Maseo of De La Soul

00:00:00
Speaker 1: The Quest Loft Show is a production of iHeartRadio. What's Up everybody? Welcome back to The Quest Loft Show. And a few weeks back, I did a one on one episode with Pasta News of Daila Soul, the legendary day La Soul, and I want to thank you all for the comments and the shares and the likes and all those reviews. You know, as I stated, I always wanted to have Maco on for his own episode. And here we are in iHeart Studios in New York making good on that promise. Over the next few weeks, we're doing something a little different here on the show. We've teamed up with Levi's and they're behind every original campaign for a series of special conversations, and honestly, the name says it all. We're talking to artists who charted their own path. People didn't wait for permission, didn't follow the blueprint, especially when things got hard, and came out the other side having left an actual indelible mark on the culture. Levi's has been the uniform for people like that for over one hundred and fifty years now. Extraordinary people who built their whole career on their own terms. It only makes sense that Levi's would be behind this.

00:01:26
Speaker 2: Two.

00:01:27
Speaker 1: Shout out to Levi's for doing this. This is a first of three conversations we're going to have called making of an Original and Dovetail perfectly and to my plans to speak with Maco as a producer, DJ and bigger than life personality, a living hip hop legend. Maco and his group are self made and we're here to talk about De La Soul and much more. Plug three Maco, my cousin Vinny, Welcome to the quest Love.

00:01:56
Speaker 3: Show my brother what goes on the intro?

00:01:59
Speaker 2: Thank you.

00:02:00
Speaker 1: There's a lot that you've done pioneered, just as yourself in this group that most people don't acknowledge. One is that the idea of the DJ actually having a voice on wax. You know, Furious five would address flash Flash two times.

00:02:18
Speaker 3: You just hear the band gooff.

00:02:19
Speaker 1: Public Enemy famously made terminator ex silent I later found out because he has the nerdiest voice of all time.

00:02:26
Speaker 3: That was one of the corner of the smartest.

00:02:28
Speaker 1: You said it not me, that's my man, Yeah right, yes, one of the greatest nerds of all time. You know, your contributions to the group like DJs didn't have equal my time. I mean, of course in the nineties, of course Pete Rock would do certain you know, people that would produce and rhyme at the same time. But it was it wasn't novelty, but it was almost like the DJ's allowed to rhyme too, Like the DJ was just supposed to be in the background scratch. Here's the thing. So I noticed on doing our Own Thing and on Peace Parts, you have some of the greatest intro stanzas and it never finishes. Because even last night I was listening to doing our Own Thing on the Jungle Brothers album and it's like me plug three. I was like, I baby, and after all the buddy, there's nothing else.

00:03:25
Speaker 2: I know, like Africa wrote that the mons for me too, okay, But even on Peace Parts, it was just like four lines.

00:03:32
Speaker 1: But in my head, I'm like, now, yes, legitimately you know afric connections and let me in all that stuff. You went deeper into it. But yeah, I was gonna say, why was your intro so short? Like did you not protest that I don't get at sixteen like the rest of you guys.

00:03:47
Speaker 2: Or first of all, I never really liked my voice. I really didn't. Honestly, you see it at that time too. Every time I would speak Africa q tip even pasta, it was like, oh man, you need the rhyme, you need the rhyme. And then also pass hurt me on some earlier stuff before we became a group, right when I was a part of another group. Okay, I just never really cared for my voice, but it was because you think you sound goofy. Yeah I think I sound but.

00:04:17
Speaker 1: You know I hate my voice too and didn't rhyme since the do you want more days? All right? So I'm the nerd that not only studies the records, but I also study the critical claim you get because I love journalism as well. And what I remember distinctively about the five Mic review of day Lot Soul Is Dead was them saying and goddamn like Macyo's rhyme and his ass off for me and Toka like what and it just so happens like that was one of the earliest examples of like and now I'm getting leaked way earlier than it should have. So somehow we had a connection to get day Los Soul is Dead like months beforehand. And actually you guys didn't know who we were like you did a trip to Philly and were performing it. We were like saying all the lyrics and you guys even look at us like, how do you guys know this shit?

00:05:11
Speaker 2: I was.

00:05:13
Speaker 1: So yeah, But I mean for you though, was it hard to talk you into taking so much?

00:05:20
Speaker 3: Versus one day I sould is dead?

00:05:22
Speaker 2: Or the people around me gave me confidence? I think I was surrounded around a strong set of him sees that saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. Okay, the way we all supported one another, you know, you felt the need to take heed. Why is he saying this or why is she saying this? There's something I think I need to be listening to because no one's really making fun of me. No one's they actually really taking these years and taking me seriously. So let me step into it, especially when I'm I feel like I'm being guided about by real credible You.

00:06:00
Speaker 1: Know, when you're doing your vocals, are you cutting? Like when I do that ship it's like Michael Jackson style. I want to I want to guard in front of me. I want to be in the dark. I want no one watching me. I want everyone out of the room.

00:06:13
Speaker 2: In the very beginning a lot of forty ounces.

00:06:18
Speaker 3: And it's coconut water.

00:06:22
Speaker 2: Was the courage?

00:06:23
Speaker 1: Okay? And then oh wait, you're talking about forty I was just playing this in the background.

00:06:31
Speaker 2: I think that forty was the courage. Really yeah, like you know, alcohol lessons and in ambitions, because.

00:06:37
Speaker 1: I did, I did wonder because the thing was, it was like I think because I have so much respect for Tarik as a wordsmith, and whenever people ask, like, yo, man, you you did like two verses on the first record, and then what happened And in my mind it was just like Tarik was so advanced math in his craft.

00:07:01
Speaker 3: I didn't want to insult that.

00:07:04
Speaker 2: I feel the same way, and I was like, you're nentwering God for the craft.

00:07:08
Speaker 1: But the thing is is that your word playing all that stuff, like especially on like with Afro Connections and let Me In.

00:07:16
Speaker 3: You kept up with them like it was an abstract rhyme. And I believe.

00:07:20
Speaker 2: Dress from Black Sheep helped me out let me In. Nice. I can't take full credit for all of that. Dave also helped me with my second verse on Afro connect Africnnection, Okay, but I think being around them a lot just rubbed off being in the whole native tongue wave of all the MC's that was around at that time. Especially that was also a time period I was I was hanging out with Grand Pooba a lot, okay, and Poob was putting the battery in my back as well. He's like, make you need the rhyme. And if Grand Pooba is telling you that, come on, man.

00:07:56
Speaker 1: Got you, got you? You know, especially with hip hop vin, A lot of your verses in your terms are now kind of in the roots every day vernacular.

00:08:07
Speaker 3: Like to this day, when I'm trying to duck.

00:08:10
Speaker 1: Somebody, I will respond, eog Passa is doing the producing, which.

00:08:18
Speaker 3: Yo, so this journalist is out here.

00:08:19
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, I'm like Passua is doing the producing.

00:08:22
Speaker 3: We probably drop.

00:08:26
Speaker 1: Shields, no hills, no bills, no, like oho, man, Like we probably stopped doing that maybe like right before phrenology, our expression of like oh shit, it's like, oh damn, shild hills, no bills, no. Like a lot of the things that you probably wouldn't think caught on to your fan base, Like a lot of that shit just became like our every day vernacular. But you nor your voice was awesome, man, and it gave me encouragement, like, oh so I just don't have to shut up and play ball, Like I don't just have to do the music.

00:08:59
Speaker 2: You said that to me on a video you made for my birthday. Yeah. I really appreciated that. I really really did.

00:09:10
Speaker 3: It was true.

00:09:10
Speaker 2: It had meant a lot to me.

00:09:12
Speaker 1: That gave a lot of us confidence, of those that didn't think they had a voice or any of that stuff.

00:09:18
Speaker 3: Where were you born?

00:09:20
Speaker 2: I was born in Brooklyn, Bedford Stoveson. Okay, same hospital as Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson.

00:09:26
Speaker 1: Okay, Okay.

00:09:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:09:28
Speaker 1: It's weird because I think on first look, we would look to you. I always thought you were the oldest member of Day Last Soul, and it turns out you literally are the baby.

00:09:42
Speaker 3: The baby. What was your house environment?

00:09:46
Speaker 2: Like a single parent home, pretty volatile environment. I've been robbed in my childhood, so a big part of my childhood is doing what we do for a living.

00:09:57
Speaker 1: Right.

00:09:57
Speaker 2: This has been my dream since I started conceiving this thing.

00:10:02
Speaker 1: I could say, did you have siblings or no?

00:10:05
Speaker 2: One brother? One brother he's younger than I see you, old brother. Yeh, I'm the older brother. So that's another.

00:10:12
Speaker 1: Were you the leader.

00:10:13
Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty much, having to take care of my brother, helping my mother out in different scenarios, you know. But yeah, I turned in. My nineteen seventy seven was when I actually saw this thing up close. And I used to get a big will every summer. Yeah, I used to get a big will every summer, and seventy eight I didn't want a big will. I wanted a DJ mixer. And I had got a DJ mixer for my birthday and it was a sparsonic up and down okay fader. Yeah, yeah, I was the first thing I gotten, and my uncle helped me put two component stereos together. My first my first DJ set was the component set with the if the automatic uh little belt nothing. My slip match was other records. No, it was other records along with the wax from the Chinese restaurant with the wax paper smart from the Chinese Restaurantkay. So the grease on the yeah it will helped me slide the records. And also, you know, you played records longer back then, so due to the fact that I have no pitch control, I would play records around the same tempo and kind of drag them or push them a little because I had the wax paper just so I could get the mix in on time.

00:11:40
Speaker 1: But yeah, so okay, most people who are not Bronx born that come on the show, I always asked them about, like as far as their hip hop experiences are concerned, because I think, to the outside world, not one of them people. I thought hip hop was just a Bronx thing and a Bronx thing like Brooklyn, Long Island stat like none of them were doing what they were doing in the Bronx. But I later found out that that's not the case. Like where would you see these block parties? And who was the DJ of?

00:12:13
Speaker 2: What was your come to Jesus moment? My coming to Jesus moment? Handcocked between Marsy and no String, right in the streets of Brooklyn two thirty one Handcock Street. They came one day, these DJs. I learned it was DJ's that day. These guys were just on my block till they started bringing this equipment out this one summer. And this was the summer after the blackout. Okay, the summer do you remember the blackout of the New York I remember the blackout in New York. I was scared as hell.

00:12:45
Speaker 3: Yeah, how long?

00:12:46
Speaker 2: How long did it last week? It was a couple of days. I can't even really remember. It was a few days. Oh yeah, yeah, more than twenty four hours. Yeah, it was more than twenty four hours. I remember Williamsburg getting destroyed to shit around that time. Remember a long time Williamsburg was underdeveloped.

00:13:04
Speaker 3: Williamsburg is where date Night is for me.

00:13:06
Speaker 2: Now, But back then it was a desolate area you didn't want to be around, no time of day or night.

00:13:12
Speaker 3: The people live there.

00:13:13
Speaker 2: It was just like prior to the blackout. Yeah, it was businesses and everything, but when the blackout hit, it was completely destroyed, destroyed, when I tell you destroyed it. It was desolate nothing over there. You weren't even scared to take the train through there. It's nothing because I never heard people give shot out Williams. See Williamsburg to get turned around, like, trust me, A lot of what I see in Brooklyn these days are very shocking to me.

00:13:40
Speaker 3: You know, even now as you go through yeah, Fort Green, to see people over there, the greatest pancakes ever.

00:13:46
Speaker 2: Yo, see people over there with baby carriages and families and all of that. It wasn't that back then. Rol Fort Green a lot of people got ptst from Fort Green, you know, you know, but these was areas that were not so nice back then.

00:14:02
Speaker 3: So did you ever live in Long Island? Yeah, I moved.

00:14:05
Speaker 2: I moved to Long Island when I was fourteen. I had a huge fight in Brooklyn. And the last place I lived before I moved to Long Island was in Bushwick with my grandmother. And I grew up with Bushwick Bill a little bit too. Yeah, so he's from That's how he got his name. He's from Bushwick, Brooklyn. I knew that, yeah, okay, okay, And he went to Bushwick High School and he used to also hang out with these Zulu cats called Zulu Savages. It was a chapter of Zulu that was called Zulu Savages. They basically was the underworld for a Zulu nation. Okay, with the earners, you know, but for the most part I had gotten to a big fight with one of them dudes name his name was Mario, and everybody was pretty much scared as dude. I was scared of his dude. But the debo of kind of sort of what but he was a Napoleon de Boat short people, short but with a heart like a shop you know, and he was a supreme bully around this time. I had to have been like twelve, twelve thirteen. At this point, I was on my way to becoming a bit of a tyrant myself because I had some issues that turned me left, you know.

00:15:26
Speaker 3: So it was no more in terms of you had to protect yourself.

00:15:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had to protect myself, so it was no more bullying mace. I used to go to I used to go to bed Star Boxing Association. I used to go to Pao, so I'll started developing my hands. I also start getting familiar with the little weapons and all that I hear.

00:15:43
Speaker 1: And that for you though, as the oldest now, usually like around my way, if you went outside or whatever, very equivalent of wait till your father gets home is always, well, I'm gonna get.

