27th & 28th April 2009 ~ Tavis Smiley ~ Complete 2 Night Interview

own your master recordings, that is, in the future. It will be inconceivable to even think that you can take someone's creation and claim ownership. Unfortunately, this discussion will start to turn into a discussion about the human genome and DNA and everything else when it gets there. We're going to be in deep water, she sees, so it's best to start the conversation now before talking about God. You know, there are four songs that I want to ask you about and I did what I've never done before, which is actually print these lyrics, print some of them, since the record is so new, I'm learning some, I have some memorized, who can tell you? gave the lyrics so I've seen some really weird rewrites of My stuff I saw them once they said the lyrics from when Dove Cry was uh dig if you want Marvin Gaye's picture of me and the kids well you know what ?

And then there was another, this person will remain nameless, yes, she did. I don't speak the English language very well, right, she had a very pretty daughter, that's why we were acquaintances, but she swore up and down that the little red corvette would pay the rent collect, well, you know what you need to let me verify that, yeah, yeah, you know, uh. I'm a fast learner so I'm not going to read any of this on the air. I'll just ask you about the songs and the lyrical content, and for those who don't have the album, you can go to Lotusflower. .com and get it and follow it at home, even if you are two or three days late, you can play it and follow it in no particular order since we mentioned the dreamer first, tell me about the dreamer oh well, when I saw the status. from the union black dick gregory uh it really touched me and a lot of my friends I show it to everyone that comes to the house, especially the white people, because they need to hear that you know it to know more about all of us because, uh, what he said it affects us all, he said something that really struck me about this chemtrails phenomenon and you know, when I was a kid I used to see these trails in the sky all the time and that's cool, a plane just flew by and then you started. to see a bunch of them and the next thing you know everyone in your neighborhood was fighting and arguing and you didn't know why, well and you really didn't know why, I mean everyone was fighting so he started talking about Steles chemistries and he started saying things that really impacted me and I would recommend that everyone try to get what he said online or anywhere and try to get a copy and just listen to it because I was so moved that I had to write the song, the other thing is that The first line of the song says that I was born on the same plantation in the United States of red, white and blue and now we live in a place that feels like a plantation that we all are. indentured servants, you know, when I found out there were eight presidents before George Washington, I wanted to punch someone, you know, I wanted to know why I was taught otherwise, just tell me the whole story.

I'll fill in the blanks, but don't you know? don't tell me something you think I'm supposed to know we're indentured servants and we have a black president now I don't vote I have nothing to do with it I don't have a dog in that race and for those who would curse me and slap me in person if I didn't I'd ask you why, well, the reason is because I'm one of Jehovah's Witnesses and we've never voted and that doesn't mean I don't think about Barack. obama president obama is a very intelligent individual and it seems that he means well, prophecy is what we all have to go through now.

It's very interesting. I did a sold out show in London, we played 21

night

s in a row and every show was sold out. I found out when I was watching TV there and you saw the United Nations broadcasting the United Nations live broadcast, you heard them talk a lot about religion, you heard the Bible mentioned constantly, this is not what we are used to. In the United States it is almost as if there is no need for God or religion and justice in politics, so there is supposed to be a separation between Church and State here. But we cannot have a separation between the State and morality. you know songs like dreamer and even I feel good is this is the same thing let me have good and bad news the bad news first since I like it ended in good news the bad news is that I ran out of time for this program the good news is I think that if I lean on my friendship I could get Prince to stay about 12 more minutes.

And if you tune in to this show tomorrow

night

we can finish our conversation. It will never end, but we will continue. Talking about these other three songs from the new Lotus Flower CD on lotusflower.com, you can get it. I want to ask you about these three other songs tomorrow night and then about this excellent artist you referenced earlier. You can fight anyway, you won't. it's this good artist the manager that bria valente referenced earlier in this conversation oh yeah bria is joining us tomorrow night too so tomorrow yeah we're talking right now so tomorrow night the second part of our conversation with prince and briana valente with us tomorrow. evening also she is one of the three cds in this new three cd lotus flower package french thank you for coming thank you I appreciate it that is our casper evening show on the weekends on pri public radio international you can access our podcast of radio with our website at pbs.org and see you here next time on pbs until then good evening from the thanks for watching and as always keep the faith for more information on today's show visit

tavis

smiley

on pbs.org hello, I'm travis

smiley

join me next time with part two of my exclusive conversation with the prince and the prince's latest protégé, bria valente, that's next time, see you then, good night from los angeles .

