In 2002, Dutch producer Nicolay shared his beats on the Okayplayer message board. Phonte, one half of the prolific rap duo Little Brother, was impressed with what he heard and reached out to collaborate. Their intercontinental alliance resulted in Connected, the debut album from their group Foreign Exchange, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last weekend. The 17-song album is lauded as one of the first prominent examples of an MC singing as well as exploring multiple genres on a singular project. While new school hip-hop fans credit Kanye’s 808s & Heartbreaks or Drake’s So Far Gone as the genesis of artists rapping and singing on a project, those in the know point to Phonte — including Drake himself.
Phonte and Nicolay’s genre-bending laid the blueprint for soulful, eclectic projects to follow, shirking convention on tracks like “Be Alright,” “Sincere,” and “Happiness,” where Phonte rhymes and croons over Nicolay’s buoyant, atmospheric production. The project’s depictions of the highs and lows of romance harken to the album title as much as the duo’s remote means of communication did. Collaborators like singers YahZarah, Darien Brockington, and rapper Big Pooh have a notable presence on Connected, which was initially planned as a Little Brother album before Pooh decided to pursue Sleepers, a solo project more in step with his sonic preferences. That decision was fateful, as Foreign Exchange has since dropped six projects and become a respected act across genres.
Phonte, Nicolay, Big Pooh, YahZarah, Darien Brockington, and Little Brother’s former manager Big Dho shared their memories of creating Connected with Rolling Stone, from the difficulties of sharing files in the days before high-speed internet to realizing each others’ genius, to finally meeting in person in “anticlimactic” fashion.
Nicolay, one half of Foreign Exchange: I had at that point in my life more or less given up on the dream of being a musician, at the very least a professional musician. I’d always played in bands in the Netherlands. [I] really enjoyed that, but it was hard to make a living. And it was clear that unless you were picked up by a label it would just be “impossible.”
I’d gotten a job at a call center just to provide for myself. And the call center life struck me as so monotonous, and not interesting that I started making music in the nighttime. I started producing beats because that was something that I could do on my own. It wasn’t something that I needed a band for. I liked not even so much hip hop production at that time, but making tracks at nighttime with a computer that I could do on my own. And at the very first stage of that, I wouldn’t even save them. I would just spend hours making beats, and then I would turn the computer off. I didn’t even have a concept of saving them and keeping them.
But after a year or so, I was like, “Well, some of these are kind of cool.” About a year into making this music at night, I felt interested in obtaining some feedback from people that I thought would tell me honestly if this was a lane worth pursuing. I had good friends and they were all into what I was doing. But I was looking for a perspective from people within the culture.
I put a beat up on Okayplayer, on the forums, and that later turned out to “Be Alright.” It was one of the first beats I’d ever done. The response was so positive that it floored me a little bit. I had more or less expected constructive criticism: “Keep at it,” or, “You might need to do this or that.” But the response was really positive. And one of the people that loved that track was Phonte. So there’s a legendary moment where he sent me a direct message, and the screenshot of that direct message is included in the Little Brother documentary that came out last year. He was like, “Yo, I love this track. I don’t know what kind of plans you have with them, but me and Little Brother would love to bless them.” I jumped at the opportunity.
The idea was to do a Little Brother and Nicolay EP together. But Big Pooh, the other rapper in Little Brother, wasn’t super into the musical direction that we were taking. He’s a more hard boom-bap kind of guy. At that point, the decision was made that he would do a solo album, and Phonte would do this as a side project. Because at that point The Listening had come out to much acclaim.
Phonte, one half of Foreign Exchange: Pooh was like, man, “I’m going to let you do it. I want to do something else. This is all pretty shit, man. This ain’t me.”
Big Pooh, Little Brother member: The first three tracks we did, “Happiness,” “Nic’s Groove,” “Let’s Move,” was dope. But I think the next track Phonte played for me ended up being “Be Alright.” I loved the beat. But at that point in my career, I was just like, “This is going somewhere that I’m not prepared to go to.” And I’ve always been one of them people, even early in my career, [who] can acknowledge [when] a beat is super dope, but isn’t for me and somebody else would make it a better song.
