Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Erick the Architect

Transcript

Erick the Architect · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: My guest today is Eric the Architect. Eric, how'd you
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: end up having a spot at the last Apple presentation?
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: Wow? Jump right in? You bet? Yeah.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: It was a random phone call that I got on
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: a Friday and I had to sign an NDA, so
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I knew it was something big. And this team reached
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: out to ask me to create an original song and
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: I worked on that song for four months and that
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: it came to be Okay, who called you? It was
• 0:36
  Speaker 3: a representative somebody that worked there is like a woman
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: that headed an apartment like the music department.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I guess they were fans of my music
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: in Apple.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, So you have no idea how they found you?
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Not really.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: I guess through the music obviously, but I never know.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: I don't ask too many questions. I just do the asign.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, when Apple calls, so you sign the NDA.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: What is the brief? What did they tell you they
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: want you to do?
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: We want you to take these words and create original composition,
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: produce a song, write the song, record the song, and
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: use the words that were all apps as a way
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: to basically weave them into a story. That seemed like
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: it was relative of how you use apps in your life.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you get the assignment. What's your first thing
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: you do?
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: The first thing I did was take all the words
• 1:28
  Speaker 3: and categorize them based on what kinds of word if
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: I recognize the apps, if I actually used them, And
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: then I broke them down into what type of app?
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Was it a game? Was it navigation? Was it finance?
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: And then I thought of how to take the obvious
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: ones and make them puns, cash app.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: You know, Airbnb, whatever, the ones that I actually use.
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: I was trying to use those first, and of course
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: a lot of those are the ones that had to
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: take out.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: So give me an example of the pun you created,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: whether you took it out or not.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Man, it's funny to think of the words now after
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: hearing of a seventy so long I chased money, which
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: is Chase bank, I chased money, hit my cash app.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: So the relative with two finance apps that were relative
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: to money.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's start from the beginning. Are you an iPhone user?
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Okay, absolutely so you were?
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, kay, we had a big thing with people testifying
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: about BlackBerry.
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: This is really going back and the US an I
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: missed them right, and.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Then android, etc. Okay, so you categorized and started creating
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: puns immediately. What happened after that? For you?
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: Then it was the beat.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: I had a skeleton for the beat, so I know
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: that they wanted the song originally to be something that
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: was like not slow, but just like a regular hip
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: hop tempo, maybe like ninety ninety five ppm. And then
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: it had to grow to become something that was one
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: hundred and you know, automated to that naturally the song progressed.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: So I had to create one beat first. Once I
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: established that beat, then I had to make the second beat,
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: which is more like a trap, higher energy, faster.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, you do this every day, but a lot of
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: people don't. Let's go down a little bit for how
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: do you create the beat?
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: I use able to, you know, so that's my production software,
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: and the beat is usually comprised of If it wasn't
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: something that had to be you know, I couldn't use
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: a sample or somebody else's music. Usually I listen to
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: other people's music to inspire me. I first learned to
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: produce by buying records and listening to them, especially like
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: soul sixties and seventies records, Barry Goldy era. That was
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: like my favorite to listen to. Then I got into
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: like a lot of jazz, you know. So I was
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: trying to think of like what this would sound like,
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: but not remove myself from it entirely, whereas it didn't
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: feel natural to me. So making the beat just starts
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: with drums and a bassline.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: That's how I start every beat, and.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: Then you figure out the melody and all the other
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: percussions and stuff like that.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, starting with the beat, how do you not repeat yourself?
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: How do you not make the same beat again? Yeah,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know. I think every beat
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: requires something different.
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: I think this being a prompt, there was something specific
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: that I was thinking about, and I know that that
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: beat was like it was a song that it was
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: just drum bassed like a drum loop. And then as
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: the MC started to rap faster, the beat got faster too.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: So I was thinking, well, if there's less elements to it,
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: then it might be something more interesting and I could
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: carry the song by my voice and using like the words.
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: So I think I recorded over like just the drumming
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: bass first, you know. Then I started to add instruments
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: later on.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, tell me about the change in bpm. Go a
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: little deeper there.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: So the original song was at like ninety bpm or
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: just I would say traditional hip hop or maybe say
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: Golden era hip hop is about ninety ninety five ppm,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: and I would say more modern. There's a little bit
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: more energy and a little faster. So when you automate it,
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: it basically it was on like a timeline that over time,
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: as the song progressed, it would slowly get faster and
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: faster and faster to the hit the peak of the song.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: So there was a moment when a flip was was
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: a switch was hit and the song.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: Went really really fast, and then I started to rap fast.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: Too, So both of them had to kind of be
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: in tandem and order for that feeling of like, oh,
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: something big happened, or is a big change, and that
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: to happen with my voice, and also production wise too.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you started it ninety or ninety five? Did
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: you make a complete song at that level? Okay, So
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: let's say you get the beat, you then put in
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the words, and then the instrument, other instruments or how
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: do you do it?
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: It was both of them at the same time. It's weird.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: It was like, because I was pretty knew what I
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: was going to say. I already wrote the song. It's
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: just now that you had to compliment what I was
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: what I was actually saying. So every revision required lyric
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: changes and also instrumental changes, so they both worked together
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: all the whole way through.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: And what other instruments did you then decide to work with?
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: I did live base a bunch of synthesizers. I like
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: analog stuff for this, I didn't really use very much.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: A lot of it was like pluggin based, a lot
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: of Artoria plugins, stuff that's emulations of real pieces of gear,
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: but I don't own all of it. So I tried
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: to like make it sound similar to how you know
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: it would sound if it was a piece of equipment
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: plug into a wall, as opposed to a computer plug
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: into a wall.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and where were you doing this? My studio? And
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: how extensive is your studio?
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: So I've been the bedroom producer for my whole career
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: until last year. So around this time, a little earlier
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: this year. Last year is when I got my first studio,
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: and I've always had more equipment than my house could hold.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: You know, I lived in LA for seven years. That's
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: kind of when my production and equipment, all my stuff expanded.
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: I had a lot of stuff, but when I came here,
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: I bought so much more.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: It was more.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: Accessible because I had a house. So I took everything
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: I had and shoved it in this room. My studios
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: would say it's pretty big, but that's coming from somebody
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: who produced in their bedroom.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: They were, Okay, when you're producing your bedroom, if you
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: had so much gear, how'd you make sure it didn't
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: get stolen?
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: That's a good question. I lived in the hood, too,
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: so that was quite dangerous thing I didn't. I had
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: insurance on this stuff, so maybe there was the assurance
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: that nothing.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: If something did happen, I'd be all right.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: But I don't know. I lived in New York my
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: whole life. I paranoid by just by nature.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: So, okay, so you live in a house in Los
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Angeles now, and your studio was in the house it was, Yeah,
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: it was, it's not anymore, no, and now it's it
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: actual location. Okay, So the actual location, I don't need
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: an address.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: But where is that in Highland Park?
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: In the Highland Park, And how extensive is that.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: Room it's enough for I don't have like a drum set.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: I wish I had a big enough space.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: But it's one big room, you know, I'll have like
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: a live room in a courting room or a production room.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: It's just one kind of like box with enough to
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: have a couch and a desk and about eight or
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: nine synthesizers and pianos.
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: So it's substantially big room. And what about a console
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and shit like that.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: I don't I use a lot of audio interfaces I
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: don't have. I have a taskcam tape recorder. So that's
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: the biggest thing that I have that's like actually analog.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: The rest of it is all inbox UAD, you know,
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: I think I have a I forgot the one that
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: I use my Windows computer. I use Windows and Mac
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: kind of together, and I chain them by using like
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: UAD software and h plugins.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: For those people don't know that ACRONAM. What does UAD
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: stand for Universal Audio? Okay, yeah, let's go back taskcam.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: I haven't been in that world a long time. A
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: is task am still in business? And B where do
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: you get the tape?
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Taskam is still in business? This is a tape machine
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: that's like it's a real to real So it's old
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: and I've always get them on eBay. That's the way
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: I find the tape.
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: But it's a specific sound that's retained in it that
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: it's hard to emulate it. Some people say there's no
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: difference when you do it in a computer. I like
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: Valualy believe you can get a big difference. And also
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: has an option called very speed, which takes the sound
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: and I don't really know how it manipulates it, but
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: it because it's a tape machine, it's able to like
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: change pitch and speed at the same time, and it
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: just creates like a nuanced sound that you can't get
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: anywhere else.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So that's okay it This may be a little left field,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: but that's analog.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: So do you have a take on vinyl as supposed
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: to digital.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: MM just in general? Like, I'm just a Vinyl guy.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: I've been.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: I guess maybe because I was introduced. I was born
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: in the eighties, so it's not like I remember when
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: vinyl came out. But I think the first like the
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Yamaha d X seven is probably the first digital piano
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: that I bought that I was like, wow, this is
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: like Tears for Fears and Phil Collins and Rod Stewart.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: You can actually press these sounds and feel like you're
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: transported to that time.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: It's like some of my favorite music.
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: But that was the industry's answer to, well, we just
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: came out of analog, what's the digital sound sound like?
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: So I love digital stuff because that's my favorite.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Like, that's what I know. But when I think about nostalgia,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: I have to go further back.
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: Because you know, I was introduced to music through my
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: parents and my brothers who always played vinyl and cassette tapes.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: So that was my first like love.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: Really it was hearing my favorite albums on vinyl, from
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Prince Purple Rain to What's Happening Brother Marvin Gay to
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: you know, I don't know.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: James Brown Christmas.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: These are all on vinyl before I had CDs and cassettes,
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: CDs and MP three's and stuff like that.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the Apple thing. So they
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: give you the list YEP, you write the lyrics first. Yeah,
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: how long does it take you to write the lyrics?
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: I wrote the lyrics, I would say in two days.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Two days, okay, just to be clear from the moment
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: they give you the list. Two days later you have
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: the song. Yeah, how long till you have the first
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: finished product?
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: The first draft that I had sent was days after.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: So if I got it on Friday that end of
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: that week, I already had the first draft of the song.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: And you send you to them. How soon did you
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: hear back and what did they say?
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: It was probably the next day, Okay, So.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: You hear back from them right after they you submitted,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: what do they say?
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: They were like surprised that I made such something so
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: good so fast. There's a lot of notes about just
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: like where was going to go, because it wanted that
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: second half to be like dramatically different than the first.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: But I was like, it's a skeleton, so naturally, it's
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: like I work best when I have some type of
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: discourse about what I already showed you and also what
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: I could work on. So you know, it was every
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: day until those two weeks happened.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: Okay, So in.
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: That initial two weeks before they say you have the gig,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: how much interaction do you have with them?
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: It was every day. It was every day, you know,
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: you go to the studio. I'd wake up and I
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: just wait for the call Okay, so two weeks go.
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: By, You've got the gig. What happens for the next
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: three months?
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: Man, it was, it was. It was a lot of work.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: I've never worked harder on anything, to be honest.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: You know, you make a song, you know.
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: You write it rap or you record whatever it was.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: You know, you still even if I'm producing for another person.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: I think what made this, what what made it difficult,
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: was the fact that it was every day. So it
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: was hard to have a normalcy of real life because
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: eventually I had to.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Go back to my computer.
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: Not that you know, you're not you don't do that
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: same level of the you know, work when you're working
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: on an album, But I think when you're working for
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: someone that's not next to you, think about it. We're
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: waiting for a phone call or an email. I'm just
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: kind of sitting on my hands. So I might watch
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: them wrestling or might watch basketball. I'm like, well, at
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: any moment, I got to go back to the studio.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: Sometimes I just go to the studio and wait until
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: I got the call and those notes would happen. It'd
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: be like kind of saying pushing me to a direction
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: of what they think I should be doing, but also
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: still allowing me to be myself. And I think part
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: of working with a really big company is like holding
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: onto your integrity and my fans and including myself. I
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: pride myself and being myself, so I never wanted to
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: sacrifice anything I felt was unnatural to do a prompt
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: or to work with a company. And I think maybe
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: that was another level of like self induced, self imposed stress.
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it was every day for Okay, was.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: There ever anything they said and you said.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: No, yeah, yeah, I mean a lot of it was.
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: It was just suggestions, but it was you know what,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: somebody's like passive aggressive.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: I don't think it was like that. It was more like,
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: do you think this? I'd be like, no, no, I
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: don't think that.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: So were there issues at all in the production for
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: the three plus months of integrity or did it never
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: get that far? No?
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: I never got that far, and especially because at the
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: end of this household to shoot a video with them.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I've got getting there. Okay, But okay, okay,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: So you're working on the song. Obviously this is a
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: huge opportunity for your career. They ever discuss money.
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: It's the first thing, is the first thing The first
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: thing is the money. You have to talk about the money.
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: When did you get the check? As soon as I
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: was done, okay, big check? Do you buy anything? Not yet?
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: I just moved too, so I'm probably gonna use a
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: lot of it too for my expenses in my house.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, So at what point do you shoot the video?
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: So the video was ironically so we worked on this
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: for we say three months. M The video was shot
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: I think Friday and a Saturday. I turned in the
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: final song on Thursday, yeah, because there was more visions,
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: so Thursday, and then I had to memorize the words
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: and shoot the video for two days.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Okay. Traditionally, let's old school supposed to YouTube whatever the
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: act would be in control. They'd pick a director. The
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: director would come up with an idea how did this
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: go down?
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: It was It was still very much like that, Like,
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: you know, the director was really cool.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: His name is Ryan, I believe, and he you know.
