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Lance Romance – Taylor Swift “Life of a Showgirl” (Why Now Remix)

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From New Jack Swing roots to Salsa Rap experiments, Bronx veteran Lance Romance breaks down his “Why Now” moment—re-imagining Taylor Swift’s Life of a Showgirl through a hip-hop/R&B lens. 

We trace Lance’s journey from his 1991 Fortune & Fame era (Ichiban Records) to 50+ indie releases, civic advocacy cuts (“Gets Vaccinated”), and 2024–2025 projects like King of English, Salsa Rap, Performance, Duetapes, and Set Styles. He shares studio lore from NYC to ATL, the Latin-hip-hop spark behind “Ay Mamita” (as Carsello), and why choosing fortune over fame kept him creative—and ready for this remix moment tied to Swift’s drop. 

If you love origin stories, producer grind, and genre-bending remixes, this episode is your play.

Listen & explore:

Episode highlights:

  • The “Why Now” behind Lance’s R&B/hip-hop take on Life of a Showgirl
  • From Run-DMC tour days and New Jack mentors to ATL studio seasons
  • The Carsello chapter: “Ay Mamita” and early Latin-hip-hop crossover
  • Publishing years, ghostwriting vs. session writing, and staying power
  • How 50+ albums happened—indie mindset, internet era, no boss

Perfect for fans of: hip-hop history, R&B remixes, New Jack Swing, Latin hip-hop, producer diaries, artist reinvention.

We’re building the future—empowering every artist and creator with the tools, beats, and network to share their voice, connect boldly, and leave a mark on the world. 🔗 Visit us at https://beatstorapon.com.

Keep creating. Keep sharing. Keep rising.

Welcome to the Beats to Rap On podcast. We've have got someone super special today. Lance Romance, hip hop artist with documented early 19's release, Fortune and Fame at Ishiban 1991. Recent indie output includes civic advocacy cuts, such as like Gets Vaccinated in 2021, cross game projects accumulating in 2024 and 2025, releases like King of English, Salsa Rap, Performance, Duetapes, Set Styles. And he is here. You know, we're going into the why now. Why now? What is it all about? So Taylor Swift just released The Life of a Showgirl, just, just dropped a couple of days ago. And Lance has been framing some hip hop, R&B, re-imagining tied to that drop. So today what we're going to do is we're going to unpack that with Lance and get into it. Yes. So why don't you tell us. So Lance from, uh, from New Jack Swing Origins to Salsa Rap Experiments, and now hooking into R&B, leaning, re-imagining tied to Taylor Swift's new album. Um, it'd be great, you know, for first time listeners to get an understanding of, you know, which track or which single track says, this is Lance Romance, baby. This is me and why. Um, what single track on the new album, The Life of a Showgirl R&B mixes, or just out of my 50 albums in general. Just out of your 50 albums, that whole legacy in general, what is the one track that screams, this is Lance Romance? Well, if you really want to know, I did a track, this is going into 2000 when it was the Latin, um, explosion. It was like, uh, Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, Shakira, Marc Anthony, Fighting N.J. Um, so in 2000, I'm actually in the recording studio at Sony Studios in Manhattan, um, and I'm recording a, what I consider to be Latin hip hop. Keep this in mind. This is 99 going into 2000. There was no reggaeton. No, there was no Bad Bunny. There was no Daddy Yankee. This didn't exist. When I was making my album at, at, at the, in Sony Studios, there was a producer named Swiss Beats, Swiss Beats was at the time producing all the tracks for like DMX, The Locks, um, and the Rough Riders. He was part of, you know, that organization. And so he used to leave. Well, they used to start at like midnight and then they'll finish at noon. And I would come in at noon and just do the day shift. But anyway, back to your question, I recorded this song and when I was recording the song at the time, God bless the dead, Big Pun just had passed. I got Fat Joe to come to the studio. I'm not sure if a lot of people know who Fat Joe is, but Fat Joe is one of the, you know, the, the foundations of Bronx hip hop, you know, from digging in the crates and other things. Um, Joe was a great guy, a lot of stories with Joe, but he was going to actually do a verse on this song that I'm getting ready to tell you. His best