James Fauntleroy

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2:11Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval. Terms apply. James Fauntleroy is one of the most prolific pop songwriters of the last 15 years. Some of his most prized placements include songs written for Beyonce, Rihanna, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars, and so many others. He's also contributed background vocals to songs by Travis Scott, Jay-Z, and his longtime friend, the late Nipsey Hussle. Similar to his music industry idol and mentor, Babyface, James Fauntleroy is also an artist in his own right. His own songs that are best described as a really innovative take on alt-R &B have lived on streaming platforms for the last decade.

2:56But in December, he finally released his first official debut album, The Warmest Winter Ever, a Christmas album that's put through the Fauntleroy filter. On today's episode, I talk to James Fauntleroy about why he decided to drop his debut album well over a decade into his career. He also explains how hundreds of his songs were stolen and posted online by international hackers, and why he considers both Weird Al Yankovic and John Mayer among some of his biggest musical influences. This is Broken Record, liner notes for the digital age. I'm Justin Richman. Here's my conversation with James Fauntleroy.

3:37What's up, man? How you doing, man? Good to meet you. Yeah, you too. What's up? Yeah, my first album came out today. Your album? I know, man. Come on, dog. This is it. So that's nice. And then my first, the last album I put out was not my album, but it got nominated. I mean, I'm sure you know that. Yeah, the EP with Terrace. That's right. so I'm going to sing one of those songs today. You nervous about it? No, I, uh, it's hard for me to feel nervousness. I've always been like that. It's hard to feel nervousness and also excitement. Like, since a kid, even. Yeah. I don't know. I've always been like that.

4:14I've always just been like, fuck it. Getting on stages and talking and doing speeches and whatever. If you don't feel you have nervousness, how do you deal with not that you've experienced a lot of it but how do you deal with any even small level of not even failure i guess it's something not going right experienced a exponential amounts of failure rejection disappointment because that's music business it sounds like good podcast stuff but um i think that it helps in that sense because you have to be some type of insane to continue to do anything after you've been told no 700 times for me i've only recently gotten to the point of where i was just fuck it you know what i mean like i i people used to say that like you know what i mean like or even that cat williams bit back in the day of just you know you need a little fuck it in your system well that's probably because a lot of artists and have like tough lives so my life was so rough before i started doing this i didn't even know this was a thing you could do man so before the music industry your life was tough it was crazy it was crazy on multiple levels when you look back what do you what do you see i see somebody that ended up being really super lucky just general luck but also the luck of being exposed to different identities and possibilities so yesterday i met with the department of corrections which was funny because the first because i'm doing a pilot program for like juvenile probation uh kids and shit and the lady was like just so you know these kids are dangerous and i just started laughing because i was like lady i'm dangerous

6:02i'm not scared of these kids you know i know what what their lives are like i know why they because i had the same experience it was like all d's and f's for the entire time i was in school which is so funny because i'm such i'm so such an intellectual that it's almost like you know what i mean like i you damn near self-identify as a nerd right like oh not not damn near i mean i'm wearing a pokemon diamond chain yeah but yeah i've been uh 3d modeling for 10 years i'm i'm always trying to get people to watch cs50 that's harvard's free computer science course on youtube i'm a serious serious nerd but i just happened to be born in um you know wild environment at a wild time like the height of when i was born was the year crack was born yeah you know what i mean and so my my father who i don't know he was um he was military intelligence when you finish military with that level job you can get a good corporate job so he got hired at Xerox corporate, where he was taking money out of the safe to buy cocaine.

7:06And people didn't know that crack turns you into a zombie. So when he ran out of money, obviously he got fired. They caught him. So he couldn't put the money back fast enough. And he started smoking crack to take the edge off. And then boom, that's a crackhead. How old were you? When he was strung out, I was three. So I don't have any memory of it either. When my dad was a crackhead, my first cousin was a heroin addict. I grew up in all these extreme, like, just hood environments, losing friends, gun violence from childhood to my adulthood. Because Nipsey was one of my best friends. So, like, I mean, one of my friends died last year still.

7:44So it's still like that, even though it's nowhere near what it was when the murder rate was, like, 2 ,000 people. That's what I'm saying. When things like Nipsey happen now, man, it's almost, for me, it feels like, I'm like, damn, are we bad? It feels like because there was a time obviously where it was much more, it was happening much more often. But so it feels, I hate to say, like a throwback almost sometimes still when we're losing people. The problem's not fixed. You know, if you work on the symptoms and not the cause, then the disease is not gone. So the cause of the environment, a low socioeconomic environment is something that we're not allowed to actually talk about or address under the social contract of human life.