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: I spoke to him before I finished the song, which
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: was cool because it was like, well, let's work together.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Is the final we can't change it anymore. But it
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: was the same thing. They built. They built a set,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: they rented out a.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: Spot, and I was in LA and then they built
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: all the props and all the ship. It was just
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: like it was legit. It was you know, I didn't
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: know what to expect. I saw photos and stuff, but
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: it was like being there, It's like, Wow, this is
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: really a lot bigger than I thought it was going
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: to be, you know, especially because I was so stressed
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: thinking about how to make the song good that I
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: didn't really think about that part as much.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you were upbeat in the app in
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the video shoose me. Did they direct you to be
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: that way or how much is that your natural personality.
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: I'm a I'm a firecracker, like you know, I'm ready.
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: I'm a very chill person. But I think when it
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: comes to advertising myself, I want I know that the
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: most interesting part of me is probably the part that's
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: the most animated. I think I'm a very observant person,
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: so I think I know what people want. I made
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: the song particularly, you know, with that in mind, and
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: also how it would translate on camera. But on camera,
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: I think I had to learn the words in person too,
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: in front of all these people. So yeah, I think
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: that that it just naturally kind of clicked.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, how long after this shoot do you see an edit?
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: M That's a good question.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: I would say relatively quick, because the turnaround was really
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: really fast, and I had to go to the to
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: the I had to go to San Francisco to actually
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: see the the screening of it, but I saw a
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: cut maybe two weeks before that were you're happy? Yeah,
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: hell yeah, hell yeah, especially because like all the other
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: cuts I saw, it didn't have the effects, so I
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: didn't really like get right, you know, the feeling of
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: it yet.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: And when I thought the sow the final I was like,
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: oh wow, that's cool.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, let me just put it this way. From the
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: moment you shot the video till they showed it at
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: the Worldwide Developers Conference, how long the time.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Was at maybe three weeks?
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they flew you to San Francisco. Yeah, okay,
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: I watched the video. We had no idea you were
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: going to be in it. Okay, So how did they
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: treat you there before it actually played?
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: They treated me like a king man. It was some
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: of the best treatment that I've ever gotten. And I
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: sat next to I sat in an area where all
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: though the celebrities were you know, and Tim cook was
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: like relatively close to me. So all of that was
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: treatment that I thought. I didn't know what to expect.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: I guess, like if I was going to close out
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: this thing, they didn't want me to be too far
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: from the action, you know.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: So, but they I have no complaints about how they
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: treated me.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, So the video comes on at the end of
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: the presentation. Apple is famous for using music. They've never
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: done anything like this. This was unique from the moment
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: you immediately watched it. Ay, how did you feel sitting
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: in the room while I played.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: Man, it's it was a crazy thing to work on
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: something for so many times and watching it watching other
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: people react to it for the first time as a
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: feeling that's kind of undescribable. Like I, I've been making
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: music my whole life, you know, and I never thought
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: that I you know, I thought I didn't have the
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: chops or the musical knowledge or whatever for a long
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: part of my life, because uh, I was always around
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: people who either didn't hold me up high enough, or
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: people that didn't challenge me enough, or I felt intimidated
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: by other people's intelligence and how much they knew about music.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: I would always be like I gotta work harder, or
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: I have to learn more theory, I have to be
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: a better piano player or a better writer. So it
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: was always an excuse. And those moments when you sit
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: in there watching like something that not only this whole
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: group of people were watching, and also billions of views
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: all over the world, it's validating in a different kind
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: of way. It made me feel like, you know, I'm
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: not this guid went to musical school, and I'm not
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: you know, the most popular person, but this thing could
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: happen for anybody that believes in themselves and are talented
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: enough and persistent enough. And it's not just about the talent.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: I could have easily quit or given up. But yeah,
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: it felt like I was the only person that could
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: do this job. I really felt like that there was
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: nobody else that they could have hired to do this
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: job better than what I did.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: How is your life changed since it became public?
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's one of those things that like I'm
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: so focused on the next thing that I.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Don't really dwell too long on a thing.
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: That's probably my problem too, Like, you know, I don't
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: really like pat myself on the back a lot. I'm
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: kind of just like focused on the next thing, because
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: I think my ego would be out of here if
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: I was like, look at me, mister Apple, Da da
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: da da dah.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Mister.
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: You know, my life feels the same to me. Maybe
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: how people view me is different. But you know, some
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: people don't like that I work with big companies. Some
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: people do. Some people want.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: More from me. I want more for myself.
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: That's always going to be existent in a career, especially
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: when you're independent and doing things in your own. People
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: believe when you do anything with the company, you're losing
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: your credence or some type of like control. When this
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: was clearly something that I wanted to do. It wasn't
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: manipulation or it wasn't like I did something that didn't
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: feel of myself. You know, most hateful comments are typed
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: on an Apple product.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, there's such a build up for months
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: and then it actually plays. You know, I would think
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: emotionally it kind of crash after that.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: Nah man, I was I was excited to see it,
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: and I was just like, damn, it is over, Like
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: I can't believe it. It was more liberating than crashing.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: It was more like what's next. I've soon after released
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: my single too so for my new album. So it
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: was kind of like traction was you know, it was
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: upward traction regardless. I knew that I was going to
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: continue to work, So yeah, I didn't. I didn't crash.
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: I was more so taking the taking the reins, you know.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, any opportunities come as a result a.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Bit mm hmm.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: It's so recent, I don't I don't know. I don't
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: think so, at least nothing direct that I could say
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: that it was because of that specific thing I did.
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: Have you been recognized in the street as a result
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: of that.
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: I think anybody that I already knew definitely brought it
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: up again.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: It was like, yo, I saw you do that thing.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: Well my family, you know, yeah, not really like a
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: lot of I'm a pretty like chill person.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: I just chill.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: I don't really be I don't want to be spotted
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: too much. You know, I have a Brunson jersey on
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: right now in LA. You know that's loud enough. So yeah, okay.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: And you're talking about working with companies other than Apple,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: who have you worked with?
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: I did a pretty big vitamin water campaign that was
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: really cool. They they used my song from my dance project.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: It's called Arschamel's three.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: It was a song called Luncheon and I produced it
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: and they wanted to use the song and the commercial,
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: and not only that, they wanted to have me be
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: the actor in the commercial too. So I was like, well,
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: very cool. And they gave me kind of my own
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: like drink, you know. So it was the one specific
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: for the commercial. I think they have one for America
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: and one for Canada. Two flavors.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: It was good. It was good. It tasted good too,
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: so I wasn't even like kafin. It was good.
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, not everybody's familiar with you. I'm sure
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: you asked all the time, but I got to ask it.
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: Why Eric the Architect?
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: Man, My favorite movie is The Matrix?
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Nineteen ninety nine?
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: I saw it my brother was graduating from college and
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: we went down there to West Virginia and we went
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: to school.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: We went to nursing school, and.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: I remember watching this movie and I was like, man, like,
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: what is this movie? Like I'm a real young guy,
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: but just the visual. I didn't get what the movie
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: really meant to me till I got older, but just
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: how impressionable it was on me. I made music, but like,
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: come on, I'm a kid, Like I'm not really, I'm
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: just banging on stuff, you know.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: But the name.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: I think when you think of the movie people like Trenity, Neo, Morpheus,
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, yo, those are like the guys or
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: as just Smith. Those are the ones you always like
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: pay attention to. That's the people like to draw. And
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: I'm like, you know, who's really the guy the architect
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: because he was just first of all, he had the
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: all white on it just was like a really like
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: impressionable visual.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: And then he had all the screens. And I was
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: always like, man, there's.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: Something about being the guy in the room that creates everything,
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: watching all these different things happen, like I said, being observant,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: watching learning, not for evil, not for manipulation, but just
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: being the person that can create.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: And I I.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: Resonate with that, and I thought, like, actual architect is
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: someone that's similar to a producer. You know you're doing
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: it right, you walk in with a stranger. It's not
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: like architects are not capable. There's someone that you trust
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: to build something.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: From a piece of paper. You know. It's like, hey,
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: this is gonna make sense.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: In a couple in a year or two, when we
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: build this thing that costs millions of dollars. But trust
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: me that this drawing that I did is gonna make
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: sense to you and it's gonna be worth your time
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: and your money.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Music is the same way.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: If you come into the studio and you want to
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: trust me with your feelings and your opinions, we can
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: put something down on a piece of paper, or maybe
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: that paper is on the screen, and I'm building this
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: dream for you or for myself.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: It's the same analogy. So I just always like it
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: was me.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: Attributing to my favorite movie and also just like embodying
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: a character. That's like being responsible for building, using sound
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: to build.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, when did you start calling yourself Eric the Architect?
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: My first and.
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: Probably twenty two thousand and nine, I was Eric ark Elliott,
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: which was the ark Oister for architect. But people thought
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: that was my middle name and I didn't like that.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: So I was like, all right, well, I'm gonna start
• 27:12
  Speaker 3: called myself the architect. And I would say that was
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: around like twenty thirteen.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: And why did you add the K to Eric?
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: That's why my name is spelled Oh really? Yeah?
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: Is your name just E Erick or does it go
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: on beyond that?
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: That's Eric k Okay.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: So where exactly did you grow up?
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Brooklyn, New York and Flatbush East Flatbush?
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, all those neighborhoods have changed a lot bigtime since
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: you grew up. What was it like when you were
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: growing up?
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Man?
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: I think about this every day, bro, I really do
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: I think about it. I'm I'm jaded, man, Like, I
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: don't care if I grew up in the nineties and
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: it was the crack era and I don't care, man,
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: that was some special shit that.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: We have in New York City.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: Man, Like, you know, this is when one of my
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: fondest memories literally is the fact that social media and
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: the Internet weren't a thing.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: You know, we had AOL.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: You got five hundred free hours fucking hundred three minutes
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: rather fucking hours three minutes, and you put this code in,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: you go online, you go on this think called AOL,
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: and you know, you have an email and all this stuff.
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: And it was like the Internet was so slow that
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: people still relied on physical things because it was quicker
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: than getting it online. So I came up during pre Napster,
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: like all this stuff from the peer to peer sharing.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: It was like you go outside and get any movie,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: any DVD, any whatever. Any artists. They had these mixtapes.
• 28:47
  Speaker 3: It will be like Reggae Gold two thousand mixtape and
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: they have Beanie Man and Capleton and Bushman and all
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: these different like artists on one.
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: I'm like, who made this compilation?
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: And it'd be some guy that like lived on the
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: block and he put his like his address or his
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: phone number on it. If you want another mix, send
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: me ten dollars and I'll send you. It just was
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: like a time when people were just I don't think
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: we understand how good we had it. And I know
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: it's about like.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Artists losing money because of this big systematic thing that's happening.
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: But the street was the way that you found information.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: It wasn't built on the Internet. And I just missed
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: playing tag and ringing people's doorbells, like before Xbox and
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: PlayStation was online. It was like this was our way
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: of communicating with people. And if you wanted to hear
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: how if a song was really good in New York,
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: you open your window, you're gonna hear the song. You
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: know the song the summer, you know it was summertime
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: when you heard certain songs play like I don't get
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: that same feeling. Brooklyn was distinctively different from other parts
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: of New York, especially Manhattan.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: Now damn it the same thing.
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: The cost of living, and also visually, Brooklyn had an
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: identity that was special and it felt more mom and
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: pop and less like the city. And as a pride
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: that I've had since I was a kid that I
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: just I still all hold. I'll have amnesty to Brooklyn
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: and where I'm from the rest of my life because
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: of particularly Flabbish where I'm from, whereas all Caribbean diaspora,
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: I'm Jamaican. You got every piece of Caribbean all over
• 30:18
  Speaker 3: from Church Avenue, from Foster to Farragut to all these
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: different pockets of Flabish, and Brooklyn is a beautiful thing.
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm hoping that that never leaves that area,
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: particularly because you know a lot of those people are
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: passed on or things have changed a lot. You know, financially,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: a lot of people have been pushed to other parts
• 30:40
  Speaker 3: of Brooklyn that are not necessarily Caribbean. You know, you
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: want to be around your people, you want to be
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: on the music and the culture of where you're from,
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I could talk about being a kid in
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Brooklyn forever. O.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: Well, first, when did your family come from Jamaica to America.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: My mom is from the Style and my dad is
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: from Jamaica, so he came.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: I think he was early twenty years old. He came
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: with his.
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: Sister was my aunt, and he met my mom. This
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: is the way obviously, way before I was born, and
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: they got married, had my two brothers.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Do you have any idea how they met? Not really.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: I know my dad, my dad's sister, aunt, Pam was
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: friends with my mom first, and I think my mom
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: was like, Oh, your brother's cute or something like that.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: It's so weird to say this stuff.
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and then she's like, oh, you like my brother,
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: and I guess she was the catalyst of how they
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: became a pair.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: And you talk about Caribbean, Okay, there are many countries
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: in there, and in that area, you know, you have
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the Dominicans and then you know, ultimately the Haitians. In
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: that microcosm of the world. Is everybody equal or is
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: there a high hierarchy?
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: That's a great question.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: I think as Caribbeans, all Caribbeans You're just Caribbean.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: There's no hierarchy.
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: The people like to say whatever the trendies do this,
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: the Guyanese. You can have little spits and spats, but
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: when Labor Day happens, you see every flag in New York,
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: so it's not predominantly belonging to one person. And I
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: think that's why I think it's so special, because there's
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: no hierarchy. There's your Caribbean. It doesn't matter if you
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: if you feel whatever about whoever else that especially when
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: you see people celebrate together. It's not like there's floats
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: that specifically that I can't get on because I'm not Trinidadian,
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: or I can't dance with this girl because she's.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: From Haiti, or you know what I'm saying, Who cares
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: this Caribbean? Who cares?
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, Caribbeans other people of color. How do you
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: get along with.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: I would say, because we're in New York, we have
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: no choice to. You know, the Jewish community and also
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: the Caribbean community are in the same community. My whole life.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: I've grew up with I've.
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: Gone to get a beef patty and I go to
• 33:10
  Speaker 3: get locks and bagels.
