December 7, 2021 • 39 mins
Dave gets the Sudden Impact story from two original members: Todd White and Alan Healy, and finds out the whole thing started as a promise these guys couldn’t go back on. Plus, a talk with one of the most recognizable pop music voices of the early ‘90s, a man who is absolutely gonna make you sweat.
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 (00:03):
So far, Like Michael Bivens at the time of the
filming of the Boys to Men Motown Philly video, I
have heard zero music from Sudden Impact, not the original recipe,
nineteen ninety one version, not the five guys in the video.
I don't think I actually can hear the music of
Sudden Impacts because it's locked in a vault at Capitol Records.
I've heard White Guys quick Verse on the East Coast
family song one Forour All four to one, and they
(00:26):
sound good, but I haven't heard any full songs because
whatever they recorded is locked in a vault, and Motown Records,
which distributed music from Michael Bivens' biv ten label, which
doesn't exist anymore. I haven't heard any music from the
Outsiders either, because whatever they recorded under that name is
the property of Sony Music, which distributed Boys to Men's
Stone Creek label, which also doesn't exist anymore. I have
(00:47):
heard some of the songs the guys recorded as Outsiders
for Life after Aaron and Noel Kane left the group
and Jimmy Marble and Jason Dowdy joined. It's a little
harder than I was expecting, a little angrier, a little
more Timberland because it was the year two thousand and
everything was more tim Milandy back then it was the law.
But from the original five I have still heard no music.
(01:08):
But thanks to Jason and Tim Bird, I have made
contact with Todd White and Alan Healy, and before we speak,
I ask them whether they have the other major thing
I'm missing, maybe the biggest piece of the puzzle so far,
the thing that put this story into motion, the two
special poster, the picture that got Michael Bivens to sign them.
(01:28):
They have it, and before we speak they send it
to me. So now I have it, I'm going to
break it down for you pixel by pixel, pegged Jean
by peg Jane. I'll talk about it with Todd and
Allen and I will get the sudden impact story from
their perspective. I'll do a little digging as to whether
one of their later songs who Are You was a
(01:49):
disc track, and if so, who was getting dissed and why?
Plus a conversation with a voice you could not escape
in nineteen ninety one, I'm going to catch up with
Freedom Williams of Seeing Music Factory, who is as always
gonna make you sweat? This is waiting for impact a
Dave Holmes Passion Project, Todd White, Alan Healey, Holy, how
(02:29):
I cannot believe him talking to the both of you.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
This is nuts. First of all, how are you good man?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Happy to be alive?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
We're both good.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I'm speaking with Todd and Allen over Zoom. They're both
in their individual homes. They live about thirty minutes away
from each other in Virginia, and as I talk to them,
I'm reminded of something.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
They're outsiders for life.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Bandmate Jason Dowdy told me about them, One that Todd
is the hard charger of the group, the engine, and
two that Alan Heally was their street cred. Here's what
he said about that, just.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
You know, like from his the family he's from, and
the people he knows in the area, like he's kind
of down with you know, some people from the streets
it that way, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I don't actually know what Jason means, but of course
now I'm expecting some kind of Virginia Beach sopranos character
a tough guy, and maybe he is, but right now
over Zoom, the two of them could not be nicer.
Maybe they've mellowed with age, or maybe they're just happy
to be talking about this stuff. Either way, you will
believe how Todd White.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Met Alan Heally. How did Todd White and Alan Healy meet.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Over a girl? Actually?
Speaker 6 (03:35):
I think I started dating one of Todd's a's girlfriends
and I got told that Todd White wanted to talk
to me, and so I was like really, So then
he told me I met him, and he was like,
you know, treater good.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
She's a good girl type deal.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
And me and him actually became really good friends through this,
and then those girls disappeared in our friendship kept on.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
So it's kind of really interesting girls.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Man, Todd, My understanding is that that is how you
met Aaron Kane.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Yeah, it was yep, Todd.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
How many girlfriends did you have?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I had a lot of girlfriends.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
Yeah, friends that were girls.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, friends that were girls.
Speaker 7 (04:21):
I don't know, man, I had to get rid of
a lot of that stuff, Dave, so I could make
room for new memories.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Have you noticed that everyone involved with Sudden Impact or
Michael Bivens says my name back to me when they
answer a question, Hayden and Evett did it too. I
can't help but wonder whether that was part of the
training Michael Bivens put them through. Anyway, it works when
these guys were teenagers. Though Todd was a bit of
a wild child, it was an energy alan really clicked with.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Our parents were both majors in the army, so very
structured lifestyle. And then you have some people that go
into that lifestyle, I'd say, and then you have guys
like us that completely fought against our dads and hated it.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
So many of us joined the military. We went.
Speaker 6 (05:02):
I asked my mom is Vietnamese Mom, I don't want
to do the Air Force and she was like, what
do you want to do? I said, I want to
hang out with Todd, and you know, you know, she
was like, follow your dreams, do whatever you want to do.
So it was a it was a different you know,
but titled just that guy man. He was just somebody
that always people are talking about him because he's either
pissing them.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Off or they liked him. Do you like Tid or
you hated Todd? Todder?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
How does that feel to hear that?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
It's cool?
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Man?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
You know, I'll tell you this, man.
Speaker 7 (05:29):
You know, we grow old, man, we grow apart man,
and uh well, not really a part but like with
me and Allen. Man, we can go like, you know,
a week, two, three, well a month without to talk
to each other and call and pick right up where
we left off, right where we.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Left off, man, you know, and uh, it's cool man.
Speaker 7 (05:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It was a real good bond. There still is.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
It's always been. It's always been really you know. But
you know, yet life happens.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
You know, how are your parents with your decision to
pursue music.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Oh they care whatever as long as he does something
with himself.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
What kind of kids were you? What kind of teenagers
were you?
Speaker 6 (06:08):
Were?
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Kids?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Bad kids, wild?
Speaker 6 (06:11):
I would tell you I was good all the way
till about when I started hanging out with Todd. I
was started getting where he was not in school, ninth grade,
he was out. I got a call and it'll be
Todd telling me, Hey, calling sick. We're going to go
to the beach. We're going to write to you know.
Then he started. There was all the music and being
around him. You never knew what to expected. This guy
all right, with a lot of parties we weren't allowed
(06:31):
to come to locally, And that all changed once we
got into boys and Men's video of course.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
All right, let's back up here a little bit and
talk about how Too Special the first version of Sudden
Impact came together. We know Todd White met Aaron Kane
at a party when they were about to get into
a fist fight over a girl. We know that the
original version of the group was Todd, Aaron, and another
guy named Eric. What we don't know is how Alan
entered the fold.
Speaker 6 (06:55):
I'll kind of tell you kind of what happened for
me to get in this group. Todd and I were
always kind of just friends that acted crazy. I mean,
if I want to do summer laugh, I go hang
out with Todd. Tide was always a damn nut, you know,
carried through all the way to when we're this age.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Now. My son loves to go hang out with Todd
just because Todd's wild. All right.
Speaker 6 (07:14):
So I was in Washington State and I got this
phone call about and Todd played me a song over
the over the thing, and it was in a group
called Two Special Tight, you know, and I was like
and said, that sounds pretty damn good man.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I actually enjoyed that. So he told me that the
two guys were.
Speaker 6 (07:30):
Getting ready to move and he needed the guy in
the group, and he was like, if you want to
come back to Virginia, you know, I'll you know, I'll
put you in this group.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
And so I was like, all right.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I just want to chime in here and remind you
that this level of wheeling and dealing, these potential cross
country moves and personnel changes, these were all being negotiated
among sixteen year old.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Boys and Aaron them didn't really know me too well.
Speaker 6 (07:53):
And I came in and it was kind of a
little bit of a first like, oh, he's Todd's guy,
you know, and this helps tide, you know, decisions now,
it's his best friend type thing. And so we got
together and I told him when I got in the group,
I wanted to, you know, not just do local shows.
I wanted to start, Hey, let's make this big, Let's
do something. And so me and him started. He had
(08:13):
that I would say a lot of the talent. Todd
has always been really good at writing hooks.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Todd, what was the name too Special?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
All about? How did that?
Speaker 7 (08:23):
I have no clue, as you, man, I mean, it's catchy.
I wish I could remember, man, I honestly have no clue, man,
you know, even a song I look back at the
song please be.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Mine, be my girl, Please be mine.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Dun dum dump my girl, like were begging.
Speaker 6 (08:40):
You know, it's but we were man, you're think you're
sixteen years old. Man, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
I do know exactly what he's saying. But what I'm
dying to know about is how they made the decision
as two sixteen year old boys to take their poster,
which again we're going to talk about later in the show,
and fly all the way across the country to try something.
What I didn't know is that getting a record deal
wasn't just a happy accident. It was the fulfillment of
a promise. So let's talk about the trip to Los
(09:07):
Angeles for Marvin Gaye's Walk of Fame ceremony.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Did you drive, did you fly? What did you did?
You tell your parents?
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Well, yeah, tell our parents.
Speaker 6 (09:18):
We asked everyone to go, So we asked Tid's mom.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
I will tell you was like our manager.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
She pretty much put up every bit of money anything
for Tide. She would put up whatever she just wanted
Tie not to going to jail. You know, be somebody,
And I would tell you music probably saved his butt
from going to jail straight up. Because me and Todd
both looked at each other and you can't sing from
jail and make money. So we're like, you know, at
least nowadays you might be able to, but not back then.
So we were kind of like, hey, let's go do this.
(09:45):
I went and talked to my mom, and my mom
will take to this day. I asked her and I slammed.
My father had a you know, we lived in Germany,
so yeah, and Mercedes Bens.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
I asked her, let me go with Todd. She said no,
and I slammed the Mercedes Benz door so hard and
slash at her door.
Speaker 6 (10:01):
Windows smashed, just went straight down, and she looked at
me and she was like, you know, just pissed off.
So I go to Todd and she comes back the
next day and talked to Todd's mom and said, Alan,
I work hard for my money. I'm gonna give you
this money if you go to LA come back with something.
And I was like, I promise you, I'm not going
out there just to do nothing.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
I'm going out there to come back with something.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
They didn't get a recording contract off a poster because
they were lucky. They got it because Alan promised his
mom he would, and these guys are men.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Of their word. Cecil Jenkins.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
On the other hand, Marvin Gay's friend and local music promoter,
might not have been as good a guy as I thought.
