The Questlove Show - Questlove Supreme: Monica Lynch Pt. 1

Episode Date: March 16, 2022

Questlove Supreme continues our celebration of Women's History Month with an interview with Monica Lynch. In part one, the former A&R-turned-president of Tommy Boy Records revisits the late 1970s New York City scene, including tips for getting into Studio 54. She also recalls memories surrounding Force M.D.'s, Stetsasonic, and De La Soul. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed human. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're 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 Clifford 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 Clifford show on the IHeard 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 Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, for 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. Quest Love Supreme is a production of IHeart Radio. So, ladies and gentlemen, another episode of Quest Love Supreme is upon us. Very happy day today. Here with my family, my team supremacist. How are you guys doing? What up, what up? Hello.

The way that we're progressing in the world, it's only a matter of time before we can actually take our theme song back. Oh. I think tonight would have been a good night for Tales from the Latin Quarter and all kinds of things tonight. See, our guest, you'll, she just had some, some, she, we just might have to. insert those things. I'm here with Team Supreme, here with Almighty

unpaid Bill. Making moves. Always. How you doing unpaid bill? Wait, unpaid Bill. Are you part of Enkanto at all? Like, is that any of your music? No.

No. I'm friends with the guy who wrote it. That's not you hitting Bruno? No. I wish I was, honestly, my bank wishes that I was, knew something about Bruno, but I don't talk about him or anyone.

I have no, I've nothing to do with Brunon. I wish I did, though, man. Like, 10 weeks at number one or some shit. Like, I wish. It's still number one, right? Yeah. Like, you know, Lynn Manwell is going to mess around and, like, beat Boysdemon, MRI, Carrie.

Is that still the longest number one song on? The one sweet day? I think it is. Okay. I mean, I'm from the old school sound scan, so, you know, or whatever method they use now to. Yeah, it is new. math don't count. Like, we come from an area where motherfuckers had to leave their house to buy shit. Exactly. Exactly. That's a dude. That's a dude. That was the way we did.

Yes. Okay. I'm sorry, because Lai is, you know, she's, she's Gen Z. How you doing, Laya? I'm doing amazing. Except for this, uh, this old gas situation. But I'm good, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. What's gas looking like in L.A. right now? Well, it's funny. You asked that, my rich friend. currently gas in Los Angeles is $6. We are at about $5.90 something. Yeah, it was like $4 out here. Y'all got IAMLegin gas prices out there. Wait a minute.

This is something. Fonte, do you drive? Oh, yeah. I mean, this is a question we've never. I mean, it's been five years, but I just don't, I can't see what kind of, like, what kind of car do you have? I got a Lexus. RX 350.

That sounds swanky. Yeah, I mean, hey, it's paid for. I ain't buying another car, so we don't ride it out. All right. I once FaceTime Fonte while he was in his car outside of the chicken shop, I believe, is what happened. Do you have like a cigarette hanging out of his mouth with just one hand on the wheel? Nah, I just have to do it. I have a way back, like Dame Dash and a paid and fool.

Yeah, I have my black father, you know, you get home and you pull up in the driveway and you just sit there for about an indeterminate amount of time. Oh, okay. Am I the only, oh, I don't know this is a TMI moment. Am I the only one that sometimes this has to sit in the car for 10 minutes just so you could brace yourself for whatever's waiting for you? All the time. You're not alone.

All the time. You're not alone. That is, yeah. Oh, so that's universal talk. Oh yeah. Straight up. Okay. I'm still happy with my relationship.

You're just asking for a friend. So, Steve, how you doing? I'm good. Amir. Anything interesting happening happening? network or you know oh gosh i mean you know um i what i didn't anticipate you asking me that question so i'm okay well let me start again how you doing steve i'm i didn't anticipate you ask me that either so i don't know what to say ladies and gentlemen all right so and uh i'm i'm

winging this so i'm trying to keep it real distinct because i realize that our guest hasn't spoken a word yet because i didn't address her or all right i know i know so Look, when cats, when dudes my age, um, start reminiscing about, you know, quote unquote, the good old days or real hip hop or true school or whatever we say, um, our guest name should ring familiar. I think that the, the thing about, well, the thing is, is that even though I've never read an interview or seen a television interview or heard it at radio interview on the radio or even exchanged any sort of casual banter with our guest or even DM crept my way into a friendship or a relationship which is I know that made that sound weird but you

know DM creeping your way into free friendships is it's kind of real like I can actually say I'm genuine friends with like Henry Winkler and working fair child just from DM creeping which kind of weird I'm also friends with tasty cake Steve. Wait, wait, wait, wait. I like making grins with, with, with, uh, non-human entities on Twitter. Bake goods. What?

Morgan Fairchild? Dude, it's so random. She started liking, like it, like, she started liking a whole bunch of my tweets. And then we're, we're actually BFFs. Like, like, hey, when you're in town, let's go to dinner. I mean, I haven't done it yet. But I think I'm down with Morgan Fairchild, yo. Oh, my gosh.

I know. I know. I don't see that coming. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, your old news kind of like happy for me right now right i'm thrilled i know i know monica's like how is this going to relate to me all right my whole point is that um you know i i i don't exactly have a relationship with our guest on the show having grown up in the age of hip hop where you know a transition from 12 inch uh and singles to lps and i'm part of the generation that

lived for liner notes and seen who did what. Our next guest name should ring familiar to hip hop heads because she was literally president of one of the most powerful labels of the genre. And I don't even want to limit it to hip hop because, you know, Tommy Boy had hits, from club hits to pop music to freestyle to, I can name them all, De La Sol, Colio, Digital Underground, Forced and D's D's.

House of Pain, Club Nouveau, K-7, LFO, Information Society, naughty by nature, the Rizzo, back when he was Prince Rakeem,

RuPaul, Queen Latifah, the original hip-hop band Stetsasonic. Y'all really have to understand that the muscle that this label operated with

probably the only other rival label that can even say that they held that same space was probably death jam. So, ladies and gentlemen, the very legendary president or former president, Tommy Boy, the one and only Monica Lynch on Questleps Supreme.

Oh, dear, thank you. How are you, Monica? I'm doing great. And I really appreciated the conversation about gas prices because now that I'm 65, gas price means a whole different thing. I've never driven. I don't drive. I just got a metro car. Oh, you're a real New Yorker?

So we'll say, what's the gas situation? I'm like, oh, let me look in my medicine cabinet. I'm on gas. That's what I'm talking. Wait, you're telling me you never had your license or you never owned a car. I have my license, but I only use it for ID. And the only car I ever drove was a gold Cadillac with power windows that my father owned back in, like, the, early 70s.

So the die was cast at a young age. So this is definitely going to lead to my first question. What part, well, I don't know. Were you a natural born New Yorker or? Chicago. You can hear it. You can hear it. Okay.

Yeah, Chicago. I'm 65. I'm from Chicago. I grew up there. Yeah. Well, you know, I grew up there and I was, you know, really weaned on top 40 radio when it was still a huge. amazing thing in the late 60s.

Heard all the great, great pop songs from that era. And back then, you know, blues was definitely still a big thing in Chicago, but it was mostly, I would say, a lot of white guys. They were checking the blues. Back in that scene, you know, Paul Butterfield Blues band. The electric blues, as they told it. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly.

And then I sort of got into the disco scene. I was a big disco dancer, hustle contests, was a dancer at the big gay bar in Chicago, which was sort of like a, it was the Studio 54 of Chicago. Then I was in a punk band and we worked at a punk club and did all sorts of things before I came to New York in 1978. You got history. What was your first musical memory? My first musical memory was listening to my parents' records in the basement.

And they, of course, had the sort of records that you would find in the 60s in a lot of collections. It was everything from Nichols and May to My Fair Lady soundtrack to, you know, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, that sort of thing. I had a big crush on Herb Alpert back then. And I got my first record player the same year that Rubber Soul came out. That was the first record I ever owned was Rubber Soul. That would be 65? No, I think it was a little earlier. I think, well, yeah, maybe 64, 65 was rubber saw, I think.

Yeah. Okay. Wow, that's cool. So would you, like, did you have any ambitions or goals to be in the music industry or did it sort of find you as you became an adult? I had no ambitions, no goals. I just loved music. I was like, I used to buy 45s all the time.

