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August 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of Cindy Campbell's infamous back-to-school party and the birth of Hip-Hop. Back To Reading Credits is a 6-episode audiovisual series from BRIC Radio celebrating the first 50 years of Hip-Hop and the people behind the curtain who drive the culture. On the show, BRIC President Wes Jackson interviews scholars, artists, executives, thought leaders, and other unsung heroes of the movement about how they shaped the look, feel, and flow of Hip-Hop, and about how Hip-Hop shapes us.
BACK TO READING CREDITS - EPISODE 2 - SOPHIA CHANG
PUB: 02.28.24
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
[MUSIC BED: Slow, heavy beat]
[INTRO]
[VO] Wes Jackson (WJ): Welcome to Back To Reading Credits – a new, 6-part audio-visual podcast from BRIC Radio celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Hip-Hop, and the people behind the curtain who drive the culture. I’m your host, BRIC President Wes Jackson.
[VO] WJ: Episode two of Back To Reading Credits was recorded live, onstage with Sophia Chang at BRIC House in Downtown Brooklyn as part of BRIC’s Hip-Hop Weekend in February. Sophia is a public speaker, mentor, screenwriter, and author of “The Baddest Bitch in the Room: A Memoir”. Sophia calls herself a “matriarchitect”. Over the course of her career in the music business, she managed Ol’ Dirty Bastard, RZA, GZA, D’Angelo, Raphael Saadiq, Q Tip, and A Tribe Called Quest. We talked about mentorship, aging, and the physical and spiritual practice of Kung Fu.
[FADE MUSIC]
[SOPHIA CHANG INTERVIEW - PART 1]
WJ: Welcome to the second night of Hip-Hop Weekend and our second live episode of Back to Reading Credits. Welcome, welcome! [applause] I would like to introduce our special guests for this evening: Sophia Chang is a screenwriter and author who has developed numerous TV properties, including a scripted series at FX based on her Audible memoir, "The Baddest Bitch In The Room", which was released back in September 2020. Earlier this year, she was the subject of an episode of the Hulu series "Defining Moments". Sophia recently created Unlock Her Potential, a program that provides mentorship for women of color. Sophia is the music business "matriarchitect". Did I get that right?
Sophia Chang (SC): Made up that word.
WJ: That's an awesome word by the way -- who managed Old Dirty Bastard (RIP), The RZA, The GZA, D'Angelo, Raphael Saadiq, Q-Tip, and A Tribe Called Quest, as well as working with Paul Simon. She did marketing at Atlantic, A&R at Jive, A&R Admin at Universal, as well as serving as General Manager of RZA's Razor Sharp Records, Cinematic Music Group, and Joey Bada$$'s Pro Era Records. She trained and managed to Shoalin monk, who became her partner and father of her wonderful children. So let's give it up for our special guest, Miss Sophia Chang! [applause] How are you doing?
SC: I'm great. West, thank you so much for having me.
WJ: That was a lot, impressive. I know I always get very embarrassed when people read it, but...
SC: I don't.
WJ: I know, I know, you don't, because you're... you are [laughter] your confidence is $10,000 of the average human. Anything I missed? Before we get into it, I want to make sure you get your props.
SC: Oh, I would like to add that I am also the Executive Director of Impact Mentorship, which is a program that provides free mentorship for men of color, founded by our dear friend Joey Bada$$. And that just launched in January. And I'm very proud of that. And I'm very proud of him.
WJ: No doubt, no doubt. [applause] We give it up for that. All right so let's get into it. We got a little while for questions. You know, I know we have some great stories to tell, but I'm going to ask with a very canned, basic question: when did you first fall in love with Hip-Hop? Because I know you have a great story. When was that moment that you can point to that lit that fuze and Sophia Chang's head that this is it, this is my life?
SC: You know how we all have those moments? Like, where were you if you're old enough when the shuttle went down? Where were you when the towers went down? Where were you when you first saw this or heard that, or tasted this? I was in 12th grade at my high school in Vancouver, and there was this Greek kid who was always digging in the crates, right. Like he was one of the indie stores, and he was buying all the records, and it was during lunch hour. [FADE UP MUSIC: "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five] And then he pulls this record out of the sleeve and he puts it on, and I went... "Fuck what's that"
[MUSIC BREAK: "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five]
… Broken glass everywhere People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don't care I can't take the smell, can't take the noise Got no money to move out, I guess, I got no choice Rats in the front room, roaches in the back Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat I tried to get away, but I couldn't get far 'Cause the man with the tow-truck repossessed my car … Don't push me 'Cause I'm close to the edge I'm trying not to lose my head Ah-huh-huh-huh It's like a jungle sometimes it makes me wonder How I keep from going under… [FADE OUT MUSIC]
SC: So I'd always been into disco, right? So I already had a relationship with dancing and music and beats and bottom, right, and the low end, so to speak. And I just heard that song and it changed my life.
WJ: Yeah.
SC: Changed my life. It forever changed how I would view music, poetry and storytelling.
WJ: Mmhmm. Now, at this point... So just to set the scene, you're in Vancouver,
SC: I'm in Vancouver.
WJ: So talk to us a little bit about that. What was that energy like?
SC: I am the proud child of Korean immigrants. Raise your hand. Shout out to the immigrants in the audience. Thank you very much, children of immigrants! I was born in 1965. I came of age in the ‘70s, which meant that I was a yellow girl in a white world who wanted to be white. You know, as people say, "How could you want to be white?" And I'm like, "How the fuck could I not?"
WJ: Hmhm.
SC: Everything I ever saw, every image of beauty and power and allure and sex appeal. It was all whiteness. Any story of success was white. So I was very much, like, I had this white ideal. And then I heard Hip-Hop. And it gave me agency. It gave me a lens. It gave me a sense of empowerment. And it also helped me honor my anger, and helped me express my rage. And so... I was a French Lit major. I don't speak French anymore, but I speak English with a French accent perfectly, which is far more entertaining. And, the before I even graduated, I just fucking got on a plane and I came to New York. And I came here to chase a dream. And now look at me. [applause]
WJ: No doubt, no doubt! So what -- so you said before you graduated. Are we talking high school? College?
