So we got this groove going up in the studio, and it was originally fast - about 125 beats per minute. So we worked up those songs, and at the same time, I said to Andy, “What if we came up with a song?” And Andy and I came up with the song “Rise.” So I think we worked up ‘A Taste of Honey,’ maybe ‘Spanish Flea,’ and ‘The Lonely Bull.’ And my writing partner at the time, Andy Armer and I had a little four-track studio in my apartment. So I called Chip Cohen the next morning, and I said “OK, what do you need?” He said “Do me a favor, work up a few Tijuana Brass songs, and do them the way you want to do them. Your uncle touches people with his trumpet.” He said, “Just do your thing - change the frame around the picture. George Harrison, Paul McCartney touched people. He said “Look man, there’s very few people in the world who can touch millions of people… as a kid, I worked and traveled with Ray Charles, and he touches people. And Billy said something to me in that hallway that really turned me around. A friend of mine was out in the hallway - Billy Preston, the keyboard player. That night I was at the old Record Plant studios on third street. So I was doing demos, and the A&R guy at A&M Records at the time said, “Would you want to do disco songs of Tijuana Brass things for your uncle?” And I said, “You know Chip, I don’t feel great about working with Herb.” And when I started to do it seriously, like I said, I changed my name, and I got my first job - which was to do demos for Columbia Records, for a group called Con Funk Shun. Back then I was 11, in ‘66, packing records in the shipping room, and I loved being around there. Herb and I were always close, family-wise, and as a kid, I always worked at A&M Records. I hated as a kid how everywhere I went, I’d tell them my name, and they’d go, “Oh, are you related to Herb?” So at that time, I was going into doing funk music, and I randomly picked the name - some girl was like, “Oh, you’re pretty badass.” And at that time, I was about 17, and I went “Boy, maybe I should call myself Randy Badazz.” And I did. But when I was about 18, I really wanted to be a musician, and at that time, Herb and A&M were giants. His words have been condensed and edited for clarity. Here, Randy tells Billboard about his memories of composing and recording “Rise,” why “Hypnotize” was the first sample request that he actually cleared, and how Biggie’s song has helped his own song live on through the generations.
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