The Questlove Show - QLS Classic: Dan Charnas

Episode Date: October 23, 2023

Writer, radio host and music exec, Dan Charnas talks about his early days as a hip hop journalist, some of the artists he did and didn't sign in the 90s and how a simple grammar mistake can cause big trouble. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Clifford Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, my basketball and college football journey, or my career in sports media.

Well, now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifers Show. This is a place for raw, unfills of conversations with athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. So let's get to it. Listen to the Clivert Show on the I-Heart Radio app,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else.

If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice Podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slical Life 12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Course Love Supreme is a production of IHeart Radio. This classic episode was produced by the team at Pandora. Yo, yo, what up? This is Fonte, Fantigolo with this week's QLS Classic. This week, we go deep.

We talk to my man, my brother. brother, Dan Charnas, writer, radio host, and music exec. Dan talks about his early days as a hip-hop journalist, some of the artists he did and didn't sign in the 90s, and how a simple grammar mistake can cause big trouble. This one was originally released February 22nd, 2017. His new book, Dillotan, which is absolutely incredible. It releases February 1st of 2022, and it is just an amazing book and a beautiful elegy to an incredible producer. Dan Charnas, So less classic. Von Ticelo.

Yep. Suprema Role Call. Supriya Tubman. Yeah. Rosa Parks. Yeah. A million more black Americans who make America what is today? Big impact.

Suprema. Supriva Rocah. Suprema Rocah. Miss Fonte, shout out to my Jews. Yeah. Quest Love Supreme. Yeah.

Fake news. Suprema. Sraima. It's a. Met Darrell Yeah When he was defending me on television Yeah

And the people that were on the other side of the argument Yeah Didn't stand a chance, right? Supremea Roll Call Suprema Rocah Suprema Roca Thank you Linda Bean Yeah

Of LLB Yeah For your great support Yeah By LLB Rollca That's a black shit Supra

That was like two bucks ago Supreme They're incredible people. Yeah. And I want to thank Ben Carson. Yeah. Who's gonna be heading up HUD? Yeah.

That's a big job. Rocah. Supriva, Supriva, that's the best one you've ever done in your life. It's not even my lyrics. Supriva, Roll call. My name is Dan. Yeah.

I didn't meet Darrell. Yeah. But I now miss the president. Yeah. Who was played by Will Farrell. Roba. Supriva. Supriva.

Supriva. Roca. Supriva. Suprema, sub, sub, sub, sub, subprima roll call. Suprema, sub, sub, sub, suprema roll call. Ladies and gentlemen, we are, this might be the most roguest episode of Questlove Supreme, probably since the drunken Christmas special. Oh, yeah.

Classic. Yeah. Wait, L.L. Bean is black? No, I was reading the Trump tweet We should explain what we were reading first of all Yeah To celebrate Black History Month We read Trump's

Those are excerpts That was Trump quotes Black quotes from his Black history speech that he gave Oh okay Mine was just a random tweet That didn't have anything Oh I was about to say

I was like I don't know I support LLBin Yeah New Hampshire Like El LBin all it Oh okay LBin's a rapper right Yes Yeah he's LL Kooj

he's Mexican cousin. Sometimes Steve says that so serious. I was like, wait. We've managed to offend the entire immediately. Within five minutes.

This is apparently the last episode. Yeah, that was his Mexican cousin and McCammer is also Irish. Ah, I see. What? We're, and that was, like,

his best version ever. It would be remiss if we didn't, acknowledge Black History Month. Yeah. And we figured the best way to do it is to quote Cheeto Jackson. That's your man, son. Yeah. He, he, he called him Cheeto Jackson?

Cheeto Jackson. Yeah. Yeah, man, he's. Yeah. He's making shit happen. Carter G. Trumson. There you go.

Brother, he is, yo. Listen, man, I feel like we need to do something. I feel like we need to do the photo. negative version of Black History Month. Explain that because I thought that was the rest of the month. Sounds good to me. Yeah, well, because I feel like, you know, it's a lot of stuff going on now and, you know, it's, you know, we're having this war, I think, between, like, people that are globalists

and nationalists and everything and, you know, federalists. Everything, all the ISTs, all the is. So I feel like every Black History Month, we try to show, like, what black people have contributed to this country. I feel like in order to really show people what we've done, I feel like maybe it might be time for us to just remove ourselves like a month. Let it go. Like just just for one month. Oh a day without

yeah a day without niggas like The Mexicans did that and it worked. I feel like like every like for real like we take like for one month we show you for all the people just like go back to your country and if you don't like it here for one month black people we take away our music we take away all our seasoning all niggis style. So wait my mom ain't about to make a living on the music

well no I'm saying listen if I can go a month Do we have the discipline? As a guy, as a dude who's not eaten any cereal or fried chicken or whatever cheese steaks that I've been known to indulge in for as of this taping, we're in the 80s. Yeah, your resistance down. That's, yeah, that is one of the, I think that's all I can. Amir's, I can't do no more. You can't do no more. I can't do no more.

You put in your time, man. I understand. But I thought about that. Like, what if we just did, like, a cultural innema? And where we just removed ourselves just to really show, like, all these folk that really won't black people go away. If you go, and not just black people. Like, everybody.

Like, all people of color. Like, if we all love. No Shonda rise. Like, your uncle that, like, needs heart surgery, no, Dr. Patel can't help you. Ooh. He said, fuck it. You mean all the brown people. Everybody, all the color people.

Like, your hedges outside that's growing over. Nah, nigger. Guillermo left. So, you know what I mean? Giamma. I'm just saying, like, we, if we did that, I think we should, we need to let our absence show its presence. Right when basketball season start. Man.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I see what you're doing. I like that. You know what I mean? It's just a thought. It's a thought, but it's no. It would never work because black people, we ain't, we ain't going to do that.

It made for good TV, though. We should do like a TV show. Write it, you know, write it up. Which brings us to our guests. Who do we have the day with us? Fonte is This is all you dog today Oh man

We're celebrating You are kind of celebrating You are kind of your own guest Oh shit Okay Welcome I got the Vits All right

I see what you did there Okay with Jach man Today on a Questo Supreme We have a guy that Is man He has written

The What I would consider Like the hip hop Bible You know I mean He wrote a book called The Big Payback, and the best way I can describe it, I've never seen Star Wars in my life, but, you know, for the Star Wars people, it is this book that shows how all...

Wait, what? Still to this day? Still. Wow. You like I gave in last year. And that was your first time seeing it? Well, yeah. How you ain't going to see Billy Dee?

How you ain't going to see Billy Dee? I was four when that nigga was popping. I wasn't watching that. All right. I'm sorry to me to digress. Yeah, no, it was, you know, I wasn't watching that. Okay. I miss Star Wars, but hey, whatever.

So, as I was saying, Billy D was in the Empire Strikes Back. That's the second one, right? Yeah, yeah. That's the one I heard was kind of live. I heard that one was dope. Turned a Jedi. I can't believe we were having this conversation.

No, I just missed that whole Star Wars thing. Hip-hop Bible. For Star Wars people. Star Wars people, his book showed how all the Anacons became Darth Vader's. Like, if you want to see how every, all the major, players in the game, the Russell, the Rick Rubens, the Jesus Christ, everybody, everyone who's someone in the world of hip hop, if you want to see how they became who they are, this book shows it.

And it shows how hip hop played a role. It starts off in 1978, I want to say? Is it 78? 68. Oh, shit. I missed the whole decade. Technically, okay, well, the beginning of the book, which is amazing to me, which I was You know, no, no, no.

Y'all ain't even said the man name yet. I know that. We got to build it up. Build it up. Build it all. So, we got to build it up. So, no, it's 1966. It starts with DJ Hollywood, and it ends with the election of Barack Obama.

And it shows how hip hop played a role in all of that and all just the many, the thread. Hip hop was the thread that ran through all of that. And it's an incredible read. And on top of that, he's played a hand in some of my favorite hip hop. pop records and he's also the writer, creator, well, one of the writers, co-creators of the breaks on VH1, which I played a small... Don't do that. A little bit, you know what I'm saying?

Big role. And nah, and he's like, you know, real good friend of mine, very knowledgeable guy. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, give it up for Mr. Dan Charnas. Yeah. Bluck-up, pluck, a, blocker, blocker. Break it up, break it up. Well, the thing was, I'd... The thing that grabbed me about...

the payback book is the fact that you really started the book in the 1800s. And what I wanted to ask you, what I always wanted to ask you, was what were your feelings about Hamilton? Because you, now, now, that's the one thing I wanted to ask, and I never got to ask him. Like, was he inspired by reading your book first? Or because you made the comparison

and compared Alexander Hamilton to, you put him in hip-hop terms. Right. In the same way that Hamilton actually does. So did you, assuming that you've seen it? I think we both read Chernos' book at the same time and had different reactions to it. He was a playwright and he started on this amazing work.

And I was working on a book about hip-hop and it just made sense. The guy who invented American money lived and died in heart. that's the first sentence of the book and so it ends and sugar hill is Alexander hamilton's estate that's where he lived yeah so i when i heard about hamilton i i i just no no i thought it's like oh my god he gets it he really gets it somebody else gets it and lynn knew something else that i couldn't believe anybody else knew is that the very first rap record really the first rap on record like like Bronx style Harlem style emceeing was not uh sugar hill gang was not rapper's delight was not uh king tim the third it was on the soundtrack the broadway recording

of run the original soundtrack recording for runaways by liz swatos in 1978 there was a rap song about the blackout on that album and lynn tweeted about it like wow he knows that i've never met the man I mean, we have the same, like, agent, but I've never, I've never met him. Really? No. Man. He's brilliant. Bring linen.

Bring linen. All right. You have a surprise for you tonight. The enigma of Miranda. So, have you seen Hamilton? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, okay, I always wanted to know what the feelings were. Yeah. I mean, it's not. I'm glad you took that position, though, because. Because we live in Harlem, so we feel like really connected to the soil of the place, you know, and, you know, and, you know, my, son. He plays Little League baseball in Jackie Robinson Park, which is right on that cliff under Sugar Hill. And it's just like you feel the presence there of that. It's... And is that, that's where

you were born a race or no? I was not born in Harlem. Where were you born? I was born a few blocks south of Harlem. Lennox Hill Hospital on 77th Street. So, yeah, so as a non-New Yorker, how do you differentiate? As an as a non-New Yorker? Oh, well, From me as a non-New Yorker asking you, how do you differentiate what's Harlem and what is? 96th Street was the, you know, the border on the east side, yeah. Okay. So 96 is considered upper west? I live on 96th.

That's your hood. The border between the Upper East Side and Harlem. Now I live in Harlem, but that's been a traditional border. It gets a little tricky because I've been looking for a few cribs or whatever. and when I went to check out a spot in Harlem, they've now rechristened Sugar Hill as in Hamilton Row. And when I asked, they were big, they kind of kicked it to me like,

yeah, this is just an excuse for us to add an extra zero to the price. It's like a whole other level. Listen, a lot of that stuff gets named for real estate. Like Morningside Heights used to be Harlem Heights. But then when the name was out of vogue, they changed it. It's like the stages of gentrification, you change the name. Plus, anything heights. Like, that just sound real project to me.

Like, in round our way, in the south, like, heights, gardens. Y'all have heights? Lincoln Heights. Heights, gardens. What's another? Houses the J-Jex. Homes are the Jax. Any of them, like, oh, yeah, oh, yeah, it's real.

Yeah, it's, yeah, it's a lot of wig vouchers. It's real, it's real out there. So that's where I stayed at. But, so I want to go in the words of our cult leader. I want to start at the beginning. You've always wanted to say that. I want to start the beginning. So I'm going to ask as if, you know,

because me and you have had a lot of conversations about, you know, everything. Oh, this is like Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall interviewed. Okay, so tell us the beginning, like, you know, what was your upbringing like as a kid? Well, I guess the most important thing about my upbringing is that, you know, my mom raised me in this. town that was in between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. So I grew up with a lot of, you know, Soul and Funk.

What town is that? Columbia, Maryland. Oh. Yeah. So it was... Are you from there, too? No, no. No, no.

Yes, you are. You're no bad. Are you from a lot of places? I'm from the DMV, but not, like, Columbia. Because Columbia is kind of not... She's from everywhere. You know, like you said, it's on the edge. It's in between D.C. and Baltimore.

You're cooler than Baltimore. You know, I grew up listening to WHU. Howard University Radio. I grew up listening to, you know, V-103 in Baltimore. So it was an interesting sort of class and race integration. It had an interesting place to grow up. And yet it was the most segregated time in American culture. It was like post-disco, you know, all the radio formats were really, really strict.

And, you know, I had my sort of, I mean, I grew up with Earthwin and Fire and Stevie Wonder and all that. But I had my epiphany with, you know, more bounce of the ounce in 1980. That was my thing. I never heard this song on the radio stations that my preppy friends listened to. What are these other radio stations? And that began, I sort of got politicized by that a little bit. What was your people's playing in the crib? What was mom and dad?

Oh, Earthwind and Fire, Marvin Ging. Oh, what? Stevie Wonder. Yeah. Wow. Oh, so you raised on the essential nutrients and... Yeah, the soul food. My mother is still angry at me that I stole her Earth Wind and Fire records when I left for college.

That's dope, man, that they would listen to. to that. So that was, was that your entryway of like saying, hey, I want to do this one day? Like, I want to do it for myself. Um, I was actually, when I went to college, I was actually thinking of becoming a, like a school teacher, high school teacher. Um, and my major was Afro-American Studies. They called it Afro-American Studies at that point. Um, and I did, uh, a, I just decided that I would do my thesis on, um, I called it musical apartheid in America. Say what, wait, First, let me just ask you this, because we talked about your background,

but this is radio, so let me just not assume you're not African-American. I know, and Jewish. So I always wonder, we get that shit confused on the top. Wait a minute, y'all didn't know that either

because y'all would have been celebrating. What? Oh, wow, y'all didn't know. No. You thought he was like, John B? No, you'd never assume because, you know, black comes in many forms, you know what I'm saying?

Mariah Carey's black, so why couldn't he? It didn't, okay. But my question, because I asked that because I'm always interested when non- blacks do a major like Afro-American studies. Like that's interesting to me. Like what made you...

I did. No, for real. You did have a registered? I majored in West African music. He did. He deals with them. Well, that has nothing to do with that. Did you say West African? I did.

I've been to Africa more than you have. I've never been there. No, I've never... Most of us have never been there. You'll find that with... I've been to South Africa. They're artists. Most regular black people...

Yeah, not. Regular black people are not. We've never been there. The only people that can afford to get to Africa those that can exploit it. So I'm interested in... How you do you win Pop, wait a minute

Where is the set Bompon Bump Bomp Bong No this deserves Cingular Let's do So now that we have That's interesting So now we have

Two Jewish men Who majored in that Both of y'all I would be interested In y'all I'd like the Toto song Africa That's about That's about all I got

Sugar for the win I can't Yeah we yeah I thought you do Well no He's a member of the tribe He's my brethren M-O-T.

Joey Lewis in the noon. Wait, what's the answer for real, no. Seriously, what makes you major in African-American? More about some of the house. Just, okay. Okay. I just, okay. Bad. Okay, I'll be honest with you. I was kind of with you. Yeah. I mean, you had so much flavor. I just thought,

okay, you one of us. Like a Sean King? Yeah. I didn't want to assume. MC search. I think it's the beard in the glasses. I think that's what it is. It could be Latin, too, you know? I'm just saying. But okay, now I know. Man, y'all have made them Steven Seagal.

If I've come without the beard, it would have been completely different. Yeah, the beard, kind of, you give it a little clay top. You left your yarmulke at home and you gave them with the beard. My pay is. How come the Beastie Boys and Rick Rubin don't automatically give us cred right from the beginning? Well, okay. For having bounce or funk or whatever you're talking about. It's weird though.

I don't even know. Just that's wrong. Listen, as for me, when I'm not. first heard the original maroon era parties getting rough like i thought they were porto rican like have you heard rock hard and all right maybe not rock hard but definitely with this party's getting rough have you have you heard

this party's getting rough uh fonte yeah i have i remember we talked about in the previous yeah so i mean basically i've thought they were portarican and it wasn't until you know i opened the inside sleeve a license to ill. I was like, oh, they are not Puerto Rican. Well, also, I guess the way they were dancing on cheese on it and crush groove, I should have known that, yes. Yeah, and I guess Puerto Rican for me, it never, because I was in the South,

so we didn't really have a lot of Puerto Rican, so we just, it was either black or white. It was Nicaraguan, El Salvadorian. Yeah, oh, wow. Yeah, that's a whole not, you don't remember this Dan in D.C. This is, no, okay. Maybe they're Raghans hadn't gotten there yet Because that was like the early 80s

Oh Okay That was when all the Coke was getting moved Listen I don't know So Dan After after after Is there any more Ducey left Man

Well anyway Nobody answered my question You should just assume In the future That all Jewish people are funky Well yeah Some of the I'm just joking

But I'm saying you shouldn't I mean Certainly You know You can He was a bit it by your statement. There is a bit of a special relationship.

