Sing to Me: My Story of Making Music, Finding Magic, and Searching for Who's Next

322 Pages·2016·9.76 MB·English

by  la Reid

Courtesy of Ditte Isager/Edge Reps
DEDICATION
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO THE
LOVING MEMORY OF MY DEAR MOTHER,
EMMA B. REID.
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
The Audition
1 Give the Drummer Some
2 Pure Essence
3 The Real Deele
4 The Solar System
5 Girlfriend
6 The Dirty South
7 End of the Road
8 Another Sad Love Song
9 Player’s Ball
10 Waterfalls
11 Nobody Knows It but Me
12 Aristacat
13 Kast Out
14 Culture Clash
15 Emancipation of Me
16 Kingdom Come
17 My Beautiful Dark Twisted Reality
18 X-It
19 Here Comes the Judge
20 Epic Life
EPILOGUE
Showdown at Coachella
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
PHOTO SECTION
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
PROLOGUE
THE AUDITION
I
’d never auditioned a child before. My partner Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds
and I had written and produced records with a couple of boy groups, but working
with kids wasn’t something I’d envisioned doing when we started our own
record company. I vaguely figured I would listen to a song or two and tell the
kid to come back in a few years, but the minute this fourteen-year-old boy
walked into my office that afternoon in 1993, I could tell that there was nothing
that felt remotely childlike about Usher Raymond IV.
These were high times at LaFace Records, the label I had started with
Babyface in Atlanta four years earlier. The company was beginning to make a
name for itself. We had an album about to be released by an unknown singer
named Toni Braxton that would become a multiplatinum smash. The label had
its first multimillion-seller, the soundtrack to the Eddie Murphy movie
Boomerang, and we had sold millions of records with another previously
unknown group called TLC. Babyface had become a star in his own right after
releasing two stellar solo albums and writing dozens of big hit songs with me as
his regular producing partner.
On the heels of all this, we had recently relocated the LaFace office from
Norcross to a bright, beautiful space we’d built out on the fifteenth floor of the
Capital City Plaza building in Buckhead. We built the conference room in the
ten-thousand-square-foot office to be shaped like a piano, which made a curved
wall in the lobby. Nobody ever mentioned that particular design feature, so we
probably spent a lot of money for something that went largely unnoticed. The
staff was growing, as our operation expanded behind our two multimillion-
sellers. The sleek, modern office lent the label an air of prosperity that I hoped
would define us in the years to come.
But with all the success had come some serious adversity. Our top-selling
group, TLC, was unhappy about money, and that was causing problems between
me and my wife, Pebbles, who also happened to be the manager of the group.
And, after scaling the heights of the music business together, from late nights at
chitlin’ circuit dives in the Midwest to the top of the charts, my partner Babyface
and I were inexplicably drifting apart.
What made the growing distance between me and Kenny even more difficult
was that when LaFace started, it was a small operation, just a handful of close
friends who moved out from Los Angeles together. In the early days, LaFace
was a family affair—me, Kenny, our office manager, Sharliss, my wife, Pebbles,
Kenny’s brother-in-law Derek Ladd, Kenny’s childhood friend Daryl Simmons,
my childhood friend Kayo. My younger brother, Bryant, moved from Cincinnati,
where we grew up, to Atlanta and came to work for us. Bryant and I always had
similar tastes in clothes and style—we shared music a lot when we were growing
up. His world revolved around music, fashion, and sports. He was funny and
charming and knew what he was about. Once we signed Toni Braxton, we
assigned her to him, and he became the keeper of all things Toni.
Bryant also scouted talent, and it was through him that I first heard the name
Usher. My brother brought several writers and producers to the label. He caught
Usher at a local talent show—he’d gone to check out another act on the program
—and called me from the show to tell me about him. I wasn’t especially
enthusiastic, but Bryant insisted that the kid was something I needed to see.
Though I hadn’t been running a label for long, finding talent had become a
specialty of mine. Our hit records so far had come from artists who had never
made a record before I auditioned them. You never know what to look for at an
audition; everyone is different, special in their own ways. You have to remain
receptive, open, but without losing your critical and analytical side. It is a tricky
combination of balancing intelligence and intuition and being able to tell the
difference between having a vision and a hallucination.
I auditioned talent in my office three or four times a week, part of my regular
workday. There was a corridor that led to the side-by-side twin offices occupied
by Kenny and me. My office was a big, fluffy, all-white space with furniture
from Kreiss and huge speakers powered by my McIntosh amplifier. Posters of
our artists hung on the walls. People would come in and out to ask questions, to
show me artwork, to get a moment of my attention. I always had an open-door
policy and people knew they could walk in anytime.
It was around two in the afternoon, and I had been listening to some new
songs by Toni Braxton, when this fourteen-year-old kid dressed in blue came to
my office with his mother, Jonetta, and my brother, Bryant. His appearance
looked a little small-town, but his surprising swagger was all big-city. Usher had
grown up in Chattanooga and learned he could sing at an early age. Thinking a
bigger city would be a better place for him to be discovered, his mother had
moved the family to Atlanta, where she worked as a medical technician. She
acted as his manager. He had never auditioned for a record label before.
My routine at auditions rarely varied and was much the same that day. After
a quick introduction and handshake with Usher and his mother, I sat back down
and asked, “What are you going to sing for us?”
I always know in a few seconds. There are very few people who can pass an
audition. I usually know when they walk in the room before they open their
mouth—even if they open their mouth only to speak and not sing. I’ve already
made up my mind. The last few minutes is just me being kind to them. I’ve been
told I’m rude in auditions, but I’m not. I might not look up from my computer,
but I pay attention. I never tell anybody what I think, unless I’m blown away. I
like the theater of leaving it hanging, so that when you do deliver the news, you
create a life-changing moment.
He handed me a tape of an instrumental track. I put it in the cassette player
and pressed Play. He stood in front of my desk and started to sing a song Kenny
and I wrote that had been a record-breaking number one hit for Boyz II Men on
the Boomerang soundtrack called “End of the Road.” He was killing it. He
didn’t get through sixteen bars before I interrupted him.
“Stop, whoa,” I said. “I need to get some girls. I want everybody to hear
you.”
Our bustling office was filled with employees and interns from local
colleges. We rounded up all the pretty girls. They filled the chairs in my office,
perched on desks, leaned in the doorway. About fifteen people crowded in.
Usher took it from the top.
He zeroed in on Phyllis Parker, who worked for us, probably the most
beautiful woman in the room, and dropped to his knee in front of her, singing,
placing his hand on her thigh and looking dead in her eyes. He was seducing her
with the confidence of someone who had done it before.
This kid wasn’t afraid, he wasn’t intimidated, he wasn’t overwhelmed by the
surroundings or the fact that he was singing for a record company president. He
didn’t have any apprehension at all. He jumped in like a pro. It turned out he had
some stage experience in a group he sang with and had done a Star Search
audition, but he was still raw and green. He came by his self-confidence
naturally.
When he opened his mouth to sing, he didn’t sing it like Boyz II Men, he
sang it like it was his own song. His tone was perfect for the way he sang the
song; he gave it his own, original sound, which is what I always look for with
people—that special voice stamp that is only yours, that will not be mistaken for
anyone else. The voice there was all his own. He was his own person. He was
already Usher.
He was confident and poised way beyond his years. His eyes told the story.
He had eyes of steel. He knew he would be a star. I could see that commitment
in his eyes. He was charming. He could dance his ass off. He had an
unbelievable vocal tone and he was a sponge. He sensed exactly what I was
looking for. I knew all this in an instant.
When he finished, the room exploded in applause and I stood up.
“Welcome to LaFace Records,” I said.