Speaker 6 (10:36):
And so Todd and I are out there. Supposedly he's
gonna take care of us. Okay, We're gonna go out there.
I'm gonna take care of this guy disappeared on us
for the first night. To me and Todd decided because
he left us there and just left us in hotel.
We were kind of just I think his paycheck to
get to La. So we get out there and we
just get left and like we're supposed to be staying
with him.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
But guess what, guys, I can't get you in the place.
Kada YadA. So we were like, you know, it's true,
let's walk around LA. We're out here.
Speaker 6 (11:00):
So you know, I'm a military brat, so I'm like,
let's go. I've been in Germany, I've been in Paris.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
We can make this.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Alan Heally and Todd White are sixteen years old, more
confident and resourceful than I will ever be.
Speaker 6 (11:11):
We go out there and this guy's up on the
stage of Marvin Gaye's you know, family. So we're up
there at the start and I'm like, man, this dude
kind of just dissing the hell out of us, really, you.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Know, honestly.
Speaker 6 (11:20):
So we're Mike Bivins comes up and runs next to
us and stands like watching what's going on in Todd season.
And I remember he Tide's like, yo, Alan, give him
the poster, and you know, he walks off. So I
walked up to him, like, yo, man, this a poster
and he's like, I'm gonna keep that shit out of
my face. And I'm like, I was like, well, this
guy just told me to. I go back and tell Todd.
I'm like, yo, this. He goes what he's saying. I'm like,
(11:42):
dude just told me to get that shit out of
his face, and Time looks at me. He goes give
me that and he runs back over there and Mike's like, hey, man,
I didn't know, man, I thought that was a new
Kid poster and asked me to sign it, you know,
like it's like kind of a disc like because they
were supposed to be like new Kids from Areas Starshit.
So he got kind of pissy and then he goes, no, okay,
am I bad. So he points to Todd and tells Todd, hey,
(12:04):
come over here, and so we you know, Tid points
to me and we both go over there and he's like.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Man, I'm so sorry. I thought she was this group.
Speaker 6 (12:12):
So he brings us up to Motown Records and we
go right into the president's office, Gerald Busby's office, like,
walk up, like man, Me and him have a poster
in one song, please be on to it. Right into
the office, and I'm sitting there like amazing, we're in
this guy's office. I'm oh, my god, you know.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
And so he starts telling Jerald how this.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Is going to be my new group, another group after
another bad creation of boys to men, this is my
new group, and so he starts askings, can you sing
like this?
Speaker 4 (12:38):
And I didn't. Man, I mean like, if I'm at
a job, you asked me if I can do something?
Oh yeah, I can do it. We can do whatever.
So I sell our group.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
Me and Ty are sitting there and we just keep
talking and he's like, hey, look, I don't know what
you came.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Out here to do, but you've accomplished it. Go back
to Virginia and go home.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
I'll call you.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
What I love about everyone's version of this story is
that nobody has told me what happened between Michael Bibvens
looking at the two special poster and Michael Bivins driving
Todd and Allen to Motown Records. And I think nobody's
told me what happened because nothing happened in between. He
really did just see the poster and make the decision,
and Motown was just as quick to jump. Jeral Buzzby
(13:17):
asks if you can sing? Does he at any time
hear you sing?
Speaker 6 (13:21):
At that point, Mike says, don't worry about it. I
got these are my guys. They're gonna be able to
so be and Todd didn't have count to sing in
the office.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
At that point, they have a meeting with Motown Records.
They get Michael Bivens' number, and I promise that something
will happen, and they call that number right away.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Before we left.
Speaker 6 (13:39):
We called that dude in the morning like I've been
even called Mike at seven in the morning and he's like, dude,
it's me, it's my number, go home, trust me.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Then we go back to Virginia and we're.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
Telling all Aaron and all them, Hey, guys, we got
some We gotta tell y'all we got something.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Trust me.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And before they head home, they have one last conversation
with Cecil Jenkins.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
You know.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
We go back to our accon lodge and that dude
calls it Udd and goes, hey, did y'all see me
on the stage.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
And I'm like, yeah, we saw you on the stage.
Speaker 6 (14:06):
And here I said, Hey man, I said to go,
I got that question for you. Can you give me
a meet with Jerald buzby tomorrow? And the guy's like, oh, hey, nah, Man,
I ain't gonna be able to you know, swing that
yeahda YadA.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
And I was like, well, okay, we're going home tomorrow.
We'll talk to you later. And so we got in
our plane and we left.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
The guys have a pending record deal with the legendary
Motown Record but before anything else can happen, another quick
personnel change.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
So we get home and we tell.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
Aaron and Noel and everybody, and then we tell them, hey,
we're bringing.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Dave in the group.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
We got another guy. We're bringing it because me and
Todd decided we were decided we're gonna put Dave in
the group. So we you know, this Yeah, they got
pissed it first, so we didn't care. It was, you know,
kind of Todd's dealing my deal. At this point, we
were wanting to do our vision.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
What was the vision at the beginning.
Speaker 6 (14:52):
The vision at the beginning was, I would tell you
we were inspired by us straight up saying, new kids
on the block. We saw some dudes singing and we
were like, damn it, we can to do that. Man
and Tied had been in like choir.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
And he was in beforeen. He was in school, he
was in chorus and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
The next step was an appearance on b ET. Michael
Bivens was booked on Donnie Simpson's show Video Soul to
announce his development deal with Motown and introduce the world
to his groups Boys to Men. Another bad creation and
sudden impact. But b ET was in Washington, d C.
A couple hours drive from Virginia Beach. And you know
how Aaron and Knowles's parents are about these excursions.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
So we had to force his now Aaron and Knowles's
parents to let us take.
Speaker 6 (15:31):
Them because me and Tyd are like, we're going. Regardless
whether you go or not, we'll replace you. Someone's going
with us. I mean, I don't care who it is. Yeah,
you know, And so Aaron really wanted to do it.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Aaron was, you know, he's still singing today. He really
wanted to do it.
Speaker 6 (15:43):
So he shot up there with us and Noel jumped
in the car and we all jumped into Dave's five
point zero convertible, trying to fit in the back seat.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
It was rough up three hours.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
The DC back seat, small, back seat small.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
We show up and uh, it's ABC, I guess releasing
the debut of Aisha. We are there and we see
Boys and Men sing married, don't you week? And that's
when we were like, wow, that's the singing group, you
know what I'm saying. So we learned real quick. And
we weren't that yet. Man, we weren't, I would say,
you know, we we were still in the very beginnings
(16:17):
of being a group. We're still writing our records, We're
still trying to figure out what was going on, who
we were right.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
We're still developing ourselves.
Speaker 6 (16:25):
The next thing we had come up was we were
supposed to, you know, we find out, Okay, we're gonna
shoot Motown Philly video because they I should just released
now Boys and Men's gonna shoot their debut video in Philly.
So we get a call and me and Tyd are like,
all right, when do we need to be there?
Speaker 4 (16:41):
And they said early in the morning on this day.
Speaker 6 (16:44):
Okay, Me and Todd left that night because we wanted
to be there early.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
What was shooting that video?
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Like?
Speaker 7 (16:51):
For you?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Do you remember that day?
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Yeah? I can remember it. This thing? How about you?
Speaker 7 (16:55):
Todd?
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Do you remember it? Yoh? Man?
Speaker 3 (16:57):
It was it was different? Yeah, I remember the neon sign.
I was like, yo, what can we put that sign?
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
We wanted that so it was an actual sign.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
They couldn't do like effects back then.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
They had a real, actually a neon sign.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Man, there is an actual, practical sudden impact neon sign
and it must still exist somewhere. Where is it a
museum a private collection? I have a goal now find it?
And Lara Croft tomb rate or that ship?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
So were there were there other takes? Were there other
concepts besides the point?
Speaker 6 (17:31):
Do you just kind of get that trot and let
me tell you man, we could we had not that
took a while?
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Well no, yeah.
Speaker 6 (17:36):
Another thing was they didn't have no you know, it
was like a last minute thing we're doing a video
and bibs like I'm gonna put my my next group
in here. So they if you notice, Aaron's wearing a
bow tie and the rest of us are wearing ties.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
The reason why is because they only had four boys
to men, so they had four ties.
Speaker 6 (17:54):
So Aaron, because he was one of the leads at
the time, said I'll go ahead and wear the bow tie.
So all of the rest of us and They're like,
what are you all gonna do? And I was like, shit,
I don't know what we're gonna do.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
You know.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
It was like, all right, everybody point on the count
of so and so and so it was like, shit,
I can point, you know.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
So then it's.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
Funny you say that because people would always ask me
all the pointers or shit like that, you know, and
different different things.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
And then yeah, it was fun man, it was.
Speaker 6 (18:18):
It was I look back at does I still see
them things and crack up my kids, you know, they
trip out that, you know, like, Dad, you weren't that cool?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Like you were that cool?
Speaker 4 (18:26):
I thought so I thought we were.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
It does appear to me, though, that Dave Dave does
seem to be pointing at the director.
Speaker 6 (18:35):
Yeah, Dave, Dave's always trying to be noticing a lot.
He's always a little bit out on his own there.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yeah. Yeah, he's always been out there a little bit.
Speaker 6 (18:42):
So if we were all dressed and let's say urban
Dave's got on the skateboard stuff. He was a skater
at heart from Virginia, you know, he lives in Virginia
Beach now, so right there with Pharrell's from that whole area.
But that Pharrell vibe how he dressed, Dave was already
doing that way back in the day.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
That was always his thing, vans and you know, looking
like that.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
So the video comes out, do you feel like the
pressure is on now to start releasing music?
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (19:08):
I thought we were going to be the next group out, okay,
And Ty would say you we thought, hey man, we're next,
you know, So we started putting stuff together. I would
tell you vocally, probably we weren't where we should have been, okay,
And that's where me and Todd when the time comes,
we do some switching around and stuff. But I would
say it was a lot of pressure. We wanted to
(19:30):
be that next group. We were trying to find a sound.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
You know what happens next, The guys signed with Capital,
They record some music. Then Bivins asked them to leave
Capital and go with biv ten Records, which they do,
and immediately bivins roster of artists starts to grow. Also,
his vision for sudden Impact takes a turn that is unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
He just had a lot on his plate. Man, he threw.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
We went from three guys and I'll see see one
for all for one there was twenty groups.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
I'm like, yo, what the hell just happened?
