New Developments...
After Meteoric Success & a Long Freefall, Speech Sings His Redemption Song on Hoopla

Among record retailers, there’s a saying that describes a one-hit wonder who no longer has the juice to sell records: “Stick a fork in ‘em.” To no one’s surprise, dance music and hip hop have produced more than their share of such acts.

In the seven years, three months and twenty-something days after adding a Grammy Award (in the “Best New Artist” category) to his trophy shelf, Arrested Development founder Speech’s career has on several occasions veered perilously close to the prickly tines of a barbecue fork.

Seated on a squeaky vinyl loveseat in a brick-walled office at TVT Records, the Atlanta-based artist considers whether he would do it all again the same way. At a fireplug 5-foot-6, topped with a crop of pigtails, the 30-year-old Speech, sporting rose-colored glasses, strokes his goatee, thoughtfully.

“I’d have to say yeah, I’d do it all over again. I had the chance to live out a dream, which was great,” he says. “And then I was humbled, which has taught me some lessons not only about the music industry, but about life.”

As the hip-hop version of Gary Coleman, Speech qualifies as valid manna for a segment of VH-1’s “Where Are They Now?” Indeed, after 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days In the Life Of, their 1992 straight-to-pop multi-platinum debut, Arrested Development’s label, Chrysalis Records, found itself clamped in the one-hit wonder bear-trap. By failing to cultivate a core audience – relying instead on heavy-rotation video play for lead single “Tennessee” and subsequent pop radio play – Arrested Development lacked solid support from the R&B market for its sophomore effort.

The results were predictable. After an ill-advised carpet-bag ging Unplugged session, Zingalamaduni, the 1994 Afro-centric follow-up, sold 500,000 units – mere chump change compared to the five-million watermark set by the debut. Soon after, Arrested Development imploded, freeing Speech to release a straight-to-the-bargain-bin solo bow, which sealed his fate as “old news.”

All along, of course, many rap music purists believed Arrested Develop- ment’s glass-half-full hip hop had no more “teeth” than Vanilla Ice or Hammer. To these folks, Speech’s plummeting fortunes were justified. His lyrics? Too soft, they said, not properly apocalyptic. Take “Mr. Wendall,” for example, a track from AD’s debut: A homeless man with no money but plenty of wisdom. Absent was any tone of anger toward a racist American social system that displaced the old-timer in the first place.

Quite simply, Speech didn’t reflect the dark, anxiety-filled side of the African-American experience. (Neither did De La Soul, of course, but being from New York, with a sense of humor, they were granted hip hop immunity.) And AD’s street cred? No mix-tape jock had ever mixed an AD tune into, say, Nas.

To make matters worse, after Chrysalis folded, Speech remained contractually bound to EMI and was forbidden to release any music in this country. With his American poetic license revoked, Speech focused on markets overseas, particularly in Asia, where his successive record sales have climbed steadily. In October of last year, after his release from his obligations to EMI, TVT Records’ brought him aboard to shore up its fledgling urban department.

“The idea of launching or re-launching a career such as Speech’s takes a lot of micro-management,” says TVT urban A&R rep Lenny Johnson, who signed Speech. “It takes a lot of time and effort, which I don’t think the majors these days have to offer, obviously, because he’d still be there if they did. But I feel like the luckiest A&R guy in the world to have him on my roster.”

The new album, Hoopla, is characteristic Speech: soulful, R&B-leaning hip hop unconcerned with overt ballin’-talk, getting paid or “putting women in their place.” Rather, initial single, “Clocks in Sync With Mine” recycles a “part-ay” refrain that relies less on chemical substances, or alcohol, than many such hip hop exercises.

At other times, Speech summons the spirit of Marvin Gaye, as on the urban-pop appeal of “The Hey Song,” which flips 4-Non Blondes’ “What’s going on” hook from their 1993 hit, “What’s Up.” It’s typical Speech: anthemic and self-assured, trusting his instincts despite being on the “DL” for the last few years.

At the same time, Speech’s heightened self-consciousness comes across on “Our Image,” where he’s “Quick to rock a mic, and humble your might, show the difference between fat and fact, and give you stage fright.”

