Our next guests help write the soundtrack to our lives, the songs that played at our proms, our breakups, our weddings, our victories as one half of the most influential production duos in modern music history. He helped define the sound of R&B, pop and hip hop. Across four decades, he's a five-time Grammy winner, a rock and roll hall of famer. And now, the producer behind a global movement where they're using music to fight hunger lets honor and welcome Jimmy Jam to the show. What's up Jimmy? Hey, what's up? How are you doing? I'm doing really good. Before we get into the legendary catalog, I want to start with what you're doing right now. It's 40 years since this was made. You see, I got the 45. We are, you see that? I love that. And it's in great shape too. I'm a collector of vinyl and love music. And I remember what an impact we are the world had, not only on helping USA and Africa and everything we did, but the song itself bringing all those artists together in the studio. And now some 40 years later, you're a part of a project that feels like a modern evolution of that, right? Well, it's certainly, I would call it an inspired by project for sure. I think when you think about that it's been 40 years since that and also live aid, I think music has always been associated with fundraising, but also spirit raising. And I think we're at a point in time where we really need both of those things. And I think that a song can definitely do that, can make people feel better, can invigorate people, can really start a movement, which I think is an important thing. And as we're in the season of giving, the holiday season, I just think it's the perfect time to try to do something to eradicate a hunger, which is unfortunately ravaging way beyond what I think we ever thought it would be. And if somebody that's listened to our show today wants to be a part of this event tomorrow, can you walk us through exactly what they need to do and what their options are? It's the next verse and the website I know is 100billionmeals.org. How can people get involved? So if you go to 100meals.org, there will be different things you can do. But one of them, what's most important for us right now is tomorrow, they will be a Zoom that you can drop in on. And we will actually be recording some of the song tomorrow. And if you could imagine, if you could be a fly on the wall at We Are The World when that was being recorded and watch the interaction with the artists and that type of thing, that's the experience we're going to try to give people tomorrow. We're going to bring a bunch of people into the studio and we're going to record the song. But you get to be part of it on Zoom. And there's different tiers. I mean, it's absolutely free to sign up. If you do just come on and without a donation, we hope that you're inspired to donate. There's a $10 level and $10 actually buys 44 meals. So if you think of it like that, it's a pretty good deal, but it allows you a little elevated access. And then for $19.99 a month, there is what's called the lifesaver. And that's an ongoing giving thing, but that gives you an even more exclusive VIP experience. So really at any level you want to join, you can join and be a part of this amazing recording with a lot of amazing artists really from around the world. Some will be in the studio with us. Some will be on Zoom. Zoom is one of our partners. And it should be an experience like no other. I know I've never experienced anything like it in the planning stages of it, so I can imagine what it'll be like tomorrow. And it's unique. I noticed on the website you can actually submit your own verse. That's true, like where you can write your own verse and submit it. Yeah. So the idea is that we are the world as you had the vinyl, which is awesome. It's something you listen to. We wanted to try to do something to get people to participate in giving. And so what we're doing is we're calling it the next verse. And the reason we're doing that is when we finish the song, however we end up finishing it, we know in this era of social media and TikTok and all of those types of things, people will do their own versions of it. They will add their own lyrics. They will do a dance version, or they'll do a rock version, or they'll do whatever. We're encouraging that. We want people to continue to keep this song living on in all of its different forms, whatever those take. I was at the other day, I was at a place where there was Deaf kids and they were doing the kind of simple philosophy of the song, which is in the verse, which is basically, I can change the world, you can change the world, we can change the world, love can change the world. But they, of course, were doing it in sign language. And it was almost like this beautiful choreography. So it's really one of those things. We want people to get involved, to be excited about giving and showing people a way to do it, to give. Because a lot of times people, they said, and they go, I wish I could give, I wish I could do something. Well, here's something you can do. And I think using music have actually a good time and raise some spirits along with raising funds. I had fun with it. I went to the website this morning, Jimmy, and then it inspired me to write a few lyrics. So I'm going to pass them on to you. And hopefully these are good. Tell me, I want you to be very critical. But here we go. Every plate we pass by is a prayer we didn't hear. Every meal we take for granted is somebody else's fear. If the table ever turned on us, we'd be hoping someone knew. The world gets better the moment you stop looking out just for you. What do you think about that, Jimmy? Is that smooth? You like that? Bars, Gentry. Bars, man. Come on, man. I love that. You too can participate. We're here talking