February 3, 2023 • 52 mins
A feel-good alternative to hard-edged gangsta rap, Arrested Development burst out of Atlanta bearing messages of peace, love, and unity. After their critically acclaimed 1992 debut album, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…, won them a Grammy for Best New Artist, they were poised to become the next big thing in hip-hop. But if their success was massive and immediate, it was also fleeting. Their second album flopped and the band broke up in 1995, just as a fresh strain of hip-hop, G-funk, became the prevailing sound of the genre.
In this episode, we examine how Arrested Development’s style and values were a celebrated musical change of pace, but how they quickly fell out of step with the trends that would dominate hip-hop for the rest of the decade. Plus, frontman Speech joins us to discuss their breakout, single, “Tennessee”; the deeply personal real-life events that inspired it; and why the group was more influential than many listeners realize.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Where Were You in ninety two is a production of
I Heart Radio. A special note, this episode contains descriptions
of violence. I think that the aesthetic of hip hop
changed right under our feet as we were transitioning from
album one to album two. Ye welcome to Where Are
(00:26):
You In nine two, a podcast in which I Your
host Jason Lafier, look back at the major hits, one
hit wonders, shocking news stories, and irresistible scandals that shaped
what might be the wildest, most eclectic, most controversial twelve
months of music effort. This week, I Feel Good alternative
(00:46):
to gangster rap. Arrested Development burst out of Atlanta bearing
messages of peace, love and unity. After they were acclaimed
genre bending debut album three Years, five Months in two
as in the Life of topped critics polls, and won
them a Grammy for Best New Artist. They were poised
to become the next big thing in hip hop. But
(01:08):
if their success was enormous and immediate, it was also fleeting.
They had all but disappeared. Three years later as a
new strain of hip hop, g funk became the defining
story of the genre. In this episode, we examine how
Arrested Development sound and Values were a refreshing musical change
of pace, but how they quickly fell out of stuff
(01:31):
with the trends that would dominate hip hop for the
rest of the decade plus frontman speech joins us to
discuss their breakout single Tennessee, the deeply personal real life
events that inspired it, and why the group was more
influential than many listeners realize. It's strange to think of
(01:54):
a time when legit hip hop artist weren't some of
the biggest names in the country. A time before Drake,
Kanye West, Future, Travis Scott, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj,
A time before Eminem, t I Loew, Wayne, Nelly, Ludicrous
and Pitty Cent. A time before Outcast, jay Z Puff,
Daddy Tupac and the Notorious b I G. A time
(02:18):
before Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. All of those artists
have had number one singles on the Billboard Hot one hundred.
We can't really say they crossed over into the mainstream
because when they climbed to the top of the charts,
(02:38):
hip hop was the mainstream. Now hip hop is essentially pop,
but once upon a time, specifically at the beginning of
it was rare for a hip hop act to dominate
Top forty radio and have a gold record. The biggest
hip hop hits in this case, I mean the hip
hop songs were the strongest showings on the Hot one.
(03:00):
Drew did not represent the prevailing sounds of hip hop
at that time. They could never be categorized as gangster
rap like Iced Tea and Ice Cube, or hardcore hip
hop like Public Enemy, or East Coast hip hop like
a tribe called Quest, or rap rock like Beastie Boys,
or jazz rap like De La Soule. Instead, these chart
(03:20):
conquering tracks came with what you could call a quirky
selling point, a gimmick. Let's look at a few of them.
The second biggest single was actually a hip hop song,
Sir Mix a lots spunky Miami bass influenced number one hit,
Baby Got Back was a bouncy oh to Plentiful Booties
(03:43):
that unfolded like one big, fat joke, though, as we
covered in an episode one of the show mixes, messaging
was actually pretty damn sincere. The track was so undeniable
that it topped the Billboard Hot one for five consecutive weeks.
The number three single was also a hip hop song.
(04:03):
At the time, criss Crosses Jump was the fastest selling
single in fifteen years, and it stayed at the top
of the Hot one hundred for eight consecutive weeks. Criss
cross were the dinky, dimple faced duo of Chris mac
Daddy Kelly and Chris Daddy Max Smith, who were only
twelve and thirteen years old when they recorded Jump their Stick.
(04:26):
They wore their clothes cartoonishly baggy and backwards. No irony here.
Also massively popular that year, House of Pains jump Around,
which reached number three. I'm the Hot one hundred and
snaring listeners with its rollicking mix of rap, rock, dance
hall and club music. Folks clearly wanted to jump in
(04:47):
their stick. They were a couple of proud white dudes
who had banded together to put out music and imagery
that celebrated their Irish heritage. No irony here either, and
let's not forget though many of you would like to
Hammer formally mc hammer, he had a couple of hits too.
To Legit to Quit arrived with an insane the expense
of fifteen minute music video featuring cameos from numerous athletes
(05:10):
and the Dallas Cowboys, cheerleaders and a storyline in which
James Brown sends Hammer to go take Michael Jackson's glove.
The uncut version also included appearances from the likes of
Tony Danza and Millie Vanilli. Hammer's other big hit was
Adam's Groove, the theme song to the movie The Adams Family,
and the video for that song, Hammer could be seen
(05:31):
dancing all over the Adams family mansion and backyard cemetery. Sadly,
no irony insight here either, so yeah, you get the point.
Pop charts boasted a wild, goofy, messy all over the
map mix of hip hop, and most hip hop heads
would say I'm using that term hip hop real loosely.
(05:59):
And then there was Arrested Development who came out of
nowhere and suddenly were everywhere. Founded by college Pal's speech
and headliner, the Atlanta Georgia Outfit would have a bigger
year than any other hip hop act. In fact, they
would have a bigger year than virtually any other group period.
(06:20):
The best moments off their massive debut album Three Years,
five Months, and two Days in the Life of Struck
the balance between thoughtful and thrilling. They brought something to
hip hop that was practically unheard of in the genre
at the time, Spirituality Spirituality, and another oddity in hip
hop at that point, hopefulness positivity. Their singles were accessible
(06:41):
and inspired, with seductive hooks and memorable lyrics. They were
instant hits. So then, why have arrested development becomes such
a footnote in hip hop history. The answer, as you
may have guessed, is complicated. It is the result of
too much in fighting, too much fame, too fast, and
perhaps more than anything, a watershed moment at the tail
(07:05):
end of that would change hip hop forever. Speech was
born Todd Thomas and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His parents
were civil rights advocates and very active in the community,
rallying together black owned businesses and supporting the black empowerment movement.
(07:28):
They instilled similar values and their children. Speech recalls them
frequently engaging him and his brother in conversations around social
issues over the breakfast table. His father owned a nightclub
called the Fox Trap, where Speech started djaying at the
age of thirteen, learning from the locals who played there.
In four he formed his first rap group, Attack, the
(07:48):
first rap group out of Milwaukee. As DJ Peach. He'd
spend records in rhyme. Attack gained a local following and
were active for two years, but Speech left Milwaukee for
Atlanta in seven, partly to avoid getting mixed up in
the gang violence plagging his city. There, he'd studied at
the Art Institute of Atlanta. His first week at the institute,
(08:09):
he put up a flyer in the cafeteria saying he
was a rapper searching for a DJ. He spotted another
student looking at it and they start up a conversation.
That student was Timothy Barnwell, but he would adopt the
stage name Headliner. They became fast friends and began making
music after class and speeches apartment and getting gigs around
the city. They changed their name and style a couple
(08:29):
of times, first calling themselves d l R Disciples of
the Lyrical Rebellion and opting for a gangst light vibe,
then going by Secret Society and emulating Public Enemy. They
finally landed on the Moniker Arrested development. While they were
fans of gangster rap, Speech and Headliner wanted to take
their music in a different direction. A Speech said in
(08:50):
a two thousand twenty interview with lad TV quote, I
felt like just the gangster rap thing wasn't showing who
we really were. So I felt like a us to
developments music was a great chance to put more flesh
on the bones of who black people are, What are issues?
Are things that were concerned about. They thought black culture
had stalled, hence the group's name arrested Development, and they
(09:14):
wanted to push the conversation forward. They specifically wanted to
underscore what it was like to be black in the South.
A Speech told Select magazine when the band started to
take off, quote, there's more black people in the South
(09:36):
than in the North, and this is the place where
black people first arrived in America. I think the South
is now the place of preference for black people. There's
a very African influence here. Headliner, who had grown up
in Savannah, considered the political hip hop coming out of
New York to be an offshoot of activist Malcolm X's
Black militancy. Well. He and Speech were inspired by the
(09:56):
work of Southern civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Their core tenants were peace, community unity. They aimed to
infuse their music with an afrocentricity that was uncommon in
rapid time, and their minds their authenticity, spirituality, and originality
would distinguish them from other acts in hip hop, a
genre that was edging closer to the mainstream. Before signing
(10:19):
their record deal, Arrested Development was a rotating collective of
around twenty members. At live shows, Speech and Headliner would
invite their creative peers on stage, incorporating cowbell players, African
dance and artists painting into their performances. When they signed
the record deal, they had to scale back and settled
on six chief members, Speech, Headliner, Babba o j air Lee,
(10:43):
Terrie mosho Ishi, and Razadan, who started as a dancer
before becoming the group's drummer and graphic artist. He designed
his official logo when he wasn't working as a barber
at his day job. Headliner was the cruise create digger,
rummaging through old records and selecting beats and vocals for
(11:04):
Arrested Development to sample. Some twenty samples would eventually be
cleared for their first album, snippets of songs from the
likes of Minni Ripperton, Quincy Jones, Rick James, John Lee
Hooker and Sly in the family. Stone Speech would build
on them, crafting compositions diffused funk, soul, folk, jazz and
the blues. Some journalists called their style alternative rap, but
(11:27):
Speech was never a fan of the term, finding it reductive.
Through Headliner's girlfriend, Speech and Headliner connected with Michael Malden,
father of rapper producer Jermaine dupri who incidentally formed Criss Cross.
Malton became a rusted developments manager, but finding them a
record deal proved challenging. They were turned down left and
right because labels didn't know what to do with them.
