QLS Classic: Danyel Smith

In 2022, while promoting her latest book Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop, acclaimed music journalist and author Danyel Smith joined Questlove Supreme for an episode. She spoke with Questlove and Team Supreme about the book, her years leading VIBE magazine, and her experiences writing about Whitney Houston, Tupac Shakur, and Arrested Development. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Questlove?

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• 0:05Speaker 01

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• 1:05Questlove?

  Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. What's up, y'all? This is Questlove with another classic episode of QLS. Back in 2022, we spoke with one of the great reporters and authors in music, Danielle Smith. Team Supreme and I got to hear Danielle's story, coming up in the Bay Area to running the show at Vibe and penning some of really incredible books. We talked about the Arrested Development story, which has always stayed with me, as well as her experiences covering Whitney Houston and Tupac. Danielle came to promote her latest book at the time, called Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop. I highly recommend checking out that book, all right? It's really great.

• 1:50Questlove?

  And of course, check out this episode. Enjoy. Danielle Smith on Questlove Supreme. Classic. How are you guys? Steve, I realize in the last five episodes, you hardly said a word. What's... Are you okay?

• 2:17Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:23Questlove?

  There you go. All right. Fonte, you're in a purple room now? All right, my fault. Still the after effects of your studio.

• 2:30Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, man. I just, you know, I feel I give y'all a little, a little, uh, bring, like, decor today, a little YouTube makeup artist vibe.

• 2:39Questlove?

  I got you.

• 2:40Speaker 04

  Oh, what's the tip we're getting today, sir? Today, we're getting how to do winged eyeliner. Oh, okay.

• 2:50Questlove?

  And, uh, Laia, how's it going with you?

• 2:53Speaker 05

  Oh, it's going good. I'm on an island somewhere hoping my Wi-Fi don't shit on y'all.

• 2:57Questlove?

  Hey. Nice, on vacation. Good to hear.

• 3:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, a little pre-op vacation. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 3:03Questlove?

  Okay, now I can introduce our, our guest. Our guest today is, of course, she's an award-winning author, novelist, journalist, magazine editor from the Y.A. area, the Y.A. area. I don't know, I don't even know if people in the Bay Area call it the Y.A. area, but I'm going on a limb and calling it the Y.A.

• 3:26Speaker 06

  Like North Cackalacky. No one calls it North Cackalacky.

• 3:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, no one calls it that that lives here.

• 3:30Questlove?

  Except for the Roots when they're onstage. I will, I will say that I got to know and subsequently feared this woman when she was the first Black editor in chief at the much-loved Vibe magazine, starting in 1994. I believe you replaced Alan Light, correct?

• 3:56Speaker 05

  I did, in fact.

• 3:58Questlove?

  Yeah.

• 3:59Speaker 05

  I did, in fact, replace Alan.

• 4:00Questlove?

  If ever you guys wondered why is Amir obsessed with journalists more than he's obsessed with his fellow peers in the music business, I will honestly tell you, it starts with this woman. Ooh. Because I only realized the power of the pen

• 4:19Speaker 05

  Word.

• 4:20Questlove?

  when it came from our guest today. She's released a, an awesome book. And if you're a fan of the show, and if you're a fan of just inside speak of, of music genre that you know and love, but things that you might not have known, I highly recommend you get Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop, where literally, not only does she reveal her awesomely kind of adventurous journey and, and life with her family, coming up from the Bay Area, Los Angeles, and of course, uh, living all over and, and

• 5:04Questlove?

  navigating through music, but she even manages to, uh, break down and share stories of, of just intricate stories that of, of artists that you love, but you really don't know about, like from the Dixie Cups to the Shirells to, um, shit, I didn't even know Leontine Price was related to

• 5:22Speaker 05

  Dionne Warwick, right?

• 5:23Questlove?

  Dionne Warwick and, you know, Sissy and Whitney Houston. And, you know, just draw on the parallels of how they, you know, those, those four generations between Leontine Price and Sissy Houston and Dionne Warwick and Whitney Houston, and what they've done in breaking barriers for just basically progressing forward, but not to mention, um, you know, Diana Ross, Namek, Gladys Knight, Donna Summer, Merlin McCoon even. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to Questlove Supreme, Danielle Smith. Thank you.

• 5:54Speaker 04

  Hey.

• 5:55Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 5:56Questlove?

  How are you?

• 5:57Speaker 05

  Oh, oh, oh, oh. I mean, I'm doing good because I'm over here with y'all, so it feels, it just feels really good and really special.

• 6:05Questlove?

  Thank you, thank you, thank you. Where are you speaking to us right now? From where are you?

• 6:10Speaker 05

  Uh, from my home in Southern California, specifically in Venice, California.

• 6:14Questlove?

  Hey. Wow, nice. Okay. I didn't know, see, I didn't know if you were an East Coaster or a West Coaster.

• 6:21Speaker 05

  I mean, I'm, I feel pretty equally both over the course of my life at this point. I mean, I think I did 23 years on the, on the East Coast between, uh, most of it in, in Manhattan, most of it in Brooklyn, some of it in Manhattan, some of it in Washington, DC, but I'm back home in my, in the, in the great country of California, so it's good to be here.

• 6:43Questlove?

  Good to have you. Okay, so the thing is, your Shine Bright book, it's almost like Jeopardy, where your Shine Bright book, in my opinion, is almost like an episode of Questlove Supreme without us asking the questions, you know? So it's almost like if I were to go, well, no, literally, she, you know, especially

• 7:07Speaker 05

  It's a cheat sheet. It's a good cheat sheet.

• 7:09Questlove?

  Especially in the first chapter, um, where you're breaking down your journey. It's almost like, I, I feel like it's a disservice to even recap that, so I kind of want to take a, a different route with this episode than I would normally do if you were a recording artist. And, well, you know, one, I want to just ask the obvious, why did you feel, uh, the need to construct this book and tell these stories? Why did you feel the need to sort of construct this story in the manner that you did? And why was it so long overdue?

• 7:49Speaker 05

  Well, let me answer the, uh, the second question first. Why was it so long overdue? It's a combination of, on my part, um, timing, uh, combination. Add to that, a lot of second guessing myself, uh, add to that, um, a little bit of fear. And add to that, I hadn't quite figured out the best way to tell it. I just hadn't. I had to get to that place. I had to get really strong, I think, um, a way that I hadn't felt probably, I don't know, in a half a decade, um, by the time I finished Shine Bright. So it's, it's all my fault. It's not my editor's fault.

• 8:34Speaker 05

  It's not anybody I interviewed. Uh, it's not their fault. It's, it's, it's my fault just being uncharacteristically slow and missing of deadlines, which

• 8:45Questlove?

  So this took you 10 years?

• 8:47Speaker 05

  Oh, no, let me tell you something. If my husband was here, he would say, um, it, it took me eight. I feel like I've been writing it since I was eight years old, but I think technically it took me six years.

• 9:00Questlove?

  All right, you're speaking of your husband, uh, beloved Elliot Wilson.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  Y N.

• 9:05Questlove?

  Yeah. Y N in the house.

• 9:07Speaker 05

  Seventeen years, seventeen years. Ooh.

• 9:10Questlove?

  That's awesome.

• 9:11Speaker 05

  In hip-hop, that is It.

• 9:14Questlove?

  Like, straight up and down.

• 9:15Speaker 05

  I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, so it's, um, it took me too long. I'm not gonna lie. But, you know, it just, the timing was right. It was, the reason why I wanted to do it is, you know, long story short, when Whitney Houston died in 2012, which she shouldn't have, but when she did die in 2012, you know, people approached me and said, could you just write a bio of her really quickly? And, you know, let's go heavy on the drugs. Let's go heavy on the bad marriage. And, you know, I was just like, no.

• 9:42Questlove?

  They would tell you that?

• 9:43Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  In a sentence, in one sentence?

• 9:46Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 9:48Speaker 05

  Like, what? Like, drugs, Bobby, like, let's go. How fast can you get it done?

• 9:56Speaker 05

  And I was like, I'll have it to you on the 12th of November. Like, I'm not doing that. So, so I came back to some folks with an idea about doing a history of black women in pop. I sold that. And I was never finishing that. And then I left that publisher. And I went back home, so to speak, to Chris Jackson at One World. Chris Jackson published my, I have two novels from the early 2000s, more like Wrestling in Bliss, that Chris Jackson published. And so I wanted to go back home with him. One, because he's a genius. And two, because I trust him deeply. And he just said, you know, eventually, he said, you're gonna have to put yourself in the book. I'm eternally grateful to him for saying that. Um, and then I spoke to my sister, who's so much a part of Shine Bright. And my sister was like,

• 10:40Speaker 05

  are you asking me if you could tell my story? She was basically like, B I T C H, you should have been told it. So, so then we were off to the races.

• 10:49Questlove?

  You know, at the top of the, um,

• 10:52Questlove?

  the introduction, you know, I, I was sort of tongue in cheek when I said that, that I loved and feared you.

• 11:01Questlove?

  Only because I, I, I realized, I mean, for starters, you know, with the source and with Vibe, and at least the first wave of, of late 80s, early 90s journalism being, uh, sort of in a serious form and not just like, and this is not to take away from Cynthia Horner, or Black Beat, or Steve Ivey, or those guys. But, you know, there really hasn't been black critical writing. And although I've seen it with rock journalism, like, I've never seen, uh, a takedown article or anything of that level from the black side of things. And, you know, you ran it very tight.

• 11:43Questlove?

  Like, your version of Vibe Magazine, which I guess is 94, when did you lead Vibe?

• 11:49Speaker 05

  I, I started as, I started as music editor in 94. I was there to 96. Went back to school for a year to 97, came back, uh, got promoted to Vibe, to be the first black and first woman editor in chief of Vibe in 97. I left in 99. Then I came, came back in 06 and was editor in chief of Vibe again, 06, 07, 08.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Two years, two years, every time.

• 12:13Questlove?

  I would say that, you know, your era was way different. I, I noticed immediately, your era from, say, Alan Light's period. I guess the Tretch issue was, what, 91, I believe, 91?

• 12:29Speaker 05

  92.

• 12:30Questlove?

  Ninety, yeah, 92 to 94. And not to say that, you know, because I'm friends with Alan, like, I'm not saying it was light in the ass, but I, I definitely saw a noticeable difference between both those issues. And that said, I don't know, in my mind, and I think this is often of how the world will see black women as, you know, we always use these words like, strong. You will use fierce and all those sort of colloquialisms to to describe them. Um, and so I was a bit taken aback, you know, at how vulnerable you got, um, especially in the first chapter, speaking of your imposter syndrome and

• 13:14Questlove?

  you, like, you know, because it was kind of like, whoa, like, you don't see a human side. Well, I mean, journalists often don't insert themselves or that sort of thing. So, I was really just, I was, I was pleasantly surprised of how you weaved your, your life in music. Like, I love those type of things, whereas not that I'm just learning a lesson of the artist, but I'm also learning the effect that it had on you, because your writing career also had an effect on artists as well.

• 13:45Speaker 05

  I learned a lot from Alan. Um, Alan first gave me my first, um, album review when he was editing the review section at Rolling Stone. That's my first Rolling Stone.

• 13:58Questlove?

  What was your first album?

• 13:59Speaker 05

  It was In Vogue, the second album.

• 14:02Questlove?

  Funky Divas?

• 14:02Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 14:03Questlove?

  Funky Divas? He gave it two stars!

• 14:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, I did it. I did it. I didn't. Come on, it was, I was, I was a big homer at that time. If I'm not still just a big ol' homer. Come on, man, you knew they were gonna call me to do In Vogue. Come on.

• 14:17Questlove?

  Okay, so.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Two stars for real? That's real like, Danielle?

• 14:20Speaker 05

  No, don't listen, don't listen to Amir. Don't do it.

• 14:22Questlove?

  I'm gonna tell you something, Danielle, you can't, you can't debate me on this. When I tell you, like, in the order of, I, I mean, a cat like Fonte will study MCs, study production, whatever. I don't know. Like, I study record reviews. I study journalists. Like, I, I study the people that determine whether or not an album is gonna have shelf life or not. I very much, no, here's the thing, though. I actually agreed with you. I didn't realize that you were the one that wrote that. And to be fair.

• 14:54Speaker 05

  Did I give it two stars?

• 14:55Questlove?

  Well, I was gonna say, to be fair, you don't determine how many stars it gets.

• 15:00Speaker 05

  I don't.

• 15:00Questlove?

  The publication.

• 15:02Speaker 05

  They do.

• 15:03Questlove?

  The publication gets it.

• 15:04Speaker 05

  And by the way, that's always the case. That was the case at The Source too, and that was the case at Vibe, when we used to give our little red light, green light, yellow light, or whatever we used to do for Vibe.

• 15:13Questlove?

  The music editor determines it. But, yeah, I remember.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Everybody doesn't know that, y'all. Y'all know that, right? I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm a fan. Hold on, I'm listening to what y'all saying. Hold on, I'm a fan. What you saying is, the person who wrote that whole review doesn't have anything to do with those stars. And how, so how do they come up with them stars?