with the legendary Jimmy Jammies working on this project called The Next Verse, using music to help deliver real meals around the world. I think Tony Robbins and the crew over there have already delivered like 62 million, or is it billion already? Billion. Oh, with a B. Billion, 62 billion with a B. That's amazing. We're trying to do a hundred. We're trying to get to 100 billion by 2030. And we'd love to obviously beat that. And we're hoping that this song invigorates and reinvigorates people that have already been a part of it. But we're hoping, like I say, it's a living, breathing thing. Man, if people are coming up with lyrics as good as you, we're going to be in good shape. Yeah. Hopefully I just inspired some other songwriters out there to go ahead and go to 100billionmeals.org. And you're working with Tony Robbins. When I think of him, he's like the walking motivational speaker. I'm curious, who was a mentor or a moment, especially during maybe a hard time where somebody really got in your ear and shifted your mindset with like a motivational speech. Do you remember that at some point in your career? I, well, a motivational speech, not so much, but I'll tell you the person that probably had the biggest influence on me early on was actually Prince. Because Prince was all about work ethic. He was like the hardest working guy I knew when he didn't have to be. He had so much talent that he really didn't have to work as hard as he did. But I remember we were doing 777-9311 with the time. And I remember I was playing my part and he said, Jimmy Jam, what are you doing with your left hand? I said, I'm just playing with one hand. I only got one part to do. He said, find another part to do. So I started doing my part and then he said, what note are you singing on the course? I said, I'm not. I said, three part harmony. He said, find another note. So it's like, find another note. And then it's like, why aren't you doing the choreography? And it was like, oh man. So by the time we got done, I was so pissed off. I was like, I couldn't do all three things. The next day we came back to rehearsal and Prince goes 777 and I go, oh. And about maybe a minute into the song, two minutes into the song, I'm realizing that not only am I hitting my note, I'm playing my part. I'm singing, I'm dancing, but I even got time to take my hanky out, wipe my face and whatever. And what it showed me was somebody had better belief in me than I had in myself. They saw me better than I saw myself. And rather than it changed my motivation about just say yes to doing something, when Tony Robbins asked me to get involved with this, it was something I'd never done before. This type of level of commitment to not only a cause, but also just a sheer number of people. Lionel Richie, I talked to him, he said, you know, herding cats or whatever the analogy is. But I've never done it before. But Quincy Jones told us a long time ago who was a mentor. He did say, Jimmy and Terry, this is the kind of thing you need to be doing. And this is like 20 years ago he's telling us this. So we're going to try to make Quincy proud, I guess. Even of Quincy, he produced a friend of mine's album, I'll Be Sure. And I was just talking to him this morning and he said that you were a mentor of his that he ran into you not long ago. You guys got a nice photo. So I was supposed to send you some love from Al B. Oh, I love that. I'll definitely take that. And as a producer myself, Jimmy, I'm drawn to like certain chord progressions that just feel good when you're creating. Do you ever think that that way when you're making a song that, you know, or is it always a blank slate for you? Or do you kind of have these chords that you like that are in your range? Well, I'll tell you, first of all, I'm so, you know, chords, so, you know, major seventh chords. Yes. Major seventh chords are. So I'm a major seventh chord fiend. And I, the reason I love major seventh chords are so much is because to me, they're the happiest chords and very emotional chords. And I grew up, when I grew up, I was listening to pop music. I was actually listening to seals and Crofts in America and the Carpenters and Brad and Chicago and groups like that. And whenever I would hear those records, they always had these major seventh chords in them. So whenever I would start writing a song, I would always go straight to the major seventh chord. I've then, of course, learned minor chords and all the other stuff. But all the songs, including the one we're writing for this event, it actually starts on a minor chord, but then goes to a major chord. And it's kind of, to the way I'm envisioning it, it's almost like the circle of life or just the circle of a day. You know, when you wake up and you're kind of by yourself and you're kind of groggy and it's kind of minor, but then it may be the sun's out and it makes you a little happier. And then you meet up with a friend and then you meet up with a couple more friends and it kind of grows. And that's the way the song goes. It kind of starts off very simple and then kind of grows from there. So yeah, I mean, I definitely am very intentional about writing and I just think certain chords tell certain stories, you know. And you're also seasoned, Jimmy, in so many ways that these younger artists are not. You came up in a time before all the lyrics are online, these YouTube tutorials. It's definitely been a big help for me learning the guitar, chord charts online. How did you actually learn songs back in the day when you had to just listen to the record? What did that process look like when you and the band would be learning one of these songs? It was, you know what, it was great education because I didn't realize at the time that being in a cover band and learning all the hit