Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis have long operated as the driving force behind some of the biggest music hits known to the world. Now, they’re placing their legacy at center stage to connect with fans like never before.
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees, thanks to their prolific songwriting capabilities, the dynamic duo is set to kick off a highly anticipated “Nothing But Hits” residency at The Venetian in Las Vegas on April 17.
“We’re at the point in our careers where we’re trying to do things we haven’t done before, and playing our own catalog is one that we haven’t done,” Jam told Blavity. “We started off as musicians before we were songwriters and producers; we were just musicians, and we were playing in Minneapolis, our hometown, and we were playing everybody else’s hits. So now, coming full circle, we get a chance to go back to being musicians again, but we get to play our own hits. So, we feel like that should be a lot of fun,” adding, “If there’s a place to really showcase that, Vegas is the place.”
The connection of a lifetime
Lewis and Jam’s paths first crossed through Upward Bound, a federally funded TRIO program in the U.S. designed to prepare high school students from low-income families or families where neither parent has a bachelor’s degree for college success, at the University of Minnesota.
The pair has been inseparable ever since
“I think music and musicianship were the kind of catalyst to get us together, because when Jimmy first saw me, before he even knew me, he saw me sitting on my bed in my dorm room, playing my bass, and that was the first thing he knew of me,” Lewis recalled. “He didn’t know anything about me, and then, before I even knew him, I saw him in the lunch room playing the piano with a bunch of girls around him. So those were kind of the catalysts that got our relationship off to a great start.”
A chance to hear the stories behind the music
For the first time, Lewis and Jam will take the stage not just to perform their hits spanning five decades for eager fans in Las Vegas, but also to share never-before-told stories behind the music.
“What’s going to be different about it is that you will hear the songs, but you also find out a little bit about the song — how it was created, and we’ll take people behind the scenes in the creative process, so there will be some storytelling,” Jam explained. He continued, “We actually have a segment of the show where we actually take the samples, and if you think about a lot of our songs, everything from Rhythm Nation, of course, which is Sly and The Family Stone, but also songs that people have sampled from us, like “Poetic Justice” from Drake and Kendrick Lamar, which is ‘Any Time, Any Place,’ from Janet.”
“We’re going to make those connections, those musical connections, in ways that I think will be special for people to know,” he shared. “My analogy is always the chef’s table at a restaurant; you can eat your favorite food a million times, but when you see the way that the chef actually prepares it, it gives you a whole different appreciation of it. So we think people will leave our Vegas show feeling like they’ve had an informed listening experience, where even though they’re good, they’ve heard ‘Just Be Good to Me’ a million times, or they’ve already heard ‘Can You Stand the Rain’ a million times, but when they know the stories behind the songs, it’ll give them a whole different appreciation of it.”
On how music is more than a sound for them
As musicians, Lewis and Jam don’t experience music the way ordinary individuals do. Their unique approach is the reason they’re the revered hitmakers that they are today.
“Music is the divine art,” Lewis said. “One of the sayings that I have is, ‘Music sells everything but music itself,’ because you have talk radio; the selling point is they play music. You have clothing. You have cars; the sound system has to be right to play music. Everything has to be associated with music in some kind of way. Steve Jobs had these crazy phones, and what made these crazy phones really work well in the marketplace was he put music in it. So music is the king thing that makes everything else feel like it’s worth it. So music is the divine art that moves all things. So we treat it as such, and we respect it as such. And when we try to create it, we try to put things in there that are wholesome, that bring things that you should feel in your life to life.”
He added, “A lot of times, people don’t want to speak life into other people, but that’s what music does. If you do music the right way, it breathes life. It breathes words into you that you didn’t know that you needed, but when you didn’t know what to say, you could refer to a song. You could say something to your lady that you couldn’t say, but you could sing the song, and vice versa. Music is everything, man. Music is that conversation that we all have universally that fits. Like Jam always says, if we get in the room with a bunch of gay, white, Black — it doesn’t matter where you come from, Asia, wherever, and you put that beat on, everybody’s head is doing that (nods head to the beat), because that’s speaking to you. That’s talking to you.”
He mentioned, “The drum was the beginning, and the melody is always there, because life is melody. You know? You hear melody in everything that you hear — birds singing, cars running down the street. You hear the sounds, industrial sounds, nature sounds. That’s the soundtrack of life. So we’re in line with those things. Music is that divine art that we all should love and respect.”
The songs that define them
Jam took a moment to open up about the gift that comes with making the music, crediting a higher source for the expansive career he’s had alongside his brother Lewis over the years.
“God writes the songs. We’re simply the delivery system,” he shared. “God has allowed us to deliver some beautiful songs, and ‘Optimistic’ (by Sounds of Blackness) is our No. 1 favorite song that we’ve ever been involved with in any way.”
Lewis added that there are several ways to prep or write a song, “But our intention always is encouragement, enlightenment, engagement, you know what I’m saying? Just to make sure that we support our people so that they can get through whatever the task or whatever the situation. So you’ve got to be encouraging. You got to be positive. You know, I don’t think we’ve ever written a song to tear somebody down, no. So it’s all about building and making sure that we’re being positive in our creations.”
The pair joked that when the aliens come to invade Earth and open the Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis time capsule, two songs they’d play to know everything there is to know about them would be “Optimistic” by Sounds of Blackness and “Open My Heart” by Yolanda Adams.
Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ “Nothing But Hits” Las Vegas residency will take place at Voltaire at The Venetian Resort on April 17, 18, 22, 24, 25, and 26, with special guests Ruben Studdard and Shanice.