Darkchild on Making Hits for Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Beyonce for 25 Years (Full Interview)

all right here we go we have one of the great musical minds of our era rodney jerkins aka dark child is in the building welcome to vlad tv thank you for having me we've been talking about doing this for like seven years yeah yeah i don't do too many interviews you don't you don't i've been persistent yeah i think we ran into each other at the the four seasons brunch that's right you know both of our families were there that's right and we had done something back in the day with ray j yeah very briefly yeah but man i'm so honored to be sitting here thanks for having me man we're actually in your studio right now yeah this is this is one of my spots yeah one of the spots yeah one to three one to three yeah yeah man i'm looking around you got the juno 106 you know the roland yeah you know like the old school equipment you know the npc's it's i feel like i'm in a historical place right now i have another i have another room here at the house that i'll show you before you leave okay and it has like i call it the wall my wall of sound and it has like five six npcs all my keyboards from that i've been collecting throughout the years real cool yeah man this is dope this is dope i mean you have two grammys under your belt nine grammy nominations you've worked with michael jackson whitney houston beyonce kanye rihanna katy perry brandy monica cher jennifer lopez aaliyah britney spears spice girls janet jackson lady gaga mary j blige lionel richie justin bieber ariana grande alicia keys sam smith and like a hundred other people who i'm not even mentioning right now her you got some grammy noms for that yeah man just historical i'm blessed man you are you are well this is our first time really talking together so i want to start in the very beginning well you actually grew up near atlantic city yeah i grew up like literally maybe seven minutes away from atlantic city um spent a lot of time in atlantic city because my father was a pastor so you know we would always go to different churches in atlantic city pleasantville is where my dad's church was my studio was and you know it was it was great growing up atlantic city it wasn't really a lot of musical opportunity in atlantic city right um but you're not too far from new york yeah well two and a half hours right so i would what i would do is i would i would um work at a local diner and i would make 35 a week and then i would take 23 or the 35 to buy a bus ticket round trip bus ticket from atlantic city to port authority and i would go get on a bus and hop over to new york and shout my music or try to get my music in the right hands if i could yeah yeah well your mom is actually a choir director she is okay so you really grew up in the church yeah you can even listen to secular music no we know it was funny we didn't my dad didn't call it secular music called the rock and roll music everything was tagged rock and roll no rock and roll music allowed me to pop rv it's all rock and roll rock and roll so i get busted with like dougie fresh and slick rick cassette too big that he came with my favorite rapper growing up and i would and i and i wanted to perform the smooth operator in the school talent show and and i would have to sleep to to practice because rock and roll music r b hip-hop whatever it was wasn't allowed in our house so it was the devil's music totally wow yeah and you actually started playing piano at the age of five yeah my mom my mom um well my dad had a house rule that you couldn't live in our house unless you played play the piano it's a house rule okay and at five years old my mom um when my mom was when my mom was pregnant with me the doctors told her that i wouldn't make it that i wouldn't that they basically prepared her for me dying she was super sick and they were like he's not gonna make it so my mom is a super para warrior still is to this day and she had faith and i was born and that faith also moved over to when i was five years old she was like there's something special about him and i wanted to play the piano and there was a particular guy who was teaching classical music she wanted me to learn from my mom was considered the help she was that she was a maid in i guess the good part of south jersey and she went up to the teacher one day and was like i would love for you to teach my son he probably sized her up like you can't afford me but she couldn't but she was persistent and he became my teacher okay yeah and there's four kids right four two boys two girls my brother fred is also the music industry um and my two sisters um they weren't really in the music industry but they roll with me they travel with me okay so you're playing the piano as a kid and are you getting better right away was it something that was like you instantly took to it or i didn't want to play the piano i remember i remember my first lesson i remember not wanting to to do a lesson i remember like bickering with my mom like i don't want to do it uh and that was it's what i do every day right and when i have four kids and they all play the piano and they and it's the same rule that applies okay live in this house unless you play um i think you know i think in my mind i was getting good pretty quickly in my mind um not to my teacher though my teacher you know he was very strong with me and very um aggressive and do it over do it no you're not practicing enough that i you know as he should have been but in my mind i was like man i'm i'm doing pretty pretty well you know yeah uh probably wasn't probably just was a kid you know playing around but um as the years progressed i think everybody started to pay attention that i was developing something okay were you playing the church at all or singing in the church i was fiddling in church i was i was more so the drummer in our church oh okay yeah i was the drummer it's funny because my brother was the keyboard player and i was the drummer i got kicked to this to curb a lot though because there was better drummers than me so they would always say little rodney get off the drums and i would get you know be like you know i'm eight years old nine years old give me my shot um and sometimes he let me play sometimes he wouldn't um but i would take that whatever i was you know whenever something that wasn't going my way or how i wanted i was just taking and feel it into my craft and what i wanted to do and by the age of 10 years old i wanted to be a producer like i knew it at 10 years old i think i think i like messed around with my brother's beat machine for the first time and i was like yeah this is what this is what i'm made for right here okay because by the time you got to high school you were taking your drum machine to school yeah but we can't even get to high school before 12 years old and reading word up magazine and and all those great magazines about producers that i looked up to like teddy riley and and ellie reed and babyface and jimmy jam and terry lewis and um um marley marr all the great producers that i would read about they all had this com commonality amongst them that they were using the mpc60 by made by kai yep i had one yeah and i was just like man i gotta get that i gotta get that that's the one i wanna be if you wanna be a producer you gotta have that machine and we didn't have the money to afford it and somehow i you know i showed my dad and we found one and my dad borrowed twelve hundred dollars off his life insurance to give me that machine and that changed my life the guy who told me that i couldn't that rock and roll music wasn't allowed in the house was now investing in his kid to do rock and roll music how old were you go figure 12. 12 years old yeah well i guess at one point you had a teacher that said uh black people will be extinct by the year 2000 oh yeah so yeah so when i was in high school right so when i was in high school i was known as the the guy who carried a beat machine in his book bag that would plug up during lunch period and make beats that would wrap in the hallways that would create songs that would you know sing sing a rap to the girls like i was known for that like i had no fear when it comes to music and uh it made up for other areas right i was always the bigger kid so when people might have made fun of me being a bigger kid i was super confident in my swag for making music so it didn't matter like make fun all you want i i know what i know what i'm good at whatever you know what i mean so and it went a long way um but because i spent so much time creating at in at night time i would always be tired by eleventh period eleventh period was history class so when i was a junior in high school i had this one teacher and she brought this newspaper clip in in in the paper said black people will be extinct by the year 2000. and i mean this was 1993 92 somewhere around there there were seven years left yeah and i'm like yo and i mean i remember i remember looking at this this this article and thinking why was she giving me this and she was a white it was a white female yes and she told me she gave it to me when she gave it to me she said stop making music don't think about music because you won't be here to do it anyway yo like raw like in my face raw and i was just like yo i went to my guidance counselor immediately like i was like he's like she didn't get i said yeah she gave me this paper told me i'm not gonna be here then uh and and he was just like scratching his head the school system did nothing about it you know um but i went back to her and i crumbled up the paper and i threw it in the trash and i said i looked in the face and i said not only will we be here but in fact i won't be here in this school by the spring and i just said that man i had no plans i don't know why i said that i was like god was speaking through me man i just said it yeah and literally by that april i was out of the school i was working doing music for uptown records okay andre harrell yeah teddy reilly was the first one to to get one of your demos yeah teddy riley was just way before high school okay so teddy teddy riley i met teddy raleigh when i was 13 years old i think i just i think i just i was just about to turn 14 and uh teddy riley was in he heard my music at an impact convention in atlantic city and he heard it through someone and he he didn't like the group that performed but he liked the music so he said tell whoever did the music that they're dope and when i heard that that was my men that was the person that i wanted to mentor me anyway i was like i told my dad dad teddy reilly heard my music we got to get to teddy riley and my dad was like where is he i said i think he lives in virginia beach i see the virginia beach on all the back of the album covers we got to go down there and that's what sucks about us not having credits the way we did back then because think about it i'm i got to teddy rally by looking at the credits his credit said virginia beach so that made me tell my that prompt my dad yo let's go to virginia beach and my dad thought i was crazy but my dad also understood the talent so he's like all right we hopped in the church van and we drove to virginia beach was like six hours yeah and we weighed out waited outside of teddy raleigh's studio for hours for him to show up my dad was like see i told you he wasn't gonna be here and i was like nah let's just wait and we wait we waited we waited and then teddy popped up and teddy took me in the studio and i played my music for him and he offered me uh pretty much uh uh not a job but internship pretty much to come there every summer during school break and kind of just sit under and learn right and for those that don't know teddy is one of the all-time greats i mean he's one of the guys that really invented the hip-hop sound he goes back to like dougie fresh yeah he did he did dougie freshman he's 14. he did the show when he was 14 years old what i'm saying he invented new jack swing yeah pharrell and the neptunes were under him under him everybody had a little everybody came from that virginia system yeah yeah i mean black street uh guy key sweat johnny champ i mean he had his hands heavy d and the boys all of that michael jackson i mean just everything that he did was just like and i and being down there watching him create definitely inspired me and and it showed me that i could do this well he offered you a contract but you didn't take it yeah that was when i was probably about 17 years old okay three years later yeah yeah i was going down there each summer going in there hanging out and then finally a deal came from teddy raleigh and um i don't know my dad my dad valued me on a different level it wasn't that i didn't want to sign with teddy riley it was that my dad probably was like i think he said something like um yeah you got you gotta give my dad you gotta give my son a hundred thousand dollars a month for him to sign now mind you we're not even making we're not even making a thousand dollars without even thinking we're not even making a thousand dollars 0.2 million and we're not signing a year my dad was my dad was was was was crazy like that and y'all y'all weren't wealthy at the time or nothing nothing but my dad i think he just i think he saw he saw value like he saw like you know at some point my son is going to make it and and and i want you know he's he's kobe bryant coming out of high school he's lebron james coming out of high school in his mind you know what i mean so um i let him deal with the business side i didn't get too much involved in it all i knew was we didn't sign with teddy raleigh and kept it moving and i guess you wanted to build an empire in your mind at that time yeah i definitely was i definitely felt like i could build my own in my own empire for sure shout out to your dad man not too many parents that are so far sighted i mean were you mad at your dad like yo no no you guys are rocking again now and the cool thing about it was like teddy teddy didn't trip either though like i worked i produced black streak two three years later like teddy let me produce black street so it was like you know it wasn't like it was all it was all love he wasn't tripping yeah like teddy was wealthy yeah and i know and to be honest like i don't i don't think i would if if i were to sign with teddy i definitely probably wouldn't have built my own thing as fast as i did