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
Joseph Patel
Oscar-winning filmmaker, producer, and journalist Joseph Patel joins Jeffrey Sledge for a deep, honest, and inspiring conversation about music, media, and finding your true voice.
Patel shares his journey from growing up in the Bay Area to becoming a key part of the college radio and underground hip-hop scenes at UC Davis—where he connected with legends like DJ Shadow and Blackalicious. He opens up about his rise through the industry, from early music journalism to producing groundbreaking content at MTV, including the acclaimed My Block series.
Joseph also talks about teaming up with Questlove to create Summer of Soul, the award-winning documentary that unearthed the lost history of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival—and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Now, he's turning his lens toward the next chapter: directing a documentary on the legendary J Dilla.
🎧 This one’s for the culture, the creators, and anyone chasing the real.
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/
Welcome to Mixed and Mastered. Today we have an Oscar-winning filmmaker, joseph Patel. He and Questlove won an Oscar for Summer of Soul and they dropped their new film, sly Lives, on Hulu. He is now working on an upcoming documentary about the hip-hop legend, j Dilla. From music journalist to filmmaker, joseph's career has been nothing short of amazing. This is Mixed and Mastered with Joseph Patel. 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. Mixed and Mastered with my man, joseph Patel. How you doing, bro? I'm good man, good to see you. You too, man. It's been quite a long time. You know. We kind of stay in touch via social media, but we haven't seen each other, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean, I feel like that's a lot of your life right now.
Speaker 1:I think it's a lot of all of our lives right now. Hey, so quick. Do you want me to call you Jazzy Bo or Joseph Patel? Joseph, what do you want? Joseph is fine, all right, I think that's what I've always called you anyway. Actually, yeah, so you were born in the Bay Area Fresno.
Speaker 2:No, I was born in Pennsylvania, but I grew up in the Bay Area. You grew up in the Bay yeah, a town called Fremont.
Speaker 1:Fremont. Excuse me, Now, how far is that from Oakland? Like 15 minutes. Oh, so you're right there in the mix.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it goes like Oakland Hayward.
Speaker 1:Fremont yeah, I've been to Hayward, I've never been to Fremont. I took there's a street in Oakland that takes you all through all of that International. Is it international or just takes you straight down through every time? International and mission. Maybe I think it was international because, yeah, because I think mission yeah, and then 14th does that too, but yeah, yeah, yeah so tell me about growing up in the bay oh man.
Speaker 2:So I landed in the bay when I was like five and you know fremont is this like suburban town. It was very immigrant heavy. You're starting to get very immigrant heavy. When my family moved there and you know the thing about the Bay is that it's very diverse. So, like my, you know school experiences are being in a classroom with black, white, cambodian, vietnamese. You know Filipino, big Filipino population. All the best looking girls in high school were Filipino. And you know, at the big Filipino population, uh, all the best looking girls in high school were Filipino. And you know, at the same time, it's it the parts of the Bay are also very segregated too, but nine times out of 10, you're in a situation where you're just with other people of color. You know it was. It was a interesting, boring. You know suburban childhood Like, but a couple of things like really, you know I had really music, was the thing that? That was my sort of gateway out of there.
Speaker 1:So let me, let me. Let me tell you one quick thing. When I when I spent a lot of time in Oakland years ago, but there was a time when I was out there a lot and in San, I always stayed in San Francisco and it was always get on my back Like why, are you staying in the city? Why are you staying in Oakland? I'm like.
Speaker 1:I don't want to stay in the city, but anyway, the one thing I noticed about Oakland I wonder if I'm saying, say, I wonder if Fremont was the same way. If you met somebody from Oakland, like you said, matter white, black, but they always said I'm from oakland, oakland was like the first. They didn't say I'm like black from oakland, or I'm green or I'm filipino. It was like oakland was the common denominator for everybody or even more specific, west oakland or east oakland.
Speaker 2:Right, like everyone I ever met from oakland specified I'm from west oakland, I'm from east oakland, um fremont, wasn't that? Fremont's not as cool as oak Fremont? Like you know, when you're from Fremont you say you're from the Bay. You're not really trying to say you're from. Fremont.
Speaker 2:But what's funny is, like you know, music for me was like the way I was able to learn about the world Right, so I was like a goth skate kid in high school where you know I liked. I liked Bauhaus and Susie and the Banshees and the Cure and New Order, as much as I liked Public Enemy and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and you know it was like it just was a weird mix like that.
Speaker 2:And a lot of that was from you know, there's two people in my life that I met where it just like opened me up to a different world. Too short was real big, like we used to play street football and street baseball in the little cul-de-sac. I grew up in listening to too short and run DMC and like you know so it was just like music everywhere and that was sort of like the thing that saved me, I think, from like a boring suburban life.
Speaker 1:Real quick before we move to the next thing. Give me your Bay Area Mount Rushmore, since everybody Mount Rushmore is kind of a big thing. Now Give me a Bay Area Mount Rushmore. I'm not playing the Mount Rushmore game, okay.
Speaker 2:I'll give you my, I'll give you my like, I'll give you like top. I mean it's funny Cause it's different now than it was then for me. Right, like, definitely. I mean short is definitely on there. Sly, slide stone. Right, we have the new documentary by Sly he's, he's, he's in, he's in the top five. Let's see who else you'd. I've never been a huge Santana fan. I don't know, man, that's a tough question.
Speaker 1:All right, I'll leave. It All right, I'll leave it Lil B.
Speaker 2:Lil B's got to be on there. E-40.
Speaker 1:E-40. Yeah, dj.
Speaker 2:Shadow. I put DJ Shadow on there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, there's Letitia Cole.
Speaker 2:There's Rafael Sadiq. I mean probably top five.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, the Bay has put out a lot of talent. So you went to Cal Davis, uc Davis yeah, davis, tell me about that, and I know that's where you kind of tapped into the college radio thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's funny. After the Oscars a couple years ago, I got an email from the chancellor of UC Davis, really Gary May, and he was like you know, chancellor, would like to invite you to be the first guest for the upcoming school year's chancellor conversations. Wow.
Speaker 2:I did not really love my experience, my academic experience at UC Davis. I was a econ major with an English minor and you know I don't remember learning anything Like honestly, and you know I don't remember learning anything Like honestly. I learned more about life than I did about like academics. Right, yes, but you know I really started getting into college radio when I was in high school because, living in Fremont, we had KZSU and Stanford you could get, and KFJC and the Los Altos Hills and KSJC and San Jose and Calix and Berkeley.
Speaker 1:Calix, I remember that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all those stations, depending on which part of the Bay you were in you could get, and so I was really listening to college radio a lot. So when I got to Davis, first thing I did I started listening to college radio and I heard two shows. One was from Jeff Chang, dj Zen, and the other was from a woman. I forget her real name, but her radio name was Voodoo Child, and those two shows just rocked my world Like they were just incredible. A lot of hip hop but a lot of like. Voodoo Child used to play a lot of like I was really into like Funkadelic and stuff like that, and so she used to play a lot of that. And so I went down to the station one day when Jeff had his show and I got to meet him. He ends up becoming my mentor. He just was like, takes me in, right, and we would come by the radio station.
