One Song - Janelle Monáe’s "Make Me Feel"

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Is Janelle Monáe’s “Make Me Feel” an homage to Prince’s “Kiss”? Diallo and LUXXURY break down the connections, Prince’s influence, and how Monáe created a musical world that is uniquely her own. Don’t let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use code ONESONG at Monarch.com in your browser for half off your first year. Get organized, refreshed, and ready for the holidays for way less. Head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. One Song Spotify Playlist Songs Discussed: “Make Me Feel” - Janelle Monáe “Make Me Feel (EDX Dubai Skyline Remix)” - Janelle Monáe “Pynk” - Janelle Monáe feat. Grimes “Tightrope” - Janelle Monáe feat. Big Boi “We Are Young” - fun. feat. Janelle Monáe “Moonage Daydream” - David Bowie “Let’s Go Crazy” - Prince “Givin’ ‘Em What They Love” - Janelle Monáe feat. Prince “Americans” - Janelle Monáe “Kiss” - Prince “Munchies for Your Bass” - Nemesis “Cars” - Gary Numan “Crazy Train” - Ozzy Osbourne Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So luxury, today we're talking about a track that isn't just a song, but a declaration of desire, freedom, and self-expression. That's right, D'allel, with its prince-worthy grooves, it marked a turning point for Janelle Monet, revealing a more playful, unapologetically sensual side of her artistry. That's right. We're talking one song, and that song is Make Me Feel by Janelle Monet. Okay, when I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice.

I want to help my kids, and I want to give back to the community. Ooh, then it's the vacation. of a lifetime. I wonder if my out of office has a forever setting. An IG Private Wealth advisor creates the clarity you need with plans that harmonize your business, your family, and your

dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IDPrivatewealth.com. I'm actor, writer-director, and sometimes DJ Diala Riddell. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers, interpolation. And this is one song. The show where we break

the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before, and you can watch one song on YouTube and Spotify. While you're there, please like and subscribe. So today we're covering Janelle Monet's Make Me Feel, which came out in 2018, but this year, the song had a resurgence when a remix of the song was used as the theme for the seventh season of Love Island USA. Let's hear a bit of the EDX Dubai Skyline remix. I'm raising the roof. Man, that takes me back to a time not too long ago when all we ever saw was, you know, very attractive people cooking breakfast and talking about who they wanted to hook up with.

Are you saying that you watched all seven seasons of Love Island? Not all seven seasons, my friend, but the last two have been kind of appointment. I've never watched it. Am I missing out on something? What am I missing on? I feel so, listen, I am not ashamed. I do watch some reality shows. And Love Island in the summertime, like they kind of go well together. Okay, well, I'll give it a shot on your recommendation. I feel like this can only end badly for me. And your trust of me.

Here's what I found interesting. I knew I knew the song. Yeah. I even knew that this was a remix that I had spun out on gigs, but I had to examine it. I had to like, you know, try and figure out what was this song? Who sang this? And I was so surprised when it came up as Janelle Monet because I consider myself a Janelle Monet fan. She's one of those artists who I feel like, you know, has such a distinct look.

But it's really hard sometimes to pin down. her sound. Right. Good point. And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that she wears her artist card on her sleeve. She changes her vocal arrangements. Like, think about a song like Pink, P-Y-N-K Pink. On that song, she sounds not quite like the person you hear on Make Me Feet.

Pink like the inside of your... Baby Pink behind all of the doors. The first time I ever heard her voice, I thought she was sort of like female James Brown. The first time I heard it was on Tightrope, which features Big Boy from Outcast. Great song. Let's hear a little bit of that. Definite Farrell happy vibes going on there. Not to mention James Brown.

Yeah, it's just, you know, I feel like that could be three different singers seeing those three different songs. Three different eras, by the way. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons I wanted to do this episode is because I wanted to give Janelle her flowers and say, hey, we see you like wearing these different, I don't want to call them masks because that sounds pejorative. But like, you know, wearing these different styles. You know, like she can come in so many different ways. I like though you put that, that she's wearing the style. She literally is.

Part of her whole artistic thing is that her artistry includes the multimedia element. It's music, it's video, it's performance, it's clothes. Big part of her look is her look. Big part of her artistry is her look. And her clothes and even her look has changed over time. It's not that she stays static. It's not that she even can be pigeonholed into one sound. And maybe that's been to her detriment.

Because to a certain extent, a Janelle Monet song can sound like a lot of different things. And so that keeps her interesting, but it can also make it where a person like me who likes Janelle Monet and likes one of her songs forgets that that was a Janelle Monet song. I think you're nailing it. And part of why we're doing this episode in many ways is because she is an artist that we think in this moment is extremely important. Right. And who deserves her flowers.

And this song is incredible and we love it. But you may have missed it. She may have slipped under your radar. Or you may have been aware of her peripherally. one good example of that. It's easy to forget that she's like featured in the fun song

We Are Young. That song is called We Are Young featuring Janelle Monet. Totally. And by the way, I think that her co-sign was one of the reasons

I first picked that song up. Like, oh, well, Janelle says these guys are cool. Yeah. Oh, right. It's plain. When we do the show, there are plenty of times

where we're doing it about an artist, Stevie Wonder, Ozzy Osbourne, like so much of their story has already happened that it's very clear. They've had decades

to establish their artist right. It's clear to establish, like, here's the song. you've heard so many times and, you know, here's the legacy that we're all sort of agreed is going to, you know, this is a different kind of episode in the sense that this is an artist whose legacy is still being painted every day. So that's one of the reasons we're excited to do this episode. It's crazy that

she's had 10 Grammy nominations, but she's never had a Billboard Hot 100. That was a crazy step when I heard that. It's crazy, right? Except technically, this one went to number 99. Right, but barely. She barely cracked it. Yeah. And actually had another technicality, another, you know, double asterisk, would be that fun, we are young, went to number one. So she's on a number one song. Yes. Yes, it's not one of her solo songs, but she is technically on that song. Exactly. And another thing that we're excited to talk about is how both as an artist, but even in the

song, there's a lot of ambiguity, wonderful ambiguity. It's gender fluidity and it's genre fluidity. And it's maybe no surprise that she cites as two of her biggest influences, Prince and David Bowie. Two of the godfathers, if you will, or godparents, if you will, of genre bending and gender bending, you know, for the past 40 years. years of pop music. Right, the fluidity of it all, right. So let's listen to a bit of Genomeone's favorite David Bowie song. This is Moon Age Daydream. I'm feeling the sadness of losing,