I don't know if you remember that there was something called the phone. monologue, this huge, like, yellow paperback compendium that you could go and do special orders of 45s at record stores back then. Do you remember that? Well, yeah, when I shop at specialty stores now, it looks like the yellow pages. Like, it's just a masterless. So if, what was the spot we used to shop at in Philly, Steve? Val Schia. Val Shivley.

Val Shively. Yeah, Val Shivley. Yeah. So like you go to Val Shively and, you know, next to Jerry's, oh, rest in peace of Jerry's who just passed away like a month ago or whatever. Like those specialty record stores, like record stores that have over 100,000 records in stock, they still have those books there. So you didn't work in a record store. So how would you get access to those records? Or how would you get access to that book? Well, I was always listening to the top 40 states. in Chicago, WLS and WCFL. And I would go down to the Marina City, those two buildings that look

like corncubs in Chicago. And that's where WLS was. And I was a kid. I would just take the L train down there. And you could stand in the lobby and watch the DJ on the air. And they would have these little surveys that they would give you of the top 40 records for the week. I know this is really kind of going back like a rocker. But I figure you would probably No, literally the show is based on long-winded rabbit hole. The whole point is to get me to not talk. So go ahead. Well, so anyway, so I started, you know, really saying,

oh, I want a special order these records because I can't find them at E.J. Corvettes or Montgomery Awards or something. Right. And so back then, as you know, there were always like these great independently owned record stores. And you could go there. And if you struck up a good relationship with the owner or a clerk, it was a tremendous source of knowledge that was passed along. And you could special order these things and just basically loiter in the store and learn a lot.

And that is, in fact, we could talk about that in the hip hop era as being a big thing here in New York and other places. But no, I came here, you know, I always say I came here with, you know, on a dollar in a dream. No plans except to go to Studio 54. and I landed in New York during the time when it was sort of like the perfect nexus of punk and disco and no wave was happening and sort of the downtown art scene and all that stuff that people lionize so much. But it was a great time to be in New York because it really was cheap. And I lived on St. Mark's Place between second and third, which was basically like the main run was. for, you know, people would get up at two, three in the afternoon and then sit out on the stoop to watch so-and-so, you know, Richard Held come down the street to cop is dope or whatever.

You know, it was, and I wouldn't say it, except that he's going to say it's not ginger, like now, it's expensive property. But back then it was cheap. It was something to behold. And yeah. And there was this woman named Anya Phillips, who was sort of the one of the co-founders, in the mud club and she was really sort of a downtown doyenne she was the girlfriend of James White or James Chance you know contortions and she uh sat me down one day she was very stern serving a dominatrix sort of way he said you're going to be a a topless dancer

and I'm going to make G strings for you because I had no money and so I said okay sounds like a plan and I went to this place called the go go agency and I I've recounted this tale many times, but there was a guy there named Johnny, and it was like a scene out of Broadway Danny Rose, and you walk up the stairs in this midtown building. And there's these big boards, and it lists all the topless bars and all five boroughs. And he would assign you, you know. He was an agent. Yeah. And so he would send me out to places in Queens, like the carousel or this place up in the Bronx called the Slice or.

or there was a place over in the meatpacking district when it was still a meatpacking district. You do a lot of stuff in Midtown because you had a lot of customers in Midtown back then. But yeah, it was. Wait, I got to ask. So I, you know, my era of, I say I'm part of the deaf leopard generation where there's no time where I've not entered a strip club where they force you to listen to pour some sugar on me. Except for Atlanta, except for Atlanta. But back then, like, would you have to feed the 45 jukebox or was there, or was it like it is now?

Like, welcome to the stage. No, no, no. I wish I had an emcee welcoming to the stage. It wasn't quite that grand. Oh, okay. I was going to ask if you had a nom de plume. Did you have a title? What was their name?

It was Mr. Smonique. And this was also in the late 70s, you know, so the type of records that you were hearing, I mean, if I hear, you know, ring my bell one more time, it's, that was sort of like, that was your pours some sugar on me. It was it was the poursum sugar of me of 1978, 79. Yeah. Totally. You know, but if it was disco, you know, because it was sort of. It was sort of like when disco, it kind of peaked, and it was much more like these mechanical type of records, which not that I'm mad at that, but it was those type of records. Ring my bell.

It seems to be the one that always comes back to me in my dreams. But I worked at, had what I call extended residences at Show World, which you might be, might remember that. And Peepland, which was also a big player on the, on the, on the, on the Dube. back then. But yeah, it was steady money, good money. I cleared $1,500 a week at the peak. Okay. I got to ask a question.

So is this, all right, you remember how it wasn't Papa Don't preach? Like, open your heart. Was it like you sat in a booth and you inserted a coin and the thing went up and you, does that type of strip club still exist? Or is that like a thing of the past now? It's called OnlyFans. Yeah. It is.

That probably is a promo. No, we need some more. Oh, man. No. Hey, these OnlyFans chicks, I think they were pretty smart. They're much more entrepreneurial. I mean, back then, I got hired. Well, like, say, for example, the show world, my boss's name was a woman named Thunder.

And she had huge red hair. She was like Bensonhurst type of gal. And the place was owned by. a guy who died recently, but it was all mob owned. It was, oh, who is, there was one of the big mob characters that, Frankie the horse Ianello. That was the guy who ran the whole, all that business. If he's named after an animal, then you know that's bad. That's right.

That's right. So, you know, they paid you a flat fee, but you made your money. You really made your money by getting these guys to keep putting the coins in and keep the window going up. So I would sit on one side and then there'd be the, the, the, the, curtain, the metal curtain, and the guys would be on the other side. And a lot of, we had a lot of Hasidic customers. Man, what a sham that whole thing is. Let's get into it. Let's talk about it. But, you know, it's because it's such a repressed, sexually repressed culture. I think you'd get a lot in

the peep shows. All right. I'm going to go there. I'm going to go there. Go there. What happens on the guy's side of the booth, though? Like, is there a cleanup afterwards? it's like, is... Oh, yes. There is Mop Patrol. Yeah, isn't this the Jiz Mopper? Isn't this where this like first came around? That's right.

If when you walk into the place, you give them cash and they give you these tokens. And the tokens are what allows you to go to the booths or to watch a peep movie or things like that. They also had live sex shows at Show World. I didn't do that there. Damn. But yeah, the idea was to. keep them putting the money in.

So these were skills I was able to apply to the music industry. Not too long afterwards. You said you didn't do the live since you'll dare. Did you do it somewhere else? Diggit. Yo. Leave it alone. You'll have to ask me back as a guest

to answer the second part of that question. 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 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 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 IHeart Radio 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.

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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. I hear a long time.

New York residents, like begging for the time when old New York returns. Is this what they're talking about? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of romanticizing about dirty New York of the 70s. I mean, literally the summer I got there is when they let out a lot of people with mental health issues onto the street. They just dumped them on the street. There was a huge garbage strike. There'd been a big blackout in 1977, as the tramps told us about it.

about. And there was, you know, it was definitely grungy and dirty. And people like to say, oh, wasn't it great back then? Because it attracted all these, you know, creative people and blah, blah, blah. But I don't really get all. I mean, I like to recount the stories about that, but I wouldn't want it to go back to that necessarily. So you like post-94 Disney Giuliani era a little better. Oh, no, I didn't say that either. No. No, no. I think I've shared this on the show once before. Like, the first day that we arrived in New York when the roots like really first came to New York to start mixing, do you want more? I believe like in December of 93 was pretty much like, I think the day that whatever, I, okay, maybe I've been on 42nd Street once or twice in my life.

I know we went to go see the whiz, but I don't remember that much at the age of seven. But, you know, I do remember us going on 42nd Street near our hotel and, like, Rich, like, my manager, whatnot not being really disappointed that 42nd Street's Disneyfied and not the CD, you know, New York that he remembers. And I remember, like, people telling us, like, that week is when the transformation started. it and everybody was pissed at it. So, hey, it's nice to be able to be old enough to look back at it and to remember it as it was back then. But I'm not getting all tears in my beer over, you know, hey.

That's perfect. Wish it was bad. So clubwise, you know, I've been trying to get another downtown New York diva that made a billion dollar career for herself on this show. but that hasn't happened yet. So I guess you are really our first witness to that era. Can you, assuming that by this time, you're watching hip-hop culture creep into downtown, first of all, like, did you go north of the Bronx

to any of the what was known as the classic eras of hip-hop, like whatever, the fever or any of those clubs way north? Yeah, I mean, I've been to the fever, course, I know Sal from back then. T-Connection. Actually, you know, a funny thing was I ended up bringing Martin Scorsese to the T-Connection one night to hear Bambada play. And that was sort of an odd set of circumstances. But, you know, so.

