transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] The Questlove Show is a production of iHeartRadio. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Questlove. This is The Questlove Show. It's not often that one gets a career that enables him to write his own ticket and fulfill a bunch of bucketless dreams, of which creating this very platform to nerd out on some of my favorite people in creativity. Our guest today is absolutely no exception. His creativity is so strong, so stringent, so powerful that it actually inspired my best friend and I in high school to start our own group. Not many people can claim that. Look, man, all I can say is that Kelvin Pasenous-Mercer has agreed to let me ask him 86 questions. Number one, how are you doing today, sir?

Speaker 2:
[01:30] I'm good, man. Thank you for the intro, because you know, bro, I mean, sometimes when I'm blessed to hear you say things like that, I already view our relationship as brothers and friends. So, you know, I sometimes have to look through you like, okay, yeah, maybe this is how, when I talk to Jeff, but when I get on the phone, I'm like, damn, that's Jazzy Jeff, but I'm his friend.

Speaker 1:
[01:53] Right. I won't make it weird.

Speaker 2:
[01:57] It's a blessing, but, you know, I feel like, wait a minute, is he talking about me? Because I'm his homeboy.

Speaker 1:
[02:03] But anyway, I got to start. Could you please tell me how you met Shugori the Dove, Dej Alikur from De La Soul?

Speaker 2:
[02:13] Well, when I moved to Long Island from the Bronx and started going to school, the first two people I met, the first person I met was a girl named Regina Peters and the very second person I met in school, who was so cool to me, was a brother by the name of Michael Jalikur, which is Dave's brother. So that's how I got to know Dave. I was actually friends with his brother, Mike. I would see Dave from afar. That's Mike's brother, Dave. So this is me and Mike in fourth grade. I didn't really get cool with Dave where I knew him as like, Dave, maybe more towards like eighth grade.

Speaker 1:
[02:58] I'm about to say when you're younger, when someone's like two or three years younger than you, that's a whole nother generation.

Speaker 2:
[03:04] Pretty much.

Speaker 1:
[03:06] So he was like a little kid to you and then suddenly, like he just grew up and then, all right, he's holding up to-

Speaker 2:
[03:11] Him and Mike were very close, even though like he's the older brother, he was very close. I mean, older by what? I don't know, two years maybe? But they were very close. But like I said, it was just that Dave had his set of friends, and if I was coming around, it was because of Mike. It really wasn't because of Dave at all. So as much as I would see Dave, they would just see me basically because Mike had brought me around.

Speaker 1:
[03:37] We should also note that Mike was also a legendary tour manager. I first met Mike because he was tour managing Common. You guys' tour manager when you first started or?

Speaker 2:
[03:48] He was our road manager starting from about 89 when we went to LL. So yeah, he started out as our road manager. Yeah, and just worked his way into doing it and touring, tour managing for other artists.

Speaker 1:
[04:06] How did you meet Vincent Mason, Maseo?

Speaker 2:
[04:09] Mase in school. He moved from Brooklyn. I just saw him in the school. I would see him around because he was just, he's just stood out. You know, a lot of times when someone new come to the school, they just stand out immediately.

Speaker 1:
[04:23] And what school was this?

Speaker 2:
[04:25] Amityville Junior High. So this was junior high school and, you know, Mase was a fairly big guy. So I was like, who do it? I'm just assuming he was going to be a migrate and he was actually like a grade below. So yeah, I mean, we, but we didn't talk for the first time until we met through a mutual friend of ours who he was actually the first DJ that me and Dave was dealing with named Charlie Rock. And that's how we met Mase to actually have conversations with him.

Speaker 1:
[04:53] So what was the difference between Long Island life versus life in the Bronx?

Speaker 2:
[05:01] Well, I mean, for me, the immediate difference was the difference between a project building and in houses and in green grass. But I must say, even when I was living in Nelson Avenue in the Bronx, I mean, it was a lot of community. You were kind of really close around each other. So luckily enough, the kids, we all communed together and the parents was really nice to us. But I had got an understanding of what, say, open air living was when my mother would send me and my brothers to Waynesboro, Georgia every summer. We never spent a summer in the Bronx. So by the time they was moving us to Long Island, it was like a similar feel of like, oh, houses, space. You have a backyard, you got a front yard. So that was the major difference immediately. Then being able to just, I guess, my mother feel like it was safe for us to not be in her eyes view. So when we was in the Bronx, we would play downstairs in the main area where every parent could see their kids. My mother felt cool enough for me to ride my bike off of the block. It was also something that was just afforded with them in Long Island.

Speaker 1:
[06:12] Any recollection or memories of any of the folklore that the Bronx speaks on in their early years, like any block parties or have you heard a yes, yes y'all from, you know?

Speaker 2:
[06:24] Honestly, no, I didn't see that. I didn't see hip hop block parties. I mean, the Jamaican brothers in our building, like they could turn around and have speakers out, you can hear music playing loud like that, but I personally didn't see any like Bronx block party. No.

Speaker 1:
[06:45] So at any point in the De La Soul timeline, were you and Dave ever at any point, just regular ass, yes, yes y'all, emcees? Like, and I'm here to say, has that ever been like your second line in any rhyme you've ever said, just like?

Speaker 2:
[07:04] All of us getting bit by the hip hop bug from the earlier days of it. It was just more being a listener. But by the time I really wanted to pick up a pin and do it, I was already bitten by Treacherous 3 and how their cadences were. So no, I really wasn't like, yes, yes, y'all, into the beat. No, it's like sires of the phone, creator of a new tone. It's a must. You put your trust in my sound and style. That's how I started rhyming.

Speaker 1:
[07:34] All right, see, you're a koumoudi disciple.

Speaker 2:
[07:37] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[07:38] How social were you guys before the concept of, hey, let's start a group.

Speaker 2:
[07:46] Social and how, and-

Speaker 1:
[07:48] Like just being friends and hanging, you know, when I met Tariq, I'll pretty much say that we were a group maybe three months later, or at least my job was to hit the lunch table.

Speaker 2:
[08:04] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[08:04] And that's how Game Access with it. So, like, was music the immediate social adhesive that brought you guys together or-

Speaker 2:
[08:12] Before Dayla, it was more like we were just doing it. Like I said, everyone was bitten by this bug and I was, like, breaking, popping, and, you know, it was almost at one point me, Dave, and a couple of other friends. One of our friends, Anthony Bryan, his pops was trying to put us together to possibly go on Apollo. And we was going to dance and pop. Yeah. There was stuff like that going on. We didn't really say we wanted to be a group or try some hip hop group thing until Dave, who was just into beatboxing, he beatboxed against a really well-known beatboxer called Paul. Paul Carey. He was really dope at beatboxing. And Dave just battled him. And it was right from there. Dave was really nervous, but he did his thing. And then we all went outside and we was like, yo, that was so dope. And we was like, we should form a group. And that's when the first time we even pictured anything about, let's be a group outside of us being a fan of just the music.

Speaker 1:
[09:20] Was De La Soul the name of that group, or did you go through other iterations before?

Speaker 2:
[09:25] It was called Easy Street. I wanted it to be called Sop Sounds, because I was already writing and just thinking of different names, because it was just something I would do. And so when we were just thinking of a name for the group, and this is us outside of the high school, and we were just thinking like, what could we do? He was like, yo, what kind of name? I was like, yo, we should call ourselves Sop Sounds. And then I explained to them, yeah, my mother would always be like, yo, you better sop up that syrup in that plate. So I was like, yo, we are all these different sounds, we're sopped together. And everyone was like, nah, Merce, that doesn't sound right. Brian was like, yo, let's call ourselves Easy Street. I thought that was the wackest shit ever, but everyone loved it. Everyone was like, yeah, Easy Street. And that was Dave being a B-Box, me being a DJ, my people's Anthony, my people's Rob, and my people's KD, his name was Kelvin too, they were the emcees. So that's how, that was the first group me and Dave was in, Easy Street. And even Dave B-Boxing and me cutting, we was even still putting together rhymes to give to them to say as they even wrote their own rhymes.

Speaker 1:
[10:38] Okay. Can you tell me the story of how you met Paul Houston? Prince Paul.

Speaker 2:
[10:44] Paul was the cousin of the first girl I told you I met, the first person I met in high school, which was Regina Peters.

Speaker 1:
[10:51] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[10:51] You just knew Paul from afar. Paul was just very cool, very intelligent guy who could just DJ his asshole. He was just a great DJ in the neighborhood. So just knew him from afar. I think he was probably in the same grade, or maybe not the same grade as my brother, Tyrone. So yeah, I mean, just knew him from afar. So me and Regina being really good friends, I found out, oh, that's her cousin, and even he DJed one of her birthday parties that we would be at. So we just knew Paul as like, that's Paul. He was really cool, but that was DJ Prince Paul from afar. You know what I mean? I must say, I probably didn't even meet him where we exchanged anything between each other until Mace got with Paul to work with him on something that a gentleman on my block, his name was Mr. Everett Collins, and he was the tour drummer for Izy Brothers as well as our music teacher. So once Mace was working with Paul on that, he was the one who then introduced me and Dave DePaul. And I think Dave actually knew Paul, but I didn't know him. Like Paul knew my brother Tyrone, and he knew me as like, oh, that's Tyrone's little brother, Kelvin. And I knew him as well.

Speaker 1:
[12:15] Now on the 35th anniversary of Three Feet High and Rising, you guys included the original plug tuning and also the original freedom of speak. What equipment, and that was done without Prince Paul, like that was just you guys on your own.

Speaker 2:
[12:33] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[12:34] How did you guys make that? Like what equipment did you use?

Speaker 2:
[12:38] I think it was an RZ-1 mace hat. He had the drum, the RZ-1 drum machine. We also had this, oh man, what's the name of it? I know it was, I want to say we had like this Tiac, I think that's the way you say it, a track recorder. And then we also had the little Casio with the sample, where you could sample into it. I think me and you have spoken about this before, but the little Casio with the keyboards, they had to like the-

Speaker 1:
[13:05] SK-1?

Speaker 2:
[13:06] Yeah, you got it.

Speaker 1:
[13:06] Oh no, no, no, the one with the four drum pads on it.

Speaker 2:
[13:09] Yep, the four drum pads.

Speaker 1:
[13:09] That's a more advanced version, okay. Was this 86 or 87 you're speaking of?

Speaker 2:
[13:14] Right, 80, yeah, 86.

Speaker 1:
[13:18] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[13:19] I don't know, maybe, I think it was the pad one we had. So yeah, because we were putting noises in that, because that's where I first even did the Three is the Magic number for the demo. I would just keep hitting it and in Mace, we were looped the beat from, what was that?

Speaker 1:
[13:37] Led Zeppelin?

Speaker 2:
[13:39] Well, no, we took it from the hip hop history, Lesson 3, Double D and Steinsky.

Speaker 1:
[13:46] Okay, I got it, okay.

Speaker 2:
[13:48] Which was, like you said, the Led Zeppelin drums. But yeah, I mean, it was just those things we was working with in the house. It was very limited equipment. We thought it was the most amazing equipment at that time. And you know, we would just re-dub, we would do one take of something, then dub over the next take and yeah, it was that simple.

Speaker 1:
[14:06] What was it about, Paul, that showed you guys that you guys spoke the same language and, you know, what was the basic process in just pushing the train along to, let's be a group, to let's make a demo, to let's try to get a record deal?