friend, Big Pun just had passed. It was around Valentine's day of 2000. So that's 25 years ago. But I made this track called Ay Mamita. If you Google it, it's under my, when I was doing Latin, I'm Puerto Rican, black Italian. So I went by the name Carsello. So if you want to know what track really epitomizes or brings all of my Latin, Italian, urban, soul, blackness, whatever you want to call it. It's this track called Ay Mamita. There's an old, old, old video on YouTube. If you can, you can probably put Carsello Ay Mamita 2000, because that's 25 years ago. So to your question, if anyone wanted to see early Lance romance, it's Ay Mamita. And that's, that's A Y M A I T A, Ay Mamita, whatever way you want to spell it. It'll pop up. It's it's now spell check in Google. I love that Lance and to the listeners, smash down the comments below. We're going to put links to all of Lance's, uh, socials and all the things he's referencing in this. That's amazing. Lance, if we can just take back, I think you mentioned just a bit there. So you debuted on, um, Rap, Ishiban with, you know, with the 1991 album, Fortune and Fame, a new Jack inflected snapshot of that moment, you know, paint, uh, take us back paint to 1990, 1991 in the Bronx where you were, you know, grinding, you know, coming up with the raw tunes, you know, how did that record all come together? Okay. So in order for me to go to 91, we have to go back to 87 and 86. Technically let's go back to 85. So I was in this movie called Crush Groove starring Run-DMC, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, um, the Fat Boys. There's a movie called Crush Groove. Russell Simmons and Lior Cohen used to send their guys to a studio called Chung King. So back in the day, you used to buy an album and you look on the back of the album to find the writers, the producers in the studio when, when you get the vinyl, right? So I'm going to speed it up. So they recorded at Chung King. I, I used to go there and I used to see, um, early Rick Rubin and we both used the same engineer called Stevette. Stevette was the engineer at Chung King. Everything I'm saying, you can Google. At the end of the day, I was working with this drum machine called a Lynn drum machine, the old Lynn drum machine. And then I wind up getting what's called an SB12 and the SB12 is known as the SB 1200. Now back to learning New Jack Swing in 1987, I go in the studio to work with somebody that everyone knows is famous. His name is Bobby Brown and this is Bobby Brown before my prerogative. Don't be cruel. This is King of Stage Bobby Brown. So if you look at the credits on Bobby's Brown first solo album, it says Lance Roman singing background vocals with another rapper at the time called Smooth B from the hip hop group called Nice and Smooth. Those are my best friends. I put them together. Anyway, I learned how to work the drum machine through another friend of mine from Harlem called Teddy Riley. Teddy Riley is the inventor of New Jack Swing. And we met at a club called The Rooftop and Teddy was producing an older school rapper called Kool Moe D. I seen Teddy work the programming. I went back to Chung King. I told Russell and Lior, hey, I can do this. They never saw me, but they like my energy. So I recorded at another studio called Calliope and Calliope was this rap group called Stetsasonic. Stetsasonic was from Brooklyn and Teddy was in there. So I went back to Chung King. So between Chung King and Calliope, I learned how to program and produce. So by time I got to Atlanta with Bobby Brown, the summer of 89, I wind up, then this is a crazy story. In the summer of 89, I met Dallas Austin who wind up producing all the TLC stuff. Look at Dallas did a million, ABC, Boyz II Men, right? Crazy, yeah. Then I met Jermaine Dupri. Jermaine Dupri did Criss Cross, Escape, Jagged Edge, some TLC. So all of my friends, Teddy, Jermaine, Dallas, everyone was producers, right? So by time I made my album in 91, I had became seasoned from the 80s by knowing Teddy, working in the studio with Steve-Ed at Chung King, going to Calliope with Teddy and Stetsasonic and building that resume of understanding the word production, right? And that's when we used to have these things called a floppy disk. You know, you save it on a floppy disk. You can't let nothing happen to that floppy disk. Yeah, that's right. That floppy disk, that was everything we had. It goes in everything. It goes in a