I mean, it's crazy that in 2016 we lost both of them. Prince and Bowie just three or four months apart. To this day, that might be one of the worst years ever. Yeah, it is for many reasons. And these two important people in my life that I never knew. It makes me sad to think of them being gone, being lost. I mean, I think with Bowie, I don't know at what age Bowie died, but like, you know, people from the 60s, you know, people who had success in the 60s tend to die, you know, like, uh, we need to get used to it, but it's still hard. Prince, I just always felt like I did not see that coming. Right. And it's just, it's, it's, bums me out to this day. But speaking of Bowie's influence, can we talk about her world building,

which definitely leads into sci-fi themes and aesthetics. There's some Afro-Futurism going on there. For Dirty Computer, she released a companion film that tells the story of an Android who's living in a dystopian future under a totalitarian regime that wants to get rid of the world of so-called dirty computers. Let's watch a clip where her character is captured to be cleaned. Twice in hell. Uncle Sam. Kissed a man.

They call this place, the house of the new dawn. This place where they drained us of our dirt and all the things that made us special. I mean, this is why I'm so glad we're doing this episode because I feel like in some ways her brain is how my brain works. Like there's sometimes like, oh, I want to like direct a movie or sometimes I'm like, oh, I just want to write a show. And there's sometimes I just want to show up as an actor, get the script and then just go. And the script will be my guide. Like, you know, she's got so many ideas and so many feels and interest. And even that music at the end, that's sort of synth-wavy, like, amazing. I love that you're saying this because it really, absolutely, there's some artists that the core of their artistry is the idea. And the execution of it could be musical, could be lyrical. Musically, could be musical, musically. could be visual, could be storytelling in a film form. But I think that there are also musicians who are just incredible drummers, and they have other ideas,

but that is their artistry, is all in how they hit the skins. And there's everything in between, of course. And Janelle Monet really does stand out. Maybe in all of our episodes, we've had everything on that spectrum, but she's with the bowies of the world, and maybe the Lady Gaga's to a certain degree,

where expression comes in many forms, including music, and importantly music, but not only in music. Not only in music. We talked a little bit about Bowie already, but another one of her musical heroes was actually a mentor to her. And we're talking about Prince.

He was a big supporter of her really early on. In 2010, when the BT Awards had a Prince tribute, he handpicked Janelle to perform Let's Go Crazy. Let's watch a bit of her performance. Can I say something about Let's Go Crazy? There's something so infectious about the BPM and the arrangement that. I couldn't even watch that without moving my foot in time to the beat. And I even woke up this morning ironically think about how lucky I am to have been alive when that song came out.

Because can you imagine a pop song that starts off with essentially like it's not a prayer. It's not a certain. He says, dearly beloved. It's almost sounds like the official can at a wedding or something like that. But like that's how the song starts. Right. And it was a big radio hit. And it was a huge radio hit.

30 seconds of wobbly organ. Yes. And then when the drum beat comes in when he starts talking about the elevator at Beverly Hills. Well, specifically he says, we call it that Shriek in Beverly Hills. You know the one. Dr. Everything will be all right. Like, how did that song ever become a radio hit? It breaks so many rules.

It's so incredible. What an incredible song. And so cute to watch him in the audience. I know. With a little smirk. And also, like, I don't know if you caught it. Like, it almost felt like, you know, like a parent sort of like, yeah.

She's doing so good. She's doing so. Yeah. In the eighth grade play or something. Absolutely. You kind of want him to like be like mouty the words. Oh, great clip. I love that clip. Yeah. Or I'm picturing him with like his hands up here like, oh, little clapping.

I mean, that's basically his vibe. His face has this vibe. So Prince worked with Janelle on a track on her second album, Electric Lady, called Giving Him What They Love. He played guitar, bass, and also sang on the track. So let's hear a little bit of it. There he is. If I can just say something quickly about this, so what just immediately springs to mind is obviously that's Prince. Yeah. distinctive falsetto. But we just did interestingly

an episode about Sylvester and about falsetto and a song called, by the way, you make me feel, coincidentally. And sexuality, right? Interesting parallels between the two of them. Maybe not fully coincidental,

but specifically here with a falsetto. On that episode, it was funny because some of the clips of the episode had us doing the falsetto with Stevie Mackey. And at certain points, a listener or two, there was a moment of overlap, basically,

where there'd be playing Sylvester's vocal and then there'd be you, maybe, maybe me, like two or three of us were doing falsetto. And to a certain degree, it was a little indistinguishable momentarily, but I knew immediately that that was Prince's falsetto. Falsetto is really difficult to get personality into because you are losing a huge percentage of what goes into making the sound.

You're eliminating that. You're just getting to the high breathiness of it all. But I knew that was Prince. One note of his falsetto was so distinctive. I found that really interesting. That is interesting. I never thought of falsetto as being. something where you lose a little bit of the personality.

You do lose a little bit of. Obviously, the incredible singers like Sylvester and, you know, Barry Give are able to keep Curtis Mayfield is another one. You can tell when it's them, but when it was me or you, maybe, you know, no shade to us. But like, so falsetto is really hard to master. And, Prince, very distinctive falsetto. And I love the story about how Janelle and Prince got connected. She said one night after a show, she gets a phone call.

And the voice on the other end is like, hello, this is Prince. I'm sorry I couldn't make it your show. First off, this is the same thing that they happen with Outcast. You know, Andre 3000 says that he gets a phone call. Right. After they're reuniting a Coachella. And it's like Prince and he's just like, hey, this is what I would have done differently or whatever. So Prince was just making calls, man.

We got on the phone. First thing he said was, you know what your problem is. You don't understand how big you are. He was like, this artist. And that artist, they wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for y'all. I just can't imagine the scenario receive a call like that. and you're not like, screw you. Like, this is like, it's unbelievable.

Yeah. There's no way that you would immediately just go with it. Totally. I mean, that's exactly how you know what. She's like, no, this has got to be some kind of a joke. But no, it was really Prince. He told her he loved her voice and how she was taking control of her career. And then he invited her and her band to come over that night for a jam session.

