Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Rodney Jerkins & Jon Keith On Songwriters Hall of Fame, Michael Jackson, Music Industry Shift +More

Transcript

INTERVIEW: Rodney Jerkins & Jon Keith On Songwriters Hall of Fame, Michael Jackson, Music Industry Shift +More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: Breakfast Club.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Morning.
• 0:05
  Speaker 3: Everybody is the j n V. Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne the Guy.
• 0:09
  Speaker 3: We are the Breakfast Club. We got some special guests
• 0:11
  Speaker 3: in the building, right. We got the o G, the icon,
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: the legend, Rodney Jerkins celebrating thirty years of Dog Child.
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: He's inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Congratulations, and
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: he also brought his new artist, John Keith.
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: Well, how are you feeling?
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: First and foremost?
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I'm good, bro, I'm good, You're good.
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: Bless John Keith. No pressure.
• 0:31
  Speaker 5: But Rodney has sold over five hundred million records worldwide.
• 0:34
  Speaker 5: He's worked with Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, Beyonce, Brandy, Justin Bieber,
• 0:37
  Speaker 5: syl Sam Smith, just to name.
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: No pressure, No pressure.
• 0:41
  Speaker 6: Okay, easy work.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: So how are you feeling?
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: First?
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: And four morefore we got to get to you know,
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: I like to bring when we have icons and legends
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: like you. I like to start from the from the beginning.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Now you from Atlantic City, from Atlantic City? And how
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: did you get into music? What made you say I
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: want to be a producer?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: And then being.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: From Atlantic City, anybody from Atlantic City to tell you
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: it's very difficult to get out there. How did you
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: get out there where people started hearing your beats and
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: you started selling some stuff.
• 1:06
  Speaker 6: My mom was a housekeeper.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: She would go and she would take other people's houses
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: and she would hear these little kids playing piano or
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: being taught. She was like, I need them. I need
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: this guy to teach my son. So I'm five years old.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: I didn't want to play the piano, to be honest,
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: but my dad had a house rule. You gotta play piano.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Live under this roof, all siblings play, we all play.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: I took the lessons, and probably when I was about
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: ten to eleven, I discovered like I wanted to be
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: a producer. I heard Michael Jackson's album and then I
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: started like, you know, back in the day you read
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: the credits. Yeah, was someone that I really admired from
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Teddy Rowley on a lot of credits, and I'm like, no,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: I want to do this.
• 1:43
  Speaker 6: I needed to do this.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: So back in the day, there was a magazine called
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: black Beat, and I saw an interview and it said
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: like it had like all the top producers, Pete Rock,
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: you know, everybody, and it was like, we use the
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: NPC to.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Make the BEATBC sixty back then, and I was.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Like, I need this, I need this, can't afford that.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: My dad borrowed twelve hundred dollars off his life insurance
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: got the NPC for me. We're going.
• 2:12
  Speaker 4: Random question. How was it growing up in Atlantic City?
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: Because I love Atlantic City because my daughter does a
• 2:16
  Speaker 5: lot of cheerleading competitions, and for some reason, when I
• 2:19
  Speaker 5: go out there, I just get a good piece of mind,
• 2:21
  Speaker 5: Like I go out there and writing all types of stuff.
• 2:22
  Speaker 5: How was it growing up there?
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: As a job?
• 2:24
  Speaker 6: It was hard.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Because there wasn't there was no outlet. There was no
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: studios there, there was no outlet for music. So I
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: did to get on New Jersey transit up, you know,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: taking that too and a half half an hour bus
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: ride pretty much every other day just to try to
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: get put on. But yeah, but let me tell you
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: I got discovered. I got discovered by Teddy Riley at
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: the Impact Convention. Where was that at Blank City?
• 2:46
  Speaker 5: Wow?
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: Break that down?
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: So he heard a demo that I produced. He wasn't
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: really into the guy singing the demo, but he was like, Yo,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: this producer is dope.
• 2:56
  Speaker 6: So the manager told me.
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: I told my dad I'm like, Dad, Teddy heard it.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: We need to go see him. He's like, where's he at?
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: I said, well, the credits say he's in Virginia Beach,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: so we gotta go to Virginia Beach. My dad was
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: like that's like a six hour drive. Like whatever, let's go.
• 3:13
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So we hop in the car, we hop in
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: the van, the church van because my dad's a pastor,
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: hopping in the church man. We go to Virginia Beach
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: standing in Teddy Rally. He was in his parking lot
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: probably for like half.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: The day now for people that don't know Teddy Rally
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: from Harlem, he built this huge studio in Virginia Beach
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: and it was beautiful. Everybody worked there, from Pharrell to
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Bobby Brown to Michael Jackson.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Yep. So we go there in the parking lot, were
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: just waiting for him to show up, and then finally
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: he shows up, like six seven hours later. Pull up
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: on him. I'm like, I'm the kid that produced. I'm
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: like literally fourteen years old. I'm like, you just heard
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: my beat. He was like that was you and I
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: was like yeah. He was like, come on, come in
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: the studio. From then, you know, rest is history, and
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: so now and then I'm getting inducted at Teddy Rally's
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: the one inducted me.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's amazing.
• 3:57
  Speaker 7: So where did the famous child come from? Where did
• 4:01
  Speaker 7: you get that?
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: I just, you know, it was really the name itself
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: came from the style that I felt that I was created.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: I loved dark minded chords. I was I was youthful,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm a young kids. So I kind of
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: took those words and played with it. But then I
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: just started saying I didn't know that I was really
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: one of the first ones, probably maybe the first one
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: doing a producer. I didn't know it at the time
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: because I was just like, I was just trying to
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: brand myself, you know, in a way, because I wasn't
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: the type that wanted to be like him and be
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: on the microphone rapping all the time, even though you know,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: I could spit a little bit, but I didn't want
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: to do that. So I was like, how they gonna
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: know who did the record? So I was like child,
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: I was saying, and then what happened was the artist
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: started to say it, so like Tony Braxon sang it,
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: and then Whitney said it, and then Michael said it
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: and then her said it. They just started saying so
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, I ain't got to say no,
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: want let them say it.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: I love that was there like a producer beat camp
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: really because it was y'all. It was you for real neptunes.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: There was a bunch of y'us. So I was working
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: in that beat camp because you had producers. You're learning
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: from an icon, but you' all became your own and
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: your own separate ways.
• 5:09
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: I think that's what was special about being in VA
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: is like Teddy's studio, Like you wanted to get into
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: his room and see what he was doing, right, And
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: when I came forelling him was already there. So I
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: was the one. I was the one that had to
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: really kind of wait for my turn because he was
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: already down there. And it was kind of like Teddy
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: was cool because he wasn't like signing nobody, so it
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: was more so just like yo, you here, let me
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: hear what you got. So I been there and I'm
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: just waiting for my shot, and then eventually he'd be like,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: all right, come in, little bro, and then you press playing.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: It's just like all right, cool, We're gonna get to
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: work and that's how it kind of happened.
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: How many hits did you make back then that you
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: didn't get the credit.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: For I got credit for my head. I always I
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: always think, So it's funny you say that, though, right.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I always look at like how people do their business,
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: and whatever's wrong with their business, it's not gonna be
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: wrong with my business. So there's a lot of ms
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: stakes that I would see in the industry, and I'd
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: be like, y'all allow that to happen.
• 6:04
  Speaker 6: That can't happen to me, you know.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: And and I've learned to play in a position affair
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: with my artists. I've learned to be I want to be.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: I want to be one of those dudes where when
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: you know, like, oh you did the deal with him,
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: you got a good deal, you know. And and a
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: lot of producers now that's blown up, came from my camp,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: d Mile Tommy Brown, like these are like the people
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: who did the mau just did. I think every Bruno
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Mars record that you can think of, you know, I
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: I don't I don't know any of the new We
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: don't read the credits anymore, like that stream.
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: They don't even understand what it means. They don't even
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: understand what it means. Like then, I think we were
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: in a different day right back in the day was
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: it was a producer driven industry. It wasn't foul sharing,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: so I wasn't sending you a fiul like I'm in
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: the studio with Michael. I'm in the studio with and
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: I'm doing their vocals with him, I'm coaching them. Now
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: it's just like, Yo, send the files and we're gonna
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: cut that tonight and send it back to you.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: And you gotta break that down.
• 7:06
  Speaker 7: In personal engagement, like it's none of that.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Is not at all, not at all. I think I
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: think that's where the game is lost. I think there's
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of producers and artists that don't even know
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: each other. Yeah, And it's and here's the difference too.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Remember like when credits was a thing, Yes, right, well,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: credits was a thing, but it was also a thing
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: where you might only saw three to four names on
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: a song. The only time you saw multiple names is
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: when someone with someone sampled. Now you see ten fifteen
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: names on the record, You're like, dang, like who wrote what?
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Like nobody can there's no real identity of a songwriter
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: anymore over a producer anymore, because it's so many names,
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: so we don't know who did what.
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: And then a lot of that have to do a
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: sample sometimes though.
• 7:49
  Speaker 6: That's what I'm saying this.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Back in the day, it didn't Now no, Now it's
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: just because you've been foul sharing. So it's like if
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: I if I'm working on the track and I started
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, oh, this is dope, let me send
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: it to him, and then he's like, Yo, this is dope,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: but I think I could do a better eight o weight.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: The minute that he has is eight o weight. He's
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: now a co producer, and then he sends it over
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: him He's like, yeah, this is fire. But yo, what
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: if we add this pad? Soon as he had that pad?