8:30So until we can do that, which is going to take, you know, probably another couple hundred years, then the issue is not going to change. Evolution is slow. I didn't know we were doing the podcast. I wouldn't have been talking about it. You want to take that out? We can take it out. No, no, no. It's cool. It's up to you, man. We'll see when we wrap it up. You let me know, man. All right, so let's start. Hey, what's up? We're going to put our masks on now. What's up? Hey. What's up, man? How you doing? Hey, good. How are you doing, man? Yeah, man.

9:05Congratulations on your debut album. Thank you so much, man. It's a wild thing to have a debut album almost 20 years into your career. it's like a young buck thing yeah man yeah bro it's i think it's time i think we're in a era that it's hard to um keep that age stigma you know existing in the internet era because it's it's just obviously not real anymore this project that you put out the warmest winter ever been out to some degree in a couple different iterations years yeah majority of it so first time in 2014 first batch of songs released in 2014 then 20 2016 yeah yeah why did you decide to compile those and drop those now it's a gift you know what i mean like uh i haven't identified as an artist for this my entire career for a bunch of different reasons but from the very beginning till now like uh let's say i had a thousand fans when i started off but like 10 of the fans were some of the biggest artists on the planet earth and they were finding my music either from me working in a session or someone telling them about it and then going on YouTube where I had hundreds of songs uploaded.

10:20And especially at that time, I uploaded exactly zero of those songs. They were all hacked. Who was putting them up? There were hackers from Germany, from Paris, from Russia. They would contact me and tell me like, I remember one time, I think it was a German german or french hacker but he found my aim this aim at the time and he uh he sent me a picture of like 200 songs and was like these hundred these are all stolen he was like these hundred i'm i'm posting but this hundred over here i really like these i'm gonna hold on to these just so i can listen to them so shout out to the hackers because they really um they were the my first digital marketing team how did these hackers know about you like what was um basically the hustle was which a lot of music business people don't even know this because they're not computer people and I've always been a serious serious computer man I knew that hackers were going to be stealing people's songs before it happened because I know how I know how it works like how they stole it and so basically I'm not going to say who it was but a prominent music business person sent out a mass email one time and they didn't know how to use blind carving copies so they put every the email of almost everybody I'd ever met in the music business was in this one email and I remember seeing it and i was like knowing what i know about hacking i was like this is not this is not good because the wrong person gets their hands on all these emails this is in the beginning of my career and i was like and was someone trying to help you essentially was that no no he just was sending out like a blast about an artist it was like yo i got a new artist everybody look at this but he put almost everybody's music uh in the music business email in this thing and i was like this is just not smart to have everybody's emails in one place like this this is the purpose of blind carving copy and shortly after that people started receiving these it's called phishing which now is a more known term but sure enough phishing emails started going out of people you know like cloning industry emails and saying yo did you get this file and they still do that to this day but basically what they what you're able to do especially the further you go back in time the the less security you had to deal with in emails and so they were tricking them into giving you their username or not the username their password then when you can go in the email and set up a attachment filter and have it forwarded to another email so basically they were going in all the anr's executives producers everybody's email setting up attachment filters to forward all attachments to their emails and then their incentive for doing this was they were uploading all these leaks to websites where like music fans would go and then they were getting money from the ads on the website wow so they're cleaning up i was on those websites i'm sure i'm sure i was on those websites yeah so think about it when you went to them old websites in the early 2000s or mid 2000s they were covered in ads bro crazy yeah so the hackers were cleaning up but they also a lot of these guys which if you think about it makes sense because a hacker is someone that sits in front of a computer all day so they love music you know what i mean so like because they're listening to music while they're doing their various hack things i love that it's not all it's not it's not only commercial concerns also like these hundred songs i'm gonna keep no they're like and and a friend of mine got an email that of a hacker that was like we want all of your james fontleroy usher uh i forgot who the other people were but they were it was like uh he was like we're coming for your shit we know you got them usher songs we coming to get that shit and so what end up happening is they putting all they're putting all these songs on youtube also so they can get ad revenue and now my small fan base which includes some of these huge celebrities are able to go on youtube and listen to my songs and other writers and go on youtube and listen to a hundred of my songs and so that that really had a big impact on me getting work and having something to support the word of mouth but also giving like hundreds um of writers like just hundreds of songs to study my style so that was a part of my style becoming kind of proliferating around right ubiquitous in the you know r &b sector so you were just making these songs like uh your own personal songs and i was trying to get placements you're trying to get yeah so when i got my first placement or a song on someone's album it was on katherine mcphee's album and i don't remember the name of the song but i was so excited because you know like just getting one song placed is a miracle and the guy was big at the time yeah yeah it was popping i was i was happy um and the guy one of the guys that worked at the publishing company came to me and he was keeping track of like everybody's songs because that was part of his job and he gave me a spreadsheet and was like i want you to see this and showed me that i had written or started 300 songs before my first placement so like a lot of those songs were in were the ones that people are sending to a and r's and stuff trying to shop them which is so funny because i have almost no i have like 500 releases and i think one came from shopping it of all those 500 songs the other hundreds of songs came from people just finding my personal music and becoming fans and to answer this extremely long answer your question why i wanted to do this now is because over the years my super small fan base has grown to a bigger small fan base of people that are really so supportive and and just you know like giving me so much energy especially when i'm i'm the music i've been releasing over the years is really just you know like to satisfy create my creative you know desire or whatever just wanting to to be able to release things that i don't have to think about all the parameters that come with working with superstars even though i also love parameters because they force you to do something different yeah and so why i'm putting the album out now is i just can't take it anymore i want to let the fans and people that listen to my music in the community and at large know that i I appreciate all the support by putting some energy into it.

