Category Archives: Blog Entries

Zo!’s Top Five Moments of 2011 – #4 First Videos Placed in Rotation

Posted on by

Valentine’s Day 2011 – I had just returned home from the school (or “that PLACE” as I would call it) after a typical day of working as a student bodyguard (a/k/a a teacher) and proceeded to send texts to numerous people in my phone letting them know that If they were close to home, pull up in front of the TV real quick and turn on VH1 Soul at 6pm EST… My video for “This Could Be the Night” was set to make its second television appearance (It was run at 10am earlier in the day). I was very promptly informed by my mother who called that morning and left a super excited voicemail, “It came on! Your video was on this morning!!” (To this DAY, she either emails or sends me a text whenever she happens to catch my video) Her voicemail was then accompanied by several texts and tweets that said the same thing. To me, this was pretty exciting being as though prior to the release of SunStorm, I had no videos. We shot footage for “This Could Be the Night” in June of last year. At the time of the shoot, I was told that the final product would be included in the MTV Networks rotation a/k/a VH1 Soul at a later date… after several steps were completed, so I thought to myself, “Just be patient, it’ll show up.” Hell, most times I would pretty much just put it out of my mind for long periods of time so I wouldn’t have to think about it. This was a fairly important accomplishment for me because a producer is normally more behind the scenes and not necessarily looked at as a “frontman.”As a matter of fact, there have been people who I have run into who had been listening to my music for some years, but barely knew what I looked like. So even just for visual’s sake, I felt that a video would be a great look… After seeing the final cut of the video, I was extremely satisfied with the result and couldn’t wait until folks would be able to see me, the crew, and hear my music on a channel that they were familiar with. When the video finally DID air, I stood up so that I was basically positioned in the middle of the living room floor, grabbed the Verizon cable remote and mashed my thumb on the “Volume +” button, which resulted in the TV blaring throughout my house. From there, I was just kinda staring motionless at the screen as if it was the first time I had ever seen my own video… I know that YouTube and other video-based sites are now almost as relevant as television, but there’s still something about seeing and hearing your work of art being displayed on TV that is still rather fascinating to me (you can tell this is my first televised video, huh?). I got on the phone with my parents and spoke with them while one of my cousins called me and screamed into the phone as if she saw me performing at the Super Bowl during halftime. If I remember correctly, the video ran right after The Foreign Exchange’s video for “Maybe She’ll Dream Of Me” – Definitely a surreal moment.

During the space of time that in which I was waiting for “This Could Be the Night” to air, I was contacted by some of vocalist Conya Doss’ people to meet with them about possibly co-starring in a video of hers (“All In You”) that they were set to shoot in November, 2010… Wow, word? Now that was something different and completely unexpected… I’m definitely no actor, nor had I ever been specifically asked to appear in someone’s video before. Regardless, I set up a meeting with them and talked about the “good guy” role I would be playing in the video and I agreed to do it. I ended up shooting the scenes for my part in a day… The next thing I knew, I had “This Could Be the Night” in rotation… and was simultaneously co-starring in another video that was also being run on television. NOW, I get texts and emails from moms that look something like this… “Both videos were on today… Your video came on at 20-after and your acting video came on at 45 after…” (She passes along the times because she knows that the video shows run the videos in the same order each time they air that particular day). That’s her all DAY… Super informative #1 fan.

“Greater Than the Sun” was a video that Phonte and I discussed shooting early on in the planning process of the album, simply because we knew how easy and stress-free it would probably be. When we eventually shot the video back in February, it was the easiest for kats to shoot… we were in Atlanta for a hot second, shot, and rolled out – AND I had some Zaxby’s while on the set!! BUT on the other hand, it has been the most difficult to get into rotation due to editing issues… The most interesting piece to me and my sense of humor is reading the comments made via YouTube as some think that Phonte is the one driving the car, somebody else thinks that Kareem Johnson produced the song and not the video… It kinda had me thinking, “Well shit… What do folks think I do anyway?” haha …Phonte isn’t driving to go and pick himself up from his house in the video! lol Maaaaan, a brovah can’t get credit for shit! LOL But I love how the bright video directly reflects the mood and the content of the song… Perhaps one day soon we’ll be able to enjoy the second video from SunStorm on TV as well…… Two outta three ain’t bad… That’s two more I had on TV this time last year!

Zo!’s Top Five Moments of 2011 – #5 The Co-Signing of “Flight Of The Blackbyrd” by Original Member Of The Blackbyrds, Allan Barnes

Posted on by

Whenever I do a cover of a song, or in this case an original piece that serves as dedication track paying homage a favorite group (The Blackbyrds) and favorite production team (The Mizell Brothers), the way that I judge the finished product is by asking myself, “Do you think that this piece can be presented to the original artist… WITH confidence?” If the answer to that question is a “yes”… I keep it. If I feel otherwise, I will not hesitate to start over or completely scrap something I don’t deem high-quality enough to keep around. With that being said, let’s discuss a phone call I received the afternoon of January 18th while I was in the classroom teaching… I couldn’t get to my phone obviously, so I let it go to voicemail. When I finally had a free minute to check it, I looked and saw that it was saxophonist and original Blackbyrds band member, Allan Barnes who called. Oh damn, word?! Now, I had not talked to him since the summer of 2007 when I went back home to play keys in Detroit’s CityFest with my former band, The Gorilla Funk Mob (ironically, I actually JUST found footage of this performance on YouTube last month). From checking the voice mail, he was giving me a shout letting me know that he was in D.C. for a day or two… Alright, sounds good to me. So, I called him back and we chopped it up about that for a few minutes. Suddenly, it hit me… I need to ask him about hearing “Flight Of the Blackbyrd” from SunStorm!! A friend of mine and GFM drummer, Tate McBroom told me that he played the record for him a few months prior… Being an original Blackbyrd, I was anxious to hear his opinion first-hand…

Me: I’ve been meaning to ask you about this for a minute…. Have you heard the “Flight Of the Blackbyrd” joint?