I'm

tavis

smiley first tonight, part two of our exclusive conversation with Iconic music superstar Prince is out with a new collection of music this spring, a three-CD set called Lotus Flower. The albums are available on Prince's new website, lotusflower.com. Also tonight, the talented young singer appears on Prince's new project, Minneapolis native Bria Valvalente. of lotus flower with a fantastic cd called elixir we are glad you joined us prince and bria valente are coming right now welcome back to night two of our conversation with my man prince i still have these papers from last night i i didn't change clothes, but neither is Prince, but he looks good all the time anyway, uh, last time we changed, this is double the same, tavis is one that didn't change, yeah, yours is double what do you have. two of those there you go, well you know, if it works for you, it works for me, I changed too, I have two of these, when we left you last night, I had these papers in my hand, uh, we were talking about something about the song. lyrics uh on their new cd lotus flower you know it's out uh three cds in this uh in this package sound of minneapolis uh elixir and uh you know flour so three three cities in the package at lotuspower.com if you want to get it uh we Were talking last night to print about some of the lyrics and we talked about Dreamer.

I didn't get to these other three. Can I ask you about the colonized mind? Yes Yes. The colonized mind is about the state of the Union. Right now, the state of the union for all of us, not just black people, not just white people, but all of us, yesterday we talked a little bit about how I was raised and my father, he was a very strong individual who held himself to a very high standard. for me. everything you said, something very interesting is that he could have turned me into a bad person. I have that side of me, but what I try to do is channel it as best I can into the music.

Larry Graham is a dear friend of mine, I just want to say what's up with him and Tina, Aaron and Latia. I'll be home shortly. I'm having a lot of fun here though, so I just wanted to say something. Larry has a volatile side. He also told me a story once I hope Larry I have to tell this is I only have to tell him one time Larry and Freddie from Slime and Family Stone are on their way to a concert to open for Jimi Hendrix right now. I'm shaking, I can't wait to hear what's about to happen on the way to the concert, they pick up some of their amps and their car is loaded with these amps, right, it's hard to see, but they're driving and they're late trying. to get to the concert, either they beat up this guy or some guy runs into them, but there's an accident right in the middle of the street in New York, Larry jumps out of the car, he yells his ass off at this guy, yeah, Freddy's with he, you know, they're both from Oakland, so you know what time it is, I don't want to see without a guy, it seems like yeah, okay, so it's like I got that side of him right and I was just captivated by that part of the story. , but then I asked him.

He said it when you got to the concert, like it happened who won the battle between you and Hendricks and Larry said, oh, we slapped him, so wait, you know, it's the same with him, if you listen to his music, you can hear the bass. and the the funk the anger is in songs like people and water and it's not fun for me and stuff like that, you know, that's what I learned from you, you know, that's my teacher, colonize mine, two more, I want to ask you . about feeling we bet we referenced this last night on the show feel better feel good feel wonderful i love the moment i love the song but i love the title yeah yeah it's about telling people to celebrate and stop hating , although there are references in the song to a record executive who we've had some pretty interesting conversations with um and uh there's a line that says you tried to make me like my good brother Steve, okay, what we think happens in the music industry is that you can release a record. and Soundscan refuses to count how many they actually sell, but you get paid for what it sounds dry, says you sold, so if it's a loan number then you only get paid for that number, meanwhile when you travel abroad and check some of the barcodes and The titles there you have already been scammed several times and in several different ways, plus with the influx of the internet you know there are no sales so they really drained your bank account so never We really knew what purple rain. sold, I don't know to date, I just know what they tell me, you know, we're doing an audit, but you know who knows a lot, yeah, we suspect so, an old school company in Minneapolis sounds, yeah, yeah, that's just an ode to how I grew up and what we used to hear there are some current references regarding bailouts given to banks and things like that, while there are a lot of us in the neighborhood that are still going through the same thing now, um it's interesting , I don't live there anymore, but I have to take care of a lot of people who live there and it would be better to listen to a lot of conversations about wealth redistribution and things like that. let's try to handle things on our own for a minute, you know, give us back our master tapes, let us sell like you sell, you know, if you go on the Internet you'll see artists with 51 million views, you know, they say there's like 200.

Million people on MySpace, that's a nation. Well, I would shudder to look at your bank records. You know, with the music that happens there, depending on one's perspective, either you're a genius for doing things like this, doing it yourself, distributing it yourself, um, etc. Either you are a genius or you hate the industry, you hate the way things should be done, tell me the strategy behind what you do today. Well, first of all, there's no hate involved, I mean, we welcome the industry to stay and continue as it is, it's actually good because, you know, when I'm sitting there talking to someone like Anita Baker, we can point to the industry as the way we no longer want to do it.