Phonte: I heard the first batch of “Sincere,” “Be All Right,” “Let’s Move,” “Happiness.” But then he kept coming with more. And that’s when I was like, I think we got something for a full length.
DJ Shadow’s Science Fiction had all these guest artists on it. It opens with a Kool G Rap song, and it ends with a Thom Yorke song. And all that shit is bangin’. I was like “Yeah, I want to do that,” because I’m a Kool G Rap fan and I’m a Thom Yorke fan, but where do those sounds meet sonically? When I heard Nic’s beats, that’s kind of what it was. Connected was almost a tribute to Science Fiction. I was like, okay, I think I found a guy who I can pull this kind of thing off with. [He] had several genres at his command. He wasn’t afraid to take a chance, and he wasn’t afraid to dip his toe in other genres.
Nicolay: [Making some of the beats for Connected] was entering the hip-hop realm. I’d always played in [soul and funk] bands, so I had the foundation. And I was a huge fan of hip-hop, but I am not a traditional beatmaker or even a DJ. As an instrumentalist, I didn’t initially see myself having a contribution. Then I started hearing stuff like the Roots, who were a hybrid of production and instruments, and even Slum Village, and Common’s Like Water For Chocolate. All that made me realize, “Okay, there’s a more musical string of hip-hop that I could potentially contribute to.”
Darien Brockington, singer: Nicolay’s time signatures were so progressive to me. They were unpredictable but they had so much soul. It had a drive. He would use time signatures and fuse it inside a very soulful piece where you’d have jazz fusion with soul music with alternative vibes all at the same time sitting at one seat. And the crazy thing about it is, when you heard it, it made you want to sing. It made you want to create.
Phonte: [My peers] were excited [when I told them about the project]. They was like, “Yo, this is dope.” There was some sense of amazement, but it was just at the music. It wasn’t so much the technology aspect of it, but just the aspect of, it was a white dude from overseas making these beats? This shit cold.
Nicolay: I was in the Netherlands, he was in North Carolina, and there was no way to do anything in person. That was never even on the table. We started collaborating digitally but never realized that it was a big deal. We were just like, “Hey, you’re there, I’m here.” I just had bought some web space that could host my music, so I had to send him links to MP3s, and he would record the vocals over there, and then send them back to me.
YahZarah, singer: I had lost my voice for eight months due to my touring schedule with the label I was on. I had a pile-up on my vocal cord and cyst, and I could only talk with flashcards and text messages. While I was talking to [Phonte] about it, I was also debating on whether I was going to leave music at the time or leave Durham. And he was like, “Wait, girl. Don’t leave. I’m about to do something amazing.” And that’s when he started talking about Connected. He was like, “Hey, I’m exchanging tracks with this cat in the Netherlands.” I wasn’t shocked because he’s always had his finger on the pulse of whatever was next.
Brockington: It was through Pooh that all of this started for me. I was working at a bank and Pooh was like, “Hey bro, what’s going on? You still doing music?” I’m like, “Yeah. I’m trying to do a little something,” not realizing that they’re Little Brother. I know them from school; I don’t know that all of this stuff had happened [for their careers] at this point. He’s like, “Yeah, I’m working on this project [Sleepers], would love to have you on it. You should roll through.” The song is “My Mind.” He let Te hear that and Te was like, “Bet.” And that’s how I got the call to come and work on Connected.
Phonte: Up until that point, we were working on LB stuff in the same room together. You write your verse, and then you go spit it. Brothers give it the yay or nay. [You’re] waiting to come out the booth, see how people faces is looking. [Laughs] With Nic, it was very similar in the sense that I always wanted to present my ideas when they were done. One of my pet peeves was getting judgment on [a song] before it’s completed. I’m like, “Bro, if I finish this song and you think it sucks, fine. But let me complete my idea.” That was what I liked the most about [recording remotely]. It wasn’t weird to me. I would just make a record and then send it to Nick, and we’d be on IM, and I wait for his response. And if I saw a whole bunch of fucking [“shocked” emojis], then alright, I know we got something.
