Legendary Producer Songwriter Michael Bennett created an interview environment unlike the ordinary. As I prepared to ask a myriad of questions and hope to feed off of his responses, it was all under control by Mr. Bennett who carefully and eagerly let the information and knowledge he has carried with him for a lifetime roll of his tongue and onto this page.

Michael Bennett: I had quit the music business. It had broke my heart so bad I had quite. And I went back to school to become a Medical Transcriber. The day that we graduated I got hurt at the restaurant, but I also sung at the restaurant. And that was the day that I said Terry Lynn I’m not going back to school anymore. Right after that I got cancer of the vocal chord. Five years cancer free.

Michael Bennett: I was a singer before I was a writer. I was forced to become a writer rather than lay down my pipes because I was stricken with Cancer and they said I would never speak again. And also I got shot several times, being a road manager for Marvin Gaye. I was right behind his and his fathers and mothers house the day that he was shot. I’ve been around awhile but I’m still up in the game. I’m hip hopping it now and I’m slamming down them 808s. I’m kicking it with people like Lil Scrappy and Juvenile. You know those types of people. But I still write that R&B.

Michael Bennett: With these children, I just have them work with me. They come into my studio. So I let them record here. But what I do is get down on their level instead of standing over them. I sit down on stools so I can be eye level with them. So I can really feel what their feeling and what their trying to project in their writing. I make them write and sometimes I write for them, but most of all I give them a scenario and I tell them to comeback with a storyline and we write it together. I’m a true-believer because they need to know the nature of the business that they need to know every part of the business. From the writing aspect to the musical composition aspect; even the business marketing aspect of their career. So, when you get them involved with that and tell them to get in there and sing it…because a lot of children become disenchanted once their overwhelmed with deadlines. I felt really high on taking care of artists. I think some of them are not well taken care of in the business. I think they’re marketed to quick. Their just like an assembly line product. I’m an advocate on artist welfare and really taking care of my artists.

Michael Bennett: We’ve all been through a lot of things in life and we want to tell everybody about the ghetto. But we have a whole bunch of those artists that are doing that. There’s a void there where if we need something clean cut and fresh and bright, that children…there are children; who are living in the projects. The majority of the children in the world that are living in projects…every time they go out their door there’s a bunch of gunshots. And even in the projects, there are children who are not of the projects because their God fearing parents, who are trying to raise them, give them an education and teach them that there are other things that they could be. Gangster rappers are telling a story that needs to be told which needs to be sold so that children can have a choice. Because a lot of these children love these rap artists but a lot of the rap artists are failing them because their leading them to believe that the bling bling and the big baller/shot caller life is the way to make it into this business but more than likely, you’re going to have a lot of children dead before they make it in this business because their trying to emulate something that they ain’t. I’m real serious. So, what happens to these children who are soft and they go into a hard world with a monster talent?

Michael Bennett: They left me to die. I had to use a Colostomy bag for 2 years. You can see where the saw-off shot gun blew off half my arm. They said I would never play the piano again. Must less do anymore choreography? My uncle was Benny Carter, the world’s greatest saxophonist. New York Times just did an interview on him last year, but he died. He taught me everything I know about horn arrangements but yet and still he told me that there’s nothing that I can teach you unless you have the desire to get the agitation to get where you want to go. And what I got, I didn’t get it until the day he died. The voices in the night, I never understood it. They thought I was manic depressant and hypertensions. I never asked my uncle for a dime. And if you look under he’s name on your computer, Benny Carter, that’s my uncle, that’s my father’s brother. The day I got a platinum record was the day I called on him and was the day that I pushed the computer and it said New York Times; Obituary, Benny Carter dead. The point that I’m making is that some of my brothers were the biggest thug dope dealers and their all gone. One of them is missing in action. I don’t even know where he is. What they did with me was, “your not gonna be…each one of them said, you’re not gonna be like we are; we went to the Vietnam War came back, are heroine addicts. But you’re not going to be like us. You’re gonna do something with your life”. And the bottom line with me, I had all of these examples of the thug life, the pimp life. I’m from Detroit, so we talking’ ‘bout pimpin. About knocking out women on the street about their money; we talking about making big deals and all of that. We talking about bookie joints and little kids running with paper. We talking about the original gangsters; the Gorilla Family. Not know Bloods and Crips. And the bottom line was I just kept seeing them die. I kept seeing them all die. The bottom line, my middle brother, they call him JJ on the streets, his name is Gerald and the last time I saw him, I went to tell him that his children would be there waiting. I kept them for five years, he (Gerald) did a whole five years and the day he got out of jail, he OD on heroine and never saw his children. It was enough heroines in his system to kill a horse. So, what he had been doing up in that penitentiary, running things, got him killed. He did all that time so he wouldn’t be on parole and I kept them children for five years and he was dead as soon as he hit the neighborhood. So what that endowed me to do was, no matter what I did, I had to learn this business. I had to hit the stages and the little penny-annie clubs and do what I was born to do. We all at one time know in our gut what our destiny is and there’s a certain road we must take in order to make it. I just hate to see some of these little kids that come up to my door and want to record and have the presence and they can just walk into my studio and try to tell me and just muscle me and run things in my studio. That’s when they see the real ghetto in me. And that’s when they see what I really know about the streets. I walked the penitentiary yard once in my life. It’s been 6 years and I ain’t never been back. There’s nothing that I haven’t done that all of these rappers and promoters haven’t done and glorified.