00:15:55
Speaker 3: My brother to fuck you up or my cousin to fuck you up.

00:15:59
Speaker 1: Like there's some people that always protected, but when you're the oldest one, like did.

00:16:02
Speaker 2: You not have I don't got nobody to go home to for that.

00:16:05
Speaker 1: Yikes.

00:16:06
Speaker 3: OK So it was on and.

00:16:08
Speaker 2: Cracking every time I lived in a fight or flight a lot.

00:16:12
Speaker 3: You know, it's traumatic.

00:16:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, so yeah it was one fight I had with this dude Mario that by the grace of God, I came out on top. You know, years went by. That was the fight that got me to Long Island. My mother was like, my mother wrote a letter. My mother grew up a foster child most of her life, so yeah, my mom ended up writing her foster parents and her foster father and telling him the story. And I end up finding a letter later. But come the end of that summer, after that fight, because it was a really big thing, everybody was like my nickname at the time, to anybody from Brooklyn that calls me fat man, know me, really knows me? Okay, yeah, yeah, they were like fat he having a fight, fat fighting Mario fat fight married and that was a really big thing. Everybody was coming out their house and I just happened to I was scared. I don't know, he had to been much older. It just he appeared to be older, so I don't really know. I was all but thirteen. And then it was all over a centipede game.

00:17:18
Speaker 3: Dude, it's always over video games.

00:17:21
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, this was one of the days. I was having a great day. I was killing it this day. Any other time I'm losing I'm killing it on this quarter, this day, getting a free man every time. All that, and he came over and he was like, yo, hurry up and get up off of this, and I looked at him like he was just crazy, and I just kept playing. I'm rocking the stores watching me play. You know, when you got having a good one, everybody's rallying around. Yo. He came over a few more minutes later and he pulled the plug. Instinctively, I just pushed him, like, what the fuck are you doing. I didn't mean to push him, but that it was an instinct, like fuck is on your mind? And then we started going at it, and he pulled out like a spike belt. He got a spike belt on. He wrapped around, swung on me. I caught it. Next thing, you know, I'm on him. The hands I was earning the last two summers came to life and I was lighting his ass up, and everybody was like, yo, fat man's fucking up Marrio and they sure, everybody was sure that, Like I just felt like I had a victory that day. But everybody was like, yo, he got to get out of here. He's got to get it, because they felt like and then he was gonna come back and murder me, you know what I mean. Because they were on that type of time Bushwick. Bill used to God rest his soul. He used to tell his story all the time, but he used to tell his story differently. He would tell his story all the time because Bill thought I went to school with him, and it didn't happened at Bushwick High School. I lived in the neighborhood, but I didn't go.

00:18:54
Speaker 1: To be beating the school bully or the counic neighborhood bully got around.

00:18:59
Speaker 2: Bill was around every day. Like we all played in Bushwick Park. So we either played softball or we played we played softball, we played basketball, or we was on the swings and all of that on the other side, you know, back then the swings used to be used to kind of you know, the swings was a real thing back then. Yeah, I'm busting my skull a few times doing that ship. But yeah, that was the park and we would play until they cut the lights off in the park.

00:19:28
Speaker 1: Do you have a fond memory of growing up that neighborhood as well?

00:19:32
Speaker 2: Or the only best memories I could say I had was getting up in the morning early mornings and everybody going to find each other to either play softball, stickball or basketball and kid or yeah, I was a Skelly kid also, I was a Skelly Skelley was Those were my best moments until somebody did something stupid till somebody it was either somebody in my crew or some somebody who's coming to mess with my crew, you know.

00:20:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, So when you get to Long Island, like what is your are you rejecting to this or is it like you just put them in and what are you thinking? Like it's like out there Long Island for you.

00:20:15
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to expect living out there. We used to go visit when I was younger, so I kind of knew where we were going, you know, I knew it was. I felt like a world or yeah, it felt country. It felt very southern like, you know, it felt like you were going down south. That's what Long Island used to feel like. Okay, you know, although it was maybe but an hour ride, but as a kid at that time, that seemed so funny forever. Yeah, and you get out there's grass, trees, crickets. We were even barely picking up kiss up bls. You know. My uncle had an FM booster for us to even pick up radio like that, you know, yeah, it was super quiet. And then also I dealt with the new kid in town issue. You know, I'm dealing what do you have to do to get there? A whole another level of bullying that I'm dealing with, the same thing, just a different environment. But now I got some new skills. I got some skills out and came with and then I also learned quickly. Around that time period, wrestling was a big thing on Long Island, not boxing. I had an advantage on a lot of cats because They're coming and I'm tapping, and I'm tapping two different fighting styles going on. So I'm coming up and learning people learning about me really quick. Other other behind fighting, playing basketball or DJing eventually music.

00:21:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, what do you think your first musical memory was? Your first time that you remember hearing music or like it having an effect on you.

00:22:05
Speaker 2: My earliest memory of it having an effect on me, and I muna say DJing more specifically than than just music. Dj had an effect on me when my mom used to date this guy from the from the I think he was from the bronxaw A, Harlem and he had a daughter and she was actually much older than us and her boyfriend Rick. I remember Rick to this day, and he had a DJ set. He had a DJ set and I was so fascinated with DJ in for some time, but I could never touch anybody's set. I also had. I had an uncle who had a DJ equipment. He wouldn't let me touch it. So it was Rick who let me touch his equipment for the very first time, and for some reason, for the very very first time I touched it, I knew what I was doing. And the record I was cutting up was Captain Scott Super Spun, Super Sprung. Okay, yeah, that was the first one I got to touch that one and Frisco Disco. Those are the two records I really remember.

00:23:10
Speaker 1: Like, how would you know I need two copies of Frisco Disco, like pre year career.

00:23:15
Speaker 2: Like it's what I saw. I didn't even have those records. It was already with the guys that I was studying at that time. Okay, whether it was Rick, ron C Loki, these are the guys that was in the neighborhood.

00:23:32
Speaker 1: Well, the reason why I'm asking is all right, So a great example is James Brown. Okay, so let's take the good Foot, Now, Get on the Good Foot comes out in seventy two and is a genuine hit, And.

00:23:45
Speaker 2: That wasn't popping in Brooklyn. That's what's crazy.

00:23:47
Speaker 1: What I'm saying is that even the period in which James Brown is trying to sell us on the original disco man and get up off that thing, like the Mustache era James Brown, hip hop is still staying in between seventy or sixty eighty, right, But it's not like you guys had a network or texting, Like, how would you guys know this song will never die? Like, as far as I'm concerned, Goodfood never died ever in since it's it's released in seventy two. But like, does someone tell you, like you got to pick the records that have at least a good break in it or a breakdown.

00:24:27
Speaker 2: Or by the time I got really got into James Brown, it was behind listening to Mally Okay, it was just rhyming with BIZ.

00:24:37
Speaker 3: I think what I'm asking you is, did it seem old?

00:24:42
Speaker 2: Like?

00:24:42
Speaker 1: Okay, it's nineteen eighty two, eighty three, I don't know if you're thirteen fourteen like starting to DJ and I'm reaching for a record from nineteen seventy two. Like for me, it took King Britt once brought a DJ muro to Philadelphia from Japan, and when he pulls out his records and I'm looking, I'm like, wait, my dad has these records in his thing, Like why is he spending this? Like I couldn't grasp that this roy Eras record and this Commodore's records from seventy four was going to work. I didn't know about the rhythm kitchen, and I know about giant steps like the idea of nostalgia culture, but even in pre eighty five moments like it isn't that once seem odd? That wait, why are we going back fifteen twenty years to play stuff for us instead of I mean, what was popping in eighty three?

00:25:33
Speaker 3: Oh? Did you ever touch the nineteen ninety nine record?

00:25:35
Speaker 2: Or right right, I get your point. I didn't touch anything current.

00:25:40
Speaker 1: I was going like, at least with sampling, then it's like, okay, I see the connection. But without even the context of sampling, did not seem odd to you that even in the eighties, I'm playing a song from like nineteen seventy seven and it still works, or.

00:25:55
Speaker 2: I didn't connect with it like that. Then I was really going on of what I was taught in my environment. So it was innately a part of me, and I didn't know nothing to wise her. I knew and my mom through some parties here and there. So these was also records that was in her collection as well, records that she would have when she's cleaning up the house. So it was just a part of me like that where I just knew it would work because it was it was working in her little parties, you know what I mean?

00:26:27
Speaker 1: Like, how old were you when you did your first.

00:26:31
Speaker 2: My first party? You're gonna You're gonna twelve? I was twelve. Where was mother's house woman party? We had moved the Crown Heights. We moved the Crown Heights. This is the first time we had lived in something really nice. And we lived on President Street. Actually I lived a couple of doors down from Stephanie Mills. Really, she wasn't no longer living there because she was doing the wiz. Her parents were there, gotcha, And well it's crazy. Ben Marine's daughter had lived down the other corner. Yeah, it was crazy. I lived on President Streets between Albany and Troy and Stephanie lived a little more close to Albany and bember Ring's daughter a little more closer to Troy on the other side of the street. But yeah, my mother's housewarming party and on President Street, and it was whoever the DJ was. He let me get on and I was rocking, and he was dancing with some girl like right, because this is when the music would be in one room with all the lights on and the speakers is out with everybody else, so nobody knew this twelve year old was playing. You know, So I'm playing and I remember the record that I really got off was Do I Do? By Steven That the way I dropped it. I will never forget that moment. My mother came and took a picture of me. I was standing on a milk crate out of a white, white, white collar shirt. It was crazy.

00:27:52
Speaker 1: Is there anything like the adrenaline of when you play the right record and motherfuckers go ah.

00:28:00
Speaker 2: Man, that's some of the best feelings ever. Sometimes the time it takes to even build that out, you know, you hope and that it'll have the impact that you think it's gonna have when you when you're trying to put it together and yeah, that's some of the best feelings in the world.

00:28:17
Speaker 1: I used to be amateur hour with it. Like when I first really started doing it professionally, I would just go.

00:28:23
Speaker 3: H h h h hit hit it and be like.

00:28:26
Speaker 2: Ah, oh, yeah, it's cool, he's killing it.

00:28:29
Speaker 1: And then like I realized, I overstimulated them. So then I had to learn like the art of highs and lows, Like a record like don't stop till you get enough, which you know, should you know, provoke like some sort of orgasmic scream. It's almost better if it comes from something that is lesser, so that it feels.

00:28:49
Speaker 2: It's feels much bigger later.

00:28:51
Speaker 1: So for you, in your all your years of DJing, what is your preferred starting record?

00:29:00
Speaker 2: Do you start with a monster? Do you build to a monster? I build to a monster. I like, I come from the eerror of sound system culture, so there's always been like a build up. You know. I actually started from being the DJ who actually brought the equipment in and packed it up. So yeah, I had Yeah, so you know that beginning of the night, it was always something monotone, slow, something to warm everybody up. You know, I'm warming up as they warming up, you know, I'll play for the people at the Bark more than I'm playing for whoever's rallying around the and your yeah, pretty much. Me and another DJ I would share this with, and his name was mister Bugs, and he he and I we had a great relationship because he would play most of the time. He would play the reggae and I would play the American music. What would make it eventful is when we would switch out and they'd be like, oh, Mason's playing reggae tonight. So that would be the performance part that everybody would be like, Wow, these guys are switching out tonight. He's playing reggae and he's playing American music. And then then I would They would call me Yankee Bear and all kinds of Jamaican dudes, all these titles Yankee Bell, Yankee Ball, bumba clod.

00:30:31
Speaker 1: What is so?

00:30:33
Speaker 3: What if?

00:30:34
Speaker 1: Right now?

00:30:35
Speaker 3: What is for you?

00:30:37
Speaker 1: The Bulletproof will Never Fail opening song for you?

00:30:42
Speaker 2: The Bulletproof opening song. I can't even say that, man, I don't even.

00:30:46
Speaker 3: See for me murder, she wrote, will never die?

00:30:50
Speaker 1: Okay if not, I don't know, especially now where it's like different generations and I don't know who I'm entertaining. I could be entertaining a bunch of rich cats. I could be entertained around the way people kids today, people that know who the roots are. Whatever Murdercy wrote at least buys me five minutes to figure out. Well, for one thing, it's like, I assuming you subscribe by the theory that women rule the dance for like, if they're dancing to it, then you know it's good. Yeah, that song for me will forever work, and then that'll buy me enough time to figure out where I go. What is a has never failed me once, never failed me, never failed me, Like I gotta wake this party up?

00:31:31
Speaker 2: Uh, never failed me. Galaxy by War has never failed me. Whether I started the party with it or I mixed it in, it's just the way it even starts off with the.

00:31:47
Speaker 3: Are you playing the intro and everything?

00:31:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I'm playing it from the beginning, if I'm playing like the beginning of a party, I could play it from the intro if I got if I'm mixing it in, then it's you know, it's definitely a build up. But that's the record that never failed me, that never failed me. And what's the name never failed me either, hijack the Herbie Man version.

00:32:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so weird, like well, of course what the beat Nuts did to it, well.

00:32:17
Speaker 2: At least version they used. The other version, the one.

00:32:23
Speaker 1: Was more disco for me, and you liked that Brooklyn.

