Speaker 1: You are listening to Waiting on Reparations, the production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio, Wong two three Folk, Yeah, yo yo,
Speaker 1: when the revolutions over exploded like a nova. I just
Speaker 1: took a rod to Kroger and nobody pulled me over.
Speaker 1: I got blood so on site and they't nobody sober. Yo.
Speaker 1: My name's Dope Knife. My mama called me Toga go
Speaker 1: and smoke up. It's all rego, it's all legal. We
Speaker 1: all ball, no such things as small people gun sticks,
Speaker 1: pots and pants and fall evil. Now we got plots
Speaker 1: of land for zero. I'm tired of saying, ship, give
Speaker 1: me reparations. Bitch. Nigga's getting hungry in the streets, so
Speaker 1: we ate the rich cops trying to make a brother. Please,
Speaker 1: so I take the fifth, But I'm like CP three
Speaker 1: with the great assists. Bring the troops home. I got
Speaker 1: a new flow, but I'll be blocking on your ship
Speaker 1: like the new bowl wrapping so sweet. They're messing with
Speaker 1: my glue coast. I don't want Delta too close. Hey,
Speaker 1: what is happening? My name is Dope Knife, and you
Speaker 1: are listening to Waiting on Reparations? Hurry up with my
Speaker 1: motherfucking check once again, I am all by my lonesome
Speaker 1: on this one. Well not completely, but I'm just without
Speaker 1: my co host still. Mariah is still on her leave.
Speaker 1: But good news is that she did have the baby,
Speaker 1: and everybody's good and recovering and getting to know one another.
Speaker 1: Don't you know. It's not even my place. I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about any about you know, I want to put
Speaker 1: anybody's business out in the street. But y'all should go
Speaker 1: check us out on Instagram because you can go look
Speaker 1: at Mariah's baby picks. They're up there if you guys
Speaker 1: want to see how the baby's doing. But I can
Speaker 1: speak for all of you listening that lingua franca. We
Speaker 1: miss you and we can't wait to have you back
Speaker 1: on the show. Now. Um, what things to get into
Speaker 1: before we start with the episode? Um, you know what,
Speaker 1: you know what I went and did. I went and
Speaker 1: listened to the new Kanye album Donda, because that came out,
Speaker 1: and I'm a rapper, I'm a hip hopper, and this is,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhat of a hip hop show. So I
Speaker 1: felt that I had to do my my part, and
Speaker 1: I guess I listened to it. I tried to nip,
Speaker 1: you know, killed two Birds with One Stone. So I
Speaker 1: listened to the album while watching the live stream at
Speaker 1: the stadium because even though me and Mariah had talked
Speaker 1: about it before, I hadn't actually seen one of those
Speaker 1: I just saw pictures of it, but I actually sat
Speaker 1: down and watched I think it was like an hour
Speaker 1: and thirty minutes or something of a live stream just
Speaker 1: of the whole event, and it was interesting to say
Speaker 1: the least. But I did you know, in that, I
Speaker 1: did get to hear the album, So I've got some
Speaker 1: thoughts on it, and you know, we'll we'll get into
Speaker 1: that a little bit in the episode today about what
Speaker 1: my thoughts on Kanye's Donda album is. Um, I'll give
Speaker 1: you a little preview of what my thoughts were. It was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: is I musically? Is I? But I, you know, I
Speaker 1: just I'm not in the position where I can consume
Speaker 1: Kanye on a strictly musical level. There's some baggage there,
Speaker 1: So yeah, we'll get into that later. What we've got
Speaker 1: going today is we're gonna be talking about Afghanistan. Obviously,
Speaker 1: it's been in the news heavy for the last few weeks,
Speaker 1: and if you're going to be a prisoner of the
Speaker 1: moment and be caught up into political polls and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. It seems to be shaping the mid term
Speaker 1: elections how those are going to play out, or at
Speaker 1: least what the narratives are going to be. And it's also,
Speaker 1: in my opinion, putting up as risk again of the
Speaker 1: Republicans kind of rallying themselves around US imperialism, which is
Speaker 1: no good for anybody with the Democrats doing bad in
Speaker 1: the polls. So so, you know, it's got some sentimental
Speaker 1: quality to it. Just yesterday, I think they pulled out
Speaker 1: or the last of the US troops left, and Biden
Speaker 1: gave a fiery speech defending his decision to pull the
Speaker 1: troops out. And you know, I'm a I was in
Speaker 1: high school when we invaded Afghanistan. So it's just crazy
Speaker 1: to think of all the time that's past, all the
Speaker 1: people I know, like literally all the adults in my
Speaker 1: life somehow had those wars that we were in affect
Speaker 1: them and touch them. So that's what I want to
Speaker 1: talk about today. We're gonna be talking about Afghanistan. What
Speaker 1: the hell were we doing there? What do we accomplish?
Speaker 1: And uh, maybe looking into the future a little bit
Speaker 1: and seeing what's gonna happen and to talk about that.
Speaker 1: I thought I might bring on a vet to come
Speaker 1: talk with me today, John Hannah, who is in fact
Speaker 1: a Afghan vette of multiple tours and a former army ranger.
Speaker 1: Now he's just I've been I've been coining him the
Speaker 1: lefty surfer Dad. But we'll see how he reacts to
Speaker 1: that when he gets on. But we're gonna have him on.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about Afghanistan, and later on because he's
Speaker 1: such a hip hop enthusiast, he's gonna join me for
Speaker 1: the music discussion and we'll talk about out that Kanye
Speaker 1: Donda album and what our experience was like and if
Speaker 1: our minds are blown, we're gonna get into that after
Speaker 1: the jump. You'll stay tuned, all right, We are back.
Speaker 1: So Monday, right before midnight, the last of the U. S.
Speaker 1: Troops departed from Afghanistan. This happened just a few months shy.
Speaker 1: I think actually might have been like a month with
Speaker 1: some change, Shy of the twentieth year mark that the
Speaker 1: United States have you know, been involved since the invasion
Speaker 1: of that country. It seems like the conflict went on forever.
Speaker 1: I know that it was going on for most of
Speaker 1: my adult life and for you know, obviously anybody who's
Speaker 1: my age to kind of feel the same way. Now.
Speaker 1: The US first engaged in this war in the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the September eleventh attacks, the attacks that led to
Speaker 1: the creation of a slew of new federal agencies, including ICE,
Speaker 1: Homeland Security, the opening of Guantanamobile Prison that's still operational
Speaker 1: to this day. There's people still locked up in there
Speaker 1: with you know what, doesn't seem like any you know,
Speaker 1: forward progress in terms of them getting uh their due
Speaker 1: day in court. Um. It also opened the doors for
Speaker 1: the military industrial complex to have twenty years of pretty
Speaker 1: much just the buffet of defense contracts. And we can't
Speaker 1: forget about the other country that we ended up invading
Speaker 1: in the aftermath of September eleventh, which was Iraq obviously,
Speaker 1: but back to Afghanistan, with President Biden pulling the trigger
Speaker 1: to pull troops out. It appears at almost every aspect
Speaker 1: of corporate media is trying to make them pay for this. Politically, obviously,
Speaker 1: the Republicans are pouncing on it, whether coincidentally or it's
Speaker 1: because of the rise of COVID, or if it actually
Speaker 1: is a result of what people are seeing on the news.