• 15:31Speaker 05

  The music editor.

• 15:32Questlove?

  The music editor will determine it.

• 15:34Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  So it's not even based on what you wrote. It's just based on what the music editor thinks.

• 15:38Speaker 05

  No, it's kind of based on what you wrote, and it's based on whatever their taste is also.

• 15:43Questlove?

  But, okay, so since you're kind of doing this in the 90s, and I will say that, you know, post Charis One, PM Dornish confrontation levels. I mean, you worked at Vibe, where?

• 15:56Speaker 05

  I did.

• 15:56Questlove?

  And you worked at Vibe during one of the most dangerous issues of all time.

• 16:00Speaker 05

  I did.

• 16:01Questlove?

  Which is the death row issue. Wouldn't your music editors at least want to give you warning if they're gonna give it a less than savory rating, knowing?

• 16:12Speaker 05

  I could never answer that question, except for on a case, by case basis, honestly. It was, as you said, it was a very wild time. And when you say, you know, I worked at Vibe during the most dangerous time during the death row issue. I mean, I really honestly have to look at the dates. One, because I blocked so much of that trauma, um, out of my head.

• 16:33Questlove?

  Oh, I remember everything. I'm sorry.

• 16:37Speaker 05

  Because, because what I think people tend to forget, at least with me, is that especially with regard to death row and Tupac, Tupac wasn't just celebrity MC for me. He's actually a good friend of mine from Oakland. And so I recuse myself from a lot of the coverage of Tupac almost, um, until after he passed. It was such a complex time at that time, such a time when I always say that Vibe called upon the strongest part of me. And that it got it. It got it. It got it. And it did wear me out, which is why, you know, you're music editor for two years, at least talking about me. I'm music editor for two years, and then I get a fellowship and I go to Northwestern for a year, because I just wanted out for a while.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  You know, uh, I wanted out for a while. And while I was gone, while I was in Chicago, um, or in Evanston, both Biggie and Tupac were murdered while I was not even working at Vibe.

• 17:34Speaker 05

  I end up writing the obituary for Biggie, uh, for the, for the Village Voice. But I wasn't even working at that time. I was trying to.

• 17:43Questlove?

  Okay.

• 17:44Speaker 05

  I wasn't. And then I came back in 97. Everybody had died. And I put Kirk Franklin on the cover because he was number one with Stomp, with the Stomp remix. And I felt like that was the second line. I felt like we had been mourning for a while.

• 17:57Questlove?

  Right.

• 17:57Speaker 05

  We, we had thought that hip hop was going to die. We thought that everything that the mainstream had said about it was going to be true, that it was just a fad. It wasn't real. We was all gonna kill each other. Um, and then, you know, you began to feel it rising from its ashes. You know, you gotta remember, like, that's when Miseducation came out. Really, Lauryn Hill doesn't get the credit she deserves for helping bring hip hop back to life after the death of, of Tupac Shakur and the notorious B.I.G. And then you add Kirk Franklin and Salt. They don't also get the credit, either one of them, for helping bring hip hop back to life. And that was actually my first cover as editor in chief of Vibe, was Kirk Franklin and the Family.

• 18:37Speaker 05

  That's how I came back in 97. And believe me, my publishers and the business people were like, this is soft cover. It's never gonna sell. It's not gonna sell. It's not gonna sell. And I wasn't really that person that was always bragging about, like, I know what the streets is feeling. I was not always that girl. I'm very much a pop girl. Pop is in the title of my Shine Bright. But it's like, I didn't know what the hell was going on. And I knew that there's no way that a song was going to number one R&B, I believe, top 10 pop for the Stomp remix. And it wasn't, like, having a major impact on the culture. I also knew that because gospel never gets the credit that it's due for its impact on culture, period.

• 19:21Speaker 05

  And it had, there had never been a gospel artist on the cover of Vibe. That, that the gospel fans, the church folks were gonna go out and buy two and three issues. And they did. And they did.

• 19:35Questlove?

  Hey, it's Nile Rodgers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by Miguel. Man, I'm a black and Mexican kid from San Pedro, and I grew up in Inglewood as well. I never liked to be, like, boxed in. Both of my parents colored outside of the line. I mean, even them being together at the time in L.A. was just not typical. And so I think that has always been a part of my DNA. There's a defiant something in me that feels like what we get to do with, with what we're given, that's great.

• 20:19Speaker 04

  ...than us is to maybe connect people to ideas that they wouldn't naturally, you know, connect to. That's really me. I'm just kind of like defiant with love, though.

• 20:30Questlove?

  Experience before the moment. A Lincoln original series on the iHeart Radio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 21:22Questlove?

  Aren't people more or less investing in the Vibe brand? Like, I'm gonna buy a new Vibe, no matter what.

• 21:28Speaker 03

  Whoever's on the cover, yeah.

• 21:29Questlove?

  Or are you saying that there's times where like-

• 21:31Speaker 05

  That's not true. There are issues of Vibe that did not sell. There are issues-

• 21:37Questlove?

  Really?

• 21:38Speaker 05

  There's a thing like this. You have a subscriber base, right? That's your small money. But that's your loyalists. They keep up paying at thirteen ninety-nine a year, twelve ninety-nine a year.

• 21:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's what's keeping your lights on.

• 21:52Speaker 05

  But you got, that's keeping the lights on. But the money money is at the newsstand, back when the newsstand mattered. Because that's two fifty, three dollars a pop. Whether you're buying it at Von Safeway, Key Food, Barnes & Noble back in the day, Walden Books or whatever, that's where the money was. And that's an impulse buy. And that's what I was judged on. That's what any editor-in-chief really is judged on, at the end of the day. Period, end of story.

• 22:22Speaker 03

  So to imply anything different with the kind of lesson, the work that you put into figuring out who you was gonna put on this cover and the content, yeah.

• 22:29Speaker 05

  No, you don't even know. It's science. And the thing about me was not everybody took Billboard into consideration. I took Billboard into consideration because I had been R&B editor at Billboard.

• 22:39Questlove?

  Did you replace Nelson when he left, or?

• 22:42Speaker 05

  No, it was Janine McAdams that I replaced. Janine McAdams.

• 22:45Questlove?

  Oh, wow, I didn't know that. Okay.

• 22:47Speaker 05

  Yes, Janine's between us. So, yeah, no, I was a person that always took Billboard into consideration because I worked at Billboard. And because even before I worked at Billboard, I studied Billboard like a maniac, which is why I got the job at Billboard. But it's like, no, I was the one that was like, if it's bubbling under, it deserves this. If it's doing this on the charts, if it's number eight with a bullet on blah blah chart, then it deserves this. Now, people always wanted to argue with me, and we had the best arguments in the world at Vibe. But I was the one who always took Billboard into consideration. Not everybody's like that.

• 23:22Questlove?

  Wow.

• 23:23Speaker 05

  I think, by the way, can I just say this too? I think it's so crazy that I just learned right now that y'all thought every issue of Vibe sold. When I got to Vibe as a music editor-

• 23:33Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no. We didn't think that.

• 23:35Questlove?

  I thought that.

• 23:36Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 23:37Questlove?

  I did.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  I thought you were just asking the question, I thought you were asking the question, Amir, like, was it the brand that sold?

• 23:42Questlove?

  I mean, it's just that, like, the circle I hang out with, it's Vibe and the source was like a religion. And-

• 23:48Speaker 04

  Nah, straight up, yeah.

• 23:49Speaker 05

  Thank God for y'all.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  But we were the ones keeping the lights on, though. We weren't the impulse buys.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  Right, it's just like podcasts. It's just like music, right? Like, come on, we want new podcast listeners.

• 24:00Questlove?

  Okay, so can I ask you this? Because I didn't know this. First of all, what is expected for Vibe in terms of going platinum? Like, how many issues have to sell for your, whoever the higher-ups are at the publishers to say, hey, they're doing well?

• 24:18Speaker 05

  It depends on, it depends on the year. It depends on the year. Because, you know, magazines, you know, magazines are pretty much gone now, for all intents and purposes. There's not really a newsstand that you can depend on. But let's just say, at the height of things, it's always a percentage. It's not an exact number. So, at the height of Vibe, you just never really want to be below fifty percent.

• 24:47Speaker 04

  Fifty thousand? Oh, percent, okay.

• 24:48Speaker 05

  Fifty percent. And you figure your circulation, like, at my, the height of circulation for me, man, I got a Vibe of up to, I don't know, eight, nine hundred thousand. So you wanna, you wanna, you wanna sell through at fifty-plus percent. Now, that's high, but I have ego. That's B+. The bestselling issue of Vibe in history is the Master P issue, Make 'Em Say, "Uh."

• 25:15Questlove?

  Wait, what?

• 25:17Speaker 05

  I hate to blow y'all up.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  Nah, I can't, that make, that makes sense.

• 25:21Speaker 05

  I hate to-

• 25:21Speaker 03

  Because now the South is buying. Because now the South-

• 25:24Speaker 05

  That's exactly what it is.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Now it's all Southern region.

• 25:26Speaker 05

  That's exactly what it is.

• 25:28Questlove?

  Yo, I would have put my publishing in my cribs, I could have sworn that Death Row issue was the greatest-selling issue of all time.

• 25:37Speaker 05

  The thing about the Make 'Em Say, "Uh," it was a, it was a, it was a perfect cover.

• 25:42Questlove?

  Wow.

• 25:43Speaker 05

  It was everybody. It was Mia X, it was Mystical, it was everybody.

• 25:48Questlove?

  No limit, okay.

• 25:49Speaker 05

  And we, and we had a tank in it. We had a tank-

• 25:53Questlove?

  I remember.

• 25:53Speaker 05

  And everybody had on camel. And so, basically, the whole cover was green and shades of black and white. But we did what's known as a fifth color in the magazine business, which means basically a fluorescent, or a glitter. And we made the orange fluorescent.

• 26:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I remember the orange, yeah.

• 26:19Speaker 05

  That episode left off.

• 26:20Questlove?

  I remember.

• 26:21Speaker 05

  It left off. And I'm not gonna say how many issues P bought, but, because the world would never know.

• 26:30Speaker 05

  The world would never know, but it was huge. And you gotta remember too, Master P has a huge contingent of fans in the Bay Area, too, out from Richmond.

• 26:37Speaker 04

  That's where he started, yeah.

• 26:38Speaker 05

  So he was all over, yeah. So it was, that's really the biggest-selling issue. I would never say the lowest issue, because it's people that we all know and love, but it would surprise you. I would never say.

• 26:48Questlove?

  Come on, you gotta-

• 26:48Speaker 05

  Y'all gonna have to get that someplace else, man.

• 26:51Questlove?

  It's twenty years ago.

• 26:53Speaker 04

  It's twenty years.

• 26:54Speaker 05

  It feel like yesterday to me, though. I feel like I'm on my way to an editorial meeting right now. Y'all ain't gonna get me out here like this.

• 27:01Questlove?

  Aw, damn it. Now, now I'm gonna go, I literally have all my issues in the room. Now I'm gonna go back and see it. If I text you, you gotta verify it.

• 27:08Speaker 05

  I will, I will. But I can't, because it's like, it's mean, man. And it doesn't necessarily sometimes even have to do with the person. It's timing. It could be the photography. It could be anything. It just doesn't necessarily, it could be the truck was late, man. It could be anything.

• 27:24Questlove?

  Please tell me what it was.

• 27:25Speaker 05

  No, you're gonna get it from me. No, because, and you talk about you fear me. You see how easy, I'm scary. I'm scary. Like, I can't say that. That's so mean. What if I just said, yeah?

• 27:36Questlove?

  It's not mean, Spirit. It's facts in business.

• 27:39Speaker 05

  This particular MC has the lowest-selling issue in the history of Vibe. That's hardcore.

• 27:46Questlove?

  It must be Jay-Z.

• 27:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, it would be, yeah. It's definitely not Jay. I will say that from the South, though. Just to show you how things change.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  Is it somebody, is somebody still has a career? Are they considered a legend still? Are they?

• 28:00Speaker 05

  Do they have a career in rapping, or do they just have a career?

• 28:03Speaker 03

  Do they have a career? Do you have a career?

• 28:05Speaker 04

  Period, yeah.

• 28:06Speaker 05

  They have a career, but they don't necessarily have a career in rapping, so.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  Okay, all right, got it.

• 28:11Questlove?

  Anyway, so I do want to know, what was the first, or at least, national, well, you said that Rolling Stone was the very first time that your work appeared in-

• 28:24Speaker 05

  A national magazine? I would say, no, that's not the case. I would say the first time I had a national story was in Spin magazine. There was a column there called Dreaming America.

• 28:35Questlove?

  Yep.

• 28:36Speaker 05

  That was my first national, that was my first national thing. And I always remember that I couldn't believe I was getting paid a dollar a word.

• 28:45Questlove?

