Latest / The Bootleg Kev Podcast / #710 - Curtiss King Talks Direct-to-Consumer, DistroKid, Making Music, Drake & More

Transcript

#710 - Curtiss King Talks Direct-to-Consumer, DistroKid, Making Music, Drake & More · The Bootleg Kev Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, we just launched the membership side of the
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• 0:23
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• 0:26
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• 0:27
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• 0:28
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• 0:42
  Speaker 3: Much love.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Let's get into the interview. Yo, Bootleg Kev, we in here, man.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: We got a special guest, dope producer, dope artist, and
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: a very successful YouTuber. Been putting out incredible content for
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: a four or five years now? When did you really
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: fully dive into this content? Because I feel like you've
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: been killing it for a minute now.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: It's 15 years now.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: 15?
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: I've been hip to the channel.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: I've known who you are for a long time, but
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: I feel like I've been more hip in the last
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: four or five years. Curtis King is here.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Come on. Finally here.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Yes, sir, man.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Good to see you.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, dude. I've loved what you've been doing.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I think you kind of, because I feel like I've
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: been so like, and I still am. I don't do
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of the streaming shit. And I feel like
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: you were one of the first guys I saw do
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: streaming and not be like weird and corny. Does that
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: make sense?
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: It does. It does. Because I remember the time that
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: I started streaming, I was a part of League of Stars.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: I was on the bench.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, shout out to League of Stars.
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, shout out to Ace Pond. I was like the
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: first person to look out for me in this industry.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: And that's how I got my first placement with Glasses
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: and Mac-10. But I never forget, he was like, you're
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: going to spend your time online and selling beats and
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: all the stuff that you're doing instead of like trying
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: to get more placements. Cause they had just got the
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: placements for Tiger faded. They had got, uh, what was
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: the one with problem? Uh, I'm trying to function with E40.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: Like they had a lot of records going up. So
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: it was a top priority, but I just saw, I
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: felt like I saw the future, man. I saw what
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: was coming up. Yeah.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, cause I, is it safe to say you
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: had kind of started because that is one thing that,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I feel like niches are where audiences are born.
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: And I feel like I had saw early on, like
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: you had taken an approach to like kind of the
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: production engineering behind the scenes side of, of that side
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: of the rap shit in your content.
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Um, and I, I feel like there was like you
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: and Devon Terrell were doing a lot.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: I was just talking to him on the way here.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Um, of just dope content where I'm like, Oh man,
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: it's crazy. No one's done been do talks about these
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: kinds of things or talks about like, you know, producer
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: news or how to, Program beats or how to engineer,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: you know, all the shit that like there's an audience for.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Is that what you say that that's kind of how
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: you kind of caught your niche as a content creator
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: for people who maybe weren't hip to what Curtis King
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: was prior to maybe finding you online?
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: Honestly, in the beginning, I didn't even think about a niche.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: When I came in, I was thinking, here I am
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: off of my history producing and working, working with TDE
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: really early on. Here I am with the placements and
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: the conversations I've had with early Glass Malone and DJ Head,
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: and they were giving me advice back then. I was like,
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: I've been given a lot of information that likely 95%
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: of people who choose this as a profession, as a rapper,
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: as a producer, would never have access to. And so
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: I got to a place where the year that Hip
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: Hop DX was like, you got one of the top
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: 25 albums of the year, back when, shout out my guy,
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: Salas was managing me, Sharae was my PR, I just
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: had a kind of, kind of, coming to Jesus moment
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: where I was like, I don't know if this is
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: supposed to be my trajectory in this way. And, uh, dog,
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: I just started like giving information through content and helping people.
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: And I just never felt that fulfilled.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: You talk about Brian Salas. Yeah.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: Friend of the show. Hey, yeah. That's somebody that you
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: talk about.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: Great guy.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: The biggest maturation you saw for me as an artist
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: came underneath his regime.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: He's a very sharp guy.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: And he quick to tell you about yourself. Whenever I
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: used to be micromanaging or trying to micromanage my manager,
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: he would tell me, Curtis, go eat a vegan burger
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: and sit your ass down somewhere.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: That's funny.
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: That's the only person who'd tell me that.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: I know Sal's very well. That checks out.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: No, I think it's been dope to see. And then
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: I think the other thing, too, is when you have
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the history that you have, especially here in LA and
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Southern California, there's a reason why a guy like Punch...
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: is only comfortable sitting down with you.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: It's crazy, bro.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Like he could win anywhere, especially during that time, during
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: that time or nowhere at all.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, and you, and people got to realize,
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: even though I've known TDE for as long as I have,
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: I've known punch for as long as I have, there's
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: times where they're so busy and they're so like, you
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: know how it is. They're very secretive about how they,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: they keep the circle very tight. And early on when
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: I went in there as really just a producer that
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: worked with abs. So, um, I just found myself being
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: in that room kind of quiet, just listening and seeing Javante,
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: seeing Soundwave, seeing, you know, Ali in his, in his
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: very early stages. But in doing that, you never know,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: like you never know what you, you know, what, what,
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: what benefits you could have for folks in that position.
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: But I just took a shot. I took a shot
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: at it. He had been showing love to the content punch.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: I've been showing love. And I was like, man, you
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: miss a thousand percent of shots you don't take.
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: So I just said, I said, you know, if, If
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: the content is as valuable as it is, it shouldn't
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: be that risk, that much of a risk to ask
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: them to be on the platform.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: That's the big thing is even asking.
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: That's hard, though. For sure. It's difficult because it's like
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: you've been doing this.
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: Legend in this. Somebody out highly respecting this. For me
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: as an artist, it's different. I even be real with you.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: The moment I started doing content, my artist relationship started
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: getting a little tricky. Well, yeah, because you're... Because you
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: the 5-0. This is the thing.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: I got to shout out you and Wayno. Shout out
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: my dog, Wayno. Who will just talk about shit. And
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: I'm going to start doing more of that kind of
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: content because I feel like, you know, obviously the guest-oriented
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: stuff is fine. But I feel like the reason I
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: haven't dived into that side is because I'm a pretty
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: opinionated person. But we need that. But I'm also like
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: a big relationships guy.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: And there's just no way that I am going to
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: go on camera and give my opinion on a song
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: or someone's album. And I'm not going to eventually end
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: up pissing somebody off who thinks they're my friend or
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: who might be my friend.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: Right right right but if you're their friend and you're
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: not gonna be honest with them is that a friend
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: that's my that's kind of where i'm at see.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: I'm the kind of person that would be honest with
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: them like when i see them or if they play
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: me some stuff in the studio but it's like to
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: be honest it's like yo dog you say if i
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: always just i know certain conversations i'm gonna get like
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: yo man have that conversation with me privately first privately
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: yeah because you have you gotten.
• 7:13
  Speaker 3: That I do live, or I used to do live
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: album reviews. I did one of Jed's albums, J.I.D. 's album.
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: And I'm just- Which album?
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: The last one?
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: The last one. Okay.
• 7:24
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: And I enjoyed it. But it was like some things
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: on there where I haven't been, he hasn't been the
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: easiest artist for me to get into. Okay. Because I
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: respect his skill set, but in terms of identifying with
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: the artist, I love stories. I love when I'm able
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: to kind of see the sequence and events and the rhymes.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: He just has a very specific style. And I talked
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: about that. Because at the end of the day, before
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: I was a content creator, I was born an artist.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: I'm a dying artist. So I'm always respect the craft,
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: even if I have something critical to say. And I
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: was critical. But at the same time, I did it
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: with integrity. Mans followed me after the stream was over.
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: I was like, oh, shit, here we go. I was like,
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: here we go. And I looked in the DM and
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: he was like, man, I just want to show you,
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: you know, show you show you love for. He said,
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: I watched the whole thing.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, shit.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: I'm like. I sometimes underestimate when I'm talking to my
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: audience and I see my usual avatars in there. Like
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: Kanye said, I'm on TV talking like it's just you
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: and me. I don't know sometimes these artists that are
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: sitting popping in. He did that, and that was kind
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: of an eye-opening thing. Also, talking to somebody on Joey Badass'
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: team after I did my Joey Badass response.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: You did a response.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: You were one of the other 38 West Coast rappers
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: who did a Joey Badass response.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: I did. I did. I got in a conversation.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: It was called content, right?
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: It was called content, yeah. Because I looked at it
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, dog, the West is finally having a moment.
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: And here you come. It's like I compared it to
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: a basketball park. Everybody was hooping back when it was
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: Kendrick versus Drake. Everybody was hooping. Everybody was rapping. You
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: wait six months later when the lights go down and
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: you got your headband on and your wristband and you
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: talking about it's too much West Coast D licking. And
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: it's like, I understand the context of Jay-Z and all
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: of that. But in me making content, I'm able to
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: see when somebody is content farming. And that's what I
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: looked at it as. I said, he knows what this is.
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: He hanging around 50 Cent, first of all. He's the
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: king of all that.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: He was shooting on the power series.
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying? He was shooting the series.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: So I looked at that and I said, everybody's taking
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: the angle of I rap better than you. My thing is,
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: as a writer, I want to speak to honesty. And
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: I'm looking at it and I'm like, you can't just
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: pop up and make your content out of West Coast.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: I just feel like that's... That's disingenuous. And so I
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: called that out and I think it might've got as
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: close as it did to his team because of, I
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: don't know how close to the truth it was or
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: because it's just unique. Who knows?
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: I thought it was fair. I thought it was fair.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I thought it was very like, it was, I felt
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: like what he said was in the spirit of just
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: hip hop.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: Sure.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: And I thought, I thought it, I thought it birthed some,
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: great bars and I thought, you know, Ray Vaughn obviously took,
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: took it and ran with it and did his thing.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Ray killed it. A lot of people, a lot of
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: people got hip to what Ray's got going on because
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: of that battle.
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I think it works.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: And then obviously Joey, he did the cypher with Ab Soul.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Who else was on that? big sean big sean yeah
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: and that was cool it.
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: Was good that's good it's good to see cyphers be
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: a part of the conversation again it used to be
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: a like a foregone conclusion but it got to it
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: got to a weird space and i know you got
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: unique perspective on it but it got to a space
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: where it felt like they were trying to make that
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: the thing of old.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: You um you said jid had dm'd you so he
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: shared with you that he appreciated your critique he.
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: Said i appreciate your integrity okay And that.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Was something that he didn't take it personal that you had.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: And like, a matter of fact, I had even made
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: a joke on one of the songs. I was like, man,
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: you got to put Charlie Wilson on this. And I
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: did a Charlie Wilson impersonation. He's like, man, I'm cracking up.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: And he, you know, he'd been following me since. So
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: I don't, he didn't have to reach out, but I,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: what I respect is the fact that he was there.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: He reached out. Um, it's crazy. Even like hearing like, uh,
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: Chris Patrick reached out. Yeah. He's Chris Patrick. Amazing. He's like, dog,
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: I used to watch your videos when I was learning
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: how to make FL studio. Crazy. And I'm just covering
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: this music because obviously it's my job in this space
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: to be aware of what's going on, but I'm a
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: hip hop head. So when I see something that's impactful,
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: like he did that Kai Sinet freestyle, I'm covering it.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: I hear music. I'm like, this is incredible. And he's like, dog,
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: you got no idea how tapped in I've already been.
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of been kind of trippy in that
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: I always wondered what relationships me doing this content might've
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: ruined or might've like, people were like, I'm just cool
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: off of him because I don't want to, you know,
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: I don't want to be a topic of conversation, but
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: I've always held it. With respect, and I always have
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: on my whiteboard, I said, if I wouldn't say that
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: to the person's face, I'm not going to say it
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: on his microphone. And I stood by that.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: That's important.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like that's a nice baseline. Like, if
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: it's nothing I would say to your face.
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 11:52
  Speaker 3: What are we doing?
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: What are we doing?
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: We clip farming. We're doing all this stuff.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the content farming thing is, it's interesting. It is, it's, man,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: it's draining. As like a consumer and someone who's like
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: in the space.
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Obviously, I understand that everything evolves like the way people
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: used to make music. It's evolved to computers and, you know,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: loops and people aren't making music the same way, just
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: like they're not doing content the same way. But it
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: feels like there's so much like just purposeful, like just
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: rage baiting.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: With real life ramifications. That's the part that bothers me.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, especially with real life ramifications. But even without, just
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: motherfuckers are just like being disingenuous and being like, they're
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: just not being, they're just being somebody who they're not
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: for the sake of whatever they deem to be, you know, clickable.
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: They don't even stand on the actual... talking points or
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: hot takes.
• 12:52
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• 14:01
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  Speaker 1: Use the promo code BOOTLAG. Save 20% off. Let's get
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  Speaker 1: back into the interview.
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: They have. And it's funny. When you meet a lot
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: of folks, you realize how much of this is literally wrestling.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: And it is, it is wrestling.
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: That's a good, that's, that's facts.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: I didn't, but thing is, it's hard when you don't
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: realize it's wrestling and you go on in there and
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: you're having conversations and you're engaging in conversations with other creators.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: They think it's for play play. And then you meet
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: somebody like me and I'm like, I'm not no tough guy,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: but I'm not no bitch. Like I'm a grown ass man.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: You say something that I find are deemed disrespectful, but
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: now I'm in an age, it's age, age of content where,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: you know, motherfuckers are putting my wife on thumbnails. And
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: I'm just like, really dog. I, I've received more hate
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: in making content than I ever received as a rapper.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: Who put your wife on a thumbnail?