Speaker 7 (19:58):
You know?
Speaker 4 (19:58):
And now who are we behind? So we decided we
were going to roll and not just that.
Speaker 7 (20:03):
Alut.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Remember his whole vision of us changed.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
Man.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
He wanted us to be like it was a EMF.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
You were going to be a rave band.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
He was all some different stuff.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Man.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
We were kind of like, yo, man, that that's not us.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Man, If you don't remember.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
In nineteen ninety one, the British group EMF, incidentally also
five trendy white guys, had a number one hit in
America called Unbelievable. They were ravy, they wore baggy day
glow clothing, they had electronic beats. Their name stood for
ecstasy motherfuckers. It was very of the time, but not
at all what sudden impact was about. But on the
(20:35):
other hand, sudden impact was about to not be sudden impact.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
First we were sudden impact. Then it changed and I
looked and it said.
Speaker 6 (20:43):
Whyt g I Z And I'm like, wait, Gizzy, like
no white guys.
Speaker 8 (20:49):
And I'm like wait, Gussy, And I'm like, what the
hell are you doing? Guzy guys like white guys, white guys.
That's not really man. I'm half Asian man. My mother's Vietnamese.
But at that point he said, it doesn't really matter.
That's what you all are gonna be.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
And I was like, oh, wow, that's what we're gonna be, okay,
And so actually, you know, we, like I said, it
was creative differences.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
And I think also that we just weren't. We didn't know.
He didn't know really what we were.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
We didn't know we were.
Speaker 6 (21:13):
It wasn't a thing of you know, I don't think
BIV hated us. I mean, that's a strong word anytime
someone says about it. He just didn't know what to do.
He used to tell us all the time, we were
his mom's favorite group at all of She had our
poster in her house.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
That's a powerful poster, is what that is. And I
have it now.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
We will analyze it later in the episode, but first
I wanted to catch up with someone else who had
a big moment in the pop music world of the
early nineties. Someone who's time in the spotlight was also
just before the Internet. Someone who is yesterday, today and
always gonna make you sweat. Freedom Williams smoking a cigar,
(21:58):
enjoying a stoke.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Where are you, I'm in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
No discussion of popular music in nineteen ninety one is
complete without Freedom Williams. He was the featured rapper on
the C and C Music Factory songs Gonna make You Sweat,
Here We Go and Things that make You go hmm.
His voice was everywhere, and it still is. Try to
go a week without hearing Gonna make you sweat.
Speaker 9 (22:19):
You can't say everybody over here, everybody, Oh, but there,
the cloud is not but no, a fool is body
people than the house?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
See there it is, you just heard it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
That song is a perfect example of the C and
C Music Factory sound Freedom smooth Flow, alongside Martha WASH's
powerhouse vocals. Of course, in the video for the song,
those vocals were lip syncd by a model named Zelma Davis.
Lip Syncing by models was another big thing in the
early nineties. That's a subject for another podcast. Freedom left
the group in nineteen ninety three for a solo career,
(22:51):
and the Music Factory shut down not too long after that.
I caught up with him at his home in Brooklyn
where he's having a cigar and sitting in front of
literally dozens of bodybuilding trophies. We're going to talk about
the whole C ANDC riot, what he's been doing since.
And I swear I didn't do this on purpose, what
Freedom really means.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I would like to talk to you about your experience
of you.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Know, nineteen ninety and ninety one. How did you come
to be involved with C ANDC Music Factory.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
I was an engineer.
Speaker 9 (23:20):
I went to engineering school when I got out of
college in eighty eight, eight nine, and I went to
work in Quad Recording Studios, now infamous Quad Studios where
everyone seems to get into a shootout.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
All right, not everybody gets into a shootout at Quad Studios.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I haven't, but it was the.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Place where tupacsha Kork got shot five times in a
nineteen ninety four robbery. There's a theory that the Notorious
BIG's nineteen ninety five song who Shot Ya is all
about that attack, but Freedom kept it peaceful. He learned
how to be useful as an engineer in recording studios,
but what he really wanted was to be an MC
while you were engineering for other mcs, where you like,
(23:57):
get me in there, God, I could kill this or
did you just say, like it's my momental come.
Speaker 9 (24:04):
Later, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I understand. You know
Buster rhymes when we left Leaders of the New School,
he would hang out at the studios with a blood
and try to get into the session, which is a technique.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
You know. I used to get hide with Sladstone.
Speaker 9 (24:18):
You know, Slatstone would come to the studio and look
for me as an engineer. I was twenty two. We
would go on the staircase and smoke a bone.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
What were your goal's career wise? Where did you see
yourself in twenty thirty years time?
Speaker 9 (24:32):
Well, to be to make money, to be to be independent.
You know, the goal of making music is Nobody who
really makes money tries to make money for the sake
of collecting rectangle pieces of paper. They make money for
the sake of being able to fly first class. And
pay for them to work and pay for their mom's
conrect surgery, or buy the card they wanted. Nobody really
(24:56):
money and of itself. So the goal of being famous
was to be free. You pay for freedom here. You
don't earn your freedom by being a humble man or
a decent man.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
It costs money to be free.
Speaker 9 (25:07):
And so as a young kid in the streets of
New York, any rapper may be a public Enemy or
christ One or Rock Kim or the boogiet Down Productions.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
Or MC light.
Speaker 9 (25:17):
Their goal is to get out of the hood, to
be free. That's why we you know, it's our you know,
But shit, I got to get out of here.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So fame was freedom.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Famous Freedom, absolutely Bowie.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
We can't afford that, so we'll probably cut that out.
Freedom did some engineering for David Cole and Robert Clavillis,
the c's in CNC Music Factory. They had a dance
project they were trying to put together, but they needed
an MC. Freedom is an MC and they clicked and
the defining dance pop songs of nineteen ninety and ninety
one were born. But after a while Freedom wanted to
(25:57):
break out on his own. He fell out with one
of the seas and he embarked.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
On a solo career.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
What kind of sound were you trying to capture for
your solo record post see and see similar?
Speaker 9 (26:08):
A similar sound, A similar sound with just a little
bit more edge, you know. And then and then I
made a lot of records that were real street records
too that I shocked, but people wouldn't. I couldn't get
deals with them because they were like, Ah, that's not
what you're doing, that's not who you are. I was
always I always say, once you do a record like that,
you can't really repeat that record. You have to venture
(26:30):
off into a different sound. But the fans don't want
you to venture off because they don't know you for that.
But sometimes with pop music you can get pigeonholes because
pop music changes me.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
In nineteen ninety three, Freedom released his first solo single,
Voice of Freedom, a slightly harder dance track with a
chorus that sampled George Michael's Freedom ninety. The video is
up on YouTube and it is pure uncut nineteen ninety
three Intricate choreography in front of moodily lit Shanelink Fences
Very season three of nine oh two on a wardrobe
(27:04):
on everyone except Freedom, who of course is shirtless and
oiled up. The song has the line dance till you
wet your pants, and that's hard.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
It is wild.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
But by nineteen ninety three, as you know, by now,
the charts had changed. There was conclusive proof that people
wanted a different sound. So your record comes out and
the Chronic comes out. Did you have a sense at
the time of what was happening in the culture or yeah,
just yeah.
Speaker 9 (27:30):
You knew it was it was a problem. You could,
you could because I loved the Chronic record. I was like,
oh shit, that's bananas. I remember I remember being in
the limo. We were going on somewhere on.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
The road New York.
Speaker 9 (27:41):
We were out of the country somewhere, and somebody in
my crews put the yo. I got that great record
crazy and with the whole hour and the Limo were rocking.
I had a record out.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
No, we wouln't even listen to my record. That fucking
chronic record was bananas.
Speaker 9 (27:55):
Of course you understood, you know when when when when
Off the Wall came out, it was a game change.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
You knew it. You know, you knew it.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
So how did that feel when you're trying to promote
a record of your own.
Speaker 9 (28:09):
The missig industry was becoming very opinionated at that point.
You know, if you didn't smoke weed and bust guns,
you weren't credible. It was one point through the early
the mid nineties where I remember when the La Catch
was making records and all of these bluffs was making records,
and I would watch the videos and I would be like, yo,
who is going to a and R that fucking project.
It's like thirty dudes with guns? Like, yo, who is
(28:33):
going to fucking do the project? The product management on
that record, Like, you got to deal with those motherfuckers,
Good luck with that shit.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Hold me.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
So, Freedom's record deal with Sony fell apart. A few
other things materialized and then faded away. By now you
know how that goes. Freedom is in Brooklyn now. He
still produces records, He still mentors young artists, He sells
real estate, does construction here and there. By the looks
of it, when's a lot of bodybuilding competitions. If fame
is freedom, do you feel that you got free?
Speaker 4 (29:09):
No?
Speaker 9 (29:10):
No, no, because of me as a person, not generally speaking,
you know, I'm looking for the land now.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
I live in Brooklyn, but I want horses and cows.
Speaker 9 (29:19):
Now I want freedom, you know my own water. Freedom
is not money. Money allows you to get off the
grid to freedom. So money actually is a trap. The
more you get, the more you want. When you get
used to find things, you don't know how to well
your own water. You don't know how to pick chickens
from your own yard just you used to go into
(29:41):
the store. So are you free? If the people who
live like that live to be one hundred, but you
got cancer at fifty, are you free?
Speaker 4 (29:50):
So? Freedom is not having everything you want.
Speaker 9 (29:54):
Freedom to me means giving up all the things you
don't need.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
My recommendation is that if you have a chance to
talk to Freedom Williams, take it. He's friendly, he's fascinating.
