Yamaha All Access issue 6
Biography
Mississippi Delta roots. West Coast gangsta rap. Heart land rock and roll.
You'd have a difficult time finding those three styles in one section of a record store, let alone in one man. But the three streams flow together in the person of rapper/singer/songwriter/producer/multiinstrumentalist Moe-Z M.D. Who else can claim to have worked with hip-hop legend Tupac, funk acts like the legendary Morris Day and rock acts like, rock n roll hall of fame member, John Mellencamp and the Wallflowers?
Moe-Z was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the epicenter of the Delta blues tradition. He started singing before entering grade school and learned to play several instruments not long after. "Then," recalls Moe-Z, "my pops saw that my sister and I had some talent, so he decided to move us out to California."
The transplanted youngster came of age in parallel with West Coast hip-hop. Snoop Dogg was one of his early musical acquaintances, and Moe-Z became part of the circle of rappers, musicians, and producers who contributed to Tupac's landmark 1995 album, Me Against the World. Moe-Z also wrote songs for New Edition and sang backup for Phillip Bailey and Earth, Wind and Fire.
Moe-Z remembers his role on Me Against the World, now universally regarded as one of hip-hop's most significant discs: "I was a producer. Some people think that in hip-hop that just means the guy who makes the beats. I did do that-I'd make the music, send Tupac the tracks, and he'd write to them in the studio. But I was also responsible for hiring musicians, booking the studio, and talking to the people at the record label. I was in control of the way everything sounded."
Not long after, Moe-Z's publisher learned that Mellencamp was looking for someone who could add beat loops to his music. "He was trying to get hold of Dr. Dre," recounts Moe-Z, "but my publisher said I'd be perfect. Mellencamp was impressed, and this began a six year stay."
Moe-Z says the transition wasn't as big a leap as it might seem. "Switching over to being a member of John's band was actually pretty easy," he says. "I grew up with all styles of music. I've been surrounded by gospel, hip-hop, jazz, pop, R&B, and rock all my life."
Has that mixed-bag background helped Moe-Z distinguish himself as a performer, songwriter, and producer? "Absolutely," he says. "It stretched my creativity. Having more genres to draw from lets me mix things that might not have been heard together before. I like to surprise people that way. For example, right now I'm working on a hip-hop track with banjo. People hear it and say, 'What?!'"
The Mellencamp stint led directly to Moe-Z's current gig with the Wallflowers. "I was already a fan when they opened for Mellencamp, and then they became fans of me," says Moe-Z. "I played keys and percussion and sang on their tour, and loved every minute of it."
Moe-Z's main instrument these days is a Yamaha Motif music production synthesizer. "Oh man," he says, "I just love that keyboard! It's incredible for writing on the road. It's a total workstation - you don't even need a separate drum machine. It has a great mix of old and new sounds. You can play, sample and program whole tracks all within one box. It's easy to use, too. I've barely even looked at the manual. I've been able to learn almost everything by feel and common sense."
How does Moe-Z - who also plays drums, bass, guitar, sax, flute, and trumpet - rate the onboard instrumental sounds? "Some of them are so close to the real thing, it's incredible," he says. "I recently recorded some tracks using the guitar sounds, and if you didn't watch me play them on the Motif, you'd swear I was really playing guitar. The keyboard sounds are also very realistic, especially the electric pianos and organs. The bass sounds are great, too-there are uprights, fat roundwound tones, deep drum-machine-type basses, and DX7 sounds from back in the day. There's even a patch called 'Snoop Bass,' which sounds exactly like Snoop Dogg's synth-bass sound."
Moe-Z plans to include the new Motif tracks on his upcoming solo debut. He promises that the as-yet-untitled disc will be as unpredictable as his career: "There are lots of surprises. For example, I might sing over the sort of track that you'd expect a rap on, or rap over a smooth track. I've never wanted to do exactly the same thing as someone else, because when you copy another sound, you diminish the meaning of your music. So I just do what makes me happy."
Moe Z leaving the Studio
Moe Z holding several of his platium albums
Moe Z and John Mellecamp
Bringing a flair all his own to the stage
Hype Magazine
Experience the magic of Moe Z's music
The Production Of A Legend: The Moe Z MD Story
Legendary Producer Moe Z MD (@MoeZMD) chopped it up with The Hype Magazine about numerous topics including Prince’s style of music influencing his own writing styles and vocals infused with funk. He speaks on a rare unreleased remix of Prince’s “Halls of Desire” which he did for Tevin Campbell and the effect that Prince’s passing had on him.