Nicolay: This was all before Gmail, before social media. We depended on instant messenger, and when he had finished his part, he would send me CDRs by regular mail. We didn’t have fast enough internet to exchange high-res files. Once he was done doing his thing, he would send me these CDRs, and then I would take that, and I would do the mixes on my side.
Phonte: We were six hours apart, something like that. I think my best time to catch him would be if I was active in the afternoon. It may be around dinner time for him. Or if it’s like 6:00 in the morning for me, it’s lunchtime for him. He be like, “Yo, you’ve been up all this time?” We would just catch each other when we caught each other. But every time we would catch up. There was always motion.
Nicolay: I didn’t come at him with 20 beats, because I was still very on the beginning stages of my journey. Sometimes I would have two or three that I thought would be dope. Sometimes I would have one, and I’d be like, “Hey, what’d you think of this?” I think the most I ever sent him at once during those days would’ve been four or five.
Phonte: [My studio setup] was the trenches, son. We just had a recorder at the studio that [our former manager] Big Dho [had]. We had a fucking Compaq Presario computer and a Rode NTK. We had this itty bitty preamp that we plugged into. It was a very basic setup, and we were tracking everything in Cool Edit Pro, which became Adobe Audition.
Dho: We went through several spots until Chopp Shop, where we recorded a bunch of other records at. We transitioned to underneath the basement of a dentist’s office. We had the egg crates you put on your bed…I bought four of them. We had some wire hangers and we hooked [the mic] into the drop ceiling. And it was standing in that. It’s like a little box.
Nicolay: We were both in these little bedrooms. Now I have a nice room, I have lava lamps, trying to get the vibes right and shit. At the time it was a very uninspiring bedroom. [There was] a printer on my desk and stuff. It was very much the start of my journey.
Brockington: Studio time might’ve been 8:00 PM. Everybody gonna get there at a good 8:15, or 8:30. We’re going to buy some food. We’re going to eat, we’re gonna have a conversation, we gonna laugh, we gonna be in stitches. You want to know what time we start recording? About 10:00, 11:00 at night. [Laughs] And this is when I was still working. What happened often was, at about 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning when I had nothing left to give because I had to be up at 6:00 to go to work, I would go, “All right, Te. You got it from here.” That’s why sometimes when you hear a lot of the early recordings, you would hear more of Te singing the backgrounds because I was too tired and I would leave.
Darien Brockington: I’m honored and I’m privileged. They could’ve asked anybody to be a part of it but they asked me, and I’m grateful.
Big Dho, Little Brother’s former manager: I almost died in the studio one night recording Connected. This when I was a big guy. I was like 410 pounds at the time. I had got diagnosed with diabetes. I didn’t know because I had it for so long. But I was like, “Oh, I just won’t eat and I’ll be straight.” But I was taking the medicine. [Phonte] was like, “You’re turning grey, yo.” That’s why Khrysis ended up becoming an engineer. [Phonte’s] like, “Yo, I don’t think Dho can handle this studio.” I was still living a different way, but trying to take medicine and not eat and I was just bugged out. That was the end of my engineering for him, because he liked to work at night.
Nicolay: I didn’t know how to sample. At some point, I figured out that I could record CDs and vinyl into my computer, and so at first my sampling was very rudimentary. Then I started learning how to chop a sample, how to divide samples into a molecular level, and then rearrange them. If you hear the first couple of beats they are relatively rudimentary compared to some of the stuff down the line that was more sophisticated. I learned at some point how to introduce my own instruments into the beats, my bass playing, my keyboards. Once I was settled into that, I was finding a hybrid of programmed drums, and samples, whether it be sampled drums or records, and then I would add my own instruments to that.
The [album] intros that I liked at the time would be more on the progressive side. Electric Circus by Common was one of the intros. I was [also] inspired by Reflection Eternal [and] the Roots records. The intro was the mission statement where you make the claim of what the album would be about. I’d found a sample and I thought that would be dope [for] the second part of the intro, the main body of it. And then later I wanted to build it out more and make it more mysterious, if you will. So I came up with that very first sound. It’s like this bat signal that later became our sound logo. Looking back, we’ve started every single record with that sound, but every record it develops in a different way. That was the moment that I came up with it. I had some synthesizers and I was just playing. I thought it could be cool if it started off almost like an alien, a spacey kind of [vibe], indicating that this is not just your average album. When Phonte heard it, he was like, “Yo, that’s it.” And he got with YahZarah, who’s an amazing singer, and she’s almost operatic on that track.
