Mixed and Mastered
Mixed and Mastered is the podcast where the untold stories of the music industry come to life. Hosted by Jeffrey Sledge, a veteran music executive and former VP of A&R at Atlantic Records and Jive Records, each episode dives deep into the journeys, challenges, and triumphs of the people shaping the sound of today. From label executives and producers to artists, songwriters, and managers, Jeffrey brings you behind the scenes to meet the minds driving the industry forward. There’s a gap in the marketplace for these voices, and Mixed and Mastered is here to fill it—one conversation at a time. Because the best stories are told by those who lived them.
Mixed and Mastered
Vivian Scott Chew
From Far Rockaway to the global stage, Vivian Scott Chew has spent a career turning "no" into new lanes. In this episode of Mixed and Mastered, Vivian sits down with Jeffrey Sledge to share her boundary-breaking journey—from becoming ASCAP’s first African-American female rep and launching the Rhythm & Soul Awards, to fielding a call from Little Richard and reshaping the global music landscape.
With humor, insight, and fierce determination, Vivian recounts pivotal moments: a 37-minute unemployment window that ended with a bike crash and a new career, bringing dancehall to America through Epic Records, and founding Time Zone International—the first Black-owned international music marketing company.
We dive into the glamour and grit of the business, the myths she dismantled (like “Black music doesn’t sell overseas”), and the legacy she’s building today through the Power to Inspire foundation with her husband, Ray Chew—including a mobile studio changing lives in real time.
This episode is a tribute to vision, perseverance, and the power of building what doesn’t yet exist. Vivian’s story is not just about music—it’s about movement. Don’t miss it.
Mixed and Mastered is produced and distributed by Merrick Studio, and hosted by music industry veteran, Jeffrey Sledge. Tune in to the discussion on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you catch your podcasts. Follow us on Instagram @MixedandMasteredPod to join the conversation and support the show at https://mixedandmasteredpod.buzzsprout.com/
Today's guest is a record industry legend, vivian Scott Chu. Vivian is an industry trailblazer. She was the first woman to work at ASCAP and went on to be the EVP of A&R at Epic Records, where she brought dancehall to America with Shabba Ranks, little Vicious and Patra. She reintroduced the legend George Clinton as well. She then launched Time Zone International, the first black-owned company of its kind, putting artists like Joe Scott, india, irie and JoJo on the global map. She's the co-founder of Chew Entertainment with her husband, ray Chew. They have sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall, had events for the National Urban League, the Jackie Robinson Foundation, big stages, big moments. This one's going to be special. Vivian Scott Chew is next on Mixed and Mastered.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Mixed and Mastered, the podcast where the stories of the music industry come to life. I'm Jeffrey Sledge, bringing you real conversations with the people who have shaped the sound of music. We're pulling back the curtain on what it takes to make it in the music business. These are the stories you won't hear anywhere else, told by the people who live them. This is Mixed and Mastered. Welcome to Mixed and Mastered, where I'm talking to my music mom. She's known me since 1996, I think it was she hired me in 1996. Let me rephrase that Vivian Scott Chu.
Speaker 2:Hi, hey, baby, and you know I am nowhere old enough to be your mom.
Speaker 1:You were Well my music big sister.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I will be your fairy godmother. How about that? Can I say fairy godmother?
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. It could take that too. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm great. How about yourself?
Speaker 1:Good, you're looking good. I love your background, I love your hair, I love your makeup. I love your swag.
Speaker 2:As the kids say master I really appreciate that.
Speaker 1:I really appreciate that and I think people are going to enjoy this conversation from a music veteran who's done so much, and I want to let the people know what what you've done, from your mouth to god's ears. So let's start at the beginning. You're waved in far rock away.
Speaker 2:I mean the beginning there's and actually there's a few guys Kelly Price, mc Search and some of the earlier handball champions of the world. We all come from Far Rockaway, a very interesting place to grow up at the time that I grew up. What?
Speaker 1:was it like.
Speaker 2:Segregation. We grew up in a predominantly Hasidic Jewish neighborhood. It was definitely them on one side of the street, us on the other side of the street. I'm not talking about our block, our whole block was black with black ownership. It was a main street and there were streets that shot off at this main street and you definitely knew to stay on your side of the street. And you know, I mean I am in my 60s and I mean I am in my 60s, which doesn't seem like that long ago when it comes to segregation, because I remember not being able to eat at the Woolworths and sit at the counter. I remember my mom buying clothes one size larger and then taking them to the dressmaker because Black people were not allowed to try on clothes. So that really wasn't that long ago. But grow up in Far Rockaway was, you know, it makes me the beach girl that I am. I grew up right off beach night street and the water was always, always my safe place.
Speaker 1:So tell me what your, where your passion for music came from.
Speaker 2:My passion for music came from growing up in the church. I'm a church girl, all right, so my mother was secretary of the church. My father was the head of the trustees, basically the dude that ran everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I went to church eight days a week and I noticed very early in my childhood if I had to be a church it was always about the choir. It was always about the choir, it was always about the music. And gospel music to this day hits me in the same space that funk music hits me and the same space that house music hits me. And my husband, Ray, who's a musician, said the commonality between the three is that they use a lot of minor, ninth and 11 chords all three of them. So that's where it resonates on me. So you can't tell me that music and our bodies and our spirits are not one, it's all.
Speaker 2:I never wanted to do.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah. So I'm obviously going to go deeper, to the music, but, like in reading, I don't know why I didn't notice. I didn't know you went to Georgetown University.
Speaker 2:I did. I'm a proud Georgetown College dropout.
Speaker 1:How was it? I mean because I know it's a predominantly white school. It's always been, but how was it back then?
Speaker 2:Well, there's a very specific reason why I went to Georgetown because my plan was not to go to college. I was a professional volleyball player and so I was going to. I had this whole grand plan that I was going to go and go to Europe before a lot of black athletes were doing that I'm talking about this is in the seventies and to go to Europe and make my claim to fame and live there. I've always wanted to live outside the U? S. I have even more reason now to want to live outside the US Exactly. Hey, that may come to fruition. But so my mom said OK, so plan A didn't work. Plan B is you got to take your ass to college. Because I went to an all white Jewish private school in Long Island called Woodman Academy and I just picked DC because it was the blackest place on the map.
Speaker 1:It was Chocolate City, chocolate, city, chocolate.
Speaker 2:City? Absolutely, and that's how I ended up at Georgetown and spent a year there. I went. This ain't happening, and you know, I mean full transparency. I had to figure out a reason not to go to college anymore for my mother not to kill me, so I came up with this great idea. I know what I'll get married and I did Wow to kill me, so I came up with this great idea. I know what? I'll get married and I did Wow.