SC: College. College, of course I went to college, I'm Korean for fuck's sake. [laughter] I wasn't that radical. Yeah, no, it was, it was college. Yeah. So I technically graduated, but I didn't walk.
WJ: Okay, so you essentially skipped graduation or skipped those last moments, come to New York City.... Was there a job waiting for you? You're just like, I'm going to make it...?
SC: So before I graduated, I thought, I'm going to get out of Vancouver. I'm going to move. And because I was a French Lit major, I thought, "You know what, I'm going to move to Paris!" And then I went to Paris and I met the Parisians, and I said, "Oh, no, no. I'm not doing this shit. I'd love to visit there. I'm not living with you people." And then I came to New York, and j'étais comme un poisson dans l'eau – I took like a fish to water. And while I was here, I went to a show at the Ritz, which is now called Webster Hall, and I saw [laughs] Joey Ramone. I went up and introduced myself and I said, "Hi, you're Johnny Ramone." And if you know anything about the Ramones, there's a world of difference between those two. And we became friends, and he introduced me to a friend of his, legendary, one of the greatest rock critics of all time, Legs McNeil. When I first moved here, I stayed with Legs McNeil and his partner at the time, Carol Overby. And she was working for Paul Simon, and she got me a job as the assistant to Paul Simon's tour manager.
WJ: Right. Okay. So that's the Paul Simon. So that's really when it starts, with a little... Not Hip-Hop on the nose when you get to the city. But that's got to be a good introduction to the business, no?
SC: Yeah I mean working for Paul Simon... I mean this was coming off the Graceland tour, a worldwide Graceland tour. And then I'm right in a milieu where I'm with the upper echelon of the music business. And I think probably the most significant thing about working for Paul Simon, other than having the honor of working for Paul Simon, is that I met my mentor, Michael Austin, who was the head of A&R at Warner Brothers Records. We literally talked the other day. He is still my mentor. And I know that we're going to talk more about mentorship later.
WJ: Yes. So walk us through -- then, when is the jump of Sophia moves over to Hip-Hop from the Paul Simon era?
SC: So back in '87, the Hip-Hop scene was really small and it was really underground, and there was none of this bottle service. There was none of this, like, girls hanging out in skirts-too-short and heels-too-high, and like, everybody like, wants to be in the VIP and...there was no flossing. And we were all in the same clubs, Wes, all of us. And what I mean all of us, all four pillars were there. You have MCs, you have DJs, you have b-boys, b-girls, and you have graff artists. But not only do you have the four pillars of Hip-Hop, you also have every executive. Not just A&R people, but you have the publicity people, you have the attorneys, you have every single executive, you have the agents, you have the accountants. The scene was so small that we all knew each other. And I'll tell you the thing that I really, really miss about the clubs those days is we were all there for one reason: the music. And you're going to have fun, and people are going to drink and they're going to get high, and they're going to meet girls, they're going to be boys, whatever. But the one very potent common thread was the love of the music. Because back in that day, DJs broke records in nightclubs. Like I remember very, very clearlyD I think it might have been daddy's House, which was Puffy's club back in the day, Klark Kent was DJ-ing and Color Me Bad's "I Want To Sex You Up, raise your hand if you know this record, I remember the night he broke it. And if you know how that song opens, there's no beat at first and it's just this acapella [FADE UP MUSIC: "I Want To Sex You Up" by Color Me Bad] and you know, when you're in a club and you're all dancing and all of a sudden the song comes on that you don't know, you're just kind of sitting there going, "What is this?" [FADE UP MUSIC] [FADE OUT MUSIC]
SC: And that night, Klark Kent single-handedly broke that record. That doesn't happen anymore. That was fucking magic. Because then you also have pride of ownership, right? You feel like, "Oh my God, I was part of this groundswell that heard this record for the first time, and I helped make it something" You know, because at that time, as New York goes, so does the rest of the world.
WJ: Yeah, indeed. I want to get into all of the stories because I know there's going to be good -- but I want to set the stage.
SC: The so the trajectory?
WJ: Well, the trajectory and I want to set the stage for your story because our theme here with our Hip-Hop 50th has been about celebrating the women in Hip-Hop who, we talked about in our last episode, there's a lot of erasure as if it didn't all happen. But you have that challenge, then you're a Korean and you're from Canada. Am I making a big deal of it in retrospect, or was it just all for the culture and people were concerned?
SC: I think if I thought about it, and I actually did think about it when I got the job doing A&R at Jive, I definitely had imposter syndrome. I think it would have been a lot harder, except that I was so, so welcomed by Hip-Hop. It was this really amazing scene because when I was talking about the clubs, you also had the artists in there. You had Basquiat, God rest his soul. You had Herring, God rest his soul. You had Clemente, you know. So you had all of these people. And Hip-Hop, in particular back in the days, in the early days, it was really native tongues that embraced me, Tribe Called Quest, De La, Leaders, Monie, La, right? Drez, Black Sheep. And so they immediately made me feel welcome. And I think that's what really helped me tamp down my imposter syndrome. But for sure, I faced those challenges. But it was just so. Mitigated by the actual artist saying, "No, you're good, Sophia."
WJ: Yeah, I just have to just comment. I love to hear you say that because, in my mind, Hip-Hop is the anti-racist, feminist. There was no time for that foolishness.
SC: Feminist? But go on…
WJ: Well, feminist in the sense that women could shine,
SC: Yes.
