Where would R&B be without Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis? They are fundamental in the DNA of the genre and the directions it has gone over the years. Janet Jackson doesn’t become one of the most dynamic pop stars of all time without their seamless interplay. New Edition doesn’t take that next step away from teenybopper R&B to fully grown savants without Jam & Lewis’s grand scale. Usher’s “U Remind Me,” Morris Day’s “Fishnet,” Human League’s “Human.” S.O.S. Band, Boyz II Men, Mary J. Blige, Chaka Khan, the resume is teflon.
Fans and the industry alike have rewarded them accordingly. There’s enough iconic #1 singles to make any popstar today blush in their inflated numbers. They’ve received countless awards, from the Grammys to the ASCAP Awards alike. However, everything comes full circle with the Ray Harris Lifetime Achievement Award. 40+ years and counting of hit-making comes to fruition through Harris opening the gate for Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis.
The iconic production duo receiving the honor at the Living Legends Foundation Awards in Atlanta on October 3rd. To celebrate, they spoke to VICE about their illustrious legacy, the anatomy of some of their biggest hits, and the state of music today. The echoing sentiment remains the same as it always has: it’s about the love first. It creates the music, it keeps their bond strong and nips any ego in the bud. The love makes Jam & Lewis living legends.
Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis sub
Let me start off with the Ray Harris Lifetime Achievement Award. Given all the awards and prestige you guys’ve earned over the years: What does it mean for you at this point in your careers? Does it still mean the same as when you first came out?
Jimmy Jam: I think it means more to us now because when we started off, I remember when we did one of our first interviews and somebody said we were the hottest producers. We said ‘We don’t wanna be the hottest producers. We wanna be warm for a long time.’ Over the 40+ years we’ve done this, that’s what we’ve strove to do. To get a lifetime achievement award is great because it’s not an ending, it’s a beginning to another chapter, so it’s very honorable.
And the fact that Ray Harris’s name is there…back when we first started, in the Solar Records days, in probably ‘82, Ray was there and one of the people who really championed his and gave us a chance to make a lot of those early records. And I also like the idea of being a living legend, because I always say the most important part is the ‘living’ part [laughs]. We’re honored, very much.
Terry Lewis: I always say that, y’know, the awards are only as good as the people you share them with. Sharing an award with Jimmy Jam is always a wonderful thing. But the most important part of it is the reward: That we get to do what we love every day, and people still find that a good thing. That part of it is wonderful to me.
Yeah, and you guys do it because you want to do it. I think a lotta people, when they make music for a long time, it begins to become obligatory after a while. But you guys do it out of firm love for it, and I think that’s where the prestige really comes in.
Jimmy Jam: We wake up every day and just thank God for the chance. We get the chance to dabble in what I like to call the divine art, art that changes the world. And we get to work with really great people; I always say ‘Work with great people and they’ll make you look good.’ The people we work with? C’mon. For me, that starts with my partner. My partner makes me look good.
Terry Lewis: You lookin’ good, Jam, you lookin’ good.
Jimmy Jam: [laughs]
A lot of people miss how beautiful the chords can be, which is something I think people miss a lot and something I gravitated towards a lot. You hear the chords on “Can You Stand The Rain?” Can you speak to the power of instrumentation and the spiritual feeling you get from it when you create?
Jimmy Jam: First of all, we started out as musicians before we could write songs. We learned our instruments really well, and Terry was the one who was instrumental in me becoming a drummer. I actually drummed for my dad when I was 12. When I met Terry back in 1973, he said ‘I don’t need a drummer, I need a keyboard player.’ I love the fact that Terry introduced me to the keyboards.
I think that music, when you play, the instrumentation is really important. The funny thing about it, when you talk about “Can You Stand The Rain,” when Terry and I first started to write together, I came from a very pop music place. I loved Chicago and Seals Across America and all those rock-sounding groups. And Terry came straight out of Parliament-Funkadelic; he was the one who turned me onto Earth Wind and Fire and Tower of Power and Rebirth and those kinds of bands. And when we first started writing songs together, Terry would write a really funky song and I’d put these pretty chords over them, or Terry would put funky bottoms on what I came with.
We eventually, finally figured out the formula of the funky bottom and pretty top, and the song that launched that had to be “Just Be Good To Me” by the S.O.S. Band. It had that funky bottom, but it has those glockenspiel bells and the melody and all that. We kinda figured that out, and all our songs have elements of that in different ways. The chords and all that are super important and they speak to you, man. They ask and answer questions, they make you happy and sad. We love that.