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: It seems cool.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: To me.
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean, I've eaten cultural food. I
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: didn't even know what I was eating. It's just the bagel.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: Stop. And I got older, I'm like, oh shit.
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: Like there was no distinction. It's just people. And I
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: think that's what makes New York special. It's like there's
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: no place in there, no real reason to be segregating
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: or to hate or to be racist towards anyone because
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: we're homogenized people. We're all stuck in this hot ass,
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: cold ass place for twelve months of a year. You
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: know what I'm saying, Like, there's no you know again,
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: I don't. I don't think there's a reputation of it,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: at least where I'm from. I think globally, yes, obviously,
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: but yeah.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, But other people who have different backgrounds, who are black,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: is it all people of color or is there a
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: contempt one or is there judgment?
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: That's interesting. I actually talk about this a lot with
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: my friends who are Jamaican American especially Unfortunately, a lot
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: of people who immigrate from Caribbean countries, they come to
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: America and they adopt American culture, but a lot of
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: times it's not necessarily it's not American culture in the
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: sense of like.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: The whole of America. A lot of time it's white America.
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: A lot of my friends' families who come saved from Trinidad,
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: they have never really participated on any Black culture, which
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: is like even like jazz, you got creole stuff going
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: on in New Orleans, stuff going on to South South Carolina,
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: stuff going on in Atlanta, like particularly black or predominantly
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: black culture, whether it's music or movies, whatever it is.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: It's like they're less familiar with it. They come here
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: for chance, an opportunity, and sometimes they chase something that
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: feels a little bit more like a white person, you know,
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: whatever white culture is. And that's mostly because they've been
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: given information from their parents that that's the right way,
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: quote unquote the right way, as opposed to learning America
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: as a whole, as opposed to you know, you can't
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: just look at one part of what America is. America
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: was built on so many different factors, and especially black culture,
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: black people. So that is that's a great question, the
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: great it's it's a problem, and yeah, that's why it's
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: hard for people who come from somewhere else to learn
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: a full encompassing understanding of what America is, especially when
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: you're only chasing just someone black or someone white. America
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: is like the land of opportunity. But if you come
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: from somewhere else, you should be able to learn and
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: full circle about what America was built on and how
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: it was founded, where it is now, why is this way?
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: And it can't just be one part of it. It's
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: just not a full story. It's not a full understanding
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: of why you're coming here in the first place, and
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: who was here before us, you know, So that is
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: an issue.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: That's a big issue. Actually, so would your parents do
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: for a living? My mom?
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: My mom passed away, but she was a secretary at
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: Connetison and my dad was an electrician.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: And how many kids in the family.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: It's three of us.
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: And where are you in the hierarchy? I'm the youngest,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: So how many years separate you from your siblings? Ten
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: and thirteen? Oh a lot?
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: So your siblings boys or girls?
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: Boys?
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: So what are they up to?
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: What do their lives look like? I was mentioning when
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: I saw the matrix.
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: My middle brother, Chris, he's a nurse, registered nurse, and
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: my oldest brother worked at Condescen as well. So he's
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: like sewer line management, Electric you know, when something happens
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: in New York, any type of disaster, he's the first person.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: To you have to like his team or his group
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: of people, like, I gotta be on it.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: We got to find out to make sure that these
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: things are not going to create problems in the future.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: So there, he's constantly working on that stuff. And he
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: likes collecting cards too. My brother like trading cards.
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, so ten and thirteen, that's a lot. Sometimes they
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: say you're another generation. I'm doing my own thing. I'm
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: gonna say, oh, this is my little brother. I take
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: them everywhere.
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what is it?
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Nah?
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: They they really I wouldn't be myself without them. They
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: I never was a kid, you know, I didn't watch
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: like Sesame Street for too long or Barney like I
• 37:50
  Speaker 3: was listening to like.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: Eddie Murphy raw.
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: You know, it just went straight from like you know, yeah,
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: like Barney to like Wu Tang. You know, I didn't
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: really have like you know, even if my parents wanted
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: to raise me, but they didn't. They pretty just you know,
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: you let your brothers raise you. They're the ones that's
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: always around. They at work, whatever they were listening to
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: whatever they're watching is what I was exposed to. And
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: I was always adult, unmature enough to know and have
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: distinction that son stuff I wasn't supposed to see, but
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: it helped shape me, and it allowed me to grow
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: a lot faster and be more mature than a lot
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: of kids my age, you know, because I wasn't sneaking
• 38:31
  Speaker 3: to watch it. I was doing these things with my family,
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: you know what I'm saying. It was you know, I
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: remember when my uncle took me to see Sprung the movie.
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: It was like, I think Booty Call and that shit
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: was at the same time. I think my mom was
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: on vacation and something, and my uncle was like, can
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: I take Eric.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: To see this movie? And she was like go ahead,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: like whatever.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: And I saw this crazy ass movie and I was
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: like WHOA, Like I ain't know what sex was, I
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: didn't know any of these things were.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: But you know, I turned out okay.
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: You know, it's I'm actually grateful that I was able
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: to feel adult because I wasn't scared if I saw
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: any of these things returning to me as an adult.
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: It wasn't like I was foreign to anything that I
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: you know, maybe a kid probably would be like, hey,
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: what's that.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: I already knew about all that shit.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: I knew about drugs and violence and guns and love
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: and poverty and you know, good art. I would say
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: the best movies came out during that time. The best
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: music came out to me when I was a kid,
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: So I was never not exposed to that stuff. I
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: always was always around.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: So what kind of kid were you like in school?
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: In school, I was the type of kid like I
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: think at first, I was probably bullied because all the
• 39:48
  Speaker 3: girls liked me and all the dudes was like, man,
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: I hate this kid. Let me make fun of him.
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: When I got older, I was like, nah, that's not working.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: I started getting taller too, so I was like, nah, bro,
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: like that's it's not gonna hold when you By the
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: time I got to high school, I was the person
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: that was defending people that got bullied. So I would
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: bully people who were bulliers. You know, if they were
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: bullying somebody, I would now, you're my bully. Not physical stuff,
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: but like being from New York, the way you talk,
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: we just we have a nasty mouths sometimes.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: So that's what I was. I was. That was that
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: was my style. And then I learned to make music.
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: I was like fourteen or fifteen years old, so music
• 40:27
  Speaker 3: was integral with you know, how I went to school,
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: and how we dressed, and how we operated.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: Who he hung out with, you know, making beats and rapping.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: You had like friends that made music and you had
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: a little clique alos click in high school we all
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: made music together.
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: And you know, I.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: Grew up in Flatbush, but my school my school. I
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: always went to school outside my neighborhood. My mom wanted
• 40:49
  Speaker 3: me to to be exposed to other people, but eventually
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: we just thing zone schools, you know, so you go
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: to the school close to your house in proximity. I
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: was always like, man, I want to go hang out
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: with kids that's not the kid that I know from
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: down the block, you know. And I had to go
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: to these astral schools which were like accelerated. So when
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: I went to the schools of my neighborhood, I would
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: cause a lot of problems because I was bored, you know.
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: And at that time, it was like there's so much
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: more education for people with attention to problems or you know,
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: whatever the diagnosis is. I don't know what the hell
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: was on me, but like I just couldn't. If I
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: was bored, I was going to just cause trouble, like
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: I would talk a lot, I would just be an asshole.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: And then my teacher made me take a test in
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: second grade and they were like, yeah, this kid can't
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: be in the school anymore. He's actually too smart to
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: be here. They would say bright back then, that was
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: the word that he used. Bright, He's bright, Eric is bright.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: And I take this test and I remember, I don't
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: remember what was on the test, but I do remember
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: they made me read this book that I don't I
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: didn't I know a lot of the words, but I
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: was just like, why are you embarrassing me?
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: Like I don't know what this is?
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: And the teacher said, the fact that this kid who's
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: in second grade is attempting to read something this hard,
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: most kids would just cry and give up. He's pronouncing
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: the words mostly correct, he's just not certain of himself.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: That is a kid that you know, he should be skipped.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: He can't be in the school.
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: So from third to eighth grade, I was in a
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: school schools that put me a grade ahead of what
• 42:30
  Speaker 3: I was, but I didn't get skipped. I was around
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: other kids who had the same type of like learning specialty.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: I don't know how to describe it.
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: So by the time I went to high school, I
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: had high school credits from junior high school and I
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: could have graduated early, but I just fucked off and
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: I graduated right on time because I kind of just I.
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: Just kind of like caught up with everybody else, you know.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: But I guess I was supposed to be like a
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: kid that graduated when you're sixteen or seventeen, you know,
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: probably then.
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: What about going to school after high school?
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: I went to City College.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: So that was at Harlem, which was on one thirty fifth,
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: one thirty seventh in Convent. You know, that was a
• 43:10
  Speaker 3: time too. It was putting me as a Brooklyn guy.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: Going to the Harlem at that time was way different.
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: You know. They could smell it on me, like you
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: not from over here. You know.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: I dated this girl that was from Harlem too, So
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: I was always on one twenty fifth. I was in
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: the projects a lot, you know, I was. I was
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: an uptown guy for like the latter part of my
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: adult life, you know.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: And yeah, that was that was basically it.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: And did you graduate from college?
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: I did.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: I went to another school that was basically, my mom
• 43:40
  Speaker 3: was really sick when I was in school and my
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: attendance was so poor that I i they wouldn't allow
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: me to basically continue, which was fucked up because it
• 43:52
  Speaker 3: was like I wasn't necessarily having bad grades just to
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: my attendance wasn't holding up. But I'm like, my mom
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: is in not the hospital, man, So like, I don't
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: really know. I wanted to be in music so bad.
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: I wanted to be a music major. Oh, you need
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: to have all these credentials. And I was like, well
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: I could work really hard and get it. Oh, it's
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: not going to happen. I was like, well, I still
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: want to go to school for what I'm passionate about,
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: and because I went because I knew design and animation
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: before I.
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: Was in school. Were like, you know, in college, I
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: knew that would be an easy way for me to
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: get some type of paper.
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: You know, that's what it is to verify that I'm
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: actually like I'm an adult, you know. I just was like, well,
• 44:29
  Speaker 3: if you don't want me to accept me to school,
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: I went to another school called Anthem and the Anthem
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: Institute basically, and they gave me the certification to become
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: a freelance designer and graphic designer.
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: So okay, let's go back to when do you decide
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: you want to start.
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: Making music professionally? Like no, no, no, no. The first time,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: I was probably like fourteen thirteen.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: And so what steps do you take back then?
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: Man?
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: It was I shit, man, Like we had fruity loops, right,
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: and you get these like little shitty programs on your
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: computer that expire after thirty minutes after use it.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: They locked down. You couldn't save anything.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: So every time I would start it, I try to
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: like make a beat and then record it on something
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: because I couldn't save it. I didn't have any money
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: to like buy the stuff. And I was also embarrassed,
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: you know, you know I'm looking. I was this kid,
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: like I said, go to school, and I had all
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: these other shits. It's like, you want to be a rapper,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: you want to be like a musician. That didn't seem
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: like a solid job. So I would hide and do
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: these things. But yeah, I would. Me and my friend said,
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: we had fruity loops. I remember that's when we it
• 45:38
  Speaker 3: was like a trial version and it would let you export,
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: so we would have like little things we'd turn it
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: on and try to make a beat really quick and
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: send it back and forth to see who had made
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: a better beat, and shit, I think that's the time
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: I was like, man, this is really fun. I'm eventually
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: going to ask my mom to help me buy some
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: of this stuff. By the time I went to high school,
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: I bought a rolling MV eight thousand, and at the
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: time I had been to studios that used the MPC,
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: but the NPC was just I'm that kind of person.
• 46:02
  Speaker 2: If everybody has that, I'm like, I want to try
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: something different.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: And I know Riza endorsed the NVA thousand, which was
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: a rolling product, not a KAI, and I was like, Yo,
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna get this shit. And I think it was
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: that summer I told my mom. I was like, Yo, whatever,
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: i gotta do extra stuff in the house. You know,
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna get a job, I'm gonna do all these things,
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: but I really want this this drum machine.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: She was just like, where did this come from? And
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, yo, like this is how people
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: make music. And she's like, well, you can use this
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: every day, and you know what moms do. I'm like,
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna use it every day. I use that shit
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: every fucking day. I stared at that thing. I don't
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: know what I was doing. I read the book.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: This is before like YouTube was like the YouTube college thing,
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: so I was just like trying to down information. I
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: remember then I jay Z had the Black album, and
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: I remember this is as pivotal. I still remember this
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: like yesterday, man, when had the movie, the documentary that
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: went with this album. It was when Pharrell had told
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: jay Z, hey, man, I want you to come to
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: the studio and hear this track. And jay Z must
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: have said, like, just send it to me, and Fro
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: was like, no, you gotta be here. You don't understand.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: I want to play it for you in person. And
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: you could tell jay Z he didn't want to do it.
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: When jay Z came, he had his due rat going.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: He take his chains off, like put it on the console,
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: like turn it on. And Fro was like wait, wait
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: wait wait wait, you know Colito's way. You know he
• 47:29
  Speaker 3: talks about Colido's way.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: He's like, yo, this is like boom and he plays
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: a song and it was Allure and I remember just
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: the core progressions in the sense I was like, yo,
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: that's a triton I could just hear it, like I
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: knew music well enough at that time to identify where
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: things came from, even though I didn't have the musical
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: knowledge to implement, I couldn't my ear and my understanding
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: of it. I was like, I know what keyboard that is.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: And there was a shot of it and you can
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: see the back of it said cork Triton.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: I was like, I'm gonna buy that. Fucking I'm gonna
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: buy it. I don't know how i'mnna get the money,
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: but I'm gonna buy it. And I begged my mom again, like, yo,
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: I need this. This is gonna make me a star.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: All these things she bought me.