because i i i moved quickly like right after that you know i was still a teenager working with some of the biggest artists so i don't you know teddy was still in in in in the prime of his career so you know i don't know how much that would have benefited me if i would have signed were the neptunes around at all the neptune's not ever at that point they had already moved on too yeah yeah at that point they moved on yeah because i remember they did rump shaker and stuff yeah yeah but that was broken yeah but once they did like use my heart for swv that's when they kind of just like their whole thing kind of started taking off okay so i guess the first uh the first time you produced something commercially was uh for kasserine katherine young yeah yeah arrested her soul she passed away 911. oh yeah she was in the building she was in the building yeah [ __ ] yeah oh and you were you were 15 at the time yeah i was 15. jeff robinson who manages her he would manage he managed cat serene young so that's how i met jeff and that's how i have such a long relationship staying in a relationship with jeff he brought her well to work with me and i was i was about 15 16 at the time yeah okay and the dark child name that came from the minor chords the dark sound everybody has their own story like people say dark chow because i was a dark young kid right my complexion is dark skinned yeah so that's what you want to think it is and that's what you want to think it is but that's not that that's not what it came from it came from really like you know i was sitting down with my attorney and my father and we were just like yo we need a name you know a production name you know i i kind of feel like i was one of the first ones to to do the producer tag like in my mind to this day i feel like i started to produce right just blaze i was for a dark child was definitely before all of that right but um dark chow came from for me the sound i was working with at the time was like a lot of minor chords so in my mind they were dark and because i was so young we just put the child and we tried other things like we tried dark boy we tried dark kid it just didn't had a ring then we put the dark child together like oh that sounded like it got a ring to it were artists cool with you putting that tag you know because these days it's very common to have a tag you know 808 modifiers artists artisans were not only cool with it they actually started doing it on my record so i would do a record for michael jackson said dark child before rock my world whitney houston said dark chop on um on if i told you that or whatever or get it back one of those songs i did with her so like artists started just tony brad they just started saying it and i was like man i ain't got to say it no more the artists are saying it now like they were just going to it's funny i was just working with um i was just working with snow allegra and she said it like in the beginning just it just you know when i first worked with her she said it you know in the booth so a lot of times the artists are just you know what they say i don't even have to say it as much now yeah okay so at 16 you got approached by uptown records uh james jones yeah versus soul too rest in peace yeah and you actually moved in with him i did in hackensack new jersey he took me out of high school so when it happened with the teacher james jones was the one who got a letter i sent him a letter with a cassette tape and he responded which is like back then no one responded to cassette tape sent in the mail yeah and he responded was like yo i want you to come to my office tomorrow he was a r for uptown and i get up there and he was like yo i want you to leave school you can live with me in hackensack and we gonna make music and i was like just like that he's like yeah you're gonna make money and i was like cool and you know and my dad asked my dad and my dad was like hey this opportunity might not happen again let's go and your dad was cool with a 16 year old boy moving in with a grown man yeah a whole different part of you know yeah it was tough it was it was it was tough at first because you know i grew up in such a hardcore christian home yeah and um but and i definitely got exposed to stuff living with james like yeah this is like they i never see nothing like this girls and everything yeah because my home man we was in church five days a week yeah i come from i'm talking about like the hardcore christian home but james was like he you know he thought he was young diddy at the time so it was off the hook up there but um you know james was a big part a a big part of me learning more about working with him and horace brown and patti labelle and different people that i worked with at a young age it definitely got my my my tool sharpened okay so uptown records at that time puffy was already gone yeah he was yeah at that time he was kind of yeah he was kind of there but not there okay yeah he he probably had some type of consultancy situation still or something but he was kind of moving into bad boy because that's when he started coming coming for me like a couple years later he's yeah he's coming for me right because i just interviewed anthony hamilton and he was over there he sounds like around the same time yeah and then at one point you get signed to uptown records which was run by andre harrell i was signed to andre harrell i went to new york in 91 my first time by 93 i was signing my deal with uptown mca with andre harrell jimmy jenkins and this was a dream come true because jodeci had just been signed maybe a couple years prior they were from my hometown and people wanted me to be in this group so bad i remember talking to devonte and uh they had already signed the deal and it was a young lady about uh caroline was a young lady who was like oh my god you need to be in this group they'd love you but they were already established so we're connected with them and eventually they they went on tour i got signed i was opening act for jodeci on the freaking youtuber you remember him over there totally do yeah i remember anthony hamilton because anthony hamilton dave hollister horace brown oh those were like the background singers for like jodeci right so you know i'm saying so then they got all their own solo deals as well yeah yeah yeah so jodeci was over there at the time absolutely and those guys were maniacs during that time crazy crazy they're rock stars genius but crazy yeah crazy yeah devonta he was the one that made me want to collect keyboards because i never forget my first time getting a meeting with devonta at the hit factory and he had all of these keyboards set up and i was like yo it's just crazy and that's what made me like get into keyboards like that right and then kc is one of these all-time great voices unbelievable yeah yeah he could blow like nobody yeah i mean the group alone the jodeci was just to me dope well and jodeci me and anthony hamilton talked about this how i i feel like up until that time r b was really very female oriented it was really done for the females the dudes would have their shirts off and be all sexy and then whatever else and dudes would listen to it with the females but not really on their own but jodeci came out and guys would be like yo i'm [ __ ] with this well you'll see what made jodeci so unique unique it was like we're looking at four tupacs right you had the black leather vest with the jeans and the timberlands right and you had four of them like that so it was like you had with the bandanas a whole nine you had four tupac singing right right when you really think about it yeah yeah and your first session was of the patti labelle yeah like my first like my first big artist i did i had did stuff before patty like you know of course like kasserine and there was um um other groups that were like on labels but my first big artist in the studio would definitely pack the bell how did that feel because she's just a legendary and you're what 16 17. yeah i was i was i was i was um in the beginning i was a little like intimidated um and i did it with my brother we went to philly to work with her and she cooked she had food there for us and all of that and then once i worked worked with her um i never forget there was a moment where she went flat on a note and my brother and i was like i looked at my brother my brother like tell her she's flat i was like i'm gonna tell her that's miss labelle i'm gonna tell her she's fat and my brother's like you want to be a producer you gotta you gotta you know man up and do it and i'm like all right push the button to tell her she's flat and she's like you can tell me i'm flat baby right before i can even get it out my mouth i'm like yeah no she's she she's she's a legend she's icon okay and then by 95 you're 18 years old you signed a worldwide publishing deal with ami yeah at 18 years old no at 17. i had to resign it at 18. oh i signed it at 17. there was a guy that worked for emi publisher named brian jackson and he used to catch the train down to south jersey and he would come and come to my basement and literally be in the studio with me i had my basement had like wires all over the place and he would just be listening to the music he's like yo man i want to sign you to a publishing deal and and the funny thing is i'll tell you a funny story that nobody really knows like right when i went to go sign tommy mottola at sony got wind of it and he called he called our home phone i never forget this man he caught our home phone he was like tommy motors on the phone and he was like i want to i want i heard about you had a lot of good things i want to do a deal with you with sony atv publishing publishing and i was like okay cool talk to my dad or whatever and i ended up signing with emi and he called back like two weeks later and cursed me out and was like sony's the biggest machine in the world and why would you sign with with them and i was like because that guy brian jackson kept coming to my house for the last three months that's why i signed even though sony's deal was 200 000 more than what emi was offering i signed with emi because brian kept coming down he got on the train and that means a lot to me like if a person is willing to to leave their office you know and go to your stomping grounds and spend time then that's who i want to be with can you say how big that deal was it was a seven-figure deal you were 17 years old yeah and you just got a seven figure check yeah yeah did you just stare at it the actual number was like 1.8 million dollar deal overall okay so even after taxes you have over a million dollars yeah i mean i mean you can't you know i don't i don't look at it that way because i look at like when you sign it when you sign a deal like the numbers don't really the numbers don't really matter what's in the deal that matters right right so if you looked at that deal today you'd be like yo you sound a jacked up deal it was jacked up what was wrong with it well in the publishing world we have a thing which is called mdrc right and that means how many songs you place so back then like right now like if i sign someone to a publishing deal i'm probably gonna give them some money and i'm gonna give them maybe a two song mdrc three tops two song two song mdrc really means percentage um 200 or 300 meaning you have to have 200 publishing right we weren't taught that we didn't know that so my mdrc was something like 16 songs right so and they have to be on art and you have to be on artists on major labels that's another another thing in the deal yeah um and so when i signed it i signed it right and i did it and then once i learned about it i never complained though i hear people complain about deals that they're in and publishing deals and all this like i'm like yo they just changed my life i literally moved my parents out of their house into another house i literally got my mom the bins that i promised her without a rope when i was five years old i'm not complaining i'm gonna go do the work now if it says 1600 percent then i got 1600 to do so i can get to my next my next option and get to my next deal so i went and i did the work and i got to my next option and then i can negotiate now because now i'm in the driver's seat right if you have success if you have success then you can go renegotiate your deals and be in the driver's seat so that's what i did how did it feel to buy your parents a house in your mom events oh as a 17 year old it was amazing it was a blessing right because the house that i bought them was it was in the neighborhood that we would that we would go trick-or-treating in so it was like a neighborhood that for some reason like you know we wasn't big on halloween or whatever but but if we did then i think my mom and dad would want to take us to a safer neighborhood to go you know do it yeah so this neighborhood was the neighborhood that they would take us so i was like that's the i'm gonna buy them a house in that neighborhood so yeah it was just it was a blessing man to be able to to do something special like that at such a young age well the next year in 1996 you produced for leah yeah everything's going to be all right yeah and a one in a million remix yeah yeah that as well you were in the studio with her and everything yeah yeah i worked with her and and um she came out to work i started working in staten island actually so she came out to staten island to do a session with me yeah what was that like it was dope it was dope but it was she was she was dope man there's probably some footage somewhere of us working together because i'm sure like back then we always had cameras rolling um but she was dope man like you know we we built a a strong bar a strong bond a strong um creative mind i went to um the mtv rock and jock b ball games with her and mr hankerson and their team and whatever um and aaliyah was she was a special talent for sure she definitely like it you know it was sad that she passed away so soon because she was really like coming into her own as actress and everything so i feel like we didn't get i feel like we really didn't get a chance to see the best of the best of aaliyah what was different about aliyah than other artists you worked with oh man i think i think um personality wise like there was this there was a soul about her that you kind of knew like from day one when you interacted with her that she was different like it wasn't about hollywood it