Speaker 2:Now who else was at the radio station was DJ Shadow, who lived in Davis, josh Davis, and then Chief XL and Lyrics Born Chief XL from Blackalicious. Lyrics Born Tom Shmura. At the time he was Asia born, okay, and we were just like at the radio station all the time and I was not a rapper, I was not a DJ. I was writing for magazines at the time. Okay.
Speaker 2:And really just my friends zines. Jeff was writing for magazines, real magazines.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I told him I wanted to do what he did and so he sort of like, showed me the ropes. And you know, there was some hip hop magazines being born around that time, early, early 90s, right like the bomb hip-hop magazine flavor out of seattle. So I started writing. I started when I started hanging out with jeff at his radio show and got to meet all these other people. But jeff, you know, he's just such a, such a generous spirit, so like he's, he's not a gatekeeper. Jeff chan is not a gatekeeper. He's like oh, you want to do this here. Let me show you how this works yeah, he's very free with the information yeah, so sorry, I gotta turn my phone down, all right.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I just started hanging out the station and I ended up getting a show and you know there was not a lot of hip-hop shows on college radio at the time, and so it was jeff. And then I started doing one chief excel, started doing one um, and I loved it.
Speaker 1:It was great yeah, it was a good time. That's when I was doing a promotion. I would come to the bay a lot because we had a I worked a job, we had a lot of acts out there, but also it was a big you said college radio scene out there and then the gavin convention and all that stuff. So it was a great chance to go out there and meet people and go around and see how how it worked. You know it was. You know it's obviously very much different now, but that was. That was a good scene, you know. And going to leopold's and you know what I'm saying, and all that stuff, man, yeah, that was still some good times times.
Speaker 2:So I would say the crew that I ended up meeting. We ended up forming a rap crew, a hip-hop crew. Okay, soul Sides. Okay, that was DJ Shadow. Blackalicious Lyrics Born. We had a guy named Benj that was down with the crew. He unfortunately passed away. A few years later. Gab moved up from Pacoima to join Chief Excel. That was Blackalicious. Years later, gab moved up from pacoima to join chief excel. That was blackalicious. A year after we started soul sides, latif the truth speaker came, came and was part of part of uc davis. So he joined our crew and we would congregate around my radio show and you know they would freestyle and we started pressing.
Speaker 2:We you know jeff shadow was doing mixes for funk and klein at the time yeah, basic dave yeah, and you know I was writing for the bomb hip-hop magazine and we were going to the gavin convention. It was like really starting to like feel like I was a part of something also want to shout out benny b.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's my. You know, I've told that guy forever. But man, that was my guy. I miss that guy forever. Man, that was my guy. I miss that guy so much. Yeah, you should reach out to him I will.
Speaker 2:I haven't talked to him in years, but Benny was instrumental in creating this thing called the Bay Area Hip Hop Coalition, yep, and what he did was he took all the radio. You know, like I said, every college radio station had at least one hip hop show. I'm sorry, I'm like I've been talking all day, my voice is going, it's all right. And Benny, he's like we should all form basically a coalition where we all report the same records and we chart individually, but we chart the same records. And what he was trying to do is basically leverage all the disparate stations around the Bay Area into one voting block. So what it did was it meant you have to bring your artists to the Bay, you have to give drops to all the stations, you have to fuck with us, basically.
Speaker 2:And for someone who had a new show on the radio and was getting drops from De La Soul and Tribe and Leaders in the New School, all my favorite groups, it was incredible, excuse me. And then during Gavin Convention, bay Area Hip Hop Coalition would throw shows. And you know, I remember one show we did at the Longshoreman's Hall and it was like Pete Rock and Seal, smooth and Main Source and Naughty by Nature and you know it was just incredible. And so you know, my experience at college was really, really about like the radio station and starting this label and writing for magazines and being a part of something bigger. And it was through music and through hip hop specifically that I felt like I belonged to something.
Speaker 1:So that's when you got immersed into the hip hop culture fully. Yeah, and it was.
Speaker 2:You know it was it was I don't. You know how do I, how do I describe it? It was like you know you, you, you, you come, you come to UC Davis as a freshman. You don't know anybody, and then, a year later, you're part of a crew, Like, crew, like. It just felt good. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:So and really, the writing took off because Jeff was encouraging me to write Dave Paul, let me write for the Bomb Hip Hop Magazine. I did a couple of interviews and I was like I fell in love with it. I was like, oh my God, this is incredible. I get to interview my favorite artists and talk about the creative process.
Speaker 2:Now, the early years was me really pretending to be something? I wasn't right. I was writing funny. I was like adopting an accent, like you know, a hip-hop accent, and it's just like within, like the first time I saw I think it was my first piece I saw and I was just like, oh, this isn't me, you know. It was really, really, really evident to me. I felt embarrassed and I was like, okay, let me, I can do this, still be engaged and not have to be inauthentic. Yeah, you found your voice and if I started to find my voice but realized it had to start from a place where I wasn't pretending to be like a hip-hop kid, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And so it was, um, it was cool, and and the hustle I had was I was writing for magazines and, because of Jeff's encouragement, I was writing for bigger and bigger magazines and more magazines.
Speaker 2:Because I was writing for magazines, I get advances of albums three months in advance and I played on my radio show, whereas radio got their advances maybe a couple of weeks before they'd get the single early, but they wouldn't get the album early. And so I was like, you know, I, I wrote the bio for midnight marauders, so yeah, and so I got the advance, like at the beginning of summer, wow, and I listened to that album all summer during my internship. I had a one hour commute each way and I did a couple of radio shows that summer at Davis and I played like album cuts that no one had ever heard yet and it was like, and it's like I was like no one in New York is going to hear this stuff. So my, my, my listeners and I had a little you know, cool, little loyal following on the air, but like like they got some treats.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I remember those days of getting records early and I'll leave them unnamed because I don't know if the staturations or limitations went out. I had a couple plugs at the source and I would get stuff early. I remember and I lost all that stuff in, but I had the Chronic early. Oh yeah, wow. I remember going to the barbershop in Harlem and listening to the Chronic on my headphones and letting people skip me Like, no, you go ahead. Because I was so enraptured by the album. I kept listening to it over and over. I let three or four people skip the line and jump in front of me because I was locked in. You know, those were good times.
Speaker 2:Yeah line to jump in front of me because I was locked in. You know those were good times. Yeah, man, I had ilmatic early. Wow, I had a. I had a dub of ilmatic from what was the publicist name at sony at the time?
