Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis

Bullseye with Jesse Thorn

NPR

Society & Culture

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2021

⏱️ 65 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have been working together for 40 years, producing some of the biggest R&B records of all time. In their four decades of working together, the fedora-wearing giants of R&B music have written and produced over 40 top-ten hits. They've worked with Prince, Babyface, Usher, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson and more — the list goes on and on. All that producing hadn't left them a lot of time to write songs of their own, but lucky for us, that's changed. This past July they released their first ever album as recording artists. It's called "Jam & Lewis, Volume 1," and it sure was worth the wait. It features vocals from a bunch of their collaborators: Mary J. Blige, Boys II Men, Morris Day and more. The music legends join Bullseye to talk about the new album, the hits they contributed vocals to, and the jaw-dropping synthesizer work they do on the Janet Jackson single "Love Will Never Do."

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.
0:13.8	It's Bullseye, I'm Jesse Thorn.
0:22.3	Before we get into my interview with my guests, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, I want to kick
0:27.0	things off with a song.
0:40.3	That record is Dream Street by Janet Jackson.
0:43.5	It's a single from her 1984 album of the same name.
0:48.3	It's a solid 80s, dancey, new, wavy song.
0:52.9	But if you aren't familiar with it, I understand.
0:56.9	Janet Jackson is a pretty unique artist and Dream Street doesn't exactly sound like
1:03.0	a Janet Jackson song, if you know what I mean.
1:06.7	Compare that though to her next single.
1:09.9	What have you done for me lately?
1:11.3	What have you done for me lately?
1:34.2	Or the one after that, nasty.
1:36.7	Get me a beat!
2:04.2	Now those are Janet Jackson songs, right?
2:07.6	They both come from 1986's Control.
2:11.3	Control was a departure for Janet.
2:13.7	She'd stopped working with her father and brought on two guys from Minneapolis as producers
2:18.6	and songwriters, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis.
2:22.6	And Control was a hit.
2:25.2	It went platinum five times over.
	...

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