He takes us through his humble beginnings at Antioch Baptist Church in Long Beach California, where he honed his skills on several instruments favoring the Drums. He learned lessons from Earth Wind and Fire’s attitude towards music and people and remains very humble since his days as a backup singer for the group. About EW&F Moe says, “Maurice White’s production of the group and how they did vocals shaped me as a producer and everything had to make sense.” Moe also reminisced on working with Radio and beatboxing against Snoop at an early battle between Snoop and another artist.
Moe has also worked with everyone from New Edition, Morris Day, to Michael Jackson and he shows no signs of slowing down.
We covered his early recording days with Tupac Shakur and the pain he felt when Pac was shot and when he was killed. Moe delves into how he secured work and tours with John Cougar Mellencamp even though Dr .Dre was John’s first thought when reaching out to a producer from the Hip Hop community. Moe is so much more than a Hip Hop producer as he has crossed genres his whole career, but when you’ve worked with the best in Hip Hop, we as a culture take notice of that and we salute you.
How did you come up with the name Moe Z MD?
I was about 14 or 15 and I really started listening to Prince and he had a drummer at the time name Bobby Z and I said you know what, I can be in Prince’s band and I’ll be Moe Z and also Prince also had a name he used when he was producing. He would call himself Jamie Star so I took the star and I made Moe Z Star and that’s what I was known us for a while
How did Prince’s passing affect you?
It was real hard for me because for a lot of my early life music that I did was patterned off of the funk Prince did with his vocals and even his writing style. It was a real big influence musically in that way and it was like my brother that I grew up with passed away. I saw his growth throughout the years and followed him and I followed his struggles in his ups and downs so it was like a family member died it was really hard. I actually had a chance to do a remix for a song he did with Tevin Campbell which is called “Halls Of Desire” and I did the remix but they never used the single but I got a chance to get involved with something that he was involved in early in my career and that was pretty cool.
How did you get started as a musician? Was it by ear?
Yeah actually we would go to Antioch Baptist Church and the musicians that they had were very inspiring and they made me want to do what they were doing so at first I watch the drummer, his name was Mike Withers. I watched him play and I used to be on the floor with my sticks trying to mimic him but everybody else was so good to so I wanted to be everybody and my Daddy got my sister a little toy piano and I started messing around with it and I tried to play everything that came on TV commercials, little pieces of shows and I developed my ears so I started being able to follow along with things. I started making sense out of it and I just applied that to each instrument. It’s the same theories just different fingers and I love the drums the most because you have the most responsibility because everybody’s following you and it’s a challenge and that’s the instrument that I love the most that I have the most fun playing.
What did you learn from touring with Earth Wind and Fire early in your career that you still carry with you till this day?
Earth, Wind and Fire I would definitely say it’s an attitude towards music and towards people. They were real humble but very smart musically and that was the impact it had when I saw them and when I was able to go and sing with them it was like watching them in their element live. They had so many hits that it kind of made it important for me to write songs that would last more than just the time period that it’s in. When I really started paying attention to Earth, Wind and Fire I was older and it had been songs from the 70s and now I’m in the 80s and understanding it and I’m getting more in tune with it and I was really seeing what they were doing and I was approaching it from a different standpoint so I think really just listening to Maurice White’s production of the group, analyzing that and how they did the vocals just really shaped me as a producer. Those are the things I look for in all songs. I look for continuity and for things to make sense, not just random instruments or random vocals, everything had to really make you listen back to it. It’s a pattern. It’s more thought than normal.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O97BXHF19N8]What was it like working with Radio which led up to you meeting and working with Tupac?
