Simon Illa Is Living Large

EVEN WITHOUT PHYSICAL and family problems, making it in the music business is rough, and Illa had a predictable bare-bones start. His father's suicide meant an increase in his monthly Social Security payments (he currently gets about $1,000), and the extra money helped him buy some cheap recording equipment and set up his own label, Paranormal, in Terre Haute. Over two years, he recorded 30 bands, none of which made it anywhere, but that's how he grew his chops. Good producers — like Storch, like Timbaland, and like Simon Illa — develop a knack for taking raw talent and sculpting it, through a rare combination of musicianship, sound engineering and feel, into something that will play endlessly on radio stations throughout the country and make everyone mad amounts of money. Since Illa didn't party (he's never smoked, drunk or done drugs — "I'm so small, they'd kill me"), he would stay up night after night, working 10 a.m. to 2 a.m., taking short naps on the studio couch. Perfection became his obsession.

Around this time, Kehinde decided that if Simon was going to make it in the music business, "Eric Bradley Gilbert" would never do. So Illa took the name "Simon" from the 1998 film Simon Birch, about a boy with stunted growth who kills his best friend's mother (albeit accidentally) and then helps the friend find his real father. And "Illa"? "Because I'm so illin', of course," says Simon.

Meanwhile, Illa had been coming to Philadelphia once a year for the now defunct Philadelphia Music Conference. Compared to Paris and Terre Haute, Philly was daunting. But by 2001, at 25, Simon was ready for a fresh start in a bigger place. "My grandmother said, ‘Be sensible, you can't,'" Simon says. "So I bought a one-way ticket."

He got a room at a Chinatown hotel and quickly ran out of money, but the Illa charm kept the staff sneaking him keys to vacant rooms. When no rooms were available, he'd sleep at 30th Street Station. Illa didn't see even that as a big deal: "The security guards there loved me," he remembers. "They even charged my wheelchair battery for me on occasion."

But breaking into the local music business — that was a challenge. One day, Illa rolled his wheelchair down Broad Street from his room in Chinatown to stake out the offices of Philadelphia International Records, home to Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff and their legendary Sound of Philadelphia. He waited in the rain for more than two hours for someone to show; eventually the head of A&R arrived, only to tell Simon he was busy and to come back the next day. So Simon rolled right back up Broad Street. And down again the next day. He got the A&R rep to play a CD for Kenny Gamble. Within a week, Simon had work in Gamble's studio.

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