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Now he's a producer. Now you got three producers versus
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: the one when I started out. Every song that I did,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: I produce. So you're talking about fifty percent of the
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: publishing his mind right out the gate. That's how it
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: starts with every record. Fifty percent. Now I'm look at
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: when I look at splits, now I'll be seeing a
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: producer like seven percent five percent. Yo, what happened?
• 8:40
  Speaker 6: You know? So I'm blessing the time that I came up.
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And I gotta ask, now you just glazed
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: over Michael Jackson. Talk about how you started working with
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: Michael Jackson. How was that call? And how was he
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: in the studio? Because you were actually in the studio.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: With him, the greatest, the greatest artist I've ever worked with,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: hands down, like and you know Mike was so special
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: and different that he pushed you to limits like you
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: can't have imagine Like I remember him telling me, you
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: got to get exhausted in the music. I'm like, what, Like,
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: I ain't know what. I'm twenty one years old. He's
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: talking about twenty one year old kid working with Michael Jackson.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: How did they call?
• 9:15
  Speaker 6: How was that?
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: How did he reach out? Oh? It called yo, this
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: is real crazy. It called from a dream, but it happened.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: It happened from a dream. I was in my mom
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: say that before. I was in my mom and dad's
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: house on the couch, took a nap and I had
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: a dream, literally had this dream that I was pulling
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: up to this studio with glass windows, and I saw
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: Michael Jackson in the red shirt, that red shirt with
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: the black pants in the window. I woke up from
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: the dream, told my mother and father the dream. I
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: just had the phone rings like ten minutes later, lady
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: by the name of Carol beer Seger calls. You probably
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: even know what that is, she wrote, that's what friends
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: are four, it's the older lady whatever.
• 9:56
  Speaker 6: She said.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: I had saved my name out at the time of
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Destney's Child. She goes, Ronnie, I love this song you
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: have out. I wonder know if you would have to
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: come to my house and work this week. And I
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: was like, I didn't even know she was. She was like,
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: I'm working with Michael Jackson. I was like where, She's
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: like bell Air. I was like, I'm in Jersey, but
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: I'm out. I'm going for real. I got on the
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: plane and I stayed in the hotel until she called me.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: She called me on Thursday, four days later and was like,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: can you come to the house today. I'm like, yeah,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: I came. I kid, you not pulling up the driveway,
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: I looked to the left. I see Michael Jackson in
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: the window with the red.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Shirt damn, staring out the window.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: Just like just like the dream. And I was like,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: nobody can't tell me. God, ain't real have you ever.
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: Told him that?
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Did you tell him literally talk? I'm like, you know,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: he blieves and stuff like that.
• 10:45
  Speaker 6: That was how I was supposed to happen.
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: Is that how you said?
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: I supposed to Mike's voice is actually giving it. That's
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: how I supposed to you a little deeper than that, right,
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: but it was true? Like it like like I just
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: feel like God just went like he showed me exactly
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: how going to be. So I can't have the story
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: to be able to tell him one day I was
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: supposed to be.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: I want to say, envy. It's glossed over, not glazed.
• 11:07
  Speaker 5: Even though Michael Jackson deserves all the glazing because he's
• 11:10
  Speaker 5: the greatest of all time.
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: It's glossed over. Jesus, it's crazy.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: Talk about working with MJ.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: How is that amazing? Well?
• 11:19
  Speaker 6: He worked me hard, bro, He's different.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: Like he'd be like he would call three four o'clock
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: in the morning, be like can I hear what you're
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: working on over the phone, and I'll be like, I'm
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: actually not working right now. I'm actually trying to take
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: a nap because I've been up for thirty hours. No, Well,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: can you go to the studio right now?
• 11:36
  Speaker 6: Play? Like, he's like that.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: So I get up and drive to the studio and playing,
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: and Mike was so crazy with it that this was crazy.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: I would playing some of the phone. He'd be like,
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: can you turn the high hats down three DB's and
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: then make sure he's goes and make sure that pay
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: to the left. And I'll be like, really he goes, yes,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: And I would be bugging and out. But only thing
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: I can think of right, which is crazy. Right. Michael
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Jackson was taught by Barry Gordy Quincy Jones, Teddy Robby,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: So that school. I'm a part of that school now, right,
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: And I'm getting what he learned from Barry Gordon Quincy Jones.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: So I'm taking it all in. I'm learning. But dude
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: was he was incredible, bro like and a great person.
• 12:28
  Speaker 6: Like you know.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: We we used to bet. We used to bet DVDs.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: We played pool together, bet DVDs, bet DVDs. I used
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: to I used to bet him he beat me because
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: I scratch. And we go shopping right here, Virgin Music
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Store on Tom Square.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: He would walk in there with you, he put.
• 12:47
  Speaker 6: The disguise on. We went.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: We went there and I had to buy the DVDs.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: A lot of people don't notice. I took Michael to
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Record Park and basketball.
• 12:56
  Speaker 6: No one knows this. Y'all know it now.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: But when we did My World, Michael kept saying, we
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: need to go to a club and test it out.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: And I was like, I was like, I got one better.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: I said, I'm gonna take this as spot called Record Park,
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: and I didn't let him get out the car, but
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: I just wanted him to feel the energy. So I
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: went to the Record Park and I played the record
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: and they was going crazy. They didn't know that Mike.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: The window was cracked the whole time. They didn't know
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Mike was in the car.
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: Wow, that's crazy.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: And I'm gonna tell you how cool we got this,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: how cool we got.
• 13:29
  Speaker 6: I'm in Manhattan one time I could sense that.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: I'm every time I went Mike, He's in disguise when
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: he goes out, like it's always that. One day I
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: was like, yo, hey, Mike, I'm coming to pick you up,
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: and he was like wow. I was like, just be read,
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: I'm coming to pick you up. I had a blue
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Peakcock Bentley convertible. I dropped the top. I pulled up
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: to his apartment and I said, Yo, Mike, come out.
• 13:55
  Speaker 6: He's like, let me get skipped. Skip was his security guard.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: It's like no, no, no, no, no, no, come out.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to kill Michael.
• 14:01
  Speaker 6: Listen, I'm trying to kill him.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: I'm I'm trying to let him see what I know
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: he wanted to see, right, and I knew no one
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: would do that for him but me. He gets in
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: my car. I put the windows up, but the top
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: is off. And I remember this day because that was
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: the day that Hot ninety seven was playing the Janet
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Jackson Black Street record that just came out, and it
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: came on and I'm playing Hot ninety seven. I'm rolling
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: through Manhattan with Michael and he's going crazy. He's love.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: He's just loving the fact. When we got back to
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: the apartment, he looked at him and he's like, thank you,
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: that's it. I'm just like, noo, this is what it's about,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: trying to get him killed. I was just trying to
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: let him see reality because he ain't seen it in
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: so long. You feel what I'm saying, And that spills
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: over into our production, That spills over to Rock my World,
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: it spills over to what we're trying to create because
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: you have to still have a sense of what's going on,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: or you can't really create from a real place.
• 14:57
  Speaker 5: You know, like you talk about my Jackson. You worked
• 15:00
  Speaker 5: with them, you worked with Whitney, you worked with Brandy Beyonce.
• 15:03
  Speaker 5: What's something they all had in common in the studio
• 15:06
  Speaker 5: that separated them from everybody else?
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: Tenacity, patience. You're talking about artists that focused on making albums,
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: which is another art form that we've lost a little bit. Right,
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: It wasn't about like just the single, it was about
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: like how to make a great a great album. I
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: felt like a lot of them sometimes got caught up
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: in trying to compete with themselves, especially Michael, like he
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: was overly trying to compete with himself. You never beat Thriller,
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: that's how could you?
• 15:40
  Speaker 6: You know what I mean?
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: But he believed he would, right, He believed he could.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: He believed he would, which is crazy to think about it. Right,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: if Michael was alive or was doing what he was
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: doing in the streaming world, I believe he could have
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: beat it. Really, yeah, I believe he could have been.
• 15:57
  Speaker 5: But you know what's interesting with an album, like, are
• 16:00
  Speaker 5: any artists what are you trying to beat Are you
• 16:03
  Speaker 5: trying to beat yourselves? Are you just trying to be
• 16:05
  Speaker 5: better musically? I would think you just would want to
• 16:07
  Speaker 5: be better musically.
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 16:08
  Speaker 6: I don't think so.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: I think someone like Michael got obsessed with knowing the
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: numbers that he that he did was so high that
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: he wasn't competing against anyone else anymore. Musically. It wasn't
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: a race with Prince anymore. It wasn't all He's like,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: I already beat you. Now I'm trying to beat me right.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: And And how I noticed to be factual was because
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: he didn't say that. He would say, I think there's
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: a day where I could do a billion cells. He
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: literally would say that, So that lets me know that
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: he's racing for that. He's racing for a number. And
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: he had to because in his mind he was like,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: how do you stay hungry? How do you stay when
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: you're the greatest? Like how do you get up for
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: the fight? Like you know, a lot of great fighters
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: lose fights because they just can't get up for the
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: fight anymore because they've done That's why you got to
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: You gotta give props to someone of Floyd Mayweather. You
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: got be like, yo, this dude stayed hungry, like, no
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: matter what, some people get to forty and forty two
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: and no and they ready to just I'm done with it.
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not putting in that time no more. He saw
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: he had. He was super competitive. He was super competitive
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: with me, meaning like he would challenge me and tell me, like, yo,
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: that producer over there, he's coming for you.
• 17:21
  Speaker 6: He would tell me, just like I'd be like, you crazy.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: If you think he got a chance to get on
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: this project, you out of your mind. That's how we talked.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: And the coldest thing I saw Mike do was a
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: friend of mine. He ran E and My Publishing, Big
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: John Big John Platt. Big Big John Platt is the
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: is the CEO of Sony Music Publishing now YEP, but
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: at the time he was running E and I. He
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: wanted to meet Mike, So I took Mike to E
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: and I to meet him. I went to go make
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: sure everything was okay inside. I came back out, Mike
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: was gone and there was a van parked.
