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Speaker 3: Let's get into the next one right now. Come on,
Speaker 3: Bootleg cam Podcast special guests in here, Brother Ali the Legend.
Speaker 3: Good to see you, man.
Speaker 1: I'm happy to be with you. Man.
Speaker 3: Thank you for doing yes, sir for.
Speaker 1: People who don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean I interviewed you one time backstage after your tour.
Speaker 3: You and Evidence were on tour YEP in Boise, Idaho
Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine or ten?
Speaker 1: What year?
Speaker 3: What of that been?
Speaker 1: That was two thousand and nine and Evidence was just
Speaker 1: coming over to Rhyme Sayers And that was an amazing run.
Speaker 1: Every show sold out, fifty shows in sixty days, all
Speaker 1: of them sold out. Yeah, that was a good time,
Speaker 1: had crazy times.
Speaker 3: Man. It's it's wild too, because I feel like, what,
Speaker 3: oh you want to put you want to down? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Down, got it?
Speaker 3: Got it? Got it?
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: How do you feel, man, because obviously, you know, you've
Speaker 3: had an amazing career as an independent artist somebody who
Speaker 3: you know, I guess would be considered quote unquote underground.
Speaker 3: When I was growing up, we had underground hip hop. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the game has changed a lot, and for you kind
Speaker 3: of being like an OG at this point, somebody who's
Speaker 3: kind of had a bunch of different errors of your
Speaker 3: own career, How do you feel, just like with today's
Speaker 3: climate in terms of like being an independent artist and
Speaker 3: making the kind of music that is not low hanging fruit,
Speaker 3: if you will.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really challenging, you know, but it's always been challenging.
Speaker 1: Like that's part of the fun of it, and that's
Speaker 1: part of the freedom of it. It's like, man, I'm
Speaker 1: going to make music about my secrets and you're not
Speaker 1: supposed to really do that. You know, I'm going to
Speaker 1: make secret music about things that aren't what everybody wants
Speaker 1: to necessarily hear right now, but there's something inside me
Speaker 1: that makes it. This is very true what I'm going
Speaker 1: to say, and to make the music that we want
Speaker 1: to make. And you know, if you're able to, then
Speaker 1: the struggle is to find the people that want to
Speaker 1: hear that secret and want to celebrate whatever that is.
Speaker 1: So and I mean, then that's true for everybody across
Speaker 1: the board. It's no different than like, you know, kids
Speaker 1: in New York that are caught up in like neighborhood
Speaker 1: beef and it's like, no, this is how we really live,
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, we're rough around the edges and we're violent,
Speaker 1: that's how we you know what I mean. And some
Speaker 1: of us are on drugs and whatever. But there's a
Speaker 1: certain like true lived human experience that they're putting in
Speaker 1: their music. And when it first happens, people are like, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't what is this? Their community right away is
Speaker 1: going to be like, yes, somebody's speaking for me. It's
Speaker 1: not easy living like this, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Everybody has something like that. And then once that actually
Speaker 1: starts to catch on the artists, once they get that space,
Speaker 1: they start to say more and we get a window
Speaker 1: into their world and we start getting contacts and then
Speaker 1: it makes sense. But you have to fight, and that's
Speaker 1: part of the beautiful struggle of it all. So you know,
Speaker 1: there was a period when we first came out where
Speaker 1: it's like when you said there was the underground thing.
Speaker 1: So when Papen Big died, it was like, okay, these
Speaker 1: are the first time the most respectable MC's, the most
Speaker 1: respected mcs in the culture were also crossover mainstream. It
Speaker 1: wasn't never like that before, Like we all love Tone
Speaker 1: and Young MC. They were never the top tier MC school,
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. So you know, the other people had to fight.
Speaker 1: So then it was a weird thing that happened where
Speaker 1: all the great MC's were like, oh, we can be mainstream.
Speaker 1: And so for people where this was always a counterculture thing,
Speaker 1: it's just like, wait, what part is this? What part
Speaker 1: are we just so we're just like jumping in bed
Speaker 1: with the oppressors now because we because you can get
Speaker 1: rich doing it. That's strange to a lot of us.
Speaker 1: And so there was like a whole movement of most
Speaker 1: Death and the Roots.
Speaker 3: And the whole rockets hair, the roots hair. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: definitely Common early Common.
Speaker 1: Shit, absolutely and you know Common's music is still that
Speaker 1: way dilated, you know, yeah, yeah, definitely dilated. People's was
Speaker 1: a huge part of that, and M F. Doom and
Speaker 1: Little Brother and like there's this like this whole thing,
Speaker 1: and we in a lot of ways were saying, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the music industry has never been for us, so we're
Speaker 1: gonna go do our own thing. So you know what
Speaker 1: we did at Rhyme Shares and in Minneapolis and the
Speaker 1: mid we was to start going to all kinds of
Speaker 1: places where they never had hip hop before and like
Speaker 1: you know, going in and performing and you know, word
Speaker 1: of mouth and all that stuff. And then just every era,
Speaker 1: we've had to figure out what's the space that we
Speaker 1: can authentically engage. So you know, it was Napster and
Speaker 1: all that, and then it was MySpace and all that,
Speaker 1: and then it was the blogs and all that, and
Speaker 1: now with social media and so it's always a tremendous challenge,
Speaker 1: but that's part of the freedom of it all for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think too, like we're kind of in this
Speaker 3: weird space, which is positive where I think somehow this
Speaker 3: Kendrick Lamar beef has like brought like attention to lyricism
Speaker 3: again in a way that it might have been missing
Speaker 3: for however you feel about the beef, But I feel
Speaker 3: like people were paying attention to like bars again, which
Speaker 3: I feel like had been kind of missing for a while.
Speaker 3: And then you got to go, like Dochi who wins
Speaker 3: best rap album? Her album was incredible. I feel like
Speaker 3: there might be a page being turned where people want
Speaker 3: more substance in their music and maybe more you know,
Speaker 3: I feel like there might be an appetite for that
Speaker 3: because we've had I mean, we're going on damn near
Speaker 3: ten years of it being very like you know, like
Speaker 3: you said, we had Biggie, we had even Nas, you know,
Speaker 3: like you know, obviously Kendrick Cole all those guys are
Speaker 3: very high, high frequency artists. But I feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: in terms of what the kids are looking for, Like,
Speaker 3: my son is eleven, and he's like in the like
Speaker 3: rap music that I wouldn't think eleven year oldl be into. Yeah,
Speaker 3: which is a good thing, you know, because that's what
Speaker 3: I was into when I was eleven, you know. So
Speaker 3: I think I think I think there's a there's a
Speaker 3: culture shift happening. I hope so especially with just the
Speaker 3: younger because obviously guys like me and you know my age,
Speaker 3: we're gonna listen, We're gonna listen to. But it's like,
Speaker 3: what are the thirteen fourteen year olds listening to, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: and what are they kind of inputting? Is it like
Speaker 3: op killing music or is it you know, Kendrick, you know,
Speaker 3: like and it's jope to see like Kendrick getting like
Speaker 3: I guess that because you know, now you've got people
Speaker 3: diving into Pimpa Butterfly, yeah, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we just put it on my It was
Speaker 1: number nine on the Hip Hop iTunes chart, and everything
Speaker 1: else in the top ten was Glorilla. It was like
Speaker 1: one through eight was Kendrick was like different Kendrick albums,
Speaker 1: and it's like, oh, okay, those are people that saw
Speaker 1: him on the super Bowl. And I think it was
Speaker 1: like a lot of like middle white America that was
Speaker 1: like Kendrick Lamar gentleman seems to have something to say.
Speaker 1: He might be as good as Eminem. Yeah, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean.
Speaker 3: And then Glorilla and then like me in the middle
Speaker 3: of it, me just chilling at number nine.
Speaker 1: It's weird.
Speaker 2: Men.
Speaker 1: So the Muslims call this realm the Dunya. It was
Speaker 1: like we were somewhere before we were here, and that
Speaker 1: was all true and beautiful. That's not where we are now.
Speaker 1: And then after this we have the life of the grave,
Speaker 1: We've got the judgment, we got the afterlife. But this
Speaker 1: place is a mixture of good and bad. It's a
Speaker 1: mixture of true and false. It's a mixture of things
Speaker 1: change and they say the same and everything is that way,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So, yeah, I love Kendrick obviously,
Speaker 1: Like you know what I mean. I met Kendrick when
Speaker 1: he was coming up and he was like yo, like
Speaker 1: we were you know, And I love Kendrick. It's also
Speaker 1: true that, you know, historically, white America has always accepted
Speaker 1: certain things, like all the culture comes from black for people,
Speaker 1: and all the cultural genius, all the culture export everything.
Speaker 1: But it's like there are some things that are not accepted.
Speaker 1: There are some things that are accepted. There are some
Speaker 1: things that are celebrated, and then there are some things
Speaker 1: that are mega celebrated. A critique what's not accepted is
Speaker 1: a critique of the power structure. So you know, what
Speaker 1: is accepted is just cultural genius that seems to not
Speaker 1: be harming it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's not like stirring the pot of too much.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: What's always celebrated is black people fighting each other, especially
Speaker 1: great black people destroying each other. So that's not Kendrick's fault,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And that's and people who
Speaker 1: aren't black. Is like, there are certain conversations. It's like
Speaker 1: I don't have an opinion about that, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, It's not my.
Speaker 3: Place to have it.
Speaker 1: But what I do know is what the white mainstream
Speaker 1: power structure does, which is they love to celebrate powerful
Speaker 1: black men destroying each other. You know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Because I mean Kendrick's last album, there's so much to
Speaker 1: break down.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, I mean, it's it's a real like think
Speaker 3: piece on like self reflection, mental help, like so much,
Speaker 3: and it went over everybody's head and it wasn't celebrated
Speaker 3: in the same way.
Speaker 1: Now it's celebrated on a certain level. I mean, he
Speaker 1: did get a Politzer Prize in terms of culture, like
Speaker 1: hours and hours of people breaking down on YouTube every
Speaker 1: possible triple entendra of a Kendrick. And then for black women,
Speaker 1: it's everybody's right decision to do whatever they want with
Speaker 1: their image and their body and everything. But black women
Speaker 1: don't really get celebrated unless they're like.
Speaker 3: Rhap City is not going to be celebrated like sexy
Speaker 3: red too much close right, too black, too black, too strong,
Speaker 3: too much close, little, too dignified.
Speaker 1: You gotta be if you're a black woman. For the
Speaker 1: mainstream to accept you, we have to have sexual access
Speaker 1: to you because we used to own you, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. So even be been married to Jay
Speaker 1: Z for twenty years, you still got to be in
Speaker 1: your underwear otherwise you're not going to bank it.
Speaker 3: That's why I was good to see Rhapsody win a
Speaker 3: Grammy this year. Man, Look, I felt like I want
Speaker 3: a Grammy. First Killer Mike won it. Oh when Killer
Speaker 3: Mike won it, I.
Speaker 1: Was like, yeah, man, you know, killing Mike at LP
Speaker 1: is like for somebody like me. So that's our era.
Speaker 1: Those guys that came up.
Speaker 3: When we came up and they just did what they've
Speaker 3: always done.
Speaker 1: There was zero according this, there was zero.
Speaker 3: Is like, man, it's also just good to know, like
Speaker 3: for like aging hip hop, Its like it's good to
Speaker 3: know I'm not a hater a hundred percent, Like I'm
Speaker 3: happy when somebody succeeds being true. Yeah. When Killer Mike won,
Speaker 3: I was it was to me because I mean he
Speaker 3: had the album of the Year. I'm like, yes, he
Speaker 3: I'm just glad they got it right. He wanted he
Speaker 3: wanted it, he said it. When he came in, it
Speaker 3: was like Babe Ruth or whoever pointing into the thing
Speaker 3: or Muhammad Ali and what round I'm gonn knock him
Speaker 3: out in he came out, he said.
Speaker 1: I want the album off the year, my mama, dad,
Speaker 1: And it's just like, yeah, man, get that album of
Speaker 1: the year man. Yeah, beautiful so rahapsity man, Like she's amazing.
Speaker 3: Man, She's incredible. Yeah, it's been fun you're bringing up
Speaker 3: the Super Bowl thing and just some of the it
Speaker 3: has been funny to watch like the far Rights, like
Speaker 3: inner conflict on how they feel about Kendrick's halftime show,
Speaker 3: because I've seen them be like.
Speaker 1: Well it was patriotic, you know, it wasn't woke. And
Speaker 1: then the other part we're like, yo, there wasn't any
Speaker 1: white people. It was just so funny.
Speaker 3: If you look at the twitter, like back and forth,
Speaker 3: it's so funny, like they don't know what to think
Speaker 3: of the halftime show, And to me, that's what's so
Speaker 3: brilliant about Like however that halftime show played out, was
Speaker 3: like no one's too sure on like some people think
Speaker 3: they got to figure it out, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just happy to see Kendrick be a
Speaker 1: free black man that expressed what he wanted to express.
Speaker 3: Like Samuel Jackson was like, all of you, you can have
Speaker 3: a story in the halftime show. It's like, yes, it was.
Speaker 3: It was amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then also that it was real art, yes,
Speaker 1: like art, that was art, Like you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no denying the fact that you know, I've got
Speaker 1: my own opinion. We all have opinions, but I'm saying, like, man,
Speaker 1: that was him saying what he wanted to say, making
Speaker 1: the statement he wanted to make. He made it in
Speaker 1: a grand way that was fitting for that stage. But
Speaker 1: it was it was art art man, Like, yeah, so
Speaker 1: those are those are all amazing things. And that's why
Speaker 1: I say, like the Dunya is always good and bad.
Speaker 1: The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Speaker 3: You know, So talk to me. Uh you left Rhyme
Speaker 3: Sayers a few years ago? Was it?
Speaker 1: I went independent four years ago? Yeah?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: Obviously? You you know brother Ali and Rhyme Sais, you
Speaker 3: guys are very synonymous. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was a company man. They talking about drinking the
Speaker 1: kool aid. I was the kool aid. I was busting
Speaker 1: through the wall like with the kool aid out. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: because I love those people.
Speaker 3: I mean love. Yeah. Rhyme Saiers is obviously, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the craziest success stories. And when it comes
Speaker 3: to just an independent hip hop label, like fuck man,
Speaker 3: the atmosphere yourself, I mean, the festivals were crazy. What
Speaker 3: for you was was the main? You know, why did
Speaker 3: you break away and decide to do your own things? Man?
