Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ beat and they weren’t happy about that at all. Read what Carl said below: (via RedBullMusicAcademy)
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“So what happened was, this producer Nick Martinelli, had taken this song, and he had told us to program a beat just like a song Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis had done with S.O.S. Band. We literally copied the beat.

They used a drum machine called an 808. It’s fairly standard, but it breathes differently to most machines. The way it goes to the end of the bar and starts again is totally different. It sort of bubbles along rather than clicking like a normal metronome. So we basically programmed the song, and then we put the 808 underneath it. It came last, so it was like a marketing tool, if you like. Because I’d never seen anything like that before. Before that, we just wrote a song and put it out as it was. Someone would maybe remix it, but remixing would be like, “Add some tops, add some bongos.” It was totally different to now. That was probably the first time when I saw someone change the form of the song by just changing the beat.

Needless to say, it caused a lot of friction between Loose Ends and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis. We loved what they were doing, but, see, this was at the beginning of a new era. It was whatever you had at the time that you can add to your game. There was no copyright for that. A beat is a beat. It doesn’t really matter who does it – or how it came about. So the fact that we used the same beat… you couldn’t really say that we had stolen anything from them, even though it sounded like it.

The real creativity was what we put on top. I think it’s the same now. If you use a sample, I think what’s really important is what you do with it. If you just take their beat and you put it out, and you just say something silly over it – then fine, that’s them. But when you bring something to it, I think that that’s different. I think it was hard for them to see that. We were always under their shadow. We were looking up at them, like these are the guys that we want to work with. And when we did things like that, it was just us being like, “Please, work with us! Recognize us!”

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Loose Ends originally broke up back in the day because Jane and Steve Nichols (the fonder of the group) wanted to keep the original sound and vibe of Loose Ends going, but Carl wanted to do more experimenting with their musical direction. Since then, they reunite periodically and Steve (pictured below) makes an appearance with the other two members every now and then.

All three members reunited in Los Angeles and Atlanta in 2006. Jane Eugene and Steve Nichols performed together as Loose Ends at the 2006 Essence Music Festival in Houston and 2011 Essence Music Festival in New Orleans. They perform now as “Loose Ends, featuring Jane Eugene.”

So be on the lookout for Loose Ends if they come to your city. If you love their music, you probably wouldn’t want to miss them live…they’ve still got it!