Yeah. He knew this guy. What were they? Wait, what era of Raging Bull, King of Comedy? What era do you? This would have been. circa 82, 83. So you tell me.

King of comedy. All right. Yeah. And he was friends with this guy named Jay Cox, who was a film critic at Time Magazine, who was related to Tom Silverman. And somehow there was a conversation. Oh, Marty

would really love to go up and check out this hip hop thing and blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I was like, hey, be happy to show him, you know, take him up there. and so there's a car service, which back then, you know, was a rare thing for me to have any car service or anything. But he went up to T-Connection. He was pretty quiet, you know.

I think he was just checking it out, observing, and, you know, the Time magazine ended up doing a big story about sort of the emerging hip-hop scene back then. But, yeah, I used to go to some of the places uptown, but more frequently I would go to every Friday night I was we went to Nogril when that was having when Cool Lady Blue you know had started doing her nights at Nogrel and then I would always go to

the Roxy on Friday night and then following the Roxy I would head up a few blocks and go to the fun house I was very friendly with jelly bean and would hang out with him a lot Benitez okay yes

so those and then And, of course, Danciteria was a really great place to hang out at. And, you know, before that, it was like Studio 54 and the mud club were staples for me. But, you know, but, yeah, Union Squares was a place I went to a lot. And Amazon Hotel, that was a big place. Patrick Moxey had payday. I don't know. Okay.

Yeah, gangstar. Oh, yeah. Totally. That was a big one. De La Sol did a big place. premiere performance there. And I didn't really hang out at Latin quarters that much. I left that to Dante.

But yeah, those were the big clubs that were sort of happening back then. Yeah. The lure of the or the, yeah, the folklore of Studio 54, like, assuming that it really started to rise in 77, when did it peak? even though I've heard Studio 54 stories like in 81, 82, 83, 84, like in the first half of the 80s, like

when did the allure of Studio 54 died down and when did it become was it ever uncool to go there? Yes, it was uncool to go there after it closed and then it reopened. I would say it peaked in 79. It burned fast and hard and

it extinguished pretty quickly. I think that, but it, you know, I'd say by 80. So were you, have you ever went there at its peak when like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Even she couldn't get in, even though they had the number one song on the charts. Like, oh yeah. No, I literally, you know, laughed that I,

you know, that I landed at LaGuardia airport and proceeded straight to Studio 54. But that it's not, it's an exaggeration, but literally I was like a homing pigeon. I have to go to my spiritual home of Studio 54. And,

you know, back then, So this is in April of 78. And back then, you know, you had all the, you know, Diane Van Furstenberg and Warhol and Liza and all these people, you know, it was razzle-dazzle. But there was always this, they always led in a group of young kids that if you were dressed interestingly enough and added youthful flavor to the crowd. You'd stand outside for a little while. and Mark Benicki, who was the doorman, who would stand on this perch in a huge Norma Kamali red cocoon coat, would, you know, sort of look around and act like, you know, he suss out the crowd.

I always had a strategy, though. My strategy was to take the subway up to as close as possible to 54 and 8th, and then take a cab from the corner to directly in front of Studio 5th, which could take anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes because the street was always packed. Right. But the trick was that split second, when the cab door opens, Mark Benicki is always looking to see who's getting out of cars. Because it could be Truman Capote, you know. But he would at least register you.

So, you know, I spend whatever, 75 cents on the subway, another maybe four bucks, just going half a block in a taxi to make sure to get it. See, now Roger should have learned that lesson. Yes. He should also have been white, but, you know. Oh, yeah. Well, listen, there's no question about that. But yeah, no, it was not a democracy. It was far from it.

So, yeah, 79 was the peak. 78 maybe. So once that peaks, are you, would you say that Paradise Garage replaced it? Or then what was your, like, what, replace Studio 54 as, okay, that's not cool no more. Let's go to this spot. You know what? It wasn't at either or. I mean, there was a lot of stuff going on at the simultaneously. There was a place called Horaz that was very popular. There was a place called the Continental bath. I mean, not the Continental Bands. That's another place. The Continental Club. There was

Dancateria. There was the mud club. There's a CBGBs was still, you know, it was very big. still back then. And then there was, of course, places like Xenon, which was sort of like the poor relation to Studio 54. You know, if you couldn't get into Studio 54, you would go to Xenon. And then there was also, what's that sex club? Oh, what's that sex club that everyone went to, the Swingers Club? I forget the name of it.

It was very popular. Hey, son. You know what? It's escaping my mind right now, like you up there. It alluded him. This is why we have guests on the show. I'm trying to... You know, I was going up there,

but at this rate, I was doing all these du-op shows. Like, I didn't see this part of New York. Well, you know, Amir, you certainly have Vince O'Laddy's disco files book. Yes. Yes. I think the Disco Files book is a really great lay of the land. Okay.

for the clubs that were happening and when they were happening. Because it didn't just, like, jump from Studio 54 to, say, Paradise Garage. And Paradise Garage was such a different, there might have been some overlap, but it was a very different vibe, very different crowd. I was not a member of Paradise Garage. I did go there on many occasions, but he had to reach out to the guy. Was it Richard Brody, I think, was the name of the guy that owned the club? Right.

get on the guest list for the night and all. It was too hard to get it. Okay. Well, you had to be a member, you know, as a membership club. Question. Before your record label days, were you seeing any bands or artists like perform in clubs? Or were you strictly just like a club kid listening to DJs? You know, I was actually more interested in the DJs to tell you the truth.

And I still am. The, I mean, yeah, I would see these shows and everything. But I didn't have, I never had the same fervor about seeing live concerts except for Roxy Music. And I'm a total Roxy Music geek fan, love Brian Ferry, like going back to mid-70s. But I, so that was, oh, and I was also loved to go see Bowie and LaBelle. La Belle was a definitely appointment. You know, that was like a big deal to go to LaBelle shows back in the 70s. Were you there for their infamous where I think they did something at the Lincoln Center where everyone had to wear something silver in the artie?

Oh, yeah. No, no, no. Yes. That was the chameleon tour, I believe. Yes. Yes. With all the costumes that were by Larry Lagaspi, the Lake Larry Ligli. Ligaspi, who's being, there's a big book that Rick Owens is doing a tribute to Larry

Lagaspe, but this was in, I believe, 76, because I think after the chameleon tour, they kind of broke up if I'm not. They broke up, yeah. Yeah, but I was in Chicago and me and all my friends. I was hanging out with this huge, gay, glammy crowd, and we all dressed as reptiles to go to the La Belle concert, and I dressed in this green sequined lizard outfit that I put together. And actually, and all my friends did, I still have photos of it, and I was invited to go up on stage and dance with Nona and Sarah.

And I have the photos of it to have the receipts. But it was incredible. I mean, this is when the audience was really at one with the... a labelle. And, you know, people felt that way, too, about going to Bowie and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, concert or anything like that. Okay.

So, for you, did you know an immediate sonic difference when you were frequenting clubs that were, you know, more hip-hop bass-based. And I mean, way before there were rap labels or even before your time at your tenure at a Tommy boy. Like, if you're seeing, like, do you remember your first rap club experience pre your record label days? Hmm. No, I don't. Because I think I started, I think probably the first club that I recall going to was probably

Negril. So it's not like I was, oh yeah, I was at Harlem World in 79, blah, blah, no, it wasn't like that. Okay. But is this the Negril that's on 23rd Street? Negru, I think, was down on like 2nd Avenue around maybe 3rd or 4th, 6th Street, Lady Blue. Freddie was very involved in sort of helping, you know, coalesce the uptown downtown scenes together. You know, BAM was DJing there. And I think, I think Rock Steady performed there. It was like a small sort of cramped basement space.

It was really, you know, not a... Like the APT? Yeah. Okay, I get it. Now, when people mention the grill, of course me being an entry in the 90s I'm thinking of the upscale Jamaican restaurant yeah thinking that maybe it was once a hip-out club like in the 80s or whatever but I'm realizing that I got fooled so can you tell me how you got pulled into the record industry

uh well I was waiting I left my my thriving career at show world and people and um you know I made this, you know, incredibly brilliant determination that the people who I was, the people I was working with, the people I was working for, and the customers were all pretty much a dead end. And I wasn't, and I wasn't getting any younger. So I started waiting tables, ended up working graveyard at a place called the Empire Diner. I was living in the Chelsea Hotel. So it's like all the bona fides for, like, yeah, she checks all the boxers sort of late 70s, early 80s. And but because I had always been such a music fan, and I was always like, what's that you're playing?