I don't want to make too much of it, but there is a bit of a... With the funk or... Between the three of us? I'm feeling it. Now, what do you mean? Between, you know, black folks and Jews in America.

Yeah, y'all had a lot a few times. Sam. Here we are. We're on the same gang. Civil rights. I'm just saying you shouldn't be surprised that there's a Jew in the room who has, you know,

who has bounce or whatever. You can't even say it. You said punk about flavor. Flavor, that shit. Flavor, that's what you know. In an MC Search episode, I said that search episode, I said that search had more flavor. Yeah, because that was the term of the time. Yeah, he had flavor.

A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me. Clever Taylor the fourth. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way,

this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes

of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space. for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream,

this is right where you need to be. Listen to The Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest, the director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl,

Eric Galco joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slical Life 12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by it. a truck. I thought how could this happen to me?

The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

All right, if you're just joining us, this is Quasal Supreme. Yeah. And if you're still with us. For our Jewish listeners, I hope we pitch y'all off. No, we're here with Dan Chon, is author of The Big Payback, Misen Plus, and also writer for The Breaks, and a whole bunch of other flash shit

that we're about to get into. All right, so tell me how college you went to... Boston University. Boston University. What year? I graduated 89. Okay, okay. You know so?

You got connects? I knew, but I don't want to play that game, like, you know, start naming proper nouns. Did you know a Lloyd Starritt? Mm-mm. Okay. I'm Google searching that shit. All right.

However, I did go to college the same time as Paul Beatty. Okay. So there's that. Paul Beatty. Who's Paul Beatty? Who's Paul Bought to sell out, just won the Man Booker Prize. Wow. College friends, man.

Damn. Read a book. I am. I'm going to read Dan's book. Okay. So what was your major in college? Afro-American Studies. Oh, that was like your major major.

This is why I got excited. Wow. No, that's real. Especially in Boston. Right, exactly. Dan, do you look at me like, what's wrong with you? I'm saying that. I'm saying that. I'm like, you went to Boston University.

Yes. You majored in Afro-American Studies. You came from the DMV. That's like a lot of different things. Like you came from a whole freaking different culture in the DMV, went to Boston and then studied Afro-Mans. What was that like? Was it a culture shock kind of?

like going up there from? Yes, because they didn't have any radio stations that played any funk, soul, R&B, you know. So that was my- You graduated in 89. So you went there in 86? 85, right. So, of course, this is how, okay, I know this is leaving, okay. So all I have to listen to are the college stations and all they're playing is like this

electro and hip-hop, right? So that was my induction into more hip-hop, because hip-hop was always just sort of like a subset of R&B to me. And then it just started to become more important to me. And then, you know, when you're in college, it's the first time I ever read Malcolm X. It was my sort of really like kind of getting politicized. And then the music was getting political at the same time.

So by the time I graduated, it was the only thing that was important is the only thing I wanted to do. I wanted to be involved in the business, you know, somehow to help this culture become, everything that it could and should be. And I think I said I'd written this thesis, you know, honors thesis at the end of college called musical apartheid in America and sort of analyzed white America's relationship to black culture over a 400 year period. And so the dynamic of, right, ambivalence. We love it, we hate it, right? We love you, we hate you. And I sort of tracked that throughout 400 years and it ended with hip hop. And that's how I got to meet

a lot of the people in the business because I went and I interviewed them. And one of those people was Bill Stephanie, who was the president of Def Jam at the time. And Bill, you know, I sent him a copy of my thesis when it was done and he, you know, said when you come to New York, come look me up.

You know, maybe I'm starting a record company. Maybe we can work together. And what was funny about that was, right the evening that I was supposed to meet with him, the village voice story came out with Professor Griff talking about Jews and jewelry. So the record company got put on this. Eventually became Soul Records, right?

Yeah, S-O-U. That's what you. I thought steps. Oh, wait. Soul. The first one. We had young black teenagers. Right. Yes.

So Bill and Hank, Bill left Def Jam to form this record company with Hank and Chuck. And then, you know, Griff, you know, was talking to Dave Mills at the Washington Times and R.J. Smith at the voice picked it up. And then it was just, it was like post. Spone for a year. What was the controversy for those that don't know? What happened was that Professor Griff said something to the effect of why do you think they call it jewelry? Wow.

Because of the Jews. Yeah. It is, though, right? I'm like, is that, I don't know. I don't know. In that time, I mean, that was crazy. I assume. Said Amir Thompson.

I've always assumed it was. At that time, that was crazy. I remember, I remember that shit was. Yeah, like Griff. They had to cut him all. They had to kind of like excommunicating or whatever. Like shit was, no, no, for real. Like, that shit was like, wow.

That's just interesting because I'm looking at Steve's face. That's one of the questions I forgot to ask MC Search was there was a confrontation between him and Griffith. The reason why Def Jam had to put guards in the, you know, that was one of the main reasons. Like it was a lot of confrontations. I remember that summer. So that put everything on hold ones. And that kind of put soul on hold.

Yeah. So what I ended up doing was getting a job in the mailroom of profile records. And that was the home of Rob Bays, Run DMC, special ed, right in the summer of, like, the fall of 1989. So my first job was answering phones and stuffing envelopes of profile. So you're saying that had that not happened, so would have gotten developed by 1989 instead of 1991. That's right. Wow. That would, yeah.

So I wonder if those young black teenagers and the son of berserk album were ready to go in 1990 like earlier than when it got released. Because it didn't come out to what? Like 91? 91. Yeah. I do recall Bill still waiting

for those things to be complete in 1990. Like it was, he was still, you know. Those two records, man, are like, to me, I mean, as far as like, I love anything and everything that the bomb squad has ever done as a production unit but it's so weird because do you have a product musically you could be hip hop or whatever that you hold near and dear to your heart that you know won't translate to anyone else anyone else for you like to me i like if i were at the source at the time when those records came out i'd like i would have

why I make both those records because it's just so many layers of genius to them, at least from the production side. But, you know, I know the average person would just give it three, whatever. The guys at the source love that song. Well, they love Changes the style. Yeah, they gave that a classic rate. Well, they gave it a four.

Yeah, change the style. I think at the time, if you remember that. Oh, I've memorized. Oh, yeah. Welcome to the record. Right. Right. Wow.

Yeah. I don't want to scare you either. And I hate to change the subject, but you know what I remember? I remember your columns. I think they were a rap sheet, right? Yeah. You were a columnist. That's how I first got to know you.

Shout out to Dreamhampton. Yeah, man. She hooked me up. Man. So with those records, soul gets, those soul is on hold. You're at profile. I was even one. We were talking about this today, man.

Like, do mail rooms still even exist anymore? I really don't know, actually. Yes. Well, I don't know it. Record labels, but NBC. At NBC, there's always someone pushing.

The mail is flowing. That's the way. I get all my, this out of my mail gets sent to NBC now. So everything, like cards from family. Bills. Everything.

Bills. No, because people have like, people be like, what's your address? And I'm like, well, do you want me to get said letter or package or yeah, so all, I just, you know, that's my house. they'll bring it to you. I sleep there.

Yeah. I mean, some weekends, I'll make it a weekend there. Well, shit, I guess it is a house then. Don't sit on that couch. But record companies barely have offices, so do they, I don't. Yeah, I don't think that the mailroom. Which is interesting because no mail rooms and no interns. Mailrooms?

That's where he started. Okay, so let's. But there's no mail room. Let's get out of the mailroom now. There's no. It's happened after. That's a goddamn mail room. No.

So at that time, were you getting, were you like, getting to please listen in my demo? Like, were you getting that? Yeah, I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't, the thing about profile at the time, there really weren't any, it was a hip hop label. I mean, it had a lot of hip hop on it, but there were no like hip hop heads there. You know, Brian Chin, who signed

Rob Bass and Special Ed, he loved hip hop, but his first love was dance music, right? So I guess that's why Corey gave me a job, you know, listening to demo tapes and doing A&R, and I was not very good at it, but who were your signings or who what what you say you weren't good at well I mean I just wasn't successful in getting anybody across like I found Chino XL when I was you know at profile but I was not successful in making the sale and getting him signed so but it wasn't long you know while I was

working at profile I also was writing for the source they had were in the process of moving from Boston to New York so were you in that first summer issue the LL one I wrote the LL cover story Ha! Sorry, cover your ears. All right. You wrote that cover story. The mama said knock you out.

Yes. I remember, oh, man. The nerd in me is really about to... Go in. Go in. Oh, man. Your Lego heart just like exploded. Yeah, exactly.

So excited. That issue, I mean, that probably next to the first five issues of Grand Royal Magazine. Wow. Grand Royal. Like somewhere in one of those 18 storage units are like I mean I would buy the source

like three each and just preserve them because when I first got that LL issue and the EZE issue I'm like that's the first time I ever saw people truly understand and

really wax poetic about hip hop culture in a way that Roland Stonewood or Cream Magazine like I'd read those magazines and just wonder like damn like I wonder what's like

for someone to write about hip hop culture that way I didn't know you wrote that cover story I was just shot in the dark that's crazy and that was what 1990?

1990 that was 90 I wrote the public enemy cover story the Ice Cube cover story and then the LL one oh man did you review America's Most Wanted I did well it was more like

it was more like a it was more like a like an essay on Ice Cube. Okay. Well, I know that Ice Cube issue. You didn't. No. Okay. Okay. Well, but I remember that was like the summer issue, right? Yeah. Yeah, America's the most one. It got a five. How about I say yeah, he got five. Tribe got a five.

Edutainment got a five. It did? Yes. It did. A fourth album got a five that I... 1990. And I'm also shocked that I knew who, I knew you guys were the deal when something didn't sit right with me with fear of a black planet but it was kind of like

you know I'll ride with it you know one of those things where it's just like probably how you feel about phrenology no no let's go there I was the same

I mean there's you know you give you act like I'll let it slide and just I'll let it go well okay We'll talk about phrenology. So fear of a black planet, you didn't, you weren't all the way on board with that one?

Here's the thing, though. I mean, even though the thing that still holds it in light, now mind you, I mean, it's 25 years later, whatever, you know, the pitchforks right up of it. They gave it a perfect 10 and really made it, like, presented in the way that even I didn't see it back then. Gotcha. something was missing and then I realized that that something was Sadler.

So Sadler was sort of like on half the record. Eric Sadler had sort of made his graceful exit. And I couldn't quite place where, you know, some songs, I was a little, the Polywana Cracker was like, okay. I like, I fuck with that one. I mean, it was a nice kind of pace. I, look, it's a masterpiece of a record. but I still went for America's Most Wanted.

Like that to me was... No, if we're doing... Of course. Quinsessential Bomb Squad. Yeah. And even for that matter, Belbitt DeVos Poison album... No, that was Bomb Squad too.

Yeah, it was. I know. So for me, of those three records, like, I was kind of weird that. It was like in the bronze. The least bomb squadie? Well, no, it was a bronze to me. And there was a review.

They gave it three and a half mics in that source issue. Wow. And I was like, whoa, this is, I said, wow, they're not salivating over this. And it wasn't like the dismissive, you know, spin magazine like, oh, this is ghetto music. I hate this. You know, it was like a well-informed. And I was like, wait, I kind of feel, I think I agree with this.

So it's so weird that I didn't realize you were that era of old. So how, no, but it was, it was those first five issues. That from that's a brand new being an issue That to me Because off a one got five too right In two issues Two issues later Okay

There was so much ambition In that era and those issues Like just to really have a voice that was It Exclusively dedicated to hip hop And just smart And political And just the people there were

I mean that was Dream And Kierna And you know Maddie Was Sheck Was he still? Of course. What was your era there?

Were you there from the beginning to? I was there when they were still in Boston when that summer issue was being written. And then I left to go work for Rick Rubin in... 91. So 91 was sort of my swan song with the source. Do you remember your last issue? The last article I wrote, oh man, I don't even remember. It was...

I don't remember... Sometime in 91, I think, was my last piece. or 91 or early 92. Well, yeah, that's as classic as it gets. Do you remember the albums you reviewed? I did cover stories and like feature articles. I didn't really do the album reviews because that was the James Bernard.

That was like the core group, the mind squad, you know. And I sometimes I regret not participating. Stopping my writing career to go into the record business now feels like, you know. I mean, because I had a lot of catching up to do when I moved back to New York. I went to go work for Rick Rubin, you know, in L.A. for about 13. It ended up in there for 13 years, but I, like, not having that writing career going forward, I thought. So you went from Profile to The Source? Went from Profile and I, you know, just wrote for the source while I worked at Profile.

And what year was Profile? 89, October 89 to April 1991. So you were there for the first, was Nardi Byron? Nature's first join on. Nah, that was Tommy Boy. Who was it? That was, um, 90s.

That was, um, so who was not? Honestly, the first onyx. Who? Yeah, the first onyx was the one. And we do it like this.

Oh. So wait, what was the roster? Just because I'm now I'm profile. Run DMC. Rob Bass. Special ed.

Quit poor righteous teachers, which is my very first record was rocked this funky joint, meaning promotion. Right. L.A. Star. I don't know if you remember her.

Yeah. I remember. She got to do. Did she have a bowl tooth or? Yes. I remember LA Star. She was on B-Boy Records for a while. Then Brian Chin signed her and she made a pretty good album, but she got into this battle

with Tretch at the New Music Seminar, this MC battle. And he said the only kind of star you could be is a Monstar. Oh, and that just ended the career. Was she the line of the whole? Was she not cute? She was not. No. I liked her.

Okay. You know, that was nothing bad to say about L.A. Star. Oh, so he's just ended her career right there? Oh, shit. Yo, it seemed like, it's funny, because you said Paul Wright's teacher was your first record that you promoted. For some reason, it seemed like he got really well received

in my area, like the DMV area. Did you feel like it was easier to promote because you kind of felt... Yeah, although there weren't really a lot of mixed shows in D.C at the time, because remember, they weren't playing it on WPGC at that time. Not KISS. Definitely not H-U-R.

What was it like, okay, when you left in 91, did you have to work back from Hill? then I have to back from hell run DMC. What was that? Was that 91? Yes, I did. Oh, so here's the story, right?

Here's the story. So, man. Rick comes call. I literally just get a call out of the blue and the receptionist says Rick's on the phone and I knew it was him. I knew it was Rick Ruben. Yeah.

Not because anybody told me he was calling but because, I don't know, Chino XL and I had been working on some demos and we had been talking a little bit and we just did like this, it's almost like this little incantation to sort of bring him out of the ether. And when he said, Rick's on the phone, I said,

this is him. And I picked up, it's Rick Rubin. So apparently Bill Stephanie had given him my number, whatever, anyway. Why was I telling you this story? Oh, the story, right. So Rick brings me out to Los Angeles. It's sort of like a courtship, you know. He's thinking of hiring me for Deaf American. One morning, I'm staying at the riot hide on sunset,

and one morning he calls, and he says, come downstairs, we're going to breakfast with Russell. So like Russell's in town So we go to the Beverly Hills hotel And Russell comes down And Russell's talking a mile a minute And Rick is laughing And he recognizes me

Suddenly Russell recognizes me As the kid at profile Who promotes You know His brother's record And he says And the single at the time Was this song called Faces

Which was this really New Jack Swing You know So what do you think of Faitheth? and I said, and I said, and I said, and I just the wrong answer, I was such a punk. I was like, well, Russell, you know, I just think as far as rap, R&B fusion, I think the kids are really listening to it in Vogue and, you know, they don't really want to hear rappers doing it the opposite way. Faith is of the louder record than in Vogue. I went into a club, that shit was so loud.

It is much louder. And Rick is losing his mind. Rick must have called three different people in the car after we left that breakfast saying, and Russell said, it's a louder record. And that's why it's better. And that's what I saw, like, the nature of their relationship is that Russell makes Rick laugh, you know? And so it's like a romance. In a good way or a bad way.