Speaker 1: It's just you know, you grow and you start to
Speaker 1: have your own ways that you the more you learn,
Speaker 1: the more you have certain things that you want to
Speaker 1: do and ways that you want to do things, and
Speaker 1: more so just like how you want to feel. And
Speaker 1: you know, I realized that the things that I wanted
Speaker 1: to do, like I've grown as a person and like
Speaker 1: what I offer the world, So like, not only do
Speaker 1: I do these like sold out tours across the country,
Speaker 1: I also delivered the Nobel Peace Prize form like keynote
Speaker 1: address at the Nobel Peace Prize. Wow, I've like lectured
Speaker 1: at Harvard and Princeton, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: also am a like a like I have leader in
Speaker 1: a Muslim community. I also want to write and do
Speaker 1: podcasts and all these kind of things. And then also
Speaker 1: I want, like I said, I want things to feel
Speaker 1: a certain way, and I just realized, like the things
Speaker 1: that I want to do, for them to build those,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't even be responsible for them to build those
Speaker 1: into that label because it would just be me. Like
Speaker 1: the things that I was requiring was that. And then
Speaker 1: also there was also some you know, when you're building something,
Speaker 1: as you go, you have certain ideas about what this
Speaker 1: is and things like that, and so you know, I
Speaker 1: discovered over time they're like, oh, I don't own this
Speaker 1: label and I don't have really a vote in it.
Speaker 1: It's not mine. I always kind of felt like it
Speaker 1: was mine.
Speaker 3: Even though you kind of felt that way because you
Speaker 3: were there, you know, because we all love each other
Speaker 3: and we're all family. But when it really comes to
Speaker 3: the decisions that are made, when it really comes to
Speaker 3: the moves that are made, when it really comes to
Speaker 3: you know, even things like hey, I don't think this
Speaker 3: particular situation is working. This particular situation is not working
Speaker 3: for me. There were years where it did not work
Speaker 3: for me and I was in a bad space, and
Speaker 3: what I would have needed to do would be to
Speaker 3: ask them to basically develop new departments just for me.
Speaker 1: And to do. And it's like that's at a certain point,
Speaker 1: like I went from saying like, hey, we're all family,
Speaker 1: let's work this out to like I'm just upset and
Speaker 1: there's nothing I can do about it, So like why.
Speaker 3: Build up that resentment?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's like, you know what, let me take
Speaker 1: the ultimate lesson from all of you that have invested
Speaker 1: so much in me and gained a lot from me too. Sure,
Speaker 1: everything I did was was very successful and nothing ever
Speaker 1: lost money. Everything I did was successful there, so it's
Speaker 1: like this was a great run together. The main thing
Speaker 1: that I can learn from you is that what you
Speaker 1: did is when you wanted things to be a certain way,
Speaker 1: you built something that was yours. So it hurt to
Speaker 1: do that, you know, because there's no scandal, there's no beef.
Speaker 1: Still love everybody, you know. But to step away, Now,
Speaker 1: what was beautiful is that right away when I did that,
Speaker 1: I started my podcast. Slug came out to one of
Speaker 1: the shows so we could do a podcast together on
Speaker 1: stage immediately, like my first time back out after stepping away.
Speaker 1: And then me and Aunt just made this album together
Speaker 1: and he came on tour with me in between Atmosphere tours,
Speaker 1: like instead of going home for five weeks, he came
Speaker 1: on tour with me. So it's like, man, the music
Speaker 1: is true, the love is true, the business is the
Speaker 1: corniest part of it. And so the business wasn't working.
Speaker 1: So now I'm doing something that does work, Like now
Speaker 1: I'm healthy, I'm well, you know what I'm saying. So
Speaker 1: I was terrified to do that, and I mourned it
Speaker 1: like I mourned it like a death because that's where
Speaker 1: I became me. I'm part They're part of me becoming me,
Speaker 1: and I'm part of them becoming them. And so to
Speaker 1: step away business wise, the main concern is like can
Speaker 1: we keep the friendships intact and obviously that's happened for
Speaker 1: the most part. Yeah, there's a couple of people that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a few situations that are like, you know,
Speaker 1: we haven't really got back on the same page yet.
Speaker 1: But those things take time, for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So with anything you're handling, there's you know,
Speaker 3: you gotta let stuff settle.
Speaker 1: But those people are good people, so you know. Yeah, seen,
Speaker 1: Bay and me are really dear friends. And he opened
Speaker 1: your album. Yeah, and he came to me and said,
Speaker 1: we're thinking about doing the Black Star vinyl on rhyme sayers.
Speaker 1: I know that you used to be there and you're
Speaker 1: not anymore. Is there anything you want to tell me?
Speaker 1: I said. Those people are honest people, but don't assume anything.
Speaker 1: That's the only thing. If you want to know something,
Speaker 1: ask it. If you assume something, asked directly. But they
Speaker 1: will never cheat you. They will never lie to you.
Speaker 1: They managed Doom's affairs, which weren't or it wasn't easy.
Speaker 1: Are they still doing that? Yes, Yes, Doom was happy
Speaker 1: with them. His wife is, as far as I understand,
Speaker 1: is happy with you.
Speaker 3: I think they're they're like his licensing and everything. They're manager.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, they're not there's there's no there's nothing. People
Speaker 1: want there to be a scandal, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: And it's like, sorry, I can't do that. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: just grow.
Speaker 3: I mean like when you think of Rhyme Saiers, I
Speaker 3: mean obviously they give Atmosphere, but then I think you're
Speaker 3: the flag bearer of the company for.
Speaker 1: And in the more traditional space, is I'm the more known.
Speaker 3: Right, especially with the label, Like I think of Rhymes Sties,
Speaker 3: I think of you, you know for sure?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I mean you know, so Atmosphere built their
Speaker 1: own world completely separate, which is what's so amazing. No,
Speaker 1: well like separate from like within hip hop. So like
Speaker 1: Tech nine and Rhymes Staries did an atmosphere. Both were
Speaker 1: like nobody except us, very build my own, very on
Speaker 1: their own.
Speaker 3: That's that's a good Obviously different sonically, but very similar
Speaker 3: in terms of their approach to the industry and hip hop.
Speaker 1: Yes, and they built their own worlds. I'm not opening
Speaker 1: for people. No, the people can open for me. I
Speaker 1: don't open for people. I do my own show. It's
Speaker 1: Atmosphere show. It's a Tech nine show. And I learned
Speaker 1: a lot from that. But that's what they built but
Speaker 1: when I came along, I mean the you know, Public
Speaker 1: Enemy and Rock Kim took me on tour, ghost Face
Speaker 1: took me on tour, jiz It took me on tour.
Speaker 1: Brand Nubian took me on tour. Big Daddy Kane took
Speaker 1: me on tour. I was working with you know, Joe
Speaker 1: Budden and like so, I was in a I was
Speaker 1: out of our early roster. I was the one was
Speaker 1: known in hip hop spaces.
Speaker 3: Yeah you were working Yeah, yeah, you were, like you
Speaker 3: said you were in that. I just remember one of
Speaker 3: my favorite records ever was the record that you Freeway
Speaker 3: and Jake One did The Truth, which was so crazy.
Speaker 3: I hadn't I don't know if you ever saw I
Speaker 3: had Nipsey Hustle freestyle over that beating Oh yes, yes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Rest in peace, nip I was just with
Speaker 1: some people yesterday for you.
Speaker 3: Man, I want to I want to talk to you
Speaker 3: about obviously being Muslim in the music industry. You know,
Speaker 3: I feel like we're in a really really strange place
Speaker 3: society wise, where you can't really be too honest about
Speaker 3: what's happening in the world. Uh. And you know, I've
Speaker 3: used my platform to be as honest as possible, you know,
Speaker 3: in terms.
Speaker 1: Of what do you mean, because I'm a I'm gonna
Speaker 1: take your lead on what we're saying. What I'm saying,
Speaker 1: you know, because I'll say, I'll say a lot, but
Speaker 1: I want to be respectful.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm talking about in terms of what's happening in
Speaker 3: Gaza in the West Bank, and uh, you know, you
Speaker 3: have a situation where you can't, necessarily, like I said,
Speaker 3: be too honest about certain what It's almost like you're
Speaker 3: seeing with your own eyes what's happening. But if you
Speaker 3: call it what it is, you know, you you there's
Speaker 3: labels that can put on your lack anti Semitic, you
Speaker 3: know what.
Speaker 1: I mean, My man, there's go ahead, go ahead, man,
Speaker 1: go ahead. Brothers.
Speaker 3: Well, I feel like it's like it's interesting to me
Speaker 3: that like we live in a space where two things
Speaker 3: can't beat you at the same time. It's like, even
Speaker 3: if you're a Zionist, whatever, cool, but you can't not
Speaker 3: be honest about what's happening at the same Like it's
Speaker 3: almost like those two things are exclusive to each other.
Speaker 3: However you feel about Zionism or whatever the case is.
Speaker 3: But like, I have friends in my life who are Jewish,
Speaker 3: who are Zionists, but also are very honest about there
Speaker 3: being a genocide and ethnic cleansing and what's happening in
Speaker 3: the West Bank is super fucked. But in the music industry,
Speaker 3: you know, I haven't seen anyone necessarily on the super
Speaker 3: commercial side outside of Maclamore Lannie. You know, there's not
Speaker 3: really a lot of big artist kind of speaking out
Speaker 3: like I feel like that'd be none, that'd be none. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that's you know, somebody I
Speaker 1: was just with Gabriel Tiodro shout out to him. I
Speaker 1: think he was quoting somebody, but he said, so part
Speaker 1: of what we're talking about with this Kendrick thing is
Speaker 1: he can call Drake a colonizer and that's celebrated, right,
Speaker 1: But where's the part where Benjamin Nett and Yahoo is
Speaker 1: a war criminal. Where's the part where because the hip
Speaker 1: hop we come from is it's like there was public
Speaker 1: in peace, the resident I'm President pulling out my ray gun,
Speaker 1: you know, like there was very direct like they're the enemy.
Speaker 1: Like what we come from is they're banging on the system.
Speaker 1: They're banging on white supremacy, they're banging on colonialism, they're
Speaker 1: banging on. Yeah, man, and what you say is completely true.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, last year I made an album with
Speaker 1: a Jewish anti Zionist producer named Unjusts. He's done on
Speaker 1: hieroglyphics and he's amazing and he's also an animator. Illus
Speaker 1: we made a beautiful album called Love and Service. The
Speaker 1: whole thing is really beautiful.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: When we got to the end of the project was
Speaker 1: right when the big Day in October happened, and we said, man,
Speaker 1: we knew that we had this in common. We knew
Speaker 1: it was a Muslim and a Jewish guy, and I mean,
Speaker 1: he's a Jewish guy, got the beard, went to birthright,
Speaker 1: mirrored a Jewish woman, he's a Jewish man, he's anti Zionist.
Speaker 1: He's also very you know, and we knew that we
Speaker 1: had this in common, but it was like not real.
Speaker 1: It was just kind of a detail. We don't think
Speaker 1: we're making music.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like it was like, yeah, we're making music. Is
Speaker 3: we're making music. And this also is like a cool tidbit. Hey,
Speaker 3: so Muslim, you're Jewish. When that happened, that makes it
Speaker 3: way a whole other. It's like, oh, this just took
Speaker 3: a different turn. So we made a song called the Collapse, you.
Speaker 1: Know, and he animated it and he animated some stuff
Speaker 1: he went in. And I respect people that critique their
Speaker 1: own community, especially if you come from the people that
Speaker 1: are in power with the money and the guns. So
Speaker 1: people see the way that I talk about whiteness, and
Speaker 1: they're like, well, you're the whitest guy ever, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. That's what Chappelle always says. Brother is
Speaker 1: the whitest of all the whites. He's a white man
Speaker 1: and he's out bino. God can't get much whiter than that.
Speaker 3: But somehow the blackest mother for God, Pale Mooney, he said.
Speaker 1: But that's funny. But it's like, man, I respect that.
Speaker 1: I respect minister Farakhon, Minister Farakhan. Most of what he's
Speaker 1: talking about and critiques is telling black people how to
Speaker 1: regain greatness.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I just had a conversation with you know who
Speaker 3: nineteen Keys is. Of course, So me and nineteen Keys
Speaker 3: had a three hour interview a couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 3: and I mean it's he's like, yo, save yourself.
Speaker 1: That's the thing.
Speaker 3: It's like, yo, like you know, if there's anything that
Speaker 3: like this last political psychle however you feel about who
Speaker 3: won and whatever. It's like, Yo, the Nigerian president came
Speaker 3: out and said something that nineteen Keys pointed out, and
Speaker 3: he was like they were talking about cutting cutting aid
Speaker 3: from the US to there, and the Nigerian president was like,
Speaker 3: why are we worried about this, Like we're Nigeria, Like yeah,
Speaker 3: we got us, Like let's not depend on the US.
Speaker 3: And I think metaphorically that's you know what nineteen Keys
Speaker 3: has been saying for a while, like, Yo, we gotta,
Speaker 3: we gotta we had our own infrastructure.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's Elijah Muhamma's message, that's Marcus Garvey's message.
Speaker 1: That's you know. And those aren't those aren't the figures
Speaker 1: that get celebrated, but those are folks that are those
Speaker 1: So those great leaders are deeply critical of within the community,
Speaker 1: like we got it to get it together, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. But for a Jewish person or for
Speaker 1: a white person to say like, okay, we have an
Speaker 1: added thing because as a as a as a group,
Speaker 1: we have the power and the guns and the money
Speaker 1: and the force and the might. So you have to
Speaker 1: be particularly but there but a voice from within celebrate
Speaker 1: like talking about taking self to account like we could
Speaker 1: do better than this. We have to be better than this.
Speaker 1: You know, uh, those you will not be appreciated for that.
Speaker 1: So we put this album out, and I'm telling you
Speaker 1: it got buried you when you saw me. You know,
Speaker 1: I've always done one hundred and fifty plus shows a
Speaker 1: year LA and for a calendar year, I had not
Speaker 1: one show, wow, not one paid gig for a year.
Speaker 1: My booking agent, who's a Jewish lady, couldn't get me
Speaker 1: a single paid show for a full year. Even during
Speaker 1: the pandemic. I performed in parking lots with people in
Speaker 1: their cars, and Dave Chappelle had us do this thing outdoors.
Speaker 1: Like man, I've never had a year with no shows
Speaker 1: in twenty two years of touring. We put this album
Speaker 1: out and we hired a very expensive and so for
Speaker 1: people hearing this story, I don't name names. It was
Speaker 1: supposed to be distributed by a big distributor. After the
Speaker 1: big day in October happened. I mean, we had everything
Speaker 1: but a signed contract. We had budgets. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of money promoting the record, manufacturing the record. They
Speaker 1: just slowly ghosted us and walked away and then posted
Speaker 1: a bunch of Zionist stuff. The biggest promoters in my
Speaker 1: biggest markets that I've known for years, I know them.
Speaker 1: I know they love me. They bring their kids to
Speaker 1: talk to me. Wouldn't book me for anything.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: There, we hired a big press agent. I know the
Speaker 1: names of all the people at the big uh outlets.
