know how to dance.
Speaker 4 (10:03):
Man, they jumping in like little bunnets.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Cupcake had her own ideas.
Speaker 6 (10:07):
I got a long weeks at home.
Speaker 10 (10:08):
Don't don't, don't start.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
I will blend one need bitches and a hot I'd
be beyond it.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
If if it's what to take for them to buy
every record that we put out there, just Margaret, you
know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (10:19):
Oh, you know, because all the green and green, that's
one thing that people don't really all the money.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
It's the same the way they were thinking about this.
Once the record was out, their stage show would be
part of the draw, and, just like their performances in
the seventies, a big part of the plan with sex.
Speaker 11 (10:37):
Appeal to little shitki yell yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
It's like I saying, look, but you better.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
Than not to the crows, the ivy.
Speaker 6 (10:47):
I'm very respectful them, and make sure that my friends
and follow us be very respectful.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
The man that was getting thrown into all of this,
the one that they hoped would help them find their sound,
was across the country in la and they had yet
to meet him in person. His name is Steve Lindsay.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
How you doing with the Steve?
Speaker 5 (11:06):
Hey, how's it going. Okay, we're going to do it
on my phone. We're turning it on my computer. But
it's so good week see you.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
A few months earlier, the band had gotten on a
zoom call with Steve. Jamal was at home and Steve
was at his home studio in Malibu. Cupcake and Neil
were on the call too, dialing in from the Downtown
Public Library in Richmond.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
If you want to do this and be an honor
to work with you guys. Love.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
If I had to create a character that's a larger
than life LA music producer, I drawn Steve for inspiration.
Steve's been part of the LA studio scene since the
nineteen seventies, when he worked as a session musician on
the keyboards. By the mid eighties, he started doing production
work as well. To hear Steve tell it, he worked
with everyone and then.
Speaker 5 (11:53):
Some Leonard Cohen and then Aaron Neville, The Temptations, Marvin
gay Elton, John Seline Dion. I mean, just you know,
I went on a tear for a long time.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
And Steve's the kind of guy who'll casually tell a
story about jamming with Luther Vandros or recording Willie Nelson.
But one artist that Steve mentioned really made Jamal's eyes
light up.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
But Lord, I said, I would little found somebody that
worked with Booing on more.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
I been coming to find out if you worked with
Booing on his Chris PRIs.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
I worked with almost everything. We're actually we're starting another
record Friday.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
The band had talked to some other producers before meeting
with Steve, but now they were sold. Steve had the
sensibilities and the big time experience they were looking for.
Neil had done his homework and he liked what he saw.
Speaker 11 (12:49):
Everything about you went over everything.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
I made up my mind being in there.
Speaker 7 (12:52):
This is the man that I want to be, you know,
associated with as far as taking me to the next
level of music.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
And in classic Neil fashion, he made sure to squash
any concerns about whether Edge of Daybreak was up for
the challenge. We read it right now.
Speaker 7 (13:08):
We're definitely gonna make yell some albums and some good
old fashion awards.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
But Steve gave them a warning. This wasn't going to
be easy.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
Songwriting is easy, Rewriting is hard. That's get you know,
that's really the truth of the matter. I mean, if
you want to work with me, this is what I
would suggest you guys coming out here. We go through
the songs. We picked the best five and really work them,
you know, dial them in, get them as good as
(13:39):
they can be, make them incredible, and then let's go.
You know, pick a studio. I like working at Sunset Sound.
It's a historic studio. There's a room there that prints
did Purple Rain in that are working all the time.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Suddenly there was a concrete plan in place. The band
would fly to LA at the beginning of some they'd
spend a week hold up at Steve's place in Malibu
and work on the songs. Steve would help them write
and rewrite four new tracks, plus a new version of
one of their original songs. Fittingly, Your Destiny was the
(14:15):
song that got chosen. Then they would get into the
studio a few days to record instrumentals, mostly handled by
session musicians that Steve would hire, and a few days
to record vocals that would all be on the band.
Three months after that call with Steve, the band was
(14:38):
practicing in Richmond.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
Sit it out.
Speaker 7 (14:56):
I had to find the cute, That's all I was
all im doing.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Steve told them not to worry about any big decisions.
He already had some arrangements in mind. The band just
needed to bring their voices, he said.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Man, he said, Look, don'tch your world about the thing.