• 17:58
  Speaker 6: In the spot.
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: I'm like, what happened? Where do you go? The guy
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: got off the van and said Mike wanted some fried chicken,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: so he went up to block the Kentucky Fried Chicken.
• 18:09
  Speaker 6: That's how he was. That's how he was.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And what was crazy was y'all were here to story
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: about jay Z doing the Summer Jam bringing Michael out of.
• 18:19
  Speaker 8: Me.
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: Yea, we heard stories he.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Brought Michael out Summer Jam. That doesn't happen without me
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: introducing him to micro jay Z Again, jay Z wants
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: to meet Michael Jackson. So my man, Big Chuck, Big John,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: all of them call me like, yo, can you introduce
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: Jay to Mike. I'm like, yeah, I didn't even know
• 18:38
  Speaker 2: j yet. I'm like, yeah, I got him bring up
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: to the studio. That was the Actually, that was the
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: first time I seen Jay kind of in a just
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: a very chill like Michael Jackson, Like, this is Michael Jackson.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: I introduced him to Michael. He had a great conversation.
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: We're talking. Next thing, you know. A couple months later,
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: he calls Michael to do Summer Jam.
• 18:58
  Speaker 6: Like he does it.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: Then Michael and the Girls Girls Girl's Remix.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: There's a version of.
• 19:01
  Speaker 6: Him, that's what they Yeah, that's what on on one
• 19:03
  Speaker 6: of the remixes.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I wanted to ask.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: No, No. It was just like I think, like I was.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: It was funny because I was just there trying to
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: introdate I think even fifty cent. It was just I
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: was introducing him to people that wanted to meet him
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: and that he wanted to meet. Mike was a diehard
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: fifty fan at the time, like no other rapper mattered
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: to Michael fifty and Biggie I was big and Biggie
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: was Biggie was gone. Biggie was gone. I remember Michael
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: used to do crazy challenges with me. I remember I
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: was working on this song called Unbreakable and as I
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: as I'm finishing it, Michael goes, we need Biggie on it,
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: as if he was alive. That's the way he spoke,
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: and I was like, what you mean.
• 19:43
  Speaker 6: He was like, I want Biggie on this. So I'm like, yo,
• 19:46
  Speaker 6: I'm gonna.
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: Get And then then I realized I had like an
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: a cappella for something that he did with Shock back
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: in the day, and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: use this and see if I can time and get
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: it right. And I got it in there and he
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: was like, okay, good, We're good. I got Biggie.
• 20:01
  Speaker 5: But they worked together in real life too, though. That's
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: I always see that picture. I don't know if it's really.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe he did, I don't know, you
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: know he, I know he Biggie and fifty was the
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: two people he constantly talked to me.
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: Can you imagine Michael Jackson wild in the what up gangster?
• 20:14
  Speaker 5: Damn?
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: Yes, low key, yeah, yes, I can imagine that.
• 20:19
  Speaker 5: I'm interested in I was going to ask you about this,
• 20:21
  Speaker 5: but I want to ask you about it now.
• 20:22
  Speaker 4: I'm interested in your visions?
• 20:23
  Speaker 5: Right? Who just told the division you had about Michael?
• 20:25
  Speaker 5: And I heard the vision you had about jay Z.
• 20:27
  Speaker 5: Has Michael or Whitney visited you?
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: And then when he used to sing with my dad's
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: church in Pleasantville, New Jersey, a little church with fifty
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: fifty people in it, call me up one day.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: I think, Charloman a dream, but I'm in the dream.
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: I had one of your visions.
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Has has said again said, have they visited you
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: in a vision?
• 20:45
  Speaker 6: Like you're saying since yeah, yeah, wow.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Michael for sure, Michael for sure. Now you want
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: to share it, not not as much Whitney, but like,
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: but Michael for sure. Just lie to just be like,
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: I'm back in the lab with Michael created. And the
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: crazy thing is is when I've had that dream, which
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: just happened a few times, it was something like musically incredible,
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: and when I got up, I couldn't remember when what
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: I was creating in the dream. It was like, whoa,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: it didn't sound like anything from here.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: Like you was talking about Whitney coming to your dad's church.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like so me and Whitney bonded when I worked
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: with her, spiritually rebonded. And one day she just called
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: me out the blue and she was just like, oh,
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: we had just finished working together album that came out.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: She was like, hey, what you're doing, dark child? Early
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: in the early Sunday morning. I was like, it's like
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: eight o'clock in the morning. What you mean, what am
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: I doing? She goes, I want to go to church today,
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: and I was like okay, and she's like, no, I
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: want to go to your church. And I was like,
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: my church is like two and a half hours from
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: mind of New Jersey. She was like, I'm on my
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: way and she pulled up to church. It's like like
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: she pulled up and she sang. She whispered in my ear.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: She was like, tell your daddy, I want to sing
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: this is like in nineteen ninety eight or nine, Wow
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: and crazy, she's saying, killed it. But here, three months
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: before she passed away, she called me up. I ain't
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: talked to her in like probably five years. She called
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: me side, I need to see you. I said, what's up?
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: She goes, we need to pray together. She's like, where
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: are you at? I said, I'm at my studio in Hollywood.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: She goes, I'm on my way. She came all the
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: way down from Newport Beach, wherever she was living at
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: the Toime literally came in the studio and next thing
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: you know, it turned into like a church service in
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: the studio, just three months before she passed away. So
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: we've always had that, like some of that type of connection. Now.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: You also talked about the competition between Prince and Michael, right,
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: was it the competition where you couldn't work for Prince
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: because Mike had his people, Prince had his people?
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: How serious was that competition case? We hear stories all
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Mike definitely stopped me from working with a lot of
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: people at that time, just a lot of artists. A
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: lot of artists was calling me to work at that time,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: and Mike was just like I'll pay you not to
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: work with them. Yeah, she was like he was like,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: I need you And it wasn't a thing. It wasn't
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: a thing of i'll pay you not to work with
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: them because they're not good or anything like that. Was
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: more so I need you here, focused on locked in
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: on what we're doing.
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: You know, we always hear a conspiracy theories, like you know,
• 23:17
  Speaker 5: they be like, oh, Bill Cobby was trying to buy NBC.
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: Michael's the only person I believe they really really tried
• 23:23
  Speaker 5: the railroad like that because of what he did with
• 23:26
  Speaker 5: the publishing in the music industry.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: He talked about it all the time. He talked about
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: it all the time. One thing I will say is
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: that in the studio he would always talk about how
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: he he lived in a certain fear. And I used
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: to always try to real him in a direction like, Yo,
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: you only to post to fear. God man can't don't.
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: Shouldn't have you feeling like that, No man should have
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: you living in that space. But he lived in that
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: space a lot because he felt like he had something
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: that was so valuable what he did, He had something
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: so value that people want it.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: He owned like half half of Sony ATV's publishers.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think what people have confused. I'm glad you
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: said it that way, because I think people have confused
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: the narrative. People for so long have said Michael owned
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: the Beatles catalog. I heard that Michael owned Sony ATV,
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: which is Babyface, Mariah the Beatles. Probably some of my
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: catalog was in there. Yes, Like, I mean, you got
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: three giants right at the time, you had three giants.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Sony was pretty much the biggest out the three at
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: that time, and they did a deal with him that,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: you know forever. He felt that they want it back,
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: And you think they threw all those cases at Michael
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: because they wanted it back.
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: I think it could have had something to do with it.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to say exactly that, but it could
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: have had something to do with it. But I believe
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: none of it because I was around Mike all the
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: time and I knew the kind of person he was,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: So I'm like, they's really trying to kill his character.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: And he would say it like he'd be like, he
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: just they just can't stand that I'm the greatest. He
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: would literally say that. He would literally say that he
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: just can't stand that I'm the greatest.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: How was his mind frame during that time?
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: Did you feel like the culture, especially black people supported
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: him and loved him or did he feel like the
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: world was turning against him?
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Now I would say we started to surround him with that,
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: like if you look, there was a period where I
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: think he didn't feel that, and I felt like he
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: was like, I need this right. So there were certain
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: people that he started to reach out to to put
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: their arms around him, and he started to feel that
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: that's why he would do it a summer jam with
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: jay Z. It was really like he knew, like, I
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: need people to have my back of this. And then
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: certain people did wrap their arms around him. And as
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: things progress, the one thing I can tell you about
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Michael that I started to learn was his family was strong.
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: Like his family like when they got together and wore
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: all that white, they were run those white going into
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: court each day, you saw that unity in a different
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: type of light. You're like, oh yo, these Jackson's playing
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: around with this. They unified And I think that helped
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: him even though he was like probably going through a
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: mentally weak and all of that, and it's tough when
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: you know, you pretty much own something that everybody man.
• 26:17
  Speaker 7: So after all that, John Keith, what you got going on?
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: That's ready to get to you.
• 26:25
  Speaker 5: Yet we're gonna get to you. But you got to
• 26:31
  Speaker 5: sit here and look, we didn't have an interview. I
• 26:34
  Speaker 5: prefer that I don't. I don't want to go after Michael.
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: That's crazy.
• 26:39
  Speaker 5: You also helped shape the sound of Early Destiny Child.
• 26:43
  Speaker 5: Did you see Beyonce be coming to Beyonce?