Speaker 1: The biggest magazine is the biggest, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1: I know their names. They've written about me everything that
Speaker 1: I've done for years. We didn't go from the biggest
Speaker 1: outlets like Rolling Stone to smaller ones. We went from
Speaker 1: Rolling Stone to nothing. Not a single blog except for one.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: There was one place in Palestine actually that covered us.
Speaker 1: Chuck D played US. Amy Goodman on Democracy Now played us.
Speaker 1: That's it. But I'm saying so we went from from
Speaker 1: I'm a very reliable entity in the music Well, well,
Speaker 1: for sure, I'm not big and famous. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: make millions, but you will always make thousands of dollars.
Speaker 3: You're gonna, you're gonna, You're always gonna sell your tickets.
Speaker 1: And I'm never a messy My fans aren't messy. I'm
Speaker 1: somebody that promoters are just like, Hey, it's brother Harley Day.
Speaker 1: Of course it's happy for everybody. Nothing, no press on nothing.
Speaker 1: And then also shadow band on social media from making
Speaker 1: a project with an anti Zionist Jewish homie where called
Speaker 1: Love and Service, which is about United War, where one
Speaker 1: of the songs is a critique of a Jewish American
Speaker 1: and what Chappelle calls the whitest of all the whites
Speaker 1: with a critique about our own power structure. So yeah, man,
Speaker 1: it's real, and you know, shout out to the people
Speaker 1: that have said it. I mean, Maclamore is in a
Speaker 1: unique position where he already got his money, his millions
Speaker 1: and his grands. Oh yeah, he's chilling, He's yeah. But
Speaker 1: what Maclamore wants is to be respected, and he's going
Speaker 1: about it the right way. Maclamore also, I've known him.
Speaker 1: I knew him long before he was famous. He also
Speaker 1: was a super underground cat for years. You know, like
Speaker 1: the one critique that I have of my brother, who
Speaker 1: I love, who is a very nice person, a very
Speaker 1: talented person. He's a husband and a dad. He's got
Speaker 1: a lot to say. He's a Maclamore learned a lot
Speaker 1: from the Rhyme series movement and from us, and when
Speaker 1: he made his assent. He was very careful to cover
Speaker 1: up the people that he learned a lot of what
Speaker 1: he learned, so he would he was and I know
Speaker 1: his his manager was my booking agent. I was very
Speaker 1: like close on the inside of what was happening there.
Speaker 1: And they were very careful to not shed light on
Speaker 1: the people that they learned a lot of what they
Speaker 1: did from. So you know, if you listen to his music,
Speaker 1: he'll credit Wu Tang and all this other stuff, but
Speaker 1: he sounds more like Sainte Francis and me in Atmosphere
Speaker 1: and you know what I mean. And also there's a
Speaker 1: lot of very very direct connections. They brought him to
Speaker 1: Rhyme Saies to try to sign him. They manufactured the
Speaker 1: deal that they had to distribute that album, which is
Speaker 1: called The Heist, which is interesting.
Speaker 3: They had he had the it was essentially like a
Speaker 3: label services thing with Warner.
Speaker 1: Which was found which was developed by Rhyme Sayers. That
Speaker 1: was the Rhyme Sayers deal that they took. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a directly from the blueprint. And so the
Speaker 1: only critique that I've ever had of him, and it's
Speaker 1: not a hateful one, but it is a true one,
Speaker 1: is that when he made that assent, there was an
Speaker 1: opportunity to tell the truth about he got credit for
Speaker 1: a lot of things that were developed by people who
Speaker 1: never got a chance to be famous, right and so,
Speaker 1: and you know, and that's a historical thing in the
Speaker 1: music business.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think with Mac man, I mean obviously, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm cool with Mac. I think he's first of all.
Speaker 3: That whole thing happened really fast, the heists, I mean
Speaker 3: one hip Hop Album of the Year. You know, a
Speaker 3: lot of people think Kendrick should have won it, but
Speaker 3: I think I don't know, man, I just I know
Speaker 3: him to be a very good guy, you know. And
Speaker 3: and I'm not sure, you know, I'm not too hip
Speaker 3: to or educated on. Like I haven't watched every interview
Speaker 3: that he's done, so I don't know who he gives
Speaker 3: love to and who doesn't give love to. But I
Speaker 3: do know like he was like a like you said,
Speaker 3: like he was very much like a blog era, like
Speaker 3: kind of like, you know, outside of the mainstream of
Speaker 3: hip hop for a long time, meeting up in the Northwest,
Speaker 3: and then he caught a wave, you know, Like.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, and like I said in the Dunya, two
Speaker 1: things are true two things can be true. Two things
Speaker 1: can be true, and so we're dealing with a very good,
Speaker 1: very talented, very hard work and deserving person who also
Speaker 1: was very calculated about employing things that it didn't happen fast.
Speaker 1: It happened very slow.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean in terms of just the like it
Speaker 3: felt like if you were not if you didn't know
Speaker 3: who Maclamore was before twenty twelve, and then all of
Speaker 3: a sudden.
Speaker 1: It seems like it was out of nowhere.
Speaker 3: Right, That's what I mean, like from like a generic music.
Speaker 1: But then there's also there's been many years where this
Speaker 1: you know, it could have there. I know this situation
Speaker 1: very well, know him very well. I've had a converse,
Speaker 1: I've had conversations with him about this. I will just
Speaker 1: say the only unfortunate thing is that he benefited a
Speaker 1: lot from underground. And that's usually the case where there's
Speaker 1: an underground movement. So we all know Nirvana, but in
Speaker 1: the Pacific Northwest, it's like, no, we were all grinding
Speaker 1: like this and then they made it, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So sometimes you'll have a situation where people
Speaker 1: really want you to know, they want to also allow
Speaker 1: their success to be helpful to the people who's grind
Speaker 1: helped them. So like when Eminem got his first Grammy,
Speaker 1: Eminem stood up there and he knew that white America
Speaker 1: had never heard intricate rhyming like this before, because before him,
Speaker 1: you could only be on a radio if it was
Speaker 1: funky colpe Medina again not justice to tone look, but
Speaker 1: like you had to be simple to be on the radio.
Speaker 1: White people did not want to hear intricate rapping. When
Speaker 1: Eminem came along. He knows white America doesn't know broader America,
Speaker 1: mainstream America doesn't know who I'm on the shoulders of.
Speaker 1: So he took out a list and he said, coogi
Speaker 1: rap And he read this whole list of artists that
Speaker 1: he knew weren't known because he benefited from them, and
Speaker 1: then he also wanted his success to benefit them. So
Speaker 1: every day he's got a T shirt on with these
Speaker 1: artists that people don't yeah and so to Yeah. So
Speaker 1: just the one critique about our dear brother, and I'm
Speaker 1: saying I'm not I'm not just being polite when I
Speaker 1: say the other side really hard work and beautiful guy,
Speaker 1: done a lot of great things. And this Gadza thing
Speaker 1: is like, man, it's beautiful, you know. But there's another
Speaker 1: chance when they say you're the only rapper saying anything
Speaker 1: he knows, also, that's not true, Like you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. So if somebody says to me, brother, Ali,
Speaker 1: you did this and this and this and this and this,
Speaker 1: I'm going to say, yes, I learned a lot of
Speaker 1: from from my mortal technique. I also I'm going to
Speaker 1: shout out all the people that came before me that
Speaker 1: aren't known.
Speaker 3: I say that too all the time you bring it
Speaker 3: up a mortal technique, I'm like, yeo, Like there's obviously
Speaker 3: you touched on what's going on in your music. But
Speaker 3: you know, when I was sixteen, like a mortal technique
Speaker 3: was like you would learn like yeah about shit, you
Speaker 3: never even heard of it. I just don't know who
Speaker 3: the young generation's version of a mortal tech is anymore.
Speaker 3: I don't think that. I don't know if it exists.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't think they're rapping. I think I think
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 3: Like or nineteen Keys or a podcast or something. But yes,
Speaker 3: like when I was growing up, like dude, you were
Speaker 3: learning about.
Speaker 1: All kinds of CIA. Did you see him once?
Speaker 3: Way he just freached out like he sent me his
Speaker 3: albums albums dope amazing. No, but yeah, but I'm sure
Speaker 3: it's like it's like we had immortal tech and and
Speaker 3: certain artists where you would be like you would learn shit,
Speaker 3: yes and make you questions.
Speaker 1: You could actually develop a political lens by listening to
Speaker 1: your favorite artists.
Speaker 3: Yes, or at least have nuance or have like perspective
Speaker 3: and at least open up your viewpoint a little bit,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: And now that's not Now that's not the case. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And you know, and I've been thinking about this and
Speaker 1: talking about it a lot. And that's why I also think,
Speaker 1: like whatever people's nuanced opinions of the Kendrick thing are,
Speaker 1: Kendrick re established that hip hop is that voice. And
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways you mentioned Islam, and then
Speaker 1: in a lot of ways Islam has been that voice.
Speaker 1: You know, you think about the first time that this
Speaker 1: person got elected. You know, they they brought I'm getting
Speaker 1: chills thinking about this, but they brought Dave Chappelle and
Speaker 1: tribe called Quest on Saturday Night Live. And they're all Muslim,
Speaker 1: Like everybody on the stage is Muslim. And those are
Speaker 1: the people that those are the people that are gonna
Speaker 1: get the worst of whatever. This is comforting America basically, right,
Speaker 1: And it just happened too, And it just happened to just
Speaker 1: did was it right after the election?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So they just and again it's like it's something
Speaker 3: about Dave's voice.
Speaker 1: During those monologues. It just it just feels like and
Speaker 1: and you know, and that's the that's the big lie
Speaker 1: of American life that just constantly gets repeated, is like
Speaker 1: we we cannot live without black people, but we hate
Speaker 1: being compared to them. And it's like, well, we can't
Speaker 1: deny you physically and talent wise, so what we're gonna
Speaker 1: do is create these narratives that you're not as human
Speaker 1: and you're not nuanced, and you're not dynamic, and you're
Speaker 1: not sensitive, and you're not you know, you're you're you're
Speaker 1: just a very talented, mega souper hero brute. You're not
Speaker 1: really fully human. But what happens over and over and
Speaker 1: over again is whenever we're in a jam, we go
Speaker 1: back to black voices to help us make sense of
Speaker 1: this mess that we made. That's that you're going to
Speaker 1: catch the worst brunt of again, and it's always there.
Speaker 1: You know, you're dealing with their mother and father of humanity.
Speaker 1: You're dealing with the original people. So it's like every
Speaker 1: great thing is from them, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And there's nothing self deprecating about that. It's like saying
Speaker 1: my grandparents are amazing, my mom is amazing, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean.
Speaker 3: It's like we are all.
Speaker 1: In one way or another, the inheritors and the recipients
Speaker 1: of that. And that's what I mean when I say
Speaker 1: that to be connected culturally is to have no problem given,
Speaker 1: to take pride in giving it up to who did
Speaker 1: I learn from? Who came along when there were no
Speaker 1: Grammys for this stuff, and who put in the who
Speaker 1: destroyed their voices and maybe their families and maybe they're
Speaker 1: whatever to build this thing so that someone like Maclamore
Speaker 1: could learn all of that, And then to be asked
Speaker 1: and to not and to deny even you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, to deny that that there's any influence.
Speaker 3: I don't listen to them. I heard scapegoat and I
Speaker 3: never heard I never listened to anything. I didn't see that.
Speaker 1: So yeah, or when people are when or when people
Speaker 1: would ask, to always push it away and downplay it.
Speaker 1: That was a very conscious decision that was made by
Speaker 1: a person who's otherwise very beautiful.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, I mean I feel like, you know,
Speaker 3: there's if you've heard, like you said, the Sage Francis
Speaker 3: of the world, what you guys have been doing over
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously.
Speaker 1: There's something you hear Sage Francis.
Speaker 3: There's definitely there has to be some sort of influence there.
Speaker 1: It's absolutely. I mean, he's so. On his first album
Speaker 1: before he got famous, there's a song called Contradiction Maclamore.
Speaker 1: This is this Maclamore song called Contradiction. He's saying, I
Speaker 1: say I'm about this, but I really do this. He's like,
Speaker 1: I say I'm sober, but sometimes I smoke weed. I
Speaker 1: say I'm this, but sometimes I'm not. He ends the
Speaker 1: He ends the song by saying, I bought fifty cent
Speaker 1: and burned Brother Ali.
Speaker 3: What does that say about me?
Speaker 1: So, by his own admission, he's saying what I am
Speaker 1: about is Brother Ali, but I didn't. But I did
Speaker 1: not buy Brother Ali's album. I bought the fifty cent album,
Speaker 1: which is the antithesis of what my music is about.
Speaker 1: This is the contradiction I'm He also shouted a soap
Speaker 1: rock out when he's got a song about being white
Speaker 1: and white thing and he's like a soop rock is
Speaker 1: the great, you know. So these are choices that are made,
Speaker 1: and it's like, if we're going to be truthful, that's
Speaker 1: that's all it is, you know what I mean. So,
Speaker 1: and this is the only reason I'm saying this because
Speaker 1: I never spoke about against him ever, even when he
Speaker 1: was coming out. When he was successful, it made me
Speaker 1: happy that he was successful, and it you know, it
Speaker 1: makes me more happy that LP is successful because I
Speaker 1: P was in those trenches, deaf jucks baby, LP was
Speaker 1: in those trenches for years. But I'm saying for somebody
Speaker 1: to learn from those trenches and also learn how to
Speaker 1: carry oneself in a way that's respectable. It's not just
Speaker 1: the so there's musical styles like if you listen to
Speaker 1: the way the atmosphere songs are constructed and Ryan Lewis now,
Speaker 1: I know that Ryan Lewis had an hour long conversation
Speaker 1: with Joe Mabbitt, our mix engineer, about how are you
Speaker 1: mixing these brother Ali records so that we focus on
Speaker 1: this type of very intimate personal thing. I know all
Speaker 1: of those stories. I know that the album was manufactured
Speaker 1: in Minnesota, where the rhyme says, albums are I know
Speaker 1: all those details, but there's something about also benefiting from
Speaker 1: someone who came alone, and like, what does it look
Speaker 1: like for a European American person, white person, caucazoid whatever
Speaker 1: to be on stage with rock Kim and Rock Kim
Speaker 1: hands him the mic and it's like, this is the guy,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. But then you look at
Speaker 1: Marlon Kraft. So Marlon Kraft just had that moment with
Speaker 1: uh with Harland's amazing with method Man. I'm getting tales
Speaker 1: thinking about this because Method Man just did a song
Speaker 1: with Marlon Kraft, did not charge him a penny, No
Speaker 1: Marlin Martin, and then he got he's a friend of
Speaker 1: the show, and then he got it.
