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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio, Blazes
and Gentlemen. It's another episode of Course Love Supreme. I'm
your host Quest Love. We have the Almighty Team Supreme
with us Particolo Brother. How has it been going. I'm
good man, I'm doing yoga. Nice. Hey, y'as to flow, Tilo, Bro,

(00:25):
I'm out here. We're down with dog and pigeon posing
on all the whole niggas. That's nice, all right, cool? Cool?
We Particolo are gonna get his totally pasted. Go past
eighty maybe to nine. I'm taking hot yoga. Yeah, that's

(00:52):
what's up. Yeah, Steve as as Steve las Cigarette, I'm
doing yoga too. How I started yet? Everything's cool? Um,
working on a lot of stuff you're you're doing. I
don't know in your mind if it's like mocking or
not mocking, like with the network and all that. But

(01:15):
I gotta say, in the last three weeks, like you're
doing like major, major, major shit, Like you're not just
like doing like rinky dink jazz records. Like I almost
feel like you're out here trying to save jazz music. Like, well,
what's been going on? Man? We got a lot of

(01:37):
records coming out. As to JMI is naming the label,
we're coming up on twenty Records. It's been like five
years that we've been around and uh, finally got you
on the label. Recently we're mixing that record with David
Murray and Ray Angry and yeah, I'm not Well, there's
a lot of great jazz labels out there obviously still
doing it, but we're doing it all analog with tape

(02:00):
and never touching digital in any way. So we I
can't find another label that's doing it like that, where
it's completely purest and old school like that. So yeah,
we're proud of it. And you know what else is
turning five years old? The Sugar Network. You know, wait,
work is five years old? That's correct this month where

(02:20):
you started in twenty eighteen. Yeah, yeah, started shortly after
course up Supreme. It's a movement, man. The Sugar Network
is the Army better yet the Navy. Well it's it's
it's like a little fan club for the for this podcast.
Basically that's how it's. That's how it started, but it's expanding.

(02:40):
It absolutely is, all right, So just let me know
JM I or is your logo at least close to
the CTI label, like there are some similarities. Um to,
we stole some of some of their design aspects for
our stuff, but not not the logo specifically. All right,
but keep it keep it at old school. Uh yeah,

(03:02):
how's it going. Oh it's going good. I got the flu,
but I don't want to miss speech. So you got
the flu? Yeah, you know, talking to a bunch of
niggas doing Grammy Weekend. Oh gake you sick, trying to
book people. But in the good News, Oh quest left supreme. Honey.
I was on the strip with my leg and my
skirt up, like, come on, NAS came on Leslie Jones like, yeah,

(03:25):
so NAS might just visit. But he said to me
he would. He said to me, yeah, I want to. Okay,
let's what's up. That's what's up. Well, ladies and gentlemen.
I will say that, you know, this interview is close
to my heart because as a founder leader of one

(03:48):
of the most legendary groups and hip hop, a group
really really responsible for laying out the carpet for a
group like the Roots to come down and be able
to have a career. I will say that, you know,
this gentleman has pretty much made a profound impact on
the music industry just with the level of I guess

(04:12):
the first wave of black Joy, Like we weren't using
terms like black Joy back in nineteen you know, we
just basically called it alternative rep. But it's almost like
I'd never liked the term alternative rep because Lawn Hill
once told me that alternative rep just means like no skills,
and you know that's definitely not the case. You know,

(04:33):
besides being one of two people in the hip hop
field that have won Best New Artist for the Grammys.
As far as hip hop winning Best New Artist, I
will say that his group's debut album really just set
a high water mark for just music period, just a feeling,

(04:55):
definitely a blueprint that I followed, and it's this conversation
is seriously long overdue. Ladies and gentlemen, Please welcome to
Quest Left Supreme. I don't know if we ever had
a one titled person before because I'm used to saying
like the full name, I don't want to say welcome
Todd Thomas offresially known. Oh you know, I'm trying to

(05:22):
make it like like you're a dignitary or or a
head of state, not just like I'm not trying to
beat the po pole. When you please welcome speech to
quest Left Supreme. Thank you man, yo, yo, that that
that all of these words very much mean the world
to me. I appreciate it. Man. It's good to be here.
It's been a minute. Man, it's been a minute. It's

(05:43):
been a good minute. It's been a good man. Yeah.
In fact, where are you talking to us right now?
From where are you at? This is my studio. I
call it the podium, and I'm at my crib, so
on my property. I have a separate building and it's
my studio. So I'm in here. And Georgia stay in Georgia,
Fayetteville area. Ye, so you've stayed in Georgia. That that

(06:08):
entire time of your parents, Yes, since nineteen eighty seven. Yo.
Didn't we meet in Milwaukee? I know that you have
roots in Milwaukee, but I'm trying to figure out if
I met you in Milwaukee once. You guys were rocking
a show at Summer Fest, which is one of the
largest music festivals in the world. Actually, and I sell

(06:28):
roasted corn at summer fests. My father opened up a
hot roasted corn stand business at summer fests. Forty six
years ago. And so my wife and I have been
doing that business. Well, I was working at it since
I was nine years old, but my wife and I
started working that business taking it over for my dad

(06:51):
for probably I'm gonna say sixteen years or so. So
one year, the roots was rocking, i want to say,
on the Miller stage or one of the stages at
summer fests, and I came backstage and hung out with
y'all while you were there. All right, So I'm totally
just going to throw away my initial questions because now
you pique my curiosity because I too, am in the

(07:13):
food world. But I gotta know, like, how do you
maintain that business? My dad, he was trying to get
his foot in the door because we're the one and
only black owned food company in summerfest and summer fests
is huge. I can't say that enough. So and so

(07:35):
basically he wanted to get his foot in the door.
They were offering soul food as an option, so on
and so forth. But he was just studying the landscape
and realized that roasted corn would kill for the audience
that tended to go to summerfests at that time, and
so he was going in as a roasted corn business,
and it started off literally bananas, like so many people

(07:57):
were into it. Like you were describing the dude that
was outside of Solb's. It was lines around the block
for this corn. And not to mention a black man
selling it, all black workers creating this corn, roasting this corn,
which is a big production, like unlike the dude that
was on the streets. Ours was a very big production.

(08:17):
So we had tons of basically six seven hundred degree
roasters that were lined up and we would put the
corn on these big metal sheets and then turn the
corn over once one side was done, and it was
a production to watch as well, and people just loved it.
And so as a nine years old, from that point on,
I started doing it, just working there. And then you know,

(08:38):
when I got old enough and my father was too
old to run it, my queen and I took it over.
And so or was he a chef by nature or no,
not at all. In fact, he learned how to roast
it the best that he could, and it was just dope.
Everybody loved it and it was way above any competitors
at other state fairs. Because Milwaukee also has a state

(08:58):
fair which is really big. It was way bigger than
the people that sold it there. So everybody just started
falling in love with Robbie's roast corn. And that was
my dad, whose name is Robert. Yeah, so he started
that whole tradition. Yeah. No, not on a stick. No,
you roast it in a roast on a roaster, and
then you pull back the husk and you let that husk.

(09:20):
You hold a hust so you keep the husk. You
know a lot of people take the husk off Mexican style,
okay exactly. And you you hold that husk and then
you wrap a paper towel around it. You dip it.
We dip it in butter, like literally a crop pot
full of butter. We dip it in there. And then
we have various seasonings, you know what I mean, from
anything from lemon pepper to Mexican style, which is like

(09:42):
a mayonnaise and so on and so forth, rubbed on it.
It's better than fried chicken, it really is. Actually, it's incredible.
It's incredible. Yeah, And it's just a local phenomenon. You
guys never expanded outside of Milwaukee or not in a
huge way, not yet. Like we strive to get into
Disney World and stuff like that, and just we're unsuccessful

(10:04):
doing that. But the truth is is that we've done
like Atlanta, which is where I live. We've done Chicago,
So this is regional to where we're sort of based
out of. But we haven't taken it national or anything
like that. Bruce Picknic, twenty twenty four. That's what I'm saying.
But even at that, consider it done. I would do
that for real. Shit, you know what I'm saying. Are

(10:27):
you growing your own corn? Do you have a farm? No? Um,
I know there's a music podcast, but I'm just really interested.
And I get it. I get it. We source our
corn from different growers. So obviously corn is very seasonal,
so we try to make sure we get the best corn.
We try to get a mixture of white and yellow corn,

(10:48):
and so it's really really delicious and it's just it's
more flavorful than your normal yellow corn. And so we
get it sourced from different producers and and you know,
farmers and stuff like, Oh yeah, I'm I'm because I
I mean, I just purchased a farm. I don't have

(11:08):
plans on utilizing it as a farm. Farm farm. Yes,
there's a greenhouse to grow like vegetables and whatnot. But
that's just like my personal consumption. But again because I'm
getting into the alternative food space and all those things.
And you know, um, not to mention, there's a brother
from Milwaukee actually, um Will Allen basically pioneered inner city

(11:35):
urban farming and kind of really like what's the pioneer
of that? He got a mcgarthur Genius Grant for doing it,
and I became friends with his daughter, and you know,
I thought it was silly. They're like, yo, man, no,
we need to teach our people how to farm, how
to because you know, and I'm a result of it.
Like growing up in Philadelphia, I didn't realize that, you know,

(11:59):
we had to go outside to the suburbs. We had
to go to Upper Darby to find fresh fruits food, right,
you don't have that in the inner city. And so
that's what made me interested in plant based foods and
developing that and not like, you know, I think people
are tending thinking like we want to replace it or whatever. Yes, granted, yes,

(12:19):
I know Patrick from Impossible Foods wants to replace you know, meat,
which more power to I truly, I believe in twenty years.
What we know is food now will be phased out
and will be like plant based. But yeah, I'm just
really interested when people get into the alternative space for

(12:39):
those things. Yeah, totally totally shout out to Milwaukee. That's dope. Okay,
so yes, absolutely, Now I'll get to it. Back to
my real question, what was your very first musical memory?
I would I would say it was seeing the Jackson
five show on Saturday mornings. That was probably be my
first musical memory. And watching Michael Jackson and the Jackson

(13:04):
five that cartoon slash. I think they might have had
like real scenes as well, so I think it was
a mixture. Well it was, Yeah, it was a cartoon.
And then they had a variety show too, so yeah, right,
the Variety Show of seventy seven. I just found out
that when the Silvers moved from Tennessee to Los Angeles,

(13:26):
you know, they the Silvers, you know, they had variety
as a singing group. They've been singing together since they
were kids. But when they got to Hollywood, one of
the first jobs that two of the brothers had. One
of the brothers in the Silvers was the voice of
Jackie and I believe I believe Jermaine. Yeah, Jackie and

(13:49):
Jermaine were voiced by members of the Silvers. Yeah, Steve,
I did not know that. That is something that we
never mentioned that on the Leon Silvers episode. Yeah, I
think it was Epman and Ricky Silver's I believe. I
believe it was them. Yeah. So wow, could you tell
me the very first album that you purchased with your

(14:13):
own money? Not given to you? But yeah, yeah, Well
I don't remember Droit with my own money, but I
remember my grandmother gifting me a forty five of Michael Jackson.
Well was it the Jackson five? It was Um damn?
What was that song? Um to the ground, Shaky body