(11:48):
Speech had promised his mother that if he wasn't able
to snag a record deal, he'd moved back to Milwaukee
and returned to college. He'd done just that when the
label Chrysalis decided to sign them, as he tells it,
it had seen how popular progressive rappers De Las Soul
had become after the release of their critically lauded debut
album Three Ft High and Rising, and wanted to capitalize
(12:09):
on its success, says Speech. At that point, we were
first just offering a single deal. We had a whole
album like pretty much prepared, but the single deal was
Mr Wendell Side A, and back then we had A
and B side Side B was natural. Mr Wendell offered
a portrait of its titular character, a homeless man. It
(12:33):
was inspired by speeches own interaction with men living on
the streets of Atlanta near the studio where he and
Headline are recorded music. The track, which sampled drums from
Sly and the Family Stones sing a simple Song, was
bubbly and buoyant with major pop crossover potential, and it
captured the arrested Development ethos perfectly. It was social consciousness
(12:53):
and a pretty package, a slice of colorful, thought provoking
storytelling anchored by an infectious hoe tapping groove. Mr. Wendell
wasn't just a bum. The song's narrator realizes he has
wisdom to share that because he's unmarred by materialism, he
may actually be more in layened than those who choose
to discount him. But life had other plans. Mr. Wendell
(13:16):
would not be released as a Rusted Developments first single.
That honor would instead go to Tennessee, a late addition
to the repertoire that while the label catapulted the group's
career and became their signature song, Tennessee was literally the
last song we recorded for the album. They ended up
signing our album deal. I think because we had recorded
(13:38):
and shot a video for Tennessee, and I think they
were sold on us. Tennessee stemmed from personal tragedy, it
would become a bomb for speeches grief. My grandmother, who
I spent all my summers with in Tennessee, she passed
away of a heart attack unexpectedly, and so we were
all devastated. I was extremely devastated because she spent I
(13:58):
spent a ton of time with this grandmother, and she
really was probably the biggest force outside of my mom
and dad to shape who I am as a person.
Speech and his family traveled to Tennessee for her service. There,
he reunited with his brother, who had also gone off
to college. He was at the funeral, and we all
left there with a sense of you know, renewal and
(14:20):
just striving to do our lives, you know better, in
her name. And that same week, my brother died of
asthma tack. He was twenty nine, and it just wrecked
my life. Everything was, everything was tentative, there was no
it was It was very hard for me to collect hope.
Tennessee had been the last place Speech had seen his
(14:42):
grandmother before she passed, and now it was the last
place he had seen his brother. To mitigate the pain,
he headed to the studio and began to write the track.
Tennessee is speeches prayer to a greater power, but it
is also the sound of him processing the deaths of
his loved ones and the meaning of his life, his race,
his ancestry, his community. Its course is simple yet profound,
(15:05):
hookey yet heartbreaking. Take me to another place, take me
to another land, Make me forget all that hurts me.
Let me understand your plan well, the song concludes without resolution.
You can hear the catharsis that brought speech. But I
told the label I really insisted on them releasing this record.
I told him what happened with my family, and they
(15:27):
loved it. They really was in a mood where if
they didn't let me release this record first, I didn't
want to release anything. To me, nothing else mattered. Releasing
this single would feel like a form of closure for speech.
But he also believed in the music itself. He knew
Tennessee was special. From an ancestral standpoint. It was a
gift from my grandmother and my brother to me, But
(15:49):
to me it was a gift to hip hop. It
was a gift to you know, the world of music too.
I feel because it was doing some unique things and
it was bringing some unique things to the table. The
label of greed giving arrested development nineteen dollars to make
a video. Compare that to Guns and Roses one point
five million dollar budget for the November Rain video. They
(16:09):
filmed it not in Tennessee, but in rural Georgia at
an old, dilapidated house. Speech discovered that reminded him of
his grandmother's house, featuring the band's friends and locals who
asked that they could be part of it. It included
shots of slave shackles they actually were in the house,
a sad remnant of its dark past. Other shots included
artwork depicting black men being lynched. It's easy to see
(16:32):
why the black and white video convinced the band's label
to give them a full album deal. It is, by
turns celebratory as a group spins records and dances on
the house's porch and around the property, and powerful with
its nods to the South's complex, haunting history. Speech for
calls being around twenty years old and going to a
record store in Atlanta soon after Tennessee was released as
(16:53):
a single to see how it was selling. After the
guy there informed him that the only people buying it
were forty plus, he thought a d were doomed, but
then MTV selected the video for buzz Bin, a segment
in which VJs gave cool up and coming artists their
stamp of approval, leaving the network to put their latest
video on heavy rotation. Suddenly Tennessee blew up. The track
(17:22):
topped billboards Hot R and B hip Hop Songs Chart
and Hot Rap Songs Chart, and pete at number six
on the Hot one hundred, eventually going gold. It was
also a hit among critics. A review in the Los
Angeles Times read quote, some of pop's best moments come
from groups that seemed to arrive from nowhere with a
confidence and mature vision, and that's the case here. Another
(17:44):
claim the song quote may go down in the history
books as the first major sad rap hit. Not bitter,
not raging or recriminatory, just flat out soul and heaven
searching the heart. Sick Tennessee would also be chosen is
one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fames songs
that shaped rock and roll its place in the nineties.
(18:10):
Pop pantheon is well deserved. Tennessee has all the ingredients
of a sonic game changer. Slick record scratching, a juicy,
shuffling beat lifted from James Brown's Funky Drummer, a go
to sample at the time, a sticky sing along chorus, speeches,
honeyed melodic flow, a rarity in hip hop which often
favored harder, more aggressive rhyming, rafter shaking, gospel esque belting
(18:34):
from guest vocalist Dion Ferris, vivid lyrics that rustle with
the cruelties of life and death, the past and the present,
and illuminate the beauty and calamity of what it means
to be black in the South. I mean these lines alone.
Then out of nowhere, you tell me to break out
of the country and into more country, past Dyersburg, into Ripley,
(18:56):
where the ghost of childhood haunts me. Walk the roads
my four fathers walked, climbed the trees my forefathers hung
From The beloved Truck also contains a sterling sample of
Prince single Alphabet Street one word Tennessee, heard most prominently
at the beginning of the song, and then buried in
(19:16):
the mix a little later. But the Purple One took notice.
At that time it was a wild wild West sample.
Why so we didn't really understand exactly the laws. When
the record got to like number six, I think on
the pop charts, and it went down to seven, we
got a call from Prince's office. And because it was
just one word, I mean, it wasn't even a melody,
it wasn't just the word Tennessee and so um, we
(19:42):
got a call and he said he wanted a hundred
thousand dollars for the sample. And at that time, as
a twenty three year old guy, first album ever, the
very fact that he asked for a hundred thousand was
just mind blowing to you. Now looking back, Speech is
grateful that was all Prince wanted. He could have took
it off the shelves. He could have, you know, like
(20:02):
a cease and desist order, and he could have asked
for half the song rights are publishing, you know what.
You could do pretty much anything because the leverage was
very much on his side. Don't worry, there was no
bad blood. In fact, Speech eventually even met Prince when
he was invited to one of his birthday bashes. Arrested
Development released their debut album, Three Years, five months, and
(20:22):
two Days in the Life Of in March, in conjunction
with Tennessee. The title referred to how long it took
them to get a record contract the way it was
worth it. The record got raves upon its release. Entertainment
Weekly said the group was quote perhaps raps most self
reflective act. The Chicago Tribune called them quote a major
new voice in hip hop and praise their lack of
(20:44):
quote macho boasting and gangster posing. At the end of
that year, the Village Voices Pass and Drop Critics poll
declared it the best album of rowing Stone crowned arrested
Development Band of the Year after one of the group's shows,
director Spike Lee came backstage to introduce himself. They would
go on to contribute a song Revolution to the soundtrack
(21:06):
of his Malcolm X. Bile pick Malcolm X a bit
ironic given that they more closely associated themselves as Martin
Luther King. Three Years, five months, and two Days in
the Life Of would yield two more top ten hits.
The reggae tinge feel Good Cut People every Day boasted
a superb interpolation of slying the family Stones Everyday People
and chronicled a street confrontation between a man and a
(21:29):
rowdy gang who taunt him and grope his girlfriend. The
Metamorphosis mix of it peaked number eight on the Hot
one hundred and number two in the UK. Speech wrote
it to illustrate the contrast between his perception of black
culture and pride and that of most black men in
his neighborhood back home, As he explained to song facts,
they understood they were black, but for them, black was
(21:50):
Jerry Curls. It was pimping. I had come to understand
the black culture had a lot more to do with Africa,
and it was different hairstyles we could express ourselves with,
like dreadlocks and braids. So I would dress like that
and a lot of the people around the Milwaukee would
sort of mock it. And so the song was really
just talking about this tension between one concept of culture
and another concept of culture. At the end of a
(22:12):
d would release its third single, Mr. Wendell, which, like Tennessee,
would peak at number six on the Hub a hundred.
Like Tennessee, both People every Day and Mr. Wendell were
certified Gold. The band would donate half the proceeds in Mr.
Wendell to the National Coalition for the Homeless in the
United States. At the nine Grammys, Arrested Development would take
(22:33):
home the coveted award for Best New Artist, becoming the
first hip hop act to earn the prize. Tennessee would
win for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.
At the m As, Tennessee would snag Best Rap Video
and Award. The group would win again in nineteen three
for People Every Day. That same year, MTV would release Unplugged,
(22:56):
an album of their live performance at New York's ed
Sullivan Theater, making a d the first rap act to
get an unplugged record. They were critical Darling's Recording Academy Darlings,
MTV darlings, and fan darlings. Arrested Development ticked all the boxes.
They could not have had a more auspicious start to
their career, or some would say, a more abrupt ending.
(23:24):
The sophomore album, Singalamadouni sold poorly, not even cracking the
top fifty. None of its singles reached the top forty.
Arrested Development had split up. Up. Next after the break,
(23:47):
we explore what led to the groups unraveling, including a
lawsuit and why are rusted development are often overlooked or
even dismissed in the annals of hip hop. Was a
(24:10):
banner year for Arrested Development. Their debut album, Three Years,
five Months, and two Days in the Life of would
go four times platinum and yield three hit singles, all
of which were certified gold. Rolling Stone named them Band
of the Year, and on the strength of their widely
popular releases, they would win a nine Grammy for Best
(24:32):
New Artist. They would tour the globe, introducing some international
audiences to hip hop, but their mainstream success was short lived.