Don't be trying to get all nervous and bush. You
good trying to do this, he said, because you can
practice all you wanted. He said, Well, we don't put
the music to the songs, and we already know the
songs we want y'all to do. So what you practice
on and how you practice it might not be the
way that we got to arrange, so you had to
do it all over again, and that it makes a
(15:29):
lot of sense.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
The one song they knew they'd be doing was your Destiny.
It felt like a full circle moment to come back
to this track in particular.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
Now I feel like I'm stepping into my destiny and
it's just about tangible. I can read it. This is
still like a dream to me. Man, even though all
this is unfolding before my eyes, it's still.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
Like a dream to me.
Speaker 5 (15:54):
You know.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
It was poetic for sure, but actually singing the song,
they hadn't done that in decades.
Speaker 10 (16:05):
Let's do it one, two threes, yo, dey.
Speaker 11 (16:12):
Check it out.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Just keep The first couple takes were a little rough,
but it was truly a joy to watch them adjust
and calibrate. They're scientists about their harmonies, and with Jamal
leading them, they started to come together.
Speaker 10 (16:29):
Take it out pour one, two, three, four, Yo, that's
the need.
Speaker 11 (16:38):
Check it out.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
You better check it out.
Speaker 11 (16:41):
Tick tick tick check it out, yo, de.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Check it out.
Speaker 10 (16:48):
Because if we stay on the picture, you here passing
all the walk I see Oh that little b bops
cross set of shit I used to do, ran out
the window, did it in a way?
Speaker 11 (17:01):
They talk back to you your destiny.
Speaker 4 (17:16):
Okay, yeah, it is all good. I canna say.
Speaker 3 (17:20):
You know, it'll come back to you. That's why you
don't be nervous, man, because this is natural. You know
the you know people say, if you swim, it's about
to throw you in the water. You still know how
to swim. If you rode a bicycle, you still know
how to ride a bicycle.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Probably excitement and the hope and the promise. There was
another big question mark. These guys hadn't played together in
a while, but they also hadn't really hung out together
as much as they were about to.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
A Okay, thank got me.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
See what you got?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Change that says you're don mess with me.
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Oh so you changed your key and we didn't know
nothing about it.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
Go forward you.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
You hate it, just man, you the loss of that quick.
Speaker 8 (18:05):
Don't worry about that. I get it at you don't
need to criticize it.
Speaker 7 (18:11):
I get it.
Speaker 4 (18:12):
I do a lot.
Speaker 7 (18:12):
I gotta do here and here, so don't worry about that.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
I will get it.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Beyond their vocals, there were also tensions brewing about what
this album would mean for their futures as a band
and as individual artists. For Neil, getting noticed as a
songwriter was a top priority.
Speaker 7 (18:31):
I put in my mind, I gonna make it regardless
of how what goes on, because I got too much
material to be sitting back on the shift like it's
been sitting all these years and I saying I'm doing
modifications and all that at all time.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
And that was concerning for Jamal.
Speaker 4 (18:48):
I'd like to add to that, man that this is
about the end of the day break. We're not trying
to see nothing else to nobody else, just the ends
of the day break with the people band. You know
what I mean, And you know it's just as simple
and as clear as it, you know, because I got
songs that I do. Other people got songs that they do,
but that's not what they're pand for.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
By the end of the week, I wasn't sure whether
I felt more or less confident about how this whole
thing was going to go. Their vocals were certainly much
stronger than they'd been at the beginning of the week.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
I can't see you are.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
I'd rather do.
Speaker 4 (19:37):
Than to be in the aws of the one I love,
So just.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Bring me you.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
But between the personality conflicts and this new friction about
their goals, one thing was crystal clear. The success of
this new album hinged on whether or not the band
could gel not only as artists, but as collaborators and teammates.
Speaker 4 (20:06):
We liked a wealthy nage for the Los angele And International.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Airport, but there was no more time to work on it.
Edge of daybreak was heading to Los Angeles.
Speaker 12 (20:31):
You have arrived at your destination, Jamal.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
You want to coffee? No, good man, I've been drinking
some of as gaty.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
We picked the band members up one by one the
next morning, headed to Richmond International Airport. Jamal had a
bag full of supplements and workout clothes with him. He
was hoping to lift weights at Muscle Beach in Venice.
Speaker 13 (20:53):
Mister Cade, how's it going, hey?
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Neil showed up with a small bag, his songbook and
his case is that all you got. You're lightweight, You're easy.
Speaker 13 (21:05):
Let's go to Los Angeles make an album.