WJ: Not in sort of feminist theory. But again, you look at a woman and I'm not so, "Oh, well, Sophia, the woman, does that job." If you were about the culture, that's the true essence of it, right? Of all the women who made it happen. I mean feminist in that way. So let's keep walking through your story. So we're in the clubs, you're seeing things break, but now we know Sophia, the manager. What's the next chapter in that world?
SC: So the next step is I'm hanging out at the clubs, I meet this guy. I cannot believe how many times I'm going to say "rest in peace, God rest his soul." I meet this guy named Sean Carasov, God rest his soul. He does A&R Jive. He signed A Tribe Called Quest. He said, "Sophie, I'm moving to L.A., I think you should apply for my job." And Barry Weiss, the president of Jive Records, God bless him, he said, "I'm going to give you the job." So I did A&R and then, you know, really the big game changer in my life is when I wanted to sign the Gravediggaz. [FADE UP MUSIC: "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide" by Gravediggaz]
[MUSIC BREAK: "Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide" by Gravediggaz]
…wicked like Dahmer / A whole alma mater of niggas is like a meal ticket. / There's nowhere to run to, ba-bay There's nowhere to hide… [FADE OUT MUSIC]
SC: The Grave Diggers was a horrorcore group with Prince Paul and RZA and... Poetry?
WJ: And I think it's MC Poetry, yeah.
SC: And I heard the record. I couldn't sign them. But we had already gotten the demo. We got the Wu-Tang demo. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a, I'm pretty sure it was a 60-minute Max L, handwritten. It was "Protect Ya Neck", "Method Man", and "Tearz". And we couldn't sign them because, you know, RZA, as the record companies would say, infamously did what's called a non-exclusive deal. So none of us were allowed to sign them. But as soon as I heard them, I went, "Holy shit". And then I got to meet him when I wanted to sign Gravediggaz. And then I was like, "I'm a fucking barnacle. You are never getting rid of me." And the way that Wu-Tang claimed me and made it manifestly clear "You see her? She's with us." Then I was coated in Kevlar.
WJ: Yeah, but what was that? How was that relationship? You said they sort of, almost adopted you. What did you do to blow them away and gain their trust?
SC: You know what... Oh, I don't think they would say that I blew them away. But I asked all of them this question when I recorded my audiobook. You know, that was planes, trains, and automobiles, chasing those guys to be part of my audiobook. And I'm so grateful. And I asked them, I was like, "So, you know, back in the day, it's '93, and you guys are..." everybody in the music business knew! I didn't have a crystal ball. Everybody in the music business knew when they heard Wu-Tang that they were going to be phenomenal and they would have this meteoric rise. And I said, "For the thousands of people swarming around you, why me?" And, you know, Ghost said, "God puts you here, Soph. God put you on our path. This is part of the plan. You're supposed to be with us." And they all had some version of this. That it was, you know, the Chinese say yuanfen, that it was destiny to some degree. And I think that they could just see that I was there out of pure love. Pure love. I never had a fucking agenda. I think all of the artists that I represented would say that to this day, "I trust Sophia with everything." One of my artists said to me, "Soph I could give you $100,000 cash today, and I would come back a year later and every penny would be there." I was like, "Yeah, of course." So I think it was and, you know, and there was a there was definitely chemistry there. And of course, the fact that Wu-Tang, Shaolin, I mean, their whole ethos is around Asian culture, right? And so there's already a built-in respect for it. And when people ask me about, you know, "Wu-Tang, do you think that was cultural appropriation?" I was like, "[laughs] no, absolutely not!" If it wasn't for Wu-Tang Clan, we wouldn't have Rush Hour, I promise you. If it wasn't for Wu-Tang clan, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would not have been an Oscar-winning movie. If it wasn't for Wu-Tang Clan, none of the attention given to Hong Kong, John Wu, and to kung fu movies would have come about. Maybe eventually, but not like it did when it did.
[PERSON-ON-THE-STREET INTERVIEW - PART 1 - When did you start reading the album credits?]
[TV static] [beep] [MUSIC: Upbeat]
Cinemasai: The very first time I ever looked at the liner notes or the reading credits on an album that I can remember was probably -- It was either Bow Wow's “Beware of Dog”, or maybe Kanye's “College Dropout”.
Pook Hustle: Read the credits? Definitely. It was on “Get Rich Or Die Tryin’” by 50 cent.
Ashley: Okay, first time I looked at credits and like tracks I would say was The Love Below.
Pook Hustle: And also they had like, you know, the little booklet inside of CDs. I always like looking at those, so I had to check that out.
Cinemasai: The art's the thing that draws you in. And then you start seeing names and you start seeing like "produced by" and like "engineered by", and, you know, like obviously I didn't know all the technical details as a kid.
Pook Hustle: I mean, that's the first time I can remember, like hearing an instrumental and it making me fall in love with the record before I heard the voice.
Ashley: It's a classic album, so definitely enjoy every track on there. It's like something for every season. You got a Halloween track? You got a Christmas track. Like, you got Valentine's Day on there too, so...
Cinemasai: mean like, that cover is crazy. He's in like a football jersey. He's got the dogs on the leashes. And I was like, "That's crazy. Let me see what's inside this!” [END MUSIC] [TV click]
[SOPHIA CHANG INTERVIEW - PART 2]
WJ: You're coming from A&R, jumping over to management. Can you just for a moment, just for people listening, explain the job description for those two roles…
SC: So so A&R is largely considered the most coveted job at a label because you are the talent scout. A&R stands for artists and repertoire because back in the day, there was a time when there were songwriters and there were singers, and often there weren't both. So somebody would have to go out and find songs for the singers. Right? That's why it's called Artist and Repertoire. And then for Hip-Hop, obviously it's different because back in my day, all the artists wrote their own music. So I did A&R and then I went back and then I went into management. Now I enjoy management far more than I enjoyed A&R because management -- John Passman says this in All You Need To Know About The Music Business, "You're the CEO of the artist's enterprise. So in A&R, it's a very important job. And you oversee the recording and all of that and you cajole, you know, marketing into making sure that your album is well marketed. But the manager, you oversee everything, everything, and you are making sure that all of the trains are running on time and that all of the engineers are talking to each other. And you have to have vision, and you have to be creative, and you have to be trustworthy, because without the trust, you got fucking Nathan. If an artist doesn't trust you, you have nothing. You could be great, you could be talented, you could be well-connected, you could be a baller. But if your artist doesn't trust you, I don't give a fuck.