Their follow up album, Singalama Duney flopped. None of its
singles cracked the top forty. In fact, the band hasn't
had a top forty single since Mr Wendell hit number six,
(24:52):
and rarely doesn't act that became so popular and beloved
fizzle so quickly, so what happened well for one eighties
second album just didn't offer the radio friendly bangers its
predecessor did. Speech said it was too rushed. The group
was still touring and promoting the first LP while he
(25:14):
was scrambling to put together there next. He was wearing
a lot of hats, so like similar to kids now
who are in their little home studios making beats. I
was that guy. But I was also the rhymer and
so I was the lead vocalist. I was a DJ
to some extent, and I made the beat, so you know,
like I sometimes envied people like n w A, who
(25:35):
you know, Dr Trey was sort of the producer, and
then you know, Ice C was mainly the main lyricist,
and then there was other members that did lyrics or
or a public enemy who had you know, Chuck D
and Flav and all that, but he had the Bomb
Squad who was the producers, and it was a group
of guys. You know, having the follow up and having
it just on these shoulders felt unbearable, and that I
(25:58):
felt really really daunted. You know. Another major reason the
group faded from the spotlight and the roughly two years
between Arrusted Developments first and second albums, hip hop culture
completely shifted. On December and w A member Dr Dre
released his debut solo album, The Chronic, featuring the lies
(26:20):
vocals of Snoop Doggie Dog and turned the genre upside down.
Sample and break beat, heavy party rap and political rap
gave way to g funk, a new strain of hip
hop that folded in smooth parliament funkadelic snippets, sparingly pairing
them with airy, soulful vocals and instrumentation. The Chronic was
(26:41):
critically held and went multi platinum. Today, it is regarded
as one of the most important albums of the nineties
and one of the most important hip hop albums of
all time. Andy Herman is a Los Angeles based music journalist,
(27:03):
podcast producer, and longtime fan of Arrested Development's first album,
but he considers the Chronics impact on the band and
on rap music as a whole undeniable. I think hip
hop just underwent this massive see change with the arrival
of Dr Dre as a solo artist, with the arrival
of Snoop Dogg with You Know. Gangster rap was not
(27:27):
a new thing in three but it it sort of
became the dominant sound in hip hop after that. Arrested
Development sound felt fresh when they descended on the scene
as socially conscious, less antagonistic hip hop acts were making waves,
But that sound an aesthetic swiftly fell out of fashion
(27:48):
after The Chronic introduced a novel take on gangster rap
and faunted tougher flash year more Materialistic Imagery, three years,
five months, and two days days had passed. It mean,
is as great as that album is, it was a
little bit of a fluke and a little bit of
just just arriving at the right moment. I think just
the culture, for whatever reason, just kind of was ready.
(28:12):
You know. I think bands like pm Don and day
Las Soul and Tribe called Quest to kind of prime
the pump for this more kind of left field style
of hip hop, and Tennessee was such a powerful single
that it just it kind of just kicked open the
door for this new group to just have some commercial
success with that sound and that vibe. But I think
(28:33):
in a weird way after that, you know, like mainstream
rap went in this much more kind of hard direction
and conscious rap when in this much more kind of
indie minded, almost sort of commercially averse direction. And then
(28:53):
where does that leave a group like arrested Development Speech
could recognize that the tides returning, but lacking time and resources,
all while still trying to maintain the ethos he and
the band weren't able to move with them. So we
got you know, we tried to do our best to
try to ride that fence of being who we are,
(29:14):
but still making sure we can sort of grab hold
to this new movement of things. I think it was
too little, too late as far as trying to do that.
Navigating hip hop's new metamorphosis was challenging enough, but arrested development.
We're also struggling as a group. We were internally going
through a lot, you know, because of the success of
the group and the moneys that were being made, and
(29:36):
especially by me being the producer and writer, and those
that know about the music industry. You know, writers and
producers make certain moneys that the artists that didn't write
are produced don't make. So I'm making more money than
other people in the group, and they we don't know
how this all works, but they know that there's more money,
and there's jealousy and anger, and there's a lot going on.
(29:58):
At that time, Headliner arrested to Elepment's turntablist and co
founder was especially frustrated he didn't think he was getting
enough credit for his contributions. Speech has said Headliner demanded
more ownership of the band and refused to tour unless
profits were divided between them, but Headliner has claimed they
were partners from the beginning, and that speech threatened to
(30:19):
end the group if he couldn't increase his ownership, as
Headliner told the Atlanta publication Creative Loafing in two thousand six, quote,
the threat was everybody was going to be put out
of the band, and there was going to be no
more original members. So I sacrificed myself to give everyone
a shot, to which speech responded quote, I wouldn't consider
him a co founder. Headliner was instrumental to a D
(30:42):
because he was the first person that agreed to be
in the band, and he believed in my vision. Headliner
sued speech. They settled on a sixty split. The tension
created a rift in the group. Money became a huge issue.
You it's members were suddenly looking for their piece of
the pie and grew distrustful of one another, their sense
(31:05):
of community, their aversion to materialism and greed a D.
S Key principles began to deteriorate. Everyone in the group
had their own sort of clique of business people and
a lot of times family members that were their managers.
Now and you know, don't talk to this group member,
talk to the manager first. And you know, and everyone's
trying to strike deals and everyone's trying to figure out
(31:27):
ways to make more money, but in ways that had
little to do with the creativity and the actual point
of the music. One night backstage the Fox Theater in Atlanta,
contributing vocalist Dion Ferris lost it and reportedly through a
charit speech, she quit right before they were such a
perform she later scored big soul of it. I know
(31:48):
in headliner was ready to move on to We did
a show in Japan and or a number of shows
in Japan. Great run, but remember a headline is saying
at that run that he's like, this is my last
He was telling a fan actually was like this is
my last show. And he didn't tell me at the time,
but we weren't on best terms at that time, so
(32:11):
I overheard it and I was like, oh okay. That
would mark the end of the iteration of Arrested Development.
Speech would pursue a solo career and achieved great success
in Japan. When the group returned in two thousand, Speech
was leading it, but the lineup had changed. Original member
Baba O j eighties elder and Spiritual Guru would die
(32:32):
in two thousand eighteen. Arrested Developments legacy is complicated. For
two years in the early nineties, they were everywhere, but
you won't find many modern hip hop critics citing them
is highly influential in the genre. You won't find them
on all the best hip Hop albums or Best of
(32:52):
the nineties list, even though they came out of Atlanta
and racked up the accolades and units in three As
I say this, they don't even have a mention on
the Southern hip Hop Wikipedia page. Some have dismissed them
as super earnest, corny hippies or hip hop for suburban
white kids. I would agree that not all of their spiritual,
(33:14):
naturie preachy stuff holds up today. It can sometimes feel
a bit suffocating, simplistic, and idealistic. I would also agree
that their music took an anti gangster and for some
therefore an anti hip hop stance. Just look at the
song people every Day. I would also argue that that
was part of their appeal for suburban white kids. Their
music certainly appealed to this suburban white kid who growing
(33:37):
up found a lot of hip hop too aggressive. Eighties,
three years, five months, and two days in the Life
of was one of the first hip hop albums I owned.
I'd fall from many more as I got older, but
it was a gateway. Andy Herman had a similar experience
with the album. He wasn't initially a hip hop fan,
but in his teens, Adie hooked him. I think that's
(34:00):
that was maybe kind of both their strength and their
weakness in a way, I think was that they played
to an audience outside of uh that that sort of
core hip hop audience. And you know, maybe that's why
they haven't gotten their due in hip hop history, because
(34:21):
their appeal was so often outside of the hip hop
mainstream that I think like a lot of hip hop
heads maybe sort of look at them with a little
bit of suspicion. But I think they deserve a lot
of credit for opening the genre up to a lot
of people who who wouldn't have found an entry point otherwise.
If the rest of development are sometimes left out of
the conversation surrounding Southern hip hop, Speech asserts that the
(34:44):
band did break ground. In his mind, their success served
as a template and opened doors for future Southern hip
hop acts. What out of rest of development? In my opinion,
there's no outcast, there's no goody mob, there's no in
my opinion, Eric Abadou, there's no roots. I'm not suggesting
that they got their ideas from us. I think they
got their road paved by what we paved earlier. So
(35:09):
it gave them an opportunity to have a voice. And
I don't I remember literally um my label playing me
the D'Angelo Brown Sugar album before it came out, wondering
if they should sign it, you know. I remember the
label showing me the Roots stuff, wondered if they should
sign it. Um you know, because with us being as
(35:32):
successful as we were and yet rooted as we were,
these groups, they felt that there was really money to
be made in that in that arena. Up next, after
(35:54):
the break Arrested Development co founder and from that speech,
joins us to talk more about their mass of early
nineties success, the reasons for their undoing, and why he
thinks the group deserves a spot in the hip hop
history books. Welcome back to Where Were You in ninety two.
(36:26):
We've been discussing Arrested Developments, rapid rise, and swift unraveling
in the years that followed. Now it's time to hear
from the group's co founder and frontman, songwriter, rapper, and
producer Todd Thomas a k speech, so speech, I'm just
wondering where you were physically and mentally in N two
(36:49):
was a phenomenal vieer in many ways. I mean, I
was a hopeful artist, poor broke, trying to um make history,
you know, trying to breakthrough in the hip hop scene,
which at that time, the South wasn't really represented, so
(37:10):
it was East and West coast, and um, ghetto Boys
had a lot of success Luke way down in Miami
with more of a coastal city as opposed to what
I'm considering South right now. So um they had success,
and so um the South really hadn't made the name
just yet, and so I was really hoping to break through.
(37:35):
And um, this is pre LaFace, which was a very
big influence in Atlanta, and so I was connected with
as many people as possible. We got a record deal.