Speaker 1: Biden's polls are taking a dip since the Taliban and
Speaker 1: started taking over everything. Um A pair of suicide bombings
Speaker 1: killed more than a hundred people, including thirteen U S
Speaker 1: Service members and ninety Afghan civilians, and at the Cobo Airport,
Speaker 1: as expected, one of the US parting gifts with the
Speaker 1: country was a revenge drone strike on a vehicle and
Speaker 1: Kabbol that killed ten people, including seven children. This whole
Speaker 1: issue has the Maga Republicans and the neo cons of
Speaker 1: the Bush era kind of finding a truce and they're
Speaker 1: all kind of going after Biden and pretty much pushing
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't be getting out of Afghanistan. In what
Speaker 1: was almost a comical turn, Mitt Romney was on CNN.
Speaker 1: I think it was on Sunday, but he was on
Speaker 1: one of those shows, and he was actually advocating for
Speaker 1: endless war. Like he he was straight up saying that.
Speaker 1: Surprisingly to me, with all of these uh, multifronted criticism
Speaker 1: that's coming at Joe Biden's way, he stood firm by
Speaker 1: his decision. Uh Per CNN. President Joe Biden on Tuesday
Speaker 1: offered a vigorous defensive of his decision to withdraw US
Speaker 1: troops from Afghanistan, defending the chaotic withdrawal from Kabbo, day
Speaker 1: after the last American military planes left the country, marking
Speaker 1: the conclusion to the US longest war, nearly twenty years
Speaker 1: after it began, he said, my fellow Americans, the war
Speaker 1: in Afghanistan is now over. I am the fourth president
Speaker 1: who has faced the issue of weather and when to
Speaker 1: end this war. When I was running for president, I
Speaker 1: made a commitment to the American people that I would
Speaker 1: end this war. Today I've honored that commitment. I was
Speaker 1: not going to extend this forever war. This decision about
Speaker 1: Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It's about ending an
Speaker 1: error of major military operations to remake other countries. So
Speaker 1: for cat like me on paper, that's literally the sort
Speaker 1: of ship that I want to hear. But we'll see,
Speaker 1: we'll see. You know, politics will determine what all of
Speaker 1: these cats do at the end of the day, and
Speaker 1: numbers don't lie. And Joe Biden's taken a hit. Now,
Speaker 1: the voting public's memory can be short, and you know,
Speaker 1: there's still got some time before the mid terms, and
Speaker 1: you have obviously have more time than that before the
Speaker 1: next election. So will this affect them if that is
Speaker 1: what's making the numbers dip. I don't know, but hopefully
Speaker 1: he keeps this tone throughout it. Now I'm gonna bring
Speaker 1: on our guests who's gonna help me try to talk
Speaker 1: about the complicated situation that is the US involvement in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking with a former specialist in the
Speaker 1: one seventy five Ranger Regiment who between two thousand and
Speaker 1: one and two thousand five did multiple tours in Iraq
Speaker 1: and Afghanistan and Small Line Squad, heavy Weapons Squad, and
Speaker 1: as the armory officer. These days, he's pretty much a
Speaker 1: lefty surfer dad and hip hop enthusiasts, and he's a
Speaker 1: good friend of mine. Uh, gonna welcome John Hannah to
Speaker 1: the show. I always I always do my introductions like this, Hannah,
Speaker 1: like in a way like there's an audience or something
Speaker 1: that's gonna go yeah, I like it. How are you doing, man,
Speaker 1: I'm doing great. I'm doing great. That was that was good?
Speaker 1: Is I that? It was good? But uh good? Exactly
Speaker 1: what you said? Surf for Dad mostly Dad, since covid
Speaker 1: U took both kids out of school last year. Um,
Speaker 1: because I don't trust Florida. As you can see, I
Speaker 1: was right. Um I put him back in school because
Speaker 1: the numbers dipped. I just took them back out of
Speaker 1: school because the governor threatened our school to take away
Speaker 1: state funding. And our school was like, yeah, we're just
Speaker 1: gonna do you know honor system. I'm like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't trust any honor system. That is insane. So it
Speaker 1: took them out. Um, they'll be going back to school tuesday. Uh,
Speaker 1: our school because the governor got sued. The santis is little.
Speaker 1: I don't know what you would cause like a mobster tactic, right,
Speaker 1: like a shake. I mean, it's not my fault. I
Speaker 1: killed the guy because I held the gun to his head.
Speaker 1: All you have to do is give me fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: That's what it feelt like. So for like you after
Speaker 1: after coming out of the year of like having the
Speaker 1: girls to be out of school. Um, oh, one of
Speaker 1: one of his daughters is my god daughter by the way,
Speaker 1: full disclosure, But like are you more like what do
Speaker 1: you what are you looking for forward to? Do you
Speaker 1: want them to like be back in school or do you? Man?
Speaker 1: I can't wait for them to be back in school.
Speaker 1: I am not a good teacher. We need to pay
Speaker 1: them way more money than any corporate executive. I don't
Speaker 1: know that anybody realizes what it requires teach mathematics and
Speaker 1: physics to one and then to like A B and
Speaker 1: C the other one. But it is impossible. I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm not cut out. Just all the tasks and my
Speaker 1: wife's full time works, so but it's all at home. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you guys are maintaining though, right, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're doing good. We're making it. I skate a lot
Speaker 1: more because there's no kids at the skate park, so
Speaker 1: ghost town. Well, so I brought you on because obviously
Speaker 1: with everything going on in Afghanistan, and I mean one
Speaker 1: of the things that, you know, one of the things
Speaker 1: that was kind of kind of shape my political awareness
Speaker 1: and identity was you know, around the time when I
Speaker 1: met you and you were just getting out of the
Speaker 1: Rangers and stuff like that. So just, you know, for
Speaker 1: for due diligence, why don't you tell us a little
Speaker 1: bit about how you ended up getting into the Rangers
Speaker 1: and subsequently ended up in Afghanistan. Of course, skipping the
Speaker 1: norm small town trying to get out of here story.
Speaker 1: I ended up in range of Reattalion after the normal
Speaker 1: selection process and the moment I got in, I got
Speaker 1: out of airborne school. We get to our unit and
Speaker 1: they're like, hey, you need to get on this helicopter
Speaker 1: and here's some AMMO and here's this film of what
Speaker 1: happened to the twin towers. I'm like, oh wow, they're
Speaker 1: really into this. The whole like production values insane and
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait a minute, this is fucking live ammo.