I met Radio of course in Long Beach and we were kids and we were young and the day that I met him he was beatboxing for Snoop in front of the high school and Snoop’s battling one of my homeboys and I was beatboxing for him and it’s like the mid 80s [Imitating Buffy from the Fat Boys] and Radio was awesome at scratching without a microphone and it was loud and the beats that he was doing was like, what!? That’s why they called him Radio because he could make sounds that were incredible He was the second one out of Long Beach to get a record deal and that was with Interscope and that was before Snoop and those guys got signed and originally my guy Keith Clark, who was one of my mentors was producing the project and they were having some issues so he asked me if I wanted to do some stuff so I hooked up with Radio and we made up a bunch of stuff that was like some gangsta stuff but then Snoop came and signed with Interscope and his gangsta stuff had gotten bigger and bigger and they had tried to make us make Radio sound more like Heavy D and eventually they wanted us to go back and revamp stuff as the gangster stuff got bigger. So we revamped it and did more gangster stuff and by this time to Pac and everybody had signed. Tupac was in John McClain’s office because that was Radios A & R was and Pac was like, “Who is that?” He was listening to the music so John told him who I was and at the time I had been producing but the things I had done were with Pop music so now this is Rap and I had escaped from Pop and this was my first professional rap thing so Tupac wanted me to do three remixes, one was “From The Cradle To The Grave,” “Running From The Police,” and “Lord Knows.” So I flip those trucks and I didn’t do too much to “Running From The Police” but I did some stuff to it and actually had Radio on the hook doing some rasta and they sent the tapes to Tupac and by the weekend he had gotten the cassette and asked me to send him some beats overnight. So I put some beats on there and he chose one but I didn’t know which one it was but by that following week I was in New York, they flew me out there to record it and that’s when he told me that “From The Cradle To The Grave” was going to be on the radio and they were going to make it for single. It was originally an R&B song that I had for someone that had returned it because they couldn’t do anything with it, so we spent like an hour just trying to get to all of my files together and Tupac finally played the cassette and I was like oh that’s an R&B song and Pac said, “Well it’s a rap now nigga,” so we start laying it down and by the time I finished it they had all written something to it, It was Tupac & Tha Outlawz but at the time they were called Young Niggaz and they were really young, I think the oldest one was Edi and he was 17 and the rest of the guys were younger than that and Pac was like respect Moe Z and he was really rough on them and everything so we recorded the song I came back to California and they told me he was going to use one of the remixes that I did on the album and it turned out to be “Lord Knows” and Tony Pizarro had a version and they kind of blended the two make that particular version of “Lord knows.” Then we took a break for about six months. I guess Tupac was going through whatever he was going through and he came to California in September and then it was on. I had never recorded that much. I’m a person that records every day, mostly all day since I was 10 years old, ever since I figured out how to record from tape to tape before I knew about multitrack but Pac wore me out because I had never recorded like that from overnight into the next night but I got used to it and after that we were cranking them out.
When John Cougar Mellencamp’s people originally tried reaching out to Dr. Dre for some drum loops how did you get that gig instead of Dre?
I think it was his manager who was actually making the calls called my publisher and my publish of course said no, you don’t need Dr. Dre you need Moe Z. So my publisher calls me and says “hey how would you like to produce Johnny Cougar?” and I was like that’s great, so now I’m leaving Hip Hop and going into Rock which is something that I knew I could do and I had the chance to prove myself and another genre which is now the fourth genre that I’ve had to prove myself in so I flew all my equipment out to Indiana to John’s studio and he said listen, “I got Raphael Saadiq out here to do some stuff and I wanted him to do some drum loops but he really ended up just playing Bass on a couple of songs. I got Junior Vasquez who is Madonna’s producer to do some stuff. I just want to see what you can do and this is the last song on the album let’s just see what you can do.” It reminded me of cradle to the grave because that was the last song on Pac’s album and he said, “Why did you bring all of this stuff,?” and I said I was told I was producing you and he got a hearty laugh out of that and he said, “No I produce myself, I just need some drum loops so let me see what you can do,” so he starts playing the song on the Acoustic Guitar and everybody’s around figuring out what we’re going to do and I got my headphones on so they can’t hear what I’m doing but I can hear what they’re doing so I’m throwing in samples of the D.O.C. and I’m scratching and I had the turntable so I went hard on it and we laid out a few tracks and he said, “What else you got?” So I started laying down different parts like the Organ and while that was playing back I was singing background, like mumbling background parts to what he was doing and he was like, “Ohh put that in there,” and 10 minutes later I’m stacking vocals and going hard and he says, “Moe that’s really good. I like what you did there, what do you think about touring with the band?” and I said okay. They had to get used to me because I came in from Eastside Long Beach shit and it was a culture shock for me and for them and we had to get used to each other but we did that pretty quick because I understood the music. With jumping genres as long as you understand the music and you put your heart into it people are going to feel it
How did u feel the 1st time that you heard that Pac had gotten shot?