Allan Barnes: What? Your joint?

Me: Yeah… The one that just came out last year.

AB: Oh yeeeeeeeah!! That’s the SHIT man!!

Me: *Trying my best not to attempt a back flip that I know I can’t execute*

It was probably the shortest and most direct approval I had ever received, but it didn’t lessen how humbled I was, especially being as though the only other song I have ever received praise for from the original artist was my cover of “Star Of the Story” by Heatwave…  Of course as soon as I got off the phone with AB… I passed the positive news along to Phonte.  

Allan’s words came in addition to what happened soon after SunStorm was released in July of 2010. Larry Mizell Jr. tweeted Phonte and I regarding “Flight Of the Blackbyrd” giving the Mizell Family’s approval… (I wish I would have favorited that tweet). Talk about HONORED. You never know who is listening and possibly enjoying your music – particularly when your music is “to” them…

Studio Campfire Stories: “Playing Your Game, Baby” (feat. Anthony David)

Posted on by

Music is pretty funny….. Scratch that. Music is hilarious – Particularly when it comes to its creation. I’d like to consider myself a free thinker when it comes to making music mostly because it eliminates any boundaries, but also because music can be so unpredictable… ALL the time. Being that this is the last SCS for …just visiting three, it’s only right that this one is probably the most interesting. So with that being said, I will begin the story by saying that “Playing Your Game, Baby” was chosen and re-created for none other than one of my favorite emcees of all-time (in my “Top 5” EASILY)… Tariq Trotter a/k/a Black Thought. Rewind back to 2009 when Phonte was working with The Roots on the How I Got Over album… He gave me a call after the work was finished and told me how big of a fan Black Thought was of our Zo! & Tigallo Love the 80’s album AND said that he was wanting to get on something in the future… I damn near dropped the phone. All I could manage to do or say was the brilliant, “WORD?!” But yeah, I was ready to run laps around Maryland… YES, the state. So, about a year or so later at the Roots Picnic in June of 2010, I was there with The Foreign Exchange relaxing, taking part in some good food and helluva jokes before going on stage to perform. Well, the next you know, Black Thought walked up to our table. We met and talked just a little bit after Phonte introduced everybody and after telling him that I was a huge fan he said, “I’ve gotta get up on one of your joints…”  *insert silence here* I was pretty proud of myself at the way I played it off… Because I FELT like saying, “OH SHIT! LET’S WORK TOMORROW THEN!!” …..But, I didn’t. We exchanged info and kept it moving…………. And I was hyped up about it, hell I can’t lie. Been listening to this brotha since ’93/’94 I had a right to be…!! Since SunStorm was already completed and manufactured by that time, the question then became, “Ok, HOW should we work? What would be the best situation?” 

Fast forward to the top of 2011….. …just visiting three was in the middle of production and Phonte put Black Thought’s name out there as someone we should work with on the album. BET! Let’s do that!! Phonte hit him up, he said he was down… It was looking great. The only issue was…. What the hell song are we gonna have him sing?!?!!! A month went by……….. Two months………. We would go back to the conversation every now and then to see if there were ANY new ideas. There were a couple of joints in mind including one by uhh…. J.B. (not James Brown). Finally, a week or so after that conversation.. Phonte and I got back on the phone to decide once and for all what Tariq would be singing. Once again, I went to my trusty laptop and started scrolling through my iTunes selections. To be honest with you, I cannot remember who suggested Barry White… But I do remember picking the song “Playing Your Game, Baby” out directly from my iTunes library. From that, Phonte gave me the, “I’m wit that” and we moved forward in sending it and the lyrics through to Thought… In the meantime, I went in the studio to attempt to recreate this damn masterpiece of a song. Let me tell y’all something… The bond that me and “Playing Your Game, Baby” have formed over the years going all the way back to my days as a child is unbreakable. When Black Moon sampled it for the “I Got Cha Opin (Remix)” in ’94, I LOVED the joint. I even felt it when Ill Al Skratch used it for “Where My Homiez?” It’s just something about the big orchestration over that simplistic GROOVE. And one thing that I never realized until Anthony David and I talked about it later on was how simple Barry’s writing and vocals were. There was ONE vocal track, no adlibs, no harmonies… Not saying that this formula works all the time, but for this song it was a perfect compliment to what was going on musically.

