THE MAKING OF 3 YEARS, 5 MONTHS AND 2 DAYS IN THE LIFE OF… BY ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT - FEATURING SPEECH

Intro:

Dan Nordheim: You’re listening to Life of the Record. Classic albums, told by the people who made them. My name is Dan Nordheim. 

Arrested Development formed in Atlanta, Georgia in 1988 by Speech and Headliner. They started recording and performing around Atlanta, adding group members, Aerle Taree, Montsho Eshe, Rasa Don and Baba Oje. They signed a single deal with Chrysalis Records, which then turned into an album deal after the label heard the song, “Tennessee.” Their debut album, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…, was eventually released in 1992. 

In this episode, for the 30th anniversary, Speech looks back on how the album came together. This is the making of 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of…

Speech: My name is Speech from the crew Arrested Development and we're talking about 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of… I think Arrested Development was the first to do a lot of things. I think that “Tennessee” was such a melodic song, it hadn't been done before, we're the first hip hop group from Atlanta that's really blowing up. And what I loved about the early 90s, late 80s is that individuality and unique music was celebrated. It wasn't condemned like it is today, like everybody was doing something different. Public Enemy was 100%, different than Rakim, Rakim was 100% different from N.W.A, you know, De La Soul was 100% different than A Tribe Called Quest, you know, they weren't the same. And so individuality and unique, you know, originality was celebrated. And so yeah, we definitely wanted to come out different. And there was a lot of firsts going on and I didn't want to confuse people with the album, so I wanted to make sure that, hopefully was establishing a few things:  we’re hip hop, we're from the south, we're going to speak about things, and we're going to go deep.

Back in Milwaukee, I had a hip hop group called Attack and Attack, we were pretty successful, to be honest, in the region of, you know, maybe Milwaukee and Detroit (laughs). So, we sold a lot of records there and I say a lot of records, like 200 records, nothing major. But for us as high school kids, it was a big deal. And we had cool concerts and yeah, it was me, a guy named Special K, who's now DJ Kemit, and he's actually really famous here in Atlanta, as a DJ and a producer. And he also was in Arrested Development. And then a brother named TA Whizz. So it was me, TA Whizz and Special K, who's known as Kemit now. And TA Whizz was murdered soon after Arrested Development came out. And yeah, so we used to do records that was sort of like probably a mixture between Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff. And like Run-D.M.C., somewhere in there, like it was. It wasn't like Arrested Development at all. Yeah, so we had like a song called, “My Car” and it was sort of a play on “My Adidas,” you know, so it's like, you know, that kind of record, just fun hip hop. I moved from Milwaukee to Atlanta because of violence in Milwaukee. And I felt like, I was gonna get shot or killed or something was gonna go wrong. So I wanted to move to Atlanta for more opportunity. I hung up a flyer and the art school that I enrolled in called The Art Institute of Atlanta. And they had a little flyer section in the hallway. I hung up a flyer, saying, I was looking for a DJ, and I wanted to start rhyming. I used to be a DJ so now I wanted to rhyme. And so this guy named Tim was looking at the flyer. And I walked over to him and started a conversation and it was really good. Like, he was a super cool guy from Hilton Head, Georgia, which is a really beautiful, like sort of Island area of Georgia. And he just came to Atlanta. I just came to Atlanta from Milwaukee, and we just struck up a friendship. And he became my DJ. We started to do some local shows in Atlanta, and one of the things I was always hoping to do was bring, like, different talents on stage with us. So we brought African dancers on stage, poets, drummers, like congas, bongos, djembes, we had live painters on stage. As we kept doing those kinds of shows, some of those people that would join us on stage became like family members to us, and we kept inviting them back to perform with us on future shows. So over time, it became Arrested Development. And, you know, we got a record deal, three years, five months and two days after we started counting all of this down. Yeah, so then, we started recording that album. I had gotten on a conscious nature from two things. One is my family is activists. My mom and dad have been activists since I was born, my dad an entrepreneur, my mother, a publisher of the largest black newspaper in Milwaukee, which she still is the publisher of that paper. It's called The Milwaukee Community Journal. So around the breakfast tables, you know, we would talk a lot about community issues and things affecting black people in particular. And we will talk about solutions as a family. And just so that was part of my consciousness, then, when I heard Public Enemy’s, Yo! Bum Rush the Show album, there was certain references that Chuck D used on that record that I never heard in hip hop yet. And I found it fascinating, you know, and I wanted to try to understand more of what he was talking about. And he spoke about Farrakhan, and I never heard of Farrakhan, he spoke about Chesimard, he spoke about Panther Power. And I was like, well, I didn't know what these things were. And the school systems don't teach black history in American history when it comes to black people. So, you know, most blacks were pretty unaware of these things in my generation. And so it inspired me a lot to do more research. And I became conscious from all of that.