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: I don't even know these people. That's crazy. It's just
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: people who see you have an opinion, be opinionated, and
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: feel like you're open game.
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: Well, Drake, I get it a lot.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, for sure. That's part of the reason, too.
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: Go ahead.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I get it a lot, and I'm not even in
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: it like that. Because I always tell Head, I'll be like, dude,
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know what it'd be like to be you.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: He probably just gets nonstop.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: But even yesterday, I retweeted the- The song?
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: The Jane. I was going to comment.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: And I was like, not again.
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: I was like, don't want that heat if I comment
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: on your post.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: And bro, I woke up today to like 200 like
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: just replies.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Yo, white boys. Oh, wait. The news ain't news in
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: the day. You need to dick ride Drake for some more.
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: It's been two years, bro.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: I've never been called a failed rapper as many times
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: in the last two years as I've experienced in the
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: last two years. I've never had that call to me
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: in 20 years. I've been on tour. I didn't have
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: all kind of great features and done my work. And
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: it was after the battle when I was very opinionated
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: about my criticism of Drake that they were like, failed
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: rapper trying to give an opinion they'll give a podcast
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: mic to anybody but you know what i figured out
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: it's only like a few things they all say and
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: that's why i think it's it's probably part of one
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: of them russian uh russian data center bots.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: No i and none of them have pictures it's all
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: like owls and pictures of dread it's all fake they're
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: not real people you broke.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: You were relevant and you know what i'm saying or
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: whatever they'll be optional but they it's it's when I
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: see it from that perspective of the dead internet theory
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: and that the, that we may be having more conversations
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: negatively and positively, because the Misa said that recently, and
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: it had me thinking like, if it's as dead internet
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: as it is on a negative feedback, why wouldn't it
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: be that on a positive when people are leaving fire
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: emojis and reinforcing on both sides, on both sides, bots
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: of bots, they don't really have emotions like us as
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: human beings. So it's a tricky, tricky world to navigate online,
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: at least now because of that.
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think, um, I think we're just living in
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: this world in which bad behavior gets rewarded. And there
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: is no shame or limit to what people will say
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: to you to try to defend. And this goes all
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the way to the political side. You know what I'm saying?
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: And raps become that.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Was it you that had made the correlation between... To
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Drake having a MAGA fan base?
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: Definitely was one of the people who amplified that, yeah.
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: And I understood what you were saying, because I do
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: think that Drake is one of the rappers, and I
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: don't think Drake's MAGA, but he does pal around with
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: the Nelk Boys and a bunch of weird streamers.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: Morgan Wallen?
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: I don't think Morgan Wallen's MAGA.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Let me be clear.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: I'm not on my podcast. I think he thought he
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: was too down. I think he thought he was a
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: little too down and got caught on camera thinking he
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: was too down.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: He said the hard R. I didn't hear that. Yeah.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: I thought he said it with the A.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: No, that was an anger. That was the caught on,
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: caught off guard with the hard R. I heard that.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: My thing is, I'm not even that surprised anymore. And
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: when I see this stuff, I'm just like... I just
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: would much rather somebody start with the hate. So I
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: know where to stand with you.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Well, my thing with Drake is he's one of those
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: rappers who a lot of his fans, and not a lot.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: He's probably the number one rapper amongst fans who don't
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: listen to rap music, but they listen to Drake. So
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: everything else they might listen to might be country or
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: rock or whatever, but they like Drake. That's the only
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: hip hop that they have a palette for.
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: And that's where the mega correlation comes in is that
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: There are a lot of MAGA supporters who act like
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: politics didn't exist until before Trump showed up.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: And I think there's a lot of people who act
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: like success in rap, singing in rap. It started and
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: it ends with Drake. And I think that that is
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: just as disrespectful to the culture of the folks who
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: came before us that opened up the door. And so
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: when I see these arguments online and I kind of
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: was inspired by it when I was starting to see
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: this is not about who can rap better between Kendrick
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: and Drake. Now you're starting to call Kendrick's music Harriet
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: Tubman music.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Which is crazy.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: You call it, you know, like, like.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, he said that. You're rapping like you're trying
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: to free the slaves. I'm like, yeah, I don't, like,
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: how is that a slight?
• 19:06
  Speaker 3: Like, what are we doing? So when you call that
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: stuff out, you will call that out. Forget Drake. If
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: it's anybody, you will call that out. That sounds wild.
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: Even like what he said on the Scissors song, you know,
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: in whips and chains like American slaves. Like, what made
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: you go with that line?
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: There's a lot of tone deaf bars from Drake.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Tone deaf or dog whistles?
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: I am a Drake fan.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: Tone deaf or dog whistles is my question.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: See, I don't want to put that on to Drake
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: because I don't. I've met his dad. His dad's a
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: nice guy. His dad is a Memphis OG. And I
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: feel like Canada has its own vibe and culture. And
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not saying all Canadian people are the same because
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: I'd be bigoted to say. but you meet a motherfucker
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: from Canada and you'd be like, yeah, I'd get Drake
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: a little more now.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: In what way?
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Just, they're very, just like nonchalant and like, dude, life's
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: good up there. They all got healthcare. Like shit ain't
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: as stressful up there. Everybody been living a pretty good
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: life in Canada. Even if you, even if your life
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: is rough.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Right, right.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: You get to go to the hospital. And everything is good.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying?
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: I'm with that.
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: I'm with that. But then when you start seeing mob
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: ties and 666, you start seeing.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: To me, that's where I'm like.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: That's why I said when Drake did the 20v1 thing
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: with the girl, I was like, this is funny.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: This is on brand.
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: When he hosted the ESPYs and he did the Manny Pacquiao,
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: I was like, this is great because this is who
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: you are.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: But see that, you're trying to teeter the fence. And
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: I think when you teeter the fence, you're playing a
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: dangerous game in which... I don't wish it on nobody,
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: but he had some of that stuff reach his front door.
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: Facts.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: This is not a hip hop. And that's what I'm saying.
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: When you have people that may not, and I'm not
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: going to put that on him, but may not have
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: been of this culture until later in life as artists,
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: this is where you start playing with people who are
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: from these neighborhoods, that are from these environments that I
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: grew up in. And even though I'm not a street dude,
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: I'm well aware, so street smart about where I'm at.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: That I look and I'm like, you don't do certain things.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: You don't say certain things because, yeah, you're right, it's
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: tone deaf, but it can also get you hurt.
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, I don't know.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: I would like to say, like, the reason I initially
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: started to fuck with Drake was I did enjoy his
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: infusion of singing and rapping. And I also liked the
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: fact that he was, like, doing songs with, like, Nicholas F.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: And Fonte from Little Brother. And, see, he had a
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: record with Malice back in the day that was hard
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: as fuck.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: And I was like, oh, there's like a normal middle,
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: like he was like a middle class kid who was
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: like a hip hop head.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: But I think it's kind of like you don't know
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: what it's like to be the most famous successful rapper
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: of all time and how lonely that might be and
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: how you probably definitively have like a crew full of
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: yes men.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: And- You know, that's why I said I enjoyed Iceman
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: once I got over the fact that it was like
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: him just being a scorned rapper about another male. Because
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: I fuck with, I think Iceman is fucking.
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: A lot of it sounded like that to me.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: No, but I think Iceman is dope. Like, I think
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: it's a great album. It's probably his best album in
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: like 10 years. I mean, I like Scorpion a lot.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: So it's probably my favorite album since.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: Scorpion, but.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: But I liked it once I understood, okay, you know what?
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: This is his truth. This motherfucker's probably been at the
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: crib alone watching Kendrick go to.
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: The fucking Toronto fucking stadium two times.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Watching the Super Bowl.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: This motherfucker has had bad dreams about this battle.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: He said he had helicopters flying over his place.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: So, like, what else is he supposed to rap about?
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: You know who I think about, though, after you explain that?
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: Because I'm with you.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: But after this, I don't hear about it.
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: No, no.
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: Empathy is what we lead with in these conversations, right?
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: You know who I have empathy for? Fonte. Fonte. From
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: Little Brother? From Little Brother, because there was a place
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: in time where Fante was the artist that we all
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: refer to, that sing and rap.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, he had an entire other thing.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: Other persona. Yeah, right. A big Fante fan. And I
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: remember looking up articles during the battle where he was
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: fighting allegations of stealing from Drake.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: Well, no, like he influenced Drake and Drake gave it
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: up to him.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: I feel like Drake gave it up to Fonte pretty early.
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: You know what? But to me, I'm just going to
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: put this out there because I've seen people do this
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: with me in interactions. Some people will give it up
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: as permission to steal from you.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Maybe.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: I just want to float that possibility out there. Not
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: saying that's what it was. I just know when I
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: looked at the article, when I read it, I have
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: empathy for you're the guy that is coming up very
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: early on, selling your career. You're known for immaculate rapping
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: and singing. It has influenced another gentleman who's coming up.
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: And now his whole shtick is a thing that you
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: have been known for. And although you have the feature
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: he was on so far gone and all that, I
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: have empathy as well. He was on comeback season. He
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: was on comeback season. That's what it was. So it
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: changes the trajectory of your career because now it looks
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: like you're under the umbrella or the branch of that.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Do you think he could have did a better job
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: because I felt like Drake did a pretty good job
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: like giving it up to Bun B and I felt
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: like a lot of his early features was him like
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: obviously he has a song the Fonte record is with
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Elzai right so that's crazy to think Drake has a
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: song with Fonte.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: And Elzai right which is I mean that's incredible.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Right and then even like fast forward to So Far
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Gone Bun B's on the album I feel like he
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: did a pretty good job of like.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: I feel like I knew as a fan.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Very cognitively that Drake, who Drake was a fan of
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and who he was influenced by, because I would watch
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: his early stuff.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: He was a big Clips fan.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: I think that, again, whatever happens from then to 2026,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: and in the middle of all that, you become like
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the Michael Jackson of this era.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Changed everything. Right. I don't know.
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: And I'm not.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: That's not even defending him. I'm just saying, like... I
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: hear the perspective, for sure.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: He's definitely, like, a changed dude. You can't... It's impossible
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: for anybody to go through that amount of success and
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: public scrutiny and fame and all that shit. You won't
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: be the same, for sure. You're definitely a different person.
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: And that's why I was just like... When Iceman, I
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: was like, you know what? Drake, however you feel about Drake,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: he is, you know, of the last... Since 2009, there's
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: a reason why it's the big three. He is the
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: face of hip-hop since 2009. He is the face, right?
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: But it's true, though.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: Mainstream rap? Don't let me get my backpacker conversations on that,
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: but mainstream rap for sure.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: He's the most successful rapper in the world and the
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: most recognizable rapper in the world since 2009.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: It's him and Kanye. Why don't we have those same
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: conversations about greatest rappers of all time about MC Hammer
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: if the parameters of his success.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Mc hammer had a very short blip of success but.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: It was the first time we saw a rapper have
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: the endorsement levels and all that barbie on the shelf
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: yeah no i'm not and i'm not doubting i'm not
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: doubting like i know you know these things i'm just
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: saying in general i.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah but you can't i feel like you can't compare
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: like can't touch this and like like obviously hammer's peak
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: was crazy but it was a blip and like artistically
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: speaking We cannot put them in the same conversation. I
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: feel like that's.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: The first version of it. You don't have the idea
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: of a rap superstar if you don't have... the guy
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: who had his own cartoon, the guy that had his own,
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean, these number one hits in
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: a time period where the culture itself, for sure, in
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: a time where the culture was like, they were like,
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: are we supposed to do that as a rapper? Yeah,
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: 50 Cent. But I just, I give all, my thing is,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: I think, and I'm not putting this on you, but
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of his fans act like hip
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: hop started with this guy and everybody else's. No, no, no,
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying that. I'm just saying since 2009, I
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: don't think there's a debate. There's no debate about the dominance,
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: for sure. He is, most people's, I mean, Right.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: Successfully it's not, there's, that's just for sure.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: No, the numbers say all that.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: And I think like when you, when you're that successful,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: like it's almost like you can never do enough. People
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: will always have some shit to say.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: You're right, but I also... Because he.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: Has done a lot... Listen, people.
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: I know they.
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: Come at it both... Right now, the fact that we've
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: been talking for this as long as we are, they're like,
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: you guys can't get to a conversation when I'm talking.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: According to certain people, I'm the biggest Drake hater. I've
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: told him to his face he doesn't have a classic album.
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: We argued about it for an hour. Freddie Gibbs was there.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Freddie Gibbs was just there. That's crazy. That's a crazy conversation.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: But again, I just think that I've... We've all had...
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you've gone through this where you've got people
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: who think you could be doing more to help put
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: them on and all that. I just think that when
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: you're Drake, no matter what, it'll never be good enough.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: And for some people, when you're Kendrick Lamar, no matter what,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: you'll never be good enough. You'll never do enough.
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: He catches that all the time.
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: And I think Drake is guilty of, one, being... Like
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: you said, you might say it's dog whistles, but I
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: think he has been guilty of just being like a little.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: He's not very good at reading.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: The room sometimes. Sure, that's a good one, yeah.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: And I also think like over the last few years,
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: he's kind of gotten lost in this like, you mentioned
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: the mob ties thing earlier.
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Straddling the fence.
