Kay

The Talk Show: In Retrospect.

Hello everyone. To begin, I’d like to thank all those in advance that will give this project a listen. The Talk Show was, at the time, a project that I put forth every effort towards to be the best [it could be]. I started this around the middle of 2003 and finished totally by January 13, 2005. I am a part of a group called The Foundation, for those who don’t know. To begin this story of the Talk Show I have to start with the Foundation.

I met Chris “Daddy” Dave through a mutual friend who was working on an R&B demo at the time. She told me about this drummer from Mint Condition that did tracks but wanted to venture into hip-hop. At first I had to admit, I was unsure if that was a direction that I wanted to go in. However, I just came off of working on a project that I felt stunted my growth as an artist. I figured maybe I should try something new. Any who— I showed up at Chris’s house and he starts to kill me with this new sound. Some samples but for the most part everything is played. So for the next couple weeks I recorded two or three songs a day and we decided that we needed to be a group. I suck at names, however, I wrote a song about us being the new foundation for music in Houston. Liz Vaughn, a brilliant vocalist in her own right sang the chorus and told Chris that The Foundation should be the name of our collective. So for those that know me, I’m like “cool, whatever, let’s do it.”

I met FWMJ when he was a freshman at Rice University. He always supported the other side of Houston hip hop strongly which consisted of my former group “Example”, The K-otix, Seeds of Soul and more. At that time he was, to a degree, a somewhat bullheaded hip hop purist and a beast on message boards. I know you probably think he’s that same way now! Lol. However, I was never into that kind of stuff but he would always encourage us to let our stuff be heard on the netâ€¦ for free! He would show me how some group from North Carolina was just “gorilla pimping” the internet and creating a buzz. He felt that we should do the same, so we started uploading Foundation songs to sites such as Okayplayer, Spitkicker, The Lawn.. Shit wherever we could get the stuff heard! We got a pretty nice response. We got offered a couple of distro deals but none really grabbed our attention from a financial standpoint. However, I did get to meet a couple of folks that really loved our music which really encouraged us to keep moving. Phonte Coleman is one of them. He is busy as hell now, but him and Pooh got on a joint that Karriem Riggins gave us. They sent the vocals during their busy schedule and told us to just hit them off once we got distro. Lol. We never got distro! Maybe one day you guys will be able to hear it, but I really want to hit them brothers with something because they did not have to do the song. MeShell N’degeocello and Mint Condition were two other of my favorite artists that I had an opportunity to meet while doing this Foundation Demo. I’m not putting these folks out there to name drop, However, this was a time that I really needed encouragement to continue what I was doing. To have these people feeling what we were doing gave me so much energy to do more. To top everything off, one day while I was recording at Chris’s house he gets a call and says somebody wants to talk to me. When I pick up the phone it’s Ali Shaheed Muhammad! That kinda fucked me up because Tribe is my favorite group period! He said that he liked what we were doing and offered to let us get on his new project. Of course, me a nobody from Houston, I’m like hell yeah man! We sent two songs produced by The Foundation. The first was “Tight” and the second was “Family”. I don’t think the album did really well but we did get a good response from our contributions. Ali called and sent for me to fly to New York to hang with him at his crib. He talked to me about a label that he was starting called, Garden seeker, in which would have himself, Chip-Fu, Sy Smith, Stokley and The Foundation. I willingly accepted the opportunity to be down with one of the all-time greats in hip hop. However, Chris disagreed so I went in alone as a solo artist. This moment was the beginning of me reaching many highs as an artist as well as learning how shitty the music industry is.

The Talk Show is my illustration of life at that time. My musical expression. Now I choose to look back and reflect on all the mistakes and hardships as well as victories that I encountered over this time span. I am giving this away because, ultimately I did the music for the people to hear and I am not really an “industry-type.” My views on life are different now, yet I feel that many people will embrace this record because I tried to be honest about myself and how I viewed the world at that moment. Until I release this project, I’ll discuss the Talk Show concept and what I hoped to get across to the listener before you actually hear it. Hopefully, it will allow you, to enjoy the album more.

Peace.
Kay

Next up:
The First Quarter: Intro, Dada, Down Syndrome, Hey Babeâ€¦â€¦