5 MAGAZINE FEATURES

Terisa Griffin + Terry Hunter Interview
The Singer, The Producer and the Story of Wonderful

by Terry Matthew | Published October 2007 | Features Archives

FOR ALL OF THE TALK of unity, support and respect, it's rare to find a truly enduring partnership between a producer and a singer. Or at least a relationship as strong as that forged by two tremendous Chicago talents from two different worlds: producer and DJ Terry Hunter and a singer/songwriter most commonly known for her R&B work, Terisa Griffin.

Both are accomplished in their own fields. Terry is currently working on another joint with Kenny Dope under their Mass Destruction moniker and has as many credits to his name as just about anyone working in House Music today. Terisa on the other hand is considered to be one of the rising stars of R&B, with a gorgeous voice and style that has made her legions of fans worldwide.

Terisa and Terry originally came together on a remix of her song "Sunshine" (Dope Wax, 2006). In most cases, the relationship would end there: either a producer-for-hire or a singer-for-hire, with both hoping to make a great record and then move on to the next. But this relationship is of a more enduring kind. Despite having separate bodies of work, Terry and Terisa are each other's biggest fans. There's no need for me to hype up either of them: Terisa, in the past, has put Terry's name alongside music giants Quincy Jones and Prince on her "dream team" list of favorite producers, and to Terry, Terisa is "the Jay-Z of R&B" and a model for aspiring singers to look up to.

My original intention for this interview was to get the word out on Terisa who, in addition to her R&B recordings, also has to be considered now as one of the rising star vocalists in House Music. But during an interview over lunch with the producer and the singer, a different picture came to mind. Terry's scorching remixes of her single "Wonderful" was the hit of this year's Winter Music Conference and has since become one of the best-selling House Music singles of 2007. Both give all of the credit to the other for the song's success. While Terry is nominated for October's TRUTH Award as Hottest Producer, I get the impression that he's more excited that Terisa is nominated for both Hottest Neo-Soul Artist and (alongside Common and R. Kelly) Album of the Year for My Naked Soul.

So while introducing the House Music scene to the performer and writer behind the uplifting voice that's dominating the dancefloor, my interview over lunch with both Terisa and Terry offers a unique glimpse into one of the extraordinary partnerships in House Music today. I met them downtown, after they took care of some business in connection with a series of gigs they've booked to perform together in Africa.

 

 

5 MAGAZINE: So you're about to leave on tour to Africa together. Have either of you ever been there before?

TERRY HUNTER: No, and I'm so excited. This is going to be kind of a spiritual journey for me.

TERISA GRIFFIN: Neither of us have ever been there. How many people are able to say that they got to share their music with the people of Africa, in person? Of course it's a dream come true. It's also a bit nerve-wracking, I won't lie. I don't care to fly, but I'll holler on the plane a few times and be okay. But to do what I love to do, I'll get on the plane and tough it out.

5 MAGAZINE: How did you two meet?

TERISA GRIFFIN: We met when I asked Terry to remix my single "Sunshine". It was a really hot remix and after that we decided to remix "Wonderful". I was really excited about working with him. We first met last year.

5 MAGAZINE: It sounds as if you've known each other for a lot longer than that.

TERISA GRIFFIN: I think that sometimes you meet people and you click immediately. That's pretty much what happened with us.

5 MAGAZINE: We're in an era when the traditional charts really don't have much relevance. But "Wonderful" was charting everywhere. It was the #1 download on traxsource.com for how long? Three weeks? Is it still up there?

TERRY HUNTER: It finally fell from #1. If it isn't a record for how long it was the #1 download, it's up there. I think that's actually held by a Strictly Rhythm release, but that was all of the downloads from a full album - this was just a single. I'd get phone calls from friends, producers and DJs, and they'd say, "Can you please let this record go so we can get up there?" [laughs]

5 MAGAZINE: Everyone from neo-soul, Deep House, to straight R&B afficionados seems to love this song. Why do you think that is?