I mean, like this is her hero. That's quite the co-sign. This is like Chimel meeting Letterman or, you know, Kendrick meeting. Tupac. Like, I can't imagine how excited she was. Insane. I mean, who would be your crazy phone call? Like, you'd be like, no, this is obviously.

I mean, it just popped in my head, but if Barack Obama called me, I'd be like, I could kind of see it happening. I like, it has nothing to do it as... I can kind of be like, oh, it makes sense that he'd be calling me. Sure. Unless Barack wanted to make a song with you. Now, that would really be interesting. And what would it sound like if Barack Obama was calling me, Diyallel?

What do you think that might sound like? You'd be like, Michelle? He'd call me Michelle. And you'd be like, no, this luxury, you'd be like, oh, yeah. Love the podcast. Which, by the way, also sounds like Jimmy Jam calling you. We always joke that Jimmy Jam sounds like Barack Obama talking about Janet Jackson. I am going to ask you the same question, but let's pretend it's the only voice that I'm capable of doing.

Let's pretend it's Ronald Reagan calling you. Well? That's the only voice I can do. Well. I'd be like, Ronnie, you were wrong about a lot. Well? I can just do one word of one voice. That's it.

That's pretty solid. Thank you. But who would be your version of like that crazy phone call? You know what? I'm going to say, I've got to say Farrell. That would be a real, and by the way, I feel it's doable to. I've spoken to Farrell. I feel it's not impossible.

You've already talked to him? He came on, but he's still your dream. He came on Fallon one time, and he was pitching us some jokes that were like, honestly, they were never going to happen because we were on NBC. Yeah. There was a lot of swearing that would have gone into that comedy, and I don't think you could even bleep a lot of it.

But, so I did talk to him that one time. But if he called me, it was like, hey, let's make some music. Like, then I'd be like, oh, man. Hell yeah, dude. From your lips to Farrell's ears. on high. Half a million listeners. On the Mount Rushmore of amazingness.

Give me for a little. It was a tragic loss as we've talked many times about on the show. When Prince died, we all felt it. But Janelle felt it particularly as he was her mentor. And apparently Prince contributed to the song we're talking about today. Now here's the thing.

The way in which he contributed is unclear. And as we listen to the stems a little bit later, let's like put, you know, double down on our listening ears into the micro of it all to see if we can figure out what feels particularly Prince. I have a hypothesis or two.

But across all the research and across all the quotes, we've had very broad statements about his involvement. For example, it's been said that he made some music and equipment recommendations, quote unquote. Apparently, for example, Gary Newman was one of the musical references that he cited. That's so interesting. The Venn diagram of, like, Prince fans of Gary Newman fans,

by no means, like, not a strong Venn diagram, so to speak. But, like, I don't ever think of, like, someone like Gary as being on Prince's radar that much. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think when we listen to the stems, there's something that jumped out to me where I was like,

oh, I think this might be it. But that'll be a fun part of the speculation once we get there. Do we know which song by Gary Newman? Or is it possibly just like that sort of like Cars era Gary Newman? So at this point, we've literally, I've told you nearly everything that was specific in the research that was done to find like what who did, like, what did Prince do and where did he do it? So we're going to become music investigators and try and sniff out where the Newman hits the Roger. We are getting forensic in the musicology on this one. Absolutely.

The closest to specific that we. were able to find in all of our research was longtime Janelle collaborator Chuck Lightning, who was quoted as saying, quote, when Prince heard this particular direction, meaning this album being kind of more 80s and being a little bit more sort of funk and digital 80s, he said, when Prince heard this particular direction, he was like, quote, that's what you all, quote within quotes, I should say, that's what you all need to be doing. He picked out that sound as what we were resonating with him. Oh, I love that. So that is the most direct we've gotten as far as what, when we get into the stems, you know, to be listening for. But I've got a couple ideas. I think

you will too. Yeah, I mean, like, let me just say, you can definitely hear Prince's influence all over Dirty Computer. The last song on the album is called Americans, and it feels very Prince-coded to me. Tell me what you think this sounds like. Here's Americans. Wonderful how we have just a classic evocation combination. Like, I love it when this minimal, a small similarity is a vocative. It's the BPM, right? It's the BPM and the beat. The snare, it's like 192. or something, boom, ca don't, and so between that

at that BPM, and then there's this one moment where you hear, like the notes go done, I'm like, let's go crazy by Prince, happened to be conjured in my mind in that moment. But also, I'd point out,

from the sounds and the BPM. Oh, I agree, but I'd also even point out that even her dry delivery of that monologue sounds a little bit like his prayer, if you will, at the beginning of, let's go crazy. And there are one or two little additional lindrum sounding sounds,

like the famous knocking sound that he uses and the clap, just little syncopated parts. I feel like he owns that knock, especially when he puts it through a flange. I really love how these little teeny pieces and that's 1% of the sonic picture.

99% is a completely new composition, but this tiny little slice of it evokes that princiness which I love. It's a nice little homage. I love it. Okay, well we're going to take a quick break, but we're going to unravel more Monet mysteries when we get back. We're going to find out which print song

Dinell took inspiration from, in particular, for her song, Make Me Feel. When we get back. I have a confession to make. I do not know every single account where money lives. I'm a little bit worried. There's like a savings passbook from the 80s somewhere with actual cash that maybe has been growing at a rapid rate.

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W-A-Y-F-A-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Welcome back to one song, Luxury. You discovered that one of Prince's songs is, kind of the blueprint for Make Me Feel. Is that right? That's right. I'm far from breaking the news that there are some similarities between Make Me Feel by Janelle Monet and Kiss by Prince. I don't know that I've ever thought of a connection between.

There are some comparisons that have already been noticed, I think. And when you play them side by side, you know, one after the other, you're like, oh, yeah, here's some similarities. But when you play them on top of each other, as I have done, as I've set up here in Hamilton, the similarities become very clear and very interesting because they're all structural and vibe, I would say. And they absolutely fall into that area of evocation that we've been talking about for the last few episodes, as opposed to direct lifting,

which from a copyright standpoint is when melody and lyrics get involved. None of that is happening here, but the parallels are very interesting, and let's get into them. What I've done is I've set up the two songs in Ableton to match each other. In other words, I've pitched the Prince song down by three half-tones so that it's in the same key. They're both in F-sharp major now.