What's that you're playing? You know, but, you know, I loved it. I just, I decided to go to this. I heard about something called the new music seminar. And it was the first conference that Tom Silverman put together with his two partners, Mark Josephson, and I'm not even sure Joel Weber was part of it at that point. But it was in a small, it was in recording studio up in Yorkville. And this was probably 1980 or 81.

So, and I met Tom at a pizza place during a break. I said, hey, I'm Monica, you know, okay, whatever. And then a guy named Bob Pittman was speaking at this conference. and he announced that there was a new new thing that they were about to launch called MTV. And I approached him afterwards. I said, oh, man, this sounds great. I would love to work for you. He, you know, completely ignored me.

And about a year, so I just kept waiting tables. And then about a year later, I saw an ad for a guy, gal Friday in the Village Voice. This is back when people, whether there was no LinkedIn. Right. You had to buy Village Voice to get a job. You had to buy the Village Rights or the New York Times, you know, on the Sunday New York Times, you know, and go through all these little, you know, mouse type listings. And I saw an ad for a Guy Gail Friday for a dance music, I think it was a dance music publication slash record company. I still have the ad. I still have it on.

You saved it. Oh, yeah, a little yellow piece of paper that I cut out. Yeah, I have it in an envelope. And I called the note. And it was Tom. And he didn't remember me, but I remembered him. And he told me, yeah, you know, dance music. I have dance music report.

I just started this label called Tommy Boy. And, you know, this would be to be like my right hand person, blah, blah, blah. And at this point, I was actually living in servants quarters up on Upper West Side. I was bouncing around a lot of places. That's always the top floor of a. That's right. I was seconds. I was seconds away from buying a five-story house in Harlem in the Heights before.

After Hamilton, then the price is really jacked up. It was like Hamilton's Row. And it looked as large as like the Huxstables crib in Brooklyn. But, you know, the basement was tricked out the first floor. Then they had the second floor, third floor, fourth floor. And then on the fifth floor, that's usually where. the maid or the nanny you know

these houses are also hundreds of years old so you imagine that's where yeah the help so that kept your legs that at least kept your legs in in shape because you'd have to go five flights of stairs yes for these tiny little

rooms it wasn't you know shared bathrooms whatever it was fine it was like maybe 50 75 bucks a week or something but I had these numerous phone calls with Tom trying to convince him why he should hire me because I didn't have a college education. He did. He's like, well, what have you done before? I'm like, well, you know, I worked at Peepland and this was, you know,

and he wasn't thoroughly convinced. But then once he said, well, okay, listen, tomorrow I'm going out to pick up the 12 inches of the new Tommy Boy release and you can come, you can ride along with me. So I'm like, okay, cool, this is my shot. And, So I meet up with him. He lives in this two-bedroom apartment over in Yorkville. Let's face it. What hell is that? Exactly.

The upper east side on the far side, you know where the mayor's home is? Yeah. That's where York Street starts. Yes, York Avenue. Right. Exactly. You know, so we drive out to Long Island City and his hatchback. I don't know if that's a thing, if they even make.

hatchbacks anymore. But we drove out there in his hatchback to this pressing plant called Apexton. And it was owned by these two Polish brothers. And so what they do is when, you know, when Tom had ordered a pressing of, I don't know, a thousand or whatever of this record, they wheel them out to the curb in 50-count boxes. And, you know, Tom opens up the back of the hatchback and I start slinging in these 50 count boxes. And I'm a girl from Chicago, man. It's like I'm big girl from Chicago. I have no problem lifting up heavy shit and slinging it.

So he was like, oh, she got some muscle on her. All right. You got the job. So that's how I started. But I had to keep waiting on tables when I started because I couldn't afford, you know, the pay wasn't a whole lot. So I was working tables at night and working for Tom during the day. So what year was this?

Or is this after Planet Rock or like what year? Oh, no, no, before. December of 81. I was the first employee. Your memory is incredible, Monica Lynch. I can't even your memories. I love this. This tells me that you didn't do much drugs in the 80s because.

Oh, no, that's not true either. Do you take that? Never mind. Usually our guests are like, hey, man, I don't remember, selective memory. What, you know how it is. You have selective memory about certain things. If you ask me other things, I say, I can't remember, but this stuff I do remember.

So was this the Jazzy J, like, funky sensation era of? Yes. Okay. In fact, it was. That's right. That's what it was like. Exactly. That was when I started in December of 1981,

Tom actually about a week after I started, went away for a couple weeks to Jamaica for an extended vacation. with his girlfriend and um jessy sensation had just come out right and so you know my duties were split between Tommy boy the fledgling label Tommy boy and dance music report which was a disco DJ tip sheet um which i don't know if you remember that but it was um an important publication in its time so he he went on vacation and left me with you know my sort of semi-defined duties. And one of them was, you know, to make sure to, you know, take the orders for Jazzy sensation and, you know, make sure the pressing plant has got the records going and all

those other stuff. Well, sure enough, I took an order from a one-stop. I don't know if you know what a one-stop is. I know what a one-stop is. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, yes, service subcategory of an independent distributor. So, and it was an, an example. account that we didn't weren't open with. And so I took an order and then come to find out

that it was some guy who was a gonif and wasn't going to be paying us. And Tom totally like reamed me about that. But you know, when you say a gonif, you mean like some friends of ours. Some friends of ours. Well, I just bought a hardcover copy of the joys of Yiddish for a friend of mine today. Because when do you say, because I said to her, I said, oh, you know, this person, Bob, oh, they're great, but they have no Rukhounis. And she's, what's Rukmunis? I'm like, you've never worked in the music industry. You don't know what Ghanif or Rukmunis is or, you know, Zoris or this. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it basically meant the guy wasn't, he was sort of a thief, wasn't planning on paying us. In my mind, the difference

between Tommy Boy and, well, I'm saying the hip-hop labels that came before, because really we're talking Sugar Hill is what I feel is notable about those two labels is that, you know, within joy and Sugar Hill, I definitely know that, you know, Morris Levy had his hands or, quote, Morris Levy types, more gangster run era of the music industry. How is one able to start a label, an independent label, in the early 80s, without someone trying to mark. muscle you for a piece. Now, even though, okay, so jazzist sensation wasn't exactly planet rock, but for our listeners that are peeping, jazzist sensation is a hip-hop rendition of Gwen McCrae's sort of timeless.

Can you feel it? Can you feel it? Our sensation, our jazz sensation, yeah. Right. So, like, are you aware of the strong arm of, the connected folks that Sugar Hill and Enjoy records definitely were? You know, that's a good question.

Sugar Hill was definitely, you know, Joe and Sylvia, and there was a guy named Malden who was sort of the other co-founder of Sugar Hill. Michael Malden? No, no, not Michael Malton. I remember him, though. I was like, ooh, okay.

No, this guy was Yugoslavian. He was sort of put in there by Morris Levy to, you know, make sure the money situation was whatever it was going to be. And but, but I would say that there, it was a very much a entrepreneurial cottage industry at that point. You know, and I think enjoy records, Bobby Robinson's label is more in that vein. But you, what you also had, and I just have to give a shout out to Corey Robbins because profile. Yes, co-founder of profile records.

Corey actually came to the office when Tom was away and he just knocked down the door. He said, hey, I'm Corey. You know, I have profile records. If you need anything, if anything goes wrong, you have any questions, please feel free to get in touch with me. It's like, wow, thank you. I appreciate it because I did have a lot of questions. But there was this, there were labels that were really the, you know, dance. The post-disco dance labels like West End and Prelude,

who it wasn't so much about some sort of cultural bubbling up. It was more about what was selling. Okay, sell sales over or peaked or whatever. So maybe it's, you know, Tanya Gardner or, you know, something that's... Right, exactly. Things that are bubbling up that are more from the street and including hip hop. But it was more of a commercial imperative,

I think, than an artistic decision or a cultural reflection so much. And I think the same thing is absolutely true with Sugar Hill and Joy. I mean, you've got Bobby Robinson and Joe and Sylvia. I mean, look at their histories with the labels that they had. So I think that they were all,

these were independent labels were owned by people who were looking around the landscape and saying, where can I make money next? A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what I'm saying. Yep, that's me, Clivert 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,

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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 podcast. Okay, so if you're doing Jazzy Sensation, assuming that you were there for its very first order,

how many pieces are you ordering and how many, like just walk me through, how does one spread it? So how many go to DJs so they can get played? Are you hoping that Frankie Crocker plays it so that it might go national and then if it does, well, in other words,

the problem that was presented in Crush Groove, which I forget what single it was. Like they had a single so successful that they didn't have enough money to print it. Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah, the worst thing that could happen to you is a hit, like the producers.