TERISA GRIFFIN: I think every woman is looking for their "Mr. Wonderful". Somehow, though, people thought it was a religious song. My mom said to me, "Are you looking for Jesus?" She's a preacher's wife, so of course she's like, "Oh, you finally did a gospel song!"

In all actuality, I'm like all other women looking for the perfect guy, and wrote about my dream guy. And people relate to it across the board, whether it be spiritually or romantically. It's happy - it's not something that's downgrading a guy, which is cool these days. The guy's not a jerk. It's not "pay my bills" or "ring the bell", you know? It's definitely a dream thing for women, and then guys get to feel good in the process. It's "wonderful" as opposed to all that. So maybe people were looking for something positive instead of a lot of negativity.

5 MAGAZINE: So if your mother's a preacher's wife, that'd make you a preacher's daughter! Where were you born?

TERISA GRIFFIN: Monroe, Louisiana. I'm a Louisiana girl. I grew up non-denominational but believing in God. Of course we have voodoo down there too. It's funny, but when I first came to Chicago, a lot of guys asked me, "So you do voodoo?" like I have dolls in my purse. And I'm like, I'm not that desperate!

I moved to Chicago about eleven years ago. I'm really grateful for meeting Terry, as my initial meetings with producers here were probably not the greatest. When you come from Louisiana, you can be a little naïve. People can choose to be good or they can choose to be bad. You can choose to do the same thing to somebody else that was done to you, or you can choose to do something totally different. And while I ran into some horrible people, I also ran into some nice folks.

I didn't know much about the music business. Like a lot of people, you're hoping that you'll run into that one person who will "find" you. Eventually, I just found myself. I knew that I could write, but of course you want to pair up with somebody. Unfortunately, people tend to believe that they "own" you in this business. That's scary. That's maybe why the music business is changing in such a drastic manner. To work for so many years and only be able to pay your bills by performing is a horrible thing.

5 MAGAZINE: "My Naked Soul" is both the title of the album and the name of your record label that you released it on. What does it mean?

TERISA GRIFFIN: Because I'm giving everything I have from my heart and my soul. As I say at the beginning of my album, I'm totally naked. I didn't hold back anything as far as money, heart or soul on this project because if I didn't believe in myself, how could I expect anyone to invest or believe in me? That's what the company is about as well as the album.

As far as forming my own label, I don't think a lot of musicians are looking for a deal anymore because they've found out that they have to trade out their publishing to get one. You have a successful artist like Prince who will write "SLAVE" on the side of his face, irritated by the fact that he could sell millions of albums but not own his own songs or get the money he should be getting.

On the other hand, I've found though that even outside of the record labels, it can be the same thing. I'm not against technology, but I've found that musicians often don't get the chance to play together anymore. I hate what it's done in that aspect. Children don't get to be sociable musically anymore, and that's a horrible thing. If they sample a song, they think they've created something. They don't have what I had when I was growing up, because music isn't in the schools. If anything, we should be putting it in so they can learn to create without sampling and music can grow in a bigger way. The shame of it is that those older musicians who made those great songs will never see the proceeds. Oftentimes, that's the life of a musician so we have to learn to live in the moment.

5 MAGAZINE: Indie producer Steve Albini once wrote an essay called "Some of Your Friends Are Already This Fucked" in which he illustrated with hard figures that with all of the record company shenanigans, a moderately successful major label artist would make more working at a 7-11 than in the music industry.

TERISA GRIFFIN: Yes, but in exchange for happiness? That's the other part of it - to live doing what you love. And if you're smart enough, you'll figure out how to do it and get paid. Tons of musicians decided, "There's the Internet, and I can go out on the road by myself." Trust me - I've lost a ton of money getting on the road by myself. But the experience of living with my musicians on the road I wouldn't trade for anything.

5 MAGAZINE: I was looking at your itinerary - you're a real working musician! You're everywhere - from the Crown Auditorium to the DuSable Museum, and that's just locally.