  Was that standard, or was that like-

• 28:48Speaker 05

  That was standard for mainstream. People don't even get that now. And it's like, I was made, I was, nah, I hope, listen, you used to be able to make a living as a writer. It's very difficult to do so now. Even in the Bay Area, I was getting ten, fifteen, twenty cent a word. If I wrote a fifteen-hundred-word piece, I was getting a hundred and fifty dollars. But when, and Craig Marks, he's actually the music editor of the LA Times right now. Craig was music editor of Spin back then. And when he said it was a dollar a word and eight hundred, eight hundred words, I just remember thinking, so that's, that's pretty much rent in Oakland back then. And I felt like, and I felt like, I felt like,

• 29:32Speaker 05

  back then, and I felt like I could stay in this. I could stay in this. But yeah, I wrote, I think my first one was about Yo-Yo.

• 29:42Questlove?

  Okay.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  Yeah. Black Pearl Forever. Yeah. I wrote about DJ Quick for Spin, who's also a favorite still. And then it was out of those Spin clips and a couple of things I did for The Village Voice that brought me to the notice of Alan Light and Anthony DeCortis at Rolling Stone. And then I was only really R&B editor at Billboard for like six or eight months, something to outline in Shine Bright. But then Vibe launched, and Alan had gone over there as music editor. And when he was promoted to editor-in-chief, because Jonathan Van Meter left, then Alan asked me to come over as music editor. And it was, it was a wild two years in that job.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  I always thought Spin was the weird cousin to Vibe magazine. I always thought they were weirdly related, like they had some kind of similar ownership or something like that.

• 30:33Speaker 05

  I mean, at the beginning, we didn't, but then like in the, I guess, late 90s, 2000s, yeah, we were owned by the same company and we were in the same building.

• 30:42Questlove?

  What was the company?

• 30:44Speaker 05

  Vibe Ventures.

• 30:47Questlove?

  Oh, so, okay, they owned their own.

• 30:49Speaker 05

  Vibe Ventures owned Vibe and Spin. And Bla- and Blaze at that time, too.

• 30:55Questlove?

  Ah, Blaze.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  Man, I forgot about Blaze.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  I don't remember that. What was their focus, y'all? What was their thing?

• 31:00Speaker 04

  The Blaze battle. It was mainly just primarily hip hop, but I remember.

• 31:03Questlove?

  Blaze was like pre-complex.

• 31:05Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 31:06Questlove?

  Really with good journalism, though.

• 31:07Speaker 05

  It was, it was. Jesse Washington was, uh, the editor in chief. I was the editorial director. Jesse Washington is actually at, uh, ESPNZ and Defeated now.

• 31:16Questlove?

  Okay. Yeah, we, we, we, we had our, uh, Illmatic rating moment with Blaze, like, Things Fall Apart, like, got a perfect five rating there, and that Jay- and the Jay-Z, uh, issue.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Amir be monitoring these review. Listen.

• 31:30Speaker 05

  He's about that life.

• 31:31Speaker 03

  He about that life.

• 31:32Questlove?

  I'm not that way now, but, you know.

• 31:34Speaker 05

  It does my heart good, though. It does my heart good to know that somebody of your stature and talent and genius is paying attention like that because we really tried. Like, we weren't up there, like, fooling around. Like, we were about passion, but we were about rigor. We were about facts and we were about deep and strong opinions. We were about design, photography. We're about fashion, style, all of it. And so the fact that you, uh, being you, were paying attention that hard, honestly, it does my heart good. And anybody that listens to this that used to work at Bob the Source XXL, any of it, Rap Sheet, all of it, um.

• 32:14Questlove?

  Honey.

• 32:15Speaker 05

  Honey, all of it.

• 32:17Speaker 04

  Oh, man, honey, yeah.

• 32:18Speaker 05

  I mean, I could take it to Ego Trip. I could take it to One Nut Network. I could take it to, uh, Forty Eighty. I could keep going. Like, I could keep going. Um, it- the fact that any of us that worked in those spaces were being paid attention to, that our work was being monitored or enjoyed, or even, it, it matters a lot to us.

• 32:38Questlove?

  Look, all right, so the deal is, I think, in that Prince issue.

• 32:42Speaker 05

  It was.

• 32:43Questlove?

  If you guys remember the Prince, um, vibe issue, the Prince vibe cover issue.

• 32:48Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 32:48Questlove?

  Um, there's a write-up for Zingal Amaduni.

• 32:53Speaker 04

  Oh, wow.

• 32:54Questlove?

  That, single-handedly, like, i- if you want to know the beginning of Questlove's micromanage era of like, I must write all the liner notes, I must know, I must do all the interviews, I must, like, no article ever scared me more. And the thing is, is that, you know, now I live in an era where, you know, I mean, you know, I read the New York Times now and just read, like, this year, everyone's celebrating the fact that New York Times gave, like, Eleven Madison a two-star review, which is like, huh, shockers, or, you know, I mean, there's been like, sort of like crazy reviews, like Miles Davis is on the corner for Downbeat Magazine, like, throughout history.

• 33:39Questlove?

  You know, it's different now because in the internet, I, I sort of feel like artists write for each other, like, hey, check this out, you know, that sort of thing, like, when they're really gonna go. But to me, when I read your Arrested Development, Zingal Amaduni feature, to me, that was like, it was literally like watching the Apocalypse Now documentary. Or, Amir, Amir's also known for good hyperbole, uh, quotes. No, but it's, it was, it, it wasn't even, you didn't even have to do anything. You didn't,

• 34:18Questlove?

  it wasn't a take-down from your point of view. Like, literally, Speech was kind of asleep at the wheel, and the entire band decided they're gonna do a mutiny in this article. And a- at that point, I realized, like, oh, man, a career could be made or, or, or deaded in one fell swoop with just one article.

• 34:43Speaker 05

  Turning point for me. Okay, so, long story, uh, I guess, long story short, it's like, it, I didn't even work at Vibe at that point. I was functioning as a freelance writer. But I had a reputation, uh, in the business for being on point, on time, and thorough. And more than that, I had written a piece for a magazine that doesn't exist anymore and hasn't for years, called Request Magazine, that you used to be able to get at Tower Records.

• 35:11Questlove?

  Okay. Yes, I love Request.

• 35:13Speaker 05

  It is a great magazine. And if you count that as national, which I don't always, just because it was given away for free at Tower and you didn't pay for it, but that was probably really my first national look was in Request. So, I did a cover story on Arrested Development when they launched.

• 35:30Questlove?

  Okay.

• 35:31Speaker 05

  Okay, so,

• 35:34Speaker 05

  it was great.

• 35:36Speaker 05

  Man, you talking about Tennessee, you know what I mean? You talking about all of that. I fell in love with them, man. I fell in love with them. They fell in love with me. It was a cover story. And this is back before I had been in the business long enough to realize it's not always wise to fall in love with groups. It's not always wise to allow groups to fall in love with you.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:57Speaker 05

  I didn't know. I was a child. I was in my early twenties, mid twenties, something like that. I didn't know. You live and learn. So then, when their second album is coming out, was it, it was EMI, am I right?

• 36:11Questlove?

  Yep, yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 05

  They were on. So the, the woman who was the publicist there was like, hey, you know, Vibe is doing this thing. Do you want to go, you know, go back and talk to Speech and everybody in the group? Yes, definitely. I was freelancing, too. It was just like, it sounds exciting. You want to send me to Atlanta. So I went down there, and my first conversation was with Speech, as it should be. I have a lot of, I have a lot of respect for him, but you could tell from the moment that I got in the car with him that things weren't okay with the group.

• 36:45Speaker 05

  And it seemed like something he didn't want to get into detail about, but you know, as a reporter, I have my instincts. I have my feelings. And so, when I began to talk to the other members of the group.

• 36:58Questlove?

  And you were allowed to?

• 36:59Speaker 05

  Yes, this was a different time, y'all. There was no internet.

• 37:03Questlove?

  I will never let Kamal do an interview.

• 37:08Questlove?

  Ain't no evidence. Kamal knows that shit.

• 37:14Speaker 05

  And what's so wild, though, it was like, at a certain point, I wasn't even going to people to talk to them. People were coming to me.

• 37:25Speaker 04

  Dog.

• 37:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 37:26Speaker 05

  Listen, I remember that group so well, man. And it's, it's heartbreaking to me because they're such a, like, the music isn't necessarily, necessarily always so, like, wildly optimistic, but it's just like, I've been around Public Enemy. Those are my guys. They're not the most optimistic group of brothers, you know what I mean? They're not, like, but they, but, but, but the group Arrested Development, they came back. They were taking us back to the South, like, they were reminding us of our roots.

• 37:54Questlove?

  Black Joy.

• 37:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, evidence.

• 37:56Speaker 05

  Everything was like, you know, the blood and the, and the dirt, like, we was all in it, the red, like, like, we was all in it, like, everybody from the Northeast used to go back south in the summertime, like, all of that feeling was there. But then, you know, I remember that DJ's name was Headliner, right?

• 38:13Questlove?

  He set it off.

• 38:14Speaker 05

  Dionne Ferris.

• 38:15Questlove?

  I was gonna ask you about Dionne, yeah, it was Dionne.

• 38:17Speaker 03

  It's coming back. It's coming back. It's coming back. All right, okay.

• 38:20Speaker 05

  And, you know, things just weren't going well. It's so hard. And I know Questlove knows this. It's hard to keep a band together. Anybody who watched the Metallica documentary knows that. And it's like, it's hard to keep a band together.

• 38:34Questlove?

  Look at my lawsuits.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  You could ask, you could ask, you could ask the Supremes, you could ask anybody, the Commodores, like, it's hard to keep a band together.

• 38:42Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 38:42Speaker 05

  Uh, and everybody was mad. And everybody's talking into the tape recorder.

• 38:48Questlove?

  And they let her know. Uh, I, I went, if you remember Ursula Smith, who was my, uh, publicist at the time.

• 38:56Speaker 05

  At Set to Run.

• 38:57Questlove?

  At Set to Run. No, well, no, no, no. She left Set to Run and started her own, I forget, her and Amy Mars had their own.

• 39:04Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 39:05Questlove?

  Thing. And I came in the following Monday, like, shaking in my boots, because I was just like, oh, man, like, they're done with, they're over with. And if they're that easy to get, like, what does that mean for us?

• 39:21Speaker 05

  No, but.

• 39:22Questlove?

  And Ursula, like, the amount of talking me off the ledge for like, two days straight. Because, I don't know, in my mind, I just felt like Arrested Development had reached the mountaintop. They reached the mountaintop that De La.

• 39:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 39:37Questlove?

  Yeah, that De La tribe, like, a lot of those acts couldn't get to.

• 39:40Speaker 03

  But they didn't come up together, though, right? Like, did they come up together like that, all of them?

• 39:45Questlove?

  Yeah, I mean, ninety-one.

• 39:46Speaker 05

  Arrested Development had what a lot of other groups like that didn't, which was Speech had mad ambition. Everybody doesn't come with mad ambition. Some people just want to make a record and get it out there. Some other people have mad ambition. And, and Speech had that. It was a very difficult piece to write, a very difficult piece to publish. It was fact-checked and went through the lawyers. It went through all of that. And it was very difficult to publish. And, guess, the publicist was wildly mad at me. Some in the group were wildly mad at me. Some in the group were so happy and grateful to me. Um, some were very good.

• 40:21Questlove?

  Dionne.

• 40:24Speaker 05

  Some were grateful to me, but I just want to say as, as, well, it just basically outlined that the group was not happy and was probably not going to stay together.

• 40:33Speaker 04

  Got you. Okay.

• 40:34Questlove?

  Check it out, Fonte. I don't know. Have you, have you read Maurice White's autobiography?

• 40:39Speaker 04

  I have not yet.

• 40:40Questlove?

  I mean, it's kind of the structure where, wait, we just recently did an interview with someone.

• 40:46Speaker 04

  Cameo.

• 40:47Questlove?

  I think it was Larry Blackman said, Larry Blackman said it was a, a democracy, uh, what do you call it? A dictatorship?

• 40:56Speaker 04

  Uh huh. Yeah.

• 40:57Questlove?

  It was like a, it was like a democracy dictatorship where I guess it's the, I, I think it's the, the idea of, hey, we're a community, we're all these things, but really, I mean, the decision falls on one person. That person's speech.

• 41:14Speaker 05

  Yes. Same about Bon Jovi. A lot of groups like that. Earth, Wind & Fire too, right?

• 41:18Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 41:20Questlove?

  So that's what I was saying with the, with the Earth, Wind & Fire book. Um, no, not even that. I mean, Maurice White, I mean, uh, Philip Bailey went into heavy with, oh, okay, Maurice is sort of the estate of Earth, Wind & Fire. We're just people for hire.

• 41:35Speaker 05

  He's open.

• 41:36Questlove?

  And as, as I'm certain that you know, Fonte, you know,

• 41:42Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 41:43Questlove?

  as an artist about being blue collar, like often we get in this game because we, you know, we, we, we see these slow motion, uh, hype Williams shots and it's like, ah, we get our Bentley moment and it never happens that way. And, um, it's just that this time Headliner was just mad about his money, mad about like the situations, but it was very much like, you know, the, the rest of the band was explaining how unsatisfied they were with the situation that they were in.