16:37And then also I want to update these niggas because, you know, like so many people study me. And then also it's because I've already seen a lot of people talking about like, why is James' first album a Christmas album? Actually, today I saw a tweet. Don't steal my question, bro. Well, no, today I saw a tweet that said, James Fondleroy's debut album being a Christmas album is such a James Fondleroy thing to do. and I was like mission accomplished so what's your question why is your first album a Christmas album well part of it there's a couple answers one is like because these songs have been out for so long I have I've had a lot of time to see what people like or not you know and I get a lot of responses about this Christmas music throughout the year and four years like so I know people like it and I know people listen to it not only in Christmas but creatively it's just um it's a fun way to stretch my imagination because like like for instance I did an album one time that people don't even know is is it's uh seven songs on the project and each one of them is referencing a one of the days of creation in the bible and you know like I did that because I was studying philosophy at the time but also because it's just fun when you give yourself new you know almost every song is about the same like three or four things yeah and i told you i wrote 300 songs before my first one so you can imagine that was almost 20 years ago how many i've written up to this point and you start running out of shit to say and do and like how do you how do i make this fun it's like coming up with something new to to challenge myself and pull something new out of myself and i'm still i feel like i still haven't had which is going to sound crazy i can feeling right now but I feel like I still haven't had the success I'm trying to get well but it's funny because you but you're working in two different like you like you could judge your success a couple different ways like obviously working as a writer producer you've had just about as much success as one could have hope to have as a writer producer right but then there is this like thing of you as an artist and it's like you know now when I go to look for James Fauntleroy on Apple Music or Spotify or whatever it's not just you on featured on whatever it's like an actual body of work from you that i can so it's like this other thing probably keeps things fun for you man to like keep yourself challenged and motivated i gotta think of something because the music business is not fun so like what do you mean by that it's terrible i mean like you know every movie about the music business is terrible like the temptations that's the one i always use but i just showed my kids that temptation yeah you got to stay off of drugs.