Being that this song is another one of my personal favorites, I took great pride in wanting to do it correctly and do it some justice. I knew that the first things I thought about when someone talks about “Playing Your Game, Baby” are how crispy and pronounced the drums are and that simple but nasty and well-placed bassline. So that’s what I recorded first… I made sure the drums that I programmed were close to the original and I played the hi-hat out live. Once that was laid, I grabbed the bass guitar and and recorded it keeping it close to the original but adding a couple of my own licks here and there. The rhodes piece followed and then…. The strings. Man, man, MAN. That was a piece that would make or break the song. If the strings weren’t right, I would have scrapped the entire song without hesitation. BUT, they actually met my own skeptic ass approval and that particular draft was sent over to Black Thought to record to. Soon after we sent the music off, the horns were added. When I heard those horns on the track for the first time, I damn near turned my own computer over. They sounded GREAT!!! Now, we ran into trouble at this point because the brotha Tariq Trotter is BUSY AS ALL HELL. I don’t know if the dude ever stops going… He’s on constantly on the road and appearing on the Jimmy Fallon Show with The Roots, in the studio recording, popping up at spots performing internationally…. With that type of schedule, I was patient and understanding. If he couldn’t record it, not a problem at all – There will be time to work on something else in the future, I was definitely sure of that. But as we inched closer to the end of production for the album and its deadline, we had to figure something out. Who out here is gonna sing…. No, no, no… who out here is gonna SAING Barry White?! I mentioned Anthony David one time… Phonte and I talked about it briefly and let it sit for about a week or more. Finally, Phonte hit up A.D. and put him on alert… “Ayo, we may need you to come through and knock this Barry White joint out for the new album, you down to do it just in case?” He said he was down… So the music and the lyrics were sent to him. If I remember correctly, I think he was on the road doing some shows on the East Coast when he received the files. He said that once he got back home, he’d take care of it. Aaaaand just a few days later, I had an email with a file labeled “Playing Your Game AD Vox” ready to be downloaded. I damn near jumped outta my seat because these vocals were the LAST things needed for the album. I downloaded it and quickly played it in iTunes… I wasn’t patient enough to listen through the minute and a half long instrumental piece in the beginning, I scrolled right to the vocals and waited………… As SOON as I heard that first bar I said to myself… but outloud, “Maaaaan THIS dude is WHYLIN!” Ok, ok, ok…. He’s got the verse part down. NOW, let’s see what it’s lookin’ like when this hook comes in when Barry raises his voice and really let’s the girl know what’s on his mind…. *the hook comes and I hear Anthony David say* “Ya PLAYIN’ A GAAAAAME!!! IT’S SO PLAAAAAIN!!” And then the END of the hook when he hit the, “Nobody but YOOOOOUUUUUUUU AAAAAND MEEEEEEEE!!” ….Maaaaaaaaaaan, you would have thought a Detroit team had won a World Championship the way I was acting after hearing that – because without even hearing the rest of the song, I knew he had nailed it. To have come through in such a huge way, the respect I already HAD for the brotha tripled… And to this day, he and I have never even met face-to-face. Crazy, right?

I think with this song being one of the more familiar selections on the album along with the fact that it vamped out a little longer at the end musically, it was the perfect closing track. As I said at the beginning, music is totally unpredictable, but I’m extremely happy with how things turned out in the long run as I couldn’t have asked for better performances. I can’t wait to get up with everyone again for the next album….


Studio Campfire Stories: “Same Ole Love” (feat. Jeanne Jolly)

Posted on by

Some of you may remember the good ole days when I taught music to Special Ed. High School kids (up until the school shut down completely at the top of August). Well, the most difficult part about maintaining a “9 to 5” and being a working musician is being able to keep some crazy late night hours. There were times that I would be getting off of a red eye flight from the west coast or getting off of an overnight MegaBus/BoltBus ride from a gig in NYC and then driving directly to work… This particular morning was no different. I don’t remember exactly how late I was up the previous night, but I do remember one thing… I. Was. TIRED. During the spring semester in 2011, second period was my planning period. So as soon as my first period class left the room, I would look VERY forward to my 50 solid minutes of peace and quiet before my rowdy ass third period class came in. But just as I was settling in to some silence… My cell phone started ringing – It was Phonte with an epiphany…

Phonte: “Ayo man… We need to remake “Same Ole Love”…. with JEANNE JOLLY and flip it into a COUNTRY song.”

Me: *thinking… humming the song to myself* “………..Hell yeah!”

P: “Cuz if you break it all the way down, “Same Ole Love” ain’t nothing but a country song anyway.”

M: “I say, let’s run it…”


I actually had “Same Ole Love” on the computer in my classroom and decided to learn the chords and changes as soon as we got off the phone. From learning the music, I was able to then hear my own drum pattern overtop of the hooks. I then walked over to the drumset in the classroom and practiced that particular pattern until it was time for my third period class to come in… Matter of fact, I practiced that pattern more than a few times because I wanted to be the one to record them and I wanted them to be laid with the same groove and swing that I had in my head.

One of the great things about this remake is not only Jeanne’s performance, but the fact that since she has been on the road with The Foreign Exchange and been pulled into various studio sessions covering several genres of music, she has ignored being a good “Country singer” and has begun to build a solid reputation as a being a dope SINGER… Period. We knew that creating this song for Jeanne and putting it on the album would be a wild card move, without question. Sometimes it is difficult to get listeners to think outside the box, especially with a song that a lot of folks connected and grew up with…. We could already see the tweets and the comments coming…. “Wait a minute, a white country singer redoing a joint by ANITA?!”  ….”I KNOW she ain’t doin’ no Anita Baker song!” No problem… We had a plan. First, we weren’t sure if Jeanne was familiar with the original version or not… Either way, we made it a point to keep Anita’s version away from her simply because Anita has such a distinct tone and sound and we didn’t want it to influence our version at all – plus I was confident that it would help our version stand out a little bit more. So after recording just the piano part to a click track or a metronome… Phonte laid down reference vocals for Jeanne to listen to before she actually went in to record it herself. I even put the piano/click track on my phone so that I could practice the drum pattern on the kit WITH the recorded music playing during my down time in the classroom…. At that point it was just a matter of figuring out when we were going to record the joint in full.