YahZarah: One of the first sessions I recorded after getting my voice back was, [sings], “Thank you for the music, thank you for my life” [on “Foreign Exchange Title Theme”]. [That was] Te’s tender pen and his ability to always hit the nail on the head with me because I was in a state of deep gratitude for getting my voice back.
Phonte: [“Von Sees”] was a note I took from Doggystyle, one of my favorite hip-hop albums, ever. The idea of, this is Snoop’s debut album, and the first real rapper you hear on it is Lady of Rage — I just thought that shit was so dope. So the idea of having Von Pea doing “Von Sees,” it was that. It was like, Von is going to open it up, but then boom, we hit him with “Raw Life” and we get into it.
Nicolay: [Von Pea] came to North Carolina just to hang out. He wanted to see what the fuss was about this scene. Phonte put him in the booth [like], “Here you go.” And he gives his perspective on the scene. The title of “Von Sees” is quite literal. It’s who we are but through his eyes.
I had the idea to connect the two tracks together. I was like, “What if I start gradually slowing the track down at the end until I get to the tempo that “Raw Life” is, so it’s completely seamless?” Once Von is done rapping, the drums keep going [and] slow down to a point where I bring in the “Raw Life” sample. And then we had the idea to fade Phonte in, to make his entrance almost more dramatic. There’s a backwards reverb on his vocal. His first words [are] “Rock to the rhythm back and forth, like a pendulum.” “Rock” is starting almost half a minute before you actually hear it. He comes in right on the first snare hit of “Raw Life.” It was the first time we were having fun with making albums.
Nicolay: Before we ever worked together, I had come to know Phonte as a rapper who would occasionally sing his own hooks. That was interesting to me because I loved R&B. In the mid-90s, I was a big R&B head. When Phonte first sang that hook on “Nic’s Groove,” I was like, “Yo, this is a guy who raps with the rappiest of them.” He’s clearly one of the best rappers of his generation, if not the best. No wonder somebody like Drake will reference him as an influence. It wasn’t just like he sang a hook, but he stacked his vocals in the tradition of Marvin Gaye; he wouldn’t necessarily have other people come in. And that “Nic’s Groove” chorus where he goes, “We just want to chill and let you pop,” it’s like, “Wow, this guy can do both.” At the time it wasn’t a thing yet. So for me, that just meant, “This is the guy. I just know that this is the dude that I am going into the future with.”
Big Dho: [Phonte] is a generational talent. You could speak to numbers, all this other shit, but I don’t know many people that can rap at the level he raps at. Whether you like what he’s saying or not. But he’ll also throw a comedy element into it for niggas. Being able to hear this person’s voice on this thing and write to their style so it sounds like them, even though he’s in the mix. I think he could get in the studio with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis and bang out a hit. He has the ability to smoke nigga’s boots.
YahZarah: [Phonte’s] probably one of the most ingenious musicians of our time. Not all musicians carry instruments. [With] some of them, their minds are amazing musical instruments and Te’s is one of them. I remember when he said to me, “If you ever see me singing on an album, take me out back and shoot me,” something to that effect — I’m paraphrasing. I laughed because I always knew that he was so talented. Because he and I both share this love for ethnomusicology, and the timeline of what makes a great record, and why a record is great is the reason why he’s able to create he does. He doesn’t just sit down and say, “I’m going to make a record.” He studies the greats and people who stay are people who study.
Darien Brockington: You’re talking about a man who has not stepped foot in a class for voice or for composition. This is all just a natural gift. The thing about Te specifically is his ability to know the story that he wants to tell and how well he tells the story. From a lyrical standpoint, I value how his lyrical content alone creates emotion because he knows how to say things in a way that it feels like the inner thoughts of a person as opposed to the words you speak.