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: We now know from the first session, say my name
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: was our first session and then you know we worked
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: together again. And when I got to day Dave with
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: her and Jade, that's what I really knew. I saw
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: the difference, right because in the group, in the group format,
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: she still was in the group, so she might have
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: been like somewhat. You know, if you really look at
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Destney Chaud as the group, they never really showed her
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: as the leader. You know how you're in certain groups
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: and you know like that's the that's the leader. No,
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: it was kind of trying to position them somewhat like
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: a boys and men where they all could do their thing.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: But we saw the leadership qualities when we worked with her, right,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: But when I got to Deja vu Bro. I remember
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: playing her to demo to Deja voud for first time.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: When the song went off, she was already telling me
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: her visual for the visuals. Wow. So she was like,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: this is how I see it. I'm gonna paja on it.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: Like she was like, this is she reminds me of
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: so much of Michael was scary. Like at that time,
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: I was like, Yo, she just came and she just
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: came into her own like mic like she's now you know,
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: I could just see the elevation of that, you know
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: what I mean, Like.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: Really quickly, I want to ask, you know, at all,
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: besides Whitney and Michael Jackson, who's one of your best
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: artists to work with, Like the time and the fact
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: that they're there all the time, they're gonna grind it out,
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: They're amazing a vocalist.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: Who is that next person? Of course, besides Beyonce.
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: Probably probably Brandy. I would think that's my girl. Take
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: us into a session with Brandy. Yeah, it was just
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: like well Brandy, it was. It was it was the
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: regiment that she had that was interested right, especially when
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: I was doing Never Say Never but Full Moon, especially
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: like she was playing tennis with Serena Williams before the
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: session every day, right, which was.
• 28:29
  Speaker 6: Interesting, was crazy.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she was practicing with Serena every day. And she
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: would come in the studio shout out to my man
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Paris Davis, because he was the an R like a
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: real an R cat right, and he had her. He
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: was the one that said you need to be playing tennis,
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: so he had her, had her playing tennis early in
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: the morning. Come in the studio and John can tell
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: you as an artist. Nowadays, artists can do a song
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: on one day. They've done it in and out a
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: few hours, it's done. We was doing songs. It was
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: taking us three four days. We really working on backgrounds
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: just on one day. I remember times where people, a
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: lot of artists would actually be like, yo, Rodney, please
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: let me.
• 29:09
  Speaker 6: I'm tired.
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: I'm like, we ain't done, Like it's not right yet.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: Until we get this thing right, We're not done. Brandy
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: was one of those artists that would go the full
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: length and not complain about it. Michae would even sometimes
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: complain like Ridan, I'm getting horse like his vocalal s
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: would call me Seth Raves a call be like you're working,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: you're working them too hard, right, and you're working too
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: hard And I'm like, yo, we're working on music, working
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: on this song, bro, like what we do?
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: How does that affect you now with these new artists
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: right because they're not staying in the studio that long
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: hour two? So how do you still have that same
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: conversation with a new artist and say, nah, I need
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: you to come back, I need you to stay longer.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: It's not happening.
• 29:46
  Speaker 7: And then, like you said, you'll be like you used
• 29:48
  Speaker 7: to be, like, look, we're not done. So and your
• 29:50
  Speaker 7: artists stay there because they know the work and dedication
• 29:52
  Speaker 7: is gonna make for great music. You tell one of
• 29:55
  Speaker 7: these you know, new artists that.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: They don't even know what they don't even know what
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: eight to ten hours, twelve hours it was times. You
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: know me personally, I stay in the studio. People know,
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: like I wouldn't leave. I'd be at two three days straight.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: People like after three four hours, they kind of like, yo's.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: Go to the music is worse.
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: I'm like, yo, that's not even like a nine to
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: five though, Like you like think about it, like if
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: you was working, like you're not even giving you a
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: full nut of file right now. So I don't know
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: when that that that shift happened exactly. I think like
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: maybe hip hop caused.
• 30:26
  Speaker 6: It, you know what I mean?
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Or maybe when we hear stories of like when Lil
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Wayne says you, I'm working on this album from the hotel,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: it may have created a narrative like yo, I don't
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: need to go in the studio on the booth anymore.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: I could just do like he did a record right
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: out of his car that's fired, like they you know,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: maybe that's what happened, like something something had to shift
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: technology technology, So.
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: What does it take to build a superstar in today's game?
• 30:50
  Speaker 5: When the attention span is so short and most of
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: these guys and girls I already think they are brand.
• 30:56
  Speaker 6: I try to encourage, you know.
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: I try to encourage artists to do what I was
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: taught in that study, like study everybody before you like
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: know the errors of music and go deep into it,
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: understanding what it takes to be great. Right, It's not
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: just like I got a song that's that's dope and
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: it's popping, or I'm gonna do this TikTok video Da
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: da da dah, like that's gonna come, it's gonna go.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: But if you really study and understand, Like there's a
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: reason why a Michael was a Michael because he looked
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: at Jackie Wilson and James Brown and he was like, Okay,
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna add that to my repertoire, right, and I'm
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna learn how to do what they do and
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: take it to the next level. Nowadays, like I think
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: artists are looking at each other around and saying, yo,
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: I got something hotter than that, or I need to
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: get a feature like instead of really going back and
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: being like, yo, I want to know why this person
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: sold sixty million, Like why would Thriller sell sixty million albums?
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: There's a reason it was great.
• 31:56
  Speaker 6: Yeah, the quality there's one hundred now right.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Forty? You know that that's crazy you think about it,
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: like like when we was talking about it, it was at
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: sixty and that was like fifteen years ago. Now I
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: was at one hundred. But the reason why is because
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: you had these geniuses, right, not just Quincy and Mike,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Bruce Swedeen on the mixing, the best musicians in the world.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Like they cared. It wasn't about let me just give
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: my homie to play guitar on this part right here,
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: now I need David Williams to play. I need the
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: best like you gotta be. He gotta be close to
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: Prince to play on this song. And that's what we missing.
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: Who are you studying, mister keith Man? You know what
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: I'm saying?
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: Now?
• 32:38
  Speaker 6: You know what I'm saying.
• 32:39
  Speaker 8: After looking up with Rodney, it's kind of like where
• 32:42
  Speaker 8: I really started my study journey, you know what I'm saying. So, like,
• 32:46
  Speaker 8: I just I just texted him the other day. I
• 32:47
  Speaker 8: was like, hey, man, what are the best Michael Jackson documentaries?
• 32:53
  Speaker 8: You know what I'm saying? He was like, the one
• 32:54
  Speaker 8: I'm in.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: But you know what I'm saying.
• 32:56
  Speaker 8: Of course, you know what I'm saying. I've been you
• 32:57
  Speaker 8: know what I'm saying. I've been I've been looking at
• 32:59
  Speaker 8: the Beatles. I've been looking at Michael Jackson recently a
• 33:03
  Speaker 8: lot of because of what you know I'm saying. He
• 33:05
  Speaker 8: talks about with his like his competitive spirit and like
• 33:10
  Speaker 8: his drive to just.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: Be great, you know.
• 33:15
  Speaker 8: And so yeah, I mean that's what That's kind of
• 33:17
  Speaker 8: where I've been recently.
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: Yeah, where are you from?
• 33:22
  Speaker 8: Ill from San Diego?
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, California. Are labels still investing in artists development?
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: The way they used to is that like the responsibility
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: of people like you now or the other producer are
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: like the.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: Manager labels gonna do that. Like I don't even know
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: the last time I really had a real A and
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: R conversation with like a real like you know, back
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: in the day, the an rs get involved and really
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: helped shape what it's gonna look like nowadays, just just.
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Like digital research, the chasing numbers.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Now, yeah, it's the numbers. And and by the way,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: we can't blame the an rs. So let's let's put
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: this out here. No, you can't, because everything starts with
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: the top down. You're gonna from the top. So it's
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: whatever the mandate of the top is telling you. The
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: mandate is, we don't need seventeen creative A and rs anymore.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: I remember when I worked at death Cham with under
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: j in La, there was seventeen an rs in a room,
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: right creatives. Then that the top says, Now, the top says,
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: we don't need seventeen in room. We need we need
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: ten digital researchers.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: But then you look at a label like TDE, who
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: was basically an.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: A and R that's independent. What is the digital research
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: that's the difference. It's searching numbers, that's the difference. That's independent, right,
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: the independent labels all day long. We gonna do that
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: for him for our artists, right, But those major labels,
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: that's why they do deals with the TV right because
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: they're doing it like, Yo, you guys do that? Well,
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: can you guys do that? We just cut all The
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: thing we really care about is those numbers. But market
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: share is the key to these, to the major labels.
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: But then you look at what Timberland did. Do you
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: agree with Timberland did said he's signing his first AI artists,
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: which is a fake artists making a beat. Do you
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: agree with that? Because that takes away from the creative process,
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: That takes away from what he's doing him.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: You don't think Timberland has to be creative to do that? Yeah, absolutely,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: one hundred has.
• 35:11
  Speaker 6: To be creative to do that.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Right, if I think we getting to the point where
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: the music industry is becoming funny, right, Remember Kanye did
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: a song he was talking about like poop poop whatever,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: one of the best beats ever. What he was basically saying, well,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: he's saying was like I can say anything, and y'all
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: foods is going to buy because y'all, this is where
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: we're at, right.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Top twenty record, by the way, too crazy.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 35:40
  Speaker 6: That's where we at though.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: But I think, I think what Timblin is doing with
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: the AI thing is like he's figured out a tool.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: It's a tool, right, he's figured out. I think people
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: are scared, that's scared to death of AI, like it's
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: going to replace human. Oh it's not, because you still
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: have to control it. You still have to be the
• 35:57
  Speaker 2: one to prompt do the prompts. It's still it's still
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: for I can't just it's not just waking up like
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: I'm new Charlotte. Man. It's not that. It's not that
• 36:05
  Speaker 2: you have to literally you have to be almost a
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: You have to be an incredible prompter to be able
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: to to make it do some of some incredible things.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: Somebody would say, if you put all that effort into AI,
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: why not put it into an artist.