Speaker 1: This isn't one of our normal you know, jog for
Speaker 1: twenty miles and may get to a shoot house type
Speaker 1: of deal. Anyway, it actually caught me by surprise. I
Speaker 1: missed whatever the public saw, right. Uh. I caught the
Speaker 1: second tower falling because of the first tower video, and
Speaker 1: we were like booted and suited, ready to go, and
Speaker 1: I had just gotten there. So from two thousand one on, uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Oh, from October on, I had been
Speaker 1: in and out of Afghanistan for our tour was ninety
Speaker 1: days there, ninety days Hong, which was just preparation to
Speaker 1: go back. So it was just I don't know how
Speaker 1: many times I've deployed, but it's a lot um and
Speaker 1: then we took on a second mission to Iraq after that,
Speaker 1: but because Afghanistan felt squandered after a while, we had
Speaker 1: been doing a lot there that seemed odd to imagine
Speaker 1: jumping out of an airplane and landing in like Midwest USA.
Speaker 1: It's a bunch of farms. There's a bunch of people
Speaker 1: that are looking at you like what are you doing.
Speaker 1: You're like scrambling to get all your squad mates up.
Speaker 1: You're in a line and you look to your left
Speaker 1: and light right through nods and there's people coming out
Speaker 1: of their house like who that? Who dare? Like what
Speaker 1: the hell is? What is all this? Right? And then
Speaker 1: We're just going to some objective we have and I'm
Speaker 1: just like looking around, like, wow, this is a lot
Speaker 1: of crops, right, and some of its mountainous. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I was on the board of Pakistan a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, and that's I didn't get all the intel,
Speaker 1: but what I knew, I'm pretty sure we were there
Speaker 1: because we knew Osama bin Laden was there the whole time,
Speaker 1: and most of the objectives were just taking out al
Speaker 1: Kaeda operatives. Whatever was the top of the blacklist at
Speaker 1: the time. We just knocked them down and there would
Speaker 1: be a new name. Um, everybody knows some of them,
Speaker 1: like Ali Quari or Alazari. There's a lot um Alilaki right, UM,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It changed a lot depending on Okay,
Speaker 1: well this target is no longer accessible, new target, so
Speaker 1: the list just constantly revolved. So like if between Afghanistan
Speaker 1: and Iraq, which one did you spend more time in?
Speaker 1: Um hm Afghanistan just because the initial invasion to Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: I was gaining a foothold. So if you can imagine,
Speaker 1: we only run night operations, but someone had to get
Speaker 1: there first, takeover bases, make bases. There's not a lot
Speaker 1: left there. If you know the history of Afghanistan, they've
Speaker 1: been through tons of wars. Basically, UM communist regimes have
Speaker 1: shut up set up like tiny little hotspots where you
Speaker 1: could start an army base, but that was destroyed in
Speaker 1: some other regimes attempt to take off take over Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: So UM, we just had to like build areas where
Speaker 1: we can go from one spot to the other fast
Speaker 1: and that took a lot of time. So one of
Speaker 1: the main things you know that makes people paint the
Speaker 1: whole conflict that's being like this endless war is the
Speaker 1: whole notion that the mission, at least what was stated
Speaker 1: as the mission, was kind of accomplished a while ago,
Speaker 1: you know, before this like current pull out. So I'm
Speaker 1: just curious because if you got out in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: was the mission was accomplished by the right technically technically, yeah,
Speaker 1: but um it wasn't. Just so, I don't know what
Speaker 1: everybody's idea of the mission was, but it seemed to
Speaker 1: me it's not like anybody gave a really good statement
Speaker 1: a fact of like step one, do this, step two,
Speaker 1: do this. I know that. Uh. The main mission seemed
Speaker 1: to be to remove any elements that could operate from
Speaker 1: Afghanistan as a jumping point to do terrorists operations. Right,
Speaker 1: that seemed to be the focus. Um. Other than that,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was just like high value targets is
Speaker 1: what they would call them. Anybody that seemed that they
Speaker 1: could either take over or had already taken over. Um,
Speaker 1: anybody that was like a local warlord was probably I
Speaker 1: don't want to say paid, but you know coherst by
Speaker 1: our government to to kind of act as a de
Speaker 1: fact of government. We would usually run through them. They
Speaker 1: seem to know the area better, and for the most
Speaker 1: part they are the government in these small little townships
Speaker 1: because like I said, it's mostly farms. I mean, imagine
Speaker 1: like Aztecs step pyramids filled with crops on those steps
Speaker 1: of each mountain you run across. That's most of Afghanistan
Speaker 1: except for Kabul. But I don't know. Kabul is like
Speaker 1: a range of architecture, like you can tell the Russians
Speaker 1: were there. You can tell it was like Indian inspired.
Speaker 1: There's Buddhists like what looks like used to be Buddhist
Speaker 1: temples there. It's pretty pretty insane how modern and old
Speaker 1: and multicultural it seems to be there. So it's you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that gets left out in a
Speaker 1: lot of the media coverage of it is just the
Speaker 1: Afghan The afghanis themselves, you know what I mean. It's
Speaker 1: like just even when talking about the bombing that was
Speaker 1: at the airport, you know, all that they mentioned is
Speaker 1: the U. S service members they get killed, and they've
Speaker 1: they've kind of like aghanis exactly the hundred others. Just
Speaker 1: like as a footnote, So just for for you and
Speaker 1: your experience like that, how did you feel that the
Speaker 1: find that the Afghans responded to y'all in y'all's presence there,
Speaker 1: whenever you did, I don't know, I have a biased view.
Speaker 1: Any time I met Afghanians that weren't part of a mission,
Speaker 1: or that were part of a mission, it was at
Speaker 1: nighttime and they were super scared, um obviously or fighting us.
Speaker 1: That the only two only two options. There wasn't like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, it's you guys, but right, um. But
Speaker 1: then during when we were in like Kabul, we did
Speaker 1: a lot of to get from one point to the other.
Speaker 1: Like day operations, they looked similar tonight. It It didn't
Speaker 1: look like we could stop and talk to anybody. They
Speaker 1: were going about the business and the bull but and
Speaker 1: the farm areas they would run. And the reason why
Speaker 1: is a lot of them have weapons, and not like
Speaker 1: big arms, but like old World War two weapons and
Speaker 1: maybe an a K but for a whole huge like farming,
Speaker 1: single family area. If we run across them, the first
Speaker 1: thing we do is searching house, even at night, day, whatever,
Speaker 1: And that doesn't matter what unit is. So if you
Speaker 1: can imagine the next house that has weapons in it,
Speaker 1: we find a weapon and we're about to question and
Speaker 1: bring in an interpreter and talk to everyone in their family.