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: I bought a cork trit and eventually months after that
• 48:10
  Speaker 3: off eBay and it worked for like a week, and
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: then the one of the transformers blew and I felt
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: so bad. I want to tell her. She was like,
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: why you're not playing the thing? I was like, it's broken.
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: She was so upset, and she was like, well, we
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: gotta get you another one. And at that point I
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: just was like, I don't want to use this one anymore.
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: I want something else, and I bought a Phantom X six.
• 48:34
  Speaker 2: I think X seven. I forget which one it was
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: at the time.
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: And I had my mvaight thousand and phantom and that
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: was it. That was when I started selling beats to
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: my friends and chopping samples, and I learned how to
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: use real equipment. We used to use sound modules back
• 48:48
  Speaker 3: then too, because I couldn't afford the actual keyboard. So
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: we get a mini controller and you'd stack you know,
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: rolling x WEE fifty eighty or like a mofat or
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: some shit, and you stack them up and chain them
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: to your MIDI control and I can send MIDI signals
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: to it.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: I was like learning to do this shit.
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: And then again, it's so funny to talk about it now,
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: because at the time, I was like, everybody knows how
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: to do this. All my friends are like, Bro, this
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: is like difficult shit you're doing. Bro, This is somebody
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: usually comes and sets this up for somebody, and then
• 49:16
  Speaker 3: the producer plays the equipment. Just because somebody makes music
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: doesn't know that, it doesn't necessarily mean they know how
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: to set up the stuff too. But I was teaching myself,
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: you know, plugging this cable and plugging it out and
• 49:27
  Speaker 3: figuring out how to do sends and bypasses and all
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: this shit. With just the stuff in my bedroom. I
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: throw out my bed to have more space for my equipment.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: I bought a rolling, the Juno one O six. You know,
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: my friend had loaned me six hundred dollars got off Craigslist.
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: That's what it used to cost of that time. I
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: was just like fully embracing, like I'm gonna be your producer.
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: I didn't really think I would be like a rapper
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: or an artist. I was more fascinated with the actual
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: production of it. But yeah, that's basically how it got introduced.
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: It was a summer okay, Yeah, all.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: The story you just told me that all happened when
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: you were in high school. Yeah, okay, you said you
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: started selling beats. Go a little deeper on that.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: So there was like there was the program. There was
• 50:18
  Speaker 2: like these websites. It was like this producer you would
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: like be able to make beats and lease them online.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: So you would make an account and you had like
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: a profile picture and shit, and you just make these
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: beats and people would pay you money to be able
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: to use your beats. I think one was called rock Battle.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: I think it was Rock Wilder used to make it
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: ran that one. It was like sound click and other
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: like online entities that you can basically give people the
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: opportunity to record a song on your track and they
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: just had to let you hear it and you'd get
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: PayPal money.
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: I get forty fifty bucks little money online and that's.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So how did you establish a price?
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: I just took whatever I think. If this is my
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: favorite beat, it was like one hundred dollars, it does
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: my favorite beat? Other beach just five bucks, bro. I
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: just I was just happy to hear.
• 51:10
  Speaker 3: I just wanted to meet other artists, and I used
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: that as a way to be like, you know, sometimes
• 51:14
  Speaker 3: the beats that were one dollar really were really really bad,
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: you know. So I thought if I charged a little
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: bit of money, it would make other artists listen to
• 51:22
  Speaker 3: it because it was cheap.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: But then be like what is it hundred? Is it
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: only a dollar? Wow? And it hit me up, Hey
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: you got any more?
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: I'd be like, yeah, but this one is fifty bucks,
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: Like oh shit, you know, I'll pay fifty bucks, you know.
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: And then I started to at least beat some other
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: people too, because I wanted to learn, and other people
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: had the same equipment as me. So I had this
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: online like click of people that were all producers and
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: artists that were teaching each other, and that kind of
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: helped me like figure out my identity and sound as
• 51:49
  Speaker 3: a producer too.
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, was this a business or a hobby? I mean,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: you know, you're making five hundred dollars a year or
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: five thousand.
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: Four hundred dollars a year. Yeah, I wasn't making money.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: I was just it was just fun.
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: So you graduate from high school, you go to city college,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: you're making music the whole time. At any point, do
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: you have a straight gig?
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: So by the time I was in City college, I
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: worked at I became a college marketing rep. So I
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: worked at Sony Music while I was in school, So
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: I was on Madison. One of my friends was already
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: a rep in the alternative department and they wanted one
• 52:35
  Speaker 3: for Urban, so they hired me. And this is when
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: I learned about major label businesses and how to navigate
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: and I don't know.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: Market stuff, you know.
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: At the time, they were real street teams and people
• 52:52
  Speaker 3: created activations in person, and my job was basically to
• 52:55
  Speaker 3: go to shows and do recaps of the people that
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: were there. By demographic, by age, what they were wearing.
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: All that shit was really important because the artists and
• 53:06
  Speaker 3: the label wanted to know who was physically there and
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: there was no way for all the execs and people
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: to go to these shows, so they let this college
• 53:13
  Speaker 3: student go to all the show. I was going to
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: shows every way. Every week, I was going to a
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: new artist. Sometimes it was artists that they were considering
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: the sign to Sony. Some of them were artists on
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: Sony and Yeah and Now. I would go to independent
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: businesses and put up displays of Beyonce's new album, Ja
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: Cole's new album, whoever their premier artist was at the time,
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: and in exchange, if they left it in the store,
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: I would give them CDs. So that was my job
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: for while I was in college.
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: And also I worked at Mexican Summer Records Commadol Records.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, in the old days, that was not a paying
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: job to be a college rep. Yeah, did they pay
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: you in your era? Yeah?
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: It was nothing though that I got money, and we
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: would if I was with my boss or anybody, they
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: would pay for everything.
• 54:00
  Speaker 2: So like if I eat food, I get food for free,
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: drinking and drink for free.
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: So you do that all during college? You graduate from college,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: what do you do for money?
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: I worked, well. I worked at foot locker, that was fun.
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: I worked at guitar center, that was fun. So I
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: always had a job. I was a job guy, and
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: I had maybe three jobs before I quit to make music.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: How well were you when you quit to make music?
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: I would probably twenty three? Maybe?
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, you quit to make music? Did these things intersect?
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: What I mean by that is when you quit, had
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: you saved up money and today I'm going to start?
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: Or were you already making money in music?
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: No?
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: I wasn't making money. I was just delusional and I
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: had a dream.
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: I remember.
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: Particularly, there was one day I had my group, Flabber
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: Zombies was starting twenty I released my project which was
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: like my opus in twenty eleven. It was called Almost Remembered,
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: and I thought, when I did this shit, it was over.
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: Like I was going to be good like and emotionally.
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: Hell yeah I was. I was so proud of myself.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: I didn't make any money, but I would do a
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: show and it be thirty people. To me, that was
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: fucking great.
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: You know, I've done shows where nobody came that the
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: shows were six people were there, just my friend and
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: my cousin or some shit.
• 55:27
  Speaker 3: So you know, at that time, I was looking for something,
• 55:33
  Speaker 3: a foundation to lean on, because I had the knowledge
• 55:36
  Speaker 3: and I had some relationships with people too, so I
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: knew that I had the foundation to make a career,
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: but I had no money, and out of delusion, I
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: basically was like, well, I'm.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: At work right now. I remember I dating this girl and.
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: It was snowing that day and I was in New
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: Jersey where she lived, and I remember I had to
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: clock into work at like one or some shit. It
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: was like a late day and the bus was slow,
• 56:00
  Speaker 3: and I'm like, damn, I gotta come in from a
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: whole book and whatever, blah blah blah blah.
• 56:04
  Speaker 2: And I was just like, I'm not going back to
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: work like ever.
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: It was like, I remember I had to get off
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: on Atlantic Avenue to go to work, and I was
• 56:14
  Speaker 3: just like when Atlantic Avenue came.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: Up, I stood up and I just sat back down.
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: I was like, I'm not going back to work. And
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: my boss was like, oh, is it snow day or
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: you're not coming to work? Is it something. I was like,
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: I'm just not coming back. I just never went back.
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: To work, and I knew that if I had quit
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: cold Turkey like that, I had to be on my
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: shit every day. And yeah, we started Flat Zombies and
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: it changed pretty much the whole.
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: It changed everything. It became from the forty the forty
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: shows with the forty people shows to like our fro show,
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: having like all these local people pulling up. I forgot
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: the name of the venue is on Granary Plaza.
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: It's closed now, but maybe two hundred three hundred people
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: at our first show. Like we didn't have any music out,
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: but it just tumbler, and all the electricity on the
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: internet about me and my friends was it was electric.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: People wanted to find out what the hell was this
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: is about. So the intrigue in the curiosity, the support
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: from our neighborhood, it being in Brooklyn, to all these
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: people pulled up. So I came from like poetry people
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: snapping and playing bongos with like ten people, to like
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: people moshing to a song that like made people feel
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: like this was like the new shit.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you say you're delusional, you quit your job,
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: you're working really hard, two hundred people show up. At
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: some point, you have to pay the Piper, where does
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: the money come from?
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: So a lot of the money came from merchandise, and
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: the time once we started to become this entity in group,
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: people wanted our T shirts really really badly.
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, having.
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: You know, a Duffel bag and selling them out of
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: Duffle bag thirty forty fifty dollars shirts. That was that
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: sustained us for a long time. The merchandise was a
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: really important part of how we all made money. And
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: I live with my parents until that started to pick up.
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: But then I started picking up and I'm like, oh shit,
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: I could move out.
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: And once he moved out, I moved out.
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: With with one of the guys from my group, and
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: then the other guy from my group also moved out,
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: and we all lived in this building in Bedstide, and
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: that's when we were like, oh shit, we make enough
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: money to pay rent together and if we all take
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: a little bit off what we had, we can afford
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: to live here. And we end up standing there like
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: three years or something like that before I moved out
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: by myself.
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, how did you form the Flat Push Zombies?
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: So these guys, man, I've known one of them since
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: I was four years old. His mom.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: His name is meech Dmitri. I've known him my whole life, really,
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: my longest friend. Him and my other friend Gregory are
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: like my two oldest.
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: Friends I've known my whole life. You know, I'm sure
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: you have people like that in your life too.
• 58:53
  Speaker 3: It's like every memory of my childhood he's there, you know.
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: And I never thought that this dude would be an artist,
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: not because he couldn't. It's just that we were all
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: doing different things. But when I tell you, both of
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: them have a natural as a producer and as your friend,
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: I was like, the way that you do shit is
• 59:14
  Speaker 3: a god given talent. I don't know how your voice,
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: your delivery is stuff that I had to practice for years.
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: They just knew and maybe we were watching each other
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: and maybe you're watching me however you want to flip it.
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: But you know, these were guys that like just had
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: a natural talent. And I met him. You know, he
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: lived on the under the block. We all lived up
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: on thirty first, so he lived on one side. His
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: parents was Jamaican. I had my Jamaican as dad on
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: the other side. You know, so you know how people cross,
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: you know, they talk shit. My dad and my mom
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: are part of the block association, so everybody knew them,
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: and my dad became the captain of the block association,
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: so my whole block.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: Was like they knew my dad, you know.
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: And as we got older, we all hung out, and
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: he went to school with Antonio in junior high school,
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: I think, so by the time they hung out, he
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: would come to the block and we'd all hang out
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: and eventually started smoking me together and started doing drugs
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: together whatever whatever they were doing, whatever I was doing
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: at the time, and we made the group. It was
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: just I still worked at Guitar Center when when the
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: group was formed, and that was one of the other
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: reasons why I quit, because the group started to have traction,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: but nobody knew that I was in it because I
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: was just the producer quote unquote, you know. So part
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: of that was because I had a job, and when
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: they would shoot videos or do anything, I had to wait.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: They had to wait for me to come back home,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: and it was a lot of shit happening that I
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: missed out on because I was working, So, you know,
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: I had to sacrifice that to kind of be the
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: group full full time.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: The other two members, what did their lives look like
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: you were going to college. Yeah, the unfortunate thing with
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: your mother, you had straight jobs. What was their life
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: like before the Flapwush Sambies.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: One of them they did, one of them they well,
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 2: one of them I worked with at a foot locker.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: The other one did what people do in the hood.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: So I'm not going to say what it is, but
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: you know what it is. So yeah, street shit did
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: a lot of street shit for money and doing doing
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 3: whatever we all did to make money. But that was
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: before we any of us, thought that this would be
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: something that would stick, you know, and you're a kid,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: you don't really.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: You do whatever you have to do to make money
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: to make sure that you can get what you need.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: And at that time, it was really just looking like
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: a rapper. It was weird back then. It wasn't right
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 3: before like Supreme and all the street where shit was
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: really really popping when I first started to make music,
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: you know, but at that time I think that people
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: didn't look like us, so it was hard to explain why.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 3: You know, we had Supreme, but we also talking about
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: like esoteric knowledge and like you got you know, Louis
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: Vuitton wallets and shit. But you're also talking about like existentialism.
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: It just didn't come from the same body. And I
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: think that was when I was like WHOA like and
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: also did street shit. So it was like all these
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: kinds of things didn't live within anybody else that I knew.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: And those people that maybe had the same mentality or desires,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: they became our friends in our community too, because they're like, dude,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: I watch cartoons too. Some of them gangbang, some of
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: them sell drugs. Some of them didn't graduate from school,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: some did graduate from school. But we all loved music,
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: and we all loved our neighborhood. That was kind of
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: why the name Flatbush. If he was from Flatbush, you
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: immediately like a fan.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: You know, Okay, you have outside projects. Are the other
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: members of the group self sustaining from music?
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, So you put out the first album you were
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: talking about being delusional, but you get people to come,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: you're selling merch Where does that leave you? Where do
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: you go next?
