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Teddy Riley, co-producer, “MTV News” (July 31, 2009) (archived)
Most of us have memories of Michael Jackson being an electrifying performer. Teddy Riley remembers him as an amazing dad.
Riley became close to Jackson while producing tracks for his Dangerous and HIStory albums. That bond grew stronger while working on songs for 2001's Invincible, when Michael introduced him to his kids for the first time.
"I felt so nervous meeting his children," Riley recalled. "He brought them in and he said, 'I want you to meet Paris and I want you to meet Prince.' And they walk in, playful. And then he was like, 'This is Theodore'. He didn't say Teddy. They were like, 'Hi, Theodore!' And it was just the greatest feeling."
What struck Riley immediately was how much Michael loved his kids and how involved he was in their lives.
"He read them a book every day. When we were in Virginia during the Invincible [sessions], there was not one day missed reading the children something. So that showed me right there that he was an incredible father."
Parenting was a major topic of conversation between Jackson and Riley, who has a family of his own — especially when it came to methods of punishment. This was a sensitive issue for Jackson because of the physical abuse he said he suffered as a child from his father, Joe Jackson.
"He was like, 'I would never have them go through the same things ever in their lives,' " Riley said. "He was like, 'I think the best scolding for children was a time-out.' The best scolding for children was, 'Let's read a book.' "
Although Teddy respected Michael's hands-on approach with his kids, he did think he was kind of a pushover when it came to discipline.
"I have to say this, but his time-outs were not as bad as, you know, our time-outs," he laughed. "They don't go up against a wall and look at the wall for an hour or 10 minutes. He sent them to the bunks with no TV. For me, that's a good time-out. But the kids, they knew what it was."
TheBoombox interview (May 5, 2017)
TheBoombox: You mentioned Michael Jackson… in a Billboard interview, you said that when you were around him it felt like going to college because you were learning so much. What was the most important lesson you learned from Michael Jackson?
Teddy Riley: Well the most important thing that I have learned is how to write to piano more-or-less than a drum machine and synthesizers and all of that stuff. So the traditional way of writing is you get to a piano or you get a band in the room and you just come up with ideas and you tell the guitar player or the bass player to play this, let’s go this way or the singer will sing a few lines and the guitar player or the keyboard player would come up with something that will accompany the lines and the idea and that’s the traditional way of writing. Most times, people, have it already done and they start writing to it. That’s not traditional, it’s not organic. It’s still writing but it’s not as organic as how the traditional folks did it back in the day with just a piano or just writing it to frets and I’ve seen and I’ve witnessed all of that. I’ve witnessed having a session with forty to sixty to a hundred piece orchestra.
I’ve been there when they did “Heal The World,” and they had the whole full orchestra and when I saw that I said man, “I want that too Michael. Which song can we do that for?” And we wound up doing that for the song that we did called “Someone Put Your Hand Out.” And it was just amazing having the composer, Jeremy Lubbock, just write the string parts and the whole orchestra parts for that song. We also did it again on the Invincible album, song “Don’t Let Go Of My Hands” and there’s another one, “Don’t Walk Away.” These songs, you know, that’s college, working with an orchestra. You can’t get no better, you can’t get more organic than that.
Billboard interview (November 23, 2016)
[“Remember The Time”] took new jack swing and my style of music to the next level. After Michael, my whole career just got turned up. Michael gave me a new life and a new perspective on my career. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be the performer that I am today. Learning from him was like going to college. His lessons about staying power, learning how to cope and sustain with the direction of the business as it changes … it all rubbed off on me.
“Red Bull Music Academy Festival New York 2017” Interview (May 5, 2017) (archived)
Teddy Riley: Getting with Michael--I'm sorry for going back, but getting with him--he kind of just showed me how to turn music up, and really hurt--he'd always say, "I want to hurt 'em", and he always would go--and me and Bruce Swedien would sit in the room, he's like, "Okay Teddy, if you can turn up the snare, when you turn up the snare, I just want you to really turn it up. And the most important thing is the backgrounds, it's got to be loud. Because that's what I want people to remember." So I'm playing the music, and he is just going, "Hurt me! Hurt me!" [laughs] It's like, "I don't know what that means, but I'm gonna turn this shit up." He's like, "I just want to hear like it's going to sound in the club and wherever--if I'm playing in a concert, it's going to be your music, so it's gotta be knocking. It's gotta hurt them. We gotta hurt the people, shock the world." And I'm just so for that. After him, it was just like, stuff had to be "bam" or you got to hear the essence of the sound...