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: He straddles the fence of like, I got shooters.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: Like, don't come at me, but still invite me to SNL. Right.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: And I think like, I think he kind of has
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: gotten lost in whatever version of that is. And then
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: at the same time, has made some extremely horribly calculated decisions.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Like to me, just saying, when he was in the
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: studio saying, you rap like you're trying to free the slaves,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: nobody in the studio said, yo.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: Let's not do that.
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: I get it.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: I understand why you're saying what you're saying because you
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: are a hard contrast to what Kendrick is.
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: But we should probably leave that one off.
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: I'll tell you this, and this is where I give
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: more credit. to you. I've seen you around this. I've
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: seen you in so many different diverse places. I've seen
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: you at radio events and I've also seen you at
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: the most underground of shows and I've also seen you
• 29:22
  Speaker 3: at Tech N9ne and strange music events because you're of
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: the culture and you understand the cultural nuance. I think
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: he's a smart dude. He's a smart guy. You can
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: see the way he's maneuvered his way through. My thing is,
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: how much of that is a cultural unawareness that allows
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: you to go in these spaces and you were able
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: to get away with things because you're... You're able to
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: get away with things because it's you, but... Now people
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: are recognizing how you've been what they'll call colonizing in
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: these different spaces. You go in there. Is it a
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: collaboration or is it me exchanging cultural currency and giving
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: you a little bit of this, what I have going on?
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: I'm with you in that you can't do no right
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: in that position.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: He might be culturally clueless. I think he's proven that
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: multiple times. And I think some of that is just
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: like the Canadian thing. Because you've talked to some people. Bro,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: I'm telling you, I've talked to some of these people
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: from Canada. And I got homies of mine who are
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: from Canada who are just like they're... Have you ever
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: watched the NFR guys? They have a really good... It's
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: a very good spirited show.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: But sometimes the way they talk about trap music or
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: club music, it makes me want to jump through the
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: screen and punch them in the face.
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: They remind you... how inside, outside the culture things could be.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: But I want to be clear, I think that I
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: love their content.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: Oh, they do great work.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: I think they do great work and they're entertaining.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: And I like them a lot. I met them at
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Rolling Loud and I said, hey, I actually like you
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: guys because you guys aren't doing negative shit.
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: But when they do like these down south lists or
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: they start talking about club music or street shit, Bro,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: it just drives me fucking crazy.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: I'm with you.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: Because they're two Canadian bros who obviously grew up a
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: certain way.
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: And the way they talk about certain aspects of the music,
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: it is obvious.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: I don't want to hear y'all talk about future.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: And my thing is, I'm not even mad at the
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: cultural awareness. But they're Canadian. But even then, I'm not
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: mad at the cultural awareness personally. I think that's an
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: opportunity for conversation and for us to do some education
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: on My issue was the arrogance about that, that that
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: that unawareness to double down and triple down on it
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: and not go consult with. Like, I can't imagine how
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: some of Drake's earlier collaborators feel when they were the
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: ones that co-signed him and stamped him and they hear
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: lines like that. Or they see him kind of like
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: buddying up with, you know, what's the guitar, what's the
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: motorcycle gang?
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Hells Angels.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: I just had a conversation about the Hells Angels.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: When you see like the branding of your OVO is changing,
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: like how do they feel when they're like, was this
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: somebody that came in here and.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, black people aren't allowed in the Hells Angels.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: Right. And you saw Rick Ross dealing with them issues
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: up there. So I'm not putting that on those two gentlemen.
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: I think they're doing great work.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: I just think that- But I'm saying, but to me,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: that's like a kind of an interesting- we're in content
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: and I'll see them speak about certain bro.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: I know what you're talking about.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: It happens like once.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: A month where I'm just like, Oh, the worst thing
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: is when I do a reaction of somebody like that.
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: And then they say some shit. They just like, y'all
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: are the same people. Cause I can just co-sign this.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: And now I feel stupid.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: And like you said, I think Drake is definitely guilty
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: of being culturally negligent at least.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: I'm talking about like that cultural unawareness goes from, oh,
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: I didn't know any better because I'm from Canada to
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: I don't have to do that because I'm Drake.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: He wants it both ways at all times.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: Like when I heard Wayne, Lil Wayne was talking about
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: like he don't remember his lyrics and we understand why
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: and whatnot. But like he was like, I do teleprompters
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: on stage. And he's like, Drake taught me that. If
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: I had a teleprompter, you know how many OGs would
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: have smacked me in the back of the head if
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: I even tried to have a teleprompter while rapping?
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I couldn't imagine going to a rap show and there's
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: a teleprompter. Do you know how crazy that'd be?
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: Are you a rapper or an actor? This is my words.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: This is my words.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: At award shows, that's different.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: For sure.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: There's always teleprompters at award shows and all that, but no,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: that's diabolical.
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: But I've never seen Drake with a teleprompter.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: To be fair, I've never seen Drake with a teleprompter.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: I've been to a lot of his shows.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Never seen a teleprompter.
• 33:24
  Speaker 3: I don't even know where they would be. I don't
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: like Drake when he acts up, but I like Drake
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: with a teleprompter. Yeah.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: All right, moving on from Drake.
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: That was good. That was good. That was good.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: So you recently, you're going by DeJuan Howard instead of
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Curtis King. Is that your artist name now?
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: Curtis King will now take over the responsibilities of the
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: YouTube channel as a producer. But DeJuan Howard is who
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: I am as an artist. I just feel like I've
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: been going through a lot of things that have changed
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: so much for me. And I just feel like Curtis
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: King no longer represents who I am as an artist.
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: So that's where I'm at with it now.
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: So Curtis King essentially will be the, if you love
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: your content, it's Curtis King.
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, if you search my name on YouTube now,
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: I was in the middle of an argument with somebody
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: from some streaming platform and we were talking numbers and
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: he was like, man, I searched your name on YouTube
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: right now. All I see is stupid faces on thumbnails.
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: And I was like, I know we arguing, but you're
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: making a real good point. And I realized that YouTube
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: has taken over.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because if people want to search up your name
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: and hear your.
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: Music, the first thing they're going to see is all
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: my Drake reactions and Kendrick reactions and the stuff that's
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: done really well. And I'm grateful. I don't regret it
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: at all. I built that brand up for 20 years.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: But originally, I went to a middle school in Carson
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: called Curtis Middle School. And I was really insecure. I
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: was shy. I was nothing like I am today. When
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: I conquered those, I became Curtis King. That's a great
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: story to tell in your 20s and 30s. I am
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: about to be 42 in a few months. Right. There's
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: no way. So I've also been going to school at
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: Mickey Fax's Pendulum Inc. School. He has an advanced lyricism school.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: And like being in that environment, being able to kind
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: of like put a framework to what I've been doing
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: for the last 20 years, it's really reinvigorated me and
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: got me to the point now where there's people reaching
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: out that were waiting for me to make a pivot
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: from content back to music. And there's a lot of
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: doors that are opening up. that I just, I'm grateful for,
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: thank God for him. But it's all the writings on
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: the wall of what I need to do now.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: All right, man, NBA season is back. It's my favorite sport,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: so I'm super excited. Of course, Couchy, man, we could
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: trade all of our favorite NBA games, futures, awards, all
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: that on Couchy. If you hit the link in the bio,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: if you trade $ 25, you will get $ 55 for free.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: This season, there are so many storylines. How's LeBron and
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: the 76ers going to mold together? They just beat the Knicks.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: Will the Knicks be able to repeat?
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Anthony Edwards, LaMelo Ball.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: That is a hell of a one-two punch in Minnesota.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: How are the Lakers going to play with all the whites?
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Who knows? And I also, I'm going to tell you
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: the team, I think that not enough of us are
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: talking about, and that's the Indiana Pacers. Tyrese Halliburton's return. Look,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: basketball season is back. And on calci right now, since
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: it's early in the season, I think we got to
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: get in on some of this MVP awards right now, man. Look,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Victor Wemignano right now is the favorite to win the MVP.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: He's trading at 32% on Kaoshi. I'm liking Luka to
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: win the regular season MVP, trading at only 13%. I'm
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: loving Luka at 13% to win league MVP. I think
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: he might lead the league in scoring this year. I
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: think he might average a triple-double or close to it
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: this year. And I feel like the Lakers... Well, I
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: just dropped something. The Lakers are going to be an
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: incredible regular season team. I think they're going to crash
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: out in the playoffs. But, man, Luka at 13% on Kalshi.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: It feels good. And I got to give a shout out. Now,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: if you guys don't know, I am a Giants Suns fan.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: Can we talk about how petty our guy Dylan Brooks is?
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Dylan Brooks, all-time petty bruh. I don't know if you
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: guys saw.
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: His hate for LeBron. Are you tired of hearing about
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: the greatest basketball player of all time? where he goes,
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: what team is he playing for this season, what ridiculous
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: new product he's endorsing.
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: Then you need the King Blocker 9000. Crazy. Advanced breakthrough
• 37:15
  Speaker 4: technology that will mute any mention of or as many
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: nicknames like King's LB. The Chosen.
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: Blocked.
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: Sound good? It sure does. Visit the URL today.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, hit the link in the bio too because you
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: actually can go on the link in our bio and
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: And enter to win the King Blocker 9000. Only 23
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: are made. Dylan Brooks, all-time villain, all-time petty. Hit the
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: link in the bio. Get $ 55 for free when you
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: trade $ 25 with Kalshi. Man, let's get back to the podcast.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: I've seen that happen with a few people who, like,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: you know for one thing, and then they get so
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: much success doing the other thing that it's like, oh, shit,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: but I also do this thing really well.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: Dog, it hurt me when I had interviews, and they
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: was like, Oh, you rap? Oh, you rap? You do music? Oh,
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: that's crazy. Oh, man, that's what's up, bro. Like, I'll
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: listen to it. They're not going to listen to it.
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: And the thing is, like, I also started getting rappers
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: treating me like employees.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: What do you mean by that?
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: Like, treating me like the hired help.
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: Like, do this, do this, do this. Hey, I need
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: you to book this. I'm working on my music. I
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: can wait. Like, to the point where they started treating
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: me as if I wasn't just a media voice because
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: a media voice is a respect there, obviously, but as
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: a hired help, like they would just kind of like stuff,
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: the ways that you never talk to your peers is
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: what I'm getting at. And so when I started experiencing that,
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: I started having a lot of empathy for the journalists
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: that do real deal journalism in this. And like also
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: the folks like, man, shut up my dog, Chuck Dizzle
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: and all the work that he's done to like make
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: sure my story gets told. And I had to think,
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: I never thought about how much research that requires. Even
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: what you do, how much research that requires and how
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: much care it requires. And I did these interviews. You know,
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: I went in there, I learned. I definitely got my
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: bumps and bruises, but it really made me realize, like,
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: I can't do what y'all do, dog. Right. This is,
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: what y'all do is, you got to focus on this.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Well, you're doing a pretty good job of doing your thing.
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: I'm tired, dog.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: No, I hear you.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: But it's working.
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Will. Thank you.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it's changed your life, right?
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: It has.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, you don't get to punch interviews. and things
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: just be the same. All of these things are blessings.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: And I'm still learning how to not find balance, but
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: find harmony. Balance is impossible. As a father, as a husband,
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: there is no balance. There's only harmony. Make sure this
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: don't mess up this. And this can stay in harmony
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: with this. So now what I'm doing is I'm saying...
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: all right, maybe the nature of the content needs to
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: change and I still do the content. I don't want
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: to do no more clickbait stuff. I don't want to
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: do no more stories about Malice being accused of stealing
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: a hot dog by a Chicago stand, you know, from,
• 40:01
  Speaker 3: from the clips. Like I, these things are just, you
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: know what I'm saying? Like, but I know it's part
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: of the news cycle and this part of our job.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Are you cutting a video for every story for the
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: most part? Or were you for a sec there? Were
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: you doing that where it was like, cause that, that
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: could be tiring.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: That's the other thing. And I'm editing too.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: When you guys do, like you and Wayno do this,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: I'm like, fuck. I do my radio show. I do
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: my podcast. And I give it up to you and
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: Wayno and everybody who does that kind of content. I'm
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: going to start trying to do as much of that
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff as I can. Are you guys an inspiration?
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Because it's working.
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: Hit me up. Shut up, Justin. Hit me up. I'm
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: sure you delegate things a lot better.
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: But So are you, I was going to say your team,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: do you have a team or are you doing everything?
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: I've had independent freelancers that I've hired throughout the years,
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: but 80% of the time it's still me.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Like are you doing your own thumbnails?
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: Oh, wow.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: All of that stuff. Anything that you see from like,
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: I learned color correction. Well, I forget the name of
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: the school that I got that from. It's an online school.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: It has an app. But I went to these schools
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: to learn the process of how to use my DSLR,
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: like how to use my GH5 Panasonic. what lenses to
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: go for, shout out to my dog, Stolen Drums, an
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: incredible producer, but an incredible videographer from Atlanta, and he
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: was telling me, like, get this light, get this light,
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: get this, and so I've been grateful to, because I'm
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: a DIYer, a do-it-yourself for a independent artist, I meet
• 41:29
  Speaker 3: so many people who are just specialists, like my dog CB4,
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: he's on a lot of videos for Wiz Khalifa, he's
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: somebody that always gave me game on this, but Yeah, man,
• 41:40
  Speaker 3: like doing all this myself, it works if you have
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: a system, if you automate it. And that's the one
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: thing that I'm building right now is infrastructure. Like, it's
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: dope to see what you build here, dog. Like, this
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: is honestly inspiring.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: So you essentially just literally, I'm sure, a little bit
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: at a time over the last.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: You don't want to take my compliment? Well, thank you.