Right, right. I think in a Rick way. Do you remember faces? Yes. Dude, I had the back from hell album. Wait, just one. You know, I got a Reminded

His Faces by 1990 era Run DMC And the thing was Because it was Faces But the single before that was pause Pause right Which was even more

Kind of New Jack Swingy But they got away with pause Jam Master J. Ron for the first time I'm Jay Something something Make up the tray Right

And I'm bring up to my homie Stanley Brown Bebebeepoo Carol with the keyboard Right Wait since you worked there I always wanted to know there's a moment

the very last five seconds of the record where Run's just like Yo take that bullshit off That bullshit is bullshit I always wanted to know if that was Run finally having a realization that they made some bullshit

The second worst album of their career On that label Lear was so mad when that didn't sell. I have a copy of a memo that he sent to my boss at the time. You want the Ice Cube remix? Ice Q remix of Back from Hell. That happened?

Yeah, I think I remember that. There was an Ice Cube. It was Chuck D and Ice Cube and Run D.C. Oh, my God. Back from Hell remix. Yeah, so because at this time, and I wanted to ask you about this, if you were involved. Because at this time,

that was after tougher than leather and, you know, Run DMC had been kind of away for a minute because they were going, they were worn with Dev Jam. Well, Warren, you know,

Russ wanted to get them on Dev Jam and profile was like, no. Did you have any input or at that time, like, you know, working directly with them, like to try to say like, hey, fellas, you know, this.

No, no, I mean, you know, they were, they were authentic. At that point working on their own. I mean, I was just the kid, you know, bringing dat tapes back and forth from the studio. That was, yeah. So when you hear this record, like, I mean, what?

I have zero ownership of it. Spiritually. Financially. So for you, it's just straight up, like, I just got to work it and it's just the job. And, I mean, listen, they got a, they got a certain amount of respect, you know, regardless, right? You know, I take the record to Red.

Red Bull play it. Take it to Chuck. Chuck will play it. It's not. Okay, what else was there? It wasn't sticky. Did you work special ed's legal album? I did.

That, wow. That's my shit. Go on, let's move it. So, no, but that whole album. No, that whole, that fucking, you wish you could. The five, do. We, the five men in the mic. Yes.

We do. Yep. That entire. I just, I just found that record. I had to pay the Astronom. astronomical amount of it for the CD. Oh, it's out of print. Yeah, it is. It's out of print. Out of print. Yes. But, yo, that's so slept on.

It was so entirely slept on. Howie T was great. So I just want to know how did Rick feel about your answer to Russell? Because remember, you said the whole reason that you were coming to L.A. is because of the possibility of you working with Rick. And then you said you felt uncomfortable with the way that you made it answered the question with Russell. So Rick was laughing his ass off. So he was happy. So he was happy for what you said.

Okay. And so were you hired? And then Russell called and left a message on Rick's machine. He said, if you don't hire that kid, I'm going to hire him. He don't know nothing, but I like his attitude. I'm glad they were amicable at least. They really were.

Russell used to call me like in the mid-90s when I was working for him when they were really, when Russell was trying to put together his polygram deal and get off of Sony, they were heading into their, They're trying to put their 10th anniversary thing together. And Rick still had not finished the negotiations. And he was like, can you, you know, can you get to, Rick is not doing anything. He needs to move forward.

So he would call me sometimes and ask if I could push it forward. So when you went to Rick, is this before or after the original ghetto boys, uh, debut on his label? I believe that was during. During. Yeah. Oh, man. So he had just signed them. and then Geffen dropped

Deaf American because of it. Right. And that's when I started to, you know, have that little, like four-month courtship period. And that's when, you know, we got the, I guess, we can't be stopped, right?

That was when that... That was, yeah. The option did drop on. It dropped on rap a lot. And I think that Rick felt some pressure, not really pressure, because Mo Austin... So he had an option to have,

we can't be stopped before. where they went to rap a lot? That's right. That's right. And I think he decided, once he moved to Warner Brothers, that, you know, he had fought well enough for the first one and that he didn't feel very strongly about We Can't Be Stop, which is ironic.

Really? Because that was the one. Yeah, that was the one. And it's called We Can't Be Stop. I mean. Yeah, the first one was it was gripping on that. Was it gripping on the other level? Which is basically the same record.

Yeah. Some engineering was a little different. And did they not add an H to ghetto boys on the original, I think the original pressing of the, G-H-T-T-O? G-E, yeah, yeah. Right, but then they went back to G-E-T-O. Right, but initially when they were on Deaf American, they tried G-E-R-E.

He was on Deaf-American when he got shot, right? Which would? Yeah, he got shot in the eye. And so that was, you know, we were still, like, concerned about his health and everything. and, but, you know, now we're getting at the era where, like, the sum of my A&R mistakes far outweigh any successes. Oh, tell us. You know.

Oh, I mean, what were your mistakes? Yeah, because. Okay. Here's an example. Paul Stewart was probably the best, you know, all around talent scout in Los Angeles at the time. And, you know, Paul brings me House of Paine's demo. And there's this song on it called John. and I love it.

And I give the tape to Rick. I'm dub a tape for Rick, and Rick calls me. I said, did you listen to House of Pain? He says, yeah, I love that song. Jump around. A lot of jumping. That's a good Rick. That's a good Rick.

That's a good Rick. It's perfect. And he says, I really like that song. I like it too. He says, but do you think they're any other, do think they have any other songs on this? Like, do you think they, and I said, no, I think this is the only one they've got.

And then we just let it go. And a course word. We were right, but we were, oh, so wrong. Who else? He didn't give us another one day. I know this is like, this is your greatest missus. Really? The Far Side demo.

What? That's the first hip-hop's album I ever listened to all the way through. Listen. What? If you're just now joining us, this is Quest Love Supreme. How, man? We're here with Dan Charnas. And he is talking about all his.

greatest misses. So how did you how did you miss out on that one? What was the story? Oh, yet another, you know, sort of Paul Stewart, incredible demo, and I liked it. I guess you know what was, I was just on some shit. I was like, I work for Rick Rubin and everything I do has to be perfect and, you know,

I just don't know, I don't know if this adds up, it seems kind of silly, you know, and I don't, you know, it's stupid, you know, because once I heard for better or for worse, oh, man. Wait, that was on the demo? No, it was not on the demo. It was not on the demo. It was, It was Mr. Officer and its current state. But passing me by was on. Oh.

And you passed it by. Straight up. I passed it by. Damn. Was it you or Rick didn't feel it? It's not that I didn't feel it. I just didn't get behind it fast enough. You know what I mean?

You didn't fight to. I didn't. Yeah. So, yeah. It took me a minute because when your mama came out, I fronted on it. Yeah, your mama was like, I fronted on your mom. Mama. The remix of your

Mama too, when no, the remix of your mama? That was whack. And even they said that. I'm sorry. Your mama remix is whack.

They did say that. Damn, they did. It's whack, dude. It sucks dick. Yeah. In the album. Yeah, but then when we got the record and

when for better for words came on, that was one of those moments. That's the first. time that like I heard Fender Road sound like water rushing. And to look at the album cover and to hear that song like it just the personality like I think that's the last time I got lost and watching and you know like when your kid that when people talk about like 70s experiences of looking at album covers and listening like. like I just got lost in a total trance like that song perfectly encapsulated to me what they were about and and then with the guitar that that that song made me hire made me

fuck defrault that was my tribute um no but i that that's also the song that made me instantly hire scott stork stork to the roots We were keyboardless And then when I heard that I was like No I want that on my record And then Rich was like I got this guy living at my crib On my floor

He could play that Damn He brought Scott To the studio the next day And it was like All right you're in the group Damn So that was

So he passed on the far side But I won the far side So that was Man that was what 91 it is 93 Yeah Yeah, man.

92. 93. So, in talking about your time at Deaf American, and I was, I was just always curious. Like, it was something, I don't know if it was a branding thing. I don't know what it was, but like, they never, that label never seemed to, I mean, other than Sir Mix Light, which I mean, we can, you know, going to depth about. But other than that, it was, I don't know, like,

just as a fan at that time, their releases didn't seem to have, have like that I guess that kind of like a deaf jam you know what I'm saying that just I gotta buy this you know what I'm saying but the records were dope like that would be my fault how was that your fault how was that your fault

I'm just you know because I mean like the knots that was like world ultimate was my the knots was on yeah you sign them yeah yeah yo I swear to God dog I listen to on the

air maybe no exaggeration maybe nine hours in a row I kept that shit on loop all Christmas Day just yeah on the air just to the eye that was my record

oh my god that whole like when we first came to Los Angeles mixed tapes was and see mix tapes I wasn't big on I was like yeah mix tapes we used to make fun of mix tape bus stops was the shit though bus stops was the one that's how we met the jazzy bad nasties.

Ah, that's right. They were in that video, they were in the video for bus stops. When we first came to Los Angeles, I met Dorn on her way to shoot, like, shoot a nonce video. They were in a bus stop video. And they gave me a cassette of it, and we were listening to it. And we kind of clown. Like, I used to sell, mixed tapes, without a lot of an emcee.

But you got them beats. You know, like, the songs that you make fun of that suddenly. We made fun of it so much that suddenly became our shit. And then it was like, yo, we got to get them on stage and rock with us. Like, just... Okay, so you're producing. So we didn't... We got to get into that your time as a producer.

So how did you make that transition? It was more like these were artists, like, you know, Chino and Quest back in New York. They didn't have a place to make... Quest the Mad Lad, yeah. So, you know, they would come to my apartment, you know, on 9th and 20th right there in Chelsea when it wasn't a gentrified neighborhood. And, you know, so it was just they liked some of the stuff they were doing with me and I managed to, you know, get a couple in there, which was good. So you were, and you were making beats on the SP at that time. I was making beats on an ASR 10 and a Roland W30 and then I bought King Tex.

SB200 from him and added that to the repertoire. And how did you learn it? How did you, because I mean, it wasn't no manuals, no shit, I imagine. It's just trial and error. Yeah. An error and error and error. What did you produce on their records? Well, for Tino Excel, I did a song called Rise, which was the last song on the album.

And Quest the Mad Lad, I did a song called 101 Things to Do while I'm with your girl. So you, you, yo, I was so mad at you for using that brick sample man. Oh, yeah. That was my, wait, I hate that every, every thing that he's done is like a childhood memory of mine. No, that living for the mind sample is like, I got that shit when I was six years old. That was the first eight track I ever got as a kid. Damn, you actually got an eight track for, wow. This is Sleepy Brown's Pop.

Stop singing. What? Finally a reference. Yeah, living from the mind from Rick. They were from Atlanta's sleepy. Yeah, his dad, Jimmy Brown. Of course he came from funk. Yeah, but when that was like,

not even like, you know, like records when you're making beats and like, oh, I'm a sample that one day. But then there's like records from your childhood. When I heard that shit, I was so, I've never been so mad at a sample used. I'm sorry. I was like, ah. No, but it was perfect, man.

Like, even the, wait, what was the drum break? It was New Birth. Did you flip it? Yeah. It's, it's a new,

it's a kick. Boom, boom, cock, it was, yeah. So what a point in your career did you know?

Because you went from, I'm just, I'm backtracking. I'm like, you went from mailroom, A&R, writer,

and then you, when did you know that you could even make beats? Like, when did you even? We did it all along, you know, like even in college, you know, worked on music and stuff. I was in the inner strength gospel choir. I was the bass player, the inner strength gospel choir.

Now then I didn't know. Whoa, that's African American States where you had. Yeah. When you were the bass player. You know you good. The inner strength gospel choir. You're a musician by nature anyway. That's just something that you left out at the beginning.

But, I mean, a bass player, that's not something that just you do. Failed musicians become producers Yeah Was this a failed producers become A&R? Wait, can I ask Was this a black gospel choir? Yes Someone was

I forgot who it was Shut up Bill When's the last white gospel choir You saw? I'm just saying I don't think there's a lot of them Richard Scholar Look at you two

No Someone during the Voodoo Tour joke It was like When made a no penal that well He's like man if your bass player is a white boy in an all-black group, you know he a motherfucker. Yeah.

Yeah. So you're the bass player? It was. And did you learn, like, were you formally trained in music? Was it all just by ear, or how did you learn? Mostly by ear. Right. So, wait, because we're just given through his whole history.

That Quest record was so slept on, though. It was, criminally. How did you feel when he got the rap page discovered, though? Well, here's the story behind that. because Sheena was editing at the time. Right, right. And Sheena was a friend. And she heard the advance and assigned Bobby Garcia to do the cover story. So Bobito wrote that cover story.

Right. But here's the thing. We were putting our rap releases, not through Wea, which was the big Warner distribution company. We were putting them through Tommy Boys independent distribution. And Tom Silverman felt that we didn't have enough radio play on the two singles we had put out to justify putting out the album right away. And we sort of panicked and I'm like, you know, I don't know if we have another single on this. Let's do four more songs. And it was a terrible time for a quest and unfair to him, you know, in terms of he'd done this beautiful album and, you know, we were. finding ourselves doing more records. And then finally, Sheena came along and said,

well, listen, you're either going to release that album and I'll put the cover out, or if you don't release the album, I'm not doing the cover. So that's when I decided to put it on the schedule anyway because of Sheena. Yeah. Dude, I mean, you know, in case you think that you threw a pebble out there

and didn't ripple and didn't. Dog, I love that record, man. Yeah, like, yeah, Def American, like, again, like, y'all made the records that I bought and they were dope, but it was just something, and maybe it was like the distribution that you mentioned, I don't know, but it just seems like they didn't get that same love that I guess a lot of other records were getting. I don't know why that was, you know what I'm saying? Because the shit was dope, but.

Bill, did you know about Questimandlet? Nope. All right, I got to play. I got to play. I mean, you're hip-hop band. You're not alone. You neither? I'm honored.

This shit was always on the video. I probably just had to hit the song. I know, just like y'all did. All right. Quest of Atlanta, 1001 things to do while I'm with your girl. It's a great title. Hey, yo. What's up?

It's Quest again. Speaking of all the niggas out there that got girls. On the real, you better stop hitting them and mistreating them and neglecting them because, yo, no joke. No, I'll fuck them. Word. Check it. Now, this way, sound foul. Nests up born with shit.

So so much So much classic shit, man. Yeah, it just got low. A little story about that. You hear that 808? That's an actual 808 drum machine. It's Ricks 808 that's making that. A win is a win.

A win is a win. I don't care which I'm saying. Yep, that's me. Clever Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show.

This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger.

So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right what you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeard radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast,

it's all about the NFL draft. and we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for

to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar, this is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast

on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, for wherever you get your podcast. And for more, Follow Timbo Slice of Life 12 and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.

And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of the girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all. all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. We're into the first hour of Questlo's Apprentia. only on Pandora here with the illustrious and praiseworthy

Dan Chonis Renaissance man Jack of all trades The black The black bass player The white bass player The white bass player And the black ensemble

Black gospel Man Yeah that's some shit Sir mix a lot Yes sir That was like the biggest song Ever Like what was it like working that shit

So that starts You know Rick calls me at Profile Records says, I'm in town, I'd like to meet you, you know, and so he asked me to come to 298 Elizabeth Street, which was the old Rush Def Jam offices. And he still had his apartment on the top two floors. And he threw down his keys from the fifth floor so I could let myself think because the buzzer wasn't working or whatever. And Def Jam had moved out. It was just Rick in this abandoned, you know, brownstone in the middle of the village. And so he decided that what

we should do our first, you know, sort of meeting or, you know, evening together is we would go to Tower Records and he would buy me records that he liked. Okay. And I would buy him records that I like. And I bought like EPMD, Big Daddy Kane, Bismarkey, Main Source and he didn't like any of them. He just like was not interested in any of it. Yeah. Some of, that's not surprising. It just was not his era, you know? He, that was, you know, he, that was, the era that he left hip hop, right? And then what did he play me? He played me audio two, MilkD, and Sir Mixalot. Both two MCs with really high, nasally voices. And I'm like, they both sound like Ad Rock. Does he just like MCs? And then the Pussies, the only way to go. And so,

for whatever reason, he hires me anyway, which I thought was a great leap of faith for him, right, to give me a shot. And then a month after that, he says, I signed Sir Mix a lot. Right? So his first two rig is Swas and I can't remember. The one with beepers was, I don't forget. That wasn't on Deaf America. That was on nasty mix, a Seattle.