You know, that album was already recorded in a demo state long ago, because I come from the school of thought where you don't go in the studio empty handed, like you go in with ideas. And for our album, it was way more than ideas. I mean, it was fully fleshed out, thought through songs, by the time we went into the studio professionally. And so that way, you know, we weren't going to waste a lot of studio time and just get in there and really try to just enhance and make the record better. And that's what we ended up doing. Everything was recorded at a little studio called, well it wasn't that little actually, it was pretty nice studio was the best studio that I knew of at the time, called Track 32. And back then it was impressive to have 32 tracks. And so we were just impressed to be able to be around that kind of professional equipment. It wasn't something we were used to. Back in the late 80s and early 90s, the sampling world wasn't fully worked out. Sampling was a new concept, you know. So there was a lot of, sort of rules floating around. One rule was if it was less than three seconds or four seconds, it doesn't have to be cleared. Other rules were if it doesn't have a melody to it, it doesn't have to be cleared. So there was just a lot of different rumors and gossip going around, none of which were actually true (laughs), we would find out later. Plus hip hop, by all means, was an art form that came from spinning records and going back and forth on the breaks of a record. So the idea of sampling was just natural to hip hop. And so we respect the art of sampling, and especially me as a DJ, you know, a former DJ and a producer now. And then I just respect the whole art of sampling. And to me, it's bringing the ancestors back to the present. And the energies, which I believe, you know, pretty much everything is energy. So those samples, those sounds bring a particular energy to the forefront, that I think once it's mixed with newer sounds and new energies, it's something exciting and fresh. It's a fusion of things that are really cool together. So yeah, it was a lot of sampling going on on that first album. 

“Man’s Final Frontier”

Yeah, you know, as a DJ, I always wanted to have a DJ track, you know, and Headliner was a nice DJ, but I was at that time better because I've been DJing longer than him. And so I just started creating tracks. And I was very influenced by Bomb Squad’s production style, just a lot of noise, a lot of stuff going on. So I would start creating that track (mouths rhythmic scratching sound). All of that stuff and then I would keep referencing Bomb Squad stuff now Bomb Squad was a team, so they had a bunch of dudes working on the tracks, and I was just me. So I was just trying to fill it up, and make sure that it was a kaleidoscope of sound. So I would keep going back and adding more and more stuff and just overdubbing overdubbing overdubbing. And one of my goals was to just have a great introduction to the album. And also to establish that we're a hip hop group, that hip hop was at its root, just the fundamentals of hip hop, scratching, you know, we didn't rhyme on that particular record, but giving props to the DJ, just sort of let people know where our heart was. 

Yeah, and then, near the end, my brother's from Ghana. He is passed away now but Bright and I and Headliner were in Tennessee, and there's a little interview skit that goes on in the very end of “Man's Final Frontier,” the first song an album, where we're talking to a woman named Mama Winbush, who, her mother was a slave and she was remembering some of the ways of slavery. So she talks about that at the very end and my brother Bright talks, and I'm talking on there. And I just felt it was a well rounded intro to a record, you know, “man's final frontier is the soul. And we're going to try to bring some soul into this hip hop genre more.”

“Mama’s Always On Stage”

It's funny, a friend of mine who was deeply in the blues, he gave me a cassette tape of some blues that he loved. And I was listening to it, found that sample, just blown away by it, it was like, had a hard on for getting into the studio basically, and starting to chop that groove up. And I felt like it was the quintessential, defining song for Arrested Development, we had already finished the album, not professionally in the studio yet, but like I said, on our pre demo stuff, we had finished the album. So this song to me, with all the album being done, I felt like this song helps to establish our southern vibe more than anything else that was on the record. “Tennessee” hadn't been made yet. So I was like, “This song has to be on this record. And it has to be somewhere near the top where it can establish more of what we are and our brand” and you know, stuff like that. You know, when I came down to Atlanta, I peeped the scene here, I mean, it was in 1987. And all the artists that I knew that were doing records here, they were dope, they were doing their thing. It felt like an extension of what Luke was doing down in Miami. So it was it was, you know, upper tempo Miami bass style music. And that's cool. But it was pretty one dimensional at the time, it wasn't a lot of diversity in what was being brought to the table at the time. So if you were in that Miami bass style, then it was, you know, cool, but if, if you were doing anything else, I didn't really hear it. And it wasn't resonating in the streets, and therefore, there was no records that were really huge, outside of just in Atlanta, and maybe regionally. People knew about it. But other than that, I mean, hip hop wasn't recognized in Atlanta per se at that time. You know, no one was talking about this is pre Outkast, pre Goodie Mob, pre trap music and dirty south movement and all of that kind of thing. So you know, at that time, it was really West Coast, East Coast, Miami, Houston with the Geto Boys. But Chicago wasn't on yet. Milwaukee, obviously was doing nothing. And Atlanta wasn't on yet. This is pre TLC, pre LaFace Records coming down here and doing that TLC stuff and Outkast stuff. So yeah, I feel like we definitely put Atlanta on the map along with Kris Kross, which was Jermaine Dupri’s act. Coming from Atlanta, that was it. 

I think the scratching throughout the song was inspired by “Roller Skate” (“A Roller Skating Jam Named ‘Saturdays’”) by De La Sol. When they are (mouths rhythmic scratching sound). It was like just making sure that we just kept the scratching going. Like that, to me was a cool idea that Maseo did. And I wanted to do the same thing on “Mama’s Always On Stage.” I did most of the scratching, Headliner did some, he did some on “Tennessee,” and a few other records. But yeah, most of that stuff was me. But again, it was mainly because I was a sort of a mad scientist kind of guy just in my bedroom by myself. So a lot of the creativity would happen at any hour of the day. To me, “Mama's Always On Stage,” it has these harmonicas, it’s raw, it's sloppy, there’s scratching going all throughout the song, whether I'm rhyming or not, whether the chorus is on or not. And to me, it just represented this connection to old and new blues, and funk in hip hop. And just it was a great, to me, fusion of all of the above. 