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: Artist sometimes talk back, Yan, damn, listen, listen.
• 36:28
  Speaker 5: But that I saw an artist say exactly what you
• 36:31
  Speaker 5: just said.
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: They said they don't want us talking back anymore.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Listen, listen, somebody listen. I talked to Timblin in death
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: about this. I can't wait to see what he does
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: with this.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: Right is a genius.
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: He's a genius, So I can't wait see with that.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: But I think a lot of times, like I think
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: he's at a place in his life where he's just like, yo,
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: I need to be just doing what I feel I
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: want to do. Differently, I don't know if I want to.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I got the energy to be
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: dealing with some of the stuff that I've been dealing with,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: you know, and the labels and all that. I just
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm gonna just do this, and I'm gonna
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: tell this thing exactly what I needed to do, and
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: whatever it does, it does. If it wins, it wins.
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: If it don't, it don't. He don't.
• 37:10
  Speaker 6: I don't think he's caring like that.
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: It's hard to make a hit regardless, right, And it's
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: gonna be even harder when people know it's coming from
• 37:17
  Speaker 5: AI because the consumer is already gonna put a field.
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: A force field up to reject.
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: They're not gonna even want to consume it properly because
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: it's AI.
• 37:25
  Speaker 4: They're not even gonna give it an honesty here.
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: I feel like you shouldn't have said nothing.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: I'm one hundred percent agreement. Like sometimes the Bible says,
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: don't let your left hand know what your right hand
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: is doing.
• 37:38
  Speaker 6: Sometimes you just gotta go.
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: Let people hear it. Then they be like, oh, that
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: was dope. Then after the fact you're like, no.
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: Do you think timeless music can still break through in
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: this world that rewards the microwave success and the algorithm with.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: I think when people really when you really put your
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: heart into something, there's still a thinking. I still believe
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: that there's people that really late and it's relatable content,
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: relatable subjects, relable things that we we go through a
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: daily basis, and when you put your heart into it,
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: I think there's people waiting for that. I just think
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: that we've been we've been part of the problem of
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: not giving it anymore. Right us producers, the labels that
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: you need, you need the independent labels to now stand
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: up to be able to give that.
• 38:22
  Speaker 5: So if a young producer came to you right now
• 38:23
  Speaker 5: and they was like, how do I create my own brand?
• 38:26
  Speaker 4: How do I create one Beyonce in this era? Is
• 38:29
  Speaker 4: there a blueprint for that?
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Didn't like, didn't jay Z say like, if you've made
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: a made a whole, make another whole. Ain't no blueprint, right,
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: You just gotta work hard and put the effort. If
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: that's something that you really want to try to do.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: I just think again, it goes back to you got
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: to study the craft right and and go hard.
• 38:52
  Speaker 6: And see what you can come up with.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: And and be patient, because I think the thing is
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: everybody wants to quit the quick thing right now tomorrow.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: We gotta be this tomorrow now, Like some stuff takes two, three,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: four years. You gotta be patient. You know what?
• 39:06
  Speaker 7: Now we got Remember back in the day, you used
• 39:08
  Speaker 7: to be able to buy like albums and everything like that,
• 39:10
  Speaker 7: and now everything is new, Like with technology, we got streaming. Now,
• 39:13
  Speaker 7: how does that affect songwriting and like splits for songs,
• 39:18
  Speaker 7: producers and everything.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: Terror On the songwriting side, there's two components, right. You
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: have the master side, which is great. Then you have
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: the publishing side. On the streaming side, it's terrible. It's listen,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: I'm an advocate against what's going on. There's no reason
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: why if I got a record and it does a
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: billion streams and I have the publishing on it, I
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: should be able to buy a house from that. When
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: you think so a billion streams. I couldn't even probably
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: pay too much of an apartment billion off a billion
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: streams with publishing. That's facts. It's so lopsided. That's why
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: I believed. I still believe in radio. I tell him
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: a heart be like ya, he got a song at
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: like number twenty four of me in mainstream right now,
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, yo, bro, don't just run away from that,
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: Like that's that's You're gonna reap those benefits real soon.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: We yeah, you like that. I didn't realize, like I've
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: seen people like literally myself make a living off a
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: radio role. I'm like, man, it's like the streaming world.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: It's like night and day.
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: But somewhere along the line people don't. I don't know
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: where the disconnect is.
• 40:31
  Speaker 5: But radio royalties paid way more than screaming ever could ever.
• 40:35
  Speaker 5: I don't understand why you're not telling your artists make records.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: For radio, I said, because I believe that it's still
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: a road to discovery. So no matter what, like, yo,
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: you make a high record. Yeah, of course, these young
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: this generation is going to Spotify and Apple Music and
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: seeing the streams and getting excited, right, and it's great,
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: But at the same time, you got miles and feed
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: you got you know, and so you don't just all
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: right doing this for radio? Come on, what else?
• 41:02
  Speaker 7: Do you feel like a songwriters like a money long
• 41:04
  Speaker 7: and a neo they keep songs for themself, you know
• 41:06
  Speaker 7: what I mean, because they're not making no money writing,
• 41:09
  Speaker 7: you know, for these new artists.
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: So that's right.
• 41:12
  Speaker 6: Yeah, definitely.
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: Did you feel disrespected when you heard just hilarious rendition
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: of the Boy's Mind?
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: No mind? I thought I thought it was hilarious, but
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: I thought it was hilarious. You mean a little more
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: all was said wrong? That's you straight next time?
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: What was it one record that you were surprised took
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: off the way that it was.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: It might have been that one, the Boy's Mind, Yeah,
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: because we were going through this battle when we did.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: When I was doing to Never Say Never project, You understand,
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: I was a kid bro, So there was there were
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: some people that didn't believe that I should do the
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: whole album. Executive produced the whole album. And I'm in
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: there and I'm like, and I'm I'm young, but I'm
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: super confident, like y'all are tripped and like this is fire,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: and they was telling me this is crazy.
• 42:08
  Speaker 6: They were telling me at the end of the project.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: They were like, so, yeah, we gotta go fly down
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Atlanta to work with JD to get a single.
• 42:15
  Speaker 6: We gotta go.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Then we're gonna do wid cleft to get a single.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: And I was like, in the studio you kind of
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: feel disrespected, especially when you've done like nine songs. So
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: you're trying to tell me we just did nine songs,
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: and you told me, I don't got the first single.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: And this is my body of work that I'm putting
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: my any and I don't got the first single.
• 42:31
  Speaker 6: I swear on everything I level.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: I packed my bags up and went home from LA
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: I went back to went back to Jersey, and I said,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: y'all figure it out, damn. And then they called back
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: and was like, oh wait, wait, wait wait. I was like,
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: y'all a trip. We got singles left and right, just
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: put them things out.
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: What had you nine you recorded already? What was some
• 42:50
  Speaker 4: of the ones you recorded already?
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: Top of the World with Mace, Wow? The Boy's Mind,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: which was early early on in the project. I mean
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: we had Angel in the Sky, we had dined, I
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: had this much everything.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: How did the Boy's Mind? Was that your idea and
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: how did that come about?
• 43:03
  Speaker 6: How did the boy's mind's funny?
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: I was just again at my dad at my dad's house,
• 43:08
  Speaker 2: and I was like playing this harp sound and I
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: was like, again, it goes back to studying, right. Nobody
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: used a harp sound in urban music for but when
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: they used they used it one way. Chucky Thompson and
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: different producers like Dave Hall back in the day and
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: the Untouchables, they used a harp sound like it's called glitts,
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: like it would come down like a glist. I heard
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: and I liked the sound of it. I was like,
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: what if I made it like rhythmic? And I broke
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: it up, like broken into rhythm. So I just started
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: doing it, and my dad came down with a little tapercord.
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: Hes To always had a little taper cod like that's incredible.
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: You gotta you gotta lay that, and then I laid
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: it down. In Paris, Davis Brady's A and R he
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: heard and we did it on We recorded on Brandy
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: and he was like, Yo, what if we put Monica
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: on this? And you know at that time, Monica and
• 43:54
  Speaker 2: Brandy they kind of didn't like each other. It was
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: definitely it was definitely a few between the two and
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, that's never gonna happen. Knowing Brandy
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: and knowing how that's never gonna happen, it's like, nah,
• 44:05
  Speaker 2: I think it could happen, like if I get you
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: on the phone with Dallas Austin and I was like
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: all right, And then next thing you know, it started
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: to shape. And even when it came out. Here's the thing,
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: I wasn't surprised that it was going to do well.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: I didn't know it was going to stay number one
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: for that long. It's like thirteen fourteen weeks number one,
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: Like we did sixteen million albums sold on that project.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: So like those type of things for my first my
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: second album was that gena talking about my second album
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: that I produced executive producer.
• 44:36
  Speaker 6: To do those numbers was kind of crazy.
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: You know, it's crazy back then, right like nowadays, people
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: manufactured the drama, didn't try to do the music with
• 44:43
  Speaker 5: that record.
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: It was the song the.
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: Music, and then people started speculating about the drama after
• 44:47
  Speaker 5: the fact, like they're really a boy that they arguing over.
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: We know that they got beat with each other, so
• 44:51
  Speaker 5: that's and plus the video.
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, you think about them doing a tour, right,
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: they're about to do a tour together, talking about like this,
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: why did they do a tour again?
