Courtesy of Funk-U Magazine & P-VIEWS (Continued)
Q : Any release date foreseen?
ROGER TROUTMAN : Well, as soon as I can stop playing Germany, Japan & doing interviews... (laughs) No, I'm just working on it slowly, but Shirley is a dynamic singer.
Q : Now how about Bobby Glover?
ROGER TROUTMAN : Bobby actually is featured on 'Love TKO'. But basically Bobby got to the point where he was getting older & he got tired of all the travelling & he just decided, enough is enough, & he's just staying home raising his kids. He's a football coach. In fact he was a football star when I first met him. So he's gone back to his first love. But I'm planning on bringing Bobby back to work for me cos' he's a great friend & a great singer, very dedicated.
Q : Are you still in touch with Ray Davis?
ROGER TROUTMAN : Yeah. I spoke to Ray in November, & he told me that he had just been diagnosed with a throat cancer. Last I heard he was pretty sick. He was singing with the Temptations for a minute (He had taken Melvin Franklin's place after he passed away at the beginning of 1975). It's just a sad thing. I had to hang up the phone. I didn't want to deal with it. I don't want to think about that.
Q : And then the last ones are Dick Smith, Sugarfoot (from the Ohio Players), & Jesse Rae.
ROGER TROUTMAN : Jesse Rae, I'm just not sure. He kinda like vanished. he did a record with me, we had a lot of fun, it was very interesting. As far as Sugarfoot, I'm talking to Sugarfoot right now cos' I want him to do a cameo appearance on my next record. So Sugarfoot will resurface. As far as his solo carreer, I'm not sure. You can never tell what's gonna happen in this business. And Dick Smith is in Washington D.C . Basically his contract dissolved. But producing takes a lot out of you so after doing all these acts, I just sayed to myself « Stop, that's it, I'm through just for a minute, just let it be. » I just needed to regroup. But what's odd is that lately, in the past couple of years, specially right now, a lot of hip-hop artists have been sampling my music. But quite a few have come to the realization that what they would want me to do is for me to do some songs for them. For instance there's a group called E-40 in the Bay Area who approached me to start a record from scratch. They had me produce a song for them called 'Scandalous' which is a take off from ' Computer love'. And it seems to be doing pretty good in the US. And that's something I really expect to get back into. I just looked up & I was back into producing rap groups, instead of them sampling me. And the money comes directly to me (laughs). And Dr Dré & Tupac Shakur approached me a couple of months ago about doing a song with them. And it's exploding right now, doing phenomenal in the US, No 1 video on MTV, & I certainly didn't expect that.
Q : That was one of our questions. Your involvment with rap, from back in the days with EPMD. Any future plans?
ROGER TROUTMAN : Well this is news, you're really gonna be the first ones to print this, because this deal I'm gonna tell ya about, just closed a few days ago. Let me do some history first. I also did a song with Snoop Doggy Dog. Snoop has a group called LBC (Long Beach Crew). I did a couple of songs with them. Then I was approached by Martin Lawrence & these movie producers who were doing a movie called 'Thin line between love & hate', & they wanted me to do a song. So I did a song called 'Chocolate City'.
Q : Is this the Parliament song?
ROGER TROUTMAN : No, nothing to do with Parliament. It's the name of a club in the movie. Then they asked me to do the cover song with a group called H-Town. So I did a remake of 'Thin line between love & hate' with H-Town & Shirley Murdock. And that's just been released in the States, & I understand that it 's only been out a week & it's selling like mad, so it seems like it's gonna be a big hit. And once I did these two songs, the producers asked me to score the whole movie. You know the dramatic parts & stuff... (He starts singing) which is a great challenge. And we just finished that, & Martin Lawrence is very happy with that. So that was the history of what's happening now. What I just did is I put together a deal with Warner Bros. Where I'm gonna do another Greatest hits album, but, it will feature 4 new songs & then the H-Town song will be on this record, probably 'California love' from Tupac also, & the LBC song will be there too. Also there'll be a snippet of everything that I scored. So it'll be kind of a unique thing that you can only get when buying this record with four new songs. We have a lot of hopes. It'll probably have the long versions of 'Do it Roger', 'Grapevine...', some little extras thrown in as incentives. And think about it I may also put some of this stuff too. (He's talking about the CD-Single from the 1976 LP on Soulciety that Genius brought with him) I am also going to do two or three jazz selections on this album Greatest Hits No2. So it'll have a wide variety, which is a good idea, what do you think?!