(14:37):
down to the ground. That was probably. Yeah. That was
my first like memory of having a record that was
my own, you know what I'm saying. So I didn't
buy it, but I owned it. It was my record
Like that was the beginning of my record collection and
it was just a forty five. Yeah. What did your
parents do for a living? My mom both of them

(14:59):
are active, my mom and my mom is the owner
of the largest black newspaper in Wisconsin. It's called the
Milwaukee Community Journal. So that's my mom. My dad is
an entrepreneur in anyway. So he started gas stations, he
started catering businesses, the first black owned fast food restaurant

(15:21):
in Milwaukee, where he started a nightclub called the Fox Trap,
which turned into an arcade. And so you know, he
was just a serial entrepreneur. He never owned all those
things at one time, but he would do this business
for a while that he would transfer to this business
and that business. So that's what my mom and dad
both did. Yeah, well, I want to know how easy

(15:43):
is it or how easy was it for black entrepreneurs
to start a business, because you know, for most of us,
you start a business first of all by getting a
bank loan, and and usually for a lot of people
that I hear talking about, you know, post civil rights

(16:04):
experience for black people, you know, a lot of the
Jim Crowing attitudes three nineteen sixty eight, we're still happening,
you know, long after, like way into the seventies, way
into the eighties. Even one of one of the funniest
stories I ever heard was George Johnson, who you know,

(16:24):
started the Johnson Here Empire in Chicago. You know, they
single handedly funded Soul Train, you know, with the after
seeing commercials and all that stuff. So he tells the
story of going to at least twenty banks in Chicago
and getting rejected by them all when he wants to

(16:44):
start a business. And I believe he says that his
uncle told him, I'm gonna show you how to buck
the system. I want you to return to blah blah
blah blah blah bank And instead of saying that you
want to borrow two thousand dollars to start a business,
say you want to want to borrow two thousand dollars
to take your wife on vacation. Wow. And they didn't

(17:08):
wow Wow again like that, you know, like we don't
talk about. Probably the main gripe of the systematic racism
in the United States is the rampant denial of bank
loans to start businesses. And so how is your dad

(17:28):
able to start all these businesses? Because you know, I've ye,
this is a rare situation for me to hear someone
that has like a dream and it goes in fruition
and manifest itself. Yeah, I'm glad you asked that. They
pulled money together from other black families and people and
so that was their startup money. And then my mother,

(17:51):
she was a school teacher. And so after the riots
of doctor Martin Luther King Junior being murdered, it was
riots in Milwaukee, of course across the nation, but in
Milwaukee as well, and they were they looted and destroyed
a lot of the black businesses. Well, while those black
businesses was striving to get back on their feet and

(18:12):
got back on their feet, they needed somebody to advertise
the fact that they were open again and ready for business.
And the major newspapers in Wisconsin were refusing to cover
these stories. So they asked my mother to put together
a pamphlet. Initially she did it. It's called the Soul
City Shopper, and she was just doing it for free.

(18:34):
Her her goal was to try to get people in
the community to realize that these stores were back open.
That started to happen other black people that had a
little bit of money scraped it together and helped them
to start what's now called the Milwaukee Community Journal. My
dad used that money to start his first business was
a small gas station, and when that did pretty well,

(18:56):
he used that money, so you get where I'm going
with this to start his next business. And he was
the most in nineteen eighty he was one of the
most successful black business people, well business people, not black people,
business people in Milwaukee. But when he got to that level,
the city literally systemically destroyed him tax wise, and they

(19:19):
came after him. They targeted him. He had a huge
target on his back, and they destroyed most of his businesses.
My mom, on the other hand, was able to keep
hers and move forward, but he didn't have businesses. I
would say past I'm gonna say, like nineteen eighty seven,
my dad didn't have any other businesses that he was

(19:39):
able to do in Milwaukee. That's how bad they put
him into bankruptcy tax issues that he had to fight
all the money with lawyers. They spent tons of money
trying to fight all of these things and just you know,
fell underwater. It actually destroyed my mom and dad's marriage
at that time. So, I mean, all of these things
obviously have effects, you know what I mean. Wow, I

(20:00):
would think owning a newspaper would be seen more as
a threat than starting an independent business. On your mom's
side of things, like how was she able to run
that community? The segregated mind state. We weren't literally segregated,
but the segregation mind state really played a big role
in her being able to sustain because the major newspapers

(20:24):
refused to give coverage to a lot of the black stories,
black death, black achievements, black joy. As you said earlier,
her paper was that sole resource for quite a while
and then later And that's the same by the way,
with my father's drive through restaurant, he had called Robbie's
and McDonald's name all of his businesses. Again I know it,

(20:47):
and so at that time period, McDonald's was afraid to
have drive throughs in the black community. They didn't want
to do it. They had some locations, but they refused
to open a drive through with My father used that
their refusal as an opening to start a business that
did have a drive through. Of course, just like any
other people, black people needed convenience on their way to work.

(21:09):
They wanted to grab something to eat, go to work,
so on and so forth, and his business took off.
So it was basically their own ignorance and their own
refusal to serve black people that allowed my mom and
dad both to have a career. Is your entire family
based in Milwaukee or just like your mom and dad like, no, So,

(21:33):
my my father's family is from Tennessee, and then my
mother's families from East Saint Louis. So they both came
to Milwaukee. For exactly, are you from East St. Louis?
My mama's from Saint Louis. From everywhere, I learned something
new every episode. I did not know yet Saint Louis roots.
Oh yeah, yea, all that stuff. I'm sorry, so sorry, No,

(21:56):
it's all good. So then they came to Milwaukee and
I met each other during college years, and you know,
so there was some family there. But you know, back
in these days, there was this huge diversion from the
from the South to the Midwest, to the West because
of lack of job opportunities and so factories were opening
in the Midwest and that's why, you know, Milwaukee was

(22:17):
one of the places that was on our radar back
then as black people. Yeah, still, all right, I got
this is a two party one. What year did you
leave Milwaukee? Nineteen eighty seven, the year I graduated high school?
So um, I left literally a week after I graduated.
I came to Atlanta. All right. Now, Part two that

(22:38):
question is, and this is weird that you leave Milwaukee
for Atlanta, in which the unfortunate commonalty thread of the
two cities is that both cities are well known for
two horrific crime Okay, go ahead, no, two horrific crimes

(23:03):
against groups of black people. Uh of course the Atlanta
child murderers and Jeffrey Milwaukee. And I you know, I
didn't know until the Netflix series that he started back
in nineteen seventy eight, Like I thought this was happening

(23:23):
like around like ninety nine ninety one, But I didn't
realize that his process was way slower. But did I
never had a chance to interview anyone from Milwaukee that
you know, or no, many black people from Milwaukee. So
I'm asking you to represent your entire city here. But

(23:44):
did you, like, did you have any family that was
affected by what was happening, uh with with Dahmer at
the time, or like was that even Emma News, Like
were they reporting like missing black people or or is
this is like a another murder this week? Or no? No,
it was definitely a huge story in Milwaukee. And my

(24:06):
dad lived in the same complex, not in the same
like area that Dahmer lived as Dahmer, So when my
mother and father divorced, his apartment was there, and so
it was a very big issue when we found out
about it, when it became big news and nationwide news.
As a family, we were affected in the sense of
knowing Dad was there. You know, my father was there.

(24:28):
So yeah, it was a very, very big deal. It
wasn't just one of those sort of like things like, oh,
something's happening over there now. It was definitely And by
the way, Milwaukee is very black, So like Milwaukee, and yeah,
we just thinkle of Vernon Shirley in Happy Days exactly exactly. No,
the city itself, I believe, I want to say it's

(24:49):
sixty or so percent black. So if you go to
Milwaukee to city itself, because you know, like like Georgia,
I know, people come down to Georgia. Georgia is one thing,
but Atlanta is another thing, right, and so it's the
same difference with Milwaukee. And it's a very black, black,
black city. Yeah, so Milwaukee, I'm going to talk about Atlanta.
Milwaukee was a very like the difference the disparities between

(25:14):
black and white people is and was so crystal clear Milwaukee.
Most Milwaukee black populations were either poor or lower middle
class somewhere in there, and white people, on the other hand,
had a you know, a much better shot at being
able to rise up the ladder in America in a sense.

(25:36):
And so when I left Milwaukee in nineteen eighty seven,
right out of high school, I came to Atlanta, and
for the first time in my life, I saw black
affluence and people being able to just black opportunity, black diversity,
conscious blacks over here with daishikis and locks and stuff
like that, and corporate blacks over there. I mean that

(25:59):
type of way. Yeah, so that was in Atlanta. That
was in Atlanta nineteen eighty seven. I'll be very honest
with you. I had a few friends and family members
in Atlanta at the time, and really before the Renaissance,
which I kind of I mean between you and like
Bobby Brown, really, Bobby Brown was the first person I heard, like, wait,

(26:21):
the success yet with this album, you're moving to Atlanta,
Georgia instead of like Baldwin Hills and all that stuff.
I just always wanted to know, like, like I thought
y'all created what we know as the Boho lifestyle, because
I just thought, like, they're the pioneers of that. But
you're saying that you saw the alternative Boho scene in Atlanta. Yeah, yeah,

(26:43):
So the West End of Atlanta, right, It's an area
where there's a large well, especially before it got regentrified
more recently, it was a very cultural landmark in Atlanta
where you had you know, African priests and African dance
companies and teaching about the importance of drumming and the

(27:07):
importance of language through music and mathematics through music. Like
these types of things were being taught and spoken of
in the West End in particular, which is where Arrest
of Development was really born in Atlanta. Like me and
my brother Headliner, who you know, was the first person
I asked to be in the group. He used to
cut hair. I call him Headliner because he was incredible

(27:30):
at barbary like demand. And then of course you had
all of these hbcused it, right, So you have Spellman, Morehouse, Clark,
Atlanta University, so on, and so Morris Brown. So all
of that area was bubbling with culture and with revolutionary
you know, ideas and visions. So yeah, yeah, definitely. I

(27:51):
think people who would later see Arrest of Development, they
would know, like if they were in that area, they
would know that we came from that sort of frame
of mind. But I will say we added the more
rural aspects, So like what you're talking about as far
as the need you know, when you said my man

(28:13):
will Allen was a pioneer in the sense of us
getting back to the land and understanding the importance of
land growth. That's the tip arrest of development in particular
was on just trying to take us back to that roote.
So our videos were unpurposely that kind of energy. If
you remember the Tennessee video and people every day, it

(28:33):
was always in that rural South, just to be able
to bring us back to that, you know, that eco
self determination, you know, saying grow our own food, do
our own thing, type of energy. To hear you describe it,
I would assume that your parents weren't. Were they musically
inclined at all? Or did you have siblings? So, yeah,

(28:55):
I did. I had a brother brother, Yeah, my brother Terry.
And then my mom was big on adoption and fostering,
So throughout my childhood my mom would foster numerous kids
and then one of them that she actually adopted was
from a crowd Ghana. His name was bright Boy Team,

(29:16):
so he lived with me as a child. And yeah,
so I did have siblings. No, my parents weren't particularly
into music. But I will say my dad being an
entrepreneur and when he started his club was called the
Fox Trap, one of the hottest clubs in Milwaukee at
the time. I started falling in love with Djan At

(29:36):
that time, I was thirteen, and I became a DJ
at that club because of just falling in love with music.
So I wouldn't say he taught me from like being
musically incline, but getting all those promo records back in
the day, because as a nightclub he would get promo
records from all the major labels. So, you know, I
remember you posting recently about Yellow Magic orchestru right, And

(30:00):
I remember I remember getting you know, vinyl from those days.
They used to poke a hole in the bottom of
it to say that it was promotional called right yeah.
And so I would get vinyl and my dad, not
knowing about music, would ask me to basically curate what
his DJs would play that night. So I was like
always digging into the crates, you know, as they say. So, yeah,

(30:23):
I think that's where I was sort of taught music
in a a in a sense was through that as
opposed to them teaching me, you know, them having musically
inclined skills, you know what I mean. Why did you
leave Milwaukee in the first place. The opportunity was very
rare Milwaukee, Like, no one had made it out of
Milwaukee except for Al Jarole before us. He's from Milwaukee. Yeah,

(30:47):
he's from Milwaukee, and so was much later later. Yeah
wait who yeah, so that's yeah, Amazi should check it out.
Yeah yeah yeah. So you know, so like at that time,
nobody was making it from Milwaukee. Um, Eric banaias from Milwaukee.

