Questlove Supreme: Monica Lynch Pt. 1

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Ladies and Gentlemen. Another episode of Quest Love Supreme.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Is upon us.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Very happy day today here with my family, my Team Supremist.

Speaker 1 (00:19):
How you guys doing? What up? What up? The way
that we're progressing? Uh in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
It's only a matter of time before we can actually
take our themes on back.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Oh something, I I think tonight would have been a
good night for tales from the Latin Quarter and uh,
all kinds of things tonight. See our guests, you'll she
just had some.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Some or we just might have to insert those things.

Speaker 2 (00:48):
I'm here with Team Supreme. Uh, here with almighty Unpaid Bill.
Oh hey, I'm pivot. Wait Unpaid Bill? Are you part
of in conto at all?

Speaker 4 (00:59):
Like?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Is that any of your music? No? No, I'm friends
that's hitting Bruno.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
No, I wish I was, honestly, my my my bank
wishes that I was know something about Bruno. But I
don't talk about him or anyone I have. No, I
have nothing to do with Bruno. I wish I did, though, man,
like ten weeks at number one or some ship, Like
I wish it's still number one, right?

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Yeah, Like you know liv Manuel is going to mess
around and and like beat boys to men. M Mariah Carey,
is that still the longest number one number one song
sweet Day? I think it is, Okay, I mean I'm
from the old school sound scan so you know, or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Method they use now to.

Speaker 5 (01:44):
Yeah, this new math don't count. Like we come from
an er when motherfuckers had to lead their house to
buy ship. Exactly exactly, That's exactly, dude, that was the
way we did.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yes, Okay, I'm sorry because La is you know, she's uh,
she's how you doing?

Speaker 6 (02:01):
Like, yeah, I am doing amazing except for this man,
this little gas situation.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
But I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good.
I'm good. I'm good. What's what's gas looking like in
LA right now?

Speaker 6 (02:12):
Well, it's funny you asked that my rich friend. Uh,
currently gas in Los Angeles is six dollars. We are
at about five ninety something.

Speaker 5 (02:22):
Yeah, we'd like it was like four dollars out here.
Y'all got iron legend gas prices out there.

Speaker 1 (02:27):
Wait a minute, this is something, fante. Do you drive? Oh?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah, I mean this is the question you never I mean,
spent five years, but I just don't.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
I can't see kind of like, what car? What kind
of car do you have? I got a Lexus RX
three fifty. That sounds swanky.

Speaker 5 (02:49):
Yeah, I mean, hey, it's paid for. I ain't buying
another car, So you write it out.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
All right?

Speaker 3 (02:55):
I want I want FaceTime Fante while he was in
his car outside of the chicken shop, I believe is
what happened?

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Do you have like a cigarette hanging out of his
mouth with just one hand on the wheel. Nah, I
just had to do it the way back, like like
Dame Dash and painting for Yeah, I have my black father,
you know, just get you get home and you pull
up in the driveway and you just sit there for
about an indeterminate amount of time.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Am I the only I don't know if this is
a tea in my movement?

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Am I the only one that sometimes just has to
sit in the car for ten minutes just so you
can brace yourself for whatever is waiting for you.

Speaker 1 (03:30):
You're not alone? So that's universal talk.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Oh yeah, straight up, Okay, I'm still happy with my relationship.
I was just asking for a friend. So, Steve, how
you doing, I'm good man. Any anything interesting happening in
the network or you know, oh gosh, I mean, you know,
I didn't anticipate you asking me that question.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
So okay, well let me just start again.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
How you doing, Steve, I didn't anticipate you ask me
that either, so I don't know what.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
Ladies and gentlemen? All right, So and I'm I'm I'm
winging this.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
So I'm trying to keep it real sustinct because I
realized that our guest hasn't spoken a word yet because
I didn't address her or all.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Right, I know, I know. So look when when cats,
when when dudes my.

Speaker 2 (04:16):
Age start reminiscing about you know, quote unquote the good
old days or real hip hop or true school or
whatever we say, our guest name should ring familiar. I
think that the thing about well, the thing is is
that even though I've never read an interview or seen

(04:39):
a television interview, heard it at radio interview on the radio,
or even exchange any sort of casual banter with our
guests or even DM crept my way into a friendship
or a relationship, which is I know that may I
made that sound weird, but you know, DM creeping your

(04:59):
way into free friendships is kind of real.

Speaker 1 (05:01):
Like I can actually say that.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
I'm genuine friends with like Henry Winkler and Working Fairchild
just from DM Creeping, which kind of weird.

Speaker 1 (05:09):
I'm also friends with Tasty Cake Steve wait wait wait
wait wait, I like with.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Friends with with with non human entities on Twitter. But
Morgan Fairchild, dude, it's so random. She started liking, like
she started liking a whole bunch of my tweets, and
then we're actually BFFs, like, like, hey, when you're in town,
let's go to dinner. I mean, I haven't done it yet,
but I think I'm down with Morgan Fairchild.

Speaker 1 (05:35):
Yo. Oh my gosh. I know.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
It's like the the eight year Old News kind of
like happy right now, right, I'm thrilled, thrilled.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
I know, I know, because like house is going to
relate to me. All right.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
My whole point is that, you know, I don't exactly
have a relationship with our guest on the show, having
grown up in the age of hip hop, where you know,
a transition from twelve inch and singles to LPs, and
I'm part of the generation that lived for liner notes

(06:12):
and seeing who did what. Our next guest name should
ring familiar to hip hop heads. Because she was literally
president of one of the most powerful labels of the genre.
And I don't even want to limit it to hip hop,
because you know, I mean, Tommy Boy had hits from
club hits to pop music to freestyle to I.

Speaker 1 (06:35):
Could name them all.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
De La Soul, Coolio, Digital Underground for Some D's House
of Payne, Club, Nouveau K seven, LFO Information Society, Ardi
by Nature, the Riza back when he was Prince Raquin
RuPaul Queen Latifa, the original hip hop band Statso Sonic. Y'all,

(06:57):
y'all really have to understand that the muscle that this
label operated with, probably the only other rival label that
can even say that they held that same space was
probably def jam So Ladies and gentlemen, the very legendary
president or former president, Tommy Boy, the one and only

(07:18):
Monica Lynch won Quest left set mere.

Speaker 4 (07:24):
Thank you. I'm doing great, And I really appreciated the
conversation about gas prices because now that I'm sixty five,
gas price means a whole different thing. I've never driven,
I don't drive. I just got a match. You New
York say, what's the gas situation. I'm like, let me

(07:46):
look at my medicine cabinet. That's what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Wait, you're telling me you never had your license or
you never owned a car.

Speaker 4 (08:00):
We have my license, but I only use it for ID.
And the only car I ever drove was a gold
Cadillac with power windows that my father owned back in
like the early seventies. So the die was cast at
a young age.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
So this is definitely going to lead to my first question,
what part, Well, I don't know, were you a natural
born in New.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Yorker or Chicago? You could hear it from Chicago?

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Okay, yeah, Chicago. I'm sixty five, I'm from Chicago, grew
up there. Yeah, well, you know, I grew up there
and I was, you know, really weaned on Top forty
radio when it was still a hugely amazing thing in
the late sixties. Heard all the great great pop songs

(08:45):
from that era, and back then, you know, blues was
definitely still a big thing in Chicago, but it was
mostly I would say a lot of white guys. They
were checking the blues back in that scene. You know,
Paul Butterfield Blues.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Band, the Electric Blues.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
Yeah, right, yep, exactly. And then I start of got
into the disco scene. I was a big disco dancer,
hustle contest, was a dancer at the big gay bar
in Chicago, which is sort of like a It was
the Studio fifty four of Chicago. Then I was in
a punk band and we'd work at a punk club

(09:23):
and did all sorts of things before I came to
New York in nineteen seventy eight.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
So you got history. What was your first musical memory.

Speaker 4 (09:31):
My first musical memory was listening to my parents' records
in the basement, and they, of course had the sort
of records that you would find in the sixties and
a lot of collections. It was everything from Nicholson May
to My Fair Lady soundtrack to you know, Herb Albert

(09:52):
and the Tijuana Brass, that sort of thing. I had
a big crush on Herb Albert back then. And I
got my first record player the same year that Rubber
Saul came out. That was the first record I ever owned.
Was Rubber Saul.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
That would be sixty five.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
Uh no, I think it was a little earlier. I think, well, yeah,
maybe sixty four. Sixty five was Rubber Saul.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
I think, yeah, okay, wow, that's cool.

Speaker 2 (10:15):
So would you like Did you have any ambitions or
goals to be in the music industry or did it
sort of find you as you became an adult.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
I had no ambitions, no goals. I just loved music.
I was like I used to buy forty fives all
the time. I don't know if you remember that there
was something called the Phonologue, this huge like yellow paperback
compendium that you could go and do special orders of
forty fives at record stores back then. Do you remember that?

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Well?

Speaker 2 (10:50):
Yeah, when I shot at specialty stores. Now they it
looks like the yellow pages, like it's just a masterless.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
So what was the spot we used to stop at them?
Philly Steve Val?

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah, yeah, so like you go to Val Shively and
you know, next to Jerry's Rest in peace, to Jerry's
who just passed away like a month ago or whatever.
Like those specialty record stores, like record stores that have
over one hundred thousand records in.

Speaker 1 (11:22):
Stock, they still have those books there.

Speaker 2 (11:26):
So you didn't work at a record store, So how
would you get access to those records or how would
you get access to that book?

Speaker 4 (11:34):
Well? I was always listening to the top forty stations
in Chicago w LS and W CFL and I would
go down to the Marina City, those two buildings that
look like corn cobs in Chicago, and that's where WLS was,
and I was a kid. I would just take the
l train down there and you could stand in the
lobby and watch the DJ on the air, and they

(11:56):
would have these little surveys that they would give you
a the top forty records for the week. I know
this is really kind of going back like a rocker,
but I figure you probably no.