A lot of people, their favorite thing is the drums, but it’s always been the chords for me. I think about the chords on Anita Baker’s “Just Because” or S.O.S. Band chords. The Janet [Jackson] stuff that you guys did, like “Come Back To Me.” That stuff moves you more than even the lyrics, I think.
Jimmy Jam: It’s funny too, because “Can You Stand The Rain?” and “Come Back To Me” are very chordally similar, as is “Tender Love,” as is “Human.” There’s certain chords that just resonate, and we love to go to those chords because they make things emotional and make you feel them in a different way. We definitely love to do that.
You guys mentioned how there’d sometimes be a push and pull, given the different musical backgrounds; I think the music industry has a habit of breaking up those longstanding relationships, even family, to a certain degree. What do you think has kept you guys so friendly together amidst all that?
Terry Lewis: Well, we enjoy working with each other. That’s the number one part. And we’re separate in our togetherness. We do do projects separately, but it’s always touched and blessed by the other. It’s never you’re alone, but always knowing you have a partner to pull in and lend an ear or an idea. It makes life easier and more enjoyable.
There’s no room to be sick of each other, I guess is the big thing for a lot of people. They’re like ‘Ah, I can’t do it no more,’ and then it becomes a big falling out. What’s beautiful is that you guys’ve maintained that union for so long.
Terry Lewis: It’s not about being sick of Jam—it’s a lotta things in life to be sick of. What we create together is beautiful, so why would I want to lose that? That concept doesn’t even make sense to me.
Jimmy Jam: And one of the things we always talk about is we’ve never had an argument. The reason is that an argument is something you’re trying to win. If I win an argument with Terry, that means he lost the argument, and why would I want to be at the hand of something that Terry ever lost? A disagreement is something you’re trying to solve.
What we do is, whether it’s my way or his way, we try to figure out what the best way is. The best way is what wins, and we can usually agree on what the best way is to go about doing something. It starts with respect and love, but I don’t wanna do this without Terry. As he said, we’re individuals in our togetherness. We each get to do what we want to do, but we also get to love each other’s doing. When I see Terry doing something he love to do, even if it’s not my thing, I love it. And he’s the same with me. That’s where it comes from.
You see how contagious it feels when you see somebody doing something they love. It’s beautiful and pure and it doesn’t get sullied by this ego, is the big thing. How do you manage ego at the peaks you guys have created?
Terry Lewis: You should always know there’s someone else who can do what you do. So we’re blessed in the ability to do what we do, and we take that very seriously. I can’t even think of anything I’d want to do, or have to do, without Jam. If he doesn’t wanna do it and I wanna do it, he gives me the ability to do it just by his presence.
When you love somebody, you love what they want for themselves for them. It has nothing to do with your ego—that would be jealousy, and jealousy is a killer. I’m never jealous of whatever he wants to do and vice versa. It’s just what he wants to do, and that’s fine. I want him to be inspired because it’s easy to do this on know-how. It’s only so many counts, so many bars, so many beats, you write the lyrics and you could do it like that. But inspiration is everything, and that’s the thing that’s divine.
It’s beautiful, it’s pure, and it comes through in the records. I got a few obvious music nerd questions. I’m fascinated by [Human League’s Crash album] you guys produced because I don’t know how much they immediately ingratiated themselves in that sound immediately. I hear a record like “Human” and I’m like ‘Who else would that go for?’ Do you guys wish “Human” or any of the other Human League records you cut, that you cut them for another artist?
Jimmy Jam: No.
Terry Lewis: No.
Jimmy Jam: We always cut records specifically for the artist we’re working with. That was always our thing from the very beginning. I remember when “Just Be Good To Me” hit really big, and of course the record companies would come to us and be like ‘Oh, give me one of those!’ We’ll give you something different. Cheryl Lynn’s “Encore” was one of the next ones we did, and we switched up the drum machines and the chords and everything. “Just Be Good To Me” sounded good on its own, “Encore” sounded good on its own, and moving forward, it was the same thing: “Didn’t Mean to Turn You On” with Cherrelle, “(What Can I Say) To Make You Love Me?” by Alexander O’Neal. We try to give different sounds to everybody.