He will make you go hmm. Freedom learned his craft
in the eighties so that he could meet people, make
himself useful, and really seize his moment. When it came
around in the nineties, Sudden Impact did something else. They
started with the marketing before they had a record out,
(30:18):
They made a poster. They built the buzz before there
was anything to buzz about, and it worked. It's that
poster They got Michael Bivens to sign them and change
the course of their lives forever. And now it is
in my inbox. So let's talk about that poster. Sudden
Impact had their uniform white shirts and neckties. White guys
(30:39):
had matching sport coats on a sweltering Houston afternoon. Outsiders
for Life were all do rags and soul patches in
the style of the year two thousand. I've seen these
guys and many of their various esthetics, but in all
of them, they were always styled by someone else. They
were inscrutable, unknowable. I never had a sense for who
these guys were until I saw this poster.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
I look at two special.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
All huddled up under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in nineteen ninety,
all fifteen or sixteen or seventeen years old, and I
finally feel like I know these guys.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
I grew up with these guys.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Todd is all the way to the left, racing stripes
shaved into his temples like vanilla ice, acid washed jeans,
pegged at the ankle, dirty Nike shoes in the sand.
Alan is next to him, wearing a bold polka dot,
something David Silver would wear on a date with Donald
Martin on nine O two one zero. Noel Kine is
next to him, serving blue steel before we even had
(31:34):
a name for it, in a T shirt and shorts.
And then there's Aaron smiling, the brash smile of the
high school jock under what might be a teenage attempt
at a mustache, a baggy guccy T shirt, barefoot, serving
you toes. These are kids. These are kids with big plans.
This is a high school dropout with something to prove.
(31:56):
This is the son of a major in the Air
Force trying to make his own way. This is a
high school baseball star finding a new family with the
kids from the other side of the tracks. And this
is the handsome little brother who's along for the ride.
I know these kids, so do you. Right now, under
some bridge somewhere, a few of them are posing, making
content for their Instagram or filming their video. There will
(32:17):
always be kids misunderstood by their parents, giggle that by
their peers, desperate to make their mark. I see what
Michael Bivens saw in this poster. I see why it's
his mom's favorite. I even see why it got them
signed to a record label. It's timeless, just from that
damn too special poster.
Speaker 6 (32:36):
Just from the poster. The poster got us there. That
point got us to Capitol. I would say, Yeah, we
pointed our way right to it.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
You know what got you there is boldness like you
guys took a huge swim.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Yeah, we just didn't.
Speaker 6 (32:50):
I don't think it was something where we didn't have
anything to lose at that point, Me and Tad felt
just was the.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Way, this is what we wanted to do.
Speaker 6 (32:57):
And it kept us, I would say, from getting into
childhood mischief because we were so driven on what to do,
you know, and what do we have to do to
get to the next point. And even when a lot
of this stuff happens, like I'm sure you're gonna get
into we still kept.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Pushing like we still hadn't, you know, just tried.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
By now you know how this story unfolds, The boys
go from Motown to Capitol to bivten, then off biften
and onto Stone Creek, and then Stone Creek goes away
and then onto a Leah's label Blackground, and.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Off of that. What I suspected is that.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
By this time and their story, the guys were pretty
fed up the part of the story I hadn't heard.
Was the night Todd finally vented that frustration. Blackground was
a record label started by a Leah's uncle, Barry Hankerson,
and one night after another endless wait to get an
album released, Todd had a few drinks and gave Barry
a piece of his mind.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
I remember having a conversation with Barry. You remember this, Allen.
I was drunk.
Speaker 7 (33:51):
Well, I I got real drunk one night, man, and
I'm gonna tell you I had a conversation with Barry's
attorney dude flat said, look, this is some bs shit.
Speaker 6 (34:00):
Man.
Speaker 7 (34:01):
What y'all are doing? Man, this is this is you
know what I'm saying, It's it ain't right man, you're
playing god with me, you know.
Speaker 6 (34:07):
What I mean?
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Let me fucking go. If you don't plan on doing something,
let us fucking go. What do you hold on to
us for?
Speaker 7 (34:13):
Obviously, obviously there's something there that you don't want to
let go. You just don't know how to You just
don't know how to handle it. You know what I'm saying.
Were we the best group in the world vocally?
Speaker 3 (34:21):
No, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (34:23):
But there's a lot of other groups I can name,
But I'm not going to you know what I'm saying,
because I don't do that shit.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Man. But we had we had good music at that time.
Speaker 7 (34:30):
Man.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
It feels cathartic for me too. This confrontation was a
significant moment in that it got them dropped from Blackground.
Their album once again didn't get released. Outsiders for Life
self released an album in two thousand and six with
the tracks ass Like That and Slipping Slide. It's up
on the streaming services if you want to listen. But
by the time the album was released, the guys were
(34:53):
burned out.
Speaker 7 (34:54):
Then it was time to grow the fuck up. Let's
be real, man, we're getting old.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Man.
Speaker 7 (34:58):
It's a about growing up man, you know what I'm saying.
Are we going to keep doing this? Or or am
I going to be thirty years old living?
Speaker 4 (35:06):
You know, saying in a tent?
Speaker 3 (35:08):
What am I going to do with my life?
Speaker 4 (35:09):
You know what I mean? What am I?
Speaker 3 (35:10):
What am I going to do now? So we had
a restructure. I wanted kids. I didn't want to run
around chasing a dream, you know what I mean?
Speaker 7 (35:18):
And so you know we did that. We took a break.
I think I took a break I didn't do music
for how long? How like ten years?
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Man? Yeah, it was it was like ten years.
Speaker 7 (35:26):
It was like ten years. I didn't touch music. I
didn't do nothing.
Speaker 6 (35:29):
I would tell you this though, Man, I would think
it's the time frame too. Man, we just we came
out what we were doing there doing now, I would
say time frame wise, if you look at it, we
were just in the wrong time period.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
There was social media.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
We could have pushed so much stuff and done our
own podcasts and done our own you know, follow the
band type things.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
Back then, there wasn't nothing but AOL messenger, you know
what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
We didn't have no internet back then. Man, we didn't
have MP three's back in.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
The timing was just not right. The timing was never right.
But their attitude about it is good. They're not bitter
and there's something that I have to know. It sounds
like I already know the answer to this question. But
are you glad you took that trip out to.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
La Yes, me and him. I would tell you could.
Speaker 6 (36:13):
You can't pay for the experiences that we went through.
You can go to college and people can talk about
their college years. I watched some of the most Hall
of Fame type things in the music business.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
Go. I met Aleah, I've hung out with her. She
told me, I'm want in a million. I got video
of it.
Speaker 6 (36:30):
I got video with boys to men and things that
I probably you can't even experience, being an end of
the road video shoot, the all the video shoots we
went to, walking through these things and living. I would
say it was the closest thing to being famous without
being famous.
Speaker 7 (36:46):
Yeah, man, I think, I think. Man, you know, it's
a journey. We're all on man, even you date.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
You know what I'm saying. We're all on this journey.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Man.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
You know, you get to you get.
Speaker 7 (36:56):
To a place, you go left, you go right, there,
you go right and find out right it wasn't the
right way.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
You go left again, you know what I mean. So
you know it's all life's journey, man, It's everything's meant
to be.
Speaker 7 (37:07):
You know your story's gonna play out, you know, and
you know life's the song man.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
That's what I say. Life's the song man. Look around you, man.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
So I have found three of the guys from Sudden Impact.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
All that are left are Noel Kine, who I have
emailed a few times and he just hasn't gone back
to me and the elusive quiet Dave Smith, the guy
who they tell me turned his back on the whole thing.
After we get off the zoom call, I decided to
take a swing with Todd and see if maybe he
has any idea how I can get a hold of
Dave Smith. Any emails right back? Yeah, man, I talked
(37:39):
to him last week. Here's his email, and so I
emailed Dave Smith and he gets back in thirty minutes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Sure, I'd love to talk. This is so much easier
than I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
I also ask Alan whether who Are You is a
dis track and he says yes, but we were in
a pissed off state of mind. We grew a lot
from that lol. As to who they were dissing, I
guess I'll have to get it from Dave Distrack Smith himself,
Michael Bibvens. Though, still nothing, But I want you to
hear something Todd said as the Zoom was wrapping up,
something that is made even more poignant by the fact
(38:09):
that his connection is a little dodgy.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
It's definitely not is definitely not over.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
It makes me think about what Scott Gimpel said in
the first episode of this show.
Speaker 6 (38:18):
I don't like the idea of endings because I don't
like thinking that it's over for anybody.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
This is a show about audacity.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
This is a show about taking big swings, and I'm
beginning to wonder whether these guys might be about to
take another one. We'll find out on the finale of
Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project. This has
been an Exactly Right production. Written by me Dave Holmes,
(38:50):
produced by Hannah Kyle Crichton, recorded, mixed and sound designed
by Andrew Eapen. Additional engineering and assembly by Annalise Nelson,
Music by Ben Wise, artwork by Garrett Ross. Executive produced
by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Follow the show on Instagram, Facebook.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
And Twitter at exactly where, and follow me at Dave Holmes.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
For more information, go to exactly Rightmedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Binge the show add free on stitch your premium for
a free month. Head to Stitcher Premium dot com, slash
Impact and enter promo code Impact.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You select a
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Monthly plan, listen, subscribe, and leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts
So far, Like Michael Bivens at the time of the
filming of the Boys to Men Motown Philly video, I
have heard zero music from Sudden Impact, not the original recipe,
nineteen ninety one version, not the five guys in the video.
I don't think I actually can hear the music of
Sudden Impacts because it's locked in a vault at Capitol Records.
I've heard White Guys quick Verse on the East Coast
family song one Forour All four to one, and they
(00:26):
sound good, but I haven't heard any full songs because
whatever they recorded is locked in a vault, and Motown Records,
which distributed music from Michael Bivens' biv ten label, which
doesn't exist anymore. I haven't heard any music from the
Outsiders either, because whatever they recorded under that name is
the property of Sony Music, which distributed Boys to Men's
Stone Creek label, which also doesn't exist anymore. I have
(00:47):
heard some of the songs the guys recorded as Outsiders
for Life after Aaron and Noel Kane left the group
and Jimmy Marble and Jason Dowdy joined. It's a little
harder than I was expecting, a little angrier, a little
more Timberland because it was the year two thousand and
everything was more tim Milandy back then it was the law.
But from the original five I have still heard no music.