Speaker 1: How many farms in the midwest of the United States
Speaker 1: has weapons in them? Exactly? Right? Like now, imagine being
Speaker 1: in the middle of the desert where there's Bedouins and
Speaker 1: the Taliban what we call all Kada. All of those
Speaker 1: people are coming in left and right. I imagine most
Speaker 1: of them had weapons, so it was just like a
Speaker 1: lottery for them who was going to get messed with?
Speaker 1: Next that it seemed like we caused more fear than help.
Speaker 1: Did you feel kind of like a cop? Yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot like a cop. I just tested the feeling. Yeah. Later,
Speaker 1: like not at first because it was mission mission mission,
Speaker 1: but then like later, like I started to get the
Speaker 1: idea that wow, like if this guy's name was Gary,
Speaker 1: I had no Gary. He looks real familiar to me,
Speaker 1: and I feel really bad about the face he's making
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, just a long time. So how how
Speaker 1: did that make you feel? When you're like in in
Speaker 1: the like like, for example, if you're you're doing something
Speaker 1: and you've got to like question some poor guy at night,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and he's fucking scared to
Speaker 1: death because there's commando's armed to the teeth, Like questioning perfect,
Speaker 1: I've actually so it's like compartmentalized, sure, like anybody would expect,
Speaker 1: But have you ever heard of like, uh, so, let's
Speaker 1: say you have a rat in your farmhouse and instead
Speaker 1: of killing the rat, you just shoot it away. Now,
Speaker 1: that would seem compassionate and helpful. Um, you didn't harm
Speaker 1: the rat, and he's not in your stable anymore. But
Speaker 1: what you've effectively done is you move the rat, and
Speaker 1: if there's another homestead anywhere near that farm, it's now
Speaker 1: infested that area. So it was just in the farm,
Speaker 1: you could have filled it, you had access to it,
Speaker 1: and now it's in your house and now it's making
Speaker 1: babies and it's hard to get to and that's a
Speaker 1: much harder area to clear it from. So you've created
Speaker 1: a bigger problem. That was basically what our mission felt like,
Speaker 1: is to like not exterminate, but basically rude out any
Speaker 1: instance of this. I don't know, that's kind of what
Speaker 1: it felt like we were doing the whole time. It
Speaker 1: felt like that's what I was And I guess that's
Speaker 1: how it was compartmentalized, right, Like, sure, this person seems innocent,
Speaker 1: but he might be one of those get back into
Speaker 1: your house rats and to make sure we need to
Speaker 1: make sure he doesn't have anything of value here that
Speaker 1: could send a message to al Qaeda and let them
Speaker 1: know where we're at, or maybe give them intel. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's searched the whole place. And if you do
Speaker 1: that to every single person that you run across, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know. It made me feel probably a lot
Speaker 1: like they felt. I mean, that doesn't sound very compassionate,
Speaker 1: but obviously they felt worse, but now worse, then not
Speaker 1: so bad about it. In that same way that I described,
Speaker 1: I was thought I was rooting out a bigger problem.
Speaker 1: There's some collateral damage along the way, but I thought
Speaker 1: it was for a greater cause. So when you got out,
Speaker 1: or not even when you got out, but when when
Speaker 1: did you start feeling like that? In Afghanistan it was
Speaker 1: like holding a family at gunpoint hostage and finding like
Speaker 1: a single bolt action rifle, No ammo, and it's got um.
Speaker 1: There's something we call the jangle truck and the reason
Speaker 1: why they had bells and these really pretty Muslim like um,
Speaker 1: they can't write the word God on things. It's kind
Speaker 1: of blasphemous in the way that having a picture of
Speaker 1: Jesus would be for some Catholics. Um. So they have
Speaker 1: this really specific Muslim design they have in a lot
Speaker 1: of scarves, and this one of those cars were tied
Speaker 1: on the end of the barrel. I remember really vividly, um.
Speaker 1: And that's what we find after holding the kids at
Speaker 1: gunpoint and they're screaming this. I mean, mind you, we
Speaker 1: only lay it on a helicopter at nighttime, so they
Speaker 1: heard a helicopter maybe for a second. We fast roped
Speaker 1: down from six ft above them. We ran into their house.
Speaker 1: We held every male at gunpoint, ripped females out of
Speaker 1: their beds that were cowering, pulled their children out of
Speaker 1: the rooms, told them all to like calm down, then
Speaker 1: got an interpreter once we had them all isolated in quarantine,
Speaker 1: and then the interpreter talked to them one by one
Speaker 1: while you hear them all screaming through the house. It
Speaker 1: sounded like a horror movie in a way that I hadn't.
Speaker 1: I had experienced gunfire, We've had plenty of any enemy interactions. UM.
Speaker 1: I mean, nothing was worse for some reason than feeling
Speaker 1: like I was holding a family at gunpoint on that moment.
Speaker 1: I don't know that was the moment that I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, we can't. I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 1: And uh I had I was required to do it
Speaker 1: for the most part. So in the and I mean,
Speaker 1: I would imagine that that just bad after that. So
Speaker 1: like that's that same that scenario that you described was
Speaker 1: probably repeated. And before that it happened an times. I
Speaker 1: don't know how many times. But and we weren't really
Speaker 1: an enter a room in clear building and then go
Speaker 1: house my house unit. We had a target, we thought
Speaker 1: they were potentially okay, affiliated we landed at nighttime. It
Speaker 1: was really well orchestrated. Um, we were a Jaysack unit,
Speaker 1: so we were proud of the Joint Special Operations. Um,
Speaker 1: it was a really big deal if we went to
Speaker 1: a place. So we took it all seriously. So they
Speaker 1: were all serious to me until that one. And then
Speaker 1: seeing that they didn't even have like a computer or
Speaker 1: any magazines or any weapons or really that that's his account.
Speaker 1: He didn't even have a round for the thing. They
Speaker 1: cleared it right in front of me and it was
Speaker 1: like click, like, oh my gosh, this is like a
Speaker 1: decorative thing they found on the wall that's in We
Speaker 1: did this to that whole family kids are crying. It's
Speaker 1: like two or three, I don't know what time in
Speaker 1: the morning, but oh man, it was awful. But that
Speaker 1: one pretty much kind of set me for life. I think, like,
Speaker 1: this is none of this is right. I don't know
Speaker 1: what we're doing, but this is not like selective and
Speaker 1: focused enough for what we think our mission is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I mean so then, I mean, I know we
Speaker 1: kind of glazed over it. But you know, how did
Speaker 1: you how did you end up joining the middle? You know,
Speaker 1: because because obviously if you if you joined before even happened,
Speaker 1: then it wasn't like a reaction to time. It was
Speaker 1: I do a lot of things for the moment. I
Speaker 1: don't think I have anything diagnosable, but I am very
Speaker 1: I don't sit down. Uh. I have a watch, like
Speaker 1: a Samsung watch my wife gave me. I get like
Speaker 1: twenties steps today minimum. Um like top one per cent
Speaker 1: when you like check it on the phone. I don't
Speaker 1: know what's wrong with me. I've always been like this. Um.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was stuck in Sebastian, Florida, and
Speaker 1: I didn't like see away other than college. But that
Speaker 1: was such a long road to get out of a town, right.