Michael Bennett: During an awards show, I had to get up and go to the bathroom. It’s a miracle that I don’t have the colostomy bag anymore, you know? I only have half a stomach but I don’t have a six pack, I got an 8 pack. At the BMI Award show I had to go to the bathroom and we’re sitting at the award show with Birdman and Juvenile. Kanye West was on stage and I said well you know, I got to go to the bathroom. And my baby was like hurry up, I think they’re gonna call your name. I’m being escorted out to the bathroom. And something told me to look over my shoulder. And I looked over my shoulder and all these people were behind the red carpet. And it’s not the first time, but this particular time I was very focused and I looked over my shoulder and it was a whole crowd of kids there. They were just screaming at me but they didn’t even know who I was. I’m a writer and a producer, occasionally you’ll see me on a flick here and there but I stopped and said ‘Well who am I’? They said “I don’t know but we want you to come over here”. Going to the bathroom made me late to accept my award on stage. And security was rushing me back because they had called my name. My wife was crying because she couldn’t open up the video. R.Kelly rushed me up on the stage. I had to take pictures and I missed that too. And the lady said where would you like to take the picture? I said well, I don’t want to take it behind the BMI sign, what I want to do is go take it with all those children who think they know me. And the security guard said there are just too many kids over there, you can’t do that. I said if you want pictures of me then you want pictures of the people who help feed my children. That whole event was the most memorable event, besides seeing my wife fumble with that damn camera. And when I get frustrated and tired and I can’t go on, those are the little faces…and I’m writing a book. It’s called ‘Voices in the Night’. People ask me, ‘how do I come up with these tunes’? Well, I don’t come up with them. I just listen to the voices in the night. There’s no formula. I cannot tell you cause I wrote “I Love you” for Lenny Williams. I can’t tell you how these things come about. Each time I go in the room I just listen to the voices in the night. And when there’s something that hits me…I go in there and it happens. I look at all those pictures of people drowning and crying about their homes [Hurricane Katrina} and I remember when I picked cotton in Louisiana and worked on a cotton Jin and I picked potatoes. To relate to what was happening to them and to my niece we wrote ‘Sweet Louisiana; I’m coming’ home. Coming’ home to you’. It’s just simple. Those people need something to go back to. So without preaching anymore, it’s just, we have a choice to be…we are what we are, sometimes not by choice but we do have a choice, my dad used to say, to change the person that you are to the person that you want to be. We all are great in our own way. It’s very seldom that I let people see these awards that I have because I’m not trying to impress them, I’m trying to help them develop whatever it is that’s given to them when they come to my studio.

Michael Bennett: So many other young people who come here and think because I make you dot the I’ and cross the T’ is that I know it all. It’s not that, it’s that I don’t want to have to see you 6 months from now starting all over again. Everyone that walks through here doesn’t have a large talent. I make myself accessible to a lot of kids who really don’t have a lot of talent. But what I do is gear them down the avenue where their talent lies. Some kids come in here and want to be a rapper or a singer. And come to find out they’ve got it in marketing or they’ve got it in album covers. They have the drive to be in music but they’re just going into the field just with a different talent. Being a producer and seeing them go down a path that they just ain’t gonna make it in, I say wait…have you considered trying to act? Or have you considered trying to be a model? Because I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that you have the talent to be something that your not. And I know we’re talking about the kind of people that don’t have it.

Michael Bennett: Voices with in the night. People who come into your life vicariously; they make the hair stand up on your back.  And they just come in your life briefly…it’s an angel delivering a message. A lot of people say well God doesn’t talk to me. Are you listening? I listen to children on the street, I listen to old people. Even though I got all these gold records, or platinum medallions or lifetime achievement awards, this that and the other; the bottom line is that it was a turning point in my life like I said with my uncle was when I stopped thinking with my head and started listening to what people were saying to me cause I don’t know everything.  It’s playing the game and being fair. Sometimes we play the game, but we have to be fair too. One thing that I’ve learned most of all is that I put my pants on just like any other man therefore there is no need of me being envious of anybody else. I am who I am and I’m good at what I do.