Speaker 2:I got married, which was the biggest mistake I could have ever made, but also the biggest blessing, because out of that, you know, came my, my daughter, Lauren. And then I came back to New York, after being in DC and always knew I wanted to be in the music business, Couldn't find a job, went to work for a landscape architect and then started dating someone else who was in the music business. Couldn't find a job, went to work for a landscape architect and then started dating someone else who was in the music industry, an engineer, and he had a professor and her name was Louise West. She was an entertainment attorney and that's where everything changed for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love Louise. She's a definition of an OG. She's helped too many people to mention and I actually want to have her on here. I haven't reached out to her yet but she's on my. I have a big list in my phone and she's on my list that I really want to talk to her, cause she I know she got some stories, so tell me about how that happened, how you got the job with Louise and how, how it you know how it came to fruition.
Speaker 2:Yeah, total serendipity, yeah, total serendipity, when I found back in the day we used to look for jobs in the newspaper.
Speaker 1:I got my first job.
Speaker 2:And there was an ad for an assistant to an entertainment attorney. His name was Jeffrey Hafer and when I went for the interview it was an office that was shaped as a rectangle and so the principals were all in the corners. So Jeffrey Hafer and his business partner, another very well-known entertainment attorney by the name of Ina Maybach. They had one suite. Another suite was the late great Kendall Minter, who I also ended up working for at one point in my life, and then Louise was at one point and I can't remember who was at the other. But I interviewed with Jeff and Ina and as I was leaving there was a table outside of an office with a phone on it and there were three lines and all three were lit up and ringing and when I looked in the corner there was this little demure black woman that had the phone and you could tell that she was just. And I said what's your name? She said Louise West and I went hi, louise West office. Can I help you?
Speaker 1:Wow, wow.
Speaker 2:No, literally. And then, after we got all the phones settled down, she said come here, who are you? And I told her, and then it turned out that she had been a former professor of the man that I was dating, who was an engineer, a recording engineer, and that's how that all sort of came together. And I said you just look like you needed some help. She said well, you know, leave me your phone number and we'll talk. And in less than a week I became her assistant. So, needless to say, I got offered the other job, which paid more, but I was just so excited to be. I never had met any Black woman in the music industry before.
Speaker 1:So any black woman in the music industry before? So, um, yeah, louise, who turned wow 83 this year. That is why you just picked up her. That's funny, that's a good story, like. So I mean the music obviously very different now than it was back then. Um, what were your first impressions of like work from from the legal side, like working in the music business back then?
Speaker 2:Well, louise represented a lot of Black music executives and that was the time when Black music executives were finally getting paid the same amount as their white counterparts. So Louise was that attorney that was going in and not making sure that they got the right salary, they got the right bonuses, the right incentives, that they had points into perpetuity on artists that they signed, that their packages were together. So that was one side of her. But then the other side of her was these musicians and singers and songwriters who used to just always come and camp out in her office. And she said you know what, viv? They may or may not sell records, but all one of them needs to do is write a hit song.
Speaker 2:And it's something called publishing. And if you can hold on to that, that's like buying a prime piece of real estate and you can live out the rest of your life on that. And that's when I got very interested in this thing called publishing and what that was very interested in, this thing called publishing and what that was. And so I learned about publishing from Louise, which primes me for one of my future jobs, which I'm sure we're going to talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we definitely going to talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know it was a great time it was. It was the. It was the mid season. There were clubs in New York that were spilling out and I mean we were going and listening to three or four different bands and bands I was talking bands with like drums and bass and guitar and hanging out. You know it was the music was. You know, because I went to an all white private school. You know I knew as much about Charlie Wilson as I did Led Zeppelin.
Speaker 2:So you know my music library was very, very vast and Louise, coming from DC, I mean she brought that whole funk thing to me that I really wasn't aware of. We just had a lot of fun. We just had a lot of fun and I got to meet some of her, her clients, you know, like Mona Scott Young, you know, started out with Louise, but also Louise is responsible for Rockefckefeller records and a lot of people don't realize that she didn't know that, that she put the deal together. She put together missy's deal, you see was the first female rapper to have her own label deal. That was done through through sylvia roan. So I got, I had a really real and louise ended up hiring me three times every time I decided to quit a job or got fired from a job, I always was able to go back home to Louise.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:I owe her a lot.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you remember when we were at Epic I still remember this we had dinner. We went to some dinner, just dinner. And that's when I first met Louise, at the dinner that we went to, and she was the sweetest pie and we'd talk. She was the sweetest pie and we'd talk and I was like so what do you have? And she was like I got this girl. She was in this group but they got dropped.
Speaker 1:This group called Sister, somehow, had given me the cassette that never came out, that album. I wish I still had it. And I was like she said this girl, Missy, and I was like you have Missy. And I remember went through this whole thing and I was trying to sign her, went through this whole thing and I was trying to sign her and I was talking to Missy on the phone. She came by the office one time and told her mom and all this. I went up to Rochester or Elmira, wherever you were, cordon of State, and the deal didn't get done. Louise was very helpful in trying to put that together. Then it went to Sylvia, but she was just really, really nice in trying to help that move along. She was dope.
Speaker 2:And an unsung hero. So I last year decided that I was going to celebrate her. So I did an event for her at the Sunset Marquee in LA and invited all of her colleagues and anybody who couldn't come. We had on video some Missy and Timberland and Mona and 40, drake's 40. Producer.
Speaker 1:I didn't know she was 40's lawyer too. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Yes, wow. So we gave her a wonderful celebration and it was one of those things that you would have thought that she had passed on and we were doing it. But it was Lou. We want you to be here and to see how much you were loved. We need to do that.
Speaker 1:That's what this, you know, going off on a tangent, but that's the genesis for this show. It's like I was, you know, quincy passed away and Clarence Avon passed away and I was like man, these people are passing away and nobody's, some people are not getting to tell their story, so I wanted to do that through this medium, you know. So tell me, I didn't. I was reading your bio and I said some things. I just didn't know. Even before we, before we get to ask cap, he worked with one of my favorite and I'd say top five I wouldn't say 10 most underrated writers and producers. Yeah, kashif, yeah, and like I was a, I'm still got his stuff in my phone, like I'm a massive kashifan, like anything he his albums, stuff he did for the people. Tell me about that. And where you were, did you work with? Um, what hush? Was hush involved with him at that time, or was it?
Speaker 2:uh, he was managed by hush. Okay, here we go. Another serendipitous moment I I left Louise, got a job at Radio City, working in the concert division. This is like my dream job, because I'm being paid to watch shows, to do shows, and I was in the very elite booking department. So you know, it was just I got to see. I saw Prince, I saw Marvin Gaye, I saw Kiss. You know. New.
Speaker 2:Year's Eve, put a joint underneath everybody's seat and went Happy New Year, so some really iconic things. But then my boss at the time got his new employment contract hurried and I went down to pick it up and the envelope was open. So the envelope was open and I read it and I went he's making what and I'm making what. And by this time I'm divorced, I'm a single mother, I'm taking care of my daughter, and I went to him and asked him for a raise and he told me that they wouldn't be able to do it. That was one of my first Malcolm X moments in my in my career, because it was like, if I stand for this, I'm a fall for anything. So I said, well, you know what I got to go, and I already knew that I was going to get unemployment, and then I would just figure it out.
