We Spoke to The-Dream About Having Panties Thrown At Him

The-Dream is that guy. Writer of some of the biggest pop-R&B tracks of the last decades, hugely bolstering the careers of monoliths like Rihanna with "Umbrella", Beyoncé with "Single Ladies", Ciara with "Ride", amongst many others, his talent for writing viscerally sexual and emotionally re-listenable tracks is unrivalled. But what sort of man does it take to create these eternal bangers, with an almost savant-like talent for melody and lyrics? The nicest man ever, it turns out. Terius Nash is a smiling, softly spoken genius, and as I found, lives a life surrounded by candles and flowers.

Noisey: You’ve just come off stage, how was it?

The Dream: Oh, it was nice and provocative and ratchet and nasty…just how I like it!

Is it weird to know that R&B as we know it wouldn’t exist without your input?

I don’t really think about it. I mean, there’s probably no R Kelly, the way we remember R Kelly, if there was no Otis Redding or Sam Cook, you know? Things just trickle down, everything’s a root of something that, like, goes into a tree. Tree drops a seed on the ground and another tree grows, everything is basically the same thing. My grandfather always used to say "there’s nothing new under the sun", so I don’t look at it in those terms but I’m sure I’ve affected a lot.

Cool. So how was the work divided between yourself and Tricky (Stewart)?

Tricky’s basically a producer. I have yet to see him write something lyrically, doesn’t mean that he can’t of course. Usually when we work he’s like the guy at the end of the conveyor belt who makes it sound great.

All your album titles, bar 1977 and IVPlay are love themed - Love King, Money V Love, Love Hate - and all your tracks are highly sexual…

Hyper sexual.

Yes, hyper sexual. Do you find it difficult to separate love from sex?

Definitely, because I think a lot of people at the end of the day, especially women, group them together. A girl has sex and it’s like 'Ah yyyyyeah… I love you!" and you’re like '…what?" So yeah, I group it together 'cos they’re like the main ingredients in life. There’s no life without sex. We’re here because at some point somebody was fuckin’ somebody somewhere. We’re nurtured because somebody loves us, so that’s two things that have to happen in order to produce life; they both have to exist in the same realm.

But why did it take four albums for foreplay to become the centrepiece?

Well IV Play is just a play on words, if you actually listen to the song it says that "I don’t give a fuck about foreplay" so, you’re not listening to the song! Somebody get him outta here! Security!

So you’re not so into it?

Of course, everything you do everyday is foreplay. Unless you just see somebody and y’all just start making out on the floor you know what I mean? It’s not about being "into it". It actually has to exist in order for sex to happen. There’s some type of banter that has to happen. I’m not into the cheesy type of foreplay like, "hey let me put some chocolate on your"…like, you know, it’s more spontaneous than that.

So no candles or rose petals and shit?

Well candles yes, but those are just a part of my life, period. Flowers are always there, so that’s not a part of this thing I’m setting up. Like "hey, I’m gonna have sex tonight, lemme get some flowers!" No. There’s always flowers around.

How does it feel knowing generations of children would have been conceived to your music?

Ah man, as long as no one tries to blow up another country or something, and they were conceived while their parents were listening to one of my records then that’s all good. Everyone needs a soundtrack. I don’t know what my mum was listening to.

How often do you get underwear thrown at you?

Not that often any more, 'cos I think now the girls come to the concerts without their panties on.

Any big ones?

Never got any parachutes thrown on stage yet, no.

Will there be more material from Electrik Red in the future?

I don’t know, I mean if they wanna make something they can make something.

So they have to hit you up?

They don’t have to. We’re still friends, we’re still cool. It’s a by-product of what happens in this industry. A lot of people ask for them, ask about them, but those same people didn’t go out and buy the record like they should have, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I made the best album I could make for a female group and nobody bought it.

I heard that R Kelly hangs around Chicago McDonalds just fucking around, can you verify that?

I’ve never even been in the same city as R Kelly! Strangely he’s one of the only people I haven’t met.

No way! Were you disappointed with how Mariah’s Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel performed?

No, not really. When you’re working with artists of that magnitude, each album has to be sold a different way. You can’t sell an R&B album how you’d sell a pop album. You have to go to those places where it’s intimate and go to those venues that you might not want to go to. Mariah singing Memoirs in a venue like this would have been great, but those are things your team has to put together and make it sexy.

OK. Would you ever release all your demos?

When I die I’ll let my kids have ‘em, so they can release them. Hopefully they’ll be worth something.

Great. Will you be back in the UK soon?

I’ll be back here on the 16th, working.

No shows?

Nuh uh, just working.

But you can’t say with whom?

[He smiles and shakes his head]

Shit. Can’t wait.

Follow Joe on Twitter @joebish

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