(31:09):
That was later, you know what I'm saying. So there
was a lot of things that was later, but at
that time, there was nobody making it. There was no opportunities.
I used to tour Detroit to try to spend time
with Wan Atkins. I'm sure you're familiar with Wan Atkins.
Yeah yeah, so like electronic music god, so like wait,
he was nice to you. He was very nice to me.

(31:30):
In fact, he liked my group at the time, which
was before arrested development called Attack and so that was
like the closest opportunities we had was like Detroit, you
know what I mean. And obviously in hip hop, even
Detroit wasn't on yet, you know what I mean. Chicago
wasn't on yet, so Atlanta wasn't either though really no
it wasn't. But but Atlanta had much more opportunity than Milwaukee.

(31:51):
So that's why I chose Atlanta. Plus I wanted to
be in the South, like I spent all my summers
with my grandmother in Tennessee, and I fell in love
with the South. I fell in love with the whole
idea of the South, especially the nature aspect, not obviously,
you know, oppression and slavery, you know, not that, but
like the realities of landownership and self determination, of growing

(32:14):
your own food, exchanging food from one household to another.
So if you didn't have money, which my grandmother didn't,
she still had everything because the next door neighbor had college,
and the other neighbor had you know, sugar, and the
other neighbor had yams and meat. And so it was
this self determined community or communal of the South that

(32:38):
I fell in love with. You know, I feel like
that's progressive thinking because I would just think in the
late eighties, like everyone I knew was still trying to
migrate to the North, especially where hip hop was going.
I mean, Jamine dupri himself, like moved to New York City,
and you know, it wasn't until you know, the kind

(33:01):
of re gentrification and outso or not even outsourceing, but
just the overpricing of city living is now made a
reverse where now people are people are coming downsidering back
down South now. So yeah, um, all right, so now
that you're in Atlanta, um, what are well what was

(33:22):
your first musical experience in terms of starting a band
or or starting a group? And yeah, so I came
to Atlanta to go to school because I sucked at
school in Milwaukee. I graduated with a zero point nine average,
which is a big time f R. Exactly, that's under
f you know what I'm saying, that's a G. And

(33:45):
so so I came to Atlanta because the Art Institute
of Atlanta was the only school that I had applied
to that would allow me to come. And I even
had to write a letter of acceptance there to tell
them that I was going to change my tune so
and so forth. So the first week I got there,
I put up a flyer because I wanted to start
a crew and I was a DJ, but I was

(34:05):
rapping more and more and more, and so I put
up a flyer for a DJ, and I hung it
up at the lunch counter area, you know where people were,
you know, hanging out, and his brother named Tim Barnwell.
Later Headliner was looking at the flyer and so I said, Yo,
you know, my name is Speech, blah blah blah, and
we just connected from there and then we just started

(34:27):
doing music vibeing. I started working for a brother named
Butch Winston at Kiss one oh four as the DJ.
Because back then, you know, DJ's not every DJ knew
how to scratch, you know what I mean. So a
lot of DJ's was still mixing old school where it
was the record faded out and the next record faded in,
but it wasn't on beat and all that. You know,
this is early years of hip hop. So you know

(34:49):
I was a DJ that actually knew how to scratch.
I was studying DST and you know all of these
types of cats, you know, jazzy Jeff, you know what
I mean. And show on it so far you said
you went produced yourself to tempt Headliner ask Speech, how
did you what? Ken you tell us the origins of
you choosing that name? Yeah, so I a Milwaukee when

(35:11):
I DJ, I was named DJ Peach p E E
C H. And it's because of the size of my
head and the light skinned complexion. And you know what
I'm saying, like that kind of vibe, my phoead be
being extra nice and was taken already exactly, and LL
cool J was taken already. Yeah. By the wait, we're
both scorpions, me and LL. Both of us are named Todd.

(35:33):
Both of us are named Todd well. So yeah, So
I put an S in front of Peach when I
started rhyming, and to me, I wanted to rebrand myself.
I knew I was going to the Peach State and
I didn't want to be known as MC Peach. I
thought that was whack, and so I was like, Okay,
let me put an S in front of it. Now
makes sense. I'm rhyming. Now I'm doing the you know,

(35:53):
I'm letting the DJ sort of go to the background,
and uh, my DJ, and I should say, go to
the background of my movement and let let me take speech.
I'll just put an ES in front of Peach. Hip
hop wise, before you go to Atlanta, who were you?
Sort of I guess more attracted to you in terms
of like where hip hop was at the time. I

(36:15):
mean there was kind of a West Coast or whatever,
but like, what was hip hop in Milwaukee at the time. Well,
Milwaukee was interesting because we liked all of it. So
we liked world class Wrecking Crew from the West Coast.
We liked Egyptian Lover from the West Coast, but we
loved house music from neighboring Chicago, you know what I'm saying.
So we were we were heavy on house music, but

(36:36):
we love DC and the go go scene. We loved
hip hop obviously from the whole East Coast New York.
So we liked all of it. And as a DJ,
I played all of that, you know what I mean.
So I liked all of it like that. I think
that was the unique sort of entry for me musically,
and my musicality was such that all of it to

(36:57):
me was dope as opposed to just one or two
that really sort of dictated my direction or what I
thought was ill. I liked all of it, you know
what I mean, It was all dope to me. So
in going to Atlanta, for you, like, how how do
you take it from a social connection to Okay, let's

(37:21):
let's see we have something here. As a musician. First
of all, did you break your promise to the art school?
Did you finish finished? Yeah? I finished. I finished with
a three point three, mind you, which I totally repented.
You know what I'm saying. I came back. I came back. Yeah.
Well it was funny. I was doing something I liked.

(37:42):
But I'll be honest, I really was my black consciousness
that made me do well at school because I wanted
to be excellent as a black man, Like that was
my That was really my intention. Like I felt like
I wasn't being excellent prior, and I wanted to to
really come with it, like I wanted to come with it.
So I studied harder. I was studying the Black Panthers.

(38:05):
I was studying groups that was about our development and
and they motivated me to do better, Like okay, I
need to do better, you know what I'm saying. So
I did I see that? Well? Wait, you had a
group before less the Development, Yeah, I did, called Attack.
Yeah okay, so what was who was in attacking? Like?
What what were you guys were less? Like? Like stylistically,

(38:28):
what were you liking? I think we were a mix
between UTFO and run DMC. If I had to say,
and and you know you got dems, you know I do.
In fact, we got records that we released back then.
They're they're like classic joints that you know, collectors got.
And because we only pressed two three hundred you know copies,

(38:51):
so it's nothing huge. But in Milwaukee that was huge
because we was the first rap group to put out
records and to do our things. So a lot of
the fas that we had in Milwaukee loved it. But
as I was saying, we couldn't break past Milwaukee, so
even working with Wanaki, so it just never happened for us.
But in the group was myself, a brother named Ta

(39:12):
Whizz rest in Peace, and Special K who was now
who was now named DJ Kimmitt who's a beast as
a DJ. DJ Kimmitt, and myself and Ta Whizz was
the group attack. Wow, I never knew that. Now that's
my guy, man. Yeah. DJ kimmitts to do. Yeah, he

(39:35):
crushes it to this day, and um yeah he was.
He was our DJ, and I was a DJ slash
rapper and Ta was a rapper. Ta was murdered. Unfortunately.
In the early nineties, were you guys opening for established
acts or like what we're shows liking. Yeah, So, like
with attack, one of the sort of ways that we

(39:59):
tried to get rec nys was throwing parties ourselves. So
my father, being an entrepreneur, would would spend the money
and hire DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, who
at that time only had a single parents don't understand,
and one or girls in the world or nothing but
Trouble I think it was. And back then they didn't
have covers on singles a lot of times, so I

(40:20):
didn't know what they looked like. We hired them, and
I say it in quotes because it wasn't them. I
learned that later. We hired them for like three thousand
dollars or what have you, and they came and performed
their one song and a few other things. It wasn't
even it wasn't Jazzy Jeff, and it wasn't Fresh Prince.
Fresh Prince. The guy I saw that night was like

(40:40):
three four hundred pounds, didn't look anything like the Prince
that we now know. And so that was our opportunity
to open up for people. So we were striving to
like use this entrepreneurial attitude to find ways to expose ourselves.
Is that crazy? That's crazy. For a second, I was thinking, okay,
Cash Money Marvelous were there, because all right, I'm from

(41:04):
Philadelphia and both groups were sort of like kind of
the same ILK skills, tables, humoristic humor. Mc oh, that's crazy.
That's not the first time I heard stories of, you know,
drifting from the hip hop side. I think there's one
dude that made a killing as Redhead Kingpin. I don't

(41:24):
know if you remember been in the FBI, but absolutely, yeah,
for like a good year and a half, this guy
was making a killing off of, you know, scamming people
doing nightclub gigs or whatever as Redheading. When don't you
realize the jig was up for like as far as

(41:48):
those catfish I mean acts or yes, yeah there were
more when no, I wasn't anymore of that particular thing.
But when DJ Jazzy jeff A Fresh Prince, when I
first saw them, and I forget what single it was,
they the label allowed them to have a you know,
a picture on them, a cup, and I was like, damn.

(42:08):
And I think just like a year later or so
and I'm like, wow, we got ripped off they and
the show was whacked their show was horrible. But I
was like even scratch, no, no, and you know, like
you know that that was a DJ Chassis Jeff, who
for me is my favorite DJ. So did you ever
tell them that story? Actually I haven't told him that story. Wow.

(42:31):
I can't wait to call Jeff about that one. Yeah, exactly,
that's crazy. It's crazy, I think. Uh in Seattle, Well,
I don't want to say, like, hey, we pulled the
same skin, but there's a festival called Bumper Shoot in
Seattle and the stars just weren't in line for me
and Tarik to be at that show. But you know,

(42:51):
we were heavy believers in the show must go on,
like we couldn't afford to give up one show. So
like everyone but me and Tarik were there and it
was early enough for people to not know who were
the roots were right, but until the last minute, one
guy was like wait a minute, that rummer skinny no,

(43:13):
And then like it went from like one person to
five people and it was like damn yea riot. But
they dice wall was black thought you know, they just
was in the mound, like we just ran out of town.
So yeah, yeah, yeah, we can't fished the city once. Sorry, Seattle.
I apologize for that. Why did you choose the name

(43:37):
Arrested Development when you started the group? Like, was the
Arrested Developing the next step after my group attack? Yeah,
after you imploded or yeah. So basically we you know,
I left Milwaukee because I wanted to go to school
and I wanted to get to another atmosphere, another vibe.
We started off as a group called Secret Society in Atlanta.

