Tim Patterson

speaker

75 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2025 last heard May 2025

Tim Patterson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Trial: USA · He Was So Interesting To The Hilfigers, The Trumps, The Winfreys · 1 May 2025 podcast

Our experiences were different growing up in Mount Vernon. I was born in Mount Vernon, so I'm kind of part of the fabric there, the family fabric, the friend fabric. My parents know different parents in the town, grew up with different people in the town. I was a lot more associated with Mount Vernon than Sean was.

Sean was a transplant from Harlem to Mount Vernon, basically because his mom and dad had bigger plans for him than just Harlem. They wanted him to grow up in the suburbs. They wanted him to have a better shot at life. So naturally, the house was built in Mount Vernon, and that's where he grew up.

So Sean never really had the friends or the people or the camaraderie that I had in Mount Vernon because he didn't grow there. He was kind of looked at as an outcast. He was different. He drove around in a Cadillac. He wore all these beautiful clothes. It was just a different kid. And kids from Mount Vernon didn't understand that in the beginning, you know, the jealousy.

Why does he have what I don't have type of thing? And Sean dealt with a lot of that as a child, a lot of that adversity, a lot of that bullying and a lot of that just being better than people, having more than people. He had no say in the matter. It's just how he was brought into the world, you know.

Yeah. You know, he had it rough, man. He had it rough around the block. Mind you, we're in the suburbs. So this isn't like we're in the ghetto or in the hood, but we're in the suburbs. It's me and him on a block of all white kids, basically. Italian kids, Jewish kids. And during that time in America, that was the early 70s.

So us being on a street with all suburban kids, all white kids, it was not easy for him, number one. Sean's from Harlem. The white man doesn't treat the black man really good in Harlem. So you come to the suburbs, How do I interact with the white man? You're my oppressor. And that was his teachings. So his association with that side was minimal.

The black kids that were spread out in the neighborhood tended to pick on him. because he just wasn't tough enough at the time. So this is how we became pretty tight. He would start to go wherever I'd go. You know, I'm coming from the other side of town, so I got a little more grit on me. I'm coming over here to the suburbs where these kids don't really know it yet.

So I was kind of like the guy on the block. And Sean was my little bro. Everywhere I went, he was there. The kids wouldn't pick on him as much, but he still had to go through it. And it was messed up because me and a few other people had to fight for him a lot, had to defend him until he was able to defend himself. Why am I able to say, okay, I defended him? Well, I had a dad in the house.

My dad instilled some things in me that let me know there's only but so far people can go with you. Win, lose, or draw. And these might have been some of the things Sean could have gotten as a child had he had a father.

So we were introduced to hip hop back in the early 80s. I had a cousin, an older cousin, who was an emcee. Back in those days, rappers were called emcees.

And I would shadow him to the parties he went to, and the block parties and stuff, and I would bring the tapes home that he would make, my cousin would make, and then I would bring them over to the house that Sean and I lived in, and I had some other cousins that would come by. So we just started listening to these tapes that were real valuable.

The thing about Sean's place, at a young kid, it was like Disneyland. You go to Sean's house and he's got everything. So he had a stage in his living room, the literal actual stage at two steps, you go up and that's where we used to dance. Cause his mom's was really into music and you couldn't help, but be infected by the music.

And I remember dancing to Donna Summer, Sugar Hill Gang, you know, all the stuff, all the things. And Sean knew how to do it well. He was a hell of a dancer, hell of a dancer. That was our germ of hip hop right there. And then, um, As he got older and as I got older, you couldn't help but not be around hip-hop because it was a culture. It was a lifestyle. It was a certain type of sneaker.

It was a certain type of pants. It was a certain type of hat. It was a certain way to talk. It was a certain way to walk. And Sean being from Harlem, he had all of this. flavor in him all of this all the ingredients to be a fly cat it was all in him from a very early age so then how did you guys end up um going into the industry itself and landing on uptown records

When we were in our teen years, we would play sports. We taught Sean how to play baseball. So he went and played baseball for a couple of teams and stuff. And then he went to high school and played football. So he was becoming athletic. He was coming out of his shell. He was becoming a lot more out of that introverted, shy shell into that, I think I'm getting to know who I am shell.

I think I'm starting to feel myself. Because I could dance. I could do all of this stuff. And people are watching me different. We got introduced to hip hop in a different way. Sean left high school and went to college. I left high school and I went to the army. And we did our time and came back together. So this is post college for him. This is post military for me.

And he's already in the industry. He's 17 years old. He's 17 years old and he's got a job down at Uptown Records. I come back from the military and naturally I'm different. I'm a lot more mature. You know, I'm a lot more grown and stuff. And, you know, I seek him out and he says, hey, welcome back. Come down to the office. Come check me out.

It was amazing. It was amazing. It was it was it was unbelievable because you got to realize this is Sean. This is not Puffy. This is my Sean, you know, three year old, four year old, five year old. And now he's 17 years old. He's in corporate America. I walk in the building. They say, hello, Mr. Combs. This is his life at 17.

Goes up the elevator, opens the elevator, says MCA Records in real big letters. And he comes out like it's just another day. I'm following him and we go to his office. That was my first experience with the music industry that day.

It was naturally a shock for me. It was a shock for everyone, you know. Sean was at the door. He was standing at the door of Rarified Air. He's making six figures at 17 years old. And Sean, he wasn't coordinated. He was just a little goofy. He's a kid still, and his actions were childish. He's 17, but he's got carte blanche access to the music industry. He's got Russell Simmons here.

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