• 42:16Speaker 05

  But I could see how it could have an effect on you as it had an effect on a lot of people, that piece, because one, it said that Vibe was going to do stuff like that. That's the first thing.

• 42:29Questlove?

  Black people have never seen something to that level.

• 42:32Speaker 05

  No, because this is the thing, because, because the media, that is considered to be ours, right? Ebony Essence, you know, going back to the, to the, to the black newspapers that came out of Reconstruction, all the way up through the 50s and the, through the Civil Rights Movement and everything else. Like, the reason that these things came to be is because we were treated so unfairly by the mainstream media.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Or we were just erased or not even considered, you know? You would talk about music in a certain town and you would just talk about all the white artists and never talk about the black artists. Or you would talk about all the male artists and not talk about the women artists. So it's like, Vibe exists in a space of like, well, of course, this is going to always be a place of celebration. But the thing that I always did learn from Quincy Jones is that Vibe was to be a place of celebration and interrogation. That no one would trust us on the celebration if we didn't also do the interrogation. Ooh. And so I felt supported by Quincy, by Allen, in doing that. And honestly, it,

• 43:43Speaker 05

  it was a very difficult piece for me to write, for the, for the magazine to publish. And also, it, it set the industry back on its heels a bit. That it's like, we love Vibe, but you just don't know.

• 43:59Speaker 04

  You still gotta be good.

• 44:01Speaker 05

  You just don't know. Yeah.

• 44:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:04Speaker 05

  And so to some, that was great because it meant that we weren't like a pamphlet or we weren't just like, it meant that Fluff. It wasn't just more fluff. Yes. You gotta remember, one of the first pieces in Vibe, I think it's in the Tresh issue, right? The, the test issue, in which Tresh was on the cover and there's a big piece by the great Scott Paulson Bryan in that piece. And the, and the headline is one for all time about Sean Combs. The headline is, this is not a pop piece.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  Right.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  Right? So, so it's something So many meanings. For so many meanings. Yeah. And so, and so we were always on that, that even with all the death row stuff, it's like, are, you know, people were like, are you guys contributing to it? It's like, are we, but are we reporting as any other culture would report on its culture? And is that also new and different for black and mult, the black and multicultural audience of Vibe to, to hear and see? So it was, it was very hard.

• 45:08Speaker 06

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer-songwriter Alex Warren.

• 45:31Questlove?

  I'm like a kid when, when I play music and I make music and I'm constantly asking questions, you know, whether it's an instrument I haven't played or it's a melody that seems foreign. You know, there's every night you play a show and, and it's the same set, but it's not the same show. At a certain point, your brain kind of goes on autopilot. When I'm in the studio or if I'm making music, that's where that curiosity kind of comes back, you know? I haven't lost it yet, but I'm also on my sophomore album. So, and you, you obviously are, are an expert here.

• 45:57Speaker 06

  Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 46:06Speaker 03

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• 46:43Speaker 01

  For most black women, at some point, you feel that protector moment where you're like, you know, do you have to fight that protector moment and go with more your journalistic mind? Or does that not even ever come into your head? There's this, and I, it's funny because I was like, I wonder if she writes in this, I haven't gotten to that point if you write about this in Shine Bright, but I was like, you know that protector moment where you go, this could maybe hurt this feeling, you know, so maybe I won't do that? Did you ever have that moment?

• 47:13Speaker 05

  I, I have that moment every day of my career.

• 47:16Speaker 01

  Okay. Okay. I could tell by looking at your face. I was like, am I saying something foreign? I don't

• 47:20Speaker 05

  No. Every, every, every, every day of my career, and especially as editor-in-chief of Vibe. It's, um, it's even different as being editor of Billboard.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Talk about that. Why?

• 47:33Speaker 05

  It's, it's a trade magazine. It's, it's all, it's all, it's all genres. I gotta know about what's going on in country, classical, adult contemporary, bubbling under. Like, I gotta know about what's going on everywhere. What's going on with pop singles, pop albums. Like, I know R&B this, R&B that. I gotta know what's going on in Latin music. I gotta know what's going on globally. Like, I gotta know what's going on everywhere and make decisions based on all of that. But you know, when you're at Vibe, you're covering black culture for a multi, for a black and multicultural audience that's not even used to being covered all the time with rigor and passion.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 48:07Speaker 05

  It's like, it's like, even like in history, if you look at Ebony, at the very beginnings of Ebony, it's like James Baldwin and everybody's in there. It's a, it's a different situation. But then, to me, due to pressures from the community, it just became more and more like, you could always expect good and proper news from Ebony.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 48:26Questlove?

  Until that Cosby issue.

• 48:27Speaker 05

  Well...

• 48:28Questlove?

  No, no. Hats off to Kierra for that.

• 48:31Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 48:32Questlove?

  That's, that's the first time that I've ever seen

• 48:34Speaker 05

  And Kierra's from what generation? The hip-hop generation?

• 48:37Questlove?

  Yes, exactly.

• 48:38Speaker 05

  Yes. And so that's what I'm saying. It just, it's, it's hard. You know, it's hard when, I can think of even small things. Like, I remember I interviewed Wesley Snipes for the cover of Vibe. That's my first Vibe cover.

• 48:50Questlove?

  Yo, I remember that issue.

• 48:52Speaker 05

  That's a great issue, man. My mom drove me to his house in Venice. Um, he was going through it and that, also that movie wasn't good.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  Which one was it?

• 49:00Speaker 05

  It was Demolition Man.

• 49:02Questlove?

  Demolition Man.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Um, the blonde hair.

• 49:05Questlove?

  I remember that issue.

• 49:07Speaker 05

  It was a hot, it was a hot mess. And the movie, the film was, but Wesley himself wasn't and never has been. So to me, he's one of the more underrated, he's actors in the history of cinema. Like, he's so good. I'm not saying he's made all the proper moves and, and all of that, but, but my thing is, how do you, how do you say that? But then, like, how do you say?

• 49:33Questlove?

  Frame it in a way that's not

• 49:34Speaker 05

  How do you say that? And that's the work for me. That's the work in Shine Bright for me. Like, how do I, how do I talk about Whitney Houston's mom?

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 49:45Questlove?

  You, you, you handled that awesomely, by the way.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:49Speaker 05

  Oh, thank you.

• 49:50Questlove?

  Yeah.

• 49:51Speaker 05

  Who, who to me is, is just like, she's so important to the history of American pop. Like, she literally trained Whitney Houston. She literally sang behind Elvis Presley. She literally sang behind Bam, Bam Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, everybody. And it's like, she literally contributed to the vocal arrangements for all of this big pop. And she trained Whitney. At the same time, she just didn't accept her daughter for who she was.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Yo, and can I just say, on that note, it's so funny you say that because as we're going through all these different lenses and filters for people these days, when it comes to the music business, I find it harder and harder to apply those filters if you really want The true story about things, or you really want to talk to people like if we really, we, I mean, we've had these moments where, you know, even talking to me and Amir and Jake will talk about people and we'll be like, yes, they were significant. They are historical. We should, these conversations should be had. However, but this little thing had happened. And so I'm so curious, Danielle, how you navigate that, like, because even in a situation like,

• 50:51Speaker 01

  I can't even say names because you feel guilty, but no man who was doing business in the sixties, seventies and eighties is fucking straightforward, has no shit with them, basically.

• 51:02Questlove?

  Right.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  There's no man. There's no man. So how do you like navigate that? That's just.

• 51:07Questlove?

  Well, I don't think cancel culture was, was a thing then. You know what I mean?

• 51:14Speaker 01

  Right. As much as it is now. Yeah. I guess that's why journalists get paid less and less. They can hardly write.

• 51:21Questlove?

  Right.

• 51:21Speaker 05

  Well, it's also because artists have so many other avenues and which to tell their story. It used to be that the only place that you had to go.

• 51:29Questlove?

  Nah, they go on IG live, nah.

• 51:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, you just go on IG live. You can go right to your Twitter feed, your IG feed. And some of that, I have to say, I am not mad at, like, I, I miss.

• 51:45Questlove?

  Even if it's to the detriment of your.

• 51:47Speaker 05

  Do I miss it? Yes. Do I miss being like, you have to go through vibe. Essentially, you gotta go through me and my cohort.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:55Questlove?

  Right.

• 51:56Speaker 05

  Right? So do, do you miss that feeling of like, oh my God, yeah, this is, we're vibe. Yeah, of course. But you know, to, to everything, there is a season. We were, we were, we were needed for that at that time. We were desperately needed. But I can just give you an example. So I'm doing this, I'm doing this, uh, this picture me doing a talking head moment for a Michael Jackson documentary.

• 52:22Speaker 01

  Okay, thank you. Come on. Yes.

• 52:24Speaker 05

  And so, and so, no, and not even to get into the complexities of Michael's situation, but just to say this, just to talk about the internet part of it.

• 52:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:32Speaker 05

  So that, so the, the person that's directing or answer, asking me the question says, don't you just find the internet to be totally overwhelming and ridiculous? Like, you can just put Michael Jackson's name into, into Google's, a Google search bar, and then like eight million pictures come back about Michael Jackson, 12 million stories, headlines, everything in the world is just so overwhelming and terrible. Isn't that just cheapening Michael's legacy? This, that and the third. And I was like, nah, actually I don't because see, I grew up a Michael Jackson fan. And I couldn't find anything about Michael Jackson. When I'm nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 years old, and all I wanted to know about was Michael Jackson, if I didn't have Cynthia Horner's write on magazine,

• 53:18Speaker 05

  what, what really would I have?

• 53:20Questlove?

  Right.

• 53:21Speaker 05

  I said, I, I, I was insatiable. When you're 13 year old as a fan, oh my God, I'm just insatiable and I couldn't find anything. And I told him, I said, so I actually feel flush, man, with joy, that I can put Michael Jackson's name into a Google search and just see every million, even if the news is bad, even if the news is ugly. I said, I would rather that, I would rather that than to have like, to be searching and thirsty to know something about my favorite one. Yes. So that's why, go ahead.

• 53:53Questlove?

  Can I ask a question?

• 53:54Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 53:55Questlove?

  All right. Uh, I was gonna ask you, what was the hardest issue for you to execute? However, I wanted to take a wild guess. How hard was that Michael Jackson issue to put together?

• 54:08Speaker 05

  What, what year? Of course, you know about me. What year was that? Was I there?

• 54:12Questlove?

  Ninety-five. Michael Jackson was on the cover of Vibe magazine, dressed very uncharacteristically. He was dressing, I think, uh, Kadada had dressed him in Tommy.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Tommy Hilfiger.

• 54:21Questlove?

  Hilfiger. Wait, you don't remember this, Maje?

• 54:25Speaker 04

  I don't remember. He had a Kangol on?

• 54:27Speaker 01

  He got a Kangol on.

• 54:28Questlove?

  Google Vibe, Michael Jackson cover.

• 54:30Speaker 05

  I remember it. I remember it. Wait a minute. Let me, let me take me into my memory. Whoever just looked it up, what are the cover lines on there?

• 54:37Speaker 01

  Uh, Michael makes history. Uh, the king of pop strikes a pose, Eazy-E's final days, notorious B.I.G., smokers, Smokes Cali, Enter the Wu-Tang Clan with, uh, oh, I can't read the names. Something, uh, oh, well, Bones Malone. Duh, Bones Malone.

• 54:55Questlove?

  That was, uh, ninety-five.

• 54:57Speaker 05

  Barely have any memory of that except for Eazy-E.

• 54:59Questlove?

  Damn, that's a flex. That's a flex. Like, oh, Michael Jackson, I don't remember that shit.

• 55:03Speaker 04

  What do you remember about Eazy-E? What do you remember about the Eazy interview?

• 55:06Speaker 05

  This is Eazy.

• 55:08Speaker 04

  Well, this is, oh, this is post-Eazy-E.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Final Days. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:12Speaker 05

  I mean, that's, that was, uh, that's, that's what I remember about that, about that particular issue. Cause ninety-five, okay, so I'm music editor. I just remember that, well, one, I just remember that it was, uh, yeah, I'm from the Bay area, so I had been knowing about and dealing with AIDS probably in a closer proximity than, than a lot of people.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 55:31Speaker 05

  It was very entwined in our lives. And so, I don't know, it, it, the tragedy of that, man. And, and I will say this, I, I'm not even the biggest Eazy-E fan, but just as a human being, man, it was, it was just too much. And also the way hip hop was dealing with it was crazy, um. That's what I really remember most about, uh, that. And I also remember just not liking the cover image or the design, which is rare for me. Which is rare because it doesn't really even look to me like a classic, uh, vibe cover, which we were very meticulous about on most issues. But you also gotta believe too, if, again, I don't know even if I was in those conversations, but I do know this.

• 56:16Speaker 05

  If Michael Jackson was involved, then Michael Jackson had probably had, uh, final say on what the cover looked like.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 56:24Speaker 05

  Because you understand too, in, in that era, um, Quincy Jones had a lot more to do with the day to day than, um, than he did by the time I became properly editor in chief.