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't take compliments very well.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: You're going to skip my compliment like that? That's crazy, man.
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: But I was going to say, like, I just find
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: it interesting.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: So, like, you just kept... I mean, because your thumbnails
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: have gotten better. Everything, it's just like, all right, I
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: learned how to do this myself. So pretty much, because
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: I would tell this to artists, like any artist who
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: don't know how to record themselves at the very least.
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: I understand if you're a rapper and you're like, man,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to make beats.
• 42:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: That's fine. But you got to know how to record yourself, dog.
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: You got to know how to do cap cut. You
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: got to. So to me, if you're a content creator,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: at the very least, you should be able to do
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: your own shit if you have to.
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: But see, you know what we may both have insight
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: on that they don't? they've never been responsible for running
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: a business. Music career is not a business until you
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: recognize it's a business and start going accordingly. That's when
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: you have, like people want a manager before they have
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: business to manage.
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: You want a PR before you have any kind of
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: news to release to the press. And I learned from
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: some of the best, like having a relationship I had
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: with Salas early on, even before Salas, like I used
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: to be managed by Street Goddess. Before that, like, then
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: I was managed by Salas. Then I was there for
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: the early years of DJ Head before he became who
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: he is. I've learned from some, Glasses Malone, another one.
• 43:12
  Speaker 3: I've seen this version of Glasses Malone years before, back
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: when he had the studio on Signal Hill.
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: I love G, man. And I think every time I
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: see G, I'm like, look, I know things are heating up,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: but you got to do better. He should be way bigger.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: I think it's happening, but I think- It is happening.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: It's happening slowly, though. I'm like, dog, we got to
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: get you cameras. We got to get- That part, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: You got the webcam shit, but I'm like, dog, glasses
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: should be the biggest podcaster on the West Coast.
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: I think it's- I think he's on his way. He's
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: on his way, but I think also, too, when you
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: a truth teller, things tend to find their way to
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: slow it down. 100%. Because I think there's a lot
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: of audience. There's a lot of audience that's not ready
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: for these type of conversations because one thing he not
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: going to do is mince his words. regardless of what
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: relationship he got.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: At all.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: So, and I learned from these folks early on. I
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: can't learn from the best and not expect the best
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: in everything I do, from thumbnails, from my videos to
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: my production. Like, dog, my first mentor, the first label
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: I was ever signed to was called Rockstar ENT. You
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: know who one of the CEO was?
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: Who?
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: Tay Beast.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, shit.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: Tay Beast. I was responsible for Tay Beast meeting Ab
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: Soul during one of my studio sessions. that I had
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: over at that label. But that was one of the
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: best producers in my eyes at that point in time.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: I've known Ichiban Don in the very earlier stages. I'm
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: around people that make incredible feel regular. So the amount
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: of pressure, like I don't care what the audience has
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: to say about what I'm not doing. I have so
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: much pressure that I put on my own back and
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: I have expectations about what I do. So I think
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: I'm a byproduct of that. But every once in a while,
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: shit just be overwhelming.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: I can imagine. Yeah, it definitely can be. Especially, do
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: you ever find yourself guilty of, I wouldn't say pocket watching,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: but feeling like, like questioning yourself based on seeing how
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: well bullshit performs?
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: You know what? Yes, yes. And God bless him. Merz
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: took me on tour with the label I was on,
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: Black Cloud Music. He took us on tour and we
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: had a Texas stop and he had a conversation that
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: He don't know it, but when I left, I was
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: in tears. And he saw me as somebody that had
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: a lot of potential. That's why he brought us on
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: as openers. And he says he was drunk. He don't
• 45:33
  Speaker 3: remember the conversation. Yeah, whatever. He pulled me off to
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: the side and he said, I feel moved to tell you, Kurt,
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: stop looking at everybody else because you don't know who's
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: in their pockets. And I said, what you mean by that?
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: He said, you don't know what kind of deals they got.
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: You don't know how much money is being spent on
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: them to look like that for you. And it ain't
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: really like that.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: How much are they actually getting?
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: How much are they getting? Right. And he said a
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: few more things I kind of keep to myself, but
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: it broke me down because I realized how much I
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: was like a little dog looking at, oh, this person
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: got this. I want to get this. I want to
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: get this blog. They got this blog.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, because that was blog era.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: It's blog era. And it's enough to drive you crazy
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: because as an independent artist, you can do the most,
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: achieve the most, and still be looked at as minor league.
• 46:18
  Speaker 3: yeah by a lot of people who don't know any
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: better it's changing a lot of that's evolving but at
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: that point in time that's what it was but it's
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: also too to your point earlier our responsibility to take
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: this as a business so you realize the mom and
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: pop shop on the corner that is that has a
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: niche they sell this one specific sandwich that nobody else
• 46:37
  Speaker 3: has with the dressing yeah i'm not worried about the
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: competition they worried about How do we increase our reach
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: on social media and on Instagram? And how do we
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: make our act like they're worried about building up their
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: side of the corner? And the way that I look
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: at it for us as independent artists is that we're
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: small businesses. And that's why you see me going so
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: tough on a neck of streaming, because so much of
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: that feels counterintuitive to my business model.
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, are you talking about the IRL side?
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: No, music streaming. I stream on YouTube. But music streaming, Spotify,
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: just the payouts, the fractions of a penny.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: No, it's crazy.
• 47:13
  Speaker 3: There's the things that made sense in the beginning when
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: it was like, oh, Steve Jobs brought this to the room.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: That makes sense. All of this makes sense because we're
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: in a new era. We were trying to fight piracy.
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: 100%. It made sense at first.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: But now as a businessman who has had a successful
• 47:26
  Speaker 3: YouTube that has launched multiple courses in terms of producer content,
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: I was like, My business wouldn't survive without emails. Spotify
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: don't give me emails.
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: True.
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: You don't have a... How can you even reach out
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: to the people who are streaming you? They're just.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: Are they Russian bots? Are they real people?
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: Are they in Montana?
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: I want to know.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: Obviously, on the back end, you can see states that
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: your music performs better in.
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: But they got bots in every state.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: 100%. But I mean, like, you would like to be
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: able to at least say, oh, cool, I... And I
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: know that they've tried their best because you could sell
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: merch on Spotify now and all that shit. But it's like, hey, dude,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: like I want access to my customers, my fans.
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: What about my music being the thing that I want
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: to make money? Right. And I think even somebody made
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: a good point. They said it's not a matter of
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: how much money you can charge your music for on
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: these platforms. It's the fact that you can't make it
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: free if you wanted to.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: That's real. I didn't think about it from that angle
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: because I'm always thinking about what's the most amount we
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: can have or make. You know, whether it's like the
• 48:26
  Speaker 3: Russell model of pay what you want. Yeah. But then
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: I thought about we can't even make it free if
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: we want it. When I went on my whole like
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: campaign of non, I got to figure out the business
• 48:35
  Speaker 3: model of direct to consumer. I'm learning from Amazon. Amazon,
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: when you search up batteries for Energizer, first thing you
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: see on their website is Amazon Basics. Oh yeah.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Trust me. I know.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: Right. So that's direct.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: I got all the Amazon basic shit.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: My house is full of Amazon basic stuff.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Kirkland and Amazon, baby.
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: And it's all quality stuff. So like, my thing is
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: that is kind of the equivalent is that the streaming
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: platforms are kind of like the middlemen and the distributors
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: are also another middleman, but they started kind of getting
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: weird about the, the, the bots and the, taking people's
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: music down.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Like, it's just getting tricky. Look, I want to take
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: a piss break because this is going to get us
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: into the hip way. Oh, yeah. You already know, Arizona, man.
• 49:16
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  Speaker 1: Lake Head podcast. And we're back.
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: That's not funny.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: And we are back.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: You were talking about Before we had a piss break.
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: The direct-to-consumer thing. Obviously, like you were saying, the streaming
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: game has really changed. I feel like it's forced artists
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: to get more creative about how they're able to monetize
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: whatever fan base they may or may not have. Whether
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: it's merch or ticket sales or selling vinyl cassettes, whatever.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: Talk about the direct-to-consumer model and just like... how that
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: has kind of changed the way you are approaching shit
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: as an artist.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: And, you know, I feel like I'd heard you talking
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: about it. Fuck forever. So it's been something I feel
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: like obviously the Russell has been going very viral for
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: his model. Uh, back in the day, Nipsey was doing.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: The proud, the pay movement, uh, Leslie as well.
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: Ryan was super, even Tyler Qualley was doing that on
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: his website.
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: Uh, with the, with the, with the album, with a
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: Yassin Bay, right?
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but even before that, there was shit you could
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: only get on his website.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: Okay, that makes sense.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: Shout out to Lib, who's just somehow beefed with everyone
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: in the world without even being on social media.
• 51:34
  Speaker 3: So yeah, so the kind of catalyst event or the
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: canon event that kind of inspired me to really look
• 51:39
  Speaker 3: into direct-to-consumer was when Spotify announced the top of the
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: year a few years ago that they weren't going to
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: be paying artists for any songs that didn't accumulate at
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: least a thousand streams.
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: And.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: That was within the last Two or three years, right? Yeah. Essentially,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: they're like, hey, all that shit is us.
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: And I'm thinking about to myself, like, there's a lot
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: of artists who are like, I don't care about that.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: I get more than a thousand streams. I started thinking
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: about the artists that still have to invest real money,
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: still got to go to Guitar Center. Guitar Center is
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: not going to give you a leniency plan or any
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: kind of like, oh, we'll just get it back when
• 52:14
  Speaker 3: you get it. I started thinking about them and I
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: started also thinking about what about the skits on my albums? Right.
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: This is my business.
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: Why?
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: Like if I had a if I had a Chinese
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: restaurant and I had like a POS system and I
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: had like a credit card system, I expect to pay
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: fees to use the service. Cool. Put that in the writing.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: But now y'all at Spotify are telling me I am
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: an intern. I'm pretty much an intern. I'm working for
• 52:39
  Speaker 3: free until you make up a number that's appropriate. That's
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: when I started looking at this. And then there was
• 52:44
  Speaker 3: another video that went viral. Shout out to Arsonist from
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: the Heatmakers. And I was mad at the video at first.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: And it actually is a reason why I'm able to
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: reach out to him today. But I was mad. I
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: was like, he made a video saying, how can any
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: artist call himself independent when y'all depending on Spotify? And Spotify,
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: one of the owners for them or some of the
• 53:00
  Speaker 3: owners are the oligarch, the major labels.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: 100%.
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: And I heard it at first, and I was like,
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: what do you mean? I am independent. And I started
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: going down the line of all the things I was
• 53:08
  Speaker 3: dependent upon in the current system of streaming. I'm dependent
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: on distributor to get my music over to Apple Music
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: and Spotify. I'm dependent on them and their terms of service,
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: making sure that I put my album a certain way.
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: I'm dependent on all these different entities. There's nothing wrong
• 53:23
  Speaker 3: with being dependent in some of these things, but this
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: is how I make my money. This is my bottom line.
• 53:28
  Speaker 3: And if they have more control over whether or not
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: it stays online, I don't have a business. I'm a customer.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: And when that dawned on me, I said, how do
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: I change that? So then I started to look at
• 53:39
  Speaker 3: those old Nipsey Hussle interviews. And he said one thing
• 53:42
  Speaker 3: that stuck with me. He said, in that streaming era,
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: you got to figure out how to create experiences people
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: can't stream. And that stuck with me. I looked at
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: the Ryan Leslie clips and I looked at all of
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: this and I started going back through history of Prince.
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: When Prince took down his music in 2015 off of streaming.
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: And I said, I don't know why, but I feel
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: like he's talking to me right now. And I had
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: this thought. And you tell me how crazy it sounds
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: because you've been in this business a long time. If
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: I'm Gucci or let's say if I'm a top tier,
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: my music is top tier. Like I think about, what's
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: my guy's name? He always wears the bandana. Mac Homme.
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: Mac Homme sells vinyls for like $ 1, 000, $ 10, 000. His business
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: model is.
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: Very unique and insane and it works.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: He sells his.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Music like they're works of art.
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: But this is what I'm getting at. If you do
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: see it as a work of art, and you say,
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: let's say you position yourself as a high-end brand like
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: a Gucci. If you're Gucci, would you release a piece
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: for $ 6, 000 for these particular scarves or whatever you got,
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: and then at the same week, would you then go
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: put it into the thrift store? And I started thinking,
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: that's bad for business because people would just go to
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: the thrift store and get the same thing they could
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: have got.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like if you're selling a Gucci bag and You
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: could get the Gucci bag a week early from Gucci,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: but a week later, I can go get it at Walmart.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: Right, unless I'm a diehard Gucci fan, right? Right, right, right.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: But it just doesn't make sense if you're Gucci because
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: it waters down the prestige of your brand.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: And you know when I said things like that, I
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: started to see it trigger the right people, and I
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: started realizing there are people who benefit in this business
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: off of groupthink mentality. And if all of us feel
• 55:23
  Speaker 3: like there's only one route towards success as independent artists,
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: We get to service these people who have businesses that
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: are meant for us to pay for. So I said,
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: if I'm actually in business, and this was Arsonist's argument,
• 55:37
  Speaker 3: if you're independent, show your independence. Can you be a
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: business independent if your music is not on Spotify? So
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: then I did it. And that's when I had the
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: first conversations with Even, because at the time I was
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: starting to build with Russell.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because I remember Even was kind of, I only
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: got hip to Even because of Russell.