I just so happened to be in North Carolina at Phonte’s spot for what ended up being a few days in April, I was on Spring Break from teaching. Ironically enough, the majority of “Same Ole Love” was recorded the day after Phonte and I recorded our now infamous parody of Mark Morrison’s “Return Of the Mack.” My greedy ass was actually going to work on a Cookout burger while Jeanne came on through the house so she and Phonte could record vocals. In the meantime, I was waiting on a call from +FE frequent collaborator and live band guitarist, Chris Boerner so that I could take a trip to his house and record the drums. I mean, I had taken along one of my favorite snare drums on the plane and everything for this! I ended up getting the call and left the vocal session to head over to Boerner’s spot to set up for my first live drum recording session… On a full kit, that is. It was a quick set-up, no issues at all…. Levels were adjusted, a few drum mic tweaks here and there, then it was time. I played the kit and actually got the drums sounding the way I wanted them to sound on only the second take… Damn near surprised mySELF! Chris dumped the drum tracks on my flash drive and I took them AND the vocal tracks home with me the following day to plug into the open session in my studio. After putting them all together, I recorded the bass guitar track and some additional percussion instruments in order to make the song bounce a little bit more. After I sent the joint to Phonte, he had Boerner add some acoustic guitar… RHYTHM acoustic guitar that really added some more movement to the end hook and dammit… Allyn Love came in and “made the song cry” with that pedal steel guitar. When I heard those final two elements, I was rewinding things MORE than a few times. I was even influenced to add the string line at the end to give the song more of a finalé. Pedal steel guitar? Jeanne singing Anita and sounding GREAT? Kats were proud of this one simply because we felt as though we were breaking a couple of rules and pulled it off successfully… It almost makes me anxious to shatter some more

Download …just visiting three for FREE…. Here.

September 11th… We Have History.

Posted on by

My first birthday cake (9/11/79)… I was probably analyzing the best method of attack.

At approximately 10:50am in 1978, September 11th and I began to form a bond that would go on to last a lifetime to say the absolute least. This would become the day that as a kid I would get so hyped up that I would establish countdowns to simply because the date would involve celebration, presents, and most importantly… FOOD. In grade school, 9/11 was the day that marked my becoming another year older, which meant I could puff my little bird chest out a little bit more. THIS of course meant I was more… well… “grown”… or so I thought. I mean saying, “I’m 10” always sounded so much better than saying, “I’m 9” combined with whatever large fraction I could find to attach to my age in attempts to make myself sound even older, right? There were some 9/11’s where rather than baking a cake, Moms would make my favorite pie (cherry) and put birthday candles in that! Other times, I may have asked her to bring in cupcakes in for my classmates on 9/11 so that they could partake in one of my favorite pastimes: being greedy as all hell. Then of course, the highlight of my 9/11 was coming home after school and asking Moms if I could open the gifts that she and Dad picked up for me, not realizing at the time how fortunate I truly was………….. Well, then I would tear those presents open as if I had no home training at all.

Yeah, September 11th and I go back a quite a ways…

The World Trade Center Towers, NYC

9/11 began a bit differently in 2001. Already graduated with Bachelor’s in Studio Art (Graphic Design), I was still living in Bowling Green, KY working on pre-requisite courses for an MBA Degree a/k/a “I didn’t know what then hell I wanted to do with my life at that particular time.” Young, silly-acting and all set to turn 23, I began the early morning hours by running my mouth on the phone all night, which consequently caused me not to get much sleep at ALL, with the exception of maybe 30-45 minutes on the couch of my apartment after finally laying down at about 5:30am. One of my cousins from Florida called me to wish me a Happy Birthday…… At 6-something AM. He hit me with, “Happy Birthday cuuuuz…”  My response was something like, “#@%&!!!!, You realize it’s 6:00 in the damn morning??!…. Well… At least you called, thanks a lot.” After getting off of the phone with him, I decided like a crazy person to drive to campus so that I could get an early morning workout. Surprisingly, I had sufficient energy to start and complete the full workout routine. Upon finishing, my number one objective for the day then became: GET SOME REST… IMMEDIATELY. I got back to the apartment, took a shower, and was fully prepared to get in the bed, cover my face with the covers to help shield any additional morning sunlight that wanted to try and peek through the blinds and then drift off into dreamland. But by the time I peeled the covers back, the phone rang… I didn’t answer it. I had sleeping to do. …The phone rang again…. Same thing, I didn’t answer it. I definitely wasn’t expecting the phone to ring a third time in a row. So finally, I decided to pick it up…. It was one of my boys calling from campus. No “Hello”, just straight to…

“AYO… They flying planes into the Twin Towers!”

Wait a minute… Huh?! THE Twin Towers?…. What do you even say to that? Except for, “The hell are you talking about?!”

“Maaan, turn the TV on CNN! It’s on there!”

I hung the phone up, went downstairs and turned the TV on and not only was it on CNN, but on EVERY channel there was a shot of the Twin Towers. By this time the North Tower had already been hit, was still on fire and some of its floors were engulfed in smoke… The first thing I thought about was my best friend and then former roommate who had JUST moved out of the apartment to NYC two or three weeks prior. I was trying to call him… Nothing. I couldn’t get through – there were way too many calls going to New York at the time and the phone carriers were overextended. As I was attempting to call him, the calls began pouring in to my phone. To this day, I have never witnessed that much call activity on a phone that I owned in my life. Birthday wishes quickly turned into a, “Maaaan, this shit is crazy!” conversation… My mother even called and said,

“Are you watching the news?!! ………OH!! Happy Birthday.” 