wasn't about um um it wasn't about stardom it didn't feel like about it didn't feel like that it just felt like like she had this soul about her that you know um she wanted to make great music to and entertain people and and then after whether it was on a a lower a smaller level or higher level which whatever way it went it was going to go and it kind of and it really stood out when you when you got a chance to talk to her right because she wasn't like a whitney that would just get in there and just blow no she was very soft yeah i heard in the beginning like when she was working with r kelly she would just almost whisper and they'd have to like try to get her to well even when i worked with her i had the kind of position to push more more out of her because she could really sing and she could and she but she was like it was almost like um she held back a lot yeah so you know um i feel like you know maybe it was she was the kind of artist that waited for the the lights and the cameras are going to turn into that that next person you know what i mean um so that's when it came out of her but yeah man she was she was she was a great artist to work with well she died five years later yeah in 2001. she was 22 years old yeah she died in a plane crash yeah i guess the story was uh she was on an island uh one of these caribbean islands and they had finished shooting she wanted to go back early and they had overloaded the plane there was a story you know i read about it like i guess the pilot yeah told her not you know that they there was too many people or too much luggage or something like that but they insisted and the pilot wasn't even a real pilot i'd heard he didn't even have his proper license did he pass away too yes so how do we know that he said that to her there were people around that heard the arguments oh okay basically he was arguing with uh with her and some of the other passengers i think he finally agreed and from what i understand the plane took off and and just plummeted right afterwards really yeah yeah everyone died wow on that flight how bad did that hit you it was bad man i mean because because i think that was the first time that i experienced uh artists passing away that i worked with yeah right and of course there's it's been like a handful now yeah you know as you get older but yeah that was the first time i was like man cuz because you know as a producer like as a producer creator and you work with an artist you think about you're still writing for that artist you're still thinking about like when you're going to work with him again yeah you know what i mean and and by the way we had a great time working together so we knew like we were going to work together again like you know we talked about it actually we like talked about it we bumped into each other in in california one time uh like i told you with that um mtv rock and jock b ball game i actually then bumped her i actually went with her and her team to the game and we talked about it like we were gearing up for that so um yeah man it hits us hard when you lose people that are not only not only just great people great human beings but people that inspire other people and that's what alia was doing she was definitely inspiring a lot of people yeah i think in 2020 a lot of female r b artists are still trying to do their best to leave impression totally you know so trying to capture what she just naturally had totally 100 well then the next year you worked with joe you did don't want to be a player yeah was that your first hit song yeah the first time that really hit the i had i had a song though i had a song before that called called the things you do gina thompson gina thompson and that was in on the r b it got to like number 12. right so yeah so like that was kind of like that's what kind of got me my name really bubbling the gina thompson thing um because i worked with puff on the bad boy remix and my name kind of started bubbling in the industry really heavy um and then joe came right and uh that song ended up getting remade by big pun later on with the same chorus and everything then we made a few times now but i mean i just heard something recently somebody using really yeah it just keeps getting done over what did you think of the big pun version oh yeah loved it loved it yeah yeah loved it well and then you worked with mary j blige on her share my world album yeah she did five songs yep and it goes four times platinum was that the biggest project at that point that you had ever worked on yeah let me tell you how that happened right so remember i told you i'm still cool with teddy riley so i'm out with teddy riley in virginia beach and i get a call from scott and ian r was hank shockley yeah i don't know your mom's fault that's right so hank shockley called him was like yo mary heard your gina thompson record and loves what you do and she wants to know if you'll be willing to come to new york tomorrow for a listening session she's going to have producers there to play beats so i went up to teddy riley and i was like yo teddy is it cool i got to say yeah go man go do your thing so i hop on a plane and i locked myself in my dad's basement and that's where my studio was kind of set up and i locked myself in there and i just made like i don't know like 10 tracks that all night that night getting prepared for mary to play some tracks for her because i was like yo this is it this is the big shot like and uh i go to new york for that listening session and all the producers in the hallway everybody was in there playing their beats and i could hear some of the stuff coming through the hallways and you had like some prominent producers and i was just like in my mind i was like oh yeah i got this one i got this one and i had to be like i don't know i probably was like 18 19 years old and i met 19 i was 19 i was like i got this i got this and sure enough when i got in the room i played hockey in love i played the beat yeah to that and mary went crazy and she was like you're not leaving new york you're staying here i'm staying here up in new york we're going to work this week that beat was so different it was like the the way that i was structured is meant to be it was just meant to be um a merry classic in my mind like when i was working on it i was just like you know it was just my mp and i had the sample from little kim and i was just like i'll put some chords over that and because i felt like what they always would marry with the essence of mary with to me was hip-hop so i was like yo this was a artist that used hip-hop beats and had chords over top so that's what i wanted to just establish with her that i could do that for her as well well didn't that same beat get used for queen [ __ ] yeah well that's where i got it from i sampled it from there oh so queen [ __ ] look him and biggie that's why we put little kids oh yeah i couldn't figure out what came yeah i sampled the just the piano movements in the beginning and i took off all the little wind so we just had the piano and then the chords exactly okay i always wondered about that now i know yeah okay so now you have an album that goes four times platinum are you still under the same emi deal during this time yeah man so they're taking their piece i'm under that deal but i'm i'm i'm about to be out of that deal then we about to go to the bank real soon okay real soon was the money starting to pour in really at this point yeah because i was producing so like your producer fees start to change you know you go from the you know in the beginning you're getting a couple grand to produce a song and then you start getting up to the 30 35 000 range right next thing you know you know you're working once you get the number one consistently now you're getting into the six figure producer range so it's like so i started so publishing money takes time to come in yeah you got to wait a year and a half to see your first royalty check that's just the facts of it so you got to hopefully be producing and making producing money yeah so so that was my my focus was like man i'm gonna be producing everything and i can you know send them to me send them to me send an artist to them who you don't care if they knew establish don't matter send them to me and i would be like yo i'm just gonna rack up okay now you bought everything for you you bought the house and the benz for your parents were you starting to splurge on yourself by this time of course what was like the biggest purchase during that era i mean i think i was like maybe right after that like i got into like bentleys and lamborghinis and stuff okay like my first car was a mercedes-benz i think that's probably everybody i get them savings right i remember my first i'm sorry my first car was actually alexis i remember because puff disney was an elevator he was like yo what you drive and i said i got alexis oh you're not doing it yet till you get the benz and i was like oh snap like i think i'm doing that i got a gs 300 you know what i'm saying i'm like 18 years old i think i'm doing it oh but yeah like i started you know that was the old me i was getting into like jewelry i was you know at jacob to jewelers every week i was like i had like i had like um the benz dealership like like you know speed dial like i would go there and they would like order like dinner for me because they knew i was coming like you know what i mean like i was i was i was you know i was i was young and i was a kid that was having fun and at least thinking that i was doing something great at the time by spending money when that in actuality all i was doing was giving it away because at that point you you learn later on that like the cards that you're buying is literally depreciating that's the second you take it off the line the custom jewelry is worthless it's worthless right once you ice out that watch it's not worth anything i don't know i don't think i've wore an iced out watch in over 50 maybe probably about 12 years i stopped wearing yeah diamond stuff because it's just worthless exactly yeah exactly and then by 1998 billboard magazine said you're one of the hottest r b producers in the country and then the next year they said the same thing so then brandy comes around i think i started working with her before 90 years somewhere around there yeah 98 97. yeah so you did top of the world with her featuring mace you did angel in disguise i did eighty percent of everything never album yeah right she had already had an album before that right yeah she had the i want to be down i want to be down yeah you didn't touch that at all right i didn't even know already okay but i came back in you know we'll never see never yeah okay and you're doing the album and then the boy is mine with her and monica now the two of them had kind of been beefing not even a kinda they'd been beefing up to that point what was the beef over i think it's just cattiness like right when you young when you got a member like brandy was 14 15 and monica was like 13 14 right when they both came out their first single so you can only imagine like the camps right i don't think it was necessarily them at the time i think it was the camps feeling it like saying you're better than her no you're better than her like you know catty stuff the same way we do as producers like you know and then you start to say it because everybody's in your ears i'm better than them the next thing you know it gets out and there's a little little beef i better not see her at this awards show i better not see her at this thing and i think there was just this this this young catty you know personalities are completely different from each other sound wise completely different from each other they're both aiming for the same crown they both want the top billboard spot um um brandy is has uh loves whitney houston monica is is the god daughter of whitney houston like you know me so you got all of you know you got all of that at the same time you know all going on and i just think that you know it just trickles over to to us and saying you know what let's take this catty petty whatever you want to call it and let's make a record with them two together and in the record let's let them not like each other on the record because they're beefing at the start of the record yeah like i think you're confused there you go like you know who i'm talking about exactly exactly let's make a record and play into the fact that they really don't like each other monica never liked randy and brandy now you know she was like monica's very ghetto when it came down to it she was like she's too proper and she's to this and i think randy might have looked at her a certain way a couple of times and looked at her like the little you know and so from that point i was just like they you know even to have them do the boys my monica was like nope not doing no song with her i was like ah come on you got to it just makes the most sense and clive wants it and you know let's just do it and i remember when it's funny because i remember when we had to do the song like in the contract they said that they had to have the same amount of ad-libs or something like there was something crazy now so i remember being in the studio telling i gotta count the ad-libs because it could you know brandy can't have more ad-libs than monica and monica can't have more ad-libs to brandy so i'm counting the ad-libs like it's crazy stuff but um amen it played out to be one of the biggest records still it's funny i just read that in like oprah named it like the one of the top r b songs of all time in her magazine last week like top five of all time like so just it's an incredible uh feat to be part of history like that well dallas austin co-produced it right because he was already no not really i mean dallas know what he did ask dallas no no dallas um what dallas what dallas did was he he uh he co-produced it because he he he produced monica's right he was already working with monica yeah so we she was signed under rowdy yeah she was she was his artist and so we you know it was only right to to go to dallas and say dallas can you can you be part of this can you you know all the music was produced by me um um in his in in dallas assisted in her vocals right oh he's listed as one of the producers yeah well he is because you know people that produce vocals should be listed as a a producer a vocal producer or whatever you want to call it i think because he because