We believe in free goods and we don't believe in the 90's of the contract as it's written now, the standard contract, we don't believe in 360 agreements, anyone who signs one of those is absolutely crazy, but it's a free country, you can do whatever to be. You want the idea behind this to be to introduce a new artist to the world, someone who is very dear to me and her music is relaxing, it calms me down. I'm not a big fan of male vocalists. You know, normally when I do ballads, I use my highest register because I love the female voice doing slow music I spoke too soon and I wrongly compared Bria's music to Chade's music I didn't mean that she sounded like shadow but I did mean that There is a romance that is present in Chade's music that he likes.

The song "Love is stronger than pride" is one of the most beautiful songs of all time and there is a romance that was missing in current music and the best I could tell you. bria was trying to do something that isn't happening today trying to get into a niche because you have a beautiful voice but you have to do something with it that you don't hear and that's what she's done and it's one of those dormant records you know that if people play and listen to the end, she has you why I'm I don't hear much of this on the radio, I think it's because I'm not signed to a major label.

Target is not a record company, they are a distributor and a storeretailer and a very good one, in addition, 30 million people pass by its stores every week so that they have the opportunity to buy the lotus flower disc. The beautiful thing about the relationship is that they treat us like any other record company, they buy the same amount and pay the same price, so you know we have done quite well they already took care of brie I'm careful I hope to make more deals like this with artists Like Anita Baker and John Blackwell Rhonda and Renato We're trying to work on some jazz stuff right now, but time will tell.

It was quite surprising to me, although without radio it's just me talking without radio broadcast to a soul, a singular distributor, you end up missing number one when this came out. like maxwell smart missed it by a lot yeah, that was nice, that was serious, well, again, you know, that's when the fighter in me comes out and you know, you know, think about jack johnson taking someone down three and four times and then they still say he lost a fight or something, you know, it's uh, Soundcan said he was number two, um, other charts say he was number one, so it doesn't make any difference to me one way or another.

One way or another, what makes the difference for me is that story is told honestly and that is not always the case. I love golf, basketball, sports and boxing, especially because it's mono-amano and we hold our own at the box office. It would be wonderful if it were on the radio. It is shocking. It's not like there's stuff there with all the Minneapolis sound that you can put on the radio tomorrow, but there is some resistance. You'll have to ask your friends on the radio. The few I've asked haven't given me a straight answer yet, so I don't know if you had a station or a series of stations where you were the program director, the owner and the program director, what it would sound like.

I just wish it was good music and I wish it were full of artists who own their master rights because without them they don't own any wealth that they can't give back to their communities. Very few artists own their masters at this time. When that changes in the future, you will see more radio stations being purchased. We'll see the airwaves change ownership quickly because you obviously told a Jimmy Hendrix story before and because you're obviously one of the greatest guitarists of our time. I like this program. What do you mean? Hey look do you know why I just tell the truth around here we just tell it I'm just trying to tell the truth um what are you doing? what do you do with this? thanks, what do you do with? um, this guitar hero, oh yeah, um, well I'm mad at I heard he made like two billion dollars and they came to us and the app offered us a very small portion of that, but I think it's more important for children to learn to play the guitar.

It is a difficult instrument. Is not easy. It took me a long time and was frustrating at first, you just have to keep doing it and it's great for people who don't have time to learn chords or aren't interested in them, but playing music is one of the greatest things to create something from out of nowhere is one of the greatest feelings and I would do it I don't know I wish it on everyone it's heaven yeah she's one of Bria Valente's three elixir uh albums in this new three cd package in lotusflower.com tell me how you found her I'm going to talk to her for just a second so you're going to give me the lead here um she says she met me first and that's what she told me I say I met her first I'll say this: Morris Hayes it's very instrumental, he's my keyboard player, he's very instrumental in getting us together and once we got together, we clicked, it was pretty easy and, uh, the most interesting thing about her is how quickly she learned to understand Writing because I pretty much talk about that with everyone I know because it informs my life a lot now.

The other thing is that she's very funny and she likes to laugh and you know, Travis, she loves to laugh. I'm kidding, that's all, yeah, it's funny. yes, I'm kidding, I told her I was going to tell you that once it was for her you put it out and in that note you can come out his name is prince his new project is called lotus flower he has won not two but three CDs in it bria valente elixir prince of course lotus flower and sound of prince minneapolis everything is good prince I love you and there is nothing you can do about it I am glad to have you here I thank you until the next singer bria valente stay with us bria valente is a talented singer which appears on one of the three new albums of music icon prints elixir is the first CD that starts this new and exclusive set that you can get on the prince lotusflower.com website of the new project here are some of the videos from each time, so Brian leans over to me during the clip and says we're just trying to make stellar elevator music.