Speaker 2 (12:07):
Literally, the show is based on long winded rabbit hole.
The whole point is that get me to not talk
so good.

Speaker 4 (12:16):
Well, so, anyway, so I started, you know, really saying, oh,
I want to special order these records because I can't
find them at EJ. Corvette's or Montgomery Wards or something.
And so back then, as you know, there were always
like these great independently owned records stores and you could
go there and if you struck up a good relationship
with the owner or a clerk, it was a tremendous

(12:38):
source of knowledge that was passed along and you could
special order these things and just basically loiter in the
store and learn a lot and that in fact, you know,
we could talk about that in the hip hop era
as being a big thing here in New York and
other places. But no, I came here, you know, I

(12:59):
always say, I came here with you know, on a
dollar and a dream, no plans except to go to
Studio fifty four. And I landed in New York during
the time when it was sort of like the uh,
the perfect nexus of punk and disco and no way
was happening, and sort of the downtown arts scene and
all that stuff that people lieon eye so much. But

(13:23):
it was a great time to be in New York
because it really was cheap. And I lived on Saint
Mark's Place between Second and Third, which was basically like
the main runway for you know, people would get up
at two three in the afternoon and then sit out
on the stoop to watch so and so, you know,

(13:44):
Richard Hell come down the street to cop is Dope
or whatever you know it was.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
And I wouldn't say except it's ginger right now it's
expensive property, but back then it was cheap.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
It was something to behold.

Speaker 4 (13:58):
And yeah, and there was this woman named Anya Phillips
who was sort of the one of the co founders
of the Mud Club and She was really sort of
a downtown duyenne. She was a girlfriend of James White
or James Chance, you know, contortions.

Speaker 7 (14:15):
And she.

Speaker 4 (14:17):
Sat me down one day. She's very stern, serving a
dominatrix sort of way. He said, you're going to be
a topless dancer, and I'm going to make g strings
for you. Because I had no money, and so I said, okay,
sounds like a plan. And I went to this place
called the Go Go Agency. And I've recounted this tale
many times, but there was a guy there named Johnny

(14:39):
and it was like a scene out of Broadway Danny Rose.
And you walk up the stairs in this midtown building
and there's these big boards and it lists all the
topless bars and all five burrows. And he would assign you,
you know, he was an agent. Yeah, And so he
would send me out to places and queens like the Carousel,

(15:01):
or the place up in the Bronx called the Slice,
or there was a place over in the meatpacking district
when it was still a meatpacking district that you do
these and a lot of stuff in Midtown because you
got a lot had a lot of customers in Midtown
back then. But but yeah, it was wait.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
I gotta ask, so I you know my era of
I say, I'm part of the deaf leopard generation where
there's no time where I've not entered a strip club
where they forced you to listen to pour some sugar
on me, except for Atlanta, except for Atlanta. But back then,

(15:43):
like would you have to feed the forty five jukebox?
Or was there or was it like it is now
like welcome to the stage.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
No, no, no, I wish I had an mc welcoming
to the stage. It wasn't quite that.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
Grand I was going to ask if you had a
numb to plume?

Speaker 1 (16:00):
Did you? Did you have a yes? A title? What's
her name?

Speaker 4 (16:05):
It was mister Smnique. And this was all sort of
in the late seventies, you know, so the type of
records that you were hearing, I mean, if I hear
you know, ring my bell one more time.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
It's that was sort of like that was yours sugar
on me?

Speaker 4 (16:24):
It was it was the poursome sugar of Me of
nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine. Yeah, totally, you know, but
it was disco, you know, because it was certain it
was sort of like when disco it kind of peaked,
and it was much more like, uh, these mechanical type
of records, which not that I'm mad at that, but
it was those type of records. Ring my bell seems

(16:46):
to be the one that always comes back to me
in my dreams. But I worked at had what I
call extended residencies at show World, which you might be
might remember that and peep Land, which was also a
big player on the on the deuce back then. But yeah,

(17:07):
it was steady money, good money. I made cleared fifteen
hundred dollars a week at the peak.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Okay, I gotta ask the question, so is this all right? You?

Speaker 2 (17:17):
You remember how it wasn't Papa, don't preach like open
your heart. Was it like you sat in a booth
and you in started a coin and the thing went up?
And you does that type of strip club still or
is that like a thing of the past.

Speaker 1 (17:34):
Now it's called only fans, Yeah, it is it is that. No,
we need somewhere, oh man, No.

Speaker 4 (17:44):
It was, Hey, these only fans chicks. I think they're
pretty smart. They're much more entrepreneurial. I mean, back then
I got hired and well, like to say you, for example,
the show World, my boss's name was a woman named
Thunder and she had huge red hair. She was like
benson Hurst type of gal. And the place was owned
by a guy who died recently, but it was all

(18:06):
mob owned. It was oh who is there was one
of the big mob characters that Frankie the horse Eyanello.
There was the guy who ran the whole.

Speaker 1 (18:15):
All that he is named after an animal. Then you
know that's bad.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
That's right, that's right. So you know they paid you
a flat fee, but you made your money. You really
made your money by getting these guys to keep putting
the coins in and keep the window going up. So
I would sit on one side and then there'd be the curtain,
the metal curtain, and the guys would be on the
other side, and a lot of we had a lot

(18:39):
of Hasidic customers.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Man.

Speaker 1 (18:45):
Thing is, let's get into it. Let's talk about it a botica.

Speaker 4 (18:48):
But you know it's because it's such a repressed, sexually
repressed culture. I think you'd get a lot in in
the peep shows.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
All right, I'm gonna go there, I'm gonna go there,
go there. What happens on the guy's side of the booth? Though, Like, well,
is there a clean up afterwards, like.

Speaker 4 (19:06):
Oh, yes, there is mop patrol, isn't isn't this where
there's like first, that's right. If when you walk into
the place, you give them cash and they give you
these tokens, and the tokens are what allows you to
go to the boost or to watch a Peep movie
or things like that. There were They also had live

(19:27):
sex shows at show World. I didn't do that there,
but they had. But yeah, the idea was to keep
them putting the money in. So these these were skills
I was able to apply to the music industry not
too long afterwards.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
With you said you didn't do the live there? Did
you do it somewhere else? Leave it alone?

Speaker 4 (19:52):
You have to you'll have to ask me back. As
I guess to answer the second part of that question, I.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
Hear a long time New York residents like begging for
the time when Old New York returns.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
Is this what they're talking about?

Speaker 4 (20:10):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of romanticizing about dirty
New York of the seventies. I mean literally, the summer
I got there is when they let out a lot
of people with mental health issues onto the street. They
just dumped them on the street. There was a huge
garbage strike. There'd been a big blackout in nineteen seventy seven,

(20:30):
as the Tramps told us about, and there was you know,
it was definitely grungy and dirty, and people liked to say, Oh,
wasn't it great back then because it attracted all these
you know, creative people and blah blah blah. But I
don't really get all. I mean, I like to recount

(20:53):
the stories about that, but I wouldn't want it to
go back to that necessarily.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
So you liked post ninety four Disney Giuliani era a
little better?

Speaker 8 (21:03):
No, No, I think I've shared this on the show
once before, Like the first day that we arrived in
New York, when the roots like really first came to
New York to start mixing.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
Do you want more?

Speaker 2 (21:19):
I believe like in December of ninety three was pretty
much like I think the.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Day that whatever.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
I Okay, maybe I've been on forty second Street once
or twice in my life. Like I know we went
to go see the Whiz, but I don't remember that
much at the age of seven, but you know, I
do remember us going on forty second Street near our
hotel and like Rich, like my manager what not being
really disappointed that forty second Streets disnified and not the

(21:49):
CD you know New York that he remembers. And I
remember like people telling us like that week is when
the transformation started and everybody was pissed at it.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
So hey, it's nice to be able to be old
enough to look back at it and to remember it
as it was back then. But I'm not getting all
tears in my beer over you know.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
Hey, that's perfect.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
Wish it was back, you know, so.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Club wise, you know, I've been trying to get another
downtown New York diva that made a billion dollar career
for yourself on this show, but that hasn't happened yet.
So I guess you are really our first witness to
that era, can you assuming that by this time you're

(22:38):
watching hip hop culture creep into downtown? First of all, like,
did you go north of the Bronx to any of
the what was known as the classic eras of hip hop,
like whatever, the Fever or any of those clubs way north?

Speaker 4 (22:54):
Yeah, I mean I've been to the Fever course, I
know sal from back then. Tea connection. Actually, you know,
a funny thing was I ended up bringing Martin scores
as to the Tea Connection one night to hear Bambada play,
and that was sort of an odd set of circumstances.

(23:15):
But uh, you know, yeah, he knew got describe that.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
They wait, what era of Raging Bull King of comedy?

Speaker 4 (23:25):
What era do you This would have been circa eighty
two eighty three, so you tell me comedy. Yeah, And
he was friends with this guy named Jay Cox, who
was the film at a film critic at Time Magazine
who was related to Tom Silverman, and somehow there was
a conversation, Oh, Marty would really love to go up

(23:47):
and check out this hip hop thing, and bah blah bah,
and and you know, I was like, hey, be happy
to show him, and you know, take him up there.
And so there's a car service, which back then, you know,
it was a rare thing for maybe have any car
service or anything. But he went up to Tea Connection.
He was pretty quiet, you know, I think he was

(24:09):
just checking it out, observing. And you know, the Time
magazine ended up doing a big story about sort of
the emerging hip hop scene back then. But yeah, I
used to go to some of the places uptown, but
more frequently I would go to every Friday night, we
went to Negrill when that was having when cool Lady

(24:31):
Blue you know, had started doing her nights at Agrill.
And then I would always go to the Roxy on
Friday night, and then following the Roxy, I would head
up a few blocks and go to the Fun House.
I was very friendly with Jellybean and would hang out
with him a lot. Yes, So those and then the

(24:56):
Dance of course, Dance Aterria was a really great play
to hang out at. And you know before that it
was like Studio fifty four in the mud Club were
staples for me. But you know, but yeah, Union Squares
was a place I went to a lot and Amazon Hotel.