he was the big producer i wasn't the big producer at the time he was he was already doing tlc he listed as the co-producer for sure okay yeah so they do a song together and i think it's also kind of dope that uh rodney jerkins dark child co-produced it because he was brandy's main producer yeah you know so all the all you know all the producers and all the you know the two producers and two artists go and make this this dope song and even though they make the song they never actually meet face to face or whatever even though the song becomes a hit until that one day until that that show uh-huh okay to let's show and the show was like earlier it was you know that saying like i said monica's song here and brandon sung out there and the record came out in the whole nine and even the video was like why would they have a beef when they now have a hit song together because they just never did like each other in the first place and it was like the hit so it's like you know you have like you know you have plenty of bands like you know that they can't stand each other they've been the same uh yeah and i just looked on spotify that song is at 80 million views on spotify and just to consider how big that is because this is so when they came out it was decades before spotify even existed so the fact that they can get 80 million right as a catalog song is crazy it's crazy yeah and at that time that album i mean i mean that song was like i want to say we sold like three three million singles really quickly we were number one for like 13 14 weeks something like that right the apple sold 16 million worldwide then then monica then monica to get back at brandy right because um clive davis called monica's album the boys by did you know that he called her album the boy's mind but it was a brandy song or so it wasn't that it was just that everybody had agreed that it was brandy and monica a song right not featuring brandy and monica this was gonna be a song and it was gonna be on brandy's album and it was going to be on monica's album but then clav davis being the genius that he was he was like oh you're not going to call your album the boy's mind i'm going to call her album the boy's mind like crazy man so it worked hey listen it worked out for me twice because now i'm on an album that's selling on both sides so i'm getting double the royalty right because it worked out twice is that your first number one song that was that was the first one how did it feel to have a number one song and you're what 19 at the time yeah a number one song in the country was it the world or no i don't think i was like that's probably 20 20 months by the time it came out still a kid yeah i'm a kid um it felt amazing it felt it wasn't that being number one because because i was on a trajectory to get to number one like meaning like i had watched gina thompson do well i had watched joe do well then i watch i can love you get to number two so i was like man i i can't go backwards now i got to get to number one so when the boy's mom was number one um that was life-changing um and it wasn't just another number it wasn't another one number one it was a big number one like it was big like it it jumped from like 27 to one it was like it broke a beatles record or something at the time really yeah it was big and it stayed there for a while i stayed there for a long time you know i mean we were like i remember around to the ninth or tenth week of it being number one going into my studio and my guys were like celebrating and i was like what's going on they were like yo he's still number one that i was like and i was like nah we gotta we gotta keep going we can't get too excited now let's get back in the lab and let's create because i think you know when you have a record like that that's so big you might want to go take a trip somewhere you might want to go spurs whatever it is and my mindset was like now we're here now they know who we are now we got to put our foot down and change radio and change the sound of radio and that was the mission well when i interviewed dallas austin he told a story that monica actually punched brandy in the face before a show the first time they actually saw each other to do it was i think it was american musical was or something and before they could even get to the stage monica decked in the face it popped in the face backstage and i'm like oh my god this is even before the performance so everybody's finding out how we're going to have a performance that looked like they're not you know at war with each other but it worked out because the song was supposed to be a war with each other nobody could really tell that [ __ ] pushed in the face before the performance like mtv i heard stories this before or after the song after what yeah because they were rehearsing from what i understood from what i understood they were rehearsing wait the two of them had a number one song together and they're still mad at each other yeah from what i heard i don't know the facts but dallas i think he was there so he was the facts yeah why why were they still beefing when they had their because that was their biggest song ever individually i mean why is floyd mayweather and conor mcgregor still beefing he had the biggest fight in history together i guess you could shake hands and go to dinner after that if you really want to and be like yo we changed the game manny pacquiao and floyd we changed the game but i mean you know that competitiveness yeah it's competitive if you don't really you know really like each other you probably won't you might go like this and be like yeah okay we did that now let's we're gonna still be competitive yeah were there's were they kind of beefing with each other in the studio as well we didn't work together so that was that was one of the things that was odd right because um it was separate it was separate it was they couldn't even be in the same studio no it was it was we did brandy's vocals in la and dallas did monica's vocals in atlanta and then he sent me to vote he sent me her vocals actually i record i'm sorry i recorded brandy and then i recorded monica and then monica felt like the vocals were too clean so she wanted dallas to do a vocal so that's when she went to dallas to do a vocals over and then he sent it to us well they recently had their versus battle yeah and watch it yeah who do you think won i thought it was a good night man no i did i mean i thought it was a great night i mean listen percent of what brandy played was my songs so i could literally i could be the guy that said something yeah we won i won right nah i thought it was a great night i thought it was a great celebration for two r b artists who changed the game and inspired so many other young r b artists that we see today um and i was and i'm i was blessed to start the event off i think brandy played what about us and at the end of the event monica played angel of mine which i'll produce which was the number one for another number one song right and brandy played the boy's mind and and ended the night and i saw you know i feel like it was a win-win for everybody and it was a win-win because it's not about who won it's it's not about who won the competition it's about who wins after the event right and if you look at what their spikes were or monica's new single and brandy's record then you'll see like they had a great win it was a great win for all of us i guess there was a rumor or maybe you had mentioned that you know you talked about remaking that song with ariana grande i was just home that was a rumor we just like we just we just no i mean we it was like a an idea that never spring forth right it was just an idea like if someone was to do it who would do it now at that at that timing at that time they were probably the two vocalists you know i mean and and in the in the in the realm r b was kind of like not there at that time there was no young r b artists at that time and in the pop world i think ariana and jesse probably were like the vocalist everybody was saying they got the chops you know but it could never it to me it would never do justice for it to be done over with two females unless they don't like each other like it has to be it has to be that are there any females that don't like there's plenty of females don't like you so i don't know if they don't they don't sing you know i think i for me and i was just having this conversation i feel like people waste features these days they waste they waste they waste duets i feel like duets whitney and mariah didn't really like each other right and so it was an event to get them on the same record together one eight when they did a record together right um so i feel like like now it's just like yo hop on my record everybody just jumps on records it's not even even anymore yeah like we need to figure out how to make events i feel you know well speaking of whitney that same year you did it's not right but it's okay and i was bumping that on the way here i messed with man such a great song she's so dope man she's she's she's one she was she was the one i wanted to work with when i was in high school when everybody said who you want to produce i was like whitney houston wayne houston i mean if you look at female vocalists in terms of just the greatest voices the the greatest she's she's the one number one she's in my opinion number one number one i think that's a very hands down who let me put it like this who wants to sit next to her hands down and her prime yeah hands down what what female wants to sit next to her and go toe-to-toe i mean maybe mariah she don't want that right not back then not in her not not not like mariah was dope mariah is still though mariah is one of the dopest ever right but whitney came from the church so when you're talking about sitting down next to someone and just going line for line and you from the church that's a different thing to be in because when you're in a chu when you're in the church you got girls in this you got girls in the choir that that can outscene you as a leader yeah right the girls just the girl in the local church can out sing a lot of singers whitney man she grew up in a church like in the hood so she's used to just brawl getting on the mic and let's go right so like in in a battle standpoint i put put witty up against anybody well when you look at the great singers there's aretha franklin beyonce christina aguilera who has a very powerful voice you put whitney over all them yeah i love i worked with beyonce i worked i did a session with christina i never got a chance to work with aretha we talked about it and i worked with whitney um whitney different man really different you know you know when you know somebody different when nobody's been able to do the national anthem yet and touch them yeah that's true that's what i'm just saying like and you know i'm just saying like people have tried attempting it right people have tried yeah she she's given us the staple she's given us the bar of the national anthem i mean the same thing with marvin gaye on the on the male side and who could touch marvin gaye 200 those are my two favorite like who who people have attempted it people have tried yeah right yeah i mean even michael jackson was looking up to marvin gaye there you go there you go i just think britney was different man like she she she gave her something i i still to this day will go back and just listen to like a lot of her stuff and i'm like man her range her vocal range and what she was able to do or her voice was on a different level and oh and by the way all of those artists you mentioned like they're like right next to her like right there like you have like the mount rushmore a female vocalist you just mentioned yeah well absolutely you still put whitney on top of all this yeah i feel you yeah i feel you yeah so you're in the studio with me who wrote that song um it was myself my brother fred jerkins was sean daniels um it was one other i believe i can't remember it's one other person right such a different song i mean she starts off basically acapella yeah you know you know the beast doesn't really come in it's just some piano thing yeah background but it's not really there's not you can't really feel the tempo yet you don't know what's she's just talking [ __ ] you don't know what's going on she's talking about how she's spitting she's going through the friday night friday night yeah your why is there only two people they must have been cheap or something i forgot how the lyrics are you're right oh excuse matthew's using mathematical mathematical equations i found your credit card receipt right like don't lie to me i see this caller id with the 213. [Music] like something like you said about 54th street that's right yeah you're right uh was she with bobby at the time yeah yeah yeah yeah so you worked with her did you know you had a hit and you guys went that way well here's the thing i met cloud day right after i saw my first publishing deal with emi when i turned 18 when i resigned it my guy said who was it that you when i was like whitney houston man he's like i gotta get you a meeting with claude davis it's like what he's like yeah man he's like go write a song for whitney so i go home and i write this like stupid songs like terrible and i get the meeting with cloud davis and playing the song he's like this has got to be the worst song i've ever heard in my life and i was crap i was crushed he actually said that to you totally in your face in my face and i was crushed and it's clive davis you can't really say you don't know what he's talking about we knew what he was and the thing is i was so young so it hurt even more like you tell me that now i don't care right right but that 18 man that's tough and i was like dang he says oh man this is what this industry is but i went back to the drawing board and you know he told me he said my door's always open for you he said that to me and i was like i'll be back as soon as i heard it they were about to start on the whitney album matter of fact it's not right that's okay was the first song he played her to start her album and he tells a story about how she danced in a hotel and sang she sing after hearing it one time twice she sing the whole song and um man and the rest was history well that song was recorded in 98 yeah she passed in 2012. yeah you never worked with her again um remember i did four songs on that album yeah i did the song