Speaker 2:I walk out of the building my head's down, I get hit by a bicycle, but not like where I'm laid out on the ground, but just tough. And I looked up and it's Kashif and I'm like hey, how you doing? He said how you doing. I said he's like so where are you working? I said well, I was working over there until about an hour ago he said great, I'm looking for an assistant, come work for me. So I was unemployed for about 37 minutes.
Speaker 1:What.
Speaker 2:I can't believe my God. What's the likelihood? Wow, and you talk about? You're right, and I learned so much. We only worked together for a year, but it was the right timing. He had just bought the Jackie Robinson estate and he tore down one of the guest houses and made that into a studio. So I got to see the making of that and the building of that lot of those people's songs, including Lala Cope's famous you Give Good Love. Whitney Houston's first, first hit was written by one of her songwriters and he produced that song.
Speaker 2:And then I also got to go on the road, and that was probably one of my most favorite parts of all of it, because I love to travel. And I got to travel. We did. Unfortunately we didn't go overseas, so it was only domestic. But I got to get on a tour bus and so I learned how to be a road manager and then how to be a tour manager, and at that time I was, like you know, in my twenties and there were no girls that were doing it. So of course, when it came time to pick up the money, you know, the male promoters didn't want to give me the money and that became a thing, and so then I had to bring call some of my gangster friends. Let's be like, okay, but you know, kashif, he created a sound. Yes, you know, like the silvers created a sound, jimmy and titty created a sound, ellie and babyface, teddy riley these are all producers that you could hear and go. I know they did that yep.
Speaker 2:Yep, same thing with Kashif, and for him it was the mini-mog, it was that bass, that, and he also had a piece of equipment that nobody else had called a synclavier, and so what a synclavier is, and it weighed about a thousand pounds because we had to truck it all throughout the country. What you call now stems was really what the Sinclair housed, so his entire show, all the big lush strings and background vocals and everything he pre-recorded onto this piece of equipment called a Sinclair. And so I got to learn a lot. A lot of my technology background comes from just sitting in the studio and watching him do stuff. But rest his soul. Gone too long, gone too soon.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Sidebar. I've always wanted this the movie. What's the movie? The first Halle Berry movie that Andre did.
Speaker 2:Right when she was a dancer.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if you remember that movie, but in that movie Tommy Davidson was the lead and they had money problems and they didn't know what to do and Tommy was like I'm going to go uptown and meet with these guys, the Halloween brothers, these big kind of guys, and they were like street guys. They filmed that scene in Perks actually and, yeah, in Harlem. Because Tommy was from Harlem, A lot of that movie is in Harlem and because time was from Harlem, A lot of that movie is in Harlem. And I always wondered, were those Bo and Charles Huggins inspired? I always wondered. I was like they might be Charles and Bo Huggins inspired. You know, kind of gruff guys, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Sounds about right, so tell me about your going to ASCAP.
Speaker 2:So then, kashif, lets me go. I'm telling you, every time, without a job, I go back to Louise.
Speaker 1:You'll be hit by another bike.
Speaker 2:I go back to Louise and there was something that was very influential in my career and it was called the Black Music Association and it was started by the late great LeBaron Taylor, who was a senior vice president at CBS and then Sony.
Speaker 1:And because of him.
Speaker 2:so many of us became vice presidents and we were paid the way we were supposed to, but LeBaron Taylor, george Ware out of Philadelphia and Kenny Gamble. And so the Black Music Association started in Philly and they would have conferences but they would also have seminars at different record companies. And Louise said, look, you should go and you should volunteer. So I had a job, I was a mom Plus. I was volunteering because she knew Louise is one of those people that she's mama Louise, but she knows that when it's time for you to fly she will kick you out that nest. And you got to figure it out.
Speaker 2:So she was basically kicking me out of the nest and saying you need a real job with real benefits, all of that. And I had heard about a position at ASCAP American Society of Composers and Publishers but I didn't think that I was qualified for it. So I kept referring other people for this position, which was that of a membership rep. And then, finally, they came to me and said, well, why don't you apply? And I just hadn't thought about it, and I did, and I got it, and I ended up being the first African-American female membership rep that ASCAP ever had.
Speaker 2:Wow Good time Good, two, three years yeah.
Speaker 1:In a very short synopsis before we're going to go into. You know your run at ASCAP, but please break down very short synopsis what ASCAP does, because I don't know if a lot of people really know what they do.
Speaker 2:Sure. So there are three performing rights societies. Ascap is one which stands for the American Society of Composers, authors and Publishers. There's BMI, which is Broadcast Music Inc. And then there's SESAC, which was a privately owned company. They recently became public. It was a French owned company.
Speaker 2:So anytime that you hear music, artists or who are songwriters and publishers have the right to be paid. And so what pot of money do they get paid out of? It? Is these three societies going and collecting fees from every radio station, tv station, now streaming platform, even to supermarkets or the dentist's office? Any place that you hear music has to acquire a blanket license for the right to play any of the music that any of these three societies hold. So that's ASCAP. Louise primed me a bit in publishing but I didn't know about performing rights, so I had to do a crash course in in in all of that. But to be able to see some of my most favorite songwriters from Stevie Wonder, lionel Richie, quincy Jones, jimmy and Terry they were all ASCAP members and I was privy to seeing their statements and would be like I need to learn how to write a song.
Speaker 1:Crazy money, crazy money Wow.
Speaker 2:That's what they do.
Speaker 1:How long were you at ASCAP?
Speaker 2:I was there for three years.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:To talk about. And again, I'm about to get fired. This time. This time I'm about to get fired. This time I'm about to get fired. This is before. Now they have the urban music or black music, whatever they call it department. It wasn't that.
Speaker 2:There were about four or five membership reps. Members would call it, would go into the bank of secretaries, then they would just sort of like round robin, and so whoever you got is who you got, and I have to tell you this story. I remember coming in from lunch and this is when your messages would be written, and on this pad it said Richard Penniman, and I remember the phone number. It was 213-657-1234. Wow, I'll tell you why I remember the number. Here's a fun fact Every Hyatt around the world's phone number ends in 1-2-3-4. Check it, you'll see.
Speaker 2:I didn't know that 213 is LA and it's a Hyatt Hyatt on Sunset. So who's calling me? From the Hyatt on Sunset? And they had a room number and when I called I said, hi, this is Vivian Scott for Mr Penman. I said, hi, this is Vivian Scott for Mr Penman. He said, girl, I've been waiting for you to call. And I went and then I recognized the voice. It was Little Richard and he was talking about. He said they done stole my money, girl. They helped me get it back. But I mean, it was stories like that and being able to help him and being able to help a lot. There was always money that was unclaimed at ASCAP. So once a year we would get a run and we would. That's how I met Benny Medina. Benny Medina was a songwriter and I didn't know he wasn't the Benny Medina at that time and his name was on the list and I called him Mr Medina.
Speaker 2:We have some money for you. I mean that you. I mean that's why everybody loved me, because I was the woman with the money.
Speaker 1:You was the one getting to the check.