Speaker 1: I was like, Nope, joining the military, and and that
Speaker 1: wasn't enough in my head. I was like, what's the
Speaker 1: hardest thing you have? And they were like rangers. I
Speaker 1: was like, dope, that's what we're gonna do. And I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, what am I thinking? And
Speaker 1: I had like all these bonuses contingent if I made it,
Speaker 1: which is a good incentive, but I didn't care, Like
Speaker 1: that's not why I went there. And it all kind
Speaker 1: of played out like I imagined it minus kind of
Speaker 1: the ending right, Like I never would have thought that
Speaker 1: i'd feel remorse for like representing my nation in some way.
Speaker 1: I think I might have been more patriotic then. I
Speaker 1: don't know. So you've been out, Well that's good. Tu
Speaker 1: we're gonna get back to that. That's interesting. But um,
Speaker 1: so you've been out since two thousand five. That's a
Speaker 1: long ass time that that war has still been going.
Speaker 1: I mean we're literally sitting here involving five that you
Speaker 1: got out and the war just ended Monday. I bring
Speaker 1: this up like every day. I don't know how to
Speaker 1: other people to about it. What did it feel like?
Speaker 1: You know, just year after year and like we we
Speaker 1: both you know, we both have mutual friends who had
Speaker 1: to go back when you were out that they lost
Speaker 1: their lives that didn't come back. You know what. So
Speaker 1: what has it been like for you in the last
Speaker 1: what is that fifteen sixteen years to have to just
Speaker 1: like see year after year like, oh man, this ship
Speaker 1: is still going on sho It seemed every incentive possible
Speaker 1: seems like it was moving us towards just living there.
Speaker 1: By that, I mean, I can't imagine a contract or
Speaker 1: contracting company. I mean imagine the airplanes being built for
Speaker 1: the mility like I couldn't like at the scope of
Speaker 1: it seems so large that I thought that even when
Speaker 1: Biden said that we were getting out, when Trump said it,
Speaker 1: when Obama said it was like no way, there's no way.
Speaker 1: There's too much of our economy is tied in this,
Speaker 1: and I thought that no president would ever be able
Speaker 1: to follow through like gets almost political suicide. And the
Speaker 1: way that Biden, I think, is experiencing it. And I
Speaker 1: can't imagine it would go different no matter who made
Speaker 1: this stroke. Well, I don't know. I feel like if
Speaker 1: Trump made this choice, it could have gone way worse.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I feel like to pull out on this
Speaker 1: would have been like see you when I see whoever,
Speaker 1: American troops, American people who helped us, doesn't matter. They
Speaker 1: all would have been left there to just no negotiation.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I can't wait to ask you
Speaker 1: about some of the political implications of this whole ship.
Speaker 1: But um, so, you know, the war has been going on,
Speaker 1: it kept going on over all the years and everything.
Speaker 1: How difficult is it for you to like keep a
Speaker 1: line on on things that are perhaps going on or
Speaker 1: is that something that you just kind of close out
Speaker 1: of your head. Have you tried to like keep tabs
Speaker 1: on what's going on in Afghanistan in the last like
Speaker 1: six years? It doesn't exist. Trump just engulfed all of
Speaker 1: the media in a way that kind of sucked up
Speaker 1: any valid story. Like uh, I would literally like I
Speaker 1: was literally just about to say that, like I w was.
Speaker 1: I did used to follow it actually quite closely until
Speaker 1: Trump became president and then it kind of and yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's impossible it was And I would have to
Speaker 1: go through like al Ja zero a lot to get
Speaker 1: any updates because they seem to just you know, they
Speaker 1: are also paying attention to American politics, but they would
Speaker 1: give you a little third party view of it, so
Speaker 1: sometimes you would get more information, but um, other than that, yeah,
Speaker 1: it seemed like we just that was what us is.
Speaker 1: We occupy Afghanistan as a as an identity. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So what do you what do
Speaker 1: you think about the the chaos that's going on there
Speaker 1: now with the with the troops pulling out in the
Speaker 1: Taliban taking over again, Like, for example, you have like
Speaker 1: a lot of national security specialists and experts and analysts
Speaker 1: that are on the Big three networks seven that are like, hey, man,
Speaker 1: now you're about to create a playground for al Qaeda
Speaker 1: and K pop and nothing hurts. Generation X is gonna
Speaker 1: come in there and everyone's gonna take it over and
Speaker 1: the whole entire ship is gonna be like like Afghanistan
Speaker 1: is going to be escaped from New York. And it's disgusting.
Speaker 1: It's a really fucking disgusting How can they they know
Speaker 1: the implications of what they're saying. They know that they're
Speaker 1: saying that we should be an endless war. What they're
Speaker 1: not mentioning is a single life on either side, whether
Speaker 1: it's the troops that pay the price or for this
Speaker 1: nation or the people that we invade on the other
Speaker 1: side or occupy, because that's that's the dirty truth. It
Speaker 1: doesn't matter if we invade or occupy, people are gonna die.
Speaker 1: I don't know what anybody thinks is gonna happen. War
Speaker 1: hasn't been a pretty thing ever, and it won't be
Speaker 1: in the future when it's just drones in fucking robots.
Speaker 1: Whoever doesn't have those will die. I don't know what
Speaker 1: anybody thinks it's going to be. And it's never been
Speaker 1: better than the people online in the Civil War shooting
Speaker 1: muskets at each other. It's the same ship. It hasn't changed.
Speaker 1: It's just new ways to do it, and they figure
Speaker 1: out some of our ways, so the numbers kind of
Speaker 1: feel the same, to be honest. And it's disgusting as
Speaker 1: fun to me that all of these people and I
Speaker 1: don't know what their financial ties are, and I feel
Speaker 1: like saying that out loud. I should probably look into this,
Speaker 1: but I feel like it's gonna anger me more. I
Speaker 1: feel like they're gonna be tied to in not in
Speaker 1: a conspiratorial way, but the everything is because they're contracted
Speaker 1: now the military industrial complex and not like Jimmy doer.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna blame everything on them, but I mean
Speaker 1: anything that's a part of their media, right, right, any
Speaker 1: part of Like if you're advocating for what we've been
Speaker 1: doing to save human life, get the funk out of here,
Speaker 1: Like that's it, Like you're fucking gross. Get the funk
Speaker 1: off the air. What's wrong with you? It's already happened.
Speaker 1: Why can't It's just like the anti masks though, the
Speaker 1: reality is there's a virus. The reality is we pulled
Speaker 1: out out of Afghanistan. What do we do now? Like
Speaker 1: that's it? Just is I don't know what to tell you.