big computer, the drum machine, a little floppy disk was everything, right? You can buy a box of them for like 20 bucks or something like that. So I recorded in a studio in Atlanta. Richard Wells was the engineer. I learned about this studio because Jermaine Dupri was in the studio the same time I'm making my Fortune and Fame album. He's making the debut album of Criss Cross. You understand? Right. So you got to remember back in the day, it's not like today where everyone has a computer. If you book studio time back in the 80s and 90s, 99 percent of the time you're going to meet someone else that just got a record deal because studio time was expensive, right? Right. So it wasn't just random people. If you're in the studio, you're going to see Dallas. You're going to see Jermaine. You're going to see Bobby Brown. You're going to see Ted. You're going to see notable people doing notable things, Rick Rubin or whoever it may be. But to your question, that led me to produce the album Fortune and Fame. And actually, prior to releasing Fortune and Fame, if you Google me, my first album is technically called Stop and Listen, 1986. When I just did Stop and Listen, 1986, I wind up going on a tour called the Raising Hell Tour. And the Raising Hell Tour was run DMC, LL Cool J, Beastie Boys. And I danced for a hip hop group called Houdini. That's insane. So I was part of Houdini, right? That's crazy, yeah. Yeah, so I'm just letting your listeners know, and I'm not saying it in a cocky way, but I'm part of the beginning of commercialized hip hop. That is amazing. Yeah, it's a beginning. So we're new on tour and Run DMC is just releasing My Adidas. Now, they already had the King of Rock, Rockbox and all that. But I'm talking when they did Aerosmith, Walk This Way, Peter Piper, My Adidas, Houdini had One Love. Houdini was already big with Friends, Freaks Come Out At Night, Big Mouth. And Beastie Boys, their debut album, License to Ill, and LL Cool J's album, Radio. We're all brand new. We're like, all of us are like 18, 19 and 20 on the road. That's crazy. So I got very lucky. So then in 88, I recorded another album called 1988 Hip Hop. So you Google it. So my first album, Stop and Listen, 86. The next album is 1988 Hip Hop. I learned how to do a lot of drum programming from Said G and Cool Keith from a group called Ultra Magnetic MCs. Wow, that is going, that is, yeah. But then I learned how to edit because my friend from the Bronx was a rapper who actually was the first rapper that Rick Rubin produced called Tila Rock. Tila Rock was actually before LL Cool J on a label called Party Time, and Party Time technically was Def Jam's first record, but they didn't call it Def Jam. They called it Party Time. So technically, Tila Rock was the first artist, but LL was the first one on Def Jam. But he wasn't the first artist that was produced by Russell and Rick Rubin. Right. And Jazzy, Jazzy J from African Bam Bottom and the Soul Sonic Force. Right. 86, I learned all that. 88, by the time I do the 88, I'm already a little more seasoned. In 90, I didn't have a record deal. I got offers from all the record labels like Profile, Select Records. I got offers from, let's say, Profile, Select. There was a, after Select, there was a lot of these indie, indie labels. I'm trying to think of the other main, like Zakiya, 4th and Broadway, which was actually where Eric B and Rakim started. And anyway, so all the labels offered, I didn't wind up taking it. I'm going to spin this really quick. So I grew up in Dallas and I used to go back and forth from Dallas to the Bronx. While I'm in Dallas, another friend of mine, he was a DJ called Dr. Rock, K-104 in Dallas, Texas. He had put this little group together called the Feli Fresh Crew. The Feli Fresh Crew featured this unknown rapper at the time called the D.O.C. The Doc, the D.O.C. wind up writing all of the N.W.A. stuff. All right. D.O.C. Wow. Yeah. D.O.C. introduced me, D.O.C. introduced me to a rapper that wasn't a rapper at the time. He was just funding them called Eazy-E, Eric Wright. Yeah. Wow. Eric, Eric introduced me. He told me to come to L.A. to go to their label. At the time on the label was an unknown rapper. He was kind of known. He was getting known named Ice-T. Ice-T was on the label. And Michael Jackson's sister, crazy enough, LaToya Jackson. We were all on this label. LaToya Jackson. Listen, Google it. We were all on this label called