Speaker 7 (21:07):
Let's go make some money.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
That's my co producer, Warren Osterguard, talking to Neil as
we drove away from his house. Last up was Cupcake. Hey,
we're here to take you to Los Angeles.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
We're here to take you to Los Angeles.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Okay, y'ah. I was at just okik my way all right.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
Bye bye.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Right away, something didn't feel quite right with Cupcake. Normally
she'd be the most energetic person in the group. I
knew her uncle had just died. She told me that
during the practice sessions, but even the day before she
hadn't been this withdrawn. And then when we stopped at
a convenience store, she shared some news about her partner,
(21:55):
the once she'd been with more than thirty years.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
I got my heart broke, but today he ended it.
He said he wasn't good enough for me, and that
he didn't want to eat a few. But you know
what's going on with me now?
Speaker 4 (22:09):
A smart man.
Speaker 11 (22:11):
That is a smart man.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
You don't have to think about it.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
Why we took thirty three years to tell me that?
Why why this happened thirty three years later this week?
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Things is, if this wouldn't happen, he want to tell
I mean, if this wasn't happen, he's going to tell
you that it hits terrible.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Tupcake was really struggling. She didn't have any time to grieve.
A few hours later, she was on her first airplane.
Speaker 6 (22:40):
Finally, after seventy.
Speaker 12 (22:42):
Two years, hor rental shuttles may be boarded. I'm the side.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
When we touched down in Los Angeles, one of the
first things we did was take a driving tour around
the city.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
You see the girl when one walking down the beach.
No one of 'em had on a bikini. That was
soup bikini.
Speaker 6 (23:14):
It was almost gone.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
No, this is the place they come to hope to
be superstars and marbles.
Speaker 4 (23:20):
Oh, they got to show what they got in one
of those sweating pants.
Speaker 5 (23:23):
Oh she was mm.
Speaker 4 (23:25):
They want somebody to pick 'em up.
Speaker 10 (23:26):
I'n't even looking at.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Women, fit of your girls or whatever, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 5 (23:30):
That's what they were like.
Speaker 10 (23:30):
It had your most beautiful tan.
Speaker 6 (23:34):
It's strangest things I see at the palm trees.
Speaker 7 (23:36):
We don't have those, but they funny looking at it.
Speaker 9 (23:40):
Yeah, they look funny.
Speaker 4 (23:41):
It's a I thought they were.
Speaker 8 (23:45):
Things up there.
Speaker 4 (23:46):
They praid of God.
Speaker 6 (23:47):
Then they cook a little palms ever falled on your head.
Speaker 1 (23:52):
We made a stop at the Hollywood Walking Family.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
It's this It's the longest walk of fame I ever say.
Speaker 10 (23:57):
It's about a bunch of people on this thing and.
Speaker 8 (24:02):
Getting this picture. Some of this stuff here, elam Levine, Journey,
Hey Journey, Oh Russell, black actors.
Speaker 4 (24:17):
I wanna take a picture of black actor. I don't
know fool with those people. I just told the guy
I said that one right there.
Speaker 6 (24:24):
When y'all mix, it gonna be for me yet, vibe
hope they.
Speaker 4 (24:28):
Got all the old ones on this side.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
Read the Staff. I got him in one of my songs.
Bad old Hollywood. Really you're gonna hear it. I told
you gonna hear it. I want to dance as good
as fread as Staff.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
And then we were back in the car on our
way to the Marina Delray apartment complex where they be
crashing for the night. Neil was singing his way back
to a song on the radio, singer REFI.
Speaker 6 (24:55):
Why does he think he can speak Spanish?
Speaker 4 (24:58):
He is on me here? Do you know me?
Speaker 7 (25:03):
Hey, Mama's easy John, y'all made me movies?
Speaker 8 (25:08):
Oh.
Speaker 7 (25:09):
In hollyo Woods.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
The night before their first writing session, when they'd finally
meet Steve in person, everyone was a little nervous, and
Cupcake decided to relax the way she does in Richmond.
Speaker 6 (25:23):
The Joy of Painting by bob ROAs.
Speaker 10 (25:26):
It's just him painting a bunch of different pictures, show
after show after show. I'm crazy about barb ROAs.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
The next morning, we drove out to Steve's studio in Malibu.
It's part of a largest state that feels more country
than city. There's a house there too, and that's where
the singers first began talking with Steve in his big
living room with a giant mounted surfboard. They needed their
plan of attack, and Steve laid it down for them.