Red Bull Music Academy Festival: What did you learn from Michael Jackson?
...What I learned from Michael was a lot of things that I know now that I can share with other singers that I work with. There are things that he taught me, as far as doing backgrounds, even better than how I was doing it, because I was doing it the mom-and-pop way. We live in the hood, so we're gonna do it the best way we know how. Well, he actually showed me the format, and how he does all of his vocals, even without having a computer, and we didn't have that. He did his vocals. And one thing about Michael, his pitch is amazing. Like, he--this is what he's singing? Okay, he'll go to the side, get his notes, and he would come in and sing straight. "Do you remember?" and his--everything is the same, each stack, and what he would do was move around the mic, and he would go this way for a different angle of the mic. It's almost like a photographer I want to get different angles of you, and Michael would go to this side. He would go behind the mic, and sing the same stack, and it would be stacked about five, six, seven, ten times, and then the next note. So I'm sitting here like, "Wow", and his vibrado, everything just the same. It's almost like a sampler. So, learning this from him had taught me how to get with other singers and show them how they can actually do their own backgrounds, and not sound the same. And it sounds like people, instead of "That's just you", and that is how I learned how to do that. It's about your angles, it's about your dynamics. And it was like going to college, because I finished high school, working with my my brothers and my sisters in there, and my friends and their mothers, and got with Michael, and I worked with the king, and it was just like--it took a while for me to tell Michael was off-key, until he really put me on Front Street, in front of Bruce Swedien and the assistants. He's like, "I just want--can you come in?", and did not know that the microphone was still on. He's like, "I need you to tell me when I'm off-key. I need you to tell me if I suck. Whatever I'm doing, I need you to tell me, and don't be afraid". And the same thing happened. I didn't do no interviews for the album for a long time, it was about six months, and I didn't do not one interview talking about the album. And he pulled me in the room again. I'm thinking, either I'm gonna get fired, or something's happening that I didn't long. And he's like, "Are you a part of this album?" I said, "Yes, I'm a hundred percent a part of this album." He said, "So why don't you talk about it?" I said, "Michael, you gave me--I don't know how many pages, forty pages of a non-disclosure, and I'm not validating that. You're not taking me to court, sue me for something I said about this project." He said, he started laughing, he's like, "Don't worry about that. That's just something I give to everyone when we're doing our sessions. I want you to take these interviews, I have interviews, and I need you to take them all, and talk about this." I said, "Well, first of all, I don't even know what's going to be on the album, so what is there to talk about?" He's like, "Okay, I'm taking you even further. Let's go to the room", and he had his progress board, and another board here, and the collage--y'all remember the collage? The Michael Jackson collage of the Dangerous album. I'll tell y'all that story. Is it okay? Okay, so on the collage, he said, "We don't even have lyrics for 'Remember the Time'." So I'm thinking, how the hell 'Remember the Time' get on the board?" He has visions before visions, and he can tell you what's going to make it, and what's not. What he feels good about, and what he don't feel good about it. It would be at the bottom of the list, and all the records that he feel good about, which he had about fifty, fifty-five records. And I'm looking at this list, and I'm like, "How did 'In the Closet' be on this list, and we don't even have the track finished." And then he put this "Jam" record that I never heard. "Jam", and I never heard the record, I was like, "So, what is this 'Jam' record?", and why is my name next to it? He said, "'Cause you're gonna work on it." And he said, "Joy" Joy had a question mark behind it. I was like, "So, what is 'Joy', and why do I have a question mark?" He said, "Because I don't know if it's gonna make the album, 'cause, as you as you can see, we have so many songs, but I know that these are going to make the album." So, I was like, "Yo, I gotta go work harder", 'cause I see only three of my songs... He said, "So, now you can talk about these songs, and just spread the word. I want people to know that you're working with me." I said, "Cool. I must write the words." He said, "Great." So, I went back in and did those interviews, came back in, and made more. Like, as I started working on "She Drives Me Wild", and "Can't Let Her Get Away", and all these tracks. I just started making some tracks, and he's like peeping in until I made this record. That really blew him away, which was "She Drives Me Wild", because he started hearing car sounds, fire trucks, and