Speaker 2:I think his name was miguel miguel yeah, miguel gave me an advance of ilmatic. I forget who I reviewed it for, or I interviewed naz for somebody, and I remember we made a trip to la in 94, early 94, and listen to that. That's the only record we listened to on a seven hour drive over and over again.
Speaker 2:It was incredible Cause you know, at the time everyone was like you'll Maddie, go Maddie. You know it was such a highly anticipated album and it delivered really. Yeah, it's an album that met the hype and I remember we listened to that let's listen to that like 10 times on the drive down.
Speaker 1:I had Faith on the show last week, so I'll let her know that's cool. So tell me about the move from the Bay to New York.
Speaker 2:So after I got out of college as a child of immigrant parents, they could not wrap their head around the idea that I was going to be working at a record label where I wasn't making any money. Yeah, they're going to be.
Speaker 1:You're poor, you're going to be in the streets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and really they just didn't have the way to grasp that and honestly, they were right, Right, they were correct. I got left soul sides really got kicked out because I was just really torn between, like, my obligations there and my obligations to my career as my parents idea of a career, and I just dropped the ball on on the bunch of stuff and and they were just like listen, it can't be like this and so you have to choose. And I was like I can't stay at this label, like I can't do it.
Speaker 1:And so.
Speaker 2:I took a job in Silicon Valley. I worked for Elon Musk actually Really For a year. Did you meet him back then? Yeah, we used to have weekly meetings with him.
Speaker 1:He had a company called Zip. Wow, how was he back then?
Speaker 2:Oh, like, like uh, like a mute, like it was his. So we, we, I work a little more specifically. I worked for a pr company that had their only client was this company called zip2 and specifically we repped kimball and elon musk. Kimball is his brother, who's the ceo, and elon was like the genius tech child, cto of the company and zip2ip2 did maps like Google Maps, but before Google Maps, and he would not speak in the room. He was weird, weird, weird, but didn't speak. Really he was like he wasn't the face of the company and it just was like it's a funny little trivial footnote in my story, but I had this job at this Silicon Valley PR company and it was awful, I hated it and I was writing for magazines and, like you know, by that time I was writing for, I think, the source and double x or double xl wasn't born yet.
Speaker 2:It was like the source and vibe and rap pages and herb magazine, as well as like the regional zines flavor and bomb and one nut, and like I was writing for straight no chaser in the uk and, like you know, it was like incredible to like get records for free, write about music and see it my name in print, right, yeah, yeah, but there's no money in that. And so eventually, a few years later, I ended up uh, one of one of the writers, one of my editors at ray gun magazine left to start, went to work for an internet startup right, this is the first dot com bubble, okay, 99. Company was called CD. Now, and he says I want you to be my hip hop editor at CD. Now, we're based in New York, I'm going to pay you something like $75,000 a year and you're moving. It was great, it was great back then. And you're moving expenses. And I was year, and you're moving, great, great back then. And you're moving expenses and I was like, okay, I'm moving to new york.
Speaker 2:And you know the thing is is, by that time I was flying to new york quite often for stories. Right, my first time in new york as an adult is 90s. I think this might have been when we first met. I got flown out to interview tribe off the beats, rhymes and life record. Okay, I've never been to new york before as an adult. I'm terrified because I'm just like I don't know how to navigate this city. Theola borden, I got put up at the radisson empire hotel. Wow, theola borden was like I'll show you around town. I'm like cool, I don't. I've never ridden the subway before. I don't know how to ride the subway. She's like I'll come get you. Wow, she comes, gets me up at like 72nd and broadway yep, yeah, and then shows me how to use the train.
Speaker 2:We go to the west village. It's like august and we just walk around and I as hundreds of people on the street and it was like I think we must have spent like ten dollars like on food and beverages and just walked around for four hours. I thought was the greatest city in the world. And yeah, I remember tribe came to my hotel because the old is like I'm not sending you anymore, I'm just gonna have them come to your hotel, you and we sat.
Speaker 2:They came to the front desk and asked for me and the people who worked at the hotel were bugging out that Q-Tip was asking for me. And we sat in the park across from the hotel. Yep, the park, yep, and just, I did my interview there with Ali Shahid and Tip. Wow, I still have the tape. I still have the transcripts.
Speaker 1:I just dug it out because you know we're working on this J Dilla documentary and that's the first interview where tip mentions dilla to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because he worked on the beats. Yeah, he mentioned the uma, yeah, you know, and he and I was asking him but what is the uma? And you know, I still I was under the impression that, alishah, he did beats. Yeah, no one really clarified differently, so it was pretty funny yeah, that's amazing.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. So how did you get? Well, how tell me how you got to mtv from that?
Speaker 2:so I was firstcom bubble. I'm working at cd now. Then uh russell launched his uh 360hiphopcom. I remember that it was called rs1w initially and um selwyn hines and sheena lester, who were previous editors of mine at the Source and Rap Pages, recruited me to work with them over there as the hip-hop editor, as the culture editor, and it was like a murderer's row of journalists, right, it was like Sheena Lester, selwyn Hines, chris X, andrea Duncan-Mau, myself, serena Kim, john Caramonicaff, chang dave tompkins all in one spot, like all in one spot and it was like and I did that through 2000, that, and then the bubble burst, and then I was, went back to freelancing and then by 2003 you know, freelancing after 9-11 like freelancing budgets went south.
Speaker 2:yeah, and you know what I used to get paid like a dollar or two dollars a word for a pretty mid-sized magazine was now paying like 50 cents a word. Wow, and that's not enough to pay rent in new york. So I took a job at mtv as a freelancer for a two-week stint. I think I was filling in minya's minya o's old job. She was a producer there. I came in as a writer. Two week stint turned into a two month stint, turned into a permalance job.
Speaker 2:Um, I was pretty humble because I had gone into debt, like while I was freelancing, and I hadn't worked at any place. And so I came into MTV promising myself I would not try to be the smartest person in the room, I would not try to pretend that I had the better taste than everyone that worked there. I would just submit myself to the job until I figured out how it worked and then figure out it was just a different strategy, right, yeah, and so I, for the first six months I worked at MTV. As a writer, I did everything they asked me to do, like Diddy's releasing a perfume or cologne at Macy's. You got to cover the red carpet and interview teenagers. I'm like cool. Right, like you know, britney Spears is, you know, doing some publicity stunt in Times Square. Go cover it. I'm like cool. Cool.
Speaker 2:And you know, I, I was, I basically did it because I was like you know, I need a job, I need bread. Yeah, you need a bread. I need a bread, but also I needed a career path. I needed someplace where I could grow.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And and have something to aim for, to reach for and get it. And then keep doing that. Because, freelancing, I realized there's no mentors, there's no obstacles in front of you. You know how many relationships that I ruined with significant others because, you know, when you freelance, like it doesn't matter if it's a weekend or not, right, it's like doesn't matter what time it is now what time it is. And so, you know, I was really was like looking for a shot. I'm glad I did it.