Mokola Records. Mokola Records. Mokola Records. Google it. Check that out. So that was N.W.A.'s first deal, Eazy-E. So crazy enough, if I have to say it, Eazy-E actually got me my first deal. That's so cool. He told me, hey, because he heard all my New Jack Swing stuff. My album Born to Entertain featured some of the stuff that I was working with, with Bobby and Atlanta. When I came back in 90, back to Atlanta in 91, there was only like three rappers in Atlanta at that time. Now Atlanta has maybe 3,000. You understand what I mean? It was only like three rappers. And I might be the first... I know this is going to sound crazy. You can Google it. I might be the first solo rapper in Atlanta with a record deal as an album. It had this other guy named Shy D and Kilo. Google Shy D and Kilo. They only had singles that used to play in strip clubs called Magic City. Right? And long, long time ago, there was a rapper that got famous. His name is Ludacris. He was a DJ. Right? So Ludacris was a DJ. So again, it's not name dropping. It's just that everyone was doing something at that time. At the time, yeah. At that time. So if you did something or your cousin did something, they were just connected. I knew MC Search. MC Search wind up managing Nas, getting Nas a deal. MC Search is partnered with Prime Minister Pete Nice. Pete Nice and I still... You can go to my Instagram. We still kind of like chat online all the time. But again, it was those moments. So again, to your question. So now I'm back to your question. All of that experience from Stop and Listen album, 1988 hip hop album. The third album is Born to Entertain. By the time I did the Itch-a-Bone album in 91, I was already four albums in. I could have retired already. So to your question, I went through it, but it was relatively fast because each year I was making another album. So it was not like back in the day, you know, an artist like Madonna or whoever was big, they could take three or four years off, right? I was just dropping them. So anyway, that's your question. That's how I got to 91. And that was the last album that I released as Lance Romance until I signed a 1993 music publishing deal with EMI, EMI Publishing. And at the time when I signed to EMI, EMI had the writers, was me, Dallas Austin, Mane Dupree, an unknown writer called Missy Elliott, Timberland, right? This is all people that everyone knows now, but everyone was just getting familiar with this demographics. And it was different. It's 91. There's no Biggie Smalls. Tupac is just, I met Tupac, I used to be a dancer for Houdini. So, so you got to remember this. We were the first dancers on a commercial level. Before me and Cliff Love danced with Houdini, there was Dr. Ice and Kango from the group called UTFO. They were on Select Records. They used to be backup for Houdini and even Jermaine Dupree did a little stint dancing for Houdini if, if you Google it, but to my point is, um, we all signed publishing deals. I signed my deal in 93 and I never made another Lance Romance record until I made the 2000 record, which is the I'm Amita. So by the time I put this Latin hip hop I'm Amita thing in 2000, I'm already, what, 15 years in the industry. In the industry. Yeah. From 85 to 2000, I'm, I'm, I'm like an old man at 30, you know, look, I'm 59. Now you got to imagine I'm 59. I got into it straight out of high school at 17. You know, I worked at this place called windows on the world. It's the world trade center. They used to have this restaurant, the twin towers, God bless the dead before the towers came down. I used to, I used to open the door for people to go up and down the, the, the elevators to go to the restaurant. I only lasted at the job, maybe three months. Me and another guy named Romeo, his name is Joe. He was from a group called the boogie boys. They had a record called fly girl, fly girl, a fly girl. So he, he wouldn't got a record deal. He came back and go, Oh, we got a deal with capital records. I'm like, I'm not going to be up and down the elevator. I got to get a deal too. You know, so I wound up meeting Leland Robinson, Joey Robinson, sugar hill records. I wound up getting a deal with sugar hill records. So that's when I met Melly Mel, Scorpio, grandmaster flash, you know? So it's 84, 85. It's still new, you know what I mean? But anyway, there you go. So to your question, I was seasoned. It just didn't happen in 1991. I make an album. I had already