You know, okay, so let's, even though I want you to lead up to Planet Rock, I'm certain that that was a problem for you guys because that was a worldwide smash. So how do you operate and service the world and how do you know what the world wants? How do you know what a local record store in Germany wants?

How do you know if Dr. Dre or Uncle Jam is playing it in L.A.? Like how do you spread the word? Like who's the person that you're trying to get this record to hoping that it will become a thing? Well, listen, back then it was a very small network. and when Jazzy Sensation was out, I mean, I would always tell people, you know, Jazzy Sensation really was what I would call a regional record. It was popular in the Mid-Atlantic area.

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

There was, I mean, this is before Red was on Kiss. I mean, there was, you know, a lot of this was through club DJs. And to some degree, these sort of specialty mix shows that were starting to approach some of them on college, college and university stations. But at that point, I know you were talking 1982. It's a short window, really, between Jazzy Sensation and Planet Rock. As Planet Rock came out, I think it was April of 82. So it's a really big difference.

So you had the independent record stores who, by the way, I've had a recent conversation with someone about this. that if there was ever a documentary that someone was going to consider doing, I think the history of independent record stores, black independent record stores and their role in hip hop and dance music is an untold story. But I would say the record stores played a big role in spreading the word and playing the records, the club DJs were more important at that point. Servicing record pools.

I mean, we, I still got these. Okay. Yes, I still have lists of the record pools and the record pool directors, and we would keep a running list of how many members do you have and who do you service and blah, blah, blah. So how many counts do you have to service? How many counts do you have to service for a record pool back in 82? You know, some of these record pools might have like the Shore record pool that was run by a guy named Bobby Davis up in the Bronx. He'd say, oh, you know, 150 members, 200 members, or, you know, you'd have maybe a Ricketts record's records out in New Jersey, and they might have 75 members or some record pool out on Long Island or, you know, whatever it was.

But, you know, the thing with the record full directors is that they were, they sort of were, had more, more power then than they did in the years to come. Right. Well, you have to give us full service or nothing, even though... I know it's about to happen. Yeah, a lot of their members would never touch a rap record, okay? So they would just sell it. So they would sell it or, you know, or it would just be like, you know, go into the, you know, the vinyl dump or whatever, but it was, you know, so...

Go ahead. Is that why sometimes when I get records and they have that little cut open, hole on the top left corner? Is that to differentiate a promotional record? Yeah. I always wanted to know what that was for. Yeah, they were, they were sort of notched. A punch hole, okay. Like a neutered

cat. You know, you know, it was a promo, you know? Okay. But that didn't necessarily prevent something being resold, but you know, it only would resell if it was a hit. Who fucking cares if it's not a hit record, you know? So, you know,

anyway, but it was a small world. You know, in New York, you know, yeah, you'd want to make sure Shep Pettibone or Sergio Monsabai or the Latin Rascals on WKTU or DJ Jose Annamald Diaz. You know, you had Carlos de Jesus on WKTU, rest in peace. You had Barry Mayo and Tony Humphreys over a kiss. Wow. Barry Mayo is still a friend, really fantastic guy. So all these guys were DJs first before I got to know them as remixers and editors?

Because you're mentioning Tony Humphreys and the Latin Rascals. And they were actual DJs first before. Oh, yeah. Tony Humph. Yeah. And Shep Pettibone was very important. The master mix on Kiss FM. You know, so.

And yeah, of course, Frankie was always at the top of the, you know, top of the food chain, you know. Like if you can get Frankie to play a record. you know and frankie was someone who i mean i knew him and uh counted him as a friend as many did um but uh and he was always very uh interested in what was coming up from the street he you see all these photos of him hanging in the booth at paradise garage or whatever he didn't want to be left behind on any of this stuff but it was uh you know so he's the original human chazam looking over the shoulders trying to copy what was he wanted to he was very savvy about knowing what was coming up he that was he had to do that and he did it so successfully for so many years um

but you know Frankie was Frankie and he was very uh you know you had to deal with Frankie like you know he was radio royalty you know so in order to are you loud to speak of the methods of how you were able to get a record played. I would like to think, I mean, I would like to think that a song like Planet Rock was so futuristic that DJs would naturally be like, you, I got to play this shit. But for an album like that, did you have to ensure ways, like how were rap records broken in markets that were unpenegable, but you managed to get them on anyway? Well, that's another good question.

The answer is yes, we had to take care of business. And I want to mention, by the way, since Philly looms so large here, that there was a really great remembrance of a guy named Snooky Jones in Philadelphia who passed away recently. He was a record promoter. And there was a great remembrance of the scene in the WDAS parking lot where Butterball Tamburo. Of course, rain supreme. I love butterball. And how all the promo guys will pull up on, I forget what record day was there. I don't know what record day was.

But let's say it was Monday. It doesn't matter. You know, they all be there in the parking lot, jammed up, waiting for butter to, you know, a light from his car and get at him about whatever their releases were. But the answer, the short answer is, yes, it doesn't. Listen, if it was a hit, you definitely had to pay. And if it wasn't a hit, you could waste a lot of money, and people are happy to take your money, but that doesn't mean you're going to get any airplay. So what you're talking about, you mean if it was a hit as in if it sounded good and you felt it deserved to be on the radio, then you determine this is going to be a hit? Yeah, sure.

There's things that deserve a lot of things, but there's, but you still had to pay to play. If you want to, there's one thing to get play on a mix show or even play, or as they used to say, say daytime, you know, like back then it was like, yeah, but you didn't get daytime, you know, but if you wanted that official ad that's getting reported to Billboard and R&R and whatever the other Bibles were at that point, you had to take care of business. And we did. How nightmarish was the Planet Rock experience? Well, I would say it was less. In terms of demand, in terms of demand. Well, it was an immediate hit, and it was something that, you know, of course, we weren't necessarily prepared for, but you do everything you can. And what we would do is essentially try and get advance payments from distributors in exchange for a discounted rate on the units.

You know what I'm saying? So if somebody said, yeah, we'll pay you, whatever, say $25,000 or, you know, whatever. You know, if we pay you up front, can you give us this many units at this price as opposed to what the regular price was? So those are the type of things we had to do to make sure that we kept the pressing plant. You know, we were able to pay for the pressing and all the other, you know, jackets, labels, all the other stuff, shipping, you know, all that stuff. Well, hopefully by this point, you guys ramped up to more than just a two-person operation, correct? Yeah. Well, that record allowed Tommy Boy to ramp up to more than a two-person operation. You know, it literally exploded. It created opportunities and marketplaces that we didn't have at that point,

because this record did go national and it went global. And it was the type of record, it's been recounted many times, of course, but it was the type of record that really, traveled exceptionally well. It was a car record, you know, it had that percolating melodic sound. So automatically, you know, California, Florida, Texas, Detroit, Detroit, you know, all these places that were not necessarily hip-hop markets yet, that really cracked the code, you know, in a lot of those places, that electro sound. Tommy Boy's early days, the first wave of success that Tommy Boy had, was definitely with electro records. It was the Arthur Baker, John Roby, productions with Solzonic Forest Planet Patrol. And then, of course, we had Johnson crew with Michael Johnson.

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there were, that had some, like, Space Cowboy. Space Calaway was huge like in Houston. Why? That was big in L.A. When I visited family in Pasadena in summer of 83, they were only playing the space cowboy. And it was like, that's when I realized things were regional because I've never heard of the space cowboys.

That wasn't an East Coast record. Well, I knew about Pack Jam, but I definitely didn't know about Space Cowboy. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's crazy. Because we were like, well, why is it big in Houston?

And it was like, oh, because there's like a big. I guess Nassar, whatever was going on down there. There's a huge space thing in Houston. Oh, okay. So, yeah, and some of these things were like that slower sound was sort of also, you know, like in the South and some places. There were just these different vibes and cultural, geographical differences that, you know, you could see with some records.