Um it was with a record label that took a
chance on us, really because Chrysalis at the time, which
is the label we signed with, they they didn't have
(37:56):
any hip hop artists, um per se, especially any coming
out of the South. So um they did have Gang
Star on a subsidiary label of theirs, and that they
were one of my favorites, so um yeah, I was
trying to break through and hoping for the best and
striving to make our presence undeniable in the music scene
(38:19):
there was there really just wasn't a Southern hip hop
wasn't really the thing at that point, and very much
East coast, West coast. What do you think you and
the rest of the rest of the band brought to
the table that intrigues chrysalists to sign you. I think
what we brought to the table is a lot. I
think we brought um melodic, melodic rhyming to the table
(38:44):
of hip hop. I think we brought a soulful energy
and like soulful um solo vocals to hip hop music.
And we brought another level of spirituality to the lyrics
of hip pop. We brought um I think a wider
scope of afrocentric city to hip hop. I think we
(39:07):
brought UH men and women being in the same group
UH doing hip hop music, which was very rare to
my knowledge. Literally, the only other rap group that ever
did it prior to us was Funky four plus one,
which had done it back in the early eighties late seventies,
and we were a live band, which the only hip
(39:27):
hop act that I knew that did that was stet
Roots weren't out yet. Statsisnic was the first to do it.
We were second. We had an elder in the group,
So we brought this whole sort of communal community energy
to to hip hop where it wasn't this generation gap anymore.
And um, so I think, among other things, that's what
(39:49):
we brought. Now, that's not why Chrysalis signed us, and
that's why I separated the answer. Chrysalis just wanted to
capitalize on the popularity of what was happening with day Soul.
Um They're three ft High and Rising album was really
a pop success, and it had a lot of crossover
appeal with songs like me and Myself and I but
also you know, I know, and and and um, you
(40:12):
know other stuff. So basically, I think they wanted to
try to get on that bandwagon in a sense. But
we had our own energy and um, while we were
definitely influenced by Native tongues and by Jungle Brothers and
day Lin Tribe, we had our own thing that we
(40:32):
brought to the table as well. Three years, five months
and two days in the Life of was a massive success.
How did you react to that? Here you were thinking
you weren't you know, you waited three years to get
this contract and then you're gonna go with another single
and suddenly you're one of the biggest bands in the world.
(40:55):
It was unbelievable and it was surreal. I mean, you
gotta put yourself in my head at the time. This
is our first record, it's our first time dealing with
a record label, it's our first time making money, it's
our first time touring the nation, and I mean I
loved it, but it was very fast paced. Talk about
(41:15):
learning a lot at a fast pace. I mean it
was just learning everything from how does this industry work?
And you know, still learning and I'm thirty years in
and learning how to tour and you know, how to
get along with a band, how to keep the band together,
how to you know, navigate interviews. I mean, there's so
many things that you're learning. Offered the first time you
followed the record. When you think Galamdooney, um and ninety four,
(41:37):
a lot of high expectations and high hopes and um.
And you know, it didn't it didn't sell as well
and it didn't really yield um. You know, many hits.
Why do you think that the follow up didn't sell
as well? I have a few thoughts. I mean, first
of all, I don't think we should have released it
when we did. We released it too earlier. I mean
(41:58):
we released it about a year after, you know, well,
being our first one was in ninety two, and then
we released but we were on tour like super heavy
and doing a lot of promo for that year, so
you know, there wasn't a lot of time to create it.
That's number one. Number two, I think the industry, it's
sort of hip hop in particular, the culture changed. You know,
(42:21):
hip hop at that time was transitioning into a Wu
Tang era, a bad boy era soon after a nas era,
and it was more gritty back to New York, Tim's
on the ground, you know, a little bit of a
hustle thing going on in the streets. That that was
the the energy that was being brought out in the
New York scene. And you know, I think that it
(42:43):
just the the aesthetic of hip hop changed right under
our sort of under our feet as we were transitioning
from album one to album two. Um so, and then
I also think, to be honest, consciousness in hip hop
in general started to become marginalized from the industry. The
industry was pushing back groups like Public Enemy and wasn't
(43:05):
really promoting their music as well. Arrested Development, Uh, Brand Nubians,
X Clan Paris, I mean, all of these acts were
sort of being relegated to the side, and what was
sort of taking its place was this more mogul oriented
business oriented. If you remember the imagery back then, either
(43:26):
you were on the streets with the Thames, or you
were in a private jet or a yacht on the
on the ocean, and you had the bikini women and
everyone's you know, a mogul and an enterprising business person
type of thing. And so there was just a total
shift of you know, emphasis of what hip hop was
sort of doing at the time and not just seemed
(43:48):
so ampathetical to what I lost the development was doing.
It was all about, I mean, the materialism and capitalism
was that's just the antithesis of what used to literally
right one with nature, spirituality, community, family, friendship, close ties,
(44:09):
the pure. Yeah, you have to really think about the
core value, like the ethos of arrested development, and that
was being put in question suddenly was Yeah, but the
fame and the money and and and you know, we
we touched on this earlier. You know, like I said,
there's there's you know, bands come about in different ways.
(44:31):
You know, not every band comes about this same way.
So for us, I'm sort of the mad scientist guy
in the room right in music. The rest of the
group members were conceptual more so than they were like
a band member. So when we came to live shows,
they were way more involved because you know, like Robs,
(44:52):
one of our members, played drums, Well the drums weren't
on the record, they weren't recorded on the record at all,
but in live shows he was playing them, and then
you know, so on and so forth. So that kind
of thing made the group you know, fascinating conceptually, but
you know, for the real like part of it, who's
(45:13):
making the songs, it's just a lot of times just me.
So it was it was really tough to be able
to navigate that that whole reality now that we're huge,
because yeah, it does reflect that. Oh wow, well Rose
who plays drums, who actually got in a band about
a month before we got a deal, wasn't on any
of the records per se. But of course he wants
(45:36):
to make a lot of money. You know, this is
his chance, this is his shot, but there's no avenues
for him to really make that money because he didn't
write the song and didn't produce it. He wasn't on
the record. So it's a tough thing to sort of
navigate because like, well, how do we get everybody happy
and yet keep moving on with what the successful formula
(45:57):
was in the first place, that got us here in
the first place that was That was sort of the
thing I was constantly trying to balance, like how do
we do that? You know? So I think you you reunited?
And so five years later sent you right in two thousand,
did you feel less pressure at that point? Did you
feel even more pressure? Because the eight years had passed
(46:18):
and in the landscape of change. So by the time
two thousand came, I didn't We didn't even release that
album the Arrest of Development new record um in the
United States at all. We didn't even release it in
the United States. We only focused on Japan. So in
that sense, it was great. Japan was totally in lockstep
with us the whole time, so when Arrest of Development stopped,
(46:39):
they were super on Arrest of development. Single Ama duty
did very well in Japan, so that was great. Then
I did a solo album in ninety six. They loved that.
It went to number one for seven weeks. I did
another solo album, they love that. Then I did uh
solo album in two thousand called Spiritual People. It was
my biggest selling solo album to date. So when we
(47:02):
dropped the Arrested Development album, it was anticipated heavily in
that marketplace, and so we toured really heavy on that record.
It was great for the group members because they didn't
have that solo career sort of run that I just had.
They were just coming back into the fold. But it
felt really big, and the press was all around us,
and the fans were extremely excited, so it felt really
(47:23):
good as long as we weren't in the States. As
long as we were, it was like everybody was on us.
And Japan is a big place, a lot of great
music fans, so it felt very It felt very good,
you know, it felt really good. So that's how we
felt when we got back into it in two thousands,
and it's it's what allowed us to sustain, like even
the new record for the f and Love and and
(47:43):
Don't Fight Your Demons, But prior to that. It allows us.
It allowed us to sustain our integrity or what we
consider integrity, and allowed us to to sustain the sound
that we liked, the aesthetic that we like, and it
makes a really fun story for people that come to
our shows. Now they're getting to hear of this catalog
that they probably haven't heard, especially if they're in the States,
(48:04):
they haven't heard a lot of it. But it feels
like it feels like they never left. In some ways,
you take Japan out of the situation, we probably in
every way just would have not been in existence. Thank
you Japan. Yeah, thank you Japan, Japan, because we're happy,
you're happy to still have you around. I think Tennessee
(48:35):
was probably the first hip hop record that I was
exposed to in my limited knowledge of it at the time,
where there was like something deeper being talked about, Like
I can't think of any other like top ten hit
singles that are you know, literally like a guy like
(48:55):
you know, addressing God and sort of you know, questioning
his relationship to God and his faith. He sort of
explores the past in that song in kind of a
way that sort of mixes like nostalgia and trauma I
would say in a way that I think is really powerful.
(49:21):
The year is the latest incarnation of Arrusted Development is thriving.
They released an album for the fin Love and have
been performing it. The response has been great. Fans of
the band's old school stuff are really loving their new material.
Young new school audiences love discovering what was happening in
(49:43):
the nineties. It's good vibes, but there is pain in Tennessee.
Tyree Nichols, a twenty nine year old black man who
lived in Memphis, sustained severe injuries after police beat him
after a traffic stop. Three days after the incident, he died.
Video footage released in late January shows the police kicking, punching,
(50:05):
and pepper sprang him as he screamed. The five officers
charged with nichols murder are also black. The story is complicated, maddening,
and heartbreaking. How can such senseless violence exists in this world?
What has caused it? How does Nichols family, the Memphis community,
the country move forward after such tragedy. My mind does
(50:28):
what it often does when it's trying to process something
so big, so sad and inconceivable. It turns to music.
I think of a rusted Developments. Thirty year old Tennessee,
a song about processing the big, sad and inconceivable. It
does not offer answers, but it offers empathy, some sort
of solace and connection, a step toward healing. I think
(50:50):
of its songwriter Speech and wonder where his mind is.
I learned that is the video of Nichols beating is released.
Speech has taken to Twitter to share his thoughts. He
has written, Tyree Nichols, is any one of us if
the system doesn't fundamentally change, My heart goes out to
his fami and loved ones. His next tweet comes a
little less than an hour later. It is the chorus
(51:12):
of Tennessee. What do you think the legacy of arrested
development has been? Yeah? I don't. I don't know for sure.
I mean, obviously that's for the people to decide. I
would like it to be that. You know, it's about revolution,
about you know, really striving to uplift you know, all
(51:35):
of us and take us all to you know, another place.