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: So in twenty so our first album was in twenty sixteen,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: which commercially sold that album, But in twenty thirteen and
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 3: twenty fourteen we released mixtapes. That mixtape that we did
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: in twenty thirteen was called Drugs Death Reincarnated under God's Supervision,
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 3: you know, and these a lot of my friends were
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 3: taking a lot of acid, bro and I didn't take acid.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: With them, you know. I just was like, WHOA, what
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: the fuck is this?
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: I never judged them, but I was always like whoa,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: Like how are we going to How am I going
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 3: to fit into this?
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: You know?
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 3: But it was like I had to kind of be
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: the real nerd and learn optically. Maybe not maybe people
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 3: thought that I wasn't around, but I was. I was
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: very integral to the actual production of music, and the
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: mixtape did really well. I remember, I want to say
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: that time Lana Doray openly said that she was a
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: fan of our.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: Group, PEO were like, what the fuck? Like, how does this?
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: You know? How that is?
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: People some person of importance says something and it kind
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: of catches fire, and all these other people would kind
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: of like reach out and rest in peace to my
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: brother Asap Yams. I knew Stevie Rodriguez when he was
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: fifteen years old. It was like all these sneaker forms
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: that were really cool, iss and Nike talk. People would
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 3: post their fits and we just talked shit on Land
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: and that it's this forum basis before social media, and
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 3: Yams was the catalyst of bringing ASAP Rocky and a
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 3: lot of the ASAP guys, cutthroat boys, like a lot
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: of a lot of emerging artists together, which we were
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: all from different parts of New York and he would
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: bring us because we all knew Yams and respect to him.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: He was a you know, he was a person that
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 3: made everybody friends and you didn't need to ask question
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: if Vams was there. He was good, you know, and
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: So boom. So we put out these projects, you know.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: Twenty fourteen, we released Better Off Dead, which people will
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: consider our best project. It wasn't an album, but it
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 3: sounded like one. I really bust my ass on the shit.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: And we opened Coachella off of the mixtape.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: So whooa a.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: Little bit slower? Okay, the mixtape? How are people acquiring
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: that online or on the street?
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: Online? Online? Yeah?
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: And is he are you charging for that?
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: Nah? Okay?
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: How do you get from there to Coachell?
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know? Okay.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: Traditionally, if you're gonna play Coachelle, you have an agent.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we got Okay, Okay, I can say that. Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: When we did Better Off Dead, it was in twenty
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: fourteen and we released it on nine to eleven as well,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: So people were just like what grap group would do
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: something like this, what are you trying to say?
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: And it was like, well play it.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: We had songs that, you know, varied from songs about
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: religion to songs about racism, to songs about love, to
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: songs about taking drugs, talk about fucking, to songs about
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: violence and exposing things that we felt uncomfortable about based
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 3: on society, and the people's perception of us was like, Yo,
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: these guys take drugs.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: Cool.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: Maybe that's the reason why you clicked it, you know,
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: if that's the reason why you pay attention to us,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: if you see some guys take some ascid to open
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 3: your mind, because that's always what it was about. It
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 3: was never to do it to be abusive to a
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: recreational thing. It was more like expansion. It was never
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: like promoting and telling people you need to do drugs.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: It was never that.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: But if that's what your perception was, which I'm sure
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: a lot of it was, people clicked and were like, Yo,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: these some dope ass raps.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: Yo, these beats are crazy yo, who mixed this? Who
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: produced this? Who's this guy? Was this? Crazy voices?
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 3: Like none of it was just like bullshit went up
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 3: there talk about no bullshit. We were talking about things
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 3: that really mattered to us, a lot of stuff about
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: America and corruption, which why I released to a nine
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: to eleven. Right, we signed to an agency, Josh Dick.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: Shout out with Josh Dick. That's his name. I know
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: it's a funny name. If he's hearing this, he's gonna
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: love that. Josh Dick became our agent and he gave
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: us a chance. He was doing like Asap Rocky's booking
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: and Action Bronson, I think, and Danny Brown. You know,
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: it was all the emerging New York artists at the time,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: and he was like the guy to go to. And
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: I remember going to Josh's office and at the time
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 3: he felt like a teacher, you know, like a shaman
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: or some shit. Josh eventually became our manager years later,
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: but he gave us the chance to start to tour.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 3: We started touring with Smoke Dizza, we started touring with
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: Asap Rocky, Asap ferg.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: Shit like. Things started to pick up, and this offer
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: came in to open Coachella.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: Okay, from the moment you do the first gig with
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: two hundred people there, How long until you're playing Coachelle.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: Hmm, maybe five or six years?
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, From the time that you first play Lives the Flop,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: Push Zombies till you get the agent.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: How long is that? Two years?
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: And once you get the agent, how much you're working?
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: All the time? We toured all the time.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: There's three hundred and sixty five days in a year.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: How many days did you play.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: So once we once we released our first album twenty sixteen,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: we were gone most of the year.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: It would be at least half of the year we
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: were Okay, what were the situations?
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: How were you traveling?
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: If the first tours were in the dollar van, and
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: after the dollar van broke down or whatever, we'd have
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 3: to get like a little shitty van and we all
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 3: got the same cold every every week, sleeping in the
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 3: van and also getting one hotel room and all trying
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 3: to take a shower really quick to pack up and
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 3: drive to the next city. And then that went from
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: that to maybe a little nicer vent the next time,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 3: and then that became a tour bus. So by the
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: time we did Coachella the second time. I believe you
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: got a tour bus.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, you're on the road in the van. How much
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: money you making?
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: Nothing? Enough to pay for gas and eating food? That's it. Okay.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: The first year you played Coachella is when.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 3: Twenty fourteen, I believe twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, what stage and at what time we opened it?
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: I don't remember what stage it was, but we opened
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: the whole festival. So it was at twelve that we
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: went on and it was it was packed. It wasn't
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: it wasn't no one there.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: It was. It was huge. Yeah, and did it wasn't
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: packed because they knew who you were? Yeah?
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you played Coachella the first time around twenty fourteen,
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: you had the experience. Did the fact that you played
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: Coachella and you did well give you a bump?
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: Oh? One hundred percent?
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: Then we that's the validation that you could tell your
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: parents like, I know, you thought we was in here
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: doing drugs and doing bullshit, but look at this, and they're.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: Like, what the fuck this?
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: Many people know who you are, and our friends became
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 3: more fans. You know, we have friends that got starting
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 3: to get our tattooed, you know, get getting the name
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: of the group tattooed on them.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: We were like, oh shit, this shit is real.
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: By the time we start showing up, you know, at
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 3: first it was our friends that would getting tattooed, and
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: other people was like, I don't even know this guy,
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: but I went that tattoo too, And then you know,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: the placement of it started getting crazy.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: Of course, people had.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: Them in like concealed places, but then people put it
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 3: in they fucking they're fucking shoulder, and like it started
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 3: getting more like confident, see people put in their fucking neck.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: It was just nuts, like watching people fall in love
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: with this thing that we made pretty organically.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: We didn't.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 3: It wasn't like we came together and we got take
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 3: up with the world. It just was like, yo, we
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: think a lot of people are whack and we're going
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: to make music now.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, So, if you played Coachella the first time in
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen, when do you get into tour.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: Bus By the time we did our first album, we
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: had a tour bus in twenty sixteen.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Twenty sixteen, so you get the first album in twenty
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: six Let me be more specific, you played Coachella. Does
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: it raise your price and opportunities.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: One hundred percent? Yeah.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: After that, After that, we continued to tour, which was
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: why it was smart. It wasn't like we went back.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: We were now doing shows but also preparing for our
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: debut album now because it's like you guys are ready,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 3: you know, And it took another two years to finish
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: it and to release it. But that whole time we
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: were just doing other shows and spot dates in order
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: to continue our name to grow so that we can
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: do our debut album. And we also try to figure
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: out if we were going to get signed to someone,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 3: and that took time too, but we didn't.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: Re released it independently.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: Why did you decide to do that?
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: Because it just fuck.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: Them, Like we were just like fucked everybody, Like I
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 3: think at that time people really, I mean maybe still,
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 2: It's like this is a gimmick. It's not a gimmick, bro.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: You could say the zombie aesthetic is a gimmick, but
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: even then, we're talking about the ego dying and being
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: reborn as another person. So if that's a gimmick to you, fine,
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: but I'm not necessarily leaning on the zombie aesthetic to
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: be accepted and this is like a.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: Like a ploy or some game. You know. We talked
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: about it for this whole time. I love this shit,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: I nerd. I love music.
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: To have me part of this ship, you can never, ever,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: ever not to take anything from the other guys. But
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: you can never say flyber Zombies was a gimmick, because I'm.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: You could say there's a gimmick involved, But gimmick to
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: me just felt like you're cheapening, or the sense of
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: like you're making it so that it seems like we're not.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: We're some fly by night shit. But you know, selling
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: shirts and all that stuff was the most organic way
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: to create fandom, and that's what we did. So these
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: labels didn't necessarily understand that. You could tell by the conversations.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: It just was like I.
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: Remember one of them, they said, if you want to
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: make money, stay independent, and I was like, okay. He's like,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 3: if you want to be famous, come to blank record label.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 3: I won't say the name, it was, come to blank
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 3: and we were like, see A, what the fuck are
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: you talking about? Like what we were like, we want
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: the money. I don't give a fuck about being famous.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: That was never important to me, But these are the
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: type of propositions we would get, and we didn't feel
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: like anybody really thought we were really dope.
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: They had no idea what we about to do.
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 3: They they still thought at the time that this was
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: just like some luck, which I do believe all success
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: involve some luck. I'm sure you can attest to that
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 3: some type of luck is involved. But persistence is how
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: you maintain your luck. That's how you ready for it
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 3: to return again. And yeah, nobody understood that, so we
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 3: stayed independent. I've stayed independent whole time. Okay, the album
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: comes out in twenty sixteen. There's still a small market
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: in digital sales. There's stream there's YouTube, there's physical you're
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 3: making any money when the album comes out? Yeah, we
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: killed that shit. We did number one Billboard Independent in
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: the country.
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: And where did the action come from? Primarily streams, physicals.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: We sold so many physicals I can't even tell you
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: the number. But you know, we have one gold record
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: from that album because of how much you know E's
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: stream well, but other people stream more than us, and
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: we still have a gold record. Okay, there's a whole
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: business thing involved in independent. I'm not going to go
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: through every step there. You know, let's just assume you
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: have the product. First step is getting in the store,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: second step is getting paid, and those are both very
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: difficult hurdles. How did you jump those hurdles?
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 3: A lot of independent records doors picked up our album.
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: Who actually did you have a distributor?
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: I forget who we had it distributed by, but we did.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the independent stores picked up and you got paid. Yeah, okay,
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: so you're making money. Twenty sixteen. What happens after that?
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: Now we go on tour and we do Cochella again
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: and it's even bigger. Now we have a slot and
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: it was fucking nuts. You know what time you're playing now?
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: This time is probably like about five or six later
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 3: in the day. I want to say we played before
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 3: Brockhampton the second time we played, and then obviously we
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: had guys like Todd the creator who were who was
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: just establishing his festivals. We played Flognon I think twice,
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 3: so we got a reallate slot there and like did
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: a lot of festivals I mean all over the world,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 3: all over Europe, in Australia, Asia.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was we were those guys to book
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: you know, okay.
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: Traditionally there's a lot of opportunity playing in festivals, and
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: sometimes it works on both ends. If you're a headliner,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: you make more. If you're opening, you make less. Your
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: tour in the world on festivals, are you making it
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: because you established already that did money is important to you.
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: You're making money?
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Hell yeah, he was making money.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: That was the reason why, Like we could sustain it,
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 3: but we always put the money back into the business.
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: We weren't. That's why we had our own bus, you know.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: That's why we had our own We understood from the
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: very basis of what we do, like if we spent
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: it all, we would getting paid like a salary. We
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 3: never took the money out like we never took the
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 3: money out in a frivolous way. It was given to
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: us like a salary. We had a number that we
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 3: were all projected to get to get and once we
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: got it, we were capped and we paid it every
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 3: month and paid taxes.
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 2: So we approached it.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: Like a business, even though the money would come in
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 3: and no matter how if we just did a show
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 3: and we got ninety grand, you don't take the ninety grand. Now,
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 3: we don't just split that you know, you put that
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: back in we get in our salary. Right, So at
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 3: the end of the year, that number you're looking at
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 3: is a cumulative it's it's the entire year plus what
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: you know, I say it, It wouldn't change just because.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: We made more money that we didn't anticipate. We would
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: still get the same amount of money. You get a bonus.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: But we were like our own bosses at that time.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, that's twenty sixteen. What happens after that?
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 3: So in twenty sixteen, twenty sixteen, to tour, tour, tour,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: tour a lot of shows, you know, and individually for me,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: I was now branching off to work with other people,
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 3: and my interests started to change, basically because the success
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: that I had from producing. Other artists would contact me
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 3: for beats and I started to be like wow, Like
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: I wanted to learn to play instruments better, and I
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 3: wanted to collaborate, and I wanted the next offering that
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 3: we did to represent the next level of what we're doing,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 3: but also how I can grow and show that I
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 3: can incorporate live music, live singing, like choir, and also collaboration.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 3: Our first album, we had no collaborators and I produced
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: every song, so.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: It was pretty much just g Raw. This is what
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: it was. It was three guys smoking making an album.
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: We did that so in twenty eighteen, so twenty seventeen,
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 3: I think we probably started the next album, which came
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: out in twenty eighteen called Vacation in Hell. And at
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: this point I was fully like, this is going to
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 3: be the album that's going to show the next step
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: of our songwriting.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: But also to me.
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: To bring in more collaborators, and we wanted we had
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: to now the name to get people that were like
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: we respected to get on an album.
