Ron Fair

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human. R&B money! Money! We are! Take! Jake Valentine. We are the authorities on all things R&B. I'm Jake Valentine and this is the R&B Money Podcast. You know what? I'm not about to go through the whole thing. I'm just gonna say let's get it started. This interview right now, it's gonna change some things and we're about to talk about the way it is. And this whole R&B thing, I have a legend of all legends. One of the greatest conductors of all time. Mr. Ron Baer. Ron, how you doing man? I'm good man, thank you for having me here. Oh man, thanks for pulling up man. It's a great honor to be affiliated and associated and to be here next to you on the couch tonight. Now this is great man, I've always admired your work. Obviously I'm sure you saw it on the show. And I'm not one of those people. I'm not one of those people like, yeah, yeah, I really respect it. I just won't speak on it. But if I got respect for somebody and I have admiration for their work, I'm going to say that. Thank you for saying that. Like I mean, for me to be here tonight and to talk through some of the highlights of my career, it's, I really didn't wanna make it like I did this and I did that and me, me, me and floss. That's not what I'm here for. For me, this is like therapy. And it's a chance to, in some respects, to tell the stories and honor the people that put me in the position and relive a little bit of it. And heal because they're, you know, through the 45 years of my major label career and the ups and downs of showbiz that come with it and the bitch slapping that the universe can throw at you, you know, in between the highs and the great lows, there's the story that I wanted to tell. So I'm hoping that we can, you know, go a little deeper other than, you know, when I did this record with the baseline, you know, I don't think people give a shit. What'd they do? I will say they do. But, you know, let's start from the beginning, man. I know you're from LA. Yeah, I'm from LA, born and raised. And I came from a kind of a theatrical family where, you know, my father was an opera singer, my mother was a pianist. There's something that would probably be unknown that was called the Yiddish Theater, which was a theatrical tradition, like an entire thing with playwrights and shows and musicals that existed in the Eastern European Jewish community that was basically the Jews from the Holocaust that were all wiped out. So they had a theater and literature and in some respects movies and radio and that was my grandparents. So we were a showbiz family. Early beginning. The first iteration of it was in a foreign language that isn't spoken anymore on the planet, which is called Yiddish. But some of the great expressions that we still have in English, like schmock and putz and shugana. Those are all Yiddish words that have lasted the test of time. But not to dwell on that. I'd like to go, if it's okay, to like, why am I here? Like what was the real beginning point? So I was a wedding singer, I was a musician, I was doing jingles, I was scrambling. Wait, so you were Adam Sandler? Yeah, I was in real life. Like these poor people who got married to me singing, God bless them. But like the very first, I always wanted to be a record producer and I was looking at record producers who were also label executives at the same time. And there was a tradition of them, like people like RF Martin or Jerry Wexler or Ted Thumperman or Lenny Warrinker. Like there were guys who were label executives and producers. And I thought that's where I wanna go. And I could engineer a little bit and I could play the piano a little bit and I could arrange a little bit. And I stumbled into a situation in 1977. I'm 71 years old. So in 1977, the 22 year old me was working at a shitty studio as a gopher and tape op. And it was called Hollywood Spectrum and it was nowhere near Hollywood. It was just this little shitty studio and people would rent the studio for $20 an hour. One of the clients and I would engineer and it was like an eight track studio and we had primitive rudimentary microphones and it was very, very, very basic. But I learned how to engineer and make things sound good. And one of those early clients was a young film composer by the name of Bill Conti. The legend. And he, so we did a session, like some little movie score thing, whatever. And he took a liking to me and he like brought me home for dinner and we started listening to jazz records. And I was very, very much a jazz, jazzer at this point, trying to play jazz fusion. And I could think unlimited, but my hands as a pianist were very limited. So the jazz was kind of off the table. If you can't play like Bill Evans or Oscar Peterson, don't bother. You know what I mean? So the jazz thing, it was like it was my passion and the harmonics of jazz and the nutrition that comes from those subdivisions of those chords. That was where I was musically. So Bill Conti enters my life and he says to, hey, I want you to come with me on some of these movie score gigs I have. Come over to my house on Wednesday and we'll go over the score. And on Thursday at three o'clock, we're gonna go record this movie score. It's like, so I go over on Wednesday and it's like, okay, bar 45, turn the harp mic on, make sure the engineer turns the harp mic on because the harp is next to the trumpets and the trumpets are gonna leak onto the harp. And so the session was on the Thursday at three o'clock in Hollywood and it was Rocky. It was the original score of Rocky with Stallone and the director of John Abelson and everybody in the room. And it was gonna fly now and bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, all the famous music from Rocky. 100% I was, bro, I was in the room for the entire recording. Every single note that was recorded, I was standing next to Bill Conti in the room with the orchestra. Now none of us knew, and I was the assistant. None of us knew, including Bill, who were still friends to the stage. He is my mentor and he is my lighthouse and my brother and my father and my everything and a burning jazz piano player. And literally nobody knew that Rocky and Stallone were gonna take over the world and that it was gonna change civilization and that that music would, to this day, 50 years later, would have this enduring quality in this when he ran up the steps and went the distance and people screaming in the theaters and the whole thing that happened. And then the instrumental of gonna fly now with the vocals on the hook. Who's singing that? It was Bill's wife at the time, Shelby, Deetta Little, Nelson Pigford, probably Stallone's brother. It was like a little background group in the booth. If you guys are here, come on. Feeling stronger. It was like, wasn't high budget shit. This is great. So the record, the single comes out and the whole thing was done, recorded mix, leadered, finished in three hours. It was a movie score date. And we did the cue of gonna fly now for the picture, and Bill conducting to the picture and then we did the record version, the longer version. So the longer version comes out on United Artists, it's a 45 and the shit goes to number one. And every marching band on the planet plays that song. To this day. We have a lot to talk about tonight, but we're just starting at the beginning. So this is like your first four-way into the music business period. Well, you know, I mean, from a major standpoint. I was like, literally, wedding singer, jingles. Yeah, like it was a movie score. There was like, I'd done a lot of stuff with Bill. I was around for a lot of his stuff. He, you know, it was like a gig, like 20 bucks an hour. And I, you know, like, hey, Bill, you need me, if you need your briefcase, let me run to the car and get it for you. Yeah, paying your dues. So time passes, a little bit of time passes. This whole thing blows up. Bill is recognized as, you know, he went on to conduct the Academy Awards 17 years, won the Oscar, not for Rocky, he was nominated, but he won it for the next year for the right stuff. But anyway, so Bill shows up at my studio. Now I'm trying to be a jazz fusion artist. And maybe I'll send you some of the pictures, but, and I have a band and we're all like fucking stoned guys pretending to be Chip Korea, but we suck. And Bill shows up at the studio. It was called El Dorado. It's at the parking lot now across from Capitol. It's from the Capitol Tower. There was a building there with a studio that's been demolished. He shows up with this thing and he rips off the brown paper and he hands me my first gold album for Rocky with my name on it, a gold album in front of my friends. And he says, you got a minute? And he pulls me aside and says, Ron, you're a half ass recording engineer. You're a half ass arranger. You're less than a half ass piano player. And this is why he's handing me the gold record. But if you put it all together, you're a producer. Wow. That's what you need to do. Stop doing everything yourself and get people and delegate it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love this guy and I, instead of being insulted, you know, you're a half ass engineer. You're a half ass piano player. You know, I realize, oh, this is that moment. And I took that gold album. So at age 22, with the gold album for Rocky, it gave me something in my soul that allowed me to walk taller. And then wanting to be a producer, I couldn't get a job. I had no track record. All I did was bullshit demos and failure tapes of my friends that I recorded in that stupid studio. Yeah. So I thought, hmm, I'm really good at talking. I'm good with words and I look good in a suit. I should be a record executive. And then I'll hire myself to produce the records. Oh, this is great. Yes, yes. So that was my plan. So I went to Music Connection. I started doing publishing demos. There was a guy named Danny Strick who was a young publishing executive and happened to be United Artists Music. He was like, hey, Ron, come over here and do all the demos. So I started doing publishing demos. And in those days, a publishing demo was not something with a sequencer and a laptop and a beat and a top line. It was a band and a real singer. It was all live. And they had a little studio. And so I started producing these demos and little by little, everything I was producing was getting covered by all the artists of the day. And I was starting to get a track record. So I went to this local paper that we still have today called Music Connection. And I said, I'd like to write an article on the anatomy of a song demo. And I will tell everybody what a song demo should be because I've just done this and this and this and this song got cut and this song got cut. And they said, we love that idea and we'll pay you for the article $25. I said, great. So I went around and I interviewed A&R people. I said, hey, I'm Ron Fair. I'm a correspondent for Music Connection. And I'd like to interview them. And all the people in LA were like, sure, I'll do an interview. Yeah. And they, and from that, I met a guy. His name was Barry Oslander. He was at RCA and he was an A&R guy. And I kind of knew him. And he gave me the opportunity to become an A&R executive in 1981 at RCA Records on Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard. And that was the beginning of a 45 year nonstop ride through the major labels. That ended in my last position, which was creative head of Virgin Records. But I made it all the way to president of A&M and chairman of Geffen and literally four and a half decades. And during that time, that's when I ran the table and started to hire myself to produce records. Yeah. So let's talk about some of those records because... Well, now I'm getting to the beginning. Okay. Okay. So let me get to the beginning. All