• 45:00
  Speaker 6: Other fifteen years ago?
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 45:03
  Speaker 6: Like, but you know it's time off everything.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: I get it, But like dag like man, imagine them
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: doing the tour together fifteen that would.
• 45:09
  Speaker 7: Have been crazy, but it's gonna be crazy though they
• 45:12
  Speaker 7: didn't get along.
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: What made you and brandy chemistry work so well?
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: I think I think my my musicality, So what I
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: what I did with Brandy, I would make Brandy match
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: whatever I played. I don't know if that makes sense,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: right if I played, if I played a sound, I
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: wanted her to become the sound and I'm playing, so
• 45:33
  Speaker 2: I would tell her. I would be like, you're the
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: strings now, like I'm gonna play the strings, but I
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: need you to be the string. And she did it
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: incredibly well. Like no, I feel like when she cut
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: her vocals, like she's the warmth that come off her
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: is just different. Her tone, her tone bar none is
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: probably the best tone we've probably ever heard in the
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: longest time. Right, I always say, like for me, it's
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: it's Jasmine Sullivan and Brandy like those tongs, those warm
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: tones and yeah, and its just and it's just like
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: you know, I feel like you know, within the first
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: hour of a session whether it's gonna go right or
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: it's gonna go left. And when we got in it
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: just you just knew. Like we did five songs in
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: the first five days, the first five songs on the
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Never Seen.
• 46:16
  Speaker 6: That we did in the first five days.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 46:18
  Speaker 7: Anybody you ever worked with in the studio, you've been
• 46:21
  Speaker 7: in there for a hour and it didn't go right,
• 46:23
  Speaker 7: and you was like, ah.
• 46:24
  Speaker 6: That happens, looking for so.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: It happens. It does. It happens all the time, like
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: you know, you know, like you go like, I'll finished
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: the session, but I'd be like, man, I wish it
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: could have went better, Like I know, like out the gate,
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: like it was just cool. It was it was our
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: it wasn't you know, it could have went better. And
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: sometimes I'd be like, I would like to do a
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: reup on that, you know, because a lot of it
• 46:51
  Speaker 2: is psychology, like when you're working with people, you gotta
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: kind of understand like and also timing. I imagine you
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: working with somebody but that the best.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Day to work with them.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: You got them that day and back in the day
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: was really tough for us, right because sometimes like when
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: I did say my name, for example, say my name
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: with Dusty Child, I only had them for a day. Wow.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: So it was like one of those things where you
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: got you know, you got Dusky Child for a day,
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: or you got Kirk Franklin for a day. Like I'm like,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: all right, I gotta go and I gotta show up
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: and show out and one day, right and you don't
• 47:22
  Speaker 2: know what you're gonna get.
• 47:24
  Speaker 5: Yeah, Well, they have an artist you worked with who
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: completely surprised you in the booth, like somebody whose talent
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: is hit different when they got on the mic.
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: I think, I think, I think scissors underestimated. Like like
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: I think sometimes like artists will vocalize based on what's hot,
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: on what's going on, when there's so much more there.
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: They're just not giving it because they don't have to, right,
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: I think there's a lot more there, Like a lot
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: of a lot of times when I work with says,
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: A lot of times I actually would get some brandy
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: out of it.
• 47:56
  Speaker 6: I'd be like, m.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: Look like some of the some of the stuff she done,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: like something brand he mighta would have done. But then
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: there's just certain little things, just little nuances that I'm like, oh,
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: that's something, But I don't know that she fully even
• 48:10
  Speaker 2: yet knows that she can even go somewhere else. I
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: feel like.
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: It's one of those people that the more she does
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: the work personally, like they improve her mental and emotional
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: well being.
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: It's going to translate to the music.
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: And the question is like, well, for me, this is
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: what I believe. I just believe that don't happen unless
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: you find God. M hmm. I believe there's no there
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: ain't I don't. I believe there is. It's real simple
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: unless and I'm not saying she don't know God or
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: had an experience with God, so don't get that part twisted.
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: But I believe like in order for us to mentally
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: be at our best state is when we know God right,
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: because the Bible says that he's not the author of confusion.
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: So and you gotta have a sober mind, right, Your
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: mind got to be on point, and that only comes
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: from an understand a real understanding, a real relationship. I
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: think people have twisted the narrative too much of religious
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: So that's religious. Well, I ain't got nothing to do
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: with nothing. It's relationship, Like, what's your relationship? Like, I
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: have a great relationship with my four kids, right, I
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: got two boys, two girls. I have a great relationship.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: I'm their father. I have a father, a heavenly father.
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: I have a great relationship with It ain't religious. It's
• 49:35
  Speaker 2: just like I know how to talk to him and
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: I hear him speak to me as simple as that.
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: So I feel like when you when you have that relationship,
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: it creates clear path for the things that you create
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: and the things that you want to do.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: One time, I feel like maybe it's just me. Do
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: you feel like you were oversaturated at one point?
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: Like it was just so much you were doing stopped.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: It just felt like it stopped.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what happened. The stop was when I stopped. So
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: what happened, I can tell you when it happened. It
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: was after Michael too, like I needed a break. Before Michael,
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: I was just talking about this like there was it
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: was a moment where like the phone is ringing and
• 50:15
  Speaker 2: everybody's calling you and you've made it, but you're trying
• 50:21
  Speaker 2: to please everybody. The industry is like knocking at the door.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: We got this for we got there wedn't do this remax, No, no,
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: can you be it? And you're just like me. I'm
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: so creative. I could do nine ten tracks in a day.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: It's easy for me. So it became like, oh I could, yeah,
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: put me in the studio song, so I got that.
• 50:38
  Speaker 6: I got that.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: So three hundred and sixty five days out the year
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: and I'm in a lab.
• 50:43
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: My catalog is thick, like people don't even understand, Like
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: we talk about songs that come out, but nobody understands
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: the songs that no one's ever heard, the unrelease gems
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: right on the ground versus yeah, peoplen't understand like all
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: of that right, And then it comes to point where
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: it's like like what he just said, Like mentally, you
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: start feeling like you have nothing less and that's when
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: you have to figure out, Okay, what am I going
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: to do? And there's this knock and it's not me knocking,
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: it's God knocking. Like you're giving too much attention to
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: everybody else. You put too much into this industry and
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: not into me. And God showed me. God showed me
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: at an early age that man will always let you down,
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: but he never leaves us. He never for said, He's
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: always knocking, even when we go astray, even when I
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: always try to put things in knowledge of my kids,
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: even when I tell my kids don't go over there,
• 51:48
  Speaker 2: but they still do it right, It doesn't mean I'm
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: not chasing them. I'm still going to get them. That's
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: how he is with us, Like, yeah, I see you
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: over there, you're doing that, But I got something bigger
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: for you. You burnt yourself out because you don't want
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: to You didn't want to listen to I can show
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: you how to do things with balance. Mhm, knock on
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: the door, come and get me. And then I have
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: to submit to it. And then when I submit to it,
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: I see my life change in a whole different way.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: And now now my creative, my creativity is on a
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: different level. It's beyond music. Music is just a little
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: small that was just a little small piece of everything,
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: But it showed me something way greater through my through
• 52:32
  Speaker 2: my family.
• 52:33
  Speaker 5: Did the depths of Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston debt
• 52:37
  Speaker 5: bring you close.
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: To to God as well?
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I was really technically I was kind of really
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: more hurt when being passed. I remember being I remember
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: being in La when that happened and I and I
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: was like, I gotta go home, man, like this this
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: is just too much. Yeah, Like this industry I think
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: creates that sometime, the pressure of the industry, the press, Like.
• 53:01
  Speaker 6: Yo, us people.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: The biggest problem that we have in this music in
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: the street is one of the toughest sins. It's called vanity.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: I remember one time, right, I'm a big guy. I
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: remember one time I was like getting myself together, right,
• 53:19
  Speaker 2: and I'm working hard too. I think it's like two
• 53:21
  Speaker 2: thousand and sixty. I mean, I'm running the mountains, I'm doing everything.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: I'm dropping me and I read my I'm on FaceTime.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: I hit Mike Tyson one time, was one of my
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: best friends, and I said, yeah, like, yo, he seen me.
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: He like, but don't get it twisted. Brother, So he said,
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: don't get it twisted. But I said, what he's like,
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: vanity will kill you. He told me that. The thing
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: hit me so hard because I was like, Yo, that's
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: what our industry's built on. Everybody that does what they do,
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: or all these pictures on the wall, they smiling a
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: lot of these pictures, but where they go home, they crying.
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: They going home, they lonely, they go home, they looking
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: at the wall, and like, listen, they stressed out because
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: they had to put the thing on, the mask. They
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: had to put it on, you know. And that's why
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: we at least I tell people, listen, let's stop playing
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: around with this now, like we've been here long enough.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: And I say that to y'all. Y'all been here long enough.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: Y'all know what it is to get up early in
• 54:16
  Speaker 2: the morning, come to work, do what you gotta do.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: Da da da dah. Right, can't tell me that it
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: ain't no pressure in it. That is just easy. I'm
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: just gonna wake up and do my thing. No, So
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: I tell people like, yo, what's your relationship like with God?
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: Not no religious stuff, what's your relationship like? Because if
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: you're not tapped in, tapped in, you're not living your
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: best You can lie put the smile on it back,
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: live on my best life.
• 54:39
  Speaker 6: No, you're not.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: If you're not really tapped in. If you don't know
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: what's to come to tomorrow, tomorrow proverb says this. It says,
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: don't boast about what you got today because you don't
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: know what's to come tomorrow. That's the vanity part, you know.
• 54:54
  Speaker 2: I'm killing it right now? How many times we heard that?