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: We got Jadakiss, we got on Bee, we got Dave b.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: I don't want to forget anybody. I haven't listened to
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: the album in a while, but my favorite overall was
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: Portugal Demand, And interestingly enough, I became friends with John
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: Gorley years before, and I was always I listened to
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: Portugal Man when I was in college in him and
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: I became Franzy came to our house when we lived
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: in Bedstar and they had just won the Grammy for
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: Feel It Still, so I respected him so much and
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: he never changed because he's as Grammy a winning artist
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: as band.
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: I was like, Yo, he's still texting me still. I'm like, Yo, this.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: Dude, the fuck this is I expect when people to
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 3: do shit like that at that time, they would just
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 3: turn a leaf and like fuck you, you know, but
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 3: this guy was like, yeah, we.
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 2: Could still make that song.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: Bro.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: He was get the song PLoP And I was like,
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: oh shit, like we about to have Grammy winning artists
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: on our album.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: That's fucking cool.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: Like I never wanted to wear it like that, but
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: it just happened to be that. This is who my friend.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: This is something that my friend accomplished. So I remember
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: the particular song of a song called Crown. This was
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: to me was the most difficult because as much as
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: I was a producer, I was I was I was
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: somebody that like I still had so much to prove,
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: and I had a chip on my shoulder and I'm like, man, like,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: if you know I read again, Jada Kiss, all these
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 3: people I loved, Like working with a rock band meant that,
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: like I had to know what the fuck I was doing.
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 3: And he sent me this session for a song that
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: was working on. He's like, yeah, you know, Danger Mouse
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: worked on this with us and I was like, bro,
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: fucking kidding me. Like Dandre Mouse is like one of
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 3: my favorites of all time. Bro from Narls Barkley, like
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: Bro black Keys Adele, Like he's worked on some of
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: the best pieces of music we've ever heard. And I
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 3: was really, really nervous, and John was like, you got this,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: And I took the song and I reproduced it, and
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: he told me Danger Mouse was gonna call me to
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: talk about it, and I'm freaking the fuck out. Bro,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: and one of my friends had come to my house.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: He was our DJ at the time. He's like, Yo,
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: I'm going to help you. He doesn't even make music,
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: but he's really intelligent, you know. And he came by.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: He's like, we got work on the song. I see
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: you freezing up. We can't let this fumble, Bro, this
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: is gonna be a big song.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: It's going to help you. We came over, we sent it.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: John approved it. I think he signed to Atlantic. Atlantic
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 3: approved it, and I was just like, holy shit, we're
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: gonna have this big ass on our album. You know,
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 3: looking back, we should have probably made it a single.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: We didn't. We had Joey Badass on our album too,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: was with.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: The other single we put out, Yeah, and it was
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 3: kind of like this flash of like, yo, these guys
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: are gonna make mainstream music.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: To me, it wasn't mainstream music.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: It just meant that we were opening up all of
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: our options to now bring in people and use their
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 3: fan bases to introduce.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: Them to us and bring them to our world. It
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 2: wasn't like bun Bee or these.
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: Artists would all of a sudden rapping like I'm from
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: Houston or some shit. It just meant that, like, we're
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 3: all collaborating now. The album did really well too, and
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: you know it had to we. I think the cover
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 3: was inspired by because Jimmy Hendrix's photo and we got
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 3: these two naked girls on it to cover themselves in glitter.
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: It was trippy and psychedelic, and it was one of
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: the most iconic covers. I would say during that time.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: It's if you know vacational hell, you know this cover.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: We even had the vinyl.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: Had speckled because it was glitter. So we wanted the
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: glitter to feel like abrasive. So when you touch it
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 2: and you buy the violel, you feel like you're touching
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: the girl. It's fucking wild shit.
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: But these are the attentions to detail that we really
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: cared about and the music had to match that. So yeah,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: that was what happened during that little not little, but okay.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: So that's twenty eighteen, bring us up to COVID.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: Jesus Christ twenty nineteen, is right. My mom dies this year,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: you know. So I had a hernia surgery and I
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: was fucked up for a while. You know, I was
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 3: about to turn thirty years old and I had the
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: surgery and my mom was going through it and she
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: was like, look if I go through all these medical things.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: You know, my mom was blind and she had renal
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: failure through diabetes, so she was on She had to
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: go to dialysis, so that was like three times a week.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: She's like, look, if I do that shit, you can
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 3: get this fucking surgery. The thing was when we were
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: on tour previously, I had the hernia had come out
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 3: of my body so I couldn't walk. So I had
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 3: to finish the rest of the tour in a wheelchair,
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 3: which was terrible. And I said, as soon as I
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: get home, I told my mom, like, I'm going to
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 3: take care of its. Soon as I get home, I
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 3: do it. So now I'm like in fucking in my house,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: in my bed, blah blah blah blah blah. My mom dies.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 1: Man.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: So I didn't want to do anything, you know, respectfully,
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 3: the offer we were supposed to do another album, and.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: I just was like, I just not don't want to
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: do this.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: I don't feel good and how this thing happened to
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: me and my family and everybody my mom touched.
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: And I also don't want to be in New.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: York anymore, That's what I said. You know, mind you
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 3: I'm in a group or several groups. However, you look
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 3: at my career and yeah, I just didn't want to
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: do the shit. And then we got the biggest offer
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: of our career to go on a amphitheater tour with
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: our other really close friends as a supergroup, and I
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 3: was like, I guess I'll go.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 2: Not only Dad had to guess I'll go. I had
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: to executive produce.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: And produce the album that we did, so I had
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 3: to go back in the studio again and we produced
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 3: this album.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 2: I don't know what people thought it was gonna sound like.
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: I think based on the supergroup other people part of it,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: it was gonna be like a big cipher every every
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: song or some shit. But we ended up making an
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: album that was really really fun, which was really really
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: surprising to me. You know, I just thought it was
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: going to be something else too, but everybody used this
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: opportunity to experiment, which I love doing that, you know.
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: So I produced this album with Tyler Dopps.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 3: Me and him did all the beats. I think Power
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: is pleasant. Also from pro Era, who tours and works
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: with Joey Badass. He produced too. We went on tours.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 3: The biggest tour that we've done as far as the stages,
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: you know, I want to say the largest tour we
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: did was over sixty thousand tickets as Flabber Zombies, So
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 3: you know, this is a type of toy that's shorter,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: but you get five thousand people in one night and
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: shit like that, you know. And after it was over,
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: I was like, I'm out, and I moved to California.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: I bought a house, and COVID happened right after I
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: moved to California. I didn't even know, you know, none
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: of us knew COVID was gonna happen. But it wasn't
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 3: even like eminent signs of like this lockdown or anything.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 3: I just bought it on a whim and I left
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 3: and I lived in California throughout COVID. I still live here,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 3: but uh yeah, that was how I got to California
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: was literally from twenty nineteen's last project.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, COVID locks everybody down. Of course, you can work
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 1: in your house, in your studio. When you start up again,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: what's the motivation and what does it look like?
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of artists were, which naturally, I
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 3: think a lot of people were just scared and confuse, right,
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 3: So I wouldn't say I thrive in that, but I
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 3: mean I'm going to make shit regardless. You know, I'm
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: not signed to a label, so I don't have to
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: listen to anybody. Nobody could tell me I can't release music.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: These labels had the hands on these artists where they
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: might have been. They didn't want to make sad music,
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 3: I feel, or they wouldn't be perceived as this depressing
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: artist or some shit. To me, I'm like, what do'
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: I have to lose? Bro, I don't really give a fuck.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 3: I'm going to release my music the way I want to.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: I worked on a project I was streaming a lot too,
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: and twitch gave me a deal, a really good deal.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: So I was streaming three times a week for a year,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: and I was working on this project called future Proof,
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: And yeah, I knew that becoming out of all the
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 3: stuff that we were talking about and releasing my first
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: project technically, even though we talked about in twenty eleven,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: I released something that was important to me. I knew
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: that people would be like, where's the guys, and like
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: shit on me and judge me. I was also like,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 3: this is bigger than me. The stuff that I'm talking
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 3: about is going to help people go through this depressive
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: ass time. I was depressed, I was fucked up. We
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: were all in a place where I needed the validation
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 3: from myself more than anybody else. If this was a
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: piece of music, a piece of art that can help me,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 3: I know it can help other people. And we put
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: and I, you know, I put out the song let
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 3: It Go.
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: I think no.
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 3: I put out the song WTF for my friend Coltrane
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: during COVID, and you know, I don't know. I don't
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: look at metrics of streaming or anything like that. I
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 3: don't know if for stream well, I didn't give a fuck.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 3: The song was about racism, and it was about all
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: the stuff that was going on with George Floyd doing
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: the protests and people creating these narratives and like it
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 3: was a weird time.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 1: Man.
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: And he's a European, he's an English artist, you know,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: he's a Egyptian. I'm a black dude. I'm like, let's
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: make a song that takes a stance on something that's
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 3: gonna live beyond this year and this time and a
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: lot of peoples with the record, and I was like,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 3: oh shit, let me make my whole project through the
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: Internet and only work with English artists, because this one
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: kind of told me that, you know, I don't know
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: what the hell it was. It was like maybe it
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: was like the fact that we can use the internet
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: to speak and there was no chance of me going
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 3: over there to physically do this. It felt like I
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: was even more attached to the music in a way
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: because I wanted to take advantage of the fact that
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: this person on the other end of the computer or
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: the phone was just as passionate about an American thing
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 3: that happened in America at first. And yeah, then my
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: friend whose name is Jean Julienne, he's a he's an
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 3: artist from France. I've known him for such a long
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: time too. He was willing to start to create some
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 3: imagery and graphics for the project. He created a single
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: cover and then we worked on future Proof, which you know,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: anytime during COVID, I was buying a bunch of shit,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 3: and I know every time you bought something, it would
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 3: say future proof by buying a computer with more ram
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 3: or some shit like that. And I was like, isn't
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: interesting that, Like, we don't apply those things to ourselves,
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 3: but we would put that into a technology. We spend
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 3: more money to elongate. How long technology lasts by batteries
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 3: in space? How can we do that internally as people?
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: So I was like, I'm going to embody this phrase
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 3: and create future Proof, which is a self advancement that
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: teaches you skill, that teaches you how to honor yourself.
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: And give yourself grace, you know.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 3: And we put out the project and then to me,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 3: it was extremely successful. I mean we never toret it
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: because it came out during future during COVID, but one
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: of the songs that there is still one of my
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 3: biggest streaming songs, like over seventy million streams, you know,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 3: and a song that people thought probably was too depressing
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 3: to listen to. Beyond COVID, it still gets tons of
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: streams because people want to feel not alone and they
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 3: want to feel validated by somebody else that's going through
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: a sim the situation. And every time I play that song,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 3: I transported back to that time where I'm like, damn,
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 3: like I never thought.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 2: We would get out of this situation. It's like a
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 2: time capsule for me. But that was the first thing
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 2: I did right out of COVID. I did Colors post
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: COVID too, so I released a new song through Colors
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 2: the platform. So many things happened during that time, but
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: it was really just the advancement of my solo career
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 2: after leaving New York City.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, so now you put out a solo and you
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: have a single. Bring us up to the present.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: Bro, I can't even I can't even like.
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 3: So many things, you know, working with James Blake, producing
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: for James Blake, James Blake produced for me. O.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: Wait, how do you make the connection?
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 3: I met him definitely before COVID. I think he did
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: an interview and he might have said that I was
• 1:31:12
  Speaker 3: one of his favorite producers. And my friend had sent
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 3: to the interview, and I was like, what the fuck what?
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: And I think we you know, I connected with him.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 3: I was like, you met that, huh. He's like yeah,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: Like what yeah, dro And he's like, yeah, I think
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: it's interesting how you find sub and bottom in songs.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: How do you find so much low range in production
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: without using ata weights? And at the time, I remember people,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 2: some of my friends too, like your beats don't hit
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: because they don't have Ata weights, And I was like,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 2: I just feel like it's corny sometimes because everybody relies
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 2: on it.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's just my opinion. And then that impressed
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 3: James Blake. I was like that, and it was a
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 3: conscious decision. It wasn't I didn't know how to play
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: Ada weights or whatever, but you know, I love sliding
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: the family stone. He kicked his drummer out and learned
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: to play with the drum machine to be at electric
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 3: and add an electric drum to a song and made
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 3: some of his biggest records.
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 2: It was like to me, I'm not going to do.
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: That, then why do I can find something similar that
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 3: gives a similar feeling, but just find my own way. Anyway,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: that was how I met him, But we made music
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 3: before I moved to LA because that's where he was
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 3: living at the time, and I must have been on
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 3: twenty seventeen or something like that, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 3: And yeah, by the time I moved to LA, I
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: was going back and forth. I was going to his
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 3: house a lot. We were cooking up and I worked
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: on my first album. I've never been here before, so
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 3: he was integral part of a lot of the songs
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 3: that we had started not that year, but years before,
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 3: because our friendship had lasted before COVID. So now we
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 3: had these songs that we had worked on for like
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 3: nearly five years, and I didn't put it out.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: You know, it's crazy.
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 3: We released a project during COVID as flaber Zombie is
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 3: called Not More Than Ever, and that was our last project.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 3: And yeah, then I basically started to make this music,
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 3: my first album working with It's my first time I
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 3: worked in a project I didn't produce too future Proof
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: technically was, but I considered that an EP. It wasn't
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 3: like a full length project. So it was my first
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: time ever doing this shit. And you know, I got
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 3: to work with some of my favorite artists of all time.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: You know, George Clinton, Come on, Leila Hathaway. We you
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 3: know James I Westside Boogie also really dope, like Joey Badass.