Nasty Mix, right. So he signs Sir Mix Lot off for that, got him out of that deal, put him on his new deal with Warner Brothers and had a finished album. And he sent it to me. And he says, listen to it and tell me what the single is. And I am not looking forward to listening to this. Sir Mixlott album because I am not a fan. And I'm supposed to pick a single. So I'm listening into the album. And then third track is, oh my God, right? And you look at her butt. I had just, you know,

it completely changed my mind about Sir Mixelot because I had just read this article in the Village Voice by Lisa Jones, who was a Mary Baraka's daughter. And she wrote about, you know, the sort of resurgence of the, you know, Afrocentric beauty aesthetic. You're seeing her more curvaceous women in magazines. Beverly Peel, I think, was the model back then. Yes, he was. Lord Jesus. So I was like, he's doing, you know, exactly.

He's saying exactly what Lisa Jones was saying. Sir Mix, that's a feminist, right? So Rick calls me, he says, so did you listen to the album? I'm like, yes, baby got back. It's a single. He says, I think so, too. So was that all your conversation? Yeah.

Did he ever have like a conversation where you were like, hey, Dan, how are you doing? It was always that grasshopper voice. He would, he would like come back from Lollapalooza. I'd say, hey, Rick, how was Lollapalooz? He said, there's a lot of jumping. He had a crazy sense of humor, not to get off the topic, but he would come into a recording studio. And if he didn't like what he was hearing, he would just say, I've got to leave.

My doctor says, my homeopathic doctor says, I can't be around a lot of heavy electronic equipment. Oh, wow. That would be his way to get out. That's something Steve would say. Wow. I had to make a, I wanted to make a video for the art of origin. He only gave me $5,000 to make it.

And I'm like, listen, I got a treatment, but I need $20,000 to make this video. And he says, all right, I'll give you the $20,000. But now you have to make four videos. Wow. So the first thing I did when I moved to L.A. was, you know, go to, the chaplain stage was the old A&M lot and that's where we shot Baby got back and I walked into the set and I thought

oh my God, this is a cartoon. Like, they're going to totally ruin the politics of this song. This is a serious song. You thought you were going to make a political statement. I just thought the director was making. Did you not look at the treatment

where it's like this big ass was apparently the treatment was Mixalot told the director it's me rapping on a big ass. So you didn't tell Sir Mix-a-Lot that there was a political angle that we could win with. It was his

angle to have. I just walked into and I'm like, oh my God, is this going to be a cartoon? How's this going to be? Because now we see it as an iconic video. But walking into that room, it felt like because then Mix Lott was upset because he said none of the dancers had asses, right? So that was a problem

for him. Then they put... Yeah. I've heard you. All right, I can admit it now. I was like, Yeah, if so on baby got back The ones in gold, not the one in yellow The one in yellow is fine In the beginning The ones in gold with the little shorts

The shorts, the shorts. And then there was a woman of color Who they were dressing as a mermaid For some reason And they put a blonde wig on her And that was like No No, no, no, no

What are you doing? So Mix Lots is getting ready To walk off the set Adam Bernstein's director Is getting ready to walk off the set Ricardo Frager His able manager managed to pull everything together

the video happened and it ended up being fantastic and all my fears and anxieties you know it ended up not being warranted all right so baby got back shit goes through the roof did you feel a little

I guess vindicated as an R like did you pick the right one that time I didn't because I wanted an emce that I signed to become a hit so I had put a lot of faith in Quest and a lot of energy into Chino Excel.

And Chino Excel, that was another story because he was part of a group called The Art of Origin, a duo from East Orange, New Jersey. And his partner was Carrie Chandler. Now, if you know... House music. Carrie Chandler was then an incredible deep house producer, but now he's

legendary, you know? And I learned so much about producing from Carrie. I mean, Carrie took me from here to there. What happened with Chino's record? I remember there was a God, what was it? It was a sample clearance that I think you guys had

problems with because he said it was a line about Miles Davis or something and it was a lot about everybody. Yeah. Yeah, he was talking to you by everyone. I think Chino was at a point. Is that putting it lightly? After, you know, he had

been trying to get a deal since 1989, 1990, and it was already 94-95. And he just had it. He says, you know, what, I'm just going to tell the truth, a way that I, you know, I'm going to say the what I, what everybody's afraid to say, you know, the relationship between, you know,

Eddie Murphy and another actor who should name, a name, you know, like we made a poster, like a black and white poster out of all of his punchlines. And, yeah, and that's what got him on the MTV. I was going to say, what offended to, I don't know the, the, the line that offended two, you know, here's a deal. But I know that it must have got. got under his skin because I've never heard the words, fuck you uttered so hard. And with, like, you heard the steam. The venom.

Fuck you, fuck, fuck. What was, yeah, what was? Now that I am a professor at the Clive Davis Institute, I understand the importance of writing instruction and the importance of misplaced modifier. That's the problem with Chino Excel and Tupac. Because Chino said, by this industry,

I'm trying not to get fucked like Tupac in jail. What he meant was Tupac's trying not to get fucked. Right? But what Tupac was Tupac got fucked in jail. This is a cactus

turn of his mother out. Yeah. There's a second grammatical error that's letting some shit. Like this is it in two years. Oh, shit. That's what it was. Did they ever, you know,

they ever make peace there was squash it or no you know Tupac died yeah because you're here to say you're coming up 95 16 oh okay I do remember though when Tupac died Chino called me and he was crying because he really liked

Tupac he mean he liked him as an emc he liked him as a lyricist he I think he wished it had gone another way and I remember going to went to Vegas with James Lopez of all people that was when

Machiavelli came out and James and I went up to the up to the room and Chino stayed in the car just to listen to Machiavelli alone you know like to have that moment yeah man so after so your two main access that you signed Chino and Quest

and then Baby got back like goes through the roof the follow up to that album it was put them on the glass put them on a glass which didn't become a huge hit but it made Seinfeld, so that made me proud. The video was me. She's not going to put him on the glass. Man, because that was, okay, Mac Daddy was the, was Baby Got Back.

What was that album, the one after, don't want to put him on a glass album. He'll make a liar out of me. Chief. Chief Boot Knock. Chief Boot Knock. How do you know that? Chief Bootna. I could see it, but I couldn't call it.

Was that the one with fake Louis on it? That was Swat Meat, Louis. That was Mac Daddy. That was back daddy. Did y'all ever get to see Dolores Tucker? Was that like after see? No, we were not important or successful enough to ever. That's the one good thing about my A&R career.

Sort of flew under the radar with old Dolores. No time Warner controversy, nothing. But I was there during that whole thing. I mean, that's actually one of the scenes that ended up in the book that Mo Austin and L. Warnocker called a huge meeting of all of the important rap artists and their managers. So everybody came. Tom Silverman came.

Bill Stephanie came. Cool G rap came, Ice Tea came, George Hinojosa came. You know, everybody was in one room. Paris was in the room, right? Oh, shit. So this is for context, this is in 1992. There's a big controversy over Ice Tease. Cop killer.

Heavy metal song with his heavy metal band, body count somehow. Rap music gets blamed for that. And so Warner has, you know, been basically the board of Warner read the riot act to the music group and he said listen if we're going to have a lyrics board here is going to examine all the lyrics and if you don't want to you know if you don't want to be put through that we understand and we're going to let you go right

if you if you you can we'll release you know no problem Moe was a good guy and he was in a really really bad position and put in a really bad position by um bob morgato and Jerry Levin who had you know were over him how long did that last It didn't last long because once There were two phases to the culture wars in the 1990s, right? The first phase was 1992, which was the body count cop killer

Where the police unions all of the country were boycotting Time Warner That subsided after the because that was an election year, right? That was when Clinton got elected Then it happened again The C-Dloras Tucker phase was like 95-90 94-95 something like that And her big goal was to get Time Warner to drop Inner Scope.

And she succeeded, but then Interscope basically walked with all its masters and got paid double by Universal to set up shop over there. So I think everybody knew... Hell yeah.

I had to. That actually scared me. That's talking about my Interscope now. You can't... In other words, you can't... It's like whack-a-mole. You know, you beat it down over here. It's just going to end up over there.

And so that ended, pretty much ended the culture wars. So when did you leave Deaf American? When Rick lost his Warner Brothers deal, when he sort of got a smaller deal over at Sony in 90... God, what year was it? 97. Okay, I won't have a chance to ask him this unless he does the show. But would you happen to know what his opinion was

of the Paul's Boutique record. Did he ever mention, or the B.C. Boys at that point in that moment. I'll tell you this. I can only give you sort of little vignettes, right? So the first vignette is me going to L.A. for the first time with Rick and him being in line at Club Laundry, I think it was, and like Ad Rock is in front of us, you know,

and just having a very terse conversation with him, like these were best friends, you know, and they're being civil to each other, but there's no, like there's no connection there. The second vignette is a couple years later, I'm walking around the office or whatever, and he stops me and he points to my shirt and he said, I like that shirt. That's shirt that Adam would wear. And I realized at that point of my mind went back to that first thing. I realized he misses his friend, you know, but he just didn't know how to do the things he needed to do to keep that friend. You know, there were financial betrayals.

There were, you know, friendship betrayals. But I do know that he, I think he liked Paul's Boutique. He really admired Matt Dyke. You know, Matt Dyke was his friend, and I think Dyke helped on that album a bit. But I think he was more sort of, there was a little bit of Schadenfreude, because Paul's boutique lost money for capital, you know,

because they had caused him so much tumult when they left, you know. So, I mean, I don't know they answers your question. Was he a good businessman? Or was he a creative man? Rick is a creative man. There's no question my mind. So who was his Russell? He didn't have a Russell.

That's the problem. That's why American recordings did not do well, really ever. I mean, they had a few hits, but he didn't, he didn't have somebody a partner who could do what Russell did. And that's why they were so good together. And, you know, Russell never found a creative person like Rick again, but he found another kind of symbiotic relationship with Leor. Yeah.

If you could call that symbiotic. But I would say it. So 97, you leave American. Where do you go from that point? I went to work for Forst Whitaker. Forst Whitaker was starting a record company. Yeah, spirit dance music. Distributed through Epic.

And I tried to sign the Far Side. Again. In 97? Because they wanted off of delicious vinyl or whatever, and I was trying to make a wave for them. We ended up signing Trey. Trey, Trey, Trey, Trey. Oh, just Trey from the Far Side.

Yeah. Oh. Oh. Ah. Man. Did anything ever happen? No, because I... Wait, wasn't trying to mess with...

Not Dugie Houser. Parker Lewis can't lose. No, no, no. No, no. You're talking about your boy. Brian O'Don-O. Brian Austin Green. But that was for Yab Yum.

Yeah. That was on Yab Yum. Yep. Okay. That album actually wasn't bad. It wasn't, it wasn't bad. I heard it wasn't. You never heard it?

But it figured you've heard everything. Not album wasn't bad. I mean, really. Phil, if you really knew what were you talking about... I just love that you got... to Brian Austin Green from Dughey House. You know, white boy, TV. Come on.

No, Brian Austin Green. The album was, it was called One Stop Carnival. Yeah, one stop carnival. He had a good single. I do remember a video. That you send me. It was like, Tray was singing on it. It was a respectful of joint.

He was like the first Drake. He was like the first, like, TV star. Trey. No, Brian Austin Green. Browns of Green. Then, we haven't had a good rabbit hole in a second. You know what, though? When I work for Ford.

I tried like hell to sign Crosswalk. Crosswalk? Cody Chestnut. Ah. I took Forrest, I said... His RB group before. Yeah. But it wasn't.

It was like Beatles-esque rock. It was dope. He was dope. And I remember seeing him live. This is really early on. This is before I think he was ever making music with you guys. And he's like, this next song is why record companies can't sign my group because of me

you know shit like that just funny and really good and I begged for us to sign him so so far as was really doing his business it wasn't like a vanity thing where it's just like no it wasn't vanity thing like Michael Jordan wasn't hidden beach yeah so trade was like the star that was that was a claim that was all you signed anybody else they never released anybody What about Ghost Dog? That was happening right when I was there, actually. There was a film of Jim Jarmish and Rizza was Rizzo's first score.

Yep, it was. I remember they were doing radio promotions behind that because they came to see it's Riza and Forrest. But that's when I decided I kind of had enough for the music business. You wanted to tell them about themselves? I wanted to write again. So since I was in L.A., the first thing I did was, you know, when you're in L.A. and you want to write, you tend to think of writing for the screen, so I ended up writing for the Leris Lounge show.

And then you'll love this, B.E.T.'s Comic View. That's for you. Get what for Comic View? Who for Comic View? They had sketch comedy for a little while. Yeah. That's true. So I helped out for a season. How was that experience?

It was great. I mean, I loved writing comedy. And in a way, it set me up for the breaks later on, you know, just in terms of that, being in a room of writers, really, really funny people, Alice and Fuse and, oh man, They're just really, you know, a lot of them had worked for living color, and I just learned a lot.

Well, Lerice's lounge was phenomenal. Like, that was, that was the, Tracy L.Roy. That's where I don't know with her, yeah. And Moose. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Worsworth.

Like, Dante. I had a chance to write with Most a little bit, like, not, like, on the sketch side. So he wrote the rhymes and I sort of contributed ideas for the sketch. But most came and Common came and Erica came. It was a really good, really good time. I think, I believe. If you Tarek did an episode? I'm not certain.

I don't remember. When did you know you were funny? In the realm of you've had a lot of hats, okay? So I'm just saying, was it a moment? Well, here's what I used to do. I used to do this segment on, you know the wake-up show, King Tech and Sway. So I used to do this thing where I would read, I would read, like the Steve Allen gag, right? I would read rap lyrics as poetry.

And I ended up doing a bunch of sketches for them. And so that led to the gig with, with, delicious slithish lounge why don't you think that work man because I thought that was I mean I thought it cost too much what did great narratings but it cost too much to make what were the what were the did most show 12 hours late uh I think he was on time I think he was back then back then this is South Africa right now I'm like you can tell you what was the what was the what was the what were the cost you ain't fooling nobody he was that it was like a presidential debate between him and master fool.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, F-U-O-L. Oh, my God. He was great. Why was it so expensive? What were the cost involved? Just sketch comedy, wardrobe and union. I mean, it was a real production. And it was not something that MTV was used to doing.

I mean, they were doing reality shows, which are just bank. Yeah, yeah. What was it about TV that you love? Because, I mean, at some point, you were like, I'm staying. The ability to write something and then have it, you know, produced and on TV. Immediately. It was so immediate.

And I got a chance to actually act and to, like, to be a part of that thing. And that was dope. It was my favorite job. It's also ahead of his time because even now, MTV still has next show. A Wiling Out. Yeah, which. It's the cheaper version. Much cheaper version.

But, no, I think it's a show that would do. much better now in like the Snapchat you know meme era than you know back then so at some point you decide okay you want to you're writing

when does the I guess the beginnings of the big payback the Bible like when does when do you start writing the Old Testament when I wanted to do hip hop journalism again and so I pitched

I pitched an article that nobody would buy Vibe wasn't interested in it. Double Xcel wasn't interested in it. It was called Last Night a DJ Save My Business. And it was about these guys who owned these disco labels in the 80s who thought they were going to be disco kings and ended up, rap fell under their laps and saved their asses, basically.

So we're talking about Corey Robbins at Profile, Tom Silverman, Tommy Boy, Fred Maneo at Select, right? the record companies that basically funded the golden age of hip hop unwittingly. They didn't, because they weren't, you know, they became hip hop fans, but they weren't of hip hop. So nobody cared about it. And then, so I decided at one point that I really, really missed New York and I wanted to come home. And so I just remember I was at a party with an editor of yet another magazine. and I was pitching this article at him

and he turned away from me in mid-pitch and walked away. And I was like, all right, you know what? Maybe this is a book. So I had enrolled at Columbia Journalism School to get my master's, and I did a lot of things there. Like I ended up, I did my master's project in the West Bank in Palestine.

And I was either going to do a book on that or I was going to do this hip-hop business history. And so it ended up being that. And my mentor there was the great Sam Friedman, who teaches this book writing class every year, and only 25 people a year getting it. You have to pitch him a book idea to get into the class. Oh, wow.

And was the big payback? Was that your pitch? The big payback was it was called beats, rhymes, and cash at first, right? And so I got in, and then the very first day we're supposed to bring in, like a sample chapter, is taping the class for a piece on the class because like so many people get published out of this class. And so on NPR to this day, there is a, first of all, I won the cliche award, like every, the most, most cliches per, it was like, you know.

So I haven't, having a bad day anyway. And we got into this argument about whether old school was a cliche or a genre. And I was maintaining it was a genre and he was maintaining it was a cliche. And he says, and this is still on NPR, 10 years later. because as they say on the basketball, as they say on the basketball court, Dan, stop bringing that weak shit. Dang.