(52:25):
Where Were You in ninety two was a production of
I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Noel Brown and
Jordan run Todd. The show was researched written and hosted
by me Jason Lafier, with editing and sound design by
Michael Alder June. If you like what you heard, please
subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app,
(52:47):
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Where Were You in ninety two is a production of
I Heart Radio. A special note, this episode contains descriptions
of violence. I think that the aesthetic of hip hop
changed right under our feet as we were transitioning from
album one to album two. Ye welcome to Where Are
(00:26):
You In nine two, a podcast in which I Your
host Jason Lafier, look back at the major hits, one
hit wonders, shocking news stories, and irresistible scandals that shaped
what might be the wildest, most eclectic, most controversial twelve
months of music effort. This week, I Feel Good alternative
(00:46):
to gangster rap. Arrested Development burst out of Atlanta bearing
messages of peace, love and unity. After they were acclaimed
genre bending debut album three Years, five Months in two
as in the Life of topped critics polls, and won
them a Grammy for Best New Artist. They were poised
to become the next big thing in hip hop. But
(01:08):
if their success was enormous and immediate, it was also fleeting.
They had all but disappeared. Three years later as a
new strain of hip hop, g funk became the defining
story of the genre. In this episode, we examine how
Arrested Development sound and Values were a refreshing musical change
of pace, but how they quickly fell out of stuff
(01:31):
with the trends that would dominate hip hop for the
rest of the decade plus frontman speech joins us to
discuss their breakout single Tennessee, the deeply personal real life
events that inspired it, and why the group was more
influential than many listeners realize. It's strange to think of
(01:54):
a time when legit hip hop artist weren't some of
the biggest names in the country. A time before Drake,
Kanye West, Future, Travis Scott, Cardi B and Nicki Minaj,
A time before Eminem, t I Loew, Wayne, Nelly, Ludicrous
and Pitty Cent. A time before Outcast, jay Z Puff,
Daddy Tupac and the Notorious b I G. A time
(02:18):
before Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. All of those artists
have had number one singles on the Billboard Hot one hundred.
We can't really say they crossed over into the mainstream
because when they climbed to the top of the charts,
(02:38):
hip hop was the mainstream. Now hip hop is essentially pop,
but once upon a time, specifically at the beginning of
it was rare for a hip hop act to dominate
Top forty radio and have a gold record. The biggest
hip hop hits in this case, I mean the hip
hop songs were the strongest showings on the Hot one.
(03:00):
Drew did not represent the prevailing sounds of hip hop
at that time. They could never be categorized as gangster
rap like Iced Tea and Ice Cube, or hardcore hip
hop like Public Enemy, or East Coast hip hop like
a tribe called Quest, or rap rock like Beastie Boys,
or jazz rap like De La Soule. Instead, these chart
(03:20):
conquering tracks came with what you could call a quirky
selling point, a gimmick. Let's look at a few of them.
The second biggest single was actually a hip hop song,
Sir Mix a lots spunky Miami bass influenced number one hit,
Baby Got Back was a bouncy oh to Plentiful Booties
(03:43):
that unfolded like one big, fat joke, though, as we
covered in an episode one of the show mixes, messaging
was actually pretty damn sincere. The track was so undeniable
that it topped the Billboard Hot one for five consecutive weeks.
The number three single was also a hip hop song.
(04:03):
At the time, criss Crosses Jump was the fastest selling
single in fifteen years, and it stayed at the top
of the Hot one hundred for eight consecutive weeks. Criss
cross were the dinky, dimple faced duo of Chris mac
Daddy Kelly and Chris Daddy Max Smith, who were only
twelve and thirteen years old when they recorded Jump their Stick.
(04:26):
They wore their clothes cartoonishly baggy and backwards. No irony here.
Also massively popular that year, House of Pains jump Around,
which reached number three. I'm the Hot one hundred and
snaring listeners with its rollicking mix of rap, rock, dance
hall and club music. Folks clearly wanted to jump in
(04:47):
their stick. They were a couple of proud white dudes
who had banded together to put out music and imagery
that celebrated their Irish heritage. No irony here either, and
let's not forget though many of you would like to
Hammer formally mc hammer, he had a couple of hits too.
To Legit to Quit arrived with an insane the expense
of fifteen minute music video featuring cameos from numerous athletes
(05:10):
and the Dallas Cowboys, cheerleaders and a storyline in which
James Brown sends Hammer to go take Michael Jackson's glove.
The uncut version also included appearances from the likes of
Tony Danza and Millie Vanilli. Hammer's other big hit was
Adam's Groove, the theme song to the movie The Adams Family,
and the video for that song, Hammer could be seen
(05:31):
dancing all over the Adams family mansion and backyard cemetery. Sadly,
no irony insight here either, so yeah, you get the point.
Pop charts boasted a wild, goofy, messy all over the
map mix of hip hop, and most hip hop heads
would say I'm using that term hip hop real loosely.
(05:59):
And then there was Arrested Development who came out of
nowhere and suddenly were everywhere. Founded by college Pal's speech
and headliner, the Atlanta Georgia Outfit would have a bigger
year than any other hip hop act. In fact, they
would have a bigger year than virtually any other group period.
(06:20):
The best moments off their massive debut album Three Years,
five Months, and two Days in the Life of Struck
the balance between thoughtful and thrilling. They brought something to
hip hop that was practically unheard of in the genre
at the time, Spirituality Spirituality, and another oddity in hip
hop at that point, hopefulness positivity. Their singles were accessible
(06:41):
and inspired, with seductive hooks and memorable lyrics. They were
instant hits. So then, why have arrested development becomes such
a footnote in hip hop history. The answer, as you
may have guessed, is complicated. It is the result of
too much in fighting, too much fame, too fast, and
perhaps more than anything, a watershed moment at the tail
(07:05):
end of that would change hip hop forever. Speech was
born Todd Thomas and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His parents
were civil rights advocates and very active in the community,
rallying together black owned businesses and supporting the black empowerment movement.
(07:28):
They instilled similar values and their children. Speech recalls them
frequently engaging him and his brother in conversations around social
issues over the breakfast table. His father owned a nightclub
called the Fox Trap, where Speech started djaying at the
age of thirteen, learning from the locals who played there.
In four he formed his first rap group, Attack, the
(07:48):
first rap group out of Milwaukee. As DJ Peach. He'd
spend records in rhyme. Attack gained a local following and
were active for two years, but Speech left Milwaukee for
Atlanta in seven, partly to avoid getting mixed up in
the gang violence plagging his city. There, he'd studied at
the Art Institute of Atlanta. His first week at the institute,
(08:09):
he put up a flyer in the cafeteria saying he
was a rapper searching for a DJ. He spotted another
student looking at it and they start up a conversation.
That student was Timothy Barnwell, but he would adopt the
stage name Headliner. They became fast friends and began making
music after class and speeches apartment and getting gigs around
the city. They changed their name and style a couple
(08:29):
of times, first calling themselves d l R Disciples of
the Lyrical Rebellion and opting for a gangst light vibe,
then going by Secret Society and emulating Public Enemy. They
finally landed on the Moniker Arrested development. While they were
fans of gangster rap, Speech and Headliner wanted to take
their music in a different direction. A Speech said in
(08:50):
a two thousand twenty interview with lad TV quote, I
felt like just the gangster rap thing wasn't showing who
we really were. So I felt like a us to
developments music was a great chance to put more flesh
on the bones of who black people are, What are issues?
Are things that were concerned about. They thought black culture
had stalled, hence the group's name arrested Development, and they
(09:14):
wanted to push the conversation forward. They specifically wanted to
underscore what it was like to be black in the South.
A Speech told Select magazine when the band started to
take off, quote, there's more black people in the South
(09:36):
than in the North, and this is the place where
black people first arrived in America. I think the South
is now the place of preference for black people. There's
a very African influence here. Headliner, who had grown up
in Savannah, considered the political hip hop coming out of
New York to be an offshoot of activist Malcolm X's
Black militancy. Well. He and Speech were inspired by the
(09:56):
work of Southern civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
Their core tenants were peace, community unity. They aimed to
infuse their music with an afrocentricity that was uncommon in
rapid time, and their minds their authenticity, spirituality, and originality
would distinguish them from other acts in hip hop, a
genre that was edging closer to the mainstream. Before signing
(10:19):
their record deal, Arrested Development was a rotating collective of
around twenty members. At live shows, Speech and Headliner would
invite their creative peers on stage, incorporating cowbell players, African
dance and artists painting into their performances. When they signed
the record deal, they had to scale back and settled
on six chief members, Speech, Headliner, Babba o j air Lee,
(10:43):
Terrie mosho Ishi, and Razadan, who started as a dancer
before becoming the group's drummer and graphic artist. He designed
his official logo when he wasn't working as a barber
at his day job. Headliner was the cruise create digger,
rummaging through old records and selecting beats and vocals for
(11:04):
Arrested Development to sample. Some twenty samples would eventually be
cleared for their first album, snippets of songs from the
likes of Minni Ripperton, Quincy Jones, Rick James, John Lee
Hooker and Sly in the family. Stone Speech would build
on them, crafting compositions diffused funk, soul, folk, jazz and
the blues. Some journalists called their style alternative rap, but
(11:27):
Speech was never a fan of the term, finding it reductive.
Through Headliner's girlfriend, Speech and Headliner connected with Michael Malden,
father of rapper producer Jermaine dupri who incidentally formed Criss Cross.
Malton became a rusted developments manager, but finding them a
record deal proved challenging. They were turned down left and
right because labels didn't know what to do with them.