And then the subject matter was very serious, you know, a little girl that I knew at the time was 16 and had our first child and so the message was really based on what I was talking to her about back in those days. I think that making a record dedicated to young mothers, you know, I'm not even sure if anybody's done it, since us and 2Pac. So you know, maybe there's some others but yeah, it's very rare in this genre. And I felt like it was long overdue. 

“People Everyday” 

In the black community, there's a lot of things that divide us. Some of them have been conditioned into us by white supremacy and racism throughout the hundreds of years that we've been facing that and some of its just class issues. Well anyway this song is talking about an African, a nigga and a black person and what it's really trying to explain is that the nigga is someone that's just getting, they're not aware of who they can be. And they're wallowing sort of in the perception of what society views them as. And then the African is somebody that's also oppressed, just like the nigga is, but he or she is like determined to rise up and strive to move forward past the oppression. And the black man is both characters, just depending on how they're acting. So if they're acting like a nigga, they're a nigga, if they're acting like an African, they’re acting like an African and that's how the song sort of goes about. I’m talking about dating, you know, and getting messed with because you don't, you know, sort of conform to the regular vibe of what's going on in the hood. And, you know, I got a dashiki on and I'm colorful and bright. And so it's this, this problem ensues and it goes on from there. So yeah, very autobiographical. Sensationalized more than what happened because of just making good music to me.

Ironically, I wasn't very familiar with Sly (Stone) until really right before we started recording “People Everyday.” When I got familiar with him, though, I was blown away by the music, just absolutely blown away. And I was blown away by the concept like the whole group, the interracial, the inner, you know, different genders. It was just phenomenal. And the energy, the positivity, the whole vibe was just phenomenal. So yeah, I definitely was inspired by them, but probably less than people would think, considering we use their chorus, you know. The chorus just made sense to me, I love the chorus. Back in those days, Dre was using some of his beats, Jungle Brothers was using some of the beats. So you know, there was people using stuff from the Sly selections, and I just was crate diggin and love the chorus, it was just, you know, we didn't sample it. I never sampled Sly, on that song, but yeah, but we did interpolate it and sing it again. I initially was rapping, “I was restin' at the park mindin' my own business as I kick up the treble tone.” And the label wanted to release that as a single, our second single after “Tennessee,” I was worried that the chorus was strong enough, but the verses would feel like such a departure from “Tennessee.” And so I told the label, “Let me let me try my hand at a remix.” And I had been keeping my ear on this particular sample from Bob James, "Tappan Zee,” And I wanted to try that. So I put new music down. I relayed the vocals in a melodic style, which is what the real goal was. But I kept the lyrics the exact same as the version where I was just rapping it with no melody. And it was crazy. It was hot, and I'm so grateful we put that on the single because that's the version that blew up. It's the version, anybody that knows “People Everyday,” which is a lot of people around the planet, that's the version that people celebrate the most. Yeah, I think that melodic thing was very key. And of course, the Bob James samples and just the way I flipped the beat, and the whole vibe was just I think all of it together was magical. 

Ice Cube and I have only met once and we didn't even meet, we just saw each other. He gave me that like iconic growl look that he does (laughs). I can't do it, but he has this like, just this look, like he's in a growl. And he gave me that look, because of this record, because he thought we were dissing him. And I mean, you know, Aerle Taree, one of the members of the group, she did say, “Who?” And I think that that's a disd because everyone knows who Ice Cube is. But my lyrics were sort of a stab too, because he had a song on one of his records that was saying, you know, “I kicked the bitch in her tummy” and basically, it's a story about a woman who was pregnant, and he kicked her stomach, a black woman. And I just was angry about the blatant disrespect. So for me, I wanted to, I wasn't really dissing him, but there was a jab there in the sense of I'm not Ice Cube. And so I'm talking about a conflict that's ensuing. But I'm not Ice Cube and I’m not a gangster and I'm not some dude that's just out to try to start fights. You know, I mean, so that was me trying to just separate myself from what was being glorified at that time period in hip hop. 

“Blues Happy”

Back in those days, hip hop was very conceptual. If you think about it, Public Enemy had characters. You know, Chuck D was the rhymer, Flavor Flav was sort of the comic relief. S1W,  who was the militant side, Professor Griff was sort of the leader of the militant side. You know, it was conceptual, you know, and we wanted to introduce people to the members of the group and “Blues Happy” was a way to do that. And yet, it didn't copy anything that anybody else did. So to me, it was a great way to sort of get everybody’s name out there, but to a blues groove, which again reiterated our Southern roots, which was new for hip hop, and “Blues Happy,” the guitar was being played by a good friend of mine, Larry, who I speak on in the song. “Brother Larry on the guitar,” so yeah.