on george michael too right um and we never worked again but we kept in touch a lot like she came to my dad's church and sang three months before she passed away wait hey wait wait wait whitney houston showed up too dad's church on youtube and sang at your little local church in church in pleasantville new jersey she calls me one day we had already like this is later on by the way it's not right it already came out all of it she calls it she goes she called me on a sunday morning she goes i want to go to church today and i was like cool go to church and she's like no i want to go to your church i want to i want to go to your church and i'll say whitney my church is like starts in like two and a half hours and you live two and a half hours away she goes what's the address and next thing you know she came down her bobby security and she came to church and she crushed it she jumped she went like this like let me sing and sang and that's what i mean like whitney different man like whitney was and then and we kept the contact and then funny like three three three months before she passed away she came to visit me she came to my studio and when i was in la and she came to hang with me my wife and my wife and i rather and and we had a good good time just kicking it talking people must have just lost it in that church i can't even comprehend that's what i'm saying you gotta you know guess how many people was there that day 10 no not ain't that bad 53 maybe 53 people you you know me probably if you took about if you take away my family about ted yeah well she passed away in 2012. um from a drug overdose uh at the hotel in beverly hills tonight we were going there too we were going to klaus party we go every year yeah and i was i never forget being in the kitchen and i sat there and i was froze and i saw that she passed away and i was just like we can't go to this yeah and i didn't go yeah that was a tragedy uh i don't even know how they still had that event two two three hours later right two three hours later they had an event and yeah that was like that was the worst thing that was i mean that was probably the worst thing i've ever experienced because three literally three months before that we were just talking about matter of fact i had a message on my machine like two weeks before she passed away saying ronnie we need to make she said ronnie we need to make light of the world music she left a message on my phone did you still have this audio i don't know i might have backed it up somewhere i'm sure yeah but she said that we need to make light of the world music and i was like i called her back i'm like i got your message she was like yeah we need to make an album it needs to be light of the world music and i was like okay right because leading up to her death i mean she was looking bad she was unbelievably skinny she was gaunt look like a skeleton um and i remember watching the documentary and i mean even clive davis was like she had she had some big award show or whatever and clive was like i'm not gonna go to this you you're you know you look too bad and she's like no i'm getting better i'm i'm gaining a little bit of weight and she was struggling with her demons i mean she was struggling with drug addiction um so it's just it's just a shame and to make matters even worse her daughter ended up dying in a similar kind of situation yes yeah sad yeah and then her the boyfriend end up dying as well like recently just that the tragedy around that whole thing was just horrific yeah because the devil comes to kill steal and destroy yeah and he's not he's not satisfied he doesn't care about just one soul he wants to take down as many as he can yeah he wants people around to be miserable and unhappy sad whatever it takes yeah man such a loss such a loss such a loss yeah well uh the next year you worked with jennifer lopez and uh you did if i had your love and uh that went number one and i guess she called you like yo we're number one and you said didn't i tell you so you already knew that was gonna be a number one song i don't and you know what i can't say you know whenever you're gonna anything's gonna be number one i do get feelings like you get feelings like you know i remember when i met jennifer lopez for the first time when they were telling me about her and what they wanted to accomplish and then i kind of in that moment felt like i knew exactly what she needed and at the time she wasn't really a singer she did selena but she's really just lip syncing actress selena songs and you know yeah she was a fly girl you know was it money money money trained money money trained you know cool girl with a great body but no one is really looking at her as a singer which you actually saw something yeah i mean well you know i can't take all the credit tommy montola saw something he called me and he was like i got this artist she's an actress but i think she had i think she has what it takes to be a superstar and he said i want you to come meet with her and i came and met with her and instantly i the personality in like the first five minutes was like it was like whoa yeah it just cut through yeah i've interviewed her before she's like really dope yeah when you meet when you work with different artists you'll see like certain certain personalities just really cut through hers cut through and and i was like okay i know what she needs in my mind you know especially that and that i still got this this knack of figuring out what i think the artist needs and um i kind of i was like yo she needs to be able to be vulnerable she needs to be able to dance and needs to have a little bit of latin flavor but not latin yeah you know and now when created it well you co-wrote that song and you produced it correct so you have most of that song well there's no song it's probably there's only like maybe two songs in the history of everything that i've done that i didn't actually co-wrote co-write oh okay so you always got your hands always or else you don't want to do it yeah okay yeah well uh if i had your love went to number one if you have my love yeah if you have my love with another one yeah stay there too for four for the next little okay seven i think seven to nine weeks i'm like that and she called you up freaking out and you were like did i tell you yeah i said did i tell you yeah i mean because i told her i said we're going when i when i first finished i was like i got your number one in my hand she's like what what so i got my number one i got your number one i'm gonna come play it for you and i brought her over to the studio and played it for and she was like i got to do this i got to do this asap and that was um and that was the beginning like yeah it took off for her and then i did a remix too that that extended it i did a remix where i took um a michael jackson sample or whatever from librarian girl and that began playing like crazy like that's the remix that they were playing so it just extended the legs of that record didn't dallas produce that which one not being girl girl no no okay i don't think so i think it's quincy okay so now you do that and then destiny's child say my name in the same year and that goes number one again so you have two number ones had we had like if you really want to get technical i think like on billboard in like a 365 year 365 days i want to say we had out of 52 weeks we had like number one for like 25 of those 52 weeks between like those different records that you know came out you ran that year totally you you owned that year totally okay so was that your first song with a destiny's child yeah okay yeah was there was that their first number one or no i don't know if no no no no no but no it wasn't their first because bills bills bills was number one okay yeah you're right but it was it was say my name was like a a statement number one for them hell of a song my favorite song that i've produced today my favorite that is your favorite song absolutely really out of all the songs you've ever done in your life yeah because there's a story behind it right so i was working with the spice girls in in london and we were in a club right before before i was coming back to california to work with destiny's child i was with spice girls and they took me to a club and there was this dj playing this this like really fast style of music called two-step like garage two-step music and i was actually blown away by it i was like man what does this sound like i never heard i'm in london never heard it i'm like i'm bringing that back to the u.s so my i was going to give that to jessie's child as my first session back in the u.s and say my name was a completely different beat it was a two-step beat the girls hated it actually really yeah like they recorded the song but they didn't like the beat no one liked the beat the label management matthew knows at the time hated it and i was like trust me this is gonna be the new wave like i'm trying to convince them and myself that it's dope right and it wasn't until the mix down i'm mixing the record with john marie horvath and i'm like yo man they're right this beat is whack and i redid the whole beat i redid the whole beat at the mix and that's what we hear today and it went on to win a grammy i think that was my my first goal in my hand grabby yeah um yeah man so it's like it's a lot it's a lot it's a it's part of just my story like that song means so much to me in different ways how did it feel even me saying for some reason i said dark child so many different times and people have said it but something about dark child 99 is the thing that everybody says to me to this day wherever i go like if i bump into beyonce right now that's what she's going to say you know me and everybody thinks i said nah nah and i said dark child 9-9 for the year because of the way i said it write my jersey accent or whatever it was but to this day everybody refers to that that particular tag how did it feel to win a grammy because i mean i in my mind i wonder grammy before that though because in my mind like when an artist wins a grammy for your work you won the grammy so when the boy's mine won right i want a grammy to my mind like yo you know you produced that yeah yeah if the if the grammys were like if the recording academy was like we're going to give the producer a grammy for if they're attached to whatever song that they produce think how many grammys i would have them probably about 17. true right to the producer and if quincy jones has 27 or 20 he probably has 50. right so when an artist wins a grammy for a song you don't get a grammy you get the certificate right not the actual goal right so some people count the certificate like a lot of people say a lot of people don't know they say i want i want a grammy they don't have the actual gold but they got a certificate yeah say like yeah i got seven grammys and you see the bio and everybody was like yo they got seven grammys so okay i got 14. but you have two actual stats two two statues i'm right right here in my house okay when you the other day uh kanye filmed himself pissing on his grammy what'd you think i actually reached out to him i didn't talk to him but you know can't do that and i and i and i love kanye i think he's a genius yeah um i think ultimately he's a he's a great guy but you know the recording academy did nothing wrong to me you know you know that grammy is just really it's just to show appreciation for your work and that there was a group of people that sat in a room that voted for their they could have gave it to anybody and they chose you yeah and so you know i don't think i don't think you know i don't i just don't think michael jordan would ever pee on any of his rings or his championship trophies yeah and you're like a michael jordan in this in this game yeah so i think i think but i think if he could take it back he would and i think you know he probably thought about like what was i thinking you know what i mean so we can't do that especially when we have kids we can't do it we can't show our kids that you know that that even exists in our mind like you know i get upset i do stupid things like throw my mpc on the ground or whatever when i'm upset but i'm not going to pee on it i love my mpc well when that song won a grammy it beat out erica badu's back lady great song uh thong song by cisco cool song but i wouldn't put that as a great song it was a cool song for the time uh d'angelo's uh how does it feel great song then the other song of beat out was tony braxton he was a man enough which you produced as well right so you actually beat yourself too i beat myself which is scary which is scary because you can cancel yourself out too like you know out how does it feel could easily easily won that like very much though um but you know tony wanted grammy tony braxton won a grammy two for he wasn't man enough that year i forgot to look at a different kind of different category so i feel like i won twice that year yeah but yeah i mean i mean hey that's the greatest feeling in the world is to compete with yourself how often do you see producers have multiple nominations in the same categories i don't so this is a rarity that's definitely a rarity yeah i i don't you know i don't see that too often matter of fact you you pointed out something that i forgot i forgot about that yes that's that's huge yeah uh i beat me uh yeah and tony braxton he wasn't man enough uh number one on the rb charts number two in the hot 100 you know just shy of being a number one overall so that was a huge song as well tony braxton is also one of the great voices out there uh yep and then i think around 2000 around that time you also work with the spice girls yep they did uh let love lead the way and how hollow was big over silence yeah right and then that same year we talked about this earlier you did uh the song with whitney houston and george michael so i told you that which was big overseas too yeah then george michael died some years back did you guys really really gel together when you guys working or is it it was funny when we worked together he changed all the melody i was like nah homeboy it was like nah you can't be coming up in here changing my melodies around he's like i think you should be like nah nah nah nah i was so adamant like on what we presented to clive davis and what he accepted right because it really was we we we when we did if i told you that we we had pitched it as a duet between