(01:08):
But thanks to Jason and Tim Bird, I have made
contact with Todd White and Alan Healy, and before we speak,
I ask them whether they have the other major thing
I'm missing, maybe the biggest piece of the puzzle so far,
the thing that put this story into motion, the two
special poster, the picture that got Michael Bivens to sign them.
(01:28):
They have it, and before we speak they send it
to me. So now I have it, I'm going to
break it down for you pixel by pixel, pegged Jean
by peg Jane. I'll talk about it with Todd and
Allen and I will get the sudden impact story from
their perspective. I'll do a little digging as to whether
one of their later songs who Are You was a
(01:49):
disc track, and if so, who was getting dissed and why?
Plus a conversation with a voice you could not escape
in nineteen ninety one, I'm going to catch up with
Freedom Williams of Seeing Music Factory, who is as always
gonna make you sweat? This is waiting for impact a
Dave Holmes Passion Project, Todd White, Alan Healey, Holy, how
(02:29):
I cannot believe him talking to the both of you.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
This is nuts. First of all, how are you good man?
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Happy to be alive?
Speaker 4 (02:38):
We're both good.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
I'm speaking with Todd and Allen over Zoom. They're both
in their individual homes. They live about thirty minutes away
from each other in Virginia, and as I talk to them,
I'm reminded of something.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
They're outsiders for life.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Bandmate Jason Dowdy told me about them, One that Todd
is the hard charger of the group, the engine, and
two that Alan Heally was their street cred. Here's what
he said about that, just.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
You know, like from his the family he's from, and
the people he knows in the area, like he's kind
of down with you know, some people from the streets
it that way, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I don't actually know what Jason means, but of course
now I'm expecting some kind of Virginia Beach sopranos character
a tough guy, and maybe he is, but right now
over Zoom, the two of them could not be nicer.
Maybe they've mellowed with age, or maybe they're just happy
to be talking about this stuff. Either way, you will
believe how Todd White.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Met Alan Heally. How did Todd White and Alan Healy meet.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Over a girl? Actually?
Speaker 6 (03:35):
I think I started dating one of Todd's a's girlfriends
and I got told that Todd White wanted to talk
to me, and so I was like really, So then
he told me I met him, and he was like,
you know, treater good.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
She's a good girl type deal.
Speaker 6 (03:49):
And me and him actually became really good friends through this,
and then those girls disappeared in our friendship kept on.
Speaker 4 (03:57):
So it's kind of really interesting girls.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Man, Todd, My understanding is that that is how you
met Aaron Kane.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Yeah, it was yep, Todd.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
How many girlfriends did you have?
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I had a lot of girlfriends.
Speaker 4 (04:17):
Yeah, friends that were girls.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Yeah, friends that were girls.
Speaker 7 (04:21):
I don't know, man, I had to get rid of
a lot of that stuff, Dave, so I could make
room for new memories.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Have you noticed that everyone involved with Sudden Impact or
Michael Bivens says my name back to me when they
answer a question, Hayden and Evett did it too. I
can't help but wonder whether that was part of the
training Michael Bivens put them through. Anyway, it works when
these guys were teenagers. Though Todd was a bit of
a wild child, it was an energy alan really clicked with.
Speaker 6 (04:47):
Our parents were both majors in the army, so very
structured lifestyle. And then you have some people that go
into that lifestyle, I'd say, and then you have guys
like us that completely fought against our dads and hated it.
Speaker 4 (05:00):
So many of us joined the military. We went.
Speaker 6 (05:02):
I asked my mom is Vietnamese Mom, I don't want
to do the Air Force and she was like, what
do you want to do? I said, I want to
hang out with Todd, and you know, you know, she
was like, follow your dreams, do whatever you want to do.
So it was a it was a different you know,
but titled just that guy man. He was just somebody
that always people are talking about him because he's either
pissing them.
Speaker 4 (05:21):
Off or they liked him. Do you like Tid or
you hated Todd? Todder?
Speaker 2 (05:24):
How does that feel to hear that?
Speaker 3 (05:26):
It's cool?
Speaker 4 (05:27):
Man?
Speaker 3 (05:27):
You know, I'll tell you this, man.
Speaker 7 (05:29):
You know, we grow old, man, we grow apart man,
and uh well, not really a part but like with
me and Allen. Man, we can go like, you know,
a week, two, three, well a month without to talk
to each other and call and pick right up where
we left off, right where we.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
Left off, man, you know, and uh, it's cool man.
Speaker 7 (05:48):
You know.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
It was a real good bond. There still is.
Speaker 7 (05:51):
It's always been. It's always been really you know. But
you know, yet life happens.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
You know, how are your parents with your decision to
pursue music.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
Oh they care whatever as long as he does something
with himself.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
What kind of kids were you? What kind of teenagers
were you?
Speaker 6 (06:08):
Were?
Speaker 4 (06:09):
Kids?
Speaker 2 (06:10):
Bad kids, wild?
Speaker 6 (06:11):
I would tell you I was good all the way
till about when I started hanging out with Todd. I
was started getting where he was not in school, ninth grade,
he was out. I got a call and it'll be
Todd telling me, Hey, calling sick. We're going to go
to the beach. We're going to write to you know.
Then he started. There was all the music and being
around him. You never knew what to expected. This guy
all right, with a lot of parties we weren't allowed
(06:31):
to come to locally, And that all changed once we
got into boys and Men's video of course.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
All right, let's back up here a little bit and
talk about how Too Special the first version of Sudden
Impact came together. We know Todd White met Aaron Kane
at a party when they were about to get into
a fist fight over a girl. We know that the
original version of the group was Todd, Aaron, and another
guy named Eric. What we don't know is how Alan
entered the fold.
Speaker 6 (06:55):
I'll kind of tell you kind of what happened for
me to get in this group. Todd and I were
always kind of just friends that acted crazy. I mean,
if I want to do summer laugh, I go hang
out with Todd. Tide was always a damn nut, you know,
carried through all the way to when we're this age.
Speaker 4 (07:09):
Now. My son loves to go hang out with Todd
just because Todd's wild. All right.
Speaker 6 (07:14):
So I was in Washington State and I got this
phone call about and Todd played me a song over
the over the thing, and it was in a group
called Two Special Tight, you know, and I was like
and said, that sounds pretty damn good man.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
I actually enjoyed that. So he told me that the
two guys were.
Speaker 6 (07:30):
Getting ready to move and he needed the guy in
the group, and he was like, if you want to
come back to Virginia, you know, I'll you know, I'll
put you in this group.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
And so I was like, all right.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
I just want to chime in here and remind you
that this level of wheeling and dealing, these potential cross
country moves and personnel changes, these were all being negotiated
among sixteen year old.
Speaker 4 (07:49):
Boys and Aaron them didn't really know me too well.
Speaker 6 (07:53):
And I came in and it was kind of a
little bit of a first like, oh, he's Todd's guy,
you know, and this helps tide, you know, decisions now,
it's his best friend type thing. And so we got
together and I told him when I got in the group,
I wanted to, you know, not just do local shows.
I wanted to start, Hey, let's make this big, Let's
do something. And so me and him started. He had
(08:13):
that I would say a lot of the talent. Todd
has always been really good at writing hooks.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Todd, what was the name too Special?
Speaker 2 (08:21):
All about? How did that?
Speaker 7 (08:23):
I have no clue, as you, man, I mean, it's catchy.
I wish I could remember, man, I honestly have no clue, man,
you know, even a song I look back at the
song please be.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Mine, be my girl, Please be mine.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Dun dum dump my girl, like were begging.
Speaker 6 (08:40):
You know, it's but we were man, you're think you're
sixteen years old. Man, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
I do know exactly what he's saying. But what I'm
dying to know about is how they made the decision
as two sixteen year old boys to take their poster,
which again we're going to talk about later in the show,
and fly all the way across the country to try something.
What I didn't know is that getting a record deal
wasn't just a happy accident. It was the fulfillment of
a promise. So let's talk about the trip to Los
(09:07):
Angeles for Marvin Gaye's Walk of Fame ceremony.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Did you drive, did you fly? What did you did?
You tell your parents?
Speaker 4 (09:16):
Well, yeah, tell our parents.
Speaker 6 (09:18):
We asked everyone to go, So we asked Tid's mom.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
I will tell you was like our manager.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
She pretty much put up every bit of money anything
for Tide. She would put up whatever she just wanted
Tie not to going to jail. You know, be somebody,
And I would tell you music probably saved his butt
from going to jail straight up. Because me and Todd
both looked at each other and you can't sing from
jail and make money. So we're like, you know, at
least nowadays you might be able to, but not back then.
So we were kind of like, hey, let's go do this.
(09:45):
I went and talked to my mom, and my mom
will take to this day. I asked her and I slammed.
My father had a you know, we lived in Germany,
so yeah, and Mercedes Bens.
Speaker 4 (09:55):
I asked her, let me go with Todd. She said no,
and I slammed the Mercedes Benz door so hard and
slash at her door.
Speaker 6 (10:01):
Windows smashed, just went straight down, and she looked at
me and she was like, you know, just pissed off.
So I go to Todd and she comes back the
next day and talked to Todd's mom and said, Alan,
I work hard for my money. I'm gonna give you
this money if you go to LA come back with something.
And I was like, I promise you, I'm not going
out there just to do nothing.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
I'm going out there to come back with something.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
They didn't get a recording contract off a poster because
they were lucky. They got it because Alan promised his
mom he would, and these guys are men.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
Of their word. Cecil Jenkins.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
On the other hand, Marvin Gay's friend and local music promoter,
might not have been as good a guy as I thought.
Speaker 6 (10:36):
And so Todd and I are out there. Supposedly he's
gonna take care of us. Okay, We're gonna go out there.
I'm gonna take care of this guy disappeared on us
for the first night. To me and Todd decided because
he left us there and just left us in hotel.
We were kind of just I think his paycheck to
get to La. So we get out there and we
just get left and like we're supposed to be staying
with him.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
But guess what, guys, I can't get you in the place.
Kada YadA. So we were like, you know, it's true,
let's walk around LA. We're out here.
Speaker 6 (11:00):
So you know, I'm a military brat, so I'm like,
let's go. I've been in Germany, I've been in Paris.