(43:59):
Then we had Disciples of a Lyrical Rebellion as our name.
Then it was Arrested Development, and that's when we got
our deal, right, So all of those names was just conceptual.
If you remember in hip hop at the time, there
was a lot of concept going on. So Public Enemy,
for instance, was not just a music group, but they

(44:21):
were a concept. You got the s onew you got,
you got played exactly terminated acts, you know, and even
in other music styles, like even with Prince from the
eighties on out, like he had Prince of the Revolution
and the and the keyboards was a doctor, you know
what I'm saying, And it was like in the time,
you know, had had that character that they play, you know,

(44:42):
the whole mirror thing with Jerome and so it's like
so the concept thing was something that was just um,
it was accessible. It was things that people were into
and I love the name, so I love like punk
rock stuff as well at that time, and Dad Kennedy's
and stuff like this. It just had a certain ring
to it. So for me, Um Arrest of Development just

(45:03):
felt right for what what we was doing and divide
we were on and in that moment. What was your
concept for Arrest of Development when you first started? It
was pretty much the same as what it is now. So, like,
you know, our whole thing was almost like a play
on soul to soul where you had jazz who jazz
b who's like the DJ, but then he would have

(45:25):
guests of different types singing on it. You know what
I'm saying, exactly right, So like exactly right, yeah, exactly right.
So that that was sort of the energy with us,
but it was more of headline as the DJ. I'm
the producer MC and I would invite every show, I
would invite African drummers on. I would invite African dance

(45:48):
troops to come and rock with us. So painters live,
painters to come and rock with us on stage. So
that was the energy of Arrest of development then and
you know, to some extent or another. Now got it
from you, I would say yes, yeah, yeah, Funk Jazz
my man Jason or definitely was inspired by you know
what we were doing. Yeah, Okay, I'd be remiss if

(46:11):
I didn't ask this question now. I mean, I'm a
pop culture junkie and you know one of my favorite
comedies of all time. Also, it happens to share the
name of your band. Now. I knew there was a
situation with Vernon Reed and the way Ins family in

(46:35):
terms of Living Color and in Living Color. But actually
I believe in Vernon situation. I believe Living Color. Actually
maybe for the pilot took the logo of Living Color,
so I know that it got to litigious proportions. But yeah,
I always wanted to know when you own a name

(46:58):
like Arrested Development. As soon that you own the name
arrest of Development, we do. Yeah, even if you're in
and I know you guys are still active, but do
you have to be wholly active in order to maintain
the name and does that allow you like, how does
that happen when another entity comes along with your name?

(47:19):
Like I knew there was a situation where Prince actually
owned the term the Family. Yeah, yeah, And so when
the Family the nothing that Nothing compares to you Want
and Done group that he produced an eighty five Yeah,
when they imploded, Um, he still retained the Night writes

(47:41):
to the name of the family. So when did he
wanted to name his album, you know, Puff Daddy and
the Family for the No Way Out album, he actually
had to break off Prince a little something just to
lease the name from him, but still Prince still maintained
that name. So when the Arrest of Development came out,
was it like is it a separate copyright for television

(48:04):
shows or when you own Arrest of Development, it's for
any entity that's name that, like if I wanted serial
or yeah, a sport or just something, you own it.
So how does that happen? Like are you talking to
Ron Howard or like yeah, definitely yeah. So what we
you know, how trademarks work is that if it is

(48:26):
if the consumer is going to be confused about your
product called Arrest of Development and our product Arrest of Development,
then there's a trademark issue. So if there was a
restaurant called Arrest of Development, probably no problem. If there
was you know, a corn stand called the rest of development.
Probably no problem. But TV shows tend to or can,

(48:51):
if they're successful, have soundtracks that they put out on
CD or a record or whatever version is out at
the time of music mediums. Sometimes as they make movies.
In those movies, you know, there could be confusion as
to when they put out a soundtrack and when we do.
And so we we had trademarked the name back in
ninety two or something. It wasn't like before we came out.

(49:11):
We trademarked it after we came out because this was
our first album. We're learning like, oh, hell, you know,
we need to trademark the name. So um, so we
did have to take Ron Howard and Fox to court
because they had stolen the name, and you mentioned a
few other examples. Did they know they were still in
the name. Definitely, No, they knew, they knew. Oh yeah,

(49:37):
they knew, they knew, But they assumed that we were
washed up, we had no money, and that we couldn't fight,
and so was the wrong assumption. Yeah, they felt like,
we'll take it and just basically, you know, just steamroll them.
And they tried to do that because you know, these
big corporations, they have a lot of money. They have
long money, so they could go into court for they

(49:59):
could go to look out a long time. And so
I had to go into court to fight, and I
had to tell the story of how we started, which
some of which I shared here in front of the
court to show the blood, sweat and tears of what
this group meant to me. So it wasn't just a
trademark to me. It was it was a thing, you

(50:20):
know what I mean. It was a baby in a sense.
And so when the people that was in court then
heard that story, Fox and Ron Howard just said, okay,
we need to settle, and so we settled out of court.
The show was already out at the time when we
went to court and we settled out of court. Wow.
Always always wanted to do that. Yeah, that was a

(50:42):
nice You were satisfied. I'm trying out to be in
your pocket, but you were heavily satisfied. Well, you know,
we were satisfied to an extent because they offered it.
You know, they could put our music on the show.
You know, there was all types of things we were negotiating,
but we didn't know if the show was going to
go well or not, so we just decided to go,
you know, with an X amount and just just move
on and then if it went to streaming, we get

(51:03):
another X amount. So things like that, you know, saying
we went into that kind of deal. Wait, since we
already did a mal jam episode, I correct me if
I'm wrong. When Malcolm Jamal Warner left the Cosby Show,
I believe that he did, or you're already agreeing with me.

(51:27):
I knew when he did this episode. I didn't know
the name of the show, and I didn't know if
I imagined that THEO became a teacher of a bunch
of elementary school kids. But I definitely remember. I believe
that Tennessee was the theme song too. You know, Malcolm
Joan Warners, But I don't know if he was THEO

(51:50):
or if he just played a teacher. But I believe that. Yeah,
I believe he was THEO. He wasn't. He wasn't THEO.
It was his first spinoff or spen off. It was
just his first debut as the star of his own show.
And they they did use Tennessee as his theme song.
I didn't know if I imagine that or not. Yeah,

(52:10):
we went to the taping of that. Yeah, they only
did like nine I think nine episodes, but exactly it
didn't last week. I forgive the name of the show.
You know, it's always exactly black sitcom thing. Yet here
we go again starting Malcolm jamal one, you know, right exactly? Yeah.
Uh So in terms of musicianship or at least you

(52:36):
as a producer, you know, is anyone teaching you production
by this point? Yea? And what were you using? What
were you making tracks on at that time? Yeah? Yeah,
nobody taught me. Unfortunately, I wish I probably would have
had that ever been dope. I was on a HR
sixteen eleases drum Machine and um uh in Sonic ASR

(52:59):
ten or before that, and in Sonic EPs sixteen. Um
So that was like my primary ways of like the
whole first album, for instance, a second album was on
those two instruments pretty much unless we hire somebody to
come in play horns, like on the song you to
play horns or so on and so forth, you don't.

(53:19):
Um yeah, pretty much my production was from that, you know,
those two things. So how do the other members that
we know of the group, speaking of like Dian Faris
and and uh Ba we know headlines and story, but well,
First of all, you said it was sort of a

(53:42):
community of people. Yeah, but the rest of the development
that we know, m how did you finally round up
the final numbers in terms of word group and let's
go for a record deal? And how do you can
able to sign all these people exactly? So that that

(54:03):
actually you hit it on the nail because we actually
already had all of these members. But when when we
got signed to the deal. You can't tour with twenty members,
you know what I'm saying, You can't. It's not financially
feasible right for a new group to go on a tour.
So I had to try to make the best decision

(54:24):
as possible of who to bring out on the road
and make this a sort of an official thing. In
my mind at the time, it wasn't necessarily the official
group members. It was just the people we could take
on the road. It made sense that we all had
different roles that we could play. And this was sort
of stage one, but it sort of got solidified into
that because that album was so big for us that

(54:45):
you know, those members was those members. Now, I will
say Dion wasn't ever in the group as a member.
She was just a guest vocalist. But how we how
me in particular, and how we as a group rolled,
is we we we blurred the lines between who was
in the group and who wasn't in the sense of
all of our you know, appearances, all of our press tours.

(55:08):
If she was down with us, then she was down like,
come on with us, you know what I'm saying, Just
come rock with us, even though she wasn't actually in
the group. And that's how it sort of got confused
that she was actually in the group. Okay, yeah, wait,
since who who was the dancer? I forget her name? Yeah, yes, okay,

(55:29):
So how did you meet them or incorporate them into
the group? Yeah? Yeah, so is she was? Basically she auditioned.
She was thirteen years old, and we auditioned her sister
who was older than her, probably about five years older
than her. And her sister was going on tour for
the first time in her life with James Brown, I

(55:50):
want to say, And so she couldn't do it, and
so she suggested her sister, her younger sister Ishi, which
her real name is Tomka. So she suggested to Mika
she came to audition for us. I actually didn't feel
to me because I loved her dancing, but she she
was dressed sort of like Quime with the polka dots
and that that energy. It wasn't the energy that arrested

(56:13):
development was on. So I didn't totally feel her. Headliner,
on the other hand, loved her style and her vibe
and felt like she could change it to the more
of the afrocentric vibe. And he was right. I mean,
she she totally changed on her own, Like once she
got in the group, she changed her whole look. She
cut off her hair, she had a bald head. She
was like dope as ever, and she just had this

(56:35):
total energy that I totally miss, you know, but he
saw that, Yeah she did. She did. Um you know,
I mean, I guess how most groups, do you know,
people changed their name when they start to sort of
go into the entertainment realm as opposed to just using
like Todd Thomas, you know what I'm saying, Like I
used speech. Her name was just Tamika Gaither. That was

(56:56):
her name, you know what I'm saying. So she looked
up black and um and uh, what's her name? Staff?
Emotional Isshi. So anyway, it's something like black Life. I
think his black life, and she looked that up and
came up with the name Moncho Isshi. See in my
in my mind, I thought, like, all right, speeches the
ring leader. So he's like pas titles giving these titles too. No, no, no,

(57:21):
not at all, not at all. The only name that
I gave, and it was more of just a you
know and a term of endearment, was Headliner because he was,
you know, he was so dope as a barber that
you know, he was known for real, like in the
West End. He was that guy that the line was
outside of the store waiting for him to cut hair.

(57:41):
So I gave him the name Headliner, which made sense
to me in a sense of you know, somebody you
know on the marquee being a headline and stuff like that.
In y'all's episode of Unsung, you made mention of like,
I think your original you in Headliner's original arrangement was
ninety ten. It was a space, it was nine ninety year.

