Towards the latter of 2011, I started this new franchise titled “Talk To Me”, a one question/one answer interview with my person of choice who I also consider a pal. First up was Hit Boy, followed by Tony Williams, Necole Bitchie and Lenny S. Each question hovered around something special to them and their career. Today, we sit with radio beauty Devi Dev, who recently made a huge move from Texas Radio to NYC Satellite radio. She currently holds court over at Sirius with Sway for Sway In The Mornings. And as any out of towner who is thinking of switching markets would want to know, I inquired about HER move from Texas to the Big Apple! Check it oput below!
LowKey: Talk To Me about the pressure you felt transitioning to the NYC radio market!
Devi Dev: Truthfully I haven’t felt any pressure at all moving to New York. I look at any market I’ve done radio in as a great opportunity to experience a different music culture and grow my brand with new listeners. I’ve been On-Air since I was 19 and I’ve always had the attitude that I do what I do for my listeners and not for the industry that exists in the area’s I’ve done it in. Having had radio shows in L.A and Houston I felt that New York was a natural transition to make. The biggest difference I’ve noticed though is by being on Shade 45 w/ Sway we are able to be in the lives of so many people nationally. I love getting calls on the show from Canada, New York, L.A, Kansas, Texas ect ect. You really get to connect with so many different types of people which has been amazing! Other then that though….in the words of DJ Quik…. New York….is just like Compton 
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Special shouts to Vanessa A & Devi Dev!
Ahhhh good ol Lenny S. Roc-A-Fella solider. A&R extraordinaire. Family man. An all around pillar in the hip-hop culture. Lenny Santiago has seen it all. But today we’re going to get specific about his travels to his current state. If you’re a Shawn Carter fan, “Lenny S” should sound familiar…VERY FAMILIAR. From hearing his name shouted on records to being VERY hands on with the Roc-A-Fella Records movement, Lenny has earned his position in this game. And during the glory days of Roc-A-Fella Records? Lenny S had a front row seat. Remember, Talk 2 Me: One Question. One Answer! Enough chatting, LENNY S just stepped in the motherfucking building!
LowKey: Talk 2 Me about the legacy of Roc-A-Fella Records and what that movement means to the hip-hop culture!
Lenny S: The Legacy of Roc-A-Fella Records doesn’t only hold sentimental value to me, Fam, friends, a few artist and some immediate staff members. Its means a lot for the music business and Hip-Hop culture in general. As every independent label is, Roc was way more than a Record Company. It is/was a brand we built from scratch. An unrealistic idea to most. A simple seed that was planted from a dream that blossomed into a reality.
Roc-A-Fella wasn’t just a JV (Joint Venture) or partnership with Def Jam, it was the PULSE of the Pavement that major Record Companies lacked and needed. They still do! I don’t think people realize how much of a difference Bad Boy, Death Row, Roc-A-Fella, DTP, CTE, We The Best or Grand Hustle is, compared to a Sony, Interscope, Universal or Warner Bros. Although these majors in fact have the experience, money, man power and machine to elevate your career to the next or highest level, it’s the Independent Labels responsibility to deliver and dictate the music & lifestyle that form the Culture of Hip Hop.
The indi labels that make up these “movements” aren’t easy to create. They require great Leaders (Artist, Producers or CEO’s), ambitious & hungry new talent, forward thinking, creative, die hard Staff members and last but not least, Fans.. Followers that believe in the music and the picture that the members of the movement are painting. Then after all that, you still need amazing music, dedication and a non stop drive with an uncanny schedule most people can’t imagine working… Then, you might make it.
I say all this to say, Roc-A-Fella Records, along with all the other movements just like it are extremely strong units. Crews. Childhood friends. Brotherly Bonds. Families with loyalty, honesty and integrity. They’re ambitious and anxious to break barriers & records that haven’t been broken. They want to prove everyone wrong. They want to go from literally nothing to something. They hold all the qualities that majors lack in. That’s why these boutique labels are SO Necessary and important for the music and culture. Without the RocNations, Good Music, Maybach Music and YMCMB’s of the game, its pretty pointless. We are the COOL factor. The music and culture is watered down if we don’t exist. We will no longer have Hip Hop… We’ll simply have Rap music.