Speaker 2:
[14:25] Well, once Paul heard the demos, you know, it was great to have him hear it because, mind you, at this point, this is DJ, this is now Prince Paul, it's not DJ Paul. This is Prince Paul who's now with Stat, and you know, they already got like a single out, you know, Rock de la Stero already went into their first album. So at that point, you figure, Paul wanted to meet with me, Dave, along with Mace. And so from that point, I was just very in awe of it all, but I was still very sceptic when he was just talking about wanting to now add stuff to whatever, these things that we had started to create on our own. You know, these are just 45s out of our own home that went from a Paul's tape to now us working on in Mace Basement. We were very proud of it. And we was very happy that now that Paul wanted to be a part of it. I remember him having that conversation, like, you know, I would love to try to add some stuff to it and da da da. And in my heart, I was like, I don't know if I'm with all that, but let's see where it goes. And when he added what he added, when he updated everything, it was absolutely mind blowing. And then even then, it wasn't until like us like really just hanging around each other amongst this time, he heard some of the other stuff we was doing, which were the skits, just us just having fun. It wasn't even skits to us. It was just when we were just lacking off, supposed to be doing what we was doing and we just having fun, being idiots and Paul was just like, yo, look what I do with my friends and he put in the VH tape of him overdubbing him and his friends voiceover like karate flicks. That is where I was like, yo, this dude is like us, like he's exactly like us.

Speaker 1:
[16:06] Wait, he would do that just to do it?

Speaker 2:
[16:08] Yeah. They were like literally put over clubs over karate tapes like, oh, you stole my doodle and it's time to fight. He would do stuff like that.

Speaker 1:
[16:17] So he would have been amazing on Instagram and YouTube had that been.

Speaker 2:
[16:22] Indie.

Speaker 1:
[16:23] 25 years early. Okay. Mind you, I know that I'm rehashing stuff that we've talked about personally, but we've never been on this platform to speak of it. All right. This is the most mind blowing thing. Could you give me what the budget was to record the entire three fee high and rising album?

Speaker 2:
[16:44] It was like $13,000, if like $11,000, $13,000.

Speaker 1:
[16:50] Okay. Like I think maybe the distortion is static. Like Bob Howe's budget for mixing might have been like half that. So I was just mind blown that you guys were able to make an entire revolution in such a limited financial capacity. Did you think that was fairly typical back then or did you know like, yeah, I'm on an independent label? And because in our mind, we're like, yeah, the Tommy Boy umbrella. So I'm thinking you guys are lighting up cigars with $100 bills.

Speaker 2:
[17:23] I mean, in mind, you humbly, we had no idea, you know.

Speaker 1:
[17:28] Right.

Speaker 2:
[17:28] Tommy Boy was one of those labels that just the logo alone meant something to you the way the Def Jam logo meant something to you, you know what I'm saying? So and we were blessed to have all these different labels brought to sign us. So we felt comfortable being with Tommy Boy because they were like in our mind a premium label of hip hop and Prince Paul, our big brother, was there. So I mean, when we got the budget, we had, we didn't know any better. We didn't know. I mean, you know, and being very honest, we're like, we're kids from a, you know, fairly middle-class, working middle-class family, you know, we had good living, but we thought $13,000 was a lot of money. So, you know, and whatever we had to do, Paul was very aware of, I'm assuming of whatever budget he had with Stetsa Sonic, and he was very aware of, like, when we were going to Calliope, as creative and as beautiful Paul made the environment, Paul was very much to the clock. He was like, you know, he would look like, all right, we need to wrap things up, or... So he was very aware and very frugal of what we needed to spend. But yeah, you know, I had no idea that $13,000 is nothing, whereas, of course, like these days, I mean, you asking an emcee to run for $13,000, that's probably like four lines.

Speaker 1:
[18:46] The thing is, is that especially with the first two records, you guys really make it sound like you lived in that environment. So I can't even fathom, like everything has to be made and created in one specific space, simply because like even the way that you guys make the skit sound, you guys make the skit sound very off the cuff. Although when you listen to those skits, they're also like well-crafted and well-produced. Like when it's the roots, we will be at sound check and then Tubo wears something real ugly or whatever, and then we'll break out in the song and make fun of him for five minutes. But you know, it's like us making it off the cuff and you guys make it feel like it's off the cuff. Although I know a lot of planning goes into those skits and I just always wondered like how much time is spent at Calliope? Is Calliope just for vocals and then you guys have a sort of a home base center in which the tape or the mic is always running in case something funny happens, it goes or?

Speaker 2:
[19:51] We knew, like we had a plan for what we need to do. We had, you know, Paul will give homework assignments. Like, so yo, okay, we got this song that looks like y'all want to call Ghetto Things. So Mers and Dave, you need to make sure you got this ready for that. Honestly, that first album, a lot of that was just off the cuff with the skits. By the time we got to De La Soul, it was more like, okay, we're going to plan. You know, I got this funny idea for a script. Okay. No. So I mean, like a lot of things like say De La Soul or G, it was just Paul already had the beat looped. We were just trying to figure out what we could do with it. I make a joke and be like, we should moan and groan over it. He's like, that's a great idea. I was only joking. We all now have to go into the booth, moan and groan. Wait a minute. Our one of our dancers and Dave's cousin's there. Y'all come in as the girls and do this. Your tip coming with us. Deny I don't know where we get De La Soul or G. So a lot of that was just, it was not planned for the Three Feet High joint. By the time we got to De La Soul is dead. Yeah. Like you said, like we knew we want to make this song called Kicked Out The House. And then Paul comes up with the beat at home. We come in, Dave comes with the chorus and then we're like, yo, we should get Bobby the drummer from Stead, tag like he's Colonel Abrams and everyone's laughing and he does it. Like that's where you do it a little bit more of the magic of on the cuff. But we're still playing.

Speaker 1:
[21:20] To me it's like you might lose the funny if you plan it. Okay, press play and then it's like, all right, well, the joke's over now, but it just always felt like the tape was running.

Speaker 2:
[21:31] No, it could be because like I said, with De La Salle is dead, Dave just happened to be bugging out on a piano. I'm sitting down on a far couch in Kalipe and he's just on the piano just doing stupid shit. Out of nowhere, Paul is just like he's signaling the engineer like, put the mic on, put the mic on. Then he's just sitting next to him and that becomes.

Speaker 1:
[21:54] Mics are always set up in the live studio.

Speaker 2:
[21:56] They're just set up so he just told him to turn the mic on and Dave didn't realize that what was happening and next thing I know, that becomes the skit that goes in front of the biddies.

Speaker 1:
[22:06] Johnny is dead. Okay, I got it. Okay. What was the very first song worked on for Three Feet High and Rising, aside from Plug Tuning?

Speaker 2:
[22:15] A lot of that was just stuff at home. So Plug Tuning, Freedom of Speak, all that was done at the same time at the crib. And then of course we came into Kaliope to do it. I would say the next song, once we got an album deal, because the next album was, I mean, the next single deal was Potholes and Jennifer. I don't know. I want to say, some reason I want to say Say No Go. We just kind of start all falling out of it. It was already ideas at that point we had. Like I knew I wanted to do something with the Hall of the Notes record, knew I wanted to do something with the Steely Dan record. Then we just start putting these things together.

Speaker 1:
[22:55] Got it. This album is also being made pre-Potholes access. When you guys are doing things, like the chopsticks bit on Jennifer, is this the era of having to splice tape? Or are you guys like the Bomb Squad, which you know by bar 64, you got to go down to 22 BPMs? Or is it like, what is the editing process?

Speaker 2:
[23:24] The editing for that particular song, it was an edit of us putting in the chopsticks, but versus Bitties in the BK Lounge, it was just all chaos. Like things was lined up and, you know, by the time Dave finished his pro, cause it was like, okay, I want to do this song. I told, I'm with Tip, we were shopping for records. I'm like, yo, I want to do like a Roxanne Roxanne, like UTFO had the three beats. I don't do that for us. It became what I wanted to attach to this idea of us making something about going into Burger King. So once we start putting it together, everything was just laid together. So Dave's music, which is the Tonya Gardner, No Frills record, my music, which is, what is that?

Speaker 1:
[24:12] It's Your Thing?

Speaker 2:
[24:13] It's Your Thing and Macy's music. So it was all lined up together. And so we just had to realize, all right, Dave, you ended it right there. We click in the, it's your thing. It don't sound right. So he was like, okay, we gotta extend it a little bit longer, say something. He said, stupid bitches. And then all of a sudden.

Speaker 1:
[24:31] Oh, I thought you were saying Spinner Burger. All right, all right, all right. I still thought you were saying Spinner Burger, Spinner Burger from the beginning, but stupid bitches.

Speaker 2:
[24:41] And all of a sudden it works. All right, cool. It was just like, just chaos, sweet chaos, like nothing like it.

Speaker 1:
[24:49] Okay, so now that time has passed, the Flo and Eddie situation with the Turtles, of course, you guys were part of this landmark situation in which a sample wasn't cleared. And I guess the Kids of the Turtles, were fans of you guys heard it. Mom, dad, listen, they're playing your music. And suddenly, they get litigious. The lure of it, I was led to believe, between you guys and Biz Markie, those were the darkest days in history and da-da-da-da-da. Was it just basically we cleared the sample and that was it? Or at its worst, were you guys sued for trillions? Or I never knew what happened at the end of that situation.

Speaker 2:
[25:30] It got settled. I was actually with our legal team meeting with their legal team. Their legal team, the lead lawyer, he was a big Daylight fan. He wanted an autograph and everything. Oh yeah, it wasn't anything. I mean, I was realizing, okay, we're getting sued for something we thought we hadn't... Not even that we thought, we knew we handed in the Tommy boy. That in itself was very upsetting to us. But yeah, the actual dealing with it, it wasn't anything I would say crazy outside of realizing we had to meet up with these people, come to an understanding of what it should be, which we wound up doing. Tommy boy wound up paying them some money. I didn't learn the fact that here it is, the money that Tommy boy was going to pay them to settle this was going to come out of our shit. And then that was another thing that kind of like made us learn about, wow, like we're being punished for something we actually handed in. You know, it all falls on us. But the dude was cool about it, the lawyer, their lawyer, and it didn't seem like he was being mean or anything. He actually, in speaking to our lawyer, was like, if the guys wanted to actually work with the Turtles, maybe that could be a solve. And we were just kind of like creatively like, no, we want to do that. Because if it was about that, maybe y'all should have just led with that. I just think like, no, like now in hindsight, maybe that's what we should have did. We just felt like, no, man, like y'all just came and tried to sue us and now you're getting this money, but now you're trying to work with us? It made no sense.

Speaker 1:
[27:00] The way that I was shot for records back then was literally, look at all the sample credits and then know to get that artist and then anything that they've been on and anything they've been, you know, so on and so forth. So like on their side of the fence, none of them saw this as like a good look. I mean, look, for George Clinton, he admitted, dude, if it weren't for y'all, the third Renaissance of Parliament Funkadelic would have never happened. So he was glad to play ball, but they didn't see it that way.

Speaker 2:
[27:29] And I'm being very honest and very understanding of them. I don't know what the members of Turtles want. I could only do what the lawyer was saying.

Speaker 1:
[27:41] So you guys never spoke to them personally or?

Speaker 2:
[27:44] Never spoke to them personally at all. This is just what the lawyer was saying. Maybe they weren't even involved, even in hindsight looking at it. I'm sure like they weren't heavily involved in this. It could have been the record company making sure that the lawyers did what they were supposed to do. Got you.

Speaker 1:
[28:02] Dude, why was I know never ever released in the United States as a single? Because when the smoke clears, when people talk about Three Feet High and Rising, the first thing they mention, even before Hall of Notes, but even before the sketches and all that stuff, is, oh my God, the rhyming over Steely Dan, I fucking love, how come you guys never released that here? Only in Europe.

Speaker 2:
[28:28] It was the Tommy Boy that was the label's decision. I don't know. I don't know if they felt like the album was run out of steam. Even by the time we did Buddy, and we did this remix to Buddy, that just ignited a whole another level of what it could be. But I love Dino. I mean, being honest, I produced Dino. So I would have loved it to be what it needed to be in the States. But we definitely saw when we were performing what it would be there. I think Tommy Boy led with that understanding as well, and that's why they only did it there. But I agree. I would have loved to have seen that release. But if I am to be very honest, after having Say No Go and then come with I Know, I think that even we was at a point where it was like, yo, we're losing anyone who looks like this. We need Buddy. I think that's where it was even for us.