whitney and michael right michael jackson yeah the demo you got to hear the demo the demo i had a guy that sound like michael huh and a girl sound like whitney that's how he pitched it and pitched it as they do it because i knew i was i think i was about to start working michael was working with michael so i was like you know this would be the perfect time to get those two together because they never did nothing together and then mike was like no i don't want to do any duets right now so so clive i think he had a relationship with george michael for working with them for years and and i thought it was dope too i was like oh george michael wow okay cool let's go bring him to l.a and then we get to l.a in his studio and he started singing a completely different melody and i was just like nah homeboy and he's like no i think michelle i said no we definitely will not be changing the melody and then i remember whitney calling me and asking me she was like so what's going on i'll say whitney she wants to change the melody she's like no you tell him that we're not changing the message she got real ghetto she's like you told me we're not changing no melody the melody is what i love this is my album this is my project and i told him i was like yo we can we not changing the melody and so i gotta you know we had a little it wasn't the easiest session in the world there was definitely a little push back there but you know we got it done okay well in 2001 you started working on michael jackson's invincible album how long before that did the relationship start 1999. okay that's when i started working with michael jackson aha 99 okay so here you are working with the greatest entertainer of all time period period no one better not the greatest singer not the greatest greatest guy of our era not the best 80s guy thriller is still considered greatest selling out greatest the greatest album musical album ever ever put together yeah so here you are working with michael jackson yeah how was it in the beginning my first session with michael jackson was at carol bearsager's house writing session and i was super super duper intimidated and that's not me at all like my personalities complete confidence always in control of the session and i was just like yo this is michael jack this is different this is like just you work this is what you work for to get here right and he was you could tell he was filling me out to see where my skills lied so i hop on the piano singing melodies our session was probably like three two three hours we talked a lot and then uh and then he was i was like and he was like i want you to i want you to stay working on my project i'm just getting just getting started and he said what do you need and i said i need my team with me out here in la and he said done say what studio was i done said what else i need a house done and all i know is like we had like we were in l.a we were locked in and like it was amazing like just michael michael took me to school i always tell people like that was college for me it really was i learned i learned business things that i didn't know in the publishing area that i didn't know from him um i just learned i learned how to challenge myself in a different way musically uh melodically you know he just taught me a lot man taught me so much and we built the we built the friendship like beyond the music like outside come to my house my parents house for dinner and dessert and stuff like this randomly i want some peach cobbler can your mom make me some piece of cobbler like you know so it was just like really cool how did your parents react that michael jackson's their house i mean peach cobbler yeah i mean they loved it right you know what i mean like they they he he was he he grew a real tight bond with our family yeah yeah yeah right because on the publishing side he was a monster he owned the beatles catalog monster he owned a bunch of [ __ ] monster like he was like so i'm gonna tell you a funny story right so michael invites me to his townhouse up in manhattan one day right and we were like we were probably like 80 percent done working at this point on this project and he says ryan needs you to come up so i'll go over there for the first time and no it's the second time because the first time we played pool we we used to play pool and bet each other and so this is the second time how much would michael jackson better well we he beat me man the first time he beat me we bet we bet dvds so and the funny thing is he wouldn't let me like he we went to times square like that night at like 11 30 at night we went to town square because he wanted the dvds that he won he beat me so i had to buy the dvds that night but the funny thing is like the next time we played the next time we went over to his house sitting there and we just talking really about nothing was just like yo we're just kicking it and then i went to use the restroom and i saw a note like a note he wrote in the restroom saying talk to rodney about his publishing so i'm like yo this is why i'm here like and so then i come back and he goes so i want to talk to you about something he goes i'm going to talk to you about your publishing and see if you're interested in selling it to me he wanted to buy your publisher yeah yeah right because i remember i interviewed eddie griffin yeah right those two were close they were yeah very close yeah eddie actually took michael to his his court date and everything yeah and and eddie was telling me about the story that michael was telling him he was working with paul mccartney on one of their projects right and uh you know michael was like yeah um you ever thought selling your publishing because i was thought about it you know i wanted whatever uh 30 million he goes okay that's interesting and the next day michael came back said oh i bought your publishing i bought the beatles yeah why i'm doing the video with the beatle that's gangster right michael while i was in the palm of god i'm gonna sell the beatles how much you selling for oh i don't know you know about 60 million wow that's a lot of money i'm gonna go right to his trailer get his people on the phone paul don't find out till the next [ __ ] day michael about the beatles come on come on say how can you buy boss how can you buy your boss he said 60 i gave you 64. that's a lot of money the girl is mine your publishing is mine yeah 25 million i paid a few million extra but yeah i own it all now yeah like he would do [ __ ] like that so yeah like he was so he definitely talked to me about it but then he talked to me about like his pride it was really on his album not necessarily everything but just like his album you know oh he wanted to own all the publishing on the album you guys are working with yeah would you say yeah and i was like let's talk about it you know like let's get into it and don't know it was like maybe like not even like two days later he called me he was just like you know what man he's like you're a good guy he's like strap that idea like wow like that was like huge you know because you know he really technically i'm sure he was could have just been like yo here's here's this bag move on right you don't gotta bully his way into it yeah i mean michael jackson yeah like oh if you don't want to do it i'll just go find a new producer exactly yeah exactly michael jackson who's not going to work with michael jackson what people don't really understand is that people say yo michael owned the beatles catalog no michael owned sony atv half of it i heard so when tommy was trying to sign me when i was 18 michael was trying to sign me because that's he owned half of sony atv yeah like that's crazy so you're talking about babyface mariah so much catalog that you can't even you know i mean i remember i remember he told me about he was like you know he should tell me that he was like ronnie get into the publishing business once we once we became real cool he was like getting to the publishing business um he believed that's that that was the way you you know you really can sustain and build different businesses and sell them in the publishing space so yeah well uh you rock my world was on that album one of my favorites too yeah yeah still to this day like it's funny because it gets more burned now it feels like than ever like so many people come up to me now like yo rock my world that's that's a michael jackson classic and i'm like so interesting like you know it would have been so much bigger back then if him and tommy weren't beefing you know but why were they beefing over him owning i thought the caterpillar i think yeah i think there was just like you know catalog discrepancies or whatever and i mean you did a bunch of that album yeah you did i mean breakable heartbreaker invincible privacy threatened it sells six times platinum worldwide which is huge but compared to his other albums quite didn't quite hit those heights it wasn't a thriller yep you know or off the walls yep was it a little disappointing for a michael no because because i do i'm like like you you probably sit down and you do math right so when i do math and i say okay he had one video and he did six million when you look at thriller he had seven videos so if michael would have had his fair shake because you know they they they went on not to promote like michael had a vision like i was part of it i i remember him saying we're gonna come out with this first we're gonna shoot a short film a threat and we're gonna shoot it right yeah we you know with unbreakable i'ma have biggie because i had the biggie verse and i might have biggie in the video and a hologram type form he had all his vision so when i look at that i might go he didn't get a chance to promote because whatever business wasn't right at that time that's why oh yeah it got halted for sure so you're talking crazy michael jackson gonna halt it yeah right because michael is known for the visuals oh yeah he he made mtv exactly thriller was a an actual film yeah no one had done that before yeah at that time you know with mtv just launching a music video would just be a bunch of people in a white room yeah or a concert performance and yeah that'd be it he actually said no i'm going to make films yeah and i mean think about like smooth criminals yeah and the the i think i think we would have did like we would do the easy easy 25 million easily yeah yeah you tour around that no that's what i'm saying no tour no only one video and that was the most disappointing thing because we worked so hard like we spent a lot of time a lot of hours like years like you know what i mean so when when you know when when they halted everything was just like are you serious like this is not but one other saying i'm not i'm not i'm not disappointed because i know rock my world is rocking to this day and people love it so what was it about michael when he got in that booth that was different than anyone else he's different bro like michael michael danced in the booth so hard that the headphones were literally would be coming off his head he had to have like three three different pairs of t-shirts with him because he was sweat out his t-shirts in the booth he sweat him out because he's performing the song in the book i mean when we did rock my world and he sweat he swear to that sweat it out that you had he had to change three times and that's every song that's how much she gives how much energy he gives in the booth all out all out yeah all out yeah i mean even the dancing i mean i've i've watched some of the videos like he would be like in his hotel room with his backup dancers you know the greatest singer the greatest dancer i mean vocally you know you said whitney was the greatest vocalist of all time michael jackson on the male side did you put him over marvin gaye he's he's in the conversation of top five but you can't ignore even the people that he looked up to you can't ignore marvin you can't ignore jackie wilson you can't ignore sam cook you know there's so many so many male singers but michael in his own right hands down was a was a beast because what he was doing at 19 years old like sometimes listen to you know his vocals at teams i'm like dag passion yes it's crazy oh yeah no i interviewed tito jackson and he's by the way michael's probably the most distinctive vocalist we've ever had i agree i agree because when i interviewed tito michael was a part of the jackson's group initially right and then one day at like a school talent show michael sang and everyone's like okay we're done michael's the lead singer even though he's the youngest in the family by the way i wouldn't want to be one of the brothers in the group of five of michael's degree one day uh like a year or two later we hear michael singing a little thing in kindergarten singing climb every mountain in in a school a performance and he tore it up man we couldn't believe our mouse flew open completely that was our brother up there singing we rush him home tell him he's in the group mom said me too say yeah you two come on so that's how the jackson brothers were formed it's like oh god let him lead every song no problem just let him lead yeah that's crazy uh you know with with all the success of michael and you know michael was the most famous person on earth i think since jesus christ really i think if you really think about it very popular i i don't i don't know anyone more popular to this day than michael jackson he's very popular yeah i mean who else i mean jordan right up there with the pope yeah i think it's more popular i think more people know michael jackson than who the pope is wow worldwide of course of course wow the allegations about the underage boys yeah you know when i interviewed uh dallas austin and he worked with him as well yeah uh he said well he didn't see anything but he feels like where there's smoke there's fire right that's what he said like anything else sorry some smoke is fired somewhere so it's been going on for years and this is not nothing new to anybody i just feel like neverland uh just put it into some detailed points that people wasn't really ready for when when you hear those allegations i just think that when i think allegations are merely allegations i feel as though like for people to come out after someone dies you should be ashamed of yourself yeah these days yeah like even but even like leaving neverland even before all of that though like the alex they're just allegations