Speaker 2:I, I think six months in, I realized that I didn't love writing, but I loved storytelling and I was working as a writer at MTV News. I was working a lot with producers there. And so, six months in, I'm like, wait a minute, I pitch the story, do the interviews, I write the script, but someone else is shooting it and their name is on the piece, when it was really your work. And I'm like, okay. So I said, what's the difference? What producing is? You're directing the cameras and and you're shooting. Sometimes I'm like, well, I want to do that and so, sorry, I got noisy neighbors. Can you hear that?
Speaker 1:oh, yeah yeah, yeah, I thought it was thunder actually. No, let's give it one second. I don't like my neighbors new york living so I pitched this story on the roots.
Speaker 2:They were recording their new album in Philly and this is the piece where I basically pitched the story. I interviewed everybody in the group, we shot a bunch of stuff, I did the script, I went into the edit and someone else's name was on it and I was like this isn't right. I want to produce. And my boss actually, he's like well, writers don't become producers. And I said, well, why not? And he's like yeah, I don't know actually, why not. He's like and and my boss at the time, ocean mcadams, he changed my life. He gave me a shot to produce. He's like all right, produce, find a senior producer who can be your training wheels. He's like but I guess you know, if you know how to structure a story, his thinking was, if he, if I knew how to structure a story, it would be easier to teach me how to use a camera than it is someone who knows how to use a camera, how to write a story, story exactly. And I just was like and I you know he was right like yeah I was able to to.
Speaker 2:My first piece was on a brooklyn marching band high school marching band called the brooklyn steppers wow, and it was about the band leader, the teacher. He had this band doing hip hop cover songs which they loved. They loved doing Jay-Z and Biggie songs and in order to remain in the band which the kids loved you had to do your homework and have a certain GPA. But basically what they did was they took these kids in as soon as the final bell rang. They did three hours of homework, mentorship, tutoring and then band practice for two hours and it was churning out kids graduating with good grades and they got to play in the band and they got out of the street, exactly, exactly and so that was my first piece and it everyone loved it and it did well and they okay, we'll do another one.
Speaker 2:And it was just like it went from there.
Speaker 1:So tell me how that? Well, let me just mention, for those of you who might not know, that era of working in MTV that you worked in was so dynamic, I guess is the word I'm looking for. There was so much happening. The hip-hop was blowing up, like really blowing up, you know, becoming pop, actually kind of crossing over, and you had the pop acts too, like, say, like britney and in sync, and blah, blah, blah, and they were selling 10, 50 million albums and mtv awards. Mtv awards were huge and, like mtv was literally the.
Speaker 1:They were the epicenter of, of pop culture, like for real, like yeah bands from england like oasis, and then, like you had to do mtv america to really crack it.
Speaker 2:You know crack it and mtv news. We had kurt loder, sujin bach, giddy niego, john norris, swank halloway who I produced for many years shaheem reed, the 1515 boys, ramon dukes yeah, later jason rodriguez, like it was a. It was a really fun place to be and, you know, news sort of stayed out of the mix of most of that stuff. We mostly operated independently but, like you know, you'd go, you'd go out for lunch in in times square, you'd come back and you'd go up to the 29th floor and you'd be in the elevator with, like gwyneth paltrow and Snoop Dogg and, like you know, or like you know, you'd hop in the elevator and it's like you know, um, oh, there's Mos Def and there's, you know, justin Timberlake and it's just like whatever you know it's just like weird stuff like that and it was just such a surreal place to be.
Speaker 2:But I really, I really loved it because MTV became my grad school. Six months after I produced my first piece, I did five pieces on Houston hip hop for hip hop.
Speaker 1:I want to get to that. I want to get to that.
Speaker 2:And it became my block. Yes so six months after I I do my first piece, I'm directing my first show.
Speaker 1:So tell us. I know what my block was. It was actually one of my favorite shows ever. I guess they don't even have them. You was actually one of my favorite shows ever. I guess they don't even have them. You can't even look at them, no more, right. They're not even on TV. But tell us what my Block was and how it developed.
Speaker 2:So I think my Block was a half-hour documentary show on hip-hop and it focused on. Each episode was on one city or one region which had never been done before. That point and part of that is because my love of like underground hip hop, I knew that there were scenes in all these little cities. But Houston was about to blow up. Right, I had all these like mixtapes. I was a DJ Screw fan, I was a Swish, a House fan.
Speaker 2:I heard this song still tipping, didn't think anything of it because this was when Chameleon Air was still on it, and then I hear this new version with Paul Wall on it and I'm like, oh, this song is popping right. It was on all the mixtapes coming out of Houston at the time. Then I went home to visit my folks in the Bay and I heard two people bumping it and I was like wait a minute, if it's being played here, it's about to be like big. I think KML was playing it. I was like, okay, so I pitched this Houston story, mike Jones was big. And then it's just like we did these series of stories. We did Mike Jones, paul Walk, chameleon Air, slim Thug, we did a whole thing on Slabs and I realized, like even right off that first episode, it was like it's not just about the music, it's about the city and the culture that gives birth to the music. And when you watch multiple episodes our second episode was Memphis, you know, and we got to go around with Three, six Mafia. And so it's a dream for me because I'm directing which I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm directing for television stories about hip-hop, underground hip-hop that is now starting to become big right, and with each subsequent episode I'm like feeling more confident.
Speaker 2:By the time we hit atlanta in 2000 I think it was 2006 I'm like let's do a great day in atlanta, let's get every atlanta hip-hop artist on a stoop and let's shoot a great day in Atlanta. Let's get every Atlanta hip hop artist on a stoop and let's shoot a photograph. And it happened, yeah, and it was like you know shout out Whitney Gilbenta, who you know put in just insane amounts of work to make that happen. But it's like I had this idea that let's recreate this photo and a hundred artists from Atlanta show up on a chilly December morning to like do this photo. And so I love that experience of my block To this day. You know, people still remember that show, like old heads remember that show. I'm really proud of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean for me working at a label where most of our artists weren't from new york, even though the label's new york based. I got to, I got the fortunate chance to go to, obviously, all these cities. Like I said, I went to the bay, I went to houston because it's uk. I was in new orleans with mystical, I was in our chicago with our bottom line, so I was seeing all these different pockets of culture and so when you guys put it on tv, it was like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's how they do it in Houston, or that's how the cars look in the Bay. You know, it was almost like confirmation for me. It's like I told y'all.
Speaker 1:It's very different when you leave New York. How hip hop is, you know, growing? It's not all New York based. Everybody is just not enamored over. You know, growing it's not all New York based. Everybody is everybody's just not enamored over. You know what's happening here? It is pockets of different culture and you guys put it on TV. I was very, very excited about that.
Speaker 2:It was cool Cause for a lot of people, hip, the real hip hop culture wasn't shown that way. Right, and we, and and to some extent we got to when you shoot, my neighbors are cleaning their apartment right now. Man, I'm really sorry and we'll be right back.