That's my, that's my, but he's the guy. He's like that tough love. Sorry. He's like that tough love teacher that got that treatment out of me. And I got out of that class, you know, a month later that treatment was sold. And then I spent the next three years reporting the book.

So how did you, how did that make you a better writer? because I've only known you, I only know you now. So what did that class do for you as a writer? How did it make you stronger? Just pouring over every word and every comma, trying to make every sentence as elegant and efficient as it can be. Every sentence has a function, every word has a function. But even more than that, I kept getting sidetrack because I'm a nerd, you know, about music.

And I wanted to talk about the emergence of the 808 drum machine. And I wanted to take these divergent paths into what Marley did and how much the bridge was so important. You sound a lot like somebody I know. Yeah, it's very interesting. So. Remind me of a good friend of mine. He says, I don't know he has to talk. I'm watching me right now.

See, he says, Dan, it's about the music. I'm sorry. He says, Dan, it's about the business, not the music. It's about the business. It's about the business. He kept saying that. to me. And so I listened to him. And that's, I remember that first chapter I turned and he says, you can't write this chapter without getting the voices of Sylvia Robinson and Bobby Robinson.

Like, I need to know what they were doing while Jay-Z was getting his Grammy. Where were they? Not Grammy. Oh, sorry. When he was at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, awarding the, you know, the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five were the first people to get inducted. So that was a motif for the book. J. Z was inducting them and he wanted to, he knew the reader would want to know where the founding mother and one of the founding fathers

of the business were at that moment. And for the listeners, where were there? Sylvia was in the hospital and Bobby Robinson was at home. Watch him. So do you acknowledge this as the hip-hop Bible?

No. I kind of see it more as the 48 laws of power of him you know that that one book that every guy that went to jail has that like like it's no I don't mean your book I'm just saying like you I always see the 48 laws of power book and every like when jay first got his office at death jam that book I was like are you strategically placing this here he had a Nerf ball and 48 loss of power book but I mean It is very informative and sort of detailing people's journeys.

And why did you feel that was important? Because it wasn't out there or? Hip hop is so big that there are so many stories you can tell about it. And I couldn't have written my book without Jeff Chang having written Can't Stop Warstaff. And I couldn't have written it without Brian Coleman having done Check the Technique. And not to even mention the smaller books. that the earlier ones that, you know, David Toup had done, and Nelson George had done a pretty good book,

Hip Hop America, I think it was called. And then, of course, like the smaller, you know, the books on smaller parts of the subject, like Ronan Rose book on... Have it a little trouble. Yeah. So all of them are really important, and I stand on the shoulders of all those folks.

But my issue was people really, didn't understand that hip hop almost didn't happen, right? They didn't understand, like when I would read accounts of hip hop history, it was almost like Run DMC made a record and then they were huge, right? And that's not how it happened. Right. People fought tooth and nail to make this stuff successful. It almost didn't happen.

I mean, when we think about New York in 1990, radio was backing away from hip hop all over. Right? Mix shows were going away. So we were Hot 97, as we know it today, felt a million light years away. But people fought for it. And so people, I wanted to tell the story of people like Keith Naftali, the very first pop radio programmer to play hardcore hip-hop in the daytime. We're talking NWA, Public Enemy. And other pop programmers across the country like Rick D's, you know, thought it was laughing. you know, dangerous even. And he did it. And he was so successful that he convinced other radio programmers eventually that this was,

you know, something that was worth doing and ended decades of segregation in radio because of it. So I felt like that was the important story to tell just for hip hop's sake.

And then it's a great American story. You know, that's why it starts with Alexander Hamilton because I believe it embodies the same, ethos. Can I ask so since you were in

Los Angeles for the greater part of the 90s I mean of course now it's just it's such a different way different feeling and vibe and

quick quick backstory so usually when when guests come on notable guests, especially New York-based guests, come on the show. I'm always fascinated. One of the common denominator stories and experiences they have is they always have a tunnel, not a tunnel, a Latin quarter story to tell. But for me, it's like, I'm more amazed at the fact that they're willing to court this danger and almost romanticize about this period in which, from my protected childhood

to eyes, it's like, yo, why would you even go to a building and what you might get shot? Is it really that much to, is it really worth it to hear nobody beats the biz? Like, do you, if that's the only place you're going, you know you can hear it, yeah.

Well, that said, living, I mean, I remember, like now when I go to L.A. It's such a joyful feeling like, ah, I'm going to L.A. And, like, I enjoy that feeling of. land in you know LA you know

hang with my friends and go to nice restaurants and it's fun but there was a period in L.A. where it was like you know we used to always make sure we don't wear no blue no red know where you you know just know where you stand don't cross anybody

you know mad shook sightings mad it was like that yo it was like San Van Niko so in to be in LA during the period of Shug's reign where any moment could be the moment where you could get got. Like, what was that like in that period?

Like, was it an enjoyable time? Or did you feel like you were so out of the circle that you could? I wasn't that close to power, I guess, in that way. And I didn't fetish death row. You know what I mean? I didn't want to be. around those folks. I didn't, you know what I mean?

You couldn't avoid it. Like, the roots are the furthest thing from death row. But, you know, Shug and Pock once came to a show, and I swear to God, even the air just sucked out the room. Like, it was like, hmm.

It was like unavoidable. So how, like, how did you manage in that atmosphere? Musically magical, but also, questionable as far as being naive and also the feeling that it's normal, it was normal, you know, like when you're, you know, that whole thing about the frog and water or whatever and you turn the, turn the temperature up,

you know, it was just, that was part of the environment. And I, I just also have this philosophy that bullies go away, you know, if you wait long enough, they're going to fuck themselves up. So I, 27 years. Man, yeah. Well, you know, in terms of his power, you know, his power was very short. Yeah,

it wasn't Twinsett. Yeah. And it turns out a lot of the things that people think he did or legendary, you know, that he did. It was myth. Didn't,

didn't do. Yeah. Oh, word? No, I'm like, yeah. He didn't, I mean, you know. Did you have first-hand experiences with any,

besides Russell and Rick? Uh, I mean, first-hand experience is non-interview, but just like, and just daily interaction with any of the, the subject matters that you profiled, like, as far as you being in the business?

Well, there are a few... Runners with dame or that sort of... There's just a few things that, you know, in the book that I was present for, right? So there's that meeting, you know, that big cabal meeting. Right. You know, there's that, you know, that fake email that's been going around for years about the secret meeting in L.A. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, where the prison industrial complex and getting all the rappers.

Oh, that wasn't real. That was the new Willie. I mean, but I did attend the real meeting, which was, you know, Mo Austin calling all of his artists, the extended family of artists, into a conference room and saying, look, here's the deal. You know, and it was a very sad meeting, you know. I think he was sad as the person who signed Prince and Joni Mitchell and James Taylor and, you know, all of these other Jimmy Hendricks. Hell, hostage. you know, to be in that position.

It was humiliating for him. And then I was the person who had to go and basically create a dummy record company for Paris. Because Paris had gotten dropped off of Tommy Boy. And Rick said, I'm going to put him on, I'm going to put on American, but I can't put him on American. So we're going to create a whole new label for him.

So I went to the Bay Area. I basically helped create a label for Paris. That became Scarface. Scarface, right? That's right. Because that was that the one that sleeping with the enemy came out on? Which record was it? Was it?

Because that was the one he wanted to call Bush Killer originally. I think Bush Killer remained. I don't even remember. I'm dude. But I have to actually read the big payback to remember. A win is a win. A win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying.

Yep, that's me. Clever Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career. in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became bigger than I ever imagined.

And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes

of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment, and the next, we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest, stories that don't always get told, and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be.

Listen to The Clifford Show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galco, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects. From hidden traits teams look for

to the biggest mistakes franchises make to the players flying under the radar, this is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slical Life 12.

and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all dated the same, prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. They said, oh, hell no. I vowed.

I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. So after this, you write the big payback. Was it anyone that

was reluctant to talk to you, like anyone that was just like, nah. Yeah. It just writes itself, ladies and gentlemen. There were people like, I really wanted to talk to Cindy Campbell, like Herk's sister. Because Jeff had done Herk, right, the artist. But I wanted to profile the business side. And I approached Cindy Campbell and she wanted money. And I said, I just don't do that.

I'm a journalist. pay anybody for an interview. So, bye. And obviously, you're never going to get Jay, you know, Jay Z in a room to interview them. So what you do is you report around people as a journalist. You start at the edges and you go around and around and circle, circle. And finally, there's only one person left, right? And you can say to that person, you know, I'm not saying that I did this with Jay Z, but I'm about to, you know, release a book that has a chapter on you or a section on you, I want to give you a chance to hear it

before it goes out, you know, and comment on it. So usually, you know, people will want to hear what you're going to write about them. And if you approach them respectfully and whenever I interview somebody for the book, I always, you know,

I always offer them a readback. Oh, okay. Just because it's their story. So you never just do it blind, just like everyone stories. Yeah, they know, they knew what it was. was going to be before it came out. Absolutely, yeah.

There were people who were mad. More people were mad when they got left out of the book. I was going to say, like it wasn't, I don't think it was disrespectful. No, not at all. Search was mad at me for a little while because he gave me a lot of time. And the section that he was in ended up getting cut. And I apologize to him over that. Now, search has a lot of stories.

He was great. And he's still great. We'll put it this way. We barely got to the Cactus CD before his. of dialect. Derlix's like, the second album. Yeah, we barely got to Darlics and like, oh, yeah, it's on the rap.

Like three hours. Talk about the Latin quarter. Yeah, he had a lot of that. He gave us, yes, the quintessential Latin quarter stories. The big pegback. So how does this go from, because now you've never even told me this story.

I don't know. How does that go from book to movie to series on VH1? Okay. What was that journey like? Even before the book came out, there were some Hollywood types calling, you know, hey, like a meeting, whatever. And, you know, so originally I wanted to do it.

You ever seen the HBO movie The Late Shift? Yes. About the whole Leno Letterman fight. And so I wanted to do a, you know, a drama with the real characters, right? A Rick, Russell, Dre, you know, hiring actors to play the real people. And that's a real problem for Hollywood. Like they have to buy all kinds of life rights, even though it may be true.

So eventually it came down to, you know, that wasn't going to happen. And I sort of gave up because I didn't want to do a fictional, fictionalized version of hip-hop history. It was corny to me, you know, especially because any time you had a portrayal of hip-hop in some dramatic fashion, it was always like just wrong.

Like I remember the Sopranos had, Bokeen Woodbine as massive genius. Oh, that when he got shot at the shooting, right? That was like the... Damn you good. Yeah. Like, I didn't want to do that, you know? And to make, how are you going to make the music sound good?

Yeah. Period, right? And this is where you come in. So, what happened was, actually, Baz Luhrman. I was going on that. I didn't know if you wanted to go there with you. Yeah, Boslerman called and said, You know, my people have read your, my team has read your book.

Team has read your book and team told me I should meet with you. And this was in the early stages of what would become to get down. But he was in the middle of doing Gatsby, who's very nice. But what happened was I had an opportunity at VH1 to pitch them. But I could only pitch them if it was a dramatic, you know, fictionalized dramatic. So I just did it. I came up with a story. You know, I eventually got over myself.

and I came up with a story about three college friends who graduate in the summer of 1990 sort of aligns with my own personal story, but also I think it's a really, really important time in hip-hop. It's like that time where it could have become everything or nothing, right? It was the year that Run DMC and Beastie Boys were blown away in sales by Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and it looked like the future was going to be this minstrel show, right?

So, shout out to a little brother. So. And 99.44% of all hip hop, no, I'm playing. No, you're not. But I'm not. Now, let's talk about it. Okay. So, I worked on the, on the pitch, and I pitched it in a room in about 10 minutes, and they bought it.

And then there's the long process of developing it. And the first part of development is to find a director, writer who can actually get this stuff on the screen. And I just, I wasn't selling myself as that person. So I remained as an executive producer, but Seeth Man was the guy we luckily found to helmet. And Seath is, for those listening, Seath is a TV director.

He's done, man, several episodes of The Wire. He's done, did he do, did he work on Tremay? Did he do Tremay? He didn't do Tremay, but he did walking. dead, I believe. Walking dead. And elementary Alex did for me. He, yeah,

I don't want to give him that in a way, but yeah. So, Seeth is great. And Seath, you know, I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, he grew up in Silver Spring, we grew up listening to the same stations, we both go listen to hip hop and go and go. And so we have, even though he's like seven feet tall and I'm four feet tall and, and you know, he's black and I'm white and he's got dreads

and I got no hair. I got so? We, we, you know. We He's my brother You know And he has done So he did a great job on the pilot script And then it came who are

How are we going to create this musical universe? And Prime DJ Premiere was first on the list And I reached out to him And you know I met Prime when I interned for a while pitch It was like a little sliver of time

before I worked for profile where I did it I interned for still fine. Wait, 89. 89. So was that, uh, so wait, this is pre Jeff Sledge. As a hip hop historian, do you have multiple copies of Buster Move Boy? And if you do, can you share him? Gang stars, uh, um,

had three 12 inches before. Before manifest? No more Mr. Nice guy out. Oh. Hmm. I'm afraid. do not. Damn.

But I think I know somebody who might. No, God, knows a guy. Yeah, I'm looking for Bustamoo. I would do anything to have A1 records back in running order, not online, but like...

Yeah. Not A1, the sound library. Oh, sound library. Yeah. Well, can I have a writer question? When you went to VH1 with your pitch, what did you have exactly? Because you didn't have a rundown with the show totally was going to be for the season.

I did. It was just in my head. So I pitched in a room from off the dome. Free stuff, son. That never happens. Bar, son. And what was, so what was the line? Like, what was the tagline, like the one line, the log line

of the show kind of in that way. Like, they really got them. Yeah. I mean, I think we may have said something like, it's sort of like the hip-hop madman. Okay. We might have said something like that. But, you know, it's, It was about the business. And what was really important is that we had a really strong female lead character.

After. Really interesting and very complex. And, you know, a liar. A pathological liar. Wait, wait, wait. Makes her interesting. I didn't pick this up in the pilot. Wait a minute.

No, Nikki is fucking, oh, God. She's. And we talked about it how, and, you know, the way it worked out, we're, we kind of have a, I don't know if it's a renaissance, but there's a lot of you're seeing kind of the black female anti-hero character on TV now where you have, you know, I mean Cookie and Mary Jane

and Olivia Pope you know what I'm saying? Where you have... Anti-meaning they're not the typical... Well, anti-hero in the sense that there are people that you... They're not just a foil. Yeah, they're not just like the good person like, I mean, they're kind of fucked up people. They're complex people. You know what I mean? And they're not just totally all good. Right. And Nikki's character

when I, when you sent me the script, I read it, I was like, yeah, she's going to fall. And I didn't know who you were going to cast. I didn't know who. We didn't know either. Fonte, how did you get involved in the show? How did I get involved in the show? How did I get hired?

Prim was the first step, right? The music, right? So I wanted to make sure that we had somebody who understood the sonic vocabulary at the time and would be able to make beats that sounded like they were, because if we have a character who's a rapper and another character who's a producer, The producer has to make beats exactly like they would be made in 1990. Using the same samples and using samples, using breaks, was very important. Very important.

And then we needed to have an MC who also spoke in the vocabulary and cadence of the time. And I knew only what there was a, I had a list and Prima was at the top of it, but there was only one person. There was only one person that I wanted to get for lyrics producer for the show. And that was Fonte Coleman. And I will tell you why. You guessed it. Because Fonte had, again, shout out to James Lopez, who hit me to all of this stuff. James had given me, when I moved back to New York, a copy of the story of us.

Oh, my God. And Fonte plays, like, basically, he plays the part of a, you know, a rapper, MC, trying to get a deal by being basically everybody else in the game. So at one point, Fonte is all the guys in the Wu-Tang clan. You do the sort of the lyrical miracle.A. Yeah, the underground. Yeah, the underground MC. And then your Percy miracles. And it was just like you are the master of voices.

And I knew that you would understand in a way that it was just like, I could just let go. And even more, like the more that you and Prime, first of all, you and Prim have a fantastic working relationship together and he trusts you implicitly and when preem produces he has you on as his co-producer by just that's it yeah that was that was wild that was wow um i mean when y'all reached out to about it um i was just coming off of an hbo pilot that i was working on and so i mean tv you know the yeah the maya thing the uh the thing with maya and bashir myer rudolph not mya finance

Maya, Maya, D.C. Harrison, yes. So, yeah, so I was coming off of that. And so you were like, yeah, man, so I got this thing. I'm like TV. I'm like, oh, God, I'm ready for like a million rewrites, a million edits, whatever. I'm like, all, whatever. So he's like, yeah, man, I got this thing.

