When Dres was working to get signed, he and Mista Lawnge of Black Sheep were planning several meetings. “One of the meetings was with this guy named Lyor Cohen,” he recalls during an appearance at Take it Personal.
“He’s paying us not attention,” he remembers. “It’s almost like we’re not there…He’s like, ‘I don’t have time for this shit. I’m not gonna be able to listen to this until July.’ It’s March. I was like, ‘You don’t need this demo, then. We’ll be signed by then.'”
The next day, Cohen called Dres’ home saying a limousine was on its way to pick him up. Def Jam wanted to sign them. When Dres asked if he had listened to the music, Cohen said he’s only heard that it’s “phenomenal.” Dres asked Cohen to turn the limo around, rejecting the deal. “At the end of the day, you have to pick your shots,” he says.
Black Sheep would go on to release 1991’s A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing and 1994’s Non-Fiction. Their debut would spawn the group’s most successful hit, “The Choice Is Yours (Revisited).”
Cohen is an industry executive who has worked with Def Jam, Warner Music Group and who recently launched his new imprint, 300.
During the interview, Dres also talks about an early interaction with Rakim and how this made him quit a job he held for only a day. Dres says he was the office manager at a studio and Rakim happened to be working on music there. Rakim came out of a session and asked Dres for a lighter. Dres says he quit that same day. “That’s not how I wanted Rakim to know me,” he recalls.
RELATED: TIMELESS: Dres Revisits Black Sheep’s “A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing”
I was pumped to write about how this nigga older than the Bible, but then I read the article. Shit’s real. Fuck the Jew nigga that treated Dres like that. Much respect to Dres because that’s some real shit he did.
Big ups to this brother Dres is a real man
Saw Dres tryin to sell mixtapes (not cd’s, actual tapes) at a college homecoming in North Carolina, shit tripped me out, I bought a tape and it was garbage
I remember that shit. It was A&T homecoming.
Only fags worry about another man’s age.
“I started 5 play, she said that she would cum. I said it wasnt 4 play, because I used my thumb”
That line right there, made this kid loose his mind when he heard it. Dres was always slick with the words
Rakim will most remember him for providing the soundtrack for hamsters in a car commercial.