like we don't you know you know isn't is it right now with everything going on in the outside world based off of allegations yeah the whole metoo movement it's all based i don't know not just me too just everything though everything yeah everything is based off of um someone saying this happened and we don't know what really happened right because we weren't there right yeah i never seen anything happen and i was around him a lot um were there young boys around because i mean that one not when i worked at all no never never never his kids prince and paris was there when i worked and that was it never well i think by time his kids came around all that all day that had ended and i don't i don't you know i just don't i don't buy into propaganda yeah i don't buy into i don't buy into all that fake stuff like because i and then i i really get upset when when someone passes away and then then you try to like um kill their legacy like you know what was it that she wasn't strong enough to do it when he was alive so you wonder now that he's under under in the ground well let's take him let's take him further down come on that's just not that's not that's not cool you know that's what i mean not cool well i interviewed akon yeah who worked with michael jackson as well yeah in fact he did michael jackson's last song yeah and whitney houston's last song yeah he said that people literally are scared to work with him because of that uh but what akon said was that you know based on his relationship with michael he feels that all those accusations started when michael refused to sell his catalog so he had access to a lot of an amer like american uh uh just just value and he owned it and if he didn't own a hundred percent he owned it fifty percent you know what i'm saying like he owned a big chunk of america's value that's that's the best way to put it and at some point you know they're going to want to have the option to buy it back or control it to an extent mike just wouldn't allow it and i think at that moment that's when a lot of propaganda and all this whispers and stuff start coming out about him which was clearly not true that could be true what i what i what what i do know is that i've never met a morph um giving person an artist that's willing to that was willing to pay for hospital bills for people he didn't know right just out just you know just to do it different yeah well i remember in one of my interviews they were saying how michael had a relationship with all these countries that america didn't have because he was a superstar everywhere so he would travel to all these countries and meet with these presidents and african countries and european countries and the u.s didn't really like that you know they were kind of edgy over how powerful he was so so there there's really a lot going on under the scenes with with well you never know i mean you know i try not to look into it too deep if i do mike michael's ahead of his time i mean he was rocking the mask 20 years before we rock that mass now the mass is essential for everybody and he was way ahead of his time so i feel like michael's always ahead of his time um he probably always felt a little bit on edge because i mean listen he did own a lot yeah right he did so maybe he maybe we don't know about threats he may have received we don't know about letters he may we don't know yeah you know he maybe he did and maybe that made him a little bit paranoid you know would he wear the disguise like the beard and everything oh yeah i remember we went to buy the dvds he did yeah we went to go buy the dvd so you put on the disguise we went to i mean we're in times square right virgin mega music store at 11 30 at night you should wear this guy michael jackson he had the beard his last producer right i was a lad i was a i was the last producer um that actually had a chart song with him while he was alive yeah yeah when he passed away in 2009 were you in contact with him oh yeah i was i worked work i worked with him again in 2007. i went to ireland went to ireland to work with him and we were we definitely were in contact um leading up to that beforehand leading up to was he any different or is he the same michael that you always knew well me was just joking like we always had we joked a lot and you know talks about music like he loves music man so he talked about stuff that was going on like you know whether it's you know 50 cent being one of his favorite rappers you know like he just like we just shoot debris and talk about stuff like that you know when you found out about him passing in 2009 i didn't believe it when i was in my lounge my studio and i'm believing i remember calling janet because you're not because i was kind of starting to work with janet a lot and i called janet to ask her and i remember she just hung up so fast it was like i can't talk and that was it and i was that's what i knew was real like and i was like yo this is crazy to me that we just lost the greatest entertainer of all time you know yeah yeah because at his funeral barry gordy said and i always remember this he said they called him the king of pop but that is not the right title it should be the greatest entertainer of all time and no one disputed it yeah such a loss such a loss and it's really you know and it's kind of unfortunate because as much as we celebrate him now he was not being celebrated like that in 2009. no he was wacko jacko he was a guy with a plastic surgery he was the guy with the allegations it was the guy with the kids that yeah i know biologically probably we're not here to be completely honest like if you look at it from like for like 10 years he probably felt like he was dead the way people treated him yeah yeah he he was not loved i mean can you imagine waking up knowing that you've given your heart and soul to make people move to make people smile to make people cry like you've given since you were eight years old you've given everything you've got to make people enjoy your art form and you wake up and then on the front page of whatever press it says wacko jacko yeah or whatever like just and purely people who are trying to defame you people who are trying to take away your character we're trying to earn like can you imagine waking up to that that's tough that's tough yeah that's tough i'm sorry if you're a lost man i never met him but i was a man i'm a super fan he was a good he was a good good good person man he he had a tremendous tremendous heart man yeah yeah it's too bad well but his music will continue to live on yeah for thousands of years actually yeah well then 2002 he worked with brandy again you did what about us yeah that hit number seven yeah you did tlc turntable yeah uh monica all eyes on me yeah was that a tupac reference no i don't even know it's just still the same sample is funny because i use michael jackson's um um what do we use pyt which was dope because monica wanted to flip pyt and i called michael and i was like i'm working with monica she he goes okay i'll send you the reels i was just going to sample it he sent me the real he like sent us the reels to the record like if you listen to all eyes on me you'll hear michael's voice at the end you actually hear his voice like right from the reels like super dope man next year you did destiny's child lose my breath yeah that's a great song yeah very different sports inspired oh that's a marching band that frantic kind of kind of feel to it yeah uh i did ray j one wish yeah uh and you continue to work with him later on me and you matt actually yeah through the whole raging yeah i just talked to him like a couple days ago yeah he was signing src we did that interview which is i believe that interviews where you announced there's going to be a new michael jackson album yeah probably you mentioned that that became like a worldwide news piece because of that uh and you got married around that time 2004. yeah and you're still married to this day 16 years 16 years four four kids two years later and uh you is your youngest daughter my oldest daughter sings well the youngest daughter who won um well she was on america my oldest daughter was in america's got talent and it sounds like you called her you call that's one of my kids don't worry about it we're good oh that was free right old cute right i know right yeah my oldest my oldest daughter she's um she's um she's 10 years old now but she was in america's got talent when she was five yeah when she was five years old and she is still a meme just so you know i know right the whole thing of her like all excited yeah i still see this meme to this day yeah so dope uh well then 2005 you did cater to you by destiny's child yeah another grammy nomination yeah uh then the next year you did enough crying for marriage and that was that was a great anger yeah why was the first verse kind of repeated twice just just try stuff do something different yeah rewind that find that dude i want to hear it again right away i pull up yeah got some jamaican [ __ ] yeah that's a reggae you know dance all vibes and it worked that was shawn garrett's jeans okay yeah sean gary who wrote that record he he that was his genius doing that well and then that same year uh you did deja vu with beyonce and jay-z yeah was that their first song together or not crazy love was their first crazy love okay yeah uh that one number one on the r b charts and got another grammy nomination yeah were they in the studio together yeah well well no i recorded them separately in the same studio though like i did beyonce one night did jay the next time okay yeah great song thank you next year you did uh sierra uh featuring 50 cent can't leave him alone which is one of my all-time favorite sierra songs that and cookies is probably or goodies sorry that and goodies uh was probably my two favorite songs and then you did uh feedback with janet jackson and had you already been working with her up at that point no that was our first time how was that because once again another icon amazing man amazing janet was you know another goal another goal for me was to work with janet um and you know that's tough because with janet like you know i'm sure you know why would she work with someone who just worked michael was like you know you know the whole the brother-sister rivalry i don't know you know it doesn't usually happen that way right it wasn't like michael was doing a bunch of music with jimmy jam and check lewis you know i think they that did i think they worked on history album together maybe a little bit but not a lot of stuff together right but yeah she you know we talked and she's like yeah let's work and we work together yeah well in 2009 the next year you did uh the one with mary j blige and drake yep oh that was a great one yeah that's when drake really you know like the r b drake yeah exactly really kind of solidified i think with that song but in that same year was telephone with lady gaga and beyonce yeah which is just incredible huge and the video was like ridiculous yeah it looked like it looked like kill bill or something right yeah like the the look of it right yeah yeah uh did you know you had something well number one was was gaga and beyonce in the studio together no i did i did so telephone gaga and i did that um in 2008 and then gaga called me back and was like hey i want to put telephone on my fame monster project and i said cool let's do it and then um we were like yo she was like what if we put beyonce on it and i was like that'd be dope but i said but beyonce is not going to sing it over this beat like this it's too it's too and she was like what can we do i said let me change the b for b for her second verse i'll just flip the beat she said you can do it as a yeah and i flipped it and beyonce was in japan the b changes yeah she wasn't she was in japan and she recorded it in japan and well i was like literally over the phone doing it with her from japan and that was like really i mean i would say lady gaga's biggest song since uh let's dance yeah that was like her next big milestone and fame monster the album got nominated for a grammy so another grammy noms under your belt yeah next year black eyed peas just can't get enough another great one yeah and usually when i see black eyed pea songs i assume that will i am does everything nobody knows how to do that everybody just assumes that well everybody's like i didn't know you do yeah yeah um you know and you were uh on american idol season 10. yeah because because i when i did so all that stuff if you notice there's a similarity and everything you just mentioned um and i think even the pussycat dolls when i grew up too it was around that same time that was all me working with jimmy ivy so all lady gaga he put me in the studio with lady gaga for the first time black eyed peas he caught yeah i played the demo for jimmy he was like it wasn't even for black ops i was just playing on my id and he was like let me get well on the phone get will and he's like i think we'll next you know yeah and then american idol jimmy was over american idol he's like i want you to be on american idol this season you know as a mentor or whatever working as a producer mentor so then that happened and then yeah so jimmy iv we got real close he moved me to la and started working on a lot of like he wanted me to he wanted me to conquer the pop side he was like you know i know you i know you got the r b chops and you can do that you sleep now he's like but can you do pop and i was like give me some artists to do and let me see if i can crack the code well and then you did justin bieber yeah next year as long as you love me with big sean yeah and then a michael jackson song came out the next year uh escaped yeah that was like from an old yeah from the old sessions i assume yeah uh but then the next year in 2015 start working with sam smith big one stay with me big one grammy win for was it record of the year record of the year song of the year i think he won like three or four grammys that year okay but record of the year is a grammy that you actually have in your hand no i think i have a song song of the year okay yeah and that beat out all about that bass by meghan trainor chandelier by uh saya see ya see ya fancy by iggy zalios pretty sure you're gonna beat that one out and shake it off by taylor swift which is another great song so you have some stiff competition i mean in in a realm that i've never been in by the way like i