Mike - Just to start it off right now, this is Home Cooking Studio, I’m Mike McArthur. It’s a joint venture between Mamas Boys Mgmt., & Karma Productions. Mamas Boys Mgmt. is Jerome Hipps and Mike McArthur. Karma Productions is Carvin Haggins and Ivan Barias. And Home Cooking Production is the production house that we created jointly. And in that company we have eight producers and song writers signed to that company. We’ll give out those names as we get into it….
J Kibble - How long have you guys been together and how did it all start?
Ivan – Actually, Me and Carvin met at A Touch of Jazz “Philly School of Hard Knocks” like we like to say… “Big Ups to Jazzy Jeff”… Most definitely, with out him a lot of the Philly Movement currently as we know it wouldn’t be what it is right now. So I met Carvin in 95’… We were both producers at A Touch of Jazz back when no one was checking for Philly at all... We were down there practicing on blank trax and regular people coming thru trying to demo records for us. That’s where we came together as a production duo for Musiq Soulchild’s first album… That album is what kinda set the tone for the Karma sound as we know it today. We came together trading ideas and that’s what made people check for us as a duo, while we were still down there at A Touch of Jazz…
J Hipps – We found Musiq in a record store on 69th Street. I used to co. manage Coconuts Record Store on 69th Street… He would walk up and down 69th Street… He would come in and hang out with my roommate and he would come over to the house and always sing with a group of cats…. It would always be like a pack of about 6 cats always walking up and down 69th Street going to movie theaters and then coming over to the store to talk about music. He was one of those six…and so Mike was working over at Poly – Gram (PGD) at the time and we were doing parties, functions and special events together while Carvin & Ivan where at A Touch of Jazz together. We finally decided to work with Musiq and put him out there… So we took him down to Carvin, Carvin was writing with Ayinke Aaries and he needed background vocals on a song so we brought Musiq down there for Carvin. From that day forward, Carvin said “Yo man, lets do this together and let me work with him and we put them together and from that day on, night after night after night, for about a year they had been working on “Ijustwannasing” basically…
Ivan – I mentioned Musiq, specifically, that was the project that kinda brought all of us together…
J Hipp - Yeah that was our first introduction to the world…
J Kibble – So from a producers point of view, what instruments or machines were you working on to produce your sound?
Ivan – The most basic equipment in the world, man… It was something that everybody could have had… If they were looking for it… We had the MPC 3000, ASR 10, Roland JV 1080 & Esonic MRI and those 4 pieces set the world on fire…
Carvin - Also we were using Q base as sequencing program and Roland 1680 to fly vocals and DA88’s to record
Mike – we sure did… We did yeah I forgot all about that… lol….
J Kibble – Those pieces are like dinosaurs today, right……
Carvin – Sure enough, but we always used the UAD7 microphone…
Ivan – Yeah, we always had the UAD7 microphone… and the Avalon…
Carvin – Na we didn’t have the Avalon…
Ivan – Yes we did…
Carvin - we had the Green…..
Ivan – Oh yeah a little later we had the…
J Hipp - that had that little light …
Carvin – What’s the, what’s the???
Ivan - The Focus Right Green…
Carvin – Yeah, The Focus Right Green, as the pre amp….
J Hipp – Yeah I kept saying, humm that’s the one to uuuuse…..
(GROUP) LOL……………….
J Hipp - and the Yamaha O2R…
J Kibble – Where did music start for you? When did it touch you and when did it start your inspiration for what you’re doing today?
Carvin – PAUSE, PAUSE, PAUSE, PAUSE, PAUSE….. LOL…….