Speaker 1:
[29:26] Okay. Has JJ Fad ever responded to Dela Craddock?

Speaker 2:
[29:32] No, not at all. I mean, we did a lot of shows with them and it was the nicest girls. Funny enough, even at the hip hop joint that you were involved in, we spoke with them. Yeah, we used to see them a lot back in the day, even just being around NWA and them. But no, I mean, they was really cool with us. We was really cool with them. No, I never think they saw it as a diss. We didn't even mean it as a diss.

Speaker 1:
[30:00] I didn't see it as a diss, but I mean, it's definitely referential to-

Speaker 2:
[30:04] Oh, yeah, yeah, supersonic. Definitely. Right.

Speaker 1:
[30:08] So Tommy Boy would often go heavy on the quirky contest things like guess that sample for whatever. Did anyone ever win that shit and what was the prize?

Speaker 2:
[30:20] I don't think no one won that. I'm being honest, I don't think they- it's almost like, and I remember being in meetings in that particular meeting and Tom was like, no one's going to guess this, Paz. No one's going to guess it. I don't think so either.

Speaker 1:
[30:37] I think they were all over like a thousand bucks like guesses.

Speaker 2:
[30:41] Yeah, no one.

Speaker 1:
[30:43] I went like for a good two hours, I went through my dad's entire record collection. Like, I'm going to find this shit if I didn't.

Speaker 2:
[30:51] Like, you know, and it's funny because like you said, in today's time, or even if you scroll back, I don't know, 15 years, like you got everyone who will be like, yo, it's this, is that? Nah. Like, back then, no one knew that.

Speaker 1:
[31:03] Okay, so can you please tell us, I mean, I know it's probably just to be silly, and I know it wasn't any logic behind it, but the overkill of Slick Rick's voice as sort of the connecting factor of De La Soul's dead with his entire, like, ladi-dadi ending thing, like, what was the genesis of the obsession? Was that sample just always on standby when you wanted to, was it like on the SK-1 just like, in case someone wanted to use it?

Speaker 2:
[31:39] It was pretty much, I mean, like, I'm being honest, pretty much, it was just like, we knew, like, after maybe the second time, it was just like, yo, this should be out, this would be funny if it just be out the album, and Paul has that sinister laugh like, yo, this is so stupid, this is me stupid, we got to figure out another place to put it. And so wherever it would naturally feel right, we would do it. And so I remember when Dave did it at the end of, when he was like, yo, Merce, do it at the end of your rhyme, do it at the end of your rhyme, to the bitty, to Lashaw, like, we can't do it. I feel like, yo, man, we would just do it, and we would.

Speaker 1:
[32:19] So that wasn't added in mastering or whatever? Like that was?

Speaker 2:
[32:22] Oh, right there in the studio, although, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[32:27] Okay. Just for those who don't know, what is the significance behind the title of you guys being Plugs?

Speaker 2:
[32:34] Well, Plugs started only from our fans. We had the single called Plug Tuning. And so, with me being the one saying Plug One, Dave saying Plug Two, that wasn't anything by design. It was just like we wanted to start the record off on something. And that was just even when Mase was to cut the record as a routine. Because you got to remember, Plug Tuning was just a routine. We was also like the children of the cold crush, the Dougie Fresh, the slick ricks. So we would have a tuning routine in the house. And like, instead of being like one, two, one, two, we'd be like Plug One, Plug Two, like to just the team Plug Tuning.

Speaker 1:
[33:15] Got it.

Speaker 2:
[33:16] So I just happened to be the one saying Plug One, Dave was the one saying Plug Two.

Speaker 1:
[33:20] Got it.

Speaker 2:
[33:21] By the time we made a record out of it, we performed it live, we performed it live for the first time at Stetsasonic's release party. And from that night, people was saying to me, yo, Plug One, I saw you the other day. And Dave was Plug Two. So the people who saw us named us those names.

Speaker 1:
[33:44] And by the way, who came up with the name De La Soul?

Speaker 2:
[33:50] It was me and Dave because I wanted, you know, when we're just trying to think of names, I came to Dave, was like, yo, I think we should call ourselves from the soul. And I gave him the whole reason behind it. I was like, I think everything we do is from our heart and soul. And I think it could be really dope, like from the soul. And Dave was like very understanding. See, kind of in his face, he was like, nah, I'm mercy.

Speaker 1:
[34:14] Is he the king of no? He's the king of no.

Speaker 2:
[34:17] He was like, but when he listened to what I was saying, he was like, look, the meaning behind it is dope. He was like, but he was like, from the soul, it doesn't sound catchy enough. Like, why don't you say instead of from the, say De La. And I was like, I'm with it. It was that simple. And that's how I became, instead of from the soul, De La Soul.

Speaker 1:
[34:49] Usually, the last songs worked on albums, wind up being singles or like a pivotal song. What was the last song worked on for 3FEE, I Am Rising?

Speaker 2:
[35:00] The last song was Living in a Full-Time Era, because we were already, and it's crazy that I can't even tell you the last song before that, because the only reason why that became the last song is that we heard, we were very confident in the album. We loved the album, we love what we had did with this, we loved the work we had produced with Paul. But when we heard The Adventures of Slick Rick, we were shook. He was like, yo, how's our album going to beat this album? Not even beat it, we just thought like, how is it going to live up to this?

Speaker 1:
[35:39] Right.

Speaker 2:
[35:40] I was like, yo, I think we need something else. I just, and we loved the song, Lick the Balls by him on that album. We was like, yo, we need something else. And I remember this kept telling Dave, yo, I think I got something. And I went in and put together the samples for Living in a Full Time Hour. This is a recording. And that's the last write. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[36:03] In light of you guys getting your masters back and re-releasing all the records again, we can hear the adjustments having to be made on Three Feet High and Rising. For a lot of those songs, did you have to use the original reels to mix all over again from scratch or? I'm only asking because I think on Freedom of Speak, it sounded way clearer and brighter. For some of those songs, you had to get the reels and remix them from scratch?

Speaker 2:
[36:39] We definitely got the reels and we did our best because at first, we did have a conversation with ourselves as saying, should we mix them, or should we preserve some level of it feeling like it did? So we had to talk with ourselves. But yeah, basically, we definitely tried to clean it up a bit, but not too much.

Speaker 1:
[37:08] I think the samples should be louder and I always wanted to fix my last verse in.

Speaker 2:
[37:15] We was like, yo, we can't start doing that. We can't think with our 20, at that time, 2024 or 2023 mind. We have to preserve what was made in 1989.

Speaker 1:
[37:30] That's right. Okay. So I want to ask the, we hate the song question. Now, in retrospect, do you feel as though you guys, and I say this in heavy air quotes, overreacted in rejecting what was clearly working for you guys in the late 80s and early 90s? Like, look, 30 years for me in the industry since 94, you know, I wonder if the resistance to mainstream, and look, I went through it twice with music and movies. Like, the second it starts and you're like, ah, this is too much. I wonder if the resistance to mainstream success and the kind of intense confrontations that arose from it was justified considering that you're pretty much entertaining the same demographics to this day. Are you not? Okay, so how jarring was it? Because I do remember a period up and right up until 1994, you guys spoke about it a lot on like De La Sola's Dead and especially on Blue Mind State. I know that Cypress Hill probably felt it the worst with like suddenly like the mainstream hip-hop is like, ah, man, they can pop down all those things. But how jarring did it feel to have that massive level of success like at the height of De La Madness? What did it feel like?

Speaker 2:
[39:05] The success itself was a blessing because I think you, your group understands the level of making your bones, traveling throughout the world. So just even in traveling, you saw it. You saw people in these different countries who didn't have English as the first language. And you had these people who actually learn English in learning your music and being in love with your music. So we saw how many people it did touch. We weren't just stuck, I guess for lack of a better way of saying it, stuck in just living in the States and only understanding what happened in the States. So we saw that as a blessing of what our music and how it could touch people, what our music could do. But still, I guess the success of, yo, you could be on here. Yo, you could be on top of the pops. Yo, you could be over here. Hey, yo, Benny, yeah, Benny Medina. Hey, what's up because we knew Benny and Benny would hang out with Russell. Like, yo, you know, maybe you should try out for this TV show that I'm trying to put together. Why don't you shoot your shot for this thing we got called Fresh Prince of Bel-et? It was just too much. It was like, yo, we don't want to do all that. We want to make music. I think us and our young minds was thinking, like, all that extra stuff was too much. As long as the success was there with us doing our artistry, that's what it was. Even by the time we got to, like you said, Balloon Mindstate, and, you know, now it's normal business. But at that time, you know, like, so got to hold up a Sprite can and rhyme, like, it was just like, oh, man, you selling out. You know what I'm saying? Like, that's just what it was then. You didn't understand this branding thing.

Speaker 1:
[40:45] See, I feel like I said yes to everything that you guys would have said no to. And even now, I'm wondering, like, did I make the right choice or did I not make the right choice? Like, you know, that remains to be seen.

Speaker 2:
[41:00] But if I may say as well, because I can be honest in looking back in hindsight, we bitched and moaned about a few things because in the blessings we were receiving, yo, man, Amir, we were just burnt out. We were like everywhere. We were doing things like this Three Fiat and Ryzen album has set us on this path where we couldn't land at an airport. You do interviews at the airport, but then you didn't get into the car and then you're being interviewed by this big magazine that you're going to be on the front cover of from the airport to the hotel. When you get out of the hotel, then you go into this banquet room and you have this press conference. Then you got to go to soundcheck but do an interview. It was all that. We were just tired of that shit. I mean, very honest. That's just really that had a lot to do with it. It was like this. OK, so this is what you got to do to be mainstream. Like, you know, we just want to go into the studio, make records, tour, whatever else come with that. I think that's really where we got burnt out from.

Speaker 1:
[42:05] OK, where is Jeff and why wasn't Mac Daddy on the left or Brainwash Follower included on the Three Feet reissues?

Speaker 2:
[42:17] I think it's just, I think us alone at Reservoir, we just needed to tag out a bit because of the fact that there was a lot of samples that weren't taken care of and that we took care of. And then it's kind of like, OK, and then we up for another round. OK, so let's go to another round of OK, these songs, these great songs that y'all put together on these 12 inches, let's get to it. And I mean, we're going to get to it.

Speaker 1:
[42:41] So you guys are fully aware that we're like waiting for the rest of the Three Feet item? OK, OK. Just wanted to make sure you knew we were waiting for that, not just like, ah, they don't care.

Speaker 2:
[42:49] OK. Jeff's a family guy. He just lives at home with his family. I mean-

Speaker 1:
[42:55] How old is Jeff now? Like he's got to be in his 40s now, right?

Speaker 2:
[42:58] Easily. I mean, maybe still late 30s, I want to say.

Speaker 1:
[43:04] Besides Mac Daddy, were there any other songs with him rhyming on it? Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[43:08] Jeff was a part of this crew. Dave was going to do- Wow, and I can't remember the name, which is absolutely horrible. They put together a dope ass demo, and Jeff had changed his name to Philly Black. He was in Philly one night, drunk too much and blacked out, and then his name became Philly Black. Jeff is Philly Black on our Bionics album. We have the song called The Sauce, and that's Jeff. Jeff is Philly Black on that album. But I think, yeah, Jeff is raming his ass off on that album.

Speaker 1:
[43:46] I didn't know that was him. Okay. All right. I didn't know.

Speaker 2:
[43:50] It's this demo that Dave put together, and I'm going to remember after the interview, which is horrible, like, Dave put together this collective. It was Jeff, Philly Black, it was Dave, and it was Devine, who rhymes on Pawn Star on our Bionic's album.