met everyone I can possibly meet in the music industry by the time I made that album. There you have it. Yeah. Oh man. I love that. So take, take us from like 1993 all the way into like the 2020s. What, what'd you do through then? So from 93, um, and this is even, it gets even crazier. Um, back then we had these studio sessions and you could either be a ghostwriter or you're a session writer. A session writer is going to get credits for everything they do. Right. They're going to their session. These are session musicians. I want it. I was like, well, what's the difference? Well, they were like, well, a ghostwriter, you get paid, but people don't got to know who you are. That's good enough for me. I felt by the time I did this in 93, I was already. I felt I already experienced enough. I'm good. Right. By the time 93 came, I had what four, four or five albums. I'm good. You know, I don't care if anybody knows me at this point. That's why I named my album fortune and fame, because I was more into the fortune and not the fame. Oh, right. This is, so it's coming back to that. So I named my album fortune and fame and putting fortune first. I'm like, I'm just in it for the fortune. So by time, um, Marty Bandeer, he was running EMI. Um, he sat us down and I remember him saying, all you guys are going to be writers and producers, except for Missy. Missy still wants to be an artist. Right. So he was the only one. Now you got to remember, this is 93. Missy didn't even come out again. She didn't come out until like 96, 97 when it was Neo Soul. Yeah. And I grew, and I grew up in Dallas with a rap group called Nemesis. Nemesis Nemesis was basically the, they're the brothers of an unknown singer at the time that used to rap. She used to go by the name MC apples and she changed the name because she started singing and she became our little sister became Erykah Badu. Oh, wow. Right. Right. No, I'm going to take you an even crazier spin. What? So Erykah became Erykah Badu, but how I got to Ichabod Records is because two of us went to Ichabod from Dallas and that guy, because we was in the studio making the record with a guy named Earthquake and I knew him early on. And his name is Robbie Van Winkle, Vanilla Ice. Yeah, right. So the reason I, the reason I got to, the reason I got to, and everything I'm saying is Googleable, Vanilla Ice and I was on Ichabod Records. Love that. The number one artist on Ichabod Records at that time was a guy from Detroit called MC Breed. MC Breed had a record called No Future in Your Frontin'. It just gets crazy. Vanilla Ice, Ice Ice Baby. Didn't take off in Atlanta. So Robbie and I decided to go to New York. He had a record. I just wanted to be a producer. So EMI signed him under SBK Records and I wind up signing Publishing, right? So the point is I didn't want to be an artist because I wasn't chasing fame. Got it. I was chasing fortune. Fortune, right? So the point is I got to EMI because of Robbie Vanilla Ice. So we went to, we was at Ichabod and we left Ichabod and went to EMI. And then I wind up saying, I'm not going to be Lance Romance. I'm a writer, you know? And I already knew how to program the drums. I was in marching band in Texas. I'm a percussionist. I'm Puerto Rican. I can play the congas and the bungles. I was comfortable in the studio, low key. So back to your question. So when we signed this deal in 93, they throw us in the studio with a bunch of acts that are signed, but they're not out and you're going to love this unsigned work. We go to the studio. They're like, you're going to work with these five guys. Okay. What's their names? Well, they're called the Backstreet Boys. Nobody knows them. Right. No problem. We work with them, but then they're going to go to Germany and work with some other producers, right? So we finished with them. Who's the other guys? Oh, another group with five guys. What they're called. I don't know. They call NSYNC. Okay. No problem. Right. She's, I think she's from Tennessee or she's from Kentucky. I don't know. What's her name? Britney Spears. All right. Do you understand? Then you're going to work with Jessica Simpson. Then you're going to, do you understand what I mean? Then Jessica, you would work as when you are publishing company, people don't understand this, the record labels go to the publishing companies to get the records to have hit records for their artists that they signed. Right. Do you