Carvin – Actually, when I was a kid I used to wake up in the morning when I was going to school when I was about eight years old… I used to hear “Wake up Everybody” by Kenny Gamble, Aretha Franklin, umm, “Till you come back to me”, and then another one… it was a Cameo record, and every morning these records would come on in sequence every morning so like that music it was what got me going every morning as a kid… And from that my mom would do Saturday morning clean up, she would play every soul record known to man from “Parliament to Stevie to Marvin, to you know the O Jays, what ever was there she had it, you know… And that was like the beginning of me in music and then after that I got involved in Hip Hop, I was an Emcee for a while… From that I went into engineering, doing drops for Power 99 & Q102 back in the day for Stanley T and those cats… And then through that I met Jazzy Jeff I worked with him putting his team together… A Touch of Jazz Crew, initially it was twelve of us but from there here I am… I don’t play any instruments what so ever… I don’t sing none of that… I write, engineer…
Mike – He’s being modest… He wrote Love…
J Hipp – That’s his instrument right there…
J Kibble – The sharpie right…
(GROUP) Lol…………
Ivan – The funny thing is he don’t even write… I’ve never even seen him write down a lyric… And a lot of the artist we work with he tries to teach them how to like write in there heads… get the thoughts out… and as soon as they come up with it, they go into the booth and they sing so they don’t forget… they write it down later on…
Carvin – Its most just to get the true emotions and true conversation instead of trying to make it grammatically correct and all of the things you would take out that would basically water down the whole feeling of the song, I’d rather just keep doing it in my head and make it a consistant conversation and then cut it and leave it that way.
J Kibble – What’s your favorite record that hit the charts?
Carvin – Aww man, it’s a lot of them. Don’t Change, Love, Half Crazy, Again,
Ivan – Mine would be “Just Friends” cuz it’s really what put this whole movement on the map… It had everybody who still didn’t really know who we were… Were like did you hear this record? Did you hear the record? Who is this?
Ivan – Man its kinda hard for me, you know Parliament Funk didn’t play at my prom like Carvin’s… Lol…
Carvin – That’s alright Otis Redding played at his…
Ivan – Actually, I’m Dominican, so the first sounds I heard were my aunts and uncles playing Latin music. But I was born in Dominican Republic when I was like 7,8 years old. Then I started listening to Hip Hop like crazy… If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would be doing this, I would have thought you were crazy… Cuz I was so into Hip Hop, I was an aspiring Emcee, I started producing out of necessity. Everything I did was straight rap, rap, rap. It wasn’t until I came to Philly in 95’ and through a mutual friend Darrin Henson, he’s a producer, we came together to A Touch of Jazz, he was friend with Jeff for many years. And when I came I saw those guys playing live instruments, they had a jam session at the time… That’s something Jeff would always do, he’d have a jam session every Friday… So all the musicians from Philly would come in and I would come in and just be blown by that… And every time I would go home I would try to practice hack my way over the keyboard. The Touch of Jazz experience is what made me listen to music a whole lot closer. I had a lot of records from sampling my tracks. I would listen to them and say that kinda sounds like what they were doing at A Touch of Jazz… Eventually I did R&B records. I always thought I was gonna just do rap beats and that was how I was gonna make my name. When Carvin came to me he said I have this kid he’s a singer he’s almost kinda like a rapper, and I heard him, I said I wanted to be apart of this project. I started giving him tracks, they were fronting on all of them, you know they was hating. Every last track I played the hated. But umm… Even after we did that, I still wasn’t quite sure if I was gonna be an R&B producer or not… I really wasn’t giving it a thought, until I met these guys… And they started managing us and we started working with our other group Aries… We went to LA for a while for one summer working with artist from Death Row and when we came back that’s when I was like were definitely gonna do this thing. It’s been a crazy ride… I can’t really pin point when the actual change came about.
Mike – Before Mamas Boys, I’m from the Hip Hop era, which is one fact that inspired me to get into music. I did a little break dancing, did a little rapping. I’m from Baltimore originally. Then after school at the University of MD, I pretty much realized being an artist wasn’t for me. That might not be my calling. So I started working for Poly – Gram Distribution in 95’… I started out as a college rep and then a marketing rep in the Philadelphia Area. Then I went on to be a sales rep and regional rep for Def Jam from NY to VA and at one point even into some parts of the Carolinas. Ran into Jerome during that period, and out side of my normal day to day job we started doing parties, we started the management company we had artist. In 97’ we were called Crossroads…
J Hipp - Then we turned it into Good Times… Both names had significant meanings… After realizing that wasn’t all we were about so we had to find something deeper that fit a little better. You know, when you say you’re a mamas boy some look at that like your soft. I love my mother, if you’re someone that doesn’t have a mother, I can understand you saying your not a mothers boy. If you have a mother that’s living and you don’t love her that’s on you… We love our mothers so we are Mamas Boys… So we said our mothers nurtured us in the proper way that their supposed to so that’s what we will do to the clients that we work with, nurture their careers and build and grow with them like our parents.
