Shawn Setaro
[The legendary rap duo Nice & Smooth recently sat down with hip-hop personality and SOHH correspondent Shawn Setaro on his popular “The Cipher” podcast. Listen to the full interview and check out five gems they dropped during the Q&A.]
Greg Nice on Kurtis Mantronix:
“He’s amazing. He’s my inspiration to create music with machines. I learned a lot from being around him. He’s exceptional. He did it without a blueprint. A lot of the machine companies, their shit sucked. A lot of the sounds that’s in these programs today come from shit that he created.”
Smooth B on his friend and collaborator Bobby Brown becoming a megastar:
“It was so rewarding, and it was so inspirational. I knew where he wanted to go, and what he told me what he was trying to do, and I’m a part of the process, I was like, ‘I believe in you.’ Because I know what it’s like when someone doesn’t believe in you. And I know when it seems like you’re talking Martian to people. I always wanted to fuse r&b and hip-hop. That’s how we grew up. What the industry was trying to do at the time was separate the two. I said, I’m going to give this dude a formula. If he can execute it, this is going to be crazy. So I saw the vision.”
Smooth B on the group’s style:
“The grand formula is just flowing. All we had to do is put our ideas together, and what emerged is what you end up hearing. We’re listening and sharing. We’re bouncing off each other, and that’s what makes it special.”
Smooth B on introducing a young Busta Rhymes to Bobby Brown:
“We took him to Bobby’s house in Atlanta. He was tripping! He just went crazy. It was his first time up in a crazy mansion, and at the same time it’s Bobby. He literally starts screaming. Busta had less of a filter back then. He was young and hype, and he just let your ass know that he was having a good time.”
Smooth B on the infamous 1991 Puff Daddy basketball game at CCNY:
“We lost friends. We left to go to the basketball game with friends and didn’t leave with them. Three of our friends died. We almost died. We were in the stairwell. Sh*t was crazy. I lost a friend from the fourth grade.”
