Terrace Martin and James Fauntleroy have been creating high-level musical compositions for a long time.

Whether it’s Martin’s involvement in the critically acclaimed outfits of Dinner Party (alongside Robert Glasper, Kamasi Washington, and 9th Wonder) and his albums like Drones or Fauntleroy’s extremely impressive production and writing catalog that spans everyone from Kendrick Lamar to Rihanna, the pair have seen inner workings of the music industry for years. It’s almost like living a budding musician’s dream in a way.

But as their careers have progressed, both are looking to simply make good music with their friends while making it difficult for anyone else to get into the fold, and that’s on purpose. Perhaps that’s why they’ve come together for Nova – a six-track album inspired by Brazil’s samba subgenre bossa nova.

On the project, saxophone riffs mix with clacking claves and elegant drums to create a smooth effort, from the background music at a dinner party or the subsequent groove portion of the night after everyone’s had a good meal and some drinks. For Martin, it’s an album he’s always wanted to do, and he thought of no one other than Fauntleroy to help him pull it off.

During a recent interview with BET, Terrace Martin and James Fauntleroy broke down their Friday (August 25)-released effort. It’s the third of six that the former is dropping in 2023, following the jazz-inspired Fine Tune and father-tributed Curly. They also explained where they’re at during this portion of their career with Martin even revealing some advice Quincy Jones once gave him. Read below.

BET: Nova is the third installment of six in this series of albums you’re dropping, Terrace. And the concept of it is something I think both your fans wouldn’t be too surprised by but definitely love. Specifically, why did you both want to come together to take it on?

Terrace Martin: This is the third one I've dropped this year, but I don't like to pair these bodies of work like that together. I don't pair my children together like that. Every project means something, but this project really meant a lot to me before the music because me and James are like really personal friends. I'm a little older than James, but in music business years we came up together. We got a whole crew. It’s a lot of us. So James was always one of the ones in our brotherhood that you can go to just for some regular human being advice. James will just give you some very good advice that will change your life, and he's changed my life a few times. And so for me, from a friend and brother perspective. So it’s like, Yo man, let's spend some time together and record a body of work that our children could say, “Wow, our fathers are friends.” It starts there for me. The other s**t is gonna come.

This is honestly my first in life complete, equally with a partner body of work. I'm not dissing what I've done but everything else is usually technically – I'm doing 80 percent of the grunt work. I don't mind doing it, but this one, he's so hands on. It was a beautiful challenge. I love challenges because I'm addicted to breakthroughs.

James Fauntleroy: I feel like it really comes across in the music as far as how I was feeling when I was hearing all of this extra fly, really appropriately expensive sounding s**t. Literally, he's telling the truth like Terrace knows where my mom lives because he’s picked me up from my mom's house, which you know living at your mom's house is not always but usually an indicator that you don't have any f*****g money so.

Terrace: We were picking this up from our mother's houses [laughs].

James: Oh, yeah. I forgot that. I can't believe I forgot about that [laughs]. So it represents, for me, kind of like the combination of our careers because in this time, we both have done so much. I'm really proud of far Terrace has come. And I'm also really proud of where James has come from. But as far as music is concerned, I always just been a huge Bossa Nova fan and Terrace tells the story better about us talking about Michael Franks…

Terrace: James has been a Michael Franks’ since he had the CD in the car.

James: Actually, I'll tell you what the story is. My mom and my aunt used to go to the Goodwill all the time to get marriage things. My mom always listened to 94.7 The Wave when it was smooth jazz. And so it was a bunch of people on there that I was into but I didn't even have the mind state to know to go get the CD. It was just guy on the radio, I used to hear all the time and be like, Man, who is that? So one day, she came home with a thrifted Passion Fruit Michael Frank CD, and she was like, “This is the guy you keep asking me about.” And that's how I started. So that was probably 10th grade. I think she gave me a CD, and I’ve just been a big Michael Franks fan since and it's really had a big impact on the kind of music I wanted to make. So this is just a perfect environment for me to get in and do my f*****g thing.