• 56:36Questlove?

  I don't know. I just was always just under the impressions like, okay, he started this magazine and I'll see y'all later.

• 56:43Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 56:44Questlove?

  But he was day to day?

• 56:46Speaker 05

  No.

• 56:46Questlove?

  Okay.

• 56:46Speaker 05

  He was, he was, he was not day to day, but he was like, if it had something to do with something that Quincy had something to do with, then Mr. Jones was involved. Absolutely. I don't know, I don't know if I talk about it in Shine Bright, but my first experience, so I did Kirk Franklin, and then, let me not get my dates mixed up, but I feel like I was called to the phone and I was told that Quincy was on the phone with Joe Jackson. Because, because it was, it was Janet had an album coming out. And so, we needed to get that together.

• 57:27Speaker 05

  And, and I was on the phone with Quincy and, and he is, they've known each other since the dawn of time and I was the sitting editor in chief and I was just like, why am I even on the call? Hello?

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 05

  And they were just, yeah, just hashing stuff out. And then I was like, um, they asked me like, who, who should the writer be? They asked, I think Joe asked Quincy that. And then Quincy finally said, Danielle, like, this is your moment. Like, speak up. Like, this is your area or whatever.

• 58:01Questlove?

  Oh, the velvet robe cover.

• 58:03Speaker 05

  Yes. And I was like, well, you know, I think this should be me. And they were like, Joe was like, really? Why? And I, and I said, simple reasons. I said, because I saw her perform at the Circle Star Theater at San Carlos, California, when I was eight years old for my birthday. So,

• 58:23Speaker 01

  Boom.

• 58:23Speaker 05

  I probably had the longest relationship with her out of anybody here, but y'all. And then also, we're both really pretty much the same age. We're both really black California girls at the end of the day. And I mean, we could go through the catalog thus far. We could go back to Dream Street if you want to. We could do what you want to do. And so that's when Joe said, well, it seemed like you should be the person then.

• 58:47Questlove?

  Wow.

• 58:48Speaker 05

  I mean, I probably, my voice was a little bit more shaky back in those times. Yes. Let me not act like I was coming with all the, like, the, all the full confidence, but it's just when Quincy Jones shoots you to Rondo pass, it's like, you better just

• 59:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:00Speaker 05

  act like Kevin Garnett. Yeah.

• 59:02Questlove?

  Be prepared. Right.

• 59:03Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 59:04Questlove?

  So for Shine Bright, what was probably the most surprising revelation in constructing this? And also, was there anyone that you had to leave on the side of the road that you wanted to include?

• 59:19Speaker 05

  The most crazy thing to me about Shine Bright is just how much music comes out of segregated times.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 59:27Speaker 05

  It's just, it just never would just cease to amaze me. And you keep thinking that it's the decades go by that it's going to be different and then it just isn't. I mean, even if it's like somebody from younger than me who got bust, you know what I mean? And from a segregated situation. Then I think people don't just talk about that enough. Like, everyone just acts like we're just all out here going to school together and, you know, being friends together and, and out of that comes multi, out of that multicultural stew comes this amazing thing called pop. Well, no.

• 1:00:04Speaker 05

  Well, absolutely not. So that was, it, it, the fact that it just kept coming up and I was just got to be very nosy about it too. I wanted to know the details of it. And I'm like, so you're on the back of the bus. What's going on?

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. When you was talking to the Dixie.

• 1:00:20Speaker 05

  At one time, it seemed like one of the sisters was like, okay, Danielle. Let me just answer all your questions because. They were like, serious? No, but they got, they really, at first, they were like mad at me and then they really had to say, you really don't know, though. Because the fact that you dropped after that was something that I didn't know. You said the thing about the screen, like when you.

• 1:00:40Questlove?

  The screen.

• 1:00:40Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:00:41Questlove?

  I thought it was a metaphor. I didn't know.

• 1:00:42Speaker 05

  It's a real screen, like an actual, real hard screen with peg holes. Like it had pegs on it and then there were holes in the back of each seat. And you could just move it and just put the, the, the screen up in the pegs. And they made the, and they made, and they made the black person do it.

• 1:00:59Questlove?

  Uh, so basically, uh, there's, there's a part in telling the, uh, the Dixie Cup story, which, uh, their single was Going to the Chapel.

• 1:01:06Speaker 05

  Big single, number, number one single.

• 1:01:08Questlove?

  Right. So there, I, I guess you could say the, the real first reign of, of, I don't want to say some corny like black girl.

• 1:01:16Speaker 05

  No, but yes, I mean, they, they bumped, they bumped, let me do, like they bumped, let me do out of number one. So.

• 1:01:22Questlove?

  The Dixie Cups is, um, Going to the Chapel.

• 1:01:25Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:01:25Questlove?

  You know, they're, they're the first black group to, to, to hit number one.

• 1:01:29Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:01:29Questlove?

  And so she starts with them and they're telling a story about just segregation and busing and whatnot. And the fact that customers and bus, uh, riders would often tell, and I'm saying tell very lightly, uh, black people to move to the back of the bus. And they would put a, a, I guess there was a disposable screen that you could put up to divide.

• 1:01:54Speaker 05

  A movable screen.

• 1:01:56Questlove?

  A movable screen to divide.

• 1:01:58Speaker 05

  It should have been at the same regulated place. I always thought, that's no, okay, so this is the thing, that is what I thought. I always thought, and this is how you know that segregation never really gets discussed in detail. And I am committed always to not talking about black people or black women in summary, but in detail. Because this is my thing, I always imagined that the bus was kind of split into like two, like into thirds. And that the white people had the first two thirds and then the black people had the area like from the back door of the bus on. Right, right, right. But see, no, this is what's crazy. They moved the goalposts essentially.

• 1:02:39Speaker 05

  The more white people that got on, the smaller the black area would get because the screen was movable. And I asked Rosa Lee Hawkins and Barbara Hawkins, I was like, so when, would it be the driver or the people? And she said, whichever. And then I said, would they ask you nicely or would, were they, or were they mean? Like, and, and this is in New Orleans, Louisiana. Oh, New Orleans, that's right. And I told her, I said to her, I know I'm asking stupid questions, but I literally don't know. Don't know. And she said, well, then I will tell you, the way they asked depended on the way they woke up that morning.

• 1:03:23Speaker 05

  And I said, we don't know how segregation really was functioning. Mm hmm. It wasn't separate but equal. It wasn't separate but equal. It was really going to the museum only on Tuesday mornings when black people were allowed and stuff. Like it was really, there's a, there's a thing, uh, I write about my grandmother telling me one time, my God. And we all know about these black nights. I'm here, you know, we do. That must. The way my grandmother was just like, oh my God, you know how conceited you are as a girl when you're like 19 or 20? And you think you're cute and you're really in the mirror and you're really getting that mascara, right? This is before lashes and you're really, the pre lash era.

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  And you're really, what's your Maybelline getting right? And your grandmother's irritating you because your, your, your, your tights, your top is too tight and your skirt is too short. So my grandmother's really giving me that look like, so where are we going? And I was like, I'm going to this spot, Grandma. It's like Thursday nights or Tuesday nights or whatever it was. And, and she was like, oh, okay, where is it? I said, Grandma, it's just at this cool spot, like all the black people in Oakland get together. Like it's really weird. It's organic. It's just like, we all just hang out there and it's just so cool. It's like a lounge and drinks. It's amazing. She said, okay, where is it? And I told her the place. She said, oh, I know that place. Cause my grand, my grandmother's born and raised in, in, in Oakland.

• 1:04:52Speaker 05

  I said, Grandma, you could not know the place. Like you're a hundred, I'm 20. Like stop Grandma, I love you, but no. And she said, ma'am, listen, we used to go to that place. And if it wasn't that place, it was owned by the same people. And the thing is that we went there because that was the only night that we were allowed to go to that club. It wasn't, it was like Tuesday nights. So we all had to get up to go to work in the morning on Wednesday. So we just had to go on Tuesday and on Saturday and Sunday and Friday, or on Friday and Saturday. When, when that's the normal time for people to party was only white people that were allowed in there. So that's why, she's like, yes, that's why it's organic. Mechanically on a Tuesday.

• 1:05:36Speaker 05

  That is, that is black night. And so my grandma, I was like, I couldn't even have a good time at the set anymore. I'm like, I'm living, what? You blew my mind with that because I was like, that's nationwide. There's always a black night. It's always on a weeknight. Black night is always on a weeknight.

• 1:05:58Questlove?

  You're, you're right about that. And yeah, when.

• 1:06:03Speaker 05

  I love writing about, I love writing about, like I said, specifics and I like writing about culture. And I like writing about something Ann Powers, who's the head of music at NPR. Ann, um, was music editor at SF Weekly and I became music editor of SF Weekly, San Francisco Weekly, right after Ann. And, and really hand held me into that job. And something that Ann taught me was, this is back in the nine, 1991, 1992. She said, no one's writing about, people are writing about hip hop as a music. No one's writing about the scene and what the scene is like. And I was, I was enraptured by that and I still am, I still am. I take notes in my head, on a pad or on my notes app.

• 1:06:47Speaker 05

  When I'm out, just because the scene matters, it matters, it's culture and that Tuesday night thing is the scene.

• 1:06:56Speaker 06

  Hey, it's Niall Rogers, host of Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series. I'm driving across the country, meeting some of today's most fascinating artists. We're exploring the stories before the moment that changed everything. This week, I'm joined by breakout singer songwriter Alex Warren. To this day, Ordinary would not have done anything and I would have not been able to put it out if, uh, if Book Talk didn't back it up. And if my wife and her friend didn't back it up. So. Amazing. Pretty crazy how like, just one thing. Right. I mean, you, you, I bet you, we could point to nine different things in our careers where it's just one thing, all of a sudden. If that one thing didn't happen, then I wouldn't be here. What you're talking about right now. Yeah. Is what I've been talking about since the beginning of my career.

• 1:07:40Speaker 06

  There's these things outside of you. Yeah. That make everything happen. These other forces somehow came into contact with each other. Yeah. Help propel you to this place. It's just insane. Experience Before the Moment, a Lincoln original series on the iHeartRadio app, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Mario Lopez from All Mario Lopez Daily Podcast. Buy smart, drive for less and trade for more. That's Toyota affordability. And it starts with a great deal on an all wheel drive Camry, Corolla Cross, or a Corolla sedan with the latest features in tech. Or test drive a spacious Grand Highlander or adventure ready RAV4.

• 1:08:23Speaker 06

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• 1:08:42Questlove?

  So in your, in your history, what will you say is your three definitive pieces of work?

• 1:08:49Speaker 05

  One of the most, uh, important pieces to me and one that continually gets good notice from people is the piece that I wrote as the foreword to the collection of, um, essays about Tupac Shakur that Vi put together in a book called Tupac Shakur. And you can find it at, uh, just Google New York Times, Danyel Smith, Tupac Shakur. And it's about a four, 4,500 word piece that basically just takes his career and life into consideration. And so that is one for me. The second one is from much later in my career, six years ago, I think now, I wrote a piece for ESPN, the magazine, about Whitney Houston singing the national anthem at Super Bowl. I just really felt like, and my editor really felt like, and, and in fairness, ESPN really felt like

• 1:09:35Speaker 05

  it hadn't really been written about at, at, at the intersection of culture, sport, and, and just like American history. I put so much work into that Whitney Houston piece and it paid off. It won awards. Like it's really a, uh, one of my favorite pieces probably that I ever wrote. And you know, I think I'm very smart in that piece.

• 1:10:03Questlove?

  Can you give a summary of that? Cause I'm curious.

• 1:10:05Speaker 05

  It's just very about Whitney Houston putting the entire country on her back because war had just been declared. This was in the pre-security era and Super Bowl was a soft target. So I wrote about everything. I wrote about what was going on with the war. I wrote about what was going on with the NFL commissioner. I wrote about her pre-recording the song. I wrote about the, I, I, I covered her, her performance in a second by second way. I covered every single second of her performance. And that's what I wanted for my conclusion and that's what we had. And I just talk about her at the end, just, you know, with the, with the, with the, what do they call it? The, the, the fighter pilots or whatever, the jet planes or whatever, the military planes going over her head.

• 1:10:48Speaker 05

  And really to me, I was trying to say how inappropriate it is and, but the way she sings free is so important to me. How she owned that word in that, in the Star Spangled Banner. So many singers run from that word or they shorten that lyric. And, and Whitney put a whole curly Q at the end of it. She went up higher than she even normally goes. She went up into Mariah territory at that moment. She stood there in an at ease, like kind of stance. Um, she was in a sweatsuit. When do you see Whitney Houston in a sweatsuit?

• 1:11:25Questlove?

  Right.

• 1:11:26Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:11:26Speaker 06

  She had tracksuit on.

• 1:11:27Speaker 05

  And a headband. Yes. And she had a headband and some Nike Cortezes. I was like, who is that lady?

• 1:11:32Questlove?

