#2233 - Scott Storch

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.

Joe Rogan (0:03)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

SPEAKER_1 (0:06)

Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Scott Storch (0:12)

Those are the three, probably, the most iconic...

Joe Rogan (0:16)

So, what are the, we're rolling now, so tell me what's like the most iconic beats you've created.

Scott Storch (0:21)

Oh, we're already rolling?

Joe Rogan (0:22)

We're rolling.

Scott Storch (0:23)

Hey, fuck it. How are you doing?

Joe Rogan (0:25)

Hey.

Scott Storch (0:25)

I mean, look, I've got not hundreds, but thousands of songs.

Joe Rogan (0:30)

Thousands, for sure.

Scott Storch (0:32)

Thousands of songs. I'm told most often that most iconic or identifiable one is obviously still Dre. We got...

Joe Rogan (0:47)

Give me a little of that real quick.

Scott Storch (1:03)

Watch my fingers while I'm playing that. If I was just like a fucking sterile, like just basic motherfucker I'd be playing. But I wanted to do it like sloppy.

Joe Rogan (1:21)

Right.

Scott Storch (1:21)

Like that perfect imperfection. Like you don't want, sometimes you want a nice sloppy booty or a nice fucking, you know what I'm saying? You don't want things always like perfect picture perfect.

Joe Rogan (1:30)

Right. You like a little grit on your hardwood floor.

SPEAKER_1 (1:33)

Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Storch (1:34)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (1:35)

No.

Scott Storch (1:35)

That's where that perfect imperfection.

Joe Rogan (1:38)

How did you get started? How did you get started making beats? What started you in music?

Scott Storch (1:44)

What started me in music?

SPEAKER_4 (1:45)

Okay.

Scott Storch (1:47)

All the way back?

Joe Rogan (1:48)

All the way back.

Scott Storch (1:48)

All the way back. Listening to like Ozzy Osbourne and Cheap Trick in a Mirror with a Kennes racket, thinking, wow, I could probably get some girls to like me if I knew how to fucking play this shit. And then my parents had like this upright piano in the house and it was a piece of furniture. And I had a cassette deck, you know, at that time it was all about cassettes. And I had a little baby cassette thing. I put it on the piano bench and figure out how to play all my favorite songs.

Joe Rogan (2:20)

Just self-taught.

Scott Storch (2:22)

Yeah, and I ended up taking three or four lessons. And the guy was like, you should just teach yourself. Really? Yeah, and my family didn't, we didn't have no money. And my mom to get to the piano lesson, all that shit was just, I did my thing. And it's at a point where my mom and dad were like, can you go outside and play with the kids? I'm tired of hearing this shit. No, no, no, no, no, no. And then that evolved into, I moved with my father, my parents had divorced. My dad was a court reporter, stenographer. And we moved from, I was born in New York. As an infant moved to Florida. But when I was 15, just turning 15, I moved to Philly with my dad.

And I was really getting into music. I was experiencing hip hop now in my head.

SPEAKER_4 (3:18)

What year was this?

Scott Storch (3:20)

I don't even know what year it was. How old are you now? I'm 50

Joe Rogan (3:23)

Okay, seven years different than me. So, yeah, okay.

Scott Storch (3:26)

I'm real horrible with the years, but I'm talking early 90s.

Joe Rogan (3:32)

Yeah, the beginning of the big hip hop boom out of New York.

Scott Storch (3:37)

And when I first found a love for hip hop, it was this music that they were sampling all these like cool, like Fender Road sounds, like, like say Tribe Called Quest.

That's not one of mine, but it was that like, relax yourself, girl, you know what I'm saying? That like Native tongue, the De La Soul, all that type of shit was heavy. And like, I was like, wow, music is really great in this. It was different than like, I mean, I loved NWA and I loved like, but that was like hardcore shit. And then like this musical-y guru and jazz and like all this shit was coming around. So I got into that and I couldn't really afford a keyboard. I'm living in Philly. My dad was like, I was cutting school and going into the city from the burbs to like, getting the music scene at this young age. And it was like, yo, go back to school and start that shit or get the fuck out. He's trying to do me a favor with tough love, but I decided to get the fuck out. And now I'm like couch hopping at homies, and that led to moving into the fucking hood in West Philly with this guy who was an aspiring manager that was a videographer that I met at my dad's court reporting firm. And kind of like halfway against my dad's will, he took me in and we started hitting the pavement, man. And I joined The Roots. They were called The Square Roots at that time. You know, the band on Jimmy Chua, Questlove, et cetera, et cetera. And I didn't have much money and I bought what they call Offender Roads. This is like big keyboard, which is, they're very expensive now cause it's a vintage. But at that time I could get that for like 200 bucks. And I got the keyboard, had a couple of broken notes on it and shit. And I just made my sound with that. And it was just like this soulful, this thing, you know what I mean? And I joined the Roots and now I'm a band member. You know, simultaneously I'm doing construction in Philly for a friend of mine who has like these like shell houses that I got to live in one for a while. And I got my first place. I'm like living in this thing. He lived across the street and kind of a nice one. This is like super horrible neighborhood, but he's got almost like the whole block. And like there's construction site on the first floor. I had to walk up and this was like semi-finished one. No electricity, but he ran a cord across the street and a power strip for my electricity. I ran everything on that one power strip. Like I had a fucking space heater like this because it was freezing cold. I had like a keyboard set up like so I could do my thing. And that was just, I made my existence. And if I had never made it, I was like, man, I'll just play at bar mitzvahs and weddings and fucking call it a day. But I'd rather do that than be a court reporter or some other shit. And school wasn't for me. Couldn't focus on anything but the music.