(25:16):
That was a big place. Patrick Moxy had Payday I
don't know, okay, yeah, oh yeah, total that was a
big one. Dala Soul did a big premiere performance there.
And I didn't really hang out at Latin Quarters that much.
I left that to Dante. But but yeah, those were

(25:37):
the those were the big clubs that were sort of
happening back then.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Yeah, the lure of the or the yeah, the focalore
of Studio fifty four, like assuming that it really started
to rise in seventy seven, When when did it peak,
even though I've heard Studio fifty four stories like in
eighty one, eighty two, eighty three, eighty four, like in
the half first half of the eighties, like when did

(26:02):
the allure of Studio fifty four died down?

Speaker 1 (26:06):
And when did it become? Was it ever uncol to
go there?

Speaker 4 (26:09):
Yes, it was uncool to go there after it closed
and then it reopened. I would say it peaked in
seventy nine. It burned fast and hard, and it's extinguished
pretty quickly, I think that. But you know, i'd say
by eighty you know.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Were you there?

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Have you ever went there at its peak? When like
oh yeah, yeah, even she couldn't get in even though
they had like the number one song on the.

Speaker 4 (26:32):
Charts, Like oh yeah no, I literally, you know, laughed
that I you know that I landed at Laguardi Airport
and proceeded straight to Studio fifty four. But it's not
it's an exaggeration, but literally I was like a homing pigeon.
I have to go to my spiritual home of Studio
fifty four. And you know, back then, so this is

(26:53):
in April of seventy eight, and back then, you know,
you had all the you know hand von Furstenberg and
Warhol and Liza and all these people, you know, is
razzle dazzle. But there was always this. They always let
in a group of young kids that if you were
dressed interestingly enough and added youthful flavor to the crowd,

(27:18):
you'd stand outside for a little while. And Mark Bennecky,
who was the doorman, who would stand on this perch
in a huge norma kmali red cocoon coat, would you know,
sort of look around and act like, you know, he'd
sauce out the crowd. I always had a strategy, though.

(27:38):
My strategy was to take the subway up to as
close as a possible to fifty four at eighth and
then take a cab from the corner to directly in
front of Studio fifty four, which could take anywhere from
thirty to forty five minutes because the street was already
always packed, right. The trick was that split second when

(27:59):
the cab door all opens. Mark Benecky is always looking
to see who's getting out of cars because it could
be Truman, Capodi, you know, so, but he would at
least register you, so you know, I spend whatever seventy
five cents on the subway, another maybe four bucks just
going half a block and a taxi to make sure

(28:19):
to get in.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
See, now Rogers should have learned that. Listen. Yes he
should also been white, but you know, oh.

Speaker 4 (28:29):
Yeah, well listen, there is there's no question about that.
But yeah, no, it was not a democracy. It was
far from it. So yeah, seventy nine with the peak
seventy eight.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
Maybe so once that peaks are you would you say
that Paradise Garage replaced it? Or then what was your
like what replaced Studio fifty four? As okay, that's not cool,
no more, let's go to this spot, you know what.

Speaker 4 (28:56):
It wasn't an either or. I mean, there was a
lot of stuff going on simultaneously. There was a place
called Hurrahs that was very popular. There was a place
called the Continental Bath, I mean not the Continental Bands.
That's another place, the Continental Club. There was dance materia,
there was a mud club, there's a Cbgbi's was still

(29:18):
you know, it was very big still back then. And
then there was a course places like Xenon which was
sort of like the poor relation to Studio fifty four.
You know, if you couldn't get into Studio fifty four.
You would go to Xenon and then there was also
what's that sex club? Oh, what's a sex club that
everyone went to? That the Swingers Club. I forget the

(29:41):
name of it. It was very popular.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Hey, son, you know it's in my mind right now, Like, yeah, then.

Speaker 1 (29:50):
You eluded him. This is why we have guests on
the show. I'm trying to you know.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
I was going up there, but at this rate I
was doing Oldie. It was like, I didn't see this
part of New York.

Speaker 4 (30:03):
Well, you know, amir, you certainly have Vinceletti's Disco Files book.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Yes, I think the.

Speaker 4 (30:11):
Disco Files Book is a really great lay of the land. Okay,
the clubs that were happening and when they were happening,
because it didn't just like jump from Studio fifty four
to say, Paradise Grash and Paradise Garage was such a
different There might have been some overlap, but it was
a very different vibe, very different crowd. I was not
a member of Paradise Crash. I did go there on

(30:34):
many occasions, but you had to it was had to
reach out to the guy. Was it Richard Brody I
think was the name of the guy that owned the
club and get on the guest list for the night
and all.

Speaker 1 (30:46):
It was too hard to get it.

Speaker 4 (30:47):
Okay, well you had to be a you know, as
a membership club.

Speaker 2 (30:52):
Question before your record label days, were you seeing any
bands or artists like forming clubs or were you strictly
just like a club kid listening to DJs?

Speaker 4 (31:07):
You know, I was actually more interested in the DJs,
to tell you, and I still am the I mean, yeah,
I see these shows and everything, but I didn't have
I never had the same fervor about seeing live concerts
except for Roxy Music and I'm a rough, total Roxy

(31:28):
music geek fan. Love Brian Ferry, like going back to
the mid seventies. But so that was Oh and I
was also loved to go see Bowie and LaBelle. LaBelle
was a definitely appointment, you know, that was like a
big deal to go to Labelle's shows back in the seventies.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
But were you there for their infamous where I think
they did something at the Lincoln Center where everyone had
to wear something silver?

Speaker 4 (31:56):
Oh yeah, no, no, no, yes, that was the Chameleon Tour,
I believe, yes, with all the costumes that were by
Larry Lagaspi, the Lake Larry Lagaspi, who's being there's a
big book that Rick Owens is doing a tribute to

(32:18):
Larry Lagaspy. But this was in I believe seventy six,
because I think after the Chameleon tour they kind of
broke up, if I'm yeah, But I was in Chicago
and me and all my friends, I was hanging out
with this huge, gay, glamy crowd and we all dressed
as reptiles to go to the LaBelle concert. And I

(32:42):
dressed in this green sequined lizard outfit that I put together,
and actually and all my friends did. I still have
photos of it, and I was invited to go up
on stage and dance with Nonah and Sarah, and I
have the photos of it to I have the receipts.

(33:03):
But it was it was incredible. I mean this, this
is when the audience was really at one with the
LaBelle and you know, people felt that way too about
going to Bowie and Roxy music. Everyone wanted to dress
as glamorously as Brian Ferry, you know. So. But but
I'm not going to be that. I'm not that personally

(33:25):
to say, oh, yeah, I was at such and such
you know concert or anything like that.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
Okay, so for you, did you know an immediate sonic
difference when you were frequenting clubs that were more hip
hop based and and I mean way before there were
rap labels or even before your time at your tenure
at a Tommy Boy. Like if you're seeing like, do

(33:52):
you remember your first rap club experience pre your record
label days?

Speaker 4 (33:58):
Hmmm, No, oh I don't, because I think I started.
I think probably the first club that I recall going
to was probably Negrill. So it's not like I was,
oh yeah, I was at Harlem World in seventy nine
and blah blah. No, it wasn't like that.

Speaker 1 (34:19):
I was is this the Negrill that's on twenty third Street?

Speaker 4 (34:24):
Negrill I think was down on like Second Avenue around
maybe fourth sixth Street. Lady Blue Freddy was very involved
in sort of helping, you know, coalesce the uptown downtown
scenes together. You know, Bam was djaying there and I

(34:46):
think I think rack Steady performed there. Is it was
like a small, sort of cramped basement space. It was
really you know, not.

Speaker 2 (34:56):
Yeah, okay, I get it now when people mentioned the Grill.
Of course, me being an entry in the nineties, I'm
thinking of the upscale Jamaican restaurant. Yeah, thinking that maybe
it was once a hip hop club like in the
eighties or whatever. But I'm realizing that I got fooled.
So can you tell me how you got pulled into

(35:19):
the record industry.

Speaker 4 (35:22):
Well, I was waiting take I left my thriving career
at show World and people in and you know, I
made this, you know, incredibly brilliant determination that the people
who I was, you know, the people I was working with,
the people I was working for and the customers were
all pretty much a dead end. And I wasn't and

(35:44):
I wasn't getting any younger. So I started waiting tables,
ended up working graveyard at a place called the Empire Diner.
I was living in the Chelsea Hotel. So there's like
all the bona fides for like, yeah, she checks all
the boxers late seventies, early eighties. But because I had

(36:08):
always been such a music fan and I was always like,
what's that you're playing? What's that you're playing? You know,
but you know, I loved it, I decided to go
to this. I heard about something called the New Music Seminar,
and it was the first conference that Tom Silverman put
together with his two partners, Mark Josephson and I'm not

(36:31):
even sure Joel Weber was part of it at that point,
but it was in a small It was in recording
studio up in Yorkville. And this was probably nineteen eighty
or eighty one. So and I, you know, met Tom
at a pizza place during a break. I said, hey,
I'm Monica, you know, okay, whatever. And then a guy

(36:55):
named Bob Pittman was speaking at this conference and he started.
He announced that there was a new new thing that
they were about to launch called MTV, and I approached
him afterwards. I said, oh, man, this sounds great. I
would love to work for you. He you know, completely
ignored me. And about a year so I just kept
waiting tables. And then about a year later I saw

(37:17):
an ad for a guy, Gal Friday in the Village Voice.
This is back when people where there were no there
was no LinkedIn.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Uh, you had to buy a Village Voice to get
a job.

