Rick Rubin
In addition to being a podcast host, Frederick Jay “Rick” Rubin is an American record producer and former co-president of Columbia Records. Along with Russell Simmons, he is the co-founder…
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A 1991 court ruling deciding the case between Warner Music and Biz Markie for his sampling of Gilbert O’Sullivan on the song “Along Again” changed how rap producers approached beat making and helped solidify the unique sound of our guest, Easy Mo Bee.
Easy got his start producing multiple tracks on Big Daddy Kane’s sophomore album It’s A Big Daddy Thing but his signature sound came together on Craig Mack’s classic “Flava In Ya Ear.” That was the debut single for Bad Boy Records, a label Mo Bee would continue to have success with through his work with the legendary Notorious B.I.G. on songs like “Going Back To Cali” and “Gimmie the Loot.” Mo Bee also has classic tracks with GZA, Tupac, Busta Rhymes, Public Enemy and more.
We discuss how he came to his trademark style, the stories behind some of his classic tracks, producing the final Miles Davis album just before his passing and his new book ICONIC BEATS: Easy Mo Bee’s Unforgettable Tracks for Biggie, Tupac, & Hip-Hop’s Greatest.
Pushkin. So you were saying, I never thought about this, that who was the first to sort of chop samples. Well, you were kind of the originator of that, like getting a sample and chopping it up.
00:24
Speaker 2
Something that I paid close attention to in the early part of my career, as far as samples and the technique that I was using to sample. First of all, I'll tell you how I got to the place of the chopping style that I was using. Yeah. In 1990, and this is in the book.
00:46
Speaker 1
Yeah. I talk about it. Iconic beats.
00:48
Speaker 2
Yeah. The only thing I had under my belt was Big Daddy Kane, the two songs on his second album.
00:55
Speaker 1
Which, another victory.
00:57
Speaker 2
And Calling Mr. Welfare.
00:58
Speaker 1
Which are classics.
00:59
Speaker 2
Featuring cool DJ Red Alert, one of my favorite DJs ever on. I had that and I had the Genius, Words from the Genius album. I did 10 songs and then my brother, LG Experience, he did four.
01:15
Speaker 1
Wow.
01:16
Speaker 2
And Jesse West did the lead single. So I only had Big Daddy Kane and that under my belt. You know, I come in in 1989. Right. So somewhere around 91, I had a meeting at... at Rush Producers Management. Because Rush had an artist management division, and then Russell created a producer management division.
01:46
Speaker 1
Which always was confusing, because sometimes you'd feel like, was that Def Jam or was that Rush? You know, like Run DMC was Rush, but not Def Jam.
01:53
Speaker 2
Well, it all came from Russell Simmons. Yeah.
01:55
Speaker 1
Yeah.
01:56
Speaker 2
And how I got there is, I quit my job. I was working at Con Edison in New York. And February... At the top of February 1990, I had been going back and forth about it in my mind, but I finally resigned and decided I was going to take the music up full time. So one day I'm in the house somewhere around noon and I just got the idea. I was like, yo, you only got Kane and the Genius under your belt. You got to keep this thing going or you're going to fizzle out. So. I always admired Rush management and just Russell Simmons, Def Jam, that whole circle at that point in time. And at that time, if you wasn't, quote unquote, like he said, rolling with Rush... You wasn't rolling at all. Yeah, yeah. So everybody was over at Rush. So I said, call 411.
02:58
Speaker 1
Who else was there, like on the management side, like on the production side?
03:02
Speaker 2
In the production division?
03:03
Speaker 1
Yeah.
03:04
Speaker 2
They called it RPM, Rush Producers Management. RPM. Okay, you had Daddy-O over there. You had Hank Shockley.
03:14
Speaker 1
Okay.
03:15
Speaker 2
Hank and Keith Shockley. You had a very young, large professor. Wow. Um, they had a hefty, um, roster over there. And so I'm at home and I get the idea cause I want to be down with Rush. And I just said, call information.
03:38
Speaker 1
411.
03:39
Speaker 2
So the, uh, operator picks up and I asked for the number to Rush management and she connects me. The receptionist picks up over there at Rush. And I said, um, I'm looking to speak to somebody about management. I said, in particular, I'm a producer. And she said, oh, I know who you need to speak to. You need to speak to Francesca. She is the woman that's heading up the producer management division. So she comes on the phone and, you know, I'm all shy and green. I'm new in the business and I'm trying to explain to her, yeah, I did Big Daddy Kane and and before I could even get through the genius stuff, she said, I know who you are. So that made the conversation easy because... Big Daddy Kane was big, so I mean, it's not like... Yeah, I know, but I was new and I was, that's the only thing I had under my belt. So I didn't think that she might have even been familiar with me yet. But she probably was because I was pleased when Kane's album came out. Because when you flip it on the back, He had all the producers named in caps, big caps. And my name was along with Teddy Riley, Prince Paul, who's a huge influence to me. Prince Paul going back to the early De La Soul days. Mr. C. By the way, fun fact, the song on that album, The House That C Built, is a house song on there. Like without the credit, I did that. Really? That track, yeah. Because I got, there's a lot of levels to Easy Mo B. I love hip hop. I am hip hop, but I'm old enough to have grown up through the disco stage and watching disco turn into house and all of that. So I've always been well-rounded with the music. So yeah, for anybody out there in the public that never knew Easy Moby produced the house track on Big Daddy Kane's second album. Now we're going to get back to the chopping that I was telling you. And Rush Producers Management and the woman Francesca Sparrow, rest in peace to her because she's gone now, has a lot to do with how my chopping style developed. So she called this meeting up in the office for all, The producers, everybody showed up. It was a lot of us. And she had these memos printed out, enough to hand out to all of us. So we're standing there and we're looking at this paper with all these names on it, names like, huge names like Sade, Prince, Anita Baker. I remember Steve Miller Band was on the list. Les Zeppelin, all kind of names. So we're looking at this list of names. And out of nowhere, she just said, you see that? And we all was looking up confused like, yeah. And she said, stay away from them. Because remember, at that time, Bismarck, yeah, I need a haircut. And De La Soul's Three Feet High and Rising were the first to really, really come under fire for the samples and everything. And a lot of the producers... That were doing those records for those artists. Happened to be under the umbrella. Of Rush over there. So she was giving us an early warning. Just to say like look. I don't know how you're going to do it. But you got to fall back on a lot of these samples. After the meeting was over. My car was parked right in front of the office. I could literally step out of the door. And just walk right over to my car. Across the sidewalk. I sat in the car. Man, I was so depressed. Because at that point in time, I was like, you could call me at that time, I was a loop king. Basically just looping a lot of stuff. And I sat in the car and I started having conversations with myself. You know that in the cartoons, the way they have the real person and then there's the little other person, the second them up here talking to each other. So I'm carrying on conversations with myself. And I was like, man, what am I going to do? And it's like the little me up here, the other me talking to me said, I just heard a voice said, why you got to always loop? Why can't you chop the instruments out of songs and make something original with it? As compared to when you cut on a keyboard, It has a bank of sounds. If you want a French horn, if you want horns, if you want like a bass line, a bass, guitar, whatever. And then what you do is track by track, you go through the keyboard's banks. You lay the first track, lay the bass line, the drums, then you come and you add keys. And so my thing was, why can't you do that? Instead of just relying on, simply relying on looping. Yeah. And that's how we got tracks like Craig Mack's Flavor In Your Ear. And even more complex, his second single, Get Down. Wow. Where I'm basically taking pieces of records, sections with, I don't know what, keyboards, horns, whatever it is, Really small musical parts and manipulating them through multi-pitch. Then here I come with the layering on top. So long story short, she caused a habit. That meeting caused a habit and the habit became a style.