I made this song out of car sounds, vehicle sounds. No real drums, and all he heard was [mouths beats of the song] and and he couldn't help to come in that room and say, "What is this?" And that's how I got more songs on the album, because I kept working. I just kept working, and just making--I did "Ghosts". I did "Ghosts", I did "Blood on the Dance Floor". All those--I worked on all those records, and he was like, "That's a keeper, that's a keeper, that's keeper too, what are we gonna do?" It was like--then finally, when I did all of those records, he made it a point for me to go and listen to how he had "Jam" before I get to it. He said, "I really, really need you to hear this record. I don't know what to do with it." But do y'all know that Michael created "Jam" on the drum machine, himself, and had an MPC in the back, and he said, "You got to here this record." So, he played this record, [mouths beat of "Jam"] but it had nothing else, just a beat, and he's like, "What'd you think?" I said, "This is crazy. I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I know I want to be a part." He says, "You are. You're gonna take the drum machine and you're gonna work on this", 'cause I was working on all these beats, and he was loving all these beats, and he's like, "So, this may kick 'Jam' out." So, that's why he gave me "Jam". And when I took "Jam", I was just sitting there analyzing, how and what I'm going to do, and what could I add to really take this where it needs to go. And I started adding the horns, and all the crazy stuff, and all the villain stuff. And he's like, "This is brilliant. Now I gotta go back in and rewrite." And that's how we were making the records. We were passing them back and forth, and he would start the lyrics for "Remember the Time", but only certain words would come out. And you guys know why Michael don't pronounce his words sometimes? It's because it's the feel of the actual melody, and if you can't put a word in there, you mumble it. And that's what Michael did. And that's how we came up with most of these songs, and then he said, "Call some of your friend writers", and I called my best friend Bernard Belle. And Bernard Belle came down, and I said, "I'm gonna let you know right now. Got to stay along this melody. You got to stay with this melody, or you may not make the cut." He said, "I got you, I got you." So, he said, "Do he want all these words pronounced, because I don't know if I'm gonna be able to curve the words with the melody." I said, "Don't worry about it, just get as many words as you can in the song". And he did, he got everything exactly how Michael curved it... So, that was the lesson of--the main thing is melody is king. That is Michael's slogan. "Melody is king". If you all are producers and writers, or any of you who are inspired by music, melody is king. Do not write your lyrics first. Write your melody, and get everything out of that melody to make it do what you wanted to do. Your falsettos and all of that stuff, then write your lyrics on top of it. That was the Michael Jackson secret, I don't take credit for it. That's what he did every song, even--you guys seen "The Number Ones". Did y'all see the making of "The Number Ones"? Where he was like, [sings lines of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"] And that was him and Randy, who was the genius when he made those [mouths opening beats of "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'"] That was the thing about how you make` a melody. You're doing it, your jamming, everybody--we're in the room, and you coming up with a line, you come up with a line, and the song is finished. That's what I learned from Michael, was really how to write a song without lyrics. You write the melody...
There was a creative battle with this song ("Remember the Time") and why it took so long. It actually took us four months to finish this song, and I'll tell you why. That's a funny story, because when Michael was singing the verses to this song, and I'm actually coaching and letting him go, and do his thing, and just lay his vocals, 'cause he doesn't like to stop and go, unless he say, "I like this part so much I want to punch onto it." Well, Michael was singing vocals straight through it. And it'd be like twenty tracks of vocals of one--just a verse. Well, we got the final verse done, and he said, "I'm gonna lay a one-take now." I said, "Okay." After twenty-two tracks of vocals, I want to see this. And he laid a one-take, because he knew. What Michael does when he's doing his vocals like that, he's taking what's good and really implementing it to the last track. He's really taking those phrases and taking in, really signaturing it, and then he makes the vocal. And when he made that vocal, we were so happy, and he disappeared. Michael went to Switzerland right after the first verse. He went to Switzerland to check on this mall that was being built and he had a few--he had stores in the mall, I think it was his mall. And he called me while he was on the plane from his satellite phone and said, "I'm gonna be back in a couple of weeks." And I