exact same.

Wow.

Well, 40 years ago.

I feel a lot older now that you recognize that.

But it was great because she came to Minneapolis to record.

And the cool thing about it was there was no bodyguards.

There was no nothing.

So tell everybody what happens when they come to see the show.

More at toplineconstructionfirm.com.

[singing] So get it up.

Get ready for a real good time.

I'm gonna try to blow your mind.

Can't you see? You and me.

It's so, so nasty.

Get it up.

Mm.

Mm

... 'cause we were very analytical about the people we work with.

We liked, when Janet was really young, she had all this attitude, right? When she was on the variety show with her brothers or doing the Sonny & Cher show and all that.

You'd always see her and she always had this feisty attitude.

But then her music was kinda soft, you know? And we were like, "Let's give her some aggressive music and get that feisty attitude back." So I remember when we did the track for Nasty, and she was, like, singing it like, you know, "Sittin' in the movie show." And we were like, "No, no, no, no.

Sing it like..." The other day she had a cold, like, right before that.

We s- "Sing it like when you had the cold." Like, "Sittin' in the movie show." Like that.

The 12th

Mm

... 'cause we were very analytical about the people we work with.

We liked when Janet was really young, she had all this attitude, right? When she was on the variety show with her brothers or doing the Sonny & Cher show and all that.

You'd always see her and she always had this feisty attitude.

But then her music was kinda soft, you know? And we were like, "Let's give her some aggressive music and get that feisty attitude back." So I remember when we did the track for Nasty, and she was, like, singing it like, you know, "Sittin' in the movie show." And we were like, "No, no, no, no.

Sing it like..." The other day she had a cold, like, right before that.

We... "S- sing it like when you had the cold." Like, "Sittin' in the movie show." Like that.

The 12th

We

were still on tour with the time.

And he said he told us not to work with any other groups.

That was like his thing.

And of course, when he found out that we had worked with them, I remember the same night we were going to mix the S.O.S. band record in L.A.

He called us over to Sunset Sound and he just said, I told you guys not to work with other groups.

and you guys did the S.O.S. band, so you're fired.

And so

oh we

did we actually recorded the track in minneapolis and janet was with us when we recorded it and she said i know that's the one he's gonna like because we did like five or six songs and she said i know that's the one he's gonna like and we said how do you know she said i know my brother it's like okay so anyway we played him all the songs and He got, you know, he said, that's the one right there.

We're going to do that.

So, okay, cool.

So we do it.

So Michael walks into the studio the day we're going to record and we're in New York.

The idea is that he's going to do his vocal than Janet's going to do her vocal.

And so

... outside of the technicalities of the break beat, how many-

Sort of.

Um, that's a great question.

Um, I, I, I think I can.

I definitely get the emotion of records.

I was listening, ironically, um, there's a record, uh, by...

There's a guy, like a EDM guy like Porter Robinson, and I love his chord structures and his textures that he does.

Oh.

He's all over that record.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And he was the one that got me into- He credit, themes ...

Well, he was the, he was the one that really started putting...

Uh, we w- we were talking earlier.

Before we started the interview, we were talking about, um, how hip hop influenced R&B.

Yeah.

Like, what part of-

of-What was the town, part of town to not go to in Minneapolis? Uh well, okay, if you were Black, the northeast was where to not go to.

It was called the, actually the northeast is what we called it.

Um, the state- That's where the white people lived? Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The ones- Every, every town has- [laughs] ...

Right.

Yeah.

We literally had two machines in one room, two machines in another room, two mix boards, because there wasn't enough room on one mix board to handle all this stuff, and literally as we're mixing, we're walking between the two studios to get this mix done.

And we work, like, probably 48 hours.

I don't think we went home.

I think we worked the Thursday into Friday to get it home.

We go to mastering.

I think Bernie Grundman mastered it or, or Brian Gardner, one of the two mastered it.

No.

someone turned down a song that you later gave to someone else that's like,

it worked? Probably.

It probably so, although we didn't do a lot of that because we were

so specific in making our songs for a specific artist.

Right.

The one I mentioned earlier that ended up with Usher, which ended up being a song called Twerk It Out, which was a pretty big record for him just as an album cut.

But that was for another artist, but it was just a melody.

star.

[laughs]

40 years ago that album came out.

Um, but that's ...

I, I think that, and I remember the first time we heard I Want Her, um, by Keith.

And I remember we were with Babyface in LA.

We were just hanging out in a club, and we ... that song came on, and we all thought it was Nasty at first, because, like, the little [sings] like, the little synthesizer parts.

And then Babyface said...

Mm-hmm.

Mm

...

in the past couple of years, just to kinda test the concept of what it is.

And what happens is if you have friends in the audience, most of the time they'll wanna come on stage.

So we did a show in Atlanta, um, during Labor Day last year.

And for instance, uh, and I will say Reuben Studdard is our, kind of our male singer, 'cause he can handle anything from, you know, Alexandra O'Neal to Usher to whatever.

And when we started doing Bad Girl, he just walked where Usher was sitting, and Usher was there watching, just enjoying the show.

Mm.

Was there a moment for you when you thought, yeah, this is what I want to do? Was there a song or a moment you could take us back to where your parents playing you an album or you listening to the radio? Was there a moment or a song that did it for you?

Wow.

Oh, well, okay.

Well, I'll tell you that I don't know if there's a song on the radio that necessarily, well, maybe it was because it was on the radio.

But I tell you, one of my earliest memories was we were at like a family reunion or something.

And back in probably 66-ish, I want to say, there was an album called, it was called The Supremes Sing Holland Dozier Holland.

And it was a gold album cover.

Yeah, who gives a shit?

Whoa! What were those sessions like with Janet? And how were you producing the keys, the drums, the bass, using the machines? And what was her energy like in the studio and bouncing off of that?

Well, her energy was great because...

A few things about that.

So...

We, it was funny because we always tried to give everybody a different sound.

At least that was always our attempt.

And I remember when we had a meeting with Janet and they played her, what was the last record we had done right before that was, um, patty austin the heat of heat which was a quincy jones production with big lush strings and just we were being quincy jones like that's what we were trying to do and i remember her saying i don't think i want my record to sound like that and we said no no no your record's not going to sound anything like that you know we're going to it's going to be a whole different thing and we didn't know what that was going to be but we just knew that we had in mind we wanted to make a very aggressive record with her because when she was young if you look at her like on the talk shows and the variety shows, the Cher, Sonny and Cher show, or any of those shows back in the day.

What did you think about sampling when it, when it first hit music?