10:06
Speaker 1
And it was really, cause it was a workaround.
10:08
Speaker 2
Yeah.
10:09
Speaker 1
How can I, cause some of those, I mean like Steve Miller, Zeppelin, I mean, all that stuff's like classic loop material.
10:16
Speaker 2
And, and getting back to, um, Off the record, before we even came on here, me and you were talking, I noticed back at that time, most everybody was doing just about the same thing. Everybody was looping, and it hadn't advanced into the kind of thing I was doing. I like to call it creative sampling. I think maybe the closest thing was, and I have heavy admiration for them, always did, was like the collages that The Bomb Squad.
10:50
Speaker 1
Yeah.
10:51
Speaker 2
Used to create for the Public Enemy records.
10:54
Speaker 1
Yeah.
10:55
Speaker 2
And, like, the habit just came with style, man. Yeah. You can hear that, the chopping style. I mean, really, really manipulating samples on records like, well, Flavian, in your ears, an example of using instruments chopped from records to create something brand new. Oh, man. Everything Remains Raw, Busta Rhymes. Yeah. That was like Mac's example of that. Yeah.
11:23
Speaker 1
Let's play a little of Everything Remains Raw.
11:27
Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
11:27
Speaker 1
The pitch shifting. Yeah. So that pitch shifting would be one sound, and.
11:33
Speaker 2
You just manipulating that one sound to... Yeah, in the.
11:36
Speaker 1
SP-1200, all of the machines, the MPC....
11:48
Speaker 2
Whatever you use, whatever machine you have, they have a function, a feature in there called multi-pitch. I know that's what it's called in the SP-1200. And you can... Just like if the sound was on a keyboard. I always like to be on a sampling machine console. I never liked sampling on a keyboard. I don't know, it's just something about the feel. It feels better when you're sitting, you're tapping... the beat out on a sampling drum machine. So I got the multi-pitch thing, or I will do like a special chop. Then I come on top, I got another layer, and I'm playing chords. You hear me? Like in Everything Remains Raw that we just heard. I'm playing chords, like two, three, and four notes. And they're changing.
12:48
Speaker 1
Yeah.
12:48
Speaker 2
Sounding like somebody sitting at a Rhodes keyboard and nobody was doing that.
12:55
Speaker 1
Not only did you chop stuff, you were really good at finding things to chop that are really unique sounding, that really stand out. I mean, like on that, flavor in your ear, of course, is another great example. It's like you just... I don't know what that sound is. No one knows what that sound is.
13:15
Speaker 2
I'll share a secret with you. Besides the Rhodes and Wurlitzer electric piano, the guitar is my favorite instrument. Flavor in your ear. It's only two notes that carry, that's the melody that carries the song. Plus the second record on the coming album. It's a Party featuring Johnny. Everything remains raw. I'm obsessed with guitars. I think where it comes from is I feel like I always compensate it for my actual abilities. I always wished that I could play piano and all instruments fluidly.
14:07
Speaker 1
Yeah.
14:08
Speaker 2
So, Through the sampling techniques of multi-pitch and what the machine could do, I just always imitated what a real session player would do.
14:21
Speaker 1
Wow.
14:24
Speaker 2
Like taking one note of a Rhodes keyboard, playing a line, and coming on top with another layer. Now we're creating a chord. And this is not just two, it's three, four tracks. And before you know it, it sounds like Herbie Hancock sitting there, you know, playing in accompaniment with two hands. I'm telling you, it was always to try to compensate and make up from what I didn't actually have. When I first started out, The Big Daddy Kane, two tracks on his second album. It's a Big Daddy thing. They bought the SP-1200.
15:10
Speaker 1
They bought the SP-1200 that you made that on?
15:12
Speaker 2
The two tracks that I did on his album. That bought my SP-1200. And later on, I added on an Akai S900 and the S950 rack mount samplers. So those are the only two things that I had. And I remember... going to other guys' house, other producers, and I go in and they have like a hefty rack of keyboards. I look and they got a rack mount, all this outboard gear and stuff. Then I would go back to, I wasn't even out of the projects yet. I was still living with my parents. And then I would go back to my house and the project and I look over there in the corner and all I had versus what I just saw at their house was, Just the SP-1200 in the car, it's 950. And I vowed to myself, I remember saying that, I said, y'all might have more than me, I'm going to sound bigger than you.
16:12
Speaker 1
Wow.
16:13
Speaker 2
That was the object, was to compete with the equipment that they had. Not even their style. It's just like, producers had way better equipment and more equipment than me. But I was destined to prove that these two machines, I can sound just as big or better.
16:38
Speaker 1
So how did you get that big sound? Would you push certain settings?
16:42
Speaker 2
Well, I told you that I grew up through all of the phases of disco. And I want to focus on that period right there. Let's say like the early to mid-70s. I remember being a kid. and going into the back park in my projects, Lafayette Gardens in Brooklyn. And the mobile DJ thing is just something that I became obsessed with because it was about the music, but it also was even more about the system, the sound system thing. And I come from that era where the sound system and sonics, because the music is important. But sonically, the way that music projects is everything. So I just always wanted my music to have a lot of bass. I guess that's where my heavy bass sound comes from. And people might not know, since like 12, 13, around 14 years old, for a couple of years, I started playing drums in the church across the street. from my projects on Lafayette Avenue. And still to this day, I play drums. So, sonically, I know how the music should project and sound from the sound systems out in the park during the disco era and in the early hip-hop era. I play drums, so I got a feel for how I want my stuff to sound.
18:19
Speaker 1
Was it always referencing the drum sounds you would make and what you heard in the park? Or were there any finished records that you could point to and be like, It's got to sound as good as that.
18:28
Speaker 2
It's just, sonically, it's just always been about how the music hits the speakers. Shout out to DJ Premier, who I know, and we actually used to record in the same studio in New York, in Brooklyn, a studio called Such A Sound. And when me and my group, rapping is fundamental, when we would be coming in, we've been coming in, walking up the stairs, and Guru and Premier is just leaving. But I heard a story about Premier had a rule back in that early 90s era. He made his beats on a boombox, as opposed to like me in my house, I made music on a real system with big house speakers and everything. But I understand what he meant.
19:24
Speaker 1
He would monitor out of a boombox?
19:27
Speaker 2
He made beats out of a boombox. Now, let me tell you why I understand that is because the boombox has been manufactured, sonically tailored for anything that comes out of that box, whether it's the radio or you use the cassette in there. It's going to give you... the frequencies have already been tailored. So when you use the boom box, everything that he made out of that box, if it sounds right coming out of the box, it's going to sound good in the car. It's going to sound good in the system. So, and the same thing for me, I always felt like it was always about How the music hits the speakers.
20:13
Speaker 1
Yeah.
