"Nervous? Come on, fam," he exclaims, before laughing and finally succumbing. "Nah, there's always a bit of nervousness. This is literally the first time [Nicolay and I] have ever played together, like ever," he stresses. "But I'm beyond certain we'll do a great job."

"I think in the past we were reluctant to talk about it cause we didn't want to ruin the surprise of it. We were still trying to find our way in terms of what we were going to do, or, if and when we were gonna do another Foreign Exchange record," Phonte told us just a couple days after the release of the LP. "Now that it's finally here it feels good to finally have it out for the world to hear."

Nicolay: We came across each other on the Okayplayer message boards, and we just used whatever internet means that were available to us to communicate. And at first I remember that Tay didn't even have a computer. So we would just communicate through messages on Okayplayer and eventually email and instant messages. Just whatever we needed to get each other files back and forth. And we essentially still work the same way to this day.

Nu-Soul: What makes this album different from Connected?
Phonte: I think on one level, Connected was a Hip Hop album with outside influences. Leave It All Behind is an R&B album with a Hip Hop influence but also with house and downtempo: that kind of stuff. It's really night and day in terms of composition.

Nu-Soul: Did you ever feel pressure to make a second Connected?
Nicolay: Not really. We kind of did away with that pressure right when we started on the album. For us, we already knew we were not interested in doing another Connected; not because it was a bad album but because it was such a good album. We felt it would be most satisfying to us as artists to do something completely different so we made peace with that right way. From that moment on, we didn't pay much attention to the pressure.

Nu-Soul: How has the partnership between the two of you evolved over the last few years?
Nicolay: (Laughing).That's a good question.
Phonte: I think even now more than ever, it's a lot more trust there. We always had an incredible amount of respect for one another's talent but with the first record, I trusted him as a Hip Hop producer and he trusted me as a rapper. So now, we have come to respect each other as musicians on all levels. Nic is one of the most versatile cats I know so if he hits me and tells me he is working on a waltz, I can tell him to send it to me. I don't need to guess. If Nicolay is producing the waltz, it's going to be a funky ass waltz. (Laughing).

Nu-Soul: Phonte, I know a lot of people know you for your incredible emceeing abilities but on this record you sing a lot more. What prompted that?
Phonte: I think it was just talking to cats that I admire and them telling me they thought I should sing more. One of the most annoying things I've read on the internet is, this one guy didn't like the singing on the album and said we should release a Leave It All Behind part two and rap over the beats. I was like what the fuck dude! That is the dumbest shit ever! "House Of Cards" is like a jazz beat and that shit would sound awful trying to rap over it. There was just so much texture in it and movement and I just felt like raps would have been cool but wouldn't have done it justice. I could have spit three 16's and a hook on "Daykeeper" but that would have been copping out and I would have been short changing myself and the listeners so I did what I felt.

Nicolay: I've read similar things and what shocks me is that this is one of the first projects where I've seen polar opposite feedback. Some people are definitely not happy with the fact that we are not doing what we used to and there are some that are extremely pleased with the new stuff. You always end up disappointing somebody but making someone else happy, so I think that's why we decided to make ourselves happy first and do something that we wanted to hear. And in no way shape or form do we feel we owe anybody any apologies about that.

Phonte: It's kind of somewhat frustrating because there is nothing on this album that we didn't at least show was coming from the last one. We dropped hints on the last record. "Come Around" was a big record on the first album and there were no raps on that, so I think in all fairness, we established ourselves from the first record. We let people know it was primarily a Hip Hop album but ultimately we would go on and do more.

Nu-Soul: Nicolay, tell me a little about your trip to Japan and how that inspired you.
Nicolay: I think it told me something I already knew. It was one of those experiences they call life changing and make corny movies about. (Laughing) It really was just coming in contact with a culture like that. It made me reevaluate what I was doing and made me realize that if you as an artist censor yourself into trying to make things you believe your audience wants to hear, you're selling yourself short. I noticed I was doing that. So the trip to Japan indirectly set me free to accept that I wanted to do things I wanted to do and then see later what genre it was. As long as it's good, it can be anything under the sun. And that trip helped me see that.

Nu-Soul: Name one moment that stands out while you all made this album.
Nicolay: Man for me, it's been a series of stuff. We kept raising the bar so when Te' came back to me with "Daykeeper," that seriously blew my fucking mind. That was the first track that I truly saw that we could really take them there. It messed with me for like a month straight. I always hoped for us to be able to do stuff like that but to actually see it... it just blew me away.

Nu-Soul: Nicolay, did you do all the production on the entire album?
Nicolay: No, ZO! actually produced, "If She Breaks Your Heart." He laid the keys, bass and drums and I did the beat. And we wanted to do that cover justice. We were looking for the right way to make it ours. It's a picture of the nineties and we wanted to insert a little bit of modern day into it. It came out really nice. ZO! did his thing and Mark Mac did the string arrangement and Matt Douglas was on the flute. The rest of the album was all me.