(58:02):
What was your rationale in that in terms of like
division of labor and you know what made that a
fair deal to you? For me, it was a matter of,
you know, I'm producing the music, I'm the main writer
of the lyrics, So you know, just go back and
listen to the record. And even on like Raining Revolution, right,

(58:24):
one of the songs on the debut, I would like,
when the song comes on, I'm saying on the mike, Yo,
this is headlining from Arrest of Development, and I come
here tonight to give thanks to the Rain. And I'm talking, talking, talking,
and throughout the record, I'm saying things. I would often
do that on records as a what do you call it,
like a reference? That's the reference exactly right for him

(58:50):
to come back and do it. That's my point, is that. Yeah,
And so like when those things happened, these songs were
concepts that I came up with on my own owned
so that's why. And so managers generally speaking got like
ten to fifteen maybe twenty percent max in my mind
at that time. And I'm not saying I was a
business dude, because I wasn't. I was twenty one years old,

(59:12):
you know what I'm saying. So you're along the way.
I'm learning very much along the way. So in my mind,
I was like, even though you didn't write these joints,
I still want to give you. And that was my viewpoint.
So you thought you was, and I thought, but you
were giving him something for work that actually hadn't been facts.
I mean, that's that's that was my view at the time,

(59:33):
you know what I'm saying. So, so in terms of
your deal, y'all's deal with Chrysalis was that who was
actually signed, like on paper like to that deal? Yeah,
just me and Headliner were signed to that deal. And
and I'll tell you why that happened because, as I
said earlier, you know, we had twenty members, so we're

(59:54):
there's a lot of people. And so when we got
the deal, which was very unexpected, but of course we
were hoping for a deal, but we got turned down
by all the other labels. So when this deal finally
came through, which was initially a single deal, actually that
led to an album deal. Um, I didn't exactly know

(01:00:15):
at that time who was gonna be out in the road.
Who is this group? You know what I'm saying, Because
we got twenty people, who is the group? Like? So
it was tough. So I knew me and Headliner at
that part. I knew. So when it was time to
sign the deal, I went ahead and did it that way.
And you know, obviously then things blew up. But that's
that's tough because when you signed stuff, you don't know

(01:00:35):
how it's gonna go at the time, Like you don't
know the record's gonna go, you know, crazy and all
of that. So were the members who weren't in the
nucleus of arrest of development? Did they wind up being
you had an offspring group called Gumbo? Correct? Yeah? Oh
I was yeah, I was like, I know, yeah, and shit,

(01:00:56):
I was about to say, I thought you had something
to do with Gumbo. The rest of the members go
to Gambo. No, So Gambo was a whole new like
to me, they were they were my like you know,
family tree starting to develop a family tree, you know
what I'm saying, like sort of a native tongues if
you will, you know where you know, they were gonna
be my Fuji's in a sense, but the Fuji's weren't

(01:01:20):
out yet. Okay, how long did it take to you
source a record deal? Like? How long was the process
of making a demo? Three years, five months and two days.
And oh so that's where the title comes from him
literally literally wow, And what songs are y'all shopping? Like?

(01:01:40):
What was on y'all's demo at the time. You know,
it changed over the over those years, you know, saying
so when we first started shopping, it was a different
version of fishing for religion. Um, it might have had
mister Wendell I forget Um. Definitely not Tennessee because in fact,
as last the last song exactly, Tennessee was the last

(01:02:03):
joint Man and Um. And it was only because I
lost my grandmother, who I told you I spent all
my summers with, and then that same week I lost
my brother Terry, and so the last place I saw
both of them was at her funeral in Tennessee. So
Tennessee was the last joint that I wrote, and it
ended up being our first single, our first hit too,

(01:02:25):
Man the Prince sample in Tennessee. Yeah, how did y'all?
How did y'all pull that off? Because he wouldn't let
nobody selp No, no, no, actually he was, but I
know he was. I was like nicest Smooth used I
Want to be a Lover, and Hammer used prey yep,
oh no, they used they used the Sky's the Limited.

(01:02:48):
They also used what you call it. They used star
start fishing coffee too. Yeah, I forgot that, you know,
Prince was. He was against sampling at that time. You know,
he didn't think it was music, you know what I'm saying,
And he was sort of offended. He was one of
those people at the time that thought it was stealing basically.
And but I will say, you know, when when we

(01:03:10):
were released to Stuff, the sample in world wasn't really solidified,
like the whole we were saying rumors like if you
were using less than three seconds, you're you're good. If
you're not using the melody, you're good. If you're just
using the beat, it's fine. So these were the sort
of rules that were going around. It wasn't really solidified
as to how that worked. And so when I sampled

(01:03:31):
the word to the see, I didn't feel like it
was even a thing because I'm like, it's just the worst.
So it's like if you use something from a record
like yo, you know, or hook you know what I'm saying,
It's like it was sort of like that. To me,
it wasn't a thing, you know what I mean. That
was how I was thinking at the time. You know,
as much as a prince head that I am, I

(01:03:52):
will actually say it might have taken me like four
to five months for me to even realize that was
a print sample, right, exactly exactly. That's the other thing.
Alphabet street just one word take on the backseat. I
gotta ask, I gotta ask, how how how much did

(01:04:16):
they get you all for? So Prince did something? Really,
I'm going ahead, God, no, no, no, what typical? You
know typically most groups will pay twenty five to fifty
thousand and four something Before one word, I get the
feeling you're about to tell me it's it's expensive. Good
it was, And what he did and this is pretty

(01:04:36):
this is pretty shrewd on Prince's behalf. What he did
is he waited for it to hit to the top
of the charts. And so we had already one on
the wrap charts, we hit number one on the R
and B charts, we got to number six, I believe,
on the pop charts, right and the moment it went
down to number seven, we got a call. And I'm

(01:04:56):
not joking, it was literally the moment it went down yea,
and he was like, yo, I want a hundred grand
for that word. And at the time I thought that
was crazy. Though, I thought that was crazy, but I
get him being nice, and I was young, that's him
being nice, bros. And I didn't realize that, Yeah he
cut your break, cut me a break, He cut me
a break. I didn't realize that he could have pulled

(01:05:18):
some sting and just could ye, yo, I want half
the record, you know what I'm saying and all that stuff.
That's ye. In those three years of stuff, did you
guys have management and whatnot? And they were helping up
with things because I know, so how did the whole
Michael Mauljane Yeah, so yeah, Jermaine's dad was our manager. Wow, Okay, yeah,

(01:05:40):
I didn't know. And so you know back then, um,
we had released a record in Atlanta and pressed about
two hundred copies and we were, you know, passing it
around the industry people. One of those people was Ian Burke,
who's a very big music dude here in Atlanta, and
then he passed it to Michael Malden. Michael Malden at

(01:06:03):
that time wasn't really huge. He had he was, I
want to say, he was managing or other tour manager
still times Leather, which was Jermaine Dupri's first major label signing,
and but they weren't huge, you know, they were just
one act on a shelf of acts, you know what
I'm saying, And so he said it to Michael Malden.

(01:06:24):
He was sort of just like a tour manager for Brick,
you know, the R and B band, and he was
just wanting to break off into the industry. He got
the Silk Times Leather hook up with his son, Jermaine.
I knew Jermaine really well too, so you know, it
was just a matter of Okay, well he's bigger than
anybody else that we knew. Let's go with Michael Malden.
He was dope and he got us to deal between

(01:06:44):
him and his partner Philip Callaway. Are you having any
social interaction whatsoever with anyone in the lineage of Atlanta
hip hop by the time you get down there, like,
are you do you know members of the Dungeon family?

(01:07:05):
Do you know Drain Big Boy or the good guys?
Like are you running to anyone that six degrees to
hip hop in Atlanta? By that point? Yes? And no, no,
none of the Dungeon family because I didn't know them, Like,
they weren't a thing when we were first coming out.
So when we were first coming out, it was other acts,

(01:07:26):
you know mc shy d and people like that that
was really making moves in Atlanta on the local scene,
and it was more like ums, you well know, it's
like that sort of Miami base type of style. One
twenty beats permitted a more type of style, and it
wasn't really where we were at, but we knew all
these cats and all of the showcases that we did,

(01:07:48):
they were on those same showcases or people like them
were on those exact same showcases. So it was very
much the scene of Atlanta, and we changed that, you
know what I mean, like bringing a different energy to
the Atlanta scene. Did you think that you had to
leave Atlanta in order to make it like we got
to move to New York in order to get it
a deal or la or No, we didn't feel that.

(01:08:11):
In fact, I didn't go to New York until right
before we got Ideal. That was my first time ever
being in New York period. So I felt like Atlanta
had a good shot, Like we had a good shot.
You know. It took us some years obviously to make
some things happen, but I felt like we had a shot.
And there was a scene there that was very musical,
very different, you know than what was going on in

(01:08:31):
New York at the time. Were there any other labels
that were considering you guys before, you know, I mean,
we tried all the labels, but at that time we
were just getting turned down left and right, left and right,
left and right. And this is prior to like, you know,
obviously Black Eyed Peas or PM down or any of
those things. Well PM don actually did put out a record,

(01:08:52):
it just wasn't it wasn't huge just yet. But yeah,
so it was it was tough for them to imagine.
You know what I'm saying, you know, because the thing
is is that at least now that a look in
sort of an aerial view of it. For me, the
beginning of what they call the alternative movement of hip
hop starts with the Jungle Brothers, and well, you guys

(01:09:14):
are technically the pen ultimate I will say that it
ended in my eyes with diggable planets really before before
the I guess you could say the eclipse of what
we call the chronic came right and yeah, yeah, part
part of my just not at the time. And you know,

(01:09:35):
I've said this to Dre millions of times that it
took me really fifteen years to really open up and
admit that. Okay, I like the Chronic, but I hated
the Chronic when it first came out really because I saw,
you know, the night that you guys when you're Grammy
was like, right when to recon I we're starting the roots,

(01:09:58):
and I was like, Okay, now you know, this is
the first step into alternative hip hop, getting you know,
a seat at the table. So by the time we
get our thing together is going to be on and popping.
And then after you know, and then the mendicable Planets
was next. I was like, all right, great, first the
rest of the planet development indicable planets, and the roots

(01:10:19):
the next you watch and then we get we get
to the train platform and the doors closed, and then yeah,
we have to wait until like the late nineties in
order to get the second wave in. But yeah, you know,
in your mind, how did you feel about the alternative
hip hop tag? Because you know, what I will say

(01:10:40):
is that I mean people that listen to the show
no kind of my obsession with sort of like journalism
music journalism in particular. Yeah, and so one of the
most impossible, like Steph Curry from half Shot, Eyes Closed,
a direction shot going in moments in hip hop history

(01:11:05):
to me was you guys winning the Coveted Pass and
Job Awards yea of ninety two, which you know, I
don't know if you were aware of it at the time,
but for those of you don't know, you know, I'll
say that Lester Bangs was the first like rock journalist

(01:11:27):
that was like a star, you know, like a journalist
that was bigger than he was a part of the story. Yeah,
saw himself as you know, which is kind of a
dangerous thing. And then after the age of Lester Bangs,
then a gentleman named Robert Christigau who started working at
the Village Voice, of which you know that's where like
Great Tade and all these other like black riders are

(01:11:49):
coming up Dream Hampton, like basically the first wave of
what we'll run like the Source and Vibe in the nineties.
But you know, in eighty six, eighty seven, eighty eight,
what's happened is Robert christa Gau is letting like a
lot of black rioters get a seat at the table
to start reviewing hip hop. And this is the first
time that I'm reading reviews sort of said in the

(01:12:11):
native tongue of like a black person, you know, And
so when I saw y'all win the Past Job Awards
and the Past Job Awards. Basically, Christa Gau gathers like
three hundred journalists across the United States and he asked
them for their top ten singles and records of the year,

(01:12:32):
and it varies so to get like, the last time
I've seen a hip hop album win that award was
a nation of millions. Before that, a hip hop album
hadn't won. So when you guys won that, yeah, I
was like, Yo, this is a fucking moment. At the
time when you won that the Past Job Awards, did

(01:12:53):
that mean anything to you or was it just like, oh,
that's cool oschool. I didn't even know anything about it.
In fact, I didn't know anything about it that you
just said it now, nothing about it? You mean, I'm
telling you, I'm telling you wait time out. You mean,
I'm telling you right now that, like right now, you

(01:13:14):
want like three Michelin stars for your restaurant, and you
had no clue, no clue that you got like five
and you had no no clue. I remember, I remember
the pass job, but like I didn't carry them. White
people thought like what was the source say, but no, no, no,
it wasn't that. I know, I know that that's that's
a very easy deflection, fante. But what I'm saying was Christa.