WJ: Yeah. Did you take some of those lessons as an A&R, do you think helped you become a good manager? Because you're sort of seeing a little bit under the hood, am I correct? And then, jumping on the other side of the table, was that helpful? Or is it just two completely different paths?
SC: No no no no they're not different at all. In fact, my guess is that a lot of A&R people would say that they are quasi-managers. I think what I learned, Wes, was how to speak to artists. And then how to make them feel heard and seen and respected. I've never had an artist say, "I love my label!" Ever. I've never heard an artist say, "They support me perfectly. They put so much money behind me!" Because I never worked with Taylor Swift or these huge -- you know, and even she probably has complaints about her label. You know what I'm saying? There's always tension and there's always a somewhat adversarial relationship between the artist and the label. And I really learned that I was very much Wes, an artist person and not a label person, that I was always going to advocate for the artist. And that's what led me so organically and naturally to management.
WJ: Can you just give us one story because ODB, you know, rest in peace. This was such a pivotal artist and, you know, just person, energy in Hip-Hop. I have to think that managing him must have been a handful, though. Or maybe am I buying into stereotypes?
SC: Dirty was a handful, for sure. The biggest problem with Dirty is that he was an alcoholic. And the biggest problem with his manager, Sophia Chang, was that I did not handle that properly. I would go and get him alcohol before he had an interview. I completely enabled it because he was like, I'm not going to do this interview unless I'm drunk. I did not know enough about addiction. I did not know enough about alcohol and substance abuse to try to be a better support to him. I mean, I think my favorite story is the story that opens my memoir, The Baddest Bitch In The Room, now available on audible and at all fine booksellers near you. [laughter] [applause] Is the story –
WJ: That's right, plug it!
SC: – is the “where are you from” story, which is the Method Man story. This is very emblematic of Wu-Tang Clan, but in particular of Method Man, and tells you a lot about his character. [FADE UP MUSIC: "Protect Ya Neck" by Wu-Tang Clan] [DUCK MUSIC] It was very, very early days. The first single that came out was "Protect Ya Neck". They spent $5,000 on the video. If you go watch it now, you'll see that it was $5,000. They still have the timecode at the bottom. I mean, but it is so clearly them.
[MUSIC BREAK: "Protect Ya Neck" by Wu-Tang Clan]
…Swingin’ through your town like your neighborhood spiderman… [FADE OUT MUSIC]
SC: And then the second video was Method Man.
[MUSIC BREAK: "Method Man" by Wu-Tang Clan]
…Hey, you, get off my cloud / You don't know me and you don't know my style / Who be gettin' flam when they come to a jam? / Here I am, here I am, the Method Man… [DUCK MUSIC]
SC: And by this time I have been to the studio a few times, and he's just the warmest, kindest, most empathetic, welcoming person. And so I walk in the studio and he's like, "Sophie, Sophie, I just got my video. You got to come and watch it." I was like, "Okay." And so he pulls me back into the lounge. So we go back there and we're watching the video. He plays the video. He doesn't want to sit next to me. He's just standing on the wall watching me, watching the video. But sitting directly facing me is one of their boys and he is just eyeballing me. He's just giving me ice grill. And after the video played, [FADE OUT MUSIC] I was about to tell him what I thought of the video, and the guy just looks at me and he goes, "Where are you from?" Now, anybody of color in this room knows that that is a uniquely unsettling question, because it's actually not a question it's a statement, right? And he was definitely saying, Wes, to your point earlier about being Korean, being a woman, you know, "Bitch, you don't belong here." And I said, and I was absolutely caught off guard, and I said, "Pardon me?" And he said, "Where are you from?" And I said, "Well, if you're asking me where I was born, I was born in Vancouver. If you were asking me where I live, I live in New York City. If you're asking me...." And I was just going to go down the line because I was also trying to point out to him, I don't actually think you give a shit about any of these things I'm saying, right? And before I could get out another word, Meth, who is 6' 4", he is just as big as he looks and nice with his hands. I have seen him fighting. He flies in between us. And he was like. "She's from Shaolin and she's down with Wu-Tang, motherfucker! That's all you need to know! That's all you need to know! She's down with Wu-Tang! Don't you ever disrespect her again!" Every time I saw that man thereafter, "Peace Queen." Every single time. And I want to point out what is so significant about this story. He knew immediately what the subtext of the question was. Do you know what I'm saying? That's how smart Meth is. That's how astute he is. That's how empathetic he is. He felt the energy. He's defending a woman, an Asian woman, against one of his crew. That doesn't happen a lot. And I'm not his woman. Do you know what I'm saying? It's different if I was the wife or if I was whatever. It clearly wasn't that. And, you know, that was really an amazing story.