But we had also Globe and Wiskin play that. beat and you know and with the uh double dance steinsky remix and uh i'm probably overlooking some things but there was this brief window between say late 81 to maybe 84 where we had this really dominant electro sound and then i think once i you know it's like oh shit as soon as i heard you know run DMC i'm like okay C change and you know Keith LeBlanc who I'm sure you know who he is because as a fellow drummer, you know, he told me a story recently about how as part of the Sugar Hill band. He remembered traveling with Sugar Hill gang and, you know, working in the studio there on all these records and all this stuff. And he said, yeah, you know, I remember one day waking up and hearing Planet Rock and saying, I think there's a sea change going on here, guys.

Oh, because they did Scorpio. That's right. Yep. That's right. You, Grandmaster Flats in the Fier's Five, did, well, really, Keith Laplonkin and, uh, uh, Doug and Skip. Yeah, yeah, Doug, Doug, William Bush and Skip. Did Scorpio, I get it.

Yeah. So from the live thing into like this electro thing was a different thing, yeah. I mean, obviously you maintain the trust of, of time. Did you get immediately helmed president or were you head of A&R? aren't first or I mean was the position real or it was just a title for paper only look I worked my fucking ass off I did a lot of different things right and no no I don't mean in a dismissive way but I mean like did you guys have a real office and a receptionist and oh I know well you know back then it was like it was all these all the labels were just scrappy operations I mean

we didn't have like any fanciness or nothing really. I tell you, we worked in the second bedroom out of Tom's apartment and then we moved into two different basement offices in Yorkville and then we moved in above the soccer store on First Avenue in Yorkville and sort of built it out there. But it was never fancy. Forcum Ds made their entry in 85 and foursome Ds, I think at the time, was way different than what you guys were normally associated with. And I know Tom's love and history of old school, do-op music.

And, you know, so basically, you know, what boys had men really pulled off successfully in 91. I mean, force MDs was that in terms of. The blueprint for that. You know, the thing is is that the force MDs came to us actually through Mr. Magic. The foursumds had been on the scene for some time, which I didn't even realize at that point. As the force MCs, yeah. As the force MCs. And Tom loved doo-wop, and he sort of saw this hip-hop du-wop group in the Force MDs.

And the woman who was his first wife, her name was Robin Halpin, and she was very, very talented jazz musician. And she actually co-wrote and produced a lot of those early Force MDs records. You know, Let Me Love You, It's for a Scratch. you know, let's not forget, they were in that first movie. Was it rapping? Yeah, with the... They were the best part about it. Amen.

They did the record with the fat boys. Yeah. Here I go again. All these really beautiful records. But they were... The thing with the Force MDs, they were always pitted against New Edition. And New Edition was the group at that point that had the more of the female audience that was

really sort of going crazy. for them. But it was always the force MDs and new addition that were sort of going head to head in that early sort of boy group vocal hip hop you know R&B thing. But the big turning point

for the force MDs and this is a story that I was very involved with was when crush group was being made one of the producers was my boyfriend at the time. His name is Doug McHenry. Oh, New Jack City, Doug McHenry? Yeah.

Yes. Yes. Oh, word. Okay. Yes. And Doug, and I was staying with Doug at the Mayflower Hotel while they were doing the film, him and his late partner. George Jackson. George.

Wait, wait, can I insert one story, only mere style? You remember the boom, the internet boom of like the early aughts when everyone thought the internet was going to be like this gold mine of a thing. Same way that Bitcoin is now. and we struck a deal to sell OK player. Oh, yeah. 1999. And I believe we brokered a deal with George Jackson. And the way that I was metaphorically burning cigars with a $100 bills, like,

all they all kissed my ass. Like I'm about to be rich, rich, rich. And Monday, Richard calls me and says, deals off. I'm like, what happened? And he's like, George Jackson died. Anyway, I'm sorry. Yes, with George Jackson. Interjection is obviously the art of the game here.

So, but anyway, so I was, so I thought, you know, here I am. I'm with Doug. I'm dating Doug. It's like, you know, and he's like telling me, yeah, we're doing the soundtrack on Warner Brothers for Crush Cove and blah, blah. And I'm like, awesome. Let me get a slot on there for the four SMGs. You know, he says, eh, you know. But we got new edition, like, ah, sorry.

You know, you're my girl and everything. So I'm like, so I'm like really. My secret. They did my secret in the movie. Yeah, it was. I said, yeah. So, but here's what happens. So the crush groove soundtrack, the movie's getting wrapped up.

The soundtrack, because, you know, lead times were crazy back then. They had to master the soundtrack. All this, the deadlines were crazy. And then I get this call from Doug, and he's like, there was supposed to be this big ballad slot on the album. It was dedicated to New Edition. And Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, we're going to produce the song with New Edition. I'm like, fuck a man. And then he calls me, he goes, you're not going to believe it.

New Edition had to pull out because some sort of crazy legal issues. They had a lot of problems back then, New Edition, with their management and lawsuits, all this shit was going on. So he goes, can you get force MDs up to Minneapolis tomorrow? And I'm like, yeah, what do we got to do? You know, blah, blah, blah, blah. Of course it was not exactly the next day. But it was within a matter of two or three days. And it was like involved calls with Ron Sweeney and Jimmy and Terry and all this other stuff.

And of course, the force MDs and their father who is a manager of Bob Lundy, they get up there. They record this record called Tender Love. And it goes on the soundtrack at the very last minute. And guess what? It's the first top 10 pop hit for Jimmy and Terry. And it was the big lead. It was the big smash hit of the album.

And it was through that that Warner Brothers got interested in doing a deal with Tommy Boy. A win is 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, personal health, personal 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 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 IHeart Radio 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 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. At this place, are you shocked? that even though, you know, Sylvia Robinson was running sugar a whole records or whatnot, were women in executive positions really not a thing? And I'm taking it out of hip hop, just general at labels. Like I know about Sylvia Rohn, at least her, you know,

coming up at Atlantic and starting east west and whatnot. Maybe, I mean, Cassandra Williams was more. At Casablanca before then. Well, okay, well, I knew about Neil Borgart, but who was running, who was at Casablanca? Well, I believe Sylvia had started. Oh, that I did not know. Oh, wow. I think so.

All right. We can fact check it. This is a great, great subject matter. I'm really happy you brought this up because, you know, there's a lot of women from that early 80s period who didn't necessarily get their shine or necessarily get titles. I was, I think I was made president in 85. I still have the press release. And why do I have it? Because I had to write it.

It's like writing your own Wikipedia entry. Yeah, he's like, yeah, you're present. Now, could you go write this up? Yes, okay, fine. So the, but yeah, before, in that early 80s period, I would say that the people that really come to my mind is like women who were doing a lot in the early hip-hop labels would be Anne Carly, a Jive records.

You know, who I actually knew Anne when she was working in the New York office of EG records. I used to harass her for Roxy Music tour tickets. And then there was Janine LeClair, who was at Next Plateau Records. It worked with Eddie O'Lockland. Yeah, that was something. There was Dee Joseph who worked with at Prism Records, which began, you know, which began chilling. Of course, there was Sylvia, and there were others, and I'm really sorry because I should have prepared a list for this, because it is important.

And there's a lot of people who, you know, it was a bit later in the 80s when there were more women who were getting into the business. But there were a lot of women who were in the business then, and they just didn't necessarily get as much recognition. they might have started as receptionist and became press or promo. So there's this whole wave of women that were part of the, even like late 70s and early 80s, whose names just don't tend to come up as much. So much in hip-hop has been told and told again through books and documentaries and everything. But there's still a lot of terrain that hasn't been touched, really.

What's the difficulty level of you, like, really, as far as like pounding, the desk and demanding that respect. Like, do you have to be tough as nails? What's old girl from, who ran Vogue? Anne. In winter. Right. Do you have to come, do you have to run it Anna Winter style and, you know.