said, "Michael, I thought you were in a room. I'm thinking we're gonna get this record finished, and you're gone." He said, "Oh, we're gonna get it finished. It's a smash. It's going to be on the album." I'm thinking he's gone, I'm not gonna be here, and maybe two or three weeks, I gotta go back home. And I said, "Michael, well, can I go home?" He said, "Nooo." I said, "Why?" He said--and I remember, everybody who left, like Dallas Austin, left because nobody really had the patience for Michael. He'll keep you in the studio and you being there, and he's not there. And there's no indication, or no guidance. You got Bruce Swedien, "Yeah, that's great, Teddy. Just keep going." And all of his workers--everybody's just there for you, and, "You need food?", just to keep me in a room... So, I said, "Michael, I miss my family." He's like, "Bring them." I said, "Michael I can't bring my family." He said, call [unintelligible]. Bring them, they can come." I said, "I miss my friends too." He said, "Bring them, don't worry." I said, "Well, how are we all gonna get around?" "Rent them all cars." Okay. I said, "Michael I could just go home for a--" "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Please stay, everybody left me. I need you to stay. This is you and I. This is our album It's not just Michael. Your name is all over this." And when he came back, there wasn't a marketing meeting or anything without me being there, and I can remember Michael's--I chose the album cover, which was--that's amazing for someone to put you in a position--it's like, they had a bunch of pictures on the table, and it's like, "Teddy, what do you think?" I'm nervous as hell. I was like, "I don't want to pick the wrong thing and the whole record company--everybody hates my idea." Well, I said to him, "None of those are the album covers." He said, "What? Should I do a new photo shoot?" I said, "No, they all great, but that's not the album cover. The album cover is what you've been doing in that room. It's that collage with your face in the middle, and you're looking to all of your art, and you've seen a vision in the colors of your music." He said, "Oh, go get it!" [laughs] I had the workers come get it and they bring and put it on the table, and everybody was like, "Wow", because I'm the only one that's seen it, and maybe his workers who walked in the room, but they never thought twice, because Michael always makin' art. He's an artist. I'm talking about a real craftmen artist. He'll take these apples, and make it into art. And put water, and he'll just make this whole thing and start piecing things together, and take the plants, and the monkeys, and that's what you seen. And it was so brilliant, that they made it into 3D. If you guys can go on eBay, you can actually pick one up. And when you open it, it's the collage and it's life-sized, it stands up, and I said to myself, "Wow, this is how God works." So, for you to be from here, all the way to here, in the marketing meetings, and from that to Michael, being on American Music [Awards] and Grammys and things about me that are so like, "Wow."
Red Bull: I have a specific question about "Remember the Time", and I feel like the song always stood out to me, just because of the register in which it's sung. He's lower than he is on all the other songs to this point from the previous album, more or less, and even the other material on this album. That had to be a conscious decision.
Riley: It's always my decision... So, Michael broke out on me, and the purpose of him singing that low was--I said, "You can't give everything away in the beginning", you got to gradually get them there. So, as you hear the song--this is the perfect song for escalation. It's like, you're climbing the steps and you get to the top of the stairs, and you get [sings climax of "Remember the Time"] and it was--he didn't do that around us. It's a certain thing when you go in the studio, it's like, certain things I do in the studio, I don't want y'all in here. Like when I play the vocoder it's very--only person I let in the studio and then I kicked him out was one of my producers, because he was in the back just laughing like crazy, because I'm up here trying to get all the feelings so while y'all hear this music the way it is, is because the vocoder really 'cause I'm screaming in that microphone. [fakes a scream] That's how it sound before putting it in the vocoder. And you got to literally--to get the feelings out of a vocoder, you gotta be uncomfortable, really uncomfortable, singing, screaming, losing my voice. So, I'll wait two days or a day of taking tea and all this stuff, and then finish it out. Same thing with Michael. Michael would sing that one part, and he's in that room just going hard, screaming, getting mad, throwing stuff, and that's how he gets the aggressiveness of that vocal. He'll go in and "bam". And I can remember one time the Anvil Cases fell on Michael, and all you heard was, "Help! Help! Help! Help me! Bruce, Teddy!" I said, "What happened?" Bruce [says], "Oh, the Anvil Case fell on him again." And I didn't know that Michael goes through a lot