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Speaker 2:But you know, what was interesting is like the artists that we featured were so proud to show off their city, yeah, and, and we weren't afraid to go anywhere. Like we. We were like take this to your hood, yeah, like where you're from, your actual block, yeah, and I think, because we treated them with respect and allowed them to be the voice, as opposed to like what Vice did years later, where it felt like a bunch of dudes on safari Terrible. It was like we allowed the artists and Sway is the perfect host for stuff like this, right when we allow the artists to really tell us where they're from, to show us where they're from and really focus on the cultural aspects, not the glorified aspects.
Speaker 2:And that experience, I think, is I didn't know what I was doing as a director or making television. I learned as I went, you know, because I really basically got thrown into the deep end of the pool and it's like all right, you're directing a two camera shoot with the host and you know you're trying to get all these stories. I think in my first show, houston, we shot 40 hours wow footage for what ultimately would be a 21 minute television show. Wow, with commercials, right. And it's like I was like wait, maybe I don't have to shoot that much, maybe if I actually prepare a little bit better, I don't have to shoot, sorry, right, you know because then you're just in the edit for like months and you're like what are we yeah?
Speaker 2:but that. But the problem is is that when we got to chicago and I wasn't prepared for this when we got when we got to chicago, people knew we were in town and so when I checked into my hotel, there was this guy waiting for me in the lobby okay, with his, with his tape, and he was part of a street gang rap group crew, something. And I, you know, politely took his tape. I did. He was looking for joseph patel and I said, oh, he's not here yet. I'm like, but I'll take this and I'll give it to him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got you, I got you and then he left and then I didn't do anything with it because I knew we only had 21 minutes. We had to, like, focus on what we were going to shoot. And we ended up getting held up a week later by the same dudes. Wow, they crashed one of our shoots in Hyde Park to a sneaker shop. Someone must have told them we were going to be there. They showed. Must have told them we were going to be there. They showed up.
Speaker 2:This dude walks through the frame I'm interviewing do or die. This guy walks through the frame, uh and and uh and flashes his gun at me. And then two other dudes come and they take the cameras and I'm like and whitney god bless her, whitney is there and she's like she's she. She dresses him down like like she's somebody's mother, right, like she's, like she's like didn't your mothers teach you better? What are you doing? Like. But they were like we just want him. And they're pointing at me, they want, they want to take me somewhere. And I was like listen, they're like you can have the cameras back, but we want to take him somewhere. I'm like take the cameras. Like I don't, I don't care. Wow, they're not my cameras.
Speaker 2:And then I threw the the conversation and really this is Whitney's doing. She's like let's figure out what they want. So she asked them. It turns out all I want to be was in the show. So I'm like okay. So I say listen, we're going to shoot this Throw to commercial featuring you guys. I said that's all I can do. There's no room in the show for anything else. I featuring you guys. I said that's all I can do. There's no room in the show for anything else. I said but we'll do this thing. It'll be quick. You guys all line up here. Sway's going to go down the line, he's going to introduce you guys, he's going to dap you all up and we're going to shoot it and it's got to be under 30 seconds. They're like fine, so we shoot it. I'm never going to use it. But I realized this is all they wanted was just to be shot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's funny, because I was going to ask you to tell me a crazy my Block story, but you beat me to the point. Yeah, that's it.
Speaker 2:So what happens is they give us back the cameras. I tell them my crew and my crew is funny, right, it's me, it's Sway, it's Whitney, it's Shaheem, it's our two camera guys who are like punk rockers, one of whom is like painfully good looking, the other one has a blue mohawk, like it's like it's a funny ass crew. So I tell them, I tell the crew, I said we're gonna, we're gonna shoot this. That's all they want. So let's just do it and let's treat it with respect, let's just do it for real. I did three takes. No, no, no, you can't do it like that. You gotta, you gotta do it like this.
Speaker 1:And made sure I was like they knew I was invested right yeah, yeah, yeah that's all they wanted.
Speaker 2:We did three takes and then they left and it was like you know, but chicago was crazy because, like chicago was crazy because sometimes, when we would wait, we would meet an artist at a corner in their hood and sometimes we would show up early you can't wait in your car in Chicago. And Sway is usually the buffer. He's like the guy that'll be like no, you know Sway. And everyone's like, oh, sway, they don't, they didn't give a shit. They were like. They were like keep it moving. And Sway's like, no, no, fam, we're going to be. And they're like don't care, keep it moving. And we're like, okay, so we're driving around.
Speaker 2:And the other crazy one was Memphis Juicy J same thing. He's like we don't stay anywhere for more than 10 minutes. And he says this in the back of his Bentley. He says a sitting duck always gets plucked. And so I'm like cool, this Sitting duck always gets plucked. And so I'm like cool, this is my second episode ever, right? I'm like, all right, fine, don't know what he's talking about.
Speaker 2:We have Juicy J and Paul. Take us to their first house. They lived in together when they formed Three, six Mafia and they said he's like we're not going to be sitting ducks. We're there for 10 minutes and then a couple of people come by. They're like oh, juicy, paul, what up? 10 more minutes. It's like 20 people. I'm like, oh, we got to get out of here. And he's like, yeah, by the time we leave, we've only been there 30 minutes. There's 150 people at the house all trying to be on camera. Juicy looks at me. He's like I told you. I'm like okay, and so like we all rush into the cars trying to leave, everyone wants us to shoot them freestyling. And it's just like, yeah, it was pretty funny.
Speaker 1:Wow. So tell me about what did you do after when you left MTV. What did you do?
Speaker 2:I left MTV after the inauguration. Okay, I was the lead producer for the 2008 election coverage, which was like a dream of mine. Okay, yeah, you know, obama was my guy and he wins the election. We interviewed him two days before the election in Henderson, nevada, and, like I don't know, I just my thing was always like stay.
Speaker 2:I got hit up by vice a couple of years earlier and they wanted me to come there because they were starting their video channel and I didn't want to leave because I was still learning shit at MTV. I did live TV, live producing, producing bigger things. You know, the election was like the biggest thing I did there and I realized after the inauguration I'd done everything I'd set out to do there. I came in as a writer five years earlier, got out of debt. Got out of debt. I actually got hired by MTV as a staff position, which they don't really do very often, but I accelerated through the ranks pretty quickly there, mainly because I was older. I was about three to five years older than everybody else, so it was sort of like I was mature enough to appreciate the opportunity.
Speaker 2:I got you, I got you and so I realized after the inauguration I wasn't going to learn anything more there and I didn't want to be a lifer because I'd seen the lifers and I didn't want to be a lifer. Yeah, so I took a job at vice and I didn't I actually didn't do music at all. Advice, they wanted me to bring them to television, and so I spent the next three years traveling around the world doing vice things.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:You know, shooting in favelas in Brazil and asking the local warlord for permission.