00:32:27
Speaker 2: Was a I can't even lie, like Brooklyn was a lot more disco than other Burroughs.

00:32:34
Speaker 1: You know something, all right, So we just did a show together at the Hollywood Bowl and you made me realize something I have never ever like, this is a weird admission to make as a DJ. I've never ever played brad by Samande in my sets, and I didn't realize how fun it was until we started doing or change and speak right, And when we played it, I'm sitting on the set like, wait a minute, this is a bonifid classic. And I know it's a classic. How come I never want in my life ever play Bride by Simonde. And the way that you incorporated the original and like to bring in full circle with playing the sample and the version you did on three pi and rising, it literally made me. I remember having a note to myself actually saying at bra inside my notes. So for you, like, do you still like playing the traditional ingredients of what classic if I was, do you still like playing.

00:33:37
Speaker 3: Breaks or are you like what is your.

00:33:41
Speaker 2: I like playing everything. I like everything that really just feels good sounds good. Of course the breaks are in there because it's what we grew up on, you know. I incorporate what really just feels good, bro. And the more I learned, the more I incorporate, the more left I think I can go. I'll go so far left that I'm.

00:34:02
Speaker 3: Right, you know.

00:34:06
Speaker 2: And a lot of that stems from growing up in the New York area, with it being so much competition that I didn't want to be a part of the competition. There was nights I even played, you know, the Building and Palladium and you know the hot guys. Of course is Capri read at the time Clark Kent And also promoters had this thing too where if you played on the bill with these guys, you you kind of almost had to play the same records too, And because it was an audience that come in rotation, rotating throughout the night, that might have missed Capri when he played before I let go, so they want you to play it again. I did get out of that, and I started to play more boutique stuff.

00:34:54
Speaker 3: I felt.

00:34:55
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, have you ever felt the pressure to be as eclectic as your canon catalog is?

00:35:07
Speaker 3: Like after Blue Mind.

00:35:08
Speaker 1: State came out and once I discovered and again this is the post DJ Mureau effect, like when he came from Japan and started playing all this like rare shit. Never once did occur to me, like, oh, I should play Evil Vibrations before I play a roller skating jamming on Saturdays. I should play the tramp break before I play let Me whatever, like that whole idea back and forth, But and then I went all the ways silly with it, like I used to always play the Peace Parts Break, you know what I mean? Like, did you ever feel like the pressure that people might have expectations for you to be as eclectic as the idea of what Dai I sould was to your audience in the first few years.

00:35:53
Speaker 2: I never felt that pressure. I actually realized I was already there. And what made me realized I was already there. There was one tour I did with Mike g from the Jungle Brothers. We had did a DJ tour together. Sammy Bee wasn't well and Mike was like, Mace, let's do this DJ run you know and uh, that's when they were doing Jungle Brothers sound System and uh, this was my first DJ tour out the country because I really when it came down to DJ and I actually stayed local. I didn't go out on tour UNTI and I went with the group, so to speak. So it was Mike g who actually talked me into traveling abroad just playing music. And when we got out there, I saw Murdo, I saw everybody. I realized I was that I was already there. I was like, this is what I need to be doing, this is this is what I what I am. And it actually reminded me of a night that I played at Irvin Plaza because I used to play there a lot in the every beginning of our career, like and plug tuning days, plug tuning pothole days. I was playing at Urban Plaza and I used to play really off the chest. I never played any mixes, And it was one night. It was a lot of times I'm playing to even figure out what I want to use. It was like a lot of that kind of always in the creative space of what I want and and Urban Plaza was one of them eclectic spots. It was so I'll never forget. That's how I end up coming up with the idea for the remix of me and Myself and I is when I played I played GQ really slow. I played it real slow, and Chuck came up to me.

00:37:49
Speaker 3: I will never forget that, And Chuck D came up to me.

00:37:51
Speaker 2: He was like, yo, yo, I've been hearing this wrecking my whole life, and why does it sound so crazy? So it was I forget that moment, okay, Chuck coming up to me, And then next thing you know, it just started to click with me and myself for nine and figuring out what to do far as a remix for that.

00:38:14
Speaker 1: At the height of your sort of DJ craft, now you brought up Capri and my first time I giged with Capri, he arrives with thirteen crates.

00:38:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, thirteen, yeah, yeah, I've witnessed the days of it being twenty two or thirty crates. I remember them days.

00:38:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, at the height of it, like thank God for Serranto where you can now have like entire terabytes inside your computer. But at the height how many crates.

00:38:45
Speaker 3: Were you me for a gig you cared about?

00:38:48
Speaker 2: Uh? I was around the same around the saying you're thirteen, Yeah I was. I was around the same. How many people actually used to drive to a lot of my gigs because I felt like I needed to bring all my crates because you just didn't know. I didn't know what we're going to get into, what kind of audience it was gonna be. OU didn't want to not have anything, And you can have all of that and still not have something, you know.

00:39:11
Speaker 3: I can't even imagine that.

00:39:12
Speaker 1: Now, if you've been attracted to the lure of returning to forty five's only.

00:39:16
Speaker 2: I've done it too. I've caught the forty five bus.

00:39:18
Speaker 1: Does really needed.

00:39:21
Speaker 2: I caught it a long time ago. No, it's not needed, But if you catch the bug, it's kind of fun. It's just it's fun. Just still trying to uh meet the timing of everything and the balancing of the needle like we grew up on that, you know, and the imperfections of it, you know it. I even realized the audience likes that they're like the record just skipped.

00:39:50
Speaker 1: So I just discovered three weeks ago someone put me onto a YouTube account in which this guy literally has a collection of all live hip hop and I mean the early days, and this is post Cold crush, like the era of us collecting tapes. I'm talking about the Graham Ass and Flash and Furious five show once they're an.

00:40:12
Speaker 3: Established group type show.

00:40:14
Speaker 1: What twenty minutes Doug and Rick had, all the deaf jam shows like ll Public Enemy. I didn't realize how much the occurrence of a skipping record was back then.

00:40:28
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm iffy on playing.

00:40:31
Speaker 1: Other drum sets not my own, so usually I'll bring like my snare or something that's familiar that I know my sound and all that stuff. But for the most part, if you are just blindly going to a club for you guys to perform, and you're on what seconds left of knowing how to balance your turntables, like how much anxiety? Was it just dealing with the whole idea of like in the second verse there might be a skip there, so I got to catch it, and or any of those because even have you ever watched.

00:41:02
Speaker 2: Rundium see how much anxiety? Have you ever watched to know how much weed I smoke? Have you ever seen rundum Sea's live a performance?

00:41:14
Speaker 1: Yes, they're doing I don't know if they're doing uh uh succerum seas or whatever. But it just skips every and then eventually JA just has to catch it yep in a way so that it stays on beat. And it's almost like it's it's the world doesn't know what genius that is, but for you, like what basic anxiety things that you have to worry about as a DJ, because you're also like playing breaks and.

00:41:38
Speaker 2: In the beginning it was the soft spots in the stage and we had dancers and all of that, right, So my anxiety would be somebody walking a past a certain part of the stage and it skips the record, which ruins the whole performance. So I used to I used to do sound check where I would people, Yeah, I would actually play the record and jump around the different parts of the stage to see where it would skip the worst, and then I mark it, put exes down and let everybody know, look this is where the record skips. It skips over here and skips over here. If you actually see the performance we do at Tramps. I watched it this morning, you you will notice that is what's happening. You'll notice when they're doing the most energetic stuff that at the front of the stage or at the corner of the They know the hotspots, they all do. They all knew the hotspots, they knew the fly to this in, they knew the fly to that end. But don't come over here else you're going to ruin again.

00:42:39
Speaker 1: Question to ask you, and you see my face, I'm like, this is what I'm ask you. Have you ever been in this situation where black Sheep has been a guest on the show and you know engine engine number nine is gonna come and you're not using replay like.

00:42:59
Speaker 2: I used to warn dress, I would warn you know. It was a pet peeve mine, especially when we had this nightmare of a show at Beacon Theater. It was since that show we had at the Beacon Theater. All of that was a pet peeve to me. It was a destructive show. Ever, the worst right up in our lives here is this eighty nine. It was we was on the bill with slick Rick. It was us slick Rick. I forgot who Yeah, it was just us a slick Rick. When I think, yeah, this was slick Ricks. Days of the Ruler, Yeah.

00:43:35
Speaker 4: Damn ok, yeah, the Great Adventures of the fucking Ruler. Yeah yeah, yeah right, but yeah, it was a nightmare the dancers were bumping into each other, skipped the record, Dave was forgetting his rhymes. We had props on stage. This was around the era of having really nice props because you know when Ll used to come out in the Lamborghini and all that. So I'll come out in a baby carriage, you know what, days riding this bike or something, you know.

00:44:05
Speaker 2: And we had these balloons, and the balloons were supposed to have peace signs on them. Management messed up and they had Mercedes been side. I tell you, destructive matter is I wanted to forget that night. This is on my brain, Like, whe's the greatest laugh this show. Mercedes been side, all the balloons supposed to be peace side. Oh god, He's like, look the piece like me up, that's crazy, It's crazy. I was but that from that day forward, like that's when I pet peeve of like the sound, the parts of the stage, all of that, Like sound check is very important to me.

00:45:09
Speaker 3: When did you give into an instant replay?

00:45:12
Speaker 2: I gave into the instant replay.

00:45:14
Speaker 1: Reluctant to do this, I was, or you felt it was necessary.

00:45:17
Speaker 2: It was necessary for so the show can resonate ac quarterly. Sound wise, because I.

00:45:25
Speaker 1: Was gonna say, by sounded awesome. You know what, Tramps, I'm standing to the right of that camera. I watched that entire show in the sound booth next to the camera. Dude, like, I'm literally that was well, that was the third day, last show. I saw the New Year's show at the Palladium, like Tribe Dayline, Souls and Missions and the like when right before Dead came out, you guys came to the phillyate the track of Daryl. But yeah, I was there that night. And that was also the first time I saw most which I don't think the world knows that your instrument and sort of bringing him to.

00:46:01
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, the word I forgot. I was an instrument to that. What was it about Dante?

00:46:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, seen What was it about him that told you like, oh, this is going to be a great fit for us.

00:46:15
Speaker 2: Well, I heard Dante before I met him, and I you know, this was a time period still where you can hear artists and not know what they look like. And our mutual friend was our dancer Asia, we call the Asia Demons, and she knew Dante. I found out that he was when he first started to do the poetry readings pre poetry jam. I was djam those poetry readings like New yor Areekan Cafe and the museum that they had his mother's basement and something they had in Brooklyn. Yeah, I do that. Moms used to be their rest of soul. I would do those events for him, bringing the equipment and everything. Most used to do this poem called Peter Pan African, and that was like my favorite poem of his, Peter Pan African. Peter Pan, you gotta ask him to do that one. It's a dope poem, so dope. And I was just fascinated with his artistry altogether, like you know, k very charismatic. I didn't know he rhyme until we got outside and all the fellas was having a little cipher and I was like, yo, he nice. Yeah, I'm like, yo, this dude is super nice. Like he's multi talented. He was freestyling and singing and all of that. So and then it wasn't a tune. I had been following this group. I heard this record. I knew I think Domind had produced the Rich New and and one day that ship came on. Now mind you, I'm hanging out with this dude. Then I sit came on a video music box and I was like, yo, right, and mind you. But prior to that, when I met Most, I was like, oh, Cosmester mysteries. Right when I met him, I was like, oh Cosby mysteries. But then when I saw that, I was like, as soon as I saw that, I called him. I was like, yo, man, why you ain't telling me? Like he was like, yo man. You know He's like, you know, I didn't want to be that guy. I'm like, now you are that guy. I need to know this guy.

00:48:31
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Like this confirms for me one of the biggest questions I ever had. All Right, I don't know if I should put this story all the way out there, but I will just say this much Most was dating someone that did not know that he was not only an extra like a main part of Michael Jackson's Ghosts. If you remember Michael Jackson in nineteen ninety seven when Blood on the Dance Floor came out, really try to you know, do the lightning in a bottle twice thing, like I got an outdo thriller. So he made another sixteen minute scary film called Ghosts and Whatnot. And Most is like one of two black people. It's like a town of an old man that's scared. It's like a Tales from the Crypt type thing, and we're watching it and I was like, oh, damn, they're the most and she's like, well, no, that's not him.

00:49:24
Speaker 3: I said, clearly, you're his voice, like you.

00:49:26
Speaker 2: Talk like that that that Brooklyn Opra thing Brooklyn and he has dialogue in this thing and she calls him.

00:49:36
Speaker 1: It's like, yo, like, why don't you tell me you're in the new Michael Jackson video. And he was like, that's not me, And I'm like, it is him, Like we could clearly we're all an electric lady watching this thing. And it just escalated there almost into an argument, and I'm like, why does he always deny when he does these like mind blowing things. But I, you know, also think that's part of the lord, like he doesn't want to appear to be I do.

00:50:04
Speaker 2: Remember in the beginning he was even he was saying, he was like he was keeping the acting.

00:50:12
Speaker 3: Like kind of monotone Search and State.

00:50:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, And he he was also turning down really huge projects because he's so in love with this hip hop thing. He's famous, yes, and he I think he did the best job at not crossing the two, bouncing the two?