Nicolay: I liked [“Sincere”]. I was proud of the music. That was the [beat] that I put on my website that Phonte had told me to take off because he loved it so much. One of Phonte’s great talents is that he can hear instantly what [a beat] has the potential to be. I had become a fan of YahZarah, who I knew was in Phonte’s circle. And then I came to find out that Phonte and YahZarah actually went to school together, and I was like, “Holy shit.” When he started introducing her on some of these tracks, particularly “Sincere.” I was like, “Now we have the potential to go more into the neo-soul realm. So while “Sincere” still has Phonte rapping, it’s really not a hip-hop track. It’s a little faster than a traditional hip-hop track. It’s almost like a traditional soul record. So it gave us the opportunity to show a different side of ours.
YahZarah: When [Phonte] called me to do Connected it was at a wonderful time because I had just signed this horrible record deal. It wasn’t a good fit for me, I’ll say it like that. I wanted to produce [Blackstar] solely with Te and [9th Wonder], my crew, [but] I wasn’t able to get them on the record. One of the songs we recorded for Blackstar was “Sincere.” The label rejected it, and I was like, “These people crazy.” When I wrote “Sincere” with Phonte, he was going through a breakup with his first child’s mother and the words that he wrote were profoundly about the Black man’s experience, feeling like he can’t be a provider and how hard it is touring on the road when you have a spouse that’s not sure about what you’re doing there and doesn’t know how to congratulate it or believe in it. It ended up becoming BBC Song of the Year, which was incredible for us as a group.
Phonte: “Brave New World” was a beat that Nic had for a while, but I didn’t know where to take it lyrically. And life started lifing, as it normally does. I was a young father. My son was two at that time. Me and my son’s mom were young parents and just trying to figure out how to make all that shit work. And so that, “Just to get some benefits, my girl lied to them people downtown” shit was real. That was where I was, and that was a snapshot of things that were on my mind.
Nicolay: What was cool is I got to know him as a person through his lyrics. At first, we didn’t know each other from Adam. We just knew we were fans of each other’s work. That requires a lot of trust. The trust was there from day one. Phonte is a largely autobiographical writer. There’s moments on the album where he talks about the relationship that he was in at the time about being a young father, some of the challenges that he was facing. I would hear these lyrics and I would realize like, “Oh, wow, this guy’s going through X, Y, Z.” I think that was the foundation of a friendship. I [also] learned a lot about America through him. Especially when I was still overseas, that was a very interesting way of working with somebody and being fascinated by the fact that we are coming from completely different backgrounds, but we do have the same value system.
YahZarah: You basically got the entire anthology of Phonte’s love life in all of these Foreign Exchange albums and ours too because we were writing about the things that we were going through, and also our personal adult puberty. Who writes about adult puberty?
Darien Brockington: I feel like the way that [Phonte] approaches [lyricism] is a man’s man’s approach. It’s nice to hear a man talk about things concerning their emotions but in a way that still embodies the strength of a man, even in his most vulnerable spaces.
Nicolay: It took us about close to two years [to finish the album], but it wasn’t continuous, you know what I mean? It was starts and stops.
Big Pooh: I was proud [when I heard the finished product]. I was happy. Phonte and I had a conversation when I decided I was good and he asked for my blessing on him and Nic doing the project and I gave it to him right away. I didn’t have no problem with it. Shit, I told them they should name the album The Foreign Exchange. And that ended up becoming the group name. But the album was dope. I knew that album wouldn’t have became what it became with me still involved because where I like to be musically is different than how [Phonte] hears [music] and where he wants to be musically.
Phonte: BBE was a label in the UK started by this cat, Peter Adarkwah. BBE had did Dilla Welcome 2 Detroit. They did DJ Spinna, they did Pete Rock, Marley Marl, will.i.am. They were killing it with their releases, and they were a reputable label known for putting out good shit. Me and Nick were both fans of them. I can’t remember exactly how we got in touch, but we had a convo with [the head of BBE’s American operation] Eddie B about putting Connected out on BBE. I think me and Nick were both excited just to have a record on BBE and to be in that pantheon of releases.
Brockington: I was working at my nice little bank job at the time. It did not become real [to me] until the project was released and they started to tour the project. That’s when I started to understand who Phonte is, who Pooh is, what this whole Foreign Exchange thing is. It’s all happening at one time. So for me, it was overwhelming and a pleasant surprise, to say the least.