Speaker 4 (11:04):
We can make this.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Alan Heally and Todd White are sixteen years old, more
confident and resourceful than I will ever be.
Speaker 6 (11:11):
We go out there and this guy's up on the
stage of Marvin Gaye's you know, family. So we're up
there at the start and I'm like, man, this dude
kind of just dissing the hell out of us, really, you.
Speaker 4 (11:19):
Know, honestly.
Speaker 6 (11:20):
So we're Mike Bivins comes up and runs next to
us and stands like watching what's going on in Todd season.
And I remember he Tide's like, yo, Alan, give him
the poster, and you know, he walks off. So I
walked up to him, like, yo, man, this a poster
and he's like, I'm gonna keep that shit out of
my face. And I'm like, I was like, well, this
guy just told me to. I go back and tell Todd.
I'm like, yo, this. He goes what he's saying. I'm like,
(11:42):
dude just told me to get that shit out of
his face, and Time looks at me. He goes give
me that and he runs back over there and Mike's like, hey, man,
I didn't know, man, I thought that was a new
Kid poster and asked me to sign it, you know,
like it's like kind of a disc like because they
were supposed to be like new Kids from Areas Starshit.
So he got kind of pissy and then he goes, no, okay,
am I bad. So he points to Todd and tells Todd, hey,
(12:04):
come over here, and so we you know, Tid points
to me and we both go over there and he's like.
Speaker 4 (12:09):
Man, I'm so sorry. I thought she was this group.
Speaker 6 (12:12):
So he brings us up to Motown Records and we
go right into the president's office, Gerald Busby's office, like,
walk up, like man, Me and him have a poster
in one song, please be on to it. Right into
the office, and I'm sitting there like amazing, we're in
this guy's office. I'm oh, my god, you know.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
And so he starts telling Jerald how this.
Speaker 6 (12:32):
Is going to be my new group, another group after
another bad creation of boys to men, this is my
new group, and so he starts askings, can you sing
like this?
Speaker 4 (12:38):
And I didn't. Man, I mean like, if I'm at
a job, you asked me if I can do something?
Oh yeah, I can do it. We can do whatever.
So I sell our group.
Speaker 6 (12:46):
Me and Ty are sitting there and we just keep
talking and he's like, hey, look, I don't know what
you came.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
Out here to do, but you've accomplished it. Go back
to Virginia and go home.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
I'll call you.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
What I love about everyone's version of this story is
that nobody has told me what happened between Michael Bibvens
looking at the two special poster and Michael Bivins driving
Todd and Allen to Motown Records. And I think nobody's
told me what happened because nothing happened in between. He
really did just see the poster and make the decision,
and Motown was just as quick to jump. Jeral Buzzby
(13:17):
asks if you can sing? Does he at any time
hear you sing?
Speaker 6 (13:21):
At that point, Mike says, don't worry about it. I
got these are my guys. They're gonna be able to
so be and Todd didn't have count to sing in
the office.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
At that point, they have a meeting with Motown Records.
They get Michael Bivens' number, and I promise that something
will happen, and they call that number right away.
Speaker 4 (13:38):
Before we left.
Speaker 6 (13:39):
We called that dude in the morning like I've been
even called Mike at seven in the morning and he's like, dude,
it's me, it's my number, go home, trust me.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Then we go back to Virginia and we're.
Speaker 6 (13:48):
Telling all Aaron and all them, Hey, guys, we got
some We gotta tell y'all we got something.
Speaker 4 (13:52):
Trust me.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
And before they head home, they have one last conversation
with Cecil Jenkins.
Speaker 4 (13:58):
You know.
Speaker 6 (13:58):
We go back to our accon lodge and that dude
calls it Udd and goes, hey, did y'all see me
on the stage.
Speaker 4 (14:04):
And I'm like, yeah, we saw you on the stage.
Speaker 6 (14:06):
And here I said, Hey man, I said to go,
I got that question for you. Can you give me
a meet with Jerald buzby tomorrow? And the guy's like, oh, hey, nah, Man,
I ain't gonna be able to you know, swing that
yeahda YadA.
Speaker 4 (14:18):
And I was like, well, okay, we're going home tomorrow.
We'll talk to you later. And so we got in
our plane and we left.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
The guys have a pending record deal with the legendary
Motown Record but before anything else can happen, another quick
personnel change.
Speaker 4 (14:30):
So we get home and we tell.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
Aaron and Noel and everybody, and then we tell them, hey,
we're bringing.
Speaker 4 (14:36):
Dave in the group.
Speaker 6 (14:36):
We got another guy. We're bringing it because me and
Todd decided we were decided we're gonna put Dave in
the group. So we you know, this Yeah, they got
pissed it first, so we didn't care. It was, you know,
kind of Todd's dealing my deal. At this point, we
were wanting to do our vision.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
What was the vision at the beginning.
Speaker 6 (14:52):
The vision at the beginning was, I would tell you
we were inspired by us straight up saying, new kids
on the block. We saw some dudes singing and we
were like, damn it, we can to do that. Man
and Tied had been in like choir.
Speaker 4 (15:03):
And he was in beforeen. He was in school, he
was in chorus and all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
The next step was an appearance on b ET. Michael
Bivens was booked on Donnie Simpson's show Video Soul to
announce his development deal with Motown and introduce the world
to his groups Boys to Men. Another bad creation and
sudden impact. But b ET was in Washington, d C.
A couple hours drive from Virginia Beach. And you know
how Aaron and Knowles's parents are about these excursions.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
So we had to force his now Aaron and Knowles's
parents to let us take.
Speaker 6 (15:31):
Them because me and Tyd are like, we're going. Regardless
whether you go or not, we'll replace you. Someone's going
with us. I mean, I don't care who it is. Yeah,
you know, And so Aaron really wanted to do it.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Aaron was, you know, he's still singing today. He really
wanted to do it.
Speaker 6 (15:43):
So he shot up there with us and Noel jumped
in the car and we all jumped into Dave's five
point zero convertible, trying to fit in the back seat.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
It was rough up three hours.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
The DC back seat, small, back seat small.
Speaker 6 (15:56):
We show up and uh, it's ABC, I guess releasing
the debut of Aisha. We are there and we see
Boys and Men sing married, don't you week? And that's
when we were like, wow, that's the singing group, you
know what I'm saying. So we learned real quick. And
we weren't that yet. Man, we weren't, I would say,
you know, we we were still in the very beginnings
(16:17):
of being a group. We're still writing our records, We're
still trying to figure out what was going on, who
we were right.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
We're still developing ourselves.
Speaker 6 (16:25):
The next thing we had come up was we were
supposed to, you know, we find out, Okay, we're gonna
shoot Motown Philly video because they I should just released
now Boys and Men's gonna shoot their debut video in Philly.
So we get a call and me and Tyd are like,
all right, when do we need to be there?
Speaker 4 (16:41):
And they said early in the morning on this day.
Speaker 6 (16:44):
Okay, Me and Todd left that night because we wanted
to be there early.
Speaker 2 (16:48):
What was shooting that video?
Speaker 4 (16:50):
Like?
Speaker 7 (16:51):
For you?
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Do you remember that day?
Speaker 4 (16:53):
Yeah? I can remember it. This thing? How about you?
Speaker 7 (16:55):
Todd?
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Do you remember it? Yoh? Man?
Speaker 3 (16:57):
It was it was different? Yeah, I remember the neon sign.
I was like, yo, what can we put that sign?
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:04):
We wanted that so it was an actual sign.
Speaker 4 (17:06):
They couldn't do like effects back then.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
They had a real, actually a neon sign.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Man, there is an actual, practical sudden impact neon sign
and it must still exist somewhere. Where is it a
museum a private collection? I have a goal now find it?
And Lara Croft tomb rate or that ship?
Speaker 2 (17:25):
So were there were there other takes? Were there other
concepts besides the point?
Speaker 6 (17:31):
Do you just kind of get that trot and let
me tell you man, we could we had not that
took a while?
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Well no, yeah.
Speaker 6 (17:36):
Another thing was they didn't have no you know, it
was like a last minute thing we're doing a video
and bibs like I'm gonna put my my next group
in here. So they if you notice, Aaron's wearing a
bow tie and the rest of us are wearing ties.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
The reason why is because they only had four boys
to men, so they had four ties.
Speaker 6 (17:54):
So Aaron, because he was one of the leads at
the time, said I'll go ahead and wear the bow tie.
So all of the rest of us and They're like,
what are you all gonna do? And I was like, shit,
I don't know what we're gonna do.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
You know.
Speaker 6 (18:04):
It was like, all right, everybody point on the count
of so and so and so it was like, shit,
I can point, you know.
Speaker 4 (18:09):
So then it's.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
Funny you say that because people would always ask me
all the pointers or shit like that, you know, and
different different things.
Speaker 4 (18:15):
And then yeah, it was fun man, it was.
Speaker 6 (18:18):
It was I look back at does I still see
them things and crack up my kids, you know, they
trip out that, you know, like, Dad, you weren't that cool?
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Like you were that cool?
Speaker 4 (18:26):
I thought so I thought we were.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
It does appear to me, though, that Dave Dave does
seem to be pointing at the director.
Speaker 6 (18:35):
Yeah, Dave, Dave's always trying to be noticing a lot.
He's always a little bit out on his own there.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Yeah. Yeah, he's always been out there a little bit.
Speaker 6 (18:42):
So if we were all dressed and let's say urban
Dave's got on the skateboard stuff. He was a skater
at heart from Virginia, you know, he lives in Virginia
Beach now, so right there with Pharrell's from that whole area.
But that Pharrell vibe how he dressed, Dave was already
doing that way back in the day.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
That was always his thing, vans and you know, looking
like that.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
So the video comes out, do you feel like the
pressure is on now to start releasing music?
Speaker 4 (19:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (19:08):
I thought we were going to be the next group out, okay,
And Ty would say you we thought, hey man, we're next,
you know, So we started putting stuff together. I would
tell you vocally, probably we weren't where we should have been, okay,
And that's where me and Todd when the time comes,
we do some switching around and stuff. But I would
say it was a lot of pressure. We wanted to
(19:30):
be that next group. We were trying to find a sound.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
You know what happens next, The guys signed with Capital,
They record some music. Then Bivins asked them to leave
Capital and go with biv ten Records, which they do,
and immediately bivins roster of artists starts to grow. Also,
his vision for sudden Impact takes a turn that is unbelievable.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
He just had a lot on his plate. Man, he threw.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
We went from three guys and I'll see see one
for all for one there was twenty groups.