Speaker 1:
[44:06] Got it.

Speaker 2:
[44:07] Someone else. And it was just a bunch of really, really amazing music. But it never. And it was supposed to come out funny enough on Tommy Boy. And it just, I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[44:15] Okay. You guys are the king of the side group stories. Literally, every time I talk to you, you talk about well, we had a group with this group and that group and that group. How many side groups were there in the Native Tongue Spear?

Speaker 2:
[44:30] You're talking about the Fabulous Fleas, which was Me, Tip, Juju, Africa, Kids on Xenophab, which was Dave, Sammy B, and Mike G. I think someone else was in that with them. We had something that we was going to call the Hoods, which was just all of everyone in Native, but we was going to call it the Hoods. Yeah, we were just, I mean, we was just very, very much taking the job of the Parliament Funkadelic.

Speaker 1:
[45:03] Were the Violators ever supposed to be an actual group or you just, they were just the crew?

Speaker 2:
[45:09] No, they were just the crew. They were just the crew. It wasn't really supposed to be, not that I know of, but they weren't really supposed to be rhyming.

Speaker 1:
[45:16] I got it, okay. Well, I mean, they were just always given equal billing, so I just never knew. So obviously, the sound of De La changed on the De La Soul's Dead album, and most notably, the musical backdrop. So what was the difference between the access to records that you use on Three Feet High and Rising compared to the access to records that you got with De La Soul's Dead? In other words, how were the records acquired for Three Feet High and Rising, whereas I'm certain now that you're touring the world and you get to shop, you know?

Speaker 2:
[45:54] Every record used on Three Feet was just records that were from our parents' collection. So Club Tuning, that was my father's record. Jennifer, that was my father's record. You know, like, whatever. I mean, Paul was probably the only one at that time already being in step, but he was still using like his own record collection. But I think it was still records that he acquired on his own, or he may have gotten from his bigger brother, his older brother, and maybe some records he may have gotten being on the road. But the majority of records were just from our home, from myself, Dave and Mase.

Speaker 1:
[46:33] So for the first generation of like crate-digging in a non-Bimbata flash way, how heavy was the environment back in the dawn of the 90s? Like for our listeners that are listening, there was probably the Bible of breakbeats, which was a compilation called Ultimate Beats and Breaks, which every rapper worth their grain of salt between that classic era of like 85 to 90 were pretty much using this. It was like Wikipedia or AI for breakbeats, but it was always the same like 60 songs. And what made De La Notable was that they colored outside the lines. And, you know, it was a period of discovery, like, oh, the parts of the record collection that you ignore in your parents' house, like, oh, there's some stuff on there too. But for me, I feel like De La Soul's Dead was the first, what we call like the digging in the crates era. I'll say 99% of that record was the, you know, like we didn't know about Evil Vibrations sample or, you know, or even it's Lou Donaldson's version of It's Your Thing or any of those things. But then there would be some moments where I was wondering, were you trying to, even back then, I was wondering, were you trolling this, like using Funky Drummer on Oodles of Old on The Fade Out? Like it worked for me, but then I always wondered, like, were you guys being sarcastic or like, by that point, everyone played it to the ground and yet you used it on The Fade Out. So I always wondered, was that by design? And also Afro Connections at a high five, nobody in their right mind would use moustache era James Brown for anything. And it's almost like you guys chose the worst James Brown song ever, which is, for goodness sakes, take a look at those cakes, which no self-respecting rapper would ever rhyme over. And yet y'all did it. Can you explain the last thing? Like in the way you're smiling, I feel like I just uncovered some shits. Am I correct on this? Like why did y'all put Funky Jam on Oodles of O's when it didn't need it? I love the way you used it, but it didn't need it, but yet you did it. Why?

Speaker 2:
[48:59] Well, just like how you said, that was the mantra that Prince Paul made sure we lived by, which was it really worked. He said, yo, just try everything. Because if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Don't cancel out any idea. So at some point, Dave has already nailed. I mean, that was the first record that Dave led in production, was Oodles of Oats. And it was just absolutely amazing. But then he was like, yo, I have these other ideas like he tried to add on. And it's not in there. One day I can let you hear it. Like the beginning of Oodles of Oats, he started it all. He's doing like Frankie Beverly going, I got to make sure I'm right. We was like, huh? Why would you do that? He said, yo, I got to try it. And then he tried it, but we was like, nah. And then I think I want to say Mace wanted to add in the funky drummer. So maybe it could be like if we dropped out the beat we already had, then that could be in there. And then, mind you, I'm like, that's not going to work. But then we tried, it was like, all right, maybe you could use it at some point. But then luckily enough, it wanted to just be in something to be used at the end. And like, cause it was almost more for the eh, cause we almost wanted to throw in the eh, like that. And so, yeah, it wanted to be in something like we had fun, like, yo, let's just let it ride at the end. But I mean, maybe-

Speaker 1:
[50:25] See, I thought y'all were trying to make a grand statement. Like, every time I hear that song, the way that my brain was thinking was like, oh, okay, I see what they're doing. They're, like, sweeping the old guys out. Like, all you old rappers that used funky drummer were flushing you down the toilet, you know, on the fade out. It just made no sense, but I was always obsessed with that shit. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[50:47] Nah, and even with Maze, Maze did- he put together Afro Connections, and, like, I just remember him playing that for us, and we was like, this is amazing. Like, we was like, yo, this is the hardest shit ever. And, like, it almost sounded like some shit. People think Daylon should have me rhyming on it. I was like, that's why we got to rhyme on this. And, like, Dave and Melee was like, yeah, we should do it like on some exploitation shit. Like, I don't know, some, like, yeah, like, Afro Connections. And I was like, yo, whatever, like, anything Dave would say, like, all right, cool, let's try it. And so, yeah, man, that was just, wow.

Speaker 1:
[51:21] So, like, Afro Connections was a- if we were, like, Heart Street niggas, like, this is what we would sound like?

Speaker 2:
[51:30] Yeah, it almost-

Speaker 1:
[51:31] Like, y'all, like, in your mind, you felt like NW. Wade would rhyme to that?

Speaker 2:
[51:35] Yeah. So, it was kind of like, it was definitely like, it was almost like through this idea that Dave came up with, it allowed us to be hard, like, okay, we can, like, exercise, this is what we're doing. You know what I'm saying? Like, it allowed you to, like, play this out. Yeah, man, we had a lot of fun making it out.

Speaker 1:
[51:54] Okay, so I'm going to start with yes or no. Will you ever tell, air quote, that story? End air quote.

Speaker 2:
[52:06] Yeah. What a top of-

Speaker 1:
[52:10] No, about the Oodles Afro story.

Speaker 2:
[52:14] Yeah, I'll tell it.

Speaker 1:
[52:16] For the first time ever?

Speaker 2:
[52:17] Yeah, if you talk about what I think you're talking about.

Speaker 1:
[52:19] You'll do that for me?

Speaker 2:
[52:21] Yeah. I mean, shit, we grow now and-

Speaker 1:
[52:24] Kelvin Mercer, can you please tell me about the story of Afro Connections at a high five? Oh my God, I can't believe you're about to tell this story.

Speaker 2:
[52:36] So, the beginning of Afro Connections, where we say like, this is dedicated to all those horrible acts. You know, the dudes who fell the fuck off.

Speaker 1:
[52:44] Right.

Speaker 2:
[52:45] That was us being upset and mad at Run DMC. Because Oodles of O's at the time when we was working on our album, Oodles of O's actually was something that Dave put together for Run DMC. Because we were told by, we had the same management and we was told by Russell and like, yo, Russ, we want these guys, they need some music. Dave was honored to try to put something together. From what we understood, D actually liked what Dave had did. But I think Run wasn't with it. It was just like, who is these little niggas trying to do something for Run DMC?

Speaker 1:
[53:30] D is going on the record saying how much of a fan he was of you guys.

Speaker 2:
[53:35] Oh, I mean, trust me. And I'm not even trying to say that Run wasn't, but Run was just-

Speaker 1:
[53:40] But Run was Run back in the 90s. I met Run. I got this by Run. Go ahead.

Speaker 2:
[53:46] One with Run and the Monu. And now, like I'll say, like our first show ever, as I said, when we did plugtuning at the Stetsasonic party, DMC was in the front row. Yes. And all we was there to do was that one song. We got off, we was like so nervous after getting off, in the bathroom to get our composure. And we did a great job. DMC followed us into the bathroom. It was like, yo, get the fuck back on and do it again. That's so amazing. It's like, he was just always such a cheerleader to us. And Jay was too. And like I said, anytime we met Run, he was really dope to us as well. But we knew Run was Run. You know what I'm saying? Run had that attitude, like no one is doper than me. And shit, we looked up to it. We want to be like Run and I'm in our mirrors as well. So anyway, I guess when Dave tried to give the beat to them, so that was the whole focus of Oodles of O's, the way Dave did the Oodles of O's, you know, he saw it as like how DMC would have the echo in O's, you know, no, da da da da da da da da da da da da. He was trying to do it on some Run DMC shit. They didn't take it because Run dissed it, but like super dissed it, we want to put it on our. Which I was cool with, I was like, yo, this shit is dope anyway, we can do it for our show. But in being mad and cryptic, we did the whole shit with connections.

Speaker 1:
[55:07] Got it. Okay.

Speaker 2:
[55:08] They got us back because I think they realized it and through Afros, they kind of. Yeah. Cause on one of the Afro albums, Jay and them, they did it. They did like some skit where I think they use a saying, something like something and then there's like some guns going off. What? I'm 100% sure that happened. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[55:33] I'd never do that shit.

Speaker 2:
[55:34] Yeah. We were just young. We loved Run DMC. We just heard that they, it's one thing to be like you just don't want to use it.

Speaker 1:
[55:42] Right.

Speaker 2:
[55:44] How Run just kind of dissed us about it. I'm sure you would run about it today and Run wouldn't even remember.

Speaker 1:
[56:01] I don't know how to ask this next question, but one of the recurring themes that I always have on this podcast is that pioneers really just get the glory of saying that they did it first, but it's always the person that comes second that gets the glory from it. And the pioneer never gets the credit. So, I mean, at one point to me, it just felt like a running joke. But when you hear songs like, when you hear Dear Mama or Ghetto Red Hot or Mary J's Be Happy remix or How I Could Just Kill A Man or Funky Child or Float On, What Up Pete, or Crucial Conflicts, Hey In The Middle Of The Barn or Warren G's This DJ or Portraits, Here We Go, shit, yo. Distortion is Stacked By The Roots, The Youngsters, doing your little eagle trip, paper ripping verse or even aerial codes for the ludicrous. I joke, but I'm not joking. I think Set A Drift from Memory Bliss is the greatest De La Soul song that y'all never made. You know what? It wasn't even till maybe two weeks into what they do that someone was like, Oh, you guys just did the De La video. And I was like, no, oh God, we did do the De La. Like I'm dealing with the biggie part of it, but I didn't even get to the De La part of it. You guys literally have done things first. It's almost like I listen to y'all to see what's going to be the next big hit. But at one point, did it just become like, yeah, of course, like to hear all of your ideas and musicality and samples, get reused, and they become like actual big gigantic hits for these artists that do it?

Speaker 2:
[57:57] I mean, basically from Ludacris doing the Aria Codes record, we never felt like, oh, man, he's trying to repurpose our idea and he got to hear from it. We never would look at things like that. We never would look at Mary doing her record and using, say, the Dollar Bill Yard record, the way we use it with the backwards 808 going vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv We took different things and used it from people we loved and we respected, and we just felt like, yo, it's an homage to them. So, nah, man, we never really thought of things like that at all, you know.

Speaker 1:
[58:36] So, one of the unsung stars or heroes of, well, we already talked about it, was LaShawn, a.k.a. Amin Joy, or Bittys. Not many, every time someone's in my car and Bittys comes on, I have to tell them that Shashana Marisol, like Shashana is the girl from LL's doing it, and she had singles on and all that stuff. Like, how did you guys, back when her name was Amin Joy, how did you come across her?