19:18Yeah, you got it shown. Because it's like we're selling an intangible product, you know? Yeah. And so, like, it's a breeding ground for con men and, you know, like, people who are unscrupulous because it's a great environment to hustle, you know? So, like, that's really one of my life goals is to prove that you can be successful without being a piece of shit and fucking people over left and right and, you know, like, doing fair business and do you find yourself in the in wanting to practice less predatory sort of business practices do you do you find that like people try to screw you over every day absolutely and do you think people are trying to screw you over more because necessarily they see that as maybe a weakness and you're not trying to hustle people i think they're just on autopilot um just doing whatever they can just trying stuff like the raptors in jurassic park when they're like hitting the electric fence that's what these guys are just like testing every fence they get come in contact with and i wish it would be nice if people would you know like consider that before i got to this latest person that's trying to take advantage of me how many people i had to get through to get to this point it would be nice if they would just but i can't be mad i you know i've been to vegas i played roulette once it was it was really i was like i get it you get it yeah man you know you you win one time and it just hooks you so every time somebody every time i see anyone do anything crazy or say anything crazy my first thought is oh they got away with that shit before and that's why they think they could do that so it's really the it's the business that's not fun yeah the the music that can also lose its its excitement for a number of different reasons but yeah it's it's the business and just human life like i study philosophy so extensively like i spoke at the philosophical research society i think that was this year wow what'd you speak on um this one was about a famous philosophical text called the secret teachings of all ages by um manly p hall who founded the philosophical research society and my first talk there was like a decade ago and that was on NPR and I just found the footage because I feel like people think I'm lying when I say that shit but I got evidence now it was on NPR yeah I did it with NPR and now I had um college professors like nerd for real bro I gotta say you did it it's like I did it on NPR no one believed me yeah it was for Rihanna songs you're like pulling up NPR footage yes bro damn well how'd you get into philosophy going broke i would tell people when you lose all your money that's when you really start looking for god right in that moment you start praying and shit was this after you had some money yeah man um you know i haven't met a person yet that didn't blow their first million dollars and most people i know are have also blown their last million dollars so it's just uh that's another part of the predatory environment that makes it hard to enjoy is like uh you know like in sports for instance they have preferred um business management um and regulatory boards and they have all these things that have come into place to protect the young athletes mentorship system it's a whole thing to address that because they realize that the quality of life the players are experiencing has an impact on the product versus in our industry there's none of that there's no regulatory board so So people can do any deal that you will sign with no oversight.

22:56There's no even like industry of what the term business manager implies. So like the biggest firms that are typical and the biggest entertainers that are going to like what you would consider like music firms, what they're getting is a CPA. That's an accountant. So the accountant is like paying your bills, typically on auto pay, calling the credit card company when your car doesn't work in Rome or whatever. But what business manager implies is that they're going to manage your business. So what you're actually looking for is wealth management. Somebody that's going to, you know, come up with a plan for your money so that you can build wealth and budgeting and whatever.

23:34Versus, I mean, my last business manager I had, you know, I would call and say, hey, can I afford this? They'd be like, hell yeah, buy two. You know what I mean? And that actually was not the truth. And so. Was that a good thing? No, it was a terrible thing. Oh, okay. Sounds like great news to me. Why, too? I wish. Yeah, because that's not real. You know what I mean? Because basically what they're doing is banking on the fact that you'll just always have income. Yeah. And that's not how we get. We rarely get paid, especially if you're a songwriter. That's a whole other conversation because producers at least get fees.

24:11And a songwriter as big as I am, I get fees sometimes, but that's not what we're all expecting that I'm not going to get a fee. You know what I mean? Right. And so for a songwriter, it's even harder because you just don't have any way to get paid except for your publishing events, which is based on your ability to have hit songs. Yeah. Which is something you also can't control. Right. You know what I mean? After a quick break, we'll be back with more of my interview with James Fauntleroy. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

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25:29And with seamless coverage from the world's largest satellite-to-mobile constellation, your whole team can text and stay updated even when they're off the grid. That's your business, Supercharged. Learn more at supermobile.com. Seamless coverage with compatible devices in most outdoor areas in the U.S. where you can see the sky. Best network based on analysis by Ukla of Speedtest Intelligence Data 1H 2025. This episode of Broken Record is brought to you by Chase Sapphire Reserve. Everybody loves to travel, right? We can get away as a once-in-a-lifetime vacation, all of it. And no matter where you're going, Chase Sapphire Reserve is your gateway to the world's most captivating destinations.

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27:34It's just like doing my eyes closed. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing. Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back with more from James Fauntleroy. your name's always been a gold standard in terms of so you i know you're saying you're not babe ruth you can't call hits and that's true but you've had an overwhelming amount of great songs written with great artists over you know now damn near 20 years how have you been able to retain that level of creativity and well a hit song is that's something you buy you know what i mean like a hit song is not a sound it's a element of a marketing campaign that costs a certain amount of money so when people are when i hear like an amateur like i got my new single coming out i'm like no you don't have any money you're putting a song out that's what that's called a single that's the money it's a budget behind it that's what a single is and so that's why i'm like i i I can't call a hit because that depends on what people respond to, but more importantly, how much money people are spending on it.