Speaker 3: And then he did the video with Marlin and would
Speaker 3: not take money. Then he came to Marlon Craft is
Speaker 3: curating a weekly or like a night in New York
Speaker 3: with a band. Methan Man comes out to the thing
Speaker 3: and says, I want everybody to know I love this dude.
Speaker 1: I rock with this dude. But if you ask Marlon Craft,
Speaker 1: where are you learning this from?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Marlon Craft came out on tour with me in Evidence
Speaker 1: with me and Evidence to it again. We made an
Speaker 1: album together, will always give it up. Marlon Craft is
Speaker 1: a little different guy. He comes from the culture in
Speaker 1: a way that I think. Or if you talk to Evidence,
Speaker 1: you know and you say Evidence will say I could
Speaker 1: only be in the room a lot of times. Because
Speaker 1: he's from Venice. A lot of people think FS Puerto Rican.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are like that. There's no way
Speaker 1: that soul for man. Michael Peret White, he's Italian, but
Speaker 1: he says, Roka taught me RockA Irish sirens taught me
Speaker 1: how to be in these rooms. RockA took me to
Speaker 1: somebody's house and just got home from prison. This is
Speaker 1: evidence telling a story. And I ask him what you do?
Speaker 1: Rock opulls me in the other room and says, here, we
Speaker 1: don't say what you do, We say what they get
Speaker 1: you for.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean. This is like to be
Speaker 3: taught and to be to be instructed, whether it's direct
Speaker 3: or whether it's just from watching it. What you do
Speaker 3: in culture is you you benefit from people who don't
Speaker 3: get the recognition, and then you allow your recognition to
Speaker 3: also benefit them that didn't happen.
Speaker 1: That's all I'm saying, Okay, have you guys ever talked yes,
Speaker 1: like in the last like recently, not recently recently, but
Speaker 1: we talked about this, so so you guys have this conversation. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I'm saying and it's interesting because so many people
Speaker 1: in the music industry asked me about it. Why does
Speaker 1: he sound like you? Why is this so much like you?
Speaker 1: Why does this sound so much like atmosphere?
Speaker 3: Why does this? And why don't you ask him?
Speaker 1: But they don't, But Tyler Quality asked him on the podcast,
Speaker 1: and I can let people watch it.
Speaker 3: It was unfortunate.
Speaker 1: Michael Moore said, I think that my success has really
Speaker 1: had an impact on and it's not his success, happy
Speaker 1: for his success. It's the it's there there there. There's
Speaker 1: a history of lies of omission where you know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people for a long time didn't know that
Speaker 1: you ain't nothing but a hound dog isn't an Elvis
Speaker 1: Presley song. It's a big Mama Thornton song. Right. A
Speaker 1: lot of people don't know that. And so you say,
Speaker 1: even if you go back and say, okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: pay her royalties, she taught you how that, how to
Speaker 1: present that, how to phrase it, how to you know,
Speaker 1: you know, you hear, you hear It's it's a historical thing.
Speaker 1: It's a historical thing that happens that when somebody gets
Speaker 1: recognized for something, you have the choice to either shed
Speaker 1: the light on the people that you learned from, whether
Speaker 1: he likes us the best or not. I know I'm
Speaker 1: one of his favorites or I was at some point,
Speaker 1: but he learned a lot from that group of people,
Speaker 1: and he's not the only one. And it's interesting because
Speaker 1: other people that also had that that booking agent that
Speaker 1: I was like one of his first artists. A lot
Speaker 1: of the things that Maclamore did he wanted me to do.
Speaker 1: So I had said the F word about gay people
Speaker 1: on my first album, and then I realized how that
Speaker 1: was a cruel thing to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean times change. That word obviously has not
Speaker 3: aged the best.
Speaker 1: But I was wrong when I said it, the fact
Speaker 1: that everybody else said it, I was wrong. So I
Speaker 1: made a song where I said something correcting that. And
Speaker 1: Zach Quillin, who is Maclamore's manager, comes to me and says,
Speaker 1: you just made the first ever pro gay hip hop song.
Speaker 1: You need to be the first rapper on Ellen. We
Speaker 1: need to make a campaign out of this, and I said, nah,
Speaker 1: that's corny to me because it's not my issue. I'm
Speaker 1: just correcting a bad thing that I did, Like I
Speaker 1: did a cruel thing. I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: cruel person. I need to take myself to account. And
Speaker 1: he said, man, you're missing a big opportunity. So he
Speaker 1: took that and applied it to Maclamore. But you got
Speaker 1: to make the song that's going to be the thing,
Speaker 1: and you're going to be the first. So now here
Speaker 1: he is on stage, this is the first pro gay
Speaker 1: hip hop song. He's from a city where there are
Speaker 1: gay there's a there's a women of color that are
Speaker 1: LGBT called the Satisfaction Dreamampton did a video for them.
Speaker 1: They're down with Ish from Diggable Planets in Shabbad's Palace.
Speaker 1: It's well known. But also this is a story taking.
Speaker 1: This is something that I thought was corny for me
Speaker 1: to do. It's like, okay, we'll just take an apply
Speaker 1: it there. So when you're on that stage, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not the first to do this. There
Speaker 1: are others that have done it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: I mean merce made a video where he kissed a
Speaker 1: dude in the video. I remember that it's called animal
Speaker 1: style because Merce is really with the ish at all times.
Speaker 1: Sure Merce is, you know, he's from Miss City for sure.
Speaker 1: And he's like, hey, if you're gonna if you don't
Speaker 1: like them, don't like me either. What's up?
Speaker 3: You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Mrse is a straight man, married, got a bunch of kids,
Speaker 1: married a beautiful Brazilian lady, got a bunch of babies.
Speaker 1: But he's like, hey, man, you want to fight gay people,
Speaker 1: here's me kissing a dude on a thing. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have done it exactly that way. But Merce is one
Speaker 1: thousand with whatever he's doing, for sure, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. That's one of my dearest friends. So it's like, man,
Speaker 1: you know all this right, So it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: along with being a beautiful person, along with all the
Speaker 1: good he's done. He also paid Grandmaster kas And and
Speaker 1: uh And and Grandmaster Cas Melly mel and Kolmo d
Speaker 1: a bunch of money to be in it.
Speaker 3: He made a video.
Speaker 1: Called uh uh It's about motor scooters.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that song's hard too. Fuck I forget the
Speaker 3: name he made the song. He wanted an old school
Speaker 3: in it. Yeah, he reached out to Big Daddy Kane.
Speaker 3: Big Daddy Can is a mentor of mine. He said, Cain,
Speaker 3: who should I get in this? He said, if you
Speaker 3: really want to get legends, who you got to get?
Speaker 3: And he put them on Macklamore put him in the video.
Speaker 3: He paid them.
Speaker 1: He's done a lot of good things. That's one area
Speaker 1: where he didn't And so I wasn't planning on talking
Speaker 1: about this today. But he's done so many good things.
Speaker 1: He is a good person. I think he and he's
Speaker 1: good with me and what he's he told quality that
Speaker 1: was confusing to him is like, Ali is so loving
Speaker 1: to me, but then he then he also has feelings
Speaker 1: about whatever. And I'm like, yes, I'm loving to you
Speaker 1: because I love you. You're very lovable, like undeniable you. Right,
Speaker 1: if you're in a room with this person, it's just like, man, oh,
Speaker 1: come on, man, look you know what I mean? Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's not that is a but when there's an
Speaker 1: injustice we have to tell the truth about that's an injustice.
Speaker 1: That's an injustice that in the time that it could
Speaker 1: something could have happened, it didn't. So he's got the
Speaker 1: Grammy he's got money. What he wants now is to
Speaker 1: be respected, and so Gaza is one of those things
Speaker 1: where he is really genuinely speaking about stuff, even though
Speaker 1: he's not as connected to it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: But he is speaking. There are people that there are
Speaker 1: sponsorships that he probably could have gotten that will walk
Speaker 1: away from him. He's making real sacrifice.
Speaker 3: He's definitely made some sacrifices because I know it's like
Speaker 3: doing a lot of the protests and stuff and performing
Speaker 3: at him like I mean, it's kind of crazy to
Speaker 3: think that, like people are losing verses and the idea
Speaker 3: of like people being kicked out of school for protesting,
Speaker 3: and I mean, it's like the opposite of freedom.
Speaker 1: I've had a file with the Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 1: since Uncle Sam goddamn came out. They took money from
Speaker 1: me when I was on tour. They seized my tour money.
Speaker 1: They came to my house and banged on my door
Speaker 1: on my birthday and scared my daughters and tried to
Speaker 1: cut the FBI tried to come into my house. I've
Speaker 1: had you know, I've been strip searched, I've been harassed,
Speaker 1: I've been pulled off airplanes, I've been I've been going
Speaker 1: through all of this.
Speaker 3: For a very long time, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But to see somebody like that step in in the
Speaker 1: way that he can this thing is this is a
Speaker 1: conversation about him now, which is which is not what
Speaker 1: I attended. But we're in a very interesting place in
Speaker 1: the world, and so when people make the decision to
Speaker 1: try to say something, it's admirable by all counts, no
Speaker 1: doubt about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's you know, I think we're just gonna,
Speaker 3: like you said, we're in a weird place in the world, man,
Speaker 3: where it's like sometimes I'll read stuff out loud and
Speaker 3: I'll be like, this is a thing like you can
Speaker 3: you like, if we're supposed to be in America where like,
Speaker 3: you know, you're supposed to have freedom to protest, and
Speaker 3: you know, the First Amendment is supposed to be the
Speaker 3: one thing we hold above all. But if there's just
Speaker 3: one thing right that mark up out of here.
Speaker 1: For Mark Lamont Hill wrote a book called Everything Except Palestine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's so crasho out to him, by the way, amazing,
Speaker 3: But it's just it's just interesting because you know, I
Speaker 3: think about uh, I can't think of the guy's name,
Speaker 3: the journalist. I've watched him for years. He ended up
Speaker 3: leaving at MSNBC when all this happened because he's fuck
Speaker 3: what's his name. You might know he's he's Middle Eastern.
Speaker 3: He had a show on MSNBC, and when all this
Speaker 3: shit happened, he left, he had to leave. It's almost
Speaker 3: like it's just crazy. It's like I said, right, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's him. But we're living in like the upside down world.
Speaker 3: But it's not necessarily the upside down world. I feel
Speaker 3: like it's always kind of been the world. It's just
Speaker 3: now it's a little bit more. Now it's with TikTok
Speaker 3: and social media, you can't hide from what's happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even they.
Speaker 3: Try to get TikTok up out of here, you know.
Speaker 1: What I'm saying. It was while at the same time
Speaker 1: saying we're gonna, we're gonna clamp down less on Facebook,
Speaker 1: which is like, we know who's on Facebook, right, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna, But but TikTok has to be and we
Speaker 1: know who's on TikTok. And that's the thing because if
Speaker 1: the it's like is it free speech or is it
Speaker 1: just a speech?
Speaker 3: I like exactly. And that's the one thing where it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: like you know, we're getting to this point where both
Speaker 3: sides are trying to act like their free speech absolutists,
Speaker 3: but they're both very full of shit in terms of
Speaker 3: like what they're what they cherry pick, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And that is the one thing about X is there's
Speaker 3: some crazy shit on X. But on X at the
Speaker 3: very least, like it seems as if unless you like
Speaker 3: talk about Elon Musk in a negative way, he'll block you.
Speaker 3: But I see a lot like Sean kings still thought
Speaker 3: on X, you know, like they got Sean King the
Speaker 3: fuck up out of here. Sean King had the like
Speaker 3: on Instagram. I feel like on IG at least Sean
Speaker 3: King was showing everybody what was happening in Gaza and
Speaker 3: then with like a Thanos finger snap, he was just
Speaker 3: gone from the Internet. And I'm like, what this is crazy? Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, but he was still at least on X.
Speaker 3: But like, but TikTok, I'm not big on TikTok, but
Speaker 3: I know that was It was interesting that the conversation
Speaker 3: went from all of these people were against banning TikTok.
Speaker 1: And then a few years.
Speaker 3: Passed, the probably two years past or whatever, and then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, it's conveniently everybody's in unison that
Speaker 3: TikTok should be banned. Yeah, And it was like, well,
Speaker 3: what changed October seventh happened, which obviously, you know, how
Speaker 3: do you feel about what happened on October seventh? It
Speaker 3: was you know, a lot of people died. It was
Speaker 3: very sad. It was a situation that nobody would condone.
Speaker 3: But when you look at the full context and nuance
Speaker 3: of the last you know, one hundred years, however many years, right,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's it's a full picture thing. And the
Speaker 3: propaganda and a lot of the misleading of what actually
Speaker 3: happened that day and whether or not it was purposely
Speaker 3: allowed to happen. Man, And there was an incredible amount
Speaker 3: of lives told, a lot of lies, and a lot
Speaker 3: of a lot of it would seem that it was
Speaker 3: allowed to happen because I mean, listen, not to get
Speaker 3: too deep into the weeds of conspiracy theorists, but you know,
Speaker 3: you needed a really big excuse to have to go
Speaker 3: in and take Gaza, right, because that's always been that
Speaker 3: There've never it's never been a secret that that's that's
Speaker 3: what they want, you know, especially with the West Bank.
Speaker 3: And so now you have the biggest excuse you you
Speaker 3: can you can do.
Speaker 1: Whatever you want.
Speaker 3: And for the most part, people are gonna you know,
Speaker 3: but the thing is and then social media comes in,
Speaker 3: so for the most part, people aren't the younger generations
Speaker 3: like now this is some this is crazy, and so
Speaker 3: that's my thing. It's like, at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: how do you feel about Israel is a country? How
Speaker 3: do you feel about what happened on October seven? If
Speaker 3: you could be honest about what's happening in guys in
Speaker 3: the West Bank? Yeah, and you know, you want to
Speaker 3: be on the right side of history or not. I mean,
Speaker 3: why do we respect Muhammad Ali so much? It's like, yeah,
Speaker 3: he was the greatest boxer of all time, no doubt,
Speaker 3: and he was very handsome and charismatic and smart and
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But he stood on something. We respect Muhammad Ali because
Speaker 1: at the height and he did this more than once,
Speaker 1: by the way, but at the height of that man's
Speaker 1: success career, physical prowess, they said, yeah, fine, you can
Speaker 1: be you can be with with Elijah Muhammada all you want,
Speaker 1: but we're gonna induct you into the army and put
Speaker 1: a uniform on you, and we're basically going to we're
Speaker 1: basically gonna stop. You don't have to. They weren't even
Speaker 1: gonna make them go fight because we could propagandize that
Speaker 1: we're gonna put a uniform on you and let everybody
Speaker 1: know who's boss. And he said, no, you're very not actually,
Speaker 1: And you know, so he gave up his success at
Speaker 1: the at the height of his physical prowess for years,
Speaker 1: for several years, he went broke doing it, similar to
Speaker 1: Colin Kaepernick, similar to Dave Chappelle when he walked away
Speaker 1: from all that money. Yeah, similar to what you know,
Speaker 1: and you know, that's a there's just there's just no
Speaker 1: way around that. But that's why we love and admire
Speaker 1: and respect that man so much. And the way that
Speaker 1: people felt about him at that time was not different
Speaker 1: than somebody speaking out against Gaza. Right now, there's somebody
Speaker 1: speaking against Vietnam at that time in that place, and
Speaker 1: people hated him for it.