Speaker 1: I can't make it go away. It happened. Can we
Speaker 1: deal with it better? Sure? Maybe I don't know. Um,
Speaker 1: let's say Trump pulled us out of Afghanistan. I thought
Speaker 1: about this a lot when Trump was running. I think
Speaker 1: me and you even had an argument around that time
Speaker 1: where I was like, maybe something's aren't as bad. He
Speaker 1: sounds like a normal Republican to me, and the way
Speaker 1: that I hate them, and he sounds disgusting, um man,
Speaker 1: I've said that a lot. Sorry, um, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: You were right, he was more disgusting, and the thought
Speaker 1: of him pulling out of war is not the same. Um,
Speaker 1: not the same at all. Uh. There's like a key
Speaker 1: and Peel skit. I don't know if you've seen it recently.
Speaker 1: It's got like Neil Degrass Tyson in it, and it's like, hell,
Speaker 1: Neil Degrass Tyson is at home and you know they're
Speaker 1: doing their normal key on Peels stuff, and that's fine.
Speaker 1: But at the end of it there's like a part
Speaker 1: where he's been you know, there's been a bit of infidelity,
Speaker 1: and he goes on to explain how the universe works
Speaker 1: to get out of it. And I was like, Yo,
Speaker 1: that's hilarious. But if Sean Hannity did this skit, it
Speaker 1: would be like super racist to me. And I just
Speaker 1: I don't give him that amount of credibility. And that's
Speaker 1: kind of I don't know, I've seen Trump in the
Speaker 1: same way, like it doesn't matter what he does, I
Speaker 1: just don't give him the credibility to have handled it. Well. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean the thing now is that at least from
Speaker 1: at least from how it looks to me, it looks
Speaker 1: like the Republicans are really about to go all in
Speaker 1: on we should be going to war more you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. Yeah, man, even Socrats. I mean, you
Speaker 1: just brought it up. But like obviously if I mean,
Speaker 1: here's the thing. The thing is, we know that the
Speaker 1: Big three are going to push it just as hard.
Speaker 1: We all know what their incentives and motivations are. And
Speaker 1: the Democrats who are out there talking that ship, we
Speaker 1: know what's up with them too. But what I'm saying
Speaker 1: is the Republicans, by like definition of being you know,
Speaker 1: bizarro Democrats and everything that therefore we're against, they're kind
Speaker 1: of like straight up being like, well they pulled out,
Speaker 1: Oh well, then we think we should go in. And
Speaker 1: if that ends up being the fight, I don't know that.
Speaker 1: Like three years is a long time. Three years is
Speaker 1: a long way away. But if the next whoever is
Speaker 1: running for president, if it ends up being like the
Speaker 1: Republicans are like, yeah, we should go to war, I
Speaker 1: don't know if that's a good political strategy. I think
Speaker 1: that might be taken. The owning the Libs thing that's
Speaker 1: going to make them lose a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of elections if they're like really gonna be running on yo,
Speaker 1: we need to go back to Afghanistan to own the
Speaker 1: Libs I don't know if that's it's not. I don't
Speaker 1: think it would fly. I didn't even think about it
Speaker 1: in that way. But that's it's hilarious. It seems like
Speaker 1: Trump's whole presidency was let's own the Libs. That's all
Speaker 1: that was. Like, it felt like it was nothing else.
Speaker 1: And if it was like like ruler that just happens
Speaker 1: to go authoritarian, Fine, We're cool with that, even if
Speaker 1: it's super hypocritical, even though I realized now that they're
Speaker 1: just about power or not, like they don't care about
Speaker 1: how prophecy in the same way, well straight, just like Jennison,
Speaker 1: a congressman on the left, like, oh you looked at
Speaker 1: a picture, NA get at here. That's that's it. They're
Speaker 1: they're not The Republicans are not like honest actors and
Speaker 1: not at all. So what do you think you know?
Speaker 1: Just from from as much as you have been able
Speaker 1: to keep up with Afghanistan over the year since you've
Speaker 1: been out, just like and from what you've seen in
Speaker 1: the news of what's going on today, where do you
Speaker 1: think it's headed? Like, what do you think is gonna happen?
Speaker 1: Do you like, do you think do you think that
Speaker 1: in two years. Do you think of two years that
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to or at least the powers that
Speaker 1: we are going to present that we have to send
Speaker 1: troops back. Do you think it's gonna become a terrorist haven?
Speaker 1: But no, I don't think it will be an all right.
Speaker 1: I don't think it will be any more of a
Speaker 1: terrorist saving than it is than it was before we
Speaker 1: went in. And I don't think it was any more
Speaker 1: of a terrorist saven then than surrounding six countries in
Speaker 1: the Middle East were at the time that we chose
Speaker 1: not to invade, including one of those being the Like
Speaker 1: was it the people who flew the planes into the
Speaker 1: twin towers in the first right, I was trying not
Speaker 1: to be. I was being a little coy, but yes, right, So,
Speaker 1: I mean I don't know. Um, I think it's gonna
Speaker 1: end up exactly like it was. I think that. So
Speaker 1: if you don't, I don't know. Do you know a
Speaker 1: lot about right before all this happened, even like the eighties? Right, Um,
Speaker 1: there's like a there's a lot to happen in Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: For everybody's heard that, like, uh, A lot of countries
Speaker 1: have gone into Afghanistan and like not withstood Afghanistan. It's
Speaker 1: not just like a harsh environment. It's just that so
Speaker 1: many countries have had interested in it. From Persia, They've
Speaker 1: been Persian twice, they were part of India once, they
Speaker 1: were part of Britain once. Um, the Mongols destroyed all
Speaker 1: of Afghanistan at one point. But that's nothing compared to
Speaker 1: they had like a feminism before feminine feminism was cool,
Speaker 1: like so in the sixth season when it was big here,
Speaker 1: they had kind of a communist movement there. And who
Speaker 1: glomed onto that were the younger people in Afghanistan. And
Speaker 1: who noticed that was Russia. Who noticed that was China.
Speaker 1: They got tons of money at the time. And I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how much of this is just PBS history
Speaker 1: that I've taken in over the years, and so please
Speaker 1: do your own research on this. But as far as
Speaker 1: I know, like, uh, there was once the king was
Speaker 1: deposed at the time, was taken over by a mostly
Speaker 1: communist government of people who didn't know what to do
Speaker 1: with the country at the time, that had hell of funding. Um,
Speaker 1: they didn't handle it well as you can imagine. It
Speaker 1: was the first time taking over their country. Um, mostly rural.
Speaker 1: Like I said before, even back then with just Kabul
Speaker 1: being like the New York of all of Afghanistan, and
Speaker 1: that's who was ruling it. So most of the rural
Speaker 1: communities did what our rural communities are southern rural communities
Speaker 1: like to do and make little posts of people armed
Speaker 1: to the teeth, spouting like crazy extremist fundamentalism. And then
Speaker 1: they just took back over the government from them people.