Speaker 2:I was the woman with the money. But Black Music Month I'm sorry it wasn't Black Music Month. Billboard had its top 100 songwriters of the year and for this particular edition, the top three pop songwriters were Stevie Wonder, lionel Richie and Quincy Jones. Black people, wow. But there were no awards at ASCAP. They had the Pop Awards, the Country Awards and the British Awards. There were no awards celebrating Black writers.
Speaker 1:And there were no awards.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. I go to my immediate boss and I said you know, this isn't fair. I'm going to write up a whole proposal. We need to have another award show. And she said it'll never get greenlit. And, as a matter of fact, don't even go to our boss's boss with this, because it's just not going to happen again. Am I going to stand up?
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:So I waited for the songwriter publisher meeting. Asher and Simpson were in that meeting because they were on the board at the time and it was lunchtime and I had all of my stats and everything prepared and I went in and I basically stood on top of the soapbox and I gave every single reason as to why and I remember Nick Ashford just nodding me on like tell them, tell them.
Speaker 2:And I left and I had some boxes in my office because I started to pack, because she told me I was going to get fired. So I had already figured out some hustle I was going to do. But you know, when you, when you get fired, you get unemployment. So between unemployment and whatever I was going to do, I was going to be fine.
Speaker 2:And her boss came in and he said what are you doing? And I said well, I was told that I was going to get fired, so I figured I'd get ahead of the game. And he's like stop. He said we owe you an apology, we just never thought of it. It wasn't that it came up and we said no, we just never thought about it. And that's how the ASCAP Rhythm and Soul Awards, you know, were birthed. And that's over what are they? 35?
Speaker 1:years. Yeah, they do it every year now. It's a big thing. So it's a big thing. So it's a big thing and you started it. I started it, wow. So after ASCAP and starting awards and getting Richard Penniman, little Richard, to check, you went to Polygram, correct.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Polydor, but Polydor.
Speaker 2:I went to Polygram.
Speaker 1:So there was Polydor and there was Polygram, which is now.
Speaker 2:Universal Music. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and I really was not familiar with what A&R was. There was very few women, let alone very few Black women, that were doing it at the time, and I was at an event at a BMI event actually and was approached by a gentleman by the name of Tony Prindat who was director of A&R.
Speaker 1:I remember Tony Prindat. I remember Tony Prindat.
Speaker 2:Working under this is going to take you back, jerome Gasper.
Speaker 1:I don't remember him.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:I don't remember Jerome so.
Speaker 2:Jerome Gasper, Black Music Department. This is when Black Music Departments were mighty and strong and had their own infrastructure and really supported the artists that were signed.
Speaker 1:I tell younger executives that all the time I'm like y'all don't understand. There were black music divisions within all the majors, like I said Polygram, cbs, which is not you know, sony, warner Brothers and so and they were these kind of autonomous things. They had their own budgets. Like I said, they had their own staff, it was like, and they all supported the artists and supported each other like if they needed a job. It's like, oh, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Talk to ray harris they might get something you know like it was that kind of thing and that I missed that because they have no idea how it and that money started moving in a circle which I think became a problem for the powers that be, because it was like the publicity people and the radio people, it was all kind of moving in our infrastructure and then they were like wait a minute, we're giving these dudes too much money. We're making too many stars, but I'm sorry no no, no.
Speaker 2:But I do want to say something about Black Music Department and what made them so special is that we were family, yes, and it was a place where you could go and be nurtured very. You could get your wrist slapped in the family. Anybody outside the family didn't know. We always kept everybody else's secrets or mistakes or faux pas or whatever within the family and that's how we were. You know, we groomed executives and what I thought was with the demise of Black Music Depart departments is that young black executives were not prepared, they were not groomed for what they were going into, so a lot of their tenures was very short. There's a lot of hiring, you're getting a half a million dollars and then 18 months later you're gone.
Speaker 1:Cause you cause you didn't. I remember. I remember not going off a tangent, but I remember when you hired me, one of the first things you told me you called me in the office and I remember you was like you know why a lot of black executives get fired? They don't do their expenses, they use a corporate card and go shopping. And I remember you told me, and I never forgot, that you can't give them any reason to knock you out. But again, those type of conversations don't happen now. Yeah, from a mentor to a younger Black executive, stuff that you wouldn't even think about. How important that is to have your expenses intact. Like you know, you can't. You know so, but anyway we're going to do some dumb shit?
Speaker 2:Cover your ass. I don't want to know about it. Yeah, we all did some dumb shit. That's ass. I don't want to know about it. Yeah, we all did some dumb shit.
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Speaker 1:Was zed Eckstein at Mercury and stuff then, or no Zed.
Speaker 2:Eckstein came after. He came after with Wing Records and then he also became head of black music right when I was leaving to go to Epic. But I didn't know what A&R was and the reason why they hired me was because of my relationship with songwriters. So at that time A&R really was artists and repertoire. So, jeff, you know our job was you sign an artist. Now you got to go find songs. You got to find a producer. You have to be in the studio with them. You've got to talk to marketing, about what the brand is going to look like, even to creative services, to what colors were used. I mean, I really we were very, very hands-on. Unfortunately, I was very blessed to have bosses that allowed me to do that. So I was a real anomaly. There was no women doing this at the time and I signed an artist that was a game changer for me, but not in a way you would think. Her name was Sapphire. Remember there was a genre called Latin hip-hop.
Speaker 1:Yes, I remember her. It was like freestyle kind of stuff, right, freestyle absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and I used to live up on Dykman Street at that time, so I lived in England.
Speaker 2:You was in the heart of it. I was in the heart of the Latin community and there was a record store that I would go to all the time played me this demo of this girl. We end up signing her. I don't know if this happened at Epic, but at Polygram we used to have meetings where the A&R department, marketing department, were in one meeting and it happened maybe twice a year. It was the dreaded P&L meeting and they would put up every single artist and you would see basically how much money you lost.
Speaker 2:The company, like everybody, was in the red, so it was about how bad in the red are you? We were going to be in the red until Sapphire goes up and it's in the black and we hadn't sold that many. But I couldn't really, and she was very high maintenance, it was always wardrobe and makeup and I couldn't understand it. And the general manager, bob Jamesison, at the time he rolled his chair over and he whispered. He said internet and that planted a seed for a future job. That I did and I went wow, I had no idea that there was even territories outside of the US. We were so absorbed in selling records in New York and LA. Atlanta wasn't even on our radar no, not at all.
Speaker 1:Back then, no, no, it was all about New York and LA and the US. We were so absorbed in selling records in New York and LA. Atlanta wasn't even on our radar. No, not at all Back then. No.
Speaker 2:It was all about New York and LA and the South, but not Atlanta.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just the South.
Speaker 2:As a region.
Speaker 1:As a region.
Speaker 2:But there was Europe, there was Asia, there was South America, there was all these places that I never thought of and I got a bonus. Wow, I was the only A&R person that got a bonus, which was really cool. I took everybody out to dinner. I was like I'm keeping the rest of my bonus, but we got. Mr Chow tonight.
Speaker 1:More sugar satay.
Speaker 2:Satay for everybody.
Speaker 1:Everybody Extra sauce.