SC: Another one of my favorite stories is, I kind of quickly became known as the Wu whisperer, Wu wrangler, Wu whisperer, whatever you want to call it. And Schott Free, who was doing A&R at Loud, which was their label, he said, "Soph, I need your help." I was like, "What do you need?" And he said, "You know, C.R.E.A.M." -- my favorite Wu-Tang song, my favorite Hip-Hop song -- he said, "We got to do a video, but we got to get a treatment out of Ghost and Rae and we can't do it." And I was like, "I'm coming." The cleaner, the glue, the professional. So I go up to the RCA Records office in Times Square, it's like 45th and Broadway, and I go in there and there's a huge press day going on, and they're all in the offices. I don't know if you've ever seen a press day, but there's just interview after interview. And I pull Rae to the side and we're sitting at an IBM typewriter. This is a thing that. [laughter] Clack clack clack riiiiiiick clack clack clack. And we write out the C.R.E.A.M. treatment, right? And then I'm like, "Okay, goodbye. I love you. Goodbye goodbye." And Ghost and Meth are in a glass conference room, and I just wave to them from outside. They're in the middle of an interview. And they both get up and they come to the door and they go, "Where are you going, Sophie?" I said, "I'm going home." "Well, how are you going to get home?" "I'm taking the train." "We're walking near the train!" And I was like, "You guys, you're in the middle of an interview, it's broad daylight, it's Times Square, I'm three blocks from the subway station, and I only have to go three stops because it's an express train." They insisted on walking me to the train. Now Ghost is 6' 3", the second nicest with his hands. And back in the day, they were very imposing and intimidating if they wanted to be. They still are now, but back in the day, they were really, really intimidating. They walked me to the Times Square subway. If you've ever been to the Times Square subway, I'm going down, it's rush hour, and you know there's a crush of people going down the stairs. And I was like, "Okay, I love you! Okay!" And then they just stood there and they just, and I know that they were like, "Oh my God, look at Sophie's disappearing." And they just saw me going down the stairs. And they leaned over the railing and they said, "Sophie, if anybody fucks with you, you tell them you're with Wu-Tang. If anybody looks at you, you tell them you're down with Wu-Tang!" Let me tell you, everybody around me, they were like........ I bet all of those people remember that story because they figured out who Wu-Tang was. They were like, "I almost got murdered the other day." [laughter] But that's, but those are stories that really talk about, you know, as you know, Wes, I'm not here to talk about their music and the B-sides, in the samples and the lyrics and all of that. I'm most interested, and that's the only thing I'm an expert about, is who they are as people with me, and that's who they were, and that's who they remain to be with me.
WJ: Thank you for that. That story! I could listen to those all day as, you know, the hip-hop nerd in me. And they are huge people and like Ghost is like... he's not skinny.
SC: Six of them are over six feet tall.
WJ: Yeah, yeah.
SC: Seven of them were also born in Brooklyn, which is a little-known fact.
WJ: You've had such a long career, and it's these great stories and there's so much more. But I do want to talk about, so you go into running this company with Michael Austin, but then that does not end well, right? You get fired because... maybe it's a little too much?
SC: When I was at Universal?
WJ: I'm talking about when Raphael Saadiq says, "Maybe this is not my cup of tea." Talk to us about, sort of, how your time in management ended.
SC: Oh yeah yeah. I doubt he was that gracious about it. Yeah. Well, I stopped managing Dirty when I met the father of my children and my Sifu Shi Yan Ming, who's the 34th generation Shaolin monk. And I just made a hard right out of the music business. And I ran the temple. And then I got back into managing. And then I was, Raphael was a client. That's when I managed RZA, that's when I managed GZA, managed Raphael, and Raphael fired me. And what was really hurtful is that we were very close and we were friends. And he didn't do it to my face. He had Michael fire me. And Michael Austin, so loyal, such a model of family and mentorship, he said on Hulu on the Defining Moments series, he said, "I think Raphael made a mistake."
WJ: Hmm.
SC: You know, and that's a big statement to make on television. Yeah, that was, that was really hurtful. You know, it's kind of like that Sex & The City episode where that guy breaks up with Carrie on a post-it. [laughs] That's kind of what it felt like. I was like, "Jesus Christ, we talk like fucking three times a day. I know everything about you. You don't, you don't have the courage and the respect to call me and do it yourself? And you make Michael, of all people, do your dirty work?" MmMm.
WJ: Yeah, and I think what you said when we were prepping this is that, was the word that maybe you were "too aggressive", right? So now we're getting into powerful women becoming potentially threatening and code words.
SC: Yeah yeah yeah. Oh, I have a very distinct memory of being in the Sony offices with Raphael. And we had a meeting with somebody, and I had leaned up against a desk and he said, "I don't think you should have done that." And I said, "Why not?" He said, "I don't, I just don't think..." And it was basically his way of saying that you're too assertive, too aggressive. I promise you, if I was a man, he would not have said that to me. Not a fucking shot. And I'm Asian.
WJ: That part.
SC: Right, so there's the model minority on top of it. So now I'm in a double bind because I'm expected to be quiet, and politically pliable. I'm not going to raise my hand. I'm not going to pound my chest. I'm not going to stop my feet. I'm not going to upset an apple cart. Let me tell you, my whole fucking life is about upsetting all of the apple carts that have been put in front of me. It is my... I would put it on my LinkedIn page. It is the machine against which I rage every fucking day is to upset every single stereotype about me and us.
[PERSON-ON-THE-STREET INTERVIEW - PART 2 - Does Hip-Hop have an age limit?]
[TV static] [beep] [MUSIC: Upbeat]
Ashley: Hip-Hop doesn't have an age limit. I think it's for everybody. We're 50 years in now, so, like, people that were my age back in the day where it all started can still have something to enjoy.
Jordan: I feel like Hip-Hop is Hip-Hop. It's a culture. Some people are a good well age over me, some are good well age under me. And you know, this is a culture and it has no limits.
Pook Hustle: If you look at something like jazz where if you a musician, if you've been playing or touring for 25 years, we look at that as somebody who's well experienced and a veteran. Even in martial arts, the kung fu masters are older. So, I look at Hip-Hop as the same thing. It's like a martial art. So the more experience you got the better, actually.
Angelica: I feel like there's really no limits to it. I mean, you have Nicki, you have like mad other artists who are still here, still doing it. I feel like you can be 60, 70 still doing that, you know.