“Mr. Wendal”

I did an opening scream on “Mr. Wendal,” which is probably the most notable. The scream to me was just my way of making sure the record wasn’t too pop. I wasn't going for pop but Steely Dan in there, that particular groove of theirs, sort of lends itself to pop music. And so I just loved the groove. But when I listened to it without the scream, I felt like it was just too palatable and too safe. And I wanted to just dirty it up a little bit in a sense. And I liked a lot of ska bands like Fishbone, and punk rock bands, like the Dead Kennedys and stuff like that. I just wanted to make sure that it wasn't too clean. And so the scream  was just sort of a rebellious intro, sort of get some of the fake fans out of the way (laughs) and that kind of thing. 

I loved De La’s “I Know You Better” (“Eye Know”) song and they sampled Steely Dan. And I love Steely Dan, that groove, I wasn't very familiar with their catalog, but I got familiar. And absolutely adored that groove and I wanted to make something that was in that light, that was in that vein. So yeah, the keys and all that stuff. I programmed myself so I didn't sample any Steely on that. But definitely inspired by Steely. 

You know, “Mr. Wendal” was very much from real life. Me and Headliner would record at this studio in Atlanta and homeless people would come to the studio all the time, because they used to hang out in the area. And we would invite them in, we'd have a talk with them, we’d chat with them. And they were always the most, a lot of them were the most insightful people, they really had an understanding of humanity. More than a lot of us who have all the sort of normal things of society have so like they understood the real humanity. And we were trapped in the niceties of society. And so they had a lot of wisdom, a lot of deep truths about who we are as people, who we really are, not who we pretend to be, who we are without masks. So yeah, that whole story was pretty much based on having great conversations with homeless people. 

There wasn't a particular dude named Mr. Wendal, per se. Once we came out with the record, there was a dude that we sort of started calling “Mr. Wendal.” And he was in our video, and his face is on that single, well, part of his face is on the single and we use the same brother in the music video. He’s pushing a cart. He passed away right after that video came out. 

On that one, I did a Sly Stone chant that's at the end of “Simple Song” (“Sing a Simple Song”)  I believe it was. And I did it backwards. Well forward and backward, actually. And the drums are well, I can't, I can't say again (laughs). So yeah, the main drums I programmed but like, there is a sample drum that's underneath, that Headliner was scratching in the record. And yeah, so that was a record. But the rest was like, drum machine. I used to have an HR-16 Alesis drum machine back in the day and I was using that. Back then I had a ASR-10 Or maybe Ensoniq  16, I forget. But bottom line is yeah, they’re just canned sounds from the ASR-10 Ensoniq keyboard. That's me playing, yeah. 

"Children Play with Earth"

I felt like it was the perfect time for an interlude. And again, further laying the foundation of what the group's about. So that if someone only listened to that first album, that they might get a really good clear understanding of who the group is, and what we're trying to say. 

I love Prince, he's my favorite artist and I loved how Prince would often disguise his voice or act like he was a woman or say that he was a different person, you know, and just pitch his voice up. I like that technique. And I was recording on a Tascam 4-track at the time. So it was very easy to do, it was a cassette-based recording studio and it was very easy to do. And I would do it, you know, just to bring different textures to the song. A lot of times when I was creating by myself in my room, I still wanted the record to have a group energy to it. So I would often do demo tracks of the other group members and what I imagined them to say, stuff like that. And sometimes we kept that on the record. And other times, we didn't. So that was one example of that.

“Raining Revolution”

That's another scenario where I was just saying before, you know, where I would create a part that I felt was necessary to set the song up. And I had Headliner do it when we went to the studio professionally. And as a producer, I didn't feel like he nailed it the way I was hoping. And so he was cool about it, he was like, “Oh, it's all good, man. Just scrap mine. And just keep your voice there.” And I did. So yeah, throughout that song, I think I do all the vocals on that song (laughs). So there's a talking section in the middle of it and it's me too, again. But it was supposed to be Headliner’s part. And like I said, we tried it numerous times and it just didn't have the same energy. It's funny because like, now I would have kept Headliner. But then, success was, it was still a hope. So I didn't want to take any chances of having a version where it didn't totally capture the energy I was hoping to capture. And still put it out anyway, like  that was not an option at that time period in our career. It was like, “Nah, we better play it safe and make sure it captures the energy right.” Instead of just sort of settling for it. 

There's always been little singing sections in hip hop cadences. And you know whether it's “La Di Da Di” where Slick Rick breaks it down, (sings “It's all because of you. I'm feeling sad and blue”). You know, (sings “We’re the MCs rocking all around stopping”). And you know, those types of things was happening throughout hip hop, but to decide to rhyme with melody throughout the song, and to really just lean into it. And still, make sure it's hip hop and not an R&B song. That hadn't been done to my knowledge until “Tennessee.” And then “People Everyday” and “Raining Revolution” and so stuff like that hadn't been done. You know, Lauryn (Hill) hadn't come out yet, Bones and Thugs (Bone Thugs-N-Harmony) wasn't doing it. Drake, of course, was far removed from that. Even Outkast and you know, that whole movement wasn't out yet. So yeah, I don't, I can't recall anybody doing that. So it was just something that for me, I think the first song I ever did it on was “Raining Revolution.” And the song is like the words are, “Let it rain, let it rain, let God's water heal me, the water of life, mentally rinsing me, physically drenching me.” And I didn't feel like it had the emotion that I wanted. Like, I really was looking for a certain type of emotion. As I was rapping that song and so I decided to try it in melody. And it worked. And that was the first sort of melodic rhyme I'd ever done. And then I started trying it on other songs.