right. So I got fired from RCA. I've been fired five times. Like I have that distinction, you know? And I'm cool with it because I was a very strong flavor. And my advocacy for artists and my temperament was such that you either... Like a lot of people disliked me because of my intensity, but I was always for the music and always for the artists and always seeing through the artist's eyes and fearless and not realizing like, oh shit, I'm gonna get my ass kicked out of here because I'm just too strong. Like I didn't know how to tone it down. And I wasn't about to... You were never scared to be fired. I never added it up until I started getting fired consistently. So how'd the first firing feel? The first firing was interesting because that particular job at RCA, they had already fired my boss four times. I had four different bosses. So the last boss who fired me, who passed away rest in peace, Paul Atkinson, after I gave him Mr. Misters' cassette, which had broken wings on it, he signed it himself and fired me. And that went on to become a number one record. So I knew I was on it. And I've never said that before, nobody knows that. But I got a job at EMI Records, the guy who original signer of Whitney Houston, Jerry Griffith, who interestingly enough was one of the few African-American Rayonards that was head of the pop department. And he was a great man, a beautiful man. And he gave me a job to be an R guy. So I went from RCA to EMI, and I stumbled into the soundtrack to Pretty Woman, which my buddy was working at Disney, a guy named Mitch Leib. He was working to say, hey, we're doing this movie over here. You know, Richard Geary's a little bit cold, but there's this new girl, Julia Roberts. And if you come down to the studio, like we'll go to the set, and I happen to be there the day of the bathtub scene, if you remember Pretty Woman, when she puts her toe into the faucet. And he said, let's do a soundtrack album, a fill-up with a bunch of records, and Gary Marshall will put all the records in the movie. And I said, sure. And signed the movie, and then the thing again, like another stroke of lightning, goes bananas and becomes a cultural phenomenon. And the Pretty Woman album sold 20 million copies. Godly. In those days. So, but I'm not a soundtrack guy. Remember what I am. I'm like half-assed engineer, half-assed producer, half-assed ranger, wanting to be a jazz guy. But you got your first success on this soundtrack. But I wasn't really the producer. I was the A&R guy who made a deal, and I brokered it. So they made me now, they elevate me. I'm skipping through history very quickly, but it's okay. Sorry. Okay, Ron, we're gonna promote you now to senior vice president of A&R for EMI Records, living in New York. And how long does that take from when you first got the job, for you to go from A&R to senior? Oh, I forgot, Chrisless. Probably five years. I forgot Chrisless. Yeah, I forgot Chrisless, I forgot England, I forgot Go West, there was a lot of stuff in between. Let's go to EMI now, because this is why I'm here, Jay. Why I'm on R&B money. So Pretty Woman goes crazy. I'm now the boss of A&R, the creative guy. And my boss at the time, another guy passed away, rest in peace, Salakata, calls me into a meeting and he says, Ron, what do you know about the OJs? I said, the OJs? Like, what do you mean? What do I know about the OJs? I have the encyclopedia of every great song. And he goes, they're signed to us, they owe us an album, they don't, their A&R guy is gone, go to Cleveland and get involved and meet these guys and deliver their record. He's like, really? Yeah. You had a B&R, go fucking deal with it. So around this time, I had stumbled onto, I keep using that word, a Bob Dylan song that I had a B in my bonnet for this song was called Emotionally Yours. And Bob Dylan to me, like he's my generation, blowing in the wind, like, you know, Bob Dylan is like a religious icon almost to somebody like me growing up in the Vietnam era, baby boomer and everything. So I had this idea that I wanted Huey Lewis, who was on our label to cover the Bob Dylan song. Okay. So I pitch it to me and my boss, why does this happen, is we go up to see Huey Lewis, Huey Lewis and then there's, and they were hot, hot, hot. It's got this Bob Dylan song, I really want you to do it. And he listens to the song and he goes, wow, there's a Bob Dylan version. Because this is great Ron, I love this, I love Bob Dylan, I totally get what you're saying. I'm not gonna do it. I said, wait a minute, what am I missing? You love the song, you get it. Huey Lewis covering Bob Dylan, that's a great thing. He goes, nah, nah, I can't do that. I can't do Bob Dylan, I'm just not gonna do it. And I'm sitting here and I thought, well, what about, wait, wait, what about if I get the OJs to sing the backgrounds on it? Huey Lewis and the OJs doing Bob Dylan, what could be better than that? Like I'm just searching all files. You're making up stuff as well. Matching file found, OJs singing the backgrounds. I had no idea, you know, kind of bullshit as that. So yeah, man, great idea, I love the OJs, man, they're incredible, like I'm not gonna do it. So like meeting over, we're driving in the rented convertible across the Golden Gate Bridge, me and my boss and I said, fuck that asshole, I'm gonna give it to the OJs. Fuck Huey Lewis, I'll just do it with the OJs. So great, when are you going to Cleveland? Next Thursday. So I send the song in advance and I've got this idea that the OJs are gonna do this Bob Dylan song. I haven't heard any of their stuff, okay? And I send it in advance and the time comes when I get to Cleveland and they had these guys, Terry Stubbs and Dwayne, someone, I can't remember his name. Terry, I can't remember the name, so it's so long ago. And they were like the beat guys from Cleveland who were working on the tracks for the OJs. Okay. So I get there, I was like, wait, I'm not there. Yeah, the in-house guys, hey, nice to meet you guys, how you all doing? Everything sounded like Belle Biv DeVoe, okay? And I'm introducing myself. It's like, did you guys hear the Dylan tune? Talking to Eddie and Walt, like the third guy in the OJs have passed away. It was Eddie Lavert and Walt Williams. Legends, Gamble and Huff royalty. Absolutely. Like doesn't get any deeper other than Barry Gordy, okay? That's the level of the OJs. And I knew that. Guys, did you hear the Bob Dylan song? It's like, no, I'm out of here, listen to our shit. So I listened to their stuff and it's like, okay, this is cool, this is cool. Great chord changes and stuff. And so what about the Dylan tune? Do you know it? Like, oh man. So let me teach it to you. So I sit down at the piano and I start playing it. And like I told you, I was a half-assed piano player, but it was pretty good. You get it off. And I'm singing it to them. It's like Eddie Lavert right here. And it's like getting closer and I can feel his sweat and his breath on my ear. And Walter Williams over here and they started, the Walter's like Marvin Gaye. He's ridiculous. These guys are fucking drilling me in my ears right in my fucking head. And I started getting uncomfortable. I turned to Eddie and I said, excuse me, but can I get one square inch to groove in? And they looked at each other and they burst into historical laughter. And right there, when they left, because I was, it wasn't a joke. I wanted one square inch to groove in. You are gonna? Right then and there, my life changed. It changed right there because what started to happen was the shit that they learned from Gamble and Huff. And nobody knows this, except for Eddie and Walter, I'm still friends with. The shit that they learned from the royalty of the sound of Philadelphia through Gamble and Huff that they channeled and they drilled it into my brain. And I'm a jazz guy, so it's like the harmonic information. I was already subdividing in my mind, like what are these chords, what are these harmonies? What are these branches of background parts and trees and cascading ad libs? How do they relate? So I'm like music theory, vegematic slicing and dicing this shit, inhaling it. And my life changed in front of me. So this album, Emotionally Yours on EMI, which had three hits on it, Don't Let Me Down, which was a number one R&B record. It had Keep On Loving Me, which was a number one R&B record. And it had Emotionally Yours by Bob Dylan, which became the biggest Bob Dylan song by an R&B group in history. Wow. And the album was called Emotionally Yours and it was the only platinum album that the OJs made that Gamble and Huff didn't make. Didn't make. I made. Congratulations. That's amazing. Okay, and then it went on. It kept going on and on. Then when we toured it, I got paranoid because my version of it was a gospel version. Yeah, yeah. And I had Richard T, who passed away like the greatest gospel piano player ever, Victor Bailey, Omar Hakeem. I had the fucking New York royalty guys playing on this track. And an orchestra that I arranged. Of course, I did my big strings and the song was, it was like an opera. It was so dramatic. This beautiful piano part that Richard T played. We recorded it at Marathon Studios in New York City. And then when we promoted it, I got nervous. Like this is too gospel. This is too church. Like I went into this whole gospel thing. Literally when we did the choir session, I did it at a power station in New York. And I told Eddie, I said, let's make it into an event. And like, by the way, people were letting me go. Like I was just a madman. So I put a choir session together that at the time for R&B people that are watching your show, Tawatha Adji, Martha Walsh, Evelyn Champagne King, Ray Goodman and Brown. Gerald Levert conducted the choir. Keith Sweatt, all these people showed up for the OJs to sing the choir part on the Bob Dylan song, emotionally yours. And I filmed it and I got it on the local news. Then what happened was when we, I got paranoid that the gospel version wasn't gonna be a hit and I had spent so much money and it was so off my rocker that I told my boss, I gotta recut it. Like as if that wasn't enough because it's tube church. And I wanna recut it and I'm gonna get Narda Michael Walden who was just coming off of Whitney Houston. Yeah, yeah. And he cut it. So then I released it as a double A side and I made two videos. Oh, shit. I was half a million dollars in on emotionally yours. But you know what happened? The shit worked. And when they played our senior hall and sang it, we did it as a piano vocal and I played the piano. I learned Richard T's part and I played it. I played it every place I could because it was the wind beneath my wings. It was everything. And the capper was when the Bob Dylan tribute concert came to Madison Square Garden and it was Chris Christofferson and Jim Keltner and Duck Dunn and the original Salmon Dave's and all that shit. The only black act on the Bob Dylan tribute concert in Madison Square Garden was the OJs. Because. The night I had Sissy Houston and Cheryl Crowe and I can't even remember all the names of the people that were in it. And took so much pride in it. But, and then of course the moment passed and that was emotionally yours and Eddie and Walt were baked into my life as forever rabbis of R&B. And what I learned musically from it, this is great because it's gonna lead into all the rest of the stories, what gave me the balls and the authority to later on teach OJs to Christina Aguilera. Little does she know that every background part that we made up was gamble and huff through the OJs, through me to her. And she just soaked it up. She had the chops. She's a descendant of the OJs through me without knowing it. Oh, that's crazy. And then later on after Christina, who was straight up R&B singing on pop records, then it became Keisha Cole, Mary J. Blige, Fantasia, Macy Gray and the rest of it. And the whole time it was the OJs in my heart. So tell me this, do you think you could have pulled this off if you didn't have your senior position as an executive? There's no question I would not have been able to pull any of it off. But I was just this mad crazy guy with this energy. And sometimes when you walk fast and talk loud, you steamroll through shit. And it's also, it's passion. It's, I love what I do. It's passion, it's vision. Later on as the story develops, the people along the way that I met with and we'll go through it. But like when I started cutting R&B records in my time at Interscope with Jimmy, Jimmy Iovine, there were two guys in the backfield that were coaching me. Promotion guys, Steph Johnson and Garnett March. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yes, sir. And it was like, Ron, we don't care if you're the white Jewish kid from the Valley. Whatever you're doing is the shit. Keep doing it. Give us these records. Right. So, Steph Johnson was the one to say, Ron, black music is the major food groups of music. R&B, gospel, rhythm and blues, rock and roll and reggae is all our shit. Those are the food groups, man. And that's the nutrition. And it was like, you're right. You're right. And it was a feast of musicality coming from the tradition that because of this freaky thing that happened with the OJs that got stamped into my soul. So that later on, like I said, I could hold my own in a room with somebody like Mary J. Blige fearlessly. Right. And you knew what the fuck you were doing. As an equal. Yes. So when you see a Christine Aguilera, big voice, Mickey Mouse Club, and you see that and you meet her and you're like, well, she's an R&B artist. She's an R&B vocal, right? Obviously it's gonna be pop and we're gonna figure out how to make this work. But she wasn't Britney Spears. She wasn't that type of pop artist. She was really a R&B voice trapped in a pop body. So Christina is a God-given enormous talent. She has two things. She has an amazing, three more than two. First of all, amazing chops. So her athletic ability to, in the singing muscle was Michael Jordan. Her tone that God gave her was a miracle and her ear was the jet fuel the whole time because you could play a chord and she would just go. But I knew from the get-go with Christina that we could go up and we could go down. We could do a Gina and a bottle. But she also sang with Andrea Baccelli and Herbie Hancock and Dr. John. I had her doing all this eyebrow shit while we were legitimizing that in that particular moment pre-internet that Christina and Britney, who were, by the way, made for great magazine cock. But that Christina was the singer. And when she sang at last on Saturday Night Live, the Edda James tune, I was playing the piano. I was always trying to just express myself. As a senior executive though. Like that is, Ron, that is not normal. Right, it's not normal. And I took, there was a lot of hate and a lot of misunderstanding. And like I said, I was fired five times. So that same fire that led me to be so passionate about the records is the same thing that took me down every time. And I think it's important that you're following and what this podcast is all about, that they understand that I understand that now. And that when I go back and think about like, well, I could have done this, I could have done that. Like, because my thing always was, I had, you know, I was 45 years in the majors, it was always about the music. Right. And when that was the thing and that was convenient, and that led to Vanessa Carleton and the Black Eyed Peas and the Pussycat Dolls and everything else, it wasn't the other piece of the puzzle, which is so important, which is the relationships and power and how music and relationships and power all conspire and work together in the record industry. I was just the dumb ass guy who was fighting for the music and fighting for the artist. And so now when I look back on it, and I was really, I was talking to my wife today about thinking about to go back and take regret and turn it into knowledge. And instead of being regrettable for like, I should have done this, I should have done that, whatever, like over the 45 years to like, you know what? I fucking learned from it. And it's knowledge and it's power. So it keeps me going every time I meet a new artist, because I'm hopeful, it's preposterous. Well, we're gonna start from nothing. Nothing. And put a song on TikTok, and it's gonna change the world. Well, guess what? I've been there so many fucking times when that's happened, I believe it. And that's what we need in our industry. We need hopeful people, right? We have enough people who aren't hopeful, because I have the conversations with them, not people even that I bring on the show, but just my friends in the industry, people I've seen do amazing things. Now that I have certain conversations, they're like, oh, this can't, and that can't. And I'm like, well, why not? And I've said it many of times, we make magic. We do. We pull out the sky, somehow it funnels through us through your higher powers. And now we have this thing that did not exist. Correct. And like before. By the way, like right now, like some like miracles, like artists that get passed on a million times, like, you know, there's a great tradition of artists passed on Chopper Run, Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, 50 Cent, Macy Gray, all were dropped. For sure. Right. The best artists on the planet. And then there's miracles like Ray, that needs to be discovered by Jay Irving, like a guy from not even from England who picks the best act on the planet. And guess what, it blows up, and she is all the way there, right? Visioned, right? And having a, because this was something that I noticed that you, a move you made with Christina, you brought in Eric Dawkins. And I remember him going in, I remember hearing about her first through him. And I'm like, don't, I don't, okay. You're a great singer, she's a great singer, but how did you get that call? You know what I'm saying? And obviously from my understanding, you made that connection, yes? So it's, I mean, to comprehend how does Eric Dawkins fit in that world is because I learned the food groups from Eddie and Walt. They gave me the roadmap to the treasure. And then, because I wanna delve back into, like then with the other, I look at all the R&B acts that I got lucky enough to work with even though we had Masks of Ditz as teachers, Kisha Cole in her hottest period of her life, she had the hot hand. All I did was listen to her, and then she would bring music in and it would be like, oh, okay, I get it. You wanna sing this, you wanna sing that, let's fix this chord, let's elevate the beat, let's polish this off, and then, or Mary, like when we redid the breakthrough, like Be Without You was, there was a whole other version of the song before we finished it, where there was mistakes on it. Now Brian told me. And she not only was, I used to think with regards to Mary, which I do wanna talk about, she was like my Elvis, she was like the fucking Elvis Presley, like this gigantic thing, like Elvis, Barbara, Judy, Elvis, that's how Mary was to me, like the biggest of the big. But she was also gracious and a great teacher, because they used to say shit to me, like don't lose the hump, whatever you're doing there, man. Skinning too shiny, and it would be like, what do you mean? And it was the whole way, the underneath of an R&B record had to move. The bass, the bass drum, the beat, and then the other stuff on top, the orchestration, the vocals, the harmonic stuff, and how those two things live together. Like I wasn't making hit records right away, it was by, you know, it was people like Mary and Kisha, just by listening to them, they taught me. What is your first, what was your first that you considered from a producer standpoint, your first hit record? The first number one record I produced was the reggae version of Baby I Love Your Way, by Big Mountain. And that has a great story too. It also, you know, going back into the weeds, Big Mountain was a local San Bernardino group that had, in these days, radio stations were programmed by humans, and they were getting overnight airplay on KSFM. We know about overnight. Yeah, and it was a song called Touch My Light. And I kept hearing it, and this guy sounded like Bob Marley, and was like, this is fucking good. But I was doing the soundtrack to Reality Bites, and Baby I Love Your Way was in the movie, and I thought I wanna do a reggae version of this. I had all this, you know, like... Cause the original was what, Peter Frampton? Yeah, so basically they're like visions or delusions. Oh, I'm gonna do a reggae, and then I'm gonna have a hit. And the hot group at the time was a group called Inner Circle. Yes. Bad Boys, Bad Boys, what you gonna do? Absolutely, what you gonna do. Right? So it's like, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna... They own a circle house out in Miami. I'm gonna do it. So I'm gonna go to Inner Circle, and get them to do this song. So their manager at the time cockblocked that, and I couldn't get to Inner Circle. So I thought, well, maybe that group that has that overnight fucking song, but they weren't anybody, Big Mountain. All they had was the overnight song, KSFM. So I brought it to them, and said, why don't we do Baby I Love Your Way? And it was like, yeah. And we'll put it in Reality Bites. Yeah. So the heartbeat of that record is Abe, Laborial Senior, and Junior, Bass and Drums. Abe, Laborial Junior, who everybody knows as Paul McCartney's drummer, was in high school, and his father, Abraham, Laborial Senior, is one of the legendary bass players to ever walk the planet. Okay. And you know, Quincy Jones level. Oh shit, okay. He was on, Abe, Laborial was on everything. So I had the idea in my head that shadows grow so long before my eyes. It's just all coming from a musical place. That the bass would have like a Mozart counterpoint to it the whole time. But ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba that I would create a counterpoint between the reggae bass line and the melody of the song. And that was gonna be the glue. And that's how we recorded it. It started with bass, click track, and lead vocal. And the rest I filled in. And that became my first number one single around the world. And it was game on. But were you at the label as an executive by that time? Yeah, yeah, I was at a different label than Big Mountain. But you know, I was always running that scam. And I had the- Oh, so they weren't your artists? No, I borrowed them. Oh shit. They were on giant records. Because you were doing that sound track. Yeah, again. Yeah, it was for RCA. But I started to hijack the shit and started to produce a lot of the records when I thought I was the right guy. Okay. So I was doing the two hat thing. I hope this is all making sense because we're jumping around a lot. I was doing the two hat thing where- Well, I'm gonna bring you back. I'm gonna keep bringing you back. Don't worry about it. I only wanted to produce the records where I really thought I was the right guy because as an A&R guy, I could do more. But as a producer, I knew my shtick. You know, and I tried to stay in my lane. So I mitigate failure that way. I could still win as an A&R guy. Christina's first album, I didn't produce anything. Nothing. I produced the producers. And that trick, producing the producers, is exactly what Jimmy Iovine did through all of the successful years of Interscope. And it was his mantra. That's why he had Will I Am, Ron Fair, Timbaland, Pharrell, Polo the Don, Polo the Don, Kwame, Terry Hilsen. He produced all of us. And he had that winning lineup. Because he himself was a producer, but he was just- He