songs on the radio and learning how to play them as much like the record as we possibly could was actually teaching us how to produce because we would learn all the hit songs and then you begin to kind of learn the formulas of what makes a hit and then you had to be really good at performing them. So I think that was what it was. I always had a really good ear. So pretty much anything I could hear on the radio, I could kind of figure it out. And then I would always try to improve upon it, at least in my mind. I would listen to it and then I'd go, oh yeah, they should have went to this chord. And then, you know, I'd kind of make my own chords. It's really funny. There's this kid, Miles Music Kid, who I discovered on Instagram a while back. I think he's nine or 10 years old. He's really young. But he's like, I always tease Charlie Puth about him. I say, Charlie Puth, is this your illegitimate child? Because he's just like a genius, like Charlie Puth is. But he's one of the people that's on the new song we're working on. And he literally sent me a note and he said, I don't like that it starts in a dark place. And I said, OK, kid, you're kid, you don't get it. Put in some Miles like me and you'll know it always kind of starts in a dark place. But then it gets happy and then it makes the happy seem more happy. You know, it's after the rain stops and then the sun comes out. But I love that somebody that's young is saying it needs to be happier. It's like, I love that. You got to build it up. By the way, right. But by the way, I said the same. I said the same kind of it's just kind of a demo track just to kind of show what I was trying to my intention. And I said the same thing to Dr. Dre. And Dr. Dre said, doesn't it need to be more sad? He said all those songs like that are really sad. And I said, oh, man, I said, yeah, I said it is. It's not, but it's going to grow and get bigger. You know, he said, OK. So it's just interesting. You know, everybody's got their own sense of where they're at. But I just think it's interesting that somebody that young would be looking for where's the happy part and somebody like Dre is like, needs to be darker. You know, when you work with these young producers, Jimmy, how do you how do you tell them? What advice do you give them on how to make music that really matters? What is something that you constantly are telling young producers? Well, I don't know whether I'm necessarily trying to teach them a lot. I can. The thing is, you can't teach experience. I can share my experience with you, but you still have to kind of go through it to figure out what it is. I do try to let people know that there's a responsibility that I feel we have. I call music the divine art. And I think that if you're doing something where people's memories, you know, I know you feel this too. Like if I said, hey, what were you doing on this day 10 years ago? Now, you could probably piece it together in some way in your mind. But if I play you a song from 10 years ago, you go, every memory comes back, you know, the temperature, the smells in the air, who you're with, what you're doing, everything comes back. That's divine because it means it's all in your brain, but music is the thing that unlocks it. So I just try to, you know, rather than tell people what to do, I just try to make them aware of the responsibility they have. And I always tell people when they ask, like, you know, what our favorite song is, and that's always a tough one. But for us, it's a song called optimistic by the sounds of blackness because it was a song that really changed people's lives. And when people tell us about that song, they don't say, oh man, that was my jam. They go, that song changed my life. That song got me through a really bad time or that song got me through whatever. And that to me is what music is supposed to do. So I just try to remind young people how the responsibility and what a blessing it is to be able to do music. The next verse I think is going to change the world using a music to help deliver real meals around the world. You can learn more and take part in this next verse by going to 100 billion meals.org. I know, Jimmy, you've seen a lot of shifts in the music industry. We've gone from analog to digital. We got drum machines came in and sampling and then pro tools. How do you see AI? Is this just another tool or does this does this feel a little different? Is this something like we've it is something like we've never seen before. But do you think this is going to just be another tool that we use in the studio? Are you anti AI? What's your feelings right now? OK, I'm let's say I'm pro AI because I yes, I do think it's a tool. And as you articulated, yes, we came up. We were in the era of cutting tape. There was no digital anything. It was we were literally cutting physical tape if we needed to edit. So that's where we came up. We came up with fax machines and VCRs and, you know, way before streaming or an iPhones and all that kind of stuff. So, yes, I appreciate the leap in technology. The problem with AI to me is two things. One is when you're taking people's images or voices and that without their permission. I think there needs to be a permission in place. And I think there needs to be a compensation in place. And it's kind of like sampling when you used to when sampling was kind of the Wild Wild West at a certain point. And you didn't even have to acknowledge who originally wrote the song or originally produced the song. And of course, that all changed after a while. I think the same thing hopefully happens with AI where there is some sort of guard rails. You know, my analogy is like, you know, when they used to be have dirt roads, right? We had horse and buggies and dirt roads. And then when we got cars with