"Fishin' 4 Religion"

I didn't know the order of the record by this time, and I wanted to try to put something more upbeat. I think right before it was “Raining Revolution,” I forget. But like, that was slow. I wanted to pick the pace up, get the energy back going. And that was another song that when we got the label deal, I wanted to try to reapproach it. And that version was really fleshed out at the studio, not only the chorus that people can sing like, (sings) “Fishin’ for religion.” But even underneath it, all the tribal voices, it's just this pantheon of different energies going on in that track. And I loved it. I thought it was really colorful, and it still rocks for us. Like right now when we do shows, that song, it just rocks any crowd. I've never seen a crowd that didn't like how that song comes off. 

You know, I grew up going to church with my grandmother, my mom, but I never respected church. And I always felt like it was passive. And I always felt like it was a tool to lull people to sleep. Especially black people where they would often talk about the prize being Heaven and the afterlife as opposed to claiming what's yours, here. So that song addresses that. I was definitely going through that in that time period. I believed in God, so that wasn't my issue. But I was definitely critical of what I had seen so far in the churches. And so I wanted something different. 

“Give a Man a Fish”

I sampled Minne Ripperton and she was covered a Beatles song and it was really slow, so (sings bass groove). And Headliner found that sample. And loved it, didn't like how slow it was, wanted to speed it up. Did it double time on my turntable. So just put it on a 45 speed (sings fast bass groove) and loved it and just was like that's it.

You know started talking about our journey because we were broke like as a group we had no money. Many times, going to businesses and trying to get food at the end of the night to eat, didn't have money to put gas in our car, you know like putting 50 cents in the car for gas putting a dollar in, you know (laughs). My dude, one of our dudes, Shy Boy worked at the theater, ou know, we’d get popcorn from him and eat popcorn as dinner. Go to Burger King and dig in the trash for burgers and stuff like this so the song is just talking about self reliance and self determination and us as a group, despite our hardship, trying to make it and just pushing through.

“U”

The song “U” from our debut. That was another song where lyrically I was rapping regular so, (raps “Lonely, lonely, oh woe is me, I say a complex cycle I go through almost every day.”
And I wanted to try it melodically so (sings) “Lonely, lonely, oh woe is me, I say a complex cycle I go through almost every day to my dismay”. So I just started doing it rhythmically with melody. And it totally came to life to me.

Definitely love that song. Definitely a true story as to what I was going through at the time, I hadn't found the woman of my dreams yet and I was looking for. I met her after I wrote that song. And yeah, we often laugh about that song, because so many of the things that I wrote I'm about came true, but they weren't true at the time. So like, I rhymed about having one or two kids, we had two kids, so on and so forth. So it's just a lot of stuff that we sort of laugh at, because it's like, “Wow, you know, God really gave us a lot of what, you know, I was hoping for.” So that was cool (laughs). 

“Eve of Reality”

The dude Larry that played “Blues Happy” had a band called “Eve of Reality” at the time. So the title I got from his band. The idea that music really was just at that time period, I was on the side, outside of Arrested Development, I was just writing music. That, to me, was more like pieces, they were like, sort of compositions. And that song was just one of those pieces that I had happened to do. And in my producing in general, I tend to write a lot of stuff like that, that actually gives me the energy to write a song like a “People Everyday,” like, it gives me sort of the foundation of what I like, the beauty of music that allows me to make something more simplistic and joyful, like a “People Everyday.” So I tend to write a lot of that stuff in between a lot of the songs that turn out to be singles and stuff like that.

“Natural”

Yeah, “Natural” was definitely, for me, it's one of my favorite songs on that record, because it talks about a, you know, a love interest that's totally not respected and not of the regular beauty standards of society. And yet, is extremely explosively beautiful to me.

Just that type of tunnel vision love story, as opposed to wanting the girl that everybody wants, type of thing. So I just thought that that was interesting. Complimenting this woman on her natural hair as opposed to fake booty, fake breasts, fake eyelashes, fake hair, (laughs) it was like none of that, just natural beauty, just from how God made her. And then musically, I was very influenced by Prince’s “Lady Cab Driver” for the beat. So the bass line was just a cool Earth, Wind & Fire bass line but the beat was definitely me trying to channel the beat from “Lady Cab Driver” from 1999 album from Prince. Yeah, love that song.

“Dawn of the Dreads”

I forget the name of the band right now, but there was a band that had a great song out that I loved back in those days. And I wanted to make a song with that sort of swing to it with the same rhythmic swing. And so “Dawn of the Dreads” was my attempt at doing that. Again, love story. That song exists in three planes. One is a love story of me meeting a woman named Dawn. The second plane is me being lonely and wanting a woman that's deep and an intellectual and meeting Dawn and her being that woman so it was like the dawn of a new day for me. And she had dreads and so it's like “Dawn of the Dreads.” And then the third plane of that song was just literally from daytime to nighttime to daytime again so the literal dawn of a new day.