29:10Now, what I can say is that I have really good taste. And why I have so much confidence in my taste is because although some of it is inherent or whatever, but for the most part, it's not about that. We have evidence of what works. We have Stevie Wonder. We have Prince. We have Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. We got Babyface. We got Diane Warren. We got all these people. And it's really our job as modern creators to try to comprehend not how to do what they did, but what worked. You know, I had an argument with him. He's a really big executive now at the time. He was a big executive. I had an argument with this guy one time because he was telling me that my songs were too complex, which he was right.

29:56But he was like, it was crazy, too, because he was asking me to work for this artist. And I was like, no. And then he was like, come on, work with the artist. And I was like, no. So then he said he wanted to have a meeting with me. Then he calls me in the meeting, and the whole meeting is him telling me why my songs won't be hit songs. And so this is the early part of my career. So I'm sitting here. Also, at the time, my manager was there, and my poor manager didn't know what my personality was like. Because growing up in the environment I grew up in, I knew in these kind of situations. In Inglewood.

30:29Yeah, the less they know the better. So I'm just like, he'll be managing me for like almost two years and he didn't know that. I was like, I am. So I'm sitting here listening to this guy who just, I told no twice, tell me why my songs will never be hits. And I'm like, I feel the pressure rising up that I'm about to let this guy have it. And I'm like, oh no, my manager knows this is going to happen. and so even though i haven't i've never yelled at anyone in the music business but and i have theories on why people feel like i'm yelling at them when i'm talking calmly because i sounded just like this when i'm talking to this guy but after i let him say all this ridiculous shit i was like man with all due respect like if you take the number one songs from any period like the last year the last 10 years last 30 years um they're different tempos different topics different genres different looking people none of those factors are the thing is something else that they have in common that i know that you don't know and so for you to sit here and tell me that i don't know how to write his song is absolutely ridiculous nobody knows you know but of the two of us yeah yeah you know more than him he was like you're absolutely right i hope he hears the shit and that's just the truth so like how i have there's two things i'm thinking about i'm measuring the quality of my music and the quality of the writing and melodies and all this stuff against these greats that I listed so I'm like I'm not looking at what people right now are doing I'm looking at the people that already proved to us oh because this is another thing I tell people all the time every generation thinks their music is the best right man when I was young it was so good I think that too now even though I know what I'm about to tell you right now oh and also people are always like you got to make music simple because everybody's stupid right And so I tell people all the time, one, people have always been stupid.

32:23Day one, the first human to the last is going to be an abundance of idiots. So when Stevie Wonder was putting out music, people were just as dumb as they were now. And then further, when I think about all these different people that I'm talking about, the other element of what makes people like songs is like, yes, I'm comparing myself quality-wise to all these greats but what i'm really trying to do with the song is turn a consumer into a believer you know what i mean like that's in good music yeah like something that connects you with the person because i'm always telling people which this is funny because i have i've seen i just saw an interview of somebody saying the opposite of what i'm about to say but art is it's it's already cathartic you know what i mean when you're when you make a piece of art you're you're using your experience to to make it even bad arts cathartic right everything but the value of it the part that people are paying you money for it's not about your catharsis it has nothing to do with you so like my my secret or my my what i'm thinking about is you know there's the quality part i told you about but my my intent is to make something that connects the listener because of the level of service this song is providing in their lives and so you know there's different venues there's barbecues there's the car there's the club a great example i always tell people because for whatever reason people think i only listen to classical music and shit whenever i tell people i listen i listen i listen i'm listening i just started listening classical right i do listen to classical music but i love all kinds of stuff so i always tell people a great example of a song that is of extreme like levels of use is back that ass up right oh my god because we'll we'll use that song till the end of time tell me please break it down yeah like mariah carey the christmas song back that ass up you know there's just like a couple songs that we consider classics oh yeah and i just remember my other point was that people always think music is so good from their era but the the fact is we stop playing the shit that's not of use we stop playing the things that aren't good anymore that's real man yeah so a lot of the a lot of the because that's the thing there'll be there'll be certain sounds that i like when i'm listening to them at the time i get real tired of real fast and i can't listen to any of it 10 years later 15 years later when all like the weakest versions of of that style have kind of gone away and you only have the the the cream is risen and it's like oh wait why did i love this shit actually why didn't i why didn't i not listen to it it's like oh because that's that's how it works yeah the ones that are impactful and and also that's good that's great you said it like that because like it's also the ones that really capture the sound the best yes you know like from the ratchet era we have rack city and loyal yeah those two songs are gonna be the representatives of that genre in 20 years yeah even though there is and there's a couple more i thought that era was great in this time though i gotta be honest i don't know it was great so yeah there's like probably five six seven maybe even ten of them songs it was a thousand that came out yeah um but same thing for new the new jack sound same thing for yeah yeah new jack was tough with it like in the growing up with new jack was it was just everywhere and it kind of it got old for me at the time but going back you're like yo i don't know man the best certain ones that we we always gonna play them.