And I don't know exactly what it's going to be, but, you know, this is what it is. I'm like, look, dude, send it to me. Let's do it. And, yeah, those records that, those first records we did, the, the, um, God, it was the, um, song, his song, God. Least inspected, yeah, God, we did, though. Those are records that I cut in my house.

And, I mean, we pretty much, I wanted to make it so that it's kind of tricky because you're writing in 1990, you're writing for 1990, but you're writing for an audience that is current day. So it has to work on both levels.

It has to be true to the times, but at the same time it has to wow the audience of now, so that they can understand why this guy would be the shit in 1990. You know what I mean? And the fact that it's fictional makes it a little bit harder as, you know, as MC because, you know, it's fiction. So it's like, you know, the Zemba always give the scene in Notorious where Biggie is freestyling outside. You know what I'm saying?

And they're kicking his actual, that was his actual freestyle. You know what I mean? And that freestyle lyrically, it ain't miraculous. You know what I'm saying? But it's accurate to what he was saying at that time. The freestyle when he's dissing the dude in front of the- Outside? Yeah, and notoriety when he's dissing the dude.

I love that freestyle. No, I love it, but I'm just saying it was dope because that was accurate to what he said then. Now in 2017, I mean, someone that hurt Royce the 5-9 or Black Thought hearing that shit is like, okay, it was cool. You know what I mean? But at the time, it was ahead. So that's kind of the trick.

So can I ask, how are you? how important like i'm i'm i'm a showrunner's nightmare on social media like i think i think nelson is just about talking to me again right now to get down well you know i for me the The reason why I'm so glad you said that about, like, you wanted to really betray the times as they were. How important is it to you, at least from in doing this project, are the music cues to you? Because, like, I'm... That's the show. It is the whole show.

Okay, well, now, not to, I'm not trying to, you know, play, you know, Devils. not devil's advocate. What do you call it? I'm not trying to instigate. No, no, I'm not trying to be an instigate. Assuming you watched the other show, how did you feel?

Like, did you instantly make notes like, okay, that's not accurate, and that's not accurate, and that cue's not accurate, and I will be honest. One of the problems with making TV, especially making TV while you are teaching, you know, as a profession, is that you don't get to watch a lot of TV. So I watched the first couple episodes.

And I understood right away that you get down as a very different animal. It's magical realism. And that's not what we were trying to do. We're doing, you know, realism, right? And there's nothing wrong with magical realism. It's an interesting term. It sounds like alternative facts.

No. See, but that's a Tony Morris. It's like what Tony Morrison does, right? except for film, right? It's like it's, it is a beautiful, romantic vision of what the Bronx was and is in people's minds. And even the, it's funny because you would, people from the Bronx from that time, that's how they remember it as beautiful, right?

Even though it was a really, really, I mean, there were parts of the Bronx that felt and looked desolate, but it didn't, wasn't desolate culturally to them. So I'm not mad at the get down a bit. It's just a very different show. And also about five times the budget, maybe ten times the budget of the breaks. You know, so it's a very different kind of show. But it's like, okay, so after you develop something, and then you put it in the hands of the production company, the producers, the directors, like other people. and how much are you willing to let your child, metaphorically speaking, play with others.

Are you willing to turn your back for a little bit and do something else and trust that it's okay or is it just like, all right, let's cut corners? Like for me, I've sat in many a room with many a writer and I just, I just, really have this disdain for their attitudes of like music as such an afterthought. Like it's really not that important. You know, like, okay, well. I know we're in 1979 and we're going to play a song that came out in 84. You know, it's cool. Yeah.

Okay. Okay. So the new edition film, shout out to my brother Barry Cole. I'm not coming at your neck. But he kind of corrected me on Twitter. I mean, there was a scene where Ricky and Bobby. and Ron were on the tour bus were talking to each other

and Ricky takes his walkman off his cassette walkman off but I clearly heard the shack up drum break that was used in the Belbit DeVoe ain't nothing change which was you know I mean this is 85

they're in the 1985 Greyhound tour bus going back to the Boston some projects, listening to a breakbeat that Ricky Bell himself will use seven years from now. But, you know, he kind of had that, that correction, like, no, that was talking all that jazz by Stets of Sonic. And I wanted to come back like, well, still, that was still 1988. Out of time, yeah. That was for, but, I mean, for me, how, I know that people cut corners and, okay, well, we

couldn't clear that song, and we just want to move time along. and usually music's used for moving time along. So it's like, how much of a stickler are you for keeping that as accurate as possible? I'm a stickler because Seeth believes in it. You know what I mean? Seeth really values the authenticity part of it. And we have this sort of language with each other where we talk about the authenticity bank account. And you know you're going to make withdrawals, right?

We have, like, I think it takes place in the summer in 1990, but maybe looking at the front door, I think, was something that we made a slight, you know, exception for. It did come out in 1990, but it came out later in 1990. I think also, just to get a rep, came out later on in 1990. But it was, it was, that's the kind of trade-off we're willing to make. There are other trade-offs, there are other sort of withdrawals from the authenticity bank account that don't pay off. Like, I'm not going to. I'm not going to, to allow, you know, a breakbeat from another time. I was going to say that Primo get away with one in this business of rap. Nah, nah, no, we kept it. No, we keep it with all of our, you know, with the scratches. We keep them so far. We keep it all, you know, stuff that was, oh, yeah, stuff that was of that time. Well, before that time, actually.

So we've actually been in the studio, right, with Prim, and there's been something that he wanted to do or whatever. like, oh, no, that's right. It's too early. And even with lyrics, we've had a few. Yeah, I think it was one lyric. I said, it was one lyric in the, in the pilot. I said something like, oh, God, what was it? It was, um, puff mad L's, I think was the line. And we was like, in 1990, it wasn't puffing mad L's.

so we changed it to something else. Because the original line was, God, what was it? Girlie's on my job. Puff Mad L's till I see blue like Gargamel. mail so we changed it to girlies on my job hard as hell make him do the smurf like gargamel and so that was what that was that was uh even but even the chorus that was official there uh we were talking about the chorus right and in your chorus was uh jo rock baby john rock baby and i thought that was too and that's something again i thought it was but i thought it was too much uptown baby which is way and i was

totally not even thinking that so i was like we'll just do joe rock y'all, nonstop y'all, which is more. But then I think we stayed with yours. I think we kept Joe Rock Baby. That was funny. Joe Rock Baby. What is the quintessential hook in 1990? Well, the thing is, well, you'll see.

Like, Tribe had no hook on. Well, in 1990, what it was was, it wasn't really hooks. Your hook was the last two bars of your rhyme. So it would be the last two bars of your song. So what you're saying? And then it goes into the. The break of scratches or an instrument or horn or whatever the fuck. So that was kind of the way we play it.

And yeah, man, I mean, I'm lucky that we have actors like Antoine is just a motherfucker. Unbelievable. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're saying. Yep, that's me, Cliver Taylor the 4th. You might have seen the skits, the reactions, my journey from basketball to college football, or my career in sports media. Well, somewhere along the way, this platform became big.

bigger than I ever imagined. And now I'm bringing all of that excitement to my brand new podcast, The Clifford Show. This is a place for raw, unfiltered conversations with some of your favorite athletes, creators, and voices that not only deserve to be heard, but celebrated. One week, I'll take you behind the scenes of the biggest moments in sports and entertainment. And the next, we'll talk about life, mental health, purpose, and even music. The Clifford Show isn't just a podcast. It's a space for honest conversations, stories that don't always get told,

and for people who are chasing something bigger. So if you've ever supported me or you're just chasing down a dream, this is right where you need to be. Listen to the Clifford show on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more behind the scenes, follow at Clifford and at TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok.

This week on the Sports Slice podcast, it's all about the NFL draft. And we've got a special guest. The director of the NFL's East West Shrine Bowl, Eric Galko, joins the Sports Slice podcast to break down what really matters when evaluating draft prospects, from hidden traits teams look for,

to the biggest mistakes franchises make, to the players flying under the radar. This is the insight you won't hear anywhere else. If you want to understand the draft like an insider, you don't want to miss this episode. Listen to the Sports Slice podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And for more, follow Timbo Slica Life 12

and TikTok podcast network on TikTok. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends, oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last

target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Can y'all break down how many different personality, like rap? Did you have to write for different personalities from Antoine to whoever? Oh, man. Okay. So I had a tough job this season. Yeah, yeah, it was. It was great. But we made it through it though um for this one okay so uh for those that uh watch the show it's the story of you know it tells like dan was saying earlier it tells these different stories of different people in the business uh at that time and so uh the main guy that i write for is um played by antoine harris uh big ups to him he is like the street guy who is you know really talented

so he's a guy and i don't know if this is something that we can maybe if y'all are still freaking out, I think we're still, last conversation we had, I think we're still trying to see if he's going to be the guy or if he's going to be the guy who inspires the guy. You know what I mean? Like, that's still, because he's a motherfucker, but like, is he going to be Jay-Z or is he going to be Jazzo? You know what I mean?

Like, that's still, that still remains to be seen. Right, because he's like hella respected in the streets. Like, it's like, you got to go through hell of people to get to him and all that stuff. Yeah, yeah. He's like, he's the man. And then in like season one, this, you know, as this season goes on, you'll see other stuff that solidifies. Like, he's really, like, the fucking, he's the guy.

So it's him. He's the main guy. Then there's, oh, man, then there's, Imani X, played by Tiana Taylor. She's the girl who is like, she's like a Latifah light. She's kind of tomboyish. Meets ISIS.

Right, right. Yes, she is. Rebel soul. So she's that. and the kind of the conflict that we'll see later on is her mother played by Kim Wayans a hilarious fucking Kim Williams plays by Kim Williams

her mother kind of wants her to be more of like a kind of salt and pepper you know female MC so that's you know her thing so I had to write for her and so the not really the conflict that we had but just the thing that we hit towards the end of this season was that I didn't want Imani to sound like a female version of

um so you have to I had to you have to approach it in a way as like all right I want her to be dope but she can't just be just the female the female version of this guy she has to have something about her how do you channel all these I mean you're like the hip-hop version of split

oh man wow how do you channel all of these in an authentic way at that yeah I mean on the spot. Do you find that working okay now finally someone I can relate to like on working on television

when you have to instantly come up with something I don't overthink it yeah like how do you deal with that man you just got to you just got to just write it I mean what is your process you just sit alone? Yeah I generally always work alone I never really work with anyone I you know record myself

and like engineering myself and I pretty much just in the time of like for um for his main song um the idea was without giving away too many plot points well in the in the pilot you know his friend has been killed so the idea was okay we got i got to take him through the stages of death the stages of grief so the first song that he does is you know it's just straight anger it's just like we're gonna get them niggas y'all kill my homie we about to set it. It's just anger. And then

later on in this season you'll see he has some other stuff that takes him through the other stages of grief. So it's just putting yourself in that character and what they would feel. That first demo of the first season feels more like denial. They're not, exactly. It's total denial. And then acceptance comes. So it's just

I try to put myself in each character's shoes and see how they would feel and just you know, write it from that perspective. But what's interesting is, and just by talking to you, like those are the two dope people, right? So is it easier to write for the dope lyrics or the mediocre, because now you've got to write for, mediocre and on purpose.

I feel like that's fun. I feel like it's fun to write for whack people. Well, okay, here we go. I love it. I run into a problem. I just drove by Captoon. Yo, I have problems. So we have battle scenes as well, right?

So we have battles that you have to write. And so. You're battling yourself, basically. Yeah, it's a mirror match. It's like a fucking mirror match and fucking, you. in Mortal Kombat. So for me, the problem I was running into was that I liked to be the villain.

So, like, my villain versus was murder. And the guy that was actually posed to win the battle on camera, them versus was, like, cool. Like, my first draft would be like, it's cool, but you need a little more. So I had to. And that was the only network note you got on the pilot. Yeah, that was like, well.

She was like, I really, it feels like, Seid. Yeah, yeah, another guy won. And so I went on Empire. It's good, you corrected that. Yeah, I went back in, like, I did another draft and they okayed it. And so the thing was in that first battle with, in the pilot with Sig and, um, Sig played by, uh, Sig played by, uh, Seig played by Torrey.

Cause to him. Amazing. The idea was that, okay, Toray is going to, the main guy, um, is going to win the, the war, so to speak but Toray is still going to kind of win the battle and to me that felt authentic because I remember coming up battling you would see all those guys who would win all the battles

they would just be freestyling and they could just go on and talk about your mom and make up shit whatever but they couldn't make records to save their fucking lives like they fucking suck I have a story the first week that we mixed do you want more at Battery Studios

we were Next in the B room was supernatural. Now, if you remember, wait, are you, I just, I just coughed. Oh, really? All right. All right, so, okay, boys and girls. And he was on East West.

Yes. So when, in 1993 at the New Music Seminar, I remember it was all about. skills and it was all about supernatural that particular year and supernat signed to east west and so he was in the B room of battery studios and we were in the A room of battery studios uh mixing our stuff and we occasionally that's kind of how we met Rizel Rizel was kind of been supernats like crew and supernatural totally 100% were just freestyle everything his shows his his his albums and all i remember was i went in his room me and tarreek sat in his

room and he had the single if i was king if i was king i ruled everything if i was king and then he did a verse right he said all right let me take it from the top again if i was king if i then he took a totally different verse is ah no no no no let me do it again and he went through like nine drafts of like 100% free totally different than the others and I was like the whole record's going to be made that way they're like yeah man freestyle record and no nah it was just one of those things like it works good live

and even still live sometimes it does it be a novelty that's what I was getting to like it's something you know you can only pull the rabbit out the hat so many times you know I mean it's like out to the freestyle union yeah I used to freeze. I mean, that was what I did, but after a while, yeah, it's like a parlor trick. Otherwise, like, look, write a fucking song, dude. So, um, we need to talk about the, the best part of that battle for me, which is the character, the impromptu character we created with Fonte's blessing, uh, named Imam Ali. Yes, talk about it. Because we really, we really wanted to, I mean, it's an Afrocentric period. Um, and, you know, not to make, um, and, you know, not to make

light of it, but there was always that dude who came to a battle to teach. To educate. You know? So I knew you were going to make I knew you're going to make a scene up based on that damn verse.

Shout out to Caitlin. Anyway, go ahead. Oh, wow. Yeah. So this was one of the times. I remember we was up, I was up there. And so we had to do this battle. So there's a battle in season

in episode one, the pilot, where Am is battling this guy's sixth hour. And so this is essentially the battle where Am wins the battle, and this is where DeV, the producer, sees the battle and realizes, yo, Am is the dude I got to fuck with. This is the guy. And so I had to write that battle between Toray and Antoine. And so that came out. So before that, there's all these other battles that take place before their battle,

which is like the main event. So I come up there and I'm in New York and Dan hits me. He's like, yo man, you know, these other people we got doing battles, it ain't really working. Would you be willing to step in? And I'm just like, yeah, I mean, I can write some shit for whatever. I'll write somebody some shit. It's cool. He's like, no, no, no, no, no.

I need you to write it, yeah, but I need you to step in. And I'm like, fuck you mean step in. He's like, like step in, like be on camera. I'm like, oh, shit. I said, okay. So he's like, well, I got an idea for this character. His name is Imam Ali. I was like, say no more.

I just knew what that meant. Sort of like Dr. York meets. Oh, your favorite guy. You know, my man. Dr. York meets. No, just Dr. York meets. Yeah, whatever you add with that. I told Fonte, he did it so well.

I saw the pilot episode and I was like, I think I thought you were Kumodea or something. Because I really did not know that was you. Nah, that was me. And the Kofi and Dashiki in the Shiki. The Kofi, D'Asheki in the shades. So the good news is that Imam Ali comes back in season. I really, really wanted a whole subplot around Imam Ali.

I didn't get it, but I'm still angling for it if there's a season two. Yeah, that means you can't share it because you don't want to, that's right. Yeah, we shot that and, yeah, I hope I spent off. Shut up. Yeah, I just saw him, I'm like, I just want, I'm Ma'u'llie. He got to have a white woman because that's what all, like, the Hohet dudes. I thought that was really you. Yeah, I thought it was to do.

