DJ Ron Slomowicz: Wow, so many different teams and projects. Let's get go back to the beginning, you first got involved in the music industry as part of a boy band. How were you recruited?
Ellis Miah: I guess it's kind of a funny story. I was twelve and we had recently moved to Miami from New York and the brother of Tigra from L'Trimm went to school with me. I decided to befriend him to get to her and I hung out with him and waited for his sister to get home from the road. Every time she was around, I would be singing and she eventually asked what's the deal. So I told her I sing, and she eventually took me to meet her producers that had gotten her a deal, a production company that was owned by Henry Stone from TK Records, from way back in the day. I auditioned and they offered me a contract that day, which was a really bad deal. It was development deal that basically tied me in with options for six years. I was in a number of group lineups that they created with me as the center. This was the time of The Boys and New Edition, so every couple of weeks there was a new lineup with different people and different names doing different songs, yet all our songs kind of sounded like someone else's material. Basically, we had a bunch of possibilities that almost happened but didn't. I was stuck in a really bad contract, but the good thing was that every day after school from the age of twelve, I went to the studio whether they asked me to be there or not. One of the producers kind of looked like me so people thought I was his nephew - his name was Larry Davis and so he kind of became like Uncle Larry. He did arrangements on the Village People, worked for Gamble and Huff and was a real musician, playing five instruments. He let me play around with the sequencers and drum machines and let me use all of this stuff. I started writing and programming little things and he'd encourage me by saying that's cool, but here's how you get this to happen or use this to make this happen. When I was about sixteen or so, I decided to start my own thing and I wrote a record that was very similar to Linear and Milli Vanilli with verses and strong hooks. I did all the backgrounds and I got two girls that were on stage to sing the parts, but it was really me and another guy. For a summer, we were on Power 96 and other local stations.
RS: What was the name of that record?
Ellis: I'm not telling you.
RS: Was it a big hit outside Miami?
Ellis: Yes, it got added in a couple of mostly southern radio stations and then for some reason it jumped over to a radio station in Fresno, from what I had heard. That summer, we did that whole circuit with Stevie B and all those other people. That was an experience but it was pretty much a really bad deal but I met my first music partner there who was also signed, Noel Sanger.
RS: Wow.
Ellis: So him and I and another guy named Jimmy formed a production team called Work In Progress. Jimmy lived in Fort Morris at the time and I drove up there to work with him. I was like a kid in a candy store because we completely got off on each other's music. We started writing and we did a bunch of club records that I sang on for ESA and a bunch of those other local Miami labels.
RS: What are some of these records?
Ellis: We did records like "Love Addiction," "Bodega Queen," and all these other silly little records. Then he moved to Miami and we started working. Musically we kind of veered in different directions so we pursued different paths and I decided to move to New York.
RS: And that was in '96?
Ellis: More of less, yes, maybe '96 - '97, somewhere around there.
RS: You get to New York and the big city, and how did you embrace the scene or how did you become part of the scene?
Ellis: To be honest, I initially came here to focus more on pop and R&B, that's what I always wanted to do. I moved here and did a bunch of records like Da Mooch "Send Me Some Love" and for indie labels like Soulphuric. I moved here and made some rounds with some R&B demos that I had written and sung back in Miami. I started networking and I didn't really know anybody in the urban game and through a friend of a friend of a friend I ended up at PolyGram. Back them, it was the beginning of Island Black before all the mergers. I met with an A&R person and played her my material, and the problem was the male urban market at the time. The things that they had, maybe it didn't work, but it was probably not the right label for me. It completely discouraged me, when she told me that this was very crossover and not quite right for them. My influences were more like Babyface and at the time they had Dru Hill and Jodeci, which were quite different from that. She said that doesn't mean I shouldn't be a part of the PolyGram family, and she wanted to set up a meeting for me with Jellybean, but I wasn't really into what his label was doing at the time.