(11:48):
Speech had promised his mother that if he wasn't able
to snag a record deal, he'd moved back to Milwaukee
and returned to college. He'd done just that when the
label Chrysalis decided to sign them, as he tells it,
it had seen how popular progressive rappers De Las Soul
had become after the release of their critically lauded debut
album Three Ft High and Rising, and wanted to capitalize
(12:09):
on its success, says Speech. At that point, we were
first just offering a single deal. We had a whole
album like pretty much prepared, but the single deal was
Mr Wendell Side A, and back then we had A
and B side Side B was natural. Mr Wendell offered
a portrait of its titular character, a homeless man. It
(12:33):
was inspired by speeches own interaction with men living on
the streets of Atlanta near the studio where he and
Headline are recorded music. The track, which sampled drums from
Sly and the Family Stones sing a simple Song, was
bubbly and buoyant with major pop crossover potential, and it
captured the arrested Development ethos perfectly. It was social consciousness
(12:53):
and a pretty package, a slice of colorful, thought provoking
storytelling anchored by an infectious hoe tapping groove. Mr. Wendell
wasn't just a bum. The song's narrator realizes he has
wisdom to share that because he's unmarred by materialism, he
may actually be more in layened than those who choose
to discount him. But life had other plans. Mr. Wendell
(13:16):
would not be released as a Rusted Developments first single.
That honor would instead go to Tennessee, a late addition
to the repertoire that while the label catapulted the group's
career and became their signature song, Tennessee was literally the
last song we recorded for the album. They ended up
signing our album deal. I think because we had recorded
(13:38):
and shot a video for Tennessee, and I think they
were sold on us. Tennessee stemmed from personal tragedy, it
would become a bomb for speeches grief. My grandmother, who
I spent all my summers with in Tennessee, she passed
away of a heart attack unexpectedly, and so we were
all devastated. I was extremely devastated because she spent I
(13:58):
spent a ton of time with this grandmother, and she
really was probably the biggest force outside of my mom
and dad to shape who I am as a person.
Speech and his family traveled to Tennessee for her service. There,
he reunited with his brother, who had also gone off
to college. He was at the funeral, and we all
left there with a sense of you know, renewal and
(14:20):
just striving to do our lives, you know better, in
her name. And that same week, my brother died of
asthma tack. He was twenty nine, and it just wrecked
my life. Everything was, everything was tentative, there was no
it was It was very hard for me to collect hope.
Tennessee had been the last place Speech had seen his
(14:42):
grandmother before she passed, and now it was the last
place he had seen his brother. To mitigate the pain,
he headed to the studio and began to write the track.
Tennessee is speeches prayer to a greater power, but it
is also the sound of him processing the deaths of
his loved ones and the meaning of his life, his race,
his ancestry, his community. Its course is simple yet profound,
(15:05):
hookey yet heartbreaking. Take me to another place, take me
to another land, Make me forget all that hurts me.
Let me understand your plan well, the song concludes without resolution.
You can hear the catharsis that brought speech. But I
told the label I really insisted on them releasing this record.
I told him what happened with my family, and they
(15:27):
loved it. They really was in a mood where if
they didn't let me release this record first, I didn't
want to release anything. To me, nothing else mattered. Releasing
this single would feel like a form of closure for speech.
But he also believed in the music itself. He knew
Tennessee was special. From an ancestral standpoint. It was a
gift from my grandmother and my brother to me, But
(15:49):
to me it was a gift to hip hop. It
was a gift to you know, the world of music too.
I feel because it was doing some unique things and
it was bringing some unique things to the table. The
label of greed giving arrested development nineteen dollars to make
a video. Compare that to Guns and Roses one point
five million dollar budget for the November Rain video. They
(16:09):
filmed it not in Tennessee, but in rural Georgia at
an old, dilapidated house. Speech discovered that reminded him of
his grandmother's house, featuring the band's friends and locals who
asked that they could be part of it. It included
shots of slave shackles they actually were in the house,
a sad remnant of its dark past. Other shots included
artwork depicting black men being lynched. It's easy to see
(16:32):
why the black and white video convinced the band's label
to give them a full album deal. It is, by
turns celebratory as a group spins records and dances on
the house's porch and around the property, and powerful with
its nods to the South's complex, haunting history. Speech for
calls being around twenty years old and going to a
record store in Atlanta soon after Tennessee was released as
(16:53):
a single to see how it was selling. After the
guy there informed him that the only people buying it
were forty plus, he thought a d were doomed, but
then MTV selected the video for buzz Bin, a segment
in which VJs gave cool up and coming artists their
stamp of approval, leaving the network to put their latest
video on heavy rotation. Suddenly Tennessee blew up. The track
(17:22):
topped billboards Hot R and B hip Hop Songs Chart
and Hot Rap Songs Chart, and pete at number six
on the Hot one hundred, eventually going gold. It was
also a hit among critics. A review in the Los
Angeles Times read quote, some of pop's best moments come
from groups that seemed to arrive from nowhere with a
confidence and mature vision, and that's the case here. Another
(17:44):
claim the song quote may go down in the history
books as the first major sad rap hit. Not bitter,
not raging or recriminatory, just flat out soul and heaven
searching the heart. Sick Tennessee would also be chosen is
one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fames songs
that shaped rock and roll its place in the nineties.
(18:10):
Pop pantheon is well deserved. Tennessee has all the ingredients
of a sonic game changer. Slick record scratching, a juicy,
shuffling beat lifted from James Brown's Funky Drummer, a go
to sample at the time, a sticky sing along chorus, speeches,
honeyed melodic flow, a rarity in hip hop which often
favored harder, more aggressive rhyming, rafter shaking, gospel esque belting
(18:34):
from guest vocalist Dion Ferris, vivid lyrics that rustle with
the cruelties of life and death, the past and the present,
and illuminate the beauty and calamity of what it means
to be black in the South. I mean these lines alone.
Then out of nowhere, you tell me to break out
of the country and into more country, past Dyersburg, into Ripley,
(18:56):
where the ghost of childhood haunts me. Walk the roads
my four fathers walked, climbed the trees my forefathers hung
From The beloved Truck also contains a sterling sample of
Prince single Alphabet Street one word Tennessee, heard most prominently
at the beginning of the song, and then buried in
(19:16):
the mix a little later. But the Purple One took notice.
At that time it was a wild wild West sample.
Why so we didn't really understand exactly the laws. When
the record got to like number six, I think on
the pop charts, and it went down to seven, we
got a call from Prince's office. And because it was
just one word, I mean, it wasn't even a melody,
it wasn't just the word Tennessee and so um, we
(19:42):
got a call and he said he wanted a hundred
thousand dollars for the sample. And at that time, as
a twenty three year old guy, first album ever, the
very fact that he asked for a hundred thousand was
just mind blowing to you. Now looking back, Speech is
grateful that was all Prince wanted. He could have took
it off the shelves. He could have, you know, like
(20:02):
a cease and desist order, and he could have asked
for half the song rights are publishing, you know what.
You could do pretty much anything because the leverage was
very much on his side. Don't worry, there was no
bad blood. In fact, Speech eventually even met Prince when
he was invited to one of his birthday bashes. Arrested
Development released their debut album, Three Years, five months, and
(20:22):
two Days in the Life Of in March, in conjunction
with Tennessee. The title referred to how long it took
them to get a record contract the way it was
worth it. The record got raves upon its release. Entertainment
Weekly said the group was quote perhaps raps most self
reflective act. The Chicago Tribune called them quote a major
new voice in hip hop and praise their lack of
(20:44):
quote macho boasting and gangster posing. At the end of
that year, the Village Voices Pass and Drop Critics poll
declared it the best album of rowing Stone crowned arrested
Development Band of the Year after one of the group's shows,
director Spike Lee came backstage to introduce himself. They would
go on to contribute a song Revolution to the soundtrack
(21:06):
of his Malcolm X. Bile pick Malcolm X a bit
ironic given that they more closely associated themselves as Martin
Luther King. Three Years, five months, and two Days in
the Life Of would yield two more top ten hits.
The reggae tinge feel Good Cut People every Day boasted
a superb interpolation of slying the family Stones Everyday People
and chronicled a street confrontation between a man and a
(21:29):
rowdy gang who taunt him and grope his girlfriend. The
Metamorphosis mix of it peaked number eight on the Hot
one hundred and number two in the UK. Speech wrote
it to illustrate the contrast between his perception of black
culture and pride and that of most black men in
his neighborhood back home, As he explained to song facts,
they understood they were black, but for them, black was
(21:50):
Jerry Curls. It was pimping. I had come to understand
the black culture had a lot more to do with Africa,
and it was different hairstyles we could express ourselves with,
like dreadlocks and braids. So I would dress like that
and a lot of the people around the Milwaukee would
sort of mock it. And so the song was really
just talking about this tension between one concept of culture
and another concept of culture. At the end of a
(22:12):
d would release its third single, Mr. Wendell, which, like Tennessee,
would peak at number six on the Hub a hundred.
Like Tennessee, both People every Day and Mr. Wendell were
certified Gold. The band would donate half the proceeds in Mr.
Wendell to the National Coalition for the Homeless in the
United States. At the nine Grammys, Arrested Development would take
(22:33):
home the coveted award for Best New Artist, becoming the
first hip hop act to earn the prize. Tennessee would
win for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.
At the m As, Tennessee would snag Best Rap Video
and Award. The group would win again in nineteen three
for People Every Day. That same year, MTV would release Unplugged,
(22:56):
an album of their live performance at New York's ed
Sullivan Theater, making a d the first rap act to
get an unplugged record. They were critical Darling's Recording Academy Darlings,
MTV darlings, and fan darlings. Arrested Development ticked all the boxes.
They could not have had a more auspicious start to
their career, or some would say, a more abrupt ending.
(23:24):
The sophomore album, Singalamadouni sold poorly, not even cracking the
top fifty. None of its singles reached the top forty.
Arrested Development had split up. Up. Next after the break,
(23:47):
we explore what led to the groups unraveling, including a
lawsuit and why are rusted development are often overlooked or
even dismissed in the annals of hip hop. Was a
(24:10):
banner year for Arrested Development. Their debut album, Three Years,
five Months, and two Days in the Life of would
go four times platinum and yield three hit singles, all
of which were certified gold. Rolling Stone named them Band
of the Year, and on the strength of their widely
popular releases, they would win a nine Grammy for Best
(24:32):
New Artist. They would tour the globe, introducing some international
audiences to hip hop, but their mainstream success was short lived.