Speaker 2:
[59:10] I mean, LaShawn was just around this. She was hanging around us at that point. Her and Sammy B was messing around. I mean, her and Sammy B.

Speaker 1:
[59:18] Oh, okay.

Speaker 2:
[59:20] So, I mean, she was just around. She would just be in the studio. So, like, her being her-

Speaker 1:
[59:27] Was she an MC, MC? Or she just had a really good voice in delivery?

Speaker 2:
[59:32] No, she was an MC. Okay. She was really-

Speaker 1:
[59:35] Because that's also her, Amoni's, that's her voice, way that at. That's her, right?

Speaker 2:
[59:40] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[59:40] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[59:41] She had a great voice. She could rhyme my ass off. We were already hearing stuff she was doing because she would just be in around the studio and letting us hear rhymes and whatever. So, LeShaw was just in the studio, like, just in the studio in Kaliope. So once I came up with the idea and being like, yo, all right, Dave did his idea of bitties. He acted out where him and our friend Wade comes in, deal with the people who work behind the counter. I want to have more of an exchange between a girl, but the girl rhyming. And I work, you know what I'm saying? I'll be the one working at Burger King. And so I was like, yo, immediately, I was like, yo, LeShaw would kill this. She has the right voice. She can write some shit to roast me. And then when I told her the idea, she was like, I'm in. And when I started hearing her rhymes, I started getting scared. I was like, oh shit, she's gonna kill me. He's like, I stop. Get back, I was like, yo, you all right with this? She's like, yeah, I'm cool with that.

Speaker 1:
[60:36] Yeah, how does that work? I never interviewed a rapper MC as far as like, I never understood how group structure worked. I've only known solo MCs. Here's my 16. So how did that back and forth get constructed?

Speaker 2:
[60:51] That exchange, it had to really be kind of like, it couldn't be just me saying, look, LeShaw, I rhymed here, this is space for you. I rhymed here, this is space for you. Listen to everything I said and answer back. It was more like, nah, let me do this first, you started off, you say something and we talked about it.

Speaker 1:
[61:11] You respond to it, right.

Speaker 2:
[61:13] We talked about how it should go. Then she had her parts and I was like, Joy, that's dope. Let me respond to it this way. Then she would now respond to what I say. Even if she had something she thought was cool, she would change a bar there to make it fit better with how I ended, how I responded. We was on the spot doing a lot of it.

Speaker 1:
[61:35] Yeah, that's amazing, man. That was such a dope moment. How did Black Sheep get into the Native Tongue Spear?

Speaker 2:
[61:43] It was through Mike G. It was the same with Moni and everyone else. There was never no audition to have someone in. There was someone saying, like, yo.

Speaker 1:
[61:55] I'll order it in the court. Okay, I'm going to...

Speaker 2:
[61:57] It was just really like, yo, I think this person could be dope. And there was never really no pushback. So I remember, I remember Mike G coming to the studio. He always called me noose. Yo, noose. Yo, it's these two dudes, man. We've been messing with. They're called Black Sheep. And he explained who they are and da, da, da, da, da. And I had already saw long before Roland went red. He's like, yeah, you know, yo, I'm telling you, they're going to be really dope. We think about they could be a really dope fit for, for natives. Like they're, they're different. And I was like, cool. It was like.

Speaker 1:
[62:34] Got it.

Speaker 2:
[62:35] You know what I'm saying? And then, and I think it was everyone else the same way.

Speaker 1:
[62:38] Wait, you just said something that just, so wait a minute on Jenny, you're not talking about rope. Noose is self-referential.

Speaker 2:
[62:48] What do you mean?

Speaker 1:
[62:50] She said, let's try it in the bathroom, but the noose was way above the sink. You were talking about you as impossible. Oh God. Okay. I, I'm sorry, bro. I thought you was going to the real dark.

Speaker 2:
[63:04] Way above sink. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[63:07] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[63:08] I'm talking about, oh, I got a noose hanging. Oh, come on, B.

Speaker 1:
[63:12] No, I thought you were like, I was like, yo, there's some dark sexual fetishes of shit going on with nooses. And I was like, for real. I was like, yo, is he talking about asphyxiation? Oh, pasta noose, not.

Speaker 2:
[63:24] I was talking about me.

Speaker 1:
[63:26] I thought she was saying, yo, let's try to the bathroom and hear some rope and let me.

Speaker 2:
[63:31] I'm about doing things in the bathroom in the sink, so I'm not.

Speaker 1:
[63:35] Oh, God. I'm a dweeb. I'm sorry, man. Okay. Why haven't the J.B.'s appeared on Three Feet or De La Soul is Dead? Besides, like, oh, wait a minute. Their own buddy. What am I saying? Besides the fanatic of the baseball, like.

Speaker 2:
[63:56] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[63:57] The Jungle Brothers just fade into the background or.

Speaker 2:
[64:00] No, I mean, it was just always about we, I mean, especially by the time we got to Balloon, it was really, really about, yo, who is the right instrument vocally for record? You know, like, they felt like, yo, man, I feel like Shorty should be on a record. So when the record, he said, no, like the entire record, like her voice, like, if it's just an ad-lib. She's like, yo, that's dope, cool. So yeah, I mean, like it was the same with Jungle. If it was just nothing that we were working on that presented itself where, yo, let's get them on this. We just didn't do it. Same with Trot Lab, you know, like, cause I don't really, what, Tribe ain't on that record. Maybe they were on a remix where I had, when I had Q to sing, dig the sounds, come or fog, plug one on the Break of Dawn remix. Right. It just seemed like Black Sheep just worked out. They was just always around. But mind you, the crazy thing is, like, Afrikanem was in the studio. They would be around there every now and then. And I don't blame for them, but it just wasn't the right record that.

Speaker 1:
[65:09] Does the producer of the song for who the session is for is the person that initiates, you should get on this, you should get on this, or have people been like, yo, I want to be on this.

Speaker 2:
[65:23] And that kind of came a little bit later, but definitely was about us saying who should get on something or, you know, even Tip, like, yo, Merce, I want you to try something on this, this scenario record. And I'm like, after I'd heard it already put together, I'm like, wow, really? Like, this shit is done. It's like, it is what it is. And then he wanted me, he tried me on something else that he wanted me and Lord Finesse on, called Bust How I Ain't Trying to Hear That. So I think it's called I Ain't Trying to Hear That. And I was like, cool, let me try something to that. So it was just really that. But yeah, we would get to a point where like in each other sessions and hearing stuff, like because when Tip did Mr. Muhammad, Africa was really making him uncomfortable because he's like, yo, this should be the, this should be like the native record. This should be like we, and this is this idea we had called The Hoods. This should do this record. And Tip was like, nah, like I want this to be for Ali. I want this to be called Mr. Muhammad.

Speaker 1:
[66:32] Gotcha.

Speaker 2:
[66:33] So yeah, like, you know.

Speaker 1:
[66:35] I see. All right, so look, how challenging was it to craft the final verse of Millie pulled a pistol on Santa? Because the way that you navigate such a heavy themed song, which, you know, is about a daughter defending herself against an abusive father. And you still have to maintain suspense. You also have to bring empathy to the situation. And for me, that verse is remarkable because this was done in a time which rappers really weren't granting women agency. Like each line, the way each line was crafted. And the thing is, one, you're saying it in a rhythmic way in which the words have to fit.

Speaker 2:
[67:22] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[67:23] To me, the most crucial line of that is your last three lines, which is, you know, Dylan pleaded with Mercy, he said it to mean to do all the things that her mind couldn't do nothing but cling to, which is such a word salad. But that also, that line gives you empathy for her in a way where it's just not like it could have easily been like, yo, I know this girl around the way and then she shot him dead. You know, it could have been like Fast Peg by LL Cool J. You know what I mean? She shot him in the head. That's the breaks. Like, next song. Dude, I'm saying Fast Peg by LL Cool J was like a minute, 19 seconds. Pretty much just could have been the same narrative, but it wound up just being more like an intense sketch. But to me, that's what I think about when I think about the beauty of hip hop storytelling. You have a very short period to paint this picture of the song to make it work. What was the genesis of that song?

Speaker 2:
[68:24] Well, it's like you said, title was gained from us going into the city, saw this homeless guy, he had a dirty Santa Claus outfit on him in the subway station. First words that came to my mind was, Millie pulled a pistol on Santa. Don't know why, but it did. And he was walking next to me, I was like, yo man, that'd be a dope title. Because at that point, we were just into this writing even down titles, and then matching the right lyrics or story to the title. So I immediately pulled out the little pad I had in my pocket, wrote the title down. Paul, several weeks later, gave us this tape, cassette tape of just different beats he's working on for us. And I heard the music I'll Stay by, what is that, Funkadelic?

Speaker 1:
[69:14] Funkadelic, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[69:15] I was like, Dave, this is Millie pulled a pistol on Santa. Just how weeping this sounds. This is it. I was like, got you. Then I married it to someone I was very close to, was being molested by her father, in real time, got everything, and then start crafting everything from there. So I mean, the story was literally happening to someone that was very close to me. In real time, this is how I felt about her fucked up father. And I was writing on this. So yeah, it was like, and as you eloquently explain in terms of how a writer is supposed to put the suspense, and I didn't have any idea about that. I was starting loving to read and whatever. I just thought like, okay, this is how I got to write this story. And Dave loved what I was doing so much. He was like, Mers, write the whole thing. He was like, because what you showed me, that for your first verse, he was just beating on it. He's like, I don't know how I...

Speaker 1:
[70:20] We'll pick it up.

Speaker 2:
[70:21] Just for it to be just solid, you write the entire thing and assign to me what you want me to say. Cool. And so that's what I did. I just kept going, kept going. But I knew I wanted it to end abruptly, like how a shot will abruptly end your life. But I had to fill in from the beginning to end. And like you said, it was a challenge to make sure that once I was staying in this rhyme style, this cadence, my thoughts of how I wanted it to go, I had to find the right words for the cadence.

Speaker 1:
[70:56] Dude, I have so many great ideas for shit, but I just because of my word salad brain, I don't know how to succinctly... Tariq's original AI, he knows how to whittle words down to make it fit rhythmically and all that. And I just never knew.

Speaker 2:
[71:09] Now to like, it's funny, I know, I wanna say y'all did it, y'all did the song over. And I got, I remember when it got to this one part where I, I never fixed it because when I say complete, it was probably like complete with an accent. But I say it so weird, complete with ad-accent, it almost like I'm, it sounds like I'm saying complete with ad-accent.

Speaker 1:
[71:34] Right.

Speaker 2:
[71:35] And I'm really saying an, an accent. But I had to do it in the style.

Speaker 1:
[71:42] Never knew, okay.

Speaker 2:
[71:44] You know, I know like people was like, what the hell is he saying?

Speaker 1:
[71:48] What is the Renee King story?

Speaker 2:
[71:50] Renee King, she, and I mean, bless her heart, I couldn't tell you exactly what she did in the music industry, but we knew her from like, if we were at like a seminar, she would be there doing whatever she would, you know, a music seminar, she was there. Or we would come to Philly at whatever show she was there. So we knew she was a part of the industry.

Speaker 1:
[72:15] Right.

Speaker 2:
[72:15] But you know, she, I mean, this point blank, seemed like a really nice, but little eccentric woman. She was trying to holla.

Speaker 1:
[72:29] Word.

Speaker 2:
[72:30] So I was just trying to like, nah, you know, I'm young, I'm like 18, 19, and she seemed like she was probably like in her 30s. I was like, nah, I think so.

Speaker 1:
[72:42] Okay, sounds up.

Speaker 2:
[72:45] She was definitely like an older woman.

Speaker 1:
[72:47] Yes, I can hear.