  To me, your 95, uh, Kells piece, which.

• 1:11:40Speaker 05

  Well, see, that's blocked, so. I blocked that.

• 1:11:44Questlove?

  But you're like the one that literally broke the story out.

• 1:11:46Speaker 05

  Yes, we did. It was, it was a team effort, but we did, yes.

• 1:11:49Questlove?

  Okay, I didn't know it was a team effort.

• 1:11:51Speaker 05

  The team effort comes in, I'm on the road with Dana Lichtenberg, we're chasing him down. But the, the reporting of, Dana Lichtenberg is the photographer that shot him for the cover, the cover, it is, and I'm happy you brought that up, honestly, because Thank you. Because really the headline is for all time, "The Sex, the Soul, the Sales and the Scandalous Marriage to Teenage Superstar Aaliyah." And the thing that made it what it was, was the fact that Dana got the shot. I got the story and Robert was so awful that day. And we didn't even know what we didn't know at that time. And so, so me and Dana are on the road, this is Allen sending me and Dana Lichtenberg on the road.

• 1:12:36Speaker 05

  Dana shot so many great shots of Lil Kim, Tupac Shakur. But, so our goal is, we gotta get the story and we need him to speak. And also I gotta report, I gotta find his teacher, I gotta find, you know, I gotta interview all types of people. Um, he, he, his bodyguard let me in, we were at the, what was it, what was it called? The arena in Philly back then, the Spectrum or the

• 1:13:01Questlove?

  Spectrum.

• 1:13:01Speaker 05

  The Spectrum. So I'm in the bowels of the Spectrum. Um, it wasn't fuzzy, but it was another radio DJ that when I saw him, it wasn't fuzzy, but it was somebody that reminds me of Fuzzy. And they were standing on stage in soundcheck that we had snuck into. And I told him my situation and he was like, "You can have my backstage pass." I'll never, like, I don't mean If that was Cosmic Kid, he looked like Fuzzy from the back. Yes, right? And I was like, "Man, you're making my whole life."

• 1:13:30Questlove?

  You were doing the story and you weren't officially traveling with the camp?

• 1:13:37Speaker 05

  Not at all. We got on Amtrak from New York to, to Philly. And they, they weren't super welcoming. There were literally signs up backstage at the Spectrum that said, "If you see anybody from Vibe here, escort them off the premises." Wow.

• 1:13:54Questlove?

  Wow.

• 1:13:55Speaker 05

  And so we were like, "Wow," we just felt like Public Enemy number one because we had a story on the, this was my thing when I was at Vibe Music Editor, Editor in Chief. "If you said you were gonna do it, I'm holding you to your word." Like, I, I really believed that and it was very childish, almost the way I would really hold on to that. Like, I would, my thing was very much like, "You promised." And I know a person could be like, I Your word is your word. Yes, but I know somebody could easily be like, "My fingers are crossed when I said it." Like, that's how, that's how, that's how, but that's how, that's how serious I was about it though. I was just very like, "No, they promised, so they're gonna be held to that."

• 1:14:34Speaker 05

  And so Jive and, and, and, and Mr. Kelly had promised we were doing this cover story. And then because the Aaliyah stuff broke, then they said no. So my thing is, "No, then we're gonna find you and we are gonna get the story." "I'm gonna come to Philly and I'm gonna figure something out. If I have to interview everybody in Philly, how do you feel about this concert and this situation? I'm going to do it." If Dana has to shoot you with the telephoto lens from the back of the stadium, then that's what we're gonna do. But the thing is, he, he let us in because of Dana. Dana was a beautiful woman, white woman from South Africa. And very just low-key with it, very, very, uh, not like giving you sex,

• 1:15:19Speaker 05

  not very, not giving you sexy, but just giving you like, frankly She know what's

• 1:15:24Questlove?

  Disarming.

• 1:15:25Speaker 05

  Disarming. So, so Rob, so Robert said, "She could come in." That's fucked up, cause you fucking beautiful. Right? Listen, listen, I appreciate that though. That's all right. But listen, so then Dana said, because we were really gang, gang. Dana said, "Okay, but I'm not coming in without Danielle." Damn. So then Robert said, "If you," cause he knew who I was. I had covered him before, I had been in London with him, all types of stuff on junkets as people used to do back in those days. So he said, "You can come in, but you can't write anything down." With a, he said, "With a pen." Okay, okay.

• 1:16:10Speaker 05

  But see, I had a pencil, so it was like, man, listen, it was so crazy. I can't even tell you how crazy that was. But what I'm saying why it was such a team effort, aside from the fact that I had Allen advising me, that Dana had George Pitts, the photo director, advising her, because we didn't know what to do. Also, you guys gotta remember, we were kids. I was 28. I was a child. Like, I mean, I was, I was young in the game, but was just on it. And so while Allen was advising me and George Pitts was gone now, God bless the dead,

• 1:16:52Speaker 05

  was advising Dana, then Carter Harris and Rob Kenner and the whole Vibe team was back there trying to find that marriage certificate. That was the goal that was set and we refused not to meet that challenge. Wow, how do you do that?

• 1:17:11Questlove?

  I'm about to say, how do you do that in 95?

• 1:17:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, let me tell you something, it was work. And we had, we had contacts, we were reporters. Um, we knew people who knew people who knew people. I mean, we were the ones that reported the fact that, how Aaliyah climbed out of the window and got with the bodyguards and they got on a private plane down to Florida. Like, this is because we know people who know people. Yes.

• 1:17:38Questlove?

  You guys had to be Google.

• 1:17:40Speaker 05

  We had to be. And so, and so Carter and them found that marriage certificate and we ran it. And that's also another one of those, to go back, Quest, so what you were talking about with the rest of development. That was another time when people said, "Oh, Vibe is serious." Because you gotta understand, I remember, um, to see one of the higher-ups at Vibe calling me either on that issue or the next time we put him on the cover, when we had even more evidence about his doings. I remember just putting it on speaker and just allowing people to walk into my office, hearing that man call me every type of B I T C H, lowlife, W H O R E, uh, Vibe being fish rap, Vibe being, I was leading

• 1:18:24Questlove?

  Who is this?

• 1:18:25Speaker 05

  This is, this is, this is like someone very high up at, at, at Jive Records. Does he still have a job? Does he still have a job? Does he still have a job? Yes, he does. So I'm just saying, and, and then I remember too, that Robert was saying he was going to sue Vibe. He was going on, I guess it was Hot 97 saying that. And I, I went on the radio, cause they were like, "Well, do you wanna respond?" This is how the internet used to work in the pre-internet era. And, and I was like, "I'll, I'll take that bait." And I went up there and they were like, "Well, are you concerned that you guys are gonna get sued? And, uh, Robert Kelly said he's gonna put Vibe out of business." And I said, "What wasn't true, I used to feel so confident in, in our, which people don't have anymore in journalism.

• 1:19:07Speaker 05

  I used to feel confident in our reporting, I used to feel confident, confident in our fact-checking. And I used to feel confident in the fact that every single solitary page of Vibe Magazine went by lawyers before it went to press every single month, that I was ever working there as music editor or editor in chief." So my thing was, I was able to say on the radio, "I think that he's just like profiling." As we used to say in Oakland, "He's just side busting." Because if he wanted to sue, then he would. But he would have to prove, one, that we were wrong and two, that we had malicious intent, and we have neither.

• 1:19:45Questlove?

  So when you run that piece about, you know, him doing all the abuse and just all the fuck shit, how do you then reconcile when it's time to review his next album?

• 1:19:55Speaker 05

  So I was there for two stories, two cover stories of R. Kelly. And I, I mean, the short answer is, I don't know what we actually did. I would have to look at the timeline. But if I had to guess, I would say that the discussion went like this, and this is purely me guessing. The record is coming out, he hasn't been convicted of anything. And so we have to cover it. I'm not saying that that is what happened, but just knowing how things tended to happen when I was there, that sounds like the way a conversation might have gone.

• 1:20:38Speaker 05

  Do you think that's how it should in 2022 with all the lenses? Is that how the conversation should still go? I think once a person is convicted of something, then the conversation changes. Cause a thing too, particular to the black community is this. There's so many times when black people are accused of things that they did not do. There's so many times in history where people are, black people was getting canceled before canceling was a word because of things that they did. I mean, things that they didn't do. And so we also had to walk a very fine line of like, "Well, what do we know?

• 1:21:22Speaker 05

  What has, what is legally?" I remember there was a whole thing at, at Vibe that, that happens at all places of reputable places of journalism is that you can't just go around saying that someone was murdered before there is a conviction to that point. You have to say that they were killed.

• 1:21:41Questlove?

  Killed, yeah.

• 1:21:42Speaker 05

  Murder is a, murder is a legal term. It's a, it's a legal term. And so these are the

• 1:21:48Questlove?

  So you would have to say Tupac is killed, you couldn't say that it was a murder?

• 1:21:52Speaker 05

  Could not until

• 1:21:53Questlove?

  Well, I'm being hypothetical when I ask.

• 1:21:55Speaker 05

  Yes, but, but yes, yes. And I do believe if you go back, you will see that. I remember that being struck out of many a piece, that he was, that he was not murdered until someone had been convicted of having murdered him.

• 1:22:11Questlove?

  Of the murder.

• 1:22:12Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:22:17Speaker 06

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• 1:23:17Speaker 03

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• 1:23:57Questlove?

  In your, I guess in your tenure there, who were some of the writers that you helped usher into the game? People that kind of started off as interns who are now like-

• 1:24:12Speaker 05

  Oh, man, listen.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  Look at your phone, look at your phone.

• 1:24:15Speaker 05

  I know. First of all, let me just say this. I don't know who all I ushered in, but I do know that I've worked with some amazing people. I mean, when I got there, you know, Alan and Jonathan Van Meter had already hired people like Joan Morgan, who's Dr. Joan Morgan now. Scott Poulsen-Bryant, who's Dr. Scott Poulsen-Bryant now.

• 1:24:37Questlove?

  Wow.

• 1:24:38Speaker 05

  People like that, like.

• 1:24:40Questlove?

  Okay.

• 1:24:41Speaker 05

  And then when I, when I got there, I mean, Karen Renee Good, Marable.

• 1:24:47Questlove?

  I was gonna say Karen Good was just starting out, like writing record reviews and-

• 1:24:52Speaker 05

  She was.

• 1:24:53Questlove?

  Yeah, you gave her Baduism as a lead review.

• 1:24:56Speaker 05

  I did. I mean, Karen and I are girlfriends. Karen was in my wedding. Like, that's, you know, we're girlfriends like that. So obviously Karen Good, Marable, who writes a lot now, so much beautiful stuff for The Oxford American. But also Sasha Jenkins, Jeff Mao.

• 1:25:12Questlove?

  She gave Sepeta her start, I think.

• 1:25:14Speaker 05

  Um, yeah, I always gotta be careful talking about who I get a start to.

• 1:25:18Questlove?

  Right. Okay, not their start.

• 1:25:20Speaker 05

  Yes, but, but no, Raquel Sepeta definitely is a genius. And she wrote for Vibe when I was there. And also that's, I met Elliot Wilson, my husband. And I signed him his first Vibe record review also.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:25:34Questlove?

  What was his first Vibe record review? You remember?

• 1:25:37Speaker 05

  No, but he, he does.

• 1:25:39Questlove?

  Man.

• 1:25:40Speaker 05

  But, but that was way before we started dating. I was actually married, Elliot's my second husband, in case people don't know.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  No, really didn't. How long was your first, your first one?

• 1:25:49Speaker 05

  Short and sweet.

• 1:25:50Speaker 01

  Nice. How old were you?

• 1:25:52Speaker 05

  I got married at like 22.

• 1:25:54Speaker 01

  Oh, very old now.

• 1:25:55Speaker 04

  That was short and sweet, yeah.

• 1:25:56Questlove?

  Is it hard when, well, I mean, at one point, both of you were editor-in-chief of competing-

• 1:26:03Speaker 05

  We were.

• 1:26:05Questlove?

  So because you guys were married and you're editor-in-chief of competing, not Hatfield McCoy level of competition. It was? Yeah, so how does that work? Like, how do you find love?

• 1:26:19Speaker 01

  Who you got for your cover, yeah.

• 1:26:20Questlove?

  What separation of church and state when both of you are fishing for like the same story?

• 1:26:26Speaker 05

  Well, we had a history of it already. Elliot went to become, when we, back when we were just colleagues, Elliot stopped writing for Vibe and he went on to become music editor of The Source.

• 1:26:38Questlove?

  Right.

• 1:26:39Speaker 05

  So I was feeling competitive at that time before we ever were dating. So, but I had to respect the skill set and-

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Sounds like that's one of y'all love languages.

• 1:26:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, and then when I was in, when I was in grad school, by this time, he was editor-in-chief of XXL. And this was around the time when we started dating. I had to respect it. Like, that's when he put Afeni on the cover. And that was just such a courageous moment. Like, I could only, I wasn't even, like, we weren't even in each other's phones or, I don't even know if we had phones back then. But I just remember saying to people, like, I know he had to fight to get that done. I know, I know what that fight must have been like, and I respected it. So then when we got married, I was, I was in grad school still. And it's like a nine, 10 months after we were married where I went back to Vibe. And we went into it real, really very willy-nilly.