Speaker 2:So that was really the light bulb that went off and it made me go, wow, think globally, think about artists that are going to sell records not just in the US but outside the US. And you know, I'll say I have a very competitive nature and I had heard that Warner Brothers was about to sign one of my favorite bands, which was Third World. And Third World already had such a base. They were already international stars. I just knew I had to make the right record and at that time Black people weren't listening to reggae. Reggae was very much pop, pop stations.
Speaker 2:Black radio did not play Red audiences white colleges kids Absolutely. So I had to figure out how to blacken third world to go into the market. So they ended up signing with me and the first single we did was a song called forbidden love that featured daddy-o from stessa sonic. As a rapper and radio said, we don't play rap.
Speaker 2:That's how long ago this was wow, yeah that that's not gonna last and you have to give me an edit without the rap on. So like fine, here's the edit without the rap, but the clubs played it okay so we broke the original version in the clubs. We did the radio version on radio and it got played across all the formats and so third world became a hit and I got to spend time in my favorite country, jamaica. You're gonna get to that, you're gonna get that. That's how jamaica, so that's how jamaica comes into.
Speaker 1:All of this was by signing third world wow, was anybody else you signed at polygram before you before you moved on my actually my very very first signing is somebody who you know as an executive.
Speaker 2:His name is Leotis Clyburn.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes, he was an artist, that's right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh wow, and we were ahead of our time. From a sound it was very New Jack City light.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Kind of sound, but that was actually the first person that I signed. But, forgive me, third World, I think, was the most notable one and the one that really changed my entire career, because I was allowed to spend time in their country.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. So after Polygram, you go to let me go on my notes here you go to Sony. I'm making hits and I'm a girl and I'm black, yeah, and you're black, you run a shit and I was cute yeah, and you're a little cutie too. You know what I'm saying? Peace to Ray. So, after this, you go to Sony Well, it was Sony this. You go to Sony well, it was. You go to 550 it was CBS.
Speaker 2:Forgive me, it was CBS when I first got there, I was at BlackRock, okay, okay but you know, I mean, I was in demand and I have to say that one of the most important people in my career there was always this chatter from female executives that you know the men are holding us down the shoulders that I stood on. You know Louise West as a woman, yes, and there are several other women that I would say that about, but the brothers had my back, and one brother in particular was Timmy Regisford.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And Timmy Regisford was doing A&R at at mca, but he was also a dj traveling the world. Timmy and I met at a black music association convention in miami that dick griffey came out on the beach and said to all the black executives there's something called apartheid going on and there's a panel going on and you need to know about us. I need all y'all to get up for these beach chairs.
Speaker 1:So he shamed us and we're all like wet and sandy. He wasn't the type of person that you wanted to say no to I met timmy there and we became really good friends.
Speaker 2:He introduced me to his friend merlin bob, who went on to do um our atlantic, and Elektra, who's also a DJ Yep.
Speaker 2:They're the ones that took me in the studio and we would put up 24 track tapes and they would let me. They would do a track by track and they would say this is the drums, this is the kick, this is the snare, and they would tell me how to build a song. I really knew what the recording process was because of these brothers and whenever I needed you know. What do you think about this song? Or can we remix this into something? I mean, Timmy was really hardcore in it. Timmy was also from the Caribbean. He's from Canada, so when I told him about being in Jamaica and hearing this one voice that was, I just didn't know. I had never heard this sound before. I had never heard a sound system, I had never heard that much bass in my life, and it was Shaba Ranks. Wow, wow.
Speaker 2:And that's how I signed Shaba to Epic and I went to see him in Kingston at Sun Splash, because it's Sunfest now. Sun splash, and it was five o'clock in the morning and I was leaning up against a tree and I was half asleep and all of a sudden I heard this sound and I look up and it's this helicopter. It's five o'clock, so it's between dark and just peaking, maybe a little bit.
Speaker 2:And this helicopter lands and everybody's going crazy and outcomes and runs up onto the stage the darkest man I've ever seen in my life with this outfit on and he jumped up on there and he says I'm dirty, stinking shabba rags. And I was like I don't know what a shabba rags is but, just to see that crowd. And he rocked it until the sun came up and kendall mentor was his attorney at the time and I previously worked for kendall yeah, I needed a job track.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're the inside track and and and that. That's what set the world on fire yeah, I mean I tell people you were you. I mean you were responsible for breaking dance hall in America.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Dance hall always existed. You know, dance hall was to Jamaicans what hip hop was to African Americans, but it was so underground, yes, and there was such a mistrust of me by the Jamaican community that I was going to change their Shaba. So my biggest, my first hurdle was trying to convince them that I was not going to do that. And it was very calculated. Shaba's release was a very, very strategic, calculated journey between radio A&R, marketing, creative touring. I mean we really all went into that 20th floor conference room with Tommy Mottola sitting at the head and we figured it out. And two Grammys later it was figured out.
Speaker 1:You really did figure it out. Yeah, you broke it. I mean, they had Super Cat upstairs and he did well too. Oh, he did great, he did great.
Speaker 2:I had Oprah. I knew Mosey. These were all Columbia acts. Yep Waller Girl, yeah. Catra. All signed by a Jamaican woman, maxine Stowe. And you know what I was talking to? Lisa Cortez. Lisa was at Island at the time when she signed Booju and while I was talking to Lisa I said you know, we need to do a documentary called the Women Behind the Dance, and the reason why I want to call it that is that every major dance hall artist that was signed to a major label was signed by a woman.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that. That's right. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Actually not black. Chrissy Barber too. Women, wow. So we're the women behind the dance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember. So when I was at Jive we had a, I went down to Jamaica to work with Steely and Cleavey. Yeah, I bought chip food for the food stickers there and we did some records. We had a good time. I still I still say to this day I believe they took us to the same place where they filmed the club scene in belly. I think that was the place I was like. I think that it was amazing. Um, but I tell people how I went, when I went with chip and you know still including, we had a great time and they treated us great and everything.
Speaker 1:But then when I was working with you, you took me down there I don't know if you remember this. You took me to Jamaica. Yeah, you took me to Jamaica and we went. We were in Jamaica with still in Cleveland. We were downtown and when I was with you, I was uptown and we went to this nice lady's house. I remember we had food at this really nice lady's house.
Speaker 1:We went to Tufkong. We went to Tufkong and we met with Sly and Robbie. We met with Sly and Robbie. I was just like this is Bob Marley's spot and I'm going to be talking to Sly and Robbie. Sly was way more talkative and Robbie was quiet. Bobby didn't say anything. But then I remember I started talking to him because I was talking to him about Grace Jones and I was like, tell me your bass lines on like. And he started talking back to me and I remember when we left you looked at me. You was like, how did you do that? How did you get Robbie to talk? I didn't know, I didn't know he didn't talk. We had me and Robbie had a really good conversation that day.
Speaker 2:We started really opening up See, this is people on iPhones, so we don't have any captures of this. It's it's all here and here.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's all in your head and in your heart. Yeah, and there was no distractions, like sick of no phone. So you just or let me check my texts, or whatever. So before we move forward, tell me a little about your. Give me a crazy story, if you can. You know, without incriminating anybody, about working at Epic With whatever artist or whatever situation, again, without getting nobody in trouble.
