Interview with Soul Solution

Guy: Not at all. We ended up doing a number of records with Hex and someway or another he would do something that wasn't right, wasn't fair. He did a record with Strictly, had us program it, we agreed to do it together and he told us that he didn't have a deal with [Strictly]. Then our attorney called us up and faxed us over a copy of a contract that Hex had signed, a production agreement with Strictly -- we let that one slide. Then there was a situation with a credit on another mix that he put 'remixed by Hex Hector,' when Ernie and I did the programming on it and we were supposed to have done as a team. There was a series of situations like this. Ernie and I shoot straight from the hip, we don't fuck around and we don't bullshit anybody -- you know exactly how we're feeling at all times. We don't want to associate ourselves with anybody who's not that way. We confronted him about our concerns and he was basically like 'fuck you,' so we decided not to work with him. After that we got Whitney Houston and Tina Turner and all these diva records that we would have done with him and we loved his input but we can't work like that. Maybe he felt slighted or overshadowed by us and didn't want the competition. We wish him all the best and everything but he didn't handle the situation right.

DMA: That [Braxton] mix took a while to jump from clubs to radio. It was #1 on the dance chart for like four weeks or so and then it wasn't until next year that the radio played it. What do you think they were waiting for?
Guy: I think the turning point on that record came in December of that same year (we did it in September). We got a call from LA Reid and Toni Braxton telling us that she was going to be doing part of our mix at the Billboard awards. Toni called us up and told us over the phone how she wanted it edited and we basically took the ballad and edited in the dance track at the end. They were like 'how much do we owe you for this?' and we were like 'get us two plane tickets out to L.A.,' because we wanted to see the show; which they did. Arista didn't know anything about any of this. The day of the show our beepers are going off and the phones are ringing -- Arista's having a fuckin' canary that she's doing this and they were afraid that it was going to destroy her career and that we're never gonna work again because we were involved. Next thing you know she rips off her dress and does it, the media goes berzerk, the phones don't stop ringing at Arista for three days with people trying to get a copy of that edit.
Lake: Then the phone call came in from Arista -- 'you guys are geniuses...' it was just so funny... so typical of big business.

DMA: Do you think this exercise opened up Clive's eyes to dance music?
Guy: I don't think so. I think Clive has always been into dance music. He's a very hip guy, believe it or not. You ask anyone who works there, in their A+R meetings, he'll go from playing a beautiful Kenny G. ballad to playing a Real McCoy dub on 11 and really know what's up. He's a real record guy.
Lake: Although one thing confuses me about Clive. This Deborah Cox thing... the dance mix of "Things Just Ain't The Same" is really huge but the new Deborah Cox album is all R+B. You'd think they'd have at least one or two dance records on there. We had a meeting with him once on an unrelated issue once and he asked us about Deborah and he wanted to know how to make her a pop singer. He loves her, thinks she's a great artist. We were like 'uhhhh... video?' If you took that song and did a video to it you would be surprised how many other R+B would be doing that. All these R+B singers should be doing house records. House comes from black music and they totally ignore that fact.