That was a pretty hilarious moment to me looking back on it. But I think the seriousness of 9/11/01 REALLY sunk in when I saw the second plane hit the South Tower on live television… I was actually on the phone with someone at the time and we BOTH blurted out, “Oh SHIT!! ….Did you see that?!?!!” …and then there was just silence. I later found out that a young lady I grew up with was actually able to evacuate from one of the towers and avoid harm. Ironically enough, her first day on the job happened to be Monday September 10th, 2001.

The main question of the day became, “Where are they gonna hit next?” And even more importantly, WHO exactly is “they?” I even remember the mall in Bowling Green, KY closing down early that day and I thinking…. “Maaaaaaaan, terrorists ain’t thinking about attacking the damn Bowling Green mall!!” This was one day that I will say that there was entirely too much going on, but there was absolutely nothing you could do about it but remain glued to the news. Oh, and I failed to mention the fact that I had an Economics exam scheduled for 5:30pm that day as well… Let’s just say I didn’t get to finish studying for it. And that sleep I was attempting to get all day, that didn’t happen either. And while I was hearing that campuses were canceling classes nationwide, we still went to Economics class that evening and took the exam. It was the only thing I got a “B” on the entire semester… But on the way back from class, I stopped through Best Buy and scooped up the following new releases…  Jay-Z’s The Blueprint CD and the Blow DVD.

No one really understood just how deeply we would be impacted by 9/11. It hit me like a ton of bricks when I was on a plane less than two weeks later. I sat down in my assigned seat and noticed that I had an entire row to myself. Hell… I had damn near the entire plane to myself! It seemed to have come with a cost because for the first time, I stood in a security line for almost an hour and a half. I remember being sent to a checkpoint of security where they would look through you bag in front of you by hand – tossing, lifting, shaking and adjusting the clothing in your suitcase until they were satisfied that you were “clean.” There were so many copycat acts of terrorism that followed that it just got to be ridiculous. For example, we can blame kats like Richard Reid for our having to place our footwear in a bin and having to walk through security detectors shoeless. The proces of catching a flight and even picking someone up from the airport hasen’t been the same since. Things changed damn near overnight pretty much to the point where we can specifically point to two very distinct eras in modern history, “Pre-9/11” and “Post 9/11.” 

Showing no mercy on my birthday cheesecake during a restaurant celebration in September 2001 …Normal activity.

Well… Post-9/11, I have chosen since its first anniversary in 2002 not to watch the news or any 9/11 related documentaries that day. As a matter of fact, I’ve watched one documentary on 9/11, of which I checked out only once back in 2003. It was so extremely detailed, well produced and ridiculously heavy that I don’t feel the need to look at any others… Since 9/11 and I have such a rich history, I will continue to utilize it as a day of celebration with my family and close friends… AND a celebratory alcoholic beverage…. AND a helluva plate of food!!  

“Happy B-Day! Love, Zo” was the cake I made to mySELF in 2001… 

Prayers and respect to those who were affected by the events of 9/11.

Love to my 9/11 Birthday family… Miz Korona, Jade, Curtis, and my brotha Grap Luva…

Studio Campfire Stories: “Everything She Wants” (feat. Phonte)

Posted on by

“Everything She Wants” was actually the LAST song recorded for the album. The reason why Phonte is on the joint is because…. well…. we both knew that he and I could complete a song super quickly and efficiently. At the time I was looking to get just ONE more joint on the album to being the total to seven and nothing was showing any promise. I was debating on whether or not to do an instrumental track as was done on …just visiting too, but selection-wise nothing was coming together. It’s kind of a difficult position to be in because as an artist because you never want to force creativity, yet the deadline you set for yourself is staring you in your face and suggesting otherwise. Well, there was about a week left until the deadline the day that I started looking through my iTunes collection and spotted a song that I thought might be perfect… My text to Phonte read: 

“Left field idea for JV3… “Everything She Wants” by Wham”

….Then I waited. 


Looking back in my text history, there IS no return text… Why? Because Phonte called me back…. Now we all know it serious when you send somebody a text and they hit that ‘talk’ button on you. And now, to give you more proof in regards to how much kats are on the same page musically, he basically told me that he had always wanted to remake that particular joint mainly because he talked about how well-written the song was. Well shit!! Sounds like we have a winner!! The discussion that followed involved HOW we were gonna remake it.  The first issue at hand: Tempo. We agreed that we would either have to do more of a sped up version of it to make it our own, or a version where the tempo was slower… we chose the latter. The funny thing is, I remember thinking of the drum pattern that I was going to use while he and I were still on the phone. As soon as we hung up, I went down to the studio and started working on a slower and more grooved-out version of “Everything She Wants” by programming and recording the drums… 

As a musician and a producer, it’s ALWAYS a positive when the music that you end up creating is identical to what you hear in your head. That is something that has taken me years of practice and repetition to be able to pull of more consistently. This is exactly what happened with “Everything…” – The drums, the swing, the recreation of the music became exactly what I heard in my head. And when this does happen, I get reeeeal hyped up about how it sounds. But even with everything sounding the way it did, I still felt as though it could go somewhere else. Once again, Phonte and I hopped on the phone… and we began to bounce ideas back and forth. I kept saying that the turnaround in the bridge sounded like SOMETHING and I couldn’t put my finger on it to save my life. After about 15-20 minutes of brainstorming… Dropping the subject and coming back to it, the conversation sounded something like this…


Me: “We’ve gotta be able to flip it into something else”

*a few seconds of silence*

Phonte: “Ok… What about ‘Remember The Time?'”

Me: *turned to the keys and played the music from “Everything She Wants” as it transitions into “Remember the Time”* “…………HEEEELL YEAH!!! THAT’S THE ONE!!!”