TERISA GRIFFIN: That's because you have to work in every genre. It's hard if you're only going to work as, say, a blues artist. I just did a gig with a 54 piece orchestra out at Millennium Park. Some people will say, "Well, she's not a jazz artist!" No, I'm not a jazz artist - I'm just an artist. It means I get to take a song that I wrote as an R&B song and hook up with a great producer like Terry and let him do what he does.

This way, I'm able to step back, do House Music with Terry, and then go play with an orchestra in Millennium Park and be a jazz artist. Artists box themselves in by limiting themselves in what they want to do.

5 MAGAZINE: You've got a big fanbase, but it's fragmented. There are people who only know you as a neo-soul artist, there's our people who know you in the clubs, and I'm sure a lot of people in Millennium Park were there for your name as a jazz artist, too. Which is the real side of Terisa Griffin?

TERISA GRIFFIN: That's all the real side of me. If you come to a show of mine when I'm not specifically collaborating with a certain artist, you're going to get everything. You're going to walk in and hear a Dionne Warwick song from 1979, because that's what I'm feeling at the moment. Then you'll get some neo-soul, some Motown, some Ella Fitzgerald, an upbeat remix.

Sometimes you'll get complaints. I had a lady walk up to me in the cleaners of all places and say, "I bought one of your CDs and it was all remixes. I was pissed off because I expected what I heard when I came to your show." I said, "Do you want your money back? Hold on, let's settle this now. How much did you pay for the CD?" Remember I'm in the cleaners! I pass her the money. She says, "I want to talk to you about this." I said, "Uh-uh, you don't get to talk to me about this."

I'm not going to put up with anyone that wants to put me in a box. I wouldn't want that type of person at the next show because your mind is too closed - you're not my audience. You have to allow artists to grow, and I think really, in the African-American community, we tend not to allow our artists to grow. We'll abandon you and go to the next thing, rather than sticking with you as an artist. We need to work on that. It might be across the board, but we definitely need to work that out.

TERRY HUNTER: Let me jump in because this is a good subject, I think, for the readers of 5 Magazine. Take it from me - coming up on the southside of Chicago, I've been a House Music DJ my whole life. The black community? It's stuck with classics. You create anything new today and it'll run them off the floor. We need to educate people. House Music? You can't just be into one kind of House Music! When I play at a club on the southside, they expect me to hit disco all night. The minute I play a new record, they're not going to have it.

This is a Chicago thing. You go to New York and they listen to everything. You go to LA, and Marques Wyatt has Deep - one of the craziest clubs in the world. Black, white, Chinese, Spanish people in the crowd, and they'll play classics, new stuff, stuff people have never heard before. For Chicago people, though, we're in a rut. We need to be more open-minded and get off that rocker.

I'm a producer. People say, "I know you for your House stuff." I'm in the process of doing an album with Kenny Dope, but I'm also working on a Terry Hunter album. People don't know that I came up listening to soul and hip-hop. House Music is where I come from, but I don't listen to House Music all day, every day. I'm listening to hip-hop, I'm listening to old school stuff - everything. You have a lot of people that don't know I made a hit in R&B, that I did songs with Syleena Johnson, that I did stuff with Kanye West. They're so close-minded and just want to know what Terry Hunter's doing on the House side.

5 MAGAZINE: Like Duke Ellington said: "If it sounds good, then it is good."

TERRY HUNTER: I had a conversation like this with Jazzy Jeff, and he said, "Understand this: there's two kinds of music. There's good music, and there's bad music." Like Terisa said - you ain't gonna box me in. I chose to play House just as a DJ because I feel I can express myself better musically through House than anything else. Production-wise, I'm all over the place. After this Mass Destruction album that me and Kenny Dope are doing, I'm coming with a Terry Hunter album. The name of that album's going to be Buffet Style. You're going to have some House, some hip-hop, some R&B, some funk, some ballads. I'm not going to give you the same BPMs for four hours, because that's not me.