20:15
Speaker 2
Projection of sound.
20:16
Speaker 1
Yeah.
20:17
Speaker 2
That's always been important to me.
20:19
Speaker 1
Wow.
20:19
Speaker 2
And being a little kid in the living room and watching my father play a lot of 45s, I was always fascinated by the sound of the 45 versus the album. Totally. Because you know on the album, the grooves are smaller. On a 45, you can spread the grooves out more. Same thing with a 12-inch. 12-inch singles and 45s are always louder than the album. And to me, there's nothing like the sound of dropping the needle to a 45. And I was like, that's the sound that I want.
21:00
Speaker 1
Wow.
21:01
Speaker 2
That sound of my father playing records in the living room. Real gritty, heavy.
21:07
Speaker 1
Yeah. And he played all concerts. In the book, you talk about how even like Creedence Clearwater Revival was a favorite of his.
21:14
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah, yeah. My father was a man of many records, and his range was so crazy, man. One minute he's playing Shirley Caesar, James Cleveland, the Jackson Southerners. Then the next, he's jumping on to, what is it, Creedence Clearwater Revival. He used to play that 45, the one with Lodi.
21:37
Speaker 1
And Bad Moon Rising.
21:38
Speaker 2
And Bad Moon Rising on the flip.
21:39
Speaker 1
Yeah.
21:40
Speaker 2
He played that. A lot of soul. Early soul, like Jackie Wilson. Wow. Aretha Franklin. Much later things like Al Green, Syl Johnson. Everything, man. The drifters up on the roof. So he's the one where I get jazz. He had like Kenny Burrell. Not a lot of jazz. Yeah, like Cannonball Adderley, Kenny Burrell, Miles Davis. Yeah, things like that in the house.
22:17
Speaker 1
It's interesting you like guitarists because Miles always had a... Well, once you get into the 70s, Miles always had a really good guitarist with him. And Kenny Burrell, guitarist. Your dad was also playing rock. Gospel has a lot of guitar. So I feel like.
22:36
Speaker 1
You might have gotten that maybe from.
22:39
Speaker 2
Maybe I did pick up the love of the guitar back then through a lot of that music. Lightning Hopkins. Oh, my goodness. Bo Diddley. Jimmy Reed. We're talking about real, real deep Delta blues. Yeah. Things like that. He would play in the house. Muddy Waters. Elmore James.
23:00
Speaker 1
Wow.
23:02
Speaker 2
This is where all of my knowledge from the music comes from. I didn't even realize it, but I was being taught. And it helped me by the time I arrived to produce.
23:20
Speaker 1
There's something, talking about those deep Delta blues, man, those records sometimes you put them on and they're stark, they're bleak, and they're sometimes like, just like sometimes the titles just hit you, like Life Was So Rough, the Songs like I'm Fixin' to Die Blues. And then when you listen to, I always think about the connection between some of those blues records and some of the themes that Pac was hitting on. Because people always say, well, Pac, you know, he was rapping about his death. He was rapping about this. But it seems like there was a tradition of that.
23:52
Speaker 2
Maybe the beat changed. Maybe the beat changed. But rap is also the blues. Okay. Hip hop is the noun. Rap is the verb. And maybe the beat changed. Maybe the musical styles changed. But when you get right down to it, rap is the blues. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Fives, the message is the blues.
24:18
Speaker 1
Yeah.
24:19
Speaker 2
It's just to, at that time, a more modern and up-to-date beat.
24:23
Speaker 1
Yeah. And the problems, the problems, the conditions changed. The problems changed, but still miserable conditions, still problems.
24:30
Speaker 2
Exactly.
24:31
Speaker 1
So plenty problems.
24:32
Speaker 2
Yeah.
24:33
Speaker 1
And so it's like it is an updated blues in a way, you know?
24:37
Speaker 2
Yeah.
24:40
Speaker 1
And so when I hear things like if I die tonight, you know?
24:44
Speaker 2
I don't know. I feel like there's a similar psyche and a similar.
25:02
Speaker 1
You know what I mean? A similar spirit.
25:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, Tupac was definitely the blues. Definitely. I just heard something that I forgot all about in the song that I haven't even had the reason to think about for decades. And If I Die Tonight, I remember I wanted to use George Clinton's Atomic Dog, but it was already too many samples in there. So I just heard it. I was like, wow, oh, snap, you did that. I took the kick. And rolled it backwards. That's where you hit it.
25:36
Speaker 1
Oh, that's the atomic duck.
25:38
Speaker 2
No, it's not. I took a kick and reversed it. So that when you play it, instead of it being boom. And I was hitting it on the one.
25:53
Speaker 1
To try to.
25:54
Speaker 2
I just heard that. I didn't pay attention to that in years. And it was all because I wanted to use atomic dog, but we already had. Too many samples in the record.
26:03
Speaker 1
Wow. So you just turn that around and get that feel. Hold on, let me hear that again.
26:09
Speaker 2
A backwards kick.
26:14
Speaker 1
That's amazing. That's amazing, man.
26:18
Speaker 2
And then when I first got the machine, I just went through every function to see what else can I use in the features that helped me in making beats.
26:28
Speaker 1
How many beats at that time What were you making, early 90s?
26:33
Speaker 2
A day? Yeah. I might make two or three beats in one day, and then maybe for the next two days I might not make nothing. I've always been like that. I make music on impulse because I hear something special. I don't just make music just for the heck of it. I got to really, really feel something. All I could hear is just maybe one note. of a guitar, like in Flavoring Your Ear, and that'll spark me to start creating.
27:07
Speaker 1
So you have to feel inspired. You have to want to get something off your chest.
27:10
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's not about quantity. It's about quality, man.
27:12
Speaker 1
Yeah.
27:13
Speaker 2
Definitely. Yeah.
27:16
Speaker 1
What is the guitar used on, Flavoring Your Ear?
27:20
Speaker 2
It's already on the record, and I'm not going to tell you what record that is. Okay. It's been going on 30-something years, and Nobody can figure it out.
27:31
Speaker 1
No one's found it.
27:32
Speaker 2
I've been driving them crazy.
27:35
Speaker 1
Do you get enjoyment out of that?
27:36
Speaker 2
I love it. I love it.
27:39
Speaker 1
What did you think when you heard Craig Mack's verse? Were you in the studio with him? Oh, yeah. Okay.
27:46
Speaker 2
I like my intro. I used to always like to put intros at the top of a song for the beats. And the reason for that is to give the DJ something to play with. And they did exactly that. See, because the concept is based upon the breakbeat, the most important part of the record that a DJ can juggle back and forth and repeat over and over. So with the intro at the top of Flavor In Your Ear, I did this thing where, boom. Boom, boom, boom. And he went right on top of the wood there. Just like. But his rhymes, Craig was different. He was real lyrical and in a sense comedic at times. I used to look at Craig as maybe like another Bismarck-y.
28:53
Speaker 1
Interesting, yeah.
28:54
Speaker 2
Yeah, to me they had similarities.
28:56
Speaker 1
Yeah. Like, they were characters. Yeah. So there was something about Craig Mack larger than life, that was larger than life. Different from how big he was larger than life.
29:06
Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
29:06
Speaker 1
You know?