Soon after we got off the phone, I laid down a full demo version, which consisted of the already finished drums and just a Rhodes keyboard track where I played both the bass and the chord parts. I sent it on through to Phonte and waited for him to record his vocals. Once I got his vocal reference back, the one thing that stood out to me was that the slower tempo made me focus in on the lyrical content more. For those who know me well understand that this is HUGE, because I usually get so caught up in analyzing the music that never really pay attention to the lyrics, which is why it takes me forever to learn them. Vocally, I was hearing Phonte get bolder and more comfortable with his range and also with the harmonies he used throughout the song. Being able to witness this kat that I consider my brother grow as an artist firsthand has been a priceless experience in itself. And in my humble opinion, as was done with “Black Cow” joint – he nailed this one… 

Download …just visiting three for free HERE

Studio Campfire Stories: “Marzipan” (feat. Eric Roberson & Phonte)

Posted on by

There are two key characteristics that are common when Phonte and I get into very involved music conversations… 1. They are never planned. It’s never formally announced, “Ayo man, we’ve gotta get up and talk about some music.” …Nope. It just happens. 2. The conversation usually lasts for a few hours. Kats are usually sitting at our computers going through iTunes like, “Hol’lup… Have you heard THIS shit though?! …. NAH but WAIT!! Remember that Timbaland remix joint from so and so that was on the such and such soundtrack?!?” Yeah… 2-4 hours of this – Sending music back and forth and putting each other on to new joints. Well, about three years ago during one of these conversations Phonte put me up on this song called “Marzipan” by a kat named Eric Tagg who I looked up immediately and found out that he was most known for his work with guitarist Lee Ritenhour (“Is It You”). I can specifically remember how hyped Phonte was about the joint… and this was looong before we even talked about possibly covering it. I’m actually glad it happened that way, because it gave me a chance to just enjoy the song and let it sink into my memory for a couple of years before I began to really study it. I even ended up picking up Eric Tagg’s entire Dreamwalkin’ album just because of the one song… I had to hear more of his work. 

Fast-forward to January 2011… Phonte threw the song out there as an idea for …just visiting three – this was no surprise to me at all. Funny enough, the FIRST thing that came to mind was the famous Cosby Show “CHALLLLLOOOONNGE!!” scene because knowing how the song went, I understood that the chords and the off-count of the verses were NOT straightforward at all… I knew from the jump that I would definitely have my work cut out for me. The good thing is, I enjoy challenges. So I figured that if I sat with the song long enough in “study mode” everything would fall into place. Well…. that’s KINDA what happened. It took me getting frustrated with the verse chord progression, shutting the song down…. coming back to it, and cussing out Eric Tagg and his engineer because the keys were tucked so well in the mix in that there were spots in the song where I couldn’t even hear specific chords. BUT… I FINALLY figured it out. That was by far the toughest part of the song to cover. Once those chords were figured out, I damn near felt in the clear. So finally, late January during a day that school was canceled because of heavy snow and ice, I turned the studio on in the morning and ended up recording the full instrumental by lunch time. I was hyped up because I had just purchased a new snare drum a week or two prior and wanted to utilize it for this particular recording session. To be honest, it was the new snare’s sound that helped shape and mold the direction and recreation of this song… I’m not really sure how I can explain that, but I’ll try my best. If you understand the abilities and the full working potential of a NEW instrument, not only will your ideas be enhanced, but production doors will fly open for you. Picking up that new piece of equipment and demoing it during the recording process allowed me to take another risk or two with my drum playing that I probably wouldn’t have been pleased with otherwise. This is why I usually have NO problem with investing in studio equipment. More sounds = more ideas = more risks being taken in the studio.

Another interesting part about recording a cover is finding the correct vocalist for the song. We were looking for a male vocalist  who could match the feel and the tone of the original joint. With Eric Tagg singing in a naturally higher register with a warm tone, there was only ONE kat who was even mentioned or thought about for this piece… Eric Roberson. Phonte who at the time had just finished recording a joint for Erro’s upcoming album Mr. Nice Guy, reached back out to him for my album. From what I remember, it didn’t take him long at ALL to turn the vocals around. But in the meantime, Phonte took the time to the hooks down, which gave the song new life in itself so when I finally heard Erro’s vocals on it, my instrumental sounded like a totally different joint. I hit Phonte up like, “Ayo… This is IT.” Just for good measure, instead of duplicating the guitar/synth solos in the original song, we decided to change it up just a bit and run guitar/trumpet solos back-to-back. Frequent +FE collaborator and live band guitarist Chris Boerner was called on once again to perform the guitar solo, which he took full advantage of by showing no mercy in the eight bars of space he was allotted. Mr. Johnny-On-the-Spot himself, trumpeter Stan Graham who can also be found on “Take Off the Blues,” “If I Could Tell You No,” and “Flight of the Blackbyrd” competed the solo package by adding his own melodic stamp, which opened up the feeling of the song even further. It’s amazing just how much appreciation you gain for certain pieces of music once you try to recreate it… “Marzipan” was a perfect example. I can’t listen to this song without completely reliving its creative process…

Studio Campfire Stories: “Driving” (feat. Sy Smith)

Posted on by

It seems as though all of the stories for …just visiting three begin with a phone conversation between Phonte and I. Welp, I guess with that being said……….. 