engines, we paid the roads and we put lines down. And then we put guard rails on. And, you know, I'm saying like, I just feel like there needs to be some things in place to kind of guard against, you know, keep it safe for people. But as a tool, I think it's an amazing tool. I will say I don't think it replaces humans simply because humans make mistakes. And a lot of our records that people really love, there's a lot of mistakes on those records. And I think if you if you went in and cleaned up all those mistakes, they wouldn't be the records they are. And I think being human, we wrote the song Born to Make Mistakes by the Human League. I mean, I think that human is that's part of the beauty of music is those little flubs, those little mistakes. They may not sound like flubs to you, but, you know, the musician is playing it might go, oh, I messed up on that part. But that's the kind of thing that I think we respond to. And I'm not sure whether A.I. necessarily does that in the best way. You got to have that swing, ain't that right, Jimmy Jam? You got to swing into some of them notes. You've worked with some legendary artists with no A.I. involved. I'm just going to this as we wrap things up. I'm just going to quickly mention some someone you've worked with. And then you just tell me immediately the first thing that pops in your mind. So first I will say, Shaka Khan, what do you think? Legend, legend. But I don't want to I know I'm supposed to give a short answer. I'll take a quick Shaka Khan story. I was sitting with her at a dinner and she said, if you ever produced me, what kind of record would you do? And we said, oh, we would do a Rufus record because we love the Rufus records where we put a band together and you just sing. And she didn't like that. And then the next time I saw her, she said, remember what she told me? I said, yeah, she said, that's the record I want to make. And we made an album with her called Funk This and it ended up winning the Grammy for R&B record of the year. So next up, a new addition. You worked with that crew, a groundbreaking boy band group, the first one. So many to follow. Yeah, new additions. Fantastic. We first time we heard their record was actually on tour with the time back in like 82 ish or something like that in Boston. And I remember we went to see their show. We met all the guys and then had a chance to not only work with them as a group together, but also work with Johnny Gill as a solo artist, Ralph Tresven as a solo artist. And BBD was actually our idea. So we had the concept for BBD and they, of course, they ran with it. And it's nice to see them all back together with Bobby, with all six of them back together. They're touring next year. New additions. Amazing. Another great group. How about boys to men into the road, man? I remember so many slow dances in high school with that song, my man. Now, that was a what a great group. And there's, I think, still doing that Vegas residency out there. What do you think of when you think of the harmonies of boys to men? Oh, yeah, boys to men is amazing. And, you know, it's funny because the end of the road was sort of the blueprint to when we did on Bended Knee. We said to them, they played us their album that was for their second album. They played it and we said, you don't have a begging song on there. And they said, what do you mean? I said, like, you know, down on my knees. I said, you guys are really good at begging. Like certain people are good beggars. And that's when we wrote on Bended Knee for them. And they ended up replacing themselves in number one. I think Babyface had done I'll Make Love To You. And then they replaced themselves in number one with Bended Knee, which is, I think, was one of the first time in history that that had happened. I think the Beatles had done that or something. But boys to men, amazing. And boys to men, by the way, audition for Michael Bivens of New Edition. Singing, Can You Stand the Rain? And the reason they're called boys to men is because there's a song called boys to men on the New Edition Heartbreak album. So it's all in the family and they're touring together. That's the tour that's going out next year. Is New Edition boys to men and Tony Braxton. So Jimmy's taken us to school here. We got just two more names on the list that I will lump these together. How about Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson, because you did a collab with the two of them in the studio at the same time. So what do you think of when you when you think of those two working with them? Well, obviously, Janet, we've had a chance to work with over 40 years. Actually, 40 years control next year, 40th anniversary. But just the difference was that Janet's very spontaneous. Like once we hit on something, she's with it. I remember Michael was very, you know, we'd get done with, you know, we thought we'd be done with lyrics and then he'd say, OK, we have to really challenge ourselves to make sure that we. And after about two or three days of challenging ourselves, Terry, my partner was like, OK, Michael, let's just record this. I think we got to get it in. So yeah, let's get it in. So I think that was that was the difference. But Michael was the most impactful studio experience ever because he walked in very calm, very mild mannered. As soon as the song came on, he's spinning and dancing. And Terry and I are like, or like fans. It was it was amazing. He killed it. Well, make sure you go follow Jimmy on social media. Make sure you go to 100 billion meals dot org. Jimmy, thank you not just for the music, but for the influence making a real difference. The next verse proof that music still has the power to change the world. Jimmy, thank you so much. God bless you, bro. Thank you, Jimmy. Say, buddy, peace out.