It’s like a tailor—you can choose your material, whether you want it single-breasted or double-breasted, and then that suit fits you. The thing the suits have in common is the stitching, the stitching is all Jam & Lewis. You can say ‘Oh, I can tell that’s a Jam & Lewis suit’, but it fits you perfectly.
“Human,” from the title of the song to the lyrics, was made for that song. The big thing on “Human” is that sometimes, out of adversity, good things come. The girls in the group didn’t like Lisa Keefe as the background singer. We actually called A&M Records and said we’re taking it back so we can finish it the way we want to. In that, Terry came up with the spoken part, “While we were apart, I was human, too,” which really completed the song. Maybe we never would’ve thought to do that if everything went smooth, but the fact that there was some adversity, Terry had to put on his problem-solving hat and figure out how to put the girls on this song and say this thing. A lot of times, that’s the magic.
With a little bit of pushback, it all starts to come together. You can’t always come to complete agreement, there has to be a bit a skepticism.
Jimmy Jam: I’ll tell you, with Human League, it was interesting. So John McClane—he was the person at A&M Records who connected us with Janet. He said Human League had sent him a demo and he asked ‘What are you trying to do with these songs?’ and they said ‘Oh, we’re tryna do a Jam & Lewis thing,’ to which he replied ‘Why don’t we just get Jam & Lewis to do the whole album?’ So that’s how that came about. It was all intention.
They were trying to recreate the funk?
Jimmy Jam: They were, but it’s great. We love it. Since we’re on nerdism, another thing: The beat on “Human” with the big drums? That was something we’d done for an S.O.S. Band record, but we did it with 808 sounds. We did it on the LinnDrum, and if you take that LinnDrum beat and put it in an 808, it goes [boops]. We had the wrong chips in there, so when I turned the drum machine on, it went [explosion noises], and Terry was like ‘Oh, what’s that?,’ and I was like ‘It’s the wrong sounds,’ but he said ‘Nah, that’s good.’ You also need somebody to tell you it’s good.
There’s bombast amidst the chords. I think if you don’t add that explosive nature, it can be a bit too sweet. You guys’ instincts are super crazy. How on the pulse are you guys with modern R&B? how do you feel knowing that people are kinda cold on it today?
Jimmy Jam: I love modern R&B. I love the evolution of music, it’s gotta continue moving forward. We’ve worked with H.E.R. and Kehlani. I love the music moving forward, and that’s not to say I don’t love the music of the past. But I think music has such a bright future, and I think particularly when you talk about an artist like H.E.R., who is not only a singer-songwriter who plays the drums and the bass and guitar and keyboards, and I think young women in particular seeing her perform, that inspires them to do that. I think R&B’s on a great path because if those are the women and creators she’s impacting and inspiring, imagine how beautiful music is gonna be six or seven years from now when those little girls learn those guitar parts.
I’m excited about it, man. I love music, but I don’t compare it to what it was back in the day. There’s a lotta people now I love. Olivia Dean has a record coming out today, as a matter of fact. She’s amazing. There’s a lotta great music out there.
Terry Lewis: I think what’s lost in it all is people’s appreciation. When you give people too much, they don’t cherish it like they should. They don’t cherish the art. Case in point, nobody care about water until they can’t drink or they can’t take a bath. Nobody cares about air until they can’t breathe. Music is kinda like that thing where it’s like ‘Oh, that’s just music,” and it’s become this thing that you vacuum to, where you don’t pick and choose.
One thing about people is they don’t know what they like, they like what they know. They’ll stay on the same tangent forever if you don’t put something in front of them that makes them uncomfortable and forces them to change. We have to have some reverence for people who create this music, man. It’s an art, it’s supposed to be different and move you different and make you invest. You used to have to invest, but now you just pay $9.99 and you get every song that ever existed. You have every flavor lollipop and you get to lick ‘em all, so you don’t even have a taste for what the really good ones are.
Exactly. You don’t appreciate it and you take it for granted.
Terry Lewis: I think that’s more the problem than the music itself. That’s also a mainstay in the artists that are creating because they’re a part of that ecosystem as well. So when we start to appreciate music for what it is and how it’s created, you’re gonna have another level of music that gets created because you’re gonna invest more.
The post ‘We Wake Up Every Day and Just Thank God for The Chance’: Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis Open Up About Their Legacy, Modern R&B, & the Ray Harris Lifetime Achievement Award appeared first on VICE.