No, no. No. Well, I don't. Yeah, no, I know what you're saying. I know what you're saying. You know, I get asked a lot over the years, people said, well, what was it like being a woman? in the hip hop world or what was it like being a white woman in the hip hop world? And I'm like,

my response is usually like, you know what, there were so many opportunities for women in the fledgling hip hop industry. Again, it was so small back then. If I had gone to say, oh, you know, Columbia records or Mercury or Polygram or whatever, Warner Brothers, you know, and said, hey, you know, I'm looking for a job, I would have been lucky to get, you know, be the coffee runner for some guy doing Mid-Atlantic radio promotion, okay? So, and hip hop because it was just a small little industry and no one was really checking, you know, like a lot of women were able to sort of get ahead in this business because there wasn't like a precedent. It wasn't an old boys network, you know? So it was still being, it was still being, the story.

was being written and there was a lot of opportunities. Although I will say when I went to the first Jack the rapper convention a lot of people thought I was hired help for another reason. So, you know, the rapper convention, that's another

documentary somebody should do. Oh, boy. Tales from the rap convention. So, okay, when, when, okay, so at 86, when Club Nouveau starts hitting, you know, lean on me and jealousy and all that stuff was highly, it was

unescapable. Like by that point, you guys are just, you know, a force. Was there ever temptation to say leave Tommy Boy and maybe, and I don't want to discredit hip-hop's, you know, force or whatnot, but in the mind state of 87, did you ever have the temptation or did someone from RCA or Warner Bros? others or quote a legit major label try to to poach you away and say come work for us yeah uh there was a label uh an m actually and and and m was a real class operation you know it was i mean there was like uh and they even bought me a plane ticket and put me in a hotel it was like oh my god you know this pretty great um but i it didn't didn't happen i really sort of a sense that I was better where it was. And it turned out to be true, you know, because it was

towards, you know, it made president, I guess, 85, 86, I can't remember exactly. But, you know, it was towards the end, you know, towards the late 80s where I really oversaw A&R and the creative direction for the label. I was already doing quite a bit already in both of those areas. And, And also, you know, in the early days, whether it was collecting money from distributors or putting in pressers with the pressing plant or getting the label copy typed up or sitting with Bambada while he wrote out of special things or creating a press list and writing press releases, talking to, you name it. It was like you got to do a lot of different things.

But it was, you know, in the late 80s where I sort of really, I think that was a really golden era for Tommy Boy in the late 80s and the early 90s. In 1988, you know, for me, at least in my life, one of the greatest paradigm shifts that really affected. I mean, 88 was such a ban of year, but you sign a group that literally changes the course of my life. And we've had various people involved with De La Sol project. So we, you know, you don't have to go through the everyday.

day. But what I do want to know is who was responsible for the genius marketing of De LaSoul? because from the press photos to the fonts to the stickers, you know, for only time in my life I ever got sent to the principal's office was because I put De LaSole stickers all over my high school. Like, so who was responsible? Like, what was the brainchild operation of, of we can make these guys bigger than hip hop. I read that hip hop for hippies. Wasn't that your shit moment? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I was very involved in all of that, but it was also, there's a lot of people at Tommy Boy that I would credit for being a huge part of this campaign. I think that it was a very critical decision to have the gray organization do the, all the, you know, all of the daisy, all the imagery for the album cover. That was, I would say, such a radical move at that point because they basically sort of threw down a gauntlet to what the prevailing visual aesthetic was of hip-hop.

And I think it was the type of thing that a lot of people were like, what is this? But the thing is, before the album, before the album and you saw all those visuals, you know, Plug Tunin was a radical record. And I still have the demo tape and I still have the write-up that I did after my meeting with Dadio. And I want to make sure to credit Dadio because it was Dadio from Stetsasonic who called me and said, hey, I've got these groups I'm shopping. Can we set up a meeting? I'm like, yeah, da, da, da, da.

And he sat on the phone. There were three groups. Two of them were like sort of these more mainstream, like Renee and Angela type of groups or something. And he mentioned De La Sol. He said, oh, and there's this group that Paul's working with called De La Sol. And I do remember thinking, that's a really intriguing name. You know, what is that? It didn't sound like a hip-hop group.

And so I met with him. And that's, in that demo tape of plug tuning and, um, was it freedom of speak, I think, uh, was on the, on the B side. Yeah. Freedom of speak. Yeah. But it was the two tracks on the, on the one cassette. And it was like, you immediately knew that it was either going to be big or nothing.

And that's where I think Tommy boys legacy largely lies with signings that were sort of in that category. Um, you're going to love it or you're not going to hate it. but it wasn't in the middle. And Dela Sull, I think, personifies that. And, you know, the demo of plug tuning sounds pretty much. I'm pretty sure. I don't think that it was even mixed.

You know, I think it was an eight-track that Paul did. And I don't think it even went beyond that by the time it was mastered. I think it was still like this eight-track demo-sounding thing. And we did this ad campaign where we got all these different people to say, you know how it is. You know, like when you know. Oh, Latifah's mom. She was part of it.

Latifah's mom, the late Rita Owens. We did a campaign that I came in for De LaSalle. I came in for Patty LaBelle. I came out with De LaSalle. We had this one with like some goofy, you know, sort of straight looking white guy. Like, you know, I came in for, I forget. It wasn't Steely Dam.

We hung that up in Sam Goodies. I worked at Sam Goodies at the time. Oh, man. Well, then you know. Really? That imaging campaign, I think, was fantastic. We had a great full-page ad in Billboard that said Dela Gold when it went gold. But, you know, I think a lot of it sprung from the group itself because, you know, I still have,

and I shared this with Paz actually just last week. He sat down in the office with this. He has a very distinctive style of cursive. And he was writing down the history of De La Sol on this notebook paper describing who each group member was. And he was writing it in De La Speak. And that was another thing, too, because, like, nobody knew what the fuck they were talking about. They had their own language. Like, what do they talk?

What do you mean? Plug Tune and what's that, you know? And what is Trujouye the done? You know, what is all this stuff? Right. But they had a different look. They had a different sensibility. So there was a lot there to already work with and to sort of get inspired to do interesting

and creative marketing and promotion. You really can't do something unless the project and the recordings and the artists that you're working with are interesting in and of themselves. You can blow it up and magnify it. But if it's not inherently interesting and great, you can't really do anything. So they really, they were like, wow, this group is pretty interesting. A lot of people played a role. I don't know if you know Rod Houston because he's also from Philadelphia.

He's now one of the biggest voice artists. He's a voice actor guy. Yeah, yeah. He's huge. He's huge. And Rod, I still have the copy that he wrote up because we did this contest to name the sample. Yeah, I remember that in Billboard. Yeah.

Did you, did you enter the contest? I didn't know the Liberace or any, yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, we got, I still have a lot of the entries from the contest that I kept. A lot of people thought it was Bobby Bloom. And the only person who got the, who the only person who got it right was Joel Weber, as I mentioned to him earlier with the partners in the new music seminar. And he's the guy who put out, he was an A&R guy at Fourth and Broadway in Ireland. He put out the dominatrix, sleeps tonight.

And he was the only one who identified the invitations, it's written on the wall as a sample. Right. So they, so there was a lot of really great things that sort of sprung from the fact that the group themselves were so different and so interesting. And I think that that whole Daisy Age imagery, you know, was certainly a blessing and a curse for the group because then they didn't really like being named the hippies of hip hop and, you know, pushed back against it, you know, but that was that album, three feet high and rising, you know, and that was actually the first project I assigned to Dante.

You know, I said, Dante, make sure you get the this, da, da, da, da, da, da, and get the clearances for so and so and so, but it was the first project that he worked on, which was fantastic. He did an amazing job. And Paul, of course, you know. Yeah, he's Paul. Yeah. 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 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. 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 player. 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,

for 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 2, 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 podcast. From 1 to 10, how much of a headache was the Flo and Eddie situation? Because, of course, Flo and Eddie of the Turtles sort of, you know, recognizes their sample. And then, you know, we're taught that that was the,

that was the gauntlet moment of rappers clearing samples for you know was that a quick one and done oh my bad here's 40,000 bucks or were they like we want a billion dollars and you know. This is that's yeah this is another great topic because the dayless sole three feet high and rising really did become the litmus test for a lot of sampling issues and it became the poster child for everything that could go wrong is all here on one album. And, you know, it wasn't just Flanetti. You know, I still have the letter from MCA publishing about Steely Dan. Oh, yeah. Or by the way, they misspelled Donald Fagin's name. But it became sort of a blessing and a curse. It was, well, I should say maybe more of a curse because look at everything that the group has had to go through all these years.