understand? So people don't understand. Lance, how did you meet all these people? Tony Braxton, Tia, because I'm in the business side. So it doesn't matter a thousand artists. I'm going to meet them first because the labels are going to send them to the studio to find the hit record. Do you understand? So I don't got to go to the club, the schmooze. I'm just going to sit in the studio. They're going to walk in. If you get signed, you're going to, you're going to come through me anyway. One of the, one of you, do you understand? So that's, that's just the reality. And that's the beauty of focusing on fortune instead of fame. Cause if I would have stuck with fame, all Duke, no disrespect. Vanilla Ice is my boy. There was an end of the line back then when you, you ran out of your 15 minutes of fame. Right. I saw that. I learned firsthand through my boy, Bobby Brown, who married Whitney Houston. Right. I was like, I don't know if I want this fame thing. It looked like it don't last so long. Yeah. Yeah. And I stayed with the fortune, which is why I'm 59 and I can now become Lance Romance all over. Because I never got tangled up into the BS. So to your question. Wisdom. That, that, that is totally wisdom. Fortune. Yeah. And not everybody has these stories. I'm not saying my life was peaches and cream. You know, you have your don't pay your taxes. Do some fed time and you know, you get it financially. All the artists learn about money the hard way, you know? So it's, it's not like, um, you have this book of follow the instructions to success. Right. You gotta remember now many people can Google and see our mistakes. When we were becoming who we're becoming, the only people that we could look past to see what they did was maybe Motown Elvis. You understand what I mean? We didn't really, yeah. We didn't really, you know, anything that I learned about Elvis is from the Colonel and the Colonel robbed Elvis and took all his money and never let him play overseas. Pretty much. And Barry Gordy sold Motown. So we didn't really, the way artists learn today, they can, they got, they got it easy. We were walking around with a five and 10 pound, two inch tape that we had to put on a machine, thread the machine. I learned how to thread the machine. I remember those days, by the way. Yeah, I know you do. I saw the records behind you, right? You don't, those Ampex reels, those four 56 reels. They were heavy, right? They were heavy. I learned how to thread an edit through another producer called Curtis. Curtis is known in the industry as Mantronics. We, I learned how to do this at a label called Sleeping Bag Records. Wow. That's crazy. And Sleeping Bag Records, it was me, Just Ice, Nice and Smooth, EPMD, some, some singers called Joy Sims, Nocera, Todd Terry, like club stuff. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. So that was, that was prior to 91. So again, by time, when people always say to me, why would EMI sign you and Pharrell and Timberland and Missy and even Diddy, all these guys had hits. I said, they got hits because they learned from me. I was before them, right? People forget because they're, they're, they're forgetting by time a Jay-Z or some of these people come in, I'm maybe already 20 years in the game. Yeah. Do you understand? Like 85 to 2000, that's 15, right? Yeah. Jay-Z came in the game in 96. So even I was already maybe 15 years in the game by time Jay-Z came in. Yeah. Wow. That's crazy. You understand? And if you came in at 2000, I'm already, I'm 20, almost 20 years in. But the point that I'm making is that gap that you said, what did I do from 93 all the way up until now was just make music. Then the internet, then the internet came and then I realized, well, I'm not a signed artist. So does that mean I can technically make an album and upload it when I want? And that's how I was able to get the most rap albums in the game. I got over 50 albums because I had no boss. That's crazy. So imagine I got all the experience, you got to imagine all the people I met, Mantronix, Teddy Riley, Dallas Austin, Jermaine Dupri, The Sugar Hill Time. You know what I mean? Rick Rubin, Russell Simmons. You understand the list goes on and on and on. I'm absorbing all of this like a sponge. I'm not talking, I'm not drinking, I'm not smoking, I'm not doing drugs. I didn't make any babies. I'm absorbing the sponge and I'm like, yeah, I'm going to learn. I'm going to learn from Chris.