00:50:32
Speaker 1: Yeah where because he could have easily went the will Smith route and just been.

00:50:37
Speaker 2: But then we I don't think we would get the records we got. We wouldn't. We wouldn't got the artistry we got from him. I'll tell you most of our constituents, comrades that have lean that went the acting route and music either vanished or they started to make it a certain thing that cater to Yeah, a movie.

00:50:57
Speaker 1: Once they're once, they're trapped into it. Yeah, you know, I got it A question I didn't ask. You give me your version of the origins of how Da La Soul got formed? At what point are you meeting Paul and Dave and kelvin Mercy?

00:51:15
Speaker 2: I met Pass, Dave and Charlie He should be a fourth member. Yeah, before we even had a name, I met Pass and Dave do a guy named Charlie. We call him Charlie Rock. I met them in summer school. To be exact, okay, we all were in English and math together in summer school of eighty five, and somehow we clicked in school.

00:51:43
Speaker 1: And I also love the smartest group I know was always all of you were in summer school, of us, all of us, all us summer school.

00:51:59
Speaker 3: We clicked and I actually lived right across the street from the school.

00:52:03
Speaker 2: So as our relationship developed in class, next thing, you know, we started to end up at somebody's house. You know, more than likely would end up at my house or Chuck's house. You know, and then things just start to grow, like we you know, some some about this connection just kept bringing these odd four people together. You know, I'm still new in the neighborhood, so I'm just still relative relatively making new friends. Like anybody I'm kind of thinking. I got a certain kind of connection with I'm developing. So we were I'm just meeting still new friends at this time, and it was definitely over the music. Somehow we ended up at Chuck's house. Then we started ending up at my house. Link make a long story shut. Chuck was getting into things that nobody else was into, and you know, he pretty much exed himself out. You know, I'll never forget the big argument we all had. It was almost like a breakup to make up, because we initially broke up. We were like, we weren't even a group yet, but we were.

00:53:10
Speaker 3: We knew we had something.

00:53:12
Speaker 2: All I knew is we knew we had something that the vibe that was coming together had me going to buy Doctor Rhythm, Drummer Shine, and he had me just getting what I can afford to even lend to what we're trying to create here. Past was buying more records and stuff, and we studying rat and more, you know. And when he brought home Ultra Magnetic, that was like the light bulb that went off, you know. I was like, Okay, yeah, we could do this, you know. And then the frustrations behind meeting the fake mc shan, a fake BDP and wait, yeah, yeah, I knew Corey Rooney really well. We grew up with Corey actually went to high school with his sister and a lot of.

00:53:54
Speaker 1: Us using Corey Rooney. His father, Herb Rooney, Yes, synthetics institution.

00:53:59
Speaker 2: Like Herb was that guy. Herb was like, I knew her before I knew Corey. You got to meet Herb Rooney. Yeah, Herb was like the guy. Herb was like, I was like almost like a surrogate son to her. Why Corey could tell you that for real, I used to be over there a lot. Seriously, her was like I don't know. He had that spirit of like he welcomed the kids into his home, you know what I mean? Anybody like you know?

00:54:22
Speaker 3: Was he aware of what was happening with his record at that time?

00:54:26
Speaker 2: I'm not sure. I don't even know, Like, did.

00:54:28
Speaker 3: You ever play in the ultramate EGGX first single?

00:54:31
Speaker 2: And be like no, because even at that time I didn't know.

00:54:35
Speaker 3: Oh you didn't even even know either.

00:54:37
Speaker 1: He just organically knew HERB B Rney without knowing synthetic substitution.

00:54:41
Speaker 2: Nope, I got substitution, but I'm not.

00:54:44
Speaker 3: You didn't and you didn't connect with you together, and.

00:54:46
Speaker 2: I did not as crazy, not at all. It wasn't until after her past I put it together.

00:54:51
Speaker 3: Damn for real.

00:54:52
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, But we used to be over there a lot, and Corey was the prodigal son. He didn't go to school. He got home schooled. He played drums all day. And Corey ran around with an army suit on with a rifle on his back. Corey to be crazy.

00:55:12
Speaker 3: Was he in the army at least?

00:55:14
Speaker 2: Nah? Corey used to be crazy. We used to be scared of Corey. I can't in front. Corey used to be.

00:55:20
Speaker 1: Off the hook.

00:55:23
Speaker 2: I know, I don't know, and I know kry R Cory is kind of wild. No, man, Corey don't play, Yeah, I don't know. Hes been solid too, Like you know, I watched him step away from the fam and go do his thing with Prince Marky D and watch him step from that.

00:55:42
Speaker 1: You know.

00:55:43
Speaker 2: He even brought me into SO Convention. I had produced two songs from Mark. One of them made the album word Yeah. Mark robbed me though, Okay, I got to address it before he passed. Okay, okay, but I had a lowell Fulson record. Then the.

00:56:04
Speaker 3: Chorus I did not earlier.

00:56:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I wrote the chorus, and I was like, yeah, Mark put my credit under Vincent Mason, not DJ Maycy or from Dayly. It was all like I was part of the Soul Convention family, but also learned at that time too, Corey was kind of on its way out from from SO Convention.

00:56:25
Speaker 1: I guess, wait, first of all, we're falling down a rabbit hole. How did you meet the fake and the fake bad people together?

00:56:35
Speaker 2: No, it was different. It was different days.

00:56:37
Speaker 3: How was that beef?

00:56:38
Speaker 2: It was different days. The fake mc shan came over Corey's house, so we end up getting an invite over there to because Corey knew what we was up to. You know, Corey also remembered me from being in a group called Hardcore and a song that I made with them, and he's still to this very day knows that song.

00:56:59
Speaker 3: Really he.

00:57:01
Speaker 2: Dude, I Won't to Rock Your Body. That was the name of his song. He remembers my verse for some reason. I don't even remember my first but but Corey remember that, and then he started to pay attention to what I was doing and me David Merse, he knew David Merse. He kind of knew what I knew. They nobody knew they rap. You know, it was like a closet thing we were doing for a long time. And Charlie lived right around the corner from Corey, so the back and forth was you know, it was especially with the invite from herb You know. This one day we go over there and this dude claimed to be Shan and I'm like, it was all suspect to me because I'm like, the way the dude talk and what I hear on the records, this don't sound like Shane. But I'm gonna rived this out, you know what I'm saying, I don't even know how he got to herb's crib, I don't you know. And then here it is different queens also, so I don't know somebody got to herb and was faking Jack's oh guy. And it got to a point in that even in that day, Corey was like, this ain't no mc shane, you know what I'm saying. And then the the BDP cat was Charlie's sister was dating somebody from that crew and the dude was hanging with BDP. He wasn't down with BDP. So that right there frustrated the hell out of Merce. I'll never forget that day. Merch was so frustrated with that shit. And then Charlie used to play around so much too. That was also another thing when we were really trying to get serious about trying to make some songs on Chuckler play too much. So that was all irkin Merce. And then it came one day put it like this is the day that we actually like Merce bassed out and he was like, I don't want to do this no more. I'm going home, taking my shirt home. I started carrying my equipment back around to my house because we end up bringing my equipment to Chuck's house. Dudes try to rob my house. And it's clear what they was trying to get because when they broke in my house, you could tell they went to the basement. Mind you, there's a sheepskin here, there's a sheepskin there, there's other Jordan's and all that. They headed to the basement. So somebody was trying to get my equipment, you know, and when my uncle ended up coming home, so they rushed out the window. They came in. You know.

00:59:27
Speaker 3: They weren't successful.

00:59:28
Speaker 2: No, they were showing up getting my equipment and taking it to the Chuck's house. So we would be at Chuck's house practicing. Chuck had the whole downstairs. Chuck, he was the Ricky Schroeder and the crew. He had his house parents had the big old house. He had the downstairs to himself, separate interests. He can even have female companies.

00:59:47
Speaker 3: They ever trained in the living room.

00:59:48
Speaker 2: Now he could have you know, like he could have.

00:59:52
Speaker 3: Have you seen him since Dale I started popping off.

00:59:55
Speaker 2: Actually I tried to continue my relationship with him by helping him with another group. And I even try to put him down with my cousin uptown, remember uptown dope one plastic cousin. Well, we call each other cousins because we grew up from babes. I thought that was yeah, I know, I know, I thought that was I did not know that was your damn Okay, we grew up from the sandbox. So I put I put truck down with him, and he messed that up too, you know. Tommy Boy turned around and was like, we want to sign uptown, but we don't know about your man. And I was like, there's another opportunity and stup for himself, you know. Yeah, so I'll never forget poss coming over the house though, him and Dave, and it was really odd to me. He was like, yo, man, we see you serious about this. You know we are just as serious. He's like, we want you to be our DJ. Dave didn't say nothing the whole time, but hindsight me knowing my brothers to this day, they spoke about this beforehand.

01:01:00
Speaker 1: You know, I do admire that about you guys. I mean there would be moments like Tarika and I are just in this kind of therapy stage of making sure that we're connected because every time I be around you guys, none of that what we hear, like the idea of day La soul, Like, oh, this group that has this great chemistry they laugh at each other's jokes whatever. Like your laugh to me is one of the most infectious things and one of the most authentic things.

01:01:29
Speaker 2: This is what you don't know.

01:01:30
Speaker 3: Okay, we're gonna fall down serious rabbit holes. All right. I used to teach at NYU.

01:01:35
Speaker 2: I hate my laugh too, but I can't do.

01:01:38
Speaker 3: All right, so they're back.

01:01:39
Speaker 1: When I used to teach at NYU, Professor A Milliard shout out to you Hello. She once did a study about the history of black music and she made an observation. So the very first time that a black voice or a black song was released, it was a song called The Laughing Song by a guy named George Johnson no relation to the Brothers Johnson, and The Laughing Song was almost like an ironic song, the same way that Stevie Wonder's Village Ghetto Land. It's done, you know, in classical music, and he's talking about like he's talking about impoverished conditions, but he's doing in such an ironic way, with like a tuxedo sort of level, basically saying like, you know, we're still struggling in nineteen seventy six with poverty and everything. But yet you know the world doesn't care if common man is starving. And so basically, since the days of the Reconstruction, black people weren't allowed to ever express emotions, which is why we invented cool, because you don't know what we're feeling. You can't be angry, you might get dealt with. You can't laugh, you might get dealt like literally, anything to do with emotions you're not allowed to do. And what she did was she conducted a study on every song in black music that contains laughter, and and she's like her findings were like ninety six percent of those songs. Laughter was always for the most ironic reasons, like you know, like when it's like we bet motherfuckers haa, like it's a laugh for evil, or if it's a James Brown command like or whatever. But never even Michael's he he's are always after some depressing shit. He just did you know, I want to be starting somethings depressing. Billy Jean's depressing. And there's rare occasions of and we're trying to think of, like has anyone ever laughed on record where it was actually genuine like I'm expressing joy And I was like, well, shit, I know the end of Rafty Rap Show where you hear like Macio and literally, so you were like one of a very rare case of a person laughing because something's actually funny and you're expressing which is it's a weird study to find that, Yeah, it's it's no. There's like a three year study that she did on just the history of.

01:04:03
Speaker 3: Laughing in black music.

01:04:05
Speaker 1: But for you, like when you're crafting these records, and I asked Pas, like, how are you guys able to make these intricate skits sound so spontaneous and off the cuff? But I know to record stuff, it's like and go and it never feels that way. It always just feels like a tape was always rolling. And you guys, just like the night you guys did the twenty minute version skipped to my loop like you can't plan that, Like what happens yo?

01:04:30
Speaker 2: That right there?

01:04:31
Speaker 1: That is my favorite shit of all time, by the way, And I listen to all twenty minutes of that shit, like.

01:04:36
Speaker 2: Everybody came over with my house. This is the first time I think everybody was at my House, Granny, rest of the Soul, China jet Right. Dave came, Mike, his brother Mike. We were trying to just figure something out, so you put it on record, put on his record, and it just start to skip on beat and Dave started skip to my Lou, Skip to my Lou, skip to my love. It just kept going, skip to my live, skip to my little and it's just and then more from there, and it was like we got to skip. We're looking for we got it.

01:05:17
Speaker 1: If you guys can find what's the mixtape you guys did. It's actually one of my favorite day Lout records, but you guys treated it as a mixtape. It's on that mixtape No No, No No, before the Dial of Daisy thing. You guys did the Impossible Mission. Oh if you have the Impossible Mission mixtape, it's on YouTube. You can hear the entire twenty minutes. I don't know why you want to, but it's like one of my favorite moments ever because it's you guys just being silly. That was a risky thing to do back then, Like has there ever been a thing because I've seen you.

01:05:55
Speaker 3: Gotta think Paul for that. You know, Paul was there ever a discussion like, yo, we can't appear to be too happy, go lucky your motherfuckers you will.

01:06:04
Speaker 2: No, that was never a discussion. It was never even really a thought. It was us being our natural silly selves. But Paul having the idea of recording it. That's it, like, Yo, we need to record all of this. It's too good. It's it's just too good. He would he would sit back like a real producer and just analyze everything and be like, yo, man, no idea, here is a bad idea. That's how he operated. We have to try everything.

01:06:47
Speaker 3: How did you make pluck tuneing?