wasn't in the pot realm i mean but that would you could say that that's a pop record i call it a gospel record that's what i'm saying when people ask me i'm like yo i just made it gospel i just put choir church organ on it i thought so for me that's what it was right but you know but yeah i mean it's a pop record because he was primarily a pop artist you know so if you look at the category it's all pop songs great song i mean his biggest song yeah period yeah did you know it was going to be yeah i told i told the a r that we were going to win a grammy ahead of time he was like i never forget he said from your lips to god's ears i never forget the guy's name is nick over in london and i i think i sell the email to ourselves like i told you we went on the grammy what was different about sam smith than a lot of the other i think he just came through he cut through like his voice we haven't we number one we hadn't had a a male british artist invade u.s territory like kim since right george michael yeah right and a gay artist an openly gay artist as well like george michaels yeah and he but his voice like george michael was was big and infectious yeah right and we had and we had heard that in a long time and it was like and it was perfect timing because you know adele was doing her thing like you know we were we were opening up to like british artists coming over here and and doing their thing so um yeah man he cut through he cut through and he and he sang that song with so much passion and conviction that you know you already knew yeah oh i know first listen this is going to be the biggest thing well then next year 2016 you actually replaced uh timberland as the executive uh producer uh well the music executive producer on empire correct yeah uh were you still in charge of the music up to the point where the show finished i i did two years not the last season and the next season oh and then you stepped off yeah who replaced you they didn't even have a place [Laughter] like how you gonna leave your kids and someone they can't like my contract you can't replace me there do you think jessie smollette was the reason why that show ultimately ended and the whole i mean i'm sorry because you know something i was actually 50 50 about the jesse the jesse thing until i saw the video at his house where he the police showed up and he still had the noose around his neck but still had the rope i'm like okay i don't know if that [ __ ] out i don't know if that ended it you know there was so much bad publicity around it yeah and i just think that yo i mean i mean we i mean do we really have shows that last that long like really like six seven seasons is a good run yeah that's true and i'm sure other actors and actresses want to move on and do other things as well well 2017 you did her uh hard place two grammy nominations for that great great artist really irish goddess yeah yeah she was a monster that year yeah she got it she she took over everything yeah she's special 2018 he did a boogie look back at it yeah and you don't usually see you know well i mean i guess he's a singer rapper yeah rapper c rapper singer yeah uh then last year 2019 you did summer walker playing games and her album came out as like one of the biggest female debuts yeah ever yeah what is different about summer walker i think in the time she locked into r b and she got to the root of r b right that's what makes uh summer different right it's like okay when everybody's trying to go alternative r b or trying this thing she's just doing r b yeah and owning it and she did own it yeah she continues tonight yeah and then plus you have the drama element with her as well which i think draw a lot of course of course uh yeah man great great song great album yeah uh well just this year cause by 2020 how many albums or songs have you sold or you know i'm trying to even i guess you could say sold because everything kind of gets condensed into selling i don't i don't count but i'm sure there's a lot hundreds of millions in it yeah maybe yeah i think um at one time like i had counted at one time right and when i counted it was something like um in the year 2001 it was like 200 plus million so in 2001 yeah like i think that's what my plaque was made so if if it's that i would definitely think it's over half a billion sold yeah and if you added streams and all that stuff down and put that all over there i i i would think it's like a billion plus yeah you're responsible for a billion yeah i would think so records sold yeah does that just blow your mind when you think about it yeah it's fun man i love what i do but you're not like what's interesting about you is that you know because we run into each other in calabasas you don't see people really bothering you running up to you taking selfies yeah i'm not no um yeah i'm not i'm not i never put myself out there right like where you got producers that have rapped and become rappers and all right i've always kind of been like you're not pharrell you're not yeah i'm not timberly i want to help make the artists i don't i don't need to be the artist i feel you yeah i like being behind the scenes also yeah i like going to grocery store by myself yeah i love it i love it man i love that i love um you know love i love creating for the artist yeah yeah uh well just recently you sold a big part of your catalog yeah to uh hypnosis your family what do you mean that's my family if if i if i sell any part of of my catalog you're getting my babies yeah it's my family okay hypnosis is family how much free catalog what 982 songs almost a thousand songs went to hypnosis yeah i kept 18 for myself i'm playing and you talked about you know hypnosis has placed a trust in me as an advisor and i have entrusted hypnosis to manage a catalog that i've nurtured for 25 plus years yeah so you've completely sold the rights of those songs well i've sold i sold what it says that i sold okay 900 982 well it probably i don't know you know where you're referring if we're referring from but it was a variety uh yeah so i saw a certain portion of pre-2007 and then i sold a portion post 2007 which encompasses up 982 songs okay yeah but rizza was another person who sold that company uh timberland timberland no id tricky steward i mean everybody's yeah uh red wine is a great company merc merc who runs the company now raj is just great people man they they have a vision they have a vision and they they treat the songs um with a different type of respect than i've seen in a long time what is this company trying to accomplish by buying these catalogs because i mean has anyone ever done this to this level before i think more i mean listen you know people have bought by catalogs right all the time but i think i i don't know if we've seen uh a non-major come with this type of intensity scooter bronze company but they bought taylor swift's catalog they have a bunch of catalogs as well but i don't think it's know what they're doing what they're doing and what they've done what merck has done in the last two years is phenomenal like i mean it's like you know i mean and i know because i'm on the board of even more deals that are coming just this year and it's like whoa and and they're on the london stock exchange right now oh you could buy stockings totally yeah total is it a good investment totally yeah totally you would buy stock well you won't stock in this company i'm sure yeah would you buy more stock in this country totally you would totally okay yeah great company great leader you know you did you know at the end of the day when you're investing what do you want to invest in right you invest in the management team right and to me murk is a great great leader he's great he has a great team and now and when when i did my deal you know there was other people that weren't even part of the team now you got tickle on the team he ran you know version for years in the uk incredible team your management team is great and then you got to think about you know what are you investing in you're investing in justin bieber michael jackson beyonce think of all of these different songs from all those different artists throughout the years that are just incredible incredible um songs throughout the years that's what you're investing in was the check that they cut you ridiculous it was great like i said those are those those are um great great people man you know that you know i'm all about i'm all about work man i keep working like people people will say man so i so how's it so how's it going like how's what going like yeah where did you just close this deal i'm in the studio i'm thinking about the next catalog i'm thinking about what i'm building you know in the future i'm not you know it's it's an asset it was an asset that i built up and i'm proud i'm proud that it's in it's in the hands of a great company like hypnosis so you're not looking to retire no bye i'm in the studio i've been in the studio working with armani for the last you know month um you know i'm i'm non-stop you know i i believe in my skill set and i believe that there's more you know when you mean you pretty much just went through my my discography right and if you look at i've been pretty consistent for 25 years um and i just think i can keep doing it why is it from your point of view that certain producers are hot to death they have this run five years 10 years sometimes even 15 or 20 years but then eventually the sound changes and then you just don't hear much from them anymore i think you know get an occasional placement here and there but you you've consistently i think two things where i think number one i think comfortability comfortability is great but sometimes it scares me a little bit you know i never want to be too comfortable yeah like i like the big house and all of that and i want my family to to live well but i never want to like be so comfortable that i'm not in a studio creating that's one and then number two i think like who who's around you your team is just is just as valuable as you are and i always choose to keep younger people around me so when it's young when you're young fresh songwriters young fresh producers like yo like how teddy had me around him that's the way i am and i think that you got the next child under you i don't know if i got him yet but if he's watching scoff call me call me well for example like david foster one of the greats period he said look i've spent the last 30 40 years in a room like we're in right now in a submarine he said i'm sick of it i don't want to be in these rooms anymore i want to go out there and live my life i want to be outside everything right i want to yeah i want to travel i want to tour i want to be out there i want to do tv and he's big in asia and whatever else but he just doesn't as great as he is he doesn't want to be in these rooms anymore like we're sitting in right now yeah but you don't feel that way no but i do have a time like in my mind when i will um i won't say retire but just like just just go i'm working on other things now okay you know i got a couple tv shows that i'm working on and that i'm gonna go out and pitch soon in the movie that i'm you know about to do with a really great producer here and so there's other parts of my brain that i'm starting to exercise and you know that i'm sure but i'll still be able to utilize my submarine because the projects that i want to associate myself with are music driven yeah so still in the studio it's where i want to be your top five producers of any genre excluding yourself uh top five in any order just doesn't any order doesn't matter uh quincy jones of course oh teddy raleigh okay that's two um max martin not very familiar probably the best pop producer ever in history what is his biggest office oh shake it off the one i beat him out on taylor swift okay um the weekends throughout our whole album right now blind the knights oh that's all him yeah all the way to to you know oops i didn't get britney spears to backstreet bummies guys from okay we have a similar trajectory like if you look at his first hit starter probably around the same time my first hit start got it and he's still killing it okay um that's three right yeah two more choose wisely um dr dre of course dr dre and that last one i think it would be germaine dupree great list and and a non-obvious list you know timberland and pharrell aren't in that list and they're awesome too i mean yeah i hate to have a five when i want to go 10 right right but um because they definitely would be the next two to three for sure but when i look at like i go by like just what they what someone has done in different genres man that five is strong that f5 is very strong and it's hard to really debate those five well rodney man uh such a phenomenal career uh and such a historically important uh catalog thank you with really i can't really name any of the great vocalists of this era that you haven't worked with in the in the r b hip-hop space you see what i'm saying you know i mean even in the pop space though like you you even got all the major pop singers to go along with it and to create such a a catalog of music and not only do you produce it but you co-write everything that you do to just come up with all this in your mind you know to create something out of nothing and to throw that something out there and billions of people react to it uh is just mind-blowing man god is good man i'm blessed that's all i can say is i've been i've been extremely blessed and and i've the the opportunity is working with amazing artists the artists they're they're the forefront i'm in the back yeah and as long as i can as long as there's an amazing artist for me to produce and work with yeah then i'm i'll be okay because i i recognize it and and they're the ones that shine they're the ones that bring it all to the forefront yeah man well listen we've been talking about this for seven years yeah and i'm glad it it took that long no it's just great man i'm so glad that you came through of course and we're doing it at your house here yeah i appreciate it you know in your studio where some of the magic has happened and uh like i said man i'm honored uh for you to tell your story thank you you know i'm thrilled to put it out thank you so much thank you man appreciate it peace

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Id: XRkSYPxkwYw

Length: 119min 55sec (7195 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020