Speaker 2:
[72:50] So I was just like, nah, I don't necessarily want to do that. Some other things in Philly I'm looking at. Right, right. But she was really cool, really nice. But yeah, I mean, I just thought like in her saying what she said on her thing to me, like if she's trying to get at me and this for the music business, because it's kind of like I think she got to feel like I think she's trying to holla, and I'm going to use this for Ring Me Ring. I'm going to get you with this and that's why I put it in front of you.

Speaker 1:
[73:18] She was fine with you guys putting her phone number and-

Speaker 2:
[73:21] She loved it. She kept the same phone number, everything. I remember she did an interview and she loved it. She loved it.

Speaker 1:
[73:39] By 91, were you guys already over the idea of De La Soul, the idea of Native Tongues, like whereas you guys are supposed to be like 16 kids hanging out in boho clothing and head wraps and incense and whatever. Were you tired of the idea of the boho-ness of what we thought, as your fan base, thought Native Tongues was?

Speaker 2:
[74:03] Well, we as De La could have felt it a bit, because if you realize that's why we ditched everything from three feet. That's what De La So Dead was all about, like ditching this outer shell that everyone's paying attention to. So let alone the outer shell of Natives the same way. And Q-Tip, Ali and all of them, they was especially fight, they was all doing the same thing. Like, all right, okay. I had enough of looking like this on this cover. Like I'm putting on this baseball hat, because this is what I really wear when I'm in St. Albans. Or I'm walking around the Queen's. You know what I'm saying? So yeah, I mean, I'm sure like it was, it just kind of like became more of like, yo, we got these dope ass rhymes. We got these banging ass beats and they're super creative. It was almost like that was more of the mantra. Like, they can with us when it really comes to that, being super creative and we can rhyme. We didn't want people to just focus on the imagery.

Speaker 1:
[75:04] Normally, you know, when you guys rhyme, I still feel like I know what you're saying because I can pick up like every seventh word. But within Focus, I understood absolutely everything you spoke of, even to the Funkadelic Knee Deep reference of, you know, of me, myself and I sort of being in the sunset and now this is where my life is. So can you explain just the whole idea of in Focus? Like, was there really a period where it just felt like the plane was landing and now the dream was over and now and I'm not saying that it's a cynical album because the thing is, is that I think maybe this year in listening to like the reissue, the one thing I never said was like, oh, you know, as much as I talk about Three Feet and De La Soul is Dead, like, really, the album that gave birth to the roots was Blue Mind State simply because of the musical directions that you guys took. But how jarring did that feel like when I heard it in focus, that that actually made me depressed, which it's an upbeat song, well, not upbeat song. It still sounds like a hip hop jaunt, but that was the first time where I was like, oh, all might not be well in, you know, Amityville land or wherever I thought, the idea of De La Soul being like, talk about just the creation of In Focus and the cynicism behind it.

Speaker 2:
[76:36] With my brain at this point, I don't recall who came up with In Focus. It sounds like something Dave would do. I came up with the music.

Speaker 1:
[76:47] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[76:49] But yeah, I mean, In Focus as a theme, definitely Dave, and definitely Dave was at that point, because even we had the running joke even at that point. Where's Dave? He's somewhere in Haiti in a tree. Dave was already this really tired with the fame, the fame aspect of it, and just what it took to keep it going.

Speaker 1:
[77:16] Is this why he cut his hair? Is this why he-

Speaker 2:
[77:18] All that, just trying different things. And crazy enough, before Dave passed, several interviews we were doing leading up to the catalog, he really talked in-depth about it, which was just very eye-opening for me. Because I didn't know he was feeling like that for that album. Dave was just revealing that he was just really not in a great place with himself and understanding himself, and where he was going, and how he should be evolving as a father, as all these things during Balloon Mindstate. So Dave really was, it was almost like he made it sound like, and in hindsight, looking back, I get it, he was almost like an airplane mode. Like he was just like, okay, I'm going to listen to the mantra of Paul, that if this is what Paz thinks is dope to try, or Paz want to do this thing called Patty Duke, Paz think, yo, Mersh, you write the rhyme, because I don't think I can really nail it, but that was his way of saying he didn't really like it. And that's why, not to skip out of your question, but then that's why when he checked back in, for stakes aside, he came back with a vengeance. So yeah, during that period, in focus is definitely Dave, like he's tired of this shit. Like he's tired of this light being on him. If I want to do some dirt, niggas looking. If I want to chill, niggas looking. I just want to rest with my daughter, looking. That really I felt like that's what they felt.

Speaker 1:
[78:44] How did you guys discover Shadara, Shadara Parr and Tagaji Khan, the two Japanese MCs on Long Island Wildin?

Speaker 2:
[78:57] Well, it started from, Khan was down with, already down with Red Alert. So the prop master stuff, we almost found out about Khan through Red Alert before we even went to Japan. So by the time we went to Japan in this meet Khan, he introduced us to his own boys, SDP, and we were actually getting on shows together. We were just really cool. They really pretty much in all of what we was doing and love what we were doing, and we actually felt the same about them. We was like, yo, these three dudes, to us, they felt like the Japanese Beastie Boys. They were just really creative, and we just saw a similar kinship musically, where the barrier of not understanding them and them not understanding us, probably, every word, but we felt a connection to the music. So we was like, when we came up with that skit, Long Island Wildin, and it only came from, I had this, the beat was just the beat, but I had this tape of Mantronix performing at the Red Parrot. Tricky T, who rhymed, of course, in Mantronix, he was just like, yeah, and I'm out in Long Island right now, because Long Island be wildin like that, but that's where I'm staying at, Long Island. And I was like, yo, it would be dope to put this in this beat. And then, of course, us just take it just elsewhere, it was like, and we don't even rhyme on it. Let's let SDP and Kahn rhyme on this shit, because they ain't from Long Island, they're from Japan.

Speaker 1:
[80:29] Right, right.

Speaker 2:
[80:29] Both sense. We thought that was be like, why? All right, let's do that. And then that's what we did.

Speaker 1:
[80:36] I see. On IMIB, how many side characters did you guys get to loop? And did they have to loop the entire five-minute duration of that song, of whatever they were? The... I am da-da-da, I be 411. I am da-da-da. Did they do that in the entire...

Speaker 2:
[80:55] All those vocals mainly consisted of stuff I... I would walk around my dad and just get people to say it. So at that point, we were hanging out a lot at Delaware State. Our friend Wade, who's Boss Hall, who Dave is... He's on the ad-libs and Dave is talking about...

Speaker 1:
[81:13] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[81:14] He went to Delaware State. So we were always hanging out there. And so all the friends we made there, I had them like, yo, I'm making a song called I Am My Bee. And he just said, I am your name, I be whatever. And then I would get them. But then, of course, Shorty, who was already at this point, going to be on the entire album, we wanted Shorty to do this. I was like, as long as you can possibly say it. And then, of course, people like Busta and Q-Tip, and we recorded them right in battery. And God bless the dead, crazy enough, Bob, of course, helped us put all that together. And this is before the simple age of what we have now. You make a voice note, you slip place. It wasn't just as simple. It was really already figuring out okay, Bob, I want this to go first. I want to hear this say this person, but I want it to kind of start building up. And he's like, and so he technically is trying to figure out how to do that. And then also like a change I can be like, cause when Tip says, I am Q-Tip, I be friction. I was like, yo, that's amazing. Let's put Tip, let's move whoever was in the way, put Tip saying that, echo. So it was tedious. Like probably doing the rhymes to that was easier than putting all those vocals in. That took me.

Speaker 1:
[82:31] I almost wondered it. I was wondering, did you leave gaps in the rhyme just to have the ad-libs coming?

Speaker 2:
[82:40] No, no, we just figured out like, you know what? This feels good. I knew, okay, like right where I end my rhyme, I wanted someone to say something. I think, okay, I got one leftover from Chris Lighty. Baby Chris, you say this. Like, yeah, man, it was just trying to fill it up as much as possible.

Speaker 1:
[82:56] Got it. Did the JBs ever respond to your verse in IMIB.?

Speaker 2:
[83:01] No, I played it for them before the song, before the album came out. I went to them and played it. I sat, I was in a car with Long and them. I was like, I'm putting them up. I played it for them. I played it for Q-tip. I played it for them. It wasn't like they heard it for the first time when it was mad.

Speaker 1:
[83:20] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[83:21] You know, and it was me because our relationship wasn't a weird space. We were always refining fame. And I kind of really took it to heart because I looked at them as my two brothers. You know, like I was hanging with those two dudes, Q-tip and Afrika at one point more than I was hanging with, you know, Dave and Mace. So if I was home and we weren't doing daylight stuff, I was at Afrika's house, in his house, staying at his house, his mother's cooking for us, or I would be at Q-tip's house. And we were like together. So it seemed like we was falling apart from each other. And that was just me being in my feelings and wrote that where in hindsight, it was just really should have been more of a talk with each other about what was going on with each other. But I went to them in the hopes of showing them this in my way of just trying to fix our relationship, where it seemed like we weren't all hanging with each other.

Speaker 1:
[84:27] Got it.

Speaker 2:
[84:28] You know, Tiffen spoke about it, like he understood it then, but it just that once that it came out, it was kind of like a bandaid that's kept getting ripped and ripped and ripped. And I think like it caused some animosity maybe at some point, but in whoever else.

Speaker 1:
[84:44] All right. Stakes is high. The intro. Who just happened to be battling another MC when they hear Criminal Minded for the first time? I'd never ever believe that line as long as I hear it. Like, battling another MC. That had to have been Mose.

Speaker 2:
[85:05] Oh boy, I love that boy, man. Mose Yacine Bey.

Speaker 1:
[85:09] Wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[85:12] I will say it forever and ever. He was the battery of all those sessions. Mose, once he came around, he was there every day. And he was like the cheerleader, the battery, the inspiration.

Speaker 1:
[85:26] How did you guys meet him? Because I met him through, I think I met him for the first time, that whatever the De La Live at Tramps. Yeah. How did you guys meet Mose?

Speaker 2:
[85:37] Through Mace. Mace was DJing at some spot. And Mose actually was the particular spot it was. Mose was like doing some type of poetry hosting there. And I think from there is how they linked. And Mace every now and then would be like, you know, this kid, you know, he's dope and blah, blah, blah. I was like, you know, cool, you know, come by the studio one day. Mind you, I'm already seeing this Dante Smith guy cause these mysteries. I didn't know that. But yeah, I mean, once Mace brought Mose through, told him how Mose come through, he was like there every day.

Speaker 1:
[86:17] Okay. When you get to Stakes reissues, can you please include the original Dave intro, where he's word-jumbling and the intro song, the intro.

Speaker 2:
[86:33] Yeah, because it's the anniversary coming up in a few months, and we're dealing with right now what we're going to put on it. So that's-

Speaker 1:
[86:39] Please, I don't know why y'all edited it, but for me, just-

Speaker 2:
[86:44] Oh, it's just too long. It's just too long. That's fine.

Speaker 1:
[86:47] No, it was- It was genius because you're literally inside the head of David's. He's trying to figure out the right cadence, but I don't know. I always thought that was brilliant. By that point, 96 was upon us. We were getting the two critics started, sort of labeled the perspective as somewhat elitist, or they invented a new term called player hating or whatever. But when you compare it to what we're dealing with now, looking back, do you find it surprising how hip hop has evolved or de-evolved, and is it shocking? What's your feelings on the whole Stakes As High kind of...