BET: James, the artwork you created for this that helped you both promo the album was awesome. What made you come up with that?

James: As far as all the visual stuff, which I had a blast doing. I was so inspired to do that because that's a lot of s**t to like, if you look at the artwork, I’m making all this from scratch and it took a lot of time. It took maybe as much time as taking me to work on the music. I was just feeling so inspired because music was on such a high level, and that's really just representative not only where we come, but how I feel about myself and the type of s**t I like to do. So I just think this is I'm really proud of this s**t and I'm really excited for people to get into it.

Terrace: I want to add to that the artwork statement. With James, what was interesting about that – I'm a big artwork fan, but I come from the era of like, See that, take a picture, boom. No matter how jazzy I get, I'm taught by Daz [Dillinger], Snoop [Dogg], and Kurupt. So my s**t is still like, that's it. I didn't realize how serious Nova was until I started having to post the artwork. I didn't realize the music sounded like that until I saw what he was making for the art. It was an out-of-body experience because I’m flowing, but when I saw the art, I started hearing things I didn't hear in the music that we do. One day, I just smoked a big-ass joint, man. I put the art on one side of the screen and I put the music [on the other side] and then I muted the music, and just listened to the lyrics with the art. Then I muted the lyrics and just listened to the bass track with the art and every little element in the art has little secret know-what as you look at it.

BET: This album is based on your interpretation of a bossa nova record. Where did that idea come from?

Terrace: Bossa nova, first of all, shout out to Brazil, shout out to the jazz musicians that they were inspired from even to create that, and they got inspired to create that thing from Black American music acts. That's where bossa nova was inspired – the chord changes over everything. So in the mid-to-late 60s Stan Getz came with a hit; he was cracking them open. He went down in Brazil. He got Antonio Carlos Jobim, they started making these really big records. Stan Getz had a video in the 60s, “Girl from Ipanema.” it was different. So I always felt like Bossa Nova is like the flyest way to just get points across. People could move to it, they could dance to it, you could do some slick s**t to it, jam beautiful over it, but then everybody's still moving. My goal is with this project: I never want to let people not move. I never want to stop you from moving.

Me and James we influenced by Jodeci, we're influenced by SWV. We love Brandy. We love Rodney Jerkins, we love the music of Teddy Riley. That's our era. So when I was trying to do anything, but that that sense of harmony with those drums, we wanted to blend all those worlds together – jazz, r&b, bossa nova, but we also want to be for real like the drum patterns are for real, those are bossa novas, the claves are on, everything is smooth.

BET: What made you want to have Robert Glasper on “Witchcraft” and Chief Adjuah on “Like It Like That” and “Chocolate For Dinner”?

Terrace: They’re the best in the world! And what I mean – it's not coming from an arrogant perspective – it's coming from these are all people I personally know, put in the time, the hours and the sacrifices to become these type of artists. And I know all these guys personally. To sit here and say money was not on our mind. First, when we came into this ballgame, it was being the best and with our peers and loving what we do and loving them, respecting the art. That's a blessing. Robert has been like that since they'd since 15. Ro has been like that. So it's like I wanted to put them with James Fauntleroy. Just how you read that. It was like, I wanted to read that and say, Wow, James on a record with Chief? What is that?

BET: What does a typical studio session look like with you two?

James: When you're dealing with a bunch of people that know what they're doing, no real session – either for a meaningful project or meaningful amount of money – no real session looks like the s**t on TV. It doesn't look like TV, it doesn't look like the Five Heartbeats when they run around balling up papers and singing the parts of the song. It's a very like surgical, and that's done with intent. So it was efficient. It just really wasn't as exciting as what people expect, other than the fact that it's so exciting to also be working with people that know what they are doing on such a high level because there's so few people like that in every industry and discipline – that all of us on the planet that are really good at anything and are constantly having to deal with people who are less good. But as far as the sessions went, it was very smooth.

Stream Terrace Martin and James Fauntleroy’s new album Nova below.