Their follow up album, Singalama Duney flopped. None of its
singles cracked the top forty. In fact, the band hasn't
had a top forty single since Mr Wendell hit number six,
(24:52):
and rarely doesn't act that became so popular and beloved
fizzle so quickly, so what happened well for one eighties
second album just didn't offer the radio friendly bangers its
predecessor did. Speech said it was too rushed. The group
was still touring and promoting the first LP while he
(25:14):
was scrambling to put together there next. He was wearing
a lot of hats, so like similar to kids now
who are in their little home studios making beats. I
was that guy. But I was also the rhymer and
so I was the lead vocalist. I was a DJ
to some extent, and I made the beat, so you know,
like I sometimes envied people like n w A, who
(25:35):
you know, Dr Trey was sort of the producer, and
then you know, Ice C was mainly the main lyricist,
and then there was other members that did lyrics or
or a public enemy who had you know, Chuck D
and Flav and all that, but he had the Bomb
Squad who was the producers, and it was a group
of guys. You know, having the follow up and having
it just on these shoulders felt unbearable, and that I
(25:58):
felt really really daunted. You know. Another major reason the
group faded from the spotlight and the roughly two years
between Arrusted Developments first and second albums, hip hop culture
completely shifted. On December and w A member Dr Dre
released his debut solo album, The Chronic, featuring the lies
(26:20):
vocals of Snoop Doggie Dog and turned the genre upside down.
Sample and break beat, heavy party rap and political rap
gave way to g funk, a new strain of hip
hop that folded in smooth parliament funkadelic snippets, sparingly pairing
them with airy, soulful vocals and instrumentation. The Chronic was
(26:41):
critically held and went multi platinum. Today, it is regarded
as one of the most important albums of the nineties
and one of the most important hip hop albums of
all time. Andy Herman is a Los Angeles based music journalist,
(27:03):
podcast producer, and longtime fan of Arrested Development's first album,
but he considers the Chronics impact on the band and
on rap music as a whole undeniable. I think hip
hop just underwent this massive see change with the arrival
of Dr Dre as a solo artist, with the arrival
of Snoop Dogg with You Know. Gangster rap was not
(27:27):
a new thing in three but it it sort of
became the dominant sound in hip hop after that. Arrested
Development sound felt fresh when they descended on the scene
as socially conscious, less antagonistic hip hop acts were making waves,
But that sound an aesthetic swiftly fell out of fashion
(27:48):
after The Chronic introduced a novel take on gangster rap
and faunted tougher flash year more Materialistic Imagery, three years,
five months, and two days days had passed. It mean,
is as great as that album is, it was a
little bit of a fluke and a little bit of
just just arriving at the right moment. I think just
the culture, for whatever reason, just kind of was ready.
(28:12):
You know. I think bands like pm Don and day
Las Soul and Tribe called Quest to kind of prime
the pump for this more kind of left field style
of hip hop, and Tennessee was such a powerful single
that it just it kind of just kicked open the
door for this new group to just have some commercial
success with that sound and that vibe. But I think
(28:33):
in a weird way after that, you know, like mainstream
rap went in this much more kind of hard direction
and conscious rap when in this much more kind of
indie minded, almost sort of commercially averse direction. And then
(28:53):
where does that leave a group like arrested Development Speech
could recognize that the tides returning, but lacking time and resources,
all while still trying to maintain the ethos he and
the band weren't able to move with them. So we
got you know, we tried to do our best to
try to ride that fence of being who we are,
(29:14):
but still making sure we can sort of grab hold
to this new movement of things. I think it was
too little, too late as far as trying to do that.
Navigating hip hop's new metamorphosis was challenging enough, but arrested development.
We're also struggling as a group. We were internally going
through a lot, you know, because of the success of
the group and the moneys that were being made, and
(29:36):
especially by me being the producer and writer, and those
that know about the music industry. You know, writers and
producers make certain moneys that the artists that didn't write
are produced don't make. So I'm making more money than
other people in the group, and they we don't know
how this all works, but they know that there's more money,
and there's jealousy and anger, and there's a lot going on.
(29:58):
At that time, Headliner arrested to Elepment's turntablist and co
founder was especially frustrated he didn't think he was getting
enough credit for his contributions. Speech has said Headliner demanded
more ownership of the band and refused to tour unless
profits were divided between them, but Headliner has claimed they
were partners from the beginning, and that speech threatened to
(30:19):
end the group if he couldn't increase his ownership, as
Headliner told the Atlanta publication Creative Loafing in two thousand six, quote,
the threat was everybody was going to be put out
of the band, and there was going to be no
more original members. So I sacrificed myself to give everyone
a shot, to which speech responded quote, I wouldn't consider
him a co founder. Headliner was instrumental to a D
(30:42):
because he was the first person that agreed to be
in the band, and he believed in my vision. Headliner
sued speech. They settled on a sixty split. The tension
created a rift in the group. Money became a huge issue.
You it's members were suddenly looking for their piece of
the pie and grew distrustful of one another, their sense
(31:05):
of community, their aversion to materialism and greed a D.
S Key principles began to deteriorate. Everyone in the group
had their own sort of clique of business people and
a lot of times family members that were their managers.
Now and you know, don't talk to this group member,
talk to the manager first. And you know, and everyone's
trying to strike deals and everyone's trying to figure out
(31:27):
ways to make more money, but in ways that had
little to do with the creativity and the actual point
of the music. One night backstage the Fox Theater in Atlanta,
contributing vocalist Dion Ferris lost it and reportedly through a
charit speech, she quit right before they were such a
perform she later scored big soul of it. I know
(31:48):
in headliner was ready to move on to We did
a show in Japan and or a number of shows
in Japan. Great run, but remember a headline is saying
at that run that he's like, this is my last
He was telling a fan actually was like this is
my last show. And he didn't tell me at the time,
but we weren't on best terms at that time, so
(32:11):
I overheard it and I was like, oh okay. That
would mark the end of the iteration of Arrested Development.
Speech would pursue a solo career and achieved great success
in Japan. When the group returned in two thousand, Speech
was leading it, but the lineup had changed. Original member
Baba O j eighties elder and Spiritual Guru would die
(32:32):
in two thousand eighteen. Arrested Developments legacy is complicated. For
two years in the early nineties, they were everywhere, but
you won't find many modern hip hop critics citing them
is highly influential in the genre. You won't find them
on all the best hip Hop albums or Best of
(32:52):
the nineties list, even though they came out of Atlanta
and racked up the accolades and units in three As
I say this, they don't even have a mention on
the Southern hip Hop Wikipedia page. Some have dismissed them
as super earnest, corny hippies or hip hop for suburban
white kids. I would agree that not all of their spiritual,
(33:14):
naturie preachy stuff holds up today. It can sometimes feel
a bit suffocating, simplistic, and idealistic. I would also agree
that their music took an anti gangster and for some
therefore an anti hip hop stance. Just look at the
song people every Day. I would also argue that that
was part of their appeal for suburban white kids. Their
music certainly appealed to this suburban white kid who growing
(33:37):
up found a lot of hip hop too aggressive. Eighties,
three years, five months, and two days in the Life
of was one of the first hip hop albums I owned.
I'd fall from many more as I got older, but
it was a gateway. Andy Herman had a similar experience
with the album. He wasn't initially a hip hop fan,
but in his teens, Adie hooked him. I think that's
(34:00):
that was maybe kind of both their strength and their
weakness in a way, I think was that they played
to an audience outside of uh that that sort of
core hip hop audience. And you know, maybe that's why
they haven't gotten their due in hip hop history, because
(34:21):
their appeal was so often outside of the hip hop
mainstream that I think like a lot of hip hop
heads maybe sort of look at them with a little
bit of suspicion. But I think they deserve a lot
of credit for opening the genre up to a lot
of people who who wouldn't have found an entry point otherwise.
If the rest of development are sometimes left out of
the conversation surrounding Southern hip hop, Speech asserts that the
(34:44):
band did break ground. In his mind, their success served
as a template and opened doors for future Southern hip
hop acts. What out of rest of development? In my opinion,
there's no outcast, there's no goody mob, there's no in
my opinion, Eric Abadou, there's no roots. I'm not suggesting
that they got their ideas from us. I think they
got their road paved by what we paved earlier. So
(35:09):
it gave them an opportunity to have a voice. And
I don't I remember literally um my label playing me
the D'Angelo Brown Sugar album before it came out, wondering
if they should sign it, you know. I remember the
label showing me the Roots stuff, wondered if they should
sign it. Um you know, because with us being as
(35:32):
successful as we were and yet rooted as we were,
these groups, they felt that there was really money to
be made in that in that arena. Up next, after
(35:54):
the break Arrested Development co founder and from that speech,
joins us to talk more about their mass of early
nineties success, the reasons for their undoing, and why he
thinks the group deserves a spot in the hip hop
history books. Welcome back to Where Were You in ninety two.
(36:26):
We've been discussing Arrested Developments, rapid rise, and swift unraveling
in the years that followed. Now it's time to hear
from the group's co founder and frontman, songwriter, rapper, and
producer Todd Thomas a k speech, so speech, I'm just
wondering where you were physically and mentally in N two
(36:49):
was a phenomenal vieer in many ways. I mean, I
was a hopeful artist, poor broke, trying to um make history,
you know, trying to breakthrough in the hip hop scene,
which at that time, the South wasn't really represented, so
(37:10):
it was East and West coast, and um, ghetto Boys
had a lot of success Luke way down in Miami
with more of a coastal city as opposed to what
I'm considering South right now. So um they had success,
and so um the South really hadn't made the name
just yet, and so I was really hoping to break through.
(37:35):
And um, this is pre LaFace, which was a very
big influence in Atlanta, and so I was connected with
as many people as possible. We got a record deal.
Um it was with a record label that took a
chance on us, really because Chrysalis at the time, which
is the label we signed with, they they didn't have
(37:56):
any hip hop artists, um per se, especially any coming
out of the South. So um they did have Gang
Star on a subsidiary label of theirs, and that they
were one of my favorites, so um yeah, I was
trying to break through and hoping for the best and
striving to make our presence undeniable in the music scene
(38:19):
there was there really just wasn't a Southern hip hop
wasn't really the thing at that point, and very much
East coast, West coast. What do you think you and
the rest of the rest of the band brought to
the table that intrigues chrysalists to sign you. I think
what we brought to the table is a lot. I
think we brought um melodic, melodic rhyming to the table
(38:44):
of hip hop. I think we brought a soulful energy
and like soulful um solo vocals to hip hop music.