Speaker 2:
[87:31] For the most part, Ahmir, I'm a positive dude. Believe it or not. Because I know a lot of times when I look at, sometimes I say this to myself when I write, I can write things out of like a warning label, like be careful y'all, this is about to happen. But I do feel that even now, there's amazing music out. It's just the problem is you just got to find it. It's not easy to find. I think with our minds, someone would be like, you know what, I only know how to look on this particular site opposed to go to that site, and that site is its own world. So I think it's harder to find stuff. And so when you talk about, at one point, when mainstream music could have more positivity, you know, like, Karras won with this super great hit, but he's Karras won, or Tribe got this beautiful, amazing record in their pocket. Yeah, I mean, that's a little hard to come by these days. And, you know, Stakes is High originally for me was about life. So even Dave was like always really a little bit more about the industry, like, yo, this industry is bullshitting. I don't know where we stand in the industry. And I was like, you know, I was reading a lot of, quite honestly, like, you know, like a Hebrew Israelite books and different types of books. I don't know where life is at. Like life is a little crazy.

Speaker 1:
[88:56] So you about to go to Penn Station with the crate.

Speaker 2:
[89:02] I used to get my books. I used to get, I was, you know, I was really deep. I was really deep. You know, honestly, I was, I was a part of the Nubapian nation. My name was Fahkorda. I knew Dr. York. I was going out to the land. Yeah. If you look at Break of Dawn on Balloon Mind State Times, like even the video Break of Dawn, I got the patches on on my shirt. So I was, I was heavily in that.

Speaker 1:
[89:24] How did I miss that?

Speaker 2:
[89:26] I was heavily in that.

Speaker 1:
[89:30] Were you in the next Lifetime video with Erika, too, and I didn't know it.

Speaker 2:
[89:36] So, I mean, like, yeah, I mean, I was just really on some like, yeah, life is life, as they would say these days, and we really need to look at what we're doing. And we meant it in a really good way. We didn't, we know, we didn't want to turn around and say anything mean, and then get into some issue with someone. But we was willing to, if it had to be, because we just really was singing out of love. And as you said, when you look at where a lot of music is today, and funny enough, a lot of MCs back then, who felt differently, they feel the same now. And they'll come to us and be like, yo, like kind of like-

Speaker 1:
[90:11] Y'all was right. Why did you guys waste that nonstop beat? Like that shit could have went far for y'all. And I get angry every time it comes up, and I'm always like, I know there's a corresponding song that goes with that thing, cause-

Speaker 2:
[90:30] Oh, it was just a banging ass beat Dave made, and he wanted to use it to talk over. And crazy enough, no man, which is the beauty of it all. Like I didn't give him any, I didn't really beat him in the head about it. I didn't even be like, yo, like-

Speaker 1:
[90:47] Oh, dog.

Speaker 2:
[90:49] Yeah, I didn't look at it like, yo, we should rhyme on this. Nah, it was just like, oh, this is dope. And now you want to do this over it and fade up and fade down? You know, it really was like that. I mean, there's a lot of songs like that. I mean, you know, It's So Easy was like that. I didn't, that's why Dave, that's why it became his solo thing. I didn't see it as something to rhyme over. I didn't see it.

Speaker 1:
[91:11] Were you supposed to have a verse on It's So Easy?

Speaker 2:
[91:14] No, because originally, It's So Easy, I made that for Naughty by Nature. That was for them.

Speaker 1:
[91:20] Oh, shit.

Speaker 2:
[91:22] Yeah, because when we were finishing up Stakes is High.

Speaker 1:
[91:25] That could have worked.

Speaker 2:
[91:27] Well, we were finishing up Stakes is High. Audre LaCadis, who's working at Tommy Boy, was like, look, man, we're working, you know, Naughty just got started on their album, but we've already identified a few songs that could be singles, and we want to get ahead of the game and get remixes going. I was like, yo, that's so smart of y'all. That's, wow, that's a great idea. And when they play for me, fill me flow, fill me flow. So that was for that. Yeah, I put that together. But when in doing it, I was like after hearing it, I matched Tretch Vocals into it. I was like, nah, this ain't gonna work because their version was so already clean and crispy and just like so dope. I just felt like as a remix, it was a step below it in how the music felt. It almost felt like what I made could have been the original. And then you go-

Speaker 1:
[92:28] That would have been the remix.

Speaker 2:
[92:30] At that time, you know what I'm saying? I felt like this ain't a good remix and I got to maybe try to find something else. And then from there, it would have just went in a pile of junk. I just, from that point, I liked what I did and then I was like, you know, me and Renee from Jaunet, we were hanging around each other a lot at that point because on the album, we just kind of would just be around each other all the time. I was like, you know what? Maybe I'm going to see if Renee want to use it for something for Jaunet. Dave just happened to call me checking in and I was like, yeah man, I just tried something for this naughty thing. It didn't work. He said, y'all let me hear it and I let him hear it and he just pretty much hit me with like, you big dummy, are you crazy? This is fucking amazing. What? We should do this. I was like, really? I didn't hear it. I didn't hear it all. I mean, mind you, even at that point, I was already doing something with Mos and his crew, Medina Green. I could even could have been like, I could have gave it to them. And Dave was like, fuck that. He said, matter of fact, Merce, I don't even have a solo joint for this. That's my solo joint. I said, all right. I couldn't hear myself on it. I didn't hear myself. When he was like, we should do it, I was like, really? I didn't even hear it.

Speaker 1:
[93:50] Okay. So, Common's cosign was very crucial for his career development. What was about him that told you guys like, let's embrace them because him being on that made me go back to like, make me go to resurrection like, okay, let me, Dale, I'll take some serious, let me take. But seriously, the line, that arachnophobia line on take it easy, I put them in time out for like three years. So, no, dude, Common helped me buy my mom's first crib. So you guys cosigning that affects my life. So what was it about Common that, you know?

Speaker 2:
[94:27] We had met, okay, obviously, as you said, you know, from the first album, his first album, saw him, cool. We meet him even from that point a few times, we would run into him like say at that Howard University, they would have like a rap conference. So we were running to Common there, whatever. Mace was the one who kept saying, yo, we need to put Common on his album. And we would be like, all right, you know, if we find something. But it wasn't really anything that was sparking me about it. And Mace just kept saying like, yo, man, Common should be on his album. I at some point got an early copy of Resurrection, the album. And when I got to communism, I was like, I called Mace like, yo, yeah, this need to be on our album. And he had that kind of, he had that tone like, all right, nigga, what convinced you? I was like, yo, I'm listening to this new album. Yeah, yeah, all right. He needs to be on our album. Dave at the same time was trying to give Biz, Dave was trying to do a bunch of shit for Biz. He was trying to like, yo, I'm telling you, I think I got a bunch of shit that could be dope for Biz. And Biz just let me write the rhyme. So, Dave had this one joint that was really dope, and then he had what was going to become the business. He was like, yo, this will be for Biz. And Biz kept fucking around and not coming to the studio. Dave was doing a lot of stuff in his own house. He had a bunch of ADATs and we would record stuff. They built a vocal booth. And so we would do a lot of stuff at his crib. And Biz would be like, yeah, Dave, I'll be there, I'll be there, and he would never come. So Dave was like, yo, man, fuck it. This beat, let's do it. Let us do it. And we're gonna just fuck with Biz and call it the business. I was like, yo, maybe this could be the joke we put Common on. This is some rhyme friendly shit. And that's exactly what we did. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[96:26] I see. All right. Also Four More should have been a single, man.

Speaker 2:
[96:31] I agree. But what we were told is that it felt too adult. It felt too like Vaughn Harper adultish from time to time. Yes.

Speaker 1:
[96:53] So you're one of the rare artists that has an arsenal of Dilla tracks that you've rhymed over, that were given to you specifically. And I think just because of the intricacy of it, most people would assume, oh, Stakes aside must be everyone's favorite Dilla track. But that's not the case with me. What is your favorite Dilla track that you've rhymed over?

Speaker 2:
[97:20] Stakes is up there. Now, it gotta be a Dilla record or any record? I just want to make sure.

Speaker 1:
[97:25] Well, I mean, no, no, no. Just for, yes, Dilla, like that you've rhymed over it. Like there's, see, verbal clap to me, just like the one time I almost got in a car accident, literally I couldn't drive straight because I was just so jealous of that goddamn intro.

Speaker 2:
[97:41] Yeah, that's exactly what I was about to say. Verbal clap, verbal clap. Yo, I mean, I just remember him letting us hear it. When I heard that record, I was like, this shit is absolutely insane. It was right where we were at that point making that album. We were just like, yo, this got to be more of like a beats and rhymes. We felt like that's what it need to be. That's what that particular song showed. I mean, it just made you want to just write to it. Yeah, I mean, even down to the fact of the version that he did, when we asked at this point Jay to send us, okay, send us the track so we can now track and track it.

Speaker 1:
[98:29] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[98:30] It was something that he had already left on whatever system he had in Detroit. He didn't know where it was.

Speaker 1:
[98:37] That's y'all just rhyming over the beat tape?

Speaker 2:
[98:40] Yeah. Because, and mind you, I went to LA to get up with him. He remade it. So even to see him do that was crazy. He remade it to even see where the? was actually like some beautiful, lovely guitar going bling, bling, bling, bling, bling, bling. And he garage band to sound and, and I was like.

Speaker 1:
[99:04] So he did some like a Guyver shit where it was just.

Speaker 2:
[99:08] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[99:08] Because I see him at setup in his kitchen.

Speaker 2:
[99:10] Yo, I mean, like, I would just flawed. I would just like, I was floored by how he re-put this shit together. He just remade it. And then, but even in remaking it, it was just missing something that the original didn't have. I took it back from LA, back to New York. We put the rhymes to it. We synced everything up. And we were distilled like, and it just wound up being like, nah, man, the two track is better. Let's just do it to the two track. And he was winning. He was like, nah, I hear you.

Speaker 1:
[99:46] For peer pressure, whose idea was it to slow the song down, like even more than what it was to give you the impression that you're on weed?

Speaker 2:
[100:01] That was JD. JD did it. And he didn't even know that I did. It was already like that.

Speaker 1:
[100:07] Oh, really?

Speaker 2:
[100:08] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[100:11] It's so blatant, though, because it just gets slower. Like, the first time I heard it, during that period, I'll say that 80% of my listening was always like driving in my car. I just got my license in 2004, so like I would just drive forever. And even I was like, yo, like, is it me or is this shit slowing down? And he didn't know that that's what you were doing it for.

Speaker 2:
[100:35] Nope, he had already given me the beat. I thought the beat was dope, but then it worked with the idea that me, Mase and Be Real that came up with, like, Be Real, we was at some radio function, you know, some show function that a radio station put on and Mase, I could see Mase out the side of his eye, saying something to Be Real, because they had just rolled up, and he was like, Mercy, you want some? I was like, and they'd laugh, and he was like, come on, the pressure, man, the pressure.

Speaker 1:
[101:10] Right.

Speaker 2:
[101:11] And I immediately came up with the idea right there. I was like, yo, that'd be a dope song, y'all trying to make me smoke weed. And he said, you can win it. So when Jay sent us that beat, I was like, it's this record, because on its own, it was doing that slow and then kind of sped up thing.

Speaker 1:
[101:28] Right, right. So, Merce, do you remember when Prince kicked you out your own session?

Speaker 2:
[101:36] Yes, I remember. Oh boy, I remember that.

Speaker 1:
[101:40] And I don't remember Prince, and I don't mean Prince Paul either.

Speaker 2:
[101:44] Because I walked into it. You were already thick in it. I walked into her.

Speaker 1:
[101:50] The electric lady.

Speaker 2:
[101:51] Yeah, I'm saying, but the young lady who ran.

Speaker 1:
[101:53] Mary, Mary, yes.

Speaker 2:
[101:56] When I walked in, she was apologizing. I'm so sorry, Paz. I'm like, you're sorry for what?

Speaker 1:
[102:01] I just walked in.

Speaker 2:
[102:02] What happened? And she's like, it's your session. I said, oh, so I'm just thinking like, maybe someone ran over. And she's like, no, it's because he's here. And then I see you and you're saying the same thing. And you're like, because the royalty dude, this guy is here. I'm like, what are you talking about? Yeah. And it becomes is because Prince took over all the rooms and playing music for Warner Brothers. He's about to get his, I guess, work out a deal with them again and whatever.