And slightly reduced the BPA. they were already pretty close. They're both roughly in the 115, 112 BPM range. But that's it. What's interesting to me as I laid them out is it strikes me as being something I've done many times as a songwriter. I do something which I know from my songwriting community

now of almost two decades is very common. You do something called writing sideways. You take another song and you take elements of it that inspire you and you write sideways from it. In this case, what I think Janelle and her team did, perhaps with Prince and definitely with his blessing, was to take Kisses structure and write sideways from it. There's two elements of the structure.

one is what happens when in the song. In other words, the intro, the verse, the chorus, the duration of each thing. But importantly, the parallel is that they're both 12 bar blues, which is really surprising because you just don't get a lot of 12 bar blues on pop radio in the last 30, 40 years. So here's Kiss pitch down just so you're used to it, right? And now I'm going to layer, make me feel. The verse starts here. And they're both about to change to the fore. Janelle goes down We're back to the one And that repeats again

Once we have that same cycle Of going from the one chord To the four chord And again in Janelle's case She has a moment Where she goes to the six It's just a quick substitution Basically, we'll get into it in a minute

This is a 12 bar blues And I'll explain that in a second But here's where we get to The change into the chorus I will layer them first with Prince Here's Janelle Now we're going to the five. Now we're going to the five.

We're going to the four. Here's the tag. You know what's crazy? There was like a, first off, that was brilliant, my friend. Thank you for doing that. I think we can all see some amazing similarity. There was like a chord in there. Somewhere in that, I guess it's her pre-chorus.

Okay. And Prince's chorus. Yeah. They'd like hit, it was like the two songs like merged into this like, amazing sound. I think part of what you may be hearing is that the chord changes are happening identically and they're mapping to each other, but they're also both mapping to hundreds of years of history in what's known as the 12 bar blues, one of the earliest kind of formats and

structures for blues music. Tell us what that is. Sure. I'll do a quick demonstration. Not only have you heard this like thousands of times, if not millions of times, what's really interesting to me is that you don't tend to hear it on pop radio. It really isn't a very common set of modern chord changes. And numerically speaking, you usually get eight-bar phrases, but this is a 12-bar blues.

So I'll just quickly show you what that means. I was also mentioning as we were going along the numbers 1, 4, 5. Here's what that means. The 1 is the root chord. Right. And then you're going to go to the 4. And then you're going to go back to the 1. And now where does your ear want to go?

Probably the 5, which is the E. And now you want to go down to the 4, the D down to the one, right? And then you want to do a little turnaround, right, or something. If you count that, I did that really quickly, but that's a 12-bar blues because the first eight bars were the 1-4, 1-4, 1-4. And then the last four was that turnaround section. That is exactly what's happening in both of these songs. There are tiny little moments. And that doesn't happen that often in, you know, let's call it post-60s radio music. Yeah, you start to hear it less, unless it's intending to evoke an,

earlier era, which because it's so 50s sounding. Something out of centers or something. Because it's so 20s sounding, because it's just old blues music sounding, maybe even pre-recorded era kind of evokes to me, to my ears. But certainly when Prince did it on Kiss in 1986, it was like, oh, wow, we're hearing a 12-bar blues. And then we had 30 years of not that many other 12-bar blues on Top 40 radio. Yeah.

Well, let's dive into the stems. Yes, I think percussion-wise, I hear a lot of similarities. But what's going on with the drums on made me feel? There are probably several drum tracks. on this song. Yeah, there's about seven percussion and drum tracks on this one. Now I feel good. Yeah, I mean, listen, it's a very sparse track, but it's mostly drums and vocals.

So let's listen to the drums one layer at a time, starting with kind of the kick drum, so to speak, but it's got more going on. And I'll layer some of these mouth sounds. Do you hear that kind of on two and four we have what sounds like... Yeah. Like a click, click. Totally. Those are happening on the two and four.

And it sounds like there's a clap. also layered on the floor. Is that somebody's mouth or is that something on the drum? So here's one thing we need to step back for a second. The credits on this record are a little bit obtuse and there weren't a lot of explanatory interviews that we could locate. What we do know is that Matt Man and Robin are the producers and programmers on the song. Their names are all over. Matt man and Robin. That's right. That's Mattias. Mattias, Pair Larson and Robin Lennart, these are members of the Swedish, not House Mafia, but the Swedish songwriting Excellence Mafia. They're part of the... They're part of the Wolf Cousins team. We talked about them on the weekend episode. Go back and listen to that.

Totally. But they have cuts with Imagine Dragons and Charlie and Dua and Selena and Brittany and Gwen. Yeah. That's right. So they are credited on this record with bass, drums, guitar, percussion, and synths. And their names are the only names that appear in the credits aside from in the vocals. So not sure who did what in terms of as we're breaking it down. They keep it a little cryptic.

They're keeping it a little cryptic, yeah. But these are all sounds that you can find like, you know, on Splice or sample CDs or in, you know, Triton Workstations. So they're out there. But they also, I don't know, I feel like they would have been fun to make the mouth sounds with your mouth. So maybe they did that. So that's the main beat for the first minute or so. And then in the turnaround, aka that pre-chorus, we get some more sounds introduced. One of them, I think you'll notice right away, is this impact.

Which to me, when I heard that in the mix, I know, I'll play it for you in the next. the mix now. Here's the whole beat at least. How did I miss that? That's interesting. It's sort of, it's... Can we hear the studio version of the song? I just want to be listening out just for that. So I think it's because there's an organ happening there. There's like a big synth bass. Yes. Coloring a lot of that low end. Now it's more believable that I didn't hear that.

It's serving a similar function. Yeah, it's exactly. Well, that kind of sound is called an impact. Like if you're ever looking for a sound like that to put into your song, just go on splice and He says her impact. He loves this sound. Sounds like the beginning of a movie trailer. I was literally going to say it. It is the sound that you hear in a movie trailer. It's the sound that you hear in a lot of EDM.

In a world. It's a big drop sound. You'll hear that across a lot of EDM songs. And it's buried in the mix of this pop song just to give it that big contrast from that minimal sparse first eight bars that we were just listening to. Yeah, totally.

And another thing that's in that section that gets introduced are these toms. And then there's a number, kick. And then if we add the mouth sounds back and the clap and the original tombs and the original percussion and that's the full beat happening there in that pre-chorus. I'm noticing now that that mouth is kind of doing a tic-tok. Before I thought I was just doing talk talk talk but it's actually doing tic-tok. There's a little bit of melody in there.

