Some VERY interesting info in here
http://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/LECTURES.95.0.html?act_session=190?uestlove: »It sounds like that, right? With Scott, it is still a lot of a giving that we work with each other on the next album or whatever. The main difference between Scott’s involvement with The Roots pre-’Tipping Point’ and ’Tipping Point’ was that I opted not to go to Miami where he resides now. Scott has always come to Philadelphia, I mean, he has lived in Philadelphia. And I opted not to go down there. So one of the dangers, not dangers, but one of the things you sort of expect in Hip Hop is what I call ’demo-itis’, which is whenever a demo, at least I like to control the atmosphere in which demos get distributed in the Roots camp. Because what happens is you come up with an idea, you execute the music, Tariq Trotter might write a quicky verse, might not even rap the verse for that song, he’ll just spit something to see if it sounds natural enough, and then we all make CD copies of it, and then we’ll live with it. One of the dangers of that is five weeks down the line, if you have more ideas to it or whatever, Tariq starts feeling like: ”Hm, I like it how it was on the demo.“ So we call it ’demo-itis’. The thing with ’Don’t Say Nuttin’’ from ’The Tipping Point’, which Scott produced, was, our new president - Jimmy Iovine, head of Interscope, got ’demo-itis’. Which was he heard some ideas that Scott did. As a band we were going to just basically take them as we have always done, like Scott programmed ’You Got Me’, the traditional way (plays keys). Like he would play a song, program drums, and then give me the CD and, be like: ”Ok, this is the idea of the song.“ And then I take it, sort of mold it how The Roots would do it, that was always the mode of operation. With ’Don’t Say Nuttin’’, in its demo form, Jimmy Iovoine, who is the president of Interscope Records, when MCA melted and fell apart in December of 2002, of the thirty-something acts that were on that label, only seven of us got saved. Talib Kweli got saved because Dr. Dre liked Talib Kweli. Basically Jimmy Iovine called Dr. Dre and said: ”Ok, who do we save, who do we let drown?“ So Dre is like: ”Talib is hot.“ ”Ok, so let’s keep Talib.“ Common was about to drown but because the irony of it all was: Common did a Coke commercial much to the dismay of his fanbase and Prefuse 73 who did that long-a** five paragraph diatribe (stretches his arms) of how Common was of the devil because he did a Coke commercial. That Coke commercial was initially slated for The Black Eyed Peas who pre-’Elephunk’ were the minions of the Interscope label. Without telling Jimmy they accepted a Dr. Pepper commercial, which then prevented them from also endorsing Coke, so Jimmy Iovine didn’t want to let this million dollar campagin that he worked so hard for let go. So he decided I have got to find somebody to be in this Coke commercial, and then: ”Common (whistles), come here quick!“ (laughter) Because Common has saved his a** by doing the Coke commercial - Jimmy was going to let Common go, because ’Electric Circus’ – debacle – and said: ”Yeah he was a good kid, I like him, alright, we save him.“ Just like that, that Coke commercial saved Common’s a**. So he got saved, we got saved, because ’The Seed’ was doing big business for ’Phrenology’. Mary J. Blige naturally got saved, Blink 182 got saved, and then pretty much - I think they kept Bilal as well. Then they let everybody go. The only problem is we are now part of the Interscope empire. Now I know for a lot of aspiring young prodcuers, rappers, or whatnot, they look at whatever the highest label is. When I grew up, you know: ”Oh man, yeah, we want to be on Def Jam.