Speaker 1:Yeah, tell me one crazy vice story.
Speaker 2:We went to Yemen in 2010. Me, shane Smith, spike Jones and our camera guy, matt. And this is when America is fighting the war on terror. The Yemeni government is basically hustling the US for money, saying there's al-Qaeda in Yemen, so give us money to fight them.
Speaker 2:And there isn't and they're having their own problems with this group called the Houthis, the Houthi rebels, and it's a sort of corrupt government and so you know, anybody who speaks out against the government they murder, right. And so we went to Yemen to do a story about how, basically, the war on terror was a farce, and we interviewed these people who basically had spoken out or speaking out against the government, because the government was like disappearing doctors and stuff, and it was. You know, we said we'll blur your faces out when we put this on TV, because if the government sees your face you're going to die. We also decided to do a story on some skate kids, because there was like skate culture happening in Yemen. Like these teenagers, rich kids, like they bought skateboards and and and all the old people in in sanaa, the capital, thought the kids doing skateboard tricks was like magic, like mystical shit, like spirits and shit, wow. And so it was a really cool story. We were gonna go to the north of yemen to interview some soldiers and and then our fixer on the ground said don't do that. And we're like why he's like? Because I think there's going to be a battle there tomorrow. On the way. You won't be safe and I was like, okay, that's never stopped us before, but he was like me and I have Spike Jones in my crew. I'm not trying to get him killed, right?
Speaker 2:Well, we entered the country as students. We didn't say we were journalists, because if you say you're a journalist, they're going to put a government person on you. We said we were film students, so we decided not to go up north. We went to this island named Saqqotra instead. Saqqotra is an island off the coast of Yemen which has the most indigenous plant in animal life, second to the Galapagos Beautiful island, and it's World Cup season. So we land in Socotra. There's one town on the island and we're watching the World Cup in this square with everybody else. That's being projected off the internet. It was incredible. We spent two days in Socotra gorgeous, goofing around, swimming in the ocean, talking to locals, and we then fly back to the mainland.
Speaker 2:On the way back in, we get detained by national security. They know we're not students. They know we're journalists. They know that someone ratted us out. Basically, you like to say somebody was watching. I think it was one of the kids, the skate kids. I think he went home bragging about being interviewed by this TV channel and his father is like in the security apparatus, and so they basically detained us coming into the country. Never been so scared in my life. They detained not only us, but they took our our footage and we were like shit. So I actually get released first because and it's scary, like in a different country when you're like being detained by national security and you get caught lying I get released first because, because of my complexion and because I'm dressed in the local clothing, which is the first thing you do in any country that we were visiting, they thought I was a local so they let me go.
Speaker 2:So then then we had a whole contingency plan in place. I ended up calling our emergency contact, who I think was a CIA agent, even though he never admitted it. He was a friend of Tom Freston's, and Tom said if you ever get in trouble, call this guy. So we're in trouble. I call this guy, he grabs me, he brings some cash. Four hours later he gets Matt, shane and Spike released and he says you have to leave the country right away. So we said well, we can't. We have this footage that they have and it's going to get those people killed. So he says come back tomorrow morning. So we go back tomorrow.
Speaker 2:The next morning he hands another wad of cash to somebody. We get the camera back, we get the tapes back, we download the tapes onto a drive, we erase the tapes that were there, we put everything back, so no one's the wiser. And then we get escorted to the airport to get on a plane to leave the country and we're hiding in a utility closet at the airport. This guy arranged everything we're like, with the workers in the utility closet and waiting until the plane is ready to take off, and they escorted us to the tarmac, up into the plane, into the seats, like everyone's paid off along the way, and then we leave the country and it was like, yeah. I was like, oh, I'm going to die here. Wow, that was the craziest thing. They ever had me. Advice, that's a good one, yeah.
Speaker 1:Jeez, dang buddy, you made it, hey. So let's fast forward to you doing these award-winning documentaries. So the first one is Summer of Soul. Is that the first one?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Summer of Soul started working on in 2019.
Speaker 2:Yep 2018, really, but really we got started in 2019. Okay, I was uh, previously at vivo, has had a content over there, hated it was looking to get back into tv and film. Hit up my old mtv boss, this guy, dave seronic, said I'm itching to get back into tv and film. I'll do do anything. I'll do any work you have. He's like well, we have this idea, we need to do a deck, a treatment. He's like it was a lot of work but for not a lot of money. But I said I'll do it.
Speaker 2:So I took this half-page pitch and wrote a 30-page treatment and blew their minds away. I hired my own researcher. I just really thugged it out and my strategy was if I blow their mind, we'll get another opportunity. They loved it. And the next thing I know Dave calls me in the office. He's like hey, do you know who Questlove is? And I'm like, yeah, he's like we just hired him to direct his first documentary feature film. He needs a producer who basically can help him put this together. Would you be interested? And that's how summer of soul came which is what you said.
Speaker 1:So I lived in harlem for at least 30 years, you know pretty much, and I had never heard of this yeah, I'd never heard it. And after one of the guys in the doc became a good friend of mine, musa, musa, yeah, yeah, and but I got, you know, I just had never, I didn't know anything about. It was just a fascinating. It's a fascinating story and that the footage is incredible because you know it's mount morris park. It's like it's still there. It's like, oh shit, like that, that happened, like right, there was it.
Speaker 2:It was incredible, yeah you know, what was funny is, when we were making that film, we had to find people, who, who went yeah, and we? The first thing we did was you know, we had facebook and twitter and everything. We didn't get anything back. And we realized, oh, you know what, like this is a generation of harlem that's not on the socials?
Speaker 2:right so we, um, we printed up a flyer that said you, you know, do you know about, do you have a relative who talked about seeing Nina Simone in the park and you never believe her Right Like. So you know, your uncle swears he saw Stevie in the park for free. Yeah.
Speaker 2:We would drop that off at social clubs, at churches, at record stores, you know, community centers. And we started getting responses back and that's how we found people. Ashley benbery, kentuck is our, was our associate producer. She went, you know, she some folks at like a ballroom dancing class, like you know, like we put in like boots on the ground work yeah, yeah, yeah find people who went to that festival, musa.
Speaker 2:Finding musa was the most incredible story in the world because, yeah, you know ashley's like, oh, I found this guy world, because you know Ashley's like oh, I found this guy Moussa. Everyone says you know that he's the mayor of Harlem, right, and he knows everybody. And we're like cool, you know. He says he was at the festival as a four-year-old or five-year-old. I'm like okay, well, what can he remember? And she did the pre-interview with him and he, you know, again, no one's seen the footage.