knew when to be hands off. He was just making suggestions. Some of them would piss me off and some of them would lead to greater heights. Yeah. So when you get the first Christina album, you don't produce that. And not a single note. And you're at, at that time, it's RCA. Yeah. How long are you there? That particular run, because I was at RCA twice. Oh, you went back? I went back. That was probably, I think it was, I'm gonna say it was like four years. So if you get fired from a company and they bring you back, do you hold anything like, ah, now you got to pay me double? Actually, I want to say this. So Christina came second in my pursuit to recreate the OJs as a white pop thing. The first iteration of it was Wild Orchid. Wild Orchid. Yes. Yeah, I'm familiar. And that was Stacy Ferguson. It became Fergie who I went back and re-signed into the Black Eyed Peas with, which we'll talk about. Stephanie Riedel, who is the mother of my four children is the angel in my life, but not at the time, and Renee Sandstrom. And the shit that Wild Orchid was singing was the OJs. If you go back and listen to their album, it's all gamble and huff knockoff. All the harmonies, all the way the backgrounds work, and it was pre-autotune. We just had to sing the shit over and over again until it was in tune, right? And so it didn't work as a three piece girl group because of management, because of luck, because of the circumstances at the time, though we ended up, because I didn't know enough. I was just an idiot kid record executive. I didn't know what I would later know, which would allow me to not only make the records, but break acts. And so what I learned- So they were your first signing? What was my first signing? My first signing was Armored Saint, the heavy metal band. That was the first band I ever signed. But from all of the universe clobbering me and the failure of that, which was I spent, when we turned in Wild Orchid, the head of the label was a guy named Straus Zelnick at the time. He was my boss's boss's boss. He was the head corporate guy. The guy, yes. He said to me, this is gonna sell millions and you're gonna be David Foster. Because this album you have produced? Yeah, and I produced the Wild Orchid record. And I thought like, I bought a brand new Calvin Klein suit that was like 2000 bucks. The shirt was 700 bucks. Because he told you he was about to be David Foster. And it didn't happen. But I took, then I stumbled upon Christina and just took the lessons. But she was not a group. And she had the exquisite chops. And so that's what led me to it. And the rest is history with Christina. And by then Christina became a cultural phenomenon. And she's still relevant to this day. And she's a magnificent artist and singer. And will always have my heart because she's my offspring in a way. Yeah. So when you go from RCA, do you go to Geffen directly from there? No. So here's what happened. Because you got a thousand miles in between there. That happened after RCA. So I had signed Christina. Her single went to number one in four or five weeks. The album came in at number one. Puff Daddy was number two. It was a miracle. And then I was king shit. Yeah. Okay. And my contract was up. Okay, re-regotiation. And I was 265 pounds, 100 pounds heavier than I am now. So I was a successful, fat A&R guy. And with a 13 million albums in my pocket from Christina, a bunch of number ones. And an expiring contract. So I looked at myself with disgust. And I said one thing to myself, you can't make this shit up. And I've never said any of this before anywhere. I thought, kill him in Jaro. I'm gonna climb Mount Kilimanjaro and I'm gonna get my head straight. And so I started walking on Runyon Canyon and get rid of that weight. And then I started running on Runyon Canyon to get rid of that weight. And then I started running with weights on Runyon Canyon and I trained. And then I signed up and I went on an expedition and went to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. You did it. In Africa. Yeah, I climbed it. And came back and got my weight under control. And right around that time, I was doing Christina's Christmas album, which is really a great album. She's completely insane on the ad libs on that record, singing at the peak of her youthful powers, like with nobody checking it. Ad libs, like you can't even, I mean, so many. Like it was incredible what she was doing. And I loved every note of it because I'm a jazz guy. So there she is running and running and running and running and running and I wasn't gonna stop her. So we're in Winnipeg, the mosquito capital of the world, where the mosquitoes are like birds. Yeah, and doing a Christmas album. And I get a call, like we're in the middle of doing like, holy night or something. The stars are brightly shining. Christina's in there singing. And it's like Jimmy Iovine online too. I'm thinking like, oh yeah, somebody's fucking pranking me. Jimmy Iovine is not calling me in. And I'm in Winnipeg, they're fucking doing holy night. What do you mean? So I pick up the phone and I thought, like I used to, I have a friend, Danny Strikker, used to prank me and call up and say, it's Clive Davis and he pranked me all the time. So I pick up the phone and I say to Christina, hang on a sec, I gotta take this. And it's like, yeah, this is Jimmy Iovine. I had met him once before. I barely knew him. And he said, I'm reading Rolling Stone magazine right here. Your girl, Christina's on the cover. And it says in this article that you forced her to sing Jeannie in a bottle. This is Jimmy on the phone. Is that true? And I'm thinking to myself, this is some kind of weird setup. Like, yeah, yeah. The trick question or something. Trick question. And I said, and before I could answer, Jimmy said this to me, I need a guy who can force artists to sing number one records. Can I have a meeting with you? And I went and met with Jimmy. And again, I told you, like I had lost all the weight. I had climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. Christina had one best new artist. It was a change in my life had come. And I went and met with Jimmy and he said, I want to make you president of A&M Records. You know, I'll give you a great salary. And I said, well, Jimmy, you know, I'm a producer. I gotta have a studio. I gotta be able to cut records without a budget. Like I just need to be able to record. And he said, you want one studio? You want two studios? You want three studios? How many engineers? You want five engineers? What do you want? Yeah. I was told, if you take that job, you're gonna curl up in a ball and disappear by somebody at RCA. Yeah. And that's when I knew like, I'm out of here. And then I took the job. And 10 weeks later, Lady Marmalade. Good. 10 weeks later. And this is a great story because Jimmy, so I just got there. And when I signed my contract, Jimmy was so smart. I mean, he is the Zeus of it all. And I had him for 10 years in my face, giving me a tripled Harvard PhD in this shit that I'm a graduate of it. And he had made the deal for Moulin Rouge, the album from the movie. And they were gonna cut Lady Marmalade. The point of this is a song that Alan II Saint wrote. I met with Baz Lerman and they hired, Baz wanted Missy Elliott to do the record, which along with Missy comes Rock Wilder and her team. So I go to Westlake Studios on like day one of Lady Marmalade. I'm on the way over there and Mona Scott calls me up and goes, hey, Ron, you know, how are you? Like, I got bad news. Turn around, you're not gonna work on the song. Missy doesn't want to do it that way. She was managing Missy. So like, don't go to the studio. It's like, okay. I called Jimmy, I said, I think I just been fired off the song. Give me a minute. So I'm driving back to Santa Monica now and then Mona calls back and goes, oh, okay, no, no, no, go to the studio. And we had Rock Wilder's track and Rock Wilder had this miracle where he got his brand new Cork Triton, this new keyboard at the time. This was the hot shit. And when you turn the keyboard on, the very first sound that comes up, bank A sound 0000 was called noisy stabber. That was the name of the patch. And he put his hand on it and it was da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And like, there it was. No fucking way. Bank A patch 0000, like you didn't even fish for the shit. It was right there. Magic. Magic. Magic. So we took the idea to Christina. Jimmy was smart because he let me continue to work with Christina on RCA, even though I was now at Interscope, I had a carve out. Yeah. 10 weeks later. Okay. Christina jumps on the record. We get pink to agree to come on it. Our home team girl was Maya. So you dam straight, I was gonna put somebody from the home team. I love her. And then little Kim came because of Missy and this magic thing happened. It was 13 days. Lady Marmalade was 13 days. And I remember saying to Rock Wilder the whole time, am I making this shit too clean? I was like, no man, I'll tell you if you go too far. Yeah. And he kept it all on track. And then we kept sending it to Missy to make sure is this okay? Is this okay? Is this okay? And then when it came to the ad libs on Lady Marmalade, I realized they all have different schedules. They're not in the studio at the same time. How is this gonna work where everybody all four of them, including Kim are doing ad libs? By the way, I wanna say this, the pocket for the hook on Lady Marmalade, the hey sister soul and the vou le vous, all that shit was Maya. Maya laid the original vocal down and everybody jumped on her pocket. She's an unsung hero. And of course they went on to win the Grammy. But Maya was an incredibly hard worker and she kind of like doesn't get her props, her flowers. We're gonna give her some flowers today. We love Maya. Yeah, so that was her pocket. Everybody jumped on it. And then it became like, a lot has been written about Lady Marmalade where that there was friction and then I took Christina aside over pink and like, honestly, I think all that is great to sell magazines. The magic was there. They ouch, it was like almost like a battle between them. But the ad lib technique was very much, it was an idea I had that if I, because the song is modal, which means that all through it, da da da da da da da. There's a harmonic hitching post that everything springs off of. And that you could sing an ad lib through the entire three minute track and ad lib pass without the chords changing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. As long as you stuck to the bass, you could ad lib. So I took each girl in and I just said ad lib top to bottom all the way through five times. By no means. And then during the ad lib pass, I would say, sing that again. Sing what again? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sing it again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sing it five times in a row. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, another pass. And I had an archive of ad lib from each singer. Then I went through it and I learned them all and I cataloged them and I gave them all names. And I have two keyboards and an L shape and I gave them all names. And they were color coded like Maya's ad libs were green. Christina's were red. Pink's were blue and Lil Kim was purple. And even like the yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like none of that was done where it is in the record. It was all just done randomly on the track somewhere. And I would name each ad lib like up swoop, ski jump, big nose, like some way to remember it. What the ad libs were, and then I played them in. And I had cue points where I'm two, three, four, yeah, yeah, yeah, where we'd come in in the pocket based on the cue point. And I played it in as a musical composition off keyboard. And I have pictures of this. And that's how the ad lib scheme came together so that they all are going off each other. Because I composed it off of their improvisation. So you get the best of both worlds. You get the free spirit of an ad lib, but in the right location geographically that they could never do unless they rehearsed it and practiced it and wrote it in advance, which was never going to happen because they had different schedules and different lives, different shopping, you know, all that. So Lady Marmour comes out and goes to number one. And you've been at the label for 10 weeks. Yeah. And then another soundtrack. Yeah, another soundtrack, interestingly enough. And then it went on to win the Grammy and that was a beautiful thing. But right around then is when Damon Elliott Yeah, the legend. was working at Enterprise Studios where Dave Pensotto had like a salon. And everybody, Beyonce, everybody was going to Dave Pensotto. He was mixing everything. And he was a great mixer. Absolutely. Great, great human. Listen, you're saying nothing but legend. So all these guys. So in the back room was Dionne Warwick's kid who had like a little $100 a month shithole studio, Damon Elliott. And Damon Elliott had an artist that he was developing named Keisha Cole from Oakland. And he knew them because of Smokey's Twins and... Megan, Lamaya. Yeah, all of them were around and young Keisha from Oakland, this rough girl and Greg Curtis. Yes, sir. And it was next to Dave Pensotto, like the next room. So it was like, hey, man, you want to hear some shit? Yeah, Dave, there's no studio that we're into that. Yeah. Because of Jason Josh. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. So all connected. I hope this is all interesting because it's like really in the woodwork. And I've never said a lot of this stuff. Like I don't have a book because nobody reads it and there's no point in writing it. That's why we have a podcast. That's why we have a podcast. That's why we're talking shit on here today. So we're at Keisha Cole now. Yeah, so Keisha Cole is this young kid. They had a whole album. There was a song called Snatch Your Wave Out. It was this whole thing. She had miraculously survived Oakland and had like, should night put her up in a house for a while? Like friend of Tupac, like her story is absolutely incredible. And then they play me that song Love. Yep. And that was a demo. And I found you, that weird Adelaide with the skip in it. And I thought to myself, this is the most authentic shit I've ever heard. This is authentic. This is the sound of authentic pain. Yeah. And it's beautiful. It was like, I wanna sign you. And she's like suspicious. Cause that's Keisha. And not understanding. And I took her a couple dinners and stuff. And we went to the IV and she had like some of the vegetables and the salad she never heard of. And the IV can be weird on your books. Your first girl. Yeah, and IV is a little weird on your first girl. But like music professor guy who's talking to her. And that would be me. And so at one point she just said, well, you just got a pinky swear that you're gonna take care of me. And I said, what is that? I didn't know. Oh, you know what pinky swear was? I didn't know what it was. She put her pinky out. She goes, this is it, right him. That means something. When you pinky swear with me, that is blood. That mean we locked in. And I said, yeah. And I took her to Jimmy to his house in, Homey Hills. And I said, I wanna sign Keisha Cole. And he said, great. So we signed her. And started working on a record. And then there was this weird song that she had. Oh, well actually, actually the first thing we did was a beautiful cover of Never Too Much, the Luther song that got on the Barber Shop soundtrack. It's like, let's introduce you on this Barber Shop soundtrack. But there was heavy politics on the Barber Shop soundtrack. Hold on real quick. Because as this is all happening, Keisha Cole is already my friend. Yeah. And I'm hearing about, I just met with Ryan Fair. Do you know him? I'm like, I know who he is. And he's that, he got these, oh, he's the head of Annemkefin. And it's at, I was like, yeah, in a scope. And you know, the whole thing. And she's like, well, by this point, Keisha had probably been in LA maybe a year or two, a couple of years, whatever. And I had probably met four or five different managers. Yup. In the span. And she was asking me if I knew Damon and LA. And I was like, I know who he, all these people keep asking me if I know people. And I'm like, I know who they are, but I don't know them personally. I was like, but I never heard anything but good about everybody you're naming between yourself, Damon, Elliot. And she's like, all right, I want you to meet Manny Haley. And I'm like, all right. And I meet Manny and he's like, yeah, you know, yeah. And he got his voice too, right? Everybody got the voices. Like, oh, yeah, yeah, we're gonna do it, Keisha. We're gonna, it's gonna be great. And you guys are working on the project. I'm like, well, how's it going? And where's that song love? Because she had already played that record for me. And I was like, I don't know about anything else you played me. That song, whenever it sees the light of day, cause I had known great Curtis too. I was like, whenever that song sees the light of day, you're out of here. You're absolutely out of here. It took a long, long, security path to get to it. Yes. So never too much comes out. Eve is on the record. That's how she met Manny. Cause Manny was working for Troy Carter. And Troy Carter was managing Eve. That's how they all met. And then we got, we got the next record was this very strange beat. I couldn't make heads or tails of it. We were at record plant. It had this weird hand clap. It was Kanye West and John Legend. Everybody was there. And me. I'm like the, sort of the music cup. John played piano on it. And they had written this song. I changed my mind. Yes. And like the first couple of nights working on it, I couldn't, it was like, there's a joke. Where's one? Meaning I couldn't find the, I couldn't feel the downbeat. Yeah. I was just like, yeah. I just, yeah, I just couldn't feel it. And everybody else is feeling, I couldn't feel it. But then when I got it, it was like, oh, so it allowed me to put my hands on it on the rough mix in a way that it started to sound like something. In the room. And if I'm not mistaken, the mix, no, not, no, I changed my mind. I think Dave mixed. So, so, never too much comes out. It doesn't get worked really. Tanks. Next comes, I changed my mind. The song goes to number one in New York and nowhere else. Nowhere, it's not even a hit anywhere else. But in New York, it's number one, which you cannot do that in your wildest dreams. You couldn't recreate that. Right. So literally, JZ is number two. It's the biggest market. And Keisha Cole is number one in New York. Because even at home, right? Like I would argue with our DJs at home. And I'm like, yeah, I gotta support this. She's from home. From the Bay Area. Y'all have to get behind this. We don't really know if that record is it. You know what I mean? It was a weird record. It's okay. That's what I can do. Okay, and then the video, which you have a little story to tell about that. Yeah, yeah, little story behind. So every couple of months I get reminded about this, especially with this new age of the internet, that no matter what I do in my life, I am forever a video hoe. So, you know, I changed my mind. I've changed my mind. I am the video hoe or video guy, or whatever you want to put it. And, but going back to that video and back to that song, so I go sit with Keisha and she's playing me the album. And she's like, this is my first single. And I'll be very honest. I'm like, where's love? Once again. I'm like, I know it's a ballot. Cause the music industry, we know how this goes. Don't start with a ballot. You don't start with a ballot. You gotta go with a tempo record. And Bob's like, yo, that record love is a smash. Like she's like, no, I'm telling you, Jay. I'm like, well, they're the label. So I guess you got to listen. I said, but I think love is your smash. And she's like, yeah. And one more thing. It's my single and I need you in the video. I'm like, well, no. And she's like, yes, you're in my video. I said, Keisha, I'm not in your video. Yes, you are. And I'm going to play you this other song. It's called superstar. And you're going to feature on it. We all know Keisha. When Keisha makes up her mind, she's going to figure out how to make these things happen. So within all of this stuff, I ended up meeting first, Michelle Thomas, who worked with you. I think she was the GM at the time. Yeah. She was my right hand person, head of artists development. I mean, we had a little six man team. So she was, it was just us. And so I go meet with Michelle. And Michelle's like, oh, if he's going to sing on your song, sing for me. Now, somehow I went from being possibly a video hoe to now auditioning and just me being who I am and just my personality. I'm like, all right, fuck it, I'll sing. So I sing for Michelle. And Michelle's like, oh my God, you're going to be great on the song. You need to meet Ron Fair. I'm like, this is all in the same day too. I'm just bouncing. Perfect. And they're like, well, he's mixing something or producing something at some studio. Go see him. Me and Manny riding around. Cause Keisha's somewhere else at this point. Manny takes me to meet you. You say the same thing. You're like, oh, okay. Look, Keisha's friend, Keisha wants you on the record. Oh, we'll make it happen. Oh, and you're in the video. So I'm like, yeah, had they talked about this shit before I got here? So long story short, video day happens. And I don't know if you remember this. During lunch at the video, you pull me to the side and lo and behold, I don't know how this end up happening against how the world works. You're like, Jay, you know Doug Mark. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, it's my lawyer. He's like, yeah, he's my lawyer too. And Doug comes and he pulls up. And I'm like, all right. So this is a full setup. And you're like, well, I said, so, okay. So why is our lawyer here? Yeah. And you're like, well, our lawyer's here because we gotta get a deal done. I'm like, what do you mean? We gotta get a deal done. I'm just, I'm here to shoot a video. And you're like, no, you're gonna be on superstar. And your words to me were, Keisha's a superstar. I'm gonna make her a superstar. And if I put you on the album with my superstar, you gotta be my superstar too. And I'm like, and it's all calculating to me. And I'm like, he's making a lot of sense. I said, but I'm also caught off guard. Yeah. Right, because I think I had just hired Doug maybe a couple of months before. So I'm like, now I'm cautious. And I'm like, am I being set up? And at this point, being completely honest and transparent, I did not want to be an artist. I had already went through a phase where I was signed to a lecture records. It didn't work out. I just wanted to focus on being a songwriter. And by this point, I had already made a boatload of money as a songwriter because I'd written for Tyrese. When he was on RCA, written I Like Them Girls, written for N-Sync at this point. And I'm in full underdog mode. We're doing all of our underdog. This is what, 2005. We're in full mode. We're killing shit. And I'm like, I'm already in my mind at that age. I'm rich. Yeah. I don't want to do the artist things. And this is being thrown at me randomly. So I'm like, I don't know. And you tell me, you said, I can't put you on this song unless you're signed here. And a part of me was a little salty because I'm like, well, that's my home girl. And this is her album and she wants me on it. But the business side of it for me was he's actually right. So to