“ You know, all my little journs, all my record reviews were all from Def Jam – a little irony (chuckles). Yeah, it was all on Def Jam. Sometimes the best just won’t do. Already I felt kind of skeptical with the situation, because you have one man that is controlling the creations of probably the most successful people in music now. He has hands all over on U2. You know, him and Bono talk every day, so it’s like, (counts with his fingers) you are controlling U2, you are controlling No Doubt and Gwen Stefani, Ashlee Simpson, Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, he just signed Pharrell to the label – that’s eight people already. Oh, I forgot about Fifty, 50 Cent and G-Unit, so Banks and Bucks, both did platinum numbers. So we are up to thirteen, not to mention there is a Nine Inch Nails record somewhere. Fred Durst is still relevant for the label, Beck does platinum numbers. So you are dealing with fifteen or sixteen acts that are multi-platinum, at the very worst 1.8 million, at the very best 10 million. And here comes the only black group of musicians with a record deal. The Roots are the only group of black musicans with a major recording deal. We are limping on our gold legs, but Common who released ’Electric Circus’, Mos Def - oh, Mos Def also got saved because of his movie career, and the HBO show. No, to Jimmy it was like: ”Oh, the guy from the HBO show, ok, he can come, too.“ (audience chuckles) So, it was very much like that. It felt like a mafioso thing like: ”(waves) Yeah, yeah, yeah, you guys can come.“ The only artist he was excited about was Mary J. Blige and what really scared us was the ’Love & Life’ record. I mean, the album they were like so hands on, and Dr. Dre, and all: ”Oh, we have got to call Puffy back.“ They took it, and it fumbled, and then everyone got scared, and so we were just like: ”Oh, man, we are so dead.“ So we go to Jimmy’s office meeting him for the first time, and it was a brief meeting, so we sat down, and it was quiet, lot of affirmative headshaking (shakes his head), no one said anything. And then he says: ”Yeah, I didn’t like your last record.“ And then we were like: (pause - keeps on nodding his head) Ok, (chuckles). He said: ”So ok, what have you got?“ Like already I’m just like: ”Oh man, the energy is not right. This is not Geffen Records, it’s so fast food here.” We played him some of the stuff from ’The Tipping Point’, it’s like ok, this guy is not going to understand a Big Daddy Kane reference, you know?. You realize this is not Big Daddy Kane, this is Tariq imitating Big Daddy Kane, the stuff is just totally going over his head. And then the remote was not working on the CD player (everybody chuckles), and then the next song comes on, and it is the ’Don’t Say Nuttin’’ demo, but because we didn’t ’roots-ify’ it up yet, I couldn’t stop it. He said: ”Wowow, don’t touch it!“ And he is listening and all of a sudden he starts moving. Of course, it is going to be familiar to him because that’s ’Dr. Dre’ (puts it in quotes) doing the – I mean, Scott Storch. Of course, it is going to feel familiar to him because all those elements that were Dre are right there, so it feels familiar to him. And then he says: ”That’s the one.“ Now, because we’re totally like a fish out of water, it’s like: ”Ok, well, we want to definitely go with the energy.“ His whole energy has changed. He stopped the CD. I mean, this is the cla**ic textbook situation of where you watch – I mean, he is not mafioso, I don’t want to paint – I mean, he is as Tony Soprano type (audience chuckles) but he is more like a Joe Pesci small type (laughter). Wait, is this going on the internet (bursts out in a laugh, everybody joins)?«
RBMA: »Going to have a hit put on you, man.«
?uestlove: »Yeah, I’m very careful of what I am saying. (laughs). But he is the guy who says, if you work at Interscope probably the phrase you most often say is: ”Oh, hi!“ He will just do like that (claps) and you will do whatever. And all of a sudden, because of his energy changing, all of a sudden the five or six executives, like our marketing guy, the A&R person, everyone else that was very hands off to us, they were basically content and happy with us being led to the slaughter. We don’t care, like: ”You are not messing up our benefits.“ All of a sudden they were returning our phone calls. And we were like: ”So now Jimmy is happy, and so now you guys will actually approve this budget?“ ”Yeah, yeah, you know Jimmy is happy, he is excited, he brought the marketing people down and everything, he is like banging the desk, he is putting in calls to Steven Hill at BET, you know, (makes a call) I am going to have this video made for you in three weeks, and you are just going to play it,“ dadadada. So we just thought: ”Ok, he didn’t like the last record, he loves this song, he is not big on artsy fartsy pretentious, you know...«