Yeah. Yeah. And then in the chorus they introduce something very modern and very distinctive, which is an 808. It's distinctively from Prince famously with the Lindrum. That was his. is drum machine. There's an 808 that comes in. I'll play that for you and provides a little baseline emphasis as well. You can hear the chord changes in there. Give me and my friend's credit, even all the way back in elementary school, we used to call a bass like that tonal base. It is tonal bass. It was tonal base. I don't know how we picked up on

that so early, but we always love the sound of it. And then obviously if you put like a little bit of like organ bass underneath that, you get like that warm, fuzzy bass that you're in your car. I'm reminded of the song, Nemesis, Munchies for Your Bass. Because I've got the munches for your bass. What year is this song? That is 1991. And so iced tea coated like, yeah, and e, d'e, e, e, e, e, e, e. Let's talk about the bass, because, you know, obviously, we've talked a lot about Kiss,

and Kiss famously has no bass part. Exactly, right? So maybe we get some insight into what. the bass might have been like in an alternate universe where Kiss has bass. Maybe Prince was trying to write a historical wrong by his contribution. Maybe this is his playing the bass on this song. That'd be funny.

What's going on with the bass on this one? Let's listen. That is the bass line. That's the bass line. So is that being played on a keyboard? That to my ears sounds like a synth, a synth patch of some kind. It could be a couple of them layered. It might be. One is just doing those down beats and maybe one is an octave up with a wop.

what sounds. What's funny is, you know, I remember when Kiss came out and, you know, he had been so glam, sort of like glam rock and R&B up until that point that I remember my first impression of Kiss was like, there's, there seems to be sort of a stepping away from the Purple Rain Prince with Kiss. It just sounded drastically different. Sure. Grasses in a different direction. And to that point, this sounds sort of like a wobbly, funky bass. Yeah. You know, for the lack of a better term. Wobbling and funky, yeah. It's wobbly. It's fumbling. It's funky. It's fumble. It's funky. And in that sense, this might have been like sort of more of Prince's turn to funk. You know, the same way the kiss is more of his turn to funk. This is her attempt to do something

sort of funkish. Yeah. That could be it. That could be it. Yeah. You know, maybe we'll ask her one day. Come on the show, you know. Come on, Janelle. We love you. Come on, Janelle. You mentioned that that base was probably played on a synth. What else is going on in Synthland? In Synthland, we have that big moment where the impact is happening in the turnaround, right, to the five and the four and then the six. Here that is on the base. Lots of sound about to appear. Yeah. Get ready for it.

I like that. Very dramatic. Dude. It's the 1980s. You've already been fired from the force. For playing by your own rules and now you're driving down one of those like soaked alleyways. Your Pontiac about to take on the drug dealers yourself. Absolutely.

It's very synth. It's very synth. Yeah, very synth. None of these things exist in a vacuum. Earlier in this same decade of the 20 teens, all that synth wave stuff is underground, but it's influencing what's going on at the pop. I think so.

Up in the higher echelons of pop, and that feels so synthet. Can I just say there's something warm and nostalgic about just like a dark synthesizer, you know, playing that kind of stuff. You're right. It is simultaneously like spooky scary because it's big and, you know, sounding,

but it's like kind of warm. It warms the cockles of your heart from a nostalgic standpoint. I feel like that's what they went for with the opening titles of, stranger things, as well as a couple other, like very, like, it's just that very dark, yeah, 1988-1983 John Carpenter and release film. Right, that's a spooky arpeggio. Spooky arpeggia. Yeah, that swell sounds really Prince also, I should say. Well, if you think that sounds Prince, wait till you hear what happens in the next layer when we get into the synths

themselves. Okay. And these are super sparse. They're very prints. They're very funky. They're very 80s. And they come and go. So if you blink, you'll miss it. Blink earwise. Is there a word for blinking with your ears. I do find on this show, I listen back and I'm like, I'm talking about something sonic, but I use like visual language for it. Anyway, don't blink, because here comes the synth stab, and then I'll give you the context. So that's happening just periodically every two bars or so, and I'll give it to you in the context with the bass.

So it would be like this. Now, that to me is a strong candidate for Prince. Absolutely. That's a strong candidate. That's not even just Prince. That's like everybody. That's the family. That's Jimmy Jan.

That's the time. Yeah, that's more staying the time. Like, you can hear a lot of prints in that. Just that stab. That's weird how you can own that stab? Minneapolis and one stab. Yeah. Well, they own it in our hearts because it makes us both think of Minneapolis

1985, right? Don't get stabbed in Minneapolis. No, you don't want to do that. And here's another very princey moment, and this is, again, very short. But there's a little swell. I'll play it isolated and then show you where it happened. Very minimal. What note is that?

What note is that? Yeah, that last note. I almost feel like Prince owns that note. Isn't that weird? It's very, very much what an Oberheim, OB, like, X-A, like there's, the type of synth prince famously played was an Oberheim.

And there are certain patches that when you bought that instrument you got. This sounds a bit like one of those kind of famous Oberheim patches. I also think that last note. And the wobbliness of it would have been the modulation. Yeah.

That is also the first note of because we were talking about Let's Go Crazy earlier. I think that's why that note is like Let's Go Crazy is also an F sharp major. There we go. Interesting. I've talked about that connection.

They're both in the same key. There you go. Which, by the way, is interesting because I don't have perfect pitch. So, like, there are people like Charlie Puth goes around and he's like, oh, that's the same note, literally the same note. I live my life more relative pitch-wise

because, you know, you can, kind of change the key of any song as we just did with Prince's Kiss, and they can match, and they, quote, unquote, do the same thing. But to quote spinal tap, you know, D minor is the saddest key. There are people for whom different notes and different keys evoke very, very specific colors and emotions. I just personally don't have that gene. But you nailed it. It is the same. They're both enough. Yeah, that's fun. Yeah. The synth gets a little playful later on in sort of the solo section that's after the second chorus. I'll play it for you. Are you hearing what I'm hearing? I definitely am.

I think that might be the Gary Newman, right? That sounds so pleasure principle era, Gary Newman. It has cars. Yeah. Here in my car, I feel safest of all cars. It's the only way to live in cars. Our Friends Electric, which is one of my favorite songs of all time. Down in the park.