(01:13:37):
Gau made it in a very even seat at the table.
So this is a mixture of black critics critics, So
that ship meant a lot more to me than job
and instead of jazz and pop, they spell it passing
job right. No, And I wasn't saying that it wasn't
you know that it wasn't important. I just meant from

(01:13:59):
the standpoint for us, for me that I as a
hip hop fan, right, we wasn't really checking for what
their opinion was on hip hop, you know what I mean,
Like it was just you know, that was kind of
what it was. I was sorry to me that was
like some amazing like I don't know, like yeah, often

(01:14:20):
hard to achieve, and you guys did it, but the
fact that you didn't even know about it even more
crazier than me. Well, you know. Also, I hated the
term alternative hip hop because I didn't for me personally,
I didn't get it. It didn't feel like it was
an alternative or an alternative to the other hip hop
like I'm listening to like yo bum Rush the Show album,

(01:14:43):
and they're sophisticated, you know, which is a rock song,
and then there's all these live drum loops and stuff
like this on yo bum Rush to Show record coming
from Death Jam, which was obviously a very legitimized label
in hip hop, and it wasn't called an alternative record, Chuck.
They sounded one hundred percent different than any in my opinion,
at least any MC prior to him, and it totally

(01:15:06):
you know, a flavor, the concept of a flavor, flavor
and everything he did in same with Nation a Million,
So hold us back record. Don't get me wrong, it
was clearly we all celebrated that music. But I'm saying,
like to me, if you know too much posse and
these type songs aren't gonna be considered alternative hip hop,
then I didn't get it. I didn't get what made

(01:15:29):
it so alternative or why it started with us you
know what's something else? If If I'm really, really truly honest,
I was twenty one when the album came out, and
I didn't buy the album until mister Wendell started until
after I'm plugged. Then I brought the record. God I

(01:15:52):
spun I'm a DJ so I had when I buy
singles and forty fives is for the purpose of like
playing in the club. So here's the thing though, when
I hear Tennessee and essentially people every day, I remember
having a little hip hop debate arguments about is arrested

(01:16:14):
development a hip hop group or an R and B group?
I was twenty one dog but even then, because he
was singing, because he was delivering so melodically, I just
in my mind rap was to a group two one
two the MIC's UNO and I didn't see that. So

(01:16:38):
in my mind, I was like, yo, this is one
of the most innovative R and B groups ever. No, Yeah,
another disclosure. One of my first debates with Missy Elliott
was over the same thing because I made the mistake
of let my opinion on on Twitter that I didn't

(01:16:59):
consider Missy Elliott and MC more than I considered her
a singer. I considered her a singer that had skills
as an MC. She lived my d ms up. Boy, Wow,
the lyrics to the second verse or I guess the
first verse of people every day? How much resistance were
you on a daily basis meeting from the hip hop

(01:17:23):
guard that saw you guys as weirdos. Ironically, we weren't
getting like from in my own body experience. We weren't
getting a lot of people doubting the hip hop origin
of who we were being in my own body. We
were getting a lot of pushback from gangs to hip

(01:17:45):
hop at the time. I mentioned Ice Cube on people
every day and early to read from our group says
who after I say his name, So there's like a
Now I meant for it to be us slight in
a sense, right, because I'm trying to compare how I'm
going to handle this situation compared to how ice Q

(01:18:07):
portrayed himself. Oh, exactly right. Wait a minute, now, I'm
just hearing now I'm one second years old. I didn't
realize that. Yep, I didn't realize it was a question.
I just thought we all we all knew who ice
Q was. Don't get me wrong, she was, but but

(01:18:28):
at the time he he did, and so did therefore
snoop and so did you know others who were on
the West Coast that were more so repping gangs to
hip hop in a more direct way, right, So there
was that sort of and not to mention every show
that I did and I'm talking about for twenty thousand

(01:18:49):
people or arrested development did I'm saying, I would say
that we're not calling black women bitches and holes. We
don't do that. Our peers do that. We don't do that.
So I'm making a very clear statement about who we are,
what we're doing, and why it's different than what this
dude's doing. So those types of things came off as basically,

(01:19:12):
you know what I'm saying, like, Okay, you down, Yeah,
what happened is the first time that you meet them.
Hube Hube did that signature growl look that he does.
You know how he just it's a cover of every
magazine you've ever seen. Qube Grace, the cover of he
gave me that cube scowl. One on one, he gave

(01:19:35):
me that scowl, right, and then Snoop gave me this
sort of like cold thing at the Grammys, And it
was that kind of energy iced tea at the time.
Me and him, prior to us really blowing up, we're friends,
but after we started to blow up, he distanced himself
for me. So it's those kind of things that I felt,
But it wasn't necessarily the whole R and B versus

(01:19:56):
hip hop thing. It was more of the stance that
we were taking. And I think, now, mind you we're eating,
we're eating at this time, like we're wrapping up awards shows,
So this is this is scary. So this is this
is like competition now, like okay, their stance is very
juxtaposed to what we're doing, and they're winning. Like this

(01:20:20):
is not an underground sensation. This is something that's actually
taking awards from them, like the chronic it's become because
because of the Yeah, I mean, you guys owned, you
guys owned ninety two. Did it ever become a burden? Uh?
Winning that much and selling that much? Because then again,

(01:20:41):
it's also like and I do remember like Cypress Hill
went through a situation where you know, the source decided
to just start going out on them for their second
album because they thought like, oh, y'all ain't making a
hip hop for the heads no more. Like we see
you know, white people dancing and slam dancing in your
videos and you're doing like Wallapalooza and all this other stuff. Yeah,

(01:21:04):
so were you feeling as though that you were in
danger of hindering the group? Without a question, Like for
me as a leader of the group. I'm worried about
that every day, Like every day, I'm worried about this,
this transference of black heads and fans loving our music,

(01:21:26):
and it started to transform into mainly white audiences now
loving the music, mainly white critics, you know, heroin the music.
It was like, oh man, what is this? What does
this mean? Like, because everything we're talking about is these
black issues. But then the people that's starting to you know,
come to all the shows is one different. We did Lallapalooza,

(01:21:50):
you know what I'm saying. We we did these huge
which I love these festivals, don't get me wrong. Like
I'm with bands that I absolutely adore, Primis of Spone
and you know, I love these bands, So I'm loving
this experience. But it's a it's a it's a hard
thing to sort of reckon, right because you're this, We're

(01:22:11):
an underground hip hop group talking about black liberation, and
yet we're doing these big rock tours and we're doing
things that I wouldn't take back to this day. But
it was tough right to try to understand the trajectory.
You know. Carol Lewis of course gets immortalized and painful.
You know, Norberdy Walkers, our agent, Carol Lewis, our agent

(01:22:32):
World Up indeed, whatever. And so I remember the reason
why my manager chose Carol Lewis, It is because you
guys were a client and always working, and he saw
the basic round that you took, you know, the festivals
you were doing. And again, this was unheard of at

(01:22:53):
the time in the early nineties. We live now in
a America just got onto festival fever. But right and so,
but one of the most shocking things was you guys
wanting to do a Chitland circuit kind of you basically

(01:23:14):
wanted to un Yeah, it seemed like you wanted to
undo the progress of the first album um with Zingle
Lama Duney because I remember this whole campaign of you know,
we're gonna do a Chitland circuit tour, We're gonna do
like small clubs and that sort of thing. And I'm like,
wait a minute, y'all sold four million, Like I've seen

(01:23:36):
you guys open for in Vogue in the summer, like
now it's your turn. Really, I was just mad because
I wanted you guys in the sheds so that way
the roots get open for y'all. So you know, I'm thinking, like, wait,
why are y'all in the these small venues where you're
not going to make money, Like go back to the

(01:23:58):
big venues. But you know why, what was your mind
the mind state of doing what you call the Chitland
circuit run for you know, the the launch of Zingle
Lama Duney, I felt like we had lost track with
the roots no puddler intended. I felt like like we

(01:24:22):
weren't connected with the people, and the machine had gotten
so it became so much a part of everything that
I felt scared, to be honest, and I felt like
I was floating and my feet weren't on the ground,
like I didn't know what I was connected to, and
so we went that direction. To me, it reminded me
of what Daylight did after their success with three feet right,

(01:24:42):
so day their next record was Daylight's Dead right. So
to me, I don't know, I know them, but I've
never talked to them about this, but I have a
feeling that it was their way of saying, Okay, let's
get back to something that has more I don't know,
routes for something. Then the whole hippie thing, like we

(01:25:02):
could take that and we could keep going with the
hippie thing. But I think that they purposely wanted to
kill that and go, you know, to something that they
that that felt more real to them. Yeah, I would say, man,
I was surprised, you know, I was very surprised. I
thought eas my mind was going to be like out
of here. I thought that would be like a bit yeah,
you know what I mean, because I was like, Okay,
this is them. It sounded like y'all like, okay, this

(01:25:24):
is this is them, But you know that was my gym. Yeah,
what was the relationship with the label like at the time.
So it was a perfect storm because the label was
going through huge changes, so that we just made them
I don't even know how many millions right right. And
what tends to happen with these big labels is then

(01:25:44):
their presidents start getting changed and people start getting changed,
and you know, they started brought you in the building facts,
you start losing your team and the people that you're
working with. Simultaneously, the group is going through it. So internally,
me and Headliner are going at war with each other
behind the scenes, and we're going through everything, you know
what I mean, And that that was demoralizing and horrible,

(01:26:09):
and the music industry was changing, you know, saying who
was coming in. It was a different energy from what
was happening in the early nineties, And well it still
was the early nineties, but like ninety ninety one, ninety
two had a different energy than what would start to happen.
We were becoming more more popular, Nazis illmatic was house.
So it was like, it's just all of those things

(01:26:32):
combined made it a little bit of a different landscape,
you know what I'm saying that that landscape internally, group wise,
musically on the outside and label wise. So with the
remix for People every Day didn't wait, did you make
both at the same time or was it after the fact,
after the album was done, after the album was done,

(01:26:52):
and in fact, when Tennessee Blew Up, which again was
the last song we did on the album, right, So,
and so, if you can imagine the whole hip hop
argument versus melodic singing argument, there was not really a
melodic singing record on the on our album except for
there was two songs, a song called You and a
song called Rainy Revolution, but none of those were planning

(01:27:15):
to be singles for us. So by the time we
released Tennessee as our first single, unexpected but last minute move.
It was a melodic style. It did so well that
I didn't feel confident. I wanted to make a run
of this, you know what I'm saying, because I wanted
this to work. So I didn't feel confident that the

(01:27:36):
version of people every Day that was on the record
was gonna do it. But the label wanted to release
that as a single, People every Day. The version that's
from the record, that's not the version that became the
one exactly. So I was like, Yo, I'm doing the
singing style on Tennessee. Let me try to basically recreate
that same song, different groove and different lot of stuff.