• 55:53
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: And I know that like Dizzy Rights had success there.
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: But it still is.
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: Kind of a middleman, right? See, but that's, and I
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: had to go through that process to see too. Because
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: at first I was ready to go straight to the website.
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: I had it all built up.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: Because really, if you have like Shopify, like, or if
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: you have your own website, why do you need even?
• 56:10
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Exactly. No, a thousand percent. I'm not even going,
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: that's what I had to figure out after going through
• 56:15
  Speaker 3: it with them. And I had actual success with them.
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: So it wasn't no malice, but there was situations where,
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: just being transparent, and I've been on my videos about this,
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: there were certain times I didn't know when my album
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: was gonna release because I couldn't get ahold of somebody.
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: At even. At even.
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: And it was because at the time they were understaffed,
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: they were still in the beta phase.
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: Of course.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: But for me, I was like, even though it's not malicious-
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: This is my business. What do you mean I don't
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: know when my release date is gonna happen? I got
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: people who wanna pre-order it and that's the backbone of
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: how this succeeds direct to consumer. These are my, what
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: they call your 80-20. The 20% of my fans that
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: buy 80% of what I do. I don't need 100,000
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: of those. P1s. You don't need a thousand P1s or
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: 100,000 P1s to start seeing some income that you can
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: really support and build what you're doing. And then when
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: I saw, like, I worked with even, and even with
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: all the mistakes that happened, right? You know, God bless them.
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: They are understaffed, all these things. With all the mistakes,
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: I still was able to pull in $ 4, 000 in two
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: weeks off of that instrumental album. It wasn't even a
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: full album by Curtis King or DeJuan. And I looked
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: at that and I said, man, there was fees from
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: working with them. And they did give me a little
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: bit of a marketing budget to work with. But what
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: if I would have done that on my own?
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Well, I am curious because I've never experienced the release. Like,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: I've never released music through Even. I've done the DistroKid thing, Empire,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: all that shit. So what is the, I guess, what
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: is the benefit of an even platform? Because from my perspective,
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: it's the fact that it's an app. Because to me,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: the convenience of having Spotify to listen to my shit,
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: it's almost like I don't listen to podcasts on Netflix.
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: So it's like some of my favorite podcasts are on
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: Netflix only now, and they might as well not exist.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying?
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: Because it's a habit thing.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: So even to me, The only thing I saw making
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: sense was like, well, it's a place that holds the
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: music that I can open on my phone and press
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: play while I'm in my car.
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: As opposed to like sending somebody a zip file.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right, right, right. But then you also got your
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: band camp alternatives.
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: Or bank, yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: Where they have their own app and all that. And
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: even like Wix is another website where you can have
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: it as an app of your own. I'll tell you this.
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: I don't have a benefit in working with Eve and
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: outside of I want to support Lou Russell.
• 58:31
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: The situation that I had.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: On the strength of LaRussell.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: I got number love for that brother. I want to
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: see him win. I just saw him talk recently after
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: all the controversy. And there's a level of, I could
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: tell somebody who's done some deep work.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: Proud of him. And I'm excited to see what he's
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: going to do next. But he acknowledged the arrogance that
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: he had at that point in time. Because I was
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: critical in my content of him. But it was from
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: a place of love. I don't want to see him lose.
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: I want to see him win. And he came back
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: with different energy. But the only reason I would ever
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: support even is to support him. But, you know, outside
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: of that, dog.
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: Like, like I can't, do it yourself i.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: Can't say too much but i would have been part
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: of a very a very reckless campaign because i had
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: an interview with a former employee and um i won't
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: say too much because it's still a legal situation that
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: never had never came out never dropped never dropped but
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: all i'm saying is i know too much and i
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: feel like god keeps putting me in situations where he
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: shows me artists at their worst. He shows me labels
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: at their worst, companies at their worst, so that I recognize,
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: although that may be good for somebody just getting started
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: in direct-to-consumer, that's not good for me, and I should
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: know better. So I had to go through that before
• 59:38
  Speaker 3: I realized this almost contradicts your whole campaign of no streaming,
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: I'm DIY, let's do it. But to me, it was like, well,
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: this could be, but the industry is full of a
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: bunch of could-bes that's going to leave you broke.
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: I remember seeing you Have DistroKid as a sponsor. And
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: I love the simplicity of DistroKid.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: Being able, I think that, again, we talked about what
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: the perceived benefits of even is. I think the perceived
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: benefit of DistroKid is literally the splits.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: Because the most frustrating thing to be an independent artist
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: is taking care of the producers, taking care of a
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: featured artist, whatever.
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: Beautiful. The team's featured.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what's your distro kid email? Here's your piece. Leave
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: me the fuck alone. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: Only issue with that is, I learned this from Triz,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: is that I didn't know on the other end some
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: of those folks got charged for an account. If they
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: want to keep getting paid.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: Well, they should. They should get... I mean, you should... Look,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: if you're a fucking producer and you're an independent artist,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: have a fucking DistroKid account.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: Again. But maybe you got a different distributor.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: Maybe.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: Right?
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: Like, you got a United Masters or.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: Something like that. But then you lose that cut, right?
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: You lose that cut if you don't... And where does
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: that money then go then? Right. And as an affiliate, dog,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: I have such a unique perspective on it because in
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: the beginning, DistroKid treated me well because.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: Because they DM... They had DM me a few times
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: and I... For whatever reason, we had never worked out
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: a deal.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, probably for the best because where they're at now
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: is not where they were.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: I guess, what are your thoughts on specifically DistroKid? You
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: have a unique perspective, but also, like you said, there
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: has been music getting taken down. People's entire albums have
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: been getting taken down. It does feel like there's a
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: disconnect on the customer service side for most people who
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: do have issues with DistroKid in terms of getting any
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: answers or figuring out a person to talk to or
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: anything like that. Is it still a platform that you
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: would feel good telling someone to use?
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: Absolutely not. As a matter of fact, I'm going part
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: of the conversations I've been having on a lot of
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: the platforms I've been on is about get your music
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: off of there because it's underneath a new regime.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because they just got bought out.
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they sold. And it was already heading in a
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: direction where I was like, once again, to the conversation.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: Shout out to that bro, though. I remember that little
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: nerdy dude who used to do their Instagram videos, the
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: owner of the.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: He ate.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, he good. He's out of here. He's out of here.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: And shout out to the people, the person that I
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: actually had contact with over there. I became their number
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: one affiliate marketer for DistroKid because I had a video
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: that did 800,000 views showing people how to distribute their
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: music on their own because of the content I was doing.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: So I became their top affiliate. And mind you, bro,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: like I was bringing in a few G's every single
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: month just off people who had signed up. Here's the thing, though.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: One day I get a text from my representative. He's
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: just the middleman. It's not his fault.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: But he's like, hey, man, there's an accountant there. You
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: mean an accountant there. So apparently we've been giving you
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: more money than you're supposed to be getting for the affiliates.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: But good news, you have to pay it back. What's
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: the adjustment going to look like? He said, I know
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: at the end of the month I went from thirty
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: five hundred dollars a month to two hundred. And as
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: you imagine, for an independent artist, I'm not a millionaire yet. 100%.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: That makes a difference. That is cutting so much of
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: my income. And then I saw just... And I'm like,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: what about all those people I helped sign up to
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: this company? I'm looking at the number. It's like I'm
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: responsible for over $ 80, 000 that has been generated there that
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: they sell off. And you start to realize, damn, I
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: got used for ads. It was an exchange. I got
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: paid for some of these things, but... I got used
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 3: for ads. I got people. I was so synonymous with
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: that brand as an ambassador. Artists were sending me DMs
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: because they were tired of talking to the bots.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: Yo, what's up?
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: I know you know somebody over there. What's up with
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: that distro kid shit? Can I get your help with
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 3: some customer service? And I'm like, dog, I do not
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: work for them. So because of the direction they've been
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: heading in that they're continuing to, the fact that they'll
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: take your real money, but you can't talk to a
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: real person about your real issues. That just doesn't click
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: to me. And as somebody that is so independent, about
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: my business, that just can't happen. I need to wake
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 3: up and know that my passive income is still generating income.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: But a lot of this, bro, like you start realizing
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: like a lot of this, and there's a part of
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: me like, okay, when it comes to these industry layoffs
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: and people getting fired, it's a terrible thing. You want
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: people to be able to support their families. But I
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 3: get nervous, Boulay Kev, because a lot of these folks
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: end up with the next direct-to-consumer startup. And they end up,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: hurt people hurt people. They end up creating these you know,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 3: really predatory products and convincing artists that if you don't
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: do this, then you can't do it. Hey, you know
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: what I just thought of? Can I bring something up?
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 3: Can I bring something up? I got a ball to
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: pick with you. Not really, but I got a ball
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: to pick with you. I just thought about this. In
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: the midst of all this conversation about streaming, I just
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: thought about this right now. So you recall back then,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 3: the conversation around direct-to-consumer was really, really loud and really
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: about leaving music off of streaming. And a lot of
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: people were echoing those conversations. But a lot of that
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: was credit was getting back to me because I was
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: on the front line taking all kind of disrespect and
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: shots because people were like, don't want to buy your CD.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: Nobody want to, you know. And I remember you supposed
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: to have me on and something came up the day
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: of and we were going to talk about the streaming
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: thing the whole time. And I'll never forget, you went
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: up there, I think you went to go DJ for Burner,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 3: wasn't it? Yes. Okay.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: Yep, I had to go to the Bay.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: That was when I was, I also was also working
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: at Empire at the time. So yeah, that was for
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: Burner's Christmas show.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's all good. I had a babysitter. I
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: was ready to come out here and rock with my guy.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: It was like 2022, I think.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, around that time.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: So then at that point in time, Doug, you had already,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: I guess, had an interview on the tuck. The very
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: next day, you got an interview with Hit-Boy and his pops.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: And the topic of the conversation was about direct-to-consumer and
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: streaming and how he wasn't putting a new project by
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: his pops on streaming. And I just looked at the conversation.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think he had put a CD out.
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: He did like an out-the-trunk situation, which at the end
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: of the day, if we're independents, we're supposed to be
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: sharing resources, information, and nobody needs credit in order to
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: do it. Nobody needs permission to do it. But it
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 3: just reminded me of this is not the first time
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: that's happened with Hit-Boy. And so when I seen it
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: on your platform, the next day.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: The first thing, what happened with it?
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: So he's on here on this podcast and you're asking
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: his pops first, like, why are you guys not putting
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: the project? His album at the time on streaming. And, um,
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: that was my entire get down at that point in time.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 3: He even acknowledged it. Like I seen him doing the
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: straight out the trunk campaign. And I said, yo, hit,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: it's good to see you doing that. And this is
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 3: good for the movement. And he's like, yeah, I see
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: you doing your thing, bro. Shout out to you. Did
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: it up. But as you were asking his pops, his
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: pops was like, I don't know nothing about that. You
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: got to ask Hit-Boy. Right. And I said, oh, well,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: that's interesting because we follow each other. We've met many
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: of times before. I've been to his house in Fontana
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: years and years back. Shout out to Kent Money and
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: all these good folks. Shout out to Kent, man. Amazing dude,
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: by the way. I met some amazing folks through that.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 3: Shout out to B-Mac, another amazing human being. He's dope.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 3: But it just reminded me, me and Hit-Boy have had
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: some really interesting moments situations play out very similar to
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: that one. So when I saw you interview him, I
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: was like, I'm not going to lie to you, Abu-Lakeh,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: but part of me was like, did he cancel on
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: me because.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: So I canceled the interview because I ended up getting
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: hit to go DJ in the back.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: To go DJ. But then the next day, we're talking
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: about the thing we're supposed to talk about. I was like,
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: did somebody pull a power move?
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: To be fair, it'd be a very unique situation if
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: I recorded an interview and it doesn't come out If
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: it comes out within a three-day window, that's quick.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: Usually it's... Well, I didn't know what to get down. Right.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: And then sometimes, like, obviously sometimes I'd be like, yo,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: crank this, drop this now because it's time sensitive.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that wasn't the case. So you say that
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: you've had interesting... So you think Hit-Boy was influenced by
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: your direct-to-consumer movement you had going on?
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: I think that Hit-Boy has been inspired by a lot
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: of independent ideas, logo ideas, branding ideas. And as much
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: criticism as he's lodging at Nas, he's guilty of a
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: lot of the same things. But a lot of people
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: won't say it because in this age, when you say
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 3: these things, they look at you as the cloud chaser.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: They look at you as, well, why would he need
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: to take from you? He's rich and he's successful. I
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 3: had a song called PCC that was really successful locally.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: And he's somebody, shout out to it, he's somebody who
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: has his ear to everything going on. We've had Many
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 3: of the interactions and DMs, and I see them in person,
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 3: everything is all love. His energy doesn't carry this. But
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: it was surprising when he showed love to a project
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 3: that had a song on it called PCC, where I
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 3: take a very specific sample of Janet Jackson. It's a breakdown.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 3: And I created a song that was a dedication to Cougars.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: It's one of my biggest ones. It's called PCC, right?