Also, film. I don't like the film. I don't like the film. We fucking love Gary. Take it all back. Painting all black. That's just an outstanding out. Now we have to do Gary Newman in the next couple weeks.

And listen, I just have to say this one line because we are in this sort of forensic. Let's not forget we're in forensic mode here. Oh, yeah, we fell off the case. According to Prince's DJ, Link of Paris, Prince contributed to the song, and she wrote in a, quote, subsequently deleted Facebook post. Prince had played her the synth line before his passing, describing it as quote, so futuristic and good, Paris said. Last night, I heard Janelle Monet's new song. As soon as the synth came in, I went, oh, damn, that's it. He gave that to her.

So that's a quote from Princess DJ. For what it's worth, since deleted. since deleted. Maybe there's some significance to the deletion. The guitar, man, I feel like there's some fun guitar stuff on here.

Hell of fun guitar stuff. Let's listen. Ooh, so tight. The word tight springs to mind and sharp. Yeah. Yeah, and I dig it. It could poke you.

It could poke you with your elbow with it. You're saying pokey. I'm saying pointed. It's pointing. It's pointing and poke. It's happening in a very tiny moment. It's syncopated. And it is a funk trope.

These are classic, classic funk guitar line. You know, in some ways, Prince and his wonderful Lind drum sort of like kills the 70s funk to a large degree in black music in the early 80s. And sort of its peak is sort of like the glam rock and R&B of Purple Rain. And then he surprises us by coming back

to a much funkier sound with the next album. Right. You know, and the single, you know, kiss, which is like his biggest song, technically about time. What else is going on in the guitar here? So we heard a little bit of funky trope. We heard a little funky trope.

there's this really cool moment that I'll play it for you and then we'll talk about it. At the end. I mean, I think we all went a little crazy just. This is a cloud. It's somebody like scraping your car with a key. You're nailing it. It's the scraping of a guitar,

a distorted guitar with a pick when you scrape down the strings. It's a metal trope. We have two tropes in a row from two different genres. Yeah, but they don't usually meet. They don't usually meet like that. We have the guitar. guitar, funk trope into the metal kind of the beginning of crazy train.

Randy Rhodes does that, you know. So anyway, it's so cool that we have that in there. And also Prince, you know, such a masterful guitarist, it would be wrong to do anything that, you know, gets all the Prince talk and doesn't have something that sort of show off on the guitar. Exactly. Yeah.

And then last but not least, that shit goes crazy in that solo section I was mentioning before with the solo melody. On top of the solo melody, there's this crazy guitar, but also it's digital. little choppy sounding. I'll play it for you and then add stuff in the mix so you know where we are. I'm bringing the drums. So that's mirroring the 16th notes on the Tom's, the Herbie Hancock,

the rocket, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. But it's very digital. But it's very digital. Yeah, that's not a hand. That's not a human doing it. It was performed and then they took that recording and they chopped it so it so perfectly digital sounding kind of cut. But I think more than anything that you've played musically today,

that to me sounds of kiss. You know what I mean? Like it's so kissy. And it's happening, lining up with guitar solo. In this moment in Kiss by Prince, this is happening. Here I'll play them together. Here we go. I love the mapping.

I mean, if somebody hasn't already, I can, that is the sound of a thousand laptops firing up. Mashing that one up. That's a good one, yeah. Well, listen, Janone, we said earlier, like, she has so many different singing styles. And she's good at all of them. I'm going to just say that. I think she's got a great voice. So I do want to hear some isolated vocals.

And maybe you just start us off with the first verse. Baby don't make me spell it out for you. All of the feelings that I've got for you. Can't be explained what I can try for you. Yeah, baby don't make me spell it out for you. One thing I appreciate about these lyrics is that in some ways, like they can kind of apply to anyone to someone else. Yeah, they're very universal.

And I don't think that that, I guess if you want to call that vagueness, I don't think that that hurts the song at all. In fact, if anything, it just allows everybody to sing it. I think it's really interesting to think about how ambiguity works in art. It's something that in pop music doesn't tend to work. Pop music tends to be about directness. And maybe that's part of what this equation is today with this episode. She made a pop song, but there's a lot of ambiguity in it.

But it still works as a pop song. Yeah. But in 2018, when it came out, she hadn't come out yet as non-binary. She was still obviously figuring out how to tell that part of herself to the world. And this film and this record and this song are, all part of that journey. And in 2022, she came out as non-binary or as she likes to put it coming in. And this great quote from her, you're bringing people into who you are. You're allowing them a unique opportunity to further understand how you see yourself. I really love that. I love that she's pushing

back on the coming out thing as though it's about other people. It's not about other people. It's about you. It's about how you express yourself and how comfortable you are in the world. And just to finish her thought on this, she goes on to say, for me, it's not this big declarative statement. This is who I am. I don't think anyone should feel obligated to talk about their sexuality. Yeah, and I think that I really like the sentiment behind that statement. And her voice is so good. And like, you know, finding like little, there are little choices in there that I really like. Like, I like how she kind of goes down on, don't make me, you know, spell it out for you. Totally. Yeah, yeah. But I will say it hurt a little to stop the vocals because she was about to get

into the pre-course. Let's hear the pre-course. So this is where the magic happens for me. I will say when I first heard this song, this is what jumped out of the, like, radio. This is the best part of the song, Fight Me. This is the best part of the song, Fight Me. This is so exciting. I'm going to play it and then we'll talk about it. It's like I'm power a bitter tender. I'm sexual offender.

One does it better. So in that moment that we have this incredible, it's chromatic, but it's more than that. But what's weird about that, and I spent a lot of time on this. What's going on there... The descending that she does? Let's talk about that descending slide right there.

Because we're hearing five pitches, technically. She's sitting five notes, but it's taking place in the span of what's actually four notes on the piano keyboard. In other words, she's dropping here, I'll play it for you. So when she sings, Tull Bit of Tender, so she does that four times in this pre-chorus, those five notes.

It's F-sharp to E-flat, but there's only four notes in between there. So F-sharp, and she's singing, Tull-Bit-O-Tendur. In other words, there's a blue note in there, but it's kind of in between the notes. It's like a microtone. In other non-diatonic 12-tone systems globally, you'll go in between the notes.