to get himself in that mode of screaming. And all of our cassettes, you hear him scream. You have to know that Michael is doing something to get himself in that mold--mad, aggressive, you know like, "I hate you so much right now", that type of thing. And I've actually seen it once, and it really gave me a whole lesson of why I do what I do. Sometimes, I'll just take off my shirt and being nothing, and do vocals. Because that's how I feel. It's how you feel. You're a creative person, your art. So, this is how you're gonna be today. That's why I don't allow cameras in the studio, because we actually go through a lot to get the vocals how we want to get them, and exact. And that's what Michael do--but let me tell you something about Michael. A lot of people don't know that Michael will have a real deep voice. And a lot of people don't know why he talks like--well, the voice is a muscle. The voice is like how you work out in the studio, and the only way you're going to get the muscles, is you got to keep working them out. Well, him talking high is working his voice every day, to stay that high. But, one day, Michael called me and says [in a deep voice], "Hello, may I speak to Theodore Riley? Theodore, how are you?", and then he would go and laugh, and go into that voice... And that was why Michael sings high, and why his voice is so clear when he sings high, and his falsetto is so silky and pure, and you feel it, don't you? It's because, he's working out every day. And Seth Riggs, who's one of the best vocal coaches in the world. This is the guy that made Michael talk high. "No matter what you do, when you talk to people, you talk high." And that's what he did... And if I wanted to be a high singer, all I would have to do is just keep talking high, and I can talk and sing high... That's what Michael did. That's the secret to Michael's madness of being such a great singer and the greatest entertainer of all time. We go through the motions, and we go through what we do and what we have to go through to keep that sound, to keep the voice, and keep what you guys want to hear on stage. If we didn't, you wouldn't like us. So...
The one thing that Michael told me is when you have something different, know that you had the first, and if it doesn't become the first big hit for you, somebody else is going to sample it, or somebody's going to be inspired...
Changed Jimmy's mind [about his song "No Diggity"] change the [Black Street's] mind, because they didn't believe in the song and it changed the world for me. Because for me to be on a song that went number one 13 weeks or something like that, and went platinum in no time, and all these great things that Michael said was going to happen for me. He said, "You're gonna get a big hit, and watch this. You're gonna really do it, and you're gonna be real. You're gone, you're gone. And I hope to get you guys on my tour". I said, "Oh hell yeah!”
“I still get emotional thinking about it,” says an audibly choked up Teddy Riley. “I sent him a few pieces, which he said were taking him back to the days of The Isley Brothers’ “Shout.” It was going to the next level.” Riley described the material as Parliament Funkadelic meets Toto—a big sound. “We never got the chance to record it,” Riley adds. “But beyond the music, I miss my friend.”
Rolling Stone (January 9, 1992)
Teddy Riley says that during the Dangerous recording sessions, Jackson talked a lot about what he’d done to his face and skin. “I’m quite sure if Michael could have done it all over again, he would not have done that,” says Riley. “But there’s no turning back. Once you change your description, you can’t turn back. You can’t get your own face or your own skin back again. But he is still Michael Jackson; he is still the talented man that everybody grew up on.”
“Vibe” magazine (June/July 1995)
He’s the greatest. Innovative. Black.
“Hip-Hop Wired” (July 8, 2009) (archived)
HipHopWired: I caught one of your recent interviews on CNN, and you started to talk about some of the things that you learned from Michael; what did he help you to appreciate about production and songwriting?
Teddy Riley: He helped me to appreciate just the art of it and how it really was because back in the day you didn’t have a sequencer. Back in the day, you had a piano player there and people would write the song first with the piano or first with the guitar player and then everything goes to tape after that. That’s how the bands, after they knew the songs and after they taught all the musicians and all the background singers the parts that they would sing, they all would go into one room and cut it. He taught me the beauty of songwriting. That is the beauty. I think songwriting from a track is a little like making love without foreplay. And I never put it that way to anyone. But it just came to mind like, you going straight to have sex. Where is the beauty? Where’s the piano? Where is the piano? Where’s that Marvin Gaye song? That’s how love is made and that’s how music is made, with a piano to get you in the mood. That’s what it’s about.
HipHopWired: How long did the recording sessions last?