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 3: Far is this some of the people that I've been
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: watching or friends with from Afar that I couldn't wait
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 3: to work with them, And I wanted this story to
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: be something that people could see that.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 2: I have my own identity now. It was really hard, though,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: you know, it's still hard.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 3: It's still hard because people have a how they discover
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 3: you is how they want to keep you. Sometimes, even
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 3: though I'm thirty seven years old, and when I made
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 3: music like that, I was twenty three, people want to
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: hold me to being twenty three forever.
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 3: I always say, people give you however long you are,
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 3: however the age you are.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: They give you that many years to make your first album.
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 3: They want you to make your next album better and
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 3: half the time or half a year, and it's just like,
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 3: how the fuck is that even possible? Like, I'm twenty seven,
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 3: twenty three, it took twenty three years to make that,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 3: and you want me to make a better album when
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 3: I'm twenty four.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 2: Give me one year to do it.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 3: And I think my first album was a great representation
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: of what I was capable love of my own as
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 3: an artist, not just as a producer, but my songwriting,
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: you know. And now my next album is in the
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 3: works right now, So I know I skipping a lot
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: of stuff. But I will say this, a lot of
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 3: times when I made music, I would have to create
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 3: another Moniker because my music individually was so different than
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 3: what people thought I was. So my insecurity would often
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: make these like little names and bullshit to like try
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 3: to carve another identity out of what people Even though
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 3: I'd name myself the architect, I didn't fully embody that shit,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 3: you know, like not yet anyway, I would make these
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: other names and pseudo characters and put out these dance records,
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 2: When I work with James a lot a lot of
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 2: us A lot of it was dance music, and I
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 2: love dance music. When I did Future Proof, I had
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: met Lydia who's now the member of Jungle, and she
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 2: sang background on one of my songs. She you know,
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 2: and I was a fan of Jungle at that time too,
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: and she contacted me.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 3: Twenty twenty three, I believe, I think. So that's when
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: the song came out and I got on the song
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 3: Candle Flame. I mean, and this is like one of
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: the biggest songs of my career, you know. I'm sure
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 3: it'll be a gold record soon. I hear it everywhere
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: my family, my cousins, my friends, from junior high school,
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 3: from elementary school. I'm in Starbucks, I heard your song
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 3: Candle Flame.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 2: Today.
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 3: I'm in Thailand. I just heard your song I'm in
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 3: I heard it on Love Island. I heard it, and
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 3: I'm like, Damn, I have one of these songs that
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 3: like have been cemented. It's been three years in the
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 3: song still has traction. That's kind of what I always
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 3: knew that I was able to do, whether it was
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 3: me assisting another person. But now I'm doing it as
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 3: a feature on a song when I just came from
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 3: just producing for so long in my life. You know,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 3: it just shows that I should prove to myself that
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 3: I could do this shit, you know, and I could
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 3: be a full embodied artist and not just somebody who
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 3: makes beats for somebody.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: Well, you recently put out a single What's story on that.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 3: It's called No Doubt I'm in Love. It's I just
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 3: came back from Kingston, Jamaica, two days ago, two three
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 3: days ago shooting a video for it. Jennifer Lara is
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 3: the original record that I sampled to do it, and again,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 3: you know, the the I'm in Love one that I
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 3: was more familiar one is doing Evelyn King one, you know.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 3: And as soon as you hit those synthesizers, just like
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 3: so many sundays, my mom cleaned the whole house to
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 3: that fucking song, you know, and I was like, man,
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: it's the nostalgia.
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 2: It's the part of it.
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 3: The texture of it is the fact that people recognize
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 3: the song. But I don't know of a hip hop song,
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 3: especially when a hip hop crossover that has still dance
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 3: elements and also reggae and Jennifer Larer's version of it
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 3: is a slower, more like soultry version of it, less
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 3: like a pop song. We sampled it Yetie Beats and
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 3: also Fee are the two producers that produced my whole
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 3: new album, and this was one of the songs that stuck.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: And as soon as we did it, I was like,
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 3: it was one of those songs that I don't remember
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 3: writing it. It was very effortless, and I usually that
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 3: means to me that it's going to be a good song.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: Because it didn't feel like work.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 3: It just felt like it just came out of my
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 3: brain and put itself onto the music. The song is
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 3: really just about freedom and appreciation for a woman. Whoever
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 3: it is that you care about in your life, you
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 3: shouldn't be embarrassed or feel reluctancy to tell them how
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 3: you feel. And appreciating all parts of the person that
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 3: you love, not just the physical, but who they are,
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 3: how they feel, what they smell like, how they make
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 3: you feel.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: You know. And I'm really proud of the song.
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 3: I think that the video is going to be a
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 3: great component to it, considering it is a Jamaican founded record,
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 3: my dad being an immigrant from Jamaica, he's from Manchester Parish,
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 3: he's from Meadowville. Shot the video in Kingston, which is
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 3: the capital and the more i would say densely populated area.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 3: Just in my trip there alone had allowed me to
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 3: reconnect with people that you know, It's weird, like the
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 3: song has so much more impact and importance in a
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 3: place like Jamaica than it did when I made it
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 3: in la And it just reminded me that you can
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 3: you transport yourself when you make this you make these
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 3: songs sometimes it feels like work and less like a
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 3: transformative experience. But you can really teleport and you can
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 3: find love, you can find promise beyond just being an
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 3: artist in the moment. These are like antennas and ways
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 3: to touch and reach other people. And the song really
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 3: speaks to me in a way different way. Just coming
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 3: back from it, I'm just like, Wow, you know, I
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 3: don't know you've heard the record already. Yeah, so yeah,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 3: I'm yeah. I just feel I feel like it's a
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 3: good introduction for where I'm about to go with my
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 3: new album, especially it being the first introduction to what's
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 3: going to sound like.
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 2: I would say the rest of the.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 3: Album is not like this, which is the best, the
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 3: best thing about it. I think diversity is what artists
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 3: a lacking at the moment, and I think I'm going
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 3: to give that now for sure.
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about all these collaborators. Are you the
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: type of person who's sitting on their phone all day
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: long connecting with people, making relationships? How does all this happen?
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 2: Oh? I'm not.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 3: I wish sometimes that I was, because I'd probably be
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 3: better at it reaching out. I'm the kind of person
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 3: I'm reading Invincible the comic right now.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 2: Bro, Like I'm.
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 3: Collect cards, trading cards, I watch sports, hang with my girl,
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 3: I talk to my family a lot. I've used to
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 3: play video games a lot, a lot. I'm less on
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 3: it now, but I'm reading and researching. I don't really
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 3: go out a lot, not because I'm introvertive. I just
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 3: always have something to do. But once I'm outside, I'm good.
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 3: And I think that, like, connected with people organically has
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 3: always been my favorite thing to be in person, not
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 3: on the phone. So yeah, I know that there's a
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 3: great tool in using the Internet and social media, but like,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: I really don't enjoy using it to reach out to
• 1:40:48
  Speaker 3: people because I just feel like a cog and a machine.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 3: You know, I don't feel like I matter to you,
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 3: because how can you really tell that I care or
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 3: that I actually enjoy your music. We all type with
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 3: the same font and got the same emoji choices. Know,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 3: how could you really know that I really love your
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 3: music or I maybe love you? You know what I'm saying.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 3: You don't know. You can't really determine that you have
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 3: to established something in real life. Then you can text
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 3: as much as you want. But yeah, reaching out to
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 3: artists has always been difficult to me through the internet
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 3: because I just I don't want to play that game,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: Okay, but if you want someone to work with you,
• 1:41:21
  Speaker 1: how do you make the connection.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: I'm fortunate enough that usually if me or.
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 3: My manager reaches out, they usually respond because they familiar
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 3: with me.
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 2: And if they're not, that's okay. Like I usually just
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: wait till this opportunity that's best and I'm very much
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: a feeling person. If it don't, if.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 3: You ignore me, then that's one thing. I'm busy too,
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 3: so I don't ever take things personal. But there's very
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 3: few times that I or my manager or my team
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 3: have reached out and a person was just like no.
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 3: It was always like I'm on tour, great song though,
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 3: or yeah, I'm down to do it. I have time tomorrow.
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 3: It's you know, I have no ego to ask anybody
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 3: for anything to me, especially if I met you one time.
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna text you as many times as I have
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: to to get to get you back in the studio
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: because you you gave me your number, So what the
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 2: fuck I'm gonna ask you if you want to make music,
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 2: you know. But yeah, that's probably just the persistence we
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: were talking about earlier.
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 3: It's like, I'm gonna keep going until I get a
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 3: real no from you. You know, if you really want
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 3: it that bad, I'm gonna I'm gonna keep trying.
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 1: You mentioned your girl. Have you been married, do you
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: have children? What's your relationship story?
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 3: No, I'm not married, I have no children. But this
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 3: is this is the most happy that I've ever been
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 3: with anyone, and the most pure connection and feeling that
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 3: you could have for somebody, and I never had that.
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 3: And I was recently telling her, you know, there's times
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 3: you tell somebody you love them, and it kind of
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 3: reaffirmed what that every time I said it to someone
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 3: that somebody else, did I really mean it? Or maybe
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 3: my understanding of love or saying that what it meant?
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 3: And it means something different now when I told my
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 3: girl I love her?
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, so where did you meet her?
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: I'm her in La? Yeah, okay, let's.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: Go back York in La. It's the same country, but
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: they're really different.
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 2: Big difference.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: So tell me what you find. The difference is to
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 1: be New.
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 3: York biggest international place in the world, I believe, I
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 3: think as a statistic was JFK is the largest, is
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 3: the most inbound and outbound flights internationally in the world
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 3: as far as airports, so they have the most people
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 3: coming from every place more than anywhere else because it's
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 3: a landing spot. And then you walk around New York,
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 3: you see everybody. There's no I can bring anybody from anywhere,
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 3: and I'll find the food that you like. That's fucking crazy, Like,
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 3: it doesn't matter where the hell you're from. Bro, Oh,
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 3: you're never gonna find I'll find it for you. Bro,
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 3: you're from serving it, I'll find you some serving food.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: Bro.
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 2: Like, wherever the fuck you're from, I'll find it. Busy, loud, competitive,
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 2: prideful New York City. No, people say it's dirty, Well
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 2: stop coming there so much and dropping your ship on
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 2: the floor. The fuck is the it's tourists, it's sucking
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: it up. It's not locals, it's you. It's all these
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 2: people coming there dropping shit on the full time anyway.
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 2: La nature, Hollywood, TV music, uh uh shit, beautiful weather.
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: Everybody's a fucking dog, you know.
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 3: I would say a lot more slow paced, and people
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 3: can appreciate nuance and small details.
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 2: You can actually work, You can really work really hard here.
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 3: I think a lot of people here, they work more
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 3: than they see their friends. In New York, you bump
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 3: into your friends all the time because everyone's outside all
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 3: the time. To me, La became a place that you
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 3: can literally close yourself off and never see anybody because
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 3: you're due work. You work all the time. Everything is
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 3: so far apart that if you don't make a commitment
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 3: to somebody, you might just like never see them. It
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 3: could be nine months you don't see your best friends.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 3: At least to me, this is my experience.
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: Very well articulated.
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 2: Keep going.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, La is a place that it breaks a lot
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 3: of people because they get lost. There's different kind of
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: nightlife than it is in New York, because I would
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 3: say there almost is none. So everybody wants to go
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 3: to a blest celebrities house to do cocaine. My opinion
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 3: on that in New York they do cocaine too, but
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 3: it's at three pm three am. Sorry, at an actual
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 3: place where people still hanging out. They're not going to
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 3: stop partying til like six am. Here that shit has
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 3: done like twelve you know, so we're all kind of
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 3: figuring out what.
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 2: We're gonna do every night. In New York.
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 3: I always had a destination. And not only because I'm
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 3: from there. I know people who go to New York
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 3: and say, bro, I'm so tired. Oh I do is
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 3: hang out all the time. I'm like, that's why it's
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 3: hard to work there. So that's that's I had to
• 1:46:20
  Speaker 3: move to LA to change my life. And I didn't
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 3: mention this. I said this in another interview, but you know,
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 3: when my mom was really sick, I didn't. I would
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 3: go to LA a lot, and I would sleep with
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 3: my friends couches and stuff, and I'll spend out a
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 3: bunch of money on playing tickets and stuff. And I
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 3: was trying to learn how to operate over here. You
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 3: know the music that I made. My mom she loved
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 3: my music. You know, she loved the flabber Zombies. She
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 3: loved especially.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: Because she knew Dimitri really well, you know his mother
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: and his dad. She always would tell me, like, you
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: got to do your shit because you just different. You're
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 2: just like one of these guys that's like you do
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 2: it all.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 3: But what people see from you and this is your
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 3: mom telling you, so I believe it, but it's also
• 1:47:05
  Speaker 3: like it's your mom. She's gonna say the nicest things
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 3: about you. You know, and I would deny everything.
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: Ah man nah like la da da.
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 3: She's like, yeah, Like you know, you have so much intelligence,
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 3: and I sometimes I wonder why you choose to make music,
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, what do you mean. She's like, because
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 3: you have so much other talent, what made you choose music?
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 3: And I was like, well, a lot of that is
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 3: because of you, because of her. She's like, what do
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 3: you mean. I'm like, man, when you grew up with
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 3: somebody blind, like she wasn't always blind. She became blind
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 3: by the time I got to high school, so ad
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 3: to every time somebody came to my house, I had
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 3: to tell them my mom was blind, by the way,
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 3: And sometimes they'd be.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: Like, well, why'd you tell me that. I'm like, well,
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: I know what it's like for you to walk into
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: somebody's house, and I've seen it without me prefacing it,
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: like people have this reaction. She can't see the reaction,
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: but she can feel it. And I was like, damn,
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: you know, Like how perceptive people who are when they
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 2: can't see anymore is fucking insane. Like she can tell
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: you what you look like.