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 3: And that song was a song that I was able
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 3: to get shows off of. I got radio play off of.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: And at the time, Audio Push, who had also had
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: opportunity had already worked with we all familiar with each
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 3: other we used to be a part of the same
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: clothing brand uh shout out to to uh my dog
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 3: fats rest in peace fats he used to have a
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 3: clothing brand called 24 7 habiliments and audio push was
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 3: signed to them and i was as well so i'm
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: familiar with the circle right they released a song called
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: shine love the song great song great sample choice so
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 3: love the video Video's amazing. I wish I had that
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 3: kind of budget. Only problem is that I didn't know
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: it came out until people were DMing me and saying, yo,
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: did you co-produce this? I said no, because it was
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 3: literally the same exact sample chop. So it was a
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 3: slightly different style. Of course, they were rapping very different
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: on that as well. But it was one of those
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: things where it's like, is this an example of the
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: rich taking from the poor in this situation? Because if
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 3: I say something, I can't, I don't have the same
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: platform as him.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: So back then, would you say, because I would say
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: that back then, like Audio Push was also, that was
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: a free mixtape initially. Come As You Are. I don't remember.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 3: I don't remember.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: It was a free tape.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: Was it? Okay.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it was still blog era-ish-esque. Because
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: I was like 14, I think they put that out.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah. And I had already had that out for
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: about two or three years beforehand.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: So Hit-Boy heard that song and gave you props on
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: that song?
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: Hit-Boy had heard the project.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: Do you know for a fact he fucked with that record?
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: The song? Yeah. You know what's interesting about that time?
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: We didn't have a direct conversation about it, but I
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: knew some mutual, one of my exes, she knew some
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: mutuals of Audio Push's family. And it was like a,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 3: it was a real conversation that was had aside from,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 3: and they were like, nah, nah, nah, it's not even that.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: But that's not the people that you got to talk to, right?
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: And I understand that's how the industry moves. Like, I'm
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: not naive to this. I've been in this for 20 years.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: I've seen many of ideas of mine. I've seen many
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: ideas of my peers get taken. I just never thought
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: it was a real deal until it happened to me.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: So the part, so it was the I Get Lonely flip.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: I get Lonely Flip. Janet Jackson. All of that, yeah.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: So it was the beat, not necessarily, obviously Audio Push
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: is aesthetically a different group. It's a different look, yeah.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: By the way, I'm seeing this dropped in August of
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: 2013 is when the video dropped, for sure.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: I say this, for somebody, and I didn't really suspect
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 3: it as much until I was able to go actually
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 3: build with the hip boy at his house. He invited me.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: I was producing for Audio Push and or produce a
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: record for Audio Push when I was invited up there,
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: and I was always gracious to be a guest there. However,
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: I didn't think about it until he started giving me
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: details about projects, and I'm like, I didn't know you
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: were that tapped in. He would tell me like, man,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: I love your projects. So it's not far-fetched. He would
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: come to me and say, man, that song that you
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: got with Rich Wright and Kool Roy, he's like, who
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: produced that? I said, my dog Jansport Jay. You got
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: a contact on him? Yeah, I'll get you a contact
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: on him.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: Jansport Jay ended up Co-producing so much.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: And he ended up.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: So, one of Hit-Boy's secret weapons.
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 3: His secret weapons. You see all these elements that happen.
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: Also a dope rapper.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: Incredible. You talking about who?
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 4: Jay.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: You talking about Jasper Jay?
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: I never really got to hear too much of his rapping.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: I feel like I remember seeing his name pop up
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: in like Two Dope Boys and shit back in the day.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: He definitely rapped. Yeah, there was a couple of joints.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, his shit was cool.
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: But no, I... I just see it and I'm like,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: I know a lot of record producers probably did that
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: to him, where it's like you got to take your
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: L before you take your W. And sometimes you don't
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: get your credit. Sometimes you are the ghost producer, whether
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: or not you're the majority producer. I don't know the
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: culture of that industry. All I know is when you
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: do that in an independent space, we call that biting.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: When you do that in an independent space, we call
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: that reckless, especially when you try to act like odd.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 3: I didn't even see you down there. I was just
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: doing my own thing. I just randomly went to this
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 3: sample that happened to be your number one song for
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: years that you're touring off of, that you're doing shows
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 3: off of. And so I look at it, and all
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: I'm going to just say is this. It's just interesting.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: And it keeps happening. And it doesn't help when you've
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 3: got folks that are in that circle that I've known
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: who have told me you're not crazy. So when I
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 3: see that and I saw the interview thing, I was like,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: that's probably more coincidence.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: Oh, you're talking about when he came on?
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm just like, how many times
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: has that happened? And then when you, the crazy thing,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: the reason why I'm even speaking on this today.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: So when it got brought up and I asked his
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: dad that and he said it was all hip boy,
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: would you have liked him to have said, oh yeah,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: Curtis King?
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: It'd have been two seconds of his time to be like,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: I'm not the only one that has done this because
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: I don't ever hesitate. You can't expect people to be you.
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: That's unfair of him. But I do think that acknowledgement
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: goes a long way, especially with somebody like me who
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: never hesitates to give credit where credit is due, especially
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: with him. Even after all that, dog, I still reached
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: out to him and I showed him love and publicly
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 3: it was always love, even though I'm still like, I
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: don't know what this is because even that song that
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: I produced for Audio Push, why am I named the
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: only one that spelled wrong on this project? And why
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 3: is my beat turned, flipped 90% of what it was
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: before into some other style and I'm not consulted? It's
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: one of them things where it's like, if it's respect,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 3: if it's love, it don't feel like it.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: So you feel like that there's like a little thing
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: there with you and Hip Boy?
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, it can't be until it's acknowledged, but I
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: do think there's enough to scratch your head. Right. And
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 3: that's what I'm getting at.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: Well, you said, I only saw him essentially, mind you,
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen or been hip to anything since he
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: did the interview with Vlad and Ellie Wilson.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: Right. Which was interesting to hear him say the things
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: about Nas, and I'm like, oh. I'm curious.
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: I don't think I got on the other side of
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: that without knowing anything new about why they're not working together.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: Do you have a reason?
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: I don't have it.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: Well, you kind of said that some of the things
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: that he... accuse naz of he might be i i
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: don't based on public information i'll just say i don't
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: know i i didn't watch an interview and have i
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: didn't have an inclination on why they're not working together i'll.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: Just say this and and this comes from somebody who
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 3: goes from being like ultra proud of this guy being
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: from the ie and representing the way he does monumental
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: records he's done with Eminem, and Lil Wayne. That was
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: incredible that a producer from an IE.
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: Dude, even the HS87 album was hard as fuck.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: Right, but I'm saying before that, just the fact that
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: you got a guy in Fontana.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: Even when he invited me to his house. I went
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 3: to his house, and I'm playing 2K with Kip Money.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: I was there to see a lot of this stuff
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: go on from an outsider point of view, but... It's
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: just one of them things where like, I never forget.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: I told him, I said, because when I get in
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: the new environment, Boulay, I'm like, hey, I'm a point.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 3: I'm Steve Nash. Right. Hey, whatever you need, I got it.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 3: I remember telling him, I was like, yo, if you
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: ever need sounds, you know, I got some sounds I
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: can give to you. He's like, no, I don't need that.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: It's like talking to Prince. No, I don't need that.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: Did you ever go to the House of Hit in
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: the hills over here in Encino?
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 3: I did. It was inspiring to see that.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he had that shit cranking. Everybody had a room.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: It was a lot going on.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there was multiple studios, but he had me in
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 3: the living room producing. But like I said, I say that,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 3: it's funny, because I say that it's not bad, it's
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 3: not malicious intent. I just think that there's... One time,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 3: it's a coincidence. Two times, it's a pattern. Three times,
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: now we got an issue.
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: Is James Ford J still working with it?
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, he's still working over there, yeah.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: So I always wonder, right, because if you think about
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: the producer game, there are... If you're someone like Hit-Boy...
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Hitboy is a very talented guy when it comes to, like,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: if you put a beat machine in front of him,
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: he can, like, there are producers like Hitmaker, and Hitmaker
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: won't mind me saying this, Hitmaker is the kind of
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: guy who his ear and his ability to bring people
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: together and his ideas and his songwriting and him knowing, oh,
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: I need to hit this person because they can do
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: what I have in my head. He's not necessarily the
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: more hands-on, beat maker type of guy, even though I
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: know he can do that, he's a producer in that sense.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: In like a puffy type.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: Of sense, I guess. Right, right, right, right.
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: Hit-Boy is quite literally a extremely talented... He could do
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: whatever you need done, right? But at the same time,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: it benefits Hit-Boy to make sure he has a team.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: But if you're like a... Just like it used to
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: benefit Mustard to have a guy like Mike Free around.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying?
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: Right, right, right.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: And so many of these super producers... We'll have a
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: guy like Metro Boomin, who is also an alien when
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: it comes to... Nobody could ever give Metro Boomin no shit.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 1: He's that guy.
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 2: But he's also got a guy like Dre Moon around.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: Who Dre Moon is very talented.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: You're a producer.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: So for you, is it enough to be able to
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: kind of be the guy behind the guy?
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: No.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: Not at all. Because if you're getting the credit and
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: you're getting the publishing, it doesn't matter.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 3: That's a different industry. And that's when I recognized the
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: difference between... Glass has told me this. He said, the
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: issue that you've been coming in contact with, Curtis, and
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: why you're so rebellious to a lot of this stuff
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: is that you've been playing by the wrong rules. He said,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: there's a record business and there's a music business. And
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 3: he said, record business is the traditional one that you
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 3: see like in the Whitney Houston movie where they have
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: all these folks who are in position, these titles and
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: expectations of those titles. In the music business, your business
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 3: is your music. The image is not the first thing
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: that's on the table. In the record business, it starts
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: with the image, it starts with the budget, it starts
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: with the access to press and all these locations. So
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: in recognizing that I'm able to see that even the
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 3: structure of the relationship between rapper and producer and beat
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: maker are in studio musician. Interesting enough, even when I
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 3: think about hit boy, I also think about an amazing
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: keyboardist named Merge. Merge was another person that I met
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: in that circle who, you know, those folks don't always
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: get their just due, but they're a part of the
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: story as well. I never forget some of the musicians
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: that worked with it at that time were also hired
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: musicians at a soul food restaurant in Rancho when I
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: used to live there. Incredible. I wish I remembered all
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: their names, but incredible. So I think about that and
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: credit means something to me, right? Probably more so than
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: a lot of people because I have, gone years at
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: times without credit i understand the necessity of it because
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: that is your your um your that's your value in
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: this industry is what have you done what can i
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: actually put your name to so i don't want to
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 3: have anybody a part of what i'm doing if it
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: doesn't feel like a partnership so i don't think that
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: that's designed for me to be in the i love
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: contributing to a bigger cause and it doesn't have to
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: have i'm not i'm not selfish i want to contribute
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: but at the same time like Let's not be a
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: part of something where one person absorbs all the credit.
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: I think that that's just something that I just fundamentally
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: just don't ever agree with.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it's kind of the industry, though, man.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's why I'm not in it. They hate to
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: see me coming. They're like, oh, God. They're like the
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 3: big name, and then.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: You'd be like, oh, there's like 13 co-producers on this record.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: And you don't even get to see their producer name
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: most times. You see their government name. And I know
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 3: that that doesn't matter for some people who are like, well,
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: I'm getting a check off of this. And more power
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 3: to you, I just feel like there's value in the
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: story of me working with an artist as an independent
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: now And being like, man, when he first came in here.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 3: Matter of fact, I'm a byproduct of that. Shout out
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: my dog, Iman Amari. We did a project called Beige.
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: And he told me straight up, Curtis, I think you
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: got so much potential, but you rapping like an unk.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 3: And I said, what you mean? He said, your inflections
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: sound like. And I couldn't see it until he sat
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: me down. One producer, one artist. And he went line
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: by line and said, no, no, no, no. Don't say
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: it like this. Have your inflection go down like you
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: do on your podcast. I said, I get it now.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: That framework is part of the reason why that beige
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: EP ended up being one of my most successful projects
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: because I got produced. And it's hard to have that
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: happen for an artist when they're in an environment where
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: it's like an assembly line.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: That makes sense.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: Every artist is not the same. Some artists thrive in
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 3: that for sure. But like, I don't think, I don't
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 3: think we got, I think we need to let go
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 3: what is one size fits all industry sauce and recipe
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: for success because Especially if we're talking about this being
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: a recipe for success of hit songs and we haven't had,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: quote unquote, the traditional hit songs. I think there's a
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: lot of people who are looking for hit songs in
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: a time period where we're not in a monoculture anymore.
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: That's fair. I want to go back to the distro
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: thing a little bit.
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: Sure.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: If someone were to ask you, hey, Curtis, I respect
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: your music opinion. Your opinion on the industry. I know
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: that you used to work with DistroKid, but I see
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: your video. Take DistroKid. What distribution service? I want my
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: stuff on iTunes. I want my stuff on Spotify. What
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: is my best service to you? Is it TuneCore? What
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: is the one you would say is kind of a
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: solid option that's out there for people to upload their music?