01:06:48
Speaker 1: In the demo?

01:06:49
Speaker 2: The demo we made with the sk one, it was a Cassio drum machine and the sk one and the sk one we put up to the speaker the sample the written on the wall sample. Yeah, so that's from the s k one. That's the sk one did demo? The actual demo? I heard it.

01:07:06
Speaker 1: It wasn't It didn't feel that homemade, like perfect timing to do?

01:07:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, who was the person that we were sharing? And it was more pause tape vibe because whatever was off, And also you had to we had the drum machine to follow because the drum program on the Casio RZ one.

01:07:30
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:07:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, the drum pattern was pretty lock solid, so you could follow the pattern. You just get tired, you know what I'm saying.

01:07:37
Speaker 4: Right.

01:07:38
Speaker 2: Other than that, that was that was it, and we were overdubbing, overdubbing cassettes.

01:07:42
Speaker 1: I later found out that a line share of it Takes the Nature to Millions was also made the same way where they didn't read the manual to sequence. They literally like, that's triggered Flavor Flave doing all the eight o eights and Funky Drummer on rebels out of pause because he had a maculate timing, so Flavor play yes, right right, but he had a maculine timing with so he's the one that looped Funky drummer and all that stuff. So just to know that none of that was sequence and all put together by human is some mind blowing shit, you.

01:08:17
Speaker 2: Know, straight out the jungle is that album was all DJ Well.

01:08:22
Speaker 1: I figured like in a later listen that oh this is not triggered only because of you know, I'm also the guy like if you know Jazzy Jeff, He's taught me the idea of warping stuff and perfecting it, which sounds weird when you start trying to make things perfect sounding when it shouldn't be. So yeah, I learned the hard way of trying to I try to warp Jim Brownski, which is a nightmare.

01:08:50
Speaker 2: You know what I mean.

01:08:52
Speaker 3: Right, wait, I got to talk about.

01:08:55
Speaker 1: Style now. Of course we're doing this for Levi's, and it's just a coincidence that you guys are also style icons. I mean as far as like hairstyles and what you guys wore, which was unlike anything that I've ever seen anyone in the craft of hip hop rocking at the time. For me, I had an old Levi's jacket that I got when I we went to school with boys to men.

01:09:22
Speaker 3: So we did this motown Philly video.

01:09:24
Speaker 1: I'm like drumming and whatever, and I kept that shit on forever because Treik's like, you gotta wear the jacket every day because we can get girls numbers. They'll recognize the jacket from the video summertime me rocking this jacket or whatever. Was there ever an article of clothing like as far as like deciding what the personal style was. I know you guys said, like, oh, we go in our parents' cribs and wear their clothes.

01:09:43
Speaker 3: But was that really the case or.

01:09:46
Speaker 2: Like not, I really was the case, especially for them two guys. They were in their pops gear. Me, I had to go buy stuff to have a pop still. Okay, got that.

01:09:58
Speaker 1: But yeah, it was like your favorite art, cool clothing or like at least for the early days of daylight soul, like that never left you.

01:10:06
Speaker 2: I mean for the early days. What was cool about it? It was like the way they were hooking up their pants. Because I do come from an era of I'm more into the nostalgic where the classic where, you know, stuff that I always wanted to wear when I was younger watching my uncles and all of them, and I used to, you know, every now and again, my mom would get me a pair of shocks skins pants, you know what I mean. I used to rock shocks camp, Yeah, shock skin, the split Gabardine joints. Yeah, I used to rock that, you know. And then but they used to be pretty bell bottom. And then when I met Post and Dave David Mert excuse me, guys, I gotta call them Dave, they would kind of hem their pants, like almost make them straight leg. They would turn the bells into straits because they their father's pants were damn near the same, so they would make them straight leg.

01:11:06
Speaker 1: And I had safety pinning them together so they'd be more baggy.

01:11:09
Speaker 2: Instead of yeah. Yeah, And so when I saw Dave do that, I copied that. I was like, Yeah, that's exactly how I really want my pants to be. I don't want them to be bell bottom because I want you to see my shoes. I'm rocking too, you know what I mean. So, but I did come from the split gaberdines, the shark skin, the mock neck iceed Dice used to rock that. That was my thing.

01:11:32
Speaker 1: Well, you also mentioned when your households got broken into you like sheepskin. Yeah yeah, so if you were aware street fashion of the time, yeah I was. I was heavily because when we heard take it Off, We're just like I was.

01:11:45
Speaker 2: A baby jem Master Jay straight up. Okay, Yeah, I was lother pants and all of that, you know what I mean? Yeah, I was relatively dressing like flashing the Furious five and run.

01:11:56
Speaker 1: Dmc gotcha, how long did it take you to creft cool Breeze on the rocks?

01:12:02
Speaker 2: Now?

01:12:04
Speaker 1: I was heartbroken because of the new version, and of course that the clearest long but I love the way you guys handle it. It's even more hilarious. That was the most hilarious thing. If you can find the original cool Breeze on the Rocks on YouTube, listen to what it was and how my bow we were back then and compared to what they had to do now with it.

01:12:23
Speaker 2: But how long did that take to craft that piece? Made me hate engineering? It made me hate engineer. Now, don't get a twisted Now, I can engineer my ass off because I got no choice. But tell me about the punching. It made me hate engineering. Talk about it punching? How about spicing? Tape spicing? And I'm not talking about the spicing we do on able ten or tubes. I'm talking about tape, actual tape, spicing tape. I hate that.

01:12:58
Speaker 3: So wait, in my mind, you're in the studio with a two inch reel doing this.

01:13:03
Speaker 2: You're doing this on the second I did it on the half inch. I brought in all the records I found with the word rock with the word rock in it. And how long did it take you to do the research or did you just automatically know? I thought of different records off top and I went right to them and I was just, you know, go through making sure you know what I'm thinking is the correct thing, and then going down the rabbit hole of fine and all the stuff I wanted to say. Rock I knew.

01:13:31
Speaker 3: I always wanted to mess with kool Breese from Richard Pryor.

01:13:36
Speaker 2: I knew that. So it was like, cool breeze on the rocks. Okay, let's figure this out, you know what. And I went down every record that had rock. But then it was putting it together. It took two days, man, It took actually two days to do that one little piece. And I recorded all the rocks to the half inch. You know. I cut the kool bris, the koolbrees, but all the rocks I spliced. Oh so wait, it wasn't like you just added on to it, No, you just oh no, yeah, I just cut koolbrees. And then why did you do it that way? I didn't know no other way. I just it was come on. It was beginnings, the embryoic stages of what we were, what we were becoming. And I didn't Paul didn't know no other way. The engineer didn't know any other way. It was like we recorded to the half engine, then we're gonna splice it all together. But I was on deck learning to splice it because it was my idea. So I'm working with al the engineer, and I swear I hated that shit marking the tape trying to get it and then sometimes you're cutting over the part where you're trying to have so now you got to record it again again. I hated that ship man. I was like, I'm never doing this again. And I say, as an engineer, I don't want to be an engineer. I'll be a producer and I hire it. Man, we mixed this record. You don't even know, like no that I mean just and it's before automation.

01:15:06
Speaker 3: And all of that.

01:15:07
Speaker 1: Dude, like that made such a profound I know you probably think like this is a thirty second sketch.

01:15:13
Speaker 3: But just our collective minds were blown. I used.

01:15:16
Speaker 1: I worked at the Sam Goodies uh the week that that came out, and when we heard it, we all stopped in the thing like what the hell is this? Like we just I mean Nation of Millions was just one thing to take in, like seven songs coming at you at the same time out of key or whatever. But yeah, when that happened, the entire like white people stopped like what is this right?

01:15:36
Speaker 2: Right?

01:15:37
Speaker 1: Yeah? Literally, yeah, I was working in sam Goodies when when that record came out.

01:15:41
Speaker 2: My favorite device in the studio was the even did the even why the harmoniza. It allowed us to, you know, to mess records together that didn't really work, you know, zealmonically. You guys did that, and I forget the example of it. Buddy Buddy was one.

01:16:01
Speaker 3: Buddy was example of that.

01:16:03
Speaker 2: What's the name was an example of it. Also say no go yes with the with the baseline, with the baseline also along with sliding the family Stone record. Yes, no, no, no, those records don't work together.

01:16:20
Speaker 1: You guys were the first to match your samples so that it's together. Can I ask something for three feet? Was Bob involved in or did he come full time during Daylight soula his Dead?

01:16:32
Speaker 2: He came up during day Los Sola's Dead in the begin and it was Bob Coulter who actually was one of the partners of Calliope Studio. It was Sue Fisher loudly, God rest his soul. I forgot the Shane favor.

01:16:52
Speaker 1: Okay, Yeah, you guys were also one of the first rap groups that I noticed that didn't rhyme over their album versions or rhyme over I came rhyme over his Recordlick Rick two?

01:17:04
Speaker 3: Was was that a purpose?

01:17:06
Speaker 1: Like?

01:17:06
Speaker 3: And the closest that I did.

01:17:08
Speaker 1: See MC's rhyming to their instrumentals, you know, like Molly mal would I always have a dub on the B side? You allowed to hear the story, the story, the story way back when when like yeah, they would do and I think that was to say you know where you are, right, yeah, But you guys were the first thing I noticed was like, whoa, these are all instrumentals, Like because that GM didn't even start making instrumentals until eighty seven. So were you guys like already aware that instrumentals should be on the B side or was that a Tommy Boyd decision?

01:17:41
Speaker 2: It was stuff we learned from stet Okay, you know, I cant front Stecho. Sonic was a huge template for a lot of things we've became. You know, if you ever saw such a Sonic live show, it was one of the most incredible shows you can see.

01:17:58
Speaker 3: I have a wish in life.

01:17:59
Speaker 1: There is not I mean, the closest that you get to classic stet in their glory. It was some talk show where I think Ella was there to really promote Walking with the Panther, and I asked this with Chuck. I'm like, this is the era of least like the first generation of video cameras. Not one person in that circle doing those tours decided to record one Stets of Sonic show.

01:18:25
Speaker 3: All I will know is the folklore of.

01:18:30
Speaker 1: The craziest group and for me to be the sort of the back end of that, and having never ever seen Step like, I can't imagine a person not seeing a Root show once at least before they say, oh, they're the greatest group, Like I would love to say that myself, but there's no record whatsoever of their performance, Like does Paul have anything? Does he?

01:18:53
Speaker 3: I'll ask It's even harder to find you guys.

01:18:57
Speaker 2: If anybody would have picked up the camera back then, would have been Paul. But if he's in the show, he can't do it right. Maybe New Kirk rest of Soul might have recorded. Maybe somebody around Paul might have I'm gonna ask him, though.

01:19:11
Speaker 1: I was gonna say one of the one of the greatest things that I got to see kind of been reflecting on Dave's life.

01:19:18
Speaker 3: Was the footage of you guys recording.

01:19:21
Speaker 1: The day I sold his Dead album, which I mean any of those things that's like gold to me. Now, Like, how do you recall like CAMRA's being rolled often during like at least the first three records when video cameras are.

01:19:34
Speaker 2: Really conscious of the camera being on. You know, you've seen his footage, right, I've seen I saw the footage of Dave doing Johnny's Dead, Yes, yes, to see that Vincent Mason, right, what is the basis of that?

01:19:53
Speaker 1: He's just having to be.

01:19:53
Speaker 2: In a pan at the piano, got a freaking fool And it's one of them days where I call home. Work was done. You know, Paul would give us homework, so homework was done, so we had time in the studio just to do whatever. That's how the skits would even come to life, because once we took care of what was for homework, right, yeah, and then we got more time to just either come up with a new song or just mess around.

01:20:22
Speaker 1: You know, I always wanted to know this question, So I meant for us being as though instruments are a big part of what makes a roots album, that stuff was part of the budget. Hey, I want to get more an extra microphone for this particular sound. I want to buy these symbols or whatever.

01:20:39
Speaker 3: Was record shopping and digging part of the record budget or was that just like.

01:20:45
Speaker 2: Nah, that was naturally part of it. You own it. And I couldn't wait to go on tour so I could hit every city, go dig and go digging. I couldn't wait, especially going overseas. It was one time I went to some store and I damn the boy half the store and I got two tickets to a Prince concert.

01:21:03
Speaker 3: Behind that.

01:21:04
Speaker 2: Really, when Prince came out with Batman, I was in this record shop and I just like, this record shop had almost everything I my heart desired. I you know, first of all, the turntable was in there and so you could play everything you was checking for. And I was just I had a day. It was a gold rush day, and I damned brought half the store. And the dude was like any typical he kept it open for me. You know, I was in there after hours and he was like, yo, just because you bought so many, I got two tickets tonight for Prince at Wembley. Stop playing. He was like for really, I want to give you these two tickets and me and my at the time, my security at the time we went to the concert. It's crazy, I lost my voice everything else. It was the best. It was the best.

01:21:55
Speaker 1: Wait, I would say probably my era, like starting in ninety five, once record dealers became aware that, oh I can sell him this Golf McDermott record for fifty bucks.

01:22:08
Speaker 3: I could sell you know this this.

01:22:11
Speaker 2: Year Mark ups on us because they see us coming.