I was having a conversation with Phonte one day…… and he was telling me about a recent connection he made with a certain well-known female vocalist who essentially made it known that she was down to be on the album. Now knowing how things can change on a dime in music without much warning, I decided very early that I wasn’t gonna get too excited until I was listening to a final version of a song with her vocals on it. A few days later, Phonte sent me a folder of four joints, which included the song “Driving” by Everything But the Girl. I’ll admit, I remembered the song VERY vaguely… BUT out of the four that he sent, this is the one that both of us gravitated toward. Technically speaking, when I listened to the song and heard it bounce back and forth basically between two or three chords, I thought to myself, this is gonna be a pretty easy song to redo… This shouldn’t be a problem at all – That is, until I listened closer and heard about 593 layers of synth in the joint. It seemed like every time I listened, a brand new synth patch would mysteriously appear – the track was VERY deceiving. Even when I sent what I thought was the final music to Phonte… he hit me back right back, “Ayo… There’s a synth line that you missed. Go to (insert minute mark value here) and check it out…” DAMN!! I thought I GOT all of um!!! *Angrily opens Pro Tools file back up*

I actually finished a “to be recorded to” draft of the song pretty early… and THAT’S when the real fun began. Once Phonte got back in touch with the originally chosen vocalist, we discovered that her schedule, our album deadline, combined with our touring schedule probably wouldn’t work out – So we ended up having to look elsewhere. But I’m sure we will get to work with her in the near future on some original material… So we turned our attention to Paris, Amber, and Anita… otherwise known collectively as KING to handle the vocals. They were completely down AND were already familiar with the song, ok… dope! Well…… That is, until they were called on to do a small gig opening up at the LA Forum for uhhh….. none other than….. well, this kat outta Minneapolis, MN named…… Prince Rogers Nelson. We were REALLY happy for them landing that show and with the rehearsal schedule they were gonna have to keep, there was no way that they would have been able to record this song and we understood that completely. Meanwhile, during the creation of the JV3, I already knew that it was a must that I had to have a joint with my sister Sy Smith a/k/a “See Smeet”… I always tell people, Sy is one of the sweetest, most down-to-earth people you’ll ever come across…. AND she’s probably also “more real” than a lot of dudes you know – love her to death. And while I was racking my brain trying to think of a song to redo that would be tailor-made to fit her vocally, the answer was sitting right in front of my face the entire time. “Driving” was for Sy Smith… Period. Phonte and I were already plotting on her to record the joint before she even knew about it or heard it! I finally ended up playing the instrumental for her in the van while we were on the road with The Foreign Exchange traveling from Chicago to Indianapolis back in May and she loved it. After we went home from that Midwest run, she got together with Phonte and recorded her vocals. Once I heard the vocal draft, I thought to myself, “She sounds a little different than normal… But it sounds dope as HELL.” I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the difference was or why she sounded the way she did… I just knew that I loved it. When I got Phonte on the phone, he told me that Sy didn’t feel too well while recording it… Ahhhhhhhhh, NOW it makes sense. To me, her not feeling 100% ADDED to the emotion and the sincerity of what she was singing about and it also helped to make it her song. To drive that point home even further, I wanted to change the song at the end into one of my all-time favorite slow joints, “Inside My Love” by Minnie Riperton. When arranging in my head what I wanted to do to re-create “Driving”, the first song I thought about was “Inside My Love”… the drums had a similar feel to me. So I allowed that particular drum pattern from the intro and the verses of Minnie’s song be the influence for the entire cover… I love Sy’s interpolation with the lyrics during that piece. She took Minnie’s opening “Two people….” line and played with it just enough to let the listener know what song we were changing into, but still subtle enough to where it may not hit you until the change is almost over……. Pretty sneaky there, See Smeet. 


Download …just visiting three for free HERE

Studio Campfire Stories: “Let It Go” (feat. Nicholas Ryan Gant)

Posted on by

I can remember being reintroduced to the original song by Pages back in the summer of 2009 when Questlove tweeted it one day saying that he currently had the joint on repeat. From there, hell… I had it on repeat. The joint is yet ANOTHER reason why I could give a damn about a “genre.” Because if you look at a picture of Pages, there’s no way you would think that they created the many soul-infused gems that they did. But I remember tweeting Questlove back and my man DJ Brainchild catching what I wrote and letting me know to check their albums out as well… So I ended up grabbing three of their albums including their self-titled joint that was released in 1978. Fast forward to 2011 to yet another phone conversation between Phonte and I where we were discussing song ideas… “Let It Go” came up. My first response came in the form of words spoken by the legendary Negro Physician, Dr. Dre, “HEY-ELL yeeeah.” 

As a listener, I felt it was gonna be VERY important to try and recapture the warmth of that 70’s recorded instrumentation from the original record. I could tell that the updating was going to begin with the drums… So once again, I started recording and programming the drums first, along with a live hi-hat and a cabasa pattern that mimicked the “Zimba-Ku” drum break. Once I heard the drums fully recorded, I couldn’t WAIT to lay the rest of the song. (I actually video recorded myself laying down the live bass on the record, which I’ll be sure to post later on…) The keys were the hardest to pick up on because I couldn’t hear them too well in certain places, Pages’ mix had those chords tucked real well in some spots. The FUN parts were the synth solos, particularly in the middle of the song where it breaks down… there are a few layering techniques I used to manipulate it sonically to where it is now. It was one of those solos where if I messed up while recording it, I wasn’t mad because it was fun as hell to play anyway!