Speaker 2:The footage would just had not been broadcast. Some of it had been broadcast the week it happened, but the week after one weekend got broadcast but, like, the rest of it never got broadcast since we had gotten these new photos from the new york times that had never been published, that showed vendors around the park and Moose in his pre-interview talked about he knew exactly Fifth Dimension was the group that he remembered. He remembers going with his mother's boyfriend. He remembers balloons being given out to kids in the park, which we have on camera. He remembers what they were wearing. He says they were wearing orange, like the Creamsicles and that's exactly what they're wearing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he talked about vendors around the park and chicken within the foil and he just started naming detail after detail and I was like there is no way he would know this unless it's legitimately what he remembers. Yeah, so we do the whole interview with him and then we show him the footage he started crying, that's what bookends the right is him seeing it and then responding to it with tears Because he realized this memory he's been holding for 50 years is real.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so many people probably never, like you said, didn't believe him. Didn't believe him whatever. And he's like no, bro, I'm telling you it happened. So like I'm going to ask maybe a silly question, but I've never met anybody else that won an Oscar but you. How does it feel to win an Oscar, bro?
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, you know, never in my wildest dreams did I think that was going to happen. We never aimed for it, we never thought it was possible, we never talked about it. And then, you know, we just want to make a movie that we loved and that we thought our friends would love and our parents would love. And we did. And then we bring it to Sundance. I remember getting the call it's going to Sundance. I'm like, oh my God, it's the greatest day of my life. A movie I made is going to Sundance Film Festival. Then it's virtual that year. Then we screen it, people love it. Then we win the Sundance, not only the audience award but the grand jury prize. I'm like this is the best it'll ever get.
Speaker 2:And then three days later, there's a bidding war between Barack Obama's production company and Netflix on one side, and Hulu and Searchlight on the other.
Speaker 1:What the hell is going on.
Speaker 2:And then we partner with Hulu and Disney and Onyx Collective and Searchlight. They're like we're going to put it out in theaters. It's going to be on Hulu. I'm like this is the greatest thing in the world. This is the greatest feeling in the world. Movie comes out, people love it. I'm waiting for the bad reviews. There's no bad reviews, like people you know it's still got like a 99 on rotten tomatoes or something amazing.
Speaker 2:There's no flaws five ways we'll say no, I mean, it's crazy. I realize and I say this with all humility, like we, because it came from a genuine place. I think it's one of the best music documentaries ever made right, because I think it's a story, for it hits on so many different levels and it's a. It's a story about black history and how black history is american history. It's also a story about memory and the things that we remember and the things that we cherish and like who gets to determine what's remembered and what's not?
Speaker 2:right, it's different levels and none of it was accidental, it was very, all of it was very intentional. It just it, just it just kept getting better to get nominated for an oscar. I cried. My mom was up at like five in the morning her time and like watching and it just validated so many. You know my parents, who didn't want me to do what I was doing, I didn't understand it. Suddenly, you're very proud. Right, that came full circle. Really, getting to experience the whole thing with the mirror was incredible because, like you know, working with your musical hero is like, and then the, so the Oscars themselves, and then what happened at the Oscars is insane. Right, we were, we were there. The Will Smith, that was our category.
Speaker 2:That was Chris Rock presenting us the Oscar, and then you know and then the next day I I hear Chris Rock presenting us the Oscar. And then the next day I hear Chris Rock say something disparaging where he's like you know, the winner is Summer of Soul, amir Questlove, thompson and four white guys Right, which is like just such a shitty thing to say when, like, only a dozen people had ever won Oscars, south Asian people had ever won Oscars before. And he knew better. He knew better. Yeah, he said the same joke on stage, at stage at the root show, two nights earlier. I I in hindsight, I cut him a little slack now because he probably was traumatized in the moment, didn't know what to do.
Speaker 2:But also fuck him yeah, um but in.
Speaker 2:But you know, and the oscar professionally changes your life, but real talk, it's. It's great to be, it's great that it's happened. I feel like I don't have to explain myself now when I want a meeting or in the room somewhere. Yeah, um, the powers that be, like I can get any meeting that I need to. That's a really great um card to have. But, honestly, my, the thing that makes me proudest is that we made a great movie. Yeah, you know what I mean. Like, really, it's nice to have the oscar, it's nice to be in the history books, it's nice to never have to explain my, my ability to somebody ever again. It frees me up to do the other things that I want to do.
Speaker 1:Where's?
Speaker 2:your trophy Right now. It's downstairs on a shelf you know where my? Record player is I should have told you to bring it on the show. I mean it used to be in the Zoom shot because I wanted to make sure no one ever got it twisted in a pitch meeting. But I moved recently, so I'm still a little disorganized. I moved recently, so I'm still a little disorganized.
Speaker 1:Tell me how you got from that accolade to doing the Sly Stone doc.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Sly. Actually he's also amazing, thank you. Sly got announced after Sundance, so before the Summer of Soul even came out. I read in Hollywood Reporter that Amir has signed up to direct a Sly and the Family Stone documentary. And I call him up, I'm like yo, congrats, do you want me to work on this with you? And he's like yeah, of course. And I'm like, okay, cool, I need to be a part of the conversation next time. I am not a hired hand, I'm part of the announcement now.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:And I didn't know what I was going to do after Summer of Soul. I didn Exactly movie comes out and it starts to the award circuit. You are expected to promote it. You don't get paid to do that that. I'm doing sly promotion now and it's taking away from the thing I'm actually getting paid to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I spent a whole year before we even started sly, after it got announced, but that was really because amir wanted to do it and I didn't know a lot about sly um. I just knew the music really through hip-hop and what I heard on the radio, but I didn't know a lot about sly um. I just knew the music really through hip-hop and what I heard on the radio, but I didn't know the story. And so, you know, I spent the first few months really just trying to get some fluency about his story together. And then the way amir and I work is I ask him we have a conversation, what kind of story do you want to tell?
Speaker 2:And he kept talking about not only you know, so everyone knows his ups and downs of sly's story. But like he's like how do we approach it with some empathy? And and then it's really the bigger idea is that you know a lot of these are a lot of black artists in in america have a unique burden and he's like, if you trace it back, it's probably Sly is probably the first artist to have this specific unique burden. Post-civil rights rock superstar who has to navigate black audiences, white audiences, white critics, the record label power structure. He's like he has no template, he has no one to follow. He's doing it for the first time. How some of those same issues that he dealt with had reverberated in a decade since.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought that was an interesting angle that you guys took like the kind of black genius thing but him and D'Angelo and Andre 3000 and like people who get even Q-Tip, you know, people kind of get to that level and Prince, you know, maybe we can go on and on Michael, we could mention 40 of them and like you get to that height and like how do you do it? Because it gets crazy, and like you're so removed from who you were because you're so high up the ladder. Now it's kind of like he wasn't. The guy from the radio DJ from San Francisco was like way in. The guy from the radio dj from san francisco was like way in a in the fucking rearview mirror.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, yeah, that was, it was a very and I was happy that you guys had tapes of him being a radio dj, because I still don't know how many people knew about that part of it and how how influential he was when he was doing that, you know yeah, and it's funny because, you know, if you think about it, he's on the radio playing black and white music together and in a way he's sort of like seeding his audience that he would play to us for his band a few years later when he, when, when slime family stone comes out. There's a whole bunch of people who are primed to hear that kind of mix of styles because they listen to him on the radio. And you know, I think, amir, you know we got D'Angelo and Q-Tip and Shaka and Andre as proxies for Sly. Yes, because we couldn't talk to Sly. He's alive, but just not in a place where you should put him on camera.