Speaker 2:I have one, okay, I mean, the reason why I was able to have full autonomy in a genre that nobody understood was because of my boss, hank Caldwell.
Speaker 1:Another Don.
Speaker 2:The Don Dada right. And Hank said I signed Shper for $175,000. In Jamaica in the newspapers it had it that he was signed for millions of dollars, which in Jamaican dollars it was. And I remember Hank saying baby, I'm going to give you $75,000. I don't even know what he's saying. I don't even know what he's saying.
Speaker 1:I can hear Hank saying that too.
Speaker 2:I gave you the PG version of what he said. He gave me full reign and he empowered me with every one of those departments. You know, before I tell you the crazy story, the reason why I say that is that when you look at Shabba's first album, it was called as raw as ever. And I went down to the creative department and they had all of the photos from the photo shoot and I said it's that one. And it was the photo of him where he's looking down, his nose is flared and he has a chain that's sort of flipped, that they wanted to airbrush it flat. And I said I want all of the imperfections.
Speaker 2:The name of the album is called as Was Ever. I have to convince his bass that he has not changed. I can't have him. Hi, I'm Shower Ranks. So it was because of Hank telling all the heads of the departments you got to let her lead on this. If she's going to fall, she's going to fall, but if she wins, she wins. But my crazy story is that I signed a very young dance hall artist named Little Vicious, and Vicious was 13 when.
Speaker 2:I signed him and he was brought to me by a man who ran a production company and Vicious was signed to his production company.
Speaker 2:So, naturally, you're supposed to sign the production company and they're the furnishing company for the artist. But I'm looking at the dynamic and realizing he's going to take all this little boy's money. So I went to court in order to do the deal directly with Vicious and Vicious' mom, and all the money was put in trust until he was 18 years old, which is why Vicious ended up having money when he turned 18. Well, unfortunately, the head of the production company did not appreciate that I did that and he sent a message saying that he was basically going to kill me. Well, he didn't know who I knew and who I knew was the late great Don.
Speaker 2:Taylor and who I knew was the late great Don Taylor. Don Taylor managed Bob Marley. Don Taylor was a gangster living in Kingston and Don I made one phone call and there's a guy, a very well-known Jamaican, who went and visited Donovan at his house and when Donovan opened the door he had a gun to his head and he said and he started naming off all of Donovan's kids' names and he said if a hair is off her head, we're going to start with the oldest and work our way to the youngest. They're all going to go. Don't do it and he didn't. I'm still here and the rest is history.
Speaker 1:See, that's music business. That was music business, that was music shit. You know, I'm saying wow, wow. I remember the first time I heard little vicious, I was living in harlem and they were pleased to play. Yeah, he's avengers out on 125th and I thought he was a girl. That was dope. And it took me like a while to figure out that was a little boy because his voice is so high. When he was young, you know, yeah, yeah, that record was dope. Yeah, he was dope, that guy brought us Freaks. Yeah, freaks, yep.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but the first week of Vicious' album release he got shot and we lied and said that he was playing with a gun and it went off. But actually he was, you know, a kid from Bed-Stuy that was doing stuff and being in situations he shouldn't have been in, yeah. So now his leg is all messed up. I have to do a video. The first single was called the Glock, so we did PSAs for anti-gun violence because I had to flip the story around. And then we did a song and I'm skipping around, but here's another interesting story. We did a song called Nika, produced by Clark Kent.
Speaker 1:God bless him.
Speaker 2:And Clark brought me the song and it was using a sample that I love. I took it to Puff because I really appreciated his opinion. And. I said what do you think of this? He's like it's all right. And I said what do you think of this? And he was like it's all right. And I said, okay, well, I'm going to put it out anyway because I really love it. And the sample was the Isley Brothers' Between the Sheets. And three months before we released our record, puff released. Biggie Smalls using my sample.
Speaker 1:God bless you, dude. Before we move to the time zone, I want to talk about George Clinton. Yeah, who you signed, and you know, just do you talk? It's your story. You tell me about signing him and everything.
Speaker 2:You say George and I automatically soften. You know, I met George when I was 14 and he was doing a show at Radio City Music Hall and the tour bus was parked in front of the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway and I was walking and saw on the top it said mothership. And I knocked on the door and the door opened and all the smoke started coming out and I said, excuse me, what's a mothership? And so one of the band members is like you know, I'm 14.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I'm looking like I'm 21.
Speaker 1:A little young hottie, I would get this.
Speaker 2:And he's like and I was with my best friend at the time he said well, come on in and we'll tell you what a mothership is. And emerges George. And he's got that voice. He goes, hold him, and I said I'm 14. And he looked at all of them. He said jailbait. I had never heard of that term before in my life. And so, george, basically he came off the bus, he told me what a mothership was. He said we're doing a show at Radio City, if you really want to come. And I was like, oh, I really really want to be in the music business and I want to do shows. And he says, well, then you show me, you show up. He said we have something called load in. It's at 8 AM. I will leave, make sure your name's at the door and if you show up you'll be able to see how we put our show on, and then there's something called load out and you can stay for that and that. So that was the first concert that I saw, from the beginning to the end. And then George and I you know I'm 14. He has no reason to have me in his life. So we parted.
Speaker 2:I don't remember how we got back together, but it was 1996. George decided he wanted to make another record. I was then heading up the urban music department for 550 Music. We signed him. George was in his 50s, later 50s, and we decided we were going to fly a mothership again. So we did a record called the Awesome Power of a Fully Operational Mothership. It's a long title. We shortened it to Tiapafoam and flew a mothership in Central Park and it was the first time that he, bootsy and Bernie had performed together in 20 years and unfortunately it ended up being the last time that they would all perform together. They would all perform together. But here again it's those minor ninth and 11 chords that George and his music use that remind me of the same feeling of when I'm in church, and so I've been a fan, I've been a friend, I am consider myself family with him.
Speaker 1:I got him as.
Speaker 2:Hollywood Walk of Fame star. Last January, he and I I produced a Audible original for him called and your Ass Will Follow, and we were nominated for a Grammy. We lost to President Carter, which okay. If I lose anybody, we lose to President Carter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's George sitting and talking about things that not the goofable things you know, just stories that just make you go, just show you how incredible he is. He's going to be 84 this year and in June he gets inducted into the Songwriter Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1:Deserved.
Speaker 2:And next year makes the 50th landing of the Mothership. So we about to soup that girl up again, wow, wow, a deserved I'm excited about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm glad that every time I see him on TV I'm just glad to see him and he seems very lucid and looking well and healthy and people bowing down to him as they should, as they should. As they should. Yeah, this guy's been around forever and launched so many careers. Yep, tell me about Time Zone. So again, I got hit by a bike and then I ran into George Clinton.
Speaker 2:My life has all been so divinely orchestrated it really has and my husband, ray chu, the amazing music director, musician, producer that he is. We knew each other for many, many years but it was always very casual and there was a simple meeting in my office and it was like literally I know this sounds really corny, but like I saw, it was almost like Cupid's arrow for real Like.