Teddy Riley: A real one? (Laughs.) A real one, I can give you some experiences of a real recording session with Michael. I sat in sessions with Kool & The Gang and it took like 8 hours just to tune the drums. Literally, like 8 hours. Go get tea, go get coffee, go look at a movie, while the engineer and the drummer just sit and hit the tom toms for about an hour and move the mic around. And then the piano, tuning the piano, the tuner would have to tune the piano, and we have to set up the mics on the piano where we would get the crispiness of that piano sound. That’s two hours alone. Now what you’d call a modern day session is fast. Like I can do a modern day session in less than an hour. Get vocals done in another hour. The session is over at the end of the day. “Celebration,” “Ladies’ Night,” was three days. Michael Jackson’s “Heal The World” was a month. Matter of fact, I think longer than that ‘cause they did it in days like with a string session. What I did with Michael doing strings on “Heaven Can Wait,” was like, we did the track first, that all took one day, and then the string section and then we did the guitar session and that’s about three days. So the modern day is a little quick. Lil’ Wayne, all those guys, the new cats, they cut a record in an hour. Michael Jackson, Kool & The Gang, Frank Sinatra, they take the time to get all that stuff tuned and get it all right so they are setting up the mood with the sound.
HipHopWired: So Michael would never have a “modern day” session?
Teddy Riley: Oh he had modern day sessions before, but he’s not used to it. Like he’s done Pro-tools sessions. He’s not really used to that but it made his life easier because he could sit and cut 24 tracks and then let the producer do what he do. Y’all want that work? Alright, you made life easier for me. But the sound is not the same. There’s a difference. It’s a big difference.
HipHopWired: You mentioned in the CNN interview it was difficult for you to produce him at first because of the awe aspect of how great an artist he is, to not be able to check him as far as his vocals, he had to pull you out of that. How did that dynamic work itself out?
Teddy Riley: Oh it worked itself out when he shook me. Not shook me literally, but when he shook me with words like, ‘Listen, you’re going to have to really produce me like you’ve produced a new artist. I need you to talk to me, I need you to criticize me, I need you to comment, I need you to give me all of you. I want the Teddy Riley that got that record out of Guy and the records out of your previous artists. It took you really producing them. I want you to really produce me. So I got used to it and I got into my own world. So that’s definitely a memorable moment.
The other memorable moment was we were in a session and he was singing a song in the room and an anvil case kind of fell his way and I don’t know if it really fell on him, but it kind of fell his way and he heard the loud sound of an anvil case falling to the ground. You immediately heard him saying, ‘Help,’ but it was almost like him doing that ‘Ooh’ like in that “Beat It” video. You heard that high-pitched voice saying, ‘Help! Help!’ and we were like, ‘What’s going on’ and then Bruce Swedien was saying, ‘I think something fell on him.’ Then we all went in the room. We wanted to find out if he was ok first. Then when we found out he was ok, he was like ‘the loud sound just scared me.’ After we found out he was ok, we just started laughing. You got to see if a person is alright. If they’re alright, then you laugh.
HipHopWired: We know about Dangerous, but Blood On The Dance Floor and Invincible, how did those projects work out?
Teddy Riley: The involvement was I was supposed to be on the History album and I came up for the History album but Michael wasn’t in the studio, he wasn’t really doing any work so I was just sitting there and I didn’t want to waste his money or his time, which I wasn’t wasting his time but, he was wasting his money by me sitting there, so I said, ‘Let me go home and then when you need me, call me.’ And then Jimmy Iovine didn’t want me to work on that project so he scratched me from the project.
HipHopWired: Why would he not want you to work on the Michael Jackson project?
Teddy Riley: Cause he wanted all the projects for himself. I had just came off a double platinum album with Blackstreet. He wanted me to work on the second project for Blackstreet, which was the Another Level album, so he gave me anything that I wanted to get back to working on that album.
HipHopWired: So you got involved with the Blackstreet project. How did it go back to ya’ll reuniting for Invincible?
Teddy Riley: After “No Diggity,” I came back off my tour, he loved that record, so he called me and he said, ‘Listen, I want you to help me finish this record’ and he had already did a bunch of tracks with Rodney Jerkins. So I got called in at the end of the project.
HipHopWired: How were those sessions in comparison to sessions for Dangerous/Blood On The Dance Floor?
Teddy Riley: It was more of a modern day session on Invincible as opposed to Dangerous. We went to traditional days of recording [with Dangerous].
HipHopWired: How are you coping? After seeing the CNN interview, I didn’t know how you would be about talking about this.