play defense when you're in that position working at a record company or whatever, the reason why I took that position is because it happened to me where I put an artist on an album and did not have her signed. And the song went to number one on Billboard. And it was a song from reality by it's called Stay by Lisa Loeb. Okay. So I wanted to sign Lisa Loeb, but I failed to do that for a lot of circumstantial reasons. The rule of thumb was don't put people on records without having something if you can cover yourself. It wasn't meant to be draconian. And like I said, I completely understood. I wasn't, you know, I never felt away about it. I was just like, it was a learning experience for me. I love that. I love all that. You know what I mean? As I grew in the business and started to understand that. Well, let me go back to the chronology. So I changed my mind, because I goes out and goes on to number one in New York, but nowhere else. So we're kind of nowhere. We got this brick with never too much, which is a great record with Keisha and Eve. And then the Kanye John legend, I changed my mind, which is number one in New York, but nowhere else. And the next record was over and over, which was Alicia Keys. She wrote it. But Alicia Keys manager would not let us put Alicia Keys name on it. Name on it. For whatever reason. You know what's funny about that one? I'm also in that video too. Are you? So you are the video. It was the continuation. Yes. It was the continuation. You're now a running character. Because yes, in the first video, I cheated on her. I get caught with the girl I'm outside with my do rag on, coming out of bed with a fucking wife beater on it, a do rag, looking ridiculous. And in the second video, she sees me at the party. Oh, this is great. And she kind of like, this is me. She looks like, yeah, whatever. He's wack. This is great trivia. So I guess I don't know. So over and over breaks the top 40 on the Urban Radio chart. But it's not moving yet. Yeah. Now we got three bricks. Then Michelle Thomas, who we mentioned, who was my right hand person, said to me her quote from her great aunt from the stoop in somewhere in Louisiana. If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got. It's like, sorry? If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got. OK, what do you mean? Y'all are picking the wrong singles. Y'all a bunch of men picking the wrong singles. What do you think women are going to want to hear? You're picking the wrong singles on Keisha Cole. The song should have cheated. Say what? The song should have cheated. Yeah. So we still had a budget. And she made the call. And I mixed that record. Produced by Durand. Well, I finished it. I put strings on it. I put the spaghetti Western harmonica and the piano. Like it was a collab, but it was a great record. And no one else had ever said that in a song. I might as well have cheated as much as you accuse me. That is the real shit. That's the real thing where she was communicating to her people. Every girl could relate to that. I might as well have cheated as much as you accuse me. I was like, wow. OK, no one ever said that in the song before. So we put that out. And what happens? Shit goes to number one. Changed everything. That record changed everything. So I'm giving an anecdote. I go to Jimmy and then now we're at Mr. Chow's, Garnet March, the whole fucking urban staff were running up a gigantic bill, drinking, Christelle eating crazy overpriced Mr. Chow's. Yeah. Having parties. Chicken satay. Yeah. Yeah. Extra peanut sauce. Keisha is the bell of the ball, like furs and looking like a movie star. Yeah. She was doing it up. Doing it up. So I was filled with this is amazing what we've done, you know, giving her voice a place in the culture with this music. And I went to Jimmy and I said, you know, we really look good on the street because we stuck with it. We broke her on her fourth single. It's a great look for the label. It's a great thing to be proud of. And he said, what the fuck are you talking about? All that means is that you picked the wrong single three times. Now, this with this much distance in this many years, of course, I love him for saying the truth. And that's his form of tough love. And then we put out love with the with the eye makeup running down her cheek, wearing the white fur and it went bananas. You put fucking Tyrese in a video and now he gets to be a hit song. And I'm in the two dugs. Well, he was my spirit guide and later on in my life, when I was at a very, very low point, Tyrese brought Eddie Lavert in and put me at a dinner to get my head screwed back on straight with my spirit guide. Tyrese is my spirit guide and my friend. I love him for that and I always will. We've never made music together, but you know, it doesn't matter. We're gentlemen together. Yeah, like he's the truth and he's a very underrated for everything he's done. He's a magnificent talent. Absolutely. So with regards to Keisha, like, so this was the meantime I was working on Maya, I did the album mood ring with her. And we have my love is like, whoa. And Maya was, you know, really holding her own in a lot of ways. Around that time, Keisha was really showing up late to a lot of stuff and just kind of messing up and and it was a little bit of a train wreck. So my buddies, Reggie, Reggie Huddlin and Byron Phillips, yeah, her B.T. at the time took over B.T. My sister was there. Oh, cool. Yeah, my sister was an executive at the time. And so I had the idea that instead of doing another music video for 300 grand, which is what we used to spend, that we could do a TV show and show the train wreck. And like that, that would be the thing that that Keisha's honest way that she walked through life would be great TV. Yeah. And Jimmy said, if you can get them to match, I'll put up some of the money, but you got to get them to match. Yeah. So Manny Haley and Keisha Cole and I went into B.E.T. in New York and Reggie and Byron had like they had just started and they had a card table, like a collapsible card table and folding chairs and a blank white erase board with a marker with nothing on it. And they were planning the network right then and there. Yeah. And I said, let's do a reality show on Keisha. And they said yes. And Jimmy honored it. And we ended up with a giant hit TV show. Absolutely. James, the boss did that. What you got to do. Yes, he did. You know, all of it is God's blessing because we just kept trying shit. And I had the ball and I had the backing of the corporation and a boss. Yeah. Who who believed in my insanity. So around this time working with Maya. We have done a flip of the far side can't can't keep running away. It's it's like a record that got away. That's a magnificent song. You know that record can't keep running away. OK, so so Maya does a version of it. And it's got all my trademark stuff. Crazy background vocals, big strings. Maya sounds like a million bucks. And I got a call out of the blue from Mary J. Blige. I thought it was a prayer like why is Mary J. Blige calling me because Mary was on Geffen Keisha was on A&M, which is my unit. But Mary calls up and says, this my shit is crazy. You did this. I was like, yeah, thank you so much. It's great to talk to you. And and and she was a fan of the song. So later on down the road, they had Mary had turned in an album that had the very first version of Be Without You on it. OK. And a guy that basically a guy who who was a marketing guy who was Mary's marketing guy named Paul Kremmin and Steph Johnson sent me that first version of Be Without You and said, you know, what do you think? And I said, it's not my problem. I'm A&M, you guys are Geffen. Right. Like this isn't my problem. Like I don't know what you what do you why do you why are you asking me what I think when I mean, it doesn't matter like Mary signed to you guys. I don't know what to say. Then Jimmy called and said, I don't care what you think you you work for. You work for me. Tell them what what what you think of the song. So I now analyze the song and it was like, OK, there's some flaws here. The harmony in the chorus, like it basically the songs in G minor. So you have G, B flat and D. Those are the three notes that make the three part harmony. She's singing in C minor. OK, she's singing the wrong chord change on the hook. She's singing them great, but that's not right. Yeah. So there was some other problems with it. So the next thing that happened was Jimmy called me back and he said, we're going to do Mary J. Blydges greatest hits. It's the it's the fourth quarter big record. We need it. Yeah. You need to get in the studio with Mary and fix the song. So I went to New York and Mary showed up and it was a love fest. And she showed me so much respect and we did all the background vocals, all the lead vocals and it came to life in front of my eyes. And the whole time, what do you think I'm channeling? The OJs. And there's Mary J. Blydges, you know, the singer of no more drama and family. It's like, yes. Yeah. And I had already made 10 records with Kisha and Maya and like and I had worked with Natalie Cole, like this is Mary J. Blydges is just like an Elvis, right? This is this is it. Absolutely. And and then I put a string arrangement on it and then Dave mixed it. And. Everybody heard it. And then Jimmy said, it's not going to be a great sets album. I need you to go through the whole album. It's shifting and fix it all in a month. And it was like, it was like September and it's December is the release date. Right. And by the way, here's this track of you two from a sound check. She can sing a duet of the song one love. Put her on that and finish that, which became her first number one in England. And I'm sure you have as an executive, you have your things at A&M that you're still trying to finish as well. Yeah, yeah. But but Mary took over my life and rightfully so. And every I learned so much from her because she used to say, like it's all about what I'm talking about. It's all about what I'm talking about. It's like, what what what does that mean? It's all about what I'm talking. It's like the words, Ron, the words, that's what they're hearing. That's what they want to hear from me. What I'm talking about. What are you talking about? All that other shit you're doing, cool. And I was like, oh, I'm learning to see it through her eyes. And to frame the vocal in a way that the message. So then it became can't keep a good woman down. Take me as I am enough crying. Take me as I am. It's take me as I'm as genius. I love it. So let me tell you a little bit of the story of that. So Erica Grayson used to do A&R for me. Smart girl. I love it. She found that song and it was a carry. Hosen, I think I. Yeah, Zeke Lewis, who now is a chairman. He's running the table. Yeah, yeah. Balai will, Muhammad, Candice Nelson. That's right. Yeah. And so thank you. So she plays me the song and it's like the album was done. This is the album's rap. Like we're mastered. We're Mary's like in a limo somewhere going to an event in a gown. She hears the record. She literally turns the limo around and meets me in the studio in New York City and sing the record that night. Yeah, that's a record urgency. And again, it's all about what I'm talking about. Like her words are burning in my head. And what is she saying on that song? Take me as I am or nothing at all. Nothing at all. It's like, wow. So really, this is what her audience wants to say to the people in their life. Right. Take me as I am or nothing at all. So the whole framing of of it are of the R&B and the community. And by the way, songs can be dumb. They can be fun. They can be, you know, who there it is. Like, it doesn't matter. But the communication element of like, what are we talking about? And then what is the music? What is the beat? What is the