The Making of Goodfellaz - The Angel Vasquez Interview - Part 1

In the 90s, every group of friends dreamed of being the next Boyz II Men or Bell Biv DeVoe. Harmonizing R&B groups dominated the radio and the charts, providing great music for everyone to hear. But while most people just dreamed of forming their own groups, Angel Vasquez made it a reality. After serving as a member of the Latin freestyle trio TKA, he leveraged his connections to create and perform in the talented group Goodfellaz.

Goodfellaz, comprised of DeLouie Avant Jr, Ray Vencier, and Angel Vasquez, released their self-titled debut album in 1997. The album was packed with solid R&B tracks, featuring the hit single, "Sugar Honey Ice Tea" which reached #25 on the R&B charts and #64 on the Hot 100, and the infectious single "If You Walk Away."

We recently had the opportunity to talk with Angel about a wide range of topics. In our two part series on Goodfellaz, we're going to do a deep dive into the heart and soul of R&B guy groups.

Here in part 1, we explore how a group develops, from the production on an album to the recruiting of members. We follow the group's journey as they performed in live showcases trying to get a record deal. And we see how a group can become so much more than just the sum of its parts.

Check back for part 2, where we will look at how groups break up over time, and where the journey takes the members.

Listen to the interview here, or read on for the transcript of the interview.

I appreciate you doing this

When it comes to Goodfellaz, every time I get somebody who shows interest about Goodfellaz, I get excited because Goodfellaz was my baby from the beginning.

I have a bunch of questions for you. I thought we'd go from the beginning to today in your career. So, the starting point seems to be your time in TKA. How did you get involved with TKA?

Well TKA was a latin trio based out of Spanish Harlem, New York. I actually got into the group like right out of high school, around 1988. I actually replaced a member, Aby Cruz, who went on to do a solo record and I ended up joining the group. But me and him had been best friends for a while, and I was actually a big fan of his.

TKA was on Tommy Boy Records, with Queen Latifah, Digital Underground, Naughty By Nature. Tommy Boy was loaded. So he was working with TKA, then when I replaced him in 88 that was like the height of the group. So I went on tour, and we started doing shows all over the world. We went to every major city and we were one of the first male trio latin hip-hop groups. I started with TKA, then the group broke up in 92 and one of the singers in the group went ahead and did K7 and he had a big record called Come Baby Come and Zunga Zeng.

After TKA, how did you end up forming Goodfellaz?

I didn't do anything for a couple of years until I decided that I wanted to do R&B. R&B was where I came from, Iwas a big R&B and hip-hop fan. I just got put into a group like TKA that was a dance pop group but that wasn't what I really wanted to do.

So I went and got two brothers.

The first one was through a friend of mine. He was like yo I know this guy and he's been singing demos. I said well let me meet him and it turns out that he's from Miami, Florida, but he was living in New York. And the crazy thing is, he was living like three blocks away from me in Spanish Harlem so and this was DeLouie Avant Jr, the lead singer who sang lead on Sugar Honey Ice Tea and the rest of the songs. So me and him met up and he sang for me. I was like "I'm gonna make you a star. I want to put together a group and I want you to be the lead singer." He looked at me like I was crazy like he didn't believe me. So I called Peter Lord and Jeff Smith from The Family Stand, and they told me to come down to the studio. We sang to them and I told them what my idea was and it was like "Angel, whatever you want to do, I'm with it."

I heard on the Planet Groove interview, DeLouie mentioned how you set them up with the family stand in the studio and it was an interesting thing to me. Now with the internet I could see how you could maybe track them down and contact them but that's why I was curious with how you got to the family stand in the first place?

I met the family stand through touring with TKA. We would do award shows and see them, and I'm the type of person that if I meet people throughout the years I always kind of stay in contact and try not to burn those bridges. You never know when you would need them, so when I finally called them to tell them about the idea, they liked the idea and then we started recording the album with The Family Stand.

Definitely good to lay that foundation, you never know what you'll need. When I look at the track list, Peter Lord's on almost every one, so it seems like The Family Stand was very heavily involved in the development process.

Yeah, I believe we signed a production deal with them, which I had no problem doing because they were going to take on this project and there was no guarantee that it was going to work. We weren't putting no money up for anything, it was just on the strength of a friendship, but you know they saw that the talent was there. DeLouie Avant Jr is an incredible singer and when I brought him back to the table, he was able to do what he wanted to do and what he loved. But they saw the potential in what we were doing and they took the reins. And Peter Lord is an incredible songwriter, his partner Jeffrey Smith is an incredible producer. They're a self-contained band, so we had the greatest musicians on the record. It was amazing working with these people.

DeLouie mentioned how Sugar Honey Ice Tea came up because you guys were in the studio with them and talking about different ideas and I think Peter had mentioned that his grandma wouldn't curse, that she'd say Sugar Honey. So was that the general working experience between you guys, where you were brainstorming on the spot?