And that my friend is the reason why the Legacy of Roc-A-Fella & every independent label is so relative for our Hip Hop culture to exist AND survive.
Sincerely
Lenny S.
Roc Alumni, 1996-Present
PREVIOUSLY: Talk 2 Me: Hit Boy | Talk 2 Me: Tony Williams | Talk 2 Me: Necole Bitchie
You always want to see your friends, no matter what they do. And in this case, Necole Bitchie is a close friend of mine. I’ve seen her grow as a website, a brand and as a beautiful person. Hard worker? That’s an understatement when talking about Necole. And with the blog culture growing at a rapid pace, some of us forget the lessons we’ve learned along the way…which brings me to the subject at hand for today’s Talk 2 Me. Remember: One Question. One Answer. Talk 2 Me Presents Necole Bitchie!
LowKey: Talk 2 Me about the most IMPORTANT thing running a celebrity blog has taught you!
Necole Bitchie: It’s taught me ‘Integrity’. When I first started, I didn’t care about what I said about people or how it might effect their livelihood but as the brand grew and I saw how influential the blogging business was as a whole, I started taking responsibility for the things that I posted. I would hate for something that I posted to be the sole reason for someone’s downfall, especially if it is ‘pure gossip’ and hasn’t been proven true. Most of all it’s taught me how important it is to have a good team. You are only a strong as your weakest link. I wouldn’t have been able to come this far by myself.
Shouts to Necole.
Ok so yesterday we had GOOD Music in-house producer Hit Boy break down the time he heard “Niggas In Paris” from Watch The Throne for the first time mixed, mastered and completed for the first installment of “Talk 2 Me.” And today, we’re going to stick with the GOOD Music formula and tap into the creative mind of singer/songwriter Tony Williams. While Late Registration was released over 5 years ago, the music still resonates to this very day. And who DOESN’T love a good studio tale about one of their favorite tracks? I know I DO! Ladies and gentlemen, WE MAJOR!
LowKey: Talk To Me about the recording session for Kanye West’s “We Major” featuring you, Nas and Really Doe!
Tony Williams: Paul Wall was in the building as well. We utilized the upstairs room at Record Plant in L.A., so he could track his verse for “Drive Slow”, which by the way, I layered vocals on. But looking back, i guess my thumbprint was all across Late Registration. That album process, in my opinion, was by far the most exciting of all the albums…. there was so much energy in the studio, on a daily basis. There was so much creative firepower around, that the potential for magic was always a possibility. That was the same day that Nas came in to lay his verse.
Anyway, Ye had been entertaining the idea of utilizing the track which he had gotten from Warryn Cambell, a few weeks prior. Tinkering with new drums was amongst the 47 other projects that he had taken on over those last few days. That’s how we work, always several things at once- biting off small components of several songs, while waiting on something to take shape, to slowly evolve until it screams out, “I’m a song now.” I remember somebody in the room saying, “I don’t think this track is gonna make the cut, why are we still messin’ with it”.
We pretty much work 15- 18 hour days when we record an album. That’s why it freaks me out when I work with a producer that starts to fade after about 4 or 5 hours, which happens all the time. And we do it for several weeks straight. Kanye will usually get to the studio about 11 am or so and start tweaking on his ideas after having had a few hours sleep to dream about them. I’d arrive early when he did and maybe sketch out ideas for hooks, but I always record vocals at night. Frequently, during that album I’d be the last one in the studio, just me and the engineer til the wee hours of the morning. It was kinda’ like assembly line work.
It was in the afternoon, this particular time, so there wasn’t a tremendous amount of traffic throughout the halls at Record Plant. Normally, we would start slow and then pick up creative steam by 7 or 8 o’clock in the evening. Plain Pat, Ibn, Don C., Really Doe and I think GLC where all in the building. We were in the big room, the first one on the left side of the hallway that morning and it seems like Nas and Paul Wall got to the studio within minutes apart and we knew that today, it was going DOWN, something’ was! Afterwards, we all just sat and kicked it for a while than we started playing the track. We never force sessions. We let them happen and at this point all we had was a track- no hook, no melodies, no concepts, no nothing… just a track.