• 1:27:38Speaker 05

  We thought it was going to be very easy to manage the situation.

• 1:27:45Speaker 05

  And after the first, and after our first issues, I don't know if people know my husband, but he's not known for like his calm and-

• 1:27:54Speaker 04

  No, not at all, not at all.

• 1:27:56Speaker 05

  And he's such a-

• 1:27:58Speaker 04

  Yellow nigga.

• 1:27:59Speaker 05

  He's such, he's such a sweetheart, but he's just not really known for, you know, taking things lightly. He's a very passionate individual, so.

• 1:28:05Questlove?

  You calmed him down. I will say, the Elliot now is, is way more calm. And I actually credit that to you.

• 1:28:13Speaker 05

  Ah, that's funny.

• 1:28:14Questlove?

  Because just his, his nerdy ego trip, like, days of, yeah.

• 1:28:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, those are my guys, though, all of them tour one. But it's like, but, but no, so we, really after the first issue, it just was bad. Like, the way things went down.

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:28:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, and so, and also you have to understand that we had staffs of people that, Elliot, a whole staff of people that already believed in him. And I was a brand-new, second-time editor-in-chief of Vibe that wanted a staff to believe in me. So we had to establish some, as we called them back then, some rules and regulations and some terms and conditions.

• 1:28:55Speaker 01

  Come on now, you got to give us a couple.

• 1:28:57Questlove?

  Yes, sir.

• 1:28:57Speaker 05

  I got to know. Well, I mean, the, if I'm honest, the main one was just that you could not discuss in any way at home, anything that was going on with the issue at work. But you could say somebody was getting on your nerves, or I don't know why they don't have Coca-Colas in their refrigerator at work, but you couldn't, you couldn't come home and say like, I'm really trying to get this covered with A, B, or C. No.

• 1:29:25Speaker 04

  Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

• 1:29:26Questlove?

  Let me ask, only because, again, like, you and him are, to me, the most courageous power couple of journalism. Only because both of you had your feet in the fire, again, at a time in which, and I, I, I'm using more hyperbole when I say dangerous. I'll say more like exciting times, but I'll also say serious times.

• 1:29:53Speaker 05

  Very serious.

• 1:29:54Questlove?

  Like, you, you were, you were definitely around during like the, what they would call the danger era of-

• 1:30:01Speaker 05

  Rap.

• 1:30:02Questlove?

  The East and West thing. But, you know, for also him, as, as a wife, were you concerned about his situation at The Source? Because he too was sort of in a weird, pickled situation.

• 1:30:16Speaker 04

  The Benzino era.

• 1:30:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, he was at XXL at that time, but yeah.

• 1:30:20Questlove?

  Right, and like, was there just any, just general worry for safety coming from your end? Like, okay, don't, don't write that op-ed because you know good and well that this is gonna, or for you, it was just like, church and state, we're never talking about what our work is and bringing it into the home.

• 1:30:41Speaker 05

  When Elliot was going through the most terrible stuff, we were not dating. We weren't.

• 1:30:46Questlove?

  Okay, I get it.

• 1:30:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, we weren't. We started dating at the, I think, the end of '03, but let me not, let me not put too fine a point on it because-

• 1:30:54Questlove?

  I got it.

• 1:30:55Speaker 05

  Elliot was, Elliot was way in the streets at the time when we were dating, so.

• 1:30:59Questlove?

  Just for our listeners, Elliot was at XXL right during the, the height of, I guess, the Eminem versus Benzino wars.

• 1:31:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, right during the 50s, yeah.

• 1:31:10Questlove?

  And it would get very serious.

• 1:31:12Speaker 05

  Very serious. As I said, at that time, when he was going through the very worst of it, we weren't dating. I knew him at, I knew him as a, as a colleague. And, you know, there's a certain scene of, of writers and such in New York at that time, black writers and stuff, where we all kind of knew each other, would see each other out and that kind of thing. And I always knew Elliot, like I said, he used to write for me when I was music editor at Vibe. And he was always supportive of me. I remember when my book came out in '03, my first novel, he came into, because he was balling. He came into Barnes and Noble and brought like 15 books. And he was just, you know, he was that type of dude. But even from afar, and through my friends on the scene and people who were publicists and other writers,

• 1:31:56Speaker 05

  I mean, they would say that Elliot was going through it. You know, people, people that saw him, I mean, these are his stories to tell, but people that saw him more than I did. And I also know just now, being his wife for these many years, you know, the health issues and stuff that came out of that era, like, it's, you know, stuff that he still manages to this day. So, I mean, he's a brave dude, though, but none of us are like superhuman. You know, and there was some real scary stuff that we all went through. Some of it is in Shine Bright, where just, you know, threats were made. And it's like, I remember my mom coming to see me in New York from California. She really did, but she did a couple of times.

• 1:32:39Speaker 05

  And she's at the office, and I was just going about the business of my day. And then she said like, so is this how it always is? And I was like, what? And she was like, just the way, it was a different era. She's like, just the way you're talking to people. I said, how am I talking to people? She's like, just cursing and stuff. And I was like, am I cursing? She was like, yes, you're cursing a lot on the phone to people. And I was like, that's because people are trying to back out of the things that they said they were gonna do. That's because of this, that's because of that. And my mother said, okay, but like, are you running a staff or are you running a gang? Like, what's going on? But see, the thing is, yeah, but see, because the thing is, we, it was-

• 1:33:22Speaker 04

  Let me think about that. It's a good question.

• 1:33:25Speaker 05

  I mean, I was only there for about five more months. Because we were scared. And also, you guys understand how invested we were in Vibe's success? How much responsibility we felt to the community and, and to ourselves? And, and just the music and to hip-hop culture? Like, we were obsessed. There's not a, a better word for it. I would say this about just most everybody on the staff, down to the receptionists.

• 1:33:54Speaker 01

  It had to be a lot of pressure because y'all were top of that food chain.

• 1:33:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, and people were, people were attacking us physically. People were getting guns pulled on them in the studio over-

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  Remember?

• 1:34:08Speaker 05

  Record reviews and stuff. And so it's like, yeah.

• 1:34:12Questlove?

  Would you change anything?

• 1:34:14Speaker 05

  I would change everything up here.

• 1:34:18Speaker 05

  Oh. Not, not everything, but you know what, if I just, as I said, we were all, we were young, man.

• 1:34:26Questlove?

  I get it.

• 1:34:27Speaker 05

  Think about, think about your, think about, I call them my baby cousins and stuff. Like, I think about my baby cousins that are like twenty five years old right now. They come over and ask me the most ridiculous stuff. And I'm like, aren't you grown? And they're like, no. And I'm like, I was a whole, like. I thought that was. Right. I was a whole R and B editor at Billboard at that, at your age, man, like. What, like, I was, I was, I was editing Havelock Nelson when I was like twenty five. That's not fair to put that up.

• 1:34:57Questlove?

  Nah, their age, nah, their age, like a twenty four, you know, in ninety five and a twenty four in twenty twenty two are two completely different things.

• 1:35:03Speaker 05

  It's very different. It's very different. I'm not saying I wasn't mature, but I'm just saying I was still, I didn't have a lot of, I was learning how to manage on the job. And then all of a sudden you tell me, you come into my office and say, I was at the studio. And such and such didn't like the review and I told him I was, I could, I didn't know what to say to that and then they just pulled out a gun. Now, I'm, I'm not going to act like I'm not from East Oakland because I am.

• 1:35:34Questlove?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:35Speaker 05

  But that was.

• 1:35:36Questlove?

  Loaded statement.

• 1:35:37Speaker 05

  Well, it's, it's, it's loaded from a native. Yeah. But that still shouldn't be normalized. It's not normalized, but in the nineteen, late nineteen eighties, in Oakland, in East Oakland in particular, but in West Oakland too. In your office, and I'm talking about when we do the story. No, no, no, but I'm saying that, that, you know, and you, you just kind of, kind of had to be about it in East Oakland. And so, did I bring some of that being about it to the offices of I, I, I probably did. I probably did.

• 1:36:11Questlove?

  When you are running a ship like that, is there pressure that you felt that your male contemporaries wouldn't have had to have gone through?

• 1:36:22Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 1:36:23Questlove?

  Wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, timeout. Was Alan, was that, was Alan?

• 1:36:26Speaker 05

  These motherfuckers don't even talk.

• 1:36:26Questlove?

  No, but timeout, was, was Alan and Jonathan a screamer? Were they screamers or?

• 1:36:30Speaker 05

  No, not at all, not at all.

• 1:36:32Questlove?

  I almost think Alan's like, not passive aggressive, but like.

• 1:36:37Speaker 05

  No, Alan's just a very soft spoken dude.

• 1:36:39Questlove?

  Right, that's what I'm saying.

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  But also people deal with white men differently than they deal with black women. All the time.

• 1:36:46Speaker 05

  In positions of power. And, and, and, and as much as I'm saying that, you know, I brought some of my East Oaklandness to the editor in chief's chair. I'm also sitting front row in Milan at, you know, the Jill Sanders show and things like that. And, and trying to, to give all of that energy before I even knew how to give that kind of energy. But if you're asking me, was it hard because I was a black woman? Absolutely. And this is the thing, I'm not guessing because I know the men that ran other magazines. And that ran vibe after me. And I know what their experiences were like as compared to my experiences.

• 1:37:29Speaker 05

  I know how much money they made as compared to how much money I made. I know all of these things, also just because I'm nosy and I'm a reporter. So it's like, was it harder for me? Yes. Were there, were there times when it was easier for me? Maybe, but not enough.

• 1:37:48Questlove?

  It didn't balance out the hard shit.

• 1:37:49Speaker 05

  No, not.

• 1:37:51Questlove?

  As an artist, I wanted to study who the gatekeepers of, of reviews and words were. Um, when, at the, well, I'm still making records, but the time when I was making product. But for you, do you have hope for what counts for journalism today? Because I will say that there's like a level of thoroughness that is kind of lost. And there's also just technique and, and I'm not saying that it's, it's, it's a lost art. Like, there's definitely some writers that I feel like are super smart and super insightful, but for the most part.

• 1:38:28Questlove?

  I think now it's like the wild, wild west where just, you know, there's, there's just people that aren't that knowledgeable about their subjects. They run on Wikipedia real quick or run to your old articles and add to it. Do you, do you feel like your, your, your, your era of the MBA? Or the new era of the MBA is, can hold a candle to your era of it?

• 1:38:54Speaker 05

  It's harder, but yes, I do think they can. Um, for the most part, if there's differences in quality, it's not the fault of the, of the writer.

• 1:39:06Questlove?

  It's also what they have to write about?

• 1:39:07Speaker 05

  No, it's the fact that there's no budgets for anything. There's no, if you're writing right now for twenty cents a word, how much are you putting into it? I was writing for twenty cents a word when I was in my early twenties. If you were, I turn stuff down now because I'm just like, it's just not worth it for me to do that. Because I, I'm not even contributing to my household well on what you're trying to pay me. And so then you have kids who aren't getting fact checked. You have kids that, that aren't, not even kids, but adults who aren't being edited by people that know and understand the culture. And who they themselves are being paid well enough to put their heart, heart and soul into the work.

• 1:39:50Speaker 05

  You have people that are only doing email interviews because no one wants to pay somebody's cab fare across town, let alone a plane trip. I remember when I sent Michael Gonzalez, another great writer from the vibe era. Shout out to Michael Gonzalez. Gonzo Mike at, at Twitter. It's like, I remember Barry White had an album coming out, that was The Practice What You Preach album. And they were like, well, I, I, I wanted the story. Like, I just wanted the story. I wanted the story. I think I was music editor at the time. And they were like, well, we can't do it, we can't do it, we can't do it. But if you want to send somebody to Brussels right now, then we can do it. I went to my boss, whoever it was at the time, and told him the situation and they said, well, buy him a ticket to Brussels.

• 1:40:34Speaker 05

  And they went and it's a great, great story from Michael and the headline is Blackberry Jam. And it's an amazing, it's an amazing story, amazing photographs. And it's like, where is that going to happen now? That's not the, that's not the fault of the writer. That's the thing that's heartbreaking to me. One of the great things about me going to ESPN was because ESPN has budget. As I said, they sent me to Qatar to do some own vibes. When is that happening? They can afford to, to, to, to, to take care of people like Justin Tinsley, like David Dennis, like Soraya, like, yeah, like. You know, like, so that people can make a living and have a life. There's not even that many places right now where you can go where that's okay.

• 1:41:18Speaker 05

  So when I say I have hope, I, I do believe that the pendulum is going to swing back, but it's going to take some foot stomping. And maybe even some swinging on the part of the journalists themselves. That's when I say, yes, like, I don't know what a general strike is called for. I don't know, but something got to give.