Ohhh That was really rough. I was at the house and I was actually writing something for Radio’s album and he had left and said he was going to come back and we were going to do some more work. About a week or so before that I had been in the studio with Pac talking with him and my sister about the case that he was going through and he was about to go to court for it and he was telling us what was happening and so we were already charged up. I was supposed to go to that session and record but because I was recording Radio I couldn’t do it and so I remember just being on the floor after we had gotten in from the studio and I was writing and it was on the news that he had gotten shot in the studio and I’m like I was supposed to be there I’m glad I didn’t go but at the same time I felt bad because I wasn’t there to be there for him and by the time we had developed a brother kind of relationship and I would page them to go to the studio in the morning to make sure that we all got and things like that. After he got shot it just change the course of everything then we tried to keep working when he went to jail and we even tried to get a vocal of his on the phone when he was in jail and we couldn’t get it so that was the last time I heard his voice on the phone or in person or anything like that because when he went to jail it was like I want to get out but I can’t help you. I really wanted to help him and I really wanted to be there but I was struggling it was just really painful you know I couldn’t be there for him.
Where were you at when you heard about the Vegas shooting that he passed away from?
I was on tour with John in London when I heard about it and I had talked to Edi and Hollywood and K Dog I forget what they call him now but I had tried to talk to him when they was at the studio doing the death row thing and I was trying to get in touch with him like you know, what are you doing but they told me Pac didn’t really want to talk and I felt like he was kind of looking out for me because I voiced a strong opinion about not working with Suge Knight. I just didn’t like his personality and he was very rude to me when Dr. Dre introduced me to him. He slapped my hand out the way and he slapped my Dad’s hand out the way, he was just really rude so I had voiced to him that I wasn’t going to be involved with him and he was like, “Dr. Dre’s my favorite producer. I love their whole get down and I want you to get down.” I was like that’s cool but it was really a lot more to it and things just weren’t like you think they were. Pac did have his own label Out The Gutter Records that was on Interscope and he had aspirations of bringing out my label Funk House and some of the artists that I had that were on his album and I saw a bright future and it wasn’t one where we were dealing with Death Row.
What are you working on and what can we expect in 2017 from Moe Z MD?
In 2017 I’m revamping my label Funk House internationally and for the last 10 years I’ve been developing artists and songs and creating the environment and getting the business part straight so that we can operate as an independent but fully functional label taking it to a new dimension I’m still doing my productions. I’ve been working with Lil Half Dead on his album called Dead Serious in 2012 and we’re going to revamp that and bring it out under Snoop’s label. I’ve worked on a song with RBX it’s called “Three Alarm Fire,” and I’ve been working with Bad Azz. I’ve been doing stuff with him. I’ve got a new project that I’m right in the middle of with Morris Day and that’s going to be a fun album. We did a dedication song to Prince on there so I wrote and produced the majority of it, 8 out of 10 songs and with that I’m just having fun with the production in keeping along with the legacy of working with these legends. In08 and 09 I was part of Michael Jackson’s camp as a producer. I can’t really talk too much about that [Laughs] but you know it’s just keeping everything going and I also love to give back so I have all these artists that I’m getting back to and bringing them on and they have a lot of diverse energy. I can’t name them all because there’s too many to name but I’m working in a lot of different genres. Gospel, Rock, Alternative Rock, three different styles of Rap and R&B and it’s not age-specific it’s about the talent. I’m trying to take it back to where it used to be, it’s about the talent but I’m going to promote it like it’s a new day.
Give some final words to the young producers and artists coming up today?
When you’re chasing your dreams if you’re really focused on what you’re doing and you want to pursue that don’t let anyone stop you from doing that.
Second, make sure that you have your business straight in all aspects and if you don’t know what all the business is, find out and ask questions because you don’t want anyone to be able to take your money from you.