Things were organic like that sometimes. Like Sugar Honey Ice Tea, they kind of touched on it. We called it the shit song, S-H-I-T. Nobody wants to say it, on the clean version it's like "I love you, I love you." So you didn't even get to say shit. A lot of those songs were kind of like that, but because Pete was such a great songwriter, he came up with these dope melodies.

How did Goodfellaz evolve over time?

The funny thing was, I came from TKA, that was a dance music group. We had choreography, we were dancing and singing and rapping and everything. So when I put Goodfellaz together, I wanted Goodfellaz to be Bell Biv DeVoe. I wanted to dance, and I wanted to do hip-hop and r&b. So the original third member that we had, his name was Barry and Barry was more of a rapper and a dancer, so it kind of fit. Me and DeLouie was gonna sing, we were all gonna dance, Barry was gonna rap.

Then when we started making these songs, it started going in a whole different direction and it started becoming like more adult contemporary top 40. You needed more singing than dancing, so we got rid of Barry and then I ended up getting Darrin Henson. I don't know if you know who Darrin Henson is. Darrin is one one of the biggest choreographers. He played Lem in soul food, and he was responsible for Jennifer Lopez, N"Sync Bye Bye Bye. He choreographed all those videos. He was a personal friend of mine. He's from the Bronx but I actually met him in Japan with TKA. I ended up putting him in Goodfellaz, so now I'm like I got a great singer like DeLouie, I got an incredible dancer and choreographer in Darrin Henson. This is gonna be crazy, you see BBD ain't gonna be able to mess with us.

We started recording more songs, and it started calling for more singing. So we had to get rid of Darrin. We had a bunch of showcases coming up with some labels and we had songs like If You Walk Away, Sugar Honey Ice Tea. All these songs that were more top 40. So my manager, Guy Route, he told me "listen, I got this guy, I want you to check him out from California - Sacramento."

His name is Ray Vencier. Ray had this big Teddy Pendergrass kind of voice, and it just fit right into what we were doing. Ray got into the group, we were probably halfway through the album. So we ended up having to put Ray on If You Walk Away, Sugar Honey Ice Tea was the last record so we ended up putting him on that record.

How did the showcases go?

We did the showcase and we ended up getting a deal on Avatar Polydor A&M Record. We did a bunch of showcases and we had different labels, Sony, Arista. Sylvia Rose was going to sign us and that fell through.

Then Larry Robinson who had a small label in California called Avatar. He heard everything and went crazy and flew to New York and signed us on the spot. He had a distribution deal through Polydor Record and A&M, that was the label that was doing the promotion for the album. And that's how Goodfellaz was born

You said you'd done a number of the songs before Ray joined. Did you have to re-record them or were they just a demo version and not the final finished versions?

He sang in a couple of the songs. You have to kind of revamp and go back and have him sing. I don't think DeLouie ever sang the second verse on If You Walk Away, so we just threw ray on the record and he sang. We put him a little bit on Sugar Honey Ice Tea. He just really had to come in and add his voice to whatever was there. It was a little crazy because he came from a different background when it came to music, he did more house music and stuff like that.

It was brilliant for the family stand to kind of coach everybody and to make sure that they got what they wanted out of the singer, and to bring something out of him that I don't even think he knew he had. That was the genius of The Family Stand. They got the best out of you. The album evolved into something that I didn't think it was gonna evolve into. I wanted to do R&B hip-hop and we turned out to be more of a top 40 group. I really feel that goodfellaz album was ahead of its time.

It's funny you say that Ray had done house music first because I found a video on youtube that said Ray Vencier and I listened to it, and I was like this is not R&B at all so I was like this can"t be him.

I hope it was good, because some of his stuff I've heard was great.

It's just interesting that you guys come from such a diverse set of backgrounds, it's almost like you stumbled into an R&B group.

Like I said, Ray is from Sacramento, California, DeLouie is from Carol City, Miami and I'm from Spanish Harlem, New York. I had to kind of orchestrate all that stuff, from picking the singers, the producers, the management. They always had to run things through me because this was my brainchild, my baby. I wanted to make sure that it went the way I envisioned it.

One thing, I was listening to the songs and watching the videos last night. I don't know if it was intentional but like you said like Sugar Honey Ice Tea is the shit song and I felt like watching both videos there was a kind of comedy. Even watching you guys on Planet Groove, you were very funny. Is that something you guys intentionally wanted to bring out?

I think I should have been a comedian to be honest with you. I should have definitely been in the movies. And you know, DeLouie and Ray, we're always kind of snapping at each other and it was a fun time.I'm from New York, we snap on people and they snap on you back. But yeah, we knew how to get along. I live by the motto, if people like you, they will want to work with you. I always want to give somebody a good outlook on life and just to be happy man.

How did you get the name Goodfellaz?

We got the name Goodfellaz from Stevie D from The Force Mds. The Force MDs were really close friends of mine. One day, we were singing and writing stuff and Stevie D was rapping. He said "something like something Goodfellaz" and while we were searching for the name, we said wait what did you say? Goodfellaz, that's it. That's the name.