NBC’s “The Apprentice”

The start of it all…

I had just been dropped from Atlantic Records and forced from my star accommodations on the upper east side to Hoboken, NJ. I had picked up some catering shifts when I got a call from an old producer friend about the show. Below is the Wikipedia summary of my first national appearance on NBC’s The Apprentice. You will also find a video compilation of my parts of the episode along with NBC’s web pages the following day, To the right is a mock-up of the album cover they created for their pitch to XM Radio.

Lastly, the single my team and I recorded during the episode, Nothing Can Be Anything, can be heard in the Listening Room of the LK Crew membership along with 100+ tracks of unreleased album cuts, songwriting demos, producer demos, acoustic performances, live recordings, unreleased soundtracks and personal song commissions.

Week 9: One Hit Blunder – Wikipedia summary

  • Airdate: November 17, 2005

  • Sponsor: XM Radio

  • Corporate shuffle: Clay asked Trump if he could move from Capital Edge to Excel because he didn’t like the way Adam, Alla, and Felisha were treating him. Trump agreed, and Clay joined Randal and Rebecca.

  • Task: The teams had to choose an unsigned singer and create a song for them to sing. The song would be aired on XM Radio Café channel and critiqued by listeners who called in. Capital Edge worked with Levi Kreis and Excel worked with Jide.

  • Judges: Donald Trump; Carolyn Kepcher; George H. Ross

  • Trump Monologue Creative Balance It is a great business person that can decide between practicality and creativity. You have to strike a balance.

  • Capital Edge project manager: Felisha

  • Excel project manager: Rebecca

  • Winning team: Capital Edge

    • Reasons for win: Without Clay’s negative influence Capital Edge successfully worked as a team and managed to create a pop rock song, despite the band’s jazz like roots.

    • Capital Edge’s reward: A private helicopter tour of popular New York City buildings with Trump.

  • Losing team: Excel

    • Reasons for loss: Instead of alternative rock, which XM radio specializes in, Excel decided to change genre and created a song that was not popular with the XM radio listeners. In addition, their radio channel was wrong on their marketing material poster, which Randal was responsible for. In addition Clay was very disruptive and rude to Rebecca which caused her to be stressed during presentation(an area she specializes in.)

    • Sent to boardroom: No final boardroom – While Trump considered all three responsible for the loss, Trump noted that Rebecca and Randall had been outstanding throughout the process, Clay was singled out for being a negative force, constantly having trouble with working with P.M.s, and was even suspected for affecting the team performance. This gave Trump enough evidence to fire him.

    • Fired: Clay Lee, for his very poor attitude, being a disrespectful and disruptive force, refusing to take any responsibility for his actions, and being too difficult to work with. Trump felt that all of the members of Excel were equally responsible for the loss, but ultimately fired Clay based on his history of not getting along with his project managers, along with his failure to improve in that regard on this task, especially being warned by Trump and his advisors before this task, especially in week 7.

  • Notes:

    • Exemptions are no longer issued.

    • Clay was unhappy with Capital Edge, so he volunteered moving to Excel. Trump accepted his offer, but Clay implicated himself when Capital Edge became very ecstatic after Clay left the team, saying they would never want to work with him ever again. In the boardroom, Rebecca said she would also never want to work with Clay again, to which Randal agreed.

    • Both Rebecca and Randal were in serious danger of also being fired; Rebecca because this was her second loss as project manager, and Randal because Trump considered the error over the channel number to be such a basic mistake that it was grounds for instant dismissal. It was strongly implied that Randal’s honesty over the error (compared to Clay’s refusal to admit making any significant mistakes in the task) played a major part in his survival.