Third, do what you do from the heart and just be humble with it because it’s all about the best quality of what we can do and don’t settle because if we settle we don’t get out of it what we need to get
.https://www.thehypemagazine.com/2016/08/the-production-of-a-legend-the-moe-z-md-story/
How the Legendary Indiana Songwriter and the California R&B
John Mellencamp has spent a career reinventing his music. He has come out with songs that have touched many genres including rock-n-roll, country, folk, blues, soul and even a touch of hip-hop. John has always done a great job of surrounding himself with talented musicians and producers who could take his vision, and help him develop it and make it a reality. When MOE Z MD joined the band in the mid ‘90’s, Mellencamp fans were in for a treat with both studio recordings and live performances. MOE left his mark on John’s music on such albums as ‘Mr. Happy Go Lucky,’ ‘Rough Harvest,’ ‘John Mellencamp,’ and ‘Cuttin’ Heads.’
Live performances included hyped up fresh versions of old classics such as “Lonely Ol’ Night,” “Crumblin’ Down,” and “Pink Houses.” MOE Z MD used his outstanding vocal range as well as his diverse and wide range of musical and studio knowledge to help John during that period. This article takes a look back at that time and talks with the man who ignited a spark into songs that have been played for years as well as new creative music being heard by Mellencamp fans for the first time.
How MOE Z MD and John Mellencamp Crossed Paths
“I had been producing Tupac Shakur, and John was looking for Dr. Dre. He had called his manager Harry Sandler, who hooked up with my publisher Larry Robinson, and he asked him how to get in touch with Dr. Dre. Larry was like, why do you want to get in touch with Dr. Dre for John Mellencamp? “He explained that John was doing a new thing and was wanting to hook up with Dre and try to create this vibe. Larry explained that it was going to cost a ton of money, Dre gets like a million a song,” he explained. Robinson told Sandler that he knew of a guy who was real hot producer and in fact, had learned some stuff from Dre, and has some of the same styles. Sandler said that sounded good and wanted to talk to him.
“So My publisher asked me if I wanted to produce John. So I’m thinking okay, I’m going to go out there and take all my instruments and do like I normally do producing. So when I get there and meet John and the band and we sit down and he’s telling me what he wants me to do. He saying he wants me to create a drum loop to go into this song, which was “This May Not Be The End Of The World” (off of the ‘Mr. Happy Go Lucky’ album). “He tells me to create a loop and that he wants something really cool, that goes with the song “Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First),” MOE explains. Raphael Saadiq from Toni Toni Toni came in before to do the same thing but ended up just playing bass on the song. “He said he wanted to see what I could do.” MOE played organ on the song and said that Babyface ended up producing it. On the ‘John Mellencamp’ album, MOE’s sister Keila did the Vox on “Days Of Farewell.”
“He asked me why I brought all this stuff with me and I explained that they told me he wanted me to produce him. He started laughing and got a good laugh out of it. So he said ‘let’s see what you can do with it’ and we started putting this song together, started playing it. We separated it and starting coming up with things we thought would go well with it. I’m in the corner with my drum machine and keyboards. They are playing guitars, and we’re just creating vibe. So they started recording parts and I started laying my stuff down and added extra things, keyboards and samples and scratches and stuff. I added background vocals as well. He was like ‘wow man, this came out great. Let’s just mix it and see where it goes from here.
“He was like, what would you think about going on tour with us, and I was like, ‘yeah, I would love to, I’m cool with it.’ I didn’t hear from him for like six months, and I figured awe, he isn’t going to do it. Then they hit me up and say alright we’re going on tour in two months and we need to fly you in for rehearsal. I was like whoa…life is changing for me. Rehearsals were like three weeks long and every day.
Rehearsals went well for MOE Z MD and the band. He has a lot of background in many musical genres and was able to incorporate new and different things into many of John’s songs that had been played for so many years before. One of Mellencamp’s hits from the 80’s that fans noticed MOE on immediately during the live shows was “Lonely Ol’ Night” for John’s 1985 ‘Scarecrow’ album. MOE’s contributions to the live version of that song nearly a decade later gave the song new life with background vocals that he added. “A lot of Mellencamp’s songs that I was familiar with, Patty (Peterson) and Crystal (Taliafero)…and even Mike Wanchic’s vocals were real instrumental in what the vibe was. So when I caught the vibe, I really caught what they were doing, and my voice was higher, so I was able to sing stuff that Mike sang when he was young and he couldn’t do it anymore,” he explained. He said that John loved it because he could hit the high notes, but he felt a couple times in the beginning that Pat Peterson might have been a little frustrated by it. “I wasn’t trying to take her part on anything because she was the queen,” he said with a laugh.