29:07
Speaker 2
They both, to me, had, like, drunken speaking styles. Real comedic. Always throwing little funny things or things that make you, like, respond to. So, I don't know. That's just the way I always saw it.
29:23
Speaker 1
Was he that way as a person, too? Just... As a friend.
29:26
Speaker 2
Craig was actually serious. He could be, um, fun, but believe it or not, Craig Mack was, um, and we bonded over that. He was very serious, always serious about God. Hmm. He had this thing, this obsession with the rapture and Jesus coming back, a.k.a. the song on his album, When God Comes, if you remember that song. Yeah.
29:56
Speaker 1
That came from him having an obsession.
29:58
Speaker 2
With, Yeah, he was very serious about God, and he was always concerned about the rapture.
30:05
Speaker 1
And he would just talk to you about it?
30:06
Speaker 2
Yeah. And that was fine with me. That was cool, because I got a strong belief in God, too. But it just kind of surprised me, because I was like, yo, for him to be that comedic and funny and drunken style on the songs and saying things like robotic, what is it, Macalicious, funk, flave. And the same God to be seriously into God. I miss him, man.
30:35
Speaker 1
Yeah. When's the last time, did you keep in touch with him over the years?
30:39
Speaker 2
One of the last times I talked to Craig, I gave him a huge batch of beats. And I never heard from him again. And then I found out they were on an album that was being sold overseas. I said, okay, he did me like that. All right. My man, my man, Yang, Big Yang had to, alert me to that. He said, yo, you know, Craig got the album with all them beats you give him. He said, he's selling it overseas. He didn't say where, if it was like in England or France or whatever. I was like, for real? Craig was crazy.
31:20
Speaker 1
When things like that happen, do you just take it with a grain of salt? Do you have the inkling to like, Like, yo, man, I got to go handle business and go talk to Craig.
31:32
Speaker 2
I'll be honest with you. I didn't think it was going to really do that much.
31:35
Speaker 1
Okay.
31:36
Speaker 2
Because a lot of his biggest successes came from record, the major record labels and the machine behind him.
31:44
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
31:45
Speaker 2
And a couple of those records are classic staples. He had one called The Wooden Horse. And then he remade EPMD's Please Listen to My Demo. He made a remix of that and changed the lyrics. And then the other ones on there were from some of the beats that I had gave him, a joint called Mack Coming Through or Mack Come Through. It's like, yo, this dude is crazy, man. Just took my beats and put an album out overseas. God rest his soul, man. He went through a lot before he left here. Yeah. Yeah.
32:26
Speaker 1
It was a sad way to go, man. And biz too. Yeah. And biz too, man.
32:31
Speaker 2
Yeah. On that note, as we get older, a lot of us in hip hop, and especially because we're in hip hop, and we came up in this thing, what they always called a young man sport. A lot of us, as we're getting older, we have to stop being in denial of and be concerned about health. There's a lot of us that are ignoring our health. And because of that, we're losing so many people a lot earlier than we're supposed to. Yeah.
33:04
Speaker 1
Yeah. I'm always happy when I see people like, I feel like Nas is like a pretty good example of someone who's setting the tone. He's setting the standard of. seemingly healthy, and also trying to help other people.
33:23
Speaker 2
It just ran through my mind, in particular, shout to A.B. Money, one third of the group rapping is fundamental I was in, and also Styles P. For starting stores that sell mental wellness products, from herbs and spices to just things that just help you take care of yourself. The older that we get, it's just so important to be healthy. Yeah. Making the music and the music itself is important, but you ain't going to be able to enjoy it if you're not here. That's right.
34:02
Speaker 1
Yeah, I know that's right. Yeah. How long after you met Craig Mack did you meet Big?
34:07
Speaker 2
I worked with Craig Mack at Bad Boy before Biggie. Or rather, no, no. I worked with Biggie first.
34:15
Speaker 1
First?
34:16
Speaker 2
First. It all started with a call, my manager at the time, Francesca Sparrow, telling me, I want you to go up and see Andre. She was talking about Andre Harrell. He's gone too. She said, I want you to go up at Uptown MCA and take a meeting with Andre. He's got a new artist that they want to put on the soundtrack to this movie, Who's the Man? And they want to hear a couple of tracks. They need a track for him. And originally it was just supposed to be one track for this new artist at the time. He was called Biggie Smalls. Then he had to change the name because another artist had the same name. And Sean Puffy Combs liked the chemistry that the two of us had on that first record that I did with Biggie, Party and Bush. And she told me that he actually called back over to the, He said, yo, thanks for hooking me up with that. That Mo B guy. I said, yo, I like the chemistry. What's going on? Let's keep it going. And right there, this is before Bad Boy Arista. Because Biggie was supposed to come out on Uptown Records.
35:37
Speaker 1
Right.
35:39
Speaker 2
After Party and Bullsh, we started recording for the album Ready to Die. Nobody Knows But Ready To Die was supposed to come out on Uptown MCA Records. Andre Harrell's label, which had Heavy D, Barry J. Blige, Jodeci, Lil Sean. Later on, artists like Soul For Real. Not Faith Evans. She came later on Bad Boy. And then Andre Harrell and Sean Puffy Combs started to differ. You got fired, right? Yeah, if you want to call it that. That's why I just said differed. Sorry. I want to be right and exact about what I said. I wasn't there. I don't know exactly what and how it happened. So I just say they differed. And that's when Puff went and started his Bad Boy label under Arista. And Flavor In Your Ear ended up being the first single. And I had to toot my own horn a little bit. The first single stayed number one at 16 weeks. Crazy. Yeah. Crazy. On the Hot New Hip Hop Chart. I think that's what it was called back then. So technically I gave Puff his first hit. Crazy. I opened up the floodgates for him on his label. I gave him his first hit.
37:14
Speaker 1
And... Did that create a positive working relationship at that point or?
37:19
Speaker 2
Yeah, it did until he added his name to the Flavor in the Air remix. And I confronted him about it. And ever since then, we were never the same.
37:32
Speaker 1
What did you think of him? Because he's on the remix. His voice is on the remix now that I'm thinking about it, right? How did he get... Were you around when that happened?
37:40
Speaker 2
Well, I remember being at a studio called Sound on Sound. And I remember I was sitting... high on top of this. No, I was down working low and Chucky Thompson was sitting high atop this file cabinet. And he was just sitting over me swinging his legs while I was reprogramming because the idea was to make the track sound a little different from the original. It was Puff's idea already to add the extra MCs to the record, Busta Rhymes, Rampage, LL Cool J. And for me, I just wanted to tweak the track a little bit to make it sound a little bit different. That's where you hear like a little bit of Rhodes keyboard and some guitar stabs that weren't in the original. But when the record came out, I saw it said, produced by In This Order. Sean Puffy Combs, Chucky Thompson, and me. So I was just curious about that. I went up to the label to ask them about it. And I don't know. It just seemed like after that, we were never the same. I noticed I didn't really work over there too much. And when I had six songs, which a lot of people considered like the lion's share of Ready to Die on the second album, I only played a smaller role with two tracks. Right. I loved the Doe featuring Angela Wimbush and Jay-Z and going back to Cali.
39:19
Speaker 1
Great contributions. Yeah. Great contributions.