Speaker 4 (37:28):
You had to buy the Village Rights or the New
York Times, you know, and you on the Sunday New
York Times, you know, and go through all these little,
you know, mouse type listings, and I saw an ad
for a guy, Gal Friday for a dance music I
think it was a dance music publication slash record company.
I still have the ad. I still have it on

(37:50):
Oh yeah, a little yellow piece of paper that I
cut out. I have it in an envelope. And I
called the number and it was tom and he didn't
remember me, but I remembered him, and he told me, yeah,
you know dance music. I have dance music report. I
just started this label called Tommy Boy. And you know

(38:11):
this would be to be like my right hand person.
Blah blah blah, and there were At this point, I
was actually living in servants quarters up on Upper West Side.
I was bouncing around a lot of places.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
That's always the top floor of a that's right. I
was second. I was second. I was seconds away from
buying a five story house in Harlem in the Heights
before after Hamilton. Then them prices really jacked up. It
was like Hamilton's Row and it looked as large as

(38:47):
like the Huxtables crib in Brooklyn. But you know, the
basement was tricked out. The first floor, then they had
the second, fourth, third, fourth, fourth floor, and then on
the fifth floor that's usually where the maid or the nanny.
You know, these houses are also hundreds of years old. You
imagine that's where Yeah, the help, So that kept your legs,

(39:08):
That at least kept your legs in shafe because you'd
have to go up five flights of stairs.

Speaker 4 (39:14):
Yes, for these tiny little rooms. It wasn't you know,
shared bathrooms.

Speaker 6 (39:19):
Whatever.

Speaker 4 (39:19):
It was fine. It was like maybe fifty seventy five
bucks a week or something. But I had these numerous
phone calls with Tom trying to convince some way he
should hire me because I didn't have a college education.
He did. He's like, well where you know, what have
you done before? And like, well, you know, I worked
at peep Land and this was you know, you know,

(39:40):
And he wasn't thoroughly convinced. But then once he said, well, okay, listen, tomorrow,
I'm going out to pick up the twelve inches of
the new Tommy Boy release and you can come. You
can ride along with me. So I'm like, okay, cool,
this is my shot. And so I meet up with him.
He lives in this uh, two bedroom apartment over in Yorkville,

(40:04):
Let's face it, the heart of exactly the Upper East Side.
On the fire, he said you know where the mayor's home.

Speaker 1 (40:13):
Is, where York Street starts, Yes.

Speaker 4 (40:17):
York Avenue, right exactly. It's you know. So we drive
out to Long Island City and his hatchback. I don't
know if that's a thing, if they even make hatchbacks anymore,
but it was. We drove out there in his hatchback
to this uh pressing plant called Apexton, and it was
owned by these two Polish brothers. And so what they

(40:41):
do is, when you know, when Tom had ordered a
pressing if I don't know, a thousand or whatever of
this record, they wheel them out to the curb in
fifty count boxes, and you know, Tom opens up the
back of the hatchback and I started slinging in these
fifty count boxes. And I'm a girl from Chicago. Man,
It's like, I'm a big girl from Chicago. I have

(41:04):
no problem lifting up heavy shit and slinging it. So
he was like, oh, she got some muscle on her,
all right, you got the job. So that's how I started.
But I had to keep waiting on tables when I
started because I couldn't afford you know, the pay wasn't
a whole lot. So I was working tables at night
and working for tom.

Speaker 1 (41:24):
During the day. Was this is this after Planet Rock
or like what years? No? No?

Speaker 4 (41:31):
Before December of eighty one, I was the first employee.

Speaker 3 (41:36):
Your memory is incredible, Monica inch, I can't even your memories.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
I believed. I love this. This tells me that you
didn't do much drugs in the eighties, because.

Speaker 4 (41:43):
Oh no, that's not true.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Do you take me never mind? Usually our guests are like,
hey man, I don't remember selective member. What you know
it is?

Speaker 4 (41:52):
You have selective memory about certain things. If you asked
me other things, I say, I can't remember. But this
stuff I do remember.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
Was this the jazzy j like funky Sensation era of yes?

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Okay, in fact, it was.

Speaker 4 (42:08):
That's right, That's what it was like exactly. That was
when I started in December of nineteen eighty one. Tommy
actually about a week after I started, went away for
a couple of weeks to Jamaica for an extended vacation
with his girlfriend, and Jazzy Sensation had just come out, right,

(42:30):
and so you know, my duties were split between Tommy Boy,
this fledgling label, Tommy Boy, and Dance Music Report, which
was which was a disco DJ tip sheet, which I
don't know if you remember that, but it was an
important publication in its time. So he went on vacation

(42:51):
and left me with, you know, my sort of semi
defined duties, and one of them was, you know, to
make sure to you know, take the orders for Jesz Sensation,
and you know, make sure the pressing plant has got
the records going and all this other stuff. Well, sure enough,
I took an order from a one stop. I don't

(43:14):
know if you know what a one stop is. Yes,
there's a sub category of an independent distributor. And it
was an account that we didn't weren't open with, and
so I took an order and then come to find
out that it was some guy who was a gonif

(43:35):
and wasn't going to be paying us. And Tom totally
liked reamed me about that.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
But when you say you mean like some friends of ours.

Speaker 4 (43:44):
Some friends of ours, well, I just bought a hardcover
copy of The Joys of Yiddish for a friend of
mine today. Because when you say because I said, I
said to her, I said, oh, you know this person, bubbah,
they're great, but they have no rookmonnas. And she said,
what's rock Munas. I'm like, you've never worked in the
music industry. You don't know what Ghani or Rochmunnis is

(44:05):
or you know, oh yeah, so yeah, I mean it
basically meant the guy wasn't who serve of a thief,
wasn't planning on paying us.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
In my mind, the difference between Tommy Boy and well,
I'm saying the hip hop labels that came before it,
because really we're talking sugar Hill is what I feel
is notable about those two labels is that you know,
with enjoy in sugar Hill, I definitely know that, you know,
Mars Levy had his hands or quote Mars Levy types

(44:35):
more gangster run era of the music industry.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
How is one able to start.

Speaker 2 (44:43):
A label, an independent label in the early eighties without
someone trying to muscle you for a piece? Now, even
though okay, so Jazz's instation wasn't exactly Planet Rock, but
for our listeners that are are peep in Jesse Sensation
is a hip hop rendition of gwymccree's sort of timeless

(45:07):
Can you feel it?

Speaker 1 (45:08):
Can you feel it? Our sensation or jazz sensation?

Speaker 4 (45:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (45:12):
Right? So, like, are you aware of the strong arm of.

Speaker 2 (45:20):
The connective folks that sugar Hill and Enjoy Records definitely were.

Speaker 4 (45:25):
Uh, you know, that's a good question. Sugar Hill was
definitely you know, Joe and Sylvia. And there was a
guy named Maldon who was sort of the other co
founder of Sugarte Michael No, no, not Michael moll. I
was like, okay, now this guy was Yugoslavian. He was

(45:46):
sort of put in thereby Morris Levy to you know,
make sure the money situation was whatever it was going
to be. And uh, but but I would say that
there it was a very much a entrepreneurial cottage industry
at that point, you know. And I think Enjoy Records
Bobby Robinson's label is more in that vein. But you

(46:10):
what you also had. And I just have to give
a shout out to Corey Robbins because Corey, yes, co
founder of Profile Records. Corey actually came to the office
when Tom was away and he just knocked down the
door and said, hey, I'm Corey. You know I have
Profile Records. If any if you need anything, if anything

(46:32):
goes wrong, you have any questions, please feel free to
get in touch with me. And it's like, wow, thank you,
I appreciate it because I didn't have a lot of questions.
But there was this There were labels that were really
the the you know dance, the post disco dance labels
like west End and Prelude. Who there. It wasn't so

(46:54):
much about some sort of cultural bubbling up. It was
more about what was selling. Okay, cell Cell's over or
peaked or whatever. So maybe it's you know, Tanya Gardner
or you know something right exactly things that are bubbling
up that are more from the street and including hip hop,

(47:18):
but it was more of a commercial imperative, I think,
than an artistic decision or a cultural reflection so much.
And I think the same thing is absolutely true with
sugar Hill and Enjoy. I mean, you've got you know,
Bobby Robinson and Joe and Sylvia. I mean look at
their histories with the labels that they had, so I
think that they were all these were independent labels owned

(47:43):
by people who were looking around the landscape and saying
where can I make money next?

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Okay, so if you're doing jazzy Sensation, assuming that you
were there for its very first order, how many pieces
are you ordering and how many like just walk me
through how does one spread it? So how many go
to DJs so they can get played? Are you hoping
that Frankie Crocker plays it so that it might go national?

(48:16):
And then if it does well? In other words, the
problem that was presented in Crust Groove, which I forget
what single it was like they had a single so
successful that they didn't have enough money to print it.

Speaker 4 (48:27):
Yeah, then yes, yeah, the worst thing that could happen
to you is a hit like the producers.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Yeah, okay, so let's even though I want you to lead
up to Planet Rock, I'm certain that that was a
problem for you guys, because that was a worldwide smash.
So how do you operate and service the world? And
how do you know what the world wants? How do
you know what a local record store in Germany wants?
How do you know if Doctor Dre or Uncle Jam

(48:57):
is playing it in la Like?