Ashley: I don't know if their taste is the same, maybe a little different with the genre, how it's going now. But yeah, it's for all age groups. [END MUSIC] [TV click]
[SOPHIA CHANG INTERVIEW - PART 3]
WJ: So you leave, you're starting a family how, how long do we start to get to The Baddest Bitch In The Room? When does that era of you as a writer begin?
SC: So I started training with Yan Ming in 1995. In 2007, 2008, the partnership fell apart. That's when I went back into management. Then in 2013, Michael Austin got me a job at Universal Music Group. I am so not cut out for corporate jobs. I was fired 18 months later. You know, at the time, everybody dreaded Friday and you never wanted the call from H.R. And I walked into my boss's office and the guy from HR was sitting there, and I was going to be like, "Hah! What, am I getting fired?" And then I thought to myself, "Oh, bitch you're getting fired." I was like, "Holy shit, here it is!" And you know, you just kind of numb out and you just listen to everything and, "You've been really grate, Sophia." And I'm like, "Oh my God!" I take all my shit in a box and I go home. So then I was fired, I guess, in 2015. And then I ran Cinematic Records, which is where Pro Era was parked. And then Joey Bada$$ asked me to run his label, and I told Joey... Hi, C.J... C.J. Fly! And then I said to Joey, he said, "I'd like you to be the general manager of my label." And I said, "I will do it. I would love to do it. I'd be honored. Here's the caveat I must work on my memoir." Because I knew I wanted to write a memoir. And, six months later, I wasn't working on my memoir. And I said. "I'm not, it's become my side piece in a way that is not productive." And he said "I love you, Soph. You've got to tell your story, you've got to go." But the inspiration for writing the memoir, because people have said, "Oh, you got all these great stories, you got to, you know, you've got to write your book. You got to write your book." And I said, "For what? To fucking tell people I'm cool and I hung out with famous people? Who gives a fuck? There are people that can write that book much better than me and have much more interesting stories. But when I worked at Universal, there were a number of young women, 22, just out of college, that I took under my wing, and some of them I still mentor to this day. And I understood, "Oh, Sophia!" I flipped the lens, "This is not about you. This is about them." And I understood that by telling my story, and I urge all of you to tell your story, that by telling my story I could be of service. When I understood, Wes, that I could be of service, then I said "I'm committing." And that was the inspiration.
WJ: That's so great. And then this goes to Unlock Her Potential. Am I right? Am I following this right?
SC: Yeah.
WJ: And then this becomes your infrastructure to lean all the way into that. Talk to us a little bit about Unlock Her Potential if you could.
SC: So in June of 2020, if any of you were in New York, you'll remember that's three months into the pandemic, we are literally scared to death. We are still wearing fucking masks in the street. We are washing down every fucking grocery that comes through the door. We're showering when we through the door. We're taking off our clothes and fucking leaving it there. Like, we feel like everything is fucking, nuclear, right? It's nuclear waste. And I'm sitting there watching Spectrum 1 -- shout out to Pat Kiernan. They're talking about this story. And I thought, "Geez, I wonder what it is that I could do?" Because there's a program in New York City in the public schools, and they provide employment for 75 to 100,000 kids in New York. Well, that summer program was gone for the summer of 2020, right? And so I decide I want to do something. I want to do something around mentorship. I secured over 107 mentors in less than 72 hours. And we're going into our fourth year. Unlock Her Potential is a program that provides free mentorship for women of color. I have my mentee here. I have other mentees here. I have volunteers here. We are an army, and we are a community. And the three core C's of Unlock Her Potentials that we are building: community, coalition, and citizenry, community coalition and citizenry. I cannot single-handedly, nobody can dismantle systems and institutions on their own. And our community is fucking amazing. And they show up so well. So in the first year we had RZA, we had GZA, we had Joey, we had Jim Jarmusch. Over the years we've had Pamela Adlon, we had Hilary Straw, who's the head of HR at Hello, Sunshine, and Sarah Hardin, who's the CEO at Hello, Sunshine. I mean, we just had Michael Mann. We've had this astonishing array of people that came in. Number one, almost all of them are my friends. And number two, I knew they care. Because none of them needed to be part of the program, right Wes? But they understood, "If Sophia Chang reaches out to me and she has this in her head, it's important to her and she's important to me. But just as importantly, it will run." Because an idea without execution is nothing. Talent without execution is nothing. But they knew that I would dot my I's and cross my T's and that it would run. And it's had its bumps. But it runs. And by the end of this year we will have mentored 580 women of color. [applause] So shout out to my team.
WJ: I'm just so impressed you said, you know, "being of service," right? You sort of looked at me and gave me that look. And that seems to be, since that light was flipped when you heard The Message, it seems to be you've been of service to the community and the culture. Did it always make sense to you, or did you feel you were zigging when you thought you were zagging, you know, in the middle of it?
SC: Well, I will say to everybody out there that our paths will zig and they will zag, and we have to embrace the zigs and the zags. I never could have predicted any of it, Wes. I never could have predicted that I, who was ashamed of my culture. I lost my language. I didn't like Korean food when I was a kid. Have you ever had Korean food?
WJ: Delicious [laughter]. Yes.
SC: It's fucking amazing. And then I would meet a rap group, and they would bring me back to my culture. That I would go through the Wu-Tang chamber to come back to the love of self and my culture. What a fucking gift. And they would have me watching John Woo movies. They would have me watching kung fu movies. And then I would be like, "I want to do kung fu!" And then I go, and I do kung fu, and I fucking meet the man of my dreams, and we fall in love. I mean, if it wasn't for Wu-Tang, that woman right there wouldn't be sitting there. I would not have the children I do today. I mean, I owe a lot to Wu-Tang Clan. So I think what I would say is that none of it was predictable. All of it felt natural. And I think, Wes, that's because I was never afraid. Look, I have a middle class safety net, so it was never fear that my children would be, you know, unhoused or hungry. So I definitely had that privilege and that cushion. But I also knew you go, you try, you might fail. I failed plenty, but I learned so much along the way. So I think that my commitment is to storytelling and to service and allahu akbar, god is great, here I am. I am telling stories. I'm facilitating the stories of others, and all of that is service to me.