(01:28:00):
So I re sang it, went into the studio, brought
the rest of the group, and we did that. We
did that version. I felt like that was the right call,
and it was the right call. It took off question basically,
you know, between Tennessee and UH, People every Day and

(01:28:22):
mister Wendell and Natural, you know, I never have that
much faith in record companies for like having a plan
and successfully executing that plan backs, So who's the person
that's going to claim the credit of it? Was my
master mind thing, because you know, not for nothing. But

(01:28:42):
we followed. We saw that blueprint and was like, oh,
this is obviously a blueprint for success. Yeah. Like well,
the label claim that, oh, we we had a plan
all along, we knew this was going to happen, Like yeah,
I would say I would credit a team and it
was Michael Maldon, it was myself, and it was Lindsay Williams.

(01:29:03):
Those are the people. Lindsay Williams was our A and
R guy at Chrysalis. He also signed Gang Star and
release Step in the Arena album and stuff after that.
So Lindsey knew hip hop. He was from, he is
from Harlem. Michael Malden knew us, he understood our vibe,

(01:29:25):
and I knew us. So I feel like between us,
we were sort of coming up with what should be this,
how should we navigate that? And the label just really
followed suit. I'll never forget being a twenty two I
think I was twenty two year old due going for
the first time up to these tall high rises on
Avenue of America's New York and having these meetings with

(01:29:47):
these all these exacts at this long table, trying to
explain to them why and how rest of development could
make it, you know what I mean, and having marketing meetings,
like talking about marketing strategies. So it's just usually it's crazy,
usually like record labels, usually stories like yours. Um in

(01:30:11):
which other groups I mean for every arts development, I
can name other alternative hip hop groups that you know.
It could be the Boogie Monsters, it could be me
if I me, it could be Shit the Roots for
the first three or four records. Well no, no, I'm
just saying which the label just doesn't have a clue

(01:30:31):
on harder to market and let's be honest, a lot
that was selling was also due to the momentum of
a controversy. You know, if someone gets shot, if someone
goes to jail, if someone has a backstory, then that's
easy marketing. But that's not on the labels part. They're
just exploiting that and always just you know, the stars

(01:30:54):
was was aligning for this um you gotta talk about
working with in the Malcolm X. I can only imagine,
like I was really excited seeing revolution for the the
end of it. I have to know, though, when Spike's
approaching you about this in your mind, especially in nineteen
ninety two. Are you seeing having the flagship song for

(01:31:19):
a Spike Lee film? Is it pressure? Because I mean
we pretty much are thinking like, oh, you got to
come with someone on the level of Fight the Power
something like of that level or debut. You know, like
there was one point where a song associated with the
Spike Lee film could yea elevate, So like what is that? Like?

(01:31:41):
Like how did that all come about? It was? It
was incredibly stressful because Public Enemy smashed it with Sight
to Power and the way Spike position Fight to Power
throughout the film made it such a pivotal part of
that film. I mean, it's an undeniable part of that film.

(01:32:03):
You know, it's part of the fabric of the film,
not just the soundtrack, you know what I'm saying. So
coming in after that was extremely tough, and um I
felt a lot of pressure, you know what I mean,
to like to try to make sure that it was Look,
i mean, Bomb Squad is a whole crew, you know
what I'm saying. But for me as a producer still

(01:32:24):
with that ASR ten, you know what I'm saying, Yeah,
I'm striving to make sure that it that it has
the layers and that it has the potency of something
that deserves to be in this film, but also making
sure that it's still us and not somebody else, you know, saying,
making sure it's still who we are as a group

(01:32:45):
and what we do. Knowing how to dacious Spike is,
you know, even for like we did a song for
Bamboos or whatever. So I know how Spike is in
terms of him putting the pressure on you. Facts. How
many times did he have to come to you to
be like because even Chuck will say I think. I

(01:33:05):
think Keith Shockley told me that Spike didn't like the
first three drafts to Fight the Power, Yeah, and the
fourth time they finally nailed it. Yeah, you know, because
I was asking Keith, like why names some of them
fight the Power and not have like the Eisley Brothers
or a reference of that, and he talked about like
we did a whole other thing. And then Spike was like, Nah,

(01:33:26):
this ain't it, This ain't it or whatever. And often
know that sometimes it's hard to take criticism from a
non musician. Yeah, they just don't know or whatever. And
you know, you guys have like four top ten singles
at the time, so it was like you could have
easily been in can't tell me Nuttinville. Yeah, so, like

(01:33:47):
how much back and forth was it until he was like,
that's it, that's the one. You know. It's funny. We
didn't get a lot of back and forth for Spike
on that, and he was very hands on though. So
he was in the studio when we record that. He
was shouting revolution. He insisted that it be an anthem
right from the jump, and so he really trusted in

(01:34:07):
me to deliver and he didn't give me any The
only only fighting back that he gave me was the
video because I wanted to have a more militant video. Yes,
he shot it. He shot it in Brooklyn. We shot
it in Brooklyn with him. It was amazing experience. We
shot that entire video on seven hours and if you
look at that video again, you'll see probably two, three,

(01:34:30):
four or five hundred people I'm not sure marching down
the street with us in one scene, another two maybe
one or two hundred people in a classroom with us
in the school. I mean, there's a lot of sets
and we did all of that in seven hours. Just amazing, amazing. Um. So, yeah,
it was definitely his hands on experience all over it,

(01:34:51):
but he didn't give me a lot of fight back.
And prior to us, Gangstar had did um it's a
jazz thing from Better Blues, and that took a little
bit of the pressure off. But for me personally, as
big as the group, our group was, I was really
wanting to, you know, go somewhere near that fight the

(01:35:11):
power energy. Okay, all right, I gotta ask the question.
So again, long time listeners know of my journalism obsession,
so without really getting into the specifics of it, I
kind of want to ask you about the aftermath of it.
And we actually did an entire episode with Danielle Smith,

(01:35:35):
writer and at the time I was living in London
and there weren't American publications they you know, it was
hard to get you know, now like everything's digitally colonized,
so I can get the same magazines that you're getting
all across the world. So you know, I'm getting care

(01:35:55):
packages from my publicists in the States to London, and
of course, you know, the Princess you A Vibe magazine
comes out and you know, I had never experienced a
black takedown article before and I internalized, like I almost

(01:36:20):
felt like that was my group. She was talking about
I think maybe these questions I'm asking you simply because
like vicariously, I was living in your footsteps and whatnot,
and Okay, what they do, that's what I'm doing. And
they do that, students that step and that. So you know,
I get the magazine. I read the Prince article and everything.

(01:36:41):
I was like, all right, read the rest of Development
article and Trouble in Paradise. I was like, yo, like
you know, I'm I'm used to in black journalism. I'm
used to like write on a magazine, you know what
I mean, like, Hey, what opposites do you find attractive
in the opposite sex? And what kind of foods do

(01:37:01):
you like? So this level of journalism I'd never seen before. Yeah,
I've never seen a takedown. And for those of you
don't know, a takedown article was kind of where I
believe the artist doesn't realize that they're being ambushed facts
in the interview. Can you walk me through the process
from which you found out that this article was not

(01:37:25):
going to be the glowing A plus report card that
arose to Development had been getting up until that point. Yeah,
like what can you just walk me through it? Like
it was? It was literally a kick in the ass
because I was cool with Danielle, Like she came to

(01:37:47):
it last and she said this we hung out with
Danielity was all love, Like it was so much love.
And we needed that article because we had already been
facing backlash. We had already been getting a lot of
different narratives about where we're going, who we are. Not
not from a like internal group like any beefs going
on in the group, but just from a standpoint of

(01:38:08):
what I was saying earlier, as far as you know,
now we're sort of these pop music darlings, which we
never were on that tip, but that's what we had
sort of become to some extent. We're winning all these awards,
We're going to these big lollapaloos of rock tours and
all of this. So that article was dear to me,
and for me, it was a sister, a black sister

(01:38:29):
that's come down to Atlanta to hang with us, so
she had total access to everybody. And long story short,
because that are always the protocol. Like because even now,
like me and Tariq, do you the roots interviews, there's
eleven of us, but right it's making Keith right you
You felt comfortable and just letting hey talk to everybody.

(01:38:53):
I did. I did, and you didn't know if it
was coming not at all, Like that was one hundred
percent one of those like damn, when I read it
is when I knew that that's what the take was,
because that's not what I was getting from Danielle in person,
like eye to eye and get the other members with

(01:39:15):
me too, by the way, so like we're with her
and I'm not getting that now, I'm she she talks
to everybody separately as well, And you know this article
starts to listen, there was there was turmoil in the group.
I'm not denying that, but that wasn't the narrative of

(01:39:35):
where we even were at as a group. So we
were going through turmoil, but we were marching on like
that's where we're at. We're going through y'all were going
through turmoil, but y'all weren't trying to sell it. We
were definitely not trying to sell it. And also we
weren't It wasn't the major narrative of where we were
at as a group. It was a narrative. It was
a narrative, but it wasn't the narrative. So when I

(01:39:58):
saw that article, and it was the narrative of the
entire article. I was like it. I lost my faith
in journalism from that point forward because I was like, damn,
like that was like you said, it was a takedown.
And I don't know what she said. I don't even
know if y'all addressed this when you interviewed her, but

(01:40:20):
it even had to been some type of thing where
you know, it's it was a good look for her
to to to do some kind of story or maybe
or boss or Uppers was like yo, come in it
this way or whatever. I don't know what it was,
but it was. It was crazy. You know. I don't
want to put words in Danielle's mouth, but I definitely
I don't. I can't even write it was it wasn't.