Nu-Soul: What goes into the selection process when you all chose guest appearances for the albums?
Nicolay: Phonte is the vocal director. It has always been like that. We always had that 50/50 thing. I do the music and Phonte does all the vocals and that includes finding the right people for the collaborations.

Phonte: Nic will send me the tracks and most of the time the hook will come to me first and then I just get stuff in my head and don't leave the studio until I get exactly what I want. So if I hear a female harmony, I think about who will sound good over it. And for this album, I had Muhsinah in mind to be my main female collaborator. Those songs were written with her in mind for her voice. That's pretty much it. I hear it in my head a certain way and pick the players that can play the positions.

Nu-Soul: Nicolay, I know you are originally from the Netherlands. Tell me about the music scene back home?
Nicolay: It's different because it's such a small country. There is no subculture here that is too small to do something like over there. Even bigger subcultures over there are small and it's harder to make a living off music that way but it also eliminates the whole debate of doing music for the money. People tend to be more free and creative but I can say that about people making music in the states too. There is a lot cool stuff coming out there though.

Nu-Soul: How do you all see music evolving over the next few years?
Nicolay: We talk about that off and on. It's interesting because people like us who try to make our living off our music see how the landscapes have changed. Like magazines we were in that are no longer out and knowing that you can't even expect the numbers like you did four years ago. A lot of people get music through the web, blogs and word of mouth. A lot of artists are gong to be independent and take on more responsibilities from the business side. They have to diversify their game and know how to play it and they will be able to operate with the major artists. Last week, we were in the top hundred albums on I-Tunes and we were in there with major label artists and we were on the new music website on BET, so for us to be in between that is incredible. Because of the power of that communication, we can sneak our way into that.

Phonte: I think as times get tighter economically and how shit keeps going to shambles, people will need music as a source of healing more than ever. Music has always been used as a form of escape for people. Like during the Great Depression, musicians were able to make a living because folks needed something to make them feel good. Nicolay summed it up the other day by saying, as musicians we are not selling music but were selling hope. It's about making a product that makes people believe in you. It's a spiritual thing more so than entertainment. They will need a form of nourishment because it doesn't show any signs of getting better overnight.

Nu-Soul: Who are some of the artists you all would like to work with in the future?
Phonte: I don't know; I'm always looking for new stuff because new people and new energy inspire me. Yahzarah was my muse for Connected and Muhsinah was for this one. So, I look for the next person that will make me be like, oh shit!

Nu-Soul: What is next for FE and you both as individual artists?
Nicolay: Making sure we sell the crap out of these CD's and touring. We are always working even when a new album drops. Leave It All Behind opened the door to pretty much do anything imaginable after this and show that we are going to do what we like. We have newer stuff and the sky is the limit right now.

Phonte: I have other FE songs that I've written already but I have been touring a lot. And I just started recording more songs. I haven't made any concrete plans on where they will land but I need to get out and record and get this music out. We spent so much time with this record, it seemed like it wasn't going to ever happen and now that it's out, I need to make some more because I need some new shit to listen to. (Laughing).

Nu-Soul: Will we ever see a Percy Miracles album?
Phonte: Nah, that won't happen. I briefly considered it. I had fun playing the character but I don't see the need for it anymore. He left a lot of material in his unfortunate death. (Laughing)

Nu-Soul: What colors describe Leave It All Behind?
Nicolay: Black and white.
Phonte: Definitely black and white. It leaves room for interpretation. If I show you a black and white picture, you don't know the true colors so you paint what those colors are in your mind. It can be interpreted on so many different levels. Some people say some songs make them sad but then I hear they make some people happy. So there are a lot of different meanings. Black and white photos are timeless and they stay strong throughout the years.

It's an image of normalcy for two busy young professionals. In the next room, his wife since May, Aimee, talks about a business project on the telephone. The family dog, a spry English setter mix named Fischer, bounds by occasionally, keeping tabs on everyone. Several Barack Obama bumper stickers sit on a coffee table, leftovers from the three splashed onto the back of the Honda Accord parked in the driveway. This one-story brick ranch house has blue shutters and an ample front lawn.

Hooking up on the Okayplayer.com Web site, the Netherlands-born beatman began sending the Triangle-based hip-hopper beats to lay verses over. They eventually tossed enough music back and forth to release a hip-hop/R&B album, "Connected," on the British BBE label in 2004.

And what, they thought, should they call this cross-Atlantic outfit they had formed? Why, The Foreign Exchange, of course.

Cut to 2006: Nicolay moves to the U.S. -- Wilmington, to be exact. He marries a stateside gal. He produces more material, mostly for the other members of the Justus League, the North Carolina hip-hop collective that includes Phonte and Little Brother as card-carrying members. He also begins working with Phonte again on another Foreign Exchange album.