YahZarah: [When I got to the “Sincere” videoshoot], I was like, “Nigga, this is catharsis. You could have warned me before I walked up in here that you were going to tell all our business.” [Laughs.] We were young [when we dated] and Te liked girls — a lot [Laughs]. We understood that despite what we weren’t able to connect on in [a] relationship…I always thought of that video as beautiful closure for the two of us because we made that record and we made that video well after we had been an item.
Big Dho: I remember we was clowning [Phonte onset] for how he threw that goddamn vase [in the “Sincere” music video]. [Laughs] I was like, “Yo, this nigga never played baseball a day in his fucking life.” That was the worst fucking throw ever.
Nicolay: Everything seems so deliberate about it looking back, the group name, the name of the album, it all feels so thought through. And I can’t stress enough that we were flying by the seat of our pants. It looking back seems like such a self-contained thing, but we were just going with the flow. It wasn’t until much later that we realized, “Oh, that was a relatively revolutionary way of making music.”
Phonte: It wasn’t even thought of, “Oh wow, this is new technology, and we’ve never met, and we’re breaking barriers.” No, we’re broke. I’m in North Carolina, he’s in the Netherlands, we have the internet. We were just using the tools that we had at our disposal.
YahZarah: When [Phonte] said he was trading tracks over AOL, everybody thought he was crazy. And those who thought he was crazy are still the same people not doin’ shit. And those who knew he was a master of it, are the ones who are clearly prospering and doing other things in their work.
Big Dho: I was like, “Yo, how do we get this off the ground as Little Brother?” How can we use Little Brother to propel this project? That was the first time I booked a tour. We had a Connected tour and I spearheaded that and we got some sponsors. Little Brother was more of the power play as far as numbers. We did the show like how the album was. We would do some Little Brother shit but then Foreign Exchange would come out. Obviously, Pooh would come out. Do his records with him, and then everything would leave and then some other guys would come out. We was in Willie Nelson’s old bus. It had a reclining spin around chair [that] I stayed in most of the time. Our bus driver’s name was Booty, from Louisiana. He fell asleep driving. He was an older dude. That was probably his last tour.
Nicolay: When I listen to Connected, I hear what could be better. I was still very much learning, and finding out how music works. I hear the influences on the record. I hear me channeling the records that I love. I think I was still finding my own voice. There are things on the record that are truly original. There are things on the record that are borrowed. They do say that great artists borrow. I don’t necessarily have a problem with it, but I was still very much finding my own voice. So for an album to be that revered, it’s interesting because I feel like our later work is better technically, or sometimes musically. But Connected hit people at a time in their lives where it was a formative experience for a lot of people. People were coming out of college, starting young adulthood, pretty much what Phonte talks about on the record.
YahZarah: Nicolay revolutionized sound around that time. There are a lot of Nicolay babies out there who may not admit [it]. He was bravely experimenting with the sounds that he loved. And what I always loved about him is that as an instrumentalist, there was very little sampling in his world. He was seeking out sounds and [to me] he defined the sound of 2005 through 2010. If you look at the music that was coming out from Black folk, all of a sudden we got real adventurous. Things got real electronic again. If you do the timeline, you’ll see what happened with The Foreign Exchange and then all of a sudden, these hip hop artists taking huge chances, more of them singing. There’s a reason why Drake cites Phonte as his favorite musician. There’s a reason why I even venture to say I’m probably a lot of signed singers’ favorite singer as well. Hearing that Justin Timberlake is a YahZarah fan because of the work that we did together collectively…I think that The Foreign Exchange has been shaping sound for the last 20 years.
Brockington: There are songs that I have sent Nic and been like, “Nic, somebody was listening to you.” There are songs that I hear that [I’ll] be like, “Te, the Foreign Exchange definitely has had influence over this particular artist and the way that they approach music, because I’ve heard this before.”
Phonte: I was talking to my friend Rory, him and the younger generation were the ones that helped contextualize Connected and The Foreign Exchange [for me] in a way that I’d never thought of. He was like he might have been 13, 14 [when the album dropped]. He was saying that [it] was one of the first times [he heard] the blend of hip hop and soul, and how that led him down a rabbit hole of just a whole ‘nother thing.