WJ: Wow. That's heavy. You going to get people teared up in here? I mean, but that's it. That's the whole rub of our lives. So give thanks for you. I mean, there's so much we can get to. But I would love to give us a little bit of how did that practice of kung fu into the discipline, into the journey, into the service? I would be remiss not to ask you about it. [00:39:47][18.3]
SC: So the father of my children is a Shaolin monk, and Shaolin Temple is not the founding place of martial arts, but it is the Mecca and it is where everything was codified. Is also the birthplace of Chan Buddhism, which migrated to Japan and became Zen Buddhism, which is much more well known here in the States. They are integrated. They're inextricably linked. My practice of kung fu, when people say, "Oh my God, Sophia, have you ever used your kung fu?" Honey, I use it every day. Everything is kung fu. Eating is kung fu. Drinking is kung fu. Sleeping is kung fu. Loving is kung fu. Fucking is kung fu. Working is kung fu. Everything is kung fu. Because when you internalize it, to the degree that I have, it's in my fucking marrow. You know, there's a saying in kung fu that some people learn it to the skin, some people learn it to the flesh, some people learn it to the bone, and some people learn it to the marrow. And that is in my marrow, and I carry it with me in everything that I do. Focus. Discipline. Power. Flexibility. And one of the most central tenets of Buddhism. And it is an integral and critical part of my quotidian practice is being present. Being present. Right now I am here with you. I am nowhere else. I am here with you. So I urge you if you don't think of anything else when you leave this room, think about being present. There are so many things out there to distract us and I get distracted for sure, but I always try to bring myself back to center. Back to you. Back to me. Back to us. And this is how we commune and build.
WJ: Yeah. I'm gonna ask you the one last question, because I think I do... What sort of got lost was in your journey you're going from Paul Simon to ODB to C.J. Fly and Pro ERA, I think you being the living thread through so much. So let's say we have a young, budding executive in the audience listening. What's that gem? I feel like you've been dropping them all over, but what's that advice? Because the industry has changed and you sort of changed with it. And you've seen it change. I wonder what bit of advice would you give to someone embarking on their journey?
SC: If you're going to go into management? You better have another job because there's very little money in it. If you work at a corporation, they're not your fucking family. That's a corporate mind fuck. The say, "Oh, you're like family!" Bitch, you're not my family. You're not my fucking family. You don't care about my kids. You might buy me a gift here and there and fucking get me cupcakes on my birthday. But you are not the motherfucker I call at three in the morning. If my heart's been broken, or if I've had a fight with one of my children. You're not family. So don't let them fool you, because this is such -- It's so political. And I saw so many people get their lives sucked into just being corporate slaves. They just had this slavish devotion to their jobs because they just wanted to keep climbing the ladder, climbing the ladder, climbing the ladder. You know, it's a capitalist trap. And part of what they do is they convince you that you are family and we really care about you, I promise you, yes, you can make friends. They don't give a fuck about you. And there are so many people who can replace you. You are so eminently disposable. I know so many people I worked with, Wes, at the corporations and they thought, I'll never get fired. Guess what? They got fired. And they felt so heartbroken and disappointed and betrayed and blindsided. It was always going to come at some point. At some point, maybe you get too expensive. You know what? Your assistant is really talented, Sophia. And we're having another merger. This has happened to my friends. One of the things that I found working at corporations, they do not invest in nor value human capital. So be careful. Enjoy yourself. Be careful. Do not give your life to the job. You are not a brand. You are not an asset. This is all capitalist lingo that we have all, including myself, assumed. Because we are all now part of this machine and we see ourselves as cogs in this wheel.
WJ: Amen. Amen to all that. We got to give it up. [applause] Okay, so we have about four minutes left. We like to play a little bit of game, a little game at the end of our episode. Just a little "this or that", right? We did this back in the day. So, I'm gonna say two things and you got to pick one to give us a brief explanation of why.
SC: Korean! Oh, shit. You didn't ask me. [laughter] Okay. Sorry. [laughter]
WJ: Writing or managing?
SC: Writing.
WJ: Why?
SC: Oh my God. Let me just say this for the record, I haven't managed in years. I am a reformed, recovering manager. Everybody, please stop sending me your fucking SoundCloud links. I don't give a fuck about your records. I am 58 years old. I aged out a Hip-Hop decades ago. I don't know, I couldn't name you a fucking drill rapper. I don't know anything about the music anymore. Please stop sending me your music. Why? Because managing, managing... I never want to chase another rapper for the rest of my life. And nobody chases rappers better than Sophia Chang. No fucking body. I actually believe I'm the greatest manager I've ever known. I wasn't the most powerful. I wasn't the richest. I wasn't the most well-connected, but I am quite certain I was the best manager in the world. So, writing!
WJ: No doubt! [laughter] To bottle up this confidence and sell it, boy. The Lord knows the world needs it. All right, so we're going to go a little kung fu, martial arts: Enter The Dragon or Five Deadly Venoms?
SC: Enter the dragon.
WJ: Why?
SC: Oh, sorry, RZA! Actually, I wonder what RZA would say. I'm going to ask him that. Because there is, I mean. Bruce Lee. You know, I think Bruce Lee redefined so much for us. Now, I didn't come to either of those movies until I was much, much older. Because, remember, I was in complete denial of my culture and distancing myself from it. But I just... Bruce Lee is the apogee of so much. He was a philosopher king. He was the greatest human machine, I think, ever. And he's a philosopher and he created his own style. I say that RZA is the Bruce Lee of Hip-Hop. [applause] RZA is a philosopher. There's no doubt in my mind. I know this. I know this. Absolutely. He took many styles and made his own. So, Enter The Dragon. But I mean, shout out to Five Deadly Venoms, of course.