In India, there's like a microtonal system that you're used to hearing. Like, it's frequently used. But in our pop music canon, we have blue notes for sure. And this is definitely in that family. But to my ear, what makes this really unique is that usually the blue notes really emphasize, like, no, no, no. And it kind of bends back down again. Yeah. In this case, she's just taking what are only four notes and making five out of them.

It's really cool. So again, so let me hear. If I slow it down halfway. Look at this. Bender. There's, in this note, she's singing two. Let me try to play it at the same time. On your keyboard, it sounds like the same note twice.

Yeah. But in actuality. Listen really carefully. You'll hear the first three map to what I play. And then it gets a little strange. And then the last note maps to it. Let's try this together. That tender is really subtly just not an E.

Yeah. It's just not an E. For those of you maybe listening and not watching what he's doing on this kid, he's hitting that E twice. But we're saying that in actuality, in execution in the song, it's not that same note. It's a little half note in between the game. If you wanted to, it's exactly right, it's a quarter tone.

And if you wanted to play this melody on a piano, you cannot. Because this is the closest you can get on a piano. Which is not what we hear. That's right. So you can do it on a guitar. You can bend it. The vocal can do it. You can do it on a fretless bass or any instrument that, unlike a piano, doesn't have the notes just demarcated.

In fact, even on a keyboard, if you're Herbie Hancock, you can use the bend wheel. But what's really interesting is. You couldn't do it on a harpsichord. That you cannot do. You can't do it on a harpsichord or a piano. I love that. Thanks for breaking that down for us. Do you want to hear the chorus?

That's just the way you make me feel. Uh-huh. So go-soca's so fucking real. Uh-huh. That's just the way you make me feel. It's such a sexy positive song. Usually there's like a little tinge of like puritanical judgment going on and some of our best sexy songs.

But there's like a sexy song where it's like, no, I just, I feel really good about it. Yeah. And it's so, it's sexually delivered too because she's not belting it. Yeah. It's sort of more of a conversational voice. She's up in your air. Yeah. She's in your air.

with a conversational. Absolutely. Love it. Register. There's some whispering going on in this song. Can you place a little bit of that? Yeah, yeah. While she's singing that, this is going on in the background as a call and response, and then I'll put them together. You can hear herself. That's just the way you make me feel. That's just the way you make me feel.

You can hear the bleed from her headphones as she was saying. I know. I love that. Yeah. It's like she's singing to herself. Yeah. Well, by the way, speaking of singing to herself, there is a credit for one other artist on the song. She's one of the songwriters credited, and that is superstar songwriter Julia Michaels, who did Justin Bieber's Sari,

and Selena Gomez is good for you. She had her own hit song issues a number of years back. Sure. I believe she's also, she's credited as a backing vocalist. So somewhere in the BGVs, Julia Michaels is also in there. Well, since you bring up songwriting, can you tell us anything about the,

splits on this song. So another mystery in the song, where is Prince and all this? Well, we found some places we think he might have contributed, but we may never know for sure. He's certainly not credited as a songwriter. He's never got a split. But interestingly, there was some disparities in the credits that I found in the world. If you buy the record, if you look on Wikipedia, if you look on a bunch of sources, you'll see Janelle's name is included as a songwriter. However, I went and I triple check this. She's not in the official ASCAP or BMI as a songwriter. She's not in MLC. She's not in PRS.

The four credited songwriters, if you want to use this song in your movie, and you got to pay, you got to send Czech summer, they're going to be going. Matt Man and Robin. They're going to Matt Man and Robin. They're going to Julian Michaels from the BGVs. And they're going to superstar songwriter Justin Tranter. Okay. And those four are an equal split, four ways.

But Janelle herself, in spite of being in the liner notes, if you buy the record, or Wikipedia, which is a less credible source anyway, is not considered a songwriters. A part of me did wonder, I was like, what was the conversation like when the producers of Love Island USA called up Janelle Monet? We're like, hey, we want to use your song. She's like, I got no say in the matter. But she gets some money. I mean, she gets the performance royalty. She'll get performance royalties.

You know, when she plays live, she sings the song and gets paid. There are other avenues. And she got the recording, you know, the master's some kind of advance of some sort. Who knows? There's lots of ways musicians make money, but she isn't making money from mechanicals or any publishing related stuff. So you can look at those shots of Ariana Maddox walking out. to this song and know that somewhere Janelle Monet is okay. But just to be clear, like, this is a mystery to me.

Like, it seems strange that there would be such a huge discrepancy. So maybe something's in the middle of behind the scenes being worked out. And hopefully she will be cut into what seems like a very personal song to her. This is not the Love Island scandal you need to be working. Okay, good. Thank you for preparing me for that. You know, after listening to the song, I really feel good about it makes me feel. And Janelle herself has said, quote, it's a celebratory song.

I hope that comes across, that people feel more friends. no matter where they are in their lives, that they feel celebrated. And I think you can truly say that. That's how make me feel makes me feel. How does it make you feel, my friend? Listen, this song makes me feel mighty real. It's part of that long legacy and lineage of sexy songs with ambiguity and sort of brimming with interesting choices and selections, musically and sonically, as we've just been listening

to in the stems. For me personally, that moment that we lingered on in the pre-chorus with the five notes that fit into four with the microtone and everything going on there, to me, was so unique and is to me like the legacy of the song in my brain. When I walk around the world, like I think of that moment all the time. Yeah. Because it's just so unique and special and cool. It's playful.

Yeah. It feels playful. Yeah. And strange, unusual. It's ambiguous. In many ways, the legacy of this song and Janelle Monet is still unfolding. How do you see her continuing to evolve? Can it be predicted at all?

And what do you want to see more from her? I love that Janelle Monet's artistry exists in the same world where we have like, you know, big pop stars and interesting. underground and she's sort of doing what she wants to do. It's her vision, it's her voice, and she's kind of like Prince and Bowie before her, like a little creative magpie, grabbing bits and pieces of what interests her and what's relevant to her and what's true to her and her authentic voice. And she's growing as a person in real time in front of us, which is so inspiring. I love that we get to witness her journey as an artist and as maybe bordering on cliche as

sounds. I can't think of another artist for whom it's as authentic looking as this. it's not just like who are they dating or what are they wearing it's like who is this person exactly i i like that a lot too and i'll tell you her first album came out like 15 years ago and since then i feel like she's constantly uh sort of reinvented herself and she's she's paved the way for like a whole new generation of artists who are unapologetically themselves but i do feel like in many ways she's just getting started and like you said like bowie and like prints i see her continuing to evolve creatively in ways that will continue to surprise us i don't think we can predict where she goes from here, but I can guarantee we'll all be listening in.