And we brought another level of spirituality to the lyrics
of hip pop. We brought um I think a wider
scope of afrocentric city to hip hop. I think we
(39:07):
brought UH men and women being in the same group
UH doing hip hop music, which was very rare to
my knowledge. Literally, the only other rap group that ever
did it prior to us was Funky four plus one,
which had done it back in the early eighties late seventies,
and we were a live band, which the only hip
(39:27):
hop act that I knew that did that was stet
Roots weren't out yet. Statsisnic was the first to do it.
We were second. We had an elder in the group,
So we brought this whole sort of communal community energy
to to hip hop where it wasn't this generation gap anymore.
And um, so I think, among other things, that's what
(39:49):
we brought. Now, that's not why Chrysalis signed us, and
that's why I separated the answer. Chrysalis just wanted to
capitalize on the popularity of what was happening with day Soul.
Um They're three ft High and Rising album was really
a pop success, and it had a lot of crossover
appeal with songs like me and Myself and I but
also you know, I know, and and and um, you
(40:12):
know other stuff. So basically, I think they wanted to
try to get on that bandwagon in a sense. But
we had our own energy and um, while we were
definitely influenced by Native tongues and by Jungle Brothers and
day Lin Tribe, we had our own thing that we
(40:32):
brought to the table as well. Three years, five months
and two days in the Life of was a massive success.
How did you react to that? Here you were thinking
you weren't you know, you waited three years to get
this contract and then you're gonna go with another single
and suddenly you're one of the biggest bands in the world.
(40:55):
It was unbelievable and it was surreal. I mean, you
gotta put yourself in my head at the time. This
is our first record, it's our first time dealing with
a record label, it's our first time making money, it's
our first time touring the nation, and I mean I
loved it, but it was very fast paced. Talk about
(41:15):
learning a lot at a fast pace. I mean it
was just learning everything from how does this industry work?
And you know, still learning and I'm thirty years in
and learning how to tour and you know, how to
get along with a band, how to keep the band together,
how to you know, navigate interviews. I mean, there's so
many things that you're learning. Offered the first time you
followed the record. When you think Galamdooney, um and ninety four,
(41:37):
a lot of high expectations and high hopes and um.
And you know, it didn't it didn't sell as well
and it didn't really yield um. You know, many hits.
Why do you think that the follow up didn't sell
as well? I have a few thoughts. I mean, first
of all, I don't think we should have released it
when we did. We released it too earlier. I mean
(41:58):
we released it about a year after, you know, well,
being our first one was in ninety two, and then
we released but we were on tour like super heavy
and doing a lot of promo for that year, so
you know, there wasn't a lot of time to create it.
That's number one. Number two, I think the industry, it's
sort of hip hop in particular, the culture changed. You know,
(42:21):
hip hop at that time was transitioning into a Wu
Tang era, a bad boy era soon after a nas era,
and it was more gritty back to New York, Tim's
on the ground, you know, a little bit of a
hustle thing going on in the streets. That that was
the the energy that was being brought out in the
New York scene. And you know, I think that it
(42:43):
just the the aesthetic of hip hop changed right under
our sort of under our feet as we were transitioning
from album one to album two. Um so, and then
I also think, to be honest, consciousness in hip hop
in general started to become marginalized from the industry. The
industry was pushing back groups like Public Enemy and wasn't
(43:05):
really promoting their music as well. Arrested Development, Uh, Brand Nubians,
X Clan Paris, I mean, all of these acts were
sort of being relegated to the side, and what was
sort of taking its place was this more mogul oriented
business oriented. If you remember the imagery back then, either
(43:26):
you were on the streets with the Thames, or you
were in a private jet or a yacht on the
on the ocean, and you had the bikini women and
everyone's you know, a mogul and an enterprising business person
type of thing. And so there was just a total
shift of you know, emphasis of what hip hop was
sort of doing at the time and not just seemed
(43:48):
so ampathetical to what I lost the development was doing.
It was all about, I mean, the materialism and capitalism
was that's just the antithesis of what used to literally
right one with nature, spirituality, community, family, friendship, close ties,
(44:09):
the pure. Yeah, you have to really think about the
core value, like the ethos of arrested development, and that
was being put in question suddenly was Yeah, but the
fame and the money and and and you know, we
we touched on this earlier. You know, like I said,
there's there's you know, bands come about in different ways.
(44:31):
You know, not every band comes about this same way.
So for us, I'm sort of the mad scientist guy
in the room right in music. The rest of the
group members were conceptual more so than they were like
a band member. So when we came to live shows,
they were way more involved because you know, like Robs,
(44:52):
one of our members, played drums, Well the drums weren't
on the record, they weren't recorded on the record at all,
but in live shows he was playing them, and then
you know, so on and so forth. So that kind
of thing made the group you know, fascinating conceptually, but
you know, for the real like part of it, who's
(45:13):
making the songs, it's just a lot of times just me.
So it was it was really tough to be able
to navigate that that whole reality now that we're huge,
because yeah, it does reflect that. Oh wow, well Rose
who plays drums, who actually got in a band about
a month before we got a deal, wasn't on any
of the records per se. But of course he wants
(45:36):
to make a lot of money. You know, this is
his chance, this is his shot, but there's no avenues
for him to really make that money because he didn't
write the song and didn't produce it. He wasn't on
the record. So it's a tough thing to sort of
navigate because like, well, how do we get everybody happy
and yet keep moving on with what the successful formula
(45:57):
was in the first place, that got us here in
the first place that was That was sort of the
thing I was constantly trying to balance, like how do
we do that? You know? So I think you you reunited?
And so five years later sent you right in two thousand,
did you feel less pressure at that point? Did you
feel even more pressure? Because the eight years had passed
(46:18):
and in the landscape of change. So by the time
two thousand came, I didn't We didn't even release that
album the Arrest of Development new record um in the
United States at all. We didn't even release it in
the United States. We only focused on Japan. So in
that sense, it was great. Japan was totally in lockstep
with us the whole time, so when Arrest of Development stopped,
(46:39):
they were super on Arrest of development. Single Ama duty
did very well in Japan, so that was great. Then
I did a solo album in ninety six. They loved that.
It went to number one for seven weeks. I did
another solo album, they love that. Then I did uh
solo album in two thousand called Spiritual People. It was
my biggest selling solo album to date. So when we
(47:02):
dropped the Arrested Development album, it was anticipated heavily in
that marketplace, and so we toured really heavy on that record.
It was great for the group members because they didn't
have that solo career sort of run that I just had.
They were just coming back into the fold. But it
felt really big, and the press was all around us,
and the fans were extremely excited, so it felt really
(47:23):
good as long as we weren't in the States. As
long as we were, it was like everybody was on us.
And Japan is a big place, a lot of great
music fans, so it felt very It felt very good,
you know, it felt really good. So that's how we
felt when we got back into it in two thousands,
and it's it's what allowed us to sustain, like even
the new record for the f and Love and and
(47:43):
Don't Fight Your Demons, But prior to that. It allows us.
It allowed us to sustain our integrity or what we
consider integrity, and allowed us to to sustain the sound
that we liked, the aesthetic that we like, and it
makes a really fun story for people that come to
our shows. Now they're getting to hear of this catalog
that they probably haven't heard, especially if they're in the States,
(48:04):
they haven't heard a lot of it. But it feels
like it feels like they never left. In some ways,
you take Japan out of the situation, we probably in
every way just would have not been in existence. Thank
you Japan. Yeah, thank you Japan, Japan, because we're happy,
you're happy to still have you around. I think Tennessee
(48:35):
was probably the first hip hop record that I was
exposed to in my limited knowledge of it at the time,
where there was like something deeper being talked about, Like
I can't think of any other like top ten hit
singles that are you know, literally like a guy like
(48:55):
you know, addressing God and sort of you know, questioning
his relationship to God and his faith. He sort of
explores the past in that song in kind of a
way that sort of mixes like nostalgia and trauma I
would say in a way that I think is really powerful.
(49:21):
The year is the latest incarnation of Arrusted Development is thriving.
They released an album for the fin Love and have
been performing it. The response has been great. Fans of
the band's old school stuff are really loving their new material.
Young new school audiences love discovering what was happening in
(49:43):
the nineties. It's good vibes, but there is pain in Tennessee.
Tyree Nichols, a twenty nine year old black man who
lived in Memphis, sustained severe injuries after police beat him
after a traffic stop. Three days after the incident, he died.
Video footage released in late January shows the police kicking, punching,
(50:05):
and pepper sprang him as he screamed. The five officers
charged with nichols murder are also black. The story is complicated, maddening,
and heartbreaking. How can such senseless violence exists in this world?
What has caused it? How does Nichols family, the Memphis community,
the country move forward after such tragedy. My mind does
(50:28):
what it often does when it's trying to process something
so big, so sad and inconceivable. It turns to music.
I think of a rusted Developments. Thirty year old Tennessee,
a song about processing the big, sad and inconceivable. It
does not offer answers, but it offers empathy, some sort
of solace and connection, a step toward healing. I think
(50:50):
of its songwriter Speech and wonder where his mind is.
I learned that is the video of Nichols beating is released.
Speech has taken to Twitter to share his thoughts. He
has written, Tyree Nichols, is any one of us if
the system doesn't fundamentally change, My heart goes out to
his fami and loved ones. His next tweet comes a
little less than an hour later. It is the chorus
(51:12):
of Tennessee. What do you think the legacy of arrested
development has been? Yeah? I don't. I don't know for sure.
I mean, obviously that's for the people to decide. I
would like it to be that. You know, it's about revolution,
about you know, really striving to uplift you know, all
(51:35):
of us and take us all to you know, another place.
(52:25):
Where Were You in ninety two was a production of
I Heart Radio. The executive producers are Noel Brown and
Jordan run Todd. The show was researched written and hosted
by me Jason Lafier, with editing and sound design by
Michael Alder June. If you like what you heard, please
subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts for
my heart Radio, check out the I heart Radio app,
(52:47):
Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Host
Jason Lamphier
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