Speaker 1:Not healthy, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And we wanted him to have his dignity right. We don't want to. We didn't want to like hang him out there like that. Yeah, that's what the whole movie is about. It's like this man has given us so much. Let's just let him live in peace.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, but you know D'Angelo facing the pressure on the voodoo tour every night, having to be in perfect physical condition every night so he could take his shirt off and do how Does it Feel to a room full of screaming fans and how it got harder and harder for him to do that. Andre, everyone wants him to rap. He saw what this did to other people. He says I don't want anything to do with this, I'm off the radar, don't think about me, I'm going to go play a flute in japan.
Speaker 1:You just walk around you know what I?
Speaker 2:mean in tokyo has this line in the film where he's like when you're black and you're innovative, they may look at you like you're odd, like can you imagine, like you know how many people call q-tip gay back in the day right, or if you're just a little different.
Speaker 2:they're like oh he's, he's gay, and that was like 20 years ago, 30 years ago, when the homophobia was at an all-time high. Now it's just like oh, this dude's weird, or you're alt-rap, like that's the thing, I think that Black artists have had to deal with in this country that other artists haven't had to. I think women have their own unique issues, even with Nina Simone.
Speaker 1:Now you look back at a lot of the things that she was fighting for and talking about. It makes fucking perfect sense. Isn't that crazy. You guys were trying to jerk her and she wanted to be respected and paid for her work. She wasn't a nut at all.
Speaker 2:And who's the other one for our generation is Lauren right? Lauren didn't participate in the film, but when we were making the film she had that viral clip of her in LA where she's like do you know how hard it is for me to get prepared mentally to come on stage every night and perform for you? And people took it out of context, but her whole rant is actually the theme of our film. It's like you think you know? Like yeah, it's, it's, it's an interesting thing.
Speaker 2:And then also, post oscar zamir was like feeling guilty about being successful, that whole idea that success, like be careful, what you wish for survive as a remorse kind of thing. Here he is, he gets an oscar right out the gate, his first documentary, and he's like are, is my band gonna treat me the same? I feel bad that tariq wasn't a part of this. This guy I've been with on my journey for 30 years. Like you know, are people gonna be like, oh, that's just a mirror being a mirror. You know what I mean. Like yeah, you know, that's mean. He ducked away after the Oscars for a few months because I couldn't get a hold of him, because he was just trying to reset.
Speaker 1:Trying to deal with it yeah.
Speaker 2:The thing that connects both films is that I think what Amir and I are really good at is how do you tell a very specific story that actually resonates to a bigger idea?
Speaker 1:yeah, and, and I think both these films are that so tell us, let's wrap it up, and tell me about the next project you're working on.
Speaker 2:I know, bob, but you, you break it down yeah, so we um, I'm not working with Amir on Earth, wind and Fire, I didn't work with him on SNL, um, but uh, we're doing a Jay Dilla documentary. We've been trying to put it together for three years. I am directing that one. Amir is executive producing that one. Okay, it's based on Dilla time by Dan Charnas, our friend.
Speaker 2:Yes, very thoroughly researched book, very. We just started about two weeks ago, hope to be done by this time next year, which will be the 20th anniversary of Dilla's death. Wow, it's been 20 years, wow. And really it's about how and it's a, it's a passion project, but it's like how, you know, it's about dilla and what he did to music and also why we celebrate him. Yeah, more in death than in life, and also it, and also it's about time. It's about the way Dilla manipulated time, but also about the way artists, or the way people live their life when they think they have all the time in the world, and then what they do when they realize they don't have any time at all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the clock is, the sand is running out.
Speaker 2:I mean for me COVID was that right, I think. During COVID I realized, oh, there's not a lot of time left. Like you will not catch me doing anything, I don't want to do anymore because time is valuable, yeah, so being here with you is because I wanted to be here with you.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it. I wanted you on here. I mean, you know, look at us, we got gray hair. Now I know, but we're still rocking you know, man yo? I really appreciate this. This is a great interview, bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, man.
Speaker 1:I appreciate you asking I feel like we could talk for five hours. Honestly, I know we could, I know we could Listen.
Speaker 2:I will say this I never thought I'd be in a position where people would want to hear my story, and I'm appreciative of it. I'm appreciative of people who learn lessons from it. I spend a lot of my time post-Oscars honestly mentoring younger kids Not even younger like even people my age too. I'm part of Sophia Chang's mentorship program. I'm part of Joey Badass' mentorship program. I meet young South Asian filmmakers or creatives and they ask for time. I'll give them time because I just feel like I got blessed. It's a result of a lot of hard work, but if I can make that path a little easier for other people because no one taught me about the industry, I had to find out on my own if I can make that path easier for somebody else. So there's more time creating and less time trying to figure the bullshit out. That's my purpose here on the planet while I'm still here.
Speaker 1:That's what sparked me doing this podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's the thing.
Speaker 1:People that I know and respect, that have had success, but maybe even had to pivot, you know, and kind of go here to figure out the next steps and everything, and and hopefully people listening will hear these stories and be like, oh OK, and oh, that's, that's the guy who did the slide, doc. You know, like that's, that's the whole point of this.
Speaker 2:So I can't wait till it flips around and someone gets to interview you, because I know you got stories yeah, I got some stories and actually one story you told me has never left me. I remember you told me the story of when you signed the pack and and you and you were you. You were like I'm the guy that signed tribe called quest, and they're like who?
Speaker 1:who? Who are you talking about?
Speaker 2:and I. I will always remember that story because it taught me it was one of the things that taught me that something Dreamhampton taught me a long time ago Hip hop is. Whatever little black and brown kids say, it is yes, they are not tied to your history, they are making their own.
Speaker 1:Making their own. You can't fight it. You can't be like yo, hot, like I remember. Um, we'll wrap it up. I remember a couple months ago people were on kai sanat because he didn't know who big pun was. Right, I'm like he's 22. Yeah, you can't be mad at that dude been dead about that long. Sadly, like he might not know, he's just, he's a kid, he's a child and what hip-hop is is for him. Is you know? And Playboi Carti and whatever's popping now.
Speaker 2:It's not. Biggie it's not Biggie man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, and I can't be mad at him for not being that for him and his generation. Yeah, you know. But yeah, man, thank you, I appreciate it. Joe, listen, man, thank you. You can catch mixed and mastered on apple podcast, spotify, iheart or wherever you get your podcast. 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.