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: First of all, what I'm not going to do is
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: put myself in the same mistake I made last time
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: with DistroKid. I'm not going to co-sign no platform until
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: I see it for myself, working for myself. I am
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 3: right now with 2Loss. That was the one that after
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 3: I did extensive research called 2Loss.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: 2Loss.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: 2Loss. T-O-O-L-O-S-T. I did extensive research, even chat GBD'd some
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 3: things along the way to see like the pros and cons.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 3: And the thing that was like the icing on the
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: cake is that you can have multiple primary artists and
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: not get charged extra for that.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: Per artist.
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: Right? That was the thing for me where I have
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 3: multiple collaborations. Like my dog, oh gosh, Leotis. And that's
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: kind of, that was a last straw with DistroKid. It
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: was some weird stuff that started happening last minute where
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: my email started coming through in French.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: What the fuck?
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 3: I'm like, I didn't change, I have no reason to
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: change these settings. And I try to hit customer service
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 3: when I'm talking to a bot now. Can't get to anybody. Okay,
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: I am a bot. a valued member of this brand,
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 3: but I can't even get somebody on the phone.
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: The fact that you got an email in French is diabolical.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: And then on top of that, I got a charge
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 3: a couple of days before rent for about 400 something dollars.
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: And I said, distro kid, I said, am I getting
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: this money? Are you? And they charged me. And you
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: know what they charged me for? A free account. They
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: set me up with because they said, Hey Curtis, we
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: want to make sure that we take care of you.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: Even though you're not an ambassador anymore, we want to
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: take care of you and set you up with the
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: appropriate label account.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 4: Cool.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: Because I had so many primary artists, they charge for
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: every single one. Maybe it's an automated system.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 4: Maybe, yeah.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: I looked up and it said $ 400 something. I said,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: if you don't give me my money back. And that's
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 3: for the year? It's for the year. So that $ 19
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 3: they always talk about, yeah, that's how you get started.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 3: But there's other features that you got to use, like
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: the primary artists if you're working in collaborations. That's important,
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 3: especially because your album's not going to show up the
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: same way on Apple Music. Are your EPs? Certain things
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 3: are not going to show up the way they need
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 3: to unless you've got a primary artist in that label.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: So I would just say this. Do your research. Do
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 3: not be tricked by the shiny syndrome. You know what's crazy, dog?
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 3: I actually talked to somebody that I knew. Shout out
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: to Brandon. I talked to him on the phone. He
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: was somebody that was a part of the blog era,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: and he remembers me from that era. He was like, dog,
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: you always was a solid one. And he said, now
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: that I'm over here, I got you. He's at two loss.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He, he also manages Python P. So
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: like he's somebody that I have the, it's that feeling
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 3: of like, okay, somebody in there is going to bat
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 3: that knows what we go through out here.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: So they got splits.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 3: Yes, they do. Yes, they do. Yes, they do. I,
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: you know, I looked at all that. I need my
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: splits for all my collaborators. So two losses, the one
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: I'm going with, don't take that as a cosine until
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: I see how it looks like after a year. Every
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 3: one of them have their pros and cons. I just say,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 3: don't go anywhere where you feel less independent. And at
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: the end of the day, don't forget this is a
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: means to an end and you should always have your
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: website set up. Even if people don't want zip files,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: the fact that you can make it available. I've done
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 3: this where I've put up a song for a dollar
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 3: 99 because my brain is still programmed by what Steve
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 3: Jobs did in iTunes. And somebody said, it's not enough.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: I want to pay 40 for this. Who am I
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: to tell them? No, they can't, they can't do that.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: They did a, they did a survey. They did an
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 3: experiment one time, Kev, where they, had a bus stop
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: and it had a regular seat and it had a
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: golden throne with a rope around it. And people who
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: were riding the bus had to pay to sit in
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: this throne to wait for the bus. Do you know
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 3: that people paid for it simply because there was an
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: option to pay for it? They paid for it because
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 3: there was an option for a VIP service. Some artists
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 3: feel guilty charging more. Some people want to because it's
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: an option to support you that way. So I look
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: at that and I'm like, set your website up because
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 3: you never know. You may be in between.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: You might be missing out on some money too. You might.
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And you get somebody who
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 3: can come to your website and you got a cool
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: little situation. Like Bandcamp is still great for that, even
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: though they're under new regime as well. New ownership. It's
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: dope to be able to know that you can set
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: your music up and you can get your money the
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: same day with streaming. You got to wait three to
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: six months. And then even then it's been divvied up
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 3: so many times by the time it gets to you.
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: Right. And then it's interesting too, because depending on what
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: the site is, like you're like some, some distribution companies
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: can get more per stream than others, which doesn't make sense.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: It's a scam, bro. I'm not, I'm not going to
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: put it on you, but it is, it feels like I,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 3: for somebody, like I said, who has, he has pretty
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: solid street smarts. I know when I'm getting hustled.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like, you could get, like, I know people will
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: be like, well, Empire, I mean, back in the day,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: Empire was known for, like, the 80-20 split. They're a
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: lot more, like, if you just want distro, you could
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: get a much better split now. But, like, I've seen
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: Empire get more money out of your music than anybody else.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: Or even, like, some of these, like, more boutique distributors,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: the Orchids, the Foundations, you know.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 3: But you know what, though? As crazy as this is
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: going to sound, as critical as I've been, I have
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: empathy for them as business owners because I know you
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: have to make a profit. But that's even more reason
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: why I can't be underneath you. Right. Because I know
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 3: like as I'm looking at those situations, I'm like, I
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 3: know why you're charging that. Right. You have to you
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: have to make your ends make your ends make your
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: ends meet. But at the same time, why why am
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: I under the impression that I am conducting business with
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: you and I'm using you as a third party when
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: you have control to take my product down? I'm not,
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: I'm a customer. I am a customer trying to get
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: to customers.
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: Do you feel like the, because I feel like we
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: are in this era of content where people can fuck
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: around and say dumb shit and hide behind the wall of, yo,
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: it's just content.
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: I see this shit all the time.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 3: What's your take on it?
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: I hate it.
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: And I hear you because I felt the same way
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 3: when I'm on a receiving end of like, Taking a
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 3: clip out of context after I've spent my time and
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: I sat with somebody and I'm like, you know, that's
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 3: not how I meant it. Right. You know, clippers are
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 3: notorious for that and putting captions of things you didn't
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: even say. But playing devil's advocate, I think many folks
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: like myself looking from the outside feels like that is
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: a model that Adam 22 has thrived off.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 4: Of.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, for sure. And they were underneath that regime at
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: one point.
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: No, no, 100%. I totally understand. To me, it is
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: very much a product of that has kind of been
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: the no jumper model.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 3: And it works.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: It's success.
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 3: And it works.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: It is very successful.
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 3: Academics is a part of that same kind of conversation.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: And that's why I always say, yo, me and academics...
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say we had a back and forth. We
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: had a one side.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 3: He's had it with everybody. Well, no, no.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: So, like, I did an interview with Maul, or not
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: with Maul.
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 3: With Rory. Shout out to Rory. He's been cool.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: We did a podcast, and I just said, like, I
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: think I said something in the interview, like, that I just,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know academics, but he comes off like he's
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: a bad person.
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: You said that?
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, boy, he couldn't wait for that one.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: So I see something to that effect.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: I don't recall.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: And then at the same time, I'm sitting with Rory.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: He's like one of his number one ops. Right. So
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: he goes on this rant and he's like.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 3: You can't have ops if you don't leave the house,
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: by the way.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: But whatever the case is.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: And like, I respect academics and what he's built in
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: the way he's built it. It's not my cup of
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: tea and he's comfortable doing things I'm not comfortable doing.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: Um he's shitty at home all the time just can't
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: be more comfortable than that i'm sorry i keep cutting
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 3: y'all go at it no i can't you know i
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 3: can't you know i can't stand that guy like i
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: i get it but so yeah but i want you
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: to make sure you're showing your love i'm sorry about
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 3: that so so.
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: He goes on his stream and it's like one of
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: these drunken streams i have a lot of people hitting
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: me they're like yo this boy academics going in on
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 1: you and he's talking about don't suck my dick and
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: and all this shit and i was like i had
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: everybody hitting me like yo, you're not going to say
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: nothing back? And I was like, fuck no. First of all,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: I'm a white boy. So if someone says suck my dick,
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: it's funny. Like, I tell my best friends to suck
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: my dick.
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 2: Like, it's, you know, whatever.
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 3: Hey, yo.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: Like, not like literally.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: No, I get it. I get it. I'm just saying.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: Them fighting words right in front of me.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right, right, right.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 3: So I was like, whatever.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: And also, I am not.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to engage in a beef with somebody
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: who's willing to go places I'm not willing to go.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: So I would rather just say, hey, man, you got it, pal.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: And then A.D. ended up putting us on. A.D. was
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: there and at his house or his.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: At academics house?
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, wherever.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 4: And A.D.
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 2: Called me randomly. Yo, I'm with academics. And we squashed
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: it on the phone.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 4: OK.
• 1:30:59
  Speaker 2: But it was a one sided beef.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 3: What's the thing about it is it's always wrestling. and
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: that's from somebody who's watched wrestling, the context is there
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: when you see WWF or WWE on the screen. You
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: know I'm about to, as a kid, even if you know, like,
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 3: I wanna act like this is real, the context.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but if you're in the WWE, it's fine.
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 3: It's fine, but they have turned that into this, and
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 3: they've done it when it has real world ramifications. One
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: of my biggest criticisms of Ed Academics, I don't care
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: what he does good or successful in this, is the
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: way that he turned Chirac into his video game. Yes,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 3: he is amplifying things that are happening anyways, but it
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 3: don't need your input from your house. Because some of
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: the things that you're saying can have an influence on
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: somebody who says, yeah, they do think I'm a bitch, huh?
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 3: You don't know what that does to somebody who is
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: already mentally not in the right space to receive that
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: kind of instigation. And I think about that and I'm like,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: he's been able to thrive off of that and find
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 3: other ways to use artists' record sales against them I
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: think that's so diabolical to the point where it changes
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 3: the nature of fans like why do fans care about
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: record sales and these bitches don't get paid off for
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: none of it.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: Well and the other thing too is like you you.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 3: Don't even get affiliate payment you don't get nothing I.
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: Feel like we've started to like listen to or value
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: people's opinions who aren't even fans of rap.
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 3: Music they don't even like music J.
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: Cole had said something and it was essentially like He
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: doesn't care what people say about his music that wouldn't
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 1: have listened to his music anyway, had they had to
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: go buy it.
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: That's a good point. Right.
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: So it's like, if somebody isn't going to, like, if
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: you went out, like back in the day when we
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: had to go support artists, like I had to go
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: to the, I had to go to the store and
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: buy the game is to be told not to be sold.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: From Snoop. So if I say this album's a fucking.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: Piece of shit, I was disappointed because it was the
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: first No Limit album.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 2: And I hated it. I can say it. I paid
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: $ 21 from Sam Goody for this fucking album.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 3: And your motivation didn't come from I can go viral
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 3: talking bad about you. No, it's just I'm a fan.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: And the thing is, I feel like nowadays it's like
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: we have all of these people who aren't even fans.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: They would never listen to J.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: Cole talking about the fall off.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: I'm not going to hold you. I'm grateful for relationships
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 3: like ours. I'm grateful for the relationships I have with
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 3: the folks in media that do care about this. That
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: was the part that blew my mind was when I
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 3: kept meeting, you know, I say they never met your heroes.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 3: I never really grew up having like journalists and media
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: as my heroes, but they became that when I realized
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 3: how difficult and challenging this is as a media voice.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: And then I started to meet them and realize like
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: how much they don't really care about the music. And that,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 3: that was off putting because I never stopped being Curtis King,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: the artist. Right. So like there's certain conversations where it's like, oh,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 3: it's just it's just content. Oh, it's just. And I
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 3: realized like, oh, this is this could be politics. This
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 3: could be sports. This could be any other category. And
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: you would still have the same passion, you know, performing,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 3: performative passion. And that's just for me. That's why all
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 3: you see me talk about is music is because I
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: would do this for free. I've been doing talking about
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 3: it for free for years. I love this, but it's
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 3: hard to talk to people who don't love this. And
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 3: I end up clashing with a lot of people who
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 3: don't love this is what I've noticed.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like it should be about the music first,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: the quality of the music. Is this shit good?
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 3: That's why I respect your platform, dog. And I know
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 3: you hate compliments. Oh, well, I'm going to compliment bomb
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 3: you today.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: Appreciate it.
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: Having artists that come on here and still rap. Like,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you had time today, but I
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 3: brought my flash drive today to do whatever I had
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: to do.
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: Oh, you got some bars?
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: Come on.
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: All right, we'll do a freestyle curse. We had a
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: good morning of bars so far. But yeah, I think
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: to me that's kind of the most important thing is like, hey, dude, like,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: and that's kind of where I felt like I just
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: am comfortable with like whatever growth or numbers I do,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: doing what I do, I'm just, I'm cool with. Because
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: I've seen like, The way to go viral, and I
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: know the things I could do to get to go.
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying I've never been messy, and I
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: won't be messy again.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: You in this. Come out of territory.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, I just know the shit
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not willing to do, and it's not even like
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: I even hate on that kind of shit, because I
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: like Poetic Flaco's channel a lot. I think it's so good.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 3: I've watched a few videos for sure.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: Poetic Flocko's YouTube channel. I text him all the time.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: When he was talking about Chud the Builder.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: No, he did good work.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: I was like, bro, the Chud the Builder.
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't know anything about what's going on with Chud
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: the Builder if it weren't for you, dog.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 3: And the way he pumping those videos out is insane too.