J Hipp – I’m a bean bag baby… I grew up in an era where my father listened to music in the basement with bean bags chairs set up all over the place. And I would just sit in the chair while he played his music. You know you put the center piece in the wax and see it turn in the 45. I grew up in that era where soul music was ruling the charts. Also where music didn’t have any genres… You know you listen to the radio and you hear Phil Collins, Sting one moment and then the next you hear Stevie Wonder and then Earth, Wind and Fire… So it wasn’t like the way radio stations are broken down into music now… But then Hip Hop came into play and you had the Sugar Hill Gang, Kurtis Blow… So I grew up in the beginning of Hip Hop but in a good era of soul music and gospel… I love music so I grew up loving music and went off to college and did college radio for WLVR 91.3 at Lehigh University… And our station had a 45 mile radius signal so we had a nice little audience. And Hip Hop wasn’t on main stream radio, so college radio was the medium where people basically came to break their artist. You couldn’t break your artist no where else except for college radio. The main stream radio stations probably had a show but it wasn’t all the time like every day all day… They utilized college radio for that. So we were very valuable at that time. So I got to meet the guys at Def Jam and Cold Chillin’, Bobbito etc… Those cats where doing college radio for their respective labels… So I got really into the music during that time… And I started doing college shows, students activity counsel would bring in groups to perform on campus with our budgets that we had for the college. And then I developed a love for it and moved to Philly and worked in a record store and met Mike ended up working at Poly – Gram for two and a half years, BMG for two and a half years marketing and sales… While we were doing that we where also grooming our own artist and the rest is history.
J Kibble – In the next five years where do you want to take the music industry?
Mike – Right now our main mission is just to make good music. We want to make the best music we possibly can. Cutting edge, umm, different, were constantly trying to push the envelope. And like I said we have the producers and song writers signed to Home Cooking so we’ve been grooming them collectively for like the past three to four years.
J Kibble - For the aspiring writers and producers, what advise can you give them?
Carvin – Determination is more valuable than talent. So be more determined to make more happen. And when doing this you have to keep god first. Cause all of this wouldn’t be happening if we didn’t have faith.
Ivan – The biggest misconception in this business is everybody is trying to get in it to make money. And they think as soon as you get in it you hit it big your, gonna make money and gonna be paid and be rich like the people on TV. But they don’t realize that what we have here is many years in the making. Even before I met these guys I was doing this since like 91’… Here it is 2006 and we’ve made a minor mark were still not where we would like to be and where we would like to take this company. Only thing I can say is our love for the music is what has propelled us to this level. We haven’t said, yo lets cash out lets just come in with a strong year and leave. So people that’s trying to get in the game, you have to have a love first, out of love you will overcome a whole lot of obstacles that this game gives you.
Mike – I would say perseverance… Not giving up… In any way shape or form. Because before a door opens it’s going to a lot of doors that get closed. Even these big names that they see like Russell Simmons to P Diddy, their consistently getting doors on the next level closed and because their persistent they keep opening up another one. So if you’re an up and coming singer, don’t expect to be Usher tomorrow.
J Hipp - Do your homework on it… You’re gonna make mistakes so no question is a dumb question. Know what you’re getting into. Don’t be afraid to tell people what it is you want to do. Because you never know who can help you. You can’t do everything by yourself. If I didn’t tell Mike what I was doing or didn’t ask him we wouldn’t be partners today. If Ivan and Carvin didn’t tell people what they wanted to do they wouldn’t be producers today. There is no such thing as overnight success…
The D.A.S.H Program (Destined to Achieve Successful Heights) is a program we do for the kids to learn the music and sports business and the different positions in it… “What really defines a person during their time here on this earth is what happened between those days…” For more info contact ???
(see the discography)