(01:40:41):
It wasn't a yeah, I did it, and so what
like it was definitely a remorse pool like sort of afterthought.
And she explained, like you you have to understand that
I wasn't coming mean spirited. I believe that there was
a pressure to not make and again, you know, as
I explained earlier, or black journalism before the source before

(01:41:05):
Vibe Magazine was basically just limited to either Ebony Magazine,
where everything was glowing or right on magazine where everything
was kind of frothy, you know what I mean, but
not like real journalism. And so I remember her feeling,
like I believe she said that it was a very

(01:41:27):
conflicting thing to do, like as a as a journalist,
do I tell the truth or do we protect because
you know, also I know the rules of black people
is that you don't spill your dirty laundry in front
of the world to see. And me reading that article

(01:41:49):
made me uber obsessive in terms of who we talked to,
Like that was the points. That was the point in
which I started, you know, studying every journalist, every by line,
looked at other articles they wrote. Yea, even to this day.
I mean, I'm not as vigilant now as I was,

(01:42:11):
but yeah, it's just for me. I was just like, yo,
like this group is might might never recover from this?
How we didn't? How did you so mentally and physically
to go that high and then to be in a
car crash that wasn't buy your intentional design, still a

(01:42:36):
car crash nevertheless, How did you guys continue with promoting
the album? Or like, was it a rap? After that?
It was a rap? After that, I mean, by and large,
and so for me, I'm I'm literally pissed at her, Like, dude,
I saw her, I saw her at Evince and I literally,
you know what I'm saying that I won't go there,

(01:42:58):
and I was pissed and I didn't talk to her
at all. I just I was literally bitter towards her.
I think for me, it was the first time I
saw sensationalistic journalism. For me, it was my first introduction
to it. So, like you said, articles prior were one thing,

(01:43:19):
and and different magazines covered things in one way. But
after I saw that, I was like, oh, okay, because
it's one thing to say the truth about there's some
beef going on behind the scenes. I'm to me, I
think I was cool with that, Like I was all
right with that, and that's why I was allowing everybody
to speak. But to make that the whole trajectory of

(01:43:39):
the story. It damaged us and Vibe was very much
a huge deal at the time, and from a black perspective,
we needed that that co sign at the time, like
we needed that from a marketing standpoint for this group.
We needed that love in order to you know, validate

(01:44:00):
the direction we're continuing to going and with without it.
It was tough. It was no no circle back for
you and Danielle. I mean at this age I'm now
fifty four. Yeah, I can seem back with her, but
but I'll be honest, like during that time period, probably
for probably ten years probably I couldn't talk to her

(01:44:21):
yea height. Yeah, you know what I mean, I couldn't.
I couldn't do it. You talked about around like uh
ninety six, like when you did your solo record and
you know you were you know, you were feeling suicidal
at the time. What took you to that mind stake?
I think it was what you just talked about. Quest
was like it was the drop and how far it was,
you know what I mean? Like that that's tough to

(01:44:42):
digest for any person in my opinion. Yeah, dude, I
was gonna say, we that's You're literally the first person
to call me to do something, so forgot like you
did a first project. It was my first music video.
I was in your video. You fully bel you Foley
Dallas Austin That's right. He was playing keyboards, right, yep,

(01:45:04):
he was playing Oregon and Ramone Harvey was your man.
I remember you and Ramone ucking me up and Ramon
picking me up from the hotel exactly yet to see Yeah, yeah,
I mean, but I mean I was a fan of
y'alls already, Like before I met you. The label showed
me y'all's album and was like, Yo, peep this out.

(01:45:24):
So I was a fan already. And um at that
time the label that was no longer Chrysalis, it was
called E M I and it was sort of morphine
and DeAngelo was signed as well, but he wasn't out yet.
So I was hearing a lot of the stuff that
they was about to go into the direction of. And
that's how I knew about y'alls. So I was like, yo,
I love this group. And so that's why I, you know,
reached out to you for y'all when you were talking about,

(01:45:47):
you know, being in that kind of deep depressive period,
what got you out of it? How did you get
through it? You know, it was through time but also spirituality.
In ninety six, I released my solo album. In ninety six,
I was very suicidal and a woman that I auditioned
for a tour I was doing in Amsterdam was a

(01:46:08):
Christian and she started talking to me and my wife,
and long story short, I became a Christian and that
truly saved my life and truly made me think of
things differently and see myself as valuable outside of wherever
a record was at and where you know, whatever, whatever
the industry was saying and my music career was going in.

(01:46:30):
I saw a value outside of that that changed my
ninety six was also around the time I used to
see you want a campus, so you were going through
all kinds of enlightening facts, and that that was I
went back to school at Clark. I never went to
Clark prior, but I went to school in general, back
to college to really, like to I wanted to be

(01:46:51):
around academia in a sense, and I wanted to be
around that sense of learning and curiosity and things that
I felt was more pure in life. Wait, you two
went to Clark at the same time he went to
Clark's speech are very brave? What was that like? I
dream of going back to college, but time won't allow that.
So what is that like like not starting over again?

(01:47:13):
But just yeah, it was tough because we had already
blown up. This is prior to Zing Lamadooney, but it
was after three years. Album so we're huge. I'm very noticeable,
very known, and so it was tough and our schedule
was absolutely insane. So honestly, I could only stay for
a semester. I had to drop back out because it

(01:47:34):
just was it wasn't doable Freddie long term unless I
would have quit the industry, which I wasn't willing to
do it that at that point. So, yeah, you were
still actively releasing music and you guys were, you know,
still there. There's a momentum and outside of the United
States fact, you know very much. Yeah, Mace did the
same thing, though I don't know what it is about Clark,

(01:47:54):
but Mace went to Clark after he was Mace too,
So yeah, Reacher Mason, yeah, man, yeah, yeah, I think
his ministry was in the was on Clark initially. Yeah,
thirty years into this business, can you tell me, like,
what have you learned? What have you like, what your

(01:48:16):
overall experiences in terms of what you learned, things that
you could have changed, or experiences that you've had. I
didn't even ask about like what a success feel like
in nineteen ninety two, ninety three amongst the people you meet,
Like did you even have an inner circle? Like did
you become friends with other artists or not or so

(01:48:38):
to answer that last part, yes or no. I mean
I was cool with you know, certain artists, but not
really friends friends because everybody was in the East Coast
or West coast and we was down in Atlanta, and
it just was a different energy. You know, back then
hip hop was still very divided. You know, it was
West coast, East coast. The South was still not thoroughly respected.
If you remember Andre's speech at the awards, like yeah,

(01:49:01):
and that was that was after us, So imagine prior
to that, how little respect you know the South guy
in many ways. So so they answered the question, no,
I don't think so. And also I'm a very like
everyday people kind of guy. So by nature I didn't
find super value and hanging with like clicks in the

(01:49:23):
industry type thing like that wasn't my thing. So if
we if we clicked, it was good, but that just
not that that wasn't what I was searching for or
sense I was weren't going like making pilgrimage in New
York to go record shopping with blah blah blah blah blah,
or when you come to Atlanta, come hang with us,
and yeah, I would start doing that later, like much later,
but no, I wouldn't. I wasn't doing that at the time.

(01:49:45):
Does the Atlanta hip hop community look to you to
know that you kind of like kind of started this
ball rolling in a way, like do you feel a
respect from Atlanta in that way? Yes? And no, yes
when they meet me in person. Know, when it comes
to documenting, like whenever there's a documentary about Atlanta, somehow
we're sort of left out of it and it starts
with organized noise and it starts with outcasts and goody mob,

(01:50:10):
let me go on record to give you the flowers
and basically says that, yeah, you know, and we really
haven't running to each other all that much because it
might have been in person, by the way, in Atlanta
if speech was in Atlanta when we was getting yea, yeah, okay,
facts facts, Yeah, I see, I see. I'm sorry, I

(01:50:31):
mean interrupted wisdom, no, God, go ahead, no no, no,
but I'm just saying that, yeah, no, I I do
acknowledge that you guys, you know, planted a seed. And oftentimes, yeah,
history doesn't remember pioneers like often people that come after
the fact and sort of perfect a formula that sort
of thing. They get the flowers and they get the accolades,

(01:50:52):
and you know, you guys definitely, whether people really want
to admit it or not, Like you know, you guys
are responsible for a movement. You're definitely responsible for the
movement that I'm still allowed to participate, you know, thirty
years later into my life. So I definitely I thank

(01:51:12):
you for that. Man. Well, that means everything. It really does.
It means a lot. And didn't you just do a
show with Christian and Tariq? Yeah? I did a show
in New Jersey at the Packs and um with Black
Thought with um uh yeah seen with Christian scene showed
up on time? He did he actually was on time.

(01:51:32):
He was before time actually, and he rocked. He did
his thing, rock him was supposed to be on it
and he broke his foot our ankle and then um
Chuck d was supposed to be on it. He got COVID.
So right, but you killed it. So have you had
any communication whatsoever with the initial original members of the band.

(01:51:53):
What's that relationship like? Now? It's dope. It's dope. Um,
it's never gonna be like it was in the early days.
But we're like mad cordial with one another, mad. You know,
when we see each other, it's literally like seeing an
old best friend. Right, So in particular me and Headliner,
because that's where the main split was, you know what
I mean, and the group sort of split on one

(01:52:15):
side or the other according to that main split, you
know what I'm saying. So Headline and I we're cool,
you know what I mean. The issues are what it was,
and I don't think it will ever not be there,
but we're real cool. And you know, like if he
has issues with his family, I'm the first to call
him and try to see what I could do, you
know what I'm saying, and to help advice versus. So

(01:52:37):
there's there's a lot of love there. And I think
as the older we've gotten, the more we're able to
dead the stuff that, you know is sort of irrelevant
and the gist of time, you know, as time moves on. Well,
not to hint too much, but you know, it is
kind of the thirtieth anniversary of that movement. So if

(01:52:58):
there ever was a time to sort of rekindle or
re spark or flame whatever, like, you know, just having
participated in an event in which we're celebrating our history,
and I know, I know hip hop has a lot
of disdain for being seen as old or ancient or

(01:53:21):
sages or whatever. You know, the non sexy term is
for for having age or wisdom. But I've learned, probably
after the Grammy experience, how important it is to acknowledge
and celebrate a history. And I totally guys have that.
So I you know, I really hope that one day

(01:53:45):
I see it all come back full circle because you know,
the world needs that. Because I still I still spend
the music and the magic. You know, the magic still works.
You know what we're thinking, What were you thinking? No,
I mean it's it's way He's gotten way better than that.
Now we've worked all of that out. Now Also, it

(01:54:07):
can really oh make it happen. Oh. Last question, This
is such a random question, but you talked about land
and stuff in Georgia earlier, and I was just curious
if you're LinkedIn with those families that brought that ninety
seven acres and Georgia. No, but I that that movement
has been something that's important for child nineteen. Black families
brought ninety seven acres for a safe space for black people.

(01:54:29):
They're building a community, so yeah, I was just seems
so in speeches like land. It doesn't have anything to
do with doctor York. No, no, no, what dope and
it's dope. P houses too dopey. They they're buildings. Well,
I'll send you the article of mire. Yeah yeah, I
want to see about that. Well. Speech brother brother, thank you,
thank you for taking the time out just to speak

(01:54:52):
with us, and thank you you know again your legend
and I thank you, thank you, thank you so much
for for doing this with us. Um this is quell
us y'all, another classic episode, uh speech. Our guests on
the show, Sugar Steve, thank you, speech man, thank y'all,
thank you, fantigolot, Sir Andy, I send you the article

(01:55:13):
of there of course on on behalf. I know once
I hang up, I know there's like a question I
forgot to ask you. I know you I see you question,
Oh yes, what's up? Supreme is a production of I

(01:55:37):
Heeart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.

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Laiya St. Clair

Questlove

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