Speaker 1: And then the Communists came back in. They're like, oh no,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna take that. At the time, I think
Speaker 1: we called in the Mujahadeen, and then Americans were like,
Speaker 1: oh well, let's keep communists at bay. Were super anti communists,
Speaker 1: and then we threw them money to keep Russia at bay,
Speaker 1: and then they became al Qaeda. That's who we know today.
Speaker 1: I think it's just gonna follow the same pattern. Another
Speaker 1: nation's probably in a second when we pull out. Um.
Speaker 1: I think that we knew when we set up the
Speaker 1: Afghanian government it's not a well organized nation enough around
Speaker 1: the outskirts of Coble to ever have anything formalized that
Speaker 1: all the people around cable will listen to, because as
Speaker 1: we well learned with Trump, I think that we know
Speaker 1: now that a lot of stuff goes without saying in
Speaker 1: the United States that we we think the powers that
Speaker 1: we are gonna like hold people to account. So we
Speaker 1: all kind of stay reserved and don't like flood in
Speaker 1: the Capitol. But some of us don't think that, and
Speaker 1: some of us believe all the lies and do flood
Speaker 1: the capitol. Like I'm just saying that, if you think
Speaker 1: that happens here, what do you think happens when most
Speaker 1: people don't live in a city and they don't get information,
Speaker 1: they don't have TVs. I don't know there, I think
Speaker 1: they We're just gonna go right back to how it
Speaker 1: was before we went there. Word man, Well, thank you
Speaker 1: for talking to me about you know, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a little break. But when we come back,
Speaker 1: since my man's you know, a lot heads don't know, right,
Speaker 1: Like the reason that I was able to get like
Speaker 1: that little bit of a of a start in my
Speaker 1: rap career way back in the day was because of
Speaker 1: this dude, you know what I mean? Like John is
Speaker 1: a huge hip hop enthusiasts, and we have endless conversations
Speaker 1: about rap all the time. But we're gonna like talk
Speaker 1: about some ship that I mentioned at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the show. We're gonna do a little bit of a
Speaker 1: I don't even want to give y'all any false advertisement
Speaker 1: by saying this is a deep dive, but we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about Kanye's Donda after the break. So y'all stay too,
Speaker 1: all right, and we are back. It is time for
Speaker 1: the music discussion. And I still got my homie John Hannah,
Speaker 1: who's sticking around with us. We talked about all that
Speaker 1: Afghanistan death and raids and bombings and ships. So now
Speaker 1: we're gonna, well, I guess talking about Kanye West isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily better, but anyway, we're gonna, we're gonna, We're gona
Speaker 1: talk about the album Donda, So just generally, what are
Speaker 1: your thoughts? What do you think about it? Because it
Speaker 1: feels the other day like so I should feel like
Speaker 1: I should compliment Sandwich this by saying there are some
Speaker 1: tracks I love, but it's just one second. I told
Speaker 1: him the other day, like, Yo, can you check out
Speaker 1: the album so that we can talk about it on
Speaker 1: the show. He's like, yeah, I got you, and then
Speaker 1: I hit him out. I don't know how long. How
Speaker 1: long later, I was like Yo, did you hear it?
Speaker 1: And he's like, man, this is like way longer than
Speaker 1: I thought it was gonna be, but we got we
Speaker 1: had to record this ship tomorrow. I can't talk about
Speaker 1: it now, but yeah, So generally, what are your thoughts?
Speaker 1: What you thought? Man? All right, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be super mean, but compliments Sandwich. There's some tracks I
Speaker 1: love because he kind of seems to go like Southern
Speaker 1: trap in the beginning of it, and it's not so
Speaker 1: much religious in the beginning. I like that bit about it. Um,
Speaker 1: but man, it's a mess. I don't know. It's all
Speaker 1: over a Matt dude. And then there's like something to
Speaker 1: bother me and like every track once I heard it,
Speaker 1: and like the third or fourth track, it's like there
Speaker 1: were cuss words in there and he cut it out
Speaker 1: like I got a Walmart album from a long time
Speaker 1: ago and I was jamming and I'm like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: I don't like this, but all like it drove me
Speaker 1: nuts after a while. That might that might be there's
Speaker 1: there might be a little bit of trivia that you
Speaker 1: are not privy to that would explain that. So he
Speaker 1: apparently did a thing where he's like, I'm only making
Speaker 1: gospel music and I'm not making secular music anymore. So
Speaker 1: the edited out curse words, I guess that's like how
Speaker 1: it is, right, but if you know you're gonna make
Speaker 1: it like I did hear that, and I knew that
Speaker 1: going in, and I was like, I don't mind, right,
Speaker 1: But then like he had the choice not to. You
Speaker 1: could have just done something else. Yeah, you could have
Speaker 1: just not said it. But like at first I thought
Speaker 1: when I first heard it, I really thought that, like, oh,
Speaker 1: so like you could do had the edits in there,
Speaker 1: and just like it's meaningful, right, And in the first
Speaker 1: I heard it, I'm like, Okay, maybe he's gonna work
Speaker 1: this in. It's gonna be like meaningful religiously. Like no,
Speaker 1: he never references it. It just happens every not every track,
Speaker 1: but but there is Oh sorry, go ahead, go ahead,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, banger. So I have I do have a question.
Speaker 1: I didn't research it yet, but is Lauren Hill really
Speaker 1: does she feature on or is that just the same
Speaker 1: she's on with the whole track? For me, it was
Speaker 1: so good, I was so happy the most I smiled
Speaker 1: the whole album just for an explanation. Is there a
Speaker 1: little bit Lauren Hills. I know, but it was like
Speaker 1: she got a she got a verse on the New Nose.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard, no, I didn't hear. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: drops like a full like sixteen or twenty four or
Speaker 1: something like that. But it's a pretty fire verse. It
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like that just reminded me he has. There's
Speaker 1: a verse on a song, and I can't remember the song.
Speaker 1: I will will look. I wrote it down somewhere, but
Speaker 1: versu it's at the very end. He says that we
Speaker 1: know that Adam wasn't black because he would never have
Speaker 1: shared his ribs. And I don't know if you remember
Speaker 1: a conversation earlier, like I flipped. So it's not on purpose.