Between “Dawn of the Dreads” and “Natural” and the song “U,” all three of those songs are basically the same point, which is, I was messing with a lot of women here in Atlanta, that were frivolous, in my opinion and materialistic and surface. And it's challenging, you know, like to find somebody that was deeper. And I'd say that I was, you know, 21 or so when I wrote this stuff. So like, generally speaking, most 21 year-olds weren't where I was, like, in conversation, so I could get that, but I wanted somebody that could. That could relate and that was similar to me in consciousness and just not as, I don't know what the word is, but sort of surfacey, you know.

“Tennessee”

“Tennessee” was an interesting song, because, like, our album was complete. And I got the news that my grandmother, who I spent all my summers with, in Tennessee, had passed, and she died of a heart attack. And so, you know, I was distraught, and my whole family went to Tennessee to celebrate her life, and my brother was there, who, at the time lived in another state. And so it was great seeing him, and then we left there, probably about a day or so later, and, you know, felt renewed, felt refreshed. And we always believe that our ancestors, you know, they give us strength and direction. And so we felt really refreshed and strengthened as a family, when she passed and after the funeral. Then that same week, my father hadn't even gotten home from doing all the business in burying his mother. And we got the news that my brother passed as well. And he always struggled with asthma his whole life. So he died of an asthma attack. And he was a doctor at the time, he had been a doctor for about three months, I think it was. He had delivered hundreds of babies within that time period. But he got an asthma attack. And because he was a doctor, I think he felt that he could wait before taking a particular medicine that made him sleepy, and he wanted to finish some more work. And so the attack got stronger. He called his fiancee to come pick him up. And on his way home, to get the medicine he passed. And so I got that news. And the last place I saw my grandmother and brother was in Tennessee. So I wrote that song, as a dedication to them. And I was deeply emotional. And as you can see from the song, it's a prayer. “Lord, I really been real stressed, down and out losing ground. My grandma passed, my brother's gone, I never at once felt so alone.” So the chorus is basically asking God for help. “Take me to another place, take me to another land, make me forget all that hurts me, and help me understand your plan.”

The label was set on releasing and “Mr. Wendal” as our first single they weren't even signing an album deal just yet. But we had finished the album in a demo mode. And so I recorded “Tennessee” on my little 4-track, I went to the label, and I said, you know, “This record needs to be the first single, it's a powerful record. And my grandmother and brother just passed.” They heard the single and loved it. They said, “We should shoot a video for this.” We shot the video, turned out amazing. And they wanted to sign us to an album deal. And so that's when we recorded the album professionally for the label.

The song is sort of heavy to me and even though it's a light melody, and it's a happy melody, the lyric content was heavy and I didn't want the song to just be heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy, heavy (laughs). So Aerle Taree came over soon after I wrote the song and I left some space in it for some, not comic relief, but just a little bit of a relief. Yeah, to me I was inspired by De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Rising. Like, De La’s 3 Feet High and Rising had a way of being almost childlike in its exploration and in some of their skits were funny but also just seemed thrown together and just sort of not thought deeply and just let it roll. That's how it felt to me. And I loved that, I love that record. So I asked her, she was very familiar with De La and all of that stuff, so I asked her to just talk about things that really was irrelevant to the song and just like almost like a commercial break, in a sense. You know, that's how I looked at it. And she did a great job, like everything she's talking about relates to some of the places her family comes from, like Holly Springs, Mississippi, she brings that up, you know, she brings in various group members and she just sort of ties it up. And it's in a very playful, childlike way, it's not very heavy in any way. And I thought that that was needed, I also think I was influenced by Chuck D, and Flavor Flav’s role, and how they sort of juxtaposed each other, where Chuck D can say some of the heaviest, most, you know, convicting stuff, and then Flavor’s, you know, generally speaking, gonna say something that's totally off kilter (laughs), and just makes no sense to the rest of the record to some extent. And those kinds of things were floating in my mind as to what the song needed.

Basically, I sampled the word “Tennessee,” from Prince’s “Alphabet St.” (sings) “I want to put her on a backseat and drive her to Tennessee.” So I didn't take any melody or anything, just (sings “Tennessee”). And I thought, back in those days, at least, the thought was, you know, you don't get sued for samples if it's less than a certain amount of time. There was rumors about, you know, it had to be a melody in order to be sued. So I thought it was a pretty much a no brainer. And so we didn't hear anything from Prince until the record got to like number three or four on the pop charts. And then it went down to four, five, and that very day, we got a call from Prince's office, saying that Prince wanted to get paid, and the quote was $100,000, for the word. And I thought that was exorbitant. I thought it was ridiculous. And at the time, I was salty about it, I felt some kind of way. I was like, “Man, he's really trying to rip this, rip us off.” And later on, I realized that really, Prince did us a favor, you know, because the song already had made millions. And it was highly successful. He could have owned part of the copyright, he could have demanded that we take the song off the shelves if he wanted to. He could have demanded that we re-record it without his word on there, you know. And so, I think, as I got older, and I realized the business aspect more, I was very, grateful that he just asked for a flat fee. And he never asked for anything more with the song again. So I probably bought Prince some pumps, or some heels or something, something amazing because of that $100,000 (laughs).