Of course once the music was finished, we had to figure out who was going to sing in this high ass register provided to us by the Pages brothers… especially those hooks! At first we thought of two vocalists, one to sing the verses and the other to sing the hooks… but one of the vocalists we were going to ask to do it was on extended vocal rest. To make sure he remained healthy and continued to improve, Phonte brought up Nicholas Ryan Gant. Now, I met Nicholas right around the time I moved out to Maryland in 2006 as he was singing background for Muhsinah. The thing is, I didn’t realize how extremely vocally talented he was until maybe last year when he came on stage with us as The Foreign Exchange was performing “Maybe She’ll Dream Of Me” in NYC at BB King’s in October. Man look…. I don’t even think Nicholas understands how talented Nicholas is. He was killin’ on stage… We exchanged numbers very soon after that impromptu performance. lol Needless to say, when Phonte brought him up… I was all for it. He sent Nicholas the music and we waited…. In the meantime, Phonte hit me up with the “check your email” text… UH oh. I checked the joint…. and Tay has laid some background vocals on it, now the song is slowly starting to come to life. The part that was getting me was “Let cha!! …Love GO!!”  ……”Whoa-whooooa …whoaaaaawhooaaoooooo!!” I was like, “YO!! This shit is CRAZY!” With all that going on, I still wasn’t quite prepared for what was sent to me about one week later. When I finally got the demoed full vocal version from Nicholas,  I was sitting in my classroom at the end of the school day and was forced to grab some student headphones to plug into my phone just so I was able listen right then and there. When I heard all of what was going on vocally, my only response was, “The hell is this kat DOING?! …..DAMN!! (followed by an additional array of colorful curse words and phrases)” The harmonies were on point, the dude’s runs were precise and not overdone and the original was still in tact. I called Phonte after about three listens and didn’t say much at all.  Phonte responds to me by saying, “Man, he bodied that shit…” Uhh… Yeah, I agree. I actually sat in the studio and soloed a couple parts of his vocals so I could appreciate all of what he did to the song. There’s actually one vocal part that I didn’t even catch until later… The top of the third verse, listen closely to what happens… “There’s no need to explaaaaa-aaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaaaain…” Nicholas takes the word “explain” and proceeds to drop the note  three times… I didn’t catch it for a month. It may not be a big deal to him or to other kats who can “saing”… But I tried it (while alone, of course), and I sounded like an idiot…. The brotha is talented and I’m glad he got down and did his thing on the album as there aren’t many who can do what he does. 


Sidenote: This was the first song completed for the album…


Download …just visiting three for FREE here…

Studio Campfire Stories: “Black Cow” (feat. Phonte & Sy Smith)

Posted on by
Production work on …just visiting three began on December 22nd, 2010 following a phone conversation I had with Phonte discussing songs that I wanted to recreate for the new album. One of the songs that had my full attention at that particular time was Steely Dan’s “Black Cow.” I was already familiar with the song and the legendary Aja album that it comes from, but for some reason around this time, the song was hitting me a bit differently – I was beginning to break it down into individual parts and mapping out the different possibilities for the song in my head, which usually means that I am ready to sit down and start working on it. I took some time out to listen through it a few times to pick up on not only the instrumentation, but the overall “feel” of the record. In the past, I actually stayed away from this song because it’s one of those joints that I enjoy so much that I would want to be able to do it justice if and when I ever decided to tackle it (as was the case with Minnie Riperton’s “Perfect Angel” on …just visiting too). I’m a strong believer in completely trashing a song if I don’t feel like I’ve done it correctly. Luckily, with “Black Cow” I knew it was a keeper after I programmed the drums, then learned and recorded the bassline… Now, the TOUGHEST part about covering this song?!?! Learning. Those. Damn. Chord. Changes. Steely Dan…. WHAT were y’all ON creating this joint?! Whewww!!! Honestly, I took a couple of days to practice the chords on the keys before even sending it to Phonte as a demo run…I finally sent the demo to Phonte as just the drums, live bass, and one keys track… We got back on the phone to discuss additions. My partner in crime, Sy Smith was scheduled to be on the East Coast to knock out a couple of solo shows, so the goal was to have her head on down to NC to record her vocals. The Foreign Exchange touring guitarist, Chris Boerner got the call to play those same chord changes overtop of my demo version… We actually laughed having to learn those changes later on at a soundcheck in Chicago… But he nailed it as usual. Next, we had to cover some of the horn parts. Phonte put in the call to the “go to” trio of woodwind instrumentalists consisting of Stan Graham on trumpet (“Flight of the Blackbyrd” & “If I Could Tell You No”), Andrew Kleindienst on trombone (“All Is Well With Love”) and Matt Douglas on saxophone came through once again… We later gave the trio a group name: Wind Parade.

One of the best parts about working on a song with a vocalist or a collective of vocalists is… well, actually HEARING the vocals over your music! In this case I was extra hyped up because after working on the demo version for “Black Cow”, I immediately jumped over to start working on the music for “Marzipan.” So to have received the vocals to that FIRST joint was an accomplishment – It always kinda serves as the album’s “ice breaker” to where, this is the project’s first major progression….NOW we’re off and running. And what a helluva progression it was. To hear Phonte “Donald” Fagen holding down the lead vocals almost brought back the same feeling I had hearing his vocals for our cover of Toto’s “Africa” four years prior. Right as I was thinking and saying to myself while listening to the first couple of bars, “You’ve GOT to be kidding me…. THIS is CRA….. *out of nowhere the harmony part with Sy comes in “Yooooooooou were high!!”* ……………………*BLANK STARE* “…OH ok, these kats are TRULY whylin’ out right now!!” From there, I re-laid my key parts which included the rhodes solo, added a live hi-hat to complete the drum pattern, and some additional strings at the end to add some dynamics. I know that I’ve heard that Steely Dan isn’t too keen on people sampling them, but I would LOVE for Donald Fagen and Walter Becker to hear our version just to get their thoughts… That would be an honor.

Download …just visiting three for free here…