Now, you got to have a white woman. You got to be authentic Hote-Tap. Come on. Like, there's no one that wants to fight for black people more than a nigger with a white woman. So, like, it's got to work. So, yeah, man, we shot that. And it was funny. Like, that was, like, my culture shock.

So the scene was supposed to be Imam Ali is the guy. He's like the old guy that is, you know, he's out of touch. And he can rap, but he's trying to teach. He would be doing push-ups. You know what I mean? He's doing push us with the perfect form But he's trying to educate and shit So in the scene

When we shot it It was supposed to be That Imam Ali lost the battle And he's like the laughing stop But when we shot the scene And we had real extras And we told him like real 20, 21 years old of today

We told him like look React If some shit is whack Say it's whack If y'all hear a hotline Like this is live And so when I did the verse They actually were cheering for me and shit

Like, they liked it. You know what I mean? Well, the thing was the guy who was facing, he was a real emcee, but he was very nervous because it was his first time on TV, so he kept forgetting his lines. So now, Fonte's, you know, improvising in character, like, well, come to the youth center. We have memory pills.

We got ginko about a boy. I was just, I was just saying all kind of shit. And so, and the thing was, my verse, I had to write it the night before. And that's something, you know, it's extremely hard to do like to write something and then have to memorize it so I'm an extra in the scene and in between takes I'm going out and listen to my phone like playing the verse over and over and over again and so finally we shoot it and you know the the kids reacted

to my shit they was like yo this they was laughing and like they was hooting hollering and so afterwards me and Dan was talking I was like man what the fuck was that that wasn't supposed to happen and he was like well you know what dude that audience like that that youth like now they didn't get ex-clan. They didn't get poor righteous teachers. They didn't get, you know, just that super pro-black time and rap where we just thought we was like going to be blackety black. They didn't get it. So to them

it was cool to see. So to them it wasn't a joke because they didn't even get the reference to stuff that we were referencing at that time. And is the cipher in the pilot? This is in the pilot. This is in the pilot. My wish is that people can hear the whole verse. Unbelievable. And listen, Jay Smooth was

an extra in one of our scenes. I remember your demo came in when J-S-Move was in it. And J-S-Move and I had such fun listening to that demo. Yeah, I cut the demo that because, again, you hit me that night. It's like 11, 12 o'clock. And I just left Blue Note with Glasper. And it's like

12 o'clock I'm getting back in the join. And he's like, so I need you to do this scene. And by the way, we're taping tomorrow, you know, like afternoon. So be ready. I'm like, all right. So I literally cut the demo in my hotel room. with my little bull speaker, my iPad, and my iPhone. And I just wrapped into that. And that was how we did it.

And so, yeah, that was it. So that was a character I had to write for. It was, um, who else your girl? Um, Imani, Imam Ali. There is a, without giving way too much, there is a audition. An audition sequence, yes. Coming up. So it's like three or four acts I had to write for them.

You did a great job on that one. Thank you, man. me. Well, here's the thing. It's not just lyrics because, again, this gets back to my horrible A&R career. You know, we had to decide, because there's the bangor at the end of the season, right? And what is the beat that we're going to use? But there's a problem. And the problem is there's a plot line that involves using a particular Bob James sample. And or rather, using a sample record by Bob James and which record was it going to be

and I felt really boxed in I felt like oh my God I know none of these things is going to make something that hasn't already been done and I'm panicking because we couldn't use knowledge I was like we can't use knowledge and it was so great it was 1990 it was 1990 but the thing was with Pring like I mean it's fucking Primm so we're talking samples

he's like oh yeah yeah I remember I chopped that for Boupon back in 92 You know what I mean? It's like, oh shit, you did do that. You know what I mean? So a lot of that stuff. So I'm not going to mention the Bob James song, but you suggest it.

And I think. That's what I was just thinking. Mm-mm. I'll tell you after it's over, but no, it's nothing. And I thought, I was like, oh, that is never going to work. It is never going to work. And I'm busy like, okay, you know what? Maybe it doesn't have to be Bob James.

Maybe we do a cool-in-the-gang song. Here's ten cool-cuh-gang songs you could sample. I'm, you know, panicking. And funk is bad. I mean, cool his back, we had that one. Yeah, we were possible, like four different artists that we could use to make this plot line work. And Prime takes Fonte's suggestion

and makes this, it's just unbelievable. Beat the coolest back? No, no, no, no. No, a Bob James record. That you have heard in another classic golden era hip-hop hit that I never thought could have been flipped in the way it was flipped. You know, I'm going to guess it, right?

I want you to do. guess it. I know it. I'll confirm it. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm about to say you probably guess it was Steve. So, no, Steve is I don't think you will guess it. Oh, it is. Holy shit. He's a tap and Z. What? Tapancy records? Yeah. Yes, he's a tab and zee maestro. Oh, you're saying that's in the name of the song.

No, no, I'm just saying that. I didn't give it away. I didn't give it away. I didn't give it away. Westchester lady? No. Nah, nah. No, like that. Wait a minute. Hang on. I mean, take me to the Mardi Gras was the...

That's Captain Ombudsman. Yeah. Well, here's the thing, though. See, flipping was really not a thing in 1990. Yeah. So, all right, just for... I can remember. The Greenland Age Act that used this particular Bob James record didn't exist yet.

So it had not been used. So it wasn't really a flip. It's a flip to us in 2017. But the producer DV thought it up all himself in 1990. In 1990. It's not Westchester lady. Nah. It's not the on-example?

Nah. Nah, not that one. Is Flip like a technical thing? Well, just to flip just means like... To take a sample that's already been used and used in a different way. In other words, if you have a Rubik's Cube in which all the sides are completely done, that's 1990. cats just started mixing it all up and you know all the colors up

and messing it up like by like 94 95 it's like you know you know players anthem by junior mafia right so Prime and Jiru to sort of poke fun at it they take the same sample which is a new birth sample and they flip it

yeah so yeah so but nah that was I mean it's been an incredible like just to be able to you know do that shit like so It puts me in a zone where I like to be, like, kind of behind the scenes and, like, live my life through different people. And, you know, that's just fun to watch. Like, hearing other people interpret your words, that shit is amazing to me.

It's just a lot of fun. The first episode of season one is aired. What can you tell us about where these characters are going without giving stuff away? Well, you know, they're on a collision course with destiny. Uh-uh. Oh, damn. No Hollywood. I think I just, you know, I, they're dealing with what we were dealing with in 1990.

They're dealing with major labels coming in and sniffing money and sniffing around and offering a lot of personal opportunity to folks. Do you take that or do you not take that? and what are you, you know, what are the risks of taking that big, cushy major label job, and what do you sacrifice in the process? You know, what does DV do to, you know, how much does he want to work with him

and how much danger is he willing to put himself in? You know, for David, who works at the, you know, the quote-unquote urban radio station, you know, how he wants, it's hip hop to be on the air so much, but is he willing to understand that, you know, it's a business, not just, you know, to give people moral lessons on, you know, that hip hop should be, you know, that there, he may have to, you know, take a little advice from his father to do some of the things he wants to do. Yeah. What Harris's character? Um, I wanted to ask you about him,

because I feel like some of these characters are like an amalgamation of a few people, some of them maybe just one person that you knew, but Wood Harris's character, a few people, one person. Few people. You know, I think there are definitely shades of Russell there. Wood, when he plays him, he channels a lot of dame, you know.

There's a manic energy there that even Russell can't, you know, it's not, it's more dame or puff than it is Russell. But he's also, he's, the great thing about watching this season, One of the best things anyway was watching these characters make, like Barry Farray is his own thing. Now, he's not Russell.

He's not Dame. He's Barry Farray. And you can see him there in 1990, and it makes sense. And the character has some integrity. I love the way, and too, for the lead character, the female, I'm sorry for you, her name. Afton Williamson is the actress.

Playing Nikki Jones. Yeah, she is, you are introducing the concept of the intern and really that, because you know, that time is over now. So it's interesting in telling us. story of a music intern and what they had to go to, a female music intern in that world. And I almost wonder with two males in the situation who, like, is there another female to kind of come in and be like, this is a whole different aspect that you don't make me know? Or did you just already be like...

Nikki will have a few mentors to choose from, I'd say, over the course of the season. And Mack, I mean... Yeah. We didn't even talk about the DJ battle. Mac enrolled himself in scratch a case. Academy to learn how to DJ so he could participate. Black La-Wan. Oh, wow.

What's that? Black La La La Le. What's his name? Mel Lee. The lead. Your boy. Oh, Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling took up six months of piano lessons to play all the actual.

He's actually playing all that jazz stuff. And the fingering's correct and the chords are correct. That's him actually playing. Oh, wow. Well, talk about Mac in that way and also his, like, history with music because he's like a different kind of actor in a sense of playing a role like this, his relationship with hip hop and his commitment. It's different, I feel like.

Yeah, well, he grew up in Staten Island. His father cut all the dudes from the Wu-Tang Clan's hair. You know, he's known Method Man since he was a kid. Who plays his dad, right? Who plays his dad. Fun fact, I actually read for that role. Somewhere, hopefully on a hard drive. fucking buried way

somewhere I'll think that I read the audition audition for his role and I didn't think it would work but I was like I'm gonna just do the shit anyway I don't think I'm maybe play his uncle but I can't play his dad

That dream had to die So Imam Ali live Yes Yeah there was also a character we had It was the scene we cut The Fred Jamal The record store Guy

Yes And that was one of the things That like really I like because we kind of get to show, you know, we're playing with history and you sometimes you get to show how wrong people got it. And so there was one scene where

the guy David, he goes to the record store and he asked the guy in the record store, hey, give me, I want to take some pictures of the customers who are in here buying hip hop. You know what I mean?

And so he then takes those pictures and goes to his, you know, goes to his boss and it's like, yo, these people are like, whip up. But the thing is the guy at the store is saying, hey, I don't want them to play

hip hop on the radio because if they play it on the radio, they're not going to buy it. It's not authentic? Yeah, not even get into like, no, motherfucker, that's is what will bring people to you. But he was just, you know, he got it so fucking wrong. You know what I mean? And there's little things that you'll see in the season where, you know,

people will make statements and it's just like, oh my God. Yeah, you know what she told us that? Petty crap. Are you serious? When he was doing his long time verse, he was like, yo man, I don't want to come out with a record. Because like once you make a record, you're whack. I don't think he did. I was like, so you want to just do mixtapes all your life?

It's like, yeah, there's a mystery to it. Like, people are still waiting for me. But like once in now comes out. Wow. Then, you know. Wow. And I don't think he never did. He never.

He could be an aquarium. Sorry But yeah But yeah We have little moments like that That are really You know You're watching it with the knowledge

Of what happens to these people Or people who held those thoughts And that's been fun for me Like kind of seeing how that plays out Um If you just tuning in Wait Hold on before you

Um I I've been looking for the simple Doop Okay Is it? this. Damn.

Nope. That was Bob James? Wow. I didn't guess it. Bitch you didn't guess it. It's right up under your nose. I got to watch it again on television. No,

no, you ain't got to. No, this doesn't happen until later. Oh. So it ain't air jet. It hasn't aired yet. It's the final episode. Yeah, it's coming. So.

But you close, though. Is it something? So you're saying when I hear this join, I'm going to want to. kick my television off the plasma like yes because it's something that's so obvious

and it's something that has been and it's not Nardalus no it's not that we that was one of the ones that we were looking at but he, Prima already used it no part of Nautilus. No it's not Nautilus because Prima used it

for my Mines Spray. I already did that for J-Rue. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah I did my Minespray and the group home. Wait, Talked like Primo? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did that one, you know what I'm saying?

We did that one and then the night trills for J-Roo. Real fast. You know what I'm saying? And then we did my mind spray. You know what I did that one? I was like, okay, Primo. So, yeah, but no, it ain't that one. It ain't that one.

But, I mean, it's right upon your nose. Like, you were hearing and be like, what the fuck? The only last one that he used was, did he use it before? No, no. Prem never used it before. He never used it. which is why it sounds fresh oh man

did red man did red man use it before nope I because I know what you think nah no not

not that one just tuning in there this is Questlow Supreme we got him playing bitch you guessed I'm like I got a question can I ask a question

of course your show. Bill? First of all, Dan is also a teacher and we haven't got to that part of it. Yeah, we teach at the same school. I know, which is amazing.

I forgot that. But you walked in you, you said, you said Marley Moore was at my class. And I feel like that was a big thing that we then went into this whole crazy bad shit show and didn't get to address. Bring the real.

Did he bring the real? Because he was on this show and he was, it was amazing. And I'm sure you have a story too. Well, I mean, he's just, first of all, to even come to a small class and to talk about his career.

you know, we were really just talking, I'm teaching a class on the golden age of hip hop and we're sort of pinning it between the years 87 and 93 for a few reasons. And, you know, he came to talk about the bridge. He came to talk about that jump to sample drums, right? That, and I never knew, and this is a whole sort of nerd thing, but I never knew.

I always thought that the bridge was made on an SB-1200. No, he talked about the guitar battle. Yeah. You know all about it. Dude, when he told us that we just... That and when he told us that the shakers... Oh, my God. Oh, yeah.

The shakers that make the music is him. That's him doing... Shh, shh, shh, shh, shh. Get out. He's literally making the music with his mouth. That was very much the whole four hours. It was like, no, you didn't. He's like, yes, it did.

That was pretty little bit. I mean, next to Whitney and T.J. Swine. Oh, my God. So apparently there was... Whitney story. There was close to being a Whitney and T.J. Swan duet. there's no punchline Look a damn face

He's stuck Right Yeah Whitney Exactly Make the music with your mouth Bobby Yeah

Whitney and Thomas Jerome Swan Together Yeah bro Molly had crazy stories So like Did the kids Like when

You have someone Like Molly come in Are they aware Of who they're looking at And like You know what that means Surprisingly This class really was

So You know Because they're young And I'm not saying it's surprising because they're really good students, but I mean, they were born after Tupac died, you know. So what do they know? A.P. I know there's a P.A.

They're going out of the big punt died. A P and an AP. Yeah. Right, right. Wow. Yeah, but I love teaching. One of your students was Maggie Rogers. That's right.

That was. Yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. And she's dope. I can't claim her either. No, no, she's my student too But she's more used to Yeah, yeah

She was my first student My very first class That I ever taught Who is she? Maggie Rogers is She's a young singer-songwriter Farrell did a video This has been

With Bob Power Where they just You know, they play records You know, you could play your records Fororell You know I mean He came in and kind of gave him notes And so Maggie played her joint

And that was the joint Where he was just like yo, I have no notes for this. This shit is crazy. And she ended up getting the deal. She's with RCA. Yeah. Capital.

I will back up my student in a couple weeks on the Tonight Show. She's going to make her debut. That's tough. Yeah. That's fucking dope. So great. Yeah, but she's dope. She's really, she has her.

It's completely singular. She sounds like nothing else. How many semesters do you do at the school? Fall and spring. You do, too? Yeah. I can only do This is the first year that I

opted not to do it I know I wanted you to teach the Dilla class No no I'm gonna still come in That's good But you know what when they first When When they approached me about Doing it

The idea of doing it Because they wanted it like last year's Whatever I felt weird about it Because There was no no curriculum and no periodicals or or books that I could use to teach. And I don't even know if I'm eloquent enough to really convey how special he was as a human being and as a musician,

especially in the age of now, which you can easily, with a click of a button, get results where all your stuff is quantized and if you want to chop up your stuff in a certain way and you know I'm trying to explain to these people like he was making these miracles with his bare hands

and brain like before this technology existed like the only way to describe it Hendrix's second album acts as bold as love you know we take for advantage we take it for granted No, well, no, no, no, just the whole album in general.

Like, Hendricks Damnir invented the, Hendricks and Eddie Kramer, invented the technology that we take for granted now, the idea of phasing and certain echo effects and chambers. Studio as instrument. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, so how, what is your goal in teaching about Dilla that will make it as mind-blowing for them? as it was for me to see that stuff firsthand as he's doing it. Yeah, you have a theory, like what you've told to me before, like the three inventors of modern.

I called the three kings of American rhythm. There's Louis Armstrong who basically established swing, you know, as sort of the American approach to meter and rhythm. James Brown, who turned every instrument into a drum. And the one, obviously. And then Dilla, who freed us from the grid. You know, he established a... I had to.