I think we can actually close this episode. I think we can. That's something that Janelle said. She says, quote, there's freedom in dancing, there's freedom and moving, there's freedom in just celebrating your authentic self. And that's what made me feel is whatever I want to do right now is what I'm going to do. And I feel empowered while doing it. We hope she continues to sing about it.

All right, One Song Nation. We've got a new segment we're calling One Genra. This is where Diallo and I break down a subgenre and share a record we think is essential listening. That's right. And today we are talking about Deep House. Now, there are a couple of sub-genres within the dance music genre that claim the title Deep House. I think it's because nobody wants to admit they listen to Shallow House.

Nobody wants that. It just doesn't sound cool. But to be clear, we are talking about the jazz and funk and soulful influenced house music that you hear in the music of Blaze, Black Coffee, Olson Lade, Mark Farina, Todd Terry, Masters at Work. that's what it's very influenced by the city of Chicago. It's like almost a direct line from the Marshall Jefferson's and the Frankie Knuckles all the way up into like the Maya Jane Coles

and even I would argue K. Trinada. So that is the genre we're talking about today. It's Deep House. So luxury, what is your selection in the subgenre of Deep House? Listen, I'm taking it back to the beginning of Deep House. I've gotten my hands a copy of Fingers Incorporated.

This is their full-length record another side, but it is Larry Hurd, aka Mr. Fingers. And he was one of the first, right? you have can you feel it? Can you feel it? Such a great song. I get chills every time like a DJ

still mixes it in. It still has that effect on me to this day. Absolutely mystery of love. These are tunes that are just absolute dance floor classics for nearly 40 years if you can believe it. It's insane. And the great thing about this record, which is a recent release,

or re-release, I should say, is that so many of these songs you had to get individually, like go to discogs and buy one 12 inch at a time. So, you know, I just bought, I was like, oh my God, I can get them all at once on this record. Can I say I love that you've selected this

because I think that, you know, a lot of people who like, you know, Miguel Miggs and, you know, Rufus Dussol, they don't realize that there is a whole genre of music that harkens back to Larry Hurd to Mr. Fingers like it's an important link between the dance music of today and the Chicago roots of the dance music. I was going to say it's arguably the beginnings of house music is this deep house, what we now may be called deep house since there have been so many splintered subgenres. And to my ears, what I hear in here is basically the things that make it Deep House, a couple of of them at least. Definitely the soulful vocals, like you mentioned. But also, I think the use of chords that are a little spicier, there's not just sevenths, but sometimes ninths and 11s and 13th. This is stuff that comes from jazz. Yeah. So these chords that are a little bit more, to use the easiest

word that pops to mind, they're complicated chords, which gives it a richness that feels deep. There's a deepness in the meaning that feels implied by the music. I can't agree more. It should be pointed out that this is the type of house music that gave us sort of like that generation of like EDM pioneers, everybody from Daft Punk to Todd Edwards. If you talk to them, they'll tell you that this is the genre that they were trying to practice in when they sort of took over like the mainstream pop charts. But this, this is, we're going deep. Right. And to be clear, daft punk is not, I would not call Daft Punk Deep House. They don't use those types of chords or vocals for that matter. They're a little bit different what they've branched off to do with

French touch. Again, I think if you look at what they were doing and what artists like Cassius were doing, especially in the French touch period. They were chasing a type of almost like electronic R&B, and I just think that sometimes gets missed when you discuss these things with people who've only been to a couple of music festivals in the last few years. It's coming out of the legacy of disco music,

and it's adding a lot of electronics or some of the earliest uses of 909s as a replacement for live drummers, just kind of out of practicality, but then also it sounded cool. And then those early tunes then inspired the next generations to start using the same sounds they heard that they liked.

and again with the Mr. Fingers and the Can You Feel It, these are some of the earliest tunes that established what we now take for granted as being the sound of house music. And just to take it to a personal level, when I first got out to L.A., there were a lot of places where you could go and hear Deep House, like, on the weekends. You know, a lot of us, you know, we would go to the Wet Party at the Roosevelt Hotel and places like that. Like, there was a sound that was specific to Deep House. A lot of us would call it even Jazzy House because they were sampling a lot of jazz artists.

Like, a perfect example is Armand Van Heldon's classic. flowers, which samples Donald Byrd's thing twice. So they were sampling a lot of the jazz fusion artists that we've talked about on the song. For my selection, I decided to run with Jazz Anova, who's one of my favorite producers, outfit out of Germany, who did a lot of really cool jazz influence, soul influence, Deep House. And one of my favorite songs by them is on this compilation of all their remixes from 1997 to 2000.

It looks like a lot of vital, but they were very prolific in that. period, they did a remix to M.J. Coles Sincere. Their remix to M.J. Coles Sincerely Yours remix, I know it's a long title. Thank you, Discogs. That remix, to this day, like if I'm in the best mood, I get chills all over my body during the breakdown. It's one of the most fantastic breakdowns. We've talked on this show sometimes about people using silence as a weapon. I think it's a perfect example because at some point, everything comes out except for this, I'm not. I'm amazing organ sound, and by the time they bring everything back in, I'm telling you, if you're at the right party and the crowd knows their shit, it's an amazing song.

There's a real warmth and depth to this subgenre of dance music because I think of the use of those chords and, of course, the vocals, whatever combination, from one tune to the next, you might get some of one and some of the other. But I think part of what makes it lasting as well is the emotional connection that you resonate with. Of course, you can find that in, you know, techno music and anything really, but there's something special about the use of these warm rich deep chords. Which just taps into different colors,

different emotions. I can't agree more. So those are our one genre picks for Deep House. Let us know what you think of our picks in the comments. And if you want to hear our selections, please check out

the one song playlist linked in our episode notes. Thanks for listening to the show. You can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, D-A-L-L-O and on TikTok at Diallo-R-R-Y.

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It really helps keep the show going. All right, luxury. Help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist, luxury. And I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diala Riddell. And this is one song we'll see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duenas. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo, mixing by Michael Hardman and engineering by Eric

Hicks, production supervision by Razak Boykin, and additional production support from Z. Taylor. This show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Weil, and Leslie Guam.