01:22:13
Speaker 1: So you were there for a magic period where people really didn't know the value of stuff and you could get something for a dollar or five dollars.

01:22:20
Speaker 2: Quarter even a quarter.

01:22:21
Speaker 1: What was the wild, wild gold rush days of record conventions? Like when I'm hearing these stories of like hotels being oh man, like, were you ever part of that madness?

01:22:33
Speaker 2: And I was for a second, and then I started to notice the competitive behavior this is where and then I stopped going the.

01:22:42
Speaker 1: First time I'm hearing blah blahs and ass or blah blah blah, like you found out who cats really were during this period. And the one thing I always heard though was that Prince B was such a nice figure.

01:22:54
Speaker 3: Prince VI from.

01:22:54
Speaker 1: PM doing was that the dealers will always let him come in like at one in the morning, like eight hours before you guys even get a chance to get to it. Either he paid them extra money or is this extra nice to him or whatever.

01:23:07
Speaker 3: And then like come nine am when it's time to let everyone else in Capri used to be there the night before.

01:23:15
Speaker 2: Really he if you get a book of room in the.

01:23:17
Speaker 1: Hotel, smart smart, smart, so.

01:23:23
Speaker 2: It catch them while they's setting up.

01:23:25
Speaker 1: Really, let me see that. Let me so I'm an add its height? Like was it really just like the search for gold, the search for the perfect break? Not knowing what's on this or that? Like would you roll by yourself or would you guys roll as a group?

01:23:38
Speaker 2: I would go by myself. In the beginning, it would we would rally up and go together, you know, it would be kind of part of our day when we met up at the studio or something like that, you know. But then yeah, after a while, I start going by myself. I start even traveling different places just alone. Got you just how can focus? Okay and don't feel that pressure?

01:24:00
Speaker 1: Yeah okay, So I mean I've heard enough folklore behind you being responsible for me and myself and I all the way that we hate the song too.

01:24:10
Speaker 3: I guess okay, we like the song again.

01:24:12
Speaker 1: Now it's a legacy song from Suit the Nuts. What is your version of me?

01:24:17
Speaker 3: Myself and I? And also the three sided twelve inch idea?

01:24:21
Speaker 2: Like, Okay, let's start with the three sided thing with the double groove, right, I'm gonna give credit to Tom Silverman for that. Okay, I gotta give it to him for that. You know, I will always say, after whatever we decided to do business wise, you know, whether we liked it or not, whatever we decide after that creatively working with him was always pretty funky, you know. The so that double groove I did, I thought it wasn't I wish I thought of that, you know what I mean that. I was like that, well, we do give you guys credit for it, but I get it, you know what I'm saying. Why didn't come to me like you know, but I was up to him for that. You know. I had sat on that sample put it like that. I sat on that and more bounced to the ounce for a long time and more bounce broke my heart when e d And came along, because it was it was just a matter of time, especially when it's a dope loop, you know what I mean. It's just when it's in the ether, it's like somebody gonna get to this is out there. I grabbed it, somebody else grabbed it. It's all about who's gonna put it out now, you know. And sure enough they did an incredible job. I thought they you know, I wouldn't expect anything less. And then I sat on the Knee Deep record and I played with that for a while and they hated it.

01:25:40
Speaker 1: I'm saving people didn't catch on and like eighty nine for Knee Deep to finally make his debut and hip hop terms, that would have been super captain. That would that to me, would have been more obvious than anything James Brown did. But were you shocked that? Oh my god, not one person is bothered to go here yet to use.

01:25:59
Speaker 2: I was shocked, like put it like that. I felt like Eric Sermon was on my heels. I did feel that, you know, like he's a funk he knows, he knows. You know. I knew Paul was onto it because we both as Funkadelic fans. You know, I gave Paul, not even knowing, I gave Paul the Maggot Brain album with the joint we used for Millie. Yes, I didn't know that was on it like that. I gave it to Paul.

01:26:27
Speaker 3: I was do your homework.

01:26:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, so damn.

01:26:34
Speaker 2: I'm like Lisa is for us, like lisas for us, and yeah, the knee deep joint sat on it for so long. I even tried it with another artist and he didn't like it wasn't too fast or just I guess it was. Yeah, it was. This was around the era too, it was getting more up tempoed with things and it becoming more dance music hip hop, you know. So David Merse wasn't in it with me like that. They just was not there with me, you know. And I was like, shit, man, I was like, yo, we need to use this shit. I didn't know how to convince them in any way until we was at Tommy Boy and.

01:27:14
Speaker 3: They were fine with Hall of Newts and Steal he Dan, but this was like to.

01:27:19
Speaker 2: Hall of no that was past's idea, you know. And I could see, you know, conceptually, lyrically, I can understand those songs coming to life the way they did, you know what I mean, especially for what he had in mind, the anti drug song song about the Girl You know what I mean, Like this, when ellll was I Need love, King was with smooth operating, we need a girl's song, you know what I mean.

01:27:43
Speaker 1: So you saw this ass Oh, we need this song that the girls can get down to you.

01:27:47
Speaker 2: And that's what I saw him trying to do, like we need a As you evaluate in the records that's coming out around you, these are the templates we're going off of, you know, like listening to ELL's album, listening to pees album, listen to this one's album, listen to King's album, listening to slick Rick's new album. You know, cause slick rick album was like we needed to record two more songs. When we heard the Greatest Avinceres slick Rick that oh he came with a living in a full time era behind that trip, that that trip we had. We took a trip. We had some shows with forty five King and and like him Shabbaz and we was in a limo limo listening to the Greatest Adventures of slick Rick, and we was like, yo, we gotta come with it. We was like, okay, already off the gate. We was like, okay, this album already scrapped. The record was like our album isn't gonna not gonna do well. We we was already like, we're just thankful for the opportunity of making an album, you know what I'm saying. Also, when something when the labels also telling you, uh, we really think we got a great record here, but we only sell it. We only think it's gonna sell like fifty thousand units. We're being told these things. So I'm really thinking about going to the military and all that, all the things that was on my list before that album deal came along. I was pretty much I was about to put it. It was all back on my list, like, Okay, after this album, I'm probably going to the military or into the work force something, because I don't see this music thing really being successful for us. You know, I swear to you know where you at when you just got two singles out and you know, you're just happy, you know, And I'm just happy, Like, yeah, we were embarking upon this thing called sampling, and we got people who supposed to pay for tearing the samples. So we thinking we get permission to do all these things we're actually doing. So the body of work and the opportunity we're like every day was happy to be in the moment, right, you know, when is it gonna end? That was the question.

01:30:13
Speaker 3: At what point do you realize that you've caught lightning in a bottle?

01:30:18
Speaker 1: Like, oh shit, not only is this gonna work, but this will be as impactful as raising hell.

01:30:24
Speaker 2: After the marketing meeting at least with me myself or not. After the marketing meeting that we had that Tommy Boy and they were like, we feel like this is a great record. The feedback that we're getting back is phenomenal, but what's going on out there. We don't know if this is gonna do well. So we're guessing around fifty thousand units. We also have you guys got great records. You know, the music that you chose, the sample, you know, it was definitely white oriented, you know. So they was also like, we don't really have anything we can go to black radio with. Remember black radio was a thing then, yeah, you know what I'm saying. So, and I never forget at Strickland, remember ed being one of the main people feeling like there was nothing quite there yet to go to black radio way, And what ended up coming up was me myself and I and also the remix for Buddy that those were the two records that landed it for Black Radio. How I end up me myself and I end up being the record that we finally decided to say. Well, Paul called me up and was like, yo, may spring that to the studio. It was when I want to say it was the same day that evening we went to a Zulu Nation party at Hotel Amazon and I don't know if it was Bam or Jazzy J who was DJing, one of them was on at the time, and they dropped me deep. They dropped knee deep, and then it went crazy in there and I hit David.

01:31:51
Speaker 3: I'm like, I'm telling you this just right, Yeah, this is the one, and.

01:31:57
Speaker 2: He was looking at me like like gave me that look like I think he right, But I don't want to do this, you know.

01:32:03
Speaker 3: Dave was always the hardest one to convince.

01:32:05
Speaker 2: Always hardest one to convince. Sure enough. I don't know what made them. They must all had a discussion with Paul, and then Paul calledban was like, Mat, bring that to the studio, bring that drive to the studio. And then when I brought it to the studio, I just had a basic loop with the drum tap running a little bit more than what you hear on the record, some drum programming behind it, and Paul came with the wrapper, Dapper Snapper, the Dougie fresh cuts, got the He had the idea of running the loop, the running, running the loop from the tape into the DJ mixer back onto the tape so we could transform all the Yeah because a crazy on it. Yeah okay, and the Dougie first cuts. We were going back and forth with that boom. So it was me and Paul going back and forth like on some DJ ship in the studio developing the track. These two dudes sitting in the back and you can see the look on their face like this shit is coming out good, like oh shit, like it's working, Oh my god. And then all I can remember is these two guys spoofing black as Black Botto Jungle Brothers, and it was just they were just in the never because they was back there bucking out. And the more and more it got clownish in backfired, and I think that was also the revelation of the humor and.

01:33:37
Speaker 1: What we do is gonna work, gotcha, you know, Okay, I gotta ask this question, and maybe this is me bridging two Day Las Soul is Dead and kind of be even though steeped in humor, it did come a little defensive. But you know, for the record Day Lost Souls there is my all time favorite record, not even in your can, but just that's what made me tarik when I started group when we heard this. But can you give me what is your average memory of the Nitro tour with LL and Wa public enemy you guys.

01:34:11
Speaker 3: My average memory? Yes, I don't think anything was average about.

01:34:18
Speaker 1: What was it like?

01:34:19
Speaker 2: Oh man, it was uh okay, I'm trying to see where I could go with this without uh.

01:34:32
Speaker 3: Ah, you're right, right, right, okay, let me ask this is yes you no question? Okay.

01:34:35
Speaker 1: So one of the main positions on De La Soul's Dead is like, yo, cats are trying to test us and again to hear you guys were getting in the scuffles in various cities based on people thinking that you're a certain way or whatever, soft or whatever, like whatever the thing was in eighty nine to ninety Yeah, I mean irony that it's coming from you guys who in our heads were like.

01:34:59
Speaker 3: Wait this day all saw as the last group weeks back.

01:35:01
Speaker 2: This was also a time period We were still young and fresh on the scene, so being backstage and all of that wasn't all of that important to us. We enjoyed being around the people, but not realizing the danger we would be out in the audience. Man, we would be hanging out like we was hanging out at Club Mars or something like that Irvian Plaza, you know, like if we were just hanging out in the city, you know. And the way the tour was, it was like we all had camaraderie, you know. It was a real brotherhood out there, you know, like LL's and his pops. They all looked after us, you know, Kine's crew like you know. And this was also although the tour was marketed as LL Day Lost Slick Rick Kine, it was n w A on that tour too Short every now and Again Special led EPMDPE. It was hip hop from east to west all over this tour. Yoyo was on the tour like just a little bit of everybody. Every city had something body different or or you know, a string of dates. They was on Ghetto Boys every now and again, So it was like just a lot of love. Man.

01:36:24
Speaker 1: Is it true that you guys are there for the infamous Detroit Night with Yeah.

01:36:28
Speaker 2: Actually, but you see in the movie happen on that tour and really how it went. Wren dedicated the song to pas it was Passa's birthday. He dedicated the song the pass and then Cube went into it, you know, and it als maybe about less than sixty seconds the hoopla jumped off. Yeah, the police throwing eights. We I mean, obviously we all thought it was gunshots, but it was police who lit ads throw them towards stage as they went off. Of course, the soilid gunshot, so that created the chaos. You know, it was a big thing because of the police around the country had an issue with them, you know, FBI had an issue with them. So the actual officers on the scene really didn't have an issue. They were just following the job because when they got finally got to them, they asked them for autographs. When Easy came back to the hotel, he was like, oh man, they just wanted our autograph and they just seem embarrassed because of the song, and it's just it's just feel embarrassed.

01:37:37
Speaker 1: Like as a DJ, I hate speaking on the mic. I'm still on the this is this thing on your phone's here in the DJ booth and whatever. But like, how did you learn to do something with authority but actually make it fun and not? Is it just years and years of communicating or yeah?

01:37:57
Speaker 2: I think it's years of communicating, years of watching and remaining a student to this and watching the highs and lows, and also that having that feeling of knowing that there's somebody out there who may have never ever seen us before, you know, I guess also watching paying attention to the barometer of the business of day lasso and knowing when you're hot and knowing when you're not, you know what I mean, And knowing that every time you get up there, you're introducing yourself to somebody who may have never encountered you before. And I think a lot of that comes from also the early days of being on these festivals that are so alternative. Especially I think when we did define Young Cannibals to her, we were like a fish out of water, you know, and we got booed pretty bad, and two him, we did me myself and I it was.

01:38:57
Speaker 1: Like, damn, I would have thought that would have been easy reach.

01:39:01
Speaker 2: Until we did that song is when we got the love. But throughout our performance. It was a struggle, was like, and you had to learn. You had to learn how to figure out what songs work for what audience, what territories, you know, start really thinking like a DJ, you know what I'm saying, and connecting with what's gonna work, what's not gonna work. Implement more crowd participation. Okay, for somebody who don't know us, we could still have a good time. Let's try to get them involved. So that's where a lot of the crowd participation come in because you'll find people going I never heard or say you guys before, but I had a great time, and that's only because they were involved.