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: It is, again, whether or not you have your gripes
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: with his journalistic integrity, his opinion on things, all that aside,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 1: I think Poetic Flaco's... I enjoy his videos.
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I like.
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: And I feel the same way about Vlad.
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: There's a pocket of Vlad's interviews that I love.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: I like when Vlad sits down with a mafia guy
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: or a Hell's Angel or a fucking... Some Mexican mafia
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: hitman who just got out of prison.
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 3: Right, he's crazy, yeah.
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: And my guilty pleasure. Uh-oh. I love Vlad the Butcher.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: This guy, when he goes on camera, he's been beefing
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: with everybody. This Aries Spears beef with DJ Vlad.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 3: Oh, you give him a nickname. I thought it was
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: a guy that comes on named Vlad. He calls himself Vlad.
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 3: I've never seen that before. That's crazy.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: He calls him.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: He's like, yo, it's Vlad the Butcher.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 3: I'm back. Oh, wow.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: Bro, it is the most. It's like my Jerry Springer.
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 3: I used to watch Jerry Springer and tell myself, well,
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 3: somebody got it worse than me. I'll be all right.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like, dude, I watched Ray J. I, like, watched
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: For the Love of Ray J. like 20 years ago,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: you know?
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: So, like, my guilty viewing is like.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 3: I get it. We all got that voice. Like, we
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 3: all have that one pocket of content. Yo, when Vlad
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 3: goes in on Aries Spears? That's crazy.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: Did you watch that podcast where he went on Aries Spears' podcast?
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: I've literally never watched a full Vlad TV podcast, but
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 3: I've seen clips.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: Listen, Aries Spears has a podcast with a comedian.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 3: Oh, I did see some of that clip. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: So Vlad comes to his podcast for them to squash it.
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 3: Right. And it didn't go well.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: And it was two hours of Aries Spears screaming at Vlad.
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: And Vlad being the most unbothered motherfucker to ever walk
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: the face of the earth. And however, because I have
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: my gripes with Vlad. And Vlad's always been cool to me.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: But however you feel about Vlad, I know people who
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: hate his fucking guts and think he is like the
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: worst thing to ever happen to hip hop. They're like, bro.
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: He's son, bruh.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 3: You know what's funny? And I got to peep that out.
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: I met Vlad on accident at a Hip Hop DX event.
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 3: It was a random guy that had a big ass
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 3: security next to him. And he was facing the bar.
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 3: I was facing the audience. It was at the, not
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 3: the Key Club, the Cine Space.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 3: And I went in there and I was just kind
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: of standing off in the corner. And some music came
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 3: on and he just said something out loud. And we
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 3: just started up a conversation. And you know how it's
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 3: at an angle where it's so many people that you're
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 3: carrying the conversation, but you don't look at them? It
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 3: wasn't until probably about two minutes into the conversation, I
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 3: look at him. And I'm like, he could be, or
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 3: he could just be a random dude with a beard.
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 3: And the conversation was... honestly very, very peaceful. It was very,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 3: it was very informed. And so like, my thing is this,
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 3: I don't believe in canceling anybody. I don't care how
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 3: horrendous of a thing they've done. I don't believe in
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 3: canceling anybody. I think cancel culture only cleans up social
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 3: media timelines. It don't change people.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 1: It don't change.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: A damn thing. I know I've been embarrassed when somebody's like,
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 3: you shouldn't have did that. And in my mind, I'm like, well,
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 3: I'll make sure I don't get caught next time. That's
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 3: my default as a human being. So my thing is,
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: if you really want people to change... You have to
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 3: leave the space open to talk to them or leave
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 3: the space open to where you say, I can't do
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 3: that right now. Get your shit together. But trying to
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 3: like do the picket fence, the picket forks and all
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 3: the pitch forks, it just does not work for what
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: we say that we want to happen. So when I
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 3: look at Vlad, I still can learn something from Vlad
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 3: and fundamentally disagree with 90% of the things that he does.
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 3: Same thing with like all the folks, even academics. I'm
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 3: able to peep game and see. Matter of fact, I
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 3: almost got... Vlad TV's YouTube course at one point because
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 3: I was doing more interviews.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's very, Vlad, whatever you, I mean, he's figured
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: it out in his way, right? And like, he has changed. There's,
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: at least somebody from an interview perspective, the clipping of
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 1: your interviews.
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 3: It's crazy, bro.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: But he's the one who started that. Yeah. You know?
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 3: And then he got bastardized. Because when you talk about
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 3: everything is content, I think there are folks who saw
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 3: that model without an understanding of the original source. And
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 3: I think that when it, in my opinion, when it
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 3: reached no jumper, it was like, oh, that's how you
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 3: amplify it within this space of hip hop. And it
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 3: got to the point where, I don't know, I'm too
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 3: empathetic sometimes to the point where I see somebody's worst
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 3: day on camera, and then I'm seeing a thumbnail that's
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 3: obviously been doctored with. That's one of my issues with
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 3: Poetic Flaco. Everybody don't need teardrops. Oh, God.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: His thumbnails are the same.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 3: I know it works, the formula. Everybody don't need teardrops.
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: Every single thumbnail, someone crying. And every single thumbnail says,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: this is bad.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 3: I see them do it for himself when something bad happens.
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: Bro, it's funny too, because he's also full of shit
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: a lot.
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Where you'll be like, it'll be like.
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: Yo, so-and-so's having the worst day ever. Their career's over.
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: And I'll always know within about a minute of watching
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: a Poetic Flaco video whether or not he's full of
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: shit or not.
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 3: Right, right. When I saw that.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, this is nothing.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 3: When I saw that, I started becoming less angry about
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 3: his takes. When I saw him put his own face
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 3: on a thumbnail and he was like, this is bad. Oh,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 3: you take nothing serious.
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: Bro, it's... Yeah, no. I think, like you said, there's
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: a time and a place for everyone's content. There's content
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: you don't have to agree with. That's why, for me,
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I understand that I could be doing a
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: lot more views and be more viral. But I'm okay because, one,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: I don't need security. I'm outside all the time.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 3: Alone, everywhere.
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: No issues. But that doesn't mean that I look at
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: what someone like Adam does or even like, you know,
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: back on Fig does something different than I do. And
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yo, I get it. But that's y'all's world.
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: And like, I've popped in on both of their shows before.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: You know, I'll pop in. You know what I'm saying?
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: I've interviewed Adam. I've interviewed T-Rell and AD. AD's my bro.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying? But it's just, even the
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: Flacco shit. Dog, that shit, genius. You're killing it. When
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: he was showing all that money, I was like, dog, yeah,
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: I hate him.
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 3: I was like, yo, congrats. It makes sense. Because when
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 3: you've been on YouTube long enough, you know what you
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 3: need to be doing to maintain a certain income. I
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 3: just wish that battle income was a new norm.
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: Oh, that battle income fed a lot of content creators.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 3: Oh my God, brother. Brother, looking at them numbers, I
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 3: was making, I renovated the studio.
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: It was like the first time Trump ran. But for CNN,
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: it was like, we're building, all the news fucking stations
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: loved Trump.
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 3: You know what's crazy? I had a similar thought. Remember
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: the actor? Oh my God, of course you do. What's
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 3: his name? He had the famous case with his ex-girl.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 3: He used to be Pirates of the Caribbean.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, Johnny Depp.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 3: Johnny Depp. And there was a documentary that showed all
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 3: the reactors as a part of the documentary, and they
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 3: were showing clips of like, oh, day one of court,
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 3: this happened. I said, I wonder if hip hop will
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 3: ever have a thing like that, and then the battle happened.
• 1:42:46
  Speaker 1: Kendrick and Drake. And then, I mean, even recently, I
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: feel like motherfuckers ate off that Dirk shit every day.
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, Dirk Trial. But see, for me, I don't
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 3: know how you, with your stance on that, I don't
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 3: do court-related stuff.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: I think there's a way to do it, and like, I.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't hate the way Trapper Laura Ross
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: covered it on his Instagram.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: I didn't hate it. And I disagree with a lot
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: of shit he's done. But I thought that he covered
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: it kind of like a criminal journalist. Now, people cannot
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: fuck with him. And I think he's done a lot
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: of goofy shit. And I don't think he's taken a
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 1: lot of accountability for the shit he's done.
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: But I didn't have a gripe with the way he
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: talked about it or even the way.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: What's the homie's name that was on the podcast, the
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: big buff fool? The big Hank Hill-looking bruh from Florida.
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 4: Oh, Jake.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: End of sentence.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 3: Not Jake.
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: What's the name?
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 4: 1090 Jake.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: 1090 Jake. Yeah, 1090 Jake.
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: But again, it's not.
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 3: But you know the optics of why that is an
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 3: instant issue for most people, right?
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, to me, the 1090 Jake thing is
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: one thing. That dude is from, I know where he's
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: locked up. I used to live in Tampa, so that's
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 1: where he came up.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 2: So I know 1090 Jake, and I know where he's from,
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 2: so I get it. The Traveller Raw shit is crazy.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because you don't even have a brand that says
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 3: anything in hip-hop.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: No, but he did a four-hour-long documentary accusing somebody of
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: being a serial killer, and he's a white dude from London.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, see, that's what I'm talking about.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: That shit is diabolically crazy.
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 3: Is that culture, bro? Because you're talking about when you
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 3: edit that video, hit upload, put that thumbnail, and you
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 3: turn your computer off, you don't know the amount of hell.
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: You don't know the hell and the ramifications that come
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: with that. And even if you do know, you don't
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: give a fuck.
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 3: You don't give, because you've already getting your check and
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 3: your check's not getting, so that's the part that maybe
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 3: that's where I'm not built for this. And I'm okay
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 3: with that. For sure.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: And I feel the same, by the way, I feel
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: the same way where I'm like, oh, you guys can
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: do all that shit.
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 3: I'm cool. But at the same time, like for somebody
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 3: that grew up, like my pops raised me on Malcolm
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 3: X speeches and literature. You know something that Malcolm X did?
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 3: For as much people try to label him as you know,
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 3: hate speech or whatever they say is polarizing, he sat
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 3: down with everybody, dog.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 4: 100%.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 3: And that's something that I'm inspired by today is like.
• 1:45:06
  Speaker 1: Detroit Red, baby.
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: Like, he sat down with all platforms. You know them
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 3: platforms did not like him. I sit down. My thing
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 3: is I'm going to sit down with people that I
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 3: feel like are doing amazing work and also, too, they
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 3: care about this culture and they care about the music.
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 3: And even if we don't talk about the music, I'm
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 3: not so self-centered of an artist where it's like you
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 3: have to, but I do think it's important that folks,
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 3: and you do this, prioritize some of the conversation around music.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 3: These artists work on this, they work on an album
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 3: for two years and talk about it on the podcast
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 3: for two minutes. For sure.
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: And like, look, sometimes people are interesting and maybe you
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: go on a tangent and, you know, maybe there's obvious,
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: there is obvious shit. Like, like, yo, if I'm gonna
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: interview so-and-so, it'd be crazy if I didn't talk to
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: you about it.
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 3: Gotta talk about this. I know that because I interview now.
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying? I've been interviewing.
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: But obviously you always want to tie in the music and,
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: and talk about, I mean, but sometimes I'll take an
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: interview knowing I don't want to talk about the music.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: Because the music's horrible.
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 3: Is that how you end up getting, dog, I swear
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 3: to you, I have not seen a clip more often
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 3: than your clip with the dude that was talking about
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 3: getting offered a million dollars.
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, you're talking about Big Boogie?
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: I actually fuck with Big Boogie's music, but Big Boogie
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: is a personality. There's people who I'm like, Bro, like,
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: I love Blueface. Me and Blueface have classic interviews.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 3: Right, right.
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 2: If I'm talking to Blueface.
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 3: You're not about to talk about... There's a lot of things.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 2: We're talking about.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 3: He's doing a lot outside of music also, too.
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, this motherfucker's insane private life.
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 3: Oh, my God.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: Jesus. Anyway, listen, we're going to have you rap a
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: separate YouTube video. Can you shout out what you got
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: on the music side under the new... Is that your government?
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 3: That's my government name.
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 3: So I'm going by Dewan, D-W-A-N... H W R D.
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 3: That's DeJuan Howard. So you just remember DeJuan, you'll find it.
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 3: It's funny. I got another name. They're probably going to
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 3: spell incorrectly because Curtis definitely got one S. How do
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 3: you have a fake name? People still spell wrong, but
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 3: Curtis King, two S's, two S's. Curtis King is still
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 3: an active brand. It's still going to be the YouTube channel,
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 3: more of the media personality and production. But DeJuan is,
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 3: you will start to see it populate on the social media.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: Not too much right now. Still going to follow Curtis King.
• 1:47:09
  Speaker 3: Curtis King is the best place to start. I'll lead
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 3: you where you need to go. Curtis King TV on YouTube, curtisking.com, curtisking.bandcamp.com.
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 3: Two S's. Two S's.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 4: Two S's.
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 3: Only Curtis you'll see with two S's. But yeah, dog,
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 3: I genuinely appreciate you reserving the time to have me
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 3: come out here.
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: All good, man. Curtis King, my dog. Appreciate you, brother.
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 3: What up, y'all?
• 1:47:28
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• 1:47:33
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• 1:47:39
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• 1:47:47
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• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: right now. Come on, man. Shout out to Eaze.