Speaker 2:I saw him in a way I had never seen it before and it happened so fast, like we had a meeting in December and we were engaged in March and married the following September. So everything moved really quickly.
Speaker 2:So, we had just gotten married and it was Ray who identified that I had really burned out. I just was not having fun going to work anymore. By this time. I'm in my late thirties, excuse me, and for an A&R person you should be in your twenties. You should be out there hanging out. And then there was this thing that came out called West Coast Hip Hop and at that time, which I loved because it used so much forgive me so much of the same musicality as George you know that whole G-funk and they used a lot of his samples and stuff.
Speaker 2:But they talked about women really badly they did, and it was just really difficult for me to justify going home to my then teenage daughter. Look what mommy did at work. I've been called a bitch and a hoe, so I had to really make a decision. Ray saw that I wasn't loving it anymore and he just said just don't do it anymore. Now you know, those Sony contracts were cute.
Speaker 1:Back then they were.
Speaker 2:So how do I walk away from this? Again, my new boss was my former attorney, Ron Sweeney, and Ron Sweeney came on to run Black Music after Lamont Bowles and I use that loosely but Ron basically set me up and said look, I can make it work where I can let you go, which means that you'll get the rest of your contract money, Because if you leave I can't get you a dime. And so that's how that was orchestrated. So I left with about a year and a half's worth of money and said what is it that I love? What do I love to do? Well, I love music and I love to travel, and I was on the highway picking up a friend of mine and there was a billboard at the airport and it was for Continental Airways. That's how long ago that was.
Speaker 2:And the tagline said whatever time zone you're in, we're there with you, and the word time zone jumped out and I went I wonder if I could sell music overseas. That takes me back to Sapphire, because I know that there's a market and I remember sitting in those epic meetings saying why don't we have an international release on Shabba? And being told that Black music doesn't sell overseas, with his manager and booking shows overseas, and then making these palm cards that said as raw as ever in store now, knowing that they were not in any stores outside of America. So, just like clockwork, somebody would go to the show, they'd go to the shop next day to get it nothing.
Speaker 1:Tommy Mottola's phone is ringing on the hook. Yeah, I'm in London. I can't get this album.
Speaker 2:And we finally released an international version. So international has always been on my radar and so I told Ray I'm going to start my own company. I have no idea what I'm doing. I had a Rolodex, I had a word processor. There was no internet and I had a phone. And I had a dream and I was reading Billboard one day and saw that there was this young man by the name of Saul Guy who had become director of international at Arister and I wrote him a note with my business card in it and saying that I really wanted to meet with him and I did. And he had just put together the Bad Boy International Tour and he knew who the players were around the world to help break Black music overseas, to help break Black music overseas. So we partnered together and I put together my own street teams outside the US, primarily in Europe. We did Europe, we did South Africa, we did Australia. We didn't do much in South America. That's how Time Zone was born and that was in 1998 and it lasted until the pandemic when-.
Speaker 1:When everything fell apart, you know.
Speaker 2:but yeah, but that was. I mean being an entrepreneur, which mean being an entrepreneur which I call being an entrepreneur Negro ain't for the faint of heart.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Not for the faint of heart. And I went the first 13 months without a paycheck and it was that. Now it was December of 2000. And I said, if I can't crack something I'm going to have to go back and get a job. And my good friend Kedar Massenburg gave me a shot and he gave me his artist A+. And again, that was a gift from God, because A-plus sold zero records in America, but because he had a sample of Beethoven's Fifth in the song. It was a very pop record and he was like would went overseas with him, girls were running after him like he was in the Beatles. It was the most insane thing I had ever experienced and so that was my first hit. So now I got a story.
Speaker 2:And then banging on record companies saying, yes, just release a little bit of money. And then I really had to go to artist managers and say you're going to have to break your own careers, you're going to have to invest in it on yourself until the record companies pick up. And then the record companies finally saw there is a value, because it's our culture that's being sold.
Speaker 2:It's about how we move, it's how we dress, it's how we dance, it's how we, everything that was being bought outside of America where Americans didn't really see that for a long time. And I came in right at the right time. I came at the height of Neo Soul, so my clients were Jill Scott and Indie Irie and Music Soul, child and Kim and like all the artists that could tour, A lot of touring.
Speaker 2:in addition to doing marketing and promoting, there were things called. You know we did licensing deals then, so I could take your US record and resell it all throughout the world and pick up different pockets of money, and so you know it was a really, really good time. So time zone is always in my heart.
Speaker 1:And tell me about what's going on with you right now.
Speaker 2:Right now I am doing something that I said I would never do, which is work with my husband, but we started Show Entertainment. That's been about 20 years, and so I'm a show producer and we do all the way up to Carnegie Hall.
Speaker 1:You know you guys are doing well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we are, we're doing really well. And then, of course, ray is music director for Dancing with the Stars and the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. And through the course of all of this, we realized how blessed we were you know, and too much is given.
Speaker 2:Much is expected, and we started our foundation Power to Inspire in 2013. And it is to support young people who aspire to be in the music industry, either as a music creator, singer, songwriter, musician, producer or behind the scenes. And Ray and I are sitting at our place in LA, a pandemic comes, we're shut down. I literally have nothing to do. I could not bake one more banana bread. It was like I gotta do something. Another netflix show what can I do?
Speaker 1:yeah, in young people.
Speaker 2:And then george floyd was killed and that's what gave me the idea. So power to inspire is open to any young person who wants to be in the music industry, ages 18 to 26.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:But our summer internship mentorship program, which was birthed in the middle of the pandemic, I made purely for Black and Brown youth. Okay, so this summer makes our sixth summer doing it. It's a virtual program. We keep it virtual because not only do I get kids in major cities, but I get kids from Tulsa, oklahoma.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I also get mentors from Berlin and Paris.
Speaker 1:And so yeah, tulsa, oklahoma, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:Also mentors from Berlin and Paris, yeah so, and we've got some really great success stories of these young people, and we don't only pour into them as far as what they want as their careers, but also just as young people. You know, 2020 was a scary time being black in America. It's a scary time being black in America now. Being Black in America it's a scary time being Black in America now, but it was really scary after George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and these young kids were like my grandmother just died of COVID and I can't go outside, and you know. So we really gave them a safe place and a term that Ray likes to use a lot is called access and opportunity. So we've been able to employ them.
Speaker 2:Our foundation coordinator and branding person is one of our 2020 alumni. She went to Berkeley. And branding person is one of our 2020 alumni. She went to Berkeley. We've got. When we did our Night of Inspiration show at Carnegie Hall this last time, we featured a segment about power to inspire musicians and singers, but we also had behind the scenes them working with us. We have a studio in Englewood, new Jersey, called RVMK, which is we keep open 24 seven to any of our young people that want to come in and learn to use it.
Speaker 2:The thing I'm really excited about. We have a couple of new things we're going to do this year, but the thing I'm excited about is something called power to inspire to go, and what that is is during the pandemic, ray couldn't work because he does TV and it was all shut down and he had to figure out how could he get back in the ballroom dancing with the stars.