35:53Yeah. And so that's my goal is like to, to make something like that. Something that is so useful. You have a really unique sound though, man. I know, man. Well, it was unique in the beginning. Yeah, but I feel like it still is. Like, I feel like listening even to this record, like it's clear, like people make music more like you now, but there's still something in you doing it and in your songs and in you performing them that make them sound original still, you know, and unique, but maybe we can talk about your songwriting. Your structure is very different than most songwriters' structure. Were you trying to play with form, or was it just like, that's just how you heard it?

36:37No, it's very intentional. When I started, there were writers I really admired, that I was trying my best to write songs just like everybody else. Who might have that have been? Well, my biggest, right at the time I actually got signed, underdogs who i actually ended up getting signed to wow where they were um kind of like redefining r &b at that time so i was really like studying their music hard and it was kind of copying it unbelievable i couldn't copy because i didn't know how you know what i mean but like it was certain little things that i was like i like this i like that but then i ended up going there and being trained in that style so much so that it was like and don't do it any other way either so that was another like part of the development but when i got there people were telling me even though brandy is one of the best singers ever and really foundational to my sound and everything also even like the people she wrote with i consider them like leshawn daniels for instance i consider them to be huge influences on my writing but being the kind of person i am i don't want to hear that shit all day i don't want to hear people telling me i sound like brandy all the time because i'm like Like, what are you saying?

37:49You know? So I really sat up there for like, and I'm still doing it to this day. Like, I'm really like, I was like, I want my own sound. It would never not have Brandy in it. You know, like, I think even while I was consciously developing my sound, that's when I discovered Imaging Heap. And, you know, like the 80s in general are big. you know I think that was when when humanity really started nailing down what pop music really could be and so that's a big part of her style I can hear too but when I heard Imogen Heap it was like okay this is what I'm trying to do you know that makes sense because you got that real like the soulfulness of a brandy but those weird sounds that you might hear in Imogen Heap and the productions are big like eight like like the best of babies I'm from the hood too you know I'm saying But also that's another funny thing about the hood experience is like gangsters love music, man Like I was getting a great, you know, I was learning a lot about me I think the first person to really my mom was the first person to try to convince me that Prince was somebody I should get into But it was really like a bunch of thugs that was riding around blasting Prince out of lowriders I was like, let me check this up.

39:05I remember my dad trying to put me on to DJ quick by telling me He's the Prince of hip-hop He's just like Prince. He was right. He was Like Rhythmalism is one of the best albums I ever heard in my whole entire life. Hands down, including every type of music I've ever heard. That's like top five albums for me. That's amazing stuff, man. I rarely talk about Dave Hollister as an influence, but that was a big influence. And he's doing like soul gospel kind of singing. And I was really getting into that. Michael Franks is a big influence. until the least people I come in contact with are familiar with Michael Franks.

39:43But I also know some ghetto people. I'm not the only one in the hood, Mr. Franks, that listens to your music. But I just had all these different influences. And basically, there's two things. One, singing and writing is night and day skills. They don't go together. Most of the big writers that have ever lived were not great singers. Most of the great singers I know about were not great writers. So those are two different things I had to study. You know, like my story of my singing style is a different path. But you wanted to have both. You wanted to have singing and songwriting. Yeah, I didn't have a choice.

40:19You know, you can't choose if you can sing or not. You know what I mean? So I just happened to be able to sing. But I love books and I'm a nerd. So I'm into words and tone and writing. And like I was already an avid reader. You know what I mean? So I already was interested in the process of writing, like literary writing. But as far as songwriting, before I started really writing songs, my favorite writer was probably Weird Al. Every song I wrote, including my first song, I wrote period. My first song was a joke because that's what writing was to me. I didn't know it was a job. So the only things I ever wrote were parodies, like the Hot Boys.