Speaker 4 (19:56):
I'm like, yo, what the hell just happened?
Speaker 7 (19:58):
You know?
Speaker 4 (19:58):
And now who are we behind? So we decided we
were going to roll and not just that.
Speaker 7 (20:03):
Alut.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Remember his whole vision of us changed.
Speaker 4 (20:05):
Man.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
He wanted us to be like it was a EMF.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
You were going to be a rave band.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
He was all some different stuff.
Speaker 4 (20:10):
Man.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
We were kind of like, yo, man, that that's not us.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Man, If you don't remember.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
In nineteen ninety one, the British group EMF, incidentally also
five trendy white guys, had a number one hit in
America called Unbelievable. They were ravy, they wore baggy day
glow clothing, they had electronic beats. Their name stood for
ecstasy motherfuckers. It was very of the time, but not
at all what sudden impact was about. But on the
(20:35):
other hand, sudden impact was about to not be sudden impact.
Speaker 4 (20:39):
First we were sudden impact. Then it changed and I
looked and it said.
Speaker 6 (20:43):
Whyt g I Z And I'm like, wait, Gizzy, like
no white guys.
Speaker 8 (20:49):
And I'm like wait, Gussy, And I'm like, what the
hell are you doing? Guzy guys like white guys, white guys.
That's not really man. I'm half Asian man. My mother's Vietnamese.
But at that point he said, it doesn't really matter.
That's what you all are gonna be.
Speaker 6 (21:01):
And I was like, oh, wow, that's what we're gonna be, okay,
And so actually, you know, we, like I said, it
was creative differences.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
And I think also that we just weren't. We didn't know.
He didn't know really what we were.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
We didn't know we were.
Speaker 6 (21:13):
It wasn't a thing of you know, I don't think
BIV hated us. I mean, that's a strong word anytime
someone says about it. He just didn't know what to do.
He used to tell us all the time, we were
his mom's favorite group at all of She had our
poster in her house.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
That's a powerful poster, is what that is. And I
have it now.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
We will analyze it later in the episode, but first
I wanted to catch up with someone else who had
a big moment in the pop music world of the
early nineties. Someone who's time in the spotlight was also
just before the Internet. Someone who is yesterday, today and
always gonna make you sweat. Freedom Williams smoking a cigar,
(21:58):
enjoying a stoke.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Where are you, I'm in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
No discussion of popular music in nineteen ninety one is
complete without Freedom Williams. He was the featured rapper on
the C and C Music Factory songs Gonna make You Sweat,
Here We Go and Things that make You go hmm.
His voice was everywhere, and it still is. Try to
go a week without hearing Gonna make you sweat.
Speaker 9 (22:19):
You can't say everybody over here, everybody, Oh, but there,
the cloud is not but no, a fool is body
people than the house?
Speaker 2 (22:27):
See there it is, you just heard it.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
That song is a perfect example of the C and
C Music Factory sound Freedom smooth Flow, alongside Martha WASH's
powerhouse vocals. Of course, in the video for the song,
those vocals were lip syncd by a model named Zelma Davis.
Lip Syncing by models was another big thing in the
early nineties. That's a subject for another podcast. Freedom left
the group in nineteen ninety three for a solo career,
(22:51):
and the Music Factory shut down not too long after that.
I caught up with him at his home in Brooklyn
where he's having a cigar and sitting in front of
literally dozens of bodybuilding trophies. We're going to talk about
the whole C ANDC riot, what he's been doing since.
And I swear I didn't do this on purpose, what
Freedom really means.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
I would like to talk to you about your experience
of you.
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Know, nineteen ninety and ninety one. How did you come
to be involved with C ANDC Music Factory.
Speaker 4 (23:18):
I was an engineer.
Speaker 9 (23:20):
I went to engineering school when I got out of
college in eighty eight, eight nine, and I went to
work in Quad Recording Studios, now infamous Quad Studios where
everyone seems to get into a shootout.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
All right, not everybody gets into a shootout at Quad Studios.
Speaker 2 (23:34):
I haven't, but it was the.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Place where tupacsha Kork got shot five times in a
nineteen ninety four robbery. There's a theory that the Notorious
BIG's nineteen ninety five song who Shot Ya is all
about that attack, but Freedom kept it peaceful. He learned
how to be useful as an engineer in recording studios,
but what he really wanted was to be an MC
while you were engineering for other mcs, where you like,
(23:57):
get me in there, God, I could kill this or
did you just say, like it's my momental come.
Speaker 9 (24:04):
Later, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I understand. You know
Buster rhymes when we left Leaders of the New School,
he would hang out at the studios with a blood
and try to get into the session, which is a technique.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
You know. I used to get hide with Sladstone.
Speaker 9 (24:18):
You know, Slatstone would come to the studio and look
for me as an engineer. I was twenty two. We
would go on the staircase and smoke a bone.
Speaker 1 (24:26):
What were your goal's career wise? Where did you see
yourself in twenty thirty years time?
Speaker 9 (24:32):
Well, to be to make money, to be to be independent.
You know, the goal of making music is Nobody who
really makes money tries to make money for the sake
of collecting rectangle pieces of paper. They make money for
the sake of being able to fly first class. And
pay for them to work and pay for their mom's
conrect surgery, or buy the card they wanted. Nobody really
(24:56):
money and of itself. So the goal of being famous
was to be free. You pay for freedom here. You
don't earn your freedom by being a humble man or
a decent man.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
It costs money to be free.
Speaker 9 (25:07):
And so as a young kid in the streets of
New York, any rapper may be a public Enemy or
christ One or Rock Kim or the boogiet Down Productions.
Speaker 4 (25:16):
Or MC light.
Speaker 9 (25:17):
Their goal is to get out of the hood, to
be free. That's why we you know, it's our you know,
But shit, I got to get out of here.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
So fame was freedom.
Speaker 4 (25:30):
Famous Freedom, absolutely Bowie.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
We can't afford that, so we'll probably cut that out.
Freedom did some engineering for David Cole and Robert Clavillis,
the c's in CNC Music Factory. They had a dance
project they were trying to put together, but they needed
an MC. Freedom is an MC and they clicked and
the defining dance pop songs of nineteen ninety and ninety
one were born. But after a while Freedom wanted to
(25:57):
break out on his own. He fell out with one
of the seas and he embarked.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
On a solo career.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
What kind of sound were you trying to capture for
your solo record post see and see similar?
Speaker 9 (26:08):
A similar sound, A similar sound with just a little
bit more edge, you know. And then and then I
made a lot of records that were real street records
too that I shocked, but people wouldn't. I couldn't get
deals with them because they were like, Ah, that's not
what you're doing, that's not who you are. I was
always I always say, once you do a record like that,
you can't really repeat that record. You have to venture
(26:30):
off into a different sound. But the fans don't want
you to venture off because they don't know you for that.
But sometimes with pop music you can get pigeonholes because
pop music changes me.
Speaker 1 (26:43):
In nineteen ninety three, Freedom released his first solo single,
Voice of Freedom, a slightly harder dance track with a
chorus that sampled George Michael's Freedom ninety. The video is
up on YouTube and it is pure uncut nineteen ninety
three Intricate choreography in front of moodily lit Shanelink Fences
Very season three of nine oh two on a wardrobe
(27:04):
on everyone except Freedom, who of course is shirtless and
oiled up. The song has the line dance till you
wet your pants, and that's hard.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
It is wild.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
But by nineteen ninety three, as you know, by now,
the charts had changed. There was conclusive proof that people
wanted a different sound. So your record comes out and
the Chronic comes out. Did you have a sense at
the time of what was happening in the culture or yeah,
just yeah.
Speaker 9 (27:30):
You knew it was it was a problem. You could,
you could because I loved the Chronic record. I was like,
oh shit, that's bananas. I remember I remember being in
the limo. We were going on somewhere on.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
The road New York.
Speaker 9 (27:41):
We were out of the country somewhere, and somebody in
my crews put the yo. I got that great record
crazy and with the whole hour and the Limo were rocking.
I had a record out.
Speaker 4 (27:51):
No, we wouln't even listen to my record. That fucking
chronic record was bananas.
Speaker 9 (27:55):
Of course you understood, you know when when when when
Off the Wall came out, it was a game change.
Speaker 4 (28:00):
You knew it. You know, you knew it.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
So how did that feel when you're trying to promote
a record of your own.
Speaker 9 (28:09):
The missig industry was becoming very opinionated at that point.
You know, if you didn't smoke weed and bust guns,
you weren't credible. It was one point through the early
the mid nineties where I remember when the La Catch
was making records and all of these bluffs was making records,
and I would watch the videos and I would be like, yo,
who is going to a and R that fucking project.
It's like thirty dudes with guns? Like, yo, who is
(28:33):
going to fucking do the project? The product management on
that record, Like, you got to deal with those motherfuckers,
Good luck with that shit.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
Hold me.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
So, Freedom's record deal with Sony fell apart. A few
other things materialized and then faded away. By now you
know how that goes. Freedom is in Brooklyn now. He
still produces records, He still mentors young artists, He sells
real estate, does construction here and there. By the looks
of it, when's a lot of bodybuilding competitions. If fame
is freedom, do you feel that you got free?
Speaker 4 (29:09):
No?
Speaker 9 (29:10):
No, no, because of me as a person, not generally speaking,
you know, I'm looking for the land now.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
I live in Brooklyn, but I want horses and cows.
Speaker 9 (29:19):
Now I want freedom, you know my own water. Freedom
is not money. Money allows you to get off the
grid to freedom. So money actually is a trap. The
more you get, the more you want. When you get
used to find things, you don't know how to well
your own water. You don't know how to pick chickens
from your own yard just you used to go into
(29:41):
the store. So are you free? If the people who
live like that live to be one hundred, but you
got cancer at fifty, are you free?
Speaker 4 (29:50):
So? Freedom is not having everything you want.