MOE talked about the creating process on John’s 1999 self titled ‘John Mellencamp’ album. “It was interesting because he had the songs, but we (the band members) would like do our own perspective on them. We would sit in the corner and think about how we would approach putting stuff on it. He let us be a little more creative on it, and even write stuff on it. Andy (York) wrote a song, Toby wrote a song and I wrote a song on there too,” he said. MOE Z MD has writing credits along with Mellencamp and George Green on the song “Break Me Off Some” off that album. “He was letting us experiment with different sounds. Dane (Clark) and I went into the studio by ourselves for like a week just to create beats and he would write songs over them. Or he would give us songs and we would put stuff to it. The thing that sticks with me is from the time I got there until the time I left, which was a six year period, the range of albums and changes in sound were incredible. In fact, we did ‘The Best That I Could Do’ and ‘Rough Harvest’ back to back within like three weeks of each other. They were completely different. We even had to dress different. When we did ‘Rough Harvest’ we would have to come to the studio in suits every day. They would take pictures. You know how the Beatles would have always have cool pictures and stuff. We would have to do that. There were always little challenges and things to keep us interested.
MOE Z MD was with Mellencamp from 1996 to 2002, which covered the ‘Mr. Happy Go Lucky’ album through ‘Cuttin’ Heads’ albums, with ‘The Best That I Could Do’, ‘John Mellencamp’, and ‘Rough Harvest’ in between. “After I left the band I even came back and played on “Walk Tall” and Babyface played organ on that. He was cool about that. Whenever he worked with cool people he would bring me in. I thought that was really cool,” he said.
“It’s funny because my main background element isn’t really hip hop, but it’s funk. So Jon E. Gee and I were like kindred spirits because he loves funk and I do to. I was able to adapt to different styles though. I grew up playing gospel and I even played a little rock. I had a funk band, and then I started producing pop music. I learned hip hop on a dare. I have a friend who raps and he asked me if I could do something for him, and I was able to do it,” he explained. But with his background being so diverse musically, MOE explains that this is why he’s not a huge hip hop fan. “There is a lot of hip hop I love, but I love so much other music,” he added.
He plays drums, bass, guitar, keyboards, saxophone and trumpet. He has had the opportunity to sing background for Earth, Wind & Fire, and on Phillip Bailey’s solo gospel album. He has also worked with gospel singer Edwin Hawkins.
He said he doesn’t really prefer one part of the music over the other. When it comes to performing live, producing in the studio or engineering, he said he loves them all the same. “No matter what project I’m involved in, I’m always listening and helping correct parts. I listen to every instrument to make sure everything is flowing in the right direction. I enjoy all that stuff and I have the ability to excel in it. People tend to listen to me,” he said.
While with Mellencamp, he said his favorite song he worked on with John and the band was “This May Not Be The End Of The World” off of the ‘Mr. Happy Go Lucky’ album. It was mainly because of the energy. The energy changed after that. After Kenny (Aronoff) left the band we had to get Dane, and the whole energy just changed and the studio was more tense because it was like, trying to establish Dane’s sound and trying to get away from Kenny’s sound,” he explained. “We didn’t want it to sound mousy either. So it was kind of tense.
MOE’s last tour with Mellencamp was the ‘Cuttin’ Heads’ tour. The Wallflowers opened for John and the band on that tour. “So while they were opening up for us, they were also recording demos for their album ‘Red Letter Days’. I used to hang out with them, and do harmony parts with them and sing background parts for their demos. They took it to the record label and they wanted me to sing on the album. I came out and sang on the album, and then they asked me to go on tour.” He was with the Wallflowers for about eight or nine months.