WJ: You can't lose with all of this. But yeah, right. The Wu-Tang manual. The Dao of Wu. Those are -- I don't know if anybody's read those books -- those books are incredible.
SC: Yeah, RZA's a philosopher, RZA's read every philosophy. He can cite the Bible. He can cite the Bhagavad Gita. He can cite the Zen teachings of Bodhi Dharma. He can cite the Koran, obviously. Yeah.
WJ: Yeah. Okay, last one. Because you said in the beginning, you were talking about breaking records and how organic that was. And then I see how powerful your digital self is. So, old-school fliers or IG posts? Digital or analog?
SC: Oh, I would have to say digital. Obviously, I have nostalgia for the fliers. You know, I still have so many fliers. I still have stickers, I still have the original Wu-Tang sticker. But the reach that you get with digital, it's incomparable, Wes. And this is how Hip-Hop went global.
WJ: Yeah.
SC: I mean, isn't that what we want for the greatest art form ever is to globalize it? You have kids in, I would guess, every hamlet, every village, every tiny town in the world you go to, someone has a Wu-Tang tattoo, buddy. [laughter]
WJ: That's facts. [laughs] That's big facts. You know, you've you've you've blessed us. Thank you so much. I do want to just leave the mic open. Anything we missed? Projects, promotion? So grateful for your presence, I want to give you a little bit of time.
SC: Saturday, April the 6th for Unlock Her Potential. We are having our second annual symposium. Our inaugural symposium was last March. It was 200 multi-ethnic, multiracial, multigenerational, multi-faith women of color. You've never been in a room like this. We made this room. Women from 22 to 72. Community, coalition and citizenry. And you know what I did at the end of the day? So at the beginning of the day, I delivered the opening remarks and I said, "Everybody's got a notebook. As we go through the day, write down all the qualities that make you the baddest bitch in the room, and I will invite you up at the end of the day to tell us what makes you the baddest bitch in the room." Speaking is, I think, one of the top fears of people in this country. And at the end of the day, I thought, "Oh shit, we got to have some volunteers as plants out here because oh God, nobody's going to come up." So we had 3 or 4 volunteers ready. 24 women came up at the end of the day.
WJ: 24.
SC: 24 women of color stood up, some of them in tears, many of them in tears. Many of them said, "I'm scared to death to be here, but I have to do this because I said, 'look around you. This room wants you to win.'" And I promise you, if that was a room full of white people, you think they would have done that? Fuck no. You think if it was a roomful of men, you would have had women of color standing up there saying, "I'm the baddest bitch in the room?" Fuck, no. We made that room. We gave them the power. We gave them the microphone. We made them feel seen, heard, respected, valued and part of a community. It was transformational. And we will eventually have a summit for Joey's program for Impact Mentorship. And I, and I want to take a second to talk about Joey. He founded this program at 28. Do you know what I was doing a 28? I was going out for dinner, I was chasing boys, and I was spending money I didn't have. I was not thinking about community, and I was not thinking about service. Yes, we can talk about him as an artist. Yes, we can talk about him as an actor. But this is life defining. Because this is service and this is a different generation of artist. And it's an incredible program. We got a staggering amount of applicants for both Unlock HerPpotential, women of color, and Impact Mentorship, men of color. And you know what it means? It means that there is a need. So if any of you are in a position to mentor, mentor women of color. Mentor men of color. Mentor people of color because we deserve to be in the rooms where the decisions are being made. We deserve to be hired. We deserve to be trained. We deserve to be promoted. And we deserve to be in positions of leadership. We know how to do it, just give us the chance.
WJ: No doubt. All right. [applause] Thank you so much, Sophia. You know, when we were conceiving this series, we didn't want to do just this, you know, people come in here promoting their albums or --
SC: Oh, wait, but I do have a mixtape! No, just kidding. [laughter]
WJ: You got mixtape coming out! [laughs] SoundCloud! But, you know, we wanted to give people different stories that really illuminate the power of the culture. So I just want to say this, you know, on the record, this is exactly what we wanted. You know, how expansive you got. And to end, you know, what that energy is, is really what this program is about, what BRIC is about. So I just want to personally thank you for that. [FADE UP MUSIC: Slow, heavy beat] And please everyone give it up for Sophia Chang. [applause]
SC: Hip-Hop gave me everything. [applause fades out]
[MUSIC CONTINUES]
[CREDITS]
[VO] WJ: This episode of Back To Reading Credits was produced by Khyriel Palmer, Emily Boghossian, Raynita Vaughn, Chris Torres, Gabrielle Davenport, and Antoine Hardy with help from Elyse Rodriguez Aleman, Michael Carroll, Jonathan Ortiz, and the BRIC TV production crew. Check the show notes for a full list of credits, and links to Sophia Chang’s work.
[VO] WJ: Back To Reading Credits is hosted by me, Wes Jackson. The show is taped at BRIC House in Downtown Brooklyn. If you like what you hear or think we missed something, comment, like, share and subscribe, and follow [at] BRIC TV on Twitter and Instagram, for updates.
[VO] WJ: For more information on this and all BRIC Radio podcasts, visit www [dot] bric arts media [dot] org [slash] podcasts
[FADE OUT MUSIC]
[BACKTEASE]
SC: Maybe it was a couple years ago, I went to go see Rae, Ghost, and GZA. It's backstage and Ghost is back there. He, like, hugs me and he pulls me in like he always does. And he goes in my ear, he goes, "I've seen your Instagram." [laughter] And I went, "Fuck!" The last people I want on my Instagram page. Lord knows.
WJ: Yeah. [Laughs] If that's not a promo for how good the Instagram page is, I don't know what you need.