Speaker 9 (29:54):
Freedom to me means giving up all the things you
don't need.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
My recommendation is that if you have a chance to
talk to Freedom Williams, take it. He's friendly, he's fascinating.
He will make you go hmm. Freedom learned his craft
in the eighties so that he could meet people, make
himself useful, and really seize his moment. When it came
around in the nineties, Sudden Impact did something else. They
started with the marketing before they had a record out,
(30:18):
They made a poster. They built the buzz before there
was anything to buzz about, and it worked. It's that
poster They got Michael Bivens to sign them and change
the course of their lives forever. And now it is
in my inbox. So let's talk about that poster. Sudden
Impact had their uniform white shirts and neckties. White guys
(30:39):
had matching sport coats on a sweltering Houston afternoon. Outsiders
for Life were all do rags and soul patches in
the style of the year two thousand. I've seen these
guys and many of their various esthetics, but in all
of them, they were always styled by someone else. They
were inscrutable, unknowable. I never had a sense for who
these guys were until I saw this poster.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
I look at two special.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
All huddled up under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge in nineteen ninety,
all fifteen or sixteen or seventeen years old, and I
finally feel like I know these guys.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
I grew up with these guys.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Todd is all the way to the left, racing stripes
shaved into his temples like vanilla ice, acid washed jeans,
pegged at the ankle, dirty Nike shoes in the sand.
Alan is next to him, wearing a bold polka dot,
something David Silver would wear on a date with Donald
Martin on nine O two one zero. Noel Kine is
next to him, serving blue steel before we even had
(31:34):
a name for it, in a T shirt and shorts.
And then there's Aaron smiling, the brash smile of the
high school jock under what might be a teenage attempt
at a mustache, a baggy guccy T shirt, barefoot, serving
you toes. These are kids. These are kids with big plans.
This is a high school dropout with something to prove.
(31:56):
This is the son of a major in the Air
Force trying to make his own way. This is a
high school baseball star finding a new family with the
kids from the other side of the tracks. And this
is the handsome little brother who's along for the ride.
I know these kids, so do you. Right now, under
some bridge somewhere, a few of them are posing, making
content for their Instagram or filming their video. There will
(32:17):
always be kids misunderstood by their parents, giggle that by
their peers, desperate to make their mark. I see what
Michael Bivens saw in this poster. I see why it's
his mom's favorite. I even see why it got them
signed to a record label. It's timeless, just from that
damn too special poster.
Speaker 6 (32:36):
Just from the poster. The poster got us there. That
point got us to Capitol. I would say, Yeah, we
pointed our way right to it.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
You know what got you there is boldness like you
guys took a huge swim.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Yeah, we just didn't.
Speaker 6 (32:50):
I don't think it was something where we didn't have
anything to lose at that point, Me and Tad felt
just was the.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
Way, this is what we wanted to do.
Speaker 6 (32:57):
And it kept us, I would say, from getting into
childhood mischief because we were so driven on what to do,
you know, and what do we have to do to
get to the next point. And even when a lot
of this stuff happens, like I'm sure you're gonna get
into we still kept.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Pushing like we still hadn't, you know, just tried.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
By now you know how this story unfolds, The boys
go from Motown to Capitol to bivten, then off biften
and onto Stone Creek, and then Stone Creek goes away
and then onto a Leah's label Blackground, and.
Speaker 2 (33:25):
Off of that. What I suspected is that.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
By this time and their story, the guys were pretty
fed up the part of the story I hadn't heard.
Was the night Todd finally vented that frustration. Blackground was
a record label started by a Leah's uncle, Barry Hankerson,
and one night after another endless wait to get an
album released, Todd had a few drinks and gave Barry
a piece of his mind.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
I remember having a conversation with Barry. You remember this, Allen.
I was drunk.
Speaker 7 (33:51):
Well, I I got real drunk one night, man, and
I'm gonna tell you I had a conversation with Barry's
attorney dude flat said, look, this is some bs shit.
Speaker 6 (34:00):
Man.
Speaker 7 (34:01):
What y'all are doing? Man, this is this is you
know what I'm saying, It's it ain't right man, you're
playing god with me, you know.
Speaker 6 (34:07):
What I mean?
Speaker 3 (34:08):
Let me fucking go. If you don't plan on doing something,
let us fucking go. What do you hold on to
us for?
Speaker 7 (34:13):
Obviously, obviously there's something there that you don't want to
let go. You just don't know how to You just
don't know how to handle it. You know what I'm saying.
Were we the best group in the world vocally?
Speaker 3 (34:21):
No, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 7 (34:23):
But there's a lot of other groups I can name,
But I'm not going to you know what I'm saying,
because I don't do that shit.
Speaker 3 (34:27):
Man. But we had we had good music at that time.
Speaker 7 (34:30):
Man.
Speaker 2 (34:30):
Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1 (34:31):
It feels cathartic for me too. This confrontation was a
significant moment in that it got them dropped from Blackground.
Their album once again didn't get released. Outsiders for Life
self released an album in two thousand and six with
the tracks ass Like That and Slipping Slide. It's up
on the streaming services if you want to listen. But
by the time the album was released, the guys were
(34:53):
burned out.
Speaker 7 (34:54):
Then it was time to grow the fuck up. Let's
be real, man, we're getting old.
Speaker 4 (34:58):
Man.
Speaker 7 (34:58):
It's a about growing up man, you know what I'm saying.
Are we going to keep doing this? Or or am
I going to be thirty years old living?
Speaker 4 (35:06):
You know, saying in a tent?
Speaker 3 (35:08):
What am I going to do with my life?
Speaker 4 (35:09):
You know what I mean? What am I?
Speaker 3 (35:10):
What am I going to do now? So we had
a restructure. I wanted kids. I didn't want to run
around chasing a dream, you know what I mean?
Speaker 7 (35:18):
And so you know we did that. We took a break.
I think I took a break I didn't do music
for how long? How like ten years?
Speaker 4 (35:23):
Man? Yeah, it was it was like ten years.
Speaker 7 (35:26):
It was like ten years. I didn't touch music. I
didn't do nothing.
Speaker 6 (35:29):
I would tell you this though, Man, I would think
it's the time frame too. Man, we just we came
out what we were doing there doing now, I would
say time frame wise, if you look at it, we
were just in the wrong time period.
Speaker 4 (35:41):
There was social media.
Speaker 6 (35:43):
We could have pushed so much stuff and done our
own podcasts and done our own you know, follow the
band type things.
Speaker 4 (35:48):
Back then, there wasn't nothing but AOL messenger, you know
what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
We didn't have no internet back then. Man, we didn't
have MP three's back in.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
The timing was just not right. The timing was never right.
But their attitude about it is good. They're not bitter
and there's something that I have to know. It sounds
like I already know the answer to this question. But
are you glad you took that trip out to.
Speaker 4 (36:10):
La Yes, me and him. I would tell you could.
Speaker 6 (36:13):
You can't pay for the experiences that we went through.
You can go to college and people can talk about
their college years. I watched some of the most Hall
of Fame type things in the music business.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
Go. I met Aleah, I've hung out with her. She
told me, I'm want in a million. I got video
of it.
Speaker 6 (36:30):
I got video with boys to men and things that
I probably you can't even experience, being an end of
the road video shoot, the all the video shoots we
went to, walking through these things and living. I would
say it was the closest thing to being famous without
being famous.
Speaker 7 (36:46):
Yeah, man, I think, I think. Man, you know, it's
a journey. We're all on man, even you date.
Speaker 3 (36:52):
You know what I'm saying. We're all on this journey.
Speaker 4 (36:53):
Man.
Speaker 3 (36:54):
You know, you get to you get.
Speaker 7 (36:56):
To a place, you go left, you go right, there,
you go right and find out right it wasn't the
right way.
Speaker 3 (37:00):
You go left again, you know what I mean. So
you know it's all life's journey, man, It's everything's meant
to be.
Speaker 7 (37:07):
You know your story's gonna play out, you know, and
you know life's the song man.
Speaker 3 (37:12):
That's what I say. Life's the song man. Look around you, man.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
So I have found three of the guys from Sudden Impact.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
All that are left are Noel Kine, who I have
emailed a few times and he just hasn't gone back
to me and the elusive quiet Dave Smith, the guy
who they tell me turned his back on the whole thing.
After we get off the zoom call, I decided to
take a swing with Todd and see if maybe he
has any idea how I can get a hold of
Dave Smith. Any emails right back? Yeah, man, I talked
(37:39):
to him last week. Here's his email, and so I
emailed Dave Smith and he gets back in thirty minutes. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:44):
Sure, I'd love to talk. This is so much easier
than I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 1 (37:48):
I also ask Alan whether who Are You is a
dis track and he says yes, but we were in
a pissed off state of mind. We grew a lot
from that lol. As to who they were dissing, I
guess I'll have to get it from Dave Distrack Smith himself,
Michael Bibvens. Though, still nothing, But I want you to
hear something Todd said as the Zoom was wrapping up,
something that is made even more poignant by the fact
(38:09):
that his connection is a little dodgy.
Speaker 3 (38:11):
It's definitely not is definitely not over.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
It makes me think about what Scott Gimpel said in
the first episode of this show.
Speaker 6 (38:18):
I don't like the idea of endings because I don't
like thinking that it's over for anybody.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
This is a show about audacity.
Speaker 1 (38:27):
This is a show about taking big swings, and I'm
beginning to wonder whether these guys might be about to
take another one. We'll find out on the finale of
Waiting for Impact, a Dave Holmes passion project. This has
been an Exactly Right production. Written by me Dave Holmes,
(38:50):
produced by Hannah Kyle Crichton, recorded, mixed and sound designed
by Andrew Eapen. Additional engineering and assembly by Annalise Nelson,
Music by Ben Wise, artwork by Garrett Ross. Executive produced
by Karen Kilgareff, Georgia hard Stark and Danielle Kramer.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
Follow the show on Instagram, Facebook.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
And Twitter at exactly where, and follow me at Dave Holmes.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
For more information, go to exactly Rightmedia dot com.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Binge the show add free on stitch your premium for
a free month. Head to Stitcher Premium dot com, slash
Impact and enter promo code Impact.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You select a
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Monthly plan, listen, subscribe, and leave us a review on
Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Dave Holmes
Popular Podcasts
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.
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
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!