I remember ,Ye, at the time was in the room across the hall working on beats and Nas, Really Doe, GLC, and I sat at the board in the big room sketching out verse concepts. An hour or so later, Really Doe was in the booth laying a verse he had come up with. I remember thinking, “man, that verse is crazy”. By now, Kanye was in the room with us. At that point, we really didn’t even have a basic structure for the song, so we tried to figure out how Doe’s verse would fit into the grand scheme of things. So we just kept listening to it over and over… and over and over and over …. and over. That’s when Ye said, “… Man, this verse is so crazy, we can’t just hear it only once, this has GOT to be the hook. And so there it was. That’s what got the whole ball rollin’ on that song-Doe’s verse.
Crazy!! And to think that Paul Wall’s verse on Drive Slow was going down, simultaneously, upstairs. Meanwhile, Nas hadn’t even hit the booth, yet. Now, we had some direction, some momentum… it was easy. After another hour or so, Nas’ verse was done and the vibe in the room was like 90′s bulls after game 6 of the playoffs, “we got another one.”
My job on that joint was simple. I’m just the icing on the cake. By that evening, I was over on the other side of the hall in the room with Ye vibing on ideas for the topping. Frequently, Ye and I will come up with melody ideas together. I remember him expressing, “We need something that feels like some Earth, Wind and Fire shit”. And you know thats all day with me. I remember singing that melody line and us trying for an hour or two to find words to fit into those beginning ba dap bop pahhhhh’s before the “feeling better than I ever…….” It’s funny how we sometimes overthink things. Finally, Kanye surrendered to the idea that perhaps the answer was simply Ba dap bop pahhhhhh….. and so it was. I wrote the rest of the vamp and had it recorded around midnight. The studio was totally alive by now.
I remember Kanye starting to write on his verse that same night, but it was probably the next day or so that he had finished recording it. The reprise at the end of the record after his rant, “Can I talk my shit again” happened somewhere around post production. I never heard that part of the song, all the “i gotta say wasp to Tony Williams” and all that. The complete song as a whole to me was new and fresh when i leaked the record at K-104 in Dallas on the morning show. They played all 5 or 6 minutes of it too. All these years later, people still “gotta say wassup’ to Tony Williams.”
I GOTTA say wassup to Tony Williams for coming through on Talk 2 Me. Oh, by the way….UHTN is presenting his next piece of work. You’ve been warned!
I’m not a journalist, but I love interviewing folks. And with the internet distributing information a mile a minute, our attention span is snatched within 30 seconds of focusing on something. So, I present “Talk 2 Me.” A one question, one answer situation that gives you just enough information about the topic at hand. Again, I hate transcribing, one of the reasons why I’m not a journalist. But I love to talk to people. And whenever you read an interview, the rhetoric usually begins with “Talk To Me about…..” Makes sense? Good.
Hit Boy, GOOD Music golden child is having a HELL of a year. Signed a great deal with the folks over at GOOD Music, is attached to one of the best projects this year, Watch The Throne and is currently planting a bevy of seeds for a 2012 takeover. But today, Hit Boy explains to Yours Truly what it was like to hear the HOTTEST song in the country mixed, mastered and completed for the very first time. Oh, that song happens to be Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Niggas In Paris.”
LowKey: Talk To Me About the first time you heard “Niggas In Paris” mixed, mastered and completed!
Hit Boy: The first time i ever heard “Niggas In Paris” in full was at the listening session up in NYC at the Planetarium. That was my 1st time hearing the album in full. Of course, it starts off with “No Church In The Wild”, people were getting warmed up. Then “Lift Off” comes on and that’s some big star wars spaced out sounding shit, probably went over peoples head. Really no crowd reaction yet. All of a sudden we hear Will Ferrells voice and my shit comes on. The crowd starts to bounce and begins to act like we’re at a club or something of the sort. That’s probably the most turnt up a Planetarium has EVER been. After it went off, it was basically a standing ovation from everyone in the room. That moment was when I knew that record was special.
Shouts to Hit Boy