So we didn't use Joe Tex on “Tennessee.” I used a few things. I use the Brand New Heavies’ shaker, which was a $50,000 investment (laughs). Because they came, once they found out we gave $100,000 to Prince and it was funny because I knew them as personal friends. I said, “Hey, you guys, please don't do this. You know, don't do $50,000, let's do something, you know, reasonable.” Because in my mind, it was just (sings rhythm) “chick, chick, chick, chick, chick chick”. So I guess it's a bar. And it's like, I just was like, “It's just a shaker. You know, it's not your groove. It's not your whole song. It's no melody, riffs.” But they didn't see it that way. So they were like, “Yeah, we want 50 grand.” So they did the same thing, where it’s like 50 grand clear, but to me, it was exorbitant again. I was just like, “50 grand for the shaker! Are you serious?” (laughs). It's funny, but we're cool. But it's just funny, it's one of those situations where like, a record makes money and everybody comes out from everywhere. So anyway, but Joe Tex, no we didn't use him on there. We did use some like really famous, which I can't say like, drums though, that I chopped up and reprogrammed in two different rhythms. 

But yeah, I knew I wanted a solo at the end. So we ended up going to Bosstown, which was Bobby Brown’s studio at the time. It later became Stankonia, Outkast’s studio, where we recorded “Tennessee.” Dionne was Rasa Don's fiance. Rasa Don was one of the members of the original Arrested Development. One of my managers named Bart Phillips introduced me to her and said, “This girl is an incredible singer.” I asked Dionne to you know, adlib, “Take me home. Take me to another place,” things that were basically in the chorus already. And so she did. And at first, she just did the, (sings) “Oh, won't you let me? Won’t you help me, won't you help me understand your plan?” and then that was it. And I was like, “That was amazing, that was great, but you know, go further, though.” Because I already had sort of the song format for her to do about, I think, 16 or so bars, I'm not sure exactly how long her solo was. But it was longer than that. So I was like, “Go more, you know, take it up,” and just sort of giving her some direction. And it's great because the first take of that solo, she did it, it sounded amazing, but she didn't like it. And I loved it. So she said, “Please record it over.” And I didn't, but I always learned years ago not to record over people's takes, because sometimes it only goes downhill (laughs). So it's good to have that original take, especially if you really love it, if you think it's a great take. So I just put her on another track. And I let her go for a long time doing numerous other ad libs. But I told her I said, “The first one's really it.” And I knew it from the beginning. But she just, you know, she's a perfectionist and a great artist. And turns out, we used the very original solo that she did. And it was from the heart, it was incredible. And it's an iconic, to me, probably one of the most or the most iconic hip hop solos, singing wise, period. I mean, I don't know who else has even done a solo, much less one that's as powerful and meaningful as that particular song.

To me, that song is not even the song without that song. When we do it live now, we actually start the song with the solo. And then we go into the song and then do the solo again, because it's such a crowd pleaser, you know, and it means a lot. So yeah, I'm really grateful that it still resonates with people. And it's a highlight of our show, you know, doing that solo is one of the highlights of our show.

“Washed Away” 

You know, there was a Cure song, I forget the name of it, but it had this extremely catchy flute sound in it. So their song was (sings keyboard riff). I forget the name of it. But anyway, it's like “Close to You” or something, I don't know (“Close to Me”). But I love that song. And I always wanted to do something that had just the cutest like, cutest little keyboard or flute line. So then that was why I started that song in general. So it was like this real simple, almost innocent kid like, melody is what I was really going for.

I also liked the fact that I was using, like a djembe sample as the kick. And then I just sped it up for the snare. So I use the same kick sound that I use for the snare sound and I just thought that was cool. And then as I started writing to it, I realized that there was this sort of subject matter of “washed away,” and this whole concept of the shore being a place of wisdom and understanding and knowledge and the ocean being a place of sort of the lack of that. And so as this whole idea started to just formulate, then I at that point is when I started putting ocean sounds and things of that nature into the song.

There was a time in my life when I didn't, I wasn't sure if I would ever get this music out there in any major way. So I was extremely excited. Like, all of us were, all of us were on cloud nine. But the money part came pretty quickly. And the confusion, the mistrust, all of that stuff because things were skyrocketing quickly. Blowing up is a very interesting journey. Because especially if it's your first album, no one knows the business, including me. I don't know the business. I'd never been in a record deal before, major label, never have even been to New York. And you know, you're dealing with terms that weren't the rule of the game when you were creating the music initially. And then now that it's big business, the rules change and there was a lot of internal questions and then mistrust and then arguments and lawsuits even. And there was concepts that, you know, none of us really knew much about, but we were learning in real time. So some of the concepts money wise was, “Well, whoever wrote the song makes more money than the people that sing on the song. Or if I wrote the song, and did the beat, like if I wrote the lyrics, and melody and did the beat, than by nature, I'm gonna end up making more money than the rest of the group members.” These things were new concepts that a lot of us were, really all of us, didn't really know much about and so we were learning it. So then before you know it, I'm offered publishing deals, which is a whole other source of income that other group members weren't offered, because they didn't write a lot. So then they want to start writing, and that's fine. But by nature, you know, if you're a hit group, you also don't, or even if you're not a hit group, you don't just write because it's more money in it, you write because you're a good writer, or you write because you have a great song or a great rhyme or you're a great hip hop artist or whatever. You don't just write because there's money in it. Or at least that's not my view. So to me, there was a lot of different incentives and sort of reasons why people wanted to get involved with stuff that had nothing to do or little to do with a song. It just had to do with, “What he got, I want that.” (laughs) Stuff like that. So it was just interesting, like how things change pretty quickly. And it was tough, because while that's all going on, you still have records to put out and you still have videos to produce and interviews to do. We hadn't made it, we just had a hit record, there is a difference. Like, it's a blessing to have a hit record. But it's harder to make more than one hit record. So there was a lot more work to do. And there was a lot more vision to carry out in order to really make this group be something that's not just a one hit wonder, for instance.