Bob Marley is resurrected on “Redemption Song,” a song Speech claims spiritually as his own, although some might suspect the redemption he speaks of concerns freedom from a recording contract, not social enslavement.

Johnson is optimistic about Speech’s prospects, despite being off the radar screen for a while. “He’s been the king of pop already,” he says. “I think now that he’s gotten older, he’s found himself musically, so it’s time to branch into other areas like urban that he never tapped into before. And I think the timing is great. Big conglomerates are hits-driven, and without the hits, there is nothing they can offer an artist. We can. I see no problem with him fitting into any type of music.”

I ask Johnson if Speech’s past success and subsequent failure might make his resurrection a tougher sell.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “Why don’t you ask Cher?”

DJ Times hooked up with Speech recently in New York and got the skinny on priority shifts in the wake of success and failure.

DJ Times: What’s been going on in the life of Speech? You’ve disappeared from many radar screens.

Speech: Still livin, still learnin’. I’ve been doing well [sales-wise] overseas, selling a lot of records over there – especially in Asia. And back here, I got my wife – she writes the checks — and my two kids, and we’re running Vagabond Productions.

DJ Times: What is Vagabond Productions?

Speech: We’ve been promoting concerts down in Atlanta, bringing lots of hip hop and R&B acts down there, and managing groups.

DJ Times: Original groups?

Speech: Absolutely. There’s this one group, El Pus, and they’re like a hardcore hip hop/punk group…

DJ Times: That seems to be the overwhelming choice among young music fans nowadays.

Speech: Oh yeah. These guys have turntables and drums. They actually started off as a hip hop band, and then all their sampling gear was stolen, so they picked up some guitars from the pawn shop and tried to learn how to play them. And after they learned how to play, they earned some money playing out and then went and bought some more sampling gear and got back into the breaks.

DJ Times: So I hear you’ve been producing some drum-n-bass tracks lately…

Speech: Well, there is an artist I produced, Nadira, a former member of AD, and she’s got a little diva-drum-n-bass stuff on her record. But I only co-produced that one. It was done by this cat from Asia who did the production on that and I just did the Quincy Jones-style of producing — just look at the whole thing and not touch any knobs…

DJ Times: Is that what Quincy Jones does?

Speech: Not all the time, but he is a real old-school producer. Today, a producer sort of means you wrote the song or you might have done the beats, but back in the day, the producer might not have done anything except come in, listen to the tunes, and say the hook needs to be longer, or stronger, this that and the other. That’s Rick Rubin’s style, too, he comes in, “I like this, change that,” doesn’t really touch knobs. But on the rest of the record I really produced it, staying there for the whole mix. Some guys like Dallas Austin will come in listen to the mix, say, “Nah, make it bassier on the bottom, do this, do that, I’ll be back in a few hours.” Me, I sit there the whole time, listening to it over and over.

DJ Times: You name-checked Dallas on the record…

Speech: Dallas Austin is a good friend of mine, way before he produced Boyz II Men and TLC. He had heard us before we were signed, and he drove over to my house, interested in messing around. At that time, actually, he had more connections than we did. He wasn’t real big yet, but he was the guy driving the Mercedes when we were all driving on the bus.

DJ Times: What do you admire about his style?

Speech: I like his writing the best. Lyrically, he is the personality of TLC. Because he writes the lyrics, he’s sort of what you see when you see them. If you like TLC, that’s probably why. He’s the guy who’s got the quirky personality and lyrical twist that they sort of represent in R&B, and I like that.

DJ Times: How did the TVT Records signing come about?

Speech: That happened very quickly. Hoopla did well overseas. And TVT had found out about the success of the record overseas and they also found out that I could not release a record here in the States for awhile — I was obligated to EMI, who folded, and I still couldn’t record. In other words, the contract still existed despite the fact that they no longer existed. So I couldn’t record anywhere else but overseas. I definitely wanted to go the independent route, because I felt like the independents really know how to work a record for the long haul as opposed to making just a one-hit wonder type of thing. I really wanted to create a career for myself, create longevity, really build an audience that grows with me and understands me as a solo artists as opposed to ”the guy from AD.” And TVT was willing to do that.