Speaker 3: And now and now we look back time, yeah exactly,
Speaker 3: Time tilles the truth, right, So it's like, I don't
Speaker 3: know what's going to happen. But it's like interesting because,
Speaker 3: like you know, I was like very much a part
Speaker 3: of the political spectrum where I couldn't bring myself to
Speaker 3: vote for Kamala Harris because of her involvement. It's tough, man,
Speaker 3: And I was I looked at Joe Stein and I
Speaker 3: was like, I feel good about the vote. I mean,
Speaker 3: I know she's not gonna win, but I feel good
Speaker 3: about the vote. And in my head, I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: nobody can do worse than what the last few couple
Speaker 3: of years have been. And how do you feel now?
Speaker 3: And now, I mean, look, this is I hate when
Speaker 3: people say that, now, how do you feel?
Speaker 2: What?
Speaker 3: I mean, the ceasefire obviously happened, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: at least something cool. But now with this go, oh
Speaker 3: my god, it's like I think this could be We
Speaker 3: all were worried about the Russia Ukrainian War and the
Speaker 3: war with Israel and Hamas kind of sparking World War three.
Speaker 3: I think there's a serious chance that US trying to
Speaker 3: bully our way into Gaza. I don't know if the
Speaker 3: rest of the world's going to stand for that. And
Speaker 3: by the rest of the world, I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know if China is standing for us taking
Speaker 3: over Gaza. I don't know, if you know, like it's
Speaker 3: pretty crazy when you say it out loud and like
Speaker 3: it's kind of become it's just wild, man.
Speaker 1: I mean it's also I mean it's it's it's on
Speaker 1: TikTok now to the difference is TikTok. But I mean
Speaker 1: it's not different from what that. I mean, the entire
Speaker 1: continent of Australia didn't have a single white person on it.
Speaker 1: There was like a multitude of thriving peoples on that island,
Speaker 1: Turtle Island, what we called America now was an entire
Speaker 1: civilization of all these different beautiful tribes and all these
Speaker 1: people that didn't have a single Africans were here before
Speaker 1: Europeans came here. I mean, and you know, this is
Speaker 1: the same thing that's happened. We're living in what used
Speaker 1: to be Gaza to the Native Americans, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean, Like when we go to these like it's
Speaker 1: still striking when we go to like these beautiful sites,
Speaker 1: you go to the Grand Canyon and like I'm crying
Speaker 1: because it's beautiful, but I'm also crying because I know
Speaker 1: what this meant to a group of people who had
Speaker 1: a spiritual bond with this place, and how many of
Speaker 1: their women had to be raped and their children to
Speaker 1: be killed, and their leaders to be killed and hung
Speaker 1: up in public in front of everybody. And I know
Speaker 1: what had to happen for that to for this to
Speaker 1: just now it's a national park.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like And so it's it's it's it's
Speaker 3: interesting because back then when there was settlements and settlers
Speaker 3: and people being you know, cleansed off their land and
Speaker 3: all of the murder, and there was no social media.
Speaker 3: This was this was a new frontier. Now we see
Speaker 3: it all. So it's like now it's like it's it's
Speaker 3: it's almost like a like that's the thing with the
Speaker 3: Goaza situation. It's like, yo, like I just don't understand,
Speaker 3: like I've I've unfollowed people because however you feel about
Speaker 3: Israel and it's right to exist, that's one thing.
Speaker 1: But that's try.
Speaker 3: Lack empathy, yeah, or or at the very least try
Speaker 3: to tell yourself what you're seeing isn't what you're seeing
Speaker 3: to me, it's just crazy.
Speaker 1: Also not new brother, So I mean you know, no,
Speaker 1: you're right, you think about like, well, what was book
Speaker 1: or two. Washington booker T. Washington wrote The Slave there
Speaker 1: because you know, he he he was the child of
Speaker 1: a white slave owner who raped a black, black enslaved person,
Speaker 1: and then he was sent away to a new family
Speaker 1: to be split up from his family. The woman took
Speaker 1: a certain amount of sympathy on him and loved him,
Speaker 1: the white woman, and she taught him to read, and
Speaker 1: the husband tortured her for that. Crazy and yeah, and
Speaker 1: then she actually became as evil as any slave owned
Speaker 1: because she was tortured for teaching him to read and
Speaker 1: for thinking he was a human being, and for loving
Speaker 1: him and treating him like a child. The husband tortured
Speaker 1: her and to the point that she became cruel. But
Speaker 1: because he Washington, but now he knows how to read,
Speaker 1: he knows how to write, and he's actually brilliant, and
Speaker 1: he escapes and he gets north and he realizes, oh,
Speaker 1: the white people here don't know what slavery actually is.
Speaker 1: If they knew what slavery was, everybody, everybody would be
Speaker 1: against it. So he wrote a slave narrative and they said,
Speaker 1: there's no way, there's no way, well, there's no way
Speaker 1: that this that this black man, even though he's light skin.
Speaker 1: There's no way he actually wrote this because they can't
Speaker 1: write like this. That became the conversation. Did he plagiarize it?
Speaker 1: Did somebody white write it for him? That became the conversation.
Speaker 1: So it's like in the Dunya there's good mix with bad.
Speaker 1: In ourselves there's good mix with bad. That's the human condition.
Speaker 1: And also in Nidunia, the more things change, the more
Speaker 1: they stay the same. So I mean that was the
Speaker 1: TikTok of its time. We're powerless pamphlets, more to mouths,
Speaker 1: paper going around and making speeches and you know what
Speaker 1: is I think.
Speaker 3: Now the visual aspect of it is just it's like undeniable.
Speaker 1: You know, there were postcards during that time. So it's
Speaker 1: funny when I talk to people about racing and they're like,
Speaker 1: I know what happened to black people? No, you don't.
Speaker 1: I've been studying this since I was eight years old,
Speaker 1: and I'm still learning something new every day about people
Speaker 1: whose skins were used to make furniture, Like you learn
Speaker 1: something new every day. It's an ocean without a shore
Speaker 1: during that time. People excuse me if this is true
Speaker 1: for people Melah and no Wu, but uh, you know,
Speaker 1: they would hang people. They would hang black men and
Speaker 1: castrate them, and they would cut off their ears and
Speaker 1: they would you know, save them as trinkets and things
Speaker 1: like that, and they made postcards and they sent the
Speaker 1: postcards to their family members, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And this is not a this is not a made
Speaker 1: up thing like you can go to certain museums and
Speaker 1: places like that and see these postcards. These postcards were
Speaker 1: sent all over America. There were physical pictures. People have
Speaker 1: denied this type of brutality the whole time that this
Speaker 1: part of the world has been this part of the world, right,
Speaker 1: we've been denying this. It's it's in our it's who
Speaker 1: we are now. It's not how it's not This isn't
Speaker 1: how it is. This is what it is. Right.
Speaker 3: What was your inspiration to, I guess discover Islam and
Speaker 3: be so I guess a separate question would be just
Speaker 3: I just kind of be so engaged in trying to
Speaker 3: educate yourself on this this stuff.
Speaker 1: So it started because of hip hop man. One of
Speaker 1: my first memories was, like that really sticks with me
Speaker 1: is seeing Minister Fara Khan on Donahue. Okay, the first
Speaker 1: time he was on there, twice. It's masterful, and everybody
Speaker 1: should go on YouTube and look watch both of those.
Speaker 1: It's one of the most even just as an oratorical display,
Speaker 1: it's one of the most amazing things ever. But as
Speaker 1: a little kid, I was always really deeply troubled, like, man,
Speaker 1: America is lying about black people. I didn't know the
Speaker 1: whole history. I didn't know why. But I'm like and
Speaker 1: so seeing Farra Kahn on TV with Phil Donahue and like,
Speaker 1: I look more like Donahue than I do, and man,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, this is incredible. So that was my
Speaker 1: first time I've been then hearing it in hip hop
Speaker 1: and things like that. And then when I was thirteen
Speaker 1: years old, I went and saw keras One give a
Speaker 1: lecture and he brought me on stage. I asked a question.
Speaker 1: He brought me on stage, and he told me I
Speaker 1: should read the autobiography of Malcolm X.
Speaker 3: And I read that book when I was like twelve, yeah, thirteen.
Speaker 1: Same, and then the movie came out. But like we
Speaker 1: grew up in hip hop us, Malcolm X is like
Speaker 1: the Jesus Christ of hip hop yo.
Speaker 3: But then you start to like, you're like, yo, Malcolm
Speaker 3: X is like a player the Detroit red Air of
Speaker 3: his life.
Speaker 1: He was like, yeah, a gangster period, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So the whole time I'm reading this book, I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is the most like yeah, so he's such a
Speaker 1: great book. He's dope. Oh he was a street guy,
Speaker 1: he was whatever. And he's also like an urban guy
Speaker 1: and a city guy at the same time, and like
Speaker 1: he's everything. And so I'm like, I'm not allowed to
Speaker 1: be in this movement, but I'm just gonna imitate them.
Speaker 1: I believe in what they believe in gonna I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do what they do, even though I'm not allowed to
Speaker 1: join it. So then Malcolm goes to Mecca and he's like, oh,
Speaker 1: there are people here that in America would be called white,
Speaker 1: but they're not white. He's like, white is a mentality.
Speaker 1: Just like for years they would say to black people,
Speaker 1: we are the so called negro, just because everybody says
Speaker 1: that's what we are. We existed before anybody else, So like,
Speaker 1: what is this title now Nigro? The same is true
Speaker 1: for European people. It's only been a couple hundred years
Speaker 1: that there was an idea of somebody called white, and
Speaker 1: that was a very specific branding thing that was done
Speaker 1: to try to unite all of the European peasants to
Speaker 1: stop fighting the landowners and the oppressors in Europe and
Speaker 1: to be on the same team. That like, we're going
Speaker 1: to be on the same team. We're all going to
Speaker 1: be white. And trust me, you're part of it. You're
Speaker 1: at least you're not going to be at the bottom
Speaker 1: of the social order and all. And you know, so
Speaker 1: we're on hundreds of years of that lie. So the
Speaker 1: first thing was that Islam addressed that lie. Malcolm said,
Speaker 1: these people, they're not white in how they are, and
Speaker 1: he said if white Americans would learn Islam, study Islam,
Speaker 1: it would help them become human again. And I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's all I've been waiting for. Then I had to
Speaker 1: like learn and figure it out and find a community
Speaker 1: and blah blah blah blah blah. So it's been a
Speaker 1: journey like that ever since. And now my family, like
Speaker 1: we've lived in is Dambul, Turkey for the last four years.
Speaker 1: My wife's also a convert. And the more I learned,
Speaker 1: the more I love it. So you're in Turk, I lived.
Speaker 1: I've been living in is Stumble four years. I do
Speaker 1: not live in this country?
Speaker 3: How is it out there?
Speaker 1: Dope and difficult?
Speaker 3: When you fight home.
Speaker 1: Or rather when you which one is home? Which home?
Speaker 3: Okay? When you when you okay? When you're flying out
Speaker 3: of Turkey? How many guys have the the head rap
Speaker 3: because they had their I know so many, it's insane. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they go out there, they get I guess like they
Speaker 3: the I mean, obviously it's like the world leader for
Speaker 3: scalp surgery or whatever. But my boy went out there,
Speaker 3: He's like, Yo, they got the hotel on lock it's
Speaker 3: like five star service. They take you to it from. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I heard Turkey is beautiful.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, if you're in it's like any other place.
Speaker 1: Like if you go to the tourist location, there's only
Speaker 1: tourists there.
Speaker 3: I'm friend with a lot of Armenians. Man, they got that.
Speaker 3: You know that? Uh, the Turkey vers Armenia thing is
Speaker 3: in La. It's a big.
Speaker 1: It is a big specifically in LA for sure, for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so people ask me about that. And my critique
Speaker 1: has always been of groups that I'm in places where
Speaker 1: I have influences and where I pay my taxes. I'm
Speaker 1: not a Turk. I'm not a citizen of Turkey. I
Speaker 1: don't vote for I don't have any power in Turkey.
Speaker 1: My audience is not a Turkish audience. I don't have
Speaker 1: influence in Turkey, and I don't pay my taxes in Turkey.
Speaker 1: My influence, my taxes, and my voting are here, and
Speaker 1: so I am critical of groups that I'm in for
Speaker 1: sure and people that listen to me.
Speaker 3: So you know what inspired you to go out there?
Speaker 1: So my wife actually studied in Turkey for a summer.
Speaker 1: There's like these like intensives when you become a Muslim.
Speaker 1: You can go and spend a whole summer and they
Speaker 1: just bombard you with learning. It's more than you can
Speaker 1: possibly take in. But you get a lay of the land.
Speaker 1: And she came back and she was like, Yo, Okay,
Speaker 1: this is the specific type of practice that we're going
Speaker 1: to start doing going forward, and someday we're going to
Speaker 1: live in is Stumbul. She's like, you need to live
Speaker 1: in is Stumbul. And so she told me that like
Speaker 1: ten years ago, and I was like, okay, Like her
Speaker 1: instincts are undefeated. I know if she's if she's serious
Speaker 1: about something, it's there's truth there. So I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: all right, so I started visiting, and then during the pandemic,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, now might as well be the time.
Speaker 3: That's dope, man, Yeah was it. I always feel like
Speaker 3: That's why I always tell tell people like I always
Speaker 3: will talk to like people who I've only lived in
Speaker 3: one city or one area in their life. I'm like,
Speaker 3: sometimes you just gotta Obviously, being in radio, I've lived
Speaker 3: all over the country, and I feel like just traveling
Speaker 3: in general, obviously being a touring artist, you get to
Speaker 3: have a lot of nuance in perspective you've been all
Speaker 3: over the world, you know. But a lot of people
Speaker 3: lack that because they just know where they're at, and
Speaker 3: it's so hard. It's easy to tell somebody to travel
Speaker 3: if they're fucking that they've got a full time job,
Speaker 3: you know, and they only have two weeks a year
Speaker 3: of vacation. You know. But just think it's so important man,
Speaker 3: to get nuanced in perspective of the world.