39:23
Speaker 2
And that album, he was taking a different direction with Biggie. First album was more gritty. So the second album was a bit more shiny, a bit more commercial at times.
39:36
Speaker 1
Yeah.
39:37
Speaker 2
And so I tried to cater to that because I played, and you won't believe this, but for Life After Death album, I played him. I still have the cassette, by the way, somewhere. I played him 80 beats. He turned all of them down. He was like, no, we're taking a different direction on this album. So at the end, the tail end of Ready to Die, I remember I offered him, the beat wasn't even made. I said, I love you more, Rene and Angela. I said, I did all this rough and grimy stuff. We just do a joint like that, like a good radio joint. He turned it down. So now that this was finally the direction he was taking, I came back and I said, so what about that? I love you more, Rene and Angela. And I remember him just saying, we'll hook it up then. And so I hooked that one up. And then going back to Cali was the second. So my two tracks on the second album, Life After Death, they were a little bit shinier. than the ones on Ready to Die.
40:48
Speaker 1
Yeah, it wasn't ready for that sound.
40:49
Speaker 2
And then More Bounce to the Ounce by Zap. That sample was my idea for going back to Cali. I did some special research in doing, making, going back to Cali because at that time you had the East-West thing was going on, a lot of friction. And what I wanted to do, I wanted to try to get everybody, if I could, on one accord, musically. I found out from a manager that I had back at that time that, because I asked him, I said, you're in L.A., what is that record at the house parties that joint that L.A. And he said, man, More Bounce. He was talking about More Bounce to the Ounce by Zap. So I need to do something with that. Here's the two me's talking to each other again. Then the other me said, yo, bad people already use more bounce. You know, No Future and Your Front and MC Breed. And of course, the original time that it got used, first time it got used, EPMD's issue, not issue, You Gots to Chill.
42:11
Speaker 1
Oh, right. EPMD.
42:12
Speaker 2
That was the first time.
42:13
Speaker 1
Wow.
42:14
Speaker 2
But so many people sampled that record. The other me said, yo, but so many people already used that sample, that record. And then I said, yeah, but I'm going to use it like nobody's ever used it. Here we go back to the chopping style. I chopped it, diced it up in so many pieces to the point where people thought that I actually had the masters.
42:37
Speaker 1
It's crazy. It sounds inspired by, but it don't sound at all like.
42:41
Speaker 2
Because... I had the track is moving the same way as the original, but the bass line is juxtaposed. It's in places it's not supposed to be playing different notes that it's not supposed to be, but yet the track is moving at the same time. Then I did the layers with the Rhodes keyboard on top and that stuff like that.
43:13
Speaker 1
And were you with Big when he put his verse down?
43:16
Speaker 2
No.
43:16
Speaker 1
No. So you just handed it in. It was just an idea that I had. And not sure what would happen with it.
43:22
Speaker 2
And he didn't even know, but what I was trying to create, like I said, was something that could get both sides on one musical accord. In other words, we got this beef thing going on, but how about I bring everybody in the middle, and regardless of what side you're on, get everybody like this.
43:42
Speaker 1
Yeah.
43:43
Speaker 2
I had to come out here in Cali for something during that time. This is after I created and submitted the track. You know when you come off the plane, those drivers, they're holding up that sign. They had my sign, Harvey. I'm like, yeah. He took me to the car, put my bags in there, so I get in his car. Like those Lincoln cars back then. Now we're dealing with Ubers, but used to have a Lincoln thing. pick you up back then so I get in the back seat he got my luggage in the trunk he had the radio on not right away but we driving to my hotel and going back to Cali comes on the radio out here in LA and I'm sitting in the back seat like he don't know he's driving I was just like smiling to myself I said yo you did it because if LA wasn't receptive to To that record, especially because Biggie did the song, then they would not have played it at all. But you know the saying, man, music overpowers and conquers all. If music is good, people are going to love it regardless. And I felt good about that, that I gained the confidence of L.A. And of course, New York was playing it.
45:10
Speaker 1
Yeah.
45:11
Speaker 2
So you got this conflict going on. But yet, in the middle, the music meant more.
45:18
Speaker 1
Yeah.
45:19
Speaker 2
And had everybody like this. And I felt so happy. I was like, yo, you did it, man. Just to try to bring some kind of peace. Yeah. If anything, if even just a little at all.
45:30
Speaker 1
Yeah.
45:30
Speaker 2
Just to get everybody on one accord.
45:33
Speaker 1
Yeah. Were you out here when Big... Died?
45:36
Speaker 2
No, no.
45:37
Speaker 1
You were in New York.
45:38
Speaker 2
I was in, uh, New York. I remember I stopped at the corner store on the corner in Brooklyn of Washington and Fulton street. That strip right there between, uh, Fulton street between Washington and St. James is where him and junior mafia, they used to stand out on the block. You know, I'm going to just say doing what they do. Um, But I stopped in that store on the corner, and I ran into, what was his name? He was one of the, Blake, Blake C., one of the members of Junior Mafia. So I'm already in the store. He comes busting through the door. He sees me. Yo, Mo, what up, man? I said, what's going on? He said, yo, I was out there with Big and them, and I had to come back. He said, yo, they're out there balling, having mad fun. And I'm thinking to myself, like, yo, in the midst of all this conflict You're having so much fun, and why would you even go out there? And I bought what I bought, my juice or whatever, and I went up in the house, played some music late until maybe about 2 o'clock in the morning, went to sleep, and the next day when I woke up on TV was the news that Big E had just got killed. So, no, I wasn't out in L.A. at that time. During that time, before and after, I was still Coming back and forth out here because you had the Alcoholics, Liquidation album. I did a remix for MC8' s Is It Get On The Floor? Rage on her album Necessary Roughness. I did that title track and another song called The Breakdown.
47:29
Speaker 1
Yeah.
47:31
Speaker 2
I'm producing Lady of Rage on Death Row.
47:35
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah.
47:37
Speaker 2
Hey, listen, whatever was going on, I made sure that I never, ever wanted to be a part of that.
47:44
Speaker 1
Yeah.
47:45
Speaker 2
Always considered myself to be a businessman. Do the work. Yeah. Do it well and go home. Conflicts and stuff like that, don't get involved with that. I never, ever wanted to be a part of that, and I didn't want to threaten my ability to continue to be able to come out here and work with artists.
48:09
Speaker 1
Before the conflict happened, were you listening to music coming from here, like N.W.A.? Absolutely.
48:19
Speaker 2
Yeah. Absolutely. You know, L.A. is a funk town, heavy on the funk history. Earlier, I just spoke about Zap, anything funky. Zap, Cameo, of course, Parliament, Funkadelic, all things George Clinton, Confunction. You get what I'm saying. LA is a heavy funk town. And that music was always all right with me because all those albums, I have all those albums. I listen to that. Funk is a big part of my music, musical palette, the things I enjoyed. The records I bought coming up in my time. So, yeah. I love music, period. I don't care what coast it come from.
49:05
Speaker 1
Yeah.
49:06
Speaker 2
And my ability to come out here and work with other artists, I didn't want to be threatened with that. You know?
49:14
Speaker 1
Take me back to Thug Life Volume 1.
49:18
Speaker 2
Straight ballin'. Straight ballin'. I only got one song on that album.