harmony? What is the whole thing? That's like that alchemy. Is. Everything to me. You know, and so I'm still at age 71. That same exact guy. Yeah. But in a changed landscape where things like TikTok can confuse the industry with believing that clicks and views means mean connection. I mean, everything more so because they do mean something. They do mean something. But I think it's one of those things where, and I've said in those meetings and I've had those conversations where it becomes everything. And it's that's not everything. Well, I sound like a hater because, you know, I'm an old guy and it came from a different period where it was just the music, music, music. But it's a component. Yes. And I'll tell you going forward in my life and I hope to do so much more. I don't want to be defined by the wonderful things I was able to accomplish. Like, you know, Vanessa Carlton's record is still so huge, but like that can't be my epitaph, Jay. That just can't be it. There has to be more chapters. But that same kid that I was that was given that record by Bill Conte in front of his friends at age 22 is who I am now. I'm just smarter and wiser. And and the the elements of the game make me think that the business that we're in today is not the music business. It's the star business and that the people that are the. The brightest lights Ray Brunomars, John Legend, Morgan Wallen, Jelly Roll, Money Long, name any of them their stars. Yeah. And the and the music and what we do and I do is the fuel. It's the jet fuel, but you don't fly the fuel. You fly the plane. Fly the plane. And the plane is the star. So OK. What's next for you? And how do you see it? In this phase, truthfully, I don't have a snappy answer for that. I just hope that what's next for me is more. Yeah. You know, because my appetite, the thrill that comes from like the three part harmony or the dope rub in the in the background vocal or whatever, that same thrill that I get, it's like a drug. I got to have more. So, you know, whether it's being able to be lucky enough to continue to work with some of the great artists I've worked with or. Or find that next girl with a tear in her voice and an authentic thing that, you know, I can bring my skills to help an artist elevate and and learn to see through their eyes. Like it's still a fucking thrill, man. So I hope to die in the gig. Yeah, that would be the perfect fitting, the perfect ending for me, like saying on Topic, let's try that again. This time a little more acted out a little bit more. That would be the perfect. No, you're a real music guy. And that is to be honored and respected from our beginning of our conversation. When I told you, like it's real admiration for what you've done and what you're doing. You know what I mean? And because it's for me, I light up when I sit with people like yourself because I know it's from a pure place. This isn't about anything else for you, but the music. And that's very important. You know, I was able to combine it with the corporate enrichment and and and and. And I like your suit. So you definitely got all that all that along the along the way. And and but change now, you know, I'm a father. I've got four children. They're they're going off to college. It's different. You know, recently I I was able to somebody will I am spoke at a AI conference and and gave me a lot of credit for what happened with the Black Eyed Peas, which was basically happened. I mean, I stumbled into that day. Pensado introduced me to will I am a lot of stumbling in the cool stuff, man. You keep yourself open. Yeah. You come in with no preconceived notion like something great could happen today. Like you just just show up and have your brain open and listen. And anyway, Dave introduced me to will I played vibraphone on a record like before for you was in the band. It ended up with me being the AI and our guy for the Black Eyed Peas and for you joining the group and where is the love and adding the strings to it and making records with will, you know, but the but the masterstroke of the Black Eyed Peas story is not the records that we made, which are wonderful. It was learning the value of counter intuition as a human. So when you're when you're dealing with this decision making, like in a musical situation or any situation in life and your brain is what would I do? What would I do? What's the solution? What's the solution? What would I do? How do I handle? What would I do? That's only half the picture. The other half is what wouldn't I do? What doesn't make sense? What am I going to avoid? So when it came to the Black Eyed Peas on the tour that broke the song, which was Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera and the Black Eyed Peas, I was able to get them on the tour because of my relationship with Christina and her manager. OK. But it was too late to print the name, the Black Eyed Peas on the ticket or any of the promotional materials too late. And it was going to cost a lot of money to do the tour. Right. And Irving Azoff, Christina's manager at the time, said, are you sure, Ron, that you want to do this knowing that you're not going to have any mention at all of the Black Eyed Peas at all as the opening act? And I thought to myself, fuck, yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. Packed up. Because I knew I knew that if it said Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera, Black Eyed Peas, eight o'clock, people are shown up at nine. No one wants to see the opener they have in their life. Right. Right. So they're showing up on time thinking it's not an opener. Exactly. Ah. So because their name wasn't on the ticket. Yeah. At eight o'clock, thinking Christina was going to go on, the Black Eyed Peas went on. And I and we had we had an understanding, me and Will, like, do where's the love last? Because we got to make sure the most people that could possibly show up are there to hear the song. So as building on radio, building on radio. It worked. And then because it was a giant hit that Justin Carote, he brought them back out in his set at nine thirty and did it again. And some interesting to my friends, the Black Eyed Peas, and they came out of people killing people, dying. Yeah. And Justin sang it with them and we broke the group. And it was because their name was the song was a hit. Yeah. But because of the idea that that what wouldn't I do could be part of the reasoning. Change my life to examine decision making prismatically, like the prism that you hold up to the light and and it shows the rainbow. That that's a part of that. That's a part of the thought process and it's a synapse. It's not just a contrivance. It's like a synapse, like a reflex. So it's always baked into me after that, like to just make sure I police myself. Like, OK, what would I do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? And weave it in and weave it in. Man, listen, your story, your journey is incredible. And it is you really gave a masterclass today of what it is to be a real music man, to be a real producer. Like that is very important because, you know, obviously we have these conversations about the beatmaker and the producer and this that and the other. And people don't really know how to put them in proper context. I would suggest if you are a young producer or aspiring to be one, you really watch this episode and really because the things you talked about from your placement, how the things you put in place, the people you got involved. So the the the the law, of course, I knew it instinctively because again, like the OJs really started the ball rolling for me, I had made records before that. But the framing of the vocal and the idea of it's all about what I'm talking about. Like that's the takeaway. It's my daughter who doesn't know who the artists are, but knows every word of every sort. Yeah, because it's that's what they're hearing now. You got to have a great beat. You got to have a great mix. You got all that part is part of the deal. What they tell about. But what are you talking about? So like if you were to go through my records and say, well, what does Ron Farrell sound like? I don't have a sound, but there's one thing in common. The vocals are all fucking slamming. The loud, the proud matter of fact, I did I did two jazz albums with Queen Latifah. Totally on people don't even know she's like Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington. Queen Latifah is one of the great jazz singers on the planet. Absolutely. OK, so I did the album called the Dana Owens album and I did the album called Traveling Light. Both of them sold a million copies. Her version of Poetry Man. Her vocal is so damn loud on there and it was glorious. I kept I thought, yeah, like, you know what, it's so much louder than the track. But this is so great because this is everything. And it's something that follows in all my stuff is like the vocals are just they're everything and the music is good. But that's that's really the hallmark of them all, whether it was a Dina Menzel or Darren Chris or Fergie or the new record I just did with Nicole or. It's always the same thing. The vocal is the law and it's the whole message. I want to tell one funny story because I know that probably because of the movie White Chicks, the Vanessa Carlton record, Thousand Miles, so it's so baked in everybody. Yes. So when I had the demo of the song, the big string parts, the down bow, that I orchestrated was originally a Wawa guitar on the demo. Waka-cha-waka-cha-wa. That's not yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so like the idea came from oh it was in the hole in the most elegant place but I thought let's dramatize this and and Do it all on down bow so it's 24 strings Da-da-da-da-da-da-da all on all on down bow doing the wah-wah. Yeah, and that's how that came about All right, so since I got you here man We got we got some special special parts of the show man, and I you know, I want to get you involved in man Tank sent something in for you. Oh really? Yeah, cuz we want we want we want to know some things So rule man, what you what you got for us, man Yeah Oh They want to know Larris I So first round as a as a producer you wouldn't have made him re-sing that Oh, yeah, that's just joyful noise right there I think that might be the first time somebody called it joyful noise So like tanks said we want to know your top five R&B singers and R&B songs So I don't know that I can put them in order and that I can limit it to five Okay, I have to start I don't want to use the number one stop, but I have to start My list no order, you know no order then Bill withers. Yes Let's just start with that. Okay. Okay. Okay. This guy with this acoustic guitar the simplicity the tonality and then the masterpiece of just the two of us With those Stevie kind of changes the girl watching so Bill withers is like I just like he I'm gonna your top He's he's incredible. Yeah, I Mean it's a little hard to say because Because of who I've worked with and it's more than R&B, but I would say Natalie Cole. Yeah Yeah, I met Natalie Cole one time. She was so regal Yeah, no, I got to work with her and she was in my life and Again like, you know the test of time can be cruel or whatever but Natalie Cole for sure. Mm-hmm. I mean of course I've already talked about Eddie Levert and Walt Williams together the OJ's. Yeah, I mean I Don't know that I can personally get in well. I Mean I can't do just five to be Mary would marry J. Blige, of course, Kiesha Cole Fantasia Yeah, TLC. Okay, you know T on you have a wish you guys more Because you had about top eight now Funny how it's mostly women. I mean I gotta give it up for Tyrese my spirit guide And on the vintage tip, you know, I think I've hit it I Right now I always go I always go back to Bill Withers By the way, and you know