Speaker 1: Well, especially if you're in the dominant group, and people
Speaker 1: in the dominant group don't realize they're in the dominant group.
Speaker 3: Like that's ultimately, you know.
Speaker 1: Unless you grow up in hip hop and you're the
Speaker 1: only person that looks like you're in a room and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, this is actually the reality. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to see what's up with this? Sure, but for most people,
Speaker 1: if you're an American, even if you don't have money,
Speaker 1: even if you're like the world media is telling your
Speaker 1: story and projecting your culture and you don't realize that
Speaker 1: unless you're not from that, and so yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to get like, we don't know ourselves
Speaker 1: until we know what the alternate version of us is.
Speaker 1: Like you have a doctorate degree in the English language,
Speaker 1: until you learn another language that's very different from English,
Speaker 1: you don't really know your language because you only know
Speaker 1: it as an insider. Yeah, it's like if you go
Speaker 1: visit a culture and like they only know each other,
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, you guys do this differently and they're
Speaker 1: like no, what do you mean?
Speaker 3: Like this is what's different? Yeah, no, is what everybody does.
Speaker 1: Yes, So for Americans it's like yeah, man, and it's
Speaker 1: one it's fine, go to Europe, that's cool, But like, man,
Speaker 1: see what's up with Ethiopia, See what's up with the Gambia,
Speaker 1: See what's up with Lebanon, See what's up with you know,
Speaker 1: Vietnam and.
Speaker 3: Go away Asia is crazy.
Speaker 1: Go away from where the tourists are for sure. Don't
Speaker 1: don't be in a tourist area. Go in a place
Speaker 1: of like, well, we don't speak the language. Yes, that's
Speaker 1: the point. That's where you want to be. We don't
Speaker 1: know anybody here, that's the point. And watch how beautiful
Speaker 1: people are to you wherever you go, like man, people
Speaker 1: will help you, they will feed you, they'll smile at you,
Speaker 1: they will welcome you, they will wherever you go. And
Speaker 1: you just start really realizing, like there is a common
Speaker 1: human thing. That's what you get to when you start
Speaker 1: with you. But you got to know different types of
Speaker 1: humans to learn what's my culture, what's our thing? And
Speaker 1: then what part is the human thing? Because so much
Speaker 1: of what we talk about is just the American thing, Yes.
Speaker 3: The American perspective. You brought d One out on the
Speaker 3: road with you. D One is one of my favorite
Speaker 3: guys man such as sweet Dude. He's been grinding for
Speaker 3: years too, yes, but he's like an outlier in today's
Speaker 3: landscape where he's he's got, you know, such a pure
Speaker 3: heart and a message that I feel like rubs the
Speaker 3: establishment the wrong way sometimes, but talk about like your guys'
Speaker 3: friendship and you.
Speaker 1: Know, yeah, so I've known d for over ten years because.
Speaker 3: He's a hard I mean, yeah, he's obviously dropped album mers,
Speaker 3: but you.
Speaker 1: Know he's a he's a Christian Christian Christians. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: matter of fact, you know, we were bonding over that.
Speaker 1: I have his child's book, his children's books over Okay,
Speaker 1: that children's book was the number one selling item on
Speaker 1: my tour. He came out and opened for me and
Speaker 1: made the most of that. You know, I loved it.
Speaker 1: He had a forty five minute set. He did seven songs.
Speaker 1: It was mostly him talking about his message, his book,
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and man, he won over every single person.
Speaker 3: It's amazing.
Speaker 1: And he is who he says he is, yes, and
Speaker 1: what I have to be we were talking is like,
Speaker 1: you know, we both have stood so hard. When I
Speaker 1: first came in as an MC, I was not as
Speaker 1: true to Islam as he has been to Christianity. I
Speaker 1: used to curse like crazy, I used to talk crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: he's had his own evolution as well, you know, to
Speaker 1: a degree. Yeah, but I respect him in my room.
Speaker 1: And when he said those things, it's like, I didn't
Speaker 1: plan here coming to talk about anybody. He went to
Speaker 1: Sway one time, not planning to talk about anybody, but
Speaker 1: Sway was like, he was talking about glorifying violence, and
Speaker 1: Sway was like, what do you mean? And he's so
Speaker 1: d had just given out shoes. He does all kind
Speaker 1: of giveaways in New Orleans. He had just given out
Speaker 1: shoes that said reform on the bottom. They were Meek
Speaker 1: Mills prison reform shoes. He's like, I just promoted this
Speaker 1: because I was so happy that Meek Mills talking my
Speaker 1: prison reform. But he just made a song with Rick
Speaker 1: Ross and Jim Jones where they're talking about killing people.
Speaker 1: So he's like, are what are we doing? Are we
Speaker 1: trying to reform prison but also encourage people to do
Speaker 1: things to go to prison. So he said, Meek Mills,
Speaker 1: you could do better. Brother. I love you too much
Speaker 1: not to be honest with you. He said, Rick Ross,
Speaker 1: you could do better. Jim Jones, you could do They
Speaker 1: threatened his life. Two of the three of those people
Speaker 1: threatened his life. And it's not a joke.
Speaker 3: Like if.
Speaker 1: A head person that's deeply entrenched in the street in
Speaker 1: Harlem come They went back to sway a few days
Speaker 1: later and said, I might not touch you, but I
Speaker 1: can't stop you know, my little one of my nephews,
Speaker 1: of one of the young guys on the block from
Speaker 1: putting in work for you just because they know you're
Speaker 1: trying to get cloud off me. That's a green light
Speaker 1: on your head at that point. Now he has me
Speaker 1: made peace with two of the.
Speaker 3: Three of them.
Speaker 1: Rick Ross is the only one that he hasn't. But
Speaker 1: I just saw he had pictures with Meek Mill, he
Speaker 1: got with Jim Jones. They threatened him and it wasn't
Speaker 1: a joke. And you know, these are the people that
Speaker 1: it's like when you look back, you say, like that
Speaker 1: is a person that really you talking about standing on business.
Speaker 1: Everybody wants to have nice things. Everybody wants to secces.
Speaker 1: That's not special. If you achieve it, it is special
Speaker 1: and we're happy for you. But that's what everybody. It's
Speaker 1: a special person though that says, I will, I will
Speaker 1: relinquish some of my success for what's right, if that's
Speaker 1: what it means. Some people pay the ultimate price, and
Speaker 1: we talk about Malcolm and Martin. Neither one of them
Speaker 1: saw their fortieth birthday. They paid the ultimate price, you know,
Speaker 1: And then you talk about Muhammad Ali didn't pay that price,
Speaker 1: but he paid a price. You talk about, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't pay the ultimate, but I paid a price.
Speaker 1: You talk about our guy Mackelmore's paying a price, and
Speaker 1: you know, and d one is that dude. And it's like,
Speaker 1: ultimately we're going to die, like we're all going to
Speaker 1: be there's a place in the earth where we will
Speaker 1: be buried or burned and scattered or one hundred percent.
Speaker 1: And it's like, what kind of person do you want
Speaker 1: to be when you die? What do you want to
Speaker 1: be the story of you? And nobody ever regretted giving
Speaker 1: up status, fame, all that for what's right, because when
Speaker 1: you die, your status is gone. Nobody knows you. There's
Speaker 1: no you to know, you know what I mean. Nobody
Speaker 1: recognizes you, nobody celebrates you. You don't have things that
Speaker 1: other people. Your grave could be bigger than somebody else,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter. But if it's like that person in
Speaker 1: that hole stood for something, they served others, They told
Speaker 1: the truth when it was dangerous to do it because
Speaker 1: they cared about the people that were being armed.
Speaker 3: Like that's different, Yeah, that's different for sure. And like
Speaker 3: you said, we think back to the Muhammad Ali thing
Speaker 3: like history, you know, like at that time, people didn't
Speaker 3: like what was going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and all those people that were just sitting there, like,
Speaker 1: how dare you change your name? How dare you become
Speaker 1: a Muslim? How dare you walk away from these white
Speaker 1: men that invested this money in your how dare you
Speaker 1: say that you won't go in the military. Who are
Speaker 1: you to do any of that? And he's saying, I'm
Speaker 1: a man, That's who I am, and God made me,
Speaker 1: You didn't make me. We're here together, and I just
Speaker 1: I have just as much right as anybody else to
Speaker 1: say what I think is true, and whatever I have,
Speaker 1: I'll lose it all. But he did that before they
Speaker 1: gave him a gold medal in nineteen sixty when he
Speaker 1: was eighteen in Rome. He wore his gold medal back
Speaker 1: in Louisville, Kentucky, and him and his mom and his
Speaker 1: family and everybody went to the segregated restaurants. But then
Speaker 1: his mom tried to go back without him and they said,
Speaker 1: we don't serve colored people here. So Muhammad Ali is like,
Speaker 1: if this just means that I'm free, but my people aren't.
Speaker 3: I don't want it.
Speaker 1: He threw his gold medal in the Ohio River, crazy eighteen.
Speaker 1: He didn't know he was going to be the most
Speaker 1: famous man on earth. He didn't know he'd be the
Speaker 1: greatest champion ever. He did that because he believed in it.
Speaker 1: And I had I'm friends with his daughter and I
Speaker 1: was like, did he really throw that? She said, I
Speaker 1: don't know, brother Ali, if he really threw that metal.
Speaker 1: But nobody ever found or where's it at? Yeah, they
Speaker 1: went through every single thing that man owned. There's there's
Speaker 1: like a state sales where you can buy his dishes.
Speaker 1: Nobody found the gold medal. I think that gold medals
Speaker 1: in the Ohio River. Let's get to this album, Man
Speaker 1: Satisfied Soul. You and aunt Aunt delivered on a production,
Speaker 1: credible body work. How how long were you guys working
Speaker 1: on this?
Speaker 3: Like? What what's give me the timeline short? It's the
Speaker 3: easiest record we ever made. So it wasn't like over
Speaker 3: some like like like how long would you say was
Speaker 3: the overall recording process?
Speaker 1: So I've made a couple of trips to Minneapolis. When
Speaker 1: I would go back to America, I would go just
Speaker 1: to see Ant And we made a couple of songs.
Speaker 1: But then I said, all right, I'm gonna come back
Speaker 1: here for a month and we'll start working on it.
Speaker 1: We made almost the whole record in that month.
Speaker 3: Wow yeah.
Speaker 1: And then some of the things I had to rewrite
Speaker 1: and then he went in with musicians and things like that,
Speaker 1: and so you know, but the bulk of like this
Speaker 1: is the beat, this is the rhyme, this is the song.
Speaker 1: The bulk of it was in a month. Wow yeah.
Speaker 1: But it's like a lot of a lot of living,
Speaker 1: a lot of hurting, and a lot of healing. Like
Speaker 1: I was in a place where when I left Minneapolis,
Speaker 1: I was at a low point in my life. I
Speaker 1: felt really bad about a lot of stuff, and I
Speaker 1: just had several years of like healing and growing.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure when you're in that position, there's it
Speaker 3: just the pen just is fluid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's like we got all this stuff to say,
Speaker 1: I already know how to make it all round. Like
Speaker 1: I've made so much music. We've made so much music together.
Speaker 1: That's the other part.
Speaker 3: So like, yeah, it's not like you were working with
Speaker 3: someone you you had no chemistry with or yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: you guys know each other's creative process.
Speaker 1: It takes thirty years to be able to make an
Speaker 1: album in a month, and some people make an album
Speaker 1: in a week, you.
Speaker 3: Know what I mean. Sure, but usually they're not very good.
Speaker 1: The albums that get made a week.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but no, but no, I mean it's it's it's
Speaker 3: for me, man. I feel like, uh, you know, it's
Speaker 3: just good when brother Ali's putting out music and hitting
Speaker 3: the man, I appreciate that a lot because I know
Speaker 3: you're always on the road. I'm actually gonna you're doing.
Speaker 3: I just saw you're doing a festival in Phoenix from from.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm doing with Whiz the Yele. Yeah, Damni and
Speaker 1: Marley Dilated will be there, and I'm about to do
Speaker 1: a tour with DJ Abilities DJing for me.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: So like DMC champion. So anybody that so Idea is
Speaker 1: one of these people that like great, amazing, tremendous. See
Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful people we ever knew. He
Speaker 1: died young, and he never got his flowers except for
Speaker 1: in our world. Her people got his face tattooed on him,
Speaker 1: but like he never got Those are the kind of
Speaker 1: people that if you win a Grammy and your your
Speaker 1: and your you're you learned from them. You say his name,
Speaker 1: you say idea. Sometimes you say even if he wasn't
Speaker 1: your favorite, even if he wasn't your friend. Those are
Speaker 1: the kind of things that I would respect, you know.
Speaker 1: But so this was a group of these two amazing
Speaker 1: white dudes. A super nerdy white dude rapper that like
Speaker 1: won the Blaze Battle on HBO and beat Puffies guys
Speaker 1: and all this kind of stuff, and KRS one had
Speaker 1: to give him, gave him a trophy. And then his
Speaker 1: DJ is a movie star looking white dude like he
Speaker 1: looks like Keanu Reeves is something buff and he's a
Speaker 1: yoga teacher and stuff. Amazing turntable list. So these dudes
Speaker 1: were like child prodigies, idea passed away abilities is going
Speaker 1: to be my DJ on the next upcoming tour. So
Speaker 1: it's like having that level of DJ. I don't even
Speaker 1: know what to do. I don't even know where to start.
Speaker 3: You gotta give him, you got to give him a little, like,
Speaker 3: you know, a little five minutes to go crazy, like
Speaker 3: a Babboo, a Batboo type interlude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm thinking that, you know what, that's the that's
Speaker 1: the one to follow. Baboo would dilate.
Speaker 3: Dilated would like take a break and let Baboo just
Speaker 3: go crazy. Yeah, man, fucking sick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or you know. Also nowadays we have a Z
Speaker 1: Trip in ll.
Speaker 3: Oh. Yeah, it's so dope to see Z Trip doing
Speaker 3: it with ll because he's from my hometown. So it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: you guys are from the same town. Yeah, we're from Arizona.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't know. I knew you're both for Arizona, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I didn't. It's like, yeah, and Mellow Music the
Speaker 1: we're partnering with Mellow Music on this album. Mellow Musics
Speaker 1: in Arizona too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, shot to U, Z Trips go man. Z Trip
Speaker 3: is a beautiful guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So with this project, man, what for you like give
Speaker 3: me kind of like your because you have it's it's
Speaker 3: easy to say, like, uh, the latest shit is your
Speaker 3: favorite shit, but this stacks up amongst some of your
Speaker 3: best work. Would you say us is like commercially you're
Speaker 3: big album.
Speaker 1: It's hard so from so basically I did my demo
Speaker 1: tape in two thousand. I did my first like album
Speaker 1: album in two thousand and three that was like underground
Speaker 1: classic before there was before there was distribution or anything.