Speaker 5 (26:04):
So here's here's what I thought we would do. Well,
Neil's gonna have two songs. You're gonna have two songs,
and Cupcake's gonna write all the rest of the songs, right,
test kiddy. Yeah, So here's here's what I thought we did.
I want to start with the songwriting part of it.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Does that make sense?
Speaker 5 (26:25):
Don't want to build a foundation and the weight the house.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
So for that songwriting portion, the band would be working
with Steve's partner, Dylan O'Brien. Dylan's a pianist, vocalist and
songwriter who's worked with artists like Bonnie Rait and Shakira.
He'd be the one helping Jamal Cupcake and Neil get
their songs into shape. To Steve, nobody does that better
than Dylan.
Speaker 5 (26:50):
I can tell you this much. No Dylan O'Brien, no
Bruno Mars. He understands the record making as well as I,
but he really understands the interior of a lyric and
a melody and how to make it get to the radio.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
The writing sessions would be spread out across the next
couple of days. Up first was one of Neil's songs,
Beautiful Brown Eyes from New Orleans. It's a slow song
that Neil had originally thought about as an interlude. This
was the first of two of Neil's demos that Steve
(27:30):
had chosen for the album.
Speaker 5 (27:31):
There's something honest about the lyric, and both Dylan and
I felt that way.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
It leaned heavily on the band's harmonies.
Speaker 4 (27:47):
I think the.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
Beautiful will be like just in Unison, where everybody's going
beautiful both together right, instead of harmony hit beautiful night.
Speaker 13 (27:59):
They come in because there's nothing's gonna be nothing else.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And Stephen Dylan had some ideas for taking what was
on Neil's Barebones cassette and fleshing it out into something
more lush and textured from I.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
Don't think the background vocals need to say from We
went over to Dylan's place and started working on brown
Eyes over there and started restructuring the chords a little
bit and making it into uh, you know, turning it
from what it was into a more commercial song.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Cupcakes song still in Love came together a little more
in the moment we.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
Gotta make some ship up.
Speaker 11 (28:56):
Cupcake takes a licks.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
It was a work in progress, but Dylan was happy
with the way it was progressing.
Speaker 13 (29:23):
Well, I'll tell you what, that's money. I know the
smell of money.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
That is money.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
The group was getting a taste of collaboration and working
in a studio. They sounded like they were having a blast.
But there was another track, Neil's favorite, called I Want
to Be a Classic. It's one he'd actually written at
Powatan around the same time he'd written Our Love. That
one was going to prove to be more of a challenge.
Speaker 5 (29:52):
It's interesting because with any writer or any artist, when
you're taking their baby and and sing like, hey, you
know what, this is a beautiful baby, but it needs
a nose job, everybody, you know, everybody immediately gets defensive.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
That's Neil's original demo of I Want to Be a classic.
Speaker 7 (30:23):
The song was meant to be reaching out to people
that had ideas and want to be like so and
so artists or icon or you know, give them my
ideas and keep.
Speaker 13 (30:32):
That up and go and shoot for that.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
But when Stephen Dylan heard the track, they had a
different reaction.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
That's an ego driven song. You could do it. I'm
not telling you not to, but I'm gonna say it.
It's a song that it's all about you. You can't
just be talking about yourself, just saying I want to be,
you know, the most incredible person, because guess what, nobody cares.
But when you're talking, you always got to talk to
(31:05):
the girls.
Speaker 13 (31:06):
So if you want to, it's close on that first line,
I want to make love all night, yeah, because then
you you're talking to somebody.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Dylan and Steve were trying to figure out how to
bring someone else into the song, someone Neil could be
singing too. They wanted to make it more of a love.
Speaker 13 (31:21):
Song, so I just started writing lines that were like
like that, except you know, don't want to be you See.
I was making the verses don't want to be this,
don't want to be this, you know, like, don't want
to be No. One night, don't want to be just
what right? Like in other words, to you, I want
to be the guy that you look back on and
(31:41):
say like that was the one, you know?
Speaker 5 (31:44):
Can I give you some insight on that?
Speaker 7 (31:46):
Said, I want to be a classic. It's going to
tell you about all the different ways and people you
know that will make you a classic, people that's already classic.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
And stuff that.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
Neil seemed a little uneasy with the changes. He told
me so later on in the car.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
I didn't get the meaning at first. Steve want me
to project all the words.
Speaker 8 (32:07):
It's like an him, women, well them the ones, gonta
be man and all like that. So if you don't,
what do you wand up changing the whole song man.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
When I asked Cupcake about it, she told me she
liked Steven Dillon's changes.