• 1:41:34Questlove?

  Okay. Are you going to write any more fictional novels?

• 1:41:39Speaker 05

  Whether, yes, I love fiction and, uh, my MFA is in fiction. I may, God willing and life is long, I may. But I will admit that the things that I'm thinking about with regard to fiction now would probably be more scripts, maybe than novels. Um, yeah, it's what I'm into right now and thinking about how to maybe even look at my first two novels and how those things might turn into things that exist in other spaces, whether that's audio, whether that's, you know, filmic or whatever. So those are the kind of things, um, that I'm thinking about a lot, trying to learn about. I've taken a page out of your book, sir, just trying to look at what could happen.

• 1:42:16Questlove?

  Pivot, yeah.

• 1:42:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, what can happen in, in documentary spaces and things like that.

• 1:42:21Questlove?

  Um, I'm, I'm actually, uh, you know, um, I guess by the time this, this airs, we're already made an announcement. Like, I'm, I'm a fraidy cat in terms of, I never make an announcement until the project is finished. And then it comes. Um, but the, the, probably the biggest secret I've been keeping under my hat for the last two years is I too have written a fictional book.

• 1:42:45Questlove?

  And we'll, we'll, I, I will assume that this will come out by next week. So.

• 1:42:50Speaker 05

  Next week?

• 1:42:51Questlove?

  I'm, I've been a junkie of, of time travel and, um, one of my favorite writers, um, a, a gentleman named S A Cosby. Who, um, he's written many, uh, uh, New York Times bestseller. So he and I sort of came friends over the, the pandemic and I guess. You know, taking a break from doing the movie, I would DJ. But then taking a break from DJing, I would journal and wrote my other music book.

• 1:43:19Speaker 05

  This is so good.

• 1:43:20Questlove?

  My fourth pivot was I always wanted to write kind of the books that I didn't get to read as a kid. So it's.

• 1:43:30Speaker 05

  And are those books like Black People Traveling in Time? Or is that what it is?

• 1:43:34Questlove?

  Yeah, it's two kids. It's middle school books. So it's two kids that are.

• 1:43:38Speaker 04

  It's a Y O novel. Okay.

• 1:43:40Questlove?

  Yeah, it's two kids that are.

• 1:43:43Speaker 05

  I love to hear it. I love to hear it.

• 1:43:45Questlove?

  Yeah, a girl and a boy. They're both 14 and 15. And the girl, she's like a science wizard and she invents a time travel device. And he gets the bright idea to try to save one of his groups that he admired from breaking up. And the butterfly effect of.

• 1:44:02Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:44:03Speaker 05

  Of that?

• 1:44:03Questlove?

  Anyway.

• 1:44:04Speaker 05

  Oh, this sounds really good. That's like, I remember I used to read all those Madeline Lingo books, like Wrinkle in Time and all that.

• 1:44:10Speaker 04

  Wrinkle in Time.

• 1:44:10Speaker 05

  All the time those folks were white in the book. I loved the books, but I didn't see myself in them.

• 1:44:16Questlove?

  Yeah, I kept that one under wraps only because like, again, I have like nine projects on the back burner. And maybe only four of them will actually make it to fruition. And the other five sort of fall out the wayside and then I gotta figure out what to do with it.

• 1:44:33Speaker 05

  But this sounds really exciting. It sounds so exciting.

• 1:44:36Questlove?

  Thank you. I'm excited.

• 1:44:38Speaker 04

  I want to ask you, Daniel, before we break. So were you editor in vibe? Was this like 98, 99? Were you still there at that time?

• 1:44:45Speaker 05

  I was there from 97 to 99.

• 1:44:48Speaker 04

  97, 99, okay. There was a review. It was the lead review for the Revolutions record review section. That was a Four Heroes, Two Pages album. I don't know if you even remember this. But it was the lead review. And that was just, if you were there, I just wanted to thank you for that.

• 1:45:11Questlove?

  Man, I never. That was the craziest leave review ever.

• 1:45:14Speaker 05

  Who wrote it?

• 1:45:14Speaker 04

  Ever. God, don't get me to lie. Uh, don't get me to lie. I can't, I would have to look it up.

• 1:45:20Speaker 05

  I don't recall it off the rip, but I wish I did because you guys are making me feel like I should go back and find it.

• 1:45:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, that review just opened me up. I mean, I never would have found that album had I not saw that.

• 1:45:31Questlove?

  And that just opened me up just completely.

• 1:45:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, that was my first time ever hearing, reading that review.

• 1:45:36Questlove?

  That's crazy.

• 1:45:37Speaker 04

  I mean, you had been living in London for years, so it was whatever to you.

• 1:45:41Questlove?

  Well, no, they're the reason why I did the German bass thing at the end of, you got, yeah. When Four Hero got that lead review, even I was like, oh, god damn, like finally.

• 1:45:52Speaker 05

  Did Greg Tate read? Hmm.

• 1:45:55Questlove?

  I bet you any money, it was probably Greg. I bet you.

• 1:45:58Speaker 05

  It sounds like it. That's one of the honors of my life too, is editing Greg. But at that time I was editor in chief, so I wouldn't have been editing him one on one. But the way it used to work at Vibe was the writer filed to their editor. And then that piece then would go from, they go back and forth with it. And then that would go to what was called the top editor, which was the senior editor. And then the senior editor would get it right. And then it would go on page. And usually then the editor in chief would read it at that point. And then it would go from approval by the editor in chief to fact checking to make sure every fact was correct. And then after fact checking, it would go to copy editing to make sure every period in common, everything was in the right place. And then at that time it would go to photo. And then after, it would go to photo and design.

• 1:46:42Speaker 05

  And then at that point it would go to production and be made into a real page. And that's when I say, when you talk about budgets, you're talking about paying every single person at, at every single stage. And that just doesn't exist anymore.

• 1:46:56Questlove?

  This hit me. I forgot. I believe if you were there in 90, were you there in 99?

• 1:47:01Speaker 05

  A part of it.

• 1:47:02Questlove?

  You guys actually let me write my own vibe feature.

• 1:47:05Speaker 05

  That sounds right. That sounds right. Oh, when you was naked? The naked John.

• 1:47:10Questlove?

  No, not the naked.

• 1:47:11Speaker 05

  That was such a moment. Like, it would be like Chris Rock is guest editing. I think that was almost my last. That was cool too. Yeah, that was, I feel like that was my second to last.

• 1:47:20Questlove?

  Right.

• 1:47:21Speaker 05

  Issue. And then maybe there was the J cover where he has his hands in front of him like this. In a white, in a white suit. But that was kind of the end of my first editor in chief era.

• 1:47:32Questlove?

  The J Lo, the very first J Lo cover in 99, that was.

• 1:47:38Speaker 05

  I don't think I was there for that though.

• 1:47:40Questlove?

  You guys didn't send a writer over, so literally I just had to diary touring Europe and.

• 1:47:45Speaker 05

  That sounds like an amazing thing though.

• 1:47:47Questlove?

  Yeah, no, it's definitely one of the, probably the second major features I wrote. Like I enjoyed it. All right, my last question, because you are from Oakland.

• 1:47:57Speaker 05

  I am.

• 1:47:58Questlove?

  But to be of age in Oakland at the time when that first generation of hip hop was coming out. Are there any notable, like for you, moments of growing up in Oakland? That you can share as far as like the culture of it in terms of shows that you saw when you were younger, that sort of thing? Because it's such a musical town, man.

• 1:48:23Speaker 05

  I mean, I don't know if I have how many Oakland tales I have. I can just tell you that.

• 1:48:27Questlove?

  Your best one.

• 1:48:29Speaker 05

  What do I have? I mean, I told you, I saw the Jackson 5 nearby in San Carlos at the Circle Star Theater. And it's like, I, I don't know, like, let's just pass by the childhood stuff and get back to me moving to the Bay Area as a college student at UC Berkeley. So now you have to understand too, that the Bay Area is a huge touring stop. I mean, you know this. And so I'm seeing anybody from a flock of seagulls to Frankie Beverly and Maze to Ziggy Marley. I'm seeing all of that. And then when I decide I want to be, like, I'm really going to become a writer, then it's like MC Hammer's blowing up, Invogue's blowing up, Two Shorts blowing up, Tony, Tony, Tony's blowing up. And these are just the folks that invoke the Time X Social Club. These are just the folks that got famous. We're not even talking about Paris is blowing up.

• 1:49:14Speaker 05

  We're not even talking about Kate Cloud and the crew, you know what I'm saying? We're not talking about MC Ant. We're not talking about, what about Conscious Daughters? Obviously, yeah, don't forget about the cool. Conscious Daughters.

• 1:49:24Speaker 04

  Ant Banks, the cool.

• 1:49:25Speaker 05

  Boots and the Cool was right there. Like, we were all coming up together. And then, and then when, when the tour happened, the tour that I was out a lot on, the Public Enemy Tour with Heavy D and the Boys, Queen Latifah and the Safari Sisters.

• 1:49:42Questlove?

  The Black Planet Tour with Digital Underground had those masks on, yeah.

• 1:49:46Speaker 05

  Yes. So one of the best hip hop tours in history. And Kid in Play, depending on the day, it would be MC Bree. Depending on the day, it would be Luke Skywalker, Two Live Group. Depending on the place, it would be Servicemix a lot. Trouble T Roy died on that tour. Just like those. Tupac was on that tour, Dancing Back Around Four, Digital. Those moments and the way that Oakland hip hop would coalesce them out, obviously Chug D. I don't even know how I can explain it. It's just, and then I'd be in the studio sometimes at Digital because those are my guys. And I was dating a road manager back then, all the wild stuff we was doing. And shout out to Neil Slus Johnson, who's an amazing guy, still we're friends to this day.

• 1:50:31Speaker 05

  You know, we'd be in the studio in Marin County or Richmond and be like, you know, gold records from like platinum records from like Huey Lewis and the News and Journey and Frankie Beverly and Maze and The Whisperers and all Pointer Sisters and all this grace of tower power from Oakland history. And it's like, we felt like we were, yes, we felt like we were in the righteous space, man. It felt good and honestly, it still feels good.

• 1:50:56Questlove?

  I had to get it out. Daniel, I thank you very much. I know we had a few false starts in trying to do this, but thank you.

• 1:51:03Speaker 04

  I was just saying, Mark Weingarten wrote that Four Hero review.

• 1:51:07Speaker 05

  He wrote that review? That you're talking about? I remember, yes.

• 1:51:11Speaker 04

  Okay, but I just wanted to thank you for that.

• 1:51:14Speaker 05

  Oh, well, of course. We, we, we are happy to be of service. We really are and we really were. And like I said, all of us that worked there over the time, I'm not saying we didn't have our bad times. But if you were a part of Vibe XXL, the source in those big magazines, even Essence, Latina, all those, King. Essence, Latina, wow. Yeah, you know, King Magazine, Slam, all that stuff. It's like, it's a certain fraternity slash sorority that we're all in. And everything wasn't perfect. We didn't do everything right, but we are most, most of us pretty proud of the stuff that we did there. And if it wasn't for that, would there be Shine Bright? No. Would there be Black Girls on Vogue? Right, no. Not at all. Not at all.

• 1:51:56Questlove?

  So, yeah, again, I really want to thank you. And yeah, I highly recommend to our audience who religiously listens to our podcast. You definitely want to get the book, get the hard copy and actually, you know, the audio book where I've just never heard someone so emotionally.

• 1:52:14Speaker 05

  Aww, listen.

• 1:52:15Questlove?

  Gripped into. Yeah, because no, no, the days I couldn't read it, I would drive to it. And, you know, there were a few times we had to break down and catch some tears for a second. And that to me, that's.

• 1:52:26Speaker 05

  I was just going to say that, yeah.

• 1:52:28Questlove?

  An awesome level of vulnerability. And I really loved the book. And it sets a lot of light on a lot of unsung heroes that we didn't know. So, thank you very much, Daniel. I appreciate it.

• 1:52:41Speaker 05

  Thank you all. Thank you, Quest, so much. It's an honor and thank you, everybody on this team. It's amazing to see and meet everybody.

• 1:52:47Questlove?

  All right, on behalf of Laia and Von Ticcolo and Sugar Steve. Thank you, Daniel. Yeah, thank you, Daniel. The journalism episodes are my favorite. Unpaid bill is back. Whatever you said, you're on mute right now. I'll speak for him. He said, give me a babe. All right, great, great. All right, this is Questlove and we'll see you on the next go round. Thank you very much.

• 1:53:20Questlove?

  Questlove Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio.

• 1:53:28Questlove?

  For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 1:53:35Speaker 03

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• 1:54:12Questlove?

  Behind every chart topping hit, you know by heart, there's an original. Writing it someplace where nobody was listening. Behind the culture that marks a generation, there's an original. Already moving, already shaking things up. Behind every night that changed the room, somebody had to walk in first. Not knowing it would land, but doing it anyway. Originals are out there. Living stories worth telling. What's yours? Behind every original, live in Levi's.

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• 1:55:17Questlove?

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.