Working with Tupac Shakur
Tupac had listened to what we had done in the studio and said ‘whoa, who’s that,’ and they told him it was MOE Z MD. He said they called him up and told him they wanted him to come down and do remixes on three cuts. They had the vocals on there and just wanted him to change the music. “So I did that, and I did this song “From The Cradle To The Grave.”” He said they did it on a Friday, and they gave it to Tupac on a Monday, and they told me they wanted me to be in the studio in New York on Wednesday. It was like that fast,” he said. MOE got there to work on a song called “Outlaw.” “The day I met him he came in the studio and he was pumped up and he was like, ‘man that song is so hot, I’m going to make that the album version, not a remix, because I love it,” he said. He explained that the problem was the contract listed what MOE did as a remix, and not the album track, so he didn’t get the publishing money for it. “That hook was my hook and I made the music. Then on the album credits it says that it was produced by Tupac and Syke, and noted that it was mixed by MOE Z.
“To me he was real creative lyrically. We worked together on how the hooks should go. We just worked close together. Sometimes I would beat him to the studio in the mornings and he would call and say ‘what’s up MOE Z, I stayed out too late last night, and I’d be like ‘ah come on, we’re already in the studio, you can make it.’ We were real close like that. I was one of his favorite producers,” he explained.
MOE said that he was devastated when Tupac died. “I was in Germany with John (on tour). The first time he got shot and didn’t die, I was supposed to be at that studio session and didn’t make it because I had another session I had to be at out here in L.A. He didn’t die, so when he got shot again, I just figured he wasn’t going to die. And so, it was devastating to find out that he really did. And that’s all he talked about when I was with him. He talked about dying, and how this world and all this stuff that in the world was…(bad). He was just real down. There was nothing uplifting. He got to where he was just talking about death. ‘I see death around the corner’ and all that stuff. MOE Z said he thinks Tupac knew he probably wasn’t going to live to be an old man.
“There was one time when we were recording. He had people in the other room that were artists. He was getting his facial scar made for the movie Gridlock. So he was working on shooting a movie at the same time he was working in a recording studio with three different producers in three different studios.”
“He would go until he couldn’t go anymore, then he would sleep, and then he’d wake up and go. That was his life. He wasn’t going to the clubs. Sometimes he would stay up drinking, but he really wouldn’t go anywhere.”
MOE Z MD spends a lot of time producing and creating hooks for artists. He does play out live at three different churches in Long Beach.
He actually is mentioned on a Snoop Dogg song “Take Me.” Snoop actually talks in the beginning of it me a shout out, referring to me as Moe Z Starr.
How Did The Name Come About?
When asked how MOE Z MD came about, he explained that MOE came from Maurice. “My dad just called me that out of the blue one day, he said ‘he Moe’ and I was like ‘Oh wow.’ I was a real big Prince fan right after my Michael Jackson phase, and Prince had a drummer in his band called Bobby Z. I thought, if I was in Prince’s band I could be MOE Z. When Prince would produce other people he would go by Jamie Starr. So that turned into MOE Z STARR. Somebody asked me once what the Z stood for and before I could answer somebody said Mozart. I’m like ‘hmmm, yeah, Mozart.’ As time goes on I meet Dr. Dre and he’s working on the ‘All In The Same Game’ record that came out in 1988 or sometime. I was in the studio with him going ‘Dr. Dre, man, I want to be a doctor.’ He looked at me and said, ‘MOE Z MD’ and I said ‘well there we go, and I’ve kept it ever since…Moezartt the Madd Dr.”
Meeting Michael Jackson
MOE had the opportunity to meet Michael Jackson. “Michael Jackson actually hired me to be one of his producers for his album he was about to work on after the ‘This Is It’ tour. So I was writing songs for a whole year, sending him demos and everything. One day I’m going to Church’s Chicken and I hear (on the radio) that Michael Jackson died. I’m like ‘oh my God.’ This was my comeback and he died,” he said.
“I’m doing a lot of things musically right now. I’m working with a lot of up and coming artists and have artists that have been out there like OG Domino, a rapper from Long Beach. In the early 90’s he was one of the pioneers with Snoop and all those guys. So I worked on an album with him, but it’s a gospel album. So he’s coming from a different perspective on that. It’s really good to because it’s not like your regular gospel album, it sounds like the street (musically) but what he’s talking about…you’re like ‘alright, that’s cool.’” Moe is playing on the album along with producing it and engineering it. The CD is titled ‘Get It Right’ and should be out soon.