Speaker 6 (32:21):
It sounds better when you want to you ain't no classic.
Speaker 4 (32:24):
It's just you know, stubborn ass old man that's not classic.
Speaker 1 (32:31):
Eventually they landed on the final lyrics. I wouldn't exactly
call it a compromise. It's still Neil song, but the
revised lyrics are in there.
Speaker 13 (32:41):
On you know that that.
Speaker 5 (32:46):
Right then.
Speaker 10 (32:55):
Nos better to be I want to be, You're free
to stay.
Speaker 5 (33:03):
I want to.
Speaker 6 (33:05):
Fix your breakfast and be.
Speaker 4 (33:07):
You want to do that for a classic you don't
want to do that for brook Dale.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Jilapp Steve certain it was the right call.
Speaker 5 (33:14):
Dylan. I have this kind of theory. I mean, Dylan
believes there's three songs. I think there's two. So this
goes back thousands of years to tribal times. So there's
the fertility dance and there's the war chant.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Neil's song had become a fertility dance. It has been
mellowed down, you know.
Speaker 7 (33:38):
They was in the process and making it better and
making it sellable.
Speaker 8 (33:42):
On the radio.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
Now that Neil's had some time to think about all
of it, he seems at peace with the new track.
But as an observer and the recipient of many of
Neil's voicemails, I can say it was a tense battle.
I try to explain to him what he didn't listen.
Speaker 7 (33:59):
That the song was meant for people that type thea
that want to be somebody, that want to be like
classic people.
Speaker 5 (34:04):
That song would inspire him to keep trying to be
that way.
Speaker 13 (34:07):
You know.
Speaker 12 (34:07):
But then the way he don't know why I relieve.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
By the end of the writing sessions, the lyrics and
the melodies were locked on four new songs, but as
the process moved forward, there were always new issues to
be worried about. They'd gotten the songs put together, but
would Neil actually be able to sing the new lyrics?
Speaker 11 (34:28):
Ah?
Speaker 13 (34:31):
Yeah, classic, Okay, you want to try it?
Speaker 8 (34:36):
Yeah, okay, I just in my mind.
Speaker 13 (34:38):
I can't beat Okay.
Speaker 7 (34:39):
I'm thinking all the more words coming back in my mind.
Speaker 8 (34:42):
You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (34:43):
And when it came time to perform all these love
songs or fertility dances, as Steve would say, could Cupcake
put her own heartbreak aside?
Speaker 10 (34:53):
I'm homesickn man, I'm home signal to the to a
point and it's just a little too much for day.
Speaker 5 (35:02):
I thought I could handle stuff like this, but I can't.
I can't.
Speaker 1 (35:07):
They were about to put all of this to the
test in a big way, finally recording their songs with
seasoned musicians. These next sessions would be their moment to
shine or lose it all. That's next time on Soul Incarcerated.
(35:30):
If you want to hear more of Edged Day Breaks Music.
Their new EP, New Horizon, is available on all digital platforms.
Soul Incarcerated was written and hosted by me Jamie Petris,
co hosted and produced by Dorian Missik, story edited by
Yasmine Kahan, and sound designed by Bill Moss and Isaac Lee.
(35:52):
Executive producers are mckamie, Lynn, Jesse Katz, and Wren Ostguard.
Special thanks to everyone who helped us research this story.
To Marv Hyman, Bill Crawley, and Sanethia Lewis. To the author,
Dale Broomfield, Attorneys David Baugh and Mara Meltzer Cohen. To
doctor Heather Thompson and Lisia McCarney for lending insights on
(36:13):
American carceral history. Thanks to the entire staff of the
Library of Virginia and to Ben Himofharb from the Henrico
County Public Library. To the vocal coaches kJ Rose and
Elise tunyak A and Ese Jennifer and Sonia, Michael Greenwald
and Elaine Fontaine Bryant. Thanks to the team at silver
(36:34):
Lining Entertainment, One Story Up Productions, the Numeral Group, the
crew at Sunset Sound and In Your Ear Studios, Alex
Lambert Lucas Benkett, Will Bethel, and Marty Keyth Thanks to
all of the band's friends, family members, and associates who
took the time to talk to me for this story,
and most of all, to the Edge of Daybreak Harry Coleman,
(36:55):
Jamal Nuby and Neil Cade for sharing it with me.
Speaker 11 (37:02):
It's long The ba Hatter
Host
Jamie Pietras
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.