DJ Times: If you had to do it all over again – The Grammy, the acclaim, and then the downside — would you wish for the same thing?

Speech: If I had the chance to do it over again, I don’t think I would do it any different. Sure, I can think of the perfect scenario: release the first album it sells two million, second album, three million, and so on. I can do that in my head. But as I look back at it now, the whole thing was great. I got a chance to live thatdream out, which was awesome, and I also got the chance to be on the bottom. I was doing shows for five people in the audience, after AD. A lot of people didn’t get [what I was doing], and it humbled me, taught me a lot about the business and about what my purpose is – meaning, I had to find a deeper purpose than just selling records. It got me back to the essence of what I do, which is make music for people. Whether it’s five people that dig it, or 500,000 it’s people, and they all paid $15 to see me, a guy born in Milwaukee and raised in Georgia. And that’s a good thing. They’ve come to see me and hear some of the music I’ve written.

DJ Times: So for awhile your happiness was hinged to record sales.

Speech: Absolutely. I think that’s the generality of most entertainers. Once they get into the business of making music for business reasons, their happiness is attached to how well their record did, as opposed to, “Wow, 400,000 people liked what I did and listened to it and came to see me.”

DJ Times: You generated a lot of fans from the first AD album through video. Did that hurt you in the long run, by failing to create a grass-roots, street following?

Speech: I don’t think that was it. AD does have a grass-roots fan base. I think the label was in the process of folding at that time, within the label, before anybody outside knew it. Also, As a producer, I think I flipped people out, in a sense. AD was splintering, recording the second album was like pulling teeth, the label was corroding, and the stuff I was producing was throwing people off — I was singing on the record, which flipped some people. I think that all contributed to the fall-off. Unlike in Asia, which sold a certain amount of the first AD record, more of the second one, even more of my first solo record, and my new album has sold more than all of them combined.

DJ Times: To fans of hip hop, you’re viewed as soft. Do you see this new record connecting with an urban audience?

Speech: I don’t know where it’s going to fit in, but maybe it will in people’s minds once they’re exposed to it. Take DMX, he’s a popular cat, more on the hard side. Not everybody wants to hear that, there’s people that want to hear “The Hey Song,” they just haven’t heard it yet. And once they do, they’ll be like, “Hey, I like this too.” The exposure is the key.

DJ Times: What prompted you to select as a cover Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”?

Speech: I love that song. I feel like that song is mine. I relate to those lyrics as if I was singing my own song: “Won’t you help me sing songs of freedom, cause all I ever had is redemption songs.” And that’s true. Since I’ve been out, that’s all I’ve written, songs of freedom, from AD to my solo things.

DJ Times: What kind of freedom?

Speech: That’s changed over the years. When I first started off, freedom was more of a physical, revolutionary idea of sorts, from oppression and things of that nature. On the second album, it was even more so, in the racial sense. I think as my third album came out, it was freedom to express myself any which way I wanted to. With this album, it’s surely more of a spiritual freedom.

DJ Times: Your “Redemption Song” has a real odd drum pattern.

Speech: I’d been performing that song live on the road. The last time I performed it was at the Paramount, and I used a live drummer. So when I did the record, I was going to use the drummer, but I really hadn’t been hearing a lot of live drums on the radio, and I really wanted this song to get on the radio, so I just went ahead and programmed it on an Alesis HR-16 drum machine.

DJ Times: That’s old school.

Speech: I love it. I did a lot of the original AD stuff on that. I know it like the back of my hand, but I also like it because it’s got some of the realest hi-hats that I know of on any drum machine. Plus you can use any pad any way you want to. People can’t believe that I use that. It just gives you more freedom – even more than sampling drums.

DJ Times: You’ve always done a lot of backwards looping and various forms of studio trickery to disguise your samples. There seems to be more of that this go round.

Speech: Yeah, on “Mountain of Lonely,” I took this one jazz record and took it backwards for the whole record. I don’t hear that a whole lot in hip hop — in drum-n-bass I do, but not in hip hop. I like how The Roots take their Rhodes and take it backwards. That has good effects, and I’m going to start doing that. So to the Roots: thank you for that.