• 1:48:04
  Speaker 3: She could look at you without looking at you, and
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 3: she'd be like, I tell you that guy he has
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 3: a navy shirt on right now. You know it was
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 3: fucking weird. She can by the way you smell, by
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 3: the way you you know, your hands felt. She could
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 3: tell a few were like stressed out.
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: It was fucking weird. Like some I'm like, what do
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: you call it, like a like a psyche or some shit.
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: I'm like, and she you know, women intuitively have a
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: lot of this already. They carry things, bro, we can
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: never have these feelings, the feeling of super high and
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 2: super lows.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 3: A man could never feel. We don't know what it's
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 3: like to conceive a child. You know, that is like
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 3: a whole fucking evolution of a life. So women innately
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 3: have that, then you have like the senses gone. So
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 3: and I was like, yeah, well, when I started making music,
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 3: it was to impress you.
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: You know, you listen to good music when you can't
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 2: see think about it. You When you reach.
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 3: For something, every intention that you have to every intention
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 3: you have to be spot on because you don't have
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 3: time to waste.
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 2: You might fall, you might fuck like, I really.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 3: Want to play the song right now, and I wanted
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 3: to be a song that my mom wanted to hear
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 3: and like I didn't know that she was like my
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 3: she was my biggest fan, but I didn't know she
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 3: was the audience of people I was initially making music for,
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 3: you know. And that's why I love sampling and why
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 3: I love making music that reminded her of.
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: The sixties and when she was a kid, you know.
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 3: So you know, I just said the story, but like, yeah,
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 3: she my two brothers. You know, your mom gets old,
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 3: she starts calling the other people's name. She called me Q,
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 3: and I didn't know who the fuck Q was And
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 3: she turns out that she tells me it's Quincy Jones,
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 3: you know. And we talked about the difference between LA
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 3: and New York at the time. When your mom says
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 3: that you're a mind of a Quincy Jones, I just
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 3: thought that she was like getting old or like you
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 3: just gassing me up?
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: Man, Why would you say something.
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 3: Like that, like like I'm making songs about acid, you know,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 3: Like what the fuck are you talking about?
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: Like I didn't get it. She's like, trust me, you'll
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: see one day.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 3: Whatever you know, you don't it's your own creation, so
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 3: you can't really look at it that way.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: And I was like, whatever, I moved to.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 3: La Man and I meet Quincy Jones, Bro, Like, what
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 3: do you you could believe in in destiny? You can
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 3: believe in, you can believe in in Disney and fiction
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 3: and shit, but some of the shit is really real, man.
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 3: Like she passed away and I met this man, and
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 3: not only did I meet him, you know, I go
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 3: to his house and you know he passes away, but
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 3: so much so much there that it's like, you know,
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 3: your mom and the person that puts you into this
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 3: world has so much perception of you and life that
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 3: we have to appreciate more of. And I never want
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 3: someone to go away and not give them their flowers,
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 3: you know. And I tell people with that still have
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 3: their mother and their lives all the time, like, yo,
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 3: I don't give a fuck what it is, whatever little
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 3: issue you have with your mom, yo.
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: And not that I have favorite to them, to my
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: mom or my dad way, but your mom is.
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 3: Just different, bro, Like fix that issue, bro, fix it,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 3: because their understanding of your life is way different, and
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 3: they're telling you stuff that you really really will appreciate.
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 3: If it's not today, it's tomorrow, it's five years from now.
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 3: I still think about what she said to me because
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 3: I'm still decoding what the hell that meant, Like, how
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 3: the fuck did you know that? You know, we're talking
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 3: about I have two gold songs. At that time, I
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 3: had no gold records. You know, like to other people
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 3: that may seem with fifty Grammys and fifty whatever, To me,
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 3: that's the world.
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 2: I came from nothing.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: Man.
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 3: You know, we took talked to here for a couple
• 1:51:36
  Speaker 3: of hours about all the struggle that I had and
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 3: all the stuff. So anything just leaving my house, just
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 3: having a tour bus, just having somebody tattoo your name,
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 3: just having somebody care about you is not guaranteed. And
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 3: for somebody to see that and still know that you
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 3: have a higher capacity to grow is fucking nuts, because
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 3: you would think that would be enough. And my mom
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 3: is like, that's not an bro, you have more of
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 3: a story. And we're talking about twenty twenty six, I'm
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 3: releasing my second debut album. In my second album, you know,
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 3: from my debut album, you know, you would think I'd
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 3: be tired of making music, or I would have no
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 3: fans by now, or I'd be jaded, or I'd be
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 3: on drugs, or I have six baby mothers or some shit, right,
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 3: now I'm very hungry and ready to conquer the music
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 3: industry as an independent powerhouse, you know, and a lot
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 3: of what she told me is still much in my
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 3: life every day. So I just want to make sure
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 3: I said that, you know, to your platform and everybody
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 3: hearing this.
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: It's like, you know, I.
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 3: Wish I can get those moments back with my mom,
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 3: and I think about her every day. But when people
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 3: pass away, that's just a physical, a spiritual, and a
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 3: It's deeper than that, and you become them. So you
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 3: are your parents.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 2: As much as you may have a little issue with them,
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 2: you are still mommy and Daddy, you know, end of
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 2: the day. And when I become a parent, I want
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 2: them to say the same things to me. And yeah,
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 2: that's that's all I want to say about that.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, you've been fiercely independent, but you've gained more notoriety
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: and leverage. Would you make a deal with a major
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: or do you believe in the independent role?
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 2: I think majors. I have no real reason to go
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 2: to a major besides a lot of money and a
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: lot of change. Otherwise than that, I think I can
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: get most of those things on my own. I've gotten
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 2: this far from not fucking with them at all. So
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: if I ever did, it would have to be because
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 2: it dramatically changed my life financially. Not really, I'm not.
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 2: I don't think I need to.
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 3: If I did, it would have to be like, oh,
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 3: I have two houses in Dubai and Jamaica now or
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 3: something like that. And it couldn't just be like, oh, yeah,
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 3: I have more followers. I don't give a fuck about that,
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 3: you know, Or I have ten more dollars in my
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 3: bank account.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 2: That wouldn't be enough.
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 3: It would have to be like, this is sustainable to
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 3: change me and my whole family's life.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, as you reference, although this is audio only, you're
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: wearing a Nick's shirt. Tell me about the Knicks.
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: I gotta take some water from that one, bro. I am.
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 3: I am one of the biggest Knicks fans in the
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 3: entire planet on Pluto, Mars, Jupiter, plants that we didn't
• 1:54:24
  Speaker 3: even discover, I am. But I've been watching the Knicks
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 3: my entire life. I don't know. There's only I love
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 3: music more than the Knicks and my family, you know,
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 3: my lady. Otherwise than that, it's the Knicks, Like I
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 3: bleed the Knicks I've been watching the Knicks lose my
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 3: whole life. Like I don't like the Yankees. I've never
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 3: I've seen the Yankees win many World Series. I don't care.
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 3: I'm a Mets fan. They've never seen them win. I
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 3: see them the Subway Series. All right, cool, I've seen.
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 3: I'm a Giants fan. I've seen the Giants win two
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 3: Super Bowls. We beat Tom Brady still doesn't touch what
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 3: happened with Jalen Brunson this season. Watching the Knicks being
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 3: friends with also other Knicks players in real life, cheering
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 3: for a team that people know.
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 2: Before now they're gonna lose.
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 3: You know how that feels to be in New Yorker
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 3: and be like, you're gonna lose tonight. That sucks, man,
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 3: Like from Patrick Ewing to John Starks to Chris Childs
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 3: to Charlie Ward, Like that's the era of basketball that
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 3: I remember. What we did this year no one could predict.
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 3: I don't even know if the Knicks players themselves knew
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 3: that they were gonna do it. But it's the biggest
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 3: underdog story in the history of basketball. It's fifty three
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 3: years is a long time to be made fun of,
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 3: and I think it was with nineteen or seventeen years
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 3: since they were in the finals. So I'm gonna wear
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 3: my girlfriend said today this morning, You've wore a Knick
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 3: shirt every day since the said I know, I have
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 3: another one, and I'm gonna word tomorrow too. So just
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 3: because the season started is going to start in September October,
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 3: I'm still gonna wear my next merchandise, like every day.
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna have a Nicks brooch when I get married too.
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 3: So yeah, very very very proud of my of my city.
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: At what point did you think it was possible?
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 3: Once you beat the shit out of Philly, I was
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 3: like it's over because I was like, this was a team.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 3: They're really good team. It's funny how everybody's like, oh,
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 3: they're not that good. What are you talking about. This
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 3: is a good fucking team. They're young. We beat the shit
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 3: out of them. That that's like to me, it was
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 3: indication like hmm, maybe this isn't a fluke. And then
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 3: we beat the shit out of Cleveland and I was like,
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 3: this was a really good team. You guys thought they
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 3: were gonna sweep us too. By that point, I was like,
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 3: oh shit, we might win. Once you won Game one
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 3: against the Spurs, I said, we are going to win
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 3: the championship.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 2: I said that, and I was like, there's no I
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 2: don't We got it. We got it.
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 3: I something told me we got it, and we got it,
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 3: and I was fucking right. It's very I've never been
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 3: that certain of something in sports, you know, because why
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 3: would they lose this year?
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 1:57:15
  Speaker 3: After all this shit, we're gonna lose. Hell no, that
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 3: can't be the story. I'm mad we even lost the
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 3: one game that we did. I wanted it to be
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 3: clean sweep after Atlanta, but I'll still take it.
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: Gentleal sweep is cool too.
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: Have you been back to New York since they won?
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 2: Absolutely?
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 3: I was therefore game three in Game four of Cleveland,
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 3: and then I was there for game four in game five,
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 3: I think three, four, and five of Spurs.
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's obviously a momentous occasion, but there are multiple leagues,
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: most and there's a winner every year in different sports.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: Do you think this victory changed New York and New Yorkers?
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 3: M h, Not only do I think that I changed
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 3: the league. Everybody's scared of the Knicks right now. I
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 3: don't care what fuck with nobody say this is the
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 3: most trades and signings that I've ever seen. And I've
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 3: been watching basketball my whole life. The entire teams upside
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 3: down because they can't figure out not they want to
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 3: emulate what the Knicks did. And it's not because I'm
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 3: a Knicks fan if I hate them. I'm like, it's weird,
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 3: Like we have a certain pride that we've always had.
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 3: Now we can actually wear our Knicks hats and pull
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 3: our hats down to the front, like we have a
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 3: championship logo, jerseys and hats we've never I've never had that.
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 3: You had to go back to Clyde, you know, to
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 3: get any of that stuff. I think it's kind of
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 3: corny that people bandwagon the Knicks, but we have enough
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 3: room for you too.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 2: It's a little weird too that people the memorabilia is
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 2: so expensive. You know. Some of the stuff that I
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: have I bought for dirt cheap.
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 3: I have a Knicks leather jacket I got like two
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 3: I've seen this jacket that I bought for like one
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 3: hundred dollars. I've seen another day for seven hundred dollars
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 3: on the eBay, and I'm like, it's cool. But it's
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 3: also like it's trendy to be a Knicks fan now,
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 3: which to me is like the opposite of the Knicks,
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 3: Like we don't give a fuck either way. Now it
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 3: became like this commodity because we won the championship. But
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 3: it's a pride that I've never seen in New York.
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 3: I mean the parade during that, I mean I was
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 3: on twenty second Street. I was on by sixth Avenue
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 3: when they won, and people were just like going, this
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 3: was we won.
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: In San Antonio.
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 3: We have people walking towards thirty fourth Street, probably just
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 3: to stand outside.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: There's a pride that I've never seen in New York.
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't no Yankees game, no Giants parade.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 2: It was more electric than the Knicks winning the championship.
• 1:59:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, you and Angelina or can you see yourself moving
• 1:59:39
  Speaker 1: back to New York.
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 3: I can't be here for my whole life. I'm here now,
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 3: but I know eventually I would have to go back.
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 2: I don't know when. My dad's getting older too, my
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: family's getting older. It's weird to say that I'm getting older.
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 2: It's fucking weird to say that too. But La has
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 2: been good to me, so I would never be one
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: of those guys. Man fuck La like this man, fake
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: people come to La.
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 3: Don't shit on La. Bro La is a great place.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 3: It has great culture, and the people from l A
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 3: are amazing. Transplants like me come here and fuck it
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 3: up because they don't respect the community and they try
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 3: to skip steps. But you got to show respect when
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 3: you come to La. You gotta show respect to the
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 3: people that have been here their whole lives. And yeah,
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 3: I love I love the Brooklyn Dodgers. So I have
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 3: a tawny jersey because you know, we know where it started.
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 3: So I'll still reach for the Dodgers.
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: And I root it for the Dodgers against the Yankees
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 2: too last year, and I will be again this year.
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 2: If you know, the Mets are not good, so it's
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 2: probably we might see the Dodgers play the Yankees again.
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll see. Well, Eric, it's been wonderful
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: talking to you, not only getting your story or you're
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: a very sharp, insightful guy. You know you talked about
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: the visions you get from certain drugs. Not that I
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: want to make it about drugs, but all of these
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: questions really make me think and You've nailed a couple
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: of things that I could never articulate. I want to
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: thank you for taking this time with my audience for.
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: Sure, thanks for having me.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 3: That was the most I ever talked about myself, So
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 3: thank you for giving me the platform. And I'm probably
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 3: gonna listen to this back and be like, there's so
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 3: much more I could have said, you know.
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: Well, no, I was realizing there are certain other things.
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to bring them up so well, I'd
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: like to know more about this, more about that, but
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 1: we're going to leave it there today till next time.
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: This is Bob Left sets