The Exchanges

Q When you were 18 years old, 19 years old, it was just all music all the time?

A Yeah, it just, um, as a fan, I listened to music all the time. I fell in love with it. I wanted to be involved in whatever way that I could. Uh, hip hop was just starting in New York City. It was still a totally underground movement, so the only place you could hear it was at one club downtown where I, where I was going to school. Um, there was only one club that you could hear hip hop, and that was once a week. But other than that, it was only in, it was in the Bronx, it was in Brooklyn, But really just in, like, community centers and outdoor parties, it was underground and not well thought of kind of music. It was street music, and, um, and I would go to this club every week and hear the music, and at that time there would be, A few hip hop records coming out, 12 inch singles, no albums, only 12 inch singles, and, um, there'd be maybe one new record every two or three weeks, and that's all there was. And I would, so, go to the club every week, hear the music there, and then I would buy the one single that would come out every few weeks, and the singles didn't represent what the energy in the club was. And I wanted to feel that energy of the club. So I started, the first record I made was called It's Yours. And the purpose of that was, I was just trying to capture the energy of the club on record. And I didn't know anything about recording. I wasn't a professional. I was a kid…

AI assessment note: “Yeah, it just, um, as a fan, I listened to music all the time.”

Q Okay. So there is four decades separating when you're working with LL Cool J and today, how similar or different from what, like, if you're working with an artist today, how different is what you're doing with that artist today compared to what you did with LL four decades ago?

A Probably not so different. It's, it's probably pretty similar. Just, it, it depends on the artist. Like, because LL was a solo rap artist, and he didn't have a, a band or make music, I was responsible for making the, the tracks, and my version of that was a very stripped down minimal thing. But now I get to work with bands sometimes that have a big sound, and there are a lot of players, and I'm looking for the essence of each of these artists, and the essence tends to be stripped down, but it's stripped down to what they are. Just finished a new album with The Strokes, and they're a band of five people. So it sounds like a band of five people, doesn't sound less than that. Sounds like what they are.

AI assessment note: “Probably not so different. It's, it's probably pretty similar. Just, it, it depends”

Q tells a story of like the Phil Spector coming to the studio with like a butcher's, uh, in a butcher's outfit. And he's got like Guns strapped to him everywhere, and David Geffen's in the studio, and John Lennon's getting drunk. Do you have any, like, things that stand out from you? I've never heard you here tell any of these, like, stories of stuff you've seen inside the studio.

A I can remember doing a session with ODB, Old Dirty Bastard, from Wu-Tang Clan, and I remember being nervous, because I'd never met him before, and his reputation preceded him, so I didn't really know what I was going into, and, um, and I thought, I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring my dog. I had a Pooley, which is a dog that has dreadlocks. And I'll be, and that would be, whatever's going on, if you see a dog with dreadlocks, it's interesting. Like it, it, it, it doesn't, it's fascinating in its own way. And I had a friend of mine also filming everything because I thought, well, if there's a camera and if there's a dog, it's going to be okay.

AI assessment note: “I can remember doing a session with ODB, Old Dirty Bastard, from Wu-Tang Clan”

Q that, but there was something like, ah, the way I would like, ah, still down what you were saying is like, constraints are actually your friend. Yeah. If you don't, like you, you can't do everything. So if you, if you artificially constrain yourself, you can't, you, it forces you to be more creative. Can you talk about this? I feel like you've used this a bunch in your career.

A Yeah. It's like the idea of creating a palette and the albums that speak to me most are ones when you hear them, you know, If an artist has 20 albums, but you hear a song, you know, oh, that has to be on that album, that seventh album, because that's the only album that sounds like that. Even though the band always sounds like the band, This group of songs sounds different than all the rest, and it, and it may be that there's some, it was either recorded in a different way, or all the songs were about a particular thing, or they're using different instrumentation than they used to use. I like it when an album, like, stands alone outside of an artist's career as a defining moment in time. It's not just more of the same.

AI assessment note: “It's like the idea of creating a palette and the albums that speak to me”

Q but like, I'm not special. You know, I think that's, there's a lot of wisdom to that. It's like, man, there's Ten million me's and ten million you's all over the world or whatever it is. Do you think Jimmy's perspective on that is like the people that you've seen that were, had talent and had success and then destroyed it. Is there anything else that he's missing from there?

A I think those are all of them. It's like, because the last one takes into account a lot of like, there's both the The mask of overconfidence and ego, which is hiding insecurity, or there's the insecurity, but they're, they're really the same. You know, they're just presenting in two different ways. Two different people have the same overnight success. One of them gets really boastful and I'm the greatest that ever lived. And the other one is like, Oh my God, they're going to find out that I'm not, that I'm really a fake. But those are both the same people. It's the same. They're two sides of the same coin. The, the megalomania is a way of hiding the insecurity. It's a, it's a brave face. They might not know this. They rarely know it, you know. It's different sides of the same imbalance.

AI assessment note: “I think those are all of them. It's like, because the last one takes”

Q Yeah, and then DJ. I'm still a little confused. Can you, like, try to explain the path that led you to this very singular position that you, that you have now?

A Yeah, I just always followed what was interesting to me at the time. So when punk rock came along, well, first before punk rock would be heavy metal. Heavy metal at that time was really more like hard rock than what we think of now as heavy metal. So it would be Aerosmith, ACBC, Ted Nugent, Those were kind of the mainstays of what arena rock was like when I was 13 or 14 years old. And I loved that music, and then I got a guitar and tried to play along. And it didn't, it didn't go well. But then when punk rock came along, I could, it was easier for me to play along because it was more basic music.

AI assessment note: “I just always followed what was interesting to me at the time.”