• 54:57
  Speaker 2: And the next day by where they go, where's the song?
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: What happened? Puffing our chest out? God don't want that.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: He wants us actually to be humble, right, y'all got
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: the pride month?
• 55:11
  Speaker 6: Thing happened right?
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: Well? Really, if you want to get technical, to Bible
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: said pride country for the fall.
• 55:17
  Speaker 6: So we poke it.
• 55:17
  Speaker 2: If we puffed out with pride too much, we bound
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: a fall.
• 55:22
  Speaker 6: And how many times you've seen somebody puff their chest out?
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: And then what happens?
• 55:26
  Speaker 6: Y'all seeing it right now?
• 55:27
  Speaker 4: Real time, literally real time.
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: So you know, I think there's rules. There's rules that
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: God wanted to established as a father to his children.
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: That's what I believe, just the same way you would
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: to your children. And those rules we sometimes look at
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: like I ain't doing that. It's too You've got too
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: many laws? You got? Why is it so many rules?
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: Because you know how he was going to act.
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: Have you ever thought that, you know, I want to
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: change my name to the light child?
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: Maybe no, you wrestle with that. Not light child, I
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: like child, not like child. It's not dark not like child.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: But you know what, because I never I never call
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: myself dark child based on dark like that that wasn't
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: the intentions right, it was some people thought it was
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: because I was dark skinned. Me, I knew it where
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: it came from. Came from the chords that I used
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: to play as a kid, these minor chords. But it's
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: funny sometimes sometimes I sit and I wrestled, and I'm like, yo,
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: like is that through people where they see that in
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: the wrong light, in the wrong way, you know, And
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: I do. I wrestle with that sometimes with.
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: An artist if you don't see God in.
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: Them right now, it's different for me. Yeah, there was
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: a time where like I would have been stroudled in
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: that fence over and over again because I didn't look
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: at I didn't look at it for what it was.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: And I think over the last two years, there's been
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: a new birth that happened. Like I get it now.
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: I get it now. When Jesus told Niko demons, he
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: said you got to be born again, I get it now,
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: like and even Nicodine was like, what born again? What
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: you mean by that? What you mean like I thought
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: the wound born that got had that happen? No, like
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: born again in your spirit, like you have to be
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: born again. And so there's a lot of times people
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: will call me all the time, Yo, I want you.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: I just I can show you. I just got a
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: call again in the studio, what are the artist? And
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: I was like, I can't do that. I can't do it.
• 57:25
  Speaker 6: Why, it's just, it's not why.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: I now. What I can do and what I will
• 57:31
  Speaker 2: continue to do is speak what I believe is true.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: So I had an.
• 57:35
  Speaker 6: Artist one time.
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: I had someone call me recently about an artist coming
• 57:39
  Speaker 2: to my studio and I said, or when they leave,
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: I mean when I if I do a record with them,
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: it might not be the record they expect to do.
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: They're like what. I was like, yeah, I guess real
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: over here and I said, They said, well, how real
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: is I said, well, every two weeks we do a
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: thing called Worship Alive at my studio where we have
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: kind of church in the studio and you experienced it.
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: They're like, you do that. I'm like, yeah, I guess
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: really real, Like I want to. I want to see
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: people changed, and you can't see people change unless you change.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: And I'm a work in progress. I'm a work in progress.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: We all all right, we all work in progress. We
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: send daily so you know, so, but I do. I
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: believe that there's I believe that there's hope for people.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: I believe I want to see I want to see
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: people's relationships form with their father, with their creator.
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: So are you a I guess a faithful artist because
• 58:33
  Speaker 5: I know the Aliens Alive is a faith label.
• 58:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 58:36
  Speaker 8: So I'm a Christian artist. I mean I was raising
• 58:38
  Speaker 8: the church. You know what I'm saying. My my my
• 58:40
  Speaker 8: father is he's a pastor now, but you know that's
• 58:45
  Speaker 8: kind of new, but he's he's always been in some
• 58:47
  Speaker 8: kind of leadership.
• 58:47
  Speaker 6: In the church.
• 58:48
  Speaker 8: But even like you know, for me, like I only
• 58:51
  Speaker 8: I got I got no hobbies. I do music, and
• 58:53
  Speaker 8: I'm like, I'm a Bible nerd.
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: That's it. I don't.
• 58:56
  Speaker 8: I don't I don't do sports. I don't do I
• 58:59
  Speaker 8: don't dovideo games like that's it, you.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: Know what I'm saying.
• 59:01
  Speaker 8: So, yeah, proudly, proudly artist.
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: What did you see in John that said I want
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: to work with him?
• 59:11
  Speaker 6: I think he wanted to kill himself.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: And when you get to a vulnerable state in your music,
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: sometimes people it goes over people's heads. And when I
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: heard some of the things that he was saying. I
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: was like, WHOA, Like he's special like this this, this
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: dude right here is special. Special. He just needs the
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: right team with him, and and he keeps getting better.
• 59:38
  Speaker 2: He's not just a he's not just a rapper, singer,
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: like musician, does all his music, producers everything, oh nine,
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: Like he's a beast. But but I knew I heard
• 59:48
  Speaker 2: his heart in his music and I heard something that
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: could that was that could penetrate the youth differently, because
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: I believe people go through things and they just don't
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: talk about it. And here's my question, right, I got
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: a question, right, why is it so quick? Like when
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: you think when we think about radio, why is it
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: so quick that we are so quick to play music
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: from people who play their experiences or what they go through,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: what their lifestyle is. But when someone on the face side,
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: it's hard to play that. Why is that? What's what's
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: what's the factor of it? Right? So because because people
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: used to say, oh, yeah, well that's cheesy, that's what
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: they Oh, that's corny, right, And I was like, well,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: then I'm gonna be the difference maker in that, and
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna find some artists that ain't corny that y'all
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: can bob your hads to still listen to still groove
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: to Da Da da dah. But they got a message
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: with it, right. So then when I when I came across,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: I was like, he's one of the ones. He's keeping.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: He's telling you his story, telling you what he's going through.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: He's telling you that he was literally about to do
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: in his life. And where the change came. It didn't.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: It didn't come from just sitting down and getting some
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 2: help from talking to somebody. It came from him. But
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: he's to say, a Bible nerd, digging deep into his word, right,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: and so and if that becomes an ultimate change, how
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: can that help someone else?
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 6: I mean?
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 5: But honestly, that's what we kind of grew up on.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: Like when you think about like the artists we grew
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 5: up on, like they were doing that. Like it may
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 5: have been in a street form or whatever you want
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 5: to call it, but if you actually listening to the music,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 5: there's a lot of socially redeeming value.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: And they but why don't they play it? Why don't
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: they play the ones? So? Is it because they because
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: they edified Christ? Is that the reason why? And we
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: are we so lost. Are we so lost that when
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: someone's their their reality is what his reality may be,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: what he feels Jesus did for him right and redeeming
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: his life. If that's really, if that's his reality and
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: he's speaking on it, why can't we play that well?
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 5: I think that if if DJs and program directors, if
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 5: they actually had their hearts open and not their pockets
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 5: and not dealing with industry politics, they probably would accept
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 5: more of that because there's plenty of it, Like you
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 5: know you have rahaps to, you know you have the
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 5: Kendricks last missed the morale and the Big Step was
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 5: like that was incredible, but.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: You got Little Baby and Kirk Franklin, you got Glow
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: and really new record Franklin. And it was good seeing
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: it at the BT Awards where the gospel category had
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: rappers doing God.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 4: But to his point, radio is playing style.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: Man, no, no, no no, But know what I mean
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: by stopping, it's like I don't like that. Let me
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: tell you what part like that because you can't go
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: and do ninety percent of something and then say, Okay,
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna do ten percent of this and then I'm
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: gonna go win the awards with the ten percent that
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: I do when you got dudes doing it every single day,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: and it's that why it's that lifestyle.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 5: I don't disagree with that, But to your point where
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 5: all works in progress, and what if that's God's way
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 5: of saying, look, you're doing all of this, you don't
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 5: get no rewards for it, but you did this record
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: and you got rewarded for it.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 4: What if that makes that person in that direction.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 2: I ain't concerned about no rewards. You think he you
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 2: really think God is concerned about it. You think he's
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 2: concerned about a songwriter this whole thing for me? You
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: really think that? Be honest? Why do you think that?
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 5: Because I think that it's your testimony, right, You've told
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 5: us how you've opened up to God, and you know
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 5: you've given your life to God and you're continuing to
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 5: be rewarded for it.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: And I think that will make people be like, damn,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: I want to do what he's doing.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 5: It's not just about beats, it's about the work he's
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 5: done on himselves spiritually.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you think that. I don't think that, And
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: I'll tell you why. This is what I believe. When
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: you play a basketball game, right, a team that's playing basketball.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: There's no reason to play on a team. Let's say,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: in any NBA team, there's no really reason to play
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: unless the goal is to get to the finals. We've
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: put too much on our finals being here on earth.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: If our finals was really predicated in what it really
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: is on eternal, we would play the game different. I personally,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: I don't think that God is really concerned about the reward.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: I think he's concerned about the ultimate reward in Heaven
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: that he wants to give his children. In the Book
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: of James's Talking, it talks about enduring.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: We're all in this race, right, trying to make it,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: trying to live our lives and do whatever. But this
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: is not the ultimate ending like some people just think
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: it ends and it's over. No, there's an eternal real
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: He promises it.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 6: So you show me.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: We're in his word where he says that he states
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: things that didn't happen. What do you mean you show
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: me in the Bible where things that were talked about
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: right that didn't happen, it happened. Like if they said
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: it was going to be a storm, this factually happened.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: I want to actually had there was people that don't
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: that literally if you told me, if you talked about
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: certain things right now, I witnessed it and then I
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: can go back and write about it, like, yes, you
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: know what I mean said, that's what happened. Like people
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: are like John was sitting, But that's.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 5: Like your dreams. Like God showed you Michael Jackson. You
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 5: went to go work with Michael Jackson, and you were
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 5: rewarded for that.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 6: See you got the reward wrong.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: No, you got a reward of a relationship with Michael.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: My reward, okay, my reward was when Michael called me
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: to pray for him. In two thousand and three, I'm
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: in a studio with Chris Tucker and my father. We
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: at the studio. Michael was going through that trial and
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 2: he said where yesman, he said, can you can I come?