01:39:40
Speaker 1: So to go from Fyan Cannibals to now you guys have been doing a lot of rotation with the gorillas, Yeah, well, first of all, I didn't even properly introduce you your Grammy Award winning Vin's Amazon. So cand you talk about working with the gorillas and even touring with them, and how that because by looking at the footage of what I see like nightly when you guys do gigs with them, you know, do you just talk about like the whole collaboration that feel good?

01:40:11
Speaker 2: I think by the time we got to the Gorillas, we were already well groomed, you know what I mean. It was for me before even the group even heard them. It was something I wanted to do, and I was already fascinated with them. When Dell worked with them, I was like, oh man, when Dell worked with them, I wasn't even thinking about working with them. I just really wanted the record. I was like, Yo, this record, It's crazy. I gotta have this. It was one of them I wanted under my belt. Here it is. I felt like, I played this record, they gonna want this from Massio. If I play that record, you know, they might not want it from Kupree, but they don't want it from me, you know what I'm saying, right right? So, and I was in love with it and then chasing it around for about a good year under the assumption that Danny Automator was the Gorillas. Come to find he wasn't. He's just a producer of that song. But I more and more I got closer to it. I forgot who. I met a cat. I met Matt, a cat named Matt, and then Matt ended up having a conversation with Remy. Remy is Damon's best friend. As I hear the story from the other side, Remy was the one going, Damon, you need to mess with Dayla. You need to mess with Dayla. Dell is like the sun of Daylight.

01:41:28
Speaker 3: I'm saying because I thought the same thing.

01:41:30
Speaker 2: He was like, you need to do this. But I could see Dell's intro was Dan, you know what I'm saying. I could see Damon and probably know much about Dan Dell either. So but Dan being on deck, you know, especially after doing you know, handsome boy modeling school, that's all in Damon's lane, you know what I'm saying, the corky projects, that's in his lane. So I could see how their relationship developed, and Dell got a part of that. But as I was fighting just to get the records, it landed up on his ears like yo, you need to mess with Daylight. And then we got a call to come be a part of this project. And it was supposed to be a completely another song altogether.

01:42:11
Speaker 3: How did they come together?

01:42:12
Speaker 1: Because actually you're laughter and all that stuff, like that's the most memorable part of it, Like how did that come to be?

01:42:19
Speaker 2: It was a different track altogether. I think the track now the track we were supposed to do is now titled Kids with Guns. When we were working on the track, it was like no one was really feeling it, you know what I mean, we were just kind of doing the job. It became one of the moments that I didn't like about us. You know, Let's not do this for the money, you know what I mean, Like, Okay, this money on the table, but if it ain't really clicking, let's not do this, you know what I mean. And somewhere in the session, Damon just stopped the session. He was like, Yo, honestly, what do y'all think about the song? I said, Yo, man, I think we're forcing something here, I said, I don't think it's a real collaboration. I think we're just featuring on something. You know. I said. No one's really putting the spirit in it into this that I know, you know we could put into this. I said me personally, I think the song is. I think the track is cool the way it is. I don't think we need to do anything to it. I don't think. I don't even hear these guys on this track. Merce already had something for it. So it did frustrate him. You know what, I'm saying Merce had something for it. Alreright, you know what I'm saying, I said, but I'm being honest. I don't even think I hit my cool on this track. And then Dave was like, Yo, why don't you play us everything you got you intend to put on the album? You know, just just play us with everything you you know you recorded that you think you're gonna it's gonna make the album. And they started playing stuff, and Merce was frustrated because Mer had his head, he had his tunnel vision for what was going on, and I knew that too, but I informed everybody. I was like, yo, man, let me know what it really is before I get on this plane. I said, Cuz I know I'm easy to upset the opera coot. You know what I'm saying. If I ain't feeling it, I ain't feeling it. I'm gonna speak my mind. You know, right, wrong and different. I'm gonna speak my mind and we go and go with it from there. So as I spoke my mind, things start to shift. Merce was slightly frustrated. Then Damon started playing stuff. Next thing you know, Tequila's coming out, Weed's coming out, but he's spending like a good nine hours in the studio listening to stuff and kind of waiting for the you know, the inspiration and all of these this tension to settle. Once at tension settled, Damon got around to the feel good in't track right, and next thing you know, this is one of the days Dave decides to smoke weed. Doesn't normally smoke weed. You know, I always called Dave a holiday smoker, but he only he's the only one that knows the holiday. You don't know when, you'll know when it's coming. So this was one of them days. And set en off. We're in there, we're getting charged, and the beat comes on and he goes, Mace, why do I keep hearing doodle Brown? He's like, I keep hearing Dude Brown. As the track is playing, he's going, don't stop bop.

01:45:23
Speaker 3: That pussy, let me see you doodle Brown.

01:45:25
Speaker 2: The whole time, he's like, why do I keep hearing this? So he start to craft the lyrics, and that's where you get the the lukeadens and check out how I na that's all that. Yeah, that's all of that. That's where it came from. That's where it came from. Dude Brown literally literally and he was like, yo, when he came with the check out, how I Mace, I need to laugh, Mace, I need to laugh, I need to laugh, and I laugh. I did that laugh. I forgot when I started doing that. It was a show we used to do bionics. We used to end the show with bionics, and I started to do the laugh. The laugh was intentional because I forgot what tour we was on. We was on Rock the Bells before l got the Way Back, we was on that. So the ensemble of artists that was on there, this is that competitive nature. Were all out there trying to pull out our best, our best shit. So you know, our secret weapon was always Fife and Biz. Bring Fife and Biz out and then we would close bionics and then I would do the laugh and the laugh as you know, it just it mean, it was intentional. It was like in the Bionics it was ha ha ha, We're still here. That's what it really meant in that moment, and then we just held on to it. It was like, yo, you gotta keep doing that, you gotta keep doing that. And then yeah, I just kept rocking it for while. I did a Cornerstone mixtape using a laugh and then came up to go to the Gorilla's record. Dave was like the laugh or recalled him, was like, I need to laugh. I laugh, okay, So it went down in the studio. I just kept doing it and doing it, and they was all fascinated in the studio how I could keep doing it and keep doing it, and it was like, how do you do that? I was like, I don't know, man, that's my laugh. I mean it's a little bit more embellished because I'm forcing something, you know, but it feels authentic though, But that's my laugh. I'm like, my laugh used to get me into trouble. My laugh would get me into fights literally, So for it to turn out to be that, you know what I mean, like, it's a good turnaround, you know. I mean I used to get ridiculed by behind my life. I end up in bouts a lot of times just behind my laugh, you know what I mean.

01:47:51
Speaker 1: You know, it's ironic because my first impression of you guys like, oh, that's the nerd, that's the happy, go lucky hippie, and he's one.

01:48:00
Speaker 3: Beat me up. But now it's like.

01:48:05
Speaker 1: David is a moody one. So for me to discover oh, the moody one is the one I thought was the nerd. Passu is based on his versus alone, and I think that's his his therapeutic thing. Pass is a low key player, like just when all this little like and I'm like, oh, okay, pass, I don't know you got downline and then you are actually the heart of day last soul to me. Besides getting your masters back, one of the most revolutionary things that you guys did was you were like first out the gate at least with using established group that I know, using Kickstarter as their business modus operandi, you know, like instead of relying on a record label. And I won't say the burden of wanting to take all that on yourself, how would you guys talked into kickstarting and raising funds for yourself? By the way, murs, I've not got my sneakers yet. However, what made you guys decide to do it? What have you learned about yourself as businessmen? And I guess I can also tie into having your masters now and what it takes to release the music that we want to hear again. So just like start with the whole kickstarter concept with what I would I don't know if it's a nightmare, or just like I'll sure we'll do it again, or not do it again? Like what was it like for you?

01:49:47
Speaker 2: It was a daunting experience, but an experience I wouldn't change, you know, well, because you give myself no pats on the back, But I pay attention really close to this business from the time we got in and all the different changes, the different fasts. I read Donald Passman's both of his books. You know, that was a great template for me to which book everything you know you didn't need to know about the music business. Yeah, and then he had did a second one that touched on the change with the Internet and know what, you know what I'm saying, Yeah, I'm data. Yeah. So those were great templates for me to continue to navigate through the business of Day Last Soul and the music business in general. Prior to that, it was always Prince Paul, you know, Prince Paul. When I was struggling with certain things, I went back to Paul and Paul was like, yo, I can't help you. Paul was like, I can't help you, he said, because you've had success that I never had. So that tripped me out. You know what, I'm saying it was like, yeah, yeah, it was like you had some success that I didn't have. He says, So I don't even know how to tell you how to navigate what you're dealing with, you know. So I started to pray a lot more, have study more, and have real discernment on different conversations I was having with different executives that like to manipulate and learning, they hustle and figuring out just just pulling this piece apart. And I know, the more waves you create, the more they want you to get out the way, you know. And that's one thing I did learn, like, oh, I'm creating waves. So nobody want to mess with Mace. They want to talk the past. They want to talk to Dave, they want to talk to who they think is docile, will be agreeable, and yeah, you know, not knowing that you might want to talk to me because my guys trust.

01:51:53
Speaker 3: Me that much.

01:51:53
Speaker 1: I do know.

01:51:54
Speaker 2: But in certain changes that were happening, you know, we are a little conflicting with one another based on the fact that some of us was paying attention to certain things that others weren't, you know what I'm saying. So this was another milestone in our relationship on trying to connect with one another's growth. For the longest, I've been the little brother, you know, I was like, here's for a better term. I was like, look, based on how we're growing in this, stop calling me the little brother. Call me the younger brother. Got you, you know, because the little brothers seems like the one you need to protect who don't know nothing, you know what I mean, that's a connotation, you know, you know, And that wasn't what was going on between me and past I was going on between me and Dave. So once we established that, it was another growth in our relationship as brothers, you know, like Mace may be on to something here, you know. The kickstarter idea came up. It was a bit of a struggle because Dave Verbatim felt like, Yo, we look like we begging. You know, it looked like we this system looked like we begging. And I was like, it wasn't weird.

01:53:07
Speaker 1: Like when when Tommy boyd impluded, you just think like, Okay, we'll just go to another label or fine.

01:53:14
Speaker 2: That was that was the you know, that's always the was the well. When Tommy Wait folded, we did go to another label. Scary we went to Sanctuary.

01:53:22
Speaker 1: And it was went off.

01:53:24
Speaker 3: It was like, was that album considered as it was?

01:53:28
Speaker 2: It was a corporate owned company with shareholders, fell apart completely great album though, thank you brother, thank you. It was a first partnership I can say we were in outside of Tommy Boy. So everything after that ended up being partnerships are just independent, you know, And luckily enough with the Kickstarter, it was a bit of both. It was when we decided to do the Kickstarter, it was because the deals that were out there were not favorable for what we were conditioned to to what was being offered, and respectfully, I had to go, yo, man, we are ten years without a record and the industry is plummeting in a certain way where it's going digitally and all of that. So these deals they're not hot now what they offering, Yo, we could go out there and do some shows and raise that kind of money on our own and maintain our ownership, you know. Then the first I saw Kickstarter, I don't know. It came across my Internet feed, and when I was doing my research on it and tapping into the different artists that were doing it, the person I really focused on was t og people don't know that Edog did a kickstarter. He did a kickstarter and he met his goal. Reason why, we don't know, because it wasn't six hundred thousand dollars, you know what I'm saying. It was like forty something fifty something thousand, But it was his goal. Oh so he met he met his goal. This wasn't newsworthy, That's all I'm saying. Break it down, like I'm a first grader.

01:55:07
Speaker 1: So the thing is that you decide from the gate what budget you want to raise, and then you create this record, and then the album sells, and do the those who contribute to get their money back or.

01:55:21
Speaker 2: Is it just nah, this is good. They just want to they want to just see it happen. I couldn't even believe it myself, like it was too good to be true, Like they don't want nothing.

01:55:34
Speaker 3: You know, I was trying two pairs of sneakers ahead.

01:55:39
Speaker 2: You heard that. You heard that?

01:55:42
Speaker 3: You oh bro, you.

01:55:45
Speaker 1: You oh pook you, oh pook you good? You good?

01:55:49
Speaker 2: You got?

01:55:50
Speaker 3: I got five pairs of day Love dunks anyway, so we're good. But uh yeah, so you did it.

01:55:57
Speaker 2: We went for the money that was being offered. Regarding the record deals. You know, we was like, okay, let's be fair and trying to raise what we know we can. All we need is to record the record. So the offerers that was out there was like nothing more than one hundred and fifty grand. So it was like, yo, we rang it around one hundred and thirty grand that we could raise. I said, look, we could raise one hundred and thirty grand and we still own the rights to our record. It's avenue give it up to some company.

01:56:28
Speaker 1: You know.