Speaker 1 (48:59):
How how do you spread the word?

Speaker 2 (49:01):
Like who's the person that you're trying to get this
record to hoping that it will become a thing.

Speaker 4 (49:06):
Well, listen, back then, it was a very small network.
And when Jazz Sensation was out, I mean I always
tell people, you know, Jazz Sensation really was what I
would call a regional record It was popular in the
mid Atlantic area. Tommy Boyce certainly didn't have the we

(49:28):
had not set up sort of a national network, which
may or may not have even been you know, might
have made a difference, I don't know. But the thing
is is that back then there was such a small
number of people to even go to. You know, we
were dealing directly with Magic when he was still on
HBI Wow, you know, Islam Head, Zulu Beats, Supreme Team,

(49:55):
there was I mean, this is before Red was on Kiss.
I mean there was you know, a a lot of
this was through club DJs and to some degree these
sort of specialty mix shows that were starting to merge,
some of them on college, college and university stations. But
at that point, I know you were talking nineteen eighty two,

(50:18):
it was it's a short window really between Jazzy Sensation
and Planet Rock. As Planet Rock came out, I think
it was April of eighty two, so it's a really
big difference. So you had the independent record stores who
by the way, you know, I have had a recent
conversation with someone about this that if there was ever

(50:41):
a documentary that someone was going to consider doing. I
think the history of independent record stores, Black independent record
stores and their role in hip hop and dance music
as an untold story, But I would say the record
stores played a big role in spreading the word and
play the records. The club DJs were more important at

(51:03):
that point servicing record pools. I mean, I still have.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
About record pools.

Speaker 4 (51:10):
Yes, I still have lists of the record pools and
the record pool directors and we would keep a running,
you know, running list of how many members do you
have and who do you service and blah blah blah,
So how.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Many counts do you have to service? How many counts
do you have to service for a record pool?

Speaker 4 (51:31):
You know, some of these record pools might have like
the Shore record pool that was run by a guy
named Bobby Davis up in the Bronx. He'd say, oh,
you know, one hundred and fifty members, two hundred members,
or you know, you'd have maybe a Rickets Records out
in New Jersey and they might have seventy five members,
or some record pool out on Long Island or you know,

(51:51):
whatever it was. But you know the thing with the
record pool directors is that they sort of were had more,
uh more power than that they did in the in
the years to come, and then well you have to
give us full service or nothing, even though.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
I know it's about to happen.

Speaker 4 (52:11):
Yeah, a lot of their members would never touch a wrap.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
Record, okay, so they would just sell it.

Speaker 4 (52:17):
So they would sell it or you know, or it
would just be like, you know, go into the uh
you know, the vinyl dump or whatever. But it was
you know, so.

Speaker 2 (52:29):
Is that why sometimes when I get records then they
have that little uh cut open hole on the top
left corner. Is that to differentiate a promotional record?

Speaker 1 (52:40):
Yeah? I always wanted to know what that was for.

Speaker 4 (52:42):
Yeah, that's yeah, they were.

Speaker 1 (52:44):
They were notched a punch hole.

Speaker 4 (52:46):
Okay, like a neutered cat, you know. You know, it's
a promo, you know, but that didn't necessarily prevent something
being resold. But you know, it only would resell if
it was a hit. Who fucking cares if it's not
a hit record, you know out so you know anyway,
but it was a small world, you know in New York.

(53:07):
Uh you know, yeah, you'd want to make sure Chef
Petty Bone or Sergio Munzubai or the Latin Rascals on
w k T you or DJ Jose Animal Diaz. You know,
you had Carlos DeJesus on w K t U Rest
in Peace. You had Barry Mayo and Tony Humphries over

(53:29):
Kiss Wow. Barry Mayo still friend, really fantastic guy.

Speaker 2 (53:35):
Very all these guys were DJs first before I got
to know them as remixers and editors, because you're mentioning
Tony Humphries and the Latin Rascals and they were actual
DJs first before.

Speaker 4 (53:47):
Oh yeah, Tony, Yeah. And Chef Pettybone was very important
the master mix on Kiss FM, you know so, and yeah,
of course Frankie. He was always at the top of
the you know, top of the food chain, you know,
like if you could get Frankie to play a record,
you know. And Frankie was someone who I mean I

(54:09):
knew him and counted him as a friend, as many did.
But uh, and he was always very interested in what
was coming up from the street. You see all these
photos of him hanging in the booth at Paradise Garage
or whatever. He didn't want to be left behind on
any of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
But it was, uh, you know, one of the original
human shizan looking over his shoulders trying to copy what
was he wanted.

Speaker 4 (54:38):
He was very savvy about knowing what was coming up.
He that was he had to do that, and he
did it so successfully for so many years. But you know,
Frankie was Frankie and he was very uh, you know,
you had to deal with Frankie like, you know, he
was royalty. He was radio royalty. You know.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
So in order to are you allowed to speak of
the methods of how you were able to get a
record played? I would like to think, I mean, I
would like to think that a song like Planet Rock
was so futuristic that DJs would naturally be like ya,
I gotta play this shit. But for an album like that,

(55:18):
did you have to ensure ways? Like how were rap
records broken in markets that were unpenatable but you managed
to get them on anyway?

Speaker 4 (55:31):
Well, that's that's another good question. The answer is, yes,
we had to take care of business. And I want
to mention, by the way, since Philly looms so large here,
that there was a really great remembrance of a guy
named Snooky Jones in Philadelphia who passed away recently. He
was a record promoter and there was a there was

(55:54):
a great remembrance of the scene in the WDAS parking
lot where Butterball tamp Buro of course reins Supreme, and
how all the promo guys would pull up on I
forget what record day was there. I don't know what
record day was. H let's say it was Monday, doesn't matter.
They you know, they all be there in the parking lot,

(56:14):
jammed up waiting for butter to you know, a light
from his car and get at him about whatever their
releases were. But the answer, the short answer is yes,
it doesn't listen. If it was a hit, you definitely
had to pay, and if it wasn't a hit, you
could waste a lot of money. But and people were

(56:35):
happy to take your money. But that doesn't mean you're
going to get any airplay.

Speaker 1 (56:38):
So what turned out?

Speaker 2 (56:39):
You mean, if it was a hit, as in, if
it sounded good and you felt it deserved to be
on the radio, then you determined this is going to
be a hit.

Speaker 4 (56:48):
Yeah, sure, there's there's there's things that deserve a lot
of things, but there's but you still had to pay
to play if you want to. There's one thing to
get play on a mixed show, or even play or
as they used to say Daytime, you know, like fact,
it was like yeah, but you didn't get Daytime, you know,
But if you wanted that official ad that's getting reported

(57:11):
to Billboard and R and R and whatever the other
bibles were at that point, you had to take care
of business, and we did.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
How Nightmares was the Planet Right experience.

Speaker 4 (57:25):
Well, I would say.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
It was less in terms of demand. In terms of demand, well,
it was.

Speaker 4 (57:31):
An immediate hit, and it was something that you know,
of course we weren't necessarily prepared for, but you do
everything you can. And what we would do is essentially
get try and get advance payments from distributors in exchange

(57:52):
for a discounted rate on the units, you know what
I'm saying. So somebody said, yeah, we'll pay you whatever,
say twenty five thousand dollars or you know whatever. You know,
if we pay you up front, can you give us
this many units at this price as opposed to what
the regular price was. So those are the type of

(58:14):
things we had to do to make sure that we
kept the pressing plant. You know, we were able to
pay for the pressing and all the other you know, jackets, labels,
all the other stuff, shipping, you know, all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
Well, hopefully by this point, you guys ramped up to
more than just a two person operation, correct.

Speaker 4 (58:34):
Yeah, well that record allowed Tommy Boy to ramp up
to more than a two person operation. You know, it
literally exploded. It created opportunities and marketplaces that we didn't
have at that point because it was because this record
did go national and it went global, and it was
the type of record. It's been recounted many times, of course,

(58:56):
but it was the type of record that really traveled exceptionally. Well, well,
it was a car record, you know, had that percolating
melodic sound so automatically you know, California, Florida, Texas, Detroit, Detroit,
you know, all these places that were not necessarily hip

(59:18):
hop markets yet that really cracked the code. You know
in a lot of those places that electro sound. Tommy
Boys early days, the first wave of success that Tommy
Boy had was definitely with electro records. It was the
Arthur Baker John Roby productions with So Soonic Force, Planet Patrol,

(59:43):
and then of course we got Johnson Crew with Michael
Johnson and you know, uh, there were that had some
like Space Pelic was huge, like in Houston, that.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
Was big in LA.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
When I visited family in Pasadena and summer of eighty three,
they were only playing the Space Cowboy and it was like,
that's when I realized things were regional because I never
heard of Space Game.

Speaker 4 (01:00:11):
It wasn't an East Coast record.

Speaker 2 (01:00:13):
Well, I knew about Pac Jam, but I definitely didn't
know about Space Cowboy.

Speaker 4 (01:00:16):
That's right. That's right, that's right. Because we were like, well,
why is it big in Houston? And it was like, oh,
because there's like a big I guess Nasaurs, you know,
whatever was going on down there. There's a huge space
thing in Houston. Oh okay, So there was so yeah,
and some of these things were like that slower sound
was sort of also, you know, like in the South

(01:00:40):
and some places there were just these different vibes and
cultural geographical differences that you know, you could see with
some the records. But we had also Globe and whiz
Kid play that beat, and you know, and with the
Double Dance Ninsky remix. And I'm probably overlooking some things,

(01:01:02):
but there was there was this brief window between say
late eighty one into maybe eighty four where we had
this really dominant electro sound and then I think once
I heard, you know, it's like, oh shit. As soon
as I heard deaf you know, run DMC, I'm like, okay,
sea change. And you know Keith LeBlanc, who I'm sure

(01:01:23):
you know who he is because it's a fellow drummer.
You know. He told me a story recently about how
as part of the sugar Hill Band he remembered traveling
with sugar Hill Gang and you know, working in the
studio there on all these records and all this stuff,
and he said, yeah, you know, I remember one day
waking up and hearing Planet Rock and saying, I think

(01:01:45):
there's a sea change going on here, guys.