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: I just need prayer. That's the reward, all the accolades,
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: it just comes and all that. That's what the world seeds.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: But now that I'm older and look back, I'm like, though,
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: the ultimate reward and I'm blessed to have all these stories, right,
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: But the ultimate reward was the time that we prayed together.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: The ultimate reward is when I go to his funeral
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 2: and Signdra Crouch and Seth Riggs. His vocal quote says, yeah, yeah, Mi,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: Michael received Christ two weeks ago. He had us prayed
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: and he did the sentence. That's the reward. That's what
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to get everybody under secure.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 5: But how do we know that God didn't connect you
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 5: and Michael for that reason?
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 6: He might have.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 4: That's what I'm saying right now.
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 5: God has expanded your territory so much that you are
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 5: Rodney dark child Jerkins. Your testimony hits different, my brother,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 5: when you on the microphone telling people that they need
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 5: to find God, and these are the reasons why their
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 5: ears are open a little bit more facts.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: But their ears are open because of the work that
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: you did with everybody else. That's why you always say
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: when we're talking about putting the medicine in the candy,
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: but let me.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: Do about God. By the way, I love the bates
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: about God.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: You know we can hang if you loved it. That
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: means you're being called, but go ahead. Did you say
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: your catalog? Yeah, several Christ several times recently.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: It's the reason I ask is recently they said that
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: you sold your catalog And why you know you talk
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: about owning yourself some stuff several times?
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: Seven times? Why several times? Because I know things that
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: they don't teach, y'all. I know things that know that
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: most people don't know. I know that there's a thirty
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: five year copyright law which after thirty five years, what's
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: mine comes back to me. I know that in any business,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: you're a businessman. In any business, you build an asset, right,
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: And when you build an asset, when you get a
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: multiple that you're satisfied with, you make that move and
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: you take that and you invest in other things.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: So where they've been getting people at for years, it's
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 2: telling people wait un till they're old and decrepit, until
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: they sell the catalog. That's the wrong narrative, right. They've
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: done that to every I know. A friend of mine
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: has sold his catalog several times, and how he every
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: time you get a three year MPs, which means good numbers,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: three years of good numbers, there's people that want to
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: buy that. Right, So let me ask you a question.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: If it takes me eighty years, Let's say I'm making
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: a million dollars a year and I'm twenty years old.
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: I'm making a million dollars a year, and you give
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: me and you give me eighty million dollars at twenty
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: years old. I would have been one hundred years old
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: to get that eighty million. Dam give me the eighty now.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: I know what to do with that, I know what
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: to invest in. Give me that now. So I tell
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: people what the real is and what they should know
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: and they should all like. And one thing that people
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: don't really talk about is copyright law. A lot of
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: people don't understand that there is a US copyright law
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: and every thirty five years you have to do the
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: work and put the things in motion, but you get
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: your copyrights back. Now, all my artists that are signing
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: my label, they own their masters. You feel, I'm saying
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: because and I want him to do the same. I
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: want I want to be able to tell him when
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: it's time, Yo, it's time.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 6: For you to let that go.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: Well, why because you got a family and you got
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: things that you want to do. And trust me, I've
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: done this over and over again. And what people don't
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: realize is that a lot of times the press releases
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: confused people right because they'll say, oh so and so
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: sell Timulin Solar's catalog so and so justin beables. So
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: people ain't selling their whole catalogs. Bro like people people
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: not selling with everything. Sometimes you sell increments little things
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: here and there, right and you and you and you
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: play the numbers game. You see what those multiples gonna
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: look like. And if you, if you do the timing
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: of everything, you say that, Okay, well I'm gonna be
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: ninety hundred years old, I might be gone. I could
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: do that. Put that into my children. Now that's how,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: that's how.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: That's how did you give your ten percent to the church?
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: Radley gotta go?
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, I don't even that's the whole debate.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: By the way, Now, I don't feel like I got need
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 5: no money.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 6: That's the whole thing.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Can we leave on the prayer? You got any last questions?
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 4: Can we leave on the prayer?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 6: If we might gonna pray, gonna be let him pray?
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: Wait, hold on.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 6: By the way, by the way, No, but listen, real
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 6: real quick though.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: My man John Key June twenty seven, got this project
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: coming out, and I'm.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 6: Super excited about his project.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: He's gonna get a song on too this morning to
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of you know miles a minute.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they got a whound album. DJ Head.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 5: He put me on the Miles a while ago. Now,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 5: like he ain't even the funny thing. He didn't even
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 5: tell me that Miles was a faith based artist. Yeah,
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 5: he just said, you're listening to this.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 8: He is a big advocate of just saying putting in
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 8: the frontcause you know, people gotta uh, there's a stigma
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 8: about Christian artists and that they're a certain way, that
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 8: they they got to sound a certain way. And so
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 8: like when when you hear people that sound like Miles
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 8: or sound like me, or sound like Indie Tribe or
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 8: no Big Deal whatever, you know what I'm saying, Like, uh,
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 8: they're like, oh wait, hold up, this is Christian and
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 8: it's like everything you're like, dag, I didn't know it
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 8: was like that, because the thing is, it's like, you
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, those of us who do it
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 8: well are not on a mission to make a genre
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 8: of Christian music. We're just making music and we're Christians,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 8: so we're not gonna rap or sing about stuff that's
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 8: not our life, you know what I'm saying. So like,
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 8: but that's also why, like you know what he said,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 8: Like in my music, I'm always I'm gonna tell you, like, yeah,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 8: I was struggling with you know, the thoughts to take
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 8: my life since I was eleven years old. I'm gonna
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 8: talk about that, and it's not gonna be the happy
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 8: rainbows and sunshine.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 7: Yo.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 8: When you get life with Jesus, everything is just good
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 8: and it's like, na, like, let's talk about real life
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 8: because people live real life and you know they don't
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 8: they don't understand what what uh what Life with Jesus
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 8: is like you know what I'm saying. So it's like
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 8: we fall in love, you know what I'm saying, We
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 8: get angry. We I'm saying like there's a there's all
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 8: kinds of stuff that goes on, and it's like, you
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 8: know what I'm saying, if you making music that's Christian
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 8: music and it's only uh worship, and it's like, well,
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 8: if I'm you know what I'm saying, If if I
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 8: want to listen to love songs, then I got to
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 8: go listen to the wildness that's out there right now.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 8: I'm saying debauchery or whatever, because ain't no love songs
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 8: that like can still be about what I'm saying a
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 8: person loving another person, but from a point of view
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 8: someone who who understands that these things are echoes of God,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 8: you know. And so yeah, you know what I'm saying,
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 8: that's me. But yeah, me and Miles just just did something.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 8: And then uh yeah.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 5: Okay, you got your own festival Holy Smoke.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 8: Yeah, we got a festival Holy Smoke. That's August fourteenth
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 8: through sixteenth in Nashville, Tennessee. Me and my brothers an
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 8: indie tribe. No big deal of the Iceberg Troy Deshaun,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 8: Mikelvie with a.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah on me. You have to experience it because then
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: it would make you understand what it's all about. For real.
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 6: If y'all want to come.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 7: That's Christian I will pay for y'all to Christian Weed
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 7: like that.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 8: You come to us. We did a year where like
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 8: you know, because it's it's fully operated, it's fully artists
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 8: owned and operated, right, So it's us who do it,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 8: and I'm in charge of the creative direction for it.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 8: And this year or not this year. A couple of
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 8: years ago we did like a whole like green like
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 8: kind of thing, you know what I'm saying. Like that
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 8: was like the colors for it. So I was like,
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 8: what I thought y'all was Christian?
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 4: This is is a weed fest.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 8: I was like, what is a weed fast?
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: Why does it?
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: What does that even mean?
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 8: No, it's not no, but you're saying a lot of
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 8: people of us suggested that to us, We're gonna go
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 8: ahead and.
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: Not do it.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 4: Let's play a recommend what you want to hear.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: From me?
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 8: Oh, man, I don't know what that's out?
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: Whatever you want to.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: Put the records on the char Okay, we do Club
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 2: It's a song with him and Mobs minute from the
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 2: West Indies project called Club do It.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: We'll get into it now, but now we got closed
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: out with a prayer.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 8: Brothers man, Hey, what's up God?
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 4: And I'm playing.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: Father.
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 8: We thank you for this time, just uh you know,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 8: being able to sit down and talk talk about things
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 8: that uh you know, concern you, because it all concerns you, Father,
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 8: So we just thank you for that. We thank you
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 8: for uh you know open hearts. Just asked that you
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 8: would uh plant any seeds that that you you know,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 8: wanted to plant during this conversation, and that yeah, you
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 8: would just be present with us the rest of the
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 8: day of Jesus.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: Man Rodney Jerks the legend. Congratulations again, Songwriters Hall of.
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: Fame, John Keith Rodney Jerkins. It's the Breakfast Club good
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: morning
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: Wake that airs up early in the morning at Breakfast
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: Club