Speaker 1:
[102:30] Right.

Speaker 2:
[102:31] This is what?

Speaker 1:
[102:32] Yeah, where I only saw the back of Clive Davis. No, it was actually for Sony. He walked in with Clive Davis both times. I saw them walk in and walked out, but it was always to their back to us. And they knew they were taking our room over and they didn't say anything.

Speaker 2:
[102:49] Yeah, it was crazy. And so when he finally sees me at one point, he's very apologetic, but I gave him the hardest squeezed hand. Eric B. Squeezed.

Speaker 1:
[103:03] I was like, yo, like, Yeah, I think to give everyone context, there was half a second where you guys couldn't clear owed to Billy Joe's drum break from Lou Donaldson. You picked the day in which we had just mastered and sequenced Voodoo. Like four years of work was done, but yet we had the room locked out. And, you know, during the daytime, Dee would always let me use the room while he was like working out or whatever. So I know one room we were sequencing the record for Voodoo and in the other room trying to do the session and we got kicked out. So I guess you were the first person to hear Voodoo not in the circle. I remember you were the very first person to hear it. Sir. And I was nervous listening to that record like from start to finish at the end of it. All right, so in closing, what three non-hip hop albums do you listen to from front to back?

Speaker 2:
[104:04] Non-hip hop?

Speaker 1:
[104:06] I mean, three most perfect records that you put on. There's no skips.

Speaker 2:
[104:13] Wow. Key of Laiya.

Speaker 1:
[104:16] OK. Stevie Wonder. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[104:19] Non-hip hop.

Speaker 1:
[104:20] The guy that invented the 24-track single album, I figured.

Speaker 2:
[104:25] Yeah. I mean, it's just as crazy that it's all, well, wow.

Speaker 1:
[104:32] Boodoo. Oh, cool.

Speaker 2:
[104:35] Boodoo front to back. Al Green's Let's Stay Together front to back. Okay. It reminds me of my, I mean, amazing record, of course, but like when I was young, I thought my father was Al Green because when I was young, he would sing it as his playing. So I was like, he sounds like him and he looks like him.

Speaker 1:
[104:53] Oh, that must be him. Okay. What are the three hip hop records that you live for?

Speaker 2:
[104:59] Three hip hop records that I live for. Wow. Raising Hell by Run-DMC, Criminal Minded and what else? It's definitely, I mean, it's those two at the top and A Nation of Millions. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[105:16] What three hip hop songs have you committed to memory?

Speaker 2:
[105:20] Three hip hop songs I've committed to memory.

Speaker 1:
[105:23] Your three favorite.

Speaker 2:
[105:24] I'm just trying to tell you that that's hard for me. Funny enough, I had to talk with Thought, with Rik about this. I was never a dude who could commit. It's really hard for me to do that. Music, I can tell you where the drops is, where the hi-hat is. It's hard for me to commit lyrics. Really? So, very hard. I have to force myself-

Speaker 1:
[105:46] You're the king of lyrics.

Speaker 2:
[105:48] It's very hard for me to commit lyrics to memory of other artists, of songs. So, it got to be something super easy. So, it's like, Aera B for president, it's like Top Billin.

Speaker 1:
[106:02] Right.

Speaker 2:
[106:02] Like those songs, it's like- I can remember it easy, because like, Coogee Rap, as much as I love him, I'll die if you put a gun to my head and tell me this.

Speaker 1:
[106:12] Burkett. Sing it right now. I get it. What are your three favorite Dayla records?

Speaker 2:
[106:18] Millie, immediately. Millie, Pull the Pistol on Santa. I Am I Be, Trying People.

Speaker 1:
[106:26] Too, Trying People. To me, man, that's, when I heard it, I was like, yo, Dayla has a lighter song. I was like, when they do this in concert, they have to, I was so jealous that you found that song, man. Like, I just, I listen to that shit like 10 times, man.

Speaker 2:
[106:49] My younger brother, he made that record with his-

Speaker 1:
[106:52] Lucky?

Speaker 2:
[106:53] Lucky made that with his homie, Perp. Yeah, man, when I heard it, I was like, I live for records like that. It just felt like something that had to pour my heart out.

Speaker 1:
[107:02] Who sparked it first, you or Dave?

Speaker 2:
[107:05] We was doing it pretty much at the same time, but he got on first. He wanted to go first, and even when I heard his verse, it has made me like, oh my god, this is amazing. And my verse was a lot longer. Where I end on record, it's actually long. It's probably like another 14 bars. I then had to shorten it, because I was like, yo, this is gonna have people crying. So I shortened it and ended it where I ended it, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[107:36] Okay. What's the last nice thing that you've done for yourself?

Speaker 2:
[107:42] Last nice thing that I have done for myself. I don't know.

Speaker 1:
[107:48] Are you a car person? Do you collect artwork? Are you?

Speaker 2:
[107:52] I don't know. I don't know shit about cars. So I don't care about cars.

Speaker 1:
[107:55] Do you drive?

Speaker 2:
[107:57] Yeah, I can drive. I drive. You drive, but I don't care about cars.

Speaker 1:
[108:01] Do you have a self-care routine, like especially now that we're of this age where?

Speaker 2:
[108:05] Just truly in tune to taking care of myself. Things that I've already knew, I've through the years started to put them on to practice. A lot of the young living that we did on tour, like the super staying up late, eating after a show, going right to bed, stuff like that been stopped for me. But just putting more of it in to practice. Losing Dave, even when Dave was still here and had his health issues and basically had his health issues. And I would just realize and like, yo man, I just need to be here for my younger kids. And I just start putting just a lot of that into practice. Like I cut all processed foods, but I just eat tons of fruit. I eat no type of candy, no breads unless it's like sourdough. So I've just really been in the gym, stuff like that. So I've just really been on my, just taking care of myself. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[109:04] Like how hard was it picking up the pieces for you and Mase to sort of carry this vision through, especially in this phase of your life, making the cabin to the sky and seeing it through. Let's talk about the process of, how did you get through it?

Speaker 2:
[109:21] I mean, and I'm not really trying to sound like, I don't know, horny and uplifting, but Dave really was there through it. Like I felt it through. I felt signs from him. I mean, I may have spoken to you about this, like even down to the album title. And once I saw the title and I'm like, this should be the title. And it's speaking to me. And I'm trying to load it into my phone, like all the newer De La Untitled songs. And it would no longer go into my phone. By the time I changed it to Cabin in Sky, it goes into my phone. Like I just felt like Dave was there with me through it. And just how we've just normally done with De La albums, like just the sequencing and it just felt right. We had some other great songs, but I was like, you know what? This song I got from Soundtrack, it's amazing, but it's not fitting in with everything else. So got to put that to the side. Or this other song that had Dave on it, that we have called Take One For The Team. Could be another great moment to have Dave on the album, but nah, this doesn't work with where it was going. So I just kind of let the compass of natural things lead me to where I need to go. And just my experience of just putting together records, and it came together, especially once I got the title. Once I knew it was going to be called Cabin In The Sky, everything just kind of just fell into place. And it didn't feel hard. It really didn't. It felt light, man, and it felt therapeutic. So it didn't really feel hard to do.

Speaker 1:
[110:57] All right. My last two questions. Bob Power, can you just talk about what his contributions were to the group and how, what was it like working with him?

Speaker 2:
[111:07] Bob Power was one of the most amazing human beings I've ever met in this industry, ever. So, I mean, like to have him being the one who has all this knowledge on sound and helping you to reach this goal or even see something that, and hear something that you didn't even realize your music could sound like. I mean, what I loved about him from the very beginning is that he was a person that he didn't treat us like we weren't supposed to be there. Because like a lot of these early sessions, you had these engineers who were like, you know, they were rock dudes and punk rock guys. And, you know, they have these young black kids coming in here who got these deals now and trying to tell them what to do.

Speaker 1:
[111:58] They don't play guitar.

Speaker 2:
[111:59] Yeah, you know, and Bob, even from Calliope Dave, was very open, like, wow, what is that? And how, so what was your thinking on that? But then he could show you his thinking on something else. So that's why he just became one of those engineers where you wanted him around, you were that reason alone.

Speaker 1:
[112:18] Is there a particular song or mix that he transformed for you that you yourself didn't see when it was in the rough stages? In my mind, do you want more of what have been, was nowhere near, like once I heard a mix, I was like, holy shit, like this is a whole new.

Speaker 2:
[112:33] But Break of Dawn is definitely one of them. Just how I thought it would sonically sound and what and how he made, because he was like, you know, tracking it with us. Crazy enough, Bob is the one who pretty much named me Plug Wonder. Why? Wonder why comes from him, because when we was doing Break of Dawn, I'm just saying Plug Wonder, wonder why you're lonely tonight. So once he heard me say it, he just what always just keeps saying, Plug Wonder, wonder why you're lonely tonight. So I will come in, Plug Wonder why? What's up? And I was like, and it would just become something we would laugh at. And I was like, yo, I'm going to add that to my mini moniker is like, I am Plug Wonder why because of Bob. Wow. He's amazing, amazing and beautiful person as you know.

Speaker 1:
[113:18] All right. My last question. Do you have three favorite Dave moments on DayLive recordings?

Speaker 2:
[113:25] Dave doing the Johnny's Dead was absolutely hilarious. In real time, I can still see him doing it. We're trying so bad not to laugh because we don't want the mic to pick it up because he wasn't in the booth. This is the mic in the room of Kalaipi. And I even threw a piece of paper and I hit on my mistakes. So that's when you say, you're fucking this up, man. We laughing like, so that was just one of the most funniest things, Dave doing that. Wow. What else is this? Holy shit. There's so many. And him doing the stupid. Well, he was on my answering machine and that's when I had to call him back. I was like, yo, you know, this is going to go out, right?

Speaker 1:
[114:09] Oh, Dave has a problem. Seriously.

Speaker 2:
[114:13] Hello? Yeah, I was like, when I came home and heard that message, I laughed so hard. And when I called him, he already knew what I was calling him for. He's already laughing. I was like, yo, I said, you're an asshole. And I was like, hey, you know, that's going on out. We said, get out of here. I was like, yo, man, that shit got to go on out. Yeah, that was another one. Oh my God. What else? It's just, he was amazing at just off the cuff, funny shit, like just he was just so off the cuff with it. I feel like I'm missing one from Bionics that he did something silly on. I don't know, it's just too many.

Speaker 1:
[114:49] Well, look, man, it has taken forever for this to happen.

Speaker 2:
[114:54] I know, man, it's cool.

Speaker 1:
[114:55] And I really appreciate you taking the time out to let me finally get this interview out after all these years I've been begging you. I mean, I've said it before, man. Like you guys literally are the inspiration for and the standard, the gold standard for which, you know, Tariq and I judge just greatness, man. And the fact that you're still constantly doing it and pushing through is commendable. And yeah, man, I can't wait to hear what you guys have next, man. So thank you for doing this for me.

Speaker 2:
[115:25] Appreciate it. I love you, man. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:
[115:27] Love you too, bro. All right. Thank you. The Questlove Show is hosted by me, Amir?uestlove Thompson. The executive producers are Sean G., Brian Calhoun, and me. Produced by Brittany Benjamin and Jake Bean. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown. Edited by Alex Connelly. iHeart video support by Mark Canton. Logos, graphics, and animation by Nick Paloi. Additional support by Lance Coleman. Special thanks to Cathy Wrong. Special thanks to Sugar Steve Mandel. Please subscribe, rate, review, and share The Questlove Show wherever you stream your podcasts. Make sure you follow us on socials. That's at QLS. Check out hundreds and hundreds of QLS episodes including The Questlove Supreme Shows in our podcast archives. Questlove Show is a production of iHeartRadio.