Speaker 1: Like that was like one of the It's underground platinum,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Shadows of the Sun, right,
Speaker 1: Shadows of the Sun.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then the next one that I did was Undisputed Truth,
Speaker 1: and that one was the beginning of that Warner Brothers deal.
Speaker 1: So that was the first one to come out on
Speaker 1: that thing. And so when that, yeah, when that came out,
Speaker 1: I was on.
Speaker 3: The main stage at Coachella. That did Conan O'Brien.
Speaker 1: And all that kind Like there was a time when
Speaker 1: the music industry was like, this is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Also that there was times where the music industry when
Speaker 1: they were looking for a new white guy that wasn't eminem.
Speaker 1: That was like they were looking for a positive eminem, right.
Speaker 1: They wanted Slug to be that. Slug chose not to
Speaker 1: be that. From atmosphere, I was in the room when
Speaker 1: MTV was trying to do that. Rick Rubin tried to
Speaker 1: recruit him. They all tried to sign him, and Slug said,
Speaker 1: I never want to blow up because I never want
Speaker 1: to fall off. He said, I if I let you
Speaker 1: make me a star, then you get to decide when
Speaker 1: I'm done being a star. If I stay building my
Speaker 1: own world. I do it as long as I want,
Speaker 1: and he's still doing it. Yo. That's you know what
Speaker 1: that that.
Speaker 3: Is very that's one of my I just met Slug
Speaker 3: for the first time.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, man, I figured you had been thoughing Slug
Speaker 1: now I'm a big fan, but I met him.
Speaker 3: I had evidence walk me into their trailer. They had
Speaker 3: a show out here last year with the headlined it
Speaker 3: was Damn Dilated Living Legends Rhyme Fest. Yeah at the
Speaker 3: LA Yeah, Rhymefest, the Homie Rymefest. Yeah, he's the homie
Speaker 3: throws it. He's doing it again this year too. But
Speaker 3: Scooby and two mechs Yes, yeah man. But it was
Speaker 3: It's funny because I was like, yo, man, I was like,
Speaker 3: I remember, like they're playing on alternative radio, yes, which
Speaker 3: was so crazy because like I remember, yeah, like you know,
Speaker 3: in Phoenix we had the Edge and I remember they'd
Speaker 3: be playing Atmosphere.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, this is this is some hip hop
Speaker 1: shit for this.
Speaker 3: And it was just dope to me because I feel like,
Speaker 3: like when we think about the you mentioned Tech nine earlier,
Speaker 3: I feel like Tech nine and Strange Music they got
Speaker 3: so much like and rightfully so they got a lot
Speaker 3: of credit for kind of being like independent pioneers. I
Speaker 3: remember Double XL went out and did a tour of
Speaker 3: their headquarters and it like broke a lot of people's
Speaker 3: brains because they're.
Speaker 1: Like, this is how does this exist? How do we
Speaker 1: not know about this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's when Little Wayne shout o out tech
Speaker 3: when he was in jail.
Speaker 1: I feel like.
Speaker 3: We don't look at in the hip hop world in
Speaker 3: the hip hop bubble, atmosphere and rhyme sayers don't get
Speaker 3: the same they accolades.
Speaker 1: And the respect and part of the reason for that.
Speaker 1: So first of all, yeah, so Tech nine Atmosphere came
Speaker 1: up around the same time. So Tech nine learned a
Speaker 1: lot of the things that they do from insane clown
Speaker 1: posse yes for sure, and they went on to it
Speaker 1: with the I mean they're.
Speaker 3: Kind of like some godfathers of this independent raption for real,
Speaker 3: to talk about the way they monetize their merch fan
Speaker 3: base and all that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so they went So he learned from them,
Speaker 1: and he told the truth about it, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But his ability to rhyme just far surpasses them.
Speaker 1: No dis to them, They're just not top tier lyricists,
Speaker 1: where Tech nine is a technician, like there's a reason
Speaker 1: he's an alien level rapper. I mean, he really truly is,
Speaker 1: and he built it independently. Live show is incredible. Live
Speaker 1: show is incredible, the everything that they did, like, no
Speaker 1: one is more dedicated to their craft than Tech nine.
Speaker 1: So the difference though, between Atmosphere and Tech nine is
Speaker 1: that Tech nine decided, no, y'all are going to y'all
Speaker 1: are going to recognize he cared, he said, and so
Speaker 1: he went out and fought for that. Atmosphere is like,
Speaker 1: I don't care who recognizes me. No, you're right about that.
Speaker 1: We don't care how we don't care who you think.
Speaker 3: That's it because tech really gave a fuck. And I
Speaker 3: remember there was like that point in time where Tech
Speaker 3: nine was on the Carter four yep, and you would
Speaker 3: see like, oh, he's doing a record. I mean, and
Speaker 3: Tech was always doing records with like forty and Cube
Speaker 3: and like certain like, but it was like.
Speaker 1: I think he has a I feel like he has
Speaker 1: a record with Pop.
Speaker 3: He might. I know they were on the same soundtrack
Speaker 3: back in the day, Okay, but I remember he had
Speaker 3: a an.
Speaker 1: Now Roger Troutman. He's got like early.
Speaker 3: Well, he had an album called All Sixes and Sevens
Speaker 3: that dropped in twenty twelve, but that was the album
Speaker 3: that came out that there was the Wayne hype. Wayne
Speaker 3: shouted him out while Wayne was incarcerated, and then all
Speaker 3: these like you would just like like he was fighting.
Speaker 3: He was like, no, young motherfuckers are gonna give me.
Speaker 3: You might just do and then you know shit. However,
Speaker 3: many platinum and gold records later, like shout out, shout
Speaker 3: out to tech Man. But I think I think we
Speaker 3: got to give Atmosphere and Slug and and and and
Speaker 3: what y'all boys are doing in Minneapolis, like real, like.
Speaker 1: I believe the Atmosphere is one of the greatest and
Speaker 1: the most the greatest, most unsung group in hip hop.
Speaker 1: No one's made more music than them, no one has
Speaker 1: toured more than them, and what they to and including
Speaker 1: you know this conversation where I'm like people that come
Speaker 1: later and benefit that don't give credit. Slug couldn't care less.
Speaker 1: He's like, I don't care nobody exactly. He's like, oh
Speaker 1: two O one O two oh two. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So they came out for the first time in ninety seven,
Speaker 1: but that was the first official release, but they've been
Speaker 1: doing stuff before.
Speaker 3: That's gotta be double triple platinum, you would think, I
Speaker 3: don't know. That just feels like one of those albums
Speaker 3: that like we'll live on, Like they could do it
Speaker 3: every every five years. They could do an anniversary vinyl
Speaker 3: every it'll sell out every year. It's twenty fifth anniversary,
Speaker 3: it's a twenty anniversary, it's the twenty six exactly, yeah,
Speaker 3: twenty third. Yeah, so yeah, God loves Ugly Seven's travels.
Speaker 3: They just did an anniversary for You can't imagine how
Speaker 3: much fun we're having, which is my personal favorite one.
Speaker 3: But in that period, like I think I'm the biggest
Speaker 3: Atmosphere fan or Earth Out Fight anybody about it. And
Speaker 3: let's not forget about Slug and Merse two well three
Speaker 3: classic albums. I'd like the first two, but yes, I
Speaker 3: mean Felt Shit was amazing.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, and what
Speaker 1: they inspired. So their way of doing things inspired a
Speaker 1: whole movement from whether they know it directly or not.
Speaker 1: And I've talked to a bunch of these people, but
Speaker 1: kind of what happened started happening independently in the blog era,
Speaker 1: you know, even to a certain degree, like Whiz Khalifa,
Speaker 1: and you know, there was a lot of inspiration from
Speaker 1: I mean, Dame Dash was mentoring people at that time.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of things going on at that time.
Speaker 1: But those guys booking agent was this person I'm talking
Speaker 1: about named Zach Quillen who I was his first. I was,
Speaker 1: I was his first very serious like sine as his
Speaker 1: as a booking agent, and he really fought for me,
Speaker 1: and he also really fought for this approach to music.
Speaker 1: And so who's don't make me go pop? The trunk
Speaker 1: on a yellow Wolf? Yellow Wolf was was was his sign.
Speaker 1: A lot of those people that came out around that,
Speaker 1: like that era of like twenty two thousand and nine,
Speaker 1: twenty ten.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that blog era, that real. That was like the
Speaker 3: meat and potatoes the blog era.
Speaker 1: Yeah, their touring career was in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: inspired indirectly from Atmosphere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, someone like Yellow's done a good job of building
Speaker 3: his own world that he could just exist in forever
Speaker 3: if he wants, you know, he.
Speaker 1: Tour forever, he could drop albums forever.
Speaker 3: And you know, obviously on a different, different thing than
Speaker 3: obviously what we're talking about with Atmosphere, because I feel
Speaker 3: like Rhyme Sayers is a company. I wish they would
Speaker 3: have kept the festival going. J Cole did it one year, right,
Speaker 3: Cold did it. Kendrick did it.
Speaker 1: And one of the things is that they were really
Speaker 1: good at calling it early on people, so a lot
Speaker 1: of people did it right before they blew up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the year before they blew up. Yeah, my boy
Speaker 3: Peter Parker was out. I was just texting in Peter Parker,
Speaker 3: great guy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Also that's my I always give him his flowers because
Speaker 3: I I he was the first radio person outy I
Speaker 3: saw on YouTube, like in like full B ninety.
Speaker 1: Six was it B ninety six?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: And Go ninety five? No, No, Go ninety I'm talking
Speaker 3: about back in the day. Go ninety five was more recent. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but he had like the full YouTube the whole video
Speaker 3: camera set up in their studio. So I'd be like, yeah, oh,
Speaker 3: they're doing fucking YouTube videos with their.
Speaker 1: Streams and she was having freestyles all that stuff. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He was just stuck in Minnesota withple what to do. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then they did a dope thing with Go. It
Speaker 3: didn't work out long term, but they had a new
Speaker 3: approach to radio where they were just like, we're just
Speaker 3: gonna play this shit we want to play and it
Speaker 3: was cool and uh, you know, shout out to Yeah.
Speaker 3: Minneapolis has always kind of been like that cool city
Speaker 3: that like flies under the radar, but it's like it's
Speaker 3: a great music town.
Speaker 1: Great I mean, fucking Prince. What are we talking about, Prince?
Speaker 1: I mean Mint Condition. Yeah, and Jimmy jam and Terry Lewis.
Speaker 1: Like Jimmy, jim and Terry Lewis, I'm of the greatest
Speaker 1: producers of Lizzo has roots in Minneapolis. Lizzo made her
Speaker 1: her thing happen in Minneapolis. Like I was there for
Speaker 1: all of that. Yeah, I saw all of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Lizzo is she's from Texas, but where Minneapolis where she cracked.
Speaker 3: Minneapolis where she learned how to do what she did,
Speaker 3: Not that she owes it to anybody in particular.
Speaker 1: Her thing is a lot more.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: It's interesting though, that her whole like I'm big and
Speaker 1: I love myself anyway. You know, the song that did
Speaker 1: it for me was called Forrest Whitaker, which is basically
Speaker 1: like I'm albino and I love myself anyway. It's a
Speaker 1: very similar kind of thing, but it's not.
Speaker 3: She wasn't up in our mix like learned studying everything
Speaker 3: and that, but she was in she was a.
Speaker 1: Part of that world. Yeah, sure, yeah, she was part
Speaker 1: of that world. And she did a project with one
Speaker 1: of the other labels. It's called Doom Tree and there's
Speaker 1: a guy on that producer on that label, kind of.
Speaker 3: Like the aunt of their from out there too. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And Minneapolis is like fucking just the backpack paradise.
Speaker 1: It really is, and I mean for everybody, and also
Speaker 1: every touring band or comedian knows that, Like when we
Speaker 1: get to Minneapolis, we're have a good night.
Speaker 3: That's everybody's I always feel like it's Minneapolis and Denver.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Denver is Denver is rich now though, so
Speaker 1: there's Denver got big time on everybody.
Speaker 3: Denver's like a great just you have to go to Denver,
Speaker 3: You have to go to Minneapolis so many venues, and
Speaker 3: I feel like fans show up in those cities for
Speaker 3: some reason. They just show up.
Speaker 1: There's a culture of like okay, man there, Yeah, they're
Speaker 1: making music like we gotta all go be part of it,
Speaker 1: and like they know how to be an audience. They
Speaker 1: also expect a good show, have you done Red Rocks, Yeah,
Speaker 1: many times.
Speaker 3: How amazing is Red Rocks? I've never been. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: try to go soon. I think Wiz is doing something
Speaker 3: at Red Rocks on four.
Speaker 1: You know, and profits from Minneapolis.
Speaker 3: Prof shout, it's a prop man prophets, you know.
Speaker 1: It's funny.
Speaker 3: There's two or three times he was supposed to come
Speaker 3: on the pod and then ended up getting rescheduled or
Speaker 3: I just didn't end up working out. But Profits another prolific.
Speaker 1: Very talented person, very hard working guy. He's another one
Speaker 1: that like everyone that knows him loves him. I don't
Speaker 1: know him like that, but there's definitely a mutual respect
Speaker 1: every time I see him as like, I know what
Speaker 1: it means to work as hard as you're working and
Speaker 1: to be as dedicated and man extremely And he's another
Speaker 1: one that he had a period where he was connected
Speaker 1: to rhymes all.
Speaker 3: Time, great white rapper city ever in Minneapolis. Well I
Speaker 3: never thought about that before. It's true though, Yo, So
Speaker 3: you said, so you already planning the next tour, then
Speaker 3: if you already got abilities locked in.
Speaker 1: And yeah, so the tour that tour is announced, that'll
Speaker 1: be April and May, and then I just announced I'm
Speaker 1: going to do a week in the UK and we
Speaker 1: have other European stuff coming and Australia will be coming
Speaker 1: soon announcing soon.
Speaker 3: That's dope, man, Are you? Are you? Like? For you
Speaker 3: is the when you put an album out like this
Speaker 3: and you get so much off your chest? Right? Are
Speaker 3: you the type of person that needs some more living
Speaker 3: to be inspired for the next thing? It's great I
Speaker 3: used to be or do you still have like some
Speaker 3: more like obviously it's what about four years since the
Speaker 3: last album.
Speaker 1: Well, so we did the Love and Service album that
Speaker 1: nobody knew about that was just a year ago.
Speaker 3: Okay, that was a year ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so but yeah, my last like major release was
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen Crazy.
Speaker 3: And is that your last album with yep?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And so I've done some projects in between them,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, this is the first like main release.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I don't think it's going to be as
Speaker 1: long now because of the fact that I have my
Speaker 1: own outlet, like now, I control my own so like
Speaker 1: I can literally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like if you get inspired and want to drop
Speaker 3: an EP in six months, so you could just like
Speaker 3: we're gonna do it.