TERISA GRIFFIN: Terry did a lot of remixes for "Wonderful". That was really smart of him not to just do a soulful remix. They were all so different.

TERRY HUNTER: People have to understand this: Terisa is the Jay-Z of R&B. She gave me how many performances? Five, six? I've never worked with an artist like this before. That's why I did all of those versions - each one of her performances were different. It brought something out of me, and I've never gotten that from an artist.

This is the truth: if you're a singer, listen to Terisa. I can't see her singing any kind of music that I wouldn't like. She has the craziest voice, so how could she make something bad? It may not be your cup of tea but it'll still be good. She is a true, complete artist.

And more than that, she's a performer. She had never performed House before. She went up on stage at the Winter Music Conference '07 and shut everybody down. Barbara Tucker walked up and put a $100 bill in her shirt, up on stage, out of respect. I knew it was going to happen. I'm sitting there, spinning, and just watching it. Barbara's like my sister - we've been friends forever. She's also a performer, a true artist. Every party she does, she turns 'em out. I don't understand why people haven't learned from watching Barbara. You get so many singers who go up on stage and just stand there and sing, no showmanship, no nothing.

Terisa on the other hand went up there and the crowd was like, "Lord, have mercy! Who is she? Where did she come from? Where did you find her?" And you know what? That's just how I felt recording. She walked up to the microphone, had nothing written down, and I didn't tell her to do anything. I just sat back afterward and thought, God, we work good together!

TERISA GRIFFIN: Well, when you get to work with a producer who can deal with your... temperament... [At this point, both Terry and Terisa break out laughing.]

5 MAGAZINE: 5: Are you saying you're a bit of a diva?

TERISA GRIFFIN: No, I know what I hear in my head, and I want them to let me try it first, rather than tell me "sing it this way". Let me try my ideas first. Don't get me wrong - I'm open for anything, but let me try it first.

I took chamber music in college, so I wanted a choir effect. I started to sing the part, and I wanted it to sound like a big choir. I said to Terry, "Give me another track!" Okay. "Give me another track!" Another? It was really great because he didn't smother me - he trusted that I knew what I was doing.

A lot of producers don't trust the singer. You have to trust my soul and my ear because it's my voice. If it doesn't work - cool, I'll go back and try what you want. But at least trust me as a musician because I'm trusting you with the most important thing that I have: my voice.

5 MAGAZINE: I take it you also have to tend to all of the label business. Doesn't that get difficult since you have so much invested artistically?

TERISA GRIFFIN: Oh yeah, it can get horrible. I've had a bout with radio. At first, I was nervous about radio supporting My Naked Soul because it doesn't fit the formula of R&B as it is right now. It's more R&B than neo-soul. But neo-soul people gravitated to it, and real R&B people were like, "This is what we've been waiting on."

In that sense, it was great. But there were other radio stations that I thought would support me but did not. There's one person I interviewed with and was told "I'll give it a listen..." - and then stuck it on somebody else and wouldn't support it.

But you've got to become one with it, understand that this is a business, and don't take it personal. I produce events, so when radio wasn't playing it immediately, I said to myself, Okay, I'll go cry about it for about 15 minutes, but then I've got to get up because my musicians have to work. I've got to get enough money to keep this person out there working this record. So let me do a one-woman show and make enough money to keep my people out there working.

But it can get to you, of course. You have to become numb to it and not take it personally. People will become discouraged but your job is to keep them excited.

5 MAGAZINE: Will you be working together again?

TERISA GRIFFIN: Oh yeah.

TERRY HUNTER: Oh, hell yeah.

5 MAGAZINE: Will Terisa appear on your Terry Hunter record?

TERRY HUNTER: You know it. I'm a permanent fixture now. She can't get rid of me!

 

Check out Terisa Griffin and buy her CD at terisagriffin.com. For more from Terry Hunter, check out this month's DJ Series. Look out for Terry and Kenny Dope's "Mass Destruction" album and his LP coming soon; visit myspace.com/terryhunter.

 

 

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