Speaker 1: It's not on purpose, but I flipped everything people say
Speaker 1: to me sometimes, like I'll reverse roles. It's like a
Speaker 1: check on myself. Like if I say something kind of gross,
Speaker 1: I'll catch myself because I'll reword it. I'll be like, oh,
Speaker 1: if Max said that, it might have been all right,
Speaker 1: but that's disgusting. I can't believe I said that. When
Speaker 1: he said that, I was like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: can't listen to like I don't know it, like fucked
Speaker 1: up the whole next song, I don't even know what
Speaker 1: like full song goes by and I'm just thinking about
Speaker 1: that verse at the end drove me nuts. And like again,
Speaker 1: if said that, he would be canceled and justifiably. So
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, well, I mean, you know, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: this is you know, Kanye is like a recurring character
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Asked just because you know, oh the
Speaker 1: motherfucker actively was trying to help Nazis like months ago. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh man, do you remember? All right? So when we
Speaker 1: just talked about Afghanistan, I brought up the key of Belski,
Speaker 1: same thing, like, I don't give him the credibility when
Speaker 1: he says things. So when he said that line, it
Speaker 1: wasn't like if like Na said it, maybe I would
Speaker 1: have taken oh man, or like DMX, who handled two
Speaker 1: religious albums great, like nobody realizes that his first two
Speaker 1: albums were full of religious iconography and handled just masterfully right,
Speaker 1: um the Mickey skid or if nobody's ever heard it,
Speaker 1: like no little Nikki anyway, it doesn't matter, but I
Speaker 1: give him credibility when he says things. But when Kanye
Speaker 1: says it, I don't. I don't know I'm gonna come clean, Okay.
Speaker 1: I have somewhat of attained listen to this album because
Speaker 1: everybody was talking about the fun in live stream and
Speaker 1: the ship that they were doing at the stadium with
Speaker 1: the listening and stuff. And then I heard like the
Speaker 1: Baby and Marilyn Manson came out on stage, so I
Speaker 1: listened to the I wanted to kill two birds with
Speaker 1: one stone, so I listened to the album like watching
Speaker 1: the live stream of that stadium event. So I granted,
Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily get to like really delve into the
Speaker 1: minutia of the lyrics because I was, you know that
Speaker 1: I had the visuals with me, and I was like
Speaker 1: looking at the visuals and listening to the songs. My
Speaker 1: general I feel like the beats are really nothing right.
Speaker 1: The beats are knocking, and there's definitely some flows that
Speaker 1: I was here and I was like, hey, this slaps.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing right, here's the thing right. It's
Speaker 1: like if my if if an artist that I like
Speaker 1: does something outside of music that's bad, there's certain times
Speaker 1: when I can come partamentalize it and it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it doesn't affect how I take in their art. It's
Speaker 1: not that way. With rap, It's not that for me.
Speaker 1: It's not that way with rapping or writers any anything
Speaker 1: that requires like an artist to be like to write,
Speaker 1: to be a writer, then your personality and your personal
Speaker 1: life kind of affects how I take in your art.
Speaker 1: That's just me. I'm not telling anybody now. Granted, I'm
Speaker 1: not the sort of person who's gonna be like this
Speaker 1: is just this is just me. I'm just being honest.
Speaker 1: I'm not the sort of person is going to be like, oh, man, um,
Speaker 1: this dude got a d U I So I'm not
Speaker 1: listening to a ship anymore. That's you know. But if
Speaker 1: you tell me, yo, this dude was trying to help
Speaker 1: fascists take over the country, then I'm like, this dude
Speaker 1: was helping, you know, like helping the people who spread
Speaker 1: COVID disinformation and got six thousand people. For me, personally,
Speaker 1: your beats cannot be dope enough. I'm not gonna remember that. Man.
Speaker 1: I have to look for my list. Oh there's a
Speaker 1: dope song, all right. So full disclosure, I'm already biased
Speaker 1: because I'm I'm atheists. I'm not at all religious in
Speaker 1: any way. In fact, I'm almost antitheists in some ways.
Speaker 1: But the Jesus Lives track, it's kind of dope. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't it's not he didn't handle it well. I
Speaker 1: feel like in the hands of someone else. It's almost
Speaker 1: like the production of some of it is so good.
Speaker 1: It needs like another artist that I like. But man,
Speaker 1: that fired. There was a piano track that is ridiculous.
Speaker 1: There's like all Kanye albums though, I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 1: at least for the next five years, you're gonna be
Speaker 1: here in different rappers spitting versus over these beats. So
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, you'll you'll get to do.
Speaker 1: That made me hopeful, That makes me unfortunately, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I feel like other people are gonna think it's hot. Honestly,
Speaker 1: I think other people are gonna love it. It's like
Speaker 1: it's the number one. It's it's like I'm not even
Speaker 1: saying that I don't like it. I'm just saying no,
Speaker 1: I don't like Kanye. Yeah, it makes me not like it.
Speaker 1: You know now, now, just from what I heard objectively,
Speaker 1: if I did like Kanye, I would kind of feel like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's not I'm going on though, like
Speaker 1: we should eat time one day, maybe not live. But
Speaker 1: I have some thoughts because I mean I listened lyrically,
Speaker 1: I was really listening to it. I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: I gotta do another. He has no self awareness, is
Speaker 1: my problem. And every time he says something, it's like obvious.
Speaker 1: Even if the song is about being enlightened and and
Speaker 1: following Jesus and emulating him, that's not what he's talking
Speaker 1: about in front of that, And then the hook goes
Speaker 1: into I don't know. I just it's too much my
Speaker 1: mind care. I don't know. I try to really listen
Speaker 1: when someone talks. I want you to tell me what
Speaker 1: part of Jesus's message is. Candice Owens tell me that
Speaker 1: I want it now anyway, if I had to give
Speaker 1: it a letter grade, if I had to, if I
Speaker 1: had to give my listen of Donda a letter grade,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give Donda a B minus. Personally, what are
Speaker 1: you giving it? And he thought he had better things
Speaker 1: to say about that. I didn't. He gave it a
Speaker 1: see and I gave it a B minus. So maybe
Speaker 1: I'm getting soft to other people gonna love it. But
Speaker 1: that is our episode today. Once again, everybody you know,
Speaker 1: go on Instagram, send your love and your thoughts to
Speaker 1: Mariah and the new bundle of joy that she's brought
Speaker 1: in the in the world. And you know, maybe one
Speaker 1: day we'll have John back on and then the three
Speaker 1: of us can have an in depth conversation about Kanye
Speaker 1: just you know, I don't even know if I want
Speaker 1: to do that. We talked about Kanye to god damn
Speaker 1: much on this podcast. Starting to feel like the anyway. Uh,
Speaker 1: We're gonna end this the way we end everything, and
Speaker 1: that is going to be with some rapidy raps your Joe,
Speaker 1: can you kick a beat? Uh? Yeah, yeah, yeah? You
Speaker 1: host this. Stevens a d o P with the E
Speaker 1: and a brock like and lou C d I use
Speaker 1: all three brains, long mouth, and I'm so dope that
Speaker 1: they stay strong out. Hey, don't shout. I want a
Speaker 1: little piece. At least we could just pull out the
Speaker 1: Middle East, but we probably won't at the will of
Speaker 1: the elite air prints Bush and all of these little creeps. Hey,
Speaker 1: this is dope Knife And you've been listening to Waiting
Speaker 1: on Reparations, See y'all next week. Waiting on Reparations is
Speaker 1: a production of iHeart Radio for more podcasts and my
Speaker 1: Heart Radio check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast,
Speaker 1: or wherever you get your podcasts. W