going through my life story There's somebody that I didn't mention that I need to because I as I told you step and Garnett were encouraging me to keep making these records I actually signed L. DeBarge and made an album with him called Second Chance And he got two Grammy nominations for and I co-produced a record with Mike City that faith Evans and L. DeBarge had a number one record with Yeah, like stuff that that I did that you can't even understand like how did he fucking fall into all this stuff? I just followed my impulse. Yeah But another guy who the whole time was telling me don't matter whether you're white Valley Jew it none of that shit matters to keep doing it was Clarence Avant and He was you know the wind beneath so many people's wings in the culture Yeah, you know whether it's Jam and Lewis or LA Reed or whatever Clarence was was the was him He was the guy father like he literally was and and I got to know him and love him and he was like Ron You know, I don't know what the fuck you smoking, but this shit sounds good. You doing it and And that meant so much to me. Yeah And rest in peace absolutely rest in peace one of the If we don't save the names then they go poof into the ether and at least from the standpoint of the people watching the show and We mentioned the names, you know to honor them. Absolutely. Yeah. All right Top five R&B songs top five R&B. I've never been asked that before R&B songs They ain't no stopping us now for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I found in white a jam Okay, I think we are family. I think that's more than R&B though. That's that's ubiquitous But it's I'm holding on to it. So I love that. Okay. I was I was Scrolling last night and and there was some old chic things that came up and I just thought I'm gonna study Bernard Edwards bass parts and make that the basis of songs like that guy Another rest in peace. What a badass. He was man. Go listen to the bass lines on on on chic And it's like oh my god, not a insane, you know, and now of course Yeah, so definitely we are family and and I know stopping us now I've got to say back stabbers Mm-hmm Um, they want to take your place. Honestly, I'm gonna go with it for once in my life Stevie mm-hmm touch me in the morning. Hmm. I mean there's gotta be Supremes and smoky and all that stuff woven in because you know as a kid in the 60s like that's that was all filtering That's what you got here every day but touch me in the morning With the tempo change, you know, I mean, I don't know that artist like I I'll tell you that my dream artist when you ask me Like what is your dream? What project do you want to do next Lionel Richie? I Want to make you a lot of rich you were making amazing. I told his manager that I know what I wanted to be about I want to be I know what I want the album to be called based on an old movie title Let no man write my epitaph Lionel. I'm waiting for you to call Come on Lionel let no man write my epitaph I know you watch the podcast Lionel pull up too an album about legacy about what we leave behind Yeah not not doesn't have to be morose but An album from one of the greatest of all time. I mean all night long I mean some of these records that we call our and V are so much more. Yeah, but they could they come from that That's their origin But Lionel Richie man if in your imagination if you think of the one more to leave on the earth to leave the planet with Like the Artemis moon shot Dark side of the moon shit that we just saw. Yeah He's my dream project Lionel Richie. Yeah, I love that. Okay. So now we're We got a we got another part where you build Your ultimate R&B Singer right from from top to bottom called a Voltron We take the you know different different pieces from different artists you put them together you make this ultimate superhero R&B superstar and we start with we go from the vocals who's the singer The stage performance who got the best performance The drip as you have on today who got the best styling and who's the most passionate You put those together Who okay, we're gonna start from the first time Who's your singer if you're putting together the super super R&B singer Priscilla money long you put money long That's a long shot. Yeah, okay. Okay, and you went you went to Priscilla too. Yeah, you didn't you didn't start with the money I said Priscilla no no no no no that girl is Special the truth I agree. I absolutely agree. Okay, so who got the performance Mary Mary's gets down on her knees and she grinds it out and she brings the audience with her down and lifts them up and Can be humorous and joyful and pathetic and painful That's why she's so huge. She is the megaphone for everybody's feelings. Yeah, you know, she's the megaphone for everybody's feelings Absolutely. Okay. Now who gonna put on the fly shit? What's the artist gonna look like shawty? Elegant elegant international. Yeah the ponytail everlasting. Mm-hmm Absolutely iconic. Yeah, man. She's another like Just I mean let us never forget her ever. Yeah, and you know, there's only that it's such a unique thing Like good with us is unique like she's like unique like that. Absolutely. Okay. Now who has the passion that you want to put into this artist? Fantasia ha Sweating by song too, maybe she's probably sweating and Shoes off and yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I got you. I got Asia just goes through she can connect her voice to the inner feelings and She I mean I've seen her take the roof off shit. I made two records with her Who is Ron fair hiring? to produce it To produce this artist what producer do you want? Jimi and Terry Yeah, now the reason why and I you know like the more I think about like I'm not on the spot like to pick songs like on Bended Knee is The encyclopedia Britannica Yeah, okay, that shit is so powerful. It's it's like classical music. It's so Jimi and Terry were I Mean the Jimi and Terry. Yeah, they're just like literally Godzilla and and mothra. Yeah monsters. No, they just made my day the other day. They shouted me out in the interview Oh, I'm like, oh, this is great. I got shot about Jimi and Terry. This is amazing. I I've done it. I've done it. Okay So I got one more segment for you before I let you go Keep playing some force. Well, let's add let's add one before to the superstar R&B act I mean, I didn't say Keisha, but she's my heart and she's my girl and of course in her movie that we got made her Biopic that she also is playing as a guy playing Ron fair in the movie Yeah, only he's younger and more handsome and they don't really tell the real story But it's cool to have somebody playing you while you're still alive. Yeah, so of course I gotta imagine her but Christina, of course has the Quincy Jones level of musical articulation like her she is like a Like a fencing champion like an Olympic sword fighter when it comes to her chops. No, she's amazing. She's got Chops above and beyond. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Okay Well, what we got? I哎哎哎 Awesome. So we had a very important part of the show. Will you tell us a story? Funny or fucked up? Or funny and fucked up? The only rule to the game is round fare, can't say no names. And then the audience guesses who it is? They always try. They always try. This person won a Grammy award. Okay, a lot of people won a Grammy. For Best New Artist. Okay, a lot of those. But this person did not thank me when the thank yous came. Forgot me. It was a terrible thing. It was a terrible thing to not be remembered on such an incredibly important moment. And it sent me into a deep, deep funk. The next day, I was called into a meeting because I felt so slighted at a lunch at the Four Seasons Hotel. It was like, we got to make this moment pass. So I went to the meeting all depressed. And when I got there, I was, oh no, that's the restaurant there, but you got to go here. And I was ushered to a door. When the door opened, it's not funny or fucked up. It's true. But when the door opened, there was an enormous surprise party one day after the Grammys for me with over 100 people. Wow. And this person stood up in front of the party and said, you will never be forgotten and made it all right. Wow. It kind of started off like that, but it didn't make a crack. Oh, it was fucked up. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't funny. Yeah, you can't make that stuff up. The next day. The next day, there was a surprise party. They mobilized quick. But you know, speaking on it, like not so much on the funny or fucked up tip, but about the Grammys and about awards. We tend to not remember who won last year for this or that. It's more about the celebration and the and the moment and the performance and it doesn't define you. Yeah, it's nice to win. But it's all good. But I don't remember if I asked you like what one what one for R&B song of the year last year, you might not remember. We certainly don't remember the year before. No, it starts to get blurry. Yeah. And in our busy world of media saturation, but so the thing the story about about the Grammys and not and not being recognized in the scheme of life. It's just one of those things. Yeah. Well, listen, man, this is this is why I don't know if that was funny or funny or funny or it was fucked up. It's fucked up. It ended up turning out right. But it was fucked up. And that's what I say it can be either or in the beginning. It was definitely fucked up because I would feel away about that if I'm watching the Grammys. And I'm like, I was a big part of this and damn, I can't even get a shout out. But it doesn't matter. It's funny because someone or somebody I've been like so lucky to have so many different mentors that people come through my life or whatever. And as a behind the scenes guy, like I was never an artist. I was a shitty jazz piano player. Like I didn't take the spotlight and I was very comfortable in that, you know, we're so passionate at the time, like living and dying on everything. Kisha literally my happiness was dependent on the outcome of a thing. But but they're but they're they the the eras come and go and there's seasons and reasons. And there's another artist and another artist and another project and another song and another record. And we're still here. Absolutely. So as long as I keep showing up and keep believing that this thing that didn't exist 10 seconds ago is going to be something something. I'm doing a record right now. I'm doing an orchestration on Wednesday. That's probably just because of the way, you know, the facts is probably going to be Deon Warwick's last record. She's in her mid 80s. And there's two duets that I'm working on. The last is by coming in and doing the show. Awesome. So one is with Teddy Swims and one is with John Legend. So, you know, like, are they hits? I don't care. I don't care if they're fucking hits, their culture and theirs and their art. And so I am throwing myself at these records with all the technology with all the musicality with all the musicianship with everything I have. If nothing else to just maybe get that phone call from John Legend to say, Ron, this is dope. Yeah. And that will keep me going, you know, for another week, just because that's what we do. It's our oxygen. This is all record making artists, songs, chord changes. It's nutrition. It's oxygen. We're dead without it. So I'll take it out that way in my to my last breath. Like I said, hopefully I'll die in the chair in the middle of a vocal over tub believing I'm making another significant record. Yeah, man. Thank you. Thank you for having me. No, of course. Thank you for sharing your audience with me and and means a lot to me. I appreciate it. Likewise, brother. Yeah. Thank you. I'm Jay Valentine. This has been the amazing, the incredible, round fair, this R&B money and I'll see y'all next week.