Yeah, here is problematic now trying to clear these samples again. Still, yeah. So, but it also. also became, it was certainly a news story. I mean, as you, Kurt Loder, you know, and there was all these news stories about sampling. It became a big thing. And of course, you know, Danio, Estesasonic addressed this very brilliantly in talking all that she has. Right. One of the best records over. And, but yeah, it was certainly costly. It was a distraction. And the thing. And the thing, thing about it is this. This is my takeaway from it, is that at that point in 1989, a lot of these rock

guys were really of the mindset of like, they're stealing my fucking art. And they weren't down with the hip hop. They weren't down with the sampling. They had very closed minds about this. there was not a it had not been established as a a path. Like, oh yeah, okay, we'll just get the sample cleared. Like today, I mean, now, you know, I think a lot of people maybe avoid sampling to a large degree for all the problems and costs associated with it. But it's ironic to me being as though those same guys sampled old blues records to create their songs.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. But you had these guys who were older, rock guys with big, you know, they had egos and they just had, they were, their mindset was completely divorced. Right. From hip hop being a cool, interesting thing. And, oh, wow, they're taking something I made and doing something cool and flipping it. A lot of these guys did not see it that way at all. Well, I know that George Clinton was extremely, he had gratitude.

for me, myself and I at least, because, you know, he instantly saw that, okay, this is bringing me back clearly to a new audience. So I'm down with it. Well, yeah. Well, yeah, and you also had Westbound records. Armand Balladian. Armand Balladian. Thank you very much. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. So Armand Balladian was definitely playing ball. I mean, you know, he saw that there was money to be made in doing sample clearances. So, you know, was digital underground or Daler or whoever it was, he's, you know, he owned a lot of this stuff. And so he wasn't reluctant in the way that a lot of the rock guys were about, you know,

violating their art. You know, it was just that it was a different, again, you have commerce on the one side and you've got these guys who were like, man, that's, you know, Don't touch my shit, man. You know, so. Right. I was going to ask Monica, what is your, um, involvement, if any, uh, with the current day loss situation with trying to get

their catalog on the streaming? None is my, uh, I don't have any involvement in that except to be supportive of the group. And, um, you know, uh, you know, I occasionally have back and forth with, uh, with Paz. And, um, you know, I have a lot of love for those guys. And I hope that, you know, they've been through a lot. They've been through a lot. So, but I don't have, I, I haven't had any sort of dealings with their business. Gotcha.

I believe our good friend Faith Newman is now at the helm of that project and trying to clear the samples and all that stuff. Wow. I hope for daylight sake that that comes through. Yeah. Well, I mean, they have it. But, you know, now it's like they got to do the work and, you know, find somebody to fund.

You know, they're doing it, but it's just a very slow process, song by song, and they want it as they, you know, thank God. I'm so relieved that they're not doing, you know, the shit now where people like redoing their sits on iTunes and gagging you with like these kind of subpar versions of their songs. Rerecorders or whatever. I hate that.

Wait. Okay, wait, I want to give a shout out to Dart Adams, who, A surefire way to make him angry is to acknowledge that three Feeh High and Rising came out March 3rd, 1989. DART Adams. I've never met a person more angrier when he's like, it wasn't March 3rd. It was February 7th. Yes.

Oh, really? Maybe he's thinking of the promo. No, my God. You're about to set DART eyes. The views and opinions of Monica Lynch are not like... No, no, no. I don't know any shit. Listen, I say I have a lot of Tommy Boy archival materials.

I can probably... I'm not saying for sure. You can officially tell us when the release date was because I swear to God, he makes this... Every March 3rd, he gets mad of shit when Paz or any member of De La Soe gets the date wrong. But he swears the God that, like, March 3rd, and he's like, like, Wikipedia's wrong.

everything's wrong like he knows listen i'll just say this at some point i'll go through all go all this if i find anything that um might have led to his uh belief yeah if you can scan a photo the only thing i could possibly think is that maybe you know because again lead times for things like press uh were significant back then um so maybe just maybe just maybe just Maybe there was an advanced copy, but I don't want to, you know, that's not official. So I have one quick question about Sessasonic. Now, the way that you guys, the way that you guys pushed force MDs to be, you know, the duop, you know, hip hop thing. And De La, where the hippies of hip-hop would be exception of a brief write-up and spin.

Like, I felt like not enough was done to really drive home, at least the marketing, that this is a hip hop band. Yeah, it wasn't an easy self. And I've never seen them. I've never heard Stetsasonic live ever. Like, even when you YouTube. No, there's no footage of them on YouTube or anything. Like, I'm taking you guys' word for it that StetsaSonic live in concert is a band.

But there's no, I mean, you know, on wax, you know, besides Bobby Simmons. playing drums on stuff. And, you know, I know they did live stuff on keys, but I've just never seen Sets of Sonic on stage and there's no footage of them. They're almost like the Harlem Cultural Festival. Like, I don't believe it. That's pretty interesting. I had never really thought about that. I didn't go to look, but I mean, I'd seen them perform live and they were really, you know, fantastic. I think the, man, it was very frustrating because they, you know, Stetsasonic as a group, they really worked hard and, you know,

it was frustrating. I mean, everyone wants to have big hits. And they had some hits, but they weren't on the level that is going to push you into a certain territory. You know, I think talking all that jazz was like a really, You know, when you look back at the catalog, I think that one to me is like in,

but they had, you know, Sally was like a record that did really well in Florida and other markets. Oh, and, you know, go Stetsa, Brooklyn, go Brooklyn. Oh, geez, no, well, you can't even put, on this show. As soon as you put, somebody's told me recently, it said, you put that record. You get your ass beat at the, at Union Square. And that was a signal for stick up kids to like get. there. Yeah.

Get the loop. You know, like, oh, shit. That's why I always stood near the door at that place. I was like, that drum roll is a traumatizing nightmare. Yeah. Yeah, totally. So they always got huge respect and they had great records, but they just, you know, and it's a frustration even to this day, you know, that we weren't able to break them out

in a hugeer way. Right. It happens. And I was going to ask you with Monica about shock. Gee, I just hate he's someone that we had on our list for a long time. But, you know, we, you know, sadly didn't get an interview him before he passed. What was he like just as an artist, as a producer? What was it like working with him?

You know, I've actually just had a long conversation with his former manager, Atron, last night. We stayed in touch. Yeah. And shock, we used to talk. We used to talk on the phone, and he, shock was, he was incredibly intelligent, so smart, so funny. He was very charming. He had an enormous gift as a visual artist. You know, I had a lot of dealing, you know, he was, we had a great relationship.

He would always be very, very specific about artwork. I have some, like, layouts that he would send me these rough layouts. You know, this needs to go exactly here. This goes exactly here. Because he did all the artwork for all the digital underground releases. And even starting with the early version of underwater rhymes and life's a cartoon, the 12-inch that they had, McCullough, before they came to Tommy Boy. But the, well, T&T recordings.

But he was someone who was very deep. I spoke with Latifah recently about him. Well, shortly after he passed, we spoke about it because she talked about how she went on tour with him and they would just go to the hotel lobby and he would start just noodling on the piano. He was a great jazz musician and she loved jazz and they had a strong connection there. He was just, he was an artist with a capital A, you know. And, you know, obviously he brought Tupac, you know, he was largely responsible for bringing Tupac into the world as an artist. And, yeah, really, really special guy.

I've never met any, you know, like especially these days where everything, beefs seem to be a marketing tool. And there were beefs back then, you know, you could look at Karras one or, you know, whatever was going on. some sort of beefs going on. But no, with shock, he was, everyone loved him. You know, I was talking to Pete Nice when he was, travel with the third base with them.

And he had huge love for him. I don't know. I don't know what I can say about shock G other than he was just, I would have late night phone calls with him. And he could just expound on just about. He was that guy. He was very cosmic. He was very cosmic.

So, okay, ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you guys that we will have a part two with Monica Lynch, the legendary Monica Lynch on Questlove Supreme. This incredible conversation, we will be back in a later episode to talk about basically the 90s with Coolio, with K-7, LFO, with the Riza. You know, there's so much more that that will happen on the next episode of Questlove Supreme. And you'll promise to come back with us, Monica, correct? Absolutely. Thank you. Beautiful. All right.

So on behalf of Sugar, Steve and Unpaid Bill and Fantigolo and Laia, this is Questo. And shout out to Cousin Jake holding us down on the leads. And, you know, we'll see you on the next round. Thank you very much. Happy women's history, Mom. What's Love Supreme is a production of IHart Radio. For more podcasts from IHart Radio, visit the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. A win is a win. A win is a win. I don't care what you're 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 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's 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 Slica Life 12 and TikTok Podcast Network on TikTok. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same process. 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.

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