Speaker 2 (01:01:47):
Oh because theyd Scorpio that's right, yup, that's right, you
grandmassive flats and the few yars five did well?

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Really Keith a plank and.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
Uh uh skip Yeah yeah, Doug, Doug wim bust and
skip did scorpio?

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
I get it?

Speaker 4 (01:02:06):
Yeah. So from the live thing into like this electro
thing was a different thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
I mean, obviously you maintained the trust of Tom. Did
you get immediately Helm president or were you head of
A and R first, or I mean was the position
real or it was this a title for paper only?

Speaker 4 (01:02:30):
Look I work my fucking ass off. I did a
lot of different.

Speaker 2 (01:02:33):
Things right, And no, no, no, I don't mean in
a dismissive way, but I mean, like, you guys have
a real office in a receptionists and oh I.

Speaker 4 (01:02:43):
Know, well, you know, back then it was like it
was all these all the labels were just scrappy operations.
I mean, we didn't have like any fanciness or nothing. Really.
I tell you, we worked in the second bedroom out
of Tom's apartment, and then we moved into two different
basement offices and your and then we moved in above
the soccer store on First Day Avenue in New Yorkville

(01:03:06):
and sort of built it out there, but it was
never fancy.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
Four some D's made their entry in eighty five, and
four some D's, I think at the time was way
different than what you guys were normally associated with. And
I know Tom's love and history of old school do
wop music and you know, so basically, you know what boys,
the men really pulled off successfully in ninety one. I

(01:03:31):
mean four some D's was that in terms of the.

Speaker 4 (01:03:35):
Blueprint for that. You know. The thing is is that
the four m D's came to us actually through mister Magic.
The four some D's had been on the scene for
some time, which I didn't even realize at.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
That as the four Cs.

Speaker 4 (01:03:45):
Yeah, as a four MCS and Tom loved do wop
and he starts saw this hip hop do wop group
in the four MDS. And the woman who was his
first wife, her name was Robin Halpin and she's very
very talented jazz musician and she actually uh co wrote

(01:04:07):
and produced a lot of those early four MDS records.
You know, let Me Love Kitchen for a scratch, you know,
let's not forget they were in that first movie, was
it Happin? Yeah, they did the record with the Fat Boys. Yeah, uh,
here I go again, all these really beautiful records. But

(01:04:30):
they were the thing with the four m DS. They
were always pitted against New Edition, and New Edition was
the group at that point that had the more of
the female audience that was really sort of going crazy
for them. But it was always the four m DS
and New Edition that were sort of going head to
head in that early sort of boy group uh vocal

(01:04:54):
hip hop you know ar you know, R and B thing.
But the thing, the big turning point for or the
four MDS and This is a story that I was
very involved with. Was when Crush Groove was being made.
One of the producers was my boyfriend at the time.
His name is Doug McHenry n.

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
Yes, Yes, oh word.

Speaker 4 (01:05:16):
Okay, Yes, and Dog, and I was staying with Dog
at the Mayflower Hotel while they were doing the film,
him and his late partner George Jackson.

Speaker 2 (01:05:27):
George Jackson, George Wait, slight, wait, I can I insert
one story only mere style.

Speaker 1 (01:05:34):
You remember the.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
Boom, the internet boom of the early aughts, when everyone
thought the Internet was going to be like this gold
mine of a thing, same way that bitcoin is now.
And we struck a deal to sell Okay player in Yeah,
nineteen ninety nine, and I believe we broke her to
deal with George Jackson and the way that I was

(01:05:57):
metaphorically burning cigars with one hundred dollar bills like all
of y'all kiss my ass like I'm about to do
rich rich rich and Monday. Richard calls me and says,
deals off. I'm like, what happened? And He's like, George
Jackson died anyway, I'm sorry Yes with George Jackson.

Speaker 4 (01:06:16):
Interjection is obviously the art of the of the game here.
So but anyway, so I was so, I thought, you know,
here I am, I'm with Doug. I'm dating Doug. It's like,
you know. And he's like telling me, Yeah, we're doing
the soundtrack on Warner Brothers for Crush Coove and blah
blah blah. And I'm like, awesome, let me get a
slot on there for the four c mgs. You know,

(01:06:38):
he says, you know. But New Addition like, ah, sorry,
you know, you're everything. So I'm like, so, I'm like, really.

Speaker 1 (01:06:51):
My secret. They did my secret in the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:06:54):
It was so but here's what happens. So the Crush
Groove sound track, the movie's getting wrapped up the soundtrack
because you know, lead times were crazy back then. They
had to master the soundtrack all this. The deadlines were crazy.
And then I get this call from Doug and he's like,
there was supposed to be this big ballad slot on

(01:07:15):
the album and it was dedicated to New Edition and
Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis. When they produced this song
with New Edition, I'm like, fucking man. And then he
calls me, he goes, you're not going to believe it.
New Adition had to pull out because some sort of
crazy legal issues. They had a lot of problems back
then New Edition with their management and lawsuits. All this

(01:07:38):
shit was going on. So he goes, can you get
Force mds up to Minneapolis tomorrow? And I'm like, yeah,
what do we gonna do? You know, bla blah blah
blah blah. Of course it was not exactly the next day,
but it was within a matter of two or three days,
and it was like involved calls with Ron Sweeney and
Jimmy and Terry and all this other stuff, And of

(01:07:58):
course the Force mds in there and the father who
is a manager of Bob Lundi. They get up there,
they record this record called Tender Love, and it goes
on the soundtrack at the very last minute, and guess what.
It's the first top ten pop hit for Jimmy and
Terry and it was the big lead. It was the

(01:08:22):
big smash hit of the album. And it was through
that that Warner Brothers got interested in doing a deal
with Tommy Boy.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
At this place.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
Are you shocked that, even though you know, Sylvia Robinson
was running sugar Able Records or whatnot, were women in
executive positions.

Speaker 1 (01:08:46):
Really not a thing?

Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
And I'm taking it out of hip hop just general
at labels, Like I know about Sylvia Ron at least her,
you know, coming up at Atlantic and starting East West,
and maybe I mean was more.

Speaker 4 (01:09:03):
At Casablanca before then?

Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Well okay, well I knew about Neil Bookgart, but who
was running who was at Casablanca?

Speaker 4 (01:09:10):
Well, I believe Sylvia had started that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
I did not know. Oh wow, all right, we give
fact check it.

Speaker 4 (01:09:17):
This is a great, great subject matter, and I'm really
happy you brought this up because you know, there's a
lot of women from that early eighties period who didn't
necessarily get their shine or necessarily get titles. I was.
I think I was made president in eighty five. I
still have the press release. And why do I have
it because I had to write it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
The It's like writing your own Wikipedia entry.

Speaker 4 (01:09:43):
Yeah, like, yeah, your president. Now, could you go write
this up? Yes, okay, fine, so, but yeah, before in
that early eighties period, I would say that the people
that really come to my mind is like women who
were doing a lot in the early hip hop labels
would be Ann Carly at Jive Records. You know who.

(01:10:05):
I actually knew Anne when she was working in the
New York Office of e G Records. I used to
harass her for rocks and music tour tickets and that.

Speaker 7 (01:10:14):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:10:15):
There was Jeanine Leclair who was at Next Plateau Records
that worked with Eddie o'lachlin. There was d D. Joseph
who worked with at Prism Records, which became you know,
which began Jill. Of course, there was Sylvia and there

(01:10:39):
were others. And I'm really sorry because I should have
prepared a list for this because it is important and
there's a lot of people who you know, it was
a bit later in the eighties when there were more
women who were getting into the business, but there were
a lot of women who were in the business then
and they just didn't necessarily get as much recognition. They

(01:10:59):
might have started as eceptionist and became press or promo.
So there's there's this whole wave of women that were
part of the even like late seventies and early eighties,
whose whose names just don't tend to come up as much.
So much in hip hop has been told and told
again through books and documentaries and everything, but there's still

(01:11:20):
a lot of terrain that hasn't been touched really, So.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
What's the difficulty level of you, like really as far
as like pounding the desk and demanding that respect, like
do you have to be tough as nails?

Speaker 1 (01:11:35):
It was what's old girl from uh who ran book?
And uh winter? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:11:41):
And when we have to come do you have to
run it in a winter style? And you know, no, no,
well I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:11:50):
Yeah, no, I know what you're saying. I know what
you're saying. You know. I get asked a lot over
the years people said, well, what was it like being
a woman in the hip hop world? Or what was
it like being a white woman in the hip hop world?
And I'm like, my response is usually like, you know what,
there were so many opportunities for women in the fledgling

(01:12:11):
hip hop industry. Again, it was so small back then.
If I had gone to say, oh, you know Columbia
Records or Mercury or PolyGram or whatever Warner Brothers, you know,
and said, hey, you know, I'm looking for a job,
I would have been lucky to get, you know, be
the coffee runner for some guy doing mid Atlantic radio promotion. Okay,

(01:12:37):
so in hip hop because it was just a small
little industry and no one was really checking, you know,
like a lot of women were able to sort of
get ahead in this business because there wasn't like a precedent.
It wasn't an old boys network, you know. So it
was still being It was still being the story was
being written, and you know, there was a lot of

(01:13:00):
of opportunities. Although I will say when I went to
the first Jack the Rapper Convention, a lot of people
thought I was hired help for another reason. So, you know,
the Rapper Convention. That's another documentary.