01:56:29
Speaker 2: That was the idea. Dave wasn't quite feeling it. Merce was on the fence, and it was really trying to come up with ideas of how we can give a little to the audience that's willing to support us. What can we It need to be a reciprocal thing. So we figured out how to do these tiers and come up with ideas of whether it's postcoing shopping, me going record shopping, somehow creating this relationship with the audience community. Yeah, so doing it, just doing something a little more because of what they're giving and documenting the sessions and all of that. You know, I think what sold us all on doing the entire ideas when we did an edm event in Miami, and somebody came to us and like, yo, you guys need to do a kickstarter. So of course I looked at.

01:57:26
Speaker 3: Both of them, was like jojie right right right nice?

01:57:30
Speaker 2: So, you know, but sometimes you got to hear from outside sauce, you know, for affirmation. And sure enough it wrapped around Dave's mind a little bit, wrapped around Mersu's mind a little bit. I think. Also everybody got wind of of what Spike Lee and Nelson George was doing us as well with raising money for the docs they were doing, right, you know what I'm saying. So it's like, yo, I'm telling you man, this is this got us written all over it, you know what I mean? You know, I like, look, there's an audience that actually just loves us. I'm like, be re late to the party is really what's going on? I was like, what's going on with the Internet and these nerds and the creators and all of that. Yo, they really are into heavily into artistic value. I was like, b and we not to pat OUs hoves on the back, but we had trust the sauce when it come to that. Yeah, I mean, I'm like, it's like y'all. It's a match me in heaven and Dave was still kind of hung up on it, but it looked like we begging for money, Mace.

01:58:29
Speaker 1: Not.

01:58:29
Speaker 2: If we approach this a certain way and it start to look at the tears of different things, we start to think we can offer in what they're given.

01:58:37
Speaker 3: So once you reach the finish line, like we superseded.

01:58:41
Speaker 2: The finish line because we always had looked to only raise about one hundred and thirty grand and it ended up superseding to being like six hundred grand.

01:58:50
Speaker 3: Would you want to do it again or is it just like just one project at the time?

01:58:54
Speaker 2: And I would love to do it again? And okay, let me, I don't know what for what project? It would have to be, uh, something special, you know something I think more than an album. Okay, you know something I don't know, something maybe musical and visual?

01:59:14
Speaker 1: You know all right? I have some nerdy, quick, rapid fire things to ask before I wrap up the show.

01:59:21
Speaker 3: Who stole your Pathfinder? In front of the studio?

01:59:25
Speaker 2: How wish somebody could tell me? Because I was ever find Nope, I had to chuck it up collect the insurance money ended up getting men did that.

01:59:35
Speaker 1: Happen as you recorded. Uh wanat to got to be where we were.

01:59:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was in that session for real. It was a night session for not going to be where everybody came up to the studio. I was in there. They all went to some club or whatever. All I know is I was in the studio and I'll never forget money going. Yo, where's the truck? Think everybody knew I couldn't park my truck the way it sat up so high. I was sitting on forties like I really had off roads like it's up top. So if it wasn't an outdoor parking lot, I couldn't park park on the street away. Yeah, I didn't think it may have gotten towed away, But once I contacted towing, Nah, my ship got stolen. And this was a year Nissan was getting stolen left and right. Yeah, so I was like I was, I only had it all but two and a half weeks. I was feeling myself come outside and it was gone, and I was like, damn. Moonie was like, what we gonna do. We're gonna go to Heavy D's party.

02:00:42
Speaker 1: That's what we still going without without a ride.

02:00:46
Speaker 2: Because I'm like, I knew I gotta take the train home at this point, and the train is long Ala Railroad don't come back on until five, So we got hell, let's go to have party, and I got take the train home.

02:01:01
Speaker 1: What are your five favorite dail I soul records?

02:01:04
Speaker 2: Oh, that's like saying what's your favorite.

02:01:06
Speaker 1: And right, and this includes the mixtapes and all those things, because I would have impossible mission inside my top five. But go.

02:01:16
Speaker 2: Wow, I guess I could say the songs I do get excited about. Now I'm talking about albums or albums. Wow, I gotta say right now, Cabin in the Sky bro just the way it's hit me. You know, each one of them hit me differently. You know what I mean?

02:01:32
Speaker 1: Is Cabin in the Sky the culmination of the long rumored Primo and Pete Rock are gonna do our records for us like you just married the two together?

02:01:43
Speaker 2: Yeah? Pretty much? Okay, pretty much? Are there any songs left over that haven't no? Okay, no, I think you got everything from the pre premum.

02:01:54
Speaker 3: Are there any extra day verses that are just on ice for now?

02:01:58
Speaker 2: I got something on ice? Okay, got a couple of things on ice I would love to consider for ao. I three.

02:02:04
Speaker 3: Okay, AOI three is still going to be a thing.

02:02:08
Speaker 1: That's a thing. Okay, that's happening. What is your favorite Daylas Soul album?

02:02:14
Speaker 2: The first one would probably always be very special because it was it saved your life. Yeah, and it saved my life for so many ways, you know what I mean. I was still a virgin, you know what I mean? Got you like you know pony Ride would be? How that idea come to be? That was Dave decided to sample him the direction in the record. Every Yeah, he sampled it just like that, you know how the tap? Yes like that?

02:02:48
Speaker 3: What five songs don't we know?

02:02:50
Speaker 1: In addition, when I asked me and myself and I question of you like helming it, what other four songs in the Daylight catalog did you helm that we might?

02:03:00
Speaker 2: I be aware of ego tripping? Okay?

02:03:02
Speaker 3: I know you did it in the woods, right in the woods. Okay, Out for connection.

02:03:07
Speaker 1: That was you. That is my favorite day La Joy. You guys opened with that when you did the Daylight Soul is Dead. That was your first song and we were we were right next to the speakers, so it's just like we weren't expecting that level boombastic. Okay, but I gotta ask, and I asked this to pass. In nineteen ninety one, no one in their right mind would even dare think of using mustache James Brown as a sample source. This is like a B side from the Get Up Off That Thing record, which again, no hip hop historian in that era would even think.

02:03:52
Speaker 3: Yo, what made you see the gold in.

02:03:57
Speaker 1: And otherwise unremarkable? Like you caught the best part ding ding ding ding ding.

02:04:05
Speaker 2: I don't know. I just happened to hear it.

02:04:08
Speaker 3: You just like James round record up for grab.

02:04:11
Speaker 2: I think it was also what I was using at the time. I was using this some eight second guitar pedal okay as a sampler. Okay, yeah it was, that was it was. It was my first real sampler, okay, for real, and I had it. I actually learned this from Paul, you know. I had that locked in with a sequential tom Lop thing my guitar player.

02:04:38
Speaker 3: Yes, that's the green box with the that's what you use.

02:04:41
Speaker 2: That's what I used for.

02:04:43
Speaker 1: Someone does not teach you here, is it? NBC sixty? Nah?

02:04:49
Speaker 2: Uh?

02:04:50
Speaker 1: You learned through a guitar looper?

02:04:52
Speaker 2: Yeah? At first I started out pausing tapes. Then I graduated to the s K one, then SK five got you. Then it was then I followed everything Paul was doing, and then you know, I was doing what I can afford pretty much. When I saw Paul, he had that pedal and he had a sequential toime drum machine and an eight track. I had a four track, okay, and he showed me how to lay sympty to the four track to get everything to trigger on time. Once he showed me how to lay sympty, I was off to the races. Wow, okay, and then anything after my first two or three samples that I got in time, then everything else was triggered. So that down, down, down down, that was because of what I was working with.

02:05:44
Speaker 1: That's crazy, Like in my mind, I love hearing unorthodox methods of making hip hop records in which knowing is just sequencing on a drum machine, none of that stuff, Like you're figuring out ways to loop and stuff outside.

02:05:58
Speaker 2: Of the outside of what we've eventually learned how to do.

02:06:03
Speaker 3: Okay.

02:06:03
Speaker 1: My last two questions, how long did it take for you immerse to really like, so we're doing this like for Dave, Like, how long did it take cause you know. I'll say that losing my manager Rich in twenty fourteen really put a good ten year pause on me in Tarik, like we did nothing without riches? What do you think? What do you think? And now it's like, oh, we got to be the adults in the room and do we trustee?

02:06:34
Speaker 4: You know?

02:06:34
Speaker 1: So we had distractions to and yes, it's still coming up. I'm sorry, the album's still coming. I know you guys think I'm bullsitting you now, but it's coming, I promise. But how long did it take to get over the anxiety of how do we restructure the show now? How do we turn this body of work into a full vision? How long was it before? I don't want to know from from beginning to end how it came together?

02:07:09
Speaker 2: But I wrote on a lot of postive strength.

02:07:12
Speaker 1: Was there a discussion like, hey, we're just going to end it right now?

02:07:15
Speaker 2: Or no, it was I was lost for a minute.

02:07:20
Speaker 1: No.

02:07:20
Speaker 2: One couldn't even really find me. He had to come. This is when I was living in Florida. He had to come to my house and really grab me.

02:07:29
Speaker 3: Out here, literally find you. Yeah, how long did it take for you to process it?

02:07:34
Speaker 1: Moren like, how how many months.

02:07:36
Speaker 2: Are you still bro I'm still morning, you know what I mean. It just it hits me different every day. Like it hit me earlier today when I saw D I cried earlier before you came in. Like actually, when you was in here setting up, I saw a D and you know we can relate obviously, right and he showed me his jam J about it. Just it broke me down, you know what I mean. So you know, just it hits me at different times. Just times I'm laughing a lot on the memories and then I'm crying at times because of the memories, you know what I mean. And I miss my dude. Man, I miss him. You know, there's a life partner. You know. It's probably the same feeling I'm gonna have if I lose my mom or my wife or somebody. You know what I'm saying. I'm never gonna get over that, you know, the ride of the ups and downs. You know, I miss everything, the arguments, everything. I miss him, man, you know what I mean.

02:08:34
Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned like the idea not of tension, but like in trying to convince him of me myself and I are convince him of kickstarting or convincing of you know, I will say that I've been the passive member of the roots. Don't like confrontation, don't like the you like y'all are the same in that well, no, like I'll be I don't know. I'm sharing this now like freak and I really had a personal breakthrough three days ago. And I mean, like thirty four years under the belt, just like sound check, let's make an album, all right, peace, see you tomorrow. And every time I get around you guys, and I'm like, damn, like you're you guys are still like I always thought it was impossible for friends and business partners to even exist in one thing like what happens when? And for me, it's always like I don't like that beat, and like, no matter how hard I worked on that shit, like weeks before, it's.

02:09:36
Speaker 3: Just like, okay, here it is. It's cool and you say.

02:09:43
Speaker 1: And then right, and so I admire that. And for me, I just always wanted to know, like, how are you there for each other now? That keeps you going?

02:09:56
Speaker 2: We always been brothers, man. I mean I think what people see now you could that's very obvious, you know, I think that was the answer. Yeah, that was.

02:10:23
Speaker 3: Did you get that.

02:10:24
Speaker 2: It's very obvious. Man. We we we truly love each other. Man. You know, I think that's perfect. People could Actually I probably notice it more because we don't have Dave, you know what I'm saying, So it's a little bit more. I think micro people are paying attention to certain things. And I think the way we've been expressing our loss, you know, there's something relatable there. Yeah, you know what I mean. My family, man, we've been through a lot, man, and it's all about how you come out on the other side. You know, family fights the fact, but that's the testament of being family, you know what I'm saying, how you come out on the other side. You know, it's always going to be some kind of conflict, some kind of confrontation. You know, it's how you get through it.

02:11:09
Speaker 3: Man.

02:11:11
Speaker 2: I'm a praying man. Pray man. God is all I've had since my childhood. You know, I lived in fight or flight. You know.

02:11:21
Speaker 3: To have a friend like Kelvin Mercer is a blessing, you know what I mean.

02:11:25
Speaker 1: True? My last question at one point, Ketchup was your angle and then you lost it? Why'd you lose the ketchup angle? High in sodium look, ladies and gentlemen. This is the first of three Behind the Originals. Thank you Levi's for for holding this down. Thank you Maceio Yo, thank you brother.

02:11:53
Speaker 3: I love you too, Man Levin, thank you for staying classic. Yes, y'all are classic.

02:11:59
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you levi O's for doing this for us, and we will see you on the next go round of court. Love Supreme. All right, Macie, thank you, I love you, Bro, love you too. And there you have it, Macio Man, myth legend correct on all counts, one of the best labs in the game. That's episode one of this very special behind every original run with Levi's. I want you to keep your eyes peeled to the feed and we'll be back soon with another legendary artist who did it their own way. Quest Loft Show is hosted by me Amir Quest Love Thompson. Executive producers are Sean g Brian Calhoun and Me. Produced by Britney Benjamin and Jake Payne.

02:12:48
Speaker 5: Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown, edited by Alex connrom iHeart video support by Mark Canton, Logos Graphics and animation by Nicko Bylowie.

02:13:02
Speaker 6: Additional support by Lance Coleman. Special thanks to Kathy Brown Special thanks to Sugar Steve Mandel. Please subscribe, rate, review, and share The Quest Love Show wherever you stream your podcasts, and make sure you follow us on socials.

02:13:20
Speaker 1: That's at QLs. Check out hundreds and hundreds of QLs episodes, including the Quest Love Supreme Shows, in our podcast archives.

02:13:32
Speaker 3: The Quest Love Show is the production of iHeartRadio.