41:02I wrote a song called Hot Breath when I was in high school. How did that go? It was just a hot breath, a hot breath. Ha, ha. I remember writing the verses out and everything, because I love Weird Al. We're going to pause for another quick break, and then we'll be back with more from James Fauntleroy. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal. T-Mobile knows all about that. They're now the best network, according to the experts at Oocla Speedtest, and they're using that network to launch Supermobile, the first and only business plan to combine intelligent performance, built-in security, and seamless satellite coverage.

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44:15I can do it with my eyes closed. I'm Manny. I'm Noah. This is Devin. And on our new show, No Such Thing, we get to the bottom of questions like these. Join us as we talk to the leading expert on overconfidence. Those who lack expertise, lack the expertise they need to recognize that they lack expertise. And then as we try the whole thing out for real. Wait, what? Oh, that's the runway. I'm looking at this thing, see? Listen to No Such Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. we're back with the rest of my conversation with james fontleroy when did songwriting become a thing you knew that you could do like as a as a career like when did that become like i want to do this well it was when i found out you could get paid you know i seen somebody pull up in a nice car with a nice outfit on and nice this and that and i was like what's up what's going on over here and so that's when i found out because i was at a publisher's i was at universal's publishing studio they had a recording studio and i had actually been there before singing a demo for somebody right before i actually had my first like writing session there and i just had no idea about what publishing was or publishing deals and admin and all this stuff so when i found out what it was i got on the internet and i researched it so thoroughly that when i got my first terrible deal i told my lawyer i was like yo this is bad right he was like i don't know the hell you think you are you need to sign that shit right now so i actually had to make a decision on the spot i was like do i want to take this bad deal and get the opportunities which i don't suggest other people do that but it ended up working up working out for me because it was worth it yeah it did it was worth just getting your foot in the door absolutely it doesn't always work like that i've seen the majority of people in those situations they end up so dejected that they they can't function after they realize because everybody has this moment where you realize you um you signed something that wasn't in your your best interest and i remember one time talking to my publisher about it even though i knew the deal was fucked up when i got it but i remember talking to my publisher about it and i was like why did you think i've said this to several people in the business i said why do you think this is okay that's a great question you know what i mean and the typical answer is this is how it happened to me this is how it's done which is actually what what made me want to start the school and get into education and all this other stuff i got going on but my publisher was like well we didn't know you and i was like what and so i always since then i've been like two things one if you do better business and it turns out bad then you know at least you did your best if you do good business and it turns out well then you just exponentially multiply what you can do with that person and if you just want to be a criminal you know no judgment but rob them in in the end not in the beginning you idiot at least build up some good will why are you so dumb if you really think this person is worth robbing yeah why would you steal them their money when they have 150 000 versus when they have 15 million you're crazy yeah yeah so that that's for all you criminals out there that's a free one do you think the music industry is fixable no i don't i don't think it's fixable at all i think um it's just business you know what i mean like the music part is it's it's not even important and and that's evident in the fact that we haven't had any new superstars really for the last decade and it's solely because that's not in the best interest of the machine it's how do you feel i mean i'll say as a just as a person who's a fan of music, the fact that there's have been no true superstars built over the last built or put out or come out or come about over the last decade.

48:11It's a drag, man. It is, man. And basically, it's just it just takes time because the internet has been rearranging everything since it popped off. Because basically right now, like, you know, you have internet fame, which doesn't translate into international market and right now the label systems have territory partners that they can make an act a global priority meaning like you know their partners in different territories will open up budgets to to market that person in different territories which then creates a global superstar yeah and so i think that the way the internet is is closing all these bridges and gaps you're going to start having people who are recreating the environment without the need of that system and so the labels are aware and they've they've figured out a lot of really smart um like i'm not angry at the labels like i always hear my collaborators especially all of us because all of us however much money we have left we're making millions of dollars you know what i mean so like yeah i don't have emotions about it i just also feel like music's better when there's a strong label system but it's all but it like oh yeah they don't feel any sense of responsibility to the the art which i do so that's a big part of everything i'm doing is like i feel because all the people that came before me had such an impact on me that i could go from zero to traveling the world and having money and doing all this i'm like who's going to do that for the next people so that's why i'm like really working hard to to fill in that gap and really trying to support and work with other people that feel like that which is almost every collaborator i had that people name when they name who i worked with it's a bunch of people who are also really concerned with preserving the art you know like bruno is one of the best examples like every superstar though like all the people that are on my list of people that i worked with one thing i noticed they all have in common is they're all like music historians every single one of them.