Speaker 3 (01:13:13):
Somebody should too, Ah boy tails from the Rap Convention.

Speaker 1 (01:13:19):
So okay, when when? Okay?

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
So in eighty six, when Club Nouveau starts hitting, you know,
lean on me and jealousy and all that stuff was
highly it was unescapable. Like by that point, you guys
are just you know, a force. Was there ever a
temptation to say leave Tommy Boy? And maybe and I

(01:13:44):
don't want to discredit hip hop's you know force or whatnot,
but in the mind state of eighty seven, did you
ever have the temptation or did someone from RCA or
Warner Brothers or quote a legit major label try to
hold you away and say come work for us.

Speaker 4 (01:14:03):
Yeah, there was a label A and M actually and
and a and M was a real class operation, you know,
it was. I mean, there was like and they even
bought me a plane ticket and put me in a hotel.
I was like, oh my god, you know, this is
pretty great, but it didn't happen. I really sort of

(01:14:25):
sense that I was better where it was, and it
turned out to be true, you know, because it was
towards you know, it was made president I guess eighty five,
eighty six, I can't remember exactly, but you know, it
was towards the end, you know, towards the late eighties
where I really oversaw A and R and the creative

(01:14:46):
direction for the label. I was already doing quite a
bit already in both of those areas. And and also
you know, in the early days, whether it was collecting
money from distributors, or putting in pressers with the pressing plant,
or getting the label copy typed off, or sitting with
Bambada while he wrote out of special thanks, or creating

(01:15:07):
a press list and writing press releases, talking to you
name it. It's like you got to do a lot of
different things. But it was, you know, in the late
eighties where I sort of really I think that was
a really golden era for Tommy Boy in the late
eighties and the early nineties.

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
In nineteen eighty eight, you know, for me, at least
in my life, one of the greatest paradigm shifts that
really affected. I mean, eighty eight was such a banner year.
But you sign a group that literally changes the course.

Speaker 1 (01:15:40):
Of my life.

Speaker 2 (01:15:41):
And we've had various people involved with day Las Soul projects,
so we you know, you don't have to go through
the every day. But what I do want to know
is who was responsible for the genius marketing of day
La Soul Because from the from the press photos to

(01:16:03):
the fonts to the stickers. You know, for only time
on life I ever got sent to the principal's office
was because I put day Lost Soul stickers all over
my high school.

Speaker 1 (01:16:12):
Like, so, who was responsible?

Speaker 2 (01:16:15):
Like what was the brainchild operation of we could make
these guys bigger than hip hop?

Speaker 1 (01:16:24):
And I read that hip hop for hippies. Wasn't that
your ship?

Speaker 4 (01:16:27):
Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I was very involved in all of that,
but it was also there's a lot of people at
Tommy Boy that I would credit for being a huge
part of this campaign. I think that it was a
very critical decision to have the Gray Organization, do the

(01:16:48):
all the you know, all of the daisy, the imagery
for the for the album cover. That was so that
was I would say such a radical move at that
point because they basically sort of threw down a gauntlet
to what the prevailing visual aesthetic was of hip hop.

(01:17:12):
And I think it was the type of thing that
a lot of people were like, what is this? But
you know, but the thing is before the album, before
the album, and you saw all those visuals, you know,
plug TuneIn was a radical record. And I still have

(01:17:32):
I still have the demo tape and I still have
the write up that I did after my meeting with Daddyo,
And I want to make sure to credit Daddyo because
it was Daddyo from Stetso Sonic who called me and said, Hey,
I've got these groups I'm shopping. Can we set up
a meeting. I'm like, yeah, da, da da, And you
sat on the phone. There were three groups. Two of

(01:17:53):
them were like sort of these more mainstream like Rene
and angela type of groups or something, and he mentioned, uh,
Dala Saul. He said, oh, and there's this group that
Paul's working with called Dela Saul. And I do remember
thinking that's a really intriguing name. You know what is
that it didn't sound like a hip hop group, and

(01:18:15):
so I met with him and that's in that demo
tape of Plug Tuning and Freedom, Freedom of Speak. I
think uh was on the Freedom, yeah, but it was
the two tracks on the on the one cassette, and
it was like you immediately knew that it was either
going to be big or nothing. And that's where I

(01:18:36):
think Tommy Boys legacy largely lies with signings that were
sort of in that category you're gonna love it or
you're not gonna hate it, but it wasn't in the middle.
And Dala Soul I think personifies that. And you know,
the the demo of Plug Tuning sounds pretty much I'm
pretty sure. I don't think that it was even even mixed,

(01:18:59):
you know. I think was an eight track that Paul
did and I don't think it even went beyond that.
By the time it was mastered. I think it was
still like this eight trick demo sounding thing. And we
had this we did this ad campaign where we got
all these different people to say, you know, you know
how it is, you know, like when.

Speaker 1 (01:19:17):
You know L's mom she was part of it.

Speaker 4 (01:19:20):
Latifa's mom, the lake Rita Owens. We did we did
a campaign that I came in for Dala Soul. I
came in for Patty LaBelle. I came out with Dala Saul.
We had this one with like some goofy, you know,
sort of straight looking white guy like you know, I
came in for I forget it wasn't steely dandy.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
We hung that up in Sam Goodies. I worked at
Sam Goodies at the time.

Speaker 4 (01:19:44):
Oh man, well then you know, so this part that
imaging campaign I think was fantastic. We had a great
full page ad and billboard that said Dala Gold when
it went gold. But you know, I think it a
lot of it sprung from the group itself, because you know,

(01:20:05):
I still have and I shared this with Pass actually
just last week. He sat down in the office and
with this he has a very distinctive style of cursive
and he was writing down the history of Dla Soul
on this notebook paper set, describing who each group member was,

(01:20:26):
and he was writing it in day last speak. And
that was another thing too, because like nobody knew what
the fuck they were talking about. They had their own language,
like what are they talk? What what do you mean
plug tune? And what's that you know? And what is true?
Guy the dove? You know? What is all this stuff?

(01:20:47):
But they but they had a different look, they had
a different sensibility. So there was a lot there to
already work with and to sort of get inspired to
do interesting and creative marketing and motion. Uh, you really
can't do something unless the something that the project and
the recordings and the artists that you're working with are

(01:21:09):
interesting in and of themselves. You can blow it up
and magnify it. But if they're not, if it's not
inherently interesting and great, you can't really do anything. So
so they really they were like, wow, this group pretty interesting.
There a lot of people played role. I don't know
if you know Rod Houston because he's also from from
from Philadelphia. He's now one of the biggest voice.

Speaker 1 (01:21:31):
He's huge.

Speaker 4 (01:21:33):
He's huge, and Rod I still have the copy that
he wrote up because we did this contest to name
the sample.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
And yeah, yeah, did you.

Speaker 4 (01:21:45):
Did you enter? I didn't.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
I didn't know the LIBERACEI or any Yeah I didn't
know that.

Speaker 4 (01:21:52):
Yeah we got I still have a lot of the
entries from the contest that I kept. A lot of
people thought it was Bobby Bloom and the only person
who got the who the only person who got it
right was Joel Weber, as I mentioned to him earlier
with the Partners in the New Music Seminar, And he's
the guy who put out He was an A and

(01:22:13):
R guy at Fourth and Broadway in Island. He put
out The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight. And he was the only
one who identified the invitations right. It's written on the
wall is the sample right record? So they So there
was a lot of really great things that sort of
sprung from the fact that the group themselves were so
different and so interesting. And I think that that whole

(01:22:35):
Daisy age imagery, you know, was certainly a blessing and
a curse for the group because then they didn't really
like being named the hippies of hip hop, and you know,
pushed back against it, you know. But that was that
album Three Feet High in Rising, you know. And that
was actually the first project I assigned to Dante. I

(01:22:56):
know that the Dante make sure you get to this,
get the clearances for so and so and so and so,
But it was the first project that he worked on,
which was fantastic. He did an amazing job. And Paul,
of course, you know, yeah from one to ten.

Speaker 2 (01:23:19):
How much of a headache was the the Flow and
Eddy situation because of course, uh, Flow and Eddie of
the Turtles sort of you know, recognizes their sample and
then you know, we're taught that that was the that
was the gauntlet moment of rappers clearing samples for you know,

(01:23:39):
was it a quick one and done, Oh my bad,
here's forty thousand bucks, or were they like we wanted
a billion dollars and you know, this is.

Speaker 4 (01:23:48):
That's you know, that's another great topic because the Dala
Saw three feet High and Rising really did become the
litmus test for a lot of sampling issues, and it
became the postage for everything that could go wrong is
all here on one album. And you know, so it
wasn't just flowin Eddie. You know, I still have the

(01:24:10):
letter from MCA Publishing about Steely Dan or by the way,
they misspelled Donald Faken's name. But it became sort of
a blessing and a curse. It was, well, I should
say maybe more of a curse because look at everything
that the group has had to go through all these years.

Speaker 2 (01:24:26):
Yeah, here's problematic now trying to clear these samples again.

Speaker 4 (01:24:29):
Still yeah. So, but it also became it was certainly
a news story. I mean, as you Kurt Loder, you know,
and there was all these like news stories about sampling.
It became a big thing, you know. And of course,
you know, uh Danny O Stessisnic addressed this very brilliantly

(01:24:52):
and talking all that as one of the best records
over and but yeah, it was certainly costly. It was
a distraction. And the thing about it is this, this
is my takeaway from it, is that at that point
in nineteen eighty nine, a lot of these rock guys

(01:25:13):
were really of the mindset of like they're stealing my
fucking art, and they weren't down with the hip hop,
they weren't down with the sampling. They had very closed
minds about this. There was not a it had not
been established as a path like oh yeah, okay, we'll

(01:25:36):
just get this sample clear like today. I mean, now,
you know, I think a lot of people maybe avoid
sampling to a large degree for all the problems and
costs associated with it.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
But it's ironic to me being as those same guys
sample old Blues records to create their songs.