DJ Times: What kind of sampler are you using?

Speech: I use the Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler, and an Akai MPC-60. I’m still old school when it comes to that, too. I do so much work that I don’t have time to learn new pieces easily. Lately, I’m not sampling whole grooves, because I’ve been sampling from CDs, so I’ll drop a CD and sample a kick or a snare. When I did use records, it would just be for some scratching. On most of my records, I still do the DJing, I scratched on “The Hey Song” a record from Jellybean, and I do some transformer scratching with a female screaming vocal on “The Hey Song.” I still love scratching. I love to do it and I love to hear it on records.

DJ Times: On this album, your studio techniques sound smoother, horns, strings, even a Marvin Gaye moment….

Speech: Oh yes, Marvin Gaye, that song was originally a strings patch, but for the American version I wanted live strings, so I called in a string section for that. I really took an organic approach to this record. I recorded it in home, a Nieve board, 24-tracks. We went into the studio, we’d start the groove off, and we’d push record, I’d have a melody, or a phrase in mind…

DJ Times: And you’d wait for the melody to push the instruments around?

Speech: Exactly. Then we’d go back and splice together the best stuff. Other songs we used a drum machine.

DJ Times: For “The Hey Song,” you lifted the hook from “What’s Up” by 4-Non Blondes. How did that ever come about?

Speech: I was on the Hootie and Blowfish tour, and they had this song – I can’t remember now which one it was – that to me sounded like 4-Non Blondes. And I’d be backstage, listen- ing to the show, and I thought of doing that song. So one night I did it live, and I started rhyming over it. We were in Canada in a huge ice hockey stadium – it was freezing.

DJ Times: Hootie and Blowfish?

Speech: Yeah, this was on their second record, and [the tour] was great. A lot of their audience had never heard of me or AD, and I won them over.

DJ Times: Back to the 4-Non Blondes. You chose to re-record that hook, instead of sampling it. Did you learn some tough sampling lessons in the past?

Speech: I have learned a lot of lessons in the past, but that’s not why I made the decision to re-record the sample. I had to make a moral decision that I’m not going to allow the sampling of a record to stop me from sampling, meaning, if they’re gonna crush me on cost. I learned that from Jungle Brothers actually. They put out a record called Done By The Forces Of Nature, that had samples all over it and they got killed on it. But they still decided to put it out as is, instead of changing it, because of what they felt was the artistic value of the record. I love that record, and I’m thankful that they didn’t change the samples, and I’m not going to change mine either. It’s like, I love this song and I’m willing to pay the cost – whatever the cost of the sample is – to keep it. With re-recording you don’t get beat up, you’re not using the master, you’re just using the melody.

DJ Times: What else did you need to clear?

Speech: I had to clear for “Moving on” some vocals from George Clinton and Parliament…

DJ Times: I hear he’s fairly easy to deal with.

Speech: Real easy, really cool. I think he’s made a real smart move. I think [sampling] keeps your music alive, keeps your melodies alive. Look at him now, he’s able to tour, for a while there, he couldn’t find anybody to buy his records and now he’s being sampled and he’s a household word again.

DJ Times: Has anybody sampled you?

Speech: Sure, there’s this group called Total…in fact, if people call me directly I’ll make sure it gets done quickly.

DJ Times: Do you write lyrics or freestyle.

Speech: I write. But on this Hoopla record, it was a very written record on exactly how I felt at a particular time. For that track, my guitarist Billy Wolk, he was playing a riff, and I had no engineer in the studio, so I put a click on and pressed record, came up with some lyrics and jotted them down. We did the first verse, came up with more lyrics, and it was lyrics that were just a reflection of what the music at that time was making me fee like. And it felt like a driving song, “driving down highway 85.”

DJ Times: I understand you’ve got an announcement you’d like to make….

Speech: That’s right. We’re planning on doing some AD stuff for the first time in five years. Right now we’re working on the contracts and it’s going to come together, and I think it’ll be great.