It's so much better than that look of Brian behind that curtain. Make sure Prince is gone. Make sure he's gone. He's fine, now he's gone, so tell me the truth. Whom? How did they really meet? He says he met you first. You said you met him. How did what really happened happen? Oh well, he was 17 years old. I'm from Minneapolis, Minnesota and I was working with Morris Hayes at the time and he took me to Paisley Park and I waited for Morris and he had met with Prince and all of a sudden, 10 minutes later, he came down and sat next to him. at me and he didn't look at me he just said hello and I said hello so what's your name? and i told him i'm bria and he said "nice to meet you" and that was it and then he left and didn't talk to me. him since then, that was the first time we met and then fast forward a few years later and you have a project, yeah, I moved to Los Angeles and, in a chance meeting, we ended up getting back together, so it was really cool and Morris.

Hayes was again the conduit, yes, the conduit for collaboration. That is incredible. What's it like to be here to be exposed and introduced by Prince? It's a privilege and a blessing and really the situation that we had in the work environment. It was like a family and we all love music, I mean I grew up with music, my dad is a musician and he also comes from Minneapolis. I think there was a really special connection there and when we all got together we just combined our talents and then I made this record that we're all really proud of and I never thought I'd be working with Prince to tell you the truth so I moved from Minneapolis and ended up coming home basically, so it's really interesting how that. works, tell me about your music, tell me about Brian's music.

I wanted a front to back record that you can play that just talks about the best qualities of love and um, and that's what this record really captures, so we did that and uh, there's a lot of live instrumentation, some songs are sessions improvised ones that we turned into songs after the fact and it turned out beautiful. I'm very proud of it, every time French introduces us to someone, there's always at least one song, maybe. a couple, but always at least one song that we all cling to because it has that quintessential prince artist prince protected sound mikey one of my videographers and i were talking earlier we think the song that does that on your project is tonight, tonight, yeah, right?

Agree with us, yes, Mikey, tell me why we think it has that quintessential trench guard sound. Well, Prince knows how to make people dance. It's funky. He knows how to make us dance. It has that quality. And um, and I think that clue is. It's definitely something that highlights that and you know some people have compared her to a nasty girl, you know, but yeah, I would say yeah, that's how it all ties into your word choice of comparing her to a nasty girl that we are. comparing prince obviously here just a few minutes ago uh raised the point and said and I'm almost quoting him, he says maybe I spoke too soon when I compared bria to sade and explained what he meant by I don't have to.

Repeat that part, people just saw that a few minutes ago, but what do you think of the comparisons others make between your music and whatever? Well, actually this album has its own sound, it's very difficult to compare with anything else. Also, you know everyone is going to take something from this based on personal experience, so nothing really bothers me as far as comparisons go, but most people who listen to it know that my voice has a different tone than other people. the ones I've been with. In comparison, I've listened to more Shantae and you know other artists like that, but it really takes on its own energy and has its own feel, so tell me about the challenge Prince gave you to create your own. sounds to create your own lane to do something that is not being done now, so he mentions that that is the challenge he gave you if I was going to work with you, tell me how you respond to that kind of challenge, well that requires a lot of introspection, you have You have to sit with yourself and think about what you want to hear that you're not hearing, you know what I mean and there are certain things that really move me in music and that's when I listen to the heart and when I hear authenticity and caring and things like that, that It's something that really gets me and music is such a powerful thing that can capture a moment in your life and bring you back to that place so it connects with you on an emotional and spiritual level. level and I really got in touch with myself on that fact of what I would like to hear and then I tried to write about the things I would like to hear.

I love the positive message of love. and and and the organic purity of real music, you know, and and I just wanted to capture that, I just wanted to capture something very real that people could hear and um and it would touch them, when did you know that music was what because you? I have modeled and that is also part of your backstory. When did you know that music was what you wanted to do, not just something you enjoyed? I think it was in school when I started doing talent shows, that's when I knew this was something I want, this is what made me happy and it really makes you happy when you make something out of nothing, that's the most rewarding feeling. that you can have and I really enjoyed it, you know, doing the talent shows and writing. music and I learned things from my father and he played 27 instruments, he's like the prince, but he also does lead vocals, backing vocals, engineering, mixing, you know what exactly the key is if you're going to release a project, Bria knows how to present it.

We should all be very lucky that Prince brought us out as part of a three-CD set. His name, Bria Valente, I just learned and got used to saying it because he will hear it for years to come. Bria Valente is the name of the The cd is called Elixir and is part of Prince's new three-cd set on lotusflower.com brian, it's a pleasure to have you, it's a pleasure the first time, I hope it's not the last, I hope don't be too nice to watch, okay that's our show for the night, catch me on the weekends on pri public radio international you can access our radio podcast through our website at pbs.org and I'll see you here next time on pbs until then good night from the thanks for watching and as always keep faith in me