I had to. It's only right. You know, he sort of renegotiated the relationship between man and machine to me. Now, it's different because if you look at, I know you got soul, right? You have these two breakbeat records that really made hip-hop funky in a way that a quantized drum machine couldn't. But there was something about what Dilla was doing that, for the first, the first of the, first time traditional musicians are trying to do what he did. And I feel very funny laying this out here because the very first traditional musician to, you know, to try or to succeed in doing that

was you. Oh, wait, wait. Wait. Who is it? Like, I got to know who it is? I forgot. I mean, yeah, it's, it's, It's weird, man. It's just like during that period, I was the exact opposite because I had such a chip on myself. You wanted to sound like a drum machine. Yeah, I wanted to be perfect. And it took D and Dilla for the most part to unravel that yarn that I had wrapped myself in a perfection and coldness. That it's just hard to describe. Like even today, I think.

the cats from the Lumineers were on the show today. And we were just in our zone. We did like three or four dilla joints in a row. And, you know, I mean, there's a lot of downtime in the show that you don't see. I'm speaking of the Tonight Show. There's a lot of downtime in which sets have to be changed or whatever. So we're just jamming amongst ourselves. And we just got lost in a rabbit hole of crazy timing.

and you know I was trying to explain to them it was like some new shit look the way you guys did that crazy thing with the beat I don't know how to describe it and it was weird like I couldn't describe it to them either so it's like that that's the fear that I feel like I will drop history or drop, you know, misrepresent his importance. But, you know, I'm glad that you, you know, that you're stepping up to. Well, I don't claim to be a DILA expert by any stretch. I mean, some of my personal history is weird in this sense because my very first trip to Detroit was to work with him.

Chino X-L and I flew to Detroit. Don't say word. Yeah. And the other one, the one with Saffir. And how it goes, I think is the name of that song. So we flew to Detroit. We stayed downtown. We drove out to Conan Gardens.

Yeah, Athenium, right? And we went to his house on Nevada and met Madukes and went downstairs. And Common was recording like water for chocolate with him around that time. We went to the Mongolian barbecue and Dearborn across from Studio A, like the whole thing. And what was really weird is a Dilo. laid the tracks and then vanished. Oh, wow. And that was it, basically, you know.

And I understand that sometimes that was the way he worked or whatever. And that, I would never have imagined that moment that I would have sort of another part of my life in Detroit many years later. My wife is from Detroit. I'm back there all the time. And every time I'm there, I think of that first time. And that's where the genesis of the class came from. Does she say what up, though?

She does not. She does not. She's a poet and a tenured professor at the new school, so she does not say that. She's a new school. She's a new school. But here's the theory. Here's the theory about Dilettam. I wanted to run it by you.

And I'm thinking of sort of staking a claim that, because everybody's talking about, what is, what is Dilaham? Oh, well, it's just, he doesn't quantize the beats. That's not exactly it. And, oh, it's septuplet swing. But, yeah, but that doesn't account for the rush snare. So my feeling is that Dillatime, what Dillotime really is, what all of the traditional and electronic musicians are trying to do is it's the deliberate cultivation of tension between straight and swung elements in a song. And that tension is dynamic. It changes over time.

Yeah. That's the Thelonious Monk theory. Remember his idea of sub-notes? Yes. But there's the rhythm version of it. And it's weird because between Dilla, there's Prince and the Rizzo. Man. Both of whom, I consider the Rizum more the accidental tourist, where you take a song like

Averbal and a course. Uh-huh? Verbal and a course. Yeah, verbal and the course is a perfect example of that where it's just like, sounds funky, leave it like it is. And Prince, well, Susan Rogers recently, admit it. Because if you listen to Prince's stuff, you'll notice that he'll program almost kind of like in 64 bars. You're really supposed to do four, maybe eight, maybe 16 of your club, but 64 bars.

That means you're playing ahead of time with drum fields that only will come around maybe once in your song. Right. And that's how meticulous he was. but he would also save tracks in which he would do stuff by hand just so it can sound human. Well, you were the person who described a touré in his book

the straight clap from the drum machine and Lady Cab Driver, but he's playing the snare by hand, right? Yeah. Then he does this other thing rhythmically with the bass, right? If you listen to like irresistible bitch or tricky, he will give you

almost a shell of what the baseline is. He'll play like two notes out of eight, right? But the two notes infer the eight. Right. So you hear the eight, but you don't hear the eight. Oh my God, we're brothers.

That's why I was surprised I had never met each other before. I was like, you, have we met. Oh, you have met. We have met. We have met like, hall. Wait, were you there at the time? I may have been there, but here's where we met. Where do we mean?

We met when I worked for Forrest, I came to Sigma Sound. to meet with Richard. Right. Oh, okay. Who, rest in peace, man. I never had a chance to tell you in person. I was so sad to hear his passing. And then after that, the next time I saw you

was out, was in the musicology tour in the Meadowlands. It was, it was, you were just walking and getting a drink from the water fountain in the middle, in the middle of this Prince concert for musicology. I remember that show, okay.

And I just walked up to you. I didn't introduce myself. I just said, you're my favorite drummer. That's all I said. That's all I said. And then I think the next time I saw you was when I did the Experience Music Project thing on break beats.

And you were, that's when you played the Rod Temperton demo for... Rock with you, for rock with you. Yeah. Oh, wow. Guess what I was... Wait. Did I tell you already?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm waiting on. I'm waiting. Yeah, we'll talk. Okay, we'll talk after. But it's a pleasure to be here now. Better late than never. Thank you, brother.

I want to talk about Mies and Plas, man. I want to talk about, you know, so this book, it was after you wrote the big payback. This is a book about how chefs can teach you how to organize your life. That's right. Tell us about the principles of that. Like, what are the... And by the way, I actually bought this book. I have to read it.

Work clean is the name. So tell us about that, like, just the philosophy of mis and plaza and what that means. Well, after I wrote the big payback, you know, it's a 660 page book. And I just was drained, you know, and I had a wife and a baby. And, you know, I couldn't imagine myself writing another book. and, you know, we were developing the break, so, you know, I had other things to do. And just how long did it take you to write the Big Payback? Four years really, really heavy, but my first interview I did for the Big Payback was

10 years before the book came out. So, you know, Work Clean came out of the pain of the interim, you know, after the big payback came out and I was still working at a corporate media company, which should be. shall be unmentioned. And it was just painful to see. That you work in there with boss Bill, with Braintchild. That's right. That's right.

This is a very funny story. When Bill came in to interview for the job and I found out that he was actually DJ Brainchild, I got down on my knees, literally got down on my knees and bowed to him. And Jerry Barrow said to me, you know, that's really not going to help with the salary negotiation. I bet he loved it, though. Yeah. Well, he's a genius.

And I'm sorry he's not here right now. But so the pain of seeing waste on such a broad scale, you know, waste of time, waste of resources, waste of space, waste of relationships.

And at the time, I was just to sort of unwind or whatever, I would read chef narratives all the time. So I read Anthony Bourdain and Michael Ruman. and oh, the book Heat by Bill Buford, like just amazing books about the culinary world, not cookbooks, but about chefs' lives in the kitchen.

And these are, you know, wild people and wild narratives, but the one thing that ties them all together is this discipline that they call Misan Place, right? It's a way of relating to time, space, energy, and motion. And it was the only thing that I really wanted to write about. And the reason I wanted to write about it because I looked for a book on Misan Plaza and nobody had ever written one. So I just used the tools of the journalist again,

and I interviewed over 100 people from the culinary field over the course of two years. I did an NPR story based on that. He sort of boiled it down to 10 principles, right? But they're all about relating to time, space, motion, resources. And just, like, the way that chefs think about things is not the way that we think. And for each of the ten principles, I, you know, tell a story of a chef. And one of those chefs happened to be Jerobi White of a Tribe Call Quest,

whom I had never met, even though I had interviewed, I did the very first press day for Tribe Call Quest, like, when they came out in 1990. But I never met Jerobi all this time. We've probably been in a million rooms together and never met. And I'm so lucky to count him as a friend now, but I get to tell his story in that book, We're Clean. It's a great story. And his story is about perfecting movements, right?

How he learned to stop wasting motion and to be really focused in a kitchen. And Jerobi actually came up with the science of the magic triangle, right? Man. That everything we do is basically a triangle, you know, and we're a circle within a triangle. And that's how we should arrange our space. Have you seen the founder, the Michael Douglas, Michael Keaton, about McDonald's about Ray Cros. about Ray Crop.

You saw it? I've seen it and almost broke my, my, uh, my, uh, my vegan run. Because I wanted a cheeseburger right after I've seen it. They talk about, oh, it's, it's really good. It's like, it's cold blood as fuck, but it's good. But they kind of, the McDonald brothers, they kind of were doing that. Like, the way they set up their original, you know, McDonald's restaurant, it was based on, you know, economy of movement.

Like everything, it's funny to hear It's choreographed, perfect It was, yeah, it was really like a routine Like the, like they practiced in a school yard On the tennis court, on the tennis court Yeah, yeah, they practiced before they even got McDonald's Like, okay, do you do that motion, that motion Like not even carrying anything

They were just practicing the body motion Of how to get you- Once the burgers is off, they go here And then we switch and then like the shit's crazy You all have like a Quest Love Supreme movie night Where y'all just go to the movies together? We don't, we need to? You know, I mean.

A book. Lickliss a movie night What, no, we don't get the shit, we barely watch, we did watch, what you call it, as a family kind of, not sleepwalk with me. Bribiglius joint. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Don't think twice. We did watch that. We did watch that one. The musical less La La La Land. Yeah, that was good. Exactly. There's one that you, one of their principles that really spoke to me, you talk about clean as you go. Very important.

Talk about that one. Well, the science behind clean as you go is that anybody can create a system. Like, you decide you're going to organize your desk, right? And you spend two hours or three hours or a whole day organizing your space, and it's great, right? And it doesn't mean shit. Because unless you maintain a system, you can't keep a system. And the only way to maintain a system is to clean as you go, is to keep the system through motion, right?

A system is not to be looked at, right? Oh, I've organized things. It's like... It's to be practiced. You know, system is not a noun, it's a verb, right? So you have to be able to move through things. So you have to make that commitment to, you know, put things back where they go, right?

And that doesn't just work for the physical world. It also works for the virtual world. It works for the emotional world, right? And it's just about taking that extra two seconds to put something away so that you're not costing yourself, you know, a minute or two later or, you know, making a real mistake, you know. One of the stories I tell in that book is how my burn my, I got like second degree burns on my hand because my dear wife put a very hot pan down on top of the garbage can where a hot pan is not supposed to go. Yeah, you know.

That's not a lot of me. But it was my failure for not being aware. That's one of the principles is awareness and you know she wasn't you know maintaining her system as she went so we both had to learn from how do you apply this to your life because i know you're like we like i mean you talk a lot about like meditation and stuff you're like heavy into yoga or at least you know what i'm saying and you were telling me about like last time it was a it was like some kind of squat that you do that transfers the sexual energy out of your body so you'll be thinking about fucking these holes I can't remember the name of that squad But it was

Show me. No, but he was giving me game. Good for focus. I'm saying, I'm real. I'm real. I'm with you. I'm word up. Everybody listen to.

That's why you know, word up. So how do you apply this? Because I mean, dude, like from, I know what life was like for me when we were working on the breaks. And I can only imagine what the fuck was like for you in between that and in, NYU and, you know, family. How do you apply this to your life?

I'm not perfect at it. I mean, I do too much and I get sick, you know, and that's not good. You know, I got pneumonia last year. Like, it was bad, yeah. Check please. But, you know, for me, you know, one of the principles that's really helped me is, you know, the idea of what do you do, what do you choose to do first, right? And all of the systems of organization that are very popular talk about you do the worst first, right?

Stephen Covey, all of his books, like, talks about you put the big rocks in the jar first, not the small rocks, because the big rocks are what counting out. If you don't get the big rocks in first, you know, and you put the small rocks in, how are you ever going to get the big rocks in, right? All that. Do the worst first. And the thing is, you don't do the worst first. That takes it out of you.

Like, you don't want to do shit else. For another reason is that chefs actually. see the world in two separate, like, parallel kinds of time. There's process time and then there's intensive time, right? Processed hands on and hands off time, essentially, right? Something intensive like, oh, I need to make a beat or I need to write this essay or I need to do whatever with my hands, right? You can't delegate that. You can't, you know, you have to be there. So three hours is worth three hours of your work is worth three hours. But there are other things that set processes in motion that you can do called

called process time. Like I need to make the rice for dinner, right? I can't do that at the end of dinner because it takes a while to make the rice, right? So I have to do it first. It only takes five seconds, but that five seconds is worth, the, you know, 30 minutes that it takes to make that rice. So sometimes you can't do the worst first. Sometimes you have to start processes so you can get hours of work for just minutes, hours

of worth for just minutes of work. That's how chefs think. Damn. So that's helped me. I got to redo my book again. I feel inadequate. Now, you're working on a book with Wiley or something I heard with Dufrene? No, no, no.

I did mine. I mean, mine was more or less about the creative process. Yeah, I bought both of yours something to food about. I bought both of y'all's on the same day. Yeah, it's about the creative process. But, I mean, yeah, you go to the ninth level of hell to get these theories that I didn't even think about. Like, I'm just thinking that chefs are like musicians

in their creative process, but you're taking it to a whole other level. They are. But it's still parallel. It's interesting because y'all's two still went parallel. It's still the same. It's, you know, the food, the music, the teaching, it rounds out. It's just interesting. That's what I learned.

Yeah. That's what I'm. Well, we were about to wrap up, but I was about to say, I learned that I really have a. A bravo from my lover? Yeah. Who knew? We look alike. We love Dillon and Prince and Prince bootlegs.

Yeah. We both love Bill. Johnson. Bill Johnson. Bill. Not unpaid. Oh, not Unpaid. B, boss bill. And we have projects that use Night on Ball Mount by

Bob James. Nope. No. No. Nope. No. Nice. Come on. That's not it. It's not it. It's not it. It's so obvious, dude. Like, it's, yeah. Do we tell them? Is that what we do? Is that how this story ends? Oh, no.

Oh, I totally forgot about about. Yeah. Yes. Oh, yay. Give it to him. I hate you right now. A mayor, give it to him. I cheated.

He said the name. He kind of gave it away. I did. I played it. Yeah. You played it good. Wow. I pulled it.

I think I got it on my phone. I learned that Steve is the jazz master of the circle. I cheated. I just said I cheated. He's the cheater. Yeah, but you cheated late. Like, he said it like an hour ago. All right.

What he did with that beat is unbiased. believe it. Wait, is it the intro? I'll play it. I'll play it for you. Oh, I think it was the intro. Is it the intro or the... And then he used the... Because I never get past the rest of the velvet. Right.

There's other parts of the song? No, but I couldn't get past either. I said, how can anybody make anything not corny with this? Sorry. And I sent him the... I was like, yo, I think this part is, you know, and Primo used it.

You were right. You were so right. And what makes it great is that Prime also. flips the NT drums. And he uses the, you know, that, right. The one that everybody likes. Because the original, I think the first draft of that song, it was, he had used misdemeanor. And at that time, I'm just like, well, you know,

this is 1990, so it's funky enough pretty much killed misdemeanor. So I was like, I don't think we could, you know, use that. But, but yeah. If y'all take it into the next level, even I would have let that slide. Yeah, I was like, no, that's, that's D.O.C. So, but, but no, man. So right now, how are your days spent? I mean, it's, you know, teaching.

Once the breaks is, once this season finishes, we get word on, you know, season two, you know, one way or another. It is or it ain't. Yeah. If, assuming it is, when do you go back in? It is. It is. It is.

When do you go back into the writer's room? Next month. Shit. Are you serious? So get back to work. Yeah. 4 AM. Good luck.

4M wake up call. Wow. I'm also working on a bit of a, I told you, a little project for Russell as well. Yeah. So he actually did hire me after all those years. Wow. I feel like you say a little project for Russell will be like crush groove 2.0 or something. Ah, all right.

So, Dan, I'd like to thank you for doing our. show. We appreciate it. Thank you, sir. I'm like, is this the normal length of the show? Y'all going to edit this down to like 15 minutes, right? This is question of love supreme. We go long. This is a...

I mean, we go long. Yeah, the breaks. Check us out. Monday nights 9-8 Central on VH1. Every Monday. Yeah. Come out of us. Well, thank you very much. In behalf of the Questlove

Supreme team This is Questlove Apparently not The Bob James expert I thought I was Whatever We will see you Next week

Wednesday at 1 p.m. With an all new episode of Questlove Supreme All right y'all next week Questlove Supreme is a production of IHeart Radio This classic episode was produced by the team

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