The thing I think me and Pooh and Nick [learned is] when you’re 20 years into the game when you first starting, you’re starting off with your peers. But when you look at 20 years afterward the people that’s going up for us is going to be the generation up under us, because they were listening to these songs when they were children, and it has a different place in their mind.
The legacy of Connected is not going to be written by us. It’s going to be written by those who came after us, and those people who had a real connection to it, for lack of a better word. I was having a conversation with Kaelin Ellis the other day, and he was sharing with me how he came into our music, and how for him and a lot of cats who grew up in church, they couldn’t play [mainstream music], but he could play Foreign Exchange records.
Pooh: I don’t think people acknowledge the impact that album had on future generations of people. It set that tone for somebody people revered coming out the gate as a phenomenal MC. And then for him to not just MC, but then start displaying his songwriting chops not just for R&B but for singing…I don’t think that album gets the real credit it deserves. Not saying it influenced everybody, but some influence came from that album that led to other things.
Darien Brockington: Foreign Exchange [happened at] such a critical time, when music was so uncertain. The industry was changing. And I feel like Connected, [and] The Foreign Exchange as a whole were the torch carrier in a lot of ways to keep the creativity present, to give people something to be excited about, still wanting to buy projects and still wanting to come to shows. I really feel like what they did kept it going in a space of uncertainty.
Phonte: I always credit Foreign Exchange for [showing me] the difference between a business built on friendship versus a friendship that’s built on business. And how those are two very different things. With LB we were three friends who went into business together. Me and Nick, we started off doing business making records, but it was through that process of making records that we learned from each other. And I think that I do credit that for just being the bedrock of our success.
Nicolay: Phonte has changed my life in many ways. I think we both have affected each other’s lives. On the core human level, I’m thankful that our paths crossed. Music is certainly a big part of that. But as a human connection, I’m happy that we affected each other’s lives in this way.
YahZarah: There are a lot of people who [Phonte’s] created with, but I think there’s a specific synergy between he and I, Nic and Darien Brockington that is unmatched because you call your friends in and we talk about our lives, and then we write about them. How many people say that? We’ve had our ups and downs as many groups will, but I think we’re all bigger, better people. And we were touring as children together, making beautiful music. It was always about the music and having fun with our friends.
Darien Brockington: It was the camaraderie, the sisterhood, the brotherhood, the artistry, the gifts, the talent that came in one place, and it did what it was going to do. I always feel like that moment in time and what would come from it was bigger than all of us. It set the stage for all the things that would follow. I’m honored and I’m privileged. They could’ve asked anybody to be a part of it but they asked me, and I’m grateful.
Phonte: [Me and Nicolay’s first meeting] was cool. It wasn’t a Catfish situation. It wasn’t like, “ah, nigga you’ve been lying this whole goddamn time!” [Laughs] He showed up as advertised. He’s just this tall, lanky white guy. I’m like, “Oh shit. Alright, what’s up?” I had no idea [he was that tall]. I had seen a few pictures of him online, but this is pre-people putting pictures of themselves online like that. He was just the same in person. A really sweet, warm human being. It was like we had known each other for a long time.
Nicolay: [Our first meeting] was almost anticlimactic. We finished the whole thing without meeting face-to-face. In fact, we never even talked on the phone. At that point, we had signed a deal for the record. And we were in a holding pattern waiting for it to come out. Phonte was touring with Little Brother, and he came to Amsterdam for the first time in April of 2004. That was the first time we had an opportunity to meet. I went to Amsterdam and visited the hotel room that they were staying. It was like, “Hey, it’s me.” And it was very interesting because it was almost like, “Yeah, but I saw you yesterday.” But we had never met. I was a little nervous because here’s somebody I had gotten to know through his lyrics, through his music, and later we had started talking a little bit, and it felt like a new beginning for us. It was the first time that we took photos as the Foreign Exchange, because we hadn’t had that opportunity before. We took some photos for the first time, and it felt like that was the moment where everything was beginning in real life, it’s like, “Oh, we are a group now.”