Music man LA Reid is a master music chef whose superpower is knowing the ingredients needed to take a good song to great. From his time in Cincinnati jam band The Deele to classic work with Babyface and Arista, and finally, his CEO vision as head of Def Jam and Epic Records, LA has always had micro and macro vision, resulting in some of the best work in music.
Reid’s biography, Sing to Me, remains the most comprehensive capsule on his life and career work but Tank and J. Valentine managed to pull some new nuggets from the drummer on their “R&B Money Podcast”. Here are seven takeaways from that interview.
1. It’s Always Been the Drums, Man
LA Reid’s gateway drug to his music addiction came through a set of Ludwig drums owned by his uncle.
“My career starts with my love for music and, more importantly, my love for seeing a set of drums for the first time in my life and feeling I saw God,” Reid said. “Everything about me just sparkled with excitement. In that moment, I was gone and I’ve never been back.”
2. Being of Service is His Motivation
Reid's north star is providing answers to artists.
“ I love that more than anything,” Reid told Tank and J Valentine. “I love for an artist to call me and say, ‘I need X,’ ‘I need this,’ ‘I need help with this,’ ‘I need help with that.’ Nothing makes my day more than to be able to say, ‘I don’t know if I can accomplish it but I’m damn sure going to pick up the phone and try. That’s everything to me.”
Being of service led to his breakthrough with the band he was in at the time 一 The Deele 一 and his bandmate Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, as Reid served as the ear Babyface needed for his songs.
“The real breakthrough for me was meeting Babyface when he was Kenny Edmonds,” Reid said. “And being the guy that he called every morning to listen to the song he had written. That was life-changing for me, right, I felt like that was the greatest honor ever.”
3. Man Got That Popeyes Credit
One of the more obscure-but-relevant tidbits that Reid shared was getting Popeyes on credit for The Deele. He had a tab open every month that he would pay at month’s end so that he could feed his guys.
“I went to the guy that ran Popeyes,” he shared. “And I was like, ‘Hey, I got to feed my band. I could pay you at the end of the month.’ My man was like, ‘All right I trust you.’ I fed my band Popeyes, end of the month came I paid him, next month I was like, ‘I got to do it again [laughs].’”
4. It was Singularly SOLAR
Signing to SOLAR Records was an end all for Reid and his band. “We didn’t want a record deal. We wanted a record deal with SOLAR [specifically].”
Reid's music teacher from high school in Cincinnati had left for Los Angeles to sign to the label and join The Soul Train Gang and Shalamar later on.
“I’m sitting there in Cincinnati like, ‘Yeah, I want to be there too,’” Reid said. “I sent my first demo to them, I got a rejection letter and I thought that was the greatest thing ever, just getting a rejection.”
The Deele were later signed by SOLAR with ‘Body Talk,’ a song that Reid had co-written, and went on tour opening for Luther Vandross and DeBarge.
5. Banking With a Boombox
Another wild tale Reid shared was about getting the money The Deele needed to pay their rent. Reid and their manager at the time, Don Taylor, had taken their unreleased song, ‘Rock Steady,’ which would go on to be done by The Whispers, with a boombox to see a guy at the bank.
“He gave us a check,” Reid said. “He gave us some money, a loan. You’d have to ask [Babyface], how much was it…It might have been ten grand, but we got some money.”
6. Where the Boys At?
In one of the later segments of the podcast, Reid, Tank and Valentine discussed this year’s Grammy Awards and its lack of black male R&B representation.
“I was watching The Grammys, it was a great show,” he began. “But there was no black men on stage. What the f*** happened to R&B and black people? Like, there was none, man, on a great show.”
The three men discussed the importance of black people and black men to each of the music genres, especially Soul, Country and R&B, and how at the moment there doesn’t seem to be men leading Soul and R&B that represent the black man.
“The best soul singer on the show might have been Benson Boone 一 he can sing his face off 一 and Teddy Swims,” Reid said. “They could sing, man. But they’re singing soul music and they don’t look like Tank. And they don’t look like Usher. And they don’t look like Chris Brown.”
7. Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis > LA and Babyface
It’s not that Reid thinks that the work that he and Face have holes. But in his opinion Minneapolis production duo Jam and Lewis create flawless music builds. Their snares indeed snare. While Reid nods to the range of Quincy Jones, who has worked with Frank Sinatra and Micheal Jackson, he still believes Jam and Lewis are the G.O.A.T.S.