Speaker 2:So he bought a trailer brand new RV trailer, gutted it out, took the kitchen out, took the bathroom out, made it into a full production trailer, two separate entrances. So it was COVID safe and that's where he drove up to CBS studios, they plugged him in and that's where he did his shows. But that trailer, which he still does it from there, that trailer is dormant for nine months of the year. So I am going to be using that trailer it's in L and we are working right now on funding and any ideas that anybody can give me to help me with this and we're going to pull up in unserved communities in LA and tell these kids come book time with us communities in LA and tell these kids come book time with us. We're going to teach you how to record it right. You're going to walk away with these slides. It's going to be on Spotify by the time you get home, and so that's a power to inspire to go with.
Speaker 1:That's a great idea. And kids they're going to go crazy over that. I think so Crazy, like some kid in East LA or Compton or wherever we don't have that access. They're going to go crazy over that. That's a great idea. That's a great idea and we're not going to charge them.
Speaker 2:you know Again, you know we've been I mean you hear me talking about from the very beginning of my career and I'm still here and I'm still excited and I get up every day excited about what I'm going to do, because it's all about the music for me. And so to watch these young people. You know they call me Aunt Viv or Miss Viv, or you know they can't call me Vivian, I'm not your friend.
Speaker 1:No, exactly, I ain't one of your little friends. Respect, do Exactly.
Speaker 2:But when I look on Instagram and I see that they're releasing their stuff or they're doing a show or that, you know it just really. You know, yeah, I'm proud.
Speaker 1:Yes, I feel weird to say this, but I'm proud of you. Thank, but I'm proud of you, thank you and everything that you're doing. This was a great interview. Yeah, we had fun. I learned a lot. Actually, I learned a lot, even though I say I know you, I learned a lot and I'm sure there's more I could learn. I learned a lot. People are going to love this.
Speaker 2:Thank you, darling. I appreciate you. Thank you for giving me a voice.
Speaker 1:Of course. So what I do is I have I'm going to do this do these separately, because I'm going to kind of pose like a little, a short thing as long as well as your interview. It's going to be a short thing where I ask these questions as I nominate our person. So are you ready?
Speaker 2:I hope so. Do I have to answer it or do I have to repeat it?
Speaker 1:So no, no, no, no, you don't have to repeat. So give me an artist that you wanted to sign, but you couldn't.
Speaker 2:D'Angelo.
Speaker 1:Give me the story behind that.
Speaker 2:The person over me. We got outbid, we got outbid, but D'Angelo went exactly where D'Angelo needed to go, because his A&R guy was Gary Harris.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And you could not have found a better music man. No way, harris. So yeah, but but d'angelo.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's, that's a good one. Give me three of your favorite artists, and why of any genre, doesn't matter. You know, old nude doesn't matter george clinton number one.
Speaker 2:George clinton number one because he makes me feel, absolutely. He's been making me feel for decades okay it's a genre, it's not an. I'm a big yacht rock girl Like people don't know, did you watch a documentary?
Speaker 2:Yes, I did so. I'm a. I'm a. Doobie Brothers, steely Dan. Kenny Loggins I cried at the Kenny Loggins this is it Last concert Like don't go. I have to say it definitely is a genre. Okay, I have to say it definitely is a genre. Okay. Louis Vega Louis Vega is one of the most incredibly talented people. I think people really make him small just as a DJ, but he is the most amazing producer and now live artist. So for two summers in a row, I went and hung out with him and his wife and Ibiza, just to dance. Wow. So yeah, those would row. I went and hung out with him and his wife in.
Speaker 2:Ibiza just to dance, Wow, Summer. So yeah, those would be. One has to be a genre because I live in. Yahuas.
Speaker 1:I wasn't expecting Louis, but he definitely deserves. I just wasn't expecting him. Okay, give me three of your favorite producers.
Speaker 2:Well, I got to go back to Louis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess two, because Louis is one.
Speaker 2:You don't get better than jam and lewis. I mean their body of work, from yolanda adams to janet jackson, just and all of the pop acts. I mean they were also one of the first black producers that were producing pop acts and having hits and consummate gentlemen. I met them when I was atCAP and I was signing up everybody in Minneapolis and I mean they were then exactly the same people that they are today. So I just think that they're amazing Producers. Wow. I don't want to take the easy route and say Ellie and Babyface, that's very obvious. I'll say Teddy Riley, I really will. I would say Teddy Riley because, again, these are all people that had a sound, you know, and not only with Teddy. With Teddy came not only the music, but then you know the little haircuts and the clothes and the dance All of that.
Speaker 2:So it became. You know, he really ushered us as a culture into something else.
Speaker 1:He did.
Speaker 2:Oh, and Timberland, I'm sorry. Ok, ok, absolutely OK, absolutely Timberland OK.
Speaker 1:OK, and last question, I'll say three, but if you can't think of three, it's fine. Give me three of your favorite concerts over the years that you've seen shows.
Speaker 2:Sly.
Speaker 1:Stone getting married at Madison Square Garden.
Speaker 2:If you watch that? I was there. I was wild at 14. 14 was a year. Yeah, I mean we had no idea that Sly was getting married and I was like third row seats on the end and you see these women come out in these gold lamé dresses with these, and it was just, and I'm sure I was tripping on some kind of illicit drug at that point of my life. So I mean, it was just that, that definitely Concerts there's.
Speaker 2:So I've seen, I've seen Chaka Khan open for Marvin Gaye. I saw Prince did 21 shows at the O2 Arena in London and I went to the 21st show and he had an after party at the little club that's attached to it called the Indigo, and he had an opening act and the curtains opened and it was just this little white girl with this black hair that was all up on top of her head. And after she finished singing, Prince came on and said ladies and gentlemen, Amy Winehouse. Wow, I remember that. Wow, I remember that. So those are some of my that's three good ones, that's three really good ones.
Speaker 1:That's three really good ones. That's three good ones. Okay, that's it we done Okay.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Earth Wind Fire, come on now. There's never an Earth Wind Fire show that comes in town. I travel to go see Earth Wind Fire. They make me happy. It's bad to be in the 70s, it's the 70s moment for me. Thank you for letting me go down memory lane. You made me think of things that I didn't remember.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much, Vivian Scott Chu Thank you sir. For gracing us with your presence.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and you know what Thank you for Mixed and Mastered. There are people like myself who are always behind the scenes. I was never that real out front industry person. I mean, I know my assignment, I know my ministry and it's that of being supportive of people who are in the arts. And it's no coincidence that I'm married to somebody like that and we don't often get to tell our stories, and particularly women. So I really do appreciate this, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, and I'll be calling you to help me get some more people on here, some people that love me too.
Speaker 2:Louise is next.
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it. You can catch Mixed and Mastered on Apple Podcasts, spotify, iheart or wherever you get your podcasts. Hit that follow button, leave a review and tell a friend I'm your host, jeffrey Sledge. Mixed and Mastered is produced and distributed by Merrick Studios.