49:23
Speaker 1
What's one of the best ones?
49:25
Speaker 2
Yeah, it was interesting the way Pac recorded with me. First of all, he was in New York and he was filming above the rim at the time. And this particular part of the movie, he was filming at the Rutgers Playground. You know all those basketball scenes? Yeah. That was shot in Harlem across the street from Polo Grounds Projects at the renowned Ruckus Park. When I met him, he said, I'm filming a movie. If you want, I get breaks. Come on the set and play me some stuff. By the time we went to the studio, we recorded this big batch of songs. But I like what he did. He didn't take all those songs and put them on one album. If I Die Tonight and Temptations, he threw that on Me Against the World. When I did Running From the Police, which later became Running, Dying to Live, the Eminem remix. The original to that has never, ever seen the light of day. But he took that and put that on the One Million Man March album. What was it called? What's it called? Nation something. That title is slipping me. But the album was dedicated at the time to the One Million March.
50:51
Speaker 1
One Million Strong.
50:52
Speaker 2
One Million Strong. That was the name of it. Then he took the Straight Ballin' that we just spoke of, and he put that on the Thug Life album. Also even pulled in my brother, LG, to work with him. So LG produced Out On Bail. And to this day, there's so many remixes of that song versus the original. Then I did another joint with him called My Block. He took that and put that on the show soundtrack. Wow.
51:25
Speaker 1
Yeah.
51:26
Speaker 2
So you got to think how smart as a strategy that was. He could have took all those songs, put them on one album, but he dispersed them to different albums. I thought that was so smart.
51:40
Speaker 1
It was wild. Mm-hmm. It's a wild idea. I mean, and he just was working so much. There's so many projects, I guess.
51:47
Speaker 2
I always compared that to like how RZA took his artist, ODB, Ghost Star Electra. Yeah. Raekwon stayed on Loud, which is where Wu-Tang was. Ghostface put him on Epic. jizzle you went to geffen same kind of strategy you know what i mean instead of having all your eggs in one.
52:14
Speaker 1
Basket yeah dispersed spread out.
52:18
Speaker 2
And what happens is you end up competing with yourself yeah these records are all coming out around the same time and you're actually competing with yourself in different positions on one same chart.
52:31
Speaker 1
Were you aware of crazy were you aware of all the various projects or were you just like this is a session and wherever they go they go.
52:38
Speaker 2
I didn't know he was going to place those songs on different albums like he did. I had to find out after they came out. I think the only two that I actually knew about were the two Temptations featuring Rapping is Fundamental, if nobody ever knew. Me, A.B. Money, and J.R. That's my group, Rapping is Fundamental, that I was in. That's us singing on the hook. I know you've been searching for someone. And doing the harmony. Yeah, that was us.
53:12
Speaker 1
Get the job done. That's you guys?
53:15
Speaker 2
Yeah. On Temptations, it just doesn't say featuring rapping is fundamental, but that was us doing the bridge hook. Wow.
53:23
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. And even in the... Hey, that's rap.
53:29
Speaker 2
That's A.B. Money singing on the hooks and the outros.
53:35
Speaker 1
That's dope.
53:37
Speaker 2
And all A.B. Money was doing was expounding on the Watch Your Nuggets sample from the Redman record that I had in there where Eric Sermon says, Hey, hey. So when AB comes on top, he starts expounding on that like.
53:59
Speaker 1
Eh, eh, eh.
54:02
Speaker 2
That's crazy. That's crazy how it came together.
54:04
Speaker 1
That's wild, man. That's an amazing song. Amazing song.
54:08
Speaker 2
Yeah.
54:09
Speaker 1
Were you happy with how it all came, like with that, when you listened to that album, were you happy with how your songs fit into the bigger, the larger project?
54:19
Speaker 2
Yeah, I was. I was pleased that the way they fit in with As a whole together inside the project.
54:27
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. It all sounds like other piece. It all sounds like, you know what I mean?
54:32
Speaker 2
Yeah. And he had a lot of different other producers on there.
54:35
Speaker 1
Yeah.
54:36
Speaker 2
That's important. Sequencing. I mean, from the first to the last as the tracks follow. Yeah. And meshing together the different sounds of different producers all together on one album. It has to flow.
54:52
Speaker 1
Yeah.
54:53
Speaker 2
Yeah. And maybe that's the reason why people like that album so much. But when you talk about catering, like I did with going back to Cali when I was catering to the funk LA thing, I did the same thing for Tupac. Wait, hold on.
55:08
Speaker 1
So tell me about that.
55:09
Speaker 2
So if you don't know... Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Boom. That's a filter. I filtered Computer Love by Zap just down to the bass and low frequencies. Wow. Added the drums and on top added my chords, I call them. Wow. Yeah, yeah.
55:51
Speaker 1
That's a wild use of zap.
55:54
Speaker 2
So the only purpose that Computer Love serves on that record is just for the bass. I think you know you can filter records. DJs do that live. Yeah. Lots of times you hear that. They'll filter a song, just muffle it down to just bass. And a lot of the producers in the 90s used to do a lot of that. Pete Rock, Large Professor, me, so many others. people. And so I always loved that bass line. But on the section that I sampled it from, there's no instrumental passage on Computer Love. Like an open instrumental spot. So I said, dang, I want to use the record. But they're singing everywhere. So I said, filter the song down to just the low frequencies and build some new music around And that's where I came up with the, and all the other things that surrounded the track.
57:01
Speaker 1
When you say it, I can hear it now, but you just don't associate, but the same way like going back to Cali, you don't even really associate going back to Cali with Zap a hundred percent. You don't associate it with more bounce. You know, it sounds like.
57:14
Speaker 2
More bounce, to me, in essence, more bounce is a little harder, a little more aggressive. Yeah. And Computer Love, it being a love song, definitely was a little bit more mellow.
57:27
Speaker 1
More mellow, yeah.
57:28
Speaker 2
But the drums is what made it hard.
57:31
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Miles Davis turned 100 this year. It's the centennial of Miles Davis. Yeah. And you produced Miles Davis' last album.
57:42
Speaker 2
Dubop.
57:43
Speaker 1
Insane.
57:44
Speaker 2
Yeah. So before I even get into anything else, let me tell you how I came up with the titles. of the album, Doo Bop. Rapping is fundamental. By the time we got our deal in 1990, the album actually came out in 91 on A & M Records.
58:05
Speaker 1
A.B.
58:05
Speaker 2
Money had this idea to name the style of what we did. And in his opinion, it was doo-wop singing, that is. Doo-wop mixed with hip-hop. So prefix doo suffix hop when it came time because we was just making songs in the studio and i would ask miles what we title in this he said i don't know i don't give a call it whatever you want so i asked the same about the album what we're gonna title the album same thing he was like i don't care call it whatever so so now that i got this autonomy i got this power To name the album, I expounded more on the doo-hop. Okay, we were singing on the Do-Bop song. So that's prefix do, suffix bop, because of his bebop style. It's crazy. I don't know how he come up with these things.
59:17
Speaker 1
And when you put it to him, when you told him, what'd he say?