Speaker 4 (01:25:55):
Oh yeah, who had these guys who were older rock
guys with big you know, they had egos and they
just had they were their mindset was completely divorced from
hip hop being a cool, interesting thing and oh wow,
they're taking something I made and doing something cool and

(01:26:17):
flipping it. A lot of these guys did not see
it that way at all.

Speaker 2 (01:26:21):
Well, now, I know that George Clinton was extremely He
had gratitude for me, myself and I at least because
you know, he instantly saw that, okay, this is bringing
me back clearly to a new audience.

Speaker 4 (01:26:36):
So well yeah, well yeah, and you also had Westbound
Records armand Baladian, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 (01:26:45):
Oh jesus.

Speaker 4 (01:26:47):
Yeah, So Armond Baladian was was definitely playing ball. I mean,
you know, he saw that there was money to be
made in doing sample clearances. So you know what was
Digital Underground or daylor or whoever it was. He's you know,
he owned a lot of this stuff, and so he
wasn't reluctant in the way that a lot of the

(01:27:10):
rock guys were about, you know, violating their art. You know,
it was just it was a different Again, you have
commerce on the one side, and you've got these guys
who were like, man, that's you know, don't touch my
ship man.

Speaker 5 (01:27:26):
You know, so right, I was gonna ask Monica, what
is your involvement, if any, with the current Daylight situation
with trying to get their catalog on to streaming.

Speaker 4 (01:27:37):
None is my I don't have any involvement in that
except to be supportive of the group. And you know, uh,
you know, I occasionally have back and forth with with
PAS and you know, I have a lot of love
for those guys, and I hope that you know, they've
been through a lot. They've been through a lot, so

(01:27:59):
but I don't I haven't had any sort of dealings
with their business.

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
I believe our good friend Faith Newman is now at
the helm of that project and trying to re clear
the samples and all that stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:28:14):
I hope for Jail's sake that that comes through.

Speaker 1 (01:28:18):
Well.

Speaker 2 (01:28:18):
I mean, they have it, but you know, now it's
like they got to do the work and you know,
find somebody to fund. You know, they're they're doing it,
but it's just a very slow process, song by song,
and they want it as they do.

Speaker 1 (01:28:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:28:32):
Thank God, I'm so relieved that they're not doing you
know the sit now where people like redoing their sits
on iTunes and gagging you with like these kind of
subpar versions of their so.

Speaker 1 (01:28:44):
Re records or whatever. I hate that.

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
Wait, okay, well I want to give a shout out
to Dart Adams, who a surefire way to make him
angry is to acknowledge that Three Feet High and Rising
came out March third, nineteen eighty nine.

Speaker 1 (01:29:01):
Dart Adams, I never.

Speaker 2 (01:29:06):
Met a person more angrier when he's like, it wasn't
March third, it was February seventh.

Speaker 4 (01:29:11):
Yes, oh really, see he's thinking of the promo.

Speaker 1 (01:29:15):
The promoh he.

Speaker 2 (01:29:16):
Oh my god, you just you're about to set Dark
Eyed using opinions of Monica Lynch are not like.

Speaker 4 (01:29:24):
No, listen, I say, I have a lot of Tommy
Boy archival materials. I could probably.

Speaker 2 (01:29:33):
I'm not saying you can officially tell us when the
release date was, because I swear to God he makes
this every March third. He gets mad as shit when
Pass or any member of Daylight Soul gets the date wrong,
but he swears to God that like March third. He's like,
like Wikipedia is wrong, everything's wrong, Like he knows listen.

Speaker 4 (01:29:54):
I'll just say this. At some point I'll go through
all go all is if I find anything that might
have led to his belief photo. The only thing I
could possibly think is that maybe you know, because again,
lead times for things like press were significant back then,

(01:30:19):
so maybe just maybe there was an advance copy. But
I don't want to you know, that's not official.

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
So I have one quick question about Cessy Sonic now,
the way that you guys, the way that you guys
pushed for some ds to be you know, the do
wop you know hip hop thing in daylight where the
hippies of hip hop the exception of a brief write
up and spin like, I felt like not enough was

(01:30:47):
done to really drive home, at least of marketing that
this is a hip hop band.

Speaker 4 (01:30:54):
Yeah, it wasn't an easy sound.

Speaker 1 (01:30:56):
And I've never seen them.

Speaker 2 (01:30:57):
I've never heard stets of Sonic live ever, Like even
when you re YouTube, no, there's no there's no footage
of them on YouTube or anything.

Speaker 1 (01:31:08):
Like I'm taking you guys's word for it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:11):
That's that's a Sonic live in concert is a band,
but there's there's no I mean, you know on in
on Wax, you know besides Bobby Simmons playing drums on stuff,
and you know, I know they did live stuff on keys,
but I've just never seen that's a Sonic on stage.

(01:31:31):
And there's no footage of them, and they're almost like
the Harlem Cultural Festival, Like I don't believe it.

Speaker 4 (01:31:35):
That's that's pretty interesting. I had never really thought about that.
I didn't go to look, but I mean I'd seen
them perform live and they were really, you know, fantastic.
I think the man it was very frustrating because they,
you know, sets a Sonic as a group, they really

(01:31:56):
worked hard and and you know, it was frustrate rating.
I mean, everyone wants to have big hits, and they
had some hits, but they weren't on the level that
is going to push you into a certain territory.

Speaker 6 (01:32:13):
You know.

Speaker 4 (01:32:13):
I think talking all that jazz was like a really
you know, when you look back at the catalog, I
think that one to me is like and they had,
you know, Sally was like a record that did really
well in Florida and other markets. Oh and you know
Ghostats of Brooklyn, Go Brooklyn. You can't even soon did

(01:32:39):
you put Somebody has told me recently said you put
that record at the Union Square, and that was a
signal for stick up kids to like get there, get
the loot, you know, Like that's why I always stood
near the door at that place. I was like.

Speaker 1 (01:32:56):
Traumatizing, Yeah, totally.

Speaker 4 (01:33:00):
So they always got huge respect and they had great records,
but they they just you know, and it's it's it's
a frustration even to this day, you know that we
weren't able to break them out in a Huger way.
It happens.

Speaker 5 (01:33:18):
And I was going to ask you, Monica about Shock G.
I just hate He's someone that we had on our
list for a long time, but you know, we you know, sadly.

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
Didn't get an interview before he passed.

Speaker 5 (01:33:32):
What was he like just as an artist, as a producer,
what was it like working with him?

Speaker 4 (01:33:35):
You know, I've actually just had a long conversation with
his former manager Atron last night. We stayed lunch. Yeah
and Shock we used to talk on the phone and
he Shock was He was incredibly intelligent, so smart, so funny,

(01:33:56):
He was very charming. He had an enormous gift as
a visual artist. You know, I had a lot of
dealing you know, he was We had a great relationship.
He would always be very very specific about artwork. I
have some like layouts that he would send me, these
rough layouts. You know, this needs to go exactly here.

(01:34:19):
This goes exactly here. Because he did all the artwork
for all the digital Underground releases and even starting with
the early version of Underwater Rhymes and Life's of Cartoon,
that the twelve ings that they had before mccola before
they came to Tommy Boy, but the well T and

(01:34:39):
T recordings, the But he was someone who was very deep.
I spoke with Latifa recently about him too, well, shortly
after he passed. We spoke about it because she talked
about how she went on tour with him and they
would just go to the hotel lobby and he would
stare just noodling on the piano. He's a great jazz

(01:35:03):
musician and she loved jazz and they had a strong
connection there. He was just he was an artist with
a capital A, you know, and and you know, obviously
he brought Tupac. You know, it was largely responsible for
bringing Tupac into the world as an artist. And yeah,

(01:35:28):
really really special guy. I've never met any you know,
like especially these days where everything marketing beefs seemed to
be a marketing tool, and there were beefs back then.
You know, you could look at karras one or you know,
whatever was going on. There's always some sort of beefs
going on. But no, with Shock, he was everyone loved him.

(01:35:51):
You know, I was tuking to Pete Nice when he
was traveled with the Third Base with them, and he
had huge love for him. I don't know, I don't
know what I can say about shaq g other than
he was just We'd have late night phone calls with
him and he could just expound on just about he

(01:36:11):
was a guy. He was very cosmic. He was very cosmic.

Speaker 2 (01:36:15):
So okay, ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you
guys that we will have a part two with Monica Lynch,
the legendary Monica Lynch on Quest Loft Supreme.

Speaker 1 (01:36:27):
This incredible conversation. Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:36:29):
We will be back in a later episode to talk
about basically the nineties with Coolio, with k seven LFO,
with the Rizza.

Speaker 1 (01:36:38):
Yo.

Speaker 2 (01:36:39):
There's so much more that that will happen on the
next episode of Quest lof Supreme.

Speaker 1 (01:36:45):
Uh. And you will promise to come back with this Monica.

Speaker 4 (01:36:47):
Correct, absolutely thank you beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:36:51):
All right, So in Biabo Sugar Steve and unpaid Bill
and fon Digelo and layah, this is questo and shout
out to cousin Jake holding us down on the leads
and uh you know we will see you on the
next ground.

Speaker 7 (01:37:04):
Thank you very much, Happy with Mom.

Speaker 1 (01:37:17):
What's Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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Laiya St. Clair

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Questlove Supreme: Monica Lynch Pt. 1