Teddy Riley: Listen. You know where I’m from. We come from the real. We come from a place where we keep it real and it’s just so crazy how this stuff here has been going on and now finally when something happens to him everyone wants to come back, pay homage, benefit from this and there’s no benefiting from this. People want to throw a party or do something but, this ain’t about a party. Yes, we should celebrate him because that’s what he would want of us, but all of the making money and all that stuff. No. If you don’t have any past things with him or you haven’t been there to check on him when he was going through his trials and tribulations, then I don’t see where you fit… I don’t see where you fit.
I have a legitimate contribution and I have a legitimate friendship with Michael Jackson. I have something that no one, a lot of people have never done with him other than Quincy Jones, Greg Philliganes, Bruce Swedien, Renee from Renee & Angela, and a few people… Babyface got to work with him. I got to work with this man. I got to sit and talk with him. I got to cry on his shoulder. I got to talk and really express some things that were just him and I that I just didn’t understand and he helped me understand it. Then there’s some things that he wanted to understand like why are they doing this to him. I couldn’t help him understand that because it was bigger than me, but I was always that shoulder. I was always that friend he could’ve said anything to. He expressed a lot of his most deepest concerns and feelings about a lot of things. I know some personal relationships that he has gone through, female relationships and different things like that but I would never disclose that. That’s the stuff that I know.
HipHopWired: How did that period of him going through trials and tribulations affect you as someone who knew and worked with him?
Teddy Riley: It affected me because as a friend, you on CNN. If the media can say so much about us to tear us down, why we can’t say something about them to tear them down? And the thing about it is, once we do that, we get cut off in the interview and some of it doesn’t get played.
HipHopWired: Were you cut off in that interview?
Teddy Riley: No, I wasn’t. I cut myself off. I couldn’t do it no more. I couldn’t take it.
HipHopWired: What was it like when you heard of Michael’s passing? On CNN you said that were bed-ridden…
Teddy Riley: Oh, yeah. Two days. I just said… You know, my mom convinced me to get out of bed. My mom convinced me and I said ‘alright, I got to get out of this bed.’
HipHopWired: What now? Do you have any plans for doing anything in honor and tribute to him musically, creatively, or be a part of anything to that effect?
Teddy Riley: Let me tell you some of the things that I am doing with the family’s approval…The one thing that I wanted to do which I told him, and I got a chance to tell him, that I wanted to make “Heaven Can Wait” over with Blackstreet. He gave me the song “Joy,” it’s on the first Blackstreet album, he gave it to me for Blackstreet, his name is on the record if you go back to it, and he gave me his blessings. That’s the only thing that I asked to do and I will reiterate that with the family because I want that on the new Blackstreet record and whether a part of the proceeds go for his foundation or whatever, I don’t care, I want to do the song because that song never came out as a single and that was one of our favorites. When I did that song with him, he held his heart and he said ‘Teddy, is this mine?’ I said, ‘It’s yours if you want it, Michael’ He’s like: ‘I want it, let’s go get it!’ He was so excited. I have a couple of witnesses that were in the room when he said ‘I want that song. I need that song in my life.’
“Vibe” (June 21, 2010) (archived)
Entertaining was all [Michael Jackson] had ever done until he became the best. Now he was going to get it all back—at any cost. Quite simply, Michael Jackson refused to lose. “I’m going to get them,” the embattled singer told longtime friend and musical collaborator Teddy Riley in late 2008 of his plans for a spectacular return. “I’m going to shock the world, just watch.”
“He was looking for a project to not just ‘Heal the World,’” Riley says, referring to his fluffy 1991 anti-poverty hit. “He wanted to kill the world’s hate. That was his plan.”
...Michael developed a very open, trusting relationship with the producers working on his comeback album. And they kept it real with him. Riley wasn’t afraid to let the master know when he made a misstep. “I heard MJ doing Auto-Tune on some of the tracks,” he says in a comically indignant tone. “I said, ‘Oh no!’ I don’t want to say any names. I would never use Auto-Tune with Mike. My whole thought process was let Mike sing. People love his vocals.”
…[Regarding Jackson’s death on June 25, 2009] “I still get emotional thinking about it,” says an audibly choked up Teddy Riley. “I sent him a few pieces, which he said were taking him back to the days of The Isley Brothers’ “Shout.” It was going to the next level.” Riley described the material as Parliament Funkadelic meets Toto—a big sound. “We never got the chance to record it,” Riley adds. “But beyond the music, I miss my friend.”