59:19
Speaker 2
No, he didn't even realize what it was. I just thought the name was cool and came up with it. He gave me the power To title every track. Say, for instance, like Chocolate Chip. It's just something that came to my mind. I'm like, call it that. Mystery, which to me always had like a mysterious feel to it. Yeah. Because there's a monotone, this note that just holds all the way through this song and it don't change.
59:55
Speaker 1
Yeah.
59:55
Speaker 2
So it was mysterious to me. So I call the song Mystery. Mystery. And then you have Duke Booty, which is taken from the message Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five featuring Duke Booty. I always thought his name was so cool. So I don't know. I figured I don't know. So call it Duke Booty. That's a funky track. I like that one a lot.
1:00:20
Speaker 1
Was it intimidating at first? Through the whole thing?
1:00:24
Speaker 2
Yeah, because when I went to go play tracks for him at his apartment, he lived on Central Park West, right across the street from Central Park. I went in there with a reel of the music that I had done up to that point. Yeah. And there was this song on the reel called True Fresh MC off the Genius album, Words from the Genius. And I would compare this track to If you close your eyes, you would think like the Bomb Squad produced it. That track could have easily been like a public enemy track. And I'm playing all this other stuff. It's nice and it's friendly. He's sitting on the couch. He's not really responding. And then when that one, the most aggressive joint come on, he sat up a little bit. He's like, yeah, I want something like that. Can you do something like that for me? I was like, yeah. So if I was worried about And being nervous about working with him, that right there kind of opened it up. I sighed big time right there. Yeah. I said, okay, he want me to be myself. Amazing. That made it easier to just go ahead and work. Come on, man. It's Miles Davis, man.
1:01:44
Speaker 1
And how would you prepare the sessions? I mean, you'd get the music together and then bring them. Like, what studio were you guys working out of? How did you?
1:01:51
Speaker 2
The Unique Studios, which was on 47th and 7th Avenue, right in the heart of Times Square, they've been closed since 2003. Actually, 2004. And when the studio was closing down, I ended up taking over the old Studio B from 2004 to 2009. Wow. But we never recorded in Studio B in the room that I took over. We always seemed to record in Studio A. It was the biggest room.
1:02:24
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:02:25
Speaker 2
Add the SSL in there, the biggest board, and I don't know. It just felt real comfortable in there. Yeah.
1:02:31
Speaker 1
And would you put tracks up and just put them in the live room?
1:02:38
Speaker 2
Well, the thing with me back then, and I'm still like that to this day, I never liked coming to the studio to create from scratch.
1:02:47
Speaker 1
Right.
1:02:48
Speaker 2
I feel like you're wasting the artist's time.
1:02:51
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:02:53
Speaker 2
It's hourly. The rate is hourly. So if you're taking four hours, three, four hours to make a beat, even an hour or two, that's an hour when the artist could have been in the booth singing or like him playing their instrument and recording. So I always made it a point to come to the studio with the tracks already done. Because nobody likes to wait. I didn't want to waste their budget. Spend a lot of money. So all those tracks that I made, I came to the studio with them already done. At home is where I created the concepts. Got everything down pat. And back then we were saving everything to the micro floppy disk for the SP-1200 MPCs and stuff. So I would come in with everything saved to the floppy disk. Didn't like taking my own equipment out of the house because something could happen to it. So they had equipment rentals where they would rent the equipment and it would be there when I get there. Only thing I had to do was bring my floppy disk, pop them in, engineer, start tracking the song. Right.
1:04:03
Speaker 1
And how many takes would you guys go through?
1:04:08
Speaker 2
I'm glad you asked that because every Miles Davis song that we did was a straight run. I'm going to mention Tupac also too. Tupac ties into this. Miles Davis hated punching. He hated punching. So my engineer, Eric Lynch, who kind of engineered almost everything that I ever did, especially if it was at unique recording studios. Miles is playing a horn, right? But there's still song structure. There's verse, hook, verse, hook. Outro, right?
1:04:47
Speaker 1
Right.
1:04:48
Speaker 2
So, Dubob's song was one of the first songs that we recorded. No, that was done with D'Anthony Johnson. All the other songs were done with Eric Lynch. So, I'm going to show you the similarities between Miles and Tupac. And, of course, it was Miles that I worked with first. So, Miles plays a verse worth of horn. My engineer, Eric Lynch, after the verse worth of Horn, he stopped the tape. Miles Davis said, don't stop my shit. Let it roll. Let it go. Let it go. Don't stop my shit. And Eric was like, I see you, Eric. You should have asked him. He liked to just record one long pass.
1:05:39
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:05:40
Speaker 2
All right. So that was Miles. That was his process, right? All right, years later, I go into the studio. Eric is recording the Pac sessions, too. Pac do his first verse. He get to the hook. Like, if I die tonight. It's obvious when he say, if I die tonight. And he get quiet. That tells you he just did the verse. Eric, again, with Tupac, he stopped the tape. What did Tupac say?
1:06:08
Speaker 1
Don't stop my tape.
1:06:09
Speaker 2
Let it roll. Let it roll. Yo, that was so crazy. Because they had similarities. I told Eric, I said, yo, you learn from Miles. If he want the tape to run, let him do his passes. Because Pac had a process for the way he recorded. He would do the verses, right? And then when it get to the hook, he'd be quiet. Or he'd just mumble little stuff in the background. Doing quiet little stuff. And then when the verse come, he'd pick back up. But it's one long pass.
1:06:44
Speaker 1
Wow.
1:06:45
Speaker 2
And Miles did the same thing. He'd play his verse worth, and if he wasn't playing on the hooks, he'd be quiet. He'd wait eight bars, four bars, excuse me.
1:06:56
Speaker 1
No, eight.
1:06:58
Speaker 2
And then at the second verse, and you hear him, he starts playing again. You'll hear him doing that on the Do-Bop song.
1:07:06
Speaker 1
Wow.
1:07:06
Speaker 2
Featuring Rappin' is fundamental. I don't know, it's just crazy to me about those similarities that, Pac and Miles had as far as their process in the studio. Both of them. Don't stop my tape. Let it roll. Don't cut my shit off.
1:07:23
Speaker 1
I'd be scared as hell if Miles yelled at me like that, man.
1:07:26
Speaker 2
You know? Yeah.
1:07:27
Speaker 1
Did he tell you what his interest in hip-hop was? Did he talk about that at all?
1:07:33
Speaker 2
We didn't really get into that many. conversations like that, I would just present music to him, and he was cool with it. Wow. He wasn't really one who talked a lot.
1:07:49
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:07:51
Speaker 2
I just remember the last time I saw him in the studio, the very last session, he was in a real happy mood, and his girlfriend had came to the session, and I don't know, he just seemed so upbeat that session, the last time I saw him. Yeah. And his manager said, we got to leave. Miles got to do some shows, but we're going to come back and finish the album. He fell sick while out on the road doing those shows. So they came back to me and told me that in order to complete the album, at that point, we did six songs. He said, what we're going to do is dig into the Warner Brothers vaults. We're going to pull two previously unreleased songs. You can strip those songs down to the horns. And build new songs around them. And those two songs became Fantasy and High Speed Chase.
1:08:48
Speaker 1
Wow.
1:08:49
Speaker 2
On the Do-Bop album. Wow. And the ninth song was a reprise of Mystery.
1:08:57
Speaker 1
Right.
