A Jamie Foster Brown Interview

 
The third Naughty, Kay Gee, is back with the group, in good health, good spirits, and has become a family man with three kids and a happy life. It’s good he’s back on the road again with his good friends Treach and Vinny to reenergize Naughty By Nature. He says today folks want music fast; you can’t wait two or three years between albums. 

 
Before this exclusive for S2S, Kay Gee hadn’t really talked to anyone about how he felt about leaving the group and if he took any blame for its breakup. So this is an opportunity to find a space for him to be honest and open. Come on, let’s talk to the smooth and silky Kay Gee.
 
 
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Kay Gee: Hey, what’s up, Jamie?
Jamie: How’re you doing, sweetheart? All my good people are around—you and
Treach and Vinny. That’s great. Tell me about the family. How many kids? Kay Gee, did you ever get married?

Kay Gee: Did that, yeah. Probably, oh, about 11 years.


 
Jamie: You all have been married 11 years?

Kay Gee: Yeah.


 
Jamie: Look at Treach; He’s been married and divorced, got two other babymamas, whatever. Vinny ain’t had nothing! [laughter] He said, “I’m so bad in that department.” And you got the stable, stable home. What is it, three kids? They’re teenagers now, right?

Kay Gee: One of them is a 16-year-old, about to be 17. Then I have a 9 and 10-year-old.


 
Jamie: I was talking to Treach and them about all the people that we’ve lost in the game.

Kay Gee: Yeah.


 
Jamie: You know? You guys are still there.

Kay Gee: Yep.


 
Jamie: How do you feel? Don’t you feel blessed that you all are still around?

Kay Gee: Definitely. You have to. Not only doing what you love to do, but just in good health and in good spirits. 


 
Jamie: Vinny told me that all of you all still hang together, even when you weren’t with the group, right?

Kay Gee: Yeah, yep, yep, ’cause I have a big family around here. I’ve got cousins and all types of people, so even when we had all our differences and whatever, they didn’t get involved with it. I got three other brothers too, so even though one of them had the issue or whatever with them, the other two didn’t get involved with that. They stayed neutral; they always do. You know, they hung around and still sat with me, you know, talked to them, and they would still communicate with Vin and Treach and everybody.


 
Jamie: Did you all communicate, you and Vinny and Treach during this time?

Kay Gee: There was a time when we didn’t. And I think that’s part of what the issue was, you know, lack of communication. And, like I’ve said before, I blame it on myself, you know, me being the oldest and trying to be the most understanding out of a lot of things. I feel like I could have communicated more. And because I didn’t communicate—you know when you don’t talk about certain things, they tend to just go on and on.


 
Jamie: Right.

Kay Gee: And I think that more than anything, that’s what went on. I didn’t communicate. I was just, like, I will just go do my thing. 


 
Jamie: Wait a minute: What was the situation? Did you hear things? Or did they hear things?

Kay Gee: We both heard things, ’cause I’m sure they would hear things because, like I said, everybody knows each other. Everybody talks to each other. So, you might say one thing and it might be twisted and turned by that person and taken back another way. 


 
Jamie: But what was it? Did you feel like they didn’t want you in the group anymore? What was it?

Kay Gee: Naw, it wasn’t that. Not at all. It was more or less, like, me: I felt like I didn’t want to be in the group.


 
Jamie: Why? You didn’t want to travel?

Kay Gee: Yeah, I didn’t want to travel. I just felt like it got to a point that I just wanted to be home. And I wanted to produce and I wanted to focus on running a company, running the label, and just being a producer at that point.


 
Jamie: Okay, so what’s making you get back out there now?

Kay Gee: Well, us sitting down and us talking about everything. And part of it is me missing the whole thing, and we all realized that what we created, meaning the entity of Naughty by Nature, we were throwing it away, for whatever reason it was. And we just felt like, “Why do that when we’ve got a lot of fans out there and we don’t want to leave them hanging?” 


 
Jamie: Did you reach out to them or did they reach out to you? 

Kay Gee: It was kind of like a collective effort. We would cross each other here and there and we would sometimes be in certain places together and not say nothing to each other. But then it just started being like, “Yeah, what’s up?” We started like that, and then it just got down to—I guess—one day me and Vin just started more talking. And just started talking about how time passes by and the game has evolved and there is so many different things and avenues and stuff that we could’ve been doing and we still could be doing. So at that time we had talked about developing some movie stuff through a mutual friend, Bob Sumner. So me, Vin and Bob Sumner started sitting down talking about developing movies.


 
Jamie: I know Bob. Bob was doing those comedy shows too, wasn’t he?

Kay Gee: Yeah. He was one of the creators of Def Comedy Jam.



Jamie: Right.

Kay Gee: And as that went on, Vin would always try to tell me about the road and they would be going out, and this, this and that. And he would come back and tell me, “Well, you know, the people still want you out there,” whatever. And then Bob too would chime in, like, “Yeah, Kay, you know the people miss y’all, man. You need to get back out there and do what y’all got to do. Do what you all do best.” So, we just started slowly getting back in. And at the time, too, Treach was working on a solo record. I had my studio, and then I reached out to Treach and told him if he wanted to come by my studio and work on some stuff, I had some beats or whatever. If he wanted to come by and work on his solo album over there and use some of the beats I had, he could do that too. He was welcome. So he came through a couple of times, and it started that way. And then it just slowly evolved to where we were working again on the Naughty project.


 
 
 
Find out how who Kay Gee produced for and how he feels the group has grown up when you read the rest of the interview in the April 2010 issue of Sister 2 Sister. In the meantime you can check in on Treach and Vinny.