Speaker 1: And then also I know that I will see every
Speaker 1: sale come in and it will all go directly to
Speaker 1: me and my partner. So bk One, who is the
Speaker 1: DJ you saw with us back then. H He DJ'ed
Speaker 1: for me and Evidence back then. So he was my
Speaker 1: first DJ and he comes from radio. He is the
Speaker 1: one that introduced me to rhyme. Sayers like the closest
Speaker 1: thing I got to a Day one and he was
Speaker 1: with me in a rhyme series Days. He made a
Speaker 1: really dope record called Radio Da Kinaball with Brazilian samples
Speaker 1: and Man Doom and Black Thought and Scarfacer on it.
Speaker 1: It's a dope album. So he did that and then
Speaker 1: he left the road and he started an anti racist
Speaker 1: radio station, Low Watt radio station in Minneapolis. This guy
Speaker 1: is dope. So when I stepped away from rhyme stares
Speaker 1: and moved to Turkey, I just let him know. I
Speaker 1: was like, I'm going to start my own podcast. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna start my own operations. I want to write, I
Speaker 1: want to teach, I want to do so and so.
Speaker 1: And he's like, yeah, I'll do that with you. Like
Speaker 1: what you mean, like along with your He's like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm leaving the radio station anyway. I'm going to dedicate
Speaker 1: my life to this again. Oh yeah, man, So you
Speaker 1: guys are together. So now it's different when you release
Speaker 1: music and you put it out and you go on
Speaker 1: Spotify for artists and you watch the streams, and then
Speaker 1: you go on destroy Kid on your phone and you
Speaker 1: watch the money, and then you go on Shopify and
Speaker 1: you watch the merch and then you go on your
Speaker 1: website and you watch the thing, and then you go
Speaker 1: to your bank account and it all it's all there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you split it with one person who is
Speaker 1: dedicating his life to this work the same as you are.
Speaker 1: It's just clean, it's nice. It's you know. And shoutut
Speaker 1: to Alchemist because when I told Alchemists I was thinking
Speaker 1: about doing that, he was like, call me and he
Speaker 1: sat on the phone with me for an hour. Just
Speaker 1: try to do that. Don't don't, don't don't do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, look quietest, cap Al's been running it up with alc.
Speaker 3: Whether it's the I mean on the Vinyl front ols
Speaker 3: killing it man. You know, obviously I don't know if
Speaker 3: you hear I mean the new two chains Larry june
Speaker 3: aut Me put out. It's incredible. I think it might
Speaker 3: have came out the same day. Your album dropped a
Speaker 3: week before. H Yeah, yeah, I came out the same
Speaker 3: day as Westside Gun. Yeah. Shout out to Al though.
Speaker 3: Al is uh Man just the just the best.
Speaker 1: And he has an album coming with yam Bay. I've
Speaker 1: not heard it. I've never heard anything. Yeah, I've heard
Speaker 1: it though, is it crazy? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Man?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Seen was sending me the songs as they were
Speaker 1: making them. Oh man, and so yeah, I mean they
Speaker 1: did a black Blackstar album. You know.
Speaker 3: I know a lot of people didn't get to hear
Speaker 3: it because it wasn't on DSPs. But the Lives Blackstar.
Speaker 3: I'm a solid man, but I love man. If I
Speaker 3: could get Yasine Bay what the Alchemist for a whole album,
Speaker 3: I will pay any amount of money.
Speaker 1: For that when you're about to and yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: I mean yah, Seen is really against DSPs.
Speaker 3: He's like that is I get it, though, I get it,
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, you want to give a
Speaker 3: shout out to Larussell. L Russell's doing a good job
Speaker 3: of kind of rethinking, like I guess, kind of the
Speaker 3: business model approach to like music. It's like, hey, like
Speaker 3: you know you can buy it or wait a while
Speaker 3: and then it'll end up on DSPs. You know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, rock Marcy did that. Yeah, is another person that
Speaker 1: does not. I mean, for as much as we love
Speaker 1: him he is, he doesn't get the credit. He's the
Speaker 1: goat in a certain sure, sure, you know he's not struggling,
Speaker 1: he's doing very well. But man, rock Marcy is another
Speaker 1: one of those guys that like, man, let's tell the truth.
Speaker 1: Let's tell the truth about I love Griselda, but it's
Speaker 1: like when Griselda gets your shine, you have to you
Speaker 1: have to tell you have to talk about rock Marcy.
Speaker 1: Don't try to hide that, ye don't hide that. That's
Speaker 1: what colonialism is, That's what slavery is about. That's what
Speaker 1: the culture is. Where you love the people you come
Speaker 1: from and learn from their grind helps you, Your shine
Speaker 1: helps them.
Speaker 3: Don't talk to Conway a lot about I know Conway's
Speaker 3: giving it up to Uh.
Speaker 1: Maybe they have and then forgive me if I don't mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to.
Speaker 3: But no, but rock Marcy's kind of the goat of
Speaker 3: that world in terms of especially in terms of just
Speaker 3: kind of just cultivating like fans and turning that into monetization, merch,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Like obviously Griselda has built their own world,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: And then you see that like man Ca died and
Speaker 1: kr was another one of those voices. That's like anybody
Speaker 1: getting shine in that world, especially if you came after
Speaker 1: the ten years of work that that Rock Marcy and
Speaker 1: Cod did, like man Car worked a regular job, right
Speaker 1: so that he could make that type of music. It's like, dude, that,
Speaker 1: like you can't take that away from each other. Like, Okay, Elvis,
Speaker 1: you're great, you shake your butt. You're white and you
Speaker 1: can still shake your butt. Great, right, great, none wrong
Speaker 1: with that. That doesn't make you a bad guy. But
Speaker 1: Big Mama Thornton had to be black in America in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and that's why. And like she's sang
Speaker 1: like that. So just when somebody is saying, hey, you
Speaker 1: ain't in, but a hound dog is dope, be like yeah,
Speaker 1: shot out to Big Mama Thornton, Like that's it. What's
Speaker 1: wrong with that? What the hell is wrong with that?
Speaker 1: And then the whole time that Rock Marcy is like man,
Speaker 1: people are writing him off and counting him out, and
Speaker 1: I mean he says it all the time, and he's
Speaker 1: got the right to talk like that. Because like, yeah,
Speaker 1: when people are putting shakers and cow bells in their
Speaker 1: beats trying to be the Neptunes, He's like, Yo, I'm
Speaker 1: looping this and I'm rapping over it. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: no drums fifteen bpm slower than what everybody's doing. And
Speaker 1: they're like, yo, you, but you could have a record deal,
Speaker 1: not if I got to make music like I don't.
Speaker 3: Want to make that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't want to I don't want to make
Speaker 1: the Neptunes, but I want to do this. And then
Speaker 1: kay is doing that, and he's got to work a
Speaker 1: job and so that he can be that free. Kle's like, look,
Speaker 1: you're not gonna tell me. I'm not doing this for
Speaker 1: my fans. I'm doing this because it's the music in
Speaker 1: my heart. If KAYI has to work a job and
Speaker 1: do all of that, then when we benefit from that,
Speaker 1: we just got to say we got to make that
Speaker 1: a part of it. Every time I'm rhyman is Ka.
Speaker 1: You know, I love Action Bronson. It's like when he
Speaker 1: got angry when people kept telling him ghost face. Yeah
Speaker 1: I remember.
Speaker 3: I think he probably regrets again beautiful because he was
Speaker 3: it on ESPN or say it was all somewhere random.
Speaker 1: But I feel like he probably he got tired of
Speaker 1: hearing it. But it's like, Okay, your voices are the
Speaker 1: same register. He's not faking his voice when you hear
Speaker 1: him talk, He's amazing.
Speaker 3: For yourself.
Speaker 1: I'm eating schnail pigeons with sew and so like I'm saying, like,
Speaker 1: he's amazing. And he's a nice person, hard working person,
Speaker 1: talented person. He's not a punk. He's a beautiful dude. Nothing.
Speaker 1: But it's like, Okay, yes, you have the same register.
Speaker 1: Ghost Face came up for all these years showing you
Speaker 1: how to use a voice that sounds like that. So
Speaker 1: and if you're gonna sound that much like him, then yeah,
Speaker 1: you're gonna hear his name a lot. And you can't
Speaker 1: be mad about that. Like that you got you gotta
Speaker 1: discipline the ego to win, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: When I came out, people told me I sound like
Speaker 1: Pharaoh Munch. And then one day I'm sitting there rapping
Speaker 1: on the wake up show and I'm going in and
Speaker 1: da da da da da. I opened my eyes and
Speaker 1: there's Pharaoh Monch And I said, oh, man, I said
Speaker 1: on the white people, man people have been telling me
Speaker 1: I sound like you. I love you. I said, do
Speaker 1: I sound like you? He said, Man, somebody showed me
Speaker 1: your picture and said, this guy sounds like you. And
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, now, I don't know about
Speaker 1: all that, but he's but then he's like, then I
Speaker 1: heard you. And we're friends now. And to this day,
Speaker 1: if anybody ever asked me, I'm not I don't have
Speaker 1: I'm not more famous than him either. But it's like, man,
Speaker 1: any white person that doesn't know Pharaoh Monch, it's like
Speaker 1: you don't get to say, man, you're so soulful in
Speaker 1: the sing song y Da Da Da da da, Well
Speaker 1: that's cause of Pharaoh, Munch and Chuck d and y'all
Speaker 1: seen and Kwali and common and you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: If there's ever anybody that celebrates me, and I know
Speaker 1: that you're also celebrating my lineage, I'm proud to be
Speaker 1: from a lineage. I hope I'm worthy of that lineage.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm worthy of you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Those people seem to approve of me, for sure, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And if they didn't, I would
Speaker 1: be I would be not just seeking approval for the
Speaker 1: approvals sake, But it's like if these are people's real life, Like,
Speaker 1: if you're really an artist, you know the blood, sweat
Speaker 1: and tears you're pouring to figuring out how to make
Speaker 1: it sound like this, And so if somebody else has
Speaker 1: done that work, it's like, man, I will never be
Speaker 1: out here gallivat and taking shine that from stuff I
Speaker 1: learned from you. And if you are an artist, you
Speaker 1: know what you added. So Eminem is like, yeah, play
Speaker 1: play Tretch from Naughty by Nature, not the hits, play
Speaker 1: Wickedest Man, Alive by Trench, and play anything from a
Speaker 1: g rap and Red Man. You're gonna hear what I
Speaker 1: learned from them. You're also gonna hear what Eminem brought
Speaker 1: because he also brought something, so he's comfortable and confident.
Speaker 1: He's like, yes, red Man on my T shirt, Go
Speaker 1: listen to Red Man, go listen a month.
Speaker 3: Well, I think even on like eminem show where he
Speaker 3: listed uh uh he had that line was it until
Speaker 3: I Collapse where he mentioned like the best of like
Speaker 3: the greatest of all time list and then and then
Speaker 3: he said and he mentioned all these rappers and then
Speaker 3: put himself at the end, and then me, I think
Speaker 3: it was like corrupt red Man.
Speaker 1: But but he.
Speaker 3: Always I think Eminem has always did a good job
Speaker 3: of paying homage. And if you know anything about Eminem,
Speaker 3: like literally his entire come up is like that of
Speaker 3: like a backpack rapper for real, like fucking.
Speaker 1: He comes from the culture and this there's he was
Speaker 1: on Soundbomban too, you know, like there's a difference with
Speaker 1: any man great with people. Yeah, any man that jump
Speaker 1: in front of a mini band, he's on the.
Speaker 3: It's funny because he was on the cover of Soundbomban too,
Speaker 3: like there was like an illustrated picture of him. Yes,
Speaker 3: that's right, yeah, right, Oh my god, one of the
Speaker 3: best mixtapes ever. Shout out to fucking Jay rock and
Speaker 3: uh bat boo absolutely man, that was shout to be
Speaker 3: junkies down by the Lyricist Lounge, good time. All right,
Speaker 3: So you got the albums out? Uh, you're doing a podcast?
Speaker 3: How often you dropping on the on.
Speaker 1: The podcast every week except for when we don't Okay,
Speaker 1: that's a good answer. Almost every week? Okay, cool? And
Speaker 1: you know all of it's at brother Aley dot com.
Speaker 3: Hitting and hitting the road in a couple of months, uh,
Speaker 3: doing some festivals and obviously the tour with abilities, so
Speaker 3: that'll be dope.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: I appreciate you pulling up the album is incredible, Thank you.
Speaker 1: It is and I love the title.
Speaker 3: It felt like it and I'm really proud of you.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I appreciate that, man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the way that you the way that you engage artists,
Speaker 1: the way you talk to them.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Of course there's viral moments with you said he got
Speaker 1: a million dollars scholarship or something to play like. That
Speaker 1: was great, But I was just like you you there's
Speaker 1: something that seems so simple. It seems like why you fit.
Speaker 1: There's just something about people that come from, you know,
Speaker 1: the dominant culture and care about the humanity of the
Speaker 1: artists that they're talking to and the artistry. You know
Speaker 1: what I mean. And that's obvious. It's always been I
Speaker 1: knew that. Yeah. For me, I'm just a fan dude,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: So it's like I'm a fan first and and you know,
Speaker 3: like you said, something that you said about Atmosphere resonated
Speaker 3: with me. I could chase virality more because I could
Speaker 3: live in the trenches of like.
Speaker 1: You're not messing, yes, but I'm good, and you don't
Speaker 1: encourage the the the what you're focusing on with these
Speaker 1: mostly black artists that you talk to, is their life,
Speaker 1: their humanity, their genius. You're not a person who is
Speaker 1: looking for them to be to be a lesser version
Speaker 1: of themselves because it'll benefit your platform, not naming names,
Speaker 1: but there are people that that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I just you know, I'm also like
Speaker 3: that's the other thing. There's just certain certain stuff I
Speaker 3: can't do because just of how I live, where I'm who.
Speaker 1: I'm with, and it's natural and it's natural to It's
Speaker 1: very natural.
Speaker 3: So I appreciate that. Love Man, Thank You album is incredible.
Speaker 3: Vinyls available yep.
Speaker 1: And start shipping in like a week or something. We
Speaker 1: just just came in from Czech Republic. Brent Rollins did
Speaker 1: the design. Legendary Guy did the Boys in the Hood logo.
Speaker 1: B Plus from out Here shot the photos. So like Man,
Speaker 1: the art is like a real, like tactile experience, Like
Speaker 1: that feels a certain way, and I really dope.
Speaker 3: I love the man, So go go support and I
Speaker 3: appreciate you pulling up man father Ali. There it is