I feel like you know, I've heard people critique me and the group for being naive, like with songs like “Mr. Wendal,” as if it's that easy type of thing. And the truth was, it was that easy for us. We really did have interactions with the homeless. Did we change the whole plight of homelessness? No, I mean, but has any song changed the plight of anything that it addressed? And I think the answer is no, just, it's a song. And I've heard critiques that we were talking down to people. And to me, it's a scapegoat approach to dealing with our music. Because if you really actually listen to the lyrics, the whole point of the song is to bring us all to a place of higher ground. You know, that's the whole point of any Arrested Development song that I could think of at least. There was a whole lot of gangsta hip hop at the time, Arrested Development stood out as one of the few that didn't go that route. I think it definitely belonged in the hip hop realm and in the scope of what hip hop is. And there needed to be a counter narrative for the sake of hip hop and for the sake of black people, which were beginning to be stereotyped within hip hop as all gangster, all, you know, gang related or, you know, violent and all of that type of stuff. So there needed to be more narratives, so I'm proud of what we've done.

Good friend of mine, named Cinque (Terrence Mason) was hanging around us at the time. And he's a great singer, gospel singer. And I asked him to sing at the end, and he probably freestyle, he recorded at my house, or my apartment at the time, we hadn't even gotten a record deal yet. He recorded that solo probably for about 30 minutes or so just freestyling. And we actually used his literal solo that he did at my house on my little 4-track Tascam cassette recorder. We used that exact solo for the real record, when we went to the professional studios, because he didn't, he wasn't able to come to Milwaukee. And I liked the delivery that he did. So I didn't want to risk him coming to Milwaukee to record with us, and not landing it the way that he did on the demo. So we just literally lifted the demo and synced it up, lined it up and used that.

Yeah, this is a 30 year sort of retrospective of our first album, 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of… and it means the world to me. It's the start of my professional music career. And it's the record that still casts a very huge light and shadow (laughs) on my offerings to this very day. So I'm very grateful for this record, and I'm just super proud that we've made it.

Outro:

Dan Nordheim: Visit lifeoftherecord.com for more information about Arrested Development. You’ll also find a link to stream or purchase 3 Years, 5 Months and 2 Days in the Life Of… Thanks for listening. 

Album Credits: 

"Man's Final Frontier" (Speech)

"Mama's Always on Stage" (Speech)

"People Everyday" (Speech)

"Blues Happy" (Speech)

"Mr. Wendal" (Speech)

"Children Play with Earth" (Speech)

"Raining Revolution" (Speech)

"Fishin' 4 Religion" (Speech)

"Give a Man a Fish" (Headliner/Speech) 

"U" (Speech)

"Eve of Reality" (Speech)

"Natural" (Speech)

"Dawn of the Dreads" (Speech)

"Tennessee" (Speech)

"Washed Away" (Speech)

Produced and Mixed by Speech

Executive Producers: Michael T. Mauldin & Speech

Written and Arranged by Arrested Development

Recorded at Bosstown Recording Studios

Recorded at Twenty Five Sixty Studios

Recorded at Trax 32 Recording Studio

Recorded at UWM Studios

Mastered at Masterdisk by Howie Weinberg

Engineer: Alvin Speights

Assistant Engineer: Matt Still

Additional Engineers: Richard Wells, Tom Held

Published by EMI Blackwood, Inc. / Arrested Development Music (BMI)

©℗ 1992 Chrysalis Records, Inc.

Arrested Development Family: Speech, Headliner, Aerle Taree, Montsho Eshe, Rasa Don, Baba Oje

Extended Family Members and Contributions: Dionne Farris, vocals on “Tennessee,” “Give a Man a Fish,” “Fishin’4 Religion,” “U”

Sister Paulette, vocals on “Mama’s Always On Stage” and “People Everyday”

Brother Larry, guitar on “Blues Happy”

Larry Jackson, saxophone on “U”

Cinque (Terrence Mason), vocals on “Washed Away”

“Mama’s Always on Stage” samples “We’re Ready” by Buddy Guy and Junior Wells

“Mr. Wendal” samples “Sing a Simple Song” by Sly and the Family Stone

“Give a Man a Fish” samples “When It Comes Down To It” by Minnie Riperton

“U” samples “Mighty Quinn” by Ramsey Lewis.

“Natural samples “Sunshine” by Earth, Wind & Fire

“Tennessee” samples “Alphabet St.” by Prince and “BNH” by The Brand New Heavies

“Washed Away” samples "Thin Line Between Love and Hate" by The Persuaders

Episode Credits:

Theme Music:

“Winter Cold” by North Home

Intro/Outro Music:

“Instrumental Rap Scratch Old School Hip Hop Underground” Prod. By Jchl

Episode produced, edited and mixed by Dan Nordheim

Additional mixing and mastering by Jeremy Whitwam