1:08:58
Speaker 2
So that came to, that made Nine. nine songs. So in totality, we actually recorded six together, and I filled the album out with two previously unreleased songs that I built brand new songs out of. I'm not sure if I'm correct, if I'm right. I think I heard that those two Then I recrafted to complete the album. I think they came out of what was called the Rubber Band Sessions. Okay. The Rubber Band Sessions was the stuff that he had recorded with Prince while he was alive. Wow.
1:09:35
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm. Because they were going to do an album together, but then it just never happened.
1:09:40
Speaker 2
I don't know. But it was all in-house, and it was natural if they would work together because Miles was on Warner. Straight up Warner Brothers records. And Prince's label, Paisley Park... Was Warner. Was under Warner.
1:09:57
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:09:58
Speaker 2
Yeah.
1:09:58
Speaker 1
Wild, man.
1:09:59
Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
1:10:00
Speaker 1
If he had... I mean, obviously, it's sad that Miles passed anyways. Mm-hmm. But just in the context of the story, it would have been interesting to be able to talk to him after the album's out. Mm-hmm. Maybe do some more work together. I mean, just, you know, you just... That's a what if. Like, what could a... You know.
1:10:18
Speaker 1
On the one hand, you worked with a legend. That's what it is. And you made a really good album. And that's his last statement.
1:10:26
Speaker 2
But it came under heavy criticism, though. A lot of the jazz purists slammed it. A lot of the media outlets. What's his name? Crouch, I think was his last name. Stanley Crouch. Oh, he slammed that album. Slammed it.
1:10:45
Speaker 1
They all slammed everything Miles did. Yeah.
1:10:47
Speaker 2
A lot of the things that got slammed when they were first made, they always later ended up to be considered to be masterpieces by people. I mean, just think, Barry Gordy thought that Marvin Gaye's What's Going On was trash. Yeah. And he thought it was a terrible move. and thought that he might alienate his female audience. Because Marvin was known to have a huge female audience. Yeah. And to talk about Vietnam, state of the world, the ecology, all of this stuff, he thought that he would abandon his fan base. But to this day, What's Going On tends to be one of the most revered albums of all time. And for Dubop, But now, over 35 years, is it that far, that long? 35. People were praising the album, like, oh, Moby, I love that. I was like, but back then, I was struggling. Oh, man. They were slamming it. I know.
1:11:56
Speaker 1
That's what I mean. It's like, it's too bad Miles wasn't around. Because I don't think Miles would have given, like, Miles, a lot of his stuff got panned, and he didn't give a fuck. Yeah.
1:12:05
Speaker 2
Anything new. Might be hard to accept. Yeah. Just like when he did the Bitches Brute album. 100%. You know, bringing in the whole electric thing. Electric piano, at times funkish, at times rockish. And even a lot of his own peers back then.
1:12:27
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:12:27
Speaker 2
Just trying to figure out, like, what are you doing? Yeah.
1:12:32
Speaker 1
You know, and playing with his back to the audience used to piss people off. Yeah. not wanting to revisit his hit. It's like funny, like, you know, Quincy finally, I guess, towards the end, got him to revisit Kinda Blue, but he was just like, I don't ever want to play that stuff again.
1:12:44
Speaker 2
I saw an interview where he was sitting on a couch on some late night show where he spoke of his back being to the audience. He said it had something or more to do with being able to hear the band correctly.
1:13:03
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:13:04
Speaker 2
He felt like if he was facing... the band, he could hear them better.
1:13:08
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:13:09
Speaker 2
As opposed to standing with his back to them.
1:13:12
Speaker 1
And probably couldn't get a good connection going, too. You're kind of more... That might have been the diplomatic answer. I think Miles did want to turn his back on a lot of them people. I love that Miles was just different.
1:13:29
Speaker 2
Left.
1:13:29
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:13:30
Speaker 2
Total left.
1:13:31
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. No one like that. I mean, like, come on. How many people? There's not a lot of artists like that.
1:13:36
Speaker 2
Just never want to lead. He always never want to follow. He always led. So I just came from New York doing, uh, uh, a small mini book tour. We didn't get to plug that yet, but iconic beats, which iconic beats, which is, you can call it my memoir. It speaks about my time spent in the music business. Um, artists that I work with, it starts from me being a little boy in the projects going all the way up to modern day. Yeah. So that's a good read. That's something anybody wants to check out. Iconic Beats, Easy Mo Beats, available at all your bookstores and amazon.com. Yeah.
1:14:30
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's got great stories in there.
1:14:33
Speaker 2
Yeah. No fluff, just like real stories.
1:14:37
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:14:38
Speaker 2
Of things that happened, time spent with artists, my experience, my life, not just about the music, but my upbringing, my family. I wanted to tell that story, let people get a deeper look into Austin Harvey Jr., a.k.a. Easy Mo B.
1:15:03
Speaker 1
In the book, do you get into shimmy shimmy yaa?
1:15:06
Speaker 2
Oh, how the original was recorded in the projects?
1:15:10
Speaker 1
Yeah.
1:15:11
Speaker 2
Under the title of Brooklyn Zoo. And then by the time 36 Chambers came out, RZA took the idea of the same beat, remaking it and renaming the song Shimmy Shimmy Ya. Yeah, I talk about that.
1:15:28
Speaker 1
That's a sampling of the kind of stuff you can get in that book. I mean, there's so many stories, man.
1:15:33
Speaker 2
And so many other stories, yeah.
1:15:35
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. It's a wonderful, wonderful career you've had, man.
1:15:40
Speaker 2
Yo, I got to say, I enjoyed this sit down. It was, you had some good questions, but then you allowed me to talk about things that I wanted to. It's not always as, you know, you always have the kind of freedom to speak like that. Because people have, the interviewers have their own questions. And they just keep it so narrow. So thank you for giving me the chance to speak. That's the goal, man. Tell some stories that people might not have ever known.
1:16:12
Speaker 1
Hey, you're the hardest, man. I want to go where you want to go. You know what I mean? So I'm happy we did it, man.
1:16:17
Speaker 2
Yeah.
1:16:18
Speaker 1
Thank you.
1:16:19
Speaker 2
First time on camera ever. Easy Mo B. Broken record.
1:16:25
Speaker 1
Podcast that's it come on that's it man come on now Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan our engineer is Ben Talladay Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries if you love this show and others from Pushkin consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for $ 4. 99 a month look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast Subscriptions And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond.
The Hosts
Malcolm Gladwell
Malcolm Gladwell is co-founder of Pushkin Industries and host of the hit podcast Revisionist History. He is a journalist, a speaker, and the author of several New York Times bestsellers including The Tipping…
Justin Richmond
Justin Richmond is producer and co-host of the music podcast Broken Record with writer Malcolm Gladwell, New York Times editor Bruce Headlam, and music producer—and Def Jam co-founder—Rick Rubin. Justin…
Bruce Headlam
Bruce Headlam is one of the co-creators of the music podcast Broken Record. He worked at The New York Times for 19 years, including two years running the 50-person Video…
Leah Rose
Leah Rose is a senior producer and hosts episodes of Broken Record. A former music editor at XXL Magazine, she also served as an on-air personality for Eminem’s SiriusXM channel, Shade 45.…
